472: Avoiding the Pressure Won't Get You Anywhere. W/ Matt Hasby
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This is Jocko podcast number 472 with echo Charles and me Jocko willing good evening. I come evening So we've been in Ramadi for a little over a week I would say and we had gone a big chunk of guys from tasking a bruiser We'd gone over to Camp Corregidor Which is on the east side of Ramadi with the first of the 506 band of brothers and we're planning a big giant operation a battalion sized a battalion plus sized operation and

And we're going to be there for a few days planning. And then we're going to conduct the operation. We're going to go home. But we'd been there for, so we'd been over in Corregidor for maybe like a day or two or something like that. And as soon as we got there, Camp Corregidor was under attack all the time.

Through mortars and indirect fire, but also the surrounding area there be IDs in place there be Rockets launched at the base. And so as soon as we got there, of course, we had a bunch of snipers in tasking a bruiser So they have towers around the perimeter of Camp Corregidor so we put snipers in the towers and Pretty quickly like couples couple of SEAL snipers killed some

Insurgents putting IDs in and whatnot and so I was like the first day we were there first 24 hours They were there. So now we're there and now I'm over talking to one of the company commanders the Charlie company commander This guy gunfighter six the guys a total pro just he's been in Ramadi. He's been fighting He's been leading his troops. They called him crazy Joe is another nickname He had but his call sign was gunfighter six. I won't say his name right now, but I

hopefully I'll have him on the podcast at some point, just a great guy. And his Charlie company, they'd done a massive amount of fighting. They'd taken a massive amount of casualties. And he was just an outstanding professional soldier and combat leader. And so I'm in with him and we're talking about how this big operation is going to take place. And the types of things he was doing, why I'm saying he's so professional is,

This was before everyone had a helmet cam and before everyone had, you know, a GoPro on their weapon and whatever, uh,

He had rigged video cameras on his Humvees or at least his Humvee. And so he would record every time he'd be out in the city, he would record every everything. And then he'd come back and he'd watch it. So, you know, he knew every wall and every curb and every building. And he just would look at them and was more familiar with the terrain in order to be as familiar with the terrain as possible.

And there's a bunch of reasons for that. Are people having IEDs there? Is that a place where they could build weapons caches? Is that somewhere where you could maneuver or couldn't maneuver? So he just was that engaged. And he understood the mission and his troops knew the mission. So that's what we're doing. So I'm sitting here with this guy and we're in like a little Quonsen hut where his company planning space was. And as we're in there, we hear like a pretty good run of machine gun fire. And, you know, I'm trying to act cool because...

I'm trying to act cool. You know, you don't want to act like a, like, Whoa, what the heck was that? You know? So I kind of, you know, give him a nod and he kind of gives me a nod cause he's trying to act cool too. You know, we're like two guys in the military trying to act cool. And so then more machine gun fire comes and I'm like, Oh, okay, that's a lot. And I still like try and carry on. Like I'm talking like, Hey, it's no big deal. And then all of a sudden they're just, Whoa, whoa, two guys.

massive explosions which is RPG hits and when as soon as the first one goes You know we start running and we go outside and when we get outside where this Quonset Hut was it was kind of on the border and it was right next to one of these towers where you know where we had perimeter security and That you know these explosions we come outside and now there's kind of smoke coming out of the tower and I look at crazy Joe and I said something like hey, don't worry about it, man. I got snipers up in these towers and

As if to say, dude, don't worry, I got this. And right as I finished that sentence, out of the bottom of this sniper tower, and the sniper tower was like concrete, kind of like concrete pipes that were on their side and had ladders or whatever stairs built inside of them and a little thing on the top, but it's basically a big concrete structure. And right as I get done saying, don't worry about it, I got snipers in the tower, right as I finish that sentence,

two guys come pouring out of the bottom of this tower, like stumbling and disheveled. And one of them I instantly recognized because he's got red hair and I can see he's wearing a seal, you know, camouflage uniform. And I know it's one of my guys. And I look to look at his face and he kind of looks like, damn. And which is understandable because I'm looking as I look at him, I can see that

His his rifle his sniper rifle had been blown in half and so he had one It was dangling from around his neck the two halves of his machine of his of his weapon were dangling around his neck because his weapon had just been blown apart by an RPG and He was lucky to be alive and and that's exactly what had just happened the RPG machine gun fire to get people's heads down They fired RPGs at this tower on those towers. They had a

basically like metal screen, almost like a chain link fence to stop RPGs from coming in, but it would also detonate the RPGs. And so that's exactly what happened. It detonated in front of him and blown his weapon in half. He was lucky to be alive. And then less than 24 hours later, that same guy, Matt, was in the middle of the blue on blue friendly fire incident that we wrote about, that I wrote about in Extreme Ownership.

He was in the middle of that he was on the rooftop. He had hundreds of 50 caliber rounds fired at him from a distance of about 35 meters and he was actually hit by frag in the face from one of those 50 Cal rounds and then after that and this is a story that Leif wrote about this same guy Matt fell probably 20 feet through a roof onto his back in the street and

And look, he survived all these scenarios and many more scenarios throughout the Battle of Ramadi and then throughout the rest of his career. And well, it's an honor to have him with us here tonight. Sniper, machine gunner, LPO chief, senior chief, frog man, and my brother, Matt Hasby. Matt Hasby.

Thanks for joining us, man. It's a pleasure to be here. That was, I will never forget that moment with how cool I thought I sounded and how reality I got checked with. You and me both. Right on. All right. Before we get into those stories, let's talk about, let's talk about you growing up. What was going on? Born in NoDak. Born in North Dakota, the great white North.

Fantastic place to grow up. It's where my family's from. Born, my mom was single. My dad decided to bounce. I have a half sister and consequently about the same age as me. So she probably wouldn't have been cool with that either way. So yeah, he left. My mom was independent person. She moved us to Arizona for a while. We always kind of bounced back to North Dakota. She married my dad, the only dad I've ever known when I was two. And what'd he do?

He was in the Air Force. There's a big Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota. And so my family's from Minot. He came. He was in the Air Force. And I just got out. We decided to stay in North Dakota. And yeah, he's just a good dude. What did he do for a living? He... What did he do? Like...

He was really like a mechanic. And so he kind of did that style of work all the way until he retired. He actually ultimately became, before he retired, he was the fleet manager at that Air Force base. So he ran all the vehicles as a civilian. And it was funny because I would talk to him and he would talk exactly like every fleet manager we've ever had in the Navy where everybody's the problem. And I would try to like get it to him like, you know, it's not that big a deal if they do this with the car. He's like, hey, that's not the procedure. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

That's why they all think that way. Well, I'm unfortunate to report to him that you were very abusive to vehicles from the Navy for your entire career. We'll get to that later, I'm sure. And so then what were you like growing up?

My parents worked a lot, so we didn't have a ton of money because they were always working. So it gave me a lot of free time. So we also didn't have a lot of money for babysitters. And so when I was, I don't know, maybe in the first grade, we moved to Illinois, somewhere my dad's family's from, and my mom, she was all in. And yeah, I was a problem because I would get home from school. I'd have about two hours by myself.

And, you know, I do, I got caught one time. I was trying to start a fire in a bottle in my living room. I don't know why. I honestly don't know why. You know how you have an urge to eat, let's say. You know what I mean? A human. A human has an urge to eat. Or a human has a, you get an itch on your arm. You have an urge to itch that itch, right? Mm-hmm.

There's some people that they have an urge to start fires. Like it's an actual thing. And I'm sure that there must be some kind of like instinct to that, right? Because to survive as a species, you have to have someone that knows how to make fire, right? And so apparently you had that gene. I mean, I was, the theory was, I was like, oh, this will be cool. I'll put it in this bottle and I'll be able to like control this fire.

And then my mom came home, like caught me in the middle. And she's like, you're making a bomb that heats up. That's going to explode. And it's going to be all kinds of problems. And I'd like to say that was like the first time I didn't know. She came home another time. The bushes were on fire in front of the building. Like we lived in like I was a problem. I was a real, real problem. And how old were you for that?

I would say I was probably around like between like first and third grade. So this is when you were living where outside of Chicago. Yeah. I was, I was living outside of Chicago. I was, uh, I was getting bused into this sketchy school. So I, growing up, I had a lot of like, uh, learning disabilities. I, to say I had ADHD was an understatement. You have ADHD that has ADHD squared. Yes. And so, uh,

Back then it was like you were the bad kid. So I spent a lot of time in the classroom distracting others. And so, you know, your desk is facing the wall. And so the one class that they found of like ADH kids, I had to go is like South Chicago. You know, it was like it was. Oh, so they identified like a for real. You have an issue. Oh, yeah. To a special school. Yeah. Well, you know, like the special classroom, like when you're young. And so I want these other kids that had it. And.

It was like school of hard knocks. I remember my teacher, her, her name was Mrs. A. She drove a Harley to school. And these, and, uh, these kids were from diverse backgrounds. Uh, I think a couple of parents were in jail, a couple of prostitutes, like stories that growing up, I had never realized what was going on. And so these were some broken individuals at the time. And, uh,

Yeah, Mrs. A, if you got emotional, you cried, she'd kick furniture into you. Like Spartan kicked the desk into kids. Like it was great. Like as an adult with children now, that is crazy. As a kid, I'm like, wow, she must be really mad. My parents weren't like that, but Mrs. A was. Yeah.

And so, yeah, we did that for a while. And then my mom decided, hey, it was time to move back up north. How old were you when you moved back up north to Novak? Probably, I was in the fourth grade. Yeah, I remember. I moved back to North Dakota. Mom wanted to, I think she realized I had a lot of freedom in Illinois. And like, it's Illinois. It's probably not the best place for me. So...

She moved me back to North Dakota out where, you know, farm fields and all that other things where I had a lot of space. Less things to set fire to. Exactly. At least less things to damage. Exactly. And so more room to do things. And so, yeah, we moved back to North Dakota and that's where we were until I graduated. So did you continue down the like troublemaking path?

I got better in North Dakota. Like, I got friends. There's a lot of freedom, you know, despite what people think. Like, we still ride bikes in the winter. Like, because that's how you get to places. Nothing's close. So, I mean, I wouldn't say, like, I was, like, a great kid. Yeah.

But you weren't terrible. I wasn't bad. I had a lot of fun. I was running around. I was also that kid, like my mom would find me on my bike 10 miles out of the city in another town because I was too cold to ride home. So I'd call her to come pick me up. She'd be super mad. But no, it was good. Yeah. Things like that. School was good, but...

I wouldn't call myself a great student because I didn't really like, I don't want to try a lot. And so I learned if I never did homework, I would just have to ace the final and then I would get a C. And once I figured that algorithm, it was over. C's get degrees. That's it. That's it. Once I figured that out, I was just like coasting. What sports were you into?

When I was young, I tried a lot and I hated them. Like I hated sports. I was like in soccer and I, you know, what's funny is I wasn't an aggressive kid. Like I was like super shy, wasn't aggressive. If like the kids were getting in the mix, you know, all trying to fight over the ball, I'd like kind of shy out. Really? Yeah, I know. You'd shy away and like think about how you could set fire to their cars. Yeah, so my mom, when I was in probably the sixth grade, she put me in taekwondo.

Cause that's all we had in Minot. There's nothing else. And, uh, what year is this? There's nothing else anyways. I mean, if this is in like the, is this the nineties? Oh yeah. Mid nineties. Oh yeah. So there's, there's not a lot going on. Yeah. Like now you can go to jujitsu and MMA academies, any basically anywhere in the country, but in the nineties. Yeah. You're lucky to have Taekwondo. Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. And now in my hometown, they have jujitsu. I'm like, I was lucky, lucky dudes. Um,

But yeah, so I did Taekwondo and that was like, honestly, it was kind of my anchor. That gave me a ton of discipline. And I had really good like Taekwondo instructors that like kind of like poured into me and, you know, kind of helped me like pull it together a little bit. I wasn't starting fires anymore. And like, I just spent my, honestly, I was, I got pretty good. Like I went a lot of tournaments, a lot of state tournaments, regional, like my parents would drive me around to different states and,

And so what's the deal? Can you, can you kick someone in the head in Taekwondo? What, let's say you're, you'd say when you're 15 years old, what grade is that? Sophomore year, sophomore year, you're doing Taekwondo. Yep. How do you win a tournament? Do you kick someone in the head? Do you kick, do you, do you make them quit? Do you knock them out? No, it's, it's point based, right? Points. And you have to like, so you're, you're evaluated on your ability to like basically pull your punches and kicks.

So you kick and you want to like, if you can tap them and pull it back, you're like, oh, that guy's a master. Like he can almost hurt somebody. And so I, I was good. Like I got that. It was pretty good. And I remember we were in a tournament and I think I was, I was a, I was a new black belt. Let me ask you this. When you would do a tournament against the guy,

and you were doing that, like you're both pulling your punches, did you feel like if you won or if he won, they would actually, like that would translate to, hey, if we got into a real fight, that guy probably would beat me, or if we got into a real fight, no, I'd be able to beat him.

I'm saying, was it like translate well where if you and I were taekwondo guys and we were in a taekwondo tournament and I beat you, would you walk away like, yeah, that guy, he definitely was quicker than me or he had better combos than me or...

Or were you like, yeah, but if this was a real fight, I would kick his ass. Oh, 100%. I remember I beat this kid and then he came back and he beat me. And he did a weird thing where he could hold his leg up and kick it almost like a machine gun. And then he would just kind of hop at you. And if you did something, he could tap your head or tap. And so he was really good at this point system. I knew in the street.

I was gonna, I could crush that individual. Badass be in the street 13. Let's go. What about work? Did you have to have jobs? Um,

Um, yeah. So growing up, my mom, she owned a, uh, she owned a bakery. And so she made like cookies and cookie bouquets and cakes and things like that. And so cookie bouquets confirmed echo Charles. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I worked there until I was probably like old enough to work. And like, uh,

So my mom and I didn't get along. Like, it's not that we didn't get along. She has a really good work ethic. And when you're a kid and she has an idea of what she wants you to do and you have a different idea. And since I'm not a real employee, I'm like her son, I argue or I don't do it as well. And so I did that till I was like 16. And then I got a job at Wendy's. How long did you work at Wendy's for?

I mean... You know I worked at Wendy's, right? No. Oh, yeah. I worked at Wendy's. So you and I have a little bit of a freak. Making those square patties. Making those square patties. Did you? I worked the grill straight up. I worked the grill. That's honestly why I quit Wendy's. That must be the entry level position. Yeah. Grill. It is. And why I quit is because I worked the grill so long I never got the window. And you're just sitting there sweating over this grill. And I was like, oh, I hate this. And by that time, I'd kind of like...

By the time I think I hit Wendy's, I knew what I wanted to do. So I was just killing time. So you knew you wanted to go into the Navy. You knew you wanted to go on the teams. How'd you hear about the teams? So I remember it was a Christmas. My dad got... So my dad was a big reader, like...

Big into Vietnam. We'd always watch the movies. I remember my mom was nervous when I was three. My dad would like, we'd watch Rambo. She's like, I don't think that's good. He's like, oh, it's fine. It worked out great, huh? But he was way into these like Vietnam books. And so I would like ferociously read these things when he was done. And you remember those old like novels? They're like thick. They're like two inches thick. They're like 400 pages. So I'd read those. And so one of my uncles gave him Rogue Warrior.

And I was like, okay. And so I got a hold of it before he did. You know, he unwraps, it's Christmas time. And I started looking. I was like, oh, I like this. And so I started reading it. And I don't know what tipped my mom off, but she didn't like it. I was way into this book. It was taking up all my time. And she's like, it's too much. So she took it away from me. And I was like, okay. How old were you? That book came out, and I want to say 1991, because I had just got to the teams when that book came out. So yeah, I was probably seventh or eighth grade. Mm-hmm.

And so I got my allowance together, whatever money I earned at my mom's bakery. And I went and I bought a copy and then I read it like in complete secret. And then it was over. Yeah. Like I was like, I'm being able to check. And then you're just waiting. Were you, so you're going to school, you're just getting whatever grades you can get. C's get degrees. Yep. Nothing else mattered in life, but wanting to become a team guy. That was it. And that's like, okay, so I need to graduate. Cool. That's all I'm going to do. I don't really like school. I don't have a plan after it.

Did you go to talk to the recruiter? Just like, hey, I want in. Yeah, I was in depth. I was in depth at like 17. So was that your junior year? Yeah, like right at the end of my junior year. Okay. So you go in there, you'd say, I want to be a SEAL. And the guy's like, of course, yeah, you're going to make a great SEAL. Because that's what the recruiters tell them all. Well, and beyond that, I got my buddy to join. Oh, really? Yeah. And so both of us, he'd become a SEAL. But I was like. Did he just join the Navy or did he want to be a SEAL too?

I think he might have wanted to be a SEAL. I don't know. I think I was pretty persuasive at the time. And so I was like, hey, we'll join together. Because what I got if he joined, Navy sweatsuit. Oh. And that seemed like a pretty sweet deal for me at the time. You wrecked that guy's life for a freaking sweatsuit, dude. He's one of my best friends to this day. Oh, you still talk to him? Oh, yeah. He did his four years. Oh, okay. Honestly, he...

I think he romanticizes those four years because I remember talking to him at the time and he had to like live on the ship. And I mean, he's a great dude, but he's back in North Dakota. He's got great family. But yeah, I got him to join the Navy for that sweatsuit. That's classic. And then what did you do to prepare? So every morning and I almost can't believe I did this. I would wake up at 530 and one of my buddies would come pick me up. We drive to the Air Force Base because I could get on because I was a dependent and

And we'd swim. We'd swim every single morning. And I would do the 800 yards. And which is funny, I didn't do the combat side stroke. I did the breaststroke. When I went to Bud's, I was the only one to do the breaststroke to do the screener. I did that too. I did that too. Because I hated the side. It would get water in my ear. At the time, I just hated it. And so I would do the breaststroke every morning until I knew I was good at it. And I would run a little bit, but

Running in North Dakota in the winter is almost painful because that's just that freezing cold air. So I would do enough. And then, yeah, I would just, that's kind of what I did. Were you doing pull-ups, push-ups, like anything like that? Oh, yeah, all the time. Pull-ups to this day have been my thing since I was young. Like I was one of those kids like, you know, when you're in like,

ninth or 10th grade, they do like the pull-up challenge. And I was always on the board for the school of like, I could get some of the most. So that, yeah, that was my thing. And then, so you graduate high school, um, anything, you know, so, so now you're getting ready to ship out. Yeah, I was, so I graduate, I'm in the delayed entry program and I'm just trying to make it like just trying to stay out of trouble. I was 18 at the time. And so, you know, we,

You have a decent amount of trouble in North Dakota because when you're 18, Canada's right across the border. 18-year-olds drink and age. And so I'm just holding it together. And then I think it was like a week or two before we get ready to deploy. I get pulled over. I had a speeding problem. In North Dakota, when I was growing up, there's – so in North Dakota right now, it's a ton of oil, right? A ton of oil. So we have problems in North Dakota like any other states. But back then, there wasn't. It was just they would get you speed traps are everywhere.

And then I wouldn't pay my tickets because I was a kid. I didn't, I didn't answer, you know, I didn't find the mail and I'd get a speeding ticket and then I forget about it. And I got pulled over and the, uh, the officer's like, Hey, you have a suspended license. And I was like, how is that possible? He's like, you have like three unpaid speeding tickets. And I was like, and so he's like, um, I'm like, okay, so what happens? He's like, I have to arrest you. And I was like, Oh no. I was like, how far away were you from leaving? I date like, like maybe like nine days. Damn.

And it was close. And I was like, oh, this is not good. Because you know when you're going in the Navy. So before I even – so I joined in like the SEAL Challenge program. So I knew I was going to Bud's. Like that happened. I had to fill out a security form, how many times I've arrested, my tickets. That's already filled out. And now he's like, we're going to have to arrest you. I don't know. So they arrest me. And I go to jail. I don't know. For Minot, North Dakota –

I don't know if it was like a scared straight night. There was like a lot of yelling and like fighting. It was like some crazy stuff going on. And I remember like, Taekwondo back black belt. So I'm like, all right, gotta be hard. And they actually didn't put me in the cell with the others because I was a child essentially.

And so I remember that. They didn't know you were a black belt. They didn't know the pain that I was bringing. And so they're like, hey, do you want to call? The karate man bleeds on the inside. And so they're like, hey, you want to call your parents? And I was like, not really. But, you know, I remember my mom was actually opening another bakery at the time. So my dad was home.

And my dad was always like, he was like the tough loved one. And so I knew, I knew what he was going to do. He wanted to, I knew he was like, we're going to, it's gonna be a lesson learned. And so I call my dad and he's like, Hey, what's up? And I'm like, Hey, I'm in jail. And what's funny is he didn't seem overly surprised, which should have been like a red flag for me. And he was like, what happened? I was like, I have a suspended license. I didn't know it. And he was like,

Okay. So what do they want? I was like, well, I'm going to have to stay in jail. It's like a Friday night. So I'm like, I'm going to stay till Monday or you can come bail me out. He's like, why should I come bail you out? And I was like, well, because I don't want to be in jail. And he was like, why is this my problem? And I'm like, well, you can bail. I said this to my dad. I'm like, well, you can come or I'm going to call my grandfather, you know? And he was like, I'll be right there.

And cause my mom wasn't home. I think really where his problem lied was my mom. She was going to come home. My grandparents are going to tell that they bailed me out of jail. She's going to ask him why he didn't bail me out of jail. So I think he was just saving the pain for, from, from later. That would have been a freaking gut check. Yeah. He said, uh, lesson learned. Forget about it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I just think he just didn't want to deal with mom. So my son was in jail and you left him there to rot for the weekend. A hundred percent. And so he came, he got me out. Um,

And yeah, so, and then I still, I almost, you know, almost went to bootcamp. Right before I was going to bootcamp, I was in, where you leave from is Fargo, North Dakota. So I was in Fargo, North Dakota, and I had a buddy in college. He went to whatever university is there. And so he's like, hey, there's a frat party. Do you want to go? And I was like, yep. And so I go to this frat party and,

And basically, it's another bunch of kids drinking, smoking cigarettes. And I'm like, hey, this is cool. And so what the cool thing was at this frat is they would put out the cigarettes on their arm. And I'm like, that seems like an awesome idea. And plus, you're tough. Yeah, I'm super tough, right? I'm a black belt. You can't hurt me. And so, you know, they're smoking cigarettes. And so I have the cigarette. And I put it out of my arm a few times. So anyway, what, you know, I wake up.

I uh, I think I have like a day or two. I ended up going to the you know It's time to leap right so I go I go into medical checks You're taking your shirt off the doctor's like poking at you to make sure you're ready that you can show up And he looks at me my arm. He's like what's this and I was like, oh, I just I gotta burn He's like that's an open wound. You can't go and I was like and so my mom i've already said goodbye Like everybody's like bye son like and so I have to call my mom and I have to be like, hey, uh

I can't go for another two weeks. So she has to come pick me up and I have to go home and heal. And I just straight two weeks of sulking. That's all I did. And then my buddy, we were, so how we, when I got the friend to join, the deal was we got to go to bootcamp together. He went by himself. Not anymore. No. Yep. But you got that sweatsuit. I got that sweet sweatsuit and he had to go to bootcamp by himself.

So you leave for boot camp. How was, I can imagine that boot camp was quite a shock to your system. Oh, boot camp. I almost think boot camp was worse than butter. Like the worst time of my life. Like I remember I got there that night. They're like yelling and screaming in people's face. And I'm like, like, this is not good. Like, and so, you know, and then immediately like boot camp, you put all these kids into one area and we're all immediately sick.

And so then I just stayed sick for the next five weeks. And so like you're in formation, you're supposed to keep your hands at your side. I'm just like, snot's pouring out of my face. Hey, it sucked. I'm not, where'd you go to bootcamp Chicago? Yeah. Cause that by then it was the only one. And so, yeah, I do that. And then finally what my saving grace was, um,

I got my wisdom teeth pulled. And so when you get your wisdom teeth pulled, you can sleep. Oh, you get like isolated? Do you get isolated? No, you just get to go in your rack. And basically it's like two or three days of just basically like drugged sleep. And so I did that, went unconscious, and then emerged. Right on. And what A school did you go to? Because you still had to go to, this is back in the day when you had to go to A school. Yeah, yeah. So I went to Aviation Ordinance.

They're putting bombs on planes. I didn't pick the school. My recruiter did. Because he was like, hey, what school do you want to go to? And I was like, well, I'm being Amy Seale, so what's the fastest school there? And he was like, AOA school. I didn't even know what it was. I was like, cool, sign me up. How long is it? He's like six weeks. I'm like, perfect. Because I'm not going to quit. Looking back on that, that was not a calculated risk. Dude, I was talking about this the other day.

If you actually ran the logical numbers to see what career path you should take, joining the SEALs would not compute. Like if you put into chat GPT or one of those AI things, you said, hey, I got Rangers, got Special Forces, got Marine Raider, got Air Force, CCT or PJ and got SEAL. Which one of these has the best probability of me having a cool life? SEALs would be the bottom.

Because a lot of people quit, and when you quit, you're not doing a job that you're probably going to be that engaged in. So there's not much logic and reason behind selecting the SEAL teams unless you're just one of those guys. You're that guy. You're like, that's the one I'm going to do. It's kind of strange that it works like that.

It's crazy. And it's like at your 18-year-old mind how much weight that decision has. And when you see these individuals go into BUDS that are kids and then they quit and the realization hits that they're like, oh my God, I'm going to be a gunner's mate on a ship. And they're like, I didn't even like being a gunner's mate. And you're like, well, that sucks, friend. And they still quit. Yeah. All right. So you finished that school. You showed up to BUDS.

Anything that really shocked you about buds when you got there? What year is it, by the way? 2001. So 9-11 hit when I was in A school. Oh, okay. And so all the SEALs are training. We're getting ready. It's going to be cool. 9-11 hit. And then we're like, oh, this is real. Like life's about to get real, which was kind of exciting for us because now we knew like as long as we pass buds, odds of us going to war are high. And I mean, when you're a SEAL, that's, I mean, that's culmination, right? That's what you're doing. That's what you want in life.

And so, yeah, we get done. We get to San Diego. And honestly, like, what surprised me at first is, but it's kind of chill when you show up. Yeah, it is, dude. It is, bro. You know, you come into San Diego. They drive you to the quarterdeck. They're like, cool, here's your room. It's Friday or whatever. You know, we'll muster up on Monday. Like, they lull you. It's a sense of calm before the storm. Mm-hmm.

And then that storm is hard. That's heavy. Uh,

So did you do like, did they call it fourth phase or prep? Like what was the pre buds for you? No, there was, there was no pre buds. You showed up. It was, it was, they had like the pre buds was you checking in before first phase. So the amount of time you had from first phase is until the next class. Okay. That's, that's what I did too. It was like, yep, you show up. And when I went through, they called it fourth phase. So there's first phase, second phase, third phase. And the fourth phase meant you were getting ready to start.

And if you had, if you showed up three weeks before the class, you got three weeks. If you showed up, I guess the most you could have showed up

First phase at that time was nine weeks long. So you could have showed up eight weeks prior and had eight weeks of fourth phase. But that's what it was. And every day was just kind of a repeat. It was like, oh, swim, run, swim, run, PT, swim, run, PT, do the O course a little bit. It was just like there wasn't a progression or anything. Right now there's a much more squared away system where you start light and you're going to go through this whole cycle before you start actually in buds. Right.

But for you, it was just, all right, cool. So how much time did you have before you classed up in first phase? I think I had like...

Three weeks. And like you said, it was, there was no control. The proctor would come out and it was just a CLD six. What I know now. And depending on how much of a sadist he was that day, it was either we were hitting the surf or we run, swim. And like, we were kind of off early every day, you know, like three, four o'clock. They're like, Hey, go, we go eat and walk around the beach, walk into Coronado. And you're like, this is all right. Life is good. So then you class up. What, what class did you class up with? I started with three, nine.

239? Yes. 239. So you start in 239. Was anything hard for you in first phase? Before Hell Week, let's say. Honestly, where I kind of paid was...

I was better, but I still came like highly immature. So like these officers are telling me what to do. And I'm like, why, why do you know better than me? And I'm going to, I'm going to save everybody figuring it out. I was raised an only child. And so I was by myself. And so, um, I had a little, uh, opposition to authority. And so that was a, uh, a steep learning curve. And, um,

So in 3.9, it wasn't bad because I was so shell-shocked. All of a sudden, I went, I'm kind of this in-shape kid. And then all of a sudden, I very much wasn't. Where my weakness was was running. I was the goon squad guy in first phase. Like in boot camp, only reason that I made the screener was I failed the run the first time. And when I came back, I had a buddy in my boot camp class that was a good runner. And he had failed to swim. And I was like, will you pace me?

And so he paced me and I passed with like an 11 minutes out of like an 1130 or it was like 1130 out of 12. And so I got to Bud's and that was like my Achilles heel. That's weird because you're built like a runner. Oh, yeah. How tall are you? 6'1". Yeah, you're like long, lean. You look like you should be able to freaking haul ass. Oh, by the end of Bud's, I was top 10%. But showing up, like I said, in North Dakota, it was cold. You didn't run a lot. And I also like...

I didn't really know how to run. So when I was in first phase, I had my roommate came from Colorado and he was this like high level, long distance runner. And he would watch me run. And he's like, dude, your form sucks. He's like, you run like a sprinter runs lots of arms, lots of legs. Like, and so he basically taught me how to run distance where it's like, keep your hands down by your waist, like cut movement down outside of what, like your legs are running. And he, I credit him and unfortunately quit. Yeah. I was going to say it's a,

I was going to ask you, did he make it? Oddly enough, he got stress fractures the day before Hell Week and he got, uh, he rolled out. And so he came back, ended up quitting in pre-phase. I think he just knew too much, but yeah. So anyway, he taught me to run and that's kind of, that got me up to speed. And then you get into, so the only challenge you had was running and then you get into Hell Week and how'd that work out? Well, no. So before running that challenge, I had the 50, the 50 meter underwater challenge.

And so I don't know what it was. Like I had this block, like I got in, you know, we do the 25, no big deal. In the 50, I got in and I made it about 25 and almost died. And, and, uh, the instructor looks at me, I get out and he's like, Matt, you have possibly the worst underwater form I've ever seen. Cause you know, you've got to do like a breaststroke, but you got to drag. And I was like kicking, I was trying to do it fast. So I was just like burning oxygen. Yeah.

And so, you know, you have a few times to try and I'm failing all these times. And on the weekends, I'm going to the pool. They don't let you do the 50 under moderate at the Navy pool because they want you passing out. So I'm doing like all these 25s and finally it's the last time.

And I, these three guys get in and I just step in front of them because I'm like, I don't care friends. You're not going to fail me today. Like, I don't want to see anybody fail. It's not getting in my head. So I get down, I do my 50, I pass, you know, obviously no big deal. What was like the transition that you did in your head? It will, I got, it was not moving. It was being, it was being comfortable, not moving. You know, you like, you do the glide. Yes. The glide. And that was kind of like the, the, the, the thing that triggered. And so I, I did the glide. I was as deep as possible. And,

And it went fine. And every single dude behind me failed. And I was like, and that's why like unapologetic. I stepped in front. I'm like, you're not failing in front of me today. I don't want that mental thing. So yeah. So then fast forward, I get into hell week. Hell week's fine, but I'm a skinny dude. And so I started to kind of shut down where like I would eat, but I wouldn't drink. And so I would drink water only when I was thirsty, but I was so cold. I wasn't drinking a lot of water.

- You ever heard that, when I started like when we do winter warfare type stuff and people would say you need to drink more water when it's cold and I'm just like no, that's not, that can't be true bro, that cannot be true 'cause when it's hot out bro, I drink water like crazy and when it's cold out, I barely drink water and so that's probably what, and I think it's just psychological, like you don't feel, you're not, you don't feel sweat, you're shivering, you don't feel like drinking freaking cold water.

And so maybe that played a role. Oh, a hundred percent. And then it does things like physiologically inside your body. And so I wasn't drinking. And then we did the, um, like the, uh, hard sand demo pit run where it's, it's like a, just a quick run and back. It's not supposed to be a hard evolution. It was before, uh, chow. And I was dead last and I hadn't been dead. How far into the hell week is this? Uh, this was Monday, Monday night. It's early. Like it's early. And so it's Monday night.

And I just can't, like, I can't keep up. Like you're, you're digging. And I, you know, like when you dig harder, you can run a little faster, like physically can't do it. And so, because I was late, they're like, we're going to do it again because of Matt, you know? And so they run again and now I'm farther behind and they're like, oh, we got a weakness. We found, you know, like he, he can't, you know, and so hold. And so we get beat as a class. I'm not quitting. And so I got pulled aside by an instructor and I got put on the decon showers and

And do he put the boots to me? Like I'm on the floor. I'm jackhammering. Like, I'm like, you know, I'm making deals with God. I'm like, God, I'm ready. I'm not going to quit. But if you want to take me, it's kind of like, I'm okay with it. Like I'm fine. And so I'm not quitting. And finally, you know, we go into med checks and they're like, Hey, check them out. Cause we, they're going to, I'm like, I'm going to get more. And I knew something changes. They, they put a blanket on and they give, they, they put me in the, the, the Paul socks and

And then all of a sudden I went from one corpsman to three doctors. And I was like, okay. And then all of a sudden I started getting food. And then they started warming me up. And an instructor pops in and they're like, hey, is he coming back? And they're like, no, he's on the first ambulance out. And I think my core temp went down to like 92. And then my Paul socks was in the 80s. And what happened was I got sight swimmers induced pulmonary edema. And so my lungs were filling up. And so one of my lungs was like, I think like almost half full. Damn, dude.

And I remember when I got to Balboa, it was funny because I was so jacked up and nobody, I was in the ER and these nurses were awesome. And they were looking at me and they're like, what the hell happened to this guy? And so, you know, I know what, like, I just went with an ambulance. There's no one there to explain like how what's going on. And so I get it. And they're like, hey, they're doing the pulse oxen all over again. I am having all these doctors are kind of panicking because like, things are going wrong. I'm not breathing. And so I get it.

And I remember they come to me and they're like, "Hey, we need to give you a catheter." And I was like, "I don't know what that meant." And so what would happen is I would keep falling asleep as they were talking to me. And so like, they're like, "Hey, we're gonna, you know,

put a needle in your arm. And I'm like, cool, I'd fall asleep. And they would poke me and I wouldn't notice. And she's like, hey, we're going to put a catheter in. And I'm like, cool. And I fell asleep. And then so she came to put the catheter and I woke up like somebody scared a cat. And I sat straight up and I'm like, no, no, no, you can't do that. And she was like, no, no, you said it was okay. I was like, no, I'll do anything. And I started like pleading and I started making deals. I was like, you can't do this. And she's like, no, no, it's going to be fine. And I was like, please don't. And I was like, you know, I was like a kid. And

She was great. This nurse was great. She kind of calms me down and they put it in and it's horrible. It is horrible getting a catheter put in. I've never had it. Yep. And so I still remember this day when she put the catheter and after it was in, I had my head, I was sweating and she just rubbed my head. She just came up to the bed.

And she just rubbed my hair. And she was just like... Like you were a five-year-old? It was. It was the most mom move a nurse has ever done to me. And I was so unhappy, just like this unhappy little kid. She's like, are you okay? She's like, here, it's fine. You're fine. And so the worst thing was, though, I spent a week in the hospital. And I knew things were wrong because I would have Navy people coming out of uniform and

And they would like quiz me what happened. And they're like, hey, did this happen during surf torture? They would use the wrong words. I didn't know who they were. And so I'm like defending butts. No, no, that didn't hit, you know. And so I'm protecting him. And I remember, and it must have been an officer as an adult. I know this now. He came in.

And like my little girlfriend was sitting there sitting beside the bed and he was like, they would come in twice and I'd have to blow into this like mechanism where I have to float this ball and kind of work my lungs back out. And he's like, so, hey, how do you have to get better? And I told him I'd blow in. He's like, so when do you do it? And I was like, oh, and the nurse has tells me to do it. And he's like, so you wait for the nurse to come in. And he kind of started to grill me on the spot. And I still don't know who this guy is to this day, but he was like, kind of like being kind of a dick.

And I remember I started sweating because, you know, I'm a buzz. I don't know who that guy is. And my girlfriend at the time was like, who is this mofo?

And anyway, he ends up leaving. And so I get out of the hospital. I get a ride back. You know, they, no one's there to pick me up. So I wait, like the duty driver comes and picks me up. And the most painful thing I remember, I was sitting in Bud's medical and the hell week class secures. So all my friends are done and I see them and they look, you know, they look horrible and they're all beat up and they're cut up and I'm sitting there and they just finished hell week. And I was

it was so painful to like watch those guys. And so, yeah, I'll never forget. How long did it take you to recover? Did you get rolled one class? I got rolled one class. I was right in. So it's not too bad. And it wasn't like... Did you recover physically where you were like, all right, I can pass runs now? Oh, yeah. And the medical was super cool. They're like, so hey, the odds of this happening, we went by, they're like, hey, how much were you drinking? And I was like, I don't know. They're like, gauge it. And I was like, maybe one cup over like the 36 hours. And he's like, oh my God. Mm-hmm.

And they're explaining is like when you're cold, the drink in the water actually like, I guess not having water is one of the things that like helped it happen. And so they're like drinks tons. So when I did the next class, I rolled into the next class and that was like life was the OIC. And when I was in hell week, I drank water. Like it was my job. And no factor then next time. Yeah. Yeah. Got wind, wind through hell week, like made it like it was fine. And yeah, no fact. Oh, I'm sorry. No, I made it four. Zero was my class.

And then Leif was 4-1, so I hadn't met him yet. So I went with 4-0. No factor through Hell Week. First phase, fine. We got into second phase. And then how did you do in second phase? Second phase was okay.

Like I got in, like I was fine, but I'd, I'd never dove from North Dakota. Like I, it was never a thing in my world. So outside a pool. So I was uncomfortable under the water, like especially with diving. So when I was in a school, I actually got like my scuba license. Cause I thought that would help me. It did not. Yeah.

And so I was uncomfortable and I was doing everything. But like with a beet red face. Yeah. Like totally uncomfortable. Like a line panic. Oh, a hundred percent. There was one point where when I was doing something and I got hit by an instructor and I did a full load, like, you know, like when you're like,

you're about to like frog jump up from the bottom of the pool. I did a full load and I didn't do it, but the instructor punched me in the back of my head when I did it, like, 'cause I knew not to go up, 'cause I mean, you're gonna AGE, right? I have a deep breath at depth. And if I was gonna go up, I'm gonna hurt. And so I went panicked and I like went to the like balls of my feet to like crouch. And he was like, oh, this guy is gonna skyrocket. But I paused and then he punches me, you know? And that's what they're supposed to do, right? To like save me. And that little interaction,

He'd never recover. Like he was like, hey, you're a huge liability. Like did not like me. And so he was like, he saw me as like this liability, right? Yeah, you could be a borderline panicker. Yep. So we do pool comp and I'm fine, but he gets me. He gets me on the final, like, you know. So you failed it a couple of times? No.

Cause they have to give you a different instructor. Yeah. And so he made sure he was my instructor and I don't know if he made sure I'm, I'm saying it. He was my instructor in the last one. So I passed, what was it like three or four before then where you're doing the buddy stuff, passed all that.

But it's buddy stuff. You can always blame that on someone else. Oh, you were going to bolt. You were going to bolt. That wasn't during pool comp when you were going to bolt from the bottom. It was during gear exchange or something like that? No, it was right before. Ditch and don? It was when they give you kind of a like what this is going to be like. And so they give you like a pseudo pool comp before you do all the ditch and don stuff. And that was like the bolt moment. And so I do the ditch and don. I do all that. It's fine. And then I get to the final, you know, whatever the main one was. And he was my instructor. Mm-hmm.

And he put the boots to me. And so, and honestly, to this day, I failed, right? So I fail. I, whatever, I get rolled. And that's when I roll into 4-1. Lave COIC.

I think he wished he wasn't the OIC of my class. Because I still would say. - Because you were in it. - Yeah, I mean, and even, I would still challenge Leif. And not like overtly, but I would like, hey Leif, this seems pretty stupid. And he'd be like, you know, and I'm 18, and with my great ideas, and he'd be, and he was a mature LT. Like he'd spent time in the Navy. - Yeah, he was in the fleet, yeah. - And so he would be like, Matt, you just, and Leif's a really like pretty calm individual, but I know in my life I have taken him to a few of his limits.

And so anyway, so we go all the way through to pool comp again. And that instructor is my instructor every single time. Really? He never breaks. And there was a one time where he had another instructor, but he joined him.

And so I knew this was wrong. And this is, again, it's buds or team guys. And so the teams are letting this happen. But thank God the SEA, the E8, and the OIC figured it out towards the end.

I first timed every time to it all the way. And then I failed three, like what is it? You get three or four chances. Yeah. So then I failed it twice in a row. And that was like a red flag to them. And they're like, Hey, how many times has Matt passed? And I, I live on unquestionably first time, every time, like I was super comfortable. Now I had practiced, I'd been under the water. Like we'd been hammering each other. Like I was good.

And so, you know, they had the big windows under the pool and so they watched. And so I get my final pool comp and he just, he works me hard, but I'm ready. I do well, like I crush it. And so he gives me the whammy knot. And so I had a deep breath and I remember this. Echo Trial's whammy knot is you got your dive gear on and eventually they're going to give you a problem. They give you all these problems that you have to solve underwater. And eventually they give you a problem that you can't solve, which is a knot in your gear knot.

with the, with the hoses that bring air to your mouth, they give you a problem that can't be solved and they call it the whammy knot. Yeah. And it's just something you can't undo. And so I look at it, I play with it. I've got this deep breath and I'm like, this is it. So whammy knot. So, you know, you fold up my gear, I do it all perfectly. I get to the top, you know, and I'm like, Hey, divers, okay. Or whatever you say. And he's like, fail. And I literally I'm blown away. And I'm like, how is that possible? And he was like, you didn't try to take a breath.

And I was like, bro. And so this is Friday. And so I'm like, that's it. You know, Bud's dream is over. I remember we went to chow after that and I called my mom and I was like, cause I didn't know who else to call. Right. I'm 18 years old. There's nobody else to talk to. Like, okay. I call my mom and I'm like, Hey, I think it's done. Like, dude, I'm literally fighting back tears. Like dream is over.

And so it gets to Monday. I go to the board and they're like, hey, Matt, here's the deal. We've never done this. I've never seen this happen. But we watched you. We're not going to roll you. We're not going to roll you. We're just going to push you forward. And they're like, and they didn't make excuse for the instructor. They're like, what's going to be? I said, Roger that. And I continue training. Damn. Check. Good times.

Land Warfare, you roll out all good, San Clemente Island. When you went through, did you graduate from Bud's? Like the big, was the big graduation from Bud's? So you had the big ceremony and the big flag and all that stuff for graduating from Bud's. Yeah, we did Bud's and then the SQT where you got your trident because we got our trident SQT. That was the private ceremony at the SQT building. And they give you your bird. So now-

When you get done with buds, they basically like, you hit the surf, they give you a certificate that says you graduated and then you go to SQT. There's no ceremony whatsoever. Now it's you graduate from SQT and it's a big ceremony with the families and all that, the big flag and all. And you get your bird that day too. Yeah. Which is different than it used to be. So how was SQT?

SQT was actually good by this point. Once I got out of Bud's, like I kind of figured it out. Like I grew up, I don't know what clicked. Bud's was a hard run for me. Like, again, I was immature most of the time. Like there's stories Leif can tell you where, like I said, I think the most angry I've ever seen Leif was when I made him angry. And I know I've told you the story before, like in second phase.

- Oh yeah, you like somehow took his life jacket. He's looking for his life jacket. - Yeah, 100%. And I told him I didn't have it and then we were late and that was the only time he's ever like got super pissed at me, left, was so mad to came back to yell at me again. - Dude, well I remember angry Leif, dude. I mean, you're like, oh Leif's really calm. Like dude, he's calm now. He would have a temper for sure.

you know, especially like something goes wrong and you know, cause the thing is life cares about stuff, you know? And when you care about something and it's, someone's doing something that's counter to what you care about, like you're going to get pissed off and frustrated and you know, not nothing crazy, but like I definitely, you know, I would give him shit because you know, his poker face, like we'd be talking to the boss or something like that.

And the boss would say something and maybe, you know, maybe it wasn't the best idea or something, or maybe he was going to negatively, like we're gonna have to work. I don't know. We got to stay for the weekend or something. Uh,

or just didn't make sense and you could see like Leif's face would just like start going red and I'd be like we'd walk out I'd be like bro your poker face is terrible he's like oh man well that's bullshit like that guy yeah this doesn't make any sense I'm like I know it doesn't but like let's let's figure that out outside so I always gave Leif a hard time and you know to this day we joke about angry Leif um

Yeah. So I can imagine, I can imagine angry life visiting upon, visiting upon immature Matt. If I was going to talk about angry life, I'd have to talk about freaking immature Matt, which is definitely a, another character in this whole, this whole jam. Yeah. They went, they went hand in hand. Oh, freaking awesome. Um,

But no challenge or anything at SQT? No. Honestly, SQT went fine with the exception of one thing. When we did SQT, we had like this big land warfare. And we did it with a buddy first. And then I remember... What do you mean land nav? Land nav. I'm sorry. Yeah. Land nav. And so...

We do land nav and I had my buddy and I was pretty good. I picked it up pretty quick. And so my buddy just kind of followed me and I was running it all day and it was fine. He, he let me and I wanted to, right. And so it was not a big deal. And then the next day was by yourself. And so, and I just blew it out. Like I found almost nothing.

And the whole day before, like I was crushing it, like terrain nabbing, not using compass sometimes, just walking into these. And I mean, it's literally a stake in the ground. You know, like you can't see it. It's a very small thing. Were you guys in Alaska? No. Or were you in Laguna? Laguna. Laguna. And I almost found nothing. And so the SQT guys are like, oh, we found your weakness. Like you're not able to land nab.

And I literally couldn't figure it out. And then I remember in the spot, he's like, Matt, go find this point right now. And I couldn't find it. And it was supposed to be like 30 feet away for the life of me. I couldn't find it. And I was like, oh my God, I did it again. Like, I can't figure this out. So the next day comes final land nav test.

Like what you just had like an epiphany. No, I don't know what happened to this day. I do not know what happened that day. I don't know if I messed the declination up on my compass and I was kind of, you know, a few degrees off in anything, but you know, I do my thing. I make sure everything's solid. And I mean, I moved through that thing. Cause I was like, what if I don't find any extra time? And I was done by like 11 a.m. Yeah. Crushed it. Like no big deal. And they were like, well, I guess you figure it out, Matt. And I was like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, sure. I'll take it.

Like whatever makes me a Navy SEAL. Let's do it. So then you end up going to team three. Yep. How many guys from your from your like SQ? Was it a pretty good crew of guys? Was it like 10, 15 guys going to team three? I think it was like exactly like I think 14 or 15. Yep. And did you go right into a platoon? Yep. I immediately got to team three, got immediately put in Charlie platoon.

And Charlie Platoon at this time, the crew that you had in there, the crew that you had in there, dude, your platoon commander is a freaking epic dude. Just an epic dude. And like a maniac. Like just a maniac. Awesome. In the best positive way. Just like a maniac stud athlete. Just a freaking awesome dude.

and a maniac, your platoon chief is like another maniac. And again, I mean that in the best possible way. And when you have, you know, so normally in a platoon, and they set them up this way on purpose, like when you get to, when you're organizing platoons at a team, you'll be like, oh, I've got Echo Charles. He's a wild guy.

and I'm going to put him with Matt because Matt is more straight and narrow, and you pair them up. And you do that, try and do that with everything. Like, you know, Echo's really good at land warfare, but Matt's really good at CQC, so we can put them together. Or, you know, Matt's deployed to Iraq a bunch of times, but Echo's deployed to Afghanistan, so we put him. So that's what you do. You're building like a complementary platoon, and there's checks and balances too. So you end up with like, oh, a guy that's a little bit more,

let's say tight and a little, you know, Boy Scout and Hell's Angel, right? You want a Boy Scout chief and a Hell's Angel OIC or a Boy Scout OIC and a Hell's Angel. So, you know, you just kind of put it together. But you had this freaking Hell's Angel, Hell's Angel in that platoon. And so how was that rolling into that? It was...

I mean, and I thought all platoons were like that in the very beginning because I was like, it was all throttle, all gas, no brake. Like, it was, you know, because the OIC, he was the first officer I said, two full sleeves, covered in tattoos, and like, unlike any officer I'd seen before. The chief was, he was like, he was like kind of like, because the chief to a new guy, basically their dad. But like...

just no holds barred. He was either going to, you know, punch you in the back of the head or teach you exactly how to do it the right way every single time. And you'll never forget the lesson ever again.

And so it was, honestly, it was great. And then of course our new guys were like, you know, you've had Bob Holland on here, Chris Kyle. Well, those were, I'm sorry. I had new guys, the one platooners, which were absolute status. Yeah. And cause they just got back from their platoon being a new guy and they're like, Oh, meat. Yeah. It's like prison, like fresh meat. And you're there, you're like, Oh yeah, whatever you want. And so, um,

Yeah. It was, it was for not like a fantastic platoon. And the funny thing is I almost got pulled from it because I wasn't supposed to be in Charlie. Apparently I was supposed to be an alpha and Z got ahold of me. Z picked me. Z was the chief. Yes. Z was the chief. We'll call him Z. Yeah. Freudian. He was the chief and he picked me cause I was a, a leadership challenge. Yeah.

like I, I got good marks from SQT, but when buds are like, Matt, Matt's, he's going to argue. Like, so he's like, Hey, he actually wanted this leadership challenge, but they're like, Hey, he's squared away, but you're going to have to do some work. And so he's like, great. And he's going to put in work for sure. And so, um, he, he, he picked me and, uh,

They figured out that we were in the wrong platoon. It was actually me and a good buddy of mine, still to this day is a good friend of mine. And they were going to switch us. And Z, he was like, hey, do you want to switch? I was like, no, I like this. Like, even though like the one platooners are scary and you and Rob are like no holds barred, like it was kind of my personality already. So I was like, I like it here. So he pulled me in and that became my platoon. And what was your job?

In that first platoon. I had two jobs. I was in the ordinance and then the air department. And air was my primary. Ordinance was my secondary. And then we got a couple other guys. And then we had to pick. So I just got put in the air department. One of the new guys, he was the primary in ordinance. He stayed primary. I stayed secondary ordinance. So basically all I had to do was when I went down there, I had to help him with inventories. But my primary department was air. So my first school was radio school. And would you walk in the platoon? Were you a pig gunner?

Yes. Well, so when I, yeah, because when I got to the platoon, the chief was like, hey, do you want to go to comm school? I did not want to go to comm school.

And I know you were a comms guy and I get it. And I just, there's a reason I wanted to go. And there's a reason you didn't. I know. And so the war by this also, like the war was starting to kind of kick off. And I was like, I want a radio. I don't want to have to be by somebody and have them use the radio. And so I was like, I remember the conversations like, do you want to go? And I said, whatever you want me to do, I'll do. And he was like, but do you want to do? And I just repeated it again. And he's like, Matt, you're really making this hard. And I was like,

Chief, whatever you need, I'll do. And he's like, you're going to be a pig gunner then. I was like, roger that. Did he give the comm school to one of the other new guys? Yeah. That ended up being the comm guy? Rex. Yeah. All right. So now how's workup? Besides freaking off the rails crazy. The funny thing, like when you do a workup, you realize like how like everybody's kind of relearning a cycle. So when we went through training, it wasn't like,

like when you started running trade at like how like professional it turned into like

Back then, there wasn't a lot of checks and balances. So I remember we got to our first block, which was Salk. So we're running around cities. And so it's very different when you're carrying a pig in the city than when you are at Land Warfare. And the heavy machine gun, the only time I'd ever shot one before I was a heavy machine gunner was an SQT, and I just did a FAM shoot. You shoot like, what, 200 rounds? So you had no freaking call. Nothing. Nothing.

So I remember I get the gun and they're like, cool, load up an ammo. So I load it up and I'm like, hey, how do I put this ammo on the gun? There was no box.

And then my, the old guys. And I remember Bobby too, because he was a head pig gunner and he was like, where's your box? And I remember I was like, what's a box. And he's like, you don't know. And I had no clue what this box is. And so I was like, no. And then I got kind of mad and this was, this was not great. And so I, I remember I got, you know, um,

We have to like do this weird thing throughout the day where it's kind of like strung around an arm like Rambo and the links are right. It's horrible. So we get done with the day and there get the new guys in. None of the new guys had box. One guy did because Bobby had a box and his, his new guy was the one who got Bob's extra box. There was no other ones. Chris was now a sniper and he was like, well, I didn't bring my box.

And so I was like, great. And so they're kind of laying into me. And I remember I kind of snapped. I'm like, why the hell would I know? In my 20-second fam shoot? Yeah.

And I, you know, when you say something, you want to take it back because I see the fire in the old guy's eyes as they were like, oh, he spoke up. And I was like, oh, that wasn't. That's your first trip. Yeah. Very first. Running your sock on your first trip ain't going to go good for a brother. Yeah. And I remember, I remember I had about three people almost inside my face within 10 seconds and immediately like back down, regretted it, paid for it a little bit.

And then I went about building a box out of like whatever like scrap material I could find and then ran the rest of the trip with it. Never let that happen again. And every single trip for the rest of my career when the new guys were going, I'm like, do you have a box? And so, yeah, that was trip one. Was there any big challenges that you faced during CQC or anything like that or land warfare? CQC was good. Like I really enjoyed CQC. Kind of clicked like the –

You know, the geometry of it going through, like... And I took it to heart. Like, I was that guy that if I made a misstep going in the house when the day was ended, I would just stay at the kill house and I would go 100 times each leg going through the front door. Like, I loved it. Lamb Warfare, I could run the gun, but...

As a new guy, I remember this trip. I was, you know, you get new guys, instructors put a lot of pressure, put a lot of stress on them. And I remember I had this one instructor chasing me around. So I'm running the heavy gun. It's probably 120 degrees. So I'm just keeping it going. I'm keeping it. And he is on top of me.

He's like, Matt, let's get this going. Get your gun up. And I just can't. Guns up. Guns up. Yeah. I can't keep it going fast enough. And he is all over me. And you know exactly the person I'm talking about. And he is legendary for lamb warfare. Yeah.

And I remember. And legendary for like getting in your head. Yeah. Like he's going to get in your head. Part of your training is like him. Yeah. If you can not fight him and nobody does, but like, that's like you made it, you know, like, and I remember he was, he was chasing me and I had 100 rounds left. And so I had to put it in my box. And I remember he's like, get it loaded up.

And then I just threw it out onto the range. I just took the range. I just threw it out on the range and I looked at him and I was like, two things are going to happen. We're going to fight or you're going to stop yelling at me. I didn't say that, but I just knew those were one of the two things that were going to happen. And a miracle. He walked out. He picked up my rounds. He handed them to me. He didn't say a word.

And then he just shifted focus to somebody else. And I think he's like, okay, that one's done. And so that was, and I remember I got back and, you know, the chief is like, Hey Matt, come here. What's up chief. And he's like, so you can't be throwing your rounds out in the desert. Like, Hey, part of our job is being cool under pressure. They do this on purpose. And again, like why I say like chief is dad, he did a great job. I actually, they didn't crush me for that. They were just like, Hey, learning lesson. Yeah.

When you're stressed like that, you don't get to break. And I was like, hey, check. And it never happened again. There you go.

What was where'd you guys go on deployment you guys didn't you this was when we were rotating through so you do half your deployment in the Pacific theater no war and then half your deployment in Iraq and again the weird thing is is because everyone thought the war was gonna be over we better get everyone to Iraq we get the chance get people to Iraq and everyone to Iraq it's is a little bit of the fair fairy right yeah like it doesn't make sense to be

To be like, okay, we'll send this platoon for three months to Iraq. And then we'll bring a different platoon for three months. That doesn't make sense. The only way you can justify it is, well, we want to get more guys to Iraq. So we'll send them there for three months. But that's what we did. That's what you guys did. Yeah. And so we went to Zamboanga. The old PI. And so we're on this base buried in the Philippines. Like deep in the Philippines. There ain't nothing around. And it was...

because all the snipers went to Iraq and this is when Fallujah kicked off. So we're reading after actions. And Chris is in your platoon. Yeah. Chris Kyle, but for those of you that don't know, so Chris is in your platoon and he's one of your snipers and, and he talks shit like with the best of them. He's right up there, dude. He will freaking bring it.

And so now he's over there along with the other, the other snipers that you guys have. Oh yeah, totally. He's over there. He's just doing God's work. And we're just reading all these after actions about like him, Smurf and all these guys. And they're just like these epic battles. Cause Fallujah, it's Fallujah. Yeah. And we're in Zambo and we're just working out every day and sweating it out. We live, I, we lived in a hut down by the water and I say hut, I mean hut. It was just like, it was surrounded by chicken wire and,

It was 90 degrees by 7:00 AM, like sucked. And so we're, it's like a good time while you're absolutely miserable 'cause all you want in life is to be in the mix.

And we're reading these and we're depressed. And during this time, the leadership pair did a good job at like they would rotate us up to Manila. And we'd stay in a nice hotel, get good meals, and just like blow off steam so we weren't in this hut. And we'd do about once a month. They'd keep at least two guys would rotate together. And so, yeah, it was long, but...

It was, all it was, was just, just waiting to get to Iraq. Just kind of like building up, steaming. Yeah. And then you get there. So then you, you do three months in the Pacific and then it's boom, over to Iraq. And where'd you guys go? Baghdad? Yep. Yep. We rolled right into Baghdad. And then what was your, what was your mission?

We were DAs, thank the Lord, because our sister platoon went to do the PSD mission. And so they were protecting, I don't know, whoever. And we got DAs. Now, that doesn't surprise me with who our chief and who our OIC was. If anybody's not doing the PSD mission, it's them. And then again, our platoon was... I didn't realize this till later. We were monsters. We were made up of like...

Perfect element of like monsters. Like there wasn't somebody in the platoon of like 90% that was like, um, you know, a question mark. It was, you built this platoon to go wreak havoc. And so, yeah, we just, we did a ton, a ton of DAs. Um, yeah. What was your, what was your job on a DA? So luckily right before we deployed, um,

I got the opportunity to skip pre-deployment, leave, and go to breacher school. So they asked all the new guys. They're like, hey, you never get a school as a new guy. Like I went to a rigorous school where I learned how to pack parachutes as a new – it was my only school. Yeah.

And so they're like, hey, there's these spots. And all four new guys in our platoon took them. They're like, we've got four spots. Who wants to go to Breacher School? So we all skipped pre-deployment leave, went to Virginia, went to Breacher School. And I mean, it was awesome. But I couldn't think of a better thing to do during pre-deployment leave than go play with explosives for a month. Yeah. You finally got to make bombs for real. Exactly. And I was like, oh, I'm in my element.

And so I got out there. I was a breacher and I was a new guy. And on our very first mission, the chief came to me and he's like, hey, you're lead breacher tonight. Hell yeah. And I was like, oh. How freaking pumped were you, dude? Like, I was super pumped and then super scared. Because it wasn't that I knew, like, you just don't want to make a mistake. Like, it's showtime, right? And I had never been outside the wire. I had never seen bad guy land. I was on base. Mm-hmm.

And so now we're going into bad guy land, never having seen things. And I'm about to be the lead breacher. And I remember. That is a lot. It is a lot, right? And so, but what was funny about that first time was it didn't go as planned. So I'm in the courtyard. I'm getting ready to put the explosives on the door. And we had to climb over the fence. And the chief was coming over the fence and fell into the gate.

And so those metal gates, so it's like, boom. And so everything's up. And so me and one of the old guys who was in the courtyard with me, we look at each other and we're like, okay, we better get this on. And so as I'm going to put the strip on the door, dude answers the door.

And then, you know, it's that moment of realization where he looks at you and you look at him and you're like, oh, and both of us, I think, had the exact same expression, like kind of surprised, but kind of like something's about to happen. And so then I just instinctively like spear him, you know, and I'm in the house now. And then it turns into a huge, massive flood and it's chaos. But yeah.

It went down and, you know, no factor. We do. I do another bridge. But yeah, that first one was did not go as planned. Like I had it planned out my head. And then I think I'm wrestling the guy with explosives in my hand and like trying to make sure I don't blow myself up and crazy. Good times. That's the way it goes down.

First off. And what was your op tempo like? Were you guys going every day, every couple days? Was it pretty good op tempo as far as doing hits? It wasn't Ramadi for sure. But I would say two to three times a week. So we were busy. Because it was early in the war. There were lots of targets. And we were chasing everything down. You remember you get intel on somebody, you were there within hours. And so we were...

We were turning and burning. And it was awesome because I got so much. Like, I was the breacher. He gave me... The older guys would breach, but we would do two to three hits a night sometimes. And so they would give us a lot of runs at being breachers. So we got to do a lot of hits, a lot of blowing indoors. And so it just made us really good. Yeah. Hell yeah. But that was only a three-month period. And it was time to go home. Yep. It was quick. And so did that. Went back to the beach. Went...

When did you and your new guy brethren, because you would get called, your little crew would get called the sisters kids, right? Did that come from that platoon or did it pick up when the next platoon? No, that was that platoon. So where we got that name is when we were doing a workup, and this was where Breacher School locks in, is...

We were doing our final FTX. And so we, you remember, we used to get locked down on base and this would be a base out in Southern California. And it was kind of for the most part vacant, like just a bunch of buildings left, left vacant. And so we'd be out there for 10 days, nothing else to do. And so you just sit around and this is before like cell phones had TV and all that other stuff. So like you're reading a lot of books.

And so we would drive around this empty base, essentially, and there would be like old base housing and old buildings. And so we're like, hey, what's happening? And they're like, oh, I think they're going to tear all this down. And so we're like, cool. Let's get a head start. Yep. Let's help the cause. So one afternoon we get done and we're bored and we're like, hey, let's go out in the base and practice breaching.

And shockingly enough, from like an objective point of view, nobody said anything as all the new guys got all the breaching equipment, all the sledgehammers, the hoolies, the chainsaws, the quickie saws. And we loaded them up into trucks and not trucks, Humvees. And then we just drove away. Like we're no checks and balances. And the thing is, I remember the guys watching us and just being like, yeah, cool, man. I don't know what's going on.

And then we proceeded to rip the lid off of that base. And we, I remember, and it was like, I think we breached every single door in a four block area. And, you know, they have those like duplexes. And it would be, we would breach it and then we go inside and then we breach those doors. And then we drove a Humvee through a sliding glass door of a building into the living room.

And then we videotaped all of this, by the way. And then we have a videotape of a toilet getting thrown out of the second story window onto the ground. And then three more times. And then my face coming out and be like, did you get that? And just the most damning evidence. And then they had these old houses that they hadn't moved away that were on pillars.

So like geniuses, we took sledgehammers to those pillars and knocked those houses off, which almost crushed us. Inconsequently, we like jumped out of the way all on video. And so and so we think again, we think we're doing nothing wrong. We're like, hey, this is old. Like nobody cares what we do here. And just echo to give you some context. Like so you go to these bases that are shut down and you'll go and do a hit.

on one of these buildings and you will legitimately breach the doors, trash the thing, freaking do whatever you're going to do. And you know, it's a house and there's, there's a hundred more of them. And so in your mind, you're like, well, yeah, we did this yesterday to a random house. Like, oh, okay, let's go practice some more. Cause it is, it is practice. It's also like, if you're freaking Matt Hasby and you're a breacher, it's like fun, you know, that's like,

There's something about breaking glass, like breaking shit. And you're like, oh, it's fun. And so technically speaking, it's I'm just trying to explain. It's not like you were in some like neighborhood. You're in you're in a place where this is what happens. This is what happens. You know, we used to have it down here by the.

But by in San Diego, there's places that are condemned areas. Well, we used to go and train in those areas and we do this exact same thing. Freaking drive home these through front doors like we would do that stuff. And so this is I'm just trying to give you some context. Echo Charles about like where this is coming from. This is totally normal. And.

I guess it wasn't quite as normal as you hoped it was because at some point, what happened? Well, so we learned. So there was a Navy CB, one of those guys that fix everything up, who was taking pictures of us from like afar. So there's like these grainy UFO looking pictures that made its way back while we were training like the next day. And then it became into question how dilapidated and how like abandoned these buildings were.

And I know today they're still abandoned. So they weren't, but I think it got pulled into like, Hey, we may have to use these in the future. And so then it got real, real fast and it went all the way up. It went all the way to the CEO. And then it was like, Pete, they wanted heads. They were going to fire people.

And luckily our senior enlisted advisor at the time was the ops master chief of the team. And so we had some pull and because, and he's, he's freaking good to go and he's going to look out for the boys. Yeah. I mean, he's legendary. And so he gets in front of it and he,

At the time, the Master Chief, he was, our nickname for him was the Milkman because when he put his Master Chief hat on, he looked exactly like a milkman. But he was not like a boy type leader. He was very rule, very rule driven. And so he's like, hey, we got to fire them all. And first of all, the chief's like, you can't, I mean, literally clean me out of new guys. We'll be undeployable.

Like, we'll have 12 dudes. And so he was like, well, then tell me what happened. He's like, I sent him on breacher training. And our chief got in front of it. And he took the entire hit. Now, that's also not free. And so he saved us. We essentially got a slap on the wrist. Nothing happened from the team. It was not so much inside the platoon. And I will say, though, by the next day, a couple of black eyes and shaved heads. Yeah.

And we were training again. And the platoon was tasked to solve the problem, which they happily did. All right. So then you do that deployment that you did half in PI, half in Iraq. You come back from that. And then you roll into your second platoon, sticking with Charlie platoon. Mm-hmm.

This is going to be now tasking a bruiser. Yep. So, BTF Tony comes in as your platoon chief. Leif takes over as the platoon commander. I come in as the task unit commander. You keep a bunch of the one platoon guys stayed, including Chris, Bobby, and a few others. And then...

You guys, oh, so where'd you get the nickname The Sisters Kids? That was that. That was the incident? Because it was like, you know, when you're like, gosh, my sister's kids are always causing problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get that part. And that was really where that was born, was that incident, was we kind of became The Sisters Kids. Yeah, so you had, what was it? There's three or four of you guys. There was four of us, yeah. Four of you guys that were The Sisters Kids. And that's kind of...

how I remember being introduced to you guys because your chief became the SEA for Task Unit Bruiser and so then I kind of got the brief on you guys like, oh yeah, they're freaking great guys, but

But they're gonna, you know, we gotta keep an eye on them and whatnot. And so that's what happens. So now you roll in and then by the way, and then you get now your new guys of which you got bagels and you got Johnny Kim who, uh, you know, we've talked about on here before and then a few other new guys as well. Uh, so you, you roll into that. Um, what's your, what's your impression when, when the transition happens?

I mean, so we were stoked just to not be new guys. It was a rough go. And the thing is, like, we turned in kind, of course. Spanked kids spank kids. And so I think...

Johnny Kim wasn't super pumped about that. But yeah, we were just not being the new guys anymore. We were like, we finally have the power. And the thing is, it was kind of stolen from us because back in the day, you did your one platoon and then most of those guys left. But we kept a ton of our one platooners who are now two platooners. And so then we got like this middle, we became these middle half new guys, half one platooners where we still had Chris and Bob and some other guys. And we're like, damn it. We thought we would like get the power. Yeah.

And so we always still had somebody's like, we're always still under somebody's thumb. And so probably a little bitter about that. And so, uh, yeah, it was good though. We were, we were stoked. Um,

And then you end up, well, like I said, you end up with some checks and balances because, you know, you got BTF Tony, who's a freaking maniac. And but then Leif, you know, who's like, you know, he's going to he's going to pull the reins in. Right. You have the SEA, who's a maniac. But then you have me and I'm going to pull the reins. And so you end up with a little bit more checks and balances.

Not that it was always perfect because there's still wild things that are going to happen, but that's kind of how we rolled into tasking a bruiser. And then our first trip was land warfare, and we start getting after it. Yeah. I mean, it was awesome. Like I said, when I thought we were monsters in the first one, they held nothing. The second one was aggressive and brutal.

I remember being kind of nervous about Leif coming in. Leif and I had history. It wasn't bad history, but it wasn't like, you know, like you said, I was young. Leif was hot. And so when he came in, I was like, uh-oh. And no, it was good. And Leif held the line, man. Like we did not mess around. We weren't allowed to be slow. Like, yeah, it was rough. I hadn't, I'd been to sniper school, but they made me,

carry a heavy gun for land warfare and I did it with absolute hate and discontent like I was pissed and

Because I went to sniper school, I learned sniper skills, and I'm like, I've got to get away from that damn gun. And then they're like, hey, it's land warfare, you're going to carry a heavy gun. And I was like so pissed. But then I ended up, I ran it well, so I got put in Leif's squad. And Leif would even talk about it. He'd be like, dude, you'd pull away from me when we were running. That's impressive. I was like, dude, I was so goddamn angry. Like, that's the only thing that ran that gun. Fueled by hate. That was it. 100% hate of that gun. But yeah, no, it was good.

And BTF Tony, who was like born at Nyland. So he's just like freaking. I mean, and he's an absolute tactician. Like he knew everything that was going on, but he loved Nyland to like a scary point.

Because I remember, you know, we'd have the workup and then those like after workup trips and all that. And he would start planning them to go to Nyland. And we're like, oh, God, no. And he's like, guys, Nyland's the greatest training environment imaginable. True statement. And it is, right? It is, objectively. But, you know, this was also early in the war, lots of money. Like we were like, we wanted to go to Tennessee and Kentucky and Washington, D.C. and all these like super fun places. Tony's like, no, the desert. That's where we need to be.

And I was like, so it was, you couldn't learn from a better person though. Yeah. Um, yes. When, when, uh, Johnny Kim showed up at Nyland is the first trip and he showed up late cause he was a new guy that, you know, you mentioned new guys don't get any schools and that's totally true except for Johnny Kim somehow gets to go to sniper school. And so he shows up late to Nyland and, uh,

Remember I just talked to the Chiefs all three of them like hey guys don't be doing any dumb shit Like we don't we don't know the new guys like if you have if you have hazing taking place and the new guy ends up being Not you don't want the guy in the in the team then he can kind of hold that over you right so you can put yourself in a precarious position and

So we had kind of had that conversation. I'm talking to chiefs like, Hey guys, like just freaking be professional with these new guys, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Says the task unit commander. I literally walk inside cause we were out on the range having that conversation. I walk inside and I,

Think it was Chris actually is like like hey Kim go meet the commander and Johnny's like looking around has no idea what's going on and he's right there and he points at me and Johnny comes running over and I look at him, you know, like hey man nice to meet you and he looks back at me He's like it's great to meet you. So you could see who I was like, dude He looks like a little shocked right now and then I look in and like there's hair. Oh

There's like hair, like he's got a hat on, but there's like hair on his collar. And I go good. And I just knew I was like, they just freaking beat his ass and shaved his head. And I was like, it's good to meet you too, dude. Like welcome aboard. And I was just like, God, this is how it's going to be. There was no greater sin that Johnny could commit than going to sniper school without his input to that. Like he just got sent and we came, we're like, Oh, you think you're awesome. Yeah.

And, you know, we're all mad. And so because we went to sniper school, but because they needed snipers so much in Iraq, they made another sniper school. And it was just for like a lot of the team three guys. And we went through all the sniper, went through the trainings. We had the sniper suites. We had the guns. JP and I went through it and we got a lot of work, but we didn't get any of the love. Like we were kind of like the bastard kids of like that went through this alternate sniper school where they're like, well...

You know, we did pit. We did all that stuff. But they're like, well, you didn't go through the other one. So we're not going to know if we're going to count it. And we're like, bro. And so. So Johnny gets the real deal. And then Johnny coming with the real deal. We were just like, don't think that you're going to. You're coming here special, Kim. You know. And such a humble guy, too, which makes it worse. Because you're almost more irritated about that. Because you're like. That's the way things work. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

Yeah, so we another thing you started showing up because I I would never make the e-dogs do jiu-jitsu because I I feel like that's imposing, you know, like the I don't impose the power structure over the boys but for officers I felt differently like if you're gonna be an officer near to my task, you know, you're to work from you're gonna how to fight and so I you know, like officers 0500

at the team, mats are out, and we're training jiu-jitsu. But, you know, some of the e-dogs heard about that. Of course, an open invite. So you started coming up. What made you, how'd you roll into that scenario? So it was when Leif and Stoner did the kumite at Nyland. And I remember like...

It was almost like a fight was happening. I remember walking down the hallway at the desert training center and you hear like all this crazy, like cheering, like it's literally like a cockfight in there, you know? And so you're like, Oh, what's going on? I got to get in there. And Leif and Stoner are like in this,

almost pseudo unskilled like death battle. Oh, for sure. And so, yeah. And so I was like, Oh, this is awesome. And so I saw that. And then like, that was it. Like from then, like I, that's when we started training. Like we, we trained out there are five thirties in the, the, the breezeway at team three. I still remember, I can still like vividly to this day. Remember like turning the corner,

And it always sucked when you beat us because you'd be like disappointed. Because, you know, it's 530. You're trying to get there. You're making it. And you, of course, are up at like four. And so you're like standing out in the breezeway waiting for people. And you like turn the corner to like see if I can beat Jocko. And you're standing there like, damn it. And you're like, hey. And you're like, well, glad you showed up finally. I was almost ready to leave. And you're like, I know. I'm sorry. Anything else from workup that you remember?

Because you didn't really have any, like there was no like challenges or anything like that. I mean, once you get done with your first workup, the second one's going to be, should be pretty smooth. There's not like, oh, I made it through CQC or land warfare and now I'm not going to make it. That doesn't happen very often. No, it was outside. The only, we had what, Mark Lee join us halfway through. Mm-hmm.

And no, that honestly was the most fun workup that we had. Like, that was awesome. Like, awesome. The stories are still legendary. Yeah. And we were kicking ass too. So it's like the trade at guys when you're doing good and you know this from being in trade at when the when the troop is doing good like trade at's

Having a good time too when the troop is doing bad trade. It's pissed and everything sucks And it's like this the whole thing turns into a nightmare but when you're kicking ass and trade that's freaking stoked and you're working like you want to work as Harder than trade at once or they go hey we want to stay do more and they're like okay cool like Right on keep getting after it so yeah, it was all good. It was all good a good time good workup lots of chaos Never-ending

- So we were supposed to go to Baghdad. And you guys were actually on pre-deployment leave. And the CO, I was at work and the CO was like, "Hey, I gotta talk to you." I go down there into his office and he's like, "Hey, we're reorganizing Iraq as far as SEALs go. "And we're gonna put all Iraq in Western Iraq "so we're all unified under one element

And that means you, instead of going to Baghdad with your task unit, we want you to go to Ramadi instead. And I was like, you know, trying to act calm, you know, trying to be like, Oh, that sounds like, and I was like, yes, sir. If that's what needs to happen. And inside I was like, hell yeah. Because Ramadi, you know, was really bad at the time. And I figured really bad place is really good for us to go. And you, we didn't, we actually thought the opposite. We thought you got, you got ranked and,

And so we want, cause we thought if we went to Baghdad, we're supposed to work with like their tier one. Cause remember at the time we had to take out the, the locals with us. And so we're like, I went on pre, pre-deployment assessment. So I went,

and worked with those guys. It was the ICTF, it was the Iraqi Counter Terror Force and the SEA. We both, we went and we went, worked it like up with those guys and like started doing the turnover and started getting all the word. And so it was really locked in that that's where we were going.

So I cut you off. But just to let everyone know, that's what was happening. We were definitely going there. Yeah, and that's what we thought. We were super pumped. We're like, oh, these guys operate all the time. We had all the words from our buddies. Because we didn't really know anything about Ramadi. And obviously, we weren't doing the homework either. Yeah. See, I did know what was going on in Ramadi. So that's why I was like, oh, hell yeah. And now looking back, we're like, thank God. But at the time, yeah, we were just like...

we're not going to baghdad ramadi's gonna suck we're not gonna work and then it was very much the opposite very much the opposite so at at some point like at what point did you go oh we're going to a place that's going to be good did you or is that did you not have that calculation yeah oh we just got screwed yeah yeah all of like we were on the plane we're like this is gonna suck we're just gonna like it's not gonna be busy

And it didn't hit it. We were in Ramadi, which as you remember, it started happening real fast. The learning curve was fast on that one. Cause I'm thinking, cause I know I left, I don't even know if you guys were back from leave yet, but I don't know how much of a chance I even had to like brief you guys like, Hey, we're changing. We're going to Ramadi. And then I left with like lay, like a group of us left to go start turnover. Cause we had no done, no turnover.

But I was tracking, man. Like I knew as soon as the skipper said that to me, I was like, oh, oh yeah. Like it's on just because the Intel was crazy for Ramadi at that time. Not so much for the seals that were there and the seals that were there were doing what they were doing, but like just broadly speaking, it was freaking chaos there. And it was even, you know, when I was there in 04, when I was in Iraq in 04, Ramadi was kind of like, like Fallujah was definitely the, the, the worst, uh,

And then Ramadi was kind of its little brother. But then when the Marines pushed through Fallujah and cleaned it out, well, first of all, before they pushed through, a lot of those insurgents left to Ramadi anyways. And then once they had pushed through Fallujah, Fallujah was much more settled down. And now Ramadi became the freaking, the hotbed of chaos there. So I knew that. And so I was freaking pumped. But apparently I didn't do a good job of explaining that to you guys, which is no, you know, that's the way it is.

Yeah. You guys were gone. So we show up there, you show up there. What do you remember? Like, what was it like when you, at what point did you go? Oh, so it was, we showed up and we still think like, this is going to suck. And so I remember it was actually JP and I. And so we remember we went to Corregidor and,

And JP and I were. So wait, you got there and we're going to Corregidor and you still weren't like, oh, damn. Yeah. We went to Corregidor though within like a day or two. Like we still. And the thing is, it may have not have all been on you at this point. I'm 23. Like you saying it's bad doesn't equate to it's bad because we're also getting a turnover with the other seals and they didn't work as much. Yeah.

And so we're like, dude, these guys didn't work. I know, you know, it's probably Jocko's like, hey, it's gonna be great. We don't believe him. He's just pumping us up. And so there's a point of like, we have to see it for ourselves. So regardless of if you said it or not, by this point, it doesn't matter. We have what we think is going to happen. And I remember the moment we like, it got kind of real was we were at Corregidor and JP and I were walking around the base and

And we went on the roof of this building. And so we were like walking around. We see these sandbags. And we're like, okay. We're like looking out in the city. No big deal. And so, you know, they used to have those, I forget what the structure is with the doorway on top of the buildings that were on there. You remember like you could walk through a door on a roof? Like you wouldn't have to go down. You would walk through a door and that's where the stairs were. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that. So we walk in the door. And right as we did it, we heard snap, snap.

And we're like, what did we just get shot at? And so then, like the 22-year-olds that we were, we step back out.

And then we wait and we snap back in. Snap, snap. Now it's a game. So we would jump out, jump back in. And then we snap. And then we were like, oh, they're active. It's not like we're getting stray voltage. There is someone out there trying to shoot us. And so we're like jumping in and out of this door, like making the sniper shoot at us. And just idiots. But that was the moment where I was like, okay, this may get a little real.

So the tower story that I told, what was that from your perspective? And so just like you said, like we get there. Chris was a worker, right? Chris is like, hey, how can we get work? So him and Leif and you, you all talk to the base leadership and we're like, how can we help? Can we get up some snipers in the towers? They're like, totally. So Chris gets up there and maybe one of the other snipers, it could have just been Chris. It was like one or two kills. And so we're like, oh, cool. Target rich environment. Get some.

And it would be in our spare time. So we were doing what basically the chapter one thing that night, you know, we're going out in the city. So I had like 10 hours to kill. So I go to the SCA and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go up in the tower and I'm just gonna see if I can get some. And it's the tower looking down. They had, they call it hell's alley. It was looking down the worst alleyway. And that's where they had gotten a couple of guys. And I was like, hey, I'm gonna go check it out. So I get up in this tower and

I start talking to these guys. It's probably 30 feet. You climb a ladder to get up there. And I start talking to these two army guys and just kind of like seeing what's going on. And I remember I asked him, I'm like, hey, you ever get hit with RPGs up here? And they're like, nah, man, never. And they're like, he's like, it hits at the bottom of the tower. And I was like, oh, okay, cool, cool.

And so I'm just like getting atmospherics. And as I'm talking to him, I'm looking down Hell's Alley and this dude in black, and it's probably three or 400 yards, this dude in black steps out, crouches down and then runs out of the alley. I was like, that was weird. And then I stepped sideways. And right as I did that, snap, this bullet goes by. And I was like, oh, you're gonna shoot at me. And so now like, I'm emotional about this. Cause I was like, oh, you're gonna shoot at me. Okay, all right, let's do this.

So I get on my sniper rifle and I am glass and means I'm just looking down my scope down this alleyway. And I'm like, because I am I'm going to arrange the meeting. And it was a classic, you know, look right, move left. And so as I'm on my gun, I start hearing that snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. And I mean, hundreds of snaps all of a sudden.

And it took me like a second to like be like, oh, this is us. And I remember I didn't even have time to like bend over to get down. I just let my knees buckle. And so as I let my knees buckle, I look up and it was that moment the RPG hit, blew my sniper rifle in half. And so I remember not even hitting the ground, falling back was like pieces of my sniper rifle are falling down on me.

And I'm like, okay. And so the tower itself is probably, I don't know, five foot, five feet around. And how you get up is like this three foot wooden door that you have to lift up to get down to use the stairs. But you have to stand up to lift up that door. There's not enough room to lift it up. So we're essentially trapped. Like we can't get down. And this other, the other, one of the two army guys looks at me and he's like, just chaos yelling. He's like, hey, if we take another RPG, we're dead.

Now, a whole bunch of expletives in there, but that's the gist of it. And so I'm like, okay, we have this crazy situation. And I look at the other army guy and his eyes are open. His mouth is open and he's just staring at the ceiling. And I'm like, oh no, he's dead. I was like, we're under attack. There's a dead guy up in this tower now. So I look at the other army guy and I'm like, hey, tell the other towers to start shooting.

And so with no radio composure, he's like, show, we need you guys to show. We need you to shoot right now. Shoot into the, you know, shoot into the city at the bad guys or whatever. And the calmest dude I've ever heard gets on the radio and is like, um, we don't see anything. So they set the ambush up so no other tower could see. And they're not just going to shoot into the city. You can't do that. And so what went in front of the city, I think, was the Euphrates. Mm-hmm.

And so I go. Oh, in front of the tower, there's a canal. Yes. It's a canal. It's not the Euphrates, but it's a canal. That's why that road was called Canal Street. Yes. And there's like a canal there. And it was like one of those things that would be like, sometimes there'd be water in it, like swampy water at the bottom. But it would also, the reason I remember it being dry as well, because sometimes it would be on fire sometimes.

So, but yeah, so you're overlooking Canal Street. You're right, because I'm confusing it with our base. So yes, I'm overlooking Canal Street. So I'm like, hey, tell them to shoot into the bank of the canal. Just start telling them to shoot their guns into the bank. So he's like, shoot in the bank of the canal. Shoot into the bank. You know, just like yelling. And finally, finally, I hear that sweet, sweet sound of American gunfire. That doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo. And all these pops. Da-da-da-da.

And so now the fighting stops. I'm like, okay, so now we can like try to get out of here. So I look at this dude in the middle and he's still just like blank, nothing. And I'm like, so I feel like his body, I feel under his body armor. There's no blood. And so I get on him and I'm like, I do what I think a medic would do. And I slap him in the face as hard as I can. When I do that, he starts to blink and he kind of comes out of it.

And I'm like, hey, like, we got to get the hell out of here. And so we opened the door. I grabbed what, like, I grabbed the sling of my sniper rifle. And we come down that ladder. Like, it's like the Three Stooges. Like you said, like, it's like we explode out the bottom. It's freaking good.

and I still, I remember you walking up to this day cause you were kind of like excited and you're like, Hey bro, did you get any? And I think I was like, hell no. And I was like, held up my rifle and I saw your face change where you're like, Oh, it was a little different up there. And I, and then the army guy holds up, I don't know if you remember this. He held up his, uh, like M four and the barrel was shaped like a C and it was, it had been blown up too. And, uh,

Yeah, that was crazy. And I take nothing from those guys because I went back up there probably an hour later.

They're back up there. That's what they're doing, man. Check on them and say, hey, you know, great meeting you two. I would rather be in the city any day than be in this damn tower. Yeah. There was one of the things I remembered while you were telling that story is that the weapon that you got engaged with, or at least one of the weapons that you got engaged with, was a Dishka heavy machine gun, which is, this is a very important part of the story because that's like a, it's the Russian equivalent of a .50 caliber machine gun.

And that's an important part of the story because you're about to get engaged by a .50 caliber machine gun from American forces. Which, again, I thought... It was like 10 hours later, right? It was like the next morning we're inserting. Yeah. Yeah. It was... Yeah. It was like 12 hours. Yeah. It was right on then because that was that late that afternoon. Yeah. And we were in that crazy, insane firefight before sunlight came up the next morning. Yeah. So...

All that stuff happens. Now we're all going out on this operation, which had been through a bunch of changes. It's a whole other story. But now we're going out on this operation and we've got, let's see, we got an element, a C2 element. We got an element with the Iraqis. We got two Overwatch positions. I think it's a total of four different groups we had out there. It kicks off pretty quick. There's engagements basically everywhere when we get out there.

And in the midst of all this, your sniper element, which was BTF Tony running it, you guys got in your original spot and you couldn't see the road that you were supposed to be covering. BTF Tony is like, the commander's intent is you guys make sure nobody recedes IEDs on this road. He gets in there, looks at it, can't do it. Can't see it. Can't see the whole road. You guys are moving.

Got the call like you're moving right got like hey, okay, they're moving I'm like no factor don't really think too much about it because There should be no friendly forces even close to you guys at this point according to all the planning no one no friendly forces should be near you and So that so I'm not worried about like even having to deconflict. Well, it turns out that

Turns out one of the Iraqi elements had decided and didn't tell anybody that they were gonna push all the way down to like the limits of the entire clearance because this is a big clearance operation was gonna happen they were gonna push down to the limits of that clearance and they were gonna set up their own overwatch position again this was not part of any plan you know if they would have briefed it would be great but they didn't so they just randomly do this and

And a Marine, thank God, a Marine goes with them. Like they start running down the street to go set up this, their own perimeter and a Marine goes with them. And it just so happens that the building that they decide to take is the building that you guys are in. And all this is happening, you know, all this is happening at the same time. Meanwhile, like we're getting shot at.

JP and his elements getting shot at like everyone's getting shot at everyone's in engagements everywhere and then What happens is? This Iraqi friendly Iraqi element you guys are you guys are just getting into that building you're just starting to get set up just assessing it and As that's happening by the way you have Iraqi soldiers with you. Do you guys have army guys with you? We had one one army guy with you and and then you guys and as you guys are setting up and

You guys had zip tied the freaking perimeter, which was like what we would do is zip tie the entryways in there. So if someone's going to get in, it's going to make noise. You guys had done that. And one of our guys is now down like checking security and he sees the freaking thing is the doors open. And then he sees a guy with an AK moving across the courtyard and shoots him.

Well, that was a friend, one of these friendly Iraqi rogue element soldiers that had gone out there and was going to set a perimeter. Now he gets shot. Now you guys think you're under attack. And then you guys get into a firefight with this element of Iraqi soldiers. Yeah. And that's, I'm just trying to set the stage for now what your perspective is. You're on the freaking rooftop. So yeah, we were on the rooftop. It was me and Johnny Kim. And...

Johnny went down to the radio guy to get something and I stayed up there.

And so Johnny and I, and I remember because we're trying to, we started to take some like random pot shots. We knew from the city, like, so now we're kind of like getting engaged by bad guys. So we knew that. So we're trying to set up our. And it's no big deal. Like everyone you're, you're, when you're going out in the city, you're going to get shot at. So it's not like, Hey, we're getting shot at emergency. No, it's like, Hey, we're getting shot at. Yeah. Like I'm literally registering, like, you know, like, Hey, we're getting, we're in a contact Roger. That's kind of the extent of it.

Yeah. And we're just gauging it. We're like, hey, it's not super close. Now that I'm very aware of snaps are like, like, I'm like, I know what close fire is. So not worried at all. And so we're looking at how we're going to set up our sniper holes that we shoot out of. And so Johnny goes down and right as he goes down, this element comes in and I see them and I saw them for seconds before the shot was taken. And I actually stood up because I was like, oh, what are they doing here? And I was going to say, I was going to yell down to what they were doing here.

And right as I'm like, you know, I take a breath to say something, firefight breaks out, grenade is dropped into the courtyard. And then I just drop, you know, I just like get down and then it's just crazy firefight. Nobody knows I'm there yet. So it's good for me.

So I get on my sniper rifle. I'm like, okay. I'm like, you know, hey, bad guys, we got word bad guys are dressing up like the Jundis, like the Iraqi military. Yeah, they had helmets. They had body armor. They had U.S. like chocolate chip camis, which was the exact same uniform. We had pictures. Like we would show, I remember showing the platoon like here's captured enemy uniforms. It's chocolate chip camis. It's body armor. It's helmets. They have everything. And by the way,

The friendly Iraqis, they're carrying RPGs and AK-47s. It's very, very confusing. Oh, and one more thing. It is...

It is just like in the morning, night vision isn't quite good, but you don't, you can't see anything. It's like the worst possible time of day where night vision, you don't really have an advantage, but without night vision, you can't really see. So you're just like switching back and forth, like just real quick as this is happening. Yeah. So I just, I just see dudes wearing these colors and the firefight kicks off and I'm like, Oh, I'm like, I can't believe I was, I'm glad nobody shot me standing. So I dropped,

There's a heavy gunner running down the street. And so I shoot him and I put one in his chest and I'm wearing body armor. He may have made it. I don't know. I think he did. And right at the moment they were like, oh, there's a sniper on the roof. And then that was. So hold on. So as that initial firefight broke out and now it's like a more significant firefight. So now I'm in a Humvee with the company commander and

And now like I get a call, I hear your radio man calling like, Hey, we're under attack. Something along those lines. And they wanted QRF. So QRF gets launched. I look at the company commander. Hey dude, those are my boys go. And he's like, Roger. So the QRF beats us there by a little bit. And when they get there,

The element with the one marine so the rogue element had now taken cover in a house next next door across the street Actually wasn't next door as across the street the QRF comes down with a hump with I don't know what is two three Humvees maybe four Humvees parks on the corner and starts dumping 50 Cal into the building where you are and so as as I'm pulling up

So anyways, let me, I've, you've told me this story before, but how's it, what are you thinking when now you're getting lit up with 50 caliber machine gun from 35 yards away? And I mean, at the time, like I had no idea because now I'm down. I got away from the sniper hole because that is taking effective rounds coming through it. And the wall is starting to degrade. There are pieces. If I remember the wall right now, cause it's blowing out the backside.

And I remember the first bullet that came through the wall. Like I'm down, I'm doing, and then to my right side, this bullet blasts through. And I was like, oh no. And so I get on my radio to tell Tony, I'm like, Hey Tony, like I was, I think I told him, I'm like, you need to call the QRF. Like what I'm seeing up here, I'm not going to be around much longer. And so I was like, call the QR. And right as I'm talking to Tony, I, one of those rounds blows through the building and hits me in the face. And I'm,

The feeling was like getting punched. Like it was like somebody punched me right in like the right below my eye, right in the cheekbone. And so I take it and I'm like, oh, and I was like, you know what? I'm not dealing with this right now. So I actually don't touch it. And so I'm still talking to Tony. And then this thing is on fire. And so I reach into my cheek because it hit the bone and kind of slid down a little bit. And I reach into my cheek and I pull this 50 cal round out. And I'll regret this till the day I die through it. You know, in that chaos, if I were to put it in my pocket.

And so I throw it. And again, I don't know what round it is, right? That's not the time for forensics. So I called Tony and I'm like, hey, I'm hit. And I'm no composure. I'm sure I sound absolutely terrified because Rex later, the comms guy made fun of me for how I sounded on the radio where I'm like, I'm hit. I'm hit. And so then I grabbed Johnny still had his rucksack up top and I had my rucksack and I moved them both in front of me to where that because I knew where most of the fire was coming so I could have some standoff and

And I was just trying to survive at this point. And now they're like, hey, the stairs to get down were in the front where I'm getting all the, we're getting all the fire from. So I'm like trapped. I'm effectively trapped. And I am running all the scenarios to get down to the second floor. Like how much of explosives do I have in my bag? Can I blow a hole in the roof? Apparently at the bottom, they're doing the same. They're like, how do we get them down here? Can we blow a hole in the roof? Like, cause I don't have my, my time is dwindling. Cause that wall is going away. And just FYI.

They did call the heavy. So they called now the heavy QRF. So the first QRF that came in, which was Humvees, was the light QRF. And then they call in the heavy QRF. And actually, that's correct my story. When the light QRF went in, I was like, Roger. And when they called the heavy QRF, that's when I told the company commander, I was like, hey,

let's go with them, like follow them in. And the company commander was like, cool. That's why the, cause when the, when the Humvee was shooting, we, we showed up, we didn't see that. We, when we showed up, we saw the tail end of that and what I saw. So now the heavy QRF is coming, which is a section of tanks. So two M1 Abrams tanks are rolling. And that's what I rolled in behind these tanks. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, that's essentially what it was. Cause I didn't know anything like,

I remember I was on the roof and there was a super low flyover by an F-18. And in my delusional world at the time of not knowing anything that's going on, I'm like, oh, good. They've called somebody that's going to drop bombs on somebody and stop this chaos. And I honestly think it was them setting up to drop our house.

Yeah, and actually the SEA Z was like do we can't drop like we don't know exactly where our guys are don't drop so Awesome call for him. You know, he's like we cannot drop it I think we had you know with the JTAC or we didn't have the JTAC but whoever was controlling the air He's like can't drop right now. Yes, definitely Do not drop because we don't know exactly where our guys are because

You know looking back and we changed this protocol. It was changed like if you're gonna move somewhere Tell us where you're gonna move and so we know where you're gonna be because it was at the time prior to this It was hey, we're gonna move we'll tell you where we are once we get there because then you're confirmed Hey, this is where we're going. Okay. Now we know you are otherwise confusing. Well, we figured that one out so

So now you get lit up with the 50 Cal. That's when I hear the call for the heavy QRF. And now I'm like, okay, go. Cause these are my guys. Now they're free. You need the heavy QRF. Get me in there with the, to find out what the hell is going on and help them do whatever I can and at least be able to assess what's going on. Yeah. And that, and that was the moment where, and I'm upset I didn't do this. So you remember we carried star clusters, red star clusters where we'd blow up for troops in contact. I never did it.

And it's, I didn't even like occur to me. And because, you know, like your new. Yeah, the Red Star Cluster was actually, it's not troops in contact. It's like, we're friendlies. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we're friendlies. He's fired up. And I didn't. And if I would have known, but I didn't. And I was like, I had it up there and I could have just, you know, pop that. Because I mean, thank God that tank. Because it'd be over. It'd be over for all of us. Those flashe rounds or whatever they like, done. And so I remember all of a sudden I saw the red smoke come up.

And I was like, oh, that's weird. And then that's when, you know, they're like, all the firing, like, stopped. It wasn't slow like the last firefight. It was like, done. And I was like, okay. And then I'm like, Matt. And it wasn't over the radio. And I was like, Matt, are you alive? And Johnny comes scrambling up to the roof. Like, just panic scramble. And he's like, Matt. And it's funny. He didn't turn the corner, which is good to him. Because by this point, during the firefight, I'd accepted like, hey, I'm dead. And so my...

My sniper rifle got knocked down. I had my sidearm out. And I remember I made the mental distinction where I was like, I'm going to kill three people. And that's the number. And if I can kill three people, I win. And so I was like, I was looking at the stairs and like the first three bad guys I'm going to kill, then they're going to overwhelm me. I'll be dead. And so I had my hand out and I'm like, this is it. I'm coming home. And Johnny didn't turn the corner. He's like, Matt, Matt, I'm coming up. I was like, okay. And he comes up and I'm bleeding. And

He's like, are you okay? And so this is like way over exaggerated, right? The firefight's over. And so I'm on the roof. And so he gets to me. He's like, oh, you okay? He's like, let's get down. And he grabs his ruck. I grabbed my ruck.

And my Rhodesian, my vest was in like the other side of the roof. It was still like 20 feet away. And it was this over exaggerated, like I got to grab my gear. And Johnny's like, leave it. And I'm like, no, there's crypto and comms in it. Like if you were on the street, you're like, what are these dudes freaking out about? Like, it's just like highly hyped over like dramatic scene. And I run back and I grabbed the gear. Still proud of that. In my world, I got that crypto.

And we come down and we go through the house. And I remember I walked through the house and I go to where the family is and I just kind of look in on them and I'll remember they were more worried about me. So I'm like, blood's all over my uniform. My face is covered in blood because I'm, you know, got my face pressed against the ground and they're like, they keep pointing. They're like, okay. And I'm like, yeah, I'm cool.

And the most surreal thing was we got out of the building and I saw you. And I was like, this is weird. And I had no idea. Like it was, and I remember now that 50 Cal gunner wouldn't look at me. And I remember asking him, I'm like, Hey bro, was there a guy in that corner? That's dead. Cause I was like, did I get him? And he wouldn't even look at me. Like he was like, so when, when I, we, we get on that, it was Farouk way. I'm pretty sure is a long road.

And we're hauling ass and the tanks are out ahead of us, but we're catching them 'cause we're going faster. And then I see red smoke. I think, I don't know who in the element. - It's Tony. - He threw, so Tony, BTF Tony threw red smoke, which is freaking amazing. 'Cause as I'm looking, I see the red smoke and I was like, okay. And I knew you guys were close. And I see the turret of the tank is turning towards that building.

It just turns and it stops and it's like sitting there and now I'm there I get out and I go I go I think it was the I think it was the Marine and I'm like, hey what happened and he's like we were entering that building. There's Moosian there So he was like there's Moosian there who he was talking about was you guys he was like we're in that building there's Moosian there one week one guy got shot in the courtyard and

And I was like, Roger. And I knew I just had like the the the intuition. I was like here. I looked and I was like looking at the building where you guys were planning to be. And I was looking at where this building was. And I knew that you moved. And I was like, this does not make sense.

And as I walked over and I was like on me and Z was like, cool. And so I'm just going to go. And those that Marine looked at me like I was totally insane because I'm going to go clear it with my S.E.A. That's what's about to go down. And so I'm walking over to I got I got my gun up and I'm just like walking over to clear the building. If there's moving there, cool. Kill him. And if not, which I didn't think there was. And as I'm walking up, the doors cracked open and I see that there's a zip tie on the ground.

I was like it I just instantly you know you're just putting things together I kicked the door open and there's Tony and he looked at me and he's like he's like dude and I'm like hey, bro, and he looks at me he goes and I just looked at him I said it was a blue on blue and he looked at me like like I was crazy like there's no way and I was like hey get the boys cuz now we had Kazovac there and I was like hey get the boys loaded up and he did the BTF Tony salute he's like

I go, get the boys load up. Get out of here. And he's like, Roger, I'm staying. And I was like, cool. So he loaded you guys up and he just stayed with me because he wasn't going to leave. But dude, you guys looked fucking horrified. It was, I felt, I was like, oh my God. I mean, you know, you guys just got lit up at close range with like 150 rounds of 50 cals. Freaking awful. I walk down.

Now I walk back across the street, I go upstairs and there's the company commander. And he just looks at me and I'm like, hey, it was a blue on blue. Those were my guys in there. He was like, what the fuck? And I go, yep. I'm like, check. We got it secured, whatever. And we kind of carried on. And then I went, you know, as soon as we got done with that portion of the clearance, I went back, went into battalion commander, checked.

And there's still a lot of confusion. And I walked up and he was like, what happened? I was like, I, and I, I like was the only person that like knew what had happened. You know, I was like, here's what happened. Here's where my guys move. Here's where these Iraqis, I don't know why they were down there, but here's where they were. They entered that building and this was a blue on blue. And he was like, Roger that. It like made, you know, he understood what had happened. And another thing that I didn't really understand at the time was like, there was blue on blues happening everywhere.

There was blue on blue incidents happening. Maybe not casualties from blue on blue, but like in a Ramadi, like friendly forces were getting shot at by friendly forces. He's fire. Hey, no, that's us. Hey, stop what you're doing. Hey, no, that's right. You know, like that stuff was happening. You have to like the deconfliction was real time and it was all the time. But he was like, Roger that. And then he looked at myself in the company. He was like, all right, let's make sure that doesn't happen again. We're rolling out on the next mission in like 40 minutes.

I was like, Roger. And that's what we did. Damn. I remember you telling me like you 100% thought you were going to die. That was it. Yeah. Like that was like the first time in my life. And it happened a couple of times in Raleigh where I was like, okay, this is it. Like, and I'm fine. Like I made my peace and I made like, what was the price? And that was that was like I said, I was 100% going to die. And I chosen three people were going to come. And that's even, I always carried like when we were in Ramadi, I carried two grenades and I would never throw one. Hmm.

Because if it ever got that bad, that one was for us. Now, the other thing I remember is that, like you said, so now you get to Charlie Med, you have to get stitched up and shit. By the time you're coming back, were you a little morphined up? Oh, yeah. I was gone. But you...

You didn't you didn't compute like you still didn't put together that that was friendly forces like you got in that 1 1 3 in that Kazak vehicle thinking like we just had a big gunfight with the moosh and By the time I was talking to you. You were like wait what like That was that was friendly Iraqis. What were they doing there? How did that happen? And so it would sucked fucking sucked. Yeah, it was and I

I mean, I got, yeah, when I got to Charlie Madden, and it didn't help. I didn't know where I was. You know? Yeah, yeah. I'm 22. Like, I don't really get where all the bases are and what their names are yet. And so I kept remembering. I kept remembering saying what base I was from. No one knew it. Apparently, that was our word for it. And so I'm like, hey, I'm connected here. And they're like, yeah. So I don't know how to get a hold of anybody. Like, so I'm on this base. And I'm like super high on morphine. And because I remember I was on the bed.

And I got there and so I'm like pretty witty and high and it was full of nurses. And I had, uh, I had like three or four nurses around my thing. And I was like, Hey, I was, uh, I was pretty good looking before this happened. So let's just make sure we keep, you know, and I'm like joking. I was like, um, and so then like the leader nurse comes and runs them all off. And then, uh, one away from this guy before it was an incident. And then like one of the nurses goes and gets a camera. Cause he, I had a really good doc. He does internally does external stitches. Cause he's,

He was just cool. And I had to get x-rays. The reason I went as I wasn't going to go, but I asked our corpsman because I was like, I thought it was going to, we were still going to do this thing. And I was like, Oh no, I don't want to miss this. And he was like, and they're like, what do you want to do? And I look at the corpsman and I'm like, what do you think, bro? I'm like, I'll, I'll default to you. And he's like, I want to see if your cheeks fractured. That's my big thing. And so I was like, okay, I'll go. And so I go, I get stitched up and like the nurses bring me their camera over and like, show me what it looks like. I was like, that's pretty cool. And yeah,

And then there's nowhere for me to go. Like I get done getting stitched up and I was like, I'm pretty tired. Can I get sleep somewhere? And so they just like, there was like a high bay next to the medical thing. And I understand the stress for like back at operations because now I'm gone. I'm like in the system. No one knows where I am in our, it was our ops chief was pissed because he was like, he thought I was like out rogue trying to get back to the Corregidor element. Yeah.

And so I sleep for like six hours and then I wake up and I remember I'm in like these loner camis from the army. And I'm like, I'm standing outside Charlie med and I'm super lost. Like we're in this wartime environment. And I'm like, I don't know what my next move is. Cause I don't know what our base is called. Apparently no one knows where the seals are. Like when I say those keywords, so I'm lost. And all of a sudden this Hilux comes and like the movies, like it, like,

drives by about 10 feet and it's like all brakes skids backs up and it's like Leif and those guys and they're like Matt literally just like found me and I get in and I'm like you know I'm telling the story and Leif's like it was blue on blue and I and I didn't I kept telling him and I was like no no I was telling him and Leif said it he told me later he's like it was like three or four times where he was like it was a blue on blue and finally it like clicked and I stopped and I was like wait what

And he was like, yeah, that whole thing. That was a blue on blue. And I was like, are you kidding me? Pissed. Pissed. And not like any, but just like the whole thing. And so, yeah, that sucked. Yeah, it was fucking horrible. We obviously do a massive debrief. We put SOPs in place to prevent that shit from happening again. And then we start getting back to work, you know? And the work was extensive, right?

Going out putting in the combat outpost kind of became a massive thing God, I say you had general McFarland on here and even like hearing it and It seemed like there was so much going on the fact that we put in one of those and we I mean the one one ad everyone together but we the fact that we put in one of those combat outposts like every three to five days for a like weeks on end

It's freaking crazy. It's so crazy to think back, 'cause the planning behind each one of those things was so extensive and crazy that the fact that we would just like get back and just go do it again and then get back and then go do it again and then get back and go do it again, it was freaking wild. You're out doing these operations. What was your, from your focus, you're a sniper. What were you thinking about during these operations?

Honestly, I was, it was like for a sniper, it's like being a kid in a candy store because I'm out and I am just looking for bad, like, and you're going to see somebody. And so it was, you're just on all the time. And of course, you know, we're out with Chris Kyle and,

So you take the spot that he doesn't want. So what's it, what does his spot look like? And what does your spot look like? Oh yeah. So Chris, Chris is a long axis, miles of street, like three or four intersections. And then you're like, I got 300 yards of alley. And so I got to really hope somebody wants somebody in that alley space. And sometimes they did, but like, and, uh, and then we also learned as snipers, like times a day, right? Like,

After called a prayer in the morning, it would start to heat up. That's when the bad guys would come out. Then as soon as it got hot, they would all disappear until the evening time when it was like nice again. And then they would all come back out, fight for a few hours, and then they'd disappear for the night. So we started to just learn when to be on the gun. And so those were the times that we would try to get on and glass. So just watch, trying to find bad guys. And I mean...

It was good. It was fun. Like, I loved it. Now, it's 130 degrees in some of those buildings. So you're like on the gun. You're just, your eyes are on fire from sweat. But you're like, I don't want to miss anything. Because I only got like, there's another hour of bad guy time. And if they go on any other street than Chris's, it's mine. You know, that was one thing that I didn't really...

think too much about it while we were there, but clearly the enemy was, the enemy didn't go out very much at night because Americans have night vision and they know that. And so, and there's no, and the civilian populace went out very little at night. And so if there was someone, a bad guy out at night, they were going to get killed because it was just,

obvious that they were a bad guy at night on patrol with a weapon like they're gonna get shot so they didn't do that there was no they used the civilian populace as camouflage during the day they'd get up walk around you know they're they're hiding their weapons and they made transitions too and like how they attacked but i didn't really think about it too much the daytime stuff like oh my gosh daytime stuff we're doing daytime stuff you you

There's two major components. Number one, the bad guys would come out in the daytime. Number one. Number two, we were working with Iraqi forces and Iraqi forces don't have night vision and Iraqi forces in some cases didn't even have flashlights. So you couldn't go and do a big clearance operation with Iraqi forces at night because it would be freaking like the worst idea ever.

So we do these big clearance operations, and if you're gonna take a company of Iraqi soldiers and they're gonna clear a couple blocks of the city,

They can't do it at night. They have to do it at day. We're in charge of training and fighting with the Iraqi soldiers. We have to go out in the day. I didn't think of like, oh my gosh, this is a terrible thing. No, it was like, this is just what we have to do. It's kind of like the guys in Vietnam. The guys in Vietnam did for the SEALs in Vietnam. Sure, they'd go out in the nighttime, but if daytime requirement, they'd go get some in the daytime. I didn't think too much about what did you, were you even, was that like a thing in your head?

No. And at the time, like, cause I remember we got back, I heard people like, Oh, you operated in the daytime. That's crazy. And at the time I remember thinking like, that's when we got, cause if you only went out at night, you,

You maybe were going to get bad guys based on the Intel you got. But if you didn't have that Intel, they were just going to run around. So in the daytime, like we caught them like that's where they were. And then if, and they always wanted to get some. So you were happy to give it like, Oh, you want to fight? Cool. We're here. We're ready. It was another thing. It was interesting when I had a general McFarland on us,

Didn't know this at the time, but he was getting Questioned about like hey, you've got all these you're killing all these enemy How is that even happening and he's like come and look come and watch and that's the same thing I would getting like, you know our senior leadership would be like hey wait you killed nine guys in the past three days It's like well, yeah, there's a bunch of bad guys here. There's a bunch of bad guys and they are attacking coalition forces and so when we set up an overwatch position and

And they come to attack, they're going to die. That's what's happening. So I think it was a little, such a little micro environment of that, that intense fighting and the aggressiveness from the insurgents to, like you said, like they wanted to bring it. And so when they bring it, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to get some, uh, what happened? This is one story that Leif wrote about in the book, uh,

What happened when the time you fell through the roof? Oh, man. All right. So I remember like, you know, there's times where you like, you don't remember why you remember so well, but I remember that night really well. So we were in that building. We'd been doing sniper overwatch. And during one of the firefights, apparently somebody got really close and put an ID in front of the front door.

And we had rockstar EOD guys. And so they checked, thank God. Like somebody looked down and checked. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's like, hey, there's an IED here. And so-

They do everything to try to like make it inert. And I remember Chris and I sitting in a room because we were both snipers in this room and like they're going to blow this ID. We don't know how big it is. So we like cover ourselves in those like those like cushion pads that are like two inches. Those will help. Yeah, exactly. And I remember Chris kind of looked at me and he's like, you ever get that? He's like, I just got that feeling, you know, when you're like six and you're like, you're kind of scared. And I was like, it's all right. Because if it goes south, we won't feel it anyway. So we're just joking about it.

And so they blow it up and we still can't go out because they're like, hey, we don't really know if it's inert. Or I know we've talked about it where like they would do one, but then there'd be like a cluster. And so it was like, oh, yeah, you think you got one? There's five more. So we're trying to work this problem. And me and one of the other one platooners, we go downstairs and I look at this wall and I'm like, I think this wall will go into the roof of that building right over there.

And so we go up, we tell the head shed and they come down and we bring sledgehammers with us this time. And we sledge that wall and lo and behold gets us onto that other roof. And so we're like, cool, we're going to escape. And so, you know, we, we figure out how to get down and there's a door that goes down to, and I remember it was 20th street and we were doing everything on earth. We couldn't, we, we did not want to go down to 20th street. So we're like, Hey, 20th street was super gnarly. Yes. Super gnarly.

And so we're like, hey, if we go on this roof to this roof to this roof, we'll get to a street that's not 20th Street. So we get onto the roof and so we're clearing out. Right. So we're going to clear the buildings down. And so one of the J.O.'s, I remember, moves up to the door and he waits to open it. And so then I go to take a position in front of the door and there was a blue tarp with dust on it.

And one of them saw, because I remember later, he's like, didn't you see that? And I was like, do you think I saw that? Because if I saw that, I wouldn't have stepped on it. And so what happened was I didn't step on the blue tarp, but I took a step to get in front of the door and my heel like leaned back and it probably would have been able to stand, but I was wearing a ruck. I had my sniper rifle on my back and all of that. And it's just the weight of it. I started to tip and one of the jails reaches out to grab me.

And I remember he like misses and I fall and I hit that the ground, just like my arms and try to catch myself. And basically that like inverted me to my back. And then I fell like 20 feet onto my back and I had my M4 in my hand and I still have the mag from that M4 to this day. And it's like in half, like it's like crumpled in half. And it's because my hand hit, I broke open my elbow and I'm on 20th street. And I remember looking up and the guy's looking down at me and

I'm like, wind's knocked out of me, ton of pain. And I was like, and I remember Leif wouldn't stop talking on the radio. And he, cause he, cause he's like, what happened? And they're like, Matt fell through. And he's like, Matt, radio check, Matt, are you okay? And he just wouldn't stop talking. And I remember being so irritated. I go, I just need a minute.

And I just was like, I just needed to compose myself for a second. Because now I'm like on 20th Street and I'm just hoping like a band of roving terrorists don't come and just like take me off into the darkness and get my head cut off on the internet. And by the way, there's also the pressure of Nick Cush who's been on the podcast, the EOD guy. They had put a charge on this freaking...

uh, IED that was out front. So all this is under the pressure of time as well. Oh yeah. And we're all very aware. And so they're like, Hey, we're going to, so then they're going to breach the door to me. So the door that they couldn't get to me was locked from the outside. It's like a padlock in a metal door.

You would think it was the vault from Fort Knox because they are beating the hell out of this door with a sledgehammer. And now I'm getting kind of fed up because I'm like, this is really loud and I'm laying on 20th Street. And if somebody comes to like get me, there's nothing I can do. Like my gun's kind of ineffective right now. You guys are on the inside of that door.

So I'm like, hey, pass me the bolt cutters. And I had one arm and I kind of like had to do like this hip arm thing where I cut the lock. And then they got out. They gave it to me. And yeah, one of the new guys does me a solid, grabs my sniper rifle because it's like 20 pounds. And then we go back to go back to the fob.

Good freaking times. And then we were doing those overwatches. We were also doing DAs. We didn't do a ton of DAs. We probably only did like 30 or 40 DAs. But we were doing them. You were still doing your breaching duties. And we definitely had some long discussions about breaching because there was rules that were coming out, rules of engagement that were coming out about breaching.

Hey, because it had been civilian casualties because of breaching. And so there was a lot of pressure of like, hey, don't explosively breach. If you have to explosively breach, you know, minimize the charge as much as you can. You were kind of in the midst of all that, you know, hearing it from both sides. The thing with explosively breaching Echo Charles is that

There's bad guys in there explosively brief explosive breach gives you a huge advantage because it rocks their world and you as opposed to you trying to manually get through a door which is you're hitting it with a sledgehammer and They're setting up that whole time. So it really is radically Better if there's bad guys to do an explosive breach but if there's civilians

On the other side of that breach now you've got collateral damage and it's terrible on a bunch of different fronts so we we went you know we did all kinds of different things there from doing manual breaches to doing call outs to doing explosive breaches when we had to the whole nine yards so you were in the middle of that whole debate I would say.

Yeah. And I mean, I give you credit. You would, you would tell us, you're like, hey, and I remember this when I'd be breacher, you're like, hey, if you don't need to explosive breach or you can cut down your breach, go feel free, go ahead to do that. And then you would ask me to say, Matt, what are you using tonight?

And then I would let you know I'm using the most explosives that I was able to use on a door. And what I'll give you credit is you never stopped me. But you said, don't mess up. And I knew. And I knew if I made a mistake, I was going to pay the man. But every single time. Because for me, I was looking at like, hey, the transition, right? The transition in any mission is the most dangerous point of a mission. Yeah.

And as we're going from outside to inside, I was like, I will not let that maybe be my fault. But yeah, I remember. And I could remember your face. You'd look at me and I would let you know what I was going to use. And you just put your head down. You're like, all right. All right. And I remember being like, this is one of those times where you're not allowed to make a mistake. Yeah. Well, I have to trust you guys that you're going to do what's right. And if you don't need to breach. And there was plenty of times where...

you guys wouldn't breach because there's another way to enter. But, you know, I looked at it, I guess, similar to you. It's like, if we're going to have to breach, we have to breach for a reason. So let's make it, let's make it do what it's supposed to do. And there was times where we, like the hostage rescue mission, it was like, hey, make sure your breach doesn't

is going to knock these guys, like knock them out of ability, you know? So I remember massive breaches for that thing. And it's the same thing with like from the position of being a sniper. Like you guys have to make the decision on who to engage. And, you know, I always would tell you guys the rules of engagement are you better make damn sure that the person you're going to kill is bad because...

If we kill like there's normal people out there in the city, there's doctors, there's teachers, there's imams that are the religious leaders in those areas. If you kill one, if we kill one of those people, like it's freaking game over. Like we might as well just pack up and go home because that is the end of us being able to do this type of operation. So, you know, that's another time where it's like you guys, you have to, you have to make the call.

And we got surgical with it after a while. I remember we started using a lot of cutting charges. And the nice thing is what I always liked is you could generally gauge what was on where the door was and what rooms were in. And that was the way I would play a game. If it was a hallway, I would see if I could get the door to the back of the hallway.

And then that, cause then that got the door out of our way. And then it was just a, you know, cause you're nerding it up as a breacher. You're like, all right, how did it flip? How did it roll? Did I do it right? And it's like a big game. But then there was other times where like we would go up and I would check the door. If it was unlocked, we just walk in. And that was like just a super cool feeling of like standing there, somebody's asleep and then you just wake them up and they're like, what is going on? And you're like, wake up. Wakey wakey. Yeah.

Would you walk in point? I did. Because usually Chris walked point for you guys. Yeah. And so I did. For some reason, I did both. I was most of the time rear security. But then if our elements flipped or there was a sometimes we would be walking and snipers would have to be like doing Overwatch. And so if Chris was going to be the sniper, I would be point. Got it.

And yeah, and Point was good. I remember this one time, I had to walk Point. And I remember when you look, when you're walking Point, you're looking at these like, kind of like these brown gray maps. And so you're like counting blocks in the city and you're like looking at what buildings look like. And then when you get there, it's not the same. Yeah, they don't look that way. Buildings are gone or like they're just, it's wildly different. I remember one time.

I was walking point and I got completely lost. I had no idea where I was. Nobody knew that. And so I was walking and I remember I started walking fast because Leif was over the radio and he's like, Matt, slow down. And I was like, okay. And I'm walking fast because we had a timeline. You're trying to find a landmark or? Yeah, I'm trying to find landmarks, but I'm trying to buy myself time. If I do end up getting lost, I can get to where I need to be once I hit something. And the landmark was the canal.

And there was one bridge on that canal we had to hit and it was not around anything else. And so I'm like, I'm in the very like dense part of the city. So I have to count blocks, but they weren't the same. And so I quickly realized like, oh no, I'm off. And so I'm kind of just like gauging where I think I should be. And I know in my mind, I'm like, nope, no idea. No, we could be anywhere in Ramadi right now. I have no clue. And of course it's like super bad area.

And I remember I broke like the edge of this house. I got right past the edge of this house and there was the bridge. And I remember the EOD guy was up there with me. He's like, oh, you hit it. And I was like, bro, of course I hit it. Like I wasn't about to be like, I was sweating because when I got past that house, it was like that come to Jesus moment where either there's going to be a bridge there or there is not a clue on this earth that I know where I'm at. Yeah.

That's what I call SEAL excellence right there. Way to take ownership. I'm just going to freaking bullshit the whole scene and keep my fingers crossed. Nicely done. And the op tempo, like I mentioned, the op tempo for the whole brigade was crazy. And that's one thing. When we got back and we started looking at it from a leadership perspective...

You know, I realized that for you guys, sometimes it was like, hey, get your shit on. We're going out again. Hey, get your shit on. We're going out again. Hey, get your shit on. We're going out again. Hey, get your shit on. We're going out again. And the people that were most engaged in like the planning were all had a better understanding of what we're getting our shit on to go out and do.

And sometimes some of the guys that were less engaged with the planning were like, dude, what? Like, okay, we'll get our gear on. And you do that four times, seven times, 20 times. And you're like, dude, like this sucks. So that definitely started to wear on some of the guys of like, like we're going out again. We just got back, like get our gear on right now. We just got back. So there's, it was, it was a very high op tempo that definitely tired guys out.

Yeah, like I would say just because we were so like absolutely smoked and it was because we're going out. It's 120, 130 degrees. And I remember there was one point in the deployment where I was like, I don't really care if I die at this point. And it's not that I'm going to fight less. You just stopped caring about your life because you're like, it's so dangerous. If I just make this something that I worry about, it's going to drag on me.

And which is kind of like gives you kind of an insight into enemy when you just stop caring about life. Like you really can become a scary individual because you're like, oh, you want to shoot at me? I don't care. I'm coming for you. And so we started to burn out. And I remember there was some grumblings, at least at like the one platoon or level.

And Leif got like wind of it. And for some reason, Leif thought it was me. And I was actually on his side. And so Leif and I had a kind of a moment where for like a hot minute, he took me off operations. Like, it's not that I didn't go. He told me, he's like, hey, I'm gonna hold you back at the base. And I was like, why? And he was like, and he kind of explained like, hey, you know, there's some hate and discontent. He thought I was running it. And I had to be like, hey, bro, I'm on your side. Like,

And so we actually had like kind of like a heart to heart. And I remember we had it out back of like the platoon hut and it was, it was me explaining to him, like, we don't know why the hell they're doing it. And I'm like, I'm trying to be the middleman trying to be like, Hey guys, what if we do X amount? What if we take that to life? And you know, we just sleep in our bed like once a week or twice a week, that'll be good.

And yeah, so him and I got aligned at that point after I temporarily got benched for about 20 minutes. And then I went to my counterparts and I was like, all right, guys. I was like the negotiator. All right, guys. So if we do four ops a week and the thing is, and it was fair, like as I became a leader, like what the guys were looking at was just a break here and there because it is true. Like,

They're up there. They're getting shot at. And at one point you're just like, your nerves just want to stop for just a minute. And I think they did that. Like we did that. And so I thought that was no big deal. And to like, your point is we were going so fast, not knowing what was happening. Cause there was, we, it was almost two years after we got back from Ramadi that I recognize what we did. Like I was like, Oh, there was reason to that. Just that chaos insanity. Yeah.

And it's always something that like I always taught my guys too. I was like, look, look for what we're doing. If I'm not telling you, ask me. If I think I'm telling you and you don't get it, then I'm off. So just ask me what the hell's going on. Yeah. And I'm sure you've heard Leif talk about this. I actually wrote about it. Like when we got back and I put together this slide, actually Andrew Paul put together a slide of like showing the retaking back of Ramadi and like Leif,

And Leif was kind of like, damn, you know, even late. And he's, you know, next to me, talking to me all the time. Even he was like, damn, like that's a, that's a pretty awesome thing to be able to see. So to think that you, or nevermind the new guys, like to think that you would be like, oh, I understand the strategic perspective of what we were able to accomplish. Like, no, it's gonna. So, so that was a huge lesson learned is making sure that

You can't expect guys to know and understand. Even like sitting here today when we were talking earlier about when you got to Ramadi. I mean, I remember when you guys all arrived at our first task unit meeting in the city of Ramadi. I'm like, it is going to be mayhem. There's going to be combat. It's going to be a historical opportunity for the SEAL teams right now with what we're about to do.

Like I said something along those lines and you were like, yeah, whatever. It doesn't seem like it's good. You know what I mean? Sure. So it's, it's just so,

It's just so important that you are able to reach and say, hey, dude, do you understand what I'm talking about? I shouldn't have to put you in Corregidor and have you get shot at by freaking snipers before you go, oh, it seems like some shit's going on here. And this is Ramadi, bro. There was freaking people getting wounded and killed every day. And the city's only so big. And we're going into the city. So if we're going into the city, guess what? It's going to be on.

And yeah, those are big lessons learned is just making sure that you're communicating with everybody and you're letting them know exactly why they're doing what they're doing and understand the big picture of what's happening. Because if they don't understand that, then it turns into what I was talking about. Like, oh, you just want me to get my gear on and go out again? And I remember, I forget what, I forget, I remember one very specific situation where you guys had been in the field

For like 48 hours and while you were in the field we were spinning up a target So now we as soon as you guys got back. It was like hey, we're going to do a da like in three hours and You know you guys get back at whatever nine o'clock at night or something was like hey, we're gonna launch it 1:00 a.m.

And I remember I was like, dude, like whoever I was looking at, I was like, dude, this dude is dehydrated. I was like, this dude is dehydrated. And I'm telling him like, Hey, strap it on. We're going back out. And it was like, okay, you know, keep that in mind, bro. And, and then of course you got like BTF Tony, who's like, I don't need water and I will go out and not, I will go out until you make me come back. Like I'm going. So, um,

Those are all good lessons learned, good things to think about. And it was a push, man. It was very continuous. Even when we were able to say, all right, cool, we've got an opportunity to take, you know, instead of going in two days before the Army, we'll go one day before the Army. Instead of staying two days after the Army gets in, we'll pull back a day. So we started making some adjustments to get you guys, to make sure that you guys were,

you know, rested and recovered to the best of our ability. And, and the bottom line is like whatever complaints guys had, every single guy, every single time, 100% of the time got their shit on and went out the wire when it was time to go. So freaking,

Like that's what you expect. These are frog men. They're gonna bitch. They might bitch, they might complain, and then they're gonna get their gear on and go to work. And that's what every single guy did, which was freaking awesome to see. And you know, like in my retirement speech, I talked about when we came back from that, from the blue on blue at Corregidor, from you getting freaking shot almost twice at Corregidor. And then I put the list up like, hey, who wants to go to Corregidor to live?

There's going to be a lot of operations. The living conditions suck. It's a terrible area. Who wants to go? And every single guy in the task, you know, put their name on the, on the board and said, I'll go. And that's the attitude that that's frog man act activity right there. Like there's war, put me in, I'm ready to go. Um, we start pushing through deployment. Uh, we're moving towards, you know, now we're doing big operations. Now we're helping the army, uh,

We're helping the Marine Corps, providing support. We're getting towards August 2nd. What do you remember about going into August 2nd? Like what, going into August 2nd, which was Mark, when Ryan got wounded and Mark got killed, what do you remember going into that? So that was, I wasn't there that day because that was right after I fell through the roof. And so like days before August 2nd, I fell through the roof. My elbow was broken open. Like I, like, uh,

our old man Corman on base, he told me, he was like, hey, this is the last op you have to stay back for. Because I was like, hey, can I go on this op? And he's like, one more. Because if you break those stitches, we've got to do it again and you're just never going to heal and then we're going to antibiotics, whole thing. So I remember the night. I remember the night before and Mark and I were like, we're joking around.

Of all things, death. And, you know, like, if I get shot, you know, and so I just remember, like, we were having, it was one of those times where, like, it just worked out to where we had, like, a really good, like, hanging out, joking all the way until he left. I was, I think I was out there with you when they took off. Like, we watched everybody go. And it's just a very specific memory.

That just him and I like hanging out because him and I lived in, we lived in the same tent. And so, yeah. And it wasn't overly like, it's just another day. Another op. Yeah. It was just another op. That's...

They were all just another op. And that's one of the hardest things is you think, oh, if you're in a leadership position, you should somehow be able to predict if something's going to go wrong or not. It's like, no. And there's operations that you're like, get back. And you go, damn, like a lot of things could have gone really bad. And yet here we are. Everyone's fine. Mission accomplished.

And then sometimes you're going out on an op that you maybe in the back of your mind think, oh, this one shouldn't be that big of a deal. And it turns out to be a big freaking, a big deal. So you're back. You know, Ryan gets so badly wounded. Mark gets killed. And now, like, what's your thought as a freaking one platoon guy as this unfolds? I mean...

And that until that point in my career, I'd only known of one buds instructor who died while being a contractor. So I'd had any real brushes with death personally. And I remember being woken up by one of the new guys who came back with the body and he was like, Hey Matt, Mark's gone. And I was like, it didn't, it didn't register. Right. I just woke up. It'd been early. Cause we, you know, I think we went to bed around like seven, eight, nine in the morning. And he had been back by like nine 30.

And he's like, hey, he was killed. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, yeah. And he was explaining. He had explained to me like twice. And I came out and I remember Ryan and Mark's body armor was there without them. And I mean, yeah, it was there without them and it was covered in blood. And by this point, we had those augment seals, like super junior guys. And he was up and he was out.

And I looked at the body armor and I looked at him and I said, hey, get a hose and clean the blood off this body armor. And then me and the one platooner went to Charlie Med to see Mark because he was there. And I remember when I walk in, we walked in one at a time. And I remember looking at him and he didn't look bad. He looked good.

normal like right like normal like nothing was out of the the uh ordinary and i remember taking his uh i pulled his american flag off and i gave it to his like main new guy friend because i was like somebody's gonna have this we're not just gonna let this get washed into the mix and so that's that's kind of what i remember of that morning and that was a very it was it was surreal for all of us because i think like i said i was 23 so being that close dealing with that at that time it was

different. And we didn't really know how to deal with it. I remember as we were all trying to deal with it together, nobody knew like what to do, how we were supposed to act. And I remember when they sent the body home, a couple of new guys went with them. And it was so, so confusing to us that one of the new guys were like, when he went home, we're like, did you see your girlfriend? And he's like, yeah. We're like, did you hook up with your girlfriend? And he's like, yeah. And we're like,

Okay, I guess that's a normal thing you would do. Like truly like, and I say that because we're so confused on how we were supposed to act now. And that lasted, I mean, we weren't down long. Like we got back out, but it was confusing because we're probably not overly good at processing emotion anyway. And so now we're processing this in hyper time. And I remember Googling what the motions were as you were going through it so we could kind of track what we were doing because it was, again, it was so weird.

So yeah. Yeah. I had the, the, I was talking about this the other day. The, you know, we had the feeling of invincibility, right? Well, I, I shouldn't say we, cause I didn't, I, you know, I'm seeing all the casualties all the time. And, you know, so I'm thinking there's it to continue to be lucky and,

Like just, it's just gambling. It's just playing the numbers. Like if you keep, if you keep placing bets, keep placing bets, keep placing bets, like eventually the numbers are going to, are going to hit you. And, but like the other thing is the, like the army guys, the Marine Corps. Like one thing that I was, that, that, that happens is when something happens on the battlefield, everybody knows about it.

So you're all kind of we're all kind of interconnected because when, you know, there's a big explode when you're out in an overwatch position and there's a big explosion. And, you know, some Marine Corps unit or army unit got hit, hit an IED and they got a casualty and that gets reported up on the battalion net. And well, the radio man or Leif, he hears that.

And he goes, "Hey guys, just hit, army guys just hit an ID. They have casualties." You're like, "Okay, you know, got it, roger." And same thing, like when you were in an Overwatch position and you freaking shoot and kill an enemy with an RPG, that gets reported. So like the battalion net goes, "Hey, you know, Leif will call the company commander. Hey, we just engaged one enemy fighter with an RPG."

The company net calls a battalion that says hey seals just engaged a guy an RPG gunner one enemy KIA that goes the brigade net so all the all the information is Getting disseminated, you know, even just a platoon commander an army platoon commander goes Hey seals just shot another guy with an RPG like they're just telling everyone's going on. It's just so so you have this this interconnected situation happening where everybody kind of knows and

Let's face it, that had been, you know, April, May, June, July. And I guess April is like we weren't too active in April because we just showed up in April. So it's it's actually like May, June, July.

And what does the Army and what does the Marine Corps know about the SEALs? I'll tell you what they know about the SEALs at that time. Three enemy killed in action by 300 Win Mag. Two enemy killed in action. Mortar team killed. Like, that's what they knew over and over and over again. And we'd roll back into base. We'd roll back into the FOB. We'd roll back into the cops. And it'd be like, high five. You know, those guys were freaking stoked. And so when Mark got killed, it was like all of a sudden that invincibility was

For the platoons and for you know, the army looking at us the Marine Corps looking I was like, oh I guess not, you know, I guess it's not invincible and that was a you know a wake-up call and like you said, you know when we train, you know in our workup We dealt we deal with down men all the time. We deal with down men and

But the down man after that iteration is now back to life and we're carrying on. And so we know how to pick the guy up. We know how to treat him. We know how to do the medical stuff. We know how to do all that stuff, but we didn't know there was no guidebook on like, Oh, what you just said, you had to Google. No one told us that it wasn't like,

You know the the seal leadership at the time had some Incredible amount of combat experience where they were like hey if you lose a guy here's what you're gonna have to talk about Here's what you're gonna have to do Here's what you have to be ready for and by the way all that also takes a backseat to the fact that we have missions to do and so we're gonna you know do a Celebration of life ceremony a memorial ceremony. We're gonna put mark on a on his angel flight going home and

And then the next day it's going to be get your gear on because it's time to get back into the fight. So all that was what we had to figure out, what you had to figure out, what I had to figure out, what everyone had to figure out because there was no playbook. Yeah, there's a playbook for how you notify the family. Yes, there's a playbook for the administrative forms you've got to fill out, but there's no playbook on what you say first.

to that guy's best friend when you hand him that American flag that you took off of his uniform. There's no lessons for that. At least there wasn't at the time. And my thing was, in my mind, the thing that I figured out to do was get back to work. We cannot sit here. This is not good. We need to get our shit back on and get back out there.

And, and that's what we did. Um, and then the, you know, the, the missions continued and the, the fight continued and the pushes continued and the build outs continued. It would just, everything kept going. Um, when was, when was the last time you saw Mikey? And so I, I remember the, just like Mark, I remember the last, cause we had a weird interaction that I said, like,

So I was in the chow hall. I was on the computers. You remember the computers? The chow hall in Camp Markley? Yeah. Okay. And so he had come by for some reason. And I was emailing whoever, whatever. You know, I was doing whatever. He had to go to medical. He had to fly out and go to Balad and get, he had, I think, an ear infection. Oh, really? And so he had to fly out.

And he came back. He went up, got looked at, got medicine. And when he came back, he was in...

for a little while and i remember because when he got back to camp parkley he's like what what is what's going on at corregidor i was like dude they're rolling out or not but he's like you got to get me back there like can you get me back there tonight he like begged and i ended up getting him a logistic convoy like he hitched a ride but that's what he was doing that's most likely what he was doing yeah and so

He walked in and I remember saw him and I hadn't seen him in a while. I'm like, Mikey, how are things going? And it was the weirdest thing. Like, you know, we do like the bro five, but then he like, he came in for a hug. Like I thought we're just gonna do the bro five. And then he gave me like a hug and it was longer than any hug that we have ever had. And I was kind of like, oh, okay, cool, man. Hey, it's great seeing you. But I remember that interaction because that was the last one.

And it was just like the bro five, but then like a solid like hug after that. And it was something we had never done. And it was just that we, that was the last time I saw him. And so it was, I mean, I'm glad, I'm glad that's the last time. That was our last interaction. You know, I'm glad I wasn't like cracking jokes at his expense or anything, you know, anything like that. But no, I mean, yeah, it was, it was, that was a very surreal event. So-

That's right towards the end of the deployment. Obviously, September 29th, that's when Mikey was killed. How much longer after that did you head home? I went right before that. So me and the corpsman had to go to military free fall school. And I had no idea. I remember I was sleeping in my bed and the corpsman comes in. He's like, man,

And by this time, like my nerves are shot. I like bolted up sweating. I was like, what? What is it? And he's like, damn, I hate waking you up. And I'm like, he's like, hey, we have to go to free fall school. And I was like, right now? And he's like, yeah, we're leaving like this afternoon. And I'd been asleep like three hours. So I had to pack my entire room up.

And it was just a couple of weeks earlier. But as you know, like as the school start, like you got to get back. And that was the one that I had to go to. And so, yeah, we we left, I think, a week before that happened because I was with the corpsman from that platoon. And he's the one who called me and told me that. And I was like, I remember I was standing my condo at the time and I was like, are you serious?

And I was like, Jesus. And so I was back to receive Mike when he landed in San Diego. So I had like, I was one of the guys in my uniform. We were at the airport, took off, loaded the casket and the whole thing. - Damn, dude. That must have been freaking totally surreal. Especially 'cause like how, what other guys from Task Unit Bruiser were there for that? - Just the guys that were sent back. So there was a few, I wanna say one of the JOs were sent back, couple of the new guys, and then myself and the corpsman were back. - Damn, dude.

And then I think a couple of the guys from the team came to be like the other two. So it wasn't a lot of us. So again, it was one of those times where like, now we had this other thing happen. We kind of knew, but yeah, so we had, we were kind of on the backend helping them do that whole side of it. Cause obviously Mark came back, we were all working still. So we sent a small group back, they did the funeral, they did all the stuff and,

and we were staying busy now we were on the other side of that doing the funeral doing all the stuff and then when the rest of the platoon because you know the platoon was trickling back and as they came back they were just plugging in to how because by the time that you all came back i think was right before the funeral and so then we all went to that yeah actually no we weren't back for the future oh you weren't back for the funeral we we didn't it was like me stone or lave tony like there's a crew of us that i mean obviously we're the leadership position we're not we can't leave until

And we wouldn't want to leave until like it's over. Yeah. And so, yeah, we weren't there for the funeral. And what was it like? You know, so you talked about reading after action reports when you were in the PI in your first platoon and Fallujah was going on and the snipers are out there doing work and you're sitting in the PI. And I didn't... When...

And later when we got home, you know, my buddies were like, bro, we were reading the freaking AARs and they were, you know, it was a lot of, a lot of combat, like a lot of combat was happening. And there hadn't been that kind of sustained combat for a particular like single unit for a long time. When you got home, what was it like? Like here you are, you're rolling back. You've just like,

You've been wounded. You've like been through a lot of combat activity and you're talking to guys. Were they aware of what was going on? Were they read in? Were they like, dude, we saw your AERs. What was it like? We were rock stars in the teams like Danny's McPee's like.

We were, because I mean, that was, we were the gold standard at that point, right? Like, because we had seen so much combat, guys just couldn't get enough. They're like, what, this is insane. What did you do? And it was just like, we could do no wrong. And yeah, we were, it was, it was awesome. Because you came back and you had all this experience.

Plus, I mean, in a greater sense, like we did exactly what we signed up for, for a sustained amount of time, saw this incredible amount of combat, even though, of course, like I always say, it was the best and worst time of my life. And I think I've heard that from you. And that's, I 100% believe that. How was the adaptation to like regular, the world when you got home? Like you go from Ramadi to,

That's gotta be freaking weird, right? You go from Ramadi, you're out on an op, you're killing people, you got people trying to kill you, and now you're at Vons. - You know, the first time I remember something weird happening was in Coronado. I was talking to the corpsman, I was like, you know I was driving through Coronado, and he stops me, he goes, all the buildings are the exact size of the ones in Ramadi. And I was like, that's what it is. 'Cause I just got, I was driving through Coronado and I just got tense, sweaty, and I was like, that's weird. And so I was telling him about it, and he didn't even let me finish. He's like, it's happened to me like three times.

But no, I was touchy to say the least. And the thing is, I wasn't like emotional about people, but like about the guys. And I remember like, you were like viciously protective of anybody that was in that, that task unit. And I mean, I was 23. So that was a problem. I remember we gotten a few draggers out there because like, and it was like, God help someone that took a swing at one of those guys.

Cause then it was like, I didn't turn off and I was like, Oh, it's, and it just, you went into just like all, I mean the, the bond. And so it took some time for that to like level out because again, like we didn't know how nobody knew how, like we weren't seeing psychs. You just, you got back and you started training again and you started like a new workup or you went to a school and you're just like, okay, we're cool now. And the thing is like, I was fine. Like I, like it's never hurt. Like I truly, if I could spend all my money and do it again, I would.

because I loved it. No doubt about that. But I mean, there's some things that were- Did you know that while you were there? No. See, this is again, I was older and how old were you? 22, 23? 22, 20. Yeah, 23. 23 on deployment. 23 on deployment, yeah. So I was like, I turned 35 on deployment and I spent my whole adult life in the SEAL teams. So when I was there, I knew 100% like this is the apex of my life.

This is like nothing better than this is going to happen. This is the best thing ever. And I knew that. And every day I knew that like every day I knew it. And so I felt like I had like a certain level of appreciation, you know, that even like you talk to Johnny Kim and and some of the other new guys that was their first deployment. It was like they like they thought all deployments are going to be like that.

They're like, how do SEALs make it through a 20-year career if this is what an appointment's like? This is freaking crazy. So, yeah, when you feel like it's normal, though, and you feel like you did your job, like, okay, cool. I did it. Now what's next? Yeah. And so...

I remember I got done. We'd been through crazy. And so I kind of thought this was the norm. Like this was the beginning of the war, right? My first point, we did the rip, but even in the second half, we got to see a lot, saw a lot Ramadi. So I was a little bit ruined. And I, and if you were in the Navy, if you joined in those early two thousands, you got kind of ruined and you were, and I talked to those guys through my entire career all the way out is it's like you grew up a rich kid. And so that's kind of how you saw the world. So when the money went away,

You were like, no, I don't like this. This isn't. Yeah. It'd be much easier to go through life. Never having eaten a ribeye steak before. Just get eaten burger. Right. You'd be kind of like burger dude. I freaking pumped on a burger. And if I never had a ribeye, I'd be totally stoked. But if you have a ribeye,

Now all of a sudden the burger is kind of like you're getting kind of. So, yeah, that's kind of what it was like. And for me, again, because I grew up in the 90s in the teams, there was no war. Like I grew up eating burger, a lot of it. So now all of a sudden it was ribeyes and I knew every bite of that ribeye. I knew I better just relish that ribeye every single bite. So, yeah, I mean, it was good. So, you know, I had a good time. But I remember like I wanted to try something new and that's when –

I went with you to trade at. So you come to trade at, you start working in Salk. Did you work Salk and CQC? Yeah, because at the time it wasn't huge. And so it was like your group was small. So half of the group was running Salk and was working CQC. The other half was running CQC and working Salk. And so we were gone forever.

It was like a month every other month. I mean, that's when I got like my platinum Marriott status that I kept for the next like 12 years. And so we were busy. What do you remember about? So this was a really pretty amazing thing was they brought all of Task Unit Bruiser.

to Washington DC and it was for Mikey's mom and dad were gonna receive Mikey's Medal of Honor and they actually did the ceremony for him but then they also did a ceremony for basically the rest of the guys and that was that was a very what's that word surreal thing to have happen like to have to go out there to be at the Pentagon to be at the White House and

And then to have like the old frog men show up and it was because, you know, you got Medal of Honor recipient. It was it was pretty amazing thing to be a part of. Yeah, it was like you say, as a 23 year old where you get an invitation to the White House, you go in, you're sitting in the press room, you got G-Dub up there. Like, you know, he's awarding this amazing honor to Mike's parents. And it's just amazing.

Being a part of that is it's it's unfortunate that that had to happen, but so lucky to have been a part of that whole, you know, just being there, being able to work with him, being able to be a part of the ceremony and see all those things, be with a SEAL platoon in the White House. Honestly, get out.

get a little, a little liquored up in the white house, which I'm still to this day shocked that they let us drink, but they did. And so it wasn't a, and you know, phenomenal stories that came out of that. Like secret service was cool, I think for dealing with us. Um, but that was so cool. And, you know, going to the Pentagon, do the, the, the med that, uh, I forget the room where all the medal of honor recipients are seeing that. And, and,

Just experiencing that as a young operator was awesome. It was awesome. And then, you know, tried to recreate the wedding crasher scene. Cops were pretty savvy to that. Which scene? You know, they wake up in the morning and they've got like the bottle and they're on the steps of the Lincoln. Oh, okay. And so apparently this was right after wedding crashers. So apparently a bunch of people were trying to do it. And so they kind of were like, hey, you guys can't do that here.

But they actually became our friends. They gave a bunch of guys the tour from the tunnels under the Lincoln. And then we ended up, uh, that's funny. Cause you, you got tours like from, I got tours from somebody else. I forget who it was. Somebody else gave me tours of the tunnels under the Lincoln. That's crazy. And it was, it was cool because it was at a time it was, everybody was so patriotic, so friendly. We're going around DC, you know, we had the, uh, that Navy, um,

the Navy yard in DC where we had that other ceremony and then we went into the Navy museum and it was all seals at that time. Cause I didn't know it rotates through what it was and got to see all that stuff. So it was, it was one of the like one of highlighting experiences in my, just my general lifetime, especially up to that point. I wish I would've taken pictures of anything in my career because I don't have Jack for pictures of anything in my career. Um,

But man, I wish I had a bunch of pictures of that whole thing, man. It was just freaking what an honor to be a part of that whole thing, man. Meanwhile, like you said, you're working at Trade-Ed. I always felt like when I was training, when I was teaching, I was getting so much better and I got so much better. Starting when I was in E5 at SEAL Team 1 and I worked in the training cell at the time and you get to see and you get to detach and you get to watch what works and what doesn't work. Did you feel that happening when you were at Trade-Ed? Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. And I was listening to your podcast with Carlos to like warm up for this. And I remember we saw some of the same things. And what was like the biggest eye opener to me was like leadership. Like regardless of like where you came from, all leaders were not, you could have this amazing operator that couldn't lead.

And that was like the big shocker to me. Cause you know, you'd have these awesome operators. I knew they were awesome. And then I would put them through training and I was like, Oh man, I am throwing some softballs right now and you are missing them. And so that was like a big learning lesson on just being a leader in, of men in combat. Yeah. And the other thing I think a lot of times people don't realize is it's a skill. And if you have an open mind to learn the skill, you'll be like, wait a second.

I just, you know, lost control in that hallway. What could I have done better? Be like, hey, you know, as you start to move, you need to make sure that you move the guys in a methodical way so they don't get out of control. You go, oh, okay. What do you mean methodical? Like, that means... So you just... If you go, okay, cool, got it. Or, hey...

You didn't see that there was a really easy solution you could have taken instead of you just kept pushing down this hallway to a freaking barricaded shooter down there and you got nine of your guys shot up with paintball. Is that good? No, that doesn't seem good. All you had to do is take a step back, look around, and you would have seen that there's another way to prosecute that target. Okay. So take a step back and you can actually learn that. And so we get to see all kinds of people become better leaders because they...

We're humble, had an open mind and be like, okay, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I shouldn't be the guy that's like pointing my weapon down the hallway and holding security. You're right. I can't lead when I'm doing that. Cool. And then occasionally you get guys that they don't understand that it's a skill or they think that they know everything already and then you're just screwed, dude. It's just like they're going to be bad. And you're right. Someone could be an outstanding shooter, an outstanding assaulter, outstanding freaking machine gunner, an outstanding sniper, and they can still suck.

as a leader. Most of the time, they can get trained up, but occasionally, their freaking ego's too big and they can't adapt and learn, which sucks.

So yeah, gotta watch out for that. Gotta watch out for that ego. So then what happened next? You went out to the East Coast? - So I trained up. I mean, while I was getting ready, the reason I went to training was I wanted to go to the East Coast. I wanted to join another team. So I went out there, joined another team. And when you go to another team, you start as a new guy. And I'd just been through Ramadi. I didn't want to be a new guy. And what I essentially did was ostracize myself.

It was phenomenal operators, great teams to be on, great dudes, and I didn't want to play the game. And in short, I didn't. And so ultimately what happened, I spent some time out in the East Coast, and then ultimately where I ended up is I got asked to come back in two years when I matured. Check. So then what, you go back out, come back out to the West Coast? So I...

Yeah. And so this is really the first time in my career that's like I've had a negative happen to me at all. Like my skill level has been able to float me through any of my, you know, leadership challenges. Your skill level could outrun your mouth. Exactly. Right. And it held me. And that was a good like.

There was a good checkpoint where I had to be like, okay, yeah, I need to – it's one of those inflection points in life where you have to make a big jump now. You're like what your trajectory is, you need to make a bigger one. And so I called back to the West Coast. The SEA from Ramadi was actually now in charge of one of the teams and more than happy. He's like, Team 5. And he was like, when you're ready, bring it. I'm here. And so, yeah, I came back to the West Coast, joined Team 5.

And then what do you get put right into a platoon? Yeah. I immediately joined a platoon. And since I just came back from the East coast, the leadership was like, Hey, we don't know Matt. We don't want him. And so they actually started immediately trying to out-proximity from the platoon. Like,

So when I had... What stage of the platoon was... Were they in the workup already? Were they... Yeah, they are mid-workup. Okay. And lucky for me, they were in assaults. And so I came back a little faster than they were. And so... Because I'd been in this high-speed training. I was pretty quick. Yeah.

And the level that they were wasn't the level that I was. So I remember one time I was going through and we call it a safety violation. I'd never had one in the teams, but because of something that I was used to doing that I brought back to the West Coast, I did. They're like, man, you can't do that over here. And I was like, hey, fair enough. And so my platoon, like I got written up for it. And I was like, wow, this is weird. I've never had this happen. And so I kind of ignored it. And I just put my head down and started working really hard.

And one day my boss comes to me and he's like, hey, Matt, I want to apologize to you. And I was like, tell me. I was like, I didn't understand why. And he's like, when you came to the platoon, I wanted to out process you. I was trying to get rid of you. Damn. And him and I actually became really good friends. And he never had to say anything. I always gave him credit. It taught me something about leadership there, like how he how like comfortable he was in it.

Because he was like, hey, man, you've been a value add. You've been a great member on our team. And I just wanted you to know, like, that's what happened. And you know what? Like.

you're awesome. And thank you. And I, you know, we did like the bro thing where I'm like, no, you're awesome. But it was, you know, it was one of those things where he was, he was a really, one of those individuals you learn a lot from. He was a good leader and I was able to learn a lot from him. And did you, did you end up being the LPO in that platoon? Yeah. So I came in and you won't, you won't remember this, but there was a guy that was younger than me that was promised the LPO. Mm-hmm.

And there was like confusion about like, hey, Matt's the senior guy. The LPO is about to make chief. We know he's going to make chief. Who are we going to make the LPO? And I went to you and we were at Victory Dunjujitsu and I was like, hey, I don't know what to do about this because I'm the senior guy. I want to be LPO. And like, and you're like, it shouldn't be a question. You're the senior guy. You just tell him you're, that's how it works. You know? And I was like, okay. Um,

And ultimately I did. I became the guy who was actually one of my best friends who was going to be LPO. He's like, dude, Matt's way, way more experienced. I was older than he was, like older in the teams than he was. And so he's like, dude, it's his run. Have him take it. And so I ultimately became the LPO on deployment of that platoon. Yeah, that sounds like the way the military works is like if you're the senior guy, generally speaking,

If you're the senior guy, you're going to be in charge. So like, now look, if you're a turd and you're senior guy, I could, you know, I could be like, oh yeah, Echo, you're the senior guy, but Matt's in charge. Like you can do that. If Echo's a freaking turd, you can do that. But generally speaking, if there's no like major drama like that, and it's like, well, I'm the senior guy, but there's this other guy that's like, well, you're the senior guy. So, and there is a whole thing that's happening in the teams, which is you're,

you're moving people up the ladder. You know, like there's certain, there's a certain course or a certain professional development and course of promotion that you're going to get. And if you disrupt the promotional progression, you're,

then you kind of screw the whole system. And me, you know, if I, if I put someone in charge that really shouldn't be there above someone that should be there. Now I've just screwed up the whole system. I'm screwed up for a bunch of other people. So a lot of times like, okay, cool. As long as you're like, you're both good at your job, Matt, you're the senior guy, go get some. So that's probably what I told you. Like, Oh, you're the senior guy, you know, let them know and get it. Yeah. And, and it, it worked out that it almost didn't work out that way. We were, uh, we were at the Island training and, uh,

We had nothing to do, so we found our way into the hell box. Bro, you're getting a pattern here. Matt Hasby with nothing to do at age 25 is not a good thing. Something's going to be caught on fire or destroyed. Okay, what happened here? I know, I know. If I look at my... As I was writing this, I was like, oh my God. It was almost painful to write at one point because I was like, it took me so long and so many hard lessons to lock things in. But...

So we were out at the island and we went to the salty crab, got a little sauced, and then went to the hell box because we were bored. It's just where the instructors hang out for buds and nobody was there. It's like a little clubhouse on San Clemente Island. Yeah. And it was empty. And so we go into the hell box and they have these like cutouts of like bikini models, like these cardboard cutouts. And so for some reason in this platoon, we were really good at throwing knives.

Like we, I don't know why we, we practice it all the times. Like it was like a scene out of the desperado when we were on one of our trips, like there's a board around and dudes are throwing it from 20 feet away and just hammering these things. So we put one of these cardboard cutouts up and we're like sitting around just talking to each other. And we were just like tossing knives at these cardboard cutouts. And what we didn't see is when the knife would hit it, the cardboard cutout would swing and hit the cabinets. And again, we're sauce. So obvious price, super obvious, but we weren't picking it up. So anyway, we,

We don't do too much. That's kind of what happens. We get done. We go back. We got training the next day, or I think it was a day off. That's why we were out that night. And so we just got to take care of our gear. And all of a sudden, the world blows up. And there's this regular Navy CB who's charged with taking care of the island. He had hand-built those cabinets. Oh, man.

And he had just put him in. So are there like knife marks in the cabinets? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, check. Hundreds. Oh, check. And so they come and as you know, in the Navy, like stories go crazy. Like in the teams. It's insane. It's,

It went from like what we really did to, we went in and dudes were pissing on the floor and throw, and it was, it was crazy. Room room mill is impressive. Yeah. And so I I'm getting like, so now it's getting bad. And it was me, the other guy who should have been the L the entire like leader, like the three platoon to two platoon group. Again, another group you can't lose. These are like who I surround myself, like strength in numbers, but,

And it's starting to get insane. And it's starting to look bad. Like Captain's Mass is going to happen. And this Navy chief, he called the wrong people. Like he called group. He didn't call the team. He called group. He didn't call anybody at group. He called the XO at group.

And then he did what he was emotional about these cabinets. So he blew the story up and it was, he was like, Hey, this is what I think is happening. And again, he didn't know. And it not his fault. Like we, we wrecked this guy's cabinets. He was emotional and fair, fair point. And so the XO of group is now on a war path and he hits back and he he's looking for blood. He wants captain's mass. We're doing all this thing. And so I go to my boss and I was like, Hey, do you mind if I go over to the

And he's like, yeah. So I go, I take some picture of these cabinets and I take a pictures of all the hell box and I send them to the CEO at team five. And cause I'm like, I have to now take control of this situation. Cause it doesn't seem like anybody else is. And, um, we get back and, um,

I go to the CEO of team five and he was like, those pictures saved your life. He was like, before you came back, all these stories I was hearing, I believed a hundred percent. I thought you guys were lying. And I took pictures. I'm like, look, now there's nothing's actually ruined. This is all fine. You know, but we had to do a DRB at chiefs, you know, a disciplinary review board from the chiefs. And so it's me and the other senior E6. And this is where I honestly, I give you credit because this is where I did the ownership thing.

is I was a senior guy and I me and my buddy are about to walk in I look at him and I go don't say a fucking word and he looks at me he's like I'm just like do not talk do you understand me and he's like okay and so we walk in he's like guys what happened and I was like we this is what happened and this was my fault I was the senior man on and everything was approved by me and I remember it was like they were off guard because I think they expected some fight

And they were like, so what? And I was like, hey, this was my responsibility to manage these individuals. I was the leading petty officer on site. This is what happened. This was a miscalculation on my part. And I own everything that happens. And we were our whites around the team for a week. We had to go out to San Clemente and help that chief out.

do some work for like five days, which equated to a lot of spearfishing. But, you know, it honest taking ownership was like, and that was one of those like aha moments in my career where I was like, Oh, Oh, you don't fight it. Like you just own it. Like, yeah. One of those things, man, the shit works. Yeah. How was that deployment? That deployment was, where'd you deploy to? We deployed to Basra, uh,

And then we made our way down to Baghdad where we became the strike force. Oh, nice. And so, which was good because we were doing mission for mission with Delta. Oh, nice. And so we would swap in and out. And it was honestly, it was a very different. Were you guys with a partner force? Yes. Okay. Was it probably the ICTF?

Or was it some other, there's a couple other elements. It was one of the other ones because they weren't as sad. And why I know it was in the ICTF, their gear wasn't as good. Because ICTF had freaking American gear. Yeah, they had like mini guns and stuff, like crazy things. No, so their gear wasn't as good. So it was a high speed unit, but not as good.

And we operated with them a lot, all over because TF 160 was our support. And so like we had everything and it was honestly, it was super fun. And being at that point in my career, I was the LPO. And so we were only allowed, we were only going out, like, I think we could do four operators to 16 of them. And so we were going out in super small numbers. And it was funny because the Delta guys would get pissed because every time we went out, something would happen.

Like firefights. Like one time we talk about not knowing where Matt again is point man. Now I'm running point all the time and we got off a helo and a fog bank rolled in so thick. I couldn't see anything and the helos couldn't land. We couldn't extract. So now we're just on the ground. We have to work it out.

And I walked us into the target. How I knew it was the target was I touched a building that was two feet in front of my face. And I'm like, I think this is it. And all I could see was this piece of wall. And so, yeah, I got to run point man. A lot of crazy combat, which was super fun. I got caught in an ambush a couple of times.

Do you have any guys get wounded? Yeah. One time I walked in and I was walking point and it just rained and my chief was pissed because he was in the back and we were ankle deep mud. He comes, he's like, Matt, is there a better way that you think you could take right now? And there wasn't like I had done the, like the best map study I could do. And I was like, chief, we got nothing, man. We're here.

So we roll up, we roll up on these, these guys and they're sleeping out in this field. And the target was a buildings. These guys are about 400 yards away. And so my chief takes the larger element to the building to do the hit. I take a smaller element to these two individual sleeping. And I remember I stopped 10 yards from them and I look at the Iraqis and I'm like, Hey, get them. And they got on top. And what I had never seen before is these guys fought and they fought hard.

And so they start kicking the guy on the right and the guy in the left, the guy in the right, like kicks off these. Like physically fighting. Yeah. Like fist fight. Like, yeah. And they're doing good. Okay. Okay. And they're like, they're winning. And so I jump on one guy and he does something I've never had a guy do under me. He rolls onto his back to face me.

And I was like, I'm uncomfortable already because now I'm like, you're repositioning. Because usually, you know, you get on somebody, they're just kind of like, and you win, big American. And he was like, nope. And he wanted to. And I remember when he looked at me, I knew something was wrong because he didn't look at me like, he looked at me more of like surprise and anger. And I was like, not fear. Okay. Yeah. And I was like, uh-oh.

And so as I, and so now I'm like, I go, cause I don't know if they've got vests on. This was a miscalculation on my part by far. Like I'm too far into this and I'm the only American and I have an interpreter and these, these Iraqis out there. And so he rolls over and as I'm about to make space, cause I'm like, Oh, please don't clack yourself off. And the corner of my eye, I see a spark. And I just instinctively knew that is starting the, like the explosive train of grenade. Mm-hmm.

oh no. And so I stand up and I know I can't run because it's dark. And if he throws it, anybody's guess. So I stand there and he, he's, he's, he's pulling back and I'm shooting as I'm shooting and standing at the same time. And I, I'm luckily I got the guy, he drops the grenade where he's at and we all run and I'm like grenade. And some of the Iraqis weren't fast enough because he was, they were the guy fighting him. And so then they took grenade frag, like in the knee and

So now I've got this guy, he's on the ground, like screaming. I have this other guy and there's a grenade on the ground and we see it and we all see it at the same time and he sees it at the same time. So it's like this, this standoff. And I'm like, in America, you know, in English, I'm like, don't do it. You know, and then you've got the Iraqis are yelling what they yell. And so he goes for it. He goes to pull it. We solve that problem.

So that was the both the guys. So you drilled the first guy as he stood up as he was, as he pulled the, the, the, the, uh, pin on a grenade and he clacked that thing off or he released the spoon or whatever mechanism. So you break contact with him, drill him. And then the other guy sees another grenade and he goes for it. He goes for it. He goes to pull it right as he's, he's like fingers. Exactly.

I'm giving it like... I'm trying to let the Iraq... Still, I'm like of sound mind. And I'm like, the Iraqis are yelling. He's going to pull the trigger. I'm like, well, nobody's doing anything. So then we... I solved that problem. And then it was funny because we were very low American footprint at this time. And I look at the Iraqi next to me and I'm like, congratulations, you got him. And he looks at me with confusion. I'm like, yeah, you just shot him. And he was like...

What? And then it was so funny. So like we do all this stuff and there, you know, we, we link up with our, our other counterparts and I see him telling his friends, he's like, yeah, I got him. He's like, you know, using the, she's like telling all his friends about how we shot that guy. I was like, I just made that guy. Well done, dude. Yeah.

That kind of reminds me, in Ramadi, when we did that hostage rescue, you probably never even saw this, but there was a full news article that came out of the Iraqis rescuing this hostage. It was this big, awesome thing that they did, and I was like, oh, cool, we'll keep it tight on that one. Good, so you had another freaking awesome deployment. Yeah, that was good. It got to the point where...

The Delta guys owned the mission that we were doing and they started like do two to one because they're like, every time you guys out go... And they would get like...

so upset because they would be watching like, 'cause you know, when all this went down, which was super cool, it was on PredFeed. - Oh, sweet. - So you could see like the firefight, you'd see me run out of this frame, you see me run back in the frame, another firefight and so like, it was super fun to watch, but like, they're like, no, we're gonna do two, you guys are gonna do one. And then like nothing would happen for two, we'd go out for one. And then like all of a sudden bad guy ambush and then like another firefight and they're like, what the hell do you SEALs do out there? And we're like, I don't know, man, just luck.

You come back home from that deployment. What's next? So I actually got... Did you do an augment or something? Yeah. So I was actually... I got called back on that deployment. My wife was pregnant at the time. She got into a car accident. Somebody hit and run, had a bunch of complications. So I was tracking that. And then I got a call like, hey, your kid's being born right now. Literally...

I was in a firefight. I remember I got me in this Delta comms guy. We got ambushed. We got in a firefight. Uh, my chief showed up, like we ended up solving problem again, killing the guy. And I was on a plane within hours home. And it was, it was phenomenal. Cause we were at the Delta guys and NSW didn't have a flight and they're like, we got a bird. You want it? And so the Delta guys got me on their bird, got me back to the East coast. They had a guy at the command show up.

with my picture and he's holding it. And so I get off the plane, he's holding my picture. He drives me to the local airport and then I'm back in San Diego. And I mean, literally from firefight to like

New baby, less than 24 hours. Did you make it home in time for the baby being born? No, no. I got home. Wife was in the ICU. Baby was in the NICU. Damn. And so it was funny though. The hospital, like psych lady was all over me. Like to like kind of annoyance. Like she's like, I know you just got back from war. And like, I'm fine. Like, I'm cool. She's like, you're dealing with a lot right now. And I'm like, I'm dealing with a whole lot less than I was two days ago. So things aren't so bad right now.

And so, yeah, hung out. Yeah, a new baby in the hospital. He got out. And then, yeah, I decided to go on an augment because I had never been to Afghanistan. How was the augment? It was good. Like, it was one of those things. I'd been at Team 5. I was looking to possibly go back to the East Coast. I was like, hey, I'm going to go out, see how this goes. My wife, I told her they made me.

And up until this podcast, I hold to that lie to this day. I was like, I don't know. I just went back and they're like, Matt, you got to go. You have to go. There's no one else. They don't know you have a newborn baby. You're like, well, they do, but it's really important. They don't care. It's the Navy's fault that they're doing this. Honestly, she always knew. But

So I go back to this augment and it's another good one. I was a JTAC and so they needed JTACs. And so, yeah, I went out there with a handful of team five guys, got a lot of, got a lot more work and it was, I just never been in the area. Do you get to make some JTAC calls?

No, honestly, no. We, a couple of firefights and a couple of like, I had them like hot and ready. And then, cause this was also getting to the point, I think this was like 2011 or 12, like JTAC calls were getting real touchy. And so it was like base commanders had to approve. Collateral damage was extremely, we had to be extremely, extremely sure nothing was going to happen, which slowed the calls down. And sometimes by that time we would have solved that problem. Yeah. Yeah.

And then what was after that? Well, on that deployment was extortion. Oh, damn. And so that was where I went over with Pittman and the guys from Team 5. And yeah, I remember that. I remember when somebody told me, they're like, hey, Hilo went down. I'm like, who? And they were like, all of these guys. I'm like, cool, which part of that? And they're like, no, all of them. And I had a friend in the teams and his name is Jode. And I go...

where's joden and my buddy knew and he was like he's on this other team and i was like okay well at least i have that one friend that i know is still alive and so then i extended because that just went down so i'm like well i'm not going back now so that didn't go over well now i again they're making me you know so i extended for another month out there and help that turn over and just you know

Try to do anything I could at that point. Yeah, man, it was freaking devastating. Yeah, that's, you know, when one, you know, you'll get word like that a SEAL got killed somewhere at some point. And, you know, every SEAL is like holding their breath waiting to hear the name of who it is. Because there's a decent chance that you know the dude. You know, if you're active duty in the teams, there's a decent chance if a team guy gets killed, there's a decent chance that you know

Know him. It's not guaranteed but man when when 17 seals got killed it was just like oh, there's just it just awful just the awful Knowledge that there's 100% chance some of these guys are your friends and if not three four five ten and Obviously the guys that were their teammates every single one of those guys so there's freaking horrible horrible scenario

So when you get done with that augment, you come back. And so when you did your third platoon, you were kind of like, you weren't the actual LPO. So now your next time around, are you the LPO? Yeah, I'm like the beginning LPO. So I did like the deployment LPO thing. Got it. And so now I come back. I'm full LPO, stand up a new platoon, new leadership, start another workup, and...

Just trying to get back into it. And how's that? Like, how's that being in the actual freaking LPO for the first time where they're looking at you? I really enjoyed it. Like there's for me, I, I love being a seal. Like I love it. I love everything about it. I love the tactics. Like I love being a team guy. And so I kind of enjoyed it because it's another challenge. Like, like now I know they're watching me. They're grading me. And I, that pressure is,

I enjoy it. Like, you know, you, you were, you thrive on pressure sometimes, which I like that. Um, unfortunately at the time I got a new boss that was my chief that had come from a different part of the SEAL teams. And so he wasn't so savvy on the tactics. And unfortunately, very quickly in training, they figured that out. Yeah.

Yeah, for guys, you know, what we call out of the loop in the teams. There's different jobs you can have in the teams that are not all directly related to being a SEAL, like a platoon SEAL. And if you spend a few years as not being a platoon SEAL, and then you get thrown into a leadership position as the platoon chief, it's going to be rough. And that's, you know, one of the things that can really, really be... Some people just, they're not going to be able to pull it off. So it happens.

Yeah. And so he was with us for a little bit and it was a lot. And I mean, the instructors were all my friends. And so they would be, you know, they're like, Hey Matt, I see you're pulling a lot of weight. And I would go to them. Cause I, I didn't know at the time I had this leader that wasn't quite savvy. And I knew other ones that had leaders that weren't savvy. And I'm like, how, how do I solve this problem? Like, and I'm not looking to do anything. I'm just like, how can I, and they're like, it's out of your hands, bro. There's nothing you're going to be able to do.

And I was like, oh, check. That was my... Yeah. Eventually, the trade-out guys go talk to the team leadership. Yep. They talk to the master chief and go, hey, this platoon chief you got, he should not be in that position. And when that happens, 99% of the time, it's going to be game over for that chief. And...

He'll get fired, maybe get recycled, you know, but it's, you know, or if it's a lieutenant, they'll talk to the commanding officer, but that's what happens. Yeah. That's the way it goes down. And he just, and for him, I don't think it was the worst because he, he recycled back to where he came from. Yeah. And I think he did fine work there. And so it was a more comfortable area. I think he was trying something and it just didn't work out, which consequently for us was good. Uh, one of my best friends that were one of the sister's kids, uh,

Became the chief of our platoon. And so we had a pretty tight relationship. So that was the chief LPO was you? Yep. The sister's kids were now running the show. The sister's kids were now in charge. And which was funny because- Freaking awesome. Because our ops chief on our Ramadi deployment was the SEA of us. So it was, yeah, right? Pepper? Yeah. Oh, damn. Nice. Okay, chat. Yeah.

Dude, freaking Pepper. Pepper, because he was the ops chief. So I worked with Pepper a lot. And one of the coolest things about Pepper, just like a little side story. So this is a guy that, how long do you think, when we were in Bruiser, he was a chief. So he'd probably been in the teams for like 12 something, 15, 13 years, something like that. But just a little side note, he would be my driver.

And the reason he would be my driver is because he could do all the stuff a vehicle commander would do and I wouldn't have to do any of it. And so it was just like,

We just had this, this like relationship of like, we'd pull up to a spot and he just knew what I was going to do. I didn't have to worry about anything. And he was just always my driver. And that meant he was like the vehicle commander. He would position the vehicles. He would do all that shit. I have to worry about a damn thing. So I would always be like getting in. And it's,

You know, you don't always get to drive with the same guy all the time, unless you're the task unit commander. Then you can be like, hey, Pepper's driving for me. And he would just handle shit, just being the man. So that was your SEA. So that's a freaking awesome crew. Yeah, no, it was super fun. And like you said, Pepper knew everything, so he was super hands-off. And he would just kind of let us run. And where did you guys go on that deployment? So that deployment, we...

we went to the Middle East, some areas that we have in the Middle East that we just occupy. And it was a miscalculation on my part is what I call it. Because even though I love the teams, they came to me before the deployment. They're like, do you want to go to Afghanistan or do you want to do counter piracy?

And I was like, oh yeah. It was kind of hitting off. Do you remember around that 12 time from like there? Pirates were crazy. And so I'm like, this is the new frontier. And we talk about the team is chasing war. Yeah. And I did that. And that paid off zero. We went to, yeah, we went to this place in the Middle East and about zero happened. How was it in terms of like, you got the boys now and they're all fired up. And then you're like, hey, guess what we're going to do?

Yeah. And this, that can be a leadership challenge, super leadership challenge. And this group wasn't bad because this group was, I mean, they, we had a lot of J sets in, in super cool places. Like they went to Jordan. I, I made chief on this, this deployment. So I didn't go anywhere. I did everything pepper wanted me to do. But at the end of that, I will say pepper made sure I had a pretty sweet deal. Um,

And so I had a pretty good deal, but I didn't go on a lot of trips. And then, so your next, did you roll right into a platoon chief after that? Yep. From that, I immediately rolled into a platoon chief at team five.

And how does it feel now to be the freaking God of the world of what platoon was it? It was we Bravo. So how did it feel to be God of Bravo platoon? It was awesome. Like, you know, when they, they say for at least enlisted, like the culmination is like your cheap platoon for me, 100% because it was awesome. And, and,

We were built to go to Afghanistan. So I had another platoon of monsters, right? Like these just awesome dudes that could operate all day long. And we had great head shed. If our RSEA now was, have you ever seen Act of Valor?

the chief in that yeah he was my boss oh yeah dude freaking awesome man yeah he's a great guy and so um working for him was phenomenal supposed to have him on the podcast i gotta get oh yeah

Yeah, because he's freaking great. Yep. He is. He is. He's one of the few people in my entire career that if someone were to say something negative about him, you immediately think they're effed up person. Yeah. Because he is the most humble, the most like nice guy you've ever met. But then at the same time can operate almost anyone under the table. So what like such a great person to be our SCA. Dude, he was a new guy.

And his platoon chief was a friend of mine. And his platoon chief invited me to go. He was a team three. He said, hey, can you come and teach my guys the basics of jiu-jitsu? And I'm like, yep. So I show up and I'm teaching them everything. Well, this dude we're talking about had trained before. And he also boxed before. And he was a new guy. And he's a big, how tall is he? Six five? Six five. He's a big dude.

and a great athlete and so I'm teaching him Jiu Jitsu and then we're like starting to roll and he catches his platoon chief in a freaking and taps him out. Bro, new guy, stepping up to the plate. It was like, yo. It was pretty freaking funny. Check. So you got a great crew again. Yeah, yeah. Phenomenal crew.

We're doing our work up. The guys are crushing it. Everyone's good at their job. And we get the word, Afghanistan shuts down. And now what's almost... Sorry for saying that, everybody. I know it's a very warped mentality for a normal person to hear. But no, we train to go to war. So sorry about that, everybody. Devastating. And so what's worse than having a platoon going to an area where you may do pirates is...

having a platoon of monsters that think they're going to Afghanistan, that now you have to break that to them and then manage them. And so we, and then it got kind of weird because they're like, okay, we have this platoon that was supposed to go to Afghanistan. Where in the world do we put them? And it got like, do we, do we send them out at all? And I was like, oh my God, if you don't send these guys out, there's gonna be problems. They're gonna burn San Diego down. And yeah, we ended up heading to,

Okay. So check. And you just had to keep them occupied, try and keep them as busy as you can. So they don't freaking just destroy the Island. Oh yeah. No one was home at all for six months. Like we were in every country doing every training mission that we could. And, and it was good. Like, and just in leadership training because my LPO was running a crew. I was running a crew, the OIC and I, we were a phenomenal leadership couple. I love the OIC. And, um,

He had a crew. And so we were all over the world, essentially just working with all these other militaries and just training, basically making the best we can of it. So that, what do you do when you get home from that deployment? You go back to trade it. I went back to trade it. And, uh, my SCA wanted me, he was like, Hey, what do you think about coming to land land warfare?

And at the time, there was a couple ideas that I had I wanted, but when we went through training, we went through the maritime block. It was like water. And honestly, I didn't think it was that good. And so I was like, hey, I'm thinking about taking this block. And he was like, I remember, he's that deep voice. He's like, bro, bro, I want you to think about this. Because he's like, nobody cares about that block and all these other things. And I was like, okay. So I ended up talking to the mass chief. I ended up getting the block. And I...

I started doing transformational change. Like we went back to the island. We started doing live fire IADs from OTB. Oh, yeah. And so like trying to bring some like, because the directive from the Admiral was, hey, the wars in the desert are slowing down. We need to get back to the water. And so I went full throttle. And then how long were you over there for?

I spent some time. So this was during this time, I got an SCA spot. I was supposed to go to team one. And then my wife got sick. She got this weird shoulder nerve thing that no doctor could figure out. And it completely like derailed my life. Like literally couldn't like move her arm. Like she couldn't take care of the kids. And so I was like, I didn't know what to do. And so this is where NSW comes in, helps me out, gives me babysitters, everything.

And Tray gives me time off to like solve this problem. And so like luckily we live in San Diego, seen some of the best doctors. It turns out she had this really obscure small like nerve thing in her shoulder that can act up if she has like skinny wrists. And so it does something to the nerve where it could basically shut her shoulder down. It goes to the other arms and she almost can't like lift them. Damn, dude. And so...

Is that skinny knees ever come into play? Because Echo Charles has skinny knees. Does that cause unilateral, multilateral problems with you? No, I knew you were going to say that too. So thank you for that. I had to, let's face it. So they figured it, how long did it take to figure it out? A while, probably like four or five months. So it's, and the thing is during that four or five months, you're going over the worst case scenarios. I mean, they're testing for these problems.

diseases that like, you're like, how is my life going to look like? Am I going to be a single dad? Like it's how many kids do you have at this point? Three. Damn. Or I'm sorry. No, two, two at this point. I had two at this point. And, um, and so they figured out and it starts, it's a process though to heal. And so luckily though, it's this thing, it can kind of come and go, but when it goes, I mean years in between and it's like, it affects the shoulders. It's supposed to get better every time. Like,

it was the best scenario of the scenarios that we were looking at by a mile. However, having to deal with like kind of repairing her and getting her better, like I couldn't be an SEA. And so I bought some, a little more time being at trade at, this is where Jason, Jason came in and he was running it. And so he kind of like top covered me. And then this was at the time I was, they need, they lost a master chief over at the center that runs Bud's.

And so they're like, Hey, we don't have a master chief. Uh, what you, do you want to go over there and run it? Run buds. Not, not bud. So like the center. So of ranges. So at the center. Yeah. Sorry. It runs buds. So at the center ranges, they're like, we don't have a master chief there. They, he just left and we're gapped like six months. Do you want to go be that guy? And I had time to like clean this up. So I was like, yeah, I have the time by the time that's done, she'll be fine. We'll be running again. And, um,

So I went over to center to run ranges, but I caveated it. I was like, I'll do it, but there's this obscure billet that I want. And it's, I'm going to go work with another unit. It's going to be like a two-year thing. And then after that's not, I'll come back SEA. And the powers that be agreed. They're like, Hey, yeah, man, that's your unit. And so as we know with promises in the Navy, they don't always get kept. Nope. So I go over, I do my time. I'll

I train. I got to do all this back work for this position. I do it. And when it comes the month, it comes time to like get the package in to like start the process. They're like, hey, one of the East Coast teams is going to take this billet. And it was just an apology. Hey, sorry, man. All right. Well, so and now this is also about the time where I was like, I'm coming up on 20. I'm starting to look at people like you out in the world. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe there's something out there for me.

And so, yeah, by this, when I was a chief, I got my degree. And so, cause I thought, you know, I've got kids and I'm, how am I going to make them get their degree if I don't have mine? So I got my degree while I was in trade at, I got an, I got another one. And so, but they were in like political science and things like that. And so as I was looking out, I was like, Hey, maybe, maybe, maybe business schools throughout.

And so I was, as I was looking to get, you know, what I was going to do next, I was thinking about going maybe work for the government. I had this one guy I was talking to. I'm like, I'm thinking business school. And he's like, hey, UCLA has got a really good program.

And so I started talking to Carlos. Carlos went to UCLA. And so, yeah, so I applied there. And got in, no problem? Yep, got in, no issues. Did you go up there every day? Or did you go up once a week? How did that work? So I was in the executive program. So every other weekend for two years, I would go up there and like 12 hours a day sit in class.

because it's the same hour amount and so yeah so i would drive up to lam fridays come back on sunday night and i just like crushed myself and then uh like how long did that take when did you what year did you retire so i retired in 22 i started in 21 so i started the last year i was in the navy because last year in the navy i'm doing a lot of medical stuff

They gave me a lot of autonomy and basically all I needed was half the day off on Friday. And they were like, bro, no big deal. So my last year in the Navy, I started the school. I retired in 22.

Good party at your retirement. Oh, man. Oh, man. People talk about that. Like that, that is my wife refers to it as a man wedding. And if I, if I never find a retirement party as fun as that one, I'll be okay because I blew it out. I, somebody called me not that long ago and they're like, Hey, I'm trying to do a retirement party. What did you spend? And I'm like, bro,

bro, you don't want to know. You don't want to know. And he's like, I'm just, I'm thinking of spending. And it was like X amount. And I was like, times price seven. And he was like, oh my God. And I was like, that's why you remember it. Um, and so, yeah, the most epic. And it was funny because when I had that retirement party, I was a management consultant. And so it overlapped like with my terminal elite. Like, so I'm like going in, doing medical stuff and then working a team as a, um,

a management consultant. So reverse a little bit during this time I'm getting out, I have one year down and I want to be a consultant. I want to de-risk myself from business. So I started networking a lot. I started meeting a lot of people and I got hired at a major consultancy as a strategy consultant. And so it was kind of surreal. Like I was like terminal Navy. I'm an actual strategy consultant, working teams, like literally the morning after my, um,

Retirement, I had to get on like a group call that morning. I look horrible. Get on a group call and like, you know, be like, hey, talk about numbers and statistics. And I'm just like holding on by threads. I remember at your retirement party, like there was a fight, like a grappling match between people. And I was like,

And I'm standing there. I felt like just like I was like, oh, I'm tasking a commander again because like I'm checking the bouncers. I'm like, they're cool. You know, I'm like, you know, these guys are friends. Hey, this is just this is just friends. This is all love over here. You know, just the way it is. But I'm like thinking, yeah, man, I did this for a long time. This dumb shit right here. I mean, you should have felt because it was me and JP for most of it. So yeah.

It should have felt real, real natural. Yeah. It felt real natural. Like, yeah, here you go. Uh, nope. This is the way it works. You know, get, get some drinks in these boys and they turned 23 again. I remember like, and they left, like, I remember the party was supposed to be over at, I think nine, nine 30. And I think it was around midnight and the, the, they just stayed open for us. Yeah. It's freaking epic. And I remember, I remember this vividly as one of the bartenders, like I want to wrestle.

And he came down and JP grabs his wrist and he's like, I don't want to wrestle anymore. He was just the man grab of the wrist. He was immediately like, I'm out. I want no part of this. And so he was done. Yeah, dude. In Task Unit Bruiser Charlie Platoon, you guys acquired this freaking big giant teddy bear.

named laser laser and You guys made the new guys which primarily if I remember correctly was bagels Ryan Jobe would be carrying that thing everywhere that that thing is still in Charlie platoon at seal team 3 and He was at your retirement like new guys from Charlie platoon seal team 3 2022 showed up with laser and

not only to the retirement itself, but then to the damn party. Yeah. And I was like,

How freaking crazy is that tradition? That was, yeah, that was like one of the gifts from the dudes. And I remember they had laser on the floor and I had a three-year-old daughter and she was running over it. And I was like, under no circumstances are my daughters allowed to touch that bear. That bear has spent more time in strip bars and other nefarious places in the world. That bear has seen things. That bear is worldly.

So, yeah. Oh, check. So then you do this consultancy for a little while. At what point were you like, who'd you talk to, Carlos? So Carlos was kind of like my into the civilian world like wizard. Mm-hmm.

he was, he was ahead of me. He'd already done it. So he kind of taught me networking. He taught me like, Hey, if you're going to get in there, nobody's going to help you, but yourself, this is how you do it. And so I kind of became like a networking wizard is just finding people at organizations. I wanted to on LinkedIn, starting these conversations and basically getting myself in. He's, he's also one of the ones that I talked to that, you know, sold UCLA. So Carlos and I became like super tight during this period. And, um,

Yeah, he helped me kind of network my way into consulting. And then how long did you do that before you started talking about coming to Ashland Front? I did that. So I did consulting for over a year and a half. And I remember...

It sucked. It sucked. And it, so I got there and I'm like, it's going to be great. You know, you've seen the movies of consultants. They're traveling like this, you know, the nicest stuff. They're going first class. They're going everywhere. I didn't leave my house almost ever because this was post COVID. And so what companies learned is they're like, oh, I can just make the consultant work from home. And the counter to that is I never stopped working. So I would start at seven and I would oftentimes be at 10 and

And I remember on one of my projects, I was on the phone with a managing director who lived on the East Coast at 10 p.m. my time. And that was like eye-opening to me where I'm like, oh, this will never end. And then probably my biggest epiphany that I had being a management consultant is we were guns for hire, but it didn't really matter. Like I was on a project and I was doing the 10-year projections for an energy company.

And they didn't like what our conclusion was. And so they're like, we would like if this other energy would come out on top. And we did it. And that was the point where I was like, oh, it doesn't really matter. We're just going to do with what you pay us for. Like,

You're going to sell this to whoever you have to sell it to. And it's not the best science. It's not even the best math. It's just the math that you wanted. And what they say about, like, what do they say about data is an analyst can interpret data, but a professional can manipulate data. And that's what we could do. And so that's when I kind of really started to, like, lose the luster. And about this time, Carlos was really kind of in my ear. He was like, hey, man. Because I would call him kind of like...

cry to carlos is i was like you know i was like hey man if you like you know i'd be on these meetings with just all this stuff was going on and i was like bro did you deal with this and he was like talk me through it you know and then he was like hey why don't you think about coming over here and then without me knowing he started to lay the groundwork and he's like just fyi i've started talking to people and that segued me into coming over here at excellent front so

And then what did you come to a muster? What'd you do first to get the intro to Ashland Front? And so before I left the Navy, I did some FTXs with JP, just being one of the role players. And then I came to a muster. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So then you show up and then we kind of have a process in place to make sure that, you know, you understand what's happening. You do a bunch of briefs, you know, make sure you understand all the principles, which obviously you had a big leg up because you worked in trade with me. You were in task and approval with me and Leif. Like you had a big leg up on knowing what you were doing. And then, yeah, we just have a good, just to make sure that you know what you're doing and you get out in the field with the clients and whatnot. So yeah.

Freaking awesome, man. And you're digging it? I love it. I love it. It's awesome. Like, yeah, it's one of those things where, like, I get, like, true enjoyment. Like, now I was on site with, like, a client yesterday, and there was one, you know the guy who is the arms crossed, legs crossed? Like, he's the non-bot in one. Yep.

And then when you see that by the end of the day where he's one of my most bought in people and I was, you're like, Oh, I love that. I love when that happens. And so it's, it's awesome. Yep. Yep. Well, it's been awesome to, uh,

I mean, it's, let's face it, dude. You want to work with dudes you want to work with. Like, you don't want to work with dudes that you don't want to work with. So we kind of have, you know, the people we want to work with and we make shit happen. Right on, man. So where can people find you right now? Obviously, you're on LinkedIn, Matthew Hasby. If you're interested in Matt coming to work with your company, go to Ashlandfront.com. You're also on the Instagram, right? Yep. What is it? Matt.

underscore has be Matt underscore has be that's where you're at people can find you there echo Charles you got any questions yeah where was your retirement party I think it was called ocean 31 yeah oh it's an I it's an I beach yeah what'd you spend

It's really sounded like you didn't want to disclose it, but we're going to need those numbers. About 15K. Dude, when you spend 15K in IB. Yeah, bro. You know what I'm saying? Yes, I do know what you're saying. Buffet, open bar, like the whole nine yards. Bunch of idiots. Yeah. Grappling matches. Bouncers getting paid off. Like what? Yeah, it was. And I mean, that wasn't, and that was in the tabs at the end of the night were crazy. Amen. That's good.

Good to see you, brother. Anything else? Actually, people don't know this. I've known Matt Hasby longer than the same amount of time I'd say that I've known JP. So since like 2008-ish. From what? From jujitsu? From jujitsu. Yeah. Right when we came over here. Yeah. You and I were rolling like early in the days. Yeah. When did you and I start rolling hard? I don't know.

it's like maybe a year before that before that yeah like right before throw down oh that's right that's right that's kind of when when you appeared in my world as a viable frequent training partner but around the same time yeah totally separate though which is interesting yeah but you didn't at what point did you realize that we worked together

I don't know, like freaking. - Like six months ago. - Six months ago, yeah, for real, yeah. - It's funny, when the book came out or whatever, I started being on podcasts, there was people in the Jiu Jitsu world that had no idea of anything else that I did. - Actually, I remember when I realized you guys worked together, it was when you came to the muster.

like that time that i'm pretty sure it was that muster that you're talking about where when you introduced him where you're like oh yeah he has a scar on his face makes him look more handsome because he fell through the roof and i was like bro matt matt has things with you that time or whatever i was like all right cool man good yeah that is that is weird i used to have a real separation between church and state yeah like i had like the teams yeah and then i had you know jujitsu yeah

And my family was more wrapped up in jujitsu. Man, back in the day, they do a better job now. But like when I was in, dude, your family was not engaged in the team activities. Like there wasn't...

Like my wife didn't hang around with the other wives. My kids didn't hang around with the other kids. Like it was very much more isolated. They do. It's totally different now. Like now they do like they bring the families together and everything's cool. They do a much better job of that. You probably saw like the transition of that towards the very end. Yeah. But yeah. So I had people in the jujitsu community that just had no like clue of anything that I did in the military. I wasn't like, what do you do? I didn't wear like,

Trident hats or anything like that. No one did any of that shit. You know what I mean? So no one really knew. You did a good job in that because a lot of the guys that I know, like from the teams, happened to work with you. I never knew it. Like a lot of them. JP, Jimmy May, obviously Matt Hasby, Leif. Mm-hmm.

Kind of everybody. Really? You didn't know that what? That you guys work together. Like I know all them separate from you. And then I realized later like, oh, wait, you guys know each other? How do you guys know each other? Oh, I guess you guys just work together. Matt, you got any other questions? No, Matt. All good. Well, any closing thoughts, Matt? No, I mean, nothing. Nothing that stands out. I mean, honestly, like...

I will say as far as like a career in jujitsu, I was looking at it and from like where you say like you separated, you are one, you have, and without actively trying, like one of the like guiding people in my life just by like having been around. Because like when it was funny, when you talk about your family, like keeping them away, you did that, I did that. Because I learned it from you. Jujitsu, you started that, I started that. Or you didn't start it, you were doing it, I started it. And you're actually the one who kept me in the Navy. Yeah.

You probably don't remember. I was going to get out in 2007 time frame. Did I ask you for a business plan? No. You know what my plan was? I was going to go be the ultimate fighter. It was like people weren't awesome at it yet, and I was pretty decent. I was like, I think I can make a run for this. You and I were sitting at boxing club, and we're up against a wall. We just got done rolling, and you were like...

you started grilling me on how much you think i think people make and in my 23 24 year old mind i'm like million dollars and you were like you smoke check me real quick and then you're like oh yeah you break your leg there's no insurance now now what are you gonna do you can't work and you're like how hard is your life you what do you do you shoot guns you go on cool training trips and then you deploy and go kill bad guys yeah i was like yeah i was

pretty much it. And you're like, yeah, I think it's pretty decent. And I'm like, no, I agree. You're right, that's good. - Back in those days, it's not even, it's better now, but I probably just rolled out with figures. 'Cause at that time, I was cornering guys in UFCs. I knew how much money they made. I probably said something like, oh, you know the guy that you just saw fight on the main card? - On TV. - On TV, on a pay-per-view, on UFC? Yeah. You wanna know how much money he made for that fight?

12 and 12 what's 12 and 12 12,000 to show up 12,000 to win. That's kind of cool No, that's $24,000 for a year or for six months. And by the way, he's got to pay his food He's got to pay his trainer. He's got to pay his manager. He's got to pay his coaches. It's totally ridiculous So yeah, that was a some good advice right? Yeah And you know your timing

It would have been close. Like, you're right. At that time, being where you were in jujitsu, you have good striking. You would have been like, you probably would have been kind of in the mix. I don't know if you would have been necessarily ahead. You would have been ahead of the mix on like the lower level circuits. Yes. You would have gone out in one. You would have gone out in one for like...

Like not just local, but like for not UFC things. Yes. Like you would run some freaking king of the cage or some of those things you would have gone out one, three or four of those things because you were ahead of the of the masses. But as far as like UFC, you would have been.

probably just a little bit behind the masses. And dude, timing, at that timeframe, timing was really, really important. If you, you gotta be, people that, you had the chance back then to just be ahead of people. Just ahead and have like game that other people didn't have. Like Jeff Higgs. Jeff Higgs, he was a SEAL, he got out, he just did jujitsu, but he was really good at jujitsu

decent striking and he was Absolutely at the time he was ahead of

Like if he would have gone in UFC, he could have won some really big fights because he was just better than most people were at the time. It ain't like that no more. And at the time when you were there, it was like, it wasn't quite like that anymore. So probably a good call. Probably a good call that you didn't get out. And that's the other thing is people, you know, you don't realize, you forget about the fact that when you're in the military, you get a paycheck every two weeks. Mm-hmm.

Think about how crazy that is, dude. Like you get a paycheck every two weeks. Like, oh, you go on leave. You go on, you go, you do a hard job. Cool. You get your pay, but you also do some jobs where you're just not doing jack shit. You're like still getting a paycheck every two weeks. And yeah,

That's a thing that you that you forget about a little bit And so a lot of times probably as I got a little bit more advanced People would come and tell me they're getting out. I was like cool man. Meet me next week Tell me your business plan. What do you mean business plan? Just tell me how you're gonna pay your bills Just tell me what your bills are and how you're gonna pay them and we'll run that math And if you got a good plan cool, man, I support it If you don't have a good plan, let's figure out how to get a plan before you get out because if you're determined to get out Well, you shouldn't be in

But if you're like, well, I think, you know, I'm going to go out and I'm going to, you know, I want to do this. Oh, what do you want to do? What does that pay? What's your mortgage? What's your rent? What's your car payment? Oh, you got kids. What's that insurance look like since you're not retiring? You know how much your insurance costs for a civilian? Like it's expensive when you got two kids. Like it's a mortgage payment in some cases. So yeah, those are important things to think about. Anything else? Nope.

So we are training jujitsu, right? Sure. So how long have you been? Are you brown belt? No, I've been. You've been a perennial purple belt? Perennial purple belt. I got slowed way down when I broke my rib at that one training. That dude. That dude that broke my rib. And that took me out. And then I just got excuses. Excuses. Okay.

Do you train right now consistently? I haven't. I'm doing everything I can, but I have such a weird schedule. And then I'm trying like...

And then where I, like my son is on the precipice where I want to like start to take him in again. But like. How old? 13. Oh yeah. And so, but like our big thing is like I get home Saturday, we're surfing, we're surfing somewhere. And so that's, I kind of make that a thing. And so then it's like, then I got a daughter. What am I doing with her? I'm rock climbing. Cause she's like big into rock climbing. And so then it's, so it's like, while also I got to find time to just like be at home. Yeah. And so it's,

It's going to happen. I just have to like, and I know you live close, closer to this victory, the victory that burned. So give us a couple more months. We'll have this victory back open and then I will make it part of your echelon front job to be here. Perfect. Perfect. When we're training, we're going to need fuel. Echo Charles. True. What I recommend, I'll tell you what I recommend.

Draco feel I noticed you drink a mole kumo two mugs already today 60 grams of protein one night And one hydrate that's what you're into today. Yes 60 grams of protein is not bad. Yeah, it's pretty good. We try to avoid going today No, that's it's planned. Oh squad is coming today. You have this quality. I squatted today. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, you got that early schedule Yeah, so would you already lift today? I did

What did you lift? Shoulders and arms today. Gun show. Gun show. Echo Charles approves. Have you taken any protein? Have you eaten protein today yet? No. Okay. We call that going catabolic. Is that a problem, Echo Charles? Well, you know, the new research comes out where, you know, it's the anabolic window that we've once, you know, grown accustomed to being servants to isn't quite as quickly to close as we thought. So you might be good. Okay.

We're all right there. What does the new research say? How much time do we have? Well, I thought was what we all thought was within that hour of being finished lifting. That's the anabolic window. That's where you buy all the protein and all the nutrients or whatever. But as it turns out, it can go a lot longer. 12 hours. Yeah.

From what I understand, yeah. Are you hungry when you get done working out? Oh, yeah. Are you hungry when you get done working out? See, dude, I'm not. It takes me like a couple hours to get hungry when I get done working out. Yeah. And I've always viewed that as bad, but apparently the new data suggests maybe I don't have to feel bad about it. No, no. Got 12 hours to-

look, I'm not going to go concrete 12 hours, but it's way like, it could be longer than 12 hours. I think it's like within the day or something like that. Sure. I don't know. You know how guys are fasting and doing all this stuff or whatever. Cause like, that's a lot of times part of the research where there's like, Hey, what about these fasting? How does this fasting, um,

How does that fit into people's progress in fitness and stuff like that? But there's different kinds of fitness. There's bodybuilding, there's strength training, there's endurance, there's all kinds of stuff, so you never know. - You know what's a good time to align all this? Deaf Reset. We're doing the Deaf Reset. Have you heard of Deaf Reset? - I have heard of Deaf Reset. - Deaf Reset, we're kicking that off January 1st, but actually you have to kick it off prior to. You have to kick it off prior to the Deaf Reset. Will this even be out by the commencement of Deaf Reset?

Well, yeah, I think this will help for sure, but this is coming out after. Okay. Well, if you're not in Def Reset right now, go get the app. Go to thedeffreset.com. Get the app. Get in the game. And if you need fuel, check out jocofuel.com. We got protein, which is freaking tasty. We got hydrate, which is also tasty and freaking good for you. We got what? Energy drink. I've drank two of them today. Matt Hasby had to turn down energy.

prior to the podcast because he's like, dude, I have enough energy and I don't want to talk too fast and get too crazy. The ADHD amplifier. Yeah, you might be setting fires later. We don't need that. We don't need none of that. Thank you, though. So yeah, Jocko Field, check it out, jockofield.com. We got Joint Warfare, Super Grill, everything that you need. You can get it at Walmart. You can get it at, by the way, almost occasionally,

I've been toying with pre-workout. Now you're old school pre-workout. Are you still in the game? I don't do pre-workout currently, but you know, I, I guess you'd call it cycling on and off. Do you ever, okay. So where I'm at is I don't want to rely upon it, but are there times where I know that I should step it up in the workout? And I know there's one way to do that. Yeah.

Hit that pre-workout. 100%. And I think that's a good way to do it. It's a good way, right? Because if you keep that in mind where you don't rely, because that's really the issue. You rely on it. Then you're like, oh, I can't. And then when you don't take it, you feel like, oh, and all this stuff. But if you're like, hey, no, I'm going to. I'm dragging ass. I got a big workout coming. I want to get it done right. Or even when you're just like, I'm in a mood for a boost. You just freaking roll it in. But don't be dependent on it. Yes, I agree. The pre-workout is a legitimate. You feel it.

You're going to feel it. You're going to feel it. You're going to feel it. Actually, my daughter, my middle daughter, Rana. Yeah. She trains a lot. And...

She trains a lot of jiu-jitsu. She lifts all the time and She was going out with some of her friends for Halloween. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, she took pre-workout to go out with her friends and they all took it. Yeah, and they were like freakin wired Children and her friends on math. What's going on? So yeah, so in and it okay So, you know back in the day my first video I ever made. Oh

Yeah, pretty much my first video I ever made. We went on a cruise, right? Remember Terry? Big sexy. So it was his birthday. We went on a cruise. So I made a little video montage of it. And you can see in there I'm loading up the pre-workout for the cruise. There's no gym on the – I mean, not that I know of, but yeah. Oh, yeah. That's part of the gig.

All right. Well, there's all kinds of good stuff. You need it. You need some supplementation. Go to jockelfuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart, at Wawa, at Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Hannaford's Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas. I was just talking to someone who's like, dude, I am all over that HEB. So HEB in Texas, Meijer in the Midwest, Wegmans out on the East Coast, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. A lot of people are into that. There's

There's a lot of, so small gyms everywhere, whether it's CrossFit gyms, Jiu-Jitsu gyms, strongman gyms. I don't know, whatever kind of gym you got. Chiropractors are carrying it. Ice bath places are carrying it. Everybody. And if you don't carry it or if you want your place to carry it, email jfsales at jockelfield.com. We can hook it up. Also, since we're doing Jiu-Jitsu, we need to wear American-made Jiu-Jitsu clothing, Jiu-Jitsu geese. Go to originusa.com.

And you can get jujitsu geese. But you can't wear your jujitsu gi to the market. No. Can't wear it to the club. Or to the retirement. Or the retirement scenario. Unless you're at Matt and JP are going to freaking throw it down. Yeah, you can wear that shit. So, originusa.com. Jeans. Boots. T-shirts. Hoodies. Hunt gear. Rain jacket. Lightweight jacket.

Insulated jacket. Vest. You wear a vest? No, I don't wear a vest. Seems like Hawaii would be unfamiliar with vests in general. I'm very unfamiliar with that. I think I've worn a vest of some sort probably twice in my whole life. Yeah. For what reasons did you wear it? Like, you know, the three-piece suit. Oh, okay. Or like a friend's wedding. Terry Big Sexy's wedding. I was about to say Terry Big Sexy. It seems like he would be wearing a vest at some point. Yeah. That's the wedding I wore the vest to. Have you ever worn a vest before? Yeah. Three-piece suit.

three-piece suit what about like the because we at origin we just came out with like the puffy you know like a puffy little vest oh yeah yeah i haven't worked i will say i've been posting up in that thing quite a bit because it's nice man first of all it's small and it's just like keeps your upper body warm because your arms don't necessarily get cold right no it's more like your upper body that can get cold that can be problematic uh anyways guess where it's made

America yeah made America not by a communist not by a slave Just by a good American person that's out there making a living with a skill So that's what we're doing origin USA comm check it out. It's true. Also chocolate store called Jocko store Are you familiar with this Matt has been I am aware discipline equals freedom when you want to represent that that's we can get you shirts and hats and hoodies and stuff like that Also good talk about good. Mm-hmm

For things that happen that are bad, there's some good that comes out of it. Hey, I saw the video. Anyway, you want to represent that, you can get it there as well. Also, there's a thing called the shirt locker, which is a new subscription or it's a subscription scenario for new designs every month. You know, those designs are always a little bit different. I have a vision right now. Can you hear me out? Yeah. I have a vision. You ever seen like the...

What are those those not Cabbage Patch kids, but they were like cards and they had like junkyard kids with garbage pail garbage pail kids in my mind Oh, yeah in my mind right now. I have a vision of a garbage pail kid, but it's you little Matt He's like starting fires Yeah, so it has to have like an almost like a rhyming name or a name that starts with like and them Yeah, or H maybe like like a

Matt Mayhem or something like that. - Or Hazardous Hasby. - Hazardous Hasby. And he's sitting there with fires and explosions and he's like a happy little kid. - A little arsonist kid. - Very happy about the whole thing. - I think that design is 100% approved. - Yeah, so those are the kind of things that you might see with the shirt locker if you wanna check that out. Also check out primalbeef.com or coloradocraftbeef.com if you need steak. What's the best cut of steak in your opinion?

New York. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We have a contrarian here. Yes. We have a problem. What's up? Rib-eye is not your, not your jam. Wagyu. I like ribeye. I like the marbling, but why like New York? It's just a really lean cut. So you like the lean cut. You don't like the, you don't like the fat. I do, but I find it's inconsistent. Yeah.

And so depending on where I go, sometimes it can be too fatty or whatever. New York is consistent all the time. I like it lean. I don't like filet mignon, but that New York for me is perfect. Then you get that, what's that duck thing that we got? Fogra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get that for the consistent fat. What's the thing about, what is Fogra? Is it force-fed? It can be force-fed. All right, let's just caveat this. Isn't this like a pita thing? It was. Yeah.

Now, they can also just eat and get fatty duck liver on their own duck lives. Of course. And that's what I assume all the ducks that I eat are. But it's fatty duck liver. And it is like butter. Yeah, you put it on steak. Have you had this before? Yeah, the first time was with them. Bro, I'm the worst.

lamest eater like I just like super basic super basic dude anything that has a different language in the name of the thing I'm pretty much it's not something I'm interested in I'm telling you that's what I thought too and then they're explaining it to me I'm like bro you're just trying to be fancy like whatever and you're really eating Carlos was like hey just try it I'll eat if you don't know what's in it

Yeah, he's the one who kind of turned it. He loves it. He's also a big New York guy. Yeah. But he said, yeah, you do it. If you don't eat it, I'll eat it. So I'm like, all right, whatever. And I think you'd like that too. Maybe just not saying the name. Problem is once you start though, now you know. You can't go back. Yeah, now you know. Don't some places not serve frogois because it's like the pita thing? They used to. And now it's kind of like, I don't know how they- They figured out a way to make it more natural. Yeah, because-

You can see some videos a little rough on how they make that. Like they would put tubes in the ducks and they're just like pumping them full of food. But now I think they do it in a way that they just kind of promote the ducks to eat. They get really fatty duck liver and then they do the foie gras. Foie gras. Okay. And you're down with it. Oh my God. If you want to put that stuff, is it like you spread it on the steak? It's a liver. You put it on the steak and then I just, I'll cut a piece off with my steak. You kind of include it in the bite kind of a thing. Okay. Okay.

Well, if you want to include some steak with your stuff, your fatty duck liver, go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com, go to PrimalBeef.com and get you some of the good stuff. The tasty steak from awesome American companies, awesome people, awesome companies, awesome freaking steak.

ColoradoCraftBeef.com, PrimalBeef.com. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. Subscribe to the YouTube channels. Check out Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, Making Cool Stuff to Hang on Your Wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Matt has a starring role in quite a few chapters. So, Near Death Matt, that's another thing. Could do another t-shirt with Matt falling from a high altitude while being shot at.

You know, from multiple directions. Yeah. Yeah. We'll come up with something. So written a bunch of books, bunch of kids books. You read kids read the warrior kid books. Oh, they love it. My daughter's favorite books were a kid. That's what I like to hear. Yeah. That's freaking outstanding. Yeah. It's so, so awesome to hear that from, from people. And I was at a,

an event the other day with some bunch of team guys and they were fired up, man. So awesome. Their kids are reading it. Your kids should be reading it. Your neighbor, your neighbor's kid, that little rascal kid over there that's setting the bushes on fire. Give that kid the warrior kid book, like get him on a better path in life. So check those out. Of course, about face, Mikey and the dragons. You guys know the deal. Echelon front.

You're going to talk about it today. The leadership principles that we learned in combat, the leadership principles that we taught so that other SEALs could perform on the battlefield. They're not only effective for combat. They're effective for any leadership endeavor. So if you want to help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com.

And we also have events. We talked about the muster. We have FTXs. We have the council. We have all kinds of events that you can come to or you can hire us as a consultancy and we'll come in. Echelonfront.com. Check those out. Also, we have an online training platform. It's the Extreme Ownership Academy. Like I was talking earlier about leaders and how leadership is a skill. Well, it is. Just like jujitsu is a skill. And just like...

Shooting a machine gun is a skill. When Matt did 20 minute fam with a machine gun and then all of a sudden he gets told he's a machine gunner, like no, it takes a little bit of time to figure that out and get good at it. Sniper school, how long is sniper school? Two months, three months? - Like three months. - Three months. It's a skill that you learn. So I know it sounds crazy. Leadership is a skill that you learn. Just like you learn an arm lock, you can learn reflect and diminish. That's a skill that you can learn.

Extreme ownership. It's an idea, but guess what? It's a skill that you learn how to apply so that by the time you are in charge when your guys throw knives at the wall of the hell box, you know that, oh, if I make a bunch of excuses, I'm going to get in worse trouble and I'm going to look like an idiot. So instead, since I'm the senior guy and I'm responsible, I'm going to take ownership. And that's what you do. But it's a skill. You're not born with it. No one is born with that skill. So if you want to learn these skills, go to extremeownership.com.

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 amazing charity organization. Matt and I have friends that have gone through some of the medical protocols that she organizes, and they are so incredibly helpful. They will save lives and change lives.

So if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. Also check out heroesandhorses.org. Did you ride any horses growing up in North Dakota? Yeah. Decently? Like a lot? No, a little bit. Yeah. Do you know what Heroes and Horses is? I've seen it. Yeah. It's freaking epic. I mean, it's 41 days. They go and meet the horse.

So you never like never been on a horse before, never talked to a horse before, never seen a horse before. You meet a horse, you break the horse, you, and then you ride the freaking horse up into the mountains for 41 days. Jeez. Yeah. It's an epic program. Micah Fink, another team guy. Great dude. He runs it. It's just outstanding. If you want to support that heroes and horses.org. And also Jimmy Mays got his organization beyond the brotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us,

Matt can be found at LinkedIn at Matt Hasby and he's on Instagram at Matt underscore Hasby. And of course you can find him at echelonfront.com for us. I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm because you can waste, you can waste 15 minutes of your time looking at social media. You can waste 20 minutes. You're crazy. 20 minutes of your time looking at a, you know,

stuff in your algorithm. I read a comment the other day. Something came up in my algorithm. Just the dumbest thing. And there was a comment and it said,

I've built this algorithm brick by brick. And I was like, okay, dude, you get credit. But think about that. That's what it does. It knows where you're looking. It knows how long you stayed on the page and knows that. And if you stayed, if there's a picture of a knife and you stayed a little bit longer, it's going to show you another knife.

And then it's going to A, B, and test you with two different kinds of knives, a hunting knife and then a combat knife. And you stay a little longer in the combat knife, it gives you more combat knives. And it's going to do that. It's just going to keep feeding you the dopamine and the chaos. So just watch out for that. Watch out for it. Don't fall victim to it.

Yeah, there we go. Echo, anything else? No, sir. Good to see Matt Hasby. Good to see you, sir. Right on. Matt, thanks for joining us once again. Thanks for coming down here. Appreciate it. Thanks for what you do here at Echelon Front. It's awesome to see you putting out word and giving your perspectives on things and helping people become better leaders. And of course, thanks for what you did for the country, for the Navy, for the teams, and for freaking tasking a bruiser, bro, day after day, night after night, putting on your gear.

Facing death. Delivering death. And you never wavered. And I thank you for it, bro. And to all the men and women out there in uniform right now that face death around the world in order to protect our freedom and our way of life, thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice to protect us here at home and everyone else out there. You know, there are ways that you can find to avoid the pressure. You can always find an excuse. You can always find a way out. You can always blame someone else or something else, but that's not going to get you anywhere.

What you should do is what Matt did. When things get tough, be tough. Step up. Step toward the threat. Step toward the conflict. Step toward the battle. And go do what you're supposed to do. And until next time, this is Matt and Echo and Jocko.