Shawn Ryan Show - #80 John Lovell - 75th Rangers’ Deadly Gunfight and Near-Death Ambush | Part 2

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

John Lovell is a former Army Ranger turned creator, homesteader and best-selling author. Lovell is the founder of the Warrior Poet Society, a values-based community geared towards training, preparedness, and spirituality. Part two of this four part series is all about Lovell's career as an Army Ranger in 2nd Ranger Battalion. Lovell served on multiple combat deployments during the Global War On Terror. Lovell vividly recounts the early days of the war, shortly after the 9/11 attacks and a deadly ambush that would be one of the closest calls of his career. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://helixsleep.com/srs - USE CODE "HELIXPARTNER20" https://firecracker.farm/shawn - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://puretalk.com/ryan John Lovell Links: Book — http://warriorpoetway.com Website — http://warriorpoetsociety.com X — https://twitter.com/johnlovell275 YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/johnlovell275 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Previously on the Sean Ryan show. Did you grow up with parents that had strong faith? My parents were on their own journey as I was growing up. What happened at 19? I ended up going into college, but somewhere, somewhere in that year, I'm just kind of like, I don't really want to be here. I want to do something else.

So I knew about pushing myself, and I knew I can push myself to death. What did your parents think when you told them, hey I'm done with this? I'm a school, I'm going to join the military. Nobody who was close to me was really a fan of this. You get in, you go to boot camp. What was your impression? Not too hard.

What did you find the most challenging? Probably the mental games. Well, hey, let's take a break. And then when we come back, we'll pick up with your first deployment, what that brief was like. All right, John, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into your comeback career. But before we get started, I can tell you are extremely uncomfortable digging into your background.

And I don't want you to think that we're just getting into war story time to brag. So my method here is childhood, military. We do go into the war stuff. We go into the struggles afterwards, and here's why. One reason is because nobody's documenting this history anymore. And this is modern history that is not being documented. To, I want to talk about what made the man that you are today,

the guy that wrote that book, the Warrior Poet Way, the Warrior Poet Society guy, you have a massive following and people want to know who the man is behind that. It's important to talk about your history. It almost, I don't know any other way to say it, but it's what qualifies you to be up there and talking about the issues today and talking about the sacrifices that you made for this country, and that's why you're so passionate about it. So I don't want you to think of it as like a chest pounding war story podcast. The only reason we do it is because it's for what I'm saying.

It's what made the man today. It qualifies you when we get into the struggles of whatever struggles you've had that we're going to dive into, especially post-military career, maybe you had a tough transition. You know, it's this is why I had a tough transition, because I experienced these traumatic events in wartime. This is how I got through them, and that brings a lot of hope to the guys that are getting out today. You know what I mean? They see, oh, this guy went through X, Y, and Z.

He overcame it this way. There's a ton of different methods that the men and women coming out of the military today who have been to war and have experienced trauma and have, you know, maybe taken life, you know, how they got through all that, walked through that fire and found success. You know, some guys find it through psychedelics, some guys find it through faith, some guys find it through therapy, some guys find it through therapy, some guys find it through business. And so there's all these different methods, and what I like to do is display all of these methods so that the men and women coming out now, they watch this.

And they see all these different methods, and it gives them different avenues to try to find their own success and get through their own traumas. And it also carries over into civilians. I mean, a lot of civilians watch this. And civilians go through a lot too. Women that have been raped. Men that have been molested as kids, all kinds of stuff. And so when people like us, I hate to group us in together,

but when people like us open up about that and become vulnerable and talk about our experiences in a non-bragging way, it does, man, it brings a lot of hope to a lot of people, you know, by hearing this. So, so I hope that makes you a little more comfortable digging into your past and, and, and giving you the reason why we do it. It's not, like I said, this isn't, this isn't a chest pounding war story podcast. This is, there's a lot of, of healing and, and, and, wisdom that comes from this.

So it's good. Sounds serious enough that I'll put my gummy bears down. These have been fantastic. And that's a big, that's it. I put the gummy bears down for you, bro. So I'd like a little appreciation. I'd make that sacrifice for you and your viewers, your listeners. I wouldn't say I'm uncomfortable talking about my past.

The more the stuff I'm most uncomfortable talking about is kind of like, you know, rebel John growing up as this just punk teenage kid. You know, like that's a little more uncomfortable because, you know, I'm not proud of that. The military stuff's fine. It's not that I'm uncomfortable with that. I'm just not that interested. Now I'm fine, like in my book, I pull out biographical elements and I tell some more stories and I tell other kind of stories from my past, which I'm not shy about. I just want it to serve a greater purpose to the reader.

It's not like, ta-da, I did cool guy stuff in the desert with Ranger Red Time. I'm just not that interested. I want to talk about how can I help the viewer? How can we, on mission together, become better and make a mark on a world that is twisted and going down fast. I want to be a change agent and a force for good and my ego isn't big enough that I care at all about reliving my glory days in less than in some way somehow serves other people out there that are grasping. So if they're, you know, wanna,

hey, how do I structure my life so that I could live a life worthy of my calling? How can I structure my life so that I do it well in my relationships, my mission, my legacy? How do I make an impact? So that at the end of my days, I don't have regrets on my deathbed. Wishing I had reprioritized myself this way.

Now, folks like you and I, we've had some near death experiences, you know, of like, man, I should have died quite a few times and didn't. And that brought a certain sobriety to me and a sincerity and an intentionality about how I would live my life and what I would be focusing on, what I would be doing, and a lot of people have never faced their own death. Don't really know how to structure their life in a way that is ultimately satisfying. And so, when we're relive an old glory to this, if it's to that end, I'm all about it. If it's just about like, me, militant, I am so bored by all the egotism and chest beating that'll happen. You know, at least I don't care to participate, but that's what I understand what you're doing.

That's different. Let's dive in. Nothing's off them. It's manless rock and roll. Let's do it. So we're getting ready to go on your first deployment. Let's do it. So we're getting ready to go on your first deployment. And so what I would like to ask is, what was that? What was the brief? When did you know you were going overseas and where were you going? I don't remember the exact moment when I told, there's always these whisperings of things happening, especially like when you're overseas.

You know, you've been hitting it hard, you're doing your combat tour, and there's rumors of like, hey guys, I hear we're flying home two weeks, we're up, we're like two weeks really, and then that spreads like wildfire, and then it's like, no, no, I hear it's like a week, and we're like, oh, it's one month, and you never really know,

and then this expression comes about of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll believe it when I'm on the bird. And that's a sea, that's more of a season, you know, soldier warfare, you're not giving in to gossip. Hey, I don't know when. Maybe it's tomorrow. I don't care. I'll believe it when I'm on the bird. That helps me in life in general too. But anyway, it kind of came down like it's a bit of a rumor. A lot of combat tours that went on. The first one was more of a scheduled date. Guys were leaving and whatever. It was a month or two.

But it was pretty hush hush in those days, so you couldn't let your family know. You couldn't let your girlfriend know. And then you were given extremely specific instructions. Once you got over there, what you're allowed to say and not say. So I remember once I deployed, I just disappeared the first time. And I think I was over there for maybe three weeks before I was able to call home on a satellite phone, that's a already in phone.

And I had to like, hey, before you say anything, I have to read you this. Do not ask me what time it is. Do not ask me what time it is. Do not ask me how the weather is. Do not ask me where I am. Do not ask me what I am doing. Do not ask me, and I have to tell them all this stuff because it's not kidding. I had you guys doing that, okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Operational security stuff. And so we had to do that kind of song and dance in the initial, the very first tours, because it was, I mean, like the war kicked off and I was there right away. What year were you over there? I think 2001. You were over there. No, no, early, early 2002.

So yeah, early 2002, we were immediately there on the ground. Interesting. Well, I can't wait to dive into this. Yeah, I mean, let's just, I didn't get there to the ground. Interesting. Well, I can't wait to dive into this. Yeah, I mean, let's just... I didn't get there to 05. Okay. So, so what, so you knew that you were going right

when you showed up to Ranger Bad? Yeah. Correct. Did you know you were going to Afghanistan? Yes, I think so. You did. How were you kind of mentally preparing for that deployment?

I had my hands so full with just surviving the scariness of Ranger battalion and doing what you're told. I was a bit distracted from more, you know, of like, it was very serious and you could kind of feel it in the air as well of like oh this is there's There's a gravity. There's a sincerity. There's an intensity That is here. No, I don't know what I was like before because day one I show up everyone knows we're we're about to go to war and so I don't think I had a lot of headspace left to dwell on it.

I'm just trying to do what I'm told at that point. And so, yeah, I did have some fears about that. The other guy seemed a lot more confident, a lot more blood lusty. And when you're an unseasoned guy, you don't even know what you don't know. You know, that would be a slower warm-up for me. You never felt any blood loss. I didn't say that. I said, I didn't feel it when I was initially in.

I'm just a skin-head, wide-eyed private, trying not to get fired or yelled at or hassled anymore. No, no, no. Yeah. When you're that new of a private and range of Italian, then of like, you are probably equal parts scared of your leadership and the rangers around you, then you are about bad guys on the field. I mean, I would, it's interesting because I don't know

if I've interviewed anybody that was one of the first in over there. And so even when I went, it was, I mean, there had been a lot of after-action reports. You know, I'm not going to say that I knew what to expect, but you guys had nothing. I mean, going in that early, September, 2001's won a hit. So if you were an early 02, I mean, that's only... I was there before the fobs were built. You know?

I was there when, you know, Bogrum Airfield, or, you know, any of these places, you know, airports and Iraq, like I remember we had just seized it. We're pushing vehicles off and trying to hotwire stuff to so we can come into your view of like, it was completely fresh. There were no like bunk houses built up of like a lot

of the fobs that Ford operating bases would be, you know, their skeletonized, they're nothing. This is fascinating. This is about to get real good. I mean, you have no frame of reference, no way of knowing what you're about to walk into because nobody's been there before. The towers just came down and you're going right

into the Hornets nest. Right away. Yeah. So where did you guys land? You know you're going to Afghanistan, you're patallying the ploys, where do you guys land? You know you're going to Afghanistan, your battalion deploys, where do you land? So we do the long trek over and we're the west coast, so Washington State and you're going all the way across the world, landing in Germany.

So we'd always pick off there. And I've Afghanistan, I think maybe somewhere around Kabul. I don't even remember. I don't even remember. I went to Afghanistan for different times. It all just kind of runs together. It was a very long time ago. This was the start of the war 22 years ago. And so my pay grade at that time, I was just trying not to lose my rifle. I know. Don't get yelled at. And so, yeah, you don't even know where you are half the time. Well, I guess when I'm getting at it,

is walking off, I mean, everybody else after you, there was some sort of infrastructure there. Yeah. So what is it, what's it like when you land? I mean, what do you, what I mean, where do you land? Is it Kabul airport? Is it out in the desert? I mean, where do you go?

You land at one of the major airports, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq. So we didn't do the initial seizures of those. Those were already seized when we land. So the runway was open for us. And then we come in as kind of to make beefing up the first line of defenses that were there. So yeah, there was also times where I remember

spending a few days in Oman before we punched over and Saudi Arabia, I remember being based out of RR and kind of running across the border there. So those were two checkpoints. Those were two stop places on the journey as well. Did you? So let's just describe walking off the burb. What are you seeing? Many of you are very familiar with the struggles that veterans and military members face on a daily basis. We talk about it all the time. The struggles with addiction, the suicide epidemic,

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It's the right move and it's the American way. If you like spice, I gotta tell you about this new product, I've been checking out, it's called Firecracker Farm Hot Salt. I've been putting this stuff on my steaks. It is the perfect amount of heat. You basically put it over top, comes in these cool push grinders, push the button. Some hot salt comes out, the flavor is incredible.

It's not too hot. What I really like about Firecracker Farm, other than the flavor, is it's a small family-owned business. It's just Alex and his family, they've gone all in on this one product, and here's another cool thing. They donate to organizations like Operation 300 and the PiPitter Foundation.

Once again, the flavor is seriously amazing on everything you put it on. You can go to firecracker.farm slash shon. You're going to get 15% off your first order. Ladies and gents, like I said, this is a small family-owned business, so supplies go fast. Once again, that's Firecracker.FarmSlasHon. Check them out. Yeah, you see dust and you see, you know, just desert, you see an entirely different type of architecture. You see a bunch of just trash and busted out vehicles, you know, you see troops from all different kind of countries, and so you're seeing of different camera patterns that you're not used to.

And as a brand new private, I'm just expecting immediately to have to IMT off the bird and immediately get in the thick of it. And I don't know enough about war to realize no war is oftentimes long periods of droll boredom followed by incredibly intense short moments of excitement. I don't know that. I don't know how good I'm about to get it, Jen Rummy, you know. What were the living conditions like? They weren't awesome. It depends on the tour. I remember

one specific early, early tour, we're doing operations with Delta and so Delta loves Rangers. They have such small numbers. Most Delta operators come out of Ranger Battalion anyway, and so it's just peanut butter and jelly. We're kind of a sledgehammer for them, so in case things go wrong, them doing their incredibly like surgical operations, when things go bad, you got a sledgehammer called Rangers around you, and so a lot of the Delta operations would always have rangers. There was early on, maybe it was my first tour. It may have been my first tour. Arplotin was pulled aside to be attached to one of these. And we just took over this kind of like warlords property, his not castle by any way.

You know, the warlords structures that they would have over there, and we just kind of lived in that. Us and some of these guys, and so I remember... Some of these guys being Delta, or some of these guys being the warlords. No, the Delta guys, and so we were most of my missions, or most of the joint operations I ever did was with those guys. I did very little with the seals, I did some with you guys. We didn't go together as well. We were more oil and water. You know, if you all had your way of doing stuff, we had our way of doing stuff and it just didn't work out awesome. And so y'all like it, y'all are good at what you did. Go do seal things.

We'll go do ranger things, but Delta liked us a lot. That went, there was a better fit. But sometimes we were kicked out, and I remember at one point for, it was at least a couple weeks where we were just living in one of these small compounds with a small Delta that we were rolling with, and then another time of like, all right,

now we're in a small delta, you know, that we're rolling with. And then another time of like, all right, now we're in a bigger compound, but we're with some SBS guys and some SAS guys. Are you working with them as well? Interesting. At least we're co-habitating and kind of playing leapfrog with each other through the desert. And so they're just, you know, when you're spearheading a lot of this stuff

before the big armor divisions and, you know, guys are able to roll through with a lot of this stuff before the big armor divisions and guys are able to roll through with a bunch of infrastructure. We're out there pro-ben and scooping up HVTs as big army is rolling through. You're trying to travel and pick guys up as they're squirting to and fro before main force comes in. So we're kind of banding together in these little compounds for safety and security. Interesting.

It's for survival. Just for the audience, HVT is high value target. Those would be your top terrorists. Right. So let's go through, we got a lot of stuff to cover. It sounds like let's start with the very first operation. You get in country,

you actually let's start with logistics, because operation. You get in country, you actually, let's start with logistics, because I'm actually curious about this. What were logistics like? What were fuel points, chow, showering, what was just everyday logistics like when you got there at that time period?

So because there weren't big forward operating bases, you just had to do the best you could. So sometimes you'd pay locals to bring you food, which was scary, because you're like, maybe they're poisoning this, and then you look out in the compound, and I'm like, oh, there's a bloody goat head. I guess we're having goat tonight.

So I mean, I have a bunch of rations. Sometimes we're eating MREs, especially in those first few combat tours before you had like chow holes and stuff. You're just eating tons of MREs, local beans in our ice and goat head. Nice. You know of showers, I remember having to pump my own water,

put it in a bucket when you wanted to be real fancy and I did this a few times. I would build a fire, heat the water up over the fire, then using an old parachute we created a kind of like a shower place. So it's just this flapping parachute and the wind to make your little shower and then you climb up a ladder to pour your hot water that you just made into a bucket with a bunch of tiny holespoked in it, and then you try to shower.

The problem is, is it's so much work that you are just profusely sweating, and when you take that shower, it's kind of quick and over, you're wondering, I'm pouring sweat, I don't think that shower did anything. And then you're also, you're just showering with wet wipes. And so early part of the war of like, there's sometimes of like the worst was,

I think I went 18 or 19 days without any kind of shower. The infrastructure didn't exist, it wasn't there. So laundry, I did my laundry by hand in a bucket. Took hours, hours to do laundry. And then you hang it up to dry and you're trying to dry it. And it just like, you know, you got open desert and sand's blowing all into your wet socks and shirt. And so you're trying to shake that out. And it's just kind of like gets ingrained in the poor. It just nasty. It's just nasty. But yeah, we

didn't have any, we didn't have any infrastructure. How long did it take before you started seeing infrastructure and logistics show up? It was impressive. I mean, by the kind of my third tour, you got it over and you're like, holy cow, you guys have built stuff. Wow, this is amazing. Like, you guys have bits.

Oh! You have bathrooms. I always wanted a bathroom. So, man, the luxury and by like my fifth tour, I'm like, you guys are living like kings. This is incredible. None of that existed. None of it existed.

Then we'd roll in, and I remember, we'd go into one of these compounds, like a Sodabad or Jalalabad, which are operating bases now. I was the first ones in there. We'd like kick folks out, secured the perimeter, pulling sectors while the rest of a strung-up constateen wire on the perimeter. There was nothing there.

How many locations did you guys go to where there was zero infrastructure at the first time. I mean, a star bed is one of the, one of the hottest regions of Afghanistan. It was awful. I spent a full day under a Humvee trying not to move because I was sweating the heat index and with that particular one, before we pushed through and seized it, it was 127 degrees. Wow.

That's the temperature outside, and you just, I literally, I sat, I laid completely still under a humvee because there was no shade anywhere. And then we rolled in and we took over a soda bed. Or maybe it was gelolabad. That, it was something bad. I don't remember.

There's a lot of bads over there. The bads run together. There's a lot of bads over there. Yeah. If I remember correctly, jill olive bad was more flatter, very hot. We saw the bad was colder up the mountains. Okay. Then this would have been jill olive bad. Okay. But well, let's go back to let's go back to you get in

country, you get settled, zero logistics, zero infrastructure, you guys are season all these things. What is mission number one and how long does it take you to get to? How long are you in country before you're running and running operations? I think the day we got there maybe within somewhere within 24 hours, we were already doing kind of just reconnaissance around our general area. already doing kind of just a reconnaissance around our general area. Wow. It's kind of like loaded up some trucks and just kind of drove around the perimeter of our

structure. So you hit the ground running. Yeah. There's no infrastructure. So you're like, let's kind of probe. Where are we bedding down tonight? Let's make sure if there's an ambush, let's go ahead and do a little recon by fire. So just not recon by fire. But try to punch out around and see some stuff. Now remember, just white knuckle

and whatever gun I had. Now I think it was a 203, just white knuckle and expect him. Like, here they come. The hordes are coming for me. And I'm ready. You know, hunked down, head on a swivel hyper alert, you know, after a while, you're kind of completely different demeanor. You're chilling. You may be singing a song to yourself, just be bopping, you're looking around, you're alert, but you're a entirely different organism after a few tours. After you've been in a few run-ins, some close scrapes, you know, you've lost your combat virginity, you loosen up a lot. It's kind of like a day one to get to you guys, like, all clenched up, and then after a

while, you're kind of pretty loose and flowing and doing your thing. And so it was much nicer to be able to chill out a bit, but those first ones, you know, even though there wasn't anything super hot and nothing happened and really no big run-ins, my first tour, which is pretty incredible. I mean, we had some stuff where you shot at and you shoot back, but me particularly, I didn't have a ton of that. You know, it was really, you know, leapfrog and finding some key positions. And I guess we're trying to wedge a spear into a country, not immediately, because it just wasn't a ton of us at the time, not immediately thin

our ranks even more and go all over the place to make ourselves easy targets. And so, you know, you plunge in and you have a footprint and then that starts to grow out and you kind of push out inch by inch. That'll be different once you know big army gets there as well and now you have infrastructure to your back and now you can aggressively run some plays out and so it'd be my later later tours, particularly my second and third tours, fourthed tours, we'll find action. But so you would say basically that your first deployment was the footprint. It was, we have a very small footprint.

Let's expand this footprint out in this country and start pushing out slowly, even slowly, slowly, into the other regions. Yep. Did you stay around Cobble Bogrum area on your first one or? Yeah, we did. And we just kind of punch out, loop around, come back.

Did you have Helo assets and all that kind of stuff there already? We had some who was limited and we'd had to coordinate what we were doing based on what assets were available. So it's kind of like, we want to do this and this, make, you know, and we'll tell them what we're doing. No, it's like what assets are available and let's reverse plan around that.

And especially you wanna go out at nighttime, most of the time. And so you just gotta figure out what assets you can get. But again, in my first tour, I'm not mission planning anything. I'm just, I'm gonna lock down this sector and try not to screw anything up. Okay. So I'm not very helpful in kind of like, what was the strategy? What was the, I'm gonna lock down this sector and try not to screw anything up. Okay.

So I'm not very helpful in kind of like, what was the strategy, what was the, I don't know. I was an idiot private, you know? And so that was my first one. I was falling in line, try not to screw up, didn't want to get shot, even more so, didn't want to get in trouble with my team leader. Okay.

It was in that order. Do you remember the first mission? What it was for? No, it was that just let's recon outside the wire kind of thing. Okay. It just got on some trucks, drove around, came back, you know, hyper that was our very first kind of mission. Well, reason I'm asking is at least for me first mission even though my first mission real mission was in Haiti and we didn't really see much Yeah, but at the time it was it was the biggest deal that I had ever encountered You know what I mean is this is important war about ready to get into some shit, you know what was how did you

So where I'm going with this is how did you kind of mentally prepare? Did you think that, did you have the same mindset, even though nothing maybe happened or nothing major happened, did you have the mindset like, oh man, this is a, we're going out, we're going to leave the wire. You know, shit's going to go down. That all, it's, it's such a joke that you know All throughout my just different tours you get these spools of like hey guys

Zit we're going out tonight 2000 enemy packs bin Laden himself He's replaced both of his arms with twin Gatlin guns and he knows you're coming And John he called you out specifically. No, you know, in your head, you feel like it's coming and you'll even get some type of intelligence of like, hey, this huge hit, big deal, verified, you know, 2000 enemy personnel right there,

something ridiculous, 200, something crazy. And then you get there and it's just like a dude in his goat, you know, like nobody's there, nothing, just dry hole. And then you go out on something else that you don't feel like it's going to be anything and you get into gunfight. Uh, or you get ambushed and you had no idea. And so, um, after you get hyper spooked up, just a adrenaline and you feel like this is it, this is it and you hit enough dry holes, you kind of learn to just relax a little bit, and then it does come at you.

And if you got the training for it, and you react, well, it may go very well for you. And you just make decisions based on what's in front of you at the time and try to keep your cool, even though the world's around, the world around you is on fire. And that's, that's what we're called to do. And sometimes, you know, when things went really bad, I was able to just kind of do that of raging fire underneath calm waters on the surface. But that took that took a bit of time of going in and out on these just different little rakey missions and, you know, going after a flight,

hey, there's these buildings off side of the road. Let's check them out and you hop out and, you know, you execute your battle drill and you kick open some doors and you're clear, you know, you're doing all your, who are our ranger stuff? And after you do that enough, it just becomes the thing that you're doing. And the intensity of it,

which is just as big as a mountain ends up shrinking. This is the thing, it doesn't mean you're not as alert, it doesn't mean you're not as proficient, it doesn't mean you're being lazy and not checking your sectors and, and you know, digging your corners, it doesn't mean any of that. It just means that you're not so emotionally freaking out. In wrestling, you know, you're about to go out on a mat and fight another dude in front of a gymnasium of people.

And that's a scary, scary thing. And so I had some stress andoculation in the fighting element for years throughout high school. That was helpful in being able to overcome some of that. Fear is fear. You know, you get used to have like, if you're having trouble conquering one fear, well, you know, if I'm scared to go, you know, get in my fight, well, rock climbing and conquering up a height sphere can help because stress inoculation can kind of help carry over from one of the other.

And so, I needed to grow in my capacity for stress inoculation so that fear wouldn't overpower me and fatigue me because that's the danger. You get your big adrenaline dump at a time when you didn't need the adrenaline dump. You get a adrenal fatigue and it'll wear you out. It's kind of like dream can weigh too much coffee and you weigh up high for two hours and then you crash. If you're high strung, high alert, everyone's coming to get me, then you're doing a combat mission that may last for eight hours.

That's unsustainable. You got to chill out, bro. You're going to burn yourself out. And so I had to learn how to kind of relax and allow things to just happen. And so calm, cool, smooth calculation in your mind, calm waters here on the surface. You need to chill out when everything else is going bad. You're just not going to make it. on the surface, you need to chill out when everything else is going bad. You're just not gonna make it. Yeah.

Did you have, so how did you prepare yourself for the first, for the very first mission? The reason I'm asking is I wanna compare to before your first engagements, you know, your close calls, what was the preparation before a mission and then when I asked that again afterwards, after you had it for real. So, you know, so my hand was really held by,

you know, my more senior leadership, they're making sure I've got all my stuff. They're telling me what I'm doing there, you know, watching me and I'm doing all that and I'm just trying to do what I am told to do. In my own heart and mind, I'm just, man, I've never prayed so hard so much of like, man, my prayer life is on point, you know, I'll play, help me Jesus, help me Jesus. And so I'm taking

this very, very seriously and I'm spun up a heart and mind for that. And so, you know, you're doing your pre-mission checks and you're just trying to do the right thing and what I'm told. And that's, that's, that's the first, that's where I started. Okay. So you're just trying, you're just trying to do the right thing and what I'm told. And that's, that's the first, that's where I started. Okay. So you're just trying, you're just trying not to screw up. Don't screw up. The fear is getting pushed aside a little bit, probably until the last minute. I'm so distracted by just doing what I'm told, remembering all the things.

You don't have a lot of time to just freaking out. Now once you're kind of rolling out now and no one's talking to me and I've got this sector, you know, and I mean like straining your eyes, see 10 miles, you know, like doing everything you can, you know, how long did it take you before that routine, before that came, became routine? Even after, you know, just, you know, a few weeks or a month, you start to relax a good bit. You realize I can pull security just as well

without freaking out. Freaking out isn't actually my internal freak out. Nobody knows, but internally, oh, I'm freaking out. That internal freak out does nothing to help my eyes and ears work better. It's not doing anything. It's just wearing me out.

And so, I mean, I can both security much better if I'm, you know, I'm kinda like, I'm eating an apple. You know, it's just doing my thing. I got my gun, I'm ready for him, but somebody shoots at me, I'm gonna kill him. You know what I'm saying? It's kinda like cold hard math.

It needs to become dispassionate cold hard math. And the sooner you can get to that, I would say the better. Now, I can still utilize in the horrible fray when all the sudden bullets start flying. You know, that adrenal dump that's useful. Maybe a little bit of anger can help a little bit, a little bit of fear can help kind of elevate some stuff

so I can borrow some superhuman elements of adrenalin and stuff, but by and large, cold hard math man, they're doing this and this is the response. And the better you're at, you know, not just white, knuckling and doing the thing, you need to be an asymmetric thinker that can see the battlefield for what it is, know what you should do and outthink the enemy. Be where you need to be. It's not your effort and your intensity that wins the battle.

It's shoot, move, communicate. And me being all jazzed, it's like if you watch MMA and somebody loses their cool and just comes out flailing, they're either gonna knock the guy out real quick, but more often than not, somebody loses their cool, they're done. You can get crushed.

You lose your cool and you just start freaking out, you're gonna make horrible mistakes. And it's gonna get you killed or even worse, it's gonna get your buddies killed. If you've seen that happen, I've seen folks lose their cool, but never to an extent that it actually costs somebody their lives. And I have not always performed awesome.

I've been everywhere on the scale of hero to coward. I've done everywhere on the scale of hero to coward. I've done it all. And so what I'm thankful of is in my more cowardly moments, they were short, I got delivered through them, and it didn't cost anyone their lives. So it was my own private crime. Could you expound on one of those moments

knowing it may be a little too early? Yeah, sure. So this was my second tour. This was to Iraq. We were after high value target. This is a guy up on the FBI's most wanted list. So it was a, you know, we had good intel. We thought we were gonna get him. I was kicking open some palace doors and

Palis doors. It was just a really nice house. And so kick, kick, kick, and then the door flings open. I could tell that it was those nighttime outside. The lights were on inside. And so I was already, I'd already flipped nods up, came in and immediately coming through the fatal funnel at the doorway, there we were, we took incoming fire, SKS rounds, screaming right past me, stuck in the wall, right over my head, over my left shoulder, now SKS, close range, same room, you know, same kind of open

great room. And I was a saw gunner at the time. And I came up and I shot him in the face and just dropped him. And it was after that, I've like, I'd never killed someone that close before. I've like, man, he, that's, that was very close. And he had to jump on us, you know, of like, I, you know, coming through a funnel with that, that man, I still remember the site picture of this day coming up. And that was really, that wasn't scary, by the way. I was just doing my job at that time.

And all right, I'm kicking open a door and I'm gonna clear another room and another build. I'd cleared hundreds of rooms now by this point Real world and so we're clear and our thing now. There's always the thought it might happen um and things had happened uh, but cold hard math you're just doing your thing and so when I shot that dude uh There was no room for fear. I wasn fear. I don't remember being particularly afraid before, not at least more than any other time. It was right after when it just flooded me.

And I remember Delta operator, he came up behind me. As soon as you fire shots on a battlefield Rangers and Delta guys are immediately competing for confirmed kills and it's a different culture It's it's and and this was the culture that I was growing up into I'm not I'm not the wide-eyed private anymore Now it's kind of like you got some action over there, bro. I want to play you know So it's an entirely different animal. I'm not looking at combat is this I want to play, you know, so it's an entirely different animal. I'm not looking at combat as this horrible thing that I can't handle anymore. Now it's kind of like I'm seeing the chess of this whole thing.

Just like wrestling, I saw it as a huge chess game and combat was too. Now the stakes were higher, but I was learning the game and I was getting pretty good at it. Well, when I came up and shot, I didn't think about that. It just kind of all happened. But that call was really close. And then also, and I tell this story of this is kind of like, this was, this was different than shooting somebody at a little bit more of a distance or something like this was up. I mean, I For me to you. Yeah, it was probably I

Don't know into this room to know and that's too big if you doubled our distance Tripled our distance or so somewhere in there not not 10 feet more than that. Okay, I maybe Maybe eight meters, okay, you know 24-ish feet. Somewhere in there, that's about the, so that was close to me. I want to tell you about this business venture I've been on for about the past seven, eight months,

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better sleep starts now. 10 feet. I would have eaten those bolts. Yeah. I was too close. Too close. The only got it. I think two rounds off. I don't think I remember count them. Two rounds off. But it was just this flood of fear that came over me afterwards. And it wasn't just, hey, I just kept it dude. It was the room clearing problem was beyond me. It was a lit up room. There was a balcony over top.

So open room, a balcony that went all the way around the room. So aerial advantage. There was open danger areas all the way around. Open doorways. Open doorways all the way around. And then this was the thing that was freaking me out and I had such a problem with. It was lit inside the house.

It was dark outside. And the back wall of the house was windows. So anyone out in that courtyard could see in, but I could not see them. And I just shot a guy and we have this huge, uncleared structure and in our priorities of work, everything was dangerous. So like I couldn't figure out where to go.

How do I even take a bite out of this thing? The layout of this particular building was beyond me. I did not know how to clear this, and I knew how to clear rooms at this point. I was pretty good at room clearing. I liked room clearing. I didn't know where to go. Everywhere you went, you're vulnerable,

like in any way, and there's a delta operator that showed up behind me, just materialized. He's like, hey, I got you, bro, go right. I'm like, no, anyway, and there's a delta operator that showed up behind me, just materialized. He's like, hey, I got you bro, go right. I'm like, no, wait, wait. We're saying, I'm like, wait, hold on, let me teach you something. Wait, I haven't got a reason to wait. I just felt like, I can't go, but I was frozen.

And he just waited for me. He just waited, maybe he said something else. I'm like, hey, come on, let's go. I don't remember. I just remember him going and I told him, no, wait. And it was, I needed to get my head around this thing. I had frozen in place. And whether it was two seconds or 15 seconds, I have no idea. Now, the truth is, is I was clogging up that hallway right in front of the doorway. Oh, okay. And if we had received incoming fire in my after-action review, that would have been my fault. And what happened? I froze. I was stuck. It was too horrible for me to go forward. I just couldn't do it. I was stuck.

Now, I think the Lord helped me and just all of a sudden, and here's one more step, and two steps, and then I'm in my flow. And then I didn't have any problems again. We cleared the structure. We did very well. No more hits of contact. We, you know, you know, bagged up some more bad guys, flexed, cut them and ex filled them. And so that one went pretty darn well after that, but I froze. And that, that's upsetting because I would have loved to that. No, it's like, well, hey, you're just on second tour. I'm like, man, the opt-imp for us in the early parts of the war, it was high. So we were constantly doing stuff.

And so in a very short amount of time, you can kind of get a taste for clearing rooms and taking down buildings and doing vehicle patrols and air-full seizures. And you're doing a lot of stuff. I'm not just hanging out and once every week or two We go out and do a mission. I'm like no, no, it's constant and that was what early global war on terrorism was like Very interesting. How long how long were you beating yourself up about? Freezing in the doorway

Let's see it happened in 2002 and it's 2023. Still today. Yeah. Man, job. 21 years. You gotta let that go. No, no, so I'm grateful that it's kind of like, come on, bro. It's a good thing that happened. One, because I have the leadership lesson from it, I have the learning point. It was painful enough of a mistake that I'll always remember it. I can learn from it, I have the learning point. I, it was painful enough of a mistake that I'll always remember it. I can learn from it and I can teach other people from it and it didn't cost anyone anything. Did it get brought up again afterwards from your peers

or was this, this was just self-reflection? This was self-reflection. Interesting. Let's move on. And I'd done a good job. I'd done a good job. So it was my own private crime that I don't think anyone else was privy to. And nobody else had much,

we all had the same amount of combat experience. You know, whether you're the platoon sergeant or whether you're a private or specialist, you're the same combat level of experience. We're all newbies. And so everyone's kind of freaking out that that just happened, like, bro, first squad just got in a gunfight inside a room. You know, that's scary.

And so I did well. I performed well. I shot him real quick. No misses, you know, right away. And so I did a good thing, but I knew. And I don't think I can fast this. This was, I just knew. And later, I would really think on man, that could have been bad. I had one other freezing point, you know, and similar kind of quality, but it was

more of the thing of rather than a freezing point for that, it was, I just couldn't see, I couldn't understand the battlefield in front of me. And I had this feeling that the bad guys were about to materialize right in front of me. And I had no way to narrow my battlefield and reduce my own exposure. I just felt like a sitting duck. And that was horrifying to me. And we had just had, we'd received a lot of contact.

I just had a buddy lose a leg. And so we got, we're medevacking him. And he's screaming and wanting to fight the dudes who just blew him up. And so I'm like, this is a hot, this is a hot battlefield. There's parts of terrorists on the ground. You know, there's fires and we just, you know, this is serious situation.

And meanwhile, I'm gonna like fogged up night vision and overlooking this ravine. And I can't see Jack. And I don't know whether someone said it or, or you know, I thought it, but I, I thought I heard someone say they're climbing up the ravine. I realized you couldn't see him coming up if that was true. And then you'd be just nose to nose.

And so my part in that, you know, that fight was very minimal. You know, I threw some grenades in the grass, you know, and you, because they're hiding in the grass. You're like, all right, let's blow up those guys. My involvement that night was nothing spectacular, but it was my, it was the confusion and the fear of the unknown. It, that was, that was a difficult pill, where as other times, you kind of, okay, I know I'm gonna play

this game, they shoot it in, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna cover you, shoot them back, all right, good to go. Not as big of a, I mean, it's scary and you don't like that because it really ticks you off to get shot at, but at least it was a little bit more straightforward. I knew where they were, they knew where I was. Let's see how this goes. And then other times, when something happens and it's just real fast of like I've been in a near ambush, that was scary.

But you're so busy reacting, there's not a lot of time or mental space for fear. You can get afraid later. So. That guy coming through the doorway that you killed with the saw. Yeah. Was that your first kill? Yeah Yeah, I was until afterwards Um, I didn't done bother me. It didn't bother you one bit

Never has you know the he was a bad guy. He tried to kill me in my buddies. He was a terrorist. He was a known terrorist And so I slept like a baby, and I've never had a problem. And so now I do think if I'd ever shot a non-combatant accident, like, that man, you get real close. You're hunting for bad guys. You're clearing hundreds of rooms. I remember there's certain missions we would do where we were taking down entire city blocks.

We might be clearing non-stop for four hours, six hours, or there's certain missions we would do where we were taken down entire city blocks. We might be clearing nonstop for four hours, six hours, seven hours of nonstop rangering. And so it was exhausting. Sometimes you'll see the old picture of old school rangers grasping their magazine for the support. And I've had dudes judge that. I'm like, why are you doing that?

Well, it's probably because he has been fighting for so long, his muscles have failed working. And so he's propping his tricep up on his body armor and his hand like this because it's the only way he can actually hold a rifle now. Because now you have the, you run the hand out, thumb over, and you're able to drive the gun really well. I'm like, yeah, that works great, you know,

for a couple minutes. And then you fatigue and you can't hold your rifle very well. And'm like, yeah, that works great, you know, for a couple minutes. And then you fatigue and you can't hold your rifle very well. And then you get the muscle tremors and all the advantages is you would have with that aggressive way out far competitive shooter grip on your rifle. All of them are gone as soon as your muscle is fatigued. Yeah.

And so, now I run my hand out, you know, and shoot, I'm not way out like as if I was a competitive shooter. And I'm not way in as if I've been clearing rooms for seven hours. I'm kind of the warm cup of porridge, so I've got good control and recoil mitigation for my rifle. But I'm just saying, some of the, that was our reality. We, we were clearing for hours sometimes. And so you just get used to clearing, but you're expecting you, you, you don't want to be complacent and assume,

never assume a room is clear before you go in it, because you always have a prejudice. You always have a suspicion. And so you all, what the, the goal is to, all right, I am, I am a lion seeking prey. You know, I am a predator. Don't think about getting shot. You think about taking the fight to the enemy. Real important to mentally jazz yourself up toward aggression. I'm not playing defense. I am playing offense. And I'm a terror. And I am playing offense and I am a terror and I am seeking destroy and I am fast and I am dead. I am these are the words I'm speaking to myself room to room. Ready? Hold, hold. Take it now mine. And this is how I would speak to myself as if constantly for hours as I'm clearing, I'm giving myself my own little mental pep rally to stay sharp

and to not get complacent. Now in the midst of that, which is a life-saving device and mindset, all of a sudden you're expecting to find a guy with a gun and instead, it's some lady and full burka and she's got a pan in her hand. Now your mind under severe stress can project and turn that pan into a gun. You can mentally project that. That so many case studies from officers and soldiers where they swear they saw them holding something like a gun or a detonator or something like that. And I think they actually did see that. It wasn't the reality. It wasn't there, but your mind literally expecting it mentally transfigured that under horrible stress. And so you got to be real careful to acquire, identify and engage. This is where the muzzle thumb would come in. muzzle thumb is where

you take your rifle and you jam it into someone's chest to put them down and hurt them bad. A lot of dudes who don't understand military context and stuff don't realize a muzzle thump is meant to save someone's life. So you can determine an adequate time and space, whether you should take their life. That's the point. If it was a bad guy, don't muzzle thump. Just shoot him. But if it's a good person, well, don't shoot them and don't assault them, that's a good person.

If you don't know, and they're right up on you, hurt them really bad, really sudden, and don't compromise your ability to shoot them. So blame muzzle them. You take that muzzle and you crush it and to their start or wherever else, not into the face, because's going to kill them. And so you jack them up or you just bulldog them over.

Whatever you can to make sure that they are knocked out of you on your path of travel to your point of domination. That's where you're going in the room. And they don't hamper your ability to clear your sector. But a muscle thump or something that's meant to, to, to buy you a little time to figure out whether to kill that person or not. There's been a lot of times where somebody all of a sudden is there and you didn't expect someone there.

We go, whoa, oh, man. Oh, and you almost killed someone. If I had ever killed someone that didn't need killing, I don't think I'd ever recover from that. I don't think I would ever really make a full recovery of that. A lot of I don't think I'd ever recover from that. I don't think I would ever really make a full recovery of that. A lot of people don't. I know. And because I've been there, though it is no excuse to shoot a non-combatant, I understand. I am sympathetic because I have also almost killed people that didn't need killing. It's got real close.

Not a couple times more scary, friendly fire as well as it's something that happens in war. There's zero wars where there isn't friendly fire. It is absolutely unprepinsible. You cannot possibly engage in warfare without friendly fire. That being said, it's not an excuse. There's an explanation. Doesn't matter. You got to mitigate it. People don't understand how confusing battlefields are. That's the number one killer that if I had to use any word to describe a battlefield,

it wouldn't be scary or it'd be confusing. It's just confusing. All of a sudden you see some dudes jumping out and they're like, there they are. Is that our guys? Is that somebody else's? Who are those guys? Who are those guys? I'm like, that's second scott. Second scott should be over there. That's their A.O. of like map check. Dude shoot those guys.

Do not shoot those guys. And so it gets really confused. You can get turned around in just a moment. You just, you know, you had your good asmeth and you had your big sectors. And then you wandered around a couple blocks and you didn't realize these streets kind of tilted you left, you had your good azmeth and you had your big sectors and then you wandered around a couple blocks and you didn't realize these streets kind of tilted you left and you were off, you were off azmeth here.

And you didn't do a compass check and you're not checking your GPS and you don't realize you have wandered into a different squads sector of fire and you didn't realize it was such a gradual shift of the road and you should have gone there. And so that's just an example of battlefields are so, so confusing. And so if you are shackled to your fear and you can't see anything except the intensity and they're coming to get me,

then you're not gonna be able to do just basic stuff like understand what you're looking at and where you're at, where everyone else is at and where you should be going. It's a zoo. It is a mental mess to sort out. War can become extremely complicated very fast. And that's a great depiction of the experience.

Thank you. I have a question. I've been, I knew there will be a good time to bring this up and I think this is the perfect time This is from a patron and he wants to know how do you reconcile the duality of being a Christian warrior? The balance of loving God with your whole heart, mind and strength and yet prepare for war in the removal of threats to human life. I've been in search of an answer for this conundrum. It's pretty easy. The Bible is real clear on this. It's harder for us to understand for some reason. I think because we just don't do a very good job in a lot of pulpits in America.

But for this, I mean Ecclesiastes 3, there's a time to kill, time to heal. It's a time to plant, time to destroy, tear up. And so there's a time to kill. The Bible says, do not murder. And this is a bad translation where we take the 10 commandments and we take one of those commandments, thou shalt not kill. It's actually thou shalt not murder. That is actually the word. It's not, it's murder is the context in what it should be. As I mean, God is commanding people to kill in the Bible. The Israelites who are taken out of Egypt and taken to their homeland, Canaan.

This is where they lived before, this is where their ancestors were from, and more importantly, this is where God promised that this is your land forever. Now, there are some horrible, horrible humans living there that are committing atrocities and crimes against humanity. Picture third right has rolled up on your homeland and you've been stuck in slavery and now you're coming back to a land

that God promised was yours and God saying, clear them out, take it back. That is your land, that is your house, that is your property, take them back. In Israel, instead said, they actually look quite scary, would rather not. And God said, very well, you cowards, you can all die in the desert. And so for 40 years, they wandered around in the desert until that entire generation was killed, except for Caleb and Joshua. There's the only two spies that went out and saw

this superior force in their homeland and said, let's go stack bodies, let's go. The Lord is with us, no one stands a chance. So that is a better answer than I ever could have expected. Thank you. Thank you. So getting back to your career, we jumped around a lot. We're wrapping up Afghanistan, then we got into

bulmins and combat that you necessarily aren't proud of. Coming back from Afghanistan, how much time down do you have before you're redeployed? It varied, but I mean, you hope for something like six months. How long are your deployments? It's shorter, about three, four months. Three to four months. There was one that was only one month. And that was a winter surge. And this is famous. If you go into regimen headquarters in Georgia, there's the winter surge pictures. And that's where we're up, living at like 9,000 feet elevation

in the foothills of the Hindu Kush and like Peronus and Esteewee and some of these remote places where no American has ever stepped foot and You know, we had this intel spin up that they're hiding up in this and we confiscated a whole bunch of you know old Russian munitions and stuff, any year craft things and whatnot, but really we just went up, got altitude sickness, ran a lot of extremely dangerous missions just in the nature of the climate could kill you. And that's famous in Ranger history, that winter surge, and I was there and that sucked

If freeze I remember we heal it in a very first night we heal it in 47's and We fast-ropeed out which was tough because your hands are so freezing cold You lean out grab that fast rope you know to slide down that rope out of the helicopter and your hands just don't work. You have to look to make sure that you are holding the rope, you know, but it's ink black outside. So looking doesn't do you much good either. And so miracle, miracles, you don't bounce on some of these fast ropes we've done, you

know, and so funny stories are flooding through my head now of fast rope, misadventures, but this one, we did our fast rope in, infilled, and the birds punched out. And as we're serving our surroundings, it's just snow, ice everywhere, nods down, looking around, and we realize, ah, we're in between two rivers.

I was like, you get through these rivers. And so we were like, you know, it's super late. We've infilled, you know, it wasn't, though we were kind of boxed in, we felt like given the more remote geographical location. And we're just just gonna wait for daylight to figure out how we can cross this rather than, well, if you cross on the wrong spot and you go in, the temperature is just such an extreme low,

that person may die before you're able to rescue him. So it's like, well, shorty death through the river or maybe chance fate under daylight and gunfire. I'm like, oh, shorty death through the river or maybe chance fate under daylight and gunfire. I'm like, I will choose gunfire. So we institute a res plan. And so some of the rangers are pulling security and other rangers go ahead and bed down

and pull out your bivy sacks and try to get some shut eye. So that was the plan and we instituted that rest plan. However, it was so cold, even with our cool sleep systems, which were very effective, one by one, everyone who was sleeping got up out of their, out of their bivvy sleep systems, packed it away and everyone pulled security all night. It was too cold to sleep You couldn't sleep even in your sleep. So it was too cold in between those icy rivers with the wind

Screaming down in between high peaks of Hindu Kush Straight onto us fully exposed and it was and so what you did is you did calisthenics all night long. I ran in place, I don't know, six hours until the sun came up. I just jogged in place the entire night. It's the only way I could keep my limbs warm enough. So you didn't lose a toe to frostbite or something. Yeah. And that was, that was night one. Oh, man. That's not even one. Let's, let's go back to, let's go back to Iraq. OK.

So we're getting into that. What year do you deploy to Iraq, Ish? 2003. So that was the, either for the invasion. You were there for the invasion. Yeah. So what happened is, you know, we had big army doing a big push through and we're grabbing high value targets up as they kind of squirt. So it's a coordination. And I wasn't

first boots on the ground, but I'm still early enough into Iraq, where I could be like, yeah, I was there. I just looked at my DD214 and I've already forgotten the exact dates that I was there. That's okay, we don't need exact dates. Anyway, I am somewhere in 2003, I should. Okay, so you deploy there, is it heavy right off the bat? What are they briefing you? This was a different thing where in Afghanistan, I had mudhuts and whatnot. These are very, like, in your cities, you find really, really impressive architecture and you see infrastructure

and build up and you've got cities, not just kind of like Haji villages. And so this is a different animal and a bit scarier. In Afghanistan, I think I was running one of the Tricycon Acogs because you want to be able to see farther. I don't remember the first deployment. Maybe it was a aim point comp in, but we decided in Afghanistan, we liked running the ACOX. Iraq, nope, give me a red dot site because it was all up close. It was moving in urban terrain and kicking in palestures and stuff. And so that was a scarier animal. It was easier living. Afghanistan was harder on the body. It was harder living conditions.

Iraq was a lot easier, but it was a bit scarier in the optimpo, it was crazier. A lot more violent. It was more violent, yeah, for sure. How long were you in country before you started burning ops this time? I mean, you're running ops pretty immediately. Immediately.

And it's really nonstop. And you guys don't mess around. No, it was early in're running ops pretty much immediately, immediately. And it, it's really nonstop. And you guys don't mess around. No, it was early in, there was so much work, everywhere you went, there was work to do. And it was all special operations driven. And so they just used us up. And that led to a lot of dudes getting out in a short time by, by the hit my fifth tour, I was smoked, I was just tired of getting there. We'll get to that point. So you get to Iraq, where do you go? Baghdad and you're running off right off the bat. What's the opt-ampo? off the bat. What's the opt-temp of? Nearly every night, maybe.

I mean, it's hard to say because it's like we didn't do anything for four days. And then we're like, and then we went every single day and night for something else. So I'm comfortable saying pretty much, you're going to something, a little scary every 24 hours. What was, let's talk about your very first engagement. What was that like for you? Oh, I already told you that. That was your first engagement, first mission. No, you mean my first like, engage my first mission?

First gunfight, first. That was that inside the room. That was an Iraq story. And that is a hell of an opt to cut your teeth on. Yeah. So was the rest of the time very similar there? Touch and go, in that tour, I'm not gonna experience anything as scary as that in Iraq.

But yeah, you're, I mean, we're grabbing up a bunch of bad guys and flex cuffing them and ex-filling them for, you know, questioning from the siop dudes and we're running all over the place, taking ground and, I mean just clearing, clearing, clearing all the time. Three or four months there, come back, now you're going to Afghanistan. Where are you going in Afghanistan this time? All over. All over.

All over. So, this is the things, Ford operating bases, warrant places that we live. We just went in to refit. And so we may come in one night, get a bunch of water, get our fuel, maybe if we have time grab some hot chow, switch out some busted out tires, grab some hum V parts and we're out the same night.

Okay. And so... So these are reset points for you, these aren't... You don't live... We weren't living and fought. Well, we later we would. So your entire deployment is an operation? Yes. It's non-stop movement. So it's like, where were you? I was everywhere. Everywhere. We didn't stay put anywhere. I'm like, there are some Afghanistan tours, I already alluded to them. I think this is tour three or maybe four. They all just run together now,

especially because it's so long ago. We're just got on trucks. We had like five different humvees and they were open. We don't like the armored coffins. No ceilings, no doors. And so it's a stripped down Humvee with a bunch of just angry Rangers. Some, you know, something saucy on top, the Modus 50 Cal or a Martin 19, you know, grenade launcher, something like that. And then you got a 240 mounted on the back. It's a medium machine gun. And then everyone else is just your rolling thunder.

Everybody's guns pointing out in sectors and you're just pushing through. And we just drove all over looking to pick a fight. Is that what it was? That's that somehow time. I'm sorry. So contact type. Some of it. So I remember it was fun fun, because you think about terrorists.

And I had this perception of the brave suicide bomber. All these guys are ready to die for what they believe in. It's funny, the high-value targets, they're the first guys to immediately roll over. And they wouldn't put up a fight. The underlings sometimes would put up a fight. But a lot of times like guys that run off into the darkness not knowing that we could see through our night vision, you'd grab them and they'd smell like crap and piss because they just in fear, just evacuate all over themselves. And so anyway, I saw some of that, but oftentimes you want to get in a fight, but these are terrorists even in their own country.

I'm rolling through your area of operations and they just let you go. And then they spray AK and then they disappear in the crowd. I'm like, fight me, you cowards, come on here. I'm here. It's one of these deployments. Maybe it was three or four. We had taken our bottom pockets off of our BDU uniform. And it just started to become tacked to cool,

probably Delta did it first or somebody did it first, but we're right there like, oh, that's a good idea. And so you take your pockets and you put them on your sleeves. No one had ever done this before. This is the first time it ever exists. Now it's on everything.

It's gonna like, whoa, you got pockets on your shoulders. That didn't exist ever until global war and terrorism. And we started doing that. Because now you can reach stuff in your pockets and you realize the utility. So we're kind of in the forces, I don't know where it started, but we adopted it early and we're kind of some of the only ones that were rolling around. It was the special operations community that was doing that. We were at, and we were listening in on some of the signal intelligence going on,

and the bad guys who would fight different forces, there's a rumor of them, don't take shots at the guys with the pockets on their sleeves. They always kill us. So that was the intelligence that got through. And so then we took them off because we were trying to roll through and we were trying to get people to shoot at us. And we realized, oh, they recognize, hey, we're the good killers. Don't shoot at them.

They'll kill you. go shoot the other people. And so we took them right back off. And so, anyway, now it's adopted all the way across. But that was just one little snapshot in time. And what you take away from that is, is these were not these brave, idealistic warriors, as I had thought, most of them were cowards within even their own country engaging in guerrilla

Terroristic Attractix and so we were trying to do stuff to strip our numbers down Now if we were all too heavy known, it's never gonna shoot at you because they know we're gonna annihilate you So we would purposefully have less numbers and look a little bit more inviting for them to kill. We were trying to be a little bit more like human bait. Now whether higher would recognize of like who knows some former Ranger military commander like that never happened. I'm like, you may not have known about it. This is what we were doing. The ground. This is absolutely what we were doing. We were looking for a fight. So a wild departure from my first tour to my third, it's like, oh please don't shoot at me.

And then I'm like, you can shoot at me, but I'm gonna shoot back. And the third one, I'm kinda like, come on. Give me your bullets. Ha, ha, ha, ha. It's a little more scar face-esque. Well, you know, I asked you about an hour ago about what was pre-mission like for you preparation.

It's a new guy who had not experienced combat. Now you are a seasoned operator. You've done countless raids, cleared countless rooms, been in countless engagements. What is your preparation like before an actual hit, an operation, a take down, whatever you want to call it, not a patrol, a hit. And I wouldn't say I was a seasoned operator.

I would say I was being seasoned. I was better than I was before because I have some dudes that, you know, Ranger Buddies that stayed in for a full like 18, 20 year career. You know, and I moved on, so I don't want, I'm gonna assign that to them. I was certainly, I was a ranger. I was a very stereotypical ranger in the way that I was ready to fight, I'm ready to fight,

and I know how to fight, and I've done some of it. So now pre-mission checks are, I'm really thinking it's not so scary and intense. I mean, you definitely have basic spool up. You get a little bit of a fragga, like an operations order. You figure out what's coming down the pipeline and you're like, ooh, that one looks scary or like this one, probably another dry hole. Trade it real, let's go, Jens, you know, and you're doing your thing. But you know, you still get those spikes, but really it's kind of like, you're like, ooh, that one looks scary or like this one, probably another dry hole. Trade it real, let's go, Jens, you know, you're doing your thing,

but you know, you still get those spikes, but really it's kind of like you're thinking through stuff. I remember earlier on, I'm getting ready, and I remember one mission I went out on. I had 11 magazines on me. For my M4, I had 11 magazines. That's a lot. It is a lot.

On your chest? I mean, just a belt chest, wherever, of like maybe, yes, my loadout, my personal loadout, 11 magazines. Now, the operations order had clearly spooked all of us. And so my leadership even, and this was, what was the op order? I have no idea. What were you gonna do?

I have no idea, but it sounded really scary. So I was like, bro, and you know, Ranger history, we have like, oh, we're waiting for our Mogadishu, where we run out of ammo and we're pinned down and we're behind enemy lines and we're, yeah, we're going to run out of ammo. So it's like, oh. That's young Ranger John. You know, more seasoned Ranger John of like, I'm carrying five mags.

If I need more, I'll take it off one of these privates, you know, who's under my command. I'll take their ammo. You guys carry 11. You're carrying it for me though. Because I'm a little more practical. I'm gonna run out of ammo before them, and then I'm gonna take their ammo.

But I realized the human body doesn't run on 556. And after, you know, like, sucking on a battlefield, or not even a battlefield, just, you know, doing your infill, and your walkin' and your sucking on in, I mean, you need water. You need water. I would have traded four magazines

for one cup of water. You need water. You can't function long without it. You know, and you may have to walk in to, you know, your mission area of operations. And you may be pouring sweat. And after a little while, you'll would like a snack. And so, man, I jettisoned a lot of magazines. And instead, I had snacks all over me. And I had different stuff of like, all right, I got

my GPS, you know, you had some pin gun flares. I had a short shotgun under my left arm, strap to my belt, and hooked to my body armor, so I could roll it in and do some ballistic breaching. I had a bunch of skittles, a couple packs and like some orange drink powder that came in the MREs for some quick sugar. I had camel backs and you know,

I had an assault pack with some now jean bottles in there and an MRE, you know, I had an assault pack with some now gene bottles in there and an MRE. You know, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to fight before it never would across my mind. I'm like in MRE, I'm going into the thick of it. You know, I'm about to Rambo, Rambo out. I'm like, yeah, sure you are here. You can grimace at the enemy while I eat my snack over there during Yeah, you can grimace at the enemy while I eat my snack over there during Because I thought it was all gonna be like this huge fight and really it's You make clear hours and hours and then it's a dry hole and then you go home and that's it and And then all this and you get intelligence to like hey, we need to actually stay here every night And you don't have a space blanket and you're gonna freeze tonight. I'm like, no, you should have brought a blanket.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find the big ranger. He'll be the big spoon and we're gonna get it under the space blanket tonight. And I'm actually gonna get some shed eye. And you heroes with your 11 mags aren't sleeping. You're not gonna sleep at all. You're going to shiver freeze because your idiots. And so pre-mission checks and prep in a realistic

and sober assessment of what it takes to keep the human machine running on a battlefield or in a potential place where you're doing operations. You see, there's already a lot of wisdom coming from this stuff that people are going to learn from, especially young rangers. But we had kind of talked a little bit about some of your near-death experiences. And so I want to dig into that. What were some of your most memorable near-death experiences, and how did you mentally overcome

whatever happened and be able to perform through that? So, one of the most memorable, I refer to as my walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That comes out of Psalm 23, but I have commandeered it and applied it to this story. We had just been in a near ambush. This is right next to the pack border in Afghanistan. We had gone up a road, which was actually a dried up creek bed that even in our,

you know, amazing humvees, getting up to four miles an hour without high centering or blowing out a tire, getting stuck, you'd be doing very good to go four or five miles an hour. So this is extremely difficult to range to negotiate. And so we got ambushed and whatnot. And so that was scary. And it was his own contact and fight. And that was a near death experience. But that wasn't the one I was

going to tell. Is it all right to skip that whole story? Skip it. Okay. So, and that was where we were getting shot at and we were shooting. And So that was scary and we all should have died, but we didn't. It was the next day, we were gonna go do a, like, since the site exploitation of her, we're gonna recon that area where it all went down. Why? I don't know.

We're just gonna go take a look at it. Now, that didn't make too good a tactical sense, except that we just really lit some dudes up the day before Who meant to kill us and we killed them instead? So that went very very well I Accredit the entire grace of God because it was a pretty miraculous thing You shouldn't live through a near-ambition. We didn't just live through it. We crushed

And so that was cool. You're gonna make me go back. I'm gonna make a little bit of this sounds interesting. Walk us through it. Okay, sure. So I am lead driver at that time, which sounds a little bit lowly because at that time, I was a team leader. So I think I'm a sergeant at this point. And I am driving down this terrible road. I'm vehicle number one in a convoy of at least four or five trucks. As I'm going down, I have all of a sudden incoming boom huge explosion front right and my tire is just exploded. It's gone. I don't know whether it was an RPG or IED.

I don't know to this day, but that's what happened. And then automatic gunfire from both sides, elevated position starts raining down on us. And so that's really, really bad. Nierian bush means inside hink ornate range. Now nobody had a tape measure, but just based on proximity and later intel. It was right on that line. They were close and I'd already walked up that terrain the day before on the right side. I did what I was supposed to do as a team leader and a sergeant at that time.

You want somebody reliable who's going to do the right thing as driver. The driver in one of these Humvee trucks, if you is target number one to the bad guy, if you've got a vehicle convoy going through someone and you kill the lead driver and you shut him down, then the whole convoy stops, then you kill the rear driver and then it's just kill all the fish in the barrel, then you kill the rear driver, and then it's just kill all the fish in the barrel. So there's the book ends.

Kill that driver, kill that driver, kill everyone in between. And so I am selected to be the driver because I was a good driver, and I was aggressive, and I knew how to use the vehicle as a weapon, and to take care of the guys, and I'm not going to lock up, I'm not going to freeze up. And so when this happened, it was really difficult for me because I wanted to fight, you know, but I did the right thing and I punched it. And that means get off the X. If you're ever in an ambush, military taxics 101, get off the ambush, get out off the, don't fight through the get off the X. And so I punched it and got off the X. And so that's tough because I am. I got the steering wheel and it's wanting to favor rikes. I don't have a front tire.

So I it's taken both arms to do this. And I'm trying to get it and set it and lock it. So I can grab my M4 and I tried to do that. And there was no chance of doing that. And then there's this 50 cow from the Maudus up in the turret that is somehow jumped out of the can. And it is hitting me in the face as we're driving through this. And it's just a nightmare. And all gunfire is going out all the way. Anyway, we got down, punched around a corner, dismounted, got down low behind whatever cover we could find,

which was just little rocks and pieces of defillade. At that time, we saw some of the bad guys who had ambushed us on the left side had kind of gone around the military crest of this. They lit us up from distance now, and then we just, we put them all down. So that was that encounter. Now, that wasn't the, that was,

it was all fast and it was pretty reactive and it kinda, it was scary, but for me, it was kinda cold hard math. It wasn't as memorable to me as this next part, which isn't like guns flying anything, that this one was actual like danger. The next one was scary because it was a bit of a mind-screwer and it was perceived danger.

Okay. And so the second one was worse to me, though anybody listening in or viewing this would be like, dude, the ambush is worse. I'm like, all I can tell you is, you know, what the pucker factor was in either of the second, either one of these and the second one, though less dangerous, was certainly a bigger, pucker factor because this is what happened. The next day we wanted to go back into that AFC, exactly what had happened there. Now, that was the excuse. The real rationale was probably, hey, let's go try to get shot at again and maybe we can

kill some more bad guys. So anyone discerning of like, hey, why would you try to get shot at again. And maybe we can kill some more bad guys. So anyone discerning of like, Hey, why would you go back through the same spot? There was nothing mission critical. Why? And it's because well, we came up with an excuse to dangle some bait out, draw some fire, and then hit them with a counter ambush that they weren't expecting. So we positioned some machine guns up on the high ground that could overlook this entire valley that we'd got ambushed in the day before. We had mortars ready and dialed in,

and we had aircraft on station. So we have our, we have our counterambush ready. All we need is bait. Now I, as a Christian, you know, had gained, I had the respect of the dudes. I wasn't all like preach here, whatever, but everyone knew, all right, John's a Christian. And I think there was an unspoken sentiment that the Lord's going to take care of me. And I'd been in some brushes. And so anyway, I was selected as the bait. And I was actually okay with it.

I'm kinda like, okay, let's do the bait thing. And I feel like I'm invincible until the Lord calls me home. And so I was actually okay with this plan, but it was a little bit nuts, because I'm like, dude, we almost all died right there. And now, without any trucks, and without any of my buddies, I'm going to take two dudes with me and we're just going to walk up that valley. Just the three of us,

we're just going to walk up there. Broad daylight. Okay. So I was the bait. And so I was strangely, I was okay with it. And so we just kind of start walking. How are you okay with it? That's this is what I want to hit. Well, how are you altering your mindset and overcoming the fear? I think I was a little, I'm like, I wouldn't mind another fight. And I felt good, I was scared.

I was scared. I'm not minimizing that. But and so, as I'm walking up this valley, I'm like this is stupid, this is crazy, but I could do it, you know, and it was, I was okay with the plan. I don't know, it was scary, but I'm good with it, you know, and so I don't know of, I had enough stress and

occupation and I was okay. And so I'm like, I don't just stroll up this. So we did me and two buddies. And so we had our little modified wedge and we're just kind of pushing up the valley, making sure we got our interval spaced out, head on a swivel, we're just taking a stroll up the valley of the shadow of death. We get way up there and so I mean maybe I'm 500 meters away from my gunners on top of the rich line. So I'm kind of like, man, can they even help me about this? And it's about this time where my radio squawks and somebody says, hey man, you got movement from Pac-Mill coming to you. Oh no, no, I'm sorry, let me back up. As I'm walking up, there's a dude, an older man. He looks like nine years old, so he's probably like 45 enough, getting years, like they mean that

climate, that culture, that that does not treat the body well. These people fall apart from malnutrition and difficult. So he starts strolling down and so we're walking toward each other. I'm watching hands and I'm pretty high alert, but I'm like, and my big thing is that like as the wind is hitting his, you know, a man dress, his ID man dress, I'm like, is there some type of bomb under there? Is this a suicide bomber? Cause that makes sense.

But why is this guy walking down this valley toward me in the middle of the day when everyone in this region knows what just went down here? There's no way everyone doesn't know what happened here yesterday. So this guy is dirty, one way or another, whether he's direct or whether he is walking down to scout out gathering intelligence in the report back. No question this guy's dirty. And so I grab him up, you know, we hold him at gun. We do a search. We maintain security.

And at this point, I am letting him lean into my radio. So our interpreter can speak back and forth to him. And it's at that time where on some I come, so I'm like, Hey, you got movement on the pack, pack meal border. Some, it looks like some trucks are rolling down in your location. And I'm like, oh, no.

Where is, I was kind of okay with doing the walk, which is already here, Brain. For me, I am way too far away to beat feet down. I'm way too far away. And this terrain is gonna take quite a while for me to get down. And I got mountains far away. And this terrain is going to take quite a while for me to get down. And I got mountains on either side of me. I am boxed in. I am stuck in this valley. And here I've got this informant, dude. So even me hiding in the bushes, if they see

this guy, just come here, they're there, they're killing them. And I got trucks rolling in, multiple trucks. And I'm like, dude dude this is bad bad. So I ended up grabbing the guy and me and my two dudes, my two Joe's who are with me, we pushed up on to, you know, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 meters up as much as I could get up. I didn't want to go too crazy with it, kick up a bunch of dust and so I needed to be kind of settled quick.

So the dust wasn't giving away my location by the time the truck's got to it. So I wanted to get up, get behind some type of sparse vegetation, because there was vegetation, but not a ton of it. And I got down behind that. And then I sat down behind the guy, I put him in between my legs right here,

and I took out a knife and I showed him the blade and then I just put it under his neck. So, you know, and I even leaned out gesture of like, shh, like this. And so, you know, I was able to gesture, hey, if you make a sound, I'm gonna give you a smile and a place you don't want it. And so then we just kind of waited it out, hoping

that these trucks didn't stop in front of us. Because if they do, you gotta kill this guy, fight the trucks as best you can and we'll hope that my buddy save us in time. Because that wear screwed, wear screwed. We don't have cover, We just have a little bit of concealment and we're boxed in and you can't run up them out while you're getting shot. You can't go left and right in this terrain. Wouldn't do you any good and you can't push your I'm screwed.

Now, I should definitely see the pucker factor in this. It was scary. It was scary. Now the trucks didn't stop at our location. That's good. And my hostage here was a sweetie pie, very, very quiet. Really still appreciate that man and his choice to be quiet. As willingness to cooperate. In retrospect, you know, all the operators out there. I'm like man you almost got a knife kill I'm like bro So anyway sorry to disappoint you pipe headers out there didn't get the knife kill So Anyway the truck the trucks roll down and then our dudes were already ready to flex on them picked them up I think they were exfilling some dead bodies from the day before. I don't remember and I wasn't there because I was all punched up, but those got pulled over and interrogated and did all that stuff and questioned. And then by the time I actually

got down, handed that dude off for questioning to one of our terps and then linked up, trucks were gone and everyone interfaced with them. But that, that was nothing really awful happened in that moment. It did the day before, but that one was a, that was just, uh, because I was kicked off in such a small group. That was, uh, that was fucking fake. I felt naked out there. I felt naked. I felt naked. I felt naked. I felt naked. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there.

I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there.

I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there.

I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. I felt naked out there. life sounds good. Next on the Sean Ryan show, you had mentioned that you had lost somebody's like how do you how do you deal with loss? How did you overcome that? I don't think I've overcome loss any more than I've overcome fear. Me going out

would strengthen your resolve to perform your mission better, or you get out of the military, find a new mission, and then go out and crush. And you're in your 17th year of marriage now. What is the secret to a successful marriage? Some of you listeners are like, oh, come on, don't say this. I'm like, it's not cliche. It's true. You and I both know this. There's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community. Talk about it all the time.

Now they're calling it operator syndrome. What kind of challenges did you face reintegrating in? Some guys that work like my platoon, and some of my buddies who got shot up, it's not this huge tragedy on their part. It is on ours who are left behind and missing them. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing He's the co-CEO of the All Secure Foundation, which assists special operations in active duty combat and that's time-satterly. Nobody helps you shoot your gun. They trained you, had a shoot your weapon. So we're going to train you on the things you've never been trained for, out of come home for more.

Everything else that turns people away from it, we try to rebrand it, reduce or dismiss the kind of stigma that's associated with it. You have to. Mike Drop, raw, unfiltered, intellectually sound, wherever you listen. If you have to. Mike Drop, Raw, unfiltered, intellectually sound, wherever you listen.