Ep. 230 | Brennan Morton | Marine Recon and Sniper - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Former Actual
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(00:20):
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for the support, and let's get to the show. When
were you actually in When did you join.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Two thousand and four to two thousand and eight? Okay,
I did four and a half because I had to
extend to stay in Iraq.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
That's a party time, you know, that's an interesting time
to be there.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, that was that was That was just put we
got our asses kicked in where we were we were
just getting our asses kicked like we were basically we
took over from first recon. They're like, oh, it's all good,
don't worry about it. The nineteen twentieth Revolution, every brigade
came in, we had all kinds of foreign fighters suddenly
show up. So we're down in the Zidon region in Iraq.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Huh and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
They're like, hey, man, this is your space that you know,
that's not usually what we do. We're like all right,
So it just became it was. It was that that
first deployment was it was baptism by fire by fire. Uh.
And then the second one they realized that was like
the I hate to say the end of it, but
that was when they realized, like if they just stopped shooting,
we'll leave. So like it went from like the most

(01:31):
nutty wild West to like six months later when we
went back to like nothing happened. It was it was surreal,
like all the new guys, Oh, when's something gonna happen?
Like shut up, shut up.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, it's weird. Once you've when you've been in the
environment where things are happening, it's like, you know, it's
nice that it's a pretty chill day and we can
yeah just kind of not do anything like the I
get it, like because if you've never that's like you
know when you haven't deployed yet and you're like, I
can't an deployment, you know, I want to do a deployment.
Like you're doing everything you can to do an appoyment.

(02:03):
Then after you've done like five deployments, you're like, fuck,
here comes another deployment. You know what I'm saying, Like
just becomes it becomes part of the grind, and you
know the toll and the danger of it, you know,
like something always happens on his deployment. So yeah, we'll
have to get into all that. Man, Let's well, what
made you decide to join the Marines?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Uh? So I always wanted to join the military. Like
when I was a little kid. I have a three
under gi Joe's at my probably like my recruiting best
and I had Camis. We played war in the woods
all summer, me and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood.
And it was always something I wanted to do. And
my my mom and dad were just against it from
like the get go, like just like terrified, didn't want

(02:45):
to do it, and uh and I think they knew
I was headed that way, but then they convinced me.
They're like, hey, we'll help you with college, Like, do
you want to go to college first? And see you
about that? So I was like, all right, So I
did going to college, uh for a useless degree as
always communications. Yeah, it was fun, So we went.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I went.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I went to college and lo and behold, nine to
eleven happens while I'm in college. I remember being in
the mub you know, walking through, and all of a sudden,
all the TVs went over to nine to eleven. The
tower's coming down, and I was like, and I don't
want to say like like that was like my epiphany moment,
but I was like definitely going now. Yeah, So I H.
I decided then that I was I was going to

(03:27):
get out and go. So I H. I actually applied
to be an officer in the Marine Corps because I
had my four year degree, and they first maybe get
my tattoos on my forearms removed, which was fine, but
that took like a couple months of laser stuff. And
then when I finally did that, they're like, hey, it's
gonna be a year. Wait, it's like wait a year.

(03:48):
They're like, oh yeah, at least u OCS is so
booked out. Now that nine to eleven happened. So I
was like, well, I'm gonna go and list tomorrow. They're
like yeah, yeah, right, And I went into the enlistment
guy the next day and I was like, what do
you got? And after some back and forth, I got
I got signed up. I traveled the country in my
truck for about three months to see you know what
I was gonna be missing, and I shipped.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Out, damn you your tattoos lasered off?

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, I was, So I was like, you could have
told me this first and I would just would have
kept him, like, thank thanks for that, Like you know.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
How much does that hurt?

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Uh? So it's funny and I don't know it's gonna
come up on camera, but I actually got a This
is right when laser laser removal was starting, So this
is like two thousand and four, two thousand and three.
The lasers were this giant. It was a machine. They
to roll in with like three people, and the guy
was all botoxed up, like it was just the start
of like the bad point, and he's like, well, if

(04:43):
ten sessions you know at two works, why can't we
do five sessions at ten laser? And he actually burnt
the shit out of my arms, like a full on
laser burn, so I have two scars instead of like
nice skin. But they were off. I mean, he did
the job.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
There were the tattoos. Were they like offensive or there's
just no tattoos.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Allowed just Marine Corps is definitely like in the officer program,
there was no tattoos below the PTE line, so they
were just on my forearms. So they're like you could
have anywhere else you want, like under PTE line, but
like you are not coming in with them. So I
was like all right, But so I wish he had
told me that first because I probably just would have
kept them. I know so many by the time I
got out.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh go ahead. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
By the time I got out, everyone had sleep full
sleeves both arms, Like there's a damn it.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
I know so many officers that are covered in tattoos,
but they had to keep them under their pt uniforms
like some dudes. Some dudes are completely covered. I remember
I knew this major. He took his shirt off, his
PET shirt off one time and his entire back was done.
I was like, holy shit, like that's a ton of work,
like how and he was like yeah, he was former
enlisted though, so.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
It was, yeah, I didn't know if I was while
I was in and listened, I didn't know if I
was gonna flip over and do a Mustang. So I
actually got more tattoos, but I just kept him under
the PNE just made sure that nothing was showing if
I was wearing my black silky.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
So when I first came in, the tattoos like I wanted.
I wanted to get sleeves done. I don't have any
now I don't have any tattoos because when I first
came in, I was looking at like different options for
doing like a sleeve tattoo, you know, get something started.
But the regulations at that time is when they were
all changing, and it was very much like they made

(06:27):
it sound like if you got anything, you were gonna
fucking not get be able to re enlist. And I
was planning on making a career, so I was like, man,
I don't want to like go get something and because
it's cool, and then like now I can't re enlist
in like two years or something like that. It was
very and when it came out, I was in MS
school and they were like no, you know, they were
obviously they don't want boots going out and getting tattoos.

(06:49):
But they they made it sound also like to us
that if you got anything, you would get kicked out
because of the new Order, And it was just because
of that. I was just like, you know, how to
fuck it that kind of So I never Uh, two.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Thousand and seven, I think it was in the Marine Corps.
We had a I think I do commandant or a
knew sergeant major came in and it was like it
went from like tattoos whenever you want to, You're gonna
start photographing every tattoo you have now, so we know
if you get another one, and then we're gonna bust
you for it. So I remember that for like three months,
the tattoo parlors were like books solid, so everyone can

(07:21):
get them in before pictures were taken. You're just like,
this is asinine, Like we like, we fight wars for
a living, that's what you're worried about.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, I think there was General Conway. I could be
wrong about that though.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
But yeah, that was a weird time.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
I'm for it, man, you know, I'm like, if you
want to go get tattoos, I think that's like a
It's like a traditional part of the military, and people
will say it looks unprofessional. I think I think like
neck and face tattoos. Yeah, for sure, anything that can't
be underneath your service uniform, and that's like your service bravos.
You know, if it can be underneath the sleeves, then

(07:54):
there's no reason not to do it, like hands, neck
that those kind of visible ones. I I get it,
I understand, but because those are fucking trashy. Come on,
let's be honest, there's very judge.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
You're like, oh, but you are getting judged. That's that's
a little much. Man.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Ninety nine percent of the time, if you have a
face tattoo, you're probably a piece of shit. There's exceptions,
there's exceptions, but I've yet, you know, I've met very
few people that have a face tattoo that aren't some
kind of shady character. But yeah, man, that's hilarious. So yeah,
nine to eleven, right, that was a catalyst for a
lot of people, me and my friends. That was the

(08:33):
first time I went down to the recruiter's office. Was
that week. I was a senior in high school, so
I totally understand where you're coming from there, and it's
hard for it's probably it's hard. It's so crazy to
think was so long ago. You know the guys, you know,
guys and girls that are joining today. You know, you
have this like sense of pride that you want to
join and stuff, but it's hard to which I had too.

(08:56):
But then nine to eleven just kind of like through
that and overdrive, you know what I'm saying. It was
like a direct attack, and everybody that had considered the
military was immediately like all right, like you said, like, well,
you know, now it's time.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
So I was in two thousand and three to two
thousand and four to two thousand and eight. Most of
my enlisted unit was people would already finished their college degrees,
but they were trying to get in. So most of
the recon guys that I was hanging out with had
either we're three years in a degree and just left
college to join, or finished their degree and didn't want
to wait the year or two. Like it was crazy

(09:34):
how many possible officers will call them but just bypassed.
The whole thing was like I want to go right now,
like we're leaving right now.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
I knew a guy I was working when I was
a boot I was put on this EFSS program, which
was like a jeep with a mortar that got towed
behind it, and part of that test team was an
infantry element because we were doing mounted convoys and we
were doing like all kinds of different testing on the vehicles.
And the platoon sergeant that I was under with those guys,

(10:03):
he was he was an infantry dude, and he had
a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and he was like,
I was working a job basically like in a cubicle,
and he's like, I was bored and this happened. I
was like, you know what, like, let's go get let's
go do an adventure for four years and then come back.
And that's what he did. He was like, he enlisted
for four years, joined the infantry, did like two or

(10:25):
three deployments, I think, all with eighth Marines, and then
fucking got out. And he was like it was hilarious.
I always remember this. He's like, Yeah, I'm gonna get
out and use my GI bill to go get my
master's degree and bank college chicks.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
And I was like, Okay, can't you get You can't
fault the plan life plans.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
But it's like that's you when people think that like
just morons are joining the Marines or the infantry. It's
quite the opposite. You get quite the uh, you know,
diverse group of characters.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
And well funny because when I when I went into
my the enlisted recruiter, they had to take your your
your GT score like you know, the APPS AB or whatever,
and they give you a GT score. And I had
a pretty had GT score and they're like, oh, you're
gonna be an electrical guy. You're gonna be you know, waterproof.
I was like no, no, no, oh three eleven. He's like, no, no, no, no,
you don't want oh three eleven, you want blah blah blah.

(11:16):
I was like no, no, no, oh three eleven. Because
at that time I didn't even really like this is
how I didn't even realize there was more in the
Marine Corps than just like oh, three eleven. Like I
was like, we're going infantry. I didn't know. I didn't
know there was like thirty thousand other jobs. But then
even within the infantry, I didn't know there's I was
just like, oh, three eleven, that's what I want. He's like,
gona be such a waste. I was like, that's what
I want. Write it up now, or I walk over

(11:37):
to another branch and so he wrote it up. He's
like this just so you know, I can't believe you're
doing this. I was like, this is this is why
I'm here, Like I don't want to be you know,
some other mos going over. This is why I'm signing up.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, I think my recruiter, my first recruiter, was definitely
the same way like they were almost they were trying
to have they were having to talk people out of
infantry because so many people were trying to sign up
for infantry that one. It was backlogging. Like if you
wanted to do it, it was like, oh, well, you're
gonna have to wait a year because there's so many
people that just sign you know, that are actually going
through and signing up right now because of nine to eleven,

(12:13):
or you can do this other job, you know. And
it was always like, eh, I don't want to do
that other job, you know. I know.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I had one of my guys who when I got out,
I actually I owned a gym for fifteen years, but
he was training for recon and now he was going in.
So now recon is not necessarily like you have to
go infantry and then you jump over. Then it became
like you could go straight from boot camp to recon.
And I was like, hey, man, like you really you

(12:38):
gotta get your shit together, cause like if you fail
to swim or if you fail anything like it, you
don't want to be, you know, open contract. He's like,
I got this, I got this. He did not get it,
and he wrote a desk in okinaur for three years.
Oh so he went from like like trying for the
old ultimate Infantry experience to riding a desk in ok
three years.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
So a recon contract you if you don't make it,
then you go open contract.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
So this is new and don't quote me. I don't
know if they've changed it now, but at the time
that he was going in so they they kind of
made it like the Seals where it's a recruiting tool
to get guys to sign up, like oh, you want
to be a badass, like sign right here. And what
they don't see is the next lines like hey, if
you failed the end dock, your open contract. Because I

(13:25):
remember one day we were we were getting out of
we were at Little Creek training at at the schoolhouse
and we were on the sealed pool deck and we
had to leave early for some reason. We got out
and there was just like three hundred dudes on the
pool deck and these two seals next to us, and
we're like, what's going on. They're like, Oh, this is
the end dock. We're like, Oh, this is amazing. He's like, no,
it's not. I think that guy's gonna win, and that

(13:47):
guy's gonna win, and the rest of them are going
open contract. You're like, oh my god, because it's such
a big recruiting tool for them to get those people
to come in, you know, and then six years in
the Navy, open contract seems even far more worse. So
I think they switched over at some point where you
didn't have to come through inventry and go over you

(14:07):
could just do it as a contract.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah. Again, Yeah, I was gonna say I thought they
I thought, I mean, it makes more sense to bring
them back to the infantry rather than open contract unless
there's like a crazy need for you know.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
So I will say this. This kid, he was, he
was a He was an interesting one. He graduated Brown
with top honors. He was a mechanical engineer. He now
works for I believe actually NASA. He was an exceptional
kid anyway, but he was also I believe he uh
he was a national wrestling champion at Brown. Like he
was just the most interesting, like physical and mental kid.

(14:43):
So I think his GT score ended up screwing him
in the end, where he was just so smart. They're like, yeah,
we're not giving you back to the infantry, like, yeah,
you're going over here, like oh man, I'm going to Yeah.
It was, it was. It was awful. I felt so
bad for him.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Man, Yeah, at the should identify guys like that, you know,
and in the enlisted ranks, And I know they have
the me set program where you can go from enlisted officer,
but there's got to be a better way to identify
people that have like a little bit more experience. You know,
if this guy's you know, everything you're saying like sounds

(15:17):
like he's probably a good person to have, Like, oh.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
He would have been, he would he would have literally
been one of those guys you just wanted on your
team like he was. He was probably one of the
funniest human beings ever met, which people don't under People
underestimate how much being funny is it important, Like, you know,
having that dark sense of humor, and I've never seen
him down before. I never seen him like, you know,
so like he was just one of those like just
indomitable guys that you just wanted on your team. And

(15:40):
it just he just didn't believe me that the swimming
was a bigger portion than it was. Uh yeah, dog.
I was like, you need to be real comfortable. He's
like I am. I was like, hmmm, are you though,
Like I'm talking real comfortable.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I've I've talked to a couple of people that
have said that they were thinking about joining and that
they'd like to do like special operations like that, and
I'm always telling them I'm not a special operations guy.
But I've been around enough dudes and heard the stories
where the pool is the great equalizer, Like you have
to be ready to go, you know.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
So we had one of my friends and I'll probably
not make some friends off the of podcast, but like,
so I had a friend who jumped from Recon to
the Seals and he made it, and he came back
and he was visiting and were like, hey, man, so
how was it? What was what's the difference. He's like,
I kicked ass on everything until I got to the pool,
and he was a collegiate swimmer, and he's like and

(16:37):
he's like, yeah, the recon pool was cute. The seal
pool was the scariest thing I've ever done in my
entire life. But he's like, physically like, any of you
guys could have made it, but if you weren't one
of the best swimmers in the like, like he's like,
you weren't gonna make it. He's like, and it wasn't
just like oh I can do the strokes. He's like,
you have to be so comfortable. He's like, I watch
guys who are better swimmers than me drop just because

(16:58):
they got so scared because of what they would do
to So he's like, that is the great equalizer, like
where like you could have the best, most physical specimen
and if he is not not just good at swimming,
but really comfortable with the possibility of you know what
could happen, then like it just it just scares people.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
So he's saying that even the only the top like
recon swimmers would make it through that then so.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
And when he went through, because this is still like
so this is still when they were they were so packed,
they had more people. But he was like you know
some of the guys who swim, because we were swimming,
was pretty pretty intense for us. But he was like
for for a lot of those guys who were just
kind of like mediocre swimmers who squeaked by, he's like,
they wouldn't have made it, Like you had to be
a very good swimmer, you had to be very comfortable

(17:43):
in the water and just kind of like it should
have been like second nature. He's like, you would have
been like it was still gonna suck real hard. But
he's like, that was the hardest part for me by far.
Everything else was just like almost not equal. But he's like,
just just the same, you know, just the.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
I can't wait to read the reconversus Seal swimming comments
on the YouTube channel. Yeah, it'll be great. So let's
hear the debate in the comments now.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
So we have also like them a quiz swimmers are
our headtop swimmer guys. Who was telling me, like what
we had one of our guys becoming a quiss for
recon You couldn't pay me enough to do that course,
like that sounded like one of the worst, like torture chambers.
Oh yeah, sure, like he was, and he's like he
I think he lost Yeah, I think he lost fifteen
pounds of meat in about three weeks just swimming all day.

(18:32):
I mean he was a big guy going in, like
real muscular, and he just he looked like a different person.
And he's like, I've never I've never hated water so
much in my entire life. Yeah, So I think it's
just the level of it. I can't speak to it.
But the swimming was not for me. It was not
the hardest part of the recon training. I grew up swimming.
I grew up like in the rivers and lakes in

(18:54):
New Hampshire and stuff like that. So that was actually
the part that I was thankful for because that was
the part I actually felt really comfortable in. Everything else
with for me was a little bit harder than the
swimming portion. Then we had guys who were flip flopped.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
One of my teammates was from the Bronx, and I
don't know if you'd ever really swam before, and he
taught himself out of swim right beforehand, and he gutted
it out and he was he was. He ended up
being probably one of the most amazing athletes I've ever met.
But It was just one of those things that like
if you either you swam all your life and you're
very comfortable, or you just learned, you know, for the
seals or whatever. Because I was training up pre seal

(19:28):
at my gym and he's like, what should I be doing?
I was like, get in the water every day. Just
get in the water. Just get in the water like
you are physically Like he was amazing kid, But I
was like, if the water's gonna be the place where
I can't help you, no one can.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah, that's a yeah. Again, that's all I've ever heard
from anybody that's done a course that requires that PJ seals,
you know, recon it's all the pool is gonna you
gotta be ready for the pool, and a lot of
people are, you know, they say, obviously people that have
grown up in a pool do much better, you know.

(20:02):
And most of the time, like swimmers, people that like
swam in school, people that played what's that water polo?
That's a big one because of the treading. You know,
you get so much practice treading water and you get
the technique down. A lot of it's technique. That's the
thing is like like I think I can swim and
I'm an okay swimmer, but I don't. I never learned

(20:22):
like the normal technique, So I'm not like out there,
you know, doing a perfect breaststroke or whatever, you know,
or side stroke. I never really learned side stroke or
anything like that. I just grew up swimming in lakes
and stuff, like you said, you know, growing up in Tennessee.
But yeah, if you're gonna do that, definitely be ready,
you know. Other than that, the movements that you have

(20:45):
to do in recontraining are underload are pretty pretty hardcore
as well, you know. So that's another thing that I
think people, I mean, maybe civilians don't understand. You would
hope marine would understand. But it's like you got to
prep your feet for something like that. You know, you
gotta get out and hike, you gotta do stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
The the rock runs during the schoolhouse were like just
mind blowing because they tell you what's gonna happen. You're like, oh, yeah,
I can do that, you know, big deal, fifty pound
rock all that stuff, And all of a sudden you
get out there and like you're like two hours in,
You're like, oh my god, this is a totally different
thing than what I thought it was gonna be like
an endurance event, like you said, like your feet and

(21:26):
like everything like hydrating, like and it certain things like
become more important than you ever gave them credit for.
And it's not just you know, how physical you are.
It is some of that gumption, but it is like
do you have the right socks on. I watched a
guy like literally just wore the old, you know, issued
socks and it shoot his feet to hell on the
first day. Well, that's gonna be a you know, bad

(21:48):
in dock for the rest of your you know, twelve
weeks there. So now it was definitely, uh, it was
definitely for me, like the rock running. I actually it
was one of my favorite parts. But it was definitely
one of those eye opening things. We had a really
great I think I had a different experience than a
lot of recon guys. I ended up breaking my ribs
in the waiting period but before one of the schoolhouse,

(22:11):
so I actually had a little more time in the
training like the holding tank, and I had one of
the best instructors I could possibly imagine, and he really
did a great job preparing us and we land naved
and rock runned at least every day like five days
a week. We would do like one week of land

(22:31):
nav where we'd be running and he'd make the points
and he'd make sure they're miles apart in you know,
Le June. So we were running everywhere, and so by
the time we got to the schoolhouse, it it didn't
feel as jarring, Whereas we had some guys who got
to the holding tank, spent two weeks and just happened
to be like the last class before we left, got

(22:53):
two weeks in the holding tank and we were in
the schoolhouse and they lasted all of ten seconds because
it was so jarring from you know, they just got
at a boot camp and then went to infantry training,
which is basically sitting on a rock for the training part.
You don't really start infisture training from one, understand, until
you actually get to your unit and then you train.
You know, Ifenture Training School for the Marines was it

(23:13):
was hard, but it wasn't It wasn't that bad. It
was as you start to get into your unit that's
when that got bad. So these guys were getting very
little time from you know, when they got out of
that to the recon and then they're at the schoolhouse
we're finning you know one uh so am FIB week
or NFIB phase. We were fitning twice a week for
long distances, you know, and that's one of those things

(23:35):
you want to be practicing, you know, just using fins,
rock running, just having nice boots, having the right equipment,
stuff like that. Because the one other thing I do
I did appreciate about the training was it was a
gentleman's course when I went through. And I don't know
about that now because I think it's attached to the
Infantry schools now, but it used to be its own

(23:55):
separate training thing with its own instructors, and it was
a gentleman's course. They're like, go buy the nice gear,
go go get the things that'll make it good for
you in the long term that you'll use forever. And
so we were you know, we weren't in issued boots,
we weren't issued socks. We were you know, comfortable and
you know, taking care of our feet and doing that
kind of stuff. And it made a huge difference, uh

(24:16):
in the longevity. I think of a lot of the.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Guys, yeah, yeah, I think they had so they had
BRC out in Coronado and that's I saw them when
I went actually went through my eight six 's one
my zero eight six to one. UH fire Support Man
MS school is down. Part of it, the naval gunfire
portion was. I don't think it is anymore, but it
was down in Coronado, and I remember seeing the guys

(24:38):
going through BRC just getting beat out there right next
to the seals, and I was like, dude, they're doing
the exact same shit these dudes are doing, you know,
running on the beach with the boat doing everything and
then doing these crazy pet sessions where they're dropping the
boat into the bay, paddling far out the hit a
booy and come back, paddle, pick the boat up, run
with it for a while, come back, put it back in,
and it was like laps in the water and running.

(25:00):
And I was like, yeah, that's that looks pretty rough.
But I think they moved from Cornado up to Camp Pendleton.
I think all of it is under camp up by
Camp Pendleton. Now I could be wrong on that, but
they did make some changes. I think around the same
time is when they also moved all the snipers into
the recon community. You know, that's that's what I was
gonna say.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, so because I was. I was one of the last.
So I went through sniper school and they asked me
to teach, and I ended up saying no because I
was going to get out. But one of my the
guys who I went through with was an awesome our
class commander. He ended up teaching, and he was during
the restructuring of sniper school where that went from Stone
Bay to attached to the Infantry Training School, you know,

(25:43):
and that kind of stuff. And he said that was
wild in itself, like that that was a totally different,
you know, compared to being off on your own, your
own camp. You know, it's all enclosed at all snipers
teaching snipers. And then he said it was a lot
more I hate say yut yut, but a lot more
people watching you officers stuff like that, so a little
less on that side.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah, I think it's yeah, definitely moved beyond that now too,
you know, have a more hierarchy in there. It was
pretty controversial when they move snipers out from the infantry
battalions and moved it to the reconn community. I don't
know where it's at now, but I know at the
time it's pretty it was pretty controversial, Like there was
a lot of people that weren't very happy about that,

(26:25):
like why would we give up that asset in our battalions.
But also if the battalions are still being if the
battalions are still being supported by the same amount of snipers,
it might not be that bad of a deal, especially
if they have like a they try to maintain like
a command support relationship, like oh hey, anytime six Marines

(26:48):
goes out on a field op. These are our three
sniper teams that we choose from, so that you get
to know the people that you work with consistently, you know,
I think that's obviously important. If you send a random
guy out every time, a different dude, then that's not
good because then you don't get to know who to
work with, how you can do things and stuff. But
I'd be interested of knowing from somebody that's recently been

(27:11):
in in the sniper community to come on and kind
of go through some of the changes there. There's been
a lot of changes, man. The rifle range is different,
the physical fitness test is different, and so yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
So what I was when I was in we were
they had us for like two years. We did like
eight different physical fitness tests. We were doing a lot
of well, the Marine Corps trying to figure out what
they were going to do. We were testing all of
them in our unit, and we would be one of
the test units and you know, we would do it
and they're like, Okay, this is the score you got,
and then it would take another unit and they would
do it with them and see what the difference was.

(27:45):
And like it was wild because like I feel like
every three months we were doing some other wild, different,
like you know thing. And by the time I got out,
I don't think my last two years I had one
PT test that was even remotely the same. It was
just all kind of everything was all over the Yeah,
you know they were doing the right when we were leaving,
they were doing the functional finish one with the dragging

(28:06):
and the CFT. Yeah. Yeah, because we used we did
that like the first day we did that. We did
that back to back, so we did our normal PFT,
rested ten minutes and then did the CFT like right.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
At oh fuck, it was right.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
We were like, wow, okay, that's a good PET test.
And I guess they when they did Marine Corps wide
that it was not. They did not like that.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Dude, that would have been miserable. I remember the first
time I did a CFT at Lejune. It was like
a January morning and it was like thirty eight degrees outside,
and and we started with that eight hundred meter run
the boots and utes like sprint basically, and I remember

(28:47):
just being just dying. My lungs were just like so
on fire from that, because eight hundred meters sounds like, Okay,
that's not that much. So you tend to almost run
too fast at the beginning of something like that, and
by the end you're just I mean, that's a tough
that's a tough like run that eight hundred meters. It's
not tough like to run eight hundred meters. It's tough

(29:09):
to run it in the timeline.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
You know, right, the one they want you to Yep.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, it was like that was always pretty killer. Yeah.
Fuck that man running the PFT and a CFT back
to back. That's crazy.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah. Well, we did it once and they they had
another unit. They didn't tell us who the other unit
was that was always doing it. It wasn't a recon
unit with some other unit. I guess they did not
do very well, and so they decided to separate them after.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
That, someone from like Supply Battalion. M hm, yeah, man,
So you know when you came in, So you came
in you at the time, did you say they didn't
allow you to go straight to recon or you did
go straight?

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Now? So I was, yeah, I was straight infantry. I
was training to be an Oh three eleven. Uh we
were at the three eleven school. Uh so we were
probably i'd say three quarters the way through infantory school
and uh, Gunny Raybon came and it was the it
was the best. It was the best speech I've ever

(30:10):
heard in my entire life. He like walked over, he
has sunglasses on. Uh, he like just looked over at us.
He's like, hey, chicks, dig recon. Yeah all right, and
he's like, none of you are gonna make it. And
that was the speech. And he walked off like that
was the entirety of the speech. I found out later
he was not a fan of the speeches and didn't
like giving them and didn't believe in them. But I

(30:32):
was like, so right right then, like fifty percent of
the dudes were like he's right, you know, I guess
we're not gonna make it. And then there was that
like ten percent or like, who the fuck is this guy? Yeah, no, yeah,
I'll see you there, man, I'll see you there. And
uh he was. He was at our enddock. So then
we so I think, like, god, I think I have
the numbers in the book, but I want to say,
like one hundred and something sat for the speech, and

(30:57):
I think only fifty of us even went to the
end dock. H So he lost like a ton. So
we get to the end dop with like fifty two
and there he is. He takes his blouse off. Dude's
probably fifty something by the look of him. His face
has the body of a twenty year old, like just
jacked out of his mind. We're like, we're all in big,
big trouble now, uh because again I didn't even know.

(31:19):
I didn't even know about recon at the time, Like
I was just three eleven. Whatever they do, that's what
I want to do. Like, I just want to get
over there as fast as I can. So they're like, oh,
try out for this special operations thing. I was like,
that sounds great, let's try that. I've never you know,
I don't know if I can make it. Uh. So
I think fifty two of us went and I think

(31:40):
three of us ended up making the teams out of
that fifty two by the time we got through all
everything and chopped up and sent over and by the
time we actually got to the teams, I think three
of that fifty two ended up making it.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, that's that sounds about right. You know, they give
you like they'll tell you like people will say, like
the school number, it will be like the percentage of
the graduates much higher. But it's like, yeah, but the
filtering process before that too.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, So we actually got to the schoolhouse,
so they I mean, they only did our school house.
So I went to u ARS. So I went to
the East Coast version. Uh so brcars And the big
difference from when I was told because I had a
lot of friends on the West Coast. Uh, They're like,
our swimming sucks because of our waves, because you guys

(32:23):
have waves in California that we were on, like the
Hudson Bay and there was like breakers like this big,
you know, so like getting the Zodiac out was easy
where they were getting the shit pummeled out of us.
But then our land nab was in the middle of
the woods in Virginia with top of top topography that
just you looked at the map and you're like, that

(32:43):
can't be right, Like there's no way, there's no way
there's that many mountains in that small of a space
and there and the BRC guys said, like they were
out in the the middle of desert and like, oh,
it's a mile that way, I can see it from
here where we were like, you know, you had to
beat a foot on top of the thing in the
middle of the mountains and get you're rubbing stuff. So
there was a lot of difference there. But they were waiting.

(33:05):
I think they were waiting almost like eight months between
classes and then they would gather up a bunch and
depending like we had some Cali guys with us, some
first recon guys with us on the east coast, and
so we ended up. I want to say, I had
the flags somewhere. I actually when they shut down ARS,
one of my friends was at the last class and

(33:26):
he stole the flag for me because they were just
gonna like put it away and like put it in storage.
So but uh, yeah, I was like what so. But uh,
I want to say we had a decent rate of
passing at the schoolhouse and most of that was just
like cause in the holding tank it was like doggy
dog world. Man, it was you're ringing the bell. Someone

(33:49):
was leaving every day like it was. It was it
was trying to break you. They really just wanted to
see where your breaking point was. Like we would be
we had to be the pool a lot of at
like five or six am, and then we get to
the pool, we get out of the pool at eight,
and then we had land nab at nine. We'd land
nap till like three pm, then classes till like five pm. Uh,

(34:11):
you had to pet somewhere in there like either on
your own and then Friday's we come like and so
it was like it was a breakoff process and a
lot of guys didn't make the breakoff process. And then
when we got to the schoolhouse, you realize it was
at such a level they didn't even have to break
you off. It was here's the here's here's the line.
You're either gonna be one side or the other ready
to go. And they were the night. They were so

(34:32):
nice about it, which almost made it worse because no
one was yelling, no one was screaming, like just like
it was either you're gonna pass your fail they could
care less like. So it was. It was. It was
almost harder because in the the first like someone's yelling
at you and you're like, oh, fuck you. You know,
in your head you're like yeah, And when we got
to the schoolhouse, it was just hey, man, we're gonna

(34:53):
run this fast. If you don't make this timeline, you're
done by wait.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
What Yeah, So it was a lot.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
It was a lot. It was a lot different paced
when you got to the school So, but a lot
of us had already gotten through months of attrition and
kind of already had that. Like I said, the guys
who were only there for like two weeks, who that was.
That was a huge quick turnover for them to suddenly
be in a position where like hey, if you don't,
if you're not twenty minutes behind the rabbit, like you failed, sorry,

(35:19):
Like that's that's it, and you're like, wait what go gone?
So it was, uh, it was it was a lot different,
uh the attrition rate, but we still lost. We lost
one guy to trench foot, which I didn't I believe
was the thing that since Vietnam, Like yeah, like we
were at our hell week out in the mountains, of
Virginia was I think it rained six of the seven days,

(35:43):
and it was literally the most miserable I have ever
been in my entire life, Like I have, I've never
been so cold and miserable. But like they're like, seriously,
change your stocks. You're like, all right, you know, like
who doesn't want to? But I guess he didn't. And
we watched his feet just slough off for like three
days when we got hol Yeah, and he was he
was a great guy. And they're like, hey, man, I
hope you reach read later. Bye, And they sent him

(36:05):
home like just trench foot. I call it crap. Man.
I didn't think that was the thing anymore.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, you can't become a liability, right, Like I think
a lot of people I've talked to you that have
done different kind of selection courses, that's a common theme
is that it's very much there's no yelling. There's no
reason to yell, Like you're beyond that. That's that's boot
camp stuff, you know, that's like that's like entry level stuff.
At this point, they expect you to show up and
be ready to go for whatever it is that they're

(36:30):
asking you to do, and you either do the task
or you don't do the task like you said, and
you don't do the task Roger annotated, you know, and
if it's a failing event, then you failed or you
know whatever. I mean, that's something I've also heard that
people's other people say it plays mind games with them,
you know, when all their messages come through like a
whiteboard or something like that, rather than someone telling them,

(36:52):
and it's just like check the board, you know, see
where you gotta be in what time, and it's you know,
people overthink directions and or start thinking for themselves, you know.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, especially especially in the pipeline, because you come from
boot camp in Marine Corps, which is just its own
little slice of heaven where there is not a moment
of your life where someone is not either yelling at
you or just i mean in your face just making
sure you're doing exactly what they want. And then you know,
you get the infantry training, and that was just a
step down. I mean there was I met some of

(37:23):
my instructors of the infantry training were like the best
of the best from infantry, but they were some hard men.
I mean they're they're coming off there like like you said,
like fifth sixth deployment, They were just burnt and so
like they were, they didn't put up with shit, so
like you know, you get this like there they yelled,
but it definitely wasn't much. And then with the the
holding tank was pretty pretty vicious. And then you get

(37:44):
to a place where no one's yelling. You're just hey man,
you're not awake and you're not in the classroom at
this time. That's fine, we don't care, you know, like
to hang yourself yeah, right, And and some guys did.
Some guys would like with Libo, like hey man, you
gotta be home at nine.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Uh, Like I mean it was.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
It was awesome being in Little Creek, uh, you know,
on weekends and stuff in Virginia Beach. Yeah, but it
was really easy to get yourself in trouble out in
town and like you know, like seriously, like this is
you guys, right, choices and we'll see you back here
and that's the guys we want. Or you're gonna hang
yourself out in town and you're not gonna make it
back in time, or you're not gonna you're just like wow,

(38:24):
this is it was. It was It was almost like
a total like a one eighty from where we started
in the training.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
That's like something they do in OCS as well. After
like I think five or six weeks or something like that,
or maybe it's three weeks, they start letting them have
either a day off or the weekend off and they
can go out on libo from OCS. And part of
that is that like, hey, if you can't go out
and like control your drinking or you can't do you know,
like you said, follow the rules that are put down,

(38:49):
then we don't need you here, Like you can move
along to something else because that's not what we're looking for.
So after you finished, after you finished that initial reconnaissance training, uh,
you go back to sex recon and then do you
go straight to schools or what's the what's the pipeline there?

Speaker 2 (39:05):
So we were So I got back and we were
already in a work up. We had already started our
next work up for our next deployment. We were taken
over for first recon and so I came back from
school and I was immediately put into a team and
it was we are working up for Iraq. Here we go,
Like it was like I want to say, it was

(39:25):
like six months by the time like we we got going.
I met my platoon sergeant who was literally one of
the most fantastic people I've ever met, but also just
just a hell of a guy and reconnaissance marine. He
ended up winning Force Team Leaders of the Year like
a couple of years back. So they were bringing the force,
the Force guys who were like Team Leaders of the Year,

(39:47):
the top operators down as our platoon sergeants to train
the next generation. So we got these guys who were
just on a different level, like right off the bat,
from anything we've seen yet in the marie incoorps. Because
then this is like the top dogs coming down training us,
and I got I ended up getting Bobby Rivera who
I think is still training a lot of the more

(40:09):
soft guys or the Raiders now I guess the Raider
guys right now who's still downs and doing the contracting job.
But he was by far and away the best platoon
sergeant of any of them that I got to see
and deal with. I ended up getting placed in I
hate say, a dream team, but I got put in
a guy one of my teammates his first his first

(40:29):
go around, he just retired out of the Raiders. I
want to say a couple of months ago, and he
was instrumental in directing the Raiders and setting them up.
They sent him with other units higher, higher, higher tier units. Uh,
he did, I want to say, a stint at Quantico

(40:51):
in one of their teams for I want to say
four years, came back, brought all that. So, like this
was a guy who was going places like he was.
He was, you know, bootle like me, but he was
just already on a different level. Like we knew from
the get go he was gonna be amazing, Like he
was just really good. My team leader and my atl
had just gotten back. One had just been in oh actually,

(41:14):
so I think that's actually a thing we can't talk about.
He had just gotten back from a South American place
or a South Southern place that doing crazy stuff. He
had just and then that was after Iraq where he
actually got blown up in an ied so we actually
called him his nickname was Scotty Boom for hitting blown up.
So he was already pretty well acclimated to the whole thing.

(41:38):
So we just got this team that was just shit hot,
and it was just it was like it was a
dream come true. And then we started our workup. We
probably did I want to say, like five months six
months of like intense workup stuff, and then we went
to Iraq for the first time.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
What was your I mean, what did the workup look like?
It's obviously this isn't the first employment to Iraq, so
now we've got some lessons learned. Here were you guys
go applying those?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
No cause, like to be honest, like, so for our unit,
like really there wasn't a whole lot going on for
like the Battle of Fallujah, but taking the cities the infantry,
God bless them, Like I couldn't do what they did.
That was amazing shit, But that wasn't what a lot
of the like the Special Operations were doing, you know,
the sneaky Pete stuff, and so uh when we took

(42:30):
over from first Recon, nothing had happened really like there
wasn't a whole lot. They're like, oh it was you know, woo,
like they were excited put it that way, like they laughed, smiling,
And so our work up, especially under riv we shot
eight hours a day for probably i'd say the first
four months of that six months, like we shot until

(42:52):
we just we didn't want to shoot anymore. Like just
those the days where you're just like we're as fun
at first where you're super excited we're getting on every
weapon system and by like form and you're like, who
another shooting day, all right, but.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
How good how good at shooting were you by that.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Point amazing compared to where we started. And that's what
he was a huge So he he was chosen. I
think he was one of the top ten rifle shooters
in the world at that point, Like he got brought
on for I think either call of duty or day
call of duty had a competition that he was invited
to to shoot at. Like I mean, he was on

(43:28):
that level where like when they do the beat test stuff,
he could do the one second transitions where it's like
rifle shot, pistol shot, like within one second, we're like
show it to us, you know, and he did it,
and you're like, oh my god, Like just he he
was on a different level, so he wanted all us
to be on a different level. And so even as
a platoon, because that was the other crazy thing is

(43:50):
I don't know about other units, but our platoon trained
only as our platoon, so what we did was not
what every other platoon did. So every platoon sergeant ran
their platoon pretty much almost independently, because there's we only
went over to Iraq with one hundred and twenty shooters
maybe you know, like I think it was like six
platoons and then maybe a QRF. So we we didn't

(44:12):
we run a huge unit. So we were very autonomous
as far as our training. So we had what twenty
guys in our platoon, So for twenty guys we were
pulling up with, we would pull up with five tons
or humbies with trailers for enough ammo for like a
battalion shoot and it's like, oh, it's gonna be one
of those weeks. Huh. We'd sit up, we were like,

(44:33):
you know, but again it was it was different as
we get we get to go home every night, you know.
We would just establish a wash and we just shot
all day every day. Did the the CQB house a
lot like that was actually one of my favorite things too,
and so we did a lot of that. And then
leshuns its own kind of hell as far as terrain,
so we did crazy amounts of land nab as like

(44:55):
patrolling and like we did a lot of mock missions
where we would go out for three to five days,
uh and then just hide in Lejune and like go
spy on people and they would try to find us
and stuff like that, like just full on just mission
profiles where we were doing, exactly what we might be
doing in Iraq and stuff like that. So but uh,

(45:16):
but we got to go home every night. It was
again it was from what I've my experience in the
Marine Corps, I think was a lot different than say
like three elevens or like another guy, like like we
were treated like gentlemen, you know, like we pet do
on our own. There was no PT. Suddenly it was
like hey, as a team, your team is responsible for
your PT. Like we're not gonna bets even a platoon

(45:39):
we'd come together over in once in a while, but
like so we were peteing in groups of you know,
our five guys and making sure everyone is shit hot
and making their sure everyone was good. But it was
it was a lot more small than that I think
people were expecting because again it was either on platoon
level or was it team stuff. So there was weeks
that we only saw either our team and then our
platoon sergeant as a lie and that was it. That

(46:01):
was our training for you know, cause we were running
around in small teams. So that's how we trained a
lot of the stuff. It was all it was. It
was it was like the healcyon days that like you
want to go back to like it, you know, like
when people talk about like the good times of their
military career. Like that was that team. I I couldn't
put together a dream team more than that, Like I
liked my my my team's after that. But that team

(46:24):
ended up just being the best team I could possibly
want with the best people. Like we had so much
fun together. Everyone was there. No one was ever like
sad and dour. Everyone was always upbeat. It was a
very funny group. Like it was just everyone jibed with
each other really really well and that and that really
heartfelt way where like you feel like you met with
some brothers real quick. But yeah, we spent we spent

(46:46):
a lot of time, uh just shooting and just doing
land ab and stuff like that, just like like you said,
like long haul rocking like good God. I was the
I was the point man, so I had to do
all the routes and stuff like that. So a lot
of you know, just patrolling and making sure you have
the skills. They took all of our all of our
technology away, you know, because if you can if you

(47:07):
can do it with a map and compass, you can
certainly do it with a GPS and all that stuff.
So we we did most of our training as far
basic as you possibly could get, and then he would
right before we went, he would introduce like, Okay, now
here's your GPS, here's your this, now now get it on.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
And so our training for it, I felt like we were.
I felt like we were prepared as well as any
unit could possibly be for what we thought was going
to happen or what was happening currently.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yeah, we weren't.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
You know, we weren't taking Fallujah. We weren't taking a city.
We were in theory we were supposed to do what
Ricon is. Like we just talked about with the Snipers
as we were helping other units, that is, you know,
our mission set. And we get over there and they're like, hey,
the Zidon in Iraq, which is like just like the
nutsack of Fallujah is your Like what do you mean

(48:01):
it's ours? Like you own, it's your ao, Like you're
gonna you're gonna hang out there and do everything there
and that place was its own different world.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
They they were so scary there that Saddam Hussein wouldn't
even send his illy troops into there because they were
so tribal. And I think the big problem with Iraq
and a lot of these things is they had no
essential problem with us, Like they didn't have anything against us.

(48:32):
But they're like, hey, there's a line here, and if
you cross that line, you're on our territory and we're
gonna fucking kill you. And we're like, well, we're gonna
come over, like, don't do it. And so I think
some of the fighting we did was not even over
like ideals. It was just like tribalism, like hey man,
you're in our backyard, get out, like and they were.

(48:53):
They knew that place. It was the most sucking mud
in between three odes that you could drive on. So
there was three ways in and that was it, you know.
So they knew every goat trail, they knew everything about it.
They ended up bringing this the nineteen twentieth Revolutionary Brigade

(49:13):
and we we and we had it out with them
for six months in a way that like I guess,
no one, no one was prepared for that point. We
got there and IED's were an occasional thing where it
was like hey, like every once in a while an
ID will go off, don't be ready. There was a point,
i want to say, for four months that every other

(49:35):
day one of our trucks got hit with an ID
every other day.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
And this is still before up armor.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, oh, this is this is when they're bolting shit on,
like we're fucking orcs and it's just like a normal
humvey weighed down with you know, all this armor that's
not supposed to be on there, so when you gun it, it
just makes a noise and goes no faster. And like
it was wild, and that stuff was starting to c
come over. You know, that stuff was starting to get

(50:02):
there right when we were getting right when we got there,
that stuff was starting to be put in. But it
was wild. It was like this like it was like
another universe compared to what we were told and we're
kind of expecting. Yeah, like everything's really calm, Like there's
some bad people at the same time that we're fighting
the tribalists, they're fighting these foreign fighters. Like there was

(50:26):
heads on spikes, Like there was literally dudes who would
come in from you know, Syria and all these other
places and foreign fighters, and they told them the same thing.
You cross this line, we kill you. They didn't believe them,
and all of a sudden they be driving and there'd
be a head on a stake and you're just like, yep,
they're pretty serious here. So owning an AO versus your

(50:49):
whole training being about being an autonomous dark unit where
like you don't really hold land, you don't, You're just
you're going in for a mission, you're coming out for
a mission. It became something completely dif than I think
what everyone was expecting. Uh, and it was not a
warfare that really we were we were any better at
than say the infantry or anybody else, because it's basically

(51:12):
drive a humby to this point, take over a house,
spend a week there, come back. Yeah, And it became
a Turkey shoot for us for for a while where
we were getting hit with id's basically every other day.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Were they likely were the IEDs, Like, were they just
random attacks or were they using them to like initiate
like a complex ambush or something like that.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
No, so they were just random. They were literally like
so they they would tell everybody in the village, Hey,
there's an ID don't drive on this road because we
don't want to waste it. But and so we'd be
driving and like there was never a follow on because
that was the thing that was where I was the
intel guy for my platoons, so I had to watch
all the videos of all the complex ambushes other places

(51:59):
like and some of the cities and stuff. But for us,
for us, it was just they just wanted us dead
and they didn't They knew that they wouldn't win. Because
the other thing, the other problem with our unit being
an AO unit is we look like no other unit
on at Fallujah, at can't Fallujah. We look like a
gypsy caravan of humbies with all these rocks like my my,

(52:23):
uh my humby actually had a uh a sasser instead
of a machine gun mounted on the turret, so we
had a fifty cal sasser with a red dot. So
like we looked like no other you know, like vehicles
driving around. And so they knew when we were coming
specifically because we were always in a five vehicle you know,
convoy uh bristling with everything. But we'd have to go out,

(52:46):
we'd have to come back. So they were just hitting
us left and right and watching from their houses like
which almost made it worse because again, like it was
a it was a battle where there was nobody to fight,
but you just kept getting punched in the face over
and over, and so it really made it so there
was not a lot of victories at first, Like there

(53:08):
wasn't a lot of like cause you know, no one
was giving us missions. Let's say that. No, no, No
higher up was like hey, like there's a mission here.
I want you to go over and do this and
come back. But when we first got there, it was like, oh,
we have to clean up this ao and it's like, okay,
how do we do that? Like that's not usually our
you know, modus operendi. And so we did as best

(53:29):
as we could, I want to say for what we did,
like we would do like knock and talks, like huge
sweeping knock and talks, but again we don't know these,
you know. And again everyone pictures Iraq and I think desert.
We're next to the river. So it was lush, jungle
like and like sucking mud and like it was. It
was a totally different like even like what we trained

(53:49):
in out in California when we went to twenty nine Palms,
nothing like twenty nine palms. It was this muddy, very
moist jungle environment for right next to the river, and
so that we we couldn't catch him, We couldn't do
a whole lot, and so we we we got the
shit beaten out of us for a while. But there
was like a three month stretch.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
So I wrote the book about my platoon ended up
having about twenty five percent casualty rate. We got hit
a lot with IDs, Like one ID took out five
of our guys a little bit later, and ID took
out my at L and my TL a little bit
let you know. So it was just like it was

(54:32):
just these crazy amounts of I'm sorry, not my my ATL.
My ATL became my TL. It took out one of
my best friends who ended up losing his leg from it,
and MYTL. Uh. And so we were fighting a war
that really wasn't like we weren't getting anywhere because we
didn't know who we were fighting. It was like that
real subterfuge where like they were hiding well enough, but
they blow us up that they were going to come

(54:53):
out and play. And so it was very I think
it was very tough on us. We kind of changed,
I'd say about halfway through where we started baiting them more,
which sounds weird, but like it actually started working where
we actually stripped our trucks down and pretended to be
like a green unit who just got in there, you know,

(55:13):
noe like two heavy guns for five trucks, none of
our like everything stripped down to just basically like you know,
basic bones. And we would go wait out in the
field like we were just like hanging out and they
they would come to us sometimes and that worked a
little better. Or we'd set up we'd leave sniper teams
out and then dry bys and then like they'd follow

(55:33):
us and then the sniper teams think it. So like
eventually we kind of caught on to how we were
gonna be able to do it. But it was definitely
not the training that I think we had been gearing
up for and stuff like that. Like again, like for us,
like most of our stuff with either CQB or Sneaky
Beat shit at nighttime, you never see us, you know,

(55:55):
in out do something and then here we are, middle
of the day, call on boys driving down one lane
roads that have one in, one out like just and
so it was it was a lot different I think
for us than what we were expecting.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Were you guys doing any kind of reconnaissance though, I
mean to try to identify you know, HVT. No like that.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
No, compared to how much we trained that way. No,
we were We were like this weird let's say hybrid
unit where we would own aos. So some platoons would
have to go and do like like infantry stuff like Hey,
you're gonna sit in this house for a week and
you're gonna do patrols around it, and then the other

(56:36):
guys would either be on like like a fifteen minute
leash for like SEQ, like taking down somebody, so we
would get this. So we had like these two weird
missions that were like kind of co currently moving where
one two platoon would be out just sitting in a
house knocking talking, and the other platoon would be doing
like a raid on a known guy. Hey the guy

(56:58):
just turned in a cell phone we got five minutes ago,
and we'd be taking off doing that. And so it
was this weird back and forth between the two. And
I think the other bigger problem is it was at
the exact same time that all the other units SF,
the Rangers, Delta, like a lot of them were also
having to kind of turn it. So I remember we

(57:20):
were put on what we were put on a mission
for this. We were waiting for this guy to turn
on his phone. We're gonna do a hard hit. And
we waited three days, fifteen minutes from our you know,
fifteen minute leash full battle rattle, just waiting for him
to turn on his phone. He turns on his phone,
we take off. We get out to the front gate.
They're like, hey, turn around, Delta just did the hit,

(57:42):
so what the fuck? So we turn around and go home.
And then it started happening yeah, yeah, And it started
happening more and more, and then there was this one
mission set where it was it was nutty. It was
literally like the like, hey, you're gonna take your company,
you know, yeah, company, We're gonna take your company. So
it took three platoons up to this place Tartar. It

(58:02):
was like this big, beautiful lake area where they all
had their Saddam all had his lake houses, like their
vacation houses. But we get there and we are within
two clicks of the seals, the Rangers SF and Delta
shows up and everyone's literally asking everyone, hey man, you
got you emissions? Hey man, you got emissions, Like we're

(58:24):
like crackheads trying to look for stuff to do. So
it was just it was the bit like we all
just sat there like are we gonna do anything here?
Like is everyone like? So everyone was just looking for
stuff to do because it wasn't the There wasn't as
much of the thing that I guess we had been
trained up for that we were everyone was expecting.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
Uh, they were realizing that it was easier to hit
us and then walk away then have it out with us,
because I mean we for for a platoon and even
like for a five man team, our unit or especially
my platoon, we're carrying more firepower for twenty guys. Most
infant feature infantry battalions were carrying like as far as

(59:04):
like the machine guns and like every like we're loaded out.
We're waiting for a stand up thing and they know it.
So they were just they were just hitting and running us.
For first about seven months. We just got knocked around
like bad.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
That story where you said you guys were on a
you know, you were waiting and then getting ready to
go on the mission and then you get the call
that Delta took it is the most recon story ever,
Recon it is the most overworked, underutilized unit, you know,
because because they don't fall under so Calm, a lot

(59:38):
of people don't even really see them, you know, they're
not visible on like the manning charge for SOCOM and
an AO and stuff like that or whatever. They're just
not like if it's like, oh, you have seals and
rangers and all these people that like so Calm is
used to working with, Well, why would they choose the
recon team to go do something when they have all
these other guys that they're they worked with all the time.

(59:59):
That's that's why so many any recon guys go over
to like SF when they get out or now it's
probably a little different because of MARSK. That helps, you know,
because you can transition to that. But man, I always
I remember one time on my MEW, on one of
my mew's the marine expras train uniforse, I don't know,

(01:00:19):
it's a deployment on ship. The recon guys are just
constantly training for what we call go Platt takedowns, you know,
these gas and oil platform takedowns and VBSS to visit
board search and seizure where they're pulling up next to
the boat and taking it over. And actually there was
a recon team that did the bagell and Star and

(01:00:41):
they actually got to take down actual pirates off the coast,
which is super sick. That's a cool story for them
to tell. But however, on my mew there was a
boat that needed to be boarded and our recon team
got all spun up about it to get ready to
do this boarding, and then the Navy commodore was like, nope,
We're gonna send in our Navy team, our Navy team
and like stood down the marine recon team. I was like, oh,

(01:01:04):
you guys got you guys got overridden by the Navy
man like not even a special operations team, not even
like seals are just their normal ship team. Because it
was like I don't think it was I don't know
if it was considered a hostile boarding or not. I
don't think it was. But you know, it was just
like damn dude, all that training and they never get
to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
You know, I mean that's I I my my friend
who just got out of the Raiders. He said that
it finally like when they finally got that. I guess
they are getting a lot more recognition over there finally
in so common stuff because I mean, like the cream
of our crop, Like I think that just takes one.
I think there's some if you go in the Marine Corps,

(01:01:45):
you're you're a different breed already, like there's just something
wrong with you. There's just you're you're a little off.
And then like to go up to the special operations
of that level, like like I met some guys who
just like like they're characters, like they're just so like
unreal and like amazing, uh, just indomitable people. And again,

(01:02:05):
but we are usually just stuck onto our own like
it's inter Marine Corps, and so it's very hard to
get the recognition and it's very hard to get like
the like oh that's cute, you know, but like this
guy over here, like oh we did so much, like
I can't. We shot so much CQB and then I
we It was it was sad how little we actually

(01:02:26):
got to use it, and you know how little we
actually were out on true reconnaissance stuff where we were
doing like we got to do we got we did
get to do this one bridge though, where we actually
got to do the death thing sounds and stuff, and uh,
the water was running way higher and faster than it
had been a day before, and it was like an

(01:02:47):
absolute nightmare. But we're like, well, we're in the water,
like we're doing what we're supposed to do. Like that
was I think the only mission we all felt like.
We came home, we're like, recon, we did it. We
actually did like a recon mission.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
We're good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Yeah, we touched water, we were doing it all and
they none knew we were there. Everything went well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Yeah, it's a bummer for those guys, and they definitely
recon should definitely not have their own AO. The whole
point is they come in to reinforce a unit, provide
this reconnaissance element to a unit, and provide some direct
action capabilities if necessary, so to to like take you
guys and put you in your own AO like you're
a standard infantry battalion. It's such a misuse of your skills.

(01:03:29):
And again, it just you know, it goes back to
you know, this is a time before Marsok, you know
when you're talking about or maybe Debt one was getting
stood up around that time, but recon recon wasn't part
of SOCOM, so you know, they weren't getting the missions
that they probably should have and and I'll let you finish.
But one of the I think I had, I think

(01:03:51):
it was David Walton was on and he was like,
what's the hardest you know for a lot of the
One of the sayings in the Army is like, what's
the hardest part about Army Special Forces selection and the
Marine going through your Marine enlistment beforehand? Because there's so
many Marines that go from the Marine Corps over to
like SF because they're getting a lot of the missions

(01:04:12):
because they've been around for a while, they're well established
and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
It's just and I think it's also wild. So and
again I don't know how much this has changed. I
was out of two thousand and eight, so it's probably changed.
But like the way our officers work was also super
wild because you've got these operators who've been in for
at this point, I think RIV when he was getting out,
my my platoon sergeant, he's been doing this for fourteen

(01:04:40):
fifteen years. He was, you know, forced team leader of
the year, probably one of the best shoot like and
then he has this boot Marine Corps officer coming in
from the Infantry, not recon the Infantry coming over, He's like, oh,
I'm your new platoon. You know. Commanders like, that's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Don't they At the time, did the officers go through
ARS or BRC?

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
So the platoon level did, but our sergeant majors are
some of our others didn't, So it depends. Really it
seemed like a crapshoot. So I had what end up being,
I think again, I just got the luck of the
draw some of the best officers I could imagine who
and this is who listened to their enlisted counterpart, and

(01:05:27):
you know, because there's this, you know, the super operator
who's been doing this for sixteen years and you've never
done this and are the best officer I ever had. Literally,
his speech was, I'm here to be an umbrella for
you guys to keep the the you know, the officers
off you guys, and you guys can do your job.
He's like, that's my job. I'm not here to plan.
You guys, run your team, do the things you're gonna

(01:05:49):
do with you know, your platoon sergeant. I'll just be
kind of doing the power points kind of thing. Uh.
And it worked. He was our team. That was the
first the first appointment, our team. Shit hot. Our platoon
was fucking shit hot. Everything ran really really well. We
all come home from first deployment, we get an entire

(01:06:11):
new crop. Our sergeant major changes out, so our battalion
sergeant major changes out and stuff, and all of a sudden,
like haircuts are now important. Like we had a whole
we had to stand for three hours because our hair
was out of rag and you're just like, what what
is going on here? And so it really was like
it was like the Marine Corps and Recon were like
fighting for like the spirit of it, like they want

(01:06:33):
yut yut uh oh. One of our guys came out
and after, you know, he's like, just so you know,
you're not special, Like, man, we went through all of
this just to be told by you some guy who's
ever done it, like we're not special now, Like yeah,
So it was it was a wild They didn't know
what we were and I don't think they had a
clue of how to use us sometimes for all our

(01:06:56):
mission sets.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Yeah, I think that's I've heard that before, people say
that you're not special, Like yeah, I got it, whatever, man, like,
but I'm doing a job that you're not doing or
other people are incapable of like I don't know, I'm
and people will argue about grooming standards and everything else,
is you know till the end of the day. I don't.
I was never I was never into I had my

(01:07:19):
hands in my pockets constantly. I didn't get my haircut
once I became like a sergeant, staff sergeant. Once I
became like a staff sergeant, I definitely didn't get my
haircut every week. It was like every other week, every
week and a half or so, which is crazy. I know,
regular people are like, that's like a normal haircut cycle.
The Marine Corps, that's that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
It's like every three days you get long hair that
grows quitty quick, Like you better be.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
How dare you show up with hair longer than you know,
a millimeter on your neck? But I didn't. All I
cared about was like show up and be really good
at your job. Like if you that's what I you know,
I can. Let's if you you can't. You can't like
a field marine, you know where you show up and

(01:08:03):
you you may not have a fresh haircut. You like
to keep your hands in your pockets. You got the
gunny gunny rolls on your sleeves and stuff like that,
and suck at your job. You know what I'm saying, Like,
if you if you suck at your job and you're
trying to be this like field marine guy, you're you
have everything going against you and you're just a piece
of shit at this point. But if you show up
and you're really good at your job and oh, yeah,

(01:08:25):
you didn't get a haircut for Monday, well I'm gonna
probably let's that slide a little bit, like go take
care of it. But because you're you're a team, you know,
you're good at what you're doing. I don't care about
that stuff as much, you know, But the opinions differ,
you know, And I understand. I understand that. Like in
larger units, like if you're talking about an infantry battalion
or like a maintenance regiment or something like that, a

(01:08:47):
logistics regiment, you're talking about a lot of people and
you have to set some kind of standard that everyone
has to follow, and it becomes a lot of like
you know, mass punishment and stuff. But I think as
these teams like you were talking about earlier, you know,
you guys were training in a small team, you guys
are really a small team element. I think when you

(01:09:07):
start getting down to that level and you if the
Marine Corps letting you spend millions of dollars or they're
spending so much money on your training and doing all
these things, like there should be some level of like professionalism,
like hey, just come in and do your job. You
know what I'm saying, Like, well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
So I got too story. No, no, I got two stories.
So we were in Iraq the second time. So the
first deployment, I will say this again, all I couldn't
ask for a better officers or anything. They let we
were getting hit all the time, we were fighting all
the time. They let everything go, like unless you were
doing something really dumb whatever. The second deployment, nothing was happening.

(01:09:47):
Like I said, like they were just they were smart
enough now that they realized they can't. If they just
stop fighting us, we'll leave, you know, the politicians will
get us out of there. So they stopped fighting us.
So then it became like the beer bureaucrats start like
taking over again and all of a sudden, so we're
out on a three week ofpuh basically just camping out

(01:10:07):
of our trucks for three weeks whatever, doing it was
like two sniper op's that were rotating and then like
another patrol thing. So we're like two and a half
weeks into this and all of a sudden, like, oh,
we're getting a visit from uh, you know, your your
battalion sergeant major or I forgot who it was, but
we're like, all right, cool. So he shows up and

(01:10:30):
he's just red faced, and we're like, what's going on
all of a sudden, like they're talking about relieving some
of our platoon sergeants and our officers and what is
going on. We hadn't shaved in two and a half weeks,
and it was like and this is like we are
caked and dust. We are like it is the most
unsanitary like and you're just like I get it. I
go back to base camp, you know, I go back

(01:10:51):
to Camfualoojah. I'll shave first right off the bat I'll
take a shower because I want to, you know. But
like we're literally like but that's all. That was all
they gave a shit about. Like at that point, there's
like this is this is Asen nine, like that, this
is where your priorities are at this point in time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
In the middle of a war. Yeah, yeah, I remember, yea.
I remember being in Sanging on my advisor team and
we were the last advisor team in Singing, and uh,
this is in Afghanistan and we had third Battalion, fourth
Marines there on our base with us, our FOB with us,

(01:11:27):
and they because we were the last advisor team. The
whole point was that the Afghan Army was supposed to
be taking over this area and there was supposed to
be a limited American presence. So the three four didn't
really have a lot to do. They were never leaving base.
They were It was a lot of just sitting around, honestly,

(01:11:47):
and it wasn't It sucked for him because the whole
point was they didn't want Americans going out, you know,
they wanted the Afghans to take over. And but my
advisor team would go out all the time with the Afghans,
like we were at out constantly. We were still doing
missions and stuff like that with these guys. And I
remember the company Gunny or something from three to four,
one of the companies that was with us came over

(01:12:11):
and was like, you guys need to you guys need
to have someone start pulling weeds and blah blah blah.
We're doing like area beautification and we're like, oh, we're not, dude,
Like we have other priorities, you know, like this, you
guys can do area beautification and do police call and
all that, Like, what are you talking about? We're going
on an operation tomorrow with the Afghans, Like we're not.

(01:12:32):
That is not of our concern right now. And it's
it's just weird, like when you get to that kind
of point in a deployment or in a war or
whatever where that becomes like a priority, you know what
I'm saying, where guys are not going on guys, none
of these guys are going on operations. Sometimes we'd have
them if it was like a if we were expecting
like a bigger operation with the Afghans. Sometimes we'd have

(01:12:55):
three four stand up a QRF and have those guys
ready to go. But we never called them. We never
called on them or anything like that. So it's just
like what you were saying, it becomes more garrison, you
know what I'm saying. Like it's just like, I don't
know what the fact that we got to that point,
it was just crazy. You know. That was one of
those wars where both Iraq and Afghanistan where it became

(01:13:19):
like the deployments were like, oh, this is how we
always do it, you know, like of course, the we're
deploying next year because why not. You know. There was
no like what are we doing to end this? You know,
we're just deploying.

Speaker 2 (01:13:30):
In the right way or yeah what I mean like
we were we were helping training at one point, we
were helping train Iraqis.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
We went with uh. We did one mission with the
Iraqi Special Forces, who were amazing, Like those those are
some hard dudes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
But the rest of them I remember like they wanted
they were talking to like they wanted nothing to do
with missions or doing anything. Like they were like, yeah, stay,
don't ever leave. You're like, oh no, this is this
is not where we want to be at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Yeah. Well yeah, yeah we had that too. I mean
you definitely had Like the Afghans. Honestly, it became uncomfortable
sometimes because we'd have to explain to them why we
couldn't help them, because hey, this is this is your
fight now, No we can't bring They're telling me I'm
the I'm the you know conduit for this. I'm sitting

(01:14:19):
here talking to the Afghan sergeant or a first sergeant saying, sorry,
we can't bring in a METAVAC helicopter for your guys
because they want you guys to exercise your METAVAC capabilities.
You know, we had a guy shot in the stomach
and Afghan I think I can't remember for the soldier
a police officer shot in the stomach, and they were like, no,
we're not bringing in a bird for him, like you

(01:14:40):
guys got a metavac him, and that metavac meant driving
from I think, saying to like lost car God, which
was like, I believe over an hour hum V trip.
You know, he's gonna ride in the back of a
hum V on these roads for an hour. And I
was just like, this is so fucked up, man, Like
I get it. I know what we're trying to do here,
but imagine tell on that to these guys and then

(01:15:01):
having to go back to work with them. You know
what I'm saying. They're like they would get very upset,
like if we were trying to help them out or
or they wanted us to help, and then we wouldn't
do something or we couldn't do something because I told
a lot of people. You know, a lot of people
shit on them, the Afghans, and some of the Afghan
soldiers like oh, you know, they're they're no good or

(01:15:22):
they don't want to be here, and it's like, yeah, dude,
we do our seven month deployment or a year deployment,
depend on what kind of unit you're with, and then
we go home, you know, and then we get time off,
we can handle our family and go on vacation and
then do some more training and it maybe come back.
These dudes live here, like saying it is one of
the worst places in this country, and these guys are
stationed here, this is their base, and they're out here

(01:15:44):
every day dealing with the Taliban and foreign fighters and
local you know fighters, and like, of course, after a
while they're like fuck this, you know, like wouldn't you
if you were fighting every day and you're like, dude,
you know, every week someone's getting blown up or something
like that. After a while, it's like, nah, so I
had some sympathy for the Afghan fighters, but yeah, I

(01:16:09):
don't know how we went down that tangent. Oh the
garrison talk, but yeah, so when it gets garrison, like,
it's just like we should be questioning what we're doing,
you know, especially with.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Some of the units we were, you know, going there,
like can these not be better used elsewhere? Can we
not you know, have have people you know doing the
job or like cause again, like the Iraqis did not
want I think Afghanistan there was a little more, but
Iraq didn't seem to have almost any like we we
were a part of. They resigned in mass when we

(01:16:41):
said we were leaving. They just feel like we're done.
You're just like, what do you mean You're done? But
like yeah, we're just not gonna do this anymore, Like
oh god, this is like well, this is gonna be
tough for you guys because we're not gonna be here.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Like that's kind of what happened with Afghanistan too, you know,
after that last unit pulled out, all the all the
whole country basically folded than a few days because the
Afghan soldiers are like like what, like, we're gonna fight
these guys and by ourselves, you know, like I have
one magazine of AMMO and my pay hasn't gotten to
me in two weeks. You know, like what are you
talking about? I have no food?

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Yeah, no, it was I was a lose lose situation
kind of I hate to say for everybody, but like
there was no there was no good endgame where because
as as far as again, I could just go for Iraq.
Like a lot of them didn't understand. And this is
what I try to tell people, Like they didn't understand
what Iraq was. If you talk about the United States
in defending the United States, I feel like everyone in

(01:17:35):
the United States can understand that, Like fuck yeah, I'm
gonna go defend our country. And I remember how many
talks we had because I was a part of the
Intel thing and I got to do a lot of
the interviews, and you know at the end, you're just
kind of bullshit and you're just like, oh, so, like
so what is your world, Like what do you see
as your world? And they're like, oh, it's me, my
immediate family, my extended family, and that's it. There is

(01:17:58):
no Iraq, there is no or or they're like their
clan or their tribe, but that's it. That's where it ends.
And they're like, I don't understand what this Iraq you
keep talking about is compared to like what we viewed
in the United States. Like they didn't give a shit,
like if it was outside like for us, like if
it was outside the Zidon, they didn't care. They could
they could have Carrid if the rest of Iraq burned

(01:18:18):
to the ground, so long as they had their you know,
their fields, and they were good like so it's very
hard to get them to be like, don't you have
a sense of like you know, national pride. And they're like,
what's that? You know, like we've we've been under dictators
our entire lives, Like we've been murdered by our dictators.
Pretty much because he was some of the wild stories
we would get from some of these guys. One guy
brought out a book and he had this like picture

(01:18:40):
book of all the battles that have happened at his
house with Saddam's forces and then these other guys and
then like you know, foreign fighters. And he was one
of the nicest dudes I ever met, but like he
was like, you guys don't understand, Like like I'm just here,
this is my house. I'm just gonna fight whoever comes in,
and this is the only thing I'm going to defend.
You're just like, yeah, there's gonna be a problem here.

(01:19:01):
A little later on, when we were like, hey, it's
your country, now go for it. And they're like, yeah,
we don't. We don't understand that concept nearly to the
extent of the United States and most other countries do.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
Yeah, for sure. I think that's like that same with Afghanistan.
Very much tribal. You know, they don't know what's going
on two valleys over or whatever, or they don't care,
you know, like they don't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
Care, like they're just like whatever, keep me out of it.
Let me just have my you know, my little plot,
and I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
Yeah, And that's why, you know, some of the tactics
that we use to try to change a country into
a democracy or whatever you want to say, don't really
pan out because, like you said, they have no reason,
Like what are you talking about national unity? Like I
don't know. You know, like an Afghan from Helman is
much different than one from a whole another area and

(01:19:49):
you know that's a farming village, villages and stuff like that.
You go up in like northern Afghanistan, it's more like
mountains and these guys same thing, farming villages, but they're
like now in mountain mountainous areas and things. It's like
and the clans are different, the tribes are different. Some
of them have beef that's gone back way, you know,
like forever. Yeah, you're not gonna unify that. You know,

(01:20:10):
there's not really much you can do there. So when
you so, after you finished this deployment, I mean, did
you did you? Did you guys try to bring back
some lessons learned to the other Marines at Second recon
or the other reconnaissance units.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Oh yeah, So like we had a we had a
violent shift of of So I come back from first deployment.
We basically I finally got to my pipeline of I
went to jump school. I came back. I was SLATERD
for Ranger School that got kanked, and then I went

(01:20:43):
right to Sniper school. So in a very short amount
of time, I was supposed to do go all three
schools back to back to back. Uh, but I ended
up just going to Jumping Sniper. And so when we
got back from sniper.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Oh, real quick, which which sniper school?

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Did you go to Stone Bay in Lejune?

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
How was that? Tell us about sniper school?

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
Oh, sniper school. It was. It was one of the
hardest but most fun things I've ever had. Like, uh,
It's funny because he Parker. If you look at the
Discovery Channel and you look at the like the becoming
a sniper in the Marine Corps, uh staff Sergeant Parker

(01:21:22):
was the one who's running the like the hour long special.
He was my class commander in my class, and I
watched that thing laugh in my ass off because he
was the funniest most He almost got kicked out for
just fooling around and being like not serious, and then
he's on the Discovery Channel being like this hard ass,
which I just I love. Like we as a class,

(01:21:43):
like I wish I would have prepped. They they thought
we were just a different breed. We were just the
strangest class because like uh they they hated recon at
the time. They did not like so for sniper school
at Stone Bay, they had one recon sniper instructor and

(01:22:04):
then like three infantry stay guys. The one guy who
was there was an absolute shit bird and had been
put there I got found out later because he was
a shipbird to get him out of the way, just
kind of like to push him out of the teams.
He didn't deploy after Yeah, and he didn't help us
fucking at all, Like so cause the way he was

(01:22:27):
explained to me, they're like, oh yeah, so like you'll
have a recon guy there in case you have questions,
and like he'll be able to kind of like help
you and like take you guys aside and stuff. He
did none of that. He didn't give a shit. I
didn't see him most of the time, which was fine
by me. I ended up really really loving the other instructors.
We got along really well. I ended up becoming an
honor grad, which was its own fun little contest. There

(01:22:51):
was me and Parker. I don't know what he got
up to, but we were going tit for tat like
for and so like. It was like they said, it
was the most fun they had at sniper school, which
I know is not supposed to be a fun thing.
But we worked our asses off, like but we we
never made it where we weren't laughing while we were
doing it, and so like we had a great our

(01:23:14):
attrition rate that said, it was usually better than most.
We were very helpful. We'd stay after. I actually lived
about five minutes from where we were training Stone Bay,
like outside the in the in town. So like I
would get up in the morning like drink my coffee
at seven, like driving this like you know, and so
most of the guys were staying there. But because we

(01:23:36):
I was a sergeant at the time, I got to
drive in and it was like like a gentleman's course.
It was like a you know, you got there at eight.
We did some some mission stuff, but for the most part,
it was like it was way more classroom time than
people imagine, Like it was so much classroom time learning physics,
learning every part of that gun in and out, like

(01:23:59):
and we'd we took tests like we took no joke
fucking book tests where guys were failing out left and right,
just on the academic side, which is I guess when
people like picture it, that's never the thing they think
it's gonna knock people out of sniper school. Shooting was
the easiest part. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but
like they taught you how to shoot. We shot so much,

(01:24:23):
and so by the end, like you're a very proficient shooter,
and that is a skill that you could always make
better just with practice. The soft skills, though, were it.
Stalking was one of the most fun hardest things I
think I've ever done in my entire life where a
lot of guys like I grew up in the woods,

(01:24:43):
New Hampshire, I lived in the White Mountains, like I
grew up as a bumpkin in the woods twenty four
to seven, you know, in camouflage. So like this was
my like playground and I really enjoyed it. And so
even when it was suck for me, I think I
really enjoyed it more than some of the guys who
were not used to that kind of stuff. But again,
it was one of those courses that like here's the

(01:25:04):
here's the line, just get past it. Like you know,
it's very it's very drawn out. They're not trying to
kick you out. They want you to succeed if you
can succeed. But guys, guys are getting drop left and
right for stalking, shooting. God academics crushed most of them.
But our class was so so tight, like our I

(01:25:26):
would say, our upper thirty percent of our class. There
was a group of us. Uh. We had we made
our own company. Our little guide on that was this
giant pink flag that we carried everywhere with rural tassels
of color that said uh athletes not athletes, uh. And
like we were just we were just a wild, fun
group and everyone academically, like we would actually have study

(01:25:50):
sessions after school was out, Like we made sure that
like everyone who wanted to like got what they needed.
And so it was. It was definitely one of the
most challenging school as far as academically, Like Ricon has
a lot of academics that guys can fail out on,
but Sniper School it was you you had to know
your shit, and it was like the Kim's games where

(01:26:13):
we would I remember that they we were in the
middle of a classroom or we're learning something about something
and all of a sudden they just run into like
everyone into the shower and everyone runs into the gang shower.
They have Metallica playing, and I mean like when I
say full blast, I mean like way too loud. They're
flicking the lights on and off, and there's the ten

(01:26:36):
items in the box and you had thirty seconds with
the lights flash and Metallica going, and you're you know,
you're trying to memorize everything, you know, color size, everything
about it, and they're like, all right, get back. It
was two days before they asked us the questions on
that Kim's game. It was it was wild it was.
It was so much. Again, it was so hard, but
it was so rewarding and fun on the other end,

(01:27:00):
Like I laughed a lot more in that course, so
everything I did in the schoolhouse at Recon just because
like there was a lot of time where they were
teaching you a lot more. I feel like Recon was
testing you. Yeah, uh, teaching a little, testing you a lot.
Sniper School was a lot of teaching moments and then
they would test. But like so it was, it was,
it was very rewarding. But I guess I was very

(01:27:22):
surprised how little shooting was the thing that was knocking
guys out, because again everyone thinks sniper's just about shooting,
but that was the thing that like once you get
on the range, like that wasn't the bad thing. It
was definitely the other stuff was killing us a lot more.
But we were a super tight class. I had a
great time. Uh I ended up uh getting on our
grad our final X was the funniest like thing. Like

(01:27:44):
if you we wrote our reports, we wrote our operations
reports and our everything, and if you didn't list it
in your operations, like you didn't get it. So if
you didn't put shoelaces they took your shoelaces you didn't
put like so we had guys who wrote down like
three p a chewing gum and they were like eating
chewing gum and like so it was just a wild,
fun group. Like they they hazed the ship out of us,

(01:28:07):
but they didn't break a lot of us. So I think,
like they said later on, like our group did very
well together and just having fun and like it was.
It was definitely not I listened. I will say this,
I've listened to some of the older snipers I would
say a generation before me, and they had some times
that just like that was that was different, Like they

(01:28:30):
were hazed and they were it was bad. So I
think I got a different flavor than some people do.
And for me it was it was a lot of fun.
I loved it. It was actually the thing. It was
the thing when I joined the military that I think
I wanted the most, because when I went three eleven,
I was my plan was to try out for like

(01:28:51):
a staple tune, go to sniper school. That was my
my whole thing, That's what I wanted to do. So
this was like kind of awesome because it was like
I got to do I got to do it all.
I got to do CQB, I got to do sniper,
I got to do a lot of that stuff and
so it it was awesome. And then uh, when I
actually got so then we get to Iraq. To answer
your question about what did we do different, So we

(01:29:13):
finish up sniper school, I get out and it's time
to pick weaponry for Iraq for our next run out.
So to put it in perspective, like how how our
platoon was running for four teams we had four h No,
we had six snipers for four teams, so we had
two teams with two snipers. My team had one sniper

(01:29:36):
and so but like we were running like you know,
five man groups with almost every group every group had
a sniper, every group had a heavy machine gun, every
group had you know, we were just bristling with stuff
and we did a lot more. The second time, we
we stopped patrolling as much. We walked everywhere. The second time,
I we would I have some one of the pictures

(01:29:58):
I sent you, Like I had a black Hawk rock
I bought because I had the Sasser, the fifty cal sniper,
the Barrett fifty cow that was what I picked as
my thing. So my pig had a Stoner the semi
automatic sniper rifle silence, So we would basically set up
side by side where he was in my outside of
my cone of blowback. But we were like anti vehicle,

(01:30:22):
anti personnel, and we did a whole lot more. Now
we had data. Now we had a lot more idea
of what they were gonna do. So now we're doing
counter ied stuff. So now we're getting back into that
kind of recon like idea of Okay, they're going to
try to blow us up, so let's get guys at these.
So Intel started making us these awesome masks with like Okay,

(01:30:44):
this is where all the IDs are happening, this is
where this is happening. And so there was a lot
more proactive rather than reactive, Like we weren't just driving
around looking for trouble. We were very specifically sitting in
places like we spent god, we spent seven days looking
through a hole in the wall, one brick. We'd take

(01:31:07):
on one brick through a sniper rifle. Me and my
I mean my Marston, Lance Marston going back and forth
just looking through that thing for a week, waiting for
because there was a break that they knew that they
were gonna come through. Uh, So it was a lot
more thoughtful. It was we stopped driving around everywhere. We
stopped like we drove everywhere the first deployment, and we

(01:31:29):
just got hit out all the time. So the set like,
I remember.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
Were you in the same area? Were you in the
same area?

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
Yeah, went back to the side on. Yep, we went
back to the zide on. So so for it was
actually super helpful for the veterans WO had already been
over because one thing that we found, especially the first
and what was shocking for the first time, is we
had all this great aerial photography of the area that

(01:31:55):
was five years old. In five years, you are not
looking at the same thing for sure. So all of
a sudden like okay, we're gonna cross this bridge, we're
gonna set up in this house. There wasn't a bridge
and there wasn't a house. So we're running around at
two in the morning looking for someplace to hide because
sun's coming up and we're in the middle of like
you know, pretty open stuff. So there was one mission

(01:32:16):
where we laid literally laid in. One guy laid in
dry well, one guy laid like in a fetal position
in a box, like just waiting for darkness again, because
for miles you could see just flat out. So we
got caught out because what was on the maps was
not what was on the uh on the ground at all.

(01:32:38):
And so a lot of our first appointment was like
realizing that we couldn't trust our intel as far as
like what we were looking at, and so we had
to like make up a lot. So when we went
back the second time, a lot of the guys who
had been there we knew, like I could have walked
blind on some of the fucking curves in the road
and stuff, because I knew where everything finally sat, Like

(01:32:59):
I was pointing man the first the first time, and
I ended up becoming atl when everyone got blowed up.
So but I had taken all that stuff from being
point man, and I remember where everything sat on the
map in my head. So well, now all of a sudden,
like it flipped over where we got to be a
lot more. I'm gonna wait right here, knowing that there's

(01:33:19):
only a few places they're gonna put this id if
they're gonna try to put it down or do this
or do that. And so we got a lot more
proactive at the same time, rules of engagement changed completely.
So first deployment, they're about I would say, thinking about
nine months apart, so just in nine months of us
not being there. It went from if it has a

(01:33:41):
cell phone, put it down. If it has a gun,
put it down. If I mean basically like you know,
just if it's a Ford observer, put it down. If
it's you know too, unless he's shooting directly at you,
don't take the shot. Like wait, so they could be
shooting guns but not just at It's like yeah, yeah,
unless you know they're actively aging you personally, It's like

(01:34:02):
this is wild. So then the ros became super super tight,
like I mean so tight that like it almost made
everyone skittish because now we're trying to become like the
first time, dude, you play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
Second time, they're like, well, we're trying to be the
nice guys. We're trying to be like you know, so

(01:34:23):
we'd rather have something bad happen, you know, and then
worry about like then you guys do something bad, You're like, okay.
So our rois changed significantly where we've gotten a lot
of phone calls or with higher where we'd be on
the hook with them and be like, hey, this is
happening right now, do we are we clear to hot
and like no, let's just watch it a little bit longer.

(01:34:44):
You're like, okay, he's gone. You're like okay, okay, well yeah,
well they're like, okay, we'll send EO D Yep. It
was it was a bomb. Okay, So it was. It was.
We learned a lot, but also everything we learned by
the time we got back there there are we had
like it almost like it's almost change the game again completely,
where the second time I felt here were way better prepared.

(01:35:07):
Like I will say this about Gunny riv the man
was prepared. When we would take over a house, we
had a full windshields of humbies in the back that
we would bring out and we'd put on every corner
of the house, so every post on the house was
actually sitting behind you know, six inches of ballistic glass.

(01:35:28):
And then we'd sand bag. I mean, like we made
many fortresses. This would take six hours every place we
set up every night. It felt like the Roman Legion
at that point, where you'd get there early in the
you know, you get there, you know, two am, three am,
you know, you can make sure it's clear, and then
we would be building these little mini fortresses till daybreak.

Speaker 1 (01:35:49):
Some of these compounds you were going into, were there
occupants and what did you do?

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Yes? Sometimes so a lot of the times we would
put in a sniper team and we'd watch the house
how it's clear. We'd still have to go because there's
actually this sounds funny for people, it seems weird, but
it was more dangerous when there wasn't people in it
than when there was. When there wasn't people, it sometimes

(01:36:13):
would be rigged with low grade like pee stuff like that,
like they'd bring them a blow like they were they
were like a trap. So we had to be really
careful there on the flip side. If someone was there,
they were very used to and this is kind of sad,
but they were very used to being displaced. So we'd
roll in and we had our interpreter. We actually had

(01:36:33):
a platoon interpreter, which was very very handy, and he's like, hey, listen,
we're going to take over your house for X amount
of days. Do you have anyone to stay with? And
they're like, oh yeah, my aunt lives down the street.
You're like, okay, go live with them for a while.
You'll know when we're gone because you won't see anything
on the roof and they would leave most of the time.
So that was on like I would say, the platoon side,

(01:36:55):
on the teen side. And I tell a kind of
funny story when I dis Terry on a on an
Overwatch mission where we took over this people's houses and
we kept them in the house and we just locked them,
not locked them in a room, but we put them
in a room. We're like, hey, don't move, and we
put cans up against the door and they're like, seriously,

(01:37:17):
please don't move. We're gonna be like kind of on
the roof for just twelve hours because we there was
a very specific Ied Brother team that had been placing
and this was where we intel said that they were
gonna be. So we set up on this guy's roof
and they it was I would say between ten at
night and four a m. That we were there, and

(01:37:38):
they just stayed in the room. So we would go in.
We would search the room, you know, make sure there
was no weapons, no cell phones, Hey do you have anything,
and we'd take that put it outside the room. We'd
give them food, we'd give them water, we'd leave them money,
you know, a whole basket of good ease. So when
we left, like I would knock and then we would
just x fill and be like, hey, please stay in
the room for one more hour, Please don't come out.

(01:38:01):
We'll be gone by the time you come out. We
found that was safer because the one thing that started
happening is like I said, like, so, the Zidon was
very tribal. If you killed one of them, if you
were a foreign fighter and you killed a zidones we'll
call them, the whole area would turn on you and

(01:38:23):
they would fucking kill you. I mean they would. They
were lopping heads off, they were doing. So they made
very sure to keep them happy or try to minimize
damage to them. So it was like a three way battle.
So if we were going in the houses that were
either occupied or we knew someone had just left, the
chances of it like one just getting blown up was
just very low, or people firing on us just randomly

(01:38:45):
or like so for the most part, people didn't even
know we were there. You know, they might tell their neighbors
the next day. We're like, well, we had a stiper
team on our roof for you know, six hours last night,
you know. But like but for the most part we
were trying to be as little footprint as we want
to do that. That was like a three man team
we did it with. So one of us would hold
security down on the stairwell to the door, and the

(01:39:07):
other two would be up on the op and we'd
just rotate out and then we'd just leave. So it
really but platoons. We would usually send sniper teams in.
That's what we learned, so second point we would send
in platoon or sniper team early watched the house for
twenty four forty eight hours, sweep it completely, and then

(01:39:28):
we would move in as either a platoon or sometimes
even a company. We had one company op that was
just I would say, the the world's worst company hop ever.
Where it was like we'd put all our eggs in
this one basket and that basket had two roads in
or out, and they rigged both roads. So when we
came out, they fucked They fucked us up so bad.
So it was like one of those things that like

(01:39:50):
in a normal battle, you were like, oh, man, I
hope we get all of our guns and I hope
we get all of our people in one spot because
then we're like this impenetrable and it was reversed. It
was like, and I hope it's just me and you alone,
you know, in the bush where at least I'm I
know where I am, that nothing's gonna be you know,
I can walk anywhere. So we were walking that second deployment. God,

(01:40:12):
we were walking what looked like on a map like
like two clicks, and all of a sudden you get
on the terrain and it's either soft sand or like
it's sucking mud and it's taking you six to eight
hours to get set up over two clicks. But then
like I would take that any day of the week overdriving.
By the end, I would like, let me walk. Let

(01:40:35):
me walk for twelve hours in dark, you know, trip
it over breaking shit and get to where him going
knowing I'm going to be safe, rather than getting in
that truck. Getting in that like even air support. Air
support sucked. We had one helo raid that we got
to the launch pad. We're already it would just black
smoke canceled, like yeah, it's real dirty right now, like

(01:40:59):
sandstorm go home. We had probably like four of those
were we're gonna do these helo raids and we're getting
ready to do air ops and all of a sudden
they're like, yeah, it's not good conditions. Man, it doesn't
seem like it's ever good conditions for helos.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
Yeah, the dusty environment in the desert is definitely not
conducive for for helicopter. No.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
And so that the few helo raids we did do
where I literally I wasn't. It was so funny because
me and my friend talked about it. He's like, I
was more worried about the helo ride to the raid
than when I was also lead breacher. So I had
all I'd see four, just my whole I looked like
a tummies full of CE four on my pouch and everything.

(01:41:38):
He's like, you're a walking bomb and you're more worried
about the flight over. I was like, dude, I don't
like helicopters. I don't have any control. I kept watching
these things go down like you know, like because of dust,
And as soon as we woul hit ground, it was like,
thank God, we're about to go into a firefight. That
helos scaring the shit out of me.

Speaker 1 (01:41:55):
I remember riding in a I can't remember. I think
it was during my advice team the deployment. Maybe no, No,
it wasn't. I don't remember either way. I was riding
in an EOD vehicle and I was sitting on top
of a know, it was in the back of an
M wrap and under my seat was just like pounds
of C four that they would use to do the
uh to bip the i eds blow in place the

(01:42:18):
ied s. Yeah, it was definitely like, all right, well,
if something happened to our trek, I guess I'm I'm toast.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
So uh when leaving over our first deployment, Uh, I
was lead breacher then too are we were lead Humbye,
we were suicide vehicle, which sucked already, but then I
had to have all my my, my, all my charges ready.
So it's just in the front there was like that
that weird front bumper they had on some of the Humby's.
We made sure we got one of those, and we
just and it was just pile full of like C

(01:42:47):
four and You're just like, I don't know if this
is gonna be far enough away from us, or if
it's just gonna push the engine block into us.

Speaker 1 (01:42:52):
Like probably you don't get We're like, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
We'll just take our chances. When it happens, it's pretty
just like I didn't want it in the cab with us.

Speaker 1 (01:43:01):
I guess, yeah, I mean C four is obviously super stable,
but you do it's it definitely feels weird when you're
cruising around with a bunch of it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):
Yeah right, And you're like, I I just remember, like
cause I had so the one thing again in my unit,
like we got to I had a bunch of different
vests for a bunch of different things, and one of
them had this big front pouch where I had all
my charges and my detonator and everything right here, so
I could just kind of pull out. And I realized
I just basically have this like you know, bulletproof vestful
of C four. And it's like, I know it's probably

(01:43:30):
not gonna go off because of that, but it's still
a weird feeling to be walking around and everyone would
just kind of look at you different, like could you
just just go a little further away from me than
where you're standing right now?

Speaker 1 (01:43:40):
You're like, all right, yeah for sure, Well, dude, I've
really enjoyed this conversation. Tell us where tell us about
your book and where people can find that and where
they can find your social media and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
Uh. So this is my book. It's called val Hollaboys. Uh,
it's a lot about my first employment with that that
that super team. We took a lot. Like I said,
it was like a twenty five percent casualty rate.

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
It was just a different, different kind of war. But
it goes for for a lot of people. If you
guys want to know about like boot camp and I
so I it goes in like I would say two
thirds are in thirds. The first third is basically boot camp,
the second third is recon training if you ever want
to know like what recon goes through, and they're kind
of training and stuff like that. So it's me kind

(01:44:28):
of going through that stuff. And then the last third
is us in Iraq, or I'd say maybe the last
half is of us in Iraq and stories from there.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
This actually started, uh when I was at the VA
for PTSD. So there there's some pretty horrific shit that
happened to our team in our platoon. So I had
been going to see a therapist and he one of
the things they have to do is write it down
over and over and over and over, and so I'd
written down a couple of these stories over and over,
and it was getting help and stuff. And one of

(01:45:00):
my friends is like, hey, man, you got you got
any funny stories? Because these are fucking just awful.

Speaker 1 (01:45:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45:05):
I got some funny ones too, so like, why don't
you write those down and put them together? So I did,
and it about God. About a year ago. I was
running a gym. This is my gym, obviously, but I
was working, and then one of my clients happened to
be like a book reviewer professionally, like that's what she did.

(01:45:26):
So we're just talking books and I was like, oh, yeah,
I wrote this book. You know, I didn't really do
anything with it. She's like, well, let me read it.
So she read it and she's like, this can get
published in ten seconds. So she actually did a lot
of the I sayed leg work and stuff like that,
and she's like, this is great. So I sent it
to case My Publishing. They picked it up. It's been
selling like hotcakes, which has been phenomenal because like, again,

(01:45:48):
those are like a weird pain point, so it's not
like my my favorite book that I've written, but it's
doing really, really really well. I'm very excited for as
far as like it's written it's not your normal Uh
so this is the I'll say, it's not your normal
war book. It's written like a novel, or i'd say
more like not fictionalized, but like more like storytelling. Then yeah,

(01:46:13):
it's a lot of yeah. So yeah, so I write different.
I write like a storyteller, so it reads more like
a like a normal novel than it does. Like, uh,
if you've ever read some of those war books from
like World War Two or in Vietnam where they're just
really dry and like, uh, I would say, the first
half of this is a fucking hilarious book, which actually
makes the turn of it really bad. That's when said that,

(01:46:34):
like it's a bad roller coaster. It goes up, up, up,
and then it just drops. It was like, well, welcome
to deployment, Welcome, welcome to the Yeah, so that did
really well. I you can get this on Amazon, Barnes
and Noble, everywhere you can buy books. That's going really well.
I think they're picking up the audio rights soon, she
told me, which is super exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:46:56):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:46:56):
We've only been out about three months now and I'm
on like two of the Amazon lists. I'm like second
third for sales on two of them. Yeah, so it's
been it's been going great. It's definitely the other caveat
will put. It's definitely polarizing because I write from a
angry I wrote this right after because I wrote the

(01:47:18):
initial stories, uh right after my deployment and right or
right after I got out where I was having like
a lot of like bad bad PTSD and stuff like that.
So there's some uh, not say questionable, but like there's
there's just some moments that are really vulnerable that if
you were there you understand. But some of the people
reading and like, oh, you're a monster because you're having

(01:47:40):
these thoughts and you're like, okay, I need you to
go into a war and watch your friends be blown
apart to bits and knock it angry and knock it
like you know. Like so it's it's funny because I
just the reactions to people, Uh, all the reviewers love it.
Some of the people, you know, if you were there.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
That's good man. No, I think that's good. I think
that raw. You know, reality is something that people one
want in a book, you know, and I want you
to sanitize it. I want you to tell me what
it was like. But two. I think people should know
what it was like, you know, and that's raw feeling
to it.

Speaker 2 (01:48:13):
I had a moment of doubt when I was writing,
when I was doing the editing with this, and my dad,
I was like, should I just take out some of
that stuff? And he's like, absolutely not. That wouldn't be
That's not what happened to you. And people need to
know what it's like like that, don't don't don't make
this another like, because there's a lot of like i'd say,
not like uplifting war stories that are like, oh, like

(01:48:35):
we did badass things and that's great, and they there's
some badasses who had some cool stuff. This is not
that story. Like this is about like I would say,
almost like like Paradise Lost type stuff, where like, I
really this didn't go the way I thought it was
gonna go. It really brought up a lot of stuff later.
I lost a lot of good friends, like a lot
of good friends. One of my best friends lost his

(01:48:58):
leg stuff like that, so like and it really it
really fucked me up for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):
Well it's good to do that. It's good to have
that outlet, man, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Right, dude, And then and then I know you're trying
to through. But like, uh, I just went to that
retirement party about like six months ago, and I've been
holding onto a lot of these feelings for god, like
almost sixteen years, you know something like that. And then
everyone got drunk and then everyone started telling stories and
crying and you're just like, oh my god, it wasn't

(01:49:27):
just me, Like oh and it was probably it was
like a huge training point in my life where like
finally everyone got together again after you know, going through
stuff together that no human beings should go through. And
it was super cathartic, like it was very it was
beautiful in fact, and so like it made me. It
made me happier about the whole thing, because there's some
stuff in here that like I had a hard time,
Like I couldn't even look at one of my friends

(01:49:48):
because of what happened to him, and it would make
me like stick to my stomach every time I even
thought about him. So just having that moment with him
and being able to cry with him and like you know,
hugging it out and stuff like that, like it it
meant a lot to me.

Speaker 1 (01:49:58):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (01:49:59):
Yeah there, Yeah, So there's my uh, that's that book
and then I have a fantasy series. I'm gonna say
it's more military fantasy for if you guys are like so,
it's based on special operations type shit. So it's like
a fantasy series where they're all kind of like specialists,
like one's a sniper, but stuff like that. But it's
it's actually based on my war experience. So it's again

(01:50:20):
a little dark at point. It's a little like kind
of raw and that's been selling really well too, so
so yeah, that's what I've been doing right now.

Speaker 1 (01:50:28):
What a cool gig man. I really again, I think
it's great. I think people got to find an outlet
when they get out. Either stay in constant contact with
people that you served with, write a book, you know,
go on a podcast, start a podcast. I think letting
you know, people talking stuff out is what more guys need.

(01:50:49):
And they don't realize it because they don't want to
talk about stuff and part of it, you know, and
I get there's a lot of people that are like, well,
no one will ever understand what it was like or
what I was at the time, And I'm like, you're right, yes,
but you also can't blame people outside of your circle
or civilians or whatever for not understanding the military when

(01:51:10):
you're not even willing to talk to them about it
and what it was really like. You know, you can't,
on one hand complain that they don't know what it's
like and that they you know, whatever, but you won't
tell them. And I think that's what these podcasts and
these books and all this stuff is good, because it's
it's expanding people's understanding what the military is, what it does.
You know, like you said, when you came in, you

(01:51:32):
didn't realize there were so many different jobs that are
in the military, so many jobs, there's so many missions.
There's so many things that happen every day in the
military that most people don't even realize. And I think
it's it's imperative that we not only educate the public,
but also save our stories for our families and our

(01:51:53):
you know, that's family history. You know, So maybe fifty
years from now, one hundred years from now, you're a
great grandkid or something like that, will find in this
interview and we'll get to hear you talk about your
experience firsthand. You know how invaluable is that? I mean,
what would you give to hear your great grandfather, great
great grandfather talk about their experience in like a war
or something like that. That's that's crazy, that's invaluable stuff.

(01:52:15):
So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story,
and I look forward. We talked before the show. We'll
have to set something up down the road. Have you
come back on and we'll get into some more stuff. Everyone,
thanks for checking out the show. My website's Jaycramergraphics dot com.
My instagram is Former Action Guys, Former Action News. Check
those out and that's it. Man. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:34):
Yeah, thanks so much, man,

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Ep. 230 | Brennan Morton | Marine Recon and Sniper

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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. 230 | Brennan Morton | Marine Recon and Sniper