Transcript of Inside Delta Force: Afghanistan, Syria & the War on ISIS | Brent Tucker (throwback ep) New

Hey guys, welcome to episode 235 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. I'm, uh, is it over here? Oh, sorry guys. My phone was on. Apologies. Uh, so episode 235 of The Team House. We're here with our guest tonight, Brent Tucker. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Brent, again, uh, thank you for being on the show tonight. Really appreciate you joining us on a Friday evening.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I truly do appreciate it.

So, again, because I got a little distracted in the beginning, Brent is a 20-year veteran of Army Special Operations. He served in 20th Special Forces Group, and then he served in Delta Force, deploying to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Today, he runs the First Responder Coffee Company, and he's also the co-host of the Antihero Podcast. We're really happy to have you here today, Brent. And, you know, I'll kind of start it off from the top asking the same question I ask all of our guests about their origin story. If you could tell us a little bit about where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and sort of how that took you on a path towards the military.

Yeah. The, I grew up in a small town in Florida, Sanford, Florida, working in a family business. We own Tucker's Farm and Garden Center that my grandfather started. Um, that was— I was one of the few people who didn't want to leave my small town. Um, and I just wanted to work in the family business. Uh, you know, I feel like my, my path in life was, was already set and I was more than happy to go down that path. Um, I definitely wasn't a, uh, um, an adrenaline junkie as a kid. I was a pretty quiet kid. Uh, so definitely not someone you would have, uh, you, you would have pegged for For anything in the special operations realm or even leaving town at any point.

So, so how did that happen? I mean, if you were on this track of like going on, taking over the family business.

Yeah. So the September 11th happened. I mean, I had, it's, it's crazy. September 10th, September 10th, I'm 20 years old. You know, still chugging down that, that same path, uh, that I, that I was on as a, as a little kid. September 11th happened and, uh, you know, it, it changed, it changed my world the same way it changed a lot of people's world. Um, I, uh, I knew I wanted to do something. Uh, uh, I, I, I made a, a decision that day that I, I kind of would make time and time again throughout my, my military career when I, when I had to come to make a dis— a big decision. Which was, I didn't want to live a life with regrets. You know, I didn't want to be, I didn't want to be 70 years old, you know, looking back and said, man, when I was 20, our country got attacked, almost 3,000 people died. And I felt like I should have done something, but I just played it safe and stayed in my small town. Um, that, that honestly is the, um, I mean, there's the genesis right there. That, that line of thinking started it.

Uh, I, I raised my hand. It took me till September 27th to actually sign the paperwork. And off I went. And I only meant to do a 4-year stint and then come right back to my small town. And as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I couldn't have been any more wrong. And I continued to be wrong about my career as it progressed.

So, so what did you enlist as, as far as like your MOS? What was kind of like your plan going into the military? The one that God laughed at, of course.

Yeah. When, when I, I knew nothing about the military and I mean, well, next to nothing. My dad would take me to air shows. My dad wanted to be a fighter pilot so bad, I guess, when he was in his late teens, then eyesight got him. And so he didn't, he didn't get a chance to chase that dream. So I definitely grew up in a military-friendly family. You know, we watched war movies. You know, my dad made us watch all the Vietnam documentaries and I loved it. So we were, we were a military-friendly family, but no one was talking about joining and I had no idea what I was going to join. So a good friend of mine that I went to high school with, Jessica Butters, her dad was, was a— all I knew is that he was in the military. I knew nothing more than that. Come to find out, he was a CW4 at a National Guard unit, a National Guard air defense artillery unit out of Daytona Beach. So he was the first, he was the only person I knew. So I went to him and said, hey, you know, our country got attacked.

I want to do something about it. So I came to him. He gave me pretty good advice. He's like, hey, I'm in the National Guard. I think you should do that. You'll get a chance to fight, you'll get called up. But, but, you know, you don't have to go away for 4 years. It sounded like a good plan to me. Sounded like I was going to get what I wanted, which was to deploy. And so I went to the recruiter that he recommended me to go to. And for a guy who wanted to join the military and fight, I got put in Air Defense National Guard, which may not have seen a lot of action. So that was, that was, uh, it took me about a year to, to— well, probably took— it took, it took less than a year for me to figure that out. Um, but, you know, figuring it out's one thing, but doing something about it is, is, is, is another. So as soon as, uh, As soon as I got out of basic and AIT, we did get mobilized to go to the invasion of Iraq, and we sat around for like 6 months in Fort Bliss.

And, um, at that point we had a sister battery coming back from Afghanistan, and so I couldn't wait to talk to those guys to see what war was like. And, uh, I asked them And they did like a 14-month deployment to Afghanistan. And I found out that—

Was this a Patriot missile battery that you were with, Brent? Sorry to interrupt.

Yeah. So that would have been a part of the unit. I, me in particular, I was in short-range air defense, which was Stinger missile operator. Okay. So, or Stinger. Yeah. So shoulder-fired Stinger missiles, 14 Mike, which eventually became 14 Sierra. Because I had to go to the little bit longer course to do the Avengers, like that Humvee with the 4 missiles on each side of the turret. So that's the Avengers. That's what I went to school for. But when those guys went overseas for 14 months and came back, they just guarded the gates. That's all they did. They did nothing but guard the gates, which was my worst fear come true. I kind of eventually was slowly figuring out, I don't think the Taliban has a lot of helicopters to shoot down, and I'm not sure my skill set will be utilized in the war on terror. So I asked those guys, I said, hey, what, like, then who was doing things? And they told these stories that were probably A little bit true, but a little bit embellished. They'd be like, oh man, these Special Forces guys, these Green Berets would come on to— would come to our gate with blood all over their Humvees.

And I'd have to be like, hey Sergeant, I need your IDs. And they'd be like, fuck you, just open the gate. And so I was like, so what'd you do? It was like, well, I opened the gate. What do you expect me to do? And I was like, man, uh, and a part of me was like, those guys kind of sound like assholes. And the other part of me was like, those guys sounded really cool. So the, uh, um, I eventually found out about 20th Special Forces Group, which is a National Guard group. Um, and that started really my, my, my whole first fight trying to, trying to do that because we were We were mobilized at the time, getting ready to go, and that was the nail in the coffin. It was like, I don't, I don't, I don't want to do this. I want to do that. Um, and so it's very difficult as a National Guardsman who's already mobilized, and we went through the whole mobilization process. And what, you know, we're supposed to be, uh, even though we didn't leave when we were supposed to, they were gonna just kind of hold us in this limbo.

as a mobilized unit they could call anytime. And so we sat there for months at El Paso waiting for a call that never came. So I started fighting with my company leadership then telling me, hey, I want to go to Special Forces. I want to go to National Guard, to 20th Group. They kept saying no. They told me all sorts of lies like, well, you have to be an E-5 to go be a Green Beret, so you'll have to wait a few years.

Yeah.

I've been, just talked to a few more people, found out that wasn't true. You know, I mean, just 20th Group, when in a weird way has a lot of like, with other National Guard units, has a lot of myths like surrounding it.

Right.

And you're like, oh, well, you can't go to 20th Group because you have to be, you know, a, an active duty special forces guy first. And when they come out, that's how they go to 20th Group. I mean, just all sorts of things that just weren't true. Um, I eventually found— I don't know if you guys remember this. You guys remember the, uh, AKO White Pages?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's how I found my 20th Group recruiter. I went to the AKO White Pages and I Googled, uh, 20th Special Forces— Googled, probably went, uh, searched, uh, 20th Special Forces And I actually found a recruiter number out of Ocala, Florida, which would have been the closest one to me. So I'm still deployed or mobilized in Texas and I call them and I still remember the guy who picked up because I ended up, he was a support guy there and was a recruiter. He picks up the phone, Sergeant First Class Carey. And I was like, hey, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Private First Class Tucker. And I want to be a Green Beret. And he asked me like 2 quick questions.

Awesome.

Like, yeah, how long have you been— he was like, Private First Class, where you at? I told him, he's like, how long have you been in? And I told him, and he basically goes, call me back in like a year, and then hangs up the phone. And again, I was like, man, these guys are kind of dicks. I think Maybe I'm a dick, but that's like, I don't know. I kind of want to like, I love that. Like, you're not good enough and you have to prove yourself. And you know this.

Yeah. It's like, you know, you got to come and stand out in front of the door and wait your turn.

Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's not this everyone gets a trophy mentality. I can't, can't wait to welcome you. You know, I, you know, I enjoyed that. We, we demobilized a few short months later. Uh, I, I called him right back. Um, and talked to someone else on the phone who was a little more welcoming and told my sob story. And they said, you know what, come over here and do a, uh, do a small tryout and we'll— and, and we'll see. Um, so I show up knowing absolutely nothing to this small tryout. I knew they told me get ready to ruck and do a PT test at least. And so I said okay, and I showed up not knowing anything but Knowing that, hey, like, all I know about soldiering is like boots and uniform matters. Uh, and I'm not a Green Beret yet, so I better show up with, with polished boots and a pressed uniform. Uh, and I did that and I was immediately scolded for it and told to get into PTs and, uh, don't, don't ever wear those around here again unless there's some sort of award ceremony going on.

And I said, okay, I like this place already. I did the PT test and the ruck, and I did very well on it. They said, hey, we want to bring you over to our program and send you to selection as soon as possible. Go back and tell your unit that you want to transfer over here. And that's where the real fight kind of started. You know, they had already been giving me a bunch of, you know, Slow rolling me. And now they just simply told me, nope, we're not going to send you. But like before the mobilization, we sent a couple guys over there. They never make it. You know, don't waste our time with the paperwork. Don't waste your time. We're just not going to send you over there. So I carried that message back to 20th Group and the Sergeant Major laughed at it and said, hold on, I'll make a phone call. They can't. It's, it's, I told you to do that, but it's really not up to them. Uh, so he makes a phone call. Um, I go back to work a couple days later. They're like, well, you got what you want.

Um, I hope you're happy. We'll, we'll see you in a couple months when you don't make it. Which was one of the best things they could have done for me because I absolutely trained my ass off. Uh, I couldn't stand them anymore. I, I didn't, you know, I had too much pride to get to fight that hard and then, you know, have to swallow it and come back and tell them I wasn't good enough. I go to selection a few months later. I come back. I think I had to turn in some gear that I still had from them. And for whatever reason, I was kind of hoping that they'd be like, hey, we were wrong about you. Good job. You're like the only guy that's ever made it. Instead, they were like, well, guess what? You haven't made it yet. You know, half the guys don't make the Q course, so you'll be right back. And that was the last time I saw him. And I'll tell you how petty I can be. When I retired 20 years later after the Delta Force, a part of me wanted to drive down there and shove my 214 in their face and say, see, see, see what I did?

Uh, but of course, I think everyone there would have been—

Yeah, they're like, who are you?

No one would have known who I was.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's how, that's how I got to, uh, that's how we got to 20th Group. Um, I was, uh, unfortunate— no, I was unfortunate enough to be smart, um, which means I got to be an 18 Echo. I put, after selection, I put down the 4 MOSs I wanted. I put Bravo, Charlie, Echo, Delta. I sure as heck didn't want to be a Delta. They said, congratulations, you got your top 3, is what the guy told me. And I was like, what's that mean? He goes, you're an Echo, it was in your top 3. There's only 4 choices. It was second to last is what I viewed it as. There's 2 reasons I wasn't real happy about getting an Echo, being an Echo, is because at the time they had a longer Q course than Bravo and Charlie. And so at that time in 2002, everybody thinks the wars are going to go away if you don't hurry up and get over there. So I wanted a short MOS, Bravo or Charlie. You know, I wanted to try to clump out of Spanish and, you know, and be in Afghanistan and, you know, 8, 9, 10 months.

I mean, the Q course is already long enough with, without, without the rest of that. Um, again, my, what I wanted never seems to, to work out and I always have to just deal with what I got. So I got Echo. Um, I stayed there longer. Uh, I, I tried, I tried to test out of Spanish. I, I missed it by like 2 questions. Um, and, uh, Of course, the joke's on me. I didn't get to miss, maybe I missed the deployment. So instead of 13, maybe I'd have had 14 if I got out of there a little quicker. But yeah, there was a lot of war left. And really, I look back at that generation of Q course guys and they were good dudes, man. I'm telling you, I couldn't be, I still talk to some of those guys in the Q course to this day. They were such good dudes and they went on to do amazing things. And really little did we know that era of Q Corps students was really going to see 15 years of war after that, which, which really may be the, the most amount of combat, you know, any other generation was, was going to see.

And we had, we had no idea what, what, what we were in for. Hello everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them. You can also watch the Team House podcast completely ad-free and early, and you can also watch it live as we interview our guests. And it's the best way to support the channel. So if you can, if you're open to it, you can go to patreon.com/theteamhouse. That link is in the description. We appreciate the supporters and. We hope you would consider being one. So it's patreon.com/theteamhouse.

Thanks, guys. Brent, I want to ask you a little bit about how 19th and 20th Group are structured because we know that the different SF groups generally have, you know, are assigned an area and aligned to a particular area. How, like, how did they choose your language? How are 19th and 20th Group, the guard units, aligned?

Yeah. At the time, a battalion aligned with a group. So 3rd Battalion, 20th Group aligned with 7th Special Forces Group. So I got Spanish because our battalion was aligned with 7th.

Okay.

That's— yep. The— well, which really kind of gets me into my days with 20th Special Forces Group as a Green Beret. I was— I spent my whole Guard time as a You know, as a as a single guy, just being a guard bum, I just went from set of orders from school to school to deployment to deployment and just stayed active the the whole time. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. As soon as I graduated the Q course, I was on a C-130 down to down to Bolivia for for for a month. I I had only, I'd only got to see, you know, the different ODAs in the company a few times. And I saw these, I saw these guys on the dive team who were just, who were just better than everyone else and were more than happy to prove it. And I, my senior Echo on my first ODA was going, was going to dive school because he wanted to go to the, to the dive team. And, and by, by the second or third time, you know, we, we had done some training together. He looked at me and goes, hey, you should go to dive school too.

And so I was like, I'd love to go to dive school. He goes, yeah, it's, it's easy. Just, you know, raise your hand. There's always slots. Go to dive school. So I'm getting ready to go down to South America. And just like he said, you know, all you had to do was say you wanted to go to dive school and they'll put you in a slot. So I go down to South America. I start training for dive school before South America. As soon as I get to South America, I get an email back to AKO again. I get an AKO email saying that funding fell through and don't worry about, don't worry about dive school. And so I said, okay. So the next 3 weeks, I, I went on a very different training. regime and partied my ass off and had a great time. We, you know, we trained hard, we partied hard. It was a great first, first experience. In fact, that team I went down there with had, you know, their, their Bravo on their team. I'm, you know, went to the unit before me. Their 18 Delta on the team went to the unit as a, as a medic before me.

It was a, it was a stacked team. of great dudes that were seasoned guys. You know, they'd all been to Afghanistan already and multiple trips, and they'd all been on the team for like 5, 6, 7 years. So it was a great, great first trip learning. I was the only Echo on the team. So, you know, it was a great experience as a new guy to have all the commo to fall on me. It was a real cool experience going to hotels and Setting up a you know SATCOM, you know PSE five, and you know shooting out reports, you know from a hotel room in different cities and in Bolivia, just kind of a in civilian clothes as as you're traveling around. So just a just you know definitely a cool experience in that part. It's a couple days before dive school is supposed to start, and I'm at a roadside cafe in Bolivia, and I get an email. Uh, it's an ATARS notification saying, uh, giving me, you know, details of checking into dive school. Um, so I went to the, I went to the warrant officer on the team and, uh, I said, hey, this is probably nothing, but I, I, I did get this ATARS notification.

And he's like, well, if you have an ATARS slot, you're, you're going, like you need to get on a plane right now and go to Key West. Um, I, I was both excited to hear that and also, uh, you know, it, it like getting punched in the gut going, I, I'm not ready for this. Let's hope by, you know, you know, you know, but there's a lot of things you can do when you're 24 that, uh, that you can't do later on in life. So I, uh, you know, not to make these stories long, but, you know, just kind of, you know, I. I get in a, a, uh, a, a one-way rental car and we drive, like, me and one other guy that was going to go back with me, drive like 9 hours straight. And there's these massive unrest going on because of the, uh, the elections just happened and no one's happy with the, the, the, the election. And there's roadblocks everywhere. We don't— our Spanish actually wasn't too bad, but it It wasn't enough to be by ourselves negotiating roadblocks. We just randomly gave people money that, you know, just kept on giving them money until they seemed to be less angry with us and they let us go.

We get to the airport and we landed on a military base dirt runway in the middle of the night, unloaded and left. So I didn't get my passport stamped. When I get to the, when I get to the airport, we're trying to load up and the guy's like, hey, something's weird. You don't have a stamp on your passport. How'd you get in the country? And I remember the last thing my warrant officer told me was, hey, if you get in any trouble, you know, here's, here's the, here's the, here's the number to the embassy. Call this guy. He's our fixer. And so, uh, I didn't give him an answer about how we got in here. I just said, hey, uh, you should probably call this guy first. And the guy told me, he goes, I don't care who that guy is. How did you get into our country? And you can go ahead and, and, uh, start looking at other flights because you're not getting on this one. And I was like, you know, okay, that, that sucks, but, you know, call this guy. He walks away 30 seconds later. He looks at me with disgust.

He just takes my passport and he stamps it and he says, get out of here. To this day, I don't know who that guy was. I don't know what he told him. But, you know, just that it was at the end of the day, it was a very cool non-combat first experience of being a Green Beret and just, you know, doing things that really is really unique to Green Berets. Um, I end up, I get a, I fly right to Miami, um, and check into dive school and proceed to have the worst 6 weeks of my life. Um, pool week was absolutely horrible. Like, you know, I quit doing breath holds. I was not ready for it. Um, I was, I got dragged out of the pool, you know, almost every day and asked why, why I suck so much. And I just, and I remember calling my dad at one point and saying, hey, Dad, we have, you know, the Q course has been a lot, you know, just went on a trip down south. Now I'm in, now I'm in dive school. It's just, it's really tough right now. I think, I think I just need to come home for a little bit.

And, and, but my dad is not the, the, the guy to to cry on his shoulder. Uh, he's, he's just a very hard man. But, uh, but I also never complained to my dad about anything. Uh, so I think my dad knew if I was calling him to tell him things were pretty tough right now, he just said, do what you got to do, son. And I said, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll call you tomorrow and, and let you know. And, uh, every day I showed up to the pool and had to fake motivation like I wanted to be there when it was everything I didn't want to do. And I never called my dad back and told him that I wasn't coming or was coming. My dad said he figured that when I didn't call back, he knew. And again, my dad's just a hardcore guy, so it's not like he's going to call me and ask what's wrong. That was just the odd random conversation we had. It was a fleeting moment of weakness. I'll come back to that story here in a little bit because I tell on myself later in my career saying, hey, this is the hardest thing I've ever done.

And I'll, I'll tell you the one particular, like, time. It was like the end of pool week and you're just, you know, you're just physically exhausted. And they, they put us in. And again, and part of it was why it was so hard is because I, I wasn't ready for it. So, I mean, I'm not saying it would have been easy otherwise, but I definitely didn't help myself out. They put us in the pool and they're going to have us do these, um, uh, sprints. And they said, hey— and they told us earlier, hey, bring, bring 2 shirts to the pool this day. Um, and so at the very end of the day, they, uh, they said, hey, get, get 1 shirt wet, take your, take your brown shirt off, put them in both your hands, and that's what you're gonna swim in to get to the other side of the pool, these 2 soggy shirts. And, uh, They said, pays to be a winner. First one to the other side of the pool gets to get out. And, um, and so everyone, you know, swam as hard as they could to get to the other side of the pool.

And, uh, they didn't let anyone out of the pool. They're like, hey, but that's not this round. Um, they sent us back and forth, back and forth, like 15 times. No one gets out of the pool. Um, and it sounds dramatic, but it's just true. Like, guys are getting fished out of the pool because, yeah, they're, they're, they're cramping up. And they're giving it their all. And they're just, and I remember thinking, you know, looking to the guy beside me on the gunnel and we didn't say it, but we both looked at each other and just said, this sucks. Yeah, that look, that empty look in another guy's eyes when he's just giving it his all.

Yeah.

And yeah, we've all been there. And I remember thinking to myself, I got one more in me. And if, if they don't get us out of the pool, I'm quitting because I'll end up at the bottom of this pool if they send me again. So they send us again. I get to the other side of the pool and I'm talking, I'm coaxing myself up, you know, well, this is— it's time. It's time to quit. It's time to quit. And me and that guy look at each other one more time and we both kind of shake our heads like, this sucks. And, um, and he goes, eff it, I quit, and gets out of the pool. And I remember looking at him getting out of the pool and thinking, you quitter. I can't believe— What is wrong with you? Knowing that I was just as big as I— if he would've beat me to it, I probably, I, I probably would've quit. And, uh, and just, but I do remember watching him quit, just dis— disgusted me. And, uh, I stayed in the pool. We went back and forth there 6 or 7 times, but I guess maybe he left me some of his energy on, on, uh, on the way out.

Uh, super glad I got dive school out, uh, out of the way early in my career. Uh, um, like, insert joke here, but like, like most divers, uh, I'm a proud diver and really, uh, really proud of that accomplishment. Um, the, and it got me to work on the best ODA I ever worked with, the best group of guys. Uh, honestly, I ended up having one of my best deployments in my military was a 20th Group deployment with that dive team running the commandos out of Afghanistan. We were just, you know, just when a group of, of really good friends deploy together, have the same mindset, uh, and just wanted to get after it. To this day, one of my best experiences in the military and dive school is what kind of afforded me that possibility.

You know, it's interesting because I want to paint sort of a picture for people who may not understand. Earlier when you're talking about going to dive school or, you know, the chance to go to combat diver school, you know, you said the senior Echo said they're always Billets available. There's always slots open. And the reason for that is because combat diver is such a notoriously hard school that people don't sign up for it in general. Like it is, it's one of those schools that somebody has to generally be really motivated to go to because it is such like a dick dragger.

I don't know if I'd have gone back. I don't know. I mean, thankfully I didn't have to make that decision. I'd like to think that with a little bit of rest and, you know, I'd have got back on there. I was really lucky in my career to not have recycled. We'll get to it a little bit. There's one thing I recycled, but SF didn't hand that to me. And dive school with it. I'm not saying the Q course was easy. By no means was the Q course easy. You know, the Q course had really tough days in it. But just for just an absolute smoke session day in, day out, you know, running redline the whole time, dive school without a doubt was the hardest military school I went to.

Yeah. So talk to us about that deployment that it led you into with the Kandak Commandos.

Oh yeah. So we, um, I had, uh, I had, I'd been selected, uh, for, for the unit. Um, actually, uh, I, I, I got selected and I, I told him, say, hey, we're on the verge of a, of another deployment and I, and I want to go back to this, uh, um, well, I should say my second time at selection. I get selected and, and we're going, uh, I want to do this, this deployment with, with, with, with our guys. It's one last hurrah, if you will. And I told them that and, and they, they were like, absolutely, you're just not going anywhere. Go, you know, go, go, go fight with your guys. I think they, they respected that. Um, so I go to, so that was really cool in a weird way, kind of being a made man and in 20th Group as a guy already selected to go to the unit. Um, And it, it was such a great mission. So we didn't have any air assets dedicated to us. You know, we didn't, but we got a lot of aviation assets given to us by the battlespace owner. And how those deals usually worked was, of course, we're, you know, you know, we're, we had plenty of direct action targets that we collected the intel for.

And we, you know, we Here's a blast from the past if you remember terms like JPEL targets.

Mm-hmm.

So we had our list of JPELs to go after, but most of them required to do it properly, aviation assets. And the battlespace owner was interested in giving us aviation assets, but the battlespace owner was actually a really good dude. And he also wanted work out of us, and smartly so. He would give us assets if we would do missions for him. And what he wanted from us was to take our commandos and do valley clearing operations for his conventional forces, which really was, which is a great opportunity, you know, really for us too. And he's absolutely right. Like, that's the commandos should have been at the very forward edge of those Valley clearing operations, you know, taking bullets that— so Americans don't have to. It's, it's, it's their country. They're a motivated unit. They were more than happy to do it. Um, they had a short shelf life. So if it wasn't, you know, if— I can't remember the exact hours, it's 48 or 72. And, uh, trust me, they, they knew what the, the shelf life was. It's even— it's in their charter. And I want to say it's 72. So if, you know, if 72 hours is about to come up, they'll let you know, hey, our, our work's done here.

This is, this is, this is as much as we're allowed to suck. And, and, and on more than one occasion, for a unit that can't logistically do anything on their own, if they're on an operation, a VALO clearing operation, longer than 72 hours, they'll, they will find taxis to come pick them up in the middle of the woods. All of a sudden they're logistical masters and can find their way back to base, but they can't find their way to a mission to save their life. That's— I know I just said they were a great partner force, but that was a reality of them. I'm telling you, I feel like the more experience I got in SF, the more Robin Sage, was real.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I remember being Robin Sage going, I have to show up and beg these, you know, these fake Gs to let me in their camp and to fight with me. Like, we're in the real world. We're Americans with, with, you know, with bombers and suitcases full of money. No one's— yeah, I don't have to. I don't have to beg anyone to come fight with us. And there I am in Afghanistan begging our commandos not to leave us going, I, am I in Robin Sage right now? This is, this is crazy. But sure enough, happened on more than one occasion. But those valley clearing operations were great. They did suck. I mean, everyone prefers to get on a helicopter, hit a target in the middle of the night and not miss a meal or a workout. They, they could be trying, you know, even, even those, you know, even, and they're still considered short duration missions at 3 and 4 days. I'm sure there's some conventional guy listening to me whining about being out for 3 or 4 days. But they, you know, when it was cold, it was freezing cold. When it was hot, it was miserably hot.

And they would reserve the commando unit to go down the worst parts of the valley. Again, rightfully so. And that's exactly where we wanted to be. But, you know, we did those valley clearing operations. You know, if they teed it up for us and they teed it up for us right, then they put us right in the thick of things. Then we got to do a lot of good work. That there's a couple of really cool stories that actually come from that particular mission, that deployment. We were the, and I don't know who keeps track of these stats. I remember them telling me, but, you know, adding up our, you know, the the various kills you get as an ODA. They, and they, you know, they, they give you your CAS, you know, kills and your small arms kills. And, you know, we were up in the, you know, high couple hundreds. And they said that, you know, we were the, you know, the leading ODA in country in kills, which really wouldn't have been hard. It's not, and although we were a really good ODA, it's not because we were amazing. We thought we were.

But they put us, they put us in a good area with the commandos. So we, we, we operated in all of the east into KL. I used to be able to tell you what N2KL stood for. I could probably get most of the, most of the acronyms. And it was just a hotspot at that time. So we, we had the, we had the, the right partner force in the hottest area of the country. One mission was a a fair, you're not, it was a great mission, but it's not necessarily the one you want to get woken up for. Yeah. I told you that battalion commander was a great dude. He calls our team leader and our team sergeant into the office. He's like, hey, I need you guys. And I guess he's teared up asking for this help. My team sergeant's like, my team sergeant, Rick Speer, He goes, what do you need? You know, he's always given us aircraft. He's always been real, real good to us. He goes, what, what, you know, what's wrong, boss? He goes, my, my, my boys are hemmed up. My boys are hemmed up in a bad way.

You know, we got, you know, we got double digits dead and, and double digits wounded. And those numbers are climbing if we don't, if we don't get someone there like right now. And came back, got the ODA, said, hey, the, you know, Blades are spinning. We got to get there. We, if I remember right, this is called Operation Bulldog Bite. We were going to insert to the south of their location because they were still in a firefight. So they didn't want us to insert there. We're going to insert south their location and the Rangers were coming in. We're going to insert to the north and we were going to, and we were basically, it was really going to, we were supposed to meet them there together, but everyone, everyone knew it was going to be a race to try to get to them first and and, and, uh, and help those guys out. Well, when we inserted, the Ranger, uh, 47 had mechanical failures and they, and they didn't insert. So it was, it was just us. Um, when we got there, we got there right as, uh, first light, um, was there. Uh, the A's, we, we got there a little bit later, was supposed to insert in darkness.

It was just first light. AC-130 got there early to try to make sure that everything was going to be kosher for us. And as soon as the AC-130 got on station, it started lighting off and it didn't stop shooting. It was shooting while we landed. And when the— and when the— and daylight, when the 47s took off, it was still firing. And I remember looking at one of our guys and like, isn't that weird? He's like, what's that? He's like, I've never seen an AC-130 in the daylight. He's like, yeah, that is, that is kind of weird. Come to find out, and heck, one of you guys may know, but it had to go up to like 2 or 3-star level approval to keep Specter flying daylight that low.

Yeah.

Engaging targets. Do you remember?

I was going to say that almost, almost always AC Specter would be like denied daylight ops. Because it flies so low, you can see it. And they were worried that would present a target for man-portables and stuff. But to have an AC-130 during the day is exceptionally rare. And like you said, probably had to be elevated because the in-country commanders, like the Air Force, they did not allow that at all.

Yeah, I'm telling you, it was a weird sight. seeing it, you know. Yeah, you know, you get to hear it a lot, you know, it's up there, you know, on, you know, on multiple, multiple nighttime operations. But when you actually see it during the day, just, it just stuck out. I'm like, man, that's really weird. Um, and, and we confirmed, you know, obviously that, you know, it got told to us that they had to get special approval to, to stay on station. And it took us, and of course we get, we get, uh, inserted a little bit A little bit further than we wanted to be inserted. And so it's going to take even longer. It's going to take all day for us to get up there. We get into, you know, we, there's a couple villages between us and them. We get into a little bit of contact, but the right call was made. Like, you know, this, you know, engaging, killing the enemy right now isn't really our mission. Our mission is to get to these guys as fast as we can. And Again, I'm the only commo guy on this mission. I was the only commo guy for the most part during that deployment.

And as we're traveling at night, we know we should be getting close to these guys. And it goes back to, again, I feel like I'm in the Q course. Like the times you feel like the Q course is so basic and things they tell you in the Q course, they do, they come back. to ring true in operations. And I remember in SUT being said, being told that the most, and then let me know if you remember this, you know, especially in small unit tactics, what is the most dangerous part of any mission when you leave and come back from the wire? You want to take a guess at it?

I mean, oftentimes it's right as you clear the objective, right? Because everyone's tired and you're chilling on security.

What the 7-8 answer for that will be reentry of friendly lines.

Oh, geez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, yeah, you're linking up with friendly forces.

Yeah, that's right. Reentry of friendly lines. And I always thought that was, you know, a little bit, a little bit over the top. Like, don't you think the most dangerous thing is, you know, getting out here and, you know, and get it on an ambush line and mix it up with the enemy? But here I am at 2 a.m. in Afghanistan, and there is this, you know, there's these young 11 Bravos that, you know, that are burying their brothers and watching their other brothers maybe, you know, slowly bleed out. And there's these guys trumping through the woods trying to link up with them. And I cannot raise them on the radio.

Mm-hmm.

And, and I was walking point at the time too, going, Well, this is about fitting, you know, it's my, it's my fault, I guess, why we can't make commo. So I guess I should be eating these rounds. I did everything that I was supposed to do before leaving. You know, I did, you know, I, you know, I got their fills, I got their frequencies. I did radio checks with their guys from the ground. Why I couldn't make commo at that time is, is just, is the, is the bane of every Echo's existence.

Yeah.

And, you know, when, when you needed commo the most, I couldn't make commo. And I just remember walking with my butthole puckered going, every step, I'm afraid these, you know, these, these bushes are going to light up. We never made commo. We never made radio contact with them. And luckily for me, they, you know, they, they, They heard things in the bushes. We lit up them. Like, you know, they yelled from a distance, hey, who's there? We got, we got to, you know, speak English. And they knew it was us.

Wow.

And they knew that there was an American force coming, you know, to link up with them. And luckily that got disseminated all the way to the outskirts. But I'll, I'll never forget how, you know, just how dangerous that Something that, that really seems like the least amount of dangerous thing that you would do. Like, you know, there was really, there's no enemy at the time. There's so much other dangerous stuff I've done in my, in my military career. Yet that to me, when I tell that story, I can still feel the, you know, the hair stick up the back of my neck walking through those woods, you know, waiting to get lit up.

With a VS-17 panel.

Like, yeah, but it's nighttime, right? So yeah, yeah, I guess.

Yeah, it's nighttime. I have NODs. I don't even know if they got NODs or if all their guys have NODs or if they're still rocking 7 Deltas on a low loom night, which makes them almost just as dangerous with them as without them.

Right.

I'll tell you this war story real quick, how they even, how they, I'll rewind it and tell you how they got into this position and what'll blow your mind what we talked about. After we met up with them. So it's really a sad story about, about the bureaucracy of our military and the inability for people to make decisions. This was one of their very last valley clearing operations. It's— it had been a very quiet deployment for those guys and they just hadn't seen a lot of action. So they, you know, they, they started in my mind a little bit to lose respect for the battlefield. You know, I mean, people don't understand, you know, there's a lot of lull to war. And yes, we lost a lot of guys in Afghanistan, but there's plenty of guys who went and deployed and never fired their gun and they never saw anything bad. And they just, they woke up every day, went to bed every day and eventually went home. And it's not as sexy as a story to tell your friends. But that's the truth for really a lot of soldiers in Afghanistan. These guys hadn't seen much, much combat at all.

They come across this, this house, and this house is completely full of IEDs, full of IEDs. And so the company commander says, hey, we're not going to touch this stuff. There's way too much. None of it. I don't feel that we're competent enough to move this stuff or we should anyway. I'm just going to call a strike on this house. So they get into a long halt and they start the process of trying to get someone to authorize dropping on this house. No one wants to make the call. The battalion commander doesn't want to make the call, the brigade commander. And In fact, it's probably worse than that. Not to drag out the story, but the, you know, the opso didn't want to make the call, who eventually made it to the XO and eventually made it to the battalion commander. Like all these thresholds and levels and everyone just passing the buck up, passing the buck up, passing the buck up. Well, they've been here for like 4 hours.

Mm-hmm.

Just waiting for someone to give them any sort of guidance of what, of what they should do. Well, it's human nature. I'd probably do it too. But what does Joe do after 4 hours of being in the hot sun after not seeing any action? Joe does what Joe does. And, uh, and I say that, like I said, I, I'm not a robot. I, I, I do the same things. Um, we're all— It allowed the enemy to get up within very close proximities and, and lob a volley of RPGs and machine gun fire and just absolutely lay waste to these guys. And they really didn't have a solid fighting chance at it. They overwhelmed them pretty quick and hurt them pretty bad. And that's when we got the call. So the fact that at the end of the day, it was just indecision on anyone wanting— and of course, as you can imagine, it's collateral damage. is the reason they don't want to, um, destroy a building. Yeah, destroy. Yeah, destroy that building.

Or—

and there was another building close, like fairly close to it. So they were concerned about that building rather than being concerned for the safety and well-being of our soldiers. They cared more about mud buildings and we sent guys home in body bags for it. It'll always be wrong. Um, and that's how— so that's, that's how we got there. Now again, now we'll fast forward. We're here, we're talking to these guys.

The—

we're going to go, you know, we're going to go up and get a little bit of shut-eye because we're— they're going to go come pick them up in daylight the next day. And so we tell them, and of course they're still in the— they're in the valley like this house is in the valley. They're still in this house or in this compound. And we said, hey, we're going to go up to that high ground over there and, and get the tactical advantage. And I suggest you guys come with us. And, and even then they're like, no, like, you guys got it up there. Like, you guys can protect us from up there, right? And like, kind of like, I'm like, yeah, what would be, what would be a better bet would just to be up there with us. Like, that's, that's where you want to be, not down here in this valley.

Right.

But, but, you know, I'm not going to be too hard on them. You know, I mean, obviously they were dealing with a lot, beat down pretty hard. And maybe they just needed him. They were more than willing to have someone come save them and help them out. But that's that. And I'll tell you one more after this, but, you know, we'll let you guys ask questions or talk about it a little more.

Do you remember the rank?

That was one of our better missions. Sorry, but I don't mean that. And guys lost their lives.

Yeah, sure.

Trying to think of a good word to use where I say, you know, better missions.

It was one of the more significant actions. And you guys went in there and helped out fellow American soldiers.

That's right.

It makes it meaningful.

That's right. Yeah. I mean, the feeling, it's only happened probably 2 more times in my career. Like, you know, to get there and face to face and strangers, just absolute strangers. Look at you and want to hug you because you, because you showed up. And they, and they, they, you know, they needed someone with guns to show up. And, you know, they, they're just, you know, they, they're sitting there waiting, waiting to die. And we're, I mean, if they knew us, we were as big as jackasses as, as, as anyone else, you know, like we're, we're, uh, we're, you know, we're definitely not at times to be put up on a pedestal, but at the end of the day, hey. When the Green Berets show up and the guys with beards show up, like, you're expected, you know, to fill that role. And we were more than happy to fill that role for them. And we were more than happy to protect those guys and get those guys out of there.

Out of curiosity, do you remember the size of that element that you guys went in to relieve or to salvage?

I want to say in the 20s.

And then do you recall like what the, was it a captain? Was it like a PL or a lieutenant?

I know I'd have to, we, there's, I don't know if you guys have one like this. I would need a lifeline and our medic, Mark DeMaio, remembers everything.

Yeah.

Everything. I could call Mark right now. He'd tell you exactly how many guys are there, the rake of that dude. and the area that we were operating in.

Yeah, I'm just curious if like the officer, like the ground force commander was the one making the call not to like evac with you guys up the hill or if he was getting it from higher that no, like stay in place until we resolve what we're going to do with this, these IEDs.

Well, yeah, I just remember that being, you know, the answer to the conversation. Obviously the team sergeant had that conversation with whoever's in charge. And yeah, and being the commo guy, I was probably right next to the commander sitting up sitreps.

Yeah.

And so was there something else with that you wanted to talk about how that operation wound down or if it sounded like maybe there was something else you wanted to say about it?

No, not about that one. I'll talk about one more that's, you know, that's kind of similar, happened the same trip, but I'll tell you one of the weirdest things. One of the weirdest things that ever happened was at the end of that operation. And by the time we actually got helos in there, it was actually at nighttime. So we actually stayed, you know, all day during the day, got all the wounded out. And whoever could walk to this next LZ, we were all going to walk to that HLZ and get out of there with a 47. So it's nighttime, uh, we're, we're in PZ posture, and our interpreter comes up to me and goes, hey, uh, one of the guys found a goat and, um, he, he really wants to keep it. Um, and my initial reaction was like, no, you can't bring a goat on a 47. Uh, but you know, I don't know, another part of me was like, you know what, Sure. Yeah, he can have the goat. So I, for whatever reason, authorized this guy to have a goat on the 47. And, um, and he's just holding this goat the whole time.

He's holding it. And we're, we're on this, um, like steep ledge. So here on this, the top of this plateau is where it's going to land. And we're at the very edge of, of this really steep ledge. So when the 47 comes in, tailgate this way, um, I look at him, I tell the interpreter, hey, hold on to that goat tight, we're, we're getting ready to go. And, um, and I'm just watching him, uh, I'm just watching with nods. And it looks like he does this and then just throws the goat off, off the ledge to, to its little goat death. And I'm like, those, they're so weird. You know, Afghans just do weird things, you know, just shaking my head like, I thought you wanted that goat. Why would you throw that goat off? And so this, this, this question is, is boggling my, boggling my mind the whole ride over. So as soon as the wheels land down in, in, in Jalalabad and we get away from the rotor wash, I go grab the interpreter. I'm like, hey, why did he kill— why did he kill that goat? I thought he wanted that goat.

And, uh, he said— and apparently he says the, uh, the .47 scared the goat and the goat back legs launched off of his chest and he tried to grab it. But from my angle, it looked like he threw the— he threw the goat off. So the poor goat jumped to its death. But it was the weirdest thing in the world to witness, not, not knowing what's going on. And I really feel like that sums up my experience.

I mean, honestly, you're lucky it was just one goat, because that could have started— if there had been like a flock or herd of goats out there, whatever it is, like everybody would have wanted a goat, and you would add a 47-foot We would have started a horrible, a horrible precedence of them probably stealing goats and taking them on the 47s.

And I'm sure, I'm sure that would have been a theater-wide email at some point.

Pretty soon you're up to donkeys.

Yeah, you would have been the Dr. Dolittle of Afghanistan, shepherding goats around on 47s.

Yeah. The, that, that same trip, Um, uh, I'm into— I'm in civilian clothes. I'm getting ready to go on the ring route and I have to go down to Bagram. Uh, I don't even— either for op fund or, or, or for crypto. There, there's some reason I had to go down to Bagram. So I'm in Jalalabad, I'm in JBAD waiting for the ring flight. And this like, uh, this E-5 or E-6 guy comes up to me and goes, uh, Um, and me, there's another guy with me on my team, can't remember who was with me, but he comes up and he goes, hey, uh, you guys Special Forces? And I mean, I'm wearing civilian clothes. I mean, could have been a contractor, but, you know, lucky guess. I'm like, uh, yeah, we're Special Forces. And he's like, hey, I've, I've been looking for you guys. I've been, I've been trying to call you guys, been trying to email you guys. I'm really trying to get a hold of you guys. I'm really glad I got to see you. And I'm thinking, what, what email are you using? What phone number? Like, how do— like, this whole thing's starting out weird already.

And then he gets like, you know, you know, real emotional. And he's like, hey, man, I'm— we're out at Camp Nijil. He goes, it's, uh, it's, you know, the next province over. It's a really small base. He goes, we're just waiting to die. He goes, we're— there's nothing we can do about it. We're just waiting to die. I, you know, I have to sit there and tell my guys that they're going to be okay. You know, help is coming. You know, it's not— it's, it's not that bad when I know it's that bad. And I'm like, man, that is— that was a horrible story. Um, I was like, look, give, give me, uh, give me your redline number. And, um, we'll, uh, we'll see what we can do. Okay. And he was like, all right. And so he leaves. I canceled my ring flight trip and I go back to, to the, uh, to the team house, you know, and I go to the, you know, the team leader and the team sergeant, like, hey, like, you know, tell them the same story. I was like, you mind if I look into this? And, uh, like, no.

Yeah, it sounds, sounds like something you should look into. And again, that's what's really cool. And that'll always miss about, you know, being on, being a Green Beret. Is, you know, the, the, the autonomy to do whatever you want. It's, it's a lot of work, unfortunately, to collect your own intel and to, you know, create your own CONOPS, you know, execute your own missions with only 12 guys and a partner force. But it's, but it's, but it's all worth it at times when you get to, to, to do things like this. And so I call, I call the guys up. I talked to their first sergeant. It's a company-sized element out there, Comrade Jill. And without trying to throw that guy under the bus, trying to feel out what's going on. And the first sergeant's like, yeah, it's pretty bad out here. If— can, can you guys come out here? And I was like, okay, I will. We'll come out and look. And so me and my team sergeant get on a Black Hawk and we, we fly out there to Compton Jail to see what's going on. And it's a— gosh, I wish I could remember the state.

I want to say it's like an Illinois National Guard unit. Um, out there and, uh, they start telling me everything that's wrong. And I remember thinking to myself, ah, they're, they're screwing this up somehow. Like they're, you know, they're, they're, they're being cowards or, you know, this is what happens when you're not aggressive towards the enemy. And, uh, you know, and obviously that was like deep in the back of my, in my mind, but, you know, I, I thought it. And so I'm listening to these guys' story and I'm, and so I'm like, so that's, so, you know, the, you know, the point of origin where it's always coming from. They're like, well, there, there's only 3 points of origin. I said, all right, well, send out an SR team and set up on, on all 3 ports, ports of origin. There's, there's 9, 10, 12 guys. I know you're a company, but that's, that's easily doable. They're like, can't do that. We can't go out. And I'm going to screw up the number a little bit, but we can't go out with less than 12 people on a patrol. He goes, and so with 12 people on a patrol, If I'm to go put 3 people, so, you know, on, on those points of origin, 3 teams, those points of origin, that's 36 people right there.

That already puts us at, you know, at, at full strength for, for running operations. 'Cause that means half the guys are sleeping while the other half are out. And as soon as those guys come back, those guys go to go, go out on operations. And the only thing we've done is run 24-hour ops on 3 different 3 different point of origins and we're not even, we're not even living. We're not doing like, we're not like, you can't run operations like that.

Right. Right.

Right. I'm like, I was like, 12 guys delete these points of these POOs, if you will, are like 1,200 meters away. Like they're not that far. Like you have to 12 guys to go a click outside the wire. And he's like, absolutely. And just, they couldn't, they couldn't drive. They couldn't drive down to the next village, which was only 400 or 500 meters out outside their gate without getting completely riddled and have to turn back around. They couldn't get air support. They asked for guys to do valley clearing operations. And just the more, you know, I sat there with those guys, the more The first sergeant, again, he was a National Guard infantry first sergeant. He was a good dude. He had, he was, you know, he was just a solid guy. He had a lot of answers and a lot of things he tried, but in the day they just weren't capable of solving this problem. And so we went back and we did something that we rarely, rarely do. We put the, I'm gonna forget words now, but the CAMDAC was broken up into 3 elements. Like, Kandak is already a battalion. So whatever, companies.

Yeah, sorry, companies. So they're broken up into 3 companies and we were going to bring 2 companies of commandos to clear this valley, which is, which, which we've never done because, you know, they're on a red, orange, and green training cycle. So they're always in third. So to bring 2 companies forward was, was a big deal. The SOTIF headquarters gave us a bunch of pushback and they're like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. We've asked, you know, we've, we've put SIGINT birds around there. We've asked our, our HUMINTers, like, we're not getting anything in, in that area. Like, they're asking us to please go do something else. And we're like, no, we've been on the ground. These guys are hurting. Like, this valley needs to be cleared. We, we set off on what we called Operation Rockstar. That was back in the day when ODAs could still name their own naming conventions, before people probably took, took some, some, some free speech liberties with naming their operations.

Operation Penthouse, you know, get approved. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. And everyone got behind it, like all the the aviation support called all the HLZs like Ringo and like all in the, and, and, you know, HLZ Bon Jovi and everything. And it was, we inserted that night and the helos, it was, it was a long valley. And the, the, the COP was at the very base of the valley. So we were going to insert at the very northern part and then kind of like a hammer and anvil operation. So, so the, so the base only had to basically be the anvil of it. And we would push them all down, all down the valley, or at least contain them in the valley. We, we get, we come into fire, heavy fire, as soon as, as soon as we, as soon as we land. And, and we're thinking, and the SOTIF didn't even want us here.

Right.

Here we are taking massive, you know, RPK fire from PKM fire from the from the mountainsides and you told us there was no one here and that it was just a bunch, you know, a couple, basically a couple low-level crooks lobbing RPGs in the base every now and again. The, our team leader immediately called, called CAS. That's a whole nother story, but I'll touch on it for just a second. At the time, you had to have battalion-level approval to call CAS. We had a great team leader who knew the rules. And there is a caveat to that. During the infill of an operation, when they know you're vulnerable, you do not have to call battalion for approval and you could immediately call CAS from the ground. That's, that's exactly what he did. And if he wouldn't have done that, we'd have had a bunch of shot up birds that, that night. So he does that. We quell, we quell that. And there's just these pockets as, as we move, pockets and pockets and pockets. And most of them were really from, from the, the sides of the mountain. So it wasn't a whole lot of like close, you know, personal type combat, but the type of combat that is, it's great and it's great for numbers because really just by you being in the valley is what stirs them up, you know, on, on these, on these mountainsides.

And then just air support comes in and crushes them. Well, the very first one that we called air support on was way up there, and, uh, I wasn't on it, but we, we asked a, a couple guys to go up there and do a BDA on, uh, on that. It took them hours to crawl up this mountain to get to that BDA site, but when they did, what we found were guys in ACUs, and they were foreign fighters.

Holy shit.

And we found them all through the valley. Long story short, by the time we get done with this valley and get home, the guys who didn't want us even going on the mission were giving us all sorts of kudos and praises for one of the, for one of the, you know, the biggest noble operations, you know, that, that we took on. And they didn't even want us to go. Our, our captain, as soon as we get home, gets home, gets, gets Uh, what I want to like, um, temporarily, uh, fired, or we'll see if he's fired because the CJ SOF commander wanted him on his, on, on the carpet like now because he heard that he didn't use the right protocol for calling in CAS.

Mm-hmm.

And, and he called in CAS without a battalion-level approval and he sat there in Bagram for like a week. And then he sees the siege assault commander, tells the story and goes, oh, I didn't know it was during infill. You're good. And sends him back to the team. While fortunately for us, while we're running amok for another solid week without our team leader, actually going on some great missions. But they didn't deserve that. And that, and again, that's that, that deployment. was really like one of the, the spur, you know, the moments that truly spurred me to say, as, and as great as that deployment was, like, you know, we got to save like those guys when we got back to their camp. They all gave us the biggest hug and they're like, man, thank you for saving our lives. We don't think we were going home without you. Like, you really feel like you did something worthwhile. But there was a recurring theme that deployment, which was this. Con ops had gotten crazy to 20 and 30 pages.

Yeah.

It was getting increasingly harder to fight. You feel like you're fighting the enemy and the SOTIF and siege of SOTIF trying to get out the door. If the enemy could move, as long as the enemy moved every night, then he was moving faster than, than we could keep up with because that con op that was approved was, was for this location. It got really disheartening.

I mean, what a ridiculous situation that you have soldiers on the ground there who are telling you, hey, we're getting hit every night, but higher is saying, well, we don't have it on SIGINT, so I guess it's not happening.

The whole thing at a battalion and higher level, you know, not just within SF, And within the military really just kind of started to disgust me, you know? And if we weren't there with such a solid team of good dudes who were just willing to do whatever it took to get out the wire, they really did have a good attitude. Generally speaking, they're like, okay, fine. You want 20 pages? I'll make you— I'll get— if that's what it takes you out of the wire, I'll give you 20 pages. You want 30 pages? Then we'll get really efficient at writing 30 pages and we'll get out the wire. They were, you know, they were just a really good team when it came to that, that really could have crushed, you know, other teams and did. And it did. It did crush other teams. What year was this?

Do you remember roughly?

Yeah. '09.

'09?

This is about the McChrystal years.

Yeah. Because I remember talking to—

'10, 2009, 2010.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember talking to an SF soldier. Sometime in like in the '08 to '09 timeframe. And he said that if they were on target and they fired their weapon, there would be a 15— they had to fill out a 15-6, like that it just got so ridiculous for a while.

Yeah. And I don't mind if the war warrants that, if we're making results and we just don't need a American cowboys, you know, going on target just to spike the football every night.

Right.

I did that, you know, and as, and as a younger soldier, that's, you know, I, I would, I would have never said that. And I'd be like, as long as we're here, we need to be out on target. Yeah, I did get a little bit older and wiser, but we weren't there yet. Yeah. And I think the biggest problem that I saw was ground guys were reporting ground truth.

Right.

And I saw it firsthand that those reports, we had these like green, yellow, and red reports about how they're doing planning-wise, how they're doing logistically, how they're, how, you know, how they're, how their training is going. And we generally gave him yellows and reds across the board. Yet when you see a polished product later up at a siege of Sotus level, looking like it's, you know, like everything's rosy when that's not what we saw.

Yeah, right. It's always, and not to disparage military intelligence because there are a lot of two-shops or a lot of human, like there's a lot of good work in the intel, but there's also a lot of bureaucracy there where when guys like you were talking about these guys, but when guys are on the ground are reporting what's going on, And then you have, you know, 2 shops, you know, intel shops going, no, we don't have any intelligence that supports that. It's like, well, there's your fucking intelligence. Like, why do you think your product supersedes what these guys on the ground are telling you?

Hey, and that's, that's part of unit history right there. Like we, we had, we've, there's been a disconnect for a while. You can go all the way back to, well, I'll get close, but Operation Anaconda in 2003. Someone help me out on that, but it's got to be close to that.

2002.

Early war where, you know, these ground units are saying, hey, there's a major collection of enemy personnel in this area. And higher-ups going, nope, we sent over ISR over there. Didn't see anything. And go, no, they're there. And say, nope, we sent ISR over again. There's nothing there. And then it, you know, it took, you know, unit AFO troops to go, to go up there in twos and threes and live on the side of a mountain for a few days and go, holy crap, this place is crawling with people. And, and even then, like, them kind of like, well, we don't really see it on, on ISR. That's one of the reasons Operation Anaconda was such a debacle. Over-reliant on ISR and not guidance to the ground.

We jumped forward a little bit. You had talked about that before this deployment, you had also, you'd gone to selection beforehand. Can you talk to us a little bit about when the idea of going to, trying out for the unit came about into your mind and then like going to selection?

No, because I failed selection the first time. I don't talk about my failures. The going to selection the first time goes back to the adage of I didn't want to be done with my military career. Not that I was thinking of retiring or being done at anytime real soon at that point. But at this point in my career, I felt like, you know, I went into the military, you know, check. I, you know, I became a Green Beret because, you know, you know, being in the regular military was— wasn't enough. And then I was like, hey, there was a small group of guys within SF that I thought were even better. And going to a dive team, check. Like, you know, I, I can— I continued to push myself. And, and, you know, and, and, and make it, you know, I wanted to go to war real bad. I went to war several times and I felt like I was really good at it, you know, you know, check. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm continuing to get to look for challenges, meet them. And, and, you know, there's a couple of things going on. One, I wanted to see how, how far I could go.

I didn't think I was the best guy on my team. And that's why, like, you know, I needed to go to selection because I got to, because I'm, You can't, you can't soar with eagles when you're hanging around buzzards. Like, it was, it was, it was nothing like that. And in fact, I was probably the 3rd best guy on my team. Um, I wasn't even the best guy on my ODA. Uh, and but I was the only guy that went to selection. And I, I did— I never told anyone this, but I did get tired of hearing a lot of people train up for selection and, you know, going to sniper school, you know, and going to this school and, you know, uh, like, um, and always like, uh, collecting this, this, this perfect packet to go to selection with because they're, because they're going to go to CAG. But they, they forgot the most important part of the process, which was going to selection. And so it's had a lot of people talk about it, but never do it. And so there's a lot of— and I knew even before that deployment, handwriting was on the wall.

Deployments are going to go away. Iraq was already starting to go away at that time. You know, there were rumors of, you know, of Afghanistan combat operations beginning to get questioned and put into halt. And I wasn't done deploying. And I knew I could go to one other place and hopefully, you know, continue to deploy and maybe even deploy the rest of my career. So you kind of take that whole, you know, that whole mound of evidence. And that's what, that's what drove me to go to selection.

So took 2 shots, which is not abnormal at all.

Right. In fact, I don't like, I like calling the first one a recce. So the first one, The first one was a recce. Um, and I made it really far. Like I made it, uh, like the only thing I didn't do was the 40 miler. And it was definitely one of those things where you show up, you know, and even though, um, you know, as an ODA, you don't have this, like, yeah, I never felt this weird, uh, oh, we're just 20th group, you know, like our ODAs always thought, you know, had a, had, had nothing but, uh, uh, knew, knew they were good. And, and if you questioned it, we're more than willing to prove it to you. So I never really had this. in my career, this, oh, I'm just 20th group. Until I showed up to selection and I don't know, it was just a bunch of really big guys and, you know, guys telling all these crazy stories. And like, I don't know, maybe, you know, maybe I am out of my league a little bit. And then just slowly, you know, the days go by and the days go by and the class gets smaller and smaller and you're still here and And all those big loudmouth guys, uh, you know, didn't make time standard this day and that day.

And, and really by, by the end of it, you're, it's, um, probably a dramatic way to say it, but you kind of know, you know how in 300, like they get to the end of it and they're like, we actually might win this thing. You know, they kind of thought it was a suicide mission and then they think they actually could pull it off. Um, it's kind of like how I started to feel like, actually, I, You know, I'm looking at everyone around me and I'm just as good as, as, as anyone here. Um, I can, I can make this thing. Um, and as soon as I— about the time I started feeling like that, uh, I got cut. Um, and, uh, which was the very end of it. And I remember going to the, um— I won't talk about the, uh We'll, we'll just—

I got—

we'll just say this. I got interviewed at, at, at the end, and, uh, the, the interviewer was like, um, uh, you know, I'm just, just not gonna— no, not gonna talk about it.

Did, did you, uh, did you get good feedback as in terms of what you could improve if you came back?

No. Okay. All right. Uh, I, I, um, I'll, yeah, I'll try. I, I do— I don't mind coming on podcasts, and I don't mind, you know, uh, you know, talk about the unit and percent, you know, uh, selection, you know, selection is sacred.

Yeah, right. Yeah, we get it.

There's— and there's some things I will talk about. Um, but yeah, I, I was— yeah, I was able to talk to him at the end. He did ask me some questions. Um, I'm afraid if I go into it, I, I'll end up, you know, giving some answers. Sure, sure.

But, but they did welcome you to come back again, try out again?

Yes. He, he, he asked— he asked me how I did. I told him I thought I did. Um, I, I thought I did pretty well. And then he, he laughed at me because he said, well, you're, you're sitting here, you must not have done that well. And I was like, ouch. Yeah, that's, that's pretty much true. We, we had a, uh, we had a lively conversation after that, and, uh, I must have said something right to, uh, to let him have pity on me and, uh, bring me back for a second try. And so, uh, I went went deployed, came back again and was just, and I truly mean this, I'm just lucky enough to get through the process. Yes, I trained for it. A lot of guys did. I was in the top third of the class whenever we did anything. I mean, I know physically I deserve to be there. So you know, why do I feel lucky? Because there are guys that were way ahead of me and always ahead of me and, and didn't make it. Um, you know, it's just, it's a weird, it's, it's a weird process that has, that has a, a weird way of working, uh, of working things out.

Um, and there's, there's a saying that didn't make a whole lot of sense at the beginning, and, and, uh, they'd say, hey, we're not looking for the best guy, we're looking for the right guy. And, uh, I remember thinking to myself, wouldn't the best guy be the right guy? Kind of doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Um, and again, uh, just the, the longer I was there, the, the truer that, that, uh, that saying, uh, rang out was it's, it's not the best guy, it's the right guy. So I was just, again, lucky enough to be the right guy.

So you get picked up and then, uh, off to OTC. And I mean, what, what was that experience like for you? I mean, did you, you enjoy, uh, the, the training?

Yeah, I'll tell you, I will tell you this about selection. It'll, because it'll, it'll roll into OTC as well. Selection, bar none, I don't care where you've been, what you've done, is the most professional thing you will ever witness. And, and that, you know, I wish I could kind of go into detail and tell you like what, you know, how professional it is and how it'll blow your mind. But I'll just leave it at that. It is, it is the most professional thing you'll, you'll ever experience. And I don't know if you ever, you know, ever had this experience where you go to a military school and things are, they're, they're run okay, but they're a little discombobulated. And, you know, it makes you feel at one point like, is this your guys' first time ever running this course?

Yeah. Are you just making this up as you go along?

Yeah.

Yeah. You gotta have this figured out by now. That happens zero times ever in West Virginia. It is the most professional thing you'll ever— it's so professional. We've had guys quit before because they saw the level of professionalism in a course and just said, I'm not that professional. I, I can't be this professional and I can't meet this standard. And so, and select themselves off, off the professionalism of it. So. I'll absolutely say that. They, you know, the unit and selection deserves that credit and to be known for that. And OTC was still professional. I say not as professionals. They, it, you messing up an OTC on a CTB run and there will be a, you know, a large muscular man yelling at you from the catwalk, you know, letting you know how much you suck and how every month, you probably don't deserve to be here. And, you know, it is, it is up to you to deal with that information and, and react accordingly. The 2 things that they gave me were this: I felt challenged and I felt like the, you know, the skill set that I was acquiring and the resources were required to, you know, needed to develop this type of skill set, we're finally there.

Like, um, it just— it's, it's like, it's like being in tactical Disney World. I mean, just everything's at, at your fingertips. If you need it, you'll get it. Um, it's without a doubt the most amazing place I've ever worked. And then, and, and I almost feel bad sometimes telling people like how great I had it because even though special operations and, and as a whole, generally speaking, you know, have, have money and they have equipment, but very few people really know what it's like to never want for anything.

So what, what was it like? What, what was it like when you graduated and showed up to your team and walk into the team room that first day?

Um, I, I knew this. I knew when, um, when I graduated OTC, uh, it's one of the few times in life where I feel like I, um, I took a moment, you know, and thought to myself, hey, like, remember this. Like, this will be— this, this may be the greatest accomplishment of your life. I know, you know, maybe, maybe that even sounds dramatic, but at least, at least I felt aware enough to know That this is something, you know, few people actually get to do. At the end of the day, if you don't make select, even if you make selection, but you don't make OTC, you did something great that still very few people do, but it's not, you don't feel good about not making it. And I, but I knew at that point, even if they fire me in 6 months, I was an operator and I, you know, and I did, you know. You did it. Yeah. I, I did this. I accomplished this. I was good enough. I, you know, and, and one of the very, I, I'm in a part of one of the smallest brotherhoods and, and all of the military.

And I definitely, I, I re— I, I enjoyed that moment. And then of course, when, when the realization of, you know, getting into your team room and that what you thought was, was pretty good CQB, The, uh, my, my first team leader did, who did not, um, hand out compliments, uh, ever to anyone. Um, kind of let it slip that I graduated number 1 in CQB, which I knew I, I knew I was doing pretty good at then, at this CQB. But he was letting me know, he goes, uh, so you think, you think you're good just because you graduated number 1 in CQB? What's, it's not going to be fast enough here. And, uh, And I looked at him and go, so I graduated number 1 CQB, huh? I don't know. And I remember him going like, no, that's, that's not what this is about. Forget that. Like, that's, that's, that's not a compliment. It's nothing. And me going, I heard it. Oh, I heard you. Yeah. I'm 1 CQB. No big deal. But he was absolutely right, man. You, you get over there and those, and they, and they'll tell you. This is usually a pretty similar experience.

They'll go to the shoot house for the first, the first couple, you know, the first couple days, and at least the first day, the first couple runs, they'll tell you, hey, just hang out in the back and don't try to shoot anything. And that's— and, and those— and I'll always remember those first few runs going, whoo, yeah, that's, that's gonna be tough to keep up with, you know. I didn't feel like I didn't belong, but I knew that I was about to get challenged again. And it, and it was just, it was just another good feeling knowing that, because it happens sometimes in our careers in special operations where you make it to something and you're like, no, it's good. And it's, I mean, it's really good, but it's not exactly everything I thought it was going to be. You know, you have those moments. And you know that the unit just never really gave me that moment.

Right.

I was, yeah. It is what you think it is.

It must be like, on one hand, as a new guy, a little intimidating, but at the same time, you're like, I'm with like the absolute top-notch guys. So, I mean, it must be awesome to be around that kind of talent.

It, um, that particular team leader loved, you know, you know, loved his team to, um, to have a lot of confidence, but, but to back it up as well. Um, and I remember, you know, my first deployment going over there with those guys, you know, still think me— yeah, I have more than enough experience underneath my belt of combat experience, but there's always this, um, um, when you're on the white side, again, it's kind of like National Guard and 20th Group, like you don't Like, you know, guys that went there, but like once they go over there, they go into a black hole and you never talk to them again. Like you have, you hear rumors of what goes on over there, but no one really knows. You hear that they're, you know, you hear their target sets are, are so much livelier. And, you know, when they go on target, you know, it's always, it's always a, it's always a lively night. And you just hear these, these stories. And so, You know, I was a little bit, you know, didn't know what to think of the unknown, you know, on, on my first deployment.

But I do remember, you know, being next to those guys and after, you know, running through the shoot house with them and, you know, watching them in mission planning and decision making and, and just how they carried themselves day in and day out and how well they knew their job. Like, I, I remember getting on a helicopter going, I'm good. Like I'm with these guys. You know, I'm good. And feeling, still feeling like I can contribute with these guys, but still knowing these guys, these guys are going to take us home. And that's what they did. And man, that's what they did. Those guys were exactly who I thought they were. As soon as we got into combat, they were great. Just can't say enough good things about them.

And so at this point, I mean, you're off to the races. You did another 8 deployments. to the Middle East. And I mean, what would, I mean, I don't know what you're comfortable talking about. I mean, are there any particular operations that stand out in your mind or any particular experiences that you think are significant either to you personally or maybe to the history of special operations, frankly?

I could have done without getting shot. I get it. Stands out. I was, I was running pretty clean there for, you know, probably going into almost double-digit deployments. And, you know, everyone on my team had a Purple Heart. And, but then I do remember, I'll say this about the night I got shot. I was, I was getting more, more aggressive and more aggressive, you know, and things that, that I probably, I knew they weren't like flagrant, but I knew that I probably shouldn't have been doing business that way and that there was probably a smarter way to do business. But, you know, it's not like I just turned into like an aggressive retard. Like, I just, I'd slowly continue to go down this, you know, this, this path and got away with it and then got away with it, you know, and even, you know, a couple times, like, you know, got to kill, you know, some people that I that I wouldn't have been in a good position to kill otherwise. And so it, you know, kind of reinforces that, hey, just the most aggressive guy, the fastest guy wins and always wins. And that's just how it is.

Um, and that is true 99% of the times. And you, you, you play like that long enough, you, you will roll snake eyes.

Uh, yeah.

And, uh, and, and, and, and I rolled snake eyes, uh, one night Way too close, way too far, you know, on squatter patrol, squatter control, you know, a click away out from the rest of the assault element, continuing to engage a guy, engage guys and get drawn further and further out. And even knowing that and being like, hey, we're, you know, there's, you know, we just got away with that last one and there's, there's more people, you know, behind, you know, in this next group. I probably shouldn't go that far and I should probably, you know, plus up another operator or 2, you know, if, if we're going to do that. And then just going, nah, we got this. And, and, and we did not. So I, I got shot. Our commo guy that was with us got shot. I, I got hit by a grenade about 5 seconds later after getting shot. Another round skipped off and shot my nods in half. So my panos were dangling on my face. Just shot up in a really bad way and really lucky, lucky to get out of there. And but we did. And it, it, it didn't, it didn't change me to to, to being like hesitant or scared.

I truly think it, it, it reset me to exactly where, where I needed to be.

Right.

I don't think I would have ever operated scared. It's just not who I am. If, if I think I couldn't have got out of that, I'd have just medically retired at that point. I just, you know, that's just not how I'm cut. So I either just would have been like, well, I lost it and it's not for me. But, you know, the whole time that I was in rehab, I could not wait to get back on the battlefield. I couldn't wait. I know it sounds maybe weird to some people, but I couldn't wait to kill someone again and to prove like, hey, that's not how my career ends. There's no way that, you know, I felt like my career would end on a mistake. So I worked as hard as I possibly could to get back out there and then to, you know, I don't know, validate myself still. I don't know the right way, way to kind of describe it. But that small reset, if I would have continued down that path, I would have died in Syria. 100%.

Hmm.

That Syria was such a different, such a different game. You think, you know, IEDs, you know, in Afghanistan, you don't, you don't know what it's like until ISIS retreats from a village And leaves about 3,000 IEDs everywhere on every road, on every courtyard, in the walls of houses, puts them on timers, puts them on IR trip devices. Just an absolute IED debacle. And they were more than— and they were smart. Like they were more than willing to use your aggressiveness against you and pull you into situations only to, only to find out too late. Yeah, we may have— that's, that's what they wanted us to do.

Right.

ISIS really was a formidable enemy in some aspects. And in other aspects, they were, they were just dumb terrorists like the rest of them. So there, there was definitely a dynamic there with ISIS. But I hate— man, I really did. I, I really hated ISIS on a, on a level that at the end of the day, I kind of respected the Taliban after operating in Iraq. Guys in Iraq were just so quick to, to surrender, you know, at times and just, and just take their, take their chances with the judicial system. At least in, at least in Afghanistan, generally speaking, they were willing to fight it out with you. And it was almost more like a tribal war as well. Like, I don't know. Again, I'm not going to sit here and give too much, too much respect and credence to the Taliban as if they're some sort of legitimate government, you know, fighting for their existence. They're horrible people. But compared to ISIS, they, you know, I can— I view them in two 2 different categories.

Yeah, the Taliban wasn't so much into like the flagrant war crimes and stuff like that that ISIS was.

Yeah, I mean, they, they had it, you know. I mean, they were, they were capable of it, but they, they— the, the amount— when ISIS was willing to do it, they were willing to do it often and do it on a very large scale, right? And, uh, and they were, and they were willing to do it, you know, to kids as much as anyone.

Right.

They were, they were just, they were just a different breed of evil. And I, I remember, you know, seeing, you know, seeing ISIS dead bodies and just looking down on them with absolutely no remorse or no, you know, internal struggle going, man, that was someone's son, you know, that was someone's father, but just looking at them and absolutely not caring and being like, That's just a 2-legged dog. You know, wish there were more next to them. I just really disliked them on another level.

Yeah.

Well, could we talk a little bit more about Syria? Because you mentioned that that was like a totally different environment. And you guys presumably working with the SDF and it was, it more of like a UW environment than some of the other deployments?

Yeah. I'll tell you, that was an SF mission. All day long. That was an SF mission. We we had way too few guys doing way too much. You know, and for people who really aren't set up to partner with with with other units, it and I will tell you why SF didn't get that mission, and they wanted it. Fifth Group wanted it so bad. In fact, there was a plan to give it over to them. Uh, when we got to Raqqa, we were gonna hand it over to them. Um, and then cooler minds prevailed. So I was like, it's a horrible idea. Like, that's like, it's like handing it over at, you know, at halftime. They either take it over now or, or they don't take it at all. Like, don't, don't, don't, don't turn it over to 'em, to 'em right as they're getting to the, you know, the climax and, and need, and you need to be a well-oiled machine.

Right.

Fighting their capital. at, you know, at the, at the most. And then, you know, and then give it to a new guy to figure out all their, all their, all their initial problems. The reason SF didn't get it is because SF, the same reason I started to not like SF at the end, they quit trusting their ground guys. They required too much oversight. And that, that war was going too fast if you, if to slow them down with the protocols that, that they would inevitably do. So the unit does a great job at trusting their ground guys that, you know, they, you know, I never, never had an issue, you know, being questioned or asking why am I doing this or why do I need that? I just tell them what I'm doing and I tell them what I need. And, uh, you know, and, and if you don't give them a reason, you know, to, to, uh, to question you, they, they, they, they never will. Um, and so the— my first trip was very, was very unique because it was, it was still— I wouldn't even call it UW. Like, it was, it was, it was closer to, to World War II.

Like, you know, we had, you had friendly lines, you had enemy lines, and there was, there was, there was, there was no in between, you know, and, and even weirder than that, at times it was like, you know, we called it a banker's war. Like no one, no one fought at night. They didn't, they didn't have night vision, you know? So, you know, when the sun came up and everyone woke up and, and, and ate some breakfast, they started lobbing mortars. You know, and right before dinnertime when everyone got hungry, they, you know, they, they packed it up and, and, uh, you know, and waited for the sun to come back up. Um, that's— yes, that's a little bit of a, you know, satire way to, to describe it because it was very unlike that at times. But there is, there, there is a lot of truth, uh, to that as well. Um, there were times, like, you know, if you were to You know, have a fire or, or even a loud generator. Like, it would, it would, it would get you some, some mortar rounds at night. I mean, they would come out and play at night if you gave them a reason to.

But generally speaking, if you didn't give them a reason to, um, they were just— it was just a very much a, uh, this is a good side, this is the bad side. They're in this village, we're in this village. There's 2 clicks of open ground between the 2 villages. And we're going to fight it out to see who, who's either going to lose this village or gain this village. And for us, as, as a sniper, it really pushed us to, to lean heavily into what, what, you know, we started to call at the time ELR, extreme long range, because everything at the time was 800 meters and in, you know, 800 meters if you're lucky with a .308. Yeah. Well, .308 wasn't going to do anything, you know, from, from, from 2,000 meters away, but that's where our engagements are. And so now we're— now we've always had .338s, but we never really dusted them off and used them with a lot of, you know, extremely at, you know, at, at these engagements. And now, you know, we're finding out, you know, we— the way we, we use our— yeah. I would have a tripod and a pillow for my laser rangefinder.

Like things that I'd never had to do before, but, you know, I would have a $3,000 really right stuff tripod just for my laser rangefinder because comes to find out, you know, at 2,200 meters away, if I'm just a little bit off, and I lased the, you know, the building in front of the building I'm, I'm, you know, I'm trying to get, you know, I'm off, you know, I'm off by, by 50 meters. And in that 50 meters, now my elevation is drastically different and I'm never going to hit my target at 2,000 meters, even though that, you know, that .338 is more than capable of making a 2,000-meter shot. So I either just excited a lot of some of, some of your nerdy shooter audience, or I just put to sleep some of Some of the guys who just like direct action. We learned a lot about our equipment and about our guns in Syria. It was a very, very different war.

Do you find the 338, once you guys dialed it in, that you guys were pretty effective using that weapons platform at those ranges?

Yeah.

Oh, that 338 was great. It was the one thing that we would go back and forth. is when you get over 2,000 meters, the problem we'd run into is spotting your misses. Even though you think the .338 is a large round, man, it is. But you can easily not see a miss at 2,000 meters. And if you can't see your miss, then you can keep throwing rounds all you want. But now you're just trying to get lucky. And even though the .50 cal is not as accurate as a .338, at least you can see your misses. And it's, you know, especially if you put like a ROTHAS round, you know, inside there, you can, you know, you can seeing your misses in that environment becomes a lot easier. And even though it's not as accurate, you know, I at least can, you know, can make an informed decision on a correction, which I just couldn't with a .338.

Right. And did the—

It really changed the way we operated a lot from long distance.

Yeah.

Did the reliance on the sniper platforms have to do with the air support not being as quick as it was in Afghanistan or Iraq?

No, we, we, we were the only game in town, so we always, we always got to kind of got what we wanted. It has more to do with guys hanging out in windows or hanging out, you know, or being underneath structures that an aerial platform isn't really going to be able to see as well as someone from a ground level.

Now, did you guys—

and if I called in an airstrike, I really have a hard time saying that's my kill. So I'm at least going to try to couple, throw rounds at it before I call in an airstrike.

Yeah. Now between the .338 and, and, uh, the, uh, the .50, did you guys experience— experiment at all with like the .300 Win Mags or anything like that, you know, for that, that sort of medium range type of—

Yeah, the .300 Win Mag, um, just wasn't a platform we used and no, no particular reason. Uh, you know, the, you know, the SF groups, to my knowledge, I think are the only ones that use that .300 Win Mag. Um, and it's a great round. I mean, it's a laser of a round, man. The, the, the, um, ballistics of that round is, is absolutely great. It doesn't have a great, uh, barrel life to it. And unfortunately, the, the SF groups purchased that and they didn't do a good job of having a, like, kind of a barrel replacement plan. So they actually had a great— they probably had one of the great medium range or one of the best medium range long guns in the arsenal for anyone. But with most of the barrels were shot out.

Yeah.

Ended up not as great as they should have been.

Yeah. Because I know some— that's something the SEALs use quite a bit and they seem to be very happy with it.

Do they use a .300 as well?

I believe so. They use it in their sniper school. I know.

So. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. We didn't even— the only thing we even used— I went to Group SOTIC and And Level 1 SOTIC. Gosh, I got to think what's SIF-SIC or SIF-SIC, if you will, Special Forces Sniper Course. And we only use .308s, you know, at that time.

Yeah, .308. Yeah, not .338, .308.

Yeah.

I don't know why I said .338.

So as these deploy, you know, you're going back and forth from Syria. I mean, how did you see the campaign evolve over time?

The campaign was pretty straightforward, really. Even though we handed off to other squadrons, you know, they really encountered the same things we did and worked very similarly. So really it was just like, you know, when you come in and out, it was just picking back up where you left off. In between rotations, um, I missed the, the, uh, the fall of Raqqa. So I'm sure that would have been, uh, a lot different. And I'll tell you why I feel like it's a lot— it was a lot different. Um, because when I showed up to Raqqa, like very shortly after the fall of Raqqa, I remember driving around that place at night feeling like I was at the, you know, the opening of Terminator. When there's just bombed out buildings just everywhere in this dark, smoky atmosphere. I've never seen damage at that scale to a city the way we leveled Raqqa. We absolutely leveled Raqqa. And rightfully so.

Yeah. And I have to ask too, while we have you here, I mean, did you have any involvement in the Baghdadi raid?

Yeah, that, that was the very first deployment I missed. Gotcha.

And so hit Raqqa and what happened from there? I mean, you said that you actually went into the city at one point. Oh yeah.

Well, from From there, we went back into a more traditional kind of high-value target hunting.

Right.

So the, the war, the traditional war was over. And then that, that kicked off a much more fun part of, of Syria where we went back into, into quick strikes and a lot of them and then had a, had a great time. That, that was probably my, my most enjoyable trip would have been after the fall of that. And, you know, some of those guys pretending like they can just put down their guns and meld back into the population and, and, and the Kurds will just forget about them. Nope, the Kurds didn't forget about you. And they told us right where you're at.

And these are the, from the outside looking in, the occasional like CENTCOM press reports that somebody flew in in black helicopters in the night and hashed out business with the bad guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It happened a lot more than the press releases would announce. There was no need for the press to get wind of any of it.

What was that like for you and, you know, your fellow soldiers in the sense of there was You know, the press might report on it occasionally. Like we had just had these 2 very long wars, right? That were in and out of the media, but there was a national awareness about it. But then Syria comes and it's not in the national consciousness the way these other wars are, but we have troops that are fighting same as we do in parts of Africa and stuff. But what was that like for you guys?

I welcomed it. Well, I shouldn't say I welcomed it. I, at, at the time, I didn't know about it. I mean, really, like, you know, when you're in that world, like, I don't— if I don't know what the, the news is reporting on or what they're not reporting on, you know, I live in a very— I lived in a, in a very, uh, almost in a bubble, you know.

Do your job, go home.

You're right. Yeah, do your job, go home. And when I'm home, I'm, I'm training for my next job, you know. So I don't, you know, I don't have time to listen to see what, you know, to see if the— what the news is reporting about Syria. I, you know, I live it in Syria. I don't, you know, I don't necessarily— the only time I would see anything on the news is someone like, you know, showed it to us and say, hey, this is, this is what they're talking about. Or if something got leaked, you know, if something got leaked, we'd always, you know, we'd always know it. You know, they'd always, you know, show it to us that something got leaked and try to— so like those are, those are far and few between.

Would they try to like, like scare you guys straight, find out who did it?

Like, no. Most, most of the time, those, those leaks would, would have come from a partner force or, you know, someone, someone at a much higher level in the military that, that they, you know, they knew was way—

Yeah.

It's not somebody in the 3X.

Or that's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's not even someone JSOC related.

Yeah.

Like it's someone that's at a, at a, at a theater, like sitcom level that has a relationship with Fox News and, and, and, and leaked it, you know, that's usually where, you know, something along those lines.

Yeah.

So from that time period, is there any other like significant missions that kind of stand out for you?

Um, I won't, I won't go into great detail about it, and I don't mean to do that as a teaser, but I'll, I'll, I'll say this more or less to kind of set the record straight on it. Um, it's another thing that it's, it's funny what, what does get news traction, what doesn't get news traction. Um, what should have been a, a much bigger story and wasn't. I'll talk about it because like I said, you, you Google it. You know, John Dunbar, you know, dying in Syria and, and Matt Tonroe, which was a British SAS guy, which was right next to him when he died, should have been a huge news story. You know, if you think about it, I mean, you got a Delta Force guy and a British SAS guy dying on the, on the same target. When has that ever happened? You know, that's, that's, that, that's, that was crazy. That's never happened in the history of either one of our, of our existence. yet in Syria, that was without a doubt a first. But that ended up being a bigger news story in Syria. I mean, in England, because, you know, we had told our people that we know that we obviously have, you know, ground troops and combat operations happening in Syria.

They were— they weren't as forthcoming with it with the SAS.

Right.

And so when the news— so when the news hit that an SAS guy died in Syria, Um, you know, a lot of the public was like, whoa, what's going on here? You didn't— you guys said that we were kind of there in a support role. That doesn't seem like a support role. Um, one of the, the worst misconceptions of that, uh, of that, um, of that mission is that, uh, newspapers reported that it was, that it was fratricide that, that killed him. And it's—

you remember something about that, but it was an IED, wasn't it?

And then, and there is a problem with it. Like you use terms like IED, which you're right, but, but people assume like roadside bomb IEDs, because that's what, you know, when you talk about IEDs is what, you know, it's what, you know, what, what it almost always is. We were dismounted at the time, really close to target, to a bomb maker's target. He had, he had early warning. And his— a, like an IED makeshift claymore went off. And John took the brunt of that. But it set off his wall charge. And his wall charge is what, is what killed Matt. And that is that story. You know, that story is out there. Oh, but Generally speaking, it'll say, hey, it was a fratricide and, you know, he died due to a friendly explosion. They'll, they'll say it in ways that, that are, that kind of really—

Yeah, it's a sympathetic explosion. It's not—

Yeah.

Jump around the truth.

Yeah.

I like the way they say that because that's— so let's— it would be like writing a story and saying, you know, Sergeant First Class Smith died in Afghanistan due to a fuel— a gas tank explosion in his Humvee. Well, did the IED set off the gas tank explosion?

Right.

Yes. Well, but the gas tank killed him. Like, that makes, you know, nowhere in the history do we ever— do we ever say that. I don't know why we do it here. It was the direct cause of, you know, of direct contact with the enemy. newspaper stories were written. Yeah, that's said differently, that painted it, insinuated differently. I just— it bugs me.

It's sort of the way fact-checkers work sometimes, right? Is, is they, they— I mean, technically what they're saying, that it was an American explosive that killed them, is true, but they're missing— but, but they're leaving out really how it all went down.

Yeah, it's like, that's, that's one— it's one way to—

Yeah, it's sort of like saying that somebody who died from, you know, from enemy fire died from blood loss. It's like, yeah, they did die from blood loss.

That's right, right. Yeah, but that's, that's so true.

But they didn't just start bleeding.

And I could— and, you know, they— the, the, uh I don't remember which newspaper, but, you know, the, the, um, the, you know, in England, they, they did like a whole investigation on it and then, you know, wrote a report saying, you know, this is the official report, you know, off of it, you know, and sent it out as, you know, as official record. And again, it's, it's technically true, but I feel like it's, it's wildly, uh, misleading and doesn't do justice, you know, honestly. Right.

Yeah.

To either one of the guys who were, who were, who were Who were who were warriors? I mean, they were both truly, truly good men. I'll tell you a story just real quick about Matt Tunroe was an SAS guy. That guy would he'd have to get on helicopter every now and again and go you know and go visit you know other places where where they were at. And if he found out that we were we were going on a on a mission that night. He would do everything in his power to get his helo to come in sooner or see if we would push the mission later because he didn't want to miss a single target. He was absolutely addicted to going on missions. And I love that about him because, you know, that's, that's, that's the way you want every, every one of your guys to, you know, to be. And so just, it's very unfortunate that, you know, that he lost his life in Syria and in that manner because he absolutely was, represented his unit. You couldn't do a better job of representing those guys.

And so how did, how did this start to like wind down for you? I mean, it sounds like you really like rode this wave throughout your career, did some amazing things. And you had a great know, 20 years in the military. I mean, what was it sort of like for you? Like, you must have some inkling that like, this is coming. I'm not going to be able to be an operator forever. I mean, what was that transition like for you?

Yeah. I mean, I was deep in my 30s and, you know, almost, you know, a decade at the time on a team. Yeah. Which my team time was coming to an end. The, what really, you know, kind of did it for me was, you know, after that, after that Syria trip, we had, we had been, we were, we were doing training the way we always do training. And I, I was just unfortunate enough to be close to a couple of really big kind of training explosions that, that, that just really, they really rocked me. And unlike earlier, you know, those, you know, I'd been near those size explosions before. But for whatever reason, you know, at this point in my life, you know, maybe it just finally shook something loose. Um, I was, I was having some, some, some real, some real issues. Uh, so we'd, we'd get, and, and what would happen is almost every time we'd go back to, to doing explosive training, like these, these mental issues would, would, would rear back up almost like, like, like, like a reinjury of it. Um, it would get to a point Where like just simple stuff, like I, you know, I'd have to, I would, I would write notes in my, in my locker to tell, to tell me where I parked my car because I would just go wandering out in the parking lot looking for it.

And it's a massive parking lot. And I feel like the first time it really felt odd to me because usually when you see your car, you're like, oh, that's right. That's, that's right. That's where I parked my car. But like to see the car for the first time, be like, that's not— did someone move my car? And literally going in there and starting to accuse, you know, hey, who moved my car? Like I was parked, you know, at the right. And like, Brent, no one moved your car. I parked right next to you. That's where you parked this morning. I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. Um, you know, I'm trying to play it off and, you know, just, I mean, I go on and on and on, but one of the, you know, the weirder stories is, you know, go. You know, taking the, taking the wife and kids to church and just driving. And at some point, you know, you know, having, you know, your wife put, you know, her hand on your hand and be like, do you, do you know where we're going? I'm like, no, um, no, I don't know where we're going right now.

Like, we're all dressed up kind of nice, and so I'm going to guess we're going to church. Uh, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know what day it is. I don't know where we're going. And, uh, and I was— my wife's like, here, you're gonna go talk to someone Monday, or, or I will. And, uh, um, and my team time was, was— I was within, you know, I had one more deployment left, you know, really. I mean, I was, um, so it was, it, it felt right.

Yeah.

And, um, I felt, I felt complete with my career. I mean, really, Syria was great, man. I loved Syria. But when I got home from that last trip, I don't, you know, just something clicked. I was like, you know what? You know, every trip I couldn't wait for the next one. And it's not that I didn't, you know, didn't have the hunger, didn't want to wait for, you know, didn't want to deploy again. But there was a feeling of completion, you know, there that had just never been there before.

So.

When it was all said and done, it wasn't— to be honest with you, it wasn't the hardest transition. It was at first, you know, realizing it's time. But as we started making steps towards that, I was kind of excited about the next chapter in life.

That's awesome.

Do we have questions for Brent?

We do. I just wanted to say also that AirTags. I put an AirTag in my car. It works wonders.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's see here. Jackson, thank you very much. Was attending selection for the unit more challenging coming from Guard SF? Is Guard SF well represented in the unit? And also, how often do you see Marines, airmen, and sailors at the unit?

That's, that's a good question. I, I was surprised at, at how many other 20th Group guys were there. There, there was a, there was a period of time where the, the highest— it was a short period of time, but it, it, it fluctuates— that 20th Group had one of— had the best success rate at selection. So, yeah, there's definitely no shortage of, or at least at that time, you know, of guard guys. And there's, you know, there's an eclectic mix of guys in the unit. Yeah. At the end of the day, it'll always be heavy with Green Berets and Rangers, but there is, there's someone from everyone there. I'll just, you know, leave it at that. I won't necessarily talk about the percentages of all of them, but they're all there.

Yeah.

And they definitely all show up to selection.

And Jackson, thank you very much. How different are the cultures between the squadrons?

Oh, that's another good question, actually. When I first got there, the cultures were, I wouldn't say drastically different, because the truth is, if you went back a little bit further, when I was there, some people would say they were drastically different. When I got there, they were still very, very different. They all had their own personalities, and sometimes for better or worse. And really, by the time I got to the end of my career, a lot of those, I would probably say more on a negative, those negative type cultures just had pretty much all but disappeared. And even though there are still slight differences between the squadrons, it wasn't as much as it used to be.

And then how do you feel about, how did you feel about Dev Group and HRT when you were in?

I didn't feel about them.

Uh, Joe's—

who are they?

I think I read a book about the second one.

Um, the, uh, we had, uh, we had a lot of interaction with, uh, with the dev group guys. And, um, yeah, I've done, you know, I've done, you know, large-scale training exercises with them. They've, you know, they've come over and done large trail, you know, they've, you know, send onesie-twosie guys or a team over. To do large-scale training operations to get that that crossover, and we'll just say in various places around the world, I've I've had one or two of their guys attached to us so they could get you know experience of where we're at, and they were always good guys. They really were. They were always good guys. HRT, I don't never never never saw them. They just, you know, completely different mission set. They're generally speaking, they're CONUS, we're OCONUS. There was a time we had HRT guys kind of attached to us, but when they were attached to us, they were just evidence collectors. You know, they weren't shooters by any stretch of the imagination. And nor could they be. They haven't gone through our level of training.

Joe's got you. Thank you very much. Did you work a lot with 22 SAS while deployed?

I think we got that one.

Yeah, I think we kind of got that.

Dog point. And there's another one. And I'll just tell you just a quick story of how much respect we have with the SAS. Obviously, we were modeled after those guys. They helped us out a lot with our tactics in the beginning. By the beginning, I mean, talking like 1970s. '77, you know, Charlie Beckwith, Founder Days. And that type of relationship has maintained for 40-plus years. So, I mean, I'll make up this, you know, this fictional scenario, but it's absolutely true. If I was in Syria and some, you know, heck, I'll make it close to home, a Green Beret, a Green Beret comes and knocks on my door and we're like, hey, you know, heard who you guys are. Just want to come over and say hi. I'd be like, Uh, go walk 40 miles and you can come back and say hi. You know, you know, uh, I'd say it nicer, but yeah, but generally, generally speaking, that's— Turn it around. Bring a foreigner to my door, a guy who's not even American, but make it an SAS guy come and knock on my door and say, hey, you know, hey mate, you know, I'm, I'm with the, the 2-2.

I was told to come say hi. I'd open that door as fast as I could and bring him right on in.

Invite him for a spot of tea.

That's right. Yeah. The relationship that the 2 units have are great. And I still talk to some of those guys. Great, great guys.

Dog Point, thank you. What'd you like about your squadron? What was the vibe like? Any funny stories?

There's always, it doesn't matter what part of this business you're in, you know, you work with the funniest guys you've ever been around, you know, and I don't care if you were a SEAL, Green Beret, Ranger, I don't care what you did. You're just hanging out with the funniest guys you'll ever work with. You know, the vibe in my squadron, I think, was a very, was a good middle of the road vibe. Like we, we, We were very professional when needed to be and, you know, could kick back and relax when needed to be. I think other squadrons at times were too professional and weren't very fun to be around. And, you know, some of them were, you know, were a little bit more, I don't know, say cowboyish, but I don't mean to say that in a bad light. But I think we had a good balance of of both. And so I really enjoyed the culture of the squadron I was in.

So Goldilocks would find you guys just right. Yeah. Nick TCH. Well, this is actually for Jack. Will Mike Perry ever return?

Maybe.

Yeah.

If he wants to, sure. We'd love to have him back.

Dano. Yeah. Yeah.

First group.

Mike Perry. Oh no, I'm still on Platinum. Okay, the bare-knuckle fighter Mike Perry.

Not, not that Mike Perry.

Okay. Um, Dano Not in Lion's Den, uh, thank you. Uh, Delta Leads the Way, Big PP, 82nd Puking Dragons. Uh, it was just a comment.

Yeah.

Um, and then Hmm. So Joe's got you. Thank you very much. You can talk or not talk about this, obviously. Was your squadron involved at all with the Battle of Kasham in 2018 against Wagner Group?

Yeah, I was in Dar Azhar. It was a good time. Uh, there's, there's a news article about it. You can read it.

Uh, Dog Point, uh, thank you very much. When you went back to HVT raids in Syria, was it business as usual or did you have to change it up?

Oh, um, more or less business as usual. Um, you know, the, you know, all the IEDs was, you know, definitely more of a thing on, um, you know, that type of, you know, gaining ground, conventional forces, they're pulling back, you know, laying them all in. They still kept, you know, the knowledge of that and some of the TTPs. But generally speaking, it was back to business as usual.

And I believe that is it. So tell us about FRCC and some of the things that you're involved in now.

Uh, yeah. Uh, when, when I got out of the, uh, the military, I had to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Um, I had no real, you know, solid plans. I did a couple like, uh, 1099 gigs contracting, but all CONUS stuff. I knew I didn't want to go overseas and contract. Um, nothing against any of those guys who do, you know, I just, you know, it's not something that I was looking to do. Had a couple former unit guys, you know, start calling me up and be like, hey, we're training a SWAT team here. I need an extra instructor. You want to come out? I was like, that sounds, yeah, I'd love to go, you know, hang out SWAT teams and, you know, try to transfer some of this knowledge that's really kind of very uniquely, you know, to us and kind of uniquely to, unique to SWAT teams because they, you know, they, they deal with with barricaded shooters, active shooters, things like that, that, that would happen on, on, on our targets. And I really enjoyed sharing information with those guys. Like, I really did. Like, I got a, you know, I felt like I, you know, every time I went and taught those guys that I, I truly gave them the tools needed to be just as effective, if not more effective And to do business smarter to make sure that they can go home at night.

And I'll never teach someone tactics where we're where safety is somehow in like the the the lead of of a reason for for teaching a tactic. Never, never, never a safety ever played a part on that's why we do this tactic. But If the effectiveness can stay 100% the same and there is the same end result that this guy dies, yet I can increase your survivability. Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll talk about that. And so, you know, I got to, I got to basically show those guys the lessons that we learned in blood. Like, I, I really wish I could say that we're so much smarter at the unit than everyone else, and that's why our tactics are so much better. We're kind of smart, but the unfortunate truth is we just get to see a lot more targets, and we had to learn it the hard way like everyone else does. So we just got— we just get a lot more exposure to mistakes and to doing things wrong. And some of those things, to be honest with you, it took us way too long to change the way we do business. So I'm really glad to be able to share that with those guys.

That's something that eventually turned into me and a SEAL Team 6 buddy. We're going to start or did start the beginning of a nonprofit to raise money for police officers, for police officer training. Budget is such, such a big deal to those guys. They have no budget. They want to train, you know, They, and sometimes they can get like equipment budgets and sometimes they have more equipment than you think they would, than that they would have because of certain grants, but training doesn't come along with it.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and some departments don't have the necessarily equipment either. Um, so it's a, it's really a diverse, you know, um, group of people you run into in SWAT teams. Um, and I'm not talking about your, your wokeness term of of, uh, of diverse, you know, I'm talking about just the different, um, the different experience levels, the, the different training, the different equipment. It's, it's all over the place. Uh, so we were going to start a nonprofit. Uh, come to find out, I, I don't like asking people for money, and that is an integral part of being a nonprofit, right? It's much— it's a very— it's a key component. It's a key component to a nonprofit. So I ended up starting a, you know, starting First Responders Coffee Company first. You know, that I'd much rather, you know, sell things, have an exchange for, you know, a, you know, value for a product and then, you know, take, take the money we raised from that and, and put it towards first responders. So we started with the coffee company. We started November of last year. We've We've donated back a little over $20,000, uh, in, in less than a year.

Uh, and, and the, and the truth is, uh, I, I love saying that number because it kind of sounds like a big number for a small business, but we, we get more requests than, than I could ever fill right now.

Mm-hmm.

So, uh, we won't be happy until we can stop telling departments that hear what we're doing and, and asking for help until we can fulfill all those requests. We will never be satisfied. And so that comes into the next part of the business. You know, we could add another coffee line, which would take a lot of work and maybe add a little bit of revenue. But we decided on, hey, what if we added a whole new product? We can get into a whole new group of purchasers. And so we started First Responder Cigar Company. And hopes of, of, of garnering a wider audience. And that's been great. That's been a little bit of a selfish pleasure because I smoke 2 to 3 of my own stash every day. And so I needed that at wholesale pricing. But, but besides that, you know, if you think half, half of the country drinks coffee, but it is a very, you know, you know, kind of convoluted market. There's a lot of people fighting in that space.

Right.

Even though I don't, you know, could argue within first responders, yeah, that's a— there's, there's a, you know, a multimillion, you know, person audience that, you know, that, that doesn't have a product, you know, kind of like ours catering to them. So, you know, we do have a nice niche cut out in that area, but a small percentage of people smoke cigars. But we're the only cigar, you know, we're the only, one of the very, very few American disabled veteran-owned, you know, cigar lines. And then of course the only one doing anything for first responders. Our cigar sales will probably take over our coffee sales in the next couple months if it continues.

I'll check you guys out, Brent, because we smoke cigars on the show. We have our humidor here, so I'll definitely check out what you guys are doing.

You got a box coming at you.

All right, well, we're happy to support the cause.

And, and we encourage everybody else to support the cause, whether it's for coffee or cigars, or I guess you said whiskey, but I guess cognac would go better, right?

First—

Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, I kind of have this FRCC, you know, uh, thing going. Coffee, cognac, cigars. Yeah, company. We'll, we'll work with it. We'll massage that.

Um, but you guys can, can find them at frccoffee.com. That's foxtrotromeocharliecoffee.com. Check them out. And it's going to be in the link. Uh, it's going to be in the show description also, um, down below. Um, and then also, uh, you started out as a guest on The Antihero Podcast, right? And then kind of worked your way up just through sheer talent and charisma. Um, right.

He needed a co-host with a small vocabulary, and I was the clear choice.

Uh, and you got— yeah, uh, you can find the Antihero Podcast on YouTube and also, um, on podcast platforms, right?

Your, your favorite podcast.

So tell us about that.

Um, yeah, it, it really coincides with the First Responder, uh, Coffee Company, uh, story. Uh, I think, um, if I remember right, a local news channel picked up a story about us, and I just got a random email from, you know, from a, a small podcast, you know, saying, hey, well, I'd love to have you on the show. I'm an Orange County deputy, which is the, the county I live in. So I was like, well, absolutely, I'll do a podcast with you. I mean, you're in my own backyard. Went over there, did a podcast with him, uh, really enjoyed it. It was a good time. He's a really good dude and a first responder. Uh, it was an easy conversation to have with him. Uh, he had me back on, you know, a couple more times. And, you know, and the times I was on was always the, you know, his bigger shows. Um, and, uh, you know, not to be edgy, but it's just true and it happened, you know. Uh, I ended up, I ended up saying something on a 30-second snippet on a podcast, ended up into a much bigger ordeal. I'll try to make it real quick.

He just, he asked me, he asked me some off-the-wall question on a, on a first responder topic interview. And he goes, hey, well, are there, are there any secrets like you want to tell me about, you know, Black ops? I was like, no, I don't really have any, because to be honest with you, most things get leaked, so you probably know them all anyway. And then he randomly goes, did Rob O'Neill kill Osama bin Laden? And I just, I answered the way I kind of do in a team room, and I go, Rob O'Neill didn't kill bin Laden. It's the worst kept secret in all of special operations. And he cut that as a snippet and posted it as the promo. Although it had nothing to do with the episode and it goes viral.

Brent, you rabble-rouser.

Rob O'Neill, did he actually respond to that? For anybody who's curious, you do have to check out the full episode where you go into the weeds with it, which was episode 37.

37. And the problem with that was it was cut as a teaser, an unintentional teaser. It wasn't— so it wasn't a teaser that was gonna, that was gonna go into something more.

That was it.

That was just my comment about it. It goes viral and has, I don't know, between all of them, a million views. And, and a lot of people were upset. They're like, you can't just say something like that and not back it up. And there was a lot of that. And, and a lot of people just upset that.

Yeah.

know, I would make such a claim without any— you can't call someone a liar and have no, you know, you know, evidence to it. So it took me a little bit. I was like, you know what, they're right. So I came back out with a 2.5-hour podcast talking about this exact subject, taking open source information from, from Matt Bissonnette to your guys's podcast to, you know, to Not, not my normal star witness, but Osama bin Laden's wife, who was also in the room, actually makes a statement about what happened that night. Hate to, hate to ruin a surprise ending, but everyone's stories are all the same except for one.

So everybody's lying but Rob?

Everyone's— no, Rob is the only outlier in here. Everyone else has the same exact story about what happened that night, uh, except, except for the guy making millions off of it. I mean, words like stolen valor are being thrown around, but I, I don't know, you can use your own words.

So yeah, and I, I— people should go check out that, that podcast, the deep dive that you guys did.

Well, in the podcast in general, because you guys cover a lot of really cool topics. Because you talk about, I mean, a lot of, uh, first responder stuff. I mean, and yeah, you guys, you guys call out bullshit where you see bullshit too.

We, we do. Uh, but I invite— I told him, although my, my co-host Tyler really, uh, he has, you know, very like of a, you know, he loves punk rock and he has that, he likes that culture and he doesn't, he doesn't mind mixing it up a little bit. Although ironically enough, Uh, you know, that, that comment makes it look like I'm, I'm, I'm more than happy to stir things up. But the, the truth is, you know, I stepped in it and then I had to own it. Um, and I, I, I told, you know, the, you know, the Antihero Podcast when I came on, at the end of the day, I really want this to be a platform where we can tell the stories of first responders that I just don't think get told. And, and, and, and there's always going to be the— and we'll have those stories on. In fact, we have one coming on, you know, tomorrow with a cop that got that, that took a round and, you know, got shot in the line of duty. Um, you know, that's very, you know, very unique to any profession. You know, there's cops getting shot all over this country and it's a, it's an epidemic and it's, it's, it's horrible.

Um, but, you know, those, those stories are out there. But let me tell you, there are stories out there that paramedics and ambulance, right, you know, uh, you know, riders can, can tell you that never get a voice and never get to tell, you know, their side of the story.

Blow your mind.

They see some of the worst stuff day in and day out. Kids and moms getting mangled in a car wreck, you know, on the way to, you know, on the way to school. Just things that are, that are horrible. But, you know, they, you know, I, I just want to make, I want to get a, a platform out there to where all first responders—

That's great.

Uh, you know, can tell their stories.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Um, and yeah, I mean, like, it's weird that the reporting on police shootings police being shot. Like, it's gone way down, but police are like getting shot a lot out there right now.

2 police officers in, uh, at, in Orlando just, just got shot a couple weeks ago. Um, and, and here's, and here's what's, uh, outside this, here's what's a really cool story. Usually when that happens, it, it, or however it's how it seems is, uh, you know, the suspect flees into a, a county or, you know, or an area outside the SWAT team's jurisdiction. So it's just, just, just the way it happens. Not, not, not, not, not often enough does the local SWAT team whose brother and sister you just shot get to go take care of it. But that's exactly what happened in Orlando. This guy holds up in a hotel still within the Orlando city limits, and the SWAT guys go to work. And that, that guy got, got the good news that night. I guess I'm assuming he resisted arrest or had a gun he shouldn't have. And the good news is he doesn't have to go through the court system. He's already got a sentence. And I got to send those guys a whole box of cigars with a handwritten letter and I said, hey, enjoy this. Taking human life is obviously something you should You should, uh, should never be, you know, taken lightly.

But that being said, not, not everyone here deserves this life. And I gave him just a long, heartfelt, you know, a heartfelt letter that said, like, you know, I've gone through doors. It worked out well tonight, but I know, yeah, I know what it feels like to not know how tonight's going to work out right before that door opens.

Right.

You know, and just, you know, some, some real kind of intimate stuff about it. And they loved it. They framed it. They smoked my cigars and, you know, and they're back at it, take, you know, removing bad guys from the streets, you know, every other night. And I love that about SWAT teams.

Yeah.

Brent, again, man, thank you for doing this tonight. And I just want to let people know we'll be back Monday with William Osgood, who's Special Forces in Vietnam. And then next Friday, we're going to have Robin Horsfall on the show who was in SAS. So we're really looking forward to talking to those 2 guys this upcoming week. Brent, any final thoughts before we wrap up tonight?

No, I just, again, I couldn't be any more humbled you guys have me on here and thinking that my story is interesting enough to listen to me run my rap, run my trap for a couple hours.

No, you were great, man. It was really fascinating. And I really appreciate you doing this.

Yeah, we deeply appreciate your time. What, uh, can— are you on social media much? Can people follow you if they're interested?

I, I, uh, some, some habits I, I didn't want to break. Um, the only social media I have is, is the business and, uh, and, and I keep it there. And I didn't even want to learn that part of social media, but, but I had to.

There you go.

That's cool. Well, people can go check that out.

So definitely, uh, check out FRCC, First Responder Coffee Company. cigar company and soon-to-be cognac company, uh, or cerveza company. You'll figure something out. Yeah, uh, and, uh, check Brent out on the Antihero Podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, yeah, like I said, hit us up when you're coming through New York sometime, you want to light up some stogies, we'll be around. Um, and everyone else out there, have a nice weekend, and, uh, we will see you Yep.

And RS, thank you. Thank you. We just saw your donation. Thank you.