Shawn Ryan Show - #34 Cody Alford - Marine Raider/MARSOC Sniper Who Became a Nomad

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Cody Alford is a former Marine Raider & Scout Sniper who was on the frontlines of the Battle of Fallujah. After an impressive 15 year career, he chose to walk a totally new path - van life. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: 🚨USE CODE SHAWN🚨 https://www.mudwtr.com/shawn (USE CODE SHAWN) https://goodranchers.com/shawn https://www.bubsnaturals.com #VIGILANCEELITE #SHAWNRYANSHOW Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. I remember going back behind the window, I reloaded another magazine, and as soon as I pop out to shoot, it all goes black. The brutality of it all and really what we were up against, I had no left to write a lot of them to even comprehend that. The body mutilations, the headings, the dismemberment, the human shields, all that. But the night prior, my particular commander comes in and he's like, everyone's going to ride their death letter.

Jesus Christ. And then you hear stories of your friends that you went to bootcamp with, the school of infantry with, that are in your body, that are fighting for their life at the same time, that you're fighting for your life in fluency, just to find out how those kids are dead. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember the feeling.

And I have never been up to shake it ever since. That's when I had this out- body experience. At the time I had no idea what happened, I thought I was dead. I saw this top-down view of what's going on. I could see my body, I could see my point man still shooting, I could see my other teammates on their ground. We were stacking so many bodies that we had to send patrols out to move bodies because there was interrupting our fields of fire. Holy shit. There were so many bodies being stacked that the locals were driving up their ambulances

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all 60 of them the first night I got them. They taste amazing. And man, I got a lot of energy now. Anyways, go to bobsnaturals.com, use promo code Sean to take 20% off your order. Thank you, bobsnaturals, for being a sponsor of the Sean Ryan Show. Cody Alfred, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me.

I'm glad you made it. Me too. I've been watching your Instagram for a couple of years now, and well, really got me your military service, I'm sure, is impeccable. I've heard, I've reached out to some buddies of mine that are Marsock and asked around about you and everybody just had phenomenal things to say. But what really caught me was kind of your philosophy on life and how you, I mean, you live free, free of all the bullshit. At least it appears that way. And so I thought you'd make a great guest and I can't wait to dive into that. We're gonna hit your childhood, we're gonna hit your military career really heavy and what you're doing now and

in your journey after the military which I personally think is very inspiring. So thank you for making it. Yeah thanks for having me. I'm really excited, big fan. My pleasure. But everybody starts with a gift. There you go. Awesome. Any guesses? It's gonna be hard. Let's see.

Nobody ever guesses it. I never guessed and I should have not guessed because I would have got it wrong. This is sick. Bro, I have deployment stories of gummy bears. I love them. Those are legal in all 50 states. I'm all about that. Right on.

Dude. That's merch. I love it. You're an XL. I, yes I am. Alright cool. Thank you. Yeah man, you're welcome. Thanks for making it. You're an XL. Yes, I am. All right, cool.

Thank you. Yeah, man, you're welcome. Thanks for making it. I'm super stoked. But, you know, we generally start the show with a question from Patreon. From Patreon. So, patrons, that's what enables this whole thing to happen. They support the show. They support my team, me.

That's why you're sitting here, that's why I'm sitting here. And so I try to get them a question, at least one question. And they actually, man, when I told them you were coming, they were all fired up. We got more questions from you coming on than most guests. So I would like to do another segment if that's possible that's only on Patreon, ask, answer, and all their questions. They get a lot of good questions. But this one is from Campbell Williams. I thought this was

a good question because it directly is related to kind of your mantra or your philosophy on life, your company. And it's basically asking in a world full of fantasies which we see on social media all the time people pretended to be what they're not or hide in certain aspects of their life or you know what I'm talking about. What is defying the norm? That is a really good question. What is normal?

Normal is what you accept as truth. Normal is what makes you stay in the haze and days of life, wondering and dreaming of something else, different, different venture you can be on, but still doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Norm is listening through the motions and buying into the whole go to education, go into debt, get a job, get married, get the white picket fence, save some money, buy your dream stuff when you're 65 just to remember, just to be reminded that you don't have enough money to live and then to die old age, full of regret. And I told myself I wasn't going to live that life. So in a world full of fake and fallacies and not so much authenticity out there, define the norm as finding your voice, finding you and literally paving a path on however you want to and whatever that means to you.

So if this is the path you want to be on, do it, but believe in it. If that's not the path you wanna be on, do it but believe in it. If that's not the path you wanna do, do something different and believe in it. To me, that's what defying the norm is. It's a good answer. Well, I got my own question too. Okay. So at dinner last night, we had,

we're both new parents, we had some good, new parent advice. So, but I didn't ask you this question on purpose because this is what I texted myself in the middle of dinner. But, I don't know about you, but my son came and changed everything. And way more than I thought,

it would actually change my life. And I have a few rules that I've made myself and those rules continue to, to continue to be more rules. This time goes on, but do you have a number one rule that you follow as a new father? It doesn't have to be like a whole philosophy, could be one just specific rule. Like my number one rule to keep myself and check for my son is I when he is in my arms, I do not get on my phone. No social media, no texts, no checking things, no checking email, nothing, no phone

on my son's in my arms. And I think that's going to go into no phone when he's looking at me. Maybe even no phone when he's in the room. I don't want my son to wind up living on his phone like I see everybody else. You know, you go to a restaurant, you see married couples, they don't even fucking look at each other,

looking at their phone the whole time. Or you go to a family dinner and you see half the family, you know, on their phone in the middle of dinner. And I never want that to happen. So that's my number one rule. Do you have one? I think I have a view which transpires into rules. And that view is this, I'm the way.

You know, that dude looks at me. And, you know, when he was first born, I was scared. I have a seven-year-old son that lives overseas with his mother that I don't get as much contact as I want to. And that makes it difficult. And so for seven years, I've beat myself up for like not being a good dad, you know, not being a good man.

And being in my son's life now, my six-month-year-old, his first two months, I was still waiting for permission to be a dad. I was holding myself back because of all these insecurities and fears and just stories I've told myself for seven years, feeling inadequate, always thinking about my son but not being able to do anything about it. And so when I when I stopped feeling sorry and waiting for permission, I just started to engage myself with him, everything changed because I found myself not being really interactive with him, I found myself easily distracted, I find myself needed to do or wanting to do things and having to watch him or hold him was keeping me from I were active with him. I found myself easily distracted. I found myself needed to do or wanting to do things

and having to watch him or hold him was keeping me from those things. It was very selfish. And I realized that no matter how I want to shake a stick, I'm the way this dude is going to model me. And if I don't show up as my best self, even with my hurdles, my hardships, my truth, you know, that kid is going gonna grow up in a lie.

And one thing that I've struggled really hard in the past four years is being present. And I think it's kind of what you're saying too, about being on your phone. I can now pick up my son and like he's there, I'm smiling. If he goes to sleep, my wife's like, get him up. I'm like, no, this dude is sleeping and I wanna take advantage of this.

I'm really wanna enjoy it because people say, like, oh, you watch your kid be born, he'll change your life. And my life didn't magically change when he popped out. But my life did change. I just didn't know it. Because I was still battling things and knowing that I am the way that I'm the vessel

for him to watch and observe, I'm the lighthouse for him to see when times are tough and times are dark, putting that responsibility on life in itself and that my role as a father and as a mentor and as a leader of the family, it helped shift me into gear that I wasn't already in. I had the capability of being in that gear, but I just needed to like make it happen.

So I'd say my rule is, A, over ever changing, but realizing that I am the lighthouse for him, and if I can't be that for myself, if I can't be present for myself, if I can't be working on myself, if I can't be better in myself, or pushing myself forward, how can I ever lead him to do the same for himself?

And being present has really helped that. And when I look at that dude's eyes, I'm just like, I fucking love you. And I mean it. And it's helped shift my perspective on I hear stories, oh, I do anything from my kids. I'm like, but you won't even do anything for yourself. I would do anything from my kids.

I'm like, you hate your fucking job. You make no money and you pawn off your insecurities on your children. And I have that as like this, this like guiding principles going into being a father and actually being able to be here and be involved and to me just did it make sense. And so I'd like stop putting the blame or stop projecting what needs to happen and start being what must happen. And through changing myself and giving myself permission to be like, yo bro, step up, be a dad, be a man, be president, stop doing this shit that you know

is not enhancing your quality of life. And that really changed it all. And when I look at him and I see him and are running away, but I'm spending time with him, I'm with him. And so now my whole view of life has completely changed even more. I'm doing what I gotta do to maximize my time with him, I'm with him. And so now my whole view of life has completely changed even more. I'm doing what I gotta do to maximize my time with my son and my family because that is what matters to me.

We were four, all these other goals and dreams mattered to me, the distractions mattered to me. But those were because I had no rules. So when I meet men like you and dads like you and we share these conversations and I hear what's important to you, I add that to my rolodex because I wanna be the best dad, you know, and I want my kid to be around strong men. I want other men to help raise my son.

I wanna try to help raise my son. And the only way I'm gonna do that I might be able to do it in a physical space, but I can take these other key points and key rules from these other great men that I admire and look up to. I'm bringing them into my life. It's challenging to me, but it's going to benefit him because he's only going to see what right looks like through my own actions. And so if I can't get my shifts together,

how can I expect to say I'm to setting him up for success and that I love him? If I don't love myself enough to put the work in, to do the hardship, to put down the phone, which is hard to do, you know, guys like you and I, our businesses are from this phone. And at least for me, it can be very overwhelming at times. I can definitely fall down those rabbit holes and miss out on what's right in front of me.

And that's really been the season of just stopping all the noise and focusing on what matters and being present. Cause I definitely wasn't like that before. So it's, yeah, so it's almost the same. It's the same. Same. Same rule. The same. Same rule, just 15 minutes of explanation.

Yeah, right. Right. Right. That's it. You got any other ones off the top of your head? What do you want your son? If you, it's not your choice, but what do you want your son to be involved in? What's one thing that you want to teach him that you want to relate with him on? Is it maybe it's your Jitsu, maybe it's business, maybe it's shooting, maybe it's building

for it. What are you looking forward to? I'm looking for hit I'm looking forward to him becoming an individual. Yeah, you know, I don't I'm not gonna there's nothing in my life that I enjoy so much that I everyone to put on anybody else because it's taking me long to even find interest in those things and knowing what I think I know about the mind and how we evolve and how we grow and how we expand and how we heal and how we do all these things, there's a version of him that I want him to be able

to have that space where he can find that version uninterrupted by outside influence, especially by us. I just want him to see mom and dad crushing their goals and dreams because you can't say, he's just on, I believe in you, go out and do big things, but if you don't do that for yourself, so it's like a commitment to life.

So I have no expectations for him other than to set him up for success and what does that mean by showing him? That's the only thing I can do. If I try to, I will never get into the sports, I will never make him do anything, but I will encourage him to do more. And as he grows and has he evolves and as a leader and as a mentor for him, I will

utilize my experience to see those gaps and offer guidance. Because if he doesn't have a buy-in, he's going to be resentful in whatever he's doing at such a young age. And that's that's only going to push him potentially further away from his true path and calling. So I'm kind of open and it's all new and it's absolutely scary and I have really no fucking clue what I'm doing. So it's exciting. Yeah, I don't think anybody does. I want to introduce my son to as many things as possible. And one thing that I worry about a little bit is, and I don't maybe you worry about it too, but you've got 15 years as a marine rater and special operations.

That's a lot to live up to for a son, you know, in your entire career, was in wartime environment. I don't want my son to, I'm hoping he doesn't try to do what I did to live up to whatever he thinks that I've accomplished, you know, and what I wanna do is introduce him to as many things as possible and hope that he finds What interests him not what he thinks I want him to be interested in if that makes a lot of sense

You know, I think I had a I believe my dad was a good man But I didn't get a lot of like Guidance and praise growing up as a kid and so I think that was a lot of like, I was always trying to like crush it to like when dad's approval. And so reverse engineering that whole phase of my life, you know, and applying that to how I view my son and how I at least right now feel like I'm gonna go

into that season of evolution is, I'm gonna treat him like a teammate. I'm gonna treat him like a teammate. I'm gonna treat him like a team member when home accountable. You know, I'm gonna give him rules and expectations, task conditions and standards. And like you said, interact, I want him to meet these other great amazing men

that they might have been superheroes back in the day, but right now they're super men. They're doing real things. They find passion and what they do. They're educated. They have their own two cents. They thank for themselves. And, you know, not a lot of people see that side

of especially veterans, especially our tribe of veterans, our group of people that we worked with, and obviously not everyone's the same. But there's so much more to life, and I think we learned so much more about life after all the suffering and the pain and the fucking misery that hardships we've gone through willingly or not that can help expand the way you view things and work on things.

And if I can introduce my son to that circle of people that are just living, growing evolving, that might be all he needs. And if he wants to go do that other thing, then that's fine. But you know, my job is to give him a well-rounded foundation so he can build any empire he wants to, not a single track mine. I'll never raise my kid military.

I'll never do any of that type of stuff. I didn't grow up that way. I was given the opportunity. But then the day that flame inside, you can't tame that, you know, you can't. You can only nurture it, you can't tame that. You can't, you can only nurture it, you can only encourage it. And you can only hope that you did good enough, right? You said the example enough, so no matter what decision they make, they're going to go with

their own philosophy into that unknown, into that fray. Because the military is not a bad place. The military is just as dangerous place as a nine to five job. It's the complacency of the mindset. It's what you're willing to do, what you're willing to accept, what truths do you have going into it, what vulnerability are you going to show yourself, what openness and willingness are you going to have?

Those are the things that I want my kid to understand to be open to, these words, these terms, these feelings, these emotions, to weaponize his mind so he can literally do anything it wants to. And have enough courage to be like, I'm done, and have enough respect for myself to be like, I need help. That's my main focus for him. That's awesome.

Well said. But, well, let's move into you. Okay. So let's start. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Duncanville, Texas. It's just South of Dallas, Texas. Right? Smack dab in the center.

And, yeah. I did that for 18 years till before I moved out and went to the military. What were you into as a kid? Hold on. Hold on. Let's go back. Yeah, let's go back. What were you into as a kid? I was into... I was into art. I loved to draw.

I was painting and drawing as a little kid, drawing spaceships, spacemen. I was in a lot of art competitions. I think a lot of kids are, but I really enjoyed it. And then the computer came out. And then I got into like,

even with paint, I used to draw on paint all the time. I used to draw like James Bond, like video game characters and very pixelated art back in the day and I had this like talent for like blowing up like small stamps. My parents collect the stamps and I would like blow up these stamps into like big drawings and paintings. I could just like, that's what I was really good at enhancing the size of something and kind of bringing it to life. And that's what I was into. Then I got into playing video games, like computer games,

mainly warship, because I saw this, I saw this Ranger poster once, and it kick-started everything for me. But this whole like fantasy fantasy of this supreme, commando, premier operating, discipline lifestyle, I'm like, oh my God, this is awesome. And so then I got into fantasizing about, what would that life look like? Then I saw the movie sniper with Tom Berenger

and that just fucking solidified everything for me So then what I got into was paintball. I got into I was like making my gillisuit at like eight years old Crawling around my backyard, you know, there's no YouTube back then, but there was VHS tape and I recorded every like Seal documentary that was on the Discovery Channel every Special forces sniper thing that I could see. Dude, I'd wake up. I would, you remember back in the day there was like the TV guide, Pamplets? Yeah.

I would like flip through there and be like, oh, this movie's playing at three o'clock in the morning so I'd get up and like record over like our Christmas can VHS taped, you know, cause I need to some space to like get this documentary so I can watch it. Like I just started to nerd out on those things because it looked hard and I was really,

I was really turned on by the aspect of like, not everyone passes and you know, there's a 60% failure rate and I'm just like those things were interesting to me. So I was really into like that, my instead of like, that's where I'm going to go. So you really wanted to test yourself at a very young age. Yeah, I was into it.

I knew my dad was in the military. He was a Marine also. Never talked about it. Every now and then, stories that come up with these around friends, but it was very few and far between. I was never influenced by mouth, where the mouth to ever seek that stuff.

I think my parents just kind of knew that's what I wanted to do. I was always playing GI Joe. I mean, shit, I had one of those toy Rambo knives with plastic ones with a compass in the handle. Oh, nice. And I would, group in a kind of small home

and I would low crawl from my bedroom into the kitchen area. I remember my mom would like, she'd like put the, the comforters and laundry in the kitchen. She's like washing the clothes and the garage and I would like low crawl underneath like the pile of my clothes and I would like hide out there. Sometimes it'd be for hours waiting for my mom

to like lift it up and like, ah, surprise her, I'd sneak up behind my cats. I'm like, surprise her, I'd sneak up behind my cat. I'm like, dude, if I could sneak up behind a cat, I could sneak up behind anybody. And I think my cats just feel sorry for me probably. They're just like this fucking guy. So, but I felt cool, you know, it was like,

that was it, I was into it. I was always trying to think like, if we got attacked in my house, I'm gonna hide behind my dresser drawers and I have like my rubber band guns and, you know, I always, I just had that mindset of like, I don't really know what it was. It was just in me and I wasn't like,

possessed with it. It was just like, it was, my vision board, I had a vision board ever since I was a child. Really? Yeah. Never even heard about a vision board until my 30s. And my vision board, I actually posted on my Instagram, I had this like cork board.

And on there I had like one shot, one kill. I was always drawn like sniper stuff in high school. Like I was always do-lin dude, teachers talking, Cody's drawing. You know, I'm fantasizing. I'm drawing a sniper rifle, I'm drawing a skull, with a booney cover on it, I'm drawing like all sorts of shit. Like, just, I, I didn't know at the time what I was actually doing

until now, later in life, I started to research, read more books, and educate myself on these anomalies that have happened in my life. But they all started from a police system and a mindset as a child. And my vision board had a classic truck. It had my scout sniper. It had like a marine patch on there. It basically had military and classic vehicles.

That was it. And I grew up with classic vehicles. That's what I wanted. That was my dream. I joined the military. You know, I get all these, I'm creating all these things. But little did I know it all started from a vision board being a kid, flipping through a TV channel, you know?

I didn't, my parents never talked about, what do you want to do when you grow up? That wasn't even a thing. I was still worried about the next birthday, the next Christmas, you know. I couldn't wait for like, when I was in high school, and like there's a high school party. Like, I wasn't thinking too far down the lifelineeline not being present or not enjoying the childhood that I was having

but for some reason I was really into that stuff dude I was going to go be a commando and nothing was going to stop me and I kind of took that mindset with everything else I wasn't really good at much things I played soccer every kid played soccer I think I kind of sucked. I'm not even sure, but I played for a few years and I enjoyed it because it was fun. I liked the whole team aspect. Then I played football and I grew up in a five a very large football team. Like Texas football, that's it.

Yeah. So what you do. And I was so good at football, I made Varsity my senior year. You know, like I was not good. I was a small skinny white guy, but my dreams were huge. I was the best player. You know, my dreams are huge.

You couldn't stop me. My dreams are huge. I was gonna go make that play. And I don't really know how all that was instilled into me. But, because I got knocked down a lot, I got put on the sideline a lot, I didn't really suck it, but I couldn't match up to 300 pound defense alignment and offensive alignment. When you're building your intimidation stack because a football team has nothing but intimidation

stacks, skill and intimidation. You're not going to put the string being on there. That's not going to intimidate anybody. That's not going to get psychological in someone's head, even though I could break through the system. So at the time, the high school, the football team, they have this view on what they're, what they're starting to land with like.

But I had that fighting spirit. And what that show made a young age was, just like a lot of things. So you know, I got beat up a lot. I ran from gangs a lot. I lived in a very, a lot of projects and apartments, like we're around the area that I lived in, and a lot of street gangs.

And I was that skinny white kid. I didn't know, I grew up very, I grew up independent. I could do anything I wanted to do. My parents didn't really restrict me on much. They also didn't get me free reign. I had some guiding principles to like, come home, eat your dinner, do these things, spend time with your mom. But I kind of had free rain to explore any adventure that I wanted to do within reason. But I realized that life

is, life is hard at a young age. My parents worked all the time. My dad was a cop. She had my dad was a cop for 42 years. Not in an easy town. He worked in Dallas, Texas, which or the Dallas County, which was insane so much crime out there and a lot of his fears from the and a lot of the youth that he saw that he's either You know dealing with their dead bodies knocking on doors to family members, you know, I think that Really puts him fear into him to kind of put me in a box when it comes to like, hey, you're gonna fuck around and find out.

The world does not gumdrops and lollipops. The world is very dangerous out there. But he also told me, dude, you gotta stay enough for yourself. You know? Because it's very violent, dangerous. And so those subliminal messages, which maybe he didn't know what he was really doing at the time, but it like ingrained into me to, to preserve it, to push forward.

I got beat up by this game today. Well, I'm just gonna run my bike faster tomorrow. I'm gonna go a different route tomorrow. I'm gonna room, remove myself from that environment, you know, oh, I sucked today at this play. Well, I'm gonna go find find the players that are good and ask them, like, hey, how could I do better for this? Or how are you doing that? Because I need to do that. Oh, you also run track two. Well, that looks hard and scary. Well, let me go try to run track. Let me go try to do these things because I realized I thrive in a team environment. I thrive even more when it was bigger than myself.

And then I found a way to, you know, not manipulate my environment, but to adapt to my environment. I got tired again, beat up. So I find new ways. I started rolling with a crew. You know, now I got five guys rolling on their little huffies to school

via some of my riding solo, you know. I don't go through it this time because this time is the loitering, lingering time and I'm bound to get himmed up this way, you know. I don't go through it this time because this time is the loitering, lingering time and I'm bound to get himmed up this way, you know. And I didn't look at it, I didn't know what fear was. I wasn't scared of things back in the day to how I understand they're very severe nowadays. But it just, I was just kind of set up for this like,

word success where I had to figure it out. And my parents both worked. And so I spent my summers, or I spent my time off, at home, I, Jerry Springer was my, what do you call it, like, homeschool there at times, these sitcoms, and then like, well these are boring, this sucks, so I draw, as soon as my self-adrelinger,

I go outside and shoot my BB gun at like a little G.I. Joe guys, and I just kept busy and Somehow it all kind of worked out because at that point in time in my life I was really just buying time because once I decided that I wanted to go into the military at a very young age I was just waiting my turn. So everything up to that point the the football, the track, the chicks, the cars, the parties, all these things as an evolution of growing up from a young kid, making it to high school where you're figuring out who you are, learning what you believe in, at a very entry level stuff.

I was just waiting, waiting my turn because I couldn't speed it up, but I was just waiting, waiting my turn, because I couldn't speed it up, but I was also trying to maximize. And my dad was really big. I'm like, hey, you're about to be gone. You better start spending time with your mom. I'm like, oh, I've got all these parties. I want to go do these things. And there's like, you need to start

worrying about your mother. And I did not like that. I did not like to hear that as a kid. I wanted to go party. I wanted to go do what these other kids did where the parents may or may not like that. I did not like to hear that as a kid. I wanted to go party. I wanted to go do what these other kids did where their parents may or may not have cared. And, you know, my dad told me one time, he's like, you might not come back one day.

He's like, so spend time with your mother because you mean a lot to her. And I'm like, oh shit. Okay. And I was always like a mama's boy growing up. I love a mom. You know, my mom, she was a fighter. She had breast cancer at a very young age for me

and I lived with another family. For quite some time, my mom is going through the whole process. And I remember, we went to the mall one day, my mom, she's bald, you know, she's wearing a wig. And she's walking, she's holding my hand, and this mall is like extremely fucking ghetto. Very ghetto. And they're like, look at this ugly bitch with no hair.

And I'm a kid. At the time, I didn't even know what to do. This is a new interaction for me. And my mom, she fucking ripped my hand. She fucking lifted her fucking chin, and she kept them walking. I'm like, holy fuck. You know, that lesson did it, hit me that then.

But that determination, that perseverance, to fucking keep on pushing, to like, yo bro, I'm gonna let words break us in this family. We're gonna let some fucking chomp, fucking bring us down because they hate themselves. You know, she said all this without ever saying a word. She led by example. My dad, my dad was the type of guy who he worked as a self.

I do not have an easy childhood. My dad was really big into like family lineage and able to trace Alfred's all the way back to the revolutionary war. Like this dude was like deep into like the family tree stuff. And when I found out a little bit about his childhood, I mean both my parents were born, they were like six and seven around World War II. My dad loved to completely opposite life and my mother. It's very hard life, very abusive dad. And seeing what my dad did, he was an entrepreneur, then he like full time police officer, work

as a softball time. He would get shot. My dad was like cops You know he like it was so bad where his area was they made it on the TV show and my dad's you know drug behind cars He's got shot in his vest shot in his leg and This dude never complained once he would come home He would eat food and he's like hey, we gotta go do this. And I fucking hated that. Because this dude was a machine. I just wanted to sit and just like, imagine stuff, dragons in my mind, and sit on the couch and like, be a kid.

Yeah. Because I knew the hard life was coming my way, so I really wanted to maximize not living a hard life when I could. And that just didn't really fly. But yeah, I was I was shown from a very young age of maybe not what Riot looks like, but hey, this is the best that I know, and this is what Riot looks like based on that information, those facts. And both my parents were strong, my mom was still strong. She's a trooper. I mean, just no stop. And that just trickled on to me.

Then my dad being hard, I wanted to impress my dad. I wanted to do things I'm making proud. You know, I didn't want to be a whus. I remember this one particular time. I was in high school, and there was someone accusing me of something at a party that I wasn't even at, that it would be funny if so and so's older brother would like call me out and like try to fight me. And I wasn't a big scrapper back in the day. There was a point where I was, but I didn't seek it.

A lot of my friends did. So luckily I was guilty by association so that kept me out a lot of stuff. I learned that on early, early on in life too. You can't do it yourself or you're not into that stuff. Have a bubble. Have a bubble that people don't want to mess with. And that can probably keep you a lot of shit.

And you can infiltrate that bubble with a different view and perspective. And now you're truly powerful and forceful by violence all the time. And this dude comes up to me one day in the common area in the high school and he's like, hey, I heard you're talking shit about my brother.

I'm like, what the fuck do you say? It just reacted, I just stood up for myself. And he's like, okay, okay. He's like Friday. And it just like, they set it this time and day to what my ass. And this dude was like a straight scrapper This dude was like the real McCoy

And I remember telling my dad this and I'm like I don't want to fight this guy, man Like I don't want to do that. I don't even believe in this Stupid confrontation and I think I took my dad by surprise I don't know if he thought I was like a pussy or what it was cuz I'm like sharing emotion and like I don't know if he thought I was like a pussy or what it was because I'm like sharing emotion and like Like thought process at a young age and I reflect back on that a lot because I still have that same vision today like Without belief, why am I doing it? And at a young age, I'm not trying to just go fight to get fight. It's not about getting beat up It's about the principle of like why am I even showing up to this?

You know and at a young age, I didn't know what that was helping me shape in my life, you know, 20 years down the road, how that discernment of like, I don't believe in this, so why would I do that? You know, this isn't makes sense to me. So why would I fucking risk my life for it? You know, and I valued me at a very young age

because no one else is gonna do it, but me. My parents kinda taught me tough love. You know, they didn't disrespect me, they loved me the best they could. But in all that process, I had to find me at a very young age to like, yo bro, you gotta start fucking fighting for yourself, picking your own battles, fighting on your terms, and stop just being a fucking victim because somebody wants to make an example out of you,

and I got tired of being an example. So, setting me just like, duke and an arch, I use my mind. Long story short, and I sure that because it was so uncomfortable as a kid to say that to your dad who is just like mainly man, this dude that everyone knew in his industry, his niche, his brave guy this tough guy to tell my dad like I want to fight this guy You know like what do I do? and him not really having the advice to give me That was hard And I don't blame him for it, but

Conversations like that. I couldn't imagine we're really prevalent back in the day. This is like 2001, 2002 timeframe. Emotions, depression, anxiety, PTSD. These things weren't conversation things. Standing up for yourself, investing in yourself, using your mind. These weren't mainstream things. These weren't family table dinner conversations. I think I kind of took him by surprise a bit. But in doing so, being extremely uncomfortable telling him,

I took that uncomfortleness and I applied it more to my life. I'm like, okay, well, this is uncomfortable because he's not sure how to answer me. And he, I don't even remember the advice, it was very basic. But I apply that to the rest of my life. I'm like, dude, clearly no one knows the answers to everything. So you're gonna have to fucking figure it out. And so I sucked to my guns like I want to fucking fight the sky. I ended up resolving it all. We figured

it out. I mean, do your friends now. This is years later. But at the time it was really hard for me challenging as a kid growing up with these big dreams, dreams to be a command no, but I wasn't willing just to go fucking and duke it out with this guy, whether I'm gonna get risked, you know, risk getting an aspeeding or not. It was just that I didn't have belief in it. It wasn't even my fight. Now, if it was my fight, it was my doing, it'd been different,

but it wasn't. And that implanted into my DNA, into my mind, like how I would live the rest of my life. I didn't know it at the time, but I would live my life, and I would make decisions even, you know, as a senior in high school, as a new person in the military. I'd utilize that same concept, like, this doesn't make sense.

So I'd ask questions, and that set me on a completely different path that little did I know that standing up for myself in a time where I could have buckled, just went with the flow, did the norm. Oh, this guy wants to fight me, I'll fight him. This guy is mad, I'll just show up because I don't wanna like lose any street cred. I didn't care about that shit

because why I was going this basic level street cred means nothing, but the lessons that I can learn from this foundation that I'm building, this foundation that I'm experiencing and the complete unknown and discomfort that I'm going through, is going to set me up for success. I just didn't know it at a time, but I did those things at the time. I didn't know what I was doing was actually going to help me out. So yeah, growing up was fun, but at a certain time in my life, I was just waiting my turn.

Because all I wanted to do was join the military. That's it. All I wanted to do was become a Scott sniper. That was it. You know, nothing else. I got my Ranger dream, got replaced because I saw that stupid Marine Corps slaying Dragon commercial.

And then I got introduced to Tom Baringer. That's what did it, huh? Yeah, that's the Dragon commercial. Yeah, I don't know why. That was a damn good commercial. You know, actually that guy, he was actually in my platoon later on down the life in my military career.

It's crazy. Are you serious? That's serious. The Dragon Slayer. The Dragon Slayer himself. Did he get an award for that? I know, no, but he got a lot of smack talk. And when we found out, he wasn't, was a enabler in our in my job

When people found out he was a dragon slayer. I thought it was sick. I'm like bro You should own that thing bro like you're the dragon slayer like we're all here Because you killed the dragon you kill the dragon you're the dragon slayer or the dragon slayer everybody in the Marine Corps passed what year? Yeah, that like Now is five is here because you killed the dragon because you I'm here. I'm just kidding But but it was it's crazy. I mean that's what it was because it was different. Yeah, it wasn't the same and Then sniper with Tom baron dream like oh shit You could be a scout sniper because army you couldn't be a scout sniper.

Yeah. And the Navy you couldn't be a scout sniper, you could be a sniper, but that scout, that scout was premiere. That scout was what set that sniper environment different from all the other branches of service. And I remember one day, because I was really into, I wanted all the military shit, dude. I have like, I would so mill, Marine Corps patches patches on my shirt dude. I was like straight nerd about it Like there was no denying what my vision was in life. Absolutely undeniable and I remember there was this army commercial very basic very generic, but like hey, if you call you'll get this like

VHS like Information tape and you'll get this camouflage booney cover and I'm like, dude, if you call, you'll get this like VHS like information tape and you'll get this camouflage booney cover and I'm like, dude, I want the booney cover. This is sick. And I like it. Who's called this number? Pshh, done. So one day my mom's like, you got some explanation to Mr I'm like, what's going on? I'm like probably in 10th grade. And she's like, love it grade actually. And she's like, what is this package? And it was like from the United States Army. And I'm, and she's like, love the grade actually. And she's like, what is this package, and it was like from the United States Army? And I'm like, she's like, what are you gonna tell your dad?

I'm like, I just did it for the booney cover, man, like, because I told him I'm gonna be a marina, and they never encouraged me, but they were like, oh yeah, we didn't expect anything different. Like they knew it. No kidding. It was weird, they knew it.

I mean, ever since I was a kid, I went like at a very young age, I wanted to do that. And like I said, I wanted to be a Scott sniper ever since a little kid and all these synchronicities I'm packing groceries. That's what kids do, right? Well, back in my day, we worked at grocery stores. And I remember this one kind of weird fella, but it was now when I look back at my life, all the weird things were all the weird acquaintances, just helped reinforce the path that I was on.

I remember this one guy in particular, he's like, you have really deep set eyes, I bet you're a great shot. Where does fuck? I'm like 16 years old, and like, this dude has creeped me out a little bit. But I'm like, I do wanna go in the Marine Corps, be a sniper. Like, you know, I'm just like,

it's just the path is being lit. Little did I know. Just like bit by bit, piece by piece, vision board by vision board. I'm building the reality, I'm building the life that I want. And that was it, dude. You couldn't sway me otherwise. I remember being my counselor, she's talking about,

because I guess in your senior year, you could take classes to help you get ready for college classes and I don't have the grades for that stuff. But they're like, you could like take some college classes while you're in high school. She's like, so Cody, what do you want to do? When you graduate, I'm like, I'm going on the Marines and she's like, she throws her packet behind her like my stack of shit. She's like, okay, so what are you going to talk about? We have 15 minutes and we just started wrapping, you know, just like, rendering about stuff because that was it.

I didn't wanna, I don't wanna be a doctor, kind of like there was no plan B for me. It was, that was it. And I remember being a Spanish class. And I don't know if you remember, but you remember those box TVs they used to have in the corner? Like in the,

it was in Spanish class. Scro screwing off, flirting with chicks. And that's when we all sell it. The Twin Towers fall. You know, and I was like, fuck. So now my vision of wanting to join the military, I didn't want to go kill people. I was in joining for America, you know, my vision was because I felt called to do and I wanted to do it as a fucking kid

and then I see this shit on TV. And I'm like, this is real. Without a doubt, I know what I, the path incurred that I'm going to is going to lead me to harm's way. Like there is no if answer buts about it. At this time I had a bunch of friends that were in the reservists. That was like what people did. They said, I'm gonna go to the military then they joined the reserves and they come back and do the same high school shit They were doing. I keep getting older but they still say the same age. That's exactly what was happening. Yeah.

And I'm like, well shit, I'm going at the duty. And I'm going to be this. I'm going to be a Scott Sniper. Like that's it. I'm definitely going to have to answer for what I just saw on TV. I'm going to have to pay that price. Like that's going to come my way.

Like I know it. And obviously it did. I'm gonna have to pay that price like that's gonna come my way like I know it and Obviously it did So my my childhood growing up was was cutting dry It was just waiting my time So did you go right in you were able to go right into being a scout sniper? No. I went to boot camp. How did you pick the Marine Corps? I know it was, you know, you said you saw Tom Barron-Jurve, but there are a lot of programs out there.

Like special-like programs. Yeah. I had this vision. I wanted to go work for the agency at a very young age too. I wanted to be the James Bond spy, Super Ninja mercenary. I was into all that stuff because I was into the French foreign Legion.

I was into everything that people were most likely not to pass. And I just had this like warrior calling. Those guys are risking it on a daily basis, you know? Disregard their belief system, their actions. You have to be aligned to that job, to that environment to even show your face. And I was just, I thought it was cool to have a different name and to have a passport that wasn't from your own home country and to live this off-grid life where you can literally be a ghost and

do anything. I was into that. I was just very attracted to it. The Marine Corps, I don't know, like I said, it was the Scouts sniper aspect. That was it for me. If there was a Scouts sniper in the Navy, I might have considered it. So it was just the... You had the potential to become a Scouts sniper. There was no contract at all. It was a gamble. It was a gamble.

The only way you can do that is, at the time, there was no contract no contract at all. It was a gamble. It was a gamble The only way you can do that is at the time there was definitely no shortage of infantry min slots I mean at this point of time I signed up at 17 so it was 2002 Signed up I signed my name. Yeah, I listed at 17 and I'm like I want to be a Scott sniper. They're like well, you have to go to the infantry and I'm like, I wanna be a Scott Sniper, they're like, well, you have to go to the infantry. I'm like, okay, oh, 311. So that's what I did.

Get the boot camp, go to that hole, and I'm smiling. And I'm enjoying every moment of it. Cause I'm now, it's my time. I've watched all the movies, I fantasized all the fantasies, I fucking GI Joe to the GI Joe's, and now I'm getting to live it out. So I'm like, cheesein' in boot camp the entire time.

It sucked. It was very hard, very challenging, but like I wanted to embrace that suck. I wanted to be there so it made it completely different because my mindset and my belief systems were aligned to the path that I wanted to walk, even though it sucked and it was miserable the entire time.

I graduate boot camp. I do the school of infantry, which in the Marine Corps, you go to the School of Infantry. If you're an infantry man, or you go to MCT Marine Combat Training. So if you're a non-infantry person, you go learn like basic infantry shit,

and then you learn your career field. School of infantry, learn if you're rifleman, machine gun or mortar man, assault men, you know, all these things, you learn those career fields and then you bring it all together. And I made my intentions known, I went to one of the sergeants, you know, I graduated bootcamp as a Lance Corporal, I was on our graduate, so I was like the number one graduating the sergeants. I graduated bootcamp as a Lance Corporal. I was on our graduate. So I was like the number one graduating recruit there. So I left bootcamp three ranks higher than 99% of my peers. And that coffee ice of my instructors

for the School of Infantry, which were in retrospect, only two ranks higher than me at the time. So I found myself in leadership position. I found myself with a lot more mentorship from these corpals and these E4s and these E5s because I was now being tasked with the word to go spread it to the men. I found myself in these leadership positions

at an early, very young age. And in doing so, we had do man-bro conversation times. I got to ask questions like, hey, how do I become a good leader? How do I manage this? How do I do this? How do I become a scout sniper? You know, what do I do after this and one of them found interest in me and he's like hey the baton you're going to which is second baton first Marines He's like the baton you're going to have a buddy there and they're running a sniper in doctrination in two months He's like so time you're going to have a buddy there and they're running a sniper in indoctrination in two months. He's like, so when you get there, sign up for it. And this dude believed in me.

I'm a nobody. I'm a student like everyone else. You know, I'm going through the phase, the funnel system of like, but where I was going was someplace where these other men have not gone before. Even in boot camp, boot camp was, all my drill instructors knew that we were going to war. It was inevitable. And none of them experienced what we were about the face. And back in the day, I didn't know anything about ribbons.

If I saw a dude that had like two ribbons that meant nothing to me, I didn't know what that was. Even as a recruit, even in boot boot camp even at a young marine age like I didn't really know until I started to learn and then know and A lot of these guys are peacocken because they're drill instructors. They're tough guys You know, they're they're trained to get inside your head They're trained to build you in capacities that you never even thought were capable.

But they also knew that we were gonna go to war and they made it very clear. These are like, you guys wanna fuck around? It's like you guys are going to war. All the ones going to the infantry battalions after this are the school of infantry, you're going to war. And I don't think any of us really knew what the magnitude of those words, because you don't. You can only fantasize so much until you get punched to the face. You can only fantasize what

it's like to get punched to the face until you realize you get punched to the face. You're like, fuck, I was not expecting that. And my School of Inf infantry class, everyone there is an infantryman of some, you know, shape or size. And we went to two four, second, time, fourth Marines. And we went to two, one, second, time, first Marines, which is the time that I went to. And both those units were very, in the, in the mix, in OIF two and Ramadi and Fulugia. And literally half my S O Y class didn't fucking make it out of their first deployment because they're fucking killed.

And we didn't know that at that age. Even our instructors didn't know, no one knew my first appointment was Fallujah. No one knew what Fallujah was about. And... But they did their best to like, give us that mindset, butter butter jam, you know.

Push the fight, do these things, don't suck, don't quit on yourself, don't quit on your teammate, you know what I'm saying? It's not about you, you know, that's true suffering and silence. And looking back, I'm just grateful. Because they did the best they could with what they had and what they knew. And obviously training has significantly changed a lot since then, because there's a lot more experience now. There's a lot more wisdom.

And those people are now in these positions where they're able to instruct you know But these instructors did a phenomenal job and this dude that believed in me Really kind of set me up for success. I'm like damn because it was not normal to like find people to like believe in you when you're just a boot Boot being a nobody And so I I smoke S.O.Y, they were thinking about promoting me to Corporal, but they said that the Colonel there said I was too young.

What's S-O-I? School of Infantry. Okay. So it's the first three month course you go to after Marine Corps Boo Camp. And it's only for infantry men, so combat arms. And so I didn't get promoted to a corporal, but they're like, hey, we're going to give you

this other leadership award. And it's going to set you up for success when you go to the infantry. So I left boot camp stacked. I left my school of infantry stacked. And more importantly, with documents that said, hey, this guy's not too bad, I was stacked with knowledge. This dude gave me this whole like,

Marine Corps planning leadership book, these like, record planning, leadership book, you know, these like, these teen arm manuals, these like things that no one had access to. None of my peers had access to. So I was given knowledge. I was given like true tangible things to like help me be successful. At the time, I didn't really see all the value in it,

but I was also told like, hey, do this shit that nobody wants to do and you'll always fucking win. I'm like, hey, do this shit that nobody wants to do, and you'll always fucking win. I'm like, okay, so this whole time in school of inventory, I'm doing like all my online they call it MCI is bringing combat institute. It's like all these like online education, you need those to get promoted back in the day, or to be eligible for promotion, because it was like a scoring system up to like a certain rank.

And you needed to meet that score, so you needed to have like all these like check in the box to be eligible for the next promotion. I'm like, well fuck. I didn't come here to play small, bro. This is on my vision board. I'm here to win. I don't know what winning means, but I just did it on a sock. And I remember saying, being told, do what other people aren't doing, and you'll fucking

win. I'm like, okay, well not on my friend. They're all getting drunk on Oshaside, California. I'm staying on base doing these stupid little MCIs because when I got to the fleet, when I got to my first unit, I didn't wanna do this shit because I was gonna be focused on my next chapter, my next checkpoint, which is to become a Scott Sniper.

So I was doing the work that needed to happen to get me to where I wanted to be at at an early age. I took a vantage of that because I had goals and I knew where we were going. I didn't know I was going to Iraq in like fucking eight months, but I knew I was going to go overseas soon enough and my goal was to be a sniper so that needed to be my main focus. So I check into my battalion and I remember getting off the bus and like they're like they're telling us all these these fear mongering, fear porn stories like all they're gonna they call it a C-bag drag because my battalion that I was checking into was just a couple miles down the

road from the school of infantry and they're they're telling us all they're gonna make you walk run down there in your alphas, which is our green suit, and drag in your seabag. And I'm like, are you serious? Cause I'm in California, I'm looking at Camp Pendleton, looking at all these big mountains. I'm like, I gotta go up those things. Like all these new hurdles in life, I've never seen a mountain. My first plane was flying to boot camp, you know?

And so I'm getting at S-Y. I see this big ass mountain. The first thing I do in reception is I, my buddy and I, we go up to the top of that mountain because it was scary as shit. We're like, let's just get this out of the way. Because if I can go without fucking mountain, I can go about 100 times and not bother me.

Like that was the caliber of men that I was around at a very young age and just looking back on that life. Man, how fortunate to be around winners that weren't losers. And I check into my unit, bus pulls up in the quarter decks of the big parade field, this big concrete slab outside all the headquarters buildings, all these things. And there is a few of these senior guys

that are receiving all of us boots. They're like, hey, if you're a golf company, so and so and so and so and so. Get off the bus and they're like yelling at them. I'm like, oh my God, this thing is real. This thing is real. And they, I knew I was checking into headquarters company. I don't even know what the fuck that was.

I was supposed to go to trailers platoon. I'm like, what is a trailer platoon? I literally thought I was gonna be in a trailer. Like, I had no clue what this was. And I'm in headquarters. All my friends are in, you know, an often numeric thing. I'm in golf, I'm in Fox, I'm in Echo, I'm in Kilo, I'm in all these things.

And I'm like, I'm in HQ, I'm a headquarters guy, okay? And I just see all my boot friends just getting thrashed. Just pushing up, getting yelled at. Just first sergeant smoking cigarettes. And these dudes are doing a count bodybuilders. I'm like, dude, this thing is real. Because we are straight fresh meat. And these guys are all OIF-1 veterans.

And they know that war, we're going to war. And, I mean, this is 2003 now. I mean, war is already happening, but they know that we are the fresh meat going with them into harm's wave. And so they're taking it very seriously. So they're kind of bringing that boot camp, school of infantry vibe and mindset,

because you're a boot, you only know the shit you were taught. You can know nothing else. And so now you're about to learn your trade in these platoons. Well, I was one of the first few boot camps to have the desert digital camouflage, where everyone in the fleet, all the senior guys had the woodland camis in black boots.

So I quickly looked around and realized that I did not want to get my ass beat or have to do random eight counts for no reason. So I quickly did what I do best. I blended in. And I made it my priority. I found some camouflage. I like shoe good, my name tape on there. I traded diggies because you had so many from Boo Camp. I traded diggies with my roommate who was a motor pool guy and I blended in. And I was in E3, so I looked like I was a senior guy. I'm like, bro, I'm set of myself.

I'm for success. I'm not gonna be like a target, dude, because all my friends were targets. And targets get hit, you know? Targets get the shitty details, targets get the crap in the stick. I didn't want that. And I'm in headquarters and my whole, I'm in headquarters

and I really contemplated to go UA. My dream come true and I fucking hated it. Really? Yep. My battalion was at, in 29 palms, doing like a big training exercise called CACs, combined arm exercise, big, big training of it back in the day. And so there was a very skeleton crew back at home. Well, the fella in charge of the headquarters guys, being me, he was in charge of like the suicide crazy watch people also.

They had like, they were wearing like white t-shirts underneath their woolen camis, they had like white lace and dude they was like a shit show and they were just, they were goofy. I'm like, I don't want to emulate you and I'm like 18 years old at this point. I'm like, you're not inspiring to me like this is, this is the Marine Corps. I was painting rocks. I was putting non-skid on steps. I'm like, what the hell am I getting into with no signs of a brighter future? And it was like that for two weeks

and I literally was contemplating like, I gotta get out of here. This is not for me, this is not what I signed up for. This is stupid, stupid without a purpose. Stupid with a purpose is different, stupid without a purpose is just plain stupid. Yeah. And so I'm back in our very condemned,

flat top buildings that had rats the size of my feet rolling around in them. This before, nice barracks happened, and AC was a thing. And this one guy, this one sergeant comes in there, and I swear he smoked probably like five cigarettes the whole time he was talking to us. He's like,

Hey, my name's Tommy. I'm from a sniper platoon. We're doing this endoc in a week. Hey, my name's Tommy. I'm from a sniper platoon. We're doing this endoc in a week. So and so, so and so, so and so. So you're in the platoon. If you don't pass the endoc, you're out. If anybody else wants to sign up for the endoc, uh, here's the list. Sign up. Here's a date and time to be there. I'm like, and all my friends is in headquarters with.

They all made it. Because they're all expert shooters. And Boo Camp, I left this a sharp shooter. So one step down, it's a true story. Doesn't sound real, but it is. I shot on another used target so he could pass. I guess he was a pizza box. He was like not even gonna pass the qualification course. And I shot on his target. So he get his like one squad that he needed to pass. That took me from my one squad that he needed to pass that took me from my one shot that I needed to be Mark's or an expert and so I go to Book I go to infantry as a sharpshooter whatever it is what it was but that's also why my name wasn't on this

like pick list but I was able to sign up for it so I sign up for this Indok and I'm like just excited I'm super excited it's it's coming. And then I realized, oh my God. I did not know the things I was gonna have to do to do this. And I remember us showing up and one of the first events we did was the pool. And I'm going back to my repository in some of mine. I'm like, none of the videos that I watched were these motherfuckers and pools.

So you're in Indoc now. I'm in Indoc. Like I sign my name up. So what is Indock? Is Indock a tryout? Yep. It's a tryout to get into sniper school. It's an Indock to get, it's an indoctrination

to get into the platoon. And then from the platoon, you're under observation. And then once you're in the platoon, you're basically earning your keep. And then you're earning your keep to get a chance to go to sniper school, because not everyone got a chance to go. So how long is this pipeline?

From endoc to sniper school. That's a big timed gap difference, endocs anywhere between like two to three weeks. But then you realize, and you learn at a very young age, you're constantly always under observation. So just because you passed the endocsination, you did all the hard things, you met the requirements that, okay, this guy can do, he can shoot, move, communicate, he won't quit,

he can do land navigation, he's a candidate. And we can teach him everything else he needs to know because back in the day, the purpose of a sniper platoon was to train you how to be a scout sniper because then you go to sniper school to get your certification to fine tune your adjustments. But in the sniper platoon, you're learning everything that they learned in a sniper school. And 90% of it has nothing to do with shooting. It's knowledge verbatim. It's attention to this attention, attention to detail.

You know, missing a period or a comma in the sentence when you're reciting a what the definition of a Marine Corps Scout sniper is. What does reconnaissance mean? What does surveillance mean? What does target acquisition mean? What does a hide sight mean? And if you miss a comma or a period, you're paying for that.

You miss an item on your on your on your observation game, you're paying for that. And so they're you're basically in a school the entire time. So for me, that was like a year and a half before I got to go to sniper school because I deployed in between this time period. But I get to the sniper platoon and hold on. Yeah, yeah, bring me back. Let's go back. So Indock.

Indock. Yeah, let's go back to Indock. Yeah, so Indock, I find myself in this pool and I'm like sweating bullets because I wasn't a good swimmer. RincorBooCamp, you're either a swimmer or you're not a swimmer. They don't really teach you how to swim. It's like, hey, here's this Vietnam era flat vest and this big old brain bucket that's surely not to save your life. And I want

you to fucking jump in the water from this tall tower. And I haven't showed you how to do any of these size strokes, how to do anything, figure it out. You're like, what the fuck? And you're just like, go. And that's how it was. And I just made them bare minimum to like pass the swim call, because it was a meet grinder. Because when I was in school of infantry, there was an opportunity to go to recon. And you could sign up for recon back in the day.

You could not sign up to be a scouts sniper. Okay. And in school of infantry, you would come and you would confirm that you can do the recon screening, right? Which consisted of, you know, some swims, trading underwater, underwater crossover,

and physical fitness tests. Well, I signed up for that and they told me to go pound sand because I had the lowest swim qualification you could possibly have and still be a marine. And so I'm like, okay, so thank God that happened because I would have deviated from this great life that I have and the opportunities that I have. And so I get to the end of the,

and the first thing we do is swimming. And I learn from that age, and that very young point that the water is the equalizer for all men. You find out who wants to be there in the water. And you might not, and I learn also, you might not pass everything, but you can't, you can't fake heart.

You can't fake determination. You can't fake fucking discipline. You have it or you don't. And I was a The poor swimmer at the end of the poorest one, but you could not get me to stop. And so the chief instructor for the platoon, he took me to side and he started to teach me things. He's like, do you have no idea what you're doing? But you clearly aren't quitting anytime soon. So let me show you how to do this. So you actually taught me how to swim.

And I realized that that was just a way to show the fat instantly before we got to the fun stuff. And that really wasn't fun to me. Neither was the things that are coming my way, but it was like the entry level, because the water's scary. They tell you to hold your breath in the water and swim where in your full camouflage utilities.

That's not easy to do. They tell you to wear your full camouflage utilities after you've been swimming for 30 minutes and they tell you to try water for 30 minutes. You're like, you want me to try water for 30 minutes? Are you serious? And I was never exposed to these things because you don't do any of that in boot camp. You do none of that in school of inventory. So these are all new phases and experiences of life that none of us have experienced. And to be honest, we're just crushing it. I suffered swimming

was and they were like, okay, well, I can either give up on you or your Lance Cobra from Boo Camp, you left School of Infantry with this leadership award. There's clearly something about you, you clearly just need to be trained on the things you don't know. And that is exactly how this staff sergeant took me in. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity because that has been a role in my life. I'm not the great a lot of things, but I don't know what I don't know. And when I get put in those situations, people see that like, bro, I am the real McCoy.

But I just need the opportunity. I just need that shot, you know, because I want it. And I'm willing to do anything for it. Even drown, you know, even suffer, even know that I can't do that shit, but I'll still jump in the pool when I don't want to, when I want to fucking quit, but I'm not going to, when he told me not to touch the bottom and I want to, I want to step up and breathe, but I'm not going to, because he told me fucking not to, and this means more to me than my comfort or the discomfort that I'm in and This dude saw that and he took me out of a young age and and mentored me mainly how to swim and

then after that we did a lot of ruck running There was this thing called recon ridge outside of Camp Hornow, which is segment time first Marines on Camp Pendleton That's our base the camp at the time and There's this thing called recon ridge and this is it starts off Very basic you're like I, I can walk, run up that, like 20 feet into that thing, your calves and angles are done. You're just smoked. And it just keeps on going up and up and up and up and up.

Until you hear the hit the ridge line. And then you find yourself traversing all these mountains or ridges, they call it the Alpha shelf. It's the first layer of mountains in Camp Pendleton. Very distinctly, you can see them from the highway. They're very massive, large, terrain features, and we're just up and down these things every day for like two weeks.

Do land navigation all over Camp Pendleton with like hard timelines, your timelines, or if you don't come back, if you don't come back with your points, you're out of a platoon. Those odds I loved, because none of us had a hand out there. Even my friends ever on the list to go to the platoon,

they had to earn their keep just like me and a few other guys that weren't on the list to go. You know, there was no handouts there. And these guys were already used to working in like two-man sniper teams, but we had four-man teams, and that's what we were working towards. But they didn't care if they had to go back to two man teams, because there was a standard. So it was like, it was so fun.

Because all my friends are cleaning guns, the armory, third march and doing dumb shit. And like, I got my collar popped to avoid getting shaved by the Rucksack. My fucking pants are unbloused. I have a heavy ass pack on. I got like drippy, mascara paint, you know? Just like, I like running down my face and I was a king of the world.

Cause we were told you will run everywhere you go. You will not walk anywhere. I'm like, okay. And instantly you're already staying out from the pack. So all of us in the sniper platoon, all they called pigs, professionally instructed gunmen.

So professionally instructed gunmen or pig, you're the boot in the sniper platoon. You're not a school trained sniper, you can do the job, but it's not your main thing. You're a point man, you're a radio man, you're an assistant team leader potentially, maybe. But you're not the sniper. And a hog is a hunter. Sorry, Dana, we're up.

We'll pick back up at hog, but so on the sniper platoon, everybody is in the Marine Corps. Everybody's there to support the sniper. Is that correct? In a sniper platoon? Yeah. in the Marine Corps, everybody's there to support the sniper. Is that correct? In a sniper platoon? Yeah. Uh... Yeah, the sniper is the main focus, but the team is the main focus because

you're not doing sniper missions, you can't do a sniper mission without the team. And so, the main thing is like everyone working as a 4-man team, a small element. That's the main thing. So out of the 4 four man team, a small element. That's the main thing. So out of the four man team, how many snipers are there? One, it varies. My first sniper team had two snipers. My team leader and my assistant team leader were Scott snipers, school trained snipers. And the radio operator and myself is a point man.

We were not. We were a candidate. I am in the sniper platoon. I've earned my keep to be in the platoon. I'm a platoon member And now I'm just waiting my time to go to sniper school. Okay, so you know cuz back in the day, hey, we got one seat. Well, there's eight guys We got two seats, but there's 12 guys, you know, it's just different how it had to work to like get your chance to go to school But every one of us were instructed on the Snipe Rifle. We all knew how to do observation.

We all knew how to do everything because it was their job and their invested interest to make sure we knew how to do it all because we're going to war and we're a team. I got to know what happens to them but they don't make it. So being in the Splatoon and these guys were like Somalia vets, OIF1 vets and I'm like, Whoa, they're like I was walking around Moga D-Shoo with my sniper rifle. I'm like, what? Like just these crazy stories I've never even heard of before and Unreal that I'm even in the Splatoon in the first place to look back at my vision board where I have this like skull with two cross-nip rifles

You know, now I'm actually in this platoon, and our t-shirt was, it had a dead man's hand, but it had a skull with two cross-nipers on it. That was like our sniper platoon logo. It's crazy. And so your school train snipers are called Hogs, Hunter of Gunman. And that's the title, that's the certification you get once you complete Scout sniper school. So, your school train snipers are called Hogs, Hunter of Gunman.

And that's the title, that's the certification you get once you complete Scout sniper school. Scout sniper basic course, SSBC. So the whole time I'm in this platoon, we're just learning skills. Land navigation, dude. Land nav, land nav, land nav. Observations, surveillance techniques, patrolling, all the things to make you a weapon.

At the same time, we're training for this upcoming deployment we all hear about. We're going to Iraq. We're going this place called Fallujah. Not a big deal. No one's bells are ringing. No one's butts were tight. We're going to Iraq.

So all the OIF-1 guys, all the invasion guys, we're like, oh, you guys better get ready. But hearing their stories, you know, OIF-1 was different, it was different. It was a different type of violence. No one knew what we were getting into. Yeah. Nobody.

To the point where the training that my battalion was doing in preparation was called Sasso. Have you heard of Sasso? I haven't. I forget the exact acronym I'll try my best. Basically stability operations. So we're doing this training. Stability operations. Stability. You're going to Fallujah. Oh yeah. Interesting. And so all these scenarios, we're doing checkpoints,

we're doing the sergeant of the guards, we're basically doing this like martial law. That's basically what we're practicing. That's really what it was. Martial law, we're practicing martial law. Show, shout, shout, shoot. These are the things that we must say, these are the things that we must do, hugs and kisses,

we're the professionals, open hearts, open minds. Yeah, I remember that. Well, there was a lot of that, but just not in the same context. And, but we did what we did best. We trained, and the cool thing about the sniper battalion was that we were part of a headquarters company back in the day.

And what that means is that headquarters is like your motor pool people, your cooks, your supply people, your radio people, all these things. And from there they get dispatched to the companies, the line companies, the infantry companies. Well infantry shoots a lot of ammunition. Headquarters does not shoot a lot of ammunition. So we shoots a lot of ammunition. Headquarters does not shoot a lot of ammunition, so we had a lot of ammunition, but we did not have a lot of sniper ammo, which is weird. We're shooting like 10, 20 rounds at a time, and that was a training evolution. So we're making everyone of these shots count. Oh yeah, it was very sparse. But we did get a lot of 50 cowl and we got a lot of 556. So let break contact drills, small unit tactics, you know, all the things that you would

imagine being a four man team, that's what we were doing. Well, on top of that, we would run missions for Border Patrol on Camp Pendleton. We would basically do a bunch of Bolo missions. And so we would pack up our gear and we would navigate the valleys and the crest inside Camp Pendleton working our way towards like the Border Patrol checkpoints. And we're like, they get a Bolo and like, hey, we're looking for a white van.

So we're like looking for white vans all night, we're just reporting back. And it's like drill, we're just drilling. We're not gonna do anything crazy, but we're utilizing a world-world scenario to provide us real-world mission training. And so we found ourselves doing that a lot, just. That's smart.

I think that's smart. Yeah, and because money was an extreme thing back then, meaning that it didn't exist. But I mean, it's still a real mission. It's a real mission. Yeah, real mission. We are planning, we're briefing. I mean, how we would even set up

high sites, vehicle high sites in the officer neighborhood because there was thieves taking place. There was people breaking into shit. Well, guess what? We'll just put, we'll do a training mission out there. So you guys are sniping thieves on base. With observations. I'm just kidding.

I'm here and being the back of one of those Chevy avalanches, sweating my balls off. You know, I got like, I got the vehicle high drape. I'm wearing the mock, you know, the mock up, the Reaper hood. And I'm like, just leaning back. And like this dude didn't even empty out his car all the way. And I'm like, break, break, break, break a break a one nine, you know, I'm past reports and but it was fun.

Yeah. Because when everyone else is sleeping or playing Xbox or getting drunk or, I mean, and Marines are crazy, dude. Like Barracks parties and like Barracks Brawls are a real thing. Like it's straight gangland there. Like no rules, people flying off

a second story balconies, taped mattresses. Like the horrible stories you hear and like there's no way those were real. Those were really real and those were really real back then. Like those were a real thing. Well we were doing a real thing too. We were fine tuning our craft. We were learning how to do

vehicle surveillance, children horse operations. We were learning how to do all these things that weren't done at the time, especially in the conventional side of things. But we had a commander who had a belief. We had a commander who was very outside the box and pushed us to train in that capacity also. Because it was really easy,

because a standard for marine back in the day was, go to the armory, clean your guns, hurry up and wait. Well, we didn't do that. One, cleaning your guns for hours on end and you're just destroying them. Two, the training is not in the armory. The training's out in the bush. And I don't even need a gun for that.

I just need a map, a compass, and an objective. And that's what we did. So we would just do star courses all the time, land navigation courses all the time. So it was like a continuous indoctrination. Because none of it got easier and it only got harder. But that definitely that's what set us up for success. And you know, that was a hard training that nobody

wanted to do. But you took pride in it because there's only 12 you. I think you had 12 of us at the time. And you know, when you're doing observations, as you know, it's three o'clock in the morning, and you're just looking at an area that's got no movement, that takes discipline. You know, it takes discipline not to go to sleep. It takes discipline not to drift your mind. It takes discipline not to screw your body over. And it takes discipline to be like, hey dude, I'm really tired. I need you to cover down 10 minutes for me. You know, all these things take discipline. So we're learning at a very young age, something that we never got exposed to from the military

in that capacity, the war fighting capacity. What is truly going to take to make it happen. So we're doing all this cool training for the sniper platoon. We're integrating with the infantry companies, doing sniper overwatch, guardian angel missions, basically where they're conducting their martial law stuff and we are doing observation, running reconnaissance surveillance for them, sitting back in the day snipers were actually employed as snipers. You're the eyes and ears of the battalion.

You're directly reporting to the commander information of all things pertinent to surveillance and observation of the battlefield. And because you were the first line of defense, because there was no recon elements in an infantry battalion. There's sniper elements. And back in the day before we call sniper platoons, we were called stable tunes, surveillance target acquisition. And that sums up exactly what we did. We were a stable-tune. And that's how I grew up in the community. And that's what we did. We did this great training for SASO.

And we're like, hey guys, we're going to Iraq in a couple months. And we're like, all right. Mint nothing. Because it was so vanilla down, we did combat drills, we did combat scenarios in the Saso training, but the main thing was martial law. You're just policing up spreading love and joy. That fucking changed very quickly.

A different type of love and joy. I found myself going on leave, pre-employment leave. I go home to Texas and see my family and I tell my parents I'm going to Iraq. And my mom was super sad. And my dad was proud, but not because I'm going to war. My dad was proud of who I become. And I wanted to selfishly just go party, chase chicks. Cause in my head I'm like, I'm going to fuck a war, bro. I don't, I'm not, I wasn't a tough guy, but I didn't know what was going to happen.

So I wanted to go be an 18 year old kid. I wanted to do 18 year old kid things. And that's when my dad's like, hey, you should better spend time with your mother. I'm like, all right, I'll spend time with my mom. I'll spend time with you. I'll stay at home. I'll do these things.

So I did. And then I come back to Pendleton and we flew commercial air to Iraq, my first deployment. And I was a Lance Corporal. So I'm still on the working party committee, you know, doing all this shitty job still. And even our platoon, we had to give up bodies to go support these things.

We got a lot of things, but we still needed to support and be team players So I find myself loading these sea bags, you know, that's where we learn the whole like conveyor belt system where you're just like Just a fine oil machine, you know and We're loading this this civilian aircraft Sea bags in the bottom None of us know what the fuck's gonna happen. None of us have a clue where we're going into. None of us, at least I did not. I knew it was gonna be war.

I knew it was Iraq, that was it. My mindset was stability operations. My mindset was the information that was told and trained upon that that's what I was going to execute and perform. And that didn't mean complacent. That just means that my mindset was on what my task were assigned to me. I mean, what else would it be on? Exactly. You know, that's what you just spent however long training to do. That's what they told you you were going to do. why would you think anything else?

Exactly. Did you want to go to Iraq or did you want to go to Afghanistan? Or did you care? I didn't care, but at the time Afghanistan wasn't even on my radar, Iraq was. I think Afghanistan might have been for like the East Coast Marines, but it wasn't for the West Coast. We were all Iraq to my knowledge at this time of life.

So in Afghanistan, what's the even thing? You know, because you hear Iraq. They did it. What was the mass destruction? That's not an Afghanistan. That's in Iraq, right? And so I really only saw that as like the potential, the potential reality that I would face, in this phase of life and my career.

Yeah, I guess at that time Afghanistan was a strictly special operation. Very special operations. Now we have Marine Units doing our detachment one, which is our very first Marine Special Operations asset. They were operating in Afghanistan around this time. They were doing a lot of missions at the time. But big general purpose Marine Corps?

No, I'm okay. I rack. So, we fly to Kuwait. And we're drinking beer. We're on this plane. I'm excited. I'm like, this is crazy, dude. I'm flying this comfy plane, civilian plane.

These stewardess are like super kind and we got our guns in there. And we're just like, they're like, feeding us beer and I'm 18 years old, but I'm living it up. This is fun, this is awesome. This is the real McCoy. We get to quay, and I'm just like,

what is this? And as my eyes open up to the scene, it's just like this crazy, massive, monstrosity of things happening. There's troops moving here, there's vehicles moving here. There is just like, whoa, it's like those, you see those old World War II films, where it's like a staging area.

And you're like, oh my god, this is it. And we did some training there. We did a lot of shooting there. We had absolutely way more ammunition. We started to link up with other assets like human, human exploitation teams, EOD teams, because these things weren't, they were not organic to an infantry battalion. And so now we're getting introduced to them. We're doing collective training with them. And since we were snipers, we were like the tier guys

of our battalion, you know, we're getting because their information, their sole purpose is based off in actual intelligence and gaining information. ours is the same thing. We provide information and intelligence is formed without that information. That's our main focus. Shooting is 10% of the job so they say and you know a lot of lessons still there it was

very very fun people are excited we're getting ready to go do our job why else would you join you know why else you're getting to go put all those hard things to test and still no one knew what was coming our way. No one was complacent with like, oh, this can be a cane of luck. They're not mindset that never existed. But the true brutality of what Flusia brought. I think if someone told you, you would have been like, no way. Telling stories of Fallujah still to this day for me, it sounds fake. It sounds made up.

Well, before we get into Fallujah, because that's where we're going. That's where we're going. Let's take a quick break. Let's do it. Let's do it. Many of you probably know by now, earlier this year, I did a psychedelic healing journey

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it also tastes incredible. My favorite ingredient is the lion's mane because keeps my brain alert all hours of the day. Some people like to mix their mud water with milk, some people like to put some honey in it. Personally myself, I just dump it in a glass of water, stir it up, and throw it down the hatch. Mudwater is whole 30 approved 100% USDA organic non-GMO gluten-free vegan and kosher certified. Mudwater also donates monthly to the Berkeley Center for the science of psychedelics

as mudwater believes the country is in a mental health epidemic and so do I. Go to mudwater.com slash shan to support the show in use code shan for 15% off. That's mudwater.com slash shan, use code Sean for 15% off. Alright, it's 2004. You're going to Fallujah. You have no idea what you're in for. Fallujah is probably the most well-known battle throughout the entire war. The bloodiest, we'll just leave it at that.

It was indescribable. And you were there. That was there. The first one was inherent resolve. That was the operation leading up to Phantom Fury, which most people hear about. That was the concluding of Flusia. That was the last battle. We were there for inherent resolve. resolved. So we arrive, we we convoi from Kuwait, Turek, we go to our fire base, it's called Baja Riyab. It's one of Saddam's old resorts. He had like some little go-kart places. He had

a place where he had caged lions, a little lake in the center. Right next to this place called the mech. This big facility that housed aircraft, medical reconnaissance, and various other entities. In our base, we replaced a 101st airborne and the Air Force. And these guys are battered. They didn't have much. And so we showed up into what you would think as a pretty austere environment. We had hard structures that were team houses because it was just like this big resort area. So there's multiple houses.

Our kitchen was a big, general purpose tent. And operations were getting pretty feisty there. We haven't gone out at this point, a couple leadership are doing left and rights with the outgoing entities, the reiki guys with the 101st their snipers and You know day one not even day one into the city but day one on the left-sea right-seat two of our guys from our platoon come back with grenade wounds On day one day one and Essentially what happened there was always is there was this like weekly tribal council essentially that happened at this district center.

And the sniper reckey guys from the 101st was set up over watch, relay stuff, and provide over watch. We had a few members of our sniper platoon go out there and I was kind of butthurt. I wanted to go. There was a senior guys, which at the time, I'm still new to this whole thing, but it makes a sense. They're doing leaders reconnaissance. I just wanted to go out and do stuff. I'm here. I'm here to work.

Well, they come back eating grenades. The hunt refers, as they're leaving, they did not leave with their headtell high. They were still getting killed and wounded all the way up to the point they left. Our kitchen, our dining area, which is a tent, took a direct mortar round. Mortar rounds were really happening a lot, impacting all over the fire base constantly, just harassing fire. And once again, we didn't really know what we're getting into.

We did not have armor on our vehicles, all of our humvees were soft skin. We certainly using the Mercedes iFab vehicles. You remember those jeeps with the roll cages. We're using those, which are cool until they're not in fallujah. Not in fallucia not in fucking fallucia and So we started to really pillage with the Air Force had and what the army had we started to take all their blast bang it Blankets Air Force had armor on their humvees. We're taking their armor get a ringing it's our rigs uh

And we had no optics You had no op we had we had no optics. You had no optics. We had our insights. And ACOGs were not a real thing. Back then, ACOGs were in the fielding process. They were not, ACOG is the, I think, three-by-magnified optic. They were in the fielding process.

They were not in our hands, not in our possessions. Night vision, good luck. Radios, personal radios, good luck. And the Cypher platoon is completely different. Cypher platoon, we all had, you know, 148s, we all had team communication, we all had seven bravos, so we were pretty stacked.

We had some pretty outdated at the time, very dated thermals, but the infantry, maybe three guys had squad systems, squad communication systems, maybe eight guys at a 30, had night vision. And we're conducting, would be conducting full spectrum operations through all hours of the day and night. By the time, no one knew it was coming.

So when our guys came back with holes in their bodies and all ready out of the fight, they didn't go home, they stayed there. It was pretty crazy, because we're just day one on our fire base on this camp and two of our guys are already out of commission. Two guys. Damn.

Two leaders. Two leaders and we're 12 man team. We're 12 man platoon. And, uh, well, four, my math is wrong. 16, we have four teams of four. And then we had a residual headquarters aspect element that could fill and go. Still pretty small, a lot of responsibility, very small outfit. And they're like, oh, it's crazy.

And you're just hearing stories. And then you start hearing the booms. And then you're like, oh, shit, then you see the booms, you know, the mortars that are coming in. And like all of this now becoming very real to me. It was always real to me, but I never had the perspective of something I never experienced.

Hearing men fucking cry, cry out for help, never heard that shit before. Hearing fear has a sound. And hearing that sound, I've never heard of that before. And it was a culture shock a bit. And but at the time, we still had no mission, we had no plan. We were doing some of the guys from our cyber platoon,

we're doing Trojan horse missions, so low vis operations, but because you're a Marine, they won't let you grow out your beard, cause of discipline. And so they're like, can we pain their face, where local garbage must they can, make themselves look like I have a five o'clock shot, I'm doing the best they can with what they had

back in the day. Well, those missions started to quickly shut down. That's around the whole time, the whole, the black water thing happened. A lot of people are dying. And it started to stir up a hornet's nest because I don't think the commanders knew exactly what their subordinate commands were actually getting into.

Which black water thing are you talking about? Are you talking about when the contractors hung upside down on the bridge, burned alive? And so you hear all these tales and stories of things going on and you're like, shit, shit's real. This is when like the orange jumpsuit guy, remember that it was like an 18-millar driver getting beheaded.

Yeah. Remember that video was going around everywhere. And there's a lot of these things, you're like, the what is this? It was like, this is, I couldn't comprehend. Yeah. Wars were sure you can probably comprehend that a bit, but the brutality of it all,

and really what we were up against, I had no, I had no left the right lower element to even comprehend that. The body mutilations, the beheadings, the dismemberment, the human shields, all that. It was crazy. And remember one day, we started getting stuff delivered to our firebase. It was a firebase, a base camp.

And all the workers we had coming to help us local nationals, they their heads arrived in a bag outside of our gate. And so getting people to come help the Americans was extremely difficult. They sent all the heads of your local workers to your front gate? Holy shit, how many heads? Did you know these guys? They're not. I'm just a dude. I'm still like living in Lala land,

because we're waiting for the mission. I'm just wondering why we're not getting a water supply. I'm wondering why, you know, this thing hasn't been delivered. I'm just a dude. You know, I'm waiting with my scratch off phone card, waiting in line for an hour and a half to use the fucking morale phone.

Because I'm still living in a reality that I don't even know where I'm in and where I'm at. I'm just waiting for tasking. But all these big things are happening. And at the time, I was low-level guy. I wasn't really involved. You just hear the stories. And you start, what the fuck does that brief look like?

Hey, if you guys are wonder more of local workers are, their heads have all been chopped off and their and packages at the front door. Well, back then, dissemination of information wasn't really a thing. And that's my perspective. that's my view on things. And I say that because when we finally got the green light to go in, it was March 26, 2004. And we are tasked with, we are pushing through the city of Fallujah and we're clearing it with how many people?

Our entire battalion. So four companies, my marine math is not that great when it comes to the breakdown of all those outfits. Hundreds. Hundreds. Two hundred. Multiple battalions. when it comes to the breakdown of all those outfits. 100. 100. 200. Multiple battalions. So there's other units.

Because I believe Flusia was a four by four grid square or two by two, something in the nature. And there is my battalion was the main effort. So other adjacent battalions, we're doing other combat missions to support our push through the city. So they were all more in the outskirts, kind of like funneling people towards us. So the plan was. And so we stage at like 0203 in the morning on our camp,

but the night prior my petun commander comes in and he's like, everyone's gonna write their death letter. Jesus Christ. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like I got goosebumps even thinking about that. Because at the time I didn't know. I saw some guys get strapped on wounds. I heard the stories of the heads. I seen and hear the explosions. But then I'm told to write my own death letter. And I'm like, what do you say?

What do I do? And I had a girlfriend at the time, so I wrote a letter to her. My parents were in my life. I wrote a letter to my parents. And we all turn our letters over to our to make manner and That's when I knew shit was fucking real. Do you still have those letters? I don't would you write? I really don't remember. I wrote what an 18 year old kid probably would

I was motivated at the time so I probably wrote some shit like I'm dying, you know, I fought for my country, I fought for my team. I love you guys, I miss you. You think your parents love that letter? No, my parents got, my parents got more than a letter later. Okay, well we'll wait for that. Yeah, it's coming up. Right on. I mean, that's fucking demoralizing. Yeah, it's pretty demoralizing

But at the same time I didn't know any different none of us knew no one knew and I get it some people might be thinking oh dude. It's war. What did you expect? But no, that's I've been to war this this was hell this was This was something that shaped my life for the rest of my life. As long as I live, I will never forget that. I won't remember all the details. I still don't remember all the details. I don't remember all the phase lines. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I remember the feeling. And I have never been of the shake at ever since. the feeling. And I have never been off the shake at ever since. So we load up in these trucks. I'm in the seven time. Those big, you know, very clunky, non-quiet diesel, 18-military tactical vehicles. And we're all smoke and cigarettes, light discipline. we're still on base. Cause the drive is only like 10 minutes.

The drive from your DVD player, your shitty fucking food, and the thing you call a bed, you're 10 minutes away from hell. And it's just outside your gate. And the drive was that 10 minutes of fucking silence and pure fucking darkness. And I just remember feeling like the rumbles of the truck.

I smelled the JPA, the fuel. You know, you just, you can feel, you can feel that energy for all those fucking souls that are there. These fucking dudes, you know, like you can feel that energy for all those fucking souls that are there. These fucking dudes, you know, like, you can feel it. The silence, that bonding that speaks no words. That mindset that has no... It has no category.

It just is what it is. And only situations can bring that about. And we stopped right outside the city. It's the clover leaf, it was like this highway, there's a highway right outside of it, and there's this clover leaf of a highway, like entrance points, on ramps, off ramps, and we park outside of that and we unload,

and it's just dead quiet, it's pitch black, but there's these street lights. And we're like, what's going on? You know, what are we doing here? Like, what's the next phase? What's the next step? And you hear gunshots. And a few of us to include myself, we like duck.

Well, it's our guys shooting out these street lights, which it's not as easy as movies make, especially with 556. And it took a little couple shots to like, make these things happen and then I got super quiet and Then my team leader comes up and he's like hey, we're Tast to do overwatch and push forward. I'm like, okay. I was a point man. That was my fucking job. I was good at it So not only my navigating to a a destination which we didn't have one, my heads on the swivel I have to see everything and relay that back. Because our mission to

provide information to Arbitan to our commanders or subordinate commanders so they can create and determine what's intelligence and when needs to be action and when needs to happen. And right on the outskirts of city was this reconstructed building and I remember making my way up there and it's beautiful. The sun's peaking. There's that smell of unknown, a new country and it was so peaceful and quiet. It was insane. It's not nobody. We slowly start to push up. We're still remaining in an overwatch position and the eye faps come up. These small Mercedes-Jeepes and our weapons guys, our weapons company guys, the guys with the Mark 19's, the 50 cowl, the 240's were mounting on these little things.

And I remember they pushed up an L shape to provide support. So the infantrymen continued to push up and bound as they were trained to do. Down from one place, the next place, and we're going to clear this village, this city. and we're gonna clear this village, this city. And then like that, an eye fab just disappears. And it blew up, like literally right in front of us. And I was like, holy fuck, this is real. Like, I always knew it was real. I heard the stories, I saw the explosions,

I fucking saw the holes in the bodies, but now I'm there in the thick of it. There's no chow time, there's no break, there's no pea break, this is it. And it's like maybe seven in the morning, eight in the morning. The day is just begun. And that doesn't stop anybody. We push the fight. We continue to push. Now

sporadic gunshots start happening. Now we have we have ground elements that are maneuvering, you know. Now we're in this hustle and bustle. There was no martial law. There was no stability operations. This is a fight now. And still not to the full capacity of what was awaiting us in fallusion. And at the time, to me, as a point man on a cyber team, I didn't think there was a lot of planning. I'm not saying I was a master planner back in the day, but I learned about phase lines later in life. And there was no phase lines during this. There was no limits of advance.

There was no real plan. I was, hey, go here, move forward. It was kind of like throwing spaghetti at the wall, see what's stuck. And so we get tasked again, we're like, hey, you guys push forward, establish Overwatch, you guys push forward, relay back to us, and the grants will push forward also. We're like, okay, so that's what we did. And now we're getting targeted. I find myself on another rooftop. And as a point man, I'm holding a very security baby.

I'm watching that door leading up to the stairwell. Not a fun job. My friends are shooting, they're engaging. They're seeing people with guns. You know, they're doing their job. And I'm like watching this door. And then I realized watching this door became very interesting because I started to get shots all around my head.

You know, phew, phew, phew, phew, hidden the wall, so I'm like ducking. I'm like, shit. So now put that in perspective like yo bro, you might be holding security in the rear, dude, but like you can't just hold security in the rear. You got to hold security all over the place. You have to be observant.

Is your head past that, you know, ledge, you know, what is your guy is doing? Have you looked back to see what they're doing? Like, I'm learning all these things that I've never learned in training. Damn. And, not like I was not trained properly, but there's only one way to learn certain things. And you have to collectively put together. That's why, you know, investing in training is extremely important. Well, back in the day, we trained the best we could with the funds we had and the knowledge and experience we had. Well, you know, day, we trained the best we could, with the funds we had, and the knowledge, and experience that we had. Well, I can't tell you how many TTPs,

tactics, techniques, and procedures came out of, and SOPs, standard operating procedures, came out of Luzha alone. Yeah. Because tactics that you thought you were going to do, we were still doing this Cold War Aerotactics. Well, that shit does not work in an urban environment like that, where that has been waiting for you,

waiting to dominate your soul, literally waiting to kill you. There was kill house, a set up all over the place. There was tunnel systems, there was rat lines, there were, loopholes, there were, channel walls knocked down to basically shoot in one house and they could run through all these other walls. So no overhead aerial platform was going to see them. You know, you weren't going to see these guys.

You're going to hear shots and they're going to disperse because they're fighting a grill of warfare. You're fighting a true adversary. And these people knew we were coming. They knew that the war was coming. They saw it with their 101st. They saw it with the Air Force. They knew that it was about to get fixed, these dudes made their last stand.

And they prepared that battlefield as such, because at this point they weren't really going, they were going the aspects of Fallujah. No one said, hey, we're clearing Fallujah, we're going to own it. This didn't happen up to this point until we got there. And that's what this mission was, that's what our overarching mission was, inherent resolve was to do, to take fallusion. And we find ourselves maneuvering to another building. And it's probably like launch time.

And there's this two story building, it's kind of under construction, kind of pretty incomplete. And you know, I go in there, see the two story building, we clear the bottom deck. I'll work my way up to stairwell, go into the room, we secure it, we set up our hide site. And a hide site back then, being very mobile and agile as we were, our hide site really just meant depth. We needed depth.

We had stand off depth in the room, we weren't setting up blinds, we weren't doing any of that. These windows were unconstructed, some of them were like massive, so we did the best we could with what we had. And so we got two M16s, two bretas, and the two sniper rifles. That was all the weapons we had. Two M16s, two pistols and two sniper rifles. Wow. The sniper's had sniper rifle and a pistol. And the radio operator myself, we had the M16s. And around this time, it's still early in the day. You know, you hear some pop shots here and there. You hear some radio traffic, but nothing's really crazy. I mean, we saw some shit get blown up.

That's crazy, but it wasn't this constant flow of craziness. It was a calm before the storm. Afternoon Per happens. Once afternoon Per happens, I'm by the window, that's where we had a radio set up at. And I see movement across, across the street on the rooftop. It was, I call it like the, it was like a muffler. It was like a car place.

There was a bunch of like car bodies up top and like mufflers and they were obviously doing like oil and shit at the bottom. You had the big cutouts. It was like a pet boys type of place, what I called it. I see these guys were across, dudes and I get the heads up to my crew. Next thing you know if I'm myself in a gun fight and I'm on the left side of this window and I'm engaging these two dudes with guns, they're shooting at us and then

we're just getting fucked up with machine gun fire. Like it's just sprained down like to the point where like we're not even engaging the window anymore then we're just getting fucked up with machine gun fire. Like it's just spraying down like to the point where like we're not even in engaging the win anymore. We're just gonna eat it. So we're backed off of the window waiting to hear gaps and lulls in the fire so we can pop back out and engage. And how we started doing it was the radar operator he would go shoot and when he would go dry that's when I would come in. We were playing that whole tag year at game. Meanwhile the two snipers in my team, they're in the prone position on the ground

because when we're not actively engaging, very accurate, sporadic fires coming through our window. And it's like literally just like mowing on top of us. So if you stick your head up, you're done. And these guys are just like, oh shit, you guys get them. Like they're kind of like laughing. They're like, fuck, they've been here, done that.

They've been to the invasion of Iraq. They were in some, one of them was in the Somalia, but it was real, it was a real deal. It was really happening. And we were not participating, we were it, we were it. And I remember going back behind the window, I reloaded another magazine, and as soon as I pop out to shoot, it all goes black. And I remember this, this like profound exhale that came out of me,

and I ended up on the ground. And that's when I had this out of body experience. At this time I had no idea what happened. I thought I was dead. I could see, if you ever play a game or if you've ever seen a game where there's like a glitch where you can kind of see like a top-down view. I saw this top-down view what was going on. I can see the I saw this top down view what was going on. I can see the Fighters across the street. I can see my body. I can see my point man still shooting I can see my other teammates on the ground like what the fuck's going on I just you had a fucking out of body experience in the middle of combat. Yeah, holy shit I've never heard of that. Yeah, and

What happened was, I see this fucking light. I see all these things going on, like, dude, I'm fucking dead. And I just get sucked back into this life. And then I snap, and I'm in this fetal position. My body went into this fetal position. And I start to move. And I don't know if I was convulsing or if it was for my friend kicking me. He's kicking me with his foot. He's in the prone position. Just, hey, wake up! They're like, dude, we thought you were dead. We didn't see any blood. I'm like, what happened?

I'm like crying and laughing at the same time. I have no idea what's going on. I got shot right in the helmet. And I didn't know this. And I'm completely out of it. Well, my body was down, fell at the radio, near the radio. They're like, get on the radio and call and support. And I'm like, what the fuck, I'm like, what's going on? I'm trying to figure out where I'm at and they're like get on the fucking radio

and call for support. I'm like okay. I'm like I pick up this fucking handset. And I give like the worst radio transmission ever. Every other word was break. Warhammer break. This is break. Grim Reaper break. We need break. I'm fucking out of it. And I get it out. I must read out. I call him like, hey, here's our fucking location. This is what's going

on. And I'm getting broken calm. And we're still under a fucking fire, under attack. And so my team was like, we gotta get out of here. So we pack up the calm and we're still under a fucking fire, under attack. And so my team was like, we gotta get out of here. So we pack up the radio and we work our way downstairs. And I find myself with a radio operator holding basically being a shield for him so he can set up the antenna, get communication and we can get fucking contact because we're like, dude, shit's about to get real. And my team leader, my assistant team leader, they're craling, they're sniping rifle and they got their pistol out.

And I can see kind of the doorway of the building we're in, and then I see this window right in front of me, as I'm like peeking out of this bathroom. And it's a very tall window, and I see this head, the top of this head, walk by. I see this turban and everything walk by. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, fuck. Because this is the real fucking thing. So I'm like, fuck it till I'm

when shut the fuck up. There's people coming. So my guy stops on the radio communication because it's loud as fuck. We'd have the best radios and intents back there and we're in a concrete building. It's not we're not in a favorable position to achieve communication superiority. And we're somewhat locked down. So we're not even in a defensive true defensive posture. We're almost just waiting for it. And I see this shadow get bigger and bigger into this into this room. I couldn't see more because I wasn't peaking out anymore, but I just saw this shadow figure get bigger and bigger and bigger until this fucking man's face, this adult face, crest of corner, and I just jammed my fucking gun into his face. He's got no

weapon, I fucking hit him, I'm looking at him, and I'm like, what the fuck do we do? And they're like, oh, he's trying to come and fucking look at body counts. You know, he's a fucking spy. He's on the lookout. And I'm like, I'm still like semi throwing up. I'm dizzy. I don't know the fuck's going on still.

I'm semi conscious to this, but like, I'm trying to process a whole bunch of things, stuff. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that I need to give that my priority than my own feelings and concerns and thoughts and emotions. One person ends up turning into seven people. People started to come to our house, no weapons.

And we did not know what to do. And I'm like, I'm not gonna fucking kill these people that have no guns. Like, at that point in time, I made that decision. Like, I'm not just anyone can kill. And at a fucking young age before I really learn what that life was about, it did not, they weren't a threat to me.

And you can't just, I don't know, at the time, I didn't do it. So it is what it was. But we didn't have any stuff to hog time. We didn't have anything to secure them. All we had was fucking our weapons drawn to them and we're like, do we are so fucked? We gotta get the fuck out of here cause they make a jump on us, we're done.

Yeah, we'll take care of you, but dude, we outwe're outnumbered. Almost two to one at this point. Just mells. And it was so random. And instead of them walking by, I'm like ushering them in. I'm grabbing them forcibly, bring them in. Cause the last thing I wanted them to do is run away and tell people that these four gringos are inside this house and

they have no idea what's going on. And my team was like, do we got to, we got to make a belt for, we got to, we got to make a run for this thing. And our only option was to hit the road, skirt fucking town, and just run until we made contact with friends. Because we're still getting fucking shot at. It's not as violent now, it's sporadic at this point. But now we have these guys come in and do quality checks. And we have no idea what they are,

what they're about, what they represent, who they work for. It's just a lot of weird things are happening all at once. And so we make ourselves out of this house, and we just started to balance. And we just kept them bounding. And so we ran to an infantry squad and we tell them what's going on. We're like, yo, dude, we're in this building over here. We got in contact from across the street.

And they're like, oh, yeah, we heard that shit. So we showed up and we just started fucking blasting both buildings, we didn't know anything. I'm like, not really putting two and two together. And I'm like, oh, you all are blasting that fucking building too, like, oh yeah, we're fucking blasting that building, we're blasting that building, and this is new, you know?

They didn't know shit, we didn't know shit until we started to piecemeal these stories together. At the time when that's taking place, I'm throwing up. I'm like, oh my God, what's going on? I get a moat turn and a cigarette. And the doc looks me over, does that little eye since recheck, and he's like, okay. TBI was in a thing back then.

No one knew what that shit was. And as we're basically teaming up, sharing stories, they're telling us, oh yeah, so and so got shot through and through the ass. Well, little did we know his OIF1 deployment, he got shot through and through the ass again. So this is now the ass guy. So there's some funny, there's some laughter going on

in this like very chaotic place, which is still kindergarten compared to the varsity that Flusia was truly about. We're like six, seven hours into the first day in this thing. It's nothing. It's all a cakewalk. And we get tasked that we're like, hey, Delta is doing a mission down the road. We need to go provide sniper support for them. We're providing basically a cord on for them, outer support. And I tell my assistant, team leader, I'm like, dude, I'm fucking done, bro. He's like suckin' the fuck up.

I like Roger that. So we go in this like Matan Death March to link up to set up this Otters cord on. And I am walkin' left and right. I'm dragin' my fuckin' gun. He's like, pick up your fuckin' rifle. I'm like, dude, I am fuckin' tryin'. I am, I'm toast to this point.

I'm hitting all the dope mean, the adrenaline's wearin' off, and like, I just got shot in the helmet. Hell, I wearing off and like I just got shot in the helmet. Hell, I don't even know who I got shot in the helmet by this point and I don't feel good. This, I'm getting to the point where I'm fizzling capable of actually performing my job. We set up the railroad tracks and they're like,

all right, you're good. We're here and the next thing now, it just passed out. Passed out these roller tracks. I remember, I remember Delta doing their mission. They're like, yeah, we're good, we appreciate it. They do their shit. Obviously, super fast, very calculated, very inspiring. And we're there on, you know, a squirt of control,

fighting powder in his life. We're there for a little bit, waiting for the next tasking order. Cause now we're probably seven o'clock in the evening. We have accomplished shit. We haven't cleared through anything. We've reacted stuff. And we come back to where we started

at the very beginning of the phase line and my commander is like, hey, you're gonna, I'm gonna send you back. I'm like, I don't wanna fucking go. He's like, no, you're gonna go back and get checked out. I'm like, no, I'm gonna stay here with a team. He's like, no, you're gonna go back and get checked out. Like, no, I'm gonna stay here with a team. He's like, listen, all we're doing is setting up borders for the night and then we're all pulling out

in the morning, you have my word. I'm like, okay, so I go back, I get checked out. Eyes around the camper like this. Cause now we're like, wait a second, we heard the stories, we saw the wounds, we heard the fucking explosions, now we experienced it all, and you know, half this unit is full of new guys. And even the old guys were like, fuck, this is intense. Even for this entry level stuff that happened, this was nothing, nothing. This was a drop in the bucket compared to the fucking storm that was coming. And so we're back in the rear.

I get checked out. Basically, we had two to half weeks before we went back in the city. And this time the plan was to go back in the city and establish a stronghold. So my team was to support two team, sniper teams to support, Equal Company, and Equal Company was going to be amvul of the main element, the main effort. Basically, meaning we were going to take over these few buildings and the other companies, other other companies that are retiring, we're going to start pushing fighters towards us. And so the thought process and the objective was, we'll go firm, we'll use all these

adjacent units to basically just like push the hornet's nest into one vector them into one area To one kill zone and then we'll do what must be done and Leading up to this. I'm like no idea what to think so we load up again and This is this is when I see my first dead guy like right in front of me. I pull up in a Humvee and I'm eating a strawberry applesauce and I'm just like I'm like bro. I love to eat and I'm definitely gonna get my food in before I got to go do what who go not God knows what I got to do and So I'm pulling up because the grunts came in because at this point we've established overwashed across this bridge

The grunts go in they clear the strongholds, they get in a fight, and they basically secure these objectives, the main element of this whole operation. And what we're doing is, we're just eating rockets for eating mortars. I'm dealing with human shields. I'm dealing with calling in air strikes. I'm doing all these things,

fighting from an Amtrak basically, why all this is taking place. So this is a very quick evolution, but it seems forever. We link up and I'm shoving strawberry applesauce my mouth. And then I see Frank the Fallusion laying outside, blotted his shit, gutts and glory, and he was a fighter as the Marines pushed in to clear these strongholds. And I'm just like, look into this fucking dudes' brains. I'm like, I finished my food.

I'll leave him the fucking truck, I'll grab my pack, and I go inside. And it is just like a bunch of ants moving around. Grunts are good at three things. Cleaning weapons, filling sandbags, and killing shit. And they are cleaning weapons and filling sandbags. That's the phase of life rollin. Luckily for me, my sniper team, we make our way up to the rooftop, and I'm on an Overwatch. And that's basically how I found myself into this next phase of fighting and combat was

this Overwatch aspect. And it changed, everything fucking changed after that. March 26th, so exactly 30 days after I got dinged in the helmet for weeks now, we're taking sniper fire from this one building. And at this point, we made so much noise. We were stacking so many bodies that we had to simple trolls out to move the fucking bodies because there was interrupting our fields of fire.

Holy shit. And there was so many bodies being stacked that the locals were driving up their ambulances and picking up bodies also. And our main fight was the sniper alley. And we would see fighters in black man jammers, you know, running left to right. And they were pushing our max ranges

for our max velocity for our sniper rifles. Our three awaits were not fast enough to like see them on the right side, to hit them on the left side. You know, we had no time to lead them in a very small window. So we were getting our paydays closer. So we basically stopped shooting at them

and or we would shoot and purposely harass them, we would miss. We would just let you know we're there because what we wanted to do is draw them in more. We wanted them to get comfortable and complacent. And so then we found out they were leaving telltale signs, they were leaving markings, they would leave rocks, they would have a runner,

they would come leave a rock by an edge and says, don't cross here, this is only for look out. And they'd leave a can over here and this is where you run. You know, because fighters, they're not on icons or at the day time, they're not on iPhones, chatting everybody. They're getting a very small brief and they're going to fight. How did you guys figure that out? Observation. How long did that take? Three days. Three days to figure out a rock is... Yup, because... No go and a can is go.

Because after that point, we just looked at it as... At this point, we were looking at weeks, right? A couple weeks of what's happening. And then we're like, wait a second. They have a system in place that we're not seeing. So then we focus all of our efforts on specific, like specific observation. And it just kind of worked out that way. And that's a good fucking pickup, especially if you're talking, you're far enough a way to where you can kill these guys because

the rounds aren't fast enough. They're too far away and you're picking up cans and rocks. There's a go, no go. Because when you're complacent, your enemy is complacent. You're a product of your environment. And the more harsh we were, the more fucking harsh these guys were. The more gray space we gave them, the more gray space it took advantage of.

And so we just stopped. We changed it up a little bit. And we're like, hey, don't shoot. We let them fucking get some wins. Because I got, I mean, I got an empty empty between over here. They're going to smoke these guys. But we don't want to, we don't want to keep on

smoking them right here. We want to figure out the fuck's going on. And so now we bring in our Mark 19's to our rooftops, and we just dial this shit in. So real quick, for the audience, Mark 19 is a grenade launcher. And if, basically, a fully automatic grenade launcher. Very heavy, looks like a fucking turtle

with a big O Unicorn spout. And little eggs come out of launch. Great day of launch. Very heavy. Looks like a fucking turtle with a big O Unicorn spout. And little eggs come out of it. And those eggs go boom. And the machine gunners got super smart. Machine gunners were like, oh bro, we're doing this. So we're bringing Martin and teens up there. We're revactoring our machine guns on there. And we're just dealing death.

And it was crazy. It was literally fish in the barrel almost. Because one guy would poke out here and three guys would run that way. One guy would poke here and then two guys would run this way. So now we're like, okay, you take the left side, this phase line, you take the right side, this phase line and we're basically,

that's how we're picking up. So now instead of trying to like lead them, we're holding on these places. So as soon as we hear unottable, or we see it in the peripheral, then that is our trigger to engage. Because now we have someone observation that's seen the whole thing, a little further zoomed out. We have guys on these 10 power fix, Johnny Neural scopes from Vietnam with silk webbing, right?

Old school, fixed power, you know, in an urban environment is not ideal, very, very scary. At least I thought it was, because you're instantly tunnel vision, and when you're tunnel vision down a tunnel vision channel, that's even scarier, because there's a bunch of doors and windows and moving things and all sorts of things happening,

and like, you have to have your head in a swivel. That's why we worked really well as a team. It sucked to not be on the sniper rifle, but being an observation was just important because it was a team thing, right? The only way we were gonna win, the only way we were gonna come out of this thing alive is we worked together.

And that's what I really enjoyed a lot about all that hell that we experienced. So we basically wrapped this up. We replaced our sniper rifles with machine guns and the machine gunners just, they took care of the rust. We had a new pointer friction was this house across the Jolans cemetery. And this is a really big cemetery, very ancient looking.

And across the cemetery was a mosque. And right to the right of the mosque was this building with a blue satellite dish on top. This blue satellite dish house we were always receiving pretty effective sniper fire from and our commander and at this time we're in so much shit we're calling it airstrikes on a nightly basis to the point where our whole house spooky was really big back in the day spooky the C-130 gunship just our house was young so much danger close fucking fire missions Hold how spooky was really big back in the day spooky the C 130 gunship just uh Our house was young

So much danger close fucking fire missions happening 105's 40 mic mic Fucking you name it it was happening if it could calm out of the sky and out of a plane and kill shit it was coming and That's high attribute I can sleep through anything right now because you had to like you couldn't always fight every time There was a fight going on, you could run up, grab your shit, run to the rooftop, but you have to be smarter because the fight's gonna continue tomorrow. And that's where that discipline

and the warrior comes in where, you know, it's if I'm needed, they will call me, you know. And that's hard to do cause you want to be involved, you want to participate, but fuck, man, you can't run yourself ragged. You're in an deployment for six months. We've been here four weeks. There's a lot of shit.

This is four weeks since of this thing. I couldn't imagine what more, many more months is going to be like. And so we draw so much attention, like making headlines, Delta shows up to our position. And they're like, hey, we heard you guys were in the shit and we're like, every fucking day. And they're like, well, hopefully we can help.

They brought a bunch of experimental shit out there. They were a sniper element. And so it was super cool to like be around these guys and see a completely new version of professionalism. It's different aspect, different mindset of everything. And working alongside them, we're sharing high sites together, we're sharing bunkers together.

They're fucking teaching us how to shoot. They're 300 win mag, teaching us how to use their fucking, they had the horse vision back in the day. You know, like all these medical options and optics and just learning so much information and these dudes were down to earth. And we're kids, these are fucking men. These are old, that's an older read back then.

We're like 18, 19 year old fucking Googley eyes, like, oh my God, look at their gear, they're so cool. And listen to their stories. Well, now that we have them, what does our commander's like? You ever heard him name Doug Zimbac? No, I haven't. Major Zimbac is a... He was a man...

Manimux men, right? He was called the Lion of Fallujah. Before we went into the city, he stood on the floor and a tank, and said that the dogs of Fallujah will go fat off of feasting up the dead bodies we laid a waste. And that's exactly what happened. Uh, I actually have a dog with a hand in its mouth on my kneecap from that deployment. There were so many bodies that they weren't whole after a couple days. Legs, limbs, we're missing. You just see dogs running with fucking arms in their mouth and you're desensitized.

And you're like, you can't even make this shit up. And then once we stop dropping bodies, now there's bodies coming up from the fucking graves. And you're just like, this is, this is hell. And around this time, we started getting filled at ACOG's. So now everyone is pretty outfitted with ACOG's. At this point in time, there's a lot of casualties that are taking place.

So now even our Korman have M16s because before the Korman had pistols in fucking Fallujah. Holy shit. I still have the same helmet. That's got a fucking hole in it. And you know, what's his name? Maddox,

Journal Maddox. Before we went into the city again, I was holding security on this fucking bridge and he called, he's like, I was a big deal. I was like one of the very freest cases that I got shot in the helmet and lived. And he had me come over there. He's like, let me see his fucking helmet. I show him as I'm fucking little kid wearing this helmet Still that's completely useless now It has zero stoppage capability, but I'm wearing it. So I got

And he's like he says something. What didn't tell me get back to my fighting position? And so I got this fucking helmet. I got all these stats and these fears. He's unknown these these things because My whole life has changed in the matter of months. My experience is the, my outlooks my perspective, the realities, I mean, fuck, I just got shot in the helmet on day one in the city, and I'm dodging bullets every day,

so I'm constantly battling that fear of, don't be a bitch, you know, I was to the point where like, dude, you have to just keep on moving. You can't stop and worry about you're gonna get shot on the fucking head again. So I started to expose a little bit more of my body here and there to give myself an option, give myself a chance,

because I was still dealing with that shit. And our Doug Zimbak, he's like, hey, I wanna do a sniper mission, sniper kill mission. We have Delta here. I want you guys to go there and fucking stack bodies. That was his main mission. That was it. It was the simplest fucking mission I've ever given in my life.

And so obviously with the Grunts' help, we roll out super early, the Saltman, launch a rocket through this fence, and we take over this fucking house. No conflict. Back in the day, you have some brabos which were not that great. You know, it's a two into one, big ol' pet 15s, Bayass laser, and these big ol' muskets,

these civil war muskets that aren't very conducive for a CQB environment. And pitch black, and you're just making all the ruckus, there is no sound discipline, because you can't even see where you're walking. So you know those, they have those metal doors that are really flimsy. Yeah.

We're hitting those, they had them on steps, they had early warning devices everywhere. Emma are like, bro, this house was set up for success. So when they're upstairs shooting, you have to make a ruckus to go get them, but granted this house was empty by the time we're there. But what we found there in this house, confirmed all our suspicions. A big spider hole, big loophole,

done extremely well, very professional, small to big, done like textbook, gave them all the angles they needed and the window they were burning was exactly to our house. And we could see the rooftop line. We could see Marines head, Bobble here and there. We had to use some planks and liders to cross to get to other rooftops on our strongholds and you can just see them move. And how we didn't take more casualties, I'm fucking grateful, but like they had a great fucking vantage spot on this.

Chest rigs, weapon cache, everything was in this house. Basically, you show up there, you fight, you move on, you go back to your family, fucking tea time. And so we set up on the rooftop, one of the Delta guys is like, hey, I kinda got a weird feeling from this one. I'm gonna go back to,

I'm gonna go back to support from the strong cold, because we had two other sniper teams back there with the other grumple tune And so we go up to the rooftop. I make my loophole I set my my team alert for success I built him a fucking stand for his shit, you know some mattresses and pillows. I chiseled his loophole I get observation up and it's it's hottest fuck We got machine gunners up there. We got grenade, grenade nears up there, grenade launcher guys, grenade launchers.

All of our sniper ammunition is up there. All my crypto is up there in my day pack. And my night vision, everything. And my team was like, hey, it's really hot. How about you and the radio operator? How about you guys go down and take a fucking hour. We need you, we'll come get you, if not come back in an hour, replace us. We're like, okay. So I'm like, hey, do you want my rifle? And he's like, no, you might need that. The radio operator

give his rifle to my ATL because he's like, fuck it, I'll take this. We go downstairs to this big, like a mattress room. You remember remember those big family rooms? It just mattresses up to the wall. Yeah. We're in this room. My rifle's next to the door. The grunts have the safe secured. Delt is kind of like in and out, then through floors, and they have other half their element

at our stronghold position. They're communicating, they're doing observation. They're participating. Silence. And why don't this fucking cigarette, and I'm just smoking and joking with my friend. We're talking about some dumb shit, I don't even fucking know what it was. And then the fucking house starts to fucking shake. And we started to get a volley of RPGs and grenades and machine gun fire, fucking all simultaneous. Through them that I was in I was sitting next to this window and across from this window was another fucking building with the window there And machine gun fire just blast or fucking window and I find myself again in the prone position

same what the fuck and it's loud It's dusty and it's fucking scary because then the scream started coming and Then the yelling started to happen and then the fucking fire inside started to fucking occur like machine gun fire picking up the grenade like everything was happening all at once At the same time we had this complex ambush basically they they set us up The Jason house wasn't fucking clear as it was thought to be cleared. And have you ever seen that footage where there's like a bunch of people coming on ISR feed and there's like this pilot that drops a bomb? Remember that footage from back in the day? Yeah.

That was us. No. Shit. That was this day. And so we are low-crolling I get to the fucking door I bra my fucking rifle and I just I I I see fear I see people freeze I see people fucking shake I see fucking blood and I see straight like, but no cowardice. I just see what fucking brutality brings. And you hear, we need to stretch your core man, mad egg.

We hear all these things. We're taking fucking couch, these upon couch, these doors are gonna knock down to provide gurneys for people, but here's a kicker, we can't get out. We're pinned to fuck down. We got guys jumping on a rooftop. We got guys fucking running to her front door. We got dudes trying to drop into her fucking windows pistols. We're running dry killing people that day. And we were

literally going to Winchester on ammunition. We're running out of ammunition on the rooftop. As my friend and I make it out of this room and we kind of see what's going on, we see them just fucking bloody and mangled. My friend, his machine guner, comes down, his fucking arm is gone. Another dude, his leg comes down, his fucking goddamn Swiss cheese. My team leader, my ATL, they're fucked up.

They ate all sorts of grenades. And you just hear screaming and you hear support, you hear help and you just hear the volleys continue, continue, continue. And it is, it's fucking traumatizing. You're like, you can't even imagine what something like that is. You can't even comprehend what something like that is. And hearing the story doesn't seem real.

And it just was never ending. And the only way we were staying alive was what was happening on the rooftop. And at this point in time, so many grenades and rockets hit our rooftop, our ammunition is gone. Our fucking 240 is destroyed. Our fucking grenades are fucking exploding up there cause there's a mass fucking fire. And it's the fight for your life at the top.

We got guys just getting fucking blasted. Get them fucking wounded, killed. It's just happening and it's happening right now. And they're like, we need support up there. And I remember hearing one of my good friends, he befriended me, he was a machine gunner, his name was Aaron Austin. He, uh, they're like, Aaron's hit, we need to get him down. And so I run up there. And, uh,

I see my fucking friend, why does fuck? And he's fading very fast. And everything stops. And it's just that save and private Ryan's scene where it just hell is breaking loose, but you hear no sounds. You're just looking the fuck around.

We're taking fire from the minaret. So they got the elevation on us. We're taking fire from adjacent buildings. We're taking fucking grenades from various floors like we're tossing grenades back. We're literally surviving. We're not even fighting. We're surviving. And we can't make a fucking run for it because we're fucking pen down at front. So we're calling it an airstrikes, we're calling on fucka support. We're calling in Medivex. And we're told that our Medivex aren't coming. Because the time we're in the ship, we're in the OKKarrow. So our command is doing battlefield circulations. So they're going around, see what's going on. They're

taking assets that we fucking need. And hearing him on this rooftop, and I see my fucking friend shot multiple times. And we fight, we do what we gotta do. The fella downstairs that I saw freesed up, I saw him on the fucking rooftop fighting next to me, moments later. And then I see my friend, and we carry him down and one of the medics from Delta. He'd like James and I'm an IV.

Am I radio operator and I? Where at this fucking point now? Where the Abrams pulled up, the tanks pulled up, and they're outside of our house just skid and fucked up. They're just providing a shield so we can make the Mogadishimal run back home. Coppers in the overhead. By this time the Minerates fucking toast.

You know, those things had like no, the mosque were off limits. But it was fucking gone. Rockets were exploding everywhere, and all we're just getting told is we gotta get the fuck out of here. And we just start fucking X-Fillin' bodies. Now that the tanks are here.

And so the Delta Medic myself and my radio operator were based like iron crossing my friend Aaron like doing this fucking mile. This run for a fucking lives back to our stronghold and everyone's bounding. My commander is fucking shot. One of the delta guys, his fucking carbine was shot. So he's got a fucking pistol. He was shot in the fucking ear. My company commander, he was fucking shot in the dick ear my my comedy commander he was fucking shot in the dick protector like dudes are bloody dudes are fucking dead and we get back and the fight continues doesn't end it doesn't end till it does to the point we ran out of sniper ammo and one of the guys from the infantry because

now my two in command my team leader is fucking out of commission. My ATL, both my snipers are out of commission. And so I took his rifle and I went to the rooftop and I started getting to work. Well, I ran out of ammo very quickly because all I had was in his gun and he didn't fire any shots. I mean, you're not gonna fire shots in a fight like that. Not from a sniper rifle. Not from a bolt gun at least. And the grunts that weren't supporting the fight, they're delinquent 762 rounds to feed me. It's like a fucking put them inside. And every now and then I get a fucking tracer. I can see. So I know

I'm not shooting match grade ammo. I'm shooting fucking machine gun ammo, which is designed to graze and I'm just working with what I got And I'm fucking crying and I'm sad and I'm still fighting Everyone's fucking fighting and it ends that night and These Delta guys say like do dude, we have never. And I was on a team, these guys, one of them was on the team that got Saddam. You know, one of them was on the team that killed Ude.

He was the one that killed Ude. And these fucking guys tell me, do I've never, ever been anything like this. And my mind is fucking blown. I'm like, how do you Titans have never experienced this shit before? They were doing different missions, very violent, very dangerous, different. And that night they fly out because they're still conducting combat operations, their little birds are coming in. And the medic, he gives me his

fucking patch. Because Aaron, I found out died, like just outside the megalite, five minutes outside the mech, because we're waiting on the resupply to happen. We're waiting on the vehicles to show up. But my battalion commander and my sergeant major wanted to go get in the mix. They're holding up assets. And to hear my fucking friend dies, five fucking minutes from like a role one unit

where there's a real medical facility there. It fucking sucked. Yeah. And then I started getting introduced to the chaplain and then they would come, they'd say some prayer shit. We do like a little ceremony for our brothers and arms. And that became a constant fucking thing. That was like a repeating cycle that never ended that deployment. I'm always seeing the fucking chaplain. The chaplain's always coming. Someone's always dying. You know, Iad's weren't a really big thing back then. But vehicle born Iadies were. Suicide. Suicide vest and suicide led vehicle born Iadies were a really big thing at that time. Squat gone.

This fucking fire team gone. And then you hear stories of your friends that you went to bootcamp with, the school of infantry with that are in Ramadi, that are fighting for their life at the same time that you're fighting for your life in Flh, you're just to find out how those fucking dudes are dead. All my friends that most of my friends that I had in boot camp and school of infantry

fucking gone, dead as shit. And I just became empty. And this was it. This is what no one knew. You know, you could train for the five, but you're not, no one trains to fucking lose your soul. No one trains to fucking fill empty. No one trains to like, you can't train for what must be done.

You only must execute when the opportunity and the situation presents itself. And I had never seen so much heroism come from a group of men in my entire life. These dudes were dads, they were fathers, brothers, they were young men, they were, they were leaders, these dudes had dreams, these dudes were on their last deployment, getting ready to roll out. Have those dudes in a fucking make it. And I get it, it's war, what do you expect, but what the fuck do you expect? And, you know, this deployment went on, these conflicts went on, I mean, to the point where we are getting combat replacements,

to the point where our cooks are on missions. Our fire bases are fucking empty because we're sitting everyone out there. And I remember one particular day I'm still out there in the stronghold position and our first sergeant comes up and he's like, Hey, when's the last time you called home? Like, I don't fucking know. And he's like, here, call home. You have five minutes. I'm like, Okay, so I pick up the sat phone and I call home And I'm like Hey, mom, she's like hey

Who's this? Why found out? Why wasn't getting fucking letters? Why wasn't getting fucking Mel? Because somehow I got put on the K-A list when I got shot in the helmet, among prior. And that phone call made it to my family. So my parents thought I was fucking dead.

But they never got a follow up phone call with where's your ceremony? You know, what's the next fucking step? My parents thought I was fucking dead. For a month. For a month. And I was like, fuck dude, I put these motherfuckers through that shit too.

Are you serious? And I'm like waving it off. I'm emotional now because I'm grateful to be alive. But at the time, I was just surviving. So I was just happy that I had a cigarette that day and had a cold coffee that I made. My little MRE package. I was happy with the simple shit,

the beef jerky that my friend shared that he got sent from home because his family is avid hunters. Then I hear that they thought it was fucking dead. I'm just like, you can't make this up, but it happened. And that just introduced me to war that was the standard for the rest of my life. I ended up that deployment was pretty hectic. We switched from singing the city to rolling missionally outside, doing a remain behind

missions, doing a lot more shit, seeing a lot of bad leadership, a lot of bad tactics, a lot of fucking egos, costing men their fucking lives. And I saw a lot of standards of what I wasn't going to accept or allow. Even from my team, I had a very, my team leader was a, was a turd. He sucked, he was horrible. So I learned a lot from all this, how I learned a lot of what right looks like, what bad looks like, what's good, what's not good. And I was able to form what kind of, what's not good, and I was able to form what kind of, what kind of leader and marine do I want to be?

Because I saw it all there. I saw some in the rear, but you never see someone's true colors like you do when they're faced with adversity. And this adversity was costing motherfuckers your lives. And so I'd say that's the best kind of adversity that you can pick and pull tangible things from And so all the younger guys in that platoon to include myself we ended up

Leaving 30 days early from that deployment To all go to sniper school and Miss just were dying down and to be honest. I was so fucking stoked. I might like, dude, I might make it out this motherfucker alive. And that's what I did. I made it out that bitch. And sort of the rest of my team, missions definitely slowed down. That's how we afforded to start sending guys back home. Because we took so many combat replacements

that were just dying on the regular. It was a scene straight from like Banner Brothers, where like, I don't even wanna know your name, you're not gonna be here long. Jesus. These motherfuckers would be at these patrol bases, minding their own business, eating at MRE, telling us what this civilian life is like,

cause they got reactivated, mora rounds landing their fucking lot, taking a shit, fucking dead, sitting outside smelling a cigarette, dead, telling us about his fucking kid. And it was just non-stop death. And there's non-stop fucking chaplains. It was non-stop memorial services. It was non-stop helmets on rifles. It was non-stop. It was the same shit on repeat. And I asked myself like, what the fuck is this for? We didn't clear that fucking city.

We had strong clothes that we pulled out of. I remember being on these fucking rooftops that we fucking let and sweat on and they're telling us we were pulling out. And it was a glorious moment to hear those words because you're like, I might fucking survive. But then it was like, what the fuck was all this worth? They're like, hey, we're leaving this position,

we're pulling back the base and we're gonna start doing these other things. It was very vague, it wasn't as detailed as that, but that was the main gist. So we're slashing sandbags. What we called home for months, we're slashing sandbags, we're emptying it out, we're breaking everything that could be main gist. So we're slashing sandbags. What we called home for months, we're slashing sandbags, we're emptying out, we're breaking everything that could be used against us.

Anything that we use a fortified position for us, we're fucking destroying it. Just be told, hey, the trucks aren't coming. 72 more hours. And we're like, we're like, fuck you. We have no morale. We have no nothing. We have nothing.

And so we stayed there and we fucked for seven to more hours. Not as bad, not as crazy as it was previously. Because after that day of being ambushed and after a lot of bombs were dropped, it changed a little bit. They learned that they're gonna get fucked up if they find the cities and their best tactic is to go back to guerrillas style tactics, hit and run shit, and not fighting the bull head on.

Which obviously makes complete sense. So they started to fuck up surrounding villages, they started to fuck up surrounding citizens, civilians. They started to terrorize, do exactly what they were there to do. And so I get this call, you know, hey you guys you're going back home to go to sniper school and I was like stoked, because I'm like, dude, I'm getting to like in this chapter of my life,

I'm getting to live and I'm getting to go do something that I came here to do in the first place. And that's what closed out that chapter but not before more deaths. You know more fucking vehicle i.e.s, comic haisies, just ripping apart a seven ton killing seven fucking people and you're just like and it was calmer but it was just so natural to fucking happen there. It was just disgusting. It was, you're over it. I wanted to go home.

I was fucking done. So I find myself home. On base, I just get back. I feel fucking empty. There are signs of the airport. Thank y'all, you know, insert typical support shit. And I had no pulse for any of it. No one was

there to meet me, no family, no girlfriend, no nobody. Me and my buddies we get bus back to our command. We get sent back to the same shitty flat top that we left from, the condemned building, rat size, your feet, water that's toxic and poisonous. And that night was a night that the surrounding, the nearby camp, the artillery camp, does their fire missions. They're a week there, they're quarterly, monthly, whatever fire missions, where I'm doing a loom missions for training.

And I remember being grateful that I'm back at home and then I just hear these fucking 105s go off and roll underneath my rack. And I just like ponder what I just went through. And I had to remind myself that I'm home and that this shit was just, this is what it was. This is normal, you know, they shoot fucking artillery. That's what they do, but I forgot.

Because when that shit happened there, you fucking, you take cover. Because you think you're smoking a cigarette in your food, but really what's happening is your fucking target about to get vaporized You don't even know it and so I Kind of started looking at things completely different You know, I just I looked at things completely different. I got shot in the helmet I'm like holy fuck I just died or at least I felt like a diet and I came back. I had the second chance

And then I I kept on pushing that that cat of nine lives this whole deployment just to come back to hide underneath the bed when I hear this this explosion happen lives, this whole deployment just to come back to hide underneath the bed when I hear this explosion happen. But that's the price you pay, I think. That's what's required, sacrifices are required for things that you want. I didn't ask for those sacrifices, but those were the cards that I was dealt. I found myself going to a school, I was crushed it. I was trained, my platoon trained me extremely well. We went there with this like, we were those guys.

People knew all about us. People knew that we stacked bodies. They knew that half of the sniper instructors came from my sniper platoon. They were senior guys doing their school time time. And so we had a shit ton of snipers. We had so much experience. So we went to sniper school, humble and eager, but we find tuning things, you know?

It wasn't something new. I lived that life. And to professionally learn it all, to learn the things I didn't know, it was really just, I found myself checking the boxes because I got first-hand experience on how to do all this hard shit so I went to Stimer School to suffer. I went there to suffer and to graduate. I got educated in some things.

Mission planning was a big one. We did a lot of big, more in-depth mission planning than I did. Five paragraph orders were really big back in the day where you're handwriting 50 fucking plus pages for a mission. I'm carrying one tube of green cami paint. You know, like, Nats as detail. I learned a lot of that. But sniper school was just fun, because I was alive.

And I was getting to do the cool shit that I didn't get to do. I was stalking Gileesuit break in. I was doing all the coolest thing that I didn't get to do. I was stalking Gileesuit break. And I was doing all the things that I really didn't get to do overseas. So I got educated and I got to participate in things that were challenging, overwhelming, and helped forge me into even better sniper.

I had a lot of experience, I had a lot of training, informal training in the experience now. And then I had the formal aspect that just fucking propelled me. Um, because I realize that anyone can shoot fucking good, but not about getting missions. Now it's about, are you the best team? Are you the best sniper, right? Because like I said, anyone can shoot, you can train a monkey to shoot. You can't train a monkey to use this mind, mission plan, brief of confidence.

Know what the fuck's going on, tell your people what's going on, inspect what you expect. All these aspects that I was gaining and I was taking all these invaluable lessons and turning them into wisdom. So all that hell that I fucking went through and all my homies went through because we all were there together.

We're now taking those aspects and like, this is who we wanna be and we're molding ourselves as we go along. So the mindset from the high school, the mindset from getting my ass kicked, the mindset from you know boot camp and school of inventory and then my deployments, all these things, it's just all stocking up and it's all kind of coming together now. And that's kind of what I realized, you know life or at least the military, it's just a series of events. It's up to you to determine what's wisdom, what's logic. It's up to you to determine if it's good or bad. It's up to you to really put thought and

effort into the life that you're experiencing, or you can just exist in it, and be in pain, being hell, not change your life, change your situation, and, you know, being in that sniperable tune. That's all about that. So I go to sniper tune, I go to sniper school, I graduate, great, I take out another, come, now I'm back with the same battalion, now I'm going to Operation Still Curtain. You heard of that one? No, I haven't. This is a 2005 timeframe.

Still Curtain was where we went through like, that's where it it was like fiber six cities. Big fucking push is big missions. This was like a big big fucking more deal. Did I know it at the time? Did not know it. And but this time I'm on a mu. So now I'm I'm training with Force Reconnaissance guys. I'm a sniper team for them. I'm super excited because that's just my natural progression. I want to go to Force Reconnaissance after this. Like, that's just all these different tiers, these different elevations of things to change and to get uncomfortable with.

So we were on these booths, this Mu and MerriX Fisher and Unit. So I'm on this LHA one, don't even ask what the fuck that means. It was a big deck. It had like a carrier. It wasn't a carrier, but it had like a top for like plans to shoot the fly off.

It wasn't like the big carrier boat. Maybe a mid size. They're all massive. And we're floating over. We hit like Hawaii. We hit Australia. Do some training. We hit the Singapore.

All these things. Hong Kong, all these great things. Get back to Kuwait, convoy to Iraq. Now I'm in Iraq, I'm like, I'm telling my younger guys, I'm like, bro, I'm like, I have the Fallujah mindset. Everything is a fucking threat. Everything is dangerous, and it was completely different. It was all different and our mission was kind of different. We I realized what a true the true force and power of a

mobilization unit can do. When you're not pigeonholed to one place you say I'm going to clear this fucking city. I'm going to declare it, and that's what you put your mic behind. Oh, you clear shit. And our view, our 13th view, was the main effort again. The main effort switched companies, switched roles. So the last rotation that was this company, this rotation, this company. But I found myself doing different missions

that I wasn't doing before. I was clearing landlines, our landfills, by myself, with my team, because we had no UD guys. I fucking throwing day packs with water bottles and rocks, with 550 cord attached to them, and slowly pulling them, because I had to mark a route for the battalion to come through. That was our job. Push ahead, gain eyes on the objective

area, report back. Well, as I'm pushing back, we had all these reports that, you know, all these different cities had different fucking minefields, landmines, all these things are around. And there's like two EOD guys, two bomb guys for like a regiment. So like thousands of people, there's only two dudes. So like back in the day, if you found an unexploded ordinance or an IED, you stopped and you were on a knee for a very long time. Sometimes days. Because you never knew what one bomb was going to do. And it was never that one that you see that gets you, it's the fucking days you change that you have no idea about. That's three stacks back and three stacks of funnier. You saw what they wanted you to see. And so clearly we held a lot of operations.

Well, for this particular operation, we had a timeline associated with it. And I think our first city we go through was this place called Lusayba. It was right outside the 440 district near, maybe it was Carbale. I don't even know, they all do the same to me. But I just told like,

hey, Cody come in here. My petunicumeter talks to me. And he gives me this like fucking dad talk. He's like, I need you to clear this minefield. I'm like, what do you mean clear a minefield? He's like, I need your team to marker route. So the baton I can push through it. I'm like, how the fuck do you want me to do that?

I have nothing. And they were talking about using the grappling hook. You shoot like a 22 cartridge on your 16th. I'm like, you want me to shoot a grappling hook at nighttime and bag guys territory to scrape it. You think that's the best way that my team is gonna get fucking murdered? And so the next back option was,

let's view as quiet as possible and we'll just use a bag. So, so we did. I took my Eagle Day pack, shove water bottles and rocks in that motherfucker, where it was manageable, toe to fucking line to it, toss it out, and pull it back. And we run the lanes that way. We create a wide berth and we would mark our eye or kimlets. We start marker fucking rots to the release point.

And I remember linking up, I was supposed to link up with a reconnaissance pattern that was out there to get a data dump from them, what's going on in the battlefield. And we were supposed to move up to find hide sites, observation sites. So when the battalion comes in, we can provide accurate precision, sniper fire, so when the battalion comes in, we can provide accurate precision and sniper fire and reporting at the same time. I'm also tasked with finding routes and lanes to send tanks and fucking packs through. There's a lot of response. I'm 19 years old at this point. I got a fuck ton of responsibility.

All of us have a shit ton of responsibility. And I remember my team all night. We were in and out of a ditch, reporting back, setting up comms, reporting back what we saw, setting the stage. And multiple times at night, my team walked through this one path that we thought would be a good route. We walked it multiple times, the recletune, walked it multiple times. We deemed it safe. We fucking market. The next morning, the battalion landing team, the BLT comes in Abrams, fucking Cobra's, LAR troops.

And my company commander that I'm supporting, his name is Raymond Doza. And my company commander that I'm supporting, his name is Raymond Doza, huge, just D1 football player, whatever that is called, and collegiate football, that was that guy dude, he was a titan. And the company rotation before that, he was my headquarters company commander and still a savage. And now he's in an infantry company commander

and he's the main effort. Let's do how to be like 360 pounds with Kiddon. Do his massive. He was big. I'm in my overwatch position. I have my smock on. I'm like blending into my background. I'm in my glass.

And I see the tanks and the troops come in. And there's Ray leading the pack. Leading from the front, like a real fucking leader. Ray fucking disappeared moments later. He hit a fucking anti-tanker mine. And the only thing, through a route that we were on, and the only thing that we think it was that we weren't heavy enough to set it off. Damn.

And I questioned everything up to that point. I'm like, did I fucking not do my job? And that just reminded me like, no matter what you fucking do when you play with fire, is going to get burned. I can't tell you how many times of the deployment multiple cities I'm watching. I'm watching intersections all night thermals my teams do recon between we're all watching it. Just to see iad's blow up on it the next day. I was almost convinced that insurgents were turning into fucking dogs.

I was almost convinced that insurgents were turning into fucking dogs and crawling around on force to plant fucking IODs because I could not figure out how it was happening. The only thing that really was there, they were probably just already laid. I mean, it's apparent a big military force could come and sweep in, so let's just backstack everything and fuck these dudes up. And I was psychologically gonna fuck up because I was just seeing no matter how hard you tried to preserve life, you can't control shit and you don't control off the motherfucking thing. You can have all the guns, you can have all the security, you don't control anything. You think you do, you want to believe you do, but you don't control any of it.

And that's a hard pill to swallow, yeah. Especially when you're doing your job, and you take pride in your job, to the point where you're risking your fucking life. And to see something like that happen, boggles my mind. And so this whole deployment, we're just clearing city after city, And, boggles my mind. And so this whole deployment, we're just clearing city after city to the point

where when we're done with one city, we're getting back in our humbies and we're driving back to this big base, we're staged out of miles away, hours away. Just wanna eat food, we're dirty as fuck, we're battered. Just to come find out, we're getting yelled at. We can't eat in the fucking chow hall because there's some douchebag telling us that

we don't have her cover on our hat or our uniform is dirty, so we can't go into his chow hall to eat. And the fuckery that can come from war, I should write a book just on that because it's unbelievable and you know this. You can't even make it up. There was multiple wars going on out there,

and not everyone was in the same war I was in. Yeah. And so just another layer of perspective, and another layer of just like, you gotta be kidding me. I just scooted my fucking friend's teeth about the fucking ground. I can't eat in this chal-hal. Are you serious? I got yelled at. I just scooted my fucking friend's teeth about the fucking ground.

I can't eat in this chow hall. Are you serious? I got yelled at because I was fucking bloody. My sleeves were rolled up. I was carrying, I was covered in a head to toe in fucking blood. My rifle was fucking stained red from enemy who's blood, my friend's blood, and my cameys were going over my fucking hands, because I'm just wet, I'm sweating, and I'm just fucking all wet in blood.

And I rolled my shit up, my boots are in blouse, my pants, my boots are bloody. Everything about me is bloody, and I get fucking corrected, because my sleep, I was told to unroll my sleeves and to blast my pants. And to be told that my friend, I'm like, is he going to get put in for an award? Well, we won't be this because that's reserved for staff and CEOs and hire. And I'm trying to make a reason of the hell I just experienced and all my friends just experienced and most of them died, some of them lived. And then there's this other war, this other reality that's happening right now

that I'm clearly not tuned into, because it is not the one that I'm currently located at. And so I learned early on in my military career that there's endless perspectives and realities out there. And wars only fucking war to those who fucking claim it. And not everyone claimed that shit. They wouldn't be part of it, they wanted the accolades, but they weren't about war.

They weren't about what the fucking true cause and the toll was, the fee to even show up for that place was. They weren't about that life. They lived in another Lala land. And that's hard on morale when... When you have, you try to put perspective into your life. You're like, what am I doing here? I have fucking goal.

I wanna be a doctor one day. I wanna read a book. I wanna do this. I wanna do that. You're not even gonna make it to the next fucking mill. And if you do make it the next mill, the chance of you doing that with ease is probably not going to be likely

Because there's someone out there that lives in the infinite alternative perspective in reality than you do and You know, we we finished that that rotation just back-to-back cities back-to-back cities back-to-back fucka cities, it was never ending, but it was part of history. There will never be, I'm sure, there will never be another, or at least in the global war in terrorism, there was never a fallujah, battle fallujah, there was never another operation still curtain that took place. These things were iconic at best. And to survive those things, the mother importantly to survive, because I have a lot of friends that survived that,

that took their lives later down the road. So they didn't really survive it. They suffered through it, and they struggled through it. But to survive and extract that wisdom from those pain points, that's where I started to see in all the hell I was living. That's not how I justified loss of life, but that's what I started to, I can say fuck this, fuck them, I'm a victim. Or I can be like, what can I take away from this?

What lesson do I have from all this hardship? What lesson do I have from this stupidity? How can I apply that to be a better person? How can I apply that to be a better person? How can I apply that to be a better fucking leader? How can I treat my men when I have a chance to be up top? How can I be better for them? How can I make sure that I know they know that I give a fuck about them, that I'm here to support them,

and it's not the other way around, that I will lie, cheat, still, to get them the words and recommendations they need, not been over backwards and crumble because I'm looking up from my own neck. I learned so much that this generation probably doesn't have that opportunity to do so. Yeah, they do. Um...

And, you know, that deployment fucked me up too. I was, uh, me a bunch of guys. We were, you know what a Micklet is? No. Micklet, if I'm saying this correctly, my memory serves me correctly. It's a pod. It's a backpack pod. Any use of a clearing operation. So you take off this backpack, this

mcglip pod and it shoots this like rocket out, this projectile out, and it's a string of deck cords, essentially. And you're just clearing routes. You're clearing lanes for tracks, for troops, for fucking everything. And they are a-pods. I think that's what they were called, a-pods. And they're loud. And they, if you're 50 meters, 100 meters behind them,

they'll make you fucking throw up. And so I found myself in the last city that we would hit during this whole entire campaign. It was a carbala. And it was right next to your fridays. And there was this palm grove that we needed to clear through. And it was the lace of the IDs. So the reporting happened.

So the reporting was said. And this is when I started to understand very little about TBI. Because I didn't really have the residual effects from my, you know, not even a year prior to deployment experience. But this time, I'm like getting really rocked. We're like, just, we're just getting the wavelengths. We're just seeing the, the whiplash, the, uh, the shock waves of all these rockets happening

and we're fucking dumb. We don't know any different. We're standing behind it ready to push the fight. These things go off, we run forward. And then we do this, we do this more and more and more. We do this. This is a continuous thing. And we're just eating it for hours.

Just, uh, uh, and that's, that's when something shifted in me. I didn't know at the time, but that's when something shifted in me. I didn't know at the time, but that's when it really started to this toll of like war fighting started to fuck me up. And we finished this mission, we finished this deployment.

I get back home and I'm like, I'm on the boat, heading back home and I could not wait to get back on the ship. Because if I got back on the ship, I was gonna live My my guy my team was gonna live we were safe and I'm Like I get the fuck out of this cartoon. I want it more. I want a different mindset some of my newer guys I wasn't driving with the mindset and the the battalion of the vision of the sniper We're doing the sniper community all these things were happening once. Like, do I gotta change my life, bro? I can't stay here.

And I was it. What made me- What was it? Was it- Change? Yeah, what did you want out? The command. The sniper now.

The command sucked. The command was the leadership. The leadership did not value you. Yeah. And my sniperable tune that I worked, my ass off to get into, it was going down the drain almost My sets at that time they were saying hazing was a big deal People weren't getting haze people were getting trained people were learning what discipline and respect is

Unviolently now there was some violence should happen before you know this time But at the time like I said there's a pig and a hog You know as a hog you were your fucking sniper, your 550 core loop with your necklace, with your sniper round. Pig doesn't have that shit. And I remember in training up, even for this deployment,

our Patunque Sergeant was real stichler about like segregation. I'm like, dude, if we make these motherfuckers, I mean, they're part of the team, but if we give them everything, they won't want to go to sniper school. They'll just wanna stay here, and they wanna stay here, they're not an asset, they're part of the team, but if we give them everything, they won't want to go to sniper school. They'll just want to stay here, and they want to stay here. They're not in the ass at their liability now

because there's no evolution in their willhouse, their spectrum of growth in this platoon. Because I grew up in a sniper platoon or a staple tune with honor and discipline. I was told exactly how it's going to fucking be, and this is why. And then I started to see phone started coming out, you know, like internet was popping,

hot or not was popping. My space was a thing, and I just saw this new generation of guys joining my ranks, and I, that plus the leadership, I'm like, dude, this isn't for me. And it costs so many lives, because there's so many egos that tie to it. I remember this one particular time,

I'm at this training event and my petunistarger wanted us all to take off our sniper necklaces. And he's like, fuck and take them off and I see them again, you're out of the fucking petun. And we're getting ready to deploy for this deployment I just talked about. And my guys are like, fuck you. And he's like, take them off.

When I come back, they better be off for your gun. He was that guy. One of our own. He I come back, I'd better be off for your gun. He was that guy. One of our own. He was a skyscraper. He was a transniper. But he was a drill instructor also. He was, he forgot who he was in this concept.

And really led by fear and intimidation instead of compassion and leadership. And I remember telling my guys like dude this guy's obviously a tool. Let's just fucking Take it off for him to come back in 20 minutes. I mean, Lee's will put it back on and I couldn't get my friends in my platoon to look at it that way. They're like fuck that and I get it. I get it But there's a time and place. And some of my friends, they were so willing to die and they're fucking sword right there. That battle was, that was it. They weren't crossed in the line. That was it. I'm just like,

guys, that's so small. That's so small. And four of them didn't fucking do it. So this is my motherfucker left that put my shit back on. Exactly what I said I was gonna do. I knew this guy was a tool bag, he little man syndrome. I knew that's what I needed to do to get over on this thing. Cause I had a goal, I had a mission, I had a vision. How can I be the best sniper if I'm not a sniper? How can I take care of my team if I'm not here?

Cause I allow my ego to get in the fucking way. My necklace means something to me too. It means so much to me, I'm gonna preserve it. Not fucking relinquish what it all stands for. So just for my guys, get kicked out of my fucking but tune that day. And on that deployment I just talked about, I'm on a rooftop, mind-moving fucking business.

You know, I'm on a rooftop mind-blowing fucking business. You know, I'm engaging and... Fighting stops. And this same dude comes over, which means he's like, hey, I want to let you know that John's dead. And I just said, fuck you motherfucker. This is your fucking fault. And I was so pissed, I was hurt.

Cause John refused to take office necklace, a fucking necklace that meant everything to him. And this fucking dude's like this tall, his name's John McGorrier, little fucking homie. He was rolling around Fallujah with a fucking saster, twice his fucking size. It was funniest shit, we put him in a backpack, trolled him at times,

just fuck around. And they were clearing this house, run adjacent to me. And John was one of the first ones to go in. Well, the insurgents had a machine gun position fortified in there. And so when the fire team went in there, because John got kicked out of the sniper platoon, got sent to the line company, John rushes in there, he gets fucking zipped in half, rest in half as fucking team. And I'm just holding grudges. And I had to get out of that fucking environment. I'm holding on to that for the rest of the deployment.

I fucking hate this guy. I hate that my friends are dead. I hate even getting the fucking no-y to new people because it seems to never end. And at that point, even one death is a fuck time when you did everything. I did bootcamp, S-O-Y. My first deployment.

I'm now my second deployment with the same guy, with multiple those same guys, and they're gone. And they had dreams, they had hopes, they had all this shit. Because the fucking necklace and poor leadership, this fucking dude's dead. I mean, he could have died probably any other way, maybe. But that's what I was holding.

I'm like, I gotta get out of the space. So, we were fast-forwarding to the inclusion of deployment. I'm on boat, we're floating out, and I find out there's a force reconnaissance indoctrination happening soon. And at this point, I still not a good swimmer. I needed to unfuck myself. So I go home, I bring my cameines,

I'm swimming at the YMCA, I'm making shit happen. They're like, don't put your head in the water, I'm like, fuck you! I got goes and dreams, you know, I'm by week today, look away, and I go do it. And then that led me to showing up one morning at five o'clock at a pool deck With nervous shits 30 minutes prior because I don't want to eat too much like a banana To make sure it cramp up

But I was nervous as fuck Because now all my friends that I worked with and employed with that were forced reconnaissance guys now I'm saying hey, I want to be one of you I'm shifting lanes. I had homies in the recon community. I got homies in the enforcement consciousness community, but now I'm saying, I want to earn what you have earned. It's not it's time for me to pay. So now we're not, not we're not friends. Now I'm a fucking student. I'm a rooker. I'm a nobody all over again. I loved it.

Because I learned that a lot of dudes talked a lot of shit in the military. Last shit. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. But when push comes shove, the ones that say they're gonna do stuff, if they show up then you know those dudes are the real McCoy's. Because it's so hard to show up. It's so hard to sign your name on a list and be like, okay, I'll be there tomorrow. At least it was for me. Now this shit was easy. I was fucking mind fucking myself.

Never doubting myself, but questioning myself like, dude, are we doing this? Is this really happening? How exciting. You have no idea what you're getting into. Good luck, motherfucker. Hope you can swim. And that's when I started the next phase of my life. My next phase of my military career, the Force for Conscience,

you know, Marine Raider career. And that's where I changed. I put myself in a group of guys that gave a fuck about each other. The leadership cared about them. The training cared about them. The communication cared about them. The support system cared about not only them but their families.

I was like, dude, I'm where I'm supposed to be at. It's completely different, more money, different mission, different mindset, more hard gates to get through to get there. So you're earning your keep, everyone there earns their keep. There's no handouts there. There's no poor leadership like that or you're gone.

This thing doesn't sit well. So I find myself doing this screening. Guess what? I sucked. I sucked this swimming. I sucked this swimming. They're like, bro, get your chin up about water. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm in it, but I'm not, I'm like not quitting. I'm suffering and I am grateful of the suffer. Because I've, I've dreamt about this moment for a long time. I dreamt about it the whole way on this fucking boat and now I'm getting to do it. But just like this, I'm so suffering, I'm sucking. I'm not even good at it.

I have all the reasons to say, fuck it, this is not for me. But I didn't quit. And however it happened, I passed everything else, but I didn't pass that portion. But I still got a phone call to show up. They're like, hey, we think this guy has something, we think he's trainable, and so we want him to come here. And so my Patoon Commander calls me in,

my Cypher Patoon Commander calls me in, he's like, hey, they called you, I've felt, I let everyone down. They're like, hey, they saw something in you, they said you can't swim for shit, but they think that you're trainable, so you're gonna go be a roaper over a forced reconnaissance,

and you're gonna go try out. I'm like, the fuck outta here. So I checked out of my inventory unit. I checked in, temporary. And I start the suffer process. Well, before we go into that, let's say quirk-burik. Okay. What?

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go to magbreakthrough.com slash Sean to save up to 42%. Again, you can save up to 42% on magnesium breakthrough when you go to magbreakthrough.com slash on. All right, we're back from the break. You're going to force recon. I'm going to force Recon to up. And at this point, I passed the screening to get in there because we're swimming every day. I'm learning and getting educated. A lot of the same stuff that I was learning and doing in the cyber community, a lot of land navigation,

a lot of rock running all the time. And there a, it was like never ending. And all the older guys at Forest were getting ready, they were trying out for Delta. So they're doing nothing but pack runs. So as a new guy, I am just doing pack runs every fucking day. It seems like, so are you in force at this point? Or are you training to go? I'm training to go to school.

I am a nobody. I'm a roaper. You made the tryout. I made the tryout. So I'm nobody, I'm a roper. You made the tryout. I made the tryout. So I'm there, I'm earning my keep. But the next phase of your keep is you have to go to RIP, which is called the Recon Induction Nation Program. And then once you pass that, there is a force, at the time, there was a force selection.

So I had to go do that. And so there was like a screening to get in, earn your keep, got a chance to go to RIP, you have to pass that. That means, okay, now you're basically prepared to go to BRC to recon school, whether you're forced reconnaissance or battalion reconnaissance,

you both go to, you all go to RIP and you all go to the same recon school, the baseline fundamental school. And then, so that's what I did. I went to rip. That sucked. It was way different than my sniper experience. I was used to the ruck running. I was used to land navigation, but they had the pool every fucking day It seemed like and I hated the pool this pool in particular They had no keys for the gate So we always found ourselves jumping the fence to go swim in the pool that told me that this wasn't planned That told me that there was like no one there to come save me when I was feeling weak and wanted to quit inside and Every day of rip I wanted to quit every day every day. I'm like to I'm gonna quit today Why why do you want to quit inside. And every day of rip I wanted to quit, every day. Every day I'm like, dude, I'm gonna quit today.

Why? Why'd you want to quit? Because it was hard. And I told myself it almost made it like a joke. If I could make fun of it now before I actually had to go out there and do it, I'll just laugh about what I'm doing it. You wanted to quit because it was hard.

Dude, it was so fucking hard. This is what I'm like, I don't know how I'm gonna make this pool. I'm not gonna make it in the pool today. They're like, oh, we're gonna do all this fucking swimming and cross over so much fuck, dude, I want to quit. I can't do this shit after all the shit that you've been through on the previous two fucking deployments in Iraq Which by the way, I don't think I've ever heard any fucking shit like that. You're worried about the pool Dude the pool was the equalizer of my soul. Jesus Christ. Yeah, dude The pool was unforgiving. I remember being on the pool deck, they split up to AMB.

I was a B group because I was not a great swimmer. I'm passing things. I'm doing, I'm holding my own weight, but I'm also not a fish. And so I am, I'm doing pushups. We're doing pushups and mountain climbers. And they're like, go! And they're just doing crossovers. And as a 25 meter pull, so you're just underwater to the next edge of your breath, underwater to the next edge of your breath. And you're just repeating this nonstop.

And you do not bring your head above the surface until you get to the edge. You just don't do it. And I remember doing pushups. You're like, push up. And we're like counting off. And I remember doing push ups. You're like push up and we're like counting off. And I hear help, help. And I look to my side, I'm like, oh shit. This dude popped up to catch breath. Med pool. And he just got swarmed. And they took his ass to the fucking bottom. And he disappeared. And they're like, fucking push and we're pushing up and like, what the fuck? And then I just hear this large rug is help help help. And I'm like, oh my god, this is crazy. And you hear help. I quit. I quit. Just always taking them down. He's panicking. Panic is cancer, right?

And it took me years to realize why you do all these hard things, the military, at least my own interpretation of them. But the panning like that is straight fucking cancer. And it spreads super fast in humans. And this dude was fucking done. And he just wanted to fucking quit. They're like, oh fuck you. And this dude ended up quitting later on that day.

But now it's my turn to get into the pool. I'm just like, oh my God, bro. This is gonna be intense. Why learn from a very young age, even in boot camp that he ain't cheating, he ain't trying. I was very hungry. As a hungry recruit, so I would like figure out ways to find food in boot camp. Well, I was a good swimmer, I would like figure out ways to find food in boot camp.

Well, I wasn't a good swimmer, so I found ways to swim how I needed to swim and breathe when I needed to breathe. So I would like see when these dudes were not like looking and I try to come up for air because I learned that if I'm not trying to get over on the system now and training, then I'm never gonna push the envelope in combat.

And I understand what discipline is, I understand what doing a hard thing is, but there's something about pushing the envelope to me that I've always enjoyed, and that's what I've enjoyed about my entire career is I love making shit happen. And sometimes there's very unconventional ways to make shit happen.

And so I can either get choked out, or I can get over if I need to come up for air. And so I'm like, okay, that's my thing. If I have to come up for air, I'm just gonna wait till they're not looking. I'm gonna come up, breathe real quick and go back down. Well, then it kind of made it like a game. So now I'm setting me looking at this opportunity as like straight hell. I'm like, how can I survive today?

Because I'm not gonna quit. I'm really not gonna quit. I say it jokingly, I say it with my friends, with smiles on her faces, because it was like coping mechanism. There's no difference in senior friends get fucking blown and be like, holy fuck, do this fuck a sucks. I get the fuck out of here. Well, I'm not really leaving anywhere.

I'm just saying what needs to be said, doing what we must to be fucking done so I can push the fight and continue on, because I'm human. I have feelings, I have emotions, I have doubts, I have insecurities, I have fucking fears. Real, I'm a real person. And the pool has a way of bringing that out of you. And you've ever heard of the ball of shit or the beehive. I've heard a lot of balls of shit.

So they would take us and we all have ropes or call ropeers because we're always doing tie knots in the water. You know, everything's getting embedded for dive school, tie notes, all this shit, notes, knots, not notes. And they took this water hose, and we're in the middle of the pool, self fucking deep, and they're like, get closer, and you're doing the ball of shit. So you're like, kind of like nuts, a butt, kind of trading water, just flailing.

You're just trying to keep your legs airing your lungs to kind of stay afloat, but you're getting kicked, you're getting scratched. And they just take this water hose and they just wrap it around you and they get closer and closer and fucking closer to the point where you're literally struggling to stay afloat. And they're trying to see who quits, they're trying to see who panics, they're trying to see who can't make it fucking survive this thing. And if you would dive down to like come to the back of the ballast shit, they'd see they'd be like, fuck you, get in the center and you're like, fuck you. And you kind of like wait a second to the call your name again. Cause you're like,

man, they're gonna have to jump in this fucking pool to grab me. But you're like, wait a second, they will actually do that. So I'll go in the middle, I'll make it happening. And you just play these games and survivability because everyone there is trying to survive because no one's just like, oh, this is easy. Nothing's easy when you reach that point that phase line of like, now we're trying to kill you. Now we're trying to see what you're really made of. Now we're trying to teach you what fucking training

can't teach you and what combat won't teach you. We're trying to teach you what you and only you can teach yourself. And that's your determination to fucking persevere and push through it. And they didn't say it with their words, but hindsight being 2020 looking back at this whole evolution of life,

I'm like, that had to be it. At least that's the shit that I'm telling myself because those times are tough. A lot of running, a lot of swimming, a lot of things that I was uncomfortable with, but, which know, I got really fucking good at them because I sucked at them so much. It was so hard, but I

Was getting better. I was getting stronger. I was getting faster To the point by the time I went to recon school. I fucking smoked it was honored graduate ZZ even the swimming do you were the fucking honor graduate of recon school to yeah? Jesus dude and dive school and dive school and I sucked at swimming and boot camp and boot camp and Not sniper school Not sniper school. What about infantry school? Yes, I was on a graduate there Impressive it worked out There's a lot of flak that comes with titles like that

Not a shit talking. And so I finished rip and me and my friends, we had a guaranteed slot to go to BRC, recon school. But before we could go, we had to go past the force endoc. So we were doing the screening to get in there and then we did the force endoc, which was like another,

you know 15 plus mile rock run Double obstacle course more swimming more in depth swimming, you know all sorts of unfun things physical fitness tests It was a real gut check. I think we started like six in the morning and I finished it like maybe your 11 or 12 In the afternoon maybe one, I don't even know. But we were told to go home afterwards and then I lay on the floor and my pinkies, my pinkies cramped.

You know, I was like, you're done, you're depleted. But everything leading up to the point trained us and prepared us for that. And I was just so pumped to even be there because these were my friends and my mentors and my leaders that I worked with before in combat and in training. And now I'm one step closer to being in a tribe, you know, one step closer to being part of this organization.

And so I get my seat to go to the BRC reconnaissance course that was down in Coronado. And I remember checking in and I'm driving across the bridge. Did I watch all the Navy'sAL documentaries as a kid growing up? All the Discovery channel they had offered, I watched it. And to find myself on that obstacle course, doing that SEAL O course, as a roaper, it was like a fucking dream come true. A, that shit is not easy. That little spider wall fucked up my forearms.

You know, the little bitty. But just to be there and trying to and seeing all these visualizations that I've had ever since I was a high schooler kind of come to fruition, you know, I yearn to be wet and sandy. I enjoyed that shit. It sucked. But I really found this like fulfillment in like doing shit that was fucking hard. Doing shit that I wanted to quit, but not quitting fucking motivated me. I loved it. Being around dudes who wanted to quit,

but didn't quit, I fucking loved it. It motivated me. And that's what I found myself in. I found myself in a newer caliber of challenges, newer caliber of individuals, different fucking things. And a lot of similarities to the Reconsis community, like, you know, school, Recon school was super easy for me. All you have to do is put out, not fucking one over, don't quit, and pass your test.

That's it. Those are pretty simple. The requirements to do all the simple things were not so simple, but I knew how to patrol, I knew how to land off, I knew knew I'd do everything minus the amphibious stuff. Fitting was new to me, minus RIP when I learned in RIP, learning how to become a reconnaissance marine and our training to be a reconnaissance marine, and then a nautical navigation. That was all new information to me. That was new uncharted territories, small boats, all new shit to me.

But other than that, everything else I kind of knew. And I was a pretty senior guy with a couple other senior guys there. So we were mentors to the younger classmates, the 18, 19 year old guys. How over you at this point? At this time, I just turned 21. And I spent many nights drinking on town

because I was just turned 21. And I could bounce back. I was super resilient. I would go study down in Pacific Beach, study my little flashcards for my test, getting hammered at Happy Hour, coming back to do a 430 beach run, you know, like unstoppable.

I wasn't the greatest on the runs, but I never fell out, never quit, never failed the time, anything. But like I was like this new journey of life my bro, I am crushing it. This is, this is so hard, it's not even hard. This is where I belong. You know, it was like this.

I was, I was so prideful to carry that rope. I was prideful to get the same child hall the buds guys were going to. It gave me so much just, I felt so good about myself. Cause I had so many friends like, I'm gonna be recon, I'm gonna many friends like I'm going to be recon, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that and they never made the moves. And here I am coming from a platoon which I would have been in charge the next go around, I would have been in charge of that platoon

and I left that shit for a new tomorrow, a better tomorrow, a bigger, a new tribe, a new community, a new challenge in life, a new continuation of the progression that I determined I was going to go do in life. Just my entry point was the sniper. That got me in the door. That's what I wanted to do, and that's led and involved to everything else that I've done in life.

So I go to BRC. BRC was great, a lot of great lessons. They're very fun, very challenging at times too, but like I said, I've already experienced it, so they weren't new challenges to me, they were just repeat challenges. So I found myself having to repeat the same end docs, the same screenings, I'm like, fuck another hardgate,

they just kept on coming. And I'm like, all right, well, this is what's required to get to where I want to in life. So I graduate BRC, I check into my company, to force reconnaissance, and I just feel like a king. Just new, new be there, new guy and just so many new opportunities ahead of me. Then I quickly realized that I'm just a boot all over again.

You know, everything I've done the past, none of that shit mattered. No one gave a fuck. People knew of me, I had those friends, because some of my sniper buddies were now for sure Constance guys. It was like kind of a natural progression. At this time, to attachment one, the Marine Special Operations Organization

was still kind of around, but more of a training capacity, but they were quickly being dissolved. They were coming to the For sure Constance, because on been known to the time, there was this grand scheme to create a special operations in the Marine Corps to call it Marsok. And this is all happening in the background, which we weren't really privy to,

at least I wasn't, and I was a new guy, so it makes sense. So one day I check up, and it was great, and being in the unit, being a force for conscious guy, it was great. You show up, team huddle, you PT, there's no work to do, you go home. And if you're in a training phase, you do training,

but if you're not in a training phase, you're in a downtime or a build up, it was big boy rules. And I'm like, dude, this is great. I felt like an adult. I was at micro-manage, I was giving a task condition a standard and told to execute, and that was it.

I'm like, this is brilliant. Everyone here is a senior guy. This is exactly where I need to be at. The one day our commander comes and he's like, this is brilliant. Everyone here is a senior guy. This is exactly where I need to be at. The one day our commander comes in and he's like, hey, it's a huddle. So our company commander tells us that tomorrow, basically they gave this big spill like we're gonna become special operations.

And they're like, everyone's on relaxed grooming standards. We have more funding coming in, expect new weapons systems, expect a very intense training regimen and we're just like, bro, this is it. This should escalate it quickly. Well, we were still in Marines, shit still wasn't hashed out by headquarters, so that lasted about a week. Do the run civilian clothes growing out the fucking facial hair, getting ready for various training missions,

down-range missions, and it felt fucking awesome. It felt awesome to be treated like an adult. Yeah. And it wasn't about the hair, it wasn't about the fucking facial hair. It was just about the trust and confidence in us to your big boys. Do what you need to do for the fucking mission.

We're still Marines. We're gonna stay within like common sense parameters, but go do what you're here to do. And I was like, holy shit, this is awesome. But that lasted like a week. Then they'd just stop with us again. They put us right back into our little bubble or a box and they'd say, nope, cut your hair, shave your face.

This is training is happening, this is happening, and you're just like, what's going on? And there's a lot what's going on? And there's a lot of confusion going on at this time, and I found myself at Fort Benning doing jump school during this whole, during the last part of this, part of this, and jump school is three weeks long. Interesting place to be. And for people out there that don't know, jump school is three weeks long. You're there for three weeks for, it's like five days of jumping, four days of jumping,

maybe three days of jumping, it's crazy. And you do only five jumps there. And you're there with a bunch of privates from the army. And you're just treated like a fucking nobody. You're marching everywhere, you're singing these silly songs, and you're a recruit for three weeks. It was very difficult to do, but you do it, because that's what it takes. Now things have changed.

But anyways, I find myself there when I come back from jump school, that's when we officially lowered our first force reconnaissance guide on flag and we hoisted or hoisted the first marine special operations battalion flag our guide on. So that's when we're called MSA back in the day. Before marine raider was a thing, MSA, we were marine special operations battalions. Our umbrella was called Marsok, marine special operations command. So we were called Marsok, but our units were called M-Subs. We're now they're called Marine Raider battalions, so MRBs.

So we've gone through some weird name changes throughout the years, because with the history and the lineage of the Marine Corps Raiders, Marine Corps Raider or the Marine Raiders were two small boat crafts, small unit guys that really made a name for these specialized insertions that were taking place. Small boat crafts, small reconnaissance, hit and run, ambush style tactics, guerrilla warfare, other reconnaissance surveillance aspects of their mission. Well that transpired into the big Marine Corps.

That's why there's boat companies in the Marine Corps infantry units where they're doing raid missions on Zodiacs and flatable boats They're doing you know, I hit and run missions are doing all these different type of things But I'm for infantry skill because the raiders got disbanded Well reconnaissance community was the tip of the spear because that's all that existed at this point forced reconnaissance was the premiere one Battalion reconnaissance was still freaking premier, just forced reconnaissance was your direct action and special reconnaissance realm, where battalion reconnaissance is focused on supporting

general purpose force. They support the battalions, the infantry battalions. They are your green side surveillance. They're the long range reconnaissance patrolling where, and they also do CQB, but the real mission for CQB and VBSS was fulfilling the force reconnaissance mission. And I'm new to all this at the time and they're like, hey, we're now at Mars lock. I'm like, okay, dope.

You know, we've kind of heard these things. Well, all these detachable one guys started showing up in our units. They're now our leaders because they all went through their own series of selection process to even get to their unit. I think you had it like, you had to be a ranger. You had to have all these schools pre-rex to even be considered for the Tashron 1 before you even got to try out for it.

Like they had this whole like slew of like superhero shit. You had to be a dual insert jump and die free fall, all these things, basic insert shit and basic leadership stuff, like from the army side. And so we formed up and we found ourselves quickly deploying to Afghanistan. That was our main area of operation. But at the time Iraq was our focus. That was what we were planning for.

And I was the part of the second company to roll out of a West Coast to deploy overseas. Well, we didn't have our own special operations insertion platforms. We're still using the Bring Marine Corps and the Navy to do our inserts. You know, whether that's the fly us or to transport us via boat. So since since Force Reconnaissance went away, there was no one to cover down that mission on the Mews, the Marine Expeditioning Unit. So you had normally a silplatoon on every Mew, and then they were either on the submarine,

on a small frigate, doing the VBSS, doing the commanders, hey, I have a special operations team with me. And now, Marsok took over, there was no force guys. So now we're seeing Reconnaissance Battalion getting a little bit more meat on their plate to like, hey, you need to go do these things. But we still have their requirements. So I'm still training VBSS. I'm still training on how to like, you know, take over a helm, you know, scale up, scale up boat. I was still a sniper. I was on a record team. So I'm learning, you know, I'm doing aerial sniping platforms,

you know, all this type of shit. And all fun stuff. I mean, I'm doing train, I've never done before. I'm shooting sniper rifles. I never had access to in the infantry. I'm using optics, you know, night vision. I have all these things I've never had before, and it was super awesome.

The Golden Conax box showed up. The Golden Conax box showed up and the end, the, the, the, you know, Car Blanche, you know, budget came with it also, where we were doing great things and at the time we're so, infants so, comp puts so much money into us,

special operations command as a whole, they're coming down to evaluate our training, coming down to like, ominous, don't this clear us off, can you meet these Michelessential task lists? Are you meeting the special operations standard? You know, can you shoot, move, communicate, do direct action, do special reconnaissance, can you do foreign internal defense, can you do unconventional warfare, can you

do all these things, and can you do it to a standard? And so it was super cool to have all these experts come down from Delta, all these other organizations and evaluate us, provide input, and then hold it accountable. It was super awesome to experience all this shit. We're operating now, we're flying with 160th, use sock aviation aspect, not marine air. You know, I love some marine pilots, mainly our cobra pilots, but like, there's a big difference between the sore and marine air wing,

how they fly, how they do everything. And we were actually being treated like fucking adults. And it was amazing. And so our first company rotates out to Afghanistan and my company is on deck. I was a bravo company, first Italian, or first morning special, very special Italian. And we were told we were going to Iraq.

So we're planning for a very Iraq scenario. What does that mean? I don't fucking know. Should move communicate. More to the same shit I'm doing it all. And we get on a boat to float over and they're like, hey we're going to Afghanistan. And we're like, it kind of felt really cool to be redirected to have this mission, I think you're going to Iraq. But now we're getting fucking diverted to go to Afghanistan. And our main area of operation was the Helm and Province. And at this time, we had second force reconnaissance, which is now second marine special operations battalion, which is on the east coast. We have first marine special operations battalion, which is on the east coast. We have first marine special operations of Italian, which is on the west coast. And we are both operating either in the singing area, the helmet area, second mainly the

singing area, first mainly helmet area. And Afghanistan was our main focus. We never sent any guys to Iraq to later on the war. And it was awesome. So now I've been to Iraq two times at this point. It was awesome. So now I've been to Iraq two times at this point. I'm going to Afghanistan pretty excited. It's a new area and Completely different battle space completely different everything the TTPs were different the mindsets were different how we were inserting were different our Missions were different. I had more authority on these missions. You know, I wasn't operating under a General Purpose Force mission. Now I'm operating under Special Operations Command. I have a joint Special Operations Task Force. I have a combined joint Special Operations Task Force. I have all these different new tiers of leadership and layers of red tape I never even heard of before and now I'm exposed to them. And with all that came

different roles and responsibilities that we got to execute. And so I found myself as a Special Reconcest. I was SR team and we're rolling got to execute. And so I found myself as a special reconnaissance, I was SR team and we're rolling around GMV gun trucks. I think I had like three sniper rifles on me. This is my first deployment ever being a truck. So I'm like, sleep in bag, check. This nice comfort item, check.

But I was a trunk monkey, so I said in the back of the gun truck, just eating powder, you know, eating on that nasty sand, gunking up my guns all the time. So like everything's in trash bags but ready to get ripped off to engage and it was a super interesting experience. Very kinetic, very different type of kinetic engagement. I did a lot more sniping in Afghanistan that I did in Iraq. Distance was definitely the advantage of the Taliban fighters. Some CQB, but a lot. There wasn't, we weren't doing raids like was taking place in Iraq. We were doing more under the scale of humanitarian assistance, you know, L-shaped, watch the pattern in life, execute the task at hand,

you know, do your mission. And it was awesome, you know, learning around a bunch of different enablers and support personnel that we never had access to before. So now our ability to influence the battle space has just like 10x itself. I'm like, do we're targeting people left and right, we're targeting things. I'm like, do we can do this? This is awesome. And at this point, I did a bunch

of specialized training before that. I went overseas, worked with people across the pond. I'm exposed to all sorts of stuff in the low viz high viz special reconnaissance realm. And now being out to apply it overseas, it's pretty freaking awesome, right? Anytime you can like utilize all that hard times that you're away from home and training and sacrifice and the hardships and go actually execute it, you're like, pro, this is what's up. And that was just the beginning, that was just a tip, you know, that was a very kinetic helmet,

helmet Afghanistan, helmet valley operation, but it was just different. Like I said, a lot of long distance type of stuff. A lot of new valuable learning lessons that I got to add to my toolbox to help prepare me for the future deployments over to come. And I'm still a young guy.

I was a new, new in this organization, new in this platoon and this company. And so we finished this rotation, I come back home and there is an opportunity to go, they were looking for volunteers to go to our schoolhouse, because now, I mean, we're deploying, we need now deployed four companies to Afghanistan.

Well, dude, we're taking casualties, we are, we do not have the manpower. And so we're cycling guys from like our sister platoons, sister companies, and to our deploying companies. So like you're not on this like rotation where you have nine months to recoup. You might get like four or five months. We were breaking all the rules,

all the waivers were going in for us because we were so young and the demand for us was so high. So calms like, okay, you wanna come play in this battle space? Well, this is what I need. So now, while we're focusing on Afghanistan, we have a third battalion that was our FID, our foreign internal defense battalion at the time. They were a group of various marine infantry personnel

that did like some type of selection, some type of specialized training, and they were the ones covering down all of our thin missions across the globe. We had those responsibilities because you can't just plan the GWAT. You got to plan all aspects of the GWAT. Sometimes the ones that aren't connected, sometimes the ones that aren't the mainstream thing,

and this battalion was covering down on all of those tasks. And so they were like, hey, we had to create the school house because we have no way to increase new people because not every forced reconnaissance guy got to stay in Marsox. They went down this checklist. And you either met this checklist

or you didn't meet this checklist. If you're a turd, they sent you gone. You know, you were a badass forced reconnaissance guy, but not every forced recon guy stayed. Just like not every reconnaissance battalion guy stayed and recon battalion. They're like, hey, we want that guy, we want that squad, we want that platoon, bring them over. And so we were filling from the ranks we had from the most specialized units that we had,

and they were going to execute the task. Well, now we're tasked with creating the foundation to make this reliable and repeatable. So I was part of the school house to do that. And we basically set up the whole, our selection process. We had guys come down from Special Mission units, help us set that up. We were running our own indoctrination program

based like our own OTC before the instructors to get us all qualified, get us all in the same machine music. So now we can go teach exactly what we expect. And so we call it IEDC instructor development course. And it was a bunch of more, guess what, hardgates. It never ended, time constraints, timelines, hard, you know, left the right lateral limits,

like which is good, because now we're all earning our keep here to be part of this big new machine that's moving forward. And so for the next, I was actually the school host four and a half years and I put through the first three classes. I taught special reconnaissance, I taught observation, I was a Marsock Advanced Steiber Instructor.

So I taught that stuff, I taught surveillance and reconnaissance, close target reconnaissance, I did all those things. That's what I taught. And then I had this opportunity to deploy from the schoolhouse. So I'm like, yes, let's do this. So I found myself at our selection. I was a cadre at our selection process. I get a phone call like, hey, dude, you want to deploy. It's like not a cool gig. You'd be working at the C just sort of, the combined joint special operation task force and a sh- Bagram. And it's a six month rotation.

I'm like, yes, sign me up. Cause I knew if I could get overseas with my guns, I could go to work. Cause I make shit happen. Cause I find a way to get what I want. I find a way to go find work. And cause I never believed in face value stuff, right? And so my whole vision was like, grow, I'm going to take all my guns that I can get because they're like, most of these

guys are giving like a pistol. Because you're your personal protection, I'm like, bro, I need my sniper rifle. I need my carbine. I need my pistol. I need my nods. I need a radio. And so I made all these connections. why I was in my outfit in my unit by treating people nicely and being fucking not a douchebag. And so my armor hooked it up, I find myself overseas in Afghanistan and I find myself at this desk job and like I'm like, this sucks. So many depressed people seeing all the red tape. I'm like, how the fuck do operations even happen in the battlefield when this is a fuckery that takes place?

These idiots are worried about what awards they're getting. They're pissed off that the ice cream is out in the in the in the chal-hal. These losers are like worrying about TPS reports. When these dudes are trying to get on the battle space, they're trying to get funding, you know, to build something. They're trying to get resupply as they're trying to get,

you know, mission critical, mission essential stuff, and they're getting red tape. And I'm seeing behind the scenes, I'm like, and I was a young guy, I was at E6 at this point, I was a young E6. And that was actually pretty senior E6. But I'm seeing all this red tape, I'm like, dude, this is just full of inefficiencies.

But that's how the system works. It doesn't mean it works the best way, it just works. Well, a fucking broken clock works too, twice a day. And that's what I found out that was, this is how this whole system was working out. So I got some shitty task. I had to like, I was in charge of, nothing I was above, nothing I was against,

it was just kind of a not fun task. I was in charge of all of our Afghan army special forces. I had to do a bunch of numbers and our commandos and basically all of our partner forces. I was just responsible for figuring out where they're all at, putting them on a map, talking to all my liaison officers from the different fire bases and different teams and gaining a big picture

so that could get briefed to the commander. So very important stuff, very crucial. It just was a different experience that I was used to. So very important stuff, very crucial. It just was a different experience that I was used to. And then I found my gap. I found the fucking needle in the haystack. And I'm reading the reports and I find out that there's just one team in the Hellman,

Raider team, Marsock team, that is just getting fucked up. They are like constantly dealing with just any sniper. They're constantly dealing with fucking like just insider threat stuff, all sorts of issues. And so every day I went to, I made friends with the C just sort of commander because I brief like I talk, very interactive. I have a pulse and this dude noticed it. And I was like in his back pocket, he loved me. And I asked him every day for like three weeks and like dude, here's the gap.

I have experience in counter sniping, let me go do this. And he's like, oh no, he can't do it every day. Until it's like probably two weeks, two and a half weeks into it, every day I'm asking him. I'm talking to the command sergeant major. I'm like, hey dude, I can do this. I have a gap.

Oh, by the way, I already replaced myself with this guy. Oh, and these other tasks and responsibilities I get are back filled by this person. Like I created all this stuff. And at the same time, I'm doing PSD. With working with the BDoc there, I'm doing a PSD, runs to the capital, runs to, you know, runs to the Kabul, runs to the embassy, getting that driving experience,

that personal security experience. I'm like, I'm maximizing my time here because a lot of people are there kind of just for the ribbon, you know? And that's just not who I am. And so they're like, all right, check it out. No. I get keep on telling no. Am I okay? Well, I get on an airplane, I get on a C-130 to fly to one of my fire bases, one of my fire bases that I was managing, you know, through email. I'm not like in charge of the vitamins.

Yeah. I'm just talking to a point of contact on the phone And I'm going there to like I want to see what's up me my friends see my friends meet these people that I'm talking to on the radio and on the computer and Put a face to the name It was a still buddy in mine still buddy in me because we work in the same jock We go over there with your business and we take this trash flight back basically like in you know late night red eye C-130 flight back to Bagram It's just him me in a palliative gear in the center of the C-130 in the crew and we're over we're over the airbase and

This fucking explosion happens and it's actually what happened the hydraulic pressure the hydraulic pump machine that does flaps Landing gear controls the fucking aircraft exploded in the fucking bay and now there's all this hot steamy fucking fluid Just being sprayed everywhere. Do we're fucking drenched in it? It's all with a fucking floor and the pilot comes in the commies like dude. I can't lower fucking flaps I can't get my gears down and we're over

We're right outside the city and we're like in like get shot fuck down space I instantly start fucking taking parachutes and throwing them toward the fucking ramp Because the parachutes that were close to us were already gonna drenched. I'm like fuck this dude I ain't dying a fucking airplane Start throwing parachutes for the ramp get him away. So we got a fucking bell out. We have parachutes. I don't fucking completely saturate it. And then my my still buddy and I would just take our gerbers and our knives and we're start cranking over

because they had like a container full of hydraulic fluid. And we're just cranking cans and throwing them into this like broken spewing fucking hot misting choking yourself machine to get enough pressure in there. And the the flight crew guys are throwing to us This planes jumping up and down the sky. We're like, dude, we're gonna fucking die and Do sure as shit. He gets his flaps going. He gets the wheels going and we land and The amuses are in me does those a big deal and they're like they rushes right to the hospital and they're like

Oh, we gotta get you guys checked out, like, no, we're okay. Mwah! Like, ralphing all this shit. We're literally drenched in all this fluid. And it's so hot and steamy, and it's like burning your soft gas. And I get into this hospital and I'm like, I don't belong here.

There's like real combat wounded guys here and I'm like getting rushed to, I'm like, oh, my lungs kind of fucking hurt. Now I'm gonna rush to X-rays, I'm like getting rushed to I'm like my lungs kind of fucking hurt Now I'm gonna rush to x-rays. I'm gonna rush to this and just like there's a fucking dude screaming over here There's this guy missing a fucking leg. I'm like Like maybe this isn't that bad and But I don't know about you, but we have a good way of playing things off. It's not a big deal Well word got around very quickly.

And the next day, my still buddy and I, we were presented awards for helping and saving the crew. And that's when he told me yes, you can go. And so he told me I had 30 days to make a difference or I'm coming back. I was out there for four fucking months and that was the rest of my deployment. And I get out there,

they're sniper for the team. He broke his arm back in the States. Great fucking guy, solid fucking friend, solid American. He wasn't coming back on deployment. And so I just seamlessly entered this fucking team. I knew half the guys, I put the officer through school and I was fucking humbled. Cause my mentors that I looked up to as a young

Scott Sniper, Forrest for Concent's Guy, they were the leaders of this special operations team. And in a matter of two years of being out of the loop and training guys, so much has changed on a team, how they're broken down, what they're doing, the missions they're doing, the fucking, you know, everything has changed. So you got welcome, but.

Yeah, everyone knew me there. And I was super welcome. I was given specific tasks and I had a role to do. And it was simple, go to your fucking job. I'm like, for Roger that. But I'm finding out these guys are doing everything different. Incerning with 160th, we're doing nighttime raids, fucking ATV, side-boss, all these things,

which I wasn't exposed to my previous deployment. My previous deployment was still special, but it was more conventional and the execution of these things, which I wasn't exposed to my previous deployment. My previous deployment was still special, but it was more conventional and the execution of things, but our missions were the specialized missions. How we did it was, I would say, a little bit more advanced it was previously used to. This was completely different. Now I'm flying around doing arrow reconnaissance. Now I'm doing big wig shit that I'm trained to do. I just never got a chance to do it.

Now I'm doing it on this team when I was really just going to supposed to feel a just desk job. Well, by this time Marsox finds out that they have a guy who was supposed to be a desk guy on a fucking team, a very violent area that gets all the fucking press. We're at the Fod Robinson near a Hellman Valley.

Okay. Yeah, so we're right off the, right near this city called Pankele, with a village called Pankele, and the Hellman River's right there. And I think it's like highway one that leads all the way up. And it's like all your little fire bases are right there

and it was super fucking kinetic. A few weeks before I got there half an ODA got fucking zapped because there's a pressure plate inside one of the towers on our base and the Taliban attacked that tower, S.O.P. you flood to the tower, do your fucking job, well they walked up there and it's pressure plate and they fucking got toast toast We had inner thoughts all the time It was definitely a sniper's head Haven in that area and right outside of our base. We had this this hill called the Ant Hill and It was brilliant. I would just grab some food Grab fucking ammo hop on this fucking four wheeler and take off to the space of this ant hill, I climb up there and I would just get to work and at this time when

I first started up I was building target packages. So now I'm like I'm observing, figuring out what the space is about. I'm taking pictures, I'm building a pattern of life because I learn from previous deployments, you can shoot one person today or 10 tomorrow. And I knew I was gonna get more fished with more fucking bait than I would by just yankin' or stabin' the first thing at a saw. And so because we were still sitting out patrols, but most importantly, then just killing these guys,

our partner force is always getting jacked up. They're always getting him to up outside of her camp. And so I needed to see how they were actually coming there and how they're setting up these IADs. Who was a defector that was part of our crew? Like what are all these things that were happening and what was our limit of advance that I could see? Word that I think the Taliban didn't think

that we could see. And that's where I was at. That's what I was trying to see. That was my main focus. Because it's not what you can't see, it's gonna bite you, it's what you can't see, it's going to bite you, it's what you can't see, it's going to fucking kill you. And so, we're building all these target packs and we're like all these bubble lists and we're just, we're creating a lot of momentum down there to the point where, I got to stay

out there past my 30 day limit, I'm doing my fucking job, find myself going on these missions, I'm like, this is epic. You know, nothing, I mean, you know, the deal. There's something about flying on a fucking bird into no man's land. Fucking take it off your fucking bungee and walking out to complete silence. There is not a fucking high out there like that. Not to me me and I enjoyed every aspect of it I was being taught things that I never saw before I mean do everything do their charges were different because the TTPs changed Everything was different and I'm just like whoa Like the wealth of knowledge is happening. I'm just being blown away with how we're executing and how professional these guys are because I'm producing

in result. But my friends, my homies that didn't go to the school house, they were still doing the mission, just to see their evolution and their professionalism change, just for the better. In a matter of a year, year and a half, that's insane. It was crazy. And it was so impressive and maybe so proud to like, be part of that unit.

Obvious reasons. They're fucking hitters, man, That's what they did. It's what we do and Yeah, that deployment was awesome It was really fun. It was very enjoyable But I learned a lot too. I learned a new aspect of like working these joint gigs And this is where expansion mental expansion happened and I learned something new that I thought was stupid But now I realized that that's just another game that you have to play. You can play it how they tell you to

or you can reinvent it and make it better, which is what I did. I made it so much better. I found my way on a team. Then I get on a team, I find a gap, and I'm learning from these guys that have learned more than me and that have more experience than me, and it's just this vortex of knowledge.

And I just realized like this is what's really fun about this job. No matter how much sucky stuff is out there, stupid Marine Corps should I had to deal with, the evolution of the mind and the experience of like your skill craft and your trade craft is that is a rush. You are literally becoming a fine-tuned specimen, you're weaponizing everything and every aspect of your life, and that's the shit that kept on driving me for more and more and more and And that's the shit that kept on driving me to for more and more and more and more.

You know, I learned a lot that rotation, you know, more fucking crazy combat stories, crazy things happening. I was like, how are we surviving this? But you know, guess what? It worked out and I survived them. I come back from that rotation. What's here?

What were you guys doing down there? So what we were doing, our main mission was we were running disruption operations. So what that means and what that meant for us was that we would fly into No Man's Land, Enemy Helped Occupy Territory where the Taliban leaders lived, where the fighter leaders lived. We fly into the backyard because we limited our chances of IADs. We really, our main focus concern was, you know, shit that was set off inside as like a, oh, shit plan. That was our main thing. Um, and what we would do, we

would come in under darkness, you know, patrol our three K four K into our target site, breach our wall, establish our shit, and we set up an ambush. And the main thing was, as we were to disrupt this area of operation for the next three days, that was our mission. You will pick a fight for three fucking days, because after three days, we'll have all every deal with a gun that doesn't like us on our position. Therefore our commandos, our Afghan commandos, and our other special operations teams can come in and insert these guys into the villages to create a new firebase, you know, to do

all these type of things. Because we were doing village stability operations was just now becoming a thing where you go inside these villages and you establish a exactly fire base. You work with the villagers and you create your militia force and you rinse, wash, repeat the textbook shit that works.

All right, we're creating an army, we're creating militia, we're blending in the Afghan commandos, the Afghan army, the Afghan special forces with their local populists, which they think they're sold out. You know, we're, we're combining the whole Jairoa, the government of, of, you forget what the, so you guys were essentially a diversion to get the, get the fires to come to us. Yeah, because what they were doing before, when the commandos would go in to take over these villages to clear through, declare any fighters and they're bringing a special

operation team in there, plus an Afghan special operations team. There was so much hate and discontent because it was just fucking chaos and violence. They don't give shit about your well or your school that you want to build at that point. You just fucked up everything. So they had this great idea, like, well, let's come up with these different missions where we can take a lot of the heat off the main effort, put these dues to work.

But now we're building up these Afghan commandos, these Afghan Special Forces. We're making them the go guys, not the founders, the ground founders where the locals hate them. Because the locals hate you, they're not gonna tell you any information, Afghan or not. Yeah.

And that's what this team's mission that I was part of, that's what their mission was. I'm like, dude, this is epic. You literally just set up, you set up, ambush positions, hoist your flag, dude, and then you just deal death. That was it. And I had a team commander, he's passed away now, his name was Matt Manoukian.

He died from an insider threat, a falling deployment. And do this fucking dude got it. He gave a fuck about his dudes, he cared about the mission, he wasn't your standard Marine Corps officer, he wasn't trying to win the war on terror in six months, he was trying to keep his guys alive and keep his guys employed. You know, he, he had their best interests. He had our best interests.

He was a force multiplier. He was like, everyone, everything you asked for. And to see that as a student, because I put him through school, to see him in that evolution, to hear these great things before you get to the team, get to the team, get to witness of myself, you know what you're doing is working and that's pretty good,

especially when you're battling the bureaucracy, the Marine Corps, the bureaucracy of all the red tape you have to do for the military, to put all your energy and effort towards training, you know, someone in the special operations field and instilling that fucking mindset of like, this is what's required of us. And so that was it. That was our main focus was these disruption operations and

that continued on the rest of the deployment. And to the point where my Mars like my headcourse command got pretty upset that I was out there doing these missions because I think their thing was that if they lost a number, a roster number, in combat, when you were assigned to this desk job, that was going to raise a lot of questions. So I started to get benched. And I was told, if I go out again, I'm going to get fucking yanked back. And so I had to stop going on these these raid missions. And I just stayed around the fire base. Oh, man, do my ant hills shit, you know, do my sniping stuff as I could support the team as best I could

But I'm definitely not gonna jeopardize their flow because I'm selfish and I rather be with this quality of men Helping them move ammo than being back in that fucking place, listen to another motherfucker, tell me about ice cream that's not there. And so I finished my deployment there on this team. I got probably two to have three weeks of that life and it sucked, but I was there to support and we did a lot of missions around the base.

Captain was a great man. He like shifted missions so he could maximize his team to include myself and I just felt so loved and appreciated and valued and maybe want to work harder so I used all the point of context that I knew back in the rear to help these guys give what they needed because they didn't know those point of context because the people they're reaching out to they're getting red tape. I'm like, bro, I know that I I've hugged that guy. I know this person.

This dude loves me and they're like what? So now I changed my role to still be an asset in the team But I was just using my fucking I was using this phone now I was using my phone to do my bidding and it worked out great man These guys got exactly what they needed to do resupply of all the comfort shit the good stuff They needed the ammunition. They needed the weapons as they needed support. They needed I was having guys come out do training with them Did you get them some ice cream dude Dude there was there was no ice cream. Oh, just kid. Oh, there was no ice cream But I did bring them my thing was cookies those What were those cookies called those big soft gooey

Lord no Doesn't matter there is these cookies out there In Afghanistan. I forget. Otis Spunkmire. Oh yeah. Remember those things? Oh yeah. Dude, palettes. I was hoping you took the ice cream machine from the headquarters.

No, I just had like seven palettes of ripets, protein, and Otis Spunkmires, AirDroped in. Nice. Yeah. Like, we had a typical air drop resupply, because that's how we got resupplied. Air drops go out there on our ATVs, grab all our shoots, burn them, so they're not used against us. Grab their shit, secure the area, load them up and try to bring it back to the base.

Well, on this particular air drop, I'm waiting because I have a surprise for these guys. I have like literally seven pilots to Cody Alfred. Unincluded that we're gonna diesel, we're gonna feel we're gonna ammo, we're gonna base a boring guys. I have like literally seven pots to Cody Alfred. Unincluded, we're gonna diesel, we're gonna feel, we're gonna am, we're gonna basic boring shit. I'm like, that's peasant stuff. I'm bringing the good stuff.

The shit that makes you fat, the shit that makes you feel good inside. The drinks, the sauces, the fucking, the cookies, all of it, comfort items, that was my rule. And this airdrop comes in, dude, and I'm just, see their team get super stoked. I'm like, and I'm gonna do just like them, but I made a friend and that relationship

brought seven pallets out of the sky into these dudes' bellies, into their fucking rooms. You know, those fed, cause one thing I loved about Marsock and was that, A, we always left places better than we got there, and we always took care of our fucking own.

We always took care of the Marines. Marines got treat like shit. General Purpose Marines treat like shit all the time. And we would every time we go to their bases to do coronation missions or to give them intel briefs and granite, we're rolling up in full multi-cam. You know, everyone's got beards, not me, babyface, but all the other adults have beards, we're all multi-cam, completely foreign. They find out where Marines are like,

what the fuck just happened? And, but we're like, hey, we brought you some ham. We brought you fucking a pallet of lobster for your fucking men. And dude, to see those young Marine faces that were getting treated like shit, you know, they're just, they're enjoying the fruits of what they have and they didn't have much.

So to be able to always get back in those capacities, I have like, do this is what it's about. This is fucking good. So we always took care of our own. We always took care of people, but you had to watch out because there's a thin line because Marines are like locusts.

We have some engineers come onto our base wants to help us move our ammo supply point and to build some new positions and bunkers. And we invited them into our chow hall, a very small chow hall, and that was a mistake. The slurpy machine that no one drank from, because we weren't unsure what's in there, gone. Mayonnaise packets, gone.

Ketchup packets, gone. Like locusts, bro bro it took us weeks to like restocker our kitchen restocker are like the things that had like hobwebs on it gone because we were scared like do we don't know what that is how long has it been here you know Jesus this shit was when Jesus was around you know this shit's old and ancient and these dudes did not care they were like this is not anRE. This is a roof of my head. They're happy. They're treated with respect.

I can use your gym, we're like, no, you guys can't use our gym, we learned our fucking lesson. But yeah, we always took care of them, and that was, that was the amazing aspect of combat that I really enjoyed, because you can do so much more overseas than you can at home. And you can give so much more overseas than you can at home, because you have so much more there than you do here and

To be able to spread that love and to spread that regret of doing that appreciation and to maybe inspire one of those people to like do better their job You know, that's what it's all about. You know, I've been in gun fights with more women than most dudes have ever even Comprehended in their life because you know when you see someone that's not part of your crew You can keep them as an alcat or you can bring them into the fold and fucking lift them up. And so, dude, I was using this engineer because I had a stay on base. Some of you using these guys as like my fucking squad. I'm like, yo, my dudes are out here doing this. This is what we're going to do.

You need to do this, lieutenant. I need you to take your truck over here. You people over here and there's like dudes and chicks part of the engineer and like, dude, just, it's amazing what people can do when they're respected and they're giving a task a condition and a standard and That's what I learned from that deployment. I learned this whole new level of empowerment Because before I got there my this team that I was a part of now they were doing it So I'm learning from them and now I'm getting to participate in it. I'm like, this makes this hell a little bit more manageable. This makes all this other previous hell, all these other previous stories, all these other previous hardships and just what the fucks, it makes a little bit more manageable

now because I'm seeing this evolution of growth and fuck the higher I move up, the more I can impact. The better you know and I go to the more cool shit I can do and the more cool shit I can help people with. So it's like, there's a lot of connecting dots in this deployment and so That deployment ended I rolled back home and That was kind of that I finished my time at the schoolhouse And it up rolling to I took over a team at a third battalion I was a team chief now. I got I got called like hey, do you want to be a team chief? I'm like fuck yeah, and that was the number one guy in a team I'm like that was a big responsibility for me. I was a team chief now, I got called like, hey, do you want to be a team chief? I'm like, fuck yeah. And that was the number one guy in a team.

I'm like, that was a big responsibility for me. I was a new E7. Um, I was assigned to go to Africa. That was my area of operation. And I'm like, Africa, I'm like, let's do this. Never thought I could go to Africa. Now I'm getting ready to go to Africa. I'm like, dude, this is a whole new field.

I'm doing, I'm learning embassy stuff. I'm learning about money. I'm learning about different pots of money. I'm learning about all sorts of things that I never was exposed to. But there's all these other guys that have been exposed to this whole time. So I'm just learning more and more and more.

Because this is all new. And, because the education funnel is very quick and Marseille when we first stood up, even the first like four or five years. Because what happened yesterday wasn't gonna happen today. And maybe everyone else was smart, but I wasn't, and I only learned and knew what I was exposed to when I could find information out about it.

The battalion that I checked into at the time, our third battalion was Connolk or Bastard battalion. I was like the seventh, you know, prior reconnaissance guy to ever be there. So we were always instantly shipped out and we were conducting missions all around the world. What were you doing in that? Where'd you go in Africa?

I was actually in Senegal. Our main thing was human trafficking and counter-narcodes. Human trafficking. Yeah, it was a very lucrative typed mission, very vanilla executed mission. What told me about the human trafficking? So NARCO trafficking? Yeah, yeah.

So apparently, intel reporting was that there was this jungle, this cosmonce. They were the fighters there were transporting drugs and weapons and they're also you know using prostitution, bringing people out there everything was for ransom, everything was about money there, everything was about drugs and guns and these fighters, these sitting glee special forces guys were like getting fucking ass pounded. They were completely unequipped for the training and the knowledge how to operate in their environment. They're receiving a lot of the TTPs that we were fighting in Afghanistan, so a lot of

bomb type of stuff, al Shabab, AQIM, all these other terrorist organizations, violent extremist organizations, we're all kind of spreading knowledge and love across the battle space. And Senegal was pretty vanilla, it's pretty basic. Um, so we really had this cool mission on paper, but you have the embassies like, not playas, the same for you. This just got you out here, you're focused as the train, these guys up. And at the time I'm like, shit,

I'm gonna live, my team's gonna live in a supplement, and I'm wearing civilian clothes, and I'm driving around a dope ass land rover, like okay, oopsie, I'm not gonna enjoy this. And so I got the maximizes and completely new venue of deployment that I never experienced before. I'm learning, I'm dealing with agency guys, I'm dealing with fucking state department people,

I'm dealing with operation funds, I'm doing with just learning this whole new aspect of being a special operator. And I'm also learning what a non-kinetic deployment's about. It can still go south at any time, but my mission was different. Now I'm training my partner for us to go out and do the work, vice-me go with them.

So this is when a vice assistant company was coming to this big thing, this AA missions, a vice-in-ass is when a vice assistant company was coming this big thing, this AA missions, a vice assistant, a vice assistant company, triple A, all these new catch phrases and catch words that were coming out. But essentially we train our partner force up and they go do the work and they come back, report us, we debrief and we, you know, set up the next training venue, how can we prepare them? What did you run into? What are the IEDs? Like, so then my engineers would come up and recreate the scenario, recreate the training venue, and then we just kind of cycle through their guys through this pipeline.

A lot of it was text in the boxes because you kind of learn it's about money at this point and you learn that some of these host nations don't really care about their training, they care about the funding. And so we're getting guys that weren't even part of the special forces crew. It was really weird, but very educational at the same time. Completely out of my comfort zone. Just, it was weird. I was always in the red, navigating that, that battle space.

Uh, but it helped shape me. It helped shape me for like future things. And, you know, that knowledge and experience of doing that and necessarily I wasn't doing the kinetic stuff. I was empowering the kinetic operations. I was training the kinetic operations. That part was cool, but I was really stoked that my team was gonna live.

That was really, that was the first deployment I ever been on that I felt pretty confident that all my dudes were gonna come home. And I don't get fuck what anyone says. I cared more about that than shooting a fucking gun. And I had a lot of young eager guys in my team. A lot of them put through school myself and I'm like, very grateful that that wasn't a mission set.

Well, we're in Africa for a couple months and to rate a deployment ribbon, you had to be there for 90 days. I'm there at like 65, 70 days. And I get this a secure call and I get told to check my email. So I log into my laptop and I check my email and it says my team's gonna retest.

And I'm like, it's told that I'm being redeployed with the next like 72 fucking hours. So my team leader and I, my officer of the team, we devise a plan, we brief our team and we start breaking down shop. We fly back to the states and I come back to the states and I get told like, hey, you. Like, well, now you're going to fucking Afghanistan. I'm like, okay. So at this time, Marslock was taking significant casualties, as well as just our manpower management wasn't on point. We were breaking all the way to Africa. We were just going to be able to get back to Africa.

We were going to be able to get back to Africa. We were going to be able to get back to Africa. We were going to be able to get back to Africa. We were going to be able to get back to Africa. So, at this time, Marslock was taking significant casualties as well as just our manpower management wasn't on point. We were breaking all sorts of red line dates for like having our head to pillow, I believe is what they call it, where you have to be home so long from training and combat to meet a readiness requirement

before you can fucking go out again. And, go ahead. But you just come home from Africa. I just come home from Africa, but I didn't hit my whole dwelt, I didn't hit my max timeframe. Oh. So it's like it never happened. Yeah.

Okay. So I come back and I find myself, I'm flying to California with my team leader. Fly to California, I link up with our first battalion. And I was to be the first third battalion to deploy with the first battalion to Afghanistan. And my team was chose because myself and a couple of other guys had Afghanistan experience and we were the most senior ones of the battalion and my team was the most capable.

So I get the mission, I mean, totally, hey, we're deploying in like four months. I'm like, Roger that. I come back to the North Carolina. I briefed my battalion. Hey, this is what's going on. This is my evolution of what I'm doing outside in the West Coast. And basically, I got this green light to fucking do whatever I wanted to do. Dude, it was great.

I built my whole training plan off a fucking calendar. I didn't do any of these stupid reports. I didn't need to do. If I said I needed some gear, all I had to do was set up a fucking meeting and I didn't always get the gear that I needed. But there was so much high viz on my team. Beyond high viz, we were like the fifth course of action that Marsoch has a whole chose. And to even be by name in that course of action, I felt pretty fucking badass. Yeah. And, you know, so I had all the support to the training, dude, my guys are just like, we're doing all sorts of bad shit and we're doing it all ourselves. No one's helping

us. We're super self-sufficient. We're deployed ourselves to Africa. We redeployed ourselves to the States. We deployed ourselves to California, we fucking did everything, all of our training, everything ourselves, and now I'm getting new qualifications because now I have different requirements, I didn't take my whole team out to Africa because I didn't need I had a capacity, I can only take so many people to Africa, because I can only have so many soft people there, Afghanistan's a different story. Now my team fucking doubled. So now I'm rolling with a 24 man team almost. I got 14 operators. I have engineers.

I got fucking dogs. I got bomb guys. I got J-tax. I got the whole king of the bottle like I did on their previous Afghan teams. But now I'm getting it here and we're setting the presidents of what right looks like for this mission set. Well being a third battalion guy, being a third battalion guy, for a third battalion team, we got hate, so much hate.

And I came from this first battalion, that's where I started my career. And they were like, fuck you guys. You guys are just here for sympathy, because we were deploying four teams now, because we were only deploying three teams at a time. Well, now we're deploying four teams at a time, and my team was creating that fourth team. My team crushed everybody.

All of our training venues, my team fucking crushed it. I was not gonna let my fucking guys go and bear with themselves. I was not gonna let them be fucking bastardized because my battalion wasn't running a tight ship prior to all this. There was not a lot of standards that were being set there. That's whether the bastard at the time, it's completely different now. But at this time, this very early stages,

it was very volatile. And you're getting all the hate, like, Marsox getting hate. Who the fuck are you guys? Why are you getting missions? Well, we're fucking doing good, so we're getting missions. But then you have that tribalism inside the companies, the battalions, fuck those guys.

Those guys are from third, like, do my guys with what your dudes ask? Why are you tripping? Why are we hating each other? Why are we doing this? And that was another lesson of learning stuff. Is this never ending learning? I was like, holy shit, you're never good enough one.

It seems like, and there's always room to learn and grow, and that's what we're experiencing. And, you know, my team just did amazing. They crushed everything. We find ourselves in Afghanistan, you know, few months later doing amazing things. I got sergeants that are, you know, E5, deal millions of dollar deals, you know,

talking to generals, run emissions. It was not as kinetic deployment as I was used to. I was very far north. I was near this place called Kajaki, the dam. It was very, very far north. And we were at this point at time where it was still a kinetic battlefield, but we were really transitioning into the downsizing. This is 2011, maybe 12.

We were downsizing not only our soft present, but we were downsizing our involvement. So everything turned into like, train the Afghans special forces guys and Make them go to missions And that was a tough one to swallow because we're in the same helmet area We're in the same stomping grounds that all of our homies got killed that or all this shit that takes place that and Telling my younger guys the team like hey because I was not about to just go on some random mass missions just to go on a combat Patrol to get contact.

That's how you die. There's no just how can I justify your death? There's I have no mission. Walking around aimlessly is absolutely stupid. And I did a lot of that battle. I had a lot of those battles. One of my leadership counterpart in particular, he really wanted to do these things.

And it was just a constant battle. I found myself this deployment wasn't about combat. For me, this deployment was about conflict. And I found myself spitting my entire work up, my entire fucking deployment, protecting my guys from what I thought of the time was poor leadership decision making and poor employment opportunities. Because it's really easy to allow cracks to happen in your mission planning.

It's really easy to green light a mission that you don't truly believe in. And those missions you don't have true confidence in. And you never really have, you have as much confidence as you can in any mission planning. But if your team is not collectively visualizing themselves with winning and coming home, that's not a good plan.

And if it makes the youngest guy question shit, that's not a good plan. And I found this, this operation was a lot of those questionable plans. And I spent a lot of time in the phone, putting up resistance, I put a lot of time in conversations and meetings putting up resistance. I put a lot of time in conversations and meetings, putting up resistance. It was a lot of strange shit that was happening.

And what did your team want? What did my team want? Yeah. They wanted to fuck it fight. How was that? It's difficult. Luckily for me, I had very strong element leaders that were fucking true leaders that were combat vets that

saw bigger than their ego and made sure their fucking dudes were employed and empowered. You know, like there was no easy task on my team. You know, my guys called them plenty of drum missions, but I tried to tell them and my leaders helped try to instill them like, oh, dude, there's a different way to fight this war, man. This war is downsizing. You know, this is not being scared. This is, it doesn't make fucking sense.

You know, we don't need, I can't only send out so many soft guys per Afghan partner forces. So my odds aren't even in my fucking favor. So why am I gonna put myself in that gunfight? And at this time, the Taliban realized, like wait a second, if I just act like a mob, like a mafia Treat this shit like street crime. I don't get fucked with

When they treat the environment like a fucking terrorist playground they get fucked with So now they're running their guns they're running their drugs. They're moving their things do shoot move communicating doing their hustle But on the fucking mafia side I felt like you know, they're doing completely different different of how it's now tied to the government It's tied to the fucking city council. It's tied to the village elders like it's a completely different dynamic now because They realize that money is more important to them than conflict and we're out there So as long as they can be good boys and girls and not strip a fucking hornet's nest. We're gonna be out of there in time We're gonna be out of their fucking way, out of their poppy fields, and they can go run a fucking mock like they do.

They focused, I'd imagine, on their government contracts, their fucking, their drugs, and the things that made them hell a bank, cause it cost money to run fucking wars. And once my guys started to see that, they started to empower that belief system and make sure

that our partner forces were good to go. We supported them numerous combat, you know, mortar mission operations, drone operations. So we're supporting them. I just try to teach the guys like, hey, man, we don't have to be the ones doing that. That's the perks of being soft is that we use our fucking minds to fight a fucking war because we're not in this like foot to ground environment anymore. We're more like let's use our minds to create the fucking battle space that we want to, not walk into something that we don't.

And it was just that new era of life. But it all worked out. It all worked out pretty well. All those guys were studs. I think they all appreciated what's going on. But the time I realized that there's big conflict and it was with me and the team leader. And it caused a lot of rift in the dynamics of the team. A lot of sides were being chose. And that is very, and it sucked. Because I

was part of that. I was contributing to that. And at the time, I thought I was just in mighty. And whether that's true or not, which I believe is still true to this day, how I handle it wasn't the best. But that would be years later till I figured that shit out. I did what I best I could in a combat situation. Well, standing up for what I believe and setting up for my men caused me to be in two investigations on deployment. So now my team is getting all this visibility. So now we're this team from this one battalion, attached to this battalion in Afghanistan

and there's investigations going on. There's a bunch of witch hunting operations happening. What I mean by that, people were looking for reasons to get me out of there. Cause I put it resistance. Cause I used my mind and I trained my dudes to do the same thing. So when you weigh the numbers of like, who's on what side?

It was very apparent that something was fishy. There was not a clear cut paste thing. And I hated that for my guys. To the point where I'm like, yo, you can take me out of country right now, but take this guy with me and let my team be safe. But if you take me out of here, they're a fucking danger. This is not gonna be good. There's gonna be bad decisions that'd be made.

And that was the word that I was willing to fight for. That was my necklace story. This is where I say, you know what? This is where I fucking stand. And I still stand behind it. Because at that time, if you've been over once, you will always fucking fold. You'll be known as a person that folds. And I did everything in my educated, fucking powers to adapt and to evolve to the environment that I was handed to the situations that I was dealt with.

But it still costs friction. So now this deployment, now I'm trying to keep my guys alive, trying to use them to use your brains, to do other fucking things, and make sure they're still maximized and being fulfilled and contributing how the best they can. Now I'm dealing with this whole administrative fiasco. And now, little do I know, my name is just being smeared

all back home, because I'm the guy that's in conflict with an officer. And we wrap up this deployment. I come home, my team crushed it. My team crushed so many things. They did so many amazing things. And all I was told was your under investigation again. I'm like, what about my team?

They fucking crushed things, dude. Where's their credit? Where's their like, out of boys and no one cared. Damn. And I allowed that to victimize me for a long time. I was really pissed off and hurt. But one thing I learned because I learned from that deployment too. One thing I learned is that we're here to adapt and evolve. And even in conflict, you can adapt to the involvement. It took me years later to get over this hatred.

Years later to make men's with this individual, but this dude is like my friend now. I learned from this guy, he learned from me, we learned together, but at the time, that wasn't the case at the time, that's not what came out. And so looking back and looking back at all the career, I just think about like,

we always have an opportunity to do something different than what we're currently doing. We might not feel it, we might feel like, this is the direction that we must go, but there's probably another way that we can do it, but no matter how just you feel. And those perspectives took me a long time to figure out a lot of healing, a lot of forgiveness to occur to do that. I mean, he's really your friend. He is my friend now. We're not still homies on the phone, but he actually was my retiring officer because I have respect for him. Because during this whole evolution,

dude, Marsox smeared my name for like four years. I was like blacklisted, it seemed like. I was... So you were an honor man of four different things. I called around a couple of buddies about you. I think you're the fastest guy to ever make EA. I was, I picked up EA in 11.5 years, which hasn't been done before, Marsoch, right? In the Marine Corps. In the Marine Corps. Correct.

And now they're smirring your name. Yep. Interesting. Because I was in conflict with an officer. And that does not go well. And so, I finished this rotation. I go back to the team. I finished my investigation. I get acquitted of everything. But I'm getting, I'm getting case studies you're being said about me and this officer. We, all these horrible things,

and you can definitely know that the case study is about me, even though it's supposed to be be anonymous and I'm attending these safety stand downs, these mandatory training events and it's about fucking me and this officer and it was fucking embarrassing and immoralizing and this was this was fucking big. This was a fucking very big deal. It was four years total, two nine years total, four investigations, quitted of everything, but they were substantial to the point where I literally got fucking put on the sideline. I had to go to our operation shop to wait my time

out why these investigations were going on. So I got pulled from my team when I came back and I was just fuck the world. I was pissed off. And I was pissed off not because I was in this time out position. I was pissed off because these other officer friends that I put through school that I've known through my Marine Corps career turned their fucking back on me. Some of my senior and listed friends turned their fucking back on me because all these allegations I was under accused of and all this like, flack. And then it all goes away.

I get acquitted. I get a sheet of paper that says, if you ever just like this again, you're in trouble. And the commander that gave to me is like, you can throw this away after we're done talking if you want to. I'm like, Roger that. And that's what I fucking did.

And I went back to work. I went back to work. I kind of had a chip in my shoulder, but my chip was like, I am not going to fucking stop. I'm gonna go even fucking further. I had visions to take over Mars like that was my goal. I wanted to be the top. I wanted to be the boss.

I wanted to be the leader there. I wasn't, I wanted to be the boss, I wanted to be the leader there. I had a lot of great mentors that were leaders above me, a rank above me. Then I also had some that weren't very good, but that's everywhere. So I'm learning from all the things I liked, what I didn't like and all these amazing men that helped me get to where I was at,

that looked out for me, that covered for me, that had my best interests, even through these darkest times, like I'm forever grateful for them. And these are all lessons I was able to learn and bring into when I was in power, when I had that level of influence where I got to pay it forward and anyone got screwing one over, but not everyone can take care of somebody. You can, but that's a choice not everyone's willing to make at times, because it's hard and you will segregate yourself from the fucking pack.

Well that's what these leaders differed from me and that's what helped me become who I was. So I'm in charge of a team again. Everything is fucking done. I deployed a Germany, I work a desk job there. They're like, hey, go do this and you come back to your team. So it was like an additional punishment. I'm like, okay, so I go to Germany and I fucking own that thing.

It was easy. I learned a completely different thing and I fucking own that thing, it was easy. I learned a completely different thing, in my the same time, it's helped me out. I'm building my resume, not even knowing it, because I'm open-minded. I'm there learning all sorts of new aspects. I'm just, I'm a forward and opportunity to grow and expand. You know, I wasn't a one-trick pony. All these opportunities that didn't really look like opportunities at times, transformed my life. I just didn't see look like opportunities at times transformed my life.

I just didn't see it, because I was holding on to grudges. I didn't see it, because it wasn't the cool thing at the time, but it was really set of me up for true success as a leader. Because sometimes a leader, you do shit, you don't wanna do. You do the boring shit.

You do the shit that you don't wanna do. You don't get to hang out with the boys. You don't get to go fight with them. You gotta do this other shit. And I was really picking up this pace and I was like, fuck, it was kind of uncomfortable. So I go to Germany, I work out there. I think I was there for like two months.

Our focus was to operate for Africa. So I'm managing teams, admissions in Africa, reporting back. Another liaison guy just at a higher turnout. And that's when I meet my son's mother, my eldest son, he's seven years old. And I start this relationship, all the type of stuff, this what happens. That was basically that whole thing. I come back home, I start this company again, this team again, and I get a phone call. I get a lot of phone calls. It was like, you want to take over a company?

And I said, fuck yes. I hung up the phone and I went up to my boss's office cause I've been asking, now I'm a master sergeant. I was already selected, I waited, it took me a year to pin on cause I was so junior. I was at free fall school. I found out that I got selected for master sergeant, but I was so junior down the list,

it took me almost a full year before I even saw the rank cause now I'm waiting through the numbers waiting for my number to be called one like Bush league number like baby back bitch number and I've pin Pin like weeks before this and I and I actually did it for a freefall made a big fucking deal. Another buddy of mine. He picked a mass sergeant So we're fucking doing Halo jump and we like do our fucking thing, we fucking Velcro these big ass shavrons to our

our peak hit you know or actually I was wearing my combat cry uniforms, it's got Velcro so I slapped this big ass shavron on it and we fucking jump and I'm like I landed and I was just like bro king of the world, bro Because it all changed then Because now now you can't hold me to yesterday standards Because the proof is in the pudding And thing is I was told when I got selected Cody don't fuck up keep your mouth shut I was told that specifically from a lot of my senior leaders because they knew that people were so outwitch hunting me because dude I'm a very verbal guy and

I'm like, okay, I can fucking do that and when I pinned on it was game over and I get this phone call like hey you and take over a company. I'm like fuck. Yes, and I wanted a company But I was never looked at it because I was told I was too young and I was told that how I interacted with officers wasn't of their liking. And I'm like, that is the most immature, fucking, unprofessional thing I've ever heard in my life. You know, and that's the thumb the man tries to put on you.

And I dealt with that my entire life. You're too young and charged with sniper team. You're too fucking young. I'm running combat missions, but I'm a fucking self. You're too young. You're doing this. All these things, that was the most uncomfortable aspect of being in the military, at least in my career field.

Cause I'm like, what is good enough? Do I need to get fucking blown up more? Do I need to bleed more? Do I need to see more horrible things? Do I need to brief more? What I need to do? And now I get this shot. And this shot wasn't the first pick.

The guy who actually had the seat put in his retirement package, because he was like, fuck that. I'm not taking out a company. And I'm like, fuck yeah, I will, because I was the alternate for it. And I get all these spills and all these briefs of like, you better not fuck up.

I'm just like, pro, where's the belief in me? But my OG leaders that are above me, these are the E9s that valued me, that respected me, that looked out for me, they're like, go fucking crush it dude. So I check into our second battalion. So now I'm the one and the only few guys at this point that I've deployed and been part of every radar battalion.

I've been part of the fucking schoolhouse and now I'm checking in to the second Italian, second-rate of Italian and I'm taking over Fox Company. And this company was savage, straight, war fighters do like they have a lineage of straight, like even G-Wat lineage of like straight, Gung Ho makes should happen. And that's the company I'm checking into.

These dudes are fucking savage. Like they have the stair that they earned you know they have that hmm because they earned that hmm the sermon and I show by as the fucking new guy here and they're like who is this tattooed guy and bro it was a game changer now I'm in charge of four special operations teams I'm in charge of like a hundred fucking neighbor support personnel I'm managing all of four special operations teams. I'm in charge of like a hundred fucking and navier support personnel. I'm managing all these officers. I have an amazing company commander. I have amazing operations officer.

Dude, I have an amazing, the perfect situation you could ever ask for, dude. And we dominated. We fucking crushed it, everything. All of our training crushed. All this flack. Oh, he's too young crushed. Did my guys were the best equipped well trained outfit in all of Marseille? And you could not

sway me otherwise. It was undeniable. In my team's making headlines, they're doing amazing training. I mean, it's amazing what happens when you empower people. When you tell people, I respect you. I know what you're here to do, and here's your left and right, well, the limits go execute. That is empowering to people, and they make shit happen. These do has been over backwards. My support people, they've been over backwards to support the team guys. Like, I'm talking about three hours one way and an, an, an, an, an, an empty by themselves in case one of the birds went down You know

Because they were having some a prop malfunctions case the birds went down We had to insert our guys, you know via van three hours one way three hours the next way like these dudes working 24-7 working their ass off For shit and we get all that we're getting all this slime life Well, we're going down rage because we're using a new technique to how to target people that was not done yet. It was a very big deal. We're this new form of information operations that we're running, completely new way

that we gain target acquisition on the battle space and acquire our targets, like building true target packs. And so we got a lot of high visibility. Well, my Sergeant Major comes my often, and he's like Cody. I know the comment on the Marine Corps is coming down to see your team, see your company,

but I'm gonna need you to sit out on this one. We're gonna have him go act as the company operations chief and have you sit here and like, what the fuck? What? Because the common art was in a big fan of tattoos. And I'm just like, you gotta be fucking kidding me dude. And the whole, my whole Marine Corps career Cody, you should get your tattoos removed. No one's gonna take you seriously.

Cody, you should have removed from your tattoos or how can you be a leader looking like that this whole time. I'm like bro, you know the Marine Corps was founded in a bar drunk ass fucking dudes. And you're worded by my fucking tattoos. I'm good for war, I'm good for fucking death, I'm good for my fucking soulless fucking trauma. But my tattoos, that's the front thing to your mind.

I'm the youngest EA in the Marine Corps and you're gonna hide me. You're gonna hide me from this. I'm not gonna go speak on behalf of my men. Can I give a fuck about who no one's gonna talk about them? Like I'm gonna talk about them? Because this guy would be the main guy speaking on behalf of all these dudes. And I was so pissed. I was like, I was so hurt. I'm like, dude, this is fucking jacked. I was like, I was so hurt, I'm like, dude, this is fucking jacked. So that happens, move over, my guy is fucking crushed, that was the main focus. Then we deploy to Iraq. That was our main mission.

I've sent a team to Jordan, had a team in Lebanon that I'm managing both, and then I have a team, two teams in Iraq. Well, I'm also in charge of all the special operations team in Iraq, because now I am the special operations task force, Operation Chief. So now I'm managing ODAs, Silpatoons, Raider teams, various assets, various leads on shit. And it's getting real. Like, it's a whole new level of responsibility and this is during the Mosul push

So 2016 I believe 2015 2016 and So much responsibility so much red tape and so much bullshit and it broke me the fuck off I'm standing behind $70,000 screens, watching Kill TV, watching drone operators not get their shit together, being denied strikes as my team is getting fucking assaulted with Mad Max, you know, armored, V-bit, V-goborn IADs, you know, to the point where the non-armed drones that we see

are watching these guys get fucking welded in so they can't escape. So the only thing we can do is bit themselves, blow themselves up. And I'm watching this shit. And, you know, we had limited air assets. Syria was a big thing at the time. Syria had a lot of assets, but we can only have so many assets in Syria and Iraq at the same time. And so to get an air strike, to call it troops in contact at this point of the war was a big no-no. Because we were in this whole advise and assist, not a company. We were fighting the entire time to get that last A, that a company aspect. Because what we were finding out is we have to do command and control. You cannot command and control a battle space by not being on

the fucking battle space. You just can't do it. Not not a part or force. Not people that don't speak your language have your same communication, have your saved desired end states, have your same why and even why you're showing up. Soft guys are forced multipliers. It's what we do. That's who we are. We have to be out there. And so my guys were just crushing it on all fields on our targeting aspect. I mean, we have tier one units coming down to get targets from us,

because we're the only ones producing and executing. We were at such a big deal. And it was amazing. It was amazing. And because of all that hard ass work, we finally get that A mission. We finally get that a company mission and So my guys get to work on a whole new gambit of things and my role is a support role I'm watching screens. I'm texting them. I'm calling them on the radio

I'm I'm calling back at home. I'm yelling at generals. I'm yelling at kernels I'm yelling at people. I'm trying to get support, I'm bartering, I'm trying to do anything I can to support my guys that are for deployed because they are literally in harm's way, they're deploying in soft skin for pickup trucks with gun mounts in the back. They're doing all these different various things and it's a different battle space. And then we started to take more casualties. This way too, as the connects environments picks up,

we started to take more casualties and watching that shit on the phone on the screen, hit me hard. I was working 18 hour days, stress eating, Oreos and frosting, cause I was so fucking stressed out watching war on TV, yelling at people on the phone to get assets and being told to fuck off Why my guys are out there just in the fucking suck duke in it out and

They're worried about assets. They're worried about waking up the general to get permission to clear to launch something damn dude to get permission to clear, to launch something. Damn, dude. Um, around this time we have a, uh, Iraqi helicopter, because we first started partnering with the Kurds, northern Iraq. Then we hit a phase line where they reach

their biblical birthright, so they say, and then we transition from the Kurds to the Iraqis. That was a very dynamic thing in the first place. Some of the motherfuckers that we're fighting back in the day, we're fighting alongside now, because now we now we're fighting, you know, ISIS. And you're just trying to make sense of it all, but it is what it is. And our Iraqi helicopter goes down like a little news helicopter pilot lived, they got shot, he was able to put on the ground, but it was still a big deal. And so they had this big no-fly area where they weren't going to allow METAVACs,

CASAVACs into the airspace to pull guys out. Well, one day, my Silbertune, they get in a tick, they call it, they declare a tick, and I still was getting denied assets, because at this time, they rolled into basically an IED built, and the and the ED tech as he's trying to problem solve the situation he got fucking smoked and the seals are fucking pinned down and they're in this whole ID belt and they're like we're fucking making a move I'm like Roger that and they fucking start beat feed out of the area. I'm on the phone trying to get a casual fact to come pick the sky up.

And they're like, the team needs to meet us at like, fucking all, like, all these clicks away. I'm like, unacceptable, non-negotiable. Get them fucking here now. Here's the fucking grid, go. And dude, it was this whole fiasco, a bunch of shit talking, a bunch of yelling, unacceptable, having to do that, to get support?

For a bird to come in and pick up a fucking KIA, damn. And you add years of violence before this, you add years of traumatic brain injury before this, and then you watch years of fucking being smeared before this, all the sacrifice, what all these men go through to fucking be out there in the battle space and you can fucking deny basic stuff, basic stuff. And being the person that's watching it all unfold, you're just like, fuck, it fucked me up.

And those 18 hour days of watching the, the, the watching the craziness happen, stressing myself away, taking ranger naps, I wasn't realizing, but I was taking ranger naps like every second I could. Little fucking, oh, I got five seconds, okay, I'm ready to go. And what I didn't realize at the time was my body started to shut down. My body was playing catch it to me,

and I learned during my workup that I was really playing catch up, my body started to shut down. My body was playing catch it to me, and I learned during my workup that I was really playing catch up, my body started to shut down for even employed. I was just really tired, I thought I was stressed. And this deployment brought it out of me. Not seeing the sunlight, eating shit food, always constantly staring at a screen, constantly being stressed out that if I'm not

in here, my guys are in support. If we're not in here fighting for a fucking guy, you're not going to hit with a knee, just shit unnecessary stress. Because war's stressful enough. And this war concludes. We get to the point now where we're doing a battle space turnover and my company crushed it. The seals crushed it. The green bra space turnover and my company crushed it. The seals crushed it.

The green berets crushed it. Everyone crushed it. They just so well. And we come home. And we do the same called home location decompression. And they ask you, you have to talk to the chaplain. You have to talk to like physical therapists. You have to talk to your administrative person,

make sure all your pace, square it away, and all this type of stuff. And it's my turn to go talk to the chaplain. And he's like, how was it? I said, fuck that deployment. And he's like, really? I'm like, I dealt with so many people looking out for awards for themselves.

That's the shit that broke me. So many fucking times told no on a fucking phone because it was fucking dinner night. That shit fucking broke me. Being told no, I couldn't get a fucking helicopter to extract my fucking dude. That shit fucking broke me. Giving blood to, I went on the mission with one of my teams one of my radar teams and

My dude got one of my dog came was got shot in the fucking head Feeding him blood for my fucking body hearing him fucking scream for his fucking mom fucking broke me Being so exhausted, but still showing up, broke me. It all just started to add up. And I was fucking done with every aspect of the fucking military. Every fucking thing it broke me. I was done. I wanted to play no more.

And to the point where now I'm talking to this site and this home location decompression, supposed to be happy, stress free. And he's like, so Cody, tell me what's going on. I'm like, fuck you. And he's like, excuse me, I'm like, listen bro, I've talked to plenty of you before. I've asked for the same shit, nothing's ever happened.

I'm like, you get me help, and I'll fuck and tell you you whatever I'll talk to you. He's like, well, what do you want? I'm like, I want Adderall and I'm not fucking sleep's fixed. I want my sleep fixed. He's like, okay. So he helps me get this packet going. I determined I needed to add her all because I was a space cadet.

I could not hold the fucking conversations, hold a sentence. My brain was all over the place and I was so fucking drained, so tired. I needed upwards in my life. I couldn't remember shit, I couldn't focus on anything. I was just done, currently I was just fucking crashing down. I needed my sleep fix because I wasn't getting quality sleep. I wasn't, I felt that I wasn't ever, I could sleep 12 hours, so be

fucking tired. I could drink 12 coffees and 12 fucking monsters and still pass out. My body was shutting down and at this point I was beyond desperate. And so he's this dude and he's a fucking phenomenal man. He starts getting me these point of contacts. And I find myself now I'm down with this deployment and I was asked overseas, he's like, hey, do you want to do another company operations chief deployment? I'm like, no. And he's like, it'd be really easier if you did. I wouldn't have to find someone else to find some fucking else. I'm done. And I'm like, I can't fucking do this, dude. And I come home, that story happens.

And then I'm checking into the school house now. So now I'm back at the school house my second time. I'm a senior ass, I'm an E8 now for three and a half years. A lot of experience on the deployment. Now I'm fitting a role that was a made up job for an officer billet. Because what we were lacking in Marsoch was these key officer billets that made them competitive to their special operation officer counterparts. Because we have Marsoch, we have officers enlisted in every role that you can be in the special operations joint

environment. And I found myself in this made up fucking job to support a made up position to make it look like it's something bigger than it is and I went from hundred miles an hour to zero and it was fucking difficult. I wasn't above anything. I wasn't above cleaning shit, doing shit. I wasn't above anything. I wasn't above cleaning shit, doing shit. I wasn't above that. This wasn't an ego thing. This was, I need simulation or I'm going to fucking explode because I just had six months of straight 18 hour days

at a minimum 18 hour days. Days I wouldn't see the fucking sun, right? Not a woe is me thing but just how it was. Sun is very crucial for us. Sun is very crucial for us. Sleep is very crucial for us, and once you up past a certain limit, you don't get that time back. You know, you don't, oh, you sleep for six hours,

you rejuvenate, it doesn't how it works. You're cognitively, you're depleting your brain. You're literally fucking up your process. The longer you stay up for the longer than a threshold that you actually have and I blew this threshold. I found myself blowing up a lot. I was very aggressive.

I was very stressed out about the dumbest shit. The stupidity that I encountered, I would just lose it and just fucking go ballistic. If you were a civilian working in my job trying to tell me what to do, I would just lose it and just fucking go ballistic. If you're a civilian working in my job trying to tell me what to do, I fucking lost it. If you were a douchebag trying to tell me what to do or not want to do your job, I fucking lost it. I was like, do what's going on with me? I went to the point, I'm finally getting out of all now because they're like, oh yeah, you have ADHD like a motherfucker. I'm like, no, no shit. We all do. This is not normal. And when we're gonna start connecting dots,

we can't just mistreat ourselves and abuse ourselves. All these years, and expect us to be fucking shippin' shiri forever. Yeah. And I think there's this phase line around that 11 to 13 year mark in the military, where at least for me, I started to shift pretty hard. It really started to all my TBI's, all my stress,

all my fucking whatever started to catch up with me. I remember busting into my Naval commander's office, he was our medical officer. And I'm like, give me something that's gonna keep me up or I'm gonna go fucking do meth. I was desperate. I would pass down the fucking floor. I would pass down the fucking floor. I would pass out of my car.

I would be late to work because I drive down the street and I didn't even know where I was. I would just wake up and I would just like start crying because I didn't know how I got in the middle of the road. I didn't know where I was going. Everything was just like system overload. And so I'm able to fill out this packet to go to, we call it intrepid spirits. Most people call it TBI clinic. And you know, they are

great a stuff. I list all my issues and how they work is you have to go get evaluated before you're even able to be seen by them. So you have to have all your ducks in a row before you be seen by them. They make it super simple for you. And so my main thing was attention and sleep. Because I, just dealing with other things in life, I wasn't really privy to those words to even how to describe them. I thought I was just being an asshole because I was fucking super tired. I thought I was, you know, running behind schedule because I was tired. I

wasn't connecting any dots. I ended up doing like nine sleep studies, three different places, and all three of them came back with, or all three places said that I wasn't an arcoleptic. And I was praying that I would be labeled an arcoleptic because there was a drug, there was a medicine for an arcolepsy. And I'm like, I'm not making this shit up, I'm tired as fuck. I can literally take, I was on like 40 milligrams

of various uppers. There were some, there were like 100 milligrams. I'm on Dexadrin. I'm on Adderall. I'm on Provisual. Shit that they gave guys to go on three day patrols. High risk training type of medicine. I'm on all these at the same time.

And I wasn't hitting that third and last rim cycle to be considered an arcolyptic. And I can sleep 24 hours still wake up tired of shit. And at this point now I'm confused, I'm like, dude, am I making this up? Am I lying to myself? What's going on? I went from this hero machine, Superman,

100 miles an hour to drag and ask. I rode motorcycles at this point in time. I'm falling off my motorcycles. I'm getting off them with them running and the kickstands not down. I'm falling over at gas stations. Speed, I couldn't handle speed. So I'm riding really slow, which is even more dangerous. I was getting lost everywhere I went and just constant explosions of fucking anger.

Uncontrolled and I was having uncontrollable adrenaline spikes to the point where I stopped my freefall pay because I couldn't maintain jumping out of airplane because jumping out of airplane already fucking gave me dope me in a drill in by the time I landed and that I was you ever do jumps you're tired afterwards at least for me that's who I was well now that I'm having complete I could just be sitting here and just like get amped up and then my my my crash was just blow it was hard hitting and my fear was I'm gonna fuck up a dude in the in the sky Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to deploy my fucking shoot lower my kid. I'm gonna fucking kill myself fuck that

and Diving I was still doing diving at a time because that was in a controlled environment I had a but I buddy and most my dives are just recall some doing in a pool very simple But everything about my life was fucking changing. I didn't know what it was. And I just started getting more, more pissed off. I got more and more uninstrained and even showing up every day. And I got tired of playing games.

I got tired of being someone else's puppet. I got tired of being, you know, dog and pony. Looked apart to make this made a position look like it's something. And, granted, a lot of those observations were how I felt at the time. But at the same time too, I wasn't training. I was taking naps whenever fun could. I was looking out for my dudes, but I had master sergeants that I was in charge of, and they were taking care of their guys.

And so luckily I had this strong network of like leaders because my position really wasn't necessary. It was a fictitious position. Maybe now hopefully it's something. But I go to my boss and I'm like, dude, I need no responsibility. And he's like, what? I'm like, I need no responsibility. And I fucking said it sternly. He's like, what? I'm like, I need no responsibility,

and I fucking said it sternly. He's like, what are you talking about? Dude, I can't fucking do this job anymore, dude. I need no stress. I need absolutely no stress in my fucking life. He's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, I'm getting hounded on how many more medical poems that I have.

I'm like, my command, this command, signed the document saying that I'm gonna be gone for weeks and I'm getting harped on the phone. Why did so-and-so get to do why? I'm like, I don't fucking know, do you ask him? Where is that TPS report? I don't fucking know, did you ask that leader in charge of that section?

Like, why are we this stupid? You clearly see that I'm here trying to save my fucking life and I'm just being just constantly bombarded with dumb shit. I'm like, and I told my can't handle this dude. I need no responsibility. The smallest thing is dressed to be the fuck out and I'm yelling at civilians. I'm huffing and puffing down the hallway of our schoolhouse, being disrespectful, and throwing away everything I fucking blood and fucking fought for. I'm just, I'm fucking blend fucking fought for.

I'm just, I'm fucking going out of control. And my friends are turning their backs on me. They're like, it's not really that bad, Cody. And I wake up on the floor on a Friday night at my headquarters building. And my friends was still challenged like, Cody, are you really that bad? I'm like, it's seven o'clock at night time. You think I want to stay here?

It's seven o'clock at night time on a Friday or any day? And so my boss, he looked out for me. And he's like, okay, we'll move you. So I found a position that was in our human performance section for Marcelac. They didn't have a rep there and they're like, well, fuck, this guy gives a shit about mental health type of stuff, so we use him.

I'm like, okay. So I leave the school house, I check into our headquarters, our headquarters unit and I do this job and I find about all these different medical practices that we have. Neurofeedback, breathwork, cognitive function, therapy, I found out about all these things. I'm like, why the fuck don't people know about this shit? They're like, well, we try to tell people, but they're not interested. I'm like,

that makes sense. I remember getting those PowerPoint brews and I'm like, yeah, whatever. Well, when you foster an organization that does nothing but checks in the box, you're gonna get whatever's. They make you fill out these pre-deployment site surveys before you deploy.

How many green beans, how many cans of vegetables do you today? God forbid you drink more than one fucking beer or you're an alcoholic. Well no one's gonna say they're an alcoholic on these forms. These guys are putting away cases a night. You're not gonna say you eat a can of beans. You're gonna say you eat six cans of beans because you're fucking, you're not gonna get hit for like some poor nutrition.

You're gonna do whatever takes to get the job done. And so those are when those lives start becoming truths. I got this. I'm good. I'm good. Well, at this point, I wasn't good. And I was very vocal about it. And throughout this whole time, I'm on I get told by this doctor, he's like, hey He's my neurosurgeon. He's like what if I told you you couldn't be a Marine anymore. I'm like fuck you That was my ego Then like what he's like what if I told you you couldn't be a Marine anymore. I'm like, why do you say that? He's like, I mean you need all these requirements that says you should not be here And at the time and I had no idea what he's talking about. I'm like, I mean, you need all these requirements that says you should not be here. And at the time, I had no idea what he's talking about.

I'm like, hey, man, I'm going to school in Florida for a military education for my soft equivalent rank. And I'm like, can we have this conversation when I get back? And he's like, absolutely. So I go there and I'm there with a bunch of like special mission unit guys and we're learning leadership shit, basic big check, check box stuff that everyone's got to do in the soft community at this rank.

Very impactful, very educational, very great, ran course. And I find myself super motivated by these caliber dudes that I want to be around, because those dudes weren't fucking either friends over. They just hear in their stories, I'm like, man, your command treats you like that. That's dope. Damn, if you say you have a family problem, something fucking happens.

Something actually happens. This fucking dope. It was this whole new perspective, You say you have a family problem? Something fucking happens? Something actually happens? Like, this fucking dope. It was this whole new perspective, because now I'm not asking questions about their gear or guns or missions. I'm talking like real shit. And they're like, give me feedback.

I'm like, fuck, this is crazy. I'm like, well, we don't have that. We should have that for sure. And I come back from this opportunity with this whole new wealth of knowledge, and I'm really inspired by these guys and At the same time I still have my childhood dream. I want to go to Delta and I've spent my package multiple times in Rincor Just told to eat a dick

Through Marsock you've been too senior, you can't go, dumb shit. White lies truth doesn't matter. But I get this email sent all hands saying no rank restriction, no restrictions at all, if you meet your requirement and you get invited and you get selected, bomb voyage. I'm like, this is it. And so I call my commander, I call my boss back at home, and I make shit because I've spent on a packet before. I'm like, hey, is my packet still good? He's like, you need to come back and you gotta rerun your PFT.

I'm like, okay, so I come back from Florida. I run this PFT. Fuck it, smoke. I'm like, okay. So I come back from Florida, I run this PFT. Fuck it, smoke, I'm in the best shape of my life. Before this, I just did a bodybuilding show because I was so fucking depressed. I came back from that deployment when I'm doing that, how you feeling story? And my wife took me to a bodybuilding show

and I saw her friends up there and I'm like, this is weird, but at the same time, you had to have like, discipline to be same time, you had to have like, discipline to be up there. You had to have like, you couldn't have social anxiety and be up there. And I had all sorts of fucking things. I couldn't go bar, Walmart, out, and town, driving was stressful enough. Like everything was too stressful for me. And I'm like, damn, even the worst shape person up there had a face, I should tell a demon to get up there. I'm like, I need to do that. And so I went to go do that.

And then that ended, I'm like, I'm fucking a press skin. So I'm trying to do all these things, trying to fill all this, I'm like, basically taking this bucket, I'm trying all these new categories of life, new challenges to like find value and respect for myself because I'm just tankin'. My relationships tankin', everything,

my work life is fuckin' tankin', my views on everything is tankin', because I'm just tankin. My relationship's tankin, everything, my work life is fucking tankin, my views on everything is tankin' and I'm hurting inside. I just have this bucket and I'm just pouring water, you know, skipping water out of my boat, it seems like. And I come back from this Florida trip and I go to my neurosurgeon and I'm like, hey, I have an opportunity to go to this selection and I've been wanting to do this forever And he's like okay Well, do you think it would be a liability there?

And so I fucking paused And I'm like yeah, I fucking would. And I'm flashing back to Florida where I'm with these guys, we're having dinner. I'm like, hey, can you guys drive at night time? It's really hard for me to see now. I'm not gonna go to that music party with you guys. I'm gonna go fucking take a nap.

Back at home, before I went to this human performance section, I had opportunities to shoot a shoot house every day, had opportunities to fucking do all this training, goalies different vents that I didn't want anything to do with it. And so when this doctor asked me, do I think I would be in a liability? It all just came to me and like, yeah, I fucking would. And that's when I fucking said fuck it. I'm all in, I'm getting better.

Because I was realizing I was just lying to myself. And I repeated that same thing seven years prior, had a chance to go to selection, didn't get to go. But I also had a chance to go to this TBI clinic seven years earlier. And the doctor at the time was like, hey, if you go to this TBI clinic seven years earlier and the doctor at times like Hey, if you go to this clinic, they find anything about it It could fuck your chances over from going. I'm like, okay, fuck that. I'm not gonna go then And I'm like Cody winning a stop-lying to yourself and winning a start facing

Reality so seven years ago. I was having these tell-tell fucking signs that I was avoiding because I was a fucking robot Because I was I was trying to fill a fucking void. I was chasing my ego. I was avoiding, because that was a fucking robot. Because I was trying to fill a fucking void, I was chasing my ego, I was fulfilling what I thought was my destiny, I'm making my vision board out of the fucking young kid, come to life and I'm doing all these things and now I'm being fucking told by my own body, I can't do this anymore.

And these words of like, I need help, they're coming out of my mouth and never said them before. And I'm asking and I'm begging and I'm fucking crying and I'm pleading and I'm doing anything I can to get assistance and this is all new for me. And coming from the special operations community at this time of life, it was not normal. A lot of people thought I was full of shit.

A lot of people started talking shit, friends, units. I'm just like fuck you man. Like I'm trying to fucking live. Yeah. And, I- What are they talking shit about? Oh, it's not that bad. Cody, everyone I fucking go through some harsh shit, bro.

I'm like, shit the fuck up. Cause I knew, cause I was really being challenged at this point. I had an opportunity to like challenge myself as in, allow someone else to tell me what my truth is or to remind myself of my fucking truth is. I knew what kind of leader I was. I knew what sacrifices I made. I knew what my belief system was.

I knew what mission I did. And nobody was gonna take that away from me. And so when I'm in this fight for my life to survive, cause I'm fucking going downhill. I couldn't boil water. I'm fucking lost in a two-bebroom empty apartment. I couldn't navigate with the fucking GPS. Like it was gradually

just plummeting until I was just cry all day. And like fucking question why, I mean, what am I doing? And through this nonprofit called Operation Healing Forces, I signed up for it while I was active duty. And essentially what that was is my wife and I got to go to they all call it rato into this like skiing, all inclusive healing retreat with three other soft couples. And through that event, cause I had no confidence. I had, dude, I didn't believe myself.

I was a fucking grenade. I was destroying everything that I loved. I was swe believe myself. I was a fucking grenade. I was destroying everything that I loved. I was swearing to my mother. I was just being a real shitty sad victim person because this is all new territory for me. And through this I met a colonel, a green braid colonel, and he told me about this amazing training treatment that he had in Tampa called Merck because I made this guy fucking cry,

telling him my story because he's like, man, I went through a lot of these same things I feel for you and this dude really cared about the troops. And so I get my command to pay, to green light me to go to Florida, to go to Tampa to do this experimental treatment called Merck. I don't remember the exact acronym, but it's M-E-R-T and it was only for special operators because it was a trial. So why not fuck these guys up or see if it works before

you unleash into the forces. I'm like, this is a hope. So I'm yep. Because if you sign it for the trial, you were guaranteed an active treatment. You're guaranteed a, I think it was like 20 active treatment sessions. So I had the potential of getting like 40 sessions because you're going down there to do a experiment. And so you have a placebo case, you have your control and you have your placebo. And they didn't tell us which one we were, but I had a chance to get 40 fucking zaps to my brain to re-stimulate my neural highways, to reconnect my pathways,

and to have a fucking chance to like, be normal, it seemed like, and I was desperate as fuck. I'm like, I gotta go do this. So I did. And it was this magnet machine that sends these zaps, and how I was explaining to it, it depletes your glucose in your brain. So I was always even more tired afterwards.

But it stimulates, I do this brain scans, they figure out what part of your brain is not functioning, what's slowly firing, what's not stimulating you? What's stimulating you? And they hone in on those areas of your brain, those frequencies of your brain, and they send these tiktik tiktik tiktik tiktik tiktik tiktik tiktik These big Mickey Mouse ear magnets just zapping the front of my head, the back of my head, the top of my head, different sides. Can you feel it? Yes. Just zap in the front of my head, the back of my head, the top of my head, different sides. Can you feel it? Yes. It doesn't hurt, but because they all hooked us up to electrodes too.

So now we're getting a tens unit to our forehead because the real machine, you can feel it. It's like a magnet, like a electricity. So everyone's getting a tens unit. So whether you're getting the actual treatment or not, you're getting the same effect because they didn't want you to because placebo is a real thing, right? Yeah, you can really cure yourself from a fucking placebo medicine. Well for this case study this trial they wanted to make sure it was as like bottled up as possible, right? Take out as much, you know, gaps and securities you possibly can, keep it even playing field.

And so I found out why I was out there, you know, they couldn't tell you information because you weren't there to heal. You were there to be part of a trial, but they highly encouraged you to look around. They highly encouraged you to read things that may or may not be on the wall. And there was, I got one of these posters on the wall

that was like, walk out in the sunlight between 7-11, no glasses, no hat, fucking drink this water, do these things, reset your arctic rhythm. I was like, fuck. This is real? And I did it every fucking day I was there. And I went from panicking, I was saying at a buddy's house in Tampa and I had literally a straight shot to make Dill Air Force Base.

Straight shot, you couldn't even make it up. You couldn't mess it up. I messed it up. I was two hours late because I got lost and all I had to do was drive straight down the road. And I called my psych and I'm crying I'm like give me the fuck out of here. I can't stay here. I need to leave now and he's like hoody He's doing an amazing job. He's a Cody. I come out there two days. See how you're doing I'm like we'll bring some fucking drugs bring you know like bring bring something for this shit, dude

And I wasn't taking anything for anxiety. I Didn't want to take a bunch of medicine because at this point I'm already I was so fucked up from all these uppers that I was on and and And they just wanted to give me more. I'm like I'm so passed on this shit. It's clearly not helping me But I was desperate. I'm like I'll do anything and so he comes now and talks about edge and I show up And I started this program and dude within the edge and I show up and I started doing this program and dude, within a month, I'm using my phone.

Within a month, I'm like, not cooking meals, I'm heating up meals. I'm still aggressive, I'm still an asshole. I'm still wanting to change and grow, but not really knowing how to do it, but I'm seeing some change in my life happen. I'm getting a little bit of me back. Not fast, not much, but it was anything was better than what I was going through, because

I was a completely different person. My wife and I were married six months prior to this, and when I came back from this last deployment, I thought I fucked up. She's like, you look and act like a completely different person. She's like, I thought I made a mistake and so I was really scared because I came back and I was so different. And you know, I lost,

I lost the last bit of me that I was holding onto on that rotation. So now if I'm myself in Florida doing this treatment and I'm still doing online college, because I lived in fear, because as a special operator, you're supposed to make six figures when you get out of the military, at a minimum, you have to,

that's your norm. You have to have it agree, because I had goals, I wanted to work for the agency, and I'm smustling through all this online college, because I knew once have it agree, because I had goals. I wanted to work for the agency. And I'm smustling through all this online college because I knew once I get out, I'm not gonna fucking do this shit because it was easy and dumb and it was just fucking stupid.

But I lived in fear. I was trying to check some boxes and do what I felt and was always instructed to do. You know, you're a soft guy, you gotta get out. Six figures, have your bachelor's degree and go crush life. Roger that. And that was the things I was holding onto. And then, got to the point where my wife,

she asked me, because I realized that the agency was gonna happen. My buddy who works over there at the time, he called me and he's like, hey, I'd love to fast track your pack to the top of the stack, to get you an interview, to get you a seat to try out. What did you want to do with the agency?

I wanted to go work for Ground Branch. I wanted to go fucking fight with my friends. I wanted the freedom responsibility to fucking actually be unleashed, not be fucking prisoned. He gives me this phone call. He's like, hey brother, I hear you're retiring soon. Are you fucking interested? I'm like, I can't tell you how much this phone call means to me.

I never thought, I always dreamt that I'd be called that somebody would want me or have an invested interest in me to help me get to someplace and it happened. And as I'm talking to my phone, I'm wiping and drool up my face because I just passed out of my truck outside my headquarters building. And I'm like, I'm going to have to say no. He's like, are you sure? I'm like, yes.

And I felt like a bitch. Because I wanted to do this one thing and everything about my life is fucking changing and I have no idea who I am. And my wife asked me when I'm in Florida doing this treatment. She's like, if you had four weeks left to live, what would you want to do? Because I was panicking. What are we going to do when I get out of the ring for?

How are we going to make money? How are we going to live? What are we going to fucking do? And she asked me that question and that set us on a path that we are here today for. I said I want to take pictures and travel around. And she's like, let's do it. So I'm in Florida, but the little bandwidth that I do have, I'm researching trailers, vans. We were thinking about buying like an old school gewagon and like making like an overland rig and putting a tent on top and doing all these things and then I caught one of this this van life and I said in this link

vans were it probably see back then but they weren't what they are now they were half the price they were back in the day fully kidded out a bed Kitchen that all this type of shit in a in a dodge pro master cargo van And she's like let's fucking do it and So that's exactly what happened. I finished my treatment for them I come back home and why I was gone my wife picked up the van She drove the Maryland picked it up drove it back to North Carolina. And we just started downsizing her life. At this point, we sold her. Hold on. We've covered a lot.

Before we get into this new phase of your life, let's take a look, Barry. Let's do it. I love to talk about my meat. So what I'd like to do right now is show everybody what I'm packing. Don't get too excited, ladies. Because I'm talking about good ranchers. You see, good ranchers has premium meat cuts. So how many of you are tired of going to the grocery store and you look at the meat aisle and it's empty

or it just looks like garbage. Because that's what it is, it's garbage. That's why you get good ranchers. It gets mailed, you get meat, premium meat, mailed right to your front door. So ladies, you can't get excited about that. Who doesn't want meat mailed right to their front door? Like on call, literally, on delivery.

Anyways, comes your door. They're all individually packaged like this. Some good looking meat, right? Throw it in the freezer. You thaw them out. You never run out of meat for dinner. So, so you can have meat every single night. That's right carnivores.

So what I need you to do is go to goodranchors.com slash Sean. You're going to get $30 off your first order and they're going to ship you your meat for free. It's like a dream come true. So anyways once again go to goodorantures.com slash Sean and get your meat shipped to your front door today. All right here we are. Now we're getting to the stuff that I really wanna hear, the van. The van. Three years, all right? Three years, the van.

Yeah, so, basically she's like, hey, if you had a short amount of time to live, what would you wanna do? I said, travel, take pictures. So we started to lean towards that, create that reality. I found a van in Maryland. It was made by a van company.

We figured out how to get the funds. Because our main thing was like, how can we go do this off my disability? That was our main focus. What can I do to live a fucking life? It's simplistic as possible to figure some shit out. And that was our main goal. So at this time, I sold like my dream truck,

my classic dream truck, I sold that because it was the only liquid cash we had at the time. We sold our big, very large house. I was into that life. You know, for retirement, I wanted a panoray watch and a land rover. That's all I wanted. Very obtainable goals.

It meant something to me. And my wife, she really worked on these budgets to help me try to get those, but I knew inside that that was just these attachments to a life that I was stepping out of, and that didn't define me, but it was really hard to like kind of struggle these things, even these materialistic things.

But we sold our house, Moont moved to a good friend of ours, his name J.R., he took us in, dealt with all my BS, and if he's watching us right now, he is probably saying yes, I dealt with so much, dude, I was a grenade, such a grenade. Who's this guy?

He was one of my old teammates, and we were his roommate. When we sold our big house, he let us move in with him. So we're running one of his spare bedrooms. And then I find myself moving in apartment, surely after this. And we're working on this downsizing thing.

We're selling all of our stuff, my wife, and on all this list and things. And to try to like, you know, three bends, you put the things you want to keep, the things you want to sell, the things you want to donate and she, she coordinated everything because I was not a team player. I wanted to, I did the best that I could with what I had but I wasn't, I wasn't making it a reality as much as she was really helping us push towards that way. She was packing everything, she was fucking trooper.

And around the same time, she is looking at how pathetic I was, and she's like researching what all these pills are that I'm on, and she's like, you're literally killing yourself. We used to eat, we used to go to the grocery store and buy whatever we wanted. That's before we learn how to go to the grocery store. And you stay away from the center, and you only buy from the outside. You know, these pills, I quit cold turkey. I was straight addicted to these uppers.

I could not function without them. And I was still passing out on them to the point where the doctors wanted to give me more. I was like, you don't care about me. So I said, fuck that. And I quit all these pills, cold turkey. Now just I just dealt with it for a few weeks as I detoxed from a very not fun withdrawal. Yeah.

And then she started looking at heavy metals, and she started doing all these research. So now we're downsizing her life, transitioning to a van, but my wife is researching hundreds of freaking man hours and heavy metal detoxing. Why heavy metal detoxing? Well, because I was a brilliant guy

that packed so many dips in my mouth while throwing flashbangs and loading ammunition and cleaning my weapons system without wearing proper rubber gloves. You know, a lot of things that we are exposed to that all added up from the food that we're eating. The hormones and the meat. I was so inflamed.

So not only were downsides in your life, we're changing everything about us. We went vegan for a bit. We stopped eating meat. If we don't know where the meat came from, we didn't eat it. Because we started to learn about energy. We started to learn about all this, literally opened up a whole new slew of like parallel for me that I didn't even know existed.

Energy, healing, self-love. This is... Who cracked that? Who cracked into that? You or your wife? My wife cracked into the holistic aspect. I cracked into the self-love and energy aspect. She felt both of those, but she really led the charge with the holistic aspect and detoxing. And I had this yearning to want to find healing. I'd hear about things like mushrooms.

I'm like, oh, there's a possibility to change. I learned about cannabis. I'm like, fuck, I can do cannabis and not have to do all these pills and have a similar effect. You know, I learned about cold showers and meditating. Things that I've been exposed to before, but I didn't have the mindset or the belief system

to follow through with any of them. And so we're getting to the point now where we're down since our lives. So we, I'm like, not helping, not participating. And I'm just observing, because I'm like, pretty fucking useless. My wife made it happen for us to do it, planned everything out.

We never had a plan on where we're gonna go in the van. We just had a plan like we had to be out of this apartment by this time. That's it, that was it. We had no plan. What were you guys talking about? Where you wanted to go? We wanted nothing.

That's just- We gotta be out of this fucking apartment in 30 days. That was our only guiding principle. Holy shit. And we our only guiding principle. Holy shit. And we were all about it because I knew that if I don't fucking change my life, I'm gonna end up overseas, care to fucking go on for money. And that's will surely lead me to my death.

I felt it inside. I had a friend tell me years before, I was active duties like, bro, I really hate for you to see over there, he's telling me stories about his friends that amazing military career, amazing fucking dad, first rotation gets fucking smoked by a fucking artillery round. And I'm like, yeah, that doesn't sound fun. But I wanted it, but I also knew I had to do the extreme opposites combat, this learning

desire to go do this one thing that I had my mindset on at a very young age. And so we find ourselves in this ban and we're eating different, we're doing different shit now and I'm like, I fucking hated it. Wait, so you left, so you're, we left. Where are you going? We're just driving around. First we decided to, we wanted to head out west

Where we wanted to head to the Utah area So you you didn't have a fucking destination. You're just like just getting the car and fucking go west. Yeah That's it. That's it. We just made it happen Um, what are you guys talking about while we're driving? Yeah. Where are you leaving for? We're leaving from North Carolina. We drop off some stuff in stores because we have some family heirloom stuff that we didn't get rid of but everything else we damn you're downsized. Packed out our rig. I loaded like a tactical vehicle. Two is one, one is none of everything. Tomahawks, flashlights, kinlights, med kits, like,

dude, I went berserker. And we talked about going into Canada before, I'm like, well, shit, I'm not gonna bring my guns, because I don't, how do I deal with that while I'm on the road? And so I'm like, what other weapon systems, security platforms do I have with me? And I'm thinking all these combat tactical scenarios, worst case scenario stuff, which is over complicating the process.

So we had to our in-laws house that lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, said, oh wow, and then we took off, we had a west. And our mission was to go on a small maiden voyage to work out the kinks because at the time our van had a shower and a composting toilet. It was fully decked out, but we weren't really sure how we wanted it all set up. It was just kind of a shanty on wheels at this point, which is a hot mess. And we get to Utah, I got a few friends out there

and I found myself just wanting to be in their home and use internet and I wanted to be on the fucking phone and I was addicted to technology and I needed dopamine and I needed attention and this is the phase of life that I was in. I was so empty and lonely inside, even though I had amazing life, I was trying to feel voids.

I was trying to fucking just escape the suffering that I was going through, because of the time that it's the value of suffering, because I forgot all the hardship of the suffering that I went through in the military, because I literally was a different person. I went from not being able to, or functioning to not boiling water,

that was a real psychological, you know, mental fuck to me, and I'm just trying to survive. So we get to Utah and I'm not happy. I'm kind of miserable inside the van because I want, I don't want to be a nature. I've rejected nature. I'm like, I spent all these years in nature in the military getting a rain dawn, being cold.

I don't wanna do that. Victim, powder pants. Well, I still go fuck. You can say in the van if you want to, but the dog's not gonna walk away. I'm like, fine. So I say in the van, I get high, I make music, I'm like a computer.

If I had service, I'd fucking disappear into the matrix. I just really played a big victim game. Then we linked with our friends in Utah, Salt Lake City, and one of them, he's like, you thought about mushrooms? I'm like, I have, but I wasn't ready at the time. He's like, I can hook you up. I'm like, okay, what do I do? And he's like, he's like, measuring and he's like, okay, take these, but this would be like one journey. So split that up throughout this pile that I give you.

I'm like, okay. And so that was all the information I got. I'm like, Roger that. And my wife knew that I wanted to do this and it came about. I seeked it, I felt it, I wanted it. I visualized it and it appeared oddly enough. We find ourselves in this BLM land.

And I told her like, hey, I'm gonna go do this and she's like, okay. So I bundled up, I grabbed my journal. I wrote down intentions, not expectations, intentions, all basically I just wrote down all the things that were way me down in life. I've been told you to do that. Me, buddy, or you just did it?

I just did it. No shit. I was, I got into journal a little bit before this and journaling helped transform my life. It helped me communicate with myself and it helped me find a place to be honest. Because I wasn't very honest at this point in my life. I was very internal.

So I said a lot, Ifines. I don't care. But actually I wasn't fine. In fact, I cared a lot. I just didn't really know how to articulate these things. Because I was so hurtful, I felt unworthy of love. I felt unworthy of an opportunity to live. I felt unworthy of a lot of shit. And so I wrote these things down, and then I fucking blasted off to the abyss. And this experienced transform my life forever. I did about three grams. Three, four grams maybe? Nothing crazy.

But for me being a, being a newbie at this, it was pretty significant. It was enough to take me over the edge where I had a break through and I have these piffenies and these a-ha moments. And, where were you? I was in the middle of woods looking at the full moon. Trippinpping mad balls. What are you saying?

At first, I saw what I would consider the universe. I'm like blasting through space. You got eyes open. My eyes are open. I'm just like, all this is playing in my mind. I'm not moving anywhere. But the interpretation from my mind, my consciousness to what I think I'm observing,

I'm blasting through space, start jumping, just mock speed. I'm being showed what's possible. I'm being showed no boundaries, at least my interpretation. And then it just hits me. And I have all these self-internal reflections of things that I wanted different in my life. And what it showed me from this very first journey was that I could change my life if I wanted to. And before this time, I didn't know if I was strong enough to do that. I didn't know if I could change my life. I thought this was it. I thought I was just going to be a piece of shit the rest of my life.

I thought I was going to be a sad person in the rest of my life. I thought I was going to be a hateful person in the rest of my life. I thought I was going to be a victim in the rest of my life. I thought I was going to be ungrateful the rest of my life. I didn't want to be any of those things, but that's the sole trap, the mind trap I felt myself in. And then I reintegrated back to my wife and I journal this whole process.

I journal every experience I have. And I come up with this sentence that I'm living a life without me. And I reflected on that for a little bit, didn't really know what that meant. I looked at a picture we had hanging in our van. It was a picture of me and her, my wife. And I'm like, I don't fucking like that guy.

And I'm still kinda like on the up. I'm coming down, but I'm like, still pretty fluffy and filling light. Very stress free, very communicative. I'm caulking, making eye contact. And my wife's just sitting there. She's just there for the show. You're still on the effects.

I'm on the calm down. I'm not peaking. I'm not blasting off. I'm not having all these introspective things anymore outside. I felt that it was coming to an end, and I come back in the van, cause I'm hungry, and I'm like, I think we had like a fucking pork chop or something,

and I look like a buffalo and made a really big deal about it. Look at a picture of me on the wall, I'm like, I don't like that guy. I don't like him. And she's like, what are you talking about? That's you, I'm like, I don't fucking like that guy. And she's like, okay, and then I'm going back to journaling. And the next day I wake up and I'm just, I could fly.

I had no stress, I had no anxiety. I felt happy for the first time in a very long time. I felt like I had a fucking chance. Well, since healing was all new to me, I rode that wave. But what I didn't do was reinvest into myself. I didn't take the money earned, the energy earned, and read a positive into me. I broke the car in the rule.

I only took, but I didn't give. And what I learned through all my other experiences that I had to give that back. You know, what I gained, I had to put back into me. And what that momentum I get, I had to put that momentum back into me. I have to take advantage of the space that I've created where in this situation I just rode the wave.

After 30, 45 days, I got to press a shit again. Super anxious again. Very limited on what I wanted to do in life. At this time, I didn't know what I got to press a shit again. Super anxious again. Very limited on what I wanted to do in life. At this time, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Before we go into that, who's the guy that gave you the suggested that you try, so aside? He's a marine buddy of mine, he's a civilian dog handler. That's all, I mean, so it worked for him.

It worked for him, he had his demons still, but he's like, I mean, so it worked for him. It worked for him. He had his demons still, but he's like, hey man, these help. And I was desperate where, if you would have said, eat your own poop, it might help you. I would have tried it. I was. How long did the psilocybin trip last? This particular one was about five, six hours. Okay.

And I'm just, I'm drilling the whole time. I just, I'm journaling the whole time. I'm like staring at the moon the whole time. I'm like, I'm just coming up with all these aha moments and epiphanies and holy shit that makes sense. And at the same time, I'm come up with this logo. And I didn't know what it was. I just drew it out. And so I leave this opportunity,

I leave this journey and I feel just refreshed. I feel fucking reincarnated. I feel like I have a chance. And I'm looking at my journal and I have this logo drawn down and I have this idea to start a company, I don't know where. And a company is the don't know where. And companies, the company I own today is We Defy the Norm. And the logo I drew was my symbol for my brand.

And what I learned from that experience and that symbol, my symbol represents the Trinity, the mind-biting spirit. But in the center, I have a time glass, an hour glass. And what I learned was that if we align ourselves, we can maximize our time. If we are online, our time maximizes us. And what I mean by that is if I align myself, if I invest into my mind, body and spirit, and I actually put an honest effort energy towards that evolution of self, I can now utilize my time. If not my time, you, you, you, you, without me even fucking knowing it. See, there was a point in my life where I thought tomorrow would come. There was a point in my life

at this point that time will heal this. And then I realized after this experience that that was all a fucking lie, we're not owed anything, time is not guaranteed, tomorrow is not guaranteed, and if anything, time is short, and we don't have much of it. And there are times that are true power and are true energy, and with our time, we can change our lives or we can be a fucking victim.

And it just propelled me on this new course of life where I wanted to fucking heal and I wanted to share everything about it. Because it was so profound and I just looked at my entire life completely different from that moment forward that I was like, I have to do this. This is my call. This is it. And I didn't know it precisely the time. But that epiphany of realizing that time is so fucking short and that I'm going to die one day. Really put it in perspective and I told myself like, Cody, you can go through all this shit that you've gone through and fucking just give up and live a mediocre fucking life.

Where you, you can be a victim. You can feel sorry for yourself. You can do nothing different mediocre fucking life. Where you can be a victim. You can feel sorry for yourself. You can do nothing different with your life. Or you can go face the fucking unknown. You can do this shit that's hardest fuck. You can do the things that make you uncomfortable. You can put yourself in positions and situations you never once imagined.

For a chance, or you can have the fucking norm. You could have an acceptance of what you currently have. And I realized that that really sucked, and I didn't want that life. And I realized that everything leading up to this point was all by grand design. You know, everything retiring early from the military. Being able to do this brain treatment, being able to get this van, being able to live on a very, very, very small paycheck, having a supportive wife and a partner to help navigate this forest.

And I felt empowered more than I ever had before at this point, but I was still struggling, I was still hurting, but I had this little flicker of light that said Okay, you can say you want to quit all day, but you know you're really not going to So say what you got to say do what you get a fucking do and let's go and That's when I started diving into like Finding me because I don't know who I was And it made me ask questions of who are you and what do you even want in life. And I don't have the answers for that.

And so we're traveling around. We leave this beautiful place, this beautiful campsite. And I'm just, I'm fucking high on life, dude. I love the fuck out of life. But I disobeyed the fucking golden rule, the unsaid rule, at the time I didn't know this. I don't even know what's the real thing, but it's how I'm interpreting it, because now I do it completely different, because it wore off after like 30 days, this high went away. I was noticing that my cognitive, my brain treatment that I did was going away.

I was resorting back to what happened, where am I at, what's going on, and I was kind of deteriorating. And then that sent me back off and to a victim mindset, I was feeling sorry for myself, feeling sad. And so we start traveling around. We're just traveling around. We have no purpose in place.

We spend much time as we can in BLM land. I'm connecting more in nature now. I'm not rejecting it. My wife is finally getting me out of my comfort zone because I wanted to stay in my little bubble And now I'm doing more nature activities. I'm walking outside the dogs for jumping in streams and creeks and chasing waterfalls chasing fucking rainbows Living on edge of cliffs until we run out of water like we're fucking doing it and All this happened about like two months and we're like, you know what?

Let's change the van up. We've been in this bitch long enough. Let's change it up, let's make it ours. So we haul aspect to East Coast. We do a bunch of modifications. We head up to Maryland, do some more modifications, head up to Canada, get some custom bug screens made. Like we're setting now for success.

And through this process, I run into more plant medicine. I do more psychedelics, I do more psilocybin. And more. Is it all psilocybin? All of it is, at this point. And the messages are becoming more profound. I'm expecting to blast off and look at this beautiful universe this this limitless infinite abundant place

And I'm just being told fuck you bro. You're going in and I'm being repeated these repeated patterns. You're living a life without you. I'm not me. I'm soulless all these weird things I'm like fuck dude because I was still feeling empty no matter how much I wanted to save myself I was still being instructive no matter how many aha moments I had I was still falling on my own sword I was still being disrespectful. I still being selfish and rude But I was making this two steps forward one step back process. So it was very confusing. I'm like, fuck, dude, we're gonna heal or we're not going to heal. And I didn't know I was navigating all this by myself. Now my friends were into this stuff. I wasn't really into books,

reading books outside of like the alchemist at this point. I wasn't diving too much into anything. I was still pretty entry level into energy. I was still pretty entry level into nutrition and detoxing and the whole aspect of like the water you drink, you know, purified water. I thought all this stuff was free upies, you know. I never really saw how it benefited me until I stayed consistent with and then I started to see my life change more.

And I find myself in Tennessee. And I was there probably four or five months earlier at a friend's house and we're talking about I'm telling about all these great epiphanies. I mean I'm kind of having this like semi-god complex where I'm like I feel like I know all the answers to the universe and what life is all about and it was a really flicking time in my life. There's a lot of new perspectives gained and I was having a hard time applying to sermon. Oh, sorry to cut you off, but did you have a schedule?

I mean, what was the determining factor of you to do more? Taking more psilocybin. And how long was there any schedule? Was it all right, I'm gonna do it every 30 days? Just whenever you felt like it. Whenever I felt like it. Did you feel like it all the time?

No, not with mushrooms. Okay. With mushrooms, those were kind of a violent ride for me. Very profound, very helpful, very opening, but they, I was probably doing them. I was probably doing three to five grand journeys, maybe every two or three months at this point. Okay.

I was curious. I wanted to know more. Yeah. I was absolutely fucking curious of what, of a new world that I had no idea existed. Were you learning new things every year? I was learning meditation, I was learning chakras, I was learning energy, I was learning about words, I was learning about yourself, I mean. Oh yeah, all these things. I was learning that, you know, how deceptive

I was to myself and how I was a root cause of everything in my life and how the power to change was all me, not anyone else, and because I was always asking for help and I was always reaching out, but I really needed to reach in. And the more I did, the more I told and the more it told, the more I explored, because I would take that momentum and put it right back into me. I'm like, I'm feeling really good, feeling really chiepery. So let me do more of these practices

because it gave me the space to find different modalities, which then helped me write down different words in my journal, which led me to different avenues in life, which led me to different opportunities and experiences, and it was all interconnected. And I find myself, we're talking with the friend of mine, we're talking about Ayahuasca comes up and I'm like, I'm ready for that.

He's like, oh bro, you should go do Ayahuasca. I'm like, do I ain't ready for that shit? And I was scared. Cause I was tasting what change could be like, but I wasn't ready for change. Because it was called a commitment and I was not willing to commit. Why? Why weren't I was scared?

It sounded like it was all positive things that it was. But I was scared. You were scared of what? What's the frontier you're scared to leave everything behind? I wasn't worried about leaving anything behind. I was scared to have to create change. I was scared of what I anything behind. I was scared to have to create change. I was scared of what I could become. I was scared that I could be happy.

And I was struggling with a lot of self-inflicting wounds where I felt unworthy to even have this opportunity. So I was struggling with a lot of self-sabotage and limiting beliefs like I'm not good enough. And I was struggling inside. I have all these epiphanies or these messages saying like I'm living good enough. And I was struggling inside. You know, I have all these epiphanies or these messages saying like, I'm living a life without me.

I have no soul. And I started to believe that. Cause I felt that for a long time in my life. I felt I was solace for a very long time. And I kinda attribute that to these open contracts that I put out in combat. Oh, shit. Give me the fuck outta here. You know, these silent things, these verbal things, dude.

I was just putting that shit out into the universe. I don't know who the fuck I was talking to. Yeah. I was saying fucking anything to survive. I was fucking thinking anything to survive. And so I don't know what kind of contracts I fucking dealt with back in the day. At this time of my life, I believe in ghosts. I believe in energy. I believe in this shit.

And now I'm like, damn, bro, it's time to pay the piper. You fucking day some contracts, now it's time to pay up, bro. And I'm realizing, well shit, well how do I rectify this? How do I change this? So I find myself in my friend's house. This is a few months later, we're traveling around the van. I mean, I'm loving the van, it's great, it's fun. But I'm still being a jerk, I'm still being poopy pants. But the van, the great thing about the van was,

we weren't tied to anything. So hold on, just backtracking. So you're saying that you believe whatever you threw out in the moment into the universe, you know. Got to answer on that. Now, because whatever you threw out happened, I wanna get the fuck out of here, I wanna live.

You're out of there, you did live. You think, I don't know. I've opened to it. You owe for that. I was open to it all. You know, I had a lot of life and death situations that I've walked away from, cutaways, shot in the helmet, planes fucking, having explosions inside, like a lot of unexplainable things.

Very explainable, but a lot of weird shit. And at this point in my life, I was stepping into a new evolution of self. I was asking much harder questions that I've ever, I've never even contemplated them. So I found myself in my friend's house month later and I get a hold, I show up and, lo and behold, my friend asks me,

is that okay, are you interested in any mushrooms? My friend has some, I'm like, yes. Because I learned this one thing about coincidence is a long time ago, they're not a real thing. They're opportunities. So you can say their coincidences and doubt them and judge them or you can have faith in and believe in it. And so I chose to have faith in this aspect, especially when it came to

plant medicine, because I was desperate. And I do another journey at his house, my friends house, and it's all inside, same with some of the same things on repeat, but at the end of it, it said, I'm ready. And I didn't know what the fuck that meant. I came to the campfire, this is like five hours later, six hours later, people are like, how was it? I'm like, I told them what's going on,

what I saw, what I felt, and it obviously makes sense to me to them, they're like, do this motherfucker, psychotic. But I'm like, dude, tell me I was ready for the next level. And they're like, okay, whatever. I thought the same thing. Well, the next fucking day I get a phone call at 10 o'clock from a buddy of mine who said, hey,

are you interested to go to prove to do ayahuasca? And I said yes. And it's like, well, here it is. Here's a deal. It tells me this deal. At the time, I have this opportunity to go take this job in LA to make Hannah Reffice money working in the cannabis industry.

And this all worked out before I was gonna go do this. And at first, I tell my wife, I can't do it. She's like, why can't you? I'm like, I'm fucking, I'm scared. How am I gonna afford that? She's like, we'll find a way. Because I was trying to, I wanted to, but I was scared. I was scared to invest, especially financial invest.

Because I had, luckily, a nonprofit, Herod's heart projects took care of me. They're, they've specialized in soft veteran community. I just had to pay for my ticket. And so, two weeks later, if I myself am Peru, I am fucking terrified. I'm fucking traveling across country by myself. I am fucking terrified. I'm having to do these things and speak up

and raise my hand and get a ticket and do this and I'm going to country writing and speak their language, I'm terrified. My confidence is zero. You know, my operator skills are fucking diminished and I'm still a hot mess. And so I find myself in Peru, I link up to the street. It was a very well known one of his names,

Dennis McKenna, him and his brother, Terence McKenna, who's deceased. They're huge in the psychedelic world. The fathers of it almost. A lot of the aspects, a lot of the research and studies and the papers and the laws and policies push for him. And he was hosting this event. And I go there and I link with a shaman. We do this whole thing and we're getting ready for our first ceremony the following day. This first Iawaska ceremony and I'm like, fuck, I don't know what to expect. I was just hoping I didn't shit myself because I heard these horror stories. Like, oh, you can, you purge one way or another.

I'm like, oh my god, worst case scenario. That's who I was. Worst case scenario guy at the time. And so I go to my first ceremony I'm like, oh my god, worst case scenario. That's who I was, worst case scenario guy at the time. And so I go to my first ceremony and I'm like, I drink my brew, it's my time. And as I'm waiting my turn to get my cup, people are already flopping on the ground, making all sorts of weird-nast noises.

I'm like, holy shit, this is a real McCoy. I get my brew, I meet my Ranger buddy there, he gets his brew and I'm like, holy shit, this is a real McCoy. I get my brew, I meet my Ranger buddy there, he gets his brew and I'm like, sitting there. I'm open-minded, I'm waiting, nothing. Not a fucking thing, not a fucking thing. Some rumble guts, couple purges, I don't see anything, I hear nothing, I feel nothing. I go to the shaman, I tell him what's going on

and he feeds me like two more bruises, like two more cups. Nothing. And I went to him the next day, and I asked him, am I not worthy for this? And he's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, I told him the story of, I felt like I was living a life without me, that I was solace.

And he looks at me, he grabs my hand, and he's like tonight, meet me upstairs at the yoga room at like 6 p.m. whatever after dinner. So I go up there, my interpreter is there, and she's like, what's going to happen is you're going, the shaman's going to perform a soul or retrieval ceremony on you. I'm like, what? She's like, he's going to perform a soul retrieval ceremony on you. I'm like, what? She's like, he's gonna perform a soul retrieval ceremony on you. On you, I'm like, okay. So I stripped down my underwear,

I fucking lay on the ground, I lay in this like pentagram, my body. And he puts his cups around me, puts these glasses of water. He's like, measures them up, my head, each point of my hands, each point of my feet. And he starts at my left leg

and she's like, stay absolutely still, whatever you do, don't move. I'm like, okay, I'm not a medicine, I'm not an eating narcotics, I'm not drunk, I'm nothing. And this dude starts singing his acatos, starts doing his chants, he starts on my left side and works, this is me clockwise, he works clockwise around me. By the time he got to my right arm, I'm fucking profusely shaking, I'm doing some like polter guy shit, my eyes are in the back of my fucking head and I'm crying.

And I'm like, what is fucking going on? And she's like, Cody, don't move. Don't move. If you move, you're gonna break the circle. I'm like, and my back is fucking killing me. I got this pinch in my back and it is fucking, I wanted to move. So, but I knew I came to Peru to surrender.

I came there to fucking go all in. And if I knew if I fucking moved my foot, wiggled my butt. If I did anything but my best, I'd thrown away this opportunity of a fucking lifetime. So I was committed to the fucking death. And I'm like, breathing all heavy. I'm doing a bunch of weird, funky chicken stuff. And I'm like, Cray, I'm like, what's you're going on? I'm conscious at the time, my eyes are the back of my fucking head. She's like, Cody, don't move. And he gets to my left hand and he finishes.

He finishes his singing and he puts his hand on my chest and I, I have this big release, this big exhale. And I just feel so at peace. this big exhale and I just feel so at peace. And he says this pervert me and I'm like, what the fuck just happened? She's like, well, he entered through your back, your pain point and that's how he accessed you and he said that your soul was buried very deep down

inside you by a bunch of dark entities. And so he had to fight them off and he brought it back to you. So when he placed his hand on your chest, he brought your soul back to you. And I'm like blown away, dude. I'm like, this is some like magic shit. Yeah.

Almost a disbeliever. And I'm like, what have worked? I'm like, what do I do now? Did it work? Well, the next ceremony, it was, I felt it. I have the same experiences, but what I was could showed me from this experience, how it was all collective, was it showed me to reconnect to me, to find me. It showed me how to clear up the headspace the

Care cell of movies and thoughts that are playing nonstop in my head that I was always holding against me Not allowing myself to heal and grow and move forward. It showed me how to address that It showed me how to feel myself and how to connect to energy So my second ceremony It showed me how to clear the space up. My third ceremony, it showed me how to connect to energy, how to charge myself. So now, when the shaman was singing his acatos, because he's on brew too at this point,

he's tapped into all of us, and he's singing, and I just, I'm just getting charged. And I'm just feeling all this just life, just come to me and I'm feeling everything I've never felt before. I'm just like, I feel this dude singing. I feel his energy. I fucking feel it.

And we finish. And they're like, okay, no red meat, no drugs. For like three weeks, I'm like, that's it. I still feel like I was missing something. And so, one of my Ranger buddy there, he had access to Chonga, which is, my understanding, it's like a flower based DMT. Like you smoke it, it looks like flower, right?

Like cannabis. But it's a longer lasting than DMT, DMT, five to 10 minutes. Chonga is like 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how much you hit. And he's like, bro, this is a cherry on top. I'm like, what? New to all this.

I just had a silver tree bowl. I just had ayahuasca. I don't know. Dude, I'm junior boot as fuck. This all new to me. But I'm like, I came here to find self love and I don't feel like I found that. I smoke this Changa. And he's, I'm like, I came here to find self love and I don't feel like I found that. I smoke this changa.

And he's, I'm like, what do I do? He's like, ask it what you want to see an experience. I'm like, oh, fucking no. He's like, ask to show you the coolest thing that you've ever seen. I'm like, okay. So I ripped this bong and I'm fucking gone. Dude, I'm fucking gone. Visual, I'm in a different dimension.

I come out of this thing like 30 minutes later, I'm like, whoa! He's like, right, I'm like, dude! He's like, you want to do it again? I'm like, yes. Cause like, I went there and I asked it to show me the coolest thing. Guess what? It's show me the coolest thing. But that's not why I was there. What was it? What was it there? What me the coolest thing, but that's not why I was there. What was it? What was it there?

What was the coolest thing? The coolest thing, dude, I fucking saw a different dimension that I can't see with my own eyes. I saw happiness. I saw freedom. I saw feeling. I saw emotion. I saw fucking chance.

I saw opportunity. I saw limitless fucking abundance. I saw the mountains fucking smile at me. They waved at me. I saw the fucking sky like it was the first time I ever opened my eyes. Did you actually see? Oh yes.

Yes. Or were you seeing everything that you saw before you smoked it? But it was just another perspective. Now it was like the exact same thing same thing in a different perspective the same people that were there I saw them they're like fucking plant people. They're all tall giants I'm like what the fuck it was weird to look at people in the face Looking at the fucking the smiling waving Mountain was trippy. I was like oh shit. So I'm gonna go look at these people. Oh, should you actually? Okay, my eyes are open So I'm gonna go look at these people. Oh shit. Oh shit.

My eyes are open, I'm seeing this all. No. And then I'm spinning in my own head at the same time. So I rip it again. And this time I asked, I wanted to find love for me. And I lived my whole entire life. Everything about my life, I lived it all over again. And how everything in my life was leading me to that point right now, where I was at right now,

all these people that I met here, all these different faces were all part of my life, and how everything was connected to one, and how everyone's just mirror of us, and how everything that we encounter in life is something that we must see to move on to the next phase. Or we can see that as normal, just a person, just an opportunity, just a coincidence. And it dissolved all that delusion that I had. And then I ended up spinning in this fucking abyss of hell, this darkness falling.

And as I'm falling, I'm seeing words, and I'm trying to speak them into existence, and the words are I love me. But they're coming out very broken, like my very first radio transmission when I got shot in the helmet. It was I love me. And I'm like, that's not good enough.

That's not a fucking sentence. Those are three separate words. And as I'm spinning, that's not good enough. That's not a fucking sentence. Those are three separate words. And as I'm spinning further and further and further into this endless, bottled-less pit just falling, I'm fighting so hard to see the words. I love me, as soon as I see the words, I love me and I open my eyes and the trip's over. I knocked over a chair in the process.

I'm sitting in this beautiful garden in Peru. I knocked over a chair as I was flocking around the ground, and I got in the chair and I just started to cry. And I fucking cried about everything. I really had, I literally had this love for me that I never experienced before and I realized that all this other love that I thought I was giving and thought I had, I had none of it because I had none of it for myself. And I realized that without me, none of that is fucking possible.

I can't give what I don't have. That's why I wasn't growing, that's why I wasn't evolving, that's why I wasn't healing, because I didn't even know what I was growing and evolving from. I was an incomplete puzzle fucking piece. And I was just brought back together and shown that you are here for more. And my life changed.

I went home and I was happy, but my environment wasn't same. My environment was a product of my existence previously. And so then I spent the next years changing and rewriting my story so I can grow and heal. Now I fucking truly, I felt connected, I had my soul back, I fell in love for myself, and I'm willing to fucking fight for that. Can we go back for just a second? You mentioned the environment that you had created.

Is that how you worded it before? Mm-hmm. What does that mean? Well, I think I know what it means because I felt that after I began five of me, oh, experience it, so I'm just gonna share. Yeah. What I noticed is how people,

how, what I noticed, the first thing I noticed was how my wife was acting. When I got back from that, and my wife is a very positive person. I'm a very negative person. And when I got back from my I began 5MEO DMT trip, when we would be out in town, I've noticed how my wife was, and I wasn't like that anymore. And I realized that that was, I mean, essentially that was me rubbing off on my wife, all that fucking negativity.

And I was happy as I was after that experience. It made me sad because I knew I fucking did that. I was like, fuck, man, she's judging those people because I fucking judge everybody. And all that kind of stuff, you know, she's me a negative because I was so fucking negative. And so many things that I observed that I saw Katie doing that I felt guilty because I knew I was like, if she'd never would have met me,

she wouldn't be fucking acting like that. And I didn't realize how much I had, how much of an effect that had on her until I got home from that and it was based, you know, you're fucking cleansed of that shit after an experience like that. And so I had to recreate my environment. Is that what you're talking about? Oh yeah. You know, I I put my wife through the ringer for years

and as I was healing, she was holding space for you while I made to do what I needed to do, supporting me in every aspect, but just taking to the face every time. You know, just being hurt, being let down. Being disappointed, being mistreated, being disrespected, and here I am happy. Here I am actively pursuing, starting a business, actively pursuing healing and she's suffering. And that sucks, that sucks to watch.

And, but she's still with me. It is what it was. I couldn't change the past and I realized I couldn't heal either until I started to forgive myself. You know, I couldn't stop. I couldn't keep on being mad at myself for fucking doing this shit to my wife for all these months and all these years.

Because if I did, I was never going to let go of that past. I'm just going to let go of that version. I mean, that story. And then I was always going gonna repeat the same shit. And so I had to forgive that version of me so I could become who I am today. And you know, it's tough on her because it didn't stop with ayahuasca. I learned about DMT. Then I learned about acid, LSD. Then I learned about five of me, oh. Then I learned about all these other things. And I'm like, I felt so called to them.

I felt so called to put myself out there because I realized that self-hailing mental health is a weird space and people don't like it. Because I realize that I have the opportunity to hold a mirror up for people. Anyone can point a finger, but I hold a mirror up for people and I can show you your true self. And that is not a comfortable thing for people to see.

It's also not a comfortable thing for people to see what they can be because it must cost you your old life for the new life. And I realized that these experiences of psychedelics and these these self-explorations and these pondering sessions and these these amazing cannabis evenings where I'm filling up journal upon journal of fucking information I called downloads and these things that I feel called and compelled to say, I'm like, I have to do something with this. And I know that everyone's in the plant medicine. I know that everyone's not into cannabis. I know that everyone's aren't into these modalities than even healing.

So at this whole time, I start sharing my story online, what I'm going through, my pain points, and I realize that I have this ability to help people see that, you know, what the medicine has showed me was that I'm medicine. And so for someone out there who's not courageous or they don't want to or this against their belief system or they're just not about that life because it's very taboo. If you have a society that is only fed red apples, their entire life, and then you come out of nowhere to have a green apple, are you interested?

They're like, what the fuck is that? That is a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. Because some people are like me, but they don't feel like they're worthy to change. They feel like they must pay their fucking carmac debt, stay in the hell loop system and cycle that they're in, and never fucking evolve, and that's all they're worthy of.

And that's simply not true. If that was the case, why are we even exist? Why are we alive? Why do we have a thing called, why do we even exist? Why are we alive? Why do we have a thing called time? Why do we age? Why do we evolve? Why are those things there? If that was the case.

If you fucked up once, why would we have the opportunity to continue on? When we feel so unworthy of being happy and to be loved and to share that love, why would we just stop? and to share that love, why would we just stop? And so that's what I would really respect and love about the plant medicine is that, it might not be for everybody, but healing is for everybody.

And they might not go through the experience that I go through, but if I can share my story, if I can share that glimpse of hope and belief like, yo bro, just cause you suck today doesn't mean you got to suck tomorrow, just because you want to quit doesn't mean you have to quit. You know, just because times are hard, just because you're suffering now doesn't mean it's not worth it. We rise through the suffering.

My whole life has been fucking suffering. I've smiled a lot, I've enjoyed a lot, I've had fun a lot. If there's been a lot of suffering along the way. Even now I still suffer. I'm human. But that is what sets parades us from who we were yesterday to who we can become today. Is that suffering process. And through all these different psychedelic experiences,

modalities and haven't tried them all, but I've definitely tried a lot. It's always shown me that I am limitless, I can create anything I want to, and I am the fucking power. I am that energy, I am that light, I am all these things that I seek in life. I just have to give my self-promission to fucking accept them and acknowledge them. I have to have that give myself permission to be courageous for myself and say, like, I need help.

I need to take a knee. I need your assistance, you know, and that's not easy for dudes to do, especially dudes. Dudes are the worst, veterans are the worst. And getting out and sharing these stories and going through all these experiences and people thinking I'm fucking crazy

because I'm like posting, I speak differently, I love philosophy, I speak and live philosophy because that gives my life purpose. Because if I'm not expanding, I'm fucking dying. And if I'm dying, why am I trying? Well I'm constantly dying. So how can I flip the script on that? I'm dying the day I was born. My time is fucking short.

So am I going to suffer in silence how I was taught, how I was raised in the system of indoctrination and you're indoctrinated through fear, through shock and awe, and through discipline. How can I recreate that same pattern but opposite? So I started diving into conspiracies. I started diving into fucking the universe that energy what is God? I started to seek out in this belief like what is belief I had no belief The stories don't really make sense to me. I never really bought off on them But I knew that I had no belief in anything and I knew that was a huge hindrance in my evolution of growth and self Because if I didn't fucking believe in anything, why would I even

try? And now I actually want to fucking try because I'm seeing traction in my life. I'm like, K-code, you can't stop. So I kept down this fucking path of like trying to explore my own life. And I realized that through, especially DMT, especially LSD, there was a different reality taking place right now right in front of us

And it's the same perspective of You go outside and it's raining and you're like oh shit. It's raining my day is ruined But then 30 seconds the rain clears sun comes out you're like oh fuck yeah the rain's out What And so I take realities and What? What? And so I take realities and perspectives like that and I apply it to the psychedelics and I see the cross-reference and see everything as perspective. I can be a victor, I can be a victim.

I can say I'm happy or I can choose to be unhappy. I can take these gifts of opportunity, these gifts of wisdom, these gifts of wisdom, these gifts of chance and time, and I can apply them to something bigger than myself, or I can be selfish and do nothing but didn't ride the wave and wondering why I keep on going back to the same place that I fucking started at. And I live that cycle for a couple of years, learning, exploring, educating myself, had no one to talk to, lost a lot of friends, my circle was extremely small, not by choice.

And as I'm navigating these systems, these loops, I'm like, wait a second. One, no one knows anything. Two, I only have is my truth. And three, I can only control my thoughts and my actions. And if I know I can control my thoughts and my actions, I can forget myself and my wrong doings and fucking grow and evolve. If I control my thoughts and my actions,

I can choose to rewrite my fucking story and then change who I am through that story and how I tell that story. Because of the time I was very victim, wondering why am I not changing my life, why is my life not growing and evolving, but I was telling the same old story, doing different shit, expecting different results.

Same old story, doing different shit, expecting different results, always ending up back where I started from, because my story was never changing. And then I started diving into fucking cognitive and quantum field and Joe dispens, and the subconscious mind, and realizing that we are programmed from a fucking childhood state to live in fear, to be suppressed, to forget our power.

Yeah. And if you can look at that, you can look at, well, what happened? What went wrong? When did we stop believing in ourselves? All my trips almost, I feel like play more, be a kid more, have more of this feminine energy. Feminine energy to like the Instagram commandos,

like what? Was? No, a player. I had too much masculine energy. I'm task oriented. I gotta do these things. I have these goals, these tasks. I wasn't setting time to play and to be and to exist.

I wasn't letting go of control and just going outside with no intention other than to be outside, going on a fucking walk without my phone, walking my dogs and actually talking to my dogs by fucking getting lost in my mind. You know, having no true purpose, not being present. And I hold my kid, I look at that fucking dude in the eyes. I'm connected to that kid. I don't fuck with my phone with my kid. I don't get distracted with my kid. He's my eyes. I'm connected to that kid. I don't fuck up my phone with my kid. I don't get distracted with my kid.

He's my kid. I'm with him. And then I struggle and I fight for space to be present with my wife. I fight struggle for space to be present with a task at hand with my goals and my dreams, my visions, my clarity. You know, and now I take all those years of suffering and I play it to the suffering that I'm doing now.

The suffering of, you know of limiting beliefs, doubts, evolution, growth, what is healing? Are you even fucking healed? Is that even a thing? Can you even be healed? And I've come to this conclusion that it's not a, it's not a, I'm healed. I've learned that it's about the destination.

It's not, sorry, it's not the destination to the journey, I've learned it's about the journey. And the journey that I've committed to is this fucking path of fucking unknown. It's the I'm never going to be I'm never going to stop growing. I'm never going to stop evolving. I'm never going to stop my belief system in what I believe in. That's unwavering. That is my why to exist with my belief system of how I feel. That's always up for debate. Because how I feel could be's always up for debate. Because how I feel could be an emotional state of where my ego's controlling my day,

vice my heart, my love. And I realize that I'm never above this expansion of self. And I realize that the more I work on me, the more I rewrite my stories, the more the stories that I have lived and impacted other people can change also. You know, me working on myself has given my wife

that space to work on herself in the ways that she finds fitting and needs to. And now our roles are reversed where I'm fucking being there for her. And it sucks. It's uncomfortable. It's not fun. But that's the price.

Because through the suffering is what you seek. And I see that now. Suffering is like, I want to fix. I want Amazon Prime. I want happiness. I want now. I want dopamine. I want instant gratification.

There is no I did this one thing and I'm cured for life and I never have to ever invest myself again. No, because your weight just might be bigger than mine that you're writing. We always have to invest in ourselves continuously. We're constantly under attack. Our minds are constantly under attack. We're constantly being poisoned with the things that we eat, consume with you. We listen to.

Everything is out there, literally, to get us. Because when you are it, when you are that thing, and you're suppressed, you're a slave. When you don't think that you have the power to change your fucking life, you'll never change your view system on how you see a slave. When you don't think that you have the power to change your fucking life, you'll never change your view system on how you see the world. If you're too weak to stand up for yourself, you'll always be a fucking slave to someone else is more powerful than you. It's all by a grand design. And I realize that I'm extremely fucking powerful and so is everyone else. And the main thing, my business, we defy the norm, my coaching group, the fire tribe, all these things that I do is to help people find their true power back and claim it and do anything with it.

Because you're fucking limitless. I'm fucking limitless. There is no price tag to the mental capacity that I possess inside. I might not know what they answer. I don't know a lot and I learn a lot and I fell a lot and I fuck up a lot. I still do to this day. I tell today I didn't want to go to the gym. I wanted to sleep in because I stayed up writing last night, but I still went. I still struggle with real shit. But the thing is, I know the difference with separate myths me from what I want to be tomorrow is what I do today. And in my years of trying to get into the healing space and evolve, I was missing

the action part because the action came with commitment. And commitment is fucking scary. When you commit to your life, the fact that you, I'm gonna fucking die one day and I'm not gonna go out like a bitch. I'm not gonna fucking give away this fucking, I'm not gonna survive a fucking gunshot to the helmet, a fucking cutaway, I'm gonna free fall, fucking jump, a fucking airplane, almost fucking crash. I'm gonna survive all these things, put people through all this hell to fucking live

a mediocre, very basic average life where I have this calling. I'm gonna survive all these things, put people through all this hell to fucking live a mediocre, very basic average life, where I have this calling inside, I'm saying fuck you, suppressing you, and putting the thumb on you. Why would I do that? Because now I become a product of my environment. Because if you allow your environment to control you,

which I allowed the environment until I stood up for myself to control me for so long, I just relinquish my power. And, you know, to me, healing is reclaiming your power. It's saying, who do you want to be today? Create that vision board as young Cody did and go build and fucking live that life. If I did that as a kid, uneven knowing it,

why can't I do it now as an adult? Why can't I do it now in my business, we defy the norm? Why can't I do it now with my coaching group, divide tribe, where I'm literally helping people by showing them a fucking mirror. And if we can heal ourselves and give ourselves permission to fucking grow and evolve, do we'll change the world? And through all these psychedelic experiences and all the books that I read and all the bleases and I have formed and the ah-ha epiphanies and all the things I do in life,

that's what it's led me to. And that's what I do and why I do what I do today. I'm still figuring out how as I go, what am I stopping? Cause I know that the keys to the universe is through suffering. Cause if it was easy, I heard one would have it. If self-love was fucking easy, there wouldn't be depression,

there wouldn't be kids on fucking pills, there wouldn't be all this sad drama shit. People who turn off the fucking TV would have lived a better life. But people live in fear, they want to be control, they want a daddy, they want to be governed. They want to be told what to do. You have to go to a doctor to be told that you're sick. What ludicrous is that?

That is a powerless person. And at some point in our evolution of self, we lost our fucking power. And at some point in evolution of self, people fucking forgot that they have a say in this life. And that's the message that I share. It's your life. Live it on your fucking terms. Defy the norm.

If the norm to you is doing nothing different with your life and it sucks and you're unhappy with it, and it's hard and you want to quit, if the norm is you fucking bowing down to that master, then fucking defy it, defy that conformity, defy the fact that that is your go-to thing. And the only person that's gonna fucking make a change in your life is you. Medicine will only show you the way,

but you gotta do the work. The medicine will give you the fucking wave, but you have to fucking write it, and you have to keep on paddling to find the next wave, and the next wave because every fucking day is an opportunity to invest in yourself. And the more this world requires of you, the more tokens you have to fucking give it.

What happens when you're depleted? You end up back where you started from, and that's where depression, anxiety, stress, fucking self-loving belief, self-sabotaging, all this shit comes about. And so if you can look at your life as a fact that you have an opportunity to live and to go all and do the scariest shit

you've ever imagined in your absolute entire life, to do things the thing bigger than you've ever thought before, to fucking plants really big objectives in life that you don't even think you're fucking attainable but you're doing it in the first place, that is going all in on life. And you can't do that, you can't have that thought process if you think you're fucking weak,

if you're not think you're good enough, if you don't believe in yourself. Because if you don't believe in yourself, how can you put and still believe in anyone else? And even in my lowest time in the military, I fucking believed. But at some point, I forgot. When I chose to be a victim, I forgot.

When my life turned upside down, I fucking forgot. When I felt sorry for myself, it became a fucking pill addict, I forgot. And then I fucking started to remember. And I come to this conclusion that life is literally about, we've already lived this before. And our life's purpose is about remembering, remembering our worth, remembering our power,

remembering that all that hardship that we went through, all the fucking tears we shed, the blood we fucking spewed, the bodies we fucking carried. That wasn't for nothing. It was for who we are today and who we're gonna fucking be common. We can either be fucking victims and feel sorry for ourselves and blame the world or we can take extreme ownership and we're like, oh fuck this dude, I don't give a shit how dark and scary this fucking road is.

I don't care if I never see a fucking light, I'm walking that way. Cause I've been walking this way, and this way sucks. This way leads to dopamine rushes and a lot of crashes. This way, however, I haven't gone down that way. And if I apply logic to my life, and I give that a fucking shot, there's limitless possibilities over there. And that's been my involvement with psychedelics. That's been my involvement with breeding. That's been my involvement with psychedelics. That's been my involvement with reading. That's been my involvement with journaling

because there's so many limitless possibilities and the only person that really puts limits on it is us. Your pain points is you, your suffering is you, your struggle is you. It's not your job, it's not your environment. It's your mindset, it's your belief system, they're not aligned, you have none. And being able to

share that with people now, through my brand, people like Cody, you're another vet company selling fucking t-shirts like Navro, I ain't selling t-shirts. I'm sharing a fucking message. People just buy my shirts because they believe in the message. My shirt's not telling you to fucking kill bodies, stack bodies, do cool guy, alpha male things. My shit's telling you to believe in yourself. It's telling you to fucking live now, die later. Oh, I'm waiting to the right time to start that business bitch. There is no right time.

You're not even guaranteed tomorrow. Our fucking friends in the battlefield, they fucking thought they were gonna come home. They really fucking believed it. Guess what, they didn't happen. So am I gonna disrespect that lesson, that wisdom, by disrespect my own fucking life now, when I saw truth,

or am I gonna do something about it? And as I started taking my power back, I started to fucking believe all these things like bro. I don't mourn for my fucking dead. I live for my fucking dead. Good for you. Because to fucking mourn, to feel sad, I just, you just give her power.

And so I, I change my own story, man. I struggle, I'm not a perfect being, I fuck up. Sometimes I listen to gangster rap, 90s music. Sometimes I listen to roof as the soul. I'm a a perfect being, I fuck up. Sometimes I listen to gangster rap 90s music. Sometimes I listen to roof as the soul. I'm a fucking mixture. I'm wearing leopard print fucking shoes that say that are embroidered that said my life my terms. Because I decided that I can live my life

that everybody else wants me to fucking live or I can fuck around and find out. I can see what I'm made of. I can see what I'm truly here for. I get a question, Cody, how do I find my purpose by fucking put in one foot from the other? You can't stay in the same ambush spot, expect nothing to get hit again. And so I take these lessons and these wisdoms from the ultimate prices ever paid through those hardships and those hurdles. And I now redefine my life by looking at them not as the suffering, but looking them as opportunities to fucking evolve.

And to me, that's the ultimate honor that I could ever do for my friends that are no longer here, for all my friends that fucking kill themselves because they were too afraid to ask for fucking help. They felt too weak to fucking go get assistance and they're fucking dead Because they chose the only opportunity they thought that was real They chose the only escape that that was fucking available and It's fucking old. I Hate the fucking phone calls. I hate seeing the post So how do you change that if I can only control my thoughts and my actions? Well, I fucking change myself. And hopefully that's enough for someone else to change their fucking selves. And that person changes their selves.

And that person inspires someone through their actions to change their selves. The fact that someone else is defying conformity and investing in themselves, taking the fucking hard dark, dark long road that has no guiding factors, no guiding principle, there is no fucking light house for you to see. It's just a fucking dark of this. But people are afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the dark before, but I realized that it is the light path that takes you salvation. It's a fucking dark unknown space that you are fucking too scared to go into.

That is your mirror. And I jump into the thing all the time when I'm feeling like a bitch, when I'm doubting myself, I find the nearest mirror and I remind myself who I am. When I'm fucking sluggish, I hop into cold shower and I fucking freeze my fucking nuts off. I snap out of it because I know that I will always be challenged, I'll always be tested. And I will always have the opportunity to be a victim. I will always have that opportunity. If I have the opportunity to be happy today, I have an instant opportunity to be very sad the same fucking second later. Yeah. And um...

That's what I share with people. That's what I believe in. That's my philosophy on life and... That's how I not justify it, but that's how I honor all these past lives. You know, these, these, these, Ray Men and Women, they're, we'll never have a fucking chance to go all in, but I fucking do. And I'm not gonna fucking be a disrespectful fucking slug of a person by playing an old version of me that doesn't exist, that doesn't serve me, that doesn't enhance my life,

that doesn't want to win big, that doesn't want to go out and that doesn't want to fucking help change this world to put belief back into people. Well, that's a hell of a message, dude. That's fucking incredible. How many psychedelic journeys do you think you've done? 30... 30? Yeah, 30 ish, 30. Various psilocybin, LSD, DMT,

Iwaska. Sure, you can even have experience with cannabis. Breathwork, I do with breathwork. Meditation. We've come along fucking ways. Obviously. You've come along fucking ways. Obviously.

Yep, and it's not a destination. It's this part of the process and when I forget to invest in myself, all I have to do is look back at my own logo. You'd be like, bro, are you aligned? Are you investing in your mind, body, and your spirit today? Oh, you haven't done it for the past five days and you wonder why you're, this is where you're at. To me, that's ownership.

That's my mirror. My logo is my mirror. My company, my brain is my mirror. My coaching group is my mirror. My voice, my mouth, my ears, my eyes, my mirror. And I just create all these things to hold myself accountable to remind myself because if I can, if I can, there's a chance, then there's a chance I can forget.

And if life to me is all about remembering, then I must do what it takes to remember. And I can only do that by making deposits daily. And not all days are wins, not all days of my greatest successes. Some days I'll just do fucking 20 pushups, bro. And I'll kind of feel bad about it, but I'll go move my body. Some days, I won't eat fucking 20 pushups, bro. And I kind of feel bad about it, but I'll go move my body.

Some days I won't eat right on my fucking, my meal plan, my diet. And instead of talking shit to myself, I'm like, all right, dude, let's butt in the fuck up. You know, I try to change the way because there's a lot of rules and there's a lot of different. You need to live like this.

You need to live so hardcore. If you're a dude or you're a vet, you gotta be this. If you're a chick, you gotta do this. If you're fucking lost in life, you gotta do this. There's so many subscriptions out there to do. And I try to do all of them. And I never felt they're all like religious titles to me. I never really felt connected to any one of them.

Sprinkles of them made sense, but as a whole complete unit, I'm just like, ugh, it's like a fucking title. That's why I give myself a fucking made up name. I'm a mindset belief builder. One I believe in it. But two, I don't need a fucking, I don't need to have a title like anyone else. I'm me.

How can I ever encourage you to be you if I say, hey, you have to be this label, you have to subscribe to this one thing. So I kind of take this approach of like, oh yeah, I meant to breath work. Hell yeah. I'm into breathing. I'm into hugging. I'm into energy. Bro, if I can't vibe with you, we can't hang out. This is simple what it is. I've worked too hard to even have the feeling of what energy is to jeopardize it. You know, like all these different things and I just have this toolbox. Instead of saying, I only do this. This is what I do every day because I tried that life too and I felt a lot. And when I felt a lot, I beat myself up a lot.

So now I just pick, I pick and pull, I have this toolbox. Maybe today or this season of life, doing cold showers doesn't work. I took cold showers my entire winter off of well water and fucking the woods. Very cold. Not one hot shower, but I've taken hot showers in the summertime. Weird, but now I spend time in the creek, vice or the lake, vice my shower. So instead of holding a gun to, you have to do this Cody, this is investing in yourself. I'm like, yo, how's another way to skin this cat? How's another way to do this? Oh, this is really hard.

So I can psych myself. I'm be like, okay, man, I kind of want to quit this, but I know I'm not going to, but I'll say whatever I got to do to make it happen. I'll fucking, I'll play tricks in my mind because I will not be defeated because it's me that has this execute that to say that and I know from experience because

I'm just remembering that I don't have to be a victim. I don't have to fucking quit. Just because it's hard or scary or you want to stop. So I just said fuck it and I'm just going to rewrite life how I fucking view it and I'm going to share that if it resonates with people then write on. If they can find a snippet of it and change their life then write on. That's what I'm going to share that if it resonates with people, then write on it. They can find a snippet of it and change their life, then write on. That's what I'm here for. And I'm not even throwing spaghetti at the wall anymore.

It's super sticks. I said, you know what? Fuck it. Throwing spaghetti in the wall, see what sticks. That's that's for approval for other people. I'm like, I really only need approval for myself. And if I can believe in what I say, believe in what I do and hold myself accountable and realize that I am human, I'm not perfect, but I can adapt and overcommoning

evolve from that state and to learn and expand my consciousness and to reprogram my subconscious consciousness and to to find belief in things that I've only fucking fathom if I can do that shit. Does it really matter if anyone cares? My spaghetti sticks, six to the wall. Yeah. So and to me, that's being empowered.

And through all that amazing life story that I have, a lot of doubts and insecurities and unknowns through that suffering, that's how I got here. And here is just the beginning. Here is just the next evolution of self and life. And I have no idea what tomorrow brings, but I know that I'm going to give today my best as much as I can, even when I don't want to. I'm going to give myself some grace and some love, and I'm going to apply that love language from the medicine into myself. And I make those deposits.

Now I can fucking, I can share that deposit with you. I can invest in you now. I can invest into this, that and that person. But I'm making sure my cup is being filled by self-investment. So now I can give and give truth and not give insecurity, doubt, fear, scarcity. And my whole life is fucking changed because I changed my story. Tony Robbins says, you want to change your life? You got to change your story. It's absolutely true. If you want to change your life, you got to change your story. It's absolutely true. If you want to change your life, you got to change

your story. I went from fucking being an ultimate victim. Couldn't be self-sufficient. Tom Lutlis did. I fucking wrote on this. No. If I can't do something, I'll find somebody. If I want something, I find a way. I don't have these hurdles like, oh, that's too hard. I find a way. Because that's what we're taught. We find a way. So if I can remember that. Bonacha. Yeah. What's next for you? Uh, what's next is I'm finally working on my book.

Uh, I want to help people. I don't want to tell them cool war stories. I want to tell them how they can transform their lives. Um, some work on this book. I have, uh, I revamping my, my coaching group. I have, I run this mentor group called The Fire Tribe. And it is straight up about empowering people. Some motivation, but more real tangible things

to evolve your life. People want more money. People want better communication. They want better relationships. They want to look better. They want to feel better. They want to relationships. They want to look better. They want to feel better They want to love they want all these things So I showed them how they can have it and

Starting this community the five tribe community my online mentorship program That's just a drop in the bucket. That's just the next phase, you know, it's, and I'm grateful, and these people are changing their life and they're believing themselves, and they have their fair share of suffering ahead of them. There is no, I did it, I fixed it, everything's perfect. But they realize that they can overcome it.

They realize that they can remember what worked before and applied to their life now with They realize that they can remember what worked the fore and apply it to their life now with the knowledge that they have. They're master creators. And that's what I show people. So that's what next for me is, like, how do I now take in that group to the next level? Do like Tony Robbins watch out, bro.

You know, like, we're gonna share a stage together. I ain't competition with you. I've got a message to change the world also. And I know all the things that I really want to do or thought I wanted to do, that is the most that it keeps me getting pulled towards it. I got out, thought about wanting to make money. How do I make money?

How do I survive? How do I feed my family? Let me go shoot some guns and teach people, gosh, it's fucking weak, thank for me. Cause I do it and I'm good, how do I feed my family? Let me go shoot some guns and teach people, gosh, it's fucking weak, thank for me. Cause I do it and I'm good at it, but it's not as a fill my cup. It doesn't challenge my belief system. It doesn't cause me to evolve.

Yeah, and I'm impacting on a very small level compared to how I feel I'm impacting now. And so what's next for me is the unknown, man. And I'm okay with that. And all I know is that the only way to navigate that unknown is just like put one foot in front of the other. And all I know is I'm not stopping. So that's what the unknown has for me.

I'm gonna fuck, I do the things that I say I'm gonna do. It might take me time, but I do them. And I'm gonna continue that momentum. I'm gonna continue putting myself out there. I'm gonna continue being a staple of what a special operator could be to what he can be. And I realize that as long as I carry that proverbial cross around, and I say, this is my bro, this is me, this is how I live my life. I'm not above you, I'm not better than you, I'm just better than myself yesterday.

And if I can walk around with that truth and share that message, then fuck me, that might change someone's life. But well, and so that's what's next to me. I want to get in front of as many people as I possibly can and share that one message they need to hear to transform their life, to realize they're powerful and to bring their power back to themselves. And these are all taboo names. That's why I give myself a fake title because I can do anything. But I realized that all I need to do is get around them. All they need to do is connect, tap into their source, apply their mindset to their release system, and they're fucking unstoppable. But it's also that reprogramming of that, hey, suffering is part of the process. We are here to suffer.

Because through suffering, we find appreciation and value and self respect, the self worth. We're born into this earth effortlessly. We didn't earn it. We didn't fight for it. Maybe in the universe, maybe as a soul, finding a contract to come into the earth, to the count, earth canal, and to be born,

but we were given life. And we're giving opportunity. And when you live with that mindset, you're let down a lot. And so if we can help people reprogram like, hey, suffering isn't a bad thing. Suffering doesn't have to be what it used to be. Suffering can just be part of the process.

It can be part of the journey. Discomfort, that's part of suffering. Walking in the rain, that's suffering. Nobody wants to do that. But that's how you keep commitments to yourself. You said you're gonna go walk today, it's raining, who cares, you go walk. I'm gonna fuck us ten minutes. Go do what you said you're gonna do because you continue commitments to yourself. You said you're gonna go walk today, it's raining. Who cares, you go walk. I'm gonna go fuck us 10 minutes.

Go do what you said you're gonna do because you continue to let yourself down, all the meditation, all the bread work, all the plant medicine you're doing, you're just saying fuck you, I don't care about you. Cause you're saying you're saying, I don't care about me to fucking do what I say, I'm gonna do.

And these are all these things that I've learned that are very true to my life. And if I can hold myself accountable, if I can speak my truth and live my truth, yeah, like I said, I'm not perfect. I'm not a supreme being, dude. I had a porn addiction before. I had a fucking pill addiction before.

I used to fucking do all sorts of dumb, horrible things. I'm still capable of those things if I allow myself to, but I do my best to not do those things. I realize those things make my life worse and they make my life better. So I said to be myself up, I just get myself powered, a fucking embrace of suffering.

Oh, fuck, I don't wanna get up. I wanna just stay in bed, I'm so tired. Okay, and then be pissy all day because you told yourself you wanted to work out. You didn't work out You really you really want to live all fucking day doing that shit see how well you're gonna be present in your life These are conversations I have myself these are realities and tests and trials and experiments that are in with myself And I don't like those days So now I'm like, okay, how can I keep my word?

To myself today. How can I do what I said I was gonna do for my wife? How can I maximize my time? How can I not be lazy today? How can I push myself towards the more unknown, the scary, dark abyss? Yeah. So, well, how do people find it? Social media mainly. Uh, social media.

Uh, and my website, We Defy the Norm. Well, those will be linked below. Yeah, those are, uh, those are my main ones. I, I'm working on that website right now, uh, codealford.com, basically to consolidate all my stuff. But We Defy the Norm and my Instagram, the codealford. That's really how people get a hold of me. And I do my best to get back to people

and my coaching programs, the link through all those programs also. And I invest in people who want to invest themselves. My time is limited, my energy is limit, my energy is limitless, but my time is limited. So I have to find a good maximizing capability to provide and to serve. And that's why I focus on people

who want to believe in themselves, who want to invest in themselves. And it's changed everything for me. Because now I track the energy that I want. I'm empowering people through their own fucking power. And we're growing collectively as a team. And do that's been a game changer for my life? How much for my soul?

Well, man, that is one hell of a fucking journey because you've been on. And I just wanna thank you for coming. It's been a real honor to interview you and get that first hand account of your life. And I just wish you the best man. You're already a solid fucking human being and I'm just proud to sell to Nellia. Likewise, I'm very grateful and humbled to be here and have this opportunity to do this.

Well, it's been my pleasure. Let's go. Best of luck, man. Thank you. Cheers. The Bullwork podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day jubu sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from inside Washington W sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes

speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way. All of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover. No shouting or grandstanding. Principles over partisanship. The Bullwalk podcast, wherever you listen.

over partisanship. The Bullwalk Podcast, wherever you listen.