July 3, 2025 • 66 mins
Dusty Jones joins us on the show. Dusty Jones is a US Army Special Forces veteran or more commonly known as a Green Beret. “Dusty” graduated the Special Forces Qualification Course at the ripe young age of 20 and was assigned to the “Red Empire” 7th Special Forces Group. He has served in numerous roles while deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout Central and South America. Some of those roles include: Assaulter, Assault Team Leader, Sniper, and Surveillance Team Controller. Dusty has served as liaison and adviser to US Army Generals as well as numerous foreign nation Counter-Parts. Dusty has continued his service since leaving Active Military Service as a lead trainer in firearms, vehicle operations, signature reduction, motivational speaking, corporate leadership and resiliency. Clients include: The US Marshall’s, Elements of DHS, JSOC, overseas missionary groups and Fortune 500 companies. Dusty is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisherman, competitive shooter and entrepreneur.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmmmm, I've got no reason the teeth of a killing
(00:23):
a scene with a need to blease you with the
light ghost Ringlets believe him in the zone to me.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
From a yend of miyank to a yane to see good. Agree,
I'm gonna say when you came to me because I'm weird,
I'm a one of a kind, and I'll bring death
to the glacier about.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
A week and of the river of blood running.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Under my feet, bows in a filet along ago stand
next to me.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
You'll never stand alone.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I last to me, but the first to go the Lord,
make me death before you make me old a feet
on the fear of the devil inside of the enemy
faces in my sight, being with a hand or shoe,
with a mind, quill, with a heart like Arctic guy.
I'm soldier and marching on.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
This.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I am a worrio and this is my soul master,
the role of the rise, and they waste to the
ground of an enemy.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Sure I read you, Lima Charlie, loud and clear.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Welcome to Steward the Nune presents Lima Charlie with special guest,
Dusty Jones. Welcome, Dusty. Glad to be here so Let's
let's start with kind of just a real quick background
and then we'll start at the beginning, but just kind
of a real quick introduction on who you are.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Uh yeah, So Dusty Jones. I joined the Army in
two thousand and three. At the time they had the
infamous eighteen X ray program, so very quickly was assigned
a seventh Group and then spent the next decade bouncing
out around all of the fun little HEIGHTI holes and
hot spots, you know, Latin America, in the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Okay, do you come from a military family? Uh?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean there's there's military heritage. I think every
generation for as far back as we can track, somebody
has birthed.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Okay, so what what made you decide to join the
military and what made you choose the Army.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well, we had that little thing called nine to eleven
and the Twin Towers falling, and you know, I think
that I could speak for myself, but I think it's
echoed across the veteran community. It was kind of a
call to arms, you know, to get back at those
that brought something to the homeland and let's go root
out the terror and evil. And that was kind of
(02:52):
the the romantic punchline of that time period in my life.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Okay, what made you choose the Army and not say
the Marine Corps or something else.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Because nobody else had Green Berets.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So you knew you wanted to be a Green Beret.
I mean that was you know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And I, yeah, I had talked about it since I
was like twelve, because you might remember the Discovery Channel
would do like those like there was the Navy Sea.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Hold on.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
They would do the in depth with like the Navy
Seals and then the Army Rangers and then the Green Berets,
And for whatever reason, at twelve years old, the Green
Berets just always seemed cooler. So that was already spinning
around in my mind at twelve years old.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Okay, so where were you Where were you living at
the time when you went to the Army.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, I was living in Utah when the towers fell,
and then tried to join up with the recruiter out
of Utah go over so well, but I had an
uncle in Alaska that had been a long time recruiter,
and so we figured that you know, all the stories
about my recruiter lied to me that at least family
(04:11):
wouldn't lie to me, so.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
So so did he lie to you? Or no, got me?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He got me set up in eighteen X ray contract.
In October of two thousand and three, I was off
to Benning and that whole program starts with you know,
like an infantry man. It's like an airborne infantryman contract.
The difference is once you get through those gates and
then they ship you off and you become a permanent
party to SWICH the Special Warfare Training Group there at
(04:41):
Fort Bragg, and that was that was home for the
two years of that training pipeline.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
So you go to you go to Benning Infantry, oh SID,
and then off the air Well Airborne School. You never
leave Benning, right, so you graduate airborne school and then
that's when they send you into the Swick program.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, that's the way it worked. I mean we're talking
two thousand and three, two thousand and four. That's the
way it worked then. I won't even begin to try
and describe what it because it's gone through several different iterations,
but at the time, that's that's how it was working.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Now, when you when you get that eighteen X ray,
I mean, so normal infantry if you would have just
joined infantry. They're going to give you this, you know,
eleven kind of X, right, and then when you graduate,
they're gonna say whatever, when you go in with an
eighteen X contract, you're just eleven bravo, right, I mean
for like, for for at least in basic training, right,
(05:36):
I mean they're not considering anything else.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I don't I don't know if I don't know that
there was like because it was a whole like it
was a new program. I don't know if we were
going through as like eleven X, but there was a
there was a contract specific uh annotation administratively that said
that we had kind of like the RIP the Army Ranger,
(06:01):
like the brit program, Like those guys coming in with
they've got a special identifier that says that they're running
to Ranger Battalion to go run through the Ranger indoctrination
program to see if they can still retelliate. So it's
a similar they had similarity to it.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Right, So you get the brag and what are you thinking?
I mean, how old are you at this time? Eighteen nineteen?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Oh dude, I was I was still wet behind the ears.
I think I was still eighteen. Yeah, we showed up
to brag from betting, and immediately it was the hazing began.
You got met at the bus and everyone's stuff gets
thrown out. It was I mean, I just remember it
being dark and we just proceeded to go through our
welcome smoke session and we were out on the field
(06:45):
for like an hour and a half and it was
like ten eleven o'clock at night. So the cadres yelling
at everybody and we're all doing push ups and flutterkicks
and rolling around and like that was welcome to At
the time, it was the Special Operation Preparation course, and
so it was like we weren't even good enough to
(07:05):
be granted a selection seat. We had to get pre
selection before we could even go to selection. So they just,
I mean hazed us for weeks and weeks and weeks
until a selection class came up. And it was all
land FPT. I mean, we ran so much and Buddy
carried and rucksacks like that's basically all we did for
(07:28):
a month and a half.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
So how many of you went into that?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
How many I remember from my basic training class there
was well right about one hundred, maybe a little bit more,
but there was right about one hundred of us, and
of the guys that started with that initial basic training class,
I could count. I think ten of us actually went
(07:55):
to group and fulfilled and Don the Green Beret fulfilled
that part of the contract. I think like ten of
us actually got through all the gates and all the
hurdles and actually got the long tab.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
But when you when you first got there, right and
you're in this this month and a half worth of
worth of hazing, is there is there any Is there
any attrition in that at all? Or is it just
oh no, matter what you're hearing, Oh there was.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was. I don't remember because I was just trying
to make it to the next day and then playing
gray Man because if you if you highlighted in any way,
you got special attention. So it was like learning how
to like hide in the masses. And I mean, yeah,
there was an attrition.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I can't remember the guy's name. I think he was
a general son that made the news. He went down
to Wilmington and then bailed out of like a fifth
fifth story balcony window and committed suicide because he was
failing or something. And I can only imagine that a
general son, what kind of pressure he was dealing with.
(09:04):
But uh yeah he he he VW the hard way,
like he quit on life. So there was like a
three day sensitivity like maybe we shouldn't be so hard
on the guys, and then it was right back to
business as usual. Continue to push, push, push, So.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
You get through this month and a half and you
actually get a you start your selection right, So what
was what was that? Like it was the day one
like there, I mean, he's been there a month and
a half of just bullshit.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Like we've already seen everything that could possibly be done.
So when we showed up to selection, we were already
like stress inoculated. It's like, oh, they're gonna yell at
us and we're gonna do a bunch of PT selections.
Strangely enough, was kind of a weird break because when
we were at SPSEY, you were hazed and harassed from
(10:00):
the time that like the instructors showed up until they
went home for the night, so from six am to
like nine pm, like everything was under like you were
doing PTM between classes. Like the gig pit was that
might be historical. The gig pit was crimey. It was
(10:21):
just dirty, mucky water and nobody wanted to go in
the gig pit, because even then, if you went in
the gig pit, the medical advice was immediately go change
shower and change into fresh clothes because they already knew
that MRSA and all kinds of stuff, So if you
went to the gig pit, it was a big deal.
(10:42):
So we showed up to selection and selection everything's whiteboard.
There wasn't really any yelling initially other than the organization
of a whole bunch of people from all over the
world basically showing up at Camp McCall. And then it
was like, here's your hoops and take all directions from
the whiteboard, and it was like, oh okay, And for
(11:07):
the next three weeks that's how everything went. You just
there was a fire fireguard, and every fifteen minutes people
from each hooch would run out to the whiteboard and
see if any instructions were written on it, and if
there were instructions, it was usually like uniform how much
your rucksack was supposed to weigh, and a start I
(11:29):
didn't even think there was a start time. It was
like the least amount of information possible. You were just
expected to be there, and so that just went on
for two weeks. Basically every day was a PT event
mixed in at random times. Two o'clock in the morning,
four in the afternoon, you were either doing a run
a PT test. My favorite had to be the sergeant
(11:55):
major out there at the time, starting older Chris Zett's
he had this. He called it the silent jumping jack,
so there was no in cadence jumping jack. He would
just state a number and everyone was supposed to, you know, one, two, three, one,
but nobody got to talk. And he's like, look, here's
the record three and I don't think our class even
(12:17):
got to three because everyone everyone got out of time right,
so it was like in's exercise and then it was
just flapping arms and nobody stopped at the right time.
So it was like two two was the record for
our class. Silent jumping jacks.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So how many people did you lose in this first
couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I just I just remember at the time, they had
just put in like they were brand new hooches, and
it started out I think there was four or five
of them, and they were all full, like every bunk
was full. And then you would just like you would
go to an event and come back and there wouldn't
(12:59):
be a guy his bunk, like his gear was gone.
And so about the time that it got to be
half full, everyone just we all slid down another hooch
and then those were full. And then as time went on,
it was just like randomly roster numbers were no longer present,
and then the formations just kept shrinking.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Okay, so at what point do you get your specialty?
Did you were you were what eighteen echo?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, I was an eighteen echo. That didn't that? I
mean that was a year later. Okay, yeah, that was
a year later before we even started the MOS phase.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Okay, so so before even of that, you you're you're
narrowing down the class. How how did the rest of
them go?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Uh well, I mean at the time, so the eighteen
X rays were double hazed, right, so sopsy, it was
basically pre selection before he went to the selection. Then
when we pass selection, we still we still were not
dubbed Soldier per Swick. Uh So then we came back
and then they did a pre s ut prior to
(14:10):
us going back to Campton and call to do the
small Union tactics phase. So we would do a pre
s ut and then when there was a slot, then
you would go to s UT and then if you
passed s UT, then then you got put into different barracks.
And now you were part of the formal pipeline of
(14:30):
US John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in school and
then and then it was it was kind of it
was kind of gentleman's You had like a morning formation
per accountability, and then you were to show up to
to your It was the Big Swick Aaron Bank uh
Academic Hall. I'm sure that I think that got named
(14:52):
either soon after I got to group or it was
in the formation. But it's right there on smoke Bomb Hill,
right across there used to be a little uh shop
at there on the corner. Oh yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I was up on that up on that hill long
before you got there in the three Signal Talian Airborne. Yeah,
so right right by that, right by that.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, I think sy Op was a fourth Syop was
like across the street up on the corner, and that
that was about the time that they were just starting
was that the All American Highway or something, They were
just starting to put in all the guard gates there. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, anyways, so h MS phase. Run through that
(15:38):
at the time, I was like the second or third
class that they cut the eighteen echo. They stopped teaching
us more code. So then we went to a condensed
MS phase. You passed that right, another gate, you passed
that one, and at this time most of most of
what was going to get weeded out was weeded out.
(15:59):
We lost a couple guys in MLS phase because it's
something administrative Dewey's. Dewey's were always the big one or
test standard, like they fell below the minimum test standard
or basically just how to I can't do this, or
baby Mama drama type stuff. But it like the attrition
(16:21):
rate had kind of slowed down at that point.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So how long is that? How long is the ECHO class?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I want to say off the top of my head
that it was it was ninety days. Man, it's been
a while. I don't remember at the time. I know
that it tracked with the Bravo course, the Charlie course,
and then the Echo course, so it was it was
all on the They were all on the same time
(16:55):
frame as far as course length for specialty. The biggest
reason is they eliminated the Morris Code requirement.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Right were you were you happy being an Echo? I mean,
did you want to be something else or were you
just yeah whatever?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I think you filled out like an order of merit thing.
And I and I don't remember Echo being my first choice.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
What was your first choice?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think? I think I said I wanted to be
a Bravo, a Delta, an Echo, and then a Charlie.
And I don't know what it was about Charlie that
I didn't want to be a Charlie, but I was
more apt to want to be a Delta. And then
after I got done and watched what those guys went through,
I was like, I'm good being an Echo.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
What Bravo is?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
What weapons? And Delta medic.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Medic that's a long one, that's like a year and
a half.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, those guys really, I mean that's I mean, it's
almost like pre med. Most of the guys I know
that spend any time on the teams, they've got so
much credit hours that they roll into a PA program
and they're oftentimes well well ahead of their peers. Uh.
And what's it, Charlie, Uh, demolitions or the property book manager.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
So you're an Echo? What kind of things they teach you?
Echo is it just radio radio type.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Uh. We spent we spent a lot of time on
UH antanna theory in HF, which was funny because hardly
anybody in the modern age is running HF anymore. The
only people that run it with any degree of regularity
or consistency. UH is going to be like Latin America. Uh,
(18:37):
some of the military units down there use it because
they don't have the budgets to run dot com, so
they still use Hfuh. The guys out in Africa, UH,
they'll use HF. But HF is like that's like your
ham radio enthusiasts.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Uh, you know, that's that's all. That's all about the antennas,
all about your gain, all about your d be everything. Yeah.
So I mean, if you remember any of it, you
can probably go take your your hand tests and get
hand licensed.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So if I, if I so choose to to geek
out of radio waves and all that stuff, But yeah,
that was that was I thought at the time that
the the antenna ethereo and radio wave propagation. I was like,
you got to be like half mad for it to
make sense. It was like abstract art to me because
(19:28):
it had more of an art form than a skill
set to it.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Right right, all right? So you finish finish echo and
now you're seventh group. Does that at BRAG yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Uh yeah. So guys get through, they get their MLS specialty,
and then you've got Robin Sage, which is the big
un W exercise. Uh. And then and then about that
time you get your group designator uh, because that determines
your language. And so seventh group uh. And Spanish. So
Spanish I think six months, four months because it's a cat,
(20:08):
it's not a because you don't have to learn a
different alphabet. I think it was four months, so daily
basically Spanish indoctrination.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Did you speak any languages before that? I'm sorry, did
you speak any other languages before that?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I had a little bit of working German because I
took some in high school. But yep, once again means
to the army. Whatever my choice was, because I think
I was like, I'm blonde hair, blue eye, I want
to go to I want to go to tenth group
because they're in Europe in Colorado. And I was like,
and I can speak a little bit of German and
(20:45):
seventh group and Spanish.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Okay, so how's your Spanish now?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Uh? It's uh, it's in there. It gets rusty, but
usually usually with like a couple of days like it,
those old synapses fire, so it's still in there. I'll
never talk fluent because like term green, go.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Look at me. But I'm from Texas. So you know,
say so. So you get you get through Robin Sage,
you get through all that. You you never had any issues.
Did you have any you know it was, did you
ever hit any point where there's like maybe a doubt
you're not gonna you're not gonna complete this.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Or uh Sut. S Ut was a ball smoker. I
mean that was I just remember that all of the
cadre during the Sut phase were all Ranger scrolled, Ranger
long tap dudes, and they did everything they could to
make it like Ranger School. I just remember, I mean
(21:47):
it was. It was so bad that anytime we stopped,
everyone would fall asleep. So we had to suck in
the patrol base because you had to like grab your
dude next to you if you were if you didn't
succumb to falling asleep, to get him on his feet,
because otherwise you were doing lost lost man patrols because up,
(22:10):
we're down, we're short too. We'll go back to the
last location, somebody sleeping in a hole somewhere, because as
soon it was like right right right uh. And then
and then guys standing standing. You would just be standing
in the woods and then hear that like somebody passed
out on their feet right woke up when they hit
the ground, right right.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That was that was.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I mean I didn't have any experience with anything like
that in my life. I mean I mean three four
or five days with like no sleep or minimal sleep.
I mean hallucinations. I mean that was.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
That was.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You would do your ARP and then set in your
your your base defense plan, and then you know, somebody
would be coming over talking about do you see the
Leprechaun in the woods? Now there's no leprechaun, Or there's
a bear. There's a bear, there's no bear, like just
the hallucinations, like I remember, uh vividly, like we were
(23:11):
all Ranger file and I just remember in my mind
seeing a big blonde bimbo, big titted bimbo running across
an open field and I was like, she looks like
she's having fun. Somebody had to grab me and they're like,
what are you doing, dude? I was like you didn't
see the naked women and they're like, no, bro, now
you're drowning. You're drowning. So that was that was a
(23:37):
wake up call. Yeah. Now selection was just selection was
a suck fest. Uh, just I'll do with it. I mean,
it's not I would say the biggest, the biggest, the
biggest determiner that messes guys up in selection. It's it's
(23:59):
all up here, like guys self defeat. And I think
you can look across any anywhere there's a selection, it's
it's it's whatever happens up here, and the little guys
talk themselves out of it. But if you can just
keep moving to the next thing and just whatever, like
oh it wasn't great, but I'm still here and you
can just show up every day, it's it's I mean,
(24:21):
it's physically demanding, but I think I think buds, I
think the Seals their their physical demand level is on
a level that's probably above Uh. But obviously you cannot
run hell week for two years, right right?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Yeah? I mean Plus, I mean, when when you're talking
water and depth and things like that, you're oxygen your
your physical fitness has to be pretty good, right, So
you get the seventh Group. How many you know how
many new guys are coming in at that time? Good
seventh at least to your your.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
As far as I know, I was, I was one
of like maybe three or four dudes. Uh and and
I was third Battalion, seventh Group, Alpha Company, and they
were next in the hopper to go to Afghanistan. I
was the only I was the only newbie on the
team and then all the rest of the teams. Yeah,
(25:24):
I was.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I was.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I was definitely wet, like I was the last one
to show up to Alpha Company. If I recall correctly,
there was a couple of guys that were x rays
that had showed up with like a year prior. But
I was like wet, wet, green behind the ears, Like
I showed up and was like Sergeant this and Stargeant
and they're like, shut up, dude, shut up, new guy
(25:46):
in the corner and color. It was basically my instructions
and do whatever, do whatever anyone else in the team
or master you to do. That was kind of the introduction.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
And they're like, stop, so how long were you there
before for you went to your first deployment.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh man, I think I showed up I showed up
to a three seven October and I think January. Uh,
it was either December or January. I was in Afghanistan.
It wasn't. It wasn't long like I missed. I missed
their PMT, I missed all the pre deployment training like,
(26:25):
and they were like, oh, great, fucking new guy. So
they like they like real quick, like bone me up
on some stuff. And I think at the time the warrant,
we went and signed out a hum v out of
the motor pool and we went out to like Area
J kind of deal. And he's like, all right, you
gotta drive a hum Vy okay, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
It's not that hard to drive pretty yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, and they don't go fast enough to really do
any real damage.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
No, no, So so what was that? What was the
tempo like on this first deployment. What was what year
is this.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
This would have been I think this was Laido five
earlier six, Okay, so there wasn't. There wasn't the big
like we were pre big conventional searge. And then I
was out RC east in Ray just north of well,
(27:21):
just north. It was like a ball smoker of a
day drive from Asadabad, like a solid like ten twelve
hours by d MV. I believe. I believe that at
the time we were the furthest North and East firebase
in all of Afghanistan, and we were messiled, Like we
(27:41):
looked across the river and that was Pakistan. There was
a rig one, there was a rig one that separated
us from Pakistan. But yeah, optemper, I mean it was
it was the wild west Man. We basically had. It
was asf the mercenary before they formalized. It was just
(28:03):
it was like we had two hundred and fifty mercenaries
and there were like twelve or thirteen Americans.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
What we are at the time was it pretty pretty
stringent or non existent?
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well, nobody was out there to check on us, so
we might have we might have done a couple return
to cender on like one oh seven's that got recovered
from cash Olds. But like when we rolled in, we
basically had to sit down a kl league because that's
the fancy term. We had to sit down with all
the village elders and we're like, here's dale. If we
(28:40):
see lights on the hillside at night, we're firing it.
Because the previous team had reported that they would go
in and set up time brockets and time mortars at night.
So we were just like, if you're on the hillside
at night with lights, we're shooting at and that that worked.
That worked for most of our deployment, and I think
the only time that we took anything remotely close to
(29:03):
effective was fourth of July, and that's because there was
a countrywide stand down on no celebratory file fires. And
then it's like every firebase across r C East all
got hit on the fourth of July because they knew
the Americans aren't shooting anything today.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So were you replaced in another seventh group?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
No, so at the time at the time, because I
think fifth group had their hands tied with Iraq, and
I think fifth group and tenth group were doing rotations
in and out of Iraq and third group and seventh
group were doing flip flopping. So we releave a third
group team and then handed over to a third group team.
(29:50):
Why and how I don't know, but that's that's the
powers that be decided that we're going to do.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
And how how long was this deployment?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Uh, I want to say that was eight or nine months.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Oh wow, it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, it was a good it was a good clip. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
But so so you get there, you have you have
a conversation with the elders. Yeah, you took out a
couple of couple of lights, a couple of sparkly lights
at night, what else, any anything else?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I mean, it was uh, it was, it was pretty
It was pretty low key like that first deployment. Uh
we I mean, we ran a lot of patrols. We
were very active, We ran the mountains. But that part,
like that part of Afghanistan Operation Red Wings was was
(30:46):
still classified at the time. I remember reading the after
Action and it was it was still a classified document
at the time, so that was still fresh. But that area,
because of the past or the passes in the Pakistan,
it wasn't there, weren't fighters. They weren't trying to fight
because that's how they were getting their resupply. So we
(31:09):
never really we never. It was It was a lot
of intelligence gathering, It was a lot of network set up,
but we really, I mean it was rattling cages and
trying to hunt guys down and it was I mean,
it was pretty It was pretty quiet until uh tenth
group or not tenth group, tenth Mountain showed up. Uh.
(31:30):
And then they basically took over our whole base.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And we were told like a company plus or something,
and then what ended up showing up was a battalion minus.
So well, welcome, welcome boys. Uh. And that was that
was interesting. Then. Of course politics and conventional and soft
we had all kinds of headaches with that. But but
(31:54):
what was really telling was, uh, the bearded ones. Right.
There had been enough I'm of of soft in and
out of Afghanistan that anybody who knew anybody that was
a terrorist knew you did not shoot at the bearded
ones because you would unleash Holy hell. And what you
can't see is the AC one thirty that will rain
(32:15):
damnation from above and the jets would show up out
of nowhere. So don't shoot at the bearded ones. But uh,
it was interesting the tenth the tenth Mountain guys were
getting in the skirmishes constantly. I don't know if that
was just because they were easier pickings or conventional leadership.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Were they doing anything different on their patrols or were
they were they mounted?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Were they I mean they were they were running mounted patrols.
They were doing dismounted patrols. Uh, and they would they
were getting the light contact periodically, nothing that I would
say would classify as like a hardened force until uh,
Operation Mountain Line, the infamous Operation Mountain Line, the almost
(33:03):
like gone calendar every year gets planned in Afghanistan. And
that's where that's Monty got the Medal of Honor. There
was a couple of dudes, it was their scout platoon
and they got sent in because we were supposed to
do this big push operation as part of Operation Mountain Lion,
(33:25):
and those guys. Chris was the squad leader, and that's
that was. That was a that was a very very
interesting ordeal politically, and then just the weird friction that
develops between soft and conventional h And we we knew
(33:46):
what was going on because we heard the TIT call
come in and we were I mean, we were loaded
for bear and we were like, look, we can get
to the base of the hill and we can at
least lay suppressing fire so that the guy's up top.
Because what was reported to us is that there were
two support by fire elements that had dishkas and there
was another two maneuver elements that were probing up to
(34:11):
their CCP or their patrol base and that's I just
saw a reminder for it the other day Monty's Medal
of Honor citation. But yeah, what.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Delta, right, he was in eighteen delta.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
No, he was a tenth mountain guy. Okay, So we
were supposed to split our team and we were supposed
to put half of our guys in with that patrol.
But something fell apart in the planning that the main
element wasn't supposed to move until like forty eight hours
after him, and we were kind of buttonheads with conventional, going,
(34:46):
you're not leaving Americans on top of that hill in
that valley for forty eight hours because even after we
do Afghani math, and because if they say one hundred,
it means twenty or thirty. Well, even after we did
Afghani math, we're like, that valley has confirmed two to
three hundred fighters, Like this is the same area where
(35:07):
Operation Red Wings and all that stuff went down. So
we're like, that's not going to work if we're not,
if guys aren't, if they're moving period of darkness prior
and setting up main element needs to push the next morning.
But that didn't fit because the plan becomes the mission
in the conventional world and anyways, so our leadership was like,
(35:30):
we're not hanging our guys out to dry on this
because this doesn't meet the five you know, the principles
of patrolling, like common senses out the window on this one.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
But that was, yeah, that was that was kind of
a that was an interesting wake up call. We had
a we had a small revolt with our mercenaries. I
just got a knock on my door and it was like, hey,
casually make your way up to the roof. We might
have to fire on on the A. What and it well,
(36:03):
it's it's that it's that Islamist somebody's wife got raped
by someone else, and so the the the merk force
was split on whether they killed the dude or killed
her because Islamic culture. I don't remember all the details,
but basically she was now unclean and and what is it. It's
(36:25):
like you've got to be there's got to be like
three witnesses or something to determine that it's uh the
CRIMEA yeah, right, So they were they were about to
throw down, and we weren't sure if we were going
to get caught in the middle of this, like mutiny
in the ASF and that was kind of We're still
(36:47):
an Indian country, like, but.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Any any high value targets this first.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I mean the craziest thing, the craziest thing that happened
on that rotation was we found out after is you
know that long skinny arm in Afghanistan that touches China.
We ran a big airlift mission because we got reports
of this like giant cash, and we went up to
(37:15):
retrieve it. And the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing is
the village elder came out and was like, hey, you're
here to pick up your stuff, and we're like sure. Well,
we found out about a week later that it was
Oga's and they were kind of pissed that we went
and recovered it. But it's like, okay, so now we
have intelligence that's not intelligencing, right, so what were you
(37:38):
expecting us to do? We got reports that this giant
cash that's flowing weapons and arms to our area is
and we could just go relieve them of it. And
it was apparently theirs, and they were a little they
were a little but hurt about that. And I was like, oh,
like this was a lot of education from like a
(37:58):
bureaucracy even in war and the weird intelligence communicate, like
they never talked down to us, but we would send
everything up and they would never confirm reporting because you
know that's the agency, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right hand talk to each other, you know.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Now, uh No, it was a it was I mean, honestly,
it was a pretty low key, low key first deployment.
We we ended up doing a big combined deal up
into cam Dash. I think it was the cam Dash
basically where the Russians lost the war. And that was
(38:40):
that was interesting. The third group team prior to us
had tried to do a helo insert and I guess
as they were getting ready to set down, a cow
blew up. So they were like, confirm mine's on the
farm fields up there. So war in phil was out.
So we ended up doing a big long ATV convoy
(39:02):
at dark and even at dark, I mean, I now
know why the Russians lost the war because it's you
followed the river and it was sheer cliff face, sheer
cliff face. So all they all they'd have to do
is literally push rocks onto you if they need to.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
That's a that's a killbox. Yeah, they catch catch you
in there. You're done.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
And and the next morning we we went looking because
we had reports that there was a guy up there.
We got into a village, somebody took a pop shot
at us and then and then the villagers were like, no, no, no,
it's it's fireworks. And We're like, I don't think so.
But whatever they were shooting at they missed. A little
(39:45):
while later we ended up, uh, somebody in town. We
did some you know, we did that snoop and poop
secret squirrel thing, and somebody in town knew something and
was gonna take us to some place. And strangely enough,
bit by bit, our entourage started getting smaller and we
were like, that's suspicious. They know something that we don't. Uh,
(40:06):
and then you know, snap, some pops start zipping overhead
and uh. That was That was probably the first real
like ass pucker moment that I'd had the whole the
whole deployment, because all I remember was the captain was like,
make comma, we need e casts and I sat down
behind a piece of cover started, uh, you know at
(40:27):
the time, the old beer can antenna. You flip this,
flip this, flip this, get get comms. And then next
thing I know, I'm looking around and I'm all alone
and snap, snap some pops and I was like, oh boy,
this is great. So I just remember listening. I was like, okay,
that's a K fire. Okay, that's M four, So I
need to move cautiously towards the M four file fire.
(40:51):
Uh and you know, bound peek my head up trying
to find my guys. And yeah, that was a that
was an interesting one. By the time I showed up,
apparently everybod that need killing was dead and it was
time to leave the mountain, And then tenth Mountain basically
got RPG and machine gun fired the whole way back. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
But so how was your with antennas in the mountains?
I mean, they don't normally play very well together. How
was your how's your comms?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
That's that's when the insanity of the common world set in,
because that's the only it's You could stand in one
spot and you couldn't talk across, you couldn't talk ten
feet away from you. But if you took two side
steps then everyone could hear you to include up on
top of the ridgeline. And it was like, I give up.
(41:47):
I have no idea how it works. It just likes
to work occasionally like SATCOM because of the angles in
the valleys, like a lot of times you weren't really
getting an angle to the bird and so it was
kind of like in the blind hope somebody hears me,
but nice.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
So you finished this deployment back to Brag, right, how
long were we back to Brag before your next deployment?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Oh, crimeny. If we weren't in Afghanistan at the time,
then we were bouncing down to Latin America, So we
weren't back very long before we were in Peru and
that was mostly just training mission stuff. J Setz. We
got back from that and then it was another Afghanistan rotation,
went back second time and then we're we were out
(42:34):
of Asadabad and that was That was a weird That
was a weird time. I think at that point we
were I think that was the first administration of the
Obama administration, and there was a lot of hand tying.
And then because the ASF that were SF trained had
(42:57):
been disbanded and we were doing this nation build thing,
we were supposed to use A and A and the
restrictions was you weren't allowed to do operations unless you
had a partner force, and at the time, that team
didn't have a partner for us because we were right
next door to an O G. A base and they
had a big partner force and they weren't sharing, So
(43:20):
we were like stuck on our hands for most of
that deployment. One there's a there's a couple of guys
that was it cop keating and one seventy third got
into that big firefight that was up up the valley
that stirred everyone's uh, everyone's you know, everyone got all
(43:41):
anxious about that one.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
I mean the eight or nine months or how long
was this?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, this is another eight or nine month deal. What
was the I don't know. Probably the craziest one that
happened is that we ended up doing because we were
trying to figure out how to work around this guard force.
If you didn't have A and A attached, you weren't
supposed to be able to do things. And we, I mean,
we quickly found out that most of the A and
(44:07):
A and even the commandos were worthless because they were
coming from a different region. We spent like two days
on a flat range and couldn't get anybody zeroed, and
then we realized that they were treating them like aks,
so they were stripping the gas rings out because you
could sell it because they were made out of ten,
so their guns wouldn't work. And then we had the
(44:28):
medic go through and do an eye test. Half of
them were legally blind. So we're like, okay, this is
our guard force. So we started. If you remember the
twenty five meter quall that had all the little different
shapes that were supposed to represent at distance, sure that
(44:49):
was too much for these guys. So we literally were
putting out the full size E type at twenty five
meters and if they could get it, yep, if they
could get three on that, they were there. But they
would go to lunch and pray and come back and
who you thought you had zeroed was no longer zeroed.
And then we found out that they would just stack
all of their guns in a corner and grab a
(45:12):
rifle when they came back. Like okay, right, working this, yeah,
working with those guys. I still we tried. We tried
to do a night vehicle patrol and we weren't out
of the gate but ten fifteen minutes. And what's coming
(45:34):
across the comms is that there's been a wreck and
one of our assigned forces is part of the wreck
and we're like what, so whole convoy turns around and somehow,
and I still don't understand physics how they managed to
do it. But like the parapets on the top of
(45:55):
like a castle where it's got the like square cutouts,
well the side of the road they had built that.
Somehow the A N A driver had perched like he
had driven up and the and the humvy was like
teetering on that like parapet wall, and we're like, how
do you how do you do that? So after action,
(46:19):
well he was high, Oh great, well you let him drive.
Well we were all high too, because they would all
they would all smoke hashish before going on mission. So like, okay,
now we got to run through and like white light
everybody's eyes to see who's right was?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Was there no option to give them a case?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Uh? We we we fought. What what we were told
is this standardization thing that getting getting a K's was
it was an optics thing. And then the other one
was trying to get seven thirty nine mL through American
(47:03):
channels too, And I guess the decisions higher than me
decided that was not a good idea. So they all
got m fource because then they could just fall in
on American supply lines and parts and but I don't
know more decisions that I don't understand, but that I
mean that that trip was multi multi oda big objectives.
(47:28):
I mean, we tried to hit we tried to hit
a training compound. Uh, we got shot out a little bit,
but we got we got snowed in. Uh. That was weird.
We ended up we ended up setting a couple of
buildings on fire because we went from early spring to rain,
sleep snow, so it turned into a blizzard. Uh. And
(47:51):
none of us, of course, because it was supposed to
be a terrorist training compound, none of us were packing,
you know, snibbl So we're puddle on around on fires
and somehow they managed to. I mean, this is the
greatest active trust I've ever seen out of a pilot,
because you heard the bird and it was just this
(48:11):
big shadow up through the clouds in the mist, and
the CCT was literally just sitting on the ground going
roll left stop, roll rearward stop, and he just that
pilot just over the course of like ten minutes, just
finally sat down and got us all loaded up and frozen.
(48:32):
We're soaked head to toe and it's you know, we've
got snow coming down. So we got off of that one.
A couple of weeks later we went and did another
big mass clearing operation that was strangely relatively uneventful until
the birds landed. And I remember, I remember, we're all
(48:52):
running to the birds. And if you've ever seen like
a dry farm filled after they've harvest, and it starts
to rain, and it like poofs until the rain well
it wasn't rain because there wasn't a cloud in the sky,
and it was like why is And they they were
all on the ridge line and just hoping to you know,
(49:12):
catch a bird, put a bird down because like it
looked like it was raining. We were just launching, you know, voluntary,
hoping to hit somebody or something. They got lucky. One
of one of the guys that was getting picked up
on one of the s O positions, he got in
the bird and turned just as like a random lucky
(49:35):
round caught him just above the side plate. So next
thing you know, we're flying back because we're all we
crammed into one bird. The blackhawks they take off and
then and then it comes through coms that one of
the guys got shot, so we all divert to I
don't even remember what the base was, but then they
(49:57):
get him into the FST so we can crossload the bird.
Like we didn't even know everything that was going on
and what had happened until we sat down and redid
the bump plan. But yeah, I mean that was that
was that one.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
How many deployments did you do in total?
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I did two to Afghanistan and one to iraq Uh
and that was while I was a Green Seer. And
then I did the contract thing for a while and
bounce back to Afghanistan like six or seven more times.
But okay, I went and did that. I went did
that fun little C three seven thing, and we did
the CQB stuff, and then we did one We did
(50:40):
one trip, or I was a part of one trip.
They did several, but I was a part of one
and it was right on the end of OIF and
Operation New Dawn. We made We made the BBC. We
made the BBC because apparently we trapped squirters off of
one target uh and we the is SR platform couldn't
(51:02):
identify who was who, so we just rolled into the
town and started plucking dudes off the street at four
am because it's four am. What are you doing?
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Guilty, but hey, we know bad guys showed up and
you look guilty because you're on the street at four
a m. So we'll let we'll let the we'll let
the interrogators figure out who's who. Well, what had come
across the BBC like a day later as a rogue
military element was uh capturing military age males uh off
(51:36):
the road in this little village, and we're wasn't us?
Wasn't us? So?
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Yeah, so having joined when you did, and kind of
you know, you know, I don't want to put words
in the mouth, but kind of why you did right
in then and post nine to eleven, two decades later,
you're out, you know, you've moved on from the military.
How do you view our engagement in all of that
(52:07):
in the Middle East? Now? Kind of that hindsight view?
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, well, I mean, and that's the tricky thing, right
is hindsight's always twenty twenty. And I don't know, like
I mean, there's so many conspiracy theories and rabbit holes
that I don't have time to like dive down. Could
it be argued that we didn't have good judge justification
to be in Afghanistan and Iraq, I would say yes,
(52:33):
knowing what I know now and with what's come to air, Yeah,
I think the justifications a little thin. But I wasn't
the dude making the call in those decisions, and I
have to assume at the time that those decisions were
based on solid intelligence. You and I both know that
combat and war is not you don't have all of
(52:54):
the facts. Oftentimes, you were making decisions based off of
minimal information that has great impact, and once that rounds
out of the tube, you can't recall it. It's rounds
out of the tube. Fire a better round next time. Sure,
So yeah, I don't know. I mean, we can't take
(53:14):
it back. You know. Does it diminish does it diminish
the sacrifice and dedication of the three percent who served? No,
not at all. And I think I think that of
the you know, the three percent of the nation as
it's quoted, that did serve. We've seen a lot of
(53:36):
the world and I think that, you know, there's a
lot of stuff Afghanistan, Iraq that doesn't get talked about.
You know, it's it's hard to have conversations with people
have no idea what that extremist Islamic culture is, Like
sitting in front of computers and watching beheading video after
beheading video after beheading video, because you're trying to figure
(53:59):
out is this one of your sources? Is this one
of your h VT's. You're trying to do pid and
you've got a stack of CDs that got smuggled to you,
and now you've got to roll through all of them,
like and that's like, that's mind boggling all of its own.
The just how apathetic that that whole thing is, like
(54:22):
sharpening it on a rock, right, Yeah, And that's normal.
That's normal culture for them, the home of the blatant
homosexuality that's all across the Middle East, especially in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (54:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
You know, it was always a rock paper scissors, like
flip a coin to if you had to go get
one of your interpreters at two am, because you always
knocked very loudly and announced yourself because someone would come
to the door sweaty. And it's not because they were
playing drums, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (54:55):
In this series, we've heard a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Yeah, it's it's so normal place over there the pedophilia
like common and you tell that to people at the
States and you're and they just don't and you're like,
that's commonplace over there. One of the probably one of
the more one of the more stuck with me was
(55:20):
there was a little girl that got brought in and
she was scalded right up to her like armpits uh,
and it was something something I don't remember the story,
but we had an FST at the time because of
tenth tenth Mountain had shown up, and so we sent
the little girl with FST and the interpreter because they
(55:43):
were another point of collection for intelligence because medcaps you
start getting history where you've been, how'd you get sick?
So you get intelligence out of that, well, out of
that conversation. She was pushed into a boiling pot of
water and she went to catch yourself like you do
when you fall, and like second third degree burn all
(56:05):
the way up both arms like and that and and
nobody of the Afghanis had issue with that.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
Was she was she by chance pushed because someone was
getting ready to kick in the door?
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh? Was she pushed into? No? That was that was
just callous behavior because of how they treat women and children.
Speaker 4 (56:28):
Over there because we we had we had another guy
in this series told a story of a very similar
situation where the girl because they were getting ready to
kick in the door in order to detract right, So,
oh my god, my daughter's hurt. Right, So now now
your focus has moved away from what you were getting
ready to kick in the door for.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
They know, they know that Americans are squeamish about violence
to children and women, and so yeah, commonplace, commonplace to
hide weapons and arms with women. Uh. At one point
it was the cell phone stuff. They would hide it
on their kids, they would hide it on their wives.
(57:09):
Like they're just very callous at human life. Like I think,
and I don't think i'd be off on a limb
is that, like livestock has a higher value to them
than human lives do. So there's it's it's a mindset
that I don't understand with. It doesn't jive with how
I was brought up and kind of Western Christian culture.
(57:32):
I think we have a different value of life than
what they do. I mean, here's here's here's one of
those like haha, but like haha, kind of as we
had one of the local elders, he's on wife number
twelve or whatever, right, and none of them have gotten pregnant,
(57:53):
so we kind of need the dude's influence. We're like, hey,
you know what, will have her checked out and make
sure she's good bride young. Of course, he's like ancient
and we've already discussed the pedophilia thing. But anyways, Hymen's intact.
Come to find out, he's been screwing all of his
wives in the ass because that's so ingrained because of
(58:16):
the homosexuality.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
We heard that same story on another episode, so I'm
one of and I think the other guy was from
Tenth Mountain, so I'm wondering if I think he was.
I'm wondering if you guys crossed paths.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
It's possible, It's possible, but yeah, I mean it's there.
These stories come up all the time. We have one
of those what is it, it's the Antolian Shepherd Kingles
or whatever. One of them we had nicknamed or the
team prior had nicknamed Poppy or or Poppy and Bernie. Well,
(58:50):
Bernie got Bernie's nickname because they were basically trying to
roast the dog over a fire. So Bernie the name stuck,
and they they can't stand dogs, which is why most
of the firebases over there we always had dogs. I mean,
it was not uncommon for one of the kingles to
come back and they're dragging like the guard forces dinner
(59:14):
which was half a goat, and then ten minutes later
you get the knock knock us to like you owe
us money for a goat, and we're like what what goat?
Speaker 4 (59:24):
Fox?
Speaker 3 (59:24):
You know he's having a heyday because he's like, I
got free dinner, right. But yeah, I mean just it's
not a it's not a culture that with what I've
seen that I I hate that we lost so many
American lives trying to now hindsight kind of trying to
(59:46):
force democracy on but I I I don't. I don't
have a lot of respect for a lot of the culture.
Are there some good ones over there, Yeah, and I
think a lot of organizations have tried to pull some
of those guys back, But by and large, it's not
(01:00:07):
a culture that that we have a lot of similarity with.
And it's kind of the question comes up, why were
we there?
Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
But it doesn't it doesn't diminish the sacrifice or the
bonding or you know, that world experience that that's a
that's a very interesting and historical part of the world.
So right, but we're never going to be done over
there because of the mindset. Uh Uh. Lawrence of Arabia
(01:00:38):
is an excellent movie. So that whole campaign, and then
they finally win the campaign and they revert right back
to tribalism and who's getting control of this and who's
getting control of that now? And you know, is it
could it be argued that our presence in Afghanistan unified
some of these organizations, Yeah, because it becomes enemy of
(01:01:01):
my enemy as my friend all Kada Taliban. The HIG
doesn't really get talked about, but in the early ways
of Afghanistan, the HIG was a separate but when we
showed up, they all banded together, uh, to fight the
you know, the jihad against the westernization.
Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
So well, when you continue generation at the generation of
of a almost an entire society that can't read or write, right,
So they're they're the only thing that they know is
what they've been taught. Yeah, what's been shoved down their throats.
They have no ability to go out and discover things
for themselves and be able to determine is what they're
(01:01:42):
being taught true or are they being fed lives right?
And when that that continues generation of generation, you're never
going to get any change.
Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Well, and look, I think there's I think there's enough
hours that be that would like to see certain regions
continue to be destabilized because like Afghanistan is a giant
lithium reserve. There's a lot of precious metals and rubies, sapphires, emeralds,
like they've got like half that area of Afghanistan, and
(01:02:11):
Pakistan apparently produces counterfeits of such high quality that it
takes a really keen eye to spot the difference. Well,
I mean there's that there's a lot of like the
timber smugglers were our favorite sources timber smuggling. They would
(01:02:32):
run timber, you know, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's like there's
timber of all things. Well, and you know there, I
mean there's stuff that comes in down through China. I
mean just trying to like get fuel delivered. Half of
it would be water. No matter like you banned stuff routinely,
anything that ran overland, uniforms, equipment, like anything sensitive would
(01:02:57):
have to get airlifted because you could not send that
overland because it would disappear. Right, So there's probably there's
bizarres in Pakistan and China probably that have sold a
cus and every camel plattern we've had for years. Well
it fell off the truck thing.
Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
Sure, sure, So any any other stories, any any other
information you want to sure you want to know.
Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
I mean, this is this is one of those things.
We could probably continue to scratch at it and pull
more and more and more, but uh, you know where
I'm sitting. We got I got about twenty years of
experience in and around that area, and we'll just be
scratching the surface.
Speaker 4 (01:03:41):
Okay, all right, Well I appreciate you coming on. Well
let me get this last point. What what made you
finally decide to hang it up and say I'm done?
Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
I think I was so tired. Yeah, I just the
the special operations world is hard because of the op tempo.
And then when you just look at the chronic stress
and the demands and the continue continue to continue, I
think I just you know, you start breaking shoulders, start
(01:04:16):
tearing hamstrings. That constant stress load they get, you know,
the alistatic load, the operator syndrome. That stuff's getting found
out about now the blast blast trauma, and then like
none of us sleep, right, I think I just hit
my point of like I don't know that I don't
have any I don't have any gas left in the tank, right,
(01:04:38):
And that was a that was a couple of year,
like very cerebral conversation because I loved being a Green Beret,
but the thing I loved was probably killing me inside
because I like, you know, because I just look back
and it's taken me the better part of ten years
to redevelop my own personal identity outside of the uniform.
(01:05:00):
I mean that was a big part. Eighteen to just
over thirty, I was a Green Beret.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Women, and I had this conversation with my wife and
a lot of people. I mean, eighteen is such an
impressionable age, right, So anything that happens in that eighteen
to twenty one, almost eighteen to twenty five of your
life is with you for the rest of your life.
So I mean, because your your brain is still developing,
especially as men, you know, because we develop a little
bit slower than women, were so impressionable at that age
(01:05:30):
that anything you're taught, man is going to be with
either the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
So yeah, it was just time. It was time to
hang it up, man, it was time to hang it up.
Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
So alrighty sir, well, I thank you for coming on.
That's good stuff so I appreciate it. Hang on, we'll
talk on the other side, all right.
Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Thanks Rob.
Speaker 5 (01:06:00):
Still By span By spun Bad
Speaker 4 (01:06:15):
Star sp
Hmmmm, I've got no reason the teeth of a killing
(00:23):
a scene with a need to blease you with the
light ghost Ringlets believe him in the zone to me.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
From a yend of miyank to a yane to see good. Agree,
I'm gonna say when you came to me because I'm weird,
I'm a one of a kind, and I'll bring death
to the glacier about.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
A week and of the river of blood running.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Under my feet, bows in a filet along ago stand
next to me.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
You'll never stand alone.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I last to me, but the first to go the Lord,
make me death before you make me old a feet
on the fear of the devil inside of the enemy
faces in my sight, being with a hand or shoe,
with a mind, quill, with a heart like Arctic guy.
I'm soldier and marching on.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
This.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I am a worrio and this is my soul master,
the role of the rise, and they waste to the
ground of an enemy.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Sure I read you, Lima Charlie, loud and clear.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Welcome to Steward the Nune presents Lima Charlie with special guest,
Dusty Jones. Welcome, Dusty. Glad to be here so Let's
let's start with kind of just a real quick background
and then we'll start at the beginning, but just kind
of a real quick introduction on who you are.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Uh yeah, So Dusty Jones. I joined the Army in
two thousand and three. At the time they had the
infamous eighteen X ray program, so very quickly was assigned
a seventh Group and then spent the next decade bouncing
out around all of the fun little HEIGHTI holes and
hot spots, you know, Latin America, in the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Okay, do you come from a military family? Uh?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I mean there's there's military heritage. I think every
generation for as far back as we can track, somebody
has birthed.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
Okay, so what what made you decide to join the
military and what made you choose the Army.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Well, we had that little thing called nine to eleven
and the Twin Towers falling, and you know, I think
that I could speak for myself, but I think it's
echoed across the veteran community. It was kind of a
call to arms, you know, to get back at those
that brought something to the homeland and let's go root
out the terror and evil. And that was kind of
(02:52):
the the romantic punchline of that time period in my life.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Okay, what made you choose the Army and not say
the Marine Corps or something else.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Because nobody else had Green Berets.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So you knew you wanted to be a Green Beret.
I mean that was you know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And I, yeah, I had talked about it since I
was like twelve, because you might remember the Discovery Channel
would do like those like there was the Navy Sea.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Hold on.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
They would do the in depth with like the Navy
Seals and then the Army Rangers and then the Green Berets,
And for whatever reason, at twelve years old, the Green
Berets just always seemed cooler. So that was already spinning
around in my mind at twelve years old.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Okay, so where were you Where were you living at
the time when you went to the Army.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, I was living in Utah when the towers fell,
and then tried to join up with the recruiter out
of Utah go over so well, but I had an
uncle in Alaska that had been a long time recruiter,
and so we figured that you know, all the stories
about my recruiter lied to me that at least family
(04:11):
wouldn't lie to me, so.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
So so did he lie to you? Or no, got me?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He got me set up in eighteen X ray contract.
In October of two thousand and three, I was off
to Benning and that whole program starts with you know,
like an infantry man. It's like an airborne infantryman contract.
The difference is once you get through those gates and
then they ship you off and you become a permanent
party to SWICH the Special Warfare Training Group there at
(04:41):
Fort Bragg, and that was that was home for the
two years of that training pipeline.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
So you go to you go to Benning Infantry, oh SID,
and then off the air Well Airborne School. You never
leave Benning, right, so you graduate airborne school and then
that's when they send you into the Swick program.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, that's the way it worked. I mean we're talking
two thousand and three, two thousand and four. That's the
way it worked then. I won't even begin to try
and describe what it because it's gone through several different iterations,
but at the time, that's that's how it was working.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Now, when you when you get that eighteen X ray,
I mean, so normal infantry if you would have just
joined infantry. They're going to give you this, you know,
eleven kind of X, right, and then when you graduate,
they're gonna say whatever, when you go in with an
eighteen X contract, you're just eleven bravo, right, I mean
for like, for for at least in basic training, right,
(05:36):
I mean they're not considering anything else.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
I don't I don't know if I don't know that
there was like because it was a whole like it
was a new program. I don't know if we were
going through as like eleven X, but there was a
there was a contract specific uh annotation administratively that said
that we had kind of like the RIP the Army Ranger,
(06:01):
like the brit program, Like those guys coming in with
they've got a special identifier that says that they're running
to Ranger Battalion to go run through the Ranger indoctrination
program to see if they can still retelliate. So it's
a similar they had similarity to it.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Right, So you get the brag and what are you thinking?
I mean, how old are you at this time? Eighteen nineteen?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Oh dude, I was I was still wet behind the ears.
I think I was still eighteen. Yeah, we showed up
to brag from betting, and immediately it was the hazing began.
You got met at the bus and everyone's stuff gets
thrown out. It was I mean, I just remember it
being dark and we just proceeded to go through our
welcome smoke session and we were out on the field
(06:45):
for like an hour and a half and it was
like ten eleven o'clock at night. So the cadres yelling
at everybody and we're all doing push ups and flutterkicks
and rolling around and like that was welcome to At
the time, it was the Special Operation Preparation course, and
so it was like we weren't even good enough to
(07:05):
be granted a selection seat. We had to get pre
selection before we could even go to selection. So they just,
I mean hazed us for weeks and weeks and weeks
until a selection class came up. And it was all
land FPT. I mean, we ran so much and Buddy
carried and rucksacks like that's basically all we did for
(07:28):
a month and a half.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
So how many of you went into that?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
How many I remember from my basic training class there
was well right about one hundred, maybe a little bit more,
but there was right about one hundred of us, and
of the guys that started with that initial basic training class,
I could count. I think ten of us actually went
(07:55):
to group and fulfilled and Don the Green Beret fulfilled
that part of the contract. I think like ten of
us actually got through all the gates and all the
hurdles and actually got the long tab.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
But when you when you first got there, right and
you're in this this month and a half worth of
worth of hazing, is there is there any Is there
any attrition in that at all? Or is it just
oh no, matter what you're hearing, Oh there was.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
There was. I don't remember because I was just trying
to make it to the next day and then playing
gray Man because if you if you highlighted in any way,
you got special attention. So it was like learning how
to like hide in the masses. And I mean, yeah,
there was an attrition.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I can't remember the guy's name. I think he was
a general son that made the news. He went down
to Wilmington and then bailed out of like a fifth
fifth story balcony window and committed suicide because he was
failing or something. And I can only imagine that a
general son, what kind of pressure he was dealing with.
(09:04):
But uh yeah he he he VW the hard way,
like he quit on life. So there was like a
three day sensitivity like maybe we shouldn't be so hard
on the guys, and then it was right back to
business as usual. Continue to push, push, push, So.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
You get through this month and a half and you
actually get a you start your selection right, So what
was what was that? Like it was the day one
like there, I mean, he's been there a month and
a half of just bullshit.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Like we've already seen everything that could possibly be done.
So when we showed up to selection, we were already
like stress inoculated. It's like, oh, they're gonna yell at
us and we're gonna do a bunch of PT selections.
Strangely enough, was kind of a weird break because when
we were at SPSEY, you were hazed and harassed from
(10:00):
the time that like the instructors showed up until they
went home for the night, so from six am to
like nine pm, like everything was under like you were
doing PTM between classes. Like the gig pit was that
might be historical. The gig pit was crimey. It was
(10:21):
just dirty, mucky water and nobody wanted to go in
the gig pit, because even then, if you went in
the gig pit, the medical advice was immediately go change
shower and change into fresh clothes because they already knew
that MRSA and all kinds of stuff, So if you
went to the gig pit, it was a big deal.
(10:42):
So we showed up to selection and selection everything's whiteboard.
There wasn't really any yelling initially other than the organization
of a whole bunch of people from all over the
world basically showing up at Camp McCall. And then it
was like, here's your hoops and take all directions from
the whiteboard, and it was like, oh okay, And for
(11:07):
the next three weeks that's how everything went. You just
there was a fire fireguard, and every fifteen minutes people
from each hooch would run out to the whiteboard and
see if any instructions were written on it, and if
there were instructions, it was usually like uniform how much
your rucksack was supposed to weigh, and a start I
(11:29):
didn't even think there was a start time. It was
like the least amount of information possible. You were just
expected to be there, and so that just went on
for two weeks. Basically every day was a PT event
mixed in at random times. Two o'clock in the morning,
four in the afternoon, you were either doing a run
a PT test. My favorite had to be the sergeant
(11:55):
major out there at the time, starting older Chris Zett's
he had this. He called it the silent jumping jack,
so there was no in cadence jumping jack. He would
just state a number and everyone was supposed to, you know, one, two, three, one,
but nobody got to talk. And he's like, look, here's
the record three and I don't think our class even
(12:17):
got to three because everyone everyone got out of time right,
so it was like in's exercise and then it was
just flapping arms and nobody stopped at the right time.
So it was like two two was the record for
our class. Silent jumping jacks.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So how many people did you lose in this first
couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I just I just remember at the time, they had
just put in like they were brand new hooches, and
it started out I think there was four or five
of them, and they were all full, like every bunk
was full. And then you would just like you would
go to an event and come back and there wouldn't
(12:59):
be a guy his bunk, like his gear was gone.
And so about the time that it got to be
half full, everyone just we all slid down another hooch
and then those were full. And then as time went on,
it was just like randomly roster numbers were no longer present,
and then the formations just kept shrinking.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
Okay, so at what point do you get your specialty?
Did you were you were what eighteen echo?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, I was an eighteen echo. That didn't that? I
mean that was a year later. Okay, yeah, that was
a year later before we even started the MOS phase.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Okay, so so before even of that, you you're you're
narrowing down the class. How how did the rest of
them go?
Speaker 3 (13:48):
Uh well, I mean at the time, so the eighteen
X rays were double hazed, right, so sopsy, it was
basically pre selection before he went to the selection. Then
when we pass selection, we still we still were not
dubbed Soldier per Swick. Uh So then we came back
and then they did a pre s ut prior to
(14:10):
us going back to Campton and call to do the
small Union tactics phase. So we would do a pre
s ut and then when there was a slot, then
you would go to s UT and then if you
passed s UT, then then you got put into different barracks.
And now you were part of the formal pipeline of
(14:30):
US John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in school and
then and then it was it was kind of it
was kind of gentleman's You had like a morning formation
per accountability, and then you were to show up to
to your It was the Big Swick Aaron Bank uh
Academic Hall. I'm sure that I think that got named
(14:52):
either soon after I got to group or it was
in the formation. But it's right there on smoke Bomb Hill,
right across there used to be a little uh shop
at there on the corner. Oh yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I was up on that up on that hill long
before you got there in the three Signal Talian Airborne. Yeah,
so right right by that, right by that.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, I think sy Op was a fourth Syop was
like across the street up on the corner, and that
that was about the time that they were just starting
was that the All American Highway or something, They were
just starting to put in all the guard gates there. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, anyways, so h MS phase. Run through that
(15:38):
at the time, I was like the second or third
class that they cut the eighteen echo. They stopped teaching
us more code. So then we went to a condensed
MS phase. You passed that right, another gate, you passed
that one, and at this time most of most of
what was going to get weeded out was weeded out.
(15:59):
We lost a couple guys in MLS phase because it's
something administrative Dewey's. Dewey's were always the big one or
test standard, like they fell below the minimum test standard
or basically just how to I can't do this, or
baby Mama drama type stuff. But it like the attrition
(16:21):
rate had kind of slowed down at that point.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
So how long is that? How long is the ECHO class?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I want to say off the top of my head
that it was it was ninety days. Man, it's been
a while. I don't remember at the time. I know
that it tracked with the Bravo course, the Charlie course,
and then the Echo course, so it was it was
all on the They were all on the same time
(16:55):
frame as far as course length for specialty. The biggest
reason is they eliminated the Morris Code requirement.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
Right were you were you happy being an Echo? I mean,
did you want to be something else or were you
just yeah whatever?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
I think you filled out like an order of merit thing.
And I and I don't remember Echo being my first choice.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
What was your first choice?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think? I think I said I wanted to be
a Bravo, a Delta, an Echo, and then a Charlie.
And I don't know what it was about Charlie that
I didn't want to be a Charlie, but I was
more apt to want to be a Delta. And then
after I got done and watched what those guys went through,
I was like, I'm good being an Echo.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
What Bravo is?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
What weapons? And Delta medic.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Medic that's a long one, that's like a year and
a half.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, those guys really, I mean that's I mean, it's
almost like pre med. Most of the guys I know
that spend any time on the teams, they've got so
much credit hours that they roll into a PA program
and they're oftentimes well well ahead of their peers. Uh.
And what's it, Charlie, Uh, demolitions or the property book manager.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
So you're an Echo? What kind of things they teach you?
Echo is it just radio radio type.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Uh. We spent we spent a lot of time on
UH antanna theory in HF, which was funny because hardly
anybody in the modern age is running HF anymore. The
only people that run it with any degree of regularity
or consistency. UH is going to be like Latin America. Uh,
(18:37):
some of the military units down there use it because
they don't have the budgets to run dot com, so
they still use Hfuh. The guys out in Africa, UH,
they'll use HF. But HF is like that's like your
ham radio enthusiasts.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Uh, you know, that's that's all. That's all about the antennas,
all about your gain, all about your d be everything. Yeah.
So I mean, if you remember any of it, you
can probably go take your your hand tests and get
hand licensed.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
So if I, if I so choose to to geek
out of radio waves and all that stuff, But yeah,
that was that was I thought at the time that
the the antenna ethereo and radio wave propagation. I was like,
you got to be like half mad for it to
make sense. It was like abstract art to me because
(19:28):
it had more of an art form than a skill
set to it.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Right right, all right? So you finish finish echo and
now you're seventh group. Does that at BRAG yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Uh yeah. So guys get through, they get their MLS specialty,
and then you've got Robin Sage, which is the big
un W exercise. Uh. And then and then about that
time you get your group designator uh, because that determines
your language. And so seventh group uh. And Spanish. So
Spanish I think six months, four months because it's a cat,
(20:08):
it's not a because you don't have to learn a
different alphabet. I think it was four months, so daily
basically Spanish indoctrination.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
Did you speak any languages before that? I'm sorry, did
you speak any other languages before that?
Speaker 3 (20:24):
I had a little bit of working German because I
took some in high school. But yep, once again means
to the army. Whatever my choice was, because I think
I was like, I'm blonde hair, blue eye, I want
to go to I want to go to tenth group
because they're in Europe in Colorado. And I was like,
and I can speak a little bit of German and
(20:45):
seventh group and Spanish.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
Okay, so how's your Spanish now?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Uh? It's uh, it's in there. It gets rusty, but
usually usually with like a couple of days like it,
those old synapses fire, so it's still in there. I'll
never talk fluent because like term green, go.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Look at me. But I'm from Texas. So you know,
say so. So you get you get through Robin Sage,
you get through all that. You you never had any issues.
Did you have any you know it was, did you
ever hit any point where there's like maybe a doubt
you're not gonna you're not gonna complete this.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Or uh Sut. S Ut was a ball smoker. I
mean that was I just remember that all of the
cadre during the Sut phase were all Ranger scrolled, Ranger
long tap dudes, and they did everything they could to
make it like Ranger School. I just remember, I mean
(21:47):
it was. It was so bad that anytime we stopped,
everyone would fall asleep. So we had to suck in
the patrol base because you had to like grab your
dude next to you if you were if you didn't
succumb to falling asleep, to get him on his feet,
because otherwise you were doing lost lost man patrols because up,
(22:10):
we're down, we're short too. We'll go back to the
last location, somebody sleeping in a hole somewhere, because as
soon it was like right right right uh. And then
and then guys standing standing. You would just be standing
in the woods and then hear that like somebody passed
out on their feet right woke up when they hit
the ground, right right.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That was that was.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
I mean I didn't have any experience with anything like
that in my life. I mean I mean three four
or five days with like no sleep or minimal sleep.
I mean hallucinations. I mean that was.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
That was.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
You would do your ARP and then set in your
your your base defense plan, and then you know, somebody
would be coming over talking about do you see the
Leprechaun in the woods? Now there's no leprechaun, Or there's
a bear. There's a bear, there's no bear, like just
the hallucinations, like I remember, uh vividly, like we were
(23:11):
all Ranger file and I just remember in my mind
seeing a big blonde bimbo, big titted bimbo running across
an open field and I was like, she looks like
she's having fun. Somebody had to grab me and they're like,
what are you doing, dude? I was like you didn't
see the naked women and they're like, no, bro, now
you're drowning. You're drowning. So that was that was a
(23:37):
wake up call. Yeah. Now selection was just selection was
a suck fest. Uh, just I'll do with it. I mean,
it's not I would say the biggest, the biggest, the
biggest determiner that messes guys up in selection. It's it's
(23:59):
all up here, like guys self defeat. And I think
you can look across any anywhere there's a selection, it's
it's it's whatever happens up here, and the little guys
talk themselves out of it. But if you can just
keep moving to the next thing and just whatever, like
oh it wasn't great, but I'm still here and you
can just show up every day, it's it's I mean,
(24:21):
it's physically demanding, but I think I think buds, I
think the Seals their their physical demand level is on
a level that's probably above Uh. But obviously you cannot
run hell week for two years, right right?
Speaker 4 (24:38):
Yeah? I mean Plus, I mean, when when you're talking
water and depth and things like that, you're oxygen your
your physical fitness has to be pretty good, right, So
you get the seventh Group. How many you know how
many new guys are coming in at that time? Good
seventh at least to your your.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
As far as I know, I was, I was one
of like maybe three or four dudes. Uh and and
I was third Battalion, seventh Group, Alpha Company, and they
were next in the hopper to go to Afghanistan. I
was the only I was the only newbie on the
team and then all the rest of the teams. Yeah,
(25:24):
I was.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I was.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
I was definitely wet, like I was the last one
to show up to Alpha Company. If I recall correctly,
there was a couple of guys that were x rays
that had showed up with like a year prior. But
I was like wet, wet, green behind the ears, Like
I showed up and was like Sergeant this and Stargeant
and they're like, shut up, dude, shut up, new guy
(25:46):
in the corner and color. It was basically my instructions
and do whatever, do whatever anyone else in the team
or master you to do. That was kind of the introduction.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
And they're like, stop, so how long were you there
before for you went to your first deployment.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Oh man, I think I showed up I showed up
to a three seven October and I think January. Uh,
it was either December or January. I was in Afghanistan.
It wasn't. It wasn't long like I missed. I missed
their PMT, I missed all the pre deployment training like,
(26:25):
and they were like, oh, great, fucking new guy. So
they like they like real quick, like bone me up
on some stuff. And I think at the time the warrant,
we went and signed out a hum v out of
the motor pool and we went out to like Area
J kind of deal. And he's like, all right, you
gotta drive a hum Vy okay, Like.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
It's not that hard to drive pretty yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah, and they don't go fast enough to really do
any real damage.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
No, no, So so what was that? What was the
tempo like on this first deployment. What was what year
is this.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
This would have been I think this was Laido five
earlier six, Okay, so there wasn't. There wasn't the big
like we were pre big conventional searge. And then I
was out RC east in Ray just north of well,
(27:21):
just north. It was like a ball smoker of a
day drive from Asadabad, like a solid like ten twelve
hours by d MV. I believe. I believe that at
the time we were the furthest North and East firebase
in all of Afghanistan, and we were messiled, Like we
(27:41):
looked across the river and that was Pakistan. There was
a rig one, there was a rig one that separated
us from Pakistan. But yeah, optemper, I mean it was
it was the wild west Man. We basically had. It
was asf the mercenary before they formalized. It was just
(28:03):
it was like we had two hundred and fifty mercenaries
and there were like twelve or thirteen Americans.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
What we are at the time was it pretty pretty
stringent or non existent?
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Well, nobody was out there to check on us, so
we might have we might have done a couple return
to cender on like one oh seven's that got recovered
from cash Olds. But like when we rolled in, we
basically had to sit down a kl league because that's
the fancy term. We had to sit down with all
the village elders and we're like, here's dale. If we
(28:40):
see lights on the hillside at night, we're firing it.
Because the previous team had reported that they would go
in and set up time brockets and time mortars at night.
So we were just like, if you're on the hillside
at night with lights, we're shooting at and that that worked.
That worked for most of our deployment, and I think
the only time that we took anything remotely close to
(29:03):
effective was fourth of July, and that's because there was
a countrywide stand down on no celebratory file fires. And
then it's like every firebase across r C East all
got hit on the fourth of July because they knew
the Americans aren't shooting anything today.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
So were you replaced in another seventh group?
Speaker 3 (29:24):
No, so at the time at the time, because I
think fifth group had their hands tied with Iraq, and
I think fifth group and tenth group were doing rotations
in and out of Iraq and third group and seventh
group were doing flip flopping. So we releave a third
group team and then handed over to a third group team.
(29:50):
Why and how I don't know, but that's that's the
powers that be decided that we're going to do.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
And how how long was this deployment?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Uh, I want to say that was eight or nine months.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Oh wow, it's pretty good.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, it was a good it was a good clip. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
But so so you get there, you have you have
a conversation with the elders. Yeah, you took out a
couple of couple of lights, a couple of sparkly lights
at night, what else, any anything else?
Speaker 3 (30:21):
I mean, it was uh, it was, it was pretty
It was pretty low key like that first deployment. Uh
we I mean, we ran a lot of patrols. We
were very active, We ran the mountains. But that part,
like that part of Afghanistan Operation Red Wings was was
(30:46):
still classified at the time. I remember reading the after
Action and it was it was still a classified document
at the time, so that was still fresh. But that area,
because of the past or the passes in the Pakistan,
it wasn't there, weren't fighters. They weren't trying to fight
because that's how they were getting their resupply. So we
(31:09):
never really we never. It was It was a lot
of intelligence gathering, It was a lot of network set up,
but we really, I mean it was rattling cages and
trying to hunt guys down and it was I mean,
it was pretty It was pretty quiet until uh tenth
group or not tenth group, tenth Mountain showed up. Uh.
(31:30):
And then they basically took over our whole base.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And we were told like a company plus or something,
and then what ended up showing up was a battalion minus.
So well, welcome, welcome boys. Uh. And that was that
was interesting. Then. Of course politics and conventional and soft
we had all kinds of headaches with that. But but
(31:54):
what was really telling was, uh, the bearded ones. Right.
There had been enough I'm of of soft in and
out of Afghanistan that anybody who knew anybody that was
a terrorist knew you did not shoot at the bearded
ones because you would unleash Holy hell. And what you
can't see is the AC one thirty that will rain
(32:15):
damnation from above and the jets would show up out
of nowhere. So don't shoot at the bearded ones. But uh,
it was interesting the tenth the tenth Mountain guys were
getting in the skirmishes constantly. I don't know if that
was just because they were easier pickings or conventional leadership.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Were they doing anything different on their patrols or were
they were they mounted?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Were they I mean they were they were running mounted patrols.
They were doing dismounted patrols. Uh, and they would they
were getting the light contact periodically, nothing that I would
say would classify as like a hardened force until uh,
Operation Mountain Line, the infamous Operation Mountain Line, the almost
(33:03):
like gone calendar every year gets planned in Afghanistan. And
that's where that's Monty got the Medal of Honor. There
was a couple of dudes, it was their scout platoon
and they got sent in because we were supposed to
do this big push operation as part of Operation Mountain Lion,
(33:25):
and those guys. Chris was the squad leader, and that's
that was. That was a that was a very very
interesting ordeal politically, and then just the weird friction that
develops between soft and conventional h And we we knew
(33:46):
what was going on because we heard the TIT call
come in and we were I mean, we were loaded
for bear and we were like, look, we can get
to the base of the hill and we can at
least lay suppressing fire so that the guy's up top.
Because what was reported to us is that there were
two support by fire elements that had dishkas and there
was another two maneuver elements that were probing up to
(34:11):
their CCP or their patrol base and that's I just
saw a reminder for it the other day Monty's Medal
of Honor citation. But yeah, what.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Delta, right, he was in eighteen delta.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
No, he was a tenth mountain guy. Okay, So we
were supposed to split our team and we were supposed
to put half of our guys in with that patrol.
But something fell apart in the planning that the main
element wasn't supposed to move until like forty eight hours
after him, and we were kind of buttonheads with conventional, going,
(34:46):
you're not leaving Americans on top of that hill in
that valley for forty eight hours because even after we
do Afghani math, and because if they say one hundred,
it means twenty or thirty. Well, even after we did
Afghani math, we're like, that valley has confirmed two to
three hundred fighters, Like this is the same area where
(35:07):
Operation Red Wings and all that stuff went down. So
we're like, that's not going to work if we're not,
if guys aren't, if they're moving period of darkness prior
and setting up main element needs to push the next morning.
But that didn't fit because the plan becomes the mission
in the conventional world and anyways, so our leadership was like,
(35:30):
we're not hanging our guys out to dry on this
because this doesn't meet the five you know, the principles
of patrolling, like common senses out the window on this one.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
But that was, yeah, that was that was kind of
a that was an interesting wake up call. We had
a we had a small revolt with our mercenaries. I
just got a knock on my door and it was like, hey,
casually make your way up to the roof. We might
have to fire on on the A. What and it well,
(36:03):
it's it's that it's that Islamist somebody's wife got raped
by someone else, and so the the the merk force
was split on whether they killed the dude or killed
her because Islamic culture. I don't remember all the details,
but basically she was now unclean and and what is it. It's
(36:25):
like you've got to be there's got to be like
three witnesses or something to determine that it's uh the
CRIMEA yeah, right, So they were they were about to
throw down, and we weren't sure if we were going
to get caught in the middle of this, like mutiny
in the ASF and that was kind of We're still
(36:47):
an Indian country, like, but.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Any any high value targets this first.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
I mean the craziest thing, the craziest thing that happened
on that rotation was we found out after is you
know that long skinny arm in Afghanistan that touches China.
We ran a big airlift mission because we got reports
of this like giant cash, and we went up to
(37:15):
retrieve it. And the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing is
the village elder came out and was like, hey, you're
here to pick up your stuff, and we're like sure. Well,
we found out about a week later that it was
Oga's and they were kind of pissed that we went
and recovered it. But it's like, okay, so now we
have intelligence that's not intelligencing, right, so what were you
(37:38):
expecting us to do? We got reports that this giant
cash that's flowing weapons and arms to our area is
and we could just go relieve them of it. And
it was apparently theirs, and they were a little they
were a little but hurt about that. And I was like, oh,
like this was a lot of education from like a
(37:58):
bureaucracy even in war and the weird intelligence communicate, like
they never talked down to us, but we would send
everything up and they would never confirm reporting because you
know that's the agency, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right hand talk to each other, you know.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Now, uh No, it was a it was I mean, honestly,
it was a pretty low key, low key first deployment.
We we ended up doing a big combined deal up
into cam Dash. I think it was the cam Dash
basically where the Russians lost the war. And that was
(38:40):
that was interesting. The third group team prior to us
had tried to do a helo insert and I guess
as they were getting ready to set down, a cow
blew up. So they were like, confirm mine's on the
farm fields up there. So war in phil was out.
So we ended up doing a big long ATV convoy
(39:02):
at dark and even at dark, I mean, I now
know why the Russians lost the war because it's you
followed the river and it was sheer cliff face, sheer
cliff face. So all they all they'd have to do
is literally push rocks onto you if they need to.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
That's a that's a killbox. Yeah, they catch catch you
in there. You're done.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
And and the next morning we we went looking because
we had reports that there was a guy up there.
We got into a village, somebody took a pop shot
at us and then and then the villagers were like, no, no, no,
it's it's fireworks. And We're like, I don't think so.
But whatever they were shooting at they missed. A little
(39:45):
while later we ended up, uh, somebody in town. We
did some you know, we did that snoop and poop
secret squirrel thing, and somebody in town knew something and
was gonna take us to some place. And strangely enough,
bit by bit, our entourage started getting smaller and we
were like, that's suspicious. They know something that we don't. Uh,
(40:06):
and then you know, snap, some pops start zipping overhead
and uh. That was That was probably the first real
like ass pucker moment that I'd had the whole the
whole deployment, because all I remember was the captain was like,
make comma, we need e casts and I sat down
behind a piece of cover started, uh, you know at
(40:27):
the time, the old beer can antenna. You flip this,
flip this, flip this, get get comms. And then next
thing I know, I'm looking around and I'm all alone
and snap, snap some pops and I was like, oh boy,
this is great. So I just remember listening. I was like, okay,
that's a K fire. Okay, that's M four, So I
need to move cautiously towards the M four file fire.
(40:51):
Uh and you know, bound peek my head up trying
to find my guys. And yeah, that was a that
was an interesting one. By the time I showed up,
apparently everybod that need killing was dead and it was
time to leave the mountain, And then tenth Mountain basically
got RPG and machine gun fired the whole way back. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (41:12):
But so how was your with antennas in the mountains?
I mean, they don't normally play very well together. How
was your how's your comms?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
That's that's when the insanity of the common world set in,
because that's the only it's You could stand in one
spot and you couldn't talk across, you couldn't talk ten
feet away from you. But if you took two side
steps then everyone could hear you to include up on
top of the ridgeline. And it was like, I give up.
(41:47):
I have no idea how it works. It just likes
to work occasionally like SATCOM because of the angles in
the valleys, like a lot of times you weren't really
getting an angle to the bird and so it was
kind of like in the blind hope somebody hears me,
but nice.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
So you finished this deployment back to Brag, right, how
long were we back to Brag before your next deployment?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Oh, crimeny. If we weren't in Afghanistan at the time,
then we were bouncing down to Latin America, So we
weren't back very long before we were in Peru and
that was mostly just training mission stuff. J Setz. We
got back from that and then it was another Afghanistan rotation,
went back second time and then we're we were out
(42:34):
of Asadabad and that was That was a weird That
was a weird time. I think at that point we
were I think that was the first administration of the
Obama administration, and there was a lot of hand tying.
And then because the ASF that were SF trained had
(42:57):
been disbanded and we were doing this nation build thing,
we were supposed to use A and A and the
restrictions was you weren't allowed to do operations unless you
had a partner force, and at the time, that team
didn't have a partner for us because we were right
next door to an O G. A base and they
had a big partner force and they weren't sharing, So
(43:20):
we were like stuck on our hands for most of
that deployment. One there's a there's a couple of guys
that was it cop keating and one seventy third got
into that big firefight that was up up the valley
that stirred everyone's uh, everyone's you know, everyone got all
(43:41):
anxious about that one.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
I mean the eight or nine months or how long
was this?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, this is another eight or nine month deal. What
was the I don't know. Probably the craziest one that
happened is that we ended up doing because we were
trying to figure out how to work around this guard force.
If you didn't have A and A attached, you weren't
supposed to be able to do things. And we, I mean,
we quickly found out that most of the A and
(44:07):
A and even the commandos were worthless because they were
coming from a different region. We spent like two days
on a flat range and couldn't get anybody zeroed, and
then we realized that they were treating them like aks,
so they were stripping the gas rings out because you
could sell it because they were made out of ten,
so their guns wouldn't work. And then we had the
(44:28):
medic go through and do an eye test. Half of
them were legally blind. So we're like, okay, this is
our guard force. So we started. If you remember the
twenty five meter quall that had all the little different
shapes that were supposed to represent at distance, sure that
(44:49):
was too much for these guys. So we literally were
putting out the full size E type at twenty five
meters and if they could get it, yep, if they
could get three on that, they were there. But they
would go to lunch and pray and come back and
who you thought you had zeroed was no longer zeroed.
And then we found out that they would just stack
all of their guns in a corner and grab a
(45:12):
rifle when they came back. Like okay, right, working this, yeah,
working with those guys. I still we tried. We tried
to do a night vehicle patrol and we weren't out
of the gate but ten fifteen minutes. And what's coming
(45:34):
across the comms is that there's been a wreck and
one of our assigned forces is part of the wreck
and we're like what, so whole convoy turns around and somehow,
and I still don't understand physics how they managed to
do it. But like the parapets on the top of
(45:55):
like a castle where it's got the like square cutouts,
well the side of the road they had built that.
Somehow the A N A driver had perched like he
had driven up and the and the humvy was like
teetering on that like parapet wall, and we're like, how
do you how do you do that? So after action,
(46:19):
well he was high, Oh great, well you let him drive.
Well we were all high too, because they would all
they would all smoke hashish before going on mission. So like, okay,
now we got to run through and like white light
everybody's eyes to see who's right was?
Speaker 4 (46:37):
Was there no option to give them a case?
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Uh? We we we fought. What what we were told
is this standardization thing that getting getting a K's was
it was an optics thing. And then the other one
was trying to get seven thirty nine mL through American
(47:03):
channels too, And I guess the decisions higher than me
decided that was not a good idea. So they all
got m fource because then they could just fall in
on American supply lines and parts and but I don't
know more decisions that I don't understand, but that I
mean that that trip was multi multi oda big objectives.
(47:28):
I mean, we tried to hit we tried to hit
a training compound. Uh, we got shot out a little bit,
but we got we got snowed in. Uh. That was weird.
We ended up we ended up setting a couple of
buildings on fire because we went from early spring to rain,
sleep snow, so it turned into a blizzard. Uh. And
(47:51):
none of us, of course, because it was supposed to
be a terrorist training compound, none of us were packing,
you know, snibbl So we're puddle on around on fires
and somehow they managed to. I mean, this is the
greatest active trust I've ever seen out of a pilot,
because you heard the bird and it was just this
(48:11):
big shadow up through the clouds in the mist, and
the CCT was literally just sitting on the ground going
roll left stop, roll rearward stop, and he just that
pilot just over the course of like ten minutes, just
finally sat down and got us all loaded up and frozen.
(48:32):
We're soaked head to toe and it's you know, we've
got snow coming down. So we got off of that one.
A couple of weeks later we went and did another
big mass clearing operation that was strangely relatively uneventful until
the birds landed. And I remember, I remember, we're all
(48:52):
running to the birds. And if you've ever seen like
a dry farm filled after they've harvest, and it starts
to rain, and it like poofs until the rain well
it wasn't rain because there wasn't a cloud in the sky,
and it was like why is And they they were
all on the ridge line and just hoping to you know,
(49:12):
catch a bird, put a bird down because like it
looked like it was raining. We were just launching, you know, voluntary,
hoping to hit somebody or something. They got lucky. One
of one of the guys that was getting picked up
on one of the s O positions, he got in
the bird and turned just as like a random lucky
(49:35):
round caught him just above the side plate. So next
thing you know, we're flying back because we're all we
crammed into one bird. The blackhawks they take off and
then and then it comes through coms that one of
the guys got shot, so we all divert to I
don't even remember what the base was, but then they
(49:57):
get him into the FST so we can crossload the bird.
Like we didn't even know everything that was going on
and what had happened until we sat down and redid
the bump plan. But yeah, I mean that was that
was that one.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
How many deployments did you do in total?
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I did two to Afghanistan and one to iraq Uh
and that was while I was a Green Seer. And
then I did the contract thing for a while and
bounce back to Afghanistan like six or seven more times.
But okay, I went and did that. I went did
that fun little C three seven thing, and we did
the CQB stuff, and then we did one We did
(50:40):
one trip, or I was a part of one trip.
They did several, but I was a part of one
and it was right on the end of OIF and
Operation New Dawn. We made We made the BBC. We
made the BBC because apparently we trapped squirters off of
one target uh and we the is SR platform couldn't
(51:02):
identify who was who, so we just rolled into the
town and started plucking dudes off the street at four
am because it's four am. What are you doing?
Speaker 4 (51:11):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (51:12):
Guilty, but hey, we know bad guys showed up and
you look guilty because you're on the street at four
a m. So we'll let we'll let the we'll let
the interrogators figure out who's who. Well, what had come
across the BBC like a day later as a rogue
military element was uh capturing military age males uh off
(51:36):
the road in this little village, and we're wasn't us?
Wasn't us? So?
Speaker 4 (51:45):
Yeah, so having joined when you did, and kind of
you know, you know, I don't want to put words
in the mouth, but kind of why you did right
in then and post nine to eleven, two decades later,
you're out, you know, you've moved on from the military.
How do you view our engagement in all of that
(52:07):
in the Middle East? Now? Kind of that hindsight view?
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, well, I mean, and that's the tricky thing, right
is hindsight's always twenty twenty. And I don't know, like
I mean, there's so many conspiracy theories and rabbit holes
that I don't have time to like dive down. Could
it be argued that we didn't have good judge justification
to be in Afghanistan and Iraq, I would say yes,
(52:33):
knowing what I know now and with what's come to air, Yeah,
I think the justifications a little thin. But I wasn't
the dude making the call in those decisions, and I
have to assume at the time that those decisions were
based on solid intelligence. You and I both know that
combat and war is not you don't have all of
(52:54):
the facts. Oftentimes, you were making decisions based off of
minimal information that has great impact, and once that rounds
out of the tube, you can't recall it. It's rounds
out of the tube. Fire a better round next time. Sure,
So yeah, I don't know. I mean, we can't take
(53:14):
it back. You know. Does it diminish does it diminish
the sacrifice and dedication of the three percent who served? No,
not at all. And I think I think that of
the you know, the three percent of the nation as
it's quoted, that did serve. We've seen a lot of
(53:36):
the world and I think that, you know, there's a
lot of stuff Afghanistan, Iraq that doesn't get talked about.
You know, it's it's hard to have conversations with people
have no idea what that extremist Islamic culture is, Like
sitting in front of computers and watching beheading video after
beheading video after beheading video, because you're trying to figure
(53:59):
out is this one of your sources? Is this one
of your h VT's. You're trying to do pid and
you've got a stack of CDs that got smuggled to you,
and now you've got to roll through all of them,
like and that's like, that's mind boggling all of its own.
The just how apathetic that that whole thing is, like
(54:22):
sharpening it on a rock, right, Yeah, And that's normal.
That's normal culture for them, the home of the blatant
homosexuality that's all across the Middle East, especially in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (54:35):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (54:35):
You know, it was always a rock paper scissors, like
flip a coin to if you had to go get
one of your interpreters at two am, because you always
knocked very loudly and announced yourself because someone would come
to the door sweaty. And it's not because they were
playing drums, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (54:55):
In this series, we've heard a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Yeah, it's it's so normal place over there the pedophilia
like common and you tell that to people at the
States and you're and they just don't and you're like,
that's commonplace over there. One of the probably one of
the more one of the more stuck with me was
(55:20):
there was a little girl that got brought in and
she was scalded right up to her like armpits uh,
and it was something something I don't remember the story,
but we had an FST at the time because of
tenth tenth Mountain had shown up, and so we sent
the little girl with FST and the interpreter because they
(55:43):
were another point of collection for intelligence because medcaps you
start getting history where you've been, how'd you get sick?
So you get intelligence out of that, well, out of
that conversation. She was pushed into a boiling pot of
water and she went to catch yourself like you do
when you fall, and like second third degree burn all
(56:05):
the way up both arms like and that and and
nobody of the Afghanis had issue with that.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
Was she was she by chance pushed because someone was
getting ready to kick in the door?
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh? Was she pushed into? No? That was that was
just callous behavior because of how they treat women and children.
Speaker 4 (56:28):
Over there because we we had we had another guy
in this series told a story of a very similar
situation where the girl because they were getting ready to
kick in the door in order to detract right, So,
oh my god, my daughter's hurt. Right, So now now
your focus has moved away from what you were getting
ready to kick in the door for.
Speaker 3 (56:47):
They know, they know that Americans are squeamish about violence
to children and women, and so yeah, commonplace, commonplace to
hide weapons and arms with women. Uh. At one point
it was the cell phone stuff. They would hide it
on their kids, they would hide it on their wives.
(57:09):
Like they're just very callous at human life. Like I think,
and I don't think i'd be off on a limb
is that, like livestock has a higher value to them
than human lives do. So there's it's it's a mindset
that I don't understand with. It doesn't jive with how
I was brought up and kind of Western Christian culture.
(57:32):
I think we have a different value of life than
what they do. I mean, here's here's here's one of
those like haha, but like haha, kind of as we
had one of the local elders, he's on wife number
twelve or whatever, right, and none of them have gotten pregnant,
(57:53):
so we kind of need the dude's influence. We're like, hey,
you know what, will have her checked out and make
sure she's good bride young. Of course, he's like ancient
and we've already discussed the pedophilia thing. But anyways, Hymen's intact.
Come to find out, he's been screwing all of his
wives in the ass because that's so ingrained because of
(58:16):
the homosexuality.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
We heard that same story on another episode, so I'm
one of and I think the other guy was from
Tenth Mountain, so I'm wondering if I think he was.
I'm wondering if you guys crossed paths.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
It's possible, It's possible, but yeah, I mean it's there.
These stories come up all the time. We have one
of those what is it, it's the Antolian Shepherd Kingles
or whatever. One of them we had nicknamed or the
team prior had nicknamed Poppy or or Poppy and Bernie. Well,
(58:50):
Bernie got Bernie's nickname because they were basically trying to
roast the dog over a fire. So Bernie the name stuck,
and they they can't stand dogs, which is why most
of the firebases over there we always had dogs. I mean,
it was not uncommon for one of the kingles to
come back and they're dragging like the guard forces dinner
(59:14):
which was half a goat, and then ten minutes later
you get the knock knock us to like you owe
us money for a goat, and we're like what what goat?
Speaker 4 (59:24):
Fox?
Speaker 3 (59:24):
You know he's having a heyday because he's like, I
got free dinner, right. But yeah, I mean just it's
not a it's not a culture that with what I've
seen that I I hate that we lost so many
American lives trying to now hindsight kind of trying to
(59:46):
force democracy on but I I I don't. I don't
have a lot of respect for a lot of the culture.
Are there some good ones over there, Yeah, and I
think a lot of organizations have tried to pull some
of those guys back, But by and large, it's not
(01:00:07):
a culture that that we have a lot of similarity with.
And it's kind of the question comes up, why were
we there?
Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
But it doesn't it doesn't diminish the sacrifice or the
bonding or you know, that world experience that that's a
that's a very interesting and historical part of the world.
So right, but we're never going to be done over
there because of the mindset. Uh Uh. Lawrence of Arabia
(01:00:38):
is an excellent movie. So that whole campaign, and then
they finally win the campaign and they revert right back
to tribalism and who's getting control of this and who's
getting control of that now? And you know, is it
could it be argued that our presence in Afghanistan unified
some of these organizations, Yeah, because it becomes enemy of
(01:01:01):
my enemy as my friend all Kada Taliban. The HIG
doesn't really get talked about, but in the early ways
of Afghanistan, the HIG was a separate but when we
showed up, they all banded together, uh, to fight the
you know, the jihad against the westernization.
Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
So well, when you continue generation at the generation of
of a almost an entire society that can't read or write, right,
So they're they're the only thing that they know is
what they've been taught. Yeah, what's been shoved down their throats.
They have no ability to go out and discover things
for themselves and be able to determine is what they're
(01:01:42):
being taught true or are they being fed lives right?
And when that that continues generation of generation, you're never
going to get any change.
Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
Well, and look, I think there's I think there's enough
hours that be that would like to see certain regions
continue to be destabilized because like Afghanistan is a giant
lithium reserve. There's a lot of precious metals and rubies, sapphires, emeralds,
like they've got like half that area of Afghanistan, and
(01:02:11):
Pakistan apparently produces counterfeits of such high quality that it
takes a really keen eye to spot the difference. Well,
I mean there's that there's a lot of like the
timber smugglers were our favorite sources timber smuggling. They would
(01:02:32):
run timber, you know, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's like there's
timber of all things. Well, and you know there, I
mean there's stuff that comes in down through China. I
mean just trying to like get fuel delivered. Half of
it would be water. No matter like you banned stuff routinely,
anything that ran overland, uniforms, equipment, like anything sensitive would
(01:02:57):
have to get airlifted because you could not send that
overland because it would disappear. Right, So there's probably there's
bizarres in Pakistan and China probably that have sold a
cus and every camel plattern we've had for years. Well
it fell off the truck thing.
Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
Sure, sure, So any any other stories, any any other
information you want to sure you want to know.
Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
I mean, this is this is one of those things.
We could probably continue to scratch at it and pull
more and more and more, but uh, you know where
I'm sitting. We got I got about twenty years of
experience in and around that area, and we'll just be
scratching the surface.
Speaker 4 (01:03:41):
Okay, all right, Well I appreciate you coming on. Well
let me get this last point. What what made you
finally decide to hang it up and say I'm done?
Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
I think I was so tired. Yeah, I just the
the special operations world is hard because of the op tempo.
And then when you just look at the chronic stress
and the demands and the continue continue to continue, I
think I just you know, you start breaking shoulders, start
(01:04:16):
tearing hamstrings. That constant stress load they get, you know,
the alistatic load, the operator syndrome. That stuff's getting found
out about now the blast blast trauma, and then like
none of us sleep, right, I think I just hit
my point of like I don't know that I don't
have any I don't have any gas left in the tank, right,
(01:04:38):
And that was a that was a couple of year,
like very cerebral conversation because I loved being a Green Beret,
but the thing I loved was probably killing me inside
because I like, you know, because I just look back
and it's taken me the better part of ten years
to redevelop my own personal identity outside of the uniform.
(01:05:00):
I mean that was a big part. Eighteen to just
over thirty, I was a Green Beret.
Speaker 4 (01:05:07):
Women, and I had this conversation with my wife and
a lot of people. I mean, eighteen is such an
impressionable age, right, So anything that happens in that eighteen
to twenty one, almost eighteen to twenty five of your
life is with you for the rest of your life.
So I mean, because your your brain is still developing,
especially as men, you know, because we develop a little
bit slower than women, were so impressionable at that age
(01:05:30):
that anything you're taught, man is going to be with
either the rest of your life.
Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
So yeah, it was just time. It was time to
hang it up, man, it was time to hang it up.
Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
So alrighty sir, well, I thank you for coming on.
That's good stuff so I appreciate it. Hang on, we'll
talk on the other side, all right.
Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Thanks Rob.
Speaker 5 (01:06:00):
Still By span By spun Bad
Speaker 4 (01:06:15):
Star sp
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