3rd Ranger Batt & JSOC Joint Medical Augmentation Unit Medic | Mike Chavaree | Ep. 291

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Coberts a Spionage The Team House with your Hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park.

Hey everyone, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety one of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park and tonight our guest on the show is Mike Shavery. He served in a Third Ranger Battalion as a medic where I knew him back in the day, and then he went on had a great career as a special operations medic, including service in the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit and retired as a Sergeant major. We're really excited to talk to Mike Tonight. Really been looking forward to this

Hey, thanks guys, and I apologize I couldn't be there in person. I really wanted to be, but we just moved into the South up in Maine and it's been a little crazy.

So yeah, next time, You're welcome here anytime. So, Mike, I'm going to ask you what I asked most of our guests about their upbringing, if you tell us a little bit about sort of like how you grew up and like what that path was that took you towards eventually Ranger Battalion.

Sure, so I didn't come from a military background that I didn't have family in the military. For the most part. We grew up here in Maine, most of my family in a twenty thirty mile radius, but grown up through uh, you know, elementary school and and and then beyond. I was a kid at Rose Plane Army in the woods and had camouflage passed down from friends and stuff like that, so it just kind of seemed like it would be interesting. I didn't have any knowledge from anybody else or anything

So you are a diesel mechanic when nine to eleven hits, what happened for you after that?

Yeah, so I got to call pretty much right as right after it happened, and I had to report up to Bangor for Operation over Legal. I think this was kind of before they dubbed it Operation of Legal, but they did a gate guard for all the National Guard Reserve training sites, and this is the Bangor Internet report that we were there.

Securing, if you will, And so I did that for.

Oh, I don't know about a year, So it is one hundred and seventy nine day orders and then they'll put you on orders again so they don't have to pay the full benefits. Looking back, those probably kind of shoddy, but nonetheless, one of the first news articles I saw back then was, you know, Third Range of Battalion had two casualties stone side for Edmonton, like right away helicopter incident, and then also you know, they conducted a combat jump

To go active. I enjoyed the.

Active lifestyle, even though it was the National Guard, I still enjoyed the uniform stuff and doing all that, and so I think as soon as I could get my conditional release, I set my goals right on Third Range of Battalion specifically. And it's kind of cool warning too, but that's like right around the time black Hawk Down came out, and it was kind of impressionable at the time. So I figured, if I was going to do something,

So yeah, thinking keeping in mind the track for combat medics, you had to go to your conventional combat medic a T after you were blessed off at basic.

Yeah, that's sixteen week long.

And like I said, I didn't even want to be a medics so and I didn't know anything about medicine, didn't really care for it too much. So did the whole sixteen week program. And you know, as we discussed going on further as throughout my career, I realized how much of a complete waste of time doing the sixteen Whiskey program was but thankfully now they've kind of straightened

And I joined for you know, I point that route for a reason.

But I was a little bit disappointed with that, but I think they straightened that out nowadays too. So yeah, the whole sixteen weeks was pretty much I was considered prior service at a T, so my experience was vastly different because that was already AI, a qualified or whatever. So I had weekends off and we're allowed to wear civilian clothes. So it was the experience of it really wasn't that. I met a lot of great friends that

When you say that the course wasn't that good, I'm assuming it's because they were preparing you for any job in a hospital that you could have in the military. So you know, you like some time in labs, you know, with labs, with radiology, with a lot of stuff that just was not applicable. Is that correct?

Yeah, that is correct.

And I think a big problem that it had, and you know, I think that they might still have to deal with today, is the credentialing piece.

So you have to be at least an anti basics and.

So I think that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because you know, a medic Combat Medican Army is well beyond anti basic. But I think the reason why they wanted to do that is as folks transition out of the military, uh, you know, they were going on unemployment and you know, they had nothing to really fall back on, and so having this certification I

Yeah, so you finished that and then it's off to Airborne School and RIP.

Right, Yeah, that's correct.

So we were training up. I did have Airborne. I have to think back as several years ago, but I'm pretty sure I had Airborne locked into my contract. And at the time we had AKO and I pulled up AKO and it said I was destined for port Hoods. So I was. I was ready to jump out of window at that time. But they had this little group that could volunteer for RIP. So I'm not sure if I volunteered for RIP at I think I volunteered at Airborne school, but we were like preparing for it at

So when when we were catching up the other day, we kind of realized that we probably went through the same RIP course in two thousand and three.

Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we did, and it was looking back, it was a pretty rigorous course. I think we only had twenty five twenty six people make it, but it was it was pretty rugged. I think it's relative because at the time, I don't think I did anything.

Hard, but you know, going through that, it was it was quite a tough. That's so glad they've changed it now.

Now it's more of an assessment selection, so you're learning something because even in rip, you know, I went through and it was great, and I finally got my tanbaret and put on my Ranger painties with my little teeny legs, but I really didn't know how to be a ranger. And so you know, in today's uh, you know, rafts one and two, I think they're vastly more prepared than we were at the time. Yeah back then, and I think a lot of people even use rips his way

But that was a lot of folks and in the first.

Few days I think we got released one hundred probably, but there's some notable folks that were in our class, so I think that's why we probably were in the same plat.

I So get to Ranger Battalion that summer, tell us about what, well, no, I'm sorry, you have to go to first. You have to you got to go to Soccam before that.

Yeah, so Balckham was h Man. That was something else.

So you know, you're at RIP and everything is very indoctrinated, no fund and tender, but it's it's very you know, Ranger, you're running around, you're yelling, you're quantity easier. I mean, it's very very strict. And then you get to sock them and like the first day I'm snapping to break rest and you know, we had some stef instructors and stuff and they're just like whoa you here.

It's quite a culture chain.

But we also had masters Gardant Black, Perry Black retired now a wonderful human being. So he would be looking, you know, from the back to see how we're reacting, because he was extremely strict. I was going through the course, so it was kind of like it's like having a dad that's that's that's really disciplined, and then I'm mom, that's laid back. So the guys, you know, I agree

SOCCA is like very very academically rigorous, isn't it.

Yeah, it's it's one of the it's the hardest I think to this day, minus probably static on jump Master. It's it's one of the hardest like mentally courses I've ever done. So and it's very like you know, math and pharmacology. And I think the big difference between that and it's the sixty eight whisky course too, is the sixty eight whiskey course is more of an algorithm, pretty

And and trauma care was going through a lot of changes at that time too.

Right, Oh, it was, Oh, it's unbelievable. It was so Like I mentioned before, tourniquits were taboo. I did the combat life stave a course when I was in the National Guard, and it was like elevates your arm and put ice on it, and then it was like and then maybe a tourniquit and then if you put a tourniquite on, prepared to lose the limb. And we've gone

So you make it through the course. Now you're going back to the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. You're leaving the SF world behind for a while. Yeah what uh so? Yeah, tell us about that culture shock a bit like landing, you know, in in range for battalion and you're a medic, so you're you know, what were the some of the stupid terms we used to use, like load density, moss or whatever. But I mean, obviously a critical part of

Yeah, No, I actually had a great experience there. As soon as I came over to the right, back to

But my reception was was actually pretty good.

Yeah, so tell us about that deployment and you know, becoming a real deal ranger medic what the job entails.

Yeah, So that one was actually pretty lethargic because I was really new. So I went to bolog to be like an outstation, the Italian age station medic or whatever, because at that time I hadn't done for Senior Valve's about like nothing. So I went over there. But I was lucky enough to be around people like Colonel Cottwall another great Americans, so I continue to learn. But on the flip side, there was the infantry, so there was

Oh go ahead, I was just going to say that. I think part of that is that the medics really are sort of like it's like a different level of professionalism as opposed to breaking in a brand new rangeer private is like an E three, Like you guys have kind of demonstrated your capacity to learn a little bit more, and it's a bit of a more adult environment, like rightly, So.

Yeah, I think that's that's definitely true.

We did have a few outlier medics who somehow made it through the stalking force and then struggled learning how to be a ranger. And they know, they did really well in the third Infantry Division or at eighty second, and we kind of found ways to get them to move on, but they just won a good fit. But I think when people were a good fit, they stuck around, did really well. You had mentioned Tony Moore, you know, on our pre call here, another big mental of mine

So I got sent home really from.

My first deployment just kind of flow anyway, because like I said, I was kind of dying age station, just kind of like a fill in medic or whatever. So

You were working at the age station. I'm curious because you mentioned the e MT basic, the MTB training, which is basically just training people to stay light, scoop and sweep right and uh and combat medics can and medics of all you know in all branches and especially more isolate stations will do a lot more than even an EMTP will be allowed to do.

Oh sure, So it's this.

Thing of being overtrained and underqualified. Were you surprised by some of the stuff that like you were training in and some of the stuff that you were doing.

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Yeah, I think that's soking for They did a phenomenal job preparing us for that through the years of life tissue training, simulations and stuff like that. And also we did rotations at major tronasatilities. So I went down Jacksonville, Florida and did everything you can imagine deliver babies. Did you know trauma on the roadside? Did trauma uh in the O R so in the er? So you know, seeing a real human being with these injuries really kind

Became my hyper focus, I believe.

Yeah, yeah, I think the beauty of even combat medics depending on where they're assigned and uh range of medics. For sure, if you're trained to do something, you can do it underneath you know, a PA or physician. You know.

We had Ray Stirling, John.

Dietro from a while, we had some Ethan Miles, all people that are you know, very well known in the community. Uh, and they would teach us and feel comfortable with us doing it. So that yeah, it was a little overwhelming at first, but you know, as you get more comfortable and you do it through repetition, it becomes a little bit no no, no.

So you go to ranger school because you're a combat medic, you're going to learn this ship too. Sure after after getting out of there, do you go to a platoon At that point yeah.

So the day I graduated and came back up to the battalion, I was approached by the Recue. He was a squad leader at the time. Eventually the been target and I was directed to try out for the Reky platoons. So I went straight from Rangers Deployment, Rangers school pretty much straight into the Recuy platoon. So, and I think that was around the time it was it was first being developed. So yeah, Ray Schnyder was in there for a little bit. So I went in there and kind

Recky platoons were you mentioned it's just get started. Wrecky platweens work were a pretty new thing around that.

Time, right, Yeah, they were. And I think in our case, you know, of course I'm biased, but sometimes that you know, I think some of the Wrekkie and maybe the other battalions it was a place where they may have put underperformers, But for ours, between our Wrekky and Sniper, I think that was one of our top And I'm not saying that I was not the best medic, I can tell

I was there. I was there when they stood up the Reki section and I was in sniper section, and uh, same story, man, I was nothing special. I was not the best sniper by any stretch of the imagination, but around incredibly talented people. And actually I was talking to somebody, uh in the rekie section today who reached out to me. Do you remember Royce?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's.

Still a good man, funny funny catching up with him. A lot of good guys in in Reki, man, a lot of really good cats that, as you point out, went out and they're still doing amazing things.

Yeah, no, and you know they still are doing amazing things. So it was another eye opener too. So, you know, I'd done this medicine thing and I thought it was great, and I was just kind of figuring out how to do that.

And then now they're like, you know, how, this is how you do it in this environment.

And also here's camera equipment, here is this, and there's technical stuff and so it's just a new trade and I enjoyed with it. It worked with my nerd side quite a bit. I struggled a little bit with i think forming relationships with some of the folks on the teams, because I think they had all come from prestigious teams and squads throughout the battalion, and I'm like this new guy that was nothing about anything. So I kind of struggled to see where I would kind of fit within

And then when you were there, because they are so small, were you basically a wreck a troop and then had the initial duties of being the medic.

Or was yeah, yeah, it wasn't so fortunate to just be a medic.

So we had to do just pretty much.

Everything everybody else did. You did, you know, the calm and stuff, the jungle two nine or two, setting up antennas, sending stuff over h p W, which is all like ARKA stuff, right because you use the A tax system and do uh everything of what we were trying to do back then. But but it was it was very good. I think what I really liked too, is they invested a lot with you know, the platoons started at the team stargeants that were there at the time, They invested a lot in our training.

They got us pulled away from.

Doing you know, a lot of the battalion common tasks that we would have to do, and they really made our training paramount And we did t SC training with the cameras, we did the you know, the tracking course, like we we went all in vehicle in addiction stuff and if there was a chance we would do it on our deployment, we were doing it here. And once again I was fortunate enough to have n c O s that we paid out there until we you know, couldn't mess it up and and so I was very thankful for that.

So it was it was a pretty it was a really good experience.

So what was the next apployment?

Uh, all right, so Afghanistan? So I deployed Afghanistan with Reki. We were split between Salerno and Bob Shapman.

We did that. Yeah, yeah, so that was the next apployment.

It was kind of you know, you know, as w Reki back then, I think we were kind of trying to find where we fit. We did TTRS, which I thought was was pretty cool. So we would go out there and looking back now, I can't believe how crazy that it downs, but you know, we would get into the car, not even up arms. It's got tin of windows. And you know, I had a beard. I was darkish anyway, and I tell you, with the full beard, I fit the part. But then we had some folks that did not.

Do you remember, Mike, there was one kid. He was so young he couldn't grow a beard, so he bought like a Hollywood beard that glued into place.

Yeah.

And when you say CTRS, when you say CTRS, you're talking about close target reconnaissance, right, so just to give the.

Leaders, oh yeah, sorry, I forget about that. So we'd either do aerial rekis or we do a CTR or the vehicles and stuff. And it was also good too, because we were pretty much unsupervised from the battalion. You know, we had our heath sergeants or whatever, and you kind of, you know, dealt with that. And I thought that was good too, because that provided us with a little lot of that top cover, we could really focus on what we had to do.

But like I said, the missions were somewhat slow.

And it is what it is for the time and where we're at, so but it's still a good experience.

I remember you guys working the isolation piece too for the direct action missions.

Yep, yep. We would go and do you know near Syde Park started security, almost basic ranger school type stuff. A lot of our guys were trained with Preacher. I did breaching stuff as well, you know, and then eventually we had Chane Eynes, so we'd go in there and do you know sniper. We'd even sometimes go up there with you guys, especially me as a medics sometimes I'd

So now you're really warning how to be a Ranger in combat. Also, all of these new skills that are coming into Ranger Battalion for the first time. I mean, cruising around in low visibility vehicles with beards is not something that rangers did up until this point, right, it was antithetical.

I think a year and a half before that, I had a high end tight and Stein boots, so that was it was very different. But I think that could probably be attributed to I think Star Major Birds at the time. I think he really instituted a lot of things within the regiment. And like I said before, we had a lot of folks. We even by the time I got there, had a couple of deployments and years in battalions, So it it was it worked out really well.

How did how did the line not necessarily the guys on the line, but for instance, also the senior enlisted I think you know who had been there since the late nineties and then all of a sudden, like you long hairs are out there running a lot like being hooligans and brigands. Like did you guys get pushed back from like particularly like the senior enlisted on the lines.

For sure, Yeah, especially when you're a state side. So we did the It was like ninety days before we would deploy, we'd have cirt throwing our beards and stuff, and it would be so much like and looking back, it's like, dude, like I didn't make it up, Like I'm not I'm just doing told you, I don't know why you're going me, but it was I.

Remember getting kicked out of the the on post gym on Fort Benning. Yeah, like you like that, get the fuck out.

Yeah. We'd come back from a range and we'd be in the you know, the uniform beds with the bell throw up here or whatever, and no name tags or nothing. You have a beard, and you know some of the conventional folks would your commander.

No, you didn't shave, and I got like three months of beer, right right, yes, you know I.

Got Yeah, it's my four o'clock shadow.

Yeah, we had a little bit of that, but not too much. Definitely battalion there.

Yeah, I imagine because there were still like that's early enough that there were still rangers there, especially like senior guys who felt that, uh like patrol based activities was the ranger mission and that they were the best light inventory in the world and all the c QB and all this other stuff was bullshit.

Yeah, And I think as a medic, you know, we're we're very thought provoking for the most part. So you know, if you're going to give me, if you're going to tell me what I need to do, or you're gonna tell me.

This is a standard.

I immediately exumin it and try to like exploit it and figure out why that's the standard what I'm doing. And there was some instances where we had a start Major I think he was the first hard and then became the star Major Glass name rhymes with Pelek, And so I'd be in like the field uniform with the field authorized field boots and my locker is in the headquarters h A C three seventy five.

So I got, like, you know, my boots on because we were.

Doing tracking school and they told us, you know where non standard boots or whatever, and he's like, now You've got to change the boots. And I'm like, put my Like my car is right there. I'm just wearing these boots to my car and I'm in the field. Had to change into Bellville's. So I get the Bellville's on, I put my non standard boots in the car, drive out to the site, and put my other boots on. So there's a lot of things like that that it's like,

Yeah, yeah, Nick was our first sergeant at the time.

Yes he was, And that was some of it. You know, it's the time and place for that. And yeah, I guess that was wrong. I shouldn't have put my field boots on twenty feet in my car. So I lived the rest of my career that way.

And then how did you guys not end up hitting it? Because because this is after my time, so I had heard, and you guys can correct this. That snipers a little salty because Recky got stood up and then basically took the sniper's only mission in addition to all their others and their gear and whatnot, like that didn't happen.

No, I think now, I think we had a really good dynamic, and and me as a medic, obviously snipers don't have a medics, so I would cover down on their training, and even while we were deployed, I'd hang out with them.

So I don't think we really had it.

I don't think you could have told the difference, to be honest, to grough out there in training event, other than you know, Jack being out there with a long gun, and maybe I didn't.

You couldn't really tell the difference.

And over time I believe it got like more formalized into like a single company or like they were much closer together snipers and RECKI yep, it did.

It became. I think it was after my time, but it became like that special people team or specialify company or whatever. I don't I'm not sure where they're at now, but yeah, no, I think that probably helped a little too.

Thinking back on it, I don't remember any any like bad blood about it, because the the reason why it happened was because r RD was getting sucked up into all the missions and that left the battalions without a reconnaissance element, and so the battalion WRECKI eyes that Mike's talking about were stood up to kind of like act as this is not a technical term, but like scouts for the battalion like to go out, you know, ten kilometers ahead of them, recont targets and then come back

Guess, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, and we did it a few times. I stayed a few times, but you know, we did it a lot. But I think at the time it made sense. And you know, as we moved on through g a lot, I think it they had to change kind of their focus a little bit, get a little more technical, TFT and you know, and all that stuff. But I think it definitely had a place. But it was. To be honest, it's pretty fun.

So you get back from that deployment back to battalion and what's the next thing.

I think that's when I hit PLDC Warriorly. Of course, one of those that came back to some just knocked out school after school and it just continued and then deployment again. So our op tempo was pretty aggressive back then. I'm sure you remember. But yeah, I think I knocked out a couple of the regular Army schools because that

Interesting Mike, just before we move on, there's one thing that just came into my head. I remember, and I can't remember if it was one of you guys or if it was a Charlie Company medic. Do you remember the guy getting flex cuff to the chain link fence and sealerno on his birthday?

I don't, but that's okay.

It might it might have been if it wasn't you, I think I know who was. Yeah, but that that remember a prank.

By Remember what the company would have been there.

It would have been Charlie Company, Okay, Leo Jenkins, I think, oh it, I think I think I'll have to I'll have to check with him and see if it was him. But I remember one of those guys getting flex cuff to the fence on his birthday and covered in shaving cream and everything.

I mean, Leo. Leo is a big dude, so I'm not right he's a scrapper. But yeah, that's pretty funny.

Okay. So you're getting schooled up and then on the next deployment again with Reki section.

Yeah, yep, so went out another deployment caff Gain is tam Reki, but this one was unfortunately cut a little bit short. So I don't remember how long I was there, maybe like a month or so. And we had a mission come down with Alpha Company, one of the platoons or two platoons, I think, and we're going to fast

We're can't do it. You can't do an board a helicopter.

Yeah no, that's not real. So there was nothing really, you know, no surprises. They were like, all right, ninety foot rope onto this hilltop, no big deal. Well it was a big deal. So the forty seven pilot apparently found a spot on a house, so instead of hitting at the hilltop, he put us down maybe thirty feet onto a rooftop, but.

Didn't tell any buddy.

So long story short, the Mark Foster, the Air Force fellow that was on our Recorde team, he hits the house, walks right off it because it's what you're supposed to do in the past. Rope. We didn't know we're in the building, so we walked right off, breaks his back. I come down and the rope at this time is not even over the building. So I fall about two stories into a woodpile. I broke my right arm, like my distal radius. A couple other people fall, get kind

It worked out, and I didn't at the time.

I didn't know that my distal radius was broked so I stay on the objective. I'm carrying some of his stuff. Thankfully, we actually X filled. I don't know, maybe ten hours later, Sun comes up in to be there. We ended up leaving, so I then am taking Mark back to Germany as his medic to make sure he has that continual care that he gets the care we had the what a good call it the it wasn't the Wounded Warrior program, but it was the one for special operations, special offers

Did you I know you left, but did you were you in the AAR?

I mean, did you it?

Like one sixty pilots are notoriously like amazing and yeah.

I actually have the video.

It seems like an odd choice to put you guys down on it was there was.

There was some lessons to be learned from that.

Of course. I talked to the pilots after the fact. They came to visit Mark and that's a good thing about the community too.

They came back you know.

Hey, you know we didn't there's obviously an issue with communication there. The rope master should have known or you know, somebody. It's sure you should have known. Yeah, yeah, but they were. They were great about it, and it did become part of the AR and I think they used it in our m lats and stuff like that after.

Yeah. So that's the end of that, and then you're back at the mother station healing up at Benning.

Yeah, for the most part, Yeah, it was. It was quite an experience so that at this time, you know, I've been somewhat running gunning school doing all this stuff. And now I'm on rear D. So there's like fifteen people on rear D, right, and so it's just like staff, I don't know if you yeah, yeah, I don't have to do my hands. So but there was you know, some good n c os that were on red D and they didn't. They were like, hey, go go home. He left.

You know, we don't really have too much folio.

So they left me. It's pretty good to go. And I think I came in like said staff duty and I still I became like an l and O for a medics. So I would go to Martin Army, get supplies, put them on the seats, have a team, ship them over if they needed it. Kind of did what I what I need, what they needed me to do.

And was did you stay with WRECKI?

After that, I think, uh no, I think that might have been no, Yes I did. I did.

I had another deployment directly after that.

Where were you?

No, It's okay, we're going, we're going, We're going way down memory lane. Yeah, I got it, yep.

So that was another deployment to.

The learnout yep. So I've gone to learning that. It was the second time.

Learn and that one was we were dug in pretty good with Charlie Company. I think they had two platoons there and we had you know, some you know, Dead Group folks there and some other folks I think at the time. So but that that's the point there. It was.

We did I don't we kind of did a little bit more of you know.

The target isolation that you were talking about, a little bit less PTR type stuff.

It was a pretty good, good trip.

What was there less CTR because there was less opportunity or because there was more risk avoidance?

I think, oh, you know what it wasn't I think it was? No, it wasnt all right. When I was speaking before and I said it was Serno and Chapman, I'm sorry, it was we had Team and Jabad and we had some folks out in Chapman. But on this time it was I'm pretty sure.

Okay, I apologize. My memory is just not that bad.

Oh No, it's okay.

When I think of what I did.

On the deployments and who I was with, that's when I started putting the pieces together. But I know we worked a lot with I think it was Charlie Company at the time.

So the mission it sounds like it changed a little bit by that that trip.

It was kind of lethargic.

And what year was.

If you remember, roughly.

Yeah, two thousand and six, mid two thousand and seven, I was back into I was a jac seumatic. Okay, yeah, I think that's about right.

So yeah, unless there's any like memorable ops that you'd like to talk about from that deployment, let's let's go into the being the.

Yeah, so well, there was we had this one trip where we went to.

We were in.

Where did we move from? I think we were in Jabad and we're going north fallowing the river and the mortar platoon they were going up to because they were acting kind of like as a platoon at the time, and one of their trucks, that drone had drove off the cliff and we actually lost a couple of guys. So that was that was a pretty hard deployment as far as I think as a ranger medic. Of course, I had nothing to do with you know, I wasn't able to treat them. We didn't even know that, you know,

Of experiencing like loss like that visceral.

These are people you know, we just saw the other day, and so there was a little bit of processing of that, but it wasn't as you know, this real was later on in my career where you know, it was a little right in front of me. So so I think that was a pretty memorable event. And it it kind of like blowed things down a little bit and and things got to you know, sometimes we're going after it and we're just taking a cycle going out, and that that kind of made everybody kind of test the pause.

We're going we're going to a bad bad for I don't remember what the part it was.

I don't remember a lot of time ago.

But it's kind of crazy that there aren't more stories about that because those roads, those mountainous roads, were treacherous and unbelievable driving under nods.

In tough conditions a lot of times.

And you know, like when you're in the passenger side of like your Humvier technical whatever, like you're looking down over oh yeah, over.

When you're trusting this guy with like one not PBS fourteens, like yeah, man, and they've never scared my life.

Yeah, And the fact that there aren't just like story after story of trucks going all over the side is amazing.

Yeah, we we you know, we had some folks. You know, a lot of injuries do come from a non combat if you will. It's unfortunate, but it's it's just remember going through because dudes get hurt in a vehicle and it's not a purple heart producing thing, but you know, still get hurt, they get spent back, they got wounds. You know, like Brian Valentine, you know, he's a command startant major, you know, because you know, robotic arm I call it.

It's not but he's just you know, hurt some of the tricets there.

But like these folks go back and it's like, well, you know, it wasn't combat related, but it was, you know, And so these folks are dealing with this kind of stuff as they transition out and dealing with the VA and you know, luckily, you know, it's in a time of war in a foreign country. It's pretty easy to show that that's slumber related.

But and even you know, I talked about it for Mark Foster.

You know, he breaks his back, but it's not due to enemy fire. It's not like that.

But he's still wounded just the same and right, it's going to affect him for life.

It's just kind of stuff. It's a bummer. But we did have a lot of vehicle accidents roll over, especially as we you know, transition to strikers in Iraq, it became a lot more proli prevenant.

Yeah, and you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this later as we get on. But even like the Marines in Syria and the number of like artillery rounds they fired, having such severe repercussions on them for blast injuries, you know, hallucinations and psychosis and all these things that it was in war, but no purple hearts and no like none of that that valor, you know, sort of recognition.

And I'm we didn't we didn't know what we were doing back then either to especially somebody for a mount traumatic brain injuries TBIs and you know, you got your bell rung and like, I'm not going to put this one out. You know, they're going out. This could be in lot and rate, you know, so like we're going out tomorrow and going so I think, you know, that was obviously not the right way to do it. And now we have more comprehensive traumatic brain injury process and so thankfully, yeah.

They're they're passing some legislation now that they're going to take the soldiers bio markers early on so that you have something to compare it to before and after and you can have a better judge of what kind of damage may have been done to these guys. So there is no that's progress is slow, but it is happening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because a lot of it's, you know, unfortunately the versle and so trying to figure out, you know, how to manage these types of folks and manage their day.

To day life for the rest of their life.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're learning so much more, and a lot of that is borrow technology from even.

The NFL showing these micro tears and abrasions and sprains and what that does to them. It's it's unfortunate that it happened to folks, but you know, unfortunate to get that information in what it produced.

Yeah, those concussion docs from the NFL are really sort of some of the guys on the cutting edge.

Of a lot of this stuff.

Oh sure, yeah, I've had several TBIs, so, you know, folks that are out there that have to do that.

Joint Knowledge online TBI concussion training.

I'm actually in there as like a guest speaker of you know, don't do what I did and don't just try to go out the next day or like if I say something, maybe they won't take me out. That's that's really not the right way to do it. Yeah, when you put yourself out there, even as a medic, you might be one of one, you might be one or two knows, but you go out there and if you're not one hundred percent, you shouldn't be out there. Yeah.

Yeah, fire ninety Carl Gustav rounds at the rain right right.

The spendex is for Karl Gustav's where it becomes torture that stuff. Yeah, or just like breaching night after night after night, and like some you know, because P for plenty is the universal formula for a breach. So like you know, standing next you know, close to the breach and then it's like it rocks you and you know, you see the white it's like okay, go go, go go, and the night after night, it like we're just now learning about the effects.

Of all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely, but luckily you know they've got the Range of Medic handbook out there, and you know, they've got pretty comprehensive field evaluations and some of it's even do it over computers, but it helps keep that record.

Oh interesting, glad where they're at now.

So then you come back and you become the senior medic for HGC.

Yep.

Yeah, so and that was kind of like a I don't know if the undefined role.

And I also did like Headquarters Platoon slegant pret JC, so it kind of was what I made of it. Like I said, we had a great surgeon, great pas at the time, and so this was my chance to work with you know, Recky Sniper Canine TSC. It had really taken off with this time and kind of made a really big effect of mortar platoons and AHAC at

As rapidly as possible and faith as possible.

So being able to get in there and just kind of think of, well, what would a mortar platuam like, what would their scenario look like if they took the casualty and kind of you know, figuring out what was you know, what was common on the battlefield at the time, what were the other battalions, what were they reporting back and treating training opportunities. I think that was kind of activated my nerd sense of humor at the time, because that made them pretty fun and sadistic.

Can you give us an example of what fun and sadistic might look like?

Oh yeah, so it would be you know, just coming back from a range and fla you know, took ahead or whatever, and the medica had no clue. They'd pull open the aid bag and it'd be like candy and snacks or whatever, and it turned into like a ten hour how long field care, you know, stuff like that.

So I mean it was it was for a purpose, sure, but it was it was unpleasant.

And uh so what was the next stop for you after this position?

So pretty much just oh I got shot, Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that one, so deployed again. I was with Charlie Company, second platoon Mike call Balls platoon at the time, and uh for Sartin Nichols, I think we had at the time for h AC. We were up on the objective and we got these strikers, this humbled and mud coming off an objective, and so we had to wait for like the third id to come out in the giant you know, records tanks or whatever they're called.

And so the sun started coming up, and I guess I was the one that they wanted to hit. So I got hit through my foot and my thigh.

I was the only one hit as far as I remember, And it wasn't like a huge like firefight, So I guess I was the wrong place at the right con I supposed, but like got hit. Obviously came back from that came back Stateside yet again and did the whole real d thing for a little while.

How bad did you mind if I asked, like, how, like, how bad was it when you got hit your foot and thigh?

Yeah, so it actually wasn't that bad. At the time, people like, yeah, getting shot, it's not that bad. But at the time I had a Smith and Wesson swat pocket knife in my pocket in the ground actually hit the knife, so the knife and the round are still in my leg, and I got shot through my foot. And growing up as a medic, you know, they always taught us. And I had Mike's Melvin who's a phenomenal manic, you know, so he was taking care of me and I was also doing you know, I had to fend

Doing what I'm supposed to do. But come to find out, I actually got hit on the top of the foot and that's where the blood of my boot was coming from.

So it actually wasn't as bad.

Excuse, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

If that knife wasn't in my pocket, it would have shadowed my female you sent mass, So it definitely would have been a bad day.

And think of how much paint it would have been had you not already been sucking on that lollipop.

Oh, before I even hit the ground, I was like falling on that ny Yeah, I got to cover and all that stuff. Yeah, but by the time I got on the striker, I was You know, if anybody has been treated by me, they either don't remember it or they got really hot and they thank you for it.

So I was pretty Uh that was pretty generous.

Yeah, so high on your own supply.

Literally, I don't mean that in a way of anything that farious whatsoever.

This is all and just so when you got hit the first the tourniquet, did you apply to the tournic yourself? Was it all self care at that point?

I don't remember. Yeah, I guess it was so like by the book. I don't remember if I did, or it might have even been first Start Nickel at the time. I honestly don't remember. But you know, if anybody wants to know what it feels like to get shot without actually getting shot, it's almost like somebody punches you as hard as they can and like your funny bone, so it's like that really weird, awkward feeling and then you

So back on rear d doing staff duty again again?

Yeah, how was how was rehab for you? Like being shot in the foot, like there's a lot of bones in there that.

They actually missed them. Yeah, I got so lucky, man, telling you, like, I don't think you could set it up and do it again. So on the top of my foot the bullet came right in and like just went over all my bones went right off the other side. Wow. So I was the pretty lucky chat Yeah.

These were Yeah, ship man, it's crazy.

Yeah, because that's not common. Usually, you know, they'll mushroom up and just take everything out. Yeah, there's there's a lot of a lot of velocity behind there. But I got lucky.

Did did you did you tell this?

Did you tell Smith and Wesson that their knife potentially saved your life?

You bet your butt. I did, and they sent me it sent me like twenty thirty nine. I bet you.

I was wondering if they did.

Yeah, yeah, sure did.

It sent me a bunch of knives though, good on them. I also got a shrider Knight, So I'm trying to remember where I got it. It was one of the r RG guys knew the person that made them.

I can't remember who actually gave it to me, but anyways, they gave me a nice like handmade. It was just it was really cool.

Yeah, so you're getting better. What's that process to recovery into getting back out on the job.

Well, so when it comes to my felf, probably in my family and the worst medic possible. So I just went straight into well, you know, it's not muscle skeletal anymore. You know, I didn't break any bone with it, there's no fracture there. Might as well just you know, start running so I get back after it. So probably within a few weeks and I would get back after it. And then I went to Seers School. Probably I don't know, four or five months after getting shot.

I went, you should be checked into a mental institution, Like.

What the hell?

Well, I mean, yeah, I had an opportunity to go to Seers School.

I go to.

It.

Just seemed like the right thing to do.

Rangering through it, that's awesome.

Yeah, pretty much. And looking back at the stupid is I pay for it now?

Yeah?

Not that, not that it would have made a difference back then.

As a medic now knowing what I know now, for all you people out there listening, physical therapy, occupational therapy, don't mess around, do it, do it right, and it'll make a lasting difference on your recovery in your life after for sure.

So how did you get a slot for Seers School from Ranger betime? Because it was that part of a rekie thing, because that's not normal for Rangers.

Yeah, honestly, I don't remember. Kyle Andres another great mind, still still great friends. He was like a school guy, so I may have been through that. But it was also rud D and I don't remember who was on it might have been Bishop so a major bishop that it was last at the time, I think he was running three shops and they're like, hey, we need folks for Seer School. And it wasn't directed at me at all, but I was like, I'll go, yeah, so.

Yeah your school ship. Yeah, I'll volunteer. I'll put my hand up for that.

Yes, do that like SCOO Sars, like Scuba where it's like, okay, who wants to volunteers? Take a step back.

No, I mean it was I thought it was. It was a pretty good school. It is what it is. But it was one of those things that you know, my team started and WRECKI at the time had been and so you talk about it and it's just like I hate not knowing. So I just wanted to knock it out.

Yeah uh. And So what happened after Super.

School missoil deployment yep. So I went to Midula still eight medic and I was a task Force senior medic for this area. So we had Bravo Companies tack Up platoon. That was Ray Barrett's platoon at the time. Pete Benjel was the leader. We had them up in missoil and I think as the ranger medic. That was probably one of the most devastating deployments that was. It was just a man. It's like almost every day for the first couple of weeks we were taking casualties and it was it was pretty rough.

This was two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight time frame.

Yep, it was Christmas. Yes, it was full.

All because we were there for Christmas.

Yep, yes, tell us about it.

Yeah, I was just looking back. It was a pretty crazy deployment.

M Ben Dylon, he was killed on the first op out there, who I named my friend after.

But that was that was it. Imagine you know, you're the pointing as to strike forth and everybody you know, you're amped up. You know it's Mossola, you got a hint, you've got a high five from the previous battalion and said, yeah, it's been pretty rugged, and you know you're getting ready for that. In the first off out we lose a ranger and it's just like dang, and you lose momentum before you even had it. Yeah, that was pretty heavy. That was a heavy lot.

Yeah, kind of takes the windown of our sales for a second.

Yeah, it does, It really does. And I think as a medic it was probably one of the most challenging experiences I had. At the time. I had Jeremy March with me, which dudes an orthopedic surgeon. Now, it couldn't be any more proud of him. Even when he was arranger of medic he was just always a sponge learning probably one of the best, better range of medics I'd worked with. He was there fort Medic and he was you know that. I think that hit him pretty hard too.

Now, now you've done multiple deployments, and we talked a little bit about like sort of the emerging teachable sea care. Uh, the technology like prosthetics were you know growing, you had the quick quod, like, you had all these things coming out.

How were you guys managing that from trip to trip?

Yeah, So we had worked with the JM now on CTM. So we would go to Fort Brag and the training area out there, so we would be trained up every once in a while going with them, which is just like at the time, it was just like, wow, you know, you've got these the best docs, nurses people in the Department of Defense, training and stuff on kind of the latest and greatest, and that really kind of opened my

What we didn't already know.

We continued to compound and learn and we had that institution and organizational knowledge there, and we also had these Special Operations that Special Operations Combat Medics.

Skill Sustainment Course Bockmouth.

Every two years we would go back to Fort Bragg to do our medical refractor with the eighteen Delta's p days sometimes the Sparks, the four men, seal medics, whoever THEA wants to do, all the medics go back there for refresher So we were constantly kind of pushing that en below as much as you can, and a lot of I know, for me, I was pretty much experimental.

Sometimes when it came to that stuff not on you.

Know, experimental and not a morbid morbid way, like I would use cutting edge, newer stuff that was out instead of kind of reverting back to what everybody always does. So like with you know, do an inner ossius instead of IV when you're trying to get an IV started to push blood on a conduct casually, it's already lost a lot of blood. It's it's really hard to do, so why not just go into your bone? So I was just really aggressive when it comes to stuff like that.

It does. And I actually just because of sort of the medical geek in me, you know, like you know, like I started trauming them as was Twin IV's bullets, which is not a thing anymore.

Right, No, you kill people now, yeah, exactly.

So if anybody's listening, you're pushing fresh old blood, fresh old blood. If you don't have press old blood, you're pushing press old blood. So getting away from crystalloids, getting away from all that stuff.

Yeah, So, like it's amazing to me, how far.

And I think we saw the same thing in Vietnam, you know, and every war really we see this surgeon medical knowledge.

But so, I mean we used we use turn kits in the Civil War, and then we stopped using turni kits and we used them again and World War two and then uh fifty eight albums people killed in Vietnam, and we stopped using it like we do it and then we stop, right, And I think that's because we didn't have a committee of futureable See, we didn't have

Right and the old we do have now and the old wisdom with with tourniquets, and please correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, I know the old uh like belief with tourniquits is you put it on and doesn't come off, which obviously risk the limb. But then wasn't it sort of developed it Actually you can at certain increments like release it.

Yeah, they went through this time period where it was called like milking a tourniquit, which would be medics or above only for the most part, but you know, there's some dangers with that too, because we've got you know, compartment syndrome that could be developing, and you've got tossins in there. Your blood's going through an aerobic anaerobic metabolism the whole time. So anytime you open up a tourniquit and you release all that into your normal bloodstream, you're

And then with medical technology at the time, it's obviously advancing too, because you mentioned like going from you know, giving an ivy to uh INTROSTI.

It's like, so you're putting an ivy, Like, how do you know?

I mean, obviously, very smart people figure this out that you can replenish bodily fluids by sticking a needle into the bone. But now are there new needles coming out? Are there like new vendors and things like.

That that are yeah, of course, and I deal with that now. So I work for stape card Medical now, which is a pre hospital traumat device manufacturer. And I say that because that didn't exist or I became a medic back in the day. Dn't We would take curle x, which is for a hospital, we would take a raftids for a hospital. We would take these needles which a her hospital, and we would use those in a austere environment.

It's fascinating.

I mean, it's just really fascinating.

And I'm sorry for everybody out there who's bored by this, but it's just incredible nerd.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's like, I mean, I think what's so interesting about it is that it's this very like practical, pragmatic application of medical science in the field that maybe you don't find anywhere else.

Uh, yeah, it really is. And I think that's the testament of our surgeons and our pas and all those folks to just continue to push even on the even on a deployment. You know, you're just took atategy. You drag them to cover and you got a pia standing right over your shoulders. That's like, yep, you're doing it right, man, you got it. You got like they would mentor you while you're doing it, and it's just you know, I don't think you see that anywhere else.

Yeah, man, ranger medics are on point.

And that's why I say that, like overtrained and underqualified. Like there's no job in the civilian world that compares to a combat medic, you know, like not not a paramedic, not you know, like you're you're somewhere between paramedic and trauma surgeon.

Uh that while being shot at.

Yeah, but even that, like the things that you are capable and allowed to do in the military, there's no space in the civilian world to accommodate that.

Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. And not to take away from any other folks jobs out there, but it's not like, you know, when I go out there, I'm trying to do the job of a PA.

I'm not trying to do the job of the surgeon. I'm just trying to do the job of the range of medic.

And you know, for whatever reason, you know, I can shoot and communicate with my rangeable tune, maybe this pier, this doc can't. So I need to be able to take what they're learning. I got to take their skill set and apply that in an environment that that they either can't get to or don't have access to. So and We've been lucky in the regiment to where it never it never came down to you know, a PA or doc like looking at us like, you know, if

So I just want to ask one more questions if you don't mind talking about this, and feel free to skip it. Uh, but what was the most challenging scenario you had in in a combat situation?

Oh? Yeah, so that one is it is kind of tough, kind of tough to talk about. But when there's a law, so it's not like there's a loss and the office over. Sometimes there's a law. You've got to keep going right, so you've got in you know, when I was a brand new range of medic one in five.

People at a radio, like not everybody even had a radio, so you'd have to like whisper or yell.

But later on in years everybody had a radio, so everybody down to the private who's about to kick down that door and do justice here? So when you have to, you get the call or you're you know, I'm treating a casualty or whatever, and somebody's like, hey, what's the status. You really have to be.

Methodical about how you translate that over.

To comms because it can really destroy the momentum in that that battle field aggression very quickly. So I think that was probably my biggest challenge, was being able to keep everybody moving, and I think standing up to some of the Platina sergeants sometimes you have to be like, hey, I've got this, you keep going. Your focus is over there.

So yeah, you did this deployment to Masul during the height of the surge. What what was the next step after that?

Yeah, it was pretty pretty tough depployment. After that it was another Afghanistan deployment and this one was Yeah, it was Afghanistan employment and that was all of eight I think, and nothing really too remarkable from this deployment. I think there was at this time the Mortal team out that it's like exciting. I think it's kind of cool. But the mortaval tune at the time, they used to have order to attached to the platoon infections whatever, but they actually went out as an organic platoon.

Really.

Yeah, they did a hell of a job, man, they did. They did a great job. They had a great medic at the time, at two medics. They really two two great medics.

And were they going out to do indirect fire or going out to act like.

They were going out as a platein as just a normal.

Really as like a line with a line team.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Wow, So you know, I know they would do a lot of blocking position type stuff for the other platoon, but yeah, they go out there. Yeah, so I was so.

Proud of them.

I say that because a lot of them were good friends of mine, so it's really cool to see where they went and how they got there.

That's pretty cool, man. I didn't know that.

Yeah, And it was also my first deployment kind of working with STYOP and t A. I'd worked with them a little bit and then working with Asymmetric Forefare kind of working with them a little bit. So it's pretty interesting the point where I learned a lot more about the bigger picture. Yeah, you know, things are bigger than just third grain to get that. Yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool.

Sea going out there and trying to like the patch up, what what what range of Batagiony seal teams have just been in.

And yeah, they did a great job too.

So you know, we had Ranger Rick Merritt, you know, I love the man, and he had told us one time, I think he actually was in Missoil at the time.

We would have young ranger privates. You know, we'd come in with clear room.

They're just knocking everything over, just you know, doing TFT finding everything. And I'm pretty sure Rick Merrit was like, hey man, you know what you're doing right now could be generating the next next batch of terrorists. And we're like, that kind of makes sense. You know, we came in here and just zip this dude up. You know, his kid probably just watched it, so like you kind of have to be a little bit more.

Tactful focus, Yeah, a little bit more tactful.

And I think that's where c A came in behind the scenes and really kind of patched that up, and I think I think they did a good Yeah.

So for people who might not know, when we say c A, we're talking about civil affairs, which is really you know, we always say s F is the hearts and minds, but like civil affairs is really hearts in mind.

Check out our past interviews with Joshua Leez.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, guys.

You know that they I thought they were phenomenal NA in my experience with them, And I think there was also a difference when I started working or being around c A anyway.

They were former ranger, former former like they.

Had been in the community, uh, and then kind of shifted to c A where now CA has its own pipeline and I haven't really worked with them since that's happened. So when I worked with their medics, they had all been somewhere and so they were just phenomenal medics and so I learned quite a bit.

And one of the things that like the CA medical like they are out there like taking in villagers a lot of times and treating you know, illnesses and injuries that these people have had for a long time.

Sometimes yeh. Then they were doing stuff you know, I just never really been exposed to I've been, you know, at that time, I was exposed to like you know, crotch rot you know, just your Hey, I just returned from a GDUI doct Can you hook me up?

I need a shock, like yeah, yeah, and family vaccination.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Uh we're kidding, yeah, right right, but you know we're working with animals and.

Children and babies, and you know, I took every opportunity to go out there with the C medics because you know, it's a good opportunity to learn to different piece of being a medic.

Yeah, like at that at.

That time, And I don't know if it's true or not, but the Ranger medics did the combat the assault portion of Soccam. Where's the s F metics Scott, Like, Oh, there's a typhoid outbreak in the village, you know, and it's so it's different and this is.

How you treat the water in your well.

And you know. Yeah, so they they go on to SFMS, which some rangers are able to do as long as they go to one of the SMUs and there's a way to do that. But anyways, Yeah, so they go on and there's like a surgical block and there's just a lot of things that you don't generally be in the regiment. So I think grander medics could benefit from it, for sure, But if you had the opportunity to go to jump Master or something else benement, that that probably would make sense. And that pissed me off at the

So yeah, range of regement. Wasn't that concerned about your veterinary skills?

Yeah no, no, despite you know me wanting to learn that, right, right, So.

So what was the next step in your career path after after that one, so.

I ended up going to the jam OLT.

But I was at the five two eight for a little while under Steve Cody was at the first Elegent he's retired now, which was kind of the dumping ground, not dumping ground as like a bad thing, but it's kind of where a lot of the soft medics went to kind of take a knee or whatever. So I was in the five to eight for a little while, but it didn't really you know, nothing really notable there. But then I assessed them and went to the jam Now, tell.

Us about that, because I think this is like, as far as public perception is, it's a kind of obscure element that not too many people know about. Can you tell us what that element is and how you assessed for it?

Sure? Yeah, So my previous experience with the organization, all I really knew was, you know, their PA surgeon surgical team, and every time we would do some kind of missing planning brief, you know, I had to include these guys, but I didn't really know what they did, and I still didn't even when I assessed for the organization, I still didn't really know it. I knew they did damage control, surgery and damage control of asuscitation.

But I didn't really understand like who.

They were, where they picked them from, how they got there, how they I didn't know any of that. So but I knew people that were there, and I knew the unit star major at the time. I love the guy, I've known him for so many years. But anyway, so I ended up assessing and.

It was more of like just a psychological type thing.

And you know, you know, your medicine, it's it's not something that you would you know, it's not going to be like, you know, a forty mile rock with you know, seven days of land now, It's just that's not what you do in that organization. So that's not really what's expected of you. So it's more of medicine and can you handle extremely high stressed situations and be in positions where you might be by yourself orchestrating National Mission Force

I don't know if he still can, but but it was pretty good.

And I think I went in there with the mindset of, you know, I never joined the military to be like, hey, the military is going to make me better. And I joined the military hopefully, hopefully that I have something to give to this organization that's like my American thing to do. And so, you know, my my brother, my older brother,

And I was able to do that in an organization and it was can you profoundly change my mind?

As a medic?

How do pretty much everything?

So j MAL is Joint Medical Augmentation Unit and can you tell us just for people who don't know, because we imagine that they go from the field medic, get metavaced and go to a mass unit but that or whatever, but can you tell us the role of the j MOUTH.

Oh yeah, sure, well it's actually the Joint Medical Unit now or JMU. So their goal is there's unclassified you know, special operations susstation teams, special operations surgical teams and Air Force and even forger susstation uh sturgical teams in the Army, like there's those already exist. And what they're trying to do is get the surgery as close to the casual as possible because really we want to get the casualty

An So the Ranger Combat medic if I'm understanding this rightly, the Ranger Combat Medic, the Special Forces eighteen Delta, the JSAK Assault medic. It's sort of the front line that is then delivering the casualty to this unit.

Yep, yep, pretty much. And where they deliver that to the unit is as close as possible, So whether that's aircraft that are just you know, loggering around or whatever. So it's it's pretty phenomenal to see, you know, it's pretty surgery in itself is pretty stressful, you know, even in a bright white lights and r seeing these dudes.

Perform like and not doing the great job that ranger SF medics or TIN medics do combat medics, but actually doing full surgeries.

Yeah, brain on the actual surgery on the move. Yes, yep. It's damaged control of testation and damage control surgery for the most part, which is box and belly. So they're not going to go in there and do like bacular surgery.

On somebody's legs.

I mean that not really, They're going to go in there and clamp off vessels to preserve the life.

Uh, tell us about what was your first deployment with that unit.

So most for the most part, us NCOs we were going through kind of like identity identity crisis, so we would do like operations because we knew a lot of people in the communities and we would understand how the different platforms worked. So I was able to do that go over as like operations to really learn that battlefield architecture. So there's no benefit in that. So it wasn't as you know, effex as of what I would have thought, but we're going over there and just handling like the

So it was very very sketch.

Yeah, battalion, no no, no, no, no, it's it's very big boy. Nobody's checking on you. Nobody's you know, even in range of Italian for the most part, it come back and do PCI, S PCC, you know all that stuff, and and you know you're kind of just used to that it's automatic, but here it's like nobody checking my dad, nobody's checking on the standard load is nobody's you know, you just have to use common sense at that time.

But it's it's pretty good. I was with a good team and it was we saw.

Is a lot more.

Eventful than I than I probably would have thought.

How how would you go about in the sort of this remote position, how would you go about getting your load out? You know, determining what you needed obviously you know how to term what you need. But what I mean is like if you needed extra stuff that you didn't have, Like, how did you go about doing that? Could you walk down to like the the not matched I could like the field hospital and get it, or how did that work?

Yeah? I could, Yeah, I could do that. I think that was one of the magic things of being in the organization. It is everybody knows it ready. So I could go to the local place and this was intel all about it time. I could go in there and just nobody was really unaware of the off folks. So I go in there and they're just like one of you guys, you know, and and they were great about it. It was a conventional army unit. I don't remember who it was, but I think the one hundred and first

But we didn't do a whole lot of easily. We kind of stayed off sped a little bit.

But I would have you a bag that were dropped for that so and then a speedball that you know, we dropped from the helicopter if we needed it.

So I was pretty pretty well equipped for being only a small element.

Yeah, but my aid bag when I was with the regiment, which is also compounding off of either another platem medic or you know, somebody else who's one of the other trum in that's also trained medically somewhat would kind of be.

The person who chose some of the others up. And everybody trained at tea truble c.

You can crossload really well, and you got a striker, you could drop a couple of bags in the area got you know, there's a lot of room there. But I had to I had to do more of one off stuff. So if I, for me, on a small team, a mass cow is one person, so I kind of.

Had to gear for that.

So I wouldn't need twenty pirnicates because that's more than what I could do anyway, So I would prep more for you know, if I had to do boxer belly or something like that on just one person. Uh.

Any memorable operations from that deployment.

Yeah, So there was a couple of times where we got pretty pretty big ticks or troops and contact and one we actually lost, uh an American advisor on that one there, and it was a it was a mass cow. So the Afghans that we're working with, I think I

They would get hit and just laid down and.

Something like trained from the get go, Like you get shot, you keep going even in training. Yeah, until they assessed them with casualty.

They would come see me in the aide station later on they're, yeah, I think I got hit and you look and they're like uniforms torn up, and I'm like, you're an idiot. Yes you got hit. You know it does happen, but but no, we lost an American on that one, and that that was a pretty brutal hit at the time. But we worked through it and you know, continued mission.

That's got to be rough man going a mass cow situation, and like, I think it's a very interesting like psychological dynamic that you mentioned earlier, that all of this happens, but you've got to keep going, like the mission doesn't just stop. Fight doesn't just stop.

Yeah, So that's kind of working through that and making sure that you know, everybody else is maintaining that focus will also getting irritated with some of the partner Nation that I didn't really you know, at the time, there's so much you know, green on blue whatever, you know, I don't. I didn't. I wasn't comfortable working with some of the partner Nation, to be honest. So it was another added thing that I had to worry about, right. So it's just it's just stressful one of the things.

You hand off to one sixtieth guy.

You know who it is.

I've worked with him for years.

You hand off. I know he's good to go. Now you're working with people you've never seen before, putting on an aircraft we vaguely know who's on it. It's just just not comfortable. Yeah.

And one of the things you mentioned earlier was.

How sometimes a platoon sergeant would stop and overlook and want to know the status. But sometimes with indage, an entire like an entire group of guys would stop, just stop, just stop, just to see if their buddy was flying.

We had, you know, I had a couple of folks on the ground. It helped out with the crowd control, so they were able to divert really well. So I didn't That was just one last thing that I had to worry about. Yeah.

So, I mean, Mike, I remember, and I'd love to ask you this. I mean, I remember. You may have mentioned to me that you got spun up for a counter terrorism deployment during your time at the unit.

Yeah, so I did.

It was the whole Benghazi thing there.

So a part of our mission was also goin to be prepared for their surgical teams. And I you know, being in the unit's not only about surgery. It's also about that inner theater operations, getting folks where they need to go back to Germany or wherever. But yeah, the Benghazi you know that that went off and I reported to work, and you know, because it was a page or phone call or whatever, and usually you know, we would train and you know, I wasn't sure if it

That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, and you got enough, you know, you've got palette load of equipment that could literally go anywhere in the world.

Yeah, you're kind of prepared for it. But it's it's kind of.

But it's great that capability exists, right, Oh absolutely, And at the.

Time, did you because you're you're seeing with right now you're in this like legit Tier one unit. Did you not know where you were going because the pilots didn't brief you were because the pilots didn't know it, like everything was so influxed. No, Like decisions were being made while you guys were in the air.

Yeah, decisions were definitely made while we're in the air.

Right as we got closer, we knew where we were going. Yeah, I mean we could start developing a plan, but at the time, there wasn't you know, we just we didn't know much. I think that the news and the media at the time was saying, uh, you know there was uprising because of a political cartoon, because of the video it was on. Then Yeah, it was on the anniversary, right after September eleventh, So that was bad intelligence, that was.

Not Yeah, and so when you've got to singinale, because you know, everybody in the military has been subject to the hurry up and wait uh you know syndrome, what was it like when you guys got to singanella?

Yeah, so you know, we're going on thousand miles an hour. We do what we do. We've we've perfected the art of setting up, tear down, set up tear down. So we got there, we set up ready to go no matter what we need to do. I started making local connections with hospitals if we needed to bring somebody back or we needed to move an o R over there. We started making you know, starting to meet the other assets that we had in country to kind of figure out where we could push people around if you had to.

Now, when you know, one of the things we see sometimes with Special Operations units is you know, like there are conventional theater you know, owners or or owners of a certain area and they may not always like what the Special Operations Units are doing there. And there can be a little bit of a rub when.

You guys fly into place like Cinella. And obviously you have not.

Saying anything bad about doctors or surgeons at any given military base, but fifty percent of doctors were at the bottom of the bottom of their class, right like fifty percent of them. So so you never know. So you never know what you are getting in any one location. And when you guys fly in, do you have the authority to sort of commandeer a surgical room and say, anybody coming from.

This is ours?

Yeah, So I don't know about the authority to do it. But we go in there and lack of like I want to, you know, tell you guys that we go in there and kick down doors and hold a clock to somebody's head, but like, you know, man, like, we walk in there and it's like a naval unit and they're like, we know why you're here, you know. So I'm in plain clothes and I just walked in there. They're like, you know, we know why you're here. What

Pretty good, that's fantastic, Yeah, Because I didn't know if maybe, like you know, some chief of medicine to be like, ah, this is our hospital and you guys blah blah blah.

Oh I'm sure it's happened.

Yeah, I've I've been fortunate to where I was able to sweet talk just about anybody to get whatever I needed. Yeah.

Uh so what what came I I mean I just following the chronology, I mean what came after that whole Bengazi situation.

A whole lot of nothing. They sat there, did nothing.

So they're trying not to get too political, but we had I personally think that we had targets, we had a show of force.

That we're we'reing ready and able to do and we did not.

So it sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Like of course, no more American lives were jeopardy put in jeopardy or harmed or.

Anything, so that's a good thing. But I think we could have done more.

Yeah, and it you know, it's not just any special operations in that theater, special operations in other areas. And I can't remember the unit in Chiganella, the airborne unit which is supposed to be there for a lot of the inextremist stuff.

We had Charlie.

We had Charlie one ten from s DEF.

They were in West stutgard I leave, so they were actually they met us in Italy pretty quick yeah, so they had assets there. We had some folks from the five two eight, which luckily I did a little time there, so I integrated them really quickly. But as far as like conventional infantry, I don't think they had a whole lot. They had like a marine rifle platoon that might have been in somewhere in Northern Africa, but I don't We

Yeah, Oh they weren't.

They weren't in Italy, they were not at our location.

They were not your Okay, so what what?

Uh?

What came after that? What was the next thing for you?

More?

Ops?

Deployments?

More? Most of my time in the unit was training and training other people. So I did a lot of training the newer teams that would attest and get selected, and we eventually developed a pretty pretty good selection tatics, but helped make it so we can test them physically, mentally, emotionally in some cases to ensure that they were the right fit for the organizations that were going out. It's because they were a good surgeon doesn't mean that they're

Like a whole other field of medicine when you get into the NBC stuff, but like assessing like someone who's exposed to sarian or like somebody who's exposed to like a radiological device.

Sure, yeah, I know, it is very different. And we were able to go up through up to Canada soduced in live agent training and stuff because we don't really do that in the US, but it was it was definitely a big eye opener at just learning you know, the LD fifty or at least lethal dose of a chemical that will kill of the population and given aunt of time, like you know, a grain of rice size of this chemical will kill somebody. It's just it's kind

Know, Korea is kind of a thing and we didn't really know.

NBC was kind of ramping up a little bit, so it was it was an eye opener because it's not sexy, you know, as a medic where like you know, trauma, you're doing this. You know, I'm you know, doing chest tubes and I'm criking and you're doing stuff and now it's like, you know, you're doing atrophine and Pisa, stigmine and you know value, it's just.

Like not you know, it's not cool, but it's it's stuff you just gotta move.

Did you ever did you ever find it?

Because like some of the things that I learned about, like the NBC stuff and then sometimes how easy it is or liked, were you ever just terrified like wow, like how have we not been hit by this stuff?

Well? Now, actually, the smarter you get on it, the more you realize that it's not as easy to do as you think. Really, yeah, so you know, it's not as easy to just you know, VX gas. We're going to throw it in a missile. You know, most of a lot of these chemicals they boil at room temperature, so it doesn't become you know, it's it's not as

We're talking about like dirty, dirty bombs, and even like e MPs, like they're not quite as effective as like the movies would have us believe.

No, they're really not. So, you know, I think that in modern warfare we just don't see it that often. I think the only time that I know of in the soft community that we had to deal with that was folks that treated children who had walked through some of the poppy fields in Afghanistan where they were exposed to some of the chemicals that they'd used that were very similar to the nerve agent poisonous organophosphate poisoning, and so kind of identifying that and treating it almost the

In the invasion of Iraq with the whole Islam Ulstaria group, if I recall correctly, Northern Iraq suspected to have a chemical weapons factory. They dealt with it there too.

Yeah, it's you know, it's just not something that I remember. On my first deployment, we had like the you had your pro mask on your side and you appointed that for a pillow, and then it eventually became like I don't even know where the pro mask is. Yeah. Yeah, Oh, and also I did learn a lot so with relaxed groening standards. Yet you can get a steal on a pro mask and they have a papper positive air pressure

I think that's just an excuse to to make it so you can't I can't have a beer and it excluded or.

Seek brothers right military service.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, because I remember like obviously in the Army it's like pro mass, but in the Navy because everybody has to be a firefighter or be on damage control on a ship. Like it's like that's why we don't have beards. You can't have beards. You can have three day growth because you won't get a seal on your you know mask, And it's like I don't think that's right.

So Mike, you get you get promoted to sergeant major, You're you're up at the top.

Yeah, do we miss something?

Well yeah he did kind of.

So I ended up taking a taking a knee.

So it was time to leave all the you know that stuff, and I talked to Dennis Smith, who was former first sergeant three seventy five back in the day, and he was the ar TV everyone ready Training Brigade started the major and so I was able to get back to Fort Penning and I was gonna be one

Uh was that like to work with young soldiers going through this arduous training?

Yeah, it was. It was very different, and you know, I took it. I took it head on, being a very different assignment and and man, I don't know, just seeing these young kids come through, and you know, obviously, you know, my uniform at the.

Time was you know, pretty uh, you know, I had a lot of stuff on there or whatever.

But so they would see that and they instantly would asking questions or this or that, and you're a medic, why you know, why are you in this position or that or whatever?

And just being able to mentor those folks.

I thought was really good to see, you know, how stupid a ranger student can be, but how remarkable they can be and how funny they could be.

It was.

It was a great, great opportunity and working with a lot of the r I a lot of the senior tax folks, and it was the It was a phenomenal part of my career.

I'm curious had Ranger School changed much between the time you went through and the time you became cadre.

Uh kind of so one of my biggest discontent And of course I went in there with you know, I had the full soft mindset of you know, ranger school is still archaic and Vietnam, and it pissed me off, honestly because it wasn't different.

So look at all these lessons learned, and I think being a medic kind of like it.

I don't know. It kind of set me up with failure in that because we always take the things we learned from combat and make sure that we incorporate that into our training and make sure that we report our casualties back to the Joint Trauma and it gets back to Committee of Tutor we'll see, which then feeds back into STOCKERM and feeds back into the medical represser, and medics are better tomorrow because of what we went through yesterday.

And it's going to do something? Probably not?

So I think that was probably one of my biggest discontents was they didn't take the lessons learned from actual combat and find a way to incorporate that into Ranger School. And I don't know where they are now maybe they have now, but.

Unfortunately, and do you mean when when you say that, do you mean in terms of the way we actually tactically do combat on the ground or treatments on the ground, or in the leadership aspect of the way were reporting these things back and the way like the the whole command and communication structure work.

Yeah, pretty much, pretty much all of it. So you know, even if something as small is making a day, you know, a power point on you know, this is your truck annex, but it's not in the back of the ranger handbook. It's on a power point you know. Or everybody thinks rangers you must be able to shoot good. We don't shoot a single live around at ranger school. You know, there might be a good opportunity to be able to incorporate that in there, and folks that you can't do

Maybe some of the SME stuff doesn't apply.

Maybe it does, but you can't tell me a ranger a rifle putoon in the eighty second can't benefit from kniper theory. Where do I even put a sniper? Where do I put you know, where should I put these folks? Where should I do this? Or I have to report up higher? I have to do this. You know, there's so much more that they have to do that. I wish somebody that graduated from Ranger School goes straight to you know, that position and enable that element so much

And I think there's still measures and ways that they could. Uh, you know, we're not creating course just to make it hard, just to make people fail.

That's good. Yeah, as my son says, like when they when they when they built the you know, the the Dark Vader when it when it built the day thing. Of course it created a lot of jobs, but like it's the Death Star. So like we don't want to create somethings really hard just for people to fail. I would rather they kind of take a look at Rangers School and create something that, like I said, even if you failed on the last day, you go back to

Do you think the part of that is because and and again I am not well, first off, I'm not putting down conventional forces, because conventional forces we're out there hooking and jabbing at these little ship fobs and and cops out in the middle of nowhere. Like they they saw plenty of action. But you know, when you talk about out sort of bringing these lessons into range of battalion,

Yeah, I think it is. I think it is for sure. And something that I tried to brain child while I was there is I went to the SF committee and because we were talking about females coming through Granger Sports, so you know, we wanted to cover you know, SF, they had already had females and psyop and PA.

So how did they run their selections?

What do they do? You know, how did they infrastructure wide? Whatever? So while we're there though, talking some of their sergeants, Major was like, you know, what if we treated Rangers fool as kind of your swift time where one of their instructors would come here do their time. They still wear their green hat, they go through ridecap, there's still

So I think a lot of people are afraid of that. But people do deserve to.

Take a knee. So if they could come over and have be like a guest instructor or still do right, apps still do all that stuff, but you're like on loan or with duty at Ranger school, right. You know, I think Ranger Regiment produces the most ranger qualified NCOs Earth send the most and can receive the most, so I think that they should be a little bit more involved with it.

Yeah, I think there's a there's a difference between I think what you and I would like Ranger School to be and what it actually is. Like we have this idea in our mind that it should be a commando's school, right, Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's what most people, like civilians think it is.

But but really, as you point out, it's a tradock school, and that most of the students are Cherry lieutenant right, IOBC.

And privates out of Ranger Battalion, right, Private and six is from that's.

The minority, Yeah, a minority of n CEOs from the conventional force, right, And and so Ranger School, like I was, I was definitely if you talk to me back in the day, I'd be bitter about it. But nowadays, like I can look back on it and see they did a very good job at training us on the basics.

Right, and it's a basic leadership.

And to this day, I could not even if I wanted to, I could not forget how to set it an ambush, right, because they do it so so many damn times. So it has value. But I don't think you're wrong either, Mike, and pointing out that it could have even more value with some modifications.

Yeah, I think so. It's just you know, i'd be dumb to think in the you know, the year twenty fifty, like it's still going to be the same, I hope not. Like there has to be a point where, you know, we're towards. Yeah, it's something a little bit more applicable. I mean, we're seeing drones in Russia and yeah, we're seeing in Ukraine. Like start moving towards a little bit more you know, modern theory when it comes to things, and it doesn't have to be you know, it doesn't

Well, it may have been a six month tactical course for some of us.

For some people, right right, Well, And that makes the question did you go through the last hard course or the first easy course, because everybody is w last hard one for sure?

Did you have the bayonet assault course? Yes, his soul is pure, his soul is pure.

But I think that you pointed out Jack that uh that really Ranger School, like enlisted people can go to Ranger School because there aren't enough officers to fill it out. But it really is an IOBC. It's an inventtry officer basic course school, you know, to teach these college kids, you know, sort of your small unit and larger unit tactics. You get them kind of up to up to speed.

Like?

Where are my regiment guys? All right, you guys, get him to get him a pass?

Yeah, you know, Mike, Mike. Else about then picking up sergeant major and kind of finishing out your military career.

Yeah, so I was picked up pretty early on. I think, you know, when I was selected. I've been in the Army fourteen fifteen years or whatever. So I actually didn't think i'd get picked up. I had been in soft majority of my career and I had you know, the classified n ce rs or whatever, so I didn't think that they'd even really read a lot of them, you know, no degree, and I didn't have a lot of diversity when it comes to assignments, which is all things that they.

Wanted to have, and they say, you're not going to get picked up if you don't.

I got picked up right away, so it was kind of a shocker. And then I ended up doing like the the online academy, which was it is what it is. It was, you know, two years of night Yeah, it's what. It sucks too because you're doing the academy, but you're also doing the job of stor major. Because as une as you know, I got selected, they were like, oh, you're coming here, going to do that. So I ended up going to Fort Bragg. It was the clinical chief

How they function and how they did things. And it was actually kind of an eye opener.

So I was pretty blessed to be able to do that, but it came with many headaches because my thing was is a medic treating my my guys. That's my number one job, take care of my guys. And so when I got put in this position, my soldiers were no longer really my job. My delivery of health care to these beneficiaries, you know, these wives, these husbands, these children like that became my priority.

And so I kind of found myself getting a little bit more aggressive.

And reventful towards the service and the service member because the delivery of health care was vastly substandard in my opinion.

Yeah, can I just want to ask you a question because you in the army in particular, you wear your d D two fourteen on your chest right or you know, like we love badges, we love you know, and you will go into a conventional army hospital does does does You're like you, well, what does your like chest help you like flair or whatever? Yeah, that's the what I was looking for.

Yeah, not really. I think most of the people in in medcom, which is you know, Army Medical Command or whatever, I don't think many of them even knew.

What half of that stuff was. Yeah, I masters don't Winning free Fall, c NB all that, like, they didn't know.

But I think you know, where it did make a difference was I would actually do shifts in the er, and I would go up to the o R and actually scrub in for surgeries once in a while. So when I go in there and I got the stuff, cope, and I'm a frog star major at the time, and you got the eighties second you know TV two and there with his wife and he's just like whoa, Like, who's this guy? You know, It's just I think that

Do we have questions for Mike, Yeah, we have a couple. I have one here for you, m Corbin asks. Over the last twenty some years, the Rangers have seen it all. Correct me if I'm wrong, But during that time, the Ranger Special Operations combat medics have led the way in innovating and pioneering advanced field medic techniques such as establishing

It's great now, that is a good question at Portland Bias, But I do think the radio medics to light years beyond a lot of data metics out there. And I've worked close with pretty much every type of medic in all the organizations. But I think the hungry Ranger medic I think, and it's not just it has nothing to do with this or nothing like that. I just think because they're just they're saturated with that knowledge of the Range of medic handbook and the institutional knowledge, and.

They have the PA and the surgeons that are there.

I've even seen eighteen deltas at our fresher course saying, you know, our surgeon won't even.

Let us do this or do that, and they'll closed my mind or.

An anteing delta, that's crazy, But ours always pushed us harder and push the envelope even when the FBA won't allow it. So yeah, when it comes to walking blood bank, we're talking about taking blood from that ranger over there who's a low tighter and putting it in this ranger who needs it. And it's not me. The medic is

I think PGAs are great, They're good at medicine.

They did do really well. I think, you know, PA medics are good. Once sixtieth medics phenomenal, they are. But I've never seen another organization where a sergeant major or a first sergeant or a masistarn or a platoon sergeant would come over and help you do medicine. Yeah, and they're good at it because they've been doing teacher for ten years at that time. I think that's what really helps in the surgeons in the PA. I think that's what really helps the organization.

That's fantastic.

Uh, you did say counter into it in Yeah?

Can I hear that right? So? Do you mean something that wasn't was not beneficial, something something.

That seemed that seemed like it wouldn't work but did or kind of blew your mind that this is actually something that works.

Yeah. I think the freshneld blood was good. That's changed military medicine for the better going forward. I'd say that's probably the biggest one there. And I think one thing that we had to get people out of the mindset was, you know, I had platoon sergeants that were like, Hey, we need to do IV training and I'm like, no, you don't, because you shouldn't be putting blood or you shouldn't be pushing normal saline or crystal lloyds or whatever. So let's get away from IV training and let's start

So it's sort of like, why do we need lactat of ringers when we have private smith right there.

Yep. So for a long time, because you know, starting an IV is like a technical thing, so infantry folks were like, oh, it's fun, so they wanted to do it. But I'm like, I don't really need you to start the IV. I need you to do this instead, So kind of kind of breaking that culture was a little hard to do.

Yeah, Well, they just wanted it for those Saturday mornings when they were feeling like shit from me.

Hey, that's what I was there for, man, I would take anybody anytime, day and night.

How students bless their souls.

Yeah, Abdy, thank you so much for the very generous donation.

We deeply appreciate it. Abby says, Hey, I'm twenty four, just in working as a TCU nurse, wanting to be a sixty eight whiskey since high school, just stuck in the immigration limbo until until then. Thanks Jack and Dave, you guys help me. Hey, thank you, Abdy.

Man.

We were rooting for you. I mean we had we had Adam Kamalan, you know, talking about his like you know immigration, uh sort of journey and and getting into the military and and all his stuff, and like bringing immigrants is a phenomenal like it's it's it's a phenomenal asset to the military.

Oh, for sure. In my experience, I've worked with stuggle that have done phenomenal whether they've I've met a few from Rutta, from even Ukraine, and then some of the what they call it the Mavney program, is that what they called that back in the day was probably no better than I do.

Where they thigh out folks.

They would bring some folks in straight from some of the other countries shim. Yeah, but that's really well. I thought it was called Madne or something like that. But I'd worked with some of those folks. They did a really really good job.

Yeah, well I'll do. We wish you all the all the best on your journey, brother Bjorn, Thank you very much. How often do cag Metics twenty fourth has ts, medics and j now work alongside each other, and how would you characterize their differences tactically and medically. I'm just I'm gonna I'm going to answer part of that for you, so so that you don't have to say anything and will just say that tactically, like they're all medics and they work according to the tactics of the people they

The rest of them.

No, that's that's correct. But the two four their medics are phenomenal.

But you'll find for medics are typically farmed out, more so when deployed to the other units. Yeah, so they work all the time. But when it comes to medicine, once again, it's a small world. So we would share a lot of our stuff, whether it's going through our medical repressure or whatever. We're all side by side and you're sureing that so nobody likes the board that experience. And even at our medical repressure, it would be a

In your opinion from the time that you were in two thousand and three or four up until and I mean act if not your guartan or guartan obviously, but until you've retired, what do you think was the biggest shift in like medical knowledge, what we thought averse what we know.

Yeah, yeah, I would say it's probably like the two thousand and five two thousand and six seven time frame where you know, teacher pile c became prevalent. It was that dgment for a while, but became prevalent everywhere else, and then the conventional force they dragged their feet for a hot minute when it came to that kind of stuff. So everybody was issued a tournique around that time frame,

Yeah, and for people because I don't know if we cover with T triple C is tactical commat casualty care right, yep?

Correct, Yeah, And there's a there's an app, Deployed Medicine app. It's free, is developed and launched by the Department's Defense. So if anybody has like an Apple Superior Apple productor or stamp Stung whatever, you should be able to find it Deployed Medicine. It has the latest and greatest, most updated information on there and of course it's free, so check that out.

Can't be free on last one, Oh M Corvin, thank you very much. Be sure to hit the like inscribed. Yes, please be sure to hit the like.

Check out our Patreon page the links down in the description, and you can get access to all these episodes out free.

So Mike, where are you at today and what are you working on?

Yeah, so I'm in Maine. We are going to stay in Maine. So this is kind of my final resting thought. I've been working for Stafeguard Medical for a couple of years now. I do new business development and they're out of North Carolina, a global company, so I'm still able to apply a lot of my medical nerd stuff there. I've also been working with some folks that ventus I getch you guys some more information if you need it.

Know, for for people who you know think that they might be having a shoot like what if it but don't know it? Maybe they think I'm just out of shape these days, Like what what should they look for? What should they ask?

You know, the V A to chet.

That's a good question. So typically with the VA to be able to get in there and get your basic

Blood labs don't lie.

So if your levels are you know, above normal range or above appropriate or acceptable levels, or they're below, it's easy.

To see that kind of trigger. But work through some of the other things are going to be.

A lot less. So I would suggest if I've worked with the v A team and they've been great for me, but I said, I want to see my values of it. I think my test officerone is low. I want to get it checked. So they've been very great about doing that.

And would the VA do testone replace or do they do tr T or.

That's hit or missed. In my experience, I've had to go through civilian channels to get my own personal test offsterone with the VA. Your acceptable level depending on that practitioner is it varies And it's unfortunate because we're seeing a lot of folks that have really low testosterone and it's it's kind of affecting their their day to day life, the quality outlook on life in the VA and I think and it's not doing enough about it.

And correct me if I'm wrong, But like, levels are very different because if a guy used to have like an eight hundred nine hundred, now he has a five. Relative if he has a five hundred, that's going to be low to him as opposed to somebody who has three hundred and used to have five.

And I'm not an end of chronologist, but sure watching and like astraally, but yeah, but you're absolutely it's relative to the person. But generally, if you used to feel this and you used to you know, be able to do this and now you're not, that could be a pretty good reason. And then when I personally got testosterone, it changed my life.

Yeah, and last question, I'm sorry, but you know you're you're such a wealth of knowledge and we're learning more all the time.

You know, we talked about TBIs.

And now we're you know, now we're finally starting to realize the effects of blast injuries, breaching and I d S and you know, mortars and stuff like that. How is medicine able to uh to split apart TB I, post traumatic stress, you know, operation like these things or is it just a big soup where they're like, well, this person's been in combat and it could be any of these things.

Yeah. So in my experience when I separated from the military, I know for a fact I had TBIs. Like I even that trip in Masoul, I hit my head while I was treating rangers shot in the face. I hit my head on the kevlar thing, and like eventually threw up from it. I know I had TBIs. And when I did the TVI screening for the VA, it was a civilian and he just was like, you know, what are these shapes? What are these animals? And asked me to memorize some things, and he said, I don't have

But there's other modalities that are that folks are.

Taking a look at, and I'm happy for it. And I think some VA systems are even looking into THHD as well. So hopefully we get there, but I could tell you we're not there yet.

Yeah, especially with the VA like the stelly gangling block, I think like you have to jump through hoops of the VA and don't. They don't give it for post traumatic stress. They only give it for a certain type of pain, you know. Like, yeah, so the VA is still like they're way behind when it comes to level of care that a lot of people need.

I think, I think my biggest advice to separating folks the folks that are already out you have to take charge of You have to take charge of your healthcare because if you don't, nobody else will. If you think that, you know, I go to the VA and I see this provider today, I might go back and see somebody else. Yeah, it's not like my time in regiment where I saw the same person every time. You have to take charge of your health care, and don't be afraid to be

Yeah, well, Mike, thank you for joining us tonight and doing this show and sharing your life experiences like this has been like super cool and they're actually very unique to dive this deep into combat medicine.

Oh no, I apologized. I've never done like a podcast before, and I don't really like talk about, you know, my history that much. That's you know, I've got to peek it all together based off memories and things that happened.

But you were horrible. You only made it two hours and two hours and forty minutes, and so I'm just kidding.

I have what one final shout out of shameless self promotion.

There you go.

My book We Defy is coming out December ninth. The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History about uh the SF teams that jumped in with backpack nuke weapons, about the first counter terrorism unit in Special Operations, the guys who worked under cover in Berlin. It's available for pre order now on Amazon and it will be out on December ninth.

How many interviews did you do for this book?

Chach like, probably close to one hundred altogether. It's like ten years of research. I mean, it's quite a while. So it covers Detachment A, Detachment Kay, Blue Light, Green Light, and the commanders in Extremist Force. That's the five chapters of the book. So I appreciate if you guys go and check.

It out, order it order or the commedis Win.

Yeah exactly. I mean, do you hate the troops?

I mean, so.

Next this coming Monday, we're gonna have Ed Bogan on the show CIA Senior Dude. And then on Friday, we're going to have Mike West, who is in the Rhodesian and South African Special Forces. So that's what's coming up next.

Thank you everybody.

We appreciate it. Thank you Mike. We really appreciate it.

It was fantastic.

Thank girl. Stay safe,