Marine Corps 250th Birthday Special: Sgt. Tommy James and the Dogs of War | Ep. 74 - The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two hundred and fifty years of the most aggressive, badass
fighting force on the planet, the United States Marine Corps.
Mister Tommy James this week on The David Brutherford Show.

(00:22):
All Right, So, one of the things that I learned
really early on in life was the power of the
Marine Corps. And that is because my best friend I
grew up with, who was in five different high schools,
didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, graduates,
joins the Corps, goes to Parris Island, turns his entire

(00:44):
life around and becomes one of the hardest work in
human beings I've ever known in my life. Now, that
set the tone for me as I went in the Navy,
and then every opportunity that I got to work with
Marines over the eight years that I was in the
time I was at Blackwater and the time that I
was at the Agency, every single time they were the

(01:07):
most hard charge and focused, dialed in guys on every opportunity,
every op, every interagency op, everything I ever did, the
Marine Corps was always the most gung ho. And so
to honor them and to honor their stories, I had somebody,

(01:27):
a friend of mine, an SF buddy, say, hey, we
need to interview more grunts, more guys that were in
the thick of it in the GWAT, And so I
put it out on X and I got flooded with
people reaching out to me to come on and tell
their stories. Well, this man today, Sergeant Tommy James, he

(01:47):
did not reach out to me, but he was rogered
up by one of his buddies because obviously him and
his story and his commitment to the country had such
an impact on his buddy that he felt like it
would be an incredible opportunity for my audience, all of you,
to hear Sergeant James' story. So, without further ado, it

(02:09):
is a great privilege and honor to welcome you to
the show.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Tommy. God bless you, buddy. Thank you David.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Okay, here's what I want to know. Let's just start
from the beginning. Describe what was the allure, what was
the thing that brought you into the Marine Corps and
why the Marines.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Well, the way I've always looked at it, if I'm
gonna do something, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Put in my all.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
And I chose the Marine Corps because everybody else says, oh,
I almost joined the Marine corps and all these things,
you know, or and I didn't want to be an
almost guy. You know, if I do anything, I do
it to the best of my abilities. It don't matter
what it is. We're cleaning the toilet, that toilet's gonna

(02:59):
be spitch shine clean. It don't matter whatever I do.
I try to do the best of my villies' abilities
and put in one hundred percent every time.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
Did you learn that growing up? I mean, where are
you from?

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Originally I was born in Oklahoma City, but we moved
to Arkansas right after the Federal building got bombed in
ninety six. And that's what they used to call me
in boot camp and coming up, they always said.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Arkansas getting stiff. Yeah over allowed figure.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
I was a guide in boot camp and all that.
I went to MCRD yeah, you know west of the Mississippi. Yeah,
in Arkansas, and you know, I've had an accent my
whole life, and it's just kind of followed me in,
you know.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
Right, Well, that's that's what I always remember.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I always remember the guys from Arkansas, Oklahoma, right, Mississippi, Alabama,
like everybody who had those thick Southern accents. It was
like you were a magnet for the instructors, right, they
just they heard you talk and then it was it
was just pylon time.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
M hmm. That's right.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
So tell me what year you went in and what
was the reason why you wanted to join.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Was it nine to eleven?

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Was it a family thing?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Had people served before you? What was the real catalyst
that it was? Like, you know what, I'm going to
go serve my country.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
The thing for me is my dad.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
He served in the army in Vietnam, and all he
was older dad, you know, he was born in forty three.
So I went in the Marine Corps in two thousand
and six and I got out from active duty in
twenty eleven.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
And the biggest thing that you know.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Drove me because was whenever I was a saint, well, no,
whenever I was in high school. I'll never forget to day,
you know, when every thing stopped, the whole world stopped,
and in every class they was playing you know, the
news and for me to wash them planes, you know,

(05:12):
you steer right into them buildings and all this.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
You know, I immediately wanted to do something.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Of course, you know, I've never been in JR, JR,
OTC or any of that.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
But I just from that day, I just said, you know,
it'd be awesome if I could do something, you know,
to help protect our country.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
I love it now when you decided to go into
the recruiters, just did you know right away it was
the Marine Corps or did you have that little itch
because your dad served in the army that you're like, oh,
I'm going to keep the tradition.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Going, or did you want to break that cycle?

Speaker 1 (05:51):
And it was, as everybody always says, it was those
damn uniforms that sucked me in.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, to be honest with you, I knew nothing about
the military or the uniforms or anything before I prior
to me joining or even speaking to a recruiter, because
it was I didn't even speak to a recruiter to
two or three years after I.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Got out of high school.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
And so none of that really swayed it. You know,
my dad would talk about it some, but he didn't
you know, he didn't just press in, you know, pressing
us to join the military.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know, I have two brothers, you know, that lived
and come up with men.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
It's just something that I felt like, you know, I
wanted to do, and if I was going to go
into any service.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
It was going to be the hardest one, you.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Know, absolutely what what tell me the path? So went
to MCRD. Was it summer of six or fall?

Speaker 4 (06:49):
What?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
What?

Speaker 4 (06:49):
What period of time did you go into boot camp?

Speaker 3 (06:53):
I went to boot camp in October of two thousand
and six, Okay, you know, it was getting towards winter
and we come out. I believe five January of No.
Seven is when we graduated. I was about two weeks in.
We went to Pugle Sticks and I didn't know this

(07:16):
ch after I graduated in the drilling struke to come
and talk to me and my dad and said, you know,
do you know why I made you the guide?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
And I'm like, no idea?

Speaker 3 (07:27):
And he said it was because in pugl Sticks you
kicked so much ass they had to drag you off there.
And I was just like, I didn't even remember it,
you know, Yeah, but that he made a big impression
on me, that drill instructure that chose me to.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Be the guide.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
And ironically enough, when I got back from Afghanistan and
was back stateside with had about five six months left
on my contract, I went to the golf course.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
One day. We go to tee up and who is.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
It that I'm paired up with my drilling structor from
booth Awesome.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
That's so awesome.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
I immediately knew it was him whenever he you know,
spoke and introduced hisself and said, hey, I'm you know
so and so, and I'm like, man, the voice sounds
so familiar. And then the more I looked at him,
you know about the third hole, he comes to me
because I honestly made an impression on him, and he said,

(08:30):
was you one of my recruits? And I said I was,
you know, because I didn't know where he's at in
his career at that time. It was five years later,
you know all this, and so that was that was
pretty cool to five years down the road, out of nowhere,
you know, get paired up with one of my drilling structures.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
You know, that made a lasting impression on me. That
was a that was cool to me.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
You know, Oh my god, seem for me. I mean,
I you know, I had I ended up, you know,
my first platoon and our sister platoon. There was probably
I think there were three guys that were instructors when
I went through buds that were in that platoon. And
that was really cool to see, you know, that ability

(09:18):
to how how the ideas the training just keeps passing
down through the generations and what that means, right to
come up in the ranks and then they have the
opportunity then to give back as an instructor is such
a powerful impact, and in particular within the.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Core when you were in boot camp.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
When you were in boot camp, what were some of
the things that really stood out to you in terms
of the training, the attitude, or the camaraderie that you
felt with the guys going through with you.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Well, you know, I didn't I didn't have a clue
of what to expect before I went to boot camp.
I didn't look anything up, you know, before that, I
never been an athlete or anything, you know, and I
just went in blind and didn't have a clue what
was coming up. But after had a month or so,

(10:15):
I figured out, you know that half of this stuff
is mind games.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, I would see them, we'd be you.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Know, marching to chaw or this or that, and you know,
I would see them always pull their cover off and
look in their hat from their cover, and they had
a schedule in there, And I figured it out real quick.
You know, we're gonna play some games if we're early,
and we got some time before we have to go
to our next event.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
But it was slam packed.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
I mean every day there was multiple things to do
for thirteen weeks.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
There is never a day where we just set around
the squad bay, you know, and played the scrub Brush
five hundred. So it was just all it was something
every day before that I'd never even shot with iron
sights or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
And I was lucky enough to be one be prior
to where they went to a cobs and all that,
and it taught a.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Lot, you know, on really good instructions on shooting and
all that. You know, before I just looked through the
crossairs and you know that's all I knew, you.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Know, right.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
I never even shot a pistol before, which I didn't
shoot a pistol to later on. But it was just
deer hunting rifles and shotguns. I did a lot of
duck hunting whenever I was younger, and I love shooting
them ducks. Well, that's awesome. It's funny. You raw dogged
the Marine Corps like you didn't.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
You didn't look anything up, You didn't have any expectations.
You just went in and you went in hard, and
I think that's for me what was always the amazing thing,
and that thirteen weeks the Marine Corps produces, in my opinion,
probably the greatest, the greatest basic troop. Right without any

(12:08):
other training, you could take that group of young Marines
and you could put them into war. And that's because
that training is so efficient, the mindset is so in,
the indoctrination is so well seated, and I think that's
really what the unique aspect of it is.

Speaker 4 (12:26):
I want to ask.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
You about when you were going through Marine Corps boot
camp and whether or not there was this profound shift
where you started to really feel like a marine, that mentality,
that devil dog emerged at you. But before we get
into that, I just want to pay some bills and
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Speaker 4 (14:35):
All right, Tommy, was.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
There a time in that thirteen weeks that you really
kind of felt a shift, You felt that.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
What is it?

Speaker 1 (14:45):
You felt that real deep connection to becoming a marine, right.
What did it happen quickly? Did it happen in the middle,
did it happen at the end?

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Well, for me, it happened in the second month when
we went from mcrd up to Pendleton for Crucible Week,
And that was that was just kind of the pinnacle
for me, going three days without eating, you know, and
humping so many miles and miles up and down the

(15:18):
mountains at Pendleton. You know, it was just me watching
all these other people fall out, can't keep up, and
I'm just like, I keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
I'm on the drill instructure, but.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
You know, and look back and it's just strung out
like a big slinky.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
You know, and I'm let's go, you know.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And that's where I really got motivated, and I realized
that it was it wasn't really hard for me to
stay up there and do the things that was real
hard for a lot of the other guys, and it's
almost like it was natural for me, you know. And

(15:56):
I just that's whenever I really knew, whenever we completed
that crew and got to go to the towel hall
by yourself.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And I got more than twenty three seconds to eat
a meal because it's the guy.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
You know, you're you're the last person in and as
soon as the first.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Up, you're done. So it was mini meals that I
didn't even get a bike.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I'd go to sit down and the first dude got
up and I'd be so mad at him.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
For the audience, he doesn't know what Tommy's talking about.
As the guide, you basically keep the entire formation in step.
You keep everything you you're did you carry the colors?
Oh yeah, yeah, and so and and and what what
everybody needs to understand is that this is one of
the most historically admired positions in the history of the Core.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
This is the guy that carries the flag that keeps
everybody in time as you more arch into battle. Right,
it's it's it's the symbolism that is attached to that
that individual is as deep as the legacy of the
Marine Corps itself. And so to be able to get
that honor is a really really huge thing for anybody.

(17:18):
And going through boot camp when you graduated, talk a
little bit about that graduation ceremony and what was it
like to you know, get the globe and anchors.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Man, it was it was awesome for me. I mean honestly,
I was a guide, so I was the only one
in the hope of tune one hundred and twenty three
guys that got to graduate in his dress blues. So
that was back before you know, they started letting everybody
wear their blues. So everybody else was in camis now

(17:53):
hold on Charlie's. They were in Charlie's and I was
only wanted full with dress blues. And I got married
TORSLEI promoted straight out of boot camp, you know, because
I was a platoon honorman as well. Wow, and being
able to march, you know, on that parade deck at
San Diego, was listening to the you know, they always

(18:15):
said march to the bee of the drum, and it
took me a long time to figure out what he
was even talking about.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
You know, I never you.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Know, had to march or do anything like that. And
you know they kept screaming, march to the bee of
the drum. Getting stepp Arkansas and you know it was
after about the fourth or fifth oh practice or whatever,
you want to call it, you know, getting ready for
the you know, the ceremony that I actually learned what

(18:45):
he was talking about when that drum hit your left
neat left footneys be hitting the ground, you know. But
me standing up there with five other Marines and doing
retiring the guy on and all that, it was a
he did pretty cool, pretty special, you know.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
And when I got that ego globe and anchor pinned.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
On me on that day, you know, I felt like
I really accomplished something.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
I bet.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
Yeah, that's so cool man.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
You know, there's just there's so much folklore attached to
the Marine Corps, right, you know, from from you know,
all the way back to the Barbary Wars. It's funny.
Buddy Mine that is a current MARSOK Intel officer up
at Pendleton and reservists and when we work together at

(19:36):
the agency. He got a chance to be at Libya
and go to where the Barbary Wars, where the Marines
that are still buried over there are and he did
this etching on one of the gravestones. And you know,
you look at that, you look at Bellowo Wood, the
Devil Dogs, you look at the bottom Battle of Taroa.

(19:57):
You look at Iwo Jima, you look at Quesa, right,
you look at Felujah, you look at Lambar, right, you
look at Marja push and nine. And it's continuously the
core that rogers up and goes deep into the heart
of the enemy's mind, right, because you bring the fight

(20:18):
to them. When you left boot camp, where did you
go and how did the pride continue to build inside
of you with your service?

Speaker 3 (20:32):
Well, whenever I left boot camp, I went to three
weeks of I was basically teaching training you how to deploy,
because of course we was in the middle of the fight.
And it was called Marine Corps training and it was
three weeks, three more weeks of additional combat training that
we went to. And out of that, I went to

(20:56):
Ford Leonnerwood for Military Police School and I done nine
weeks of training there. And whenever we got ready to
graduate a military police school, about a week or two before,
they took the top five percent of the class and
asked them, you know, if they want to go to

(21:18):
canine school to learn how to be a military working
dog handler, And you had to fill out some you know,
questionnaires and stuff basically smid application to it. And I
called one of my good buddies, Rick Staggs, that you
know I grew up with, and he went into the
Marine Corps about a year ahead of me, and he.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Was a Military Police officer too, but he was a
field MP. He got to deploya.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Iraq immediately after he got out in p school on
most so he already had the format under his belt.
And I call him up. He's at Lejeune and I said,
hey man. They asked if I want to go to
canine school.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
What I tell him? He said, hell, yeah, you do,
he said.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
Them dudes and her act the canine had it made.
They got an air conditioned hug when they was back
on base and everything else. And we're out here sleeping
under the tents. And I said, you want to pick
a nine Henley.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
So I was like, okay, well, I'm going to submit
a package and see where it goes. So I left
for Lannerwood and went to San Diego, a Lackland Air
Force base, and I had another three and a half
months of training there, you know, in Military Working Dog School.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
And it was crazy to me when I got there.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
It took about three to four weeks before I even
get picked.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Up in the class and so we're just sitting.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
In the barracks doing you know, whatever the local staff
wants us to do, just doing crap work and all,
and finally get picked up and there's like three or
four Marines in the class. But it's mixed services, you know,
we got Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marines. But the

(23:01):
Marine Corps was the only service where a Marine can
come straight through out of his training and go to
Canine School. Every other service, Army, Navy, and Air Force
you had to do a full you know, enlistment of
four years and then then you could request that is

(23:21):
kind of like a b billet is what we called it.
In Marine Corps. You could request the b buillet and
come to CA nine school. But Marines were the only
service that could go straight through because obviously we were
a different breed, you know.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
So, well, your military bearing is definitely, I should say,
your military bearing when you're not on leave is.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Exceptional, that's right.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
So all right, so you're in Canine School, you go
through that, you graduate.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
What happened next, Well.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Straight out of Canine School, I get orders to Quantico, Virginia.
So I go to well, I get a couple of
days leave go home and actually, see that was one
of the things that my recruiter straight up lied to
me about, you know, whenever he got me to sign
that five year contract, I.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Was like, hey, you know, am I gonna be able
to have my vehicle?

Speaker 3 (24:20):
And they said, oh yeah, man, you got like a
year of training, you know, you can take.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Your motorcycle, your vehicle and all that straight up there
with you.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
And of course, you know, I figured out real quick
that he was full of shit, you know, So I
come back home and I actually get my motorcycle and
my truck and moved to Quantico, Virginia.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
And that place was awesome because we got to do a.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Lot of training on the west side of base with
FBI and CIA.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
And we're in the middle of everything up there. You know.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
It was that base was so so big, and and
you know, we just every week it was something else,
you know, the FBI guys and the CI guys, they
was always calling, you know, trying to coordinate training activities
and stuff together.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
So I got to do a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Of that, which a lot of other marines you know,
wouldn't never got the experience, you know, unless they were
stationed at Quantico and was in certain groups, you know
that they always wanted to train with the dogs. And
when I got a sign there when I first showed up,
it was me and a buddy of mine, Mendoza, justamith Nosa.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
He's a master sergeant now.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
He stayed in and last I seen he was in Hawaii,
uh stationed. There was one one of the other guys
that was stationed with us in Quantico.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
We show up there, we go to PMO and was like,
you know, what do we do?

Speaker 3 (25:48):
And they said, well, there's only one open dog because
another buddy that well, another guy that became a buddy
of mine, Sergeant Paldino, he was getting out and it
was this hunter, thirty pound check shepherd that had like
thirty two unauthorized.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Bites, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
You know held just fight and attack out of nowhere,
and you know, just this dude had massive paws and
everything else. There like he's the only open dog and
otherwise you're gonna have to go to PMO and go
to the road.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
And I was like, well shit, hell, I hand him.
I don't want to go. I don't want to be
a regular cop.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
You know, I'm going I want to you know, be
on lee straight, you know, right off the back, and
me and Donnie Paldeno got together and you know, and
he's told me, you know what he does, and you
know what to watch for and this and that, because
that's something he was smart too.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
I'm talking a straight up hoodini. The first week I handled.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Him, he broke out of his kennel and come into
the office and cleared the whole some bitch out, but
I mean there were people staying on top of desk,
Get your dog, get your dog, and he just come
to the desk I was sitting at and crawled up
under my feet and laid down, you know, because Donnie

(27:09):
is like, man, you're gonna have to put in a
lot of extra time and word, you know, to trust.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
So he One of the other things was handling Santo.
He was non deployable because he had hip displace yet
and he was already an old dog.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
It was Santo Echo zero five zero.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
He's actually in the Marine Corps Museum now, because I
remember when we first got there, they was, you know,
just putting all that stuff together, and whenever I got
out or whenever I PCSD, nobody else would handle them,
you know, so there's only you know, in that case,
you know, if nobody, nobody wants to adopt the dog

(27:54):
whenever he gets ready to retire, you know, the only
other option is he gets euthanized.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Right. So my kennel master there, you.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Know, reached out to the Marine Corps Museum and asked him,
you know, if they wanted him to be in there.
So that was a and I didn't know that until
years later, you know. But about a year into my
uh stay there at Quantico, another school come up, another

(28:27):
training opportunity, and it was called Specialized Search Dog School.
It was six months of training and I got to
go back down to San Diego or not, I mean
San Antonio to Lachland.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
So another six weeks at Lachland.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
And of course this time I'm out of the fleet
and I could stay at the you know, the hotel there,
and you know, have my own vehicle, and you know,
it was a straight up party, dude.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
I did my uh, I did my paramedic refresher time
in San Antonio for three months and uh, I'll tell
you what that place is is definitely a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Oh yeah, a lot a lot of fun, A lot
of good memories there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
The reason why I wanted to go there because I
was non deployable hemling Santos and we only had six
dogs there at Quantico, so you wasn't getting you know,
them dogs were like equipment, you know, there was a number.
You just didn't get a new dog unless something happened,

(29:32):
you know, he died or retired, something happened. You wouldn't
wanna get a new dog. So the chances of me
deploying was zero. So that's why when another school came up,
you know, I was like, hell, I want to do that,
you know, and I knew that I'd be put in
the field. Then whenever I got through with that training,

(29:53):
I would PCs to either.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Le Zune or Okinawa or.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Pendleton and being a deployable unit. And that's what made
it so so good for me going is I knew
that there was no way I wasn't gonna get to
get in a fight after I got done with that.
Of course, I had no idea what SSD dogs was.
Whenever they asked if you want to go to the course,

(30:19):
you know, I just I asked a couple of buddies
of mine.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
And you know, and figured it out.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
And I was like, yeah, yeah, you want to do
that because you're gonna go to a field unit and
you know you're gonna get in a fight and go
get some So I've done that six months there, san
Antonio came back and there wasn't him. Ten days after
I went back to Quantico, I already had orders to Pendleton.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
So that was a three thousand mile journey from Quantico,
Virginia to Camp Filton, California.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:52):
I made that one a few times myself.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's something you could do and you know,
more than in less than three days in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, all right, So you go back out to Penalton.
What unit did you go with? And then what was
your job at that moment? And where where? What timeline
were you on? What what what year was it, what
month was it? Where was the g WATT in Iraq
and Afghanistan at that time?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
So I show up to Penlton in December of.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Eight and so I'm a couple of years in, you know,
and I'd already picked up corporal whenever I was in
SSD school because and it was one of the things
that the other guys couldn't believe it is like, can
he pick up you know, corporal?

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Can he be an n c O in training? And
you know, it was.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Cool that I had a cousin that was one of
the instructors there that I didn't even know was a
cousin until I went back, and you know he was
a corporal James. Well, he was there in the first
deployment or first time I went. That's when I first
found out about him because a lot of the other
guys was giving them shit, saying, you know, who's this

(32:14):
other James?

Speaker 2 (32:15):
And he calls his mom and.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Puts her on the phone and he starts to ask me, oh,
you related to this guy, this guy, this gun. I'm
like yes, no, yes, no, And then she's just like, yeah,
we'k in. And so, of course, you know, my first
three months there in that military worka dog school. You know,
we talk and you know a little bit, but I'm straight,
I'm fresh, you know, I'm still a boot to them,

(32:39):
you know, so you know, he doesn't give me any
special treatments, you know, but we get to know each.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Other a little bit. And there's another.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Exciting moment that happened in that first three months.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
They called it the Battle of Chaparral.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
And it was you know, we had about twenty three
marines uh in between Canine School and Correction School because
corrections went there too, and we was that first military
working dog school. It was it was like the rest
of the training before. You know, we were still treated like,

(33:20):
you know, not recruits. But we marched at chow Hall
on Thursdays, you know, in a child and then come
back did.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Phield Day and all that. You know, it was still strict.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
You couldn't have vehicles, you know, no liberty off base
you know on the weekends, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
But it's the attenson started building up.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Going to chaw is it. They was like a DLC
or how it was a bunch of army folks that
would join the military, but if they didn't know English,
they'd send them to Lachland so they can learn English
and all that.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
And it's like one hundred and forty of them. Wow,
and we're marching.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
The out every week and the tension just starts rising
because they get real close to our ranks. And you know,
one time they cut us off and the master guns
of that Lachlan at the time was the deep most
senior enlisted gun master.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Guns in the Marine Corps. Wow, so he's salty.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
You know. I was in his office one day and
he was dipping and he was spitting in his coffee cup.
And it was the morning, and I see him, you know,
I was just like, well, maybe that's just a spitter.
So I see him go over to the trash can
and he dumps that dip, spit out and then puts

(34:38):
it under the coffee pot and gets a cup of coffee,
and you know, goes a dressing.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
This hardcore salted man.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
That's your salt.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
You know, I've never see somebody do that stuff before.
I you know, I took took an accidental you know,
sip of dipspit before and turn and green them keep
my guts out. And this dude just pouring it out
in the trash can and you know, pouring straight black
coffee in there, and you know, and you know he's

(35:11):
he's hard, you know, And this starts building up, and
finally master Gun shows up and it gets through the
detachment there. You know, it was just about nine or
ten staff marines stationed there, you know, and then just
the training personnel and they see it building up, and
so Master Guns comes with us and marches to chow.

(35:32):
And they gave us a little pep talk before we
went and said, hey, you know, if they try to
march in our ranks or anything, you know, this is
the day we're gonna let him know. It ain't happening.
We're Marines.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
And so we go to chow. You know, everything's fine.
On the way there, we don't see him.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
But when we're marching back to the barracks coming back,
here they are. We're you know, getting ready to turn,
make a column right onto the little boulevard and more
back to our barracks and they're in a column left
and I'm up.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Front, you know, calling Cadence and all.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Because of course we had every you know, you had
to have guides that march them, the marine, the instructors
and stuff. They didn't do that, you know, they always
had somebody assigned to do that. And they marched into
our ranks and they got about one person deep, and.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
I yelled fall out. And it was a huge battle, dude, I'm.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
They we go to swing in and kicking, and it
was crazy. You know, people like master Guns was over there,
just kept tapping on the shoulders, you know, dodging blows
and everything, and you know, the instructors are trying to
stay out of the fight. And you know, it was
twenty three marines out against over one hundred of them,

(36:53):
and they ended up being a plaque maid behind that.
And they called you know, PMO and K nine Marine
showed up the Air Force K nine guys, and we're
just laughing like, yeah, send you a dog on me.
You know, I'll call them off. You know, they know
that we were K nine Marines and stuff. Oh my gosh,

(37:15):
it's a huge thing.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Man. We took their guide on, you know and everything.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
And man, there was fifty eight of them that went
to the hospital and.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Oh my god. Yeah, and about I think.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
We had two female marines and both of them went
to the hospital. But that was it out of twenty
three marines and all them. And of course there's a
big investigation behind all that. And about I don't know,
four or five days later, I'm in training and here
comes cee id. They picked me up, and I'm just like,

(37:50):
you know, why are they picking me up? So we
get down there and they start you know, questioning me
and all this, and there's like we had fourteen guys
positively identify you as the one, you know that hit them,
and I was just like, so I'm the only one,
and they're just like yeah. I was like, well, what

(38:12):
I mean, how did they identify me? It was like
off your D O D I D you know my
cat card?

Speaker 2 (38:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
I was like, wow, really, And so I'm in there
for a couple of hours and here comes Master Guns.
He shows up in there and I'm thinking, oh, ship,
my ass is yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
You know this ain't gonna be good.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
You know, how why did why did not you know,
one of my instructors or something show up?

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Why you go straight to the top?

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Master Guns is here and he pulled me aside and
he's like, look, son, don't.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Worry about it. I got it. And I was like, sir,
I'm gonna take responsibility for my actions. You know. What
happens happens, you know. And he's just like, there's nothing
gonna happen to you. I promise you that. And next day,
you know, we.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Always had a weekend safety breed and this is a
I got arrested on the fourth day that after well,
now about the sixth day, because it was from Thursday.
We're on to the next Thursday. So it's been a week.
Whenever they come, you know and detain me. I didn't
get arrested all, they didn't put me in cuse. But anyhow,

(39:21):
the next falling up Friday, UH comment on of the
Marine Corps there and the sergeant major of the Marine
Corps show up to Lackland because he wants to talk
to this group of Marines because the word spread like
wildfire of that battle, you know that happened.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
There was blood everywhere.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
You know, people was on the balconies of the gateway
in you know, videoing and you know, yelling stuff.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
It was.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
It was pretty entertaining and word got around and in
the fleet units they were telling our story, you know,
on the weekend safety breefs about you know, how twenty
theme were mas fought one hundred and forty or something.
So army guys and uh Camawana saw Marine Corps show
up and you know they want to talk to me

(40:11):
and a couple other guys. You know that was uh
in the unit and everything, and he gives me a
challenge coin and all that was you know, you know, man, y'all,
are you know motivating and glad? You know, the spread
of corps is high right now and all that, and
master Guns ended up retiring behind that, Oh wow, because

(40:35):
they wanted me to go down and he he looked
out for me and he basically saved my career.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Wow, you know.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
And he ended up retiring and that of course I'd
already graduated that I wasn't far from graduating when all
that went down, and they present some of the other
instructors that were still there. They had a list of
all the marines on a little plaque, and they had
that pike from the guide on that we took from him,

(41:05):
and they mounted that on there and said the battle
Chaparu and uh in his retirement, they presented that to them.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Oh that's awesome. And I didn't you know. Of course,
I had no clue.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
And this happened until I went back over a year
later for SSD school and i'm I walk in the
barracks and look and see this plaque and I read it.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
If you of course, my name's plastered up there.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Pfc James at the time, and I was like, holy shit,
I didn't have a clothe that. I asked my cousin
because he was still there, and I called him like Chris.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
They tell me about this plaque day, what's up with that?

Speaker 3 (41:45):
You know, he told me the whole story, and that
was pretty cool, you know for me to show up
a year year and a half later and uh be
able to tell them guys, you know that was there,
you know.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Green, you know, coming right straight out of.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
Boot camp and all. You know, that's me until the story.
That was a that was pretty rewarding down the road.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
That's like the pinnacle of the Marine Corps.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
It's like it's like you're gonna do everything just as
hard as you can, right, You're gonna defend the court
the unit at every at every stage, right, whether it's
against you know, meatheads going out and drinking on the weekends,
or it's you know it's other units that are trying
to you know, flex on you.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
It's just it's the mentality of the Core.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
It's that camaraderie, that brotherhood that that can't be broken
no matter what. And I you know that that just
falls in line with I think the great allure of
the Cores. Right, That's why people have such profound respect
for it, because they know that they you all stick
together no matter what. After you finished that. When was

(42:56):
your first deployment overseas?

Speaker 3 (42:59):
That's so we finished finished that and I get PCs
to Penning ten and then in June of twenty ten
is whenever I actually, well, that was my first combat deployment.
Prior to that, like when I was at Quantico ANDOL
with me being there with non depurbo dogs, I got

(43:20):
to do a lot of work.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
With POTUS so SOS.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
I got to do a lot of missions work with
the Secret Service and stuff. We covered the G twenty
something we covered when Bush went to Africa.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
He went to four different countries, Liberia.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
And Tanzania, Ghana and one other one maybe Liberia or something.
And you know, so I got to do a lot
of tad stuff like that, you know, for a couple
of weeks at a time. They'd always pull me up
and you know, we had HMX there, which was headquarters
the Marine Corps Battalion. They had their own dogs and

(43:57):
they got to do the local DC stuff, you know,
searching compounds and buildings you know around d C wherever.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Potus was going or VIPs period.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
You know, so I got through a lot of that
stuff and that was cool, you know, being able to
work with the Secret.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Service and all that. You know, that was awesome.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
You know, I gained a lot of respect for them guys,
and of course you know, they always loved it when
that Marine showed up, you know, to work with them.
Because I didn't know it before then, but probably over
fifty percent of the Secret Service is former Marine Corps.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
That's right, yeah, you know, so you know they get it.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
They know, you know, right off the bat, and it's
instant connection whenever you show up and they're there.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
So fast forward.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
I'm in Pilton now, I'm there for I'm a corporal
when I show up and they immediately give me my
own I guess you could call it a fire team
or whatever. I get, you know, six D eight guys.
I'm over and we start training, and the longer I'm there, the.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
Bigger my leadership role gets.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
And I worked all the way up to chief trainer
there and so I'm training sixty dogs getting ready.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
For deployment and we're taking the bed thirty.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
You know, we only deployed half the platoon at a time,
so that was something else that was way different at Pilton.
You know, I go from eight dogs in Quantico and
show up at Pilton and there's sixty dogs there.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Wow. So it's a lot more going on.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
And every day you're gonna put them dogs on oder,
do some basic obedience, do bite work.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
You know, there's.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Multiple different canine units within the Marine Corps. You know,
you got your regular patrol dogs that are on the
PMO and patrol with the guys that wear badges and
guard the gate and all that, and you have explosive
and narcotic dogs in that dim units.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
You know.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
Then you then we had another unit that just come
up as I was coming up through the ranks. It
was combat trackers and these dogs were trained to track
personnel and and bite at the end of it. You know,
it was a lot of BikeE work and stuff and
that and a lot of tracking and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
And then as I was coming up, SSD wasn't even
a thing.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Whenever I was in uh Kdine school the first time,
and they was few and far between because SSD dogs
were specialized search.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Dogs and they were mainly Belgium allay walls.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
We had a couple of labs here and there, and
very few shepherds because and we did all our training
off leash, so when we got when I got to Penpton,
and we had just a hand well several of the
guys that come out of the same training that I
went through.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
Lachland or yeah, Lachland was there with men. There was like.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Twenty three specialized sirch dogs handlers in the whole Marine Corps,
so they were very few and far between, and the
SSD guys was kind of the high speed, low drag guys.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
You know. We we got attached with, you know, the
Seals and.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
The free Con guys and you know Force ree Con
all that.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
You know, they always put.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Us with, you know, the ss basically you know, MORISC
wasn't really it was just coming around back then, and
they didn't have any any of their own dogs. Me
and another buddy of mine, William Suser, we kind of
spearheaded that. Matter of fact, he's a he got awarded
the Navy Cross.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Oh wow. Over there, Billy Susser they called him. He
was working with.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
That was the first time that we had canine, actual
Marine Corps doll handlers attacked.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
With marsde guys. Wow.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
And he was working with them, and you know, he
showed out one day and you know, basically doing the
same stuff that we do every time we're in a fight.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
But one of the brass put them.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Up and you know, he got awarded and I was
really proud of him for that.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
You know, that's amazing.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah, that's that's that honor is just people. It's extreme.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
And to be able to you know, serve your country
at that level, man, it's just a whole nother, a
whole other level of courage.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
So, all right, so you you trained, you're at you're
at this elite level of the dogs. You're you're working
with a bunch of guys. When did you find out
you were going to Afghanistan? And because you got there
in June twenty ten and so the big Marsa push
it happened, you know what the fall of two thousand
and nine into twenty ten, that's when what Kyle Carpenter

(49:03):
got hit. And during all that time, I was actually
in south central Afghanistan working for the agency what and
just listening to the daily reports of all the Marines
in Marja, just getting lit up doing daylight over patrols,
you know when roes that are basically you know, hand

(49:25):
tying you guys from actively engaging the enemy. What was
that like? Like knowing you're going into that environment.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Well, you know, it's what and I don't know why
it is, but you'll never meet a marine that wasn't
just itching and dying to get over there and getting
a fight. You know, a lot of people ask me,
you know, even since I've been out, you know, man,
was you scared? You know, were you afraid of dying?

(49:56):
And I said, absolutely not. There's like, what do you
mean you wasn't afraid? I said, because marines don't die.
Our spirits is left forever. You know. There's always some
stories told, you know, about these legendary marines and you
know what they did, and it just that's that, that's
spree the core.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
You know, your legacy lives forever.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
You know, and stuff like that, you know, and you
just you know, whenever the stuff popped off, you know,
everybody else would retreat. You know.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Of course, marines we're running towards the.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Sound of fire, you know, So that was a that
was always you know, kept me motivating everything like that,
doing that but coming showing up.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
We get there.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
Around the first of June, and of course, you know,
well for y'all probably didn't have to do it, but
almost every other marine that shows up to Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
You get two weeks.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Of oh what you called it's uh getting up used
to the heat and all that.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Kind of stuff. I forget what's call it.

Speaker 3 (51:02):
But and about the week and a half in they
tell us, you know, because we show up there with
thirty dog teams.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
And then we get separated out.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
We're IA's on different units all over, you know, so
your individual augmentees with different you know units, and you know,
our senior leadership would always you know, put the you know,
certain guys with certain you know units.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
You know that he knew they would, you know, excel in.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
So about a week and a half end ah being
in Afghanistan, I find out that I'm going to be
attached with first Recom Battalion and they're out of Pilson too,
and so we go up there and I'm kind of
one of the leaders now, uh, having trained all these
marines you know, to come up and all that, so
I'm one of the spokespersons.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
You may say.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
I would always go around to different units and you know,
familiar as ourselfs and introduce, you know, and let them know, hey,
you know, we're forced multipliers here to help you know,
where do y'all need us the most?

Speaker 2 (52:06):
And they put us put me with Force Recon.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
They had, uh, they still had a Force recombatant because
they'd cut them out there for a little bit and
they brought them back, you know, and I'm pretty sure
that was the last deployment that a Force Company got
to deploy. And then after that, they was, you know,

(52:30):
like whenever I got back from Afghanistan, I was being
forced to join MARSOK and they were trying to force
all the other guys, you know, the Force Recon guys,
They was, you know, trying to force them to just
join Marsok.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
They was kind of trying to downsize.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
The Marine Corps you know at that time, and you know,
you had to meet certain requirements to be able to
rein let us and stay in and all that.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
But they put me with Force Company, and.

Speaker 3 (53:00):
My first day out in the in the fight was
June sixteenth, So I'm about.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Two weeks in and you know, I meet these guys,
and you know, when.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
I show up to meet these guys, it was kind
of different because I show up there and I'm not
Sergeant James when I get there, you know, I'm just
Tommy yeah, and you know the captain and all that,
he's not you know, sir this or that. You know,
he's just John, you know, and you know these this
twenty four guys in first name basis, and you know

(53:36):
that was awesome, you know, being being there with these guys.
We had I think like twelve or thirteen snipers in
the platoon.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Wow, you know it was. It was a stacked stack
group of guys, you know.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
And first day in we show up and we're uh,
we are what spearheaded what they called Operation New Down
and it's a little different. They had to Operate New
Don in Iraq that I later you know, found out about,
and we were Operation new Don. That's what they called
our first mission out. You know, for the first time

(54:12):
we went out. We stayed out in the field for
thirty days. You know, we moved every four days. We
would just go take these compounds, you know, four o'clock
in the morning. Our hands were tied. We couldn't you know,
do many hard knocks and none of that.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Wasn't able to.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Do a lot of that high speed load drag stuff
that recom guys the stuff get to do.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
We were just you know, trying to do what we can.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Every four days we're moving compounds, and we couldn't knock
on their doors to four o'clock in the morning, you know,
we'd wake them up. And it was so crazy. We're
in the country with no electricity, no running water, living
in mud huts, and three hours after we knock on
somebody's door, the Taliban knows we're.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
There and we're in a tick, you know, just crazy.
They had these dag of no key.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
It is like they come out with in the early
two thousands and that was their new phones. And how
they had cell phone service over there still blows my mind.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
You know, that they had a cell phone service.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
You know, to be able to communicate, but we didn't
have running water and all of that crab you know.
So first day in we're supposed to we went there
and get breathed like we're gonna set up to snap
VCP on this main route that allow of the high
rank in Taliban h officis are using. So we show

(55:34):
up there, we insert about three o'clock in the morning,
he lo insert and we go set up our VCP
point and basically we had one irrigation ditch.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
It was about I don't know, eight.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
Foot wide and probably ten foot deep, but it's just
it's not deep in water.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
So and there's a little burn there.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
And later find out that we're the ones that dug
all the irrigation ditches in the eighties there and for
them to you know, be able to farm and stuff.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
So we're on the bank.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
So this irrigation ditch kind of spread out and the
captain and guns the gunnery sergeant Moss, I believe he
just got out, Brian Moss.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
He's he was the gunny in my.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Force recon group of guys, and uh, they're the ones
that's up there, you know, actually stopping the people.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
And we're thinking, we're gonna have a.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Bunch of people come through here and you know, gonna
be able to talk to them. They had to turf
with them, you know, to all that. And this dude
drives up on a mop head about twenty minutes after
day Life, and they talked to him, and of course,
you know, he says he's nothing and blah blah blah,
and he drives off and not even ten minutes after that,

(56:59):
we're in a ten yeah, and now we're surrounded. We
figure out real quick that they got snipers set up
in every location. How they get intell that we're going
to show up in these places, it's crazy to me.
You know, you can't like everybody over there, you don't
know who's Taliban and who's not. You know, they all

(57:21):
wear the same clothes, you know, and there's just no
telling telling them apart. You know, it's not like fighting
an enemy like another military unit, you know, because they're
all wearing man dresses, and you know they may might
have an e k under the man dress or ak
under the man dress or not, who knows.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
So first day in we get pinned down by these
snipers and it's all day affair, dude. We're just on
these you know, irrigation dishes. We're calling in air support.
We didn't get air supports around child time, you know,
twelve o'clock.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Before we got our first air support.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
And so they you know, come showed up and dropping
hell fire and you know, took out a couple of
the snipers. And then there's this other little half of
a mud hut. It had about three foot walls on it,
behind the irrigation ditch that we was pinned down on.

(58:21):
You know, all our guys were spread out along that
ditch on both sides of them, and Captain comes on
the radio and it's like, hey, James, can you go
clear that that compound so we can get some better
cover and you know, reassess, you know, our situation and
all that. So it was pretty sweet. I got to
send my dog. You know, that was one of the

(58:42):
high speed load drag things. I could send my dog
off lease. We're ninety nine percent of the other dog
handlers in all the military or on a six foot
lease or thirty thirty foot retractable lease. Yeah, you know,
my all my worst off drag. My dog has radios
on her. You know, I got the mic and I'm
you know a little microphone.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
I'm giving her.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Commands you know, over her radios and have her search
that whole thing. And you know, all I had was
a little about ten foot opening that I sent her
in and I had her you know kind of cross that,
you know, several times smelling and you know, searching for explosives.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
And then I send her.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
You know, she knows my specialized search dogs, no directions
and everything, so I could stop her, send her left,
send her right, send her forward, bring her back. You know,
that was what made the specialized search dog, so elite.
And you know that was no other military working dogs
done that, you know, only.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
The specialized search dogs. So I cleared it.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
And then you know, I ran out run out there,
and I got a spotter everywhere with being a dog handler,
I'm gonna have a spotter because my eyes are you know,
obviously on the dog watching her if you're in all that.
And I always have a guy you know, right beside
me that he's my eyes and ears.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
So me and my spotter go and you know, actually
enter the compound and by by around time sun's going down,
you know, the rest of the platoon finally made movement
over there, and then we regrouped, and so it's an
all day affair, you know, that day one, you know, Jason.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Yea, not even like a stake out, nothing right into.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
You know, straight into it. You know, we we do
several little recalling things. They you know, about the middle
of the day, they they asked me to come over
ready to hey, James, you think you can go clear
us a route to these compounds over here to the
south and so we can you know, take the fight
to them. And uh so, me and three other marines

(01:00:56):
were walking down this ditch, you know, searching.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
I'm with the dog, I'm searching.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
This and that, and you know, we did that and
then come back and of course it's one hundred and
forty degrees up there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
People don't understand. People have no can't even fathom the heat.
It's out of control.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
Oh man, it's crazy. What the dogs?

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
How did you keep the dog engaged in that level heat?

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Well, I carried double the water from everybody else, of course,
you know, I carried my whole load, my whole gear list,
just like the rest of the tune. And I had
to carry all her food and all her water with
me as well. So we got a lot of I
got one gallon a day and she got one gallon
a day. And so I just the Marine Corps dog

(01:01:43):
countlers that we get so much training, man like, leading
up to the deployment. You know, we're basically vettecs. When
we get ready to pour, you know, we get a
lot of training with the vets. We get to work
with a lot of other agencies, all the three letter
guys you know, we work with, you know, all them
dues they put us on hm ME when we put

(01:02:04):
on our pre deployment training, you know, work with HF
out there, Hugh Arizona.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
You know, they had mount towns and all.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
That set up there was that's another you know, hell hole,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
But yeah, they teach us, they train us.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
You know, to learn the signs, you know, all three
of the signs of you know, heat exhausting, heat stroke
and heat for heat stress and heat stroke you know
in our dog, and be able to.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Tell, you know, when they're getting too hot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
And you know, that's one of the biggest reasons why
the first two weeks when you get there, they make
us acclimate to the weather.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
You so for two weeks we had to just do
basic obedience out in the weather, full gear dogs and
full gear. And for the first two weeks you get
your dog acclimated to the weather over there, and over
time that you know, they get used to it, you know,
and are able to stand the heat.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
What was the name of your dog and how long
had you been operating with that dog prior to leaving.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
So whenever I show up to Penton, I have a
dog named Macky that I had was a love low
about fifty five sixty pounds Belgium mount that I trained.
It was the when we're in SSD school, you get
to sign two dogs when you show up there and
you're training two dogs the whole time you're there, you know,

(01:03:25):
and then at the end of the training, the best
dog out of the two gets a.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Sign to you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
And unlike the rest of the military working dogs, if
you get a sign an SSD dog, that's your property.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
If you PCs to Penlton, she's going with you. You
move to you knowlesume that dog's going with you. No
other dog handlers and any of the military for that,
you know, for you know, for that, you know, nobody else,
Like when you go to a base, you just got
to sign a dog at that base, and that dog

(01:04:00):
lived at that base its whole life, except for the
specialized search dogs, you know, because they took so much
more of a poor to you know, train them dogs.
So I show up with Mecky and there's another guy there,
Chris Bady. He was one of the few israel SSD handlers.
They sent some select guys over there to Tell Aviv

(01:04:25):
and instead of going to Lachland for their six weeks
to train, and they went to Tel Aviv and got
to work with the Israeli guys you know on specialized
work dogs search dogs, and they got.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
To you know, learn the real training you know, over there,
they their.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Hands wasn't tied by the moms of America, you know,
like it was in the fleet everywhere else. They got
to really train a dog. They didn't ask a dog
to do something, they told it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
You know, and and they was going to learn it
one way or another, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
But so I show up there with Mecky and he's
an okay dog, but he's just not great, you know.
He was green when I got him, and the staff
star and Batty was getting in the process of getting out,
and so there's only so many SSD handlers at each

(01:05:15):
you know, each base.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
And so I get a signed with rona kilo four
five eight. That was my dog. Her name was Roona.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
She's about a fifty five sixty pound on Belgium malawas.
She'd already been on two deployments di Iraq with baby,
so she was she was teaching me a lot of
stuff because whenever we showed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Up on base, you know, when we was in Lackland.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
We couldn't use you know, e callers and a lot
of that stuff, you know, you had to you know,
foods reward and high phrase stuff training.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
But when we showed up to sleep, you know, that's
when the training really started, right right, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
So I get a sign with RONA about a month
or two after I get to Pillton, and that's when
we start building our rapport and getting ready for the deployment.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
So that was.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Go ahead, all right, all right, so you're you're you
get in, go in country, get attached to that Force
parsuon day one. It's canatic, you're getting into it. Did
it maintain that pace that time? That that that level
of engagement through your whole deployment.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Well, the whole time I was with Force Company it
did you know we stayed out that first time?

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
Of course, you know Force they would always put us
in the hottest places and stuff like that. You know,
we was we were lucky for that because we got
to stay in the fight.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
I mean every day it was multiple ticks. You know, you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
Always know you was going to get in a tig
and then you know there'd be a break where they
would pray you know, thirteen times a day or whatever,
you know, and then after they got through, you know,
it starts again, you know, it starts with small arms
and all that. So it was out for about thirty
days the first time. And of course, you know, none

(01:07:11):
of us shaved and all that. So whenever I show
back up to Camp Leatherneck, and I didn't know it
at the time, I show up in country as a
corporal and the first we stay out for thirty days,
and then I go back to the Camp Leatherneck to
our kennels there that was set up at leather Neck,

(01:07:31):
and everybody thinks I'm a turk at first, because I'm full.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Beard, you know, hair, you know, grown out for thirty days.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
You know, they're just like, some of the guys just
looking at me, like, what's this turk doing in our kennels?

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
You know. And then some of the guys was you know,
calling me sergeant.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Once they figured out, you know who I was, you know,
they started calling me certaint James.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
I'm like, what the hell was you know, I haven't
been promoted that I know of. You know at that time,
you know, you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Only got promoted by compositive scores, and you know, they
had the level so high, you know, they wasn't looking
to promote me any you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Corporals and sergeant right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
Finally I figured out, you know, I asked Willie. I said, hey,
you know, why are some of these guys you know
calling me sergeant? You know, Willie was a staff sergeant
that was a kennel master that deployed with us, and
we were, you know, good buddies by this time, and like,
what's going on? He says like, oh shit, you hadn't
heard him. Like no, He's like, man, you got meritoriously promoted.

(01:08:33):
He said, you need to go down to the meth
and take a promotion picture. And I was like what.
I was like, well, can I go just like this?
And like, you know, you can't, dude, you got to
shave and you know, get and all that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
I was like, man, that'd be so awesome if I
got to take a promotion pick full beard, you know,
And uh, they wouldn't let.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Me do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
So yeah, some similar happened to me to my summer
O too, my first trip to Afghanistan, my only combat
appointment in the teams, and and we got like this
unsung hero thing. We went and met the general from
SOCOM and and uh, you know, I was at Sealed
Team one and they call it No Fun one. And

(01:09:15):
and you know, I had the beard was out to hear.
The hair was long, you know, and they looked at
us and they're like, go get your starch, cammis on,
shave your face, cut your hair, and and we showed
up and it was funny. Every other unit, the SF
unit that was getting recognized, the two guys you know,
long hair beards, the Mars. It was a forced guys.

(01:09:39):
They looked, you know, they were out in doing it.
And then the the Air Force JAYTAC guys that had
been there for like nine months at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
They had like zz top beards.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
They were wearing cutoff bedus and like tivas. And I'm
like this sucks, man, But yeah, I feel you when
you got to get you got your good combat flow
going and you got to.

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
Get all trimmed up.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Man.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
That's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Yeah, yeah, that was you know, whenever I first got back,
you know, of course I hadn't had a shower and
over a month.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
You know. Yeah, a lot of people don't understand.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
You know, when you deploy, you know, there's not just
bathrooms and shower huts everywhere. You know, when you're a marine,
you know, Marines are out in the field the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
You know, we don't get none of that luxury coming.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Back to a big bob every day, you know, and
being able to take a shower and all that. So
but I got squared away, and you know, then hell,
all the guys was forced and you know, figured it
out already before I even knew about it, you know,
And and so there's like, hey man, let me come
to your ceremony and all that, and so we did

(01:10:49):
all that crap.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
It was cool, and that's cool. Yeah, going back out
the second.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Time, you know, we we didn't helo insert the second time.
We took VIX out. And I don't know why we
took Vex out because once we got to that little
fob that we was going to, we parked them there
and we never got in the sunbitches again.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
So I'm thinking, why do we even drag these out
here and have to, you know, deal with all this,
you know, if we're not going to actually use them,
you know, but that's the Marine Corps for you, if
it makes sense, We're going to do the complete opposite.

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
Just to keep you on us, just to keep you harder.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
They gonna keep you on your toes, you know, every
time you left.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
You know, whatever little pb you were at, you know,
are a little compound, you're at them.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Irrigation ditches was everywhere over there. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
We're a helm in province, so we're almost in the
middle of the country and these these irrigation ditches are everywhere.
So as soon as you leave, your feet are getting wet.
Because of course we don't travel bridges or.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Walkways or nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
We're gonna, you know, try to jump these ditches, which
was hell wearing nods, and especially when you got a
dog attached to you. Oh, every time I was ready
to jump, she wasn't, and vice versa. And I woke
up in the middle of the ditch most of the times,
all out on my hands and knees.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
You know. It was because you could never judge a dish.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
And so I'm thinking, you know, when first walk up
to them, well, man, this ditch is only a foot
and a half two foot wide.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
I'm just gonna jump it, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
And you go to jump it, and you realize when
you're about six foot across that you're not at the
other side.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
You're in the bottom now, and each wet every time.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
Thirty minutes from leaving feet are soaking wet, so you're
wet feet, you know, hole daggum, you know, patrol and
then coming back, of course you're gonna get your feet wet,
you know, right before you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
Go back in. That's right. That was every day, you know,
So it's it's miserable.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
You know, your only care and you know, a couple
pairs of camis and your you know, rucksack, and then
you know, as many socks as you stuff in there,
you know, six may pairs, and you know that was
just part of it, you know. And I always had
you know, fifty pounds on average, extra weight on top
of me because you know, of course I got to

(01:13:20):
carry my dog's food, my dog's water, and you know,
the same gear list as all the rest of the guys.
And of course you know, they spread out, you know,
the stuff for the barrio and all that, so I
might have two or three mags and my rug too,
you know, and you know we always got spread.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Out the load. You know. So how long how long
did that did you go out? Another? Thirty days?

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
On that second it was about forty five days that
second go around. Wow, And we had a it wasn't
nearest Connecticut as the first push we went out, but
you know it was still you know, we got in
at least one to two ticks a day. You know,
it was always, you know, something every day. And we've
done all our movement at night. We've done very few

(01:14:05):
patrols during the day. We would always patrol at night.
And do you know our knocks or soft knocks, you know,
four o'clock in the morning, they had our hands tied.
We couldn't just rush in. You know, we did get
to do a couple of hard knocks.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
That was sweet. You know, that was when the real fun,
you know went down.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
You know, it's nothing like doing a you know, hard
knock going in, you know, two o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
They don't expect it, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):
You know, just you know, you got the element of
surprise at that point. You know, the rest of the time,
you know, they see it coming, they expect it, you know,
because they always knew where we were at, you know,
two or three hours after we showed up, if not sooner.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Who knows what was the feeling, What was the feeling
in the core during that time with those roes. Why
was there frustrate now obviously because you're with force, You're
you're getting to move at night, you don't have to
do over daylight stuff. You know what what was the
greater sense within the core about how constraining the roe

(01:15:11):
E'SE were and and was what was that mood like throughout?

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Man, it was like having your damn hands tied behind
your back. You could not engage first they you know,
you had to be you know, declared troops in contact
before we can.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Even engage the enemy. You don't know who's who.

Speaker 3 (01:15:32):
So we're just out there on our you know, toes
and you know, heads on a swivel with the whole
time because you know, you don't know who's who everywhere.
And it was, you know, it was frustrating a lot
of times. You know, we would look and you know,
get this intel. You know, intel would come in headquarters.

(01:15:52):
You know it's like, hey, y'all need to go check
this out, this and this and but of course you
know you can't engage, you know, going in the door.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
You know they have to engauge you. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
And the craziest thing about me, you know, I walk
point my whole deployment. You know, everywhere we go, no
discrepancy on where I'm at, I'm gonna be point man,
you know, so of course, you know that didn't bother me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
That's what I was trained to do, and that's what
I wanted to do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
And so anytime you was point man, especially with the
k K nine, you had.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
A bigger target on your head. You know, absolutely, I
was the one walking around with a target.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
And anytime we got into the tick, you know, the
bullets was always flying at me first, you know, because
they realized, you know, if I got a dog, you know,
I'm a forced multiplier. I'm the one finding all the
right ads and you know all that and you know,
keeping them from being able to you know, take mass.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Caws te's on us and everything.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
You know, I was, you know, always the one that
they just all the eyes were on me, you know,
and being you know, all the training that we went
through leading up to the deployment, you know, they got
you mentally and physically ready for it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Yeah, you know, it was no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
You know, did you did you guys take any casualties
during that deployment, Well, that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
First time we went out, we had no casualties whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
The second time we went out, one of our guys
that's in the patune. He was a sergeant at the time,
sergeant rolling, and he took a shot. I believe it
was the first Yeah, it was the first patrol we
went out on the second mission we went out on.

(01:17:47):
We went go take this compound. And we're taking this
compound four o'clock in the morning. We do our knock
and everything, nobody answered, do our call out and all that,
nobody answers. And then right at daylight, HQ comes on
the mic and it's like, hey, there's a lot of
activity next door, you know, a lot of movement. They're
digging it up in the garden. He said, we need

(01:18:08):
y'all to go check it out. So we You know,
of course, every time we took a new compound, every
four days, you spent from four thirty to day, like
filling sand bags. Everybody carried at least twenty five sandbags
with them, and that sucked every time.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
You know, you had to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Fill sandbags and barricade the entry ways rooftops for watch positions.

Speaker 2 (01:18:29):
You know, So you're doing that every time every four days.

Speaker 4 (01:18:34):
You know, so and saandbag sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Do what and Sam?

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
Filling sandbags sucks?

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Yeah, dude, I don't if I never see those sandbags
in my last body. Awesome. So we're in the middle
of doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:53):
We had we got maybe three sandbags high on our
watch positions, and so they call us and they're like, hey,
when you go check this compound next door. So we
take a little fire team. We got about eight or
nine guys and we run out of that compound we
took and go next door to you know, see what
the hell's going on over there? You know, they got

(01:19:15):
of course we got the I R above us, so
that they're the ones who notified us. You know, it's like, hey,
we're picking up a lot of activity on the isol
and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
We go over there, and.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
Dude, it was one of the worst days that you know,
I remember being over there because we we go to
run by.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
This door and I don't run by the door.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
I run in it, and some other guys run by
it and I get on the micro.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Hey, we can't run by this entry with you know,
without clearing it. Dude, y'all know better than that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:51):
Of course, you know, they're just trying to get in
a fight seat, you know, find what these guys are
hiding and all that stuff. So I run in there,
and then I got my spotter follow and then finally
they looped back and they come in and we start
searching this compound and there's.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
A couple of people in there. You're yelling.

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):
You know, we had to turf with us. Of course,
you know, he's always, you know, doing his own damn thing.
You know, we had these we had to carry these
A and A guys everywhere we went. The first time
we went out, we took four or five of them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Man, big paint ass. You know, we couldn't go nowhere
without them. Then the second time we went, we said, hey,
how many of these guys are we actually required to take?

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
And they're like, well, you have to have at least
two of them, And so that's all we took, and
we got.

Speaker 2 (01:20:41):
A lot better ones. They knew some English and stuff. Yeah,
so we go over there and man, we're not in.
I hadn't got a quarter of this building cleared.

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
And Roland was on the roofs next door, you know,
he had to bury it up there and everything, And.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
We got into a big tick.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
If they busted off with a damn RPG that buzz
two inches from my ears.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Wow, And that was that.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
Was one of the first times where I'm just like man,
if I would have leaned back done anything, you know,
it's over with, you know, and Eric, it was all
concentrated on me and Andrew Perryman, he's still in no
but no thinking is still in. It's hard for me
to keep up with these guys anymore because I unplugged about.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
Four months ago, yeah, all together.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
So I used to keep up with them on Facebook
and now I'm just I got tired of that stuff,
and I you know, I just unplugged from the rest
of the world, doing my own thing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
You know, the older you get, the more you realize.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
That, you know, you got very few friends, you know,
in the civilian world. You know, there's still guys that
I would go to war with today, you know that
I served with. But civilians, you know, they don't have
the mindset that we have, and you know, they wouldn't
take a bullet for you, Like, there wasn't a person

(01:22:10):
over there that I wouldn't have took a bullet for.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
In my group of guys, we got really tight, really
quick and rollings.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
He's raining down on it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
We finally figured out where the sniper fire and arbag
he comes from. It's another compound over They had this
high up spot with an open window that could see.
I mean, it was almost like they stage that whole
scenario because they was already set up. And that was
one of the worst firefights we've been in. And so

(01:22:41):
we clear all that and about ten minutes into that,
Tick Roland takes a round in his back and so
when he did, they said, hey, we're banning in this,
We're going back, and we got.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
To support these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
Of course we got to call intimating back and all that.
And that was the first.

Speaker 3 (01:23:04):
Time that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
We got the gloves taken off. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:23:11):
He come over the radio and said, hey, if it moves,
it dies, you know, we ain't letting you know this
is this is it. So that was a that was
uh first thing in the morning when that went down,
and it was like that for the rest of the day.
We called in man, I think seven or eight you know,

(01:23:32):
air support missions, and man, it was crazy, you know,
we we everybody was on the wall or on the roof.
There wasn't just you know, normally we only had two
guys on overwatch, you know, and everybody else you know,
was doing whatever and you know, but that day, if
there was a peep hole or anything, everybody was on
the walls, you know, looking from every direction, and we did.

(01:23:57):
We wasn't able to meet evact rolling out that night
because we stayed, you know, of course, you know, with
us being force recon. We had our own dock with.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Us, you know. And he was a Navy guy, but
he's not a normal Navy guy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
He's got the training.

Speaker 3 (01:24:14):
I forgot what they called him, but you know he's
got all the training, you know, and he's high speed
load drag, you know, and he deserve to be there
with us, you know. He you know, he was bad
to the bone too, you know, and of course he
you know, he was with us whenever we went on
that raid next door, of course, you know. And that's

(01:24:34):
what caused us to cut that short and have to
go back because when we you know, whenever they come
on said, you know Roland got shot. You know, of
course we got doc with us. We got a hall
ass back. Yeah we don't know the severity of it
or anything at this point, and we haul ass back
and you know, we get him off the roof and

(01:24:55):
replace on course, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):
We're when we get back we have.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
We realized we got to you know, get some more
cover because that was one of the reasons why he
got shot, is because he didn't have no cover. You know,
they're in prone position, but you know, he didn't have
enough cover to even you know, protect itself there. Yeah,
and so we had to get all that set up
and send the firefight all day. We didn't get he
didn't get a ride out that night, but when the

(01:25:21):
gloves come off that day and that was the only.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Injury we had in the first two times. About the
middle of the deployment, the army.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
Was getting ready for a big push in Candor and
at the time, the command in General for Afghanistan was
a dagum Army dude, and that asshole pulled all the
marine dog teams that was there away from all our
units and reassigned us to a different units in candle Hort.

(01:25:59):
So we had to pass back up all our ship
and we left all the guys that you know you
was with, you know, don't belt your repoort with and
got to know and we got stuck with you know,
these army guys, and man, you don't realize how much
training you actually have until you get put.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
With you know, one hundred army guys.

Speaker 3 (01:26:19):
And I'll never forget the first mission we went out on.
You know, they put me with uh, the ranger guys
that was there with one hundred first I think one
dash one eighty seven or something. It's on a couple
of these commendations up here. But they put us with
them Racassians or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
I forget. Couldn't even pronounce the dudes it was with.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
And we go to do it, you know, mission that
first night, and they said we're gonna We're not gonna
go through any entry ways.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
We're gonna climb over the walls or blow through the walls.

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):
The first time we went out, you know, I get
up there and you know, I'm taking off, you know,
falling this my spoder. Then I get down over that
and I look back and then you see the silhouette
of thirty or forty guys standing up and running across
this rooftop. And I get on the radio and I

(01:27:18):
just start screaming. I say, hey, get down, get down.
And we had a butter bar with us. Of course,
there's nothing like being with you know, a marine officer
that's in charge. And I said, what are y'all doing?
And he's just like, you know, we're assaulting where I said,
I mean, dude, one machine gun burst and you're all dead.

(01:27:39):
How do you not realize that? You know, they're just
gradually walking across no discipline, you know, no sense of urgency,
you know, and of course these guys are all fresh,
you know this thing dream, yeah, you know, a couple
of weeks, two or three weeks, and you know, we'd
already been there four or five months, you know, and

(01:28:00):
they just they didn't get it, you know. And after
that they brought me into headquarters and they put me
as in charge.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
There was we had like four or five Marine dog teams.

Speaker 3 (01:28:13):
This was that ram Rod. We got moved to five
ram Rod. Actually it was five Wilson first is where
we went to. And then they we spread out from
there and I got I went to five ram Rod
and I had about four or five Marines with me,
and then we had some other personnel, you know. I
had a female Army dog handler, and I had a

(01:28:37):
Navy guy and an Air Force dude that I was
over there, and of course I was I was a sergeant,
and some of the other guys was you know E
six's and E seven's, but I was still in charge
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
Yeah, yeah, right on. So that was that the sixth month.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
How much longer did your platoon did your last? And
when did you finally get out of there?

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
We stayed there till the end of December, okay, and
uh we didn't we didn't get to fly.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
It was I think we left either Christmas Eve or
Christmas Day.

Speaker 2 (01:29:15):
And you know how it is if you're.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
Flying on a C one thirty, If that some bit
stops anywhere, it's broke down.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Yeah. I don't know how we got.

Speaker 3 (01:29:22):
There, but anywhere it stops, it's gonna be broke down
for twenty four hours or so, who knows.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
They tell us at first six to eight hours.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
And then about fourteen hours in they're like, oh, we're
gonna be here twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
They got a problem, blah blah blah. But what one
of the.

Speaker 3 (01:29:39):
Things that really pissed me off is when they pulled
all our you know, we had guys with like all
other different branches of people, with SF people and all that,
and they pulled us off, put us off with the
army guys.

Speaker 2 (01:29:53):
We lost right off the bat. We lost Cookele Max Donahue.

Speaker 3 (01:30:00):
He lost him on I think about a week after
we got yeah, about a week after we got as
signed to these other units. He was searching a roadway
and his dog responded or you know, oh shit.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
Alerted on an ied and.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
Of course we set up a you know, he set
up a court on you know, and everything flagged, it
all off and they're setting up and as he's backing
up to you know, set up a perimeter, he steps on.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
An ad blows him and fingey up. And that was
on like August the eighth of twenty ten. We lost him.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
And the first mission that my force buddies went out
after I got pulled from him, they went to singing.
So we left hellmar or that we was in hell
Ma the first couple of times and they went to
sing it. It was a big puss that the Marine
Corps was doing up there. And man, it wasn't two

(01:31:11):
or three weeks in h one. One of the guys
that slept right beside me on my second mission out
with them, Jonathan Blank, He was a sergeant. He stepped
on I d and he got critically injured. He lost
both of his legs right above his knee caps down,

(01:31:32):
and several of the other guys rolling.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
He got rolling was like a damn magnet, dude. He
was always getting hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
That first day we went out, he twisted his ankle,
had to go back to the fog for a week,
and then of course he gets shot.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
Then you know, the second.

Speaker 3 (01:31:48):
Time, and then the third time they go out, you know,
he gets scrapping on from the A A D that
Jonathan steps on, and a couple of other guys you know,
gets scrapped on, gets injured and stuff. But yeah, that
that really pissed me off because the whole time I
was with them, we had zero injuries. Other than that time,

(01:32:11):
you know, he zero injuries.

Speaker 2 (01:32:13):
Ads.

Speaker 3 (01:32:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I felt like, you know, I was
helping keeping our guys you know, safe and on. That
pissed me off so bad that I felt like it's
always haunted me. I felt like Jonathan would still have
his legs if they wouldn't have pulled me from him,
you know, because Roman would have alerted on that hands down.
You know, it was a big enough ad that she

(01:32:35):
would have got on older way before the actual explosives device.
You know, So that really pissed me off. And Jonathan
he's actually works with the Black Rifle coffee. Now you'll
you'll see them on their advertisement commercial and it's I've
always thought it's pretty cool to you know, know the

(01:32:58):
military guy that they're person you know, putting on their
advertisement because you know they're not going to advertise.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
Who he is and all that. He got real lucky.
Lieutenant Dan was a Swayzey dude.

Speaker 3 (01:33:10):
Yeah, he built Jonathan a damn house.

Speaker 2 (01:33:13):
That's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:33:15):
So he got a house, you know, bill Form in
Texas where he was from. He you know, he got
out a couple a year or two after we got back,
and you know, then going back to our diplomas, he's
asking about the injuries and stuff. You know, Jonathan stepped
on I D first with the Ricon dudes and we

(01:33:38):
lose uh Corporal Donahue. And then in September, my actual
roommate that room that I was roommates with before deployment,
he stepped on a damn I A D and he
got injured real bad and he lost his dog.

Speaker 2 (01:33:56):
And his dog's name was Grief. His name was out
for Brenner.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
He was a corporate matter of fact, he ended up
writing a book surviving with grief, and ironically it was
already it's already a best seller on Amazon. You know,
he's been spreading a message and talking about what, you know,
what people we had to go through and everything for

(01:34:20):
ever since he got back.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
You know, he's stand up golden, do you know.

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
And Chris Williamham one of the other buddies, he was
a kennelmaster. He stayed in whenever we got got out.
Obviously he was already a lifer and he got to
travel around do a lot of you know, interviews with
different major news people and all that over his dog

(01:34:46):
that stepped on an ied with a junior Marine that
was on our first deployment and it's like two years later.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
His name was Rodriguez. One Rodriguez.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
He got a sign with Luca was his dog's name,
and she was so special to me.

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
Is because Growna and Luke Luca were out.

Speaker 3 (01:35:08):
Of the same group of dogs out of Tel Aviva.
She was both of them was Israeli SSD's and their
their tattoo numbers, you know, were Kilo four five eight
and Kilo four five nine.

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):
They were one number off, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:35:26):
But she she lost the leg and stepping on I
A D. Well, they've gotten smart, you know, they changed,
you know, their tactics. Once they figured out what SSD were.
You know, they would they started putting the pressure plates
behind the damn I A DS. So they set it

(01:35:48):
up to where by the time the dog responded on it,
you know, they would have a pressure player or something
behind them so that it would, you know, cause more
casualties in the whole you know, group of guys out
there right you was always changing, you know, the way
they did it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
You couldn't never figure them out.

Speaker 3 (01:36:06):
You couldn't stay on top of them, man, and you
don't know how they was communicating and everything else. It
was every day it was a new day. You didn't
know going out, you know, from day to day.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
So after when did you so you came home in
December twenty ten, and how much longer did you stay in?
When did you punch out? And tell me what that
decision was like?

Speaker 3 (01:36:36):
Well, we actually didn't get back to sometime in January,
about the first week of January.

Speaker 2 (01:36:43):
Of course, you know, it took us a week or
two of them get back.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
You know, we was hung out in different places, spent Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:36:50):
Eating some out of gas station, and food.

Speaker 3 (01:36:53):
You know the only thing that was open on Christmas
Day was some gas station, and we you know, staying
she bloney sandwiching the crap out of there, you know,
trying to make her way back.

Speaker 2 (01:37:03):
And we got back about the first second.

Speaker 3 (01:37:06):
Week of January, and I'd already made up my mind
that I wanted to.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
Get out, yep. And because I have, I got a daughter.
She was born in two thousand and four July two
thousand and four, and.

Speaker 3 (01:37:19):
I married her mom. Whenever I PCs from Quantaco to Pendleton,
I had ten.

Speaker 2 (01:37:27):
Days to make that move.

Speaker 3 (01:37:29):
And when I come through Arkansas, I stayed there a
few days, you know, and I ended up marrying her,
and they went out to Penlton with me, and of course,
just like most Marine Corps marriages, they felled within four
or five months, you know, and she left. She was
in Penlton with me for five months, and she left

(01:37:50):
and you know, told me she wanted divorced.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Two weeks later. I didn't even know we were fighting.

Speaker 3 (01:37:56):
You know, you know, cause of commanding Officer house. If
she gets finds that information gives me in a whole
lot of shit. And I hadn't done a damn thing
wrong and blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
So we got it took a year for me to
divorce her. I figured I went to the.

Speaker 3 (01:38:16):
I figured out I could file for divorce myself, didn't
have to hire a lawyer, and I took a bunch
of classes out there in California and it was sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Man. I got to do everything myself, and it took
a year.

Speaker 3 (01:38:27):
Long process, but our divorce was final the day before
we left for Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
Okay, So I knew that I wanted to be in.

Speaker 3 (01:38:36):
My daughter's life and I wasn't going to be able
to do that if I was going to stay in
the Marine Corps.

Speaker 2 (01:38:40):
So I had about when we got back in January.

Speaker 3 (01:38:44):
I had ten months left on contract because I went
in ten October six and was supposed to get out
nine October of eleven. But they had some up That's
when you know, part of that time that they were
trying to downsize the Marine Corps whenever we got back.
So they had a program out you know, where they'd
let you.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
Ees.

Speaker 3 (01:39:05):
They would move your ES date up to ninety days
ahead of time if you were going to get out
to further your education, So you had to put in
a package senior already accepted the college and this or that,
and the Marine Corps change your ES date and you know,
up to ninety days ahead to you know, allow you

(01:39:28):
to further your education. So I decided I was going
to go to college because I wanted to get out
ninety days earlier was the main reason.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
I wanted to do whatever I could do to be
able to get to my daughter, you know, sooner.

Speaker 2 (01:39:43):
I hadn't seen her in over a year and a
half at this point. Wow. So I put it in
the package.

Speaker 3 (01:39:49):
Get all that accepted, and I already knew, you know,
before we ever deployed that, you know, I wanted to
get out. So I started saving up leave for terminal leave.
So I had sixty days saved up. So I got
out in May. They changed my ironic thing, They changed
my ees from October.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
Ninth to July ninth. And that's my daughter's birthday.

Speaker 3 (01:40:11):
Oh wow, So I'll never forget that day, you know,
whenever I got out. You know, she was born July ninth,
o four. You know, I got out all right. My
actual ees date was July ninth, twenty eleven. But I
got out in May. You know, it's when I actually
got to leave, you know, on my terminal leave and
come back to Arkansas. And to be honest, it was

(01:40:36):
a struggle, you know, whenever I got out, you know,
I did connect with this one other guy.

Speaker 2 (01:40:43):
I went.

Speaker 3 (01:40:44):
You know, I got out in May, and of course,
you know, college wasn't in until August. So I moved
back into my same place I was in whenever I
left the Marine Corps, and I go back to work
at the motorcycle shop that I grew up working in.
It's Cooper Motorcycles and there in town. And I started

(01:41:07):
working in there almost immediately after we moved to Arkansas,
and so I already had a lot of experience there
and I come back and I start working there. Of Course,
you know, I got a pocketful of money because you
just get back from Afghanistan. You know, you got your
deployment money and stuff. So I wasn't really kind of
hustle or nothing. You know, I was in pretty good shape,

(01:41:28):
you know at that time. And like it wasn't what
I expected. You know, before I left, I was really popular.
I was always popular guy in school, had a lot
of you know, good times with different people. And I
thought when I got back. You know, man, I'm gonna
call up my buddies. You know, we're gonna drank some
beer and party, you know, having all these girls and stuff,

(01:41:52):
and it's almost like it's a different world. You know,
I was gone for five years and nothing was the same.
You know, these same buddies that you partying with before
you left, you know, done moved on or through lives
and then started families and you know, got a career going,
and nothing's the same. So you know, you come back
thinking you're gonna go back to how it was before

(01:42:13):
you left and joined the military, and it's like a
wake up call, man, and a bunch of other stuff
just starts pissing you off, you know that you never
would have dreamed of before. You know, you get upset
about stuff and you know, things that people would do
and say and all that. And then going to college, man,
that was you know, man, I heard like my so much,

(01:42:37):
you know, But whenever I joined the Marine Corps, I
was already older. When I joined the military. You know,
I wasn't seventeen or eighteen fresh out of high school.
I'd already been on my own working, had my own
place and everything else, and I think that's another thing
that made me succeed so much whenever I went in,
because I you know, I was already he's you know,

(01:43:00):
taking care of myself. I wasn't fresh off mom's tad
or nothing like that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
You know, I already knew how life worked.

Speaker 3 (01:43:07):
So that's why I felt like it was so easy
for me to assume a leadership role, is because I'm
already older than these guys, you know how you know,
most of them hadn't ever had a real job or
nothing at all. So I get out and now I'm
now I'm the old guy going to college. You know,

(01:43:28):
I've already done five years of Marine Corps and now
I'm in college. I'm like I was twenty eleven so
and I.

Speaker 2 (01:43:36):
My dad do the math on it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:38):
So I'm I'm several years older than ninety nine percent
of these people. And yeah, lucky one dude in there.
I was going for mechanical engineering. There's one dude going
for the same thing. He's a grunt, you know, marine grunt.
So we connected, you know, and we would sit next
to each other and on that's I think it helped.

(01:43:58):
He just got out too, And I think that me
and him connecting helped both of us make.

Speaker 5 (01:44:04):
It absolutely a lot easier, you know, because we would
cut up and you know, make our own jokes and
shud make fun of these kids, you know, these kids wearing.

Speaker 2 (01:44:14):
Socks and sandals, like who does that?

Speaker 3 (01:44:17):
You know, we'd be clowning, you know, and we were
just kind of away from the rest of.

Speaker 2 (01:44:22):
The people because they were all, you know, eighteen nineteen.

Speaker 3 (01:44:24):
Years old, you know, and they hadn't even you know,
they had no clue what the real world was really like.
You know, he'd done a deployment tyraq, and all sudden
we connected.

Speaker 2 (01:44:36):
It got to be pretty good buddies.

Speaker 3 (01:44:39):
While we was going to school together and only done
the first that one semester of college because.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
You know, I had to had to maintain a certain
GPA and.

Speaker 3 (01:44:53):
Everything the whole time I was in, you know, to
meet my requirements from our early release from the Marine Corps.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
So I'd already started putting in applications.

Speaker 3 (01:45:03):
And when we was off on that Christmas break, I
put in an application for the Union Pacific Railroad as
a transportation employee.

Speaker 2 (01:45:15):
And while we was.

Speaker 3 (01:45:15):
Off on that break, I got called in for an
interview and I'd had an interview prior to going into
the military.

Speaker 2 (01:45:23):
That was one of the reasons why I went in.

Speaker 3 (01:45:26):
I had an interview in six I already been trying
to get on for almost three years, and I had
one interview and I said, look, if I don't get
this in, if I don't get this job with the Railroad,
I'm going to the Marine Corps. Because I've read where
the Union Pacific Railroad was the number one most military

(01:45:47):
and fl friendly employer. I said, if I go do
four or five years the Marine Corps, I won't have
a problem getting on. So that was one of the
plans going in. So long story, short cut back. I'm
out on that Christmas break, you know, and I'd already
re enrolled for the next semester and all that. But

(01:46:09):
I get this interview with the railroad, and I go
in and do it. I pass everything with flying colors,
get a actual sit down to interview with them again.
And I told the guy, you know, I said, look, man,
I said, I need to know yes or no real
quick like, because I'm supposed to start back school middle
of January, and I have to repay back all these

(01:46:31):
you know, grants and all this crap. If I don't
go to school, and the very next day I get
an email saying they've extended a job offer. So and
it was for a conductor position on the railroad. Well,
I started out making you know, like eighty thousand dollars
a year, and if I was to stay on as

(01:46:54):
a mechanical engineer, like the highest paying job in the
state was only like eighty five thousand, that was maxed
out somehow, Hell would I do three more years of this?
And I started making this kind of money now and
go up from there. So that's why I, you know,
dropped out of college and accepted that position on the railroad.

(01:47:15):
And that was that was an adjustment, you know, because
it was the railroad. Believe it or not, the railroad.
That railroad is a whole lot like the military. You know,
if it makes sense, let's do the complete opposite kind
of you know, you don't know how they'd make, you know,

(01:47:37):
four point six billion dollars a year when when you're
in the trench is actually doing the work. And the
way you got your hands tied, you know, it's so
much like, you know, you got your hands tied, you
can't do it the fast way. You got to do
it the railroad way, the saft way, yeah, you know.
And so that's where I actually met Clifton. Brian Clifton,

(01:48:00):
the guy that you know told you about me. So
that's where I met him. And it was a whole
lot of similarities as far as howis run and you know,
the bullshit you got to put up with and all.
You know, it's just I'd never understand and still to
this day. I actually got in a little bit of

(01:48:20):
trouble in my training because I figured out real quick.
You know, it didn't make sense to me they would
spend all this money hiring you in training. You trained
you for three and a half months to be a conductor,
and as soon as you marked up and got your certificate,
they were looking for a way to fire you. Man,

(01:48:42):
I was just like, why in the hell are they
running around, you know, testing us, making you, you know,
trying to fire us, and when they just spent sixty
thousand dollars training us. So during our training, you know,
we had some managers come in to talk to us
in our last couple of weeks, and of course, you know,
I'm about spoking guy, so all the instructors know me

(01:49:03):
and everything, you know, during all the training and all that,
and we had a couple of managers come in there's
just like, you know, asking us questions and stuff. And anyhow,
they they called on me for something and asked me
about how I felt about it, and I said, I
ain't gonna lie.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
You know, this doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:49:23):
And he's just because the instructors had already told us
we got sixty days whenever we graduate from our training
that we're on a derail process they called it. And
during the derail period they could fire you and terminate
you completely for almost anything you've done wrong, didn't make
a shit if it was your fault or not. You

(01:49:45):
go out there and you get hurt on the job
and no fault of your own, they.

Speaker 2 (01:49:51):
Would terminate you. Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:49:53):
And the instructor had told me that a couple of
days before that, and so that was still.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
Spinning around in my head.

Speaker 3 (01:50:04):
And when the managers come in, you know, talking to us,
you know, I spoke up about it and I said, man,
I think it's bullshit, and you're just like, excuse me,
and he says, like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
I said, you know, I brought it up. It's like
it makes no sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:50:19):
How y'all can terminate us, you know, our first sixty
days and it not being any false of our own.

Speaker 2 (01:50:25):
Wow, why is this place operating like that?

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
And now they never do those those organizations, it is
what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:50:36):
Once they get become these.

Speaker 1 (01:50:37):
Golias of corporations, you know, they they it never seems
like anything makes sense, much like the military.

Speaker 4 (01:50:45):
All right, let's let's wrap it up.

Speaker 1 (01:50:46):
Let's tell me about what were the greatest lessons that
you learned from your time in the Marine Corps and
what would you recommend to young men who are thinking
about going in right now.

Speaker 3 (01:51:01):
Well, some of my greatest lessons was, you know, learning
what integrity was, and you know, all that kind of
stuff up, the real values and stuff that the military
teaches you about, you know, and the I guess, the

(01:51:21):
way it makes you grow up.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
You know, my three months in the military.

Speaker 3 (01:51:26):
I mean I was already almost twenty one years old
when I joined, but then three thirteen weeks of boot camp, man,
I grew up more than thirteen weeks, you know, than
I did, you know the rest of my life, you know,
and you know these new guys coming in, you know,

(01:51:47):
I would tell them. You know, man, apply yourself, you know,
and learn about it before you ever joined.

Speaker 2 (01:51:54):
And there's no greater brotherhood than the Marine Corps.

Speaker 3 (01:51:58):
If you do happen to earn the title and earn
that Eagle globe and anchor, there's no greater feeling on
earth than when you get that pend on your chest.
You know, it's a brotherhood that you know, like you
said earlier, it never dies.

Speaker 2 (01:52:16):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:52:17):
The people that you deploy with and the people that
you train with and do stuff with every day, you
create a bond with that's never ending.

Speaker 2 (01:52:26):
You know, if they call you.

Speaker 3 (01:52:28):
If one of my buddies, you know, Rolling Andrew, any
of them forced boys, if they call me saying, hey, man,
I need you out here. You know, I'm shutting down
my shop, putting sign on the door, and I'm gone
a couple hours.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
You know, we're going wherever they're at. We're gonna help them.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
So do something that challenges yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:52:50):
You know, don't just join the cheer force because it's
the easiest.

Speaker 2 (01:52:54):
One to go to.

Speaker 3 (01:52:55):
Everybody says, you know, and you know, don't do it
because it's easy, you know, don't you know, try to
you know, challenge yourself and make yourself a better person,
you know, because there's so many people. You know, when
you get out of the military, and these people you

(01:53:15):
know ask you about your time and certain stuff, and
every one of them, all these army guys, Air Force guys,
you know, they're always saved.

Speaker 2 (01:53:23):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:53:23):
He said, I almost joined the Marines, but you know,
but what you know, you got scared. You know why
didn't you? You know, there's you know, and just it's
a challenge, and it puts so much respect in front
of your name. You know that there's people just knowing

(01:53:46):
that you're a Marine. I mean, it puts fear in
most of their eyes, you know, where you can walk
around and almost feel like Superman, you know, because these people,
you know, they look at you and you know your
marine and this and that you know and there you know,
they're gonna think twice about what they say to you
and how they speak to you, and what I One

(01:54:07):
thing that I still haven't figured out is why Marines
when they get drunk, there's every time, it's no matter what,
if you go out with a group.

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
Of Marines and you get drunk, there's gonna be a fight.
You know. They Marines love to fight, dude. You know
it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:54:27):
And even now, you know, I got so damn mad
at my nephew that that drove me out to you know,
to a bar a couple of weeks ago, and uh,
I told them, you know, there's a bar right down
the road from my house, and like, man, we go
down there.

Speaker 2 (01:54:40):
I'm not worried about getting two miles back down here
to the house. We'll walk if we have to.

Speaker 3 (01:54:45):
You know, I said, don't carry me into town though.
Of course, you know, you know what happens. You know,
you make a plan and then you know, the drinks
start rolling and you see some hobbies in there, you know,
and it's like, where are we going? You know, of
course we end up with this other the place, and
you know, however, it just it's almost.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
Like marines are magnets to trouble. You know, they're just magnets. Man.

Speaker 3 (01:55:11):
There's always every weekend and it's like, you know, there's
so many more admins and stuff that are wrote behind
this junior marine getting in trouble out in town, you know,
and causing shit and stirring up a scene. You know,
they're just magnets too.

Speaker 1 (01:55:28):
Well, I think marines are magnets to the fight always.
It's just the way it's been for two hundred and
fifty years. It's the way it will always be as
long as that as free of gorgeous continues. So, Sergeant
Tommy James, I can't thank you enough for coming on
and sharing your story with my audience, and.

Speaker 4 (01:55:50):
Just a real privilege and a pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
Man. It was an honor to meet you.

Speaker 3 (01:55:56):
Dan or David, I'm sorry, and I never got the
chance to work it with any Seal guys, but I did.

Speaker 2 (01:56:04):
My buddy Mendoza that's still in there.

Speaker 3 (01:56:06):
His first deployment Iraq, he got to work work with
some and that was in either seven or eight, and
you know that was it was cool to no, no,
you know, he got to work with y'all. And then
you know, to know, like even whenever the Seal guys
went in there and you know, took out Osama, you

(01:56:29):
know the fact that you know they had a male
with him.

Speaker 2 (01:56:33):
You know, I said, man, that would have probably been
me if I would have stayed in. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
Unfortunately, one one other reason why I got out of
the military, because whenever I got out, you know, they
was putting Morsack together and making it bigger, and if
you met the requirement some more sock, you had to
go take the assessment.

Speaker 2 (01:56:56):
And I met all the requirements, so that if I wanted.

Speaker 3 (01:57:01):
To reenlist, I couldn't re enlist and be a K
nine handler anymore. I was going to have to re
enlist and go to Marsaw, which didn't bother me whatsoever,
especially after working with the forced guys and.

Speaker 2 (01:57:12):
All that, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:57:14):
So, but one thing that was kind of a Debbie
downer for me is during all that screening process, they
asked you if you've ever had a.

Speaker 2 (01:57:22):
Concussion, and my dumb ass told the truth.

Speaker 3 (01:57:27):
You know, I said, yeah, I had a concussion whenever
I was a kid, and that disqualified me.

Speaker 2 (01:57:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:57:32):
So, you know, well I could have reenlisted after that,
but I lost the interest, you know, you know, I
was motivating always gung hold, you.

Speaker 2 (01:57:44):
Know, to.

Speaker 3 (01:57:46):
If I you know, even though I'm a marine, I
want to be the baddest marine you know there.

Speaker 2 (01:57:50):
Is, you know for sure?

Speaker 1 (01:57:53):
All right, sergeant, thank you so much, God bless you,
and I wish you all the best man someper five
hey

Speaker 3 (01:58:00):
God bless and Tomorrow's marine corpse two hundred and fiftieth birthday,
and I just want to sign off with saying Happy birthday, Marines.

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Marine Corps 250th Birthday Special: Sgt. Tommy James and the Dogs of War | Ep. 74

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Marine Corps 250th Birthday Special: Sgt. Tommy James and the Dogs of War | Ep. 74