From Navy SEAL to Army SMU Operator | Drew Mullins (throwback episode)

It's not Drew's fault, it's totally us. We had some we moved into a new studio, we have some technical issues to iron out, but I'm really glad that we did.

sixties for about eight years, so I was born on a on a Navy base, as were three of my other brothers and sister, and I just had a kind of a normal wildhood, I guess. But then my parents got divorced and so there was four of us, and just as you know, life would have it, we kind of had to just fend for ourselfs but great, great upbringing. Played A lot of sports and worked in the oil fields for a while. And in the mid to mid eighties, I was a young man and kind of drifting. I

was playing rugby with uh. I started playing rugby after college and had had a lot of fun. I met some some of the guys on our team just happened to be Vietnam Era seals. So and I didn't really know what a frog man was. I mean, back then, you didn't know anything about it. You did tea or any of that stuff unless you knew someone, and except for that book Men with Green Faces or whatever it was. And I was kind of I was had gotten into an early marriage, I had a son, kind of out

of wedlock. I was feeling pretty much like a dead bee dad kind of thing, and was trying to figure out how to how to navigate the waters as a as a young man. And one of the one of the games we had, we were down in San Diego and this my mentor, the guy who saved my life, basically,

Eddie Farmer, shout out to Eddie Farmer. He'd get together when we play the other team, and there'd be other guys he knew from Vietnam, and they start telling these stories and I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? You know, you know, like crashed helos with oga stuff in it that they had to get out, and ambushes and all those kind of things, and you know, they tell all these stories and I thought, wow, tell me more about that. Well, it was what it was, and

I and I thought, that's that's pretty cool. And then one day Ed pulled me aside and he kind of had the father talk with me because I didn't really have a strong father figure at the time, and I didn't want to repeat some of the same mistakes that happened to me when my parents broke up. So I figured, at least if I joined the Navy, I could take

care of my son, you know, ay a child support and all that kind of stuff. So I went to the recruiter and I was a little bit older. It was twenty four, I think, and he starts, you know, going down the list. Hey, so tell me about you know, what education you have, what do you do, what kind of jobs you have, And he gets to the part where it's it's like, did you ever do any drugs?

I'm like, I looked at him, like pretty serious and and and he said, yeah, I mean, you know, did you just I had to choose a rate at the time, you know, it wasn't the pipeline is now. So before that I'd asked him, well, what do the Seals need, and he said they need corman really bad, and they need radio right now. So I said, oh, I'll be a Corman. I get hurt. I can take care of myself.

But then when he got to the drug screening parties, He's like, he asked me that question, and I said, uh, And then he said, wait, wait, wait, stop before you answer that, if you've experimented with anything more than five times, you might not be eligible for the program. Ah okay, thanks, Yeah, I experimented with pot five times whatever and anything else.

I'm like, come on, dude, really he's And I said, okay, no, anyway, I joined I made it through that, but I was, let me just say that, you know, it was the eighties and I was kind of sweating the Hiss test when I went through MEPs. But I mean, and I made a deal with myself. Hey self, but you're not gonna do that shit anymore. Yeah, your career, yeh for that kind of stuff. And and it wasn't a big deal. It was just kind of like the usual West Coast stuff. But I went to Buds, or actually I went to

corn At school and then went to BUDS. Classed up in uh the winter of eighty eight with class one fifty three. That was my whole week. Class had one hundred you know, the typical numbers, one hundred and sixty something sixty six, I think, guys, and I think forty made it through Hell week or something like that. And uh, talk more about it later about like you know, some of the bud stuff. But made it through Hell week.

I got rolled back because I got it. I got hurt, but ended up graduating with class one fifty six and then uh, you know, started the pipeline. Went to Airborne school and I had a funny stories. I was only Corman to graduate from my class. And when orders came out. You know, you probably do the same thing in the army. You feel out a dream sheet, like where do you want to go? Right? And I had this girlfriend at the time. I was trying to, you know, put distance

between and a nice person. I just just wanted to be free. So I put down every West East Coast team SIL team I could on my dream sheet, and of course I didn't get orders to the East Coast. I got orders to the West Coast, but uh the orders were weird because it wasn't like SIL Team three, Silteam one, SUL Team five. It was like some weird name, and uh, you know, the instructors are looking at me like, hmm, how did you get those orders? I'm like, dude, I

only even know what this is. And so I went and talked to the Phase master chief and he said, hey, uh, that's uh, that's the cover name for Red Cell, right, So I don't know if you know what red Cell is, but that was the second Marsenko command that he created, and they were basically the real world kind of up a red team for security, for defenses and things like that for bases, and that kind of went sideways a

little bit right after that. But so they sat me down, they said, hey, this is these are pretty awesome orders, but if you want my advice, I mean, you'll you'll have a lot of fun. You'll get a lot of really high speed schools, and you'll get a lot of calls and a bunch of things that you'll really enjoy, but you won't get the opportunity to learn how to be a good frogman. Ah okay, good seal Because you know,

the pipeline was STT, which is now SQT. I mean back then most of us, as you probably know, would go to our team. He'd be on probation for six months or a year and a year sometimes longer depending and you went through advanced training seal tactical training, and you're evaluated by your peers basically. So it was it was one of those kind of things, which I think

is a really good way of doing it. But anyways, they said, yeah, if you do that, you know you're not going to get the opportunity to really cut your

teeth in the traditional way. And back then the teams were kind of geographically specialized. So I said, okay, sounds like good advice. But then when I talked to the detailer, He's like, yeah, you're going to stil Team five. And I'm like, it's like right next door, right, you know. And in Coronado and uh, seal teammate had just come on board. They just commissioned it and they needed corman.

So I swapped with a guy and went out to seal teammate, drove my Volkswagen bus all the way across the United States with everything I owned, straight to Airborne School and subsequently to Virginia Beach.

Yere Plank Conner show. I haven't really pursued that, like I'd like to get, you know, some certificate or piece of wood or something. But yeah, so I show up at Virginia Beach and you know, back then, I don't know if you've ever been to Naval Amphibious Space a little creek, but it's changed a lot, of course, But it was just Seal Team four, Team two and STB two were there. Teammate was brand new, and I remember going through the gate and asking someone, Hey, where's Seal teammate?

And the guard said, go down here and make a left all the way to the end. Make another right.

You'll be right there. Turn the corner and I see the signs and I see the compound on the left and it's the right it's the teams, but on the right it's a bunch of like a chain link fence and a bunch of trailers trailer park, and that was teammate went in and checked in, and it was it was an interesting time back in eighty nine ninety because a bunch of the guys who were there were had just come back from Persian golf, so they did Iran a jar and you know those ops that that a

certain guy named Malcolm says he did, but he didn't. Uh yeah. So we had this really kind of a unique mix of folks there some basically it was known as Dump eight at the time, right, so that's where you kind of like cast off all your you know, free agents that that you want to get rid of your problem kids. At the same time, there was a bunch of guys who were really solid who volunteered to go because they wanted to be part of creating a dug.

So we had this really eclectic mix of folks. And to give you an example of what I mean by colectic, we're in we're at ranks for quarters one morning and Exo's up there doing give them the plan of the day, and all of a sudden you hear some of these guys like yelling, and all of a sudden, whack. I look down the line. There's these guys are in a fistfight, right, you know, like at the end of the line, just beating each other up. And you know it's over a woman,

of course, you know, that's how it works. And I'm like, oh, wow, this is awesome. What do I get myself into? But you know, over time, you know, being in the first platoons was it was fun, you know, it was really cool to learn from some really great talented guys and

started to point.

took the tier airfield. He took around. Luckiest guy in the world. I mean, he took around like imagine you're running and you got your your legs hot up in the air and the round went onunderneath his thigh, missed his balls by an inch and came out the other end of his his ass. And when he came back, of course I like to tell him the story because I had to like change his dressings all the time so I can stick and his ass the whole time

changing it. Uh but uh yeah, so we were we thought we missed our chance to go to war, because that's what the mindset was back then. It's like, dang, are we ever going to go? You know that kind of thing, like everyone and we scrambled. We deployed to go to Turkey and the they started the shock and aw, I guess it was, you know, the air war part. And by the time we get to inter Lick, it was over right. So it was like we're handing out MRI's to courage and not trying to step on mines

and stuff like that. Pretty uneventful, but we had a fun time in the med for the rest of the six months. So you're basically on a marg you're with a mew breen Uh expeditionary unit. And we got off the ship a lot because we had things bilats and j sets and training set up. So we had a lot of fun which we trained a lot with other counterparts, the French, Spanish, the Turks. We did Bright Star in Egypt. What a shit show that is? Man on the Yeah, yeah,

it's funny. There's a We did a jump, you know, one of the one of the things to do is that kind of combined thing where you do parachute jumps static line jumps in the desert. And this might have been in another platoon, but I remember we were in a see one thirty and the Egyptians must have just like said on their base said, hey go get a parachute, you're going to jump with these guys, right, And so

we get up there. Everybody snaps in because it wasn't prey fall, it's just a static line and you could tell none of them had ever jumped before and were literally kicking them out the back of the point, right. It was hilarious, right, And of course we went out to and yeah, so we had you know, that was kind of Shenanigan's but it was it was good. That's when you back then you felt like a sailor, which I think is kind of cool. Yeah, it's a lost

art these days. You know. You we didn't have internet. You know, the you know mail call was a big deal. Yeah, uh perfume and other things inside, yeah, packages and you and selling Copenhagen for twenty dollars a can to ships board, stuff like that.

bunch of high speed guys. I mean it was stacked platoon of you know, the airlready had two three four deployments and we were on the John F. Kennedy deployed on that and the probably don't remember this, but the Saratoga was the this carrier we were leaving and they were off station off of Interlick I believe no, Yeah, they were off Turkey and they were doing some kind of exercise. And this is when someone on the Saratoga, like fire control guys, shot a missile and hit a

Turkish ship, you know, killed some dudes. And so when we get there to do turnover, we hung this big sign off the side of the Kennedy saying, you know, don't shoot us kind of thing, many sheets and we just had a blast doing that me and ended up doing some fun stuff in Africa and just tooling around. But living on a carrier was it was a pretty good life I actually can consider compared to living on a on a ship that you know, a barg Yeah, pinionship.

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I we're like eighty monsf we go, let's have a talk, right, So, about an hour and a half after being in the dip tank riggers taped up breathing through a snorkel kind of thing, got the message. I don't know if you've ever seen that or not. But yeah, you know, you can dip your rig and a dip tank and see if it's see if it's leaking air. It also works you can put a guy into there and you just rigor tape a snorkel to his mouth so you can breathe. Yeah,

so I got rid of that. But so it's what this would be in I'm going back a little bit. This will be eighty nine. This was I was. I was in this bar watching the World Series as the A's and the Yankees, I think, and I'm sitting at the bar just paying attention to the game, and I looked down at the end and I'm like, fuck, I know that guy from some place right, And it turns out it was trying to wrap my brains who he was at the time, but it was Michael Bean.

we're talking more. And I just finished like the short course eighteen delta, right, so I know I was stick things and you know, the goat the gold labor because back and we didn't have the pipeline, so it was.

script we're doing. We're doing a film, a movie, and it's just they lost their director or changed their writers or something like that. So it was I said, sure, you know, to do local, you know, real reality kind of check on because what's his name? Rick Rossovich was playing played the corman remember Rick with from Top Gun, right, yeah,

and uh he was Iceman's Iceman's yeah. Yeah. So I go there and remember reading the script and I'm like it was just cheesy, like this is when the chief gets shot or somebody gets shot, and they you know, they do some bullshit stuff and then they close his eyes.

He's going all kind of stuff like, well, that's not exactly how we do it, right, we do this, this and this, And I kind of demonstrated you know, full sweep and air away and all that kind of stuff, and made some they made some script changes and and then you know, that kind of comes out later on in the in the film to a degree. I mean some of it got cut, but but uh, prior to that,

back to the bar, incomes Charlie Sheen. That's right, I forgot this part. Incomes Charlie Sheen with his freaking entourage with people, and uh, they're you know, women and stuff, and I'm like, yeah, hey, what's up? You know, you know, typical like, yeah, who are you? I don't care, right, you know, And it was I think because I didn't care. I mean, I knew who he was, but you know, you kind of hit it off and and one thing.

Let to know that. Then I went the next a couple of days, went over to their thing and we wrote, helping me write some of the scenes in the script. And uh so that's that's, that's my contribution to Navy seals. I didn't you know, ah, when there's a gun running, gun battle and a couple of guys get killed, you know, Rick at least tries to do the right thing, right, he used the right verbiage and all that kind of stuff.

So so there's that. And I never told anybody about that because I was already in kind of on the on the fence anyways with thee my own Yeah, yeah, I was giving enough trouble, you know, them home on accident and my roommates like, what the fuck is this? And you know, sorry for the language.

do a reunion on both coasts different times. But it's at Little It's and it's like starts on the meetinghouse on Friday, you know, you it's a Chiefs club. That's wherever he meets, and you know there's a whole lot of good times there drinking and then Saturdays, you know, various events like uh, there's a demonstration, there's a run, there's a swim you know where kids and everybody can

run in that different classes and then categories. Saturday night is a oh and we do a KPEX kind of demonstration, you know where I did a bunch of those where bass rope in and snipers come out of the water and you know, things like that for the for the families. And then in the evening on Saturday is the beach party. So it's at the Officers Beach. I think I don't know if it's still his anymore. I think it's in forts story now, so it might be different. But and

we'd heard rumors that that she was going to come. What's her name, DEMI mere me to me, to me more to me, it's like Kamala, I can't say it right whatever to me mour was coming. And so sure enough, you know, at midnight or eleven thirty or whatever, we're all kind of like hammered. Anyways, she ends up showing up, and she's got like four older frogmen, retired dudes who are escort and around kind of their bodyguard escort kind of thing, so she can navigate the you know the environment,

and let's just say. It wasn't real popular, right, I mean, people weren't real excited, yah, yeah to see her. And uh, you know, so I remember looking ours with some guys and I said, I'm gonna go get her a beer. So I went over and got a beer red solo cup, brought it over to her. I said hey to me, and I was smoking cigar or something. You're gonna be a if you're you're gonna be a seal. Here, here, have a beer, you know, drink a beer with me.

And she's like, oh, I don't. I don't drink, and uh, I was like, oh really, So I just had it and I wanted it at her and I just turned it upside down and dumped it on her feet and just dropped the solo cup and wopped away right now. I mean, I don't think I meant to drop it one. I meant to just pour it out there, but I was kind of wobbly, and uh walked back to my

guys and uh, you know, that was it. And then later on, you know, kind of came back years later, a couple of years ago where other guys were talking about that, and he said, you know, yea, I heard about that I know if it's true, and yeah, that was true, but you know, nothing happened. I an't get in trouble or anything. But I just feel like that's you know, they're going to be you want to be a team guy or team gal or what you gotta you gotta play the part man.

You talk about hairjel you know that's them. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, they're you know, they're they like to do all that kind of stuff. And they even put out a calendar. This was hilarious back in the like early nineties, this calendar, and it had all these beefcake shots of these guys, right, and we just never let them live live it down right, because it was like a fundraiser of deal and a

bunch of guys. I went through buds with it, and of course we made find like hey, if you're on the East Coast, our calendar would be picture of a guy jumping out of a second story bedroom window because the you know, the boyfriend came home or you know, up against the wall getting arrested by the cops or pulled over for d u I or something like that. That's that would be like more of the East Coast stuff. And yeah, so that I forgot what I was going to say about that.

that again you can see it. The stuntman kind of didn't enter the water the right way and end up getting hurt pretty good. Really. Yeah, there's back or something like that, but you know, it just kind of like and then the golf course stuff is classic and all that, but G I. Jane just seemed to be just way too contrived. I mean, they couldn't even simulate buds, right, yeah, you know it was.

to speak of thinking. But mostly we were there for trap, you know, like if playing with down, we were supposed going to be the crew to go help get the pilot, and uh, there was a pilot shot down but the Marines did that that mission from US uh oh what's it called there? Right? The Air Force base?

looking for him and everything. So that second deployment on the carrier, we didn't uh, we did a lot of that. But so Balkans was on my radar. Yugoslavia came back then that was still teammate. I screened for dam Neck at the time and got selected, but I was also let's see, how make sure we get this right. Yeah, so I didn't know what I was going to get.

And the orders came out to go to Gray Green, which would have been the boats, but I was on deployment, so it was on the carrier and they had a policy at the command not to take guys off mid deployment to come, you know, so that you know, just lucky to draw at that point. So I got back, re screened and got a positive screening. But at the time I was at E six Corman, they had just kind of retooled the whole pipe line for becoming a chief.

You know, I had to have eighteen Delta qualification or or Navy I d C school independ to do the Corma school. So I went out to actually I went out to dl I first, that's right, and I came back and screened. But so I went out to dl I learned French Ish.

So I went from teammates and in the in the process, in the meantime, teammate had they had a proper compound built, you know, we we'd be you know, we were normal by then, you know, by the by the end of our deployments, my deployments there had proper compound, establishing a reputation. It was all good. Checked into Team two and that was like, I'm really in the teams now, you know.

It was awesome. The uh it's just Rudy Bosh was the command master chief, you know, and it was like, you know, you'd walk around and be like, uh, check the watch built, you know, because if your hair wasn't cut right, you're you're on weekend duty and stuff like that. I mean, it didn't matter where you came from. Even in even a regular team guy. I mean, they were gentle, gentler in welcoming you than than a brand new guy.

great Vietnam history. And I was just just stellar performers. It was like the Triple A Club for for Damn Neck basically, you know, so you know, they were recruited out of there heavily, and they had like a pipeline going so guys would rotate from from Damn Neck you know, to training and platoons and then passing knowledge on. But my first platoon there, let's see in between between that platoon and after d L I, I didn't j c O mission in the Balkans. I don't know if you

know what that is, jack Joint Commission Observer. So they had just declared the ceasefire okay in in Yugoslavia, Cirpska and all that. So NATO or SPUR was going into you know, carve it up and they had the British sector of tie sector for yeah, I think these. Yeah, so it was true. It was really an s F eighteen mission, right, but they didn't have enough guys, so

they would, you know, let us play. So one or two of us per house would would pair up and go living on in a house in the different sectors Bonya, Luca, everywhere, Tusla, you know, all the all the different places, and the s F guys did their s F you know, i W stuff and what was cool about it While everybody else in the whole AO was in full battle rattle and kevlar and helmets and body arm and all that.

We were driving around thin skin vehicles with turps, just wearing cameis with no idea on them and maybe a pistol, and we go anywhere we want, We blew past every checkpoint in the country, just did whatever we wanted to do.

And then they did their collection and stuff and it was it was basically the mission was, you know, collect information that might be intel and established relationships, you know, kind of figure out stuff and then you know, the precursor to some stuff that our cousins were already doing. We you know, kind of in the open helped them out with that. But it was a great time. Tenth group. Again, that was my first exposure to those guys. I wish I could remember their names, but we were in the

Sarajevo house, which was actually on the ser side. So I don't know how familiar you are with the with

the conflict or not. But what was telling What was really amazing about Sarajevo when I went there's uh that it was they still had snipers and they still had the occasional stuff going on, but you could really tell who had the most arms by the condition of what side of town you were in because it was just destroyed and being on the Serbian side, you know, they did what the what the Serbs did is they displaced a lot of people. They just basically came and said, hey,

we're taking your house. You can go live in Croatia. Beat it, you know, that kind of thing, and some family would take it over. But uh, it was it was a really interesting time, you know, just driving around with those guys and working with them, and at the same time we you know, got to move around doing other things. So that was a that was a fun time.

The j c O Mission. Sometimes I forget about that, uh, but that really kind of opened me, opened my eyes to kind of what was really going on, the ethnic cleansing, and then you know the post Tito world and you know the influence of this, you know the Soviet Union once the Soviet Union fallen, just how how that affected different uh parts of the world. So let's see. So back to Team too, did a deployment there went We

actually left early for that. This is when Momboto Seiko okay, he was the leader of what used to be called zaiir H. There was a civil war going on and the embassy and uh serially no in capital of u Zaire. Oh yeah, why can't I think of that? I think a Sasarak moment right now. Anyway, we had to go early because there was that going on, it was unstable,

they're thinking about doing the neo. And then also Serial Leon was was a shit show too, So I mean that's just like everybody who's been an s F guy or a Team guy in the in the nineties has been to either Seria Leone or Liberia, right, you know, because they kept collapsing. So we went early. We got on the USS care starge, my squad with six eight other seven other guys and the and the LT. So the way they broke up a sealed platoon is sixteen guys.

You have an AOI O I see who's usually a tenant uh three, and then an ao I C he's going to be an O two or you know usually or a hard charge in O one. And then you have a chief and uh leading petty officer. So I was leading petty officer, which which is he six? Help ill? So I pair up with the lieutenant my squad, Alpha squad, and then Bravo squad. It was you know, they paired up with the chief, the chief and and the AOS.

So my squad leaves two weeks early. We get on the care Sarage and steam full speed over to West Africa to Zaire and uh we wait for you know what we're going to do. We did an intel mission, which is kind of training, but no one knew where the guy was. Right, he had left the country because he's you know, was wanted by the Hague and everybody else.

But but things were going south. The Marines were planning a non combatant evacuation operation across the river in Brazzaville, in Cootevar, and the we were wondering what we were going to do. So remember divots for divots, the sat com thing where you could go take photos and then blast them back over.

And we were bored, bored. F aug Man's a dangerous thing. So we my leathermen. I broke into one of those cockpits and took a bunch of gyroscopes and instruments out of there souvenirs. But while we're sitting, you know, okay,

we're gonna do our training, we take some pictures or Intel specialists guy on the team, he's got his big camera out and this seven O seven I think or seven sixty so I don't know what it was. Some big plane lands on the other side of the airfield and he's looking through hist his camera and he sees they opened the door and it's like all this gold

stuff's inside there, like gold handles and you know, really ornate. Well, it just turns out that that was the president of the country, the dictator about to Hasey Sayclo's plane, and we accidentally found where he was because he you know, he's leaving the country and they were getting fuel or whatever. We sent it back and and so it's happenstance. But that was the extent of what we did there. Marines actually did more. But in the meantime stuff started going

sideways and I always get him mixed up. I apologize, library are serial leone. So we had to zoom up there and evacuate the embassy and brought a bunch of people off the neo there. But the fun part, the interesting part of this whole thing is right, so the MAGTAF the new commander is a Marine. He's six and the Navy guy who's running the ship is uh, you know obviously in six to two as well. So in the Navy, if you're at sea for more than thirty days, you get a beer ration, right, and we were at

sea for sixty five days. We only people to get off the ship by the time we did get off, where before that was our squad and the Marines that actually went to the embassy and we crossed the If you cross the equator in the Navy, you're what's known as a shellback. If you heard of that ceremony, yeah that okay, Well we crossed the equator at the primary so we crossed at zero zero zero zero, which makes

you the most unique shell back in the world. Right, so you have a special neptune, you have a special ceremony, and uh that's you know, another fun time. But for whatever reason, they didn't want to give us a beer ration. So now we're like, hey, we're two and a half. What the what the f? You know, we do all our work. Ship cruises north. The first place we're going to pull into port is the Canary Islands. So it's like the way they do it in the in the Navy. Right.

You they set I don't know if you guys ever been on ship, but they set what's called seeing anchor detail. So that's you know, you have the cruise divided up into two or three ships and see an anchor. Those are the guys who manned the ship and and take care of when it comes into port, getting it all tied up. And then they do you know, they have to have certain manning on the ship and then embarked company.

Can they get liberty call? And I thought, ah, you know, my my squad was like, yeah, we're gonna go out. I'm like, I'm gonna stick around. Me and a couple of guys are just gonna stick around. We'll go. We'll go in the next liberty. So the Canaries are are just like sick you know, that's where everybody goes. You know, that's where all the reality kind of shows are film from England, you know, the all that stuff, real destination place.

And so I thought, I'm gonna go down to the Sick Bay and work with the junior Corman down there because I had already finished Independent Duty Cormer School, which is a year long basically your pas so to speak.

who already know this stuff. Right.

rain gear on? There? Like because no one told us to put our punchos on. And I'm like, what do you mean no one told you to put your punch on? It's raining, you know, It's like did people have to tell you that? You know, it's a lot of junior guys. So it was just kind of like our our introduction to it. So essentially it was like at that point we figured out, okay, this is how we get around this. We went to the first sergeant of our company. I guess it is Dave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

swim or swim calls. And uh he's like, well okay, yeah, I see he was, so, well, we'll just uh what we're gonna do is you know, every morning or we're going to go swim in the pool and then we'll just meet the company at the chow hall, right, which meant we would just could stay out later and then just you know, take a shower and go to chow

hall like that, you know, normal civilized hour. We actually tried, we actually tried to do it actually for real, but it was so damn cold, Like we were like, yeah, now we're just gonna just milk this thing and the other thing. I remember that that I can speak about openly is well, the one thing about the army back then is there's a lot of smokers, right, and so whenever they we take a break, you know, these guys would rush outside and start smoking, and we're like bored.

You know, what, are we gonna do push ups? You know whatever. So one weekend we're like, okay, let's let's go build some pull up bars outside the place, right, So we went to home depot and bought four by fours and some cement and some keep or some pipe doug holes and put two different height pull up pull up bars right outside. And it was like remember that scene in Planet of the Apes when when the monkeys see the the apes see the monolith. Oh that's two

thousand and one one. Yeah, yeah, sorry, uh, two thousand and one where they're like looking at it like what the you know they're touching. And it was like Monday, and people were like looking at these pull up bars like they where those come from? And so we, you know, on breaks, we go out and do pull ups. You know, we're young, young guys, still like in the best shape of our lives, just out of buds and everything. But yeah,

that was that was. That was a fun time. Ended up getting out of there and then anyway, getting back to back to the story, I'm in the Canaries and I'm an id c and in these quad zeros. You know, that's just that's just a corman in the Navy who doesn't have any particular specialty like rady, like radiology tech or respiratory therapist or whatever. And I swear to god, we set seeing Anchor. We were at the Brow. The gangway went down at like two o'clock, between two and three.

By six o'clock, sure patrol was bringing drunk marines and sils. Okay, because we've been at sea for sixty five days, right, and people just were like, I'm getting hammered, right, So people were coming back and they were passing out. So we just were like bringing in a sick bay. And I was teaching teaching these young guys. Okay, what's the unconscious protocol? God't know what that is, right, because you don't know what's wrong with this guy, and he could

be a diabetic. You could you know, you could be on drugs whatever. So I'm gonna teach you the unconscious protocol, which basically was I'm going to teach the patient not to do that again. Right, So two large bore ivs nisel aharyngeal uh you're wreath uh cather you know you're wreath the cather.

drunk and whatever. I'm teaching the young guys how to do ivs and you know, how to do catheters and nasal fare and airways and you know, blah blah blah. And he goes, you can't do that. You can't, you can't, you can't do invasive. You know this is what you do in the teams, right, you do it to each other right all the time. But uh, I mean I didn't get in trouble or anything. But he's like, yeah, good, good initiative. Bad maybe not quite the best judgment.

mustard mustard report for your guys. So you know, I wake up and like four of the racks, four or five of the racks were empty, Like my guys didn't come back. I'm like, fuck, you know, but I ran into some chiefs and at breakfast and they're.

the command and doing like fifteen years there. Paul, let's go do those guys, and uh went out in town and found them, you know, they were still drinking and everything, and they could see me coming from from away down the street and they're like, oh, Andy's pissed, and like, motherfuckers, Man, I had a false fire muscle report. And you're you're lucky you're alive, because it wouldn't be if I, you know,

And I said, here's the deal. You're my bitches for the rest of the deployment, right, That's how it's going to work. And uh, you know, it was all good after that, and they were I mean, you know.

right now. This is my fourth deployment. Fifth. Actually, when I got back, it was like, hey, I went back to the command and they're like, yeah, you're in E six,

you're a korman. But here's the thing. If you go through Green Team, we're not going to cut you loose to go to eighteen delta because even though I was an id C, to get advanced, you know, you had to check the other blocks because you're competing against every other corman in this in this society, and said, we're gonna need our two years of of use before we can you know, and they might put you off cycle for chief, right And and that's kind of like when

I'm like, ah, you know, and they were, you know, they were like, you know, it's one thing to and you know how it is they like to grow their own h enlisted dudes before they become chief, because then you're a boat crew leader, you know, and if you've not cut your teeth on you know, a bunch of deployments as as a team got team member you know, a unit or a squad remember or troop troop member, then you know you're kind of like not you don't have the corporate knowledge to be troop chief.

six too long. You need to go to Punch's ticket and get it. And you can, you know, because we want you to be a chief. We want you to be a leader. But back then it was just kind of it was in between the scene, kind of seams of advancement, so it was, you know, you had to kind of make your own decision on that. And yeah, I talked to some guys who told me about this unit back that time. It was called torn Victor that

was its diagraph name or whatever you call it. And you know, they go back the union goes back to the uh what do.

and then found out and then I applied. I applied before, filled out a package for that for that smooth and UH. I thought I was going to come back to the team and be a platoon chief whatever, and they they selected me to go to assessment selection. So I went in ninety nine, early ninety nine, so March went out to UH went out to to Nevada and did the long walk and stuff and UH had a real good assessment selection got picked up by the By that at that time, there had only been one other seal who

was there before me. There was there'd been a couple of other guys, but they were of like liaison guys or you know whatnot. So yeah, so ninety nine went to the went to the unit and did a year worth of what we call c Q c q T. You know, it's been called a bunch of different acronyms, but it's basically the you know, a year long trade craft slash stuff. So you it was a really I must say to this day, I love Buds. I loved

everything about it. It was the hardest thing ever did at the time, but the assessment selection aspect of screening for the for the unit was the most rewarding thing I've ever done, because you don't get any feedback on any decision you make, you know, and a lot of people try to g to it, and you can tell g to it because I late years later, I ended

up being Cadre. Right, So you're you're that Wizard of Oz guy behind the screen, right, you know how it all works, right, and then you you're able to see, you know, how people try to game it. You know when they're when they are not. But yeah, it was, it was awesome.

But but they also realized that they were having a hard time finding the right candidates just in the army, right, so they opened it up to the sister services and and you know, of course the leaps and bounds after Desert Storm took off, I mean after UH nine to eleven, just you know a lot of Marines and and but rangers, yeah, they you know, and some of the best guys I worked with were former rangers or rangers still you know,

at the unit whatnot. You could see the pedigree in the senior n CEO guys were rangers, so as Yeah, I'm gonna speculate on that, but I but I believe it was just kind of like Manning issue. They wanted to grow more more troops in the squadron they had, you know, they have various levels of capability, you know, you know, and.

come across as and know it all. But but I was also a criminal at heart, right, I mean a lot of the things I did before I joined the Navy were survival mode stuff, right, you know, just getting getting by. So when I got to the unit, it was still it wasn't a JAS unit or jsuck smooth. Then it became one shortly thereafter for a number of reasons. But definitely had to adapt to a strong army culture.

But this is a very unique army culture right right, and a long history of things that the country doesn't even know about what they did, and the you know, great men and women. I mean, I'm not talking about just men. There's some awesome, stellar operator women who've gone through that whole pipeline who've done amazing things. But to your question, I guess I did have to adapt to that. And then when you realize that, suddenly you were an asset and everybody wanted your opinion except for the fact

it was an army manned unit. When it came to advancement, like I many times was the de facto troop chief or troop sergeant major, uh for for whatever reason. But I'm never going to get selected to be the troop Stargeant major because it's an eighteen series billet. It's an eighteen X ray billet. Oh wow, right, okay, yeah, now that might have changed for our years, and I imagine it has, but you know, that's kind of one of

the things you have to wrestle with. But the good side of the the upside to it was to go there, you go to your actually covered under a different place in the Navy. Right, So when it came to advancement, I was one of one all the time, and all my oe R s or fit reps were signed by Cno. I mean almost, I want, I almost busted them out

because it's hilarious to read him. You know, you know, Admiral Mullen, Admiral this admiral that you know, promote this guy, you know, blah blah blah, make him an officer, all this kind of stuff. So, you know, was the time I was a chief that I made senior chief there eight. So on the inside baseball part, I didn't have any

problem for advancement. It's just, you know, you kind of discount that because it doesn't really matter when you're when you're at a tier one element, a tier one organization, it's about performing, right, you know. It's it's not like I need to bank rank too, so I can you know, teach people how to blost their freaking pants or something like that. It's it's you just want to operate, right, okay.

come back. And and interestingly, if I were to name names in the Army right now, uh, all the key leader g os or a big handful of them or guys that I worked with, right I went through CTQC with or or deploy with, you know, and uh, there's a reason why those guys are leading you know, two stars and three stars.

was on the wall, okay. And I'm trying to remember the the order, whether the other commands created their own counterpart to what we were doing, you know, I'm talking to the other squadrons. Yeah, each each particular Tier one unit created.

a chief for that squadron. You know, he was my honor man and in my Budds class, and was saying, look, dude, we can tell you how to do this so you don't make the same mistakes, you know when it comes to all these other things you got to do, approvals, docs, covers, all that kind of stuff, you know, in typical fashion like yeah, we got it, but don't your help. Yeah, even though they were receptive, it was what it was. But so it was an army unit manned by jointly

manned and as far as the Balkans go. So I get out of our advance, our our pipeline training. And this is this is an interesting little side note. So we started out with twenty two dudes, twenty two people because they weren't all dudes and at the end there was ten. We go to the board. I'd had a really good final exercise, I thought, and you probably know what I'm talking about. We do real world stuff. I mean, just the best training in the world, the best exercises,

the most realistic stuff. And I went to the board and they cut They murdered five people right there at the boards. And I would have been number six because I go into the in the room and they're all like, yeah, they did run down the list of stuff and we we just don't think and you did this and that good and blah blah blah. And see right before that, my fact was telling me like to hey, you just keep doing what you're doing. You're great, You're fine, Everything's

be fine. So I'm like, okay, I got one little exercise left, you know, chill. Go to the board and uh They're like yeah, but we're just not sure that you're suitable for the Okay, I got it, walked out and uh so I would have been number six. But then the uh command start, a major comes out and he goes I for a bit and he said like, hey, they just don't they think you, you know, they don't

understand your meant you know your affect. They think you're like, like you don't give a fuck, like I don't give a fuck exactly. In fact, at one point they said, at some point during the actual course, it's like, hey, man, if you if you don't like it here, we can just send you back to seal teams. I'm like, dude, send me the funk back to the seal teams. I did for fourteen years. I loved every fucking day I went to work. It didn't matter how hungover I was.

I loved my job. Okay, go right ahead, you feel froggy, jump, send me back. I don't care. But you know, you know it was a little more frank than that. But uh yeah, so it was like, oh, threaten me with sending me back to something I like to do right right, But you know, he said, hey, you know I'm gonna you know anyway, long story short, Uh, you know, he basically had the overriding the vote, and I'm glad he did. You know, if I said his name, you probably know

who it was. I just don't want to do it. Sure he ended up being Jason Sorry major.

what do you call it? Horseshoe shaped layout of everybody and they ask you, hey, go rank these five priorities, you know, family, God, country, unit, whatever, right, and you do it and then they tear India about what your priorities were, and it's there's no right answer, right, It's like how much you believe what you're what you believe, you know. And that was the same kind of carried over to the end, you know, the board, the final thing. But but I but I knew my work was good.

So anyway, I don't want to sound like a bragging but fortunately for me, he was there, uh and and and it all worked out. Now that's ninety nine and we're full board, going looking for you know, Jaysock, Blue and Green are and O g A are over in

the Balkans hunting person's indicted for war crimes. You know, Karate and Melisavich and all their minions and so we immediately started deploying over there, and I did, like I think I did four deployments over there from varying degrees of sixty days, ninety days, you know, ninety nine, two thousand, and that was awesome. I mean, that was just like the most fun stuff. You know, you're running around doing

tech stuff, doing surveillance. Just I'm sure your partner can talk more about that, if he knows more about that.

I mean, I will say this one this one day, so some of the guys that I were at my team and Team two that were my counterparts, went over to Damn Neck and one of them was uh Neil Roberts, you know Roberts Ridge and Operation and Anaconda, and I'm I'm over there with the unit doing doing stuff and and uh uh a bunch of guys from Red Red Squadron came over and they had just come back from there, and they were the the unit, the team that was going to like do the hits, you know, go round

up dudes. And one of them was Goodie, you know, Goodie Kay Yeah, I mean I know you yeah, Okay. Anyway, those guys, you know, were awesome. So it was getting ready time for me to rotate out. And we had a bunch of cars and we just got this new Audi A eight and right, and I was like, oh, I wanted to drive that thing. So I said, hey,

I'm gonna I'm gonna take the AA out. I'm gonna see if I can set the record to whatever that town was in Cerbska, and I did zoom, you know, full full speed, blowing through checkpoints and everything, get there

in like fifty five minutes. It's normally an hour and forty five minute drive or whatever it was, right, And I remember driving through town, cruising through town, past the Italians or or the Dutch or whoever they were, and I look over the right and I see this car as BMW, a red BMW, sitting in a driveway and there's someone out there barbecuing. And I called back, I said, hey, you know, you know, texting is uh you know what

kind of car does Joe drive? He drives a red I said, you know, oh, okay, is it you know, license plate blah blah blah. It turns out I accidentally found this one guy. Yeah, that was they we were looking for and passed it on p I d D them. They came, we came back, I came back. And then it turned out that those guys ended up going and

getting them. And it's kind of one of those Oh yeah, they set up with you know, they had a set up a place and you know, it's it's a classic story where they wait for it because he washed his car every Sunday right in his driveway and and so they just rolled up one day and with a van and and did the did the thing, you know, punch some punch some in mouth through in the van. Black hood over the head. Yeah, I don't even know if there's a black hood. I don't think they even gave them.

You know, they didn't even give the ship. You know, like the disrupted this family barbecue and took this guy off the street. And I always thought that was pretty satisfying. Yeah, just like again, luck, total total luck, right, But that we did a lot of really fun cool things that that, you know, we we performed instead of having surrogates to it or whatever. Very satisfying. I went out after that.

I went out to the Bundle of course, Tanne Bundle course out and out West and Tucson and Mariana and well that.

two thousand. We go down to this course and we got invited by our cousins to say, hey, if you want to go to this course where we got, uh, where you can learn all these boats, different kind of boats and different kinds of diving, and you can come down here and and uh take this course. It was a month long, so we learned all kinds of different similar vessel driving and and whatnot. And and then you mix trade crafting with that, so you're using you know,

you're learning how to do that. And and then we did mixed gas diving. Get her little certificate. You know, I made a little diver card so we you know, we could do any kind of mixed gas diving and whatnot. And so I made friends with these guys that were down there, and later on there they invited me up to this barbecue up and up in Arlington and we're sitting outside. You know, you know if I said their names,

I mean, I know you know them. But one thing led to another, and Mick, who's there at the time, yeah, Mo as well as Thomas is the last n Anyway, they're like, hey, we're getting ready to go do this thing, this thing called the Nile right in Iraq, and we're gonna we're taking these Tenth Group guys and Pilot team dudes, and we got we got extra slots. You know, what do you think you want to come? You want to do it for us? I'm like, I'm like, yeah, that

sounds good. You know what's his name? Who's the famous CIA guy who wrote the books uh, before that about that they made Curproco not Curproco.

on next week's episode. So Chris Cox, fire Force, One Man's War in the Rhodesion Light Infantry. Suggest you guys go and check this book out?

the Death Star. He was one of my h teammates, but he was also the squadron commander at the time, and I said, hey, sir, here you think of this? I want to do this. They they're asking us if we want to do it. We want to be part of this going in before war the War one in two thousand and two, Right and long story, short phone calls were made relationship. You know, things were vetted and that's the reason why our unit got into ah, the AFO mission, into the into the the deal before. You know,

we are part of the Nole team. We went in in October of two thousand and two and it started doing Ope AFO whatever you want to call it, and uh, it was just again you know, God loves freaking progament and Lucky right place, right time. Uh. The rest is kind of history is so that's how we actually got into the whole war before.

heismand from Turkey they didn't happen. It ended up being that it was us, you know, us and the Kurds and Tenth Group, which you know had a role in the initial invasion anyways, but they ended up taking a bigger piece of the pie because that was it, you know. And then of course we all know about Viking Hammer, which what those guys did, we did actually planned it.

It was uncle Uncle Andy and some other nick and some other guys along with you know, and then the Tenth Group guys came in and fine tuned to their order of battle. But it just, uh, it was It was a good time because for three months we were let's see November, December, October and nover in December of two thousand and two, we were in there by ourself running around doing ricons. I mean I ended up lasing sixty two dimpies for that wow, not just myself, but.

they were you know, tomahawks. And then we just watch him hit and and just waylaid all these all these targets. And then then within a day or two after that, we let's see, the tenth group might have already been in. Yeah, they were, they were already in, and we had planned the four prongs for Biking Hammer and then we launched that assault afterwards. But prior to that, we also had this CCT guy. The true hero of the whole Viking Hammer thing was was the Air Force CCT slash come

back controller guys. They just were like composers of an orchestra. Was amazing. Like when we did our assault on Viking Hammer, we'll call this guy Jack. He he had aircraft stacked up like loss like la x yeah from you prior heard the story and it was poetry emotion.

The fear was that this terrorist organization could kind of bog down our invasion of Iraq, so we had to have kind of a northern front in that conflict during the invasion, Drew, could you tell us a little bit of out what you did. You sent me some pretty cool pictures actually of you out there in the field with the peshe Murga. Can you tell us a little bit about what your role was and what you were helping facilitate at that time.

you know, just amateurs. These people were they were trained, right, Yeah, they actually had defense and Depth center. So as they

they knew, you know, gradually, you know, obviously we're going to buy out our way uphill. So they would just leap brought back to fortified positions where they had weapons, and.

off of Roosevelt or something. There was a female and Jack's talking to her and she dropped her bombs and then He's like, I need you to do some straping runs along this ridge line. And so the ridge line essentially on the other side of it was I ran right. So she came in and just freaking lights gun in on him, took out some machine gun positions, and we were able to advance forward. Yeah, but it was interesting to get shot at all day long?

I mean, I was I was so frustrated that day because I decided because I had brought my SR twenty five with me, and I was like, I want to hope this fucking apples and uh, all these these magazines and whatnot, or I'll just take my end for right, And I regretted it to this day. It's like, because that was shoot, I was like lobbing shots at these guys four hundred and five hundred meters away, right, having it like you know, Kentucky. Yeah, yeah, and and of

course we're fighting uphill. So it's like at some point I was like carrying a bunch of shit. So I took my rear played out and just you know, toss it on the ground and get it later. So but yeah, to this day, I was like, never go anywhere without a seven six two rifle in the open.

But I remember this one occurred taking around the chest right Bot right next to me and kind of in between me and Jack and uh, and I went to him and pulled open all of his you know, they had layers of clothes on, right, because it's like march right a rack of snow on the mountains, right, it was cold, and I pulled all these layers of clothes out and the round, the seven sixth two round was like sticking out of his chest. It wasn't even like it hardly even penetrated because.

You know, it was like the dilemma. No, I'm not gonna tell because I don't I don't want to do the paperwork, right, you know, so I'm gonna like, you know, back then it was like, you know, we're gonna get in trouble.

Kirk Cook with the Kurds. Uh. It just kept going and it was a real good time with with ten group and looking forward to the reunion, you know, I think they're going to do a twenty year anniversary of that Viking Hammer coming up here next year, early early early next twenty three.

to leave on September ninth. And so September ninth, I get on the plane, fly to fly out there to the Caucasus and land, you know, because you lose a day when you're flying that way. Right, So check into our place, turn on the TV. I'm with another another teammate and they were watching CNN and he's like, hey, man, check out the TV. There's like a plane just crashed one of the towers. Like, oh okay, think of you know, World War two, when that be twenty five at the

Empire State Building or whatever. And you know, I'm watching it. And then we like everybody in America has the story, same story. We watched the second plane the time. So at that point it was like, holy shit, war with someone, right, So you know, we're on the horn, we're talking to the chief at the base at the station, and next thing you know, we're we're doing stuff. So from that point on, it was everything was like laser focused. It was awesome, great times to be alive. You know, we

just got everything we needed. Uh, we did a lot of great stuff. I just feel like it was you know, a bleusts time to be an American. Yeah, so.

They were like literally taking their clothes off and throwing them off, you know, in the street, their uniforms and knowing, you know, soveying close. And this flag was it had to be twenty feet long or something like that. I ended up giving it to someone in some general and com But yeah, we found a bunch of really interesting things there, missiles and things that more interesting. But to put it, wow, But it's just it's too bad that the political narrative is what it is as far as

the level of evidence. But you know, there's cases to be made on both sides of WMD. You know, finding Sarah is one thing. Finding effective Sarah rounds is another thing, right right, right, I would say, there's yeah.

been there like six plus months. So I left came back home. That's two thousand and three.

this one. I put it in a package for commission, a Mustang commission, and you get to you can check a block for war an officer or just line officer, right, Nothing wrong with foreign officers. They're awesome, right, but they don't want to run a training stuff, right. So I just thought, yeah, I'll just roll the dice line officer. So the message comes out, I'm on, I'm on an objective overnight. It's you know, December of two thousand and two,

and I'm selected for master chief, right, pretty nice. Then I might have the order backwards. But I also got selected for ld O for for commission. So I come back and I have to make a decision, and I went to the boss to the CEO, and I said, hey, man, if I sirt and say, man, sir, if I take

this commission, can I stay at the unit. You're like, I don't see why not right, because typically if you get commissioned, they send you off to freaking another side of the world, right, one of those who you are, so you show up as this boot and send or officer. And uh so one day I'm I'm selected to so many things at the you know, I'm gonna be a nine. And then next thing, I'm like, well, I'm manbe you know one, right, you know, we do this ceremony. Uh and uh I get uh, you know, go from E

nine to or E eight promotable two one. And it was like people are looking at well, what do we call you now? I mean, yeah, you call me Drew. Right. So I stayed there for another five years, ended up taking one of the other troops, a different kind of troops that did different, uh atypical a stuff.

from whoever's available within the squadron squadrons to becaudant. And so I was very actually that was very rewarding, you know, to to do that, to teach people tasks and assess them and that now you're one of the guys in that horseshoe formation around the candidates.

So that's when I got to, you know, really do the things that I thought was really my strategic intelligence. Yeah, run sources and you know that was a dicey sorry, dicey time, uh in the history of Somalia and the Horn of Africa, but very rewarding.

yet equally if not more imposing. And I think what what he is saying is that, uh like Dale is is very much a large life figure, and you know in the way he carries ol of with itself and and deservedly so, like he's you know, been there, done that, and while and you are humble and yet you are also equally if not more imposting. Is when are when?

you just wake up and go, I belong here. This is this is where I live. I can do this. I can't perform I I can. And it doesn't mean I'm any more Superman. I'm not a Marvel character. It's just that you just realize you know your craftsmen, your you know what you're doing right, and there's you know when you when you get to that point where you trust your inner self. I think that's what I learned

going to the unit. It's like, this is why I've made this decision because I think it's the right decision. And here's why I think it's the right decision. This is why I set the l Z up this way. This is why I aborted this mission. This is why I did this thing. And you're right because it turns out right. And so when you're when you're fortunate enough

to be in that position to repeatedly over years. UH make good decisions or decisions that are productive or you know sometimes the just and where you walk away, right, you know what, right a good feeling about this.

command right right. They don't even know how to read a map, right, you know, And and uh so you have that those kinds of challenges to deal with, but at the end of the day, they trust you and they let you kind of drive the try the train yeah, no.

or Pat Pat McNamara or or other folks. But that's just so you can just tweak and fine tune your skills, right mostly you get Yeah, so we did a lot of foreign weapons stuff and so, but maintaining our calls was never an issue. We wanted to set up a shooting course with some expert We did it whenever we needed to. How was it we wanted to also wanted to maintain What I've left out is that we work oftentimes integrated as part of a combined team with our

brothers and sisters in Blue and Green. So you know, we needed to be able to not be.

I mean, that's one of the things you neglect were we always want to look at things from the standpoint of it, you know, as a voice or foreign intelligence.

have to struggle with uh. You struggle with relevancy.

fortunately for me, I was able to do that. I ended up working with Mick and some other guys for a little while, and although it wasn't a real long time, I made a personal decision not to, it did keep me relevant. I did get to go do some things that I didn't get to do in the military that were just awesome. You know, I got more trigger time afterwards than I did cumulatively you know later. But it's just what it was, what it was.

I don't want to bother them. And you stay, you try to stay in touch, but but at the same time, you re ut recognize they're still running one hundred miles an hour and and you're not so you know, it can take a toll and and and uh, for me, it did. Uh, it's it's snuck up on me. And there when I made the decision to kind of come off the you know, come off the field and and

focus on a new marriage and having kids. You know, it was a deliberate decision, and uh, but it also forced me to face some things that you know, what was going to happen in the future, and at some point you're real For I feel fortunate that I recognized that I couldn't fix it myself, and I reached out. It just turned out it was this weird thing. I I got to say. I was walking into Wegman's one

day and I hadn't seen Rod Gonzo. This one guy Intel, a guy in a few years and he said, Hey, what's up, Drew, And we're shooting the ship in the parking lot and maybe you could just see it. He must have been written over my face. And he's like, uh, hey, you're her headstrong, you know, And yeah, they got a

lot of money. They they're helping, helping guys. And give him a call and I looked them up, ended up calling him, having this inject with someone's you know, and just kind of explaining things that I just didn't understand what was going through my head. I never thought about doing anything, you know, drastic some people with twenty two and suicide and all that I said. But but I realized I just after twenty five years or twenty seven years of doing whatever I was doing, I suddenly I

found myselven waters. I couldn't control right somebody else, you know, And so I reached out and talked to this guy. Did an inject next a guy. Now I'm like talking to a psychiatrist. Next thing I know, I'm talking to you know, getting help and Headstrong was started by a marine captain or major who a bunch of his major, a bunch of his platoon members. After Ramadi and Flujah, young guys were killing themselves suicide because they came back to the world and they were you know, they had

issues when they were young, young kids. But you know, the VA just hand them a bag of pills and right and uh So, the stigma of PTSD was this, you know, before Nika and Nico was formed for the guys that that Tier one units. Now where you you actually you know, get the proper treatment, the proper trend uh uh transition, an assessment like what Mark talks about. Anyway, that was before that. I was worried about my T S, s C, I t K down all that kind of stuff, right,

you know I was. I was worried about, like, well, somebody finds out I got you know, issues, I won't be a case officer or whatever. So this was completely anonymous they kept. You know, it was all done by big, big, deep pocket boat donors. You got the help you needed without any kind of stigma and had strong Save save basically, and that's why you know I'm where I'm at today. Not that not that things that have necessarily been.

you know. I mean, there's there's a lot more we've We've really progressed a lot since I went through that, So I, yeah, definitely.

sort of other role in life. And I was wondering if you would be willing to like talk a little bit about like the very like kind of conscious decision you made to move from one life to another, because like that's something that just it really clicked with me at least.

a a softball. You think it's a curve, but softball, and you swim a miss and if you just like paid attention to it and hit it the right way, it would have been the best thing. So you you have it. Like for me, I felt like a mhm. I met my wife and at the time and we were going to go down this path that from Dave's old place, and I realized that wasn't the right fit for me because the organization was saying, your spouse has to basically stop her career. I'm gonna be blunt about

it because it needs to be said. She's you know, I look at my you know, she's a rising rock star in her field global right, and you know, within the the organization was saying, yeah, you know, but but she has contacts and I thought I put myself in her. She was like, what if somebody said that to me when I was in the beginning of my seill career, I what I have today if I had given all that, all of what I've experienced, right, And I felt like,

that's not fair. I got to live my career. I got to do exactly what I chose to do, and I had. I had a great career, and I wouldn't want to put that on anybody else. So I decided, hey, you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna decouple. I'm not going to impose that restriction on my significant other and be a support element in the meantime. So I started doing you know, I see training people doing whatever. And

it was hard. It was really hard. It was really hard because you know we're talking things were still very kinetic, very going on, and we've being a coin advisor in Afghanistan for a year and that was very rewarding, work with Marines and working from my Crystal and betray us. We didn't even talk about that. That's another podcast probably, but you know, you have to like some at some point,

you just got to make the decision to pull the cutaway. Pillow. Yeah, right, and hope you reserve opens you pull that preserve pillow and thank god the rigor packed it right. I saved my life, right, you know, and then you have to deal with everything after that. And the transition was or a challenge, but I've embraced it. And now we have two wonderful children that I just adore and I my wife is h a rock star and I'm just glad to be her EXO and support structure.

in a way, a pretty selfish life. We are. We are living our dream and you know, and what gets left behind are the wives and the children when we're doing that, And you know, they're the ones who, you know, the spouses are the ones who wonder, like what's going on when we haven't been able to contact them for two or three weeks at a time, right, or whatever, one more question, okay, And and for you to make such a I don't want to say mature because obviously

you're a grown man. But but what's it's a mature decision to say, like, I've been living my dream and now if I like, if I want to keep living this thing that I've been living, then I have to sort of ask my wife to stop living her dream.

people died in their arms. I mean I didn't have that kind of had a lot of very interesting experiences, I mean stuff I can't talk about right now, but but they weren't traumatic. So so when it came time for me to deal with traumatic the aspect of like I don't I mean, you know, when I'm asking people when when the Sykes asked me the question, so what happened? You know, what was a traumatic episode? I'm like, I don't know. You know, how many people did you kill?

I give them a number? Right, yeah, but that doesn't bother me. It's I guess I don't have you know. But at the end of the day, it's like, how many people did I have disappeared because of what I did? Or how many people? You know? And that's the thing I don't even I don't even care about that aspect. The point is we end up at a point, at a crossroads, and whether we understand how we got there

or not is not important. What's important is what you do when you get to that why in the road the crosswas and you recognize I'm lost, okay, right, and and I need you know, this is the point where you know, I got to ask for directions or I got to ask for it, right, And you don't know what that helpens, but you got to at least ask.

There's so many things, I mean, and you used to find at night and sleeping there in the day, you're taking an ambient you're you know, you're doing amphetamines to do whatever or whatever on occasion. But at the end of the day, you just used to a different body chemistry. Your body chemistry physical actually changes and then you come back to to a normal life, so to speak, and you're challenged by that because now all of a sudden,

everything about you. You know, you look across the street, different activity, You walk into a grocery store, you're checking your corners, you know, where's the exits? Okay, what's this driver going to do? You know, all these things that happened that it's it's part of a chemistry thing. And uh, you know we all we all have to deal with that in some way or another, oh to some another. And you don't you think that you're can complete control

or command of yourself. And and then you're faced with these and you realize one day that you know, you're barking at your wife, you're you know, you're doing all this weird ship, you're hyper vigilant, whatever it is.

rescued Captain Phillips. You know, forty eight hours later they're driving through you know the drive through it at talk about.

Thank you for Laurence Us for both the donations. Is there any credibility to the rumors of the Kandahar Giant and the Taliban fighters needing eight to nine bullets to go down due to captive goon or other substances beats?

people need to understand, need to check out. You know, when when you're when you sign up your defend the constitution, carry out the orders of the day, you know, blah blah blah, and you want to do your job. You kind of don't care, but you don't want what you do to be completely meaningless discountant, right, you know, it's worthless.

And as far as that you know, mean type of question goes, people should recognize that when young Americans, I mean the thirteen Marines and and all, I share something in common with the fifteen Marines that died in Okay HK. They did that because they're looking at they believe in what they're doing, they believed in their brotherhood, they believe in you know, and and represent the United States as a true speaking of hope, and every now and then we need to take a reset and recognize that. But

if we don't, we don't have those values anymore. You know what's going to pull that boy right?

their own devices after they trusted us so much. It you know, it's easy to blame Au a politician for those issues, but it seems to be a trend of of of the American government, like in generally it takes the veterans that worked with with those indigenous forces to to like lead the charge on getting them sanctuary.

of other stuff. And when it came time to retire, I was like, I was all thinking about, Hey, I'm gonna go and uh work for Wexford, work for AWG, do this and that. You know, you gotta make money. And when it came time to retire, I was doing my out physical and I was pretty pretty apped up. And my squadron surgeon, to his credit, said, hey, you know, you ever thought about a medical retirement, Like, well, that's

for guys that got blown up or whatever. That's not for me, because now you're you know, the definition is can you do your job right? So any one thing went another. So he helped me do a med board medical retirement board, and it just didn't turn out that I was. I was pretty apped up.

I had to buy the uniform, the whole thing. And then you know, bum Ed comes back and says, oh, no, we're going to retire. When you get medically retired, you retire at the highest pay grade or the highest frank yet. So for like nine months I was at E nine and then all of a sudden, it was back to three. So I retired as a three. That was the best

thing that could happen. So I retired with one hundred percent of disability for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the things we've been talking about, amongst the physical subject. But I went back to school, got used my gibil, got got my degree in history, abassadors into history, and then I got to master's in International affairs, and you know, turn my life for round. So I'm not sure if I I'm on track for answering your question, Jack, refreshment my memory.

to to raise kids and be present. I know so many friends on both sides army and maybe who in their in their weren't presentn't able to be present because they had career conflicts and then you know, their families were challenged by that. And if it wasn't for their you know, real strong spouse or or whatnot, you know,

that was that determined the success. But back to you know, now I've got this opportunity, and very recently I realized that I think what I I would like to pursue is you know, the kind of the vet TV version of what we've all learned from being in special operations and having families, you know, how the lessons learned, the pros and cons, the funny stuff.

don't know nothing about my past. Like they're they're eight and six years old, right, old man, but you know, and and and they I might as well be a World War two veteran, right right, yeah, But but now they're asking questions, you know, yeah, And and I realized all the mistakes I made, all the things I learned, all the things that had I been a good dad before or in the military, I would have been a better leader.

You know, get to give the ground truth, and sometimes the ground truth doesn't dovetail with the commanders intent. So I would say maybe to answer this question, you got to dig deeper than the surface level of you know. How that applies to domestic aspects I'm I'm inferring. I'm assuming that's what's we're talking about, right, I don't even know that.

But but the actual scale or scope of folks that need to be dealt with on the on you know, that are being compared to.

it's like, I know counterinsurgency stuff like you know, as well as I know how to kill that guys.

that is sort of being put out there. But but what you're saying, is it that's more of an information war that it's not that the effort or or the ground gained is not similar to what you would actually see an accounter uncertainty from either side.

go back to civility. We need to work hard on, you know, taking care of our neighbors, our neighborhood, our cities right, our counties, right, and finding common ground because we all share ninety percent of the same common grounds.

there table, make sure the kids are saved in schools, like like they're trying to live a normal life, while a small minority on each side is sort of controlling the dialogue in a way.