Ep. 231 | Brandon Young | 75th Ranger Regiment - Former Action Guys Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Yeah, it reminds me of the first you know, deployments
to Afghanistan and all the all of our etacks. I
remember I went to ARII one day and I'm like
looking around, I'm like, what the hell, Like what do
you why do you have a basket full of stuff?
And are you putting that on the unit card? And
they're like, yeah, man, like aren't you guys getting all
kidded up for this thing? I'm like, uh, not, like

(00:22):
you guys.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Are really that's awesome, that's uh yeah, that doesn't happen anymore.
But I will say the gear has gotten a lot better.
Oh over the years. Like now, you know, I was
in the Marine, so now, like you look at an
infantry guy that's in the Marines, he almost looks like
a recon guy from five ten years ago, you know,

(00:44):
because they're all wearing pellotores, they're all running around with
suppress rifles.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Like cutaway helmets, cut away helmets.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, it was definitely not what we saw, which is
weird that all that stuff came into play after the
Global War and tear when we knew during the Global
War on terars that like that was all good equipment
because you know, so Camm was using it. Everybody. There
was a lot of people using it. But what are
you gonna do? You know, when you decided to join,
so you went almost directly into the Rangers.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
You didn't contract directly into the Rangers.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, what you contracted as infantry, right, and then you
volunteered what jump school? Correct?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Correct? So I had an unassigned airborne infantry contract. And
then the way it was back then is that guys
would do Airborne school before they would do Ranger in
doctrination program. And so I volunteered while I was an
airborne school by just going to the Patches building and
persisting and getting my name on the roster. And so

(01:45):
I ended up the first unit that I ever was
in was the second Ranger Battalion. So I went immediately
after Jump school, I went to Ranger Indoctrination program, got
my ass handed to me just like everybody else did, passed,
and was assigned to Alpha Company, Second Ranger Battalion up
at what is now known as Joint Base Lewis McCord.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Now, when you join, though, were you wanting Was that
a goal or was that like a goal down the road?
Or did are you? I mean, obviously you're happy you
went right into it because you volunteered for it.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, I thought that I had to kind of walk
the progression. I didn't know that you could be a
private in the Rangers until I was in basic training.
And in the end of the basic training cycle, we
got a new drill sergeant, Drill Sergeant Coronado. He had
been in third Ranger Battalion, and he said, you know what,
young you should really try out and go to RIP.

(02:36):
And I said, well, yeah, I'd love to, but you know,
I got to be like a sergeant for that, right.
He's like, what are you talking about? No, And so
I found out basically in the last month of basic training,
and from then I was just like, came on, this
is exactly where I would be. I want to be
with the.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Best, Yeah, for sure. Now is that opportunity open to
a lot of people or not? Really? I mean, do
you have to like seek that out? Because one of
the things I kind of push on a lot of
these podcast is that you have to, you know, create
your own destiny. You know, if you a closed mouth
doesn't get fed, if you don't ask for that. If
that didn't come up in conversation, like would you've known

(03:12):
about that.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
You know it's it's a good I like the way
that you put it. A closed mouth doesn't get fed,
And I do think that you have to be hungry,
you have to be persistent. You have to in many
ways create your own luck or your own destiny. Some
people go in with what is called an option forty
contract so their recruiter can sign them up. If they

(03:36):
have the appropriate GT scores and all that good stuff,
they can sign them up for an Option forty contract,
which means that you will go from basic training to
your Advanced individual training and then immediately after that you
will go to what is now Ranger Assessment and Selection program.
So that is possible on the front end. But my

(03:57):
recruiter didn't know about it, and I had and I
know he didn't know about it. I had known the
guy for three years. I was going to my recruiter's
office in Fremont, California, from the time I was probably
like fourteen years old until I could finally sign up.
I just always knew I wanted to be a soldier,
since I had memories. I wanted to be a soldier,
and so I figured I would have to walk the
progression but you know what man like when opportunity strikes,

(04:21):
if you're willing, if you're hungry, if you're willing to
do the work, if you're willing to attack it and
get after it, then I think there's really a lot
of opportunity. And what it looked like for me at
that Patches building right there on Fort Benning at Jump
School is literally every day I went there like twice
a day. I'd go before formation, i'd go after formation.
I'd write my standard name line down, I'd slip it

(04:42):
on pieces of paper. Underneath the Ranger Regiment Liaison's office,
I'd write my name on his chalkboard the whole nine yards,
to the point that when I actually finally met him,
he smoked the crap out of me because he's like,
are you the guy that keeps like writing stuff all
over my boards and everything? I'm like, Roger Sergeant, But
seem to work because I got a chance to go.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, you got you're motivated. You know, that's what they
want to see. Like, yeah, they're gonna harass you for
But at the same time, it's like, hey, you gotta
respect the motivation.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
You know, yeah, for sure?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Now you know, do you think going right, going right
into like RASP or rip at the time, right after
boot camp or basic training and infantry school. Is that
a natural kind of flow or do you think you're
physically ready for that? I mean, there are guys that
join the military that aren't in great shape, and they
leave boot camp in better shape, but not the best shape.

(05:35):
So are you really ready for that kind of challenge?

Speaker 1 (05:40):
I think it can be. I think it depends on
what your background is, and most guys that end up
being successful are the people who come into it with
a background of physical fitness. A lot of wrestlers. I
was a kickboxer, football players, people who have experienced some suffering,

(06:00):
I would say, and know how to at least persevere
a little bit through some of that. So I mean
it's not to say that some people don't go in
after getting built up. I mean the thing now is
that the one stop unit training or one station unit
training is now what twenty two weeks long just for
an infantryman, and back in my time when I enlisted

(06:24):
in nineteen ninety seven, I think it was eleven weeks long.
And so that the time horizon is greater. I think
that we have learned an awful lot about training and
physical fitness, and so I think it can help you
get a leg up. But my suggestion is that most
guys who go that route are coming from some kind

(06:46):
of a foundation where they this is not new to them.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, shared misery. Shared misery builds bonds.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know, ah, yes, lifetime bonds.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Being able to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and is
something we always said, you know, that's one of those things.
It's like I remember being out in the field or
doing some kind of training and it'd just be pouring
out or whatever, and you're just like, you know, it
is what it is, Like, what am I gonna do?
You know, I can sit here and complain and cry
or whatever. And don't get me wrong, we all complained some, sure,

(07:18):
but like you just you understand there's nothing, no one's
coming to get you.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
So just no one is coming to deal with.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
It, you know.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, that's yeah, that's good training right there. Now going
through what was tell us about RIP, how it was
like at the time, and if you know how it
has changed. If you could give us some updates of
what people could expect if they joined right into the Ranger.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Program, Sure, so as a late nineties ranger, the way
that ranger and doctrination program was is essentially it was
kind of like grab on to the handle on the
outside of a speeding bullet train, and if you can
still stay holding on after for three weeks, then we'll
give you a chance to go to a ranger battalion.

(08:04):
It was predominantly physical, constant smoke sessions, constant torture, if
you want to call it that, it was. You know,
land navigation is a staple of it as well, So
you know, here's a map, here's six points. Go basically

(08:24):
find stop signs in the woods with no technology. All
you have is your compass and a protractor and this map.
And if you're not backed by a certain amount of time,
then you fail. If you talk to anybody on the course,
then you fail. If you exchange information out on the court,
you fail. All that kind of stuff. And so it
was a relentless experience. And so when you pass that,

(08:49):
you basically proved that you could keep your wits about
you when things get a little bit sideways. Because that's
essentially what land navigation really teaches right at test your physical,
your mental, your emotional, what are you going to do
when you get stuck in a draw, because everybody is
going to get stuck in a draw? How are you
going to deal when you're not sure where you are?

(09:10):
All these kind of things, So it kind of gives
you that foundation of what we're looking for in a
special operator. And then you would get to your unit
and it was essentially lots of training, I mean constant training,
and you were basically like the new guy for however
long it took until you went to ranger school, graduated

(09:32):
and got your ranger tab and came back and we're
a leader. And so for me, I was in the
Ranger Battalion as a private, and I was there eight months,
and then after eight months, I was sent back to
Fort Benning to go to Ranger school, graduated, Ranger school,
came back. And that's the big separator in the ranger
regimen is either you're a TAB or a non TAB,

(09:53):
And so if you're a non TAB, you're basically considered
kind of like one of the privates. And if you're
a TAB, then you start get into the junior leader
ranks and progress up into sergeant staff, sergeants, so on
and so forth. That is how it was up until
about two thousand and four, two thousand and five, and
what we started to experience after years of protracted combat

(10:17):
is that it wasn't good enough to make sure that
guys could do as many push ups and flutterkicks, you know,
rock long and find themselves out in the woods and
find their way out of it. That wasn't enough because
guys were graduating from RIP and then going to meet
their platoons in Bogram or buyapp and getting straight into it.

(10:37):
And so what we started to do is it started
by adding a week in about two thousand and four,
two thousand and five, and I was there at the
Ranger Regiment Training detachment as we were starting to make
this transition, and we started to add a week of
marksmanship training. We wanted to give them at least a baseline,
and that has transformed over twenty years of combat. The

(10:58):
Ranger Regiment was deployed for over eight thousand straight days
after nine to eleven, after the Towers fell to what
is now the Ranger Assessment Selection Program, which is now
an eight week process, and the first four weeks is
very similar to what old RIP used to be, Like,
I mean, they're going to put it to you. You're

(11:19):
going to do the worm workouts, which the worm is
basically like a three hundred pounds sandbag that takes six
dudes to you know, to lift. You're going to get
Coal Range. Coal Range is the is the location that
is kind of like the Apex experience where you do
the land mav you do the road marches, and you know,

(11:40):
Coal Ranges is the place where many a dreams have
been broken. And after you get through Coal Range, then
it starts to transition a little bit into a little
bit more. The second half is like preparation and now
we're doing things like marksmanship, tactics, breaching, demolitions, you know,

(12:00):
advanced medical things of that nature, so that by the
time a young ranger shows up to their unit, they
at least have a little bit of a running start
and they can then jump straight in because you know,
we were just straight into the rotation cycle for twenty years.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I mean even eight weeks is not a lot
of time to get somebody ready, because if you join
under a contract to become a ranger, that means you
could be what down range in nine months or less
from the time you started boot camp. Too. Now you're
in country and you know, like that's right.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
I mean we had it, like I mean justin we
had it. You know, I will tell you back in
so back in two thousand and three, on my third rotation,
we got alerted the entire seventy fifth Ranger Regiment gets
sent over to Afghanistan. And I had just received a
new ranger or in my squad. So I'm talking this

(13:03):
guy just got back from the central issuing facility, had
just gotten his boots, had just gotten started to tie
his equipment down and get his kit in order, and
maybe seventy two hours after this cat shows up, we
get blown out. And so we're over in Afghanistan a
couple couple months into the trip. It was about two

(13:24):
month trip, and we're in the midst of this situation,
which I'm sure you can relate. You know, when you
do sustained operations out in the mountains, you've got to
take times to refit and you know, rehash and plan
and all this kind of stuff. And we happened to
be at a pause point, and it just so happened

(13:45):
that you know, some lone rocketeer fired like a one
in a million shot from across the valley comes streaking
through with an RPG comes streaking across the sky, you know,
hits in front of our positions. And as I'm running
out of the talk, you know, screaming out orders. I
was the weapons squad leader, which is the senior squad
leader in a ranger platoon. I'm screaping out fire commands

(14:08):
and nothing's happening. And I look over and who's on
the machine gun? The guy that just showed up, I mean,
and he had essentially frozen on the machine gun. And
it was experiences like that where we had to take
a hard look at ourselves and say, was it his
fault or did we put him in a bad spot
where he wasn't actually ready. We didn't actually prepare this

(14:31):
young ranger to be successful in that moment. I mean,
six months prior to this, he had been walking the
high school graduation stage in a cap and gown. Now
he's taken fire in Afghanistan, and what has he proven
to us is that he can do as many flutterkicks
as we can throw at him. That doesn't mean that
he's really ready for prime time. And so, you know,

(14:51):
just to truncate that and bring it to the end
like he ended up having a wonderful career, great guy,
great ranger. But it was experiences like that. That's one
of many learning lessons that we said, Okay, well we
have to do something. We have to give them some
kind of a running start.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, for sure. I mean one as a new person
in the military something, you know. One thing I tried
to tell my guys once I got became like a
sergeant and a staff sergeant and I was in charge
of people I was telling. I would always tell them
be like, hey, listen, the new guys, they don't know
what they don't know, you know what I'm saying. So like,
if they show up and you ask them to do
something and they just no one's ever taught it to them,

(15:27):
then you have to teach them. Like you could be
mad or whatever you want, but you can't, like, you know,
expect them to show up and be the best scout, observer,
best jaytac, best for you know, whatever whatever job it is.
Because they don't know what they don't know. They need
they need reps in training different scenarios. Entry level training,

(15:49):
even as in depth as it can be, is not
not really enough to get especially kids that comes right
out of high school I mean, yeah, you can test
to this once you're when you're in a combat arms unit,
especially ones ones that are deploying quite a bit, you
get in this mentality. You know, it's like this fighter mentality,

(16:12):
and you know what you're getting ready for, and you've
been you've been prepping for, especially someone like you who
was in in the late nineties. There wasn't a lot
going on, so I'm sure by the time the call came,
you guys had been like itching for this for a
long time.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
We were hungry, man like because we had It was
like we were playing We were practicing for the big
game and not playing it four years later, you know.
I mean, obviously it was a horrific situation when we
were attacked, but brother, we were ready. We were ready
to take it to anybody, and it was online donkey kong.
What we didn't realize is, you know, going into this,

(16:47):
you know everybody, your your expectations are just a natural
extension of your experiences in life, and the experience of
our unit had been the Somalia's, the Panama, the Grenadas.
You know, it was kind of like the hit it
and quitit mission, right, you would you would get in
there you'd maybe do an airfield seizure, you'd go hard

(17:07):
on target for thirty days and then you're out of
there and that's it. And so when those initial deployments
started started unfolding, it was everybody we thought we'd missed
the war because we didn't get the objective Rhino the
October nineteenth jump by a third range of Battalion into Afghanistan.

(17:27):
We're like, we missed the war. Oh boy, we had
no idea what was coming. Yeah, we just had no idea.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
That's all we should have done, you know, go in,
you know, crush some skulls, beat, you know, give a
little retribution for what happened and stuff like that, and
get out and leave. Yeah. Yeah, it turned into a
mess for sure. And I think anybody that was there actively,
like talking to the public or talking to the Afghan

(17:57):
soldiers and stuff, you're like, hm, this is on shaky
ground at best, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, I mean it was tough. You know, even in
two thousand and three, we were looking at each other saying,
what are we doing? What are we doing here?

Speaker 2 (18:09):
Were you guys fighting with like Northern Alliance guys at
that point? Still was that still a thing?

Speaker 1 (18:13):
When when My first rotation was in the beginning of
two thousand and two, and we had a couple of
guys with us who were like, I mean, like these
dudes were like Musja Hadeen back when the you know,
Russian incursion was going down, and that was about all
of the exposure that we had. We didn't have a

(18:35):
whole lot of exposure. I think most I think the
oda's were doing a lot of exposure with the Northern
Alliance and guys like that. But you know, for us,
like a Ranger, a Ranger platoon, a Ranger battalion, like,
we weren't really geared for that kind of interaction.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah, you guys just be taking over airfields and stuff.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, direct action, you know, close with and destroy and
And what was happening a lot in those years as well,
is that we were doing a hell of a lot
of long range patrolling, reconnaissance, route reconnaissance, we were doing
lying in ambush. And it's it's fairly comical because you know,

(19:17):
when you go to ranger school and you're so I
went to ranger school. I graduated in March of ninety nine,
and ranger school's a miserable experience. It's you know, the
two levers that they use to replicate the rigors of
combat or starvation and sleep deprivation, and so you know,
you're just like you're miserable, you're sucking, you're going through

(19:37):
it and all this kind of stuff, and there's always
that thing in the back of your mind where you're like,
what are we doing here? Like this is this really
like the what is this preparing me for? Because I
had come from a ranger battalion and we're doing you know,
close close quarters battle, we're doing sexy stuff, you know,
late nineties sexy version stuff, and we're like, what am

(19:59):
I doing nowt here doing these like Vietnam era patrols,
And then you fast forward two thousand and two, two
thousand and three, I'm like, well, there you have it,
you know, like here we are starving out in the
middle of nowhere, and we're we're clearing large grid or
clearing like grid squares for basically for lack of a
better term.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I know quite a few I don't say quite
a few, I guess quite a few marines that have
gone to Ranger School, and they all, you know, said
that it was a good learning opportunity, even the ones
I didn't graduate. The guys. There were a few guys
that hold a chip on their shoulder. They think that
the instructors were being harder on them for some stuff
because they were Marines. And I was like, I don't know, man,

(20:42):
maybe I've never been, so there's some devil. You hear
that a lot though, like they didn't like the Marines
that were there, or they didn't like, oh my gosh,
there tad protectors and I think it is what they call.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah, Well, the funny thing is that we had there's
there were Marine Ranger instructors there and it was really cool. Actually,
let's tell this quick story here. So it's the it's
the end of Ranger School. Ranger School unfolds in three phases.
You have the Darby phase, which is right therefore Benning.
You have Mountain phase, which is up in Delanaga, and

(21:15):
then you have Swamp phase or Florida phase, which is
down in like Eglin Air Force Base area. And so
you have to get a go in each grade. You
have to get a go at a major graded position
in each phase in order to progress forward. Right, so
you get it's constant, it's constantly being placed in different
leadership positions and you get assessed. You know, you're the

(21:35):
platoon leader, you're the platoon sergeanty, squad leader, all this
different kind of stuff, and it's basically it's binary. You
either go or no go. And so there I am.
I'm you know, mind you I went to ranger school.
I was nineteen years old, right, and I'm in ranger school.
I'm in Florida Phase. It's the last patrol. I don't
have my go so I've already failed a graded patrol.

(21:59):
And so I'm I'm like, oh shit, like I'm I'm screwed, right,
And I'm sitting there, and the way it works in
the morning is they call in the ranger instructors, call
you everybody in, they assign new roles and all that
kind of stuff. So they're going through and assigning roles
and they assigned this guy and the so my squad.
I'm like, okay, it's down to the last person. Am

(22:20):
I going to get a grade? They assign it to
somebody else and this guy and I'm just like, shit,
I'm screwed, Like I'm going to have to recycle Florida Phase.
I am sucking. This is miserable. And I start to
hear this like kerfuffling going on right next to it,
you know, like over between the guy that had been
placed into the leadership position and the major patrol leader.

(22:43):
The ranger instructor. His name was Sergeant first class. Heally,
I'll never forget him. He was a ranger reconnaissance guy.
And so he's talking and blah blah blah, and he's like, yeah, sergeant,
you know, I gotta get my eye checked out something YadA, YadA, YadA.
And he's like, well, what's wrong with your eye? I
don't know, something's wrong in my eye, just you know,
I just I just need to go see the medic.
And he's just like, okay, we'll drop your gear. And

(23:04):
you're heading back to the rear. And the guy's like, no, no, no,
I just I just need a medic to give me
like some I drops or something like. It's like, sorry,
ranger lifelim er eyesight, you got to go back to
the rear, drop your gear right there. Now. This is
the last day for a grade of patrol. And this
poor guy, you know, drops his gear now. Mind you,
he had in a previous phase gotten his orbital bone

(23:27):
crushed from he had tried to do ranger school before
in the boxing you know, you do boxing in Darby
phase and somebody crushed his orbital bone. So I understand
why the guy had some concerns. And I understand also
while that why the ranger instructor was like, hey, you
got to go back in, kid. So I overhear all
of this, and I sprint from the line over to

(23:49):
the ranger instructor because this cat is he's gone. He's gone,
he's moving out going to the GEEP. I run over there.
I'm like, hey, sergeant, I can't help notice that you
need a squad leader for this last great patrol, and
I need a grade of patrol. He looks down, he's like,
what's your roster? And for who are you? And he
looks down and he looks at me. He's like, you
think you got a kid? And I was just like Roger, sergeant,

(24:10):
and he's like, okay, get to it. And then everybody
gets an assigned ranger instructor and mine was Gunnery Sergeant Parker.
Gunny Parker, badass marine, like you know, marine recon like
the full nine yards. This dude was, I mean, like
this guy would walk in and the presence was like whoa,

(24:32):
This dude is like no joke. And that was my
last grade of patrol. And you had to do this
like long. It's called if you don't do the weaver,
you do something called the wid March five hundred. It
was the winter, so you couldn't go into the swamps,
so you basically road march the whole patrol back in
around the swamps. And I'm running up and down trying
to get my go and this and that, and we

(24:52):
get to the end of this thing and I'm spent.
I got nothing left, and you know, everyone drops a gear.
Everything is over. We're back in the barracks and Parker
pulls me over and he says, well, what do you
think do you think you did what it takes to
pass young? And I was like Roger, Sergeant Roger, Gunny
and he's just like he's like, yeah, you did. He's like, hey,

(25:14):
I just want you to know you earned this. You know,
I'm not giving you a go because it's the last day.
And I like you, I do like you, but you
did earn it. I'm just like, you know who or
who rah whatever, Gunny, thank you. But he made such
an impression on me, man, like he was he was awesome.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
That's awesome, that's good. That's what you know. As a marine,
that's what we want. You know, you always hear and
you know what I'm talking about as a soldier too,
and things that happened you hear the only time. A
lot of times you only hear the negative stuff in
the news. You know, former marine killed his family, or
former marine robbed a store or ranger.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Blah blah blah, rob the bank.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
It's like, man, we don't really want to be known
for that, Like we want to be like professional, like
be known as professionals, you know. And yeah, I really
enjoyed the Marine Corps and that's the kind of attitude
you kind of for a lot of these units. You
have to have an attitude like that, like, you know,
be professional and be kind of hardcore about it because
jobs like that rep, Marine recon, jobs like what you're doing,

(26:15):
those are real life and death. You know, jobs like
there's actual life and death. And that's something I've talked
about on the show and explain to people after I've
gotten out. Sometimes it's hard to take things serious out
in the real world because oh no, you know, so
and so didn't get the email in time or oh no,
blah blah blah, And when you've come from a situation

(26:35):
where you're like experiencing actual life and death, this everything
else just seems mundane and you're like, why is everyone
freaking out about this situation right now? Like what do
you guys? You know?

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, yeah, no, I totally appreciate that. When I when
I got out of the Army in two thousand and nine,
I got into the commercial side of healthcare. So I
was representing a cancer diagnostics laboratory and we happened to
be the company was kind of early adopters at seeking
and hiring vendor veteran talent. And one of the things

(27:07):
that the guys and I would say to each other,
because the truth is is that it was a hard
ass job, and there's a lot of hard jobs out there.
And one of the things that we would do is
we would call each other as we're, you know, riding
around and getting our teeth kicked in by prospective clients
and just say, well, at least nobody's shooting at us today.
Just keep saying that over and over again, nobody's shooting
at us today. And I think that what I talked

(27:29):
to a lot of veterans about this, that we really
have the opportunity to help others gain a little bit
of perspective if we approach it from a place of
I would say, caring and connection. You know, it's very
easy for us to put our walls up and be like,
I'm you know, I'm a badass veteran and you'll never

(27:51):
understand and this and that. But the truth is is
that nobody holds a monopoly on hardship or adversity or suffering.
You know, there's some really hard stuff going on out there.
When we instead use our stories to build bridges instead
of walls, I think people really appreciate that about us.
They really appreciate the calm that we can bring, They
really appreciate the perspective and just say, hey, you know,

(28:14):
I can appreciate where you're coming from. You know, we
we had some really hard things that we had to
deal with, and you know where you're at right now,
what do you feeling. I think a lot of people
can appreciate that if we find ways to relate to
others as opposed to you know, kind of the thousand
meters stare, I'm kind of basically like untouchable or yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Guys that take on that like disgruntled veteran PERSONA yeah,
it's like come on, man, no, I agree. And I
talked about this again earlier in another podcast episode. I
was responding to a Reddit comment someone had. Someone mentioned
on Reddit on one of the subreddits about how do

(28:59):
you respond when someone asks about your service or something
like that, and so many people were like, I don't
talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.
They don't need to hear about it. And I'm like, yeah,
I kind of get that. But at the same time,
veterans will complain a lot about how civilians don't understand
them and that they're not getting the treatment they should

(29:20):
get or they shouldn't get that, you know, there's not
things being highlighted that need to be highlighted. But at
the same time, they don't want to tell anybody what
their experiences were, Like you know what I'm saying, It's like,
how can you expect them to relate to you if
you won't even tell them what you did? You know,
And I'm not saying you need to go into the
inner depths of every thing you've ever done or experienced

(29:42):
or anything like that, but I personally think we owe
it to the sons and daughters of Americans that are
sending their kids in the military to explain to them
what really happens while you're in the military. I think
we owe it to American taxpayers for them to know
what is their tax money is being spent on. I'm

(30:03):
not saying that we should I'm not that that isn't
me saying that there's something wrong with how we're spending it,
but they should know this is what missions actually look like,
this is what guys are actually going and doing, and
we're so because of no draft and stuff like that,
we're so out of touch. Like the American populace as
a whole is so out of touch. I mean, I

(30:24):
remember when those Green Berets were killed in Africa and
people were like, we're in Africa, and I'm like, yeah,
there's like I mean, I know, they don't advertise it
themselves obviously, but at the same time, it's not like
it was a huge national secret, and it's like there's
just stuff like that happening all over the world that
people don't even realize, and I think they deserve to know,

(30:47):
you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
I do I do know you're saying, I agree with
you justin I The way I look at it is
that as veterans, we represent seven percent of the US population.
And so if you're going to tell me that the
only people that you're going to canne is a very
small subset of the US population when as a veteran
after you get out, then I'm going to tell you
that you are loading the box for failure. That's what

(31:11):
you're doing. You're setting yourself up for a very big failure.
Because the way that I think about it is that
if I only talk to the guys that I served
with what they live all over the United States of America.
We're all distributed, right, we all end up coming together,
and then we all end up kind of going our
separate ways. If I only talk to those guys, if

(31:32):
they're the only ones who can relate to me, what
about the first community that's closest to me, that is
desperately trying to relate to me, including my wife, my children,
my family, my mom, my brother, my sister. If I
don't ever give people the chance, then I'm just setting
myself up for failure through that isolation, and nothing good

(31:52):
is born of isolation nothing. And that's why, you know,
after I've spent time in healthcare. So the co author
of our of our book Perseverance is Greater than Endurance,
Blaine Smith. He and I are business partners. He was
the executive director of a nonprofit called Team Red, White,
and Blue. Team RWV was the first employee, and he
conned me into joining him. He caught me. He just

(32:14):
called me up and was like, hey man, what do
you think about, you know, leaving that nice corporate job
you got, taking a sixty percent pay cut and helping
us raise money for veterans. And that's that's a big
thing of what we did is we helped one hundred
and fifty thousand veterans reconnect to over two hundred cities
across the United States by by kindling this this using

(32:35):
physical and social activity to connect people. So it's you know, cultural,
culturally authentic experience. What do we do in the military.
We do pt together, We go for runs, we go
for hikes, we do yoga whatever, right, you know, get
together over a cup of coffee, have a meal, all
that kind of stuff together. And we were we were
inclusive of our civilian counterparts by design because we would

(32:58):
tell people all the time, how are you going to
reintegrate into your community if you only talk to people
who once wore a uniform? And so what would happen
is is like we get people out there doing things together, right,
you know, say we're out on a hike together and
halfway through the hike, you see these two chopping it
up the whole time, and you know, the veteran says, oh, hey,

(33:18):
by the way, you know, when did you serve? And
the other person says like, oh, I actually never served
in the military. And it's like like their brain just
like explodes, Like wait a minute, you mean to tell
me that I could just I just had a meaningful
connection with somebody who never served in the military. Well
hold on a second, now, you're like, yeah, brother, Like

(33:38):
that's humanity, man, Like, far more connects you than divides you.
Just give them a chance. I'm not saying to like
go out there and just start puking your story all
over the place. In fact, please don't, because that's more
than anything at defense mechanism, showing everybody that you're trying
to push them away. But I am. Yeah, yeah, Like,
just give give people a chance, you know, start small

(33:59):
start with your family, start with your friends from high
school or whatever. Just give people a chance, because you're
giving yourself a chance.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah. It's weird for sure, and it's hard for people
on the outside to understand. But it's like some of
these guys, you know, you live with them, you work
with them, you go to the gym with them, you
eat with them for years, you know, and it's literally
like living with a brother or brothers, you know, and
sometimes sisters. And it's hard to replicate that bond. And

(34:28):
I think that's why a lot of guys have issues
when they get out. They're looking for something that was
like that, you know, that bond without all the bullshit
of the military. Yeah, and that's why I'm always like,
you got to get into something. You got to find
a hobby that you're really into and just kind of
dive into it. And really, you know, that's what you're
looking for, you know, that's what you need, is like
something outside of your I mean, it can be a job,

(34:50):
I guess if you're starting a business or something like that,
but you know, maybe outside of that, you should have
something where it's just a cool hobby that you know,
try to find like minded people in that sector of
the world.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
So yeah, yeah, get engaged in some way. I totally
agree with you.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, man, So again, like I said, people should definitely
share their stories, do that and let people know because
it's important. And in the spirit of that, we'll get
back to when you're at Rangers. Can you kind of explain,
can you Ranger Regiment has a lot of different breakouts
of like you have like Ranger reconnaissance. There's like, there's

(35:27):
different platoons, there's different jobs. Can you kind of give
us an overview of Ranger Regiment as a whole, what
different There's different jobs that they do, who does those jobs?
And then let's talk about your first deployment and how
that went. Sure.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yeah, So the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment is the US
military's premier direct action raid force. We do certain subspecialties
like airfield seizures for example, and other direct action raids.
And essentially, what you have as a Ranger regiment is
a fully self sustaining strike force or unit that can
go and deploy and conduct these kind of missions. And

(36:02):
so everybody who is in the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment
has passed Ranger Assessment selection from cooks, to mechanics, to
personnel clerks all the way down to door kickers the
line and then it breaks out into different subspecialties. But
at its core, what the Ranger Regiment is broken down
into is four battalions. So you have first, second, and

(36:25):
third range of battalion. First battalion is it Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia.
Second range of battalion is at Joint Base Lewis McCord
and that's where I went and grew up in. Third
range of battalion is at Fort Benning, Georgia. And then
the fourth battalion is the Ranger Special Troops Battalion. Actually
I think it's now called the ARMB Ranger Military Intelligence Battalion,

(36:46):
and that has its own sub specialty. Within all of that,
you have other breakouts. You mentioned reconnaissance, so there's a
Ranger Reconnaissance Company. This is the premier reconnaissance surveillance organization
in Jaysock. They're doing incredible stuff and have grown so
much over the last twenty five years. But at its base,

(37:06):
it's really the first, second, and third battalions that are
out there conducting those direct action missions. And so when
you take a battalion break that down into essentially four companies,
and you have those companies Alpha Company, Bravo Charlie, there's
a headquarters company. It has fluctuated over the years. At

(37:26):
times there has been a Delta company and an Echo company.
My information is a little bit dated in this regard
because it has fluctuated. But what those companies. If you
just take a basic company, like when I deployed combat
Charlie Company, second range of Battalion, I was in first platoon,
which is the Mad Slashers. That's a forty man element, right,
and you have four of those within a company that

(37:50):
go out and can conduct raids. They can conduct you know, ambushes.
Then they can do a whole lot of different things.
But at its you have these kind of two worlds,
especially back in my time brock in mind day, you know,
we had our feet in two worlds. You had elite
light infantry and then Special Operations Force. And as the

(38:12):
war progressed, we tilted deeper and deeper and deeper into
the Special Operations side of the world of our existence
as opposed to the infantry kind of stuff. And so,
you know, kind of letting my story kind of unfold here.
So I was a staff sergeant by the time September

(38:33):
eleventh came around, So I was a squad leader of
a nine man ranger assault squad, and I also happened
to be engaged to be married, and I was supposed
to be married in December of two thousand and one.
Kelly's mother had cancer. She went home on hospice care
on September twelfth, two thousand and one. She had a

(38:55):
day of clarity five days later. We got married on
September seventeenth. She died two days later. I deployed about
a week after that over to Jordan, and so it
was a pre planned deployment. We would go over and
support the training of Jordanian rangers. But once the towers fell,

(39:15):
everything was on the table. It was it was. It
was on like Donkey Kong, and we were the closest
to the fight. We had the Joint Special Operations Package
there with us. We were doing training jumps with you know,
which may or may not have turned into what the
air mission validation was for Objective Rhino. Because when you're

(39:36):
out there and you're doing airborne operations and training, you
never jump with live rounds. And we're out there on
the outskirts of amm Jordan, jumping with live rounds, doing
these kind of training missions like Okay, we think it's
about to go down, and it did go down, but
it was Third Ranger Battalion, October nineteenth, Objective Ryan. Oh, yeah,
that's exactly how we felt. We were just like sons

(39:57):
of bitches, you know. Yeah, I got the rug pulled
out from under us man. We were pissed, and so
we go home. And then a couple months later we
got our first taste of it. So I deployed to Afghanistan.
Then in April of two thousand and two, I should

(40:18):
mention after the Objective Rhino mission, I'm still over in
a mom Jordan. I get to call home for the
first time. I finally get a hold of my wife.
It's been about a month, and she says I'm pregnant.
I said, of course, you're pregnant. Of course, nine months later,
when I'm over in Afghanistan, I'm listening to my son
being born from a satellite phone while they're in Seattle

(40:39):
and I'm in Bogram, Afghanistan. And so that was the
beginning of my war experience, which it kind of you
blow that out, and I was around for about three
of the first thirty six months of our marriage, and
it was just a really really difficult way to start
to start a family.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, definitely. I mean you had a lot of things
happening all at one time.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
There.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
That's I mean, that's reality though. That's a lot of pressure,
you know. And the hard part about the military, especially
when you're talking about it, you know, like the Rangers
or something like that, is that when a mission comes up,
you want to go, and it's like you've been doing
all this training and everything's going on, and deep down
you know it's not what's best for your family, but

(41:26):
you know that it is what's best for your desire
to do this one and probably good for your career.
I mean, I don't think a lot of guys think
about it like that. But you don't want to be
the guy that didn't get to deploy.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
And that's that's the These are the tough thing. So now,
mind you, I got married, I was twenty two years old.
I became a father at twenty three years old. And
to your point, yeah, to your point, justin like I'm
looking at it, I'm saying, when we knew we got
the hall to deploy, my platoon sergeant met me in

(42:05):
the hallway and he said, I know that I know
Kelly's pregnant. We need you. Wasn't even a second I said,
I'm going, Oh, I'm going yeah, yeah, Like I was
gonna be damned if I wasn't going to lead my
rangers in combat. That's all I ever wanted. And the

(42:25):
truth is is, like I thought that's what my story
was going to be, that I was gonna go I
was gonna go out and hail a gunfire. That's just
the way I always saw my story going. You know,
I was raised in a in a pretty chaotic home.
My dad when he was around, was a really sick guy,
and it created just a really toxic environment. He took

(42:46):
off on us when I was eleven, and you know,
all of that kind of exacerbating. You become a kid
who's just trying to figure it out. You look around
you and you have all these other families that seem
like everybody's happy and perfect, and you're You're one of
the kids that was left behind by your dad. And
I was like, okay, great, I know what I'm good for.
You know, like I'm gonna I'm gonna go I can

(43:06):
go protect their ability to have a safe and loving environment.
I'm angry. Anyways, I've always been overly aggressive. Anyways, I've
always been the kid who was getting into fights, you know,
almost getting expelled from elementary school, all of these different
kinds of things. And I'm like, yeah, no problem, Like
I'll get into it. So confronted with this decision, right

(43:31):
which whether it was a decision or not is really
quite irrelevant frankly, because I had already in my heart
and in my mind made that determination. And so what
did I do is I said, Hell, yeah, I'm going
to kidding me like, I'm gonna go freaking you know,
I'm going to go get after it, like this is
what I have been training for, this is what my
whole life has been aiming for. And then what did

(43:51):
I do? I went home and you know, Kelly wringing
her hands, like, you know, did you talk to them,
like are they going to be able? What's going to happen?
I'm just like, sorry, babe, duty nothing I can do
about it.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, I mean, and there is an element that, for
sure where the military owns you, Like if hey, if
I tell you to be here at this day and
this time you're going to be there like you have to.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
There's no that's right.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
But I will say they are sometimes not always understanding
like what you're talking about when they know there's a
lot of the life things happening, and it's they really
need to ask, because if your mind isn't there, if
you're not ready for that, if you're focused on all
these because you had all kinds of stuff going on,
if you have all this other stuff going on, are

(44:35):
you ready to do this? Can we? You know, it's
like can we? You're not going to become a liability
at some point?

Speaker 1 (44:42):
You know, like, yeah, is your head in the game?
You know, sure, head going to be at home with
your new wife who just lost her mother and who
is pregnant, and whose father is off the reservation because
he just lost his wife of thirty years? Where's your
head at you know in all of this? And so yes,
I think he asked, and I think he mostly asked

(45:03):
out of courtesy with already knowing what the destination was
going to be. But I had already known the destination.
And I think that you know, justin both things are
true here, right, Like I I did have a responsibility
to my Rangers. I did have a responsibility to my unit.
I also had a responsibility to my new wife. I

(45:28):
also had a responsibility to this child that, you know,
we were bringing into the world. And you know, like
it was, it was, it was difficult. I don't know,
I don't know any other way to say it other
than my my head was already down that rabbit hole

(45:50):
of like I got to do this, like I got
to go lead people in combat, and I didn't have,
I think, the moral courage at the time to go
home and be honest with my wife, and so I
lied to her, and I that was a lie that
stayed buried for seventeen years. Brother, seventeen years, I maintained

(46:10):
that lie. Nope, it wasn't my choice. It wasn't my choice.
It wasn't my choice. And meanwhile, you know, being a
kid whose dad took off on him, last thing I
wanted to be as a dad was absence the first
thing I was, and I chose it. And so now
you know, we talk about like the conundrum that occurs here.
You know, this is where quite a bit of the

(46:32):
work that I had done when I was in Denver
Seminary getting a Master's of divinity and leadership was thinking
through these ideas of moral injury. You know, there's a
certain wound upon the soul when you, as a human
being make decisions that are not fully in keeping with
your moral compass, so to speak, or where there are

(46:53):
not clear black and white answers, because most of the
world is quite gray, and you don't know if you
can trust the way that you make those decisions in
the world. And so I think that much more is
becoming known about moral injury, and I think we're doing
a fairly good job at talking about that a little
bit more because it is uniquely different from PTSD. But

(47:15):
all to say, you go back to that, that's what
my first deployment looked like.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, that's crazy, that's a lot going on. I will say,
I remember a lot in the Marine Corps. They spoke,
especially before deployments, you know, the old mantra, you know,
keep your honor clean kind of deal, and it was like,
you don't want to go out there and accidentally blow
up a house I had a family in it, or

(47:39):
you don't want to accidentally go out there and kill
a kid. You know, like this thought that I think
regular people have that you're just like these bloodlust killers
out there just killing everything is definitely not true. And
most of it is because, like we're all humans, and
I mean, there are psychos in the military, just like
there are in every other industry in the world. But

(48:00):
most of us have feelings and morals and would feel, like,
would feel absolutely horrible if something we did, you know,
caused harm to like a kid or an innocent civilian
that was, you know, not doing anything. At the same time,
feel nothing when you cause harm to a guy that's

(48:21):
legitimate a bad guy, you know. I remember we smoked
a dude with a high Mars rocket that was emplacing
an ied and they told us afterwards, They're like, yeah,
that was the guy from we found out through forensics,
that's the guy who emplaced the ied that hit Lieutenant
so and so who had to get meta backed out
of country. And I'm like, fuck that dude, you know,

(48:43):
like I had zero qualms about that.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
You know, I think I appreciate you you bringing this
into into these kind of discussions because I think far
fewer conversations on this are being had than they need
to be. I think we need to be actually talking
about this a little bit more on it. And go
back to where we started here with just connecting with

(49:09):
our fellow Americans who never served. Is it's like people
want to hear the you know, high intensity quote unquote
war story. But I think what they need to hear
is they need to hear about all the times that
we didn't pull the trigger. They need to hear about
all those difficult decisions that were being made in split

(49:31):
second moments. They need to hear about, you know, those
that long vehicle convoy, sorry, that long convoy that we
were on from Asadabad to Gardez moving a bunch of
gun trucks where you know, middle of the night, we
come rolling into a town and all you see is

(49:53):
a figure running out of a little building with an
AK forty seven running up and you know, one of
the guys has got it, you know, beaten in on
that person. And they need to hear that it actually
was just a child running out forward here. Take this
AK forty seven, like I don't, we're not enemy. And

(50:14):
the restraint that our NCOs and that our rangers had
instead of pulling the trigger on a thing like that,
that's the real story. Those are the far more common
stories that I think people need to hear and that
we need to be sharing because I totally agree with you, man, like, yeah,
maybe there's a couple of psychos out there whatever, but
most of the people are just you know, they're just

(50:36):
normal people that are trying their hardest to do something
good in the world. Serve their country, protect their country,
see others who are being in states of oppression, liberate
them from those states of oppression, and do good things
in the world. And that's you know, when when the
whole debacle are botched withdrawal from Afghanistan happened, I'm sure

(50:59):
that you, just like me, had a ton of conversations
with other veterans where we had to remind ourselves, hey,
the policies we have nothing to do with that. The
decisions that are maybe we have nothing to do with that.
What you had something to do with was you kept
your honor clean. As you said, I love that term.
I had never heard that before. But you kept your
honor clean. You did the right thing. You you know,

(51:22):
you close with and you engaged when you needed to
and you didn't engage when you needed not to. You
can hold your head high knowing that you made a
difference in those scenarios and I think that what doesn't
help is when you get this like you know whatever,
this like crescendo of noise where people just think that, oh, yeah,
you know, you guys were just a bunch of bloodless savages. No,

(51:44):
you don't actually understand the way it went down, And yeah,
you probably don't understand why guys are having such a
hard time guys and gals are having such a hard
time with this withdrawal because there we're all looking at
each other saying, like, what was it all for? What
did I do? What happened?

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, well a couple of things there. One I can't
believe you've never heard that keep your honor clean? We
I think we I think that came up every time
we discussed ro O S the rules of engagement in
the Marines.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Oh yeah, that was not in the Rangers. Ours was,
you know, choose the hard right over the easy wrong.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah, same same. You know. I think part of the
problem that the general public has is one, You're right.
They they see these stories of like big social media influencers,
military influencers, these seals, these guys that have done crazy stuff,
and then they attribute that to everybody like everybody was
in the military, so that stuff may have must have

(52:38):
happened to them. And then I also like battles like Fallujah,
you know, happen and and there's so much footage from
like Fallujah around and they think that's the norm, and
that's not That's definitely not the norm. It's most of
it is boredom. Most of it is just walking around,
you know, like waiting for something to happen, or or

(53:02):
you know, seeing it.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
A dry hole after another compound assault after compound assault
after dry hole, and you're like, what the hell damn it?

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yeah, And then rules of engagement something that's always kind
of for me as being a jaytach and knowing these
stringent rules of engagement I had while I was in Afghanistan,
it's always baffling to me. Like in the media they
make it sound like we're just slinging hell fires all
over the place and bombing, and I'm like, man, you

(53:31):
don't understand the process of getting that approved. Even in
a dynamic situation, I'm sending it up. If I'm on
the ground and I'm radioing something in, I'm sending it
up and then my air officer is reviewing it, and
the fire's chief is reviewing it all the targeting information
and everything to verify everything's good. I was the targeting
chief for third Battalion, six Marines and we've done tons

(53:53):
of missions. Every time there was a target that came up,
I put it into piss off, which is some targeting
software for those that don't know. And I'm confirming the
location of where they're about to strike, and I'm also
confirming that there's nothing on the no strike list. And
there's buildings you'll see little red circles all over the
map of things that can't be blown up, mosque, schools,
stuff like that. They can be if something crazy is happening,

(54:17):
like you taking a fire mosque, but in general, unless
guys are really pinned down and dying, then you're not
gonna touch those. And it just in the media they
make it sound like we're just slinging these things all
over the place, and then depending on their ordinance, I
may not even get approval of it. Someone up higher
may need to because of hey it's too close to
this mosque, or hey it's in this person's area of

(54:40):
operations or whatever. You know. It's like it's just I
just don't think people really understand you know what actually
goes into it. And again, accidents happen. Unfortunately, it's combat.
You know, things are gonna happen that's unintentional and stuff
like that. And there are bad people in the military,
just like you can name a profession that doesn't have

(55:01):
a subset of bad people in it. It's unfortunate. We
try to do a good job of weeding it out.
But you know, obviously that happens. And then there was
one other thing. I was going to say, what were
we talking about? Oh, you you had a good point
I was gonna add on to. But either way, yeah,

(55:22):
I think all that's important. I think the general public
needs to know that stuff and that it's good that
people talk about it.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Was it about the post withdrawal from Afghanistan Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
I was less affected by that than a lot of
people because I was an Afghan advisor in twenty thirteen
and Sanging and we were the last advisor team, and
that was a pretty contentious area. I mean, a lot
of people know about Sanging, Fifth Marine, seventh Marines, the Brits.
You know, a lot of guys were killed and sang in,
a lot of guys were made by ads and stuff.

(55:54):
Like that, and we were there as part of the
Afghan National Army Advisor team going down to the companies
and doing missions with them and stuff like that, and
we were the last ones and we knew, I mean
when we left, we were like, hey, we we were
trying to like turn things over, like we wouldn't do
all their metavacs for them, you know, it had to

(56:15):
be essentially lifelimmeriy site and maybe even then we may
not do the metavac depending on the situation because it's
like we want you to exercise your capabilities because we're leaving.
And it made it a weird deployment. But after we
left and the Afghan Army took out over, I think,
like I want to say, less than a year later,

(56:36):
one of the guys that I was on that advisor
team with sent me a YouTube video or maybe it
was on LiveLeak, I don't remember, but it was the
saying in Bizarre and it was just like a ghost
town with tumbleweeds because Isis had rolled in there and
just taken it over. And it was like so for
me when everything went down at the end, I'm like
I already went through all this because the place we

(56:57):
went and fought and did our thing, you know, with
the app Afghans. And then that also led me to believe,
like when they said, hey, when we pulled out, hey,
we think they're going to last four to six weeks,
and I'm like, yeah, no, way, four to six days.
You know, like anybody that's worked with the Afghans new
and it's not necessarily their fault. Undermanned, under armed, a

(57:20):
lot of corruption, you know, a lot of things went
into that. But yeah, so I was actually expected.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, I think that I had done quite a bit
of you know, healing if you want to call it that,
and still you know healing journey I perceive will last
for the rest of my days, and that is just fine. Yeah,
And I think that I think there was a lot

(57:49):
of guys that really hadn't engaged in any of the
healing process and it really hit them quite hard. I mean,
within a week of you know, seeing all those images,
you know, people hanging on planes and all that crazy
crap going on, two of my former rangers had died,

(58:12):
one by an alcohol related incident that you know, I
can't say whether or not all I can say alcohol
related incident, and he died. Another guy by suicide, and
you look at that kind of stuff and you're just like,
you know, this is where like we don't need any
we don't need any public Monday morning quarterbacking of anythings.

(58:33):
And you know, frankly, what these guys need right now
is just a little bit of compassion and reminding that like, look,
you know, you're you did the best that you could do,
and you know you you did everything that you could do.
You kept your honor clean, You're a good man. You
know you did you did the best that you could
and it's devastating, but you know, you look at all

(58:54):
the friends that we lost in Afghanistan, and you can
underderstand why. You know, you wake up one day you
see that stuff unfolding on the TV screen. Then you
have all this narrative where it's it's just so like
lopsided and makes you feel like you're a villain. And
if you're isolated and you've lost perspective and you're you know,

(59:17):
on the brink of losing hope, you can understand how
you know, it gets really dark really quick. I'm not
excusing it, but I'm just saying you can understand how
guys go that road and so what we need to
do is just you know, be the best that we
can be. You know, we can't save anybody, like I'm
nobody's savior, You're nobody's savior. But we can love other
people and just take care of them and you know,

(59:37):
be good friends and just try to add some perspective
and remind you know, like hey man, like that's what
happened over there right now, and what's happening you know
by political decision. That's not something that that you know,
we we'd have to talk about. Let's just talk about
how we're connected and we always will be.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Yeah, I've never actually had any conversations like that with
any buddy that I served with. Well, okay, that's not true.
I guess there's like two guys that I'm in like
a group chat with that I'm we're just always kind
of messaging messaging each other. But guys that I served
with that I talked to occasionally, like I'll reach out
or they'll reach out to me. That's almost always just

(01:00:19):
hey man, how you been, And then like maybe a
couple minutes of each of us catching up, and then
we start telling the old stories again and harassing each other,
and I like that none of my friends are like
talking about the politics, you know, because it's so divisive
in the country and everything, and it's just like, yeah,
like you said, let's just talk about you know, the

(01:00:41):
shared misery and things that made us like, you know,
friends and bond forever kind of deal. People got to
reach out. I mean that's the all the other bs
like they want people want more money into the VA
for suicide prevention and things, and I'm like, I don't
know what it's getting us, Like, I don't know. I

(01:01:03):
think people really the biggest thing that could help them
is just their friends from serving together reaching out to
each other occasionally, you know, callin to say what's up,
Tex and say what's up. I think there should obviously,
I think there should be help within the VA. But
I mean I remember being in the military and how
many how many suicide classes are you gonna sit through?

(01:01:24):
And it's like, Okay, man, I got the signs, I
got this, I got the symptoms. I understand, in my opinion,
having Unfortunately, I just had another friend commit suicide a
couple of days ago, Andrew Distranger.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
He was a good dude, good Jay tach Gout, you know,
Ford observer, and I just don't know what you can
do if someone said on that, you know what I'm saying,
other than.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Just the present, Yeah, yeah, I mean sadly, just Easter Sunday,
we had a ranger here in Colorado and our community,
matcith Kart, killed himself and you know, we were just
I just had coffee and breakfast with a couple of
close ranger buddies and we were just literally having this conversation.

(01:02:06):
Justin and I I believe that this isn't the first
ranger buddy that I've lost a suicide. This is now
the third, actually, and when I look at it, I
you know, I think we have to acknowledge that there
is a level of sickness, darkness, you know, evil, There

(01:02:33):
is a depth that we do not understand that some
people are experiencing. And we cannot necessarily transform that or
heal that or solve that. But what we can do
is we can be supportive of our brothers and sisters.
We can reach out to them, you know, we can
include them, we can remind them that they are of

(01:02:56):
infinite worth and all of these things. I think we
can do that, but we also need to hold that
intention with the reality that for some people there is
some very dark stuff going on there that we do
not understand. Yeah, and I think we look for the
signs we know, have the you know, conversation, ask the

(01:03:17):
question are you thinking of suicide? If they say yes, okay,
can I help you get connected to some resources? You know,
when I was at Team Red, White, and Blue, we
did these safe talk trainings that were all over the
United States where we equipped leaders to have that very
simple conversation to get people to the right resources. We

(01:03:38):
can do all that, we should do all that. I
think we should do all that, but I think we
also need to recognize we just don't know what's going
on inside people's heads, sure, and inside their hearts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah. Yeah. I saw a quote the other day it
was like, I hope you're winning the battle you don't
tell anyone about And I was like, oh, that's deep,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
Yeah. Well, And and the other thing about that too,
Justin is like, look, tell the truth. Yeah, for sure,
the truth. You know, like when one of your buddies
ask you, hey, man, how you doing, how you doing? Really? Yeah,
tell the truth like I'm not okay, I'm not good, Okay,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
It's hard to do that though.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
You know, it's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
For guys to guys and girls or a lot of
people to open up because in the military, you're not
wanting to show any signs of weakness, right and because
that's how you I don't know, it's just like a
perception that you put off. There's no signs of weakness here.
I'm ready to do my job. I'm ready to go

(01:04:46):
to the next level if you're ready for to have me,
you know, for people that are really like into their
job and want to keep moving up. You know, especially
in the special Operations community, I'm sure there's schools that
you're dying to get to. There's training that you want
to get on. What if you show these perceived signs
of weakness, you may be afraid that they're not going
to send you. Oh he's got this thing going on,

(01:05:07):
so we're gonna send him here while his team goes
and does this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
You know, that's one hundred percent right. Justin in the
Special Operations community, it is a zero defect environment where
you are expected to be indomitable. That is the culture.
And the thing about it is when you leave that culture,
and most of us leave by our own choice, some
people don't leave by choice. But either way, when you

(01:05:31):
get off that train, there has to be an acknowledgment,
or I would encourage an acknowledgment that you don't have
to be that guy anymore. You don't have to self preserve,
you don't have to manage your reputation in that regard.
And I think that what happens is that people continue
to manage their reputation and they don't actually tell the
real story, and they don't actually share what's really going

(01:05:53):
on inside their heart. And meanwhile they're out there drinking
their face off, drinking their life away alone in their
apartment because they just lost their family, they got a divorce,
all all the things that we've seen happen over and
over and over again in our community. And you're like, brother,
I get it, Like, but you know, you don't have
to act like a ranger in your twenties anymore. We're

(01:06:16):
in our forties, man, Like, let's let's can can we
go back? And I think you know, you talk about
this like in terms of whether you want to look
at it in terms of frameworks of like the hero's
journey or whatever. Is like you know a lot of
us have gotten out and we can go back to
our community and connect with these guys and talk to
them and say, hey, like, it just doesn't have to

(01:06:37):
be that way. And you know, one of the organizations
that I'm involved with, I serve on the board of
directors of the Gallant Few, and we do the Ranger
for Life program. And this is so amazing. I wish
I had had this when I got out, because so
twelve months prior to guys separating, guys and gals separating,
they go in there and they connect one on one
with all these people and say, Okay, let's start thinking

(01:07:01):
about what your plan is going to be in twelve
months before you get out, because I want to make
sure that you understand there's a whole community of rangers
out here waiting to support you. There's a whole community
people rooting for you. We have programs, we have services,
we have all the things. Let's get you connected and
let's actually get you moving forward in your life because

(01:07:23):
what I think happens, unfortunately, is too many of us
get stuck in a brain space that we were in
from maybe eighteen to twenty two or twenty four in
that I have to be indomitable, I have to be
zero defect and then we get out of the military
for whatever reason, we get out. Most of the time,
people get out because it's a choice, you know, you

(01:07:45):
said earlier, and I think you're about right, Like people
don't want to give with the bullshit anymore. But we're
so overidentified with that lifestyle, like like I have to
be Ranger. Everything is Ranger this and that. You know,
it's tattooed on my back. I wear stuff that says
Ranger all the time. And you just keep putting the
walls up, but you don't actually tell the truth when

(01:08:08):
your buddy calls you and says, hey, man, like I'm
kind of worried about you, Like you doing okay, you
can't help. But notice last time we hung out that
you just kind of just kept drinking. Like if you're
not okay, say you're not okay. If you can't do
it with your ranger buddy, for God's sake, who can
you do it with?

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
Yeah, no, I understand. I mean, but again, we're you're
talking about a group of people that not easily going
to divulge any weaknesses, you know, no matter how far away.
And there's some people that are just never going to talk,
and that's unfortunate because you know some things, you got

(01:08:44):
a voice. I mean, I think I tell this is
something else I always give advice to him, Like, even
if you don't want to talk to someone, write it down,
like journal it, you know, because that's so important to
just like get some stuff out. Just like getting it
out is probably like, ugh, you know, there's probably stuff
that people are holding on too. It's like, even if
you don't want to come on a podcast or you

(01:09:06):
don't want to like tell the stories to other people
or something like that, write it down. You know. Not
only is it like a mechanism to kind of maybe
deal with it or whatever or just kind of revisit it,
maybe rethink about it, but if you write it down,
you know, maybe someone in your family and think about
a hundred years from now someone finding that these handwritten stories.

(01:09:28):
You know, I believe I think I remember you kept
a journal, correct, I did, exactly. I mean, how valuable
is that to your family to know, especially because you
were in some of the first waves after nine to
eleven going in and doing these things. So I mean,
can you tell us about tell us about when you
started that journal, why you started it, and then maybe

(01:09:50):
some of the like key moments you think are in
that that you want to divulge obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Yeah, for sure. I so I have a always I've
always been a writer in some context. I've always I
think that I didn't realize how much I needed that
Catharsis to get it out because I'm constantly processing. It
never stops up here. And so what what I didn't

(01:10:18):
realize back then, but I'm glad that I did it,
is that it actually helped me. It It actually helped
kind of me manage, you know, my energy, for lack
of a better term. And so I had it from
my very first deployment as I just I felt like
it would be valuable for me just to reflect on

(01:10:39):
what I was seeing and what was going on. And
so I always carried a little notebook in my left
sleeve pocket, in a little plastic bag that says, in
case of death, give to my wife. And I wanted
to write down what I was thinking things about, like
you know, wishing that I was at home missing my wife.

(01:11:02):
And I did not realize how powerful that actually would be.
A couple months ago, my kids and I were sitting
I have adult kids now. My son is twenty two,
my daughter's twenty and my daughter Ellie, she said, you know,
read one of those things out, like pull it out

(01:11:23):
and read it. And I was just like okay, I'm
like yeah, sure, and you know, it sits up on
this shelf right behind me, and I pulled it out
and I just read two pages and it was actually
from Jordan and it had said something to the effect
of I just found out that I'm going to be

(01:11:43):
a father and I'm not there. I feel like the
lowest of low right now. I feel like dirt. But
oh my gosh, I'm going to be We're going to
have a baby together. And I look over at my daughter,
I mean, brother, I had read like this much from

(01:12:03):
a little spiral notebook and she's just crying.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
She was like, oh my gosh, that is so sweet.
And it was just like a gift that I just
had no idea. I just kind of did it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Just passing thoughts, you know at the time, are just
like passing thoughts become like a thing like that. Yeah. No,
I encourage people to do that. I started one when
I started my first deployment, and then I just didn't
keep up with it. And I really regret it. You know,
I think I got on that first apployment. I just
got so frustrated with stuff that I just kind of
like when internal which I kept writing stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Down really well, that's and that's exactly the same thing.
As I started writing stuff, I started writing about how
pissed off I was. You know, I would I would
write things like what the fuck are we doing here?
You know, I would, I I.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Would this is when you're in Jordan.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
No, this is in Afghanistan now. So I carried it.
I carried it with me Jordan, every deployment I did overseas,
I had it with me. And so I ended up
doing four rotations to Afghanistan, and you know, going back
to you know, those early war periods. On my second rotation,

(01:13:19):
so we deployed day after Christmas two thousand and two.
And the way the Jaysok rotations would go is that
you would do about three months and then you would
you would come back about one hundred days is actually
what it was. You know, So faster rotation cycle, shorter rotations,
higher operational tempo was kind of the conceptual model of it.

(01:13:41):
And so we're out there, it's March of two thousand
and three, we're supposed to be getting relieved by a
third Ranger battalion. However, war kicks off in Iraq and
so we get extended and one of my three month
deployment ended up being a six month deployment, nice to
Afghan stand. So we're just getting extended over and over

(01:14:03):
and over again. Meanwhile, all the spouse is back home.
They're like, oh, your husbands are coming home. No they're not.
They're coming home next month. No they're not. They're coming
home next month. No they're not. You know, we had
like the Ranger Regiment commander comes out finally after the
initial surge is done over in Iraq and they're like, boys,
you know, we're getting you home, so we can call
ourselves the Lost Company, Charlie Company two seven to five

(01:14:27):
plus one platoon from Alpha Company, the Earth Pigs third platoon,
Alpha Company. They were with us, and we were like
the Lost Company, right, and we get the call like
you're going home, blah blah blah. And then you know
he's out there with us in Assadabad, which is you know,
out in the Knar province, and we're we had been
out there for ten weeks, just kind of sucking it,

(01:14:49):
you know, eating eating rockets and RPGs and mortars four
or five times a week, you know, just a total
like fish bowl of a shitty firebase and comes out
tells us we're going home. And then that night after
he kind of broke broke the boys and we all
went back down to our you know, hooches and whatnot.
He had gotten a call from Cobble and they said

(01:15:09):
they ain't going anywhere. You know, we've got some actionable intelligence.
We're keeping them there for another month. And I felt
I felt so bad for the regimental commander, but you know,
nothing but respect, you know, who would go on to
become General Jove Hotel, Nothing but respect for General Hotel
because he faced the music, came back, you know, looked

(01:15:29):
at us and said like, I'm sorry, fellas, but you know,
we're going to stay in place. We're going to do
our jobs, and we're going to take it to you know,
take it to the enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
You're like, oh damn it, here we go. Yeah, because
those are for people that don't know, those are like
legitimate deployments. Like you said, they're shorter, but the tempo
is so much higher. This isn't a regular infantry unit
that's been given an AO and they're not doing foot
patrols and something may occur.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
This is.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
Doing direct action missions, doing infills constantly. You know, like
there's a lot going on on that type of appoyment.
Can you you said that was on your second deployment.
Can you describe your first deployment what that first rotation
was like Afghanistan and then kind of give us how
those Ranger missions may have changed or if they did change,

(01:16:17):
like morph over the years of over your four deployments.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Yeah, as soon as I start stopped choking on my water,
I know when we first went out there, it was
very much it was search and attack, so it was
kind of like bread and butter infantry missions. You know,

(01:16:44):
we were inserted. I remember the first mission that we did.
It was in a place called the Mirkapar Valley and
we get inserted into this location and there was essentially
a backstop that had been created by ODA and a
you know a bunch of Afghan nationals. I don't really

(01:17:04):
know who they were, mind you, like in the Rangers,
you're you're just very kind of like sequestered and if
people of extreme focus, I don't know who they were,
but you know they were they were kind of the backstop,
and our whole thrust was to essentially search an attack,
you know, clear through and push any of you know,
the al Qaeda or Taliban over towards that backstop. And

(01:17:29):
it was you know, like I even have it in
my journal. It was called it was supposed to be
seven days. It was like seven days in the Mirkabar
Valley and it ended up becoming like a joke because
we we we cleared it in like three you know,
we just like kind of pushed through. And this is
when I was telling you we had these musjah Haden
guys with us, and it was like super odd. And
and I'll tell you this, like one situation that happened

(01:17:50):
that was really I think indicative of of some of
these first missions is we get there and I remember
them telling us, like a good indication of whose enemy
and who's not, because we had no clue who the
hell we were going after. Is look for weapons and
volleyball nets outside of their locations, you know, for for

(01:18:15):
like volleyball nets, like the hell we're talking about here
for kidding me, and so weapons, volleyball nets, and then
like you know flags, and that was about all we
had justin. And so we come up on this one,
you know a little compound and everything. Oh and if
there are no women and children out and about, like

(01:18:35):
look for those things. That's what That's all we had
to go off of. So we come up on this
one compound and you know, and and you know, like
point Man's like, you know, like, hey, you know, I
got I got a volleyball net, eyes on volleyball net,
and we're like, okay, I guess that means something. You know,
flags guys walking around with aks were like a game on,

(01:18:58):
you know, like hell yeah, And so you know, we'd
line everybody up in a in an overwatched position and
like meanwhile, the Musja Haden guys are like looking around
like what's you know, what's the situation, and you know,
like are like we're trying to get some kind of
like what do you think about these guys? And they're like,
I don't know. So we're we're sitting there, you know,

(01:19:19):
everyone's got like a line of sight beat up on
all these dudes, and I'm just like, you know, if
I give the signal, you know, hit it right. And
these these Afghans that were rolling with us, they're like,
you know, I don't know. They're just like, well, let
me go talk to them. And so they go like
walk up and talk to these guys and or they're
like three hundred meters away and they're turning around. They

(01:19:41):
give us like the thumbs up, like nope, everything's good here.
I don't know who the hell these guys were. They
could have been, you know, like we just had no idea.
But that's what it was like. It was. It was
one situation after another like that we would set up
in and hide. You'd have specter, you know, we'd be
you know, burning burning buildings just to kind of like

(01:20:01):
light it up to see like what do we have here?
Like while we're watching under nods and just like I
don't know, is that is it something that is an enemy?
Is it not? I don't know. Are there any women around?

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
And when you say burning buildings, you mean lighted.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Up with the IR light it up with IR.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Yeah, So for people that don't may not know, they're like,
holy shit, he's just burning down buildings.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
Yeah no, no, my bad. Yeah, IR. You know, we'd
put them under the IR flood light and it would
be image and it was it was confusing.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
Well, that's that's interesting because later on in the war
it was mostly direct action raids and response to intelligence. Correct,
So this was more of like so, so this is
more of just kind of moving through an area and
see what happens, you know, like a recom by fire
kind of deal or not recom by fire, but.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
No, but I mean search and attacks would be the
technical term, or some people might say movement to contact.
I mean it was. It was a lot of stuff
like that in the That's more than anything what I
remember for my first deployment. Another thing, another fit situation.
In the first deployment, we got so we did that
Mirka par thing. We come back and then it was like, okay,

(01:21:15):
we're going to put you guys out in a place
called Lawara, and Lawara was basically Pakistan, and so we're
out there, like brother. We had all the maps that
we had were Russian maps. It was wild right wayack,
I know, we were out there with Russian maps. We're

(01:21:36):
in like a very small, four walled compound if you
want to call it a compound. It's an ODA team.
So that special Force is a Green Beret team. For
those of you listening, that don't know. We had some
dude from a three letter agency that nobody knew who
the hell he was. We just called him fat Tony
because if you ever if you saw fat Tony, odds

(01:21:58):
are you weren't going to see him again. And that's
what what happened is we would go out, we would
we would try to ball up you know, suspicious kind
of folks, and then bring him back and you bring
him back to fat Tony and you never see him again, right,
And that's what it was like. And you would be
out there on these like hillacious movements trying to figure

(01:22:19):
out okay, well let's go look at what's up on
that ridge line, you know what this is. Or we
would find, you know, like these supply routes or routes
that they would be bringing weapons over the border from Pakistan.
But the whole while, you know, you might be in
a location and you would and you would have you

(01:22:39):
would like you'd be like, you know, hey, ask the people,
where where are we, you know, and they're like, we're
in Pakistan and you're like, okay, but the map, you know,
you're looking at this map and it's like, you know,
we're not in Pakistan, and we're like, well maybe we are.
I don't know. There was a lot of stuff like
that on on our first mission all while, you know,
and then chasing hosts. Is the way that I that

(01:23:01):
I wigh, that I would say it is that you know,
you would you would come back on you maybe go
do like a long patrol. You would come back and
you know, we're coming back in and my alpha team leader,
appoint Man Hoover, Jason Hoover, stops the whole thing and
he's just like, uh, we come walking up and there's
just a string of one oh seven rockets rigged on

(01:23:23):
a time delay firing device, you know, aimed right at
the the firebase that we're occupying out of, and you're
it was bizarre. You know. That was what my first
rotation was like. The second rotation got different.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
When you say you oh, I'm sure, especially as intelligence
maps came out, you know, like some imagery. When you
say you were on a long patrol, do you mean
like multi day you're on multi day operations or you're
talking about just okay, so you're not just you guys
aren't just setting up establishing like a patrol base and
then going out on daily patrols. You're going out and

(01:24:00):
extended operations to surveil, reconnaissance and develop That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
That's right. So like you know, leave out of the
fire base, undercover of darkness, you know, gain altitude, climb these.

Speaker 2 (01:24:13):
You know as legitimate mountain.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Ridgeline, legit mountains, you know, get up there to thousands
of feet, establish a hide site, conduct surveillance and reconnaissance
over you know, the town in the area. See if
you can't identify something, and you know, you're just calling
things up that you can make sense of whatever you

(01:24:35):
can make sense of. Okay, this one's got seems to
have radio antennas. Haven't seen any females or children walking around.
Starting to develop that kind of you know, intelligence, and
that was kind of what the first one was really
about for us.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, that makes sense. Early on
in the war, got to kind of figure out what
the hell's even going on? What's where I talked to
a guy Todd O. Palsky who is a recon marine
and then went over to Delta for a little bit
and then came back to Recon and his whole thing

(01:25:14):
was like you know, at recom Italian they went into
Fallujah to support that push, and he's like, it doesn't
matter what the satellite image shows, you have to send
somebody in to verify is that bridge actually there is
this actually as how old is that imagery? How accurate
is that imagery? You know, and he's like, there's always

(01:25:36):
going to be a need to put someone on the ground.
I don't necessarily agree with that in full before the
where we've gotten in drones, I do, but and the
whole point is that you got to do some good
reconnaissance and understand what the battlefield even is before you
can make smart tactical decisions. You know, if you're using
old Russian maps, I mean, let's hope that those are accurate,

(01:26:00):
and it's hard to do some plotting on a map
like that, doing two point resections off mountains that are
mislabeled and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
So yeah, Fortunately they were MGRS, you know, Military Good
Reference System enabled, and we were like, okay, oh really
at least yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Wow, that's interesting. Wow yeah yeah yeah, what an interesting
time early Afghanistan though, I mean, how did it feel
to be to know You're like, dude, were some of
the first guys to be in country after after this attack.
Like I always ask people that did the invasion of Iraq,
I'm like, did you understand the momentous you know how

(01:26:37):
big this you're in like a world history event. You're
you're working on a world history event here you're part
of it. And I ask how they feel about that.
I feel like you weren't on Okay, you didn't get
to go do Rhino. That's a bummer obviously, but you
were still like that early phase, Like you guys are
some of the first guys going into Afghanistan after we
were directly attacked. I mean, did did you fee did

(01:27:01):
you feel the seriousness of that situation?

Speaker 1 (01:27:04):
Yeah, we all felt it. I mean we felt like
we had the opportunity to take it to the enemy
and we were we were ready, and we were excited
about that. We felt that we felt like we had
the American people with us in spirit and that we
had the opportunity to be truly the tip of the

(01:27:26):
spear and just take it right to the enemy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
Yeah. And I think, I mean, from all accounts from
what I've seen, like the Rangers did a really good job.
Rangers and Special Operations troops did a good job of
like basically annihilating the Taliban, you know, pretty quickly in Afghanistan.
Were you there Deering or before maybe Anaconda, the major

(01:27:51):
operation that everyone talks about is.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
That, Yeah, I was there right after. So that was
so that was first Ranger Battalion's rotation, which then ended up,
you know, unfolding with the Battle of Talker Guar, all
that stuff that unfolds in Anaconda. So that was first
Ranger Battalion that was there. So some of my you know,
dear friends were there. One of my good friends was

(01:28:14):
on that mission. And then so the rotation cycle goes
from there, right so first and then second Ranger Battalion
took the next one. So that's where at the time
it was only companies and then shortly thereafter it started
to become battalions. And so I got there a couple
months after all of that went down.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
Yeah, man, that's so that's like the thing that I
think a lot of people point out about the beginning
of Some people say that we could have ended the
war right then, but that it wasn't. I'm talking out
of my ass right now because I only remember the
operation kind of. I mean, you might be able to
talk more about it, but I think we the Rangers
were pushing through there, right, and then there were some

(01:28:55):
avenues of escape that were left open or something like that.
Is that kind of how it went. I don't really.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
Yeah, I mean I would be out of my depth
to try and speak too deeply into it. But you
mainly have the tenth Mountain Division, so infantry Division that
was over there quite a bit doing a lot of
the kind of stuff. And then you had what at
the time was called AFOs, which were different JAYSOK elements
that were broken down into like these advanced forward observer

(01:29:24):
kind of observation teams that were doing a lot of reconnaissance.
Rangers at the time, we were predominantly in a quick
reaction force capacity, and so that's when when the Battle
of tacker Gar goes down, You've got you've got seals
who unfortunately had a big situation unfold and they called

(01:29:48):
the QRF and that's where you get first Ranger Battalion
elements come into that scene.

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):
Okay, yeah, that's a whole thing. Man. There's so many
famous battles. I need to go back and refresh on
some of them because obviously, coming from the Marine Corps'
focused on a lot of what like the Marines did
down in Hellman and things like that, and that's something
I also remind people. I'm like, hey, before before the
surge happened in Afghanistan, there wasn't like a marine AO

(01:30:18):
like Hellman became a marine AO. There were marines in
different parts of Afghanistan doing different things. And then when
the surge was getting ready to happen, I believe what
happened was there was some negotiating up at the Joint
Chiefs level of who's going to run what parts, and
the marines only wanted to be supported by other marines.
They wanted to be self sufficient because we bring the

(01:30:39):
entire magtaf is what we call it. And that's why
the Marine Corps basically got stuck down in Hellman and
they only focused on that for the rest of the war.
And then the rest of the country was the army
and then special operations were sprinkled in a little bit everywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
Yeah, we were primarily so you know, come my second rotation.
So now this is like I said, end of right
after Christmas, oh two and then into three. I mean,
we were heavily focused in up in the Conar province,
we were running what at the time, you know, the

(01:31:15):
Peshe River Valley road was called Route Blue and that
was ied alley to us because there have been so
many mind strikes prior to and so what we were
doing is, you know, with as best intelligence as we
could get, as best target development that was being done,
we would go, you know, we would either be going

(01:31:38):
to try and do an assault, traveling obviously during the night.
We never traveled during day, these kind of things. You know.
I spent ten weeks in Asadabad, which is you know,
right there at the in the Konar Province, right off
the Conar River where it intersects with the pesh River,

(01:31:59):
and we were just doing constant operations. I sometimes it
felt like we were just trying to stay as active
as possible to keep kind of any enemy people back
or you know, keep them on their heels if we
stayed on our toes. It was just a lot of
those long movements like I described before. You know, there

(01:32:21):
was I seemed to remember, and I knew this was
over twenty years ago, but I seemed to remember there was,
you know, kind of like this resupply line that they
were using. So we would go up and set as ambushes.
We never caught anybody, but you know what we did
is we caught a lot of one o seven rockets

(01:32:42):
and RPGs and mortars coming down on our on our firebase.
I mean, it was like day in and day out,
and it kind of it was what it felt like
was incredibly maddening justin is what it felt like, because

(01:33:06):
we knew the intel that we were getting was that
they were they were instructed the al Qaeda or Taliban
were instructed like do not get into a direct fire
conflict with the Americans. And so it literally was month
after month, mission after mission of chasing ghosts, trying to

(01:33:28):
trying to catch these cats. You know, sometimes we you know,
I seemed to have to recall vaguely. You know, we
did a we hit this compound and then just hauled
out piles and piles of weapons, you know, SAMD bag
these dudes heads, put them on a black chinook and
you know, they never came back. I'm sure stuff like
that was was really the kind of standard.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
That's awesome though. I Mean, if you're going to take
guys out those that's it's always nice when at the
end of the day you can go yeah, that was
a legitimate like that was a legitimate bad guy, you know, like, yeah,
people don't see that. People don't hear about that, you know,
especially as the war went on, it kind of became
backpage news, like eh, and really you only heard a

(01:34:11):
lot of times. You only heard about anything in the
war something bad happened, either a bunch of people had
been killed or someone did something wrong. And other than that,
the actual missions like what you're talking about just kinda
kind of went under the radar, kind of went under reported.
And I don't know, you know, I mean, what are
you gonna do about that? That's that's legitimate though, I mean,

(01:34:33):
that's that's a good mission.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's uh.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
There's worse missions to have in Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 (01:34:41):
I think so. And I think that that I appreciate.
I appreciate that. I mean that that's the right perspective
when you're in it, though, and you're a ranger and
all you know is close with and destroy, close with
and destroy, close with and destroy, and then you're like,
what the hell, like we're we're nobody wants to fight
us today.

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

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
Yeah, it's like so frustrating at the beginning, but and they're.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Like mcguiver with their with their like rockets and with
Righty's so many ways to launch them.

Speaker 1 (01:35:13):
Oh my god. You know, we'd just be sucking rockets
all the time. And then finally, you know, you get
to the point like I remember, we you know, like
I said, we've been an a bad for so long.
You know whatever, you know, if you one o'clock in
the morning or something and you go baboom, you hear it,
and then like you know, at first, you're like, you know,
you know, everybody's like moving out and like doing the stuff,

(01:35:34):
and you know, every this and that, and then you know,
after a couple of weeks or something of that, it's
baboom and you like open your eye and you're like
incoming or outgoing. I think that was outgoing, all right,
you know, go back to sleep, right, I mean, that's
just like the way it goes.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
That's reality in that kind of world. Yeah, I even
even as so, when I first joined, I was a mechanic.
I came in open contract. It made me mechanic, and
I was miserable because I wanted the infantry. But anyways,
my first deployment I did was to Iraq as a
mechanic and I was on base all the time, and
when we first got there, we were at chow and

(01:36:12):
we just heard boom, and I'm like, what the We
all kind of like look at each other, like what
the hell. And then this like contractor that was there
kind of laughed and was like, a that's for IOD
setting stuff off. He's like, you only have to be
worried if they do more, if it's more than one explosion.
Then a second later, boom, another one went off, and
I'm like, waitter.

Speaker 1 (01:36:31):
We get.

Speaker 2 (01:36:33):
Found out that it was EOD setting stuff off, But
then that happened semi regularly because we were on a
bigger base and they would bring shit back there to
blow in place or you know, to detonate, and when
we were getting mortared, we never knew you'd hear an explosion.
Was like, was that EO D or we'll find out later.

(01:36:57):
I mean, it didn't hit us, so whatever it was
didn't hit us. So it just becomes part of life,
you know, it does.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
And you know I told you that first mission that
we went into it was actually I look back on
it and I kind of chuckle a little bit because
we come in and you know, we get off the
M forty seven's and everything like that, and then you
start hearing this crack crack, crack crack, you know this

(01:37:23):
and that, and I remember looking over at my platoons
aren't chat and he and I looked at each other.
I'm like, are we taking fire? It's like, I think
we're taking fire. And then it's just like, all of
a sudden, you know, you just get down, like you
just don't. Like the first times those things start to happen,
it's almost like this abstract occurrence like, oh goodness, gracious,

(01:37:46):
we are taking fire. Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:37:47):
Yeah, it's almost like that scene in Black Hawk Down
where that that that gunner on the truck was like, sir,
they're shooting at us, and he's like, well shoot back,
and he's like, you know, like what do you do.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
Exactly? But it's just like what you know, Yeah, it's
it's wild when it happens, and so.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
It really, you know, reality starts to set it. How
long did you guys take any casualties on your first apployment.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
No, we didn't take any casualties until our third rotation,
and so we that was so you know, fast forward
and I'll tell you. One more thing that happened on
when we got extended is like we were we were
pretty bummed we got extended. It sucked. It was frustrating,

(01:38:39):
and we were like, you know, like everybody's over in
Iraq just getting after it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
Like come on, man, it's funny. You're not talking about
wanting to go home. You're wanting to get over to
the other war zone.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
Oh dude, come on man.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
That brings exactly what we were talking about earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
We're just like, but then we were watched I was
you know, like you could look, you could go into
the jock and like we were looking at the the
air mission brief and like the you know, the plan
to assault byop. It was like, yeah, we might lose
two or three C seventeens and you're like, wait a minute,
that's like almost an entire ranger battalion, Like what and

(01:39:15):
thank god, the you know, third Infantry Division thunder Run
they just sliced right through and you know, beat that
thing up. Thank god. But so I'm over there in
Afghanistan and this was this was actually unexpected, but we
actually got an airborne operation. We got a jump mission

(01:39:37):
while we were over there, and so objective raptor. So
one platoon from second Ranger Battalion happened to be my platoon.
I happened to get to jump master this jump, which
was a pretty badass and it was right at the
Tribe Order region of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. So we

(01:40:00):
do this thing. We we jump and it was a
you know, an information and observation campaign. We were trying
to spike up some movement. Again, this is another kind
of like almost like a search and attack kind of thing,
like let's see if we can't you know, stir some
stuff up. So we go in at dusk and you know,

(01:40:22):
so that we could be seen, so that we could
spike movement. We jump onto a dried out lake bed.
Do what we do, you know, jump, you clear, expand
the air headline, all that kind of stuff. Establish a
an airfield. So the combat controllers establish a literally an
airfield and this dried out lake bed, we call in

(01:40:45):
some one thirties one thirties come in. We extracted a
you know, AFO team and inserted another AFO team. All
this stuff kind of happens and like all the while,
like you don't really know if what is this leading
to like, what is what is this creating? All I
know is that, you know, pretty cool. I got to
actually do this in real life.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
Yeah, combat u.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07):
Yeah, got to actually do it in real life. And
I mean, you know, I make no bones about it,
Like you know, there's not like, you know, nobody was
shooting at us. There was no like bullets ripping through
the fuselage. I would say, like the most exciting thing
that happened is that the Iranian Ada was painting our birds.
So we've got like these talons doing evasive maneuvers and
all this kind of stuff and which was wild. We

(01:41:28):
do the jump, We do all that, and you don't
really know what's going on because then you get extracted
and all this kind of stuff. And then turns out,
you know, a couple of days after that jump, we
snatched up Khalaide shik Muhammad over the border in Pakistan,
and you're like, maybe that had something.

Speaker 2 (01:41:47):
To do with it, maybe communications.

Speaker 1 (01:41:50):
Maybe we spiked some movement, you know, and yeah, you
just you don't really fully know. But all you know
is that you know you're you do the job that
you're given to do, and you do it to the
best of your ability, and you know you hope to,
you know, take some bad guys off the board.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
And so with that, do you get to put a
star in your jump wings for that?

Speaker 1 (01:42:14):
Yeah? That's badass, right, pretty bad ass.

Speaker 2 (01:42:18):
I mean when you're talking about jumpers, right, and when
you're looking around and you see a dude that's got
a star in his jump wings, that's like, oh shit,
Like where's that guy been?

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
Yeah? One platoon, so the only platoon from second Ranger Battalion.
And you know, it's it's not a very widely known
factor story because most of the jumps from the Ranger
Regiment were done. I think Third Range of Battalion hit
a couple of airfields. They of course did Rhino, they
did H one and H three in Iraq.

Speaker 2 (01:42:49):
That's the Hydeitha damn right, that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
One Haditha is another big mission that you know they
that they did.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
I actually had one of the one sixtieth little birdlot's
on and he was the little Bird pilot supporting that
and he was like, yeah, it was fun. It was
a bad situation. He's like, I was the only guy
there for a little bit, Like he was just doing
doing circles, like doing cast closer support for those guys
while they were fighting.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
Yeah, all the while our Regimental command sergeant major was
running around with an SR twenty five just smoking dudes.
But ye haditha dam was no joke. But I was
not there.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
That's another guy story. But you got jump You got
a star on your jump wing, so you know what freak.

Speaker 1 (01:43:33):
I mean, Yeah, you do it. You know, you do
the job that you can do.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
Right, you know, you gotta get more flair, and we
know how the army loves flair on their uniforms.

Speaker 1 (01:43:43):
So, oh my god, dude, I spent I spent. I
spent the remaining years.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
Some of my ranger budges is like, are you shitting me?
You got a mustard staying for that. I'm like, hey, man,
I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
That's life.

Speaker 1 (01:43:56):
And they're like, I mean, I'm jealous. The reason I'm
saying is because I'm jealous. Yeah, I don't have a
mustard stand I'm like, no, I know, that's why you're
saying that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:05):
It's like, so in the Marine Corps there's really not
a lot that goes on uniforms, you know, like especially
in your service uniform you're wearing or like your cammis.
Maybe if you're recon you're wearing your jump wings and
dive bubbles. If you're jump qualified, you're wearing jump wings.
If you're a pilot, But that's really it. You're not
really seeing and even on your dressed uniforms, that's really it.

(01:44:26):
You may have jump wings or something like that. It's
all mostly ribbons and metals. And I remember being like
a junior guy. I was like a lance corporal, maybe
a PFC still I don't even remember. And I saw
this staff sergeant that had a combat action ribbon with
two stars on it, and this was in two thousand
and seven. And for those I don't know what that is,

(01:44:47):
the combat action ribbon means that you've gone to un
deployment and then you've also been in combat. There's a
lot of people that went to Afghanistan that basically went
and enjoyed green bean coffee and kind of did their
logistics job and stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. That's
they had a role to play. But if you went
out and you got in combat, actual combats, and you
earn the combat action ribbon and you wear that on

(01:45:08):
your your service and dress uniforms. And I remember seeing
this guy with two stars on it, which means he
had been in three different war zones and seen combat
in two thousand and seven, And I'm like, what who
is this guy? You know? And that's probably kind of
what it's like when you if there's like a new
guy before you got out or something saw you and

(01:45:29):
was like, holy shit, this guy's got a star on
his jump winks like he's did a combat jump. That's
almost unheard.

Speaker 1 (01:45:34):
Of then, right, yeah, I mean, and in addition to that,
like what we have is so we have a combat
Infantryman's badge.

Speaker 2 (01:45:41):
More flair.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
So that's it. Yeah, more flair. We got to have it.
It's that blue rifle with the wreath around it. The
blue rifle is the expert Infantryman's badge, and you test
out for all of that and I have that too.
But you know, the Combat Infantryman's badge is very analogous
to what you just described. So basically it's not just
that you went to a combat zone the Army. When
you go to a combat zone and you are serving

(01:46:04):
in that capacity, you get a combat patch, so you
the unit that you're with goes on your right shoulder
and it can be on your right shoulder for the
rest of your career. It's not the same as you know,
as receiving a combat infantryman's badge or a combat action
badge for non infantry mos is you get that when
you take fire and return fire with the enemy, which

(01:46:25):
I think is essentially what you're discussing in terms of combat.
And so yeah, you know, like I it was it
was pretty cool. I could walk into any room and
everybody knew exactly what that meant. You know, I am,
yeah a bitch.

Speaker 2 (01:46:40):
That's the epitome of That's like one of the things
of like always practicing for the big day and never
getting to do it. Like paratroopers know that more than anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
Probably right, absolutely, man, I mean, I mean, hey man,
my back is destroyed now, but at least I got
us mustard.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
Stain out of it going into an actual So we're
talking real life now, real life jump. It's easy to
look back and go it was no big deal, it
was no no one there. But when you're leading up
to it, this is a serious event. This is no
like Nie, who did the I assume the observers that

(01:47:15):
youre f s os is that what you called them?
AFO AFO the AFOs, Were they the ones that kind
of did the air field or like your landing zone
what do they call that where they like go in
first check the landing zone.

Speaker 1 (01:47:31):
Yeah, so it was actually the Ranger reconnaissance detachment went
in and did that. So they they reconned out the
entire thing. I'm sure they probably did it by halo jump.

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):
That's all I was getting ready to ask, did they
halo in?

Speaker 1 (01:47:46):
I'm sure that they did. You know, they they spotted
out the the dried out lake bed and then you
obviously fed up all the information to put in the
When you're doing a jump, you know, you have a
HARP on the aircraft, the computed assisted release point so
that you know exactly by you know, GPS and all

(01:48:08):
that kind of stuff where you actually turn the green
light on the backdrop. As a jump master, which I
was is that you actually hang out of the door
and you spot the drop zone. You can't technically release
or you're not supposed to technically release you know, anybody
unless you can spot the drop zone. But yeah, all
of that kind of happens. So you have like a

(01:48:28):
reconnaissance element that's out there they're spotting this whole thing.
There was an AFO out there from you know, another
Special MISSIONE unit. They're out there doing their thing. We
know our thing is to you know, jump in establish
an airheadline. We actually had a company of the eighty

(01:48:49):
second Airborne come in after us as well. So again
this is this is all iospace, right, So think about
like Operation Market Garden if you want to get a
comparison where you're trying to like you're trying to get
the enemy to see you.

Speaker 2 (01:49:06):
Yeah, for sure. So the eighty second had guys jump
in as well.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
They had a company jump in. Wow, after we had
expanded the airheadline.

Speaker 2 (01:49:14):
That's definitely some bragging rights outside of you know, they're
not even in so common they can you know, that's
a huge deal for those outside of that community. I mean,
my dad was in the Army, and I grew up
wanting to join the Army and join the Rangers, and
that was dead set all the way into high school.
And then I read Marine Sniper and that that flipped
me over to the Marines. I get it, So I

(01:49:36):
understand all the Army stuff too. It's like I appreciate, like.

Speaker 1 (01:49:40):
I thought I was going to go into the marines.

Speaker 2 (01:49:42):
Did you went into the army but see what happens? Wow? Man.
After reading Marine Sniper, I was like, it's interesting how
things like that can can you know, back in the
day when you joined and not really as much when
I joined it it started to change. But back when
you join, there wasn't a lot of information out there
for military specialties different u. It was like maybe someone
wrote a book and you'd go to your local library

(01:50:04):
and check it out, you know, because there's no Amazon.
You're not ordering this interesting book, you know, so maybe
you'd go to the library and check.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
Out this Soldier of Fortune magazine, you know, like maybe
you could get a copy of that.

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
Yeah. Occasionally Discovery Channel will do some kind of documentary
that's like probably seventy percent correct on some kind of
military training, you know, and it's like, oh, that's what
I want to do. And then obviously you have to,
like a crackhead, continuously watch Full Metal Jacket over and
over and.

Speaker 1 (01:50:34):
Heartbreak Ridge and Heartbreakdge.

Speaker 2 (01:50:37):
Heartbreak Bridge is hilarious as a marine. Heartbreak Ridge is
hilarious because it's obviously they say it's in North Carolina,
but it's obviously a Camp Pendleton and for a lot
of people didn't know that was supposed to be the Army.
It was supposed to be an.

Speaker 1 (01:50:50):
Army second and first Range of Battalion.

Speaker 2 (01:50:52):
Yeah, but there was something with the pr they didn't want. Yeah,
they didn't want the way it was represented. They didn't
want their units to be represented like that in marine
to like flogging.

Speaker 1 (01:51:03):
And that and like knowing that like those were that
was Operation Urgent Fury, you know, the Grenada first and
second Range of Battalion jump in even you know the
scene where Mario van Peebles is calling in fire, you know,
with like a telephone, the.

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):
Telephone that happened. That actually happened, And now the Marines
get credit because it's in a movie.

Speaker 1 (01:51:28):
Ye. Yeah, and you had asked me, and I'll go
back to it. You know. So my the first casualty
that we took in second Range of Battalions. So so
I come back from that, uh second deployment, which ended
up being two rotations in one, but you know whatever,

(01:51:48):
I only call it one rotation. But so I come
back from that, and you know, at this point in time,
I've I've got a baby at home, I've got you know,
we've been married for almost two years. Baby doesn't know
who I am. My son doesn't know who I am. Like,
we're struggling, and I'm holding on by a thread. And
so I said, I've been in the battalion for six years. Now,

(01:52:09):
can I go down to the Ranger Regiment headquarters and
actually be a Ranger in Doctrination program instructor? Like I
got to take a couple of plays off from the
sidelines here because it was clear that this was not
slowing down anytime soon. So I get granted that, and
I'm got the house half packed up, and we share

(01:52:31):
this is the first chapter of the book, Perseverance is
greater than endurance, And we use this as as a
just a way to kind of show what the difference
between the two really is. So, like, I got half
the house packed up, I go to work one morning
in October. I don't come home until December. We get

(01:52:53):
alerted the entire Ranger Regiment gets sent back over to Afghanistan.
We're deep up in the Nurse Stan province where clearing
towns and villages at eleven thousand feet you know, the
valley floors seven thousand feet. We're so high up that
the aircraft and it's so cold because it's the winter.
This is called Winter Strike two thousand and three. We're
so high up, as you know, when the temperature drops

(01:53:17):
and the altitude increases, air lift capability decreases, so they
couldn't resupply us. They had to drop one meal per
man per day at the base of these two valleys.
And as we're continuing to patrol up the Cantigua Valley,
we have to send an element down every day to
recover those meals. I mean, we're down twenty thirty pounds each.
We're sustained operations, got one hundred pound rucksacks the whole

(01:53:40):
nine yards. So we're deep up in this. And we
again happened to be at a pause point in Kantiwa
South where we've got the village strong pointed, we've got
guys in security postures, we have an observation post kicked
out the whole nine yards, and over the Commands satellite radio,
we we learned that Jay Anthony Blessing, Sergeant Jay Anthony Blessing,

(01:54:05):
on November fourteenth, two thousand and three, was killed outside
of Nongolom, Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. So I remember
I told you earlier in our conversation peesh River Valley
Road Route blue, particularly between checkpoints two and three, right
in front of Non Golomb was like the nogo no
goo uh And they got hit right there. And so

(01:54:29):
Jay was a great guy, he was a friend. We
came up together an Alpha Company, second range of Battalion
and yeah, man, you know like it was, it was.
It was pretty devastating, I think for all of us
because up until now, you know, it had all been

(01:54:49):
one whatever, one way. Yeah, and now now they took
you know, one of our brothers away from us, and
it was it was, it was heavy.

Speaker 2 (01:54:58):
Yeah, it becomes more real. It lifts the facade for
some people that are kind of in this daze where
I don't know where this is just not as dangerous.
You don't think it's as dangerous as it is until
someone gets killed and then you're like, wait a minute,
you know, or you know, one story, I'll tell one

(01:55:21):
quick story and then we'll jump off here because I
know we're running out of time. But I remember when
we deployed to Afghanistan with my advisor team, we got
off the bird and I think it was like we
had just got off the bird. And half my team
had deployed before, and then the other half hat't. We're
small team, like eighteen guys or something like that, and

(01:55:41):
I remember I think it was three Blackhawk Metavac choppers
taking off and one of my one of the lieutenants
that was with us that hadn't deployed yet, was like, well,
maybe they're going on a training run or something like that,
and I'm like, dude, training's over. Man, I'm like, that's
something for real, you know that something. And and then
like the next day, I was going over to the

(01:56:03):
airfield to get updated maps because at this point we
started well, I was like one of the first we
started using these tablets that have map data on it,
and the squadron had the most up to date map data,
and me and Mike Corman went over there because we're
gonna meet with the squadron and talk to them and
then go talk to the Metavac guys and introduce him
and you know, just do some It's always good to
like make liaison with these people, yeah, that you're gonna

(01:56:25):
be working with. So we went and did that, and
I remember as we were walking by the main medical
facility on on leather Neck a should nook comes in
and just starts offloading people and I was just like, fuck, man,
you see all these people wrapped up and they had
been hit by a car bomb. And I was just like,
and there's these nurses sitting here crying and stuff or like,

(01:56:48):
you know, like they're we're all kind of seeing the
same thing because we're just happened to be walking by
and you see it and you're like fuck, you know,
and it's that reality. And this is on my way in.
This is I'm getting ready to leave leathern I can
go into singing, which is has its own reputation, and
that really sits in the back of your mind, like
all right, man, like game on, you know, like everything
else has got to go to Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:57:10):
Yeah, I mean that that happened. I had a similar
circumstance happened on my first deployment. One of the one
sixtieth DAPs actually crashed at East River Range East River
Range over in Afghanistan, and it was like wait a minute,

(01:57:31):
you know, like we're we're now we don't crash transporting
bodies onto the C seventeen to send them home, you know,
the full ramp ceremony, you know, Courton lined up everyone saluting.
I happen to be driving one of the one of
the bodies, and you're just like, holy shit, like this

(01:57:53):
is we're playing for keeps here.

Speaker 2 (01:57:56):
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way, man. I
think I really appreciate you coming on. You know, Brandon's
has been great. Uh you want to plug your book
and your socials and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:10):
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So we have a book
out there. It's called Perseverance Is Greater Than Endurance. You
can find it anywhere books are sold. If you want
to go to a website where it has it all
right there, go to www dot perseverancebook dot com. You
can hit me up on Instagram. I'm at Brandon dot
Young one four and our company is at Applied Leadership

(01:58:34):
Partners on Instagram as well. You can find us at
Applied Leadership Partners dot com as well if you like.
And yeah, that's that's where we're at.

Speaker 2 (01:58:44):
And my website's Jkreemergraphics. My Instagram is at Former Action
Guys and at Former Action News. Hit me up there,
and you know, man, I really appreciate you coming on today.

Speaker 1 (01:58:52):
Thanks for having me brother. Appreciate you

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Ep. 231 | Brandon Young | 75th Ranger Regiment

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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. 231 | Brandon Young | 75th Ranger Regiment