357: "Remember The Ramrods", With Medal of Honor Recipient, David Bellavia

This is Jocko, podcast number 357 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

Sims kept moving and I stopped him by shouting to his back.

Sir, anything you asked me to do, I am here. You know that.

Sims stopped slowly pivoting on the p stone. He walked back to me. I know that, Staff Sergeant Bell. I've never once questioned that in you.

I took a moment. It was a cool night. The silence of this area of open nothingness was now invaded by giant generators humming, blasting lights brighter than a Texas high school football stadium. An area that was essentially a path that required night vision two weeks ago was now amassed with army heavy equipment trucks, trucks, cranes and Conex trailers of worker B contractors and soldiers endlessly moving equipment 24 hours a day for the big inter theater move to Fallujah.

What do you got, Sergeant? I am more worried about losing people now than losing people in 10 years. And I don't mean to disrespect where you were coming from. I just can't think that way.

We are going to lose people. We will lose some of these men.

The reality of what he just said seemed to impact him in real time, as if he was unaware of what was coming out of his own mouth.

He paused. Sergeant, I don't know if I'm prepared for that either.

We both looked at each other. All I wanted was the Fallujah fight. I dreamed for this test. I was so excited about the prospects of actually impacting this war.

Now with Captain Sims, the reality of it seemed to hit me at once.

He looked at me, bags under his eyes. Stress. Worry. His wet eyes seemed red from long hours and late nights.

No way around this. I need you. This is going to be really rough, he said.

We need you, sir. You got us here and you will get us home.

Let's get as many back home as we can.

Yes, sir.

We walked in two opposite directions that night, Captain Sims. Toward the glowing lights. Me into the pitch blackness of the barracks.

When I think of Captain Sean Sims, I see him in his DCU's, bright in that night's glow of the light.

With only a helmet on his head and a sidearm on his leg.

Walking into the light.

And that right there is a excerpt from a book called Remember the Ramrods, An Army Brotherhood in War and Peace by David Bellavia.

And that's a conversation that took place just prior to the second Battle of Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury, the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War and the heaviest concentration of urban combat since the Vietnam War.

Captain Sims, Captain Sims was the commander of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, known as the Ramrods, who were organized in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division.

David Bellavia was a squad leader in 3rd Platoon of Alpha Company.

And so that was a conversation between an officer, the officer, the company commander and one of his non commissioned officers as they prepared for the worst combat that they could imagine.

In a short time. After that conversation.

They crossed the breach into Fallujah.

Where they met the enemy, improved their mettle as soldiers, as warriors and as American fighting men.

And there was great sacrifice during that battle, including over 500 wounded Americans, 95 killed. And for his actions during one house fight in that battle, David Bellavia was awarded the Medal of Honor.

And he has written about his experiences in two books. The first book called House to House. And a new book that just came out.

That I mentioned, which is called Remember the Ramrods. And it's an honor to have David Bellavia here with us tonight to share his experiences and his lessons learned. David, thanks for coming out man.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

That reading that section of the book. I remember when we were getting relieved in Ramadi, my tasking was getting relieved in Ramadi and new task unit came to take our place and, and we're giving them an in brief and the guys that were relieving us, well, they were coming from San Diego, California, Seal Team 5. And I remember giving him a brief and I was telling them, you are going to take casualties. And you could see even though these guys, these guys had been to, to, to Mark Lee's funeral, they'd been to Mikey Mansour's funeral a couple weeks prior.

But you know, they got on the ground and there's me and I'm telling them, hey, you guys are going to take casualties. It's a, it's a rough thing to, to face. And that conversation that you had with Captain Sims, you know, and, and look, how old were you at that time?

I was 28.

28 years old. And you have that attitude like, hey, this is what, this is what I was born to do. This is what I've been waiting for. I want to go fight Influen. These guys from Team five, God bless them, what they want to do, they wanted to get into it, of course, and that reality check of hey, this is where it's going and this is war and casualties are going to come. It's a, it's a heavy, it's a heavy thing to walk into it.

I mean Hearing you read that.

I. It's. It's so. It's. It's strange to me because I think of, you know, the guys that get hurt are the ones that really know.

You can get shot at repeatedly. A snap, a hiss. You know, when you're first in country, you always laugh at the new guy. Doesn't know the difference between incoming, outgoing, like, hey, what are you doing? Running for the bunker, right? It's like when a baby's born, the pacifier falls, and you sterilize it, steam it, autoclave it, you know? Then after, like, the second, third kid, you're like, you know, come on, put some more dirt on it. It's good for his immune system. The reality is that once you have been shot and you know, and you see your friends that have experienced it, there's. It's not real until that happens. And we remember. The Ramrods is a book about how we all are trying to. I used to think that I missed war and that for my entire remaining adult years after I left the military.

I missed adrenaline. I missed the ultimate. I mean, you go into a job interview, and it's like, are you good enough? What's on your resume? You know, what degree do you have? Your credit score? In civilian life, we like before we trust you. Go on a date. Are you worthy of my time? Do I trust you? In the military, I trusted before. I still don't like half these guys, but I trust them.

It's a totally different. And so we look at those days, and we think, that was the best time of my life. And there's also. We know that's weird for civilians to hear, right? We know that that's odd. And I thought those were the best days of my life. And I realized it wasn't the war. It was the relationships. It was the people. It was the sense of validation and purpose. Every day I woke up, I knew what I had to do. I knew I was needed. And being needed in a fight is. The great leading men is an incredible honor. But having a purpose in a fight is the greatest experience ever. When you're being shot at, and it's almost like the enemy's only shooting at the guys they want to take out of the battlefield. You don't ever want to be in a fight. And not getting shot at, that means they're willing to keep you out there for a little while. You're not exactly a threat to anyone.

It's a great feeling to know that this, my generation, every reason people are divided today, our generation at War had all the problems people have today. We had gay people, we had people of different ethnicities, different religions, and yet we cancel each other's vote out every year. So we got in the same debates and then when the bell rang, we went out there, did our job, and learned to live with each other and respect each other and love each other. And that, to me, is something that we. Everyone talk. Well, it's missing. It's our responsibility to remind our citizens why we. There's not a dental plan in the world that's gonna make you do what you did. I mean, honestly, seriously, is college debt, College debt's that bad that you're gonna go and do a vac in Ramadi? I mean, it's ridiculous. It's absurd to say so do you grieve you have been able to do something with your career that to me is. I'm tired of people saying, look what he did. I want people to say, look what I can do. If it's not inspiring to see people like you, then it's a waste. Because if it's just about one individual, and that's why this award is so. This award is ridiculous because what do you do? We're a team. It's all about us. But however, this one guy, you know what I mean? The only award for the entire living, for the entire war. It's not an honor. It's disrespectful. I can name you seven names from Fallujah alone that should have the Medal of Honor. So now you put one award on someone. What is, Are we going to go and just eat shrimp for the rest of our life? Is now the time to go and, you know, go off into A and E and start a TLC show? My Medal of Honor life? You know, what am I supposed to do with this now? How about we remember who we are every single day? I'm still a soldier. I'm still an infantryman. I will always be a non commissioned officer. And I'm an example of my leadership. And the greatest compliment a leader can have is when his subordinates eclipse him. And that's tough for. That's tough for a guy in his 20s running around with. People don't understand this about the military, but we get a lot of guys that were Division 1 studs that brought a gun to football practice. We get a lot of guys that screwed up. And these are guys that could be playing on Sunday, any sport they want.

There are times that you want a professional goaltend a little bit and be like, well, that's a hard charger. He's smart, and he's physically fit. I'm going to destroy his career. He's going to take my job. I don't want to give him a good report, a good counseling statement. I want to give him an award.

And then you start to realize that the reason why our military is elite is because every generation is better than the previous. And you have to embrace that greatness. That's what a leader is. A leader is saying, this is what I did. Look at what my 12 guys did. They're better men, they're better fathers, they're better citizens, and they're better soldiers than I was. That's what you want to be able to say. And until you say that, you know, you're. You're playing paintball with it, with a. With a college fund. It's not real. This is what it's all about, is make it. Is making it better for the next group.

Well, I think there's a lot in these books that definitely are going to help a lot of people be able to move through these things. Let's get into where you came from a little bit, just a little bit of background on you. So you're born. Born in what, what, 1975?

Yeah.

And up in western New York. How do you say your town name? Lindenville.

Lindenville, yeah.

Population 838. Is that right?

That's. Yes.

Like 2010 census.

We're not going to get an arena football franchise anytime soon. But it. It's a real small town. Appletown, right off farming community off of Lake Ontario, and it's about an hour from Buffalo.

And your dad, what'd your dad do?

Dentist. Father was a dentist, and he chose rural instead of suburban. He could have done anything, practiced anywhere. That's where he wanted to raise his family.

And what about your mom?

She was working at the practice. She would stay at home, helped him out, was a partner all throughout. Great family. Great. I'm the youngest of four, and everyone.

Has a master's, double master's, PhD. I mean, my dad was all about education, be a professional.

How'd that work out for you?

I'll tell you what, it was weird that he, as a dentist, his whole thing was he had great empathy, wanted to always take people out of pain. And I would hang out. My granddad is still alive. He's 102, and he was a Normandy vet. He did Sicily, North Africa and Normandy.

Let's get him on the podcast.

By the way, I'll tell you what, that'll be a 12 hour. He won't shut up. Just give him Olive Garden. And he'll just keep talking. He'll go. But my grandfather would. My mom. It's my mom's dad, and she had, like, 13 brothers and sisters. And I would get these stories at an age that you probably shouldn't be telling. I remember there was a time I went target shooting with my Dad. I had a.22 rifle, and I was. He was like, david, your grouping is good, but let's try to get it center. And I'm like, because it was low, right? And he's like, why are you shooting? You know, let's get it in the middle. And I'm like, but that's where the femoral artery is. It's by the hip bone. And Granddad says. He was like, listen, no more stories about where the bleeders are. You know, that's not what we want. He would tell me these stories of combat that were almost. They were filtered. They were Victorian in the sense that there was no better nobility. But there was always this contrast of, don't ever think the enemy is just. Nazis are horrible. Imperial Japanese were the worst people in the world. But they're human beings. And there's something that happens to you when you go to war that you'll never, ever look at life the same. But it wasn't as if it was a warning of, don't do this. It was, you can't ever appreciate anything unless you're in that environment with other people doing something together against evil. So, you know, when I went to Kosovo and K4 Bravo, no offense to the Clinton administration, I didn't really find evil. You know, we didn't interrupt, you know, ethnic cleansing. We found the ethnic cleansing. We weren't a kinetic force standing up against Milosevic or the, you know, the Greek Orthodox against the ethnic Albanians. It was just kind of like, we're here. We're just hanging out. Iraq was, you know, again, it was. I saw evil. I saw it. I saw people that wanted to hurt myself, my friends.

You can be victimized by that trauma, or you can be empowered by it. And you could say, listen, there can't be a bad day ever after that, right? I mean, there can't be. There's nothing you can't do.

So your grandfather made that impression on you at a pretty young age.

The stories were ridiculous. Ridiculous. He's like, I'm sleeping, you know, cold day in Bastogne. And it was a dead pig, a frozen pig. And he would tell these stories of how he would go into these French areas that were friendly to the Nazis. And he's like, my guys haven't eaten in weeks. Do you guys have any eggs? And they're like, no eggs, no nothing. He's like, you're a liar. And I'm like, this is a French civilian. You know, like, they've been through hell. He's like, you're lying. You have eggs. You've been giving eggs to the Nazis, haven't you? He's like, we found barrels of champagne. We found ham, salted ham. We feasted on that. And I was like, what's the message here? The message isn't, my grandfather was pillaging of civilians. The message is salted ham. And whatever luxury you could find was the best meal of his life because he didn't know if his day was going to end tomorrow. And I'm 12, and I'm thinking, you know, that could you imagine not knowing what tomorrow is going to be like and just having this opportunity for fellowship, camaraderie, and a warm meal and you will literally do anything just for that moment. And he's. At the time, he was in his 80s. Now he's 102. He still thinks about that meal. It doesn't matter. Five star, four star. He thinks about that meal in a barn, you know, next to a blown up 88. Like, that's incredible to me.

So you got this on one side. Meanwhile, your dad is all about education. Want you to. How are you doing in school?

You know, I was. My parents raised me right. I had a great school, great teachers. Everything was good. This wasn't. I went to college and I was checking the box, and I remember my senior year, I was in a library and I was a goofball, and I was just trying to be funny and be popular. And the little TV on, the little roller cart TV, they plugged it in. It was 10-19-93, and I'm watching Bill Cleveland get dragged through the streets of Somalia. And I felt like a complete fraud. I've never felt like this. The closest I've come to an out about experience where I thought.

We can't be funny, we can't laugh. This is an American who dedicated his life to protecting us. And he's being dragged by a truck and ripped apart by kids in Mogadishu and Black Hawk Downton. And I remember saying a prayer that I didn't know what life I would live. I had no idea if I was going to be a dentist. I had 12 kids, one kid, never married. I'm going to avenge Bill Cleveland. That's all I wanted to do was just give me, if it was a two week missionary trip, I'd find a way to get into the marketplace in Mogadishu. But I was going to stack up and just take a Polaroid and send it to the Cleveland family to say we got him. And the one thing that I never understood about soldiering was how important.

Avenging loss is and how what that means for your morale, what that means for a family. And again, that's another disconnect with civilians. But knowing that the person that destroyed your life and took something away from you, that we got them. When a war became nothing but IEDs, nothing but you never saw the enemy. You're listening to music and you disappear into mistakes. In a war where you had the chance to see the enemy fix them and they're now afraid of you. That's why we fought. And Fallujah, Ramadi, Muqtadiah, Baqiba, those areas, Mosul, they gave us the opportunity to actually fight back when so many of the losses in Iraq at that point were, you know, ghosts. Basically.

I want to get to the point where you get done with high school. But there was a part of this book that I promised myself had to be read so that everyone could hear it.

Here we go. When I was 17 in the summer of my junior year, my my dad started a group for teens whose mission was to wait until marriage to have sex.

The fourth of July was the biggest event in our small town. Our population of 750 would balloon to 3,000 in one afternoon. The fireworks, the parades, the chicken barbecue, the macrame plant hangers made this the go to location in Orleans County. Inevitably, there was going to be a float for his new organization. My father came to me and explained how difficult it was to get orange older kids to join his group. And this is a group, like I said, this is a group for people that are going to stay virgins until they're married. I was stunned. How richly bizarre it was that teenagers didn't want to ride downtown declaring to all their peers they were virgins and not open for business. With a sober face and piercing eyes, he asked me, david, I would like you to be the king of our virgin float.

Not having read the bylaws of the group to see if this sort of nepotism was allowed, it was quickly revealed that this was an acceptable policy. There was no disqualification in being related to an officer of the group and naming me the king of all virgins.

Without a proper vote or at least having a board meeting. I was a good kid, shy, not exactly a ladies man, and in fact, a real bona fide virgin. At 17.

I just really didn't want to be on a float being pulled by a John Deere tractor in my hometown, declaring to my entire community that my prom night didn't end. Like I had told all my friends. I was introduced to my Queen. She was 12 years old. Every other kid on the float ranged from the ages of 9 to a very mature 13. But I love my father. I could not let him down. People like you, and if people like you and if they see you are waiting, maybe they will wait too. He said to me, dad, you are far overestimating my ability to influence my peer group. No one cares. This is humiliating.

I rode on the float on a throne of chastity while girls who hadn't even reached puberty tossed Tootsie Rolls to my laughing peers. I wore that crown. I wore that sash that read I, I don't until I do.

That was the most emasculating 25 minute tractor ride of my life. When the parade ended, my dad came up to me and said something I'd never forgotten. David, that was a very difficult thing I asked you to do. Remember this. If you live your life doing things that are difficult but that are right, you'll find the strength to do tougher things when they count the most. My hero asked me to do it. And I wouldn't have changed a thing because it made my father proud.

I know you're a courageous guy.

That was rough.

I can tell you, when I was 17 years old, that wouldn't be happening for me. I would have ran away.

I think.

You know, to me it was always obligation, was, you know, your father was your father and I love my dad. And there were times that, you know, you know, when you become a father, you think, oh, I don't know if I would have done that. I don't know if that lesson works out well today. But the toughest thing I've ever had to do in my life was love my army, when my army treated me like garbage.

And there's nothing more difficult than that. It's to love your branch, love your chain of command, when there's no reason to do it. And that relationship with my officers was very much like my relationship with my father. These are the rules. You grow where you're planted. No one picked their unit. Very few people get a chance to pick their people. And when they do, it's different. But here I am and these are my people, and they're going to tell me what's going. And I'm going to knock it out. I'm going to find something. Because I would fear the enemy can kill you, the enemy can hurt you. The enemy can take your eyesight and your body parts. But the shame of letting down someone that was an officer in charge of me or a senior NCO was far greater than what the enemy. I was more afraid of what they could do to me than what the enemy could do. And it sounds stupid to say out loud in your 40s, but I felt the same way about my dad. I mean, this man was. He was five foot three, never told me to lie. And yet I'd look at his driver's license from New York State. I'm like, it says five nine. You're not five, nine. What's going on here? But that was my dad and I loved him. And that was a ridiculous request. A ridiculous request. But making him proud was everything to me.

Do you play sports in high school?

Yeah.

What'd you play?

So we're a real small school. We didn't have football, so we were soccer, which is very difficult to get motivated for, but we did the basketball, soccer, baseball. Those are my three.

And then you say you end up going to college.

Yeah.

And what are you planning when you go to college? What year is it? What year did you graduate?

94. Went to college. Started off in New Hampshire and again I went pre med. Biochemistry was the major, but it was the pre med. And then I had no, you know, really sheltered in a really small area. And so I wanted to meet, you know, girls. I wanted to be popular. And so I figured all the guys I met in the theater program just weren't that interested in women. It was really strange to me. And so I figured I'll. I'll see if maybe I could be like a theater minor and just kind of hang out in this crowd. And.

I had no real ability to do anything. And was shocking that they didn't care. Like, nobody wanted to see me dance or sing or even attempt to act. They were just like, you want to be in this group, go ahead. I'm like, this is like a degree. Don't you need to have some semblance? It was just like walking around. Everyone, everyone just was like, no, put a turtleneck on. You're a part of the club and you're gonna spend money to get a degree in something, and we don't even care if you're even good at it. And it really? Cause even the science guys cared. I mean, you had to at least pass and do well. No one gave a damn about, you know, the fact that I couldn't do anything.

So were you in plays or something?

I mean, you. You have to be in everything, but it doesn't mean you're good at it. You know what I mean? Like, you have to be involved, but it's. And then, like, the. What, you're graded on your effort. Like, you're graded on how much you smile.

Like, how this is confusing to you.

Yeah, just like, this is. Like, I don't. I don't get it. And so you wonder why there's so many delusional people going to LA and New York. And it's because for four years, they're like, you are really trying hard. Well, listen, can I work? Can I get a job?

We have a law, a federal law on a credit card that says if you pay the minimum in 20 years, this is what you're going to pay. But you can walk into a college today and get a degree and Shakespeare on stage, and no one has an obligation to be like, that's not a real job, by the way. You're never gonna make money. What are you gonna make at the end of 30? At nothing? How do you do a profit and loss? There were a lot of guys in theater departments and film that just, you know, what is Andy Warhol? 15 hours of a guy sleeping. It's art. Well, all right, you know, maybe you could be like Andy Warhol, you know, so. Yeah, it didn't. It didn't work. So how long.

How long did you stay in college for?

I stayed in for the remainder. It was my senior year of college, second semester, and I had a professor tell me. And so I was getting more and more rebellious in the idea of. I felt like my friends were in the army. My friends were doing cool things. And I just was like, I'm doing this for my father. I'm doing this for my mom. I'm doing this for everyone. And then these professors were just. I'm like, what have you done in theater? What have you done? Have you ever been in a movie or written a movie or anything? And the guy's like, you leave this school, you'll come back with your tail between your legs. And I was like, and do what? Teach? Like, do I have an opportunity? Like, what am I going to do if I leave here? What have you. Like, how are you teaching? Listen, I go to the range. Someone. It's a guy who really knows how to shoot a machine gun, Teaching me how to shoot a machine gun. It's not some guy who's like, I have this crazy dream about an 84 millimeter rocket. Let me give you a lesson on it. They actually are subject matter experts. I didn't understand why these people were professors and why they were doing. And so I just. My last year, I just said, I don't. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to leave. I want to go. And.

Maybe I'll write a screenplay or maybe I'll write a book, or maybe I'll do something to show that I don't need this degree. My brothers all had it. My brothers all did it. It was like, I checked the box. I'm serious. I went into debt. That's how serious I am about being an adult. Like, if you don't take me seriously, I got a piece of paper that says, I'm serious. This is real. I put money into it. I wasted time. I'm a real. An adult. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. I want to do something that you don't think is intellectual. But I think it's intellectual, and I can't think of anything. Every time I watch. I'm a big Buffalo Bills fan. Every time I watch football in the trenches, I'd go to war with that guy. A war is always a metaphor. There just wasn't a war. So I came home from college one summer and we had a home invasion. These two drug addicts broke into my parents house. And I was like, this is my time. This is what I've lived my whole life for. I grabbed Remington shotgun and I loaded it up. And I was, I'm going to shoot these guys. They're shirtless, shirtless guys just running around the house, cutting wires off of TVs, throwing them into their car, moving in and out. I had a Rottweiler at the time. I put the Rottweiler in the garage because I was afraid the Rottweiler would bite him. And I didn't want, like, there to be a liability issue. Like, maybe they were my parents, friends, maybe it was a misunderstanding. But I was shook. I was scared. And I grabbed this shotgun, I loaded it up. I felt. I felt it just like I had done previously. And I brought it up the stairs and I saw these guys. My mom had had neck surgery. My dad was taking care of her. They were on the other side of the house. And I just thought.

You'Re going to murder these guys. You're going to kill These guys. And everyone's going to have to move out of the house. Everyone's going to look at you differently. And what I was really doing was just buying time, right? Buying time for them to do something and run away. And they didn't. And they looked at me with like zero fear. And that hurt. But that was, that's, you know, 3:00am inventory. No one saw that. But then my dad came out after these guys roll off, they get arrested, they go to jail, the whole trial. But right after they drove off that day, my dad looked at me and he looked at me in a way that was just. That was emasculating. Having your dad look at you and say, you're 22, 23, and you're not ready for the world. That was it. That was it. I'm like, I'm going to summer camp with bad haircuts. I'm gonna go. I'm Gonna get my PhD at the University of Fort Bennington, Georgia in Human Studies. And I'm never going to be. If there's a noise anywhere I'm at, any situation I'm in, I'm going to handle it. Any situation I'm in. And, you know, you could be bigger than me, stronger than me, you could have more skills than me. I'm going to tear your eyes out or shoot you repeatedly. You know, there's going to be a series of escalation, but the reality is I'm going to handle it. I'm going to handle it. I had no ability to control my destiny. I had no ability to handle anything. And the army gave me the opportunity to at least say, we're going to teach you enough to get your ass kicked in a fight, but we're going to teach you enough that you can control your destiny. And I needed that desperately. But there was no war going on. I was 99, you know, end of the late 90s, and it was just learn how to march and do pt. And that's what I thought I needed. So infantry, they told me 11x ray met extra special.

And so when I get to Fort Bend, I'm like, I'm an X ray. They're like, I'm a Bravo. And I'm like, what's that? They're like, that's real infantry. I'm like, no, it's not. They lied to you. But when I got to Fort Benny, Georgia, the first night, there were kids, like crying and nervous. I slept the best sleep I've ever had in my life because I knew this is who I was. This is Where I'd be safe, there was no stress. You know, these kids were like 19, 18. I was like, this is nothing. Or what are you worried about?

This is why we're here. We're here on this earth. We were born to do this. Now we don't get a war. That's the part that's going to suck, is we're just going to end up with a bumper sticker on our car. What are you going to say? We're a vet and get a free meal at Applebee's? But listen, we offered. There was nothing for us to do.

So you were that fired up? Like, day one of boot camp.

I had no idea. I wore khakis and a button down shirt because I wanted to impress. I wanted to impress my drill sergeant. I was a professional, and they told me that I was going to be there for like 15 weeks. And so I didn't. I knew I had to shave my head, but I thought I was going to grow back, so I brought a hairdryer, right? When they shook my bag, they're like, what piece of shit brought a hairdryer? I was like, this is my first challenge. Like, do I own it? And I'm like, yeah, that's my hair dryer. They told me there was a couple months here. I wasn't aware that there was a payday haircut. You didn't tell me that. You know, but honestly, I had no idea really what I was getting into. But the more I learned, I just. I looked at these drill sergeants and I was like, these are amazing. The NCO became. I'm so glad I didn't go officer, honestly, because I saw these NCOs, and I was just like, this is everything I've always wanted to be. If I could have a son. And I could see a person shoulders back, looking you in the eye and not, you know, not waiting to speak, but listening, hearing what's going. And if you don't know the answer, you say, I don't know. Like, wait a minute. What is this? Magic? If you don't know something, you actually admit that, and then you make a mistake. You say, I did that. But you know what? It's not going to happen again. This was like learning a new language, a new way to. This was true north. Nothing else is north but that. This is right, this is wrong, and own it. Accountable, responsible, and ready for more. To show that you're ready for more, you take whatever I'm guarding. This little drinking fountain. But you know what? No one is stealing that drinking fountain. I'm 10 for 10. No fire on my fire guard. This is. This is. It was the greatest thing in the world for me.

So you go to boot camp. Really no factor for you. You're kind of loving it.

Loving it.

Ait. Is that where you go next?

It's all one. One station, one big thing. Yeah. So infantry is all whatever you. And they said I was going to be mechanized, which, you know, Fort Drum, Fort Hood. It didn't matter. I just wanted to do, you know, what's a bunker? I mean, it blew me away. And then I thought to myself, wait a minute. If a bunker is this little thing, guys hang out in it and they shoot you, what's a window? They're like, oh, no, we have a different battle drill for that. But I'm like, but it's really a bunker, isn't it? And they're like, wow, this is a thinker. We got ourselves a thinker. So now these guys are saying, let's explain something to you. A battle drill is like an audible. You see the linebacker come up. You see that you're not in man coverage. Now you're like, I think we're just going to react to the contact. But in that, reacting to the contact, a million things can happen, and you've got to decide. So I didn't even fundamentally understand. I want to get you. I want to get close enough to kill you. That's the game, right? So in order for me to get close enough to kill, you have to stop shooting at me so I can move. I'm like, wait a minute. This is making sense now. All these movies are making sense. So I got to keep your head down. So plunging fire is different than just shooting over your head, Right. I want to. I don't want to hit you necessarily. Do what would be great, to take everyone out and. But it's not the way it works. They're moving, too. They're getting away, too. But if I can give you something to think about, I can get closer to you. And the closer I get, the more accurate I can get. And what's cover? What's concealment? Hey, the only thing I would give one more class. If you're going downrange, fighting in Europe or Asia or the Middle east, what cars have engines in the trunk and what cars have engines in the front? Because the first day, you hide behind what you think is an engine block, and those rounds come flying through it like a knife through butter. You're like, oh, those damn Germans. They put it in the back that's the one thing I would change. But cover and concealment. I understand this. So now I get education. We have to be educated. You have to learn. And having what these young kids have today, what I didn't have, all my drill sergeants were making up stories about Panama, and everyone was at. Everyone was at the soccer stadium every, you know, Bosnia. Let me tell you how bad. No, there was no Haiti. You know, I almost jumped, Almost jumped into Haiti, almost did this, almost did that. Gulf War. These men and women today, they got stories. These drill sergeants, these leaders are like, let me tell you why you want your chin strap on. Let me tell you why that sappy plate's important, why we get low, why it's important to bring the elbows in. What controlled fire actually is. What do you want? Hey, there's no drywall in the Middle East. That's all concrete. So when you start shooting inside of a close quarter, that is coming back to you. It's a tic tac toeing around, right? A grenade is great, right? Throw the grenade and everything's over. Unless you don't have ventilation. Now, you just threw a smoke grenade in a room, and the only people that know you're in there is the bad guy, because you don't know where they are. You've never been in the house before, and now they all know where the door is and where you are. So that frag, let's hope it was a smart frag and got, you know, all of these lessons learned that we need never had and we learned in the actual battle and the ability to take information at the highest level, lowest level, and share that information. I've never been in an organization on the civilian side that shares lessons learned like our military does, and it's a combat multiplier, without a doubt.

Yeah, no doubt about that.

So you're learning from the I almost jumped into Panama dudes, which, God bless them, you know, they were ready. They wanted to jump, they were ready.

And.

And so what's your. What's your first duty station, then? Where do you end up? What do you get? Where do you get assigned when you get done with boot camp? Ait. You're. Now, what are you? An E2 at this point? An E3. An E1.

So basically. But the only advice I got from the drills, the recruiter was, you're. You're. You can be a spec. You can be a specialist. E4. Okay. You're college. Don't do it. Oh, you gotta earn that now. I didn't realize all I had to do was basically just not get a DUI for 12 months, and it happens automatically. But that first promotion felt like, you know, I was Thor. I mean, like, getting promoted and seeing the increase in your, you know, in your pay. And, like, this was, like, a big deal. So E2 to E3 to private. I have a rocker on my little private wings. This was. I'm telling you, it was important. It was special for me. So I got a duty assignment to Fort Hood, Texas. And in the process of doing that, my son is born, and he's born with a kidney issue. And so the army basically is like, hey, there's no infantry duty station that has these pediatric nephrologists that you need. You got one at home. We're going to put you on a compassionate reassignment. I didn't know what that was. And they were like, so go be a recruiter. You got a good GT score. We're going to keep you for two years on a compassionate reassignment till your son is old enough to go where you need to be, and we'll keep you in Buffalo. I was like, you know, they made up jobs for me at a recruiting station, and I just was miserable. I mean, seriously.

So that's what they did. That's what you did. You went to.

That's what I did. For the first 18 months of my army career, I was in a recruiting station. I would have volunteered to be a POW at that point. I mean, it was absolutely. There's no more difficult job than being an Army. Any recruiter is the. Everyone's disqualified. The game should be. If you finally find someone answering the phone, you know, at the mall, I mean, you just. Disqualified. Disqualified. Disqualified. I mean, it's ridiculous. Everyone's disqualified. I remember one time I found a guy, he committed to the Army. I brought his packet in. I had opened the door, like, on, like a, you know, one of those hoverboards just floating through the office. I go to my station commander, and he's like, hey, this guy was born on Christmas Day. And I'm like, yeah, people get born on Christmas Day. His name's Christopher Kringle. And I'm like, that's a weird coincidence. He's like, you're an idiot. You're an idiot. You just talked to Santa Claus. And again, no idea that there were people out there that would waste your time and that, you know, just. You're the corporal recruiting program where they. And then they give you an NCO rank. And so at the time that September 11th hit, the army, obviously, the military across the board. Let's move, people. You know, get on with your career.

Were you in that in there when? September 11th.

Yeah. So from 99 until, you know, September 11th, I was in a recruiting and they said, look here, three choices. Reclassify to another job. Go back to AIT and get another job that's near a place that the army will take care of the kid. Get out of the army or go on what's an all others tour, which is 36 months away from dependence. And I'm like, well, which one gets me to the war? And to be honest with you, I love my country, I love my army and infantry, but recruiting also will make you want to go to war too. I'll do anything to get the hell out of that office. They're like, Germany. And I'm like, germany? What is it the big red one. And I'm like, I've seen the movie. Movie. Like, I love the big. I want to be in the big red one. Afghanistan. Are they going to Afghanistan? They're like, oh, no, no, no. Big Red One hasn't done anything since 1996. We. You are only in charge of the very dangerous battleground of Kosovo. And I was like, kosovo is a war, right? And they're like, technically, technically it's a war. I mean, you're not going to get combat pay, but you get like combat almost pay. You know what I mean? It could be. So that was our big fight. We were peacekeepers, forward deployed Germany peacekeepers. And the big red one really hadn't been the big red one for a long time, since the Gulf and even the Gulf War. We were kind of like the fake barn door that Saddam chased in the Gulf War. So it wasn't the Vietnam Big Red One or the World War II Big Red One or obviously the First World War. It was the peacetime peacekeeper stuff. And so I said, sign me up, I want to do it. I want to do anything that isn't recruiting.

And that's what you did. So you go over there and how did you enjoy your time in Kosovo?

Well, it was a six month tour that became a nine month tour. And no offense to the Minnesota National Guard, but I don't think you got relieved by the Minnesota National Guard, did you? You always know if, listen, National Guard units are incredible and they're awesome, but when, you know a group that had never ever we got relieved by a National Guard unit that was calling like their sergeant Major Phil. And like, I was like, what? It was a totally different World, I never experienced it before, so we just felt like we were in the backwater. Everyone was getting Afghanistan but my units in the 2nd Infantry, 22 infantry, the Ramrods and 1st ID and Alpha Company, Captain Walter, Captain Sims, together, Colonel Newell, Sergeant Major Falkenberg, Sergeant Major Bond. These guys all decided to take that nine months of Kosovo, three months extended, and make it the practice for Iraq. And I got to tell you what, that saved so many lives because not only were we together for two years, right? 15 hour patrols of watching dogs mate in Kosovo, nothing happening, begging for someone. I mean, nothing was going on. But after that 15 hours, you're in the snow and you're training for the desert. You're not going to wear that baklava, you're not going to wear those boots. Get in your desert uniform, get out there in the snow, and let's train for Iraq. In Kosovo, we got all the rounds we wanted, whatever we wanted. Claymore. Never seen a Claymore since Basic. You know, whatever we wanted, we had access to. And we blew up pallets of grenades, pallets of C4. We were ready for combat because of Kosovo. Had Kosovo not happened, we wouldn't have got that training. So we graduated to a level that on day one, we could, we could fight. And that's why we were successful.

And then you guys end up getting word that you're going to go to Iraq.

Finally in Kosovo, we're told we're in the, in the shoot. So it got real serious. We literally would. We went our nine months, I think we refitted for 60 days, but that's like leave and re qualifying and then right back to, to the fight. So by the fall, we were in Germany and then we were three months maybe, I think is what we had. We went right to Kuwait and got ready for Iraq.

I'm going to take it to the book here.

When the army deployed the Ramrods to Iraq in February 2004, we had a basic idea of where we'd be going inside the country. We ended up at FOB Normandy, which by the way, I got corrected by one of my Vietnam veteran friends that they say, he's like, it's fob. So I don't know, I've said FOB the whole time. So there's been a transition till. And the SOG guys from Vietnam, we say FOB now. So FOB Normandy in Diala province, section of Iraq between Baghdad and the Iranian border. Our area of operations included mooc. What is it? Muktadiya.

Muktadiya.

Muktadiya. A mid sized city of about 150,000. Fitz, one of your guys was wounded in an urban firefight in April 2004, only a couple months after we arrived in theater. To the north of the city lay open, rugged terrain. When Americans think of Iraq war, the images conjured up are the street scenes in Baghdad or the flat expanse of open desert in the western part of the country. But Rao looked more like Vietnam in 1968.

Thick palm groves grew in low spaces between gentle sloping hills. There were canals and rivers that the local farmers had harnessed to turn the land so bountiful that they had become known as the breadbasket of Iraq. Among the heavy vegetation and irrigated fields, small communities straddled the roads leading out. They were ramshackle, impoverished places, but seated among them were wealthy Sunnis connected to Saddam hussein's once ascendant Ba'ath party. Below these elites, the vast majority of the population were Shia Muslims with strong ties to neighboring Iran. After the American invasion in 2003, a kernel of resistance formed to the American occupation in one of these rural towns called Sin Sil. In the early stages of the insurgency, there were actually only a few locals involved who forged ties within Iran to secure important weapons, export explosives and ammunition. The palm groves around Sinsil and its sister village became ideal places to cash those supplies. When the Ramrods first arrived At Normandy, the 4th Infantry Division had been battling this growing threat. They had identified six men as the leaders in the insurgency known as the sin sil six. The fourth IDs, intelligence guys that put their faces up on a wall map and then connected them to various known hideouts and accomplices with different colored yarn. The first time I saw their bad guy map, it reminded me of a Hollywood stalker's lair. With Sinsil being the nexus of the insurgency's leadership, it became one of the most important sectors in Rao. Captain Sims frequently took us out there to meet the locals, drink tea with their leaders and discuss the needs of their communities. Classic counterinsurgency. Win their hearts and minds. Stuff that came straight from the Vietnam playbook. Within 30 days of our arrival, the Sinsil 6 had grown to the Sinsil 10. We tracked down and killed two of the original members. When the intel learned there were three brothers moving between Syrian Sinsel to arrange another flow of weapons to that area, they ended up on a yarn crossed wall map too. One of our special operations teams located, trapped and killed one of the brothers. The other two escaped. Each time we thought we'd deal with this. We dealt with the Sinsel a crippling blow. They emerged strong, with even more support from the local population. It was like fighting a contagious virus. For every patient we treated, three more infections would crop up. The sin sil 10 grew to sin sil 20 and then 30 after that. We just lost track as a wave of recruits, organizers, and well trained Iranian operatives flooded into the breadbasket. That spring, the insurgency erupted all over the country. Between the first Shia uprising that displaced the Sunni ruling class rebellion, nearly every coalition unit was inundated with insurgents planted IEDs, planting IEDs in their operational area, executing ambushes and launching attacks at key targets. As the weeks wore on, our trips to Sinsil turned into a kinetic version of Groundhog Day. We'd go out so Captain Sims could continue to try to develop relationships with the local Iraqi power base. While he was talking to them, drinking tea, the insurgents would be alerted to our presence and establish ambushes for us. So that just kind of paints a picture of what you guys rolled into.

Yeah, 4th Infantry Division, you know, at the. You know. So we started to see the extensions. You had a stop loss that was going on when Iraq kicked off, and a lot of people thought they were out of the military and they were kept in. And then you had the first real extensions. I think it was Karbala was the first armored division that did. They were supposed to do nine months. Everyone was gonna do nine months. And then it became a year, and then a year became 15, and there were units that were doing 18. And so we didn't really have. With the kinetic tempo that was going on. Afghanistan, Iraq, how are we going to replace these units? Are they doing sustainment, you know, stabilization operations, or are these still kinetic? You know, I didn't. We didn't. We were told, don't. You're not getting a cib, you're not gonna get a common antibodies badge, and you're not going to get a combat.

They told you that when you got.

To Iraq, 2004, the mission accomplished, the war was over. You had to be engaged by the enemy. That kept changing what engagement was.

So check this out. So you got there in February. Why? I was there as well. I was wrapping up my first deployment. So I got there in 2003. I was in Baghdad and in April of 2004. So just after you arrived, we went. My task unit, it was actually just a platoon. It was my platoon. We went and we captured one of saudr's top lieutenants down in Najaf.

Yeah, we were there.

Okay. So when we did that.

Ignited everything.

In April of 04. In April of 04. So the big fight was supposed to be in April of 04. Fob Duke, which is the big fob that we created in April of 04.

Where was it?

Right outside of Najaf.

Okay.

That is named after my brigade where The Duke Brigade, third brigade, first I.D. that was. I've never. So you talk about the terrain, you know, a lot of vegetation, humidity. Najaf was straight up the oil bubbling. I mean it is just nothing but sand. And the biggest cemetery in the world is in Najaf. And after August of 04, they added a couple kilometers, if I'm not mistaken. That was a horrible. Muqtad Al Sadr was this toothless, self defined cleric. He didn't have the street credit to be a real cleric, but his dad ran that Mahadi militia. Sadr City in Baghdad. These Mahadi militia guys, it was weird to see the gestation of the insurgency. The Mahadi militia knew enough to get killed. They really were not. They were wearing uniforms that were like gold and black. They didn't really have a whole lot of tactics. When the Iranians started to bring the Quds forces and Iranian Revolutionary Guard got a whole different. Their indirect fire, much more accurate. The RPG 7 as opposed to the 5. The way they were trying to go after vehicles and tracks and the EFPs and the IEDs. But the other thing was when we started to make Iraq the insurgent all star team and bringing in these boys from Chechnya. I mean when you would go through Fallujah and pick up passports and be like France, Italy, Chechnya, you know, Bosnia. There was a guy in Dearborn, Michigan. Can you imagine that you were so hell bent that you decided to go to Iraq? I mean, what. But everyone from all over the world. Najaf, though was the first time our unit was able to show what I shouldn't say. Our unit armored 1st Cavalry, 4th ID before us, 3rd ID before us. But the 1st Infantry Division in that OIF 1 to 2 showed that tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles belonged in an urban fight. No one was using the Abrams in the city. No one thought, what's a Bradley fighting vehicle? The thing about a good. And again, all infantrymen think the mechanized are lazy and fat and. And they just want to eat and watch tv. And we hate the tankers in Garrison. We're beating up the tankers more than we're training. You know, infantry hates tankers. After Iraq, infantrymen and tankers are the best of friends. Because if you can Support that again. So many units, they take their platform, their support by Firebase, it's a five ton truck with a 50 cal. It drops you off and it goes home. You carry that support by Firebase with you. You work in concert with the Bradleys. I'm providing security for you. You're blowing pieces into, you know, fun sized pieces for the enemy. That 25 millimeter high explosive autocannon is one of the greatest gifts the Pentagon gods have ever given us. And when you want to, I don't need a clear house. If I could have a gunner put two HE rounds in a room.

It'S over.

We're feeling pretty good about it.

We like DraftKings has us as the favorite.

What made me think of that is I could see your leadership telling you in what would it be in February or maybe even January of 2004. Like hey, you're not going to get combat action. You're going to go, it's going to, to be. But I guarantee by April when that, when, when they, when this, when the Modi Militia militia went berserk, right, you're, you're going to get that combat action whether you like it or not. It's coming because they went. I mean it was like a 180 degree turn. We were, I mean the, I was up, up at Baghdad. We went down into Joff to grab this guy Yakubi who was one of his lieutenants and we brought him back. And by the time we got back, you know, for us it was another mission. Now we had been targeting Sauder for a long time but they wouldn't let us do it. And they finally said, you know what, let's see what will happen. Let's see what'll happen if we grab one of his guys. So they sent us to go do that. It was total mayhem. I actually felt bad. I felt horrible because the conventional forces got caught off guard, they weren't ready for it and like in Solder City went totally insane. A lot of casualties there. And I remember Baghdad where I was. We'd get an occasional mortar in there. All of a sudden the front gates getting attacked. I mean it was on. It was a radical change that happened after that mission and it really fueled the insurgency.

There's a couple videos we were getting ready to go to Najaf. We saw I think the Poles, the Polish army was at like a camp Kilo which was right outside of the city. So the Easter uprising In April of 04 was the insurgents attempt to cut Baghdad off and you had Highway 5 which went from the east in Diyala all the way across Baghdad. You had Fallujah, which was always considered to be like the wild west of Iraq, even when Saddam was in power and they built their homes. The Shia population, vast majority of Iraqis, were Shia. Saddam had the Ba' Athist party, which was Sunni. But what's weird about Iraq's culture, as opposed to any other Middle Eastern country, is that Saddam was able to make pan Arabism in the war against Iran. He convinced half of the country to die for Iraq. The flag. And so when he puts inshallah on the flag, this is like, everyone was pro Iraq in that war with Iran, which was very bloody and costly to the people over there. And so by the time you're building real estate, if you're in a Shia area, you are very insecure, and you're building your homes very thick walls. You've got gun slits on all. I mean, you're ready for any minute that government's going to roll up and take your house. So it's like siege warfare in a neighborhood. Everyone is ready for what's going on. I mean, glass that was embedded in the concrete when you crawled over the walls. I mean, it was a very insecure culture. But Najaf was that Easter uprising. If you go to Arlington cemetery in section 60, April 8th and 9th, you will see casualties from Ramadi, Fallujah, Diala Province, Baqiba, Sadr City, Mosul. That's really when everything started, was in that. In that one week in April from the Marines dealing with vigilant resolve and what they tried to do in Ramadi and Fallujah. They had to be basically. I mean, they were. I mean, they were successful. They took the. But you had Al Jazeera and Al Arabia TV and the idea of civilians, everything became a PR war. And it started with, unfortunately, with Abu and that horrific story where you had a National Guard unit abusing prisoners. And it just put fuel on the fire.

What a freaking horrible.

IO loss for America with these knuckleheads right now. You remember the contractors, the Blackwater contractors March. That happens. Where are you when that happens?

So 1st Infantry Division's 1st Brigade was brought in April of 04 for the Fallujah fight with the Marines. And Again, Ambar was 82nd Airborne hands off Anbar Province in April of 04. And the Marines take over Anbar. There's really no the army that is allowed. They're there, blocking positions, support. It's not an army mission anymore. When Anbar is run by the Marine Corps, we've got the rest of the country and there's a whole lot to do, by the way. But all the attention is on the. I used to love that in 06 when I went to Ramadi. When you were out there, it was. You couldn't say Anbar province. You had to say restive Anbar province. The restive Anbar province. Like everything's like Anbar province. Like they're 8 foot goliaths. They're different people, they're so tough. But Ambar really is the first domino to fall.

With the pacification of when the insurgency starts to really fall back. It's the sons of Ambar. That area though in 04 the first IDs first brigade comes in to help in vigilant resolve, which is April. And then they basically lose that Fallujah brigade. They pull out of the city. And that was a policy too. Like just catapult the dead cow over the wall, let him get sick and die. We'll wait until April. But because we had Najaf and we were able to pick up and move that guy Fitz, Colin Fitz was my peer. He was the first squad leader. He got shot in 4-8-004 in Muktadai. That kid got shot by three different weapon systems. And what I used to love is when a new guy would show up, I'd be like, the AK74 is a different ballistic. Let me show you. On his elbow. And he got hit by the 762 by 3 9, the PKM, which is the, the bigger 762 by what, 51 54, 54, 54 and what the 74 is what a 5, 44 or 5?

I think so.

Yeah, yeah. So that was the baby, but all three. So we were getting popped with and we, we took out, I think over a two day period we took out 160 and they saw that that Bradley fighting vehicle was not to play with. It was not to play with. And coax 25, go to Najaf, show that we can work well with Marines. That puts a pin on a board where someone says, hey, I want to take Fallujah. How are we going to do it? Give me those army two seven from Armored first Cav and two two and one six three from first id. And so we were just there to help out the marines in a block, you know, one wing. It ended up being something a little bit bigger than that. But that's how we got our street credit.

You got an interesting exchange in here in the book that I was very, very stoked to see you say this. The map board hung on otherwise jailhouse bare walls right beside my cot and the homemade crucifix that held my helmet and body armor. No photos of home near my space, just the board with three maps of our area of operations. One depicting the road net, one depicting the political demographics, and one topographic. Surrounding them were the latest satellite and overhead images that Lt. Col. Newell's intel shop had pushed down to us. Hackworth says we need to out moosh the moosh. The hell does that mean? Work harder. Stay out longer. Be ferocious. Never let them outwork us. Dig in sometimes. Take the high ground when possible. Grab rooftops without turning the lights on in a house. Never do the same thing twice.

I wish I'd never given you that book. Lieutenant Colonel David Hackworth had been a staff guy in Vietnam, writing counterinsurgency manuals in the Pentagon. When he was ordered to put his theories into practice, he was sent to Southeast Asian. Given command of the worst battalion in theater, he transformed it into a Viet Cong threshing machine. Known as the hardcore recondos. They damaged the enemy every time they left the wire. Fitz had given me Hackworth's memory memoir, Steal my soldiers hearts before we left Vilsack, which is where you are in Germany. I read it and absorbed its lessons. Then one day at Normandy, I sent him a random fanboy email through his publisher and agent. So you sent an email to Hackworth's you know, publisher. He responded. He was in Mexico, dying of bladder cancer without violating operational security. I sketched out our situation and asked what he would do. He offered excellent advice. Like a tactical Dear Abby. We corresponded often, and this is what he wrote. You never let them outwork you. And you will never be ambushed again. Your men will. They will hate you. But in 20 years, when you are all older, they will realize how much they appreciated the attention you paid to the details of war. Work harder. Do your best to leave enemy where you killed him. If your command makes you police up the dead, make him bleed enough for his buddies to know what happened there. Send the message. Mess with us and get wrecked. They shall fear our ferocity.

I don't know if you know, but this book right here. About face. I ended up writing the forward for the new release of that book.

Oh, it's classic. Yeah, Absolutely classic. I'm a huge. So the fact that he refused responded. Yeah, that's cool.

I wish I was would have been smart enough to email him. I wasn't.

And. And. And. And his ability to. Because his whole thing in Vietnam and again, Vietnam. We didn't invent counterinsurgency, obviously. That's what we're doing in Vietnam. Out mo. The mo is what he would say because he was always talking about out kong the, you know, out enemy, and out, you know, g. The G. Yeah, exactly. And I was, was I'll gorilla the gorilla. And so, you know, they're disciplined, we're more disciplined. But if you, you know, again, we were doing this thing where I would dismount out of a Bradley and I would see an id, and I'm like, well, we dismounted because they saw the tracks there. So we're not just like they do with the Blackhawks. Fake land. Fake land. We're going to do that with the Brads, you know, dismount left, ramp goes down, no one gets out. We drive around for another couple kilometers, dismount more, no one gets out. Sometimes we stay in the Bradley, sometimes we leave on the first, the third, the fourth, whatever. Never, ever egress the, you know, leave the battlefield the same spot that you dismounted and you would walk up on these guys. And the feeling you get after, you know, you're cold. I mean, people talk it's 50 degrees. Well, it was 120 during the day. I mean, it's a huge drop in temperature. And you're cold and you're miserable. And even though the smokers couldn't smoke, we wouldn't let the dippers dip. You know, everyone's gonna suck together. But when you get, you know, when you get the enemy and you knock them cold and they don't even see you coming, there is Christmas Day, is a beautiful day that we all love and get excited about. But when you can shoot a terrorist that doesn't know you're there, it is the greatest feeling in the universe. To pop a guy who's like, loading a fuse on an rpg, that is the greatest experience in the world. You're gonna try to hurt us, kill us, and you don't even know we're there. That was. I took. I took the counter ied, counter ambush missions. They were the most important part of my life. And I was just absolutely almost to a point point where, you know, it was a little bit of obsessive compulsive about, hey, the tankers got. Got hit over here. They were using propane and bouncing a propane tank up to hit these guys at chef chest defilate. There would be mobility kills, but they would wait. You would see a van with a bunch of camera equipment. We're doing a wedding. I Want to see the video? I don't think you're doing a wedding. A casket. You want to talk about the biggest?

I remember the day that I pulled my testicles out. Metaphorically. It was the most brazen thing I've ever done in my life. They didn't ever want us to interact. You're having a funeral. A wedding. Women are respected. Respect the culture. There was a time I asked someone to open up a casket, and that took because I'm telling you, that could have been the end right there. But it just. It didn't seem right. It didn't seem right.

What was in it?

Oh, body. Unfortunately, I guessed wrong on that one. But. But I was. I was thinking, this is where I carry munitions.

Yeah.

I would. I would do a fake funeral. I do it because they show up at the grave. Najaf. You saw this in the cemetery all the time. Time. You know, are you burying a body? You know. But you had to think like that. And you're going to be wrong. And you're going to. You're going to make a mistake, but your guys are not thinking like that. And we had to think outside of the box to be able to fight the enemy the way we had to. But I guessed wrong on that one. But there wasn't a wedding. I got the wedding one right. They were filming us at checkpoints. I got that right.

You mentioned Fitz. You talk about Fitz here. I remember watching Fitz get hit over and over again. Limping, dragging himself to cover, still shooting as he moved. When he went down, I thought he was dying. It was like a tectonic shift seeing him like that. My world rocked when Fitz was gone. Back at hospital, somewhere safe. I'd never felt more alone. No one gave us status reports on our wounded. Healthy looking guys who got evacuated died. Men like Tyler Pruitt, A tanker medic whose foot was mangled by a rocket that struck his Humvees door. We raced to the scene, cleared the LZ for a dust off. They loaded him onto the medevac. There was no sense of sudden urgency. He was a medic and treated his own wound. The morphine induced smile and a go kill that piece of thumbs up. He was fine. Pruitt's war was over. My squad found the plastic chair the insurgent used to ambush them. My squad went through hell to track this guy. Murder hornets. Giant orange wasps native to that region stung Joey Swanson more than eight times in the face as he was clearing out a cache this guy had had on standby. We stayed well past nighttime In a dense palm grove soaked to the bone, heads pounding from dehydration, just to maintain the promise of shooting this guy. For Pruitt, the vegetation was too thick. The trail dried up two days later. I was drinking a cup of coffee in the chow hall when his platoon sergeant told me that he died of a blood clot. This made no sense. I would never have given up for the night. If I knew I was tracking Pruitt's killer, I would have lived out there for weeks. I was shocked and felt selfish for quitting.

When Fitz returned to us. It was a Lazarus moment for me. A Lazarus moment for me. I just assumed he would be the same as he was before he got hit. But that pipeline, those hospitals, the physical debilitation, it always changes a person. I couldn't understand what he was going through. I could see his physical pain also. He knew the sound a bullet made when it smacked into bone. Every round that cracked nearby reminded him of that possibility. He knew the agony of lead mushrooming into your muscle fiber. He blinked with every shot, expecting impact. Fitz was right. He'd seen that side of war that I had missed. The combat support hospitals, the emergency surgeries, as men bled out on the operating room tables. He'd woken up surrounded by burned, limbless men and women clinging to life as the nurses and doctors struggled to patch them together. His war was different. That was the root of his caution. When he came back to us, it wasn't that he feared that for himself.

He feared it for us. Fitz feared it for me.

So there's a next level badass, right? He gets freaking shot with three different types of ammunition, Gets Kazavak out of the country, and he's still wounded, I mean, he's still messed up. And when they say, you know, hey, where do you want to go back to in America? What do you want to do for the, you know, for the rest of your recovery? He says, no, send me back to Iraq. I want to be with my boys.

Yeah.

And.

And honestly, you know, at this point in my life, I'm, you know, 28. These kids are 18, 19.

This huge cycle of life that you go through at that age, and, you know, with a family and responsibilities and young kids. Fitz was in the army much longer than I had been. Done more. His tactical proficiency, you know, watching him, it was always this. When you have two dismount squads, it's always a race to the objective. Who gets there first. You know, you don't want to be the support element. It's the worst, you know, Your local support and in training, you know, he was the guy, the big personality, the senior squad leader and every, every, you know, rotation we did. His unit was the, always the assault unit. And I second there. And then I'd be in the back of the, I'd move my position in the Bradley in the convoy. I want to be in the back. They're gonna hit the back, they hit the front. I never, we never got any action. And so when I learned from him though, was his ability to.

The elevation on an urban battlefield. You know, we talk about Little Round Top and Gettysburg, that you're not going to get that in the desert scape, you're not going to get that in the Middle East. So we're going to use our buildings, but we're also going to be careful not to just go through the front door every time, right? If we can go roof to roof, we'll try that. But we can also find ways that if I've got outer cordon, inner cordon, and I'm around a building, if I can have someone from the outside just clear two corners, I could tell that guy coming through the door. Worry about corner 3 and 4. 1 and 2 is good. No one's going to be to your right, no one's going to be to your left. Focus on what's important.

Also, I was obsessed with booby traps, platter charges, doors that would blow up, grenades on a handle. And he's like, listen, we had no time for that. It's either going to happen or it's not going to happen. I'm like, fitch, we just heard about a special foreign unit, just had a building contained I.D. they lost everyone. He's like, you tell these 18 year old kids that there are wires out there that they're going to trip over. They're going to think about those wires. The saw gunners aren't going to be looking forward. We're not going to. I would go to the classes that Delta Force and Special Forces would train. They take like two NCOs per company and guys like you that are just, you know, hockey helmets and they're talking about. And they'd be like, let's talk about this rationally. And you always had like one intellect and one just like giant. You know, he has like eight heads on his bicep and he's just there. And the intellect guy would be like, think about this. What's the easiest way to move through a building? And they put the flyers up, right? They would send someone forward. That's what elite people do. Small unit. Elite folks that have the training will do that. We're not elite. Right? We're not going. You go into a house and find a cookbook and leave. One guy has a bullet in his head. There's a family of seven, they don't even know dad's dead and the cookbook is missing. That's what you do. We don't do that. We're high intensity. Know your role, know your lane, know your skill level, and master it. Just master what you do. We have to strong wall. We have to have one firewall. Keep all of our fire contained. And you know, what? If it takes a break, a 20. You know, I remember the first time I got in a house fight way before, and thank God our crescendo to violence was graduated, because if we would have gone to Fallujah, it would have been over. We had engaged at close quarters. We had taken targets out in buildings. And every single time there'd be a new twist, and we learned from those twists, and it allowed us to mature. So by the end of the rotation, when Fallujah happened, we were ready. But I remember my. My team leader took a shot, saw Gunner took a shot. And I was saying I was still giving the hand at our signal, right? Like, clear. Clear. Clear. Like, bro, you just dropped a guy. You know, they know you're here. You know, after you shot the guy in the living room, I think the guy stairs aware, maybe the Americans are here. You know, there's no point in whispering. There's no point in, you know, the old days. You know, a rolling tea in a hallway. Or you'd see a couch or a refrigerator, and it'd be like, okay, I'm gonna open the 1, 2. Like, why opening the refrigerator door like that? You know what I mean? This is what they trained. This is what they taught. It's all horseshit. Put a round through it. Put a round through the couch. Put a round through the curtain. Don't even bother with the crazy. The other thing was, I found in a minefield. They were Italian toe poppers. I never even seen a landmine in my life. In fact, I thought they were RPG fins. I really thought someone had buried like, a bunch of cigarettes in an ashtray. They just put RPG fins and there's wires connecting them. And I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, what do I do? What do I do? You know? And so I'm going through, like, at the range, everyone turn off their electronics, probe their way back, and I look and everyone's gone. Everyone Got out of the danger. I was still there. And I'm trying to get underneath one of the mines and put some C4 down there. And I look over and there's Fitz. Fitz wasn't even near me. He got to me. Here's a guy that wants to be in a minefield with me, only to tell me as two NCOs, that electronic stuff is bullshit. He said, listen, man, I love you. I love what you're doing. You buy the book. But listen, we're not getting an EIB here. This is no expert. No one's watching us. Who gives a shit? You know what you do with minefield? Avoid it. Get the hell out of it. Avoid. And then he sat me down. He's like, obstacles. Why do you put an obstacle out there? I'm like, well, you're watching it. He's like, yes, I'm going to put an obstacle down because I'm going to overwatch the obstacle. So what does that tell us? Tell someone's here. Someone wants us to go through that. Now let's start to box around these open objectives. Let's think and use what we're learning. That's what he did. He gave me, like, that right seat ride every day. And when he left, I'm just like, I'm. Now I'm the guy, and I don't know what the hell I mean, you know, I didn't. I was learning a lot, too.

And how long was he gone for?

He. So he had heard in April, came back in August. So that's a, you know, a pretty long. I mean, that was a big chunk. But when he came back, I thought we were gonna be the, you know, Flying Eagles again. I thought we were gonna be like a. The Road Warrior tag team. And it was noticeably different. It wasn't that he was afraid. He was in the fight all the time, but it was like, let's be smarter about this. You know, there's no need to. You know, I love taking the Bradley and bashing it through a building. It was one of my favorite things to do. I mean, look, we're gonna. And he's like, what happens if we lose at Bradley? And I'm like, we fix it. He's like, okay, in three weeks, when you get the parts I just lost to Bradley, now guess what? That's one less six guys, and I don't have that firepower. We treat that thing with respect. You're not bashing it through anything. I was like, all right, okay.

I'm heartbroken over here.

Yeah, I'M like, well, what am I supposed to do? Like, what? So we started to realize that the guys laying IEDs didn't know the people paying them, and the guys wiring it didn't know the people laying it down. So why don't we start digging holes? Why don't we start putting IEDs down? Why don't we intercept this machine? The only difference was I wanted to kill the bad guy and Captain Sims wanted intel for Colonel newell and the S2 shops. And that's the part that broke my brain, because I thought we were going to win the war by killing. And that's not necessarily the way you win an insurgency.

Yeah. So that's a point in the book that you talk about, is your differences with Captain Sims and how you guys are reconciling those differences. He was of the mind, hey, we need to form relationships with the local populace. We need to learn from them. We need to. We need to support them. We need to keep them safe. You were like, hey, we need to kill all these. Kill all these bad guys. And you guys got some tension over that.

Yeah. I mean, if you could randomly go through a marketplace and, you know, every one of these dead guys is on our BOLO list. Well, isn't that something. It could be that we. They would always tell you, like, well, 2% of the population, those are. The. The rest of them are good people. It's a city of 500,000 people. It's a lot of assholes. Two percent of that's a crazy, disproportionate amount of assholes living in a zip code. So he was right. And I think history proved that. I think that the counterinsurgency model, the surge.

The FOB is one thing, but the COB was a very successful way to say, look, we're not just going to engage in a fight and leave. We're going to live here, we're going to stay here, we're going to own the violence and only use the violence when it's necessary. I didn't grasp that. I was still thinking Old Testament. And so the Iraq War, in our year in Iraq, counter uncertainty was a huge part of what we were doing. It was very early in the beginning of implementing that. But Fallujah was not a counterinsurgency war. Ramadi was not that type of fight.

Now, you had some incidents that really kind of brought this to a head, A couple incidents that really brought this to a head with Captain Sims. One was this giant guy that comes walking down the street. You guys are in a position and this guy comes walking some Iraqi, he comes walking down the street, he's got a freaking sword and.

Talk us through what happened there.

Look, I would always be shocked that I would see a 12 year old Iraqi and he looked like a 6 year old. Back in the United States they wasn't a well fed population. And you don't see Giant. This guy was like 6, 8, 3, 30. I mean he was a big corn fed, big dude and he was just acting crazy. Now we knew people were doing drugs. We'd gone, you know, you deal with all of that. You got the drunks, whether their alcohol policies are liberal or conservative, people are still drinking 100%, people are still doing drugs. But this guy was at a. And we were getting. So there was this weird schizophrenia going on in the military at that time, at least in the army where we wanted to kill the enemy to get on a report. But you also wanted to win hearts and mines and have a quiet area. So if you're going to have a loud fight that showed up on some general's radar, you wanted it to be a fight where Americans were killing bad guys and not getting killed. You never wanted the report of, you know, you lost 10 guys and you killed maybe 20. You wanted it to be overwhelming so that if you got on a general's desk it was because you guys were badass and killing. And the other side was you wanted not nothing on the report because that meant you were doing your job and there was nothing happening. So we found that the 1st Infantry Division was, you know, doing a pretty good job of eliminating OIF2 was when we really started to see the enemy being attrited through special Forces and other units of Marines and Anbar and everyone else. And there was this weird, attaboy, you're making us proud. Colonels are going to get stars based on that. But then you had the guys on the ground and in the S shops and in the intel and they were like. And the SF guys who were like.

We'Re just going to stir the hornet's nest. I mean our Green Berets were like, I'm going to go piss off about 500 people and then we're going to call you boys in to just, you know, that's what they did. They would go into an area, we took a bad guy out, we surgically removed someone, but they have like 40 friends. Hey, you guys go handle that. And this was the relationship, this giant. It was a day when we had a big wig fly in and was looking at the area and they're like, no contact. Just. This is going to be one night where you're just going to New Testament, you know, turn.

The orders are, go out there and just.

No, no gunfire.

Don't, don't. Don't get in a gunfight.

Don't get in.

Can you do me a favor, Bell? Don't, don't gunfight tonight. That's what you get told.

And I. And. And it was legit, and it was all the way down, and I had no intention to get in a gunfight, but the guy's 6 foot 8. I'm not, you know, Gracie trained. You know what I'm saying? I don't have the cauliflower ears, and I. I don't have the. But I learned enough to know, you know, if I hit a guy and I. I pop him good, or I use my helmet, you know, a butt stock, something, I could. I could subdue someone, and I got enough guys to zip tie them. This guy was like. He was huge. I mean, he was huge. And it got to the point where I had no choice. I slung a Mossberg, and I had an M4. And when he was. He had my Mossberg, and it was slung on my iba. So when, you know, he had positive control over my shotgun and we had to put him down and it was just. He was really angry, and the guy had a mental issue. So he's a community, local guy that everyone loves and adores. He's a big, gentle giant. But, you know, whether he was drunk or high or both or, who knows? But.

It destroyed the community. It destroyed our relationships with the community. And it's the weird juxtaposition of combat, where a soldier could be honorable and protect his people and a bad guy could be beloved and a really good guy, too. But when those paths cross, it's why wars, you know, war is hell.

Yeah. One of the terms I learned from the Count from my army counterparts and in Ramadi was good shot, bad result. Meaning like, hey, this guy, whatever was wrong, he was drunk or whatever, acting crazy, and you wish it could go a different way. But here's this guy. You try and subdue him, he fights. Now he's fighting you. Now you're fighting a guy that's six foot eight, whatever, 300 pounds. Now all of a sudden, he has your shotgun and there's just like, this is just what's gonna happen. You have to kill this guy.

If I walked away from it now, he's. I mean, how many times I've had. We had kids that would give you know, numbers and four vehicles, five pack, coming this way. And, you know, we had leaders that were like, under no circumstances will you engage children at all. Hey, I don't want that on my conscience. No one does. But they're also giving away our position. So if I'm not going to engage him lethal, we're going to take this kid down and get him out of. If you let a guy on the battlefield point out where everyone is and you're giving away everything so he has to be confronted, whether or not what the means you confront him are the way. But when you're throwing a sword around and you're cutting soldiers and swinging it, you know, again, I got myself in that situation. I shouldn't have. I did. I found myself in that spot. I had to get myself out of it. We did. But I learned a lot of lessons. And the lessons are that, you know, when the orders are no shooting, you avoid it. You're not in the open. You go and you take a house down, you get on a rooftop, you're not standing in the street, you're not pulling security the way we did. Had Fitz been there, I don't think that would have happened. But he wasn't, and, you know, it happened.

And again, there's. Look, I'm reading little excerpts of this book. This book is a. Is an incredible book. Just. There's so much in here. There's. There's entire storylines in this book that we're not even touching on in. We're going to talk about today. So if you're listening, just get the book. It'll really help you. This part is one of the stories, one of the storylines about this sort of differences in thought between you and Captain Sims. And just. Just given some more about Captain Sims here just to give some background on him. You say this. Sims walked like a man who had a boulder on his back, but was too proud and stubborn to admit that the weight was crushing him upright. Shoulders square, he made his way to us. In some ways, I suppose taking Alpha Company into Fallujah was his destiny all along. He was the son of an army officer who survived two tours in Vietnam. His uncle also fought in Vietnam, completed two tours and was disabled by wounds received there. His Grandfather was a 36 year 2 war veteran of our beloved service. Sean had been born in Taiwan, went to high school in Korea, and came home for college to the country his family had given their lives to defend. Sims had been a high achiever, never type A, but rather a devoted, studious and introspective officer with plenty of grit. He checked all the boxes. Pathfinder and Airborne School, Ranger School, Armor Officer school and at. At Infantry Officers Basic, he had been the platoon's top graduate. Along with the weight of leading a company into the worst urban hellscape US forces had experienced since Way City, Vietnam in 1968, Captain Sean Sims carried the legacy of his family's heritage on his shoulders as well.

It's a lot.

A lot for this guy to be, you know, doing.

Yeah, you know, I love West Point and Annapolis, great institutions, but so many of these ROTC guys, you know, they've officers are officers. And the good ones, you know, you learn a lot from bad leaders, without a doubt. You know, you learn what's what you don't want to be. But the good ones, sometimes that seed gets planted and it grows and bears fruit 20 years later. And I guess having someone that's so intellectual and forward thinking that he's like, there's a way that we can fight wars and not lose our soul. I would have mortgaged my soul. I mean, honestly, if you would have told me this is going to be the future, but you can control the present and save lives and bring everyone home and be successful.

What would you be willing to give? I would have given you everything. Everything. I don't care about being 40. I don't think I'm going to make it to 29. No one's thinking about, no one's buying a 30 year mortgage when they're deploying to Ramadi. You're not looking at the future, you're looking at now. And to have these people that were like, listen, there's a way to do this, there's a way to do it. When a new soldier came in, I wanted them to see the enemy. Especially if we killed the enemy.

That's something that if you're not accustomed to, you know, moving a body off the battlefield, why is that important? There's a reverence. We're not out there cowboys. We're not disrespecting the enemy. We respect the enemy.

There's a holy relationship between combatants on the battlefield and you have to respect the enemy, but you also have to acknowledge that there is something special about what is going to be needed for you to be able to go home, walk off. More importantly, win the objectives that were there to win. Right. So I can't have a guy brand new in a country who sees a body and completely, you know, comes unglued. This is a part of the business. So here's the deal. I don't need you to be on point for the first two weeks, but I need you to follow up, and I need you to know what it's like to have a rifle crack next to your ear. I need to know what it's like to be near a firefight, even if you don't do anything because you're brand new. But when that. When the aftermath, and we go through that limit of advance and we cross that battlefield field, I want you to pick them up. I want you to put them in the bag. I want you to own this, because this is all of our actions. And this is something you're going to have to get accustomed to. And the reverence you show. The reverence you show because nothing would infuriate me as much as I would want to poke. You know, I'd end your life if you disrespected one of our fallen. I mean, that's unforgivable. But I also was highly defensive over the way the enemy was treated, as well. We're not savages. We're not Russians. We're not Chinese. We're not Mujahideen. We're American soldiers. We'll conduct ourselves that way. We're professionals. And you will show respect to the enemy. We're gonna kill them. And if they're dumb enough to raise kids, my boy's gonna kill your boy, too. That's just who we are. But there's a way that you respect the enemy on the battlefield and understanding that, you know, this idea, they're meat. They're just, you know, leave them out there to rot. Leave them out there to be, you know, whatever. There's a time when that's unacceptable. Civilians have to know we're the good guys. We're always going to be the good guys in any circumstance.

So now we're advancing through this deployment, and now you guys find out you're going to Fallujah. How's that take place? As far as. Are you starting to prepare in any particular way? And what's the timeframe between you guys getting tasked with going to Fallujah and actually getting there? And. And, like, what. What time frame? So did you get tasked?

We were supposed to go to Mosul. That was the first rumor mill. And Charlie Company ends up going instead of us. But we know that we're going to be used again. Understand? You know, April 04, Najaf. That was supposed to be the fight. The fight didn't happen until August, so the army command is realizing that this is the year we got to Start doing something or we're just going to be kicking the can down the road. And Fallujah was really depending on the presidential election between Bush and Kerry. The fight was supposed to happen in October. You know, it's politics. We're not going to fight a major battle before an election. It'll look bad. Wait until after the presidential election. So that was November 8th that year. And so we knew that we had our orders. You know what's happening in the army by how good your food automatically becomes. And you know how, you know something shitty is coming? Because, like, hey, let's redo their chow hall. Let's give these people boy some toilets. You know, they deserve cable. They're. And so all of a sudden, we start getting brown and root people and electricity. We had power, we didn't have water. And all of a sudden all these things start happening and we're like, oh. And then, like, we had problems with vehicles for a very long time. And all of a sudden, like, a GS15 master carpenter is like, I could fix your rooms. And, you know, you want a new gun tube for that Abrams, I've got four in the truck. You know, they were fixing everything. Every and then every. I. I was like, hey, can I. We were at one point on a bullet count, right? At one point we had to be like, how you gotta every day come up with a certain amount of bullets so that we're not, you know, we know who's shooting what when. It was all part of the reporting. And then there was a time when they were just like, hey, what do you want? Do you want claymores? I'm like, do I want claymores? Are you kidding me? Pallets of C4. I have no. You know what I did. So we had engineers, the new task force in the army. Platoon engineers, Platoon of tankers, platoon of infantry. Let's go fight. You know, the global gi. We, these engineers are brilliant. They're the intellects of the combat arms guys, right? They have the prescription glasses that are fashionable. You know what I mean? They're super smart. And our 82nd engineers are great, but they're showing me, like, a Gatorade bottle and they're like, all right, so we're going to put the C4 on the bottom and put some cardboard. And what do you got? Links, shell casings, whatever you have. That's the metal. We're going to put a timing. Now, listen, DAT cord, timing fuse. They're different, right? Like, okay, so I'm just there, like, you know, writing all this down. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. I'm like, well, these guys said I could use shell casings and links. Why don't you just throw bullets in these things? I mean, that would be a combat multiplier, right? It explodes and a bullet comes out.

Wow.

That is a horrible idea. That is a horrible idea. So now you got live rounds. Just like, you want to throw it on a bonfire, too, while we're at, you know, just mindlessness. But at the same time, I remember these claymores. I had these. And I'm like, okay, the cord is way too short for a claymore. And so I'm like, I wanted to start 100 mile an hour taping claymores to IDs we found, right? Because I figured that'll be, you know, get in a ditch, clickety clack, and blow up the IED sound. I mean, EOD was like the Easter Bunny. I mean, we heard it existed. No one's actually seen the Easter Bunny. It was like a Sasquatch. When I saw Hurt Locker, I'm like, shut up. Where were those dudes? I've never seen an eod, a robot, a guy in a suit. They're amazing, God bless them. But they were always EODs here. You waited for two days for EOD to show up. And I'm like, I don't got time for this. Let me just show me enough. I'll blow it up myself. So I got my C4, I got my blasting cap, and they're like, you gotta crimp the blasting cap. And I'm like, crimp? When you say crimp, you mean what now? He's, oh, you crimped too hard. I'm like, I crimped too hard? He's like, just crimp it enough. I'm learning. Like, how many, you know, ticks do I need? You know, how many should I. And so I'm getting myself in some really, really stupid.

I'm getting nervous over on this side of.

So dumb. It's so dumb. And you. It's like, give a monkey a hand grenade. You know what I mean? And so we got to the point where I had these claymores, and I thought, you know, I've got all these alleyways.

I'm going to spray paint the backs orange so I could see them.

I'm going to take 100 mile an hour cord, and I'm going to tie them to the top of buildings. So if a guy is coming through an alleyway, not gonna wait. I don't Wanna pull security in every alley on a building. It's like the Alamo. We gotta defend ourselves. I'm just gonna clack a claymore when a guy's running underneath it, right? Not realizing that the little prongs on the claymore are actually supposed to be in the ground for stability, right? So it's like a claymore. And then when you dangle it on cord, it's like. It's like. And you can't. It's nighttime.

Which way is it facing?

So the first time, man, it happened and it's. That's like, you know, going to the zoo and you got that two hour window where the lion is awake. You know what I mean? You're like super excited. You're like gathering the kids and like, hey, someone's. When you hear that, like that the windbreaker pants. And you're just every. You're like spidey sense. Everything's like, oh, this is real. This is happening. Here they come. The bad guy's coming. And he's coming through the aisle, the. The alleyway. And I'm like, okay, okay, all right. Now it's like, do I hit it immediately? Do I. Wait, what's. You know, now you're nervous and you. But you're the nco, so you're trying to be like, guys, let's not get nervous. But you're the one that's not enough. You know, you're like, on my command, but just. Everyone, okay? Everyone drinking? Everyone's good. How's home? Did you talk to mom? You know, like, wasted time. I finally get the point. I'm like, all right, I'm ready. Go. And this thing just. I mean, there's 700 of those.32 calibers in that thing. 700. And that thing just went flying in the air. I mean, flying in the air. Like, it was. It could have taken a satellite out. It was the dumbest thing in the world. And it was like throwing a bomb in the air. Just like launching like spin decaying 40 millimeters right over your head. And they were like, what. What did you think was gonna happen? But I thought it would just like, you know, like a top attack artillery round. But I'll tell you what, not only was that alarming for us, that guy must have shit his pants, that dude. I'm sure that guy's in dental school, changed his life around. He got out of there, went back. Back to the Philippines and as a productive member. But no, that you.

You.

You want to think outside the box. Sometimes you get a little too Much knowledge, and it could burn you.

All right, let's get into. Let's get into Fallujah a little bit.

No, so. So for this, I'm going to the book house to House, and. And I'll tell you what.

The arc of the writing and the thought process between these two books is amazing to see. So you. You had written this one. It came out in 2007, is that right?

Right.

So you'd written it maybe 2005, 2006, something like that. So you're fresh off the battlefield and you're writing this book, and it is an. It's an unbelievable account. It's really. It's. It's just an unbelievable account of you and your guys. And then, you know, just to finish what I'm talking about, the. The way that arc goes into. Remember the ramrods, your new book, you can see how much you thought about it, how much just the perspective of getting older and time and the way everything's impacted and when you look back, what it looks like now, but to be able to sit for me and. And read these two books and just see that arc is. Is incredible. So for anybody that's listening, both books, they're both incredible books. Get them.

This is going to the book. It's House to House, an epic memoir of war.

And you say this. I meet with Sims, Iwan, and Fitz for a final briefing. We roll out. We'll roll out in the morning. And our mission is now defined. Sims details the assault assault plan and explains our jobs with step by step precision. Each platoon will play a different part in the initial attack. Fallujah is a city designed for siege warfare, and you talked about that earlier. Architecture aside, the insurgents have had months to prepare for this battle. They've dug fighting positions, mined the streets, booby trapped the houses, built bunkers, and cleared fields of fire. Every road into the city is strong, pointed, mined, and blocked with captured Texas barriers. Fallujah is shaping up to be the Verdun of the war on terror. We face a battle of attrition fought within a maze of interlocking fortresses. Attrition is such a sterile word. We'll be trading our lives for theirs. Sims makes it clear that our initial objectives will be heavily defended. The insurgents have deployed foreign fighters on the city's approaches. They form the outer crust of their defense in depth. So we'll face them first. Intelligence reports tell us that we'll face Syrians, Iranians, Saudis, Filipinos, even Italians and Chechens. They've. They're well Trained, ideologically motivated and armed with ample ammunition and equipment. They've trained for years to kill us infidels. Some have cut their teeth in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Somalia. They are veterans just like us. A regular Islamist all star team.

We can expect possibly 30% attrition at an urban breach like this. Sims tells us. I've been writing down everything Sims has said. Now I pause and stare at the initial casualty estimate. 30% just to get into the city. There's no way we can keep everyone alive. Once inside the city, obviously we will issue. We will not use the main roads. They are all heavily ied. Our lead tracks must create their own pass with help from the engineers. Look over the maps. We'll have to improvise most of these routes. I am not going to rattle off what the acceptable attrition is. According to command, gentlemen, we'll seize Highway 10 and push to into the industrial district. Expect some of the heaviest fighting in this area. Foreign jihadists will use hit and run tactics, but there are enough fighters in the city for them to have a mobile reserve. We could face counter attacks during the first day the enemy has the forces to mass against us. There will be no calling in medevac choppers once you're in the city. It'll be too hot for Blackhawks. We'll have to ground a vac our casualties to this cloverleaf east of the cities, east of the city. End quote. The bad news continues as Captain Sims closes his laptop and turns to us. We expect the insurgents have stockpiled drugs. We'll be facing fighters hopped up on dope Again. I look over at Fitz and I know what he's thinking. If this is true, these guys are going to be hard to kill.

So that is a freaking.

That is a. That is a bout as a heart of a brief to sit there and listen to bunkers, IEDs, booby traps, interlocking fields of fire, strong pointed buildings. I mean this is just for anybody that's not. That hasn't been in the military that doesn't understand the. The litany of enemy power that I just went through. You can't make it any worse. Not going to get any harder than what. What I just read.

Well, and the thing goes, it was. That day was the first day that we realized we were actually going in. I mean we thought that the marines were going to do. We had Iraqi intervention forces and marines and we were just on the flanks because it was the feign, the fake invasion seals had gone in on the day that we were taken Down Fallujah and took the hospital out. And once the hospital was isolated, there was one road that connects. Intersects Fallujah, Highway 10. Right. And so you've got a northern side, which is. These homes are all like honeycombs on top of each other. South of Highway 10 is all industrial. So there's two completely different ways to do Mount and industrial. As dangerous as a living room because it's wide open, anything can happen. But it was so crazy that he was giving us an attrition number, and then he was like, I'm not even going to tell you what command is expecting. So we're starting to think this is a Normandy beach land landing. This is the Higgins boat's doors. You know, the ramp is very similar to a Bradley. The Higgins boat's coming down, and you're just going to get whatever. If you can get to a foothold, hold it and let the Marines come through. And then it's on them. Right? That's pretty much the way we're looking at this. And I thought to myself, do I share that with my guys? Do I take that back to the platoon? There was a time early in the deployment, my platoon sergeant is a guy from Missouri who is. I mean, if you went to central casting to find a platoon sergeant, I write in the book House to House that he learned to kill anything that could shit outdoors at like 4. You know what I mean? Like, if you. If you took a dump outside, this guy could kill.

You're fair game.

Yeah. And he would send these deer videos. His mom would send him deer hunting videos and a deployment. And I started watching him. And there was a moment when a deer hunter.

Will be like, hey. And the deer will be like. And they'll take the shot. I was doing that to insurgents where you couldn't get the shot you wanted and just be like, hey. And the guy would be like, whoa. And you just. You'd pop them. And I'm like, this works. This is incredible. You know, so he was. He was always cool. Always like, you know, I was a meatball. I thought my first name was Jesus and my last name was Christ because that's what he said. Before my name, there was no rank. It was just Jesus Christ Bellavia. You know, there was no doubt who was, you know, running this show. It was him. And I remember there was a day that he looked. Called me over to his Bradley and he was smoking a cigarette, and he said, hey, look at me. And his face was white, and he was like, I just got. I've confirmed it three times. No time for bullshit. We've got 200 to 300 white hots coming through this palm grove and they're expecting to be here in about 20 mics. And I was like, impossible. He's like, it's orbital platform. This is not a ground surveillance radar. This is orbital platform. They're tracking them right now. We've got 300 guys, QRF 20 minutes, fast movers 25. That's how much time you've got. Sustain this area for 25 minutes. And I'm like, this has got to be like a candid camera. You know, what am I going to do? How am I going to react? And I remember thinking the guys always knew when the spare barrels came out, shit was it was going to be a bad day when this, when you had time to set up a T and E and have a spare barrel, it was going to be a bad one. But I thought, I'm not going to tell them. I'm not going to tell them. I'm going to prepare. Like the battle of Intium is going to break out. But we're just going to have our mags ready. We're going to have. I'm going to set this position up and you know, or knock it down. There was a guy stacked flour up. There was like a.4 rows of flour bags. And I'm like, well, there's position one right and elevation low, high, ditches, whatever. I could find a culvert here, a thing. And we waited and we waited. And finally the thing was like, hey, I got the wrong 12 digit.

This is a guy relaying from a sheriff network. And like, so someone else is getting, someone's getting messed up right now, but it's not you. And I thought to myself, that's an incredible lesson because you either trained your guys and you're ready or you're not.

How important is drama? And as a drama major, I can tell you that I'm not very good at it. But I can tell you that if you're doing it for the effect, because some leaders need that, this is going to be the worst day of. Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves. Right, that's the line. You want to have a John Wayne moment? Is that weakness? Is that strength? Do you really? If you're really doing your job, let 300 guys come. I'll eat chow, you give me 150 meters of standoff distance and 30 seconds of warning. My guys can eat a burrito and we're gonna, we're gonna hold this ground. That's what I want out of my force. That's what I want out of my guys. So I thought to myself, do I take that information back and do I tell them, look around the room, because you know that talking. You probably sat through a briefing. Look around the room to your left and right. Not all of you will make it out of this meeting. You know what I mean? You're like, well, everything's dramatic. Everything's life and death. And over time, it erodes trust, it erodes fidelity, it erodes swagger. So the one thing I wanted to be careful is with families, you know, the family running this group. Depending on what unit you're in, families are all about, you know, gossip. And you got groups of wives that are going to the range and, like, you know, they know who's deploying, who's dead. It could be. If you don't have a command unit at home willing to take these casualties and handling themselves as pros, you can have some real problems in a unit with just gossip and whatever. I hated the people that were calling home. I hated the distractions of bills and kids. And I tried as much as I could to just to get them away. I know there's Burger King at the other fob. Don't eat it. Don't eat it. I know there's a Pizza Hut at Warhorse, and I know they have really good food and blood blue cheese. Don't eat it. I want you to be as miserable as possible. Not because I hate you, not because I'm insecure. And I want to show you my alpha. I want us all that when we eat blue cheese, damn it, when we have a Whopper, it's going to be because there's no more fighting. You earned the Whopper. I know your wife and your girlfriend want updates, and the kids are riding bikes and trick or treating. I don't give a damn damn about any of that crap going on. And if you are thinking about your girlfriend or your wife or what's going on, is Jody coming over? What's happening? You are not in this game. And you're no good to me. You're no good to me.

Your focus is on that mouj that's cleaning his body of hair, putting it in a bag, and saying his prayer because he knows he's going to die. He knows he's going to die. When I came home from Iraq on leave, I met a Vietnam guy who was a tunnel rat. That's a shit job. That's like the worst job in the world, right? And I was complaining to him about How I was mad that the UPS man was whistling and happy and we're going through all this mess. Like, I could see these kids, grocery stores, guys and their girlfriends at the mall getting a latte, and I'm like, these freaking turds. Like, you have no respect.

Do you have a limp? Are you stuttering? Why are you getting a haircut? Are you too good for your country? Who the hell did the. And I had an inferiority complex. And this Vietnam vet looks at me and he says, you're going back in a week. And you know what your problem is? And I'm like, what? He's like, you think you're coming back?

And I was like, I didn't know what to do. I didn't have spit in my mouth. I didn't know if I should crawl into the fetal position or. What do you mean? I know I'm coming back? He's like, no, no, no, no. In your head. You're not coming back. If you fight like you're coming back, you're going to not make the choices you need to make. You're going to always think about someone else. He's like, right now, close your eyes. Casualty notification team is talking to your little boy. Your mom and dad just changed your star from blue to gold. Do you see it? All right, it's over. It's happening. That's your reality. Now fight now. Fight now. Get out there and realize it's going to happen. You don't know when it's going to happen. It's going to happen. 62, a heart attack on a. You know, joke Uncle Jim with the grandkids. It's going to happen tomorrow with a bullet through your face. You don't control it. Give in to it. You're not coming back. Fight like you're not coming back. And you will never lose an inch of ground and you'll never lose a soldier because you were afraid to not give him the fight you want. It changed my life. I'm like, is that what you. Is that why you guys are all insane with your long hair and your weed, your wound? Woodstock. He's like, that's how we fought. That's how we survived. And that's the only way you can make it through. And when I thought about that and I started to live that, I was like, all of these things are distractions. I want you to have a wonderful marriage. I want you to have a wonderful family. But you're not going to have any of those things. If you're thinking about Halloween and about that Bike ride. We got to go take care of people that are going. And so what? We would watch Nicholas Berg, the beheading video. Every second of that guy getting his head cut off by Zarqawi in Fallujah. Let's watch beheading videos. Let's watch the people in the towers that jumped out the windows. The heat was too much. They jumped. That's what we're avenging. That's who we're fighting. Every one of these guys cut off Nick Berg's head. Every one of these guys is really raping and destroying and they killed our citizens on September 11th. That's the mindset. I don't want to hear about your family. I don't want to hear about your wife. I don't want to hear about shit. Pay your bills if you don't have a relationship that you can trust someone to pay the cable bill. I'm going to make this really easy for you. Reenlist. Okay. Reenlist. Because you're going to need the income. Right? We are here to do a job. This is our focus. And anything else is sedition. You are committing a crime to me. You're committing a crime to the country. Because you are here for a purpose. And I don't give a shit about what your ambition or hope is right now. It's us. I don't. My dad didn't. I didn't know my dad. You had a dad. I don't give a damn. We got all these different walks of life and socioeconomic issues. Focus. And that did it. That did it.

And that's the best possible thing you can do for your troops?

I think so. I hope so. I hope so.

Fast forward a little bit. Ramrod's taken knee. He calls us into gravenly in his gravenly gravelly southern drawl. There are times I think he's speaking a foreign language. His southern accent is so indiscernible, it's like a cross between John Wayne and Ross Perot. Our task force is known as the Ramrods. Those of us in Alpha Alpha Company are the terminators. Alpha Company forms a horseshoe around Sergeant Major Falkenberg. We get down on one knee and wait. At first he says nothing. He spits a wad of red man chewing tobacco into the dirt as his eyeball. As he eyeballs us with a squint, he takes time to look each of us in the eyes. I stare back at him. To me, he has always been a seemed as big as a grizzly bear and twice as scary. But now as I study him, I realize he's wiry and short. It's the weight of his character that makes him seem so large. Men, I could not be more proud of you if you were my own kids. We wait for him to continue. He hesitates. He's struggling with his emotions and we see his eyes mist up. That sight sends a surge of emotion through me. Part love, part despair, part blind loyalty. I couldn't be more proud looking at how far you all have come and what you are about to do. He pauses again and lowers his head. His iron self discipline fighting a losing battle with his heart.

That's all. Go get him.

The mechanics and support guys start to cheer. Somebody shouts give them hell. Other shout as well. For a moment I can't move. Sergeant Major. Sergeant Major Falkenberg is our father figure. He's the man I've most wanted to impress. I have wanted and needed to believe he was proud of me and what I'd done with my squad. I never felt I did anything to be worthy of my own father's pride. My father was the first person in the history in the of the state of New York to go from junior college to dental school. Starting with absolutely nothing and accomplished accomplishing so much on his own. I sought his affirmation, but always, seemingly in vain. I always felt I never quite measured up to his eyes. To me it was my fault for squandering so many chances here. Now I want more than anything to stand with Sergeant Major Falkenberg as we head into the fight and measure up at last. This time I am determined not to fail. His few words have had a more profound effect on me than any of the the pep talks of the past week. A great speech is only partly about what is said. Often what matters more is who says it and how it is delivered. Our Sergeant Major's vulnerability and love for us spoke volumes. As everyone else gets up to head for their Bradley's, I stay a heartbeat longer. Falkenberg turns his steel blue eyes to me. No words are spoken, but in his eyes I can see something. A feeling coming my way.

Respect.

I gotta get you to read these books on audio, man. It just. It sounds so much cooler hearing you say it. Falkenberg is a guy who is. First of all, he was 45 when he died. He's the first American to be killed in the battle of Fallujah. And you want to talk about like you're watching a movie and the hero of the movie is the first guy to drop and there's no Explanation. It's the most morale killing thing in the universe, right? I remember hearing that he was 45, and I was thinking, I'm for, You know, at the time, I was the same age. He seemed like a dinosaur. Like, that's the oldest person in the world, you know. And, and, and he. His body on the stretcher, he wasn't even big enough to cover the entire polis litter. And I. The guy just was a giant. And every.

You know, always had the worst rifle, a, you know, an A4 with nothing on it. He's like, let the fancy guys have the fancy shit. I don't need it. You don't need nothing. Iron sights.

I just absolutely adored him. And I always. He hated. I don't think he liked me. And that's the other thing. No, I really. I could tell you with authority that he did not like me. But I had loved him and had he liked me, I don't think I would have. He was such a guy who's been in the military for 25, 30 years. They've been to every armpit, every butthole the world. They've seen it all. There's nothing you're going to tell them that they don't know. On the day we show up to FOB Normandy, 4th Infantry Divisions on one side, first IDs, on the other. Our two battalions, 2822, infantry, which by the way, is the order of march at Normandy Beach. And ironically, it took the 1st Infantry Division to take the battle that's neither here nor there back in Normandy. But they're first in Normandy first. You know, that's their unit. This fourth ID SAR major steps up, and he is the most eloquent guy in the world. He's like, gentlemen, on the other side of that wire, there is an enemy. That enemy will take your life. We are here. Learn from us. You know what I mean? Like, it was. They were dirty, their uniforms were ripped, and we were just. I actually made noise. I starched my DCU's. I made like a.

Totally combat. Ridiculous. You don't ever need that, right? And Falkenberg gets up after this eloquent speech about, you know, the world is a dangerous place, we are the beacon of light and freedom. And Falkenberg just turns to us, doesn't talk to them, and says, don't trust a single one of those sons of bitches. They're gonna steal your night vision and go deer hunting with him. He's like, they'll put your night vision, they'll put it in your gas tank. They're gonna lie. They're gonna steal squad leaders. I want a green to green every five hours. I don't want a single fourth ID guy in your living quarters. I've seen this shit. They're your friends, and then they steal all your gear and they go home to Killeen and they go deer hunting with unite vision. And we're all like. And the guy was. Everyone was like, what the hell's wrong with this guy? Right? But that's who he was. He didn't give a shit. If he was an elementary school principal, he'd be the worst ever. He was an infantryman, and all he cared about was, these are my kids. These are my boys. And the idea that he would be the first to go down and how that. You want to talk about, you know, losing officers, losing senior NCOs, and these young kids saying, okay, I'm not a platoon sergeant anymore. Now I'm a first sergeant running a battalion rotc, lieutenant running a company. I mean, their trigger pulls away. But that to me, was the sign of, you know, this is real. Like, we'd lost 40 plus guys to that point in the deployment. Every one of them stings. Every one of them hurts. But he's much more than a leader. They become your mascot. They become your empathy. They're more than leaders. They're the identity of who you are. They're your validators every single day. It's not a good day unless he says it's a good day. You're not ready until he tells you you're ready. And when that's gone, it is a father figure.

It was devastating. It was devastating. And now you're not even in the fight yet. It would be like you're going to the Normandy beach and the guy gets hit in the Higgins boat, and now you're. The ramps are dropping, and everyone's like, what? Just. And you're like, forget it. Forget it. Everything's okay. Everything's cool. We're keep going. And. And you get the report that there's an angel, right? That was the radio chatter. An angel. We got a ramp. Ramrod seven, angel seven. You're like, you know this. Well, you know what? Let's go work. Our mission is to get the guy that killed Falkenberg. That's what we're doing right now. Are you serious? Yes. I got the mission. The guys in this block killed Sergeant Major. Let's go get him. It doesn't matter where. We're in Bosnia. We're getting the guys that got Sergeant Major Falkenberg do not be the one to come home to a ceremony and see his widow and his daughters and say that you didn't have something to do with getting the person that got him. That's the only thing we can control right now. This is the last one we're going to take. Right. But it was. You don't know when to. You can only compartmentalize so much. And so these two books are dealing with 20 years after that. And did we maintain our promises to our friends? Did we sit down with the kids? We all talk about it when you're old enough. I'm going to sit down with the owner, tell you who your dad was. How many of us have actually done that? How many of us have actually stood with a widow? I would hear a story of a woman that lost her husband in the war and she got married again. And I thought to myself, that's way too soon. That's disrespectful. Like, how do you do that? You, your husband, you loved him. He loved you. He talked about you all the time. And you just got to marry another guy. And someone told me he was like, Bellavia. That was 12 years ago, man. 12 years ago. Let this woman move on with her life. You're holding on.

You have no idea what she's been through. You have no idea who this guy is.

You can't think like that. This is. These families have gone through so much, and we promised that we would be there. Have we been there? What kind of lives have we lived? We said we were going to live for them and be twice as good because they're not here. We have to do more with our lives. How many have done that? Instead, we're talking about suicide and addiction and how people have quit. There's no way you're thinking about your buddy that died in the war. If you're thinking about killing yourself, getting high, or giving up, you are betraying all of that. We've been far too soft with this generation of saying, oh, it's acceptable. That's a choice. You're making a choice. It's a valid choice. It's bullshit. It's not a valid choice. You made a promise. And if you would have killed yourself as we're stacking on a house, how would that have been received? But no, you decide you're going to do it at home when it's over. No. No. We have a purpose, and we have to honor our word. And this book is about how. I didn't. I didn't. And it took a stupid this award that got all my guys together again. And we realized we don't need any of the stories. We don't need the glory, we don't need the attention. We need each other. That's why we did it. We need each other. We need to be present in each other's lives and validate and acknowledge that there's purpose and that we all have. We all have a journey. And some of us are struggling, some are doing great. But we got to honor those promises we made each other when we thought the world was going to end in 24 hours.

At this point, I'm going to fast forward a little bit. It's basically go time. And there's. I kind of have to read this part because we get a new character gets introduced into the scenario here you say this throughout. Alpha Company digital cameras appear and soon the men are posing for one another. Nearby, our embedded reporters take all. Take all this in. They cluster together like new kids in second grade watching the scene. As awkward outsiders, these photos are crucially important, a form of insurance against our own mortality. A few months back, we lost our man and realized to our unending dismay, that no one had a single photo of him to display at his memorial service. It was disgraceful. Surely this is in the back of everyone's mind now. This time we will have a record of every soul who goes through the breach. Michael Ware breaks ranks from the cluster of journalists. With Yuri in tow, they come over to 3rd Platoon and offer to take our picture. The platoon lines up and they go to work. The other embeds see this and promptly stream to their assigned units, taking cameras and snapping pictures of them as they click away. They are no longer awkward outsiders. Now they've found a way to help us. They circulate among the soldiers and start to fit in. They've shown us they're human and the company appreciates that. After Michael and Yuri finish, finally finish up, I light a smoke and stretch out on the ground next to the Track. It's almost 0900. The morning is crisp, cold and punctuated by distant artillery barrages. Every few minutes, an Apache thunders overhead. Fast moving fighter jets crisscross above them in the sky.

This is where I belong. It's the first time in my life that I've found my place. It's a reassuring thought that eases some of the butterflies fluttering around in my gut. I wonder if it was like this for the soldiers of the Union army during the Civil War. Tenting on the old campground and all quiet on the Potomac. Have been replaced by our percussion, heavy metal, modern riffs of mud, vein and dope. But we're still basically the same. The details vary from war to war, but no matter the epoch, the comradery remains. It is a closeness that no civilian will ever really understand. A Bradley swings out of the column and starts towards us. Lieutenant Colonel Newell, riding shotgun in the turret, yells at the troops as he passes. He looks like Patton must have looked as he raced alongside one of his flying columns in a jeep dressed like he was ready for a parade. Patton sometimes stood on the passenger seat to shout at his gis. Newell can't do that in a modern day Bradley fighting vehicle. But the similarities are striking nonetheless. Our task force is a hundred vehicles long, strong. Newell's track record runs the length of our column like a steel sheepdog, shepherding us forward. As he passes by, I hear him bellow, let's go, go, go.

So you got Michael Ware, who's Australian journalist. Yuri's the other guy that I mentioned. Where's he from? He's a Russian guy.

Yeah.

And he. These guys are embeds. And, and how much did you know about Michael Ware at this when you first met him?

So Michael Ware was, in my opinion, Michael Ware was a public enemy number one because he was the face of Western journalism to the terrorists. So all these beheading videos, they were trying to basically circulate through him. He was embedding with both sides. And so I didn't know what a journalist did and I didn't really give a damn. But he, when he showed up, I mean, really, I mean, what, him? He showed up and he was Time magazine, cnn, all these things were going to work through him. And he had the respect of being the guy that has gone to every horrible place in the world. And so I didn't see him. I saw him as a partisan. I saw him. He has an agenda. What I learned in one of the reasons why I became an abed reporter when I got out was because I had such a. I mean, I grew so close to respecting this guy because at a certain point, our radios are only as good as what they're. You know, I can't get on the horn at my rank and level and talk to a general in the Marine Corps that's on a flank 5km away. He would pick up a sat phone and he'd call the embedded journalist with the Marines and he'd be like, listen, we need artillery and we need it now. I'd be like, damn. Like, welcome, welcome to Team America. Michael Ware no, he was doing things. And then he sat us down and gave us his own briefing. And that changed the way we fought. Listen, you get command and they tell you dispositions and.

It'S gross to say, but when you saw an enemy defecate, you could learn a whole lot about what you're fighting. You know, diarrhea is a good, good sign. These guys are nervous. They're not healthy. They're not. They're tired. They're not. You could see the mucus. I want that. I don't. I mean, I want. For my. I want to see that. Right? Give me more diarrhea. I want. I want to see the enemy suffering and scared and not healthy. Right. Michael Ware gave us a briefing on what type of enemy we were fighting. And the way that these guys, you know, they're rocket teams. He's like, you're gonna look for little designations. One building is gonna have nothing but rockets in it. The next building, nothing but medical supplies. The next building just bullets. If you start fragging out like you're doing, you're gonna get the wrong building and that whole thing is gonna go up. He's like, look, they've read your books. They know how you like to enter buildings. We would go into a building on the top floor. All the stairs were removed, all of them. You would jump from a roof to another roof. And they took out not only the roof, but the second story as well. You're falling all the way down to the first floor and they've got these rods and glass and concertina wire. He's like, there's gotta be a way that you, you acknowledge that if you're coming from the road and you're going through a front door, they know you're going to take that door, right? That's the door they want you to take. You would find serpentine, like almost like a maze of just really crudely put together cinder blocks, maybe 8ft tall. And they would just work you into a turn, in a turn. And then you look up and that's the overhead where that PKM mounted. And they're just gonna fire at you while you're like a rat in a maze. He's like this. They've had way too much time to prepare. He's like, tunnel networks. They know they have to protect their wires. And if they leave their wires in the open, there's too much artillery and bombs out there. They're gonna cut those wires. All of those wires are gonna be dug, all of them. So when you see a hole and a Wire coming out. It's leading to a house. I've seen it. It. I know what these guys are doing. I'm like, this is intel. This is really good stuff. And this is a guy who did not care about being famous. He didn't care about being on camera. He was just about, wherever you're going, I'm going, and I want to get the story so I could tell the truth. And that's why he was hanging out with the enemy. You want to know the truth? Who are these people? Where are they coming from? I love that guy. I don't think if he didn't film that house fight, there's no way that this award would have happened. I don't think it was 15 years. The video and his documentary and it's circulating gave our unit credibility, gave that award credibility. I mean, we hear a lot of stories, you know, unless you see it or hear it, you know.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, the Chapman story is so unbelievable that had I not seen a drone footage myself, that is one of the most incredible things any American has ever done in the history of warfare. The Roberts Ridge and what they knew, the birds getting shot down, the. The. The seals working with Air Force. And.

Again, sometimes, you know, those things help just kind of paint the picture a little bit better. But Michael Ware had no business going into any house fight. He had no business doing any of that. And he did it. And I just. I. He's like family to me now. I love him. I. I just. I. I don't know. I've never had a relationship with a person outside of uniform that I could actually say. I tell them now.

You were born in the wrong job.

You should have had a rifle, not a cannon. There was a part in Fallujah where I thought about giving him a rifle. And the only reason why I didn't was I couldn't imagine what that report would look like if my guy got shot because he, you know, nutted up. I don't know. I don't think I would have survived that.

And that documentary is called Only. Only the Dead.

Yeah. Yeah.

I remember when it came out, somebody, you know, forwarded to me, like, hey, this dude's freaking with the moosh. This dude's doing this dude's with Moosh in Ramadi. I'm like, what? So I like, what are you talking about? And went and watched. It's crazy to watch.

It's crazy.

It's crazy to watch. He's. He's. Yeah. At some points, he's embedded with Americans, and at some Points. He's embedded with Moosh, and it's crazy to watch and see and. And then, you know, there's a story behind it. But, yeah, it's a. It's a crazy documentary.

He's a cr. He's a lunatic.

Yeah.

I mean, I know. I love him. I have another I. There's valor that we show. If people fight cancer. Show valor. People stand up to bullies. Show valor. Soldiers, cops, firemen. And I never thought journalists could do that. Every time I hear a journalist being so brave, you know, you had the. You know, you read a teleprompter. You know what I'm saying? You went to makeup and got your hair done. Excuse me if I don't celebrate the holiday. You know what I mean? I might just go to work today instead of having Wolf Blitzer day. But the truth is, there are guys out there and girls. That woman from CNN in the Afghanistan. What's her name? The. The. The. The lady that was vetted, though. She's. She's a real deal.

Yeah, I know. I've had a woman on this podcast, Holly McKay, and she's gone over and done all kinds of stuff where I'm like, hey, she's, like, on social media, like, messaging. I'm sending, you know, like, messages. Get out of there. What do you mean? Like, Afghanistan was falling, right? I was trying to pass messages, like, you need to get out of there now. But, you know, she's committed to doing her job. Yeah. And it's weird, man, the video of this. I don't know what to tell people. Read the book for. This is my. This is my advice. Don't watch the video yet. Read the book house to house. Spend a few hours. It'll probably take you seven or eight hours to read this book. Read this book, and you'll kind of be like, well, that seemed crazy, but, you know, could it have really happened like that? You'll cut. You're gonna have questions in your mind, and then you go watch the video, and you're like, holy shit. So that's my advice. Read the book and then go watch the video. Because there's a video that's just. You know, you watch the documentary for sure, but it's. It's crazy that he was there to capture this on video.

It's crazy. There's a point in the video he doesn't mention this, but there's a point where I took a shot at him, and he's got the camera, and I. You know, people think that, you know, you. You. You in A close quarter fight, you lose your hearing. You can't hear anything anymore. You're just exchanging gunfire for you. You're totally deaf. And this dude is like, hey. You know, in the middle of a dark house, he's like, hey. With an Australian accent, he's like, hey, that's the journalist. And I'm like, dude, I'm gonna. Who the f is. I'm gonna blow your head off. You know, why are you speaking English? And I took a shot and he, like the round, like, hits the side and he's just like. And he's right back. And for years I thought he just put the camera down. I thought he just put the camera down in the house and left. And he. And I was doing a. Doing a radio show and I said that. And he. The first time he contacted me since the military, he's like, you son of a bitch. I was in the house with you the whole time. I have the entire video. And I watched this documentary. And the first reaction you have is, I was way cooler than that. You know what I mean? Like, in your own head, you hear yourself screaming, and it's like, I can't believe how scared I sounded. And then you realize I was scared. You know what I mean? Like, you. You seriously, like, you hear a story. The army loves to, you know, they will. They want their guys. This is the version. This is what happened. Very clinical, very sterile. It all happened within two seconds. That video is 29 minutes long. In. In totality, I would have told you that that entire fight was two minutes long. That's way too much of just. And maybe we block. You know, when you go through something, you forget about it, or you don't think about it, or you can't remember it, or you don't want to remember it. But all I can remember is it was so dark that you just think it's the same guy, you know, and you just. You're bleeding. You're not bleeding. The 5, 5, 6 almost cauterizes. You don't get the. You can't drive if you're not hitting pelvis or someone in the face. They're moving, you know, and so you're not getting stopping power. And the other thing that was so strange is that, like, you don't know where your guys are. And so you're constantly, you know, thinking that you're going to get into a spot and these guys are going to frag out or just start juicing because, you know, you trained them to do. You trained him to err on the side of area fire at all times. They're going to go through a spendex in here with two 40s and M249 saws and 40 millimeters. And I don't want to be on the receiving end of that. So how do I just get out? But. And then it gets personal. And the moment it becomes personal is the moment where you go through so many in a close quarter battle. It's, well, you know, it's strength, it's will, it's, you know, spirit. It's what you're fighting for, your country, your friends, your family, it all. It's the most schizophrenic experience that anything can turn that battle. And I've never been in an octagon. I've never been, you know, but if there's something you can do that can intimidate me in that 30 second window or however long it is in a, in a MMA match, I at least dominated you enough where I could do something. And I got you thinking, psychologically, I've got you thinking, and sometimes it's just registering that the guy that you're fighting against is scared of you, right? And there was a moment. So the house fight is really three different fights, right? You got the. We walk in, we get ambushed, and then the tough. The thing that caused me the most thinking was just to stand in a doorway with a saw. That was the nuttiest, that. Because you don't know. It's unknown. Are there two? Are there one? What is it? It's all unknown. You've never seen the house before. And I remember I hooked my finger to the second knuckle. I mean, we're butterflies, you know, this is the training that in the military, it's just, I'm second and I, I hooked it because I'm like, if I, if I go down, this thing's gonna keep firing, right? And then I have a runaway. And the only time I've had a runaway is on the range. And you point them, you point the machine gun down range and break a link. And I'm about to do that. And I think, wait a minute, this is actually, this is actually, we'll take it.

But that thing fires a lot of rounds. And now I'm in this unenviable position of hoping the people that designed the saw.

Fn.

The FN people have fixed that magazine issue where you could put a M4 magazine in. And they have.

So I'm trying to feed a magazine to get magazine, get a little 30 rounds, do whatever. And I realized that not only are these guys talking to. So that they had a room that had a stairwell going up and a Jersey barrier coming out. And I thought there were two machine guns. The army has their own version. I guess it was a PKM and an ak. Excuse me for, you know, thinking that PKM that was two feet away sounded like two, you know. Yeah. Was a pom pom gun in my. My mind. But as they're juicing that door.

The platoon gets on one side. I'm the only guy on the other side, but I'm in that. I'm on the stairwell now, and I'm looking over, and I got nothing left. And I just remember them talking to each other. And I did not even wound him. And for 200 rounds at, like, 3ft, that just took everything I had. My mom mojo was done. So I start beating tail, and as I'm running out, I just feel the heat and the tracers behind me, and I'm like, I'm running out. I felt like I was in that house with those two guys again. Like, I'm running. I've never broken contact in my life. And I'm breaking contact, and someone just grabs my H harness as I leave the courtyard and just pulls me like a rag doll. And I was just like, that's it. And then we're taking fire from the roof.

So. So let me just get through this.

How this. Just. Just to clarify for everybody. So you guys enter this house.

Yeah.

And you. There's. I mean, just think about what you just said. There's a Jersey barrier, meaning that the Moos had brought freaking concrete barriers, like a Jersey bear, like you see on the highway.

Yeah.

They had it up the stairs.

No, it was underneath a stairwell.

Underneath the stairwell, they have a Jersey barrier to, like, they built a bunker inside this house. This is what you guys are up against. They've got. So your. Your. Your team's in there, and now they're engaging, and your. Your team is pretty much stuck.

Right.

They're pinned down. They can't get out of this house.

Right.

And you're standing there, and you realize that somebody's got to put down some cover fire so everyone can get the hell out of there.

Right. So you got our machine gunners outside, and they're firing at guys in a kitchen. And these are two young kids. Joe Swanson, Jameson McDaniel. They have 240 Bravos, which is the M60 version today. And they're firing their machine guns into the house. The bad guys are shooting from this entryway into a Living room and the walls are falling apart. And so you've got. And again, it's like throwing a log on a fire. You got the rounds just going everywhere. You can't get up. You're literally hugging ground and you can't get up. And so I just kind of rolled to the left side of the room and the entire platoon was on the right. And I remember trying to squeeze my rifle and it just, there was something in the trigger well and around it hit the magazine well and popped the magazine open with the spring. And the bolt was, I thought it was a double feed, but the rifle was in op there's no way I could do it. So I just said, throw me a machine gun, give me a saw. And someone slid a saw over. And that's one of those things where you ask for like, you know, I'll help you lift the couch. And then the couch is £500 and you're like, yeah, I need help with it. The, the saw came over and it was, it was ready to go. And I just, I needed time. I needed time. Like I, my legs were like, you know, lactic acid and just concrete. They wouldn't move. And it just like, you're just like, this is it. Like, this is it. It's gonna. And so my whole thought process was get literally low, suck up as many rounds as you can in the sappy plate and the helmet. And if they're going to hit you, they'll hit your leg or they'll hit your, you know, your arms. But just bring, bring those arms, duck. Walk in as low as you can and just try to get well aimed. Fire to keep their heads down and just kill these guys. Walk right into the bunker. They'll never expect that. Just walk right in and it just ran away as soon as I pulled the trigger. It was just for clarity.

What does that mean when you had a runaway.

So open bolt weapons, closed bolt, you know, the, like a machine gun. We train people for three second bursts, right? So you just. As long as you pull that trigger down, an automatic weapon is going to fire rounds as long as that trigger is depressed. A semi, you got to squeeze every time. When I pulled it down, I chewed up so many rounds that the automatic machine gun just was seared and that was just firing the rounds regardless of where my finger was.

So you pull the trigger and it keeps shooting and it's just going to stop. So in a training situation, when he was talking about branking or it could be in a combat situation, but once it's running Away, meaning you let off the trigger, and it's just bullets are still flying. One of the things that you can do is you take the. You grab the belt of the machine gun, all the bullets, and you break it off. And then it will only shoot however many are left. And then it stops. And, you know, he had to make the decision, well, should I break this off? Oh, no, wait a second. This is a good thing. Yeah, we'll take it.

It's basically the same thing happened to Alec Baldwin.

Too soon? No, too soon.

No. But.

But one. It's a very. It's a really weird feeling, but you think in. In a, you know, in a combat situation, use it, right? Just point it. But the problem is that it's a 200 round. It's a drum, a hard plastic drum. And there's 200 rounds. And you don't realize how fast those rounds are gone. Because once the rounds are gone, I don't have any more linked ammo. I'm not a saw gunner. I'm hoping that these guys are just going to get out. We have. These guys have the Australian peel. Anytime a special operative trades a grunt, you get things you don't know. So I learned Australian peel, but I'm never gonna learn. I'm never gonna use it because I'm an elite American infantryman. I don't break contact, right? And it's the first time we did it. And it's basically like, look, I'm gonna go forward, you're gonna get out. So I got the gun. I'm gonna move in. You're just gonna. And I just need to know, last man. The last guy just has to yell, last man. So I know everyone's out. And then I'm gonna go with him. I'm gonna fire everything I have and run away. And we're breaking contact, and I don't hear last man. The gun's going crazy. And I'm walking on the stairs above the little bunker, and I'm just kind of trying to bend, you know, like it's a leaf blower, like, just trying to, like, get it in there. And it's. Nothing's happened. It was a disaster. It was pretty bad. But that's on tape. You know what I mean?

Like, it's like crazy.

Could you have not put that part in? Like, it would be great if only the cool parts were in there, but unfortunately, it's everything you say.

I mean, as you're writing about this, it's crazy to read about it. The trigger still depressed. My mind races. I'VE suppressed the enemy. Now I should kill them. My heart urges me forward against the stairwell. Get out of there, clear the room and juice these guys. I try to step forward but my feet won't let me. My legs feel like they're chained to the floor. I can't advance the 10ft needed to end the fight. Don't be a move forward. I strain against my own body. I cannot move. The saw's bolt clacks back and forth as it chews through my ammo supply. Okay, I probably have about 110 rounds left. What if I make a push to get on the stairs? No, my body still refuses. My heart rages. I Z the saw along the barriers. More foam explodes out to the cascade on the floor. It looks like snowfall in hell, in the fire lit gloom. Okay, I've got probably less than 100 rounds left. It's time to move. Get forward. Finish this. Finish this now. I push. I swear my legs won't budge. The enemy remains unhurt, hiding behind the ripped up barriers. I can't do it. My heart seeds with contempt. Then my saw runs away from me. Sometimes with that weapon, once you go cyclic, you can't stop a stop it. I ease off the trigger, but it remains locked back. The bolt charges on its own. The gun spews at least 50 more rounds, then clunks on an empty chamber. I'm out of ammunition. I'm still in the stairwell room. Any second the under the stairs will pop their heads back up, see that I'm an open target and finish me. My legs suddenly free up. I've got to get out.

Run.

I spin right and bolt through the doorway, thinking McDaniel and his.240 will be in the foyer to cover my escape. I don't see Misa anywhere, but both of the living room and the foyer are completely empty. I charge through both and out the front door. As I fly into the courtyard, an automatic weapon clatters. Give me another automatic weapon. I scream, still standing in the courtyard. Yo, pull back. Fitz yells. I need 203s. Give me some 203. Fire. Bullets crack over my left shoulder and hit the outer wall in front of me. I keep running, my legs pumping furiously, and then I'm through the gate and with my men. Misa appears at the gate and throws me to the side outside the street. I got you man. You're good. We're safe.

So you get out of the house?

Yeah. I mean, honestly, that was pretty. I think it was the angle of the house didn't you know, the guys on the stairwell could only hit you when you're in the house. And the guys from the window had to have either moved away from that vantage point, because if they were hitting, you know, McDaniel and Swanson were right outside with a couple other guys, and they were exchanging machine gun fire at point blank range. If those guys were there with the ammo that they had, I mean, it would have been too easy. There were pillars in front as well. But for some reason.

I wasn't a fish in a barrel for him, but I could feel it. And what was so crazy is that, you know, I'm just thinking to myself, my. You know, like, when you're at that two mile more point and a run and you hit the water wall and your legs just. Everything is. You run so hard that you can't feel anything. The adrenaline is just going nuts. But you're like, I eventually have to stop. And when you have to stop in that moment, you can't just stop at a dime. You got to at least walk it out after you hit the wall. I mean, I went from zero to 60 and I was. I felt my butt cheeks. I thought I got hit in the, in the, in the ass. And I. I think it was my heels, like, I mean, kicking my own ass. Like, I. I had muscle spasms, you know what I mean? Like, like, like a charley horse, just from nothing to full sprint in a fight or flight. And I had soreness, like on the back of my hamstring and my quads and my glute. And I was just like, am I hit? What happened? And the realization that I did nothing to the enemy. At least if I got two, if I got one, let's get the bomb. And the problem with Fallujah is that the bombs became like a butcher shop. You know, you got a big set play. You got like three fixed wing. And I'm like, I need a bomb. Okay, here's what's gonna happen for your bomb, Mr. I need a bomb. All artillery stops. All the aviation assets are gone. You're getting your bomb. It better be important. And your number's 15 because 14 other guys need a bomb, Mr. DMV, you know, I need my license done now. And you are on a list. And if you don't have a radio, you don't have rank. You're not getting a bomb. So we asked for the bomb. I wanted the bomb. Didn't get the bomb. But now I'm on the street with the platoon, and everyone is ducking for cover. And it was just such a horrific feeling of. I mean, I would have told you that that moment of my life was the moment I was born to have. And it never in my mind ended with me running, screaming with nothing, with no dent in. In Goliath's armor. It's just. It was crazy. Like, I can't believe nothing happened.

Now, that being said.

Yeah.

A normal human being would be like, well, thank God I got out of there and everyone in my platoon is okay. Cool.

Okay.

Let me tell you what happened, all right? Normal human being, what would happen if you were in front of your men that you care for, love and everything else, and then you start giving orders, and they're like, no, sir, I'm listening to him. Right? That's what they did.

Oh, okay.

And that just pissed me off. I lost it. I went from I can't believe this is happening to f. This. Yeah, you guys want to listen to Fitz? You guys want to listen to Lawson?

We couldn't get accountability. Is someone in the house? Is anyone dead? Do you have all your equipment? I couldn't get anything. Everyone was scattered from still getting shot at. So Fitz and Lawson did what we are trained to do, which is break contact to another building, set up fire superiority, get elevation, eyes on, suppress, and then consolidate, Come up with a new plan.

That's a normal plan.

That's a normal plan.

That's normal plan.

I had Michael Ware, and I. He claims that I'm pacing the streets like a lunatic. I don't remember that, but I do remember looking at Michael Ware, and I just looked at him, and he looked at me. He looked exhausted, sweaty, and he was just like. I felt like he was telling me, you could do this. Absolutely. There's two guys in the house. Go. You're good for two.

You're out there, you know, thinking to yourself, and you write in a book like, what. What the hell kind of example did I just set?

Exactly.

Then you start with, give me my fucking rifle. Who has my fucking rifle? Which is. Which is classic, right? You know, thrown your rifle to somebody else. You took the saw, and. And you're, like, getting more pissed off. Yeah, by the minute.

But in my head, I was telling my guys what to do, and they were not listening. I was internalizing that as Bellavia shook. Big Sarge is not the same guy. He's scared. He just ran like a little bitch.

I'm gonna look at Lawson and Fitz. These guys are cool, calm, collected, like they are all the time. Right? And I was just like, you all right? All right, like, is that what you think? I wasn't. There's no rational. You're not. You're emotional and adrenaline's going crazy. And the only guy that I can get any, you know, my Dr. Phil is an Australian from Time magazine. And he's like, I'm not going anywhere. And the bullets are. Listen, I don't know what's happening to me. I can't see me. I could see him and there were bullets all around him, just ping pong, ping. And he was just like standing there. So I'm like, this guy either has a death wish or he really believes that I can do this. And if he believes I can do it, that's all I need. And so I was like, let's come up with a plan.

And my plan was a bomb. I need a bomb right now.

You get some Bradley's up there? Yeah. Cantrell's Bradley lumbers up the street. The platoon scatters as the brat arrives. Some. Some get behind it for cover. The turret traverses. His gun, barks the shell explode. The shells explode high into the side into the kitchen and living room.

Untershir, is that right?

Yeah.

Untershir walks his fire back and forth. See sawing between the two rooms. He pauses as Cantrell sweeps the track free of the shell casings, which tumble hot into the smoking street. Cantrell backs the Brad up to up the street to where he can lay down a curtain of fire on the rooftops. Most of the shells go high, but the incoming shots cease for the moment anyways. What else you got? You think we got him? Cantrell asks Michael.

Where?

Here's the question over the din of the Brad's engine. Shots. He shouts. There's no way he's got him, Sergeant Bell. There's no way. Ware had been in the courtyard when the hit the fan. He had to dodge the machine gun fire from the kitchen. In my heart, I know he's right, but at the same time, there's no point in wasting any more ammunition. The Brad just can't get a kill shot into the house. At best, the barrage drove the insurgents away from the front windows overlooking the courtyard. I think we're good. I tell the Brad crew. We're back to square one. I start to pace again, walking back and forth. My inner monologue spills out of my mouth. I'm talking to myself in front of where? In front of the men. I'm livid. The whole situation has taken my dignity. I need to find the strength to get it back Honor. What an overused word. It's an abstraction. Who can define it? All year in Iraq, I've stood with my men. If they had to fill sandbags until three in the morning, I'd be out there in the dirt and mud with them. I would never give an order then go relax as they were worked. My example is all I have. As a non commissioned officer, I take pride in that. That is my honor. I've always told my men not to be afraid in combat. When the bullets start flying, they need to man up and dish it back tenfold. How many times have I drilled this into them? Perhaps telling them to be unafraid is unrealistic. We're all human. Fear walks with us in every battle. Yet we cannot allow fear to dictate us who we are and how we act. We cannot let it control us. We must master it. That is another essential element of honor. As I storm around in the street, struggling with myself, ware regards me curiously. The last thing I want right now is a journalist watching me grapple with my own demons. I turn away and pace back up the street, slipping on a couple of 25 millimeter shell casings in the process. Another spray of sparks flares around me. Do I have the ball walls? Do I have the nuts to do what my heart wants me to do? If I don't go in, they'll have won. How many times have we heard that American soldiers rely on firepower and technology because they lack courage? How many times has our enemy said that man for man, they can beat us. That's nothing new. The Germans and the Japanese said the same thing during World War II. Inside that house, I surrendered my honor and my manhood. Now I have to take both back or live with the fact that they are right about me. That is unacceptable. I rant and swear with abandon. Down the street I see Sergeant Knapp taking care of my men like they are his little brothers. I want to cry. I'm so proud. I love these kids in a way I will never be able to express. I see their faces one by one. John Ruiz, Lucas Abernathy, Peter Sokolis, Alex Stucker, Victor Santos, Brett Pulley, Tristan Maxfield. They deserve more from me.

I stopped pacing and let out a deep, rattling sigh. Only where remains by me on the street. Everyone else has moved away. Perhaps my display has convinced them I've gone mad. But where is still here? The journalist, our platoon's unofficial intel officer. We stare intently at each other.

It, I say. Fuck, it agrees. Warehouse. That settles it. I'm going Back in.

It seemed very rational at the time. Again, I really thought there were two bad guys in that house. I know I'm good for two. I figured even though they're talking, I had to have hit them with something. Ricochet, a piece of concrete. Maybe they went through their ammo. But the clock is ticking. And my biggest fear, the reason why. So the Bradley. The streets are very narrow and there's high walls. The Bradley can only traverse at a certain elevation, so it was only getting the upper stories. And the gate was only so wide. Right. My fear was just give them something to think about so they don't run out. Because the last thing I wanted to do this was we're looking for 10 to 12 bad guys, which everyone's looking for tennis or bad guys. And it was in a structure of homes that was blocked off by four tanks. So we had thermals. They couldn't leave this block. They're in here somewhere. And this is a couple more houses to go. This is all of them. We think. We hope it's all of them. I don't want them getting back into houses that we already cleared. And now we're playing, you know, whack a mole again, and we're going to get someone killed or hurt. But again, talking someone. I thought someone said we're gonna die. And so in the video, I'm yelling, we're not gonna die. And all the guys today will tell me no one said that. That was in my head. That I'm just. I'm resp. But they thought. They were like, dude, you were having a full blown conversation and there was no one you were talking to. You're answering questions. You're taking food orders like you've lost your freaking mind. And I think Ware sensed that. I think Michael Ware sensed that I was coming unglued.

So he decided to egg you off.

So he's basically like this guy, I think we've got some hope here. Let's. He's like, what are you thinking? Without saying it. He's like, what are you thinking? I'm thinking I want to do this. And I was ready. Someone gave me an M16A4 with a 203. I had one grenade. I had one 40 millimeter. And I made the mistake of giving magazines away because I saw the enemy was wearing our uniform because that Fallujah brigade had all of our uniforms. But I saw a guy running around with a. With a marines rifle. And this guy had the bandoliers, the iba. And I just thought someone died. And they got all of his ammo. And there's no way I'm gonna go in here and get waxed and then give. Because I was, you know, we were carrying I don't know how many magazines. The combat load is nonsense. So, you know, I don't want the guy to have everything. So I carried five magazines. One of them was empty, which was my mistake. So I had four full magazines. And I probably should have taken much more than that, you know. No, that, that was a huge mistake. But I was thinking, I don't want these guys to have too much. But then. So the plan is I need as many saw gunners as I can. Now doctrine is one thing. You've got your, you know, in a stack our military infantry, seven, eight, you know, non special forces doctrine is you got a point man rifle and then you go with your grenadier, and then you got your automatic weapon and then you got a leader, team leader, squad leader, whatever it is. What we learned very quickly in Fallujah is I need machine guns, automatic fire, I don't give a damn what it is. Shotguns and machine guns. So we incredible for our battalion and our brigade and our division to just find brand new saws. Most of these saws were older than our saw gunners. By the time we deployed. We got. Everything was new. And they got the combat saw, the smaller rifle, the collapsible buttstock. This was. Hell yeah, this was good stuff. So we all carried saws, as many saws I can get. So we had. I said I wanted four guys around the building and I was going to run in there like a lunatic and try to push him out of the house. And then our saw gunners would shoot them up. That was, that was the, that was what we drew on the dirt, right. Lawson is a buddy of mine. Lawson died in 2013. Great kid, great guy. He was our weapon squad leader. He had an M14, only for Fallujah. No night optics on it. So when the M14 goes away, the only thing he's got is a Beretta. And I don't know if you know this, but next to like gold.

A 9 millimeter magazine was the hardest thing to find. You would do anything to find an extra 9 millimeter magazine. They were just, you could not every pogue, you know, sitting around, weather traffic, they all had the 9 millimeter magazines. We couldn't find them. So we only had two magazines of 9 mil and he had his 9 millimeter and that was it. And night vision with no optics. Obviously it's a handgun. So we set up our guys. As soon as I walk into the house the third time, right? So we were in the house, leave the house. The Bradley fights, that's like the second fight. And then I get in the house the second time, the real fighting, everything is different. That Bradley fighting vehicle rearranged everything in that place. And the first thing I notice is that whatever plumbing system they had is all over the ground. And it smells like a menstruating anchovy, right? It is horrific. It is horrific. I mean, just the foulest, nastiest, dirtiest water in the world. It's slick.

And there's fires everywhere. So the areas that aren't wet have fires going on. And I'm seeing these. I thought they were. At the time, the only light I had was night vision and the blinking of the shots that were fired, the tracers. And now I'm seeing that what I thought were bricks are just blocks of that plastic PE4, the shitty C4.

And there's one like mushed on the ground. And I'm like, this entire freaking floor is wired. And I think I gave the instruction because they're not very well, they don't know. They know as much about explosives as I do. And there's like these really long, long.

You know, popsicle stick size blasting caps. And they're like out, there's, some of them are hanging like speakers, like just really poorly done. Not. And the Brad just rattled everything. So you got water and then there's broken mirrors everywhere. And you could like look up in the corner and you could see a broken mirror through the fire and the night vision and you could see, see the corn. So they saw us coming when we walked in. But that worked two ways because I can see them at the 711 that they built with their little mirrors everywhere. And, and then I, I, I could hear one of the guys like doing his prayer. Like he was saying the same thing over and over again. And that's when he started to, he put, he, he was screwing a fuse on rocket and his buddy under the stairwell was holding the rocket. And he was basically fixing the rocket to fire the rpg. He's got an open door behind him. And I was like, okay, game's over. Lawson's inside, the guys are outside, he fires that RPG at the, you know, I'm not MacGyver. What? You shoot a rocket at a bunch of flash explosives, it's gonna blow up, right? I don't know what the hell's going on. I mean, wasn't raised in Mogadishu. You know, so I don't know how explosives and all that work. He's got that rocket. He's gonna shoot it. We're all done. So the plan was now and everywhere I'm walking with the water, it's sending a wake of little ripples everywhere. So they know that someone's in here. So I don't have any choices. I just decide it's. We're doing it. So Lawson doesn't even know, like, what's the plan? What's. You know, what do we. We're with. We're like. We're just doing it.

He's just in there with his nine mil.

With his nine mil. He has no idea, right? And Michael Ware with a camera.

Michael wear with the camera, trying to get light. What's your night. What are you seeing through your night vision? Because you got fires in there. That screws it up. You get no ambient light. Or is that ambient light working for you? Like, what do you seeing through your night vision?

So I wasn't an airborne guy, but I was told that the airborne infantry changed the way the night vision works. So when you make a sudden jerk of your head, the night vision shuts off. And whether it was just running or just the motion of whatever I was doing, my PS14s were cutting off and turning back on. And it was the worst time, because the only reason why I got that rifle, it's got a peak to alpha, which is an infrared flashlight and an infrared laser. Now, you're anti Oakley with that thing. I don't have to aim it. I mean, I'm. I'm popping dudes from the hip. With a peak to alpha. I've got a line right to you. I could, you know. Yeah. So. But without the PF14, it's crap.

And these things are just on and off.

They're just going. And it never happened before. I had great, great knife. I was, like, proud of the way I took care of my knife. Guys would break their night vision, be like, you irresponsible, horrible human being. You know what a marine would do to have that? You get a seven Bravo for the rest of your life. You don't deserve the PS14. That was such a cool thing to have, the PS14s and the squad, and we took great care of them, and I never had an issue. And all of a sudden, like, you need it. You need to make that flight, and it's delayed, and you're screwed. And my night vision started coming on and off. And so I just said, all right, I turned it Off, I turn it right back on, and I'm like, I just need. Just get through that door again. I'm thinking, there's two guys in this house. The only two people I've seen are under that stairwell, and that's it. And nobody's communicating.

We don't know what the other platoon is doing. They're on the other side of the street. They don't know where I am. The Bradley, the. A lot of confusion. But I walk through that door, and I saw his eyes, and I was like, oh, yeah, like, you had no idea of all the things you thought back door. See, I thought they were thinking back door, too, right? I put. The guys, they were super loud. They're getting around the house now. We're going to come through the back door. And then we came to the front door again. And I see this guy's teeth, and they're beautiful teeth, like veneer teeth. Like, my dad's a dentist. I know good teeth. And this guy smiles, and I just start shooting.

And then my night vision dies again. But I got quality aimed shots with a PQ2 Alpha, and I figured I got them both. And one guy ran, and the other one got trapped between the Jersey barrier and the stairwell. He couldn't move out of that area, so he was pretty much done. But the other guy ran to the kitchen in front and was like, okay, one guy. That's it. One guy left. And he's wounded. You know, I hit him a couple times.

And then as I'm doing that, I'm walking backwards away from the stairwell, and I'm like, this is a room. And I'm just standing in the doorway of a room. And then as soon as I'm thinking, I haven't cleared this room yet, guy from the kitchen starts shooting back. And then Lawson with his 9 mil, is just, you know, gangster from the side, just popping this guy. And this guy starts shooting at Lawson from the kitchen. And as he's doing that, Lawson just kind of pops back into the water. And whether he had hit through the wall or got. I don't know. I don't know. It's dark. I don't know what's happening. He's not saying anything, which is smart, right? You don't want to. He's a tough guy. He's been hurt before, and he's never cried or screamed or anything. So he just kind of went back and he just. His whole arm just drops. And he's got his hand on his shoulder and he's reaching for his neck and he's like, is this blood or water? And I'm like, oh, no. Like, that's not the choice. I can't see. He's like, it feels slick. I'm like, but the water's slick, you know? The. What? He's. I'm. He's doing this, like, with his hand. He's numb. He can't move his fingers. So he's like. He just points to his weapon and with one finger says, I have one mag left. Doesn't. Just one. And I'm like, okay. And so I switch out mags, and I back into this room, and it's a master bedroom, and I have. There's, like, a bed, a wardrobe.

And.

I gotta clear it, right? And as I'm doing that, these guys come running through the door. And so now we're exchanging fire.

But I'm noticing that there are tracers going horizontally in the room. And I'm thinking, is my zero off? Like, am I. Am I just, you know, like. Because I'm shooting from the hip, and the PS14s are coming on and off, and I'm like, am I shooting to the side? You know, is this Pikachu? Did it get damaged? Did it get jostled? What's happening? Whether these rounds are going horizontal. And my platoon sergeant's screaming in my radio. And with that noise from my ear, everyone. And I hear a cavalcade of footsteps upstairs, next room over. And I'm like, this radio is going to be the death of me. So I just take. I told him, I said, two effers down, one rpg. I'm really stressed out right now.

I'm really stressed out right now. And I just threw the radio in the water. And that's when I realized that I could start to cheat a little bit and use the gap of. My night vision's solid for a little bit. And I used to have that PQ2. And I could use the gap between the frame of the door and the concrete, metal frame, and there's, like, a hole. And that dude was just trying to creep up on the door. I'm like, I gotcha. You know? And so I just put the rounds through that gap. And I couldn't have done it without a laser, obviously. And he buckled. And. But the weirdest thing was, guys would fall, and I'd look over, and they weren't there. And so I'm like, is this. Hollywood's obviously full of crap, but, I mean, is this the same guy or is this a different guy? Is he running up and down the Stairs. What's going on? And just as that happens.

Another guy comes tearing down the stairs. And I could hear his pants. And as he hits the water again, that ripple gave him away in the water. And he just started firing, and I popped him. And then the guy came out of the kitchen. The original guy that was wounded came out of the kitchen. And then all of a sudden, I'm just kind of relaxed and everything's cool, and I hear some guy screaming from the stairwell. And he's. It's like British. A British accent, and he's just, like, talking. And.

I don't know if it's Lawson. I don't know if it's Michael. Michael Wegg's Australian. Is he talking to me? But this guy's like, talking about, like, your mommy won't find your dog tags. And I'm like, it's me.

I don't know. Are you trying to intimidate me? So I'm Speaking broken Arabic, 1st Infantry Division manual. Stop or I'll shoot. Do not resist. First American Infantry. All that crap. And then I hear, like, dog or something, kelp, whatever. And. And as I'm going through all that, another target appears in the door. And I'm shooting that target, and I see a long stream of rifle fire that is from my left out of a wardrobe, straight into the wall.

And I'm like, I did not. I didn't just shoot. That was not me. You know what I mean? And I'm like, oh, my God, there's a dude in this room. And as soon as I even process that, the doors just come flying open and he runs out and he's got a snub nose AK under his armpit. So he's running this way, and the rifle's pointed behind him, and he's just squeezing it, like, behind him. Oh, okay, right.

So he's planning to try and get out of the road.

I think he's just trying to get up, but he's. It's dark and he can't see anything. And the wardrobe falls on its doors, which, again, there's a lot of miracles. But that is probably the most miraculous thing is that an entire wardrobe, like a footlocker, you know, like a wall locker that landed on its doors. Because if that thing would have fallen flat, he shot right into that wall locker, into that wardrobe. And had that thing been flat, that would have gone right into me and the side of the wall as well. And it just absorbed through the wall. I took.

I thought I hit the elbow, and it just instantly. It's wet, but I'm wet, too, so it's like, what's going on? But I remember grabbing my arm, and I'm doing this inventory of like, you did it. You got shot. And it's not that bad, right? It's not that bad. It hurts. You can't see it, but you are now a bullet shot. You've been a victim of a bullet wound, and all these guys that acted tough, you now know what they went through. You're just as tough as they are. You're not gonna. You're not gonna scream manic. You're not gonna leave. You're gonna breathe. You got shot in the arm, and you're good to go. You got lucky. Stay in the fight. Everything's good. And then I'm like, this really hurts. You know what I mean? Like, it really hurt. And I'm like, oh, okay. But I'm like, I'm psyching myself up, right? Dude is at the corner. He's leaning against the metal. The doors weren't like real doors. They're like metallic tin doors. And he's leaning against it. And I hit him. Now, again, I thought I hit him six or seven times. The video, it's like three shots, but again, what I'm thinking, what actually happened? I thought I hit him repeatedly, but I got him in the lower back.

And it was the first time I heard someone, like, actually scream, like, really loud. And he moves his way out the door, but I hear him up the stairs. And this is the time where I get to do my little field, you know, medic. I'm gonna treat my own arm wound. Put a tourniquet on. You know, I have no idea. Like, it's below. It's right here in the little joint area of my elbow. And I'm like, oh, my God. I feel. I feel the bullet. Like, the bullet is actually in my arm. And this is crazy because there's no Kevlar, and it would make no sense that a bullet would lodge and just kind of stay there. So I'm like, oh, I feel dizzy. But is it the smell? Is it my nerves? I can't pass out now. And I just kind of plick it out, and I feel it. It's a. It's like a piece of wood. It's a splinter. And I'm like, dude, you went from almost being shot by a bullet to a splinter, and you were gonna take yourself out of this fight. You know what I mean? Like, call of medevac for a splinter. I went from thinking, I'm just like every other tough guy I saw get shot to being like, you don't even. Can't take a splinter. Like, you were gonna punch out for a splinter, man. You know what I mean? So, like, my head is going from, like, super confident to. But when he left and he turned and I saw his face, I'm like, he's scared. And I like the fact that I hit him repeatedly. He's wounded and he's scared, and he wants to run away from me. So I figured, okay, Lawson, go get. I'm yelling to Lawson, I need saws and shotguns and fits and first quad. Get everyone to get the whole platoon in here. And he's like, I'm not leaving. And I'm like, no, you gotta leave, because we need to get everyone in here, right?

So I don't want to be on that floor because I'm thinking Bradley fire, or the guys just come in and start spraying. I have nowhere to get covered, and the best place I want to be is at least on the second floor to tell them, hey, you know, smoke grenade, flare, I'm here, right? But I know that guy's there. And I look up the stairs, and I could see his wet feet. But then there's blood, Like, a lot of blood on the stairs. And I make my way up in between my wet shoes, my wet boots, and the blood. I take a step on that puddle of blood, and both feet just go completely out. Like. Like, I lost my footing completely. And when I lost my footing at that moment, a round just went off from the second level of the stairs, and it was. Right. And our. Our bullets, when they hit, like, brick or concrete, ricochet. That 762 just. It just fudged. It. Just went right through it. But I could see it, and I was like, that's where my head was, right? And so I went from. I got this guy to. I just slipped, and if I didn't stand up, I would have been done. And then when I got to the second level.

My PS14s went. I went to. When I went to flick them on, they went to ir. You know that light that.

Like a light?

Yep. Yeah, that shines. And I saw his face, and he was just all kinds of stressed.

I imagine he was very stressed at the time.

And I was like, this guy's mine. And one more. That's it. So I'm doing my head. I'm like, 1, 2, 3. Or is that 1, 2, 3, 4? Like, I'm just trying to do an inventory of how many are there. Still people alive downstairs? Did I just leave Lawson and Ware with alive guys, or is this just two guys and I'm just losing it?

Do you know if Lawson went to get the rest of the squad yet?

I can't hear anything. My hearing's gone. And not only that, I can't.

The building is so big and thick that with the water, if it was empty and dry, maybe you could hear echoes of whatever. But the only thing you could really hear was what was coming at you. When something went from. Hits the water, the water was the giveaway that there was someone coming, because you could hear the splash and you could see the signature of it. But upstairs was dry. It was super dry up there. And now I'm back to.

I got my rifle and I charged a magazine. And I think I. This was the last. What felt. It felt like 20 that had shot maybe just one of those. I recharged and didn't have full 30, but I took out my grenade. And this is where I was going to practice my cooking off. I was so proud of how I cooked grenades off. I was cooking grenades off at the 12th grade level. I was really good at it at that point. And that sizzle, so many guys would tape their spoons, then they just throw the grenade with the tape off. But the spoon would stick to the casing, right? You pull your pin and you threw it. And it never went off because the spoon stuck to the. It'd been taped for so long. So I was like, it's not happening to me. And I brought it to my ear. You got to be careful because, you know, defense contractors, five seconds, two seconds. But I couldn't hear the sizzle. My ears were so shot that I was like.

1, 1, 2. And I just was like, oh, no. You know, like, that's how this story ends, with me blowing my own head off with a grenade to my ear. Like he was taking a call. Like, Mossad blew me up for taking a call. And as I turned to look at him, I. The room was an L shape, right? So I had like a. Like a perpendicular. I threw the grenade. I hit him with a grenade, but it went into a big pile of these foam mattresses. And I heard it kaboom. And I heard him, you know, hurt. And he got bit by something. Shrapnel hit him somewhere. But when I came into the room, I instantly tripped over my. My shin scraped off the top of a. Just a mess of propane tanks. I mean, the entire room was full of propane tanks. I fired one round and I just smelled this, like, really oily, thick smoke that was like, plastic foam burning and natural gas. And I just, like, I can't. I can't shoot again because I'm gonna blow the tanks up or do whatever. So I just kind of used my rifle to find him in the room of smoke and wave the smoke around and just try to find where he is and whack him as hard as I could. And that's where, you know, we just started wailing on each other in the dark, in the smoke, just kind of, where is he? Where is he at? And I didn't want to bend the barrel. The. The M4 is a rifle that, you know, I butt stroked people with that plastic butt. And it's. It doesn't really do what you want it to do. But the problem with the M4 is that if you wax on hard enough, you're gonna bend your barrel, right? So I mean that you're taking your rifle out of the fight. And I got Santos's rifle, but it's heavier. You know, the A4 had that stock that was, you know, and so that's much better to go into the fight with than an M4 would be. So I tried to take advantage of that, and it was the first time I realized how exhausted I was. I was really spent, you know, and I was starting to feel like my stomach was tightening and breathing became harder. And.

I. I was hoping that I could just get close to him and shoot him, right? Like, be able to get a close shot into him. But I also realized that when a person is fighting for their life, they're not going to give you any of those openings. And I could tell he was older.

The foam would burn and then die, and then a flame would pop, and then it would die, and then a flame would pop again. And he had a gray beard, and he was wearing a bandolier, like, you know, around his waist.

And so.

Yeah, it was like, every time I thought I had an advantage, he had a big gouge out of his. His arm. His forearm had a giant bite from shrapnel. And so when he would do something to me, I would just kind of put my hands in that. That wound and that. And he just complete. You know, he. That was so much pain that he would. You could tell him his guard was down. But this is why we need to teach self defense and. And jiu jitsu or something, because in the gear, it's hard enough to move. You know, God forbid, if I had elbow pads on, I wouldn't have Made it. But the vest is so heavy. And the way we load the vest is. It makes it even more unbalanced. I didn't have any moves. I didn't have a choke. I didn't have anything to do. And my hands were wet, usually hair. So I. I stuck my finger in his eye, and I figured that that was gonna to do it. And I was so freaked out by the way an eyeball.

Ruptures that it just unnerved me. The whole thing was just so.

It seemed like I was cheating. You know what I mean? Like, I was doing something that was.

Not what we're supposed to do. I never had an experience with.

Anything like that before. I've never done anything like that in my life. Training. No one's ever given us a PowerPoint or class on that.

And I had my helmet.

And so I figured my helmet is probably. But my PS14s were on the helmet and the tie down at that point, when I took my helmet off.

No one ties. Elites don't tie things down, but we tie everything down because we're so irresponsible. You never know when you lose something. And I tied it down, but when I took my helmet off, my 14s fell. And now you've got, like, this pendulum, and so you're not able to get what you want.

Now, the part of the story that gets misinterpreted a lot is that I took a sappy plate. Everyone says I took my sappy plate out. I opened my vest, and on an iba, at that time, it was Velcro. One side had a plate, the other side didn't. And so as I was trying to hit him, I wasn't getting enough force with my helmet. I took his head, and I just kind of used the open vest to subdue him. If you ask me, that's when the fight really stopped. I would think that I. That at that point, it was. I don't think he was. We weren't equals at that point. Whatever.

You got the upper hand.

Yeah. The wounds that he was sustaining to his head between the helmet and the sappy plate were enough to either disorient him or make him just not.

A problem. At least in my own head, I thought everything was great.

And he goes to the ground, and when he goes to the ground.

I put my hand over his mouth, and I'm literally all my force has got one hand, the one arm is wounded, and when I put my leg on it, he's like. His hips are coming up. It's hurting him. But then he's yelling, and then I hear a guy above us yell back. And that's when I completely went from, I'm in control and I'm gonna be okay, to complete, you know, a panic of I don't have the strength. I don't have the strength to do this right. And he's wounded. I mean, shoot me four times. You know, I don't know if I could do what he's doing, but if there's another guy that I have not yet met and he's 100% healthy.

I'm in deep trouble. I'm in trouble. And so as we're. We're. I've lost complete positive control of my rifle at this point. Now I'm trying to find it with one foot and just kind of probe my foot out to find my strap. I could drag it to me or do whatever. And he bites my hand really aggressively.

Right? And it's. It's like now I'm. I'm firing on, you know, I thought I had him in a good grip where I could at least. And I thought the fight was out of him, and he just starts biting me. And then as I move up my body.

The hand that I was not holding, I just. I just heard a loud crack of what turned out to be a Soviet. 45.

I don't even know where he had it or it came from, but it just fired directly in the wrong. He didn't. Thank God. He didn't know where my head was, but it was close enough to my head that it went from not being able to hear cloudy to, like, ringing. Not being able to hear, you know, which is. It's like a tinnitus versus I just can't hear, you know, and that was. That was really, like. It affected my equilibrium and affected my thought process. Things became dire. I went from super confident to, like, this isn't going to work out. And. And when I stood up looking for my rifle, I felt that I had my Gerber in my cargo pocket, not on my belt, which would have been almost impossible with the adrenaline and the sweat and the water to. To pull that out. It was so tight to my belt that it would have been, you know, but it was in my cargo pocket. And. And a lot of people think that's a multi tool. They say he killed. You know, the multi tool came out. It. It was a Rex Applegate, you know, a very quick release.

And I. I just figured I would. I would just pop them. I was just gonna let him know, you know.

I was speaking broken Arabic. It turns out he didn't even speak Arabic, but I was just trying to tell him to shut up and so I could hear what was being said or how many were. You know, was it our guys, maybe? It's. It's my guys coming up, and I just can't hear. And so I just. I was just letting him know I have a knife. And then he bit me again. And when he bit me, you know.

He bit my lower body. And that was unbelievable pain. It was unbelievable pain. And it was just a complete adrenaline spike. And it became. I'm gonna. I'm just gonna jab him. You know, I'm gonna cut him. And when I. When I put it in, it hit his collarbone, and it cut my side of my pinky down. My hand just kind of went off the blade and kind of went to the. To the knife, and it. Nothing happened. It was too hard, and it was not in the right region. And then when I put my hand over his neck, I kind of felt where I could guide it. And as soon as I put it in, it was a cold night. It was a rainy night. I felt steam, like, warm, hot steam. And there was a noise that I couldn't. I couldn't hear the noise, but I could feel the noise. It's a. It's like you. There was a. The spurt was. This is. And everything just auto rebooted. He was just like. It was over. It was like. There was no. You know, there was no response to it, you know, and the only thing. I took enough science to know that I could speed it up. And so I just kind of was doing, like, a little bit of, like, a CPR almost.

Just to get. Just to end it, you know, just to get all of it out. And so I just started putting, you know, like, doing CPR to end it, and.

That was it. And after all that, I.

It was ridiculous, and it wasn't. I wanted a cigarette, you know, and I went outside, and again, my helmet's gone, my vest is open, my rifle is somewhere on the ground. I have a magazine, maybe. I don't know, eight rounds left, 10 rounds. Much less than 30. And I know there's a guy above me, but it's a porch, and there's a roof on top of it. And so I just kind of cupped my hands, but I wanted the cigarette to be, like, my light, right? Because I have no night vision. And I figure if I get that cherry going, I could at least signal someone if they're coming in, because I haven't, you know, I figured I could at least see something, get some nicotine. I mean, I wanted nicotine, but I also wanted to see, like, what was going on, signal, do whatever. And as I'm dragging that outside open air.

I just hear like a.

Like someone, like, took off, like a scuttle of feet and like the. The most grotesque Joe Theisman snap I've ever witnessed. I played sports. I've seen guys, you know, break legs and compound fractures. Achilles injuries. That was a bad one. And whatever he landed on completely immobilized him when he landed on the ground. And.

He was in severe distress and emotional about how much he was hurting. And the magazine swiveled out of his.

No butt stock on the ak.

It was a short AK with no buttstock. And the magazine was out. And when I threw it back in and recharged it, it just was way. It burst. It was on automatic, and it just burst. And very little accuracy. I don't think I hit him with the ak. And then when I ran into the building, he fell, like, back into a water tank in the corner. And he couldn't move his. Like he was. One leg was the only thing that was causing, you know, his ability to move. But the rifle, I. I ran into the rifle and my rifle, and so I. I picked it up and I just shot until it went empty. And I don't. I hit him. I. I could see that, you know, I hit him and I hit his wounded leg, and I hit him in the back near the kidney. And all I know is I didn't know if there was a landing. There was a canopy underneath that part of the building, but I just heard the saws open up on him. So when I looked over finally.

I could see that he was, you know, head first in the palm area, and the two machine gunners had done their thing. And then the guys come flying in, and Lawson ends up getting shot by a shotgun. Lawson. Total accident. But Lawson basically was on the second story, and he was like, Terminators. Our guys are called terminators. Terminators coming in. And he just kind of turned the corner, and if someone hit him in a sappy plate. But that could have been horrific. And so the next. They're like, bomb is coming in. Bombs coming in. And I just. My voice was hoarse. I was, like, totally, like, you know, shook. And we ran out of the house, and Fast mover dropped a bomb, and it went right through the. You hear it, like, ting tong. Like, you would hear it, like, it didn't go off. And then they brought so that was a 250. They brought in a 500. That thing bounced and I don't know if it was our laser, if it was the fuse. I don't know what happened. Two bombs were duds. The final one was a 2,000 pound bomb and we were all like outside of the house. That blast was worse than anything that happened inside the house. I mean it just voided all of our. I mean just like we just vomit, like uncontrollable vomiting.

Like so you were just outside the house when the 2000, the Bradleys.

So the Bradleys all pulled up on a line and the guys got inside the Bradleys and zipped up and Fitz had grabbed me as I was making sure all the guys were in the Brads. He just grabbed me, threw me in a hole. And honestly we got the best end of it because the guys that were in the Brads got just completely concussed from that boxed in area and all of that munition. I mean, danger close. I'd say it was, I don't know, 200 meters from where the bomb went off. And all the periscopes on the side of the Brads were all shattered.

And the guys were all like woozy and vomiting. It was really bad. I mean they got shook really, really good. We were outside and I think we got the better end of it. I think. I think because we were low and in a hole, we didn't get nearly as messed up as all of it. But we go back in, pull the bodies out.

You know, start doing our inventory. And the next day I want dies our executive officer. And then J.C. madison died and then Sims died. And it just kind of was like crazy day, but there's like 12 other crazy days to go. And we just kind of did our thing. And then 15 years later I get a call that the DOD is doing an investigation and people I haven't Talked to in 15 years are calling me, telling me that they're looking into every aspect of my military career. And I'm thinking, like a lot of guys have happened, someone gets a little jealous, someone gets upset. And they said something happened. The way I had a reporter investigating and the military calling, I lawyered up, I got a lawyer. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to jail. Like, what's going on? And then Trump called.

Before we get to that, before we get to that. So this whole story that you just told about being in this house, this is November 10, 2004. This is your 29th birthday?

29Th birthday, yeah.

This is two days into the battle. Yes, because there's a couple days and there's a little bit of a lull as it kicks off, you know.

Right.

It's hard for you guys to get through the breach. You guys get in there and it takes a couple days. I mean, there's action out of the gate, but. But this is definitely a highlight for what you guys were doing.

Yeah.

Like you said, Lieutenant E1, November 12th, he's standing in a Brad. He's actually waving goodbye to. To where. Who's going to, like, fill his report or whatever he's gonna do. And he gets hit with. He gets hit with an rpg.

RPG that doesn't detonate. So it's, like, awful.

You. You got in. In the book, remember the ramrods? You've got this. This quote. Do they take, you know, his brother had died, and you explain this in the book. And again, there's so many. There's so many things in this book, but, you know, his brother had died in 1989. And so Ed Iwan, they. His parents want him buried, you know, in a cemetery in their small town in Nebraska, I believe. And there's a inscription on his grave about. About. Lt. Eddie won. It says, ed lived every moment. He stood in the rain, heard the thunder, danced to the lightning, and believed in rainbows.

That's the 12th. The next day, the individual that we've talked a bunch about, Captain Sims, who's your. Who's your company commander? A guy in the. It's. It's. You know, I don't think I covered this, but as you guys are going in, you know, this guy realizes what kind of a fight you're about to go into, and it's not going to be a hearts and mind fight. And you guys all really come together as. And he knows he's going to be reliant, relying on his door kickers.

And.

So the next day, after Lieutenant Ewan dies, Captain Sims, he's.

Kind of catching up with you guys on the battlefield. You guys are tired, and he's gonna go basically do a strong point in a building, kind of set up a little command post or something. And, you know, you're like, hey, boss, let me. Let me go clear that thing for you. Let me get my squad in there. Let me clear that thing. And he's like, no, you guys, some rest. Stand down. He says, air out your feet. Get some chow. We'll take care of it. And it was a building that had been cleared, but, you know, it then had been left and Cleared and left. And when these guys go in it, they get into a gunfight.

Captain Sims, Captain Sims is killed.

And like you said, you know, this is. And this is something sometimes people forget is that when someone gets killed in combat, combat continues. And you still have a mission, you still have enemy, and you still keep going. And that's what, that's what happens. You guys keep going for a total of 10 days. It's November 17th, you guys finally come out of the field.

And you got some great, you got some great perspective in there, you know, as you're coming out of the field and what that's like. You guys are now.

Seen way more than anybody else has seen in certain. The, the ramps in the rear. You know, they're trying to tell you to get your uniform squared away and this stuff. And always that, that, that contrast between the guys that are on the front lines, the guys that aren't. The Time magazine article comes out. So Michael Ware, like you said, works for Time. So you guys are out of the field. On November 17, November 22, this article comes out that he's written. It's called into the Hot Zone. And it's, it's. It's telling your story. You're. It's telling your company's story. And of course, I mean, you know, the, The Fallujah event was in every. It was the entire news for, you know, three week period. And so now everybody is reading this article about you, about your guys.

And.

All that being said, deployment's not over yet. You guys still have another three months of deployment left.

What are you guys doing when you get out of Fallujah? What's that recovery like? And, and now what's your mission towards the end of deployment?

So, you know, we don't really know about the magazine, the article, but everyone in our sector knows about Fallujah, and they know that when we were gone, we were replaced by units that didn't have the same logo on their arms. The insignia. And what that means meant the, the red one. And.

That we were in Fallujah, and that bought us a tremendous amount of street credit with the, with the bad guys. You know, it's. We were super cocky, we were super confident.

And we weren't. You know, the mistakes that we made, the zigging and zagging in the old days was long gone, the chances we were taking. You know, they always talk about how when, you know, the John Basilone story of, you know, you get a guy that does crazy things at Guadalcanal and then he wants to Go back to Iwo and the unit that he led. I mean, they got a. John Basilone.

Is a legend and an icon. He's selling war bonds, he's dating Hollywood starlets. I mean, this was a national hero. And everyone hung on everything he said. He had so much street credit, he didn't last, what, 15 minutes on Iwo. And so there are things that. The reason why they take you out when things like Fallujah Ramadi, big set plays where units do crazy things, is because you don't have a sense of your mortality. And you do take chances that you think, well, it hasn't happened yet. You know, I'll roll it until, you know, we fold. And our unit was doing that. I mean, we were just like in the old days, if you took fire, the enemy stopped. You know, you'd give chase, you do your job. But at the end of the day, we fired, they stopped, they ran away. Who cares? After Fallujah, we. We were gonna kill you. Like, we were gonna take you out. And it didn't matter how long it was. It went down, it didn't matter. You know, we had guys going through tunnels, and, you know, it's very difficult to clear an attic. You know, that's one of the most dangerous things you can do because you're literally just popping up in the middle of a floor and anything can hit you. And those are always. You know, guys were just doing things they'd never done before because they survived what was, you know, an epic urban fight. And I noticed it, and I noticed that election day was the big thing. The battle of Fallujah was because January 2005 was going to be the first free election and all of the craziness that was going to happen on election day. And so our mission came to just. We had a pretty good handle on Diala Province before Fallujah. When we left, there was that period where they regressed a little bit just because they unit. You know, you're brand new, you don't know the area very well. Great soldiers, they just didn't know our area. And so they were only there for a month and a half. And we started to see that they were taking liberties. We took those liberties back. We counter punched. We did great things. But it also became a way. Like, it was real now. Like, the guys were gone. They weren't etsing. They weren't going to a different duty station. They were not no longer there. And the memorial services and the, you know, and you just take more loss towards the end of a deployment, you Think, why are we taking loss at the end? We're so close to just going home. Like, is this. What's the point? What are we doing? And so that became more of a struggle of keeping our poise and our focus. But also the discipline was the hardest for leaders at the end. That's when all the crazy happens, like, in the last 30 days of a deployment is when nothing can be rationalized. No loss, no injury, no death. Nothing makes any sense because you're that close to the finish line. And it takes a lot to just kind of. Maybe I'm going a little bit too crazy. You know, what you don't want is. You don't want, you know, that. That guy who's getting out of the army, he's got a month left in a combat zone, and this is Jerry Rice's last football game, and he wants one more touchdown before he hangs it up. I don't want a guy who wants one more fight, you know, before he hangs it up, you know, so you. You want to be reasonable, but at the same time, professional and disciplined. But that was. That was tough because, you know, there's. And then these units are coming in to replace you, and they've done nothing but red. You become. Our unit became like army rock stars. You know, they. They were in magazines and the Army Times and the. And so guys are taking photos with these new guys and signing furniture. And this is the coffee maker from the gunner of the. You know, like, they. It was a weird feeling to hear your unit and these names of guys that you work with every day. And they're in Rolling Stone magazine. They're on cnn. They're talking about Falkenberg. Hey, turn on. Could you tape me Fox News? They're doing a special on Sergeant Major Falkenberg. Like, what? Like, he's your Sergeant major. Like.

It was a very surreal experience to go from the backwater and a unit that really peaked in Vietnam to the 1st Infantry Division back where it's cool again. And all these guys who just did their jobs are now, you know, doing interviews. You know, you've got reporters that are sneaking onto the FOB to interview the boys from Fallujah a month later. And it's just, like. It was very surreal.

You know, because it's just a lot of attention, and it's not necessarily. People process it differently, you know, and.

You guys end up going home in February 2005.

Yeah.

And at what point are you deciding that you're gonna get out of the Army?

You know, my whole thing was so I didn't know anything about, you know, the Time magazine, everything you hear about, about, you know, you're in a vacuum. But there was a big award ceremony going on for the division and a welcome home. And again, we're a German unit, and it was a lot of Silver Stars and Bronze stars and a lot of these guys that did incredible things. You know, it was hard to get a private, a specialist, an E5, the award that they deserve. A lot of guys they really never quite weaved around were getting awards that probably, you know, aren't service awards, not valor awards. You. You have that in every unit. But it was apparent that they were going to take this Fallujah fight and essentially make this award a Distinguished Service Cross. And that's the way it was billed. We did the unit. The brigade commander, Paul Ray Smith, had just received the Medal of Honor, the first recipient since Vietnam, posthumously for what happened in 2003 at the airport in Baghdad. And so this was going to be the second a Distinguished Service Cross, which would have been the first Distinguished Service Cross since Vietnam. So we got the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross.

And this is what you're hearing about your award.

Yeah. So I'm getting the dsc. That's the way the ceremony is going to be. All the guys get their Silver Stars or Bronze Stars, and we're going to hold the dsc. Secretary of the Army's coming to Germany. Hold division. It's a DSC award. I did a commercial for Armed Forces Network talking about getting the dsc. And the DSC is in the back. I mean, it was happening. And as that's all going down, they're basically saying no one knows anything more than the dsc. And it's not an award that you, you know, you don't know how to write it. And the witnesses. And so the division did the DSC with battalion and witnesses and whatnot. And Secretary of the army shows up day of the award. We do the rehearsals. We're getting ready for the live. The band, the division commander and the Secretary of the army is like, Bellevue is not getting the dsc. And so I'm like, all right, you know, like, what? That kind of sucks. I mean, we did the commercials. I'm in my uniform here, like, what is going on? And they're like, they're upgrading it. And I didn't even, you know, I was like, they're upgrading the dsc. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Like, what is going on? And it went from being upgraded to just, you Know, Army Times, USA Today, all these media people telling the world that I'm going to. I'm nominated for the Medal of Honor, which is not something the army puts out. No one puts that out. You can't say you're nominated for anything. It's not, you know, you're either approved or you either get it or you don't. There's no. Like, you didn't get the Medal of Honor. Give them the dsc. It's the Medal of Honor. Nothing. Right? You could take a Silver Star and upgrade it. You could take a DSC and upgrade it, but you don't get, like, a fallback award. You know, it doesn't work in reverse. So I go home, I leave. There was a lot that happened on that deployment, and our unit was disbanded.

So half of the guys went to another unit and deployed in eight months. The rest of the guys went to Stop Loss. Guys went home. Everyone went home. And I just was like, I'm gonna be a civilian. And I wanted to do some embedding. I wanted to do some other stuff, work some vets groups and whatnot. And then I get a package in the mail, and it's the Silver Star. And it isn't my citation. It's not my name. And I'm like, this has to be a mistake, right? It's not in my DD214.

It's not your citation, it's not your name?

No, it's just like, I jumped on a tank and I suppressed the enemy. It's basically the Silver Star was for stepping in the doorway with a saw.

Got it.

And then there's something with a Bradley that I didn't do. And then my middle. My name is spelled wrong, but it's not on my TD214, and the orders aren't signed, so I'm like, you know what's going on? And now everyone's like, you're going to get the Medal of Honor. And the media is like, this is happening. The Silver Star, it's an interim award. You're going to hold on to that, and then you're going to get the Medal of Honor. Well, that goes on forever. And then nothing happened. And so people.

So what are you doing? So now it's, you're out of the Army, I'm out of the Army.

Army. I decide I want to go back in the army, but I don't want to. I have a family, and I want to be a dad. I want to get a normal job. And then I hear, so you're conflicted Conflicted. I go and become an embedded reporter. I start a veterans group. We start running Democrat Republican veterans for Congress. We have a great class. Lee Zeldin, who's running for governor of New York, was one of our first guys. Allen west was one of our first guys. We've had some good ones, we've had some bad ones, but we ran quality guys and girls. And in the process of doing that, I meet all of these. There's a class that is started where there's a professional veteran class that comes out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And I'm super cognizant that I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the DD214 guy in my car. You know what I mean? I don't want to be the guy that's low crawling to the copier. You know, it's like, hey, at what time? Well, zero niner, we're gonna like stop another brief, right? Like you work at an Office Depot. Like you did not have an actual depot. And so I don't want to be that guy and I want to be like a normal guy. But every time something happens with the war, my local newspaper, my local whatever, like this guy's getting the medal of honor. And then people want to write books. And the books they're writing are not the stories that happened. They're like, dan killed eight people single handedly.

But that's one story. Do you know how many people he killed over here? And it's like, wait a second. First of all, how much money you get? What's going on here? You're making money off of our friends, our stuff. Why are you sharing these stories? They're not true. And then I got to hang out with guys like Marcus Luttrell and I saw the veteran side of celebrity in a way that made me super grateful for my life. Because Marcus was a 50. 50. 50% of the country thought Marcus Lutrell is truly one of the greatest treasures we have on our planet. He's a humble, decent, wonderful man that went through some crazy things. And then 50% were like, I hate him because he's successful and known. Why is he famous? Why do I care about Marcus Luttrell? And I'm watching him go through this and I'm seeing that for every guy that wants to shake his hand, for every girl that wants his phone number, there are 50 people that want to put him in jail, and there's 30 people that want to call him a fraud and go after his story and go after his Friends. And he's doing this journey, and it's like he's a pioneer. Like, he's discovering the Oregon Trail, and he's doing it all by himself.

Uncharted waters.

Uncharted waters with grace and dignity. And he can't win. Everyone's out to snipe him. And I remember he told me one day we were in Texas doing something, and he said, you are so lucky it's not the Medal of Honor, because as crazy as this is, the Medal of Honor would be worse. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe you're right. I'm blessed. Sal Gianta, first living recipient I see this guy, he's on at the Super Bowl. He's on the Letterman show, and I look at his face and I'm like, this guy has got the weight of the world, and he is just. Just getting buzz sawed. I mean, there's. You're the great. You can't take anything away from Salgiotto. What he stands for, what he did, who he is, how he leads his. But there's still people. They'll want to just rip him to shreds and go after his unit and his decisions. And does he. Well, I heard he was. I. Come on, man, give the guy. And he's the only one. And there's no net. There's no support. There's no one he could talk to. Vietnam guy, nothing. Just gianta. On his own, doing his own thing. And I said, thank God this is the first. I was like. And then it became, well, maybe the story isn't true. I mean, you didn't get the award that they said you're gonna get.

So they did the investigation, and obviously you didn't do shit.

This is bullshit, right? So now I'm like, wait a second. I go from going from being like the Susan Lucci of combat veterans nominated for a daytime Emmy for 18 years and not getting it. It's an honor to be nominated now.

When did you do your. Your embedded reporting? So this is so 2006. You're freaking in Ramadi when I'm there.

Yeah. No, so that.

Which is crazy.

And Major Megan McClung was the PAO who lost her life for the Marines. And I thought I got approved because I'm like, the only guy that wants to be there. And at the end of that tour, at the end of that little time, she said, will you sign my Time magazine?

And I was like, no way. Like, she's like, yeah, come on. What do you think we're stupid? Like, yeah, you show up here. No one wants to be here. We just wanted to make sure you weren't coming here to be a hero, and you weren't coming here to do something stupid. And when it was appeared, you know, it was apparent that you had your heart in the right place. We thought you could use your platform to tell them what we're doing, because we're doing great things. And Ramoni, no one's talking about it at all.

What was it like when you were on the ground there in Ramadi?

Yeah, that was the worst place I've ever been in my life. I would take Ramadi. I would get an apartment in Fallujah before, in 2006, Ramadi was insane. And I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I'm. You know, as you're. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you can go through something that's really bad compared to another bad thing. But unless you have the perspective to know, like, okay, I saw the army, the Marine Corps and the seals, right?

There was no differential. The only time you could tell elite people just by the way they move. You know, the fluid nature of how special operations do their thing. The Rangers, incredible. Marcel, the Marine, Special Operations, marsoc. You know, all these guys, Recon. These are some studs, right? I never was in an area where I could not tell.

Because of just the. Over the. Just.

The disproportionate amount of brazen enemy attacks. You could not differentiate what unit they were attacking until 40 minutes into the fight. And the objectives were being pushed. And you could actually see it. Was that crazy. It could have been 101st, could have been 3rd Marines. It could have been Navy Seals. There are 60 guys running around doing whatever the hell they want to do, and it is just snipers in hides. That was where we found the guy on a table with a hole cut in the table. And there was human waste, human urine hooked up with IV bags. And someone just went in there and threw water on a blanket. I mean, the dedication to just lay in a hide with an IV for your food.

Rahmani was nuts. And you know, the cement truck bombs, the video of it, no one was covering it. We had a time. Was just balcony journalism. You heard a story, a stringer gave you a video of an ied, you put it on the news. Nothing on the ground, nothing tactical.

Are we winning? Ramadi was a fight that actually was like an anaconda just squeezing the life out of these insurgents. And the more you killed, you saw a clear reduction of violence. I mean, a Clear reduction of violence. Like, you might have five guys you couldn't recruit when you just had that kinetic fight. The snipers were crazy. The mortars were crazy.

It wasn't.

And the civilian population was still there. But you saw the beginning of the Sons of Iraq. You saw the beginning of the Anbar Awakening in 2006. But most importantly, you saw the population see enemy combatants that were mujahideen as the actual occupiers. That was the first time was Ramadi, oh, six. When Americans are like, they're the bigger tribe. They're not going anywhere. They're good people. They're honest. They just want to be left alone, play the game, work the job, do whatever, take their money. But these guys from Syria, I don't want them. I don't want these guys coming in from wherever. They're the occupiers. Get Iran out, get these people out.

And. And we'll be fine. But Ramadi, it was not a good place.

And.

And it was. It was also weird to see people lose their life and watch someone mourn.

Someone that I didn't know, like, I never been around, someone who was hurt or killed that I didn't have a connection to. And to watch that, extremely personal.

You feel like a stranger. You feel like.

You'Re intruding.

That's not why we're there. That's a very personal thing. And that was really crazy, too. And when I was in Ramada, I had a kidney stone. And I remember being medevaced by one of the seals out there. And the last thing he told me, I mean, I was trying. I didn't want to drink their water because it was weird, because, like, they don't want you there. Like, no one cares about you. You could be missing for days. And they're like, what? Oh, no? Move on. And so they were like, I'm gonna buy you a drink. And I was like, yeah, that'd be great. I guess he meant he was gonna give me pain meds.

But when I came to, I was on the. On the shoulder of a grown man. I was thinking, please don't know who I am. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be the guy from Time magazine that's being carried off, like, you know, a sandbag. But they did surgery on me there and removed the stones and gave me a catheter, and I had stents put in. It was nuts. And then they sent me back out into Ramadi. And I remember this guy. This guy came up to me. He's like, Hey, I got your Flomax. Do you need Flomax?

You guys are issuing Flomax prescriptions? We have evolved since 2004. But I got to see the hospitals and the surgical units and how hard those men and women work and the ground units. But the people of Vermont gave me hope that this is actually going in the right direction. I couldn't say that about Dialla. Dialla was worse. And I went back to dial in 08, same area that I fought in. I went back to Fallujah in 06. Didn't really seem all that great.

I mean, it wasn't better.

And then in 2008, I went back to Fallujah, and they had a fight at a city council meeting over solar lights for their traffic signals. And I was thinking, damn, they're more green than we are. Yeah, that's for sure. But, yeah, the moral of story is, when I got out the award, I didn't know what was happening with it. And everyone kind of turned immediately. People were like, this isn't real. You're bullshitting. This story is not true. You know, Gerber would have given you a knife by now. You know, like, there's something would have happened like, this. This doesn't make any sense. And yet everyone said, there was a tape. There was a tape out there, and I didn't have a relationship with Michael Weir. But they're like, there's a tape out there. And now I'm thinking, oh, one of them. What's on the tape? Show me what's in the box. What's on the tape? Like, is it good? Is it bad? Like, I don't. I don't want to, you know, do whatever. And then he sold his documentary. And when he sold his documentary.

Everyone started talking about it again. And the book started reading the book, and they wanted to make it a movie. They wanted to do all these different things. And I thought, ah, this is. I'm getting into the territory that I was really happy I never was in. And then you got Dakota and everything he went through, and Kyle, and, you know, all these guys. Will Swenson and, you know, just. It just seemed like half of the population was like, atta boy. Here's a free ticket to Disneyland. And the rest of them were like, I'm gonna hunt you down and make sure you could never work a job again. It's such a schizophrenic world, man. And so 2018, I'm minding my own business. And I get these calls before we get there, though.

I mean, there's a huge amount of time that's passing by. So it's now 2005, 2006, you're doing some reporting. 2008, you're doing reporting.

Yeah. So I was. I worked in Washington. I started a veterans group called Vets for Freedom. Pete Hegseth, Fox News, we had. Marcus was a part of that. There was all these guys that we tried to just get the politics out of war fighting, you know, send us to fight. And if you don't like it, don't vote to send us. But you can't defund a war while we're in the process of fighting. And then I just. I wanted to go back home. I wanted to be a dad. I wanted to coach soccer, and I wanted to just see my kids. And this is what we fought for. So I just became a normal, you know, a guy. I worked at a milk plant. I was doing, you know, advocacy work for, like, the power grid. You know, like, nothing crazy. Like, you can't be against protecting the power grid. You know what I mean? And working at a milk plant and everything was cool. And then an opportunity came up to do some radio. And Buffalo. And I love my hometown. I love the Bills. I love everything about Buffalo. And I was like, hey, you know what? When I'm on the radio, no one's talking about the Army. I'm weather traffic guy. So in a way.

So wait, you were weather traffic guy?

No, no, I'm just saying, I'm talking about just cat decline and plastic bags and, like, nothing remotely, you know, if they. Did you write a book? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But let's talk about this. Cats and these declaws. Why are we declawing cats? It's like cutting their fingers off. Are you happy with yourself? And in a way, I could control my narrative. You didn't know what I looked like. You just heard it every day. And yet I controlled what you knew about me. And if you wanted to ask me a question about something I didn't want to talk about, I just switched the star hung up on you. I didn't have to be on Facebook. I didn't have to go nuts. You want to talk about the war, there's moments where you have a book out, you go on Fox. You talk about the end of the war, the way Obama ended the war. Bush, what do you think about this? What do you think about Trump? What do you think about the Caliphate? Those are things. You feel like doing them or you don't. But I'm not a professional veteran, and that chunk of my life was amazing, you know? And then I started going through all the things all my friends were going through. You know, Chuck yeager dies at what, 99? What do they talk about? The Soundberry's 24, dude. We're talking Chuck Yeager's entire life, and we're talking about when he's 24. It's a sound barrier. Who gives a shit? He had kids, he had a job, he had businesses. Nobody wants to talk about Chuck Yeager. They want to talk about when you're 24, and you start to realize that if you live your life in that moment, that's all you're going to be. And everyone's going through what I'm going through. Went through a divorce. Divorce sucks. War sucks. You move on. You meet new people, you have new relationships. But I never. I figured that the guys were the war. My old unit, my old life was the thing that I'm burying in a time capsule. And so those guys, the more I heard about them, the more there were problems. I'm not your squad leader anymore. I can't help you anymore. It's time to move on. And then all of a sudden, I get these phone calls from guys I haven't talked to in forever, guys at the Pentagon, people I met in Washington or overseas. And they're like, do you hear what's happening? Which is, like, the worst way to start a conversation. Did you hear what they're doing to you?

They knew a lot of information. They had a lot of stuff.

And your initial thought was, they're investigating you.

They were investigating. They're asking questions. I'm not. I don't even know who you are. You're calling me on the phone.

You're asking me, did you think the Medal of Honor just was never going to happen? At some point, did you figure, all right, what year did you approximately say, hey, you know what? It's been four years, this shit ain't happened? I got my silver star with my name missed out.

All the living recipients were Afghanistan. And the Obama administration was very clear that Iraq was the bad war. Afghanistan was a good war. We don't talk about Iraq. The caliphate's moving throughout the country. No one wants to revisit Iraq. We're making Iraq move movies that we avoided because it was too close to reality. Now, you know, Superman's making the movies, you know, Ramadi. Like, all these things were happening that the culture was just like, no more Iraq. And it was okay.

And this was like, 2010 or something.

I would say 2010. That it was like, okay, fine. And by the way, I saw what happened to Marcus. I saw what was happening to all these other guys. I mean, they savage Dakota Meyer. There's absolutely nothing. No one can rationalize why that guy goes from American hero on a pedestal.

You take Will Swenson and Dakota Meyer. Each branch of service, you give him award for the exact same thing. You don't think that's weird for those two guys? You don't think you're creating. Why are you doing that? You can't say that. Will Swenson did something incredible that day. Dakota Meyer did something incredible that day. No, that's not what you do. You make it about branch rivalry. You take two guys, you're digging into people's lives. This is trauma.

This is their identity, right? And then Dakota decides to be a man and get married. And because he marries someone, we gotta put on tmz. He's now a celebrity that gets followed by gossip magazines. Come on, dude, these kids are young. They got their whole lives in front of them. You're lucky they didn't end up.

Like Elvis in some Vegas hotel just eating peanut butter sandwiches. I mean, you can't do that to young people and not give them the opportunity to become normal again. These guys can't work normal jobs. They can't be normal. You don't want them to be normal. You want to exploit them to sell war bonds. But then when they make money or they become successful, you attack them for being whores. And I mean, it's unsustainable and it's horrible to see. It's like watching a slow moving freight train. A baby playing with a stick of dynamite. And you're watching this and all I could think of is, my heart breaks for these guys. I know them all to be honorable, wonderful men. But I'm so glad I'm not there. I'm so glad that for whatever reason, my path was different and I could just control it, you know? I love that. And then it became apparent that not only was this going to be serious, but reporters. The same reporters going after Navy SEALs for, you know, doing silly things. The same guys loving the Leavenworth dudes that were getting thrown in jail. These reporters were like, hey, tell me about this incident. Tell me about this, tell me about that. And I'm like, you know what? You can all eat a bag of hot. I am. I'm lawyering up, dude. You're not touching me. Not touching me, right? And these guys are like, dude, one or two things is happening. Either you you're gonna go to jail for 40 years or you're gonna be the ambassador to France. Like, we've never seen this before. Like, no one wants to acknowledge anything. So I'm doing the radio show. One day, my contest line blows up. Like, we give tickets to Manheim Steamroller, and it's someone from army personnel that's like, you must pick up the phone or we'll come to your house. And I'm like, army personnel. Like, that's not. Like, there's no criminal CI. There's no CBS show. Is gonna spawn off G1. You know, the RV personnel. Yeah. Out of it. 71 Lima. On this episode of 71 Lima, paychecks stopped. Right? We're gonna figure out the housing, you know, food crisis. No, it's ridiculous. And then.

They'Re like, a senior member of the DoD wants to talk to you. And I'm like, maybe it's a dsc, Right? Well, that's awesome. Senior member. Got to be chief of staff, you know, whoever. And then one day they're like, are you by your phone? Are you by your phone? I'm like, yeah. And they're like, the senior member of the DOD is calling, and.

Are you suspect at this point that you think it's the dsc? You think the DSC is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because senior member. They would just say, you're getting the. Would just tell you, I'm a grown man. I mean, what are we doing here? It's not like, let me go to the book.

Phone rings. I took a breath, then answer the phone. Hello, David. An upbeat woman's voice said to me. My name is Madeline, and I have President Trump on the line wishing to speak to you. Is now a good time?

What the hell? I almost said that out loud. Fortunately, I caught myself. Yeah, now's a good time. My phone blinked. Suddenly heard President Donald Trump's voice come through my phone speaker. David, how are you? Do you know why I'm calling? I'm a little nervous, I admitted. You should be nervous. I should be nervous. Okay. Do you know what you've been recommend. Recommended for? In that instant, I knew what was coming was far more life changing than throwaway allegations. The war was over. I had moved on. Fourteen years ago, I was told I was nominated for the Medal of Honor, sir. A lifetime ago. Back then, the thought of being awarded America's highest valor medal was seemingly a dream come true, a validation of my skills and professionalism as a soldier. It would erase the insecurities I had wrestled with constantly and be A tangible symbol of my service to my father. After all these years, I could go home to him with something he could take pride in about his youngest son. None of that happened. Well, David, you got it. Trump said.

Just like that.

I mean, when you. It's one of two things. It's Alec Baldwin from Saturday Night Live or it's Donald Trump, I mean, the President of the United States. And honestly, it was so surreal. The moment I heard, the moment, you know, you get a call from a flashy number and it's the switchboard of the White House, then it can't be the dsc, you know, but the amount of cloak and dagger that's behind this thing is just so crazy. And then it's not just you getting the Medal of Honor now you're the only guy from Iraq. So now this gives every weenie from the mainstream media an opportunity to be like, let's re adjudicate why we went to war in Iraq. Am I just a recipient of the Medal of Honor? Am I a mascot? Am I the guy that you just want to, you know, why is this happening? Why is there only one? Why are there so many. Afghanistan, only one over here. And you know, I mean, when you look at the timeline, you know, some of these guys have had the Medal of honor for 10 years, 15 years, you know, whatever it was. I think the old gentle was like 2,012, maybe 11:10. Yeah, sometime around there. I mean, I was long out of the army when that happened. So I'm the old, the second oldest of the GWOT recipients, but I'm one of the newest recipients. Right. And so it's like I kind of navigated all of that and kind of put that away. You know, maybe you do want to give it to a 23 year old. Go out there and enjoy it and have fun and you know, get a, you know, buy a car dealership, you know, valor cars. Go do what you want to do with it. But at this point, it's like, you know, you're, you're 35 and someone delivers a Shetland pony to your door, you're like, no, Santa, I was 11 when I wanted that. You know, like that's, it's not, it's not what I. At this phase of life and then it starts happening and then every, you realize, oh, you know, here's the key to the city. And you know, here's an allegation, here's the, you know, why did you say this on the radio? Did you actually imply that this person should be beaten to death? I mean, like, I've been doing the same thing for seven years. Come on. The attention is. And then everywhere you go, you're in the past tense. They talk about 2004. They don't want to hear about 2022. They don't want to hear about the future.

It's. You know, you're frozen in time. You're at your own funeral everywhere you go. And all I thought about was, I went through this with 40 of the most beautiful people I've ever known in my life.

Maybe I'll just go through it with them again. What if we make this award instead of being the guy that stands up there awkwardly in a uniform you've probably never worn as a soldier, and you eat a bunch of shrimp and you meet, like, Jimmy Kimmel, right? Why don't you just say, look, I'm going to be the guy that just constantly redirects it to the kids that got nothing, right? The ones that did everything I asked them to do and never received any. You know, maybe we just bring the band back together. You know, let's make the Medal of Honor. About the Unit, why do you not. Why don't you get to invite people to it? You get all these people to come to the White House, but you can't invite the guys that actually were there that day. Why don't you want to do that? You know, why isn't this a Unit award? Why don't you bring. It's all of our. We all did it, right? There was a camera there. There was one guy, and, you know, it became a story that people talked about. But did I do it? Could I have done it again? I'll tell you again. Would I do it again knowing what this was? No. I would have called a bomb in and waited for it patiently. There's no way you want this if you are a person that is gonna live your entire life, you know, based on the past.

I don't know of any other award where you have to wear it everywhere. If you interviewed Will Smith and he brought the Oscar, you'd think he was a total douchebag. You might think he's a douchebag anyway, and you might be right. But my point is, you don't bring that everywhere you go. This is an award you're supposed to wear everywhere you're supposed to. It's your identity. This is like, oh, no. There's only so many living, and there's only so many in our history. And let's just. Everywhere you go, it's this award. First and I'm thinking to myself, man, that it's the wrong. There's so many. Let's talk about the Iraq war. Let's actually have a discussion about what was sacrificed and what was accomplished. Because I'll tell you what, all you people that want to Ignore Iraq for 10 years, Baghdad's more likely to host a Summer Olympic Games than Kabul is. I mean, can you actually look at the two wars and say that? Is Iraq better today than the good war, the war of choice in Afghanistan? And that's through no fault of American valor or American blood, but you could get a president elected tomorrow that decides Ukraine's worth. American treasure and blood. You can get a president tomorrow that wants to hit Nova Scotia for some reason. I don't know. Look, we don't make those calls, but we fought a fight of our generation, and we did it with valor. We just went beyond the highest expectations of what our military branches ask of us. And I'm proud to be a part of the generation. I might not have voted to go to war with Iraq, but I'm proud of my war. And my war was Iraq, and I'm proud of the men and women I served with and make the award about that.

Yeah. And just to clarify, you were the first living Medal of Honor recipient from Iraq?

Paul Ray Smith was the first recipient. Yeah, but. And that story is, you know, as close to Audie Murphy as you're going to get.

The. You detail this, the. You know, as it goes from there. So.

First of all, it's.

It's.

It's. It's incredible. You know, as you make this decision to bring everyone in and you start reaching out to your old friends and you're. You're reaching out to the Gold Star families, the widows, the moms. I mean, it's. It's incredibly emotional to read through it and how that goes down and what you're feeling and what you're thinking and.

And then, you know, you get to the point where you're actually. You take it through the ceremony. And I, you know, I attended Mikey Monsour's Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House and, you know, was obviously honored to be able to be there for that. But you just being able to read your experience and what that was like and. And reflect on what I saw, I mean, you just did a great job of capturing the. The ceremony and what happens.

Yeah, it's. It's. It's a very powerful. A very powerful thing. And this idea that you talked about, you know, why not make it everybody else's award. And it's not just something that you're saying right now. It's what you actually did. You reached out to everybody. You got the band back together. Those are the words that you use in the book.

They allowed us to take those guys on stage.

Oh, no, that was. That was.

That was awesome.

That was epic.

That really was cool. And listen, I gotta tell you, I don't know how I would have reacted. You know, they handled it with grace and love. And the ramrods of my unit were, I don't think, you know, in my 20s, I couldn't tell another man. You know, in the military, we're super weird about, you know, we laugh at things that are. You look at today and you're like, you would never say these words or you never laugh at these jokes, but expressing love in my 20s was. Could not be done. You couldn't go up to a guy in your 30s or your 20s in uniform and be like, I love you. You know, don't ask, don't tell. Just love me. Write me a note or something. And when you hit a certain age, you realize.

I love you. And I want to tell you that I care about you. I really am proud to be in your life. It's a gift that you and I are connected. And no matter what happens in this world, no matter what disappointment you have, I know who you are. I know what you're capable of. I know what you've done for me. And, you know, these. The questions that I was always afraid of. You know, if I would have gotten this thing when I was 29, I probably would have been an idiot. I probably would have. You know, I don't know if I was emotionally mature enough to be able to. To realize that you're a product of the people you're with. You know, we smoke cigarettes at 14, and we blame, you know, peer pressure. But peer pressure also makes you kick a door down. Peer pressure makes you clear a road, ieds, makes you jump out of a helicopter with a rope. It depends on who your peers are. If you got quality people, they're gonna. You're gonna be all right going with the following, the herd. It's okay if the people are worth it. If you got dirt bags and scumbags, you're going to be an idiot. So these kids are men. They're all great people. I'm blessed to have them in my life. I'm glad we're back. But, you know, it doesn't give you a pass. And there's always going to be, you Know.

It'S crazy how we think that something that we get is, you know, somehow gonna make you coast through. Like, I think there's a mindset that you don't need to do anything anymore. Get a DUI tomorrow and find out. The first thing they say won't be, you know, a random guy in Buffalo with a radio show. It's gonna be, you know. You know, Medal of Honor guy gets a dui, as it should be. Don't get a dui. Don't be an idiot. You know, it's not hard to do, I hope.

Yeah, Pretty. Pretty awesome.

On that day, when you talked about them coming on stage, you say, the president asked my family to join us on stage. This is right after you receive the Medal of Honor. This has become a traditional gesture to acknowledge the family. My mother walked up to meet the President, along with my brothers Dan and Ran and my three beloved children. Their mother stepped up, too. Sharing the stage with them was unforgettable. My family together in front of countless people across the world. The effects of November 10th have rippled through their lives ever since. Even if the kids had not known it, they earned this. A gesture that was once an homage to them by our president and atonement for all the hardships we'd experienced as a family since my return. As I stood there, though, my heart and head told me this needed to be first and foremost, foremost the ramrod's spotlight, their moment. I needed to give this honor there on stage with the president, to the men, to Marilee and Colin Sims, where it rightfully belonged. I moved to President Trump and asked him, sir, can I bring my ramrods up here? I pointed to the audience. Trump was surprised. This wasn't just a break in protocol. This was taking a wrecking ball to it. But this president was never one to adhere rigidly to past traditions. He asked, how many are we talking? All of them, sir. He looked over at them and said, let's do it. Bring them up. Come on up here, guys. President Trump rolled his hands over to welcome them. Get up here. The ramrods flowed onto the tiny stage. This felt right. This wasn't my award. This was our award. Our moment. Not mine. We fought the battle of Fallujah as one family. We. We would share this stage as one family. It reminded me I was never alone. I always had them. These men never betrayed me, never let me down. They did everything I asked of them and more. They are the reason I am alive and did have my reunion with Evan after all. Of course, they were also the reason I was wearing this award. There we were, shoulder to shoulder, one more time. Captain Sims led the way for this moment. He showed us that true leadership didn't end with our time in combat. It took me 14 years to figure that out. He wanted us to fight scrupulously, not because he saw it as a path to victory, but because he knew it was the only way we would survive the aftermath of war.

I had never known an officer who looked that far ahead. He wasn't trying to just be our commander in Iraq. He felt that responsibility. Responsibility would be his forever.

As this event unfolded, I understood the vision of our forever commander. The Medal of Honor had brought us back together. It was our unifying force.

And.

I. What's pretty awesome is you can go watch this on YouTube. I hate to say it, but you can go watch this on YouTube. And it's. It's freaking outstanding to see.

It was awesome. It was awesome to go through. And. And, you know, and so then, you know, the army wants you back and help out, recruit, do all those things. And, you know, one of the things that really opened my eyes, the army is I love my army, and I. That's the soft spot it's always been. Don't let you know your army is depending on you, and you want to do its best. But the army also has changed a little bit, and it's another generation's Army. It's not really my army anymore. And I think that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not a good thing, you know? All right. And there were times during this process where I had people in my life.

I wanted to be able to experience this award with the folks that I.

Had, a new brotherhood of people that I cared for. And because of the situation with divorce and the army and the White House getting involved and all the PR people and the communications people, they were making calls and dictating decisions that weren't really.

Putting me first. Right. And it's tough. It's tough because you have to think, well, this is about the institution. This is about this. But we're supposed to be an organization that is lethal, that's ready for the next fight. And we are far too in the weeds as an institution right now. I don't know the Navy or the Air Force or the Marine Corps. But I could tell you that, you know, there is this generation we were supposed to, you know, they talk about that famous class in West Point during the Civil War that had all this experience in the Mexican and the Indian campaigns and how great they were in battle in the Civil War because of all the experience they had. That was supposed to be us after 20 years of war. We were supposed to have the best generals and the best colonels, but because every one of these young lieutenants cut their teeth in combat, we didn't have it. After the Gulf War, they all went away and you had peace time and peace is great. We love peace, we fight for peace. But my God, we are hemorrhaging far too many light colonels and majors that are just saying it's not worth it. And the guys that sticking around for four stars, I worry that in 10 years, they're the ones that need it. They got nothing else to do. There was a time when our four star generals were the best of. They were CEOs. You know, I just saw one retired the other day. This guy could work anywhere in the country. He's that good. Paul Funk is one of the greatest generals the Army's ever seen. What's going to happen in 10 years? Are we going to have the best of the best or are we going to have people that just hung out long enough? Survivor island and they kept held onto the torch and they're there.

It's sad, but I want my command sergeant majors to all have been privates in Ramadi and Fallujah. I want my generals to have been lieutenants in Kabul and in Afghanistan. We don't. We're losing it.

Well, that would certainly be an ideal thing. And speaking of ideal things you get, you ended up giving a speech and this speech the next day, this is at the hall of Heroes at the Pentagon and you end up giving this speech. It's, it's an amazing speech. It's a, it's an amazing speech and it's got a bunch of views once again. You can go watch this. But you, you in the speech, a lot of is it you just paying a tribute to the men you fought alongside and you pay homage to all the services. But there's one part of the speech that I think it captures what you just said of what the ideal, what the, what the American military is supposed to be.

And I just want to read this real quick. You say this and go watch this whole speech on YouTube. You say this. The entire military is one cohesive, dedicated force. And the threats to our nations, they don't sleep. They're watching our every move. Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, isis, al Qaeda, they may be watching this right now.

Our military should not be mistaken for a cable news gabfest show. We don't care what you look like. We don't care who you voted for, who you worship, what you worship, who you love. It doesn't matter if your dad left you millions when he died or if you knew who your father was. We have been honed into a machine of lethal moving parts that you would be wise to avoid if you know what's good for you. We will not be intimidated. We will not back down. We've seen war.

We don't want war.

But if you want war with the United States of America, there's one thing I can promise you. So help me God. Someone else will raise your sons and daughters.

We fight so our children never have to. We fight for one day when our children and our enemy's children can discuss their differences without fear or loathing. We fight so that anyone out there thinking about raising arms against our citizens or allies realizes the futility of attrition against a disciplined, professional and lethal force built to withstand anything you can dream of throwing at us.

Americans want this kind of country. Americans want this kind of world. And we stand ready to defend it, to protect us, so help us God.

May God bless this beautiful army. May God bless our Marine Corps, our Navy, our Air Force and our Coast Guard. May God bless our allies.

And we already know that God blessed America because he gave us the greatest fighting force this world has ever seen. Two. Two infantry and the first Infantry Division. Thank you. Ramrod's duty. First Dukes.

Again.

To me, that's the military that I tried to join. That's the military I tried to represent when I was in and many of those I served alongside. That's exactly the way they felt. And you captured it.

Incredibly.

I appreciate that.

Little editorializing at the end of the greatest fighting force the world's ever seen. You know, that might be hyperbole, but my point in that is that, you know, I think we're all raised differently in the. In the military. Our leaders gave us tough love, but now that we're out, we're still ambassadors. And it's very, very important that people start to see veterans. You know, we're not some infomercial for Sally Struthers. For 99 cents a month, private Snuffy can get a cup of coffee. You know what I mean? Like, we got, you know, like wounded dogs in cages building houses. I love those institutions, but we're going to run out of houses to build. We're going to run out of wounded men and women who gave us everything for our country. God bless their sacrifice. God bless their service. But I Don't want a cottage industry of, you watch a recruiting commercial, it's followed by a guy lost his limb trying to open his kitchen cabinet. I mean, that's a really schizophrenic message to send to America's young people. How do you honor service and sacrifice without bookending it next to a commercial saying, join us, and we too will give you a kitchen countertop that allows you to cook in front of your family in case the worst thing happens. Hey, listen.

Everyone knows what's going on with service. And the men and women who have sacrificed, who've been out there, they empower us. They're walking vessels of valor, our generational valor. No one should cheapen that. No one should denigrate that. Buy them two houses and an additional car. In fact, take it from Iraq. Let the Iraqi people pay reparations for our dead and our injured. I'm all about it. I have no problems with that at all. But at the same time, we still have to have a warrior class in America. And this is just the victimization of veterans is something that just absolutely. I find repugnant. And it's not helping us. It's not making us more deadlier or more lethal on the battlefield. It's not intimidating our adversaries, and it's not bringing peace to our allies. It just shows that, well, eventually America will get it. Eventually we'll understand that the greatest generation was the greatest generation of American because they knew they were at war and they had to do everything to win their war. You want to say no to war forever? I'll be with you. I don't want to see war again. But if this is going to happen, it's got to be overwhelming, devastating, and a reminder to your future generation. Go to dental school and learn a trade. Don't fight against Americans, because it is going to end in tears every single time. And I just don't think we're that military anymore. And I don't think our elected officials want us to be that military anymore. You know, hearing the stories of people joining our military to get hormone therapy.

It'S like, what are you doing? You're combat ineffective. You can't deploy. Why would I want you in my team? What do you do? I want a college degree. Fucking. You want a college degree? Fantastic. You want to be a citizen? Fantastic. You want to better yourself, better your community, better your country. I'm all about giving you the tools to make your society better for serving. You're not bettering yourself because you're selfish and you See yourself in a different light. And this is what's best for me. It's not best for your community, it's not best for your country, and it's best for you. And that's the opposite. It's literally 180 degrees from what we're supposed to be. And I just don't know why more people aren't standing up, especially our generation, saying just because who we are does not offend you. I mean, representing our true self of what the military is and what veterans do is not something. It invokes. Pride.

Right?

It gives us swagger, it gives us security, it gives us pride, it gives us patriotism. If it's offensive to you, that's the problem. That's your problem. It's not the institution's problem. I'm so sick and tired of having to apologize for what? What do you want me to do? You know, the first question that we got asked when we did the whole little media thing after the Medal of Honor is what do you say to the families who lost loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan? And I'm thinking to myself, the fact that you have to ask that just shows me. I mean, what are you goose stepping with? You know.

You tell a family member that their loved one died so that we could live. That's what happened. Their sacrifice could have been any one of us. They put themselves in a position so that we can have a tomorrow and a future. And if that is difficult for you to understand, then I'm glad you never served. Honestly, part of me wants to think that maybe we think we're better than civilians. And other parts want to say, well, some people can't do this, some people don't want to do this. I get all of it. But there are certainly people that are offended by people who make the choice to serve their country or serve in any sector of first responders or any of these other folks. They're just offended by everything. And honestly, I don't even give a damn about it. I mean, you're just a vacuous nonentity at the end of the day. If you're not going to put the fire out, if you're not going to help, tell everyone there's a fire and all you want to do is comment on why the fire got put out, then you're just a jack off. Like, there's no, there's no, there's nothing in the chain that says I need more of that. So stop acting like you're on an equal platform with a disabled veteran. You know, let's give a service dog to everyone. If you need a dog, get a dog. I'm not offended. You have a dog. I don't think you need a pot belly pig. I think you're being obnoxious with a peacock. I think when you brought a bull with fairy shrimp in it, you're just being an ass. I mean, we can differentiate between the people that need to be put on a pedestal and the people that just want to be acknowledged for being different. They wanted to serve, they love our country, they love our family. We're all different walks of life. But that doesn't mean that we're not proactive to people that are obviously trying to get in the way of this family tradition. Today, if you're joining the Marine Corps or the army, it's because your dad did it, because your uncle did it. Why isn't this a decision everyone is making? You have an obligation to go to college. Everyone has an obligation. Well, you're not going to college. What's wrong with you? What do you mean you're not going to college? Obviously you're not serious about succeeding in life. It's ridiculous. And then you think to yourself, why isn't every single 18 year old saying, I'm going to do my two years and find myself. I'm going to learn about people and be uncomfortable and be different and sacrifice and see the world and see different people and be surrounded by diversity and difference. I don't have to force the diversity. It's already there. There's diversity everywhere, right? And it's in the military, it's in every walk of life there's diversity. Embrace it. It's beautiful, but it's different. And you have to be exposed to that. Different to grow. I don't understand why every able bodied person is insane. I want some of that. I want to be better. I want to take care of myself. I want individual ruggedness. I want to be tough, I want to survive. Right? And you've got a generation of website developers that, you know, I mean, seriously, if a zombie apocalypse happens, I look at, there was a time when, you know, a person said, I want a partner who's gonna be there for me when it all goes down. And now that decision isn't. I want someone who. What? Look, I understand that things have changed. We can't change. We have to be the same yesterday, today, forever. And the military cannot adapt to this schizophrenic nature of. Hey. Today we believe the following individuals.

Are a protected class. Today we believe the following Individuals can reproduce. Today, we believe the following. I mean, you want to kick out 15,000 people for vaccinations? What did you do with anthrax? Did you dishonorably discharge them? What did you tell them? You said you don't want the anthrax. Well, you know, you're not going to defend your country with all the people you trained with for a year. Why don't you take the anthrax? That was the choice. Am I going to not deploy with these men that I consider family to me? Because what. I don't know what anthrax is. If anthrax was naturally occurring outside of training grounds in San Diego, would people not resp. You know, this vaccination thing to me is a object lesson in how we have completely decided that we want our universe instead of our universities becoming more like our military. We're deciding to make the military plug and play to everything that's happened in society. And unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote. And the enemy doesn't give a damn about inclusiveness or feeling good. The enemy wants to kill you. They want to kill you as quickly as they possibly can. And I don't want a military that feels good at the end of the day about who they are. I want the military to feel good about who they are because they dominated the battle space. And Americans don't know what a mortar incoming or outgoing sounds like. Right, That's a problem.

Yeah, I mean, the military has one purpose.

And that's to be able to fight and destroy the enemy. That's what it is. And if you're doing things to the military that don't enhance that capability, it's a problem. And if, you know, you said that the enemy doesn't care what they're doing, what we're doing, actually they do care what we're doing and they're trying to encourage it as much as possible. They want us to be as weak as they can possibly make us. They can get drugs over the border, they can put programs on your phone that, that fill your brain with a bunch of stuff that makes you think things that are not healthy. Like that stuff's actually happening. That's actually happening. So hopefully. Well, I'll tell you one thing, these books that you've written.

In my estimation, any.

15 to 23 year old male that reads these books will be encouraged to move in the right direction because they lay out what it means. And like I said, they're an incredible, this incredible arc between the two books. And they're incredibly powerful. And these are Stories that need to be told. These are stories that need to be told so people understand what it takes and what it means and what a brotherhood is inside of a military organization and what sacrifice really is. And we can never forget these things. And you would think the way the civilian populace sometimes behaves, you'd think that these wars didn't happen.

They happened a couple years ago. You know, they happened a couple years ago.

And you know what? They're going to happen again. They're going to happen again. And there's always going to be war. There's always going to be conflict.

What conversation do you have if that does go down in five years? You're talking to an 18 year old.

And they're like, did you foresee this coming?

You go to universities. I know some people don't touch the Vassar giving the talks on the circuit. But one of the things that young people in college will always ask a veteran is what can we do to prepare for the future? And sometimes the answer of you need to be prepared to kill 20 communist Chinese is, you know, 20 million people want you dead. There's a way that we can say to the Chinese government, the people of China are not the enemy. The people of Russia are not the enemy. The people of Iraq or Afghanistan are not the enemy. But no Venezuelan leader or Mullah and Iran or forever leader of China is going to dictate how the world behaves. So I don't think I would have told you at the end that I hung up my uniform that the world was better and safer. And I'm disgusted that as we grow into our twilight, our kids are going to have to learn to shoot, move and communicate. And that's heartbreaking. And I don't know what. How do you have that conversation?

There's only one thing that's more heartbreaking than that, and that is if they don't learn to shoot, move and communicate. Because if they don't learn to shoot, move and communicate, we'll be overrun. I mean, at some point, you have to be able to back up the way you want to live. You don't just get to walk around the world doing whatever you want without being able to defend that way of life. And if we don't maintain that ability to defend the way of life that we often take for granted here. It'll go away. Yeah, it'll go away.

All right. Books coming out November 8th. Everyone buy it immediately. Remember the Ramrods. Where can people find you right now? What are you doing right now?

So we are odyssey.com, the David Bellavia show, five days a week, four hours a day, tons of content that is not really meant to upset anyone. Pretty PG13 stuff. But I gotta tell you, I find that what I'm trying to do with my radio show is to have discourse. I don't see the world the way a left wing progressive sees the world. I respect them, I want them, I need them in my culture, in my society. I don't want to cancel them. I want to learn. But I need you to understand that if we disagree, we need to discuss how to disagree. And there's a way that you can have a discussion with someone that you disagree with and leave it with respect. And we have no ability to have discourse in the country today. And so what I try to do in my little piece of the world world is just facilitate quality critical thinking and discourse. This isn't how you. I disagree with X, Y and Z. Inflation, energy, oil. This is what I feel about abortion, marriage. Wonderful. I don't care what you think. It's boring to me what you think. How do you think? Why do you think that? That's far more interesting because it always is going to come to a selfish exercise. I feel this way because I robbed a bank and I would like to be reformed. No bail, right? It's always like, there's always a story that makes you have. Why are you against, you know, Pan Asian trade? Well, I'll tell you. I have a tire company and my intellectual property was. There's always a reason for it. So what you think? No one cares about why you think it and how you think to me is the. Is the secret sauce. And so what I try to do in a talk show is get 80 year old people and 20 year old people from all different walks of life to tell me, you know, you're transgender. Tell me, what do you. What would, what, what motivates you to call into a talk show? What do you want people to understand? Because I don't get it and I don't mean disrespect. I don't understand it. Help me understand it. No, I'm not here to help you understand it. I'm here to tell you you're wrong. Okay, well, I do have a problem with that. Because if I'm asking you to help me understand something and you refuse to, that's where everyone shuts down and we label each other and we're. You're this or you're that. I'm just saying I want to know, where are you coming from? And why is it important that I give a shit about what you, where you're coming from? Because I bet you you don't. You don't care, right? I could bore you for four hours with the Buffalo Bill secondary. And why the Tampa 2? You're going to be like, no one cares, dude. No one gives a damn. I do. Why do you care so much about it? Why are you so into a football team? Is there anything else going on in your town? Maybe there isn't. Got chicken wings. They're cool. You know, beef on wick is fun. Logan. Barry, why do you feel this way? Why is it important that I understand where you're coming from? And if I can't get your respect, expect enough to see me as a person, then you're not even. All you're doing is.

Annoying people. No, really. And we have to stop annoying each other and just say, look, where are you coming from? Why? Because I'm a veteran does not make me better than a person that isn't a veteran. And for a long time I thought that way in my heart of hearts, I'm better than you. Right? That's not true. I've learned in my elder years that that's ridiculous. Your patriotism has nothing to do with what you did in the military or out of the military. Right. I just would like you to love the home team. I think that's, you know, just love our team and be supportive of it. And at the end of the day, if you can respect people and disagree with them, man, I think we could solve all of our problems. Right? It's fun. It's a little frustrating, but it's fun.

How long is the show?

It's four hours a day, five days a week. And it's. I get a lot of Canadians, you know, the Canadians, we're close. Buffalo is close to Toronto. The Canadians know more about the constitution than we do. And the Canadians have nothing but like state run information. They don't have choices. So they'll be like, listen, let me tell you about the second amendment, why it's important. You know, the Articles of Confederation doesn't allow us for a standing army. I'm like, where are you from? Brampton.

You're not supposed to know any of that. Your prime minister needs a haircut.

It's always an education and it's super fun. And I think it's a great service to just say, hey.

We have to be better. We can be better. Optimism is great. It doesn't make you naive. Be hopeful, look forward to the future. But it's all about the way we conduct ourselves and our discourse and how absolutely toxic it can be by just saying, nope, you're one of them. I don't want to hear it. And nothing gets done after that.

To find you davidbellavia.com davebelavi.com and go.

To odyssey.com and david odyssey.com odyssey@au, D A C, Y. It used to be Intercom. They changed the name to Odyssey.

What about your social media? Do you actually have it?

I don't really do. I mean, I just. For the book, we started a DG Bellavia at DG Bellavia, Twitter and Facebook one. But what happens is you get all these, like, Nigerians and people that create. You know, I'm on, like, dating sites. Like, I need money to get out of Iraq. You know, could you help me? I just need a thousand bucks. I'm trapped in, you know, in Nepal. It's like, no, that's not me. That's not. But there's a lot of those out there. But.

So you're not. So are you on Instagram, too, or. No, I'm on everything but DG Bellavia.

David Bellavia, Instagram, David Bellavia on Facebook, all that stuff. But DG Bellavia, because there's so many accounts on Twitter. But that's Twitter. But for the most part, I don't really do. The social media thing is just main. Do you. Are you nuts over there?

I'm not nuts on it, but I'm on it. And how long?

How long? I see with the time.

Right, right.

With the, you know, working out and stuff.

Yeah.

Do you get a good response from that or do people get.

I don't know. I mean, some people chime in. Yeah, people. People chime in.

Do you read any comments?

Oh, you know, I'll look through the comments sometimes. But, you know, I don't get. I don't get all hyped up about what anybody says. I mean, if somebody says something cool, I'm stoked. But if there's someone that wants to, you know, say something negative, it literally doesn't bother me at all. I just kind of like, oh, cool. You know, it's a bottom. You know what a bot is? Right. So it's just a bot. But there's people that get really spun up about that stuff. I just look at them and say, it's a bot. Where are you getting spun up about a computer program in Russia or something that's putting that information into you? But no, I've found social media to be Mostly good. I've connected with some incredible people. I mean, I've had people come on the podcast that were Vietnam, World War II, that I connected with them through social media. So that's been awesome. I get great feedback from people.

What we. Some of the stuff I make, I'll get feedback. Hey, you should make this. You should make that. I'm like, oh, that sounds like a good idea. I really didn't think of that. I think if you go into social media with, like, a positive mindset as cheesy as that sound of like, okay, there's gonna be some good stuff in here, you're gonna find it. If you go in there worried about a bunch of negativity, which there's definitely gonna be, it'll drive you crazy. So I don't get wrapped around any of it.

What did it take for you to get to that. That enlightenment? Was it a man?

I was on Joe Rogan's podcast, and Joe Rogan's like, hey, dude. You know, like, at some point he goes, hey, this is the first time I was on. This was 2015. And he's like, dude, you know, when this comes out, don't read the comments. He's like, a warning, right?

And I think, you know, in the military, you get thick skin, right? And so I would say I definitely had thick skin. So they came out and I sat. I remember I sat in my daughter. My daughter's room, my oldest daughter, and we were reading the comments, and I was laughing hysterically because some of them are pretty freaking funny about, you know, I'm a Neanderthal, and obviously I could barely string a sentence together and all these things, and I was just laughing, and it seemed funny. And so I think from day one, a. From Rogan's comment, like, hey, don't read the comments. I didn't take that literally. What I took it was, is, hey, look, there's gonna be people that are assholes. And when you read shit from people that are assholes, just say, yeah, roger that. And some of them, like I said, some of them are pretty funny. So it didn't take me long at all. Didn't take me long. But, you know, it's a thick skin. You're in the military, any weakness that you show is immediately getting pounced upon by your platoon mates, and you're gonna get torn apart. So if you.

It's literally the worst defense in the world is to say, ouch, they really hurt. Please don't ever mention my goiter. It's gonna come up 85 times I've.

Got something in the world that really bothers me, and I've never told anybody what it is, ever, and I never will. I'll probably leave it in my last will and testament and say, hey, y' all, in my platoon that did this at some time, or if you wanted to really piss me off, if you would have done this, it really would have bothered me, but I'd never let you bastards know.

So I don't tell anybody, you know? So I started telling young people that you should be the same way about your dreams. I think everyone should have a fake dream that they give. No, don't ask.

How do you utilize this?

Don't ever share what you really want to do in life. It's no one's. You have to protect that. That's what you want. What do you want to be in 10 years? Why the hell am I telling you?

There's.

I don't want to.

One school of thought of that is like, when I say, hey, man, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. And I posted on the Internet, hey, everybody, I'm gonna lose 30 pounds. And then you're like, oh, I better lose it, or else I'm gonna look like a shitbird. Or, hey, I'm gonna run a marathon, and I'm gonna run it on this date. And so there's. I forget there's a name for that. You know what the name for that is?

Something along the lines of public accountability.

Public accountability. So that's the thing where you say, hey, my dream is to, you know, create my own or write a book, right? And so you tell everybody, and now you kind of get pressured. So what's your reasoning behind not telling people?

I don't. I think you should protect. You have people in your life. Trust is everything, right? So you have people in your life that you trust. These are your life partners and everything else. That's what that relationship is all about, right? Together we're going to raise a family. We're thinking about buying a sheep farm outside of San Diego that raised them together in harmony, all right?

That.

The moment you go out and start telling people, this is my ambition. Why would I want to expose what I want or what I meant? I'm not manifesting. I don't need accountability from people If I'm losing 30 pounds. Again, this is. I think we. We as a generation, we're the same. Roughly, I think the social media of. We are the ones that screwed up. Social media. Media. It's not the young kids, it's the gen Xers that, you know, in the old days I would drive by your house and be like, you're a loser, right out the window. And now I stop at the driveway and I'm like, let's wait for a comment. It's not enough to scream you're a loser. Now I gotta wait in my car to be like, who's gonna come out and debate me on whether or not I think you're a loser? And we put things on social media that are just like, we're thirsty for some sort of response that I'm proud that you're losing £30. Good for you. You need to. You know what? That's healthy. Who gives a damn? Either you're doing it because you want to do it or you're doing it because you want people to think you're doing it. At the end of the day, if you have a dream to be a 50 year old law school graduate, shut up.

They should find out about your R and B album the day you drop it. Now I'm in the studio. Do you know what I mean? Because all you can do is you're going to hear for three months, what the hell are you thinking? Choco's got a cookbook. That's awesome. Let's see the day it comes out. Why am I telling everyone? Busy in the kitchen today. So working on the new recipe.

So there's where I think now I see, I'm capturing or I see a similar vein with people where they get satisfaction just by saying, you know, hey, I'm, I've always wanted to write a cookbook. I'm gonna come up with a cookbook. And they get a boost from that. They get a, what is it? Endorphin? A dopamine hit. They get a dopamine hit by telling you, hey man, I'm writing a cookbook right now and that's enough to make me feel good. That I don't actually do anything. Right. As opposed to me not getting that. Instead of going and freaking hammering on my computer with my steak recipes, would.

You, would you rather have four 27 inch biceps or would you rather have vegetable oil in your arms? No, honestly, you could look way you would look. And if you were that Iranian. Oh, yeah, yeah. That guy who. Those are the guys you invite him to move and he can't lift the couch, he can't do anything. He has.

So that's the equivalent for you of telling you what my dreams are.

Don't. I don't.

I'm just injecting. What is it? What do they inject in their biceps? Echo Charles, biceps expert.

What was the last. Did you have this in the seals? If you had a new girlfriend or a wife, would you ever show anyone a picture of someone that you were romantically connected?

How long was I romantically connected to said woman?

The only time they should ever see your partner is in person. Because that is the dumbest thing.

That is a little weird.

Why would you do that? I want to show you who I'm dating. And then you wait for, like, what is the response supposed to be? Like, oh, my. Is she okay? Where is she from? Chernobyl? You don't do that.

Ask you.

Hey, that's just weird, too, bro. Don't be asking me to see a picture of my girl if that.

If that's your friend and you're like, oh, I heard you're dating somebody new. Like, yeah. What? Tell me.

I don't know.

I feel like that's normal.

I had a. I knew a guy who had a picture of his family and all, you know, his daughter and his wife, they're in bikinis. And I just said, hey, listen, man, you got. No, you got to take this picture down because it's not only inappropriate, there's no way this is safe. This is not safe for anyone. They make a comment. They're weird. They don't make a comment. They're probably normal. Right? But why would you even do that? Don't ever. In the military, rule number one is you never show a picture of anyone you are involved with because there's no point to it.

It's weird now that you're putting it.

Together, it's a horrible thing to do.

That was one thing when I was reading your book, and you. Or no, when you were talking today, and it's also in your book. Like, one time, my wife asked me, I was on deployment in Ramadi, and my wife says, oh, the kids want to see a picture of where you sleep, you know, And I had, like. We had some old Saddam building, and we had, you know, built our little plywood freaking beds in there and stuff like this. And so I'm like, cool. And I would email my wife, like, once a week, you know, a little update, you know, hey, chow's great. Miss you. Blah, blah, blah. How the kids. And so I went to take a picture of where I slept at night, and I realized there's, like, no picture. So I went into, like, my. Went to my freaking locker, pulled out pictures of my wife and kids, pinned them up, took a picture, took them all down, put them back in the folder, put it in the drawer and shut it. Because that's smart. Just like you were talking about, like, the last thing I needed to be thinking about over there was my wife.

Absolutely.

And, and that seems like a maybe that seems like it's not healthy, but I think it's completely healthy. You got guys depending on your decision.

Making without a doubt. It doesn't mean that you don't love. It's like whenever I see a Facebook profile, it's like Joe and Kim Jones. It's like, oh, no, you know, like.

Something happened. You know what I mean? Like they're. You don't want to be a two headed monster. You gotta have autonomy, but you also have to have trust.

Yeah. I had the luxury of my wife being very, I've described, emotionally dependent. So she didn't need me to be, like, telling her, you know, hey, I hope everything's great. She was like, hey, I got this. I got the home, I got the freaking water heater when it breaks, I got the whatever, the toilet, when it gets stopped up. You handle your, you know what, your business overseas, and I'll take care of this stuff. And that was pretty very lucky, very lucky to be in that scenario.

But to me, and it's the ultimate in just, you know, being, making those choices and putting those barriers up. Because there's, in today's, you know, private sector and jobs today, there's absolutely no. I mean, you know, you bring your lunch to work, you don't make lunch at work, you don't get in the kitchen and start constructing a meal. Like, what the hell's wrong with you? It's like, I have one. The pet peeve that drives me nuts is the wet hair.

What's the wet hair?

Anyone that shows up with wet hair. Is it raining out? No. You have no time management. Just be lame, be laid, late and presentable.

This is coming from a guy that bought a blow jar.

You know what? I learned lessons in life, but there's no reason why someone should be running into work, brushing their teeth, you know, doing. It's just, I'm gonna be late and then I'm gonna show up and I'm presentable. I'm ready to go. This isn't a meeting with, you know, tribal elders. The first 45 minutes, we're just gonna waste time talking about the weather. Show up, be ready, and everything's cool. You always got that guy that's going from like cubicle to cubicle asking, hey, how you doing? What's going on? We have no line of, like, what's personal? What are you. What are you doing this weekend? None of your damn business. Bob, get my expense sheets done. You know what I mean? Like, we're buddies. You want to be friends. I don't want to be friends. I want to just get the job done. You know what I mean?

With dry hair while we're at it. Yeah, Echo, Charles, you got any questions?

I do not.

Sometimes Echo throws that curveball in the end, man, so you gotta watch dopamine.

Dopamine.

It's.

The thing's real.

It's real.

David, any. Any closing thoughts?

No. I want to say, honestly, what you do is. It's important to our generation, and a lot of people look up to you, and it's rare that you meet someone that's worthy of that. There's a lot of people that get. That have the pedestals, the products. This is what I want the world to see. This is the person I want to be and the perception. And you're legitimate. You're who you are. You're who you. There's no difference with a microphone. Is this on, by the way? Good question. No. When the mic. Me too. When the mic's odd, it's the same. And that's. It's refreshing. I really was afraid that I was gonna meet you and I was gonna be like, oh, man, I wonder what.

That guy would be like. Who's that guy? What's that guy?

Like, if you've never done that, where you met someone and you really, really thought they were just totally squared away, this is someone I could look up to as a mentor, and then you're just like, no, I. I have done.

It, but I'm just wondering what asshole Jocko would be like, like, who's that guy?

Oh, you could totally.

Am I Like.

What would I be doing cold?

I don't know.

What would I be doing?

Covid. Jocko, is that your ulterior.

Well, I had covert a couple times. It was no factor. No factor.

I remember when that. When you cut a video that you had coveted, there was, like. There was controversy. It's like, oh, what. What did he do?

Oh, I tell you.

You told people you had covet people. Like, oh, he must be.

Yo. I was doing events I like during COVID There was times where I went to, like, the first live event that I did with COVID when Covid was a thing, and I went to this thing, it was in Arizona, and I forget what month it was, but I went and I was thinking, like, oh, how freaked out is everybody gonna be? And I wasn't freaked out of COVID because I was, like, young and healthy. And anyways, I went to this event and. And then they said, hey, some. Can people shake your hand when you're done? I'm like, yeah, cool. And so I stepped down off a stage and they all line up 500 people out of a thousand or whatever. And the funny thing was, was there.

Was sneeze on Choco.

There was a few people. There's probably 10 people that had masks on as they approached me, right? So they come. They come up to take the picture. They shake my head. They take their mask off to take the picture. When they get close to me, I'm like, I just, you know. So, yeah, I got Covid. Maybe that's the evil Jocko.

Well, you would figure if you're going to be a person, it's usually when you're sick or you're not in sound mind.

But those were. The viral Jocko videos are not what you expect them to be. They're not. Like, it's not controversy. It's just something that happened to you that people make viral. Because I can't believe it's happened. Like, as if you had Covid, it was a declaration, like, you wanted to talk about your vaccine status. There was a time when that question was asked. Some people didn't want to talk about it. Some people did. Some people said, it's none of your business. But the assumption that you had Covid, it meant something about vaccinating status. We now know. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. The Yankees, Aaron Judge, he got Covid. Everyone's like, I can't believe you didn't get vaccinated. I still do that, by the way, when I hear that someone gets Covid, I'm like, why wouldn't you want to get vaccinated? That's so weird. Like, you should know better. You're the vice President, United States. You should get vaccines. It's safe and effective. Like, do it. Everyone's doing it.

I'm telling you. It kills me. I love that. I remember that moment specifically when everyone was asking, like, what was he doing?

Yeah. Well, as you know from doing radio four hours a day, you can't pretend to be someone for four hours a day. And just like on this podcast, you can't come on here. I can't come on here and talk for hours and hours and, like, be in some character mode where I'm pretending to be someone that I'm not. I think it would be harder for me.

But there's a lot of MMA guys, a lot of guys that just are not. I mean, look, I love the sport, and I think those guys are. Tim Kennedy is one of the coolest guys. Totally. I mean, I love that dude. He's funny. He's just a maniac. But there are a lot of people that just aren't tough people.

The facade is they're tough, but they're not tough. You know what I mean? And I just think that that's. It's cool that there's no, you know, you don't have to put that out there. It's this. It's genuine, and it's real, and you don't have to. To. You don't have. This is not a podcast. It's an interview show. The podcast format is like, this is how Jocko sees the world. You know, Let me tell you what I like. I like fudge. I like fudge. I like cookies, and I like pumpkin pie. And you do a podcast about just you. You're sharing this platform, a lot of people, giving opportunities, sharing, putting the light that's on you, on other people, helping people, sharing ideas, being consistent. It's important, it's appreciated. I don't know if you get enough, but I really do appreciate this, and I appreciate you. You letting me be a part of it and everything you continue to do. Because it means a lot. Seeing people that you emulate turn out to be honorable and decent is awesome. So thank you. You, I don't know about. Nobody does.

That's how he likes.

That dopamine thing scared me. He had that way too quick.

It's real.

He's like, it's called dopamine.

Dopamine, yes, sir. Right. Well, man.

It'S. You know, I've said this a couple times, and on this podcast, I mean, if you could sit down and talk with John Basilone for three, four, five hours, like, what I wouldn't give to be able to do that.

So he's from Buffalo.

Yeah, I love that. So to be able to sit here and talk to you for, you know, however many hours we've been going, it's just an honor. And I know that so many people are going to learn so much from this. So thanks for coming on. Thanks for the lessons learned. Thanks for your service, obviously, thanks for your leadership, and thanks for the example that you set for, for everyone in the army and. And everyone in the military, and really for the citizens of our country of how to be. How to be honorable.

That means that means a lot. I really appreciate that. My last question for you, and I'm gonna let you go. If you could do it over again.

What elite branch do you think? How would you rank them?

All the branches in each one of the elite branches, they all have great guys.

Who's the one group, though, that you worked with that said, and you thought, these guys are like that, we're equals?

Well, I worked with Special Forces guys that are better than me. I worked with Marines that were better than me. I work with. Who am I missing? I work with Army Rangers that were better. I worked with. I've worked with guys from the 101st that were better than me, guys from the 137 that were better than me. There's, there's studs in all these groups. I've also worked with every one of those groups that, with guys that were not as good with guys that you didn't want to go on a mission with you. So to me, there's great, incredible guys in, in, in all units. And, and then there's also, in all units, there's people that are, are crap.

But just as, as institutionally Delta, you got the, you know, marsoc, you got the Air Force specialized. Right. Individuals, there's going to be good and bad. But the one group that you looked at and said, wow, if I wasn't a seal, I'd want to be that.

That's. If I wasn't a seal.

If you weren't a seal, can't be a seal.

I mean, there's a.

You didn't get the vaccination that kicked you out.

Yeah, actually, they let them all stay in. Thank God.

If I wouldn't, if I wouldn't have joined the Navy, I most likely would have joined the Marine Corps just because, like every. Well, like most of the young men I grew up with, when you looked at the Marine Corps, you thought, hey, it's the Marines. Yeah, because they do such a good job with their culture and with their image, and, and the Marine Corps is an outstanding group. And so I probably would have ended up in the Marine Corps. And if I wouldn't end up in the Marine Corps, I would have been in the army because the same thing. Let's see, I'm dodging now I'm feeling like I'm dodging. Your question. Who I would.

What if your daughter said she wanted to go? What would you suggest?

If my daughter said she wanted to go into Special Operations?

No, no, she wanted to just join the military. What branch would you think you want.

Your Daughter in the Air Force, you.

Know, without making that a punchline. Why is that?

Well, my. I'm just. My oldest daughter came to mind. She's very analytical. She's really smart. I think that she could bring a lot to the table in that kind of environment. Probably being an intel officer, she's really good at assimilating information, and she'd probably be really good at that job. So there you go.

Yeah. No, because I could always.

I would be horrible at that job.

Analytical.

No, just being. Being an intel officer in the Air Force, I don't think it would be a good fit for me.

Do you think. Have you ever been. Could you be a pilot? Are you too big to be a pilot? Because they're kind of like jockeys a little bit.

Yeah, they're a little bit like jockeys. One of my really good friends is a. Is a top gun pilot, Marine Corps. And I had no desire whatsoever to be a pilot. None. Zero. I had no desire. And, you know, even, like, riding in a Bradley. I never liked riding in a Bradley. I always felt like I wasn't in control. Like it was this machine and I couldn't really. Now, look, I wasn't driving the Bradley. I was always sitting in the back like you were freaking sweating my nuts off and wondering where the hell I was.

Right, Right. No situation. I'd rather be in a Higgins boat.

Yeah.

That you could see where you are.

Yeah. That was so. So. But being a pilot, for me, I never had any desire. I'd watch a movie and I didn't care. I wanted to see what the grunts were doing.

Yeah.

I always wanted to be on the ground. And more specifically, I wanted to be some kind of a commando of some kind. I wanted to, like, put cami paint on and sneak over beaches and kill people. That's what I wanted to do. That's the only. That's the first job I remember wanting. Like when I realized I'm going to grow up and I had to do something, I wanted to do that. Something where I put a cami cork on my face, you know, because we used to burn the cork and then put the black on our faces when we were little kids, I wanted to do that over the water, into enemy territory and kill bad guys. That's the only thing I remember wanting to do. So that's why if I want to join the SEAL teams, it would have been the Marine Corps, because the Marine Corps was in the water. And I knew that much even as a young kid. But pilot was never was. Never was Never into it, never even thought about it for a minute.

So I always wondered that because when I think about like the, Even when I watch Avatar, I'm rooting for the Marines in that I know they're the bad guys, but that I don't like. The blue people are the ones that like. I like the. I always watch the movies for the guys that I can identify. Not that, you know, they're evil, they hurting the, you know, the wonderful blue people. But I'm just saying, I get it. I understand that in the Navy, the guy. Every time you watch a Navy SEAL movie, there's a guy comes out of the water and like gets ready to hold the body.

Oh, yeah.

Is that a real thing?

No, no, that's the, the move. That movie is called act of Valor. And yeah, that's not real.

No, that's not real. They, that's like a, that movie's like hour and 30 minute music video of real bullets. They, you know, it's a big recruiting thing. It was a big recruiting thing. And they got some guys to play the roles in the movie. They, they hired these guys, they hired this production company to make a recruiting video. And the guys said, hey, we can make a recruiting video, a 30 second or one minute recruiting video, or we can make a 90 minute feature film. What do you want? And they then the Naval special warfare at the time said, well, we need people, let's do it. And so it was a big recruiting tool. And, you know, and the Navy benefits from that because. Because no one, basically no one makes it through SEAL training. It's a very small number of people that make it through SEAL training. So the Navy gets all these dudes and it, that's one thing that's, that's horrible about trying to go in the SEAL teams is that if you don't make it through the SEAL team, if you don't make it through basic SEAL training, you're in the Navy. And if you're the type of personality that wants to be a machine gunner, you're gonna end up on a ship in a engine room turning wrenches or changing oil or whatever. And look, that's a legit, like, that's a legit job for some people. Some people love or turning wrenches. Some people love being at sea on a ship. Some people love that kind of job. That's what they should do. And they join the Navy to go do that, which is perfect. But if you join because you want to be a SEAL and you don't make it, you're gonna End up in that job that you really don't want at all. See what's nice about up MARSOC or Special Forces in the army. If you don't make it through Special Forces selection. Cool. You're an infantry line unit.

Yeah.

You're. You're still in an awesome spot. You can go back later. You'll learn more. Same thing with the Marine Corps. The SEAL teams is rough in that aspect, man. You don't make it through SEAL training, you're done. You're doing a job that you most likely don't want to do.

That's fascinating. That's trigger point.

So be careful of that, man.

Be careful.

Careful that young people out there. That's why go in the Army. Go in the army, become an infantryman.

You can pick your own mos. Yeah, there you go. Any. And you could be extra special 11x ray.

Awesome, man. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

With that, David Bellavia has left the building.

Crazy town. Crazy town.

Yeah, it's.

Honestly, if you're listening to this right now, get these books and read them. They're really powerful and there's so much. There's, like I said during the podcast, there's entire storylines that are in these books that I don't. Didn't even come close to mentioning today. Yeah, we even get. We didn't even get close to that part of the story, which is a. This story runs the whole thread. This other story's in there the whole time. There's so much going on. He does such a great job capturing it. The house to house book.

You can tell when you read it that he's a couple years off the battlefield, but his mind is not off the battlefield yet. His mind is in the game. When you're reading that thing, it is very intense. It is very raw.

And. And then you get to read. Remember the Ramrods, which is what, almost two decades later? Well, I guess 15 years later. Fifteen years, a long time.

Yeah.

In a man's life. Fifteen years, a long time. And you learn a lot and you see a lot and you go through a lot more and you get perspective on stuff.

So it's a really incredible read, both these books. So check these books out. They're awesome.

There was a couple of things that he mentioned I was like, I really put into perspective in a crazy way where he. Where he described a sniper that they found and he was attached to like, iv just to stay there the whole time. And what did he mean? He said there was a hole in a table.

Yep. So he just laying ways, laying so.

He didn't have to go to the bathroom or nothing. Just right there through the hole in the table.

Yep.

Just staying there for just days and days and days to be a sniper.

Yeah.

That is committed.

That is committed for some committed insurgents that are ready to die for their cause.

Did you notice he said something super small? It's kind of a side note, but like, he. He goes. When he was anticipating maybe the Medal of Honor scenario, and someone's like, oh, there's also a tape out there. There. And then he was like, oh, there's a tape. Let's show me the tape. And then he said, what's in the box? Yeah, he said, show me what's in the box. And then he kept kind of talking to her. Do you know what that's from? What's in the box?

I do know what it's from. It's from the movie Seven. Right. Which is interesting because again, because he's now older, first of all, he knows he's forgotten things. Second of all, you learn eventually that your perception of what's going on in combat isn't the same as what's really going on in combat. So he. Now, now at this age, he knows that, like, oh, there's a video. I wonder what I'm. You know, he knows. He knows what he thinks he did. He knows what he thinks he said. He also at that age knows that what he thinks he said and what he thinks he did may or may not be on there. It may or may not be perceived the same way by everybody else. So that's why he's like, what's in the box?

That was. To me, that was a pretty much perfect movie analogy. I was very impressed. Yeah. What's in the box? He wants to know, but he don't want to know. What I'm saying is that kind of deal.

I liked it. Yeah.

So much respect for that as well.

Yeah. And if you get that, you can watch it on parts of it on YouTube. I didn't know that there's. He mentioned a 29 minute version. So that would be the entire. The entire event. Probably from the time they get to the house. They go in the house, they get everyone out of the house, they wait for the Bradley's brother. Like, that whole thing is probably 29 minutes. There's one clip that I've watched which is maybe like five minutes long. And it's basically from the time they're getting to the house the last time when he's gonna go in and kill Everybody that's on video on YouTube that you can go and watch and look, it's not like a movie because most of it's just black. Like flashes, noises, explosions. You don't really know what's happening. You now, once you've read the book and now you hear the podcast, you can be like, okay, that must be what's. Oh, okay, that's what.

And.

But then you see, you know, at the end of it, here they are dragging these bodies out of this house that this guy went in there and killed. And, yeah, it's. It's definitely wild in that movie. By. By where the. The movie.

The.

Only the Dead.

It's definitely a fascinating movie to watch. And. And you get. You have to understand his perspective a little bit. It takes a little getting used to, because for me, you're watching it like, oh, wait, this guy's with Mujahideen forces that are attacking Americans. Like, I hate this guy. What are you doing? You're embedded with. Like, I hate you. Like, why don't you stop them? And so. But then you realize, hey, he's trying to figure out what's going on. And so you end up understanding what he's doing, even though at the time. And there's some. I actually. I need to watch it again, because there's some. That dichotomy is brought out in a way that is. Makes it easier to understand, because, let's face it, if you're freaking sitting there while Mujahideen forces are getting ready to kill Americans and you're not doing something to stop him, I got a problem with you. You know, And I think some of it is, like, he's with them, and he's like, holy shit, they're doing an attack. And he kind of just. He knows if he says anything, they'll just kill him.

Yeah.

And, yeah, it's. It's a really. But then. And then at a certain point in the movie, he basically stops embedding with the moose because he realizes that they're evil, and he starts embedding with the Americans. But he has got a lot. He passes a lot, and he passes a lot of intel to the Americans and especially to, like, David Bellavia and his platoon. He's given them exact intel about who they're fighting. And it. It's really clear in the book how helpful he was from that perspective. But who knows? Maybe at some point we can have Michael Ware. He's. He's got all kinds of crazy stories from his. All the insane things he's done and it's weird, you know, like, I guess the, the.

The, the highest degree of, of explaining all that would be a documentary. Right. But at the same time, a documentary is only going to be an hour long and, you know, you got limitations and what you can put in there and how long you want it. Whereas if he's come and explain some of that stuff on the podcast and maybe a little bit of a longer format, you could get down to some, some good information that may not be conveyed properly in the.

In the, in the hour and a half long documentary.

Yeah.

Hey, how hard?

Like, wait, have you ever done jujitsu, like, with full gear on, like the full gig? How is it a lot different? Like, it feels like especially just, even how he sort of mentioned it seems like, dang, that might be a lot harder, actually.

No, no, it's. It's not. It's not a lot harder. Yeah, it's not a lot different. It's a little harder. It's a little different. It's not a lot of either.

I feel like. Then again, then this is more of a question, like the bottom game would. Feels like it'd be a lot more different than the, the top game wouldn't be that much.

No, but they're both about the same different.

Oh, for real?

Yep, Yep.

That was a excuse that got used by people when it came to training martial arts and jiu jitsu in the SEAL teams. It was like, well, you know, jiu jitsu, you just wear a gi. You don't wear all this gear or jiu jitsu, you just wear a rash guard. So it's unrealistic and you're not going to be able to fight when you have gear on. And which is. They would say the same thing about. I would make comparison to parachuting because when you parachute with military equipment, it's this big parachute and you've got. You could potentially have a weapon with you, potentially have a rucksack with you, and you're gonna protect. Potentially have your web gear with you and you have all these things on. So it's a lot different than me running down to San Ysidro or wherever and doing a civilian jump where I'm just like, literally wearing a pair of short sneakers and I jump out a little back, little. Little parachute on my back and jump out, throw out. You know, it's just real easy and slick and cool.

Yeah.

But here's the thing. If you're really good at those slick, cool civilian jumps and you put a military rig on, you're gonna be really good. Same thing with shooting. Sometimes guys would be like, well, you don't want to learn the bad habits of target shooting or of three gun shooting, which is a certain competition type of shooting. You don't get the bad habits from that. But if you take a guy that is a three gun shooter, competitive, and now he's in combat, he's gonna be infinitely better. Now, look, are there certain little things you got to watch out for? Yes, there are certain little things that you got to watch out for. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard the story, but there's a shootout in Florida, I think it was in Florida. And the cop, when they, the cop got killed. And when they did, like the investigation, he had the shells from his revolver in his pocket, which meant that as he was reloading, instead of just dumping the shells from his revolver, he was catching them, putting them back in his pocket, which is a habit that he got from being on the police range. And you don't want to have to bend down and pick up your brass, so you just put them into your hand, you put them in your pocket. So he had lost whatever, three quarters of a second or a second and a half on every reload because he had this habit. So you do have to pay attention to what bad habits you may or may not get from doing these civilian activities that are complementary to your military career. So, for instance, there are positions in Jiu Jitsu where it may not be the best thing to do because, oh, you got a sidearm, right? Or like, let's say you're a police officer. There's certain positions you want to use because it doesn't expose your weapon. It doesn't expose your weapon to being grabbed. So you want to do certain things that are a little bit different. Now, would I rather be a cop that's a purple belt in Jiu Jitsu that might have one bad habit, or some cop that has no experience in Jiu Jitsu and just gonna get the shit beat out of you.

You're gonna get the shit beat out of you. That's what's gonna happen. Yeah. So. So, so Jiu Jitsu with gear on is slightly different, slightly harder, but very, very similar. And it's. And it's similar enough that it's going to make all the difference in the world. Yeah, one of these scenarios.

And yes. And keep in mind, even if it was like a lot bulkier and a lot harder, it's still better than no Jiu Jitsu. And which I've always thought or whatever. But I was wondering at the time, you know, you obviously, you know, he tells the story all good.

So.

So I'm like thinking about it, like how that looked and how that felt or whatever. And like I kind of imagine like trying to choke someone and you know, like, you ever, like, maybe if you have the GI on and they're fighting your choke or whatever, and maybe they're not even fighting that good, but it's easier to fight a choke with the GI on versus with no gi.

Right.

Because you can just grab any part of that thing or whatever. So with the bulky gear on, chest plate, helmet, like all this stuff, it's like kind of hard. I would think it'd be harder. So I'm like, shoot, I wonder how freaking hard. Even if the dude is untrained, I wonder how much harder that would be.

It'd be the same as training versus untrained. Like a Jiu Jitsu fighter. Someone that doesn't know Jiu Jitsu is lost. Yeah.

And I feel like sometimes, well, a lot of times anyway, people don't do Jiu Jitsu or maybe they'll do another martial art, or maybe they'll advocate for another martial art. They'll do the straw man thing where they'll be like, yeah, you're gonna pull guard in the street or whatever. Like, I think it's pretty common knowledge that someone who knows Jiu jitsu and they get in a fight with a guy in the street or in a kill house or whatever, they're not going to pull guard on the guy. They're going to. It's like, hey, let me. Basically what they do is they look for the most inappropriate move of Jiu Jitsu and they say what, you're going to do that move on the most inappropriate time or whatever. When the, the reality is no, Jiu Jitsu is like a bunch of moves, actually infinite moves. And you know a certain amount of those in infinite moves. And you're gonna do literally every single time that you possibly can the most appropriate move for the appropriate time. And pulling guard is one of the many moves that's more. Yes. Geared towards a training scenario, like with another Jiu Jitsu guy or with, you know, a tournament scenario, whatever. Yeah, but that's not like a. Yeah, that's not a self defense or a real fighting.

No. Unless, you know, like for, for Bellavia, this dude comes out of the closet, if he would have just like, like hit him and knocked him to the ground. And all of a sudden David Bellavia is on the bottom.

Oh, yeah. And that's not pulling guard. That's very.

That's very different. But you are on the bottom, and you are gonna need to get out from the bottom or at least control the guy from killing you. You better know guard, so you better know guard at that point. So. And you know, that's exactly what. What he said, too, you know. And look, you got. You got all your friends, you got a machine gun, all your friends got machine guns. You got a pistol, all your friends got pistols. You got a knife, all your friends got knives. You'd think there's a pretty slim chance you're going to have to actually.

Kill someone with your hands or with your helmet or with your knife. It's pretty small chance, but there you go. There you go. So keep training, everybody.

Keep training.

Awesome honor to have him on with that. Speaking of training, when you train, you're gonna need to fuel your system.

It's true.

It's true.

Jocko fuel. So, again, I know it's common knowledge, whatever, but this is one of those deals where, you know, you can get plenty supplements from plenty places, you know, but you want to get the for real, clean one. The one with only upside, no downside. Yeah, that's what I had to add was true.

So the drinks, the energy drinks, which have no sugar in them, the energy drinks which have no chemical preservatives in them, this is what everyone else is feeding you. The stuff that has sugar in it, the stuff that has chemical preservatives in it, the stuff that has chemical flavoring in it. We don't have any of that. This stuff is literally good for you. You can get it, get mulk, get the ready to drink milk. By the way, we. We had a little Jocko fuel board meeting today. We started discussing how much milk ready to drink we should make. And I'm listening, and there's comments being made. You know, it's going to be this investment. It's going to do this thing. We got to do it this far in advance. Important information like what? How much should we. Boom. We're going back and forth. And finally I said, hey, make as much molk as you can. Make as much as you can. Where? Like, we have it at the gym here at Victory. It's selling out in, like, a day. It's gone. So everybody loves the ready to drink milk. So we are gonna make as much as we possibly can to get it to everyone, because it's the best.

It's just the best. It's just so good.

So Good for you. So convenient. Now look, do you get the powder milk? Yes, I have the powdered bulk. That's my dessert. But sometimes you need that midday hitter and sometimes you think, man, it's gonna take me four minutes to make a mold. No, no, not gonna. It's just gonna open up an rtd. Ready to drink? Did you. Are you familiar with the term rtd?

Yes, sir.

Is that a normal.

Term to be familiar with? Is everyone familiar with that term, ready to drink?

You know what I mean?

I think it's a. I think it's a industry term. Yeah, you know, rtd, like a normal person doesn't say that.

Rt.

Ready to. Oh, I might be thinking mre.

Oh yeah, that's meal ready.

Ready to eat.

Yeah. Oh, this is different. But it is a drink and it's ready.

Well, it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, very similar. So hey, check it out for Jocko Fuel stuff. Look, you can go to jockofuel.com you can get the drinks at Wawa. You can get all the stuff at Vitamin Shop. It's all at the military commissaries. It's at the Hanford supermarkets up there in the Northeast. Dash stores in Maryland, Wake Fern and shoprite. Circle K in Florida. Where at H E B. You know that Texas. If you're in Texas, go to heb. I know you're going to heb. Go to heb. Go to Jocko Fuel. Get what you need. That's why we got it in there for you apparently kicking ass down in heb. So thank you. Go get some. And Murphy's down in the southeast. That's where you can get Jocko Fuel. And if you don't have those retails stores in your area, Jockey Fuel. Calm. Go get some.

What else?

Well, origin. Can't forget about that American made stuff. Started with Jiu Jitsu geese.

Yes, we did.

But now, now there's a lot of other stuff. Jeans, boots, new washes of the jeans. By the way, I got all three.

Oh yeah, wait a second over here.

I didn't get them yet.

I'm sorry. Some people got it.

These things.

Some people don't know. It's okay.

But yeah, Amanda Roberts, about that. Amanda Roberts, I know you're listening right now. You know what I need? I don't want the light.

I don't.

Well, no, send me all three. I don't know, send me all three. Because I was gonna say I don't need the super light ones, but Pete was reminding me. Pete said he was driving his motorcycle and it was Hot. It was a sunny day. And the really light jeans, they don't absorb the heat.

Did the job. Yeah.

So yes, Amanda Roberts, please send all three washes of jeans to my house as soon as you can.

I did agree with you there, though. You don't strike me as the light wash jeans wearing tight.

I would. That's what I hesitated on it. But then I remember what P. Roberts sold me.

Functional.

P. Robert told me functional. Like when I'm out in the desert heat, I don't want to wear a black pair of jeans. I want to wear a nice pair of light pump with light ones.

You make a good point. All of them fit the same, just like functional, functionally. Sound. Hundred percent, by the way.

Yeah.

So, yeah, jeans, boots, some belts. The belt even. It's a. It feels like a subtle thing. Very impressive. Very impressive.

If you're gonna make it, make it real good. That's the kind of the overall concept, right?

Yes, sir. All made in America, by the way.

Yeah, well, that's not even a by the way. That's a. Hey, listen up. Made in America, if you care about human beings, don't buy stuff that's from other countries because they're not taking care of their human beings. They're. They're enslaving human beings to make you your product. They don't care about the environment. They don't care what they do with the dye. When it's done dyeing, whatever they're making, they just put it in the ocean, put in the rivers, kill all the animals. They put it the crap in the atmosphere. So if you care about people, if you care about planet Earth, and if you care about America, then go to Origin USA and get some OriginUSA.com that's.

What we got big time. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. So we can represent the path. Discipline equals freedom.

Good.

We've seen that video before. We know that concept.

Good.

You want to represent this where you can get it. Also, we've got a shirt locker, which is a new shirt every month, subscription scenario, new shirt. Some cool designs on that one. Good feedback on that one. But yeah, that's. You can get that@jocko store.com as well.

Subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget about Jocko Underground. Don't Forget about the YouTube channels. Right, the Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. I do a lot of assistant directing, and let's face it, when I do that, it's kind of a big deal.

You do good work.

Also, Origin USA has a YouTube channel. If you want to see what's happening at Origin usa, check that one out. We're showing kind of what's going on behind the scenes there.

Psychological warfare. I've been saying I was going to make another one of those for like five years.

Yeah.

Slowly. We're kind of being creative with some of that stuff, and.

A little bit. It's good. It's good.

All right, so psychological warfare. If you want to get a little MP3 activity for yourself when you have a moment of weakness, flip side Canvas. Dakota Meyer. Kind of interesting today. Speaking of Dakota Meyer, I asked David Bellavia, hey, what. What flavor drink do you want? I said, we got this, we got that.

He goes, oh, let me try that.

Black cherry vanilla. I was like, cool. Ran down. Gotta go. By the way, that's. That's Dakota Meyers drink. That's his signature flavor. He's like, hell, yeah. So I should have got a picture of that.

Yeah.

God, I'm an idiot. Well, you know what? You can pull some off the camera, off the video.

Yeah.

When he's taking a drink, right?

Of course.

Yes, sir.

You can do that, right?

Yep.

And we can send it to Dakota and be like, hey, Dakota, Birds of a Feather.

Bunch of books. Hey. These two books, remember the Ramrods, An Army, Brotherhood in War and Peace, and then House to House. Both of them by David Bellavia. Just outstanding books. If you have any interest in history, in combat, in war, in human nature, in the limits of mankind, on an individual level of bravery, get these books. They'll both be available on our website, but sometimes people go, hey, what book should I read? They're all on the website. They're on the website. Go to jockopodcast.com. go to books on the podcast. There's a tab. Is that the right word? Yes, sir, there's a tab.

And you can get those. Get Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. Final spin.

I'm bummed.

David Bellavia talked to me for 10 minutes about how much he freaking loved Final Spin.

It was great.

Blah, blah, blah. And we. And we didn't. We weren't recording. We weren't recording. Echo Charles next time. Which is great. Good job.

That's my bad.

You had one job, two jobs. What was the other one and a half?

Yeah, so. So check out Final Spin. Check out all these leadership books I've written, the kids books. I've written Mike and the Dragons Way, the warrior kid. 1, 2, 3, 4. 4. About face. We talked about that today. I wrote the forward to the new version of that. So get in there. Extreme ownership dichotomy of leadership. Echelon front have a leadership consultancy, a leadership consultancy where we work with companies all over the world teaching them leadership principles that we learned on the battlefield. If you're interested in that for your organization, go to echelonfront.com and if you're just an individual that wants to come to an event, wants to learn these principles face to face, you can also go there, check out our events. We also have online training, online training for leadership and life. Look, leadership is a mindset that's going to help you in every aspect of your life. It's not necessarily, oh, I'm in charge of 42 people and these are the leadership principles I need to know. No, it's like, oh, I'm in charge of me. I'm in charge of my two kids. I'm in charge of the three peers that I have at work. I'm in charge of my group of seven friends. Whatever it is. If you're interacting with other people, you are leading people. So learn how to make your life better. And by the way, it all starts with you. Learn to lead yourself. Learn a decision making process for the things that you do. You get all that through courses and through live interactive training on extreme ownership dot com. Go check that out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org and also don't forget about Micah Fink, who is taking vets up into the wilderness so that they can search and find themselves heroes and horses dot org. And if you want to connect with David bellavia, go to davidbellavia.com he's on Instagram sometimes. David Bellavia, reluctantly. He's also got that radio show. Facebook is David Bellavia Radio. So check that out. As for us, we're on Twitter, we're on the gram, we're on Facebook.

Echoes at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink, of course. And we kind of got in this discussion, buy into it all. It's not all good. Social media can. It's just like fire, right? It's fire. Fire can be good, can cook your food, keep you warm. Social media can give you, connect you with people, give you some good information. Fire can also burn your house down and kill your whole family. Guess what? Social media can cause a lot of significant mental problems as well. So be careful. That's what I'm saying.

Once again, thanks to David Bellavia for coming on here, for sharing your story, and.

We will not forget what you did. We won't forget your proud tutu ramrods duty first. And thanks to everyone else in the army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard for your service and sacrifice. Thank you all for being the best military in the world. And don't lose sight of that.

Thanks as well to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there.

There's been much sacrifice for our freedoms. Let's make sure that we live to honor them. Let's live like Lt. Ed Iwan.

From his epitaph, Ed, who lived every moment.

Stood in the rain, heard the thunder, danced to the lightning.

And believed in rainbows.

Go live every moment. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.