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Special Operations, Cobert Osspionage, The Team House with Your Hopes, Jack Murphy and David Bark.
Hey, folks, welcome to episode two hundred and eighty eight of The Team House.
I'm Jack Murphy here with David park.
Our guest on tonight's show is former Ranger and former Delta Force operator Dave Nielsen. Really happy to have him on the show tonight. Has an incredible story to tell. I want to tell you, guys before we jump into it, about Caman cigar. I don't know if you noticed, but this place is a little bit of an underground cigar lounge that we have here in Brooklyn. I love smoking cigars. It's something to do to unwind and relax and just kick back for a little bit and maybe not think
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Hey, all right, Dave, thank you so much for joining us and I we really really appreciate it.
Dave. It's great to be here at Jack. I'm literally like writing down Cayman Cigars and ghost bed because you guys are good at that. I need that.
Are you a hot sleeper?
Yes, but my wife is just coming through a certain period in life and she's liking it cool now, so we're almost But.
Yeah, I wonder because sometimes, you know, I've had hypothermia, and obviously we spend a lot of time in the desert.
I wonder if that does something to your body's ability to regulate.
I'm sure it does, I really think so. Yeah, Like I can handle the sun now, it doesn't like cook me. But just last week, you know, coaching football, I hit a point. I'm like, guys, I'm going in the shade and side lampbagers follow me. I mean yeah, because how many heat cats But first one was on a sniper stock man and training, Like.
I just out, yeah, yeah, Dave.
I want to ask you know what we asked most of our guests about their origin story to start off, if you could tell us a little bit about you know, where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and what was you know, that path that took you towards the military.
Yeah. Thanks. So I'm from Michigan. My mom lived in the city, you know, parents divorced real early, two older sisters, younger brother, and I lived in the suburbs with my dad about forty five minutes north in a little town called Lake Orian, back and forth from the city. My mom is married to a black man to the suburbs and that was I didn't know it at the time.
Me and my brother were just like you know, but it was now I know that that was an extreme culture shock that we lived in and it made us better. So that was in the eighties. But I ended up, you know, after high school. I knew I wanted to drink beer and I liked like literally, I'm not even trying to that's all I could figure out that I liked and and you know girls. So I ended up homeless and sleeping in my car and it was cold in February in Detroit, and you know, I was even
okay with that because I had a little job. I had enough money for beer and food. And then somebody broke into my Ford Granada one night. I'm going, you know, it stole my little speakers, and that was something just set me off there. So I went to the recruiter. I never had anybody in my family in the military. I just had some friends do it, and it just
never seemed like it was for me. But when that happened, I knew I wanted shelter in food, and so I went there and I didn't know anything that I was doing. I ended up with the Ranger contract kind of on accident. But once I got there and we started walking with
weight on our back and being tested. I found that the very hard life that i'd had, the abusive childhood and straight up drama that I had endured, God was using for a reason, and that was that I found that I had this mental toughness that you couldn't make me quit. And that's how I succeeded in the army. You know, the first first phase anyway.
I mean you said you ended up with a ranger contract by accident. I mean, how does that happen? I mean, did you guys go in there and say, give me the hardest thing you have, or did they say, like push that across the desk, like we got this for you right here, pal sign that.
Yeah, when I tell this, it sounds like the old you know, well, it was either go to jail or go in the army. I don't know if I believe those all the time, but this really happened. I was like, I just wanted to go to a cool location. I didn't know anything about anything. I wanted to go to war. When I was sixteen, I said, if our country goes to war, I'm gonna enlist. And everybody about you know, screeching halt at the table. But I just had that
Emmy in nineteen eighty six. You know, the movie Platoon came out somewhere in there, and I just love that movie and sought out the Vietnam ra vets. There's a book Charlie Rangers read that over and over and once I was in. But so yeah, so I'm going in and I'm like, I'm trying to get to California or Hawaii. And the recruiters are they had me in some a tank unit. You know, I didn't even care about the job. I just wanted location. So I'm going into the map station.
My buddies are driving me from Detroit to Cleveland. You know, long story. But we're drinking old Milwaukee lights and I'm not you know, I'm not driving. I'm in the backseat, but I tipped one and uh right as we went by a state police officer. So I got a minor in possession of alcohol ticket on the way to the maps and I knew that wasn't going to go over well, and of course it didn't, and he was, you know, okay, you screwed this up. You gotta leave, come back in
two weeks. Maybe. As I'm walking out the door, he said, hey, do you want to do you want to be a ranger? I can send you right now on a ranger contract. And I said, yeah, okay, I knew a little bit about it at that point. I said yeah, And that made me excited. And you know, we all need a challenge and to find our purpose. So that was the start of it, and I left right then. I you know, that night, I was in a hotel room and starting that whole process.
It's you know, when you tell your story, it reminds me of you know, we had another a British military veteran on who had a very traumatic childhood and there's something he said about joining the army really struck with me. He said, it was the first time I ever felt safe, which as a as a forty one year old man and a father today, like, that's such a horrifying thing to hear. I'm glad that he found some measure of safety in the military.
Though, of course, yeah, that's saying a lot. I love that.
So for you, it was sort of an escape from from a pretty troubled background.
It sounds like, yeah, and it was easy. It was security and you know, people were crying and all that, and I get it. They had, you know, good families, but like like now I know I'm going to get food and I'm not in Detroit on the streets like that was dangerous in itself. I used to just sometimes going to work at four in the morning, I would like start running, acting like I'm already being chased to
avoid you know, certain situations. So yeah, it was it was good to be in and it just it was so easy, Like even the hard stuff, it's just I laughed, and it's not. You know that the toughness comes from from I don't know where, but I think it's in all most of us, especially if you know that you got something like man, go walk it out, go put it on the line, take a risk.
We actually when we were on any Stump show, we talked about this that there's probably a large problems of.
People in special operations who are here. There were either.
Like adult children of alcoholics, had had like childhood trauma things like that, and so the idea of quitting just because you're in pain.
Is like so right, yeah, and I am seeing that that's common. You're right when I a couple of the Australians said, yeah, it's a common thing, and it threw me for such a loop when it was Tom Brown in nine Origins. He's like, asked, you know about my childhood, and you guys are doing the same like it's it's real, but that's not stuff you talk about in the regiment. Well, I guess we do. But it's more like you know, leverage to use against you.
Joke around about you Like you have to joke around about it because if people know that your sensitive about it, they're going to use it all the time.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, So like a nickname don't eat, don't fight, a nickname.
You get to range for battalion in the nineteen eighties, this is a different time.
What was it like you were? You were a two seven five guy.
Okay, so tell us about like landing in Savannah and what wife was like in one seven five the year you got there?
Yep. So eighty nine. Uh started in April, so it was through the summer. I get through rip and did pretty well and just you know, I think we had twelve guys make it out of sixty five or something, so you know, E two, no E one Nielsen. I'm just feeling like I got that black Beret man, like feeling really good, and then I knew the shock was coming and it came. But you know, again it was like this is okay to Aspect four is like cool, I want to be that. And it was brutal like
nothing else ever since Ranger Private that. I mean, there's nothing. There's no harder period of my life than that as a Ranger private.
Yeah, and very quickly it sounds like after you get there, Panama kicks off.
Yeah. So I'm assigned to b COO uh one seven second platoon. I start out in in second squad. I think on a fire team, and then got moved a weapons so I'm the weapon squad. I'm like it was like literally like they put the small guys, you know, I'm like five seven, yeah, one sixty. They put all those dudes in weapons just as a joke because that's funny. Look at them they gotta But again it's like all right,
go ahead and try me. So get were there and uh so we sat around talking thinking about Grenada, which had happened in eighty three, like ooh a combat jump, our portuns start and had you know, the old fat scroll on his right shoulder, and it was just like Dave you mentioned earlier what it was like to see that later on, and so you would talk about Grenada and this is eighty nine and Grenade was in eighty three, and at that time, you know, as young privates, eighteen
nineteen year old, it was like that will never happen again. That was so long ago. It's six years ago. Yeah, and that was like one of the first times, you know, Jaysack tried to use all the pieces together and learned so much. But yeah, December seventeenth. It happened on the twentieth.
But you know, we got alerted and all that a couple of days before and literally getting ready to go on leave my first leave in ten months of being in the Army to see a girl in Henderson, Nevada, and we were Bravo alerted that that night, I was watching The Simpsons on TV packing to go on leave, and you know, Bravo alert, get your shit fall out downstairs, Like right, I saw real quick.
You never know if it's just a training, it's this the real deal.
And even it's a real deal, like, what's the chance is actually gonna happen?
Yeah, I just want to follow a train of fight here.
So you're a young Joe in Georgia and you're going to see a girl who is now.
In Las Vegas. Was her vocation artistic and.
At the time she had lived in Michigan Bay And yeah, child a sweethearts but yeah, okay, good intentions, but yeah, it's good that that didn't happen.
So can you walk us through a little bit of the process, because I was saying before we started the show, I'm reading this book about the Jumping Grenada right now and it's very interesting to hear like kind of that process of like getting alerted, bringing the guys in, briefing them up, getting them ready to jump jmp I, getting them on the point. I mean, could you kind of like walk us through what that experience was like for you as a as a private and ranger battalion.
Yeah, it was. There's no other time like it in my life really, And you know, since then, been on about six hundred combat missions. I got journals and this and so much, but there's nothing like that. One man, because some of the guys quit that had just graduated with me from rit I saw him out in the hallway like handing their black brads to their space. I'm like, what are you, what's going on starting Rummels my gun team leader. They're quitting Lanier, I had this nickname, Lanier Lanier.
They're quitting. You're gonna quit. I was like, no, of course not, well you're not going on the jump and I was like why, you know, we'll room and I just was like specialist rumbles, I need to go. You know, we've trained together and he we had a He's like the best leader I've ever had to this day. We talk all the time, thirty some years later. So it was like I find out I'm going pretty you know, pretty quick after that. So it was just NonStop details AMMO.
Mostly a little child here and there, hurry up and sleep. And then they had terrain models like that were like twenty feet long. I mean they didn't just make those. Yeah, we had you know, briefs and briefs and it's very frightening. Mostly, you know what, man, I've learned telling stories. It's like, the reason I have been hesitant is because I don't want to get it wrong. I don't want to leave somebody out like that is the most important. That's why
I'm so hesitant sometimes to come on social media. And I do it a little bit and I see that. You know what's worse than that not trying? Right? So yeah, where we were, uh, it was just so model.
He had enough, Yeah, he had enough washed to to get somebody from the five shot. Some major kicked off the jump so an actual combatant could go exactly.
That happened a little bit, I think in Panama. Then got worse and worse with the jumps in Afghanistan and all that. But yeah, I end up on the first chalk. I'm the ninth man out on the first bird, on the left side of A one. And we had we had jumped a few times in battalion. I mean, it's it's brutal, eight hundred feet you know, six hundred rounds whatever, you know, tripod and lots and lots and lots of wait. And the worst part was just you know, I learned
that this was I always thought it wasn't necessary. We got to the airfield and we sit and we wait for hours and hours every time in the hot sun and in the rain, and this time it was in the rain. And so we rig up and we get on at like I don't know, seven o'clock at night. It's getting dark, it's raining, and it's cold, at Saber
Hall Hunter ourmy airfield. We're rigged up so much weight in our rucks and we get on the birds and it's a six hour flight and you know, golly, man, thinking back, there is just no suck like range of battalions. I mean, it's so hard to explain. I've tried and tried and tried. I wanted to quit, I wanted to get hurt, not here in Panama, but just it was so hard my first training mission and battalion, you know,
we fast roped in. I'm sorry and get off track, but like got to give credit and explain what it's like roped in off of Chinook, you know, into Fort McClellan, Alabama, and walk all night in the dark, right with no GPS back then compasses and pace count and somehow find what we're likeing for. And it's just such a shock to me to be walking through the woods all night. Nobody talks. You're so tired, can't smoke, you can't, you know, you just suck it up. You learn to like do it.
And it's so hard. So we're on the plane, man, and they opened the doors after six hours of this long flight, and the air came in it was warm air. It felt so so good and until I you know, saw orange snakes in the air and heard round hitting the plane, and it was like a mix, an equal mix of total excitement, like I want to go to war. I need to go to war. I need to test myself. Am I a man? I want to find the most difficult thing that scares me, which is war dying. Really
I want to confront it. And my life is so miserable anyways, as a range of private, like I want to see. I wanted to conquer fear. That was my thing, and of course you can't. Now I'm afraid of the silliest things, but I know how to deal with it. But so it's equal parts excitement and you know, hua and just straight fear like I've never had since before then or since then, because it was my first time. I'm an E two private hooked up and there was a dude right in front of me that we had
gotten in a fight at a bar. Not a bad just an argument and like we skinned each other, you know, we like made up right there and my gun team leaders on the other side, and he screamed, you ready to get some team, Like I could hear him over that, you know, the engines of the mold one, And that sort of snapped me out of it because I was like, Okay, what what's the process right here? When when people go to war for the first time. Oh yeah, I should be scared. I should be thinking about my family. I
couldn't remember any of my family's names or faces. Blank. We go out and as I got to the door, you know the slow motion like you got so much time to do so much stuff because your brain is processing is quicker than it ever has. I remember seeing the grass move on the ground like we're that low. I could just see the tall grass kind of going like this.
What altitude do you think you guys were at?
I got out higher than most. I know they started at five hundred they somebody said there were there were altitude calls. I think I went out around four to eighty four hundred and eighty, which is like when you see a jet that low, you think it's going to crash. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they're struggling. So I'm in the front pretty so I got out pretty you know, higher. There's trace a rounds below me. I landed and then they shot above me. So it's just nuts. You know, we only had five kias.
That's more than you know needed, but I thought it would be so much more, but lots of wounded. And then as I d rigged and got moving, I felt like again the slow motion thing. I felt like, I'm like, come on, body move something's wrong. I'm like, I'm not gonna make it. I'm not going to do it. And I looked over and I saw a dude like going about the same speed as me, you know, shucking and
driving and taking cover and this and that. So I learned later that I was doing everything fine from the training. That's why we train, you know, I had no If we wouldn't have had training, I would have just been useless. But I was doing my training, So that's you know. I became a believer once I learned about that.
Yeah, and I mean, did you guys jump on was it Rio Hoto? No?
That second back we jumped on to Qmantorios.
Okay, all right, so tell us about what the what the objective was and what you guys were trying to accomplish.
Yeah. So we had our building, I forget the name of it, but everybody had their their thing and E two private man I was like, have the tropod ready, and my my, uh my, ammo. And there was a kid, a guy on another gun team in my squad. He said, I'm gonna drive. I'm gonna dump this AMMO when we land and I rated him out man, and I would do it again like no, you're not brother, Uh huh, that's all of us, that's team stuff. And uh he didn't. He was gone, yeah, you're not gonna dump ammo. Man.
So landed. I didn't hit tarmac, I just missed it. I hit grass, But it was still like like getting punched in the neck. Yeah, we wore reserves. I don't you know. In Grenada they didn't and like we didn't want to, like we want to be cool like Grenada, you can't use them, well, just put them there to stabilize your ruck and all that, like whatever.
Okay, it's so ridiculous, isn't it?
That you know they're they're so And it's probably not your like direct line supervisor, but it's probably some colonel or lieutenant colonel or whatever who doesn't want to have to explain why they didn't wear reserves, even though a reserve is going to do absolutely no good at all.
At four hundred and eighty feet, you know.
Yeah, it's hard to get that thing out at eight hundred Yeah, really hard. What is cool? But they did that was cool. I just found this they made us where they make these helmet covers. Yeah, I kept this thing.
That's awesome.
Yeah, just tore up b to us and we you know, so we all look like predators running around. That was a good call.
So so you land, you start heading out to the assembly area, and you said there was a target building.
Yep, and there's the old choke point. So I see people are kind of bounding up going through the choke point. I forget if it was marked with the cam light or something, but there was a choke point to get through. I heard, you know, sort of skirmishes left and right. There was nothing in front of me to deal with, but I heard you know, RPG explosions, which I would find out later some of my buddies took you know,
got blown up, got through the choke point in there. Well, there was a body there that people made sure was dead. That so that's my first dead body. I went through the choke point and then got to my objective kind of quiet at that point, and then uh, something god I had I had to crawl to another gun position for AMMO to redistribute, and somebody came up on a roof. So I see this sort of you know, I'm crawling like high crawling, and I just see somebody on a
roof with a gun look down at me. And I'd had dreams about this. I'm getting like dry mouth talking about this. I'm like waiting for it, and I hear a gun, you know, a pop. My squad later shot him with his pistol. I mean, it's like unreal. So there was that, and then then it got quiet, and then the eighty second jumped in, and then uh, we watched them jump in and come up and and then
the seventh id landed and came in. And then the air Force had it had an ice cream or a box truck, and my platoons start and picked me and another private said Nielsen and from Kia, unload this truck. It was bodies. You know, he told us they had gone out collected bodies. So we opened the truck doors and you know, it's like half full of this box truck of hot bodies in the hot blood man. When you first the first time it's just like, wow, you know, it got real. So we're unloading these I can feel
it right now, just warm copper, blood smell. Bodies were stacking them up and on the bottom of the pilots. Jim Markwell, ranger medick from one seven to five, and he had tried to put his first aid kid on it. He was shot in the in the pell of this horrible spot. Yeah and yeah, so we got him off, wrapped him in my squad leader's poncho. And man, at that point, I had been up for almost three days.
So I go back to my security position and the sun's starting to come up, and there's this stack of bodies and you know, I'm starting to hallucinate so and other people were too, so I think I can't even remember what happened, But somehow we went in and got sleep in this hangar and I slept for a long time. That was that. That was the first combat.
Wow, And what was kind of the follow on to Panama? Because I mean, the invasion it all popped off relatively quickly. Were there like follow on targets that you guys had to hit or were pretty much just chilling on the airfield at that.
Point, we chilled for like a week and then we went out in the bush to look for Noriega. I think it was just training exercise. And that was, to this day the hardest humping I've ever done, Harder than selection. Yeah, that was Panamama. Oh my god. Yeah, the jungle's no.
Joke down there, Triple canopy, the black palm, Yeah.
Yeah, black palms, no joke.
Yeah. And and uh, and I had lost my PC when the when the I think Huey's took us. I don't know if it was black Hawk. We run it a hue I think lost my PC, and and so did another private. So what do you do? You wear a sand bag on your head? Ranger Nielsen. So we're out in freaking jungle patrolling looking for Noriega, and I have a sand bag. I put E two rank on it.
Well fortunately so for people who don't know a PC has patrol cap it's also as you dirty civilians would call it a hat, and you stand in line for hours outside and boutique to buy them.
But I'm if it just.
Hadn't been actual combat, the entire all the privates would have been online looking for it walking through the jungle.
Oh yeah, yeah.
And so after Panama that's nineteen eighty nine. Uh, it sounds like we're relatively quickly, you guys get spun up for Desert Storm.
Yeah, we go back and now life's kind of good. It's like I'm a PFC with the CIB that was our thing. Yeah, you go to Ranger School and and you know we're driving with the second bat guys, which is not normal, you know, because there's other there's always tension, but and and third back because you know, everybody's got their stories. But you know, the Black Sheep and all that are doing their thing. But we're all PFCs with CIVS and Ranger School and it's like untouchable, right.
Yeah, Bustard, Yeah, combat Scrolls.
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. So yeah, the altho, the entire Ranger regiment jumped into Panama time.
I think that's ever happened.
So that's kind of cool, Like you and your peers all had this sort of like shared experience, even across the geographically separated battalions.
Yeah, it was it was very Uh it was a link. You know. It changed everything for me anyway, because one I knew I could do it. Uh, you know, my gun team later was like the near a good job, Like I did it everything I was supposed to do, barely with that sandbag. I was so mad at this. You know, it's some spec for in another squad that heckling me and making me do that. But whatever, I
got through it. Uh. Not long after that desert storm comes up and they pick one company out of the regiment, BIKO one seven, which is fine, and like.
Us, what's that schwartz a cough didn't like us?
Yeah, man, I had to meet him. We had to do this like, you know, put your stuff up there and he's gonna come through and just general Orman schwartz cuff. This was a number sixty year cool belt fed machine gun. So he's like, I, no, ranger, Yeah, tell me about yourself, you know, shook his hand and all that. So it wasn't bad, but we didn't do anything.
You guys sat out there. Yeah, there there was and I mean I guess it wasn't you guys, but there was like one ranger target. I think they hit like a radio relays station or a radar installation.
Yeah, I mean, so that was first between my buddies. They went cool with some unit guys and that thing up at the Kicker charged in Ghost. It was like big old, massive tower. Yeah, and I think it was after that, and then a black Hawk went down because of weather and thirteen or fourteen guys were killed at the tail end of that. We had to go out and recover that. So you know, just sad.
Were those the unit guys that were out?
Yeah, okay, I remember Dale Comstock was out there on the ground when that happened.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that And then I went to that right after ranger school and I had gotten married, so it was just good living, but but hard living. Got back and then I got out the army. That was just always my plan. I was just gonna do a I did a three year en listening. I got out in ninety two and never thought about staying in.
Right, you held that you had that experience and you're ready to move on to the next thing.
Yeah, not to mention how difficult it is to be a ranger man. So yeah, I'm out for ten years and then you want to talk about the BlackBerry. Now you guys got one on yourself.
David's is right behind mine, is right here.
Nice.
I was a school ranger. I never I never breathed the same. You guys were the same rarefied air as.
A bad dog, teams and interrogators.
But you went to George Mason, you went to school. I mean, before we get to your your road march protest, I mean, what were you doing on the outside, what was what was sort of your your wife ambition?
There still very lost, kind of just searching. So you know, we talk about the trauma and the childhood stuff. It was bad. My brother, my little brother, best friend hung himself twelve years ago and twenty twelve, just you know, he couldn't get through it. So you know, it's bad. It's so I was just lost. I was really lost at George Mason. I was an English major. I like to write, and so I just you know, I never really knew what my calling was. Like I'm just I
don't figuring it out. It's it's being a coach, and it's telling our story. So one oh seven says, let the Redeemed of the Lord Teller's story. It's so important, and let the wise listen. You know, I was at the VA and this this man was like, well I only did one rotation, so I'm not blah blah blah, you know, it's just a not just he's a he's a regular infantry guy. And I felt compelled to talk to him. I said, man, you did it, or that you went there for a year, you did your job.
It doesn't work with on us all. Like so, yeah, I'm out and just you know, on the fast track to realizing I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I'm sober today. Fifteen years is my sobriety date. July twenty six, two thousand and nine. Yeah, I just can't can't do it.
Yeah, yeah, no, congratulations, How how did you you know?
I think that a lot of guys from the community, a lot of people form the community, have to come to terms with this idea of the quiet professional.
But stories deserve to be shared. People deserve to hear them.
And the people who have them deserve to be able to tell them. And and not just you know, for the historical part. And and I'm not talking about the guy in the bar you know who killed in laden but but you know, the the just the stories and and again, like a person could be an admin person like you do your time, to do your time, like and there's no shame and there's no comparison or whatever.
But but we come from this community, and you in particular, come from this community where it's always impressed.
Upon you to be the quiet professional, right, you know.
And but then you get out to the real world, and one, being a quiet professional doesn't get you a job, right uh?
And two.
You're doing yourself and the next generation a disservice when.
You don't share. Did did you have a difficult time coming to grips with that? Or how did you? How did you do that?
And I'm wrestling with it right now. Really I'm at peace with it. But I so appreciate you guys. I'm trying to do my podcast. It's difficult, So I appreciate what you're doing. And I didn't, you know, I get to the unit. So okay, I'm a really quiet professional, you know, But what is that? What is the purpose of that? Like Jessica Lance, for example, we dug up those bodies, and I never talked about the nine bodies that we dug up. Hey, that was a reason to go.
You know, stuff like that needs to be said, must be said. And so for me, it was a long process, Dave, like years, I mean just about a year ago I went to seminary some years back, and I love theology. I just love that, you know, thinking about the creation and everything. So after that, I felt moved to tell my story, tell, you know, and and hear stories and you know, so that maybe my brother wouldn't have hung himself so at a certain point, and it was it
was hard. I think my first thing was an Instagram account, and I was so nervous and I had people helping me and I put out like a post and then hey, people are liking this, you know, and I put some pictures out that it was on a podcast, and you know, I think the more we do it, the more sometimes scarier. It's like I've done these interviews with David Hookstead of OutKick, and he knows he gets those questions teed up. And
it's like I decided beforehand to answer the question. I really thought and prayed about it for a long time, and I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm not going to half measure it. I'm going to tell it all. So I'm going to talk about killing and not in a bragging way, but because it is a fucking burden, yea, not even that it's bad. It's not like I can't sleep because of this. No, I'm at peace with all that. But it's so it's a whole different life experience that needs to be known by people.
It's interesting that you brought up bragging because I think.
For a lot of us, it feels like when we are telling our stories, it feels to us like we're bragging either that or that we're boring people to tears because they don't because we think they don't care about this.
You've also had a couple interesting conversations with guys after we did the podcast. Yeah, and they tell us some fairly graphic stories, you know, just man to man that they didn't want to share on a podcast because for exactly that they don't want to come across like they're bragging about it and like.
This is something to glorify. And I mean, I respect that, I get it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a fine line, and I so I try to always caveat or disclaimer it with you know. Look, I'm doing this because I have found peace and and I've gotten better. I no longer want to die like I did, like I tried to. So you know, it does work, and like you said, the next generations, we're doing them at the service. We absolutely are if we don't.
You know, these Vietnam rangers took me out on a sailing trip for three days and they told stories and the like, now you go, tell us about Panama and you know, and we did, and we shot jellyfish off the boat and all that and just had a life experience.
You know, like that's cool.
Yeah, So take a uh, I mean, we're gonna, We're gonna definitely I want to I want to dig a little bit deeper into some of these themes you've mentioned, but kind of going in chronological order. You're in school, You're in You're you're in Cipy Street, You're you're a dirty, nasty civilian trying to find your way. I mean, tell us a little bit about how that went, and walk us into how you had this this epic protest that even I heard about.
M hm, it's hilarious. Well, here's a story from a George Mason. In my English class, I we had to write a narrative of you know, I forget two thousand words or something. So I wrote and compressed the Panama story I just and then we had to read it in this class. And this is like Honors English. So we had this really good instructor who was respectful and and I went through the jump commands, you know, six minutes, and you know, I and I called it altered because
I had been altered from that experience. And I read this. So I'm in my late twenties, I'm older than many most of the people in the class. I read it, and even back then in the nineties are like, what are you talking about? Right? We went why why did you do that? You know, it just it wasn't even like it was this. It made me laugh and then cry later.
But yeah, it's like it's not like they're necessarily anti war hippies. It's just they're sort of flabbergas did like this happened?
Like what exactly? So I'm like, man, people don't know anything, and without our presence and our freaking muscle through these years, we wouldn't be able to do anything good.
So yeah, and you know, it's funny because I have seen guys who sort of resent civilians for that, but at the same time, it's like, that's why we're there. So they so that so that they could know who got voted off the real world or whatever, and they don't.
Have to worry about something that Yeah, exactly, you know, you know, so, yeah.
It's it's it's a very interesting thing.
Like did the people in your class treat you differently after that?
I think so. I think that's where I started to see that there was always within a group, and it became like a metric for me of who I want to be around, because I can remember a couple people who had follow on questions and they're so scared to ask questions, and you know, I learned long after that no,
come on, ask anything. It's fine. Yeah, but you know, I think that's where I started to, uh see that the people who at least had that look in their eye like whoa, that's heavy, Like I want to be around those people.
Yeah.
And when did it come around that, you know, the Rangers were changing out their beret from Dave's time to the to the present modern time.
To yes, when Shinseki said, you know, the Rangers are motivated, I think that if we get that black beret which motivates them to everybody else, the rest of the army will be motivated too.
On paper, it was brilliant, Yeah, and then we heard about it. So this is in thatah, it was.
It was two thousand, Yeah, two thousand.
I'm a civilian at George Mason. We just had had that's there were like check groups, ranger check groups, and you know, I don't even know what they were.
Called, like AOL or something back then.
Yeah. Yeah, and we're listening, We're talking to the Vietnam guys real time. It was. It was cool. And then so I heard about this Black Barry thing and a guy named Dave Scott from Montana started it. He needed volunteers. I was like, hm, I think I can do this. I talked to my wife and yeah, I can do it. So I volunteered and I got on his team, you know,
set it up. We had all kinds of support monetarily and leadership, like guys behind the scenes retired, some of some of them are still active, you know, some E nines and some officers who supported us. I still don't know exactly how, but we had just everything we needed. So it's like, yeah, we're gonna at least say suck it, General Sinzechi. That's that's crap. I mean, the Black Prey was what we why we got through rip three weeks.
I did it twice sucks had to do when I went back in the second time, which was after the ro March. So yeah, so we uh, all right, We're gonna walk from Fort Benning home of the Infantry, to Washington, d C. To raise awareness about this stupidity of giving the black beat to everybody, right and every the people in the army. They not one person ever said that was a good you know, they didn't want it. Yeah, they knew, right, So yeah, we start walking twenty average
twenty five miles a day for thirty days. It was I wasn't carrying weight, you know, I had a ruck with some pillows in it. Pil Frangdrick got a little smarter at that, Yeah, right right.
Did at any point you hear from like the Department of the Army. Did they ever weigh in on like this controversy and what you guys were doing.
Yeah, and I would hear it from. I think it was I don't know if I should drop names, but the you know, the colonel of the Rege, I think Colonel something. I had a call at the beginning or we did saying well at first it was like what's your plan? And they asked for our social Security numbers? And then they said, okay, you're good to go. It's like, oh, they wanted to make sure you Yeah, yeah.
That makes sense.
I think they're making sure we were legit right, cool, Like yeah, yeah, please do that.
Yeah.
And I tell people like always, it's okay to ask for two fourteen. I'm not going to get offended.
Yeah.
So yeah, because there's so many posters out there, so many liars. Yeah and so and then at the end, colonel called me on my on my home phone. I'll get to that, but yeah, So they were involved. They were watching everything Army Times was out there, and then it was like box news. It was local news and every time, you know, little city that we walked through, it was cool. Man. That was fun just to sort of be alone. People fell out. I was the only one that, you know, not by not because I'm awesome
or anything. It's just I was the only dude that ended up going the whole way. But the guy that started fell out with some trouble. Again, the leadership that we had would they were they would come in, they would make sure everything was good, and then they would leave. So the news president the media really built up though, So it's like then it's like Fox New CNN and it's we're seeing it on. You know, I didn't like that. I still don't, but I'm gonna do it. That's what
we're trying to do is raise awareness. So, you know, we get to d C. We we start talking to Center oh Man and I got some cool We see Al Sharpton walking down the street. So my gun team leader, Sarton Rummels, he shows up. He's a civilian. He shows up wearing deserts. I'm wearing O G one O seven's. We had John Burns Somalia. We'reing chocolate chips. And then we had Bill Rown who's dead now. He was a f Company ranger in Vietnam. Wow, going from you know,
we got there. So we're at the Lincoln Memorial Parks and we're walking up and we just happened to be in a wedge for me like four or five rangers, you know, just and Al Sharpton and his entourage is coming down the I didn't my certain Rummes was like, Hey, that's that's reverend. Now I'm gonna let's go meet him. And he's like, hey, Reverend, the boys want to talk to you. Can we come over and meet you and is like they like covering up on Al Sharpton. Just
a funny story, like to meet that's hilarious. So we get into d C and talking to senators and we're trying to uh, Hillary Clinton was a brand new senator at that point. She was her office was down by the mill. She was brand new and just you know, for the for the rangers were like can we you know, we're like doing everything we can to talk to Hillary Clinton just to get a picture you know, for the for the walls and the barracks because it would be hilarious.
And she looked out, but she didn't come out. So but it was cool. We talked to like strom Thurman and you know, all these people that are gone now. But it went well. I testified in the Senate Small Arms or some committee.
On Services committee.
Yes, thank you, and General sin Seki was there. This This was weird.
Yeah you think I had hold that scumbag?
What was that?
Yeah? They they had me in there and I was like what do I do? Just sit there with your black or tanberry, I can't remember. But so they start going and is that gentleman here that walked seven hundred miles from you know, I stood up like thank you, blah blah blah, and they're hammering Shinzechy. They're like, this is why you're trying to spend six million dollars in China. That's that's what really got got it overturned was the money.
It always is right, it's like hate tank boy, yeah, and always trying to tell the difference between a ranger tab and right right ye, never ending battle. But they you know, and I thought I was I was young, I'm you know, I was like, oh man, they told him good. We go out in the hallway and we're talking and he's standing right there and I wanted I just wanted to look him in the eye, and he wouldn't.
He wouldn't you know. I'm kind of like not too aggressive, but just trying to like get to where and he wouldn't look at me. So after that, colonel called me at home and said, hey, we're gonna wear Tambo rays. There's a compromise. And I thought that I still thought that was BS but whatever.
Yeah, that that that was gonna be what distinguished them separate from Big Army.
So so for people who may or may not be falling along this, this was a real like heartache for Rangers at that time because black was a ranger of color, were night fighters black. Yeah, so you have your green beret, you have your maroon beret, you have your black beret, and uh and then Shinsaki, General Shinseki, a tank officer, right, it was an armor officer, decided that basically that, oh, the rest of the Army needs a spread of corps
like the Rangers have a spree to corps. It must be the magic hat they wear, that that fantastic French poof that they wear, which was a pain in the ass to shape to it like, and nobody in the army did that. They didn't shave it, they didn't shape it.
Yeah.
Yeah, but but he thought that the answer to army morale and esprit de corps was these magic hats that the Rangers were wearing.
And so he basically said, everybody gets that.
Hat when that when getting the hat like getting a green bray, getting a black bereat, what was a rite of passage?
It was?
It was you know, for us, getting the ranger cat was no big deal like that just meant that we can make he five.
We didn't care about that. We cared about getting that black Beret.
Yep.
So there was a lot of heartache about it at the time.
Yeah. So.
And at the same time that all of this is happening, it's already percolating in the back of your mind that you want to join the you want to go back in.
Yeah, it was. And I because I couldn't. I still was like I couldn't find what I wanted to do with my life. And I woke up one morning and it was like, oh my god. I said to my I literally, I'm going back in the army. And she screamed the F word really a loud. I think I've been sort of murmuring it. I said, I'm going back in. She knew I was serious, and she's like, ah, but
quickly or eventually got over it. I gave myself a damn high and tight and it took me a year to get back and they wouldn't take me back in. I had a spinal fusion and I was old, so I had to get waivers and wavering and I couldn't get back in. And then they're like for a year, and then they said, well, you can be a cook or a mechanic at Fort Riley, Mkansas, Kansas. You picked your job and ID so I just happened to have this paper here because my wife just had loaned it
to somebody. Another story, But I mean, this is the Washington Times and there's me like George Bush. You know, we were on the front page of these papers a few times and my TBI just kicked in. What were we talking about?
The Yeah, you were talking about your decision to go back in and they said no. And I just want to stop you right there real quick.
You said you were old. And for our audience out there, how old is old? I want you guys to hear this. How old were you at that point?
You're talking thirty thirty two years old? So ancient?
Yeah, you were ancient for the airborne ranger in the sky.
Yeah, kind of like athletes.
Yeah, I mean that isn't that The average age in ranger regimen is eighteen, isn't it?
Well?
I mean I think the average age is probably like it's probably like twenty one because you.
Have your leadership, you do, but there's much more privates there was on average. Yeah, it's like it's.
It's it's it's it's a teeny bopper organization.
We have soccer school with guns. Yeah, yep, but we get it done somehow.
So here you are an elderly man of thirty, well into your wisened years.
Yes, yep. And again, man, Dave, we're not bragging, but like, this is a hilarious thing that happened. So there was an e eight woman working at the MAPS. I had this pray, but this is my last resort. I brought it in. I said, Master short, this is me. I did this walk because I love our country and our army. She was like, damn, that's freaking cool. Where do you
want to go that day? Right there? I had orders to one five no basic training after ten years and and then, man, it was either then or the next time when I went in. I'm sitting in this at the MAPS in Baltimore. I'm living in Northern Virginia for George Mason to go back in. There's this like one hundred inch TV screen on MTV and I'm sitting there with all the other idiots getting into the MTV's on and they this is back Martha McCallum whatever, Like what
are special operations? And they showed me and my little antrage walking up the Black Brace to the Lincoln memorial. Nobody knows it's me, right, It's like, oh my god, I never saw that commercial, that thing before or since then, but it's like, wow, you know, nobody knew it was me sitting there. But ridiculous, just ridiculous.
So you didn't have to do basic again. Did you have to go back through maps or not maps on rip?
Yeah, so straight to one seventy five. That eight was just like she just wrote over. It was so easy. So I show up. They're on leave. I just show up the army. I got my whole uniform. I think, no rank, but I you know, I certainly got my mustards stained and scroll on and old star Major Turner's there, who was in the six when I got out in ninety two? Oh grab what?
Oh?
I remember you? You know everybody's on leave, but he's there, Rudy. So he puts me in snipers, and I'm just elated, like, oh, that's what I want to do. Nine and eleven had happened, you know, I want to get back in a fight. So they're gone on leave, I'm in, uh snipers. I kept my little barracks room twelve seventy six North or whatever, and I get in there and I slp my wallocker. I don't know if you guys had to do that.
I don't. I'm trying to remember. I don't remember if we.
Did or not.
So I do that, and uh, they come back and leave and I'm in their formation, like what else am I going to do? So I just their first woe when they get back. You know, you're back from leave. Everybody was just like January and they're like, who are you? So I tell them and they're like, oh, okay, so are you? So?
Are you a TAPSPEC for at this point in time.
I'm a tabed PFC. PFC Wow, they put me back in as a PFC.
Wow.
Okay, yeah, like why couldn't. I was any five when I got out and they couldn't even make me expect for there was some hate there. Yeah, so yeah, PFC back in And then I went to that must have been after it. I went back to RIP, which was which was hard, but it was cool because when it got when we got to Cold Range, those guys knew
the structures. They had jumped into Afghanistan. They knew that that I had done the walk, So like when it was getting ready, you know, we're carrying the log and we're going to do fun games all night for three nights or whatever. Somebody taps me on the shoulder and I turned around, like to a fight, I thought it was, and he's like, no, no, no, come here. He's like, get your rug and go over there in the woods and sleep. And I was like, are you sure? And
oh was that nice? Hover? Many hours it was and I heard it all going on, but save my bacon. Then we do the twelve miler, you know, there's ninety night guys, and like, I got to come in first. I'm the old man, and I did, but oh did I hurt myself doing so? Back to rip and then it tried to put me in three seven five, which
I wouldn't. I didn't mind. It was just I had my family at Savannah, so yeah, got that change, went back there, and yeah, we deployed to Afghanistan and then Iraq, Iraq, and then I went to selection.
And what was it like for you going to Afghanistan and Iraq? Having been a Panama of that?
Looking back, I don't know what I could have done different With my personality. I'm an introvert, so I just tried to like jump in, but man, I was pretty freaking dumb on a lot of stuff. We had prick seventeen's and they had what was it seven? No, it's a seventeen now, new radios, new machine guns, new airplanes. Man Like, we went to jump the first time and I put my hands on the door. They're like, whoa, what are you doing there? Geronimo? Yeah, everything was different.
So I got pretty mocked and ridiculed, you know, all the way till I made election for Delta.
So but what I mean was the mocking and the ritual like in a fun way, like hey, old man like or or was there do you think there was actual short of malice behind it?
I think a little of both. Good question, you know, I think it was both. There was just you know, there's one guy who's just trying to get under my skin. And he did and probably looking back as I could today, it which is it wouldn't bother me, Like I don't need to let that bother me. But he did and made it really hard. I made it harder than it needed to be. You know.
It's just like, what was he a here or was he a senior to you?
He was? He was equal? So in the we're in snipers were both tab spectors, and it's just, you know, it was just pretty much dick measure and I mean like trying to out do me whatever for whatever reason. I don't know, but it's like that's still I mean, that's why I coached high school football. It's like that's the thing that you guys have. But I think a lot of people have. They don't know that that needs
to be brought out. When you see something wrong, when you see hypocrisy, do something m and and and I think it's time that people listen to two warriors, the warrior class of people of men and women some women.
What was uh, what was it like now going back to war with the Ranger Regiment because as you point out, like the technology had changed, but the regiment was also going through tremendous changes at the time. And I mean you said you did a couple of pumpst Afghanistan, a couple to Iraq.
Yeah, one to Afghanistan. I was pretty slow. I mean I probably should have had basic training again, I mean I was. It took me a while to catch up, it really did. So I did my best. Yeah, you know, we we had the Jessica Lynch thing. We talked about a little bit earlier where it still pisses me off, but you know, we went there to get her and the nine American bodies that were buried in shallow graves for three weeks that we dug up that.
You know, I've heard story to herry up pretty that it was pretty bad.
It was horrible. Yeah, but the worst you know, that's doable. But the worst part is is here in the news and and just all the bs and it's like, never I never heard about the nine nine bodies.
Do you remember, you know, when crazy like conspiracy theories had actually caught on to where even like major news networks was that the Rangers had b fas on their weapons. Do you remember that it was so crazy in firing an adaptor? So even mainstream media was like cat was like sort of propagating.
They weren't like this is what happened? Like did this happen? And so you know what does that mean? Was this right? Just a hoax? It's like, where are you guys getting your information from?
Yeah, it's it's maddening if you let it, you know, I don't. I'm hesitant to bring up the name Pat Tillman, but I saw in that movie that just came out where he was thinking that we were just there to shoot airplanes. It's like, dude, like he didn't know that we were digging up bodies because they don't freaking communicate disem of that information, right, he didn't. He thought we were just there for hours. That I saw that, I was like, oh my god, that's m man, we're not telling stories.
Yeah.
Yeah, So when when did the unit sort of come on to your Were you like, I don't want to be a ranger, or were you like, I want to do this thing.
Rangers were cool. I just honestly like the physicality of it. I mean, I did it for almost six years total, three years, and then the other enlistment almost three years. I don't think I could have done it much longer. It is so demanding. I mean, I just so I knew in the unit I knew he had. It was hard to get there, but I knew that we didn't walk. They didn't walk everywhere. I just hated walking everywhere, eveno
I did seven hundred mile marks. But yeah, it was kind of like, I wonder if I could do that, I'm gonna try, and had the opportunity. Patuon started and let me train and irack. So I walked around at the MSS, those ten houses we had up and down those driveways with you know, bare feet sometimes just to toughen up my feet and get ready and you know. And then there was something that there was this first sergeant.
I had smart wool socks on. In Iraq during the war, we're wearing whatever we call it range uniform, like shorts and boots, T shirt for workout, whatever it was. I had some brown T shirt range of panties, right, yeah, how can I forget that? And he comes up, He's like, hey, ranger, buddy, of those those army issued socks. I'm like, well, other smart wool socks. First aret gotta change him. And I was like, man, that's it. The little thing, yeah, pushes me over the edge.
Yeah.
So I went to selection. Yeah, and all those dudes were like, what do you what are you going for? You're old.
And what was that experience like? And I mean did you kind of find what you were looking for in the unit?
Yeah? And then some I mean it just loved it, loved it it. I don't I don't stay in touch and go and go to reunions and all that like, I'm it's not my identity anymore, right, But it was so cool because you know, and the Rangers there was like, you don't get paid to think. I need to think, man, lady needs to think, right, So I wanted to do that. And then I get to the unit and they're like, you got to invent something in your first year. I was like, cool, I'm in the right place. Yeah cool.
And when when you showed up the unit, did you go to the line or did you go to the sniper, Like where did you go first?
Where did you end up?
So I got through selection my first try, and I'm elated walking on you know, Oh I made it the first time. Then I get to OTC and failed. I made it to the end. My pistol shooting just sucked. I mean I never saw a pistol. I never sat a gun before I joined the army. So yeah, I mean, you're gonna shoot a live round in a real airplace, and you got to be into a bullet trap. You can't mince.
And in the nineties, rangers and that, like now Rangers have pistols. In the nineties they didn't like maybe the squad leader, I don't know, maybe I can't remember, but yeah.
Well and then you know the yeah yeah, the beauty commander was Burretta but yeah, I mean but that it was important. So I failed. I made all through and failed, and that's how I became a dog handler. So you know, twenty five thirty percent of people fail LOTC. It's not an uncommon thing. I had a plan. I had seen Rudy, this awesome dog when I was a ranger with the unit,
so I was like, I want to do that. So I failed, and I asked the sorry major telling me that I failed, if I could do that, and he said, hold on a second. He came right back and he's like, you're going to see You're going to squadron. So so I'm a West Virginia graduate but a no TC failure, so I'm directed right, Okay, cool. That was priceless because I really learned to appreciate everybody now that i'm director.
I failed something. I'm not superman anymore. And I had this wonderful dog, Pepper, who you know we've talked about a lot and it was a great experience. I hit her for two years. She was killed in six After that, I went back to OTC crushed. It was drafted first, you know, up high like they have a draft, So it was Yeah, then it was straight to a sniper wreckie team. And you know we still do assault of course,
you know, it's pretty much what you do. And so the rest of my years just on a couple of different teams and different squadrons, and I mean we just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of of hits every night, all night.
How how mature when you went direct support?
Uh?
How how mature was the dog program at that time?
I would say, not fledgling, but but close. Uh we could do CQB without issue. That dogs knew what they were doing. So it was still young but not established there were it was only at the unit. Yeah, very interesting.
Yet what were what was the role of the dogs of the unit? I mean you were the knine handlers at that time.
Two main two main things like detection and uh, you know, going after a person attack like so some of them you know, well, yeah, my thing was, uh, you know, a squirter, somebody's gonna try and run away. This this fifty three pound girl can uh, she's gonna get you. Yeah, and she's like awesome around the house. She loves with the boys, so she you know, yeah, so yeah.
The breathe, I don't know if people want that out, but the breath that they use is it's amazing.
I don't know.
It's not a house pet, you know, it's it's not it's not something you get for you know, your two bedroom apartment in New York. But it's I mean, it's a working dog, smart as hell light and when they turn it on, it's on.
Yep.
They're pointy eared dogs, and there's there's a few varieties, but the pointiered ones are the ones that mean business. And then they go through selection. That's pretty cool. You know, out of one hundred dogs will get one or two that will like my dog Pepper. You know, they had to set up in a dark room looks like a hole in the wall, and they you know, like and she jumped into a hole blindly. Yeah wow, and like yeah, that's how you know. There's there's tests to see if
they're going to do it. Yeah.
A friend of mine who who has a I think three of them I can't remember me for but she was saying that that a lot of times they use the females because they're more aggressive.
The males.
The males get a little dopey and a little too friendly sometimes and that honestly, like sometimes the smaller the dog that like, the more aggressive it it can be.
Yeah, I mean she was she was fifty three pounds. She was small, and there was this kind of bruiser in the kennels, you know who old Salt who had been there and he uh one time we kept him all separate, but there was one time where he got out and Pepper was out and he tried to give her some stuff and she whipped his ass right back in his kennel. It was it was amazing, Yeah, yeah, amazing.
Do you have any any memorable moments from that time as a canine handler that stand out for you?
It was it was so uh so now I'm with like a delta team, you know, I'm attached to them, uh feeling feeling sort of worthy, but not like TC because if I it's like looking back, you know, it was like my identity was so dependent and that's just where I was at the time. It's okay, like I know now that you know, I'm a I'm a person and a father and God loves me and all this, But it took a long time to get our first bite. So uh, just a few missions. You know, there just
wasn't conditions. I'm not just gonna bite somebody. So finally, like we're taking some uh some guys that you know, detainees off off a helo. So it's dark night, you know, blot whatever wherever it was, just you know, the noise, can't hear anything. You got to get right up and screaming. Somebody's ear to to say anything. We're getting these detainees off and retired, and we're walking them and this never happened except for that time. This dude starts leaning back
into me. I hadn't been to Seris school yet. I didn't know anything about resistance. He's resisting me. I didn't know what was going on. And then I'm just like I didn't know what to do. So so then he like turns around, and I was clueless, and I'm like at the end of the line, so nobody's seeing me.
Pepper my dog comes around and bites this dude right in the junk and and he's just like, yeah, you know, and the truth the guys turn around, the guys that I want to like be accepted into, they turn around and they're just like, she did it finally, so and it was it was the right thing. This dude was I don't know what, you know.
So the dodd just didn't like that dude bowing up on you like that.
Yeah, right, it was so cool. So yeah, that was the first one, and then everything was smoother after that. I mean, you know, until she got killed. But we're going after Zarkkawi when she got killed. I don't know if you guys remember a MS. Yeah, of course you do. At the time, you know, forget about Bin Lauden, like Zark Cowie was. You know, we wanted to get our hands on him. He's sawing off people's heads, recording it and putting it out for the world to see. He's
he's evil. He's really really evil. So that's who we're going after. When she got killed on the Tigers River, what turned out not to be him, But you don't know until you find everybody that's trying to run away.
I mean, I know it's a painful experience, but do you want to talk about what happened that day?
Sure? Yeah, And you know it's funny when I tried to die, when I decided I was going to die in twenty fourteen, Like I said, my brother committed suicide. I did the only thing crazier than suicide. At the time, I was like, I'm going to go to the mental hospital. And the day that's nuts. So I drove to the Durham Va High and got myself checked into the mental board.
Helped me out about the mission with Pepper in twenty sixteen.
So thank you. So I quickly got out of there. There my roommate had one arm and a torso in his head. Nope, he was missing two legs in one arm. And when that dude turned and looked at me, I wanted out because his eyes were death in a different way. So he helped me, and I, you know, but I got out. It took three days to get out. I got out, and then on my follow on, I had this great doctor, this awesome therapist, Sarah Boating, actress, Sarah Boating.
She was incredible. She talked to me and then we ended up doing prolonged exposure, which is telling the same story over and over. And I chose Pepper and Lance Cornette, good buddy of mine had been killed the night before she was killed, and uh so for a year and a half. I went to the VA as part of my recovery, telling this story close in my eyes, trusting, you know, this awesome doctor who I'm still in touch with. You know, these guys. There's there's good help at the
VA if you can find it. For eighteen months, and then right towards the end of that, I get contacted by HBO and Channing Tady wants to do this documentary. It was like, oh my gosh, So I wrote this little thing called Suicide the Red Carpet because in three years it was like I'm trying to die and then I'm literally walking the red carpet talking about my dog story, which you know, I learned to say it speak it well at the VA. So it was it was clearly, uh you know sort of I had help if.
The therapy day, yeah yeah, And so what what did happen?
Well, we're going after eight one squatter. There's this massive combined units thing and we just had a little, a little job. We were rerec team around little birds. We were just squarter control. So there's all this coordinated stuff with this village in South Baghdad, and now this is a nasty, nasty, nasty neighborhood, and I remember flying in seeing hoods of humbies on the ground in parts really bad. So we going to night. There was like even one
hundred and first Airborne was part of this. There was units all over the place doing things. We're squarter control. We were flying there, no squarters, boom. We went home. It was five minutes from the airfield. We're back. We get off the birds and they you know, oh, there's a quarter. So we go back and me and Pepper. It had started real early at night, So we get back there. It's maybe nine thirty ten o'clock at night, going after a squirter on the the banks of the
Tigers River in south Baghdad. And maybe one day I'll be able to explain how thick, thicker than Panama this stuff was at the the you know, on the edge of the river. So we get the squirter. You know, we're being sold from eyes above, from bird's eye. He's right there, he's ten feet in front of you. I can't say, are you sure? Yeah, yep, But it's straight down and it's raining and it's muddy, and it's February. I slide down. Once I scrambled back up I send Pepper.
We hear a pop and it's sounds like a nine mil pop, muffled and and nothing. So we're trying to figure out what to do. Blub blah blah. Pepper comes walking back up the hill like I don't know if it's five minutes or an hour later. Probably five minutes she comes walking up the hill like dopey. I'm thinking she's shot and losing blod so I you know, I know what to do. My wife is a vetech at the unit, Laura Miller. She's awesome, not at the time,
but now she's my wife. I'm checking Pepper for bullet holes. There's nothing, and as I'm doing that, she's like, all right, hey, leme alone, let me alone. She comes back to life. So I'm and she's soaking wet. So I was like she was partially drowned. You know, it appears because she's not shot anywhere, there's no wounds, so she recovered. She's back. So now, man, we just we put everything we've got
and everything we can call into this guy. We can't drop a bomb because there's billion houses right there, but we're doing everything short of that, and we're not touching him. He's got this spider hole. So on and on and on and on. I made the decision, and nobody told Nobody tells you to kill somebody. You never get orders to kill somebody or to you know, you decide things like that. So I knew man. And there's a picture I sent you guys the name of that pictures last night.
That was our last night. That was right before we went out, and Lance Cornet had been killed the night before. She and him were friends. So it's just like I sent her again. I made the decision to send her again. And she didn't come back that time, but she got him out of the hole. And my buddy's like, there is I got, you know, shoots the guy dead birds. I sees him floating down the Tigris and we can't find Pepper. So we're looking and then I got her.
I got her.
I got her. You know, somebody found her strobe light or I r strobe that it come off. So I'm like, oh, she was in a fight, because you know, things anchored on there. She was in a fight. We looked. I got on a little bird and he just crabbed around the banks, you know, looking, looking, looking, and I knew what was coming. It's getting light, and I know the commander, I know we got to go home, but I'm not
gonna go home until I get Pepper. And you know, the call came and it's getting the sun's coming up there. We got to go and I just that's when everything snapped. That's when everything broke in me when because I punched the ground and I screamed, and that's when I that's when I really became a good warrior actually, because I was like, you know what, fuck everything. That's when everything changed.
We got home and I threw that kennel about you know when we landed, and uh man, I had dreams for years that I was looking down like bird's eye view and she's coming back super super super tough.
People.
People who are are watching this and maybe not familiar or like, might not understand how closely socialized the handlers are with the canines. I mean, do you want, if you're open to talk a little bit about like what that relationship's like and why you know the way you talk about it. You know, it's like losing a family member.
Oh yeah, it was. I mean this was my best friend. And so I got Pepper. When I got to the kennels who Cammit dog handler and O four. They're showing me all these dogs and they're all and this is so and so, and he does he's good at this. And then I show Pepper and she's sitting down wagging her tail. And I just had my baby daughter. So I'm like, oh, look at this little sweet girl. She's the only girl. And I'm like, I didn't say anying,
like I want her. And they're like, well, she bites, but you know she's too small and blah blah blah, we'll probably get rid of her. So she was assigned to somebody else. He ended up getting the duy awesome dude, Sean Kelly love him. So I got Pepper, and I was so happy because she's so smart and but she she knew like reality, she knew, you know, and and ask from a from a real person because she didn't really care about me at first, and she gave me
a chance. But like, I don't know why I did this, but I just after work, everybody go home after training, and I would take her out in the back. There was this like green grass meadow and I would just lay there with her for a long time, as often as I could just to let her know that, like this is real for me, and I know it is for you. So we we bonded, you know. And and then the night before, you know, Lance Cornett being killed.
The night before, I didn't sleep. I I kicked the freaking heavy bag all night with her and there in the gym with me and necessary. Yeah, two nights in a row. Oh my gosh, I don't remember that, like for two days after that, I don't remember.
To put things in context for people. I'm sure everybody's fallen along.
But a squirter is somebody who runs off target right when you know you have bad guys, Like, a squirter is a person who runs Now. Early in the war, that was sort of like they're retreating. What we eventually learned, though, is that there was no such thing as a squirter. There were only maneuver elements. And if they didn't have a weapon on them when they squirted, they were running to a cash to get a weapon, and.
They would buy and wait, and they would wait for X phil and then they would come.
Out blasting, or they'd blast from a covered position or a concealed position like this guy would have done.
So it's not he was. He wasn't out of them. That dude was not out of the fight.
That dude was waiting for his moments exactly. He wasn't scared if the cops come in to my house. I'm not gonna run right today? Right?
Oh yeah, what is it?
It did this kind of like this was sort of like the end of your time in the K nine unit.
You were I mean, am I wrong to say that you were a bit emotionally traumatized by that experience and like couldn't take another dog after that.
You're not wrong, And I never really thought about it, but I wouldn't have It just so happened to be. Thankfully at the point where I was going back to Twoice to OTC there was a two year wait since I had failed, so it's like you can go back and try in two years, and that was just a couple of months before it so kind of again ordained to me. Yeah, I wouldn't have done it again. It was the hardest work too. Besides being ranged private, the
dog handler is extremely hard work. Jumping off of a black Hawk with a dog on a twenty inch elastic tether is something to do, or you know, getting over a sandlink fence. Oh my goodness, was that difficult but well worth it. And you know she used to like So the night after Lance died, we're at the MSS. Those houses Oudi and Kus's house is on the river, is where we just where we lived for years. So somebody dies. Man, the next day, it's quiet, of course,
you know, it's somb it's there's no words. But life goes on. And so you get up and four or five o'clock in the afternoon because you would go out at night. So so Pepper would go around and Man that night or that day, I uh, I just let her go some you know usually, and I could hear her going room to room normally it was like Pepper, you know, but it was just like, oh hey Pepper, and then you know, another room and she would just make her rounds. Man, it's like no other dog could
do that. I don't I don't know what goes on nowadays, but she she could do that. So, man, these guys, I love these dudes that I was with. Man, it was I Team, Reckie, Troop and Squadron. They they were her uncles. I mean, this was they. They thought that she she thought that we were a pack. So they did everything they could, really really to find her, man, and we just could not.
So yeah, generally, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but generally those dogs are not that well socialized, where a lot of times only their hangler can really be physical with him, be like playful with him stuff like that.
Is that correct?
Oh?
Very much so. And Pepper was seven years old and she so she had been taken home. She was from Belgium. She had you know, some somebody that had taken her home. So she was very well socialized, you know, and in that naivete or whatever of the dog programming, oh I want this dog kept it. You know. I would put a poncho liner in Pepper's kennel when we flew over Iraq on the bottom because it's so cold, you know. And they'd make fun of me, and I'm like, hey man, whatever,
loving Pepper's wrong. I don't want to be right because we were good. But yeah, most of the other dogs, you know, Rudy just I love that. Almost everybody got a complimentary bite from Rudy. It'd come up, you know, people be standing there and he knows it. They're like, what do I do? Pet him? I don't know, man, you might get bit if you pet him, you might get if you don't, just a little snap bite. But it was, you know, yeah, incredible animals.
So what was it like then landing in the UH Sniper Wreckie Troup When you became you passed oughtc the second time, became an operator.
When that switch happened and I didn't really wasn't cognizant of it at the time, but when when after Pepper died, and you know, I just was like I tuned out and it worked. It got me to where I could shoot pistol, I could do whatever I gotta do. I get I'm you know, now I can run, i can keep up with with the young guys, and I'm driven again. I have a purpose. I'm gonna be the best operator
I can be all that. So I did gosh oh, and then so we get we start to plan what the next like switch for me, what really took me kind of over the edge was going out and capturing these guys two and three times yep, and then our mates getting shot in the rick harm. I got shot in the head and it's like by somebody that we had rolled up And I don't mind saying it's like, I'm going to talk about this the rest of my life. I made a decision if it was legal, moral and ethical,
if it lined up, boss, do you want this guy dead? Yep, all right, he's dead because I had a new daughter, a brand new baby girl, and I just made that decision and I carried it. And when I coached football, I tell guys from this experience and I try to do try to get you know, work run every place so hard that you get a look from your teammates like, who the hell are you? What are you doing? Because I got that look and they're like, and I kept it up, and not not for any reason. I just didn't.
It's dumb to fight a war and not fight to win right through that.
You know earlier when you were talking about the being in a college class and you know, the students who wanted to ask you more.
One of the things I found.
Very interesting, uh with civilians is and you can tell me if this match is your experience at all, is when they find out you've been in combat, they'll say, oh, the first question is always did you kill anybody?
And then the second question is how did you get over it?
Or how how did you, And and for me, it's always been like there's nothing to get over it, like they were, they were shitheads, like they were oxygen vampires, and they didn't need to be here like better luck, next life.
The way to get over it is I need more like a drogue.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you know, like the id meakers were the worse because you'd roll them up and.
They wouldn't even have they wuldn't even try and fight back.
Yeah right, yeah, yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And good news for you.
Yeah, and so you know, but you're you're another five years in the sniper Reckie troop at least. You know, I'm guessing this Timeframeworth talking about it's like it's a grind. It's back to back to back, like you're from that generation of operators that really got put through it.
Yeah, and I'm you know, I'm proud of that in a way that I'm using like this to tell my story both where I was weak, where I was strong, what I learned where I screwed up to help the next generation. Yeah, it was a grind, my god, just back to back to back. And then let's throw in a surge in the middle of all this, and yeah, you know, going out, I got my journals. I have three leather bound journals in my safe, you know, with my my guns and my birth certificates for my kids.
Like those things are. They're not very detailed, but I wrote in code so that I will know, you know, I will have memories of all that. So and it's not about numbers, it's not about being better than anybody else, but it is it. Man, I'm just scratching the surface.
You know, we all are of of what of what it's like, I mean to any any other as far as like what it's like, any other aspects of it that you want to talk about or things that stand out in your mind from that period of time.
I was saying, it was a decision, and that's where everything that starts with. And I've tried not to get political for a long time, but we can't. We can't avoid it. We have the biggest circus going on. It's it's almost like we're being punked. I mean I wouldn't, are we. So I'm sitting there watching the Trump rally President Trump Rally with my daughter and I saw that and I said, he just got shot in the ear.
This is before an nobody knew. You could tell by the way he moved and the sound of the pop. She's like, what, he just got shot in the air. Because we've seen so much of that, we've done so much of that, and then to just see this, I don't even know what to call it, and I don't. It's not looking down, but it is. I do feel like it's the sheep giving orders to the shepherds, and that needs to fucking stop. I don't know how, but if I don't say what I just said, I'm not
doing my part. And it's it's the video game ers telling the football players what it's like. Is the best analogy I can come up this. Yeah.
Yeah, it's been an interesting.
It's been an interesting dichotomy because you know, we saw sort of you know, like they are crazy people everywhere, right, I mean, we get him in our units, you know, you get him in politics, you get him in everywhere. And we saw sort of the QAnon phenomena, you know, on the riot, it's like, oh, well, the rights or really loons and now you have very large people with a very large presence and a lot of influence saying he wasn't shot.
It was glass, it was this, it was that. And it's like, okay, so the left is equally susceptible.
To That's that.
I mean, going on has been a thing for a long time. These people have been off the rails with conspiracy theories. Yeah, going back to about the time, about twenty the twenty sixteen timeframe.
And it's just and you're right, it's very it's very frustrating. It's it's like a bad really, it's like an abusive relationship, right, it is the gas lighting. It's like you didn't see what you know, I wasn't in bed with her, Honey, you didn't see that.
You know.
Yeah, it's not some ethics.
You do not see where you just saw.
Yeah, we all saw it live on TV. It's not some epics conspiracy, right you know?
And yeah, hell is the impossibility of reason?
Yeah.
So I mean, Dave, But but to go back to this period of time, I mean, are there any before we move on and get closer to the present, I mean, any experiences that kind of stand out for you that you want to talk about before we move on?
And a horse femail function on a halo drop boy, that was something twenty five thousand feet. Yeah, it wasn't combat, but you know, training in the in the desert, twenty five thousand feet jumping a long rifle. I think I had a Norma three three eight Norma mag and flying a ruck and I opened. I was sort of head down. I think my pilot shot wrapped around my ankle. I felt it, and slowly it was like this constriction and I've time slows down and I'm like, oh, that's not good.
I try to wiggle out and it it caught air and it my foot kicked the back of my head and I don't bend like that as that thing caught air. So I thought my leg was just like when you take a chicken leg and thigh and you turn it and you hear that that's what it but like it didn't break, but that's what it felt. Wow. But I'm hanging upside down at you know, twenty four thousand feet now with a ball of crap. And so I laughed, and then I prayed the Peter prayer, God help, and
I did my cutaway and it went away. Sometimes they don't on a horseshoe. Sometimes the reserve it's trapping around. People die. Yeah, and that was in nine and I jumped one more time after that to get it out of my head. And that was when I was like, when I was done with the fight.
What altitude were you out when you got something over your head?
Oh?
Probably seventeen sixteen. I was still high because my my air, my mask came off, my nods came off, and as when I got situated, when I got my shootout, I was high pocks. I you know, that's why we do the chamber. I was starting to pass out, so I got my airback on and came to The pain was so bad. Made a radio call. Hey, I'm okay. I heard them talking about me. You know, we got a horseshoe. It's Nielsen, Bubba. Just listen to the again. The training.
You know, you never think it's going to happen to you.
But David, when you when you were sixteen, you know you said, if a war breaks out, I want to go. You happen to be in the right place at the right time at several points, well, I mean for Panama, for Panama, and you know when you were going back into the military, did you think that that did you think that another like one off like Panama was going to happen again. Did you think it'd be a peacetime military did you did you even think about it?
I did. I hoped for it. I hope for war. I don't know why. I don't anymore. But it needed it. Yes, you know, there's a scripture. There's a scripture that says God did this just to teach the Israelites war, like the Lord is a warrior. I mean, it's it's all over the place. It's an important thing, and it's it's just not respected enough like it should be, like it has been in history and we don't know. I don't know why.
Yeah, and isn't It's kind of funny because I think when when you're like that, it's like chasing. It's this escalating chase, right that, Yeah, that you know for somebody who grows up, you know, in in a not so peaceful household, like getting hit is no big deal. So where most gentle you know, gentleman, uh, you know, it's like, oh, I wonder how I do if I was ever punched in the face, or I wonder how I do.
It's like you're like, ah, whatever, but then you want to be in combat.
But then you get in combat, and you're like, well, I didn't kill anybody, Like, it's not really combat if I didn't kill anybody, right, And then you kill somebody and then it's like, oh, I never killed anybody with a knife, you know, or or whatever it is, Yeah, with epistol exactly.
Whatever it is, like you always find that one thing, that that piece that's missing.
Yeah, I didn't get shot. Everybody on my team got shot, right multiple times except me? Right? Why?
Right?
And then it's crazy like okay, dude, that's you know, that's enough.
But it's absolutely that way, right, these elaborate fantasies of how a firefight goes down so that you can like, you know, pull off some John wickshit or something, you know what I mean.
Yeah, it is, And then it's the next one and the next one. And I remember thinking bank Gazi happened and I had taken Arabic for a year and lived in Israel. I was off a team, and I'm like, oh, I want to go back to a team. And as I'm thinking that, I see Brett Favre on the Vikings like just get murdered by some d end and it was like, Oh, that's gonna be me. If I go back.
So right, So you had this injury and this horseshoe malfunction.
I think you said two thousand and nine, but you were medically retired in twenty fourteen.
So tell us about what that next step was. Like you said you were off a team.
That was actually twenty ten. Okay, yep. So then I went to like I said, I volunteered for to learn Arabic. I had always thought that would be cool. We're in We're in k Cook on a rotation. Hey, anybody want to do Arabic? That would come up like once a year, and I prayed about it and it was like instantly I got this, Yes, do it? So I did. And again I felt like I was betraying my team, But why are they asking if they're not serious? So you know,
and then I'm I'm in Israel earning Arabic. My whole team gets fragged in Afghanistan, of course, and I'm mad because I'm not there getting fragged with But it was great. I learned that I did that. And then so eleven
twelve the process started. Then you know, somewhere in there the medical retirement because the TBI stuff, I just I couldn't keep up so in the PTSD, and so when I went and talked to the maddics, the med shed, the doctor and Colonel Dyer, the psych there, it was almost like they were waiting for me to come to them and say I'm done. So h yeah. So there was a year or whatever in there is where I just worked at the language lab and facilitated others learning foreign languages and and.
Then medically retired. And you know, as we we kind of get into your like post service life, I want to ask you because as we have this conversation, like I'm sensing there there are two different days at this time right there is you mentioned praying numerous times. There's Dave who who has religious faith and has a family, and then there's Dave that as you said before that you want it.
You try to die And what what what was that experience like? And uh, you know post service.
I went through. I went through two divorces back to back. Uh that that was the main thing. I have three kids. Uh, it was just too much like day like Dave was saying, it's I stacked. I try to stack so much stuff and so many cool things as much as I could until I couldn't and I hope that's enough, right, I hope I did enough to be respected, Like what.
To respect yourself? Yeah, it's all internal, right, yeah.
Yeah, you come to learn later. But so help me out, please, man.
Of your post service life, and you know some of the struggles that you went through.
Its just in twenty fourteen, this night in November, something came over me and my brother had hung himself two years prior. And he wasn't supposed to. That was supposed to be me. That dies, not my little brother, right it. I I wasn't facing it. I didn't. I didn't know how to face it. I had two new babies. I man, I tried to get I didn't try to. But so I had two XY's. They're teaming up on me. Their nickname I Rack in Afghanistan because I keep having to
go back and fight each one. They get like restraining order number freaking four, right where the cops come and take your guns. The cops know me. I'm like, hey, man, can I brush my teeth? Yep? Go ahead? Will you cuffed me in front? Sure? Dave like just going through the motions. But I was never ever convicted that. They were never held up. They were always dropped, so it's just harassment. So for some reason in there, man, I was like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Next time they come to take my guns, I'm gonna make a stand. And I was serious about it. It happened again, and I said, sir, I'm sorry. You know they're at the door of the cops. Five cars out there blocking positions. I said, no disrespect, but I'm not going to give you my guns. This is stupid, and I shut the door. He's like, please don't do this. I said, you, please, don't do this. And I'm going
down into my basement. This is ten years ago. I'm going down into my basement, into my alamo to fight it out and my ex wife my wife at the time, I didn't know how sick this was until my wife, now Laura, told me how sick this was. She says, Okay, well good luck or you know whatever. She said. But she's I'm telling her to leave the house. That she's leaving. She's not trying to talk me out of it. Right.
I didn't even realize it at the time. She wants me to die, she wants my so I'm saying god bye, to my son's my twin boys, who were born on November nineteenth, twenty twelve, ten years to the day after an ambush in Afghanistan November nineteenth, two thousand and two. Said, note, I'm saying goodbye to Milo, my son, who's five months old. And he starts laughing, the first time he's ever laughed
and in his life, five months old. And it snapped me out of whatever dark cloud I was in, and I said, what the hell I'm doing.
This is not.
Worth it? Take everything except my kids, you know. Yeah, I called. I called the cop. I said, hey, man, come and get them. They're cleared. All my guns are cleared right here in the open. And they were. They were mounting up for the attack. Yeah, so that that happened. Come on, it's so clearly divine intervention. I tell my boy, like, you saved my life. Some day I'll tell you how. He's eleven now. But they came, you know. So they come back into this guy's looking for a fight. He
comes up, he's trying to smell alcohol. I'm not drinking, get some, you know, and he just takes me to jail. They go through their counting every round. It takes about six hours, I got reload and stuff. It's just ridiculous. Ends up. Man, the guy drives me home. You know, I'm sitting in the front seat talking to him. We were like friends, if we could be, but you know, we're just we talked it out of me and the cop and that was the last time that happened. But
that was so close, you know, if you let that. Oh, it's so hard. There's a we've got to have our right good probably bad part. You guys know what I'm saying. Man, It's it's a fine line.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's whether it's a real line or not. It's a line that you feel will break you.
Yeah, you know.
And you know, and I'm curious, you know, I sort of growing up in an abusive environment. You know, until we reach some level of self enlightenment and recognize our patterns, we often seek out relationships that and people who repeat that or or whatever. And it sounds like these women were very skilled or very good at that.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, And who's the last person we look at to be at fault. Like, you know, my friend told me, hey, you got to be at least fifty percent of the problem. Yeah, Like I'll admit that, but not fifty one. Oh yeah, I'm probably seventy five percent. I don't know who cares. Yeah, like, yeah, let's stop finding these patterns.
Yeah, essent.
What was I mean you walked right up to the precipice. What was your path to recovery after that moment?
So it was shortly after that was the night of like I'm gonna die. I don't know how, but I'm dying tonight. And then it was so I think like if I was to talk tell somebody about I'd say, just walk it out, move, move your ass, move your faith, whatever it is in there, move it, play it out. I'm just dealing with this with my nineteen year old daughter. She's like, I don't have a purpose of why am I alive? She had a suicide attempt last year. My baby girl is now nineteen and with slit wrist. And
I was like, Cam, set a goal. I don't care if it's crazy, and see if you can do it, do everything you can. If you can't, then you know, okay, life's not worth living. And she said, okay, So yeah, it's about walking it out and moving it. Face the tank man. One time we were on patrol and we well, we're going on a hit and there's an N one tank in this field, like there wasn't supposed to be there, and we couldn't reach him on the radio. So like, man, if we just walk by and he wakes up, he's
gonna shoot us. So that's my saying now, like face the tank, figure it out. I end up knocking on this tank, you know, like, what are you guys doing here? We almost shot you? Like okay, and then he's now he's pulling overwatch for us, So face the Tankah.
And You've gotten involved in a bunch of other things since then, I mean, coaching high school football. Some it sounds like, you know, missionary work almost and see and even document you know, some Hollywood stuff.
Also, Yeah, people ask me, I'll be like, do you have a job, Not officially, but I'm busy as hell and my life is great. I am so happy, guys, you know, joyful, just things are. Things are good now. Because I admitted that I couldn't fix myself, that I needed help, that I got to talk, somebody asked me for help or anything, yep. And and man, I look back and it's like people were so grateful to me along the way. I did so many a lot of stupid things, just hurtful things, you know, things that were
done to me. And it's all about relationships. So yeah, sire Leone is a big one. We a friend of mine just he's a he's a pastor and he it happened through him. And then I'm a theologie like I am. I went to seminary not to preach. I just love studying and you know, learning the why of things. So I'm helping my friend out. He had to leave. So then I just stayed on board and I'm doing these Bible studies online with this church in siur Leone and sending them a little, a very little bit of amount
of money every week. That has become an orphanage. The roof just went up. It's and when the guy told me, let's let's do this orphanage, I'm like, I said, okay, Like it's not going to happen. But it's been two years of this money trickling, and that goes a long way over there.
We have an orphanage that your impossible goal that you set.
Right it happens. It's like, oh wow, that's the biggest that's the coolest thing I've ever been able to be a part of. Then all this other stuff because you see a kid hurting, man, it's I can't handle that.
Yeah, David, If anybody is listening and they might want to help out with this church or this orphan Asian serial leone is, is there a way that they can do that?
Thank you? Yeah? Probably Christology podcast on Instagram to start, and then I'll send them right to Pastor Hamilberg, who's the pastor there, and they'll they'll do it direct. That's not this. I don't have a Bible one C. Three. I just I don't have the capacity right now for that the business side of it. But if they want to give, absolutely that would be awesome. I'll put them right in touch with the pastor and it's easy.
So it's Christology.
Yeah, the Christology podcast.
Christology podcast on Instagra.
Want to tell us a bit about what your podcast is about.
Also, we've done forty episodes maybe Christology the Study of Jesus? Who is He? Who he is? I in seminary it kept coming that word kept popping up. I was like, that's a silly word or what does it mean? Like you don't see it anywhere. What's the same as theology THEO is God, the study of God, Christ, the study of Christ. So it always came down to, like Paul or Peter has a high Christology and these people have a low Christology. It's who he is. I've boiled everything down,
all my experiences in life to that question. Everybody's answering that question in one way or another with how we live and die of is he he says he is? And it's not about Hey, check it out. I'm gonna tell you who he is. We can have any bands, so we can talk about football or anything, because he made it all, he said, he says in the words. So that's it, I mean. And this is a great platform and way to I guess get people to look and see. So, yeah, it's a lot of work, man, it's hard.
Yeah.
And you also got involved in the war Dog documentary. You know, you tell us a little bit about these projects that you got pulled into, and you know it sounds like you really went your professional experiences to them.
That was like a gift. Hbo Channing Tatum produced and funded this documentary called war Dog A Soldier's Best Friend. When it started, it was like this is going to be maybe, you know, win an award. Like we had director Deb Scranton. She'd done this really good stuff in the past, and you know, we had this momentum and the time it took to do that. It went from like yellow ribbons and thank Troops to you know, we suck in those few years from I don't know, fifteen
to twenty eighteen. But it was incredible to do. It was hard, but told my Pepper story and there's a couple other guys on there telling stories about dogs. And we go to Hollywood and meet Channing Tatum and like magic Mike like stay away from my wife, dude, like but it was. It was so cool. And then while we're there, there's these a couple guys, the dog handler from the TV show Seal Team, Justin Melnick, he's there.
He's like, Hey, do you want to come out to the set tomorrow And I'm like, nope, nope, nope, I don't want to do anything. I want to go home. And we talked a little more, and so we went out to the set Laura and I my wife, and watched him film and then they said, like you want to be extras? I said, okay, So we came back for this, but I'm a dog handler now on a TV show. In episode thirteen of season one of Seal Team, I'm a dog handler that gets killed. I love it.
It's just my night. I don't have any lines. I'm just walking into the team. We go into a building. Boom. You know. It was so fun to do. And I got paid four times the amount to act like what I used to do for real.
Yeah?
Right, and you found it fun to play out like the fantasy where the stakes are so much low lower than they were overseas.
Yeah, all that. It was hilarious. It was fun. And then so then this is worth talking about. Sure, Chris Chulac was the director. I think he's gone out from that show. But what an awesome guy. I met these people in Hollywood. I thought it was going to be what you hear about man. Without that, like my experience from the VA and all that stuff wouldn't have been complete because they were like just real people. And can you watch this and see what you think and how
I'm doing this and give some feedback. And I'm watching this scene where this RPG round comes up a string. You know they're making a TV show, right, But something freaking like the only like PTSD like movie type thing I've ever had.
I was like.
Something triggered and I and I had to walk away, and I was gonna start crying and I was gonna be embarrassed, but I had been to the VA, so I knew what to do. I turned back around and I talked to my wife, and then I talked to the director, Chris Julac. I was like, he said, was that was that pretty good? I said, yeah, that was really that was really freaking. That was really race.
That was pretty on target.
Yeah, yep, yeah, keep that up. That was good. But you know, I was able to stay in it. And that was like the first sort of win with something like that, and then it's happened many more times and now it's a breeze right now. Life is like like it should be. Hollywood was awesome. Went out to Justin's house last year and rode horses with his wife. Me and my wife and daughter went out there, and just the dog handler from Seal Team awesome.
That's super cool.
And you said that now you're married to a woman. Did you say she was a veterinarian in the unit, Laura Miller. She was the vet tech vet tech. Yeah, so the enlisted help her to the vet Big Army. Well, she was in the Army twenty six years. She retired right after me. We were friends when I was in she was the vet tech and yeah, so she worked with Pepper and all the dogs at the unit nine years about the same time for him, I was.
Yeah, and we both found ourselves single and now we are spend every second together. That's awesome, fantastic, that's great. Yeah.
And so where are you at today?
I mean, you've had this like incredible journey, I mean, walking almost up to the brink. I was kind of curious about, like where you're at today, and you know, you've shared some really good experiences with us. I mean, and I'm just interested in, you know, I guess if we were to like aar this entire conversation, I mean, lessons learned, right.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Jack. You know what, It's still just as hard, Yeah, but I don't take it as hard, Like I still am struggling presently with what do I need to be doing? Do I do I write that book? I've started a book forty forty times and the title changes and I can't organize it and like blah blah blah, but I gotta get this out, you know. So it's like and if I do or don't, I'm okay with it. But then it's like, man, am I being lazy? Am
I not? And then you know, people like, well, you got your missionary work on a podcast and your football coach. It's just like, okay, you know, it's kind of self.
Imposed your defense, Dave. I mean, writing and rewriting a book forty times is quite normal.
So I've heard yeah, good, I don't even know that, you know, it needs to be told this is this is good. It's not you know, the cliche is true. On my I've had like I got this list like it was one a week when I was doing a podcast a week of usually like a guy who was in the Rangers in the nineties or two thousands for four years and then got out in those Man, that's hard. Uh, it's so hard, and they'd be like, you know, I heard something you said, and man, I appreciate I was.
I was about to just totally give up, but I'm gonna try again. It's like, oh man, that's cool, that's cool.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean and it's it's wild too, you know, because like with the post traumatic stress, with the TV I S with the sort of the uh what the operator syndrome, and then the OP and then and then also the I was doing this and now I'm doing something like this, and you know, and a lot of guys, I mean girls, a lot of people uh from that life find them they find their dark night of the soul, right they they they find that and and it's not this chronic situation that they have
to deal with their entire life. It's it's they have to get over that bump. And and sometimes a call from a buddy, sometimes hearing somebody like yourself talk about it sometimes that gets them past the night that that that may have changed everything.
Wow. Sure, yeah, man, that's it. That's deep. And there's a name. I think I've heard that, but I didn't know people talk about operator syndrome.
Operator syndrome. Yeah.
Wow. And and you've you guys are saying that the thing is to get through to that and through that.
I I mean hopefully not to it.
Hopefully Like people you know, deal with it, you know, they talk to you know, they they have a good mental health regiment. Most people in our field. Don't like we we we've always been self sufficient. How we made it through, what we made it through.
You know, we don't. We don't focus on our problems, right, Our problems are I don't really care. I don't really care. I don't really care. But enough I don't really care. Is that it all starts to build up after a while. Yeah yeah, and then when and then one day you do care and you care a lot.
Yeah yeah. So it's face the tank every day, no less than one bold move is kind of my motto because I've been slowsful, lazy or lately and uh lazy lately uh but like almost freaking had a damn heart attack, like I will go up with chess bains and went to the hospital. So like it's really hard, people say this, but to learn to relax, Yes, yeah, yeah, isn't it?
Yeah, what's up with that?
Yeah, it's keep it keeping up that high adrenaline rate, that's what That's what that is, you know, And and sitting still and doing nothing is just like so empathetical to you know, who we it's really who we are as people, right, because like who you were as a person is what led you to this profession.
Not the other way around.
A really a really good shrink at the VA told me. She said, it's its own type of post traumatic stress. It's like this low grade post traumatic stress that just taxes the body.
She goes, because where you guys come.
From and then where you're at now, it's like you have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake all the time, and that's how you're driving through life.
Oh my god. Yeah, mmm, well.
We have some questions, right, ok, we have some viewer questions. Uh, Bjorn, thank you very much. What was your experience like with other Tier one units like dev gru and twenty fourth sts and FBI hurt Which team works best with unit?
So it's always kind of a it's kind of like two dogs coming together. Really is just like you're really I mean, honestly, you're ready to fight, That's what I'm thinking. It's just like you're just you're bowed up because it's good on good right, that's what we call it on the football field, ones on ones, and you end up being friends. But it's like, in the back of your mind, how am I going to take this guy? Right? Right?
Be kind me courteous, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
Yeah, it's true, it really is. But I always love the Seals really. I mean a couple of incidences, but you know, I did stupid things too. I don't know, man, I always thought they were great and laid back, which is how I am like, I'm should have been s F instead of ranger. FBI was like, oh, that was a tough one, especially when they were with us. I'm like, what, we just waited him out, man. We just like had a little talk with him, you know about like, hey,
we're gonna go do this. What do you think about that? One guy was like cool, and one guy was like, I'm not sure that's okay. You don't need to come.
I remember when we were doing a class on EPW and searches and one of the rangers was given the class was like, so, you know, you come up. You know your barrel is hot because you've just been in an ambush. You come up to the body, you just stick your hot barrel in his eyeball, and if he flinches, you pull the trigger. The FBI guys looked like they were about to ship their pants right then and there.
I always am nervous around and I'm like, you learn something wrong? At what am I?
Like?
What have I done wrong lately?
Like?
Are they really here for because of you know what they say.
The tax in the background that they're looking into.
Yeah you really hear just a fingerprint is dead, dude? That I feel you really?
Yeah? Uh Bjorn? Thank you again? How different are the squadron cultures?
Very just like ranger companies, just like football teams in a county, just like siblings. There's always a personality. It's it's cool. I mean, that would be a whole field of study, I think, But like Charlie Company one S five, you know, I was attached to them as a sniper, like, but then individually I got good friends from there. You know, I'm a I think then twenty years go by and you hear you grew up a little bit, and you
hear other like you guys were really retarded. Some of the stuff you did wearing sandbags on your head in Panama? Why'd you do that? Like I didn't want to expect for it made me do it. I'm like, yeah, he's nuts. The dude's crazy. So it's like, yeah, we work kind of dumb, but they do have personalities squadron to squadron.
It's weird, isn't it too?
Because you wonder where that because it sounds as though Aco is the same everywhere, because like at two some five they were the alphabots and and if you're wearing sandbags on it.
Yeah, but it's weird that it had that a company has a.
Person and a lasting personality, not a person that's driven by you know, the sergeant major or the first argant, but.
It's enduring thing. Yeah, it's it's it's really interesting.
Bjorn. Thanks again.
Also, what was more rewarding for you personally being an assaulter or a sniper? And do the jobs require a different personality?
Pretty pretty awesome question. You have to be able to do both, because when I was there, you get switched. You're like, hey, you're going to a wrecky troop. You don't always have a choice, and it's just a whole extra set of skills and guns that you got to maintain and do. It's a lot of extra work, but it's its own rewards. So different personalities. I always say my greatest sniper shot was about one point eight meters.
I was moving, I was reaching back like this, and I do grabbed his wife and it was the first time I shot brown tip and I hit him like you know when you blow it the yolk out of an egg with a pinhole, Like somehow it hit him magically and his brain popped out on his wife's lap. Wow, as I'm moving and like they're moving and my team leaders going up, you know, the other side, or my teammate, and we see that slow motion and he looks at
me like, I'm like, I don't know, that's weird. She's sitting there with her brain and the like just nothing, I mean, what that doesn't happen? So I call that my best sniper shot, well because it was. I didn't have any long sexy sniper shots. But I'm proud of that one because you know, he was pulling his wife and to use her as a human shield. Yeah, I put I put it right in the only spot that lots of sniper training, you know. Yeah, I just I
just never had a long shot. Yeah, three hundred meters but nothing nothing wrong.
Now.
See, I've been led to believe though, that a sniper around the head would have made his entire head explode bye bye, by all the current ballistics experts.
Out there, you don't even have to close by them.
Close by that it'll shear half their head off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unless you' shooting ice bullets right.
Right right if Jorn, thanks again? What was harder selection or OTC?
And why damn? What's with these good questions? Really good questions? Go Lee. I've thought about this one a lot. And selection, I'd say OTCS because it was harder because selection you're alone. I got to be alone walking the mountains and it's non stop walking the mountains and you're wet and tired. But I mean it's so out in the middle of nowhere. I would I can't sing, but I was singing whatever,
you know, hymns and hers and everything. I'm just singing like afraid that I'm you know, I'm not gonna make it. And so yeah, I mean it was miles and miles and miles, hundreds and hundreds of miles in the mountains over many states, and it was extremely difficult. But OHTC was harder because it's long, grueling, longer than it takes to train a fighter pilot. And I did it twice. I did OCC twice and ripped twice.
Glutton for punishment, you are, yeah, not anymore and corporn, thank you very much. Any funny stories from when they first brought dogs into the unit.
So Pepper, before I had her, she and before Shawn Kelly had her, she was with a guy named Kelly Robie, who's an awesome dude. He's out there on Instagram.
Kelly is second bat with Kelly. Yeah, I was a second bat with Kelly.
Oh nice, nice, nice. Yeah he had Pepper first. I wasn't. I wasn't there. But this is a true story. Kelly is just freaking he's real. He sent Pepper out, you know, on a training mission as we're attempting, like somebody got had the idea, Hey, do you think we can do cekep with thugs? Well, why, well, because they can go up and bite somebody and we won't get shot. How the hell are you going to do that? Well, we're going to train him by by doing this, and then
one more step and one more step. So this was way early in the process. So you know, it turns out we go to war and we have we're fighting people that are just culturally extremely different, different diet, they smell different, so it's pretty easy for the dog watch the turf as you're getting into a panther. Pretty easy target discrimination there. But in training, so Kelly sent Pepper into it a dark room. She goes around and she comes back. He's looking for her, and she bit him
in the nuts, her own handler. Yeah, and that was the end of that relationship.
That'll do it.
Yep, Kelly was done with Pepper. I mean, maybe I'm missing something and he'll fix it. But awesome guy. He helped me. Like I got to the unit and there's like a few guys that are just down to earth. He was one of them, Like he just knew it was hard and he was an operator the whole way. That's the that's the key man, be an operator in life. But I, you know, have the mentality of a support person. He was like that. And yeah, I mean I'm sure there's a lot more.
But Joe's got Thank you very much. Do dogs play any role in the SSC process on targets?
Yeah? I can't answer that one. Okay, Yeah, good question, very good question. Love it, love it, Love the thought there.
And then this last question.
Is asking if you knew some people by name and what you thought about them. So I can either ask you and you can say whatever you want to say, or I can not even bring the names up so you won't be held.
I'm fine, I'm not I'll face that tank. I'm cool with it.
Okay.
Did you know Tom D Scott Miller or Steve Gilliand if so, what did you think of him? And what did you think of the officers you served under?
Walk the unit?
I know who all those men are, Scottie, General Miller. Awesome, awesome man. He's the kind of guy. I never directly directly worked with him, like in a troop, but amazing man. I'll take the time for he was a commander for a time when I was there. Excellent officer. You know this wasn't him, but I had true commanders who would We were getting ready to go on a mission and I'd be like, where's my quickie saw? You know, I got I gotta have the saw on my back because
we're roping. Boss, where's the quickie? It's on his back. He's like, no, No, it's okay, I got it, Like boss, no, no, that's my job. I already got it on.
Man.
I mean you know it's okay. Like something like that. An officer does something like that for me. We are we're good man, I got you, brother, and then that perpetuates that that real brotherhood. You know, it doesn't have to be that divide and there very often wasn't at the unit a couple of times, but for the most part, man, were they good solid men, officers, men that I still aspire to be, like, you know, Scott MILLERSA Yeah, wonderful man. That's awesome.
Did you know if we had on Petra nothing?
Well, Dave, I mean, thank you for sharing your experiences with us man and just being so open. I really appreciate it, and you know, I think it goes a long way to you know what we've been talking about this whole time. I mean, like these conversations matter to a lot of people out there, whether they're veterans or
even if they're young people. That we do have a lot of a young audience actually, of people who are thinking about signing up, thinking about and listening, and I think these are really.
Like important conversations for them to hear.
Mm hmm. That's good to hear. That's really I don't know if I've thought about it like that, like that's cool and man, Jack days, thank you guys. I wish there were so many times I wanted to stop and ask your opinion or you know, stuff from you guys. Maybe we can do that at some point. I want to hear some of your stories.
I would be happy to have you on again, man, anytime. You know, this has been. This has been really interesting and insightful.
I think, thank you guys very very much. It has been. I knew it would be. I don't get nervous anymore because I've done it a few times, and it's it takes me to hopefully many people to like the next level, Like I, okay, I just talked about more stuff than I didn't think of it. You know, I knew when not to talk about stuff, but like it's it's it's a scary thing to think that I might get it wrong because of the deadly seriousness of what we what we did.
Yeah, I'm I'm envious.
I I mean, if I could change one thing in my life, it would have been that I would have kept journals because as you know, like it was just it's one green GluR after a while.
Yeah, yeah, I kept grgs too, So like I've got dates, one day I'll sit down and match them all up. I haven't done it yet.
Yeah, that's a I'd really encourage you to finish your book, Dave, even if you don't publish it, if you put it in a shoe box and you're safe for your kids. I get emails all the time from the kids of Vietnam veterans and how do I find out my dad did because he.
Never talked about it, you know.
I mean there's a podcast of course nowadays, but you know, those sharing those memories with your kids and grandkids, it means a lot to them.
Yeah, thank you for the encouragement. I will do that.
Next Friday, we'll be back. We're going to have Alan Schabarrow on the show.
Alan's a great guy that I knew from back in the day, and he served in third Special Forces Group and he just got back from some time he spent in the West Bank.
And in Israel.
So we're gonna have an interesting conversation with Alan next week. I hope you guys will join us.
Then check out Christology on Instagram. Yeah, Christology podcast on Instagram.
Thanks everybody.
Yeah, thank you Dave staying talking to Thank you brothers, appreciate it. Thanks