Special Forces Sergeant First Class | Nate Cornacchia | Ep. 227

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing. Go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Teamhouse and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the

stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're gonna give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us another secret review, why don't you just send us an email. We'll talk about special operations covert. Ask me any the Team House with your hopes. Jack Murphy and David Park Welcome to The Team Mouse, episode two hundred and twenty seven. I'm Dave Park. Uh here's my co host, Jack Murphy. Oh, Jack's out tonight. We have a

very special guest, uh Nate Cornakia Special Forces. Oh what what rank did you get to? Nate? Uh Strom? First Class? Okay, Special Forces for about ten years, ten and a half years and great great stories tonight, so uh stand by, So Nate, welcome and thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's an honor. You know, you guys have some really impressive operators on the show. So I'm just honored to be here. Well, we're honored to have you. So what's

your origin story? How what led you come too the military? Like? How did you? An easy one? This is this is a really easy one, right. So my family has a very uh, you know kind of story military history. So my grandpa was in the eighty second, he jumped into Normandy on D Day. My dad was a Greenbray as well, forty six company. He was in the eight Camps in Vietnam. So for me, that was sort of an easy decision, right, you know, it took me a little while to get there. I went to college first

before I came in. But you know, it was one of those things, is I really just wanted to be you know, like dad, right and grandpa in a way because you know, sort of war heroes as your grandpa and your father, and you kind of want to live up to do that. I don't really necessarily think I did, because those conflicts are just so crazy that they were in. But you know, it's it's cool that we have such a lineage that we have in our direct mind for sure.

Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it When you think about the trench warfare in World War One, and then you know, like Normandy and you know, and the Visitic Islands of World War Two, and then the type of conflict that we had in Afghanistan Iraq, it's very different. Yeah, and you know Vietnam as well, because you know, having a dad and also so many of his teammates that he's still friends with in contact with. So guys like Riley Lott, who was the n c I S of

Mike Forces for seven years, who just passed away recently. He just got inductedto the Special fourth Solvain. Guys like that, Jim Day and mcview sog.

These are guys that you know and my dad that I grew up around listening to their stories, right, you know, I have some pretty wild combat stories and then I listened to their stories and I'm just like, good job, you know, like I've been through almost nothing, you know, comparatively in the comrade room from from the guys who came before us for sure. So did you always know you wanted to be a Green Beret then? So, you know, I mean I was a Green Bret for Halloween when

I was five years old, so but I still would have lost. You know, I was an athlete all the way through college, so that was sort of my goal. I played baseball, so that was sort of my focus at the time, and then you know, sort of through college kind of found that, you know, I was completely lacking purpose. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and sort of a kind of a weird story, just woke up randomly one day and was like, I'm gonna I'm

gonna join the military. I'm gonna follow in dad's footsteps. Luckily having a dad that was fust forces, he knew about, you know, a eighteen X ray contract that could get me straight to selection, so that helped me a lot, having sort of the pathway already known from you know, having a group guy as a dad. But that's sort of how that sort of little pathway started for me. Was sort of a lack of purpose that led me into you know, going for this career, which thank god I did,

because you know who knows where life would have taken me otherwise. Now, you know, we talked to a lot of you know, guys in particular who are older and like ninety eleven was a defining moment for them maybe they were already in the military or they went in shortly thereafter. But for you, because you went in in twenty thirteen, correct, yep, so for you, they're already go ahead. Well, yeah, I was gonna say, you know, for me, nine to eleven was I was in.

I was in in high school, so referen high school. So I don't think I really registered. You know, obviously I knew, you know, what a terrible tragedy wasn't whattnot. But I don't think I had registered. What it meant as if had I been a little bit older and already at the age to be able to join the military at the time. And I think sort of by the time, you know, I was eighteen nineteen, I already planned on going to college and doing sports and whatnot, that

that sort of wasn't something I was even thinking about. So yeah, a little bit differently, Yeah, I guess, And what was your awareness of the war up at that point? Because we had been in Iraq for you know, ten years. We've been in Afghanistan for twelve. Yeah, so I mean I definitely had friends from high school that joined, you know, and I had buddies that I went to that actually went to college with that had been in Fellujiah and whatnot, and you know they had gotten out of

the service after that and they were in college now. So obviously, you know, I had the awareness of that, and still you know, still followed the conflict quite a bit because of my dad, you know what I mean, We're still definitely in a military family and followed that very closely.

And yeah, so I think it's I don't know, it's one of those weird things again for me, more so of you know, I've always been a huge patriot, coming from a family the type of family come in, but more so for me, it was wanting to like live up to what my dad achieved. And he didn't just achieve that. My dad's in staying achiever all around. Right, He was a Green Beret, he became a politician for sixteen years, the lawyer for forty years. So I mean he's

hit the whole gambit of life success. But so for me, really that was the big thing is following and footsteps of Dad. More so now I found sort of patriotism and then everything not more patriotism, but sort of love of the military and all that as I went through the military, but up front that's more of what it was. Then sort of love of country, you know, the typically that type of thing. Mine was more of a family traditional type of thing. Yeah, so you get the eighteen X ray

program, you go, did you go to a Fort Benning? Yeah, yeah, yep, so the way, so the way the at least when I went through, right, it's been eleven years now, but the program basically sends you to basic training and to airborne school and then now provided you you know, make it through basic training, right, but and then guarantees you to go to spect Forces selection. That's all I guarantees is a chance

to go to selection. So yeah, I went to four Betting four months in basic training and then you go straight to airborne school from basic, so you're right down the street, you do your airborne school and then you drive up to North Carolina in process and get ready to go to selection. So four months did so did you go to the infantry basic? After? It

was the whole so you got an an MOS out of that. Well, so no, so we do. So you did your typical sixteen weeks infantry and then or basic training and then infantry ai T. That's part of the eighteen x ray course. And I think they do that because you know, honestly, like ninety percent of those guys that are going to wash out and go to the infantry, so that way they already have the infantry MOS,

but you don't. Actually you still carry the eighteen x MOS the entire time until you either wash out and become a eleven Bravo or you make it and you become the eighteen series. How that works? Now? Would did you do anything to prep because obviously you don't get into in shape really in basic training, So how did you prep you for SFAs you get actually a negative shape? You know, I came in as a college athlete in incredible shape. I was ready to go for sure, and basic training was massive rance

right or brought my fistical fitness levels way down. But as the eighteen x ray you go to before you go to selection, there's a course called I think it's sopsy stuff Operations, Preparation, preparation and conditioning. So it's like a three week course all the eighteen x rays go to that basically is just three weeks of getting back in shape. You're going to do some land navigation, learn stuff like that sort of prep you to go to selection, which

is actually a huge benefit to go to that course. So that's sort of like get lets you get back into the condition you were and honestly, you know, the eighteen X rays because of that course, kind of go into selection at a much higher fitness level on average than anybody else. Really. Yeah, so it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more successful, but usually you know, those guys eighteen x rays are getting the best times on

the runs and the rooks and all that type of stuff. Right, dude, for the shop, See, did were they smart about the fitness and the conditioning or did they just kind of smoke your bags? No? No, no, it's it. Well, when I went through, it's an awesome course. They had guys that, like the whole course was designed around actually functional fitness recovery you ate, you know, like four or five thousand calories a day. I mean, in awesome course to actually prep you.

It wasn't your typical military like we're just gonna break you before you go to selection. It was. It's actually designed to get you fit physically ready to go to selection. So probably one of the better courses that are part that's part of the entire two course, but that's because it's not just a smoker. Yeah, and then do you go directly? Did you go directly from that into SFAs or was a wait period? I think I think it was probably like a week between. So, yeah, you come out and then

pretty much go right away right after that. And what did you think of SFAs when you were there selection? Oh? Man, you know at that point. You know, it's funny. I had you know, I was fortunate and I had a Greenbray as a dad. So I knew what the two course and tail right, I knew the structure of it. I knew what f FAS entailed. I knew the all of all the events. But you know, I only had four months in the military and I was a little bit older. So I was twenty three or twenty twenty four when I

when I joined. So but I mean, maturity wise, when you're around guys can brain your battalion and you know E five E six is from the eighty second and you've been in the military for four months, you know, you really don't know anything. For me, I sort of just tried to carry as my dad, getting the advice as much weight as you can, and you know, sort of just be respectful to people and keep your mouth shut for the most part, you know, because I was you know,

I had college, so it was an E four. I came in as a as a E four, but you know, I didn't know, I didn't know anything. So that was kind of my thing was be the guy that you know. I was big. I'm six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds, so big, strong, carry weight, not complain, which you know can take you a long way in the eyes of your peers in a situation like s AS for sure. Yeah. And then so you you graduate SFS and then which MS did you choose or what's chosen for you?

Well, so you get a wish list at selection right where you rank from first last or you know, medic communicator, engineer, weabon, sergeant, and so my wish list I put engineer first. My dad was an engineer, so I wanted to do that, and then communicator second, which is what I ended up getting so I ended up getting the eighteen echo MLS, which you know, I'm not. I was never a huge fan of radio as the whole way through my career, but you know I was.

You know, I made sure I was good enough to get my team comms at all times. But I was never a radio nerd. Everybody always thought I was an eighteen Bravo, you know, A group whenever they met me ended up what my MLS was. Yeah. So so you you made sure that they didn't drop a fill, but you weren't big on wave propagation theory and everything. Yeah, exactly right, I kid, I make sure you got comms on THEE one fifty two. I knew how to set up the

SDN lawlessly. Other than that, like, don't ask me if you're the commander, don't ask me to do any wazoo stuff. Right, we're not, We're not going down that road. Yeah, I'll get my dream. I'll get my junior to do that. You know. That's sort of where I got two later back career. Yeah, and then what so then where did you get assign what? What team did you go to? What group?

Yeah? So interesting? So I initially was had Russian as the languages and was supposed to go to tenth group, and then I ended up breaking breaking my foot on a ruck at twelve mile ruck. About three miles into the ruck, I fell into a or stepped into a pothole that because they had been raining on the side of the roads in North Carolina, stepped into it and it was like three feet deep, fell in, broke my foot. Ended up completing the ruck in time, which I mean I probably would

have made it through the shoe course out I had not done that. But because of that, it reset me and I had to read you that phases the course and wait for my leg or my foot to heel obviously, and then I got Chinese Mandarin as I got reset back into the system, and then first group. So that's how you ended up getting over the first group.

And then yeah, I got to I got the first group with my group of guys, and then you know, you go into the start major's office of battalion and he sends you over the company and you go into another startan major's office your first day, and me and my buddy who went through the whole two course together, both eighteen echoes, walked into the same company. He went into start Major's office first, and he walked out and had

a slot on the Halo team. And so I walked out. I walked in second and sat down and start Major pointed at the board and he says, all right, we got one spot on a team for eighteen echo if you want to be on a team, And obviously that's all I wanted, and he's all right, can you swim? Can you swim? And I'm like, oh god, He's like, well, you're head to do the dive team. So that's how I started my career and ended up on a combat dive team for three and a half four years. So yeah, that's

how that's where I ended up on my first team. So when you went to Mandarin was it was it there brag or did they send you a d l I? How did that work for you? And how long was it? So? Yeah, so language school at least when I went through, was right there at Braga And this is six months, eight hours a day, and we had like an instructor from North Carolina State that was from Taiwan. So I mean you definitely are immersed and learned the language pretty well.

It's you know, six months straight eight hours a day of your target language with Chinese Mandarin? Is it this brutal to maintain? So you know, I was pretty I could speak pretty well my you know, first couple of years out and then you know, ten years later that OPI was was pretty ugly, right, Yeah. I struggled through to to get my one one yeast of the time by Dean. Yeah. So what was it like getting to first group, which is you know, focused on Asia. Basically you

go to a dive team. Did you go like what was your setup for? Were they showing rotations, you know, to Afghanistan. Were you set up directly for like pre scuba. Yeah, so interesting sort of how that works, right because at that time, that was twenty fifteen, sixteen ish, and we were really in the height of that eighteen month rotation all the groups right where six months in Afghanistan, twelve months off, six months in Afghanistan and twelve months off. That's what all the teams were doing. We

were rotating in and out and replacing everybody. So that was the entire focus of the battalion in our company when I got there. So I got there immediately went on a trip to the Philippines, which was cool. But that's just the first trip, just a you know, training partner force of deployment, got back and then had a little bit of time to be able to try to go to dive school. Was in pre dive ended up tearing my meniscus in my right knee, and so I wasn't able to finish dive school.

And then by the time I had recovered, and then we were straight into PMT for the next rotation of Afghanistan, which for you know, people who don't know, it's not just you don't just deploy for six months Afghanistan, right, you have that big train up that's usually like nine months, that incorporates multiple PMTs, cephalic, all these different things you do as a

team to get ready for that combat deployment. So it's really like a you know, twelve to fourteen month sort of total of train up and deployment. So I wasn't able to go to dive school because of that. Came back and when I came back from that trip, I had to have surgery on

both my knees. So by the time I recovered from that, we had another different trip we were going on too, So I actually never ended up getting to go to dive school after even being on a team for three a half four years, and there's another couple of guys on the team that were the same way. We just never got an opportunity to go because that wasn't

the focus. So, you know, you're rotating out of combat, you know, the paylo or the dive nobody really not that they don't care about that, right, but like there's no water in Afghanistan, right, So that wasn't the big So the focus was, you know, could you you want to miss PMT and on all the train up for war to go to dive school with your team, or do you want to be ready to go

to war? So it's kind of situation that we're in what was that what was that six month period or you know whatever a train up like, because obviously there was probably quite a bit of combat experience on your team at that point time, right, A ton a ton, so especially on that team for that went on. Our twenty eighteen Afghanistan rotation was honestly it was like an all star team. Now, I had no experience at the time,

so I can't say I was at all start. But the senior level group of the team that had basically been hand picked and put together and we ended up having the highest one of the highest profile missions in country because of it. And yeah, I mean our senior we had two We had two eighteen deltas who both had like seven years team time, right, the junior had like seven years team time, and the most senior eighteen Delta, who I ended up being on a team with for like five six years, really like

one of my biggest mentors. He had like five combat rotations already. The team sergeant had three or four. Everybody on the team other than a couple of the new guys had multiple rotations through already, so which was amazing for

me on a first trip. Yeah. Well, I basically just got to soak up so much knowledge, and by the time I had gone through full PMT and my first combat rotation, I was so far beyond the average amount of experience for somebody at my point in career combat experience wise, because of

those guys on my team, you know what I mean. So yeah, yeah, So with uh, you mentioned that your junior delta had you know, seven years, right, Yeah, I think at that point he had like six or seven years, and he was the junior because our senior had even more time than that, And I mean obviously probably could have gone somewhere

to be a senior. Was it was a team just very tight, no, So he was the senior, right, and then he was the senior for like two he had been the senior for like two or three years. And then our other older senior who used to be So I'll pull back. So when he was a junior, a new guy in the team, his

senior, they're to still the same two guys. This was years before I got to It was his senior, right, and then he went on a broadening assignment for three years, came back to the ODA, and so his old senior was now his senior again, even though he had been the senior delta for like three years up to that point. So that's sort of the joke of Blake. You know, you're the new junior eighteen delta even though you've been a senior for He was the like the most senior eighteen delta in

the company other than his old senior who came back. So that's just how I have a level of experience this specific ODIA had with guys, multiple guys like that in you know, MLS is like that, which is pretty rare to have that. That's amazing. Real quickly when you give a shout out to our sponsors, first, a ARP Veteran Court. It's a twice monthly newsletter. Guys. You don't have to be a member of a ARP to to sign up. It's free to sign up for the newsletter. They send

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our good friend Mike Taylor, who's been on the show before. Uh special Forces Legend and uh Fugitive from the uh well, not fugitive, but what is responsible for getting a ghost and out of Japan? And that was a great episode. But you know, Mike, you know, one of the things that I don't know if you know your your experience Tunate is like a lot of the uh you know, the drinks they have out there are just

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We go through a ton here. These are all empty, but they have a lot of different flavors. Uh. Great stuff. So back to you, Nate. So what what was it like your first deployment. You know, you have this long history of family in combat and now your you're deploying. Oh yeah, man, that's that's a good question. I think

anybody's asking that question before. So, you know, going into my first appointment, I actually felt quite confident just because of the men around me on that team, right, I mean I had just guys that were honestly sort of legends in you know, the I W was say, sort of legends in the company and the battalion get at already, and so that that gives you a lot more confident than you know, I knew that this team had been put together sort of handpicked by the command team to do a really high

profile mission. But you know, I also knew in the back of my head like, oh shit, I have no idea what I'm doing. Right, And for example, you know, right out the gate are very first combat operation. We had the one sixtieth sixtieth fly us in and we landed on the fucking X. Sorry my language, No, you're fine, you

can cut okay. You know we landed on the X, right, So I jump out of it with one sixtieth bird look up and the compound is boom right there, and there's murder holes everywhere, right, so I'm like, oh, holy shit, well this is for real, right, But you know, the way our team started had set it up. He sort of had but sort of each of the new guys with one of the really experienced seniors. But then he also not the very first couple missions, so

we get our feet wet. But then he also made us new guys the element leaders and sort of had the more experienced guys there with us, you know, sort of as gatekeepers to keep us in line. But in doing that sort of you know, like massively increased our experience so fast because we were so integrated into the planning process and actually leading elements doing all stuff typically senior guys would be doing. So we learned fast, right. And we

also we had a lot we had a really high op tempo. We were doing missions about every five days pretty much, all period of darkness, nighttime raids all. We have talked about it before the show, but I so we were in the Candahar area, operating through that sort of Heroin Silk Road for people who don't know from you know, a pack stand up through Candahar

into Helmand and then out towards Iran. There's a lot of Talban activity in that area, so we were really targeting big facilities, taking down not really looking for drugs at all. We weren't doing an acid stuff, but you know, taking out sort of big targets along that road because the Talban you know, typically wanted to hold that area, those areas. So so yeah, for the first deployment, I mean it was a pretty wild first deployment,

right is it was super connectic. We were in tons of gunfights, tons of missions, so you know, it was peaked to the fire real real fast. And yeah, but but awestome at the same at the same time, you know, it was kind of that trip was kind of like two three combat deployments in one. When you when you take the amount of stuff we did, what year was it that you why didn't Afghanistan? So

in twenty eighteen, So we I tell people that. So basically, like I think we were on thirty d eight pre deployment leave when Donald Trump, you know, made that famous statement that we are not here to nation build, we are here to kill terrorists. So that was like three weeks before

we landed into Afghanistan. The morrow we changed and we went after it, so we were there to basically take it to the Taliban and then part of our part of our battalion was also clearing out the name of our valley and basically was that was the time we pretty much eliminated ISIS out of afghan staying up through the name of har valley. That was all sort of that same

timeline. On that same trip, MYODIA wasn't operating in that area, but are some of our teams in the company were on those big ISIS clearing operations at the same time. Just to give it an idea of what time frame that plus so it's twenty eighteen, what was the SF mission at that time? Like was it like Robin Sage you said you went you were flying on the one sixty if going connectict. So there wasn't a lot of the sort

of unconventional warfare style, correct, No, not really. So we my ODEA was working with the Third Sock Commandos and the Third Sock A and a Special Forces guys and now it was pretty much every mission we did was nighttime, right, I mean over and over and over again. Everything you know. There was really no nation building or there wasn't no partner Force development. We barely ever trained with the guys. We pretty much just went on missions, so sort of that U dub type of thing, we didn't do any

of that. It was all point target. We are there to destruct or disrupt and destroy as much of the Taliban Talban tap capabilities as we can in our area. So that was the whole focus for them. And how how was it working with the Afghan stock? Yeah? Yeah, so the commandos were rough, right, real rough, you had to We ran in some definite sketchiness a lot of the time. But we had the actual A and A Special Forces guys, which those are the guys that go through a real

Q course with Special Forces instructors. Some of those guys have been doing it for fifteen years. They've been fighting the Taliban for the entire conflict. And those guys, some of them were legit. I mean, I wouldn't say that at the level of an American Special Forces guy, but I mean they

no bullshit, some of these guys. So when we had the the ANASF guys, we were able to really you know, take it to the Taliban in a lot of ways because they were willing to fight, right, they were willing to get their hands dirty, whereas the commandos, you know, when when the bullets started flying, they were sort of like, no, we're not really actually interested in in this war thing, right, We're just gonna lay down and sort of hide and let you guys take care of it.

So, so how did that work for you? Guys? You had I assume a twelve man O D A. And then you had your an indigenous partner force that would go in with you. Would ye, would they lead the assault? Would you lead this assault? How did that all work out? So? You know, they the tactics we use have changed year by year by year by year and what and what we do. So at that point it had gotten to basically single file movements everywhere. So we would

obviously planning the missions, we led the missions. So I would as an element leader, I would have you know, the Afghan team leader next to me for that element, and I would be telling him what to do, and he would then tell his guys what to do. Right, I would say, Hey, we're going to this compound, We're going to this fumpound, that sort of thing. But but yeah, so I'm sorry back, but what was the no just about how just about how the dynamics was with

you and them, Oh, how the assaults would work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we would have again we had our twelve man team, but we also would try to plus it up with a lot of different enablers. Right, So we had a Air Force Combat Controller that did all of our fires type of stuff. We had a SAWDA, we had two EOD texts. We would bring out usually four or five uplift guys, so infantry

guys that would be security for the commander and the CCT. So we would have probably about twenty Americans total on the ground and then usually fifty to sixty Afghans because we were working with the s F guys most of the time, we didn't need as many Afghans to be able to get as much done. So that would usually be about the structure, and we worked pretty much in four elements so that we could clear large, large areas because the compounds,

you know, it's not like Iraq and Afghanistan everything is. The compounds are so spread out between hundred and twenty hundred two hundred meters between each compound, So you'd work in four different elements with two or three Americans on each element and that way you could work together as a big organism to clear large swaths of compounds that way. So that's sort of how that was set up for clearing operations. I guess you could call it through a big villages, I

guess, right. And if you're flying with sixtieth, I mean obviously you're doing operations similar to what the Rangers are doing or Tier one elements are doing. When did when did SF sort of move into that? Do you know when SF moved into that role when they started flying one sixtieth and doing those

direct hits. So we didn't have one sixtieth for every mission, right, that was like when we got lucky and really at one sixty if they picked the missions, so when they're like, oh that's the cool one that they're gonna do, we'll fly them. Most of the time we had regular regular army pilots. But but yeah, so now everybody sort of had different mission sets, right, Like we had other SF teams that we're doing sort of the drugs CID type stuff we had over in like helm in Hurrah and areas

like that. We had teams doing the big ISIS battalion size clearing operations where you had a whole company of SF teams moving through valleys, so everybody sort of had a different mission set in that regard. But I think that started more around like twenty fifteen sixteen, as we went away from VSO in twenty thirteen and we went back to the big bases. Yeah, so that's because we would fly in from we lived on Candahar, and we would fly in

from Candahar to hit these targets and fly back. So I think that's that's kind of when we went away from VSO. That's sort of when we transitioned to sort of that more conventional style point target rate type. Yeah, for the senior guys on your team, the guys who had been back and forth, what was their opinion of SF doing like Kinetic Verse VSO and things like that. Yeah, So quite a few guys on my team they're prior.

They're prior trips were VSO trips. So that's really when that transitioned. Sort of twenty twelve they were doing VSO and then the next trip they were doing what we were doing. You know, I mean, honestly, like living living conditions, you know, it's sort of a lot better when you've got shi fi and you're living on taff and there's surf and turf at the chow hall when you get back from doing your raid, comparatively to living six months

in a mud hut. Yeah, but I think they I think they enjoyed VS THO more, you know, because you got to do so much. You were somewhere immersed in in the fight and in the mission, and you were doing stuff during the day, and you could actually drive around and like and do all kinds of different stuff. Whereas us it was kind of like we're on base and we do hits right when we come back. That's there wasn't a whole lot of being immersed out in the culture or or anything like

that. That's sort of the first ten years of the war what SF was doing. Yeah. Yeah, we had had We've had Scott Manon, who was one of the guys I think who really pushed to get those VSO operations going. And then I think before before we saw any results, we just kind of like the government just shut them down. You know. The thing is, though, is that with VSO up in the twenty twelve, I mean we had pretty much taken over the country. Yeah, I mean it

was super effective. Once we you know, figured out how to do it, and we decided, oh, we're just gonna draw down VSO and give all this back to the Taliban for example, and some of the areas and the missions. I'm sure we'll get into talking about. We were going into areas that some of my buddies had taken in VSO three or four years before that. We had already owned that. Now we're going back into do targets hit targets on, you know what I mean. So it didn't in that

regard, it didn't make any sense. It was like, what are we doing? Why did we just give this all back to them for no reason? Yeah? Yeah, And for people who were watching or listening VSO or viliage stability operations, which are similar to like what the A camps in Vietnam, the Marines, the close I think of the close action platoons uh or civilized I think close action, but basically creating those sort of domains of control by you know, not taking over village, but but inhabiting the village,

helping the people out and creating the stability that way. Yeah. So the biggest way they would do that is you know, and and Afghanistan is very rural and tribal. Right, so a team would be in and they would be with the village elder and then they would develop, you know, a police force or a fighting force, and they would be able to sort of secure their own territory against the talban. That was sort of the idea behind that, and then enable them to do that. Yeah, but obviously,

even if vsos are more effective, kinetic is sexier a lot. Yeah, Yeah, it briefs better, right, It briefs better, it does for sure, right, and it's it's a lot cooler to uh, you know, set and it's our a team in the middle of the night with AC one thirties and a tens and yeah, and I SR watching all of it. So, yeah, so you said your first stop, you guys landed on your the the X which is right on the target. Was that Was that your first firefight or what? What? None? Was your first firefight?

Oh? Yeah, no, So, I mean we got in a few our very first operation, we did get in a little bit of a firefight towards the end, but I mean now it scuffled out pretty quick. Our first and then so and then our next couple operations we got in in smaller ones ticks here and there, nothing like too crazy to talk about. But the biggest, first, biggest firefight that I got into was, or our team got into, was the mission I was telling about earlier where we

got near ambushed twice. And you know, all the guys on my team have our awards and upwards of our at Delta as a silver Star stuff like that. So that's that was the huge like when you talk about real firefight when I think about now. We had a few more after that later in the trip as well, big ones, but that was actually sort of towards the front of the deployment when it comes to a major major gunfights. So can you set it up and walk us through these these near ambushes? What

was the mission profile, what did it look like? How did it all go down? Yeah, so I'll give it just a backstory to what we were doing. So again, we were going into an area in tern Cott, which is you know, maybe forty minutes north of Candahart, which again this area had been completely controlled by us during the VSO and now we were going back in to try to sort of take that area again. We had done a few operations sort of through the valley in that area, and this

one we had figured was probably more of a taliban's stronghold. We had a really good intelligence sergeant on my team at this deployment who was able to find all kinds of crazy stuff, but he had sort of figured out that this was most likely where a big stronghold was, where a lot of potentially taliban leadership were at. So that's why we were going in to hit this target.

And so with the way it worked because of the terrain, we had to plan on infilling the helicopters about two kilometers west of the main compound we were going to try to hit for whatever reason, I remember exactly why, but we had to do it that way, and we were gonna infill both helicopters forty sevens with about sixty guys in two different elements, and then clear from west to east to get to these compounds that we were trying to get

to. So the way I the way I like to explain it, So anyway, I'll just say we we land on the c age forty seven My element does we have two elements about two groups of fifteen guys, and I'm I'm main element leader of this mission, so I'm basically the head guy in charge of our element, and we land sort of offset of this big open field, which there's a on the Google imagery kind of a big dilapidated compound

about one hundred meters away. And as I'm sure you know an ISSR, you can never really trust exactly what that imagery looks like, right, that might be a lot different than it was. But it looked like it was old and dead, and you know, no Americans had been in this area for four or five years, so we figured there's no reason for the Talban to you know, be randomly posted up in this compound, you know,

two kilometers away from their big hub. So we land on the CGE forty seven, sort of in this wooded area, and we're walking through the trees.

And the best way I like to describe it so people can visually see it through their eyes as I walk you through how this all happens is imagine you're sort of walking through the forest and you're coming up to an open area, you know how that looks coming out of the forest, and think about you're basically on the fifty yard line of a football field, and so you got the big open football field in front of you, and you look to your left and the end zone. There's basically a compound that is the size

of the entire end zone. And it's night obviously, and so we come out and we start walking towards that compound because in the plan we plan on just bypassing this compound, because we had two kilometers ago. We didn't have time to just clear all this random dilapidated stuff. Right, So we're moving up towards the compound. We're hitting probably the thirty thirty yard line, twenty yard line, ten yard line, and then we turned to horn only move

alongside the compound to come around and bypass it. So we're paralleling the building now, right. So as you're walking, the building is to your left about ten meters and we get most of my element out in front, you know, and we're in a big open field in front of this compound. And all of a sudden, as we're walking next to this compound, all hell breaks looks just fucking gun shots and machine gun fire. It's just absolutely insane, and so at first it's what, you know, what in the

hell is going on? Let me back up real quick. So as I'm walking up to it, I'm talking to the predator drone and he tells me the slant is zero zero zero. There's no one inside this compound, and you guys are good to go, right, So that's that's how we're feeling as we're going to move around. So anyway, all of a sudden boom, you know, out of the movies, shit is going heywire gun shots

everywhere, machine gun fire. Turns out there wasn't zero We find this out later, right, we don't know this in the moment, but we find out later there wasn't zero guys inside. There was ten Talban insurgents inside. And this was a built in defensive fighting position with a bunker, all kinds

of ship. They had, pkms, RPG's everything. So we basically are now out in the open and we've just been near ambushed, right, And so I and immediately all our Afghans laid down right, and I'm the element leader, so I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and I stee off right right next to me to my front, to my

right are my eighteen. Bravo's got the Mark forty eight machine gun and he's basically got it on full auto, spraying it into this compound trying to get us fire suppression, so we stopped getting shot at As my eighteen Charlie runs up to the wall and he starts throwing grenades over the top of the wall just to try to get the fire suppression. And I'm basically picking up the Afghan team leader and guys by the back of the caller because I'm as an

element leader. I'm like, I got we have to get out of the open field battle droll want ouph us something? I don't know. We can't just stand and stand the open field. We're all gonna get shredded. The guy from the guys next to me, he goes down, he gets shot. So guys are getting shredded as this is happening, and so as as this is all and again it's it's it's crazy to talk about this because you know how long this lasted. I still don't know. Was it two minutes,

was it fifteen minutes, I don't know. But as I'm trying to get these, you know, and I'm firing firing back right, trying to grab guys. We've got to move. They won't. They're just immediately dropping back down on the ground. And as I'm trying to do that. My senior eighteen delta, the senior senior I was talking about, he had like five combat deployments. She just dude, what he absolutely crazy. He would

love run. He loved to run towards bill bullets. Right, he comes springing up past me full speed, running straight at this this near ambush and yells at me as he comes by, like, hey, we gotta go man. Yeah, And so we realized like that it's there. The Afghans aren't going to do anything. This is too crazy. It's just four SF guys that basically have to eliminate this threat. So my teammates, Yeah, they're up front, they're throwing grenades. I see the guy right next to

me here in the doorway. He gets shot and goes down. At first, I don't know if it's one of my buddies or not, because my teammate was right by him as well, And so I run over, grab him, drag him out of the way, realize it's an Afghan, so sort of throw him off to the side, tell my EXO, hey put tourniquets on him, which funny story about that, or so we brought out the company XO. He wasn't a special Force. This guy, we just brought him out so he could get a you know, a combat operation,

his first, his first ever time out on a mission. And five minutes into the objective, we're in the near ambush and you know, he's getting bodies thrown out and his eyes are that big, you know. But so yeah, you know, my teammates were still throwing grenades, the firing is

going on. At some point, my eighteen bravo, he is now racking in another two hundred round drum, still on fullato, and sprang in the doorway that somehow, at some point we had killed enough guys through you know, firing in the doorway, throwing grenades, all that type of different stuff, throwing grenades into the bunker that they were firing out of that I think we killed six that way. That the last four panicked and they ran out

the back of the compound. So it's sort of it started to die down, and then our CCT told us, hey, we have you got four guys fleeing out the back. He didn't, and so we didn't know if

they're riding maneuver on us or whatnot. So the AC one thirty says, hey, we're gonna strike these guys, and so with one of five rounds and there's forty meters away from us, you know, so it's everybody run up, dive behind the compound walls as they've strike a couple different times, and so that all starts to die down and we realize, okay, we've we've eliminated everything here. We call in metabas, you know, we start meta back and our guys that had been shot, and you know, that's

we're like, okay, we're ten minutes into the operation. We still have to conduct this operation. We still have to hit this this compound, and there's still you know, another even worse near ambush further on in this operation.

So, because we had in filled on two different elements, our second helicopter was supposed to land in that open field in front of that building, and for whatever reason, the pilot screwed up and overflew the airfield and landed three hundreds passed it, and had he not, he would have landed that stage forty seven ten meters in front of all of that, which would have

be and you know, immediate catastrophe. Just by the stroke of God that we didn't have a page forty seven with forty guys just immediately shot down on them. Yeah, I was wondering because when you describe the field with the compound, but it was an old compound and it sort of led to, you know, to the stronghold if almost that if almost like the tactical leaders of the Taliband were like, if they sat down, they'll set down in

this field and this is where you'll hit them. I mean, you know, they didn't have ten guys in there for no reason and built that into a giant DFP for no reason. So I think, you know, because they don't do that just everywhere, right, and we didn't expect that at

all. So I think, you know, it kind of made sense because it was that that was the only place that we could figure out where we could land based off of the terrain, and then they had you know, this huge defensive fighting force ready for us right there where you know, we we decided was the best place to land. So, so how was this compound set up that because you you mentioned the walls and then the doorways like the opening to the compound, did they have elevated positions too or were they

mostly shooting through the doorway. So the way it worked. There's you know, you're big like eight eight foot compound mud walls with big doorways in between. There was a few of those. They also had sort of a bunker built that was raised sort of out front of the walls. And then and then and then buildings sort of drop set about five feet back from the compound walls that they were back off set in those buildings basically taking shots out from

the buildings through doorways, through secondary doorways. Does that makes sense? Wow, it was a good set up. Yeah, so they yeah, they were, they were ready for us for sure. But then yeah, and then I can go into uh, you know, further into the operation where the second year ambush has absolutely please so so uh so, how do you guys consolidate? Does does the second team move to the compound or do you guys move to them? So at this point, now they're way because they

overflew us about three hundred meters. They're towards the objective and they basically got off and they and they kept moving, so the front element now is probably like seven eight hundred meters ahead of us. They're just trucking towards the objective. So we you know, we get our guys met have backed out,

I get everybody back together. We end up bipping the DFB, you know, blowing it up so they can't use it anymore, and then we pretty much just high tail it out into you know, the open field, and now we're you know, going full speed bypassing everything to try to catch up to our front ELP. So that's that's sort of how how we're doing. So we so nothing much happens there other than us, you know, moving

through the field about a thousand meters And is the fun element? Are they moving because because basically now the targets compromised, they know somebody's there, so are they just are they're moving out, trying to stay ahead of the trying to keep the like the tactical edge. Basically, yeah, for sure. And you know, while this is happening, we're there's all kinds of moving

and activity in the compounds. They're approaching, and we have our air striking targets NonStop out in front of them, right, So they're moving to basically bring a fight, as as our air is prepping the objective there for them. So we kind of have two different things in two different places going on simultaneously and you know, once we we also really because of the way at infield, they couldn't really come back to help us anyway because they would have

potentially been moving back towards us that way. So they pretty much, you know, decided maybe the team start and made the decision, Hey, to keep going. We're gonna keep going. You guys obviously are okay, and you and you guys will catch up with us once you get that situation figured

out. Yeah. But yeah, So then, so we had basically moved through that open field, and our front element had gotten to a compound probably about fifty meters away from the final objective, and we had pretty much caught

up to them, and we're basically a compound back from them. That we got into a compound, we decided to sort of take a tactical pause, and then we started getting chatter on the turp phones and is SR that there was another compound right next to us, basically in between us and the front element. That there was chatter that they were gonna they were setting up another

ambush for us to walk through in between the compounds. So me and the commander made the decision, Hey, we're gonna stand by for a second. We're gonna have the apaches level this compound with hell fire rockets so that we can move up and support the front element, right, so that we don't get ambushed again. Because at this point we've taken a bunch of casualties,

we can't really afford for something like that to happen. So as we're prepping that strike for that to happen, all of a sudden and I'm sitting in the compound sort of We've been moving east this entire time, and I'm looking at the compound wall towards you know, our lead element is. Yeah, I know, they're in front of me, on the other side of this compound wall. And again, out of a nowhere boom, all hell breaks loose machine gun fire. We can I can see the tracers of machine gun

fire flying over the top of the compound walls towards us. So we know, we can't tell exactly what's happening, but we know, oh shit, our front element is right here where all this is going on. And so I again, I didn't see this with my eyes because we couldn't get up to actually fee over the top of the compound wall. So this comes from

obviously my buddies and their valleward citations and everything of what happens here. But so as we're waiting for the strike to come in, they were moving around a compound sort of into a hallway between two compounds, and then as they got into this hallway they basically got ambushed again. Except for them, they had the Taliban. We're ready and we're throwing grenades over the top of the

walls down into the hallway that they were all in. So three of my teammates who are in that hallway, they all one of the grenades lands between my eighteen Charlie's feet, I mean literally between his feet, blows up, blows his pants off, I mean completely fucks him up. The guy behind him, all three of them get blasted by grenades. The Afghans get blasted. And then at the end of the hallway after they did this, they had a PKM set up, so it was yeah, it was just fatal

funnel shred machine gun grenades coming over the top of guys. It's just about

as worse situation as you can get to. The two of the s F guys were completely basically blown off the off out of the hallway into this colvert ditch and a bunch of the Afghans got shredded, and it was basically our eighteen delta and who had just been hit by the grenade, mind you, and the Afghan team leader who had been shot in the face, were the only two guys coherent enough to keep fighting, and they somehow fought through this

hallway and killed the dude at the end of the hallway with the PKM and eliminated that and our eighteen delta then drug out obviously the two SF guys first got down behind cover, went back drug out all the Afghans, and then he ended up obviously treating all those dudes as we all then got back together.

And at that point we had taken so many casualties that we got forced off the X. I mean, we hit our we had our brain fart what you call it when you take too many casualties anyway, like the mission credit. Yeah, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, so much of your fighting force is now incapacitated that you have to move off the objective. And we had to emergency infill because we had taken so many,

so many casualties, and that just turned into a big casovac. You know, up to an open field that we could get the helicopters into to get all our guys out, you know, shot and blowing up and all of the stens when you guys are making this infill or this when you guys are actually doing the sex fill, Like, are you still receiving fire or is the air suppressing that? Pretty well? No, so yeah, so at this point, the air and again we had an AC one thirty on

station. We had two A tens, two F fifteens, two apaches. So this at this point, you know, because you get you get everything sent to you when you're in this tainous of a firefight. You know how that works, right, So at this point we had every asset available in the entire area above us. And yeah, they just air once once they realized we had taken and they're watching this happen as well, you know that

we had taken so much, so many casualties and so much damage. They just started leveling basically that entire compound in defense of friendlies, which allowed us to basically pull everybody off the X. And yeah, they basically had their heads completely suppressed down to where those guys, you know, they're not popping out to try to shoot us at that point, there's so much hair watching them. One of the things you mentioned earlier was that the rules of engagement

had changed just before you guys went in. What had they done and how did they change for you guys. Yeah, so there were two different rows for us, depending on whether you were Talban or ISIS. Right, the way it had worked, it got worked for For ISIS it was kill on site, sort of that Fallujah style military age mail. If you'r ISIS, you're getting shot in the face, even if you're on the toilet unarmed,

doesn't matter. For the Taliban, it was now basically imminent danger and hostile intent, right, which you know how that works, right, So basically you're out at night and you're doing sketchy stuff, even if you're not armed, if you're moving in the middle of the night to maybe go and place an ID or whatnot, you can be considered a threat. So that's what

that's what we the ROE changed too. And you know before that it was, you know, especially in the Obama era, it had gotten to the point of basically you had to receive fire before you could even engage a target, even if you were watching Taliban maneuver on your position, weren't allowed to engage until you actually received fire. So sort of went from that too, you know, taking the chains off the dog. And you know, if you're there doing dumb stuff in an area you shouldn't be, you're probably not

going to make it out well. And you know, because you had mentioned like the AC one thirty taken out the maneuver element that had you know, flood the compound and yeah, and you know that was that was a discussion for a very long time. Are they squirters because you can't shoot squirters, You can't shoot somebody running away. But so many times these people were running to better positions, they were running to cashes exactly, and they were minis.

Yeah, that's and that's how that was framed. Framed is that they had just ambushed us, and now they were moving to a position of tackle advantage. Right, So the AC one thirty is allowed to strike in defensive friendlies because of that, correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it gets

complicated. And obviously, you know, when you go into a place like Afghanistan where you're fighting side by side with you know, with the host nation force, you know, precautionousne to be taken like you don't want to harm innocent people for sure, but you know, the Taliban was very good at using those rules against us. Yeah, you know. And uh and we saw some growth things on our deppointment, Right, we had a a a young child killed that was trapped to the chest of a Taliban inserted, right,

using them as as body armor. Right, So stuff like that is, you know, is a reality. So you know, I that's some of the harder stuff you see. But but you're right, you know, But so what was your You mentioned the M forty eight earlier, that your Bravo had the M forty eight, which I I'm not I've never used. I assume it replaced the M sixty Is that right or didn't replace the Mark forty eight. Mark forty eight is basically a saw that shoots a seven to

sixty two round Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that's the stow con variant of the saw. It's sort of a uh seven six two machine gun that you can one man carry and it has a two hundred round drum that you slide in like a saw so that you don't need multiple people to shoot. So it gives you that extra firepower that a saw doesn't have because of shooting five five six, but still in a one man carry. And then for you guys, for the guys who weren't the weapons guys, like what

were you carrying? So I carried the Mark forty eight a lot, actually when not so when I was an element leader, you know, your whole focus is running the elements and the team leader and all that, I would carry an M four with maybe a three twenty grenade launcher or something like that

we actually carried. We ended up by the end of the deployment switching our load out to carry just a ton of grenades, so we would carry six seven grenades per guy, just because as if we just talked about that was the type of fighting we were getting into in these compounds, sort of that grenade battle type of stuff, or bunkers, all kinds of stuff like that.

When I when my other teammate who we typically worked together, either I was element leader or he was the other one of us who wasn't at the time, would carry the Mark forty eight so that we would have that firepower. And you usually have two, right, you would have one on each of the elements, so that each element had a seven six two machine gun. So that's sort of how that would work. Now, were you guys carrying like standard grenades, were you carrying the minis? Were you carrying thermobarics?

Like what? Oh? Yeah, yeah, so we would Cary, I would usually carry because we had there were so much bunkers and you're doing and a ruse gone and kanahar and I'm sure we'll get into another story that involved this is massive bunker field type of stuff we got into. So we would carry a couple of thermobarics for sure, because we could just clap collapse

dfps so easily, and these tunnels that they were using. Yeah, so yeah, I would usually I'd usually carry two thermobarics, maybe four or five reader grenades and then maybe one in senior grenade if I need to, you know, make it easy to burn all the drugs, because we would find even though we weren't doing specifically drug stuff, we would still find you know, like three four hundred pounds of heroin and operation you know, like ten

twenty bags of of twenty pounds heroin, you know, and it just makes it easy to yeah, yeah, the black tar stuff, but it just made it easy just to burn all that stuff, really easily. So yeah, that's how sort of how that? Yeah, grenade loaner. Yeah, uh do you remember your first time using a thermomeric or somebody like, well do Yeah, I got a great story about that. Please. So my

eighteen delta who who again? Guy I worked with the longest as a team a team guy, and then I ended up he took a team starting slot in Okinawa, and I end up I ended up going and traveling to be on his team as a one of his team guys. Is he was a team starting So anyway, we were, we were moving together doing some stuff,

and again we found this bunker system that we're going to collapse. First time I've been around a therb of barrack, right, He's like, oh, I'm gonna throw this in this bunker, right, So he throws it in the bunker and he takes off running and I look over my shoulder like what is he doing? You know? And it goes off and I'm standing

way too close and it ends up my lip right here. It'd been a little bit chapped, you know, in the center of your lip gets chapped, and it blew my lip apart, ripped my whole lip apart, from the over pressure of it, you know, and I was like, oh my god, you know, you get your face blasted back. So that was my That was my introduction into what a therb of America dated. So after that, it was like throwing and run as fast as possible. Yeah

they're yeah, they're they're effective. They're they're heavy, but they're effective. Yeah for sure. So okay, uh yeah, so like what so after so you guys X fill this target, you get back? Yeah, how are the guys on your team because it sounds like someone got rode ard and

put away wet. Yeah, so are my eighteen Charlie the one he took the brunt of it right, so amazingly the grenade that hit him again, it was like basically blew his pants off, you know, it's his whole face was you know, pressure eyes burned everything like that all the way up his body. He took zero shrap, which no idea how because the guys behind him ate all the shrapnel for some reason, who knows, you know,

the grenades are weird like that. He was massive, massive TBI, massive concussion for a while and he ended up having to go to the senior leader course like three days later he got pulled out of Afghanistan to go to for us. That's how you become an E seven. It's more important than a combat operation, I guess. So he basically massive TBI trying to fly go to this course. He basically told us he had no idea what was going on. Instructors just gave him a pass because he was so messed up.

And then my senior eighteen Echo took a bunch of shrapnel through his arms,

but he ended up being okay. And then our eighteen Delta who got the Silver Star, which, honestly, I tell you that story, he promised you have the Middle of Honor because all those dudes would be dead if he wasn't able to do what he did, which pretty much all the hoour awards on that mission were downgraded one, even his, so because the general decided NCOs shouldn't have that high of hour awards, right, and the EXO that was with you didn't get one, so why should you, guys?

Yeah, so, but and then he took a bunch of shrapnel in his hand, And the worst part about him taking all the shrapnel his hands is he was basically inside of the guts of these Afghans sewing them up and doing stuff with bare hands, shredded apart, right, so he had to deal with all the medications and all that stuff to make sure he was okay. But of all of that that happened, I think we took fourteen fifteen casualties, you know, guys being shot in the face and the stomach and the

chests and blown up. No one died on that mission, but now they now they might have later the Afghans. I don't know, right, because that's a lot of nasty damage. But but up front, yeah, nobody died. And I think we killed fifty eight Talban on that mission, so you know, we got pushed off the objective, so it wasn't a necessarily

success, but the fact nobody died was was was good. Yeah, I mean you got pushed off the objective, but you still like killed fifty eight it was fifty yeah, yeah, you know zero fifty yeah, and that was that was definite and you could you know the at that they were willing to fight us that crazy, that hard. Let us know that that was

there was important, important people in that area. So we definitely did a lot of damage to to a high profile area for sure, do you know was it was it Afghan SF or Afghan commanders that were with you that night? Afghan FF. That was the thing is those guys typically and I watched them do some crazy stuff later in the employments, but even they and that's it shire situation. We're like, no, wait man, we're not We're

not moving. We're gonna lay down and shoot into the darkness. So but but you know, it's one of those things where again I had had you know, for me, had I not add, you know, my my senior delta just basically sprinting straight into a near ambush into gunfire, I might not realize what to do either, right, So, because it was just such a heinous, crazy thing out of nowhere that having a guy like that had four or five combat amployments with been in so many crazy things and Hellman

and Moosa Klay and all these insane stories that having him there was huge, right for the rest of us on the team, the other SF guys, to know, Okay, we can do this, right, we can eliminate the threat. We all we gotta do is move and do the things that

we're trained to do. Yeah, Which that that sort of gets into that how important that war experience is and why I'm a little bit worried about us going away from from war and combat and what that's going to look like for the future generations, because it's such a massive thing and actual combat to have guys like that, Yeah, when you're a new guy, for sure.

And the thing is is, battle drills aren't fun to do. And and I think a lot of guys like it's just human nature that when we're doing battle drills, like we check out after a while, We just go through the motions. But like you're talking about a near ambush getting off the X is Yep, it's vital. And yet you know, and and you know, to speak to what you were doing, you were trying to help out the the Afghans, like you were trying to get them off the X two.

Yeah. But yeah, and it's one of those like you say, it's just one of those things that it always degrades. Like we went from Vietnam and it and it took a long time to relearn all the lessons that that guys like your dad like instinctively did. Yeah, And you know, it's it's interesting you say that because I had the immediate response to do those things that we do through training. Right. My immediate response was, Okay, we have to maneuver right, right, have to maneuver on this.

We were able to. But it's thing that you say that is, once that degraded, it was sort of what do we what do I do? Right? Like these guys won't move right, and it's a guy with all this experience that you know is the one that kind of snaps into your head of like, oh shit, okay, we've got to do this. Yeah that you can't really train for those type of things. Yeah, you kind of just have to gain that experience through actual time, yeah. Fights.

Yeah, And it's interesting you mentioned how the afghansf Like, you know, my experience with both Afghan Afghans and Iraqis is if you're train them for CQUB,

they're good at doing CQB. But if if a problem arises during that time, if it's something that they haven't necessarily trained for or have down, they a lot of times they didn't have that sort of that lateral thinking, so they would vapor Like it's interesting you say that because, again, like I said earlier, I watched some of these guys do really impressive stuff on

missions later. But it makes sense because that is they were doing things that they were very proficient at when they did it, whereas a situation like that is definitely not something that that anyone really trains for. So the fact that they sort of just shut down kind of is exactly what we're talking about there. Yeah, yeah, no, it just reminds me of, you know, the the old idea that if you if you take the prone in a near ambush, you'll never get up. Oh yeah, no for sure.

And we were not in a position of advantage, right, what are we gonna do. Lay in that field and we shoot it an open doorway like this, We're gonna all die eventually if we if we stay here and do this. So so, how long did it take your team to sort of recuperate, uh, you know, to to be able to be operational again. Yeah. So, so two of our teammates, our our eighteen Delta was okay because he he had to get his hands stitched up. He got you know, his hands shredded a little bit, but he was all right.

So he's he was continued to be on the team in our operations. But our eighteen Charlie and our eighteen Echo were messed up to the point where they were out for a couple of months, I think. And then we actually plussed up guys through the company, so the B team and from other teams that weren't doing as much, we were able to, you know, get s F guys from different odias in the company to come out on operations with us to help us sort of plus up those numbers while while our teammates

were out for injuries. Now you said you your exo wasn't SF. Did your exo go out on any more ops after that? No? He is now, he is now. He so he went to the Q course you know after, you know, years later, and he made it through. And he's agreeing right now. But yeah, I think he might. I think he might have come out on a few ter that. Oh, I gotta tell you the funny, funny story about that. That brings me back.

So so the Afghan, the Afghan that I dragged him throw in front of him, and he had been shot through and through through the bicep a couple of times here and here, and our exo had thrown tourniquets on him, you know, And so I run back over after everything's calmed down, to check on the guy real quick, and he's this Afghan had laying there on the ground on his back, and he's got two of his buddies staring

down on the ground. And I look at him and his tourniquets are all off and he's just bleeding out to death on the ground and I'm like, what are you guys doing? Why are his tourniquets off? And the Afghans are like, oh, they they're hurting him too bad. So we took him off, you know, so we throw you know, I grabbed the tourniquets and I throw him back on and I run over and grab my eighteen Delta and I'm like, can get over here and check on this guy and

make sure he's not dead. His buddy's almost killed him, you know. But just you know, as heinous as that whole thing was, just I remember even laughing in the moment, like, wow, you guys are yeah, that is dumb, right, you know, But but anyway, it's a testament to your ext So though that he went out there and it was just a taste and like it led him on. Yeah, oh yeah,

for sure. Yeah he was a good dude. But again, just the fact that uh, you know that's your first yeah, yeah, your first operation just immediately in the ship as you would say, you know, yeah, So so you guys get plushed up, like how long is it before you get you're back out again your next mission. I think after that one, I think we waited a couple of weeks. I think that definitely slowed us down a little bit as we uh sort of were making sure guys were

okay and and we figuring out that whole thing. But I think it was a couple of weeks and then we were back at and back out on operations. So when that long, you might not have any like essay of this, but you know, if they sign a follow on after that compound knowing that it was probably something important or into that area, I don't. So we continue to operate through there quite a bit for the rest of for the rest of the trip. But yeah, we didn't go back. We didn't

go back in there exclusively. I think we kind of got our tail but between our legs a little bit, and it was just a nasty area. Again, train wise, it just wasn't any good way to get in there. So it was one of those things where you had to in fill offset and walk to there, and they were obviously ready and they weren't going to

give that up. So yeah, it kind of is one of those things if like we don't really know what is in there, so is it really worth us continuing to to go in there or can we have effects, you know, better effects further out in the area. Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of the I mean, once they let you know, it's like put in a marine company and put them online and let them it's like yeah.

And again we had such as the bulk of our battalion doing the Nangahar Valley ices clearing operation during that time that we didn't really have anything like that for us to be able to get you know, ful odias to actually take that down. We were you guys or other you know, like uh, sister teams like were you guys? Were you you were operating in larger than odias at any point in time, So we we didn't as a team, but yes, a lot of our teams were so Again that Nangahar Valley was an

entire company. I think they had four or five odias that were clearing the valley together. And then I think our team in Hellman's and Pat worked together a little bit because that Musa Kla area was hellman, the entire war was just such a nasty place that the Taliban just never were willing to give that up. Yeah, you know, and it was such an integral part of that drug trafficking road there through Helmand that that was always a nasty place.

So our od eight didn't do multi team clearing operations, but our company did a lot of them out in raw there was a Hurrat or we had a couple of odia's working together. So yeah, yeah, it's a normal thing. But our team pretty much SUSI was working by ourselves down south the Candahara Roostone area. So what was your next stop? Then out out out the gate after that up Oh man, if you remember, I know it all bunds together at some point too, Yeah, it does. You know.

There's there's so many that were sort of generic nighttime raids were getting you know, small gunfights here and there, the air would strike. We killed ten twenty guys clear through not really find anything. The next most memorable one is the one where our ODIA found the largest cachet of himme ever found in Afghanistan, which that's kind of a fun there's no there's no gun fights involved in this story, but it's kind of a cool story for the fact of what

we accomplished and what we destroyed. So I could go through that one, but it's not as long, but anical story and again we we we set the record for that. So so yeah, we had and again this was I think in the Arous Gone area, so same sort of valley that I'm talking about Terran Connerus Gone and all sort of runs in the same area and that that the prior mission took place in. And for whatever reason, I don't know how our intelligence are and figured this out. Again he was incredible,

super and super smart dude. But we decided to go and hit this area because you know, it looks like a an area of interest and it's in the same area. And we get in, we infill or maybe like three off the first compound and the very first building we get into, there's we're first compound. There's one Afghan there. Oh, let me backtrack. So this area actually another ODIA had been in a year prior to the to this same compound. This is why we went in and they had gotten this

massive blowout gunfight. The one sixty had had to come in and they had to be emergency X filled off. So it was crazy area about a year ago. So we figured, hey, we're gonna go in here too and test our luck. So that's actually how how we ended up going into this spot. So we infil and worked it. So now we're expecting to fight because the prior Odia had gotten such a ship show that, you know, and we had just come off of, you know, the one we had

been in that it was like, okay, we're going in. We're and we're ready for a fight. And the very first building we get to, you know, a young Afghan maybe sixteen seventeen years old, comes out. He's like, yeah, there's Talban here and they have all their stuff right there in that building. And he's like, and they have some right here down next to the river. So we're like, all right, walk us

over there to see it. And we walk down and next to the river there's like one hundred mortars buried in and we're right off the right off the helicopter and we're like, oh, okay, so there's gonna be there's gonna be some stuff in this area. If there's this big of a cachet just out in the middle of nowhere, and so you know, he basically points to the compound that we're planning on hitting, you know, the big one that we knew that the prior Odia was trying to get into, and says,

yeah, this is where all the Talban keep their stuck. And so we start moving in and most of the Talban fleed early right they heard the aircraft coming, which was a very typical thing. If they're not willing to fight for what's there, they'll just get on their most motorcycles and just bounce once they hear the aircraft. So we we pretty quickly just walk straight up

to the main compound. My element again is the one there's we're split up, but my element is the one that's and I'm Element leader again on this one. My element is the one that's going to this compound. And so

we we pretty much freely get into this compound no resistance. And it's a big open compound maybe fifty meters by fifty meters of open space with you know, buildings around it, and you know, there's cars and stuff in the middle of this compound and I'm not thinking much of it, and we're like, man, maybe there's really not that much in here. And then all of a sudden, my EOD tech comes up on the radio and he was like, hey, you need to come look at this. And I'm like,

okay, you know what is it? And he's like, come over here by this giant building. So I walked. I walk over and he's standing you know, just a normal doorway and he's like, come and look at this. And I go and I look in the door and it's a warehouse and it's from you know, ground to ten feet tall of himme as you know, one hundred feet wide, and it's like and if you're standing next to it, like, okay, if this goes off, I'm literally

all of us they are going to be vaporized instantly. So it's like, oh, I really hope this isn't rigged because all of us are going to die immediately if there's somebody with a claquer standing one hundred meters away, you know, and it's you know, I had seen large amount we had gone through. We found tons of really big cachets, but I mean nothing like this. This was absolutely insane. Again, it was the largest one ever found by any US military and Afghanistan. So it was like a warehouse full

of bags of hime. And it wasn't just him me, they had probably hundreds of mortars and rockets and ammunition. I mean, it was massive, massive stockpile. So we're like, okay, well great, we're gonna blow this up. So we call it up to the fall, it up to the Soda f and tell them what we found. And well, as we're doing this, we start looking in the cars they're in here, and we're looking in the car slashlight and we're like, oh, that's a vbed.

Oh that's another vbed that these are all rigged, and we're like, oh shit, Like this compound is the most like this is the most depth centered place we could be for explosives in Afghanistan. If something goes boom, you know, you got fifty dead soldiers instantly. So we call it up and we're gonna you know, we're gonna first try to get we first. They're like, well, they're gonna strike it right, there's no way that we're

not that we're gonna leave this. And so they're like, yeah, cordon off the area and make sure nobody comes in and out, and then we'll strike it and we'll get rid of it. So that's what we do. We spend the next couple of hours making sure we clear everything. There's no one inside these compounds, there's no one near it. We have the whole

area of cordoned off. And then we wait and we wait and two AM rolls, around, three AM rolls around, four AM rolls around, and we're again we're in a valley in taran Cott, which is like, you don't stay there into daylight. Staying there to the daylight, you start taking rockets and mortars from the hills. So we're like, are you gonna strike or not? Like what are we doing? And then finally they tell us.

We're like, oh, well, we're we can't strike. So then we're like, well, we'll just hip it ourselves, right, We'll bloat up ourselves. And they're like, no, you can't do that. Maybe there was a mosque, I don't know, but we're like, what are you talking about. We can't do this. We can't leave thirteen thousand pounds of HMME on target for them to kill American soldiers with it for this ten

years. This is insane. And they're like, well, stand by, and then eventually, you know, five AM rolls around, and the helicopters show up, and we get on the helicopters and we leave, and everybody's looking around at each other like what the hell are we doing? I mean, we have we had the whole area corn on off. It's all taken

care of. So obviously we're confused. We're pit We're pitted, right, Like, for one, I didn't just walk around this the this area that was just guaranteed death for two hours for us to just leave it there. And so we get back. Everybody's pissed, we you know, and there's no gun fights anything like that on this mission, and so, you know, we do our AARs, we go sleep, We wake up the next morning and we come to do our team meeting and our team started. It's

like, hey, General call and got some news for you guys. We have to fly back in and hit this target again. So apparently what happened, and again I don't know for sure, but the general who had the authorities to strike this target was asleep and his aids didn't want to wake him up, so that's why we didn't strike the target. Well, when the general woke up the next morning and he saw the mission brief and said why

the fuck didn't you guys wake me up? We can't leave. Just like we said, we can't leave, right the enemy, all of this go back and get it the general that the General takes the risk of sending us back into the largest cachet ever found that they could potentially rig to kill us all. Again, that was very brave of him to take that risk.

Yeah, that's what we s That's the very first thing we said. We're like, oh man, you are so u so brave because you guys leave And I mean, first off, you guys, so when we're talking about him, you're talking about homemade explosive, right, yep, what what was the nature of the of the homemade explosive Because we're talking about are we talking about id S or it's not a finished PROD that like, No, so

it's it was more to the now. Again I'm not an engineer, but more of like the fertilizer base, uh, explosive right, Like it's it's it's an explosive but hasn't been turned into an i D yet. It's just the actual explosive material that they have bagged up in big fifty pound bags, I mean, and the fact that it wasn't rigged the first time, Oh yeah, against you guys, and then you're going back in there after you've already told the Taliban that we know this is here, and then it's not

rigged again. It's it's so lucky. So the SODAF did hold air assets above the target and they struck anyone who got anywhere near it throughout the day, throughout the night. So they did do that, right, because otherwise we would have been like, no, no, that's just guaranteed death. But still you never know, right, you never know if it wasn't already rigged. Right, and then now they realize somebody you know who's in the area says okay, now I get on my cell phone and wait from the

come back and boom. But you know, to uh to like with everything we got, we got a bunch of I got. We all got our calm with combat devices, right. So they gave us big flashy awards for our bravery on that one. That's they had to make up. Oh and they gave our They gave our our team leader a Valor Award for that mission, which he tried to turn down because he was like, I'm not accepting a Valor reward, you know, and he was like six hundred meters away

from the whole thing the whole time. It's not accepting a valer award for this, and you know, the command was like, oh, yes you are, because we're not. We're not gonna have this look like a mistake, you know what I mean, You're gonna be brave. So when you guys went back in that that second night, did you have to read did you just have to coordinate or did you have to go back to the White House and reconfirm. Well, so we went back in the same night and

they still wouldn't strike it. They sent us back in and we had to internally bit it. It was like, you guys had a thing too, we had to blow it. Yeah, they wouldn't even strike it, so we didn't court on it or anything. So they sent us back in and they were like, well that we don't want to take the risk of striking

it. You guys go do it. So yeah, our EOD texts and our Charlie's went in and they rigged it, rigged this warehouse with C four and everything and put a massive delayed fuse on it, you know, and they popped it and everybody ran five hundred meters and uh, you know, it's crazy when this thing went off, and you know, it's too bad we can't show the video of it. When this thing went off, you know, it looks like a nuclear bomb going off in the NATO video,

but I remember because we're in a valley. I was probably seven hundred meters away from this explosion and I could feel it in my chest like it was a door charge in CQB. That's how big that explosion was, you know. So it was a sure, we do we have the video? Yeah, I sent it to you guys on Instagram. Yeah, if you get an oh yeah, we'll throw it on the Patreon. Yeah yeah, yeah, but that's the you guys have a video of the is SR after we

bit that. But yeah, I mean it's and it was kind of like, you know, after we saw that video, it was like, oh that's and you can see, you know in that video you'll see you don't realize it's like, oh, these are tiny buildings, you know, and it's like engulfed by this atomic bomb cloud and it's like, oh, that would have been us as little ants that Yeah, I had this thing gone off? Yeah, did it did it also, do you guys also bip

uh the vehicles or did that charge? Take about take about that? Yeah, it blew the I mean it blew four hundred meters of compound, disintegrated. Everything inside of that thing was was absolutely gone from that much explosive. That's wild. Yeah, that's I mean, it's so wild that you guys were sent back in there instead of Jess it's instead of basically doing an air strike and saying and calling it a day. Well and you know, super

irresponsible. Yeah, you know, and I could say that now that I'm out, But I mean the fact that you would send us back into that, you know, is for the fact that you made a whoop seed, like just strike it man. Yeah, like you've you've been watching it the

whole night. You know, nobody's come into the area. We had it cordoned off, right, you know, the i SR Has been watching the whole bet you know, they they'd rather, you know, send in a team full of FF guys than take the risk of you know, somebody getting in trouble or something like that. So it is what it is. Yeah, Now, what did you guys do about the mortars down by the river? Oh? We dipped those. Yeah, we blew those up just as

we went through. Yeah. Yeah, so there was there was a few different little caches on the way as we got there that we just dipped in place. Yeah, but yeah, cache a wise, we would find stuff like that all over the place. We've probably found like a one hundred different caches throughout all those different missions that we would just dip in place. And with that, I wanted to say this because I always forget to talk about it, which always made always pissed you off. Is all these cachetes,

we're always American ammunitions. It was American mortars. It was American ammo still sealed serialized in the green and you know the green boxes. And it's like, oh cool, I wonder how the Taliban we're getting all of this, you know? So but I mean they got plenty of it now too though, so I guess let's see. Yeah, that that is interesting though, because I mean, how do you think do you think that it was indeed working on base? Like so, well, I can tell you I do

know how it is, right. So what it is is that you know a lot of people don't realize in Afghanistan, you know, the whole Taliban A and A thing is not as like black and white as people think it is. It's there's a lot of like I'm Taliban one day, and I'm A and A the next right and whatever suits me best is where I'm at. So for example, tons of missions we would hit Taliban villages and there would be multiple an A police cars parked at the compound hanging out with their

Talban bites. So what I think more of what it was is, you know, we supplied the A and A with all this ammunition and all these mortars and all these rockets, and then they would just turn around and sell it to the Talban. I think that's more of how that whole thing played out. So in twenty eighteen, did you guys ever find any night vision whether it was American or commercial? Like, did they have that? Yeah? So the Talban Red Unit guys had it, which we found a few

of those on the mission. The final mission I'll talk about was Talban Ready Unit guys that we ended up getting in big fights with. So but that was that was the only Taliban that had night vision that we came across. Was and was it was it military American military or was it like storebox commercial.

Yeah, so I didn't. We didn't see any American military. But the big thing too is that the talband red unit unless they got trapped, which in this mission I'm talking about we trapped and bad, they would not fight American forces, right because they didn't want to give up all the Gucci equipment, so they would really only fight the ANA. So we really didn't come across them that much for that reason. That's it's you know, it's

crazy because it makes all the difference. Like if the the guys who ambushed you from that compound, if they would have had night vision, it might be dead. It'd be different, Like it would be dead. Everybody in that field would be dead. They would hit you when you're in the field, not when you were like ten meters away. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, that's the only reason we're a lot is they didn't have it. Yeah, And that and that you can't be in an open field and get ambushed

from a compound. If they had. If that was us with night vision and compound, we would killed everyone. Yeah. Yeah. So uh so then after you know, after this and your team leader gets his valor award and and you know, mad respect to him, for wanting to decline it. Oh, he's a awesome dude, one of the highest ranked officers in the Special Forces Regiment, right, great, great dude, great commander.

And yeah, that was his thing, and especially because you know, the entire team had gotten Valor Awards for everything that happened and that was his thing. Was like, I, for one, he didn't care, right, And for him it was like what you know, he was pissed too because it was like, why are you sending my guys back in to do this and now you're trying to like make it all kosher by giving me a Valor

award. Definitely didn't sit right with him, But so do our comms have v devices now, Yeah, So that's what we all ended up getting, right, So we were all put in for besides my aten L two got the silver Star, we were all put in for bronze stars with Valor. And the way the Valor Award system works is you get put in for the Valor Award and then it goes to your local chain of command and your company. They have to agree. The citation goes through, it goes to your

battalion command. They agree, it goes up to the Soda of command. They agree, then it goes to a board of sergeant majors who look it over and they can agree or down grade, right, and then it goes to the one star general. So each general can sign off on a certain level of valor awards. So the one star can sign off on a r com V, the two star bronze star with V a silver star I think

it's the fourth star middal of honor goes to the president, right. So so what had happened was it our bsmvs and this is my whole team all went through, all the way up past the board of starting majors. Everybody agrees bron star val gets to the one star general, who has the authority to either pass the bronze star up to the two star or he by himself with no other person can say no, I'm just gonna downgrade these r com

V at my level. Boom, sign them. Here's your RKMV. So that's what he did to our our oda is he said, no, I'm not going to send them further. I'm just gonna downgrade him right here at my level. Sign here you go, So you know, it's it was kind of a shitty thing to do to us. But at the same time, for me, you know, the important thing for me was more of like one, it's just an honor that I was with my teammates to be

a part of that. And you know, some of the things I watched my teammates do or in my opinion, so much more heroic than what I did. That Again, it was just it just meant a lot to me that I was a part of that. And then also the recognition sort of for my family and like my kids when they grow up, they'll be able to, you know, see something like that. So you know, the level of our ward never really mattered to me. I don't really care.

But it's still kind of one of those shitty things that an officer just decides on his own a bunch of NCOs like, no, I'm just gonna downgrade your stuff and sign it. But honestly did not know that the armcom had a v device, But I guess it's been around for a while. But yeah, it is very shitty. I mean, it's like, why why like it? It's not money out of his pocket, it doesn't cost yeah anything to sign off on that. He just randomly like reads it and goes

nah, nah, not these guys. Yeah, you know, we said the same thing. And what's funny is you know we read you would read like Bronze Star with Valor citations from the Tenth Group team before us. Yeah, you know we read those citations and no knock on those guys, right, they had an awesome stuff. But you read those citations and be like, well, this is these are your ambushes were ten times crazier than those

awards. Yeah, and yet ours are. And you know the worst part was we had the Soda Commandrew come and see us afterwards and he was like, you guys only got put in for broad Stars with Valor for that. Yeah, He's like that should you guys should all have silver stars. Yeah. But then they turn around and knock us all down. But you know, whatever, you know, but you know, I mean even you know,

like in your dad can probably speak to this. And you know, we've had a lot of guys from SF and macp Sag on the show from Vietnam, and it's in those small units when the whole unit is doing something very valorious, you know that it just it's not looked at in the same way as an individual in a in a line company. You know, doing the you know, one person standing out, we'll get recognized and not always not always recognize, like they get their medals down downgraded a lot too.

But it's weird how the military looks at small units who are under dressed and doing these uncommon acts of hour. Basically, yeah, you know, and we we would always get told, you know. And there's there's a big thing soft operators. Typically you know, what you get a vour ard for might be a bronze star, and that same thing for someone the infantry is a mel of honor. And that's the reality of it. Because the way that the military says is, you know, you're just doing your job.

Your job is to do extraordinary things. Right, you did your job, why would we give you, you know, anything above and beyond that right? So right, and you know, and for your delta to be wounded, to charge a machine gun nust like that is the definition I think of what you know, absolutely, yeah, you know, you get you get injured, you save lives, you eliminate the threat in a machine gun nests in that situation. It's it's all of those things, you know what I

mean. But he's a you know, he's an eighteen delta green brace. So that's a silver star that's not valerable that I guess, you know, I don't agree with this. Chances are though, when he's ninety, they'll they'll turn around and upgrade it. They just don't want to, you know, they just don't want to pay the kids for college. And yeah, sure so, uh so you guys have now bip this you x fill like

what's next on on the agenda for you guys? Yeah, so again we we have you know, some I don't want to say normal missions, because we had a lot of wild stuff that happened, but I just like to, you know, hit the big ones that are that are exciting and fun

to talk about. So that the last one or the third biggest kind of coolest mission that we had was is a mission where a Taliban compound was being overrun or not excuse me, an an a compound was being overrun by the Taliban in a place called camp and a conduct and cause a ruse gone.

And what made this sort of a really high profile mission is that caused the Aru's gone, which was north east of a ruse gone was outside of the med rings of anything that we could go to so for people who don't know, you have your golden now or of medical coverage that we don't really operate outside of in the event that somebody gets injured. So caused the ruse gone. No SF no American military had ever been in here ever, So that's how far out it was. An austere it was. And so this camp

camp and a conduct that the ANA had been basically getting overrun. They couldn't get any supplies in, they had all these dead soldiers, they couldn't get them out. And our partner force basically asked us if we'd be willing to go in and and and help this compound, and we were able to which we were like, yeah, this is awesome. We get to go outside the med ring. We get to you know, this compounds under attack.

We know we're going to get into some nasty stuff. And the general you know, he's I guess he you know, he's into blessing off on risk, so he was willing to take the risk to send us the way outside the med ring. And we had to, you know, we had to set up with the one sixth of having we had surgeons sort of forward place on on CGE forty seven's inside, like you know, within the med ring. So we had to build that whold apparatus for for us to be able

to do it. But yeah, so we get blessed off to come in and basically hit this wover. The way it worked is so there was a compound the ANA had which on one side of it, there was a big mountain on the back side of it, and then you know, let's say the north side of it was a big mountain range, and then it was right at the base of the mountain range, and then the south side was

sort of grass shrubbery lands. And so the ANA guys were stuck in the compound up next to that mountain range, and the Taliban had built a bunch of bunkers the dfps, and basically we're assaulting through through this area to attack the compound, and there was nowhere for the Ana to go. They were

completely stuck. So, you know, we got breathed from the ANA guys about where the compound was and where the Talban were, so we got some pretty good intel on it, and so we decided, okay, well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna infill behind where the Taliban are and we're just gonna pincer the Taliban in between campaign the Conda and US, and there's gonna be nowhere for them to go. They're just gonna have to fight us. So so that was the plan as we went in, and so I'll

just kind of go through, walk through the mission. We got a lot, we got a lot of go ahead if you need to stop me. Yeah, So was it all open terrain? Was it wooded like outside of that that kind of open area where they had built their fighting positions? What was it? So? Kasaru's gotten more vegetative than you would think in Afghanistan,

much higher elevation as well. So think of it as like high grasslands, sort of grass up to your waist with intermittent pretty large trees and then sort of open areas in between that, right, sort of kind of like Washington and Oregons type of vegetation. Not your typical you know, Candahar desert dirt, more of a vegetative, large forested sort of type of environment.

Okay, So yeah, so we uh, we we fly in and we offset quite a bit because we don't want them to know that it's Americans, right, because we know no Americans have ever been in there, but we do know that they have been basically trying to shoot down any A and A helicopter that comes in. So they've been used to the ANA trying to fly in and not be able to get in. So we want to basically make them think that hey, this is A and A helicopters trying to get in.

So we have the helicopters first fly in and then fly over the top, have them get shot at but our patches and then fly off, and then we sort of kind of like a false infill, and then we fly in right after that to make the taleband think, oh, that was just

A and A helicopters. And so we fly in, we hit the ground and immediately, I mean within the first couple of minutes, we start getting the chatter on the chirp phones, you know, and the ISSR of the tal band going, oh that you know that A and A are here. They're trying to get their friends down. Let's go get them. Let's go get them. So we're like, oh, man, these guys have no

idea. You know, we've got we've got our full o DA, We've got sixty afghans, We've got and again there's a mountain range right here on the wall. So we're able to hold our AC one thirty in all our air aft that's right on the other side of that mountain range. So they can't hear the typical big brother in the sky the yeah, yeah, they don't know that we because they know the sound of that. So they don't

know that we got that because of the strain. So so we get to our very first compound and the our CTT who's talking to the pilots, is like, hey, the pilots just said that there's thirty guys in rank and file columns walking through the open towards us, right, so they're basically an infantry line thirty Taliban hunting their way to take down these an A soldiers. They think that just flew in, And so our commander and our CCT year

like, all right, bring in the AC one thirty. And so you know, we're five ten minutes into the operation and right up over the top of the mountain range, the AC one thirty hits, hits the orbit and just you know, smokes all thirty of them, and immediately you hear over the turf phones of screaming, oh god, it's the Americans. It's the Americans. It's the Americans. So that's how, that's how that that operation starts. Right. So now but now you know, they're like, oh

god, this Americans are here. So now they're not out in the open. Now they're bunkering down. So they had built all these bunkers and defensive fighting positions so that they could fight out of towards the Taban camp. So we had to still clear from where we were all the way to the Ana camp because we were also going to x fill all the dead bodies of our Ana partner force. It was like ten guys that were dead that they couldn't get out. That was part of what we were trying to help them do.

So we had to get all the way there. It'll imitate everybody in between. So the very first situation, we get into the big, first big compound, we're about to try to get into. The AC one thirty has struck a bunker maybe thirty meters offset from this giant compound, and so we were trying to get access to this compound walking around. Finally we found the gate to get in, and we're all standing on the side of the compounds. We're waiting to get in and I think em element leader on this

one too. I get my guys inside and I send out a b DA search, so battle damage assessment search with one of one of my ODIA guys, two of my Odia guys, and some Afghans. I'm like, hey, can you guys go clear that bunker real quick with the AC one thirty struck just to make sure we know what we got. They're right cool. They go walking out to go do it, and then out of nowhere boot machine gun fire PKM fire everywhere. So apparently you know, there was four

or five guys in this bunker. The AC one thirty killed the guys on the outside of it, but they're still bunkered in. So our two two teammates to grabbing grenades and throwing them inside these bunkers World War two style, end up killing those guys. But that was sort of the first realization of like, oh shit, these guys are in these bunkers like they are no

ship World War two style bunkered in towards the objectives. So that was sort of the realization of like, oh shit, we can't just walk like out in the open at these bunkers. There's people inside. So so again we

have to. We're continuing to clear towards the towards the compound, and we get to the second big compound and and again we're going through maybe like one hundred meters of open area again with like waist high grass as we get from compound to compound, and so we're maybe halfway there to the to the campaign of Conda. Nothing really too bad it has happened at this point other than

and you know, doing bdas on bunkers. And my team starts like, hey, I need you to get to the final the final compound that's sort of the last compound in between the compound and the campaign a Conda. So I'm like, all right, well, we got to clear through this this open area to get there. So get my guys, my afkhans ready to

go. And they go walking outside the compound and we get ready to move, and as I get to the wall, they all come springing back at me and run back inside the compound and I'm like, whoa, what are you guys doing. We gotta clear this area and they're like no way. My Afkans are like no way, we are not moving through that. And

I'm like, what do you mean why? And they're like you look, and so I go and I look my head out and I look at this big open area and I mean, it is they built the bunkers out of dirt and mud, but it's it's waist high grass right with giant bunker bunker bunker, but every ten feet a huge bunker, right. So you're looking at this and you're like, there could be people anywhere in the grass.

There's bunkers everywhere. We know there's people in these bunkers. So the Afghans are like, no, wait, we're not We're not walking through that. You're crazy. And I'm like, I don't want to walk through that neither, but we've got to clear through it. So, you know, I go to my team starting I'm like, I don't know what to do. The Afghans and we have the Afghan and the an a SF guys and they're

like, no, wait, this is crazy. And so my team startings, Like in the funny thing in SF, anytime there's like a problem that's unsolvable, people will always tell you you're a Green Beret, figure it out. So this was like the ultimate moment in my career of like, you're a Green Beret. Figure it out right. So my team startings like, well, I don't know me and to figure it out. And I'm like, oh, okay, how do I How do I do this? Right?

So I look at the my imagery and I'm looking out and now I've gotten on a second story of compound and I'm looking out at these bunkers and I'm like, how do how do I do this? But I realized is I'm looking at the bunkers, all the doorways, and they're shooting holes they

have set up or face towards the camp. So I realize, well, we could clear this east to west and basically walk through this bunker field without them having any eyesighter access to us as we walk up to the bunkers, and so, you know, I guess I think it's a good plan. So I briefed my Afghans and I'm like, hey, we don't when you do this. There's no way we're gonna get shot if we do this. And the Afghans are like, all right, we'll do it, and so

I'm like, okay, here we go. So me and my teammate and you know, ten Afghans we come walking out the compound from the backside. Now and I walk around the corner and again it's like Vietnam grass up to your chest with these bunkers, and I'm like, this is the this is the sketchiest thing I've ever seen in my life. Right, I know, there's people everywhere. At any moment, anybody could pop up and start shooting,

and we breast. We get the whole element out into the grass, and once as soon as we get out into the grass, machine gun fire from across the way blasts out of nowhere. And then our team that our other elements to our left is firing back at the machine guns. Machine gun fire. Crazy. It Actually they actually aren't shooting at us, but we don't know that right, So because we had just come out into the open, it's actually the tal band shooting at our other element and them shooting back.

So we go running back around the corner, you know, like oh ship that we're not we're not running out in that bunker field yet, but you know, kind of like cowards with our tails between our legs, just because this is so it's you know, it's like World War two for real. It's like this is so sketchy, I would say, than cowardice, you know, yeah, yeah, but you're like okay. So you know, we compose ourselves and we're like, shit, all right, okay,

we can do this. They're not shooting at us. And so we we walk out again, and you know, I have two an A s F guys that are with me out front, and one of them who I mean, this guy. When I talked earlier about some of these A and A SF guys who were crazy, this dude his story. Basically, he had been fighting in the ANASF for fifteen years. Talband came to his village when he was six or seven years old and murdered his entire family in front of

him. So all he cared about was killing Talbot. And he was our point He was our point man for this movement, and so he would walk. You know, we're walking out. We get to the first bunker and I made me ten feet away and he just walks straight up to the bunker because again, you know, with the way the holes are, they can't see us. He walks up to the bunker, he looks in, jumps his head out and looks back at me, and he goes there's people in

here. And I'm like, well, okay, kill him, I guess, and so you know, he grabs it through an as and he throws him in and blows up the bunker and we end up clearing through probably like five six seven more bunkers that way, of these an A Step guys just walking up to the bunkers looking inside, oh god, and grenades and throwing them in and eventually clearing through you know, this whole area that way, which was again, you know, you know, combat is sketchy in general,

but that was definitely the sketchiest thing I'd ever done. But anyway, so we we we get through this bunker field and we finally made it to our last compound and then our other element. You know, they have to make the same track, right they have to. They have to do it through on their side, and we eventually, you know, clear all the way through, and at this point we've just eliminated all these Talband and anyway, so I was a getting with that they were Talband Red Unit guys.

So we found a bunch of mvgs and also we knew they were Talban Red Unit because they gucci their guns, so they they're a ks. They flare them out with all kinds of crazy ribbons and like you know, like, yeah, yeah, it's like one of those things are like sort of that Arab like, you know, you go into an Arab convenience store, how flashy it is they do that with their hay case and everything. So all

the guns we were finding were you know, guccid out and crazy. But something we've never talked about the Red Unit on this show, and I think it was something that happened later on in the war. Can you can you speak to that a little bit. Yeah, So basically Talban Red Unit were the sort you could think of the Talband Talband special forces, right, and they were guys that were being equipped well we don't know for sure, but

equipped from Iran most likely and then potentially Pakistan. But they were pretty much exclusively through the southern part of Afghanistan at least while we were there. And again they used them primarily to really hit the an A hard right, so they would use their sort of their Talband soft guys to nail after an A checkpoints and really cause sort of you know you d havoc on the Ana through the south. So that was really their purpose and they were far better equipped.

They had body armor, they had night vision, they had all the Gucci equip you know, Gucci equipment far so you know, they weren't just regular Taliban villagers that were you know, fighting at the lowest levels. These guys were were organized, they were equipped, they were funded, and again they didn't want to fight the United States and they didn't want to fight us off. They were there to you know, really cause damage and havoc to the Ana who had you know, no chance at fighting guys like that.

Yeah. Sure, it's funny that you know, you mentioned how they sort of like Gucci out there gear because when you think of like us off, if I'm in a Gucci of my gear, like you have a a four sixteen nupper, you do the camo paint on it, like you do that for them, it's like bedazzling at putting dazzle flass. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a very it's a strange sort of comparison or dichotomy. You know how what they consider like gold, like if

they could afford, they gold plate it exactly. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, so we thought a little bit of that. But yeah, the big like the ribbons, the fancy color like yeah, peacock type of stuff coming three k. Yeah. Yeah, that's how they that's how you could tell that you had, you know, higher level of tier guys.

Yeah. But it's funny because even there their personal photos and I don't mean the red the Redd Unit, I mean like Afghan or like their personal photos are generally in a field of flowers or they're like that soft light old like you know, family portrait style. You know. It's it's yeah, it's interesting. It's it's an interesting contrast. Yeah, yeah, for sure, you know. And it's funny because when you when you talk about like this waist high grass and these bunkers, I think back, you know,

obviously like your dad was venom. I think back. It's like, boy, it's too bad we stopped using napalm because that's a perfect like environment for napalm, right, just burn that gas grass out. And we actually talked about that because that was one of the things before. Again, this wasn't like a three minute thing where I figured out a plan to to move through this marker. This was like a thirty minute sure me trying to figure out

how to get these guys to agree with that. And part of that was, you know, hey, can we get air to basically just blow this bunk or field out and strike it. Yeah, the problem was at that we could have technically, but at that time all are both our A tens and our apaches had to go off station to refuel, so all we had was fifteens, and the F fifteens were like, dude, we're not gonna we don't We're not gonna strike an area, you know, twenty meters away

from you. Guys, like everything stanger close at that point for them.

Yeah, yeah, so we did. We did have them do a show of force, the only time I ever had F fifteens do it, to show a force over the top of us right before we went out to move, which was I mean, that was actually insane if anybody hasn't had that done, where they come down about one hundred feet off the ground, the F fifteens, and then they punched their mock right as they go over the top of you, and I mean it's like the shock wave blows out and

almost blows your ear drums out if you're not ready. But that was the best we could get, you know, before we moved, because all our other our actual assets that could strike close like that we're off station. So yeah, So at any point in time when you were you know, the other element, when they you guys were moving forward clearing these bunkers, you know, with grenades, did they ever glean on did they ever catch on

to what was going on? Not really. I think that they were so you know, having like thirty other dudes immediately smoked right out the gate, I think, you know, I think that was just chaos for them.

I think it was basically hiding the bunkers and pant It was panic big time, right because they thought, you know, they had controlled this area and they were just kicking the ship out of the ANA for the last month, and then all of a sudden, you know, and then so they're coming out to oh, we're gonna we're gonna march on out and and mess these

guys up. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, oh shit, the whole might of the American military and soft is here, and what is left of who we have is now in these bunkers. Probably communications gone at that point. Yeah, So I think that they were just completely disheveled to the point of trying to hide and just survive at that

point because of that. The other thing is, you know, once that AC, once that AC one thirty like comes in, you know, comes over the mountain, they can hear just like that landmar in the sky like they know what that means, right, every buddy, Yeah, everything, the ANA knows the Taliban, everybody knows they called big Brother, right, everybody the others who the big brother is A dude is And that's why we that mountain range was so awesome is that we were able to keep our aircraft,

you know, with in strike distance but just right on the other side of that mountain range to where they just kind of sat up over the top in orbit and boom. Yeah, that's amazing. So so once you guys clear this and you move forward to the ANA compound, like what happens? I'm You're they're obviously relieved, right yeah, so oh man, yeah for

sure. So we cleared through that, we get to the compound and then you know, we go in, we meet all the guys and we get all their wounded out and then all they're dead, which we then had to basically carry out and X fill out, which I think they had like nine or ten nine or ten bodies which had been there a long long time. But yeah, so we got those on helicopters and uh and got all those guys out of there, and you know, that camp was fined after that

because the Taban you know, they bailed out of that area. They were like, oh god, the Americans are are We're willing to fight. But it it gained as such massive appreciation with our partner force more so than anything

else that we did. That was a huge deal for that relationship between us and our and our third Sock commandos that we did that for them, which was cool to be able to do that too, you know, because you can imagine from those guys in that camp's perspective, they're just trying to survive. You know, your buddies are dead everywhere around you. There's nothing left for you to do. You're struggling to hang on and then you know, we show up and kill everybody that's been you know, smoking your unit for

the last month and uh and get your guys out. So, yeah, that was definitely a really cool thing to be a part of. What was it sketchy when you guys were approaching the am combat? How did you deconflict so they didn't fire you up? Not really because they had R A and A guys had comms with their guys in the compound from pretty much the time we hit the ground, so yeah, they knew. So we had cleared

through. We didn't clear straight up to the compound. We cleared to the final sort of compound, the Talband head control, which is like another one hundred meters away from the compound, and then basically Radio had them the team leaders and we had the Afghans obviously lead and go get the dead bodies and whatnot. Yeah, we didn't go with them into the compound, but yeah, they had they had comms with their own guys, so that wasn't wasn't really any prom at all. Now do you guys like, did I sart

pick up? Did anybody x hill from that area to the taliband? Do you know that you got all the bunkers So we definitely, yeah, we definitely had dudes after the AC when thirty struck that initial engagement. Yeah, there was guys leaving that area like oh yeah all over it was you know, from the fringes. Yeah they were gone. But all those guys who were basically bunkered in that were attacking the A and A compound, there was nowhere for them to go. Yeah, I mean it was yeah, they

they there was nowhere to run too. But the guys on the fringes, yeah, they bailed and they got on their motorcycles. Everybody was gone once they as soon as they heard the AC one thirty and the big one O fives come in, it was like, if you can get out, get out. Yeah for sure. So how did that? You know, so your afghans go in, they recover the bodies. How did that operation end for you guys? Yeah? So well, interesting way that ended. So,

yeah, we brought all the bodies out. There was a big, big open field that sort of we had we had to move through as we went through the compounds. So it was a good place to bring our our helicopters in and interesting with that. So we had two Chinooks and I think three black Hawks. We had an extra Blackhawk come in able to help bring the bodies out, and they all came in sort of at the same time. And my elements where we were posted up, well, we watched all

the helicopters come in and land and then No. Sage forty seven lands in front of us, and so you know, I'm looking around like okay, we're kind of missing we're missing one, you know what I mean, and watching and you know, we do these things quick, right, the helicopters hit the ground and get on the helicopter you leave, and so I'm watching that and then up they go, up, they go up they go, and all of a sudden, all the helicopters in the air and my element

is just standing on the ground and we're an enemy's territory, right, this is a again, this is a place where we're way outside the med ring. So it's like, this is not a place we want to get left. But apparently whatever this last chinook, you know, he was like a kilometer away in an open field by himself for whatever reason. But so luckily I was able to still talk to my commander on on my radio. I'm

like, hey man, nobody has picked us up. So all the other helicopters loitered and we're able to talk on the final helicopter to come by and actually pick our element up like ten minutes later. But it was like, okay, this is super sketchy, you know, this is this is a dangerous area, which we know Talvian are are in the area. But you know, I think they again we just talked about they had all bailed out of the area. So yeah, that's dangerous, but it's still kind of

like, Okay, we really don't want to get left. Yeah, you know, two hours outside of the med ring. Yeah. But but but that pilot maybe it was the student driver or whatever, like yeah, I don't know. We have yeah, you know, the one sixtieth is one thing. But those guys are amazing. But some of our regular army pilots, some of the stuff we saw was like, man, just an aside. This is from just talking about Shinook pilots from a mission that really didn't

have much happened to it at all. But at the very end when we were getting picked up, we got one of the crazier things that happened in our employment. Same thing. So all our elements are we're getting ready to Xville. We're in our line of twenty guys standing in line CCT is I R open in the CG forty seven's on the ground. We're watching. We got two pH forty sevens coming in right at us. Two elements side by side. The first forty seven you know, it comes in lands fifty meters

in front of that element, just perfect. And then we're watching our ch forty seven and we're like, man, he's still really really high up in the air, like why is he not coming in? And then it's getting closer and closer and closer to us, and we start to realize like, ohkay, he's gonna fly, only it looks like almost right on top of us. And by the time we realize it, we're like, oh god, he's gonna land on us. And so everybody off running in different directions

in this siege forty seven pilot comes in. He realizes he's basically getting a land on top of us, and he yanks his pitch to not land to the point, and so we're kind of at the bottom of a hill like this right here, right, so we're sitting down here, and so he yanks his pitch to not land now, and so that his back rotors smack off the ground where we are all we're just standing breaks the ground, which would have killed everybody, how they are not all just jumped out of the

way, and then his rotors hitting it launches him upright and he almost heat kettles the entire stage forty seven up on top of it so and then barely to get it back up to get around to come and get us. But just aside for some of the crazier things you see some of those pilots, do you think that was mostly an experience? Was our brown out because he had there a bird had already been in or yeah, so we you know in the Kandahar area and Helmet area, like brownouts they're like re single landing

just because it's it's the way the terrain is. Yeah, so that the inexperienced pilots really really struggle. Yeah, with the brown outse the experienced pilots are so used to it that they just let their instruments fell. What to do they land, they don't really care. Yeah, but the but the inexperienced pilots, for sure, those brown outs can't cause along. Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny because I remember I flow with the Marines like a Marine forced Recon team once and we're on the marine birds and as they were landing, I was like it, like the rear seems really it seems like it's down, like like we're not landing level. And I was thinking, maybe this is maybe this is just how these birds land. I don't know, but I look around all like the Marines and their eyes are all like this big, and I'm like, oh, this isn't how they land at all,

No, I think, you know. And the brown outs that's really calm and too. You'll see that where like it'll start to tilt and they will be like more and more like they're trying to get the butt of the ramp to touch so they feel better about it. But you're looking out the back like, Okay, this is yeah, this is not good. Yeah, I mean. And and to be fair to helicopter pilots like it,

it's a very challenging, challenging environment to fly in for sure. And it's not just you know, it's night they're under night vision, they're dealing with instruments. It's a brown out. Yeah, they're worried about getting shot down by an RPG from who knows where, ye, because they got all that going on at the same time. And you know, a lot of those guys, I'm sure it's you know, I'm probably probably their first combat rotation. They're actually flying for real, you know, stress of that on top

of it. Yeah, and for people who might not know, I know a lot of you do. But for people who know brown simply when when a helicopter is coming in, obviously it's kicking up a lot of air, a lot of dust, and places like Afghanistan where the dust is it's like silt. Sometimes it's like talcum powder in some places, and it just it creates a brand out where they can't see anything and they're they're on pure instruments. I mean, it's almost like it's almost like moon dust exactly. It's

like and you're you're right. I mean, it's there's no vision at all. You know. Sometimes we'll jump off the back and it's like I'm gonna run twenty feet in front of me and and face out. Yeah, and just great because you can't see anything. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, moon dust is really you know, it's like you step in it. It's like, like I said, it's like talcum powder, just like puffs everywhere. So sure. So, uh, were there any like significant operations for

you guys, any fun operations for you guys after that one? Oh? I mean those are you know again, we there's there's the most the other operations have like little bits or pieces that are cool or fun, you know, but those are those were three of the the biggest ones. Again, we had another operation just for talking about it wasn't that cool because we didn't

really get any gunfights. But we found the number nine most wanted talban on the Jupitalists at the time, Objective ice Pick I think his name was at the time. So for people who don't know, you know, we rack into the US government racks and stacks, you know, the most wanted terrorists in areas. So that was that. That mission really didn't we didn't have any It was kind of a we infield. Nobody wanted to fight and just happened that we found the guy that we were looking for. So nothing exciting

there. The result was cool. But but yeah, I could talk, I could talk briefly about my very first combat operation and some of them diculousness that that happened. That's kind of funny. Please do, dude, if you wanted to hear that. Yeah, so my very first combat operation. Right, so again, my very first one. We fly in on the one sixty and we land on the target and we're in an area in a ruse gone that looks like Jesus Christ lived there. I mean it is mud

huts two thousand BC. Rural type of environment. Right there is no green anywhere you look. It's ten foot tall, you know, dried out mud walls, sort of like the face of the moon type of things. Every compound wall has murder holes in it as far as you can look. So we hit the X. We jump off. I'm not an element leader at this point. It's my first mission. My buddy is. And then so there's some really funny This has really got really funny stuff that goes with it.

We didn't we got in a gunfight at the end, but more funny stuff. So right out the gate are her. We're riding in the one sixtieth and so these guys don't mess around. They fly nap of the earth, which for those who don't know, it's right off the top of the surface of the earth. They fly out the whole way, They fly in fast, they drop, you jump off the aircraft and they're gone. There's no messing around. So we we we hit the X. We jump off,

they take off. I look up. There's a compound right in front of us, and immediately we have are my team leaders with me, our commander and no, no he's not, he's not with us. He's in the other element, and yeah, he's in the other element, and we have our our our CCT with us. And so for everybody who knows, the combat controller and the team leader the ground force commander always side by side

because they work together for any stripes. So our CCP is with us, and our commander is a thousand meters away, and our CTT is looking around, and he was like, where am I what happened? So I guess what happened? Is the other aircraft that he was supposed to be on with the team leader when they landed, he was like trying to get unclipped from you know, the radio and the aircraft. He didn't do it in time.

By the time he got unclipped and looked that one sixtieth pilots took back off and then they were they were jumping the other half of the element over with us because we sort of did a split and fill, and so he gets dropped offs with us, and so immediately first operation he's like, oh God, what happened? I don't know where the commander is? And so are my seat my senior medics, same guy I talked about earlier. He's like the one with so many combat deployments. He's like, okay, I'll

take you and I'm gonna walk you across all these murder holes. First mission back to the team leader. Right. So that's how that mission starts, which is just ridiculous. And so we start moving our way through these first compounds, and I mean it's like everything out of your worst nightmare when it comes to I EDS there is there are wires everywhere you're walking through, wires are getting tangled up in your legs. Everything looks like an ied nightmare.

Right. So, very first operation I'm carrying because in the plan we're gonna knock down this defensive fighting position. I'm carrying the Carl Gustaff on my back with rockets, right, so that which I never ever did again, right, this is a one time thing that I did. And so I've got the car Goostaf on my back. You know, for those who don't know, it's this big rocket launcher and I'm carrying it around getting tripped up in

wires. And we move up and it's maybe you know, or maybe thirty minutes in we get to this first compound that I'm supposed to knock down with my Carl Gustaf. So that way because it's a defensive fighting position. We can tell from the immagery this is this is an nobs you know, you can see it built up. We're gonna knock down a hole in the wall. That way, we can come in the side of it. We don't have to, you know, stand out and trying to breach it and deal

with getting grenades throwing on us or anything like that. So my my senior eighteen delta again, he he's my AG and we run out into the open and he's like, all right, man, let's let's shoot. Let's knock this ball down. So I run out and you know, again my first time at operation ever, and I'm like okay, and I am and wind up and I'm like, where's the wall, you know? And oh god, you know, I don't know. I'm like, I'm so mixed up now, I don't know what's going on. And so he grabs me and

he was like, dude, it's over here. He turns me one hundred and eighty degrees, you know, linds me up onto the wall and he's like, okay, okay, let's let's shoot it. And I'm looking at the wall. I'm like, aren't we too close to this. You know, we still laugh about this. We're like thirty meters away from this wall with Carl Gustaf and he's like and again, same same guy who sprinted towards the bullets in the near ambush. She's like, no, we're fine,

we're fine. Don't worry though. I'm like okay, And so, you know, he puts the rocket in. I lined it up, and you know, I clack it off, boom, and of course the concussion basically knocks us both down because we're so close and you know, dust everywhere. I get up, I'm looking at the wall, you know, it starts to settle, settle, settle, and I look over at him. I'm like, what did I miss? What happened? And he's like, no, you hit the wall. But these walls were like two three feet the

just sun dried mud. This goo stop round did nothing and just knocked the dust stop of the wall. And so we're like, oh, oh god, what do we do? And then we look we look over in our Afghans had been watching us, and they just rolled their eyes and they just walked in the front gate of this DFPED. So we're like, okay, well, all right, we feel pretty silly right now. So we you

know, we run over and just walk in. We get inside this this compound, and immediately everything I've been told and the trained up for the last nine months is we use our We had special Afghan guys. Can't get into sensitivity of it, but they would basically be mine sweeping guys for us. So we don't walk anywhere that those guys have. They walk in front of us everywhere where we walk. That's all I've been taught for the last nine

months. We get inside the compounds, some stuff starts happening. My same eighteen delta, you know, while while this can be is like, oh, we need to get over there, and he's like, he's like, let's go, let's go, And so he just takes off, running through an area that hasn't been cleared yet with no mind detect your guys, and an area that looks like there's an ID in every step you could take. And so I'm like, okay, so we take off. We're going and

doing this and that. We get to this sort of half wall on a compound and again it's all these dirt mud walls and everybody's jumping over it to get to the next thing again, I got this giant Carl Gustav on my back. I go to step over the wall like that, you know, the walls like this. I go to step over it like this, and

the ground beneath me falls out. And so now I'm being held up on my nuts and I'm stuck with the Carl Gustav on the wall, and I have to have these Afghans come over and basically lift and drag me up over the top of this wall to get me out of there. So it's getting more and more ridiculous. Right as I'm carrying the stupid thing. We get a little bit further in the objective, and we had an EOD tech on our team who had like five or six combat deployments and was one of the

craziest dudes I've ever seen. He I don't know how he was alive anymore. And I'll tell you an example of why. So we roll up and this was in between this and this part was when my buddy through the therm America and the collapse. One of the things that blew my blew my lips open, right, So all this stuff is happening, right, So it's just I'm like, this is what combat is. This is ridiculous, right,

I'm I'm struggling. I'm trying to I've also got this giant rocket on my back, and I'm trying to get through the doorways of these buildings. And you know, the Afghans are small, so these buildings they're like four foot tall built doorways by three feet. So I'm, you know, and I'm six foot two with this giant rocket launch from my back, struggling to get through. And then we finally are getting towards the end of the objective

and we find a cachet down in a basement. It's just massively filled with explosives, not not massively, but quite a bit of explosives down this sort of basement. And my eighteen delta he's like, I'm gonna move on and keep clearing towards the end of the end of the objective. Here, you guys, go ahead, you and the EOD tech and go ahead and bip that. And so I'm like, okay. So I look down in it and again it's the basement is like, that's the most i d looking thing

I've ever seen. No way, I'm you know, no way I'm going down there. My EOD tech is like, Oh, it's no big deal. I'll go throws some four on that. He runs down the stairs, goes and sets these C fours on all the C four blocks on all this rigs a rigs. The charge comes back up, and so we're standing next to the mud wall with the basement that's sort of beneath us to the left, and he hands me the like the clacker. Yeah, he has me the clacker, and he's like, do you want to blow it up?

And I'm like, all right, man, I guess right. So he's like, all right, go for it, you know. And we got our we got our shoulders to the wall, you know, we're hunkered down, and I do you know, I'm like push quarter turn pull. Nothing happens. And he's like do it again, and I'm like push cord turn pull, nothing happens. It's like it's fit and now it's failed and I'm like, oh god right, and so he then we just had a failed

failed explosive on this. He runs back down onto the charge after this has just failed, which you, like, anybody who's been around explosives nose like this is the last thing you would ever right, yeah, exactly. Insane and again, this is my first combat operation. All this is happening. I'm watching this like I'm watching these guys. That's done, you know, multiple deployments is crazy shit, Like this is what we're so, this is

what we do. We just do insane shit like this. So he runs down, rigs it up, and he rigs way longer, a way longer charge on it this time, so we're able to like back up like fifteen more feet and get behind a different wall. And I'm like, okay, this seems a little bit more safe. And so we get behind the wall and this time push for a turn. Let it off. Boom. Right, the explosion is so big that it's basically raining mud clods like across the

entire objective. There's Afghan's running around try to get under cover, and I look up and the building with the basement that we just had our shoulders next to right is gone. It's a giant crater in the ground. And I look at him and I'm like, we were we were standing next to that when we tried to clack that off the first time, you know, And he was like, oh, whoops, now it worked out, so yeah, that's and then uh okay, so and then the final part of that

for sort of funny thing and first operation. So we get through that, we get to the sort of the line of advance, which was these two story compounds that ended up in a big vegetative field, and so we basically got up on top of these buildings and there was actually tal band that were maneuvering out in the grass and sort of a gunfight sort of kicked off as me and another guy were up on top of the roof and you know, both start flying. So we just you know, start way laying rounds out

into the forest. Crazy basically, you know, we're not really shooting at anything, like panicking, you know, like backing up, getting down behind cover. And you know, my the same eighteen delta I was just talking about so many combat deployments. He like looks up over the ladder is watching us and just starts laughing at us, and he's like, what are you guys even shooting now? You know what I mean? And we're like, is that worth the CIB? And he's like, no, no chance.

But but yeah, so that was sort of my first, uh my first time on a combat mission with just ridiculous stuff happening around me and it's funny too, because like there's there are best practices, right, there are the things that like, this is how we do it. But then there's the reality and the practicality of yeah, we're not waiting for our our Iraqi like mind sweepers like to go ahead of us before every step we take exactly.

Yeah. So that right out the gate on that mission was me realizing like, oh, you know, and then later, you know, later in combat missions and later in my career, you know, you don't you're done and think about stuff like that. But when you're a brand new guy and you've been training to standard and then you're watching all these older guys just like not do any of the things that you know you said were the most important

things to do. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, And and combat is one of those things right where because of that it's ludicrous, Like combat is just ludicrous and the worst things happen, and the funniest things happen, like yes, right, and everything's like heightened and elevated. Yeah, And you know it's funny because you say that is because some of the funniest stories.

For example, you know that right after that near ambush, me laughing at Afghans taking tournament kids off their buddies, right, painest things with hilarious things, And it's like people that haven't ever experienced it, they can't really understand. You know. I've had people say before when I'm telling those stories, you know you might you're laughing at things in the story, and they're like they can't figure out. They're like, this is intense and horrible. How

could you be laughing at that? And it's like, well, you have to really understand sort of the morbid reality of what's going on, yeah, and have that that has to be part of your sense of humor. Otherwise

I don't think you could really function. Yeah, you know, and as it is so dark, right, and the humor is that like pressure release a lot of times, like you know, when a guy's clearing a building under fire and he steps in like like a toilet hole and comes out, comes out to the knee coated and human, you know, like and shit, yeah right, yeah, it's like it's like it's like, yeah,

you're still under fire, but this is absolutely hilarious. Yeah. Yeah, And and there's there's a lot of that yeah, And and I hope people don't you know, And I tell the stories. I hope people don't think that I'm a cavalier about some of this stuff, you know, because I can laugh about so in reality, you know, I've gone through a ton of behavior help to deal with things I've been through, yeah, you know,

years of work with therapists. But but you have to be able to laugh about stuff like that because I think, you know, you have to compartmentalize it, yeah, somehow if you want to, you know, continue to lead a decent mental stability in your life. Yeah, but I think that you see the same type of behavior and like er doctors and nurses like like you know, you you have to find that that uh that lining right, Yeah, I think I think that's a that's a good example for sure.

People that you know, see a lot of death and tragedy. For sure, you have to be able to departmentalize that. Yeah. Yeah. So uh so that was that was all like one that was a super active deployment and yeah, and again those were just three of the like the big ones. Every mission we had, you know, I think we killed close to six hundred confirmed you know, so those three missions was probably one hundred

and fifty to two hundred. So you know, you still got ten more missions where sporadic, ten twenty guys, ten twenty taliban here there, you know, small gunfights here there, quick snippets, you know, things like that. But yeah, it was it definitely was a huge, hugely kinectic

deployment overall. For sure. You know, you spoke to something earlier, you know, a little bit uh that, you know, when you were in the bunkers or when you're taking out Like one of the things that people don't understand in combat, especially when it's at night under night vision, it's very confusing, right, Like a lot of times you don't even like one of your buddies might be in a gunfight and you have no idea where the

fire is coming from. Like it's just very confusing for sure. For example, you know, the guy who got shot next to me, part of that being in her night visions, I can't see what type of uniform he has on. I don't know, Yeah, I can't tell. I can see his face, I can't see really much about him. Right of me being worried? Is that my teammate, right, you know? And I don't want to sound morbid about it, but had I known right away that

that wasn't my teammate, I wouldn't have been concerned whatever at all. Then Afghan just got shot at and more focused on the gunfight. But you know, that's sort of an example of what you're talking about of sort of that flog of war, especially in her night vision, is a real thing for sure. Yeah, So so you guys finish up your twenty eighteen deployment and then you're back on the shoot, basically starting a training cycle for another deployment.

So, yeah, what had happened? So we come back from the twenty eighteen deployment and that team had been together for almost three years, almost every guy on that team, So it was sort of that time in everybody's career where broadening assignments were happening. Some of the high ranking guys were moving into the E eight realm to take their own teams. So the team I had, I had to have surgery on both my knees, so and some

other guys had injuries they had to deal with. So the team, that team sort of broke apart for the most part, and then I did. I had recovery on my knees and I ended up going to a mountain team after that because by the time I had recovered my the dive team I was on had replaced the eighteen Echoes, and my start major asked me if I if I wanted to go ahead and be on a mountain team, which you know, I felt cool. That's a new experience. Which that one, you know, I uh, no combat on that one. We did a

cool trip to Mongolia, which that was an interesting one. Not many guys have been to Mongolia, which was was a fun trip. But I was only on a mountain team for about a year and a half until twenty twenty ish when the eighteen Delta, my senior eighteen Delta I've been talking about this

whole time. He had taken a low team out in Okinawa and there was another Afghanistan rotation getting ready to be spun up for the pre train up, and he had one of the only teams from Okinawa that were that had that was gonna be going to Afghanistan because most teams from most teams hadn't from Okinawa hadn't been to combat in years. And so I reached out to him and was like, hey, you need an eighteen Echo. This was also going to get me out of being a switch instructor, so I was able to

you know, stay on a team by bypassing that. So he was able to hold eighteen echo slot for me. I was able to PCs out to Okinawa get on his team, and then we started another train up for the next Afghanistan rotation that we were going to do in twenty twenty one, which I I could talk a little bit about that because that is going to lend into obviously what everybody saw with what happened in Afghanistan. I don't know if we want to talk about things that are that politically charged on Yeah, yeah,

I mean yeah, I mean it's history. Well let's not avoid it. I mean, it is what it is. But I'm going to assume that that at this point in time, you're the older, wiser man who voiced the Carl Gustavs off to the Bravos. Yeah. You know, at this point, I'm five years on a team, right, so you know, I'm a I'm a senior E seven at this point, element leader.

You know, I'm getting brought to the team to be sort of that guy that you know, my eighteen delta who was that senior guy for me with that experience as a team guy he's sort of is bringing me to the team to sort of be that guy for his team, sort of that right underneath him, senior leader at this point going into the next time at So, how does that so tell us about that you got you got, you got

to Okinawa? You go to that the first group team out there? Yeah, so I so he was in So I go see, he's got a Halo team out in Okinawa. And again most Okanawah hadn't been to Afghanistan in almost a decade just because for whatever reason, but I don't know why, we just all of a sudden decided we wanted two teams from Okinawa to go on the next Afghanistan deployment. I guess because of the highest levels Command was

upset that Okinawa wasn't holding their weight in the combat realm. I don't know whatever, But of course, you know my wild old eighteen delts a senior. He was the one that managed, of course to find his way to be team sergeant, to be the team that was going to go back to combat, because that's what that's what he did. So I wanted to be a part of that. So he saved me a slot on the team at PCs out there. I get to the team, and I mean they're in

train up for Afghanistan when I get to the team. So they are currently in Safawik, which is our Special Forces Urban and Sulter course, So usually as an ODA before combat, you do that together for about about a month, which really trains tons of urban combat, CQB, all that different stuff as an ODA, so they're they're in the middle of that course when I get out to Okinawa and then moving straight into the premission training cycles of PMT

one two and then a battalion validation, so sort of three different PMT events that we do sort of that six month build up to a combat deployment. So that's how I get out there. But yeah, so we do our which is funny because we get out to Okinawa and then all our PMT stuff is in America, so I pc PCs out to Japan and immediately spin the next year back in America training and so we uh and the team on months

very good. So we but again we're the one Okinawa team that's going to deploy with one of the battalions from Group Maine, so nobody really was that happy about us being there, you know. We're sort of like step child. That was sort of us and a one of the teams from SCO the Crift was also with us that was going to be a part of it, but we ended up being one of the highest ranked teams at the validation, which sort of made sense because we had our team sergeant was the eighteen Delta

US talking about insane amount of combat experience. Amazing leader. You had me as one of the element leaders, and then the second element leader on our team was one of the senior guys from that eighteen that twenty eighteen trip on our sister team that was in Hellman, so we had a huge senior corps of guys. Our eighteen Bravo had multiple combat deployments, so again we had

a a odia with a lot of combat experience again ready to go. So we were looking at having a pretty good mission going into that trip, which would have been into twenty twenty one. And then yeah, so we got to we finished our both our PMTs, our validation, and we got back

to Okinawa. We went on our thirty days pre deployment leave, which is a pretty standard thing after your BMTs, you know, you spend your time with your family, you grow out your beard, you get ready to leave, right, and so we had shipped all of our equipment and the is s us too. I think it is going through Dubai into Afghanistan. I mean, we are that close to deploy to Afghanistan, right, Like we are three weeks and we got like a week left. I got my beard

grown out, We're ready to go. We're supposed to go to Bogram basically ideally most likely going to be facilitating the an entire Soda, so upwards of eighteen to twenty one oders we're going to be at Bogram to basically facilitate the probably six months of leaving Afghanistan. Sort of the idea at the time.

You know, I'm not an officer, I don't know the exact battle plan, but that sort of was the idea, which you know made sense because you know, for what people don't realize is that we would have one soda for that same amount of odas that held control of the entire country of Afghanistan at a time, right, So you're gonna have that level of firepower just up in Bogram to be able to facilitate that. And then we get the

announcement basically right before we're going to leave of trips canceled. You guys aren't going, We're shipping your gear back and we end up basically getting told we're going to Australia and said next week. So you can imagine we are not happy. Nobody's happy, and it's it's not our team, it's the entire

SODA. No SF guys will now be going into Afghanistan. So we just pulled out the guys who were there, all the teams and are sodaf was supposed to be the ones that backfilled that, and you know, the powers that be decided we don't need that. And then here's the reality of what we saw happen right after that and the catastrophe of the fall of Kabul and Bagram in Afghanistan. So again I hate to get to political, but the reality is I know that that didn't have to happen the way it happened because

we were literally supposed to be there. And so people understand the Talban will not fight a Soda from green brets. They won't fight an Oda of green berets. Right, all you would need us is just to be there, and the whole thing would have never happened because they wouldn't have fought us. They wouldn't have tried, They would have just waited, right But as soon as they found out, oh there's no more bearded ones, Okay, now we'll just take the country over. That's the sad reality of you know,

what has happened. And I've watched you know, the podcasts of some of the guys that have lost legs and arms that were a part of that, and the guys that were killed, and it was all needless. None of that has happened. So it's sad for sure. And obviously, you know, I haven't really wanted to talk about that before, but it just pisses me off so much. You know, I've lost you know, best friends

and teammates to that, to that war. The hardest part about it is that is the is the guys have lost to that and the time I spent there and it was to watch that happen. So now it's to me, it's a point where it's like I don't care, I'm gonna I'm just gonna be honest and tell the truth of what happened and what we had available and the decisions that you know, the government made people should know that. I think they should know that a better, a better plan was in place and

we actively decided grew it. We don't care, We're gonna do it this

way instead. Right, Yeah, And you know, it's interesting that how you're speaking about this because and we've talked about it on the show a couple of times, but you know, people talk about post traumatic stress a lot, but something that doesn't come up in popular conversation yet is the idea of moral injury, you know, and this this idea that and obviously you know, guys for Vietnam definitely had this too, especially guys who worked closely with

the indigenous peoples. It is this idea that you look at an event like that and you say, it's not even withdrawing from Afghanistan, because I think that I think that all like veterans and all like military people were like, yes, there needs to be a plan in place for withdrawing, Like we don't know what we're doing there. We're not like we it's like you talked

about the vso we took this ground and then we give it up. You know, our our government at no point in time ever had a cohesive idea of what victory meant there, but then to just turn around and and leave the way we left. Yeah, it was psychologically. First off, it was harmful to the troops that were there. It was harmful to the Afghans or Afghan allies. And then it was also harmful to the veterans, you know, and and you know and the people involved in that who had been

involved in war that well that was shitty. Yeah yeah, and you know, and you're right, even when I was there, it was kind of like what a you know, what exactly are we doing here? Right? So once we had eliminated, isis al Kada's gone? I mean, I'm not an idiot. The Talban didn't care about global politics and everything. They just wanted everybody out so that they could, you know, kind true the way they wanted it, right, was the Taliban, you know, conducting

terrorism across the world. No, like you know, were aholes. They're they're horrible, Like it's horri They're horrible the way they treat women, the way they you know, treat people. But is it our job to go everywhere and get rid of all horrible people all over the world? Exactly? And And that's what I mean, is that, like I'm I think we were all we were all aware the only reason we were fighting was for the guys next to us right when I was there, you know what I mean.

But at the same time, you know, especially you know our guys, like our Hazaran guys that were basically been keeping SF guys alive and keeping our legs on our bodies for fifteen years. Those guys, I mean so many times I would go to step somewhere and they would stop me, grab me, and they would make sure they stepped in front of me if they

would take that id before I took it. Those were some of the people that we decided not and those were the ones that got slaughtered by the Talban because the Talban knew that they had been working with us offt for so long, you know, So you're right, I think, you know, I talked me and I get to talk to my dad about that one a lot, having you know, him being an a CAM guy in Vietnam and dealing with the endage, and we talk sort of that same thing of you know,

we did the same thing to to the uh, the munt yards and the vietname Vietnamese when we left Vietnam. Yeah, we left them to get

slaughtered too. So it's a it is tough, and you know, it's it's again one of those things where I've you know, sort of just kept my mouth shut about it for a long time, but I just kind of tired of doing that because it just angers me so much in a lot of ways, just being a guy who knew that, you know, like and again, one of the frustrating things is like guys like me, su guys with at the time, I would had seven years seam time, combat experience,

all these things. I would have been there on the ground in charge Odier's facilitating that, and instead we sent a bunch of kids from the eighty second that we're eighteen nineteen years old to do that, you know what I mean, That's what really drives me crazy is that you know, we had guys like me and my teammates that you know, what have you trained us for for this whole time that like you had everything you needed, you know, you had you had delta, you had a whole soda Like everything was

there, So it wasn't like we didn't have a better option. And I think that's what angers somebody, angers us so much in that yard. Yeah, it was administrator. It was an administrative failure. And whether it was with you know, the administration, with Biden or with the military or State department, like, I don't know how it all broke down, but yeah, but it was a failure, a complete failure. Yeah. And again I have no idea where the order for us not to go came from.

Clue. It was just hey, you're not going right there, we're right, So let me see if we have any questions. Do do you mind checking patroon? Let me see if we have any questions for you? What are you doing now? Where can people find you? Yeah? So I retired left least month and I am currently a firearms instructor, so start my own business. So my my YouTube is Valhalla Firearms Training, so sort of you know, Viking Baalhalla Firearms Training, same thing on Instagram and just subs

bet on what I do. So I kind of think of what I do is sort of being a Green Beret and four civilians, right, So I teach all kinds of different stuff, concealed carry courses, to trauma medicine, teach basic to basic pistol to rifle courses, but also more advanced stuff and advanced carbine courses CQB things like that. I'm just getting started. I'm going to be relocating down in Oregon here in a couple of weeks, but but

yeah, that's going pretty well. Looking to hopefully get into working with you know, the squat teams and the Sheriff's department and things like that down there, really transferring all that knowledge that I have, not only to that, but also to sort of the civilian community so that they can you know, defend and protects you know, their families as well, because I think there's so much that that we learn and we get trained into that is applicable to

civilians as well. So, like I tell people, you know, I'm insanely well versed in CQUB. It's the thing I took to the most of my career. I love it more than anything. But that's transferable to everyone because if you're a gun owner and you have a home, what is your home? Your home is a CQB situation, you know what I mean? Do you know how to fight off a home invader? Things like that.

So so yeah, that's what I'm doing right now, is is ideally, you know, I work for the government for so long, hopefully I can, you know, build my own business, which is going really well so far, already have that all started, but you know, hopefully doing the part of my military career as a green brain that I love, and then you know, transitioning that into the civilian world as well, because I think you have a lot of beneficial stuff to impart on people that are interested in

that's fantastic. So can people come to you for their Karl Gustaf training needs? Also, Yeah, no, I don't have a I don't have a Carl Gustaf. And I also don't shoot him anymore. Had my brain rattled one too many? Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, you only need to be the Karl Gustaf. Is one of those things like when they're like, hey we have extra rounds, who wants to shoot them? Liver is like, yeah, I'm good. No, I'm good, I'm good. I'm

good. So Joe's gotcha. Thank you very much. I know you're not sought a but in the timeframe you were an Afghan Stan did you see the Taliban adapting changing and to our sigate capabilities. Oh that's a good one. So we had we always had Sauda's with us on mission. But I really I hate to try to talk on things that I'm not an expert on, and that's really you know, the SAUTA realm is really their own separate thing. So I don't have a good answer on that. Actually don't know on

that one. Yeah. Now, as an echo, you didn't have any like big draw to the sata's. You're like, how you guys do your thing? Yeah, surprisingly, so not really. I mean as an eighteen echo, I didn't really get into a whole lot of that because we had usually had two sada's attached. Yeah, and again we're so split. We're still split up on four different elements. Like your MS is sort of a

very very second everything. Yeah, you know, whether you're an at Echo or Charlie or Bravo, like in combat, you are an operator on an element. You know, for my specific MOLS, that pretty much was over. You know, once we left the team room, once everybody's radios or filled and you know, everything's good and everybody's got comms, you know, they other than me being dual commed and listening in on you know, also the aircraft and things like that. Like that side of it was pretty much

over. The rest of it was you know, focused on clearing operations and that side of Yeah, you know you mentioned, uh, you know that you had these combat enablers in your CECT guy and you guys had a lot of error like we've talked about on the show before, like the J tax A CCT the tach ps, like how how professional, like how good those guys are are at their jobs. Yeah, so, I mean I I am a so tech, I am tax So I can't talk on that.

But you know, for us as an SF guy, I so many sort of hats and jobs that I'm wearing, especially as you get into senior levels of it where you might be a main element leader. So for example, if I'm a main element leader and I'm in control of moving thirty you know, thirty guys, I can't also be the guy who's battle tracking everyone around me, who's who's controlling aircraft, who's telling and strikes. There's no way

that I could ever do both of those things. So typically, you know, I do know a few SF guys so tax that that did do it in combat there were their team's main guys, but for the most part, we usually had Air Force CCTs or jtax attache just because our workload's way too high to be able to handle stuff. And that's a full time job.

I mean, yeah, it's hard to do that and anything else. No, it's an MLS by itself, and you know, it's the most it's the most important MS or job on the ground as well, and it's the most dangerous one because if you messed up, you're gonna kill your own guys. So there's no room for erro on that at all. So you don't want a guy who's like controlling aircraft as his third job. Yes, that's yeah, that's not ideal. Yeah, Jackson, thank you very much.

Did you ever work with the sift, C TACH or CAG and SF? What were your thoughts? So? How often do you see? Guy? See you? Guys want to go either route? So, I mean I heard TAG, but what was the other one? The Sift? But I think they got rid of the Sift, didn't they? Oh Krif is it christ now? Yeah? Krif? I'm sure they're talking about Krift. So the Krift is in Okanawa. Yeah, so they got rid of the crift, right, They don't call them the cripts anymore, but CCO is still

the crypt. They're still doing the same functions. So I was looking at going to SCO, but uh SCO's mission said didn't really lend to combat really at all. So a lot of guys have sort of gone away from COO to the line odas. For example, on my last ODA two or three guys that were from the Crift originally, which was great for me because I've been trained by the Krift guys for so long in my career and CQUB and

stuff like that, which they are absolutely insanely good at at. I mean that is when you talk about CQUB and stuff like that in the CRYPT and Delta, those guys that's the that's the ultimate level, highest level in the world, both those organizations. So yeah, I worked with a ton of Krift guys because I had him on my team, which has been great for me because I've stolen so much of what I know from those guys. And then for Delta, Yeah, I worked with quite a few Delta guys on

different types of things. So on that twenty eighteen trip, we had a contracted advisor that was a twenty year tag Sartain major who was one of the most I'm not going to give any names, but he's one of the most awarded soldiers in American history, and he was with us and out on every operation. So working with him was was pretty wild on a one just the stories, but just that level of professionalism. You know, there's levels of

professionalism even in the soft world. You have stuck forces very high, and then you get to Delta Force and it's just insanely, insanely professional. And then also I did a not an operation, but a training event with GAGS

Surveillance Unit a few years ago, and that was really cool. I was basically I played a North Korean security guard, so there guys could surveil US through I'm not gonna say areas or anything like that because you know it's sensitive, but I got to be a part of watching them do that side of things, which was which was pretty awesome. Those guys are you know, I've got quite a few close friends and old teammates who are over in TAG now, so you know, I get a little bit of knowledge here and

there about what they're doing. But yeah, definitely, those guys are incredible for sure. Fantastic idea. If there's one thing you could take away from the US Army Special Forces or oh, if there's one thing you could add or take away from SF. What would it be, oh, add or takeaway? So it already happened for takeaway, which was when s VAB was

created. Right, So the SVAB for those who don't know, sort of came in and took the place of training the host nation armies regular army forces, which Special Forces was dealing with for a long time, which just became such a huge pain for us in trying to deal with that and then also running operations. So I actually do like that that happened something I could that we could add to Special Forces. Oh so I think, uh, you know, making s F a Tier one unit so that we had the funding

that you know, things like Ranger Battalion have. I think it's you know, kind of bs that you know, Ranger Battalion and uh no, knock on Ranger Battalion, Like those guys are awesome. I mean a third of the SF guys I know are from Ranger of Battalion. But you know, it's kind of kind of pisses us off that, you know, there's the eighteen year old Ranger guys running around that are Tier one and and you know, forty year old SF guy with ten years experience in them and Tier two

operator. But yeah, well has it changed because Rangers used to be Tier two and then stuff I thought was tier three? Did that? Did that change? Yeah, so that's change. So so Rangers of tier as far as it used to be Rangers of Tier one because they do a lot of stuff with GAG and then SF is Tier two. Okay, now that that could have changed recently or whatnot, but from the last time I remember that. I mean, I'm just like going back to like when I was in

which eight years ago. So uh so, yeah, definitely, because I do remember because it was we were in Afghanistan. It was always TAG and Ranger Battalion that we're getting one sixtieth and so that was why, right, So you and you guys got the h the tail landing, the rotor strikes. Yeah, well, I mean we got the one sixtieth sometimes, but then you would also get the Hawaiian National Guard, uh you know, air air aircraft sometimes for like high profile missions, which just seemed kind of wild.

But yeah, and then Scott thanks any tips for a twenty nine year old trying to actually learn a second language for the first time. Japanese Man Japanese. Yeah, so foreign language is rough. Chinese was really really rough. I would say you'd have to really just get immersed in it. You know, we in language school you do six months straight at eight hours a day with an instructor who was from that country, and you pretty much exclusively

speak it. The best way of seeing guys learn it is through what's called a let or they actually go live in you know, if your Japanese, you actually go live in a in Japan with a Japanese family, and guys can learn it way faster that way. But you don't have access to that. Then, however, you can immerse yourself into it, the better you know it's foreign language isn't really there's no secret to it. I think it's just the more you speak it and the more you immerse yourself in it,

the faster you're gonna pick it up. For sure. Yeah. And when you consider that any five year old in any country can speak their language, like for sure, it points to what you're saying, is that it's immersion. Yeah, it is that repetition of yeah for sure. So everybody check out Nate at Firearm or Valhalla Firearms Training on on YouTube, like subscribe right now, and also Valhalla Firearms Training on Instagram. What were you saying? D huh oh, it's in the description. Uh yeah, send them down

in the description. But also if you're listening on the podcast, check them out, subscribe, follow, join Nate. Thank you very much. Yeah, this was fun for sure. I appreciate it. Yeah. So I uh, I like, uh, you know, it's my second second podcast I've done, and it's definitely you know, so much of this stuff I haven't really talked about before other than you know, with my teammates. So

it's kind of therapeutic in a way. I think. Yeah, to uh sit down with you know, another soft guy like you and who understands and and have a free, you know, sort of safe space to talk about the same and stuff. So yeah, definitely cool experience. I appreciate it. We appreciate you, man, like we we appreciate you coming on.

We you know, like our our goal here is just recorded history on the personal level, and you know, and they're they're things like if we could go back and listen to podcasts with the guys who were on Omaha Beach or you know, you know, like you know, it's amazing and and we have a unique way of capturing history these days that they didn't have in the past, where you know, hopefully one of these days, you know, your kids, your grandkids, you know, your great grand control be able

to find this and see who you were. Yeah, and you know that's that's a cool you put it, and you know you think about it. You know all this stuff. You know, it's not just me, It's just what my oba has done. It all guys have done, you know. I mean, that's something like this that's going to disappear some day and

nobody but us is going to know. And you're right, I think, you know, as as I've gotten older and gotten away from it and just all the things I know, so many guys that I've worked with have done to to not let the American public know what our soft operators have done over the last twenty years. I think is a is a grave injustice to not only us, but also to the American people. I think they need to know sort of the heroism and the things that they have no idea we're happening.

Oh absolutely, And I would I would go so far to say not even not not even just a soft operator. It's like, you know, like anybody who were was involved in in the conflicts, anybody who was, you know, like, there are so much history there from yeah, you know, you know you you mentioned that, and you're absolutely right, I shouldn't say just soft operators. For example, I was watching Cody Alfred's podcast with Sean Ryan talking about Fallujah, and you know, I've got buddies that

were in Fallujah. They haven't really talked to me about the stories, but

listening to his story about that is absolutely even for me. It was like, God, I was, I was in some heinous stuff, but I cannot even imagine being in that, which which is while I actually know that he talked about adults force operator that killed Judah, saying in his podcast, actually, uh, you know we know the guy yeah talking about but but yeah, you know, you you listen to that and you're like, this is a nineteen year old kid that that type of thing that I couldn't I

couldn't even fathom as a you know, at my level of what that was like you know, insane. Yeah, I mean, you know, we meant you mentioned Guccia earlier, and Soft had a very Gucci war in these wars, and it's not that you know, soft and like undergo stuff. But there were there were like people out at these fobs. You know, conventional that we're out there for twelve fourteen months, like hooking and jab every single day without the AC one thirty, without the eight tens, you know,

with without all that stuff. You know. And you know, it's like I said, I've talked about this before, but like some of the people have the most respect for the Arkansas National Guards, like they're there, I don't know their cav or Bradley like whatever. Like those guys were hooking and jabing all day long in Iraq. Yeah, and you know, you

you bring up a great point. And and and when I mentioned earlier talking to you know, about my dad and some of those guys in their stories, you know, that's sort of the realization for me of like, yeah, I was in nasty firefights and things like that, but you know, I flew back to the fob and went back and called my wife and had

chao. Yeah after that, you know what I mean. So when you talk about, uh, sort of the level of comfort and the back half for the last ten years of the war when I fought, you know, I'm not naive to think that I was you know, in any of the nastiest stuff compared to what you're talking about there for sure, or fire wars. Yeah, I definitely. I definitely got to do the you know, the Gucci side of where we flew in and we had the advantage. Well me too, Yeah, Jack, we had we had all the air apps.

You got the air stacked again. We got nasty situations and we got fucked up in a lot of ways. But you know, there's which you can't really compare those, you can't come. I try not to compare myself

to anyone else. I think you can't. You can't do that because I think we're all all of us that have been warfighters and we've all gone through different absolutely absolutely, but there's still that Yeah, there's still that common that common thread that binds us all together that have been through that type of thing as well. Absolutely absolutely, Well, we deeply, deeply appreciate you.

We uh thanks for spending a Friday night with us. Yeah, everybody, check out Valhalla of Firearms Training, check out our sponsors, AARP, Veteran Report and Vitamin One, and we will see you. Is it next Friday? D Monday got injured? Yeah, Monday the fourteenth, I think we have Aaron Haleen. He's a former EOD got injured. Now he runs ultra marathons. I don't know how anybody in EOD hasn't like how there's somebody in EOD that hasn't been injured. It's like the most stressful job, I think

in the military. But so we'll see you guys Monday. Jack will be back hopefully, and Nate we will see you soon. Man, all right, you can hang out for a second. We'll say goodbye to everybody else. Thanks everybody,