Ep. 225 | Scott Lyng | Army Tanker, Firefighter, and OIF Veteran - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:23):
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let's get to it. There's nothing else we can go
ahead and just kick it off. Due, all right, So

(00:44):
Scott Ling, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. So
Army tanker correct and you got out in twenty ten.
Also a firefighter, you know that's a I don't think
I've had any tankers on. Someone can remind me if
I have, but I'm pretty sure I haven't had any
I've had I don't even know if I've had anybody
that served with tanks in the Marine Corps. Becuse tank

(01:05):
the tank community in the Marine Corps is pretty small
before they got.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Rid of it, and they got rid of them.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, yeah, now it's gone. So I have a couple
of questions for you. I want to get into all
your military stuff and the army stuff, but first, because
you know, we have these fires out here in California
and you're a firefighter, You're you're a residential firefighter, correct, Yeah, yeah,
what have you ever gone to a fire hydrant that

(01:31):
was not that didn't work, that was empty? Has that
ever been an issue?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Not in not in the sense that I needed it
right then and there. Yeah, the department I worked for,
we bordered Chicago, so we're only like four point eight
square miles, but we're the west side of Chicago, so
we're very busy. For three stations, we run about nine
thousand calls a year. Every year we do fire hydrant testing.

(02:00):
And yeah, there's been a couple of times when you
come up to a hydrant and we test, we flush
them that you'll snap the snap the oh gosh, what
the heck's it called? The rod that runs down to
the to the waterman. You'll snap that and you'll get
nothing out of it, or you just spin it and
then nothing happens. So it happens.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, Yeah, I just thought it's so crazy, like what's
happening out here? I'm in San Diego. For those that
may not have seen the show before, we just had
some fires nearby. I mean I've had them. I mean,
if you're in California, you know the fires happen, but
too Yeah, it's like an ongoing thing and then the
rain comes and then the mudslides come and then everybody's like,
how did this happen?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
It's like, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
It happens literally every year, but this one was a
little bit more devastating than normal. And it's just crazy.
How like funding for like a fire department, I don't
know how that's ever questioned, you know what I'm saying.
And it wasn't like they they the leadership that people
criticized at the fire depart that the fire chief she

(03:03):
pulled out documents showing how like she had been requesting
funding and saying that they were understaffed and stuff like that.
And I think that's an issue in a lot of
fire departments across the country nationwide. Idea, what is like,
I mean, what are what what do you see like
in your I don't want you to like get yourself
in trouble, but like in general, what do firefighters need
more of?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Oh man, right now, it's staffing. Nobody wants to do
the job. When I was testing, you know, because it's
a municipal test, you know, So I got out of
the fire I got out of the Army, went into
the Fire Service, and you got to take municipal tests,
and those to take the test, then you would get
on an eligibility list, and the eligibility list would be

(03:47):
good for two years. I would go take these tests
and this is all Chicago, suburban Chicago area, maybe two
three hundred sometimes, you know, I think what the one Aurora,
like two thousand people took this test. Nowadays host COVID
and I don't know if it's just a COVID thing
or whatever it is. We're lucky we get fifty people

(04:10):
to take the test, and out of that fifty maybe
fifty percent pass out of that fifty percent, You're lucky
if they passed the background test. That's just staffing right now,
where everyone nationwide is hurting for staffing.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
That's crazy to hear because I always thought that, see
what you said before, Like, hey, two thousand people came
in to take the test, everybody I ever taught. I
had a buddy who got out and he wanted to
apply for the Chicago Fire Department and he was like, dude,
the weight on this is like years. This was like
in twenty ten. So he's like, the weight is literally
like years. All I can really do is go maybe

(04:46):
go become an EMT and work in that field until
a spot opens up maybe, you know what I'm saying.
And I was like, oh, that sucks. So you're saying
that's not the case anymore. People aren't even applying anymore.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
People aren't applying. No, huge And it's it's across it's
I mean obviously public service, but it's across. Uh. Police
especially whether that be whatever reason, political or whatever, but
fire service were taking a hit too.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah. Police, I mean especially in the Chicago area. Those guys, man,
they get So there was that police officer that was
killed recently, you know, like a month ago or a
month and a half ago or something like that.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
The one that happened to day for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I mean he was my city, our village, oh was it?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And he was what on the hours for less than
two years, wasn't he He was a younger police officer.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
He had been with our department for cart and the
police department the village that I worked. Yeah, he'd been
under it was under five. I knew that much.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
It's crazy because like for people that don't, I'm from Lotfand,
Indiana originally, which is not too far from Chicago, and
my dad lived in Chicago. He actually worked on Great
Lakes and lived in the west of that area. I
can't remember the area, the actual town he lived in,
but it was right outside of like the area you're
talking about. But like they have that civilian there's like

(06:14):
a civilian group that can investigate police shootings and stuff.
Oh yeah, and it's like every which I get it,
and I you know, on its surface, you hear that
and you're like, oh that makes sense, Like people should
you know, see what we should all get the facts
of anytime the government kills somebody right, But it becomes
like a witch hunt for even stuff that is obviously

(06:37):
you know, like the officers being shot at, he returns
fire and kills the guy, and now he's being investigated
and and all these there's like all these issues and
stuff like I don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Man, I think I think it's almost nationwide now everybody
wears body camera. Yeah, you know, you can't hide from
that stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Well. I was just talking to my buddy yesterday who's
a police officer, and he was saying that what has
happened is that people are realizing that the police aren't
lying as much as everyone says. You know, someone comes
out and says, oh, this guy, the police came up
and just shot him, he wasn't doing anything wrong. Well
then the bodycam footage comes out and you see him
running at him with a knife or pulling a gun
out of his waistband or something like that. And it's

(07:16):
like what people thought they were going to uncover a
lot of like crimes by police officers, which there have
been some, you know cases of that, but a lot
of times it's just normal interactions. You know, cops are
just like every other person, you know. I think that's
something that has come from that, which is good.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Absolutely absolutely, And that was even as officer reddens. They
released the body cam footage of him, and it was, Yeah,
they were casually talking to him, trying to get him
to come to them, and he pulled a gun and
you know, unfortunately killed killed him and he survived. He
was shot once or twice, but he survived.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
So yeah, man, I just can't believe. I get why
people don't want to be police officers, especially in cities
like Chicago or something where it's like the politics of
it can be very you know, you can get burned
so fast for just doing your job. But we thought
there was a push for that.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
You would think, and you know, and it is the
great it is probably to me, it's the greatest job
I've ever had. Well, next next to shooting one hundred
and twenty millimeters smooth board. But yeah, you would think,
I know, the political climate that we were in a
couple of years ago, they even talked about us getting
body camps on the ambulance, which I mean that threw

(08:39):
a bunch of red flags for us because of hippo
laws and you know, patient privacy and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
But well, I mean wasn't those same hippolaws apply to
police officers that are providing first aid to.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
People though, So my understanding of that because we do
have officers get in the back of the ambulance with us,
depending on the call, right, if it's a combat patient,
psychiatric something like that, or if they're under arrest. Obviously
some of them, and don't don't quote me, I believe
they do turn off the camera, but at they're undercust

(09:12):
If they're in custody, I think they leave the camera on.
But I think everything's blurred out. Even if you like
foid it, they'd blur it out. They'd edit the audio
so you can't hear, so you're protecting that person.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, So yeah, that's crazy. Man. I was actually just
telling my kid recently, because he's getting ready to graduate
from high school. I was like, I saw a notice
on Instagram. I don't remember which page put it out there,
but it was one of the firefighting pages and there
was a openings listed for seasonal positions as a wildland

(09:43):
firefighter up in Trucky And I was like, dude, like,
if you're coming out of high school and you don't really,
he doesn't really he's not really sure what he wants
to do and stuff like that, you know, And I'm like,
if you don't know what you want to do, a
job like that is really cool because it lasts a
few months. You know, it lasts a fire, so you
can and you can walk away anytime. Really, but if

(10:03):
you go up there, you're living on the job. It's
one of those things you were like fully immersed in
at the whole time you're there. Always like it'd be
like an intense summer camp. Dude. I was like, you'd
come back, you'd be super jacked from hiking up and
down the mountains up in Trucky. You'd have all these skills,
and you'd have probably at least ten thousand or more
dollars in the bank now that you can just go
buy a car, get a place, whatever you want to

(10:25):
do as an eighteen year old kid, which is awesome.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, it's like a deployment.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, it's definitely. I was like I was telling him,
I was like, if you don't know what you're gonna do, man,
maybe that's not a bad idea. He's got another job
lined up, so I think he's gonna do that one.
But I I don't know, man, when I was younger,
I used to think being a firefighter would be super cool.
I used to. You know, maybe it's because I grew
up in that era where we're watching like Backdraft and
stuff like that, and it was like.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yes, oh, if you go, we go.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
You know what kind of deal?

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Oh no, yeah, that's uh I joke that that's I
mean there's a bunch of firefighters out there that will
say that movie me or movies like The Towering Inferno,
the TV show Emergency. Uh. You know that that kind
of got us into the fire Service. I knew. I
knew at a young age the two things I was
really interested in was the military or the fire Service,

(11:13):
and that was it for me. So yeah, I love it,
and you'll you'll you'll never find a fireman that says.
What do they say, I find a job you love,
you'll never work a day in your life. Yeah, and
that's that's the fire Service.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, it looks like a cool job. I mean it
really does. I mean it's obviously hard on families and
stuff because of the crazy schedule, but I think it's
one of those things, like the military, you kind of
have to adapt, you know. So let's jump backwards then,
because you're doing that stuff now. Before that, you decided
to join the army. What made you decide to join
the army over other branches? And then did you decide

(11:46):
to go into tanks or was that where you were placed?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Oh that's a funny story. No, so I I honestly so. Oh.
Going into freshman year of high school, I found this
program down in Texas called Marine Military Academy, which is
a marine I don't know the sponsored or whatever whatever
it is, but they're a bunch of retired Marines and

(12:09):
they run a high school program. What's for you, you know,
for your high school. So they had a summer camp
program for like a month, and uh, you know, I
begged completed my parents, Hey I want to go. I
want to go, So they sent me. It's pretty much
basic training for high school kids. You know, a bunch
of bunch of wayward boys down there that you know,

(12:29):
parents are trying to straighten them up. And then there's me, like,
I volunteered for this. What did I do? So that
was you know, I really like I really when I
came out of that, I had that confidence going into
high school and I was like, man, this is kind
of the path I want to go down. Weirdly enough,

(12:49):
that was two thousand. That was two thousand and one.
So my freshman year of high school, nine to eleven happened,
and you know, that was that was kind of it
for me. It was all right, we're at war. I
know when I got and I get out three years,
I this is what I'm gonna do. I had a friend,
a really close friend of mine, he enlisted prior to

(13:12):
prior to nine to eleven, and he was actually in
the invasion. I want to say he was with three
seven Marines. Eric, if you're listening, I apologie if I
got that wrong, but uh, yeah, he he went on
the invasion. So we stayed in contact and it's still
in contact with him to the stay. So I kind
of knew, like that's what I wanted to do. Senior

(13:34):
year of high school. Uh, buddy of mine went to
talk to a Marine Corps career and he trying to
I guess they do like a like a buddy program
or something. So he was going to be crash rescuing
in the Marine Corps. Yeah, and he ended up doing it.

(13:55):
He ended up spending five years in Okinawa. So you know,
he loved it. We had the same contract. I was
going to do it with him, and like last minute,
I was just kind of like, I don't know, Like
you know, we're in Iraq, we're in Afghanistan. I kind
of want to go combat, Like I feel like that's

(14:15):
something that I needed to do. So I took a
step back from the Marine Corps and it was just
a fluke. I graduated high school. I was driving a
tow truck actually, and it was like three or four
days after I talked to the recruiter, and an Army
recruiter call me and I was like okay, Like he's like, hey,
you want to come in talk. Sure, let's go sit

(14:37):
down with him. And for whatever reason, whatever he was
selling me like sounded good. But mechanic stories. He was
a he was a mechanic in the invasion. He was
like I don't know what unit he was in, but
he was an army mechanic for Humpies. So he just
kept on talking to me like, hey, man, you want
to be a mechanic, Like that's the best job in

(14:58):
the army. Man Like here going to get out have
some skills. Yeah, Like I kind of want to do combat, man,
Like I'm young, I'm dumb. Let's go. So I signed, uh,
you know, I did my initial stuff there and uh,
I didn't sign a contract or anything, but I had infantry,

(15:19):
calf scout or tanker or my three choices. So like,
I don't know, Like a month goes by and I'm
supposed to go to MEPs, not MEPs. Yeah, I'm not
supposed to go to MEPs to uh, you know, do
the whole duck walk cough, you know, fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Show your butthole to the old Air Force guy. Everybody
doesn't matter what MEPs he went to has that same story.
It's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
He was air I thought he was a Navy.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
Well Air Force guy, some old old dude.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah. So I show up because they had us stay
over at a hotel so we would go the night before.
I show up at the recruiting station and I'm like, hey,
you know, I'm here to go to APPS. They forgot
about me, which there's there's a history of that happening
in my army, my military career. So like, oh, they're scrambling,

(16:10):
they're trying to find somebody to take me to MAPS,
and there's this brand new E five they just got in, Hey,
can you take him to the maps and say, yeah, sure,
get in the car with this guy. He asked me.
He's like, hey, you know, what are you gonna What
are you gonna sign up for? I was like class,
thinking infantry, but I really kind of like CAVS scout. Uh,
you know, I want to be combat He chuckled, and

(16:34):
he's like, you don't want the CAVS scout. I'm like,
why is that? He's like, you want to be a tanker? Oh?
Like what? Well? The guy had just come from an
armored unit and he was a nineteen kilo So forty
five minutes car ride with him, I was like, shoot,
I want to be a tanker.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I guess yeah, it's it's It's funny, how like if
you sit down with someone that enjoys their job, how
the way they talk about it and explain it to
you can really convince you that you want to do
that job. Now, someone that really enjoys being a mechanic
trying to convince someone else that's one of those jobs
you got to you gotta want. I mean, all of
them are jobs that you gotta kind of want. But

(17:13):
I didn't want to be a mechanic. When I came
in and that was miserable for me. I will say
I learned a lot and I've probably saved thousands of
dollars on doing my own maintenance and stuff on my
own vehicle. But outside of that, like that was not
you know. So if you're like, if that's that's what
you're all about, then go for it. But yeah, I mean,
I think that's good that you kind of stuck with

(17:33):
what you wanted though, you know, rather than letting them
talk you into something else, because this is like a
once in a lifetime opportunity and that kind of decision
can I mean, how much different would your career have
been had you been like, yeah, you know what, let's
do mechanic. You know, like that's a completely different side
of the army than being a tanker. You know, yeah,

(17:55):
how does that work? So, you know, obviously most of
my audience and a lot of my guests are like
Marine veterans and stuff like that, or people that know
more about the Marine Corps. We have thirteen weeks boot camp,
then we go to a month of MCT, which is
Marine Combat Training or SI. If you're infantry, you go
to the School of Infantry and then following MCT. If
you're not infantry, you go to your MS school and

(18:18):
that's however long it is. Some of them are on
Army basis. When I went through to be a Ford observer,
a fire support man, my school was on Fort Sill.
You know, there's a marine battery a board at Fort
Sill that is works alongside, but you're not like mixed
classes or anything. Can you kind of explain that process
for people that may not know. For the army side, Yeah,

(18:41):
So the.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Army they do a thing called OSUT, which is one
station unit training, So that's certain MOSS have that where
you do your basic training and you do your ait
all at one station. You're not moving. I think medics,
you know, medics would maybe go to like Fort Jacks
And for basic training and then they'd get shipped down

(19:01):
to Fort sam Houston for a t But for US infantry,
tankers and CAF scouts, Entree tankers, CAF scouts and probably
field artillery guys, and there's probably a lot more than
I don't know. We do what we suck. So it's
nine weeks of basic training. I went to Fort Knox,

(19:22):
which is the home of what was the Homo Armor
before they moved it in twenty twenty ten to Fort
Benning and then Fort Benning got changed to the Maneuver Center.
But yeah, Fort Knox trained CAF scouts and tankers. So
we did nine weeks there and then we had like
a weekend off, graduated basic training, and then we went

(19:42):
straight into a T with the same drill sergeants, the
same company everything. So for us, it was sixteen weeks. Yeah,
I want to say it was sixteen weeks.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Does the drill sergeant start treating you different after that
weekend off? Is it more laid back? I mean, you're
still a junior soldier, You're still a new guy, so
there's gonna be a little kind of dickish probably, But
is it different than the drill instructor or drill sergeant mentality.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's more laid back. I think we
had like Sundays off. I mean, I think we always
had Sundays off, I remember, right, But I mean it's
there's still the juill sergeants. There's still I mean anytime
I think because we do what do they call it?
They do red, red face, white blue and then gold
and gold being a T. You know, they always tell us, hey,

(20:32):
you can always go back to red phase and we
can always treat you like children, you know, in case
you do something stupid like leave a rifle or you
know whatever. So they were a little bit better, but
it was more at that point we transitioned more into like, hey,
this is your job set, this is what you're going
to learn. And these guys are all tankers and a
lot of them this is I went to basic January

(20:52):
of six. So a lot of these guys were like, oh,
if the invasion got back from the invasion and you know,
PCs to drill and then like this was like their
second or third cycle. So a lot of these guys
were like the invasion going into Iraq, which was kind
of intimidating eighteen year old you know, like what did

(21:13):
I get myself into? But how did I say? On
the same on the same context, we did have a
marine detachment down the down the street from us that
were Marine Corps uh tankers recruits I guess you could
only call, but they were learning how to be the

(21:34):
Marine Corps. At four knocks.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, well at that point they're done with boot camps,
so their marine so they've gone through m CT. Also
and now they're like, you know, marines in MS school,
you're just junior marines. And then what we say is like, hey,
when you finish MOS school, then you hit the fleet
and that's when you get to your unit and stuff
like that, and that's what so that's what we call it,
you know, in tanker school. I remember watching i think
on the Discovery Channel or something like that, like Forever

(21:58):
Ago a doc documentary about Fort Knox and like the
Tanker School, and it's like, don't you guys have like
these like almost like simulators that are like big pods,
oh that you guys jump into. Tell us about that,
like what's the actual what's it like to be inside
of one of those tanks?

Speaker 2 (22:13):
You know? Also that we do have sims, we never
really got to where we did them a little bit.
They have a for the most part, when you become
a tanker and you're a junior guy, you're a private
E two, E three whatever, you're a driver or you're
a loader. Right, the gunner's position and the tank commander's
position are n COO positions. So in basic training they

(22:35):
really harp on weapon systems at two forty bravo loading
the the m two, five six main gun and then
driving those like the three main things they really want
you to be good at. And they do some maintenance
stuff which when you get to when you get down
range to your unit, everything's ten level apparently. But yeah,

(23:00):
so they have a simulator. It's on gimbals and it's
focused for driving, and it's it's pretty wicked. It's pretty cool.
I will say, like the first five minutes you're in it,
you get really at least I did, you get really
kind of nauseous and monching sickness. But then once you
get used to it, it's pretty cool. They have the
driving stimulator, and then they had these pods and I

(23:23):
want to say it was like c C T closed
circuit something. Oh, I can't think of the acronym for it,
but they have these pods where you have like a
driver and then you have it's set up. You have
a driver by himself, and you have your crew which
is four man crew, so you have your three guys,
your lowder, your gun or your tank commander, and it's
just a big warehouse full of them. And they can

(23:45):
set up maps and they can set up enemy and
you know, you just they set up missions and you
go and you can do it, you know, and it's
as in basic training. He's like, this is a game.
This is really cool. Like I love it. When you
get to your unit, every unit has these things. Was
like we had him. I was stationed at Fort Benning.
Benning had them down on main Post and that was

(24:05):
part of our train up to go over to Iraq
was we would go as a company. We'd go as
to tune first, then we go as a company and
then do company movements to tone movements, actions on contact
things like that. Uh, that was I mean, I'm sure
we had like things we had to accomplish. The one
that was really focused and it was really cool simulator

(24:28):
and it was right down the street from our company.
And again I forget the I forget the name of it,
but it was for gunnery and that was the tank
commander and the gunner and then you'd get another n CEO,
usually another gunner to run it for you and you
would go through all the tables, you know, for gunnery,

(24:51):
and that was your that was your build up before
you actually got in the tank, went down range and
then actually shot gunnery. We would do that at probably
for like two weeks before it went down range and
because it's I think we only had like two two
in their cargo containers. Two cargo containers for two armored regiments.

(25:17):
He'd be doing that at like three in the morning,
like jacked up on Red Bull or something like because
that was just like our time slot, you know. Yeah,
and the next thing then you walk out of there,
you go do pet and normal day. So but they
were really cool, they were really fun. I enjoyed. I
enjoyed the sims. The sims were I mean, it's I'm

(25:37):
sure they were built in like the nineties, so this
the the graphics weren't that great, Like you can play
like Gunner Heat PC. I think graphics are a little
bit better.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
But yeah, oh you know, we used to have sims
that we'd work as. Uh like DVT is what we
call it an s a ET. Those are two different things.
The DVT is like a laptop set up, and the
SAVT is like more immersive. You're in like a dome
kind of deal and there's like a one hundred and

(26:08):
eighty degree view or something like that that you can see.
But the even with the laptop setup, which is pretty basic,
you're basically playing a video game. You're watching people and
you're calling in artillery, and I would run it as
an instructor, and like you were saying, with those guys,
I could I could basically build an enemy army and
then put them anywhere I want and have them come

(26:29):
in at different times, and then you had to like
kind of attack it and deal with it. Even as
basic as that was, we I think I think the
training that you get out of it is is really
good because what it does is it reinforces, Like it
reinforces like your what am I trying to say here,

(26:49):
how you get how you do the mission and stuff
like that, the steps, you know what I'm saying, It's
like get you working through the steps. Every once in
a while they could throw like a weird thing at
them just to kind of throw them off, throw somebody
off and see how they'd react to it. But it's
like really good about reinforce. Reinforcing like communication drills and
just like the basic steps of doing close air support,

(27:11):
doing artillery, call for fire and things like that.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, our big thing for that the build up for gunnery.
Our big thing was fire commands. And that's because when
you go to gunnery, you have you have open comms,
and you have guys in the tower. So they send
two tanks down range for gunnery, and they have guys

(27:36):
in the tower, and you have multiple tables get to complete,
and you have guys with a stopwatch, like I remember
it because I had to do it a couple of
times for our sister battalion. You would have to sit
there and the minute they say like identify tank, you
hit your stopwatch, and you have to hear them say
you know distance, you know what it is, U direction,

(28:00):
you know what fire, you know what what what round
you're sending down range. Then you have to hear the
safety stuff, so you have to hear if the loader
actually yelled you know, you know, if he armed the gun,
if he yelled up, if you know, and you get
you get knocked when you go down when you shoot gun,
or you get knocked for certain things, and there's safety
violations you can get knocked for. So for that part,

(28:21):
it was huge, huge on fire commands, so that it
was the second nature that when you did it, you
just did it. And then like I said, when we
would go do like the platoon size company sized stuff,
initially it would start out like we're moving as an.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Element, you know, like a a lot of the stuff
and I granted it was two thousand and six, but
a lot of the stuff we did was still set
in like the nineteen eighties, fold a gam mission, you know,
on tank on tank battle stuff.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
And then usually you know, by the end of the
day because we're be there all day. You know, it
was just kind of like, all right, let's have fun,
you know, ram a tank, let's go do some stupid
stuff and the shoot you know whatever. But yeah, it's
really big for us. I'm sure it was for you
guys too, like fire commands, getting all your fire commands
and you know, uperly you.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Know, oh yeah, I mean, artillery is notoriously anal for
very you're the the script is very you know structured,
like I'm gonna say this, and you're gonna say this,
and then I'm gonna say this, and if I don't
say if I don't repeat back what you said, then
it's like all these things. Artillery guys are all about
correcting each other. On comms, It's like almost the most

(29:31):
efficient comms that you can get in the military is
probably in the artillery world because a lot of it
has to do it's just like one, it speeds up.
The process. Artillery is notoriously slow, you know, because you
got to get you got to send in a fire mission.
The fire direction control has to process the fire mission.
Then they have to send their data down to the
gun lines, and the gun lines have to set the guns.

(29:53):
And then while they're setting the guns, they got to
set the rounds and all that, you know, the same
thing as kind of intakes and that's that takes time.
All that takes time. So the whole thing is to
speed up and also be safe, you know, so you
don't actually say fire when you meant five, you know,
or something like that. It's just it's important, you know.

(30:14):
And it's Oh, that's why I tell people. When you
get out of the military, you're you're still in a
job where lives kind of obviously are in your hands
kind of deal, like it's a life or death situation sometimes,
but for most jobs it's not like that. So when
you go from a job where literally how you speak
on the radio can fuck up something and cost of life,
and then you get out to the real world, you're like,

(30:36):
like none of this matters, you know, Like how if
I say something wrong? No one's gonna die or anything.
It's I don't know. So let's talk about for the
next topic, let's talk about tanks. Let's talk about the
tank itself. I know that I think they're on the
version three now, which is I think you what were
you on when the N one A two, no A one?

Speaker 2 (30:59):
So I was, Yeah, I was like A one. So
I was with a third Day Street Division out of
Fort Benning. We were third Brigade, which that brigade doesn't
even exist anymore. They they closed up shop I think
like twenty twelve. But yeah, so we were third I D
and we got all M one A once I think
we had when I first got to the unit. So

(31:21):
I got to I graduated basic in May May six,
got down to the unit in June, and these guys
had just gotten off the plane like the month prior
Ramadi from Iraq. So they were on o IF three
and actually my Battalion two six nine armor they were

(31:44):
attached to second MEW so they were they were attached
to the Marine Corps unit in Ramadi. So we had
a bunch of guys that just come back. We didn't
have tanks, and big Army found us tanks. I think
they came from like Georgia National Guard or something. They

(32:04):
were probably like Gulf War, you know, like era Abrams.
They were rough. They were all just one one heavies,
very basic, nothing really fancy about them. We spent we
spent like four months building up to go to gunnery,

(32:27):
my tank specifically, Uh yeah, uh well we we you know,
we built up to go to gunnery and uh we
pulled out the the the motor pool. We made it
two miles down down down the trail, and I hadn't

(32:48):
really ever driven that that specific vehicle for more than
two three minutes, right, We got about like two miles
down range and drive and all of a sudden, my
engine just winds down. And the engine on the Abrams
is I think it's that AGT fifteen hundred gas turbine engine.

(33:10):
So it's it's from what I was told or I
believe it's like the same engine that using the Chinook.
But they just converted it to sit into the back
of an Abrams. And the main reason for that was
when they designed the tank, they wanted to get away
from diesel from like the M sixties because the M
sixties diesels throw black smoke, white smoke, and they make

(33:32):
themselves very prominently known when they're driving around or a
gas turbine other than it being sound like a jet engine,
no smoke more or less. So we're driving down this
road and the engine just kills on me. I'm e
to nobody like, uh driving, I'm in the driver's all.

(33:53):
If you've ever seen the schematic of a tank, the
driver's in the hole by himself. So he's up in
the front part and it's a really nice scene. Actually,
you're you're laid back, you're kind of in a reclined
position with these a t bar kind of like a motorcycle,
and you can turn it and you get a brake
pedal and then everybody else is behind me in the turret.

(34:14):
Engine shuts off. I come to a halt and I'm like, hey,
uh started, Like I don't know what to tell you.
The engine's dead, like oh, restarted, go to restart at nothing?
So you know, we call a halt and jump out
and it's just hissing and oil out of the belly plane.
Really okay, Well something happened, no idea what so? Uh?

(34:37):
We call our our that was in That was third platoon.
I was three four so we call our our wing
tank three three to come hook us up and tow
us the rest of the way. So they back up
to us, We hook up the tow bar, throw the
final drives in the neutral start going down the road,
which is a horrible ride to be towed down the

(34:58):
gravel road being the rear vehicle. And we made it
four or five miles. Maybe one of the final drives
somebody didn't put a bolt in final drive, flipped back,
re engaged into the transmission, locked up the whole left
side track, and then just bound us put us like

(35:23):
lead Victor. We went sideways and ended up stopping. So
we're like, all right, well, looked at the final drive.
The final drive which sticks out like that much, had
sucked all the way into the transmission. So we called
the mechanics. They came back with a pickup truck and
they're like or the humbie and they're like, yeah, I

(35:44):
gotta gotta get you guys back to the motor pool.
Nothing we can do. Like it's good shot. So we
set my wing tank forward. Well, the eighty eight, the
MIC eighty eight, which is a heavy covery vehicle which
is built on an old them sixty platform was at
the head of the head of the column. Couldn't get

(36:08):
it back down this dirt road. I don't think anone's
gonna get in trouble because this was twenty oh yeah,
it's going on nineteen years ago. One of the mechanics
he had a buddy that was I think it was
expecting a He had a soldier that was expecting a
kid or something. So he calls him up because he
wasn't going on and arrange with us, and he goes, hey, man,

(36:29):
I need you to go to the motor pool. I
need you to get it an eighty eight and I need
you to drive down whatever road. And he's like, what
are you talking about. He's like, I'm on leave right now.
He's like, I know, but I need you to do this,
Like can you go do this? They're like, okay, fine.
So these guys commandeered a random eighty eight that's sitting

(36:49):
in the motor poole drive down, pick us up, bring
us back to the motor pool where we spent three
days with a settling torches, plasma torches, everything, just cutting
away all the gears and the final drive to get
the final drive out and even we had some general
dynamic guys that were like, I've never seen this happen before.

(37:11):
So ultimately three days later we get a new engine,
we get a new transmission, a new final drive, bring
the tank back out to gunnery. We go to shoot gunnery,
like two days before. Table late, which is our qualifying table. Uh,
my doghouse went on mine my my gunner's doghouse, which

(37:31):
is the all the Christmas tree for all the optics,
all the ballistics, the computer, the blissed computer, everything you know,
takes the dump on us and they have to replace that.
So we we shoot, We shot gunnery. We qualified. It
was it was a great thing. But by the time
we were done with that tank thing with damn your brand.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
New it's almost a brand new tank.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Uh. And it was a shame because we before I
went to Iran in seven, we went to NTC, the
National Training Center up in Fort Irwin, and we railheaded
over our vehicles out there, and instead of rail heading
them back to Georgia or putting them on a boat
and shipping them to the Middle East, we left them

(38:17):
and we ended up and we got to Kuwait. We
ended up drawing refurbished tanks from Kuwait. So it was
kind of a shame because I was like, well, I
put so much blood, sweat and tears in this thing
and it was damn near brand new. No, then we
pretty much picked up brand new tanks and in Kuwait.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
So, yeah, they got a whole lot out there of
like different different things for the guys that do N
eighty eight. Are those like actual did tankers drive those
or do mechanics take mechanics?

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah, those those guys are actually tank mechanics. Great guys,
I love them. My buddy Tyler, he's actually fireman as
well down in Pop County, Georgia, but he was my
tank commander by tank mechanic for shit the five years
that was yet two six nine and uh, great guy, Like, yeah,
we love our tank mechanics up until the point, up

(39:08):
until the point we would bring them something like hey,
you know this XYZ is broken. Ah, yeah, that's ten level.
You guys can fix it. It's suck ship everything's ten
level on this thing. Now.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
Yeah, we used to call out, I mean we'd call
operator level. That's like operator level main it's homie. Yeah, yeah,
that was It suck being a mechanic because you have
to fix other people's screw up. Yes, it's like, dude,
you screwed that up. That's your fault, but I'm gonna
fix it. And then you're gonna go screw it up
again and I'll fix it again. Oh yeah, all right,
for the take itself, like what kind of weapons are

(39:41):
we talking about on the tank? You obviously got the
main gun, you got a machine gun. What can you
tell us about the weaponing the weapons on the tank
and then the different rounds that the tank carries.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
So the main gun round obviously it's uh, the M
two five six one hundred and twenty milimeters smooth bore.
The original Abrams, which was developed in the seventies, late
seventies and eighties, had one hundred and five millimeters rifle
which was the same the same barrel and breach that

(40:11):
was on the sixty. Somewhere in the eighties they upgraded
it to the one twenty, which actually, funny fact it
came from the Germans, the Leopard two, which is the
Germans main battle tank. They created the one twenty smooth board,
We created the rounds for it, and then that was

(40:33):
kind of the trade offs since they're NATO and you
know our allies. Really, Hey, you know you got a
really amazing weapon system. Let's put it on the abrams
and the rest is history. It's smooth board, which is
really cool because it's like that inaccurate. So that's the
main gun. With the rounds. You have the sable round,

(40:53):
which is a uranium depleted dark the round old casee.
That's just a dart that's in the middle. So I
think the the the nomenclatures like armor. It's a armor piercing,
fin stabilizing discarding sable with tracer, so everything kind of

(41:14):
falls off around it except for this you know, two
and a half foot uranium dark that just punches holes
through damn or anything. Yeah, and that's your main that's
your main one that we use against tank on tank.
From there, you have a heat round, which is a
high explosive anti tank. Actually, I have a demo round

(41:38):
of the heat round right here, So that's the training
round where this is the dummy round for the heat round.
This big part here, the whole bottom part is all
propelled and then the explosive is this stuff all explosive
is just this tip right here, and that's that can

(42:00):
be used for you know, tanks that can be used
for APC's buildings things of that nature.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Is that actual size?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Is that the correct size, that's actual size.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
That seems a lot unless you're really short, that seems
a lot bigger than I expected.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
I'm five ten and that thing, I think comes up
to my waist.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Yeah, that's I didn't know it was that big.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
No, the Heat rounds the bigger one, the biggest of them,
all the stables a little bit smaller. Then we have
a round called the Impact, which is a multipurpose anti tank.
That one's really cool because that one, similar to the
Heat round, a big chunk of explosives up at the top.
It has a air to ground moote little selector so

(42:48):
you can switch it from ground, which is kind of
like a bunker buster. It will go into a building
and then detonate you know X amount of feet yards
or whatever inside of it, or it will work off
kinetic energy where you can shoot down helicopters. So part
of what we did in the simulator was actually targeting

(43:08):
like am I, am I twenty four, am I eighteen
Hines and their transport helicopters and shooting them down. How
realistic in real life. Never done it. I did it
in the sim.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
So you know, did it seem like in the sim?
Did it seem like pretty possible? Or is it every
once in a while?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Yeah? Hit, no, I hit yeah, but I was a gunner. Yeah,
I hit them in the SIM.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
So I wonder what they have now, you know, I
bet now it's more advanced.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
When when I got to Iraq and seven, we had
just gotten a new round called the cannon there's canster round.
It was five hundred tongues and tungsten steel ball bearings.
And they're like, oh, by the way, like this thing
only has a range of five hundred yards because it's
a giant shotgun show.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Yeah, so we had that said deadly five hundred yards. Man,
you don't want to be in that.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
We used it. It was yeah, it was. It was impressive.
But they when I was talking to General Dynamics guys
when we got it, they were they were talking about
they were developing like a missile that you could put
into the main gun and shoot out, kind of like
a tow missile at the Bradley's that the Bradley Fighting

(44:24):
Vehicle has. So, I mean, I know it was in development.
I don't think it ever it ever made light. But yeah,
they keep on, they keep on changing the rounds, making
them a little bit better, making them, you know, or lethal,
which is kind of kind of neat.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
But yeah, that was.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Pretty much the two main rounds we carried for SABO
and heat rounds, and then they ended up when we
went in O seven. They didn't give us any heat,
any sable rounds because they're like, hey, there's no more
there's no more tanks. You know, you're not fighting tanks,
you're fighting the insurgency and so forth. So they gave
us heat rounds and PAT rounds and then canister round

(45:00):
So that's the three rounds we carried. And in the
tank we have behind the loader, so you have the
breach of the main gun. Here, the gunner sits right
to the right, tank commander sits behind the gunner. Then
on the other side you have the loader. The loader
has like like sixteen rounds in the semi ready rack,

(45:25):
and then behind the tank commander you can cross load.
He's got like fourteen rounds and then there's like four
more on like in the hall. I could be wrong
with my map, but I want to say we had
somewhere around like thirty mid thirties to maybe forty rounds

(45:45):
that we carried on the tank and we could fearfully loaded.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah, isn't in the the ammo stored behind some kind
of barrier in case, like you guys take a hit.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yep. So it's a really small door. It's about you.
They the loader has a knee panel that he hits
with his knee and the door flies open, and then
the cool thing is on the top of the tank.
There's blow off panels. So the idea is that if
you get hit in the back or the ammal cooks
off or whatever, it's going to blow up and out

(46:17):
instead of into the crew compartment. Russian tanks don't have that.
The Russian tanks their ammos pretty much all around the hole,
and you take a hit, it's going to blow up,
which is a lot of guys in the Gulf. For
if you saw a lot of pictures of like T
fifty five fifty fours seventy two, their turret would blow

(46:39):
off because it was just wrapped with ammo and then
once that cooked off, it would and their cast iron
the Abrams. The Abrams is all welded, but I think
it has over like two like I think it was
like four miles worth of welds on that thing.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Wow, and you guys have the reactive armor correct or
they know they do now.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, we we were the first tank in Iraq and
eight to get them. Michael Tune was, it's it's interesting,
uh the idea behind it. I was blown up with
the reactive armor on, and I don't know what gave
me the concussion, the I D or the reactive.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Armor because it's just another explosion, right for those that
don't know what that is. I mean, I don't know
how much of that's classified, but can you kind of
explain what it is?

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, So when we went to Iraq and O seven
we were just giving M one A one heavies, so
they just had the regular complements of armor on them,
which is, you know, the skirts and then the Chatham armor,
which is still classified. I don't even know, like General
Dynamics want to tell us what it is, but it's
it's like a layering armor. So around I think it

(47:48):
was eight, maybe it was O seven, It might have
been O seven seven, General Dynamics was like, hey, we're
gonna put some reactive armor on the Abrams, which they
had already been doing on the brandings. So what it
was was I think it was like twenty four rows
of these boxes that were like forty five pounds each,

(48:10):
you know, rectangular boxes, double stacked all down the skirts.
And it's essentially cop B. And the way that it
works is that when kinetic energy hits the side of it,
it's a projectile explosion, and it hits and then it
takes that force. It detonates, but it blows it out

(48:32):
away from the vehicle. So yeah, it's two explosions. You
get hit and then it blows up and blows the
takes the force and sends it away from the from
the vehicle.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
It's supposed to be a counter to like shape charges
and stuff. Correct and how I mean, I mean, how
effective do you think it is?

Speaker 2 (48:49):
Why it will work wrong? I got it, let me
tell you that much.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, So we were battling. We were battling a lot.
Most on my unit was battling a lot of e fps,
which were the copper you know, they take copper and
make like a forged projectile.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, the explosively formed projectiles for those that.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Are yeah, and uh, and then we also had well
not well my unit had they were dealing with RPG
twenty nine's, which were from my understanding, they were like
a modern day version of a German Panzer Faust from
World War Two, and uh we we took some casualties

(49:31):
in the tanks. They would go right through the turret.
We took my buddy Keith Nurnberg and our medic doctor
Paradis were killed by a RPG twenty nine that went through,
went through the sponsor box, went through the turret right
at the load at the tank commander position, and it

(49:52):
went across the loader and killed both of them. So, like,
you know, you think like the tank and that's probably
one of the reasons why I liked being a tanker.
Was like, oh, I'm in the biggest, baddest, you know,
vehicle out here.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I'm protected.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah yeah, Well you're also the biggest, baddest target too.
Yeah yeah. So they started putting they started putting the
reactive armor on, I want to say, towards the mid
end of seven we were Michaelton was the first one
to get him in country.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Oh was it after those guys were killed? Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, we got we got them after those After we
lost our guys, they also added a belly plate, which
a couple of thousand pounds belly plate to help with.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
I mean, it already sits so low to the ground.
That's the problem is that it's so low to the ground.
So adding more stuff yeah may help some, but the problem,
the central problem is it sits so low to the ground.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
You know. That's well, and that's and it's design too,
it's designed to be a lower silhouette.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, but you're right.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Yeah, it did limit and it did create some issues.
I know they had not unfortunately not us. But they
have rolled tanks because you know, you got those berms
in Iraq, you know along waterways or canals. Yeah, and
they've rolled. They rolled abrams really pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
They drove. I remember one drove into a river during
the invasion. I think one of the tankers fell asleep
because they had been up for like thirty six hours
or something. Then one of the drivers like, yeah, damn,
that'd be crazy, dude, Real quick, one, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
I was just gonna keep on talking about the weapon
systems of the other ones that we have real quick, Well.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Real quick. You said that the medic was killed as well.
Do the medics ride in the tank with you?

Speaker 2 (51:37):
So arts did I can. I can say ours did
when we went to Iraq and so we got orders.
I want to say like October of six. Let me
let me fact, let me go back when I got

(51:57):
to the unit. If you want to know what unit
back then was going overseas, like just look at who's
the basic training, who's sending everybody because anybody who didn't
have order somewhere or National Guard or like Germany or Korea,
we were going to Third I D. You know, Fort
Stewart or Fort Bennings, like we all knew, like okay,
well Third ID is going back over When we got

(52:21):
our orders to go to Iraq, I think we were
only at like sixty six percent strength brigade wide. So
when we went to go shoot gunnery, my first gunnery,
which was horrible. There's a there's a whole story behind that.
But we had tank crews that only had two guys.

(52:42):
My tank crew had three. I think we had each each.
So in a tank platoon, you have four tanks per platoon, right,
sixteen guys, four guys per tank. We have three platoons
in a tank company. Each platoon had one tank crew
of two guys, the gunner and the and the tank commanders.

(53:04):
So when we went to go shoot gunnery, if you
were if you were an E four below man, it
sucks because they're like, hey, look we need a loader,
Hey we need to we need a driver. And it
may it may be a first platoon tank and maybe
the second between and maybe headquarters, but like we never
all of us are are you know E four and
below guys, we were running around I don't remember sleeping

(53:25):
for two weeks, you know, and this is this is gunnery.
It was wasn't even in Iraq. So when we deployed,
we were a little bit better. I think we all
had three man crews and like a couple of us
had four man crews. So when we got our medics
assigned to us, we were like, hey, guess what you're
gonna learn how to do? You're going to learn how
to be a loader, you know, And we weren't really

(53:47):
shooting main gun in seven Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
I mean, I feel like at that point, you guys
are more of a show of force than anything, right.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we would we would teach those
guys like, hey, you're going to be a loader. The
older station has a two forty Bravo here's how to
operate the two forty Bravo. And there was a couple
of times and Michael too, specifically, we had mar Medoc.
He drove, he loved it, he loved driving. And even
even his.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Boss drive a tank.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
Yeah okay, even his his uh his boss, sergeant Orbis. Yeah,
start in Orbis Like he's like, hey, I'm going to
get on that. So we would occasionally take you know,
non tankers, like all right, here's the driver's hole, here's
what you do, and there you go, like thank you.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Kind of shows you how easy it is to drive.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Right it is. Yeah, it's very simple.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
It's pretty straightforward, basically keep it on the road. The
thing too, because it's so low you don't really have
to worry about I mean, you said that you've had rollovers,
but that's not unless you go on some like hilly
terrain or something like that. If it's flat, that's not
really a concern, right.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
No, No, Like I said, the main thing for us
was the Burbs. If you get up on a berm
with the canal and you go to like get off sideways,
and I have a picture somewhere of one of our tanks,
like it was. It was you could see underneath this
right side track. Yeah, that's where your issue becomes, or
like the bridges, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
There was a problem. Well, I mean, I guess there
is a problem in the Marine Corps. Not really a problem,
but it's known. Like the LAVs. They sit really high
and they the light armored or yeah, light armored reconnaissance vehicles.
They sit really high and if you turn them roll hard,
they can roll over. Outside of that, those are the
most comfortable rides I've ever been in in the military.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Oh yeah, the Abrams was the same way. I remember
when I first drove one in basic training. I think
the instructor was telling us like, oh yeah, they spent
multiple millions of dollars to make this suspension drive like
a Cadillac, and it was it was. That was. It
was an amazing ride. And every now and then we
would do stuff with the Brandley guys, the mechanized infantry guys,

(55:50):
and I'd ride in the back of Bradley. This sucks.
I'm in an up armored aluminum vehicle that's gonna melt
if we get hit, and then the rides sucks.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
No, I wasn't like that with the LAVs. The Lav's,
which I think were what the Army was going to
buy before they decided to go with the Bradleys. I
think they were looking at the Lav's and then went
with the Bradleys. But the same thing, I mean, the suspension,
the ride, you don't feel like the terrain and stuff,
you don't really feel it. It's like, I don't know,
it's a really good ride. And honestly, in that one,

(56:22):
you stand up most of the time, unless you're in
some weird conditions and you're down inside the vehicle, but
generally stand up when you guys, you know, cruising around.
I mean, how often are you guys? What's the training
look like for a tanker because are you out driving
the tanks every day? I imagine you're not one, you know,
I imagine you're There's parts of the year I assume

(56:45):
they're working towards their gunnery qualifications. This is let's imagine
that you don't have a deployment coming up or whatever.
I imagine there's parts of the year that you're working towards
your gunnery qualification. Outside of that, what kind of training
are you guys doing? Are you are are you working
and doing training with the infantry and stuff to work
on your integration with infantry units and supporting infantry and

(57:07):
all that kind of deal.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
So was I was there at a transition time when
I got to my unit two six's nine Armor. When
they came back from Amadi, they were strictly an armored battalion,
so they had three they had three tank platoons and
their mechanics and then their HHC. When I got there,
they had just restructured and we went from an armored

(57:33):
armored battalion to like an armored combines battalion, a combined
arms battalion, I believe it's the term. Yeah, combined arms battalion.
So what they did was they took my sister battalion,
which is one fifteen infantry AUDI Murphy's of whole thing
AUTI Murphy's unit. They took two of their mechanized infantry companies,

(57:55):
put them in my battalion, and then picked out, you know,
one of the companies, and they essentially they created combined
Arms battalion of headquarters, two mechanized infantry, two armor companies,
Fox uh Fox Company which is engineers, and then our mechanics.
So like a self sufficient unit. We were still when

(58:18):
I got there, we were still really just focused on
tank stuff. We did the build up to gunnering. Like
I said, go into the simulator, the two different sims,
a lot of vehicle maintenance because I think the tanks
were just they were they needed them. I don't remember
doing much driving until we went to gunnery. And then
once we went to gunnery, that was kind of it

(58:40):
for us. After you qualify, we do a really cool operation.
It's called the table twelve, which Table twelve is when
they integrate the mechanized guys as well as air assets.
So we would do like a combined actions on contact
where the tanks pull up, were engaging targets and the
Bradleys run down, dismounts, get out Bradley's engaged targets, dismounts,

(59:03):
attack of house. They call in mortar fire, and then
after the mortar fire they call in like apaches and
the apaches coming, you know, do do what they do.
That was really it. It wasn't until they were like, hey,
by the way, we're going back to Iraq, maybe we
should train you guys had to do some like kicking
indoors and and uh, you know, so infantry stuff. That's

(59:24):
when we started actually doing a little bit of infantry stuff,
but for the most part, the build up to OIF
II was mostly all, Hey, we're going to be in
tanks and that's what you're gonna do when we went.
When we went back in oh seven, there was a
lot more. We still did gunnery, we still qualified did
all that, and then there was just a lot more

(59:44):
like we went to shoot house, we did squad life
fire stuff. You guys were doing, you guys were doing
provisional infantry as a majority, right or how often were
you guys in tanks compared to like on patrol Towards
the end of the deployment, like fifty fifty we ended

(01:00:09):
up getting we ended up getting four humbies, And yeah,
we were like, hey, you guys have your mission of
Route Clearance with the ABRAMS and QRF with the ABRAMS.
If you're not doing that, we want you guys to
start doing stuff, you know, going over the door, walking
down patrols or doing whatever. Which that's when I learned, like,

(01:00:30):
as much as I love being a tanker, like we're
not supposed to get off the tank, but we only
have fourteen guys on a platoon and an infantry platoon.
It's got like fifty like, yeah, well it's a.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Good party over there. Man, that's route clearance with the tank.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
That doesn't seem like a good idea. That seems like
a vehicle you don't want to get blown up again
because it's so low to the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Yeah yeah, I mean we did a lot of so
when we first got into country, well we fresh Scott
to Kuwait. It was an interesting, interesting situation that happened.
For whatever reason, somebody up higher again. I was an
eight three at this time, and we the main unit

(01:01:17):
went to Rustamaya. My brigade went to Rustamaya and Bob
Hammer and somebody with the tenth Mountain who was in
the USAFIA. A lot of Amadia area been talking to
Big Army like, hey, we need help. Those guys have
been getting the lightastre unit and they've been getting kind

(01:01:38):
of pounded. So they came up with this idea that
they would take a patuone of tanks for four tanks,
put it in a mechanized infantry company, swap the platoons right,
so they they'll pull mechanized infantry guys, put them in
my armor company and then send that mechanized infantry to

(01:02:00):
which has two platunes of Bradley's our tanks. I think
we left with like a mortar section and a couple
other you know stuff. We needed mechanics, medics, and then
they sent us. They sent us up north to tenth
Mountain Infantry Division, and we weren't even we weren't even

(01:02:21):
with third Infantry Division anymore. We got kind of oy,
you'll have fun, be safe, we'll see it. We'll see
you in sixteen months. Right. So when we got to
tenth Mountain and they all all they had was humbies.
This is pre pre m wraps, right. Those guys were
just getting id blown up off these you know, little roads,

(01:02:45):
and they really needed they really needed something to come
in there, kind of like show like I said, show
of force. So we did. We did that for about
three months. Hardcore just showed up with tanks and bread
and just would roll, you know, five six patrols a
day just for route clearance.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
When when so, when you move up to that area,
do you drive the tanks there or do you guys
truck them up because that seems like a long distance,
right they Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
They we loaded them up on on heads. Yeah, and
then they we picked we flew into Bagdad buy up
and then we picked them up and buy up and
then yeah, we drove them out to uh Ufa, which
is like maybe an hour two hours.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Yeah, they put them on those low boy trailers, right,
and then truck them up. Yeah, okay, yeah. The so
I guess I would assume then, were the trucks that
were trucking them up were driven by civilian contractors.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, those trucks looked like mad Max trucks. I remember
that because those were up armor too. Those were these
weird up armored semis that the civilian contractors would drive. Yeah,
I remember those things. Fuck man. Yeah, I assume you
guys didn't drive the tanks from one side of the area,
you know, down there. I can't imagine like the maintenance
that would be involved just in trying to do that,

(01:04:04):
So that makes more sense. Uh oh yeah yeah, shit Ton,
How you know, how did you feel like you guys
were utilized while you were up there? Were there any
like missions that stood out?

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Yeah? We honestly, like like I said, our first three
months there, it was just it was just a lot
of hour long patrols. You know, you'd have three during
the day and two at night, maybe three at night.
So it would just be like, hey, we got a
patrol at like six hundred, We're going to a run
down to Usafiel. We'll cut some side streets, we'll go

(01:04:38):
up and down. It's just a show of force to say, hey,
we're here. You guys want to fuck around.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Well, describe a patrol. Describe a patrol? I mean does
that when you say you're you go on to patrol?
Is it is it a mounted patrol? Is it a
mixed patrol?

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Uh, how does that look? I mean I understand you're
driving the tank around just to let them know that
you're around, But is it only mounted or is it
dismounted as well?

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Only mounted for us?

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Okay, so yeah, we would we would just get.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
In the tank and drive just the Yeah, they would
have pre plotted streets would go down. Obviously, you know,
you don't want to have a routine or anything, so
it would always change. But yeah, we would just drive around.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
And that's so crazy. That's so crazy to just drive
a tank around town. What was the reaction of like
the locals where like, oh fuck, Like when they see
you coming down the street, like oh what the hell.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Now, you know, a little bit of everything, a little
a little old fuck or a little confusion, you know,
you know, like you point, you point a barrel at
them that they're they keep on driving. You know. It
was a little bit of everything, you know, kept us
on our toes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty Were you guys utilizing the optics
on the tank? You know, I don't know, the optics
on the tank are really you know, they have really
good optics, same with like you know, a lot of
the like toe gunners and stuff. Some of the optics
that they make for these these weapons systems are really good.
So were you guys utilizing those optics to maybe like

(01:06:05):
find ID in placers or infantry moving stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
Yeah, so the tanks, the tanks have the infrared on them,
which is great at finding copper wires that are sitting
in the sun. You know, command you know, command death stuff.
So yeah, we would generally it was all up to
the gunner whatever the gunner wanted to do. It's very
easy when you're behind the gun to switch between you know,
normal vision daylight vision to uh, you know, thermal imaging

(01:06:31):
or you know, and then you have three power fifteen
power and then on the second point, you know, we
got we got upgraded stuff. So I think we had
like three fifteen, like twenty twenty five and fifty powers.
So yeah, it actually worked out really well, especially like
I said, copper wires. Copper wires always showed white hot

(01:06:52):
or black hot whatever you had during the daytime, and
that was really beneficial to see.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Yeah, what was the biggest idea that you guys had found?

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Uh, the one that I blew up, the one that
blew me up?

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Bummer way to find that one? Huh yeah, how much?
How big was it?

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
I think EO. D. Came out and said that it
was like three one, five five already rounds with like
six sixty millimeter mortars and like twenty pounds of C
four or something. Wow. Yeah, it has an interesting story.
We so we moved. We moved a couple of times
in country, and the last time we moved, we were

(01:07:33):
at we were right outside BIOP. I can't think of
the name of the patrol based US patrol based lines done,
but we had all these we had all these you
know Iraqi mails walking around, you know, with no jobs, no,
no nothing. So somebody created and this is around the

(01:07:54):
time of SI the Sons of Iraq, the creating a militia.
So we ended up going around and really, hey, what
do you guys need? What do you what can we
do for you? You know, day typical. We can build
your schools, we can build you water, we can give
you you know, you know, whatever you need. And of
course the answers like, we need you to leave because
we don't want you here. But it's like, well, too bad,

(01:08:15):
We're not leaving. What can we can just throw you,
throw money at you, what do you want? So we
ended up building multiple like that's pretty funny, uh, these
little wood huts, and we created own militia guys that,
you know, guys that couldn't get hired in the Iraqi

(01:08:36):
Police Force or Iraqi Army, the ia. And we're like, hey,
we'll pay you whatever. We'll give you a rifle with
like twenty rounds in it. You protect this, this intersection,
this is your intersection, like this is your home. You
protect us. So we built like, I don't know, maybe eight,
eight or ten of these little checkpoints and it worked great,
Like it really did. We We no longer we're getting

(01:08:58):
sniper fire from stuff if we were no longer hitting
IDs weird. It all worked out, so it went good
for about a month or two, and Iraqi Army hated it,
like they just did not like it because they thought like, hey,
this is our our ao, this is what we are

(01:09:19):
area to protect, and we're like, okay, cool guys, Like
if you guys were great, we wouldn't need these guys
to help. But whatever. So I was on and a patrol.
I don't even remember the control. I ended up somehow
driving a Humbye that night for our company commander, and

(01:09:41):
that firefighter started between the Iraqi Army and our militia guys,
and I remember like sons coming up were watching tracer
fire going back and forth, and it's like I think
I even asked the CEO like uh or are we
gonna shoot at like like those are our allies and

(01:10:03):
those are the guys we pay for, Like what do
we do? He's like, Oh, we don't thing we can do.
We got to watch. So after that, you know, big
Army got a wind of what we were doing and
it was like, hey, you got to shut it down.
You can't can't do this. So we went to every checkpoint.
We tore down these wood shacks that we built and really,
hey guys, sorry, have a good day. Bye. So that week,

(01:10:28):
like the week after, we were doing the census mission, which,
like I said, we have been given four humbies, and
we're told like, hey, you should go down in this
like city block and go door to door pretty much
asking like how many women do you have living here?
How many children? How many men? Just doing this census,
you know. So Monday through Friday we were doing that

(01:10:50):
in humbies and you know, complacency kills and I think,
oh god, what was it. It was January o waight,
so we've been in country like ten months and we
still had like six more to go.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Oh my god, dude, the army is so crazy about that.
That is so nuts.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Oh yeah. So we had always gone down this one
road across the berm and then ran back. And when
we ran back, my section would split off and go right,
and bravo section would split off and go left, and
then the road kind of made this you and then
we had stopped and you just you'd foot patrol down

(01:11:30):
the streets, knocking on doors and stuff. Done that Monday
through Friday, right, very complacent, very like whatever. And uh
it was It was weird because I remember I was
a specialist at the time, and I was I think
I was gunning that day. I was supposed to have
done that day. So I have the vehicle, I have

(01:11:52):
my my humbill set up ready to go. And my
lieutenant walks out, David Cannaday, and he's like, hey, you know, ling,
what's up. And I'm like, yeah, I got the vehicles
ready to go, sir man behind us, we had our
our tanks parked in the motor pool on our patrol base.
And he looks back and he sees three of them.
He's like, where's uh, you know, three three two or whatever.

(01:12:13):
And I says, oh, you know, it's down for service.
Mechanics are doing PMCs on it or whatever. He's like, huh,
we haven't been in the tanks in a while, have we.
I'm like, no, no, we haven't. He's like, you know,
he's like, screw this, I'm gonna go scratch this ticket.
We're just gonna go do a route clearance in the
tanks since we haven't run them. I was like, okay, cool, whatever,
you know, you're the boss. I'm just whatever. So, you know,

(01:12:36):
I holler at the other guys, and hey, we're taking tanks.
We're not taking humbies. We're just going on a route clearance,
you know. So we ended up putting three tanks up.
I ended up driving the middle tank, which was my tank,
like thetoon sergeant's tank, and he chose, hey, let's let's
take the opposite route that we've been doing the whole week. Okay, cool,

(01:13:00):
So we're coming, you know, we take I don't know,
it's like forty five minutes. We come up around. We're
coming back to where that area was, and right at
that turn, we had a checkpoint. When you come across
the berm, you turn right and you make that use
there's a checkpoint like right here. But we had just
you know, we had dismantled it like a week prior.

(01:13:20):
So we're driving down. I'm the middle tank out of three,
and I remember the lead tank comes up to this
ninety degree turn and the driver, who was not not
the best driver in the world, Uh, he takes this
turn and it's jerky and choppy. You can see the
tank commander like flailing in the hatch and my tank
commanders like, god, damn it, ling, you better make this.

(01:13:41):
Make it smooth. Okay, cool. So I remember throttling up,
stepping on the brake a little bit, and then turning,
and I mean it was just this perfect, like twenty
five miles per hour, just nice, hard right nine ninety
to return. I saw behind the minute we made the turn,
I could see the tank in front of me, and
then just everything went black, orange flash. Everything went black

(01:14:04):
on me right where that checkpoint had been. They had
put a crushure plate, put the idea underneath it and
hit us. The guys behind me said they thought we
were dead. There was four of us inside. They said.
It actually picked up the tank and went kind of

(01:14:26):
sideways because I was going so fast, I had enough
momentum that it carried it on and dropped it. And
then we ended up going into that berm on the
left side. I think it set off like four four
reactive armor, and then the projectile or something came up,

(01:14:51):
went through two of the shock housings which holds the
control arms on which linked to the the torsion bars
for the suspension, and projectile went penetrated through that came
up behind my head and uh embedded itself like underneath
the breach of the main gun. And then warped the

(01:15:12):
whole of the of the main gun. I don't remember much.
I remember being pulled out of the tank and like
sitting on the front slope and looking around like I
was in la la land, like, oh, what happened?

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Apparently I had my pistol in my hand the whole time.
And when the guys finally got my hatch open, I
was sitting with my nine mil like on my chest,
like just staring at I don't remember it, and then
they threw me. They threw me in a in her
wing tank and that's when I remember. That's what I
do remember. I remember sitting in the wing tank in

(01:15:48):
the loader's hatch, kind of like just dazed. I was
looking at a Sergeant Graves and start an infant and
they were like, yeah, good, and I was like, I
don't know, am I? And you know hands me a
cigarette which I had just quit smoking, and I was like, hey,
I quit smoking. Grades It's like, well, you could be

(01:16:10):
a fucking dead right now, so I have a cigarette.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
I was like, okay, IDs are also unhealthy for you
a little bit. Yeah, man, I'm so glad. That's crazy, man, Like,
how long before you think you were you know, how
long did the concussion last?

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
You think, Oh, I was back on control in like
three days.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
So yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
They they sent us back to the patrol base. They
did like that a concussion protocol test test, and then
they sent us to Bagdad to get X rays and
should I had three days off. It gave you like
a bag of flex row and a couple of valume
and say here you go, relax.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
Go chill for a little bit. That's yeah, man, Yeah,
that's just getting blown up in a tank that doesn't
seem like just because it's so low I mean, and
that I mean what you described before, having multiple artillery
rounds and all that stuff. That's a lot of explosives
you know that that could have breached it all pretty easily.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
Yeah, it was a big hole. They ended up. They
ended up coding that tank out. General Dynamics came and
looked at it and we're like, yeah, we can't fix
it because it warped the whole. So that one four
point something millions.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Millions millions of dollars damaged by how much you know,
in an ID set up. That's our problem right now,
is like, yeah, we can spend a major amount of
money on this like advanced whatever, but then it gets
defeated by something that costs twenty bucks. You know, well,
if they can build twenty dollars defeation devices over and

(01:17:57):
over and over again, eventually the US is run out
of money or you know, whatever nation is fighting that
kind of fight, they're just like slowly bleeding you to death.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Yeah, I don't know, I'm We had tanks when I
was insanging, and we would tell them like, hey, stay
out of the stay out of the valley because that's
where like the fighting was happening. They mostly stayed up
on a mountain side and they were there for like observation,
doing overwatch and stuff using their optics, and we would
always tell them like don't come down here in the valley,

(01:18:29):
and then are we I was on an advisor team
at the time, and we left, and as soon as
we left, the unit that was there was like, come on,
bring the tanks down. And the tanks came down and
one of them got blown up and fucking stranded in
like a field, you know, because it hit an ID
and dudes got injured and stuff, and it was like, dude,
this is not this isn't this isn't your fight. You know,

(01:18:51):
this is not a tanks fight like this is. You're
there for Overwatch and maybe some like like we said,
show a force kind of deal. But if you come
down here where it's all I eds and like some
small arms attacks, you're just risking yourself more than you
need to. Like there's no reason for tanks to be

(01:19:11):
in that valley, and they brought them anyways. But we
also had those police like you like the militia you
stood up, that was the Afghan local police. We would
have those same kind of deals where it would be
like a sand bagged spot on like an intersection with
like plywood and stuff, a little watch hut kind of deal,

(01:19:32):
and that was our Afghan local police and same deal.
They would be in like their normal clothes though, and
then have an a k and we'd be like, wait
is that can local police are telling? Those are the
local police?

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
Yeah? Yeah, we had we had. I remember when we
first moved to that area, uh control Baselines. Then our
one of our first patrols, they had had something set
up like that, and I remember we came around like
it was our first time going on patrol. Beca we're
on a corner and there was a long burm with
like tall grass and whatever. And as we're coming up,

(01:20:06):
I was, oh god, I think I was trail Victor.
I was gunning, and I remember my like lead, my
lead tanks are freaking out, and he's like, oh, dude,
there's a there's a recoil less rifle over here, and
like what And sure enough, like they had to set
up their own checkpoint and they had I don't they'd
have any ammo, but they had this big ass Russian
recoil was rightful on a iPod or whatever. And I'm

(01:20:28):
just like, like, I'm not sure what that would do.
I don't want to find out, but.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Yeah, I mean those are those will fuck you up,
you know. I mean that's just a little mini almost
like a main round, you know, it's just like that
by itself standing there. Those things. They would shoot those
in Afghanistan, and man, I would I hated it so
much every time our when I was an advisor and
our Afghans would shoot that thing, the recoilless rifle. It
was the I'm trying to remember the name of it.

(01:20:57):
It's I can't remember the name of the recoil's rifle
that they had. But man, the problem was is we
never knew what the fuck they were doing. They would
go to load it and you're like, sometimes they'd have
problems with the rounds. You see them just take around
and just kind of toss off to the side. You're like,
what what are you doing, dude, and like what is
this round right here? And then they would be fucking
around with it and you're not sure when they're shooting
and we're sitting here with no like ear protection or anything,

(01:21:20):
and you're just kind of waiting. You're like, come on, dude,
is this guy gonna shoot it? And every time it
was like a surprise, and it was like almost getting
you know, probably kind of like shooting that main gun.
It's like a punch in the face almost because of
that concussion from the blast. That made me more jumpy
than anything I think from my deployment in Afghanistan was
those were Coloss rifles. Lets dude shooting those? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
Ours. So like when our when we first got to
our first our first battle position, our first control base,
which is in Yusophia, we had over we had taken
over they had taken over a water treatment plant and
built this troll base around this water treatment plant right
on the Euphrates River. And I mean to me watching
a bunch of Vietnam movies and reading a bunch of

(01:22:02):
Vietnam books, like it was a firebase. Like this was
solely a firebase. We had the patrol base. They had
a mortar pit where they could drop one twenties, eighties
or sixties one of the two. I know they had
one twenties that probably had sixties, yeah, I think. And
then we had these little checkpoints all around all the
patrol the patrol base, pretty much keeping people away from

(01:22:26):
the patrol base, or we would you know, had them
if they were just walking, had them down out there
walking through. But uh yeah, that was I think my
first night in the guard tower at our checkpoint, which was,
you know, a w I don't know, had a quarter
mile from the from the patrol base. You know, when
those guys drop a loom round at two in the
morning and they don't call out, hey, we're dropping a

(01:22:47):
loom round, like yeah, your your asses on the bottom
of a tower, going who was that nice? I'm sorry?

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
All right, guys like ship yeah, yeah, man, it's a
it's a different world over there, like people that haven't
deployed or anything like that. It's hard to understand it,
but it's a different world when you're in a place
like that. Let's talk real quick about how do you
guys come up with the names for your tanks and
when you guys switched tanks when you went from the
ones you had at home to the ones you picked

(01:23:16):
up in Kuwait, did you keep the same name or
did you rename them?

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
So initially we weren't allowed to name our tanks. Really yeah,
when we were state side, I don't know whose call
it was in O six, we weren't allowed to name them.
When we got into Iraq, we we eventually named them
when we got I think we named them when we
got attached to the hundred first Airborne.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
That's like a tradition. And then like a huge tradition
is like naming them the tank like the tank group
comes up with something.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
I want to say, it was like brigade brigade level
permission and whoever our brigade commander or whomever it was,
was like, no, we're not doing that, lame uh No.
So how they named the tanks now is it has
to have to start with the first letter of your company. So,
like I was Delta Company, so all of our tanks

(01:24:07):
had to have you know, d something or whatever, you know,
DS nuts or dirt nap or you know something along
something witty, you know, something cool and witty. Ever, so yeah,
it was generally the gunner. The gunner would name it
since he was the one shooting. You could ask ask
the driver or the loader for input, but for the
most part, the gunners just like, hey, I'm gonna name

(01:24:27):
it this.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
And you're like, okay, what was the most offensive like
tank name you saw?

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Oh, most offense? Say, you know, we were we were
we were kind of told to keep a PC.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Were there unofficial names for tanks?

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
No, I mean maybe I think my favorite was dirt nap. Yeah,
that was my favorite. Uh my first tank, my gunner
named it Diplomat. I was like, okay, cool, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Yeah, there's worse, there's better. Yeah, Like, man, I'm surprised
it's just a gunner. I mean I get that. I
feel like I feel like it would you guys would
all come together kind of like they do in the
air wing side when they're doing call signs, you know,
for their pilots and stuff, and come up with something
as like a crew for something like that. I know,
the artillery, the artillery batteries in the Marine Corps and

(01:25:20):
the tanks. When then we had them name name the
tubes and you know, spray paint them on and stuff
like that, and you see some funny ones sometimes, you know.
I seen one with a Bible verse on it. It just
said the verse. I can't remember which one it was,
and it was something about the like Lord reining down
thunder and lightning or something like that, and that was
the Bible verse that they put on the tube. The
artillery too, but I was like, that's a good one.

(01:25:42):
I was like, that's probably offensive when you send it
over to the Middle East, but that's a that's a
pretty good one. Yeah, dude, what was your You said
yours was dirt nap, that was your tank or my first.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
One was Diplomat. And then when I became a gunner,
I just named it Dinga okay, ding that was yeah,
that was my unofficial you know, I platoon start company. Yeah,
pretty much. I got I got to the unit. My
platoon start is like, oh you're Dingling And I'm like,
oh cool, thanks, never heard that before. Yeah, how how
big is the competition within like a platoon, company, battalion, whatever,

(01:26:20):
on the different levels of being like the best gunner.
They'll say, what now, I said, what's what's like the
level of competition between like the company, the platoon, you
know whatever, to be like the best gunner. Oh, it's
it's pretty high. You qualify, So I think it's like
seven hundred thousand, right, you get a thousand thousand points qualify.

(01:26:44):
You get a little patch, you know, depending on what
rate you're kind of like, you know, if you're a marksman,
sharp shoot or whatever, so you get you get that.
But it's bragging rights. And I think if you shot
top Tank in the company, I think you got like
a four day weekend. If you shot top Tank in
the Italian, you know, then you would go, uh, you'd
shoot again against our sister battalion. And if you did that,

(01:27:06):
I want to say, you know, a army they would
give you like, oh, here's a Gates arm Majors Coin
or it's you know, yeah, and me I think you
probably get an r COM like Armyccommodation medal for But
there's a lot of bragging rights. I can't remember who
shot top Pankhack the tune. It wasn't me, I can
tell you that much. Unfortunately, yeah he was. I know

(01:27:28):
it was uh As the famous like do use as
h God, he would not let that down. I would
always yell top terk and like, all right, fuck you.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
That's another unfortunate name though. Douche that's his name. That
was his last name.

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):
That was his last name.

Speaker 1 (01:27:44):
Oh man, Yeah, he had to have been kind of
tough because growing up with a name like I had
a buddy whose last name was Gay and this dude
could probably beat the ship out of a bunch of dudes.
And I'm like, that's from growing up with the last
name of Gay and dealing with the repercussions of that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Oh yeah, that's you know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):
The Submarine Artillery has something similar when we would go
to Brag. We would go to Fort Bragg twice a
year at tenth Marines out of Campbell June and we
would do a regimental artillery shoot that's a month long
in both March and then October, and during either one
or the other or both. I don't remember if we

(01:28:25):
did it every time we went, but I think at
least once a year they did a top gun competition
and it was best battalion in the regiment, you know,
best battery within the battalion, and then best gun within
that battery. And it was a big deal. It was
the same thing. It was bragging rights kind of deal.
It was kind of a big deal. I mean, I

(01:28:45):
was a Ford observer, so it was less of a
big deal for us. They would all blame us. They
would say that it was us that fucked them, why
they didn't win top gun, like they weren't shooting right.
We're like, dude, don't blame us. We're giving you a
point on the ground that we know where the point is.
Like you can't hit it, that's on you, homie, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
We've been here all week, we know where that is.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, And it would come at
the end of a month long of every day shooting
every day except for man, I think we even shot
on some Sundays. Maybe not, I don't remember, but constant shooting,
and so these guys were skilled by the end of it.
So it was always cool to see, you know, the
competition and stuff like that. I like that kind of
that rivalry in there, and you know, the bragging rights.

(01:29:26):
You know, you can come out, but then you got
the people, you know, walk around all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
Yeah, I mean it was it was it was fun.
I love shooting. Shooting was especially the tank. I remember well,
last time I shot we were in we were in
Iraq in twenty ten and I remember, you know, hey,
I looked at my tank commander. I was a gunner.
I looked at my tank commander. I'm like, hey, man,
like this is I knew I was getting out, this
is this is going to be the last time I'm

(01:29:53):
ever going to shoot something that is cool. And he's
like yeah, man, and uh he gave me the fire command.
Look down range that identified you know tank thousand yards
you know firefire heat or firefire sable on the way,
pull the triggers and I mean, I shoot you not.
I had tears in my eyes. I was like, fuck,
that's like never going to top that shooting wise.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
Yeah, last one. I still I did my last control
on San Clemente Island with the section of skids, section
of of cobras. It might have been a hue cobra. Actually, yeah,
it's a bummer when it's over. It's like, man, because
that's the cool part about doing the actual job is cool.
It's all the other stuff that's like that makes it
not where you don't want to keep doing it. What

(01:30:38):
do you think as a former armor guy, what do
you think about what's going on in Ukraine specific not
the politics of it, but the specifically the ability of
armor and the disadvantage it has against some drones.

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
I mean, you want to talk about technology, that's it's
showing you out the weakness that you have to You
have to now figure out how to how to combat, right, Yeah,
you know, it's always it's what are we We're reactive?
I feel like a lot of the times we're we
have a great idea what we need to do and
how we need to do it, but when we get there,

(01:31:14):
we're always like, uh shit, we're like a day late,
you know, or we're behind the power curve. And I
felt that way in Iraq when we built up, always
on tanks and it's like oh shit, now we're on
patrol and now we're foot patrol. Yeah, moving forward. I
mean it's cool. I'm it's cool people are you know,
people are in contact getting killed and whatever. But it's

(01:31:36):
cool to see tanks actually being utilized. It sucks that, hey,
they can be knocked out by a drone. But shit,
you know, like you said in two thousand and three
to thirteen, like they're getting knocked out by IDs, which is,
like you said, like a twenty dollars you know device.
So it's it's interesting, it's interesting. I don't know how

(01:31:58):
the US would go about operational wise on the Russian's
doctrine for armors antiquated. From my perspective, Yeah, they got
to figure something out though well.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
I mean, I think we saw most of the dramatic
like tank kills early on in the war, especially when
they were still trying to figure out what the fuck
they were doing. You know, they had a really bad
habit of all bunching up on roads and kind of
being in these massive columns and just like sitting there
like open targets. And you would see too, like you still,

(01:32:36):
I guess you still kind of see it where these
guys are going around with their hatch open and they'll
fly a drone right into the hatch. It's like, fuck, dude,
you know, once that and once that ammo cooks off,
that you're done for. I mean, once it goes in
there and it blows up that ammo. Some of those
videos that have come out of that war are crazy
watching the turrets blow off and everything and and that.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
I said, that's that's just how Russian tanks they're built.
They're not they're not built for crew survivability. As horrible
as that sounds. The Abrams is built relatively, you know,
cru survivability and ease of use. The marcavo are israelis

(01:33:18):
that that's like, that thing's huge. It's huge because it
is designed to keep the crew safe. You know, the
ammo's ammos stored separately. They even have like an escape
patch which they haven't used that, you know since like
World War two era tanks, Russians were all all about

(01:33:39):
the numbers, right, push them out, push them out, push
them out. And yeah, they're deadly vehicles. I think the
T eighty eight has like one hundred and twenty five
millimeter barrel like in that round, that round will penetrate
and destroying Abrams. You know, hitting the right spot even
at T seventy two, you know, you can knock a
tank out. Yeah, it's they're not built for sub probability

(01:34:02):
and their tactics and maybe it's just pissed for training. Obviously,
the Russian government since the fall of the Soviet Union.
They've been you know, lacking on on funding and training
and you know, look at the curse. You know, there's
a reason why, you know, they lost that stuff. Unfortunately,
you know, we we kind of have that unlimited budget

(01:34:25):
in the United States or we can continue to train
and continue to improve over stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
We definitely look at military and military like objectives, how
to take an objective in different ways. You know, the
Russians will definitely what do they call them, uh like
meat barrages or something like that. They're still like just
pushing people just just into the grinder. It's like, hey,
we're just going to keep pushing bodies at the problem
until we wear it down so that you know, and

(01:34:52):
they have in Ukraine Russia. The big thing that nobody
actually wants to talk about is that Ukraine has way
less people to throw out this problem than in Russia.
So it's like it doesn't matter what equipment we send them.
At the end of the day, they just don't have
enough people. And the Russians just keep throwing bodies at this,
you know, into this meat grind or just and now

(01:35:12):
these Koreans are getting killed over there. Like I saw
something that said like forty percent of the Korean force
had been killed or injured or something like that. I
can't they were pulling them back from the front lines
because of their casualties, I mean or missing. Yeah, it's
a yeah. I think there are some defectors, for sure.
It's such a weird I don't know. Since the whole

(01:35:32):
Ukraine Russian thing kicked off, I've wanted to ask more
questions of armor people, because it seems like a situation where,
you know, it's like a decision point do we continue
how much do we can put into armor in the future.
The Marine Corps got rid of our armor, Like we're saying,
no tanks, it's not agile enough for what we need,

(01:35:54):
what our mission is, and stuff like that. And again
it can be taken out if it can be taken
out with like a own that has a EFP on
it and it just has to slam into the side
of the tank, you know, how good of a weapon
system is it. I don't think that. I don't think
that they are obsolete, but I also think that, you know,

(01:36:15):
using them in the future is going to be different
than like the how they were utilized previously.

Speaker 2 (01:36:21):
You know, oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely and you know you
look at like I mean, in the armor community we
always say, uh, the last greatest tank battle was seventy
three Eastings East think that seventy three Eastings in the
Gulf War, and that that's an amazing story. What you know,

(01:36:42):
I mechanized you and it can do the bradleys with
the toe and then you know battalion or ALPNY size
of Hanks Abrams just going to town.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
On outrange. They were outraging all the Iraqis. You just
couldn't range.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
Them right yep. And that's the that's the amazing thing too.
The weapons system on that, the computer everything, like when
you have that that vehicle bore site, when you have
that that that barrel boor site perfectly you have a
laser you know, and it's it's as simple as oh,
there's my target, get the side of it, hit my laser,

(01:37:18):
I get an instant return, you know. And that that
ballistic solution will compute up to three ninety five yards
I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:37:30):
And that was in two thousand and ten.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Yeah, so who knows, I don't know what it is now,
you know. And then it's as simple as the minute
you do that. The computers taking in curvature of the earth,
aarometric pressure, heats, you know, elevation wind, and it's that
and you may not even notice it. As a gunner.
When you do that, the gun will move wherever it

(01:37:54):
needs to move. Your site stays right on that target.
You know, tank matters is five, Are you on the
way and target target? Like game over man.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
Yeah, that's it's fair. That battle is a good battle
for people to look up if they want to look
up something on YouTube or something like that. There's a
lot of good documentaries that discuss that. But you're right,
that's a really cool, uh example of the usage of
armor prior to what we're seeing now, you know, yeah
run yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:21):
Because I mean like the invasion of Iraq and O
three you know, uh, and there were they were they
were there were targets, armored targets that they were shooting.
But I mean you look at like and that's the
picture I have back here is thunder Run, which was
Third Industry Divisions pushing the down Highway Highway one and
Highway eight in the uh uh, the airport said, I'm

(01:38:44):
international biop. Now, like there's some cool video and there's
great books on it, but Uh, yeah, it's it's different.
It's changed. Like we were not that that uh, that
seventy three Eastings shock Force, that the blitz Creek, if
you will. Well, you know that we've kind of became
when in the Gulf for of speed and power, I

(01:39:06):
mean that's that's the Abrams gas turbine engine. I think
we'll go forty five miles per hour, you know, and
fly and you can still hit targets, you know, actually
just just moving. But you know what moves faster than
a tank, well, zoom, he's up top, you know, the
Air Force, the Marine Wing, the Navy, like you know,

(01:39:29):
there's a reason why those guys fly in and drop
bombs and take out you know, important the targets before
we even get to go in and do stuff. Just fights. Yeah,
the fight's changed.

Speaker 1 (01:39:42):
Yeah, yeah, it's uh. And then we'll keep changing, you know.
That's how it works. I guess the technology and stuff.
So I guess let's wrap it up, and I guess
my final question is have you seen Fury and what
did you think about it?

Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
Yeah? Yeah, no, I saw fury. You know, every tanker's
Brad Pitt. I don't know if you knew that or not.

Speaker 1 (01:39:59):
Obvious.

Speaker 2 (01:40:00):
Yeah, clearly it was a good movie. One of my
tank one of my tank commanders. Uh. Actually I was
involved in training those guys for that movie. He worked
with He worked with Brad Pitt, So they got the
fire commands. You know, it's Hollywood, so they got the
fire commands pretty pretty down. But I mean, yeah, it's

(01:40:23):
uh for what you see happens inside a tank. Yeah,
I mean it's it's it's goofy. But I always joke
with guys or you know people nowadays, and I'm like, well, listen,
like you don't know what happens inside of tank in
the middle in the Middle East. You don't want to
know what happens inside the tank in the Middle East.
You know, it's four dudes just being dumb and young,

(01:40:47):
you know, saying stupid ship, doing stupid ship. But uh,
that was a good movie. It really, you know, the
realisticness of it, what those guys did in World War
two and and the the casualties those guys took was unreal.
You know, I don't know why anybody would want to
be a tanker back then, Like those guys were just

(01:41:07):
getting knocked out left and right. There's a great book, Uh,
who's I can't think of who wrote it. I can't
think of the name of the book. It's from the
author Animatos. He wrote Devotion. He also wrote a book

(01:41:28):
I want to say it was like a armored or
something about the first Pershing tank in World War Two.
And uh, they actually had video footage of that tank
going toe to toe against the panther in the city
of Cologne. There was a cameraman filming and it's it's
wicked again. It's a completely different battle, completely different battle

(01:41:50):
from then to now.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
I think it was Rommel who said I think he yeah,
I think he said that the German pans Aer tank
could take out four American tanks, but unfortunately there was
always five American tanks. That was like his quote, like
their tanks aren't as good, but they just have so
many more of them than we do. Kind of deal. Yeah,

(01:42:15):
I get what you're saying too, about you know, four
guys locked into a thing the conversations. People don't realize
how you know, this is why you talk about other
military people's like family, because you're around them so much.
Like it's hard for people to realize. Like in the
real world, you get up in the morning and you
go to work and you have your people that you
see at work all day, and then you go home

(01:42:36):
and you do your stuff at home. In the military,
you get up in the morning and the same guys
you see all day long. You're gonna go peete together.
Then you're probably gonna go eat together. Then you're gonna
go to actual work together. And then when work's done,
you're gonna go hang out together after it's over with.
And then when you want these long training exercises or deployments,
when it's a small team like that and it's the

(01:42:57):
same four to ten guys that are all always together,
the stuff you talk about just is out of this world,
like off the wall shit, because you've talked about everything
and you're like and sometimes you're just talking to like
try to stay awake if it's a long day or
something like that, and it's like some of this stuff, man,
you definitely couldn't talk about it in polite society, you know.

(01:43:19):
But it's a good time, and I think, you know,
it's not that's not a bad thing. I think it's
good for people to get close like that and kind
of really interact with other people and kind of see,
you know, how people truly are.

Speaker 2 (01:43:29):
But yeah, that was the one thing I loved. I
did love about being a tanker. I mean, other than
old free Ammo, the brother I mean's And that's probably
why I went into the Fire Service right afterwards. It
was the brotherhood. You get so close to these guys.
You know, we're only a sixteen man sixteen man platoon,
whereas an infantry platoon you got fifty guys, fifty sixty
whatever it is. So you know these guys, these guys

(01:43:51):
are your brothers. And yeah, I loved I obviously don't
get along with everybody, but yeah, I love it. I
loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:58):
And it's good though, because you learn how to deal
with people that you may not agree with because you
have no choice but to deal with them. And that's
something that's wrong with society today is they demonize everybody
they don't agree with, and they want to even have
a conversation with them or associate with them or anything
like that because they have a choice. In the military,
you don't have a choice. This guy you may completely

(01:44:19):
degree with, disagree with everything he's about, his politics, his
life choices, whatever, it doesn't matter. He's the dude next
to you that you have to work with every day,
so get over it, you know, and you find some
common ground with those people. Yeah. Man, well, I really
appreciate you coming on and giving your perspective. Like I said,
I don't think i've had another tanker on I. If

(01:44:40):
I have, I feel bad. I'm sorry for whoever that
may be. But I appreciate you coming on. Is there
any kind of organizations or anything that you were looking
to promote?

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
No, the only one I can think of is, like
I said, I don't really have a channel or anything
or whatever. I am a fireman outside cargo and uh,
through our union, the International Association of Firefighters, we have.

Speaker 1 (01:45:10):
Oh dude, I lost yet when you're promoting I'm gonna
pause it until he comes to back on.

Speaker 2 (01:45:16):
I suffered with survivors guilt.

Speaker 1 (01:45:20):
Hold on just a second. Yeah, right, when you said
the International Associating at Firefighters did froze, so everybody after that, okay? Yeah,
Like I said, no, we have an organization through the
International Associations Association of Firefighters, which is our nationwide union,
called the Center of Excellence out in Maryland, and I

(01:45:41):
believe they're trying to open one out in California. And uh,
you know, when I got back from Iraq.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
I suffered from PTSD, survivors guilt, t B, I, all
that fun stuff. You know. We had lost We lost
seven guys over there, my lieutenant being one of them,
who I still you know, I have his name tattooed
on my leg and I named my my firstborn daughter.
His last name was Aids, John John Eads. My first

(01:46:08):
born daughter is a frey Ida, kind of an honor
to him. Since I couldn't I never made a boy.
But yeah, so I ended up, through the course of
my time in the Fire Service and life progressing and
a divorce, I ended up calling the Center of Excellence
and going out there. Then when I got there and

(01:46:31):
I was, you know, you know, whatever I tell my story,
I'm you know, army veteran, two combat tourists to Iraq.
There was like sixty five percent of the guys there
or gals there were veterans, and even even the counselors
were like, yeah, there's a reason why you guys are here.
You know, you guys think you can handle everything. You
go from you know, the military, where you know it's go,

(01:46:53):
go go, and you go right into like the Fire Service,
the police, serre, you know, and your same deal. You're
just you're just moving forward and you never stopped to
like take care of yourself. So if there's any first responders, uh,
you know, obviously suicide is a permanent solution to a
temporary problem. And and uh, you know, I'm sure you

(01:47:15):
justin as well as anybody listening, they know way too
many people that have chosen that path. I know, I
know we have lost. I know more people that I've
lost from that path than than combat, which is horrible.
There's help out there, if there's anybody in the Fire
Service through the I f F, reach out. If you
need help, reach out to the CEO. It's a great facility,

(01:47:39):
great great program, a bunch of veterans there. I still
have a buddy that I talked to that I met
out there who's a he's a dispatcher in Virginia Air
Force guy. He's an Air Force cop. I don't even
know that was a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:47:54):
Apparently it is security forces, ye.

Speaker 2 (01:47:57):
Security forces. But yeah, oh that's you know, there's programs
out there, and I know a lot of us suffer,
a lot of us suffer in silence, but you know,
reach out for help, and if you're a fireman, that's
a phenomenal, phenomenal place to go. So that's kind of
my my push for mental health.

Speaker 1 (01:48:14):
Good man. I think it's great, and I've said multiple
times on the show before, one big thing that everyone
can do is just reach out to somebody every once
in a while and say what's up someone that you
served with. You're like, hey, man, it's been a while,
Hope you're doing well. They may not even respond to you,
but at least you reached out and they see that
someone is thinking about them, you know what I'm saying.
Like some people, some people leave the service and kind

(01:48:36):
of become a recluse, you know, they don't wanna they
don't associate with military at all. They don't talk to
anybody that we're in with. That's fine, that's totally cool.
But I think the best thing that we could do.
I mean that no one can figure out suicide, and
as much money as they put into it, we're just
never going to figure it out. And I don't know
what the answer to it is. And but I think

(01:48:56):
that the best thing that we could do on this
level is so just to reach out to people and
say what's up, man, Hope you're doing well, you know,
And I don't know. I do it every once in
a while, you know. Actually, it's funny. Is this guy
that I went to boot camp with. I was randomly like,
I wonder what he's up to these days, and I
looked him up on LinkedIn and shot him a message,

(01:49:17):
are like, hey, man, been a long time. Hope you're
doing well. You know, I hope the military service as well.
Found out he did a couple of deployments, he got
up blown up once too, and and all that stuff
and everything kind of caught up with him. But it's
like that little thing. I don't know how he perceived
it on his end, but that kind of conversation, you know,
is a positive and it reminds people that you're someone's

(01:49:38):
thinking about you. And the organization. You know, that brotherhood
we always talk about shouldn't end when you pick up
your DD two fourteen, you know, and it shouldn't be
up to the government to make something happen. We should
do something on our own to kind of support people
going through problems or anything like that. Even if you're
not going through problems, you should still reach out to people.

Speaker 2 (01:49:57):
Yeah, you know, and you know that's that's really right.
It's us. We're the ones that can push the hardest
to make things better, you know, moving forward for the
next group, you know, for the next kind of ration,
for the.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):
Next you know. And one of the leadership traits that
the Marine Corps pushes is knowing yourself and seek self improvement.
And you have to be honest with yourself. Man, Am
I having problems right now? Is there an issue here?
And if there is, go do something about it, because
no one is going to be an advocate for your
issues more than yourself. And if you don't do anything

(01:50:30):
about it, you can't complain that no one's helping you,
because it's it's kind of on you. You know what
I'm saying to to have a positive mindset or a
forward thinking mindset where you're taking you know, there's an
issue coming up, or you're having problems with something and
rather let it, letting it spiral out of control and
something horrible happening, get in front of it and kind

(01:50:51):
of realize, hey, man, maybe I need to talk to somebody,
or maybe I don't know. I ramble about this only because,
like you said, I know guys that commit suicide. I mean,
my roommate when I was in Iraq, we stayed in
these things called Choose, which is the containerized housing units. Right,
my roommate in Iraq and nine like I was on
my I was doing my classes to get out of

(01:51:12):
the Marine Corps. And I thought he committed suicide. Someone
told me, and I was like, God, damn it, dude,
you know, And that was like the first. Then you
start hearing about guys dying, and it's like not always suicide,
but I just don't get it, man, I don't get
to suicides. We had a guy commit suicide on my
last appoyment on ship. He hung himself on the ship,

(01:51:35):
and it was just like, damn, man, there's a whole
ship full of people you could have talked to, you know,
there's like over a thousand people on this ship, and
he still felt lonely, you know what I'm saying. And
it's just like I don't know how you can I
don't know what you can do about that.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51):
But I know for myself, I was so far into
my own head, you know, and I isolated myself and
it was the opener for me. And I always tell
this to people, and I used to I used to
be a fire instructor at a local college around here,
so I would teach fire academy stuff and I'd always
end with like, hey, you know, because obviously very silly.

(01:52:13):
And it's similar, right, like the stressors that we do
within the fire service, the things we see and deal with.
Suicide rate is huge in the fire service, sadly, and
it's it's huge in the police, the party, you know,
police service. The minute I I remember just hitting a
wall and uh, one of my lieutenants, who is a

(01:52:34):
Navy guy, is uh Navy guy. Uh. One of my
lieutenants looked at me and he's like, hey, dude, you're good.
And I was like, no, I'm not good. And prior
to that, I'd always said yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, Roger, Roger,
carry on, I'm good. And uh He's like what's up?
And I told him. And then from there it was
just like man, everybody came out of the woodwork. Hey,

(01:52:56):
I'm here for you. What do you need, I'm here
for you. What can I do for you? Like it's like,
holy shit, I'm out of one. And then even even
when I went to the Coe, same deal. I reached
out to guys i'd served I was like, hey man,
like I'm at this place essentially rehab, what's going on?
And it was it was very therapeutic, and I'm sure

(01:53:21):
it was for them to some extent, you know, just
to talk to guys about things that you know, because
it's it's the shitty thing, right we Unless you're a career,
career military guy, you get out audio is by right,
you don't. You don't really see anybody else. The closest,
the closest I had. I have a buddy in uh Munster, Indiana,

(01:53:43):
I rarely see anymore. I served within my unit, and
then my buddy Mike Nixon who's from Displains and unfortunately
Mikey you know, product of suicide. And you don't see
these guys. You don't see them anymore. And we have technology, right,
you have your phone, you have FaceTime, you can call them,
you can do whatever. But everyone's life just kind of

(01:54:05):
goes on and you kind of separate.

Speaker 1 (01:54:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:08):
But yeah, now now afterwards, like you said, I make
a point of it that I will talk to random
guys say hey man, just they remember this time in Iraq,
Remember this time in training where we're like, you know,
just checking in.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Yeah, you never know what's going to happen. I had
one of my old radio operators called me up one
day out of the blue, and we fucking talked for
like an hour. It was like and it was like
rolling back into the old days, talking shit, you know,
harassing each other a little bit, kind of just catching up.
It was a It was a good thing. I will say, though,
I think it's almost harder for career guys that get

(01:54:40):
out because they put so much more into it. And
that's not a dig on. I mean, I didn't retire,
you know, I didn't stay in for twenty and retire.
But those guys that that's all they've ever done. Like
most guys like you and me and a lot of
people get out with enough time to kind of get
another job and maybe even start a whole new career.
When you get out of the military after twenty five years,

(01:55:02):
maybe it might be hard to find another job. You
may not need another job. But it's like, I don't
know any every person that leaves the base for the
very last time, it's a weird feeling because you're driving
away and you're like, holy shit, I'm not going like
that was it? You know, that's yeah, that's the end
of that.

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):
You hate it when you're in, but then you'd miss
it when you're gone.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Yeah man, yeah, so yeah, Like we were saying, though,
reach out to people, reach out for help if you
need it. Be your own self advocate, you know, know
your self, seek self improvement, Understand that there's something going on,
and maybe you need some outside influences, either just a
BS with a buddy, or maybe reach out for professional help,
you know, in whatever area that you need help in.

(01:55:49):
You know, and as veterans, we have so many resources
between the VA, which can can be hit or missed
depending on where you're at. You know, I personally don't
have and here in San Diego, the VA has been
okay for me, but there's a you know, it's a
military town. There's like two VA hospitals here. If I
lived in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, it's gonna
be a little different because the closest VA is gonna

(01:56:11):
be farther away. But use like the VA. If you're
in a business, you have a veteran business, you know,
look at the Small Business Association or a Small Business
is it Association SBA. Look at the SBA. They got
programmed there's so many programs for veterans that you have
these personal issues, professional issues. Use these programs like we've

(01:56:31):
been They've been funded in everything by the government. There's
no reason not to use them. So look those things up,
like you said, the Center of Excellence, if you're a firefighter,
use those kind of programs. That's what they're for, is
for people to utilize and become better, you know, at
their job, better citizens, just better all around. And you know,
it's good for all of us. So again, Scott, I

(01:56:52):
really appreciate you coming on the show. Everybody. Yeah, man,
everybody can check out my stuff. Jakremergraphics dot com is
my website and at Former Action Guys at Former Action
News is my Instagram, and that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:03):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:57:04):
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:06):
Yeah, thank you very much, sir,

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Ep. 225 | Scott Lyng | Army Tanker, Firefighter, and OIF Veteran

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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;}Ep. 225 | Scott Lyng | Army Tanker, Firefighter, and OIF Veteran