November 14, 2023 • 46 mins
Florent Groberg joins The Good Stuff podcast to tell his story of growing up in another country before coming to the United States, serving in the military and being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome with the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Jacob Schick and I'm joined by my co host
and wife, Ashley Shick.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter. We work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy. At
One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
to share with us the lessons they've learned that shape
who they are and what they're doing to pay it
forward and give back.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest's journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Today, our guest is Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Floren Groberg.
This is a story about patriotism. He's here to tell
us about his childhood in France, his family history in Algeria,
moving to Chicago as a young kid and eventually becoming
a United States citizen.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
His love of country led him to joining the army
after nine to eleven. This episode is important to us
because we want people to understand that the Medal of
Honor recipients are real people. Also, he's held in high
regard around the world because of that medal. But today
we talk to him about who he really is. His
life now, is a husband and father, the eight seconds
of action that changed his life, and what was going
(01:31):
through his mind when President Obama put that medal around
his neck.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
We are so glad he's joining us today, and you
will be too once you hear this interview. This is
an intimate conversation amongst friends, and a swear word or
two might be included.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
We both fought and bled for the right to say
whatever the hell we want, so deal with it.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
In fact, Flora Groberg, so great to have you here
on the good Stuff. We have tried many times to
get you here, and you canceled twice for the two
most legitimate reasons ever, a dinner at the White House
and having your first child. Yeah, so welcome to the
(02:08):
good stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I mean one of those is the most legitimate. It
was good dinner.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Good because I was gonna ask, like, is it everything
that you think it would be? Like first class everything?
And is the furniture comfortable? Is it like warm and inviting?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So I went to the state dinner in December between
obviously this current administration, Biden and please you know Macrone.
I'm French background, so yeah, that's part of the reason
why I was invited. And other than the dinner being
two and a half hours late literally really yeah, yeah,
we didn't start eating around until ten ten fifteen pm.
(02:49):
The reason that happened is because Biden and macnt wanted
to shake everyone and take a picture with every single
guest and all the bs not and that bs but
the crap that bite In takes about being old years old.
I was really surprised that he stood for three plus
hours in the same spot and shook everyone's hand and
(03:11):
I took pictures. You know what I mean, You gotta
admire that. I now at forty, sure as heck, I'm
not doing it. I was like, all right, or we're
gonna go hell a lot faster.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, but going back, I was born in Friends and
my mom is my aunt. So the woman that raised me.
I called mom is my aunt. Her sister had me.
I think she had a fun night or something and things,
you know, did not work out the way she planned it.
But the world was blessed with you. Shit, I got lucky, right,
So my mom adopted me, and you know, for the
(03:44):
first three years, just her and I we lived in
the els Heirs of Paris. She gets so mad at
me when I said ghetto. You know, we live in
the ghetto. Latta is like the French newspapers said that.
Literally after we see the Medal of Honor, one of
the headlines was from the ghetto of Paris to the
White House, right, I was like, that's what they call it,
you see it? Right? It all blame me for this,
(04:06):
But you take a you know, we did a Google
Earth thing and you go to my neighborhood and you
kind of look at the buildings and it's one of
those buildings with like steel doors and bars on windows
and stuff. You're kind of like spits the yeah, demographics
right there. But I loved it. You know, it was
my world. You don't know any better. When you're a kid,
you know, that's what you grew up in. Luckily, she
(04:28):
met this guy named Larry who my stepfather now my
adoptive father, and he was there on business and they
kind of hated it off and over in the next
six seven years it dated right, and he was in
my life and he was amazing, right from Gary, Indiana,
you know, raising Gary lived in Chicago, And one day
(04:49):
when I was about ten, it's seven years in he
asked my mom if she was willing to want marry him,
but also moved to the States, and so they had
to convince me and convinced me. He's so smart. He
got me Nintendo and I was playing Mike Tyes and
Punch Out Best one of the best, one of the
best games of all time. Yeah, And he came to
my ram us playing that game and he asked, hey, flow,
(05:12):
do you like McDonald's. You want to eat McDonald's. I
said it, yeah, and he's like, also, would you like
to meet Michael Jordan? Michael Jordan, you know, because I
mean I wasn't even basketball player, but everyone knew Jeordan
the whole world, right, Michael Jordan. And you know, this
is the nineties, early nineties, that's glory, that was Glory days.
This is like nineteen ninety three. Yea, like this dude
is just one of his first repeat right then. Yeah,
(05:35):
loved to met Michael Jordan's Like, wow, if we moved
to the States, McDonald's the headquarters of it there, Michael
Jordan lives in my city. I said, okay, it sounds good.
Just like that. That was the end. He ran with
it and we were gone. We were gone three weeks later, gone.
So I tell people, I lost my allegiance to my country,
my family, my friends, my school, my sports, everything about me,
my whole identity was just sold for McDonald's and Michael Jordan.
(05:58):
The way there's McDonald's and rents just want to bring
it out there. It's really good too.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, it's two of the biggest franchises ever, right right,
And so yeah, I should go work for McDonald's and
just be like, this is what a great story spoke
something that, Yeah, I would like McDonald's and the Michael
Jordan to take note that not just any dude, yeah,
(06:23):
but a Medal of Honor recipient.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Those aren't just handed out. It's not going to work
with Michael. So President Bush put me in one of
his poetry books, you know, And so I'm in there
I'm in his museum. He paid me and put me
in his museum. And in the book he says that
he's going to figure out a way to contact Michael Jordan,
and it has not happened.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So you moved to Chicago at age eleven.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Tell us about that. What was that like? Culture shock? Shot? Yeah,
one hundred percent culture shock. Moving to Chicago in nineteen
ninety four was a complete culture shock, going from the
city to the suburbs, not speaking the language. Did you
speak any English when you move? Not really? I mean
it's put It gave me a couple of courses before,
but like you know, just like you take Spanish in
school a little bit, and it's totally not my priority
(07:07):
at this time. And I came here and it was
just so different. Everything was bigger, wider, longer. I don't
know how I'll subscribe it. I remember being in this
town home that he lived in and we're there, walked
outside and I couldn't see people, buses, you know, metro, nothing,
(07:27):
It's just houses and quiet. I remember thinking like, this
is creepy. I want to be in a city. But
then it was also peaceful. It was new, so everything
was just kind of cool. Care of like wow, like
all right, let me just explore this. But one of
the things that got me super fired up was when
I saw one of those yellow school buses, because I'd
(07:48):
never seen one in my life before, you know, and
I've been I visited the United States a few times,
you know, usually in a city and for like a
week or two right with him. But now here I
was and that's where I lived. I knew that, and
I saw one of his buses drive by the only
time I've ever seen those buses in movies with TV
shows were Zan and things like that, right, you know
Cosby Show and the movies that we watched. I was like,
oh my god, this is so cool. I got super excited.
(08:10):
Like my dad, it's just like his kid's weird, because
I was like, I don't want to be one of
those things. One day, like everyone's trying to avoid the bus.
I wanted to get in the bus. But I just
thought I was so cool and in the people.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
It was hard to communicate, but as kids, you don't
need words, you just need action. Sports was an easy way.
I was a really good soccer player, and I got
to play with some really good soccer players around and
so that I created a bond, bonding and obviously in track.
But we lived in Chicago for a little bit and
moved to DC. I went to the French International School,
(08:43):
so I was still every day French shot with a
lot of emphasis in English. Obviously, that got kicked out
of that school in eighth grade. Hold on what happened?
I had a racist teacher, you know. And so my
father would help me with my English, you know, on
work and I run an essay and you know, he
would look at it, and but I wrote it and
he would just give me advice. I'm like, well, you
(09:04):
might want to change this tone, you might want to
go through your grammar. So he would help me. But
my uncle had just been killed in North Africa right
before that, in Algeria fighting the GIA terrorist organization, going
to Ga predecessor to Raa Kaita. And my uncle was
a preacher of the Muslim faith. He was an mom
and when the GIA came in with sharer law in
(09:26):
a westernized Muslim country, he decided to that they were
perverting his book and his religion and his beliefs. So
he went and joined the army. He went special operations
there actually got to come to the United States and
be trained with some and had Bragg now liberty, and
he went back and fought for years. In February of
nineteen eighty six, during a ceasefire to observe Ramadon of
(09:49):
all things, his unit was ambush who was shot beheaded.
This member put in a box sense to my grandfather.
And my grandfather was a war hero in Algeria French
andoshin prisoner war for three years and the cattle is
for y'all during independence against the French. So he was
really well known. So they killed his son and then
obviously that to his body and then send it to
him as a message. It only motivated more my uncles
(10:11):
to join the army at that point, just like terrorism
never works, it just motivates the next generation to fight
against that. Yeah, so that just happened, and you're eighth grade,
seventh grade, seventh grade, and my uncle had just been killed.
And this guy gives me a zero in my paper
and he said that cheated zero. Yeah, yeah, he said
(10:32):
at zero instead of cheated. I said, I don't know
how I cheat, but how you cheat on this? Right?
And he said, all your Arabs are this is the same.
So I took a remember it was like desk chairs
connected to each other. Yeah. Yeah, I took one of those,
lifted in and threw it at him, missed him obviously,
for I was scrawny and small and all my strength
in the world to picked that thing up and that
(10:54):
threw it and went like, oh foot. But that's the thought,
get you kicked out. Yeah I got kicked out. But
my mom was like, that sounds great, kick my son out.
But let me go out there and tell all the
diplomats around that this is a racist school.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Years.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I put a hell of a lot of money that
you know, you charge a ton of money into it.
Is not to say that probably wasn't cheap. No, it
wasn't cheap. And my dad moving here, he was you know.
I went from being super poor and nothing to like
live in a normal life and my dad investing quite
a bit of money in my education because I didn't
speak English, right, So anyway, I took the ESAUL test
(11:28):
after that English is the second language, and I went
to till the middle school American school, and I remember
being in school and not speaking the language. So I
had English. I didn't have English. I had Esaul. Today day,
I'm trying to figureut how I made it to class
so English that was my Esaul. So I'm there with
a bunch of like people like me, Hispanic, French, Africans.
(11:49):
You know, this is like it's actually a good number.
But like history, science, math, everything else, it was in English,
like with everybody that probably didn't make it a chant
at all. The thing is, I think that helped really, yeah,
because by the time I was in regular English freshman year,
I was an Honors English sophomore year, and I was
(12:09):
an ap English junior year. Wow. And I think being
forced to learn in that element, I think that helped me.
I don't know how made it through, to be honest
with you, like maybe like they were nice to me
or something. But the only class that I felt really
comfortable in was in Spanish because I spoke Spanish too
at the time, because I lived in Spain for a
little bit of a period of time. So like I was like,
screw all of you, I can speak this language, right,
(12:31):
So me and the other like Hispanic duds were like,
let's go. That led into going into high school sports
and in college. And but when nine to eleven happened,
and I think this is like a kind of to
conclude this piece, this whole transition. I became naturalized as
a seventeen year old, right, So my dad officially adopted me,
so I became his son on paper and everything, and
(12:53):
that made me American right away because I was a minor.
And so in February two thousand and one, I became
a US citizen, and I remember not truly understanding that moment,
but just being happy. I'm like, one of you guys,
Now I'm American officially. But when you fast forward seven
months later and nine to eleven happens, and now you
(13:15):
do the connecting dots in my own mind, which is,
these individuals are the same people that killed my uncle.
So I felt like terrorism was following me, and now
they attacked my mom's side of the house, right, and
now they're attacking my newly adopted country. So as an American,
(13:35):
I felt that it was my responsibility to now join
the military, but also felt that was very personal and
so I mean, how could you not at that point? Especially,
I tell people I had the easiest four years in
college because I didn't really care what I was studying
because I knew exactly what I was going to do
after because nine eleven happened when I was in the
Orient school and I wanted to quit. And he asked
(13:57):
me one single question. He fit, what's the one thing
I asked of you when I give you my name?
I obviously didn't no ideways talking about so he ran.
He reminded me, he said, when a Groelberg starts something,
he or she finishes it because if they quit when
things get tough, they will always find an excuse to
quit everything else that they start. That could be a
job of family, you know, relationships or whatever it is.
(14:20):
So it's like the hard thing for you to do
is get your education right now. And he said something
really valuable. After that, I was like, as we go
to war into this, this is not going to be
a two month, three month thing. This is going to
be a long thing. Because he's his background was in
communications from Motorola and he traveled seven months out of
the year. We didn't see him. He was always on
the road because he would go to these big deals. Well,
(14:43):
he's former army veteran Vietnam one was in a capacity
of working with the agency, and we can get into
that's of fun stuff. And now we have all the
pictures and stuff. He golfed with ben Lan's father. He
knew the King of Morocco and stuff because he was
selling them radio technologies on stuff all around the Middle
East and Asia and South America, and so he had
(15:06):
all these access points he lived. I was so lucky,
like he raised me and he had all these understanding
of like culture and stuff. And so he told me like,
this is something that's been brought for a long time,
and this is not gonna end overnight, so like you're
gonna you're gonna have your opportunity to play in this game.
And so finished school. I said, all right. I was pissed.
But of course he's completely officer in me. First of all,
(15:28):
he's blonding green ice. So really a lot of questions
growing up about that's your dad, Okay, milkman, where are
you at?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah, that's that's I mean, seeing is believing, you know,
I mean, that's it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
We both have great dads too.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, And you know what, man, you probably you know this.
You didn't have a better guy to mantally prepare you
for all of it. And he and clearly knew what
he was talking about had way more of a freaking
understanding than June role population, you know, watching the nine
to five Dad.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
This is the stories he tells me. I won't go
too deep, but I'll give you this sort of a synopsis.
We were sitting at the table, him and I just
chatting and I'll be like, all right, so, like, how
was your trip? He'll say it was good. This time
was a lot better than last time. I said, he
went to Zambia. Right, I was like, oh, what happened
last time? He's like, a little misunderstanding? What's a middle
(16:27):
little misunderstanding? I go bad, like your customer, I'm thinking
of deals, right, I'm thinking like you're customer, didn't like
you're pricing whatever it is. And he's like, I was
sticking pictures of this building. Police came buy and picked
me up, me and my buddy up, threw us in
jail and they called the spies and it took all
our stuff and I was like, uh huh. And he's
like yeah, and there's this guy, you know, just like local,
(16:48):
chained up in the bench next to us, and they
came in and beat the heck out of him, pretty
much killed him. So at that point we realized, like,
we really need to figure out a way to get
the heck out of here. So we saw a priest
and we told him, hey, I'm Larry Groberg. Go to
the US and and let him know, like we're here
and I can come bail us out. He's like, yeah,
in about you know, twelve fourteen hours later, you know
us guy came in and he kind of build us out.
(17:08):
But ha, some really misunderstanding. I said, what do you
mean what do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Right? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I'm like, yeah, what are you talking about? Did you
got thrown in jail for being a spy for taking pictures?
He's like, yeah, we're just taking pictures of a building
where we're gonna put these you know, these radios and
antennas and stuff. I said, something's missing, right, Well, he'll
tell me another story where Africa was, like his fun stories.
I think it was Zimbabwe. There was a curfew. He's like, yeah,
(17:37):
I had a long meeting kind of went past curfew.
So I got my car and drove through and I
saw a checkpoint. I realized, probably not a good idea
to stop at checkpoints. I kind of punched through it
and they shot a couple of rounds of aca at
me and then they chased me. But luckily there was
another guy that did the same thing. They went after
him and I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah,
there's no way. Your story's don't fit. And then the
(17:59):
case was when I was uh, and they moved to
North Carolina and I went into the attic just like
my boxes, and this is kind of funny. That's why
I liked the idea of boxes and learning the story
of your dad or grandpa. And I went into one
of the boxes looking for something and I found an
identification card from Moroccan Jean dal Marie right the police
like National police up there, and is my dad's face
(18:21):
with a different name on it. And I took that
brought it to him. I was like, what is this.
He's like, huh, yes, not d card. I was like, no,
I get that, dude. Why do you have a different name?
Oh yeah, you know they didn't like my name, so
to get on basically, just give me this card. I'm like,
Larry Grosberg is a pretty like easy name, dude, Like,
(18:43):
why do you have like a pretty much French name.
He's like, oh, it's just it just made it a
lot easier. I said, not man. And so when I
went into that world myself after the Army, I realized,
like this guy was doing a little bit more than
what it's to this day, he won't tell me your truth.
I'll figure it out one day.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You'll figure it out eventually.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That's man, that's conviction, though, amazing, this whole old school dude,
that's legit.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
You don't respect that. No, hell no, I wanted to
tell he just smiled, he smirts, and that makes it worse.
This is just total coincidence. And really there's our stories, right,
we have top of one more. This is the best one.
This is the best one. My mom to this day
is incredibly still mad at him because they were going
(19:27):
to Luxembourg. From Paris to Luxembourg for a long weekend.
This is you can't make this ship up. She packed
her bag, he packed his bag, and they went on
the train, right, and my mom went to the bathroom
on the train to Java, and she took her bag
with her. Okay, it was like a pretty sizeable bat,
right because she was she like freshing her up, doing
(19:49):
her makeup again. She left the bag in the bathroom
forgot about it, came back, sat down like ten minutes later.
My dad's like, where's your back and she's like, oh, crap,
I left in the bathroom. Luckily, she went to the
bathroom and still there, picked up the bag. Right, It's
like complete luck. They go through customs, right. She goes
through customs, no issues. He goes through customers, no issues.
(20:09):
They arrive at the hotel, he's like, can I see
your bag for a second, and so she grabs a
bag and then in there he somehow put it, put
it one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and he took
it out and she's like, what the fuck is this lyric?
And he's like, oh, we're doing this business steal and
we have to pay off this third party guy. And
she's like, no, that's great. I don't care about your
(20:31):
illegal activities or whatever the hell you're doing. Why is
it in my bag? He's like, well, I can't cross
customs with a one hundred thousand dollars without declaring it.
And she's like, why is it in my bag?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
You would let me.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
He's like, they're going to check my bag. More likely
they wouldn't check yours. She's like why didn't you tell me.
It's like then you would have been nervous, and if
you would have been nervous going through customs, you would
have checked your bag.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
And I'm like, dude, bro, you are he's some illegal,
real stuff like you were like, that's really all I
did was from Motorola.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, okay, yeah, so yeah, I mean that's common practice.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I like, Larry, so tell us about when you did
make that step to join the military.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It took a couple of years sort of French government
to renounce my friend Citisenship. I didn't realize you couldn't
be as you know, pleasure allegiance to two different countries
and you know, and get a clearance. Yeah, I didn't
know about the stuff. So I went to the fresh
embassy renounced my friend Cisenship. Took a little bit of
time to get that paperwork back, which is probably one
of the suckiest part of my life, because you really
want to do something and you're incapable of doing it
(21:37):
because of a piece of paper. Right, So I sold
voice of IP lines for a sub of Cisco Systems
at the time called e Core Networks and just waited
my time. Right, made a good money made over only
one thousand hours, as like a twenty three year old,
which is like unheard of. Yeah, it was just sales, right,
and I sold this huge deal right in two thousand
(21:58):
and eight thousand, even they with the Embassy of Kowait.
It was like three million dollars and I was gonna
net me like seventy thousand hours of bonus. And the
next day I got a call for my recruit to
come in because you see my paperwork back and now
the army was ready to put me through the board
so I could go off security to school. And so
(22:20):
I went to my job and Michael Berdermini at the
time was the big boss, and I said, hey, I'm resigning,
and he's just like, are you serious, Like you're about
to get paid, dude, Like you're so good at this,
Like you're about to get paid. You know, next month
you're going to get like thirty five k and then
four months later you get the other thirty five k.
He said, that's big money and stuff. And I told
him I was like, ude, I been waiting for two
years for this. I care that about money. I'm twenty
(22:43):
three four years old, Like money is not my objectives.
This is what I want to do. So I quit
that day and they were all shocked because like, no,
one will not take their money, right, No, of course,
and I started training again. You know, I was a
division athlete before and running track from Maryland, and I
needed to get back in to it, and so I
started training and that's what I focused for the next
month and a half before I went to boot of
(23:05):
just getting like into top physical shape.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So which thank guy that you were an athlete before that,
because you had an advantage in how to prepare.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You knew what you had to do. Yeah, no doubt.
That was my full time job. I did side jobs
for a little bit of cash, just to like pay bills,
but I had money anyway, so you know, saved up.
So I did that and I went to Benning one July.
It was hot.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I was about to say, so you went the best
time of year to Georgia. There's no humidity and it's
just it's cold. Yeah, Chili, it's tropical.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It was the best decision I've ever made, making it
from ad one hundred thousand hours making twenty seven thousand hours.
You did it for the paycheck, obviously, I'm sient. I
didn't even get paid. For the first three months, I
didn't know. I did not get paid at all during
basic training. There was a problem in the pay system
with my name, a glitch in the system, imagine that.
But you know I learned something valuable though and Basic.
First of all, people hated me in Basic. I was
(23:58):
the assistant PG and they hated me because every morning
I get up a zero four hundred whenever I will
wake up was obviously I didn't sleep under the covers.
No one did, really, but some did. They were idiots.
But I was fired up every day because every day
I would get out of bed, now just be like
great roll And I would tell these guys like we
get you get ship ready, let's go faster and stuff.
(24:19):
And I would hold them to the standard because I
told him, every day is a theay closer to me
coming to us army soldier. Yeah, and that is real shit.
People are fucking dying. This is not a joke. This
is that summer camp. This is what is this tell
Nate two thousand and eight. Yeah, okay, I mean yeah,
and you'll go through like probably one of the worst
(24:40):
other than three or four right five in Iraq. This
is like becoming like really bad specific in Afghanistan. And
so when I was telling and had friends deployed, and
I said, this is real shit, like every day. We
need to embrace this and learn from what they're teaching us,
because this is Deanna we're going to get. And people
just thought I was I just ran from the crewer
(25:00):
too much. And so things that I did in basic training,
I didn't tell anyone I was going to basic training,
nor my friends. One guy, Matt Sanders, dropped me off
at Maps and that's you want to got innew A
couple of reasons I did that is One, I didn't
want letters. I wanted to focus on on the job. Second,
I sure saw did not want my friends to know
where was at so they would send me this dolls
(25:21):
and stuff to get you. So that was like, you know,
part of that, but I really wanted to focus. Third
is I'm a track athlete and the Olympics were happened
that year in that summer, I didn't want to look
forward to a letter with like times and things like that.
I wanted to just be one hundred percent focused on
this trade. And so I did that, and believe it
or not, that created some the droll instructors. I throw
(25:44):
a walk caught on and then you know how you
do mail call and it throw your mail and stuff.
And I've never got.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Anything in front of God and everybody, right, it's never
one on one like yeah your grandma. Yeah, ever it's
in front of everyone.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And then one they realized, probably week six and seven,
like at the end, they're like, Roberg, you never no
one likes you. You fucking I think everyone here hates
you because you're so mean to them. The reason why
the bear with you because you win every like a
physical competition here and you know that means the team wins.
They don't like you here, and it shus I don't
like you out of here because you never gotten a letter.
(26:21):
And I was like yo, So guys started coming to
me and at night and giving me their letters.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Story.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It was so funny. So actually you know what worked?
Though it worked, it worked, and like you got empathy,
Yeah I didn't care about empathy.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah I know you didn't care about that crap. But
you got to read all this all the I can
only imagine. So we had I can only imagine.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But when I graduated and then I went to a
CS and infantry school Airborne School and en Rangel School.
I tell you what those fifteen sixteen months where so
I'm of the hardest but best moments of my life
because every day I got closer to my objective. Yeah,
that you've been waiting for a lot longer than most
had the way whole life home as I felt like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Let's go ahead and talk about your deployment to Afghanistan
twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So in twenty twelve, my second deployment Afghanistan, I was
in charge of the security detail for at the time
Colonel Mingus who is now the Chairman Joint jesus is
APP Director, And the mission was simple. I selected six
highly qualified individuals across the brigade to run a personal
security detail for him and Cremns Homage Griffin, and we
(27:27):
were going to protect them in Afghanistan and the eastern
part of Aghanistan. We're based in nangarhar At in Jalalabad,
Jabad and we had forty five different now stations across
six provinces. So our stations meaning US or friendly basis
that were part of his ecosystem. And so the job
was simple, it was really awesome. I would coordinate his routes.
(27:49):
I would coordinate with the receiving units his intent, his arrival,
and then I would just work with the birds to
get all the bursts scheduled, and then when it was
going on the ground, I would protect them. So if
we went out out of wire, I would always ask
for twelve to fifteen soldiers at a minimum to escort us,
because my team was designed to protect him and the
Starry Majrix. So meeting, if we went outside of wire
(28:11):
and we got hit, what our job was to do
was to collapse on these folks, on these leaders in essence,
like they really put them to their ground and shield
them with our bodies and then X filled them away
from the threat. And having that element of twelve or
fifteen soldiers really a squad platoon that's halfway sixty, that's
the security to fight the fight so we can successfully extract.
(28:33):
And so that was it, and it was awesome. I
got to see Avihanistan in ways that I never saw
my first tour. I got to sit in meetings with ambassadors,
with politicians, with General Meyville, all the top military officials
form partners. I got to sit in a tri state
boarder meetings with Pakistanis while Afghans and you know Indians, right,
(28:56):
I bet that was interesting. Oh it was amazing, Like
I got to really learn about the mission of Afghanistan
from a very high level terms about leadership, and it
gave me a better perspective of what the heck we're
doing over there versus what I learned was a regular
infantry all sering with our platoon in ALL nine and
a jab wasn't particularly dangerous. We just knew that, you know,
(29:18):
it's Afghanistan and she can go crazy at any moment.
We had a couple of close calls. A v bid
Finley shields a vehicle born id, so they put a
bunch of explosive blew it through the gate. Got into
a nice little firefight there. That was fun. I didn't
do anything. I watched it, so that's a little sad,
but it's still fun. Another one they put an ied
right before we landed our aircraft's thank god, like local
(29:39):
Afghan National Army guy on that base was noticed it,
so then we went through video cameras identify that the
other Afghan National Army guy had put it there, so
you get rid of him. Had dinner at lunch at
Ben Laden's house in you know, Nangahar. It was crazy,
like amazing. And then off of course did the whole
Perun Northern afghanist ten peace where there was no roads, nothing,
(30:02):
get to do some advanced patrol with the State Department
and CIA and some other folks to bring the ambassador
up there Olsen to the you know, a meeting with
the provincial governor. And lastly, I'll say this, every governor
that I met, it ties back to the United States.
So the guy in Perun, yeah, would find out way
(30:23):
to get out of Perun, what a bumping in a
ride with us or like you know, taking a two
week journey through the woods and stuff, so he could
go back to Kabul and fly out back to the
United States so he can run his taxi driving service
in New York. Right, come on, yeah, no, they all
have They all have investments in the US. They have
friends that they live here. I'm talking about, like it's
(30:45):
such a corrupt business over there. But they're all back
they have there, so live here half the fucking time, right,
you know a lot of them. So it's absolutely fascinating
when I learned about the ends. So I'm here in
Perun and no one is near right DA's muhammed On,
one of our number one high value target is like
living across the freaking mound right there. And this guy,
(31:05):
you know, his cousin for the governor comes to talk
to me in English like we're talking right now, hey man?
Oh yeah zoo. And I was like, oh my god, hi,
who are you. He's like, oh, I live here and
I go to New York. I come back, said, but
do you ever come back here? What's wrong with you?
He's like, oh, business, you know. Family. It's like I
so blessed I had the opportunity to this tour. But
on August twenty twelve, we're going to actually the sun
(31:29):
Kuna Provincial Governor's Security meeting happened every Wednesday at ten am,
and on augusta, twenty twelve, we landed at Combat Oppos Fires,
which was about a thousand meters away from the Governor's compound,
so it's a military base and the escort I had
requested the night before was not there. So it was
(31:49):
one of those s fat leaders from the under ind first.
So at the time in twenty twelve, with these really
did this program where members who were not infantry people
would go through this training program and come in and train.
They'd be assigned to a unit there like us. It
was four five D and they'd just spend time with
just y Afghans, right, National Army and stuff, and just
(32:10):
train them just like special Forces mission, right. But they
wanted to go to more conventional, grander scale. And so
these folks were there and this guy was one of them,
and he was in charge of that base. He didn't
have an infantry background, so when asked for that escort,
he was like, no, I walk the route, you know prior,
and then we're clearer. I was like, dude, no, you
want to walk it with me? Man like and anyway,
(32:30):
he decided to not listen and he did that. But
guess what he did. Your onder standard is very clearly.
He walked it, he cleared it, and he left. He
wanted to do a governor's compound. It's a hot route again,
no doubt. They just stayed in the fucking house. Yeah,
they just watched them. Yeah. So he took all of
my soldiers, all the soldiers that requested, and he left.
(32:51):
And so when we landed, I saw no one. My
heart started beating a little bit faster. My Spidey sense
started kicking up. You know, I got two brigade commanders,
three battalion commanders, and Afghan generals, two gs, fifteen State
Department guys with me. I got two commands, arm majors
and two majors. Like you know, brigade level, there's a
(33:12):
lot of brass. That's a lot of It's a ton
of brass. I mean, you have one hundred Colonel Warrath
Brigid commanded for undred, first year colonl Mingus Briget commanded
for four five D. You have a bunch of battalion commanders.
And the reason why they were all there with us
is the night before he had an all hands leadership
meeting in July, albat so well Raff wanted to go
with him, but some of these battalion commanders were going
to bump a ride, go to the security meeting, and
(33:33):
then go back to their bases. So then I had
six security for all that. What I immediately did is
freaked out internally, right, took a deep breath. This is
all happened like within four seconds, and said, what the
hell do I do now? So I saw my Protucerrian,
and I said, Brink, get the translator in Cdfgan martial
(33:53):
army guys smoking cigarets by the gate. Get all tell
this trans they're all coming with us. And then I
sprinted towards the base and I went to the three
places you go look for soldiers, right, maybe just four,
but three. I went to the hooches. I went to
see they were asleep. You know where they're sleeping. They're barracks. Whatever,
make sure barracks. I went to the chow hall and
I went to the gym. Right, the only other places
(34:13):
to latrine, so right, the shitters. And I found two guys.
One of them was a soldier, former soldier of mine,
start On O'Brien, who was sleeping, told him to get
the heck out, He's come with me. Put on his
gear really quickly. And then the other one was a
KBR type of fucking American contractor. And I was like,
you have a weapon. He's like yeah. I was like,
I don't know how. It was like, you're coming with
us too, So toda's day. He's probably like, holy crow.
(34:37):
I don't even know his name. Nothing about this guy, seriously, Yeah,
I just brought him with me, and so I had
the Afghan National army guys get up front. The game
plan was to put them to be up front about
ten feet in front of us because I didn't trust them,
but also to appear bigger. Yeah. Right. And then I
changed the configuration of our diamonds so the way we work,
we would do a diamond and I would put my
(34:58):
principles inside his diamond. And I was always a rear
of diamond because I wanted the responsibility, like all hell
breaks loose, to grab the boss first and put them
to the ground yep, and then it will take them
to safety. This time, I wanted to be at the
spear of it so to have better visibility. And I
put my pre fc O chart twenty one year old
kid behind me in my position, and I told him,
if something happens, whatever direction I go, I need you
(35:21):
to take the boss go to the opposite direction. He's
like Roger that. And then we drove on went out
there and you know, atmospherics were shitty and there's quiet
Toyota corollas are following us. It's an interesting place because
it's off the water, right off the river. We were
the last point right of that base before you hit
(35:42):
the water. It's one road, so that you have water
on the left, there's nowhere else to go. So like
the fact that I'm after like five minutes of walking
on this eleven hundred thousand thousand meters movement, there's a
car that is following us. So on radio, I was like, yo, yeah,
get this guy like off our but in the diamond,
I put all the officers. When he puts our Major
(36:04):
Griffin in there too, he told me, hell no, it's
like there's way too many dumb ass but leaders here.
I was like, I have the most infantry experience of
everybody here. I'm going to be in a rear. We're
doing rear security, and I was like, this is awesome, right, yeah,
this guy's warrior. So it was like that's I'm covered
in my rear, so I don't have to worry about that.
So I felt like I got an extra guy right there.
But long story short, seven hundred meters into a movement,
(36:27):
right before you cross the bridge and then seas across
the bridge, you take these stairs, you by the Governor's
comp You go a couple of hundred years in your
governor's compound. They came at us for motorcycles at the
entrance to the bridge. There's houses to are left right
on the water, and then it was on the right
side was the police academy right for the Afghan National
Police Academy. What they were doing is two side bombers
(36:49):
waited inside thus houses and they initiated their ambush by
creating a diversion with motorcycles coming directly at us.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Luckily, the Afghan National Army point guy did a really
good job of identifying the motor cycles early on that
he like starts screaming and raised his you know, rifle
and started screaming darry, which literally forced a bike to fall,
like those guys to fall off the bike and they
started running. So he started chasing them. But I created
enough of the version to a lot of the guys. Yeah,
the first guy to come out, So by the time
(37:21):
I realized that he was out, like, he was about
forty feet from us. So I turned around, looked at him,
couldn't see a weapon. I was kind of confused. I
was like, what is this kid? Do you come from?
So as he made his moving towards us, I sprang
it towards him. He ought a couple of names and stuff,
and when I got to him. I hit him with
my rifle across the chest hard, and when I hit him,
(37:43):
I realized like I just hit something that wasn't flush right,
So I was like what, So I'd let go of
my rifle. It was slunk to my kit and I
grabbed him by what I realized at that point was
a suicide mess. It's a really odd feeling grab man,
you know, the even it's the best. So at that
point I could think about was I got to get
(38:06):
him away from everybody as quickly as possible, as far
away as possible. He's about to kill my friends, and
you don't think about yourself. You just said about doing
your job. And I drove him and threw him, and
as I threw him, I saw him Mahoney followed me
into it. He received a civil store for this. He
landed on his chest, he detonated, and everything went black.
(38:31):
I just saw the demonstray come out of his hand.
That's the last memory. And then everything went black, and
I woke up a couple of minutes later, twenty feet
away with my foot facing me. FIBIOI blood everywhere right.
My producer found me and dragged me into a ditch
in my medic saved my life. He applied a tournique to
my leg and kept me awake and things like that.
But the first thing I asked was what's the status
(38:53):
of my own War six and World War seven? What's
status to the colonel? And I saw major and they
said my War six fine. You know why he's fine
because my fucking PFC caes. You saw me running towards
the guy the other way. Wow, exactly what you told him,
and the boss had a concussions about it while we're seven.
The guy I was telling you about was like I
(39:13):
got real security. He died because when I talkled this
guy and Lenna in his chest, the ball bearings, the
concussion of the blast threw me and it shaved off
a piece of my leg with the you know, but
the majority of ball bearings went the complete other directions.
Thirty feet away from the blast is where they wiped
(39:34):
out everybody. And they wiped out command Arrew Griffin, Midjic Gray,
Mister Kennedy, and Reggae ab delfalta USAD guy in a
state apartment. And so when he told me that my
Worse seven didn't make it, I told him to get
me out of this ditch and take me to him,
and they were like trying to drag me. I was like,
I get one good leg, you know what I mean,
I can hop So I was holding on to hopping.
(39:56):
I had my pistol in my hand this whole time, right,
because when I got when I will, I couldn't find
my riflece I took my pistol. I didn't know if
I was getting ambush whatever. And the local popular started
to congregate towards the blast right, and I saw my
friends dead, you know, and my heart I kind of sunk.
(40:16):
But what I saw next was something I'll never forget.
Was a younger kid, this guy smiling a local yeah okay,
and I almost shot him, yep. I mean I was
about shooting the fucking head and that PFC, which I
grabbed my hand and pulled it down. He's like, not
worth this or not worth it. We'll get him eventually,
(40:37):
and then they put me in a truck and that
was the end of my war. I received the Medal
of Honor for that action, and he's out the fifteenth
for President Obama. I'll close out with this like I've
never been more uncomfortable in my life. It felt more
like a fraud in my life than standing on that
stage received the Medal of Honor, because you feel like
it's the greatest failure I've ever had. I've lost four
(40:57):
guys under my command on my protection, that command protection,
and that wasn't the only one there, Bahony was there,
brink O chart sequel, borrow a Mama medic O'Brien. I
lost half a butt cheek that I woke up. I
still pissed at me probably this day. You know, from
that blast. God knows what happened at KBR, dude, right,
(41:19):
I'd love to know. But the reality is that you
feel like you're put on this stage and highlighted and
called the hero from the world literally, and nothing that
you ever do in the military is about you, So
it's about the team. It's never done by yourself, so
it's about the team. And so I was really glad
that President Obama took the time to recognize them, But
(41:40):
most importantly I spoke so highly and recognized the will
Star families, yeah, and told them to stand up. So
I won. You know, that was a big part of it.
But I felt like such a fraud getting it and
so uncomfortable as you go on with it. You realize
it's a platform do some good. It does open up
a lot of doors. Of course, it does gives you
you know, so it's like, what do you want to
(42:01):
do with that? What do you want to make out
of that? And to me, I've taken it to be,
you know, sort of my mission to make sure that
I earn it. But it doesn't mean that I make
a living doing off that. Right, I want to LinkedIn Boeing,
Microsoft did all different things because I don't want anyone
to ever say this guy, this is what he has
(42:22):
a house because he's a melbody recipient. Now fucking I
work for him, dude. You know what, as somebody that
knows you, I know a lot of people with the metal.
There's a reason I'm not tight with all of them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
If you weren't what I said earlier, if you weren't
a genuine, authentic human being, your ass wouldn't be in
that seat.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I can't imagine the burden that that metal brings. And
I think it's important that our listeners understand. You know,
the metal doesn't define you. It's not who you are.
It was a moment in time and unfortunately you've been
given the burden of representing this country that you fought
so hard to fight for, that took years to do
because of a piece of paper, and now you have
(43:04):
the burden of representing it the rest of your life,
you know. And there's every day you wake up, say
you have to do an event at the Metal Bourne
Room Museum, or you gotta do something where you have
to done that metal. Yeah right, it's just like every
day I wake up and you know I have to
put on a.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Leg before I go pee.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah, it's that daily reminder of this is just a
tool for me to do something to leave this spin
and ball of chaos better than I found it.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
It's just a tool. Yeah, that's hell. Man couldn't agree
with you more. But you know, if that tool and
that platform can provide me with an opportunity to help
our community and save lives, because that's what we're doing now, right,
you know what I mean. We're losing more folks and
suicide more than ever than ever, and then never that
(43:50):
we ever lost in combat. That's the battlefield today. And
so that's what this platform allows me to be more
of an advocate and just get through the doors a
little bit faster, and I would have ever had the
opportunity to before still took, I would have been able
to do stuff. But like so, that's the way I
look at it. It's a burden, but it hard percent
(44:11):
agree with you, does not define me. I'm a courier
to the metal of Bounty recipient melt. No human being
can be the metal of audit. That's how big and
important that thing is. Yeah, it's unbelievably powerful and represents
the top of our nation in terms of the meeting
will beyond the metal. So I'm a courier and hell, no,
eight seconds of action can that define me as a
human being?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Right?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You know? That could be a complete ship back. Yeah,
I mean you know so, yeah, And we'll leave it
at that. Bro, I you know how I feel about you.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I don't even have to tell you, but I love you,
and you make this world a better place. Your existence
makes this world a better place, and I'm grateful that
that day.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah. Selfishly, I'm super grateful you're here.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I know that you're making a bigger impact, and I
mean what we do now is way bigger than what
we did then.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Ha percent.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I'm grateful to build to call your brother's a that's
an honor and privilege and that has nothing to do
with the medal.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, I mean this means a lot, you know, T
Coomin and Ashley, I think you guys man, he have
a team doing this. Thank you for opening it up
for guys like me to have a voice and share
some common thoughts. And my world is my son and
my wife, right everything I do is about them. And
then if you ask me the second piece out that
is to make sure that I get to earn it
(45:25):
for insit our names to bigger and wider audience. And
that's commissioned Griffer, Major Grahamager Kennedy and Reggae ab Delfata.
Guys that were you know, really represent the medal way
more than I do because they die for our country.
It's an honor to be here and I'm looking forward
to your next guest. This is cool shit.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Man, Flauren Groeberg, Thank you so much for coming and
opening up and telling us your story and giving us
parental advice and all the things. This was truly the
good stuff and just so great to see you and
spend time with you. Thank you so much for listening.
If this app so touched you today, Please share it
(46:01):
and be part of making someone's day better.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Put on your bad ass kch and channel your inner
flow and go be great today. And remember you can't
do epic stuff without epic people. Thank you for listening
to the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced
by Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Produced by Nick Cassilini and Ryan Countshouse. Post production supervisor
Will Tindi. Music editing by Will Haywood Smith, edited by
Mike Robinson,
Welcome with the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Jacob Schick and I'm joined by my co host
and wife, Ashley Shick.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Jake is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter. We work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy. At
One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Each week, we invite a guest to tell us their story,
to share with us the lessons they've learned that shape
who they are and what they're doing to pay it
forward and give back.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest's journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Today, our guest is Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Floren Groberg.
This is a story about patriotism. He's here to tell
us about his childhood in France, his family history in Algeria,
moving to Chicago as a young kid and eventually becoming
a United States citizen.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
His love of country led him to joining the army
after nine to eleven. This episode is important to us
because we want people to understand that the Medal of
Honor recipients are real people. Also, he's held in high
regard around the world because of that medal. But today
we talk to him about who he really is. His
life now, is a husband and father, the eight seconds
of action that changed his life, and what was going
(01:31):
through his mind when President Obama put that medal around
his neck.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
We are so glad he's joining us today, and you
will be too once you hear this interview. This is
an intimate conversation amongst friends, and a swear word or
two might be included.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
We both fought and bled for the right to say
whatever the hell we want, so deal with it.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
In fact, Flora Groberg, so great to have you here
on the good Stuff. We have tried many times to
get you here, and you canceled twice for the two
most legitimate reasons ever, a dinner at the White House
and having your first child. Yeah, so welcome to the
(02:08):
good stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I mean one of those is the most legitimate. It
was good dinner.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Good because I was gonna ask, like, is it everything
that you think it would be? Like first class everything?
And is the furniture comfortable? Is it like warm and inviting?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So I went to the state dinner in December between
obviously this current administration, Biden and please you know Macrone.
I'm French background, so yeah, that's part of the reason
why I was invited. And other than the dinner being
two and a half hours late literally really yeah, yeah,
we didn't start eating around until ten ten fifteen pm.
(02:49):
The reason that happened is because Biden and macnt wanted
to shake everyone and take a picture with every single
guest and all the bs not and that bs but
the crap that bite In takes about being old years old.
I was really surprised that he stood for three plus
hours in the same spot and shook everyone's hand and
(03:11):
I took pictures. You know what I mean, You gotta
admire that. I now at forty, sure as heck, I'm
not doing it. I was like, all right, or we're
gonna go hell a lot faster.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, but going back, I was born in Friends and
my mom is my aunt. So the woman that raised me.
I called mom is my aunt. Her sister had me.
I think she had a fun night or something and things,
you know, did not work out the way she planned it.
But the world was blessed with you. Shit, I got lucky, right,
So my mom adopted me, and you know, for the
(03:44):
first three years, just her and I we lived in
the els Heirs of Paris. She gets so mad at
me when I said ghetto. You know, we live in
the ghetto. Latta is like the French newspapers said that.
Literally after we see the Medal of Honor, one of
the headlines was from the ghetto of Paris to the
White House, right, I was like, that's what they call it,
you see it? Right? It all blame me for this,
(04:06):
But you take a you know, we did a Google
Earth thing and you go to my neighborhood and you
kind of look at the buildings and it's one of
those buildings with like steel doors and bars on windows
and stuff. You're kind of like spits the yeah, demographics
right there. But I loved it. You know, it was
my world. You don't know any better. When you're a kid,
you know, that's what you grew up in. Luckily, she
(04:28):
met this guy named Larry who my stepfather now my
adoptive father, and he was there on business and they
kind of hated it off and over in the next
six seven years it dated right, and he was in
my life and he was amazing, right from Gary, Indiana,
you know, raising Gary lived in Chicago, And one day
(04:49):
when I was about ten, it's seven years in he
asked my mom if she was willing to want marry him,
but also moved to the States, and so they had
to convince me and convinced me. He's so smart. He
got me Nintendo and I was playing Mike Tyes and
Punch Out Best one of the best, one of the
best games of all time. Yeah, And he came to
my ram us playing that game and he asked, hey, flow,
(05:12):
do you like McDonald's. You want to eat McDonald's. I
said it, yeah, and he's like, also, would you like
to meet Michael Jordan? Michael Jordan, you know, because I
mean I wasn't even basketball player, but everyone knew Jeordan
the whole world, right, Michael Jordan. And you know, this
is the nineties, early nineties, that's glory, that was Glory days.
This is like nineteen ninety three. Yea, like this dude
is just one of his first repeat right then. Yeah,
(05:35):
loved to met Michael Jordan's Like, wow, if we moved
to the States, McDonald's the headquarters of it there, Michael
Jordan lives in my city. I said, okay, it sounds good.
Just like that. That was the end. He ran with
it and we were gone. We were gone three weeks later, gone.
So I tell people, I lost my allegiance to my country,
my family, my friends, my school, my sports, everything about me,
my whole identity was just sold for McDonald's and Michael Jordan.
(05:58):
The way there's McDonald's and rents just want to bring
it out there. It's really good too.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah, it's two of the biggest franchises ever, right right,
And so yeah, I should go work for McDonald's and
just be like, this is what a great story spoke
something that, Yeah, I would like McDonald's and the Michael
Jordan to take note that not just any dude, yeah,
(06:23):
but a Medal of Honor recipient.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Those aren't just handed out. It's not going to work
with Michael. So President Bush put me in one of
his poetry books, you know, And so I'm in there
I'm in his museum. He paid me and put me
in his museum. And in the book he says that
he's going to figure out a way to contact Michael Jordan,
and it has not happened.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So you moved to Chicago at age eleven.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Tell us about that. What was that like? Culture shock? Shot? Yeah,
one hundred percent culture shock. Moving to Chicago in nineteen
ninety four was a complete culture shock, going from the
city to the suburbs, not speaking the language. Did you
speak any English when you move? Not really? I mean
it's put It gave me a couple of courses before,
but like you know, just like you take Spanish in
school a little bit, and it's totally not my priority
(07:07):
at this time. And I came here and it was
just so different. Everything was bigger, wider, longer. I don't
know how I'll subscribe it. I remember being in this
town home that he lived in and we're there, walked
outside and I couldn't see people, buses, you know, metro, nothing,
(07:27):
It's just houses and quiet. I remember thinking like, this
is creepy. I want to be in a city. But
then it was also peaceful. It was new, so everything
was just kind of cool. Care of like wow, like
all right, let me just explore this. But one of
the things that got me super fired up was when
I saw one of those yellow school buses, because I'd
(07:48):
never seen one in my life before, you know, and
I've been I visited the United States a few times,
you know, usually in a city and for like a
week or two right with him. But now here I
was and that's where I lived. I knew that, and
I saw one of his buses drive by the only
time I've ever seen those buses in movies with TV
shows were Zan and things like that, right, you know
Cosby Show and the movies that we watched. I was like,
oh my god, this is so cool. I got super excited.
(08:10):
Like my dad, it's just like his kid's weird, because
I was like, I don't want to be one of
those things. One day, like everyone's trying to avoid the bus.
I wanted to get in the bus. But I just
thought I was so cool and in the people.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
It was hard to communicate, but as kids, you don't
need words, you just need action. Sports was an easy way.
I was a really good soccer player, and I got
to play with some really good soccer players around and
so that I created a bond, bonding and obviously in track.
But we lived in Chicago for a little bit and
moved to DC. I went to the French International School,
(08:43):
so I was still every day French shot with a
lot of emphasis in English. Obviously, that got kicked out
of that school in eighth grade. Hold on what happened?
I had a racist teacher, you know. And so my
father would help me with my English, you know, on
work and I run an essay and you know, he
would look at it, and but I wrote it and
he would just give me advice. I'm like, well, you
(09:04):
might want to change this tone, you might want to
go through your grammar. So he would help me. But
my uncle had just been killed in North Africa right
before that, in Algeria fighting the GIA terrorist organization, going
to Ga predecessor to Raa Kaita. And my uncle was
a preacher of the Muslim faith. He was an mom
and when the GIA came in with sharer law in
(09:26):
a westernized Muslim country, he decided to that they were
perverting his book and his religion and his beliefs. So
he went and joined the army. He went special operations
there actually got to come to the United States and
be trained with some and had Bragg now liberty, and
he went back and fought for years. In February of
nineteen eighty six, during a ceasefire to observe Ramadon of
(09:49):
all things, his unit was ambush who was shot beheaded.
This member put in a box sense to my grandfather.
And my grandfather was a war hero in Algeria French
andoshin prisoner war for three years and the cattle is
for y'all during independence against the French. So he was
really well known. So they killed his son and then
obviously that to his body and then send it to
him as a message. It only motivated more my uncles
(10:11):
to join the army at that point, just like terrorism
never works, it just motivates the next generation to fight
against that. Yeah, so that just happened, and you're eighth grade,
seventh grade, seventh grade, and my uncle had just been killed.
And this guy gives me a zero in my paper
and he said that cheated zero. Yeah, yeah, he said
(10:32):
at zero instead of cheated. I said, I don't know
how I cheat, but how you cheat on this? Right?
And he said, all your Arabs are this is the same.
So I took a remember it was like desk chairs
connected to each other. Yeah. Yeah, I took one of those,
lifted in and threw it at him, missed him obviously,
for I was scrawny and small and all my strength
in the world to picked that thing up and that
(10:54):
threw it and went like, oh foot. But that's the thought,
get you kicked out. Yeah I got kicked out. But
my mom was like, that sounds great, kick my son out.
But let me go out there and tell all the
diplomats around that this is a racist school.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Years.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I put a hell of a lot of money that
you know, you charge a ton of money into it.
Is not to say that probably wasn't cheap. No, it
wasn't cheap. And my dad moving here, he was you know.
I went from being super poor and nothing to like
live in a normal life and my dad investing quite
a bit of money in my education because I didn't
speak English, right, So anyway, I took the ESAUL test
(11:28):
after that English is the second language, and I went
to till the middle school American school, and I remember
being in school and not speaking the language. So I
had English. I didn't have English. I had Esaul. Today day,
I'm trying to figureut how I made it to class
so English that was my Esaul. So I'm there with
a bunch of like people like me, Hispanic, French, Africans.
(11:49):
You know, this is like it's actually a good number.
But like history, science, math, everything else, it was in English,
like with everybody that probably didn't make it a chant
at all. The thing is, I think that helped really, yeah,
because by the time I was in regular English freshman year,
I was an Honors English sophomore year, and I was
(12:09):
an ap English junior year. Wow. And I think being
forced to learn in that element, I think that helped me.
I don't know how made it through, to be honest
with you, like maybe like they were nice to me
or something. But the only class that I felt really
comfortable in was in Spanish because I spoke Spanish too
at the time, because I lived in Spain for a
little bit of a period of time. So like I was like,
screw all of you, I can speak this language, right,
(12:31):
So me and the other like Hispanic duds were like,
let's go. That led into going into high school sports
and in college. And but when nine to eleven happened,
and I think this is like a kind of to
conclude this piece, this whole transition. I became naturalized as
a seventeen year old, right, So my dad officially adopted me,
so I became his son on paper and everything, and
(12:53):
that made me American right away because I was a minor.
And so in February two thousand and one, I became
a US citizen, and I remember not truly understanding that moment,
but just being happy. I'm like, one of you guys,
Now I'm American officially. But when you fast forward seven
months later and nine to eleven happens, and now you
(13:15):
do the connecting dots in my own mind, which is,
these individuals are the same people that killed my uncle.
So I felt like terrorism was following me, and now
they attacked my mom's side of the house, right, and
now they're attacking my newly adopted country. So as an American,
(13:35):
I felt that it was my responsibility to now join
the military, but also felt that was very personal and
so I mean, how could you not at that point? Especially,
I tell people I had the easiest four years in
college because I didn't really care what I was studying
because I knew exactly what I was going to do
after because nine eleven happened when I was in the
Orient school and I wanted to quit. And he asked
(13:57):
me one single question. He fit, what's the one thing
I asked of you when I give you my name?
I obviously didn't no ideways talking about so he ran.
He reminded me, he said, when a Groelberg starts something,
he or she finishes it because if they quit when
things get tough, they will always find an excuse to
quit everything else that they start. That could be a
job of family, you know, relationships or whatever it is.
(14:20):
So it's like the hard thing for you to do
is get your education right now. And he said something
really valuable. After that, I was like, as we go
to war into this, this is not going to be
a two month, three month thing. This is going to
be a long thing. Because he's his background was in
communications from Motorola and he traveled seven months out of
the year. We didn't see him. He was always on
the road because he would go to these big deals. Well,
(14:43):
he's former army veteran Vietnam one was in a capacity
of working with the agency, and we can get into
that's of fun stuff. And now we have all the
pictures and stuff. He golfed with ben Lan's father. He
knew the King of Morocco and stuff because he was
selling them radio technologies on stuff all around the Middle
East and Asia and South America, and so he had
(15:06):
all these access points he lived. I was so lucky,
like he raised me and he had all these understanding
of like culture and stuff. And so he told me like,
this is something that's been brought for a long time,
and this is not gonna end overnight, so like you're
gonna you're gonna have your opportunity to play in this game.
And so finished school. I said, all right. I was pissed.
But of course he's completely officer in me. First of all,
(15:28):
he's blonding green ice. So really a lot of questions
growing up about that's your dad, Okay, milkman, where are
you at?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah, that's that's I mean, seeing is believing, you know,
I mean, that's it's one of those things.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
We both have great dads too.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, And you know what, man, you probably you know this.
You didn't have a better guy to mantally prepare you
for all of it. And he and clearly knew what
he was talking about had way more of a freaking
understanding than June role population, you know, watching the nine
to five Dad.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
This is the stories he tells me. I won't go
too deep, but I'll give you this sort of a synopsis.
We were sitting at the table, him and I just
chatting and I'll be like, all right, so, like, how
was your trip? He'll say it was good. This time
was a lot better than last time. I said, he
went to Zambia. Right, I was like, oh, what happened
last time? He's like, a little misunderstanding? What's a middle
(16:27):
little misunderstanding? I go bad, like your customer, I'm thinking
of deals, right, I'm thinking like you're customer, didn't like
you're pricing whatever it is. And he's like, I was
sticking pictures of this building. Police came buy and picked
me up, me and my buddy up, threw us in
jail and they called the spies and it took all
our stuff and I was like, uh huh. And he's
like yeah, and there's this guy, you know, just like local,
(16:48):
chained up in the bench next to us, and they
came in and beat the heck out of him, pretty
much killed him. So at that point we realized, like,
we really need to figure out a way to get
the heck out of here. So we saw a priest
and we told him, hey, I'm Larry Groberg. Go to
the US and and let him know, like we're here
and I can come bail us out. He's like, yeah,
in about you know, twelve fourteen hours later, you know
us guy came in and he kind of build us out.
(17:08):
But ha, some really misunderstanding. I said, what do you
mean what do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Right? You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I'm like, yeah, what are you talking about? Did you
got thrown in jail for being a spy for taking pictures?
He's like, yeah, we're just taking pictures of a building
where we're gonna put these you know, these radios and
antennas and stuff. I said, something's missing, right, Well, he'll
tell me another story where Africa was, like his fun stories.
I think it was Zimbabwe. There was a curfew. He's like, yeah,
(17:37):
I had a long meeting kind of went past curfew.
So I got my car and drove through and I
saw a checkpoint. I realized, probably not a good idea
to stop at checkpoints. I kind of punched through it
and they shot a couple of rounds of aca at
me and then they chased me. But luckily there was
another guy that did the same thing. They went after
him and I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah,
there's no way. Your story's don't fit. And then the
(17:59):
case was when I was uh, and they moved to
North Carolina and I went into the attic just like
my boxes, and this is kind of funny. That's why
I liked the idea of boxes and learning the story
of your dad or grandpa. And I went into one
of the boxes looking for something and I found an
identification card from Moroccan Jean dal Marie right the police
like National police up there, and is my dad's face
(18:21):
with a different name on it. And I took that
brought it to him. I was like, what is this.
He's like, huh, yes, not d card. I was like, no,
I get that, dude. Why do you have a different name?
Oh yeah, you know they didn't like my name, so
to get on basically, just give me this card. I'm like,
Larry Grosberg is a pretty like easy name, dude, Like,
(18:43):
why do you have like a pretty much French name.
He's like, oh, it's just it just made it a
lot easier. I said, not man. And so when I
went into that world myself after the Army, I realized,
like this guy was doing a little bit more than
what it's to this day, he won't tell me your truth.
I'll figure it out one day.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
You'll figure it out eventually.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That's man, that's conviction, though, amazing, this whole old school dude,
that's legit.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
You don't respect that. No, hell no, I wanted to
tell he just smiled, he smirts, and that makes it worse.
This is just total coincidence. And really there's our stories, right,
we have top of one more. This is the best one.
This is the best one. My mom to this day
is incredibly still mad at him because they were going
(19:27):
to Luxembourg. From Paris to Luxembourg for a long weekend.
This is you can't make this ship up. She packed
her bag, he packed his bag, and they went on
the train, right, and my mom went to the bathroom
on the train to Java, and she took her bag
with her. Okay, it was like a pretty sizeable bat,
right because she was she like freshing her up, doing
(19:49):
her makeup again. She left the bag in the bathroom
forgot about it, came back, sat down like ten minutes later.
My dad's like, where's your back and she's like, oh, crap,
I left in the bathroom. Luckily, she went to the
bathroom and still there, picked up the bag. Right, It's
like complete luck. They go through customs, right. She goes
through customs, no issues. He goes through customers, no issues.
(20:09):
They arrive at the hotel, he's like, can I see
your bag for a second, and so she grabs a
bag and then in there he somehow put it, put
it one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and he took
it out and she's like, what the fuck is this lyric?
And he's like, oh, we're doing this business steal and
we have to pay off this third party guy. And
she's like, no, that's great. I don't care about your
(20:31):
illegal activities or whatever the hell you're doing. Why is
it in my bag? He's like, well, I can't cross
customs with a one hundred thousand dollars without declaring it.
And she's like, why is it in my bag?
Speaker 3 (20:41):
You would let me.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
He's like, they're going to check my bag. More likely
they wouldn't check yours. She's like why didn't you tell me.
It's like then you would have been nervous, and if
you would have been nervous going through customs, you would
have checked your bag.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
And I'm like, dude, bro, you are he's some illegal,
real stuff like you were like, that's really all I
did was from Motorola.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, okay, yeah, so yeah, I mean that's common practice.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I like, Larry, so tell us about when you did
make that step to join the military.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
It took a couple of years sort of French government
to renounce my friend Citisenship. I didn't realize you couldn't
be as you know, pleasure allegiance to two different countries
and you know, and get a clearance. Yeah, I didn't
know about the stuff. So I went to the fresh
embassy renounced my friend Cisenship. Took a little bit of
time to get that paperwork back, which is probably one
of the suckiest part of my life, because you really
want to do something and you're incapable of doing it
(21:37):
because of a piece of paper. Right, So I sold
voice of IP lines for a sub of Cisco Systems
at the time called e Core Networks and just waited
my time. Right, made a good money made over only
one thousand hours, as like a twenty three year old,
which is like unheard of. Yeah, it was just sales, right,
and I sold this huge deal right in two thousand
(21:58):
and eight thousand, even they with the Embassy of Kowait.
It was like three million dollars and I was gonna
net me like seventy thousand hours of bonus. And the
next day I got a call for my recruit to
come in because you see my paperwork back and now
the army was ready to put me through the board
so I could go off security to school. And so
(22:20):
I went to my job and Michael Berdermini at the
time was the big boss, and I said, hey, I'm resigning,
and he's just like, are you serious, Like you're about
to get paid, dude, Like you're so good at this,
Like you're about to get paid. You know, next month
you're going to get like thirty five k and then
four months later you get the other thirty five k.
He said, that's big money and stuff. And I told
him I was like, ude, I been waiting for two
years for this. I care that about money. I'm twenty
(22:43):
three four years old, Like money is not my objectives.
This is what I want to do. So I quit
that day and they were all shocked because like, no,
one will not take their money, right, No, of course,
and I started training again. You know, I was a
division athlete before and running track from Maryland, and I
needed to get back in to it, and so I
started training and that's what I focused for the next
month and a half before I went to boot of
(23:05):
just getting like into top physical shape.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So which thank guy that you were an athlete before that,
because you had an advantage in how to prepare.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You knew what you had to do. Yeah, no doubt.
That was my full time job. I did side jobs
for a little bit of cash, just to like pay bills,
but I had money anyway, so you know, saved up.
So I did that and I went to Benning one July.
It was hot.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I was about to say, so you went the best
time of year to Georgia. There's no humidity and it's
just it's cold. Yeah, Chili, it's tropical.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It was the best decision I've ever made, making it
from ad one hundred thousand hours making twenty seven thousand hours.
You did it for the paycheck, obviously, I'm sient. I
didn't even get paid. For the first three months, I
didn't know. I did not get paid at all during
basic training. There was a problem in the pay system
with my name, a glitch in the system, imagine that.
But you know I learned something valuable though and Basic.
First of all, people hated me in Basic. I was
(23:58):
the assistant PG and they hated me because every morning
I get up a zero four hundred whenever I will
wake up was obviously I didn't sleep under the covers.
No one did, really, but some did. They were idiots.
But I was fired up every day because every day
I would get out of bed, now just be like
great roll And I would tell these guys like we
get you get ship ready, let's go faster and stuff.
(24:19):
And I would hold them to the standard because I
told him, every day is a theay closer to me
coming to us army soldier. Yeah, and that is real shit.
People are fucking dying. This is not a joke. This
is that summer camp. This is what is this tell
Nate two thousand and eight. Yeah, okay, I mean yeah,
and you'll go through like probably one of the worst
(24:40):
other than three or four right five in Iraq. This
is like becoming like really bad specific in Afghanistan. And
so when I was telling and had friends deployed, and
I said, this is real shit, like every day. We
need to embrace this and learn from what they're teaching us,
because this is Deanna we're going to get. And people
just thought I was I just ran from the crewer
(25:00):
too much. And so things that I did in basic training,
I didn't tell anyone I was going to basic training,
nor my friends. One guy, Matt Sanders, dropped me off
at Maps and that's you want to got innew A
couple of reasons I did that is One, I didn't
want letters. I wanted to focus on on the job. Second,
I sure saw did not want my friends to know
where was at so they would send me this dolls
(25:21):
and stuff to get you. So that was like, you know,
part of that, but I really wanted to focus. Third
is I'm a track athlete and the Olympics were happened
that year in that summer, I didn't want to look
forward to a letter with like times and things like that.
I wanted to just be one hundred percent focused on
this trade. And so I did that, and believe it
or not, that created some the droll instructors. I throw
(25:44):
a walk caught on and then you know how you
do mail call and it throw your mail and stuff.
And I've never got.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Anything in front of God and everybody, right, it's never
one on one like yeah your grandma. Yeah, ever it's
in front of everyone.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And then one they realized, probably week six and seven,
like at the end, they're like, Roberg, you never no
one likes you. You fucking I think everyone here hates
you because you're so mean to them. The reason why
the bear with you because you win every like a
physical competition here and you know that means the team wins.
They don't like you here, and it shus I don't
like you out of here because you never gotten a letter.
(26:21):
And I was like yo, So guys started coming to
me and at night and giving me their letters.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Story.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It was so funny. So actually you know what worked?
Though it worked, it worked, and like you got empathy,
Yeah I didn't care about empathy.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah I know you didn't care about that crap. But
you got to read all this all the I can
only imagine. So we had I can only imagine.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
But when I graduated and then I went to a
CS and infantry school Airborne School and en Rangel School.
I tell you what those fifteen sixteen months where so
I'm of the hardest but best moments of my life
because every day I got closer to my objective. Yeah,
that you've been waiting for a lot longer than most
had the way whole life home as I felt like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Let's go ahead and talk about your deployment to Afghanistan
twenty twelve.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So in twenty twelve, my second deployment Afghanistan, I was
in charge of the security detail for at the time
Colonel Mingus who is now the Chairman Joint jesus is
APP Director, And the mission was simple. I selected six
highly qualified individuals across the brigade to run a personal
security detail for him and Cremns Homage Griffin, and we
(27:27):
were going to protect them in Afghanistan and the eastern
part of Aghanistan. We're based in nangarhar At in Jalalabad,
Jabad and we had forty five different now stations across
six provinces. So our stations meaning US or friendly basis
that were part of his ecosystem. And so the job
was simple, it was really awesome. I would coordinate his routes.
(27:49):
I would coordinate with the receiving units his intent, his arrival,
and then I would just work with the birds to
get all the bursts scheduled, and then when it was
going on the ground, I would protect them. So if
we went out out of wire, I would always ask
for twelve to fifteen soldiers at a minimum to escort us,
because my team was designed to protect him and the
Starry Majrix. So meeting, if we went outside of wire
(28:11):
and we got hit, what our job was to do
was to collapse on these folks, on these leaders in essence,
like they really put them to their ground and shield
them with our bodies and then X filled them away
from the threat. And having that element of twelve or
fifteen soldiers really a squad platoon that's halfway sixty, that's
the security to fight the fight so we can successfully extract.
(28:33):
And so that was it, and it was awesome. I
got to see Avihanistan in ways that I never saw
my first tour. I got to sit in meetings with ambassadors,
with politicians, with General Meyville, all the top military officials
form partners. I got to sit in a tri state
boarder meetings with Pakistanis while Afghans and you know Indians, right,
(28:56):
I bet that was interesting. Oh it was amazing, Like
I got to really learn about the mission of Afghanistan
from a very high level terms about leadership, and it
gave me a better perspective of what the heck we're
doing over there versus what I learned was a regular
infantry all sering with our platoon in ALL nine and
a jab wasn't particularly dangerous. We just knew that, you know,
(29:18):
it's Afghanistan and she can go crazy at any moment.
We had a couple of close calls. A v bid
Finley shields a vehicle born id, so they put a
bunch of explosive blew it through the gate. Got into
a nice little firefight there. That was fun. I didn't
do anything. I watched it, so that's a little sad,
but it's still fun. Another one they put an ied
right before we landed our aircraft's thank god, like local
(29:39):
Afghan National Army guy on that base was noticed it,
so then we went through video cameras identify that the
other Afghan National Army guy had put it there, so
you get rid of him. Had dinner at lunch at
Ben Laden's house in you know, Nangahar. It was crazy,
like amazing. And then off of course did the whole
Perun Northern afghanist ten peace where there was no roads, nothing,
(30:02):
get to do some advanced patrol with the State Department
and CIA and some other folks to bring the ambassador
up there Olsen to the you know, a meeting with
the provincial governor. And lastly, I'll say this, every governor
that I met, it ties back to the United States.
So the guy in Perun, yeah, would find out way
(30:23):
to get out of Perun, what a bumping in a
ride with us or like you know, taking a two
week journey through the woods and stuff, so he could
go back to Kabul and fly out back to the
United States so he can run his taxi driving service
in New York. Right, come on, yeah, no, they all
have They all have investments in the US. They have
friends that they live here. I'm talking about, like it's
(30:45):
such a corrupt business over there. But they're all back
they have there, so live here half the fucking time, right,
you know a lot of them. So it's absolutely fascinating
when I learned about the ends. So I'm here in
Perun and no one is near right DA's muhammed On,
one of our number one high value target is like
living across the freaking mound right there. And this guy,
(31:05):
you know, his cousin for the governor comes to talk
to me in English like we're talking right now, hey man?
Oh yeah zoo. And I was like, oh my god, hi,
who are you. He's like, oh, I live here and
I go to New York. I come back, said, but
do you ever come back here? What's wrong with you?
He's like, oh, business, you know. Family. It's like I
so blessed I had the opportunity to this tour. But
on August twenty twelve, we're going to actually the sun
(31:29):
Kuna Provincial Governor's Security meeting happened every Wednesday at ten am,
and on augusta, twenty twelve, we landed at Combat Oppos Fires,
which was about a thousand meters away from the Governor's compound,
so it's a military base and the escort I had
requested the night before was not there. So it was
(31:49):
one of those s fat leaders from the under ind first.
So at the time in twenty twelve, with these really
did this program where members who were not infantry people
would go through this training program and come in and train.
They'd be assigned to a unit there like us. It
was four five D and they'd just spend time with
just y Afghans, right, National Army and stuff, and just
(32:10):
train them just like special Forces mission, right. But they
wanted to go to more conventional, grander scale. And so
these folks were there and this guy was one of them,
and he was in charge of that base. He didn't
have an infantry background, so when asked for that escort,
he was like, no, I walk the route, you know prior,
and then we're clearer. I was like, dude, no, you
want to walk it with me? Man like and anyway,
(32:30):
he decided to not listen and he did that. But
guess what he did. Your onder standard is very clearly.
He walked it, he cleared it, and he left. He
wanted to do a governor's compound. It's a hot route again,
no doubt. They just stayed in the fucking house. Yeah,
they just watched them. Yeah. So he took all of
my soldiers, all the soldiers that requested, and he left.
(32:51):
And so when we landed, I saw no one. My
heart started beating a little bit faster. My Spidey sense
started kicking up. You know, I got two brigade commanders,
three battalion commanders, and Afghan generals, two gs, fifteen State
Department guys with me. I got two commands, arm majors
and two majors. Like you know, brigade level, there's a
(33:12):
lot of brass. That's a lot of It's a ton
of brass. I mean, you have one hundred Colonel Warrath
Brigid commanded for undred, first year colonl Mingus Briget commanded
for four five D. You have a bunch of battalion commanders.
And the reason why they were all there with us
is the night before he had an all hands leadership
meeting in July, albat so well Raff wanted to go
with him, but some of these battalion commanders were going
to bump a ride, go to the security meeting, and
(33:33):
then go back to their bases. So then I had
six security for all that. What I immediately did is
freaked out internally, right, took a deep breath. This is
all happened like within four seconds, and said, what the
hell do I do now? So I saw my Protucerrian,
and I said, Brink, get the translator in Cdfgan martial
(33:53):
army guys smoking cigarets by the gate. Get all tell
this trans they're all coming with us. And then I
sprinted towards the base and I went to the three
places you go look for soldiers, right, maybe just four,
but three. I went to the hooches. I went to
see they were asleep. You know where they're sleeping. They're barracks. Whatever,
make sure barracks. I went to the chow hall and
I went to the gym. Right, the only other places
(34:13):
to latrine, so right, the shitters. And I found two guys.
One of them was a soldier, former soldier of mine,
start On O'Brien, who was sleeping, told him to get
the heck out, He's come with me. Put on his
gear really quickly. And then the other one was a
KBR type of fucking American contractor. And I was like,
you have a weapon. He's like yeah. I was like,
I don't know how. It was like, you're coming with
us too, So toda's day. He's probably like, holy crow.
(34:37):
I don't even know his name. Nothing about this guy, seriously, Yeah,
I just brought him with me, and so I had
the Afghan National army guys get up front. The game
plan was to put them to be up front about
ten feet in front of us because I didn't trust them,
but also to appear bigger. Yeah. Right. And then I
changed the configuration of our diamonds so the way we work,
we would do a diamond and I would put my
(34:58):
principles inside his diamond. And I was always a rear
of diamond because I wanted the responsibility, like all hell
breaks loose, to grab the boss first and put them
to the ground yep, and then it will take them
to safety. This time, I wanted to be at the
spear of it so to have better visibility. And I
put my pre fc O chart twenty one year old
kid behind me in my position, and I told him,
if something happens, whatever direction I go, I need you
(35:21):
to take the boss go to the opposite direction. He's
like Roger that. And then we drove on went out
there and you know, atmospherics were shitty and there's quiet
Toyota corollas are following us. It's an interesting place because
it's off the water, right off the river. We were
the last point right of that base before you hit
(35:42):
the water. It's one road, so that you have water
on the left, there's nowhere else to go. So like
the fact that I'm after like five minutes of walking
on this eleven hundred thousand thousand meters movement, there's a
car that is following us. So on radio, I was like, yo, yeah,
get this guy like off our but in the diamond,
I put all the officers. When he puts our Major
(36:04):
Griffin in there too, he told me, hell no, it's
like there's way too many dumb ass but leaders here.
I was like, I have the most infantry experience of
everybody here. I'm going to be in a rear. We're
doing rear security, and I was like, this is awesome, right, yeah,
this guy's warrior. So it was like that's I'm covered
in my rear, so I don't have to worry about that.
So I felt like I got an extra guy right there.
But long story short, seven hundred meters into a movement,
(36:27):
right before you cross the bridge and then seas across
the bridge, you take these stairs, you by the Governor's
comp You go a couple of hundred years in your
governor's compound. They came at us for motorcycles at the
entrance to the bridge. There's houses to are left right
on the water, and then it was on the right
side was the police academy right for the Afghan National
Police Academy. What they were doing is two side bombers
(36:49):
waited inside thus houses and they initiated their ambush by
creating a diversion with motorcycles coming directly at us.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Luckily, the Afghan National Army point guy did a really
good job of identifying the motor cycles early on that
he like starts screaming and raised his you know, rifle
and started screaming darry, which literally forced a bike to fall,
like those guys to fall off the bike and they
started running. So he started chasing them. But I created
enough of the version to a lot of the guys. Yeah,
the first guy to come out, So by the time
(37:21):
I realized that he was out, like, he was about
forty feet from us. So I turned around, looked at him,
couldn't see a weapon. I was kind of confused. I
was like, what is this kid? Do you come from?
So as he made his moving towards us, I sprang
it towards him. He ought a couple of names and stuff,
and when I got to him. I hit him with
my rifle across the chest hard, and when I hit him,
(37:43):
I realized like I just hit something that wasn't flush right,
So I was like what, So I'd let go of
my rifle. It was slunk to my kit and I
grabbed him by what I realized at that point was
a suicide mess. It's a really odd feeling grab man,
you know, the even it's the best. So at that
point I could think about was I got to get
(38:06):
him away from everybody as quickly as possible, as far
away as possible. He's about to kill my friends, and
you don't think about yourself. You just said about doing
your job. And I drove him and threw him, and
as I threw him, I saw him Mahoney followed me
into it. He received a civil store for this. He
landed on his chest, he detonated, and everything went black.
(38:31):
I just saw the demonstray come out of his hand.
That's the last memory. And then everything went black, and
I woke up a couple of minutes later, twenty feet
away with my foot facing me. FIBIOI blood everywhere right.
My producer found me and dragged me into a ditch
in my medic saved my life. He applied a tournique to
my leg and kept me awake and things like that.
But the first thing I asked was what's the status
(38:53):
of my own War six and World War seven? What's
status to the colonel? And I saw major and they
said my War six fine. You know why he's fine
because my fucking PFC caes. You saw me running towards
the guy the other way. Wow, exactly what you told him,
and the boss had a concussions about it while we're seven.
The guy I was telling you about was like I
(39:13):
got real security. He died because when I talkled this
guy and Lenna in his chest, the ball bearings, the
concussion of the blast threw me and it shaved off
a piece of my leg with the you know, but
the majority of ball bearings went the complete other directions.
Thirty feet away from the blast is where they wiped
(39:34):
out everybody. And they wiped out command Arrew Griffin, Midjic Gray,
Mister Kennedy, and Reggae ab delfalta USAD guy in a
state apartment. And so when he told me that my
Worse seven didn't make it, I told him to get
me out of this ditch and take me to him,
and they were like trying to drag me. I was like,
I get one good leg, you know what I mean,
I can hop So I was holding on to hopping.
(39:56):
I had my pistol in my hand this whole time, right,
because when I got when I will, I couldn't find
my riflece I took my pistol. I didn't know if
I was getting ambush whatever. And the local popular started
to congregate towards the blast right, and I saw my
friends dead, you know, and my heart I kind of sunk.
(40:16):
But what I saw next was something I'll never forget.
Was a younger kid, this guy smiling a local yeah okay,
and I almost shot him, yep. I mean I was
about shooting the fucking head and that PFC, which I
grabbed my hand and pulled it down. He's like, not
worth this or not worth it. We'll get him eventually,
(40:37):
and then they put me in a truck and that
was the end of my war. I received the Medal
of Honor for that action, and he's out the fifteenth
for President Obama. I'll close out with this like I've
never been more uncomfortable in my life. It felt more
like a fraud in my life than standing on that
stage received the Medal of Honor, because you feel like
it's the greatest failure I've ever had. I've lost four
(40:57):
guys under my command on my protection, that command protection,
and that wasn't the only one there, Bahony was there,
brink O chart sequel, borrow a Mama medic O'Brien. I
lost half a butt cheek that I woke up. I
still pissed at me probably this day. You know, from
that blast. God knows what happened at KBR, dude, right,
(41:19):
I'd love to know. But the reality is that you
feel like you're put on this stage and highlighted and
called the hero from the world literally, and nothing that
you ever do in the military is about you, So
it's about the team. It's never done by yourself, so
it's about the team. And so I was really glad
that President Obama took the time to recognize them, But
(41:40):
most importantly I spoke so highly and recognized the will
Star families, yeah, and told them to stand up. So
I won. You know, that was a big part of it.
But I felt like such a fraud getting it and
so uncomfortable as you go on with it. You realize
it's a platform do some good. It does open up
a lot of doors. Of course, it does gives you
you know, so it's like, what do you want to
(42:01):
do with that? What do you want to make out
of that? And to me, I've taken it to be,
you know, sort of my mission to make sure that
I earn it. But it doesn't mean that I make
a living doing off that. Right, I want to LinkedIn Boeing,
Microsoft did all different things because I don't want anyone
to ever say this guy, this is what he has
(42:22):
a house because he's a melbody recipient. Now fucking I
work for him, dude. You know what, as somebody that
knows you, I know a lot of people with the metal.
There's a reason I'm not tight with all of them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
If you weren't what I said earlier, if you weren't
a genuine, authentic human being, your ass wouldn't be in
that seat.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I can't imagine the burden that that metal brings. And
I think it's important that our listeners understand. You know,
the metal doesn't define you. It's not who you are.
It was a moment in time and unfortunately you've been
given the burden of representing this country that you fought
so hard to fight for, that took years to do
because of a piece of paper, and now you have
(43:04):
the burden of representing it the rest of your life,
you know. And there's every day you wake up, say
you have to do an event at the Metal Bourne
Room Museum, or you gotta do something where you have
to done that metal. Yeah right, it's just like every
day I wake up and you know I have to
put on a.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Leg before I go pee.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah, it's that daily reminder of this is just a
tool for me to do something to leave this spin
and ball of chaos better than I found it.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
It's just a tool. Yeah, that's hell. Man couldn't agree
with you more. But you know, if that tool and
that platform can provide me with an opportunity to help
our community and save lives, because that's what we're doing now, right,
you know what I mean. We're losing more folks and
suicide more than ever than ever, and then never that
(43:50):
we ever lost in combat. That's the battlefield today. And
so that's what this platform allows me to be more
of an advocate and just get through the doors a
little bit faster, and I would have ever had the
opportunity to before still took, I would have been able
to do stuff. But like so, that's the way I
look at it. It's a burden, but it hard percent
(44:11):
agree with you, does not define me. I'm a courier
to the metal of Bounty recipient melt. No human being
can be the metal of audit. That's how big and
important that thing is. Yeah, it's unbelievably powerful and represents
the top of our nation in terms of the meeting
will beyond the metal. So I'm a courier and hell, no,
eight seconds of action can that define me as a
human being?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Right?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
You know? That could be a complete ship back. Yeah,
I mean you know so, yeah, And we'll leave it
at that. Bro, I you know how I feel about you.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
I don't even have to tell you, but I love you,
and you make this world a better place. Your existence
makes this world a better place, and I'm grateful that
that day.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah. Selfishly, I'm super grateful you're here.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I know that you're making a bigger impact, and I
mean what we do now is way bigger than what
we did then.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Ha percent.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I'm grateful to build to call your brother's a that's
an honor and privilege and that has nothing to do
with the medal.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Well, I mean this means a lot, you know, T
Coomin and Ashley, I think you guys man, he have
a team doing this. Thank you for opening it up
for guys like me to have a voice and share
some common thoughts. And my world is my son and
my wife, right everything I do is about them. And
then if you ask me the second piece out that
is to make sure that I get to earn it
(45:25):
for insit our names to bigger and wider audience. And
that's commissioned Griffer, Major Grahamager Kennedy and Reggae ab Delfata.
Guys that were you know, really represent the medal way
more than I do because they die for our country.
It's an honor to be here and I'm looking forward
to your next guest. This is cool shit.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Man, Flauren Groeberg, Thank you so much for coming and
opening up and telling us your story and giving us
parental advice and all the things. This was truly the
good stuff and just so great to see you and
spend time with you. Thank you so much for listening.
If this app so touched you today, Please share it
(46:01):
and be part of making someone's day better.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Put on your bad ass kch and channel your inner
flow and go be great today. And remember you can't
do epic stuff without epic people. Thank you for listening
to the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced
by Ashley Schick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Produced by Nick Cassilini and Ryan Countshouse. Post production supervisor
Will Tindi. Music editing by Will Haywood Smith, edited by
Mike Robinson,
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