Ep. 227 | Travis Harless | Invasion of Iraq - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you had a unique experience compared to a lot
of people, you know, three deployments in four years. And
I thought it was interesting because when you hit me up,
you said that you were sixteen when you were a
senior in high school. How did that happen? How did
you skip a grade? Let's talk about that, and then
let's describe, you know, what pushed you to the Marine Corps,
especially the Marine Corps Infantry.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yeah, I didn't like skip a grade.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
So my birthday is November twenty ninth, and so I
was like one of those kids is at the younger
end of the spectrum, like younger of my class, like
the youngest kid in my class. So I started kindergarten
when I was four, and I turned five and during
the school year, you know, and so forth, like all
the way through. So like I was always the youngest
kid in the class. I wasn't like especially gifted or

(00:44):
skip a grade. I was kind of a shit student.
I just was at that younger end, you know. So
I turned seventeen in my senior year of high school.
So yeah, nine to eleven, I was still sixteen. Yeah,
I went to the recruiting office the next day. I
had no interest in being in the military prior to
nine to eleven. Like my best friend in high school

(01:07):
was all gung ho. He wanted to join the army
at first, and then a friend of my brothers was
a marine and had talked him out of joining the
army and told him to join the Marine Corps. So
my friend Brandon was talking to the Marine recruiter all
the time, and I used to make give him shit
for it, like make fun of him like a nerd.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
He was in the RTC program at the school. We
had like an Air Force RTC at my high school,
and he was in that and like all other friends,
and I would always like talk shit to him, make
fun of him for being a nerd or whatever. And
then anyway, so when nine eleven happened, that kind of
changed everything for a lot of us, and I got
pushed towards the Marine Corps because I didn't know anything
about the military really, like or any of the branches.

(01:45):
But I remember from like history class just being told
that like the Marines were like the you know, the
best of the best kind of a thing, and that
was just something that kind of stuck with me, and
and I was like, well, I really want to go
kill some terrorists. I was like very upset and very
gung ho, and so I was like, I'm going to
go join the Marine Corps. My best friend Brandon and

(02:06):
he was like in contact, actively in contact with the
recruiter at that time. So he brought me down, introduced
me to the recruiter the next day, and we had
taken the asvab Our junior year. They had a day
where they came in and they all the entire junior
class in my high school took the Asbab. So I
already had an Azbab score and I had scored like
my whatever the general the overall score is, because it

(02:28):
was like the overall score, then you have like the
GT you know, was the four other scores. I'd scored
really high, ninety overall. And they were pushing me to
all of the different recruiter jobs that you know, the
quotas they have to meet, like they wanted me to
do I don't know a bunch of other stuff, and
I was like, well, I just want to like go
shoot terrorists. I don't I don't have any interest in

(02:49):
doing anything like that requires brent power. And so anyways,
they I had to wait because I was still sixteen,
so I had to wait until I was seventeen to
actually list. So my mom signed my permission slip or whatever,
and then I went to MEPs on my seventeenth birthday.
They had like co state my paperwork, so I actually

(03:11):
signed it when I was sixteen. But anyway, so I
went to MAPS on my seventeenth birthday. Graduated in June
of two from high school. And then the earliest the
earliest ship date because it was a real popular time
to join the military right.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
For nine to eleven. There was a lot of a
lot of Gung Ho people in there.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
So the earliest ship day I could get because they
asked me when you would to ship out for boot camp,
and I said, well, I graduated on it was June
sixth of two, so as soon as I can after
I graduate high school. And then the earliest day they
could get me was August twelfth, after so it's two.
I had to wait two months after graduation, so and
that begain that became a factor like years later when

(03:50):
it came time for my third deployment. So I went
to boot camp in August of two thousand and two,
graduated November eighth and my birthday's over between, so I
was still seventeen when I.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Graduated boot camp.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
That's crazy, man, Yeah, would you do that again? Do
you think? I mean?

Speaker 1 (04:07):
That's I I also was a senior on when nine
to eleven happened, and I also went to the recruiter
that week, but I got in trouble my senior year
in high school, so I had got delayed. And looking back,
like at the time, I was super pissed because I
was like, you know, like a lot of people, nine
to eleven just happened, like, dude, you know, I want
to join right now. Yeah, And but looking back, I'm like,

(04:31):
you know what, I'm kind of glad I got a
couple of years to like live life a little bit, yeah,
and like kind of live on my own and just
do things with my friends before joining the Marine Corps.
Because a lot of guys go straight from their parents'
house to the Marine Corps and then when they get out,
they're kind of lost because they've never really had their
own time to grow, you know what I'm.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Saying, Oh for sure. Yeah, So for me it was
a little different.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
My dad died when I was thirteen, and my mom
she had some some problems and I had to move
in with my older brother. So when I was thirteen,
I started living with my brother. He's six and a half
years older than me, and he was taking care of me.
So I was mostly kind of on my own for
like my entire high school years.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
And that's part of why I barely graduated. There was
nobody really.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
To hold my feet to the fire when it came
to like going to class or whatever. Yeah, and I
would have just left right away from boot camp, but
the recruiter said, no, you have to graduate because they're
only allowed to accept a certain number of people that
don't have diplomas. Yeah, because I had pushed like, well,
what if I just get, you know, take the GED
test and then go now, and they said, no, you
can't do that. So it was a little different than

(05:36):
just going straight for mom and dad's house. But there
definitely would have been a benefit to getting some life
experience before. It would have made it not such a
shock to the system. I mean, I mean, I don't know.
I don't think there's a way you can go to
Marine Corps boot camp without it being a complete shock
to the system. Like it's not impossible, but maybe just
a little bit less. It did pay off for me,

(05:56):
like in the long run. So when I got out,
I was twenty one still when I got out, and
then I got a job in my hometown in Bakersfield,
California as a police officer, And so I went to
the academy, and I remember our academy is like, as
far as police academies go, like ours is one of
the more like strict military style. So they're like they
try to imitate the military, and there's a lot of
like lling and and we have a pretty hyatrition rate

(06:20):
compared to like other college course academies. And I remember
being in the academy and having this and having this
feeling like compared compared to being in a Marine Corps
boot camp, it's kind of like silly, it's a joke.
And I remember some other recruits were like, Hey, is
this what do you think this is hard as a
boot camper or is this easier? And I'm like, like
at five o'clock every day, I get to fucking go home.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
I go home.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
I get to like get in better with my girlfriend,
you know, like they can only yell telling me at
five o'clock. And then I'm out of here, like when
you're when you're a rencal book camp, they fucking own you,
like like there's there's no like leaving, there's no escape
like at any time.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
It benefited me.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Like later in life because it was like nothing ever
is gonna be as hard as as that.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
That also to me, that makes things harder to go
do because I don't want to go through it because
I'm like, this is so silly, why are we even
doing this? You know, it makes it almost harder to
handle it because it's like this feels like such a
waste of my time.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
One hundred percent, and like I felt like old.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Uh So, anyways, I got out and then I initially
was gonna try to become a fed and I was
gonna go to the border patrol, and uh I went
to I took the test. I went to the border patrol.
Like they had like an orientation event. And this is
how much of the knuckles that I was. The recruiter guy,
like he's not actually a recruiter. He was a guy
came and spoke at the orientation and he was like

(07:44):
this overweight, out of shape dude and he was like
talking and I remember looking at him like I don't
want to be part of this organization. Like just like
on the way this guy looked, you know, it's just
so stupid mind sight, but that's the where.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
My twenty one year old brain worked, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, And so I said screw this, and then I
and it originally didn't want to go to our police
academy because of that very thing you said. I knew
what it was, like I had some friends in the
police department, and I was like, I really don't want
to get yelled at by some fucking cop, Like I'm
not going to deal with that, Like I'm that part
of my life is over. But then working as I
worked construction for about a year from the time I

(08:17):
got out to the time I joined went to the
police academy, and I was making like nine dollars an
hour to operate a wheelbarrow and like move broken concrete
and do like hard, hard ass like manual labor, getting
paid like nothing, and realizing that like construction was not
I was not cut up for this, and so like
you know what, like I'll just go yelled at like whatever.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
So like real life.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Kind of hit me, and then I realized, like maybe
it's not that bad after all, to go back into that,
I would have you know, I was never interested in
joining going back into the military again, just just.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
I kind of wanted.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
I kind of had a bad taste in my mouth
with the whole thing by the end of it, and
I just.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Didn't want any part of it.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
But then real life hit and it was like, well,
you you're not doing so well out here, and going
back to something similar to that isn't so bad.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
I think a lot of people come to that conclusion really,
you know, either coming back into military going to something
similar to the military. You know, they're like, you know,
I used to bitch about it, but it's not really.
The structure is nice, you know, at least you have
the structure kind of deal. What was your favorite part
of like your infantry training? And because you basically rolled

(09:28):
out of s OI, out of the School of Infantry
and rolled right into Iraq a month I think within
a month, right, you were in Kuwait getting ready for
the invasion. What was so what was your what was
your favorite part of infantry training? And then how well
prepared did you think you were when you showed up
as a new guy to your unit.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
That's a good question my favorite part, you know, I
it was good as an eye opening experience to realize
like I kind of was able to skate by just
in life in general. So like, like I said, I
wasn't a good student in high school, but I was
smart enough to where I could just like kind of
halfway pay attention, not really do any work, and get
like a C on the test and pass the class.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
So like I was a very low effort, like lazy person.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
And then when I went to SY I kind of
had that same sort of mentality and approach and it
did not work. And so like I remember, maybe this
isn't a favorite experience, but it was probably the best
thing for me. Is I failed land NAV. One week
we went to land Nav, of course, and I had
to come back on the weekend on my Saturday. Well,
everyone was out like you know, in ocean side or whatever,
doing whatever, and I'm fucking walking around the mountains because

(10:36):
like I didn't pay attention. Because I didn't pay attention
to class. It was like a big, like kind of
reality check, like no, you're lazy and you need to
get your shit together. And so so I don't know
if I was a favorite part, but I mean, that
was a good, a good experience to kind of like
wake me up and not to be as as much
of a like.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Useless piece of shit.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
And then when I got to uh, I guess when
I got to to the fleet. So my unit, first batime,
seventh Marines, was already deployed. They deployed in like very
beginning of February of three, and I graduated from from
the School of Inventory like mid February, so they'd already
been in the country. They put me in a moving

(11:19):
company and then they shipped a bunch of us over
and we met our unit. We met one seven there
in Kuwait. I got there on March second of three,
and they just had a second line. There was like
seventeen or eighteen of us in a line, like all
lined up, and they're like, okay, you first three, you're
going to Alpha Company. You next, you know, four, you're
going to Baker you know next, the next five, you
guys are Charlie Company. It was just like that's how

(11:41):
I ended up. I ended up in in Charlie Company suicide.
Charlie one seven.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Did you tell your mom? Did you tell your mom?
The company's motto nicknamed yeah, I've been suicide Charlie.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Now, Mom, Yeah, well, it's funny getting the tattoo because
like not everybody, but pretty much everybody.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's in the unit.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
If you have if you have tattoos, you get a
suicide Charlie tattooed after your deployment. And so like you
get this tattoo that says suicide Charlie and the Charlie
spelled wrongs chr.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
C h A r l e y.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
It's like spell wrongers or skull and crosses on. Its
a suicide.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
That's awesome though. That's that's legacy though, you know, that's
for people that don't know. That's all the way back
from World War Two.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah, John Basilon knows his company was
a machine gun section leader once seven charge Charlie. So yeah, sorry,
oh yes, it was the training prepared me. I don't
I don't know, because you go from like running around
the hills and Camp Pendleton, but it's like hill country

(12:46):
and wooded to like the deserts of Iraq, you know,
and like in tracks like I don't even know if
there were infantry companies. I mean, the recont guys were
in high back combies. But I don't think that. If
you're a line infantryman like I was as an three eleven,
I think every single person was crammed in an Amtrak somewhere.

Speaker 4 (13:04):
Man, what a miserable ride.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
I've never had to ride in one, but I have
never heard a good story about riding in the back
of an Amtrak.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
No, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's so like the like,
did you never never ride one, like even in training
at all?

Speaker 4 (13:19):
No? Man, and I did two mus Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
So it's designed for like a squad sized element. You know,
they have a they have a driver, the command and
the troop commander she's like whoever the squad leader is,
and then the track commander, and then the back. They'll
have a crewman in the back, so there's three crew
members and a squad leader. They have like their own
little spot, and then the rest of the squad. It's
supposed to be you know, the twelve van squad, so
should be six on each side in their bench seating.

(13:45):
But I mean we were averaging like well over twenty
people per track, so you're supposed to have twelve in there,
and it was at least twenty plus and like so
there's no seating so that you know, like it's that
old saying. It's like how many people can you fit
in a vehicle? You know, like one more like so
there's always room for one more. So yeah, we would
just like sit like the way you'd loaded up is

(14:06):
the boots would sit on the ground, so we'd go
all the way to the back or to the front
of the track. You've come in from the back door,
and then you sit down facing the back door with
your legs open. And then the next day that comes
and sits in between your legs with his legs open
and so on.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
All the way down.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
You just like cram him in there, and then I
throw all the gear off top of it, and you
got like, you know, we had Weapons Company guys attached
to US weapons platoon and Weapons Company guys, so we
had like you know, guys with javelins in there, and
like it's just like there's like mortars and demo everywhere,
and like we're just like on top, literally on top
of each other and just like crammed in this thing.

(14:40):
And it's the march up from Kuwait to Baghdad. It
was essentially like a like a three week traffic jam,
like the worst traffic jam like ever for three weeks,
and so you're just like sitting there not moving, the
vehicles running, and then it'll move a little bit and
then it'll stop. And like when you're down in the hole,
like you can't see there's no windows to look out,
so it's like you're on this like terrible road trip

(15:00):
that's like not moving in traffic and there's no windows,
and it's like the tops open and the exhaust is running.
It's just blowing exhaust, like down on top of these
just breathing diesel exhaust for like three weeks.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Good time.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, it was kind of that was miserable. And then
like every once in a while they opened the back
door and they let you out to like go shoot
it something.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
How how often were you getting out of that because
I can't. I mean, I it would be hard to
get up and run after sitting down for hours in
a position like that, let alone get up full fully
loaded with gear and everything else to try to get
out and like go do something. How Yeah, what was
like your average stretch of time that you were back there?

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh, hours and hours?

Speaker 3 (15:44):
I mean it depended on the day, but I mean
sometimes we would sit in there like like literally not
get out for twelve straight hours.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
That sounds like torture man.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah yeah, and so but it is like, yeah, you
get up your like legs asleep or whatever. And that's
not the worst part. I would say the worst part
is to get year because everybody was in Mop what
is it Mop two?

Speaker 4 (16:04):
Just mess.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, So you were constantly because we wore mopsuits. Which
is another funny thing, is like we're in the desert
and we're wearing these bright, these like dark green like
wooden camera mop suits.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Put in the wrong order on that one, My bad.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, so we're we're in the suits at all times.
But in the beginning, our first hit was at the
oil refinery is shoot, why can't I think the name
of it down there in southern Iraq as soon as
you cross the border, I think it's all Basrah.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, there was this big.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Oil refinery there and that was our first location that
we hit, our first target. And they were convinced that,
you know, the scuts were going to be coming in
and they were all gonna get hit with the Nerviigians
and and so we were in Mop two, so we
had the boots on and if you ever wore mob boots,
like those things are fucking misery, especially two thousand and
three mop boots.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
They had these.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Like like shoelaces on him. Me tie them up and
they so they would they they had like kind of
a rubber flap at the bottom that it would tie
over the top.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
And since they lived like the little elf shoes in the.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Front, they were like curled up in the front, the
little toes and uh, we were sitting in those for
hours and hours and let me rewind. When I first
got to the unit, my squad did. The first thing
he did was we had our sea bag on our pack,
and he's like he stripped down my gear to like
the necessities of what I would need, which included five.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Pairs of socks.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
So all you need is like all you need is
five pairs of socks, Like that runs out real quick,
Like I was. We were in Kuwait when I got
there to the tummy like crossed stair was like three weeks,
so I was, I only had five pairs of socks
before we even like entered into Iraq. And everything's dirty
like and and so like your your feet are just
wearing dirty, nasty socks with in boots that you're not
hardly ever taking off, and then you putting rubber boots

(17:52):
over the top of that, and like it just kind
of marinates, you know. It's like a yeah, just slow
cooking your feet, you know, it's like a crock plot
like on each foot. And so then when you get
up and you run, like your feet are just trashed
and not so bad in the beginning and that first
like that first operation, but by the end of like

(18:12):
week three of being in this truck for three weeks
and wearing map boots like you know, a large amount
of a time, like.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Your feet are just destroyed.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
And that was that was the hardest part, is like
the running on just fucked up feet.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Was anybody was anybody like losing their mind you know
in this because it's okay, it sounds crazy for people
that may not you know, think about it, but it's
I can see how. I mean, imagine ten hours in
a box that's pouring diesel fume around you and you're
like you can't move, you're sweating, You're basically wearing a

(18:45):
saana suit over your uniform with all kinds of gear
on top of it. And yeah, no, how could you
I'm not surprised that people went crazy.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, no, I went a little nutty.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
And that's like you were talking about, would it be
benefit to come in a little bit later.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
That would have been beneficial because I'm a kid.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
I'm eighteen, like barely eighteen at this point, and like
I don't have any like life experience for maturity and
being stuck in there, Like if I was a little
bit older, it wouldn't have been as tough, I think,
so there would have been a benefit there for sure.
But yeah, there was one one point. There was a
night where we were in the track. We didn't get
out at all, you know, over twelve hours, probably closer
to fifteen, and we would stop every night. Then we

(19:26):
would unask the track and we would dig ranger graves
that we would sleep in, so just like basically enough
to where you could see you and a partner could
sleep next to each other like lengthwise. At first we
would dig fighting holes with like ranger graves next to them,
but then we were just digging these holes. It was
just a sleeping holes. So we would get out and

(19:46):
dig our holes. And this night where this day, we'd
be in the track for all this time and then
there was a real like heavy sandstorm, and so there's
you know with that Iraqi that like when the sky
turns like red or orange.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
I always saw the photos of that and was like that,
it probably doesn't actually look like that. That's probably like
a thing from the photo. And then I was in
Iraq and everything turned to orange. I was like, Okay,
maybe it wasn't the photos.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, that's so that that was happening this one day.
And so we're and we're sitting there miserable, second exhaust,
breathing the orange and the orange air, and we get
to we get to like our stopping point where it's
our our we're prievous. We would get out and we
would dig these holes and would sleep on the ground
for like, you know, five hours, and they said, okay,
we're not getting out tonight because it's the weather. Conditions

(20:29):
are too bad, like we can't see. We're gonna stay
buttoned up in the track. And I remember like I
was like i'mnna lose it, like I'm gonna fucking lose it.
And so I volunteered for Firewatch, like hey we need someone.
I was all fucking take fire Watch, Like give me
the Firewatch I could just get the fuck out of
the track. And I remember just breaking down and thinking
like man, I just don't want to do this anymore.
But like what are you gonna do? You can't to

(20:50):
go There's no quick button, you know, Like yeah, I
was if there was a way to quit, like I
absolutely would quit right then and there. But and then
started raining. It poured rain on us, and that was
reprieve too, because it got rid of the orange air.
So we load it back up in the track and
then they almost tipped it into like this pond.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
We got stuck. We had to get towed out as
a fucking mess.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's like like the epitome of like you have to
be comfortable with being uncomfortable, you know, you just have
to like deal with it. There's like you said, there's
no you just come to this conclusion to yourself. You're like,
there's nothing I can do about this. I'm literally, yeah,
it is what it is. I can't change anything about
the situation right now.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
So here we have the best, the best way to
like get through that stuff. I would always Later on,
as it got a little older, I realized is you
have to accept they say, accept the fact that you
belong to a fuck situation, Like this is fucked, like
and you just kind of accept it. It's gonna be terrible,
it's gonna suck, and then you get over it and
then the next step is to just like make fun

(21:50):
out of everything. Yeah, and like you'd be surprised that
like how miserable you can be and still like the
funniest ship that could that could happen, would happen like
in those moments. And there's something about there's something about
like strife and misery that brings like comedy, especially if
you're in like a situation where you're close knit and
like with other guys and and it's the funniest people

(22:10):
I've ever known are like just these guys who were
just eating it and being miserable together and you know,
someone would say or do something hilarious and just like
brighten the mood. Yeah, So it was the benefit I
think is sort of joining we're talking about earlier joining
so young is it?

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Like? After that? So that was my first deployment.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
I had two more deployments after that, but then I
got I was like twenty one years old, and it's
a big shock to the system. You know, they talk
about a lot about like transitioning veterans, transitioning whatever. And
I had a lot of that, like struggling with switching
back to civilian life. But it was it's like nothing's
not going to ever be that hard again, so that
there's the benefit. It's like when you look back, you're like, whatever,

(22:51):
you whatever's bothering you in your day now, like you know,
like it's twenty years later, Like nothing that goes on
in my day to day life now that's like seems
like a noise me or bothers me is anywhere near
as bad as like, you know, being crammed in a
fucking amtrak for fifteen hours.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, diesel blowing on me and you know.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
A javelin on my right leg and a more or
two on my left leg and some you know, smelling
marine who hasn't showered in a month, like laying like
on my crotch. Like so it's yeah, that's that's what
I'm grateful for the most thing I'm most grateful for
from the military is like your ability to be, like
you said, get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, yeah, I I'm the same way, but almost to
a fault where it's like it almost makes you kind
of write stuff off or maybe I don't know, it's
hard for some people to understand where you're coming from.
Where you're like, listen, this isn't that bad. But if

(23:48):
you tell someone that whatever situation is that you're discussing
isn't that bad, but to them, it's like super bad.
They don't really understand where you're coming from. I feel
like sometimes you come off as a dick or come
off as like uncaring or something like that because you're like,
you know, listen, this isn't life or death. Like when
you've actually dealt with life or death, you know, situations,

(24:10):
then it becomes like, okay, well this isn't life or death.
Like if we fuck who cares?

Speaker 4 (24:14):
Send it?

Speaker 1 (24:14):
You know, do whatever it is, like if it if
it's messed up, then no one's dying from this, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah. And I don't apply that to other people.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I apply that to myself, Like if I find myself
getting kind of bitchy or kind of like whiny, I'll
use that for me to like look back to kind
of check myself. But I'm broke cognizant. I wasn't always
a sway, but I'm more cognizant of like not doing
that to other people, because like whatever, the hardest thing
that you're dealing with is the hardest thing that you're
dealing with.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
For sure, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
I think about if you have kids and like say,
like my five year old daughter has an ice cream cone,
she drops it on the ground and she loses it.
Like that's gonna be a traumatic, terrible experience and she's
gonna be very upset. And what kind of a prick
would I be here? Like you don't know what it's like,
I wasn't the ship with the ground?

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
So like, and that's an extreme example, but that applies
to everyone, you know, Like, like everyone that I have
a relationship with, they're having a hard time. Like how
helpful is it mean to be like to shit on them?
Like your time isn't that hard? My tone was harder?
It's like, no, you're just a prick, Travis, like like
try to you know, be compassionate, like you were.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Saying, Yeah, I had to, like come, I had to
like rework my empathy when I got out, Yeah, you know,
just because it was that's how I was for a
little bit, like especially because I went, I got out
and then started into college. So now I'm dealing with
like eighteen to twenty one year olds like you would
in the military, like junior Marines or something like that. Yeah,

(25:38):
that have like just say stupid stuff, you know what
I'm saying, And it's like, you know, it was just
hard to relate obviously because I'm an adult now. It
was hard to relate with these like eighteen nineteen twenty
year olds and some of the stuff they're talking about.
I'm like, who cares, Like what are you even talking
about right now? You know, Like it was so that
kind of was a it was a shock for me

(25:59):
and something I had to like relearn, Like Okay, like
you said, you know, the worst thing's ever happened, He's
still the worst thing that's ever happened.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
So yeah, I don't know, man.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
That's when you were So let's talk about back, you know,
back to the march up. You know you talk about
taking the oil fields. Was that was there enemy forces
there at all?

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Well?

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Like what when did you did you guys get into
any engagements on your way to Bagdad? And then if so,
like what was like the layout of the you know,
enemy forces and stuff.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, very light and limited. I mean, like well one seven,
we weren't the tip of this spirit. We were more
of the shafts the spirit. But we were the first
Americans to get into the oil refinery. But it was abandoned,
so they were expecting there to be some contact and
expecting that the the wracky military to be defending it.
But the wrecky military we didn't defend anything. I mean,

(26:50):
there were some light skirmishes in the march up, but
everybody was there that knows, and like you know, it
wasn't It wasn't until late two thousand and four that
like shit started to get were like the people who
really wanted to hurt us like showed up. And for
the most part, like the march up was like abandoned
tanks on the side of the road getting just lit
up by uh, you know, by our air power and

(27:13):
you know, maybe getting hit with a toe missile or something,
and you know, you'd come into a base and it
would be like a band like freshly abandoned, like hot
food still there. But there was there were some limited engagements,
so not not at all oial refinery. They had they
had completely ditched that place. So we were expecting some
contact there and didn't get any. Well, we got into Alcoot,

(27:33):
which is a little bit north of uh keeping Basa, right.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, as I get old, my uh I think later on.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, and I always spend a very little time because
most of my time in Iraq was spending. I came,
but we just drove through there. A little bit of
contact in Alcoot and then uh it was it was
limited from there up into into Baghdad. We got into
Baghdad and again it was a lot of just like
like you get there and you could tell someone had
just been here, but they didn't. You know, this American

(28:06):
military like what are they gonna do? Like a conventional
military force has got no chance against the American military
of two thousand and three. So so yeah, they were gone.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
And what else.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
We got to Baghdad and shoot like early April, mid April,
I think in a mid April, because it was about
a three week trip. The march up was and we
stayed in this presidential compound right on the Tigers River.
I was speaking of engagements. So so Saddam Musin had

(28:44):
this compound that had like seven palaces in this one
like twenty foot wall around the whole place, and there
was these palaces and each palace was bigger than the
biggest house I'd ever seen, a huge, huge, giant mansions.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
So we clear this whole thing.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
We get to the back and then the back of
it buds up back to the Tiger's River and we
we we stayed there for maybe a week or so
before we moved. On our first night, we got to
sleep inside. It's the first time we slept inside in
like weeks, you know, And before that we had slept
in tents in Kuwait, and the marines just like immediately

(29:22):
destroyed the place, like like like all the toilets were
just overflowing with marine shit, and like the company community
communities like you guys are allowed to sleep inside, and
was like they moved on the on the grass. So
we're like living in the backyard, like in the backyards
of these palaces.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Remember there was this car one day pulls up and
so in two thousand and three, the technology was a lot,
a lot shiger than it is now. So my first
rifle was in M sixteen A two with iron sides,
ye yeah, yeah. And our platoon, so in my platoon,
we had three guys that had M sixteen A fours

(29:59):
with a cogs. So each squad had one one marine
with an M sixteen eighty four and an A cog and
they were like the designated marksmen. And uh So this
one day we're sitting back there on the grass at
the end of the march up in Baghdad, and it
was like sunbathing between like patrols or whatever, and you
hear like a crack, like a whiz and a crack,

(30:20):
Like what the fuck is that? And uh and instead
of like the net, you know, the seeking cover, you know,
and like trying to identify the threat, like you know,
everyone just stands up and is like looking around, like
what is going on? Where is that coming from? And
then there was a car that had pulled up on
the opposite side of the Tiger's River. So we're the
backyard of this is like right on the Tiger's River.
There's a big wrought iron fence and and so we

(30:41):
see this car that's pulled up and there's a guy
like the driver of that car, he's like shooting and
it's a good it's a good two to three hundred
meters from where he is to where we are. And
the platoon commander yells for the designated marksmen with our
three marines with the with the a cog. He's like
designated marksmen up and so they grabbed the rifles and
then like all the other the Marines just grab all
their shit and like we're still We're like, no shoes

(31:04):
was the first thing you gonna take the shoes off
to like litric feet there out because we all had
trench foot and we're projected from that. And like everyone's
just laying around and they're like ranger panties and like
their skivy shirts. And then everyone grabs their shit and
they run up on this onto the fence, and so
that we have a full marine, a full marine platoon,
rifle platoon with attachments, so probably like forty something guys

(31:24):
and these designated marchmen. They take a couple of shots,
and I remember like looking over at one of the
other Marines that was on an A two and he
starts shooting. I'm like, well, fuck that, I'm gonna start shooting.
So then I'm shooting, and then I hear the sawgunner
to my left, like he opens up and the star
starts firing, and then like the next saw and the
next up pretty soon like we are. We had smaller squads,
so we had I think six sawgunners in the platoon.

(31:44):
Like all the saws are shooting, all the marine, all
the rough let are shooting, like the Patuk Americans run
over stream and everybody sees fire and you know, like
kicking everybody and they stopped, and I mean they just
like shredded this poor look. And I thought, like later on,
like like what the fuck was that guy thinking? Like
this one raindo guy in a car and like you're
gonna shoot like the fucking ulplitude of marines that are

(32:05):
like were on the open. But he didn't anything and
it didn't go too well for him. But anyways, like
that's what combat on of, you know, won the march
up was like it was kind of silly.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
It was like a like a fun little adventure.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
When you got done, were you like, was that it
this was this is the invasion? Or were you like,
I mean you were kind of younger still, so did
you understand the historical impact of what you were doing?

Speaker 4 (32:29):
Taking part of.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
No, no, it's nothing but being young.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Uh So we had bad intel on our uh like
our first night once we had crossed the land departure
into into Iraq, and so we crossed from quit and
across the border. We're in Iraq and we're moving, we're
moving up, and it's like later in the evening, and
we had some intelligence that that a one hundred and
twenty Iraqi tanks had gotten away from where they thought

(32:56):
that they were, and that they were they were moving
towards our position, towards once and first Time Save Marines.
And we're an infantry battalion. And I remember the the
section leader for our mortars platoon or saw our mortar's
UH mortar section from UPS platoon was in my track
and he was like like visibly upset, like freaking out,

(33:18):
and he was like saying prayers like loudly, and he
was like having a full on meltdown. And I my dumb,
like eighteen year old brain thought like what is this guy? Like,
like what's the big deal? You know? It was like
but I didn't understand it, Like one hundred and twenty
tanks versus like a battalion of infantry marines, Like we're
not going to do too well here, yeah, like they're

(33:38):
they're going to fucking kill us anyway. So my team
leader came and he and he said, do you remember
how to shoot the eighty four? And I was fresh,
and I asked why. I'm like, yeah, I remember. So
he like brings the eighty four and he shows me.
We go over the operations. You know, it's pretty simple,
and he's like, here, you're gonna take the eighty four
and I'm all pumped up. I'm like, hell yeah, I
get to kill a tank tonight. And this is what
I'm thinking Like this, I'm I'm a new like you know,

(34:02):
like no, if this was truth, this this isn't bad
until you're probably just gonna die. But you know, in
my mind thinking I'm gonna get to kill a tank,
like hell yeah, you know. And so we stopped, we
set up a fighting position and uh and we watched
this artillery barrage go on all night and no tanks
ever come, just bad until so anyways, no, I guess
to try trying to answer your question, I understand, like

(34:24):
I didn't understand the political ramifications at all, but I
didn't understand just basic like life things like this, like
you know, one hundred and twenty tanks is going to
kill your your little infantry battalion, like, not, we don't
have we don't have any armor, we don't have any support,
like we're not going to do very well here. I
thought that this is just gonna be a great opportunity
for me to to kill some tanks. And the funny

(34:46):
about that at four is I carried that sucker after
that day because that was the first night of the invasion,
and I carried it all the way through. So like
anytime we dismounted, I forgot to mention that, Like you're
talking about how it's difficult to get up and get
out to try and get back in, why had to
keep this at four? So at all, my regular deear,
But I'm also carrying an eighty four and it's you know,
it's a fourteen pound rocket. The rocket itself is four

(35:06):
pounds and the cases another ten pounds, and it's long,
and it's got this shitty strap, you know, and so
you got it slung on your back and every time
you like climb a wall, like the lower end is
like hanging off your backside, so it'll get stuck on
the backshell of the wall and he's like full down
each shit.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
So I'm carrying this thing.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Around all the way through, all the way to Baghdad,
all all the patrols we did in Baghdad. And then
after we were in Baghdad for a few weeks, they
sent us to Najaf, which is like the holiest city
in Iraq, the holiest Muslim city in Iraq. And so
we're in a jaffe and they they we went out
to the desert and set up a range to shoot

(35:41):
off all of our old ordnance. And so we were
getting to do a LIFEI range for the first time.
And I was all excited because now I get to
shoot this at four. I carried this fucker for two months.
So they set up this little movement range and we
go through the end, and they had this little fake
bunker at the end, and we had the operation plan,
however gonna do it, And at the very end, I
was supposed to fire my eighty four to this bunker.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
So we do the whole thing, get to the end.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
You know, I get it cocked and locked, and I
remember getting on anee and I look back, you know,
back plasteral clear, and I go to fire and and
it's a dud.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
It does not fire. It's a fucking dud.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Damn it yes, So anyway, I carried I carried that
fucking uncomfortable rocket around for two months everywhere I went
and it didn't didn't even function.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Did they give you another one to shoot or it
was like sorry, budd.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Nope, nope, sorry, that was it.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Extra Yeah, we didn't have like well, I guess they
do have extra spares, but yeah, that's I was like
super bummed out because like, if you're an O three eleven,
you don't shoot like rockets like they'll they'll select like
one guy and infantry school gets to shoot the actual
rocket or whatever. So but I didn't selected for that,
and like that, you know, there's a couple of hundred
that don't get do it. And so I was pumped up,

(36:54):
like I want to get to shoot a rocket, you know.
That's that's a big deal for three eleven. If you're
an assaultan, it's like whatever. They shoot rockets all the time.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
But for me, it was like.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Back in the day, I was wondering if it if
it broke during like me just banging it around all
the time like that cause it to not be useful.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Probably that probably didn't help. Yeah, survived two months in
a track. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know Assaultman's no longer.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
A job, right, I'd heard that, Yeah, they got rid
of it.

Speaker 4 (37:24):
Yeah, So I don't know who.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
If there's specific people, I'm sure they still designate specific
people to to train on on at fours. And actually
I think now I think they're using Karl Gustav's more. Yeah,
and I think actually they're working on a replacement for
that as well, because there's something with the Karl Gustav

(37:47):
is like, you're basically gonna get CTE if you start
shooting those, you know.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
So so if you're if you're fire up at four
is gonna happen to you. So I ended up firing
one and training later on.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Like so, I deployed three times, but bright before my
third deployment, I was a squad leader and one of
the squads that not my squad but a different squad,
was doing to run ali fire range and they did
an extra body and so I just jumped in to
go run this range with them, and they had an
x THRA eighty four.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Then he fired and I was like, I'll fuck y'all
shoot it. So I got to shoot it.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
And that was the first experience of like shooting a
rocket and I don't know how if she was ever
fired one, but when you when you're right next to it,
it's like there's an explosion happening right next to your
head that like projects this rocket out and like I
don't know, like maybe they did teach me this, but
I don't remember, Like there.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Was no way to prepare for that. So I remember
when I fired it.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
We had fired like one or two just prior to
that too, and so we had to fire from the
same spot and I was right next to these other
guys when they fired there, so it was like two
rockets and then the one I fired, and it felt like, yeah,
it felt like I'd been punched in the face, like
like you know when you get hit in the nose
and you get that burning like a r eyes get watering,
and like Keith Kinna hurt. Like it felt like I'd
been punched in the face. And so yeah, that's got

(38:57):
to be not good.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
Get really not good for you.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, Well, they always tell you, they're like, Okay, you're
gonna you're gonna feel like a weight shift.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
That's like the thing like don't jerk it because you're
gonna feel like a weight shift.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
Yeah, uh yeah, that's what now.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Colin Gustav was after my time, like when.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
They became me too.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
I don't even think only special operations. I think marisk
was using them while I was in, but now I
think the actual infantry battalions are using them.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Okay, yeah, they they had they had brought back the
small not the small rockets sort of the law, which
is like the that what are they? They're sixty millimeter Uh,
they're sally like a sixty millimeter mortar, but they're they're
smaller with only three pounds and they're short little rockets.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
So I can't remember that when we take those out.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
And it's way more convenient than an eighty four because
the eighty four is so damn long and like you know,
in two thousand and six there's no tanks, like you're
not shooting tanks.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, it's kind of silly to have an eighty four.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
It's kind of nice to have a have the Yeah, no,
I know what you're saying. We have those also the
what do they call it again, the law?

Speaker 4 (40:09):
The law?

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, yeah, you like extend the tube and like it's
super simple, it's very basic. We had those in Afghanistan. Also,
we never shot one. I don't think none of my guys.
I don't think any of my guys ever shot one,
but I do know guys that have shot them. The
other nice one is the h the javelin, you know,
because that launches and you don't have to worry about

(40:30):
the back blast because it has like a soft launch
and then it takes off. The rocket kicks in the
downside of that is one of this one of the
scouts that I had at tenth Marines before he came
to me. He had done the three sixth deployment to
Marja and he has a video. It's on YouTube.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
I have to find it. Uh.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
He has a video of them shooting a javelin in
Afghanistan and the motor didn't take off, and it was
like and lands right in front of them and like
a They're like, oh shit, yeah, it's like oh for
a short round. Yeah, I just landed right in front
of them, like ten feet in front of them.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
I was like, oh fuck, like a short round on
a mar tube.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
The motor doesn't ignite because I think it uses like
compressed air or something like that to like launch the
round out and then the motor ignites and it takes off.
But yeah, you have those issues though, But these javelins
are super effective. So, but they're way more bulky than
like an AT four or a law Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, they're way more expensive too.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
I remember pissing off some of the Sultan, like you know,
with the javelins and they're getting banged out because of
the whatever targeting system they use is super expensive. But yeah,
I'm so old that, like the tow gunners, isn't an
mos anymore, that one went away before I believe Sultman
did well, we had tow gunners that they don't even

(41:54):
make the tow missile anymore.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, but I think they had tow gunners for a
long time, even when I I was in Yeah, because
they didn't make them anymore. But I think we had
a stockpile of quite a few. I know, as a
j Tach we didn't ever use. I'm trying to think
if we ever, if I ever used one in training
or anything. Tow missiles were kind of a kind of

(42:18):
known at the time to get stuck on the rail
of an aircraft like they'd launch, but it wouldn't actually launch,
so that those fell out of favor for the hellfire
missile which I guess now there's a new version of
the hell Fire out now. But so tows went from
being like an aircraft and a vehicle kind of thing
to just be in a vehicle thing because I remember,

(42:40):
I remember some of the vehicles had the saber saber
system which was like the optics for the tow missile
on it.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
They would roll with them.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yeah, So I don't know if they still use them
like that or not, but I think and I think
when the assaultment went away, I think they rolled them
into the tow gunners like that. I think all that
became like a assaultman javelin toe you were that guy.
I could I'm I could be wrong about that, but
I do remember.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
So what they do for like explosive breaching.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Now, if you don't have the Sultanan w roshband some
guys here and there, but that was primarily the Sultan's job.
Like once once the initial you know, invasion hit was
over and you aren't fighting the Iraqi military like you
gotta you gotta have demo, like you gotta be able
to get into places.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well, maybe they send guys, I don't know. Maybe they
send guys to the school like individual augments out to
the breachers course because there is a breacher. There's a
formal breachers course on each base. And the other option
too is to have the combat engineers come in and
do that, because that's the other thing that they're supposed.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
To be doing.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
And I remember in Afghanistan it was pretty common to
have combat engineers with you because of the ied threat
and them doing uh like trail sweeping and stuff like that,
I D sweeps and stuff. So it wouldn't be too
far of a stretch to think that wanted somebody one
of those guys could be there to help do a

(44:04):
breach if that's planned you normally, you know, you're not
randomly doing breaches. I mean that could happen that sometimes
you do, but normally that's a planned op. There's a
plan to do a breach, and everything's kind of pre
set before that, so I don't know how they're doing it,
to be honest, it'd be nice to have to get
somebody that's recently got out and come on and talk

(44:25):
about it. But the infantry's changing, man, have you seen.
I mean, if you see what the infantry, a regular
infantry guy uh in the Marines looks like now that
they're wearing kit they you would have thought ten years
ago you would have thought they were Marsac guys, or
you would have thought they were freaking recon guys. Yeah,
everybody's got pel tours, everybody's got suppressed rifles in fours

(44:47):
with a good optic on it. Everybody's got you know,
the high cut helmet for the pel toars, like the
different I mean, the Marine Corps really come around to
some of the gear changes and stuff, which is good.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Uh, don't they their their basic rifle calls were done
with optics too, right like that that changed happened a
long time ago.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, when I was still in we
did in boot camp we did iron sights, and then
in the fleet we did with our A cogs, and
then at some point now they do, uh, they do
it with their A cogs.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
I wonder if they drill with a cogs on. I
wonder if they do drill with that would be kind
of hard, Huh. That would change some of the drill
that you learn in boot camp, right for sure. Yeah,
some of the drill instructors out there can leave a
comment or something and let us know if they're doing that.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, so I so nostalgic over the iron sights.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Like I remember, so I later in life became a
rangemaster for my police department, and and we would teach
rifle school, and you know, I was just like I thought,
everyone needs to know how to shoot iron sights, like
we have we have optics, but like you should know
how to shoot iron sights and kea shoptics.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Feel, you know. And I think that's a good practical
way to be.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
And like we'd spend all this time and effort trying
to train people up on irons, and like it's I
didn't realize how difficult it is for people to learn,
you know, Like you know, I was taught this when
I was seventeen, and then like you know, get these
you know, twenty something year old cops and you're the
and they can't do it, and they would slap a
red dot on they'd be shooting great, you know, and it's.

Speaker 4 (46:14):
Like, oh really, yeah, that big of a difference.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Huh oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
So anyways, and I it took me a while to
kind of shake that whatever that kind of get off
my lawn old man of like, yeah, you should all
learn how to shoot your irons. You know, yeah exactly.
It's like, well, actually those are pretty outdated. Maybe you
should get with the program.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
I'm if you have the time and the budget, I
think people should shoot with iron sights still to get
used to them.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
I'm a fan of.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
At some point we started getting issued like backup iron sights,
like they would be like little iron sight flip up.
It'd be like a little flip up. I think it's
good to get that out and do the Obviously, if
it's on your rifle, zero it so one you're gonna
shoot and zero that. But yeah, I don't know, I'm
learning shooting fundamentals is I don't know. I enjoyed it,

(47:09):
and I always enjoyed the rangers. Some people that don't
like going shooting, even the Marine Corps that hate ranges
and stuff like that, but I always enjoyed it. And
I that was another one of those things where I
walked away from the Marine Corps and I would hear
people talk about shooting and they talk about like this
crazy setup and optic that they have and they're shooting
like two hundred yards. I'm like, what are you talking about, dude?
And I I didn't want to be like, oh on

(47:32):
iron side, we shoot five hundred yards, you know, like,
but it's like at the same time, it's kind of like,
what the that's crazy that there's what kind of didn't
feel like I mean, it was good rifle training, but
it wasn't like anything crazy or intense rifle training in
boot camp, you know, got you to a level where
you could, you know, most people, there were some people

(47:54):
in boot camp even that couldn't shoot hardly, but most
people could shoot pretty well in a target, a man
sized target of five hundred yards with iron sights pretty consistently.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, you know, it's just crazy. Yeah, it's yeah, it's
crazy to think.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Yeah, like you're saying, these guys that get these high
speed setups and then you know shoot at two hundred
You're like, like, that's.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Where we start at.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (48:19):
This is the rapid fire course. What are you talking about?

Speaker 4 (48:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (48:22):
I see these hunting videos and guys are like, we're
one hundred and fifty yards away from the deer, and
it's like, what do you You're using a thirty OCS
six with this like ten power scope and all this
other stuff, Like what are you trying to do?

Speaker 4 (48:34):
Yeah, I'm trying to shoot its eye out.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yeah, so that's a good skill to have.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
But uh, yeah, did how much how much did your
equipment change from your deployment two thousand and three to
your deployment two thousand and four.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Yeah, good, good questions. So from my first second deployment,
we had we had transitioned to like a lighterweight kevlar,
So I started with like the whole I don't even
know if Vietnam era like super heavy kevlar with like
the one dirty ash chin strap, you know, And I
remember they got these. I think on my second deployment

(49:08):
we had similar helmets. They hadn't moved to like a
lighter one. We never got like the high cut like
the ones you're talking about, but later on we got
the lighter way kevlar. But they had bought these kits
where you could take out that They used to have
like a ring that would go inside of the of
the helmet, and it was like and that was what
you would wear and it would dig into your.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Head so bad. So they bought the pads which everyone
has now.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah, we're like they took that ring out and you
had the actual you know, padding that would the helmet
would press against your head with the pad instead of
like a leather strap, and so like that was a
big deal. It's like, oh man, this like doesn't cause
instant migraines.

Speaker 4 (49:43):
I remember people buying those.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
That was like one of the first things they would
tell you, like, hey, if you still got that, you know,
because I when I came in, we started with those
helmets too, they would do the same thing. They'd be like, hey,
a thing before the playing a lot of people do
is swap that out with pads, And I'm like, huh,
that's a good idea.

Speaker 4 (49:59):
And I never did it though, but it's like a
good idea.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Now there's even more advanced like suspension systems that they
put into helmets that people will buy. And I knew
multiple guys at bottom like after market kind of deal.
It wasn't issue to them that way. They did it
on their own because they wanted their own comfortable helmet.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
You know, Oh yeah, that's a solid investment. I mean,
you're gonna wear this thing all the time. So that
was like from the top down. That was like the
first thing moving away from lbv's did you ever wear
like a like a old style green LBV?

Speaker 4 (50:28):
Not like seriously.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Exactly right exactly at the range.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
We still had those issued, but people started breaking them down,
and like it's funny, I think the two thousand and
four two thousand and five was the time at least
in my experience, where like gear really made like a
kind of a quantum leap, and just from practical use,
like people having to wear shit and use it in
the field, and and so there's like sort of homemade

(50:58):
versions of stuff that you see like around today. Like
nobody ever wore belts and gun belts on my first deployment,
But then guys started fashioning like the lower strap for
the LBV that she would you would snap it at
the bottom. They would take all the netting off of
the LBV and they would use that as a gun belt,
and they'd attached like the thisstle to it, attach magazines
to it, kind of get some of the weight off
of their chest and off of their their their let's

(51:20):
say plate carrier. We didn't even plate. We didn't have
blake carriers. We wore flat like point blank flat jackets.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
I see.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
So for my first or second employment, we went we
did have point blank.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
STAPs flat jackets with like sappy plates, but they integrated
they started issuing the side plates and then we were
wearing like the stegosaurs full get up. So we had
like the callers and the throw protectors. That was the
worst one, yeah, yeah, and the groin protector.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
You know, that one was so bulky. They went through
multiple iterations of like plate carriers and vests that and
that one, because it went from the one that kind
of folded over itself, that kind of weird vest, to
that big bulky one and it was like I had
that like kind of like cloth lining on it or whatever,

(52:07):
and it had, like you said, a big neck protector
and all that crap.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
And I think that that actually was after my time,
So that was like the one that we actually come
over the top. So the flat jacket I wore was
like a trifle day.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
We would wear it.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
You put you arm through like a vest like on
both sides, and then you trifled it over and it
would ulp her down.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
Was the only one you wore the whole time.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
Yeah, on all three deployments, that's the same flak, but
we just would modify how we would run it. So
I uh, I started running it like I would attach
like direct attached to the molly on the flat jacket
like all the my my pouches and stuff instead of
wearing the LBB, so ditched the LBB sort of running
a belt to to kind of take some of the
the weight off of the vest and put it down lower.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
What else? And then.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Oh rifles, Yeah, so I M sixteen a two was
my first rifle. It had like because you know, like
when you're boot camp and you you start with weapons
maintenance and like the first thing you do is you
clean this, you know, the six inch barrel with with
your ap brush, and they've all been cleaned by all
the former recruits so much that like all the bluing
is gone and it's just like it's just shiny silver.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yeah. So I like this shiny silver, you know, M
sixteen eighty two. I don't even how old it was.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
And then I got an a four M sixteen eighty
four with an a cog and then we went through
like all the different the original like Picatinny rails like
that was a big deal. If you had like a rail,
you could attach a light to it. So my first rifle,
I like, this is embarrassing. I had I had with
black electrical tape taped a mag light like one of

(53:39):
those little mini maglight flashlights on the front of this
gun so that I could have a light because they
had a version of a gun light.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
What was this call.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
There were these just trash like giant like lights that
attached through you know, the old handguards. They didn't have
piccatiny rails on them. They had like the holes on
the top and the holes in the bottom and separate guards.
And there was a way to like fashion this big
bulky like shitty light that wasn't bright attached to through
the two hole through the holes on the handguard. And
so a bunch of us that just like used electrical

(54:09):
tape and mag lights and just taped them on the
front of our rifles. And those were dunlight that we
were run. Yeah, so like we had like an actual
picatinny reel like the old shitty ones before they came
out with the more modern stuff like and actually having
a real flashlight like a first generation Surefire. You know
it probably had like sixty lumens, but us it's like,
oh my god, this is the brightest light ever.

Speaker 1 (54:29):
Takes three of those one two three batteries, you know exactly,
but you'd never find a replacement for when you need it,
You're like, what kind of take the legs?

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Yeah, and and then we started running PEC twos. It
was early earlier generation. I don't know what generation of
lasers are running now. My first night night vision was
the seven Bravos, so it's the it's the two with
the that comes out into the one tube.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
Really.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Yeah, it was my first night vision.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
And then like I think my second deployment, I had
upgraded to a fourteen Bravo, which was just the monocle,
so just one and those are like a joke now,
you know, like everyone laughs at those.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Well even like the normal I think now they're using
PBS seventeen's and the normal people are. You know, if
you get over to like Marsak and stuff, they have
those white phosphor yeah, like quad tubes and stuff like that,
different kind setup like that, which, yeah, night vision stuff
is on a different level now than it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
It's crazy. I remember like doing some driver training. They
wanted us to learn how to drive humbies. You know,
we're just infantry guys. We didn't drive very much, and
we had to do like nighttime driver training. Warring the
original seven Bravo night Vision and like trying to drive
around that thing.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
It's like.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
Super sketchy, just like regular driving, not like combat driving,
but just trying to drive like in a parking lot.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
Dude, imagine back in the day people.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Used to fly with those Oh my god, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Yeah, I mean just imagine flying a helicopter with that.
But that was advanced back then. You were like, well,
look how much better this is? You know, now you
look get it, You're like, what the hell, how can
you even move?

Speaker 2 (56:06):
It's like being drunk with one eye open, which.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
But yeah, it's definitely.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Gear has definitely come a long way, man, you know
from you you know, you started off in like basic
AM tracks, humpies probably five tons still seven tons at
and I don't like seven.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Oh that's another thing I think about vehicles. Yeah, seven tons,
so we didn't have some am tracks.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
And then well, my second deployment in two thousand and four,
we when I got to al came, we relieved three
seven Serper times seventh Marines and they got they got
torn up real bad, like and part of the problem,
part of the reason why is that there wasn't armor,
Like armor didn't exist, so they were operating exclusively in
like high back humbies, unarmored humpies and seven tons, and

(56:56):
they just we were doing this a little bit at
the beginning of my ployment, and things got a little
bit better as time went on. But they would just
fill the floor of the of the Humby with sandbags
and then sand bag up the side like the wall
area of the Humby and so weighted it down. It
was like super heavy and you know, it's not great armor,

(57:16):
and so a lot of times they we hit like
guys were guys were getting hurt and killed just because
the American military didn't have armor to give to these people.
And then they started they started welding on like metal
plates like steel or I don't know, I'm not a
welder or a metal guy, but some kind of like
metal plate that was just attached with by submarine on

(57:37):
both sides of.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
The of the Humby.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
And so yeah, yeah, there you go l armor. And
that was like a big deal if you had if
you were an l R or Humby, that was like, Okay,
this is I'm safe.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Now I can stop anything with this quarter inch thick
piece of thet Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Yeah, well I mean it was, but I mean, if
you're like looking over and the next guy that the
next vehicle over is like literally no armor.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Yeah, as many sandbags they could put in there. I heard.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
I heard those sandbags actually made it worse. That they
were actually more dangerous than having nothing.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Yeah, I guess. And you have like secondary projectiles maybe.

Speaker 1 (58:14):
Yeah, because yeah, they're full of rocks and dirt. So
if those blow up, they're just blowing rocks and dirt everywhere.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
Yeah. Man, that's such a crazy thing too.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
And there was a good I will say the government
was pretty quick about understanding like, oh, we need armor.
Like the ied threat wasn't a thing. I don't think
it was something they had thought about. But when it
became prevalent, we were pretty quick about sending over armor.
And the first step was that l armor and then
the next thing. So then they started producing hum v's

(58:46):
that came with their own armor packages, you know. And
eventually remember those hum v's that had like almost like
vault doors on them. They were so heavy, like big
thick ass cook man people broke their hands in those doors,
fingers cut off off and everything at home. And then
once we realized, hey, the humpy's still too low and
we're burning up engines, and transmissions carrying all this weight.

(59:10):
Then we took a playbook out of like South Africa
and started up with the m RAP game. And then
obviously there was multiple versions of that, but you know
it did. That's such a crazy thing to think about
that you guys were over there with no armor.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
I'm so old that I know, I've never written in
an am rap, Like really, I I.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
I take that back later, like fast forward to where
they were getting decommissioned, and then there's the I can't
remember the name of the program, but there's it's a
controversial program where law enforcement and cheese can buy or
get acquire military gear for like like no money. Yeah,
and so our local sheriff's department acquired I think they
got two am raps, and so like I got to
get inside one. I'm like, oh, this is awesome, you know,

(59:55):
but uh those you know, years later, once it had
been decommissioned and sent out.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
To the to the I think they made a little
nicer too for you guys.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yeah, this was a military it was a Tan military
am raph. Okay, so they were they were basically being
like sold off or given away because so but as
a marine, no, I I remember seeing an am rap
and saying like, what the fuck is that? Like on
my last deployment two thousand and six, as we were
on our way back, they had them in Alisade, the

(01:00:26):
air base and Alosade, which is like useful there, and
like we're way out on the fringes of the world
and there's no amrams out there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
We do the air base and like this, what the
fuck is that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
I thought that. I thought they looked silly and ridiculous.
But yeah, so we we would larmor on the humbies,
l armor on the seven tons, and we would do
our patrols, like if we had a squad size element
going out, you could put a squad in a seven ton.
And then on my last deployment, they had seven tons
that were had better armor on them, that had kind
of an angle to it, and it was it looked

(01:00:58):
less homemade, like uh, they had like an actual ladder
that would come down like a like a ramp sort
of staircase ladder that would come down as opposed to
like we would like if you think about like a
cargo transport seven ton, that's that's what we would use,
where the back to the tailgate just like flops down
the whole tail gate and it's got like a couple
of little rung ladders, like two little ladder.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Rings on it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yeah, you climbed that tailgate and then's just like a
flimsy little composite you know, tailgate and slapped the thing
up and hook it in place, and like that's where
we roll around in.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Well, they made they changed I don't remember what they
called them, but they had like a troop carrier seven
ton where you were basically inside like armor plating and
it would like a little yeah what is that called it?
It had like crappy little windows on them that you
could barely see through, and it was like they were
kind of pointless.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, you couldn't see or shoot out of the thing. Really,
it was just basically get your m B.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
But yes, he was talking about it was it was
like it was designed specifically for that as opposed to
like the cargo one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
It was just the larmer slapped on the side. Yeah. Uh,
we had those on my I think on my second deployment.
In my third deployment, we got those. Yeah. Funny story.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
So on my third deployment on the squad Beater and
we were doing a hit on the house and I
was the second squad, squad beater, and the first squad
was the main element, main effort on this hit. And
we were we were going to be the printer, So
we're going to set the court and intern on a
cordon on this house, and then they were going to
come in and hit it. And it was about three

(01:02:32):
and a half clicks from where our base was. So
this isn't Alkayne, and we lived in battle positions what
they called them, so it was like bps, and they
were they were these small little bases about the size
of a football field that were in the city. So
we you you would just walk out the front gate
and you could foot patrol in the city. And so
it was a nighttime hit. So my squad had to

(01:02:54):
walk like on the southern edge of the town like
it was desert, you walk. We'd walk through the desert
for like three and a half clicks and came up
and then snuck into the city and set the perimeters
at the court, and then the other squad would come
in the seven tons, and then they would they were
going to hit the house.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
And so the seven ton pulls up, we get everything set, we.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
Have a we have overwatch, we have a perimeter and everything,
and the seventhing comes rolling up and the squadator jumps
out and he's like and he's his squad doesn't gather
a seven ton and he starts yelling.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
He's like, get out of the truck. Get out of
the truck. And it's just like silent like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
And then this is like the one time the company
commander decided to like come out with us, because usually,
you know, company commander never leaves the base. The platoon
commander would come out here and there, and he was
on this too, because the company commander was there. But
the company commander is there and this is just two
squads from our platoon hitting his house. And he's stand
right there and a staff sergeant Lord is his name,

(01:03:48):
the other squad there. He's like, get out of the truck.
And then he goes to the back and he opens
up that staircase. Then he pulls it down and he
climbs up and he looks in and he looks and
you see his faces like, oh shit, and he looks
down at the at the tread of the kindergunters in there, sir.
When they had left the base, they had two seven
tons parked next to each other, and he told them

(01:04:09):
to go load up, and they went and they loaded
up first, and then him and the driver came last,
and they got in the they got in the truck
next to it, and they fired up and they took off,
and he didn't realize they had chicken the like they
had loaded the wrong seven ton or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
So that did not reflect well upon him.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah. No, we went from being the support squad to
being the main effort for that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
That's crazy. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's man. What
a time to have been there. I got there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:40):
I went to Iraq in two thousand and nine. That
was like the very end, you know, when I was
a mechanic at the time. So I was like on
TQ on Alta Cottam Air Base the whole time. And
what part of go ahead?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
What part of the country is that?

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
U it's right next to Habania, like you know where
that's at.

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
It's not far.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Yeah, I think, well, no, I don't. Is there a
damn there?

Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
It's it's not far.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
From Fallujah either. It's really like thirty or forty minute
drive I think from Fallujah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Yeah, it's to the east of Pallusah, right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Something like that. Man, I don't know. I was a
mechanic on base the whole time I was. I was lame.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
That's when I first that was my first time actually
before that deployment was my first time working with m
wraps and they were new enough where, you know, those
of us that were mechanics, So at the time, for
those that don't know that haven't listened to the show,
I was a mechanic. And then I lap moved during
my deployment actually in two thousand and nine to be

(01:05:41):
a Ford observer. And when you're a mechanic, you're just
working on humby seven tons and lvs's that was it.
We just come in and my level of maintenance. We
were just basically replacing Humvy motors, transfer cases, stuff like that, transmissions,
those kind of and then it was like, hey, you're

(01:06:02):
going on to deployment, and then hey, there's gonna be
m wraps on this deployment. So then they would send
us to like I didn't go to em V, I
didn't go to Mahave Viper to do training predeployment training.
I got sent to South Carolina while everybody else is
going to EMV. Hate in life in the desert I'm
out right outside of Charleston at a school where it's

(01:06:23):
a civilian. I'm literally at the factory, at the m
RAP factory learning how to work on these things. And
are you familiar Have you seen like the original Transformer?
I think it was the original one or maybe the
second one, the one that has the M wrap at
the end, like skating down the street.

Speaker 4 (01:06:39):
Do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Yeah, so that one. We actually worked on that vehicle
and they had it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
I was thinking, I was thinking eighties cartoon.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
No, no, no, not that far back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, the Megan Fox one, the original
one with her in it. At the end of the movie,
there's a part where there's an m RAP that changes
into you know whatever, a Transformer and it's skating down
the freeway. That actual M wrap we that was the
one that we would work on at the at the schoolhouse.

(01:07:12):
It had a Decepticon logo welded on the back door
of it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
It was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
I think I have some old photo of it somewhere.
But but yeah, that's like how the changes in technology
were were happening fast enough where it was like this
isn't even part of my normal ms Like I'm gonna
have to go to a school, a specialty school to
learn about this before we even deploy, you know, which
was a good thing again, a good thing you know

(01:07:37):
that they were. It sucked that it was as haphazard
as it was because they didn't really plan for i eds.
But at the same time, I think they did a
there was an all out effort to combat i eds
as best as they could with what they had.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
You know, Yeah, no, for sure, Like when you're there,
it feels like they don't let you. But but what
the fuck is going They don't have something better for us,
you know, But like the logistical nightmare of like creating
an entirely new type of vehicle and then getting it
built out, getting it mass produced, and getting it sent
halfway around the world to you is so Yeah, to
their credit that they did it faster than anyone on

(01:08:14):
the planet probably could have pulled that off.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
But when you're there, it's like, what the fuck is this?

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
Yeah, the best military in the world, this is all
we get.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, sand.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Bags on the floor. My buddy Michael, my buddy Michael,
who did an deployment and I think in four to
Fallujah and then five he did. He said the same thing.
He was like, yeah, my first apployment, we had sandbags, man,
and like l arm or maybe you know, if you're
a lucky kind of deal. He's like, that was you know,
you just kind of dealt with it. And I was like, man,
that's so. He's like they would go to the scrapyard

(01:08:47):
to find pieces of metal to weld on themselves, and
I was like, dang, that's crazy, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Yeah, and then what hum vi would get blown up.

Speaker 3 (01:08:54):
They would just pick them apart and they would take
the armor off of the blown up on these to
attach them to the ones it didn't have armor.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
It's kind of like that. Remember that movie Enemy at
the Gates, that jud Law movie.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
It's about World War World War two, and I think
it's in It's in uh Stalingrad and they're the he's
a he's in the Russian Army and they're they're being
sent off to to go fight Germans, and each every
other soldier is being handed a rifle.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
So every other soldier gets a rifle and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
Then the other guy gets a little clip of ammunition
and they tell them the one with the rifle shoots
the one with the right without the rifle follows, and
when the one with the rifle is killed, the one
with without the rifle picks up the rifle and shoots.
It's kind of done with the armor, with the armored trucks,
the VI's. But you were saying how you were trained

(01:09:42):
on on on fixing vehicles that didn't or they didn't exist,
the ones when you went to school and need to
be like retrained or whatever. I think that that's you're
asking earlier about like what prepares you in infantry school.
It's like I think we're always fighting the last war,
you know, so it's always learning herb. Yeah, and so
like when I was in infantry school, we you know,

(01:10:03):
like this is two thousand and three, two thousand and
two to two thousand and three, like we're training for Vietnam,
you know, like we're there was desert storm obviously, but
like the like patrol tactics, like patrol formations and all
that stuff, like walking around out in the hills and
in the in the forest. You know, it's like it's
there's there's there's no terrain that in Iraq. It is

(01:10:24):
anything that looks anything like you know, ocean side California.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
Yeah, yeah, had you I mean afterwards, you you, before
your other deployments, you got to go out to twenty
nine Palm. I mean you already in twenty nine Palms,
but you got to go out and do a mojave
viper training cycle. Did you think that was Were you like,
oh man, I wish would have got this the first
time around? Or were you like, is this kind of dumb?

Speaker 4 (01:10:47):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Did it feel like it was kind of prepping you
more so for what you would see?

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
So yes and no.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
So as as time went on, Like I think that
the the acure talking about the advancement of technology and
tactics that from you know, when this sole thing kicked
off in two thousand and one to where we are today.
You know, it's been twenty four years. Uh, there's this
huge jump like quantum leap in and all that stuff

(01:11:15):
in training and tactics and equipment. But I think that
that from my perspective anyways, that time that I was in,
it was kind of a special time from two thousand
and two thousand and six. I feel like there was
the biggest ramp up in that time and things continue
to advance from thereforward. But like I feel like we
we really like change gears and really shifted towards like

(01:11:36):
the and modernizing that time.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
So the training in Twina and Palms like say in
two thousand and four was was getting there.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
They didn't have the infrastructure in place so like so
they ended up getting where they have like actual like
you know, mountain towns and like you know, mock like
villages and full town They have got some pretty incredible
facilities there now. But when I first started training there,
we were still running the traditional Wi fire like movement ranges.
You know, have you ever been to a range for

(01:12:10):
one hundred and twin homes?

Speaker 4 (01:12:11):
I haven't had to run it, but I know what
you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
Yeah, yeah, that's like the legendary range, at least at
the time. I don't know if they still do range
one hundred.

Speaker 4 (01:12:17):
I think they do, yeah, everyone, yeah, because everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Hates it there. I used to love range for one hundred.
It was like sick that way. But it's a lot
of running and a lot of carrying heavy shit and
a lot of like shooting and explosions and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
And if you can, if you can.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
Have the wherewithal the no, like, hey, this isn't normal,
Like I'm not going to get to do this in
my other life. Like it's actually a really good time.
But yeah, it's physically demanding and tough, but there's nothing
like that in Iraq. Like you're not gonna you know,
you're not gonna run a quarter of a mile with
a with a you know, seven to sixty two amo
can to give to your like machine gutters and then
like go down into a bunker and like you know,

(01:12:54):
fire a rocket and blow up a bunker, and then
like go through a trench and shoot a bunch of
Indian combatants and clear a trench. Like none of that's happening,
you know, in the in the wars that we're fighting now.
So so you're kind of fighting, you're kind of fighting
like some former fantasy war in that trending exercise. But
as the as time went on and and training, the

(01:13:16):
infrastructure got in place and they started building out, like
they started with like those sea train towns, you know,
where like all the buildings were built out of sea trains,
so you'd have like a one story, two story, and
three story, and then they would put like actual compound
walls around them, and then they got better and better,
and I ended up going back to twenty nine Palms
as a police officer, I went to SWAT School. They

(01:13:36):
hosted it there in twenty m Palems in twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Eleven, and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
I can only imagine what it is now in twenty
twenty five. But in twenty eleven, I had been, you know,
five years since I had been in twenty nine Poems,
and I was impressed. Like the base itself was like
so much nicer, and I'm like, oh, wow, they have
like an actual store here.

Speaker 4 (01:13:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
Yeah, I was like the PX is amazing, like and
having like this when I was here, and the chowhels
were good, but but we went out to the desert
on the training site and their little their little mountain
towns and they were very realistic, I mean completely built out,
like they had like full on blown up buildings and
blown up cars.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
And like yeah, all that stuff, and it was like, wow,
this is impressive.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
That's like a I think the area I think I'm
thinking of the same thing you are. That area is
almost like like for people that have never been out there,
it's like almost like six city blocks or something like.
It's huge, and there's like, like you said, like literal
collapsed buildings, you know, it looks like they built up
a like a parking garage or something and then blew
it up and then all these other building shops multi story,

(01:14:41):
like yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's it's a pretty wild
place to go and train.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
And I think for the Mohai Vipers, like later on
they would hire, they would have like like actors that
would come in. They were the role players, like real
real role players. Yeah, like there were Arabic speaking like
and that they would come in and they would have
like really reality based scenarios that weren't just like a
bunch of twenty year old like marines acting like idiots

(01:15:07):
being the role players, you know, which.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Is usually what we did. That's what we did.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Was before my my deployment with the Advisor team to Afghanistan,
they brought in a bunch of Afghan role players and
we would sit there and have meals with them and
do different things with them and talk to them, and
like you get used to kind of like interacting, and
then every once in a while, like if you're doing
something they break character and be like hey, you know, hey,
don't eat with your left hand, you know, and you're like, oh, okay, cool,

(01:15:33):
and then they would go back into speaking in air
or speaking in uh. I can't even remember the languages
now that they have in Afghanistan to each other and
stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:43):
But it was it was an interesting, like dynamic.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
And it was weird because when I remember when we
were doing the training, they were like, all right, when
you get to Afghanistan, you're going to go and meet
your Afghan counterparts because we were all advisors, and they're
like they're gonna line everyone's gonna line up and you're
gonna stand across from your counterpart and then like introduce
yourselves and all this, and I'm like, we're doing this

(01:16:07):
in training. I'm like this is so corny, like we
would never do this, this is so stupid. And we
got to Afghanistan it was literally just like that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:14):
It was like the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
I was like, I can't believe this is actually how
we do this, Like this is yea. I remember doing
it in training and going, this is ridiculous. We would
never do this in real world.

Speaker 3 (01:16:23):
And then that's sign un deployment. Were you like assigned
a specific person, like a specific counterpart.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Well, it was just someone that you would relate to.
So I was a fire support guy. I was the
team's jatach and I was a team's Ford observer, so
they're fire support officer for the battalion. I would talk
to him about how to best employee fire support. I
would have to grab a mortarman because sometimes they'd be like, hey,
teach us how to how to be more accurate with

(01:16:51):
these mortars. And I'm like, bro, I'm a Ford observer.
Let me go grab one of the mortar guys off
the fob. Which I love to do it because it
was like there's nothing else going on, you know, with
the advisor team was kind of the show right at
that moment. So they were like, yeah, we love to
come out and help and but yeah, so yeah, everybody
had there because the advisor team is less than twenty
guys and each person has a role. You have your

(01:17:14):
normal job, whatever it is you are. I was a
Ford observer. We had infantry guys, we had radio guys,
and then you had the counterpart that you would interact with.
So like some of the infantry, Like one of the
guys is an infantry sergeant and he was a advisor
team chief. Because within our team, we were advising an

(01:17:36):
entire battalion we broke it down to the two lies,
which were the companies, and then so he was like,
you know, two lie Alpha or whatever advisor and he
would meet with the first sergeant. So he was the
face to face guy with that that company, the Afghan
company's first sergeant and anything that he needed he would
talk to him about kind of deal. So it was
kind of formal, but kind of informal also because we

(01:17:58):
all rolled well maybe I was informal because I rolled
with whoever needed me. You know, I was at assigned
to any one company. It was I was the only
j tax. It was whoever needed me there. Well sad
you say that's nice, Yeah, I mean, yes, it was cool.
But there was also anytime anything ever happened, I was

(01:18:18):
out there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
You know, there is an element of getting a hoard out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:23):
Yeah, there's three three companies and there's always a mission
to go on. So I was always going out with
somebody different.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
There's always there's no there's no solutions, there's just trade offs.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
But I would prefer that though, I mean, you know,
being overseas, like would you rather sit on a camp
and do nothing, or sit on a fob or a
base or whatever and do almost nothing, or would you
rather be out, you know, moving around and at a minimum,
even if you're not getting into fights or something like that,
at least experiencing the culture, the you know, the countryside

(01:18:55):
of where you're at.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
Right, Yeah, yeah, it was I was kind of reminded
me we were talking about some of the training. So
there's a training got better and we were trained for
like i D recognition, and it was kind of a
silly on some of these mohamme viper they called it
cacs when I was in, but the cats and know

(01:19:18):
the training exercises and they would teach you to like
look for something that is out of place or whatever.
It's like it's always like that mysterious trash pile on
the side of the road. And then like you're in
you're in twenty Palms, which is like it's a shiny desert.
But the thing about being the Marine Corps is like
everything is police called, so there's like no trash anywhere,
you know, So like when you're on a training op
and there's like a pile of trash, like it's really obvious, like, oh,

(01:19:39):
there's the i D. You know. And and so I
remember I had my third deployment. We got it like
you get a new chain of command like every time
you deploy. And so there were some guys I'd been
on deployment with two other times. Since our third time around,
I had a new platoon sergeant, new patoon commander. And
my platoon sergeant was Real Gong Ho. He had just
come from Sy. He was an instructor at SY. Remember

(01:20:00):
we go on our first foot patrol and I'm assuming
he was expecting to, like, you know, to keep heads
up for that mysterious pilot of trash, but didn't realize
that like the entire country is, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
Covered in trash. There's fucking crash everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:20:15):
So it's like it's it was like wigging out because
it's just like everywhere looked it was a fucking mysterious
trash pile.

Speaker 4 (01:20:21):
Everything could be an I D.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Which is true, but like you know, there's a there's
a there's a certain element of just kind of acceptance
that comes after after a time.

Speaker 4 (01:20:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Yeah, in Afghanistan, it was yellow drugs because they would
make homemade explosives. It wasn't it wasn't like Iraq, where
there was way more military explosives.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
You know, more to.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Rounds one five, five rounds, daz chains and stuff like that.
And now they didn't have any of that in Afghanistan.
It was all homemade explosives. And they would make the
homemade explosives and put them in these yellow cooking oil jugs.
And so your pre deployment at his leg look up
for these yellow drugs. And then you get over there
and there's yellow jugs literally everywhere because when they don't

(01:21:05):
use them, when they finish the cooking oil, they use
it for water, they use it for you know, a
million other things.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
So everywhere you go you see these.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
Now the obvious side is when you see a yellow
jugs starting to come out of the ground a.

Speaker 4 (01:21:16):
Little bit, you're like, okay, that's id Yeah, watch out
for that guy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
Well, one of the key indicators is like what are
the locals doing, because they know what they know what
the explosives are a.

Speaker 4 (01:21:26):
Lot of times yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
And you know it was crazy too because like we
started seeing in Afghanistan that there was like the Taliban
was trying to work on their pr campaign. You know,
they had been killing too many locals with IED's because
they would just place them in the road. You know,
and then whatever hits it hits it, you know. And
so they came up with this, like, you know, they

(01:21:52):
had these like different kind of types of pressure plates
and I'm not going to explain how to make one
on the podcast, but they had these like pressure plates.
And then they're like, hey, we're killing like locals and
it's given us a bad name. Tyler Bennes want to
have a bad name. So they made these pressure plates
where there was almost like a split in the middle
and your tire had to be a certain width to
set it off. And it's so that only military tires

(01:22:12):
were you know, really that wide in that area.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
Uh, they stopped the donkey carts and everything.

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
I'm sorry, said again.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
They stopped blowing up donkey carts.

Speaker 4 (01:22:21):
No, that's always a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Yeah, yeah, we had a I remember one time we
had like a mope head that was like a v
bid in the bizarre and saying it too, you know,
they'll yeah, it's horrible. A marine actually got killed in
Afghanistan where they they went online and found did.

Speaker 4 (01:22:40):
You guys have the.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Radios the little the like walkie talkie green one were
out yet?

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
No, they were starting to come on. Oh wait, sorry,
the the Waukie talky ones.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
Yeah, yeah, so like the not the blackbiter. You probably
know what the inbier is, right then, it's like a
black fails or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:23:02):
Are you talking about the ones that had the headsets
that was basically like kind of like a radio shack
style walkie talkie that you could use.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
No, no, like encryption that's more advanced.

Speaker 1 (01:23:12):
Something with encryption that's more advanced. Yeah, you're thinking about
one fifty three. So we called that the one fifty three.
I think the one fifty two is a green like
walkie talkie push a talk radio vhf UHF I believe
no HF. I don't think I could be wrong on that.
But anyway, it was just basically a small radio that
you could carry. And like a lot of things that

(01:23:33):
are military, air softers and like people that do like
paintball and stuff want to mimic you know, military stuff.
So they make these fake one one fifty two radios
that you can buy online. Well, yeah, and they look
just like them, they just don't and they were like
actual walkie talkies. They just don't actually, you know, they

(01:23:53):
can't do what the actual ones do. And the taliband
dudes bought one offline and hallowed it out and filled
it with explosives and left mark and left it on
a road. And a some of the guys I was
with at Anglico were on this Georgian liaison team the
country of Georgia. They were there ford observers for him,

(01:24:17):
and one of they got to report that one of
their Georgians had lost a one to fifty two radio.
And this staff sergeant that was on the advisor team
was like walking to his truck and saw this one
fifty two on the side of the road and was like, oh,
there's that radio. Those idiots lost, you know kind of deal,
picked it up, threw it in his truck and got
in and it blew up and killed him and you know,
injured some guys and stuff like that. So they're crafty, man,

(01:24:40):
you know what. We can talk shit about them and
stuff like that, but they're crafty.

Speaker 3 (01:24:44):
Oh yeah, I mean you talk shit, But it's like
like where's the American you like, where the premier military
in the world, you know, the the greatest empire, the
efforts there's ever been in Like, you know, these guys
are like, you know, illiterate, like guys running Russian you know,
outdated Soviet like equipment and giving us I don't know,

(01:25:06):
winning the war.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Actually yeah, I mean you can definitely say that in Afghanistan,
Iraq not so much. I think Iraq is now better off.
I mean people complain about Iraq, but I think now
it's better off than it was. It seems like it's
more safe than it's ever been or not ever been,
but it's been in a long time and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):
Yeah, they had a little hiccup in that that ISIS
twenty fourteen twenty fifteen era.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Yeah, you know, it happens, those things flare up a bit. Yeah,
you know, it's like a rash, you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
Know, heads getting sought off here and there.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
But yeah, after that, dude, when that was when they
when the ISIS thing kind of became big for a
little bit, they were producing like those like high quality
videos like torture videos.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
Oh yeah, I believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
When livelyak was still around and ISIS was putting out those,
uh those videos that were you said, highly well produced,
like like yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:25:59):
I don't even know what was Lively still out then?

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
Is that still Lively?

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
But I remember you could pull them up online. You
could watch these videos of just like they would just
come up with the like the most terrible crafty ways
of executing people too.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
Yeah, lighting people on fire and cages, putting cages and
pools and drowning people.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
Like running people over with tanks like or like shooting
them with a shotgun slugs, but then like doing it
in slow motion, like high definition cameras and slow mo.

Speaker 4 (01:26:25):
Just crazy stuff, crazy stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
I remember watching it on Sipper on the secret Internet,
like the Sipper. Yeah, that was like when they would
come out, we'd see them and be like, what the
fuck are.

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
These guys doing.

Speaker 1 (01:26:37):
Dude, these guys are like straight animals, you know. And
then they had that one guy who was a British guy,
so he was speaking English and he was like putting
out all that the propaganda man that was.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
John.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
Yeah, that's that stuff was crazy, the amount of propaganda
that they were producing and how evil, like they didn't care.
And even I remember at the time al Qaeda was
like distancing them. They're like, hey, we're denouncing the things
that they're doing, and it's like, dude, you got crazy.
You got al Qaeda denouncing the things you're doing. You know,
you may have taken it a little too far?

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Yeah, isis is like, oh that's the line. Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:27:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
I mean, you know, I always wondered I watched you
saw these videos of these like beheadings and stuff. I
don't always watch them, but when you have, if you've
seen one, almost always the person in the video is
like super calm. And I was always like, how are
they super calm?

Speaker 3 (01:27:30):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):
Where they drugged up? And sometimes I think they are
drugged up. But I learned that they have taken that
person and put them in front of the camera and
they pretended they've gone through the entire steps like twenty
thirty forty times already, so by that point when they're
actually gonna kill them, the person is like, whatever, man,
this is another run through, you know, and then they

(01:27:51):
don't even realize it's gonna happen until it actually this time.

Speaker 4 (01:27:54):
It's for real.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
Yeah, that makes sense to do much dry runs.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
Those videos are so crazy. It's just stuff. That's the
kind of stuff that I'll make you want to like
stay in and you know, keep deploying. When you see
that stuff, you're like, dude, how can someone like this
exists in the world. And it also it's a thing
too that if you're not if you're not in that sphere,
you know, you're not getting that. That's not in your algorithm.
On Instagram, getting isis tortures, torture videos. There's a lot

(01:28:22):
of people that don't realize the evil that's out there,
you know, and like that level of evil exists, and
it's not as far away as you think it is,
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
No, Yeah, it's some dark shit out there for sure. Yeah.
I always wonder what it's like there now.

Speaker 3 (01:28:38):
I mean I don't keep up on current Iraqi events,
but like you said, I'll look, so I'll look on
Have you recently looked on my Google Earth or on
like whatever mapping systems to kind of look at my
old AO to see if like the base is there,
and like the bases are gone and you can see
like where all chime used to be. The base was

(01:29:00):
at a train station and it's all it's all like
destroyed and gone. But then the little cities would operate in.
They look like they're all built out and like there's
you know, civilization has come back.

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
So yeah, I think people are I mean I think
you can go there and do tours and you know,
there's obviously an issue with extremists, but there's an extremist
in every country. You know, there's extremists here. You know
that if you went to an area, you'd be like, hey,
be careful, there's weirdos over in that area.

Speaker 3 (01:29:28):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:28):
It's kind of the same deal. I actually have down
the street. So I live in the city here in
San Diego. Down the street on the there's a corner
shop down the street and a couple of dudes that
own it are Iraqi and they actually came over during
the Golf War. Their parents were Christians and came over
during the Golf War, and they were saying they'd heard
the same thing, that it's much safer than it used

(01:29:48):
to be. And it was kind of crazy because I
even asked them. I was like, because they're around my age,
maybe a little bit older, And I asked them, I
was like, do you remember or do you remember hearing
about the purge that Saddam Hussein did of all those
people that basically disagreed with him, Yeah, prisoners and all that. Well, yeah,

(01:30:12):
they like they he had basically all the people from
the bath party and like a reading an arena or
like an auditorium or something like that and started calling
people off by name, and they were literally taking them
outside and executing them. And I was like, do you
remember that? And he was like no, he never even
had heard of this Iraqi guy. And I was like,

(01:30:33):
and it's it's like that kind of thing I like
to bring up to people when they talk about you know,
maybe it would have been better of Saddam Hussey would
have stayed there.

Speaker 4 (01:30:41):
Maybe you know this and that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
And also just to touch in on our own politics
when people talk about how there's fascist in our government
and all this stuff, I'm like, man, there's examples literally
on video. You can watch the videotape of it. None
of them shooting them, but him reading the names and
the people having to stand up and they walked to
the back of the room and they take them outside
and shoot them, most of them, not all of them,
but most of them. And I'm like, trying to compare

(01:31:07):
what you dislike about today's government, you know, it's just
like such a radical It goes back to what we
talked about earlier. You know, how some things seem like
a big deal to someone isn't a big deal because
it's like, eh, whatever. That's how I kind of see
world politics. Sometimes I'm like, sometimes people need to take
a step back and look at big picture and what
things have become, what things actually have transpired, the actual

(01:31:29):
evil that's out there, and stop trying to compare that
to like the whatever local politician or you know, whatever
you that you dislike.

Speaker 3 (01:31:38):
Because it's it's gross. So yeah, it's I think it's
more of the default mode that we in America. We
kind of forget the default position for a lot of
people in power. It's a lot of what we're used to,
or at least what we think we're used to.

Speaker 1 (01:31:55):
Well, you know, I mean again, and this was probably
you can probably attest to this. You know, you join
when you're saying, a lot of people expect that the
military is like a straight conservative and you know, right
leaning people, but there's really a very diverse thought group
of thought in the military. There's people that are really
right wing, there's people that are really left wing. There's

(01:32:16):
conspiracy theorists, there's super religious people. You know, there's so
many like different kind of people and.

Speaker 4 (01:32:23):
On like the real world.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
You know, if I go to college or whatever, I
can distance myself from that person. If you have these
different all these different personalities in your squad.

Speaker 4 (01:32:35):
I mean, you just have to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
You get used to dealing with it because those are
the people you're around every day for eating, working out,
work everything all day every day with these same group
of people, and you're just kind of forced to deal
with other perspectives without making a big deal about it,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):
Yeah, yeah, when you get off work at the in
the evening, like well, I mean when you're a newer guy,
like you go when you go home, you go to
the barracks. It's like all the people that you work with,
you also live right on top of each other, and uh,
you know that guy that might annoy you as your
roommate or one of your roommates. So yeah, you have

(01:33:16):
to get used to being in close close contact or
if you're in a track and you're just all piled
on top.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
Of each other.

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean I remember like having
definitely like all kinds of political conversations with people, and
it was never like heated or anything like that. You know,
we would disagree on stuff, but it wasn't like, well, good,
you know, I'm never going to talk to you again,
because well, one that was an option that wasn't an

(01:33:42):
option because we worked together. But yeah, I mean, I
don't know. I just thought it was always interesting to
sit down and have conversations with people because of all
the different perspectives of where they come from. You come from,
you know, California. Other guys are coming from Pennsylvania. Other countries.
Did you guys have Did you have anybody from other

(01:34:03):
countries in your unit?

Speaker 4 (01:34:06):
I don't know. We had some.

Speaker 2 (01:34:09):
Shoot. Where was he from?

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
He was the South Asian. He's either Cambodian or Philippine Filipino.
They spoke very very limited English, and they joined the
Marine Corps kind of to get a citizenship and like
he ended up getting deployed to Fallujah with three seven
before he came over to US.

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
But yeah, but there was there was some people like that.
I know, a Russian guy.

Speaker 3 (01:34:33):
My first liltun Okay, yeah, so you got you get
a lot of the perspective for me. I'm I'm a
California kid. I'm from you know, the Central Valley, and
I had never left the farthest east I had ever
been was Las Vegas before I before I went to Iraq.
So I uh so, my my worldview is pretty small
and so yeah, it was eye opening to be around.

(01:34:55):
Like you send people from other parts of the country
and it's like, you know, you know all these guys
from like oh high Io in Texas and Ohio's I
want to go to Ohio because Ohio is funny.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Like all the guys you know from Ohio.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
There's like this Ohio hierarchy that exists, or the like
southern Ohio people, like the the JD Vance types that
that like they're descended from thee.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:18):
So there's like the hillbilly Ohio people, and then there's
like the people from the rest of Ohio that kind
of look down at them. Like my first platoon, there
was three guys in the platune from Ohio and all
three of them lived in trailer parks like before they
became marines. But two of them talked so much trash
about the third one because it's like he was like

(01:35:38):
this like hill billy yolkal like lower class guy like
all from the from a trailer park, but like, oh
he's from I can't remember what we were part of Ohio,
like it's basically Kentucky and they were like talk talk
trash about it. I'm like you all live in a
trailer park.

Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
Which is the ultimate sin you're from Kentucky, Ohio person, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:35:57):
Yeah, it grows.

Speaker 3 (01:35:58):
But anyways, I guess what I'm getting at it, Like
I never had the experience of being around people that weren't,
you know, from where I'm from, because I've never been anywhere,
and so it's it is real eye opening to just
like live with people that you said have a different perspective.
I think we all, for the most part, had the
same mission in mind. Like I was gung ho about
the whole thing. It wasn't until you know, many years

(01:36:18):
later when I kind of look back and I'm like,
wait a second, what was the connection? Like what did
Saddam Sussein have to do with nine to eleven? Again,
I remember them telling me there was a connection here.
You know, it was like all about this.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):
Now with that kind of looking back, with that kind
of perspective, do you regret anything?

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
No, No, Like I.

Speaker 3 (01:36:40):
Wouldn't do anything differently, I guess that's what you mean. Yeah,
and I didn't. I I think we all in that
timeframe didn't have the Like the Internet wasn't as prevalent
as it is now. Social media didn't exist, smartphones did
not exist, so it was really easy to get lied

(01:37:02):
to and not be and not be able to figure
it out. So like I had this kind of naive
perspective of our government that like they would never like
lie to us. That's crazy, the government would lie to
to the people like never, you know, and like the
thought of that never even crossed my mind. And so
it was never like there was no way to question anything.

(01:37:24):
And so I guess I'd give my my young self
a little bit more cut myself from slack, like like
we all we all believed it and we were all
gung ho. Uh. And I'll also just like being so
grateful for the experience, you know, we talked about like
earlier on in the conversation about you know, you get
those experiences and then looking back, like or dealing with

(01:37:45):
hardship now is so much easier than I think it
would otherwise would have been.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):
I have not got to go do all that and
be in the war.

Speaker 1 (01:37:52):
Yeah, My So my previous interview was with a gentleman
that was serving in Laos in viet during the Vietnam War,
uh little you know, hidden war, which is kind of
really bad, kind of a bummer for him because I
imagine when you when you come back, you can't even
like go to the VFW and talk about your war
stories for a long time because no one even knew

(01:38:12):
when they were there. You know, it was never official.

Speaker 3 (01:38:15):
But he went, can I get like service connected disability
or anything like that? Like are you allowed to say, like, yeah, so, well,
what if you're wounded in Laos and you get a
purple heart?

Speaker 4 (01:38:25):
I don't Yeah, yeah, I know now, I know. Now
they have.

Speaker 1 (01:38:32):
If you are injured in combat, if something happens like that,
it goes on your record that you were injured during
like a I think it's like during a classified event
or something like that. There's a way you can put
it down, like, hey, you know, this is when this happened.
It was during you know what. I'm gonna stop talking
about it because I'm not one hundred percent sure, but
it's something with the VA because there are people that

(01:38:53):
have an issue, not that they like did something that
was like super secret squirrel, you know, during the Copal
War on Terear or something like that, but back then
probably not. I mean I don't know what the process
would have been, but yeah, it would have been difficult
for sure, But what I was getting at was that
he I think he said about ten years ago he

(01:39:13):
went back to Laos where he was at and he
saw the airfield that he worked out of and and everything,
well what was left of it, and he actually met
with some of the guys that were fighting on the
Vietnam side, and he's like, yeah, I had a really
good conversation. We were like brothers and stuff like that.
Could you ever see yourself doing that, like going to
Iraq and like talking with some of the Iraqis that

(01:39:35):
you know, we're there around the same time as you.

Speaker 3 (01:39:38):
That would be awesome. I would love to be able
to go back. That's why I was kind of curious
to talking a little about what it's like there. And
I was like looking up a while back at what
did our area of operation look like now, and how
it's all built out. The streets are all the same
like the but the buildings are there, like a lot
of buildings are prepared, and I just wonder what it's like,
what it's like to be able to drive around there

(01:40:00):
and like talk to people and at the time, and
it was like, you know, every time you go outside,
there's a good chance that you're going to get blown up,
like to just business carrying on business as usual. Like,
I'm just so curious of like what life is like
there now and what it's like for those people.

Speaker 4 (01:40:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
I think it's now back to like where you know,
there's corrupt politicians and you know, it's just kind of
part of the system over there. Yeah, but I don't
think it was it's ever to a level that what
it was like when Saddam Husin was in power.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Yeah, there's that.

Speaker 3 (01:40:36):
So there's the Saddam Hussein thing like uh and you know,
killing political prisoners and that, and that's terrible. I think
about how bad it was when when the chaos of
so the Americans arrive at top of the government and
then the insurgents move in and so like you're just
a normal person living there and you have like a
fucking war going on all around you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
So I think about like I I live in a
cul de sac and I have my kids go play
out in front, and I'll put some cones out in
from the street to keep the traffic from coming through,
and like being nervous about my kids riding their scooters
in the street in the culta sac in front of
my house, you know what I mean, Like I can
only imagine what it's like to like live in a
fucking war zone.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
You should scream at It'll be like you know, the
kids that Iraq, they don't get to play in the street.

Speaker 3 (01:41:20):
Yeah, but I just mean, like as a parent, you know,
like like when bullets are flying and there's explosions and
like it's just insane to me that like people just
live that way.

Speaker 2 (01:41:30):
Yeah, I cannot believe that.

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
You know, I am worried about a car driving slightly
too fast in the residential neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
Well yeah, yeah, it's I did feel bad for the
for like those kind of people, like the locals. I
remember in Afghanistan. You would see we would be moving
like north on UH six eleven route six eleven, and
I remember vividly like looking off and seeing like kites flying,

(01:41:59):
and that's how the Taliban dudes would signal each other's
with kites, and we'd pull up to like an Afghan
patrol base or something like that just kind of see
what they're up to. And I remember seeing like kites flying,
and then you'd see these like big groups of like women, kids,
and like goats. They'd get their livestock, and they would
start all moving away from where all the village is

(01:42:23):
out onto the street, getting away from the area because
they knew something was getting ready to happen. And it
was so surreal to see that and be like, oh shit,
something's about to happen. Like all these people aren't leaving
at one time for nothing, you know what I'm saying.
And it was I just yeah, I can't imagine what
it was like to live that life, to grow up
that way. You know, it's unfortunate. I think I think

(01:42:46):
almost everyone that was ever in one of those countries,
can you know, if you were out with the populace
at all, there's like a memory of like a kid
or something where you're just kind of like, man, that's
a bummer for that kid. You know, this is like
you're not there. No one's there to lie like ruin
their lives, kill those people or anything like that. Like
I think you hear these crazy stories about people that

(01:43:07):
snap and do things that are obvious war crimes and
stuff like that. Yeah, but ninety nine point nine nine
nine percent of the people are just over there, like
trying to do their job and go back home, and
a lot of times it's like, hey, if this dude
wants to fight me, then let's fight. You know, I'm
not afraid to go out and fight a guy, but
I also don't want to affect. Like, you know, nobody

(01:43:28):
wants to kill women and children.

Speaker 4 (01:43:30):
Obviously, no, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:43:32):
But the sad thing is is, like I said, like,
I mean, stuff like that does happen, and it's not
like it's not like it's the Meli massacre that's going on,
you know what I mean. Like I so I do
a little bit of writing. I write on substack here
and there, and I wrote this piece last year. I
was talking about a specific a operation when we did
where we had a what are they called. It's like

(01:43:54):
one of those civil teams that would go around and
like try to help rebuild infrastructure and help the local bissinesses. Yeah,
so civil Affairs troop.

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:44:04):
And so these couple of guys from the civil civil
Affairs team got attached to my squad and we had
to provide security for them while they went out and
talked to these local shopkeepers. And this is a two
thousand and six and the SPS for dealing with oncoming
like vehicles because v beds were a big threat at
that time. We had these like pink and orange like
fluorescent flags that we would like wave to kind of

(01:44:28):
get their attention, and usually that would cause them the turnaround,
drive the other way, and if it didn't cause them
to stop, we would have pin flares. And you know,
low budget marine corps, we didn't have a lot of
pin flares, so we would have like one of the
point guy and the tailing guy would have one, and
if a car is coming in the in the signals
that worked, they'd fire a pin flare towards a car
and then that would usually get them the turn.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
And then.

Speaker 3 (01:44:50):
If that doesn't work, then the escalation was we had
tracer rounds, our first five rounds in your magazine. With
tracer rounds, you would shoot tracers near the vehicle as
like a signal, and then if that didn't work, then
you would try to shoot the engine block, and then
if that didn't work, you would shoot the driver.

Speaker 2 (01:45:04):
And there's this escalation.

Speaker 3 (01:45:05):
But you all, everyone had the authorization to go from
like step one to you know, one of the last
actually shooting the driver depending on the situation. But that
was like the escalation you're supposed to use anyway, So
we're set up and in this like a bizarre like
shop area where they have like the saw all kinds
of stuff like all open market, open air market. And

(01:45:26):
it was one of the main thoroughfares that ran through there,
and we had blocked off traffic coming both ways as
the east and west thoroughfare. And this car comes from
the from the east, traveling west on MSR Diamond which
is in al Came, and my point man is up
there and he's trying to fly he sorry, let me
back up a little bit. The word the car was

(01:45:46):
coming from was around a bend, so about maybe fifty
meters further down the road you couldn't see because the
road had bent around, and so he was coming. He
couldn't see us until the camera on that bend. So
usually you have a little bit on a straight road,
you have more kind of distance to it to signal
and a warn. Right, So this car is coming and
and my point man does the flag and then he
goes to try to shoot the pin flare. And we

(01:46:08):
had Iraqi National Guard that we would train and also
that we would operate with, and the idea was it
to do the turnover he had to do operations with
these guys. So my number one, my number two guy
my patrol were Marines and the number three and number
four in our started column were Iraqi National Guard. So anyways,
my point man's waving the flag, he shoots the pin
or he's he's getting the pin flare to shoot the

(01:46:28):
pin flare, and before he can get the pin flare off,
my two Iraqis they start shooting at this car. So
they're shooting basically, you know, towards the front of the patrol,
through the number one and number two guy in the
stier column. So those two guys they bail out because
they're getting they have gunfire coming from behind them, coming
through them in the car, and they jump out of
the way. And the driver of the car he starts
getting shot up by these Iraqis and the Panics, and

(01:46:50):
he punches it, and so he's he punches it. He
starts coming through the patrol, and then then the other
Marines beyond the two Iraqi soldiers, they start opening up
on this car because it's it comes as vbed, you know,
and I remember as it came rolling through, like right
through the center of the patrol and thinking like, oh fuck,
this is it like here it goes, you know, we're done,
and then it it it rolls to a stop, pulls

(01:47:10):
over the side of the road, and then the engines
starts smoking. Because when you're shooting, Trisa rounds into a
car into like the you know, the flammable components of
an engine that catches them fire. So it comes to
a stop, the driver gets out.

Speaker 2 (01:47:23):
It's this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:47:24):
He's bleeding from his neck and he's screaming and freaking
out and cars don't blow up, so we're like, oh, well,
that's good, we're not dead. But then we go to
see what had happened. And one of our map platoons
was in the area, the mobile asilt platoon, the like
Humby mounted platoon, and they pulled up and we opened
up the car and the guy has he had his
two wives and his kid in the car with him,

(01:47:45):
and both the both wives were hit and killed. So
the front seat passenger had been hit through the head,
and the backseat passenger she'd been hit multiple times. And
and his kid was probably like eighteen months old and
was sitting in a lap of the beckseat passenger and
by some miracle, this this baby didn't get hit, but

(01:48:07):
mom had just bled all over this kid, you know,
and so they pulled it, they pulled them all out,
and his kid's covered in blood and like, holy shit,
we killed a fucking baby too, and uh and we
kind of start to look him over and he's not injured.
And they rushed these to these two women off and
they died. Anyways, the point of story is I look
back on this and I think, this kid, this is
in two thousand and six, so he was probably, you know,

(01:48:28):
between one and two years old at that time.

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
And now it's twenty twenty five, so he's twenty. He's
in his early twenties.

Speaker 3 (01:48:33):
If he still if he made it through the ice
as stuff, and and he's still around, you know, and
this guy's in his early twenties. And I always I
always think about this kid and like what is his
life like? And like what is his what how what
does he think about America? Like what does he think
about these marines?

Speaker 4 (01:48:49):
Probably not good?

Speaker 3 (01:48:51):
Well, and like, look, we were following our protocols. We
were doing what we were trained to do the way
we were trained to do it, and that and even
following the protocols and doing everything the way that we
were supposed to be doing. It turned out that like
these innocent people died and and like, you know, like

(01:49:11):
how much good are we really doing?

Speaker 4 (01:49:13):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:49:15):
And what what are I say? What are the long
term consequences of the mistakes that we make? Like are
we making things better? Like? If I was that kid?
I know what I was like when I was eighteen.
I was a hothead when nine to eleven happened, when
the planes at the towers, I'm going to go kill
some motherfuckers. That's where my mind was at. I could
only imagine if if a you know, foreign invader came

(01:49:37):
and shot my mom out from underneath me, what would
that do to me?

Speaker 2 (01:49:40):
And what would I be?

Speaker 3 (01:49:41):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:49:41):
Yeah, you know, like how personal am I going to
take that?

Speaker 3 (01:49:44):
Like? How can he grow up to be anything but
like an American hating terrorist? Because that's what I would
be if.

Speaker 2 (01:49:50):
I was him.

Speaker 4 (01:49:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
I think they they really pushed that a lot. In
ROE brief on my deployments was like, hey, listen, you
know the end state if you kill is you're making
an enemy for life or more more than one. Yeah,
everyone that knows that person. And if if they were
andocent for sure and everyone knows that, then now you're definitely,
you know, why why would they want to support you

(01:50:13):
for that, you know, when you're doing stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:16):
Again, this isn't This isn't the Meli massacre. Like, no
one had any any here.

Speaker 3 (01:50:21):
You know, we were getting hit with v beds all
the time, and this looked like a v bed come
in and we all were all convinced that we were dead,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
And I thought I was going to get hit with
a v bid one time. And I'm telling you people,
and when you said, you're like, oh, this is it,
that's the exact same feeling I felt when I thought
I was about to get hit by one. And it's
so it's such a weird, like helpless feeling. And obviously,
in hindsight that situation, you're like, man, this is messed up.

(01:50:50):
And it obviously the Iraqis didn't help the situation, you know,
the Iraqi army guys.

Speaker 4 (01:50:54):
Yeah, you know, they kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:50:58):
Had they not been there, he might have got the
pin flair and had he got the pen flo off,
it might have turned him around possibly, you know, but.

Speaker 2 (01:51:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:51:06):
Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:51:07):
Though we had I think we only had one. There's
only one civilian casualty that I can remember. When I
was with Third Betime six Marines in Marja in twenty eleven,
a DM shot a guy that we thought or he thought,
was implacing an ID and he was just happened to
he was farming at night. And the deal was in

(01:51:29):
the area was if you were farming at night, because
that they do that in the summertime because it's much cooler.
That's fine, just you know, you had to carry a
lantern or some sort of light source so that you know,
it didn't look like you were trying to do something
you weren't supposed to do.

Speaker 4 (01:51:43):
And that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:51:44):
He didn't have a light or anything with him, and
where he was farming, where he was digging, was on
the edge of the field, right next to the road,
and it just looked like he was emplacing an ID.
And then DM took him out and they ended up
paying the family, and it was just like, you know, yeah,
that kind of shit's messed up.

Speaker 4 (01:52:03):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:52:03):
It's like, there's it's not good, but that's the reality
of war. There's never gonna be an area where it's
just good guys and just bad guys and no innocence
in between you know, there's no there's no arena for
us to go fight and to mitigate that completely.

Speaker 3 (01:52:21):
The whole concept of good guys and bad guys was
a thing, you know, like I grew up watching Ninja
Turtles or whatever and like Power Rangers, and it's like
it's like a lot more complicated than that, you know,
because they think about like someone that kid, so that kid,
like we're not.

Speaker 2 (01:52:35):
The good guys.

Speaker 3 (01:52:36):
Yeah, good guy to who? Yeah, good guy to who?
Exactly like we're the fucking bad guys, you know. But
to us, we don't think we're the bad guys. We're
the good guys. We're the Americans. But you know what
I mean, we were attacked. We're here because we were attacked,
and like it's just so much more complicated.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
Than that, and like.

Speaker 1 (01:52:54):
I don't know that's yeah, I don't want to get
into like current stuff, but it's like, yeah, why when
I look at like some of like the war in
Ukraine and stuff, I'm one of these people that are
just like, dude, just he needs to.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):
End somehow, just stop, just stop.

Speaker 4 (01:53:09):
Thousands of young men.

Speaker 2 (01:53:12):
They don't do it as.

Speaker 3 (01:53:12):
Much now as they did, but like during the debates
and you hear these people going on and talking about like, oh,
we're depleting the Russians fighting power without using our soldiers,
and it's like, have you watched any of the fucking
videos that come out of that, you know what I mean?
Like you watch these drone attacks and you see these
guys getting their fucking legs blown off.

Speaker 2 (01:53:30):
So do you realize what that is?

Speaker 1 (01:53:31):
Like, like, yes, what's a nice, clean, sanitized way of
describing it. You know, we're defeating their ability to fight.
That means also thousands of young men are dying every week.

Speaker 3 (01:53:44):
Yeah, yeah, I gu guys gets his legs blown off,
and if he's lucky enough to get his tourniquid in place,
like he might not die in the next ninety seconds,
and if he's lucky enough to get us to a
surgical center, he might survive. But like he's permanently disabled forever.
And like to use that use like you're saying the

(01:54:04):
euphemism of like, oh, we're depleting there, It's like, I
don't think some twenty three year old corporal from fucking
Russia or the Ukraine used to have his legs blown
off or be killed or be you know, for for
an hour how does that benefit us?

Speaker 2 (01:54:16):
Exactly? Like, how how are we safer or better off
because that happened? I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:54:22):
You say, you don't want to get into in the
current events, so I apologize. No, no, no, the people
talk about war sometimes, he's like the.

Speaker 1 (01:54:30):
Very casual, very casual about sending other people. That's what
That's the question I have to a lot of people
when they talk about it. You know, people especially people
that are like Ukraine's got to fight to the end,
you know, they got to get all their land back.
I'm like, that's just not realistic.

Speaker 4 (01:54:45):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:54:45):
They just don't have the manpower. And if you really
believe that, are you willing to go over there and fight?

Speaker 4 (01:54:51):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:54:52):
And if you're not willing to go over there and fight,
are you advocating for us to send people.

Speaker 4 (01:54:56):
Over there to fight?

Speaker 1 (01:54:57):
Because that's what they need more than an anything is manpower.
They the equipment and stuff is nice, but they just
don't have the manpower. Now now you're looking at Russia
is receiving you know, thousands, I think tens of thousands
of North Korean troops has replacements as well, and it's

(01:55:18):
just a it's a they're in a bad situation, and
we could go in and fight with them, and that's
what But who wants to do that? Who if my
son is eighteen right now, and I would not be like, yeah,
you should definitely go fight for Ukraine, fight against Russia
for Ukraine. You know, you should join the military and
hope that they send you over there, like no man,

(01:55:38):
especially like you said, these videos are coming out, like
this drone warfare. The way they're doing it now, it's
such a wild Yeah, it's such a wild thing to see.
We're seeing people get blown up in HD every day.

Speaker 2 (01:55:52):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:55:53):
Yeah. So I guess I'm forty now and like my
over this arc of my life, you know, going from
being sixteen and gung ho and just wanting to get
into it and go kill you know, kill the bad guy,
whatever the hell that meant to. Just like all these conflicts,
I just my question is always like is it worth it?
So like one of the things I pulled out of it,
it's like I don't it's not I don't think it's

(01:56:15):
Explain to me.

Speaker 2 (01:56:17):
Explain to me, like what about this conflict over there
is is worth the amount of life that's being lost?
You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:56:27):
That chunk of land that's been taken away, like if
we can't negotiate. And I get it, like, you know,
I don't want my country invaded and taken over. But
there's a point when an entire generation of your fucking
young people are dead or you know, seriously wounded, It's like,
how is this worth it?

Speaker 1 (01:56:41):
Yeah, we're just sending people. I mean we aren't, but
they're sending people into a meat grinder that's a stalemate essentially.
Russia is making some gains and stuff on the on
the lines. It's just I don't know, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
It's worth funding the whole thing, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:57:00):
Like we're not stopping it, Like we're finding a good
half of it for sure. That's my whole thing again,
is like when people keep advocating that we should keep
doing stuff, I'm like, to what end, what does victory
look like? How much should we send? And at what
point are you going to start advocating for troops to
go over because again, that's what they really need. And

(01:57:21):
when you talk about advocating for troops to go over,
what you're really saying is that you're okay with starting
World War three over this whole situation because if we
send troops over, you've already got North Koreans in Russia.
Who's to say China is not going to you know,
they're already aligned with Russia. Who even more so, who
says they're not going to send troops. It's just I

(01:57:41):
don't know what the end state is. And I wish
it would just people be more, there'd be better attempts
at de escalating the entire thing.

Speaker 4 (01:57:49):
I just don't Yep, I don't know many.

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):
It's not all it's not all Churchill and Hitler, you
know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:57:55):
And like you're Neville Chamberlain, if you if you you know,
if you advocate for peace and you advocate for negotiation,
Like it's funny thing that like people have that position
against you know, guys like me or you that it's
like like, no, actually, I kind of got a little
glimpse of what it's like in that life or what
that world is like, and it's not worth it.

Speaker 2 (01:58:17):
And just it is not worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:58:19):
I'm sorry, I don't I feel bad they lost that
they lost that bit of land and they you know,
they've been invaded and it's terrible and I'm not justifying
what Russia has done. But I feel like we're the
We're the we're the premitive power on the on the planet.
And you know, if we wanted to negotiate for peace
and force Ukraine to take a piece, we could force
them to take a piece. But we're we're just like

(01:58:41):
funding it and sending more equipment and sending more people
in the grinder, like you said, just chewing up their
entire their their entire population. And I feel like we
have a responsibility as a premitive power to kind of
step in and be like, Okay, stop this, you know
what I mean. Like you're you're a dad. You come
home and your kids are fighting, and if you just
like yell like yeah, it don't hard. Yeah, that's not
what you're supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (01:59:02):
You're you're step in and you're supposed to make it stop.
That's your responsibility.

Speaker 1 (01:59:11):
I think that's why for those that aren't aware, there
was supposed to be a mineral deal signed this week,
and that's when the whole blow up at the White
House went, which most people only saw a small clip
of that. I highly encourage people to go back and
watch the entire excuse me, forty five minute meeting with
h Zelensky. I almost did, because so few people have

(01:59:32):
actually seen the entire interview. I almost did a live
stream where I was breaking it down and showing like
I see because I people aren't gonna want to hear this,
but I agree with jd Vance and what was going
on in that. If you watch the entire interview, you
can see where Zolensky is sitting next to President Trump.
Trump is looking away saying something in Zelensky's over here

(01:59:53):
shaking his head, disagreeing or making faces, and then he
he when j Vance said something about they need peace
through diplomacy, then Zelensky questioned that and goes, what do
you mean and started like kind of almost berating him.
And then when he asked him if he had been
to Ukraine and jad Vance had said no, he kind

(02:00:16):
of whispered under his breath and shook his head like
you in disgust. I saw something. The translation said that
he called him a bitch under his breath. I don't
know if that's one hundred percent true or not, but
he did. He did say something under his breath and
like shake his head kind of like he was like, oh, well,
then don't say anything. But It's like, bro, what do
you You know you can't go in and act like
that and expect these people to be okay with you.

Speaker 4 (02:00:37):
So when jd.

Speaker 1 (02:00:38):
Vance blew up, the whole thing was he watched Zelensky
making these faces the entire time, and then it got
to where he was talking and he said something about diplomacy,
and then Zelensky pushed back, started questioning what he was saying,
and then when he like did the you can see
it in the video, he does this like, oh, have
you been to Ukraine? He kind of does that, and

(02:00:58):
then when he does that jad Van, that's when he
immediately kind of digs in on him, and I'm like, damn,
you know, I don't want to see that. That's not
how it should be. But at the same time, I
get where they're coming from. You know, they're trying to
push a piece deal the term suck, Like nobody agrees
that Putin should be in fighting in Ukraine and all

(02:01:20):
this stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:01:21):
No one wants that.

Speaker 1 (02:01:22):
And but you can't, like, like they're saying, you can't
go out here and be like he's a war criminal,
he's the worst person ever. At the same time, you're
trying to get them to make a deal for peace,
Like if someone's sitting here calling me a piece of
shit and insulting me over and over again, and then
and then they turn around and go, so, yeah, man,
you want to like can we make this work?

Speaker 4 (02:01:40):
Or what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (02:01:41):
You?

Speaker 4 (02:01:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:01:41):
You know, like so and you know, here I go
being in a Vladimir Putin apologist, I guess or not.
But like, no one really thinks about what we did
to push this thing, you know what I mean? We
promised the Soviet Union we would never push NATO one
inch further uh further east. Yeah, it's country after country
after country, and like it's a red line that you know,

(02:02:04):
Ukraine is right there on their southern border and they
send Kamala Harris over there two weeks before the invasion
to say to Ukraine, we want you to join to
join NATO. It's like, I don't know if the I
don't know if the Soviets decided to move a bunch
of missiles into Cuba right off the you know, southern
coast of Florida, Like, would we have a problem with that?

(02:02:24):
Would there be a nuclear war exchange potentially over that?

Speaker 4 (02:02:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:02:28):
It's like yeah, actually, like.

Speaker 1 (02:02:30):
There's definitely drama. So it's been ongoing drama too. I mean,
you remember back in two thousand and eight, I think
it was when they took over Georgia for a little bit.
Russia invaded Georgia for a little bit. Actually deployed by
the guy in two thousand and nine who's a Marine
reservist who was in Georgia when that happened. He was
there as part of his like two week whatever annual

(02:02:54):
training or I don't know if he was an deployment
or for his annual training, but he was in Georgia
and he's like, yeah, I remember the Russian that's flying over.
He's like, we don't have weapons or anything because we're
mechanics and we were there on this rotation to work
on trucks. But I don't know what the answer is, man,
and I don't want people to think that I'm My
whole take on it is. I think people should stop
fucking getting killed. I think thousands of people dying a week,

(02:03:17):
I think everybody should be able to agree that that's
not a good thing. I don't see a realistic path
to victory for Ukraine. And when I say victory, my
definition of victory is them reclaiming all the land that
Russia has taken from them so far, not to include Crimea.

Speaker 4 (02:03:35):
Now if we.

Speaker 1 (02:03:35):
Include Crimea even worse, that's gonna be even harder. But
even the land that was taken during this invasion, that
would be a victory for Ukraine. And I just don't
see it. And that's all because of manpower issues. The
only way that we're going to see up victory for
Ukraine in that sense is if Europe and the US
provide ground troops, and then we're talking a different level

(02:03:56):
of warfare, and I don't think anybody wants to get
involved in that, especially when you talk about the global
war on terror. Casualty accounts and stuff. Is many a
school compared There's more people killed in a month in
Ukraine than there was in the all of Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (02:04:12):
Oh yeah, those baby shit compared to what would be
going on.

Speaker 1 (02:04:16):
And I just don't think we're And that's where I'm like,
I hear people that are want to keep pushing it,
and they think that we should keep fighting. I'm like,
I don't understand your I don't understand your perspective. I
don't understand there's no yeas.

Speaker 3 (02:04:32):
World War three we're toying around with it. I don't
think that what's happening right now is.

Speaker 1 (02:04:36):
Worth worth what we're Well, my question is always for
people like that, I'm always like, well, what do you
what do you think is victory? Like, what's the end
state that you think we should.

Speaker 4 (02:04:45):
Be going for?

Speaker 2 (02:04:46):
And and they'll say, whatever it takes.

Speaker 1 (02:04:49):
At what point should American troops have to get involved?
And when they say that they shouldn't at all, I'm like, well,
then you're not going to get the victory that you're wanting.

Speaker 4 (02:04:56):
That's just not.

Speaker 1 (02:04:58):
Again, the equipment is only does some anyways, we've beat
this dead horse. Tell us about your podcast, man, No,
that's all good, dude. I almost did. I almost did
a Like I said, I almost did a live stream
the day of that interview with Zelensky that that meeting,
because I saw and even the clip I put up

(02:05:19):
wasn't the best clip because it didn't like having thirty
more seconds on the front end of it would have
shown a little bit why Advance and Zelensky started going
back and forth. You would have seen that. So that's
kind of on me as well as one of these
people that produces content. But I almost did a live
stream going through the full forty five minutes, because if
you haven't seen it and you watch it, you can

(02:05:40):
watch and you see Zelensky making these faces and then
like kind of like Trump will say, hey, we just
want to get peace. It's gonna be peace. We're gonna
get peace in Ukraine. And then he's like, they're going
can never be peace with these Russians, and it's like,
what are you doing. You're like countering him in public,
and JD. Vance is sitting here watching this the entire time,
and then when he insults JD Van to his face,

(02:06:00):
he's like, fuck you, you know, and it just becomes
the whole thing. So people need to go watch the
entire forty five minute interview. You'll see that the ninety
percent of it was very cordial. Both of them were
nice to each other. There are compliments back and forth,
and it was all good to go, and then that
ending just kind of went to shit. So yeah, yeah,
but let's tell us about your podcast, because you also

(02:06:21):
have a podcast. Tell us about that, and then is
there anything you want else you want to promote?

Speaker 4 (02:06:25):
Let us know.

Speaker 3 (02:06:26):
Yeah, no, So I recently started a podcast called Badges
Bullets and blunders, and we're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast,
and Rumble. It's it's dedicated to telling funny cop stories.
So every week have a different police officer and they
talk about just the crazy, wild stuff that happens, like

(02:06:49):
in the course of their job, the funny things that happened.
I should say, there's a lot of other podcasts that
are out there that are about like the more serious stuff,
you know, like serious debriefs and that sort of thing,
and we'll talk about some serious things that happened, but
the focus is on like the funny things that happened
during the course of our duties.

Speaker 2 (02:07:06):
And I got the idea.

Speaker 3 (02:07:08):
As a I've been with my department now for seventeen
and a half years, a SWAT operator for like fourteen years,
and like when I go to SWAT training or operations
and just kind of the in between runs, like in
a training environment or like after an operation, and just
like the standing around kind of like jaw jacking with
my friends.

Speaker 2 (02:07:27):
And trash talk that would go on.

Speaker 3 (02:07:29):
And I realized, like how hilarious like some of these
guys were, and like how funny these conversations were.

Speaker 2 (02:07:34):
You know, a lot of it.

Speaker 3 (02:07:35):
I can't say, in public. But I thought that there
would be a market for that, for for people to
see what what it's like and what these personalities are
actually like. It's like I think about before I became
a police officer, I didn't know anything about policing or
about cops. You know, I just had been pulled over
and given tickets a couple of times, and you just

(02:07:56):
see a uniform, and you know, it's basically like a
robot in a uniform. You don't think of it as
a person. And so if I would have had a pot,
if I would have had something like this to listen
to or to to to watch, like before I became
a police officer, I would have been a lot less
apprehensive about doing it. Like when I did it, I
just needed a job because I side of the Marine
Corps and I need to find some work. There was

(02:08:16):
a construction, But then when I got into it, I
realized I actually had a great time. And a part
of that, A big part of this, like like in
the military, it's the people that you're around, and so
I'm trying to bring those people uh into the public light,
so just to get their stories out there and to
let the world know that like, you know, like we're

(02:08:36):
normal people, Like we're just you know, a bunch of
fun love and fun guys. Uh And and I'd like
to let the let the world have a different perspective
on like what we're like we as the law enforcement community.

Speaker 4 (02:08:48):
Yeah, I humanize it a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:08:50):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, badges, bullets and blunders.

Speaker 4 (02:08:55):
Nice. How many episodes you got? Now?

Speaker 2 (02:08:59):
When do you? I think when you want around? We
just filmed another one the other day, so we'll have
that won't be come out next week.

Speaker 1 (02:09:04):
Most shows don't even make it to ten, so you're
already on top. Yeah, so that's awesome.

Speaker 4 (02:09:10):
Man. It's fun.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
It's a fun project. And I always tell people like
it's probably if you're thinking about starting a podcast, it's
probably more work than you've thought about because you don't
really understand the intricacy. There's technical issues that are always
kind of there. It's not not unlike calm in the military,
you know, communications is like you always have to do

(02:09:33):
something to get calm up, to get it to work
and stuff. But it's it's a good outlet and it's
a good place, you know, even if even if some
people don't necessarily care about getting an audience or anything.
They just want to have a good outlet. I think
it's good for that. You know, it's a different version
of like if someone telling you to go write in
a journal, you know, write your thoughts down and stuff

(02:09:53):
like that. Everybody needs some kind of outlet, and I
think podcasting is a good one one because you get
to talk to like minded people or maybe adversarial people
if you're into that more debate kind of podcast. But
you also get to record, like something like this, you
get to record history, your own personal history, so that
one day someone down the road will get to listen

(02:10:15):
to it. And you know, without that, I think I
don't know where we'd be at. So I'm glad you
came on.

Speaker 3 (02:10:20):
Man.

Speaker 1 (02:10:21):
I really appreciate you coming on. Everybody should check out
your podcast. Send me a link to it and I'll
make sure to add that to the show description so
people can easily click on that. And you guys can
check out my stuff former Action Guys, Former Action News
on Instagram, my website' jacrimographics dot com.

Speaker 4 (02:10:35):
And that is it. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (02:10:37):
Bro,

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Ep. 227 | Travis Harless | Invasion of Iraq

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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. 227 | Travis Harless | Invasion of Iraq