Shawn Ryan Show - #51 Chris VanSant - Delta Force Operator / Killing Off the "Deck of Cards" & Capturing Saddam Hussein | Part 2

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Delta Force Operator Chris VanSant is back in Part 2 of this two-part series. This episode dives deep into his role in the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein. VanSant vividly recalls an engagement with over 300 enemy combatants after a goat herder revealed his team's location. We get a first hand account of the operational tempo it takes to hunt down each player of the infamous "Deck of Cards," and what happens when a handful of Delta Operators are outnumbered in the Horn of Africa with only the Navy Destroyer U.S.S. Chafee for cover. VanSant tells stories of loss and grappling with the survivor's guilt that would ultimately change the course of his life. Chris serves on the board of the All Secure Foundation and is on a multi-year effort to complete the seven summits to raise awareness for veteran mental health and support All Secure. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://mudwtr.com/shawn - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://mypatriotsupply.com Chris VanSant Links: All Secure Foundation | Instagram | LinkedIn Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is part two of the Chris Van Zand episode. Chris is a former Delta operator with a phenomenal career. If you guys haven't checked out part one, I'd highly recommend it, because it threw us back into the top 100 of all podcasts. That's out of over 8 million podcasts.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. If you haven't left us a review on Apple podcast and Spotify, please head over there, especially on Spotify, all you got to do is click that five-star review and that's it. And on Apple, if you don't mind, just leave us a one-word review, tell us how we're doing. We love you all. Please like, comment, subscribe, share the episode. If you're getting something out of this, share it. Alright, love you all, enjoy the show. Lots of good stuff coming, cheers. Previously on the Sean Ryan show. So I went to the regiment as a young

private and a year after being there, I had an alcohol related incident, I had a DUI. So I left the regiment after about a year and being there, I had an alcohol related incident. I had a DUI. So I left the regiment after about a year and change for having this alcohol related incident. So even though I served there, I trained there, and I was a part of that organization. I left. What's the culture like at the Ranger Regiment?

I mean, it was the hardest train in place in the Army. Yeah, it was some hard charge and hard train in dudes, which wasn't necessarily the case in the rest of the commercial army. My opportunity's hard, and if he ever hears one of these things I hope to God, the man finds me on social media and reaches out to me. This kid, he reached down and grabbed an AK,

and I basically went from the high-ready to on him to off-safe, and he threw the AK on the ground. The cuffed his wrists, you know, so he was in the back of the van with his wrist cuff, and he slid the window open and hopped out. I don't know how many more people that you'd kill. Like, how many more people is bomb skilled? How many more people you'd taught him to make bombs?

Let's say a quick break, and when we come back, we'll get into Iraq. All right, Chris, we're back. You just did a pump in Afghanistan, your first one at the unit. Come back. Now you're going to Iraq. How long did you come home for before you had no Iraq? Yeah, we got home in July. I think by mid fall, we were in full bone. We knew that we were potentially going to

invade Iraq and we were doing a full-blown prep training for doing a long-range desert mobility and invading the country. And then I think we deployed in February of 03 to our Saudi Arabia, which was our staging point to kick off the invasion. No, shit. When did so? I mean, how did that feel knowing that you're going to go be on the initial front for invading that country? A wild. Yeah. I mean, we were excited. One, there was the historic nature of it. So take

away all the sides of going to war, not going to war. When you train to be a part of one of the most lead organizations on the planet, you know, it's like practicing to play in a football game, you know, you want to play in a football game, you know, you wanna play in the football game. So we were pumped, we were excited, we were excited that we were chosen to be the force that did that particular mission set. There was some legacy there. So the unit had done long range desert mobility

in the first golf war, basically hunting scuds in the Western Desert of Iraq to try to eliminate that threat and synomsability to influence things outside of the country and shoot those missiles into Saudi Arabian other countries. In this particular case, it was a different mission set, but along the same lines. So we were basically hunting WMD throughout the Western Desert. Current intel beliefs and hindsight does a lot of things to the Iraq war you and I both know.

But at the time we firmly believe that he had some type of WMD in whatever form we assumed it was chemical at that time and that if he was going to have it and it was going to be stored not in Baghdad or to create but it was going to be outside of the city in one of their outstations of their emeral supply points that were moving west out of Baghdad and into the western desert. So yeah, we were excited, nervous, I think. But the legacy piece, you know, having been done in the first Gulf War

and then, you know, the last time a desert mobility was done prior to that was like way back in World War II, like in North Africa. So it was a pretty neat thing to train and prepare for. It was different. It's not like you covered desert mobility in OTC. I think I probably had as much experience as anybody in that. I had done that rotation to Kuwait with a mechanized unit.

So I personally understood what it was like to be out unsupported in the middle of the desert and crossing long distances. So yeah, I was super pumped and excited for it. The weird part was when I got to our Saudi Arabia, this is our universe discussion right here. So when I got to our Saudi Arabia, there were two other units that were

co-located with us. One was some components of third range battalion, one of which was Charlie Company third range battalion, which is the company that I was a part of. No shit. The other was one company from the 82nd Airborne Division, which were accompanying like a high Mars detachment or something else, but it was Alpha Company 2nd, 325. Damn. So, literally, two of the three other organizations I had ever been a part of were all in that same spot at that point in time in history.

And I've thought about that over the years, I'm like, what are the odds? If I had stayed in 3rd range of Italian and I don't know what I would have been at that point, probably a squad leader or something, but I would have been right there. If I would have stayed in Alpha Company 2nd, 325, I would have been at that point, probably a squad leader or something, but I would have been right there. If I would have stayed in Alfcomy, second, three, two, five, I would have been right there. Like, damn, that's a really weird, that is crazy. Yeah, so that, I think that, even at the time,

I think I took that like, this is where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing. And I think I had a lot more, at least personal going into that than I did going to Afghanistan because I had deployed once I got to know my team. I felt like we had trained and prepared very well for that. And we were ready to go. How long were you there before you guys cross the border? A couple of weeks I think. Yeah, it was not a very good, it was a kind of miserable existence. They slowly but surely shoved a bunch of people

into that area and we didn't have the support structure to do it. So like in the beginning, we had like four portapoddies for like 400 dudes. Oh, so they were literally overflowing. It was disgusting. It was cold, like the weather wasn't great. It was winter still on the desert. Yeah, but I think it was a couple of weeks before we, yeah, got our like last mission brief and

speech from the J-Sok commander and off we went. Damn, I can't even imagine the anticipation of, But damn, I can't even imagine the anticipation of, I mean, is it going to be today? Did you guys know when it was going to be? No, like the exact day. No, not that I recall in the beginning. I mean, they would do team leader meetings and stuff every day and they would talk about things. But I don't remember us having a hard date till shortly before we left. But like I said, we weren't there that long. You know, there's

a, in most of the portions of that border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, there's a double berm system. That's really all that separates it. It's not like there's fencing or anything else. And so there's two berms. And then at various intervals with miles and miles between them are Iraqi outposts that are like towers, where they would post Iraqi military guys to sort of keep watch on the border. So we knew we had to cross those two berms. We were gonna do it in between outposts that aviation assets, he loves 160th guys,

we're gonna take out the two outposts on either side and a radio communications point to hopefully silence their ability to say, hey, someone has crossed into our country. How did it go? Good. Yeah, like we started out. I think we drove most of the first night just getting to the border from where we were. So we spent a night out in the desert in Saudi Arabia where we all just sort of bagged out. And it was really cold. Like we actually, I think we got a little snow that night, like nothing that stuck,

but you know, you're in the middle of the desert, it snows. And it reminded me of I read a SAS guy, Amy McNabb's book, Bravo 2-0. And he talks about it in that before they're incident where they got snow. And I remember thinking, wow, that's weird. Like, you don't expect to get snowed on in the desert. But yeah, we had a little snow. It was cold. We had every piece of snow here. We owned on.

I was driving most of the time, like as a newer guy on the team, I drove the the Penns Tower, the six wheeled on armored vehicle that our team was on, and we had an ATV and our team as well. So I drove the Gower. In this case, Brad drove the ATV and we would rotate positions. He and I drive in one or the other because you couldn't drive the ATV every night because we had thumb throttles. And you'd get that jello thumb from holding that throttles down all the time. But yeah, we spent the night in Saudi Arabia, moved up to the berm. They had done some error reconnaissance and they had found a bulldozer that was sitting

all by itself in a location on the Saudi Arabian side Who knows who it belonged to but we had mechanics with us Which is interesting too, but in order to support our element We needed that technical expertise of those guys invaded right along with us on our vehicles nice And they hot wired the bulldozer and use the bulldozer to plow down enough of the berm that we could drive the vehicles over. And so after they had finished plowing the berm, we kind of coordinated efforts. 160th came in and all we heard was the calls over the radio, but they basically smoked

the two guard towers on either side and we drove into Iraq. Did you start gauging people? No, no. So we had... How long did it take? I don't remember if it was the first night or the second night. So we had a series of targets planned along the way.

We would drive all night basically, under night vision. We had some other technology on our side. We had ground-based fleer balls at the time. And it was the first time they were used. Other than that, it was like he-lows and aircraft and stuff like that. They didn't have them on ground-based vehicles. We actually had them on every, I think, we had three total for the squadron. My vehicle was one of the ones with the fleers. I had this big LCD screen between me and

Chilly, who was the team leader at the time, and he was sitting in the TCC, you know, in the passenger seat of the Gower. And so I could see everything he looked at with the flare ball, so that was nice. But either the first or second night, we had bedded down for our rest over day-sites, so we'd find a waddy or a depression or something to hide in, put Camo netting out, put out security, and then get some rack for the day, eat some chow, et cetera. And we woke up to an aircraft fire. Like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it went on for like 30 minutes.

And it sounded like it was just over like the next rise, like it was really close. And now it's probably the first like, okay, we're in a, we just invaded a country and we're at war. And it won't be long before we're in a, we just invaded a country and we're at war. And it won't be long before we're involved in something. And I think if we had a big fear during all that time, it was that we were in unarmored vehicles. You guys were in unarmored vehicles? No, armor whatsoever. All that technology and yet unarmored, why did you have unarmored vehicles?

Uh, the, because the platforms were built for long-range desert mobility. Okay. You know, we had a lot of guns. I think our defense was we're gonna put more stuff in your direction than you can put in ours. We had some anti-tank weapons that we brought with us. We had some cruise-served stuff on top of each one of the vehicles. But yeah, on armored vehicles there really wasn't an option other than that to cover that kind of distance

and we were having drive thousands of miles. Yeah, I guess, I mean, fuck, I guess IEDs weren't like a huge thing. No, wasn't even on the radar yet. And we were literally driving across the desert. It wasn't like we were on roads. Like we were in Navin across open desert. Okay. And then, yeah, so that an aircraft fire that first morning,

and then shortly after, I think we hit our first target, which was an Iraqi outposts and ammo supplypoint. So it was basically just like you see at Airfields, like in the US where they have like all of the bunkers all over. It was one of those that was used for stored ammunition. And yeah, we did a hit on basically the guard outpost where they were. It was the first time some shots were fired. I was driving, so I drove up to the target house. Some stuff happened in the beginning and you know, some couple of Iraqi guards were shot,

and then we made entry into the facility, but it was minimal skeleton crew out there. And then we proceeded to clear basically every bunker in the M.O. supply point looking for WMD. So don't know what we were tasked to do. And that sort of continued for a while. We did that at numerous locations. Some of the little more activity than others. And a lot of cases, we would pull up short,

use the flare ball, and call in, cast, call in close air support, and drop a bunch of bombs on an objective before we would move in. So different mindset than we were used to, you know, as a counterterrorism force or a hostage rescue force or whatever we were, we were basically doing, you know, if it's a tactic, raid style missions on these compounds. So that was a little different. And kind of cool, just to do full, you know,

the full gamut. But we definitely own the night. We could see them miles and miles before they could see us. And we definitely had, you know, there wasn't anybody in country yet. So we had all the air assets. It was, I think we were in country for four days when the first Valley of Tomahawk missiles and all that stuff got fired into Iraq and when they started to push from the south. So we had been in country for a little bit and done a few things before any of the regular invasion actually started. Damn, that's pretty, that's pretty fucking cool, man.

I mean, that's, that's, that's US history. Yeah, it was pretty neat. It was neat to be a part of like, you know, I don't know, unless you were at that specific time in place, you never ever have an experience like that and guys in my lifetime probably won't again. Yeah. But yeah, we, and I think we understood that. Like, I think we felt like we were a part of something substantial. Why no, the majority of your special operations career, I believe was in Iraq and I know you're on some extremely

some very high profile operations. I hope we dive into. But after that initial target package where you guys were going after fuel depots, ammunition depots, like, what led on after that? The first big engagement was April 2nd. So I don't know what we were a few weeks in, I guess. We pulled into a rest over day site a little later than we normally did. We used to do it before the sun came up, try to find one, but you couldn't always find one. And we were trying to cover a little more distance,

probably, than we should have. And so we drove into daylight and basically didn't get to our rest over day sight until after the sun had came up and in coming into that area we passed a goater out in the desert and he definitely saw us, he saw our moda for lack of a better term of vehicles that were definitely not Iraqis and he went into the town of Baji, I believe it was and and about 8.39 o'clock that morning we found ourselves in an engagement with, I don't know, 2.300, Fettying fighters that

had come out of the various towns and cities in there there. So that day, you know, six, seven hour fire fight. We were sort of hit on three sides and we were kind of in two different bowls. We took some casualties early on. That was when Andy Fernandez was our first loss to the Iraq war. Andy was shot, basically a through and through from a PKM up over a little hill.

He was wearing a plate carrier. You know, we were doing desert mobility so he had no side protection at the time and took one in one side out the other. And then we took quite a few RPGs and some guys had some fragmentation injuries from RPGs, but nothing too serious. But ended up getting close air support.

Like we were the only show in town out west. So at one point, I think we had like 25 aircraft, just wheelbareled overhead. Oh wow. And the Air Force combat controllers that were with us had a field day dropping bombs. And Casavatt came in for Andy. It took quite a while to get from where they were

and Saudi Arabia to us, but they were escorted by two direct action penetrators to UH60 DAP helicopters. So, you know, black hawks with guns guns and rockets and those guys shot every single round of ammunition and rocket that they had while the Kazovak bird picked up Annie and a couple of other wounded guys and Evac Tim. When the Black Hawks right is the Black Hawks were running dry. Our Black on ammo as we said. A couple of A10s showed up and they had some fun for a while. But at the end of the day,

like, you know, there was 40 of us or whatever and some crew serve weapons and some radios and some planes. And the bad guys basically had small arms, machine guns and AKs and then overmatch one the day. Like once we got in on where we were in the position, and we're able to utilize all the stuff that we had with us to our advantage. They just kept coming and we just kept killing.

How did that feel to see your first casualty see guys getting shot? I mean, you'd done some stuff in Afghanistan, done something like it was a whole lot of action, then you get here and it's a fuck, this shit's real. Yeah, that was, there's two, a couple of things from that day. I didn't see Andy get hit, so we were, he was in one troop, I was in another. He was a brand new guy.

It was just like me in Afghanistan. It was his very first combat rotation he had just gotten to his team. And we were separated by a small hill, so one troop was in, or actually two troops were in one little bowl and we were in another. The guys that ended up shooting Andy, they actually came up on a piece of high ground to our right flank and didn't even see us where we were indefinitely and they shot over us into the other two troops. So my troop ended up moving some guys up and killing the first guys that got to us. But the things that stood out to me that day were one, okay, this is real.

Like, we, yeah, sure there'd been some things at the various targets, but it was small scale, and we're well capable of handling it, but we just came up against an overwhelming number of people. And they wanted to kill us, and we were forced to defend ourselves. That was one, two, was what we can bring to bear when we needed to, which was a little bit confidence building. Three was when Andy was killed, it was the first time I ever heard he'd eagled down over the radio. And so that was a moment, I think, for everybody.

Then we lost Chris Spear in Afghanistan, who was a unit medic, but it was a weird scenario. It wasn't like this. And they hadn't lost anybody since 1993. So when Andy was shot, we heard he'd go down over the radio. We found out later that he had passed either shortly before or shortly after they had lifted off with the MetaVac from willing sustain and blood loss. But Andy was so new, we didn't know who it was.

So they just said call sign over the internal net. And he was like Bravo 6 or whatever. He was the last newest guy to the team. And we weren't sure who that was and that felt kind of shitty. Damn. You know what I mean? It wasn't a false. It was just, it was a new guy

and he was in a different troop and you know, he hadn't really gotten to know each other yet. So. Yeah. But you know the rest of us, you know, we ended up finishing that day and drove out of there and continued the mission. And I think that was like my

fourth thing of the day. It was like, okay, nothing changes. You just had a major engagement. You dealt with the threat. We still have the job to do and we need to continue on. And that's what we did. So I heard you talk about in another show or another podcast or maybe something I read, but I heard you speak about an operation you were on when you realized how many people were coming in from out of country. It wasn't just, oh yeah, Iraqis. It was, I mean, everybody was coming there to fight Americans.

Yeah. So fast forward. So we ended up pushing all the way into Tocret and we hit some palaces and stuff and to create at the end of that desert mobility, which is wild driving into a palace in an armored vehicle and getting out and doing a assault on a palace. I laughed because Tocret was basically deserted. The enemy had pushed out to the outskirts and we had had some skirmishes and some more closer support and some A10 love getting into the city but once we're in there it was like a ghost town. Yeah yeah and so we

ended up bumping out with another squadron about at that point they flew out into the desert H1 landed in an airfield, unloaded all their vehicles, tagged us out, and about a week and a half later we rotated out. So, and they continued on, that turned into progressing into establishing the MSS down in Baghdad after they had rolled through the conventional forces that rolled through all the way into Baghdad. Some funny stuff in there where we thought

at one point, Regiment was gonna jump on Baghdad International Airfield. You had the, what was her name? The seals did the rescue lunch, Jessica Lynch. That happened. There's some animosity there because we're like, we're already here. Why don't they just take us, you know, and fly in some birds and we'll go do it. But, but yeah, those guys did that. And you know, there were like some things that were going on elsewhere in country, but. But yeah, we came home. We went back for what they call the first surge. So whenever we got home from that, I think we were back in August for a 30-day stand

where we had two squadrons and we did some two squadron hits on things. We're chasing deck of cards stuff. So Saddam and all of his minions. But then came home for like two weeks and then deployed again for our true second rotation. So now you're in October of 03 and Halloween night of 03. So pre-Saddam capture, we were on a hit in Fallujah

and 22 SAS, I was just laughing about this the other day with the 2-2 SAS guy. But 2-2 SAS was working with us. So the Brits had joined the fight now, and they had a contingent of Tier 1 asset in country. And they were doing targets, and we were doing targets, basically, all over the country. And we were in Fallujah this night, and they had a block, and we had a block chasing some high-value targets in Fallujah this night, and they had a block, and we had a block chase in some high-value targets in Fallujah.

And they ended up, you know, drawing the short straw on the blocks, and they were manually breaching the gate of a house to get into the courtyard and all hell broke loose. They, house full of bad guys, I mean RPGs and machine guns lined up on the roof. Like it was just, it was bad timing. The Brits took some casualties in that initial engagement. We ended up covering their ex-fill of those casualties and withdraw from that space

from across the street. I was on the roof, drop a building across the street. We brought in, we had Bradley's tanks in blocking positions, and rather than just go heavy and try to assault this house that was obviously heavily fortified and heavily armed, and full of bad guys, we started shooting tome missiles from the Bradley's into this house,

and we had a couple of little birds in support, and so a lot of 2-7-5 rocket, a lot of machine gun into this building. I think we shot 11 tome missiles into the building. it, a lot of machine gun into this building. I think we shot 11 toe missiles into the building. Middle Eastern buildings are notoriously resilient, as a lot of us know. So, you know, there's some holes in the fence, there was a lot of holes in the house. Every time they would shoot more rounds, it would be quiet for a minute, and then a bunch of rounds would come out, it would erupt again, and that went on for some time. But eventually, we got to the point where we had shot all

the toe missiles and the little birds ran out of ammo. And we're like, all right, well, we got to go salt this house because that's what we do. So we did. There was a funny moment out front where we tried to send the dog in just to see if anybody was still up and moving around. And it was early on in the dog days.

And the dog, teammate, now my team, we drew the short straw on where the first ones to enter this compound. And so I'm standing behind my two IC at the gate. And Mikey actually called 40s, like let's send the dog in and see what happens. And so one of the dog handlers sent the dog in. He went in the courtyard, we can't see him.

Couple of minutes go by, he comes back out, nothing. And Mikey's like sending him again. Dog goes again, a couple of minutes go by, comes out, nothing, no barking, no, like we don't hear anything. We're like, that's weird. Try it one more time, still nothing. I think we tried three times.

Well, hindsight, what we found out was the dog was going into the courtyard, he was getting tangled up in all the toe miscellwire that was laying on the ground. And they had never dealt with that. So the dog would get all tangled up in the wiring that was laying on the ground in the courtyard and he would get confused and he would just come back out. Instead of going into the house,

because they'd never dealt with it. So they'd never train the dogs to deal with obstacles and route to make an entry into a building or whatever. I was never a dog guy, so forgive me, dog, guys, if you get the point. Yeah. And so, yeah, so at that point, Mikey leaned over to my shoulder and he was like, you got a flashbang

and I pulled one off his back and he went, fuck it. And I threw the flashbang over his shoulder and the courtyard we made entry. We ended up, one of the teams ended up killing a guy that was still alive in the house. And then we started to, we cleared the first floor, started to go to the second floor, and there was a suspected ID on the landing

on your way up to the second floor. Protocol was to get out of the building, so there's a code word that we used to get out of the building. So they called that code word, thinking the building was rigged. Even then we were paying attention and it was before any of that had ever happened. So we exited out of the building, ended up clearing the building, next door, going up to the roof, and there were still guys that allow on the roof, and we ended up engaging.

My team ended up on the roof of the building, next door, and it had engaged in those guys. And at the same time, the Brits had gotten back in the fight. And we're coming up the backside and they were pissed. They'd lost a couple mates. So they were like, wall charge, grenade and courtyards, grenade and rooms, like they were full blown. It doesn't matter who you are, you're dying. And yeah, they made entry in the house behind us,

came with one of the roof. And I see tac lights. So two SAS wasn't running nods back then, which is insane. No shit. No shit, tack like, no nods. No nods, no lasers. Yeah, 2003. And so they're wall charge, entry, frag, enter and rooms.

They end up in the house behind us. They come up, I see the tack like coming up the stairwell and I'm yelling across the rooftops. Ego, ego, ego, ego. And I get an answer back. Right, ego, ego, ego. I'm like, cool, they know we're here. And I made a mistake. I go, hey, whatever you do, don't throw a frag.

There's ordinance all over the roof. You know what's coming. The call that came back to me was right mate, frag out. Your name comes out on the roof. Brad and I both hit the deck. Luckily, it didn't set off any of the RPGs or anything that were sitting up there. But yeah, so what ended up coming out of that was

the SSE of that target after everybody was killed. They were all wearing like track suits. Like somebody hit like out of a movie. Like someone had given them clothes. In the house was nothing but like sleeping mats, some food and water, and ammo. And what it was, it was the first foreign fighter target we ever experienced.

So they were guys that had been brought in through what eventually became the rat lines coming from Syria into Iraq, through Western Iraq, and then into the cities. And so they were the first true foreigners that we ever encountered. coming from Syria into Iraq through Western Iraq and then into the cities. And so they were the first true foreigners that we ever encountered. And to my knowledge, they were the first ones that were encountered in Iraq. And that was a weird moment because it was early in the war. Like we hadn't even caught Saddam yet.

But it was a really good snapshot of things to come. The average on-farm income in the United States was a loss of $1,100. 60% of US pork comes from one company, wholly owned by the Chinese. And farmers are more likely to commit suicide than veterans. Folks, we got a problem. I'm Lucinda, a generation farmer and chicken, and wild caught a lascan salmon, shipped straight from the heart of rural America. Come stand shoulder to shoulder with us

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Damn, so your team was the one that discovered that was happening. Yeah, like said, to my knowledge, that's the first time that happened. And we knew it. Like it was like, this is weird. Like, why are these foreigners coming from other countries? And why are they armed to the teeth? And what's their goal? What's their objective? But yeah, that was that was the first realization that people of similar beliefs are coming to where we are specifically to kill Americans that are in Iraq. Damn. Yeah.

You were on the Saddam raid. Yeah. Let's go into detail on that. Yeah. Yeah. That one. So, that happened so so that happened Halloween night and then in the That was so October 31st. So the month of November we call it was like whack-a-mo

It was like we get some Intel hit here there Some guy that was connected. I mean we were all over the country trying to catch Saddam It got to the point where it was comical like where we were laughing about it You know, we would pre-stage at this point trying to catch Saddam. It got to the point where it was comical, like where we were laughing about it. We would pre-stage at this point, they've got fobs established in various points of the country. So we would pre-stage at these fobs, do a broad daylight, heal a assault to an objective.

And then that evening, we'd get another hit and we'd do a ground-based vehicle in fill and hit a target in Baghdad. And then we'd fly back to Ramadi and we'd hit a target in Ramadi. It was like one after another, after another 24 hour ops, we were literally exhausted. And then lo and behold, early December,

so it was December 12th of 2003, we got a hit on a guy, it came up, it didn't matter how they figured it out, but signal intelligence, a guy popped up, it doesn't matter how they figured it out, but signal intelligence, a guy popped up on a phone and it was a guy that we had been tracking named Mohammed, Iber email Mooslet. And Mooslet is who our intelligence analyst, it's not unlike the Bin Laden story in that there was really one person that had been working the problem set from day one and they were

really the key person for tracking down an individual. We had an intel guy that tirelessly poured over information in details and data and background and history and had a pretty good idea of how and where Sonom would be, who would be connected to him, and then had further developed how he was getting information out, giving orders out, whatever, and who was hiding him. And Mousslet was the key to this. He was the key courier or messenger, if you will, that probably knew where Saddam was and was responsible for giving Saddam's orders out to, you know, the sort of network that was spread around Iraq. So we called them the Golden Ticket.

And so they told us that we had a possible from Oslet and it was in Baghdad, which we were surprised. It actually wasn't far from where we were based out of our mission support site, the house that we lived in in Baghdad in the green zone. And so we rolled out on vehicles. We hit the initial target. It was a troop plus. So it was three teams plus a team from another troop. They hit the initial target and it was a dry hole.

Like, the moose wasn't there. Nothing of value was there. They didn't know anything. But while we were there, you know, we were dead silent. It wasn't like we blew doors and all that stuff. It was a pretty quiet hit. I think they got it, they got another hit and they narrowed down his location

and it was a couple of blocks away. So we moved, it was a kind of four apartments in one house. So it was two upstairs, two downstairs with a stairwell that ran up the middle and then split. So you had one apartment on the right, one apartment on the left. I ended up being the lead team had one apartment on the right, one apartment on the left. I ended up being the lead team on the apartment on the right and I was the breacher at the time and another team had the

door on the left. Just putting a charge up on the exterior door. It was a dual door so I had to open the exterior and put a charge in between the two to get them to blow both directions. So I'd open the door, place my charge. The team behind me on the other door had done the same, and somebody in there had like bumped something and made a noise. So I was on a knee and just put the charge on the door, and a guy came to my door and like looked at me. And I'm weapons long because I'm putting the charge on the door,

but I pulled my pistol out and I just stuck it up in his face. And I said, in English, basically I had mouth open the door. And he looked at me and he went. And so he opened the door. I basically just rode the door into him as soon as he turned the handle, pushed him against the wall and just held him there as the teammate entry behind me. Clear the room, clear the first room.

I think it had a bathroom and maybe one or two bedrooms off of it all secure, nothing. You know, nobody in the house. Progress to SSC. So we're talking to the guy that I had against the wall. Cuff that dude, they're doing a little battlefield interrogation with him. And the other guys are going through portions of the house

and we hear a call from one of the back bedrooms And it's a teammate. He's like, hey, I need a guy. There's somebody under the bed back here and so a guy went Pulled the mattress up and laying underneath the bed on the floor was the guy like this as flat as he could be and he had a toy plastic a K47 laying next to him a Toy a toy, a toy, a kid's toy. Shit, you know, and so pick this guy up. He didn't look like the photos we had in Mooslet.

We didn't think we on the ground didn't think it was him, ah, whatever, it's another one of those dry holes. But they were both a little weird and a little shady and there was a few things on target that didn't make sense. And one of them was in the SSE and Mooselet's wallet. He had, you know, a couple thousand dollars worth of cash and it was in US hundreds.

The US hundreds were sequential. So the serial numbers on the bills were literally in order. So like, zero, zero, eight, five, one, zero, zero, eight, five, two, zero, zero, eight, five, three. You guys figure that out right there on the spot? Yeah, so you don't see that, right? Unless it came out of a large sum of money that was withdrawn from an institution at one time,

that just doesn't happen. But regardless, it didn't look like a guy, we didn't think I was guy, and we'd been chasing Saddam for a year, so it's just another dry hole. So we drove the detainees back to BiAP, handed them off to our Intel analyst and some of the interrogators that had set up shop there at Bagna International Airport. And we went home and like I said, 24 hour ops, you know, at the time it was common place to

like pop an ambient when you got back from a mission. So you knew you could get three or four hours of sleep before they woke us up to go do the next one. So I think we popped an ambient, maybe had a beer too, one like up, another dry hole and we went to bed. About four hours went by, our intel guy comes running back in to the MSS, he comes back to where our troops rooms are because we were the ones that had just pulled this dude out. And he goes, it's him, man, it's totally him.

And we're like, what? Well, you're ridiculous. There's no way it's out. And he goes, it's him, man. It's totally him. And we're like, what? Well, you're ridiculous. There's no way it's him. Yeah, no, it's him. It's Muselet. It's the golden ticket. And he is spilling his guts. He knows where he is.

He knows who's with him. You guys need to get your shit on. Get ready. We're going to Decrit. And we're like, all right. So we had another one of our troops, our wreckage troop actually was into Crete. So they stuck Mooselet on a helicopter and by app, they flew them up to Crete, handed

it off to them. We loaded up in vehicles and started the drive, a couple of hour drive up to Crete from Baghdad. They took Mooselet out and did a close target reconnaissance in a couple different areas. And what it was was what our intel analyst thought all along. He was going to be near to create near Samara or whatever the town he grew up in was that he was going to only have a tight-knit group of people around him that he was going to be near the river because Saddam

loved fish. Like, he had a real strict diet and he only ate fish and he had a personal chef and that chef had a family farm and Walt always believed that those were going to be the people closest to Saddam because he was paranoid and this dude had been with him forever. So we identified the cook's house and we identified the cook's farm. The house was in town, the family farm was outside of town and we came up with a plan after those two were pointed out based on the reconnaissance where we were going to split up as a squadron. my troop was going to take the house in town. The other troop plus snipers was going to take the farm and we did a simultaneous hit on both those places. While we were doing the hit on the house in town, I think the guys finished up on the farm about the same time, and the call came back from the farm that it was a dry hole,

that it wasn't the right place, it wasn't the cook's family, like something was off, but we had cased the chef. And he identified himself as Cased, although he didn't say he was Saddam's personal chef, battlefield interrogation, right there very quickly led to, yep, I'm Cased the cook, I'm Saddam's personal chef. And yeah, he's been hiding out with my family. So what had happened was Mussolet in a last ditch effort to defend Saddam had pointed out the wrong farm, knowing he was on another one. So after some work and driving the guy out and

confirming locations, they realized they were one farm off. Well, luckily C1 had hit the first farm, total blackout. No charges, no flashbangs, no nothing. They had done it completely silent, so they hadn't spooked anybody. They shifted over and hit the next farm. And then, yes, shortly after that, they uncovered the rug with the rope to the cork plug in the hole, pulled the cork out, and saw this looking down on a guy,

pulled him out of the hole and it was sedent. No shit, yeah. Re-surprise, Steve, came back alive. Yeah, I mean, it was during that phase of the war, your marching orders were killer capture. During that phase of the war, your marching orders were killer capture. You had rules of engagement that warranted either one. I think with Saddam it was understood that we weren't bringing him back. That being said, it's a unit operator and we're the good guys. And they pulled the cork out of the hole and there was an unidentified male with his hands over his head. The guys are gonna put a bullet in him

and they're certainly only gonna pull him out, look at him and put a bullet in him because that's not what we do. So, yeah, I mean, friends of mine, guys, that's so this is a second hand, I'm still in town, going, man, I hope this is it. Yeah. We're sitting in the vehicle at this point,

just waiting on the radio call and But yeah, they pulled them out of the hole. Holy shit at Saddam And yeah, that that was kind of it. So the radio call came and I think the squadron commander at the time said I have a possible for a BL number one Holy shit, and so yeah, we were Pretty freaking ecstatic. The joke was, it's on the way there. We were like placing bets with each other.

Like, do you think this is it? And in the beginning, when we first left bagged that, we were all like, bullshit, that's not it. There's no way it's gonna be another dry hole. By the time we got there and like the CTR had happened and all that stuff was going on, we were all kinda coming around like, all right, maybe this is it.

And I remember there's so many weird moments kind of coming around like, all right, maybe this is it. And I remember there's so many weird moments from that night, you know, just besides being a significant part of history and it obviously means more now than even it did at the time. But I remember like, getting up to go do that originally. And I remember the dogs, you know, when you put your kid on the dogs and get fired up because they knew it was go time. And it was go time. And it was like the one time that I really noticed it. Like they were like pan and like ready to go just because we were putting our gear on.

And it just felt different. Like I just was like, yeah, this might work out. Wow. So yeah, so you know, brought him back. Did you see him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, a few cool things happen. Like, there's some pictures that exist.

There's some pictures that made it out from that. But one of the cool things that happened was we brought him back to To Create and we had him in our detention facility there. We had next to the house, the guys were staying in there. And they let us basically all come into the open hall of this house when we walked him out to put him on the helo to fly him down to buy up. So there was an opportunity for everybody that was a part of the operation to physically see him and be close to him and understand the significance of the event.

And I thought that was a cool call by the leadership. The pictures that made it out were actually taken by an interpreter that worked for a three-letter agency. A lot of pictures were taken that day and the understanding was these are for years and years only and they don't, they're not for public release but she immediately emailed those to someone and they ended up finding their way onto the internet. But it's ancient history now so it doesn't matter but at the time it was a big deal. Yeah, I can imagine. But yeah, so flume down to buy up and yeah, he stayed there. It was a different animal than years later with Ben Laden,

but Saddam sat basically in a prison cell for a year till they hung him after publicly trying him and the whole thing that happened after that. Did you feel anything when they hung him? We've been with a kicked him off for a two or three story. Bang and... Yeah, I mean, when they hung him,

you know, there's an element of wanting to be there. Yeah, I mean, when they hung him, you know, there's an element of wanting to be there. I mean, we personally witnessed a lot of the horror that that guy was responsible for, like we'd seen the scars from it. You know, it was, he was a ruthless, ruthless dictator. And right, wrong or indifferent, you know, as a soldier, as a service member, you're an extension of US foreign policy, right? And you are there to do what they ask you to do. And we were asked to complete a mission and we did. And so even years later with all the hindsight on the Iraq war, I still think that what we did is the right thing, even if the reasons for getting us there weren't necessarily just.

It was a horrible, awful person responsible for brutally murdering thousands of people. Do you want to talk about any of the stuff that you saw? Because I'm going to share some of my experience. I didn't see anything when I deployed. I didn't see anything that he had directly caused when I was in the SEAL teams in Iraq. And it wasn't until actually my last deployment at the agency when I got to see just a site where things happened.

And I mean, I knew that he had tortured people. I knew he killed and murdered thousands and thousands of people. In my last deployment, I went to Hook and right around there, there was this compound that he, with these hooks, that came out of the walls. And he would take pregnant women and hang them on the hook and they would just be hanging there on the wall until they fucking blood out and died. Then inside, this is like a square or maybe a rectangle, two or three stories, I should

have pictures of it. And there was like no railing or anything on the top floor and then directly off the drop off were these huge concrete blocks. And we were with an interpreter and I was like, what are these blocks all around for? And he said that they would put heads, they would put a body, right, lean them over the block, have their head on that concrete block

and they would throw center blocks off the third story, crush people's heads. And that, you know, I saw a lot of traumatic shit, whatever it's combat, right? I didn't see anything, I never encountered anything like that. And just hearing that and being in that fucking place was made me realize how evil that son of a bitch actually was. Did you see anything like that? Yeah, similar experiences. So locations and places that things occurred

absolutely. Just talking and interacting with people. But honestly, one of the ones that I think had the largest impact on me was Christians in the Middle East have been persecuted for years. Saddam was one of those people that was a part of that process. The first Christmas that we were in Iraq, we had a number of Iraqis that worked for us. In the MSS that we had vetted that were friendly to why we were there in support of them. They did various things for maintenance tasks.

We had an Iraqi plumber, we had an electrician. It was what we had and we needed to support that infrastructure. And so we had two or three guys that had been around in the mission support site a bunch. And I didn't know anything about them. that had been around the mission support site a bunch and I didn't know anything about them. Chrismas Day, 2003. So we had caught Saddam on December 13th.

This is two weeks later and it was Christmas morning and Brad and I were outside on like the front balcony and we hear people sing in Christmas songs, like Christmas carols. Really? And we're like, what the heck is that? And we're like, listening, and we walk, and we look over, and we look over the balcony,

and down on the lower level is these guys that work for us that are singing Christmas carols. For the first time, probably ever. Damn. In English, because they were so happy that they were in a place where they weren't gonna be prosecuted for their religious beliefs. And that stuck with me.

Wow, that's fucking powerful. Damn. What was your deployment cycle like after, I mean, that's like the pinnacle, you know? Yeah, number one. I mean, so that was neat, like historically, that was neat to be able to do what you were tasked to do. I think we all knew and thought we were going home after that.

We really did. We had a big party that night when we got back to Baghdad. We had a good time Rysline presents go to your happy price What's up? It's Kayleigh Quokum when it comes to travel. We all have a happy place You can see yourself already there. It's beautiful It might be sunny and sandy for some, neon and urban for others, deserts or rainforests or hiking trails. With price line, you can get to your happy

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and a great wardrobe starts at J.C. Penny. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Clayboard, Worthington, Stafford, and J.Fourar. With clothing for every occasion, from family get-togethers to fancy occasions, all dressed up everywhere to go. JCPenney does it in style. Check out the latest in-store or online at jCPenney.com. Uh, that didn't happen. I think we did hit like the next day.

I know it was like a dose of reality like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going. Congratulations. Get back to work. Yeah, I think we chased, uh, uh, uh, outdury. He was like BL number six, black list number six. You know, he's the bald guy with like the red mustache that was always on TV back in the day. But we chased him for a while.

I don't know if that dude was ever captured or whatever. But, uh, yeah, we did a couple a day, or I think it was the next day, we did a hit chasing out Dairy. And then we ended up redeploying a couple of weeks after that. So after Christmas, we deployed, I think first week or second week in January, got bumped out by another squadron.

And yeah, the conversation was like, are we done? But so quickly it progressed into the resistance in the foreign fighter movement and all that stuff. You guys thought the war was gonna end? We thought we as an asset were leaving. Okay, like the US had occupied, we had bases all over the country, like we had all this, you know,

like I said, an extension of foreign policy going on with US forces, but that's not what we're there for. At least that's what we thought. But that just wasn't the case. Like the insurgency grew and built and continued from there. And then that turned into a whole resistance movement and a whole new target set and a whole new set of bad guys that we were tasked

with going to get. Wow. Yeah, so came home for, I don't know, six months, I guess, redeployed summer of 04. That was the first rotation of the exchange where my crystal had forced Deb Group and us to, they gave a team to us to go to Iraq, we gave a team to them to go to Afghanistan, to got a cross-pollinate between the organizations. And I think the thought process was,

I need these two Tier 1 assets to be interchangeable and both units had incredible capability, but they weren't necessarily interchangeable, they were different. But the targets that we were working on was the same. So he wanted to kind of cross-pollinate information and skill sets to make sure we were all on the same page so he could use whatever, wherever.

I think he foresaw the opt-empo stuff becoming an issue. There's only so many of us and the targets just kept getting greater and greater and greater. And I think it was brilliant. So that O4 rotation was the first time I deployed with the Navy SEAL on my team. And that was a fun rotation. Like we called it Baggedeed Swat.

So we were rolling up dudes every day that were on our targeting list. That were responsible for the farm fighter movement. That were responsible for targeting US troops. Like we were literally making a difference every day. And it was so early on, they weren't well trained. Like they weren't experienced in fighters. They weren't, we could get away with doing a lot of things that we couldn't later on in the war.

So we were doing a lot of commando shit. Like land on the X, heal the assaults, like faster open on the rooftops. And we were doing a lot of commandos shit, like land on the X, Hilo assaults, like faster open on a rooftops, and you know all the stuff that everybody thinks is really cool. And it was fun, you know, we were doing Hilo and ground force at the same time and hitting the target at the exact same moment. We started urban assault climbing and we were climbing buildings and moving building to building to do top down entry, you know. Oh, sure. Never knew we were there. Like that was to building to do top down entry, you know. Oh, sure. We never knew we were there.

Like, that was really kind of an evolution phase where we started doing a lot of that stuff. And it was fun, you know. We weren't, you know, we were getting gun fights occasionally, but honestly, we were doing things, you know, it's one of the elements of CQB, Speed, Supervisor, Violence of Action. Like, we were executing those to a T against an inexperienced group of fighters. And so it was easy pickings for the most part. You mentioned earlier that most all the missions that you were going on on,

all these hits were capture kill. How do you determine whether you're gonna kill on our capture? It's based on the threat. Based on the threat? Yeah, I mean, the threat at the exact moment. I can tell you, we never put a bullet in an unarmed person. Okay.

Not once. In my career, I've been shot at a few times by friendly forces, you know, blue and blue on accident. I have never seen anybody shoot an unarmed person or a person that wasn't a threat. So, you know, I know that mistakes happen in combat and I know of a number of them that have happened over the years, but yeah, to me, kill, kill necessitated enemy combatant that was armed. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of captures there early on. That was that rotation in 04. We finished up that one. I think my next one was in early 06. Yeah, that was summer of 05. Sorry, summer of 04 home for the fall about six months later. I was back in 06. 06 is when things are 05.

Sorry. 05 is when things started to change. I heard you say you never felt fear until 2005. That's when you started feeling fear and things started changing for you. Yeah, I think I had a level of confidence from things that had happened. And if I said never felt fear, I don't think I was conscious of it.

There were times when I felt fear, but I quickly got over it because I'm like, you know, this is the best train dudes in the world like around me, like they got my back. It was a myriad of things. I've always said guys, there's faith-based guys, there's ego guys that just think that they're better than everyone else, which gives them a tactical edge.

And then there's guys that are a little bit of everything. I was a little bit of everything. I believed in my training and the people around me. I knew that there's a power higher than me and that hopefully it was looking out for me. And then if it was my time to go, it was my time to go. So I kinda just drank from that. But yeah, I say that because in 05 is when we started losing guys.

We started facing a more experienced enemy combatant. The IED threat had escalated and was rampant and everywhere and that was scary. Getting in a vehicle to go conduct an assault is one thing. Blown the doors and enter in a house of armed combatants is one thing. But riding down the road completely helped us in the back of a vehicle waiting to get blown up. That's fear. And I think we all felt that. And then you coupled that with some incidents

that happened in O5 with IEDs and a lot of guys getting killed or maimed. Do you want to talk about that incident at all? Yeah, I mean, well, for me, so O5 was a weird year. So we had done a rotation. We had come back. I had, I was in 11 Bravo at the time time and I wanted to go to the SFQ course. I wanted to be a, I wanted my MOS, my job to be a Green Beret. So that if anything ever happened to me,

or I wanted to leave the unit that I was in and go out to a different force, I could at least go to the Special Forces Command community and be a Green Beret or be on an ODA or be an instructor somewhere or whatever. I didn't want to have to go back to the Conventional Army. So about that time is the same time that my team leader changed out, so a guy rotated out to selection and training, Chili Palmer, like his team leader time was done and Chili was moving on.

Brad, at the same time, Brad Thomas stepped away and went to combat development directorate, went to CDD. So we had some of the same guys and then some new guys and I said, hey, I really want to go to the Q course. Are you guys cool with me going? And it was like, yeah, like there's no good time, just go. So I tried to go in between rotations, but I ended up going, you know, the course is six months long, so towards the tail end of me being in the course, the squadron deployed. Well that turned out to be like, see squadron as a squadron at the time turned out to be like their worst rotation.

So in the beginning of that rotation, the guy that had replaced me on my team that I hadn't even trained with. So he showed up to squadron just like I did, immediately deployed. So like we met each other in passing, but we didn't even know each other. They trained him up and he became the team breacher, which was what I did for a long time. One target, they were driving in, he was on an ATV and he took around between his helmet and his nods, so through his nods mount.

And then shortly thereafter, they were on a target, and he was putting a charge on the door, and a belt head opened up in the hallway through the door, and Steve was killed. So that was one. So I'm not there. The guy that replaced me and was in, what would have been my position ended up

dying on this first rotation to combat. The second one was and this is not very long after that. They were hitting another target, hit the house, dry hole, ended up doing a follow on target that was close by. So they had already lost speed, they'd already lost surprise all they had left was violence of action. The bad guys knew they were there Teams approached the house My best friend at the time a guy went to OTC with Mike McNulty and another guy that's in it legend in Bob Horge and Bob was basically the first dude up at the door with Mike. Mike was breaching, but as they breached and made entry Same kind of thing machine gun setup just waiting on guys to come in the house the door with Mike. Mike was breaching, but as they breached and made entry, same kind

of thing. Machine gun setup, just waiting on guys to come in the house. Mike and Bob both got hit, and Mike and Bob both ended up dying. So I'm in the cue course, and I'm in the tail end. I'm in the field exercise to graduate the particular phase that I'm in, which is like the the MLS phase. And I was in the 18 echo course. I was in training to be a special force communication sergeant or whatever. And we were out in the field. And like the primary instructor, the first sergeant

for that phase of the course showed up out of the field. And he came up to me. And he said, you got a minute. I need to talk to you. And I said, yeah. up to me and he said, you got a minute, I need to talk to you. And I said, yeah. Every time, it doesn't matter. Every time I've ever told this story.

So, yeah, a guy named Lonnie Plevins, and Lonnie pulled me aside and he said, hey, I don't know who it is. I don't have names, but I know that, I didn't even know about Steve yet at this point, but I know two guys from Usoosak were just killed in Iraq and he goes, and I know it doesn't say, United States Army Special Operations Command unless it's you guys, because Usoosak is a staff organization and it's usually used as the descriptor for a

unit guys deployed if they were from one of the groups, it would have said, seven special force group, four special force group or whatever. And he said, so I don't know who it is, but I'm assuming you do. He said, do you want to take some time and leave, and go see if you can figure it out? And I was like, yeah, I'm not sure what to do,

but yeah, I really appreciate that. And I'm like, what about the course? And he's like, you're doing great. I'm not worried about it. He's like, you know, I've been to combat for a bunch of years Like they gave me a little bit of a pass, which is one of the coolest things that's ever happened in my career. And so I left I stopped at a gas station and saw the paper and same thing that Lonnie had seen and I went to the pay phone and I called Staff Duty at the unit and you know there's a you have to identify yourself and whatever and so once they confirmed I said who is it and they said

it's Mike and Melty and Bob Horgan. So to this day, I don't remember like what happened in the next 24 to 48 hours. Like I think it's one of those things where my memory has chosen to like get rid of that. my memory has chosen to like get rid of that. And I cannot recall going home or talking about it. The next thing that I remember sort of in that phase of events was I called back to the cue course and I said, Hey, it's two guys that I know, one of which I went through school with and it's one of my best friends in the unit.

Um, are you cool with me like attending the funerals and being a part of this stuff because these guys are coming home? And they said, yeah. So, yeah, Mike and Bob's remains came home. We buried Mike at Arlington. We buried Bob in Texas. And then I went back to the Cucors.

They were basically done and I had to go right into Robin's age. So I went into, you know, phase, whatever it is, the last phase of the SF qualification course with that. And I think it's because I didn't have time to process it. I didn't understand what was going on, but, and I found out about Steve. I think it was now looking back, it was like survivors remorse or survivors guilt. It was the guilt of not being there in Steve dying when that should have could have would've or maybe not been me, but that that happened because I wasn't there. It was not being on the ground or on target when you're best friend and another guy that you really looked up to or killed.

It was just a, it was a really weird thing that I didn't understand and I didn't know how to process. And I felt guilty. I felt like I let my guys down. Should I, I mean, I skipped over the part. So Mikey, who was my teal at the time, they hit a target out in Western Iraq, same rotation. Mikey ended up in a house, basically by himself trading rounds and grenades with a guy, ended up with like 37 holes in his body from fragmentation injuries,

and two other guys on the team were shot, and a couple other guys on the trooper shot, all in one target house. And so same thing, finished up the cue course. Graduate if you can call it that. And the first thing I did was I drove up to Walter Reed to see Mikey in intensive care in the hospital full of holes. So it was like a thing I went to do to take a break from deployment and to better myself and professionalize myself and add some skills I thought. And what it ended up being was this huge,

like heavy burden guilt trip where I felt like if I'd have been there, some more all of that shit wouldn't have happened. And it's silly, like you see, I still carry it. And I've come to grips with it over the years and I realize that that's ridiculous. And I therapy and talk to people and communicating with folks, and no one's ever said anything to me like,

man, if you were there, like thank God, and like nothing like that has ever happened. And I don't think anybody ever thought that. But I've carried that for, well, as many years as that's been, almost 20 years now. And it's still as painful as it was then, I just deal with it a little better now than I used to.

And that was a triggering year for a lot of things. So when I went back to squadron after that, hold on. There's a lot of people to deal with that. Sure. What are some pointers? What are some something that can help somebody that's getting over that?

Talk to people. Communicate. Communicate. You are your biggest enemy. If you stay in your own head and your own mind and you compartmentalize that shit and you don't share it with anyone, you will convince yourself that they are thinking those things. Like man, he let us down. It's just not true.

It's never ever true. But if you don't discuss it, you don't get that reinforcing assistance of someone going, no, man, no. Like that shit was going to go down no matter what. Like that happened because of a myriad of circumstances that are beyond your control and had nothing to do with you. But if you don't communicate, you're going to continue to hold that in yourself and think those things. You know, it's like when you're in a relationship, like with your spouse, like I say this in my wife all the time, I'm like, if I know something's bothering you and I say, what's bothering you and you say nothing, my head turns it into the worst possible thing of whatever the situation is.

She's mad at me because of this. She's mad at me because of that. It's probably all completely false, but because we're not communicating effectively, because I'm not openly discussing it, and you're not openly discussing it, we don't get to dispel with all of the super negative and figure out what the root of the real problem is.

So my advice would be communicating with people. I think the combination of me being in the middle of the cue course and having to go right back to that, basically bury a bunch of dudes and then go back to work. I like, I never took a minute to go, how do I feel? And it's also why I think I lost two days of my life. Like, I think those days are gone because I physically and mentally did not know how to deal with what had just happened. And that was far worse, weirdly, that was far worse for people out there that have been through it.

I've seen guys get injured, I've taken a lot of lives, all of that, like combat trauma. It wasn't really that stuff that truly stuck with me. It was that year, it was things like that. It was post-career when another one of my best friends that took me in when I got divorced, died in a base jump in accident, you know, Brandon Jackson, phenomenal operator, amazing dude, one of my best friends. He died post-service, jumping, like chasing the adrenaline high

that he had from all those years of being an operator. Yeah. Like the difference was, I had a bunch of years later to get better and get healthy and understand how to process it. And then I needed to talk about it. After that discussion and knowing what you know now, would you have changed any of your decision making when it comes to the Q course? No, no, I mean, everything that's happened to me in my life and all the decisions I made

have led to where I am right now. So all the good and all the bad had to happen for me to meet my wife and up with my wife. For me to get better, get healthy, understand better who I am. Yeah, no, I don't think I would do anything different. I mean, obviously if I could take back the loss of those people I would. And those are, you know, we're hitting the high points. I mean, I'm sure you, like a lot of people out there,

like I stopped counting, but you know, we just, there's lost a couple more guys out of the community in the last 30 days. The last time I counted, I was up to like 40 some dudes in the last 20 years that not all best friends, right? But guys that I work with, guys that I went to schools with, guys that I was professionally connected to, and in some cases some really good friends. But that's 40 some folks over the course of 20 years.

That's a lot of loss. And it happens and it's part of what we do and it's part of the lifestyle we chose. But the way that you deal with it isn't by shutting it all down and sticking it in a box and never talking about it. Just the fact that you're able to say that you wouldn't go back and change anything and the advice that you're given to other people. I mean, that's going to help thousands of people, and it's proof. It's very obvious you're still in pain over it, but that's proof that you can fucking

move past that kind of stuff. And it's not your fault. And I think that's going to help a lot of people. And it's okay, right? Like, we laughed about it, not on camera, but I'm cool with that. Like, I'm okay with my emotions, as it relates to those things.

Why? Because they are horrible, traumatic experiences that are difficult to deal with for anybody. And the second thing is trauma is trauma. Like, I shouldn't even quantify it. Whether it's one or 50, whether you're in a car accident, or your parents get divorced in a shitty situation, trauma is trauma and the impacts of that of trauma

are by and large the same across the board. The symptoms are similar and people try or want to or you as an individual want to quantify like, well, that guy's been through so much more than me. So I I can't relate bullshit. It's all relative, it's all relative. Trauma is trauma, the mechanisms for recovery and getting better and getting past it are all the same. Thank you for saying that. That means a lot to a lot of people. But, well that's pretty heavy. Let's take a break. Cool, thanks. Yeah, all right.

Yeah, I'm good. Cool. I told you, I literally can't stop it. I thought I was gonna get through it at that time and nope, as soon as I think about Lonnie coming up to me and going, I don't know who it is. Like, it feels like it was yesterday. Like that, pit in like it was yesterday.

Like that pit in my stomach of fuck. And then when I found out that phone call that it was Mike, like Mike had four kids, four young kids. Fuck man. And I was like, why that guy? Like, of all the dudes in Squadron, then it could have been, why is it to do that as a phenomenal father, a phenomenal husband, a guy that probably worked harder than 75% of the guys to get here because he's a fucking regular army guy. You know, he's not a ranger, he's not an SF dude, and a guy with

four young children. Like, why does it take him? Yeah. And you know, a lot of guys after that, but for some reason, man, like fuck. It's fucking weird, man. I mean, yeah, I used to, when Adam Brown got killed, the dev group, I didn't go to dev group, but I did a platoon with him, and he was that guy. He was, I don't know if you've ever heard Adam Brown,

but whatever. He was, I mean, he's just a fucking good dude. Good dude. He's a faithful man to his wife. He's there for his fucking kids. Like, he's a Christian. He's a, and it sounds awful. He's a perfect fucking role model.

It sounds awful, but let's face it, we weren't all great role models. Yeah. Some of us were fucking shits. They're a good portion of our life. Like, not to say one guy deserves it more than the other, but it's like it's always that guy. Yeah. great role models. Some of us were fucking shits. They're a good portion of our life. Not to say one guy deserves it more than the other, but it's like it's always that guy.

The dude that isn't like that. It's fucking weird. Yeah. It is really weird. That fucked me up. I think I was getting pretty messed up by that point anyway. And I think I always felt like I was gonna die in combat. And so that added piece of, why wasn't that me?

You know? Like, because I didn't think I was a good person at that point. Like I really did. Maybe you weren't. Maybe I wasn't. I wasn't. But you know, you get what I'm saying. And like, that's all part of it too.

I don't even know how to talk about that shit, so I don't say that part often. But yeah, like Mike, just like you said, like Adam, they were just good dudes. Like they were examples, like good ones. So why the fuck was it then? We'll keep this portion in. We just talked about it. Let's take that break. I wanna take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon.

Patreon support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one of a kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com, slash Vigilance Elite, and support the Sean Ryan Show today. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

Alright Chris, we're back. Let's we left Iraq, you went to the Q course, we talked about all that stuff, then we just had a conversation outside about your next deployment to Iraq and all the vehicle interdiction stuff you're doing. Let's go into some of that. Yeah, so came back from the QCourse. The next rotation over was a different one. So the things that kind of evolved, we weren't doing 24 hour ops anymore.

We were running day night at a different outstations around the country. But a couple of weeks into that rotation, we decided we were gonna stand up a daylight vehicle in a addiction cell. So we were going to use helicopters and intelligence collection to target individuals. And when they left structures or houses wherever they were and they were mobile, we could hit them in the right spot at the right time. You know, minimizing external threat and civilians and everything else

and maximizing our ability to get exactly who we were after. So at this point in the war, Intelligent Collision was fantastic. Like we had a lot of air assets, we had a lot of drones and things that were providing real-time information and visual stuff that we could see. So we would build

target packets on folks. We would watch guys, we pattern a life on and basically we were pre-staged at Balaad and when they got into a certain area where we felt like we could go get them, we'd load up on the helos and we'd go get them. My team was completely new batch of folks at this point. So I was a 2SC roughly at the time. And basically, we had a bunch of fresh guys out of OTC. Weird thing about the unit, it doesn't mean they were all young guys. Some guys don't end up over there until way

late in their career. Some guys end up there early like I did, earlier in their career. So it was kind of a mixed bag, but they were new to the unit and had never been overseas with us. We were really good at what we were doing. So we were aggressively targeting foreign fighters, terrorists, and folks that were a part of the network. And we did so. And these are key players. Yeah, all of it. It's not your everyday fucking ground fighter. It's not, you know, we're going to set an idea up and then go to party. These are these are key players that

you guys are going out. Yeah, a lot of them. A lot of them. Yeah, a lot of them. It led to a lot of very successful mission sets where, you know, exactly who you were after. You were watching that individual. You watched them get into a vehicle, and then you flew up alongside them and confirmed that, hey, there's nobody but exactly who we think it is in that vehicle. They're all military age males, they're all our primary targets, and we're gonna deal with that threat.

So very successful. We had some funny ones in there, just to lighten it up after that, like heavy last segment. You know, one time, I think it's my one and only hostage rescue, although a number of them have been done over the years by the Navy guys and by us.

One in particular during this daylight vehicle and addiction phases, we were watching a couple of bad guys. And they had left the structure they were in and they weren't, they hadn't quite broken the box Where we needed them to be to launch yet, but while they were in route to that location They stopped off at a gas station We watched it was a car full of four dudes. We watched them get out of the vehicle They went up to a semi truck and they basically car jacked a semi truck

So they took the two Iraqis out of the semi truck, the driver and passenger, they stuffed them in the back of the trunk of the car. Two guys got in the car, the other two guys got in the semi truck. Semi truck went one way, the car went the other and we went, well, guess we're doing a hostage rescue for a couple of Iraqis. So literally within nine minutes of these two shit heads,

kidnap into random Iraqis and stealin' their truck, Nine minutes of these two shit heads kidnapping to random arachies and stealing their truck. We had stopped the vehicle, killed those two and I popped the trunk and let's do a rackies out. And I thought, man, no wonder, no wonder they think, what did you say to them? I don't think I said anything. It was a couple of us, you know?

They guys. Yeah, it was like, come on, come on. And they were freaked out. Like they had no idea. Like they got car check to gunpoint, got stuffed in a trunk. Probably thought they were gonna die. The next time the trunk opened

and opened the trunk and there's two Americans fully kidded out, standing there over top of them, helping them out. And I thought, man, no wonder the bad guys think we are the greatest nation in the world. Like they just did this and nine, ten minutes later, we were on them. Yeah. And so that was kind of a neat point.

But yeah, there was a lot of good things that happened in that stretch. A lot of bad guys taking off the map. It was a bit cathartic in that, that was kind of the anger phase. For me, you know, I was really upset about things that had happened in O5 and guys that we had lost. I mean, before we get into that, it sounds like you guys have just killed an entire deck of cards. Yeah, easy. Do you get numb to that? I mean, do you even fucking care anymore?

That I mean, these are all key players, or does it just, is it just going to work? I think it depends. Some guys get more involved in the intelligence picture and exactly who and what and why we're doing what we're doing. I think I got a little more numb as the years went by. I think there's an evolution in empathy that occurs in combat that people don't talk about very often.

It doesn't mean that you're making bad decisions. It means that the decision-made trick or the amount of time that it takes you to get to that decision to pull the trigger gets less. Some of it's, I've said it before, like, spidey sense where you just know this is bad and your reaction times get quicker or you feel like something's about to go bad or whatever. But some of it's just, yeah, it's just a reduction in empathy. So no, for me, I didn't. They were just bad guys.

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goes by and I think that kind of happens to everybody. Yeah. We can move on. All right. I don't have to set everybody. Yeah. We can move on. All right. Yeah, so that rotation, yeah. That was probably one of our better rotations in that. It was one of the healthiest cycles we ever had while we were there.

We were stationed in Belod. We were getting up, we were working out. We were eating three squares a day. We weren't doing night ops, it was all daylight stuff. It was all daylight. All daylight. Wow. And it was effective.

And it, you know, it hadn't been done, nobody done a daylight vehicle, healaborn interdiction since the, like, the one that they did in Somalia in 93. Chasing Mohammed Ferdadid, you know, and our, or whatever the guy's name was, Otto or whoever they rolled up, doing one. But, but yeah, hadn't been done in a long time. It was really, really effective,

not just for that rotation, but it was effective for the rotation after us. The guys continue to do it for another 60 days. So we literally like clean the board in terms of, you know, bad guys and influencers on the battlefield, you know, high value targets, like we really clean house in about a 90-period. For us, I'm like a touch of the fun one was the hostage rescue, but sort of towards its tail end, we had one where it was some guys that we were tracking related to AMZ, Abu Musa, Balsar, Kawi. Right? But, yeah, one of the few objective names I remember, it's like objective mayor, but it

was a daylight vehicle interdiction that turned into a full-blown daylight helo assault. And so whether they had gotten used to our pattern and activity and what we were doing to engage them, or it was just pure dumb luck. They broke off of the road that we were intending to interdict them on and ended up pulling up to a house in a rural community, a couple of structures together and they got out and went in the house. Well, they were fairly significant high-value individuals. So our daylight vehicle and addiction turned into a daylight assault. So we changed course, started heading towards the objective. About one minute out, I was, as they say, I was like the lead nav guy as the two I see on the team.

My particular team was responsible for navigation to the target, whether it was a vehicle or whether it was house or whether we were walking or whatever it was. So I was in the door of the helo. I had a tough book next to me, a laptop, you know, running some map software tracking our location and had the target house pinned on there. And then we had a predator overhead. So we had a display in the helo also with what the pred was seeing.

So I'm watching this, looking out the window, watching this, looking out the window, looking where the target house is, and the pilot flies right by the house. And it's out in the middle of a farm field. So I'm screaming and I'm slapping the crew chief, and I'm pointing, it's right there, it's right there, it's right there. Well, the pilot's, you know, the crew chief says,

some of the pilot, pilot banks hard, comes back down, sets down in the field, and the trail bird comes in, sets down behind us. Well, there's a irrigation ditch, like a great big irrigation ditch between us and the target house. And as we got out and started moving, we all collectively, like the, I don't know, two and a half teams worth of, got two teams worth it guys. Hit this ditch and we're all just standing there because we know it's like Chesdeep and nobody wants to cross this thing.

And like a scene out of a World War II movie, our true commander at the time goes, get over there. And I remember laughing because here's a bunch of commandos, you know, afraid to cross this little body of water but we did and We crested the other side of the the trench line and then luckily for us The guys just sort of starburst out of the house And so there was a lot more than we thought it was eight to ten guys and they came out guns blazing

So as we're trying to close the distance and deal with some of them the two little birds and we hadn't support had caught up to us because the hawks were a lot faster than the little birds. So when it turned into a helo assault, we didn't want to waste any time. We wanted to get them while they were fresh in case. They were spooked and trying to go arm themselves, which is what they did. But so as they squirted out, the little birds came in. And so this is weird daylight thing where we're firing maneuvering across this field towards the house as these guys go in every direction The little birds came in with guys on the pods and they're shooting down and the bad guys are shooting up One of the pilots took one through his foot straight through his foot didn't tell anybody finished the whole operation And went until we got back we found out he had a bullet hole right through the bottom of his boot. Just kept flying the mission

We had another guy take one in it was weapon So didn't penetrate his rifle, but hit him right in the rifle damn on the pod boot just kept flying the mission. We had another guy take one and it was weapon. So didn't penetrate his rifle, but hit him right in the rifle. Damn, on the pod. But so anyway, Target goes down. We're all good. Everybody's OK minus the wounded pilot.

And the bad guys are all dead. But every single one of those guys had a body bomb on. Every one of them. All of them. Every single one was wearing a rigged body bomb. None of them detonated. The two vehicles that were in basically the front yard where they had parked the car were like two of those like

mini buses, both of them fully loaded with explosives. They were VBIDs that were getting ready to use. And the realization hit us that when we flared in turn, when we missed the target and came back in, if they would have just happened to be able to clack off one of those two trucks, it would have taken down both helos and probably killed everybody in our troop. Shit. But fortunately for us, and this is the way where it goes, what is it, what's the saying,

better to be lucky than good or whatever. Yeah. We were lucky that day. And yeah, the Intel that came off of that in particular was some of the Intel that was utilized to target AMZ, which we had rotated out with the very next rotation is when they dropped all those bombs and killed him and confirmed that he was killed. So yeah, it was a really successful rotation. Mentally it was probably good because we were really getting after it. And you know, we all had a lot of baggage from 05. I mean, I think that's a good question. Mentally, it was probably good, because we were really getting after it.

And we all had a lot of baggage from 05. So, we were really effective. We were really engaged. And we didn't lose anybody. It was a good trip. Man, you've been a part of a lot of high-profile stuff. Yeah, we're lucky timing. Yeah, it's funny how it all plays out, but you look back on it and you go, well, I was, I got

to do some significant things and not a lot of, a lot of guys got to do. And to this day, I, you know, now I can look back and realize how fortunate I was, not just to live through all that, but to experience it all that, and to do it with the guys that I did. So, yeah. It's not just luck. There's a lot of hard work that goes on the good look. So, let's move.

I know you want to Africa. Yeah. Towards the end of your time. Yeah, so to end of the O6 rotation, I came back. A guy that I had worked with that had been my team leader for a brief stint, had moved to a different place in the building doing more clandestine work or advanced forces, AFO stuff. So in the years leading up to 2007,

General McRister, who was a JSAW commander, had been slowly but surely spreading out in intelligence collection kind of around the globe. And I think the phrase was, you need a network to fight a network. And he was smart enough to identify that OutKite is, got cells all over the world. There's a network of folks that are communicating. The long and short of it is, there's a lot of people out there that want to kill Americans and that have been a part of that. And we need to be

forward and collect intelligence in other countries besides Afghanistan and Iraq. So in, in, in, uh, Lato 6, um, I got asked to, to try out to come up and try out for this other part of our organization. Um, that was really focused on stuff outside of, of Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh, and at the same time that I had gone through that and done that and, and joined that part of the building. They stood up a new task force in DC and the task force was designed with combating acute threats,

greater GWAT stuff outside of the Middle East. The Horn of Africa was a particularly big hotbed. What they had figured out was that Somalia be in the lawless land that it is, was the perfect place to not only recruit from, but to ship farm fighters from various countries around Africa and the Middle East down to, to train them, prepare them, give them skills like IED building and marksmanship and whatever, and then put them on boats, ship them up to Yemen, and then via Yemen back into the Middle East to go kill Americans wherever that may be. So it was an integral part of the Farm Fighter Network, and we wanted to do something about it. So in early

07, or I guess early spring of 07, I got to deploy to the Horn of Africa, working out of the embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. We had, you know, intelligence collection in various countries throughout the Horn, but I was one of two guys from my organization. We had two guys from DEB Group, two guys from the Air Force equivalent of those two organizations, so a combat controller and a pair rescue guy, two guys from another Army organization, based out of Virginia,

and then a couple of Ranger Recon detachment operators. So we called it the Rainbow Coalition because it was two guys from each color of the rainbow. Two guys from green, two guys from blue, two guys from red, two guys from white. That was our little joke. Along with a bunch of other assets that were involved with really intelligence processing and understanding.

Yeah, Africa was different in that it was new. I wasn't surrounded by my squadron mates. I was lucky in that the seals that I ended up with were guys that were a part of the exchange back early on in the war. Okay. That Macrystal had directed and we were all kind of at the same points in our career. So while they were moving into the clandestine element of their organization, I was doing

the same. So we met in Africa. It wasn't the first time we'd ever seen each other. So it made for a very easy, comfortable environment where we could do some high-level stuff together without a whole bunch of time to train together if that makes sense. Limited assets, we didn't have much. We had no ISR, we had no predators, we had no close air support, we had no AC-130. Our intelligence collection was humid, was meeting with people on the ground, and gathering information.

We had a signal intelligence platform, so we had one airframe that flew overhead that listened to real-time voice calls via the iPhones and other handheld satellites that the terrorists were using. And we had a couple of indigenous speakers that we would put on the plane and would listen to those real-time phone calls and had been doing it for the last five years and could recognize key players' voices.

And so that was literally how we were targeting to fast forward. And I guess the tail end of May, early June, we started getting some traffic in Mombasa Kenya. So we had some human intelligence that directed us to there. And then we put some asset, that one asset that we had overhead. And lo and behold, they got a hit on the two, probably two of the most wanted guys in the world, which were a guy named Harun Fizzul and a guy named Salay Nabhan, which were responsible for the USMC bombings in Nairobi, Kenya, and Daris Alam Tanzeni in 1993.

And so long time target spent on the list for a long time. This is 2007, so the long time later. But what they were involved in was basically that far-enfighter trafficking into and out of southern Somalia, and the training of those guys, and then subsequently moving them back into the Middle East. So, we knew we needed to do something. We just didn't have the assets to like go interdict anywhere. And we certainly couldn't do it hit in downtown Mombasa Kenya.

So we got lucky. The last communication we had from them was that they were boarding a boat. And it was 18 to 20 terrorists or so and that they were headed north. They were stopping in southern Somalia and then continuing on to Sena Yemen, where they were going to dump their guys off or movement into the Middle East. So on the onset, we had what we thought were the number two and three most wanted dudes on the planet. Assalam-a-manladen being number one, this was two and three. And outside of the Middle East, we had them on a boat, we had to move in north along the coast of Somalia, but we had no way to interdictum at sea.

So we came up with a hasty plan. We had been working. The CIA over the years leading up to that had developed a relationship with some folks in Somalia. And one of them was the Puntland Defense Force. So Northern Somalia and the town of Basasso, these were basically Somalis that were recruited via various means, but mostly money to help us achieve things in that country. So they were the best friends money could buy at the moment. But yeah, we ended up flying from Nairobi, Kenya up to Djibouti, where there was a U.S. naval base. We dumped half of our guys there.

And then three of us flew from Djibouti when I say half. It's like, so six guys. We left three in Djibouti to coordinate some assets or what we had, you know, like an aircraft if we needed it for Casavac, start talking to our higher headquarters about what's going on and what we're trying to do. And then we flew and forward staged in Bessasso Somalia

and linked up with the PDF as we called them. The PDF there was led by a guy that was basically a former Somali warlord, but again he was sympathetic to our cause and was not a fan of foreigners and foreign fighters coming in this Somalia to train like that just wasn't, he wasn't good with that either. So his name was Bashir and so we linked up with Bashir, handful of his guys, and we basically tried to figure out what we were going to do about this boat moving north, and we were kind of hoping and praying that we would pick him up again and get a good fix on their location, or that they would stop, and they would give us some course of action. Well, about the time

that all this is going on, we're flying a plane up the coast of Somalia, trying to gather some whatever we can and they catch them on the phone. And they had so high sea state off the horn, which is notoriously bad like shipping lane in terms of sea conditions. They had rough seas had forced them a ground on the coast and actually damaged their ship.

It was in the town of Bargol and they got in a shootout with locals in the town. They stole a bunch of supplies like water and food from the townspeople and then they moved up into the hills just outside of town. So they couldn't get back on their boat because their boat was damaged. All we got, so now we're getting real-time human intelligence. All we got out of the townspeople was, that hey, these guys are all foreigners, like they're all from other places.

And they're heavily armed. They have a bunch of guns. There's a bunch of them. And we don't understand why they're here. Like this is the conversation that's going on. So, you know, the three of us that were in Bessasso, it was me, a guy from Dev and a CCTV guy, we're like, well, we got to do something. Like we have an opportunity to get, you know, number two and number three

most wanted dudes on the planet. Like we got to do something. So we came up with a plan with with with Bashir and the PDF guys that we were going to fly and get as close to Bargol as we could stop about two hours west of the town and then he was going to coordinate for some folks in the area to come pick us up and then you know we were going to drive in the bargol and figure out you know what we were going to do with this so that all went down when we were on the way out of town Brady and I the CCTV guy were in one vehicle and and and Phil the the Navy guy was in the other vehicle and we're with Somalis and we're driving down the road and this vehicle comes screaming down the road behind us Like high rate of speed like dirt spilling out everywhere and we're freaking out like none of the guys in the car

Speaking literally the only person that does is a busier. He doesn't know what's going on and this car is chasing us down. So they're hawking, they're horned, they're hawking, they're horned, our guys pull over and we're like, what are you doing? So we're ready to go thinking this is somebody

that spotted us coming out of town. And they pull up, stop get out, it's guys that they know what it was was they had forgot their big bags of cotton and they didn't want to leave without them. They forgot their drugs. Yeah. So and that was typical work in Winsomales. You know about mid-day they would start chewing cotton mid-afternoon they were useless. So if you didn't get it done in the morning it wasn't happening. But yeah, so that was a little high stress moment leading up to that. But we ended up getting on plane flying out. His guy showed up, so it was the three of us,

Bushier, and a handful of his loyalists. And we drove into Bargol. On the way into Bigarl, we were kind of working on a hasty plan, and we had nothing. So we just kind of worked with what we knew to be true, what we had hard facts on, and we kind of backwards plan from there. So, Brady, the CCTV guy was like, look man, we need a way to get out of here. Like what are our options?

We've got a fixed wing plane and Djibouti that could come get us. We've got our guys that are coordinating there and we've got some PJs that were stationed there. So we've got some options, but it's like five hours away. He's like, well, there's a Russian airfield that's south of the city that I saw on the map, old dirt strip. He's like, why don't we stop on the way into town and survey that airfield and make sure we can land that bird there just in case. Perfect, great idea. So we stopped survey the airfield. It was probably the quickest airfield survey. A CCTV guy's

ever done, but he felt good enough that we could land a plane on this dirt strip. So we picked up, we left him there, filled the Navy guys like, hey man, there's a Navy destroyer off the coast. Can't see him, but he's out there somewhere doing an a piracy operations. So this is before Captain Philips a year before that all went down. But so they're out there just burning holes in the ocean trying to deter Somali pirates from doing what ended up happening a year later. And so he's like, why don't we call that destroyer? It was the USS Chaffee. And Brady's like, cool. he's like, why don't we call that destroyer? It was the USS Chaffee. And Brady's like, cool, he's like, I can do that.

Like, we'll call him in the blind and be like, hey, you got US forces on the ground. He's like, I can pre-plan some targets. You know, they got deck guns. Like, if we get in trouble, we've got some naval gunfire. Awesome, great. And they're like, well, how are we gonna do this?

And I'm like, well, I think we just basically need to get there where they're dudes. We need to set up a patrol base between the town and wherever we think they are because we don't have an exact on their location. I said, it's 110 degrees outside. Let's bring the aircraft down so they can hear it. Let's bring the boat in over the horizon line so they can see a US naval warship off the coast and set up a patrol base out of small arms range, but where they can see us. It's just wait amount. I'm like, there's nowhere to go. There are thousands miles in any direction from the next town through the desert.

It's 110 degrees outside. They're boats damaged. I go, they're going to start being heat catch too soon. Like they weren't prepared to be here. We are. We have the ability to access the town, whatever. And we've got some friendly, smiley, friendly swilless. We'll just wait it out.

So we pull in everybody's good with it. The three of us feel good about it. You know, it's basically the three of us and eight or 10 Somalis. So to our knowledge, there's 18 to 20 some of them and they got Belfeds and a bunch of other stuff. We didn't have shit. We had rifles and pistols and a handful of Somalis with AKs.

We did have two machine guns, but not a ton of ammunition for either one of those that the Somalis brought with them. So we set up our little hasty patrol base and we're waiting. In the early part of the day, it's hot and we're dying and Bashir is like, we need to go get these guys. We're like, now we can't do it. And again, he's the only one speaking. So he's like, no, we need to go do it.

And he keeps pressing. And like, we can't figure out why. He keeps pressing, keeps pressing. Still can't, like Bashir, just calm down, man. And what it was is he didn't understand. He's like, he can see the boat too. We didn't say anything about it. He can hear the plane.

And he's like, at one point, he's like, why don't you just drop a bomb on him? And we're like, one, we don't know exactly where they are. We have no way of geolocating them. Two, the battery died on their phone. They're not talking anymore. So we don't know if they moved, we don't know what's going on. We just know they're in those hills somewhere. We're like three, like we haven't worked a whole lot together. So like, this is a dangerous thing. Like we just need to wait these guys out. Well, he loses patience. So it's probably two, thirty, three o'clock in the afternoon.

And he comes over to the three of us. So the Somalis are kind of spread around just doing the thing, chewing cotton. And the three of us are like just trying to figure out like what's next because we can't just shoot an able gunfire. Like we basically have to get an engagement to do anything. And we're in a country where we're not supposed to be in. We got no air assets, no cast, no nothing. So Bashir walks over and he goes, I'm taking my guys and I'm going over the hill to kill them. And I go, what?

And he goes, you can come with me if you want, unless you're scared. He pumped us, literally pumped us. He shit. And so I'm like, all right Bashir, you know, unless you're scared. He pumped us. Literally pumped us. He shit. And so I'm like, all right, but you're, you know, straight face, I'm like, I get it, I get it. Like we need to do something, I understand.

I go, can you give us a minute? Let us talk and come up with a little hasty plan here. And I'll be right back with you. He's just fine. So he walks off to his guys. And I turn around where he can't see me and I start laughing. And Phil and Brady are like, what do you laugh at? And I go around where he can't see me and I start laughing and fill him.

Brady are like, what do you laugh at? And I go, you guys are going to believe this. That's like, but when you go through Robin Sage in the cue course, you have a G chief, a guerrilla warlord guy that's pretending that's his thing and he has his little Gs. And I go and they act like complete assholes and they do things like this. And when you're in the cue course, you're like, no way this ever happens. And here we are in Somalia. And this former warlord is going,

are you too scared to come with me? And so, you know, we had a quick conversation, and I'm like, look, we're gonna lose the faith of these guys. These are our only security. We're a five hour flight, a really long swim to a boat. We got no assets, no nothing. Like, we can't lose this.

Like, we need to keep these guys on our side. We didn't trust them to begin with. You know, we hadn't worked with them a whole bunch and it wasn't a very comfortable feeling. It wasn't like we had been training these guys and working with them for months on end. Yeah. Supposedly the CIA trained them for the last few years,

but I can tell you what we saw was not a highly trained force. So anyway, so we end up pulling Bashir in and we explained to him that basically we're gonna do a movement to contact, bounding over watch. And we ended up putting the gun teams on either side, not so much because of the tactics,

but because we were afraid about having them too close to us and what would happen. So we had a gun team to our right flank, a gun team to our left flank. The three of us were staying together no matter what. And then we had a couple other Somalis and Bashir with us. And so we start this bounding overwatch. We move a gun team up, move another gun team up, so on and so on. And so we crest over the first hill. About the time we

get over the first hill, headed up to the larger ridge, we hear a belt Fed open up. And it's to the north of us, and they're shooting at the guys on our right flank. Can't tell exactly where it's coming from, but we can tell that that's the only ones that they can see. So we continue to move up to gain the high ground on this ridge line to try to get a better fix on their position. By the time we get up there,

we realize where they are, not too far from our position. We engage those guys, but then all hell breaks loose. So in the draw behind the ridge that we're on, we're taking heavy fire. Ineffective, we're behind like this ridge of rocks. So we've got some cover, it's good cover, but man, they are just hammering the ridge line.

So the impression is that, this is exactly what we thought. This is a lot of guys. So we got a couple of dudes that have been dealt with on the north side, but they have shot and wounded both of the guys in our gun team to our right flank. About the time that we're trying to figure out exactly where they are below us. Now we got no grenades. We've got nothing like I said. Small arms. About that time bullets come. I'm here filling Bashir over there. The two Somalis are a little bit further to his left and then the gun team is beyond them and then Brady's on my right and then

the wounded gun team on his right. And so rounds come crack and right across the front of me the cover I'm standing at like skip off the rock right in front of me and Brady and I both look left at the same time and dudes are maneuvering up the ridge line. There's four or five guys that are coming up the ridge. And so all this in a split second, that first barrage of fire, Bashir is like just standing out in the open, get shot three times.

So Phil grabs him, pulls him down behind cover, and is like packing like Kerl X and Gaws in his holes. Brady and I both turn and I move to a piece of cover between me and the guys on the left flank, yelled at Brady, hey, move to me, move to me, move to me, express a fire, Brady moves to me. Now it's the two of us, the two Somalis that are up here with us are now

cowering down behind the rocks and terrified, like not returning fire, not anything. And I think, well, at least they're not going to shoot us right there the gun team between us and them are now in a shootout with the guys so half the guys that are coming up the ridge are shooting at the two small eyes on our left flank the other half of the guys are shooting at Brady and I it's kind of whack-a-mo Brady and I ended up shooting rounds between a bunch of rocks and just ricocheting a bunch

of rounds into the dudes and they would peel out to one side of the other and we kind of dealt with it. But anyway, in the midst of that portion, we ended up dealing with all those guys, but they had wounded not just Bashir, but the other two guys. So now I've got five wounded Somalis, including the only one that speaks English and the three of us. So everybody on the ridge is down. I'm not worried about.

It doesn't seem to be we have good visibility that we've got any more threat coming up the ridge line above or below, but we're still getting hammered from down below. And I'm like, I don't know what our move is from here. Like the three of us were like, we don't have a lot of options here. And Brady goes, about some naval gunfire. Oh!

And so, you know, the three of us kind of looked at each other and we're like, all right, yeah, we can do this. Like, let's just have, they're all in one spot. Let's hammer this draw. We had already talked to them pre-planed targets. So the boat was ready and aware and they were jacked up. Like they didn't even know we were there. I thought they were a fucking pump.

We called them in the blind. It was a really funny like 20 minute conversation before we had gotten into that position and you could hear them in the background. Like yeah, like they knew they were getting ready to get some. And so Brady is on the horn with the boat. I have a handheld satellite radio because I'm like, we can't do this

unless I call troops in contact over the SACOM. Like they gotta know we've been engaged. They didn't just shoot naval gunfire into a country we're not supposed to be into. And so, yeah, so Brady's talking to the boat, calling a naval gunfire. I'm calling in troops in contact over SACCOM. I said that we had wounded, but I didn't say who.

Because I was worried that if it was just Somalis, we weren't going to get the same reaction. Which, I don't know if that was the right call or the wrong call, but it was the call that I made at the time. And so we ended up grabbing up as many of the Somalis as we could and we started pulling back off the ridge right about that time time rounds come overhead. I think Brady shot had him shoot like 24 rounds or something off the deck guns into the valley and walked him up and down as we pulled back off the ridge.

So we get back down to our patrol base. There's no more fire coming from the hills other than, you know, the smoke and everything that's left dust from the naval Barrage. We get in the patrol base. Phil basically, like almost on his own, I think I helped him with like the first two guys treating casualties, but Phil basically patched up all them dudes by himself. I was talking to Basaso, Basaso was talking to Djibouti, Djibouti was talking to Nairobi,

Nairobi was talking to Jsacke Bragg, Jsacke Bragg was talking to SecDefin DC. So this was like damn, like it was wild. And again, they asked me twice about casualties, and I said, you know, we're currently, we have a casual collection point, we're treating our wounded, we're unsure of their status at this moment, but that we were working on it, and we were all right, but we needed Cas back, and we needed it now, because they were a five hour flight away. So we patch up the Somalis.

It's getting dark now. There's no sounds, there's no fire, there's no nothing coming out of the hills, and basically we don't have the ability to like go over there at night. We've got no workforce anymore. We had three similes, I think, down in the village that had weapons,

but they weren't really a part of what we were doing. So we had those three, stay in the patrol base. We'd come and deer to a couple of vehicles from town. We loaded up the wounded and we drove the 10 minutes down the road to get to the dirt airfield. However many hours later they landed a causton on the dirt airfield and our guys from Djibouti got out along with a bunch of PJs that they brought from Djibouti to secure the wounded and treat those guys. They got off with us so ammo resupply brought some other

stuff with them. The bird left with the wounded to fly back to Djibouti and then the five of us went back to the patrol base and basically just camped out for the night until the sun came up. We didn't tell anybody that there weren't any Americans on the plane, the wounded. So when it showed up in Djibouti, it was PJs with a bunch of wounded Somalis and no one in Djibouti was even aware of the operation So they ended up they ended up in the hospital there on the naval base in Djibouti And all those guys ended up living which is cool But but yeah, we kind of surprised him with that one so the sun comes up next morning We ended up going over the hill as a more capable force because now there were six of us. And we had at one

local that we had recruited out of town that spoke enough English that we could at least communicate with the smallies that were with us. They weren't really willing to go over the hill again because they had witnessed what happened the day before. But they eventually and reluctantly came with us and we thought at least they could help us with recovery as some of the bodies if it was two and three or whatever. Yeah, no, there are Arabs and they weren't touching a body after that much time later.

So we ended up moving through the area. A couple of guys died and most of them were already dead. We had a guy that we thought for sure was Haroon Fizzle. Look just like him. I mean, same skin tone and had a pair of glasses. It was a lot of similarities that we thought it was him, nobody that looked like Nobhahn. And the rest of the guys were like a who's who of bad guys from around the globe. Like two guys with British passports, like legit British passports. A Yemeni Assyrian, like it was this random collection

of, it was exactly what we thought it was. And so we're on the radio, we've got a possible for, you know, Her infosol, whatever his call sign was at the time. And they're like, all right, well, we're going to fly in an SSE team to duty and a testing and confirm. We need you to take them up to the site and we're like, we're not doing that. And they're like, why wouldn't you do that?

And I'm like, I'm not taking an FBI team that's never been a combat, never been trained into the hills of Northern Somalia where I don't know how many guys are still running around out here. Like, I had no way to confirm or deny if we'd gotten them all, I knew we had a bunch of bodies, but I had no way of knowing if we'd gotten everybody. And so there's some back and forth on the radio. What we ended up agreeing on was we'd bagged up

the guy that we thought was her infosoole and we carried him off the mountain, threw him in the back of a truck and then drove him down to the airfield. So when they landed all they had to do was get off the plane and deal with the possible. And then we could give him all the other intel we collected. So passports and money and compute landlap pops and all kinds of stuff. Smorgasborg of intel was a decent decent hidden that respect. But yeah, so the FBI guys get off the plane, and he's not hitting that respect. But yeah, so the FBI guys get off the plane, I unsiped the body bag for him.

You know, they peel it back. It took him two seconds. They grabbed him, they rolled him up on his side, they pulled his shirt up and he had no scar. And they said, it's not him. And we were like, what? And I'm like, it's not him. I'm like, how do you know that fast that it's not him?

You didn't do anything. And they go, yeah, Harun Fizzou had a penicidus, he had his penics taken out in whatever year. He's got no scar, whereas the penics was removed. And we're like, damn, that quick. They just shouldn't like, all ever nothing, you know, we're all proud of ourselves. So we're bummed out. We're like, all right, well, let's wrap it up. Like the rest of those bodies. We got plenty of intel. Like it is what it is. Like the Somalis are all still alive. They're back in Djibouti, let's get out of here.

So we loaded up and flew back to Djibouti. You know, there's a little bit of a reception there from the handful of people that did know where we were. We get to the hanger and all three of us are just covered in blood. You know, not our own, but I've got cuts all up and now my arms from the sharp, corley rocks that we've been moving around on the ridge line.

And then the wound and some allies and all that stuff. So we looked quite a sight to people that saw us coming into the hangar that we were in. And about five minutes after we're there, a little navy dude comes not going on the door. Open the door comes in, he says, hey, the admiral that is in charge of the base needs, whoever was just involved in whatever went down

to come brief him. And we're like, okay, can you give us a few minutes like to clean up, like whatever. And he's like, he just said as soon as possible. And we're like, okay, whatever. So it's telling more common. So the kid leaves. We like run through the shower,

put on a fresh set of DCU's or whatever. We were wearing pants and shirts. And so we leave. We walk onto the main compound there, off the airfield. We finally find where his little headquarters is. We walk in and his, one of his staffos or secretary or somebody's like, you know,

the Admiral's back here, Bobobos, so they take us in this little conference room. And he's sitting at the head of the table, he's standing up in a couple of his staff officers, junior guys are in the room with him. And he's like, gentlemen, how you doing? Come on in and have a seat. And so we go in and we sit down.

And he's like, and it, mind you, the whole way over there were like we're screwed like this dude is gonna flip a gasket like who are you how is I not aware of this how did you involve my worship that I'm responsible for who cleared this we're assuming no conversation has been had and it hasn't so he's like look he's like you guys have had a pretty wild rough rough 24 hours, huh? And we were like, yes, sir, like just waiting. And he's like, so tell me the story.

Like, how did you get there? And we're like, well, and we kind of gave him the brief, like we've been doing some targeting, we've been working on this, we've been in an out of Somalia a number of times, we had an opportunity at some really important folks and to disrupt the network in a substantial way. And we just felt like it was an opportunity at some really important folks and to disrupt the network in a substantial way And we just felt like it was an opportunity that we needed to take

And he's like, well, you know, had you been planning this and we're like, nope It was pretty much a hasty decision that was supported by three-letter agencies and DC in the moment because of the significance of the targets and yeah, they asked us if we were okay, don't it? And that's what we did. And again, I'm waiting for the reaction. And he goes, that's the coolest shit I've ever heard. That's awesome.

And Phil, who's hilarious, Phil bust out laughing. And then it's a comfy conversation. And he's like, so you guys, the three of you just decided you were gonna go do this and we're like, yep, and he's like, man, you guys have some huge balls. Ah! And so to this day, if he is that man, whoever it is, and I don't know, I don't remember his name,

but if he's ever out there and never hears this, I've said it once before, I would love to hear from him, just to like have a conversation about that day and how funny it was and get more of his perspective, but yeah, so it ended up being a really good engagement and he was grateful, we were grateful that his guys reacted the way that they did, that they shifted mission, you know, they had no clue.

And they were spot on, their rounds were spot on. I mean, all their training and anything they'd ever done in peacetime came to fruition. That's some of the coolest shit I've ever fucking heard. So we got home and it was a, I think all of us collectively when there are organizations, we ended up briefing various elements

within our different commands About what went down how it happened? Why because this was the first thing outside of G. Wow. This is the first time guys had been engaged outside of Iraq, Afghanistan and a little bit impact stand, right? So it was a big deal in terms of getting in a gunfight somewhere like that But we didn't really understand the significance of the impact. Like to us, we didn't get the guys we were after. Like we missed our mark. Yeah, we killed some bad guys.

It needed to be killed. But we missed our mark. Well, I didn't find out for, I don't know, a month later, I'm having dinner with a J.S.O. Intel analyst, that's a friend of mine. And she's talking about, do you understand what went down? And I'm like, no. And I'm like, we didn't get our guy.

And she's like, no, no, no, they haven't even told you guys. And I'm like, no, what are you talking about? And she proceeds to tell me that what happened was, after that engagement, one of the guys that we killed was a Yemeni dude and they called him the bear. And he was the chief like movement officer for all foreign fighters coming into and out of the Middle East and Africa.

So he was basically the gatekeeper for bringing guys in, depositing them in Somalia, after they were trained up, bringing them back to Yemen and then facilitating their right line movement into the Middle East. The Sudanese guy that we thought was Serone Fizzou was like AQ's primary like IED teacher.

They called him the professor. So he had been in Southern Somalia for years, teaching guys how to build IEDs. The two British passport holders were like dudes that had that were actual British citizens that had had some level of training and had been teaching shooting and marksmanship in Sun and Somalia to foreign fighters. Like, it was like this.

Holy shit. And so, conversations and intelligence that was collected right on the heels of that was that AQ leadership in the Middle East had completely lost faith in the ability to traffic a foreign fighters into and out of Somalia. And it stayed that way for nearly two years. So it shut down that whole pipeline for like two years after that event. Wow. So like when a year later when Captain Phillips went down, you know Somali pirates, they had nothing to do with GWAT. That was just Somalis me and Somalis

in that part of the world. And yeah, like the guys had nothing. Like, it was, there was nothing going on anywhere. You had Somalia had its own issues, al-Shabaab and all that stuff. But the connection between greater AQ and the Horde of Africa had been completely disconnected. So yeah, it was, that was the last gunfight I was ever in. Um, for me, it was one of the most significant. You know, with all the amazing things that I was lucky enough to be a part of, it stood

out to me because it was a handful of operators with different background and experiences that, if it hadn't been the three of us, if it hadn't been an Air Force guy and a Navy guy and an Army guy together, I don't know that we would have thought of all the things to do that we did, and I just skimmed over it. But I don't know that collectively would have thought of all the things to do that we did and I just skimmed over it But I don't know that collectively we would have survived that day like it literally took an idea from each guy And all of us being a part of that to kind of effectively do what we did that day and then get out of it unscathed And so yeah that it really the piece with the ad row at the end Even funnier is is it so like I don't know, it's probably six months later. I get a phone call on my team room phone, which is a secure line that only people within

certain elements of JSOC would even have the ability to look up and access. And I answer the phone and it's, I don't know, someone that works at JSOC or maybe it was someone that works up at the beach. But basically they were calling me to ask me if I would write the narrative to a company, um, the seals to fill Soverstar recommendation. And I was like, absolutely. Like, my unit didn't do that. They gave us another run star with V, you know what I mean, in your inbox, but we were just wired to, so I was happy. I was really excited. I was like, yeah, that's cool.

So I hang up the phone. So like 10 more minutes goes by and the team are in foam range again. And it's Air Force guy. It's Brady and Brady's like, do you believe we both got screwed? And they want us the right the narrative for Phil Silverstar. And he wasn't upset about Phil getting it.

He was upset that all three organizations didn't talk to each other and like do the same thing. And so anyway, so we had a laugh about it. He was being funny. And I was like, you're gonna do it right. He's like, absolutely. And so yeah, so the three of us this day, like it's a memory that we share,

that we'll never go away. And yeah, it was the last, the last Rogue Unified ever got in. That is a, that's a fucking hell of a way to end it. I mean, holy shit, that's, that's, that's fucking cool, man. That's awesome. Yeah, it was, it was, it was cool. Did you get to go to his ceremony?

Mm-mm. No. Of course not. You guys keep in touch? Uh, yeah. I mean, we talked via text a while ago, but yeah, we're two different worlds, so I don't get to see him very often.

That's cool, man. Well, if anybody wants to get a hold of you, like the admiral, you're all your infos in the description. I appreciate it. Yeah. Damn. So how did you leave the unit?

Yeah, so I came home from that trip. Everything changed. I ended up redeploying into the Horn of Africa the next year. And, you know, at that point in my career, in spite of, you know, that all being a good story, when I got home from that trip, injuries had caught up with me. I got home from that trip, injuries had caught up with

me. I got home from that O7 trip. I ended up having a total disc replacement next surgery C5C6. I had pain for years leading up to that and I was just wearing a home and nods jumping. I just worn out the disc between those two vertebrae. So I had that surgery in Lato 7 and leading up to what I was on a lot of medication. I was on a lot of painkillers and muscle relaxers and I wasn't sleeping, so I was on sleep aids. I really looking back now all these years later, I wasn't myself, I was drinking. I think it was just years of,

you know, 11 combat rotations, adding up to some trauma and some mental health issues and some other things that I, frankly, at that point, I wasn't aware of. So, yeah, I redeployed in early 2008 to the Horn of Africa. We didn't have a lot to do because of everything that it went down the year prior. We were still messing around with Al Shabab and some of the other terrorist elements that

were within Somalia that were disrupted in that. Somalia was kind of three, I don't know, almost three individual countries, if you will, at that point in time you had Mogadishu in the surrounding area with sort of one element of control. You had Puntland in the north and then you had kind of southern Somalia that was kind of on its own, which is and lawless, which is why they got away with running the train camps down there. But yeah, I went back. And yeah, I made a mistake while I was there.

I had a relationship that I shouldn't have. And sort of by happenstance, I was having some personality conflict with the guy that I worked with because I'd been there the year before he hadn't. And then I had all this mental health stuff going on. He probably did to it at that point. And you know, we just come from a competitive alpha environment. And I think it just made things difficult for the two of us. So I had a great relationship with the seals that were there.

He didn't because he was the new guy. There was a lot of things that led to some animosity and discomfort. So I made this mistake. Rather than like us talking about it and working through it, he enhased to send some information to the rear and said that I'd done this thing. And... hasted sent, you know, some information to the rear and said that I'd done this thing. And he fucking dived you out. A bit. Yeah. You know, was I in the right state of the mind

at the time, probably not? Was I drinking heavily? Yep. Was I, and like now I'll say, was I full on addicted to paid medication? Yeah, I was. I had been given a tackle box to deploy with because I was 30 days post surgery,

and I, yeah, I had a problem. So my decision-making probably wasn't clear, his probably wasn't clear, but yeah, he enhased her frustration or whatever. He sent an email to the rear, then ended up eventually in me getting Lego from the unit. And I was asked to leave for two years. And when you've given everything you have to a place

and all you've done in all your time there is deployed a war, it was a big shock to my system. It was like having you're in everything that you are torn out of your body and you're left standing there looking at a shell of what you thought you were. To make matters worse, you know, the unit's pretty cool about when you leave. Like it wasn't the super severe thing. I didn't have an AD. I didn't shoot somebody I wasn't supposed to.

I had an inappropriate relationship with a person that was married and I didn't know it. And that was it. So I had to do my unit appreciation tour and leave. But I had gone to the Q-course and when I was in the Q-course, they changed the policy where if you didn't go to language school, you couldn't be awarded the MOS of the tab. So when I left the unit, I had to pick a job out in the regular army. And the only one I could find with a halo position where I could still do freefall was the Lurst detachment there in the 82nd.

So I left the unit as an operator coming off of my 11th combat deployment and I went to the 82nd Airborne Division to be the Lurst First Sergeant. Wow. Yeah, luckily when I got there, they were about six months out from a deployment, so they were prepping a good Afghanistan. They told me that and I said, I can't deploy.

Like I actually said, I can't deploy to the chain of command. And they asked me why and I said, look, I'm divorced. You know, I got these two little girls in a custody battle in this situation, you know, I'm trying to spend time with them. Refreshly divorced at that point? Yeah. Did the relationship overseas lead to that divorce?

No, no, no, no. I was long separated when that happened. Okay. I just wasn't legally divorced. I was shortly after I got home. But yeah, I was long separated when that happened. I just wasn't legally divorced. I was shortly after I got home, but yeah, I was separated for two years. That's a whole nother story, but yeah, my marriage basically, yeah.

Do you think the marriage dissolved because of the opt-ampo and how many deployments you were doing? I think it's a contributing factor for sure. Yeah, I mean, the stress that it puts on your family at home is every bit is painful and difficult as the stress that it puts on you as an individual overseas, which is something that I'm very aware of now

that I wasn't necessarily then. So to operate, to work, to be at that level, for me, I was just a regular dude. Even when I was in the unit, I felt like I was working every day just to be mediocre and stay there. And I think most guys feel that way. And so, to let up even for a second, or to take your eye off the ball and not focus on doing what you do and training and being focused on the next mission,

even for your family, felt like it was going to be the end of your career. And so consequently, the people at Home Suffer. And I know there's some guys that navigated successfully. I was not one of them, but it was definitely a contributing factor. So yeah, yeah, so left, ended up in the 82nd. Eventually found my way back to SF Command through the help of some friends and some good leaders.

I ended up getting a one-one in Spanish, testing out, met all the requirements, and then there were some hiccups with, could they make me an SF guy or not, but General Mahal and the USOC commander at the time ended up fixing it, getting me my tab, MLS, and said, pull me back in the fold.

So yeah, I spent like six, eight months as a lurch attachment first-star, and then I went up to UCSock and ended up in equipment development. Good friend of mine, Peacooled, was the CDD-G8 there, UCSocken, and said, yeah, I'd love to have you, man. Like, you wanna come around target and gaze before me. So that was all I got into acquisition. How long were you on pills?

About two and a half years. Yeah. So, you know, I personally, I think the pill addiction started with the pain. I think it was a time, oh six, when we were handing stuff out like candy. I don't fault anybody for that part. They were just trying to keep us going and we didn't know what we knew about pain management and pain medications and prescription narcotics basically at that point. So we threw pills at everything as a service. So I got pretty heavy on the pills, had surgery. They left me on the pills to recover.

And you know, six months into that, you find yourself where you wake up in the morning and you don't have any pain. You're just taking a pill because the pill makes you feel normal. And then as time goes by, the pills don't have the same effect. So you take a pill in the evening and you have a few beers and that downward spiral just continues and continues. The thing with prescription pain meds like that is like you're a shell of yourself and you don't even know it. Yeah. Like you're not

there. So anybody in my life at that time, now looking back and absolutely tell you, yeah, and he was not himself. So that stretch, leaving the unit, you know, getting divorced, leaving the unit, being hooked on prescription pain meds and self-medicating with other substances, having my identity stripped away, all led to suicide attempts. In about 2010, I sort of bottomed out at some point in there. Believe me or not, I've gotten myself off the pills shortly before that. But to get off the pills, I was heavily self-medicating with alcohol. And I didn't really have a lot to do. Like, I was, work was, it wasn't like I was deploying, it wasn't like I was training, I was, work was, it wasn't like I was deploying,

it wasn't like I was training, I was working in a staff job. So I could do whatever I did in nighttime, show up to work, it wasn't like anybody was really checking on me so I could be late, nobody would catch it. Like there was a lot of circumstances that added up to me being allowed to function like that for too long. But yeah, how long was it that stretch? Yeah.

Really from, oh, well, surgery in December of 07. So almost, yeah, the tail end of 2010 was kind of a progressive downward spiral and just self-loathing, just feeling empty and awful and chasing adrenaline and you yourself you have self-destructive tendencies so you get adrenaline anyway you can it's like a it's like a barking dog that you beat like eventually if you don't give a dog attention it even though it knows it's gonna get hit it still barks because it wants some kind of attention. And it's the same thing with, like, trauma and those self-destructive tendencies release it was for me where it didn't matter what kind of adrenaline spike I was getting, I

needed something to feel like I was alive. So whether that's getting in fights, whether that's, you know, drinking or whether that's women or whatever it is. What was it for you? Nah, I've kind of all of you, buff. Fighting? Yeah, I mean, I got in a fight in a fight in a house in Southern Pines one night where I went from zero to

being on the guy's face in seconds and didn't know how it happened. And that, I just wasn't that guy. Like I was a humor guy, like sure I've been in some fights long the way and frankly kind of enjoy it, but I wasn't the dude to like pick fights in the bar. Yeah. So that definitely wasn't me.

But yeah, the suicide attempt, I attempt's not the right word, but, you know, I woke up one morning after a particularly rough evening, you know, blackouts and area where I didn't remember a lot. Um, and I found myself sitting on the end of the bed with the pistol on my hand. Um, went back and forth a few times, a few different ways, uh, and somewhere in that process, you know,, you only talked about over breakfast. My kids kind of came to mind and then that led down the rabbit hole of

like what is this gonna do to them and like none of this is their fault. Like yet they're gonna be the ones that are punished if you do this and that was enough. That was enough to put it down to put it away to go what are you doing man, like what is going on? And then the person I was dating at the time, God bless her, you know, convinced me to go get some help.

And that was sort of like the day where the switch went off. And so I did, I called the Ususok's like at the time and I said, I need to come in and see you. And so I did. You're still active at this point. Yeah, still active, still working. No one even knows that any of this is going on. Other than people really close to me.

I've been there, a lot of guys have been there. Let's talk about how often you're waking up after a blackout scenario where you don't remember. You don't know who you're supposed to be pissed off at. You don't know who you slept with. You don't know who you got to fight with. You don't know how the fuck you got home. You don't know why you're on the side of the road, passed out in the fucking ditch.

How often was that happening? Regular. Everyday. Not everyday. Every couple of days for sure. I think, you know, you have one of those incidents, you'd have a blackout incident, and then like the self-loathing that comes the next day and you're exhausted because it would take a couple of days to recover enough to go, all right, I'm going to go on drinking again. Yeah. You know, I lived in town. I was walking distance from the pub. Like, there was a stretch in there.

Uh-huh. There was a stretch in there where I knew everybody in town. So, it'd be two o'clock in the morning on Tuesday. And somebody in the bar that knows me or the bartender would walk me outside and point me in the direction of my house. And I'd make it, you know, because it was two blocks away. Are these colleagues?

No, no, a lot of them locals, like people that lived there. Sometimes it's a pretty protective town, so we all knew each other and people that lived there for years knew the guys from work. And you know, there's not a lot of regular army folks out there so it's a pretty a pretty protective community So yeah, some people looked after me and But yeah, that was a rough stretch and and difficult to talk about for a lot of years like not something I was comfortable saying I've gotten there, you know with help and understanding and counseling and You just trying to move past it and use that experience to help other people,

you know, maybe seated themselves and go, man, I need to make a change and I need to talk to someone I need to do something. So that's why I talk about it, but it's still difficult. The embarrassment has gone, it's like it an emotional, right? Things still make me emotional. The difference is I don't feel bad about it anymore. Like, like you asked me before, would I change anything?

Nope, not a thing. And, you know, I've heard quite a few people along the way, and certainly done enough damage to myself, but all of that stuff got me to where I am today, and I wouldn't be here without it. You know, I wouldn't have met my wife without it. How old were your daughters at the time when you attempted to kill yourself?

Uh, so 2010, so they were, Taylor was, it made me do math. Taylor was born in 98, Kate was born in 2001. So one of them was nine. The other one was 12. And yeah, it was like 50-50. So like I had the kids half the time. So, well, probably not half the time,

but the time that I did have them, I would stay sober until they went to bed, and then I would drink myself to sleep and then get up and be dead. Like, you know, I don't think they had any idea either, but yeah, it's pretty rough stretch. Do they know this now? Yeah, yeah, I mean, they didn't for a long time.

Pod class, I did a few years ago. One, the first one, really the first real one I ever did. I talk about it a lot, and pretty good detail and my older starter, listen to it. That's how they found out. Yeah. Fuck out. Yeah. Fuck man. Yeah, you know, you don't think about it.

And she called me and she's like, Dad, I'd listen to that podcast you did. And in a good way, we both got emotional. And, but she said, I didn't know any of that stuff. And I said, yeah, well, like you were little girls. Like, I don't, I don't want to expose you to that stuff. It didn't really matter. So it was kind of a dual hat.

It was one, it was her as an adult, getting an understanding of the things that dad had done and where he was all those times that he went away. Like they knew I was deployed, you know, and I was at war, but they didn't know what I did, how I did where, you know, none of the at war, but they didn't know what I did, how I did, where, you know, none of the details, because he just didn't talk about it. But on the other hand, I didn't know my dad had a

pill addiction and struggled with alcohol. And, you know, I'm sure, in hindsight, she looks back and goes, dad drank quite a bit, or whatever it was, I'm sure she has her own, they have their own things from that. But, yeah, it was a pretty profound moment. And I was glad that she listened to it. And if anything, it kind of fueled the fire for me

about being open and honest about it and trying to get rid of that stigma, like, hey man, it's still hard. Like I've been, we're talking about my road to recovery from 2010, it's 2022 again, maybe 2023. I still have tough days. You know, most people look at you and they hear the things that you say and they're like, man, that guy's got to, maybe 2023. I still have tough days. You know, most people look at you and they hear the things that you say

and they're like, man, that guy's got to figure it out. Nope. The only thing I figured out is how to accept the things that have happened to me and that I can't do it by myself. But yeah, you still have days, you still have times, you still have things that happen that bring that stuff back up.

But yeah, I think them knowing that, I think it's made our relationship stronger. Yeah, I think it's the right thing to do. How fast after the, how fast after you tried to kill yourself, did you start to see a turnaround? And what was the, we'll start there. It took a while. Yeah, I mean, step one for me was getting help Step two was a diagnosis so I'm seeing a psych is where I started and then subsequently seeing a counselor

Through the army I didn't do that for very long. I think I did that for six months or a year for a minute of reasons, but yeah, that was step one. Diagnosis was really important for me because for the first time somebody actually did an assessment and looked at me from a medical perspective and went, here's the damage that you've done. Yes, you have your exposure to low-level blast for years and years and years

and the concussions that you've had and all this other shit has added up to you have traumatic brain injury. You have damage to portions of your brain. That trauma, that physical trauma, that physiological thing is manifesting itself in certain ways, which is causing some of your mental health issues. Additionally, you know, it was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I never felt like I had PTSD ever,

but I didn't know what survivors' guilt or survivors' remorse was. Like, I think I laughed at diegd diagnosis at the time. It made more sense to me that my brain was damaged. I don't know, post-traumatic stress, because I was still doing that denything of, let's just weakness, just mentally weak. And it takes some time, it takes education to understand

to get past that and realize that all that stuff is interconnected, man. But then I had a hiccup with medication. So right in that first like 30 days of realization, diagnosis, therapy and path to get better, they prescribed some some head meds, some some yes, some mental health medication. And I did feel better. Like I felt great. Like within a few days, I felt like this weight was lifted, I felt lighter. I'm like, man, I'm on it, I'm on the path. This is awesome. And a month after taking the prescription,

I went to the pharmacy and I got my refill and they accidentally quadrupled the dose on my prescription. So instead of giving me like really low dose, number of milligrams of whatever the drug was, they were giving me four times that. So I went from almost dying to feeling great, to literally like going postal, like breaking stuff in the house

and just not having control of my emotions. And like it was awful. Like the the psych that I was seeing figured it out. I called him in a panic like I was losing my mind. And on a hunch, he made me read the pill bottle to him from my prescription, like just on a hunch. And when I read the milligrams, he went holy shit. And I was freaking out and I was like, holy shit, what?

And he's like, that's four times the dose I prescribed you. You were on like two milligrams of whatever it was. And I'm like, what does that mean? And he goes, that's what's going on with you right now. Like, he talked me down right then and there, on the telephone. He was like, I need you, can you drive? And I said, yes.

And he said, I need you to come in and see me now. And I did hung up the phone and I went there because I was afraid I was gonna kill myself for somebody else. Like, I had no control over my emotions. Holy shit. And so- So hold on. So he's the one that was prescribing you that.

How did it wind up being four times the amount? The pharmacy screwed it up. It was the fucking pharmacy. It was literally a personal, it was an individual heir. It was human heir. Holy shit. Yeah, I mean, we laughed. Like, he and I, like, like I said, I find humor

in weird situations. We had a laugh about it. Like, if that happened in the civilian world, I wouldn't be working right now because I'd be a millionaire from the lawsuit that occurred, you know what I mean? But you're in the service, just human air. So you can't just come off, you can't just stop taking it

or you're gonna have withdrawals and a bunch, you're gonna have another mental swing. So what an up-havenin was he had to progressively wean me off of what I was taking now. How fucking long have you been doing that? Do you have an idea? It was about five days. So enough to get it completely in my system

because it takes a few days for it to start doing whatever, I don't know enough about it, but, but yeah, I think I'd been honored about a week when I like snapped. And yeah, had an episode for lack of a better term. Damn. So yeah, weaned me off of that over like the next four weeks. Like we progressively reduced the dose over each week and you know, because you take it daily or I think I was taking

it once a day. But yeah, so came off of that, well that that was like some scar tissue right there, because I was like, you're not giving me a pill. Like that's never happening again. Like I said to you, at one point, like I didn't take an aspirin for years because I was terrified that something was gonna happen to me again. And so that was sort of the beginning of the awakening of, I need to find healthy alternatives to healing and getting better, something that works for me that isn't medication, that can help me down that path.

And so that, again, wouldn't change it. It was an instrumental moment in my journey that helped me to where I am today, but man, what a roller coaster. Yeah, no kidding. If you talk to your daughters about, you know, some of the stuff that maybe they experienced that maybe you wish they didn't experience,

did they see a lot of... Going through that? Sure, some anger early on. No, honestly, like we haven't really talked a lot about it. I guess I was lucky or unlucky that I was either separated or getting divorced and that I could fake it when I was around them. They were pretty young as I, you know, in the early years. So, oh, five, when that happened, that was probably the year that I started really getting rough at home and having temper issues and things like that. So, they were really young. What kind of stuff was happening at home? I had some anger issues. Just know where I'm for it to go. Like little things that set you off. I've had anxiety for years.

That still hasn't gone away. Like I do good in public spaces. I can go to a sporting event or whatever, but when it's over, I just wanna be away from everybody. You know, I just came back from DC. I was at the AOSA show and I love it. And I can be on and talk to people and it's part of what I do now,

but when it's done of what I do now but But when it's done, I'm drained like I just want to go curl up in my house Like and be by myself and so some of those things have still held on But I think that's why the outdoors is so appealing to me because I'm out there in big open space with no one around me but my significant other But yeah, no, I haven't talked to the kids about it. You know, it's one of the, I guess it should be something that I should work on, but I think a lot of it was really early on, and then by the time we were separated, the kids weren't around that stuff very often.

Or at least not that they've ever mentioned. So that's a good question though. Yeah. Outside of therapy, have you done anything else to keep you going? Tons. Yeah, so, you know, I spent the last five years in the service, working for Special Forces Command. In the G8, I was a soldier systems commodity lead,

and then I was the deputy chief of the G8 there for SF Command for my last two and a half years in service before I retired. That collection of guys there was really good for me. So I got there in, you know, 2010, I left in 2015 when I retired. That five year stretch, I got what a lot of guys don't get, which is time while I'm still in their service to focus on my recovery, without having to deploy to combat, without all those other external factors that pull at you, just because of the things that had happened to me and the mistakes that I made.

It's just where I ended up. But I was surrounded by guys that were similar points in their career that had struggles of their own. And we were like this little family unit, man. We were like this little team of folks. All SF guys, all Bennett War bunch, where even if we couldn't talk to our friends or our family, we could talk to each other. And it wasn't always like big profound stuff. It wasn't like we sat around and talk about, man, I'm really sucking

a day. Like I wasn't at that point in my life. It was more like, you could say something to a guy, like, man, you know what really sucks blah, blah, blah blah blah blah and he got it and you knew he got it because he'd been in your shoes walking your shoes and so there was a little bit of I don't know I guess that was a little bit of therapy there early on some team room therapy and at the same time I was working a nine to five I got to dive into work I got to focus on the job of equipment, grain berets and and being the best that I could be at that. And I think that was helpful as well. So, you know, losing my identity a few years earlier and going, man, what am I if I'm not a Delta

operator? And then, you know, having a couple years of success and doing well and getting, you know, the guys that are still in the fight, the kid that they need, I think that filled some voids for me. I think it made me feel competent again. And I think it taught me the lesson that I say to people all the time now is what you do is just what you do. Like a career is just that little tiny portion of your life. The things that made you great at whatever you did in the service is the same stuff that can make you great at whatever you choose to do next.

And we forget that. I think we strive so hard to be the best at a particular thing that somehow we get lost in. This is the only thing I'm ever going to be good at. And it's just not true. I personally think a lot of the guys coming out of soft units on top of PTSD, on top of PTSD, on top of traumatic TBI, on top of Survivors Guild. Now they're kind of lumping all this stuff into Operator Syndrome. I think, which is a whole other discussion, but I think another factor that a lot of guys coming out of a profession like that struggle with is reinventing themselves. Sure. How did you kind of reinvent yourself? Yeah, a few ways. So by 2015, right before retirement, a bunch of good stuff had happened.

I had, you know, I wasn't on pills, I wasn't self-medicating with alcohol or as often. I mean, still to this day, I have the ability to fall off the wagon and I have to be very conscious of that. But I was doing very, very well. I had met my now wife, I met her at the tail end of my career when I was on the path to getting better. But I met her as a pretty broken dude. And like I said to you this morning, like she loved me for who I was right then and there. That was a very instrumental step for me. Like, your self-worth is tied to so many things.

And I think that's one of the things that was the hardest for me to pull out of is recovering that. Having somebody really enjoyed me and appreciate me for me, I think was a key component of getting that back and going, I can do whatever I want to do and I can be good at it. So she was a big step. How did you meet her? Through work. Yeah, she worked for a company that made some equipment that we fielded. And so I worked on a few different projects with her company and that's how we met initially. And I had some ups and downs early in our relationship, but we were long distance. So she was in DC

and I was in North Carolina. So, you know, I could, I could, I'd be great for the three or four days that I was with her on the weekend. And then I, you know, I'd be great for the three or four days that I was with her on the weekend. And then I, you know, I sometimes would fall off the wagon a little bit in between. Yeah. But that got better and less and better and less as the years went by. But then right after I retired, I knew I needed to reinvent myself

and to reinvent myself, I knew I needed a break. I needed some separation between, okay, that's what I used to do. Now, I'm going to go do something else. I need it like a mental marker. So, what we ended up settling on was hiking John Mirrigtrayal in California. I've always been an outdoor guy. I had introduced my wife Robin to that world, and she sort of fell in love with it early, and liked doing it with me.

And so originally we were going to like hike the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail, but it was just so much time. And I did have a job lined up right there at the end, but I was like, okay, three weeks. So 21 days, 220 some odd miles, starts in Yosemite finishes on the summit amount with me. Let's go do this. And the few things happened. The second day of the John Mir Trail, we were both sucking. I mean, sucking. Our plan was to average 10 miles a day, which we did. Our longest day was 17.

Our shortest day was probably 8 1 1 1 2. But walking 10 miles a day, even we did. Our longest day was 17, our shortest day was probably 8.5. But walking 10 miles a day, even if you're a commando, especially one that hasn't done in a while, with a pack on your back and the wilderness, with elevation and vertical up and down, will beat you down. And it's tough. And so the second day we were both hurting and I was going to propose to her at the end of the hike, but I got scared that I wasn't gonna make it that long. So, so, so I had this ring in my pack and I pulled it out on day two. We were in this beautiful meadow early on, like still in Yosemite, and I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.

And then I told her the story that, you know, I was gonna wait until the summit about when the three weeks later I was gonna have carried this wing, this ring the whole time, blah, blah, blah. And we had a laugh and I, you know, said, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself today and I wasn't sure I was gonna make it. And I really wanted to do it while we were on this hike because it's something that we love doing.

And you know, she's wonderful. And yeah, I was asking her to like change everything. Like she left her career. She moved on to North Carolina with me that last year. We were moving across the country because career number two for me was out west in Arizona. So we were leaving family and friends and everything that we knew. And I felt like I needed to make some level of coming in the back. So it was really me.

We were totally good with where we were and what we were. We even joked about when we will never get married. We'll just stay just like we are, but, but yes, I did. But anyway, that happened. And then what John Mier did for me was it. You, I was an insomniac for five years leading up to that. So the one thing that hung around, even after all the other stuff was starting to get better

was I didn't sleep and not sleeping as torturous. So I would go several days where I get an hour to sleep a night and this is even during our relationship. I'd go several days and they exhaust me, would just build up and build up and build up. And then I'd sleep one day, or I'd sleep, you know, 12 hours or whatever. And then it would go back to the pattern.

And it was torturous. And I refused to take sleep aids because, one, I'd only get two or three hours out of them if I did it anyway. Two, I felt weird and three ahead, all those pill issues. So I wasn't, there was no way I was taking an ambient or anything else.

And so John, you're a reset my clock. You wake up when the sun comes up, you walk all day and it's physically exhausting and beautiful and you mentally relax and you communicate effectively with you. If you're lucky enough to be with somebody like I was and you finish the day and you're exhausted and you eat a big meal and the sun goes down and you go to sleep. And, and damn, you fall asleep because you're exhausted. And I did that for 21 days straight. And when we finished, we drove to Arizona now.

We drove to our rental place in Arizona, and we got home and like that first day, she goes, hey, tomorrow, let's get up and go straight to the gym. Well, I used to work out in the evenings, like after work or whatever. For whatever reason, I'd gotten that habit. And I was like, eh, like I really resisted. And she pressed. She's like, no, she's like, you've been waking up at like 5 a.m. at Sun Up every day for the last three weeks. Let's start a healthy pattern. And so I did. So we got up the next morning,

we went to the gym. I think it was Luke Air Force Base at the time, but we used to use the one-on-base We went to the gym. I think it was Luke Air Force Base at the time, but we used the one on base because I was close to it and Started that pattern came home made a healthy breakfast eight lunch healthy dinner and then just stuck with it And I have not had a sleep issue since 2015 That's amazing and it was so profound like the hiking piece the being in the outdoors that like for me It's connection to spirituality like it's where I feel best. It's where my mind is the clearest. Yeah like the cathedrals of nature, right? We always say like the backcountry is our church like that's our saying. When you're out there and

you truly spend some time in the wilderness, you get to enjoy it with all of your senses. And there aren't a whole lot of things that are like that. So when you're walking, it's the feeling of the ground on your feet. It's the pain in your muscles or the exhilaration or the tiredness or whatever. It's the smell of the trees and the flowers. It's the wind blowing on your face. It's the sun on you.

It's the sounds in nature. It's all these things. It's an overwhelming experience if you just give it a chance and appreciate it. And then it still fills the void of things that I miss from the military. So when we plan a climb or a long distance hike or something, it's like an hop order, man. You gotta think about logistics.

When are you gonna resupply? Where are you gonna sleep at night? How far are we gonna walk today? What are we gonna do in inclement weather? are you going to resupply? Where are you going to sleep at night? How far are we going to walk today? What are we going to do in inclement weather? You have to work through all those things to do a long distance hike that I think really filled avoid for me. That gave me something to focus on that I enjoy,

that felt good, that was physically challenging. And at the end came with a sense of accomplishment. And then as it went on, it got even better, because then it's little things in between. It's that next pass, that next ridge, and all the scenery changes and you're like, wow, this is awesome out here. It doesn't cost anything except a little bit of sweat.

And it really, for me, was profound in changing how I deal with things mentally. It gave me time to process, it gave me time to communicate with my significant other. I have the best conversations we have all week. Like I'm kind of a bump on the log at home. Like I can zone out and turn on a movie or whatever and I'm just not very talkative.

We get out in the wilderness for like two miles in. Well, I'm talking about all kinds of stuff. Like we have a really deep, meaningful, connective conversation in the back country. And so what that taught me was, you need to find your thing. You need to find your zen space, that thing that gives you the ability to relax, let go, and let your mind wander and have open conversation. You need to figure out what that is, and it's different for everybody.

For me, it was, it was being in the outdoors. It was doing all those things. For somebody else, it might be woodworking or painting or reading or playing golf or whatever that is, but you need to find something where you can get in that correct headspace where you have a healthy environment without alcohol, without drugs, without anything else, without any pressure, where you can get some of those things out and talk to people that matter. So we're just gonna say that, because we just got back from Montana and did a ton of me and my wife,

and we did a ton of hiking, and it's just fucking weird. It's like nature just makes everything, it's like it's always supposed to be that way. That's how it's supposed to be. All this other shit, you know, it's fucking healing. It really is. It's very healing.

Yeah, I mean, I'm better like when we go do something and I come home, it's almost like a reset. So it's a healthy way to go to hit refresh and go, okay, so if you're stressed, if you're whatever, you get out there, you spend some time away. Cause day one you might think about, that's why multiple days, I think it's important.

Day one you might think about work, you might think about stuff you forgot. But by day two, with no cell service and arm in the back country someplace, you have nothing else to do, but appreciate your surroundings. And all that stuff just sort of melts away. And it allows you to like think about things

that you need to think about and what's really important to you. Yeah. Were you guys sleeping intense or? Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we've expanded. So we do a couple of long ones a year. We do a lot of long ones a year, we do a lot of smaller ones a year. And then each year that goes by, I've sort of pushed her to do bigger and bigger things.

So we started getting into some mountaineering stuff and we've done some big peaks. Or Zava in Mexico, we did codopaxing in Ecuador. Yeah, and we were on our way. Honestly, my plan was to do the seven summits. So I think I can get her to do five of the seven with me, but she says absolutely no to Everest, at least right now, and she says absolutely no to Mount Vinson and Antarctica. But I think she's completely capable

and wind up doing the other ones with me. But a couple of things happened, COVID happened, and then yeah, I had some heart issues, and so that kind of put us behind, and then Russia invaded Ukraine, which one of the mountains is in Russia. So, but I hope we go on there. I'm hoping to get back on track with that.

And I think it's just about one, I love being in the outdoors, two, I love pushing myself to kind of achieve something and have like a goal to focus on. Three, I get to do it with my spouse, which is freaking awesome. And I know how lucky I am. Like a lot of people don't have hobbies that coincide.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I got lucky enough to find somebody that, when I'm being the lazy one, she kicks me in the button, says let's get out and do something. So I'm hoping to get back to that. Now that I feel good and healthy again and see where it goes. Well, hey, if you do make it to Russia, at least it won't be the first time you're in a country,

you're not supposed to be in a country. It's supposed to be. You know, but probably will be the first time you were in a country, you weren't supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be. But probably the last time I could detain somewhere either, but yeah. But, you know, let's talk about, we talked about your heart in the stance and everything at the beginning. I honestly can't remember if we talked about this at breakfast and at the beginning, or if it was just breakfast, but no one, what your limits are, and no one you need to quit doing something. You're in another high stress job, different scenario, you know, that combat, but very entrepreneurial type job.

Let's talk about knowing your limits and knowing when to stop, because you probably wouldn't be sitting here. Yeah, so when I left the service, phenomenal opportunity, I got the opportunity to go to work for a nylon and body armor company, Tear Tactical. I was Tears Chief Operating Officer for really the last seven years. A lot of growth in there, learned a ton. You know, I was fortunate in that the owner

kind of took me under his wing and I got to understand manufacturing and how that works and production and schedules and I really did, I got a 101 in business and manufacturing here in the United States and I'm really really really grateful for it But what comes with growth and work in particularly with someone with a with an entrepreneurial mind and drive is You know, they need balance right they need somebody

They're the driver that's always pushing and then they need somebody that sort of cleans everything up behind them and As you grow and get bigger what comes with that is a substantial amount of stress. And it's a creepy stress, like it sneaks up on you and you don't realize it. I think as time went on, I didn't realize how much I was carrying around. Like the weight of, if this doesn't work out, like are we gonna be able to pay all our employees

or, and I'm giving an extreme example, but I'm just demonstrating the point. You know, when you have to let somebody go, when, you know, it's all the baggage that comes with that. I think leaving the service in part of my recovery was, because I lost all that empathy for so many years, I feel like the pendulum swung the other direction and it made me a more empathetic person than I've ever been. And I think I was carrying a lot of that around. So, you know, all those employees and all that stuff,

just started to add up over time. Having been through the trauma of your life changing and you not having a choice in the matter. So like I said before, having your identity ripped away from you like I did. Having been through that and recovered from that and then done some other things, then moving on to a profession outside in the military,

being able to reinvent myself, being able to be successful in something completely different than anything I had ever done. When the hard stuff happened, those were lessons that I was fortunate to have in that I was able to pull the trigger right away. I was able to go, okay, I've had a great run. We've done really well.

The company is doing very well. I'm doing very well, but I have a health condition right now that if I don't make some changes and address, I could die and stress is a part of that. I exercise, I eat well, I try to take care of myself, but I have a hereditary heart condition and anything I can do to lessen those issues I'm going to do. So it was a very short conversation between my wife and I. It was, I think I'm carrying around a lot of stress and I think that's contributing to

this as much as anything and it's time to make a change. And she was as fearless as I was. She was like, cool, do it. I didn't know what the next chapter helped. Didn't know what it was gonna be, but I knew I was gonna be okay because I'd been through it before. And so reminding myself that like,

hey man, it's cool. Like, you'll figure it out. Like, it doesn't have to be tomorrow. It's not like you're struggling to put food on the table. You saved your pennies. Like, it's fine. Just do it. And I did.

Good decision. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's different now. I mean, I'm a team guy, you know, and I just started doing some private defense consulting and it's a different animal. I think the cool part is being able to share some experience

and hopefully help some companies that are doing some innovative or some unique things, helping them bring those to the warfighter is cool. And I definitely get some joy in that. There's some anxiety, like what if I can't help them, what if my advice isn't good, but I'm okay with it because I think I feel like, and I'm open and honest with them, look, if I'm value added and you think I'm helping

or doing things that are benefiting you and helping you achieve your end state, cool. If not, cut me away. No harm, no foul. Again, I'm good with who I am and where I am, and I'm comfortable with it because of all that stuff that's happened, and I know that if one doesn't work out, I can either find another one

or I can create a different opportunity. I can do something different. I can completely change what it is that I do in that path, and I'm gonna be okay. When did you get involved with the Olsacure Foundation? Yeah, F few years back. So Tom, sadly, and Jen, sadly, run the All-Secure Foundation.

Tom was one of my OTC instructors. He was a young C-squatter-and-Guy in 1993 during the October 3rd Blackout Down Incident in Somalia. So he's one of my OTC instructors. When he finished his OTC instructor time, he came back to squadron. He was my troop sergeant major in C squadron. So we have a military history together.

And then we sort of maintain a connection loosely over the years and communicated a few times. Obviously a lot more in recent years. I think we're all getting a little better at that. But a number of years ago Tom called me and kind of out of the blue and said, hey, I want to talk to you about something. I said, okay, he said, I'm writing a book.

And I was like, what? And you know, because there's a stigma in the community or at least not so much now, but there really was then. And I said, what do you mean you're writing a book? And he proceeded to tell me, you know, he's gonna write this book. And he thinks he's gonna call it all secure writing a book? And he proceeded to tell me, you know, he's gonna write this book and he thinks

he's gonna call it all secure. And the reason is he's gonna use it basically to generate some initial resources to support the all-secure foundation or this nonprofit that he wants to start. And so we talked about all-secure a little bit and you know, what his goals were. And one was to be a go between between veterans

and first responders and law enforcement and other entities. So kind of being a hub where, hey look, this is the struggles that I'm going on. These are my problems. Go to one place and then have them go, okay, you need to call these people or you need to call those people.

Two was reducing the stigma of owning it, of going, yeah man, I've been through some stuff. I have some issues and I wanna get better. And that's okay. And in our community, that's not real common. Like when you did it, there weren't a lot of leaders out there going, look at me man, like I struggle. I struggle whatever it is and that's okay.

And here's what I'm doing to get better. And I wanna help others do it too. There's just worn a lot of examples of that. The third one is they really wanted to focus on the family unit. So just like you asked me earlier, like about my ex and the kids, the veteran, male or female or whatever,

is not the only person that's affected by post-traumatic stress and those issues that happen. The person on the other side of that, your spouse, your children, whoever, that secondary post-traumatic stress, that's something recently that they're discovering is a huge thing and in some times it's worse than what the veteran is experiencing. And all secure is the first and only organization

that I'm aware of that's paying attention to that. That's really focusing on the family unit and how war and combat and those injuries have affected an entire family unit and then how to heal the whole family unit. So that's how it all appealed to me. But when he called me about the book and he said he's explaining all of that and he said some really profound things and I asked him about war stories jokingly, like you and I were talking about. And I was like, aren't you worried like dudes are going to get upset? He was like, maybe they do.

Maybe they don't. He's like, but here's the thing, man, if we want people to pay attention to the problems and issues that veterans are suffering from, you got to get their attention. And so if you don't bring them in with some a little bit of background and context and story as to how you got here, how are they ever going to want or understand how to help us? And I was like, you have to validate it. Yeah, you got to validate us. Like, man, you're right. Well, I was really impressed. A, that he called me and he called me because I was involved in a lot of the events that he spoke about in the book.

And he called a bunch of guys. Like, it wasn't just me. Like, I'm just one dude. You know, I'm really grateful that he thought enough of me to call me an ad. You know what I mean? Like, how you calling me? This is this guy that I looked up to, you know,

and idolized honestly, when I was in OTC. And, but yeah, you did. You explained all that. And that was a turning point for me as well. I was like, man, right, wrong or indifferent. There's going to be haters out there. It's going to be people that say negative things. But he was leading by example. And I'm like, man, if this dude that I looked up to that I learned from that I was educated by in school, that taught me things that kept me alive and worn, and kept my teammates alive. If he's man enough to go, these are my struggles.

Like, look at me. This is how low I felt. This is how weak I was for lack of a better term. Yeah. And I'm good with it. And this is what I'm doing to get better. And I want to help other people do it too. Shit, if he can do that, I can do that.

And so that for me was a kind of a milestone where I started to start learning how to get better with being public about it. And being okay. And I have a funny joke, like I said, you earlier, like I tell guys, like, it's particularly guys from the soft community, like, you earn your man card, man, nobody's ever going to, going to take away from the things that you've done, the sacrifices you've made, like, you've done enough, yeah, whether it was one or it was 20, like, you've done whatever your part was, you've done your part. So it's cool, man, now focus on the next mission, which is getting better, taking care of yourself and the people around you.

How many years has all secure been around? Three? Three years? Relatively. Yeah, I joined the board about a year and a half ago. Yeah, I think about three years now. and they're doing a lot of counseling, a lot of family therapy. Yeah, I mean, I use one of all secures therapists. Stacy, she's amazing. My wife and I talked to her at least once every couple of weeks, not because we're

having problems, but because it's healthy and it's good for us. And because honestly, we both feel better having talked about some but because it's healthy and it's good for us. And because honestly, we both feel better having talked about some things because someone's not afraid. They understand the things that you've been through and they're unafraid to ask hard questions. And every year that goes by, I get better at answering the hard questions.

And that means I'm healing. That's amazing. Is all secure, does it have a facility or no, that's next phase. Yeah, no, they have a website. They're working on what's next. They do retreats throughout the years, or during the year, at a couple of different locations, but they bring in veterans and first responders. and basically it's an education-based retreat where therapists are on site, they talk about various topics, they talk about coping mechanisms and ways to deal with them. They provide some literature and some information, some research.

It's a lot more about going back to, like I said, that diagnosis phase, like how important step one is, and it's helping people and families understand that it's okay to go do this. Here are some resources to go do this and then here are some resources when you're working on the path to getting better. So yeah, they like said I think it's three years now. Yeah, phase two, I don't want to speak for them. You know, they both wrote great books, Tom and his wife, Jen, both. But I think Phase Two is, yeah, established in a couple of different facilities on their own where they can bring veterans in and do things that they need to do.

I hope they get it. Let's talk about real quick. That needs help. They get referred to all secure foundation. They make the call. What does that process look like? Yeah, it depends. So if you email or call or whatever,

A, you're going to get a response in very short order. Usually it's understanding who you are, what you are, and what's going on. In a lot of cases, like I'll give you an example, like let's say it's a veteran that's dealing with substance abuse problems. Great relationship with Warriors Heart, Tom Spooner's organization down in Texas.

I was just talking to Tommy the other day. He started that thing as a, just like us, as a veteran that was dealing with some issues and he wanted a way to work through those and help others He started Wuer's Heart, which is a professional treatment facility for veterans with TBI PTSD and suffer from alcohol and drug addiction issues They at any given time they have 70 patients in there at a time. Like Tom told me that they're on the cusp of needing to do a second facility

elsewhere in the country because they're treating so many people. Holy shit. With great success, you know, that's awesome. It's phenomenal. But so, yeah, so where I'll secure what do as they would say, you know, is this a guy that needs some substance abuse, help on the front end, that's phase one,

phase two is progressing into counseling and therapy, whether it be for the individual, for the family unit, or collective. I think it's just sort of that initial triage is where they act best. It's where's the best place to plug you in so that you're not just going, doing internet searches and trying to figure out

what should I do. Yeah. So, yeah, my favorite thing is, that's really smart. Be an event that's public, you know, I'm not a mental health professional. I'm not an expert, I'm not a doctor. Like, I don't know.

Like, I'm working on me, I share my story to show people that it's okay and that there's other people just like you and that it's okay to want and need and seek help and that it does get better. But I'm not the person to make you better. But what I can do is I can refer you to the right organization and kind of slim down that process a little bit for you and help you identify the best way for you to get help based on what's going on. And the families too.

And the families too. Yeah, that's amazing. Like I said, the only one out there I know that's focusing on secondary post-traumatic stress as well and the family unit, so it's pretty cool. Yeah, and that is, that's, I never would have thought of that, you know, because you don't know where the fuck to look. And it takes a lot of time to research and try to figure out what's going on. And a lot of times you wind up in the wrong spot.

And so, yeah, that's smart. I mean, I'm really grateful because it gave me a resource. So when somebody does ask me, I can either say, hey, reach out to all secure, and immediately send them a message and say, this person's gonna reach out to you, this is what I understand to be going on. Like it helps speed that process along. But like me too, like I don't always know,

like I don't know, let me call and ask, hey, what do we do with this? And you know, they've got that network established and connections with good organizations are several they're involved with, but I'm just giving a couple examples. But, but yeah, it's you really do need that because guys don't know what to do. Yeah. Well, that'll be linked below in the description as well. But, well, Chris, I just want to say, man, it's been an honor getting an O.A. It's been an honor to have an end to your backstory. And I think I don't think I know this is going to help tens of thousands, maybe millions of people.

And it was a little guaranteed. And all your contact info is linked below. And I also want to remind the audience, we had a conversation out there in the last break. And I want to say, some of these episodes get long. And we're probably at five or six hours at this point. But we're just scratching the surface. You know, whether it's a nine hour episode

or an hour and a half episode with you, with everybody that's been in that chair, you know, we're just scratching the surface. You don't know how many apps you've been on. You don't know how many times you pulled the trigger. You don't, we don't know how much suffer and you've done. We don't know how much suffer in your family's done.

All we get is six hour summary of what's the- The post, the- What's the 40-something years, you know? And there's a lot more to dive into, but I think this paints a real good picture of what that life is like, what it's like coming out of that, some of the struggles that we deal with, that you personally deal with.

And I just really appreciate the honesty and the time. Thanks, man. It's a privilege to be here. I think what you're doing is great. I think you need to keep doing it. I think we're starting to see a shift a little bit in the community and that more and more guys are starting to come together. The connections are getting closer. We're there for each other. That self-isolation bubble that had gone on for decades really is starting to get cracked open.

And it's because platforms like yours, like what you're doing, bringing this stuff to the forefront, allowing people to talk about it and engage with each other, share their stories, share their message, and hopefully inspire others to seek help, get help, or help their buddy out. So I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, man, best of luck to you. Thanks.

You too. Yeah, really. The Bullwork Podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day job is 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 Bullwork podcast. Wherever you listen. No shouting or grandstanding. Principles over partisanship. The Bullwalk Podcast.

Wherever you listen.