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May 24, 2025 84 mins

Today we have a once in a lifetime interview with Medal of Honor recipient Ryan Pitts, who truly earned this prestigious award in the mountains of Afghanistan fighting off a very dedicated, organized, and determined enemy force. Ryan and I connected thanks to the National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership, a non-profit helping to share lessons of leadership from Medal of Honor recipients and the values they live by with people who lead at any level.

In this episode, we dive into Ryan’s near death experiences (there are several) while downrange but we never venture far from what leadership is all about, from a private in the foxhole to a Colonel at the TOC. Ryan earned the Medal of Honor in the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan in July 2008 when I was flying Apaches in eastern Afghanistan out of Khost. Ryan made sure some of the gun pilots from the 101st like Jimmy Morrow and John Gavreau were at his award ceremony at the White House because he felt they were a part of this effort as much as anyone (which you know this gun pilot loves to hear).

Ryan is incredibly humble for having earned this amazing award and I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend in Chicago with him, the Center for Leadership executive staff, and another Medal of Honor recipient Col. Harvey “Barney” Barnum. They were treated like royalty at a Cubs game with everyone wanting a picture with these heroes. None of that has gone to his head, as you’ll hear in this interview.

I’d also ask you to notice how he remembers the name of so many of the people he served with and how he speaks of this as a ‘their’ - collective - award and not his own. We need more leaders and people like Ryan out there and that’s exactly what the Center is doing. Please have a look for a Center for Leadership event or course near you by going to mohcenterforleadership.org.

Special thanks to Andy, Elise, Tom, Forrest, John, and all the other folks who made this event possible. With that, please enjoy a detailed description of some of the most intense combat and true heroism from living Medal of Honor recipient, Ryan Pitts.

The National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership exists to inspire, develop and empower leaders through the values of courage, sacrifice, citizenship, integrity, commitment and patriotism. Through fellowship programs, onsite training and a nationwide digital platform, we’re helping Americans of all ages learn what it means to lead with honor. Learn more at www.mohcenterforleadership.org and follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership, and on Instagram at @medalofhonorcfl and X at @MedalofHonorCFL.

 

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Find Ryan Pitts Online:

🥉The National Medal of Honor Center for Leadership mohcenterforleadership.org

     and https://mohcenterforleadership.org/exclusive-qa-with-the-nmohlec-education-director/

📸 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/medalofhonorcfl/

📘 Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MedalofHonorCenterforLeadership/ 

💡 X https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-m

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
I don't want my family to seemy head cut off on YouTube.
I looked at my wounds.
I'm like, if they capture me like there'sno way they're gonna be able to treat me
like I'm just gonna die in the enemy'shands and my friends are probably gonna
get hurt trying to recover my body.
I don't want that.
And in that moment, thinking about,okay, what do you do then Ryan and I just
thought, don't let 'em take you alive.
Make it so they have to kill you.

(00:21):
And I just in my head was like,okay, set a goal for myself.
I wanna kill as many as I can.
My personal goal was three.
That seemed fair.
Considering I was immobile, Iwas just gonna sit there and
wait and try and surprise him.
Coming over the sandbags and CarlDuo, that northern fighting position,
got on the radio and talking to MattMeyer and I tell him, Hey, everybody
up here is either dead or gone.

(00:42):
And he comes back and tells me,Hey, there's nobody to send.
We're in it down here too.
You're gonna have to, you'regonna have to hang in there.
Welcome to Combat Story.
I'm Ryan Fut and I serve Warz Zonetours as an Army attack helicopter pilot
and CIA officer over a 15 year career.
I'm fascinated by the experiencesof the elite and combat.
On this show, I interview some ofthe best to understand what combat

(01:04):
felt like on their front lines.
This is combat story.
Today we have a once in alifetime interview with Medal
of Honor recipient Ryan Pitts.
He earned this prestigious awardin the mountains of Afghanistan
fighting off a very dedicated,organized, and determined enemy force.
Ryan and I connected thanks to theNational Medal of Honor Center for
Leadership, a nonprofit helpingto share lessons of leadership

(01:25):
from Medal of Honor recipients.
And the values they live by withpeople who lead at any level.
In this episode, we dive intoRyan's near death experiences.
There are several, not just this oneevent while down range, but we never
venture far from what leadership is allabout from a private in the foxhole.
To a Colonel at the Talk, Ryan earnedthe Medal of Honor in the battle of

(01:46):
whatnot in Afghanistan in July, 2008when yours truly was flying Apaches
in eastern Afghanistan out a coast.
Ryan made sure some of the gun pilotsfrom the hundred first who supported
him that day, like Jimmy Morrow.
John Avro and others were at hisaward ceremony because he felt they
were just as much a part of thiseffort as anyone else, which you
know, this gun pilot loves to hear.

(02:07):
Ryan is incredibly humble for havingearned this amazing award, and I was
fortunate enough to spend a weekendin Chicago with him, the Center
for Leadership Executive Staff, andanother Medal of Honor recipient,
Colonel Harvey Barney Barnum.
They were treated like royalty ata Cubs game with everyone wanting
a picture with these heroes.
None of that at all has gone to his head.

(02:27):
As you'll hear in this interview.
I'd also ask you to take noticehow he remembers the names of so
many of the people he served withand how he speaks of this as their
collective award and not his own.
We truly need more leaders and peoplelike Ryan out there, and that's
exactly what the center is doing.
Please have a look.
For a Center for Leadership eventor course near you by going to

(02:51):
MOH Center for leadership.org.
Special thanks to Andy Elise, TomForrest, John, and all the others
who made this event possible.
With that, please enjoy a very detaileddescription of some of the most intense
combat you can imagine and true heroism,not just from Ryan, but a lot of the
other guys who were there that day,including many who did not make it back.

(03:15):
And this story with Medal ofHonor recipient Ryan, pit.
Ryan, thanks so much for taking the timeto sit down with us and share your story.
Thanks for having me.
Um, so we are here in Chicago for apretty cool event with the National
Medal of Honor Center for Leadership.
You can kind of see for, for folks who arelistening and cannot see on the screen,
uh, we've got the backdrop here, but.

(03:37):
We're gonna be talking about leadershipthroughout, but we are in Chicago.
We flew in over the past couple days.
You came in, uh, a little bitearlier than me, but I wanted to
start on this idea of hard landings.
'cause truly of all the times I'veflown, the landing I had into O'Hare
yesterday was the hardest landing ever.
And I'm sure anybody who'sflown with me doubts that.
But this was like a strut breaker.

(04:00):
And since you've been down range a coupletimes, including in some of the hillier
parts of Afghanistan, I have to imagineyou have a good hard landing story.
So I thought we'd kick off there.
Yeah, there's probably, uh, a couple.
They all felt like hardlandings after a certain point.
So my first deployment was OEFsix, uh, spring 2005 to 2006.

(04:21):
Uh, we were in Zabel Province,northeast of Kandahar.
So kind of like highwayone flat around there.
And then very mountainousonce you got out.
And we did a lot of airassaults 'cause and we would
surprise the enemy quite a bit.
And we had a lot of hot LZs.
We were landing in.
And, uh, first firefighter everwent into our scouts are out
there just a scout element.
They got attacked and so ourcompany got spun up to go out

(04:44):
there and QRF for 'em going in.
We had two flights of, uh, CH 47 Chinooks,uh, one platoon on one, one on the other.
And when we were coming in, I guessthe other bird got hit by an RPG Landon
didn't, didn't take the bird out.
Bird was amazing.
The land kick everybody out and thenthere wasn't, there was like another few
weeks later we got another firefight wherebird RPG hit right outside and I think it

(05:07):
was a Pennsylvanian National Guard unitand it was every air assault after that.
You know, hot lz or not, we were comingin like a bus, hitting a brick wall.
I mean, they were, they were comingin, turning and burning, yanking and
banking all that stuff in a bus, right?
Yeah.
And just hit, I thought the aircraftlost its struts, you know, the,
the wheels were in the dirt.

(05:27):
And, uh, you know, it was, I wasamazed that we were still able to walk
coming off and just, just running off.
But it felt like, uh,car accidents that, yeah.
So it, I'm, I'm interestedto get your take.
So, you know, I had mentioned beforewe started recording, my old man flew
Hueys in Vietnam, and he always wouldjoke that when they were going into
xFi guys, he was more concerned ifthe guys were coming out of the wood

(05:48):
line, getting into the choppers andlike turning around and shooting.
Because it was almost more of like a show,but when they were just running for the
birds and diving in, it was like, thatwas, that was when the pain was coming.
Did you experience anything likethat when you guys were down range?
Not X fills?
No.
No.
Not on X fills.
By the time we were getting exfil,usually the battlefield was pretty secure.

(06:08):
Yeah.
All right.
Enough said on that.
Um, just before we kickoff, love your name.
W why are you named Ryan?
Is there any, uh, I don'thistory behind this.
I don't think there's any history behindit other than just, uh, Irish family.
I guess it means like little King.
Okay.
Middle name's McSherry.
That's pretty Irish.
Irish Nice.
Mine's Donahue.
Yeah.
So yes.
There we go.
All right.
Awesome.
The old country I work with awoman who was named after Nolan

(06:29):
Ryan, and I'm like, that's cool.
Mm. That is cool right there.
I don't All right.
I wish I had a good story.
Yeah, I don't, no.
Yeah, I'm, I'm the same.
I was just curious if youhad something in there.
Okay.
Um, you can't believe everything youread online, of course, but I have
come across a story where you knewyou were going into the military from
a very young age, maybe kindergarten.
Is this true?

(06:49):
Like you told theteacher this at one time?
Yeah, yeah.
No, I, I think my family still hassome of, like the drawings I did
where it's like, I'm gonna be asoldier then a professional football
player, then I'm gonna retire.
I wish I'd followed that paththat didn't work out that way.
Uh, but yeah, for a lot of mychildhood I, you know, I was one of
those kids running around New Englandin the woods picking up a stick.
You know, you, you know, you findthat good stick that looks like a gun.
Yeah.
Um, running around out thereand then it, I, you know,

(07:12):
into paintball in high school.
So was I, yeah, the tactics, um mm-hmm.
It drifted a little bit from me inhigh school as I got a little bit
older and was more interested inchasing the other sex around and
having fun with my, but my buddies.
But when it came time, you know, my senioryear, junior year and starting to look
towards the future, um, friends were goingto college, you know, getting accepted.
I was accepted to college, I was acceptedto the University of New Hampshire, but

(07:34):
I just didn't know what I wanted to do.
I didn't feel passionate about anything.
I wasn't a great student, mainly'cause I didn't apply myself.
Um, you know, I had a, my family karbackground, my old man was a machinist and
ran his own small construction company.
I knew my family would do everythingthey could to help me out with school.
Um, but I knew at that time Iwasn't gonna be a great steward

(07:55):
of their, their resources.
Uh, so I decided to join the militaryand, you know, I look back on it and
I wish it had come from that placeof altruism, of patriotism, of,
you know, this is my duty to surf.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Um, it was January, 2003 when I, Ienlisted halfway through my senior year.
Um, we were just in Afghanistan andthat had kind of quieted down by
that point we'd be in Iraq by March.

(08:16):
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, we joinedfor a lot of reasons.
Um, you know, I looked around atthe guys that I joined with, you
know, some because, you know,their family served that tradition.
Yep.
Others that I was completelyunaware of wanted to join to become
citizens of the United States.
Yeah.
Um, so whatever those reasons were, onceyou get there and you become dedicated
to the mission and dedicated to eachother, all those reasons just fade away.
You're there fighting for each other.

(08:37):
So I do, I do occasionally like to askfolks this, just 'cause you brought it up.
Like if you go back,'cause you were 17, right?
Yep.
When you, when you signed up delayedentry turned 18 in basic training.
I, I hope there's a good story there too,but when, when you were 17, if you can
put yourself back there, what did youthink you were gonna get out of the Army?

(08:58):
Yeah.
I, I at dope blow smoke on this.
Is it just like, Hey, I want togo see the world and shoot things.
Like, what was it?
So part of it, so I picked my job.
So being 17, my folks hadto sign the paperwork.
Yeah.
I wanted to go infantry.
Um, I wanted to try and go rangers.
Um, but my folks werelike, no, no, no, no.
We're not gonna do that.
And the recruiter, I.
Was a Ford observer.
And he said to me, he is like, if you wantto just go be with them, like be a Ford

(09:22):
Observer, you can go do all that stuff.
So my, my parents didn't quite know thatthat's what I would end up in going to do.
That's what I wanted to do.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I thought at that time beingnaive, I was like, oh, we're America.
You know, I, I saw, you know, first Iwas in Storm while we were three months
involved and, you know, four weeks ortwo weeks to steamroll 'em, you know,
I thought, you know, this thing'sgonna be over before I get there,
you know, let alone 20 years, yearslater, you know, and even remember on

(09:44):
my first deployment, telling my folks,I'm like, ah, don't worry about it.
I'm going to Afghanistan.
Nothing's going on there.
I'm be handing out, youknow, beans and blankets.
That's what we'll be doing.
And, uh, it didn'tquite turn out that way.
Yeah.
Um, you bring up the forward observerrole, so we have not interviewed a
forward observer for, just for peoplelistening who aren't familiar, can
you just describe what that role is?
Yeah.
So I was, because we as pilots love them.

(10:06):
Yeah.
I was always with, uh,normally with our lieutenant.
Right, and I was his right hand asfar as, you know, big guns coming out.
So I would control mortars, artillery,work with close combat aviation,
rotary wing, um, also fixed wing,um, talking to a tens, talking in gun
runs, um, talk to some fast movers,drop some J dams, things like that.

(10:28):
Um, as you mentioned, yourfolks, it sounds like no military
history there in in the family.
No.
As kids today growing up, looking atleaders and people, you know, medal
of Honor recipients and whatnot,was it a tough discussion with your
folks to like, Hey, can you just goahead and sign this paper and sign
my life away for the next few years?

(10:49):
Yeah, I was a littlecontentious for a little bit.
Was it my, nobody was very supportive.
Um, I mean, not to say thatthey were discouraging.
Like I know my grandmother toldmy mother like, you have to talk
him out of this no matter what.
You know, I remember my mom afterI enlisted being excited, she was
like, oh, you, you got acceptedto University of New Hampshire?
I'm like, yeah, it doesn't matter.
I'm not going.
Um.

(11:10):
I remember teachers being,you know, people saying, oh,
you're too smart to go do that.
And I think that's a big mistake.
You know, even in the infantry, I servewith some very, very intelligent people.
You know, guys that have gone on to bepetroleum engineers in cybersecurity
or start their own businesses,um, that it's not like that.
But I was committed.
I was going, yeah.

(11:30):
Um, they weren't talking me out of it.
And, and then just hypothetically, let'ssay you don't go down that path into
the Army, whatever, you don't sign up.
What do you think youwould've done in your life?
Honestly, I don't know.
I don't know where Iwould be without the army.
Like I did a lot of growing up, uh,and chose a company that was the one
company I served in my entire time.
It's remarkable.
Yeah.
Uh, really fortunate in that, youknow, I think of a lot, I mean,

(11:53):
at least 50% of who I am todaywas because of the military.
And, uh, the lessons I learnedfrom the guys around me, leaders,
peers, um, subordinates, I wouldn'tchange it, you know, despite all
the bad things that happened.
Um.
I wouldn't change it for anything, justto known some of those guys and see the
things that I saw, uh, good and bad.

(12:14):
Yeah.
Um, just looking at, at the path in tothe military for you, I mean, we're gonna
talk a lot about leadership today, right?
With the, the center for leadership here.
Do you have any notable ormemorable leaders before you get
into the Army that come to mind?
Family, teachers,someone in the community.

(12:35):
Yeah.
Um, my grandfather for me was a big one.
Um.
He was a star athlete inMassachusetts growing up.
Great basketball and football player.
He was a big guy.
He was six five, like 2 25.
Um, he became a highschool vice principal.
He coached, like through his entirecareer, um, just a real quiet, solid guy.

(12:57):
Uh, you know, I'd hearstories about him at school.
Yeah.
Like, you know, he would, uh, messwith the blinds when he was like,
interrogating kids that got in trouble,you know, so that the sun had shine
right in their eyes or hear, hear storiesabout, you know, to tell if they had
been, you know, using drugs on campus.
He'd be like, what do you think aboutGreen m and ms? You know, trying to
just throw 'em off, tangents like that.
But I also heard stories about, you know,an active shooter scenario actually in

(13:19):
Concord, Massachusetts at the school.
Somebody had brought in agun and everybody's heading
one way and my grandfather'sgoing the other way, you know?
Yeah.
Towards that kid.
He was always helping out other people.
Um, so he was a big influence in my life.
Big leader.
There were definitelyteachers along the way.
Um, you know, I think maybesaw something in me, you know,
one that comes to mind is, um.

(13:39):
Viet f was my chemistryteacher in high school.
I had him for two years.
And, you know, talk about aguy that like held standards.
I remember there was, I wasgonna get the first a hundred
on a test, like in his class.
It was either gonna be that year or Idon't think it was gonna be ever, but
that I missed, I moved a decimal pointand he didn't give me the a hundred.
Yeah, he he wasn't gonna give it to you.
He was like, this is the standard,this is the rule, this is how we do it.
You either pass by thestandard or you don't.

(14:01):
Um, and he was a great guy and I mean,even to his story, he was a, a refugee
from Vietnam coming outta the Vietnam War.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
You end up going, as yousaid, chosen company one 73rd.
How do you get there?
Like of all the places you couldhave gone in the US and overseas?
Was it a battle to get there?
How do you end up there?

(14:22):
It was good luck.
Which is a great assignment,by the way, right?
Oh yeah.
Like, I mean, this is Italy folks.
Yeah, yeah.
Like wasted it on me initially.
So I went to basic training when Isigned up, I was just Ford Observer,
not Airborne needs the Army.
Send me wherever you want me to go.
I didn't care.
Uh, stupid on my part.
I should have been right.
It worked out though.
It did, yeah.
But I, it was during some downtime,you know, we're sitting in a classroom

(14:45):
environment and basic training withthe entire, I think it was probably the
entire company, and somebody came in, youknow, to give a presentation about being
a paratrooper, gonna airborne school.
And I was like, okay, that sounds cool.
Jumping outta planes.
I like adrenaline.
This sounds awesome.
What really hooked me is when they werelike, Hey, this is an extra $150 a month.
If you end up on jump status, sign me up.
Yeah.
You know, I'm making like $600 a monthbefore taxes as a p ffc, it's so bad.

(15:05):
You know, I'll take a 25% pay bone.
And just from there, at the end ofbasic training came down on orders.
I, I thought I'd be going to the 82nd.
I was like, oh, that's the mothership.
That's where all paratroopers go.
I'm gonna go to North Carolina.
I'm telling family that.
And then I came down on orders, uh,for the one 73rd, and man didn't
even know that how lucky I was.
Yeah.
Did you know anything about the like Nope.

(15:26):
No.
Nope.
Showed up and learned that they hadjumped into Northern Iraq, you know,
saw enough movies, great stories, yeah.
To be like, I don't wantto be the replacement.
Um, but learn so much from those guyswhen they came back and their experiences.
Oh man.
Um, it, so I, I have a nephew whois in the one 73rd and just telling
me about life in Italy and, and thatexperience sounds phenomenal, but the

(15:49):
history of that unit is spectacular.
So just out of curiosity, you're,are you private when you roll up?
Yeah.
Okay.
What's it like being broughtin as a private in the one 73rd
as the wars couple years in?
I mean, rough.
I mean, they were on us, right?
Every tiny little mistake.
Yeah.
You know, it was, do the right thingeven when nobody's looking, you

(16:11):
better be an expert on your job.
Like constantly being quizzed on our jobs.
Um, and proficiency.
Um, physical fitness was huge.
Yeah.
We ran a lot.
Um, there in, in Vicenza therewas, they can't do it anymore,
but there was Monte Baro.
So we'd run downtown and go up thismountain, turn around, come back.

(16:31):
We had all these like other crazy,there was dark side was the 10 mile run.
Goat trail was like the eight milerun up this tiny little thing.
Jurassic Park was up throughthe woods through all these
different, uh, little wood steps.
It was hard.
Like, I mean, I hated my first two years.
The RV is a private nobody loves.
Oh, I'm sure that time, right?
Like, I, I didn't think I'd mop so manyfloors or, you know, pull weeds and outta

(16:53):
in between so many, um, so many bricks.
But it, they did it an incredible job.
Training us and preparing usand showing us like, you know,
this is gonna be uncomfortable.
There's not gonna be any timeouts.
You're gonna find out what you're made of.
You know, we jumped into bunker dz andgraph and veer and then, you know, humped
all the ruck bared all the way acrosspost to the range biv W at the range.

(17:17):
I mean, they were trying to make itas hard and as miserable as possible.
'cause it still doesn't even hold acandle to what you're gonna see in combat.
I feel like one 73rd is almostlike a, you know, see a lot of
conventional infantry units.
I feel like they're almost somewhere inbetween like the conventional and the
special ops world for whatever reason.
It's just the, the training.

(17:38):
Um, couple things.
One, had you traveled outsidethe US before you joined?
I had, I'd been to Montreal, which in NewHampshire, you know, that's pretty common.
Not that far.
Yeah.
I had never been on a plane, I had neverbeen further west than New York state.
I. Or further south thanWashington DC Oh my gosh.
But my first plane flightwas out to basic training.
You go and so basic training, thenyou go to Italy and then obviously

(17:59):
we're gonna talk, you're gonna goto places in Afghanistan that many
people will never, ever hear aboutor could, could find on a map.
That's insane.
Um, on the leadership topic, before weget into like, yeah, you're in battle
and directing folks, which I think alot of people think of for leadership.
When you talk about mopping floors,how does that tie into leadership?

(18:20):
And I you truthfully, likehowever you want to take this one.
I'm not trying to softball you,but I feel like there's something
about doing the grunt work.
That makes you a betterleader on the other end.
Yeah, I mean, the first thingthat came to mind when you started
bringing up is just learning how tobe miserable quietly, like in silence.
You know what I mean?
To suffer in silence becausethere's a, there's a lot of that.

(18:40):
Yeah.
But it's also attention to detail.
'cause it can seem like, yeah,just mop this place, but there's
gonna be like little standards.
They're gonna come in,they're gonna nitpick.
And so some of that's teaching youyour own attention to detail to like
kind of that forethought of like, okay,what are they gonna be looking for?
Alright, let's make sureI get all these corners.
Let's go the extra mileand do the better job.
Like you're gonna mop thisfloor better than anyone.
Oh yeah.
Like, it's gonna be amazing.
Uh, you know, I'll go get some mop andglow, we'll shine it up, whatever it is.

(19:04):
Um.
But also, you know, that also comesinto like the volunteerism, you
know, when they'd ask for detailsand it's kind of like you don't
know what you're getting into.
You kinda learn to let go of maybesome of that control and be ready
for the situation that's coming.
'cause they'll, you know, they're asking,all right, I need five volunteers.
Well if they only get four, everybody elseis doing pushups and somebody's getting
selected and is gonna be miserable.
So you just learn to raiseyour hand and run over there

(19:25):
and move as fast as you can.
Like, that's also part of it, isjust doing everything to the best of
your ability as quick as you can soyou can be ready for the next thing.
Um, so there were a lot ofgood, good lessons outta that.
And I mean, you know, the great leaders,I think were standing there over our
shoulder also, like quizzing me on things.
Yeah.
You know, maximum effective range.
This danger I was gonna say,are they quizzing you on Yeah,

(19:45):
probably ranges, weapon systems.
Like, Hey, what are yougonna hit this target with?
'cause you just gotta know, right?
Like you were the expertin that unit on that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, so when I got there, it waseven before the unit got back and the,
the guys on rear D were doing that tous, they made it almost more miserable
than it was before they got back.
But it was good, you know, preparationfor the, uh, the, yeah, shell comment

(20:06):
when they showed up was what was coming.
All right, so you get thereand how long do you have before
you end up going down Range?
So I got there in February of ohfour after Airborne School, and then
we deployed in April of oh five.
So right around a year.
All right.
So just as a, what are you, 19, 20 19?
Yeah, I'm 19.
Uh, I'm 18.

(20:27):
When I show up.
How, how are you thinking about, allright, I'm about to go down range.
Like these guys are all coming back.
We're about to go.
Like, how are you rationalizingthis as an 18, 19-year-old?
I think, you know, I wasn't, I didn'tknow at that point 'cause we had just
invaded Iraq, that the kind of theop tempo for the Army was gonna be.

(20:49):
You're either there oryou're getting ready to go.
Yeah, that's it.
It's one on one off, one on one off.
That's just what it's gonna be.
Um, so I wasn't thinking too much ofthat, but after we went through all the
training and as we were getting closer,I mean, I think we're all ready to go.
Like, you want to go employ this training?
You know, do these things.
You know, part of the reasonI became a Ford Observer, I
wanted to watch stuff blow up.
Um, you know, so we were excitedto go use the lessons that we had

(21:13):
learned in all our training andto go with, you know, our boys.
Yeah.
Did you write a letter home like,Hey, if, if I don't make it, no.
I didn't ever write just a one off letter.
I do remember, and I think that'ssomething, you know, a lot of people
miss or don't think about, is, youknow, we're all 18, 19, 20-year-old
kids and we're filling out our bluebook saying, Hey, at my funeral I'd

(21:35):
like these people to be my polar bear.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
I'd like at that age, this music, youknow, and you know, some guys are picking
crazy music, like, I want hate breed.
I will be heard.
Right.
Or Yeah, you know, whatever.
Just crazy metal.
Um, but that is insane to be thinkingabout just starting your adult life Yeah.
And you're also planning forthe end of it at the same time.
Yeah.
And, and you know, other people your ageare probably out at parties and Yeah.

(21:57):
And I don't even wanna see what Iwrote down for that, like the music
I would've chosen many years ago.
Um, but yeah, that's something else,you know, joking around being like,
going to take your DA photo, like,oh, let's all go get our dead picks.
Yep.
You know, like just that gallowshumor to kind of take some
of the um, but you need it.
Yeah.
That some levity to the situation.
Okay.
So, and you guys know earlyon where you're going?

(22:19):
Yes.
In Afghanistan?
Yep.
All right.
Yeah.
Can you talk us through yourfirst combat experience?
Yeah.
Whether sometimes for people it'scompletely mundane, sometimes crazy.
Most people feel like it's World War iii.
What was it like for you?
Um, it was pretty insane.
Uh, I remember it was May 3rd, 2005.

(22:40):
We'd only been therea little over a month.
I don't even think I'd been shot at yet.
Uh, early morning our scouts hadbeen out on this mission and I, I
think it was just like a scout team,like maybe two squads, not a lot.
And they were in contact and they justran in and were like, Hey, get your stuff.
You guys got, you know, 45 minutesto be up on the flight line.
Scouts are in contact, we'regoing, you like a QRF or something?

(23:02):
Yeah, we were Q fing out there.
Uh, that wasn't even our designated role.
We were, we were with ourbattalion headquarters, so
we often would act as as QRF.
We also did some rotations to Kandaharas QRF, um, but they told us, Hey,
it's probably gonna be a hot HLZ.
We loaded up into two birds.
You know, this is not like a lotof the training I've done where,
you know, you're doing yourwalkthroughs, you've walk drills.
This is, yeah.

(23:23):
Hey guys, you're flying outto this point on the map.
Here's kind of the situation.
We're probably gonna be split up.
Go do.
Um, you know, and I got pictures,you know, I remember us going
in outta the back of the Chinookand I could see the other one.
You know, we were first in line and the,the Apache's behind us falling up up.
This is daytime.
This is daytime.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And uh, our bird split.
We hit, you know, one side of the river.

(23:45):
They, this is the ar dog, river valley.
Other bird hit the other side.
Heard afterwards that thatbird took an RPG going in.
Didn't, didn't take the bird out.
They were still able to land.
Just charge all those, those paratroopers,you know, we did the same thing, ran out.
It was really rocky, youknow, can hear the gunfire.
But on our side, immediately it waskind of quiet and there was more
going on, kinetic on the other side.

(24:07):
And it's just, you know, chaos.
Like everybody's lining up onthe berms, we're all spreading
out, doing our 360 security.
We started moving down into thisorchard and all of a sudden this
guy takes off running and uh,you hear somebody, hey, get him.
And I learned about this later.
One of our team leaders, Tim Brumley.
He just goes running right after the guy.

(24:27):
He never saw him.
I didn't know this until recently.
It was just off a word of somebody else.
I mean, that's the trust youdevelop in each other, you know?
And that belief in that it,it's, this is, this is like an
enemy fighter who's running Yeah.
We think it's an enemy fighter.
Yeah.
And this guy's just bookingit through this orchard.
And as he goes to run through thisgap in a wall, this doorway, he didn't
see it, but Brumley didn't see it.

(24:47):
The guy jumped over a trip wire andwhen Brumley went through, he detonated
and it, it hit him in his left ankle.
And I, I was maybe 30 yards behind himand, you know, watched him fall back
and do a, a drainage ditch and go down.
And what amazed me, you know,thing time kind of slowed down
is I watched his entire squad.
Instead of going to him, they didexactly what we were all trained to do.

(25:10):
And that was move up tothe wall, provide security.
Gain fire superiority.
Yeah.
And rpg you've been trained, that was the,you know, the, um, the trigger too for
the enemy on the other side of the wall.
RPG started hitting everythingstarted, you know, blowing up.
We didn't have a medic on our bird.
The one mistake we had made wasboth medics were on the other bird.

(25:30):
We didn't have any medics on our bird,but our battalion, you know, our unit, we
put a lot of emphasis on cross training.
Um, they call it rock first responders,so we all knew how to stick IVs.
We all know how to do needlechest decompression, sucking
chest wound, tourniquets.
They had also sent, um, probablyabout 30 or 40 of us from the
battalion to EMT basic course.

(25:50):
Wow.
Before we deployed, I got to go to that,and this is young PFC, dumb Ryan Pitts.
I remember I got up, knew wedidn't have any medics, and I was
like, oh, I'm the, I'm the guy.
And I got up and ran towards Brumleyscreaming, I'm EMTB certified.
Like, just embarrassing right.
To look back on now, butwhatever Got the brumley.

(26:13):
Start working on, on treating him.
We didn't have tourniquets at that time.
We hadn't been issued tourniquets, butwe had learned about, you know, field
expedient tourniquets and I'm lookingaround, I'm like, what am I gonna use?
Ended up cutting my weapon sling.
Interesting.
Um, 'cause I put it on, I bandaged his legand elevated it, but it was still starting
to bleed, so it was arterial put on the,the weapons sling and then we humped him.

(26:36):
Oh my god.
He was heavy.
Like it's, people don't know that, right?
Like how heavy a human is.
Yeah.
When you gotta carry a limp fire.
I, you know, see these videos, youknow, whether it's other recipients like
Brit Salinsky, like throwing a teammateover their shoulder, you know, through
the snow and, and hump into the HLZ.
There was four of us carrying Brumley ona poncho and just, you know, wore us out.
Oh, on a poncho?

(26:57):
Yeah.
Like, yeah, just everybody a corner.
Just keep it TT and,and carry him like that.
Yeah.
Got him to the Hhl Z and um.
I think I ended up jumping in infantry.
I did end up jumping in one of the squads.
My FO was like, Hey, you know,they're down a couple of guys
with Bromley, another injury.
You know, lemme go jump in.
So I was running around with thisinfantry team, you know, assaulting.
We stayed there, we fought into the night.

(27:18):
We had, uh, AC one 30 come on station.
So I remember that your firstgunfight, you had AC one 30 overhead.
Yeah, they had, uh, a tens were doinggun runs around us during the day.
Remember we had to, you know,turn on all our, were you
calling all this in as the FO?
Uh, I was not calling in the Apaches.
My OI was a RTO for my o Yeah.
At that point.

(27:38):
Uh, and I, and you know, afterthat initial, basically after
Brumley went down, I was runningaround, I was just an infantryman.
Got it.
Yeah.
In an infantry squad.
And, uh, yeah, I wentthrough the night all night.
I think I, we maybe stopped and restedfor like 20 minutes and then into the next
day, quieted down, stayed there the nextday, you know, did our BDA and then, then
left Incredibly, um, didn't take any KIA.

(28:01):
Um, we had some seriously wounded,there were some crazy stories out there.
One of 'em, Chris Choi, this PacificIslander dude, I mean, maniac,
maniac, loved him, squad leader.
He had told his squad,Hey, you know, follow me.
Well, in the heat of the moment,they didn't, they didn't hear him.
And so Cho rolled out on his own Oh no.
And came up on a, a machine gun nestand ended up taking it out on his own.

(28:24):
You know, hearing about it, you know, ashe was assaulting magazine goes, you know,
dry, he switched to a rag and put a ragright in, uh, the enemy fighting position.
You got a silver star for that.
Um, actually at the end, um, I thinkit was Michael Brennan, the squad,
the scout squad leader, our weaponsquad leader, um, Mankowski, who
stayed in a position after gettingwounded, and Troy all got silver stars.

(28:49):
Uh, you know, one of the other thingsthat happened, I, one of the guys we were
with took a direct RPG to his M four.
It hit him right around the slip ring.
It, luckily it didn't detonatedetonate, but I mean it, the tail
fin ripped a chunk out of hisleg, snapped his weapon in half.
I mean, that's what it was just, I thinkfor me coming out of it just being like,
this was just absolute chaos, like stuffyou can't even, you know, that is crazy.

(29:11):
Think eight tens.
Yeah.
And that was the first one.
And then for that deployment, it feltlike every month we had a fight like that,
like that, um, up until about July, dude.
Okay.
Couple things on that.
Um, you know, you mentioned you're aforward observer, but you know, you
kind of plug in as an infantryman.
Are you accepted into the infantry kindof ranks with that or they, do they

(29:34):
see you as an fo as someone different?
You know, I wasn't really, I Imaybe at that point a little bit,
but by the second deployment, no.
I mean, whether it was medics, you know,whoever was with us, I was do whatever.
Yeah.
Well, it was also that bymy second deployment, we all
came in as privates together.
We were all the team leaders.
Yeah.
It's almost all but two of the teamleaders in the platoon I was in

(29:55):
were guys I served with as privatesand we kind of grew up together.
Yeah.
And half the squad leaders I knew.
Um, so I felt like I was, I waspretty accepted as one of 'em.
I mean, granted, theystill gimme a hard time.
One of my buddies, Brian, his song willstill be like, Hey, Pitts, where's your,
your CIB, your Combat imagery badge?
I'm like, I don't have any.
He's like, that's right.
You got a combat action badge.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
They're always giving me a hard time.
I'm like, I did everything that you did.
Yep.

(30:16):
So, uh, interesting.
Um, also kind of on the,the subject of leadership.
So you're a, you're a privatein this battle, right?
You're lowest man probably on the totempole, on this battlefield, but I think
when you, when, when you kind of lookat what the Center for Leadership is
trying to do, it's a little, it's alot of like lead from where you are.
Mm-hmm.
And these skills can be taught.
Mm-hmm.

(30:36):
If, if you're talking to a group of PFCsnow, what are you telling them about?
Like, how can you be a leader, eventhough technically you've got like seven
leaders on the battlefield with you?
Yeah, so I, you know, for me, I talk aboutleadership's not about position or title,
like leadership's love, action, right?
And you can be a leader as a peerjust by through your actions, the
things you do, doing the right thing.

(30:58):
Um, you know, one of the thingsthat I miss the most is, yeah,
we're all buddies, you know, andyou're pumping each other up.
You also are leaders in the sense thatlike, when your friends making mistakes,
be like, Hey man, you're off your game.
Like, what's going on?
Like, this is unacceptable.
Like, yeah, we're best friends, we'rebrothers, but like, also you're messing
it up and putting the rest of us at risk.
Like pull your head outtayour third point of contact.
Mm-hmm.
A story that I think of when I thinkabout anybody being leaders in that last

(31:21):
battle on July 13th, 2008, Jacob Stones.
Lowest guy on the totem pole becausehe'd been demoted once or twice.
Yeah.
He, he's Garris soldier.
Right.
I joke around.
I don't think he ever got pickedup by the mps, but it was like,
that guy, you get out at 1700, fiveo'clock, five 30, the MPS got 'em.
I love, like, he's already in trouble.
Trouble not a garrisonsoldier says it all.
Yeah, right.

(31:41):
But grading combat and towards theend of that battle, I, you know,
I'm by myself, I'm calling for helpdown to the, the company commander.
Everybody with the radiocan hear our conversation.
They can also hear the enemy talking.
In the background on my, myradio, they were so close.
They also heard the companycommander, Matt Meyer, say, Hey,
there's, there's nobody to send.
Like, we're takingcasualties down here too.
We can't, can't send anybody's.

(32:02):
Okay, got it.
Jacob heard that SOS most juniordude and says, that's pits up there.
Like, we gotta go get him.
And wasn't taking no for an answer.
Wasn't looking for permission.
His squad leader, Israel Garcia rolledwith him, met up with Sergeant Sean
Samoo and Mike Denton, specialist MikeDenton, and they fought their way into
the op when I thought nobody was coming.

(32:22):
Yeah.
And save.
And that's leadership my life.
Yeah.
And that's anybody, yeah.
Can be a leader.
Damn.
Okay.
So We'll, and we'll get into that battle.
Of course.
So just, you're coming out of, I mean,even that as your first battle that
you just described is more than mostpeople will see in entire deployments.

(32:43):
And, and you say, you know, you haveone of these a month for 12 months
and probably several of those, whenyou come outta that deployment,
like how are you thinking about,all right, I'm in the army, I'm
probably doing another one of these.
Like what's the, how areyou rationalizing all this?
I mean, I was okay with it.
I got stopped lost formy second deployment.
Um.
And I was fine with it.
Like, these are all my brothers going,like, this is what we trained for.

(33:06):
Like I wanted to go and you'rein the right place for you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was in the right place, you know,honestly, you know, you spend all
year, I remember getting back from myfirst deployment, you spend all year,
you know, dreaming about what it, howawesome it'll be when you get back.
And I remember getting off the busesand going to my room and sitting
on my bed and being like, what now?
Like, I felt lost.
Yeah.
You know, it, it felt naked without myweapon that I'd had with me for a year.
Like it was a part of me.

(33:27):
Mm-hmm.
Right.
It was an extension of my body.
Um, and, you know, that kind of autonomyto, to choose what you wanted to do.
But I can also very, uh, vividlyremember being in Afghanistan,
especially on my second appointment,like walking around and I'm already
stop-loss and being like, I enjoy this.
Like the sense of purpose,the camaraderie, the teamwork,
the challenge of like, yeah,learning what you're made of.

(33:49):
Um, you know, trying to make a differenceand trying to protect my country.
I love the people that I was with.
Um, and just, you know, hownuts is it that I'm here?
Yeah.
Um, on that first deployment,had you, and, and not to make
light of this at all, but had youtaken a life in that deployment?
Um, I honestly don't know.

(34:11):
Um, in there on the battlefieldwhen we had, um, you know, there was
one, this guy just made a mistake.
We were driving down Highwayone and he started shooting
us from the side of the road.
And, you know, I roll out with the oneinfantry squad on the pl, you know, as
the FOI always had to carry my radio.
Yeah.
So I'm the only guy with a backpack andthen, you know, my pl iss like, Hey, we

(34:31):
want to, when the Apache show up, let'stie a VS 17 or a, you know, a orange
scarf to the back of your, so I'm thetarget and we converged on this one
dude and all of us, um, you know, enengaged and there was others decisions.
Yeah.
But you know, a lot of times youdon't see much, you're just all
shooting in the same direction.
Yep.
And then you just do the BDA afterwards.

(34:52):
Yeah.
Um.
The intensity of some of those battles.
Was there anything you learned todecompress the night of, or, or
whenever you get back to the, toyour fob or, or whatever position
where you can rest for a second?
Or was it just, I just gottaget ready for the next one?
Or you weren't mature enough yetto know how to grapple with that?
Oh, you know, I think there was, whenthere was missions, you know, there were

(35:17):
maybe rituals of like listening to music.
You know, you're going through yourgear, double checking it, because after
you got back from patrol, our mission,you're getting your gear ready right away.
Whatever comes next because youneed, because it could call,
the call could come right in.
As soon as you step off the bird,Hey, you're going right back out.
Mm-hmm.
Like, there's, there's, there'sreally no rules to this thing.
It's what's needed.
And a lot of them, I mean,that first one, May 3rd.

(35:37):
There was another big one on June21st when we were on QRF, on, um,
Kandahar was 10 minute recall,get to the flight line, go.
So there were a lot of those like,Hey, you're, you're loading on a
bird, you don't know where you'regoing, so you get used to it.
I mean, I used to shut my eyes onthe, the birds, you know, a lot of
us would, where we'd be in our headsthinking about, you know, the battle.
A lot of it was going through my head.
It was, I just don'twanna let anybody down.

(35:59):
Like, interesting.
Do I know my job good enough?
You know, being disciplined and,you know, really thinking about,
I want to know where everybody is.
I really need to be thoughtfulabout when I'm controlling fires
and where I'm putting them.
Yeah.
Especially you, you know, 'cause youknow, my job was to support all those
guys and if I get it wrong, a lot ofpeople can get hurt or get killed, you
know, in just one Salva, you know, I hadmy music that I listened to in my second

(36:21):
deployment, you know, get ready to go outthere and do patrol and things like that.
We played video games coming back.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Hey, low on Call of Duty.
I remember, you know, we'd have all thehoochs linked up with, we'd order Cat
five cable or six cable from the S six.
You know, get our routersout and we'd be screaming.
The squad leaders are coming in,like, you guys need to shut up.
You know?
But we had a blast.
Um, did you guys watchanything, like, any, uh, shows?

(36:44):
Like, what was the show at that?
It was oh five.
Um, so, so, oh, what we, I don't rememberwhere we were watching oh five on the
second one, the guys got into the Hillswith Lauren Conrad and, and all them,
they were big into watching the Hills.
Uh, Smallville was big.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We were watching a lot of Smallville.
Oh, 24 was probably big at that time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it was ridiculous to me that theywere watching the Hills that I, you

(37:05):
know, walked by an area and I'd see10, 12 guys huddled around a laptop.
I love it.
What are you guys watching?
We're watching The Hills.
I'm like, y'all infantry?
Like, are we really doing this right now?
Don't you just wish that the ACT actorsthat are on that show are like the people.
Could hear this like, hey.
Oh yeah, you got these likebattle hardened killers.
Yep.
Watching this reality show or whatever.
Yeah.
Watching Laguna Beach.
Yeah.
Oh, the hills is the thel.

(37:26):
You gotta see what happens with lc.
Oh my God.
Alright.
Um, just transitioning then as you go, asyou get ready for the second deployment,
you've already been through one push.
What did you all know wascoming for this next one?
Did you, could you have anticipatedit was gonna be this lethal?
No.
Uh, 'cause initially we weresupposed to go to Iraq and it was
in the middle of our last trainingexercise, our mission ready exercise.

(37:49):
So the war games that we got, word.
Oh, hey, you're actuallybeing pushed to Afghanistan.
Oh.
Oh, that's crazy.
And I, we got, we got our, youknow, our briefing from the unit
we'd be replacing in Vir or Fels.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and.
Going through it the first time andseeing where we were in Afghanistan
to this, you know, where we were.
First time down by Highwayone in Kalo, Sabo province.

(38:10):
It was, you know, relativelyflat to the mountain.
Very different, very different to this,you know, a valley floor where we're at
might be a couple hundred meters wide.
And then it was just straight uphearing about what the enemy was
like and what they were fighting.
We kind of had an idealike, this is different.
Like a lot of these fobs arejust wild west outposts in the
middle of, you know, bad country.

(38:31):
Um, you know, this is verydifferent terrain, you know,
hearing about this enemy.
I mean, we certainly learned aboutit when we got there about how, you
know, they planned like we planned opborders and sand tables and rehearsals.
Um, so, which many people don'texpect of that enemy, right?
Like they weren't doing it in our firstdeployment where we were the second time

(38:52):
these guys organized, they were organized.
I mean in like.
There was variety too, from like wherebattle company was down in the corn goal.
I mean, they, we did a rotation downthere to give those guys a break.
And those guys were hardcharging for a year.
I mean, they knew, Hey, you leavethe wire, you go a hundred meters
south, you're getting shot at everyday they were getting shot at.
Right?
Super contentious up at RAO inthe wa it would almost lull you

(39:15):
into a sense of complacency.
Quiet, quiet, quiet.
Not even like probing fire, andthen all of a sudden mass, mass
attack trying to overrun a base.
And, and so going into that, what'syour role this time as again, as we
think about leadership, like, whereare you at, what, what role are you?
So I actually moved up fromRTO to fo my first deployment.

(39:36):
It was actually on that June21st firefight, uh, loaded
with my fo Chris Tobias.
He's, I mean, he's the one thatraised me and taught me like
everything, like incredible leader,like especially junior leader.
He, he, I. Pushed backagainst what I thought.
Um, military leaders, youknow, he didn't yell at me.
Yeah.
He'd scuff me up when I made mistakes,but I also remember he had like
a very Socratic method sometimes.

(39:58):
Mm-hmm.
You know, he'd ask me like, Pitts,why'd, why'd you do it that way?
You know, trying to understandwhat my thought process was.
Yeah.
And help me understand whycertain things were important.
He never held back any of his knowledge.
Like he was always trying tomake me better and push me.
You know, I remember I could outrunhim, he'll probably watch this and
disagree with me, but I could outrun you.
But I can remember him pushing me andtelling me to run faster from behind me.

(40:19):
You know, like it, you know,you're not doing good enough.
I love that.
I love that man.
I love that.
Yeah.
We were a great team, but we wereon the bird out on June 21st,
and I heard that chosen nine two.
Travis Stoddard, um, wasthe FO for second platoon.
He got shot.
And you know, at that point our companywasn't super close with the platoons.
It was kind of like a segregation,like, Hey, first platoon, don't hang
out with second, they're dirt bags.

(40:39):
Third, don't hang out withfirst they're dirt bags.
And I remember just looking atTabba and being like, Stodd down.
He is like, you know what this means,right in the back of a Chinook.
And, and he's like, what?
I'm like, I gotta goto Second Platoon now.
Like, that sucks.
I gotta go serve with these turds.
Yeah.
And that's what I thought at the time.
And then moved over there.
And so I actually stayed as the FO forsecond platoon from the first appointment.

(41:00):
The second.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Deploying in the same role.
Wow.
Did you, had you done a dangerclose call, uh, danger close
engagement in that first go around?
So first go around, you know,we weren't taking mortars out.
We would take mortars out with us,but a lot of places we were at,
like we weren't within range no.
Of any artillery.
So it was pretty much all talkingto, to close combat mm-hmm.
Aviation and, I mean, youwere one of those dudes.

(41:23):
You guys were awesome, right?
Like anybody can really talk them on.
Yeah.
You know, there was, there was a firefightthat June 21st, one of my buddies, the
RTO for second two, Adam Delaney, islike trying to talk him onto something.
He's like, shoot it, it therock that looks like an ass.
And in the audio you hear thepilots go, does he say the
rock that looks, oh, I see it.
You know, and then they,I knew they come in.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
So I hadn't called any, but we definitelyhad AC one 30 shooting around us.

(41:47):
Danger close.
Uh, second deployment.
Yeah, definitely more.
The mortars, I would'vecalled in Very danger.
Close.
Yeah.
Especially our sixties.
Um, there's also, there'strust there, right?
Like who's, who's, who'ssending these things.
Yeah.
And our mortar team was unbelievable.
You just trust them.
Yeah, I, I mean, I would, I,I'd let 'em shoot on top of me.

(42:08):
God.
Um, but I had asked the Apaches,especially in that last battle,
to shoot extreme danger.
Close.
So let's, let's go tothe Medal of Honor event.
If you can, you just set the contextand walk us through this battle.
Like what, why are you goingin, why is it so contentious?
Yeah.
And, and also you, you alluded to the,you mentioned a hundred meter wide,

(42:28):
maybe valley, straight up mountains.
Like what is the altitude?
We're talking here for these, becausethis is not your normal mountain range.
I, I, I, I mean, I could be wrong.
I, we were probably at likefive, 6,000 feet at Valley floor.
Valley floor, maybe higher.
And then I. Seven, 8,000or more once we climbed up.

(42:49):
And I mean, that's a lotof patrols particularly.
We had some bases.
So just to set it up, we, my platoonspent a lot of our time with our battalion
headquarters in, in alm, kinda like themain city there, um, in Kunar, Stan area.
And then the wa all went up tothe north and way, way up north.
We had two fire bases.
We had Combat Outpost Ranch house, whichwas just stuck on the side of a mountain.

(43:13):
HLZ was the top of aBondi, just a mud hut.
Birds couldn't even power it down likethey were kind of half hovering there.
Um, and then the other was Combat Outpost,Bella Valley floor, couple ops around.
And there was less than a platoonat either one of those, geez,
only resupplied by helicopter.
Um, if we had wanted to get there on theground, we probably could have driven
to a certain point, then we would'vehad to walk in and probably was at

(43:35):
least a day to get up there, maybe more.
Um, so not great areas.
Ranch House was almost overrun in August.
When we got there, uh, they actually,the enemy took about half of the base.
They penetrated half of thebase and our guys held him off.
Uh, it was Eric Phillips, um,Jason Baldwin, Hector Chavez.

(43:55):
Like there were guys stuck infighting positions behind enemy
that could hear him running around.
And I mean, even talking aboutjust like small leadership.
Yeah.
Like sometimes you're by yourself.
One of our guys, Jetta Deloria, he was ina position that collapsed, was like one
of the main spots they rolled through.
They nailed the position with RPGs.
It collapsed on him.
He's got shrapnel.
He can't move.
He can hear him running around him.
You know, at one point he'stalking about trying to throw
rocks at him to distract him.

(44:17):
He zed out his radio, even thoughthat was his line of communication.
'cause he didn't want them to get and zingit out, like making, so it's inoperable.
Yep.
Um, so the, he couldn't fall intothe enemy's hands, you know, one of
the guys, Jason Baldwin threw like40 hand grenades just trying one
after a time trying to hold him back.
Um, and, and at that fight, youknow, post couldn't see each other.

(44:38):
It's absolute chaos.
You know, everybody had to be a leader.
If your team leader went down orsomebody was wounded, you had to
continue to defend your posts and hopeeverybody else is doing their same job.
They repelled it.
They did a 10 gun runsinside the wire of the base.
I saw the hole in the tacticaloperation center where a
round came through the roof.
They were able to repel 'em.
Incredible.

(44:59):
Eric Phillips got adistinguished service cross.
Uh, I know, I thinkBaldwin got a silver star.
There might've been some others.
Matt Ferra got a silver star.
We went up after that, broke thatbase down, burned it to the ground.
Like we just couldn't, weknew we couldn't hold it.
Yeah.
Um, broke down to Bella comingto the end of the deployment.
You know, we knew that they were gonna tryand overrun Bella and they just, they were

(45:19):
starting to step up attacks, but they, weknew they couldn't quite figure out how
to crack that nut of how to get in there.
Incoming unit, you know, lesspeople, less combat experience.
So we needed to do, you know, Arbitcounty commander, our company commander,
we need to do everything we can toset this new unit up for success.
So the decision was made to breakdown Bella and simultaneously move

(45:41):
up to the village and would whatnot,and occupy some of that, that power
vacuum that was gonna be there.
Locate near the populace.
This is 2008.
It's 2008.
And can you just describe, youmentioned platoon size elements.
How big is the platoon?
Just for people to rationalize?
Yeah, it's about 40 guys at belt.
It's small.
Yeah, right.
We took 49 Americans to ot.

(46:02):
So when we moved up to OT, we hadabout 25 Afghan National Army.
So with them we're two Marine ET tts.
We had a squad of engineers, we hada, a gun truck, a tow missile truck
attached to us from our Destin company.
And then a good p partof our, our platoon.
And our job was to set up this newbase, you know, bring, you know,
HESCO barriers and start fillingthings up and building this thing up

(46:25):
to hand it over to the incoming unit.
A bunch of things went wrong.
I mean, the night we drove up.
Rain, torrential, downpourwashed out the road.
I mean, these are like go trails.
Yeah.
Like Humvees could barely travel, soconstruction couldn't get up there.
They're delayed.
There was an incident where there weresome enemy fighters that were attacked
and you know, their propaganda, there's upnorth with an Apache, you know, that said,
oh, they're, they're attacking civilians.

(46:46):
So the water, the civilians thatwe hired drive water up to us,
didn't wanna drive up to us.
They sent us a bobcat out there.
Great.
We got afu fuel bli.
They didn't bring us the pumpfor the, so like, it was just,
you know, doing everything.
We started digging everything by hand,you know, trying to fill eight foot hesco
baskets and build our fighting positions,you know, improve your position every day.

(47:07):
You know, we're working hard.
Um, you know, we're also tryingto manage the water situation.
Like, okay, we're gonna work as hardas we can in the morning, you know,
from, from, uh, you know, right afterstand two until, you know, maybe 10,
11, middle midday when it's super hot.
Soon as it starts to cooldown sunsets in the afternoon.
We're gonna keep working then.
And just building sandbags, uh,digging our holes deeper and I mean.

(47:28):
Ground over there is like concreteusing pickaxes and eTools and,
you know, doing everything we canbecause we knew all those fighters
that wanted to overrun Bella.
We thought they're just gonna, they'rejust coming, come down the valley.
And, you know, our, our,there were some SOPs in place.
We had an ISR asset over us for likethree days, you know, just constantly.
Mm-hmm.

(47:48):
Watching.
But at that point, that was theSOP you get three days, well, they
didn't attack us in three days.
They waited till the morning of the fifth.
Uh, and they moved in undercover ofdarkness, had us completely surrounded,
um, you know, fire supports positions.
They moved trying in the gate, you know,our fire superiority, both artillery

(48:09):
and, and rotary wing and fixed wing.
They were, you know, in some casesabout 10 meters just because from
our positions, they get close enough.
They know, they negate, we're notgonna call something in, they can't
do it now, I would with a 60 right.
But kind of almost nothing else.
Um, and we'd actually wokenup that we, you know, we we're
doing stand two every day.
We're up, you know, we have standtwo is just getting everybody up,

(48:30):
but before the sun rises, yeah.
Everybody's in their positions lockedand loaded, scanning, ready to go
to rappel and attack everybody.
Um, you know, we were running 50%security at night, so guys were
patrols patrolling the wire and,you know, manning their positions.
We were actually getting ready to go outand do a patrol that morning to find a
new position for our observation posts.

(48:51):
We were lucky.
We had our companycommander on the ground.
He came down when they brokeout Bella, so Matt Meyer.
And then we had our platoonleader, John Brostrom.
So awesome.
Had our platoon sergeant, um,Dave Zwick out there as well.
And Matt, morning stand two went byquiet, but we noticed, you know, in the
days leading up a lot of fighting agemales around, a lot of people sitting,
sitting around drinking tea, watching us.

(49:12):
Uh, I even remember at our positionover the op guy just climbed a train
and was just looking into our position.
I'm like, get outta here.
There wasn't much.
There's nothing we can reallydo other than just yelling
at him and tell 'em to go.
And, and again, Ryan, youguys are in, um, elevated?
Not much.
No.
We were just outside the villageand so like that, you know, there's
been conjecture about the locationof our op, our platoon leader.

(49:34):
You know, it's a game timedecision on the ground, right?
Normally, yeah, we're gonnabe in the high ground.
You want to have that so you get theobservation, you, you commanding position.
But he was also very much thinking about,well, we only have so many guys on the
ground, I wanna be able to reinforcewhere you are, so you're not too far.
Yeah.
So we picked, you know, kindof the best that we could do.
I wanted to take over thetop floor of the hotel.

(49:55):
I was like, we got cash.
Look on the guys.
Like we could rent it.
Yeah.
You know, like it's, it's alreadya built hardened structure.
Like those things can take a beating andwe just couldn't with the population.
Um.
And so our tow missile trucks spottedsome guys in the hills and Union.
They're, they're notpleasure hiking, you know?
Right.
Patterns of life.
Um, spot weapons.
I started working up a fire mission.

(50:17):
I couldn't actually observe 'em,so I'm kind of like talking through
other people to try and work upthis mission through somebody else.
And then there was just a burstof machine gunfire from the north
and just all help broke loose.
They targeted all our heavy weaponsystems, so they like knew They
went after the mark nineteens,they went after the 50 cals.
They went after our observation post.
They went after our mortar firing point.
Um, I mean, every position was just rocks.

(50:40):
What time of day is this immediately?
This is about 4 30, 5o'clock in the morning.
So some, some daylight.
Oh yeah, there's daylight at this point.
Like we were gettingready to go on patrol.
We'd already gone past Dantoo, but I mean, they were just
everywhere and all around us.
And where are you at this point then?
I'm at the observation post.
I'm about a hundred and 150 metersoutside of the vehicle patrol base

(51:01):
that's in the middle of the village.
We're about 75 to a hundred meters fromour first squad who was kind of manning
a traffic control point on the road.
All right.
So, so that's when kind ofcoordinated attack happens?
Yeah.
And they know exactly where to target.
Oh yeah.
It sounds like they're goingafter the heavy weapons.
Talk us through, man,what happens in this day?
So, right off the bat, a bunch of usat the observation post are wounded.

(51:23):
I'm, I take shrapnel.
I don't remember if it waslike half jumped, half thrown.
I ended up in like a whole differentfighting position and, you know,
kind of come to look down at my legsand they're just perforated with
shrapnel and I'm, I'm looking at 'em.
I can see a piece of shrapnel camethrough the back of my left boot,
um, partially severed my Achilles.
Shock was actually starting to settlein, in, in my legs, and I'm, I'm

(51:46):
sitting there and I'm looking, and Iremember looking at my feet and being
like, okay, just wiggle your toes.
Like, move your feet.
I couldn't move my legs at all.
Like, what hit you?
Could you lift my knee?
It was shrapnel, RPGs, and aids.
Okay.
I mean, it was a, it was a mix.
I was hit several times, like severaldifferent volleys and I, you know, at
that point I had never been in a fightwhere our wounded had to do anything.
Right.
Usually we just moved him toa casualty collection point.

(52:07):
Hang tight, man, we'regonna get you outta here.
I can listen.
You know, I'm the senior guy up therewith this other NCO, Matt Gobble, and
I can hear all the guys around me,these specialists, and immediately
returning fire, like immediately doingwhat they're supposed to be doing.
I, my bell was rung like, I'm dazed.
I'm trying to figure out what's going on.
It's absolute chaos.

(52:27):
There was nine of us up there.
I don't even know where everybody is.
I'm terrified of like,what's happening to the guys.
Crawl to the southern fightingposition where Jason Bogar is, um,
you know, figuring like, I, I needsomebody to treat this, you know, I
need to get a tourniquet on this leg.
I had taken some shrapnel onmy left arm too, so my left
hand was maybe 50% utility.

(52:48):
I had some, I have some nerve damage in itnow, but like, I couldn't really use it.
I could do like probablygross motor skills, not fine.
I get in there, gobbles, concussed,he's been hit, he's covered
with shrapnel, bogar turns.
He was just returning fire on the enemy,standing up with his saw, just unload.
And he turns around, seesme in gobble, looks at me.
Sergeant Pitts, what do you need?
I'm like, I need atourniquet on my right leg.
You know, I said that rock first responderand the EMT course, you know, we learned,

(53:12):
you know, the, um, femoral artery.
Yeah.
You know, I, you can bleed outinside your body in two minutes.
And I was hit right along, youknow, where it, where it ran,
uh, had 'em put a tourniquet on.
I was like, you know, keepputting it on tighter.
I didn't bother with,you know, any bandages.
There was just too much.
I'm like, we don't have enoughcurlx and ace bandage to bandage
me up, so just forget about it.
We'll just let thetourniquet do its thing.

(53:33):
Uh.
Alright, you good.
Moves on to the next guy.
Uh, and he just stands up and returnsfire and I can hear the guys firing.
And you know, at this point I'm justsitting there and I'm thinking, you know,
this is my job to just sit here now, youknow, do what I can, but wait it out.
Tyler Stafford crawled into the position.
He had been wounded in the opening salvo.
He had tried to, youknow, detonate claymores.
He tried to return fire.

(53:53):
He told me Matt Phillips had been killed.
Matt Phillips, you know, again, anotherguy just I meet doing his job in the
complete absence of orders, knew thateverybody's got a gain fire superiority.
He was returning fire, he was gettingready to throw a grenade at the enemy
when an RRP G came in and explodednext to him and, and killed him.
And you've you've served withthis guy for a couple years now?
Over a year?
Yeah.

(54:13):
So, you know, over a year.
He was one of the juniorguys that came in.
You know, my buddies trained him up.
Um, yeah, all those guys at thatposition, most of them I had been with.
For probably close to two years.
Um, two guys, Chris Mcce and Jason Bogarwere both replacements that came to us
halfway through the deployment, so knewthem last time, but they were both very
competent, um, soldiers in what they did.

(54:36):
When Stafford came in and, you know,told me what happened to Phillips,
he told me he didn't know where hiswilling was as legs willing was down.
You know, that was panicked to me.
'cause I'm like, do they have him?
Like, what's going on?
And he told me they were throwinggrenades and, you know, I don't
know what it was in that moment.
It really pissed me off, um, that theythought that they could get that close.

(54:56):
And I said, I remember thinking to myselflike, if we were, we're within hand
grenade range for, for you guess what?
You're in hand grenade range from us.
Yeah.
And I had an idea, there was somedead space to the north on this little
river bed that I thought they were in.
Um, this is really the only place thatthey could be throwing hand grenades from.
And so I crawled back up thereand started cooking off grenades
and just putting 'em in there.

(55:16):
And trying to, trying to keepup with the guys around me.
You know, looking at it, hearingthe volume of fire, being in other
firefights before you can kind of, I'mlike, this is not like, it was intense.
This is not like the others.
Um, you know, in terms of theircoordination, their support
by fires and things like that.
And just trying to keep upwith the guys around me.
Um, are you putting weighton your leg this time?

(55:38):
No, I'm crawl.
You're literally, I'm dragging crawl.
Yeah.
And you know, I, there was a, um, two40 Bravo in the position, you know,
we learned all the weapon systems.
I'm like, all right, let's, I'm gonnastart using this and do my job there.
So I used my hands to prop my right legup into kind of like a kneeling position.
I'd pull myself up, blind fireover the top of the two 40 and then
come up and start trying to engage.

(55:58):
But I, you know, therounds were in a soft sack.
It's a crew served weapon.
It's just me.
So I'm kept having malfunctions 'causeI couldn't feed enough ammo into it.
Pull it down, clear the malfunction,repeat, you know, and while this
is going on, you know, pull PruitRainey Gun Team leaders, specialists.
He's managing the fight as best he can.
He's moving ammunition around.

(56:19):
He's telling people tocontrol rates of fire.
You know, he's talking to me, tellingme what he needs, giving me updates
to relay, to relay to our commander.
My commander's asking me, you know,what targets do we wanna fire?
I preplanned targets out there.
You're radio?
Yeah, I'm trying to do the radio.
I, I wasn't really effective asa Ford observer at that point.
You know, I was trying to get targetswith our mortars, but an RPG went into our
mortar firing point, hit the ammo cache.

(56:41):
Those guys had to vacate.
Um, Sergio Abba wasmortally wounded in there.
You know, our guys are dragging himacross open ground while bullets are
just falling like raindrops around him.
Hector Chavez got shot throughboth legs trying to drag him, you
know, to cover, but they, theygot him back to, back to position.
I mean, everybody, like it wasn'tany different down at the vehicle.
Tr everybody was basically like anisland in the same situation that, you

(57:04):
know, I was, um, just trying to returnfire and, uh, you know, we were lucky.
Brostrom.
It was hearing about the reports, whatwas going on up at the observation
post and turned to our companycommander, Matt Meyer, and said, Hey,
you know, our boys are in troubleand there I gotta, I gotta go.
And Matt, you know, this is, that's,that's John's leadership right there, but

(57:26):
it's also Matt's 'cause Matt trusted him.
He didn't question it.
He could've been like, no, yeah, hecould have said that it's too late.
I need you here to, to do this for me.
And he said, Nope.
I'll hand, you know, Igo, I'll handle the radio.
Here you go.
Where you think you're needed.
And Brostrom rolled out with, uh,a medic doc Hewitt who came to us.
He wasn't even part of ourunit when we deployed, but he

(57:47):
backfilled a medic we had at Bella.
And this kid was so great thatwe were all like to our platoon
sergeant, Matt ha at the time.
We said, you know, we gotta keep this kid.
And so we did.
And uh, Hewitt went with himand Hewitt got shot just running
into second squad's position.
So Hewitt had to go back.
Strom gets the second squad by himselfand, um, he's asking for volunteers

(58:07):
like, Hey, we're gonna, the observationpost, they're taking casualties up there.
I need some people to comewith me to go reinforce.
And you know, when I think aboutcourage, I think about this moment.
There was a guy there, JasonHoder, sweetest kid in the world.
Hilarious.
And I, I say kid atthat point, I'm 22, 23.
He was 26.
He's youngin.
Youngin.
But I, I had seniority on him.
Sweetest kid.

(58:28):
So funny kiddo.
They bring him out for re-enlistmentceremonies to mock our battalion
commander, do an impersonation.
'cause he was spot on And you know, be thebattalion commander, very religious, very
devout in his faith, you know, grew upsinging with his family, traveling around.
He's from Tennessee.
But I remember that he wouldtalk about being afraid to dying.
And that wasn't something we talked about.
Right?

(58:48):
You know, we're all beating our chest.
Everybody's, you know,fake it till you make it.
You, I'm not afraid of dying,you know, we're here to fight.
But he would talk about it.
And I think about the couragethat it took just to do that.
But on that day, knowing this is a guywho's, you know, actively afraid of
dying and, you know, talking about itwhen ster master volunteers ho to raise
his hand, you know, and this is thegnarliest firefighter I've ever been in.

(59:09):
And he went.
I don't know how they made it.
They took the most direct routeto the observation post that
they had to, this is to you?
Yeah, they had to pass probablywithin 10, 15 meters of
probably some enemy positions.
You know, when I think about it in myhead, you know, not the exact same,
but I liken it to when lieutenantin Band of Brothers, when Lieutenant
Spears, they're in Ba Stone and Foyand Spears gets up and runs to link up.

(59:30):
Yeah, right through the likethat's what I think about.
Like that's, you know, myversion of what they did.
And they showed up and Ididn't know they were coming.
Brostrom scared the hell outta me.
He popped his head up overthe sandbag next to me.
He was like, what's up Sergeant Pitt?
And I was like, Jesus.
And he's like, where are they at?
I'm like, take a look around,sir. They're everywhere.
Like 360, you know, they're downin this river bed over here.
You know, they're over to the rightover here, up in, you know, this area.

(59:53):
And he started and I wasrelieved that he was there.
'cause Gobble and I are both wounded.
You know, we've got a fullyphysically capable platoon leader.
I trusted John.
He came to us halfway throughthe deployment too, right?
He replaced our first plDevin George in November.
He was a total bro, like Brostrom was.
He is a Army brat.

(01:00:14):
His dad was an infantry officerand then was a, an aviator, uh,
I think he was an Apache pilot.
He had served in Desert Storm.
Uh, John came in, said, Hey, I'mgonna be tougher than you dad.
I'm going infantry.
Yep.
Big surfer in Hawaii.
He loved to talk trash to all of us.
He's like, sonar Pitts, when are yougonna come lift big boy weights with me?
You know?
Uh, but very tactically sound likehe just knew how to fit in with us.

(01:00:35):
Like wasn't trying to, you know,be anything other than himself.
And I think that's an importantpart of leadership too.
Like he was authentic to John.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
To who he was, you know, when he wasreal and we knew, you know, caring
about your subordinates is so important.
And he was that guy.
You know, we knew that he wasn'tmaking decisions based on his career.
He was making decisionson what was best for us.

(01:00:57):
Sometimes that was stuff we didn't like.
Right.
You know, we could do the easypatrols down at the valley floor.
No, guys we're, we're climbingup, you know, when he wanted
to take the fight to the enemy.
Respect that, that why we're here.
And to be fair, like that's not easyto do in a leadership position where
you, you're like, Hey, 15 of you we'regoing up here and everybody's pissed off
at you, and you know they're gonna bepissed off, but you gotta do it still.

(01:01:18):
Yeah.
And we, we trusted him though, youknow, when he explained it to us and he
would solicit in, you know, feedback.
You know, they tell all the lieutenantsthat, like, listen to your NCOs.
He was listening to the NCOs and weknew that, you know, if there was
something that he'd push back, company,battalion, whoever, you know, he'd
go defend us and keep, you know,that s from rolling downhill onto us.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, but so glad that he showed up.
Like he was just such a great, greatleader and he's immediately, you

(01:01:41):
know, re you know, when Rainey'stelling me, Hey, Brostrom wants
the six, the two 40 take it.
And then I'm, you know, I'm backon the radio, I'm trying to help
redistribute, redistribute ammo.
Um, you know, and the guys around mewere doing incredible things, right?
Like bogar treating people turningaround immediately standing up in
return fire, I mean like totallyexposing himself to enemy fire.

(01:02:02):
I learned later after the battle a years.
You know, quiet kid, quiet guy.
He was a little bit older.
He was 20, 26, 27, but helooked much older than us.
Like he was the old man of theplatoon and he, he hated it like that.
Quiet, very quiet Georgia boy.
Um, you had driven trucksbefore you joined the military.
I remember.

(01:02:22):
You know, you, you do ruck marches, youdo hard things, physically hard things,
and, you know, you're just sucking.
Life sucks.
But I would look to other people belike, all I need to do is find somebody
hurting more than me and just draw mystrength from that and be like, yes.
You know?
Uh, he was somebody youcould always count on Yeah.
To look over and be like,he's more miserable than me.
Never complained, never fell out.
Yeah.
N just was right there, like, almostlike, just like a sleeper, like a

(01:02:46):
just really good below the radar dude.
And on that day he's manning the two 40.
He took a round right off hishelmet, knocked him off the gun,
and he got back on the gun andmanned it until he was killed.
Um, totally unassuming dude.
But as I look back on it andlike what I saw from him, like.
Am I amazed at what he did?
Yeah, but am I surprised that he dugdeep like that and did that for us?

(01:03:10):
No, um, it didn't surprise me at all.
And, and there, from what I've read,there are moments where you're on the
radio and I think you're talking backmaybe to the commander and they can hear
the enemy 'cause they're so close tolike, through your radio transmission.
This happened shortly afterBrostrom, I, I don't know how like
time just, oh, I can't imagine.

(01:03:30):
Like, I don't know, it couldhave been five, 10 minutes.
But, you know, after Brostrom showedup, they're moving things around.
After a time it felt quiet in the op.
Like, it just didn't sound like thesame outgoing fire was happening.
And I, I didn't wanna yell out.
So I, you know, started crawling around,you know, I could look down to where
Broche had set up and I can see, you know,the guy's bodies and nobody's moving.

(01:03:51):
Uh, you know, I crawl and I lookup at what we call the Crow's
Nest where Airs and Rainy and Mccewere, and nobody's up there either.
I get to the southern fightingposition and nobody's there.
That's when I realized like I'm bymyself and that's when I could hear,
you know, the enemy talking around me.
And, um, I remember crawling backto the center of the, the fighting
position of our op and thinkingto myself, like, just starting to

(01:04:14):
think, okay, like what do we do now?
Like, what do I have, youknow, all I can think about is
like, I don't want be captured.
I don't want my family to seemy head cut off on YouTube.
I don't, you know, I looked at my wounds.
I'm like, if they capture me, like there'sno way they're gonna be able to treat me
like I'm just gonna die in the enemy'shands and my friends are probably gonna
get hurt trying to recover my body.
Like, I don't want that.
And you know, in that moment thinkingabout, okay, you know, what do you do

(01:04:37):
then Ryan and I just thought, well,don't, don't let 'em take you alive.
Like, make it so they have to kill you.
And I just in my head was like,okay, set a goal for myself.
I wanna kill as many as I can.
My personal goal was three.
That seemed kind of fairconsidering I was immobile.
I was just gonna sit there and waitand try and surprise him coming
over the sandbags and crawl to, uh,that northern fighting position.

(01:04:58):
Got on the radio and, you know, talkingto Matt Meyer, I, I was really just
trying to get anybody on the radio 'causeI didn't know, you know, where he was.
So I'm calling for chosen two fivePlatoon Sergeant Dave Wick, two six
Romeo John Hayes, or Chosen six,our company commander, Matt Myers.
And, um, I get Matt and I tellhim, Hey, you know, everybody
up here is either dead or gone.
And he comes back and tells me, Hey,you know, there's nobody to send.

(01:05:20):
Like, we're in it down here too.
You're gonna have to, you'regonna have to hang in there.
And there was no anger for me.
Like there was no malice.
I completely understood.
'cause I could see, I mean, it wasn'tany different for them down there.
Yeah.
The tow missile truckhad actually exploded.
Those guys from Destin company, uh,may, Aaron Davis, Justin Grim, stayed
in that truck after it was on fire foras long as they could before they left.

(01:05:43):
It exploded.
I remember seeing the smoke, Ilearned after the fact it ejected a
flaming toe missile about 30 meterslanded in the fighting position
where our mortars had gone throughas they're all thinking about, Hey,
everybody's getting ready to scatter.
'cause you know, they canhear it starting to spool up.
It sounds like it's gonna cook off.
Eric Phillips guy who got thedistinguished groves cross at Ranch
House says it's better for oneguy to take a risk than five or

(01:06:07):
six run into fighting positions.
So he grabs this flaming toe missile andruns it out into the open and he doesn't
just, you know, ed it out there, you know,he thinks if this thing cooks off, where
should I point It sets it down and makesit back and, you know, save those guys.
I don't think the missile evercooked off, but you know, who knows?
Yeah.
You just dunno what could have happened.

(01:06:28):
And um, so I got it.
I understood and I just, at that pointthere was like no reason to stay on
the radio and I just said, I'm fine.
You either send people or thisposition's gonna fall, you know,
nine two out and then it was.
I talk about the cross training and Ithink that's important as a leader is
to be looking at like, you constantlyneed to be acce, uh, uh, assessing
your team on, Hey, what are we goodat and what can we be better at?

(01:06:51):
Yeah.
You know, where are the gaps?
How do I make sure everybody knowsthe job of the people that they're
left and their right so they couldstep in and do it, or at least just
have that situational awareness.
It makes us all more dangerous.
And so we did a tremendous amount of, of,of cross training and a lot of emphasis
on paying attention to other people.
So I just started looking atthe tools I had around me.
I had a radio, I had a2 0 3 and it was okay.

(01:07:14):
Think of the next thingthat you, that you can do.
So I thought about the 60 'causeI knew these guys were real close.
Uh, kill radius on a 60millimeter mortars, 30 meters.
I was willing to bring it in that close.
I was willing to bring it in to 10'cause I tr like Chavez Gilmore Quack
Phillips, our mortar team were amazing.
Called down.

(01:07:34):
Try and get them.
They tried.
I know they did.
You know, Phillips threwa flaming toe missile.
They stayed in the, the motorfiring position as long as they
could, they just couldn't get to it.
The 60 was out in the open and they weregetting lit up every time they went out.
Fine.
Next thing, well I had watched,you know, we trained all the
time, we trained even on patrol.
So Sergeant Sean Samara who'dlater come into the op, I was

(01:07:54):
on a patrol with him one time.
This is when we were up at Bella.
He was practicing shootingthe 2 0 3 in a dead space.
Right.
You know, it's a direct fired weapon.
You shoot it what you can see,but you can also indirect it.
Right.
'cause it's only got a limited range.
So he was teaching his guys howto fire it like a mortar and
drop it in behind dead space.
I can do that.
So I remember taking the 2 0 3and setting it on the ground and

(01:08:15):
pointing it almost straight up.
And then I just canned it a little bit.
So I was trying to drop it in theriver bed about 10 meters away and, you
know, loaded the first one 10 meters.
Yeah.
Let it fly.
I, I have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm eyeballing all this.
Yeah.
You know, I have no idea whetherany of, I don't know whether
the grenades did any good.
I don't know whether the 2 03 did any good, but I let that
first one fly and, and, you know.
Little part of me was like, oh shit,I didn't, I didn't check windage.

(01:08:38):
Like, is this So, you know, you do thelittle, like, this is gonna do nothing
if it lands on me, but I'm doing it.
Yeah.
You know, didn't.
All right, let's keep going.
Fired off a couple of those.
Look to the next thing.
I go.
Okay.
Well what about having somebodylay down suppressive fire?
I know two, one can see myposition, sort of two, one Bravo.
Uh, great friend of mine, Brian,his long was in my wedding.

(01:09:01):
I was in his, it was all after the fact.
Trust him.
Dude was a great shot.
I'd watch him, I can't remember.
He had a, a, a private at his platoon.
We got there.
We're at the range.
Uh.
Afghanistan, and we've got theseiron maidens up on the, on the
mountain, it might be 200 yards out.
And his soldiers, you know,were re and everything.
He's like, I don'tknow, my barrel's loose.
His song grabs a rifle from itand is just like standing up

(01:09:21):
free arm, ting, ting, ting, ting.
Nothing wrong with it.
You just suck.
You know?
So I trust him.
Tell him, Hey, two un bravo, youknow, lay down fire over my position.
Maybe I can keep 'em from comingover the tops of the sandbags.
I, I don't even think he gave me a Rogerall of a sudden, just clack, clack,
clack, clack, clack, you know, and,and he's doing it and trusted them.
And that's, you know,that call I made to Meyer.

(01:09:42):
That's when Sos and Garcia heardit and started making their run
link up with Sam and Denton and,you know, fight their way in.
And Sam actually engaged a fi a fighter,an enemy fighter standing on the rock,
shooting down in the observation post,trying to, trying to, you know, kill me.
And, uh, they push in.
I had no idea they were coming.
Never felt so relieved in my entirelife when those boys showed up.

(01:10:05):
And, uh, I could tell mywounds were pretty bad.
Like, I, I mean, I waslike, mentally, okay.
When SOS first got to me and Icould see he was like, oh, s like,
uh, this is beyond my pay grade.
Like, Hey Garcia, this is a point in thebattle though, where we've been there,
we've been fighting for hour and a halfand I mean, we brought a ton of with us.
Gosh.
But this is like, we're all goingcyclic, you know, firing back while

(01:10:29):
Garcia is pulling security and sosthey're trying to like treat me.
Um, Sam and Denton start goingguy to guy to our casualties
and searching him for ammo.
And you know, again, somethingI learned after the fact.
Denton, Mike Denton, we called him Mongo.
He was this kid.
He was oh my size, you know, just a moose.
Yeah.
Big dude, great kid.
Ho's best friend.

(01:10:49):
Saw Gunner could just do everythinghe wanted, but he could break
any, like a nods base plate, likejust an inner piece of metal.
This kid would figure out how to break it.
Great kid, but he's searching guysand Hoder was his best friend.
And I, you know, talking to him after hetold me about how he searched Ovate, you
know, took the ammo, told him he lovedhim, and then moved on to the next guy.

(01:11:13):
And, you know, I think about thatin that moment of like, I never
had to do that with anybody.
That was my best friend.
Yeah.
You know, the, the strength, theleadership in this 21-year-old kid to
search his dead friend, best friend'sbody for ammo, tell him he loves him and
then just go right back about business.

(01:11:33):
Wasn't long after they got there, anotherbarrage of rocket propel grenades come
in, wounds us all again, mortally wounds.
Garcia, um, Denton's throne,you know, he lands on his neck.
Sam is hit bad.
We're trying to figureout what's going on.
We crawl back to thesouthern fighting position.

(01:11:55):
Sam's sitting there.
He's banged up.
Sos is banged up.
You know, Garcia's, uh, mortally wounded.
I'm wounded.
I'm laying.
It's like, what can we do?
I look over and there's Denton, he'sperforated with shrapnel up and down,
his backside hip bleeding out of his ear.
'cause he had a perforated eardrum.
Um, like I said, he is a sogunner, right hand dominant.
He had taken a piece of shrapnel throughhis right hand bone sticking out, and this

(01:12:18):
kid switched to his non-dominant hand andis standing up, pulling security, right?
Like there's three leaders aroundyou, down and out, not doing a whole
lot, you know, doing what we can.
I mean, and this kid takes theinitiative to stand up and continue to
do the right thing and protect us andpull security, you know, not making
excuses, just doing whatever he can.

(01:12:42):
You know, and I, I was blown away.
This is around this time theApaches is starting to show up.
These guys are flying low.
I mean, I could have hit 'emwith a nine mil if I wanted to.
I could have thrown a baseballup there and hit their bird.
And I mean they were shooting within10 meters of the observation post.
So close.
You know, I was talking through CaptainMeyer being like, Hey, you know,
where do we want this first gun run?

(01:13:03):
You know, even all this, the heat of this,I mean, you have to be thinking clearly.
I'm like, okay, you know, ifthey go over the gun target line,
hey, you gotta come west to east.
So you don't, if you go long, youdon't go into the, into the vehicle
patrol base, you know, hit this river.
Yeah.
We're within 10 meters.
You, you gotta do it.
And I, I've listened to their audio.
You hear 'em be like, did he say 10?
And they're like, yeah, alright.
We're coming in.
Get down and, you know,talking to 'em afterwards.

(01:13:25):
'cause I've stayed intouch with those guys.
You guys don't like to shoot your 30mic mic within like a hundred yards.
Yeah, a hundred meters.
They did it, you know, and rightthere, like the risks that they took
coming up there, um, flying theirbirds that low, you know, putting
their careers on the line or, you know,even their morality of like taking
the chance of killing friendlies.

(01:13:45):
Yeah.
And the, and the sake of helping out.
Worst, worst thing.
Right?
Like, that's like the worstthing that can happen.
You know, they're takingthose risks, which are not.
They're not small.
No, I know what that would feel like.
Yeah.
Um, and I was just blown away.
You know, the, the guys justkept coming from the vehicle
patrol base, like kept coming up.
You know, about this timeour first platoon showing up,
they're, I mean, it came in hot.

(01:14:06):
They did a, they drove from ourve our battalion headquarters.
Uh, it was like maybe 10 clicksas like the crow flies should have
been like about a two hour drive.
You know, they should have beenclearing all the corners and everything.
They just, they just mad maxedit up there in like 45 minutes,
like as fast as they could.
This is great.
This is as first platoons showing up.
Apaches are on station.

(01:14:27):
Medevacs is starting to come in.
I've heard after the fact they weretold, Hey, you know, don't fly up there.
But they heard about the casualties,the WIA and KIA, we were taking,
they came up anyways, taking roundsin the bellies of their birds.
I watched the first bird layingdown by the vehicle patrol base.
You know, at this point I'm,I'm fed up with the fight,
like I've lost a lot of blood.
I'm tired.
I'm sick of these guys.

(01:14:48):
And I'm looking down there,it's about 200 yards away plus.
And I'm like, ah, we gotta get down there.
I'm like, all right, you know, whatever.
They have us pop smoke andI think we're just marking.
And I watched this other black hawkcome in flare and land right on the
hillside between us and the enemy that'sbadass, like right on the terraces.
And they didn't just land thecrews jump out and start bounding
down the terraces to load us up.

(01:15:10):
And, you know, that was theend of the fight for me.
Um, it kept going on for hours after that.
End of the day, we lost nine guys.
Sergio Abad, Jonathan Ayers, JasonBogar, Jonathan Brostrom, I, Israel
Garcia, Jason Hoder, Matthew Phillips,Pruit reigning, Gunnar willing.
We had almost 30 wounded.
Um, you know, a lot of people cameto our aid, but that day was like a

(01:15:31):
culmination of just a team effort.
We had marine shooting artillery, wehad Air Force overhead, we had, you
know, those medevacs and those Apache,those are units we never trained with.
We never knew.
They put their crews, theiraircraft, their lives on the line.
To come help us.
Um, and it was just a culminationof like everything that leadership

(01:15:52):
and teamwork are supposed to be.
Um, and, and truthfully, I wish wehad hours to go, but just for one of
the things I read, there's gotta bea moment in that battle for you where
it's like, this could be it for me.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like, which probably haslasting effects on people, especially
veterans, you know, for people.

(01:16:12):
Not everybody's been in a Medal of Honorscenario, but they've been in, you know,
folks who've been wounded or, or justbeen pinned down and, and felt that.
How did you rationalizethat in the moment?
I mean, like I said, that moment where Iwas like, I just want to take 'em with me.
Like, death was not the worstthing that could happen to me.
Yeah.
And honestly, there was like a, a senseof calm and peace once I just decided

(01:16:35):
on that, that it was just like, allright, this is what needs to be done.
Like, let's go do, and I knew like.
You say it sticks with you.
And it does because likeright now, I'm a dead man.
Like I should have died that day.
I completely agree.
In my mind, I was dead.
I was trying to, you know, you gothrough that, it changes you, right?
You're, you, you try andbargain with yourself, right?
Those like seven steps or youknow, of, um, grief or whatever.
Mm-hmm.
It was like very quickly being like,well, what can I do dude, there's

(01:16:57):
nothing like, all you can do is takeas many of 'em as you can before you
go and just became very okay with that.
And I'm here because of all my brothers.
Like, it's not what I did.
It's those nine guys, you know, boughtme time and space with their blood.
I didn't do anything thatanybody else wasn't doing.
They just gave me the opportunityto do it a little bit longer.

(01:17:18):
You hope one day you can go backto that place safely and see it?
Like would you go back, you think?
I don't know.
I, I, I, I think I would have to.
I think that that's a, a facingsomething that I know would be
tough and not letting, like thefear of like, what am I gonna feel?
Yeah.
Coming back here I. You know, I'vetalked about one of my buddies now,
and it's like, would we go back?

(01:17:38):
It's, it's crazy to think about.
I still, I, I think I'd have to, forthose nine guys, like a place that
most Americans will never know of,you know, like, I mean, I've looked
it up on Google Earth, like I've,I've gone back, I'm sure, to that
area and just looked at the satelliteindustry to see if, like how to, yeah.
Just to, to be like, what does it looklike now I know where it happened.
Like it was right hereby this tree in rock.

(01:17:58):
So, um, look, there's twoquestions I'd like to ask
everybody before we wrap up here.
One is, um, when you were deployeddownrange and you were out in the
middle of nowhere, but was thereanything that you carried with
you that had sentimental value?
Like good luck, charm, somethingthat someone gave you, something
you just wanted nearby?

(01:18:18):
No, I, I, uh, basically Icarried a knife every time.
Um, your own or an issued one?
No, my own.
Yeah.
Um, and then it wouldbe the KIA bracelets.
And actually what's interestingis that day I had two of them.
Taped together.
Um, one for a platoon sergeant MattTaylor, who we wanted to name that
vehicle patrol base after he wasmurdered in January of that year.

(01:18:41):
And it was taped over the one from,uh, Kyle White's action, which
was between Ranch House and Bella.
They, they ran us ambush.
Um, there were six guys that we lostthere, five from our company and one,
uh, Marine ETTI had 'em taped together.
And still to this day, it's probablythe most precious thing I own, period.
Like if your house is on fireYeah, I'm, and the kids are safe.
You're getting that.

(01:19:01):
It stopped shrapnel from going throughmy right wrist, like it's chewed up.
Um, I could see where it wentthrough the top band and then pushed
through the second and extruded it,but didn't penetrate on your right.
On your, on my, on your dominant, whichwas the only hand that was falling.
Yeah.
That was all you had left.
So like that Yeah.
Kept you in the fight.
In the fight.
Yeah.
And it's, uh, I still look at it fromtime to time and just to think, but

(01:19:22):
like, I'm not a religious person.
I'm not like a, the deeper meaning thing.
But it's hard for me not to lookat that and be like, these guys
were still looking out for me.
Where does that sit now for those persons?
It's in my office.
It's just on a shelf.
At least not in a, yeah, it'sjust an inconspicuous spot.
I just, it's cool, like tolook at it from time to time.
And then last question I try to askeverybody, kind of looking back on,

(01:19:46):
I mean, truly near death experiences,and we didn't even hit on all these,
but looking back at that time, theservice, the sacrifice, the time
away, would you do that again?
Absolutely.
I, I'm a hundred percentwouldn't even, I wish I could.
Um, you know, and doing back, Iwould do some things different.
I would be even more intense aboutit than I, than I was, uh, like

(01:20:07):
the training, yeah, the prep.
Even more leadership.
When I, I talked to all of them.
When I talk to new soldiers, I'm like,learn everything you can about the jobs
of the people to your left and your right.
Learn everything youcan about those people.
There is, so, I, I mean, wetalked about it, right where I
was, I felt selfish, somewhat,you know, my motivations to join.
I got, I still got so much more outof it from the people I served with.

(01:20:31):
Then I, then I gave I andI, my only regret is that I
couldn't serve more, more.
And then just as, as we wraphere, obviously we've got the,
the Medal of Honor Center forLeadership logo in the background.
We're out here supporting that.
Um, and, and just to put a finer point onit, and people can find a lot more info.
You can help support, you can donate,um, but you can also go to classes.

(01:20:53):
And it's really trying to teachpeople like you weren't born being a
leader like you were in this moment.
You trained, you picked up these skills.
And I think they're trying to leverageyour experiences and of other Medal
of Honor recipients to, to sharewhat you can do to lead in all
these different scenarios, business,life, family, and the military.

(01:21:14):
First responders, et cetera, right?
I mean, that's like what this is about.
Yep.
The center.
Ryan, thanks so much, man, for the time.
This was awesome.
Thanks.
Thank you so much forletting me be a part of it.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
I hope you enjoyed that combat story.
This really was a once in a lifetimeopportunity sitting down with not just a
Medal of Honor recipient, but someone whoearned it not that far from where I was.

(01:21:37):
I have tremendous appreciation for thethings that I saw these guys on the
ground doing day in and day out, up inthe mountains, fighting off attacks.
And you've heard me talk before, likethere were days where we'd get called
to FOB Wilderness, which most peoplewill not know of unless you were over
there, but aptly named because out inthe middle of nowhere and fixed position

(01:21:58):
that just got rocketed all the time.
And we'd fly out there andtry to help these guys, but
they were truly on their own.
And there were days where wegot our licks in, um, and days
where we couldn't help 'em, but.
You know, I, I saw a bit of thismyself and I can only imagine what
Ryan's fight was like, but I have,you know, tremendous appreciation for
that terrain, that enemy, that time.

(01:22:20):
Uh, it really was something andhearing Ryan talk about, it's amazing.
Hey, the other thing is this guyis just so down to earth, humble,
blue collar, through and through,totally apolitical just talking about
what it is to help other people.
So easy to get along with.
I wish more people were like this.
So I do hope this gets out to more folks.
They can hear from him, truly.

(01:22:42):
He could walk around and justturn his nose up at anyone, uh,
with this medal around your neck.
You can do a lot of things.
He does.
None of them, neither did Barney, um,Earl, who he had interviewed before.
Earl Plumley, David Bellavia.
All very grounded folks.
I don't know if there's some correlationthere between people who are willing
to risk their life to that extent, uh,selflessly for others and just being a

(01:23:04):
humble person, I guess we'll never know.
But, um, Ryan is the epitome of that.
I hope you all enjoyed that.
Um, we're gonna try to do a fewmore of these with these folks, but
please do check out the NationalMedal of Honor Center for Leadership.
Please do donate if you can.
Um, but also, if you're interestedin hearing more of these stories from
folks, they travel around the country.

(01:23:26):
They go, they train first responders,they work with first responders, law
enforcement, and they're just helpingto train leaders on, you know, what
are effectively, um, leadership lessonsetched in stone or blood in some cases.
So please do check out their websiteand see how you could help or
participate 'cause they would love it.

(01:23:47):
And please do sharethat with someone else.
Um, they went to a lot of trouble toget me there so we could talk with Ryan.
They did not have to do that.
They took me to a Cubs game, whichfor those of who have heard my
interviews, um, the Cubs are my team.
I grew up overseas, never reallyhad, uh, anything to do with
America until I came back.

(01:24:08):
When I was in high school, the only touchpoints I had to the US were in Chicago.
And so when I got evacuated outtaPakistan, during the Gulf War, I lived in
Northern Chicago, became a huge Cubs fan,watched Ryan Sandberg, Clark Dawson, you
know, all, all those guys down at Wrigley.
Have tremendous love forthem and to be able to go.

(01:24:29):
We, they took us out, walked outon the grounds, uh, before the
game, like truly out on the field.
Got to meet so many amazing people, VIPtreatment, just being a fly on the wall.
Very cool to see.
Please do, check thatout wherever you are.
Stay safe.
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