Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Military

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Sheppard, and I'm joined by best friend Aaron Weekly. Monie is tending to some family stuff, and so the cutest boy in the world is joining us.

Monica, I got your back, girl.

Okay, so today is is Crazy Military Stories. If you think for one second that might not involve unauthorized evacuations, don't worry. It could end up even in these stories as they do. Please enjoy Crazy Military Stories.

Hello, I'm John Robbins, comedian and host of WNDRI's How Do You Cope podcast. I'm also, Plot Twist, an alcoholic. I've written a book, Thirst: 12 Drinks That Change My Life, published by Penguin. Thirst is a book about alcohol. It's mystery, it's terror, it's havoc, it's strange meditations. But, John, I hear you cry. Isn't that a rather odd book to write for a sober man who more than anything wants to stop thinking about alcohol? Well, yes, but I had to go back to find out why the one thing I know will kill me still calls out across the night. It's the story of what alcohol did for me and what alcohol did to me. If that's of interest to you or someone you know, Thirst, 12 Drinks That Change My Life is available to pre order now online and from all good bookshops. I'm Jon Robbins, and on my podcast, I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, How do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real.

Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts or listen to episodes early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations, and motivational series.

Hard times, come and go.

Good times, take them slow.

My life, I had them Jake, can you hear us?

Yes, I can. Look who's joining us today, Aaron Winkley. Do you see him? It's me, Monica.

Oh, there he is.

Jake, I think I would have been able to guess that you were in the military just by looking at you.

I definitely sell it on my face for sure.

Where are you at, brother?

I'm up in Massachusetts, in the western part of the state out here.

Are the leaves They're starting to change on you?

We're still a little unseasonably warm, but they're starting to come now. Probably the next couple of weeks will be peak leaf season. Yeah.

Weekly and I are going down to North Carolina next week for some leaf change. All right, so you were in the military and you've got a crazy military story for us. But before you tell, did you happen to listen to the episode about the Delta Force that were running drugs on the main show?

I did. I was at Fort Bragg station there at the same time as the story. Completely to it. No idea what's happening. Really? I was there for the first year of it, and you said like, 80 people died that year. I didn't hear a single one.

Wow. I think that's one of the most shocking episodes we've ever done. Yeah.

They were referencing places and people I knew, and I was like, This is insane that I was there and didn't know about it.

You had that hundreds of kilos of coke were passing through the base. Okay, so hit us with your story.

This story takes place in the country of Slovenia. My duty station at the time, I was stationed in Italy. Generic Infantryman was my job. Standard foot soldier, you picture when you think of the army.

Really quick, is Italy the dream deployment? Like, that It feels like it'd be high on the list for me.

I was 18 when I got stationed there. I got a piece of paper saying, You're going Italy for two years. I let loose. I had a great time out there.

What was the closest big city you were to? Aaron's already thinking about our week in Italy. I know that's why he was giggling.

Verona, Venice area, northeastern Italy. Okay.

Yeah, that's where we were, Venice. Okay, so from Italy, they sent you to Slovenia?

Next country, over a couple of hour bus ride we took. Our mission in my unit in Italy was training with our Allied forces throughout Europe. So it was a bunch of joint NATO training exercises, a lot of stuff just learning from them, them learning from us, just tactics and techniques type of stuff. So this specific time, it was a one week trip to Slovenia we were on. And throughout the week we did a bunch of firing ranges, training tactics, us working with the Slovenian army. And the culminating training event took place over the last two days. Slovenian army was pretending to defend this village in the middle of the woods. Over a 48 hour period, we told them, you don't know when it's going to happen, but a huge US force is going to attack the village and they have to try to prevent us from taking it. We were going to start at the mission at sunset. The morning of, there's a big leaders meeting and everything. They're going over all the routes and the maps and the tactics. The story is mainly about my platoon element, which is about 30 to 40 guys, but there were several platoons, other companies, everyone.

A big coordinated effort to attack where their reinforcements are coming from, where their support is, the village and everything. It was a big mission, all just training still. I wasn't a part of this meeting. I didn't look at any maps or anything. I was a Bravo team leader, so a small leadership position. I had a couple of guys under me, and I really just had to worry about my guys.

Are you on foot or are you in a vehicle?

On foot. We probably step off around 8: 00 PM, and we're supposed to get to the village at 5: 00 AM. It's pretty rough mountainous terrain, so it's probably 6-8 miles or something, but it's going to take us hours to get there. At sunset, we step off. We have night vision goggles, everything, the whole set up, rucksacks. It's thick. This is like a junglist wilderness terrain. The canopy is so thick, the ambient light from the moon and everything can't get through. Our night vision goggles work still, but it's not a good picture. You can just see general shapes and outlines a slow movement through the woods toward this village.

Am I right? I think a lot of people think night vision is just like, Oh, you can see at night, but that's not true. It's emitting a light. You have a light bulb, basically, in the goggles. If you're not looking and shining your light at it, you're not going to see it.

No, you have a pretty tight tunnel of vision, and you just got to scan back and forth. It only covers one eye, so you can keep your other eye exposed to what's real close to you, but it's dark. You can't see much at all. Our platoon's mission is a couple hours in, we're going to get to a mortar position that the Slovenian has set up. A small group of us, my squad, plus a couple of their teams, so Maybe 15 guys are going to go and attack this mortar position because we know once we attack it, they're going to radio back to the village like, Hey, we're getting attacked. It's all timing-based, and we want them to think, Oh, there's a small group of us, even though there's a larger element. So we're going to split off, attack this mortar position, and then meet back up on the other side of it with the rest of the platoon and continue to the village where everybody else is going to meet at dawn. So we get to this break off point. My squad goes on the Bravo teams. My team is the back half of the formation, and we're just following in.

We get to it. It It goes pretty smoothly. We take the little mortar position without any hassle as we expected. But during it, the Alpha team leader, the guy who was at all these meetings and saw the maps and the routes, his night vision goggles break. So now he's like, I can't lead anymore. I'm even blinder than I already was. I have to take over. So as a Bravo team leader, now we're going to go in front and lead the way, but I have no idea where I am.

And there's no talk of like, Bro, just take my glasses and my goggles.

No, because this guy was being a baby about it, and I was like, All right, you can walk around in the dark for the next six I'm not going to do that. So we have little Garmin GPS's. The squad leader straps it to my wrist. He's like, You know how to use it? I'm like, No. He's like, Well, there's an arrow on it. Just follow the arrow. It tells you how far, 800 meters to go. You can't mess it up. And I definitely messed it up. So after this mortar position, we have about a 10-minute walk to meet up back with the platoon, and then I'll be in the back again and just follow them all the way to the village. I can't mess it up for this 10-minute walkabout. And again, it's rough terrain. It's slow moving. I'm leaning this out, and I'm just looking at my wrist, holding it in front of me, following the arrow. And at one point, there's a log I got to straddle to step over to stay in our tactical wedge formation. I've done it probably a dozen times already this night over the last couple of hours, and I go to push myself and reach for the ground on the other side, except there is no ground on the other side, and I just start plummeting off of a cliff.

Oh, Jesus.

I reached out for what I thought was just a skinny tree, but it was the top of a pretty tall tree, and I missed it. I'm going down now. It's a few second freefall. I hit halfway down a little rock out crop, spin over, and now I'm just sprawled out on my back on the ground. I land on my rucksack, my rifle to the side, my night vision is knocked off. I knocked the wind out of me. The whole time, it's quiet movement, hand and arm signals, and I just yell, halt. I don't want anyone to follow me. The squad leader comes up. He's like, Hey, are you good? What's going on? I can't see the top of the rim of some ravine or chasm in the middle of the woods. Just this little pit, it went down probably 15 to 20 feet. I said, Yeah, I'm fine. And I just feel around blind on this wall, and I just find little rock ledges, and I climb back up, and I meet up with the squad. And at this point, we're only a minute or two from meeting up with the platoon. So the squad literally leaves out and we go in.

He's like, All right. I'm like, Yeah, my leg hurts, but I'll be fine. Let's get a move on. We still have miles and miles to go an hour until the sun comes up.

You're probably in a little bit of shock, and you probably have no idea if you've heard anything, really.

Absolutely. I just know my leg's a little stiff.

Embarrassed.

Yeah, that's what you know.

I have these guys that look up to me. Now I'm just yelling all in the middle of the woods, and I fell off this cliff. I complained about my leg, which already is a red flag for me because I complaining. So the next five hours or whatever it is, till the sun comes up, I'm thinking, I hope I have the nastiest bruise on my shin, so I don't look like a wimp for even just mentioning that I hurt. So we're back to the mission. We got to get to this village. Everyone has to get there by a certain time to be in their own position so we can all assault it at the same time. So I just start walking up mountains, down mountains. It feels like it takes forever, miles and miles. I keep banging my leg on rocks and sticks and everything, and everyone's miserable, not just me. So I'm like, I just can't wait to get here. And we get there a early, just before the sun's starting to come up so we can see better. You don't really need your night vision. God was on anymore. Everyone gets in position outside this village, and we have maybe 30 minutes before everybody else is due at the village.

I roll over in my bud, everybody's in a prone position, facing out with their rifles, defending the middle. And I find a look at my leg and I look down and my camo pants are just soaked in blood. My tan combat boots are the darkest red I've ever seen. The pant legs are all torn up and tattered. My squad leader who's in charge of me is sitting right by me, and he notices that I'm now looking at my leg. I peel back the fabric and I look in, it's just this bubbling abyss of blood and sticks and rocks. I don't even know how big the wound is. There's blood everywhere. It looks like it stopped bleeding now, maybe a couple of hours ago, but clearly a lot of blood loss. He says, My face just goes instantly pale right away. All the adrenaline is wearing off now. He calls for our platoon men to come over, who's one of my best buddies. He's joking walking over saying, What do you guys need? Stop wasting my time. And he looks at my leg and immediately knows something's wrong and begins to cut my pants and boots off.

And he can't believe it. I'm sitting there joking with him saying that I'm fine. We can keep going. But he risses it out the best he can with his saline water or whatever and wraps it up. And we talk to our platoon sergeant who is going to make the call on what we're going to do about this if they have to get me out of there now or if we can wait till afterwards. The decision was it stopped leading already. We're going to just wait. Me, the platoon sergeant in charge, and the medic are going to sit back, and they can handle assault in the village without us. There's another 100 guys. They don't need us. We pull off to the side of this almost like an ATV trail, maybe 10 feet wide that leads away from the village. We're just going to sit there on our rucksacks and joke around, Enjoy the morning sun while they attack the village, and then we'll get out of there. We're sitting there on that ATV trail, joking around. My legs propped up. One side of the trail is a steep drop off, not quite cliff, but over a 45-degree angle, really rough terrain, thick woods.

And the other side is like a small rolling hill up with a little clearing between trees and stuff. And we're sitting there and we hear just sticks breaking, coming up this real steep embankment. And we're like, The Slovenians cannot be coming to attack us right now. There's no way any person would even dare to climb up this. So the medic takes a few steps forward so we can see down this embankment. It's only 10 feet across, maybe. And he's met coming over the top just by this massive mountain bear.

Oh, a bear.

The biggest bear I've ever seen in my entire life. Less than 10 feet from us where we're sitting. It was the loudest growl you've ever heard, a belting roar.

Yeah, and you don't have any live ammunition, right?

No, all training around simulation. And even if we could, the fight or flight instinct, we all chose flight right away. No one was engaging this bear. No one raised their rifle. The platoon sergeant took off up the hill. The medic right behind him, and then he looks and was like, Hey, I should probably help Jake up. I'm stumbling to my feet. He helps me up, and it's like, My leg never happened. I'm full sprint right behind him, going up the hill. I like to think the bear chased us, but it just slowly meandered up the hill after us, probably got 100 or 200 yards ahead of it where we could still see it. And finally we stop and I look at the platoon sergeant. I'm like, What the hell was that? You abandoned me. And his only words were, I just had to be faster than you. I wasn't worried about the bear at all. He was getting you. I was getting out of there.

What happened to no man left behind?

Also, you smell like blood. I'm sure the bear is like,.

The mission ends. They stop the training in the village. They put me in this little army ambulance, me and the medic ride back to where we've been camping out for the week training. And there's a battalion doctor there. He cleans it all out. I looked down and you can see it's a several-inch wound, and it just looks like somebody took an ice cream scoop and just took all my flesh and muscle out of my leg. You can just see a good portion of my bone. Everything looks stable. They wrapped it up and just we're about take the buzzer back to Italy. When you get there, just go to the ER, have them X-ray it, sew it up. I didn't break anything. It healed up fine. Pretty good scar, but there's a large portion of my flesh out in the wilderness somewhere in Slovenia.

I hope the bear got his hands on it somehow. I want that little treat for the bear.

Yeah, maybe that's what slowed him down.

Maybe he caught the scent. He'd been following us for hours. Yes.

I'm delighted to hear. My fear was going to be that you were going to tell me that your tibia had gone through your skin or something, that you were going to have a bone hanging out.

I still feel some divot, so I definitely chipped some parts of my shin on the rocks. I went down, but nothing broke, thankfully.

Boy, oh, boy. Is that the most hurt you got in the service?

Yeah, I had a couple of small broken bones, stress fracture, stuff like that. Throw your back out once in a while. Are you still in? No, I'm not. I got out probably four or five years ago.

Okay, and how long had you been in?

I did a quick five-year contract, and then I got out.

Did you dig it?

Oh, loved it. Best decision I ever made.

Oh, that's great. Well, Jake, it's really nice to meet you, brother. When you hear these stories of most people are dying in a friendly fire, it's like, Well, this is how. Most dangerous Just things like climbing a mountain in the middle. He blindfolded in this bear.

There was no real threat, so I decided to make my own. Yeah.

All right. Well, great meeting you, man. Thank you so much for telling us that story.

You as well. Thanks for having me on. I want to give a shout out to my wife, Babby. She's a passionate armcherry, wrangling a kid, trying to keep him quiet somewhere.

Send her our love.

I will. Thank you so much.

All right. Take care, Jake. Hi, guys. Hi. What do you think of this surprise? Best friend, Aaron Winkley is here.

I'm so honored to meet you guys.

Where are you at, Kimberly?

I am in Colorado.

Okay. What city in Colorado? Colorado Springs. And what's the vibe there? This is hippy-ish.

I wouldn't say hippy. That's more Boulder, but it's more like a conservative town. A lot of military here, but the Aspins are yellow and the mountains are here, and it is a great time to be in Colorado.

Are you from there originally?

We are not. Both my husband and I are from Minnesota, but the military brought us to Colorado, and here we are.

Now, listen, we feel a great kinship with the Minnesota, us Michiganders. Do you feel any kinship with us? Is it a one-way street?

Whenever you talk about how wonderful Michigan is and Lake Life and all the things, I'm like, yes.

Snowmobiling? Most people don't snowmobile.

They're like, What do you mean? You're on ice?

What's happening? And those little mini mobile homes that they're fishing in, the shanties, but they're so elaborate.

They just let them sink when they're done.

Sure. Okay, so Kimberly, you're currently in the service.

I am not. My husband was, after 23 years, he retired about two years ago.

Okay, well, you're not old enough to have a husband that retired and was in the service that long.

Believe it or not, I'm old enough to have that and also a child who's in the service.

I want to guess you were 25.

Yeah. What skincare line are we using? Right. Okay, hit us with your military story.

I just want to put a disclaimer before I start. Everybody in this story is okay. There will be some times in this story where you think, but everybody's okay.

It's like when I watch movies with my kids, I go, Hon, they just don't kill the lead character.

Yeah, exactly. This takes place in early 2005. My husband was active duty at the time, and we had just moved this tiny Air Force base in Southwest Oklahoma, Altice Air Force Base. Shout out if you know it. Probably most people won't. Our first week there, we had moved there with our two little ones. They were two and eight months old at the time, both little girls. Our big Friday night plans for the first week there was to go for a walk. We lived right on the edge of town where we were surrounded by fields, country roads. Not much happening in Altice.

Is it military housing? It is.

We were in an apartment. We were just going to be there for a couple of months, and we were like, You know what? We just need some space. We had been walking for like 45 minutes. I was walking on the dirt shoulder. I was pushing the stroller, baby in front, two-year rolled in the back. My husband was actually walking in the ditch. So he was walking at the angle down into the field. And we were having a great time. And all of a sudden, bam, I'm hit from behind. No. I look up and I have been thrown five or six feet. I was in the middle of the road. And I look up and I see my husband standing in the ditch still. And we share this eye contact look. And I tell you, we've been together since we were 17. I have never seen the look that I saw at that moment and never since. We lock eyes and we turn our heads down to the road and we see a car slam on its brakes. This is hard to hear, but when they slam on the brakes, we see this stroller that had hooked onto the front bumper, disconnect, and break apart.

The front is tumbling one way, the back is tumbling another way, end over end into this field.

Oh, my God. With an eight-month hold?

Yes. As soon as we see the car stop and the stroller disconnect, car peels away. No. Everything you would see in a movie, like squiling. We get up and we start running. And vaguely in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, my back really hurts. My leg really hurts, but you don't care. I run to the two-year-old, he runs to the baby, and when I get there, her face is just blood. There's mucus and tears, and she's screaming, and the baby's screaming. And my husband looks at me and he goes, Are you hurt? Where are you hurt. And I was like, My back hurts, and my leg hurts. He's like, Lay down in the field right now. You have to put her down. In my head, I know he's right, but in that moment, you're like, I can't even do this. But I laid down, and right as that's happening, another car pulls up. We have not seen another car for 45 minutes. And she says, I saw what happened. How can I help? And he says, Follow that car. He gives them a description of the vehicle. He says, Call 911. Tell them what happened.

So she takes off. And we're just in this field. I'm laying here. He's got two screaming kids trying to call 911.

Is the eight-month-old bleeding?

No, she's not bleeding, but she is screaming. You know those baby cries where it's like, she's not annoyed, she's not hungry. She is just terrified.

Was she in the stroller still or no?

They didn't get thrown. Thank goodness, they were still buckled in. But the baby and I get transported to the hospital via ambulance. The two-year-old, they found out she just bit through her lip. There was a lot of blood, but they could treat her there. She stays with my husband. We're gone. Shortly after we leave, the police get a call that they found the car. They found the car at a car wash where the driver was actively scrubbing the stroller paint off the vehicle. They're like, We need you to identify the vehicle. He and my two-year-old jump in the back of a cop car and drive to the car wash and identify the vehicle, and she is subsequently arrested for her actions.

Was she drunk or are we finding this out We don't know.

Did she say she hit a deer?

She didn't say much.

I hit a deer that was in a baby carriage.

Family of deer.

Exactly. I spent the night in the hospital. My leg was not broken, but I couldn't wait bear on it for several weeks and had some internal stuff, but the baby was released right away. We move on and try to heal, but knowing we're going to have to come back to Altice for a trial. Fast forward a year, and we are back in Altice because he's got another school that he's got to go to, and they schedule the trial. For when we were going to be there. I'm not sure the city of Altice has a lot of money to fly witnesses in and out. So I am newly pregnant, very, very sick.

Okay, wait. Number three, all right. You guys were in a hurry.

Well, that tends to happen, Dax. They tell us to be there at 8: 00, and we are, and we're just waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And I don't have a ton of experience with the criminal justice system. I have no idea if this is normal. I assume that judges are pretty busy people, but it's afternoon, and we haven't been called back yet. We finally get called back, and the judge says, Well, I'm sure everybody knows about the hubbub at the courthouse this morning. My husband and I look at each other and we're like, Did you see a hubbub? I did not see any hubbub. Apparently, her attorney that she hired drove a significant distance intoxicated. When he got to the parking ramp, the gate thing, completely took it out. Drove through it. Caused a ton of damage to the parking ramp, the courtyard area, the courthouse, everything.

Was she related to her attorney? Sounds like a family member or something. What a mess.

Once again, the police, everybody, we are big news in Altice. Obviously, we can't have the trial that day because her attorney's in jail. So we had to reschedule the trial. It's a whole thing.

Really quick, we got to acknowledge the condition of this man's addiction because it's 8: 00 AM trial and he drove along with it. It means he got the cocktails going at 6: 00 AM. Yes.

I was thinking that, too. I have been to court for drunk driving, and I showed up drunk in court every time. The night before saying, You can't be drunk. My lawyer was a friend, and he's like, Just don't be drunk. That's all you have to do. I couldn't do it. So, yeah, I'm guessing he started the night before.

I have the picture of him. I picture a guy in a suit that's not tucked in very well, and I picture him overweight for some reason. I got a whole image of him. I do, too.

Maybe balding.

And a disheveled tie, Ms. Button shirt. We have the trial. She has some consequences for her actions, and we just go on and heal and do our best to forget. But that was a crazy move.

I feel like I would have forever PTSD. Anytime I'm walking in the flow of traffic or riding a bike, I just like, once you know someone can blast into you, even though you're visible, I feel like it would ruin me.

Yeah, it does. It definitely sticks with you, and you're hyper-aware all the time of what's going on around you and everything. It messed my two-year-old up for a while. Every time she heard sirens, she just cried.

Is that something she remembered?

Funny Actually, enough, the only thing she remembers is riding in the cop car, which is great. But a potential sim moment is that the two-year-old is now 23, and she graduated from Air Force pilot training this summer, and she is currently at Altice learning how to fly the plane that her dad was flying when all of this happened. No way. The baby is now 21. She's going to graduate from college this December, and she is going to be an army combat nurse.

Okay, hold on. How emotional is your husband at the notion that his little girl is going to fly planes? I would die if Lincoln did that.

It's quite precious. He's so proud.

Oh, man. Did they get on? Did they get together and talk airplanes and stuff? Yes.

She I'll call him and be like, Hey, dad, what's going on with this? Oh, okay. Well, here you go. I'm like, Well, that's my cue.

Oh, that's so sweet. Well, Kimberly, I'm so sad that you were mowed down in the street. I mean, that's fucking gruesome. What was the age of the woman driver?

She was young, 20 or 21. And by the time the trial hit, I had come to a place of compassion for her. She's young. She wasn't driving her car. She didn't have insurance. She wasn't supposed to be driving the car. And she probably thought she killed us. And fight or flight took over. And while it's the wrong choice, you can see how she got there.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear you say that because I was going to attempt to be compassionate without being disrespectful to you. But yeah, when you're 20, man, and something like that, I I can't even imagine the weight of something like that happening.

Was there an immense later in life?

Not personally. I remember talking to my husband about it around the trial and relaying the same thing. He's like, Well, I can see your point, but she did almost kill my family, so I don't have as much compassion for her as you do, which I was like, Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, I'm still at the fuck her phase of the process.

But I did just want to take a second and say thank you to you, Dax, especially for doing those USO shows back in the day. As somebody whose husband was there a lot during that time. It just meant a lot that people would take time and go and just give them a little bit of levity, give them something to think about other than where they were. I know you say it was your honor and you say all the right things, but I just wanted to say from the other side of things, thank you for doing that.

I'm so happy to hear you say that. Give our love to your husband and your three little ones that are now big. And thanks for that story. Great to meet you, Kimberly.

Great to meet you guys.

Bye, Kimberly. All right.

Bye, Take care. You guys ready for Trevor? No, but I'm ready for Trev.

Big T.

Big T. A little REV.

EV..

Hello. Can you hear us?

Hey, I hear you. Can you hear me?

Oh, I can hear you wonderfully. Meet best friend Aaron Weekly. He's joining us today.

Hey, Aaron, how are you doing?

I'm doing great, buddy. Great to meet you.

Yeah, good to meet you guys.

Now, is the full name Trevor, and you go by Trev?

Yeah, I go by Trev. Full name is Trevor.

Has anyone Noone ever called you Big T, Little R, E-B, Hoochie-coachie.

Never that specifically, but there's always a first for that, so I like it.

I don't know if you've ever heard me say this, but I only met a few Trevors in my life, and all three of them were the coolest dudes in that grade. A lot to live up to. Yeah, he knows. Where are you at, Trev?

Eastern, Pennsylvania.

Eastern Pennsylvania. Eastern. Where's that?

Western border of Jersey. If you know Bethlehem, Pennsylvania?

Bethlehem Steel.

Bethlehem StillSex. Yeah, so we're right next door to them.

Oh, okay. So you were in the military?

Yeah, 12 years. Just got out this past June.

Oh, no kidding. Did you enlist right out of high school?

I did, yeah.

But branch.

It was Army National Guard.

Did you happen to hear the episode we did about Fort Bragg?

No, I actually listened to my first episode of you guys this morning.

Oh, no shit. I'm going to guess your wife told you to tell this story?

Yes, exactly. Perfect. So my wife has been like a day one arm cherry. She loves you guys. She's like, Oh, you got to listen to the show and all that stuff.

I always be meaning to. Be honest, you must hate my gut. But if my wife was always talking about some guy- You're actually my best friend because it saves her from calling me on her commute home.

So I have a lot of time.

Okay, well, then you're welcome, I guess. Yeah, thank you.

She told me to listen to the Foreign Objects in Butt Story.

Oh, it's a good one.

I already signed up for this story, obviously, before I listened to the show, and then I listened to it this morning on my commute in. I was like, Oh, man, I'm not prepared for this. It's going to be another butt story.

There can never be too many butt stories.

This is another butt military-themed.

Wonderful. All right, hit us.

Okay. This is way back in basic training when I went through in 2013. I went through in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and our story starts one night in December. We're just three weeks away from graduation. We had one more field training and exercise scheduled. On this night in particular, I had a shift for patrolling our little camp that we set up. It was from 1: 00 to 3: 00 AM. There was about two feet of snow on the ground. The wind chill was making it like negative 5, negative 10 degrees. Just miserable weather. So here I am in the cold, 18 years old, questioning my life choices. Walking around in the cold, I see this opportunity for some warmth. And it's a large generator sitting in the center of our camp, blowing warm air out of all the exhaust vents and everything. So I was like, you know what? Make my way over there. I'll warm up real quick. So I start with my hands. I'm putting it over the exhaust, just trying to get some warmth. I'm like, you know what? I got to take it a step further. So I undo my plate carrier.

I'm trying to get the exhaust vents into my top and everything.

And are you worried at all about carbon monoxide? None, I bet, at 18.

I wasn't very smart at 18. Who was, right?

You just strapping yourself to an exhaust pipe.

I don't know what emissions are. Just go with it, right? I'm like, this isn't enough. I need more. I'm going to get more warmth. So I'm just taking it a step further. I'm doing my whole top. I'm trying to get the air down the front and back end of my trousers.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's not great.

So counterintuitive as well because you're cold, but you're getting naked outside in the snow.

Yeah. Again, not the smartest decision.

Too hot now.

Yeah.

Sweating bullets. Too cold and too tired for it to make sense. I look up suddenly at this big generator and I see an even bigger exhaust vent on the top of the generator. And I'm like, you know what? That's the one. I got to get up there and try it out. Without a second thought, I hop up there, I drop all my trousers, drop all common sense as well, and I hop bare ass right onto this large exhaust vent. Again, not very smart, but you know what? I got to tell you, in that exact moment, it was the best feeling because you had the warmth going up all in your little nasty bits and everything. Just warm your whole body up.

I might even get aroused in that scenario. I think I got that hot air blown against my nuts.

A few seconds of gratification is like, this feels great, but all right, I'm warm enough now. I got to stop dilly dilly and get back on patrol. I go to basically hop off this generator and I can't.

I'm stuck.

Oh, God.

So I'm like, all right, well, hey, maybe I got my pants caught on something. But then I looked down, I'm like, wait, no dummy. You're not wearing pants. So what am I stuck on? I'm looking down still. It's dark and everything. I had Christmas storied my ass to this generator. The moisture and the heat and the cold metal just stuck on there.

So you had like ice binding you to the generator on your butt sheet? Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. All the science that I don't understand. Yeah. So I got stuck on that thing. So now I got to figure out a solution to get myself off of here with the least amount of pain possible and hopefully nobody finding out. I got a few options. Option one, I call to the nurse 10, get some buddies to help me off, maybe get some hot water on a spatula. Everybody will laugh at me. They'll give me a stupid nickname. Option two, I can just grip the side of this generator and just rip off it here and just worry about the pain and the damage later. So I'm like, I don't really want to do that. The cynical side, option three is like, I sit here, die from exposure. Best case scenario, it makes a good story. And they make a safety PowerPoint from me, and I'm famous for that. So I'm like, no, all right, I'll go with option one. So I'm looking around, maybe I'll try and get somebody's attention. But then I'm thinking, well, the drill sergeants are going to find out about it, right? And then if they find out about it, they're probably going to smoke everybody because one, I was off patrol.

Two, I got undressed in the middle of this patrol camp.

I mean, I would think I'm seeing something really perverted.

Yeah, 1: 00 AM naked guy sitting on a January is never a good sign.

This guy is so horny. What's he doing?

In your defense, who would to ever guess you would get stuck.

Yeah, I sure didn't. So I was like, all right, you know what? Too much time is passed. I got to make a decision. I hear some of the tents like stirring next to me. Maybe somebody's getting up and just instant panic. I'm like, all right, no, I don't want anybody to find out. Fuck it. I'm just going to go. I rocked back and just ripped myself off of this generator. It's not a cool story. I didn't have any action hero landing. I just ate full face right into the snow. Pants around my ankles, just not graceful, just hideous. Try to recover. I pulled my pants back up.

Did you get a sense that the skin on your butt cheeks had torn off?

I couldn't feel anything at this point because it was so cold. So I'm like, All right, I'll be fine. It's okay. We'll worry about the pain, whatever later. Just let me get my gear back on, get back on patrol. So fast forward a little bit near the end of patrol, I'm going to go get the relief, take over for me. And I was like, You know what? Let me just walk past the generator one more time. I see something on top of the generator. And then I'm like, Why is there this pancake on top of the generator? I'm like, Why is it flapping? Also, why is it red? It was basically half of my ass left behind. All bloody, spotted. It started to get frosted too because it was snowing. But nobody found out.

Okay, but do you not need medical attention at this point?

No. So luckily, I had these baby wipes. Probably not the right medical care for it, obviously. I had some ointment, the powders and stuff, and just concoctions of whatever I had in my bag at the time. Some miracle. I did not get a single infection. I mean, it's scarred right now, and it looks terrible. You can ask my wife. It's like hamburger helper. Everything's fine, though. It's good. Made it through, nobody found out. And let's see another day.

You continued training without a butt cheek.

Yeah. Wow.

This happened on a previous call. It's like, you hear about all these friendly fire episodes or different ways guys are dying, not getting shot. It's like, there's just too much time of doing too much weird stuff. You're trying to get warm. Certainly other insane stuff is happening like that around the clock because you're just by yourself, bored out of your mind.

I was thinking of what story to tell. My wife told me about this prompt. I've been on two combat deployments, had a lot of good stories there, but usually they have a little darker side to them. But she's like, no, tell the butt story. I was like, okay, I'll tell that story.

Great choice.

Yeah. And what do you do once you're out and you've been in there for 12 years? How do you resume a civilian career? What's that look like?

I basically got lucky. I got a job where my wife used to work at this college in Pennsylvania, and now I do chemical hygiene. So nothing even I'm remotely close to what I did in the military. I was a combat engineer, so I did demolitions, clearing obstacles, a lot of fortifications, and working with like, inventory guys, Special Forces, stuff like that on deployments.

And are you annoyed when you're watching action movies, the way they're handling the explosives? You're like, That's not how it works.

Thousand %, yeah. I try and keep my mouth shut. I don't bother my wife with that stuff during the movies. It's like, Oh, that's not what that sounds like.

Well, Trev, I'm glad you made it. And if I had to have a big gnarly scar somewhere in my body, it would definitely be my butt because it's already a disgusting feature on me. Yeah, why not?

There are definitely worse things out there. You guys mind if I give a few shoutouts?

Paul, we would love to hear some shoutouts.

My wife is really hoping she could be here for it, but she couldn't. She actually sent me something to say on her behalf. Oh, good. I was like, no, that's too long. Give me something short. So she resent it and it was the same length.

Okay, great. What's her name?

Her name's Katie. So she says, First off, shout out to Kristen for introducing me to the pod way back when we were a true day one armcherries. Monica and Dax, thank you for keeping me company on my long commutes this past year while my husband Trevor was deployed. Normally, I'd call him on the drive home, but during that time, I knew I could count on you both to ride along with me. And a special thank you to Dax in my work as a children's counselor. For kids impacted by domestic and sexual violence, I facilitate narrative therapy where kids create their own stories of survival. Part of that process is showing them examples of people who have been through hard things and chosen to share their story with courage. Your honesty about your experiences has given me something real and relatable to share in those moments and even getting to share snippets of arm, chair, and session. It shows kids that survivorship isn't something to ashamed of, but something that could be powerful and inspiring. I can't thank you enough for giving them and me that reminder.

You got a good one. We love her.

She really loves your show.

Oh, wonderful.

Thanks for that great story, Triv.

Yeah, it's great to meet you guys. Thank you again for your time.

It's all I can do not to ask to see the butt cheek, but I'm going to let you go. I know. Me too.

I'm at work right now, so I can't really do that anymore.

I was hoping you would.

We'll catch you on a cold day when you get naked next time. We'll take a peek. Absolutely. All right. Be well. Take care. It made me think, did I ever show you the picture of Kenny when we went on those downhill? In New Zealand, you're on a paved sidewalk on these little plastic carts with wheels and you're going so fast, and all you can do is pull this handle to break, and Kenny got hit from behind by somebody and then got thrown off a mountain, but his entire butt cheek turned black. Have you seen those pictures? I don't think so. It's crazy. His whole butt cheek didn't fall off. It was just black. Textbook, Kenny experience. Scott, can you hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Oh, I sure can.

Hi, Scott. It's Monica. Can you hear me?

I think you are our best friend Aaron Weekly. You don't look like Monica.

Nice. This is a fun surprise, right, Scott?

This is amazing. The first time I rode in and I get the email from him, I was just blown away.

Where are you at? I see an enormous filing cabinet behind you.

I'm essentially in a storage closet at work right now. I just locked myself away for a few minutes to do this.

Is there any risk of you getting fired over this?

None at I very much told my boss that this is happening. He's fully on board. He said, You got to send me the recording when you're done. Okay, great.

Where are you, Scott?

I'm in the Midwest. I'm just outside of Minneapolis, in Minnesota.

You're our second Minnesota today. I'm going to ask you the same question I asked them. Us, Michiganders feel this deep kinship with you guys. Is it mutual?

It is definitely mutual. We can't stand the folks that stand in between us, which would be the Wisconsinites.

I'm so happy to hear that from both people today because I was scared that maybe it wasn't.

It's extremely universal. Yeah.

Oh, good. Because we got the land of 10,000 Lakes and the Great Lakes State. I think these are the only two States with Lake and Moniker.

We just have to reach around Wisconsin and we'll be fine.

Yes. And have you done any snowmobiling?

Oh, yeah. Lots of snowmobilings. Yeah.

He said it like, Don't be offensive, of course. Next question. Okay, so, Scott, you have a military story?

I do. So I've been in the Navy for about 10 years now, and by designation, I am a submarine officer. So my story takes place at my first permanent duty station, which was a nuclear-powered submarine.

Okay, I've got 100 questions before you tell me this story. I would go mad in there. You're deployed sometimes for months, no, on that submarine?

It's six or seven months at a time. That's right.

Oh, Aaron, can you imagine being underwater in a tube for fucking half a year? What systems are in place to make sure everyone doesn't lose their marbles? Is there a lot of protocol for that?

Losing marbles is not necessarily the top priority. Okay. You I got to go through Brownhog's Day. There's lots of games. There's movies pretty much on all the time. When the Switch came out, that was huge.

Any area you go to to replicate sunlight?

There is nothing special about the lights in there. There's no vitamin D lights. There's no sunlight whatsoever. So you get a lot of really pale dudes when you come up from deployment.

Bunch of ghosts getting out of that stuff.

The sunscreen comes out immediately.

What's been your own mental ride on that? By the end of the six months, are you like, Okay, we got to get the out of this, too?

Pretty much. And it just so happened that my deployment in that six months was right when COVID broke out. So I was really debating on what story to tell from the boat. The other story, which I wouldn't go into, is we're pretty sure we got the first strain of COVID coming out of Southeast Asia run through the boat. Oh, boy. That was pretty crazy. And we didn't know it at the time, but there was a really bad flu that went through the entire boat and just knocked people down. And we found out later that there was a pandemic going on.

Yeah, because I I was going to say probably the only upside of being on that submarine is that no pathogens are getting in. If everyone got unhealthy, we're going to have a six months without a cold, but not the case.

We pulled in to Japan, and then a week later, everyone was sick. But that was before we even heard what COVID was.

Was that a January situation? Because I got it, I feel like before it was a thing.

That's right. We pulled in in December, and then that following January, everyone was sick. The story I decided to tell was definitely for you because it's the grossest one. Oh, good. It's also considered a large scale unauthorized evacuation.

Wonderful. Great. Wonderful. Thank you.

One of the questions I get asked pretty often is what we do with all the trash and human waste. The short answer is all the trash, all the poop tanks, everything has to go overboard. It gets emptied into the ocean. There's big holding tanks called sanitary tanks or sand tanks. When they fill up, we got to put them overboard.

I hate to ask this, but the fish just love it or fish just fucking eat the hell out of that human waste?

You can hear fish, you can hear whales, you can hear shrimp. Shramp. Shramp are actually the loudest. There's so much clicking and just random noises from them.

Swimming through a couple of hundred gallons of fucking navy waste.

Hundreds of pounds of waste. The toilet system on a submarine is not like the flushing system at home. It's not even like what you would see on an airplane where they have the vacuum system. There's essentially just two different valves. So there's one at the top, which would bring in new water, and one at the bottom, which drains it down, and it just gravity falls into the a building tank. There's no pressure to the system whatsoever. So you're just replacing what's in the toilet with fresh water.

Dumb question, is there a grinder? Because the bus has a grinder.

The trash system has a compactor, and then the sand tanks have filters, and those filters do clog up. So there's very strict requirements about what you're able to put into the toilets, because ultimately, if you put something that's not going to go through the filter, some poor dude has to go down there and get it out.

Diarrheal only, please.

That's right. Diarrheal.

There's two different ways that you can empty the sand tanks. They can either get pumped out. That tends to take a little bit longer and it's a little bit louder. So some are trying to stay quiet. The other way you can do it is you can pressurize the tank with high pressure air and then just open the hole valve and high pressure air pushes everything out into the ocean.

I'd like to see that.

The key with that, you absolutely, positively cannot open any inside drains because then the inside becomes the path of least resistance. You have several hundred pounds forms of high pressure air. And if you open up the drain valve to your toilet, it's just going to go back up to the toilet. That's your path of least resistance.

Yeah, like a geyser.

That's right. There's two more important things to note before I actually say what happened. The first thing is that there's a lot of other things that drain to these tanks than just the toilets. So there's the showers, the sinks, the galley, which is our kitchen. Anything in there drains down to these tanks. And then the last thing is there's an emergency announcement circuit. The biggest thing is if you saw a fire, you could call it away. And this announcing circuit cuts everything else out on the boat. So no one can talk on the phone if this announcing circuit is on. It goes to all the controlling stations so you could get people moving in the right direction, set off the alarm, wake people up, things like that. So there's a day on deployment where we needed to blow the sand tanks overboard. We've done it many times. We do it every couple of days. And the person lining up the system to do it is going through their process. They hang these big red signs on each of the toilets to say, We're blowing the sand tanks, don't use the toilet right now. I'm sitting in the wardrobe.

I'm just doing some work on my computer, and all of a sudden I hear on the emergency announcing circuit, someone just very frantically say, Stop blowing the sand tank. Immediately, something has gone wrong. I open up the door from the wardrobe to go out and see what has happened. And the door from the wardroom, which is where we eat, goes right into the kitchen. And I walk into it. It turns out that the valve for a sink and then a floor drain in the kitchen were left open when they pressurized the sand tank.

This is the worst place to spray the It's right into the kitchen.

So just like you said, it makes an absolute geyser of shit water that comes up from the sink and the floor drain. It hits the ceiling and then just mushrooms from there. The counter, the pots and pans, the utensils, everything in there, every inch of the galley is absolutely bathed in shit. And it goes on for a minute before the person who was lining up the system are able to go isolate the high pressure air, and then the high pressure air bleeds off. So you're still got residual pressure in the system. So it goes on for a full minute of just this shit geyser.

And it's gallons, right?

Oh, yes. Everything is built for flooding. So the galley area is closed off from the next room over. And so in the galley, you have ankle deep shitwater that had built up by the time they turned it off. But it covered every square inch of the kitchen.

Did you throw up?

I didn't. No, the smell was there for weeks. Oh, we The food's being made. People then, for cleanup, were wearing waist high waders going through this stuff. And we used every ounce of bleach and cleaning supplies that we had on board to try and clean up this mess. It was horrendous.

Is there ever Any talk of like, Gang, we got to surface and go to a port. This is worthy of interrupting the mission here.

We need a reset here.

You would be surprised at the creature comforts that get placed on the wayside for the mission sets. That is not something that would pull you off station.

You also have this crazy time crunch now because it's going to take obviously a day or two to clean this place up, but yet you got to feed everyone.

We had uncooked meals for about two days, which would be cold-cut sandwiches, something where We just got to defrost it and heat it up type of thing. But we're using paper plates because you couldn't do any dishes. We're using plastic utensils.

It's not like you can just spray the place down. It's going to go back down the drain necessarily. You got to get this out of there.

And it's in every crevice. As possible in there. This is during deployment, so we still got a full deployment left to go. And at some point, you just had to get past it. This is where we still got to cook our food.

Anyone get dysentery?

I don't think anybody actually got sick, but I do know that the doc was ready to medicate people up.

Is there men and women in the sub?

The boat I was on was males only, but there are definitely integrated crews now, which is amazing. We absolutely need females in the submarine Force. Some of the most The badass submariners I know are females, but the boat I was on was all males.

Not like it should matter, but I was hoping because it seems like men are definitely more deserving of a disaster like this.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. I'm glad they're integrated, and I'm so glad no women had to be a part of this.

It was honestly a huge shot to the captain's ego. He said something like, I've heard of other boats that this happens to, and you hear about this in stories, but man, I didn't think it would happen to my boat.

And obviously, we can isolate who Who was specifically responsible for not closing the valves. What did that dude feel like?

That dude felt pretty bad. Unfortunately, because it was a procedural violation, he does need to get into some trouble. They go to something called Captain's Mast, which is our version of the UCMJ, where if you're out at sea, the captain is judge, jury, and executioner. So they did lay down some punishment. But the guy was honestly a really hard worker, and nobody thought too poorly of him.

He survived. No one code-readed him in his bed that night.

He was not ostracized or anything like that. He was part of the cleaning crew.

That's why it took so long. It was only him.

Yeah, you did it and you fixed it.

There were some sorry folks and waiters for a couple of days. Those almost certainly went in the trash compactor.

Some whale ate the rubber.

Right from that to the whale's mouth.

I mean, they are a marvel of technology. The fact that they can go underwater for six months is incomprehensible.

They are a marvel of technology not built for human creature comforts. Yeah.

And what happens with air? Are they breaking down water into oxygen? Yes.

We have electrolysis on the oxygen generator. That's only creating fresh oxygen. The rest of the air and what's in your breathing air is all recycled. So the nitrogen and everything else that comprises air, and then the CO₂ gets scrubbed out of the air and pumped out the back.

Wow, man. Well, Scott, what a wonderful glimpse into that bizarre world. I've I've always been dying to talk to someone who has been on one of those for six months. Well, it's lovely meeting you, brother. I'm so glad that you were able to take 20 minutes to chat with us.

This is so fun. Thank you so much for having me. I hope you know how much of a great impact you have on everyone listening.

Oh, thank you, man. I appreciate it. All right. Be well, brother.

Thanks, Scott. See you.

Oh, boy, Aaron. The closest I've had to that is I went down into the basement of the old house. This happened actually more than once. I went down in the basement and there was ankle high shitwater from a toilet that the sewer main got clogged and then all the pressure from upstairs just kept dumping it in the basement. Have you had that?

I had it at the bar. It was the most disgusting. It blew a cap off of the drain and it flooded it with not only shit and piss, there was tampons. There was everything. Everyone had flushed down those toilets. It was karma wrapped up with a bow.

I hone in on these moments where I look at something and I go, I can't do this. And then I go, But I have to do this. No else is going to clean the basement up. I know that I staring at it for a half hour, trying to figure out how I wasn't going to have to do it. And then at some point, you just accept you're going to have to do it.

It's the worst. A sub. What a nightmare.

Oh, fuck.

I would throw that sub in the garbage when we got back.

Yeah, so I would just scuttle it and send it to the bottom of the ocean for the whales to nibble on whatever's leaking out of it. The shrimp. You know those shrimp ended up on a plate? The shrimp that eat all the waste. Oh, God, I know. Of course. All right. I love you.

I love you.

Do you want to sing a tune or something? We know a theme song.

Okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of Armchairs, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, I rindish. On the fly, I rindish. Enjoy. Follow Armchair Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wndri. Com/survey.