Valor Under Fire: Clint Romesha's Journey of Courage and Commitment - Part 1 - Hometown Hero Outdoors

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In the land of 10,000 lakes, a remarkable movement
was born.
Welcome to Hometown HeroOutdoors.
We are dedicated to honoringour military service members,
veterans and first responders byproviding them with
unforgettable outdoorrecreational opportunities.
We believe those who haveserved and sacrificed so much

(00:25):
for our country and communitiesdeserve a chance to reclaim
their spirit and find healing inthe great outdoors.
This is Hometown Hero Outdoors.
Welcome to the Hometown HeroOutdoors Podcast.

(00:55):
Here is your host, chris Tatro.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Hometown
Hero Outdoors podcast.
I have an awesome guest todaythat I had the pleasure of
meeting this last year at ourgala.
If you follow us on socialmedia or have been involved with
our organization to any extent,we have the pleasure and the
honor of having Clint Romachécome to our gala last year and
Clint is a Medal of Honorrecipient, so thanks for being

(01:24):
on the show, clint.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
I appreciate thanks for having me, chris yeah,
absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Let's do a quick introduction with your bio and
then we'll hop into it.
We'll talk about you and I gotsome you know some of those
hard-hitting questions that Inever asked.
I'm just joking, I don't haveany hard questions, but I have
some.
Uh just some.
Get to know you.
You know people and who ourlisteners are and understand who
you are.
Get some of your opinions, uh,about the afghanistan withdrawal
and whatnot, but uh reallyhearing about who you are, what

(01:50):
your life is, what life is withthe medal of honor and what that
uh has spelled out for you foryour years to come in your
family life.
So I think I think it's allvery interesting to people to uh
hear what that looks like.
So staff sergeant romashaydeployed twice to Iraq in
support of Operation IraqiFreedom and once to Afghanistan
in support of Operation EnduringFreedom.
Clint received the Medal ofHonor for Conspicuous Gallantry

(02:13):
in Intrepid.
Oh man, this one's going to getme Intrepidity, yes.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Intrepidity.
That's a terrible intro on mypart already.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
You know that an officer wrote that with those
big syllables, totally.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
In action, at the risk of his life, above beyond
the call of duty, while servingas a section leader with Bravo
Troop during combat operationsagainst an estimated 300 armed
enemy fighters at combat outpostKeating in Afghanistan on
October 3rd 2009.
Outpost Keating in Afghanistanon October 3rd 2009.
In the day-long battle, staffSergeant Romachet was hit with

(02:48):
shrapnel as a result of arocket-propelled grenade hitting
a generator he was using forcover.
Undeterred by his injuries,staff Sergeant Romachet
continued to fight, exposinghimself to heavy enemy fire and
destroying multiple enemytargets.
With the help of his team, hehelped recover the injured and
fallen under overwhelming fire.
Staff Sergeant Romachet'sheroic actions throughout the

(03:08):
day-long battle were critical insuppressing an enemy that had
far greater numbers.
February 11, 2013, staffSergeant Romachet received the
Medal of Honor in a ceremonyheld at the White House.
His book Red Platoon A TrueStory of American Valor that was
released in 2016, became a NewYork Times bestseller.
Staff Sergeant Romeshade nowspends his time supporting

(03:29):
veteran initiatives andtraveling the country doing
veteran and youth outreach,enjoying time spent with his
wife, kelly, and their sixchildren.
So that's a mouthful, but, man,we got to say it and tell the
story.
So thank you for being hereonce again.
What's going on for you today?
What's on the docket?

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Today was getting dog food for the dogs this morning
Just like the rest of us, I loveit.
Quick trip to Tractor Supply andthen I got a little yard work
done and getting prepped forthis coming weekend.
Got some traveling coming up,Got some football coming.
Her oldest it's his senior yearof high school Said I was
playing the number one team intheir region, Velva, this Friday

(04:09):
.
So we're undefeated right now.
So this will be their firstreal big test coming in to see
how far, hopefully in state, wecan go this year.
So always excited to see whatthe kids are doing and what
their kind of future holds.
Because it's those small things, you know.
I remember growing up I playeda soccer and baseball, Um.

(04:30):
The school I grew up in was toosmall to have even a nine man
football team, Um, but I alwaysdo remember back to those days
of playing sports in high schoolthat really set some of those
values and teamwork thatfollowed on later in military.
So it's always cool to see ouryouth be involved in sports and
activities like that in ourcommunities.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Totally yeah, I got.
I got two daughters in soccerright now and I miss some of
those days in my youth when Iwas able to run around like that
and do the things they don'tcare about Now it all hurts.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yep, Now it's like oh man, do I really want to try to
sprint, or am I going to pullsomething?
Or I mean even waking up,sometimes you're worried about
what's going to be aching andhurting that day.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
No kidding, I was walking into our daycare
provider yesterday and I gothalfway to the door and all of a
sudden, something to my my pop,my back popped and everything
seized up in my muscles and I'mlike I didn't even do anything.
I was just existing and I'm inpain and went to the
chiropractor today.
Super cool, but, yeah, no, it'sexciting, though those days
you'll never get back with thekids and being able to watch

(05:24):
them do the sports There'll begood memories to look back on.
Oh, absolutely.
So, yes, again, thanks forcoming on.
It was awesome to have you outhere in Stillwater for our gala.
I know a lot of people got tolisten to you and your
presentation as a keynote thatnight, but I really want our
listeners to get to know whoClint is and talk about your
upbringing, and you talked alittle bit about your youth

(05:44):
sports right now.
Who are you?
Where'd you come from?
How'd you get in the military?

Speaker 3 (05:55):
So initially I grew up in Northern California and I
grew up in a part of a part ofthe state where we were very
agriculture agricultural, grewup like seven miles away from
the Nevada state line and about15 from the Oregon state line.
Miles away from the Nevadastate line and about 15 from the
Oregon state line and that waswhere my family from, coming
from Scotland and England,crossing with the covered wagons
on the Oregon Trail.
That's where they just kind ofstopped at the end of that
process.
So my family had been theresince kind of the start of

(06:19):
California and that portion ofNorthern California, multiple
generations coming through there, and said it was awesome.
At the time I didn't reallylike it because I was growing up
in a town of 100 people.
I went to school in a town of500.
Every morning we were milkingcows by hand before going to
school and a lot of manual labor, which you know just what it is

(06:42):
, and said at the time I didn'treally appreciate it, but I knew
every day I could look back andsee something I did.
So that was a great experience.
You don't really know untilyou're kind of looking back in
retrospect what it meant andthen you know my family, like I
said, had been there from youknow the covered wagon days and
really our military, ourmilitary experience and our

(07:04):
family started with my, mygrandfather, uh, grandpa smith,
world war ii.
Um, in fact he was one of eightkids, uh, but him and his
oldest brother were the only twoboys and the rest were girls.
So at the start of world war ii, granddad was still 17 and his
oldest brother was 19.
Uh, our great grandpa, sm Smith, had passed away by then and at

(07:26):
the time his older brother,william, was the only one that
could actually do legal stuff onthe farm.
So granddad actually took hisspot to go to World War Two,
trying to preserve, you know,the ranch and the farm and have
William take care of it.
So granddad joined.
He was an old buckaroo, um, hewas bareback riding champion,
kind of ended his career earlyto go to world war ii.

(07:49):
Uh, initially, when he hesigned up and joined, he was a
calvaryman because of hisexperience with horses and all
that.
Well, I don't know if you everwatched that movie, the pursuit
of honor with don johnson, oh,yeah, yep.
So granddad was kind of part ofthat whole.
Um, let's remodernize and getrid of the Calvary and
traditional horseback um andmove into the armor branch.

(08:10):
Well, of course, once theydownsized, kind of his MOS and
stuff um, first thing theywanted him to do is jump out of
airplanes, cause he's a smallerframe guy like me and of course
he didn't care how much theywere paying him extra a month,
he just wasn't going to do that.
But again, with his backgroundof ranching and farming and
working heavy equipment, heended up becoming a combat
engineer.
He ended up surviving theNormandy Beach landings, the

(08:33):
Battle of the Bulge.
That's incredible.
He came back, you know,restarted his life after his
time in service and in fact oncethe war in Germany kind of died
down, his commander found outhe was an old rodeo guy.
So for a lot of the occupationtime he spent over there he put
on USO rodeo shows forentertainment for a lot of the

(08:53):
troops waiting to either getdeployed back to the Pacific and
stuff.
Then we fast forward and, like Isaid, my father, he ended up
joining the army out of highschool.
He knew his draft number isgoing to be low so he just he
went ahead and signed up to goto Vietnam.
He ended up doing two toursover in Vietnam.
My oldest brother.
He ended up joining the armyinitially got out, had a break

(09:16):
in service, then re-entered theair force, just retired two
years ago after 26 years ofmilitary service.
Second oldest brother ended upgoing into the marines, did his
time there for about four yearsdown at Pendleton.
So there was always this kindof background of family,
military, family service.
But growing up I don't rememberit ever being like a
prerequisite for us Romeshayboys to join.

(09:37):
It was always grandpa and dadalways talking about you know,
we're one of the greatestcountries in the world and you
don't have to wear that uniformto serve it, but you do need to
give back.
You know, contribute back toall the just benefits you get
just from being here.
And I said when it came timefor me to graduate high school

(09:58):
I'm a, I'm a product of C's getdegrees Me and college weren't
really going to be a thing.
I remember growing up listeningto Grandpa Smith and Dad's
stories of their time in serviceand they never once talked
about combat.
We all kind of knew they'dprobably seen some stuff, but
back then you just put it all ona shelf and you went on with
life and they never reallytalked about what combat truly

(10:21):
was, what combat truly was.
But they always talked abouttheir comrades and their
brothers and the guys theyserved with.
And all those most of them werejust funny shenanigans, stories
of almost getting in trouble orarrested for doing something
dumb or inappropriate or but itwas always these uplifting kind
of just, you know, just areinforcement of what that
brotherhood and teamwork andcamaraderie really meant and how

(10:43):
, even years and years down theroad, how they could reconnect
with one of the guys that servedwith their noon known at one
point in their military serviceand they'd pick up after not
seeing them after 20, 30 years,like they just talked to him
yesterday, and that reallyalways impressed me.
So, like I said I, I ended upjoining, like a lot of people.
We joined for one reason, weserved for another.

(11:05):
But I joined because I wastired of smelling like bag bomb
and digging fence posts and knewthat if I went to college I'd
probably just fail in the firstsemester and have a whole bunch
of student loans that I wasn'tgoing to pay back.
So as soon as I graduated Ijoined up for the Army in 99.
I was 17 at the time when Igraduated Again, not that I was

(11:26):
super smart, but my birthdayjust happens to be in August.
So when I graduated that springI'd already talked to the
recruiter, had things set up togo.
I just needed my parents'signature.
And that was the first time Iremember approaching my dad and
actually talking to him aboutmilitary service directly.
And I just kind of overhearingsome of the stories and
immediately, as I told my dad,hey, everything's set up, ready

(11:47):
to go, Just sign for me, I'll beout of here in like two weeks.
Dad just kind of looked over atme and he's like hey, clint,
it's 1999.
There's not a lot going on inthe world.
But if you put that uniform onmaybe not tomorrow, maybe not in
20 years, but there is a chanceand a possibility you might
have to go and do and see thingsthat no one should have to go
to.
And see back of my mind, I'mthinking I'm the youngest of the
three boys.

(12:07):
He's just wanting to keep mearound for another damn summer
to get free labor out of me.
Um, and so I did, uh, but on my, the day after my, my 18th
birthday, I went to therecruiter, signed on that line
on September 11th of 99 is myinitial enlistment date.
Oh no, kidding.
So I said back then everyonewas I mean, if you were joining,

(12:31):
you're doing it for the collegemoney, right?
Just sign up, get the collegemoney.
You know, desert Storm wasstarting to be kind of a long
memory.
We'd been like, I said,relative peace for a long, long
time.
Not a lot had been going on.
But after I graduated basictraining, went to Germany as my
first duty station, I got sentto Kosovo back then, um, shortly

(12:52):
after the invasion of them, um,and air war and all that.
So that was my really kind offirst, first kind of taste of I.
You know that was more directlypeacekeeping operations but
kind of combat.
But more importantly, what Ithought as an 18 year old kid
how selfish and just dumb I wasfor taking for granted how much

(13:15):
I'd been given just being bornin this country.
I remember our first couple ofmissions of being over there in
Kosovo.
Missions of being over there inKosovo we were escorting
Albanians to Serbian towns andSerbians to Albanian towns just
to get fuel for their tractorsso they could farm, because they
didn't have a military escort,because of the mass genocide and
stuff going on and the deepkind of hatred between those two
ethnic groups that they wouldget murdered.

(13:37):
You know, and I used to think,man, I grew up in such a tiny
town.
It took me 45 minutes to get toMcDonald's and I thought that
was a tragedy in my life, and Iwas in my late teens before I
ever had a Big Mac in my lifeand I thought, wow, that was
truly tragic.
But then I seen stuff like thatfirsthand and it put in
perspective what granddad anddad talked about giving back to

(13:59):
this country, showing the worldwhat this country stands for are
we are trying to improve thelives of those around us totally
, totally.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
So what years were you in kosovo?

Speaker 3 (14:13):
first time was uh 99, 2000, and then I went back
again in uh 2002 and 2003 okay,so you, I was in Bosnia in 2003.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
That's when all the big riots kicked off over in
Kosovo, right About 2003?
.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, toward the.
It was later in 2003, becausewe went there, yeah, like
December, right before Christmasof 2002.
And then I had left, by whatwas it?
March 2003, headed to Korea formy next duty assignment, okay,
okay.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, I hear you.
I mean what you're saying abouttaking things for granted.
I mean, definitely it iseye-opening.
You know, we live thislifestyle where we're so
everything's so comfortable forus.
I mean, we don't realize thatuntil you get over there.
And the biggest eye-openingthing for me in Bosnia was how
it looked like home.
The biggest eye-opening thingfor me in bosnia was how it

(15:07):
looked like home.
Uh, you know, very green trees,um, rolling hills, farms, you
know, but very third world, youknow, blown up homes, bullet
holes, everywhere, people barelyhaving good clothing, I mean
and and and they looked like youand I and it was just kind of
mind-blowing at like, just wow,like this is, this is how life
could be.
We are really lucky, and Iremember that changed a lot of
my perspective when I came backyeah, that was like I said, it

(15:30):
was eye-opening.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
That's that they're like, and I, like I said, think
back to even today.
I remember me and my wife werehaving a conversation about a
month ago or so on what kid getsthe next upgraded iphone and
like, how, how big of a problemthat is that we're having a
discussion of who gets thenewest iPhone when there's
literally people all over thisworld that don't even know where
their next meal is coming frombecause they're living under

(15:54):
tyrannical just BS governmentsand situations.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Amen, no, you're not wrong.
Yeah, I mean that those areyoung years and really paved the
path and changing things inyour career.
I'm sure you know so.
Then you said your next dutystation was in Korea.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Moving forward, did you deploy to Iraq directly from
Korea or Yep, like I said, Ijoined, thought I'd do four
years, get out Right Right away.
For me the Army was the bestexperience of my life away.
For me, the army was the bestexperience of my life.
Um, I again met, met guys thatyou can't find friendship and

(16:31):
brotherhood like that.
And for me the army was supereasy, like they told me what to
wear, where to be and how to doeverything.
So with that kind of structure,that's where I where I thrived
and said I never planned onmaking it a career or anything
like that.
In fact, when I first joined myonly goals were hey, if I can
make it four years in the army,maybe pin on corporal and not go

(16:51):
to Fort Leavenworth.
That would be the most success,successful thing I could ever
do in my entire life.
But, like I said I, I I'dgotten a kind of taste for the
military.
Of course, by then 2001 hadhappened.
We went into Afghanistan.
At the time I was still on theAbrams tanks, so I knew the
chances.

(17:12):
We learned from the Russianspretty well.
Tanks in Afghanistan don'treally mix.
But I wanted to still stay infor a bit and that's why I
re-enlisted for Korea, becausethey were offering a good bonus.
I was re-enlisting out ofKosovo so I could get it
tax-free.
As you know, as you do that,joe math, you got to figure out
how you can save that 28% intaxes.

(17:32):
So Uncle Sam doesn't get it.
And so I went to Korea thinking, okay, I'll go there, do a
18-month hardship assignment.
And I had a guaranteed returnassignment coming back to Fort
Irwin after that and the thoughtwas save that bonus money, do

(17:54):
my time, go to Irwin.
I'll be in trade-offenvironment since, like I said,
iraq hadn't kicked off at thatpoint.
But I'd probably just get outand then finally figure out what
I was going to do with the restof my life.
Well, of course, on my way toKorea, just getting there,
that's when the ground warkicked off, the shock and awe
and everything that kicked offin Iraq.
So I got to Korea sitting therethinking, well, I'm going to
miss everything, you know,especially at that time to

(18:16):
reenlist, to be in.
You know we're at war.
That's what I, you know, in mymind, that's what I joined to do
.
I had a great first sergeantthat I'd met later on in my
career.
But you know, I used to alwayshave the saying like, all you
guys do is just waste taxpayers'money because you don't do your
job until you're actuallygetting shot at.
All you do is practice to doyour job and that's at the time

(18:38):
what I really felt like I'm herein Korea, I'm just practicing
to do a job.
North Korea is probably notgoing to attack all the actions
going on in Iraq.
Right now I'm going to FortIrwin.
I won't get deployed from thereand I'll finish my time and
never see a day in combat.
But, like I said, you don'tknow what life's going to bring
for you.
You just got to show up for itevery day.

(18:59):
As I was in Korea, I got pulledover from a tank I'd been
assigned to.
I'd actually had my own tank asan E five over in Korea, kind
of fast tracking, uh.
But since it was a new E fiveshot top, uh, top gun and our,
our uh gunnery that year ourColonel's gunner was going to SF
.
I was a young, hot E five thatcould shoot really good.

(19:19):
I got pulled over to be thecolonel's gunner and about 15
months into that, um, uh,deployment we had gotten orders
that we needed to send two tankcompanies and we were going to
be the first, first kind offorward deployed uh army unit

(19:39):
that got deployed to anotherhostile environment.
So they were piecing togetherpart of uh.
What was it?
Second brigadend Brigade, 2ndID, back then 1st of the 506,
1-9 infantry, 2-7-2 armor, 1-7-2armor.
They were piecing together aunit out of Korea to forward
deploy it to Iraq.
Well, and of course I was thecolonel's gunner.

(19:59):
So if they were going to taketwo tank companies, they weren't
going to take the headquarterselement with the colonel.
So if they're going to take twotank companies, they weren't
going to take the headquarterselement with the Colonel.
So again I thought I was goingto be missing, kind of missing
out, and just by happenstance,um, about a month before we
found all this out, one of thegreatest NCOs I ever served with
um as a young PFC he was at NCOI just looked up to.

(20:19):
I always wanted to be him was astaff sergeant, gary Antes, and
he was just that and my oldunit that I'd left.
When they came back from Koreathey got sent to Iraq.
And Sergeant Garriott, as theywere going into Baghdad
International Airport area heended up getting killed.

(20:40):
So as soon as we kind of hadthe opportunity to come up,
since I was a colonel's gunner,I decided to go up to Colonel
Jost and talk to him.
Hey, here's the deal One of mydear NCOs that I really admired
and respected got killed lastmonth over there.
I know I'm assigned to you, butcould you give me a transfer to
one of the tank companiesdeploying, because at that time

(21:03):
I wanted to go back for revenge.
That was my motivation to getinto combat.
I wanted to go avengeSargariantis Colonel.
We had a good discussion and hegave me the approval, so I got
shipped Alpha Tank 272 armor,and that's where my first
deployment began.
15 months in Korea, I did abouta month's train up, so 16 by the

(21:25):
time I was done there, and wegot sent to Iraq from 2004 to
2005.
We ended up being in a placecalled Havana, which is kind of
in the middle between Ramadi andTQ.
That was the same year wehelped support the Marines to go
back in for the Battle ofFallujah.
We were the heavy armor supportfor that, and that deployment

(21:47):
really put into perspective,though, what my dad had talked
about going over and having todo and see things that no one
should have to go do and see.
Um, on the flip side of that,though, I got to see so many
heroic and just amazing thingsfrom my, my battle buddies to my
left and right.
Um, as much tragedy andheartache and loss that had

(22:07):
happened, I'd also seen a lot ofjust amazingly, just over the
top, brotherly love andcompassion and and sacrifice for
for something better and morethan just yourself.
Um, that, to me, really was theepitome of combat, was that,
when you can serve with thoseguys to your left and right, you

(22:28):
know, as you kind of boil itdown, at the end of the day it's
not about politics or why orwho you're there with.
You're not thinking about who'sin office, but you're truly
thinking about those to yourleft and right and they're there
with you and that's what you'redoing it for, and you think
about their families back hereback home.
You know supporting us allevery step of the way, and

(22:51):
you're doing it for all thosethings, not because whoever
might've been elected or not, orwhatever the geopolitical kind
of spectrum was at the time.
You know you get over there andyou realize the guys that are
serving, that are wearing thatuniform I don't care if you're
yellow, pink you know what yourreligion, creed, background is
when you're in the foxhole.
Can you do your job, cause I'mgoing to do mine?

(23:12):
Do you have my back, cause I'mgoing to have yours?
And if that's yes to all of it,I don't care anything more than
that.
And you build such a tight bondthat I think sometimes we get
distracted with with all thisdivision and stuff.
But when you're put in thosemoments you really see that the
testament of what this countryand all those values come
together stand for.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
No, totally Like you just said.
You know it doesn't matter race, creed, religion.
You're all one color, all onerace.
You know it doesn't matterY'all bleed red.
I know, yeah, exactly.
Wow, you know, I didn't knowthat you were a 19K.
I feel bad for not knowing thatI also was a 19K, but I was

(23:53):
referred to as a twat for all mydeployments tanker without a
tank.
But, um, there's anothergentleman that I am familiar
with.
Uh lives just west of me.
Actually, I think you guysprobably know each other.
Um, his last name is Grunhauser.
He was uh in tanks in Germanyas well.
Well, yes, ring a bell, oh,grunty, yeah, yeah, no kidding

(24:15):
so he was in house about a wayyep, so he was actually married
to one of my co-workers thatpassed away from breast cancer
and now he's a police officerlocally here.
So he just lives, oh, fivemiles west of me oh man, you
gotta give him my best.
I have a small world sometimesyeah, I remember when I first
met him I went into his housewith my friend Chelsea she's a

(24:36):
coworker past and they weredating at the time engaged and I
saw all of his stuff on thewall and he was on a podcast
down here locally with one ofour friends, eric Reeds, who
does a podcast as well.
He told this story about Iraqand the battle of Fall infusion

(24:58):
tanks and lost his tankcommander and all this stuff and
just wild stories.
So it's just a small world thatyou brought up being in tanks
over there and just how theworld connects is crazy, crazy
stuff.
So so then you get thatdeployment out.
Then you had another deploymentto iraq, or did you go to
afghanistan right away afterthat?

Speaker 3 (25:09):
no, uh, we came back from there.
That's when we got stationed atFort Carson.
We're at Fort Carson for aboutnine months and then we pulled
orders again to go back to Iraq.
So that was my 2006 to eight,because that was the time we hit
during the surge.
We were just transferring overfrom being armored to cavalry at

(25:31):
that point, so I'd beenreclassed by then to be a 19
delta um.
So then we spent majority ofour time kind of down south of
baghdad, near salman pak um, andthen we were jumping like every
four months.
So by the time we got done withthat 15, 16 month deployment,
we were just outside of soldercity on that one.
Okay, that one was totallydifferent mindset though, you

(25:52):
know, because it was always theweird thing, you know, just
cause you had combat under yourbelt.
Every deployment was unique anddifferent because, as the first
one, we are very kinetic.
Uh, that one was a lot of, youknow, the hearts and minds of
let's rebuild this place, um.
So it was interesting to kindof see the, the, the changing of
the times and and how you.
Still, you know, we're tryingto go after the bad guys and

(26:15):
break up a lot of the terroristcells and try to prevent some of
those IDs and stuff.
You were still very much moreinvolved in the local
communities of trying to getthem back on their feet, um,
cause we didn't want to be thereforever.
So unless we and that's what Ithink a lot of a lot of people
forget is we are really goodAmericans are really good at
rebuilding nations, um, but itdoesn't happen overnight.

(26:37):
But you can look to see I mean,just look at a satellite map at
night of, uh, north and SouthKorea.
I mean the lighting difference,um, you can look at Japan, one
of the the the largest economiesin the world now after world
war two, after we literallydropped two nuclear bombs on
that country.
You can look at Germany I thinkthat's the biggest economy in

(26:58):
Europe right now too.
But we didn't get there in a fewyears.
It took long, long-termplanning and I think that was
the good intent of which we weregoing over there and trying to
provide.
You know that was the goodintent of which we were going
over there and trying to provide.
But I'm also a realist that youknow there's certain places
that the mindset is just notwilling to embrace that and it's

(27:23):
got to be done overgenerationally.
Like I said, what I've seen inIraq, I think we had the
opportunity there to reallyestablish that, but it was going
to take a full-time occupationover the course.
I mean, we still got troopsover in South Korea, we still
got troops in Okinawa, we gotguys over in Europe.
Iraq still yeah, yeah.

(27:45):
But Afghanistan now going on,that deployment in 2009 to 10,
that was just the mindset was, Ijust don't think, ever going to
be there to truly change them,because they didn't.
They didn't look at themselvesor, as far as my opinion was,
they didn't look at themselvesas the country of Afghanistan.
It was a village of Armul, itwas a village of Wanat.

(28:07):
It was the village of Kamdash,it was the village they didn't
look at themselves as oh, we'reeven the providence of Nuristan
or Kunar.
They were so secular anddivided at such a small level to
even come close to uniting themand to kind of what we take for
granted, because our life hasbeen so comfortable that it's

(28:27):
hard to wrap your head aroundthe mindset of something like
that, your head around themindset of of something like
that.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, no, it's.
I never made to afghanistan,but I've heard those stories and
the difficulties you know, evenyou see some of it in iraq to
some extent, with the, the beingsecular and stuff like that,
with, um, the sunnis and shiites.
But it it's uh, definitely feltlike they had the uh, some
optimism there to be able tohelp with each other and
potentially work together.

(28:53):
But I've heard that a lot aboutAfghanistan.
Like I said, I was not thereand you would see it firsthand,
but Afghanistan was kind of alife-changing deployment for you
.
So let's tell our listeners alittle bit about your deployment
to Afghanistan, where you'restationed, and the battle of
Camdish.
Is that how you know?
The battle of Camdish?
Is that how you say it?

(29:14):
Yep, camdish, yep.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
So, like I said, for me coming into that deployment,
I was coming up on about 10years of service at that time.
Again, never thought I'd makeit a career, so I had already
made the decision.
It's like, let me do one morehitch, let me go deploy one more
time, cause when I can get thetax free money and get the
hostile fire pay, you know, tryto be a little bit more

(29:39):
financially stable.
Uh, transitioning out of themilitary, um.
So I'd already made thatdecision to to get out after
that deployment, one on apersonal level.
I wanted to go on thatdeployment cause I'd already
done the Iraq thing.
So it was kind of like checkthe block, get all the tickets
punched on your frequent flyerpunch card or whatever.

(29:59):
And I had the benefit ofSergeant Kirk.
He's one of my team leadersthat came to us prior to that
deployment.
He was a 173rd Airborne guy.
He had just gotten back fromthat part of Afghanistan and
listening to his firsthandaccounts and telling us like,
look, when we go over therewe're fighting seasoned fighters
.
It's not like Iraq where youknow, some of the time you're

(30:22):
just having a guy jump out fromsomewhere and spraying AK and
running off and then you'replaying, you know, chase around,
chasing ghosts and stuff likethat.
He's like these guys will sitthere and they will fix you with
one, one fire team and they'llflank you with another fire team
and they'll put support byfires down.
They'll coordinate with theRPGs and indirect fire.

(30:44):
Like these guys are seasonedwarriors.
And just on a personal levelthat's like, I think, for a lot
of, a lot of men.
You want that kind of man testin your life.
You want to know if you've gotthe guts to be able to go toe to
toe and you always want to playto a skill level equal or
greater than yours to improveyourself.

(31:06):
So, going over to thatdeployment, I knew it was going
to be totally different thananything I'd seen in Iraq,
getting the intel reports andthe briefings and stuff leading
up to it.
We knew the location we weregoing to was going to be lack of
a better term less than ideal.
We'd known the history of howCombat Outpost Keating got its
name, with Lieutenant BenKeating passing away in a

(31:26):
vehicle rollover trying to justmaneuver a piece of military
equipment to and from the roadlinking Fob Bostic to combat
outpost Keating.
And knowing that at thatlocation the only way in and out
after that because the road hadbeen basically inserviceable

(31:47):
for military support vehicles,that the only way to get
resupplied or any help was goingto be by helicopter.
We knew that it kind of satdown in this little valley area.
Um, generally we'd heard aboutsome of the attacks uh in the
area before, not too muchdirectly was was quite as
extensive as combat outpostkeating as you had, like other

(32:08):
uh little outposts in the arealike uh, what not?
Uh, fertile king, those onesgetting heavily attacked and
overran, partially overran stufflike that.
So we had all this kind ofthings going on.
And I just remember I rememberthe first time getting there we
flew in on the Chinook andthey'd only fly in at night
because you put a big Chinookdown in a valley like that, it's

(32:30):
a very easy target.
So you could only fly in atnight and only when there was
zero illumination, no moonlight,hopefully you had some cloud
cover to kind of drown out thestarlight.
And I remember coming off theback ramp of the Chinook, had my
night vision goggles on comingoff, linked up with the unit
we're replacing, trying to justget our bearings about us.
And I remember kind of scanningout over the LZ, and I remember

(32:56):
kind of scanning out over theLZ and I remember thinking to
myself, these night visiongoggles must be broken, cause,
as I'm kind of giving a quickscan, get my bearings, you know,
with a set of MVGs you canalways pick up the horizon,
right yeah.
And I don't remember seeingthat it was just all kind of
black and I was like, oh, thisis kind of weird.
And it wasn't until the nextmorning, waking up in the
daylight and stepping outsidefor the first time, that I
realized I just didn't look uphigh enough, but those mountains

(33:17):
surrounded us on all four sidesand they were straight up.
My first thought is like whothe hell picked this spot?
Remember one of the things I'man old school guy.
So one of the first things Idid when I got there I always
would write handwritten letters.
I never liked to email or callback home or anything.

(33:38):
Just for me it was therapeuticto put pen to paper.
I wrote my grandma, because bythen my granddad had passed away
.
I wrote my grandma, smith, andI just sent her a quick letter.
Hey, grandma, hey, we're allsettled in here.
Guys, morale's looking high.
We've got 12 months.
We'll be home soon.
This place is gorgeous.
It reminds me of growing up inthe Sierra Nevada mountains.

(33:59):
I get to look up every day atthe sunset and it's just, it's
beautiful.
Love you lots, talk to you soon.
And grandma had sent me aletter back a few weeks later
and it just started off withwhat the hell are you doing
Looking up Everybody?
Weeks later, and it juststarted off with what the hell
are you doing looking up?
Everybody knows you take thehigh ground.
My grandma even knew thatlocation was just less than
ideal.
Um, and then and then, then,very quickly, it was very

(34:20):
inspirational and just amazingto watch, like a lot of our
younger soldiers, copus and maceand jonesy you know that was
their first deployment ever andtheir 18, 19, 20 year old kids,
first time kids, first timebeing overseas, first time being
in a combat zone.
Everybody from the lowliestprivate to the commander,

(34:42):
everybody knew that location wasjust terrible.
But to watch those youngsoldiers sit there and they
didn't just say, oh well, thissucks, poor me, and had this
pity party, they really embraced.
Um, there was a saying writtenup on one of the one of the
beams that our barracks had justsaid it never gets better.
And they embraced that saying,not as a negative, like, oh man,

(35:03):
life's so horrible it can neverget better.
It was no, they were going tomake every day the best damn day
possible, so there's nopossible way it could get better
.
And I mean just to embrace thatkind of mentality, to
understand that they couldn'tchange the location, they
couldn't change their situation.
This is what they volunteered tosign up for and, like so many

(35:25):
servicemen and women that raisedthat right hand, you get asked
to go do things that are lessthan ideal.
They're truly challenges andthey're sometimes it's the
choice of the two of the lessevils.
But you still got to.
You still got to perform, youstill got to come through it and
it was.
They're just positive mentalattitude of yep, we all know

(35:47):
this sucks.
We don't have to sit here andcomplain about how it sucks.
We don't have to dwell on itand let it get us down.
We're going to make every daythe best day possible.
So it can't get any better andit will never get better.
And it was really cool to seethat and that's what I think

(36:10):
part of what led into whathappened on October 3rd of why
we ended up being able to getout of that situation.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Hi, this is Phil podcast producer for the
Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast.
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(36:35):
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Speaker 2 (38:22):
October 3rd is a big day.
It is.
You guys had a lot of success,but also a lot of tragedy at the
same time.
You know, and I'm sure thatyou're still day-to-day I think
about it.
You know, and uh, I mean when I, how I got connected with you
too is um, you know, um kind ofwas revolving around that day,
obviously, and um, I was in dcfor police week and uh, this uh

(38:48):
medal of honor show came up onnetflix and we sat there and
watched it and uh, just like,wow, absolutely inspirational,
you know, to watch um, but alsosuper sad, based on all of the
friends that you lost and thatday.
But uh, I know there's thatshow.
Um, but also you have your book.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
But uh, talk about that day a little bit oh, that
day, like I said, uh, you know,we'd been there for three months
, about three months at thatpoint.
You know it was one of thoseweird things where every day we
got the same report.
A S2 guy came in, the intelwould come in.
Hey, you guys are going to getattacked tomorrow Anywhere from

(39:26):
two to 500 fighters be ready toget overran.
Like I said, three months, thatkept happening On average every
day, happening every, onaverage every day and and I mean
every day, would get attacked.
And I mean some days it wasjust some ak fire coming in some
days was pretty wellcoordinated with.
They'd hit us over in the westwith some, uh, some small arms,
fire rpg, and then just startpounding us from the east with

(39:48):
the b10, recoilless, rifle dropand mortars.
So I mean, every day you wereexpecting some sort of contact.
So, going to bed the night ofOctober 2nd, our platoon Red
Platoon, we were forceprotection, we were security for
the outpost.
We never really seen anything,indicated anything out of the

(40:09):
ordinary.
You know, to most of us it feltlike just a regular night
leading up to the next morningand I had just been pulled off,
or I just got relieved off,sergeant of the Guard, by
Sergeant Stanley.
It was about two or threeo'clock in the morning, um, so I
just got back to my bunk,started getting wound down, just
started falling asleep and zerosix incoming fire happens.

(40:33):
And, like I said, normally thatwas a normal thing and in fact
we started just dubbing at ourtaliban alarm clock because
around six o'clock every morninganyway, you know, something
typically would kick off at thattime.
But as I kind of heard theincoming fire, well, waking up,
getting my kid on, powered myradio up, like just listening,
and it was like wait, no, thisis different.

(40:54):
Um, because normally you'd gethit and your defensive positions
would go into a cyclic rate offire.
Try to get that fire supportsuperiority like gain that
momentum to help beat the enemyback.
Well, like I said, just in thefirst couple of 30 seconds you
could tell there was moreincoming fire than there was
outgoing fire by a huge margin.

(41:16):
And as that radio finallypowered up and I could start
hearing what was going on overthe force protection comms,
every defensive position wascalling overwhelming enemy fire,
overwhelming accurate enemyfire.
Hey, we need reinforcements, weneed close air support.
I mean, every position wascalling that all 360 degrees

(41:38):
around us was just getting justhammered Very quickly.
You know, we'd heard right awaythat Kevin Thompson, up at the
mortar pit, had been hit.
The enemy, like I said, hadsuppressed our 120 mortars.
We had OP Fritchie up on themountaintop.
They set just far enough backthough that couldn't give us
direct eyes on, but theynormally could get well, they

(42:01):
could always give us the theirone 20 mortar support, but at
the exact same time the enemyhad hit them and they were on
the verge of getting overranright off the bat.
They were in a hell of a knifefight themselves and so, like I
said, just trying to get, get aa handle of the situation,
knowing our mortars were down,then starting to hear you know

(42:21):
these, our defensive positionswere running black on ammo.
They're trying to go cyclic,they're trying to hit everything
they can, with them not makinga dent.
Um, it's one of those thingswhen things go wrong.
It's never just one or twothings that go wrong, it's a
multitude of things.
Just so happened the nightbefore our troop commander stony
portis.
He was flying up to op fritchieon the we call it the elevator

(42:43):
lift, when they'd resupply usand they just hop up there and
they should bring them back.
But the helicopter got shot atwhile it was up at OP Fritchie
and the pilots, for their ownsafety and security, wasn't
going to return him back to thebottom of the valley because
they already knew the enemy hadthat helicopter kind of pinned
in.
They took him back to FobBostic.
So our troop commander wasn'teven there that morning and it

(43:03):
happened to be LieutenantBunderman.
Um, my, my Lieutenant got thecall the night before and said
hey, sir, you're the senior guyon the ground.
Now you're going to be incharge of cop Keating till I get
back.
Well, I said better, bunderman,that was his first, his first
time in combat, his firstdeployment.
We had had the benefit, though,of being teamed up as section

(43:26):
sergeant platoon leader for overa year at that point.
So we had built a lot of trustand kind of knew how each
other's thought process worked.
That Bunderman, minnesota boy,who was born and raised up in
Blaine, used to tease himbecause he's got a history
degree in the University ofMinnesota, and he said he really
just went there to party andhang out.
So now it seems like a degreeto get, if that's what you want.

(43:49):
But I wouldn't replace him withanybody else that day, but I
mean, he ended up brand newlieutenant, first time overseas.
He's the on-the-scene commanderfor what ends up being the
deadliest attack on coalitionforces for the global war of
terrorism.
Um, also prior to that normallywould have drone support kind

(44:09):
of over watching us, because, aswe sat in that valley, we
didn't have the ability todetect the dead spaces of enemy
kind of infilling on us, andtypically would have close air
support, about 20 to 30 minutesat the most away.
Two weeks before our attack,though, the lovely soldier Bo
Birddahl decided to take off.
So they scrambled all those,they took all those air assets

(44:30):
away from us in order to go findhim, and of course we didn't
know back then what was going on.
You just knew you had a soldiermissing.
So it's one thing the militaryis always going to be good about
we're not going to leaveanybody behind.
But because of that, normally,our drone support that would be
giving us coverage overnight wasgone, allowed the enemy to push
in on us, and then, because theair assets got pulled farther

(44:53):
south, we knew it was going tobe probably at least an hour
before we could get any sort ofa rotary wing support Because,
as we said, in that valley itwas very tough to have fixed
wing support, because if you'redropping bombs at 30,000, 40,000
feet and you're dropping into avalley, you're literally
dropping into a teacup, so it'svery easy to hit the center or

(45:14):
roll into the center coming offthe sides.
So typically the helicopterswere always our kind of go-to
for close air support, but weknew they were going to be about
an hour away, if not more.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
An hour is eternity.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Oh yeah, it's, it is, I mean, a second's, an eternity
in combat, right you?
Just, I mean time doesn'treally exist at that point
either.
No, but, like I said, veryquickly we heard Kevin Thompson
was hit.
Uh, things were going just frombad to worse.
The eastern side of the outpostwas normally secured by the

(45:46):
Afghan National Army.
That morning there was about 35of them.
Basically that morning.
First contact hit, most of themjust dropped their weapons and
left.
They just walked off, let thewhole eastern side of the camp
open.
Sergeant, uh, sergeant kirk, uh,who, like I said, had just been
over in that part before, uh,normally in contact, one of his

(46:06):
roles was to take a team over toreinforce that western side
where gallegos was at on lraz 2,as they were trying to move in
position coming through thefront gate, sure building area.
Uh, that's when we heard SarnKirk had been hit.
Uh, hit with RPG, hit with asmall arms fire.
Uh, blue platoon, who was theother maneuvering platoon on the

(46:27):
outpost that day.
Their role was typically toresupply the battle positions
with with ammo, and so the enemyhad done their job.
Um, as soon as they were tryingto kick out guys to go to the
ammo supply point to resupplythe the battle positions.
They had a sniper trained onthe door.
So guza was one of the firstguys to try and kick out a blue
platoon, and he was.

(46:48):
He was hit by sniper fire andthings just bad to worse, bad to
worse.
Uh, I remember just trying toget an idea of who we still had
in the fight, what the heck wasgoing on, what assets we had
available.
Very quickly, like I said,things just went from bad to
worse.
Within about the first hourthey breached, like I said, they

(47:10):
breached our perimeter.
We got overran the front gatearea.
We ended up getting isolatedfrom about nine of the guys.
At one point me specialistgregory were able to find um,
some 240 ammo, had about 200rounds, tried to maneuver it
over so we could put cover onthe west, trying to get gallegos

(47:32):
and larson and that, that teamthat was cut off and stuck out
of ammo.
I shoot larson that had the 50cal blown out of his hands on
that truck.
240 was down so we had fiveguys stuck in this Humvee.
It just couldn't go anywhere.
So me and Gregory snuck over,put the gut up on a little 60K
generator, used that as a battleposition and I just remember

(47:54):
looking out to the west on theputting green and the
switchbacks and kind of thewaterfall area and it was just
like ants coming down the hill,um, muzzle flashes everywhere
and just trying to go fromtarget to target, um, and
calling gallegos, and it's like,hey, I'm giving you a
suppressive fire, you got tomove, you got to move, you got
to get those guys out of there.
Now and he just kept would callon back.

(48:15):
It's like, brother, we can't goanywhere, you're not bringing
enough firepower, there's toomuch going on.
And just chattering back andforth and, like I said, ran
through that first 100 rounds,reloading the second one, said
at that time I didn't realizethe front gate had been over,
overran and abandoned.
Enemy was able to sneak in out,flank us to the right, set up an
rpg team and I said, as we'reengaging with that, next, the

(48:39):
last, last hundred rounds thatwe had available, they hit us
with RPG, blew me on Gregory.
I remember just picking him up,patting him down, make sure he
was good, told him hey, take offrunning.
Brother covered him and thencalled, called the IA goes back
and said I'm, I'm almost at ammo.
They got me pinned in thisposition.
They got me figured out.

(48:59):
If you can move, you need tomove right now.
And he just said, brother, wecan't go anywhere, we'll see you
when you get here.
And it was heartbreakingbecause it was like I knew if I
was out there, that dude wasgoing to do everything in his
power to come get me.
But at that time it's likewe're out of ammo.
They've got us outflanked.
Um, I'm sitting here by myselflike it makes no sense to sit

(49:24):
there and fix a bayonet and runinto the open field to try and
save them, because that's, youknow, that's tactically just not
not smart.
Um, but at the end of the dayit still felt crushing because
it felt like I was abandoningthem, like I said.
He just said, hey, we'll hangout till you get here.
And we displaced back at.
Shortly after that, um, I saidsergeant hart came up to me.

(49:45):
He's like, hey, we'd found somemore 50 cal ammo.
I said at this point we wentfrom being.
The outpost was maybe 175 200meters from the the longest two
points and maybe 120 to 150meters at the widest two points.
We we own three buildings atthat point we own red platoons,
barracks, the aid station, thenthe tactical operation center,

(50:09):
everything else had been overran, enemy was already burning down
the blue platoon barracks.
It was just total chaos.
And, like I said, sergeant Hartcame up to me and he's like hey
, we found some more 50 Cal ammo.
I think I can sneak out and geta group of guys, we'll put it
on the truck two and we'll usethe armor of the truck two to
run over to try and supportGallegos and get those guys back

(50:32):
.
And I don't know if I arguedwith Sarnhart for two minutes or
30 minutes, just remember goingback and forth and it's like
brother, I can't secure yourleft right, I can't secure
anything around you.
You're going to be the biggesttarget out there.
You got limited ammo, like justgiving them all the cons of
what he was trying to attempt todo.

(50:53):
And I just I know Hart wasalways one of those guys, though
no was never going to be in hisvocabulary.
You couldn't tell him no.
He knew that if there was anysort of slim chance whatsoever,
the risk was always going to beworth the reward.
And that's when I finallyrealized that I wasn't going to
convince him otherwise.
And so I finally told him okay,go ahead and I knew as soon as

(51:18):
Hart left out the back of thebarracks that was the last I'd
ever see of that guy andmiraculously, somehow it comes
up on the radio.
They made it out to that truck,they got it fired up, they got
it reloaded and they startedpushing west to go get Gallegos
and them.
And that's when I told them hey, you guys talk to each other.
At the time Copas, who was theonly gun left in the fight at

(51:44):
that point young 18-year-old kidfrom Worcester Ohio, the only
Mark 19 left to defend theentire eastern side.
He had had a sniper that hadjust been causing him problems.
I went to the aid station tocheck on Sergeant Kirk.
I was able to find one of theAfghan Dragunov sniper rifles
and I was going to reinforceKopis and playing a little

(52:06):
peekaboo with his sniper as Hartwas trying to move over to get
Gallegos and then I heard itcome across the radio and Hart
just calls up and he's like, hey, they got an RPG pointed right
at me and then nothing thateliminated what was bothering.
Copas came back to the the aidstation trying to figure out

(52:28):
what's going on, went into thebarracks.
At that point alamo positionhad been called.
Basically meaning anybody thatcould hear the call they needed
to hold up into those threebuildings and basically that was
going to be our last last stand.
Um, and I remember looking inthe barracks when I went in
there and it was just like Isaid guys just pointing weapons
at the door and if you weren'tspeaking in an american, if you

(52:49):
weren't speaking english in anamerican accent and wearing an
american uniform, you'd get shot.
Coming through the door and itwas just like man, this can't be
.
Like, yeah, we were cut off, wewere running out of ammo, like
things were just going and tohell in a handbasket.
And I just thought to myselfit's like no, we still got.
We still got fight left in us.

(53:09):
We're going to dictate wherethis thing goes.
We're not going to sit here andjust let them impose their will
and take us.
So I ran back to the tacticaloperation center where bunderman
sitting there trying tocoordinate everything and I
remember just looking at him I'mlike, hey, sir, I got an idea.
And he said what are youthinking?
And I said, hey, we're going totake this back.
And he said, okay, what's yourplan?

(53:30):
And I said, well, we're, we'realmost out of ammo.
First thing we We'll feed ammoback, because if we don't have
bullets we can't fight.
We need to shut the front gate,because if we don't shut the
front gate they're going to keepsqueezing us.
We need some breathing room.
I said okay.
And I said the third thing,most important we need to go
find our guys.

(53:55):
Because in the back of my mind Idon't remember being scared
about getting shot or dying orany of that.
What scared the ever-livingcrap out was thinking, if I, if
I make it through this and I gotto go back to the States and
tell a gold star mother, goldstar family, a widow, I couldn't
bring your son home, I couldn'tbring their body home.
Um, I, I just that scared theever living crap out of me.
Cause I I'd tell my guys onevery deployment hey, we're all

(54:16):
going over, we're all not comingback alive.
Like that's the nature ofcombat.
Like going over, we're all notcoming back alive, like that's
the nature of combat.
Like you sit there and you wantto bring everybody back alive,
but the reality of it.
I always believe that if youhave that mindset of, oh, I'm
going over, I'm bringingeverybody back alive, and you
lose that first guy like it justcrushes your soul in it and it
weighs so heavy on your heartbecause you're you're setting

(54:37):
really unrealistic expectationsIn my mind.
I would say you know, we're allgoing over but we're all not
coming back alive.
But I never once thought Iwouldn't be able to bring
everybody back, to bring thatsoldier home, to give their
family closure and that peace ofmind and to be able to sit
there and have those finalmoments at their funeral.

(54:59):
That's what was scaring, justthe ever living crap out of me.
And so butterman said okay, doit.
Um, so I went in the barracksand I just said I need a group
of volunteers.
And I had five guys that stoodup.
They had no idea what I wasasking them.
I just said I need a group ofvolunteers and Raz Delaney,

(55:20):
jonesy, miller, um, and and nowI'm spacing Raz Delaney, uh, raz
Delaney, dantley, jonesy andMiller.
These guys stood up and I toldthem the plan.
Basically, I'm asking you tocounterattack an enemy that's
got the high ground, that's gotus outgunned, um, like it's a
suicide mission, um, I, and Itold him that that and I said

(55:42):
you don't have to do it.
And every one of them, justlooked at me and said, hey,
we'll follow you anywhere.
And for me that was such, Imean just a proud moment Like
that's that's as you think of,kind of the, the brave heart
moments, like when you get guysto rally behind you and trust
that I knew in the back of mymind it's like, dude, we're dude

(56:08):
, we're probably going to bepretty screwed, but you guys at
least believe my, my cockamamiebs right now that you would
trust that, say you'll follow meanywhere.
Man, that's just so.
I mean, it's indescribable.
Like I said, we pushed up.
We kicked the enemy off theammo supply point, started
feeding ammo back, pushed up,kicked him out of the front gate
, pushed, pushed them off there,secured that, locked them out
and then we were able to finallypush up and start getting our

(56:30):
heroes.
But Larson and Carter werestill alive.
Got word that they were stillalive.
Mace was badly wounded.
We gave them support by fire sothey could bring Mace back
through our lines.
Sergeant Larson came back outto me and said hey, griffin is
just outside the Shura buildingdoor here to the left.
Martin last seen him by thelaundry trailers.

(56:53):
Gallegos got hit down by thelatrines.
I don't know where SergeantHart is.
Like I said, we were able topush up and we got Griffin, we
got Martin, we got Gallegos.
At that point we'd extendedourselves a little too deep and
we couldn't find Hart.
Like I said, it's crazy whatyou kind of go through in

(57:13):
moments like that.
Like I said, we were justterrified that the enemy had
taken Hart because that wastheir tactic.
You know, if they could get anAmerican body like that was such
a huge propaganda thing for thetaliban.
And I got to watch things likelarson that day.
Dude was from chambers,nebraska, um farm boy like me.
He played a junior collegegrowing up before he joined the

(57:34):
military.
He was a strong safety.
So larson was fast and Iwatched him three times that day
.
He left his kevlar, he left hisbody armor and he left his
weapon and he ran around thatoutpost fully exposed doing the
bullet dance to try and locateSartre Hart and unfortunately,
three times he couldn't do it,could not find him and we just
thought the worst and we thoughthe was gone.

(57:56):
And as the QRF finally was ableto land up at OP Fritchie and
work their way down, just as itwas getting dark, as the sun was
setting, they had made far sidelink up with us and was
sweeping through the outpost andthey finally came across,
sergeant Hart, and after about15 hours we finally had 100%
accountability and all personnelat Combat Outpost Keating

(58:22):
personnel at combat outpostKeating, you know.
And then in retrospect you lookat it and you know the army did
their 15-6 investigation andthey came back and said you know
, this outpost shouldn't havebeen there.
All this, you know, it was anindefensible location and so
that always kind of chapped me.
It was like no, we might havelost, you know, some ground that
day.
We never lost that outpost andI watched 52, 50 Americans, two
Latvian soldiers defend what youYahoo's called the indefensible

(58:44):
.
And they didn't do it because ofpolitics or or a hatred.
I mean, they didn't even do itbecause of that hatred of the
Taliban or the enemy.
They did it out of pure love ofeach other.
And, as I say, you know, dutywill get your guys to do a lot
of things, it'll get them to dotheir job, but that loyalty and
love that you build, that bond,will literally make a guy drop

(59:07):
all of his body armor, leave hisfreaking weapon no Kevlar and
go run around three times and dothe bullet dance just to find
his friend.
It's an amazingly.
It's a tragic thing that has tohappen, but in the silver
lining of it, man, you see somuch beauty of love for your
fellow brother that you won'tsee anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yeah, wow, 15 hours, that's a long time to be
fighting.
What did it man?
So many questions, what?
What did it, man?
So many questions?
So, after the, the battle andyou guys get accountability and

(59:49):
um how many were kia total?

Speaker 3 (59:51):
we ended up losing eight that day.
Um, I said stephan mace, um, weended up losing him about four
o'clock that morning I said, andit was kind of weird, just
really hard to kind of wrap yourhead around at first, because
they said he had gotten hit sametime gallegos did.
Uh, he laid out there and outin the open for six hours, um,

(01:00:13):
with minimal.
At one point uh, ty carter wasable to go out and uh put some
tourniqu on him, pull them alittle closer to cover, but for
all intents and purposes he wasout for six hours without any
medical treatment and then, whenLarson and him were able to
bring him back, brought him toour aid station.
And of course we're very remotesite.

(01:00:33):
It's not like we had fulltrauma surgeon or anything like
that.
We didn't even have plasma onhand.
But what they did is they theyput a call across the radio
anybody with ab positive bloodum come to the aid station and I
watched guys come off the linein the middle of a firefight
that had the same blood type andthey did direct blood
transfusions into mace to keephim going.

(01:00:55):
Um, and, like I said, when wefinally got the qrf.
There we kind of got thesituation a little under control
.
We started started bringing inthe Medevac helicopters.
We put Mace on that helicopter.
He was giving thumbs up,cracking jokes, talking about
drinking Coors Lights.
When we seen him back at FortCarson and that it was four

(01:01:15):
o'clock in the morning, we gotthe call that he died on the
operating table.
And it wasn't until years later.
Uh, his mom, just a phenomenallady, vanessa, has been just
such an anchor and a rock forfor all of us.
She she might have lost one sonbut she gained so many other.
Um, after that day, and youknow, talking to her and I asked
her that it's like you know,how does, how does your son

(01:01:38):
survive all of that with themost minimal, barestst things,
giving thumbs up, and then hegoes.
You know he dies on anoperating table with some of the
best surgeons we've got.
That you know.
And she just said you know hewas with his military family.
So when he said goodbye to youguys on the helicopter, you know
he could go back to hisheavenly family and his God.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
And that's deep know he could go back to his heavenly
family and his God.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
That's deep, just truly a special thing that, like
I said, you don't see anywhereelse.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Yeah, I'm sorry for your losses, man, that's a lot,
that's a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
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(01:02:39):
new cars because of thedepreciation factor.
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But when you become debt-freewith an emergency fund, you're
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with a fully funded emergencyfund and you've got nothing but
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It just needs to be in theright phase, not when you get

(01:03:23):
out of the academy, right didyou lose any um friends or
anyone close to you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
I know you lost a sergeant nco when you're in
korea, but when you're on yourother deployments, did you lose
anyone in your platoons, yourcompanies?

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
um, my second deployment, that was really what
kind of?
I don't think if I would havewent, if I wouldn't have went
through what I went on my seconddeployment, I don't think I
would have been able to handleAfghanistan.
And and to give the backgroundof that story, I had a soldier,
eric Snell, uh was his name,trent, new Jersey, um, and his,

(01:04:10):
his resume was stacked right,like he came to us and I think
he was like 28 at the time, um,as a brand new you know, brand
new soldier.
To have a 28 year old, brandnew soldier like that's an old
dude, right right yeah, totallyuh.
And he came to us and was likeokay, you know what's your story
and come to find out.
You know, he's a hell of anathlete and in high school he

(01:04:31):
got drafted by the clevelandindians.
Um, he could speak French andFrench and Portuguese yeah, he
could speak like two or threedifferent languages.
He had a degree in poli, sci.
He had worked as a big managerfor AT&T in South Africa for a
while.
He was a freaking mail bottlefor a while, like he was just a

(01:04:53):
whole package.
And when Snell got to us andfound all of this stuff and it's
like dude, why don't you joinas an officer?
You easily could have beenmaking three times as much and
telling us what to do, and nowyou're just a lowly, lowly guy
on the totem pole.
And his, his response wasalways well, I, I want to become
an officer someday and I wantto go, uh, see if I can become a
green beret.
Um, but I never wanted to getin those roles.

(01:05:16):
Unless I served time as someone, I was going to tell them what
to do.
I didn't.
You know, he very much embracedthe role of I'm.
I didn't want to be a leader ofpeople that I didn't already
have the, the hadn't alreadyalready kind of walked their
path before?
Yeah, I wanted to wear thoseboots and that that just blew me

(01:05:37):
away.
And snell was like I said, hewas one of those guys that, no
matter what, he was always goingto do the right thing.
His integrity was second tonone.
And our second time in iraqwe'd been there for about 10
months or so, coming up on well,yeah, maybe coming closer to
our year mark because we'dalready gotten extended uh, I

(01:06:00):
just finally gotten was able toget him promoted.
Um, just put his hard stripeson about two weeks before and we
pulled a mission where at thetime we're just outside of uh,
yeah, we're just outside of sadrcity, just outside the iz.
At that point the Sunnis and theShias were in a civil war,
right, and they would keepdriving fricking car bombs into

(01:06:23):
the marketplaces to kill eachother.
So to counter that, we startedputting up these huge Alaskan
barriers along the marketplacesto prevent them from being able
to just drive in and give peoplekind of that blast protection
of the big Alaskan barrier.
But of course the locals wouldsit there and use their
equipment and move them becauseit was inconvenient.
And then all of a sudden you'dhave another car bomb go off and

(01:06:45):
kill a whole bunch of civiliansand stuff.
So we'd gotten tasked then withbringing the local contractors
to tether them all together witha big cable.
So they couldn't do that.
Well, the one day and normallyhow the mission would work is
you'd send a platoon out in themorning that would provide
overwatch for the localcontractors, and you do it for
maybe three to four hours tops,and you'd you'd stop because the

(01:07:07):
sniper issues were, you know,pretty, pretty high risk at the
time and literally you're justdriving in a straight line as
they connect them, so it's veryeasy for them to sit there and
set up an ambush on you.
Well, this day just happened tobe, white platoon was already
out there.
They'd been out there for quitea few hours.
The good idea Ferry I don'tknow who, I'm not going to pass

(01:07:29):
blame but said hey, red platoon,you need to go replace them.
We made our protest.
Hey, this is not a great idea,something bad's gonna happen.
Sniper in the issue, you know.
And we're just following astraight line down the road.
Like this is not, this is notgood.
You know that, overruled byhigher command, you know, you
gotta kind of accept orderssometimes, right?

(01:07:51):
Um?
So we rolled out I was leadtruck at the time um, we
replaced white platoon, kind ofgot a sit rep of what had been
happening.
The last few hours been veryquiet and I just remember as we
pulled and got into our securityposition I just told my my crew
.
I was like we're not evengetting out of the truck, let's
just sit here, stay buttoned up,stay low.

(01:08:12):
And of course nell's like no,we need to get out.
Do our fives and 25s meaninglet's clear five meters, 25.
At that time that was yeah, yep, and I'm like no, we really
don't have to do that.
Bud, like white platoon had beensitting here for the last 40
minutes.
There was something hereprobably would already went off.
Now we've got to do this.
Like I said he was.
He was always going to do theright thing.

(01:08:33):
And I was sitting therethinking I'm like I'm being a
shitty leader because I'm beingthat little negative.
Nancy, I'm having a little pityparty because I lost the
argument with higher command onhow dumb this thing is that
we're about to do, and I saidall right, and I got out and I
did the fives and twenty fiveswith him.
I wasn't going to let him do itby himself.
And after that I'm like man,you're such a great soldier.

(01:08:55):
Took him behind the Alaskanbarriers because there was a
little ice cream shop over there, bought him an ice cream cone
we had a little ice creamtogether Just told him hey,
really appreciate all the greatshit you're doing, keep it going
.
Come back to the truck.
And I'm like, hey, just getinside, because at that time I
was training him to be my newdismount team leader.
And snell's like no, I need topull local, local security

(01:09:17):
because we're all going to bebuttoned up.
You know we're at risk ofsomeone being able to sneak in
close on us and do something badlike now we should be good,
like we haven't had one of thosekind of attacks here.
So and he's like no, I need tostay outside, pull local
security.
Well, I said all right, and hewas sitting there with about
three quarters cover behind theHumvee.
Snell was like six foot three,I mean like 270, just chiseled,

(01:09:40):
just an ox of a dude.
And I opened my door and I wassending up my grids and stuff
and doing my sit reps on theFBCV2.
And all of a sudden it soundedlike my gunner dropped a can of
ammo down inside the turret.
And I just remember looking upat Bowman I was like what the
was that?

(01:10:00):
And he goes, it wasn't me.
And as I look back over my leftshoulder I seen snow lying
there.
Um, I've been shot through thehead and he he was killed
immediately, which thankgoodness he didn't didn't suffer
any of that.
And I remember coming around thecorner starting to return fire

(01:10:21):
direction of the sniper.
I remember just feelingterrible because our medic come
running up doc wood and, like Isaid, smells now lying there
kind of open in the, withoutcover in the street.
I just remember, as doc woodcame up, I grabbed his ass and
I'm drugging behind the humveewith me and it's dude, there's
nothing you can do for him, youneed to get cover because more
rounds were coming in.

(01:10:41):
At that point we pushed theenemy off.
They basically did the DCsniper tactic on us.
They had a car waiting therewith the taillight kicked out of
it and shot from the trunk ofthe car and then sped off.
I was able to put Snell insidethe Humvee, took him to the, the
green zone, cause that was, uh,at that time the closest major
trauma center, um uh, aidstation for us and, like I said

(01:11:05):
he was, he was gone when we gotthere and, as they were kind of
getting him ready to be shippedout, I took me and my driver and
my my gunner we're sittingthere cleaning our Humvee out.
I took me and my driver and my,my gunner we're sitting there
cleaning our Humvee out.
I mean you, just, you can tell,just, I was pissed, just like
how can something, someone thatawesome had that happen to him,

(01:11:29):
and angry at the command,because it's like I fricking
told you something bad was goingto happen.
Uh, and that's when, first,arno Vera came up to me, though,
and he just kind of pulled meto the side and he's like, hey,
you just got to know this thatyou can have the best equipment,
the best soldiers, the bestplan, the best everything, bad

(01:11:50):
shit's still going to happen inyour life.
It's what you do about it.
It's the only thing you caninfluence and change, and I
don't think, if I went throughthat, because that that hit me
hard, that resonated so so well,like you can have everything
perfect going on your life oryou can have a whole bunch of
shitty I mean bad shit's justalways going to happen.

(01:12:11):
Some things are just totallyout of your control, and when
it's out of your control to sitthere and waste your time on the
what ifs or the what shouldhave, what it could have, well,
you can't change any of that.
The only thing you can changeis what you do going forward.
And if it wasn't for that lifelesson I don't think you know
October 3rd could have beensuccessful, and I don't think

(01:12:32):
now, almost 14, 15 years downthe road, you'd still kind of be
going forward without thatmentality and that kind of motto
to live by in my life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
I'm sorry about that too, man, but I mean you're
right, though I mean,unfortunately, tragedy does help
you learn and strategize fornew things in the future.
You know, and when things areat their worst, it can only get
better.
But uh, wow, yeah, you've beenthrough a lot.
How you doing over there, youokay oh, I'm always good all

(01:13:09):
right, just making sure.
I know it's kind of tough toopen up those deep dark places
at at times.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
But so that's how we we honor and keep them alive,
those by sharing that.
Because you know, as less andless of a serve and as time is
going by and you know global warof terrorism went on for 20
plus years and kind of came toan end, you know the Americans
mindset, I mean our attentionspan is pretty minute and if

(01:13:36):
we're not sharing those stories,talking about those guys we're
not living up to, we'll neverforget and we'll always remember
that, even though it's it kindof tugs on your heartstrings.
Thinking back in those moments,I also sat there and I think
about that damn ice cream weshared, sitting on the other
side of the, the, the Alaskanbarrier, that I got for for 50

(01:13:57):
cents.
You know, two ice creams for 25cents, right um?

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
memories those moments.
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
Well, how are you doing on time?
Yeah, I know you got some otherstuff to do today, but I got a
million questions for you.
Either we can keep going herefor a little while or otherwise
we can maybe do a to becontinued and up to you.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
Yeah, I think we probably got to get wrapped up
here pretty soon.
Yeah, I'm coming up to somesome hard stops here shortly
absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Is there any chance I could potentially have you back
on sometime and we'll do the?
To be continued, I have ahandful of different questions.
I kind of want to talk aboutwhat it's been like to be a
metal vaughn recipient.
Uh, difficulties, the highs,the lows.
Talk about the Afghanistanwithdrawal.
I just got a handful ofdifferent questions for you.
Can we do another?

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
follow-up.
Yeah, we can absolutely do avolume two or whatever they call
it now I think it'd be great.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
Yeah, no, it's awesome, so let's do that then.
So, hey, thanks for telling usyour story today.
I know you've told it a lot,but you know it's great for
people to hear and have thatmemory of those who did give
everything you know with theAfghanistan withdrawal and how
things went down there.
I'm sure that was incrediblydifficult to watch and I know a

(01:15:13):
lot of the veterans that I'mfriends with who were in
Afghanistan had a really hardtime with that and I'd like to
talk about that down the roadhere.
But thank you for sharing,letting us into your life and
your home and being able to talkabout those things, and thank
you for your service, everythingyou've done.
You're a great man and I lovethat.
You're a family guy and you'regoing to get some hunting in
this fall, I hope.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
We'll see with the schedule hunting in this fall, I
hope we'll see what theschedule that's.
That's always difficult things.
Hopefully uh, I know I've got aweekend planned, hopefully to
get some pheasant in, but otherthan that it's going to be tight
till we get to february.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Well, I'm hoping to get to february, then we can get
some ice fishing in again hey,you should go up to that lake of
the woods trip that we hostevery year.
Would you like to go to that?
yeah, that would be an awesomeone yeah, they do about 40 ice
castles up on lake of the woodsfor a full weekend and, uh, they
catch some good fish.
Otherwise, I can get youconnected with dan brassfield up
in north dakota too.
I don't think you guys are veryfar from each other, but he's
hosting a couple pheasant tripsand maybe, maybe, if your

(01:16:07):
schedule's aligned, you guys canfigure something out.
Yeah, that'd be great.
All right, brother.
Well, thank you again forcoming on.
I'll let you get back to yourday and move on, but let's touch
base and follow up and we'llget a volume two together with
Clint Romashay.
So, thank you very much.
And, for our listeners, thanksfor tuning in.
You guys got to take a deepdive and peek into Clint's life

(01:16:28):
and his heroic efforts, with hisfriends and their heroic
efforts as well, you know forfor the battle of Kondash.
So, thank you, clint, we willsee you.
And, to our listeners, we willsee you on the next Hometown
Hero Outdoors podcast, thank you.
Thank you, chris.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
The Hometown Hero Outdoors podcast is made
possible by the followingsponsors O'Neill Electric
Contractors.
The Minnesota Police and PeaceOfficers Association.
Relentless Defender, appareland Financial Cop Financial
Advisors.
Thank you for listening to theHometown Hero Outdoors podcast.

(01:17:08):
For more information, visit ourwebsite at
hometownherooutdoorsorg.

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Valor Under Fire: Clint Romesha's Journey of Courage and Commitment - Part 1

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Valor Under Fire: Clint Romesha's Journey of Courage and Commitment - Part 1