The Most Underrated Special Ops Unit (MARSOC) | John Dailey | Ep. 295

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by myself. But it taught me a lot of things, you know, uh, you know, learned about not living off the land necessarily, but you know, just being very comfortable outdoors.

You know, I think the I was I think it was eight the first time I told my dad, I want to go camping out in the woods by myself, you know, and it went out, set up my tent, you got everything ready, you know, at about like two in the afternoon, and you know, it seemed like an eternity before the sun finally went down, and when it did, you know, it was it was probably you know, I was a stubborn kid, but you know, it's gets dark and I've been camping plenty with my folks, but uh,

you know, all the sounds of the night time start coming out, and I really, really, you know, I wanted, I wanted to go back home, but it was it was just you know, the stubbornness that kind of kept me out. And I think that's probably one of the things I learned kind of growing up that way, and it's stubbornness was absolutely a skill that paid off and make evidence in the Marine Corps.

He kind of everything that I wanted to do. And he had the pictures up on his his wall in his office, and uh, he kind of took me under his twing, you know, and and you started teaching me, prepping me, and so, you know, throughout my my high school years. The decision was made. I didn't have the grades really for anything else, so that that made life a little easier. We didn't have the money for college even if I would have. Uh So it was it was a pretty easy decision, but it was. It was

one I was. You know, when I went in, I I operated on the assumption that you joined the Marine Corps you stayed in forever. You know. I didn't. I didn't realize that there was there were enlistments, all right, And when they they told me like, hey, how long do you want to join for? I was like yeah, until I die, I guess I don't know.

love them at the time they're sucking. But you know, when you get back to the you know, the rear, you're cleaning weapons and cleaning gear, and you kind of get to talk shit to other teams about how hard your patrol was or how you know, how bad the mission was, or who ran out of water. You know, it's you know with twenty four hours ago, or ran out of show and they had to x fill. You know, those those sorts of things that build teams, build communities. And that's that's what I loved about it.

me as a PFC wasn't talking to anyway. You know, I would get my ass shoot by one occasionally, But so there was but we were still absolutely learning or practicing all of the you know, we were preparing to fight another Vietnam, right, so all of the lessons that that they had learned, I remember, and I just I still have. I pulled out and made copies of the other day, a relatively thick document that that GETA was

just patrolling tips from from UH. I think it probably was compiled by SF guys, but you know, everything from you know, taping on your legs, tabs on your mags you could pull them out quickly to to cutting down the mag pouching inch. So it's easy to get your mags out, you know, taking the spoons under your age and all of these things. We were just just all

over them, you know. We were you know expecting or hoping or whatever for another you know, Vietnam, and so that's kind of my formative years in the Marine Corps and my early years. Uh I was in the Scout sniper platoon and those that was you know Carlos Athcock. You know, his book was passed around and uh getting the opportunity to meet him, I got to meet him. Uh was like meeting you know, a freaking rock star est uh So it uh, I mean it was it

was really, uh I think a good time. There wasn't a lot of money, you know, there was a whole lot of uh I mean life in the infantry really at that time. You know, on Monday morning, you you know, throw your ruck on it, you you know, hike out to the field and you'd you know, set up a camp and you do patrols, you know, Tuesday through Thursday.

If you're lucky, you know, Thursday, you'd you'd hike back, clean your weapons, turn them in, you know, go get drunk Thursday night, and usually they just give you off Friday, so you get a three day week and you know, three day weekend and back at it the next week. And that was just a week after week after week. So I mean, you got really really good at the basic you know, infantry activities that you know lead to success.

found out that I was a sniper. And I'm sure I didn't make it hard for him to find out, you know, I just just graduated from sniper school. So I'm sure I was spouting off to anybody who listen. But he was like, hey, man, I got a deal for you. There's this duty where you go and work at foreign embassies and uh, you know, with your with your background as a sniper, you know you'll be you know, working for the CIA at no time. And I was like, what,

you know, like that sounds awesome, Like sign me up. So, you know, the unit was actually kind of pissed because I had just got back from sniper school. You know, there's some expectation that I was going to help train some other guys and I was. I was on the next thing smoking to the Marine Security Guard school, which, as it turns out, is does not involve, you know,

targeting people for the CIA whatsoever. It's a whole lot of wear in your dress uniform and kind of greeting dignitaries and just basically standing standing guard over an embassy at night when everybody goes home. But it was it was a really great learning experience. I know, while I was in Budapest was my first duty station, and that was right as the wall was coming down and eighty

nine and the Soviets were leaving Hungary. I met the chick who had become my wife some years later, an American school teacher, So that was you know, that panned out. So we've been married for just over thirty two years now, so that that worked out pretty well. And then from there I went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I missed the First Golf War because you know, during that that interim period. But uh, and that's I don't I don't think I

talk about it in the book. But one of the kind of funny stories to come out of that is when I got I left Budapest right as the build up for the Gulf War was happening, and so by the time I get to Argentina, it's it's getting ready to kick off. And there's a form in the Marine Corps called an Administrative Action Form that you can fill

out and request anything with it. And so I would go into the embassy every morning, I'd fill out one of these forms and say, hey, I want to go to you know, any unit that's it's involved in combat, and I would you know, turn it in to my you know, my boss, who was a gunny at East seven, and he would I don't know what he was doing with it, but uh.

to the kind of our next boss. And the State Department chain of command was the regional security officer at the embassy, And so I had been there for a couple of weeks filling out these forms and the President Bush, the senior President Bush, came to visit, and yeah, we had the opportunity all the Marines out there to meet him, and he's shaking our hands and we're getting our picture taken, and he's getting ready to go into like a press conference,

and he when I shake his hand and says, you know, hey, sorted daily, sir, He's like, daily, are you the one who keeps trying to go to Iraq? Knock it off? You're not going. So I'm sure you know somebody had put it in his ear, but it was I was like, well, I guess, you know, I guess I'll give.

Banana Wars. Yeah, Nicaragua or Haiti.

started charging. I think he was the first harden at the time, and said, come on, your sons of bitches, you want to live forever. So that's of course everybody jumped up went after him, and that's, uh, that's kind of the day.

not sure that's one hundred percent. I'm not sure that it matters, you know, if it's a dred percent, right, but uh, yeah, the story was that the Germans, the German Army had a awarded uh the the term two for London to a unit the hardest fighting unit every year within the German Army, and after meeting the Marines, they decided that they would have bestowed that name on

on the Marine Corps for that year. So that uh and then we took that name and earned or not or you know, made up or not and ran with it.

and and then to have it happen, and you know you're setting it out, and especially setting it out you know beside the pool and Buenos Aires, you know, at the Marine housis right. Uh, you know, if you had to send it out, it was a pretty good place to be. But it's still it really hurt me. And then when I got back to the States and back to an infantry unit, the fact that there were you know, young guys you know, run around with the stack of metals, uh,

you know, ribbons from a like man, you know. You see, I definitely felt that I had I had missed, you know, my calling, you know, and it didn't seem that there was you know, anything else kind of bruin on the horizon. So it was really at that point it's like the only thing that I can do is keep kind of moving up to units that will, uh offer me a better opportunity.

And I mean I could swim, you know, well enough to get in the Marine Corps and well enough for most things. But Force ricon it requires a pretty high level of swimming ability. And so I had tried out once and didn't make it. And it's it's tough, you know, it's a tough thing to learn how to swim, you know, when you don't, you know, there's the Rene Corps doesn't give you a lot of access surprisingly to uh. Especially I was stationed at this point at twenty nine palms

to the middle of the desert. You know, they did have a swimming pool, so I started, you know, hitting that up and working on that. But then I had the opportunity to try out again and made it.

when I got to Force. But the battalion recon is the asset of a battalian level commander, so it's there. He's there to answer that commander's information requirements generally speaking, you know, within five to ten miles of their kind of area of interest. Force recon, on the other hand, works for the force commander, so it's you know, whoever the kind of the big big wig is. You know, when we got into Afghanistan, it wound up being Maddis, So he was the task force commander, so we were

tasked with answering his requirements. So because of that, you're more likely to have like a freefall capability in it. It's not exclusive to to Force Frican, but it's more likely to have a or advanced freefall capability. And Force Ricon also had the Direct Action mission at the time, and I was there as at IHR are an expremists hostage rescue. Yeah.

all special operations and coordinates them. The SF was like Roger that you know, they jumped over the Rangers, the Seals, Air Force Special Operation his PGA's Pair Rescue and the Marine Corps was invited, but the commandant at the time said no, he had had a different vision for the Marine Corps and that was I mean, it was a great vision. But the Marine Corps formed at that point

the Marine Expeditionary Unit. So at any any point in time, there are generally two Marine Expeditionary units that are on probably three Navy ships, so there's three or four thousand sailors, three or four thousand marines out at sea and there. That's kind of when we came up with the America's nine to one to one, you know, a little nickname

for ourselves. So because of that, the fors Riekan assets were held to be a part of of that, and so and then we were I was just joining the Marine Corps at that time, and you know it would you know later when I got the force. Like I said, it was, it was not uncommon, you know, an uncommon topic to have, you know, when you're sitting in the ground drink and beer to bitch and moan about you know, us not not having access to the missions, the money.

wild West. You know. They were you know, we were bringing in l A p D Squat, who was kind of you know, new and l A p D Swat was bringing an FBI h r T. A lot of a lot of other people from a lot of places were coming and and the level of training was was

incredibly high. But it was also, like we were talking about a little bit before we came on camera, like a lot of point shooting, a lot of uh, some trick trick shooting was was kind of the order of the day, and some in some places and and you can you could be really really good at that, uh, you know, at short range and as long as you are practicing every single day, you know, like we were the early days, there was you know, they were bringing

back from from Vietnam. They'd actually developed the OEG uh, the occluded eye gun sight. We were throw of those on our M sixteens and and MP fives, which requires you to shoot with both eyes open all right, because it's like a clear or not not a clear test tube essentially with a red dot in it so you can't see through it. You know, you had to keep

both eyes open, which is yeah, which is good. I mean, it's it's helpful obviously to shoot with both eyes open, But it was it was based on this idea, it's called the binion aiming concept, right, that if you keep both eyes open and shoot that way long enough, it becomes natural. So there was a lot of you know, testing and experimentation going on. So it was it was

a really cool time to be there. By the time I rolled in, I think things had settled down a little bit and in my opinion anyway, first force recon was was recognized certainly in the Marine Corps as the pinnacle of of what marine reconnaissance could be. So I had arrived with the kind of pedigree of having spent time in a sniper platoon, you know, been you know, a sniper, been to the scout Sniper Advanced course at

the Marine Corps just puts on once a year. And I had also had the opportunity to go to Ranger School and jump school, so which was which kind of unusual at that time, and it was unusual that anybody outside of Porto Rican would have gotten to go to Ranger school if quotas were available. So when I checked in to First Force in ninety two, I got, uh, you know, one of the one of the Marines was asking me, you know, asking me who I was, and

this and that, and you know it was forgot. I couldn't remember my name, but he was like, hey, you know, he was telling his platoons argat he was like, hey, we should grab that guy the ranger. So I became ranger daily after that. And there's a name that's stuck with me now for thirty some years. And you know, people always you know, really curious were you in the Rangers or you know, before you joined the Rink Corps,

or were you a park ranger or whatever. But no, it's just somebody couldn't remember my name.

you can be you could be moved anywhere. And so quite often that would happen to recon marines when they became promoted to a staff sargeant, they would get moved out to the infantry and they would do some time there and come back. I was fortunate. I mean, I think there was you know, it was known that if you were you know, somebody that really put out, was good at your job, then there were way used to

find it, find a way for you to stay. And and often as long as you kept deploying, you know, you were staying active in a in a platoon, then you were you were kind of safe. So at that time there were a lot of guys who were who were staying for a good while. And I was I was able to stay, uh for about ten years there and and you know, work my way up from pointmand to platoon sergeant and would have would have stayed I think, yeah longer if if I could have tell us.

I was talking about. Our first stop had been Darwin and we spent a couple of days there training with the Australians, some snipers, so we had had a range, we're out shooting. We finally wrapped up, came back, cleaned up, and uh had our first night out on the town. And so the Australia if you haven't been, and I haven't been back in a while, but uh, you know

there's the there's the woman. The man ratio is out of kilter, right, so there's all of the young guys were like super excited because there's there's tons of tons of ladies running around. I had, uh, you know, I was was married. I had my team leaders were all married, and we're like, hey, let's just go find someplace quiet, get some beers. So we find the an Irish pub.

Of course there's one everywhere kiddy O'Shea's Irish pubs. So we're kind of tucked in the corner drinking beer and yeah, there's playing soccer on the big screen above the bar, and then it switches to the to the first tower, and yeah, within minutes the Marines, who were designated as the shore patrol to try to keep people out of trouble, come running into the bar, yelling get back to the boats, back to the boats. And then they were just down

the street yelling in every bar. So we eventually we finished our beer and then kind of finished all the beer they would let us buy, and then eventually made our way back to the boat. And when we woke up the next morning, they had somehow managed to wrangle you know, everybody, and we were on to see.

it's a big event. The Navy commodore and the R commander, the MEW commander had to attend this thing. So there was obviously security concerns. So we wound up providing a security detail for our commander and the Seals provided one for the commodore. So we were kind of run around east More with those guys for the day, and then from there we kind of headed straight for the closest coast to Afghanistan, which was Pakistan. Went by October we

were had established some FARPs and and uh. It's got a prestaging basis in aunt ja Alabad and and Uh and then by November we were in Afghanistan. Cool.

got there. We were I got our feet unders for a couple of days and we're tasked with doing a vehicle reconnaissance to find a route from from where we were, which was called fob Rhino got out in the out in the middle of nowhere up to Kanahar, and so me and my boys went out, uh, you know, left at night, spent two nights about one hundred miles of kind of cross compartment going through the desert finding a route, and uh eventually brought up a larger unit to uh

just kind of established an essentially big patrol base and start trying to stir some shut up. We spent you know, we were going out every night looking for you know, at the time, really bad satellite images of you know, expected you know, Taliban physicians, and we'd get there and it'd be, you know, a bunch of rocks and a couple of trees, and we they thought they were vehicles. And it's the you know, things have absolutely improved over

the last twenty years. But we got I got pulled in on the December seventh and by the battalion commander that we were we were out with, and he was like, Hey, I need you guys to go out and UH interdict traffic coming between Kandahar and to the to the west towards Flash Gagar, So we you know, kind of came

up with a plan. We weren't going to uh at the time, everybody was declared hostile, so I mean, and you know, we were within our rights to just you know, set up machine guns and blast and a guard that went down the road. You know, I wasn't I wasn't cool with that. You know, I could imagine, you know, I didn't want my guys to approaching the vehicle that we shot up and finding a bunch of you know, a family that was trying to get out or whatever.

So you know, they kind of if Ganny's had been through enough of that with the Taliban, so we you know, I put it to the team leaders. They came up with a plan to execute a essentially what was close to a mission that we trained for quite a bit, a vehicle takedown. You know, when you have a vehicle that you've got to stop and then you've got to determine whether the bad guys or not are in it, and then uh, you know, shoot them as they are right or or snatch them up. And uh, that's that's

what we wound up kind of setting up. We strung constantina wire across the road. Kind of positioned ourselves off. I put one of my other vehicles on the base of fires and k things went to shed and uh, I was talking with air and pretty soon they let us know that there was a small convoy that was headed our way out of Kanadahr. And at that point, you know, setting there and this is December, Afghanistan is fucking freezing cold. We're kind of sitting there shivering, you know.

And I told everybody, I'm like, hey, man, I think I'm like an anti you know, bullet magnet. Right. I've I've been uh in the Marine Corps at this point for fourteen years, and I've I barely heard, you know, a couple of shots fired in anger and and you know, I haven't returned fire on any of them. So I don't uh, I don't know that's going to happen tonight.

So I was, you know, kind of talking to I didn't want guys to uh yeah, yeah, I wanted to one kind of keep it light, you know, because we were either gonna do some shit or we weren't right. And you don't want uh, you know, you don't want guys so hyper that they're uh, you know, jerking the trigger at anything. So you know, we talked just about, hey, you know we've trained, we've done this ship a million times and practiced, right, you know, there's nothing different than that,

So let's just treat it like that. You know, we've rehearsed it not you know, there was one of the things that was kind of pounded in my head as a young guy. You don't rehearse and tell you you get it right. You rehearse and tell you can't get it wrong. So, uh, you know, and I had kind of tried to push out on my guys. So eventually the lead vehicle of this convoy, the other two vehicles which were larger like five ton trucks, had pulled off, and the lead vehicle was kind of scouting ahead and

it pulled up. You know, shot past us saw the Constantino wire because we had hung kin lights on it, and it said, screw it, I'm going for it. And uh, watching a vehicle, you know, it's sixty miles an hour hit Constantino wires, pretty fucking astounding, all right, it you don't get far, and it didn't get far. It's got gets snatched snatched up. You know, as soon as that wire wrapped around the axles. It it shuts them down pretty quick. We had, you know, popped up onto the

road way behind them. And as soon as we did, I could see, you know, sitting in the back of this dually or a yeah, dual cab truck. There were you know, three guys you know with ak's. The front was was stuffed full of guys. You know, it was like a clown car. The back of the bed of the truck was packed full of boxes and crates and things like that. So we didn't know what it was

in them, but uh, my vehicle stops. I jump out of the vehicle commander's seat kind of rush up, and you know, my guys kind of roll in behind me and I yelled, hey, put your hands up. I don't don't quite know where that came from, uh, but uh,

you know, it was giving them a chance. The funny thing is that at that at that moment, and it was the first time I'd experienced it, but I had I had read about it, you know, like Grossman and on killing the like time distortion, how time you know, changes, and how like a lot of you know, you know, once loud noises started, once shooting started, it didn't sound

like shooting, right. It was just like little pops kind of the visual perceptual airing where you kind of your world kind of starts to collapse down onto the threat in front of you. And so all of these things started happening. And luckily, like I knew what were because I had, you know, like I said, we read about it. I talked to guys about it. The three guys in the bed of the truck were obviously the primary threat.

The guy in the middle of the guys on either side had because it was so cold, had their ak's bundled up in blankets and their hands bundled up. And the guy in the middle, who was an old you know mood, you know he'd been it wasn't his first rodeo. You know, you could see his hands were red, you know, but he had his hands on his weapon, and uh, it was you know, it was comical how slowly he was, like he seemed to be moving trying to bring his

weapon up on me. And so you know, I shoot him, you know, And you know, one of the weird things, you know, is that there's a thing called persistence shooting, where you know, if you shoot someone and what you'd expect to happen, doesn't happen, then you just keep shooting, all right, you expect the guy to fall down. He doesn't fall down, and he couldn't because he was propped

up in all these crates. But uh, I shot him a number of times more than enough before I went ahead and and did you know what we had been you know, trained to do and shoot a turning into a box drill. But by this point, you know, I've got you know, my guy. Other guys are are up there with me. They're engaging. And then the constantina wire had run down the length of the vehicles, so they were having trouble opening the doors. They're trying to roll down windows and jump out the windows, and it was

it turned into a kind of a comical scene. But the uh about that time, the bed of the truck burst into flames and it spread very very quickly. I mean it was it was switch which led to people that were still in the bed of the or in the cab of the truck to really try to get the hell out. So so now they're they're climbing out and we're popping them. They're falling in the constantina wire and it's just turned into a kind of a ship show. But uh, some start popping off and at the time

I thought they were, you know, being fired. I didn't realize that they were cooking off that quickly. So we start bounding back and then uh, you know, RPGs rockets start like sailing, you know, filling the night sky. They're not armed, and they you know, they weren't launched. Uh they were you know, they were they were cooking off.

So they're like spiraling, you know, through the air. So he got a little a little uh spicy, I guess, uh for a little bit, but uh, you know, we pulled back, you know, make sure we had uh you know, got our main weapons and equipment kind of check and and that was that was really it. We brought in fast movers on the other two vehicles that were sitting out in the desert, and really that kind of uh you know, other than the fifth group guys, they were

up in the mountains. That was the first kind of engagement of Afghanistan.

are going to participate. And still the Marine Corps was like, nah, man, we're rummy, We're good. We don't don't want to do that. And it took some doing eventually, and to be honest, SOCOM wasn't too eager to have Marines on board either, from you know, everything I gathered. So there was there was actually about a year time kind of gap between the time I got back in two thousand and two and the time that one stood up, So there was there was a lot going on kind of behind the

scenes that I didn't know about. But ultimately the decision was that the Marine Corps would provide a small unit. They would serve as a proof of concept for a couple of years. So they would train, deploy with a Special Operations architecture over top of them, and then be evaluated on how well they did. So when I got back from that deployment, I was told that, hey, you've really been here now too long. You've got to go somewhere.

So luckily I just just went down the street to the Special Operations Training group and ran the took over the Urban Sniper of course, which was was great to get get back behind the gun seriously and got re uh you know, definitely bust the rust off on my shoot skills. So but that job only lasted for about a year because you know, I got kind of tapped on the shoulder at a meeting and Colonel Coates, who

was was selected to be our boss. It was like, hey, you know, Ranger, do you uh, you know, I've got tapped for this thing? Do you want to in? And of course you know it's you know, not a hard question to answer. Hell yeah, I went in and uh, you know, he asked me to be a team leader.

So they were going to be initially four teams. We were the charter was for seventy eight men that eventually grew closer to one hundred, but of that one hundred men, there was roughly a third were forced reconnaissance Marines, about

a third were intel. And that's really what kind of set us apart, was the huge intel support that we had, and then the other third ran the gamut from you know, communicators and fires guys and administrative guys and mechanics and everything else that should mean to to run in a unit.

before nine to eleven. And but the other guys, we were guys that I had kind of looked up to as being like the you know, uh, like the next senior class or whatever, you know, guys who had had a couple of years on me. And so I was and I don't know if it was anybody else felt that way, but I've you know, and I talk a lot of in the book about the idea of imposture syndrome, all right, not quite thinking that you're you deserve to be where you are, and you know, people bitch and

moan about it a lot. I mean, I'm thankful every day for it. You know, I think it push pushed me to you know kind of uh, you know, always strive to be better, but to prove myself. But so I told my team very early on, like, hey, guys, we're going to do whatever mission you know, ship mission needs to be done, you know, will be the ones

to do it. So, you know, particularly as we started, I mean, because I was coming from uh that role as a sniper instructor, you know, I got put in charge of all kind of sniping overseeing our sniping program, which led you know, came in handy later on. I had picked a couple of the guys that I picked had worked for me in that in that role, so we had a very robust, you know, sniper capability that wasn't as terribly common, and uh so then particularly once

we started doing direct action missions. You know, everybody wants to be the you know, the guys blowing the door off and clearing the house. I was like, hey man, we'll do the you know, we'll do the RNs on the objective. We'll uh you know, which my guys would bitch and moan about sometimes, but uh, you know, be the the guys who uh you know, went in a few days before, laid in the snow or the mud

or whatever, and took pictures and reported back. And that ultimately, uh kind of just led to my team, our team being the go to guys for anything that was you know, more challenging or you're kind of out of the ordinary.

makes makes the job easier. The uh So, so we had a pretty we were accustomed to doing that, to going to like seeking out vendors and things like that, and and uh we had had a really bad helicopter accident a couple of years before when I was at First Force ninety nine, and uh, helicopter was a bunch of our guys were going to do a ship takedown and so they were going to fast robe onto the

deck of a ship. The pilot came in and misjudged the height and caught his skid on a net the like big steel in that flipped the helo over and they sunk. So we had a bunch of our guys died, a crew chief and the helicopter died. And one of the things that came out of that was that the equipment that we were wearing was crazy heavy. Our bullet

bouncers and everything were very very early generation stuff. So when that happened, I got grabbed to go and work with the Marine Corps to build a better suite of kind of amphibious, capable, more survivable gear. Yeah, and and that definitely kind of put me, you know in that world with so Natic laboratories is the the Army Research Center where they make m R. E's and boots and everything in between. Uh, I got you know to go up there and got to make a lot of contacts

and friends. So they came in handy, you know when we came time to start kitting ourselves out for because even in ninety nine, when we started building that equipment suite, it was you know, green green camouflage, you know, that was that's what everything was. We still assumed that we're going to be in the jungle somewhere, you know, even though we'd had you know, the previous war had been

as short as it was in the desert. But so that was you know, you know, making you know, building out a flat earth or tan you know, sweety gear

and taking a look at it. After some time we had in the inn and we developed a cutaway process for the for body armor that that hadn't existed before that, you know, the use of spare their bottles and kind of a litany of you know, one of the marines that in the old days we used to back when telephones had cords on them, we would uh going off and steal their phone cords and use the phone card

to make a lanyard for our pistol. Right, a couple of fisient leaders, you know the flexcuff with little Tonys flex guft and that was that was how you secured your because if you're fast roping, you know, onto the deck of a ship, your pistol comes out. You know, it could be disastrous. So you know, one of the marines was very fortunate that he was able to break that the telephone cord or the connection on the telephone cord.

So you know, we got people to make breakaway lanyards and the kind of the list went on of innovations that came out of that.

we would do. So we started doing a lot of preparation for that, you know, a lot pretty heavily in sniping, heavily in deep ground reconnaissance, vehicle mounted reconnaissance. And about halfway through the time that we had to train, the decision was finally made that we would be going to

Iraq much more kinetically focused deployment. We were going to serve essentially as a SEAL or NSW task in it, so we would be a task in it underneath a Naval Special Warfare Task Group that's who we would report to. So we get on the grounds in early two thousand and four and are assigned to hang out kind of in an area around Baghdad. So we were near one of Saddam's kind of near the by app the compound,

the airport, and near in Baghdad. That's where we lived, and we're you know, we got on the ground to find out. Normally, you know, when you do a turnover, you know, you get in country, you do a turnover with another unit, right REPTOA do a relief in place, and they're like, hey, here's all of the information that we have. Here's all the bad guys that we haven't

gone after. So we didn't have that. There had not been a seal a platoon in place there, so we were really kind of put in a position where we had to make our own luck. Right we had and we we weren't. You know, it's a weird situation. We and the seals wound up being great. The commander that we worked for was very supportive and and you know, a straight shooter, but we also didn't quite know who you could trust, you know, you know, who is had your best interest at Harton, who was hoping that you

wouldn't be successful. Yeah, So so we had you know, one of our and it's really where those big crew of Intel guys came to play. A Couple of things happened that seemed to be uh, you know, unfortunate initially, but we wound up being the best thing that could have happened. So the seal commander that was owned us was like like, hey, you guys have got like thirty Intel dudes. You know I don't have that many, you know, in my whole task in it. So he was as

was his right. He was like, Hey, I'm going to take some of these guys and send them over to to work with one of my seal platoons over here. And these guys over here, of course we're pissed because with my team I had I had my own human guy, my own second guy, my own geo spatial guy. So that changed the way that we operated. But what we quickly came to realize was that now we had our eyes and ears, you know, attached to everybody all over

the country. So it wasn't long before you know, these guys are just talking and you know realize that, hey, we've got probably a better kind of overall picture of intel of what's going on in the country than anybody does. And one of our Intel analysts was bored, you know, just kind of digging through Intel reports and found a report that about Iraqi interpreter who was working for the US that had been executed, and he started here, He's

thought he had read something else. So we started digging back through these Intel reports and realized that over the span of the past six months there had been like twenty of these interpreters who had been killed. And being a you know, an Intel guy, he started, you know, trying to connect dots, and you know, it's like stringing the yarn across the wall or whatever with pictures and things.

I don't know how he did it, but ultimately he came up and was was like, hey, here's this this one interpreter that's like connected, you know, to all of these dead interpreters. So, uh, it was the interpreter was a woman. You know, the only way to that we knew to get her was to go to the place where she was working, you know, during the day, which which meant, uh, you know, low profile, you know, being

vehicles kind of go going in low profile. So that's when all of the you know, the taking, the taking the missions nobody else wanted to kind of paid off. So, you know, the all of us team leaders gather around and of course it's the first mission that we're doing, so everybody wants it, and uh, the decision was like, hey, Daily, you know you're the you're the guy for this one because you've you've done all, You've done all the the

odd you know, one off type of things. So I was I had because there was a female we were going after. I had to take a female to searcher and the only female we had available to us was a Polish brom operator. She was the only female operator that they had, and she was, uh phenomenal or she was you know, would put you know, any you know, I always think of her when people talk about what women are capable of. Right, she had Uh it was was I think their most you know, lethal sniper that

they had. She was incredibly talented, but so she came with me another marine and we had to take a seal kind of a human guy with us, and you know, one of our intel guys, Sibby's in a vehicle driving around bag dead, and it just so happened that we kept like we were like five minutes behind her, you know, everywhere we stopped or we missed her by like a

day or two. And so we finally get to a place where where she had most recently been and were able to get her to come in, you know, under the like the guys and picking up a paycheck or whatever, and grabbed her and grabbed the man that was driving her,

and then we get her back. And at this point, this is before the Abu Gray Grave thing, just just like weeks before, but we were able to have our own, uh interrogation facility and brought her in and once they started talking to her, pretty quickly realized that she was she was the one. She was responsible for all these deaths, but she was unwittingly responsible. She had uh, a hot looking Iraqi dude had you know, approached her and you know, they hit it off, and she was she was not

deserving of a hot looking Iraqi. Dude, she was an elderly not elderly, but an older uh you know, an older lady. Uh so should have been some red flags, but uh you know, and he, however, got her to hand over uh you know, phone lists and information for other contracted uh interpreters. So when she found out, she was you know, there's a saying that, hell hath no fury like a woman scorn she was. She was fucking pissed,

uh like like a really fucking pissed. So she was like, hey, here's his address, here's his friend's address, there's this other guy. And so that night, you know, we went out, uh hit hit his house, his place of business, and his place of business. The business that he was in was apparently making bombs because it was just a bomb making factory. And then from there, you know, you grab computers, you grab explosives, you grab paperwork, and then assess there's leading

mission to mission. And after that we were like, you know, just every night we were out about John out.

build our own target packages. And really once we got that, that got the first one knocked out. It was we were, you know, as busy as as we could be. We were turning uh uh stuff away, and then I think we pretty quickly established a reputation as being a unit that would you do a good job, not step on other people's toes. There was a lot of especially at that time kind of it was a little wild West

in in Baghdad. At that point, there were you know, we started, you know, working with Oda's that had you know, tons of of you know, sources and tons of targets, but you know, because of the way they were split up, didn't have the ass to action them, right, so you know, they you know, they would say, hey, we've got to hit this guy's house, but it's he's one of our sources, so you know, please don't blow his door off, you know,

or please don't. And so we're like, hey, man, yeah we can, you know, don't fuck his house up too bad. Yeah we can. Uh, we can do that. And so we pretty quickly got a reputation of being somebody that other people wanted to work with. And then it, like I said, it just became the point where we were incredibly busy.

other sixty guys in the in the unit. So we had one of the things that one of the things that absolutely made the unit as special as it was was that Colonel Coates's philosophy was that you know, everybody, everybody fights, so we would you know, run you know, he would have us put on shooting packages for the all the support guys, you know, all the enablers, all the intel dudes were everybody was kidded out the same, right, So there was there were times when things got got

a little bit icy. You aren't quite sure about the reservists that that had been attached to us as an armor who was man in the fifty count but h it h. We would always keep one of our teams uh kind of in reserve and with with the vehicles. So usually we'd have like one operator with with each vehicle to kind of just control the fight in and around that that vehicle. But there were occasions where we were able to bring us army units or even some Iraqis once let's say got up and running, or other

marine units. The push, it was kind of a big push to keep us away from working with other marines because it was kind of the proof of concept was supposed to determine if we could work outside of the Marine Corps. That was when Fallujah kicked off, and you know about that time, you know, we were you know a lot of our buddies were there in forgery compleatoons and we really wanted to go in and they were, you know, because of that, they kept us out of that fight.

But you know, everybody had been after these guys. So we first started getting some info on X, and our intel guys were you know, just churning on him. We were getting able to get some sources pretty close to him, but you know, when we would, you know, that guy and his family would be dead. So it was it was challenging. We wound up getting pulled off for a while,

as you mentioned, to do this security detail. And I say that only because the guy that we were guarding was occurred the Kurdish vice president of Iraq, and then you know, the threat was becoming you know, significant enough that as they started progressing towards the election that they wanted us back on going after bombmakers. So eventually we roll up this guy that we believed to be X. He you know, a couple of days in interrogation and

he won't admit it. We bring in family members and they're like, yeah, that's him, that's him and the but the guy, there's no way this guy was going to talk. You know, when we'd gotten to a point with the Iraqi interim government having taken control that anybody that we were rolling up, if if we wanted them to, you know, do any serious time or be put in prison, you know they were going to have to go through the

Iraqi court system, and we had already. I didn't do it, but a couple of our guys had to go and testify right against these people. And here's what we found or inside exploitation, here's where it was. Here's so this guy had been, you know, once we started kind of getting his backstory, responsible for the deaths of a lot of Kords me as part of the Saddam's regime. And so we're like, how can we get this guy to talk?

We're going to have to let him go if we didn't, And somebody came up with the idea, let's, you know, hit up our new pal that we've been protecting for these these weeks, the vice president who's occurred, and ask him if will join us on a little trip out to uh, you know, his kind of hometown territory. You know, they're like, what would happen, right if we turned this guy over to the Kurds. So I know, I didn't

go on this particular mission. I wish I would have, but fly out and uh, you know, with the vice President of Iraq, this dude with the bag on his head named X and then a bunch of our guys. We get him to a location where we turn them over to some Kurdish uh militia guys and you know, they pull off the bag. He recognizes the kind of the ship show that he's in and uh and we

were not. The point had been made very clear. He was safe, all right, No one was going to do anything to him because we were you know, our guys were hanging out in the bank. But uh, you know, once they started making their displeasure with him, you know, known he started off and up. Uh you know, plenty of infos so more than enough to kind of seal to make sure that he was going to be trapped

for a while. So and then once getting him kind of helped lead to this this next guy, uh z And he had been someone that all of the uh OGA organizations had been. Everybody had been after this guy.

he just he was never in the same place. But we one of again, one of our our human intelligence guys, was able to get a and it took like a source to get another source closer to get another source closer and eventually worked this young guy that we just we called the kid in as this guy's kind of gopher, and the kid eventually kind of worked his way up to the point where he was driving you know, Z around and uh, you know, we found out I didn't know it at the time, but Z had been responsible

for killing this kid's family, right he was. He wasn't a kid. He was probably twenty years old, So which was you know, why he was It wasn't about money for him. So we get, uh, you know, a text or some communication that that the you know, the following days he is going to be having lunch with some other big wigs in this very very busy restaurant and

a very very bad part of bag Dad. So it was it was a place where he could kind of walk down the street, you know, with with without fear, and we knew that they were going to have you know, lookouts on all the corners and across the street there were a couple of mosques that were kind of known to just just be full of fighters. So it was it was dicey, you know, especially you know, we made had all of our success by trying to hit a guy's house at two in the morning, all right, you know,

and doesn't you know, you you get sleepy. So this was kind of the middle of the day thing. Somebody came up with the the idea of, you know, instead of trying to there's no way really to come through and come into Helo's you you're going to be heard, you know, you come in and in uh military vehicles, you know, you're going to be seen identified far enough out.

So we got a bunch of fans, you know, just used a bunch of vans, you know, no armor, so it was it was a little dicey, but h took the you know, the darker skins, the dark haired guys through them and and you know headdresses and everything and had them behind the wheels and uh. The when the kid arrived, you know, he gave us the code word that they were heading to the restaurant. And then when they got to the restaurant, he went into the to

the bathroom and sent a text. And we were about five minutes out, so we were able to roll in and we brought in some of the Polish drom with us for external security on that uh and and rolled into a restaurant where pretty much everybody there was an anti coalition. Pretty much everybody there had a gun, you know, and then we had to figure out you know, you know, obviously we we found the the driver you know, or

the kid. We knew who he was. And then as we at this point we didn't even know what have a good photo of the but you know, we come in, roll him up. You know, we're able to you know, move quickly kind of get everybody out before any any shit kicked off. And uh, you know, by the time we got him back to you, back to our our base by the airport, we were told that you know, he was being taken away from us, right right.

We we were, you know, we were we had the ability to interrogate our prisoners for a couple of days, and when we were done with them, we would take him and drop him off at Abu g which it wasn't far away. So after the story broke of all of the kind of bullshit that was going on there, this kid was found with his head chopped off on the side of the road. And then shortly thereafter, a video of you know, him getting his head chopped off,

you know, surfaced, So we, uh this was happening. I think I think it happened like right as we were arriving in country. Uh when he when he when he went missing, and then it was you know, we were up and running by the time they found his body, and then the video was released, so there was I think it was Solder that was chopped his head off, but you know, you're right, I'm sorry. Yeah. So any rate, we uh wind up getting a lead on the guy who's who was or oh guy who was involved in this,

So we wind up, you know, rolling up. He lived in an apartment building, hid his house in the middle of the night like we did, and you know, we found a bunch of bloody clothing and bags and just CDs, you know, stacks of CDs of the betting right, so kind of kind.

and I don't I don't know. I had Yeah, I had seen years before a video of a chechen cutting off ahead and I mean the amount of of uh, I mean, fuck, that's you got to really want to fucking take a guy's head off, all right to do that, So there's got to be some fucking hate involved in that. And I didn't get it. I was like, man, I just I kind of want to get it. I want to see this guy and see what he has to say. And so I'm standing in the back of the room

just really my job is kind of be intimidating. And uh, the guy gets just brought in a down He's got a bag on his head, you know, they pull his pulled bag off, and you know, looking at him, you know, he's you know, truck and this guy looks like a normal fucking dude. You know, you know, what the hell is he doing? You have involved in this? In this bullshit? So you know, they's interrogating him and he's innocent, of course,

you know, he didn't do anything. He doesn't know how the all the bloody clothes got there, how the CDs got there. But the interrogator sets a laptop down on the table and pushes the button. And I had I had been standing in the back of the room, and at that point I kind of got like pulled forward, right, and I don't want to sit there and watch this video again. But uh, you know, I find myself got

with my hands on the chair. It's just and I talked about there and then there are a lot about it because it was kind of a moment that, uh, I mean I would have paid money to you know, paycheck to have been allowed to just choke that fucker to death. I didn't, and you know, obviously you know I didn't want to go to jail either. Uh but uh, you know, it just it made me realize that, you know,

everybody's capable of killing people. You know, sometimes we think because we're you know, marines or were special operations or or this or that, but I think anybody is capable of of uh, you know, killing somebody if you know, you push the right buttons.

I mean, it's like a city this place and there's underground tombs, there's uh you know, above ground, there's just it's like a massive city made up Wadi Salam I think, yeah, yeah, And that's called the Valley of Piece is what it means. Which was funny because we had the Marine Expeditionary Unit getting ready to go head to head with the Mahdi Army in the in the Valley of Peace and the value of Piece. But so we got called up and it wasn't just us, so there were seal sniper teams

went up. The Poles sent a team and we wound up running into an s F team that was was

running around. But when we got up there at the center of Najaf is the Ali a mam Ali Mosque and it's the I think it's the second or third holiest site for Shia Muslims, right, so it's uh, you know, no matter what you do, you can't fuck up this mosque, all right, It's got the dome is actual gold they're like golden tiles on top of this, and it's it's you know, nobody was willing to do anything that might risk damaging the mosque, and consequently, the mosque complex was

where there were you know, a couple of thousand dicades. So the only people that were able to move beyond a perimeter that had been set were snipers. And so we got up there, wound up connecting with the two six Cavalry and in their sector, and they were, you know like, hey, well, you know, we can't, we can't go beyond this this line, but we'll we'll throw you in the back of the vehicles, We'll get you up as far as we can, and then we'll provide a q RF in case, you know, ship really goes to ship.

So we were able to move in as special Operations sniper teams, and for the first couple of days it was because we all got in a position kind of surrounding the city about the same time the seals on the far side, the poles were over here, and the they the insurgents assumed that they knew that nobody could come beyond this line because that had been the way

that it had been. So you know, sun comes up the first morning and it's just like fish in a barrel, right, I mean we were just crushing, you know, you just hear sniper shots boom, you know, all kind of ring in the city.

boat guns we kind of had. I took about seven I think it was seven snipers with me and Ja Tack, and then later we we brought in some more guys. But for the first couple of days, it was like I said, just uh, just shooting nearly as fast as you could you could reload. After that, you know, they

started pulling know, some some pretty talented snipers. So we wound up with you know, a couple of occasions you know, really uh call, you know, thinking back to the things I've read about Leningrad and you know, the sniper battles in World War Two, and there was a lot of you know, a little you know, putting our hats up on sticks and trying to get a hold of periscopes to use. So a lot of things that are in

use now. You know, every sniper runs around with periscope like that was not something in the in the arsenal, you know, back in back and forth.

you know, looking into the mosque compound. And it was at that point that and I think somebody I'm not you know, I don't quote me on it, but I got a report that the total the you know snipers, we had been responsible for three hundred, killing three hundred all of the soft snipers, and and like thirty or forty of their snipers.

would get you know, come come close. So we got down and we're finally able to pinpoint him to a building, and uh, what we discovered he was doing was, which was a World War two tactic, was he had chipped out bricks and a couple of different rooms and he would pull the brick out, you know, take a shot, put the brick back in, moved to another room. And so we brought in. That's the time when the two sassers uh came in handy, So we brought into fifty cows and just dropped the wall on him.

So we we start getting back into in the reconnaissance training, you know, spending a lot of time up in Bridgeport, California, in the mountains and trying to you know, what we saw is the the issue with reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan at that time, especially where that you know, you can't stay out more than like twenty four hours without compromise,

right right, It's just you know, you couldn't do it. So, you know, so we'd come up with the idea of being able to go out do your own reconnaissance and then you know, be light enough, but you know, you have enough that you could go do a direct action mission, you know from your observation post, you know, and just

cut down that time. So you know, we started really and it's really a really cool time experimenting a lot of time up in the mountains, just seeing like how light we could go, how uh you know, how much ammo can you carry? Different ways of cash and ammo and things, how you know, experimenting with with like we're you know, eating sticks of butter and just calorie food to keep you going. It's just really like nothing was

off the table. So it was this kind of cool think tank of of you know, hey, let's find ways to get lighter and lighter and be able to sustain ourselves for for a long period of time. So while

this is going on. Kind of unbeknownst to us, there had been a couple of organizations that had done The Center for Naval Analysis had done one, and somebody else had done an evaluation of our deployment, and it was, you know, all glowing, Hey that one did great, you know, And so armed with that, the commandant of the Marine Corps and the commander of SOCOM go into Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, and say, hey, yeah, great, everybody had

a great, great experiment, but we don't want to continue it. And you know, Rumsfeld was, you know, to his credit was he's like, well, you know you're going to do this thing. I keep telling you, and they're like, now now we're we're good. We tried it, you know, I didn't like it. And so he eventually said, hey, you're going to know, instead of kind of letting you grow this small unit into a little bit bigger unit, you're going to form a two star level component to SOCOM.

So instead of being one hundred dudes, it's going to be a couple of thousand dudes. You know that the mank dorps would have to take out a hide. So it took it took about a year for that word to finally get out of us. So in the interim, like I said, we're just experimenting with stuff training. You know, some of our guys were at retirement age and said

screw it them out. You know, we had some guys that had moved on to other units, and so there was there was a little bit of attrition, but for the most part, you know, we were just kind of sitting there with their fingers crossed, hoping that we're going

to get get called to go out again. And that when it became clear that that wasn't going to happen, they told us that we were going to be disbanded about the same time that MARSAK was activated, and so I started, you know, looking for a way to and MARSK was going to be primarily headquartered on the East Coast. You know, I had spent you know, Debt one and most of my life had been out in California.

But yeah, so I check in. You know, everybody I meet is great. You know, they're heavy hitters. I'm you know, excited to be working with them. And then this captain comes and it's like, hey, I need you to get in the car drives me to the base headquarters and Marstok was using some office space in there because we

didn't have any of our own. And I get drug into to what was I think the deputy commander of Marstok's office, and uh, yeah, there's a this Marine Corps newspaper that says, you know, the articles Disgruntled that one and it you know, somebody or more than one person that talked to him and kind of said, hey, this

is you know, this is bullshit. You know, we we yeah, did a great job, and then we kind of get you know, unceremoniously disbanded, and and uh and I I hadn't personally felt that way, you know, I you know, we were going from one hundred dudes to a couple of thousand dudes. I saw that as a win, right, and that was based on all the work that we did.

So but I was, you know, not terribly thrilled when when I get drugged you know, from uh the range, you know, when we're out we're out on the range, out to this colonel's office so that he can like yell at me, you know, and slapped this paper down. So he was like, you know, are you disgruntled? And I'm like, I wasn't two minutes ago, you know when I walked in here. But it's it's changing pretty fine. And the conversation deteriorated thereafter. I wound up, you know,

a wound to becoming good friends with the guy. And he's a good guy. I don't know he felt he needed to put his foot down or make a statement, I guess, but yeah, yeah, the early days, there were a lot of I mean definitely, you know, any starting any organization of any sort, but especially you know, start

a special operations organization within the Marine Corps. Was was challenging, you know, because there were still there were a lot of marines that were opposed to it, and a lot of very senior marines that were opposed to the whole idea that didn't think it would last. And that and now we just just celebrated our seventeenth anniversary at marsoch So I think we're I think we're doing okay.

some things with CQB. We brought in people to help us innovate, so we had a lot of ideas about, you know, ways to do things better than we had been doing them. I brought or I didn't bring them with me. Another one of the Marines who had been in my team and had been my sniper partner and my team came with me as well and was assigned to the school. So, you know, between the two of us, we we had like a big checklist like, hey, you know, here's all of the shift that we're going to you know,

stop doing. Here are the things that we're going to start doing. And it's a little bit of a rocky road, but I mean we were really building from a cadre of probably you know, twenty instructors. If we were lucky to you know, today, we're probably have two hundred and fifty. So it uh, it's it's grown exponentially, and obviously we've added you know in the in the when we started,

we taught CQB and sniping and urban reconnaissance. You know, that's that's grown now to tell language courses and intel courses and you know kind of what have you along with our assessment selection program and our operator the individual training course the trained raiders. So I think to answer your question, it was, uh, you know, the opportunity on a small scale to kind of start up that one.

You know, those lessons definitely paid benefit, you know when it came time to start up something on a bigger scale. But it's it's a whole different beast, I said, when you're you're trying to develop the you know, a training program that's gonna take take marines from any military occupational

specialty and tournament raiders. And it was it was a unique opportunity, you know, and I got to travel down to to Q course and out the buds and you know, talk with guys out there and see the way other people are doing it, and so it was a really cool time.

Like you said, I mean, we wrote the Small Wars Manual, the uh you know, we're we stood up the World War Two Raiders, the first you know organa, the first special operations unit in in the US history. We're heavily involved in the O. S S. You know when that was stood up and they were you know, the O. S S was almost the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps was also almost given that mission, and they fought it. Off, and that's how they kind of got saddled with with

forming the Raiders. It's a fascinating history. If you read the President Roosevelt wanted to to bring Bill Donovan into the Marine Corps and make him in general. And there's there's I have copies of these letters, you know, typed up by generals in the Marine Corps, like you know, pitching and moaning to each other about it, that I was able to find in an archive. But uh so, Yeah, the Marine Corps is during the Banana Wars and you know, in and around World War One, they were you know,

Chesty Puller was the military governor of Nicaragua. You know, so we had guys who were, you know, operating at incredibly high levels, you know, thinking way outside the box, you know, doing things that seem to kind of be unmarrine like in some ways. But you know, Vietnam, the Force Rykun guys were you know, on par with anybody, you know, uh, you know, it was, it was working.

So it's been it's been odd. I mean, early in the early days, we were getting a lot of especially infantry officers, they would try out and just could not wrap their head around the idea that I'm a great Empfstry officer, but I'm not making it here, right because I'm not able to think you know, differently, right, not able to look at uh at situation you know, through other lenses.

was the case, you know, ten years ago. So I think the one thing that they don't and it's it's not their fault, it's just kind of a product of the world that we live in, is uh just sheer mental toughness, you know, like they had in most cases, they haven't had situations where they were were training, you know, in their the marine corps careers that was quite as as austere as as you know, it was was common, you know, twenty years ago before the war.

it came from the Army. The Seals were were always I think they realized pretty quickly that hey, if we can you know, get these guys on our side, you know, we're sister naval service guys, we can at least have a little more asked to fight back. Because there's a joke goes that SOCOM is spelled a r M y. I think the Army makes up like seven or sixty percent. Yeah, yeah, Well, or three percent.

my mind. I wanted to ask you, Oh, I want to ask you about rules and capabilities, Like, I know there's maybe some OPSEC issues, but maybe at a more general level, how do you see more sock like slotting into the ward or special Operations community over I know they're already there, but also in the next like ten years, I mean, what like unique role do you see them filling that maybe the other units aren't.

the beach and inland. So I think, yeah, more focus on that reconnaissance. You know, technology is growing by leaps and bounds. So you know, watching what's going on in Ukraine, you know there's there's obviously a lot of lessons learning there that we're taking to heart.

known for was their scout snipers. Now and now we have MARSOK which fills this very vital role, but you still have Battalion Recon I think right, and still have still have Force Recon and Force Recon hasn't to my knowledge, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but they haven't been brought into the socom umbrella.

So there's there's still snipers in the Marine Corps, but in Reconnaissance and in Marsk the state platoons of the sniper platoons within the infantry battalions or are being converted into scout platoons. So they it's I don't fully understand it. They're they're not there's not a sniper school and they're not going to train snipers, but they still have scope weapons and they still have a really similar role. They're beating them up, so they're they're growing a little bit.

I think that the snipers school has been you know, and it's the same reason you know, the Marine Corps just banded it post World War One, post World War Two, post they didn't even have really have a mutch of the way of snipers in Korea and then post Vietnam again, so I think, you know, I think they'll make their way back and then hopefully they will. But at present, Recon Battalion is still filling the same role that they

always have. Force recon is is is smaller than it was it used to be a company of anywhere from five to eight platoons, and now it's it's a much smaller foot brand, but they still will continue to be heavily involved in the force design twenty thirty and then heavily involved in uh, you know, providing commanders. You know this commander's eyes and ears.

we really didn't. I mean, a lot of people didn't know how long we were going to exist. You know, there was always kind of the threat that you know, we cost too much money and the you know, SOCOM doesn't want us in the Marine Corps is getting get rid of us. So a lot of a lot of you know, when you're being built in the middle of a fight, you know, you've got to focus on what

you need for that fight. I think as we've you know, things, you know, the situation changed, both in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, everywhere we started, you know, adjusting with that. But over the last ten years, I think we've had enough time to to set back a little bit and start looking at, hey, how do we make sure that we're building the unit, the organization, you know, for the missions of the future.

impacts of a gunfight. But you know, look for ways, you know, I always wanted to look for ways to make myself and my guys more capable. So you know, for a while, I was really hell bent on speed reading software because I thought that would help, you know, just speed up our ability to see, speed up your ability to identify it hardget to shoot. You know, we if there's something kind of new, you know, I was

going through. I was in a phase where I would try anything, and uh, you know, meditation became became one of those. So I started getting into it, and uh and I wish I was into it a little bit more, but uh, you know, I still believe in it. But I were like the first group of guys who are going to be more socks instructors brought them into a room, and I brought this lady, a really nice lady who had volunteered meditation instructor, you know, her time to come

and teach. So she talked for a little while, and all the instructors are kind of sitting there nodding their heads, and then she was like, hey, so we're going to all sit down and do like twenty minutes of meditation. Close your eyes. And so I'm I'm sitting there in the front, you know, with my eyes closed, and like I hear the door and then I hear the door again, and I'm like, all right, know, focus on my breathing

or whatever. And by the time the twenty minutes is up, I opened my eyes, and I mean me and her everybody else had left.

he's done pretty well for himself. I just had the opportunity to see him and have dinner with him a couple of months ago. He was he was incredibly driven as a as a young captain and major. I remember he used to at First Force. He used to set up these orienteering days where it was and it was

usually there'd be a helicopter. You'd, you know, he looked cast in swim into the beach and then you and your teammate would you know, have to you know, move around and navigate like a twenty thirty mile movement over the course of a day, find points at each point. There would also be like some questions you had to answer or like a Kim's Game thing that you had to remember, and U you know, if you if you want, you got bragging rights. But he's he's still pretty damn fit.

I asked. I saw him, and you know, he was always a excellent reconnaissance marine and a good leader and somebody that you knew was was going places.

So you know, it's the thing that the Marines kind of always done, punchbuber or weight class. But yeah, I don't I wouldn't hold your breath too long for that one. But I would like to love to see it.

I think that's the direction. If I were, you know, the commanding general for a day, that's the direction I would like to see.

know and make donations. Say my website is Jdaily dot com and there there's there's info about the book, obviously, but I also write a couple of weekly emails that go out. You know, one's just called Walking Point. It's it's kind of translates some military things into ways to make yourself better, and the others called rock the Fuck Up and it's it strangely enough about rucking mostly.