"Special Projects" in Special Forces | Randy McElwee | Ep. 390

The Team House with your host Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, guys, this is episode three eighty seven of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest Randy mcawee. Randy served in fifth Special Forces Group. He is a veteran of Desert Storm. Also some interesting special project missions that he did in the Afghanistan Pakistan region, and a whole number of other things. Martial arts plays a big role in his life. He was a part of bringing combatives

Thanks for having me.

Oh, Randy, tell us a little bit. You know, I always ask everyone this, they're they're you know, the regular people who watch the show are probably sick of me. But the origin story. If you tell us a little bit about what your upbringing was like and how that took you towards military service, Okay.

So I was a kid from a real small town in West Virginia, right in the center of the state. The town had two stop lights and really didn't need either one of them, but they had to because the county seat five miles up the road only had one, so they had to just do better. I grew up my entire life there, you know, a lot of outdoor stuff, hunting, fishing, camping, and you know, played high school football. Didn't really have a vision for what was going to happen after high school.

You know.

It was a lot of cool stuff that just kind of appealed to you at that age. And I kept looking back at that book and finally I decided that, you know, I'm going to reach out to him and contact him, talk to him. And so when I did, he kind of told me that now, you know, you don't want to go in the army.

And I was like, well, I'm interested.

He goes, no, you got a job, you're doing fine, you really don't need to do it. And I was like, well, you know, I kept after him, and finally he you know, talked to me about it. I sat down with that little marketing book that he gave me and started asking him about some of the things in there. And the first thing I asked him about was the Airborne section. He's like, oh, yeah, it's jumping out of airplanes and I was like, I don't think I could do that.

Really you know up my alley love to do it.

And he goes up Airborne, you gotta do it, and I was like, damn, that's that's not not setting me up for success. And we I talked to him a little bit about maybe being an MP and uh, you know, because I thought that might be interesting, get some hand to hand combat training. But I kept coming back to the the the SF stuff. And at the time, they had just come out with the opportunity for guys to come off the street and go directly into Special Forces.

They were standing up first group at the time.

And you know, this was about nineteen eighty three.

Yeah, you were. You guys were the first generation of SF babies after Eagle Claw happened and they started, yeah, probably spinning it up.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And it wasn't the eighteen X RAY program back then. It was called Unassigned Special Forces. And so I went to the recruiter, you know, I went to the map station, got the physical, did everything I had scored.

I had a one nineteen GT.

So they were trying to give me all these administrative jobs and all these things I didn't want. And my brother in law had been an infantryman in Vietnam, and he.

Told me, you know, he tried to talk me out of it, tried to talk me into going the Air Force.

And of course I would listen to him, and I actually worked with him on the construction job.

He's the one that got me the job.

He was kind of one of the foremen, and so you know, I told him, hey, I'm really sad I want to go into special Forces, and he said, you know, did everything to talk me out of it. Obviously I wasn't listening like most kids that age, and so he said, well, you know there's a Special Forces National Guard Group.

Why don't you do that?

You know you can, you'll be home, you'll go training, you know, you'll get out. And of course I didn't listen.

To that either.

So you know, all that great advice from somebody who knew something, and I said, no, no, I want to be all in, all out special forces, active duty, you know want.

I want the whole thing.

And you know, he also told me, well, if you're going to the recruiter, you know, make sure you get exactly what you want and it's in writing, because they will lie to you. They will, you know, they're not going to give you what they say. They're used car salesman. And when I got there, it was exactly liked that they you know, tried to pawn me off on whatever. These positions were that they needed to fill because my GT was high enough for him. But none of those

He'd come back and.

You, well, I can get you airborne to Italy, you know, a great assignment, and then you can volunteer for Special Forces. And I was like, no, it's got to be Special Forces in writing. And then he came back and said, well, you know, I can get you into uh, you know, the Ranger Battalion, and then you can volunteer from there and go to Special Forces. And I was like, no, no, I'm going I want to go to Special Forces. And so he finally said, yeah, okay, I got a couple

You know.

We asked him like, well, man, what happened? How'd you get so big? And he said, well, you know, I went to the Ranger battalion and I'm a radio guy there and I carry all these radios that are really heavy, and you know, so that stuck in my head. I don't want to be a radio guy. The radios are really heavy. So I turned that down. And he came back and he said, well, you know, you could be

In my mind, band aids were light.

I had that stupid young mentality that didn't realize one hundred pounds of anything is still one hundred pounds, and it had no idea that, you know, the medic carries as much or sometimes more than the como guy, and so I signed up for that and said, okay, put me in as a medic. And then I went to basic training at Fort Leanderwood, Missouri, and left there to go to Fort sam Houston.

For the combat Medic course.

At the time, it was the ninety one Bravo course, and you know, the I'd only been on a plane, like I think I'd flown three times, maybe four. And then they bust us down to San Antonio, Texas. And i'd been there in the winter in Fort Leanderwood, Missouri, got my first case of like mild frostbite there on

Towards the end of it, everybody got.

Their orders for their first duty station and there were a few of us there. I think there were probably five or six of us that were unassigned special Forces and a couple guys that were unassigned Ranger and a lot of us got these orders that said, you know, and I remember mine said that they were going to send me to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. It said nothing about airborne school, nothing about any of the other stuff I was promised. And so we went to the cat

Uh.

They actually some of them accepted the Hawaii assignment, and then the other set came in and it said, uh, Airborne Italy. And so some of those guys. Some of the other guys just took the airborne assignment to Italy and they were told the same thing, Well, you can volunteer.

Once you get done with airborne school. But we never saw those guys again. And then.

So we said, hey, listen, you know, listen, we want, we need our orders.

They're not correct.

So they held us over for an entire cycle at Fort sam Houston, which wasn't a bad deal.

You know.

We we were frocked as drill corporals and made like additional cadre to supplement the cadre there, which meant we we mainly did CQ, charge of quarters duty at the desk a couple of nights a week, and then we ran the PT for what they called school for soldiers. Anytime people messed up during the week, they held them over on Saturday and we ran PT for him and so we got to, you know, push him pretty hard physically.

Wow. So you get to Benning do airborne and then it's a brag. And when you get to brag, did they do I mean s fas I don't think existed yet right until like no, Examn. What was it like for you getting into SF and going through that process?

Yeah, so it was.

It was interesting because first and foremost I had no clue about the military whatsoever. Because this, you know, going to Fort Bragg was really like gonna be my first real duty station, and so you know, I I got my orders, I went to Fayetteville and all my orders it had it set up to where I could take thirty days leave.

Well I read that as I had to take thirty days leave.

So, you know, I was over there, and at the time, I had cousins and uncles that lived in Fayetteville because they had been in the military, and so you know, I spent some time with them, and I was looking at my orders after I'd been there a couple of weeks because I was bored, and you know, I said, well, you know, I was talked to one of my cousins and he said, well, you know, you can always just go by and check it out. So I went by to check things out to see, well, hey, you know,

You know, we did the PT test.

We did the swim test, we did the RUCK, so everything was just kind of checking the block to make sure you met the minimum qualifications, and you know, we did that and basically we were doing it like all week, and we did it for a couple of weeks.

In a row.

So I took a lot of swim tests and there was always PT test, swim test, twelve mile ruck. So they would do it like back to back to back, and you know, we guys out and then you would wait for your class. And while you were waiting in pre phase, they had this informal selection process that the.

CADRET was running.

And the way it worked is they divided you up into elements and you went to these different training events and it would start on a you go on a Monday and you'd either go to Basic Skills where you you know, went over not tying, repelling, you know, a few other things like that. The other section was patrolling, so you go out, you'd learn patrolling. They would you know, educate.

You on that.

And then the other one was you go over survival skills. You know, I didn't really do anything for them, but you went through the classes, learned some of the things, and then they had a land nav portion where you would practice land nav but it was on Fort Bragg and you know, they would start you off with just a basic you know, compass course, make sure you understood how to operate things.

But they would rotate you through these.

You would start on Monday and then you would go for a week and then over the weekend they would usually rotate you out. But they had a kind of an interesting process where they did it. Sometimes is they would just call you in and a lot of time it was in the middle of the night. They would have you grab all your stuff line up in front of one of the buildings. You'd come in and sit down in front of a desk and the guy would

They weren't there anymore. You didn't see them, and.

You're like, oh, man, I guess I guess those guys quit. And so you would go through the week, do your stuff, a lot of it, you know, would be out in the field, depending on which section you're working on, and then come Friday morning, you'd be back in getting breakfast at the mess hall and then you'd see the guys and you're like, hey, I thought you quit, and they're like, no, we were doing this phase that phase, and so you know,

Today, I want to tell you guys about quality of stem cells. Maybe all of you, most of you have experienced what it's like to get older and as you age, you don't heal quite as fast as you used to. You don't recover as fast as you used to, and it can feel like your body is not putting out as you expected to. It can feel like the dial has been turned down one notch. You feel like, you know, it's similar to the same feeling it's getting sick, right, So you feel that you know you're not really where

And it was all voluntary for you to give up and to quit doing that, and then once they finished that portion, you would wait for your class to come up and you would go to Camp McCall. Well, when they originally they took my group and we went out to Camp McCall and I got out there and I was out there maybe a day or so we had really just in process, and they called out, you know, okay, let's have all the eighteen problems over here, let's have

And so I was like, well, I had no idea what happened.

I got back to the uh, you know, the staff office where the tax were on Fort Bragg in the Coscom area.

They looked around talking.

I guess somewhere on my paperwork it had said that I was a weapons guy, and I was like, no, I'm a ninety one problem. I'm a medic. And so they're like, well, you're not supposed to be out there. They've they've shifted the course and now everybody's going to all the medics are going to go to Fort sam first and make sure they can pass before where they bother to send him to, you know, out to Phase one.

And I was like okay.

So I was kind of stuck waiting around, and in that time they put us on different details, and you know, we had some good ones. We had one to where we actually had one of the other medics, a guy named Dan Rodgers, had owned a martial arts school in Fayetteville and was a really accomplished martial arts instructor. So they didn't have anything to do with us for one week, so they kind of turned us over to him and let him train us a little bit, so we got

While you're waiting.

And then one of the most interesting things for me as I got stuck on a detail because I was one of the guys that my.

Security clearance had already come through. And so we had a guy come over, you know, older looking guy, long.

Gray hair, big mustache, glasses, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, and uh, you know, they told they told us, I think there was like four or five of us, like, okay, you're gonna go with him, And.

So we went with the guy.

We went over to the other side of post and you know, he had a little van that he put us in and he's like, hold on, wait here. He got out, came back and he handed out clipboards and said, make sure you're reading signed these statements. And so we were reading the statements and they were non disclosure statements about how we wouldn't talk about anything we saw, we

Any of you guys know how to operate a loader?

And the guy who's looked around, I said, I I know a little bit because you know, I had worked construction. And he goes, okay, jump on it and knock that building down, and and I was like, uh, you're sure. He goes, yeah, just do it. He goes, I'll be back, and he would leave us and we would go knock this, you know, I would knock the building down, we'd clean it up. He'd come back around lunchtime with some old sea rats and give us something to eat, give us the next thing to do. But we got to see

You know.

He took us over to eat in the Buttoner Road mess hall that used to be the old Delta dining facility, and uh, you know, so we worked for him for I think about a month and a half, maybe doing different things cleaning up stuff. We saw a few you know, cool training extra sizes here and there, but really interesting to work with him and kind of be mentored with that free and easy style.

Yeah yeah, I mean yeah. I picture the guy coming walking up wearing his cowboy boots and his flannel shirt.

That's him. Absolutely yeah.

And we thought he was just some who retired guy, but you know, he was still with the main guys running all the training and it's pretty cool.

And Walt Hue made if I recall correctly, he was killed in Somalia in ninety three.

I don't think he was.

I think he if I remember correctly, I believe he died later. He actually died of cancer.

Did he? Who am I confusing him with then? But we'll come back to that, And I apologize if my fast off.

In fact, I think he had already, you know, passed before ninety three.

Me let me see, since we're here and we can edit this a little bit if we need to, let me let me look it up to make sure, because I would feel bad if I got that wrong.

Okay, and I'm certainly not sure, but I believe he died of cancer.

Is the person I'm thinking of? What it was. It was a mine. He was oga guys and they were driving around and ran over a mine. That would be deeks okay, okay, certain des.

From fifth Group and that was in Somalia.

Yeah, let's see here, going down, going down. No, this Shoemate retired in nineteen eighty two and continued to serve and Delta as a civilian until his death in nineteen ninety three. So it was that timeframe, but it doesn't say what what killed him.

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm appreciure he died of cancer.

Let's see here, found something else on him? Yes, you're yes, okay, I got it here. Yeah he worked, okay, Yeah, so he worked as from nine, retired in nineteen eighty two, continued to work as a civilian safety officer on Range nineteen until his death.

Yeah, in nineteen ninety that's where he worked.

Yeah. Yeah, nineteen ninety three he passed away of cancer. Yeah, so thank you for correcting me. So you spent almost twenty years in Fifth Group once you finished the Q course, which is pretty cool in of itself, But tell us about kind of you know, I actually we haven't even really gotten into talked about the Q course at all. Is there any funny stories about your your time, like when you got to the Q course that you want to tell before we get to fifth group?

I think maybe I hope the Statute of limitations on most of them, those run out, but uh the uh, I'm trying to think if there's any that are are are you know, obviously I don't have to worry about my political career, so those will be okay, but uh there. You know, it was kind of a unique experience as I'm sure the the Q courses for everybody I know being a medic we were fortunate enough to be out at Fort sam Houston.

And you know, I always hated it for the guys once they.

Moved the medic course to brag because it's not the same, you know, you in Fort Sam Houston. You you're out there, You're gonna party all night every night and then wander in just in time for PT. And we had some of the hardest PT I think I've had in in s F was during the medic course. And uh, you know, we had a a former scuba guy out there named Pat Mahoney that uh you know from tenth group that pushed us pretty hard with the PT.

Yeah, sure, I know, mahoney, Yeah.

Yeah, he's he's still around.

Uh, I see him on Facebook every once in a while, but uh, you know, he was was one of the guys that kind of pushed pushed us through there. And the PT was was pretty rough. The academic stuff was you know, and I'm sure it still is. Was was really tough. But what made it interesting was the the guys.

And for me, it was the replacement for my college years.

So I was, you know, running a mont going out with the guys and I actually didn't drink until they got in the Army and then uh got.

To San Antonio.

That's where I started, you know, embracing my Irish heritage and kind of giving it a run.

And so once we.

Got there, I'd literally almost failed out because I partied too much. But the only thing that kept me in is there are a lot of great guys that were there that you know, I rode their coat tails, and that was kind of my story through all of the Q courses. There were a couple of guys from Ranger Battalion that helped me during phase one and kind of you know, got me through the patrolling and those those skills that obviously I had no experience, as you know,

And tell us about getting to fifth Group and sort of what year that was and what it was like at that time.

Yeah, so initially, and you and I talked about this just before the podcast is I didn't want to go to fifth Group. In fact, I don't know of anybody at the time back in the day that wanted to go to fifth Group. Fifth Group was on Fort Bragg and at the time, I think about all they ever did was a post clean up detail, and so I actually had taken like three years of Spanish in high school, and so you know, I was this white kid that

They had all the cool stuff going on.

They were the place to be, and so I went over there, talked to him, gave him my host spiel in Spanish. You know, he was like, all, this is great. You know, we actually got a white guy that speaks Spanish. We'd love to have you over here. Let me get your social Security number. He got all my information, said yeah, we're gonna try to get you some orders, get you a Seventh Group. And then you know, I'm standing out there when we all got our orders and ninety percent of us went to Fifth Group.

Just you know, that's just how it was.

And Fifth Group was I think the last choice on my list at the time, but it actually turned out to be like probably the best experience ever for me. I went over to the other side of the post. They were over there off of Buttoner Road and the old World War two Barrick Still and initially I got assigned to first Battalion, a fifth Special Forces Group. I signed in, and you know, the really cool thing about it is when I showed up, like all of these guys that were sart Majors and.

A lot of them that were Team Startans.

Were these senior guys that had been to Vietnam. Some of the rest of them had been and done tours in Iran. And there even used to be stories about how some of them had second wives and families, you know,

Were like, well, how do you know that.

I'm like, well, now I hear about that all the time, and all I had, you know, I didn't know how to actually implement a lot of it. I hadn't done it, but I'd heard these guys talk about it. I had heard their experience, and everything that I was taught was on a different level.

I just didn't really know how to apply it yet.

And it kind of got me, you know, clued in that I need to take things a lot more seriously and start really figuring out what it means to be a professional. And so that kind of worked out for me. And at one point I used to carry a list in my pocket, like when I first got there, and my list was why I'm not going to re enlist. It was all the reasons about you know, how I'm

I didn't know what I was doing.

I had no business getting to do the super cool stuff yet, and but you know, I wanted it like every other young kid that showed up. And I finally, you know, I had my list and the star major. It was getting close to time to relist and the sar major you know, would pull you in and you don't even have the reenlistment talk with you. And I told him, no, I'm not reenlisted. I'm not doing this. And you know, he asked me one time, He's like, well why not? And I pulled out my list and

And what he didn't know is that when I was in.

High school I risked motocross, so I had some experience with the bikes, and so they let me get on the bikes and run around, and you know, as it turned out, I could do it pretty well. And for the first time since I'd been in the Army, I had a great time. I started to enjoying what I was doing, and the guys out there were really serious about training. Training was you know it was we would go out on you know, usually on Monday morning, stay out all week. We would train a lot of night training.

And then so while I was in.

Language school, I was taking night classes and having an English class at night, and I wound up being the distinguished Honor graduate from the Persian Parsi class, and which worked out real well later because you know, it got me set up to be an interpreter for a classified mission overseas with Fifth Group. But once I got through language school and that stabilized me long enough for them to go ahead and move first Battalion and you know,

This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to. The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where ghost Bed can help. It's a family run company founded by a team with over twenty years of mattress making expertise. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's durable, comfortable, and engineered to

Yeah, they had the World War two barracks that were right beside our area, but then they had some newer ones that we had accepted. And the big controversy when we got there was there was an area off on one side of post that was the cab scout area, and everybody was really upset that we didn't take that area. It was kind of off by itself. It was, you know, out where range roads started. It was a really nice setup,

So, I mean, but the time frame you're there, the Soviets are still in Afghanistan.

Right, Yeah, yes, yeah, they were, and a lot of the things that were going on were kind of directed towards supporting the Afghan munja Haden against the Soviets and trying to continue to push them out.

Were you guys part of helping the like train and field them with the weapons that we were delivering the Pakistan.

So that operation wasn't directly with that, but there were some other things going on that were coordinated through other government agencies that were focused primarily on that, and we

Well, we didn't see them initially.

We just saw the people throwing rocks, so we thought it was directed at us, that they had figured out, you know, a van full of white guys down there, and they were going to overrun us. And you know, truthfully, is probably one of the more terrifying experiences I had in the military.

But it worked out, and.

The riot police actually moved across in front of us, hit them with some tear gas and you know, some shields, and gave them some wooden shampoo and kind of settled things down, and then we eventually got past the traffic jam and moved on out. But you know, that was just one of the many things that happened while we were on that deployment. And during one incident while we were there, we were about and what happened on a Friday when we kind of had a day off because that was the Holy Day.

But myself and I think one of the.

Other guys we were actually in like a local car that belonged to one of the to uh, one of the guys that worked for the consulate the American Club, and you know, we never found out, but we're pretty sure he was one of the other government agency individuals and the you know, because we got to know him

And then it was followed by screaming. So I stepped out into the.

Hallway, and you know, the guy came out of the room down the hall with his hand what was left of it, and it was squirting blood about ten feet hitting me in the chest.

And you know, so I stepped back in my room.

I grabbed the gauze and put it on his hand and kind of wrapped it up.

But what had happened is he he had been.

On the first rotation of this and then came back into the second rotation on this Operation Salam operation. So

And luckily his roommate you know, wasn't seriously injured. We didn't know that.

At the time because you know, there was blood and a lot of stuff everywhere. But you know, the the guy that lost his hands, Jeff Horton, you know, we treated him, packaged him up, and then I handed him off to the other medic who transported him to the hospital. And I started checking out the guy who had the neck injury, which turned out to be you know, perfectly benign. I mean, luckily for him, it was about an inch off to the outside and missed his karate and his

This is also kind of like for you, I guess, your real first taste of like the SF mission.

Yeah.

I had gone on one other like short mission to the to the Gulf in bob Rain as a as a Medican a Persian speaker. I had gotten attached to like a group of seals. They were doing this mission at the time called Prime Chance, where they were seizing Iranian boats that were cruising through the Straight of Horn moves. I didn't really do much there, but you know, it was cool to go along and be there for a few weeks, hang out with the seals and you know,

Yeah, and how what was sort of your perception of how that UW campaign was going on at that time. Did you have some inkling that the Soviets were on the brink of defeat or was it still very uncertain?

I think it was. It was not quite fifty to fifty at that point. I think everybody was fairly sure that they were on a downward spiral. I don't think anybody knew exactly, you know, to what degree, but I think everybody was fairly certain that the efforts that were being directed against the Soviets were having a pretty intense effect, and that it was, you know, it was going to take its toll eventually. It was some unique insight into

And when you got home from this, you got put on a special projects team, right.

Yeah, So when I got back, I actually interviewed and and the one thing I know, all the groups have their own special projects sections, but when I was in fifth Group, they had three main special projects teams, and that was before the move up to Campbell. They had one that was known as Grizzly Hitch that that did a particular mission. Then there was another one that was a combined team that was in second Italian, and then there was an additional one that was also assigned a

What you know, as far as what you're able to say, I mean, what was a special project's ODA back in those days?

So back in those days, it was an ODA that was you know, it belonged on paper to fifth Group, but it answered for tactical control and operational control to another organization. And it you know, depending on which special project it was, it can vary on exactly who they came under. Some of them I think came under so so calm uh, you know, it just depends on how

And what what did you guys end up doing. You said you were oriented towards the aft Pack region.

Again, so the the mission was to to kind of supplement and work with some other government agencies to support that overall mission.

Was this uh part of like the the Stinger missiles and training up those guys.

Yes, yeah, yes, As a matter of fact, one of the things I did once I got to that team is I went and became Stiger missile qualified.

We had Bass Basle on the show talking about that a ways back. You did you know him?

I think I know who he is. I don't personally know him.

He would have been a sad guy, ground branch guy at the time. Him and another guy, I believe they were like they set up a lot of the Stinger missile training in Pakistan.

Right, Yeah, yeah, it was. It was an interesting thing.

And then I really wasn't on there too long before the Gulf War kicked off, and at the time it was kind of interesting because all of those three teams were assigned to second Battalion of fifth Group, and then

Straight up all out war. Everybody wanted to do it.

And so we deployed with third Battalion, uh, you know, as just one of the regular odias. But as right before we deployed, they split up our team a little bit because we had all these senior guys that had a lot of experience, and so they split up some guys. I was the newest guy, you know, assigned to the team, so I was one of the first guys to get plucked and sent to this brand new ODA where I didn't know anybody, and and the majority of the guys

It wasn't a good feeling.

But you guys got deployed for nine months for the Gulf War, right.

Yeah, I was over there for nine months. I actually stayed.

The team was there I think for eight I stayed an extra month because they needed a volunteer to stay and do some stuff, and at the time, you know, I had nothing better to do, so so I stayed.

And you you guys were working with the Saudis and there I recalled there's a name for this, I can't remember it, but it was the fifth group augmentation teams with the different Arab armies and the coalition. Do you recall.

Yeah, they were called CAST teams Close air support teams.

Yeah, thank you, So you tell us about it.

We were we were attached to the Saudis and we were at the Triborder area in an area called Hafer Alba Team, which was this big dry river or dry waddy bed that was considered to be a potential high avenue for a counter invasion or for an attack from the Iraqis with tanks.

And so what were you doing out there for that eight nine months?

So initially we were training the Saudis, which were less than highly motivated. They were not your dynamic soldiers at all, but you know, we were trying to convince them and build rapport with them. It was a classic sf UW

But at the time we also received a.

Couple of cross border reconnaissance missions and a couple other taskings to do some things along the border, a couple of things to serve as kind of a quick reaction and reinforcement force, especially you know, during a couple of the battle small battles that happened, so you know, we we were kind of just jacks of all trade for the most part. They're really trying to figure out what to do with this, I think for the most part.

And interesting enough though, is you know we we were up there.

With them, and then we packed up a couple times to go out and pull reconnaissance at night on this this Wadi Albatine to make sure there wasn't an invasion or a counter invasion. And right before we received another order to do it, it was probably about the fourth time we'd done this to load up and go observe and it was just us the team, and it was

They were all gone. They had all fled back behind our company. You know.

We we saw all their equipment left, you know, around through there. There was like one of them left, like a whole supply whatever their supply company was.

So there was all this equipment there.

We were up there, you know, k Martin threw it picking out some new gear, and eventually we saw one of their officers who had been sent up there to survey the area to find out, you know, kind of what was happening. And we saw We're like, hey, what's going on, you know, and we're like, hey, the war started. And he's all he could do was shake his head. He was miserable, and he's like, oh, no good, no good. We're like, no, this is good. We're gonna be done.

Were you ever able to rally those guys and get them back up on position.

They came back like right after that. The next day.

They you know, we were able to convince him to come back up and you know, set everything back up again.

I think just because.

They they weren't clued into the air attack, and I think initially when it happened, they weren't sure they were our planes. We had a lot of issues with them the whole time we're along the border, especially once the air war started, like right after that, because you know, they had anti aircraft tracks that they were using, and sometimes they would lock onto the A tens with them, and you know, we were telling them, hey, don't do that,

War for us. We're just up here getting paid.

So it was kind of sad really to try to get them motivated to you know, joined in on all the things that needed to happen.

So you guys were not able to like be one are the prongs going into a raq with the Saudi National Gual.

Actually, actually we were really which is probably the worst part, is this same group of folks. I mean, we nurtured them for months and finally got them to where they were feeling a little more motivated. And then whenever we launched the ground invasion, we headed out with these guys and went to breach the minefield. The interesting part about it is, and I got a great picture of this somewhere, is when it came time to breach the minefield, it was just, you know, it was in the early evening

We need to we need to keep moving through the minefield.

And so once we moved through the minefield, we had an objective to attack the former like Kuwaiti Base. I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it had been overtaken by the Iraqis and now it was held by Iraqi soldiers and it was on the way to Kuwait City. So we arrived there with the Saudis just before dark, and being the motivated guys that they were, they all stopped and said, hey,

We had like all the armament and tons of stuff.

I mean, I remember having I think we had three Stinger missiles per vehicle. We had probably eight eighty fours, a couple of boxes of grenades, all the ammo we could carry, and that was for each vehicle.

Two of them had fifty cows.

One of them had a mark nineteen on it, so we were gunned up pretty good, but you know, there was still only nine of us to go in there and you know, try to try to free them out of.

Being pinned down inside the city.

So we we rammed the gate with the one one three, went in, you know, got to the air and got into a firefight with some folks that then ran into a mosque. And at the time, I was on the fifty Cow because I was one of the few guys that knew how to operate the fifty Cow, and each vehicle had a como guy or somebody operating the radio that could call casts, and then somebody that was driving it, and so you know, I had a como guy in

Of ripped through the walls with the fifty Cow.

After a you know, good exchange with him, we had a big number of guys surrendered to us. They came out waving a bed sheet in a line, and uh, you know, more guys than nine guys could handle.

We had.

There were hundreds of them, and so we we got that figured out and turned them over to somebody else, and then from there we received orders to move on in towards Kuwait City. Stopped on the outside outskirts of Kuwait City for the night, and then rallied into the evasion and the operations in the city.

After that, Wow, what was it like going into the city.

Always madness, you know, because the road had been just annihilated with all the tanks, all the vehicles that were trying to flee the city. The atens and the other aircraft had just wiped them out and they were you know, clogged up and just you know, like just devastated. And we saw several of them along the way that we ran into tanks and some of their tanks had been

Yeah, I think with the with the burying of the equipment, I think that might have been some sort of miscommunication or something with army syops that they it was supposed to be like lay down your arms, but the way it transmitted was like bury bury your arms. It was something something similar to that.

Yeah, I have a lot of the I collected some of the little leaflets that they dropped, you know, as we went through, and I've got them in an album at home because there's some interesting keepsakes on and we remember like watching them every evening, uh, you know, for a while during the war, they would send the B fifty two's and they would bomb them every night at

Yeah, I mean, unless it's like the Republican Guard, they're not really interested in dying for Saddam. I don't think.

Yeah, they really weren't.

And it was kind of a it was pretty sad story for most of them because you know, they were kind of stuck in the middle. They were basically told if you if you run away, we'll shoot you and then you know, if you run too fast towards us, you might shoot them, because you know, it's hard to tell. It wasn't a real good win win situation.

For him and for your element. Did you guys have like a phase line that you were supposed to move up to in Kuwait City?

We did, I want to say, I don't remember for sure, but I think it was like six Ring Road.

Was there.

One limit of advance we were supposed to reach by the end of the morning of that first day, or I guess it'd be the morning of the next day.

But because our.

First objective was to retake that military complex and then after that we got the follow on mission to move on into Kuwait City and I think it was to stop at six Ring Road, but I don't remember for sure.

It's been a long time.

So you guys didn't see the Highway of Death and all that kind of stuff.

Uh, we saw some of it, because once we moved up into positions, some of us were pulled out to you know, to do different things, and then they started retasking us to work on missions. Some of the guys got moved over to the like the Equestrian Club. There were several other follow on missions that we were kind of tasked to do to start to regroup once the city was retaken or the country was retaken, they just

And what was the next thing for you? Like you mentioned you had volunteered to stay an additional month.

So I'm trying to remember exactly what we did after that. I mean, nothing, nothing exciting happened after that. It was a lot of like routine boring, you know, security, moving stuff that are to the rear. Yeah, it was really

And so I mean, this is this is your big war experience after training for it for years and years, And what was it like coming back home from Desert Storm?

It was I mean it was really interesting because you know, we we had the benefit of getting all the praise that the Vietnam guys should have gotten. Yeah, and everybody, you know, was was finally aware of how the country had acted, and so there was a lot of guilt, I think, and as a result, people maybe over compensated

I didn't I didn't do any of that. I just came back.

There was a big, you know, welcome thing at the airfield at Fort Campbell when we got back, and then I got back, turned in my weapon and went on thirty days leave. That was the uh you know, the thing at the time is to take some leave. And it was you know, like I said, I'd moved over there to like a brand new team. Didn't know that a lot of the guys, most of them are brand new.

Learned a lot from him.

So I'd had all this great leadership and then I got stuck with this.

That this guy that's so cool. I wrote about Greg Daily in my book, Yeah yeah, about his involvement in blue Light. Now I recently talked to his son a little bit. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, cool. We're super cool guy.

Very cool and you know, very laid back, you know, like kind of a cool surfer dude, and just really smart as far as s f and an inspiring leader to really kind of, you know, teach you a lot. I wish I'd have paid more attention and really understood the same thing as kind of working with Walt Shoe made.

I didn't know what I had.

But you know, once you you go to the other side of it and you get somebody who's a week leader after having some strong leaders, then you recognize all those traits and you really start to have a clue about you know, the benefits you had earlier.

So the next thing for you. You got put on a desert mobility team.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was lucky enough that one of the guys who who had been on the Pakistan trip with me, uh had taken the desert mobility team in that company that I was in, in third Battalion, and so he knew who I was, and he had been there, you know when the guy blew his hand off, and you know, we were there the whole time for that six months.

So he got me moved over to his team.

He knew I had done the Beehind vendor stuff in the desert, and then I had some background with the motorcycles and and the vehicles, and so he you know, got me on that team and kind of really turned things around for me. A guy named Dave Brace, great team sergeant, and you know, we we had a probably one of the best teams I think I've ever been

And you guys had all this experience doing it from desert storm.

Yeah, we did.

We and most of the guys, you know, we had a like one or two guys that were new that had missed Desert Storm. But for the most part, you know, the guys all had solid backgrounds. And then the interesting part is not long after that, we actually got deployed to Pakistan again to do a joint training mission with the Pakistani Special Forces, which was another great trip, and since I'd had that time in Pakistan, you know, that kind of really set me up well for success to.

Do well with that with the SSG.

Yes, the SSG.

Special was Chris Miller with you guys.

Chris Miller. I think maybe he was. He wasn't on my team. I'm trying to remember if he was there for sure. I didn't work directly with him, so I don't remember if he was there or not.

Yeah, it might have been like the team before or the team after or something like that.

Could have been. We went.

We actually went twice, so I went on two of those deployments with the say SSG to do joint operations with them.

What was that like? Working with them?

It was really cool.

They They have this unique compound that's on the top of this mountain called Charat and it's they were actually initially founded by some of our special Forces from I think it was from tenth Group back in the fifties, and so they are they very much treated us like they're founding fathers, big brothers. There was a lot of respect there, a lot of you know, like admiration. When we were going over there, they actually renovated a complete barracks complex for us to stay in, made sure we

The hot water heater.

And I think one day one of the guys you know, inadvertently came out of there and the water was a little cold because it hadn't got fired up yet, and he you know, shook and shivered and said who. And one of the Pakistani officers went around and grabbed the kid and started beating him with a riding crop.

You know.

We were like, hey, hey, it's okay, and he was, you know, tell him, hey, you know these are I guess, whatever you do, don't don't let the water be cold. And from then on, the water would like scald you because then you know, he had gotten some serious discipline over it. But it was interesting because they had this this whole cliff sheer cliff wall that has all these carved symbols in it from all the British units that

And then we moved to an area and we had to do a.

They were insistent for some reason on doing a river crossing, and so you know with this glacier water, you know, we spent a lot of time trying to talk them into there's a bridge right over there, we can see it, let's do that. We'll use security and then hit the objective. But they were they were hell bent on having that river crossing for whatever reason. It was one of their

Yeah. I mean that's pretty hardcore, moving through the snow, jumping in, crossing the river, freezing water. Yeah.

Yeah, to this this day, I don't I don't like the cold. It gets too cold here in Georgia for me. I'm gonna have to move south, I think, because.

Yeah, I stopped running out doors in like November. I'm like, nah, I'm not in ranger school anymore. I'm not doing this. I So after this, you're you get promoted to team sergeant.

So so before I get promoted, I actually came back from one of these trips, and I came down on orders for Civil Affairs, ninety six Civil Affairs at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, because I've been on a a protected status from my time on the Special Project Team that so I couldn't be I couldn't be moved or PCSD. And so I got these orders because now I was off that team, my time was up, and they were going to send me to ninety six Civil Affairs as a

I tried to go to.

You know, to Supartech or to even you know, one of the be one of the medical instructors at Fort Bragg. I tried everything I could think of, and I was running out of options, and I came across this assignment

You know?

And he goes, can you do six? I was like, hell, I can do ten. You know I can handle. He goes, well, what about rock March. I was like, oh, yeah, I can rock March. He goes, well, can you you know, can you run? I was like well, so, so I'm like how much we talk and he's like five miles and forty minutes. It's like, yeah, I can do that. And so they set me up to go to to ROPE, the Ranger Orientation program, and basically it was selection for

So you you went to ROPE, so you actually became a ranger.

Oh, it absolutely became a ranger.

So the whole time we were there, we wore black berets because that was what the uniform was at the time, had high and tights.

Every Monday, just like all the other Rangers or the Rangers roll.

We were one hundred percent assigned and part of the Ranger Battalion. We did every every you know, qualification, certification, every task that all the other rangers had to do. We had to do it, and we had to do it better.

Yeah that's awesome. Yeah, it's not something just some tdy assignment that you went and go chill out somewhere. Yeah, the real thing.

It was not a chill out assignment.

What was that like? Going from like your whole career up until this point had been Special Forces, you know, long hair, slightly out of regulation, mustaches, you know, all of that, and and working in an unconventional environment a lot of times, and now going to the Super Regimental Regiment.

Oh yeah, so I was like a surfer kid in a Catholic school, you know, I was going down there. You know, everything's pretty laid back in SF. It's like, hey, how you're doing everything down there? Is Rangers lead the way. And you know there used to be this walkway that went from the battalion headquarters up to the medical section, which is where I worked. I was the NCIC for third Range of Battalian's Medical Section, and I would have to make that walk a couple of times every day

And you know, we would walk.

Down through there and for a while, you know, I was like, hey, how's it going, and they're like rangers lead away.

You know.

Everything was real, super ultra serious the whole time. So it was a big adjustment, you know, for there. And the worst part was these there had been two other guys in the position there before me, and one of them, the very first guy, had gotten in trouble and I think he was out of third group. I don't remember for sure. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. I only heard about him. I never

For some reason.

And then we had the guy after him who found out about the opening and came over and kind of slid in the position because he was already on post at Fort Benning for school in Americas, and his whole reason for coming over is he wanted to get this special assignment and try to make E eight. And he couldn't pass the PT test. He couldn't do the rough march, he couldn't do the pull ups, you know, because he was supposed to pass the fitness tests and go to

I just haven't been caught yet.

And you know, so I had to give it back to him pretty good And luckily, the thing that really kind of saved me there is I'd had some background in developing the combatives program at Fifth Group, and so we had a couple of events that happened to where there was some combatives, and so I actually had to, you know, put some throw down on a couple of guys to actually prove that I wasn't the this guy who couldn't do pull ups and I wasn't this criminal.

You know, that was unprofessional.

So the guys before me had left this really unprofessional taste in their mouth, and they don't exactly love SF guys anyway.

They don't you know, they.

Don't trust this. They think we're unprofessional. And these guys did nothing but prove that. So the whole time I got there, initially, I was busy trying to earn my reputation with them. They had no respect for me. They didn't think much of me. I was just another SF loser. And the only thing that turned it around for me is I went to another one of those meetings and I kept seeing this thing on the schedule that said Medex,

You guys got some helicopters. I was wondering, we'd really.

Like to do some training with you, maybe train some of your guys on you know, some of our stuff. We'd like to work with you, you know, what what can we do? And the fact that I went there in person and talked to the guy, the guy was really open to it. And so you know, I got this National Guard helicopter unit and I did the same thing with the METAVAC unit that said hey, you know, we're training the medics.

We'd like to work with you guys.

And so then the the other piece was we didn't have a training area, and same thing happened. I asked, well, where can we do a training area? You know, what can we use? And they have an area there called mckinnam Mountain Site, which is a really excellent training facility. And you know, I came up with the concept that what we would do is kind of do a take on you know, a follow up from the incident with Blackhawk down to where urban environment. You've got people trapped

And so.

I found out that one of the officer training schools on post had mckinnam Ountain site for the time we were trying to do.

And so same thing, you.

Know, we called up asked for CO usage and like no, you know, so I went over in person again, got my little gray Ranger pickup truck, drove over, said hey, I'm sorry mcawee.

You know, we'd like to work with you guys.

Maybe we could exchange some training, train you guys, you know on some tactics or something. You know, what can we do to work out CO usage on this mckennam ount site that you have. And they're like, oh, yeah, no problem. So they signed off for co usage for US, and then about a week later they actually fell out and just gave it to US for I don't know what changed in their schedule, but they didn't need the area.

So I spent my.

Whole week doing the dog and pony show with the visitors folder walking them all through the scenarios. But after that, I finally earned enough respect from the guys at the Ranger would tie in because of the way I organized the training event. And the bottom line is that the

I worked with them as the liaison.

And then after that for all the joint rotations and exercises, they would request me to be the liaison.

You know, I was I had the SF experience.

I was a little bit older than a lot of the guys that they might normally interface with, and so they kind of treated me pretty well and would request me to do that. So it turned out to be a pretty good deal, you know, during those things.

One thing I'd like to ask you and the sense I get from talking to guys, particularly the seventies into the eighties and in your case in the nineties, that back in the day before SF became a branch, back before the Ranger regiment got very formalized and SF got very formalized and use of SoC and so common everything that back in the older days, it was a little bit more possible for someone to bounce between the Rangers and SF throughout their career. What do you think about

So, you know what, it's one of those things that's that's real experience. Experience being what you get when you get something you don't necessarily ask for. And now I went there, you know, to be honest, for the wrong reasons. I went there to get out of going to civil affairs.

I never saw it as a problem.

But you know, the truth is, in the beginning it was because I didn't have the experience that I should have, uh to kind of start things. But it also gives an interesting blend of perspective, right because I thought outside the box because I'd never been in the box. So it adds something to the team to have these perspectives of guys that don't know the rules for doing what you do, and you know, so sometimes you come up with some crazy concepts on how things should be executed.

Being out of your element because.

You know that they are at the time were ultra conventional with the high and tight spits, seign boots all the time, starts uniform everything. You know, dress right, dress, and I was okay until we had formations or had to do drill and ceremony, and you know how you know how that is with an SF guy, I did

The way I do things anyway.

But it set me up to go down there and you know, get that unique experience. And what made it a little more challenging for me is I was an SF guy down there without a ranger tab, so I was not ranger qualified. While I was there, that have gone over well, oh, they they did not love that. And it was always interesting because you know, they always did what we called sniffing. They were always trying to

Did you end up having to go to Ranger School.

So the deal when I went down there was supposed to be for me to get to go to Ranger School. And you know, so when I showed up down there, it was all set up.

I was supposed to go to Ranger School.

I had a slot that was coming up, and that they came to me and said, hey, the doctor. You know, he's been here longer than you. He hasn't got to go to Ranger School yet. We want to send to him, you know. And I was like, well, you know, what can I say? I mean, he's been here longer than me. Yeah, I mean, it's fine, I'll go to the I'll go to the next class. And so he went, and I think at the time it was kind of it was toward the winter, and after my Pakistan experience, I was like, sure.

Let him go to the winter class. Oh wait, but uh.

And then the next thing that happened, though, is right after that, I came down with orders to go to the the SF a knock, which you know, I needed for promotion to E eight, and so I was like, well, I got to go to that. So I wound up choosing a knock at Fort Bragg over going to Ranger school and then by the time I got back, I didn't have enough time left to go, and so I didn't get to go. I never went. And it's one of those kind of, you know, bittersweet things. I wanted

You needed a Knox so you could get promoted to E eight and take a team.

Right, Yeah, I had to have it.

And then you know, I came back from a knock and then not long after that, the E eight list came out and so I was on the list and my time was up at the Range of Battalion.

And what was it like going back to fifth group? What was the team that you took?

So I went back.

Initially, one of the cool things about the Range of Battalion is they live by the regulations. So if you can dive into the regulations and find out how to use them to your advantage, you are a master of that domain. And in true SF style, I figured out that one of the requirements they had because I was an SF guy and I was getting language paid because I was a two plus in Persian PARSI well, I discovered that, hey, they have to send me to set

You know you're gonna go to Monterey whatever.

I said, well, you know, there's training at Fifth Group and Fort Campbell, And so they sent me back to a language immersion training for a month at Fifth Group before I was about to head back to the you know, to be reassigned a Fifth Group. And so when I went back there, I started scoping out for a job. I knew that, you know, I needed to find a team startant position in order to have a place in

Know, that wound up getting getting into a.

Couple guys relieved and really messed up the team. But also somewhere in there they had another incident where they were in Ethiopia and the team medic had died from an overdose of ketamine. And and I don't know if it was a suicide or if he was, you know, using it as a as recreational drug and just overdose or something.

It's you were you were a medic. Isn't it really difficult to overdose on ketamine?

It's it's it's the only time I've ever heard of it in in my entire medical career. It's not something that that happens easily. But this was what I had been told from coming back, and so I was like, man, this is you know I was. I was talking to my former team sergeant, the sart major, and I was like, I don't know about this. This is a you know, you're asking a lot. And I said, well, I'll do it, you know, because I want to work with you. I

Isolation to fly out and deploy to El Paso.

And do these scut hunting missions, which you know I had some experience with, especially after you know, at one point we had done some joint you know, tactical development with the CAG guys on scud hunting with the mobility, So I had a good bit of background in that area. And mainly I was just kind of observing them from a leadership standpoint, an organizational standpoint, to see, you know what, what's the problem with this team? What can I do? What can I bring to the table to kind of

He would have been a weapons guy.

I was there when he came in, and now he had gone through the warrant course and was a warrant officers a guy named Larry Corrigan, great guy, and so you know, we were excited to be working together. You know, he found out a little bit, you know, like right after that deployment that I was going to be coming to the team. And then not long after they finished their evaluation and their deployment, they rotated the team starting out and put me in and I took over the team.

So it was ODA five to four to two.

And so that was my first team as the team sergeant, and turned out to be a really great team.

I had some great guys.

I was there probably about a week when I I had to fire a guy. Uh and interesting enough, it was the medic h you know. I came back and and it was probably the wrong time to try to challenge me because I'd just come from the Range of Battalion and I spent the last two years like button heads with those guys trying to prove.

That I was professional.

I knew what I was doing, so I had to kind of learn a lot of this stuff by the book. And when I came back, I'd spent time while I was at the Range of time, I'd been an instructor for one of their battalion wide combatives courses.

So I brought that back to the team.

I was that was going to be part of what I did, and I came in with a real emphasis. One of the things that we had that was part of ROPE when we went through or the Ranger Inductionation program is we were all sent to watch the classified aerial video from Blackhawk down from the you know, where the Sugrit and Gordon actually took the crash site and

Have another option.

So I was pretty gung ho on all those kind of things, starting with fitness, you know, shooting, combat Adams, those were my directors for the team as I really came in wanting to make it the most professional I could. And so when I first came in and took over, one of the things I did was I made sure everybody had their their d bags packed, you know, packing list. I went through all the basic stuff right, here's packing list. Make sure you have this. Okay, we're gonna do all

And you that we.

Mentioned earlier talking about the guy who had gotten blown up in Somalia in the vehicle with the landmine, Well, this guy I believe was in the vehicle with him when that happened. So you know, I really hated to kind of kick him off the team, but his attitude was just he was done, he was burnt out.

He didn't he didn't want to do anything challenging. Part of the problem.

I'd like to ask you what were sort of the leadership problems or the organizational problems that you identified on that team. Obviously, firing that guy was kind of the first step of laying down the law. Well what did you kind of have to do over the months to get that team turned around.

So the biggest thing when I went in is because these guys had gone through these incidents, they had some guys that were brand new, and then they had a few guys with a little bit of experience. So overall they were a pretty young team. But the guys that had been there, you know, there there, you know, EGO was crushed. They just felt like losers because they've been part of this team and they'd been labeled because of these incidents that they were just a bunch of losers.

So they had no pride in themselves, you know.

And so we started with just the basics, you know, we came in, we started doing you know, intense pt and started building the guys up, and I kind of let them know, you know, I tried to use a very incentive based program. I put out you know, a school's OML or a merit list right away so that they knew, hey, these are the things you're working for. And some of them were new, and I, you know, I did all the the basic things of.

Just you know, counseling.

So I came in, sat down with all the guys within that thirty days, initially did initial counseling. I was real clear coming from the range of battalion about like, hey, this is what I expect, you know. I handed out all the the items of, Hey, this is what the team's going to be about. And I really just kind of started off by telling them this is going to be the best damn team in fifth group, and you know, that was my approach. I wanted to do that, and I also kind of let them know that, look, I

All he can do is block and evade and defend. And then you switch.

The other guy gets to be offense and punch, and then the last minute it's both ways, so you guys get to you know, to go at it pretty hard.

Well.

I used a card system to where you could draw cards, and I kind of stacked the deck. And the another part of it is they had a real young team leader. He had just gotten there and the you know, his young captain, and I think it was his first deployment when one of these things happened. So they didn't relieve him because you know, he really hadn't been there that long. But I think it hurt his his ego as well.

He and I knew each other really well and you know.

Worked together really well as far as establishing some strong leadership because he came in like just before I did, so we had a new leadership component. We kind of got the captain on board with us, and then the team started to gel after that.

That's pretty cool and did uh you get to take that team abroad at all?

Yeah, we actually got to to go. We got several pretty good missions. We did one trip that was pretty cool to Jordan where we actually did some we did some live fire call for fire with a B one bomber and uh, you know, we did a complete navigation through Waddie Rum with the with the Jordanian forces and then hit a live fire target and called the B one cast in on it. We went, uh, let's see,

And I guess because you did a pretty good job turning the team around, they gave you a second one.

Well it worked out really well.

So after that we changed sardin Majors, and I was blessed to get another awesome Sartin Major, a guy by the name of Kip Hopkemeyer who was just you know, like another Stellar at the time. He was another legend in fifth group that had been there forever. And the whole time I'd been working on convincing the group to

Mobility development the UH to go with that.

The team that was in question had actually been in the Kenyan Embassy when when it was bombed, and so you know, these guys were going to a lot of places and winding up in some pretty you know, hazardous environments and most of the time they didn't have the benefit of weapons. So this kind of fed into the idea of me working with all the unarmed and knife combat stuff. And so this arm major you know, talk to me and asked me, you know how I felt about that, and I said, wow, that that would be

I'd be up for that.

And so I got put on the short list and considered for it, and they selected me to go run that other special projects team, which was a joint team of two odas.

That's pretty cool. It's awesome that it sounds like your job was kind of like getting the rest of the group trained up on these skills.

So I had made it my personal endeavor, you know, as far as the combatives because at the time it wasn't a popular concept for the whole group. In fact, there was a lot of resistance to it. Initially, we didn't even have like a room to train in we started out. I would take my guys to the squash court at one of the gyms and we'd sign it out and use it to do the combatives training. So we had a hardwood floor. We weren't doing much ground

We kind of set.

Up from the fact was still there when IAT that room, that combative's room in the ISO fact was still there at least when I showed up around like two thousand and seven.

Yeah, So so we did the makeshift room and we kind of laid it out so that one day we had a visiting general I think it was from Yusufic and he was taken he was doing a tour with the group commander and we weren't supposed to be there, but we made sure we had a few guys in their training and we had a guy standing outside, and when the General started walking by, we opened kind of opened up the door and went through a little like, you know, pre rehearsed routine we were doing to make

I had set that up red mats on the walls maybe if I remember now.

That was the second one in the UH that was in the the medical therapeutic center because it couldn't be called a combative's room or something.

Shit, is it? Damn? Maybe you're right, Well you'd know better than I would.

Well, my memory's not not always that good anymore.

But initially we had these dark green wrestling mats that you know, I worked a deal to get them wholesale, and they're they're brand new. But we put them in there, and we had like a rope along one edge, you know, so it looked kind of like a ring. And then we had the padded walls and everything. So we finally got a combatis room that we were able to train in, and so, you know, I kept taking my team there,

And I mean that kicked things off for fifth Group in a big way obviously.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

So up until then I was kind of on the downhill cycle of finishing up my team startin time. I think I might have had maybe six months months left at the most with the Special Projects team starting job, and they had worked it out. I was going to become the ice of fact manager, the hotel managers what they used to always call it, and then I would do the training for all the teams in the group.

And where did that take you and your team?

So our team right away we locked down the first day and started getting you know, doing teleconference calls with so calm, and then the leadership like immediately told to McDill to do some command planning with them and figure out like how that was going to work for us. And then we we kept some missions that were still involved as part of the rotation.

We went.

The interesting part about it is we were actually in Pashawer, Pakistan along the Afghan border in June of two thousand and one, so right before the incident, and at the time we were working with the the you know, we had some things working with the State Department then the embassy there that were related to trying to figure out

I mean, and that's kind of a I mean, it still is a bit of a wild West in some of those places.

Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting part of the world. I mean, you got the extremes. You got Kazakhstan, which is like New York City with everybody speaking Russian. Uh, you know, the capital there is a major city and it's it's kind of like the Twilight Zone because everybody's there speaking Russian, but it looks like a major US city.

I was in I was in Almadi last year. Yes, yeah, it feels it feels like, yeah, you could be like in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.

Yeah, exactly.

And then you've got you know, turk Ministan, where uh it's very wild West and and uh, you know, extremely strange but very unique. And they they speak their own uh uh like uh Persian dialect there. That's that's pretty close. So I was able to communicate with them while we were there. It was some pretty cool experience to to get to go to those countries. It's probably the best part of the Fifth Group area.

Were you guys mostly kind of like working on setting up the logistics for everything going down in Afghanistan.

So we we were still completely involved in a joint Chief of Staff directed mission and a lot of it, like we were working through UH through the embassies in those different countries, So we really didn't have anything to do directly.

With fifth Group.

Interesting are you can you can you talk about what you were doing at that time?

So so we were we were UH indirectly supporting UH Jaysok endeavor.

And so you were traveling around that part of the world under basically working for so calm And how long did that go on for?

So let's see, I think I had that team startaint gig for we were we were doing that.

Part like after nine to eleven. I was with him until.

Let's see, for about a year for you know, the first part of the that and then you know, my team startain time was up and and UH for me that there was a lot of pressure to take like a group operations job or one or the other, you know, things like that. But for me at that time, you know, we'd had the incident with the guys that UH that

Some cert except yeah, when they called they called it an air strike.

Yeah, they called it an air strike that wiped out the team ODA five seven four and and those guys, you know, we're really good friends of mine. So at the time, I really wasn't too big on continuing to

He tells me what to do.

And he really wasn't in favor of us as the special project from the beginning, which is kind of sad because all my guys ever did was make him look good.

You know.

They came back with letters accommodation from the ambassadors and and you know guys from uh, you know, from Department of State and even a couple of times I'd go in and given after action, you know, a post trip report to him, let him know, hey, this is this, you know things we went here, we did this, this is good. Here the accommodations from the ambassador and you

And the command to put him against the commanders. I think the battalion command get kind of irritated when they have like a special projects team. The SITH was another element that was in this category because they're mostly working for Jaysock and who were oh back in the old days. Also the green Light team. That was another thing that just like sucked up all these resources. And when you're assigned to another element like that, it means that, like

Oh yeah, this guy hated us like severely, you know, and and all we ever did is make him look good. But he did not like that at all. And so it was a constant battle. And then after that happened, you know, I was kind of disheartened as far as sticking with Fifth Group. And you know, I'd always been taught by all these guys that I'd learned from all the years that you know, if you if you've got a problem, you need to have a solution. And so I started looking at it and I was like, you know,

Possible.

And the answer I came up with is, you know what, I can go teach future officers at ROTC. And so I got my choice of assignment after Afghanistan and we were, you know, the project was closely connected to the SITH. You know, it was the it was labeled the RST or the Regional Survey Team. Yeah, so so that was kind of the responsibility there. And like I said, I

Oh great, So you were able to, yeah, find a good position to kind of ride out your last year or so in the military. Yeah, you know.

And it's the it's really the big lie because they make it sound like, hell, you'll be home. You know, you got all this free time and everything, and I guess you could do it that way. But when I got here, the one of the things I saw was the kids were really motivated.

You know.

They most of them had signed up because of nine to elevens, so they were anxious to go out there and make a difference. They were different from a lot of the youth that you know that you were seeing everywhere else. And you know, so the key there was to take the job seriously and really try to train them and make good leaders out of them. So it takes up like a lot of your weekends, which they don't tell you about. You know, you're doing a lot of training thing with them on the weekend. You're in

But you know, they're like your own kids. So it was a good.

Experience overall to work with them and to see folks that wanted to be motivated leaders and to impart to them while they're still listening about what a difference they can make and how they need to be a strong leader and work with their NCOs.

And for the last twenty years, I mean we've kind of touched upon it throughout this interview, but martial arts is obviously a big part of your life. You know, your black belt certification behind you there, jiu jitsu, army combatives, developing all of that, and you've kind of flipped that into a business after your military career.

Yeah.

So so one of the things I've found is I was on my second marriage and we waited ten years to have my son, and you know, he was born in two thousand, So the plan was I was winding down I had my son. I had two kids from the first marriage and you know, completely detached from them just or that didn't work out too well, so you know, I didn't want to mess it up again. So I wanted to have that time with my son. And he was,

And that definitely, that government contracting money as the g WATT was picking up was very tempting for a lot of people.

Yeah. Absolutely, I like almost said yes a few times. Yeah, it was really tough.

And so you're down in Georgia, you said, opening karate gym becomes a jiu jitsu gym. I mean, how does it go? What are some of the roadbumps and hurdles that you have starting a small business, because I know there always are.

Oh absolutely.

So the first problem is I'd worked for the government for over twenty years, so I didn't know how to make a profit. All I knew how to do was spend other people's money, and so I had no clue about running a business. But luckily, you know, all that time and Special Forces. You learn how to to come up with things that nobody knows how to do and you don't know how to do yourself.

So I started figuring it out.

And I had I had done, you know, I in my spare time at Fort Campbell, I had been a karate instructor, already had my black belt. I did that as you know, my part time recreation when I wasn't gone all the time. And so I started off with that and I had developed this relationship with the gracies and actually got my blue belt, you know, which is

That had started all of it.

So I started working, you know, having jiu jitsu and karate at my academy, and I also did the logical SF thing. I started going, Okay, there's got to be a school for this, and you know the answer was, there's an NBA program.

And I was like, no, that's not what I'm looking for.

I want an actual school that teaches me how to run a martial arts school. So I started looking around and I found training opportunities for that. I started reading all the books I could about business. But the main thing I did was just like I did an s F was I started putting everything into a training curriculum.

I tried.

Initially, I was like, you know, I tried to be a businessman, and it didn't take long before I figured out I'm not a businessman.

I'm an SF guy.

So I had to reorient my thinking to the idea that I'm an SF guy on a mission to run a martial arts business. And once I made that switch and I started doing everything the same way I did to run a team and to do s F missions, then it started to click for me and things started

What was it like? I got to ask your whole career, and you've been training soldiers in hand to hand combat, and now I imagine you have everything from you know, a teenage kid that comes in wants you to teach him how to be a killer, to a parent coming in saying can you teach my six year old daughter how to do karate?

Yeah?

So the nice thing is actually ROTC kind of worked as like a prisoner release halfway house for me. So I had to kind of, you know, change my language a little bit, my demeanor, and I had to learn to do that SF thing and work with the indigenous people, which were academics at the university and mainly civilians, So I had to kind of adopt and adapt that you know,

A version of it there.

Last year we went out to near Los Angeles, California, taught a version of it. You know, in the last couple of years, I went to Detroit, Pennsylvania, and I go every year to UNC Chapel Hill to teach a version of it there, and have been doing that for like the last twelve years.

And we do this in our own community.

And then last year as well, we had an incident that was highly publicized on the news that an illegal immigrant killed a student on campus, so a young lady by the name of Lake and Riley. And so when that happened that day, we got fifty two calls for these courses that we do. Obviously we couldn't fill them all,

Yeah, where can people find your dojo? What's what's the name of it? Where can they find it? And where can they find going commando, like if they want to find some of these services and safe these things you're talking about.

Absolutely, So the best way to connect with us if if there's any interest in the our Jiu Jitsu Academy, it's Gracie Jiu Jitsu Athens, you know, or Athens ju Jitsu dot com. That's the easiest way to find that. And as far as going Commando, if if somebody wants to, you know, connect with those concepts for business. I'm at you know, Commando success, dot.

Com, cool and the safe program.

You can always find me, excuse me, you can always find me Randy mcwee on LinkedIn.

Oh cool, Okay, and so that's probably the best way to find you personally. Yeah, absolutely cool. You know, I know we've talked about a lot through this interview, Randy, but I want to just kind of backtrack just to say, you know, is there anything that I haven't asked her in this interview that you'd really like to talk about?

You know what?

At this point, I think, uh, you know, working off of a forty year old memory, I definitely don't think we didn't cover everything.

We didn't talk about anything.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to you about your background and experience. So you know, that's really the one thing I would ask is, tell me real quick about your time.

It was I got I wrote a book about it if people are really interested. But yeah, I was.

Uh.

I started off in Ranger Battalion. I was in three seven five.

Guys.

Yeah, man got there in two right after the invasion of Iraq. In three I got there, and then I went to SF. I went to the Q course in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, I got the fifth group, and then I was there for a few years and got out in twenty ten.

Excellent. Yeah, so I love my time in Ranger Battalion.

I mean it was a kind of a rough experience at the time, but I still remember all the all the things there, and I especially remember this one guy, you know, that was the first sergeant. His name was first started Nielsen, and he recently passed away a few years ago. But the cool thing about it was I used to go to you know, he was my company first sergeant, so I had to go to the meeting, you know, the training meeting once a week, and we used to call him the gun because you never knew

At three seven five.

Yeah, I can't imagine what it's like doing like twelve years in SF and then going to Ranger Regiment. That's hilarious.

Yeah, it's definitely a hoot, you know, but like I said, great experience and set me up well to be a team sergant.

So, so if you guys are looking for Randy mcawee, you'd find all the links down the description to the things we talked about here, going commando, his jiu jitsu dojo, all that good stuff LinkedIn will be down there. For those of you who are watching this on YouTube or listening to the podcast, you check down the description. Randy, thanks for taking all this time tonight to talk to us and walk us through your career and your story. It's a really like unique experience.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

You know.

The one thing that I noticed over the years is there's a lot of guys like me that I call C students that that have been an SF and and you know, all these things happen and you don't notice it until, like.

You go back to like the Fifth Group reunion.

I went to a couple of those, and you talk to some of the guys and you realize that the you know, a lot of the new guys they don't realize like what a crazy, wild world it was back before things, you know, back before the money flowed and we were having to kind.

Of oh yeah, you know, oh yeah, guys, get talk to some of the old guys about Bad Tolts or Fort Gulik and Panama and you will hear some stories. You will hear some real stories.

Absolutely, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it was a good time.

Yeah, thank you, Randy, and thanks everyone who joined us today. We'll see you guys next time. And uh, Randy, thanks a lot.

My pleasure.

Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the team House podcast, the eyes On podcast, and the high Side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. Uh. The newsletter is gonna be once a week. It's gonna come into your inbox and you're gonna get the most current podcasts on eyes On and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or current on the high Side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you.

And that's Teamhouse Podcast, dot Kit, k I, t Kilo India, Tango dot com.

Backslash joints as