In Their Boots: Insights into the Military Veteran Experience

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
War is a paradox.
It is the power to bringnations together, to inspire
heroism and sacrifice and toforge bonds of camaraderie that
will span a lifetime, but italso has the power to tear
families apart, to shattercommunities and to leave scars
that will never fully heal.
And, for those who have served,the transition back to civilian

(00:26):
life can be one of the greatestchallenges they will ever face.
This is the typical life ofmilitary veterans, a world that
is both familiar and foreign tomost of us.
It is a world that is shaped byunique experiences, values and
traditions of the military, andby the sacrifices and struggles
of those who have served, butit's also a world that is

(00:47):
constantly changing, as newgenerations of veterans confront
new challenges and newopportunities.
Thank you for joining us atSoup Sandwich.
Dig your foxhole, heat up yourMRE and spend some time with us.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hey, so I want to welcome everybody back to the
VFW Post 3033 podcast.
My name is Charlie Klein, postmember.
Vfw Riders Group post 3033Riders Group president.
Who do we have here with ustoday?

Speaker 3 (01:25):
My name is Tim Erdibi .
I'm the post commander for thepost 3033.
I am a sergeant of arms for thepost 3033 Riders Group and I am
the director for the Departmentof Michigan Riders Group.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
My name is Trey Porter, US Army.
I did 20 years retired as asergeant for his class.
I'm a member of post 3033.
Also the vice president of theRiders Group for Borley-Hannell,
Post 3033.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
I'm Shem Thompson.
I did 17 years in Army.
I'm the junior vice commanderof post 3033.

Speaker 6 (02:12):
All right that's what we got tonight.
All right, boys, what do wewant to talk?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
about.
Last time we kind of left offon a whole crazy about of
subjects.
Right, we talked about postmembership.
We talked about Riders Groupthings, stuff going on in the
community, obviously veteransupport stuff like VA and all
that kind of stuff.
So I think probably right nowwell, obviously you guys are all
members, but Riders Group'sbeen out there kind of kicking

(02:42):
ass along with their Honor Guardprogram, right, doing stuff in
the community.
We just got done doing our toysfor Tots donation for the year.
Dropped off bag of toys at ourpost for toys for Tots and we
took some down to our local townjust south of Mount Pleasant.
Shepherd dropped off bag oftoys down there to their police

(03:08):
chief who blasted us all overFacebook.
It's a really good promotionDown there.
He's got a huge following so itwas cool to see how many times
that post had been reshared,likes and the loves and all that
stuff.
I think it was great.
It's good publicity for us.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Oh yeah, shout out to Chief Sawyer.
I actually grew up with him.
Oh really, yeah, his dad and mydad were friends.
They worked together at MishKhan in Six Lakes and I've known
him my whole life, ever since Iwas born pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
so I actually met him because when my wife was at the
prosecutor's office here forIsabella County obviously she
works real close or dead at thetime right, we're real close
with all the agencies around thearea and Luke was always just
an awesome guy, right, huge,huge supporter of anything in
the community and it showsbecause you know, when you put

(04:00):
something out there on Facebook,I mean the outpouring that he
gets is huge.
So it just shows that there'sgreat police departments.
I'm not knocking on our tribalor the state or the city or even
Isabella County either, right,but I mean that small town
community mentality that theyhave is huge down there.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
Oh yeah, and I've been following Chief Sawyer ever
since he got hired over thereor elected in.
I'm not exactly sure how thatworks over there, but you know,
because I've known him and knownhis parents and follow them on
Facebook as well.
I've seen his progression andwhen he started over there, even

(04:42):
when I was still in themilitary, I was watching his
Facebook before I moved back tothe area.
So, yeah, shout out to him.
He's doing great things overthere really.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, to be honest with you, I don't even think he
ever spent time in the militaryat all.
I don't think so?

Speaker 4 (04:57):
No, he didn't.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Just to have those other community members that are
out there supporting us.
You know, just like we supportthem, right, you know we show up
to their functions, theirbenefits and do stuff like that,
and then in turn, they turnaround, do the same thing for us
, which is great.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
Well, I see I look at police officers in the same.
They're doing the same thing wedid, right, you know, they're,
to a certain extent, they'regiving up parts of their life to
serve their community.
They're serving their communityjust in a different way.

(05:32):
You know, we went overseas, weleft our areas.
They're staying in theircommunities and still serving
their community.
So I look at them, pretty muchthe same as what we're doing.
They get shot at too.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Well, absolutely, you know.
I mean, and they miss theholidays, right, I mean there's
got to be someone workingSaturday nights and Sunday
mornings and Christmas Day andkids birthdays.
I mean they do the samesacrifices that we did, maybe on
a different scale, right,Because at the end of the day
they went home, right, but ittook us six months, nine months
a year, right, to get back.
And you know, back in my timeit was emails, and I think I

(06:12):
talked about that on the lastpodcast, right, I mean that's
all.
My wife and I used to have togo to the internet cafe, right,
Give them two bucks to getonline for 20 minutes.
You know what I mean.
It's so much different nowadaysthan it was even in your
talking back in my day, you know, early 2000s, late, late 90s.
I mean that's the way it wasdone.
You didn't even wait on snailmail.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
Shit, I remember shit .
We even have emails or orinternet cafes.
Shit, we go somewhere and weget phone cards.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
AT&T would have phone booths set up, yeah we always
had the bank right, the bank ofphones, right outside the
barracks.
You know about 45 phonessitting there and you could
overhear everybody'sconversation.
You know and you're the good,the bad and the ugly in those
conversations a lot of times,but you know my, my ex-wife is.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
She's deployed right now.
She's over in the Middle East.
She's actually at Camp Aire ofJohn in Kuwait.
I can pick up the phone andcall her right now.
You know, I matter of fact, Italked to her today.
What does she have like a phonein the room?
She, she or cell phone cellphone not cell phones, it's her

(07:18):
iPhone she, as long as she'sconnected to the internet, she
can call another iPhone, iphone,I guess that's true.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
There's that Wi-Fi calling option, right yeah, and
your phone's that.
So she picked up the phone andcalled me today.
Like it, like Tim's.
Tim's looking at us like whatdo you mean this setting?
What are you talking about?
Iphones?
What's an iPhone?
I still have a flip phone.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
But you know, these guys with their Android say they
could if they were overseas andhad an internet connection.
All they have to do is use aFacebook Messenger to make a
phone call, or Google Duo,whatever they got.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
So let me ask you this question Would it, would it
, when you're deployed, would itbe more convenient to have
anybody at any time right whenyou're not actually not on
patrol, not on duty or whateverright Be able to get a hold of
you?
Or is it almost a detriment?
Right, so you're not focused onthe mission because you might
be interrupted at any time.
Right, so, like if you're, ifyou got your eight hour rest
period and it's like I want tocall home, you had the option.

(08:16):
Now, right, you're on youreight hour rest period or
whatever, they instantly can geta hold of you and maybe bad
news.
Or maybe now you're distractedby something else.
Is it?
Is it a good thing or detriment?

Speaker 5 (08:30):
It really doesn't matter, because if it feels bad
news, it was going to comethrough, no matter what, whether
it be email, whether it be RedCross or something else going to
come through, you know, orwhether it be a phone call, it
didn't really matter.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
See, I always kind of like the option of I got to
call home when I wanted to callhome, yep, right.
So I didn't.
If I didn't want thedistraction, right, because
maybe we're prepping forsomething, maybe we're getting
ready for something and I neededto be 100% focused in the game,
right.
Then I made the call when Iwanted to make the call.
I didn't have the otherdistraction besides a mail call
or oh, I should probably gocheck my email, right.

(09:07):
But if I didn't want to, Ididn't have to, right.
Now, all of a sudden, you know,and you start talking time,
different changes, Right?
So I mean there are 11 hours.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
I had well out of us.
Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
It was.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
I was talked to her probably around noon it was
probably like 1130 my time andshe said it was 730 at night
there.
Yeah, some time.
So I mean all of a sudden eighthours yeah so my mom and dad
get off work at five.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
They call you, it's 4am, 3am, whatever waiting you
up in the middle of the night itcould be right.
So I mean, I just was kind ofcurious now that we talk about
how more convenient it is toreach out you know touch the way
the world is nowadays.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
You, you're completely accessible to
everybody all the time.
With this cell phone, you knowpeople can reach out and touch
you anytime they want to.
You got no, no downtime.
Really, I'm working 24 sevenBecause I got a cell phone.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, yeah.
That's what's one thing that mywife and I had to get used to
right when I started thebusiness was my vacations are
always working vacations.
The reason why I have a laptopright with us.
I've been projects managingprojects, taking phone calls
we're trying to do somethingwith the kids and my phone's
ringing all the time.
I mean that just is the way itis.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Yep.
And that's you know, overseasit's.
It's even when we were, when wefirst joined, right I was.
I've joined in 1997.
You joined when.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah well, same time, so same time.
I delayed entry programs sountil 98.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
We didn't have cell phones back then, people
couldn't just reach us when wewere out in San Diego or
wherever you were at.
They couldn't just, they justcouldn't reach out and call you.
You know you'd have to.
I didn't have, I remember Ididn't have.
I had a phone in my barracksroom.
I had a pay phone downstairsthat will that I would use, so

(11:07):
completely way more accessiblenow than we were 20, 30 years
ago.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, so nowadays, you know I like the fact that
there's conveniences.
I was just wondering if youknow it'd actually be kind of
cool to talk to somebody maybedeployed right now, you know, to
actually see how they like itRight, I can arrange that.
Well, we can, we can Bluetoothher in here.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
Oh, you could 100% she could.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
She could be on here with us right now.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
Let's go, for I'll give her a heads up next time
Because, like we said, it's it'sprobably 2am.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yep, 2am or 3am.
Yeah 100%, I get it.
So you tell me to meet yourmicrophone.
I unmute you and then you cough.
Hey, it happens, it gives methe thumbs up with.
That clears as well.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
Lisa in fart Surprised.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
So it happens, it happens, yes, we've got we've
had some pretty cool stuff goingon up at our VFW post and we've
actually got some some newmembers coming in right.
We got AJ Boyle came in right.
He's he's a younger member,army yeah, he's only been out
not very long, right four orfive years?

Speaker 3 (12:24):
No, he's still in.
We still have.
He's a in the guard unit, Okayhe just came back from.
He came back from Afghanistanabout eight months ago.

Speaker 5 (12:35):
Yeah, he's actually in the 125 right now we have one
that's.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
I don't know.
I don't know if he's in the 125or not.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
Yeah, I think he is, I think, I think it's the 126,
126.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
I think it's the 126.
So is one better than the other.
I'm just kidding you, becausewell, actually, the way they,
the way they've numbered theinfantry battalions, at least
them to where, during World Warone, when they won and they

(13:10):
marched in the parade, theymarched by battalions.
And at Michigan at one timethere was three infantry
battalions there was the 126,the 125 and the 225.
225 was from Detroit area, 125would be from Lake Alma, poured
here on Saginaw, flint, and thenthe 126 was along the the west

(13:33):
coast.
So when they start downsizingin the military, they cut the
infantry battalions in thatorder.
225 went away.

Speaker 5 (13:45):
Actually they became the 425.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
No, the 425 was a separate thing.
They were the snake eaters.

Speaker 5 (13:51):
Well, I think they 225 got eight.
They were absorbed by the 425.
From my understanding of it.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
I didn't know, I didn't think that happened.
But so then the 126 went to anarmor or a calf, and then the
125, because they were theoldest regiment of infantry in
the state state is the onlyinfantry regiment.
And now they brought the 126back and the 126 is what I

(14:21):
joined out of high school, theAvengers of baton, 60 years ago
62.
Thanks anyway, dick.
So just a little interestinghistory of the Michigan National
Guard.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Actually, the Avengers of baton doesn't
necessarily fall directly solelyon the 126.
That's actually a 38 38thinfantry division yeah like the
anybody within the 38th infantrythroughout the whole Midwest
they were.
That's where they were dubbed.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, the Avengers of baton.
And another thing cool aboutthat is the 126.
They hopped around withCharlie's people out in the
Pacific.
They were at late aga off Lizearn or Liz moon or some island
bullshit name like that.
They had 787 consecutive daysin combat.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, so.
I thought, I thought it was badwhen they extended me from 12
months to 15 months.
What the hell.
So it was it was that.

(15:45):
That was the worst deployment,that first one that's.
You guys were there when I wasthere.
You guys were in Rustam Maya.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Mortaritoville.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, that's, that's exactly where.
Where I was at, we were gettingrocked, just like you guys.
Orders every day, every day.
It was not fun no, it wasn't,but I'm glad to be here.
I can tell you that Iappreciate things a whole lot
more.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
And I get there and your ass is on your way to scan
you.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
That's where I was at Yep.
Yeah, scan you.
So did you guys do that 15months?
You guys didn't get thatextension.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
No, we ended up about 10 months, wasn't it?

Speaker 5 (16:24):
No, it was 12 months to the day.
Damn near.
Wow Was a year.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
We went.
We went from six to eightmonths.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
Those uh, those, uh, I was actually where I was at in
scanning.
I was with Minnesota NationalGuard.
They were running the five thatI was at and I think they,
those guys, ended up doing,between their ramp up and their
extension, 21 months, almost twoyears, gone away from home.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
It was tough man.

Speaker 4 (16:59):
Yeah that that had to be bad, but you know that's
what we sign up for, right.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
The unknown, times that shit happens.

Speaker 5 (17:08):
I love being away from home.
I have to deal with the wife orbullshit back here.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
Yeah, you get.
You got your good and your badsimpler times, yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Well, you know, I think for a lot of us, you know
we all listed before, thingspopped off, right, so we had no
idea going.
That's different if youenlisted in 2004, five, six,
eight, 10, right, totallydifferent.
You kind of knew what you weregetting into.
For a lot of us it was beforethat, I mean golf, or was 10
years prior, you know, and thenall of a sudden, man you're in

(17:40):
it, but you do it going in.
It could always happen on anyother time, right, but I mean
wasn't that wasn't activelygoing.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
So right, but you knew when you were signing up.
You knew that this was apossibility.
No, 100 percent, not yeah youknow, and I get it.
I say that, say this, that myson joined a few years back and
when that?
I think it was when Trumpkilled that, that general, that

(18:06):
Iranian general, remember, wasthat Salamani, or out of care?
Remember his name.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Al-Zawari or something.
Yeah, died like a dog.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah Well, big beautiful dog.
No, that was, that was aterrorist.
This guy was a.
Was was a.
He was a Iranian general.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
I can't remember terrorist.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Pretty much right Hamas, the Hamas general.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
And my son was like, oh my God, we're going to, we're
going to war with Iran.
I was like, just take it easyfirst of all.
Ok, quit being a little bitch.
That's pretty much what I toldhim.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
I said listen, this is what you these are me right,
Because I know Marines don'tknow exactly.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
I was like, listen, this is this is what you signed
up for.
I said and if you go over thereand you die, guess what?
That's what you signed up for.
We're going to miss you, butyou know you signed up for
something bigger than yourself.
So yeah, ruck up.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Well, I can always.
I can always tell you this wesaid there's two ways I want to
die Right.
One glory in my country, right,dying combat, or at least in
service right.
And two I'm not hardly a mind.
Yeah, one of two ways.
Let someone pull out in frontof me.
I guess that's what Godintended it to be.
So that's two ways that I wantto go doing, the two things that

(19:24):
I love or riding around in thesnow or I'm going to add a third
thing Bangin.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
What about banging on your Harley In the snow?

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, so where this this?

Speaker 2 (19:38):
whole snow thing comes from Our city here, mount
Pleasant.
They're redoing our downtownarea.
They're increasing the smallpark park and lot kind of stuff.
So that's in the redesign.
We had the Korean War Memorialright that was located at what
we call town center and we havethe World War One or World War

(19:59):
Two just outside of the downtownarea memorials.
They were in kind of a terriblearea because you really wasn't
much parking, wasn't much areato stand to actually visit the
memorials.
I mean you could, but I meanyou couldn't get a group of more
than four or five peopleprobably standing there at
either or so through the city ofMount Pleasant, parks Parks

(20:19):
Division and obviously theleadership of the city decided
to get involved with theAmerican Legion here in our VFW
post, talked about movingeverything down to the Michigan
Vietnam Memorial it's the one,the big one for the state, as
well as the global war on terror, yep, global war on terrorism

(20:40):
monument down there.
So we put they were through thebudget, they were able to move
the other monuments those threewere World War One, world War
Two and Korea down to IslandPark where they're in consensual
order consensual order Yep,yeah, that's close enough for
good good enough for a Marineright.
Yeah, close enough for infantryMarines.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
So they're going to end up.

Speaker 5 (21:01):
Not consensual, not consensual.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Consensual, something like that.
Right, so they're in order.
Right, world War.
One World War, two Korea.
Sequential, yeah, sequentialorder yeah, that's what I'm
talking about.
And then they're going to bedoing some more work down there
with the sidewalks and stuff foraccess to those memorials.
So we moved those three twoweeks ago, on a Friday actually
of all days that end up snowing,and our riders group had a

(21:28):
couple bikes out there to helpescort, along with the city
police department, firedepartment and then the
contractor that they had comemove the memorials to our
speaker, something like that.
Yeah, those guys are awesome.
I mean they were crazyrespectful, super appreciative
that you know we were escortingthose memorials down there.
The guys worked hard.
They didn't even take a lunch.

(21:49):
I mean they got it done in sixhours when they straight worked
and that was cold and not a verynice day, but it was.
It was a cool thing for us to godo.
I mean I think it was thecommander from the American
Legion was there helping,helping out where he couldn't
and doing what he needed to do,and it was cool for the raiders

(22:10):
group to be a part of that.
I was.
I was happy to do it because,you know, if our, our memorial
ever got moved, I would hopethat there was guys out there,
like us that jumped out thereand took a day, no matter what
the conditions were, and madesure they were moved
appropriately.
So that was.
That was something that was.
That was pretty cool.
It's been going on around herein town that our post has been
involved in.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
We do a lot.
We do a lot I mean I told Timbefore I ran for vice president
of the group is that I've been apart of this post for going on
four years now, and it's timefor me to step up and start
taking more leadership role anddonating more of my time, commit

(22:55):
more of myself to this causethat we, that we all love.
But I didn't realize how muchwe actually did, and I'm
starting to find out that it's alot, a lot.
That's why we're on our postsevery year, right Well?

Speaker 3 (23:16):
that's a and yes, we are.
Usually for the last five outof six years we've been all
state and then the last twoyears we've been all American
and they're all American as anationally recognized V F, w
award.
All state is a state recognizedand basically to get that you

(23:40):
have to have membership,memberships, the big thing, um,
and then you have to do yourreports, you have to go out in
your community, you have to dothe voice of democracy program,
you have to do the Patriots 10program, um, donate to Trotter,
donate to national home.
You got to do all this stuffand a lot of people say that

(24:02):
because it's a donation of moneythat you buy your, you buy the
all American, but you don't,because you should be doing this
anyway.
You shouldn't get an award fordoing what you're supposed to do
.

Speaker 4 (24:15):
You know well, not only that, how do we get the
money?
We go out work and go out andwork for it.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
So we donate our time , we raise it.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
We raise.
It's not like we're just allputting in some money.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, we donated it.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
You know we got to work for that money, we got to
work to get those donations toin order to donate it to who we
donated to.
So so it's not buying it.
We're working hard for that.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Well, that's what's crazy, right?
You know, the writers groupgenerates a lot of money, right,
we do 5050 raffles, we do thebreakfast, we do stuff like that
, right, and through the monthof December, what we spent this
year was donation wise, right?
So, either, you know, we spentsome money for Special Olympics.

(25:05):
We spend money for kids,christmas stuff, the toys for
tots, I mean all the differentstuff that we donate to the
national homes, the campTrotters.
Our writers group has donatedabout $7500.
And I don't have that, I'm justparaphrasing.
That's probably a little bitmore, might be closer to $7800
that we donated in one year.
Right, and some of that, youknow, donations go back,

(25:27):
obviously, to our pulse, forthings that need to be fixed and
done and that kind of stuff.
You know, like the mind, thepodcast equipment.
You know we donated to thatbecause it's a good thing, but,
yeah, I mean, so there's thatmembership works their asses off
to generate that money.
Right, and that's what we shouldbe doing.
Right, we should be spendingthe money in the community that
supports us.

(25:47):
So you know, but if you want tocall it buying, whatever,
doesn't matter.
Those are the least.
Like you say, those are thethings that we should be doing
right.
We shouldn't always be takenright.
I mean, we've served ourcommunities before, we should
still continue to serve them,and then, out of their
generosity, they'll, they'llserve us back.
Yep, right.
So I mean you can't just be,can't just be one sided,

(26:08):
especially as an organizationlike like ours.
You know where it's take, take,take all the time.
You have to give right andyou're not a good steward of
your community, I feel, ifyou're not giving back right.
So that's what we do.
But one of the one of the coolthings the director over here
hasn't said yet, but sounds likethe Department of Michigan is
looking at putting together anall state type program for the

(26:30):
riders groups.
Even Right.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, we're, we're looking at doing something like
that actually, charlie, help me,help me get some ideas for it.
Well, I am like the unofficialofficial assistant director yeah
that's true.
So so I got had a chance to goto wine dot their posts down in

(26:54):
Southeast Michigan and talk tothe Fort district riders, and
they seemed on board with it,other than one individual, which
I'll work on that.
But I think it'd be.
I think it's a good way tobring the riders groups of
Michigan together, because theyall do a lot of stuff but they

(27:16):
do it individually.
And if we could do it together,I think it would grow the VFW
membership, because you comeback home from combat, right,
you still, you still got thatadrenaline going.
What's the best way to keepyour adrenaline going?
Jump on a motorcycle and ridelike your hair is on fire, okay,

(27:37):
so so that that grows, thatgrows membership, and membership
is our lifeblood.
We don't, if we don't havemembership, we can't do the
stuff on Capitol Hill that weneed to do for veterans to, to
support the veterans that comehome and that are owed a lot

(27:59):
more than what they get.
And the way we do that is bygoing to Capitol Hill and
voicing our concerns and gettingstuff, getting stuff put out
there.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Well, and kind of piggyback on that, but it's to
make sure that the riders groupsare doing what they're supposed
to be doing.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Yes right.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
So it's like getting their reports in on time every
month, making sure theirelection reports once a year,
but it's also making sure thatthey are out there doing the
things in their community thatthey should be doing Right.
So it's like being at differentevents and stuff, because
that's that's recruiting Right.
I mean, all of a sudden you get10 or 12 VFW members, with with

(28:37):
patches on, that show up to anevent.
There might be a veteran outthere riding on his own or just
at the event Well, didn't evenknow he had a VFW I like to ride
and then all of a sudden thatturns into an easy recruiting
event.
Right, absolutely, and it's.
And you know we had this, thisconversation about membership,
membership, membership on thelast podcast.

(28:58):
The good, the bad and the uglyare just trying to always get
membership right.
It's like how do you get goodmembers compared to just a name
on a wall, right?
I mean, there's two differentkinds of kinds of members, right
.
There's active members that aredoing stuff at the post and for
the post and for the otherveterans, and then there's guys
that just walk their name on awall and don't don't support, do
anything.
But I think this, this program,is great because it's it's

(29:21):
point points based and there'slike five or six different
categories, right.
And then you earn points basedon putting the check in the box,
say we did this, we did this,we did this, we did this.
And if you earn enough points,then you end up.
Then you end up earning an allstate type golden motorcycle or

(29:41):
whatever award it's going to befor that riders group and that's
going to bring breedcompetition amongst riders
groups because obviously we'reall a type personality people,
right.
So we want, we always want tobe the best, ain't that right?
Right?
So if you're the one group thatdidn't check enough boxes, guess
what you're going to do nextyear?
You're going to be the groupthat checks the boxes and when
you check the boxes, that meansyou're out there doing good

(30:03):
things, right?
You're supporting the communityor you're making sure your
reports are in here, donating.
It's not large amounts of money, it's like $50 or $25, you know
.
So with with a cap you coulddonate more, but you can't earn
any extra points just by buyingit, right, right?
So once you spend a certainamount you're not going to get

(30:23):
any more points and that's noteven close to enough to what you
need, right.
But at least you're doing thethings to support the VFW,
support the membership, supportthe VFW agencies and you know we
all like to walk into someoneelse's pulse and see what they
got hanging on a wall, and wewant, when they walk in ours, we
want them to see that we're outthere doing the right thing,
because I think sometimes theriders groups get, get a bad

(30:45):
name.
It's like oh you know, theriders groups taking over the
pulse.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah, it's all about the riders group.
They're the new fish in the sea.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yep, they're, they're the new shiny new toy.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
The shiny new pen.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Yeah, I think that's what it was to.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
I was a state leadership feel.
Feel about riders groups.
Um, you're in, you're in the no10.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
So I would hope they they would love us, because our
department commander is a memberof one.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
I know that, but by and large.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Okay, so so for the next, the riders groups are
probably going to be stuck withme, unless I turn it down for
the next three years.
Kimberly Napoleon, the nextdepartment commander, she
already asked me, yanka alreadyasked me, um, and I think Larry
Thayer is running for junior andhe already asked me because,

(31:43):
unfortunately, the way the I'mgoing to pause real quick.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
So anybody that doesn't know Larry Thayer, he
has the best golf balls on theplanet.
Got his name on him he he handsabout all the VFW golf onnings.
Tim uses his golf balls andcannot lose them.
He can hit him into the pond andthey'll skip and then be up in
the grass.
If he has a brand new pro V one, he hits it.

(32:08):
It's gone.
It's at the bottom of the pondor it's in the middle of the
woods.
Larry Thayer's ball.
Go in the woods and bounce out.
They're that good.
Sorry, I just had to come outbecause we were joking about
that.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, always smashing on my golf game that I don't
have.
So, um, and I put that out tohim.
I haven't gave him the templateyet because I'm still talking
to other riders, grouppresidents like Scott Taylor

(32:38):
from Harrison he's, he's all inon that.
He'd be all over that.
Ross Common I don't know aboutRoss Common.
They more or less just want toget a group of guys together and
ride, so I don't know wherethey would be in that.
Fowlerville is a little trickyright now.
District fours.
Bill Schaefer from Districtfours, like yeah, let's do it.

(33:01):
Ray likes the idea, but itwouldn't take effect until
Kimberley's year.
Kimberley likes the idea, yaccalikes the idea.
So I think the leadership wantsit.
I think the leadership wants itto go forward Right.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
And not, and not just that, that program, but riders
groups in general, I think.
I think departments all in onit.
One, because we're out thereDoing the things that we should
be doing and then at the end ofthe day, you know it's, it's,
it's good for membership andit's good for it's good exposure
, I mean, unless groups are outthere not doing what they're

(33:41):
supposed to do.
But I think in the next threeor four years riders groups are
going to continue to be strongat the VFW level in the state of
Michigan.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, I think.
So we're going to try.
I know something Ray has kindof pushed.
Ray is kind of pushed, raised.
Ray is kind of pushed for me to.
Ray is kind of pushed for me to.

(34:12):
I'm trying to think of what I'mtrying to say.
Ray is kind of pushed for me tomake sure the riders group do
the right thing.
Ok, right, it's got to be, it'sgot to be VFW first.
It's got to be VFW first, andthen you're a riders group,
right.

(34:33):
Right, because there are some,there are some groups that have
the motorcycle club mentalityand that turns the members of
the post off, and then there itgoes.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
Right right.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
So so that's that's important, that we remember this
as riders groups, and when newriders groups come on, that'll
be up to me to say hey, hey guys, we're VFW first and then we're
a riders group that helps theVFW, right?
So so we'll see how that worksout, hopefully, well, well.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Did you just say we're riders?

Speaker 3 (35:19):
group oh.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Did you just say we're riders groups first?
Yeah, I messed that up.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
We're VFW first, riders group second.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
There we go.
That's what I wanted to.
Yeah, yeah, wanted to clarifythat, because you know how my
head is.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
It's all over the place, right.
So With the reporting thingthat you're talking about, the
reporting thing is you would notbelieve post that do everything
that they're supposed to do butthey don't turn in a report.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Hmm, hmm.
Is that?
Just laziness.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
It's.
I don't want to do it because Idon't have to.
And they do have to becauseit's in the ritual and the
bylaws.
So so we got to have sometechnical difficulties.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Difficulties.
Yeah, the new deck of, please,you want to introduce yourself
once you pick your microphone upTechnical difficulties.

Speaker 8 (36:26):
Wow, he's gonna.
He's gonna fucking hurt himself.
I told you.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
It's not balanced, right man?

Speaker 8 (36:35):
She had no problem.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Must be that that sexual, that sexual chocolate
that's coming through.

Speaker 5 (36:45):
I'm going to get out of the house to y'all later All
right man, all right, see youTake it easy.
Shem you going to the post?
Yeah, All right.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
I'll see you later.
So just so everybody knowspodcast tonight's back up at the
AJ Skylounge.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
We just kind of come and go and people fill in and do
what they got to do.
It's actually located at myshop, my business, so you'll
hear Grad doors, you'll hearpeople stop up and downstairs,
you'll hear all kinds of crazythings on this thing.
We'll be doing them up here fora while, I think, just because
our posts are up here.
We'll be doing them up here fora while, I think, just because

(37:17):
our post is so busy all the time.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah yeah, Busy as hell man.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
But that's how we want it.
Oh, no, 100%, and that's likesay unfortunately.
That's kind of why we're whywe're here we should be wish we
could do that to post, butthere's just never a day.
That place that's empty.

Speaker 8 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
I mean seven days a week.
It's rocking.

Speaker 8 (37:37):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
So join the podcast, Breton.

Speaker 8 (37:42):
That's right, I just popped in.
My name is Breton.
I am a Navy veteran, the bestbranch there is.

Speaker 5 (37:50):
Oh my God, next to the other three.

Speaker 8 (37:57):
I did almost six years on active duty as a, as a
corpsman, so mostly medicalrelated things, good time and
spent some time over in Bethesda, maryland, and then I have the
Pearl Harbor for three years.
So that was a.
That was a good time to butspend some time overseas with a

(38:20):
mobile surgical team and thatwas pretty much the culmination
of my.
I think it was five and a halfyears.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
And also some of what you've been missing.
We've been talking quite a bitof rarest group of stuff, a
little bit of stuff that's beengoing around here in town talked
about, you know, moving the warmemorials.
A couple of weeks ago we talkeda little bit about toys for
tots and you know, especiallynowadays right, the way that
social media is used, you know,as far as promoting stuff.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
That's why we you know, we're fortunate enough to
be able to get down to ChiefSawyer's place down in Shepherd
and donate, and his Facebook'sbeen blowing up with that post
and we did talk about becauseTrey was talking earlier about
this His ex-wife is deployedright now over the Middle East
and cell phones.
I got to get your take right,so like because you're younger,

(39:12):
right, you're mid 30s.
Right, we're mid 40s.
Some of us are mid 60s, likeTim.
But 60s.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
I thought he was in his 80s.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Oh, okay, well y'all can bite me.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
But you know, with cell phones, right, he was like,
I just talked to her, just likeI'm like man we used to have to
like, right, get the callingcard and go to the phone bank
and email that kind of thing.
You know, nowadays it's soeverything so readily available.
I was asking what their takewas.
Do you think it would have beenbeneficial for you to have your
iPhone over there?
You could take a phone call atany time.

(39:48):
Or was it better that you gotto do it on your the time that
was convenient for you?

Speaker 8 (39:54):
Well, first I'll say you know the old setup, the
calling card and the whole nine,when I'll most of my time over
there was in Djibouti, africa.
So they didn't really have aninfrastructure, at least even
closely compared to anything inAmerica, or maybe you know

(40:15):
closer to them, maybe likeBahrain or so they didn't, they
didn't have that.
So they still, they still hadthat calling card setup.
There's a trailer you could gointo and call people at home.
But I think my take on it, itabsolutely would have been
easier, it would have been nicerto, you know, be able to use my
phone and if I remembercorrectly, I actually did use my

(40:36):
phone, because today's day andage we all have these apps that
we can download, and I recalldownloading an app that would
allow me to call home.
It would scramble my number, sonobody ever knew it was me, but
it worked off of Wi-Fi.
So what little Wi-Fi we had wecould still call.

(40:58):
You know it was.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
It was an interesting Was that a Magic Jack, Magic
Jack that's what it was.
I remember when I was leavingIraq that we actually had phones
that were run through MagicJack as long as they were
plugged into the internet.
It's a little Magic Jack thing,but now I guess it's apps.
Use apps for that.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah, well, so what, what?
What my thought was more orless right.
Like you're, you're gettingready to go do an operation,
you're going to do something andthen all of a sudden, now
you're distracted by a phonecall from home.
Or if you need to focus andconcentrate on whatever mission
that you were on, right, becauseif it's a 12-hour shift in the

(41:40):
hospital or being part of aMedevac team or whatever you had
going on, is that almost adetriment to this thing could
ring and change your day.
Vice, you decide to call homeand find out what's going on, or
decide to go check your emailor whatever.
To me, I think I liked the wayit was, if I needed to do what I

(42:02):
needed to do and I decided tocall home in three days.
I decided to call home in threedays.
Not, you know, the washingmachine just died and my wife's
calling bitching oh my God, orsomething you know what I mean.

Speaker 8 (42:13):
I could like be a man .
I mean because that's that's.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
That's a distraction.

Speaker 8 (42:15):
I'm 10,000 miles away , honey.
What am I going to do?

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Right, that's.
That's kind of what I wastrying to get at.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,it's not the convenience of
being able to call home Overover, but it was just the
distraction that maybe came fromit being that easy to get ahold
of you In that thought process,absolutely.

Speaker 8 (42:32):
I mean it's it's a little more elevated or
escalated, I think, when you'rein an active war zone or you're
over there doing something thathigh level that we were doing.
But I would still compare it tohaving your cell phone during
your normal work day.
You know that is our work overthere, well.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
But this happened in a training exercise.
Okay, when I first was in, Iwas in a scalpel too.
That was a six man squad.
I'm the squad leader.
We have to probe a infantrycompany's lines to find out
where the weak spot is, so thatthe other infantry company could

(43:19):
attack that area.
So we're there.
It's dark.
Of course.
This is back in the early 1930s, yeah, before night vision.
This is back in the early 1900s, so we didn't have any night
vision.
Okay, so what we used is binos,which, if the moon was out,
would give you a pretty goodlook.

(43:41):
So we're crawling up.
I have my assistant squadleader on my left, I have my
Point man on my right and thenthen behind us, pulling security
, are the two drivers and theother 60 gunner.
So here we go, we're going upand all of a sudden ring, ring,

(44:06):
ring.
I look back the dude behind me.
We called him Mr Gadget.
He was a private, and if RangerJoe's were to be on the other
side of the road and if RangerJoe's was selling it, he bought
it and he had his fucking cellphone on.
Yes, he had his cell phone on.

(44:27):
And, needless to say, all of asudden flashlights out in the
woods.
You know they're hunting nowand here we are a six man team
with M16s.
We didn't even have the goodM4s at that time, we just had
the junk M16s.
And these guys are man squadscoming out here, squads coming
out here.
So we had to hunker downunderneath this tree and we had

(44:52):
the radio.
All of a sudden the radiocracks and I'm like.
I looked at the guy carryingthe radio and I'm like shut the
fucker off man.
And we sat under this tree untilalmost daylight while they were
running around.
And then when we finally gotback to our little camp and I
had to tell the police, I had totell the platoon sergeant that

(45:12):
yeah, we didn't, we didn'tfigure anything out.
And he's like why?
And I just looked at the dudeand I said ask him.
Yeah, he had the first sergeantate his ass.
It was amazing.

Speaker 8 (45:24):
So I don't know if today's day and age.
If you want to say that he atehis ass, well, well you can take
it the way you want, but but,you know that's one of them.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
One of them things where I am with Charlie.
No, right, absolutely, leavethe damn phones alone, man.
Right, the news will get you to.
Like Shem said, the news willget to you when it gets to you
If something happens.
Right, you know you don't needto.
Your mind's got to be focusedon the mission at hand.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
And this is where Now this is.
This has gone into a wholeanother subject, but we could
probably get somebody on on theline, sergeant Major, somebody
that has troops overseas, andfind out what they're doing
about that.
What are?
They just because we're curiousabout that.

(46:15):
I can tell you what they'redoing.

Speaker 8 (46:17):
They probably just don't allow it.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
Well, that's what I'm thinking Like if you're going
out on mission, no, you can'thave your cell phone.

Speaker 8 (46:25):
Or I mean, it's an Opsac thing.
Exactly, that's what GPS andeverything.
Getting ready to say that I'mliterally a target.
Yep, so you're talking aboutthat.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Do you guys remember back?
Oh, this would have beenprobably 2010.
Right, so you'd have been inmiddle school, but for our
soldier guys, 2010.

Speaker 8 (46:40):
I remember I'm just kidding I was my first year in
military, so you're nuts hadn'tdropped yet, but it was.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
It was like the Fitbit.

Speaker 6 (46:49):
Remember the Fitbit running like you know, you wear
a Fitbit and you go run.

Speaker 8 (46:54):
I think that was that was going with us.
I remember that.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
So all these, military people in the Middle
East.
Right, they're wearing theseFitbits and it was literally
tracking where they're walking,you know how many miles and all
this different shit, and it wasGPS tracking them and then they
were getting those.
That system was getting hackedinto so the enemy could actually
see where the troops weremoving.
Yep.
And what they were doing.

(47:17):
Remember that, yeah.
So it's crazy to say, right,cell phones.
I mean Google's listening tothis going.
What the hell are these guystalking about, you know, is
they're tracking everything thatwe're saying Because these
things are always on even ifthey're off, right, right, but I
mean that was you talked aboutoperational security, right?
I mean that's, that's crazystuff, that Mm-hmm, these cell
phones.
I guarantee you thateverybody's here's the bin.

(47:39):
I want to see 12 cell phonesbefore we break wire, right,
yeah?

Speaker 6 (47:43):
They all got to be in here before that gate, that
gate open yeah.

Speaker 4 (47:45):
And you go.
But even even being on base andusing that phone, they're it's
so easy to get into these thingsand to get into these systems
especially, let's say, which Iguarantee you nowadays that
they're they have Wi-Fi all overtheir base.
It's civilian run, yep, run bypeople from the economy, oh yeah

(48:08):
.
So what are they going to dowhen they, when they go home at
night and you have to expectyour shit's tapped.
Yeah, I mean.
And the terrorist comes totheir door and says I need all
that information.
Well, what are they going to do?
They're going to give it tothem.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
That was our, that was our kitchen staff over there
.
Right, they came in clean andthey did our food.
They were all people fromguitar or whatever, right I mean
they were.
They were the locals, right,contradited them to take care of
us.
But the same instance.
Now you can actually get a waybetter accountability of how
many people around that base Ifyou could count how many
different IP addresses or howmany different cell phone

(48:44):
numbers that are that areconnecting through that base.
I mean you could say, yeah,there's 1200 of them, yeah, oh,
yeah, there's 200 of them.

Speaker 4 (48:51):
Because if you if everybody's carrying a device,
it's and then you know, joe'semailing Susie back home talking
about the mission when we'rerolling out when it's going to
happen.
All that they're talking,they're talking about it, I'm
there through their cell phonesto their spouses.
I got to leave out tomorrow,honey, and I could be able to
talk to you for a day or two.

(49:11):
We're going here, we're goingthere.

Speaker 8 (49:14):
You know what's happening, and so I don't know
how they're controlling thatnowadays, but they, they have to
On land that's got to be reallyinteresting and I'd I'd be
interested to hear from SergeantMajor or somebody to see what
they say.
But I can tell you from theNavy's perspective when you're
out in the middle of the oceanand you can't see land, you also

(49:40):
don't have cell phone signal orWi-Fi.
You get the Wi-Fi that the shiphas installed and by the simple
order of the commander or, inmy case, the captain, the
captain of the ship will shuteverything down.
The only people who have accessto internet are the people who
have access to the securedwhatever they call it

(50:02):
Navigations and communications.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Navigations, communications yeah.

Speaker 8 (50:06):
Your email.
Oh, and that's the other thing.
Everybody's email is scannedLike Right, that's you know, and
many, many emissions, many,many of movements that are being
made.
Many of movements were wereshut.
Everybody was shut down, liketwo days before we even moved.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, so.
So like when we left Bahrain,when I was at my fast team and
we went into the guitar.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
I think we might have a good person to talk about
this.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, you might actually know when Joe gets in
here.
But we actually had a script toread, right?
So I had Lieutenant sittingnext to me, I had a phone, he
had a phone.
I gave him the number.
He calls my wife back here.
I had a script to read.
Oh hey, it's me, how's it going?
We got, we got a few minutes totalk, all that kind of stuff.
I remember.

(50:53):
And then, and then at the end ofthe day, as I'm reading through
the script, if I said anythingoutside the bounds of that
script, he'd hang up the phone.
So there was a delay, right.
So Jim would talk, it'd go tohim and come to me and then I
could reply to go to him andthen go to her with seconds
delay, right, and if you screwedit up at all, the phone call is
done and it literally was.

(51:14):
You might not hear from me for30 to 45 days, right?
So, and basically no news isgood news nowadays.
You know, just like, just likewhat Brent was just saying, that
captain of the ship shuts itdown, it's down.
I mean there's no Anzifer Watts, because operational security
is huge, right, because theyalways want to know how many

(51:36):
people are leaving and who'scoming and who's going and all
that kind of different stuff,right, where you headed to, and
probably nowadays that'sprobably a huge issue.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
But yeah, we just had somebody come in Joe.
Joe when did you get out of thearmy 2017.
Did you, were you doing ITstuff over there?
Yes, OK, so um shoot.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Introduce yourself real quick, just so people know
who you are.

Speaker 7 (52:07):
Joseph Gates, I did almost 10 years as a 25 Bravo in
the army, a deployment for youin Iraq and a deployment for
your Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Proud Post-3033 member.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
That's right, that's right Agident webmaster and
super-tact.
Writer of a green crotch rocket, for the love of God.

Speaker 4 (52:29):
And part of the Writers Group.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Part of the Writers.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
Group.
So we've been talking aboutcommunications overseas when
we're deployed, like my ex-wife.
I was just telling them that myex-wife we share a child
together.
She's here with me and shecalled me like that.

(52:53):
She's over in the Middle Eastright now.
She called me today, just likethat.
We were talking about somestuff about our daughter, but I
could pick up the phone and callher right now on her iPhone
because of the Wi-Fi connectionsituation over there.
So we're just wondering whatare they doing nowadays to
protect people?
Obsess, obsess, yep.

(53:16):
What are they doing aboutobsess over there nowadays?

Speaker 7 (53:18):
I don't know.
I was over.
Something happened.
A lot of times they wanted usto shut the network down so
people could get anything outprior to family members back
home knowing anything happened.
That was the rule of thumb.
But you know that wasn't it.
Oftentimes it was just arespect thing.
We didn't actually shut it down, we just knew, hey, don't say
anything until you got the wordback that the family's been

(53:39):
notified.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Right Now, what about those civilian networks and
putting on those fobs?
You guys have to have controlof that.
You guys have to have controlof it, right?
And you know what?
My ex-wife is a 25 Bravo.

(54:00):
She's a warrant officer.
She probably would be a goodone to speak to this.
You call her ma'am.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
Hell no, stand at attention.
Hell no, slew her every time.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
Yeah, we know, we know, yeah, we got you no so.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
I mean part of.
I think what he's kind oftalking about too is you have
subcontractors that come outright, they're cooking, they're
cleaning, they're doing thelaundry, they're doing those
things right.
So they're obviously connectedto their local cell phone
networks or whatever.
Is there like some sort ofthing that's put up that makes

(54:35):
their phones dead zones whilethey're on base?

Speaker 7 (54:38):
Nope, we just had specific areas that we knew that
you could not take your cellphone into.
For instance, there was like aweekly standup we would do,
where we'd get reports from newcompanies and from FOBS about
the current ID threats.
We had a container outside theroom because they were Rochon
phones.
They were owned by the Russiansactually, so we turned them off
and put them in these littleboxes prior to coming in.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Really, so that's actually good news, then OK so
the Russians have control of thephone?

Speaker 4 (55:08):
No, no, no that they're actually confiscating
them.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
They're locking them up so they can't be used while
they're there.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Right when I was there, any contractor on the FOB
had a contractor that wasAmerican that followed him
around everywhere.
He went everywhere.
So we had our guy that providedthe internet and IT.

(55:39):
One day about 1 o'clock he'slike I've got to go, got to go,
got to go home, so he takes off.
He wasn't off the FOB for like10 minutes and we got rocketed.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
Oh my god, we got rocketed, yep.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
So he knew what was going on.
So then we, you know, hey,foolish wants shame on us, right
?
So OK, so we put a squad towatch him.
I don't remember who had thebase security, so to speak, but
they watched him.

(56:18):
Next day.
There's that old Rusty yeah,this was on Rusty Mine.
The next day they see a guykind of looking around and he'd
take a step, look around, takeanother step, look around, take
another step.
And from where he was at, heended up at the side of a

(56:38):
building.
It was the gym where everybodywent to work out, right?
So a couple of days later, afucking gym gets hit.
Luckily it was in the afternoonand nobody was in it, because
everybody was out on mission orsleeping, getting ready to go
out.
For well, the third day yeah,third day was hey, come here,

(57:03):
we're going to baptize you, ohman.
And they scooped him up andtook him off and put him in
their little jail and called inthe interrogators and stuff like
that.

Speaker 4 (57:16):
But yeah, hey guys probably sit down in Guantanamo
Bay right now.
He's probably sitting in a goodold Cuba.
Getting a suntan.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
So it's crazy and the unfortunate part is right.
You have to trust the localnationals right to do that stuff
.
I mean, we're not going to sendcooks and cleaners overseas for
a year here, Wish good becauseI obviously trust Americans more
than I'm going to trust thelocal Iraqi population, some of

(57:52):
them.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Some of them.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
There was actually.
I mean, there's a lot of themthat are there to support us,
and they're there for the rightreasons.
I mean they want the change.
But the same instance thoughthey're being threatened that we
don't see, and stuff like thattoo.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
So I mean there's all kinds of differences.
I can speak on that too.
I worked with two interpretersbecause I worked in the
headquarters section.
Joe and Randy that's the nameswe gave them.
I don't know what their realnames were.
So what we did is we workedwith the Iraqi police.

(58:29):
We trained them, showed themhow to patrol things of that
nature, and Randy and Joe, whenthey were on shift, if I had a
problem at a police station theywould get on the phone and they
would call the police stationand they would do their.

(58:51):
And Joe or Randy was just alittle guy.

Speaker 8 (58:57):
You do that again.
I just I didn't know.

Speaker 4 (59:00):
You only get one.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Yeah, you were in the Navy.
You probably got excited.
So, so so Randy just gets on thephone and just choose this guy.
Oh, so then I get a radio callfrom the section that's down
there and he's like, yep,everything's good now.
Tell Randy, good job.

(59:22):
I don't know what he said, butgood job.
So I started talking to Randyand I'm like what did you tell
him?
He said I told him that hebetter get his head out of his
ass because if he doesn't,they're going to think that you,
the police chief, are crookedand they're going to arrest you
and take you and throw you inCuba.

(59:43):
And the sad part of this iswhen we come home.
Randy went home on leave andthe mighty militia got him and
hung him up in a tree andskinned him.
Yeah it's fucked up.
The guy was and he was.
He was like three weeks awayfrom getting coming over, coming

(01:00:05):
over here.
Yeah, I mean, he was in there,he was.
He got wounded with the 101stearly on in the war, blew his
leg up, barely could walk.
But the guy was so cool man, hewas just a great dude.

Speaker 4 (01:00:19):
We did not.
We did not do a good job oftaking care of those
interpreters that took care ofus.
We did not and it's a shame.
Shame.
We got to do better as acountry when we, when we go
overseas and we use thoseinterpreters, because they
definitely become targets andtheir family and their families
Yep.
Yep.

Speaker 7 (01:00:42):
We had one where we were doing like a piece of the
ID, like take them out and givethem safe and stuff like that
for the Iraqi police, and thisinterpreter came with us for
their final training mission.
We're just taking them out tothis huge sand berm and blow
some crap up and call it a day.
On the way out I told theinterpreter that was in the

(01:01:03):
vehicle with us hey, we have abunch of the foreign nationalism
here.
You guys need to stay awake.
It makes you touch my crap.
Well, we get to where we'regoing.
The Iraqi police get out, theinterpreter gets out, my driver
myself put down the road to theway post security.
We get down there and do commscheck Nothing on the radio.
I do comms check, nothing'scoming back.
Thankfully I had the fielddevice on me in my pocket, so

(01:01:25):
when I refilled the device onthe way out, somebody had pulled
the lever on the radio andpulled it up.
It turned it off and the radioswere famous for losing their
fill.
So if I wouldn't have had thatstuff on me, we wouldn't have
been able to call back and tellthem hey, we're out here, we're
set.
Or if something had happened,we might have communicated.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
And what were they called?
They did the fills the radios.

Speaker 7 (01:01:46):
It was the old style one, I feel it was called now.

Speaker 5 (01:01:50):
The ANC.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
I think, Pricky's seven.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Pricky's seven.
Yes, because when I was overthere, my buddy Chief Bansmer.
He's a Chief Warrant Three now,but when he was over there he
was our commo guy.
And he had a hell of a timewith them losing their fill.

Speaker 7 (01:02:10):
They were telling the truck to turn off.
Yep, go, bye-bye, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Had a really hard time with that.
And what about the Blue ForceTracker guys?
Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Bring back some memories from me.
I totally forgot about that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
I mean, the system overall is a good system because
you can track every truck, butit's kind of hard to remember
when there's so many units onone satellite that it takes
three years for the old one tocome off and the new one.
So I had to remember what theunit before me's ID numbers was,

(01:02:55):
because otherwise I wasn't ableto track the trucks.
But it was a cool system.
Did you know about it?
You seen it?
Yeah, we used them.
Ok, it was basically asatellite tracked your vehicle
and you could tell if thevehicle's moving stopped in the
wrong country.
Not that that ever happened.

(01:03:16):
Nobody ever ended up in Iranand it's a really cool system,
but it was just too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
Does it map it like GPS?

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
So you could see it on a road map.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Yeah, yeah.
If they're going down routewild, you can see the two
vehicles hauling down.
If they stop, boom, you can sayhey, why'd you stop?
You sent messages across to it,Yep you can type in messages
across to it.
It's the whole nine yards.
That was cool.
It's cool as shit, but thesystem didn't work for a while
because too garbled, too muchinformation trying to go off of

(01:03:55):
a small platform.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
You couldn't, though, but you couldn't take other
units vehicles off, what you'reseeing or no?

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
No, what I'm saying is, I believe, the IT people.
When you come out on a fob, theIT people who and I think our
IT people were a couple guysfrom the Navy and they would go
in there and they'd get yourcall signs like Hooligan 6,
hooligan 7, whatever, whatever,whatever, and then they would go
and type it in to your truckand then they'd upload it to the

(01:04:29):
satellite.
So then you should be Hooligan7.
Should show up on the map.
Show up on the map.
But because it was so garbledand it was so overused, I might
be looking at, I'm just going tosay a 7, but it wouldn't be a
my 7.
It wouldn't say Hooligan 7.
It'd be like Red, 7.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Right, but that's what I'm trying to ask.
You couldn't see just yourvehicles.
You'd see everybody's vehicles.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
No, I would track my vehicles, but I could see
everybody's vehicle if I wantedto.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Well, that's what I'm saying.
That's probably what made itgarbled.
You're looking at all theseother units, vehicles when you
just want to specifically lookat yours.
You couldn't map it down ortake away everybody else's
vehicles and just see just yours.
You have to see everything.
So if there's 8,000 pieces ofequipment moving around.
You're seeing 8,000 vehicles onthe screen.

Speaker 7 (01:05:22):
Well, part of the idea with that system was so
that we wouldn't have friendlyfire instance happening.
You're thinking that, hey,that's an enemy truck coming
through and in reality it's oneof us.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Yeah, no, I get it.
But I mean, if you're allleaving and trying to get out,
you could pop them.
You could pop every othervehicle up and you could take
them away to just focus on yours, and then, as you're moving,
you could pop everybody elseback up or get rid of them, just
to make it less confusing whenyou're trying to move.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
I think you could bring it down to just yours
because, if I remember right,100%.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
That makes sense right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
If I remember right, I had to have Ryan come in
because, again, I'm not the techsavvy guy Flip phone.
Flip phone New riders groupname flip phone.
So I had to have Ryan come inbecause I was looking for a
certain squad and I think therewas a way that you could change

(01:06:18):
it to where you could go to thatgroup of trucks.
You could type in their numbersand they would come up, or type
in their numbers and they wouldcome up, so you're not really
seeing everybody, buteverybody's using the system at
the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
So everybody in theater was working off the same
, which makes sense.
But I was just asking if therewas a way to pare it down and
you could expand it to everyunit.
You could expand it to just afew or just yours, because I
mean, I'm sure it's got to behard to look.
I mean if you jump on GPS andyou look at Mission Street,

(01:06:53):
that's like seeing every vehiclethat's on Mission Street right
now.
I mean you wouldn't be able totell one to the next and that'd
be flying all over the place.
It'd be hard to probably keeptrack of.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Oh it is, it definitely is.
But it was a pretty cool system.
I could see, if it wasdispersed a little more, how it
would work.
And, like Joe said, with afriendly fire you could track
even infantry companies AlphaCompany, bravo Company, charlie
Company and somebody could be ina head shed back in a secure

(01:07:26):
fob, given direction to thecommanders on the ground hey,
you guys, you're moving in frontof the other company, you need
to go left.
I think that would be cool ifthey could really, and maybe
they have, I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:07:41):
Kind of like an air traffic controller, but for the
land.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
Yeah, something like that yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
That's just bizarre.
I mean you could go right downto the man.
Yeah, level, that's just got tobe a lot to look at.
Oh yeah, Keep tracking.
But it's kind of probably coolto see all the different moving
pieces and you can make surethat they're moving in the right
spot, because we didn't havethat type of system right Nope.
I mean, we went on as a 25 man,and that was it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:10):
Well, it's what they send us to battle staff for.
I don't know if you ever wentto battle staff, Tim, but send
us battle staff so we canunderstand.
All of those pieces, all thosesymbols, everything that you're
looking at on a battlefield fromthe S shop, the S1?

(01:08:33):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
S1 was at your supply .

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Admin.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
S3.

Speaker 4 (01:08:39):
Operations.
Yeah.
If you're looking at everythingfrom the operations standpoint
and you're looking at that blueforce tracker.
You're looking at where allthese pieces are and all the
symbolism on this map, what itmeans and everything like that.
That's really high speed.

Speaker 7 (01:08:54):
Really high speed and it prevents you because back in
the old days they had to mapeverything manually, which is
always way behind whereeverybody's actually at.
So when you look at this,they're actually at this
location.
They're not moving there.
They're actually there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Yep.
Well, we use sand tables.

Speaker 8 (01:09:08):
What came to mind for me when you said that was the
scene from we Were Soldiers.
When he calls out Broken Arrow,and then the camera pans to the
war room and they literallyhave the physical map.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, sand table, yeah Sand table Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
That was one of my favorite things to do was build
the sand table Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
I seen a.
We had a cadet, I think, fromCentral come over and he was
working as part of his drill andhe made one and it was pretty
fucking high speed yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Well, the whole point is so that once the direction
comes down, you bring your fireteam, your squad, in and you run
over the table, man, andeverybody could see Everybody
could train, they could see theterrain, the mountains.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
So when you get on ground you're going oh yeah,
this is that little mountain onthe sand table, that's a big
mountain right now.
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Sand tables.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
And another thing I hated talking about GPSs and
stuff is the plugger.
I had so much problem with that.
I had privates come out ofbasic and again, guard units
didn't get a lot of them.
Ok, so we had to rely on theold school map reading oh yeah,
protractor compass map.

(01:10:26):
And I had this private come upto me and it actually was Mr
Gadget.
He come up to me and he's likeSergeant, why do we have to go
through this map reading class?
And I looked at him and I said,well, so that you can know
where you're going, you knowyou've got to be able to
navigate.
And he goes well, I can justplunge it into my plugger and

(01:10:46):
I'll know where to go.
And I said, oh cool, because wewere doing the class and we had
the plugger.
And I said, well, let me seethat he handed it to me.
I was like, ok, that's prettycool.
I said you learned this inbasic, right?
And he goes yeah, and I goes,ok, I dumped the batteries out,
handed it back to him, threw thebatteries in the fucking woods
and said good luck.
Oh man.

Speaker 4 (01:11:11):
Yeah, I remember mappering.
I wonder if they still do thatPLDC.
They don't call it PLDC.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
No, it's a Warriors leader course.
Wlc, yeah, wlc.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
And being on the ground actually reading the map
and trying to find your pointsthey should I know, even going
through as far as when I got outwe were still sitting down.

Speaker 7 (01:11:33):
Every so often You'd go over land now on the
classroom and if you got lucky,they'd take you out in the woods
and have you do it.
I can't tell you how many timeswe sat around the table and
said well, these are the colors,this is how you do the grid,
squares and all that stuff.
But it wasn't.
Very often they were like allright, now we're going up to the
field, we finally did one, wefinally did a night one one year

(01:11:55):
and they ended up tellingeverybody you can take your
phones with you, but they'regoing to be in an envelope, so
if you need help, do not takethem on that envelope.
Well, one of my soldiershappened to be in the same team
as the command team was.
The commander was.
They went out and they get backand we're like how did you guys
get back so quick?
The commander pulled out hisphone.

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
Imagine that, imagine that.

Speaker 7 (01:12:16):
The commander, the one who made the rules.

Speaker 4 (01:12:18):
They're the ones they always do that, those officers
boy.
I remember when I was in Iraqthe second time my commander
never showed up for PT.
One morning he decided to showup for PT.
I took his ass on a 12 mile run.
I was out at Al-Assad, it wasan air base.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
You're fat ass, can't run.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
Well I could.
Back then Was this when youwere a drill sergeant.
It was that Slightly after that, a little bit after that, and I
was in shape.
I was in the military activeduty full time, so I took him on
a 12 mile run.
He never came back to PT againthe whole time, Not once.

Speaker 8 (01:13:04):
That was good.
Can we jump back to land navfor a minute From the Navy's
perspective?
We don't learn land nav and Ihear all these jokes about who's
in charge of the lieutenant, sothey're not getting lost.
Is it really that complicatedto read a map?
Yeah, Can be.

(01:13:24):
I mean because I've never beenthrough anything land nav.

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
Yeah, and the thing about it is you have to go from
this point and find this pointand you would think, looking at
your map, it's easy to do that.
You could walk straight.
Yeah, just walk straight andfind your point.
No there's all kinds of terrainthat you got to navigate.
I mean you could be off just acouple of half a degree.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
And you're way over there and missing Point is way
over there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Yeah, so you got to be pretty much on point with
your land nav and figuring outwhere you're going.

Speaker 7 (01:13:58):
I always don't mind with the train association and
the accounting thing, and thenwhen I went to do my first night
land nav, that fucked me yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:14:06):
Yeah, god forbid that you go to WLC in Korea, because
I did their land nav courseover there.
I was a staff sergeant at thetime too.
And boy, there's a lot ofmountains over there in Korea,
and trying to find your pointwhen you're walking over terrain
like that it's pretty tough.
I did my WLC at.

(01:14:30):
Fort Landerwood, missouri, lostin the woods Lost in the woods,
Yep, and it was a lot of hillsand stuff, but not like Korea.
Korea is like a mountain and mysergeant major was like you
guys are going to go out thereand you're going to go through
what your soldiers go through.
I was like shit.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
OK.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
So in the Marine Corps we don't go over land nav
at all in boot camp, right,they're just making basic
Marines, that's it.
So you get to school ofinfantry and that's where you
hit land nav, right, so theytreat you the basic rifleman,
more stuff, right as far asinfantry goes.
And then especially schools formachine gunners, mortar men's

(01:15:14):
back in my day it was smallstuff like that, but you hit
land nav there and then ofcourse it's straight all the
time Land nav, land nav, landnav, land nav when you get to
the fleet or anywhere else.
And I did the jungle warfarepackage over in Okinawa and that
was a whole different beast,because that canopy oh yeah,
that's all you have right,you're standing and it's a two

(01:15:38):
day land nav course.
So you get paired up and theytake your MREs, you take stuff
to Hooch down at night and youtake off, and as soon as you get
in the jungle you get in abouta quarter mile, half mile, and
it's dark, it might as well bemidnight.
You can't hardly see anything,shadows are screwing with you
and it's just like you're saying, right, it's the mountains, the

(01:15:59):
hills, it's the streams, therivers.
Because you think, right, I'mjust going to walk three miles
this way, get to this, can.
I got to write the numberthat's inside the can down and
then you walk to the next one,right.
But when you're going to goacross a river that's huge or
steep cliff, I'm going to haveto walk a quarter mile that way,
cross the river in a shallowspot, and then I got to figure
out my quarter mile back andthen get back on that Asmuth.

(01:16:21):
So you have to count steps.
Right, I took 48 steps and Iwent to this way.
Then I took another 350 thatway before I could cross.
Then you got to come back thatsame amount of steps with any
type of offset to get aroundanother obstacle, right?
So it's like they're saying ahalf a degree over a two mile
walk can be, you could be off400 yards from where you

(01:16:45):
actually need to be at.
So it's pretty wild.
It'd be like a ship.
I mean, if they're off a degreeby the time they go from one
side of the ocean.
They're talking England toAfrica, probably difference.
You know what I'm saying.
I mean it could be that crazy,just one degree.
So yeah, I always like landf.
I always found it fun Becauseit's a crazy challenge and I

(01:17:08):
still have one of my maps from29 palms that we use for landf.
I still have all this gridsquare design.
I still got my compass.
I still have a lot of stuff.
So we actually pulled some ofthat stuff out.
The other day at the house,when I was putting Christmas
runs away, I pulled out an oldbox.
I was like what's in here?
And I opened it up.
I'm like we still got that map.

(01:17:30):
That's pretty awesome yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
And coming up through the ranks, that leadership.
Once you hit E5, you'resupposed to be really good at
landf.
Right, that's the one thingthat scared the devil out of me.
I was always like fuck, I don'twant to be lost.
And I was a little differentbecause we navigated out of

(01:17:54):
vehicles, all right.
So you had to keep your pace bythe odometer, so you and the
driver had to be on the samesheet of music.
It's a whole different animal.
That's way different.
It's way different because foreverybody out there that doesn't
know, 1,000 meters is 6 tenthsof a mile.
Ok, so we took off and let'ssay we had to go three clicks.

(01:18:19):
We had to go three clicks andthen take a right.
I would have to tell the driver, ok, what's my odometer reading
?
And he'd tell me now I have tocalculate 6 tenths 12.
And then, ok, when you get tothis on your odometer, we'd be
taking a right.
And then you got to do theterrain association.

(01:18:40):
I mean, it's a lot different ina vehicle than it is Make sure
you drive straight.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Yep, you got to drive straight.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
Yep so, and we used to go to Drailing all the time.
And after you go there 10 times, you say hey you remember where
the Lieutenant got blasted withthe CS gas.

Speaker 1 (01:18:59):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:59):
Well, we're going there, ok, so you drive there.
You already got his old hat,yeah.
Then we went to Panama, down toJungle Warfare School.
Oh, fuck me, running man.
I was like I don't want to behere because the jungle takes
you where it wants you to go.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
I mean there's a spot that you can't walk in and then
it's just dark.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
Yep I mean don't forget to check your declination
diagram.
You remember that.
Yep True north at your azimuth.
You know your true north andyour grid north.
Yep, two totally different,yeah, two totally different
things, because if you don't dothat, you're going to be off.
You're going to be off Big time.
Yeah, that's crazy and everymap is different too.

(01:19:39):
On that declination diagram,Every map is different, so
you've got to make sure youcheck your map.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
See when I was in it and going to Grayling.
Not that big a difference liketwo degrees Right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
So we didn't even play with it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:51):
Two degrees, we're traveling.
A couple clicks, not that big adeal, we'll find it.
But when I was down in LittleRock, arkansas, now it's like 12
degrees.
So two clicks at 12 degrees I'mgoing to be in Texas.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
I mean, it can definitely throw you off, yeah,
but land nav was always one ofthose things, if you just
concentrate.
It took your time.

Speaker 7 (01:20:17):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
You'll nail it every time.
I think people would get intheir own head, or they want to
be the first to be done.
Or they want to get there quickor do something, and that's
when the mistakes happen.

Speaker 4 (01:20:27):
That was me.
I was smooth as Yep.
I took my time.
I took my time when I was doingthat in land nav.
Yeah, you have to, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:20:34):
Because, I see guys out there running.
Yeah, oh yeah, they'd ploteverything down.

Speaker 3 (01:20:39):
Yeah, I see an idiot do that too and he failed
B-knock because he couldn't landnav.
And he was an infantry guy andI know he could land nav because
he was out of a Bravo companyand I was out of a combat
support company.
So I knew the dude.
We actually worked together andI told him he's like I'm going
to get the record for this, I'mgoing to get the record for this

(01:20:59):
.
I'm like no Dude, that's a dude, you're going to miss something
.
Sure enough, he did and theysent his ass home.

Speaker 4 (01:21:07):
That declination diagram.
Yeah, he forgot to add that in.
Yep.
So it was good times.
Good times, you guys, reallybringing back some memories from
here.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
I loved it.
I loved the army, I loved it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
I did too.
I got to a point where it wasso much mandatory training, and
at the end of my 20 years I waslike I can't wait to be done
with this and never have to domandatory training again, or
mandatory fun.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
Yeah, you got to go to the oil club because that
wasn't so bad.

Speaker 4 (01:21:45):
The mandatory training was just so much of it,
and I get it.
You got to check the box.
You got to make sure that yoursoldiers are trained on sexual
harassment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
they're not pinching each other's booties or whatever
, just because they weren'tsaying good game.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
That's right.
They got to say good game orsexual harassment.

Speaker 4 (01:22:02):
Yeah, so, but boy, it just got to be so much, so much
.
And when I was getting ready toleave, when I was getting ready
to retire, and I think it wasmaybe three months left, and my
first sergeant was talking aboutsome mandatory training, I'm
like first sergeant, come on,come on now.

(01:22:24):
And she finally was like yeah,yeah you're right, sergeant
Porto.
Ok, ok, don't worry about it.
I was like thank you, I'm outof here, so just leave me the
fuck alone.

Speaker 7 (01:22:37):
That sort of stuff is why I enjoy being deployed more
than being staysite.
Yeah, you didn't have to do oneend of your job and you're left
alone Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:22:44):
Yep, it was just so much, so much and you probably
remember it.
You said 2017, you got out, soyou probably remember all that
stuff, especially around then,that they had us doing just so
much.
It was online stuff.
It go in one part of your brainand right out the other as soon
as you Pass your little classand click your whatever.

(01:23:07):
That's the only thing that,like, if it wasn't for that, I
probably would have stayed 30years in the military, but that
all that mandatory training wasjust it was.

Speaker 7 (01:23:19):
It was so annoying for us that we would take turns,
so there was like somethinglike 20 or 30 class.
We had to get through and I hadfour guys in my section so they
signed each one of us five orsix classes.
You turn the class and at theend you save the certificate.
Right click on it and then weedit the code.
Oh my god.
Print it off and then hand itto our admin guy.
Like it didn't upload, here yougo and he'd upload for us, I

(01:23:41):
would Fuck and have your ass ina sling man.

Speaker 6 (01:23:47):
That's the tech guy, yeah, no shit way to scan the
system E4 mafia right there,this is this is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:55):
This is the part of these podcasts, right.
It's just a bunch of us sittingaround talking about stuff that
hopefully the listeners outthere going.
You know I remember doing allthis stuff and it's just a bunch
of guys just be awesome yeahyou know, just having a good
time.
That's what it should be about.

Speaker 8 (01:24:08):
Yeah, oh yeah just don't tell too many of the E4
mafia secrets because they willstill come after.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
We were all part of E4 mafia at one point time.

Speaker 8 (01:24:20):
I think the most hated required training that I
had and I don't know if it wasthe same for Army and Marine
Corps, but it was the yearly.
It was kind of like operationalsecurity but more specifically
to like Computer systems andstuff.
You had to go through the emailfishing and like and it was
this whole like animated Thingand you were walking through an

(01:24:43):
office and it was the dumbestthing and it never changed from
year to year.

Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
Yeah, yep, yep, I remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
I was in the infantry , we didn't have to do that man.

Speaker 4 (01:24:53):
No, I didn't either.
Well, when did you, when didyou were, when did you get out?
Oh, too.
And then you were oh Wait, ohwait.
Yeah, it got pretty bad, I'dsay after after the whole Iraq
war and everything like thatjust seemed like after 2010 it
just got worse, worse, worselike, I'm adding to it.

(01:25:16):
You heard what Joe just said.
It's a 2030 classes you gottaget through.
I mean it got ridiculous and itwasn't like that you know
earlier in my career.
But Lord have mercy just got.
She's something I couldn't dealwith.

Speaker 3 (01:25:30):
See mob, yeah, something I couldn't deal with
and I but I sort I had to, but Ijust made sure I stayed away
from.
It is Working with women.

Speaker 4 (01:25:44):
Nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with that.
We really want to go into this.

Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
Maybe, maybe we save it for another day, I don't know
.
I mean, I'm just saying that I,I Say I, just I'm.
I seen a lot of stuff in Iraqbecause we were attached to an
MP company or MP battalion.
So they had women, they hadfemales and I just I seen a lot
of stuff that I Was glad thatinfantry company Didn't have to

(01:26:13):
do that.

Speaker 4 (01:26:14):
They now can that women can now be infantry.

Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
Yeah, but I don't believe they mix the companies
no they have to.

Speaker 4 (01:26:23):
They can't have a whole female Company full of
female infantry soldiers.

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
I guess, I don't know when.

Speaker 4 (01:26:29):
I wouldn't believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Well, I'm glad I'm out then probably not enough of
them to be able to do that.
So actually the Marine Corpsjust switched over to have a
mixed training is for basebootcamp right, so basic, but
they sleep in a separate squadbay but they train together
every day, right?
So it's gonna be interestingwhen, when my son Andy takes off
here in June 14th, right forbootcamp, it's gonna be

(01:26:53):
interesting to hear how wait howthey have females and males
sleeping in the same day.
Oh, okay, so the males havetheir like.
Just for instance, ourBuildings are three stories
right where I came from from SanDiego.
So basically, like the maleswould be on the on the first
floor right, females would besleeping on the second.
But, they would train togetherduring the day.

(01:27:14):
They sleep separate at night,right?
So I'm assuming?

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
The arm is.
Doesn't say probably, yeah, itdoes, it does but I thought
basic with within the army.
I thought they had female basictraining and add mail.

Speaker 4 (01:27:26):
No, it's all mixed together now, when what they do
is they have separate bays.
Yeah, so Male bays are overhere, female bays are over here.
Same kind of like you, andDon't get caught over in that
female bay, or females, don'tget caught in the albay.
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
I'm gonna guess, and I don't know, because this is
pretty recent they just shutdown.
We used to have the fourthrecruit battalion, which was
where the females Marines wentor recruits went, right, they
they shut that down year, a yearand a half ago, so now they're
all doing it together.
So, I'm.
It's gonna be interesting tosee that they will be.
So you know which which I agree, I mean they should train

(01:28:06):
together.
You have to work together, soyou might as well start right
out the gate being together.
Yeah but that was like along-held tradition that the
Marine Corps has always had.
Right is separate for boot camp, but obviously when you get to
the fleet or or whatever yourassignment is, then then you're
working together.
I think that probably hadcaused some problems, right,
because you're not trainingtogether.
So, right, I think a lot ofmales saw the females

(01:28:27):
differently Because they're notnecessarily training together.
They don't really know whatthey're doing, kind of thing.
I mean, they're all doing thesame thing, right, their
pull-ups are different there.
Yeah run times are different,all that stuff.
But I mean, I think it's goodto have a cohesive unit, but I
was also glad that I didn't haveI would.
I didn't directly work withfemales all the time Because I I

(01:28:47):
don't want to say it'd be adistraction, but I think it
could be a distraction.

Speaker 8 (01:28:53):
It is a distraction you said you were a drill
instructor.
I was yeah so was this going onwhen you were actively a DI?
No, what was what?
The?
The, the females and malestraining together.

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, so this wasn't how long ago, was
that 2003.
I became okay, so it's been aminute.

Speaker 8 (01:29:14):
Yeah, all right, cuz it was the same thing with the
Navy.
We had my division in recruit.
Training was not co-ed, it wasan all-male division.
But there was another divisionin the same building With this
exact setup and that was 2010.
So I just I just kind ofassumed that that was normal.

Speaker 4 (01:29:36):
You know.
You know what we should do Isget um.
We got a couple of female VFWmembers.
We get them up here and have adiscussion.

Speaker 3 (01:29:47):
Yeah, that'd be good because I listen.

Speaker 4 (01:29:51):
Females in the military.
They, they fulfill a vital roleabsolutely and I want to.
I want to make that clear.
I'm not saying anything againstit, I'm saying for me right for
me.

Speaker 3 (01:30:02):
I'm glad that I didn't have to deal with it,
because I would I would take itas an distraction.

Speaker 4 (01:30:07):
Well, I can tell you what what would happen is is you
would, you would get used to itand you would conform well
absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
You don't have a choice.
Right, right, right, you're inthe damn military.
Right, they say guess what?
This is what you have to do.
Then, right, you got twochoices Do it or get article 15.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
No, right, yeah, exactly, I mean, you know, there
were those, those, thoseSoldiers that couldn't handle it
, especially once it allintegrated right.
And what happened to them?
They had to go.

Speaker 7 (01:30:43):
Yeah, I know myself, I'm just gonna ask Joe, you, you
get out.

Speaker 2 (01:30:48):
17 means you're in 12 .

Speaker 7 (01:30:51):
Yeah, I went in and oh seven.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Oh seven.
Yep, so you were you wereintegrated down a bootcamp.
Nope, that was a bending.

Speaker 7 (01:30:58):
Bending was male Okay yeah, we're in a couple of
places I know we're integratedenough.
For myself, when I went fromBenning doing the basic training
, my ait Gordon the first drillinstructor we had there that
came out to us like that wasfemale.
It was a little adjusting likewait, this is different, because
last nine months, yeah, I gottatake her serious.
Oh.

(01:31:18):
I saw was male yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):
So I want to.
Latvia was a lot of you.
Yeah, it was Latvia in like 96.
Is that one?
The Olympic bomber happened.

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
Yeah, yeah okay, I was in Latvia and and there is a
can only imagine.
There is there's a group ofAmericans, there's a marine
platoon, there is a guardplatoon from Michigan and a
guard platoon from Pennsylvania.
Okay, and then the marineLieutenant right, who?

(01:32:03):
Who's a Company leader in theMarines?
Is it a captain?
Yeah, usually it's a captainOkay so there's a, there's a
captain, there's a captain, inthree platoon.
So we had a infantry company,right?
Well, then we had a platoonfrom Switzerland, norway and
once I Sweden.
But anyway, we were over thereunder a thing called partners

(01:32:28):
for peace.
It's when the Soviet Unionbroke up, right, right and so
we're, we're in the damn shower.
You know no big deal.
We're taking a shower aftertraining.
All of a sudden we hear, weturn around and the Swiss
there's three girls standing inthe shower with them, you know,

(01:32:49):
and the American guys are likehiding their junk Because we're
like what the hell is going onhere.
So later on we got to talkingabout them and that's how they
train, they train, and it was aninfantry group, right?
They?
said no, they're gonna fightwith us, they're gonna sleep
with us, they're gonna showerwith us.
And I'm like, dude, I couldn'tdeal with that.

(01:33:12):
I'd be in a fox hole with achick and it's cold out and it's
dark.
Oh no, no, this, I'm sorry thatain't gonna work.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
This just goes to show the cultural differences.

Speaker 3 (01:33:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:23):
Yeah, look at like absolutely real right now.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
I mean, look at their defense force, right.
I mean there Women staying onthe front lines.

Speaker 3 (01:33:30):
Oh, and I see, and when I was in Egypt we went into
Israel and I seen some badassIsraeli women went to.

Speaker 2 (01:33:40):
Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 (01:33:41):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:48):
We treat our women with with kid gloves, I think
yeah, so I think when we go forus, that have gone over and we
see the way that all theircultures are they're.
They're no different than a man.
They're gonna do everything wedo.
They're not gonna be treatedany different.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:34:03):
Well, I think we're moving in that direction.
We're getting better at it.
Not really well, I know we are.
I Just don't know if we should.

Speaker 3 (01:34:12):
Yeah well, when I went to Lithuania same thing,
partners for peace they had a7th Dragoon division, which
basically is like a cavalry kindof thing, and they did put on a
display and there's, there's acouple big dudes out there and
there's this little chick, she'sprobably 115 pounds, hot as

(01:34:36):
hell, and they did a martialarts sparring thing and she
messed these dudes up.
Man, she, she could, she couldpick, pick her leg up, so it
almost standing on one leg andher other leg straight up over
her head.
And I'm thinking, holy shit,that woman would wreck you.
So but what you said about tooprotective, I did a training

(01:35:03):
exercise up in Grayling.
We were the op for one year andthe lady that run us I had like
six of my infantry guys that goton the thing and she, but she
was in, she was in charge as faras the out, for she was our NCO
, but she, let me run all the,all the Missions.

(01:35:27):
But she said I want to go onthe missions and I immediately
I'm like, but I guess, when a E8tells the E6 I'm going on the
mission, guess what, she's goingon the mission.
I was like, all right, so we,we were hitting.
Alma had a infantry unit, alphacompany, from the 125, and they

(01:35:51):
were up on this little hilltopand we were supposed to probe
their lines.
And I'm trying to think of herlast name.
I remember her first name,carrie, but I can't remember her
last name, anyway.
So we're, we're doing the thingright, coming through and
Walked into an ambush, so theyou know the blanks are firing

(01:36:14):
and all this bullshit.
My point man, because he wastoo busy looking over his
shoulder to making sure she wasokay, walked into a trip wire
and one of them, ones at the,the chem light, trip Trip flares
that they put on the trees,yeah.
So next thing, I know he'shumping the tree because he
jumped on a light trying toblock it so that we could get

(01:36:35):
cover, and it was a shit show,and then it was more fucked up
than a runover dog.
So we obviously we get eitherdead or captured, right so.
So then, like the exercises over, sergeant Major Pescas cause
them and says okay, over, sendmy people home.
Send my people home.

(01:36:56):
So we get back in the thing, wedo an AAR and Carrie and
Sergeant Major Pescas there andwe're setting around and he's
like, alright, after action, you, what went right, what went
wrong, what can we do better.
I said, well, nothing wentright.
I said nothing went right, okay.

(01:37:17):
I said what we did wrong is wetook a female on a patrol.
And then I looked at my pointman.
I said you know better.
I said you know better, she, ifshe's on that patrol, she's got
to take care of herself.
And and I found out later thatthey were kind of banging.
So so that was part of theproblem and and and.

(01:37:38):
Then he's like okay, what, whatcan we do better?
I said don't put a female on mypatrols.
I Said because obviously my menare infantry guys, we're not
used to working with a femaleand we're gonna take care of her
at all cost.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Right, and that just goes back to the distraction.
This is right, well not just adistraction.

Speaker 3 (01:37:58):
Protected in us, that's we're protective.
And the banging in its.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
That's a whole nother set, yeah, set of circumstances
, but you know when it, when itcomes down to it, yeah, one
where we're protected almost tothe point of overprotective, to.
That's a distraction, becausehe's more worried about her than
him.
Yep, because he's not lookingback there.
For you know, for for the guyin front of you, behind you,
yeah, cuz he knows I can do myjob right.
So this and and I'm not sayingright, wrong or different, I

(01:38:28):
mean I think they should, ifthey can do the job Absolutely
physically, mentally, in theirability right, pulling the
trigger at the right range orwhatever, to qualify to be there
100%, should be there,absolutely right, and I think
it's gonna take us getting usedto that Right, which is gonna be
the struggle.

Speaker 8 (01:38:47):
Mm-hmm, you know, it's mostly a mindset change.

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
Right, I think that's gonna be the struggle of
getting used to it, just likeI'm interested to see how all
the Marine Corps bootcamps goingwith With no in in, integrated
with the women.

Speaker 7 (01:39:01):
I think a lot of them will be easier from the use to
it more if they Make thephysical requirements equal,
because when you go out there ona you know, an actual mission
in country, it doesn't matter if, hey, you've got a male who's,
you know, 20 years old and cando miles and under 12 minutes,
and you got a female at the sameage but her requirements is,
you know, 15 or 16, they'retogether.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
Right, yeah, and they do have a difference as far as
their physical abilities fortheir, their physical fitness
test in the Marine Corps, right,like they were doing in I don't
know what it is nowadays, butthey were doing like this arm
hang thing and in date Times forthe run through different stuff
, which is fine.
But if they're gonna go to theschool of inventory, right, you
got to put a hundred pound rockon and we're going 20 miles

(01:39:45):
today.
They got to be able to completethe entire thing without
unassisted, no different thananybody else, because that's the
real world.
Right, I mean, I get tograduate and to get out the
fleet, regardless, if you're atruck driver, you're gonna be in
school of inventory.
But when you get to that thoseschools, there is a physical

(01:40:05):
requirement.
That shouldn't be any damndifferent, because if you know
we're out on a mission or doingwhatever, you got to be able to
hold your own because, nooffense, I don't want to take 25
pounds a gear off you for me tocarry 125.
Yeah, right, so I mean, that'snot fair to me.
Well, here we go, I know, Iknow you're coming.

Speaker 4 (01:40:27):
No, listen, I knew a female, I had a couple of female
.
I served with a lot of females.
I was, I was a finance guy, sothere was a lot of females and
and I'm gonna catch a lot ofshit for this from these- guys
later on.
But I had a female platoonsergeant and I tell you what

(01:40:47):
She'll run with any guy.
I'll put her up against any guy, any guy, and she'll keep up
with them physically, mentally,whatever.
Her name was Charlotte Morris.
She retired a sergeant major.
She was a drill sergeant likeshe.
She, this woman, kicked ass dayin, day out and and there's two

(01:41:10):
women that that I can think ofthat I Would take the war with
me.
That was she's one of them.
And then there was another onethat I actually did go to war
with.
Her name was Catherine Spreeman.
She's from Wolverine, michigan,and, as a matter of fact, she
texted me on Thanksgiving, toldme happy Thanksgiving.
But that Woman, there she nowshe.

(01:41:38):
She never made a past e5, butshe was.
She was just that kind of woman, a person or soldier that was
just like I'm taking care ofsoldiers, I don't need to do
this, I don't need to do that.
She retired at e5, 20 years inthe military, but but she, she
kicked ass as far as, as far assoldiering and Leading soldiers

(01:42:02):
concerned, she should have beena sergeant major, but she just
didn't do what she needed to doto get there.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
I'm not saying that they should write.
I'm just saying there, therethe standards.

Speaker 4 (01:42:14):
Yeah, yeah, I should be the same, right, and then
there should be no complaints.
I'm not so sure CatherineSpreeman could have kept up with
a man physically, but just her,her, her whole attitude, her
demeanor, it was just but, but Ibelieve we're talking about two
different things, right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
You can.

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):
You can have the person that can do the two miles
right and do the push-ups, cando the setups, but that was
Charlotte.

Speaker 4 (01:42:43):
Morris that the first one I was talking about she
could do Anything physicallythat a man could have done, okay
.

Speaker 3 (01:42:48):
But where it comes, a real world, putting a ruck on
your back and walking 12 clicks,okay, I'm sorry.
A male body and a female bodyis just built a little flippin
different, right, okay?
Oh yeah, men generally arestronger, right.
There are some females that youdon't mess with because they're
like linebackers and they'llbust you up.

(01:43:09):
There are women like that.
Yeah, there's not very manyright you take the average man
and the average woman and putthem into a Well, combat
situation, combat situationagainst each other, yep, the
man's probably gonna win most ofthe time.
Yeah, okay, not saying thatthey can't pull the trigger, but

(01:43:30):
and how many times, how manytimes did you run in combat?
For two miles?
Oh, never, okay, I had asergeant major come up to me
because I wasn't a runner, Ihated PT, hated it.
And he come up to me and he waslooking at my thing and I
squeak by the run and he's likehey, sir, you should try to try

(01:43:56):
a little more.
And I said do to do what, sirman?
He goes Well, you're run.
I said what am I gonna do whenI see the enemy?
Am I gonna run from him?
He goes well, no, I said, am Igonna do a push-up test with him
?

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
He goes, he goes he goes no.

Speaker 3 (01:44:13):
I said okay, sit ups.
He goes, no.
I said well, then I I feelthat's wasting time, that a
soldier should be doing otherthings.
He goes, okay.
But let me ask you question hegoes.
What happens if you get anambush and you have to
Retrograde because we don't sayretreat, we don't retreat, we
retrograde, okay, and you haveto run two clicks to an LZ?

(01:44:36):
I was like okay, so that's,that's good, valid point.
I said, but fuck, that's ourmajor.
He's like what do you mean?
I'm a bad motherfucker.
I'm gonna just stand and fightbecause otherwise I'm gonna get
died Running.
I'm gonna be dying tired.
They're gonna shoot me in theback, shit.
I'm like fuck that.
If I'm going, I want to befacing them.
And he kind of shook his headand he's like Sergeant.

(01:44:58):
R.
B.
I'm like sorry, sir major,that's how I feel.
I said I'll do it, but I I'mnot.
I just don't see the See, thethought process, right because,
it's different.
It's different.
You know what?

Speaker 2 (01:45:11):
do we do a time rock Right right, like, like what?

Speaker 3 (01:45:16):
no, that's through a saw school.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
That's throw a hundred hundred twenty five
pound combat load on.
And then you have you got to doten miles within three hours.

Speaker 3 (01:45:24):
Right and let's see you, that's that's the true,
that right, yeah, yep and thenthat's what I'm saying that's
what I'm saying, but yeah, Idon't know it's.

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):
It's fun to sit around the table and be asked
for a while catch up on stories.

Speaker 4 (01:45:40):
Believe, believe it or not.
I was a fucking PT stud when Iwas in the military.

Speaker 3 (01:45:44):
Well, you were a drill sergeant at some point, so
you had to be.

Speaker 4 (01:45:48):
I well, yeah, and it came to a point.
I also was with our Our, ourSOAC, which is special
operations aviation.
Oh yeah out of Fort Bragg and itwas either you, either perform
Like you, better be getting adamn it burning.

(01:46:08):
Your, your, your, your badge.
Because I remember we had amajor that was in there and he
was doing the bare minimum asfar as PT was concerned, and
they were like Well, major, wegot a, we're gonna get rid of
you.
You've got a spot for you overhere on the other side of the
base With the regular, with theregular Joe's, and you, man, you

(01:46:31):
did not want to get kicked, putout of that unit for any reason
whatsoever.
They put a sergeant major outof that.
We had a sergeant major thatthey a female, that they just
were like You're not reallycutting the mustard, sergeant
major, so we're gonna send youover here across post, over the
over there with 82nd of 18thAirborne Corps.

(01:46:52):
So with that unit, if you're notscoring like 290 and above, you
better start looking foranother job, because and they
don't have organized PT they, atleast when I was there, they
didn't it was either either youyou did it on your own and you
weren't punching a clock.
You could come in at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, hell, you.

(01:47:14):
You could even probably noteven come in one day be like I'm
not gonna make it, but your jobbetter get done.
Nobody's gonna be doing yourjob for you.
You know right.
See, there is called the bigboy rules.
Either do your job and then youalso perform PT wise, or Hit
the road.

Speaker 3 (01:47:33):
It's a road.
Yep, that was.
That was probably my biggestdownfall being in the guard.
Okay, because, let's face it,in the guard, they do in two
days, two weeks, what it takesthe army to do in a month.
Right, okay, we're responsiblefor our own PT, right?
Right, some units, like yousaid, they don't have mandatory

(01:47:56):
PT, but most units do most.

Speaker 1 (01:47:58):
Most units do.

Speaker 3 (01:48:00):
So if you're forced to get your ass out of bed and
go out and do PT, I probablywould have been a little better
at it, because I'm forced to doit.
When I was in basic training, Iwas forced to do it Right, so I
did it and didn't have aproblem with it when I came back
from basic training.
Now I'm forced to go drink abeer, chase women, that's what

(01:48:20):
you do, right?
So I didn't do PT right, yep,you know.
And and it was just never.
I mean, I don't know guys whojust lift weights to me that's
like boring, you know, right, IStill was able to do my job and
rock and my what I want to callreal soldiering, which I didn't

(01:48:41):
think PT was.
But I understand, you have tobe physically fit, you have to
be able to do your shit right.
Yep, luckily I was able to rock, you know, I didn't have a
problem with that, but I didn'tdo a lot of ruck and because
most of my career was in avehicle.
So, and then when we went onpatrols, we took the salt packs.
Which what can you put in asalt pack?

(01:49:01):
Hardly nothing.
So basics, body weight and ammo, right, yeah.
And Little food, little water.
Yep, little food, little water.
So I Don't know that.
That was just one thing Ialways didn't like about the
army.
But on the same hand, my bestruntime was 1104.

(01:49:23):
I don't ask, I think the guysfucked it up.
I really do.
I really think the dude fuckedit up, because a mile and a half
to two miles I think the dudefucked it up because I was hung
over like a motherfucker.

Speaker 4 (01:49:40):
You're probably just in a hurry to get it over with
probably Six-foot two, six,three stretching those legs.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
He left the.
He left the mic ultra at thefinish line.

Speaker 3 (01:49:53):
Man we stood in formation before we did the PT
test and the first sergeant'slike Holy shit, you guys stink
because you could smell the beercoming out of our.
Yeah, I took off and and I wentaround and he was like 555 on
the first lap and I'm thinkingthey ain't no fucking way,

(01:50:13):
that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
You probably started at four minutes late, yeah, and
Yep, sure enough, I come aroundand it was like 1105 and I was
like What'd you say?

Speaker 3 (01:50:28):
He goes 1105 and I'm like Sergeant really, and he's
like 1105, okay, and then Ifailed the push-ups in the setup
, so I Think I threw up doingthe push-ups.

Speaker 2 (01:50:45):
Yeah, for us to get a hundred and I'm assuming still
the same.
It's three mile run, yeah, andin 18 flat or under six minute
mile.
Yep, six minute miles.
So Fast I read it, it was justjust over 18.
I was like 18, 10, 18.
I was like that and I was puking.
It was beautiful Virginiamorning, nice and cool.
You know, in in the MarineCorps you got to run, you got to

(01:51:08):
have one turn around, one turnaround spot.
Oh, really, so you could.
You could run a mile out, turnaround and run two back to the
finish line.
They don't have to start,finished on be the same, but you
got to have one spot, you turnaround that.

Speaker 4 (01:51:20):
So you guys do three miles with you, three miles yeah
18 flat around to get thehundred points right right and
it's yeah scales by right.
So yeah, yeah, I was running subsub 12 minute miles, or sub 12
minute two miles at my in myheyday and man yeah, when I was

(01:51:42):
at, when I was at fast, yeah, itwas nothing every day to do
five to seven miles.
But when I was at yeah that'swhat I was gonna say.
When I was at brag, I ran eightmiles every day.
That's on average, it would besix eight ten, six eight ten,
and the only days I took off wasSundays, and that's just
because I Didn't want to getkicked out of my unit.

(01:52:03):
So yeah, sabbath day I Didn'twant to get kicked out of the
unit.
I love that unit, you know, andI mean so much stuff I learned
there.
And Really and Charlie probablytell you that Special operators
, operators, it's kind of wherethe rubber hits the road.
You know, as far as our army isconcerned I know Tim's rolling

(01:52:26):
his eyes over there at me, butUntil you're there and you see
it, I I probably shouldn't evensay I'm not gonna talk about
that story, but I've seen someshit, I can tell you that and
the things that those DeltaForce guys do, amazing, just
amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:52:44):
Yes, that's pretty cool All the special ops.
I mean think of seals, yeah, oh, yeah.
So I was just gonna say right.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
so when I was when I was a fast company, right, we
deployed the man of Bahrainright then for deployed from
there, right for differentmissions or whatever, but we
happen to be there was the oldManai Plaza.
Before they built their the BHon base over there at NSA.
By rain, we had this ManaiPlaza, which was no hotel right.

(01:53:13):
That got taken over by us.
That's where we live.
But seals ended up showing upone day, right, but then you
have any idea they're coming in,you know so you wouldn't we're,
no, we're, we're down eatingchow.
Also, these guys rolling, we'reall like how's that?
You know?
Cuz obviously you could tellit's just us in this hotel.
And yeah, these guys comerolling in.

(01:53:37):
I End up going down to the gymthat night working out.
A couple of them come in,introduce themselves man, most
laid-back, cool, chill guysYou'll ever meet.
Zero fucks to give.
They're just, they're doingthat, doing their thing, and
they're like, yeah, we got, wegot a couple days off, you know.
So we're just, we're justbasically chilling.
You know we're out in mop levelfour playing basketball On a

(01:53:58):
basketball court in this hotel.
You know like training, youknow hardcore and I get used to
the heat.
It's 120 up mop level for gasmask, everything.
I got, I got, yeah, I gotpictures.
My wife's like you guys werecrazy.
I'm like that's what we weredoing.
You know, we're just constantlyputting yourself through stress
and these guys are like whatare you guys doing?
You guys are idiots, you know.
You know we're like, hey, man,we're, this is what we're told

(01:54:20):
to do.
Is that's what we're doing, youknow, and we got Corbin out
there with us, you know.
So people pass out being allmopped up.
Yeah, you know, you get the oldsilver bullet, you know, but
yeah, they were, they were, theywere cool, shit man.
I mean, they they taught you.
Like you're just normal personand you know that they were,
they were, they were high speed,low drag is what we always said

(01:54:40):
you know, those, those, thoseguys.
You could just the demeanor.
They were all the same all thesame, didn't brag, didn't think
they were better than the nextguy, man, they were just there
doing their shit.
They were happy to talk to youand you know, if you said
something you they didn't reallywant to answer, they wouldn't
answer.
You know they would play itkind of change the subject and

(01:55:01):
stuff, you know, but man, we'dbe a working out.
They come in, hey man, how's itgoing high-fiving, and you know
, fist bumping and doing doingthe shit is we're in there
working out.
You know, like they're in thereworking out.

Speaker 4 (01:55:10):
Yeah but that's all they do they work out, bang
chicks and kill people?

Speaker 3 (01:55:16):
Not necessarily in that order.

Speaker 2 (01:55:18):
Left yeah, that's what seal stands for.
That's what they did, man.
They hit the pool there, theywere working out eating, and and
then they were gone.
I mean, one morning, you knowwe're back out getting ready to
go PT, and they were gone.
You know they, just as fast asthey came they left.
You know they had their coupledays off and they were.
They were Scooting man.
So it's pretty cool, yep, yep.

Speaker 4 (01:55:39):
That would have been nice to have done something like
that.
So my career.

Speaker 2 (01:55:43):
So I did.
We did a lot of training thatfast up and up in Little Creek,
that Damneck, which are the twobases just just north of us over
there, that's.
That's where those guys istheir school training stuff that
over there, so it's pretty coolthey had a trade?

Speaker 8 (01:55:57):
Did you just admit that you wanted to be in the
Navy?

Speaker 4 (01:56:01):
No, no, no dude special operator.
Special operator.
It would have been cool to dothat.

Speaker 8 (01:56:05):
Oh Okay, the Navy could have sworn you just listen
if I was gonna be in the Navy.
Yeah, the only thing I wouldhave done is been a seal.

Speaker 4 (01:56:12):
That's it.
If I could have made it.

Speaker 8 (01:56:15):
All right, just one clarification.
All right, all right so.

Speaker 2 (01:56:18):
I don't know if I doubt about this on the last
podcast, but we would go upthere and use their training
facilities and stuff.
So one of the things that fastcan we did if we ever have an
embassy that's overtaken, rightwe could, we'd go back in and
take it.
So like when I went to AfricaI'm not really Kenyon when that
embassy bombing went off right,we went there to secure the,
secure the building and stuff,but like a Benghazi thing right,

(01:56:39):
that's where you got your otherfamily over there in Africa,
right.
That's right, okay, but we'renot gonna talk about that.
So they have a, they have abuilding is Dam near the size of
a, of a Walmart, and they canliterally change that building
over to the layout of anyembassy that the United States
has around the world.
And so these guys have to getin a situation like was it

(01:57:05):
Lebanon, or whatever, right,when they was, it was it Lebanon
that they took over the theembassy, with all the hostages
in the 80s?

Speaker 4 (01:57:14):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
Iran, I don't remember anyways.
So they can literally gothrough, I mean right down to
the painting on the wall whereit would hang on that wall and
the same color couch, the samecarpet, the same doorways in the
exact same spot.
I mean they can literally,within you know, 48 hours,
change over this building to anyembassy so that these guys

(01:57:39):
could go in there and trainRight.
There's CQB tactics, that thatwe we have our own, our own
school for that.
That was where our securityforce rules that, so we went
down for that.
But their shoot house istotally different than ours and
way more high speed, but thatthat they can actually do dry
runs through that that facility.

(01:57:59):
So when they get on site therethey know exactly where the door
is at, they know exactly wherethe couch is at and I'm saying
that whoever's in there doesn'tmove stuff around, but at least
the general layout.
I mean, if that hallway is 66feet long and slayed out at 66
feet long and there's eightdoors and they're in the exact
same spots crazy the amount ofshit that they got.

(01:58:21):
And then back then they hadthese huge pickup trucks that
they'd throw their duck boats inRight, which are their
inflatables, with the big motorson the back, and you see them
out there, right outside thebase, flying around and they're
jumping in and jumping out andyou know, do all shit.
And these big trucks would justback right down on the beach
and they'd load them up and pullthem out of the water.
I mean, they were, they werecool man.

(01:58:42):
We used their, they hadhelicopters to practice
fast-roping Up on these hugeplatforms.
So, we, yeah, we'd train on onall their stuff.
You know, not nearly the highspeed, low drag those guys were.
You know, right, they're,they're beyond the scope, but
you know, it's pretty cool beingable to go to their facilities
and train with it and use it.
And then, of course, we'd seehim.

(01:59:02):
We never interact with them, weweren't, we weren't cool enough
for that by any means.
But I mean you could, you couldsee him, right, and it was, it
was, it was pretty cool.
So those, those teams that wereback, they're, they're still
training, I mean, just like wewere.
You know, if you're not on amission, you're training for the
next one, no matter what it is.
So it was, yes, pretty cool.
And I actually got to meet themout there One time and, yeah,

(01:59:24):
they're all all cool guys.
So it's pretty, pretty neat.
And I never got around theDelta Force guys.
And then Marine Corps came upwith Marsock.
So we had Force reconnaissance.
That's going away everythingwith the Marsock, and then
that's kind of going away,another renaming it the Raiders.
So and those guys are onparallel with the Delta Force

(01:59:46):
guys and and the seals rightthere on that level, maybe not
at that top level, but they'reRight in that that zone where we
were a notch or two below rightthere capable of some shit?

Speaker 8 (01:59:59):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
So I, you know, I mean, and everybody's got their
own different mission right.
So the seals, or by water, I'msure Delta, delta Force is more
urban.
Yeah right, and force recon wasobviously jungle Right.
So each branch had their, their, special operators.

Speaker 4 (02:00:17):
Green berets were more jungle, and then they have
their own separate missions overat Bragg they had the, the JSOC
over there, jsoc headquarters,and I Never even and I was, I
was with the special operationsover there.
You know, I was never with 82ndor 18th.
I deployed with 82nd, my seconddeployment, but when I was at

(02:00:41):
Bragg the whole time I was withthe special operations and but I
never was able to get overthere with those JSOC guys and
see what they were doing overthere.

Speaker 2 (02:00:49):
I can imagine it was some real high-speed shit, but
I'll tell you if, if I were todo it again.
As much as I love being aMarine right right through If I
could ever have done it again,knowing why I know now it was
smart enough hold on becauseyou're, you might catch some
shit what you're about to say,but go ahead.

Speaker 4 (02:01:10):
You know.
You know what I'm gonna say.
No, but go ahead.
That you would have been Navyand went no seal Air Force.

Speaker 2 (02:01:16):
He's already Navy Air Force peer rescue.

Speaker 8 (02:01:20):
You want to talk about bad.

Speaker 2 (02:01:22):
Absolutely bad motherfuckers right there, boy,
those guys, those guys areinsane.

Speaker 4 (02:01:31):
I've actually never had any dealings with those guys
.

Speaker 8 (02:01:34):
I have an either, but they Are basically legend or
are?

Speaker 4 (02:01:41):
are they Not quite to obviously, like you see?

Speaker 8 (02:01:44):
a legend standards, but right there, they're still
up there, but are they are?

Speaker 4 (02:01:47):
they?
Are they special operations forAir Force?

Speaker 8 (02:01:53):
I believe that they do classify them as a Spec ops,
oh yeah, for sure so.

Speaker 2 (02:01:59):
So there's mostly like SAR like search and rescue,
yeah, so these are the guysthat are literally like if
you're playing a shutdown overenemy lines, they'll.
They'll come out halo, jumpingright from 30,000 feet and then
find the pilot, find the plane,do the medical right that's
needed if needed, and thenthey're in charge of getting
that pilot, or pilots or crew orwhoever, back to an extraction

(02:02:23):
point so like think about it as,like I Would say, mix a medevac
with Navy Seals.
Okay so I mean it's, it's like,yeah, you got a best way to
explain it.
You got to get up to speed onthese guys.
These guys are crazy.
There's some.

Speaker 8 (02:02:42):
There's some awesome YouTube videos of some of their
training that they go throughright there.
Attrition rate for thattraining is pretty, pretty damn
high is on level with with theseal training right.

Speaker 2 (02:02:52):
So, I mean you might start with 50 and you get three.
Right right like it means thatthat insanely high Wow, because
it's not only right you got tobe physically fit, but you also
got to learn all the medicalshit you got to.
You got to learn those smallsquad tactics and you got to
have yeah, that's, it's nuts.

Speaker 4 (02:03:11):
Well, it should be that way though, too.

Speaker 8 (02:03:14):
You know, I just looked it up Quick Google search
puts their attrition rate atbetween 86 and 90% yeah, we can
say it, man, it's nuts.

Speaker 7 (02:03:34):
Look at that from a that's an expensive person yeah,
yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:03:45):
No, that was my bad Said to get out Tim's way.
No, but I mean it's.
So you know, when you starttalking about, you know, special
operations, capable, what, whatour military has is absolutely
insane.
You know, I mean there's allthese different, all these
different units that I have, allthese specific, different

(02:04:06):
Capabilities that are special tojust them.

Speaker 4 (02:04:11):
So well, you know, that's what I was saying and
when the rubber meets a road.
As far as these specialoperators are concerned and the
missions that they do and Timhas given me that look, hey,
I've done plenty of deploymentswhere I was not it with special

(02:04:31):
operators, okay, but it justseems like what we do, what we
do as non operators, is justkind of Fluff fluff.
You know what they do is what.
When they do they have Specificgoals in mind.

(02:04:54):
It's like when we were, when wewere in Iraq, what were our
goals?
What were our objectives?
You know what I mean?
They know what their objectivesare.
They go, they do it, they killit, whatever it is, and then
they come home and they and theywait on the next one.

Speaker 2 (02:05:11):
Yeah, then they have no idea what it's gonna be yeah,
yeah, or where it's gonna be.

Speaker 4 (02:05:15):
Yeah, yeah, when I was in, when I was in Poland I
was with NATO for four years andin that city there was a Delta
Force guy, army Delta Force guy.
All the time he was there.
I don't know what his missionwas, but he was there waiting

(02:05:37):
for something to happen and then, and he would be there three
months, maybe six months, I'mnot exactly sure and then he
would go back home.
We rotate out, somebody newwould come.

Speaker 2 (02:05:48):
Yeah, that's the same same thing like with our fast
team.
Right, we, there's threedifferent spots that that we
deploy to.
I don't know where they're atnow, but man of my brain was one
road to Spain and then Yakuza,japan, right, so we're.
We had teams planted everywheresitting there waiting, yeah, so
we were doing the same trainingthere as we were doing back
here, right, as far as makingsure we're getting to the range

(02:06:08):
and shoot houses and stuff likethat.
But until we were needed, wedidn't really have an objective
right.
And then, when we did get one,it could have been anything from
dropping the minute you'rehelping security with
humanitarian aid.

Speaker 6 (02:06:20):
It could have been an embassy, it could have been
yeah, an airfield it could havebeen.

Speaker 2 (02:06:24):
Who knows what you know so.
Yeah, it's it's.
It's weird when you gosomewhere.
I mean, like you know, when youguys are in Iraq, right, you
know, you know going in whatyour mission was gonna be right.
For the most part, he's eithergonna be secure in a city take,
taking a city.

Speaker 3 (02:06:40):
Our mission was to train the Iraqi police.

Speaker 2 (02:06:44):
Yeah right, but did you know that?
For you left?
What are you gonna be doing?

Speaker 3 (02:06:47):
Yeah, when we got hooked up with a 759th MP
battalion, we kind of figuredthat we weren't gonna do
infantry shit.

Speaker 2 (02:06:54):
Yeah, we were gonna do.
Well, you didn't find out tillyou got there.
Or do you start training forthat back here?

Speaker 3 (02:06:59):
We start training for that back here.

Speaker 2 (02:07:00):
Yeah, so you knew, going over what, what you're
gonna be doing.

Speaker 3 (02:07:03):
But I think Trace talking about the overall
objective, the overall what?

Speaker 4 (02:07:08):
I mean, was it?

Speaker 3 (02:07:09):
to?
Was it to throw Saddam out ofpower?
Was that it?
Because if that it happened,then we should have been home.
Yeah, the minute they hung himright.

Speaker 4 (02:07:17):
Yep, yeah, exactly.
But we were.
Well, we were over there,nation building, nation building
.

Speaker 2 (02:07:24):
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
It's it's it's in stillgovernment that's friendly to us
is what it is and here's thething is.

Speaker 4 (02:07:31):
You know that's a completely different culture,
completely different people.
I don't know that democracy isright for them.
You know what it means.
We like democracy, we love it,but is it right for them?
Not so sure, but time will tell, yeah, time will tell same with

(02:07:52):
.

Speaker 3 (02:07:52):
Afghanistan.
What was our, what was ourmission there?
I mean To get Osama's I'm abeen lying.
We got him in, but we stillstayed.

Speaker 4 (02:08:01):
Yeah, we still stayed because we fucked up the
country and felt like we neededto stay there and keep sure to
try to keep it together.
Well, you do.
So what happened when we?

Speaker 2 (02:08:10):
left.
You do because once you, onceyou eliminate a Government right
a leader, and chaos startsright.
Who's the next guy gonna stepup one?
Are they friendly to us or notfriendly to us, right?
So you got to make sure thatbefore you leave.
Oh hell hasn't broken loose,right?

Speaker 7 (02:08:27):
and Everything starts fracturing well that and that's
training grounds for morepeople to come in and take over.

Speaker 2 (02:08:35):
Yeah, and I think a lot of times.
You know you have to thinkabout the big picture, which is
obviously way above our paygrades and things, but when it,
when it comes down to it, beforeyou leave, you got to make sure
that the pieces are picked up,right?
I mean, you went in there withyour goal, but and I think a lot
of times, that's where thingslapse, because something's not
already put in place.
It should have been put inplace way ahead of time here's

(02:08:57):
right.

Speaker 4 (02:08:58):
Here's a problem nowadays is, if you think about
during World War two or theKorean War, it started to get
bad in the Vietnam War and wehad desert storm.
It got even worse and that'sbeing having the media there and
and and the thing is, war isnot pretty, it's not sorry, it's

(02:09:25):
not, and You're getting areally good example of that
right now in Palestine of whatwhat an army Probably should do
to bring a country to heal andand it's sad, and there there
are children dying over thereand there are women dying over

(02:09:47):
there in Palestine, in the GazaStrip.
But what did you guys do aboutHamas before they went in there
and and are doing what they'redoing?
What did you guys do?
There's six million of you,there's what 50,000 of them?
You guys should have took themout a long time ago and now

(02:10:08):
we're gonna deal with it andeverybody's gonna pay the
fucking price.
So we were not allowed to go inand truly bring that country,
those countries, to healAfghanistan and Iraq.

Speaker 2 (02:10:22):
If we wanted to, we could have and Let me ask you
this, though why is that ourresponsibility to do?

Speaker 4 (02:10:32):
You're talking about Afghanistan and I, well,
afghanistan would have been ourresponsibility because they,
they attacked us.
I think we should have not beenin Iraq.
But if we're gonna go dosomething, let's fucking do it
right.
If we, if we, if our presidentsaid, fuck it, we're going in
there, then Listen, we eitherwin the war or we don't.
Are we gonna win it or we could, because we didn't win either

(02:10:53):
one of those wars?
Well, I I agree with whatyou're saying, with with the
media, right?

Speaker 2 (02:10:58):
I mean, now you got all these reporters embedded.
You look at World War two,right Like my grandfather's war,
right, mine too, both mygrandfather, any media that came
out of.
There was an embedded Guy fromthe Navy, or right from the
brink, or or, if you, were inEurope, right, yep, it was
they're not in the army andthey're not gonna talk about
those atrocities.

Speaker 4 (02:11:20):
Well, and they have.
But but those happen everywhere, right?

Speaker 2 (02:11:26):
They still happen nowadays.

Speaker 4 (02:11:26):
Yeah, right you can't control, especially as we're
all deal with.

Speaker 2 (02:11:30):
PTSD issues.
Right, you got people stillover there serving or even at
those times that are goingthrough those PTSD things, still
actively there because they'renot gonna send them back.
You know, it's just not gonnahappen, right?
So that aggression, depression,all those different things
combined with actively being ina war, right, yeah, it's always

(02:11:53):
gonna be that way, but the waythat these things get played out
.
I mean you could turn on anynews channel right now.
It's probably everything'sstill about Israel and Palestine
.
Yeah, 24 7365 and those pocket,that's are gonna stand there say
the same thing they said 15minutes ago.
Yeah, you know, or they'regonna do a bunch of assumptions
or whatever else, rather thanwaiting two days for the actual

(02:12:14):
story to get Told correctly.
Yeah, with all the facts, notjust a bunch of facts.
Yeah with all the facts, notjust a bunch of opinions, you
know it's all about who's first.

Speaker 8 (02:12:26):
It doesn't you know Details or truth be damned.
It's who's first on the air,and that's all yeah, who's first
tell the story Right?

Speaker 2 (02:12:34):
that's where misinformation comes right, and
this is this is the problem whenyou have media actually being
allowed to be in there, right?
You're getting all thismisinformation all the time.

Speaker 8 (02:12:44):
I can't.
You know, media serves aExtremely important purpose, so
don't get me wrong especiallyfrom the American perspective,
where we have freedom of thepress and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (02:12:56):
That's freedom of press in America, not overseas
in the middle of the war.

Speaker 8 (02:12:59):
That's what I'm that's what I said, like what we
have here, in.
America right Freedom of thepress, but regardless, though,
there are times I feel that thatthey're actually more of a
detriment than a help toanything well then, once again,
we talked about op sec earlier,right?

Speaker 2 (02:13:17):
So now, all of a sudden, anybody can turn on CNN,
fox News or OLN or whatever theother ones are in that as NBC,
and they can see.
They can see real world, what'sactually happening.
So all look at all these tanksare driving west out of here and
all these people are moving outover there, and Nothing is a
secret anymore, like it shouldbe right.
So Because those cameras arerolling 24-7.

(02:13:39):
There's no limitation to whatthey can shoot or can't shoot,
or where they can go or wherethey can't go.

Speaker 7 (02:13:43):
I think it desensitizes the people of
what's actually going on too, sothey're like, oh, just on the
news.
It's on TV but it's not reallyin their face.

Speaker 2 (02:13:51):
Yeah, I don't even, I don't even watch it.
Yeah, because it's just thesame Garbled mess that it's been
for the last 25 years, 30 yearswhen it comes to wars, yeah you
know, I don't leave nothingthat they say.

Speaker 4 (02:14:04):
Yeah, I mean, especially as it pertains to war
, like these embedded reportersI don't know they, they're not
really there so then?

Speaker 2 (02:14:14):
so then, why do we allow?

Speaker 4 (02:14:16):
They're gonna.
if they're gonna be embeddedwith a military, I don't think
we should yeah, I mean, itdepends, do we want to win or do
we not want to win?
Because what happens is thesereporters say oh, they killed so
and so, and so somebody got youknow there was a woman and
child that got killed, okay, andthen.
And then the masses, the public, get upset and they Call their

(02:14:38):
congressmen and complain, andtheir congressmen or they want
to get elected again.
So they don't want people upsetwith them because they sent us
over there and then we got allthese restraints on us.
We can't do this, we can't dothat.

Speaker 7 (02:14:53):
Tim knows what I'm talking about I'm gauge rules of
engagement, yeah sir.
I'm a woman.
They went from a vehicle wascoming to a checkpoint.
If at one point you could shootto kill and then yeah, we're
there's the only time you cantake the warning shots away from
us, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:15:11):
Yeah, and that's the thing.
Like the rules engagement overthere were nuts.

Speaker 3 (02:15:15):
You had to get shot at first and and if the dude was
shooting it Joe and I'mstanding next to Joe, I can't
shoot back because he wasshooting a Joe.
He wasn't shooting to me.

Speaker 7 (02:15:27):
Right yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:15:29):
Yeah, whatever it was , yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:15:32):
Yeah, rules, engagement oh.

Speaker 8 (02:15:35):
You know, jumping back real quick to the to the
media thing.
You know, before we got intowhat we were just talking about,
I'll just say this.
That's before you know.
We're not even talking aboutany potential bias or personal
agenda that the journalist has.

Speaker 4 (02:15:51):
Right, yeah, yeah.
And I mean they, those thingsdo exist, the bias and the
personal agendas.
But Everybody has have thosebiases.

Speaker 8 (02:16:04):
Agreed.
I'm just saying you know, youknow if they do have a bias Then
it always comes out, and howthey write the story right, and
I know there were some horriblethings that happened, say, in
the Vietnam War.

Speaker 4 (02:16:19):
There were people, there were US soldiers out there
raping Vietnamese women and andthings like that.
That kind of stuff can't happen.
And when that kind of stuffhappens, but that's got to be
pleased by the leadership.
Exactly, yep, that's what I wasgonna say.
Exactly what I was gonna say isthat the leaders need to need

(02:16:39):
to.
Take care of take care of itand and and clamp down on it and
and hold those people toaccount well.

Speaker 2 (02:16:47):
So when I was on my Office computer earlier today,
one of the headlines and yahooright pops up and it said
something about Israel.
Soldiers conduct is not Good,like they're acting out or doing
something.
You know it wasn't.
I'm trying to find it.

(02:17:08):
I saw it earlier today.
I should have taken a pictureof it because I knew I was gonna
lose it, but and it was justsomething dumb over like their,
their conduct when they're notworking right, they're Like they
, like.

Speaker 4 (02:17:21):
They're just over there messing around like
playing around.

Speaker 2 (02:17:25):
Yeah, it was honestly nothing that had to do with
anything in the conflict, it wasjust like some obscure Thing
that was written to say like allthese guys are a bunch of bad
guys.
And they were, yeah, likehorsing around or doing
something.

Speaker 4 (02:17:39):
I'm right, I'm gonna try to find it again.
You know I I honestly do.
I feel for the people of Gaza.
I do, I do.
What's happening to themshouldn't happen, but what
happened in Israel shouldn'thappen to begin with, okay, and

(02:17:59):
they as a people should Takecare of police their own, police
, their own.
They should have took a carerHamas a long time ago if I.
Don't know.
It's like like they, they, theyopened the, the, the gate to

(02:18:19):
the Lions cage and the line cameout started eating everybody.
Well, why are you fuckingsurprised at that?
You open the door.
You know you open the door andlet that line out.
What do you think he was gonnado?
That's what they're turningGaza into a parking lot.
They are, and it's sad.
It is sad, but Okay, so here'sa.

Speaker 3 (02:18:44):
Here's a talking about the media.
I watched a movie back in theday and I think was like 1932.
Leave it to, leave it to thetechie to to find it before
Charlie does.

Speaker 2 (02:18:59):
No, what, what, what this article says?
I'm not gonna read it, but justthe headline is video videos of
us Israeli soldiers actingmaliciously, emerging in
international outcry againsttactics in Gaza.
So what?
What would be consideredmalicious, right?

Speaker 3 (02:19:18):
trying to kill the other people.
I mean seriously what.
That's what they're there for.

Speaker 8 (02:19:21):
What about using a hospital as a, you know, command
center, or or all the dead, or,all the dead hostages are
finding down in the tunnels?

Speaker 2 (02:19:29):
Yeah, so I mean regardless of whichever way you
lie.
I think the Palestinians shouldhave taken care of Hamas, not
let them Do their networking orwhatever that they were doing.
Right, because now they're.
Now they're paying the price,because now Israel, who got
attacked, has to come in andclean their house, right, you
know.
So I mean, I get it.
I don't care which way you lie,doesn't matter to me.

(02:19:50):
But looking at it from anoutsider perspective, that I
don't have skin in the game,right, I don't have a dog in the
fight.
Regardless, you know, be nodifferent than us if we were to
be a.
Regardless, you know, be nodifferent than us if we let some
militia go up and invade Canadaand kill a bunch of them and
all of a sudden they startinvading Michigan, going, you
know, we're blowing everythingup and killing people, like I

(02:20:13):
mean, we should, we should havetaken care of it If we knew it
was a problem we should takecare of it.

Speaker 4 (02:20:16):
It'd be more like it would be more like this it would
be more like the MichiganNational Guard, which is state
run right, the reserves isnational run Right reserves are
federal.

Speaker 3 (02:20:30):
The guard is state but can be activated effectively
Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:20:33):
so that would be like if Gretchen Whitmer right, our
governor, she's the governmentsent the Michigan National Guard
to Canada to invade.
Right, we knew it was gonnahappen because it was the
government.
Hamas is the government in Gaza.
Yep, it is the government there, and they knew this was gonna

(02:20:58):
happen.
But I've also heard reportsthat Israel knew this was coming
and that they've been proppingup Hamas just because they've
wanted to.
They've been wanting to go inthere and now they have an
excuse to go in there.
That's just something that Iheard.

Speaker 8 (02:21:18):
I don't know if that's true or not but I mean,
that's just basic intelligencegathering then.
I think.

Speaker 4 (02:21:24):
Right.

Speaker 8 (02:21:25):
I mean America does that.

Speaker 2 (02:21:28):
Well, unfortunately you can't preemptively strike
somebody.
Well, exactly, hey these guysare putting soldiers on the
border.
We're gonna go in there andtake them before they get us
Israel could, Israel coulddefinitely.

Speaker 8 (02:21:41):
Israel kicked ass the last time somebody fucked
around.

Speaker 2 (02:21:44):
But how would that look?

Speaker 8 (02:21:46):
How does it look now?
Yeah, it turned it into aparking lot.

Speaker 2 (02:21:49):
Well, but now you got an excuse to go in.

Speaker 4 (02:21:51):
They attacked us yeah we attacked them first.

Speaker 2 (02:21:55):
So I mean that's some of it right.

Speaker 8 (02:21:56):
And the main thing, I think, is they may have known
about it.
And were they prepping, werethey getting ready?
I mean, they could have, butIsrael, much like America, is
always at a state of readiness,not necessarily a full on war
footing, probably much more sothan us.

(02:22:16):
But after the attack they sureas hell were on a war footing.

Speaker 3 (02:22:19):
Well, Israel has to be, Because every motherfucker
in the world has been trying tokill him forever.
If you think about this Germany, now Hamas I'll tell you what.
If I was the whatever the ofIsrael, Prime Minister.
Prime Minister and I knew themotherfuckers were gonna do
something.
I'd be like stand ready, boys,let them, and then, once they

(02:22:45):
did, I'd unleash hell and I well, that's kind of what they did.
Well, and who can blame them?
They've been getting fuckedforever, you know.
And no, I'm not Israeli, by theway, I'm Irish and French
Canadian.
I don't like to mention theCanadian part or the French, but
that's beside the point.

(02:23:08):
That's just my take on it.
Man, if you're gonna fuckaround and poke the bear, don't
get pissed off.
When the bear gets pissed andsays, I'm gonna stomp your guts
out now.

Speaker 4 (02:23:19):
Yep, yep, and then eat them too, and eat them too.

Speaker 8 (02:23:23):
I mean, there's so many examples of this.
When Pearl Harbor, 9-11, afterboth of those major events
happened, america kicked ass.
We took care of the issue andit was done Well.
We didn't give ourselves thestrength to understand.

Speaker 3 (02:23:38):
We took care of Pearl Harbor, because that was World
War II.
But 9-11, as we talked aboutearlier Sure, we went into
Afghanistan and we went intoIraq, but did we take care of
that?
I don't think.
So.
I'm with Trey, I think.

Speaker 4 (02:23:58):
We didn't.
Well, Iraq is doing all right.

Speaker 3 (02:24:01):
Well, Iraq is fine, you don't hear about him anymore
.

Speaker 4 (02:24:03):
Yeah, yeah, I mean they got invaded.

Speaker 2 (02:24:06):
Let's give you Ukraine, and you got Israel and
we were after and we were afterthe people who were behind the
attack the leadership which wasmostly Saudi Arabian right, they
were mostly Saudi.

Speaker 8 (02:24:17):
Well, we didn't go into Saudi Arabian.

Speaker 4 (02:24:18):
We didn't go in there , but most of the conspirators
were Saudi, I believe.

Speaker 2 (02:24:23):
Yeah, I think it was a majority and then we got Osama
and then after that it wasSaudi.

Speaker 3 (02:24:29):
We were just kind of done.

Speaker 8 (02:24:32):
But did we.
Well, yeah he might be downthere in Cuba.
No, no you don't think so.

Speaker 2 (02:24:40):
He's seven leagues under the sea.
I bet you Fish food.

Speaker 4 (02:24:46):
I'm nibbling them up right now.

Speaker 2 (02:24:50):
And I listened to some of those other podcasts
Conspiracies, the actualoperators were talking about it
and I don't think that ever is alie.
Yeah, yeah.
When they said they went inthere and got them yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:25:02):
Well, I do know that there was some talk about one
guy said I shot him and theother guy said I shot him, and I
think that's where the littleconspiracy is Experious.

Speaker 4 (02:25:11):
Ok, guys, you both shot him.
Yeah, you both shot him.
We'll give him credit.

Speaker 2 (02:25:15):
Everybody wants to get credit for that I shot him
yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:25:20):
They're drawing our prayer for Bob.
No, it was me, Actually.

Speaker 2 (02:25:23):
I remember laying in the bed that night when we were
watching TV and Obama came on,gave his report.
They got him.
That was pretty much what Iremember.

Speaker 4 (02:25:34):
Remember they were partying in the streets in.
Washington.

Speaker 7 (02:25:37):
DC.
Yeah, I was in.

Speaker 4 (02:25:39):
That was actually a really proud patriotic moment.
Right there it's all thosepeople in the streets
celebrating that.
That was great.

Speaker 2 (02:25:47):
That's when America was all together.

Speaker 4 (02:25:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:25:50):
It's like, right after 9-11, america was all
together For a while.

Speaker 2 (02:25:52):
Flags flying everywhere, super Bowl
commercials, I mean the wholegig.

Speaker 8 (02:25:58):
What's the saying?
We never won a 9-11 again, buton 9-12, America on 9-12.

Speaker 2 (02:26:05):
Yeah, that's what we want.

Speaker 8 (02:26:06):
That's what we want.
And then I was going to saysomething, but I completely lost
my turn.
Imagine that.

Speaker 7 (02:26:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:26:16):
Have you guys watched the 13 Hours of the Benghazi
movie?
I have.

Speaker 4 (02:26:22):
I've watched it.
It's a good movie Fuck it.

Speaker 8 (02:26:25):
It's fucked, but it's a good movie.

Speaker 2 (02:26:27):
Yeah, wasn't that about that comic of Muhammad?
Was that what that?

Speaker 3 (02:26:31):
was Well, supposedly, supposedly Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:26:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:26:35):
I can't believe that they were trying to pass that
off, for I don't know what theywere thinking.
Listen, you can't get anythingover on the public nowadays.
We got too much access toinformation.

Speaker 2 (02:26:50):
It's too easy for us to talk to each other.
I mean, you couldn't talk tosomeone from California.
Now I can do it on TikTok,Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter.

Speaker 4 (02:26:59):
So these communities of people that live on the
Internet, they're going to findthe truth.
They will find it in anysituation, be it Benghazi or
Justin Bieber getting engaged toHalley whatever name is Right,
right, they're going to find it.
They're going to find the truthout.

Speaker 2 (02:27:19):
I thought it was all about Travis Kelsen and Taylor
Swift.

Speaker 4 (02:27:22):
Now it is.

Speaker 2 (02:27:22):
Now it is.

Speaker 8 (02:27:23):
I'll be honest Sometimes.

Speaker 4 (02:27:26):
It's all about Trey Porter in my life.

Speaker 8 (02:27:29):
Sometimes I just wish there was like an anonymous
group or whatever WikiLeaksgroup or something that really
did go and hack and try to findthe truth.
So nobody.

Speaker 4 (02:27:41):
I don't know, Well, they kind of do that.
Wikileaks kind of did that,used to do that.
I don't know when is that guynow.

Speaker 2 (02:27:49):
I think he's in Germany.
I thought Germany or the UK.

Speaker 8 (02:27:52):
He was arrested.

Speaker 2 (02:27:53):
Oh really.

Speaker 8 (02:27:54):
They got him, oh yeah .

Speaker 4 (02:27:55):
He finally left that embassy.
Ecuador, yeah, ecuador, ecuador, they got sick of him.

Speaker 2 (02:28:00):
They arrested him in the second detention that was at
Julian Assange right.

Speaker 4 (02:28:02):
Yeah, yeah, whatever happened, a dude was in there
for like two.
Was he still in Russia?
He was in there for like two orthree years, snowden.

Speaker 2 (02:28:08):
Snowden yeah, snowden's in Russia.

Speaker 4 (02:28:09):
I think, yeah, he's in Russia.
Yeah, he's in Russia, but itwas years ago.
Somebody should get ahold ofthat guy.

Speaker 7 (02:28:15):
My sister-in-law has a foreign exchange student from
Russia.
Really, I'm not asking themabout him.
Yeah, they think about him inhis perspective.

Speaker 4 (02:28:22):
Yeah, for sure, I was in Miami one time.
No, not you Believe it or not,I was on the beach and there was
this Russian chick.
She was standing therecompletely topless.
We start chatting her up aboutRussian and everything like that
.
She was like we fucking lovePutin, we love Putin.

(02:28:48):
I was like really I was shocked, but then people really love.

Speaker 2 (02:28:56):
Putin.
You gotta remember, though,he's Russia's first president,
right?

Speaker 7 (02:28:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:29:00):
So he is all about his people.
He's all about Russia's.

Speaker 4 (02:29:04):
But is he though?
Sounds kind of funny, doesn'tit?
I would think so.
I think he gives thatperception, but that dude is
probably they say he's therichest person in the world.

Speaker 3 (02:29:16):
Okay, they gotta love him.
You know why?
Because he was with the KGB,and if you don't love him, he's
gonna find a way to kill you.

Speaker 8 (02:29:23):
Okay, he's gonna take care of that he's one of the
OGs man.

Speaker 3 (02:29:31):
So that movie I was talking about?

Speaker 4 (02:29:33):
we were talking about , not that one 13 Hours right
Benghazi.

Speaker 3 (02:29:38):
No, this is a Vietnam movie.
We talked about reporters andhow, back in the day, there was
an MOS for that particular thing.
What you need to do is you needto research.
It's called 84, charlie MopicAll right, it's a Vietnam movie.
It's about a photographerwhatever that goes out on a

(02:30:03):
mission with a squad of snipersnot a sniper squad like a
special forces group, okay.
So this is where it gets pickyor really cool.
The movie does Shave Tail,lieutenant Justin Country, black

(02:30:25):
Point man in the 60s.
His second in charge is ahillbilly Southern white guy,
okay.
And then there's a couple otherpeople, then there's like a
Mexican guy that's on the teamand then another white guy, and
that movie covers so much shit.

(02:30:46):
That is not funny.
It covers things about thereporter asked the white guy
what's it feel like to be led bya black guy?
And the white guy goes off onhim.
If you look at the movie,you'll love it.
The white guy looks at him andgoes why are you going to ask me
that fucking bullshit?

Speaker 4 (02:31:05):
Is this a documentary ?

Speaker 3 (02:31:06):
No, this is a movie.
It's called 84, charlie Mopic.
And then he talks to theLieutenant about this and
they're trying to teach theLieutenant.
Lieutenant is like well, yeah,I know that.
And they're like well, then,motherfucker, you figure it out
on your own.
You know, because theLieutenant was like I'm the
Lieutenant, so it's a greatmovie.
It's a great movie, I watchedit, and the ending is just the

(02:31:27):
ending will kill you 84 Mopic 84Charlie.

Speaker 4 (02:31:32):
Charlie Mopic.
Okay, I'll look it up.

Speaker 3 (02:31:35):
It's pretty good movie.

Speaker 2 (02:31:37):
So it covers a lot of those controversial issues,
absolutely.

Speaker 3 (02:31:40):
Absolutely, and it's an embedded journalist, but he
is a soldier.
You know not CNN Right and it'snews network.

Speaker 2 (02:31:53):
I mean, like I know the Marine Corps still has them
right, Photographers and stufflike that, but I don't think
they actually go out in thefield like that.
You know they're not embeddedwith a patrol or with,
necessarily, a combat unit.
I mean they're out there in thefob and they're taking pictures
and doing stuff.

Speaker 7 (02:32:08):
I don't think that's like one of the guys I was in
Iraq with.
When we got back he reclassedwho's a supply guy?
He reclassed doing that combatCamelment stuff and I'm going to
our brigade afterwards.

Speaker 2 (02:32:19):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
So well, you say, we wrap thisone up.
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.

Speaker 4 (02:32:28):
We've been here two and a half.

Speaker 3 (02:32:30):
This, is awesome though it is.

Speaker 4 (02:32:33):
And actually he's been really great really great.

Speaker 2 (02:32:35):
Yeah, it's fun.
We can just sit down and shootthe breeze and talk about all
kinds of crazy stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:32:40):
So I got 20 years of shit material to unload, so
perfect.

Speaker 8 (02:32:45):
Perfect, we'll get you another next one, Since I
dropped in a little late at thebeginning.
Did you guys talk about whatwe've been doing over the summer
and yeah, a little bit Right.

Speaker 2 (02:32:53):
Yeah, we covered.

Speaker 8 (02:32:55):
Yeah, we've been kind of busy, you know, and, that
being said, I think maybe weshould, you know, really focus
on this during the winter, youknow, when the writers group
can't be out all that much andwhen the post is a little bit
more busy at home versus, youknow, during the summer and when
we're out doing stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:33:14):
Yeah.
Yeah, but we can always maketime to do it.
I think we should do a coupleof months.
Yeah, I think so, I mean, andthat way we can rotate different
people through, get differentperspectives, get Kelly the new
post member.
Oh yeah, Maybe, have her comein and talk about her.

Speaker 4 (02:33:31):
Kelly.
And what is Crystal?
Crystal, crystal Crystal.
Yeah, I would like to get acouple of females up here and
get their perspective on some ofthe stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:33:42):
And any of those people out there listening.
If you comment subjects, ideas,things like that that you want
us to talk about here, aboutstuff, you know we're all about
it for sure, so throw it outthere.
Yeah, All right, We'll.
We'll kick it out and move onwith our night.

(02:34:04):
So appreciate everybody.
You guys have a good night.

Speaker 1 (02:34:08):
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Whether you're a veteranyourself, a spouse or family
member of a veteran, or simplyinterested in learning more
about this community, thispodcast is for you.
So come with us on a journeyinto the heart of the veteran

(02:34:31):
experience and discover thestories, struggles and triumphs
that have shaped our nation'sbrave after they've returned
home.

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