David Rutherford Show: From 9/11 to Fallujah: A Marine Grunt’s Untold War Story

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I know that you love grunt stories just as much
as I do. Today we've got Griff former combat marine
and all round badass on the David Rutherford Show. All right, everybody,

(00:23):
welcome back to my Grunt series. And again this is
as a result of my good friend Clay out there,
my Green Beret brother, who was a former marine first,
who put the idea in my head that, you know
what Special Operations, that we're not as good as badass

(00:44):
as we think we are because a lot of grunts
out of there did just as much, in many cases
more Felujah Ramadi, the Marja push, and I think the
reality is that we've had way too much of a
spotlight on us. The drama obviously has gotten absolutely at

(01:05):
a crescendo with this past.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Weekend and.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Congressman Dan Crenshaw trying to sue my best friend Sean Ryan,
which is just all insanity.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
But again that's not why we're here.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
We're here to really get into the unbelievable stories and
histories of the grunts that were the backbone of the
g WATT. I am incredibly honored to welcome Robin Griff
Griffins to the show today. Griff Brother, thank you so
much for reaching out. I've been stoked for this for

(01:41):
weeks as we've been trying to figure out how to
get you on.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I appreciate the time, David. I'm looking forward to having
a good conversation with you and sharing some grunt stories.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Awesome, awesome, all right, before we get into the grunt stories,
I mean, the most obvious thing that we got to
talk about out is when was the earliest influence that
the Marine Corps or the army or like, how old
were you?

Speaker 2 (02:10):
What movie?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
And sorry about my voice. I've been a little underweather
last few days.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
But what was that moment? Like for me?

Speaker 1 (02:17):
You know, it was watching The Green Berets with John
Wayne when I was a kid, and I saw that
and I was just like my mind exploded as to
what was out there and the allure of what it
meant to serve and to be a member of the
United States military.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
So what was that moment for you?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Not to like beat around the bush, But it was
nine to eleven for me when I decided I wanted
to be a marine. I had heard of the Marine Corps.
My father was a veteran of the Airborne you know,
one hundred and first nineteen sixty, sixty one and sixty two,
very patriotic man. And I was kind of a punk
kid who didn't want any thing to do with what
his father had done. I had seen movies Full Metal

(03:03):
Jacket really had my attention as a teenager. So I
knew who the Marines were, and I knew how to
upset my father enough to be like, oh, I'm going
to join the Marines. And so there was some of the.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
There involved, but I'll be blunt.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
When nine to eleven happened, I had a patriotic h
just emotion come over me, and I thought someone's got
to do something. And then I realized, wait, my dad
was patriotic and join the army. My grandfather was in
the Navy, and so I was I was like, well,
I'm gonna do what I always you know, kind of

(03:40):
told my dad I was gonna do. I'm going to
join the Marine Corps, and he just wished me good luck.
My mom cried, and that was it.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That's all he said was good luck, son, proud of you.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
He didn't say he was proud yet, he said good luck.
If you make it, we'll see wow. And so when
I came back and I got off the plane from
boot camp. He definitely conferred his pride on me, and
he never he never took it back after that moment
in time. Once I became a Marine, he was proud.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
All right.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Before we get to you going to Marine Corps boot camp,
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Speaker 2 (06:08):
Who yah, Patriot mooma, We love you. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
All right, grev, let's talk about Marine Corps boot camp.
So tell me the sequence of nine to eleven happens.
I mean, just like so many of y'all nine to
eleven babies, right right, I'd been in since ninety five
and so like I was already there. But I mean,
the overwhelming response was that sense of you know, not

(06:32):
only oh, you're gonna attack us. Well, guess what America's
best are gonna Roger up? How long before the moment
you decided to the moment that you were at boot
camp and then until.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
You got home. What was the timeframe of that.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, I went to boot camp December of two thousand
and one. Oho, okay, down in San Diego. I went
to the recruiting station like a day or two after
nine eleven, and I had talked with the recruiter there.
I had graduated high school earlier that year that summer,
and I had kind of just kind of played around

(07:09):
with it more and less just to kind of get
my dad off my ass, you know. And so when
I went down to the recruiter, he was kind of shocked, like, Oh,
I didn't expect to see you down here. And I said,
you see what happened. He's like, yeah, there's a line
out the door. You're gonna have to go get in
the back of it. And I did, and I waited
my turn, and I signed my papers. He said, we're

(07:29):
not going to send you off immediately. Well, here's the
delayed entry program. You're going to do two months in
that and then you're going to go to boot camp.
And that's how I became a marine.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
What was the delayed entry program, like did you have
to go meet with a motivator or a guy to
get you ready or what was that like?

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Mostly just the recruiters getting us together and either doing
like a hip pocket class about like hey, this is
how the Marines jargon works.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
You know, this is what you're gonna hear in boot camp.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
I was a bit overweight and so they were like, hey,
you need to start dieting now, you need to start
running now, and you start working on pull ups now,
stuff like that. It was a really good experience for me.
I actually met one of my lifelong friends, one of
my best friends I served with in went to Iraq
with my recruiter. Was good because we met each other
in that delayed entry program and he said, I can't

(08:21):
make you into a Buddy Pro program right now because
I don't have the spot, but I'll do my best
to get you guys in the same unit.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
And he did do that. So ooh, that's awesome. That's
really cool.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
So as as uh, you take your ads VAB and
in the Marine Corps, you don't get a signed where
you're going and tell the end of.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Boot camp right? Uh no?

Speaker 3 (08:43):
You? So I was a three hundred option and so
it was infantry for sure. Yeah, some sometimes they can
assign you like I don't. I think it's like a
generic MS, you know, and then you get on specific
after you after you do do boot camp and stuff
like that. I did take the asthad. It wasn't a
killer score, but it wasn't it wasn't a terrible score,

(09:05):
like all the jobs were most most of the jobs
were opened up to me, except something that might be
like super high speed or something like that, you.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Know, nuclear whatever, Yeah, crazy nuclear harrier pilot, none of that.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
I mean, like I said, nine to eleven had motivated
me to go and fight, and so I said, no,
I'm going to join the infantry. Which it didn't make
my dad very proud when I when I told him that.
And that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And so all right, in preparation for leaving, did you go?
You went to boot camp in San Diego, right, yep.
Now a lot of people say, oh, boot camp is
just there's only one real marine boot camp, it's Paris
Island and all that. But I know people who went
to MCRD out there and got equally kicked in the

(09:54):
nuts as as.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
All the people so talk about a little bit.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
What that was like go through boot camp so close
to nine to eleven when you started, and because operations,
I mean, you know, I think, uh, you know, ground
branch and which was the jawbreaker they were in probably
I want to say it was like September thirtieth or something.
They were starting ent er you know, Triple Nickel, sf ODA,

(10:22):
Triple Nickel with you know, they had done the they
were moving in or five five eight two were moving
in on horseback. You know, Seal Team six was working
out a quetta down low. So like combat's beginning as
you're in boot camp. Was was the message pretty clear,
like hey, you're you're going to combat. This is what's

(10:45):
going to happen. What was that attitude like during that time?

Speaker 3 (10:50):
It wasn't guaranteed that you'd go to combat. Like no
one was saying, hey, we're definitely going to send you
to war. I think the drone structors had thought maybe
they were going to miss out, even that they thought
it was gonna end uh faster than it happened. And
but there was intensity there that you could tell was
definitely and they said, hey, you might be going to combat.

(11:11):
You yours a really good possibility you will be where
I could see, like in a previous classes, maybe those
dun same drones structures were just a little less intense
on that part, yeah, you know. And and then with
with the group of recruits that I was with in
as well, we had guys who were in on age waivers.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
You know.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
I was in boot camp with a marine from Tucson, Arizona,
who was like thirty five years old.

Speaker 2 (11:38):
Wow, you know.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
And so because because nine to eleven, it's just nine
to eleven, and guys decided to do the right thing
and chose to serve. And so like we had guys
like me who just recently graduated high school and didn't know,
you know nothing, and then there were guys who had
given up full careers and businesses and and stuff like that,

(12:00):
and they were in for the fight as well. And
so it was it was different in that regard as well.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Okay, all right, so when did you finish boot camp?
And then what happened after that?

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Give me the next few months where you went, where
you got a sign and what training you start getting into.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
So I graduated boot camp February two thousand and two.
My mom took pictures of the wrong recruit because I
had lost so much weight in fifteen weeks down there.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, she took pictures of the two recruits down in formation,
which I always thought was funny. And then I did
come home to Salt Lake City, Utah for a couple
of days on leave and got to spend some time
with my family, and my dad was just emaciated, matiated
with pride, you know. He was a very patriotic man

(12:51):
and he was my mom was still pretty heartbroken. And
then I went to School of Infantry West down in
Camp Pendleton and I learned to become a mortarman down there.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
And then then after that I got stationed in Camp
La June with the Second Marines, first Italian second Regiment.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
And what time did you get to Camp La June?

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Oh, that was gonna be probably uh, I want to
say April, maybe May of two thousand and two, so
not much longer after maybe two or three months after
graduating boot camp. SI is kind of a blur, you know.
It's kind of my first time I was outside my parents'
house for real, and like I'm didn't have a drill

(13:33):
instructor either.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, and you got to do your own laundry, cook
your own food. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Man, released on Liberty and I'm like, what do we
do now?

Speaker 2 (13:43):
And they're like, yeah, whatever you want. I like, get
out of my face. Yeah, Can I go to Walmart?

Speaker 3 (13:50):
No?

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, do whatever you want. Yeah. That's funny, man.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
You get you get so brainwashed, right, You're so ready
for someone to say all right, go sit down, go
over there, go to admin. Do you know, you just
get indoctrinated into it and now now like oh wow,
I can think for myself and I can have my
own life outside.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, it is. It is wild to think back on that.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled in
boot camp, and I do all the rest of the
like recruits had went back to the squad bay without
me because I was there longer, and I was kind
of like what do I do? You know, and they're like,
you go back to your platoon now, and I'm like,
by myself, somebody to walk with, Mike, and so like yeah,

(14:35):
I remember walking across h MCRD by myself like please
don't be seen, Please don't be seen, Like get to
the squad bait, Get.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
To the squad bait. It all worked out, you know.
So Yeah, tell me this.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Explain to me this, because this I'm I'm I'm one
hundred percent believer that that the Marine Corps boot camp
is by far the best short term psychological indoctrination process
there exists on the planet. Agree, And they're just the system.

(15:08):
The way they do it.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Is so functional.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Now, functional is not exquisite, right, it's so it's so professional,
it's so dialed in. What do you think about the system,
the training, the regiment. Why does that have such a
powerful impact on both the individual, the young man who's
becoming a man, and then also the beginning of building

(15:37):
those bonds that really which is really indicative of what
the Marine Corps is, right, The Marine Corps is a
bonded group of men that are the devil.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Dogs of warfare.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Right, And so how does that begin to take place
in your opinion in boot camp?

Speaker 2 (15:56):
In my opinion, it's about the choice. You.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
You chose to be there, and they are constantly reminding
you that, yeah, this sucks, or you chose to be
here and you can choose.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
To leave, like the.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
That that out is always there and you can always
choose to leave. You don't have to be here, you
don't have to do this. But if you want to
do this, we're going to get the best out of you,
and this is how we're going to do it.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
That's really interesting because you don't I think a lot
of people don't understand the power of of what being
a will and participant is, right, Like, that's the essence
of all participation.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
If if, if, if.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
You're not willing to go all in on whatever, whatever, the.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
The structure of integration is.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Right. What if you're not willing to open up your heart,
your mind, your physicality, even your spiritual dedication to each
other to be in all in, then the program doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
Right, Yeah, it doesn't. And I'll be honest. I have
a son and I've seen it in his friend groups,
not in him as much, but there is kind of
like this, uh, like they're just their their presence is
there because that's what's deemed necessary, Like they didn't choose
to be here, or that kind of attitude of like
there's no choice that they made to be here at

(17:18):
work or whatever. And so I see that in young people.
I don't see it in young Marines I meet. So
I think that that that that power that I don't
I don't want to call it like stoic choice theory,
but can maybe somewhere around in there like that's still
part of the Marine Corps. I think that comes to
be blunt. We we are institution, and I say we

(17:39):
still even though I am very far out of the
Marine Corps, you know, but uh, we are an institution
that values tradition, and I think there's something in that
tradition where it's that that stoic choice theory of like, hey,
you chose to be here, you chose to be a marine, Like.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
I was one of my closest friends, former recon marine
and now he's a Marine Reserve officer from Marsok out
out West. And when he was at the agency with me,
he spent some time in Libya and had the opportunity
to go to the grave site where the Marines who

(18:20):
died in the Barbary Wars the first Barbary Exchange. Their
gravestones are still there. There's like and he went there
and he did the etching, you know, has it and
he has it in his office and I was like,
what's that? And he tells me this story and it's
like literally the beginning, right, It's like the overseas beginning

(18:44):
of the Marine Corps conquest in the Barbary Wars. And
I could tell the pride in him, right, And I
could tell that, and you know, it was one of
those things that there's just such a historical re elevance
to the impact that the Marine Corps has had and

(19:04):
then has at all times. Right, there's just a really
there's something solemn. Maybe solemn's not the right word. There's something.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
There's a.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
I don't know what is it. It's there's there's a
there's a depth, right, there's a depth. There's there's a
a depth of legacy and honor and tradition, like you said,
that's so powerful in the core that it precedes you. Right,
Like you get you know, four people walk into the room.

(19:45):
You know, you're wearing your dress blues and the rest.
You know, I'm in my soupy say you know, I'm
in my you know, I come out, you know, and
I get my little I get my little fucket I
get and I'm like, I'm like, hey, what's up. I'm here,
And You're like, get out of here, retard. You know,
we want the we want the marine and and I

(20:08):
there's just something powerful and you learn to carry that immediately,
don't you like in like that's a part of the
responsibility that you are.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
A not a member, but it's too light.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
You're you are a part of the brotherhood that this
whole thing represents, and you owe it to that brotherhood
to be that forever agreed.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
And like what they told us in boot camp and
in SI and even in the fleet was once a marine,
always a marine. And I think that is a remarkable
thing to have. Once you are a marine, You're no
one's taking that away from you. You're always going to
be a marine. I do think that it is a choice,

(20:53):
you know, Like I always want to present the good
principles and qualities of that as well. I know that
they're is stuff like you know in the veterans community,
like calm down, gun home, like like you're not a
marine anymore, you know. I I tend to be on default,
on the cringe side, I guess you could call it,
or like I love it. I love talking about it.

(21:15):
I love the Marine Corps. I had the prison you
should as you should.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
You earn that right.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
You not only did you earn the right by just
going through the training and putting on a uniform. But
you definitely earned the right by going to combat multi absolutely,
and and that's and I think that's the beauty of it. Like,
you know, you generate these bonds so significantly in training
with these other men that that believe right at its core,

(21:41):
Like every time I talk to people, well why'd you
join this?

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Or why'd you join that?

Speaker 1 (21:45):
And like every dude that I know that's a marine
is like I joined because I wanted to be a marine. Yeah, right,
like in there and it's and it's spoken in this
way where it's just like like you're there with audio
are not Audio Murphy, but like a chesty Poller, right,
you know, you're you're side by side, arm in arm.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
With chesty Puller.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
And and that's a powerful thing man, And and it
really has exemplified it in the core itself. Tell me
about the guys, some of the guys, and you don't
have to use your names, but what stood out about
the men that were around you just some some things
that you noticed about each other.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Genuine They were very genuine men.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
They all had a uh, I don't want to call
it like a all for one and one for all mentality,
but that's kind of how I felt when I was there.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
You know, we all came from different backgrounds, different places,
and we were all in one, for lack of a
better term, suck together right in camp or whether we're
in SI or whether we're just in the field in campus,
you know, or if we're in combat, like especially because
that's where all that stuff was preparing us to be
right and all those like I want to say, all

(23:05):
ninety nine percent of those men absolutely just terrify me, David.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
So like there's always one turn right, there's all.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Just terrifying, you know. But so ninety nine percent of
those men all had a very genuine perspective on life,
what we were doing and who they were.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
So like if one guy was, hey, i'm stud, pet stud, Like,
you knew who that guy was immediately, he didn't he
didn't hide it, you know, or he didn't try to.
You know, if we're all in a squad together and
this guy's got the best PFT, like, you knew exactly
who that guy was, and this guy's the best at

(23:44):
I don't know, doing.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Math, you knew who that guy was. Yeah, it's very cool, Yeah,
and it was.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I always get a sense that even though Marines break
balls with the best of them. Yeah, if you get
a group, you get a platoon of Marines, and you
do have those individual guys like they'll boast about it.
They'll they'll there, they'll brag about their teammates like, yeah,
like it is that ride or die lifestyle, right, and

(24:13):
that's built into it.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And I just think it's such a.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's such a transformational experience to know that now you
have this, this camarade, this level of camaraderie that is
a derivative of that. You know, you always say, I
raise my right hand and I sign a blank check
for you know, the United States of America. Who yah, whatever,

(24:40):
But really what you're doing is you're signing that check
for the dude who's on your right and your left.
And I think you guys embody that from the get
go with such a powerful way.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
It is and I'll say even through generations. So I'm
a little bit older now and I'm more in the
veteran community than I am like the activeauty, and I
meet other Marines who, like the guys I served with
and went to combat with, Yeah, we have a fierce
comaraderie and we can bust ball is pretty good too,
by the way. But even the younger guys who came

(25:12):
in ten years after me. Now and I can see
and I go, oh, that's a marine right there. And
my wife's like, oh, you know, I was like watch this,
and I'll go over and you know, hey, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (25:21):
A marine or devil dog? How do you know? Well,
Airica gave you away.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
But I leave them in the community and like they're
police officers, firefighters, teachers, fathers, just doing things that marines do,
you know, just improving their environment and proving around them
and just being gung ho.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
You know, I love it.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
I love it all right, all right, so you go,
you check in in le June. Now we're dealing may
of two. It's funny, that's that's when I first landed
in Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Was a Mayo two my first trip. And and so
now you're there.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Obviously the mentality of the war in Afghanistan is shifting
a little bit, right and now it's starting to become
all right, we've inserted the government, we got cars.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
I in.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
When did you guys, like when you landed and you
started training there with your platoon, you know, was it
was it like, oh, man, we might not be going
over there, or had had there been an idea like
had the murmuring, Because I remember when I got back
when we when I first went over on an Advon,

(26:31):
when got February of O two in Kuwait City, there
was almost no build up for Iraq. And then when
I got back to Bahrain afterwards and we went and
got all our stuff in Kuwait after Bahrain, like there
was a massive build up beginning for Iraq. And so
just in that short amount of time, there was this

(26:52):
huge shift where, oh, no, Iraq's going too. So did
tell me about that time when you were in Lajuh
for like six seven months.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, So we checked in and the battalion had just
come back from Okinawa and they did a rotation over
in Okinawa and they were over there when nine to
eleven happened, and so they thought, like the senior Marines
to the junior Marines, that's always kind of like a thing,
and there was hazing involved, but it was more just
a good clean initiation if you ask me, you know,
into the infantry, and they they were kind of in

(27:26):
the mentality like our corporals and sergeants were like telling
us like, hey, we already seen the craziest thing when
we got stood up during nine to eleven when we
were in Okinawa. You guys aren't even gonna see anything
like that. And then we did a combined arms exercise
out in twenty nine Palms together and it was still
kind of that same mentality.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
The training was is Cold War era training, So we
were a big infantry unit training like a big infantry
unit in twenty nine Palms. And then when we came back,
that's when murmurs started to happen. After we came back
from that training cycle, and maybe even a little bit,
maybe a month or two even after that. But in
December of two thousand and two, we were pretty much

(28:05):
like locked in. We're like, yeah, we're gonna end up
going to Iraq, and we had telling us.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
And you had commanders telling you that.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
In December of two, you had commanders saying, yeah, Jens,
guess what where it slotted.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
This is what it's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Did they give you any kind of rough timelines at
that where they saying anything.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
So it was getting ready to be Christmas and a
lot of guys were going out on leave, and so
the officers did give us a timeline of hey, when
you come back, we're getting ready to deploy, and so
don't don't, don't, don't disappear. It is essentially what the
officer were saying, like, you will miss a movement and
it will be extremely severe if you missed this movement.

(28:48):
And wow, they were maybe even talking more to the
seniors who've kind of seen a little bit more of
that preem nine to eleven. We're like, yeah, you might
get slapped on the wrist you show up a day
or too late. No, they were like very strict about hey,
you're going on leave and you will be here at
this time. And back then I was little Lance Corporal Griffiths.
Well actually I was still PFC. I picked up Lance

(29:11):
corporal in transit on the USS Manse that's coolly on ship,
which was I love the experience of ship itself. But yeah,
they were very strict with the leave. They they didn't
give us leave. I came home for that Christmas for
a week maybe, and then I made sure I was

(29:32):
on my flight because they were very adamant about, hey,
you you do not want to miss this movement as
you'll suffer real consequence.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Okay, all right, So you knew it's coming you, but
you're still you're you're rolling off old school training, right,
Gulf War, first Golf war training, You're That's what the
mentality of the invasion, I'm sure is going to be.
Like describe coming back and then getting on that boat

(30:03):
and heading over. What was morale like, what was the
dynamics like in the platoon? You know, what were you
guys talking about? You know, because when you're at C
right for long periods of time, there's a lot of downtime,
a lot of border. What was the mentality on that
boat like during that ride.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
The mentality was you're gonna go to combat. But they
were not specific. So even the NCOs and some of
the staff NCOs that were in my heavy mortar platoon
would be like, Hey, we're gonna go do detainee handling
in Africa, or hey we're going to go do this
operation in Korea or something like that. So but what

(30:47):
they did, like when we were getting ready to deploy,
what they did mention was like, hey, you're not deploying
regular So I deployed with Task Force Tarawa and it
was heavy right, Like it wasn't like a regular MEU
or one battalion and then all the attachments are coming
with it. We had three infantry battalions. Yeah, holy, three

(31:07):
infantry battalions crammed onto old ships.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, what was that like?

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Describe those living arrangements so prison But I'm pretty sure
what that ship about experience was like.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Again, I I'm just a kid from Salt Lake City, Utah.
At this point, I'm happy to be on the adventure
kind of. Yeah, I'm I'm nervous, and I'd lie if
I said I wasn't afraid. I was afraid going to
wars not. You know, it's war, and and so there's
sometimes where here we're just gonna do detain handling it.

(31:42):
I go write a letter to my mom, Hey mom,
everything's gonna be just fine, and sergeants so and so
we're gonna be handling Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we read that
letter and have a clue. You know, he's not you know,
just let my mom have heard with pleasure.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, here you go, sweet, you just
keep reading these. Yeah, but we were doing we.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Were putting gas masks on a lot of it was
for that because that WMD threat and a chemical warfare threat,
like when we invaded Iraq. We were in mom suits. Yeah,
so we would on ship practice just putting our gas
masks on and off and taking apart, are doing all
kinds of marine stuff that you could possibly think of.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Pulling up twenty four hours a day on ship. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah, there's a lot of cards, you know, we play
board games and stuff like that too.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Was I mean, I think a lot of young people
that imagine going in and they you know whatever. I
don't want to call them illusions, but whatever, uh, however
they concoct the idea of.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
That, right. Oh yeah, man, I'm gonna beat gung ho.
I'm gonna do that.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Did you experience where there are other guys that were
trying to project that type of like, ah, I can't
wait to go, I can't wait to get into it.
Was there a an attitude like that that was building
and everybody too.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah, there's definitely an attitude of uh bravado, right yeah,
Like and maybe it's a lot of it was false
and like I would do it too. I'm not immune
from it.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
I was a twenty year old kid on a ship
going sailing to Iraq, and so like there was a
lot of that, and then you know, there was We
had some really good leaders. We had some really good
staff n CEOs and some good just NCO's period. They
were still very genuine. But yeah, it was kind of like, hey,

(33:37):
if I if I catch you, you know, sleeping on watch,
I'm gonna be your biggest problem, not sa dom saying,
you know, and I keep those things literal, like, okay, yeah,
I don't want to get killed by my own sergeant
because I messed up. So that one was there, you know,
and it was for me it was like a big
adventure because I was I was just kind of a

(33:59):
shelter your kid, and now I was sailing through the
Mediterranean to the Middle East, and so.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
I enjoyed that part of it, Yeah, the adventure.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
So but yeah, I'm going to get all of them
along the the middle of honor and I'm going to
go crush the enemy by myself and all that stuff.
But we had good leaders who were like, calm down,
just make sure your stuff's good to go. You know.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Yeah, talk talk a little bit about your leaders.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
I mean, obviously nobody had any combat experience. I mean,
you know, anybody that did was from golf one and
so they're you know, they're all pretty much gone by then,
you know, at least at least your senior n c O.
S Right, So no one, no one had combat experience.
What what did you gain? What did What was your

(34:46):
estimation of their mindset and them going like were they
experiencing the similar feeling as you guys.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Or or were they uh?

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Were they more conditioned because of more time in to
be more methodical in their approach to what might be coming.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah, they were definitely more conditioned and methodical and definitely
had the right mindset. That's the best way I could
put it is they didn't feed into that youthful exuberance
for adventure and war like I did. And they made
sure that we were focused on what was our job.

(35:26):
My platoon sergeant especially, and he was a gunnery sergeant
who had come straight at drill field, so he was
a drill instructor, and he was a swim instructor, and
before that he was an artillery guy, and now he
was a heavy mortar platoon sergeant. And he just did
an excellent job at now buckling, you know, under that

(35:47):
much pressure, like, hey, I'm going off the war, I'm
taking these guys to war.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
And he just he made it all about let's do
the best job we could.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
To even if it's like, hey, we're gonna cut burlap
sacks to put over the headlights. You know what I'm
saying while we're on ship, this is what we're gonna
do because this is going to help us out later on.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Or you guys need to be doing this with your
gas mask.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
You guys need to be doing this as a squad
and and doing those things.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
You know, he was.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
He was very much a three mile stud Like he
could do three miles and eighteen minutes. So even on ship,
he tried to get us to run as much as
we could and so but his, uh, his presence was
very stoic. When he was in front of the platoon,
he was very stoic. And what you want out of

(36:32):
a leader in that situation.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Well, that's always the greatest thing, is like the people.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
That find their way into those moments, right, those lead
those true leadership moments. And I believe there's nothing more
difficult on the planet than leading young men into combat.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
I mean, it's got to.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Be just so so profoundly overwhelming to have other people's
lives and you know, at the ends of your decisions
and and and when you don't have any you know,
in depth experience of combat like it, I can't I
can't imagine how much more intense it is. So all right,

(37:10):
tell me walk me through when you guys got the
word the ramp up, and then and then getting deployed,
and then leaving the boat and starting the because you
were part of the invasion, right, correct.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
So we sailed in the Mediterranean. The rumors were going around.
We heard I guess Jennifer Lopez passed away as what
I heard one rumor was, and some crazy stuff like that.
And then we sailed through the Suez Canal, and that's
when we all kind of went, oh, we know where
we're going. Yeah, we were in the old school desert canyons,

(37:44):
not the chocolate chip but the old like the old not.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
The digitals, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
And we had our gas masks on us the whole
time when we were going through the Suez Canal, and
we've seen all the Egyptian forces lined up on the
Suez Canal and and and the stuff we were doing.
So when we sailed to that to us CA, now
we're like, okay, we're gonna hit Iraq. Guys, were also
getting word you know from other places. You know how
it happens sometimes, Yeah, it does get broken sometimes, and

(38:11):
and so like yeah, we're gonna go into Iraq.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
And we did like an Elkak.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Landing in Kuwait, like like a no kidding, like marine landing.
Like we didn't get out and like we weren't we
didn't have Yeah, but just the came droppeds doors and
said get out, and we got out and waited for
helicopters and then we were in Kuwait for Camp Shoot Kuwait.
We were there for at least thirty days okay maybe,

(38:37):
and then we pushed in with Task Force Tarawak across
the LED and we were in war at that point
in time.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
And like I said, that, explain that, explain like all right,
you have all right, Jent, there's twelve hours everybody you're
you know, you're having your pre mission briefs. You're having
you know, the the you know, the Grand brief, then
the platoon brief, and then your squad brief. Just walk
us through like those briefs and what that feeling was like.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
So we were in Kuwait probably at least two or
three weeks when the President gave Saddam that ultimatum. And
so when after that happened, I believe it was General
the Tonsky who came and gave us the big pitch
your brief, which was just so moto because none of
us could actually hear what he was saying, except like

(39:29):
when he'd be like kill and we'd all be like yeah,
kill like and that was like we didn't hear any
details of what he was like, you know. And then
right as he said and the shakana just started. Twenty
four hours ago, two f eighteens did a near pass
on our camp.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Oh wow. So we were all like, we were like, yeah,
we're gonna go.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
We're gonna go do this thing. And some guys were
you know, I had marines who were a little bit older,
you know, and they're like, bro, like, we're just gonna
get gobbled up by wnd's one as we cross over,
like were these gas masks and it's gonna suck. I
was like, you know, well, we did our duty. You know,

(40:08):
we're here, we're gonna we're gonna follow orders.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
But we got the Levy preface at Griff too.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Because what people don't understand is the absolute suck factor.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Ten of MOP level four.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
So MOP suits are are biologically biological suits for biological warfare,
sharing all these other types of gases. It's super thick
rubber right and with and so if they don't breathe, they're.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
Hotter in hell. Right, you're going to.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
The hottest place unearth as it is. You know, you're
got this gas mask. So we used to have to
run the O course and MOP level four and and
by the time I would finish, right, there'd be like
an inch of my sweat in my boots at the bottom, right,
you know the deal. So I just want the audience

(41:00):
to think about one, you're a twenty year old kid
and you're going to go in to.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Combat I E.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
And all you had they had we had to go
with at that time was the first Gulf War. So
you're imagining that and that's your frame of reference. And
now you know now they're saying, oh, and by the way,
you're going to be completely dawning MOP level four for
the foreseeable future.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
So you got to eat out of this, you got.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
To drink out of it, you gotta live out of it,
you got to go the bathroom out of it. You
got to ride in vehicles for fifty hours straight.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
You gotta launch mortars from it.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
I mean it's just doing that without that mop level.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
For it's difficult enough much less this.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
So I just want to give the audience a perspective
of not only the young mind, the young marine mind
that's going into combat, but how they have to go
into combat was a whole nother story.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
And to add on to that being the youngest guy
in that situation or the lowest rink guy, because you know,
if you run out of all the detection stuff, what's
the next way we're gonna detect if the environment's deadly
or not. Hey, PSC, you get to take your mask
off first, And so that's always that was always there.
I was actually on the NBC detection team for our company,

(42:17):
so I I was one of the guys I actually
got to go do like the little square recons when
we come to a new site and all kinds of
fun stuff. But uh, yeah, mom, gear is different. We
would play gas mask soccer on Campbell Jun and I
don't think any of us ever actually kicked the ball,
just kicked each other.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
So yeah, it's always got to be about a fight, right,
It's not actually about just any for brawl. Yeah, yeah,
I love it all right. So you you get a date,
you get a time.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Tell me that first moment where you sent one forward
down the pipe, right, you got your whole kid, Just
talk me, talk us through that.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
So we did get briefed on Nazarea and Ambush Alley
when we were on the way to there after, Tonsky
told us, Hey, this is your guys' job. This is
your guys's mission. It's to secure these two bridges in
this real old town called Nazarea. And I was like, sweet,
so let's go do this. And we crossed the led

(43:24):
and we knew where we were going, we knew what
our mission was. And we drove for like two days
in humdies and then we showed up in Nazarea and
then there was Republican Guard uniform troops outside the city
and they were in a checkpoint and one of the
Ford observers from the mine company had called in mortars,
and so we shot our eighty one millimeter mortars at

(43:46):
this checkpoint that I think was probably abandoned way before
we ever shot at it. Yeah yeah, And it was
kind of meravado a little bit. We shot the mortars,
you know, and we were kind of like high five
and like, yeah, yeah, we're combat now. We shot a mortar,
had normal idea the kind of the ship storm we
were going to be put in later that day in nazarea,

(44:08):
because we didn't know what was going on up north
of us exactly either, and so to keep telling that story,
we shot those mortars. Then we picked up that position,
which was just a little south, and then we discovered
that an army unit, the five oh seventh, had been
essentially ambushed and then some soldiers were taking kidnapped essentially

(44:32):
at that moment in time. So everything changed from that
moment when that information came down. Everything became very hastened
is the best word I have for it. And they said, hey,
you guys are going to push. You guys are going
to push now, and we kind of looked around, like, hey,
the plan was to push with these big things called
abrams tanks next to us. We don't see any of

(44:53):
them right now. You know, we got these tracks, which,
don't get me wrong, if I'm in a firefight, i'd
they still have a track them my Toyota Tacoma right now.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's not a mud.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
There's not a lot of difference between the marine track
and the Toyota Tacoma, you know, And so we pushed
in and that's when I fired my rifle for the
first time at enemy and dressed in Republican Guard uniforms actually,
and also Fettiine fighters who were dressed as civilians. And

(45:25):
it was all from the back of a humbie for
the first little bit. And then that changed when we
set up inside the city and we were shooting at
rooftops where guys were coming, popping up over rooftops and.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Just a lot of crazy.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Is it is chaotic to think about the day and
how those days events happened.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I was in kind of the rear of my battalion's
column right as we moved through, and so we had
companies that were how big.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Was the column?

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Let's give an estimation of the size of you guys
moving around, because that's the other thing I want the
audience to realize. Like, you know, for us, it's it's
much more simplistic because we're we move in such small groups,
but you guys have massive numbers vehicles and people, and
so describe a little bit of that moving from one

(46:17):
place to the next and then coming up with the
next All right, now we're going to go here and
the waiting, and that's I think that's the thing that
people just don't understand that they're like, you just put
the gas pedal down, you drive until you hit people,
you shoot them, and then you drive, you know, So
give them a little bit of insight.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
So in the battalion, we would have three infantry companies,
and each infantry company in that task force was what
they referred to as mecht up, which was means they
had roughly about twelve AAVs, and in each AAV they
could fit between ten to twenty five marines roughly give
or take, depending on how crammed they would be and

(46:58):
how big the company was. So we had those three
companies roughly like one hundred to twenty one hundred and
fifty marines in each one of those line companies with
about a dozen to fifteen tracks. So I don't know
if people are when I say track it's an amphibious
assault vehicle. It's it looks like a tank, and most
people think it is a tank, but it's only six
inches of aluminum not steel. And they'll let you know.

(47:22):
The guys who drive it, like hey, this is not
a tank, but it it can float or sink slowly
depending on the years. And so, but I was with
the Weapons Company, so I was more behind the line
companies as well. Weapons company had about like another one
hundred maybe one hundred and twenty marines in it, and

(47:42):
it was broke up between the heavy water platoon which
I was in, and then we had like the anti
armor platoons and pretty much anti armor so like small gunners,
toe gunners, and it was all kind of humby based.
So my platoon had I think we had ten humbi's
give or take, you know, and and we had eight

(48:02):
mortar guns. And we would break it up each squad
instead of a marine rifle squad would be a mortar
gun right, and there'd be a squad leader for the
gun there. And my gunnery sergeant did an excellent job.
He came from artillery. He did an excellent job preparing
us at getting those guns to fire on the enemy
and and use those mortars in close support of the

(48:25):
infantry that we were there with, specifically those three companies
that that are ahead of us, because in in the
Marine Corps, rfos come from our own company. We don't
we don't. Uh, you know, in the army, they go
to their own specific school and then send them to
the wherever they're gonna end up. For us, we just
send one of our own guys to that line company

(48:47):
and he's now the guy with the radio calling in
the fire mission. And so, uh, just in my battalion alone,
we're looking at like four hundred four hundred, you know.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
So that's just massive, like so massive, I can't even
wrap my head around it.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Man. Yeah, it's it's sometimes weird to think that there's
that many people and I see faces and crowds, and
I go, I think I know that face, but I
don't really know that face because it's just another four
hundred of you faces.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Well, and it's interesting too because you're you're all you're
moving together, but you're all trained independently, right and you know,
and it's and it's the coordination of that. It's not
as fluid as a lot of people think, like it
takes time for for the tactics of an assault, or
the tactics of you know, taking a city or a

(49:40):
city area or whatever, or taking a bridge like this
is all very complex in terms of the coordination of
all these different units.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Right, yeah, oh absolutely, and hats off to the men
doing it. We did make mistakes that day, and I
say we because you know, no one's perfect, you know,
and some of that coordination did get coopboard a little
bit between our Air National Guard and our our guys
on the ground, you know, and that can happen. But

(50:13):
I really think that, uh, the leadership that I had
was so ready to take like acknowledge the mistake to
be better than next iteration.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Yeah, And I think that's the beautiful aspect I think
of of one the Marine Corps is there's a built
in humility like you fuck up, you own it, but
you move on and that and that's the one thing
that I really think the adaptability, right, you know, and
that's that old saying, right, adapt overcome and Concker or

(50:45):
something like that, and and you know that that embodies
what the Marine Corps can do, because like the idea
is like you're you're up front, and so if you're
not pushing forward, that's the that's what's wrong. Like you
might push forward and make, you know, a tactical mistake,
but you're still going to have to push forward in

(51:07):
the next you know, six to ten hours you're moving forward,
So all right, get us to where you're a.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Rample for that one, please.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
So when we went into nazarea, the canvas is on
our humpies. We were in high back combies were closed
down over the top of us, and we were all
shooting out the back hatch of it. When we got
to the north side of the nazarea, we said, we
don't need no stinking canvas. We rolled that thing all
the way up and we now all of us could
could fire out three hundred and sixty degrees instead of

(51:38):
this little back hatch. But we learned that right there
in Ambush Alley from the hour before, you know.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
In a firefight.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
So yeah, we adapted, you know, adapt or die, adapt overcome,
and it happened right then and there with that. You know,
I remember seeing that and go, yep, that's the right thing.
Let's do that, you know.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
So one of the interesting things that I I love
to talk to guys about is kind of the moment
where you put away like oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,
oh shit, and you're just like, hey, if it happens,
it happens.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
I got to do my job.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And so it's that pivotal moment of like, Okay, I'm
not gonna waste any more time mentally, emotionally dealing with
the what if of me getting shot, getting blown up, whatever.
I just have to now only focus on doing what
I need to do, my job in relation to you know,

(52:33):
the platoon and accomplishing and its job to walk us
through that.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
A little bit. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
So back on the north side of that, during Naseria
on the twenty third, I talked to you about my
battle buddy that I met in the debt program here
here in Salt Lake.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
He was in one of the line companies.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
He was in one of the AAVs that got hit
and was exploded and blew up all over the place.
So I seen that from a humbee as I was
crossing it, and I seen marines, you know, corpses in
those AAVs, and we actually picked up some of the
Marines who were from you know, there was I think

(53:14):
two or three AAV's that got hit and they were
in on the rooftop of a building, which was really
sketchy because we were shooting at Iraqis on the rooftops
of buildings. And then we go wait, wait, wait, that
guy's not an Iraqi that guy's a marine, and the
humby stops and you know, do you guys need a ride? Yeah,
we need a ride. And they jumped in and I
asked one, Hey, where's my buddy at And he just

(53:36):
looked at me like, hey, he didn't make it. And
so on the north side of that bridge. When we
were on the north side and we were kind of
at a casually collection point, you know, and things were
still very fluid, that's when my buddy came up to me.
He actually had crossed the bridge. He on foot, beat
fleet and then went across. He didn't cross the bridge

(53:58):
on foot, he swam across the canal. The Domkin knotts. Yeah,
my god, he's got an excellent story and I love
seeing him. But when I seen him, I thought, Okay,
now now I understand this. They told us about the
fog of war, they told us about the chaos of this. Yes,
and and I thought, Okay, if every day is like this,
there's a good possibility I'm probably gonna get hit before

(54:21):
it's over.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Every day was not like that particular, yeah, no, for.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Sure, but but still it it's it. It is what
you have to establish some level of cognitive dissonance that like,
you can't let that just be this this what this
veil that you you're you look through operationally because you're
always it's it's interrupting your ability to be as proficient

(54:48):
and efficient with your your tactics and your your skill sets. Yeah,
all right, So how long was this deployment and and
how much like give me kind of the highlights of
of how you interpreted it, you know, how we if
your success, how you guys felt as a unit, how

(55:09):
successful you were, and and really just kind of the
the emotional highs and lows of it.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
So definitely, I feel like we were successful in our
mission in securing the bridges, even after we had kind
of some mistakes made, you know, in that coordination part
of it, we still at the end of the day
marines were on those bridges and they were secure intact,

(55:37):
and we could push forward north to Baghdad. So Task
Force hera While, in my opinion, was definitely successful. But
that the low is that we did lose eighteen Marines
in one day wow in nauzarea, and we did have
a memorial service. So we after nazarea, we were kind
of held back a little bit, you know, my battalion specifically,

(56:01):
because we did have the higher casualty rates than the
other two battalions in the task force. And so we
did a little bit of kind of just patrolling and
kind of like security like rear end security kind of
stuff around Al Coup in that area as well. And
we were there for probably like another two three months

(56:21):
total in that area of Iraq. We stayed at a
TV station there, which was it was interesting because we
had a guard tower and I remember, you know, standing
duty in the guard tower and chasing like I I
small animals around this TV station in a humbie like
we were hunting back in the woods, you know, and

(56:43):
would be like get in and we'd chase, you know,
a bunny rapper or something.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
I'm like, dude, we're gonna get in trouble, but you know.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
And then so we were back in campus June, I
want to say, like it create.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
August, like late August.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
So but we sailed out January, yeah, and we were
on ship like a month month and a half through
the Suez and up the Persian and then Kwait Iraq
and we got back on ship again, which was a
whole other experience after we had been through combat. You know,
we're getting on ship eighteen less guys than we came with,

(57:18):
and a lot of other guys who were metavacked out
as well, you know, and the Navy guys kind of
there at first, like that first day, they were just
kind of like, uh, how do we treat these guys?
You know, You're just kind of like the standoff distance,
you know. But then after that it was just like
back to the normal, like, hey, get out of my way.
I got to make the ship go, you know. And
so we sailed back. Yeah, and that took that didn't

(57:41):
take us nearly as long as sailing there, I guess.
So I guess they kind of went this way there
and straight back. We did stop in Palma day Ma
Yorka for four days that I barely remember.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Your first official post combat liberty, which I'm sure was
live late.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
We we we were celebrating, you know, being alive, being young,
and being Marines.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
And so you're falling, I'm sure too, absolutely, yeah, man.

Speaker 3 (58:11):
And that was the low point of that. We did
do like an impromptu memorial service where we shot our
mortars actually were kind of like the twenty one gun
salute for those eighteen that we did right there on
the north side of nazarea. And then you know, it
was a low point that it's hard to describe now

(58:34):
because there's it was a roller coaster of emotion. Yeah,
you know this day you're low and then you're high.
Because it sounds that that survivor's guilt. We've all dealt
with it. You're glad, you know, you're glad you're going home.
You're happy to be going home. Yeah, and you know
it could have been different. So just dealing with all
of those coming back on ship was its own can

(58:54):
of worms, you know, wow, just mistakes that we're and
and things we were hearing about what had happened, things
we were back home from friends. Yeah, and not to
get to into the politics, things we were hearing, you
know about, you know, what was going on and why
we were there and all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
So yeah, it started immediately like that.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
That's the interesting aspect of Iraq versus Afghanistan. Like Afghanistan
never was in question until much later. Where I think
with Iraq, it was right kind of from the beginning.
I mean, I had buddies that were a part of
this group called the original Dirty thirty, and they were

(59:39):
in charge for the agency to go out and find
the weapons, you know, the gas and the weapons of
mass destruction, and very early they were reporting like there's
nothing out there. Maybe some old chemical places, but no
weapons of mass destruction, no nothing.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
And then you know, I think also the al Qaeda.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Ties were disproving pretty rapidly after that. So you know,
I did have a bunch of buddies that were part
of the initial push, and you know, they've got great
stories like you and and going through. But again, you know,
when they got back, you know, after that first cruise,
things began to shift for sure. And when when you

(01:00:22):
were back, how soon when you guys got did you
get leave?

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
And then what did you do on the leave?

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
And then how soon after you came back from leave
where they're like, all right, Griff, get ready, jock back up,
you're going again.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
So yeah, we did get a leave. We got a
big block a leave. When we got back. I think
it was like a thirty day leave they gave us.
And I came home and my community welcomed me, you know,
as best as they could with all that other stuff
going on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
Like my mom is very on the other.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Political side of the war, so like I'm dealing with that,
and I'll be I'll be honest. I didn't know, you know,
so when I was a young, dumb twenty year old
full of fight, I just came home and go, yeah,
of course we were doing the right thing, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
One percent, you know we all did we all? I mean,
that's what you do? Why why would you? And it's
I mean, it's so ironic because I do get hit
this question a lot now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
They're like, do you regret what you did?

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
And and and I say, I don't regret anything I did.
I regret because I of who I was with, and
that's why I did it was for the guys that
where I was with. But yeah, there's a component of
me that once I really came to understand the the
the politics that were behind not not only Iraq, but

(01:01:47):
certainly Afghanistan. And you know, I mean, once you learn
the story of Jawbreaker and how you know that that
ground branch team and the Delta guys that were you know,
an hour behind ben Laden and then couldn't get ranger support,
couldn't get other support, they couldn't get the money to
keep this. Like you're like, well, how come this fucking

(01:02:09):
story wasn't told everybody, right, Maybe that would have, you know,
saved a couple thousand lives, maybe, you know. And it's
just like, but that's beside the point. Obviously we could
we could have a whole show about how we feel
about what we now know to be the reality of
those commitments. But but I just want to focus on

(01:02:32):
the strength and the positivity of of your sense of
service and then also your sense of camaraderie and the
men you served with.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
And and so I had. I had a deep sense
of camaraderie with the men I served with, even though
I sometimes we didn't agree, I you know, we were
aware of that stuff. And one of the stories that
I tell actually in the book that I self published
and wrote, is about time in out Coote where we
were delivering hospital supplies to the hospital there and there

(01:03:07):
was a big group of children around are Humdi, you know,
and they were asking us mister, mister this and that
and the other. And the only thing I really could
do because this one Iraqi kit k Kip coming up
and pressing me on my flak jacket with my uh
my sappy plate. We only got one, by the way,
just a little grunt story. We there was there were
slots for two, but we got want anyways, so he

(01:03:30):
was pressing me up. He said, mister, you like he
wanted to know if that was my real chest, and
then that was communicated clearly like he thought I was,
you know, armored d And so I ripped open my
flak jacket and I started pounding my chest like King Kong.
And then these kids start just mimicking me, like I'm

(01:03:51):
talking like a hundred little Iraqi kids mimicking me and smiling.
And I thought, well, that's a good thing we did,
you know, And those little victories really gotten me through
kind of like you know, and you're right objectively cognitively,
you know, looking back and going paying it, you know,
like but those little times, and you know, the guy
right next to my humbie he told me, he's like, hey, Griff,

(01:04:13):
you're wasting your time, dude. These kids are going to
grow up and hate us anyways, and I was like, well,
not today, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Not in this moment. That's the way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
Like my first deployment, I wanted to hate everybody, like
I thought that's what I had to do. And then,
you know, every deployment after that, you start coming to
the realization that civilians caught up.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
In war, no matter where it is, when it is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Throughout history, those they're the people who suffer the most
agreed right, and and and and oftentimes you know, the
reason they're suffering isn't quite the most righteous.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Endeavor there is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
But again and so like after that first one, I
always was very cognizant of the women and children that
just found themselves in these war zones and to try
and force empathy within my heart to realize, like, how
would I want soldiers to treat my daughters and my

(01:05:14):
wife if you were invaded here, right, you know, and
that although you know the likelihood or whatever, but how
am I going to be I'm not going to lose
my humanity for just because I don't have to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
And I think I struggled quite a bit actually, even
in that coming home and being on that thirty day block,
trying to force people to see it that way that
I was seeing, you know, when they would be like, no,
this is what's going on and you just don't know
because you're brainwashed or whatever, and like I'm like, no,
this is what I experienced. You know what I'm saying, like, yes,
war's horrific and deadly, but there's also those these little

(01:05:53):
moments that are are noble, you know, and yes, yeah,
and that's what I've still trying to articulate that better,
you know, progress, We're always working towards that all this,
and so I still try to articulate that better because
I do think it is important, you know, just as
important as the big pitcher, you know, is those little

(01:06:13):
individual wins and speaking about conraderie like me and the
guy that told me that he ended up doing twenty
years in the Marine Corps and getting out as a
first sergeant.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Great dude, And you know we.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Still talk to this day about stuff, you know, like this,
and him and I are more similar minded about a
lot of stuff now in twenty twenty five, you know.
But it is that camaraderie of men who don't necessarily
have to agree about everything.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
There's something that is man.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
That's the Marine Corps too, is because there's guys who,
you know, it doesn't matter I'm a Christian. You could
be a Christian, but you could also be a Muslim
and be a marine and you're still going to be
a marine. We're still going to do the job that
we're here to do, and we're gonna do it with honor.
And that's what I tried to communicate my darnedest to
when I was home on leave. And then when we

(01:07:08):
came back to campus June, we didn't really think we
were going to go back. We thought, okay, we did
our part, like send somebody else now, And there was
guys back at campus June chomping at the bit, you know,
to go, because we came back and we had this
fancy little ribbon now that said we've been in combat,
and they didn't, so you know, they were chomping at

(01:07:29):
the bit to go. We did another iteration of CAS
at twenty nine Palms and then that's when.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
We heard that we were going to be what's CACS.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
It's combined arms exercise and it's the old Cold War
stuff that the Marine Corps Infantry used to do, where
they'd get the artillery, the tanks, the mortars and everybody
firing in the same range. It's really cool. Actually I
loved it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Well, I mean it's impressive as hell.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
You know, there's a lethality in that that seems like, oh,
this is how wars are won right here, you know,
and to be able to participate in that, it's got
to be exhilarating out a minimum and then out of maximum, like, yeah,
this is why we're the Marine Corps.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
This is why we're bad ass. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Yeah, And there's there was a little bit of pride
in that, like, hey, cause I got to be tasked
to be a FO on the next time, and so
I was getting to call in for fire, I was
going to talk to aviators up in f eighteens and
and I remember one day vividly on that second time
we were down in twenty nine Palms. They had Air
Force guys dropping and they were dropping way off from

(01:08:37):
where these Fateen Marine pilots were dropping, and we're just
like on the ground, we're just going, yeah, that's right,
you know, that's that's right. You know. But yeah, that
force and readiness that the Marine Corps offers, and I
know that there's been a little bit of talk about
getting rid of the Marine Corps, which is really dumb insanity.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
There's no better.

Speaker 3 (01:08:59):
Group to fight air, ground and seed than a Marine
expeditionary unit like a you It's just so valuable to
the country into global politics and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Like that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
But yeah, so we were doing that training, and yeah,
the camaraderie was always there, you know, when we were
in twenty nine palms were we were guys who had
come back from Iraq and now we were kind of,
you know, we were trying to to get ready for
whatever came at us next, even though we were kind

(01:09:30):
of like, oh, we're not going to do anything at
that moment in time quite yet.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Okay, all right, so you you weren't sure it was
still going. This is probably you said you August you
left your back, so now you're moving into four.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
And it was it was in.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
What was it, I think it was April or May
four when the Blackwaters guys got hung from the bridge
in Fallujah, right, correct, Yeah, yeah, and then and then
after that is when all hell broke loose?

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Right, So where were you in your timeline around that?

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
So we we were doing the MEW work up when
that happened. We were on the back end of that
MEW work up and getting ready to deploy. And because
we were doing a MEW there was all kinds of
rumors like, oh, we're just gonna go like you know
our predecessors did and go to Japan. And we're gonna
sit in you know, camp whatever it is there in
Okanawa and not do anything we did not know and

(01:10:31):
and lance corporal should not assume that's you know.

Speaker 5 (01:10:35):
Above their pay grade, because I think when that did
happen and we were ready to be a MEW and
we had all the attachments for a MEW, they were like, nope,
this MEW is going to go back to t Iraq.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
And that's when we found.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
Out we were going to go to the Triangle of
Death and uh Musai Biscandaria area and and go do
what they were calling security uh and sustainment operations at that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Point, any sustain And that's right, I forgot that. Yeah,
I got one of the hearts and minds yea, yeah, yeah,
security sustain in hearts and minds. That the mix of those,
right is like, you know, we're gonna beat you into
submission type mentality, all right, So you get this brief
right and then talk about the next time. I mean,

(01:11:20):
it's it's got to be a completely different feeling the
second time as you begin to prepare.

Speaker 2 (01:11:26):
Yeah, it was completely different. For one, we didn't we
weren't on ship. Yeah, we were amute, but we took.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
Seven forty seven straight to Quait City this time and
flew there on commercial jets and then the camp. When
we got to the camp, it was a lot different.
So the first camp was spartan, light conditions, I kid
you not. We were MRIs and sleeping on dirt. And
then the second camp had pizza hut on it, you know,
and so like it had a little coffee thing, and

(01:11:53):
it had like a tent that had bootleg movies that
were playing all the time and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
But what was cool about that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
Camp was there was actually, for the first time in
my service, I encountered I encountered other military personnel who
were coalision forces, and so that was kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
As well, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
But yeah, we we did get brief when we were there,
like hey, you guys are definitely going to go into
a hot part of this country.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
You need to be ready. And so we what was
that like, I mean, how do you get ready?

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
I mean, obviously you've done all your preliminary training, but
now you know, they're the the counterinsurgency was building, they
were their tactics were evolving. Is there a moment where
you guys, obviously you're getting turnover feedback from the other
Marines that are operating the other Army units. Did you

(01:12:46):
guys have to alter or change tactics or learn something
new on the ground.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Yeah, completely different set of work up that we did.
We did like a two week course at March Air
Force Base where we we had opt for living in
like an abandoned part of the base housing and we
were going to go in and patrol and we lived
for like a week and a half with these guys
with sim rounds, kind of almost simulating exactly what we

(01:13:15):
were going to be doing. That's cool, Yeah, I thought, well,
and that's the MEW. The Meal was very locked on
with that, you know. The leadership in the MEU was like, Hey,
we're gonna not send these guys back to another Cold
War iteration where they're gonna learn something that they're not.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
Going to use.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
And so right before we left, we were at March
Air Force Base and we did that training cycle and
that was extremely helpful and like individually personally getting ready,
like everyone kind of handled it different. In my o pplatoon,
we did have two Marines who uh went you way,
you know, they they checked out, you know, and so

(01:13:53):
like like I said, it is always a choice. It's
always kind of that choice. It's not just it's not
like once you're graduate way to boot camp, like you
still got to choose to be that marine that you're
supposed to be and not be kind of that that
other marine.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
Why was it like getting like new guys in now
and how many how many guys that you know had
an actual combat pomp and then what was it like
with the new guys and that integration?

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
Uh, conflictual, A lot of conflict those coming in because
there was a lot of ego involved once you're a
combat veteran, and the corporals and sergeants, Yeah, they were
God's gift to the infantry, you know, and you knew
guys who are coming in You don't know Jack squat
because you haven't been in one day of a firefight

(01:14:42):
and then you know, six months of a camping trip.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
So there was a lot of that. We did get
in trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
You know, there were guys who got brought up on
charges for hazing and that iteration the one I showed
up in. No one ever got brought up on charges,
but that second at one there was some definitely I
would I would call it inappropriate stuff going on as well,
and so that was handled accordingly, you know. And uh,

(01:15:10):
but yeah, the new guys coming in, they were scared
at first, and then after a while they just they
just were in the suck long enough, Like this sucks,
and we're all here together, right, Like you got the
right idea, did so, And that's.

Speaker 1 (01:15:23):
Such a critical piece of something to learn in your life, right,
Like we all have this natural propensity under that duress
in the suck, like we just it's just natural to
want to bitch and moan.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
It's just we're you know, I mean, we're human beings.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
But like the guy that gets it first, like to
look at the dudes around you and be like, all right,
that's a hard motherfucker right there. I'm gonna just mimic him, right,
I'm gonna just do what he does. I'm gonna, you know,
if I see him do something, I'm And it's like
learning that early as a new guy is so valuable

(01:16:02):
in anything you do, right and any working for any
business or any whatever. Like you you see, all right,
what's the best way as a person who doesn't know
anything to gain the respect of others by doing what
I'm told?

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
Not bitching, not making.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
It worse, not making it more problematic, but just like
solid commitment to whatever it is that you need me
to do, I'm here to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
Yeah, And we were really fortunate our platoon sergeant stayed
as the platoon sergeant for those two deployments, and so
he he was a constant, stoic presence, you know, even
when we changed commanders, so we got a new lieutenant,
you know, we had the same gunnery sergeant and it
was just a very appropriate man to be put in

(01:16:52):
that job. And he prepared his platoon as best as
he could and he did a fine job doing it.
And then yeah, there was always someone there to look
up to, you know. And when I was either a
PFC or a lance corporal or even a corporal, there
was like a gunnery sergeant who I could go, well,
I can just mimic that guy and what you see

(01:17:13):
with my squad, and that's that's good to go.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
That's cool. All right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
Talk about your own personal experience now in that second deployment,
because this is deployment. You were injured, So why don't
you why don't you take us through like a few
weeks before then then the op you got injured and
then we'll go from there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
So I got married in between deployments.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Oh shit, congratulations, man.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
I went to Florida on A ninety six and met
my wife down there with a battle buddy of mine
who was from the Pensacola area. Yeah, because on a
ninety six you can't go from campbells Chooon to Salt Lake.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
And now back then, he I think I.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
Married a girl from down there, and she was pregnant
with my son, and so I had that going through
my head and I was actually really concerned about it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
One of the reasons we got married in the courthouse
outside Campbell's units because we had planned a wedding in Pensacola,
but Lance Corporal shouldn't have planned ship because that that
schedule got moved up, you know, and wedding got canceled.
And I was like, well, if something does happen, I
want to make sure that my child is taken care of.

(01:18:28):
Let's just get this legal on the books and then
we'll work it out later, you know. Yeah. Yeah, And
so that was there, and then that's.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
A massive that's a massive thing, Like it's difficult for
people you're you're living such a transitory life as is
so finding roots being in one place, your your your
family is your teammates, and the whole your whole focus,
like your whole world is relative to that. And and

(01:18:57):
then all of a sudden you bring like how old
was your wife.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
At the time. She's nineteen year twenty one at the time. Right,
she's pregnant. You've got one combat.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
Deployment under your belt, and you're fixing to get ready
to go get another one. Like you guys are kids,
man like literal kids dealing with the most extreme life
circumstances that exist.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Talk a little bit about.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
How you were managing that together and then independently.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
Yeah, so together.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
We were actually introduced by my buddy, right, and his
fiance who he got married to, was my wife's best friend,
and so we had kind of a community to lean
on as well. And then where I'm from, Salt Lake City, Utah, marriage, young,
star family, young is the expectation. I'm not LDS. I

(01:19:59):
was actually as Catholic, but like it's still is kind
of like the expectation.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
It should be the expectation everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
I mean, God, if we could go back to that,
we would reduce so many of the problems that we had.

Speaker 3 (01:20:11):
Agreed and so we were handling it as best we could.
You know, my wife was very dependent on her mother,
like she was still nineteen years old, and they they
were they were from Pensacola, so they're they're they're not
they're in the loop with the military to a certain right,
like they understand the game. And so they understood like, Okay,

(01:20:33):
let's let's make sure she's taken care of. And and
she was, and so her family I'm very grateful to.
And then my family was very supportive as well, Like
my father was very patriotic and he was very proud
of my service. And my mother, even though she didn't
agree with it and was heartbroken, she was very supportive

(01:20:54):
of me starting a family as well.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
She liked that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
And and in my mind I kind of was like, well, yeah,
why not. You know what I'm saying, like, I'll start
a family and then I'll go, you know, maybe possibly
get killed in combat.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Well yeah, and that's the thing, like that's the thing
that people are like, like you did what, like, like, hell, yeah,
let's go do I mean, you you're all your attention
should be on being a marine and staying alive. But
what people don't realize, right, there's there's a texture of
life that exists when your life is is when you're

(01:21:33):
living a culture of death. Yeah right right, and that
and that texture is is fragile.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
You don't know how much you got, you don't know
how long it's going to last.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):
So meeting somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Falling in love wanting to have a child, like, it's like, no,
I want to get after this because I don't know
in a year from now if I'm even going to
be here. And and I think people like people, you know,
there's always the funny memes about you know, young Marines,
you know, going to the strip club and getting married

(01:22:12):
and you know, getting the new vehicle and buying the
house and then they have nothing when they get so
you know that's all. But the reality is there's a
sense of urgency to live life to its fullest that
kind of governs this behavior a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Don't you think.

Speaker 3 (01:22:28):
I'd agree with that one hundred percent? And that's what
I wanted to get married. I wanted to have children,
and I thought, okay, I might have an opportunity to
do it with this beautiful girl who who was attracted
to me as well at the time, and she still is.
We're still married, by the way, So we were one
of the few that made it through that, you know,
and there's plenty of other stories, but she was she

(01:22:50):
was a rock when I got wounded. She was a great,
great wife to have, great partner through all of that.
But yeah, so managing was just kind of like, hey,
I want to make sure on my end, like legally
your guild, Like I know my mom and dad are
going to do the right thing regardless. You know, they're

(01:23:10):
good people. They're not going to be like, oh, our grandsons,
you know, nothing to do with us or nothing. Yeah, yeah,
Kia or whatever. That's not who my parents are at
by any means. But I still wanted to make sure, okay, legally,
like just for her sake and for my child's sake,
they understand, like this is what I wanted, you know
what I'm saying. So we handled that and adapting. My

(01:23:34):
wife is great at adapting, because, like you tell a
nineteen year old girl, had cancel your wedding plans on
the phone because I'm gonna be leaving for Iraq a
month sooner, and they can't. They could maybe take off
at that point in time, and she just said, Nope,
we're gonna We're gonna go ahead, and we're gonna go
through with this, and we're gonna get it done. She
was a rock star and her friend they would put

(01:23:56):
together caier packages for the whole platoon for us, you know,
so when we're there for Christmas, they send everybody Christmas
socks and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
So they were rock stars in their own.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
I mean that's a whole nother thing too. I mean,
imagine being a young nineteen year old woman who's pregnant,
freshly married, and your husband goes to the most dangerous
place in the world as a marine into combat in Iraq.
I mean the magnitude of the the cop not confidence,

(01:24:30):
what is it. It's it's dedication. I agreed to make
sure that not only you, but your your platoon mats
know you're gonna be cared for, know that people are
praying for you, Know that your loved know that she's
not going anywhere, know that she's all in. Like that's
got to be like, does it counterbalance the fear of

(01:24:53):
having a child in her at home and going to
comment knowing that she's all in that back at home.
Is it almost make you Does it almost make you
more focused, more dedicated when you're downrange?

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
I would say it does.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
It gives you that something to fight for, and that's
something after my injury, I definitely learned, you know. And
like I said, she would put together care packages. So
you're talking about a nineteen year old girl, barefoot and
pregnant walking into the Comenia store and buying like ten
patches of Copenhangen long cut or or Redman. The red

(01:25:29):
Man long cut is what I liked, and so I'd
send her a letter like, hey, send me more Redman
long cut, and she's like, they stare at me so
badly because I'm pregnant and I'm buying all this red
Man long cut, and I'm just like, you know, So
it definitely it gives you that that energy. I think
for sure there's something with that energy there and and

(01:25:52):
maybe it's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine,
you know, maybe some guys better off being alone, and
that's how they that war fighter mentality is there. For me,
it was always motivating to have a family that I
was fighting for.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Oh that's cool, that's beautiful, that's America, right, there before
we finished that whole thing, before you go to the
deployment on your second deployment. Let's I just want to
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Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
Let's get to business.

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(01:28:09):
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Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
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Speaker 2 (01:29:25):
Go get it done. Thank you, Hillsdale, Love you. All right,
take us.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
Through going over you know, the few weeks leading up
to where you got injured, and then walk us through
that experience if you could.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
Yeah, So we were.

Speaker 3 (01:29:39):
We were in the Triangle of Death there near iskandarea
and Musaib just south of Baghdad, doing a lot of
work on the main highway, highway one that runs between
Vasra and Baghdad, and doing a lot of I D
counter ied E stuff like that, and so the I

(01:30:00):
was getting pretty good at being outside the wire because
I was a Ford observer. I had had one combat
deployment under my belt, and the lieutenant liked to have
me around because I could fix the radio, you know,
and I knew how to talk on it. So like
he kept me out there as much as he could.
And we were doing patrol based stuff. And then as

(01:30:22):
we were starting to step off, we were actually had
we had National Guard unit there, the advanced party was there.
We were getting already hand off, so we were doing
like joint patrols with these National Guard guys, telling them, hey,
this is a bad alley, this is a bad street,
doing that stuff. And I was spending more time on
the fob at this point. And this fob iscandarea for
an operating basis which was on a power plant right

(01:30:45):
on the Euphrates River, and we got mortered there probably
twice a week the whole time we were there, so
we got very complacent, unfortunately with the mortar attacks.

Speaker 2 (01:30:56):
And so I was.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
On the fob and our tents had a hesto barriers
around them, and essentially what I was doing was I
was getting ready to come home, so I was done
off the highway. We weren't at a patrol base in town.
We were on the fob, just kind of doing security
or in and around the fob, and I was working

(01:31:17):
out at the gym, bulking up to come home, actually
trying to put back on some muscle mass. So when
I came home, the wife would get pressed, right, and
so like I was spending you know, an hour in
the little base gym they had there at the fob,
which wasn't it wasn't fancy or anything, but you know,
marines like we're gonna find stuff to lift heavy and
grunt and do all that stuff. And then one day

(01:31:41):
we got hit with a mortar attack right on top
of us, and I initially thought it was outgoing. So
we were kitty corner from the artillery pause, and I
thought they were shooting just outgoing, which happened as well,
you know. And so that's when I was hit with
that mortar inside the tent.

Speaker 2 (01:31:59):
It was midday and I had just got off the
phone from because we had phone banks on that fob
as well. I had just got off the phone with
my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
Oh wow, So literally you hang up like you turn around,
detonates and then what'd you take? It was just shrapmill?
Did you did you get hit by the blast?

Speaker 3 (01:32:20):
What I was I was back in the tent napping
when it hit. I was probably like twenty thirty minutes
after the phone conversation, and I was getting ready, I
was taken. I was on rack ops to do night
patrols around the fob, right, so I'm getting my sleep
in now. And so I was racked out, just in
my skivvy shorts, all my stuff right next to me,

(01:32:40):
and we had the red like they were like ten
metal racks that were in in and the plywood floors
and the white tents that they would soak in with
kerosene to keep the dust out as well. Yeah, yeah,
and then we had these uh uh like LG air
conditioning units that they put on boards and up and
put in the tents, which were decent. But yeah, the

(01:33:04):
incoming came and it hit across the street first, and
so it woke me up. And then my sergeant from
my fire support team came in the tent and he
just told everybody, Hey, they're right on top of us.
Get in the bunkers if you can. I rolled out
of the rack and had done just enough time to
grab a flak and the kevlar and kind of pull

(01:33:26):
it over the top of me. And then it just
felt like I got.

Speaker 2 (01:33:28):
Hit with a semi truck. After that, Wow, And I
was out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:32):
For at least at least a minute, and I came
to and I don't really know how I first got
initially on my feet, but I was on my feet
and I was on fire.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
So this left side was on fire, my whole left side.

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
And my sergeant was putting me out with his hands
and he just he said, she said to me, stop
dropping roll as we were next to the tent hatch,
and so I stopped, dropped, rolled out the tent hatch,
rolled myself out, and I was still in a lot
of shock at that point. So I had taken shrapnel.
I had a collapse right long. This arm is fused fully,
so like it was kind of just hanging there.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
Oh my god, I had.

Speaker 3 (01:34:11):
Blown it kind of out, like I'm missing like twenty
percent of the elbow joint that's now just kind of
like a matted bunch of a bone. And so I
was there in the tent kind of bleeding out and
dying at that moment in time, and still in shock.
And my sergeant, who was hit but not as severely
as me, he was able to run and go to
the talk or the headquarters right and he takes off

(01:34:35):
that direction towards a building when we're in a tense city.
So we're intense, that are in a row right before
everybody understands I know you understand, David, but like we're intense,
and they have these hescal barriers around us, and the
mortar actually hit the top of the heschal barrier of
my tan, so I was definitely within. There was one
hundred and twenty millimeter mortar. Oh God, which this this

(01:34:57):
is morbid joke. I tell everybody I have a mortar trifecta, David,
because I fired eighty one's on my first deployment in
the Battle of Azuri. I fired sixties on that second
performament at a mosque actually off the campa, and then
I got hit with the one twenty, So I got
the trifecta.

Speaker 2 (01:35:15):
Obmutely.

Speaker 1 (01:35:18):
I would have liked if you had been on an
artillery unit for the third going out, but I guess
take taking one is definitely put you at the top
of that list. Brother, good God, all right, tell me
about uh getting treated Tree Hodge, the medics that saved
your life.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
Tell me about those guys.

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
And so I was behind that tent and it was
just me by myself there. I come to my feet
I pull I remember pulling myself up on the wire
of the Hesco barrier and walking to the next tent
over in the in the row there and there I
actually did lay down on a rack and I started
saying prayers. I started praying. I like I said, I
was a Catholic kid, grew up and saw Lake City.

(01:36:00):
I started saying prayers. I was taught then. And then
that's when the shock trying of like went away completely.
I was in pain at that point in time, like
the shock hadn't mitigated the pain. But that's when the
shock kind of like went away, and just something came
over me that said, you're not dead. Go get out
of this tent. That's going to be on fire.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
Soon.

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
That tent burned down too, and so I walked out,
and when I was walking on the bottom of my feet,
the skin was peeling off on the plywood floorboard, and
I remember that just being the most painful part of
that experience. And I walk out the front of that
tent hatch and my first sergeant is there in kit
in in kevlar flak, and he's looking at me and

(01:36:45):
in shorts, and his first instinct he told me this
when I was in the hospital he came visiting. My
first instinct was to chew your ass out, you know, because.

Speaker 2 (01:36:53):
You're not in your gear.

Speaker 3 (01:36:55):
And then he did a double take on me and
realized skin was falling off on my body. They did,
they called like the chair carry him, and Orman did
the chair carry. It felt like they threw me in
the back of the humby pretty rough, but you know,
no whatever, we needed to get me to help. And
so I remember riding in the humbie and telling my

(01:37:16):
first sergeant and first start wooting. If you're listening, I
love you, brother, and he was telling me you're gonna
make it. You're gonna be okay. And I was just
telling him, just tell my son, I love him, Tell
my son, I'm proud of him, you know, and he's
just he was calming me down, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
As a good leader should.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
And he probably didn't have any clue, you know, he
didn't know if I was gonna make it or not.
He didn't know about the Golden Hour, he didn't know
about the cash and the hospital opened Bagdad and all
those amazing people who did save my life surgery after surgery,
after this, you know, but I remember being rushed to
the fob kind of aid station there, and that's when

(01:37:55):
they put the tinfoil blanket over me and they gave
me my first shot of morphine.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):
And I really down after that, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:38:01):
Was just kind of like listening to the radio, like, Hey,
where's the helicopter at Doc? And Doc's just kind of dude,
you're wild, you know, like you're crazy, dude, Like I
hope you make it grift, like you know. And so
I remember being pulled on the stretcher and the helicopter landing.
They loaded us into that thing, and I remember flying
up to Baghdad and the crew chief was really good

(01:38:22):
to me because I I wanted to see Baghdad. So
because I'd always been in the South for my two deployments,
I never actually got up to the Bagdad and there
was always the stories of the Green Zone and all
this other stuff, and guys would get you know, hey,
we need twelve marines to go be security for this
convoy to Bagdad, and I'm like, oh, I want to
go in. The Lieutenant's like no, my Artsyo staying here

(01:38:44):
with me.

Speaker 2 (01:38:45):
You know, he's not going anywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:38:46):
And the one time I actually did get to kind
of maybe possibly go.

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
It got canceled, of course, and.

Speaker 3 (01:38:51):
I sat slat in the back of a seven coron
on the file and so like he's sitting there calling
out minutes, you know, five minutes, three minutes, two minutes,
and then I look up and he just kind of
looks at me, and he's like he moves out the
way and he goes, that's what you want to look.
And it's the dome, you know, and across swords and stuff,
and I'm like, thanks, I'm jack.

Speaker 2 (01:39:12):
I almost had to die to see it, but I'm here.
I'm good.

Speaker 3 (01:39:15):
And then they landed and carried me into that hospital.
I remember that, and they asked me, you know, name,
ranked blood type, and I was out after that they
used Yeah, I was induced for twelve days, I think twelve,
my god, and I woke up at Brooke Army Medical
Center in San Antonio, Texas. But I had been transplanted,

(01:39:38):
transported from Baghdad through Germany, through.

Speaker 2 (01:39:42):
Bethesda, and then to San Antonio.

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
All right, look, how many surgeries did you get in
bag Dad? Did you get any in Germany? And then
how many in in in uh San Antonio?

Speaker 3 (01:39:53):
So twenty seven total is what I call definitely, about
half doesn't life saving ones. They're in Baghdad, where off
for a minute, and they so I have a spa
right here, which is called a cardiac window where they
drill a hole and then they start your heart directly
with the stuff right on top of the heart. So ye,

(01:40:17):
lots of good people in that system. That saved my butt.
And I never even got to thank him, you know,
because they I was in a coma. And so then
a few.

Speaker 2 (01:40:27):
More surgeries in Germany. There's really like stabilization stuff for
the travel. Yeah, and then like twenty and Burka Medical Center.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
Most mostly that was with the arm. They did a
couple of these. A Colonel Hidach down there. I don't
know if he's you know, I don't keep travling him,
but he was a great orthopedic experiencon down there. I
got a great story with him. And then a lot
of the burn scars was handled as well. So I'm
burned and about thirty two, about half of that is

(01:40:58):
what they call full thickness, which is down my lower
extremity on my left side. The calf got burnt off
to like all the flesh all the way. That's what
full thickness, So yeah, yeahness which is being burned to
the bone, and so like about fifteen percent of my

(01:41:19):
lower extremity, well my lower extremity, about fifteen percent of
my body had that. And so that's what they took
care of at brog Army Medical Center. And like I said,
the orthopedics there great people there as well. You know,
I got to see my son the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
Was So that's the whole other thing that I has
been just going through my mind, is you get hit,
how soon does your wife find out where was she
in the pregnancy? And then you know that reunion when
you came out of the coma.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
Just describe that a little bit for us.

Speaker 3 (01:41:54):
So my son was born November and I was wounded January,
so he was born November when I was there, and
I vividly remember it because I got the word and
I smoked cigars with my boys on the checkpoint on
Tampa and then she was told she was actually she
was at Campbell June. So she was getting ready for
me to come back because we were like it was

(01:42:15):
like a week left, you know, And so we were
preparing to live to a married couple off base next
door to our friends who were also going to live
off base next to us, and so she was preparing.
She was actually at the Dollar General there in Jacksonville,
North Carolina, with her best friend, my buddy's wife at
the time. Grateful she was with her because she did

(01:42:38):
get the call and it was hard for her to
take and so she was grateful. And my son was
already he was like two three months old, and so
she was able to give my son to her best
friend and kind of just handle that that she was
being told by the officers at that point in time.
And that's when things really started moving for her.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
Uh you know.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
She she had never flown a whole lot, and then
she was gonna fly from Chicago to San Antonio and
with a three month old baby, you know. And and
so she she was getting flown to where I was
going to be at and handled them that way, and
so was my father. My father got very close in

(01:43:23):
that moment, so he had he had My cousin was
actually in the Marine Corps at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:43:29):
He was in Ramadi.

Speaker 3 (01:43:30):
He was a lieutenant colonel, and he was telling my
father stuff he wasn't really supposed to be telling him
at the time, and so my dad was very well
prepared and he kind of, I don't want to say
feather to nest, but he made sure my wife was
taken care of.

Speaker 2 (01:43:46):
That's awesome, and.

Speaker 3 (01:43:47):
So that that's how she her. Her route kind of
was chaotic with that, but everyone wanted to help her,
and there was we had a very close knit community
around us. But she was in campus June. My son
was three months old. You know, we were getting ready
for a big homecoming, and uh it was a big homecoming,
just not the one we planned.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
No, I can't imagine what that's like.

Speaker 1 (01:44:12):
You know, obviously I've I've had a lot of friends
that have gotten busted up pretty good and and a
bunch that are dead.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):
But it's that, you know, it's the what is it?
It's the reality of.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
It's the reality of how fragile life is, right.

Speaker 2 (01:44:36):
And that you can't deny it. You have to live
in it, you have to sit in it. And and
then especially for your wife, here she is showing up
at your bedside and you've got a recovery. I mean,
this is not gonna be quick.

Speaker 1 (01:44:50):
It's not like and you're gonna have permanent, you know,
challenges basically, So it's like processing all of that together.
What were the ways that your family worked together to
get through that, to help you get through it, and
that the military helped you.

Speaker 3 (01:45:10):
Yeah, so the military they did an excellent job of getting.

Speaker 2 (01:45:14):
Me alive and home and then.

Speaker 3 (01:45:19):
Extended because I was at the end of my four
year contract actually, so they extended my contract so I
could finish my PTEAM, my physical therapy and stuff. And
Brooke Army Brooke Army Medical Center is actually it's probably
the best military hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
But maybe I'm biased, you know what I'm saying. Oh,
I agree, They're phenomenal absolutely down there.

Speaker 3 (01:45:41):
So I can't have enough good things to say about
the people down there and everything that they did.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
They were very kind to my.

Speaker 3 (01:45:47):
Wife, you know, and it's a functioning army base down
there as well. And so back then too, in two
thousand and five, there was a lot of attention being
erected towards us, you know, and so so my wife,
who had kind of not been you know, she wasn't
the homecoming queen or anything like that. She wasn't really

(01:46:10):
suited to take the attention. She she kind of passed
the buck onto my dad, who handled it very well.

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
And could be like, hey, it's time to go.

Speaker 3 (01:46:20):
These people need their privacy, and he kind of just
became that gatekeeper to her, taking care of my son
and also taking care of me and herself.

Speaker 2 (01:46:32):
You know, because that's big too.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
I mean, here, you you've committed to this other person
and now there you don't know what the future.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
Is going to be with them in your health.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
I mean, it's it's it's all these unknowns that are
really the profound impacts of war, you know, is is
you know, yes, it's the deployments, it's the training cycles,
but it's the real impacts of war. It's being injured,
you know, in an almost catastrophe like way. It's it's
coming around from that, managing that, and then and then

(01:47:05):
it's like, all right, what's next with my life? So
how did you guys make that decision? What what was
the process of going all right, that's enough, I'm done,
and and now we're gonna go move here, we're gonna
do this and and then start living life. Post Marine

(01:47:25):
Corps describe a little bit of that for us.

Speaker 3 (01:47:28):
Yeah, so in the hospital there, she she really did
take lead and taking care of the family, and it
was just like my job just to heal, and so
she she continued to lead in that that regard, you know,
and like you're saying the cost of war, and not
to toot my wife's horn, but it should be tootored

(01:47:48):
a little bit because she she was wrapping bandages over
my burn scars from war, and she she paid very
close attention on how to do that because the doctors
were like, hey, you can't do this wrong because this
could cause an infection.

Speaker 2 (01:48:03):
And she was very, very close and very.

Speaker 3 (01:48:06):
Intense with making sure I was going to be able
to heal appropriately when she never signed up for any
of that, right.

Speaker 2 (01:48:13):
And so.

Speaker 3 (01:48:15):
Me being from Utah, I I was thinking, well, maybe
we go back to Salt Lake, but I didn't really
want to. Like one of the things that attracted me
to the Marine Corps was bases were in California and
North Carolina or Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (01:48:27):
They weren't in winter states, right.

Speaker 3 (01:48:30):
And so my wife was from Florida, Pensacola, and she
had been so good to me. I kind of thought, well,
let's let's lean into this and let's move to Pensacola
near her family, you know. And it worked out well
because her family was very like they're clued in on
the game, right, Like they're they live in and around
Pensacola Naval Air Station, so they they're they're not like

(01:48:53):
foreign to military stuff at all. And so I also
was I was on I wasn't ever on the fence.
I'm on the fence of It's maybe my biggest regret, David,
is that I didn't try harder to stay in the
military in doing a job that I could do because
I was offered those things. I was told, hey, we'll

(01:49:14):
find a place for you. The Marine Corps still values you.
We'll find a place for you. And I told those people, well,
I'm going to go to college. And I could have
went to college whenever. You know, That's it's one of
my things I tell I tell my my family and
my friends. It's like I I kind of wish I
would have been like, no, wait, this isn't done yet,
or if you're not done here, you can go to

(01:49:36):
college whenever. And so that was part of my decision
making process too, was like, hey, there's a nice college
down there in Pensacola. I have in laws and a
wife and this new life, and so I'm gonna lean
into that part of this and kind of close that
chapter of the Marine Corps, which, like I said, it's
probably my biggest regret.

Speaker 1 (01:49:57):
Yeah, I feel I feel a lot of that too,
Like I I ended before, I think I should have ended,
and yeah, I battled that. That's why I kind of
chased it with Blackwater and the agency after and all
that for sure, But you know, as a kid, you're
so young and you're not sure, and you know you
just like, well, I got to make the right decision

(01:50:19):
for my.

Speaker 2 (01:50:19):
Wife and kid, and so you do that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:24):
Talk to talk to me a little bit about your transition,
because obviously that regret in there a little bit. What
was that like and how long did it take you
to get to where you're like, Nope, I'm good, that's
that's my past. That's good. I'm proud I did the
right thing. I mean, you're four and a half, your
five years in the military. It's probably some of the

(01:50:48):
heaviest things I've heard. I mean, there was no waiting
around to get after it. Man, you got into it,
and you got into it quick. And so how long
did it take to get to that place where you're like,
all right, I'm ready to move into this next full
chapter of my life?

Speaker 2 (01:51:05):
Oh uh? Well last he was years. It was years.
It was years.

Speaker 3 (01:51:12):
So I really did lean into like the college and
and thinking, Okay, I'm going to be a college student now.

Speaker 2 (01:51:20):
And when I was wounded, I was. I was.

Speaker 3 (01:51:23):
It wasn't a moral wound, but it was a mental
wound to a certain extent too, where I thought, I'm
not this infantry gun ho guy that I was, and
my physicality suffered because of it. I did not invest
in my own health and my own physicality like I
thought I should have, or like I think I should
have now, Like I regret that part a little bit too,

(01:51:44):
and not being as physically fit as I possibly could
have been as a as a wounded guy in those
first couple of years, you know. And I struggled with
that for a minute. You know, I gained a lot
of weight, I started drinking heavily. I was in a
college environment. Marriage troubles cropped up, you know what I'm saying.
And I went through all of that. So I mean

(01:52:06):
I wasn't So I gave myself to Jesus in twenty twelve.
That's probably where I actually came to full realization, like, hey,
you need to put this in the past and you're
a new person.

Speaker 2 (01:52:20):
You're the same person, but like you know, you have
the experiences. But what got you don't want to be saved?
What was the thing?

Speaker 4 (01:52:28):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:52:28):
So I grew up Catholic, and I was always still
I was kind of dogmatic Christian, you know, as a Catholic,
and I was living in Pensacola, which is a very
different kind of culture down there, and so my son's
kindergarten teacher had actually invited us to go to a
Baptist church. And I started. I was I was reading

(01:52:51):
and I was studying history. I first started one. I
first wanted electrical engineering, which was not what I should
have been doing, and then I chose history. And then
I found religion in kind of a more scholastic sense
too in that point where I was studying in college.
But also now this Bible study thing that's evangelical different

(01:53:12):
from me was there. And so I made that decision
to get baptized in twenty twelve, actually after my wife did.
She was never baptized down there initially, and so she
stepped forward first and then I got baptized after that.
In my heart, I think I really chose to be
a follower of Jesus a long time ago, you know,

(01:53:33):
when I was a child, probably, but we all ebb
and flow right a little bit, and I chased war,
you know, and I chased that to a certain extent.
But yeah, so I wanted to be a better man
for my wife and my son, and I seen, like
we talked about earlier, imitating these better men, whether they're

(01:53:54):
gunnery startants in the Marine Corps or whether deacons at
the Baptist.

Speaker 2 (01:53:58):
Church Vietnam vetter and some of them. You know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:54:01):
I see those guys, I go there's something there that
I'm missing, and that's when I chose to give my
life to Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):
Dude.

Speaker 1 (01:54:09):
That's beautiful, man, Thanks for sharing that. All right, Well,
we'll wrap it up a little bit here. So last
two questions. Yeah, first and foremost, what is what are
some of the most significant significant things you took away
from what the Marine Corps turned you into and shaped
you into as a man. And then what are the

(01:54:30):
things you learned about that brotherhood and what makes it
so so so strong and so so much.

Speaker 2 (01:54:39):
A part of what the core is.

Speaker 3 (01:54:43):
It's discipline, first of like, first and foremost marines have
to be disciplined to be a marine, you know, and
not giving up. Like if I get knocked down ten times,
I'm going to get up eleven, you know what I'm saying.
So I'm going to get up every time until there's
no more breath in my lungs. And literally had a
right line collapse, I still had a left one, and
I'm still gonna get up. I'm still gonna do what

(01:55:05):
I need to do in m be in that fight.
And so that that changed me a lot from I
even see in.

Speaker 2 (01:55:12):
My peer group the kids I grew up with.

Speaker 3 (01:55:14):
You know, and the men they are now. And I
don't want to, like, you know, shame them in any ways.
But I often told my wife, like, if I was
never a marine, I would never even talk to you know,
I would have never had that confidence in me doing
the things I need to do. And that's that discipline,
right when no one's watching, and then I can have

(01:55:35):
the confidence to put my name forward to hey, please
have a baby with me and let's start a family
and stuff like that, or you know, whatever it is.
Let me go to the college professor and be like, hey,
this paper is good. You read it, and e those
in the trash and I can go write another one
without being help or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
All right, last question, last question, Uh, what happens if
your son comes to you and says, Dad, I want
to be a marine.

Speaker 3 (01:56:05):
I will encourage him to look at the army because
there's a lot more options, you know, for him, and
I would be very proud if he chose any service
to me, blunt, and we've talked about the National Guard.
He's talked about it a little bit with me. I
think it's a great option for him if he wanted

(01:56:26):
to do that. You know, my grandfather was Navy, my
dad was Army. I was the Marine, and so if
he went back to the Army, it wouldn't hurt my
feelings too much and we could keep our dollar bet
we have on the Army Navy game going and stuff
like that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:41):
So yeah, I would be I would be overjoyed with pride. Pride.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
That's awesome, Uh, Griff, I can't thank you enough, man,
Quite honestly, it's one of my favorite interviews I've ever done.
I've done a lot of them too, man, and I
just I think you represent what the epitome of a

(01:57:08):
marine is. And I think the way you're able to
articulate not only your experiences, but the impact of what
the Corps did for you, what it provided for you
and your family, even though he almost got killed. It
is an honorable way with which you represent the Marine Corps.

(01:57:29):
And I'm just I'm really grateful that you were willing
to come on and share your stories with us.

Speaker 3 (01:57:36):
I appreciate it, David, and thank you so much for
the time. And I'm not perfect, you know, no one is.
And can I plug my book real quick for it? Yeah,
one hundred percent Mormon Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:57:47):
It is available on Amazon.

Speaker 3 (01:57:49):
A really good veteran army guy, Vincent Bargas, turned me
on to Amazon KDP. I got into writing when I
was in college.

Speaker 2 (01:57:57):
This is this is really good.

Speaker 3 (01:57:59):
I spent a lot of time writing it, and I
spent a lot of money getting it edited as well.

Speaker 2 (01:58:04):
And so please go check it out, go read it.

Speaker 3 (01:58:06):
It is not a memoir, but it is an Iraq
war story based on my experiences, and there might be
some you know, transhumor in there for everybody. I enjoy it.
But thank you so much, David. Thank you for what
you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
Yeah, God bless you brother. Likewise,

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