482: Roll Up Your Sleeves and CHOP THAT S**T UP. With Sergaent Major Daniel Pinion.
03:34:20 Share

This is Jocko podcast number 482 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Once we arrived at Camp Ramadi in June, everyone could tell we were not in the north anymore. Mortar attacks occurred daily and we were located right against the enemy held parts of the city. I said that correctly. The enemy controlled over 75% of the city from government buildings to hospitals and neighborhoods.

However, we held the edge of the east and the west sides of the town. We had a transition of authority scheduled around June 2006 from their brigade to ours. We would officially assume control of the operation and they would go home. About two weeks before the turnover, Captain Baima was reassigned to a tank company. This is a backward move for an officer.

They do their initial command in the tank unit, and if they are the best of the best, they are selected to command the likes of us. However, for our brigade and the mission in Ramadi, this was one of the best decisions that Colonel Sean McFarland, the brigade commander, ever made. Captain Mike Maingun Baima had the perfect amount of arrogance, competence, courage, and audacity to do what needed to be done as a tank company commander. The plan was set.

The night of turnover, our brigade would attack the city. We would simply push from west and east and meet in the middle, no matter how long that took. Our unit was again attached to another battalion, and we were still serving conventional roles. But as a bonus, we'd be in a close relationship with SEAL Team 3, tasking at Bruiser, and begin planning for our small kill team operations.

And that right there is a little excerpt from a book an outstanding book Which is called chop that shit up and we will get to the meaning of behind that title It's written by a guy named Daniel pinion who is a retired army command sergeant major He served for 28 years in the army and he led infantry. He led armor he led cavalry soldiers at every level of leadership and

He's been awarded the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, Purple Heart, five Meritorious Service Medals, nine Army Achievement Medals, and a slew of other personal and unit awards. His brigade recon troop in the Battle of Ramadi was deployed constantly into points of friction, and his troop suffered the highest casualty rate of any company-sized unit in the entire brigade. And yet, under Dan Pinion's leadership, they never wavered.

Not one time. And it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share

Some of his experiences and lessons learned. Dan, it's great to see you, man. And thanks for joining us. Yeah. And Jocko, this is amazing. Thank you so much. Echo. Awesome to see you, brother. I look forward to telling some of these stories. Thank you. Nine Army Achievement Award medals. So I thought I was pretty good because I have five Navy Achievement medals. You know, Echo Charles. Yeah.

You can get an Army Achievement Medal or a Navy Achievement Medal for some very interesting things. I think I got four of them as an enlisted guy. And it would be like, this is during the 90s. And I get a Navy Achievement Medal because I ran a course of instruction that included 13 hours of training or something like that. You get a Navy Achievement Medal. But nine of them.

Yeah, I might have got one for showing up to formation on time. That's awesome, man. Yeah, thanks for joining us. This book is amazing. It's just an outstanding book. And we'll talk about how you wrote the book and everything. But let's get into the book a little bit and go through what your life was like before you started your Army career. I'm going to go to the book here. It says, I grew up average in almost every possible way.

Although my mom divorced my biological father when I was little, I grew up in a two-parent household from the age of five and count my stepfather as my dad. I have a twin sister, two younger brothers, and cousins who lived only 30 minutes away from us growing up. It takes a village to raise a child, and we had that with our family and community. And this was where? In New Jersey? Yeah, New Jersey. Whereabouts in New Jersey was it? Andover, New Jersey. Newton, New Jersey. So way up north, right against Pennsylvania, Delwater Gap.

So if you ever eat M&Ms, I'm looking at you two, you guys obviously don't eat M&Ms. Darrell Bock: Let's not jump to conclusions here. I could get busy on some M&Ms from time to time. Darrell Bock: If you ever eat some M&Ms, they're made right in town next to us in Hackettstown. Darrell Bock: There you go. Darrell Bock: Right up by the Delwater Cab. Country. In fact, we're so country, they used to come saying, "Old MacDonald had a farm," when they come play us in sports. Cornfields and dairy cows. Darrell Bock: Yeah, that's awesome.

You say, I considered us middle class, big house with a yard, woods for days behind us, a friendly and safe neighborhood, and hardworking parents who seem to make everything possible for their kids. My mom couponed during the week with my Aunt Barbie and then woke me up every Sunday to help deliver the Sunday paper while listening to Elvis on the radio.

My dad, who to this day never sits still, worked in the garage or at work from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. almost daily to help us make ends meet.

I also think he simply liked tinkering with cars and listening to the eight track player. What did he do for a living? Was he a mechanic? Yeah, a mechanic. Basically, diesel mechanic. Self-taught. Never school trained and probably, I mean, people call him to this day about mechanics. This guy. Dad, I love you. This guy. I'm amazed at how smart he is. He's amazing. And

And then, so he worked at a shop, but then you guys had a garage at home. He was constantly working on stuff all the time. Correct. He just got himself another car that he's fixing up. What'd he get? Do you know? No, it's old though. It's like 1920s, 1930s. He's going to fix it up and he sells it. That's awesome, man. Going back here, I was taught to hunt, fish, explore, dig fence posts, garden, build retaining walls, et cetera.

This is just a Northeast thing. That's what we're doing. Got to get ready.

So you're playing sports. You play baseball. Correct. And you're left-handed. Yeah. I realized I was left-handed when I was 13 and my uncle saw me tossing pebbles at my grandparents' house and I couldn't throw pebbles right-handed, even though I played sports right-handed. And he looked at me and he said, why aren't you? I said, I can't. It's too small. It didn't feel right. Saw me throwing left-handed. He said, get in the truck.

Took me down, bought me, he's like, you're left-handed. And I started playing baseball left-handed from that age. What other sports did you play? You know, you grow up playing basketball. You try it all. But I've, you know, I dropped basketball after I think my freshman year of high school. And then I always loved, we always loved baseball. My entire cousins and I, we always played baseball. Yeah.

Yeah, you played a lot and you say that you were mentally tough and physically athletic, but you lacked the discipline to make your dreams come true. Because the dream is, of course, being a Yankee. Yeah, absolutely. New York Yankees. Go Yanks. And it sounds like...

You say my relationship with academics was the same. Yeah. So I was lazy. It was, it was called what it is. Uh, naturally smart, naturally athletic, lazy. I was the act. I was the opposite. Naturally unathletic, naturally dumb and just hardworking and stubborn. Uh, so then you, you end up talking about the army, I guess your grandfather, uh,

Frank Richards was in World War II. Uncle George was also in the Army. He was in Hawaii during the Vietnam War. But did you, as you started thinking about it, was it like, when did the Army start to enter your mind as a possible plan? Wasn't even an idea until, like I said, we were cutting firewood and my father brought it up and he was like, hey, I don't think you're going to make it basically in baseball. Yeah.

You just don't have the drive that you need. And we were cutting firewood and he was like, "Hey, I need you to talk to my buddy, Ali, the state trooper who's also in the National Guard."

And I was like, yeah, talk to this guy. He's a recruiter of mine in the same National Guard unit. And really, like 48 hours later, I was in the National Guard. Dang. I mean, I put no thought into this thing. I mean, I took a test. And they're like, hey, man, you scored off the charts. Nice. ASVAB way up at the top. GT score near the top.

I think it was like a 122 or something like that. And they're like, hey, you can have any job you want. But National Guard's like, hey, here's what you want. I saw a video of scouts doing reconnaissance, making grenades in the, you know, trip wires. And I was like, yep, that's me, buddy. Let's do it. I hated getting my hands dirty at the time. I was like, nope, that's what I want. And two days, yeah, 48 hours later, I was in National Guard. That's wild. You go 48 hours. Yeah, no thought whatsoever.

It is also awesome that you can be a kid. How old were you? About to turn 17. Yeah, you can be a kid with no plan whatsoever. And all of a sudden, you can have your whole life kind of planned out at that point. Absolutely. How's basic training? What was that all about? Yeah, I absolutely loved it.

I had no, I loved it. I have never realized how challenging and fun it could be. Like I realized I needed structure like that. So getting yelled at, like I loved watching people not fail, mentally break because they didn't realize that it was a game. Like to me, it was a game.

watching drill sergeants yell at you to try and change and have you become a team, I immediately, playing sports, realized what they were trying to do.

And try and get us to do something and work together. So I was naturally trying to pull people together as a team, like informally, and try and get us. And then watching people who couldn't understand that concept and then like, oh, they're yelling at me and then break. I couldn't grasp like, well, have you never not been yelled at or have something hard? And then being physically tired. I think I gained 30 pounds, 40 pounds of muscle. Dang.

Like I went in 150, like six foot and came out like six, two and one 90 or something like that. So the challenge, the structure, I was tired. And then the paycheck. Oh my God. I couldn't believe that. Richest guy in the world. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I couldn't 700 bucks or whatever it was a month. I loved it. It was amazing. And then I remember shooting that machine gun the first time. And,

Love at first sight, boy. I was hitting rounds on target, five to seven round bursts on an M60 machine gun. And I remember the drill sergeant slapping me with the range rod on top of my helmet. And I thought I did something wrong. And next thing you know, he's like, more ammo, more ammo. And I started watching barrels start to fall because I kept hitting the barrels at like 200 meters. And I knocked all the barrels off.

And they just kept giving me more ammo. And I knew, right? Like I'm in heaven. Did you shoot left-handed? No, I was right. Thankfully. Yeah. I was right. No, I don't, I don't need, I don't need brass and brass deflectors. Yeah. No, this is what you say in the book to you. So you come home, you're, you're like a thick, thick guy. You say my shoulders were broader and I look good.

But National Guard was one weekend a month, two weeks a year. What do I do with the rest of my time? I did what any cool high school graduate would do. I went to my local high school basketball game to show everyone how cool I was and see the ladies. As stupid as it sounds, this is where I realized I needed to be a full-time soldier. That's like a good wake-up call. You're like, what am I doing here? No, it is. All right, all right, all right.

Oh, yeah, McConaughey. But it really is. So I went back. It's December. So I graduated right before Christmas, so Exodus. I go back, and what do you do? My friends are coming back from college, but I don't really relate to them. And you start separating. We didn't have cell phones. You didn't have texting. So you start naturally separation from your friends that way. The ground war, the buildup had started. Hmm.

So everybody's watching the news for Desert Storm. You know, this is 90. So I go to the high school basketball game to try and that's what I know. And I remember them playing the national anthem and I go right to attention and I'm strapped and the flag's there. And I just remember everybody talking and I remember just burning inside. And now I can look back and understand it. But I remember right then, like,

Like I need to get out. I'm in the Army. I need to get out of here. I need to go serve. And I knew I was learning the Army values. So that 16 weeks of basic training and serving your country and a bigger cause like was starting in my blood right then. And I felt it. Yeah. And I need to put myself in a position to do something. So I went home. I was like, hey, I'm joining active duty.

And I'm going to serve my country. And was it hard to transition over to active duty? No, not at all. No factor. No. Because I thought active duty was basic training. I thought I was going to drill sergeants. Like I showed up in California, Fort Ward, Monterey, California. And I remember asking, I'm like, where's the drill sergeants? They're like, what? There ain't no drill sergeants here. Yeah. That's what you think the whole military is like. Wow. Yeah.

- Yeah, so this book, just a little bit about this book. This book really is, even though I started with like this first chapter where you're talking about how you grew up and stuff, the book isn't, it's not like a chronological of your whole life. It's not an autobiography or anything. It's more some of the highlights that I'll hit some of them that where you learned big lessons, right?

And the name of the book, as I mentioned, is Chop That Shit Up. And so this comes from you are now in where? What was your job at this point? Yeah, so this is Fort Ord, California, my first duty station. I've just gone active duty, and I'm a private. Know nothing about life, the Army, military.

And you guys are getting an inspection. Correct. So this is the Army in the 90s where they inspect your rooms every day. You have to clean everything. And our platoon was responsible for the latrine. And remember, this is shower heads, six to ten shower heads, ten toilets, sinks, whatever, open bay. You didn't have your individual bathrooms there.

And our platoon is responsible for cleaning that common area It's great and and it sounds like you're you're very motivated at this point like you're into the game and you kind of take charge of cleaning the heads cleaning the cleaning the bathroom and You say in the book here, so you go to you you're looking at the the first sergeant, you know He's kind of on his way and the in the first stall toilet is

You say this, we were staring at the biggest turd I'd ever seen in my life. Whoever deposited this monster needed to see a doctor to get their butthole fixed because it had to be tore up. I can't do this turd justice. It was so big, it was just sitting at the bottom of the toilet bowl and it could easily touch each side of the rim. It was longer than an M7 bayonet, if that helps. I'll help the crew out here.

Pinion this is yours to fix my gunner ordered me as we heard first sergeant This is the guy that's coming to inspect you as we heard first sergeant slowly progressing from the stairwell to the NCO latrine at the end of the hall Only the hallway left and then us it would take minutes at least to fix this So you start to flush the flush it you flush it again and the turds not going anywhere and finally you come up with a plan and

Which is just lock the door, the stall door from the inside, crawl out from underneath and you'll talk your way out of it. And so that's exactly what you do. And then here's here comes the first sergeant. First sergeant was six three broad shouldered man with an airstrip style flat top haircut. He was drafted in the army during Vietnam and proudly displayed his draft letter on the wall behind his desk.

A Huey door gunner in Vietnam. He claimed he had been shot down three times during combat. He looked like he could kill you by looking at you.

Good morning, First Sergeant. Welcome to our fine dining establishment. So clean you can eat off the floor. My bullshit mode was in full gear this morning. Shut up, Pinion. Get out of my way. Everyone has failed so far, and I don't see you bucking the trend. We were screwed. At ease, I yelled, and everyone inside the latrine snapped to parade rest. This is to indicate respect when an NCO is the senior person entering a room. Carry on, troopers, he commanded under his breath.

First Sergeant immediately moved towards the first stall, as was his routine. Why is the door shut? Who thinks it's okay to take a dump during my inspection? Pinch it off and get out of the stall, trooper. First Sergeant, it's empty, I calmly stated over my right shoulder while stationed at the door's entrance. It's broken. What's the matter with it? First Sergeant asked. And here I made a mistake.

I had yet to learn that the first sergeant was responsible for maintenance and work orders for the buildings in our unit. This was about to get ugly. "It won't flush, first sergeant," I hesitantly responded. "Open it up, pinion." "Oh no, here we go." I crawled back under the stall wall and glanced at our enemy. He was still there, with a hint of a smile forming. "You son of a bitch. If I saw any soldier walking like his butt hurt, I was going to kick it for this."

I unlocked the door. As it swung open, I held the door against the stall wall with my back and stood at parade rest with the first sergeant on my left and the toilet on my right. Holy shit. The first sergeant screamed as a few soldiers behind him giggled. Roger that, first sergeant, I said defeatedly. First sergeant squeezed into the stall next to me at parade rest and him staring at the most giant shit in the history of soldier turds.

He reached over and flushed the handle. Nothing. The big smiling turd refused to move. First Sergeant turned his cold eyes toward me. You know what you have to do, Pinion? No, First Sergeant. First Sergeant held his right hand in front of my face and formed the famous knife hand used by every NCO and drill sergeant during their career. Also used in a karate chop.

First Sergeant took his hand from my face, turned toward the toilet, and still looking me dead in the eyes, chopped his hand in the toilet. You have to chop that shit up, he said confidently. The other soldiers in the latrine were gagging or full out laughing now. I was in shock but still at parade rest, refusing to look at the hand-to-hand combat taking place in the toilet. First Sergeant stared at me the whole time. He finally lifted his hand from the destruction, reached over, and hit the toilet handle.

The most beautiful sound of swirling perfection took place and the itsy bitsy chopped into a thousand pieces turd drained away. The first sergeant straightened up and stared into my eyes again. "Pinion, this is a life lesson here today. During your career, you will hit many obstacles that won't go away on the first try. When that happens, you can give up and walk away or simply roll up your sleeve and chop that shit up. Understand?"

Yes, First Sergeant, I replied as First Sergeant wiped his combat-proven hand on my left arm and shoulder. After his hand was clean, First Sergeant winked, left the latrine, and said we had passed the inspection. I can see it like it was yesterday. So he wiped his freaking hand on you too? Yeah, now just look. He's like this and gets done and then is wiping like this.

But that mentality is real though, isn't it? Got a problem. What are you going to do? Yeah. I mean, there's many metaphors and obviously, I mean, I live this and what a lesson to learn. And I was almost 19. I mean, some people say how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. It's the same metaphor. And this is this. And I have used that mentality my entire life since that. I was just doing something, a task two weeks ago and I was,

chopping it up, same thing. And that's how I look at all obstacles in life. And that first one taught me that at 19. And I would not have been successful in my military career without that lesson and that toilet and that visualization that I've carried the rest of my life. And now you have it. Yeah. Now we all have that lovely visualization.

That's awesome. Fast forward a little bit. In October 1992, I reported to Freiburg, Germany, where I was assigned to a reconnaissance scout platoon in 4th Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment. This was very different from my job at Fort Ord, where I was genuinely light and served as division reconnaissance for 7th Infantry Division. Here I would learn to complement heavy units and tanks.

So how did you like it when you get to Germany when you show up there? Well, I loved it. One, I came away with a German wife. So for 30 years, it worked out perfect. So that's a win. Yes. And two, I've been fortunate. I'm sure we'll talk about it, but I've been fortunate as a 19 Delta Cavalry Scout. I have been blessed. I've been light, heavy, helicopters, planes.

Humvees, you know, I've seen the realm of what reconnaissance can do. So I wasn't just funneled in one area or became special in one area. I've seen the 360 of our job. So I was fortunate in that knowledge space. Heavy special. It's different. Yeah. It was, it was interesting from my perspective. So for us, when I grew up in the SEAL teams and, and,

For us, reconnaissance meant there was only one thing. When I thought of reconnaissance, I only thought of one thing, and that was a very small group of guys foot patrolling somewhere, very clandestine, and basically you're like hiding and you're not going to be seen. And I remember the first time it was actually with the 137, and we were talking about we were going into South Central Ramadi, and they're like, yeah, we're going to do an armored reconnaissance. And I was kind of like, huh. I mean, I knew what it was just by the name,

But I was like, that's a totally different viewpoint. Armored reconnaissance means we're going to drive tanks down there and look around and see what's going on. And it was very different from my idea. Correct. And what I liked about, you know, same thing. So I was in Freeburg supporting basically 137 or tank battalions is same thing. You're light, you're on foot and you're going deep, but you're really exploring how can I effectively...

help armored battalions maneuver to effectively engage the enemy. So what are their axis of attacks that I can recon for them to set them in the best position to attack the enemy and defeat the enemy? And then what information can I give them in effect or artillery? How can I affect the battle using artillery? So it was,

So are they training you to look for, oh, here's a pro this, this kind of terrain is a problem for tanks. This is a good, this is what they're training you for. Absolutely. So whether it's a route reconnaissance or area reconnaissance or zone reconnaissance, we're, we're looking at three to five kilometers wide going 10 to 15 kilometers deep as one platoon. And then looking at the entire terrain of how we can maneuver the battalion or the brigade behind us to come up to the enemy. And this is a,

I guess this is kind of after the Cold War, right? Because of the walls down in the 90s. And so you're... But you guys, I'm sure, still had like this vision of fighting the Russians. Oh, you're absolutely fighting the Russian threat. So the three by three by three. And yeah, you're absolutely... Right on. Fast forward a little bit. And again, get the book. The book is... It's got so many details. I'm not going to cover them. We'll read some high points of it. But the book is just... It's such a...

The way you wrote it, it's like listening to somebody tell a really good long story. So get the book. Fast forward a little bit. That year was a good one.

We would end it with a bang in July I'd married my German wife and we spent three weeks of our honeymoon traveling to see family in New Jersey in Florida our Scout platoon was the best in Germany for the second straight year and I'd reenlisted to spend six more years in the army With a picture of Elvis as the backdrop as he has been a had been stationed in Freeburg The army gave me a wife and a rent-free place to live Which is the housing area and my leaders lived down the street life was good. It's like perfect can't go wrong

Living the dream. Fast forward a little bit. On December 01, the 1st of December 1994, a Thursday, I was officially promoted to sergeant by our battalion commander. So you're making rank too. Yeah, correct. Focused, working hard. Yeah.

Fast forward. Now we're getting to 1995. In fall of 1995, the former Yugoslavian country of Bosnia-Herzegovina was out of control with three Bosnian groups fighting each other. The Dayton Peace Accord was drafted and implemented to stop the war and ensure peace. Our unit would be deployed with the mission to enforce the accord and allow people to put their war-torn country back together again.

So this is like in the 90s, you're about to do something real, which is... Yeah, this would be my first major deployment coming up. Fast forward a little bit. We were nervous, but this was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission. The only threat discussed was thousands of mines in the country. Our maps were littered with red dots, and one red dot represented between one and a thousand mines in that area. That's real... Yeah, that's kind of a widespread number there. Yeah, we don't really appreciate that kind of intel. One dot, one dot.

Uh fast forward we flew sunday night and executing the landing was pretty cool The air crew had us mount the vehicles So we were all in position when we landed when we landed the ramp lowered the crews unleashed the tie downs We drove off within a few minutes. The plane was empty and turning around to take off again That's not you had to be pumped. How old were you at this point? 24. Yeah, if that If that yeah, I was a sergeant leading my first crew. Oh, yeah of men uh

Yeah, and I was going to get the mission to lead us up north to the Sava River to secure it so everybody can come across. You say this. Now, in our scout platoon, we had 10 Humvee vehicles, typically with three soldiers per crew, but we were never manned 100%, so we had to get some soldiers from another unit to fill us out. The lead scout is the senior staff sergeant in the platoon, and he led us everywhere.

This person generally has the most knowledgeable, was generally the most knowledgeable, but not in our platoon. Staff Sergeant Heap was the most knowledgeable. And although junior in the rank of sergeant, I, quite frankly, was better scout than the other squad leaders. Together, my staff sergeant and I were a dynamic duo with great soldiers underneath us. Our lead scout was smart but quirky and absolutely could not handle stress. This was how he became known as Shaky Jake. Fast forward a little bit.

We eventually completed our mission to secure the south side, found and established a base camp, Camp Colt, escorted our battalion teammates down to Bosnia, and helped find and mark too many minefields to be comfortable with. It was draining.

No showers either. We would heat a 50 cal ammo can full of water on our pot belly stoves and clean ourselves with a washcloth. It was cold with about two to three feet of snow on the ground, which made mind detecting especially fun. Basically, it sucked. The stress was building and tempers grew short.

Once a battalion was established at Camp Colt, they started implementing standard procedures for maintenance. We had grown accustomed to doing our own thing for the last month and a half, but now we would need to inspect our vehicles and request them to be dispatched for missions every seven days. This is a horrible idea because we could be out on a mission for seven to ten days without warning.

So it's basically you're getting put some admin requirements on top of you guys while you're in the field. And as I wrote it, I tried to write it as my mentality at that time. You know, as you look back as a leader, there's lessons learned. So I tried to write as, you know, that's me, cocky young man coming up. But yes.

Well, I forget who I originally learned this from, but I would say this all the time. You know, the next echelon above us doesn't understand anything, which is a very common attitude to have. And if you can remember that that's the common attitude is that the people above us don't understand what's happening. Oh, wait, that's actually me. That's actually my problem. I don't understand what's happening. Yeah, correct. Correct.

Shaky Jake didn't like it frustrated the crap out of him during one down day with no scheduled missions We started our dispatch procedures the vehicles and maintenance tents were located on the flight line And I just finished a mission brief for the following day and was heading to join my team as I approached the maintenance tent two or three soldiers jumped through the flaps I heard screaming from inside and being the idiot that I am ran into the tent just in time and

Shaky Jake was screaming at the maintenance sergeant a master sergeant e8 and someone very senior to Jake shaky Jake had his back turned to me I will fucking do it yelled Jake fucking pull the pin the maintenance sergeant yelled back What the hell is going on as I came around Jake? I saw him holding an m67 fragmentation grenade one hand was cupping the grenade and spoon and a finger from his other hand was wrapped around the pole pin and

The maintenance sergeant had both hands around Jake's. I did what any dumb person would do and put my hands on top of theirs. So now the grenade was covered by six hands and I yelled, everybody fucking calm down. I'd either startled them or found a commanding voice I didn't know I had, but they immediately stopped screaming and looked at me. Three of us face to face holding a grenade. Master sergeant, please release your hands. Staff sergeant, please let go of the pull pin gently. Give me the grenade and both of you step back, I ordered.

They listened, and I secured the grenade. As soon as I had the grenade, I left the tent, yelling some nonsense instruction to the soldiers gathering to see what the commotion was. I range-walked, speed-walked to our platoon tents where I found the platoon sergeant and the platoon leader. Shaky Jake lost his mind and pulled the grenade on the maintenance guy I stammered. Where's the grenade, the platoon leader demanded as he jumped up from his cot. Right here in my hand, sir. That's a freaking crazy little scenario. No, I mean, yeah.

What do you do? And it's, I said, these are a hundred percent. What do you do in those situations? And you come around and you see it like this. And next, you know, I'm like that. And that mass aren't, wasn't playing around. And I'm looking, I'll say Jake, I'm looking at Jake and I'm,

I didn't understand what stress does to a person. You can look back now and understand the situations we are in a few months into it. Like I said, no showers, barely any power, your mind sweeping.

Three feet of snow looking for mines, and we're marking the minefields. You know, what it does, you don't know about finance problems, marriage problems. I don't know the minds of people at that time. And then six of us with hands on a grenade, what do you do? And I was a young Sergeant E-5, promotable sergeant.

to a Staff Sergeant E6 and a Master Sergeant E8. And I had no idea. All I said is, you know, you read it. Get your hands off. And then next thing I know, I had the grenade. And then I didn't even check to make sure the pins were in or the clip was on.

Next thing I know, I'm taking a grenade and just holding on to the spoon. So it was a bad situation, but I didn't understand stress at that time, what it does to a person. Yeah, and that's kind of the big lessons that you learn there. Because this guy, he was sent to mental health for a few days, which is called behavioral health now.

But no investigation, no sworn statements, nothing. And a few days later, he comes back and basically everyone acts like it didn't happen. And what you say is stress is hard and it's essential to know your soldiers personally and professionally. We knew Jake stressed easily, but we only tried to help him after a significant incident during deployment. I also learned that during deployment that when the situation became stressful, it was up to me to calm things down.

I learned to call people by their first names when the shit hit the fan. It put them at ease and helped them focus on talking to me. That's a really good point. It's a really good point. You know, you're used to calling someone lieutenant or sergeant or whatever the case may be. And all of a sudden you say, hey, Fred, listen to me right now. That's a that's a really good point. You say in later positions, I use these lessons to show my soldiers it was OK to have problems and acknowledge them.

I was the first to make routine appointments with behavioral health, and I made sure my soldiers knew and saw, and more importantly, joined me. I also ensured that we never again did seven-day dispatches in the field or on deployment, 30 dispatches always. So your learning lessons. On September 11th, where were you?

Yeah. So I was a drill sergeant one. So I was at Fort Knox. I was a drill sergeant, but I was September 11th. My wife and I were actually on vacation or on leave in Germany. We flew space a, so I was getting ready to come off the trail. So my tour was ending. Your tour as a drill sergeant was coming to an end. What would, as a, as a drill sergeant, how'd you like being a drill sergeant? I loved it. And what,

To me, it seems like you are going to get to understand human beings at a higher level being a drill sergeant. So I was fortunate to be selected for the next higher rank and drill sergeant within a two-week period. So technically, it was going to put me behind sort of like my platoon sergeant timeline, but I was such a better platoon sergeant preparedness-wise by being a drill sergeant first.

And it definitely helped me later. I'm not saying I was a good platoon sergeant. Time will tell what people thought of me. But I was better prepared because of drill sergeant. And you are absolutely correct. The way, like even say, like I said, like an average life growing up. I don't know if that's true. How many people actually had two parents, a house, woods, learned to fish, hunt, like had siblings and cousins around them and had mentors? Like I was probably way above average. Mm-hmm.

And you don't see that until you see all these different cultures come together and you teach them how to be teammates. Just like when I taught ROTC and teaching college kids how to be officers. Like I get, I get to see different spectrums of stuff in life, in my career. So being a drill sergeant was one of the highlights, but I was overseas when September 11th actually happened. And I started calling like, Hey, do you need me to report to this base? Can I fly home? Um,

It was a hard time. Where did you go next? After drill sergeant. After drill sergeant, you're overseas. Were you on a wrapping up your tour as a drill sergeant leave type thing? No. My wife, because she was German, had hiatus from her job. She was ending her three years. We were trying to go back to Germany. Okay.

So we are actually back in Germany looking for housing. And I was working with branch trying to get assignment back to Germany and we're visiting her parents. Um, and we're coming up and I was, I basically told branch, I said, I really would like to go to Germany cause my wife's gone back there.

with or without me. And that's where they're like, hey, you can go to Ranger School or Pathfinder. If you go to Ranger School, I'm not sure I can get you Germany. If you go to Pathfinder, you can go to Germany. I said, well, I guess I'm going Pathfinder. And I went to Pathfinder and got Germany. When September 11th happened, when I saw it happening, obviously I knew there was going to be a response, but in no part of my brain did I think we were about to start 20 years of war. I know.

What were you thinking? Yeah, I honestly, yeah, I don't know if I thought 20 years either. I didn't know who was absolutely responsible. I can't say even my focus was on that. I think my focus was making sure there's prepared for whatever was about to come. And I knew Afghanistan when we first were going into Afghanistan and then they're talking Iraq and I was a platoon sergeant now.

My sole focus was making sure our platoon was prepared for whatever we were getting ready to go to, whatever that was. And it was just making sure we were trained. And we had a troop commander that just pushed us in training, and that's what we – I just focused on that, not length, not where, not what, just our jobs were ready for whatever we're – or wherever we were going. Mm-hmm.

Speaking of training, I'm going to fast forward a little bit in the book. You guys are preparing to go out in the field for some training. You say it was an alert to go in the field. 100% accountability by 0400, order brief at 0500, and roll out to the field by 0800. About 15 minutes before the mission brief, I heard the first sergeant yelling for me to get to the commander's office. I thought nothing of it, maybe just wanted an update to see how fast we could move after the mission brief. I was wrong.

"What do you know about such and such whorehouse?" demanded the commander. The second platoon sergeant, whom I admired deeply, was there as well. A deep-rooted military family and traditions type of soldier, also extremely competent. "Never heard of it, sir. I am married," I sarcastically replied, but I really had never heard of it.

Well, Staff Sergeant Michaels from 2nd Platoon is apparently there, and I need you two to go retrieve him, he ordered. I looked at my battle buddy and then at the 1st Sergeant, all of us wearing shit-eating grins because this might turn out to be fun. Roger that, sir. So you say you probably selected for this mission because you spoke German. You figure out where this place is, and you show up at this brothel.

And you say, we had entered another dimension, a vast living room with humongous cathedral ceilings, a beautiful staircase in the middle led to the rooms above. Couches, tables, and chairs were spread throughout like it was a spa. In one corner of the room was a buffet of drinks and fresh fruit for breakfast. In the other corner sat a mini weight set to work out on. And we saw an enclosed glass area with a small pool and hot tub.

This place was the ultimate man cave. Lots of TVs and music played at 0600 in the morning. To top it off, three or four men were lounging around wearing nothing but towels with girls sitting beside them.

If you've been, I'm sure people have been overseas or other places that they can relate to this 100, maybe, maybe not. Yeah. And it's legal there. That's the thing. It's prostitution is legal in Germany. Correct. So, or at least that's what you said. Yeah. In that time. Yes. Okay. I think it still is. Trying not to stare because some of the women were completely naked. We hurried up the stairs, open the doors one by one on the second floor. We found our guy, uh,

knocked out between two beautiful Asian women who woke as we entered. Get your ass up and let's go, fuck stick. We're going in the field in two hours.

You guys rushed downstairs he gets dressed and then this is what I just had to read this Section because of this as we were leaving I saw it on the wall just before the exit was a certificate of appreciation a certificate of appreciation is a military document printed on behalf of a command or unit and given to businesses restaurants that support our soldiers it is always signed by the units commanders and senior enlisted leader for us that would be our captain and first sergeant and

This certificate on the wall caught my eye because it had our unit crest, which was a dead giveaway. I don't remember the exact words, but it read something like for meritorious support of our American soldiers and their needs. Your professionalism, skilled techniques and utmost care of us helped maintain morale and well-being of our soldiers, etc., etc. This is hanging on the wall. The certificate was signed. You're a grateful soldier instead of our unit commander.

And it had the whorehouse name in bold letters in the middle. It was professional looking and surrounded by similar certificates, units, coins, and patches. I'm taking this, I shouted as we marched out the door.

That's it. You guys go on the mission. Everything goes smooth. And here's a little bit of here's the lesson you learned here before being released for the weekend. Our commander and first sergeant held a meeting and the captain issued a new policy letter outlining off limits establishments. Of course, the whorehouse was at the top of the list, along with many other establishments. We never had a issue with the whorehouse again.

You guys had a little dining in ceremony which is like a party and you presented our commander with our certificate of appreciation that he had unknowingly provided to a whorehouse. It was great overall laugh, but I learned several lessons from it. First, accountability is essential. This would help me teach my leaders later when I served as Command Sergeant Major. When someone fails to show up to work, we don't simply wait and assume everything is okay. We find them. That is genuine care. Even if they merely overslept, we always care for our soldiers.

The second lesson is about policy letters. Every stupid policy letter is written because soldiers messed up too many times. If everyone did the right thing, there would be no need to explain it in detail.

From that moment forward, I scrutinize policy letters from a different perspective. What is the policy's actual purpose? How will it be enforced? Is there a systemic issue that needs to be addressed? And how will you implement it if you write it? Sometimes commanders go crazy with policy letters and use them as punishment. Lastly, do you as a leader and soldier actually read and understand the policy letters? So...

Well, what's funny is after this book came out, one of my buddies, you know, read it. We, we came up in our careers together and either I followed him, he followed me. He called me. He's like, bro, I'm the one who presented that certificate to the warehouse. He's like, he's like, I gave it to him. I was like, I figured, I figured it'd be you. Now, again, I'm going to fast forward here. You end up, you're on your first deployment to Iraq. Um,

You're doing missions. This one here I'm going to talk about. In the spring of 2003, our unit deployed to Iraq, smack dab in the middle of Baghdad. We're doing an HVT raid on a terrorist cell, working with the British SAS.

uh special operations team didn't have enough people to conduct the raid so we would run the raid for them secure the prisoners and houses and then they would come in and grab all the intelligence etc when you combine different organizations you call yourself a task force so you're you know they didn't have enough people you got to hit a target and i think this becomes common you know especially as you know if you're doing intercordon outer court on the actual raid sensitive site exploration and all that you know ssi all that good stuff sometimes you just don't have the people especially specialized units so you

use us or some other people to help. So, yeah. And that next level of that for us in Ramadi was like here, we, we would get Intel from somewhere and we, there'd be a target to hit in somewhere, you know, in downtown Ramadi and we could brief, get our Iraqi troops, load up our Humvees, drive down there, drive to the cop foot patrol off from the cop. And all that took, you know, eight, 12 hours to get all that done.

Because we have to get permissions to take our Iraqi soldiers. Like there's a bunch of stuff. Or I could call Mike Baima and say, hey, go hit building 28 and look for this guy. And he'd be like, cool, I'll be back in 20 minutes. Yeah, correct. And it was just like awesome. But that's at another time, a little bit more in the future. For this one, you guys kind of go through a planning cycle with the SAS. You're going to go out and hit this target. Fast forward a little bit. The time finally came. You guys reach the checkpoint, 0200.

The platoons reached their positions you guys set off your explosive charges. So boom boom the explosions were near simultaneous And it was beautiful ears ringing the assault teams moved We had put too much explosives on the guesthouse door blowing the entire thing off the frame and making easy for our teams to enter within seconds our assault team had a man woman and child in custody and brought them around the corner to put behind the guesthouse two terrorists came out the back door one of them with a weapon and

The selector switch on my rifle went from safe to semi and I laid my sights on his forehead because there was an old car in between him and me. I should have shot differently, but I aimed for his head. It would be the first, but definitely not the last time I squeezed my trigger with the intent to kill. I fired one shot and grazed the side of his head and my staff sergeant at the enemy on the left directly after.

We both missed. Or sorry, my staff sergeant fired at the enemy on the left directly after. We both missed. But it worked out because the enemy dropped their weapons and raised their hands. Meanwhile, inside the main house, we heard room clear, room clear. Within two minutes, they had everyone moving into the garden between the houses and then on their knees. And that's when we learned that Iraqi walls are made differently than American or European walls. You guys almost shot me, said one cold leader.

The tracer round I had fired, the first round to guide everyone to where I was shooting, nicked my target, traveled through two walls, and passed the other assault team. That near miss made us rethink where and how we positioned people for future raids. With the site secure and the inner cordon set, we brought in the special operations team who conducted their sensitive site exploitation.

We secured nine terrorists, three HVTs, and a crap load of weapons to boot. It was an extremely successful mission. After returning, the special operations team came by and shook every one of our soldiers' hands and said that was one of the best executed raids they'd seen. It would also lead to many more dangerous missions, but we had confidence and experience to execute them all. The biggest lesson I learned this time was about not missing my target when I shot. I will never forget that moment.

I didn't regret trying to kill someone. I regretted missing. And I made sure my soldiers and I never missed again. When you only had three to five seconds to engage an enemy when ambushed, if you missed, they ran away. But if you hit them, they had to stay and fight. And we now owned the ambush and could kill the enemy. Ask any of the soldiers I led after this mission and they will tell you I put emphasis on marksmanship and shooting. We never missed again. That's the shooting part. And then the

understanding what your backdrop is and if you miss you could be hitting your own guys, which is Something that a lot of times, you know, that doesn't really happen in the movies, you know Well, you don't think about what your backdrops are I think I learned this when in the in the 90s we had one of the main kill houses that we used when I was at SEAL Team one was made of just literally plywood and so you had to set up your whole assault to

to not have anyone downrange because we didn't have bullet traps at this time. Like we would just shoot paper targets or cardboard silhouettes that are in a house. So you had to kind of figure out the geometry of the whole thing to make sure that you weren't going to shoot your own guys. And that's something that you don't think about a lot. I mean, I put no thought of rounds going through the outer exterior of an Iraqi house until that point.

Not at all. Uh, that totally changed our thought process, you know, especially as we're thinking about like inner cordon and until they said they saw the tracer go through the exterior wall and two interior walls. And then, like I said, I, I taken lives or pulling a trigger against an enemy. Um, I will never regret if that's what we're asked to do. Uh, and we saw in Ramadi as we'll talk, uh,

when you're getting side street ambushes or from rooftop or a window, and you know, you only have a split second to see it re react and engage before they run away or hide or circle a different direction. You only get one shot. And if you miss, you're not going to get a second chance until later. Uh, but if you hit them, it's on and I will take my chances every day. Uh,

when it's on. Uh, so we, we emphasize shooting nonstop. I mean, we zeroed on a one inch square at a hundred meters. I mean, that was our zero from that point on. Uh, and it was five out of six at a hundred meters, one in square black square. And if you weren't in that, it didn't count. Yeah. The marksmanship is a real thing. Got to be good. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

This was kind of a story here that it just shows you how awesome our soldiers are. You say, when our new brigade commander came in, our mission immediately changed. We would now split up our assignments. One platoon would escort the brigade to meet the brigade command team around while the other conducted IED route clearance missions around headquarters. No more raids and finding bad guys. We became a taxi service and circled the headquarters looking for explosives.

That's a significant mission change. It is. So you're talking 2003. You're right behind the main push. I mean, they're going from dropping grenades and taking Baghdad International Airport, 3rd ID, and we're right behind them.

And our mission was find bad guys. And like you were talking about earlier, you know, we basically had the whole brigade footprint and we could go to all the battalions and say, hey, we want to operate in your sector for a week. What would you like us to do for you or how can we help you? So we knew the entire East Baghdad footprint.

could help all the battalions and like hey we would love you to do this and that's what we did we found bad guys and it was awesome what months was this

This would be, what was this, May 03 to basically probably October 03 when it first started, or that time period. Yeah, so this is like Wild West activities going on. Yeah, correct. And again, the enemy isn't really, they're learning IEDs at that time. So they're dropping grenades. You know, they're learning. And then they lifted stop loss and commanders started switching out.

And then we went to a route clearance. I mean, we didn't even have doors on Humvees and we had no up armor. I mean, we had the Vietnam flak jackets on floorboards with sandbags. And again, I'm 6'3 and my knees are in my chest from the sandbags and flak jackets trying to protect us. And they're like, hey, go find IEDs. And this is Baghdad with the wires and everywhere is command detonating wires at best.

I mean, it's just trash and you didn't have the vehicles and we're driving around in circles. Yeah. We had, uh, we had, uh,

The same thing unarmed Humvees. We had the camp like literal actual canvas doors. Yeah, you know like and so we what we did was we popped those doors off completely and we turned our seats so that they faced outboard and so then so then at least we'd be presenting the plate of our body armor and it was also it felt better because now you're just looking you're looking out instead of having to look over your shoulder looking out and scanning for targets, which

Felt a lot better than sitting there trying to look over your shoulder with your weapon kind of canted So that's what you guys end up doing You're getting replacement soldiers to or new soldiers One of those soldiers was private David Cantor from California And so you're out on a clearance mission. This guy has a new guy and

and you come up against a suspected IED and you call EOD, EOD shows up and when EOD shows up, they're like, okay, cool, yup, we think it's an IED. So they're gonna send their robot down. So they got a robot and they're gonna put a water charge on it and blast that thing in place, which is a great thing to do, not putting any lives at risk. So...

You say this as the robot backed away. So that's what they do. The EOD shows up, they send the robot down. And as, and then you say this as the robot backed away to turn around, either it got stuck or the transmitter stopped working. We watched and waited and finally got impatient. And I asked the EOD leader, what was the matter? The robot is stuck. We need to go down there and get it. Crap. Here we go. I thought I turned and saw the other EOD soldier putting on his bomb suit.

I started calculating whether we needed to expand our perimeter to look for bad guys in case this was a command detonated or someone was waiting for the EOD soldiers to get close enough. I called the leaders over and we mapped out two areas we would push to ensure no one was watching or waiting for us. I spotted private Cantor edging closer to us as we talked and decided to fuck with him in combat in a stressful situation. Welcome to the army.

Cantor come here private. We need help the robot is stuck and we need you to go get it I ordered Cantor went ghost white, which was the reaction I expected for someone with Colombian blood He looked positively Caucasian at that moment Cantor hadn't seen the soldier in the bomb suit yet He looked at the robot then at me and very nervously said Roger that sergeant and turned toward the robot I was utterly amazed

He didn't really know us yet or trust us. And this was his first experience with an explosive device. Yet he thought it was his duty to go down there. And that's what he planned to do. We immediately stopped him, of course, and laughed our asses off. You could see the blood rush back to Cantor's body after a massive look of relief came over his face. It was a golden moment.

That's to me just an epic story like you got a guy Hey, we need to go and just risk your life to go grab this robot and he's like, yep Roger that I mean, yeah one so one I'm gonna meet Cantor tonight after this It's amazing and then Cantor becomes a sniper and does amazing stuff for us in Ramadi again He worked with Chris crack Kyle and stuff. I mean Cantor saved lives when we talked Dietrich here, but new private replacement

grows up his brother's in a gang from the streets here in california and serves his country and we ask him to do something and he's like roger that scared and he does it and that's just one of many of a few soldiers uh yeah he's absolutely amazing uh and we mess him with a kid in combat and then but that's you know that's i bet you all militaries like that yeah um

I'm sure somebody's like, oh, that's horrendous. That's the military. Yeah, it's horrendous. It's horrendous and really funny. And it's true, yes. And there's another cool story you write about Cantor in here. He ends up getting in trouble at some point and going AWOL for a little bit. And you call him up, you talk to him. And when you, hey, look, you got to come back, get back here. And when he gets back, you punish him.

um, you know, you say we rip off his rank and, and, uh, demote him to private. But if you check his official paperwork, there won't be anything because as far as anyone's new. So you did a little paperwork shuffle. Like, I mean, there is no paperwork. Exactly. Uh, yeah. Rank came off his chest and rank went back on his chest. He, he graduated sniper school. Uh, there was a situation back with his family back here in California, uh,

And he went back to take care of it instead of coming right back to Germany to our final train up to come back to Iraq. He was scared. He didn't know what to do because his other buddy who graduated sniper school came right back to Germany. And I was like, Hey, where's Cantor? And then he got scared. And then when I got a hold of him on the phone and I was first name, David, I need you to come home. Everything will be all right. I need you to get your ass back here. We'll take care of it. And yeah,

There had to be punishment, but it was visual. I knew what he was doing, and I knew the reasons he was doing it. Sometimes you get it. And I wouldn't be where I was if leaders hadn't done stuff for me. You end up, you get hurt. You get blown up, right, on that deployment? Their first one. Yeah. What happened there? So, and thankfully, again, thankfully it's 2003 and not later. As we were talking about, they were learning that.

different stuff. So we were escorting the brigade command sergeant major, a wonderful man who later died Christmas Eve. And we were just coming down Route Pluto on the east side by Sodder City, and IED exploded. But it was more of a grape charge, you know, where they're packing all the charges, like a shape charge, as you know. And it hit us, demolished the vehicle, and I think there might be pictures. If not, I have them.

Thankfully, we were okay. Later found out I was not okay. We responded, but again, we're talking about calm under fire. I called the reports on the one good radio. The other radio was shot to hell. The whole left side was peppered. All the tires were flat. Antennas were gone. We responded. I remember I had the ops sergeant major behind me, E9, and

And he was like, what do I do? And we started, we actually opened the doors, got out and started to pull cover while the other vehicle was coming around to search. And he wouldn't get out of the vehicle. I was like, get out, pull cover. And I called the report and I was like three WIAs. And I sent, and they're like, who? And I was like, Red 4 Delta, Red 4 Golf, Red 4. And they're like, that's you. I'm like, yes.

And then they were treating us. And then they responded. And I was telling her earlier, I always used to call my wife on a sat phone like every two weeks on a Sunday. This happened on a Thursday, I believe. And we get treated. And we're basically all RTD. They bandaged us up. Oh, we went out to mission the next day. The brigades sergeant major, he came and grabbed me. He's like, hey, Pinion.

I need you to get a vehicle. It'd be nice if you get your vehicle fixed. I mean, they had to replace all the tires, all the commo, everything. We had holes, holes all through the vehicle.

And they're like, Hey, I want to take your vehicle to division head course so you can see what we went through. I'm like, we, I was like, all right, so our major. Uh, and I remember Lugo, my driver was just like this, you know, but they say you fall down, you get back on the bike, but he was like this driving to division head course the next day. But anyway, you know, they do a casual reports or whatever. Somehow I got back to the rear and they left a voice message on

to my wife and it was, have you heard about your husband? If not, call me. That was our casualty notification. Well, I didn't call my wife. Uh, and I called her on Sunday. As soon as you heard my voice, she is freaking out. And I'm like, baby, you can hear me, right? You hear me, right? You hear me. Yes, it was bad. Thankfully I was okay. We later found out that I had tore an ACL in my knee, which required surgery. As soon as I got back, uh, they did the MRI. They're like, Hey, you like, you have no ACL anymore. Uh,

when I had gone into the radio mount and tore whatever. So I had surgery right after. And then they found out I had bleeding on the back of the brain from TBI. But, yeah, that was the IED from that IED. How long was this first appointment? We got extended. Sometimes I misspeak. I think that one was 17 months. Was it 12, 15, 15 months. 15 months.

Yeah, because we got extended right as we were shooting basic load. And they're like, yeah, you're going to Kuwait in two days. And they're like, nope, stop, extend it and go to Karjaf and Karbala and stop the uprising. And we got extended three months. Yeah, 15 months. How was it coming home after that deployment? Yeah, it was good. It was hard. You know, it's hard. Any deployment that's coming home is hard, but...

I think mine was hard because I talk about getting fired sometimes and I had a really rough relationship with my third commander and it was my fault. You know, you have to own your, your, I was pushing the wrong way as a leader. And I put my platoon leader in a rough spot because I thought I knew all the answers and I knew what I was doing as a platoon sergeant, which I did. And I knew how to keep my men alive, but I was pushing my commander wrong. And I,

And I thought my commander was a coward under fire. A different story. And three weeks before the deployment, he removed me after an incident. And my brigade sergeant major saved me from a court-martial. And so I was removed, and they put me on brigade staff. And as we got back, that's when they found out my ACL was gone. And they found the brain bleed or spotting.

And they did this ACL surgery. And it was the brigade sergeant major who called me. It was like, hey, congratulations. You also made E8. You know, good job, buddy. And oh, by the way, we're already being told we're going back to Iraq. We're not even home 30 days. And they're like, hey, you're going back to Iraq. I mean, we just did 15 months. But that was the time, 2003, 2004. They're like, I mean, I met people there.

who went with us to Iraq, stop loss lifted, they PCS'd and we saw them coming back north as we were going south to go home. And 30 days after we get home, they're like, hey, we're going back to Iraq within a year. And he's like, congratulations, you made E8. When can you walk? I was like, hey, they said I'll be running in nine. That's not what I effing said. When can you walk? I'm like, 30 days. He's like, good. I'm making you the first sergeant. You're going back to the BRT.

Get ready 'cause you're gonna have a special mission. - So when you left in October, in October 2003,

Did when you went home, cause so I got to Iraq in like September, October, 2003. Yeah. We left in like July of 04 or something like that. It was just our mission changed in 03. We started doing circle. I got blown up in 03, but we did circle. So when you, so you, so you didn't leave until July of 04? Yeah, I think around that time. Yeah. So you had started to see, cause I was going to say there was a time period, like maybe around December, 2003 into early 2004. Yeah.

Even in the spring, it seemed like things seemed to be going in a decent direction. Like, oh, you know, like... Because I left in the spring and...

it was probably around April of 2004, and it seemed like there was a spike in some enemy activity because the Shia were starting to rise up and that was starting to cause problems. But prior to April, so what would that be? March, February and March, it was like, oh, we're not going to be here for that much longer. That's how I felt. Did you kind of get that feeling too? We were pulling tanks out of Iraq. I was escorting tanks to Kuwait,

They're like, yeah, we're good. We're going to be pulling cops, shutting down bases and cops and everything else. We're good, man. We're out of here. Yeah, we're out. So you get back. You're immediately, you let your leg heal up. And now you're right back into training for your next deployment. And what's your job now? What's your position? Yeah, so I was in brigade staff for a couple months getting better.

And then we hear we're going back. So I think it was April 2005 is when they laterally appointed me to 1st Sergeant E8 and put me officially back in the Brigade Reconnaissance Troop to get ready to go back to Iraq in April 2005. Then when, was Colonel McFarlane there?

Officially the brigade commander. I think so. And they're like, Hey, we got a special mission for you. And again, the brigade reconnaissance troop is a special unit to begin with. And I'm not trying to sound cocky or anything, but it's a brigade reconnaissance unit. How many guys are in the, in the brigade reconnaissance? Yeah. On paper it's, it's like 57, 54 with attachments. We can go up all the way up to a hundred depending on what missions we're doing. But on paper it's like 54. Yeah.

So you'll work up for that. Any major lessons learned as you're preparing to go on this deployment? Yeah, I think the biggest lessons were the mission change because they're like, hey, we want you to do small kill team ambush missions. So we are going to embed asymmetric warfare group. We want you to learn from ODA. We want you to learn from SEALs. Like here's all the unconventional teams that,

we want you to learn from. We're going to send this amount of people to sniper school, this amount of people to tracking school. Like we went, we were sending people to schools and doing all the field training. So there's no downtime. So you had one year back, but that one year back was training for stuff, not out of our realm, but it was new lessons learned. So I think it was getting ready for that type of missions. And then right before we deployed, they're like, Oh,

Change a mission. We're gonna put you under 137 and put you up north as a landowner Which is okay? Not typically our mission, but that's what our training was focused on small kill team mission operations So that then was that was that? McFarland driving that correct like I don't know I have some insight doesn't he correct? Correct and he pulled myself and captain by him in the office and

and said, "This is where I need you to go with your unit." And that's what we did. - What was your first impression of McFarland? - Again, you get this tall, almost, I'm not gonna say nerdy, but sort of nerdy, dry sense of humor. Like I couldn't read him at all at first. And you know, some guys are funny, some guys just look like hunter killer, sort of go like scary. I didn't have any of that with them.

I really had no opinion at first. You know, I can say stuff about Colonel Tedesco and some of the other battalion commanders. You know, like Captain Biama, you just get this arrogance right away. Yeah, that guy, he was like, all right, I got you. I can read you like a book, easy. Your book has pictures and colors. But I mean, yeah, yeah.

Colonel McFarland is just skinny, tall. You can tell he's smart right away, but he gave us the mission and he was straightforward in it too. And we had a good S3. Um, and then they just told us what you want to write, execute. But he gave us the authority and the lenience to run it how we felt.

Yeah, he's a true believer in decentralized command. Correct. That's for sure. So when you go on deployment, so your first thing when you go on deployment, it's now what, early 2006, and you guys go straight to Tal Afar? Correct. And we're west of Tal Afar in Sindjar, Sindjar Mountains, just south of Sindjar Mountains in Biage. In fact, that's where you, so this tells you about main gun biome. Yeah.

His first op order was welcome back, Biage. That was his first op order for us to go back to Iraq. When you're up in Talfar, so what are you guys doing up there? What's your job? What's your mission? So we were landowners of a small town. So your troop actually had like- We owned land. Okay. And we had Iraqi army. And this is when Bimo is still in charge of your troop. Correct. And we owned the town and the land south of it.

And we called it like the terrorist training camp. Like they were bad, the terrorists, and they were blowing themselves up. We would get some mortar attacks and we do some counter mortar missions and

But our job was really to try and work with the Iraqi army there and have them turn over, take over that area. So we were partnering with them a lot to do a lot of the missions and then really south of that area. And then sometimes we got to Syria, the border out there and try and stop the smuggling that was going out there on the border. When did you start hearing rumors about Ramadi?

It came fast. That changed the mission for us. I think we're like the redhead stepchild. We're just out there doing our thing. And all of a sudden they're like, hey, we're going to close this base here in Biage and you're going to go to Talafar. And by the way, we got AWG coming in again. They're going to embed with you for 30 days and we need your snipers to get ready. And we're going somewhere west of Fallujah.

And I had operated west of Fallujah in my first, when we did the Fallujah mission in 03. We started looking at maps and they started talking Ramadi. Probably, we didn't hear about it until probably early May or late April. Dang. So it was late. And I think they were still trying to decide who's going where between battalions and stuff. Yeah, so I don't... Yeah, it was quick for us. And then how did you guys get down there? Did you just drive? Yeah, we drove. So...

That was, so we closed up, went to Talafar, got our marching orders. And that's why I talk like the transition for us was huge. And then we drove our entire troop through. And I mean, you're talking multiple sectors, Apaches overhead, you're switching crypto through the zones with multiple commands, like it through the night. And then I think that was our first transition that the game is on.

And we're talking like Doc Black and stuff that was here earlier. For the new soldiers, we just came from training camp that people blowing themselves up. We are now hitting convoys and multiple IEDs along the route from Baghdad to Fallujah to Ramadi. And we're getting stopped with multiple convoys in the middle of the night. And IEDs are just going off along the route. And that's a main route. And I remember...

Our supply sergeant is an LMTV with a whip antenna man pack radio. And I'm tracking the convoy on the blue force tracker and we're doing a count. And I don't see the LMTV cause he doesn't have a blue force tracker, but I'm doing a count of the convoy and he says he's moving, but our convoy is not moving. He had jumped into the other, some other convoy. So now I'm chasing our supply sergeant along a route and I track him down.

And I get him pulled over. I'm like, bro, you're in the wrong fucking convoy. He's like, what? I'm like, you are leading us to Ramadi right now. Like, you're the lead, man. Tip of the spear. But it was a wake-up call for some. Like, we are not north. We are not in the north anymore. Like, we are moving. The game is changing. It was just a movement to Ramadi was fucked.

And then when you guys got down there, did you guys immediately get chopped to the 137? No. So we left 137 when we got to Talafar. Got it. And then we didn't – I don't think we had clear attachment orders yet. So when we got to Camp Ramadi, we were back under brigade control initially. Okay.

And I think, yeah, we were told we were going to start doing small kill team missions. And that's when we initially told we were going to start working with the SEAL teams. In fact, I think our first few missions were with SEAL Team 3. And, yeah, our first three missions were with SEAL Team 3. What was your impression of meeting my guys there?

Yeah, it was interesting in a good way. So we had worked with the ODA team up north and we did not have the greatest impression because they were very standoffish. In my first deployment, we had very good interactions with unconventional forces in general, no matter who they were, what task force they were, whatever they said they were, we had very good interactions.

But up north, we had a very standoffish interaction. They had their own compound within our compound and would not talk to us and would not share what missions they were doing. Would only tell us when it was over. And that's a very tough atmosphere to deal with when you're trying to share intel or how can you help each other. So it is very different when you get invited to Shark Base to come into your talk and you're like, hey, brother,

my name is Jocko. For some reason, I thought it was Rhino or something like that at first. Rhino was actually the task you did commander after me. His nickname was Rhino. So you went from Jocko to Rhino. Maybe that's why I stuck it in my head. But either way, I was like, man, what a badass. But I remember I was like, man, badass. And I think it was our first impressions. Like, man.

How welcoming of a difference it is to say, hey, how can we help? I think that's one of your first sayings like this is what we do. How can we help each other? And then this is the area we know right now. And I think you had an Intel person give us a layout of what you knew.

And because we were starting to build our map and we had pulled all the intel from deployments before. And we had our XO, John Vilsenor, and Staff Sergeant Damon Walker, who was in our headquarters. They started building the intel of all of Ramadi. And we had all the building numbers and we started pinwheeling all the attacks.

by house, by hour, by day of the week, by month to try and find patterns. And we had no intel experience. And they're like, hey, we're going to pinwheel this thing. So initially, and then my guys had sort of this coolness because they had done small kill teams. This is a background they've been training for for almost a year to get ready. And they're like, hey, we're ready for missions.

So I think within the first two weeks after transfer authority, we were already on missions with you guys. And they're coming back like, this is what we trained for. So they were hyped. And we had success in the missions. I mean, Jesse Gonzalez came back. I'll never forget. He came back and he's like, first sergeant shot a 203 right now. We didn't have the cars or whatever. We had the 203s under that rifle. He's like shot 203 round HE through the window. First try.

They high-fived me. And I was like, hey, great job, Jesse. Or Gonzo. We call him Gonzo. We dumped a lot of 203 rounds there. A lot of those 40-mic rounds. Yeah, you're right. We didn't have a lot of 203s. We used the M79. Yeah, the M79. Old school. That thumper. But yeah, it was great. The attitude in Ramadi, fantastic.

was like, hey, everyone needs all the help we can get, and we're all one big team here. So you guys, like, for us, it was like, oh, you guys want to come out and set up Overwatch positions near us? Awesome. Like, let's go. And I think that's the point. We had similar capabilities that we could support each other, maybe not levels of training or equipment-wise, but we had the capabilities to help each other. And we had the soldier...

with discipline to go out there and do it. So having snipers with snipers and machine guns with machine guns and the specialized team to do small kill team operations and size capacity, it just worked out perfect. So when we did joint missions, it was amazing. Yeah. I remember one time we got a visit from like one of my senior leaders in the SEAL teams and they're like, you know, Hey, John, could you need anything?

And I was like, yeah, we need another task unit. Like, can you send me another, just send me another 40 seals out here. And like, we got, we, I got more work than we could ever hope for. That's not happening. And so it was like, okay, cool. So you guys show up. It's like, bro, you guys want to get in on this action? Let's go. Yeah. It was a, I remember one mission I walked on with, I think it was a life. Uh, we were walking, it was nighttime. Um,

just the green lasers or You know and they're just everywhere and I just remember being it's like a light show at night and we're just and you're like This is awesome. Yeah, it feels good. Yeah. Yeah, so echo Charles when you're patrolling you have night vision on and So the enemy can't see it but you can see you can basically you can tell where everyone's looking because you can see where they're what they're lazing and so you feel like

As it's pretty awesome. It's like an awesome feeling of knowing that you can see how much people are paying attention to scanning windows, scanning doors, scanning rooftops. You see all these laser looks like a porcupine of lasers going down the street. And it's a very good feeling. Yeah. I mean, you see, yeah, you definitely feel more confidence without a doubt. It feels good. What kind of TTPs surprised you?

I will tell you honestly, I felt really confident coming back on those missions of how closely we operated. Now there are stuff like if you're talking peeling, but if you're talking cover and move either with team or individual, we were very closely, you know, you guys might say stuff different, but we operated in general movement, the silence, the

But cover and move was all the same. I think the only true difference we had is of how we established within houses, the TTPs or barricaded or set up positions within there. But if we set our vest next to the machine gun, so it doesn't matter who was on the machine gun, they had the ammo and everything else. And we had the vest here.

But we learned from you of how to cover our dead spaces better or what we're looking at from talking to your team. So we learned knowledge of how to look at danger areas better. But when it actually came to the patrolling and the maneuvering, I think we were very close. But like I say, Chris, Kyle, shooting with our snipers on the range –

And having that fun competition and smack talking really helped and gave our guys confidence to realize, hey, our guys can shoot. And it's fun to compare notes and techniques and how we set up our blind spots and why we sit back off a window like this and to learn how they shoot. And when you're making the holes in the wall, why you make it like this is

It was really fun to compare stuff like that. And then I think our guys learned about decision making. And that's what I always preached. I never, I always say it like I should have a t-shirt said like okay is leader, but I was always proud. Okay. Okay. But I always, I always preached make a decision.

The people who don't make decisions have issues or leads to problems. You have to evaluate and you have to make a decision. Your decision is not going to be right, but it's going to be worse if you don't make a decision. And I think they learn from your team how quick people can evaluate situations, prioritize, and then make a decision and execute. And that would generally lead to better outcomes than...

overthinking or not making decisions. Yeah. The, the exchange of information that everybody had was, was pretty awesome. I know we did a bunch of, uh, overwatches right in the beginning with three, eight and three, uh, scout snipers and stuff. And they shared all kinds of good information with us. Um,

and helped us with our TTPs. And then the decision making and stuff is like, we get a lot of really good training. And one thing that we do pretty good is make really small decisions fast.

So it's like, hey, I don't necessarily need to make a huge decision right now, but I can make a little one. For instance, oh, our Overwatch position is getting attacked. I don't have to say, oh, we're going to leave now. But I could say, all right, well, let's put eyes on this part of the road so we can see what the exit is going to look like. So you can make a decision very quickly that then is going to indicate to you if you want to make another small decision in that direction, you can make it or you can say, oh, we

oh, we're not taking fire anymore. It seems like we're gonna be okay. Or, oh, we're taking more fire. Luckily, we already have eyes on our exit. We can move down that road. So making these little decisions very quickly is what I think our team got good at. And again, for us, it was just like having more people, especially like you guys that were focused on the same thing that we're focused on,

Being able to set up mutually supporting overwatch positions was just very helpful and very awesome. Yeah, and I think that's one of the things we'll learn later is we were smaller than the Marines the way they took houses. So where they would put 40 in a house, we're putting 12. So we had to rely on mutually supporting houses and overwatch positions. So anytime we could team up with you, we're like, absolutely. There's no way we're saying no to that.

What was your op tempo like? Yeah, we were gone every day. I mean, you know, Colonel McFarland at the time, he wanted major operations every two to three days. And then, so as a BRT, so we went from 137, we get to Ramadi, we started off doing missions with you, and then they put us under Colonel Dean as a landowner again. And because they took forces from his battalion,

to give the 137 for the main push. So we supported his battalion and we had some land that we owned again and route gremlins. And then we got pulled off of that to do missions again. And then Colonel McFarland would be like, hey, I'm going to keep putting you at the point of friction. Wherever I need special stuff, I'm going to keep putting the BRT. So we were always in some good spots.

And also, it's also, you mentioned in the book, but McFarland grabbed Mike Bima and took him from you and put him back in charge of a tank company. Yeah, what a great decision. Again, you don't understand what his mindset was, but for Ramadi, I mean, you worked with Mike all the time and then later, but I don't understand why decisions are made. I try and learn that. Like, I'm more interested in books that say how decisions came out, like why. Right.

But, boy, he nailed that one, putting Bayama in a tank. Yeah. That dude's Rommel. You don't get the nickname main gun for nothing. So we talked about stress, you know, with your deployment to Bosnia. How was your troops handling the stress in Ramadi? I know that one of the things that always struck me as a very –

unfortunate situation was the fact that that vehicle graveyard was on the right hand side as you drove out the front gate and there's 75 or a hundred vehicles. They're all twisted and, and burned up and knowing that each one of those vehicles represents one or two or three Americans wounded or killed. And just the knowing every time you go out in the city, there's that chance. How was your, how was your guys holding up?

So I will tell you, you know, the transition when we got there early June and we realized this is not the north anymore. And you had the daily attacks, mortar attacks. And we're like, oh, this is not Kansas anymore, Dorothy. It was a serious wake up call. And then we started with the early missions and we had immediate success. So everybody was on a high. And then we attacked Ramadi. And again, we had early success there.

But around the end of July going into August is when it really started to hit us because we started to take casualties and losses. We were fortunate where we never really used the front gate. We used the back gate because that was our area. So, but we became keenly aware of the graveyard because we started putting vehicles in it. And because we were small, uh,

Any casualty to us became well-known. So as soon as we started taking casualties, such a small unit, just like a team, it really starts to hit you. And I started to see it wear on our soldiers quicker and heavier. I know for us, August 2nd is when Mark Lee was killed and Ryan Jobe was so badly wounded. And we had been working with you guys at that point a lot.

What do you remember about how that impacted your guys? I know that Army guys that I knew, they were very, you know, it seemed like we had a little bit of invincibility, you know? Like, hey, we're out there tasking a bruiser. We're going down. We're killing bad guys every day. And, you know, being that everyone knows what's happening, everyone's reading the AARs, everyone's hearing on the radios. You know, you're hearing the reports on the radios.

And so I know that, I mean, for us, it was definitely, you know, an end of our invincibility. What did you do? Do you remember that impact for you guys? No, it absolutely was the exact same. So we know that day very well and the mission and.

like I said, every time we went out with you, there was a, there was more level of confidence of what we had. We had more firepower. We have more professionals. I mean, we had the best of the best going out with us or supporting us or us supporting you, however you want to look at it. We were just better than the enemy and we knew it. And we put a hurting on the enemy. There's no other way to say it. And when you,

You hear that Mark Lee was killed, and you hear it's a SEAL. It doesn't matter the name at first. You just hear that a SEAL was killed. I can't even imagine what your team's going through. And then you hear about the evacuation, and you hear what's going on, and you're still fighting door to door to door, and you're still supporting. It really, for me internally, like, oh, my gosh.

You're not Superman anymore. And that's what I remember from the previous deployment like hey, like I'm not invincible I just remember that feeling for me personally and then when you have it happened to a team a SEAL team you're like oh this is real and then like I said when we went to the memorial service and to hear you speak and one people realize that like that tent is huge and it was filled I mean, it's absolutely filled and

standing room only to honor Mark and then to hear you speak and the strength it takes to speak and then like I said in the army we would have people speak and then you do the roll call where you say the name and then you do taps and the salute and it gets you gut-wrenching but like I said I

felt everything leave my body when somebody just screamed Mark's name. I mean, it was earth shattering scream calling Mark's name. And the reality set in for me personally that everything was about to change for us. And I can't remember the date of the memorial service, but it coincided with

with exactly when we started taking losses. That first week of August, we started taking some serious losses and casualties and everything changed from the BRT. So I know exactly where we are in Ramadi. Yeah, so that was, you know, Mark was killed on August 2nd and...

I forget what day the memorial service was, but it was not long after. I mean, they were happening all the time. It wasn't like you postponed it. It was happening. And I know that everyone has to get their gear back on and go back out in the field. That's what's going to happen. The enemy's going to keep coming. The missions are going to keep going. We need to keep pressing. We need to keep pressure on the enemy. And so we get our gear back on. We go back in the field. And that's exactly what you guys did. That's what everybody did.

I'm picking up on the book here on August 4th 2006 second platoon was scheduled to go on route gremlin again the request they requested a route clearance team and it was denied I was scheduled to go on their mission But the night before I was told to be in a meeting with the brigade command sergeant major Second platoon conducted the early morning inspections and headed out for their missions first platoon would replace second platoon in sector and

Around 0800, in the middle of the meeting, Sergeant Jared Rogers, our communications sergeant and the executive officer's gunner, practically knocked the door down to get to me. His eyes and expression said everything, something terrible had happened, and I was needed.

We stormed out of the HQ, jumped in the XO's vehicle and returned to our troops, troop HQ. My crew had my vehicle ready and our new medic was prepping everything in the backseat. Sergeant Rogers couldn't tell me what was going on as it was hard for him to talk and drive with his emotions going crazy. But once I got to our HQ, I heard that second platoon had hit an IED and it was not good.

We jumped in our Humvees and the commander and I took off. The point of contact was only five minutes away and I saw the smoke billowing in the air. That's a weird, it's a weird thing. It was a weird thing about the Battle of Ramadis.

You could you could see smoke, you know from base. I know you know My building we could go we could look out the window of my building They were sandbagged But if you went outside on like these had these little patios you go up on the rooftop You could just sit there and watch you could see what's happening You'd hear a report like sometimes I'd hear something happening and go up to look and see what I could see and so here you are and

You're actually still on base, relatively safe, and yet you can see smoke and you know exactly what it is. First platoon, who was already in sector but further out, turned around and headed to the point of contact as well. Second platoon had wrapped up their early morning reconnaissance and snap checkpoint missions and were heading back to base with Sergeant Story and his crew as the rear vehicle in the convoy.

His crew that day was Sergeant Bradley Best as the driver, Specialist Michael Hayes as the gunner, himself as the vehicle commander, and they had an Iraqi translator sitting behind Story. Usually the platoon sergeant would be in the rear vehicle and the platoon leader would be in the middle. However, the platoon leader was on leave.

So Sergeant First Class Mike Olenek, am I saying that right? Yeah, Olenek. Olenek served as platoon leader and moved to the middle. Sergeant Story's crew had just passed the Ramada University walls and were starting down an S-shaped curve embankment when the IED went off underneath them.

It was command wired, set off by an enemy watching from a nearby factory. It had been placed in the perfect choke point on the only path down the embankment. You couldn't drive fast there, and if you were not careful, vehicles would bunch up. The ground was not freshly turned, so the IED had been in place for a while. The commander and I made it there quickly with our two crews. Trying to figure out what was happening in the chaos was hard. As we approached the burning vehicle, I thought I was looking at the gunner's hatch.

However, as the smoke cleared a little, I saw tires spinning. I was looking at the bottom of the Humvee where the IED had blasted through the undercarriage. Staff Sergeant Story, Sergeant Best, and the interpreter were killed instantly. There was absolutely no doubt in our minds. They did not suffer, but we could not get to them with the ammunition cooking off inside the Humvee engulfed in flames. Captain Enslin said,

Ordered 1st platoon to head toward base and grab the camp base camp fire truck and force them out the gate to help us This was a colossal no-no They were civilians and their mission was to serve the camp not outside the wire But those brave civilians defied orders and followed 1st platoon out the gate to us Specialist Michael Hayes was alive but hurt very bad. His leg was in shambles and on fire. I

He had to escape from the Humvee. Trying to move, he realized his leg was cut in half and reached down amid the flames to grab the bottom portion of his left leg. Then on his back, Mike crawled away from the heat. He made it approximately 20 feet before the first soldier reached him.

Specialist Chris Buckley and Sergeant Reagan Barr had been in the vehicle in front of white twos and immediately stopped when they heard the explosion jumping out and racing toward the vehicles. Chris heard Mike calling for help and went to him while Reagan attempted to get the others out.

So you see that Humvee and you actually think you're looking at it right side up, but it's flipped upside down. Yeah, it's horrific. I mean, absolutely horrific when you see the smoke sort of clearing and you see what you're actually looking at. I mean, one, it's important to...

that this enemy is sophisticated and they're changing tactics. I mean, as we're adjusting, they're adjusting. I don't think people understand that sometimes as we're trying to talk about Ramadi is a key hotbed for a reason. They're good. This wasn't just a pushover enemy. They're changing as we're changing tactics. And as we were changing

beating them in this route going gremlins area. They're adjusting tactics and we shut down their smuggling and their weapons. And as on that day, they adjusted, uh, and, and got us. And it was horrific. IED. Uh, it's one of the worst ones that I saw going back to the book. By the time we got closer, they had Mike loaded into, uh,

Sergeant first class only next vehicle and they raced toward my truck. We had practiced. We had practiced casualty evacuation and exchange several times. Typically, we would cross load the casualty from one vehicle to mine.

I would continue treatment and get them to safety while the platoon returned to the fight. But our standard operating procedure was about to change. As we pulled up door to door, I saw the anguished look on Sergeant First Class Olenek's face. He was a strong soldier with outstanding leadership skills. We had been drill sergeants together in years past, and he was a perfect role model for his soldiers. Easygoing, funny, and great to get along with. Today, I saw the horror of war in his eyes.

As we were about to exchange specialist Hayes from one vehicle to the next, Doc Herod, am I saying that right? Yeah, Herod. Doc Herod screamed, fuck no, don't move him. Doc was precisely correct. Mike was stabilized already and there was no need to risk further injury. We adapted on the spot. I jumped out and then into...

Sergeant first-class owes vehicle and he jumped in mine off We both went this was possible because our vehicle load plans communication setup and crews were interchangeable This would become our future SOPs on casualty evacuation as my new crew started back. I turned and inspected specialist Hayes

Held his hand and told him it would be okay since we were so close to base and first platoon was on their way except for the risk and we traveled alone I had to tell the driver Specialist Ruiz to slow down a few times because we were bouncing around so much and I didn't want to hurt Mike anymore Mike was in not in good shape as doc tried to keep his let lower leg Attached we made it to the gate in no time. I had alerted the field aid station and we were on route and

What expected and what to be expected so the medics and doctors were waiting for us at the aid station I followed the men the doctor told me to stay out, but he quickly learned that wasn't happening I gave them all his information blood type injuries meanwhile The vehicle crew started cleaning blood from the vehicle and getting it ready to return save him was my order to the doctor I will but I can't save the leg I understood meanwhile the fire department extinguished the Humvee and assisted with the recovering of the dead heroes and

I stayed at the aid station and waited for the arrival of the bodies so I could go through the process of paperwork and identifying them. I'm forever grateful to Captain Dan Enslin and Sergeant First Class Mike Olenek for keeping everyone back and helping the firefighters recover our soldiers, and I am so sorry for the horrors forever etched into those brave responders' brains. When the bodies returned, the morgue did their underappreciated job of prepping them for their final flights home.

I signed all the paperwork and made one order very clear. Everything goes back to America. I was not leaving a single piece of American soldier in this country. Specialist Michael Hayes was air transported to safety and back to America for treatment. That night we conducted our first angel ceremony for our fallen. So for us, that was our first hard reality. We had had IEDs before that and people had walked away.

We had casualties. We had somebody end up losing a hand and blind in his eye, but they walked away and talked. That was our first loss and hit home. And you talked about like earlier about like cantors and Roger that. I'm going to go check that IED.

And now you have Buckley, a 19-year-old kid, shielding his body from explosives going off in the vehicle as rounds are cooking off and grenades are cooking off so they can work on Specialist Hayes to try and stabilize him.

I mean, just a 19-year-old kid just like, hey, I got this. You have Regan Barr trying to get to the vehicle on fire and burning his hands, trying to open the doors as rounds are cooking off and it's so hot trying to get to him. And then you have a medic like, don't you move him, basically, making the right call and changing our evacuation process and adjusting the ways we do stuff. But

That was our first lesson. I mean, reality slapped us in the face. And it afterwards, I don't know if I mentioned or not, but Buckley told me afterwards that he went back to his tent and he was the only one left in his tent. So this is probably three weeks of hard fighting when we took over and he went back to us and we had about 10 people in our tent at a time. And he went back to the tent. He was the only one left in his tent.

And Staff Sergeant Bear came into the tent and said, grab your shit and moved all his stuff into another tent. We lost an entire tent within three weeks from casualties and wounded. And that was our first loss. So it hits you like we're in a fight. And it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. And we have to continue to push. And that was the day when it really hit us.

How long was it before you guys were back in the field? Yeah. Yeah, hours. Yeah. Yeah, hours. I mean, first platoon was on mission as soon as we finished clearing that area. Second platoon, who lost, as soon as we ended up inventorying everything, they were back on mission the next day. But this was my first leadership challenge. So this is where they—

got stuff right and wrong. I started compartmentalizing myself and putting stuff back. I became cold. I don't say in a negative way. I just didn't show emotion where my commander did in a positive way.

But I became very mission focused, like let's go. And I became anal and making sure, are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Not micromanaging. I was just very mission focused because I didn't want to see any more. And I didn't take care of myself emotionally. I didn't grieve. I didn't, I focus on what's next. And I had a platoon who was scared.

fear and I was scared and it was fear and I had leaders who were ready to give up leadership positions and I was like fuck no I needed them to lead and they were the best people to lead and I couldn't switch them out even though they were asking me to switch if I had switched them out what would that have done to the other the soldiers under them I couldn't there was no better option so

It was me going on a mission with them more. That was my decision. Like, first sergeant shouldn't be kicking in doors or being the first vehicle in the convoy. But there I was going to Baghdad with them in a convoy or wherever we were going. So I had a leadership dilemma. And there's stuff about me. I became cold. And some I got right and some I didn't.

And it hurt me later emotionally because I grieved later, all at once, later on the deployment. And I had a soldier, Shea, his first time I saw battle fatigue. I mean, I heard about it in World War II. I didn't even know what the fuck it was. You know, you heard about it, was it General Slappin'? I watched this soldier, blank stare, couldn't blink, no emotion, couldn't sleep.

Lock board sleeping on a cutter laying on a cot couldn't move from losing his best friend on that day and that we had to evac to the rear for PTSD or battle fatigue and you didn't do your initial assessment like what the hell is going on here? Yeah, and it's one of the toughest young kids I ever saw young non-commissioned officer and could not function physically emotionally or mentally and

At the time, I could not process or understand it. In about three months, I understood them 100%. So reality hit our troop. Fear struck our troop. And I started to learn. I was changing inside as a leader. Yeah, I think some of that's just survival mechanism too. Yeah, correct. Because, and I know I felt like I cannot be, you know, breaking down a group.

Because same thing like if I'm breaking down over here what's gonna happen with everybody else so you you know survival mechanism is like okay What do I need to focus on and I literally told my guys I said hey, I don't know what to do except for one thing work and

And we're going to go back to work because I didn't know there was no, I never had a class in it. I never had a senior, uh, leader pull me aside and say, Hey, if you lose someone in combat, cause it was the nineties, we didn't have guys that lost people in combat. We just didn't exist. So I wasn't, there was no instruction. There's no manual on it. Oh, there's a manual on the casualty, uh,

whatever casualty care officer. There's a manual on that. There's all these protocols you follow. Make sure you do this with the gear. Make sure you do this with the serial numbers. There's all that stuff. That's a checklist. But not one thing on that checklist addresses what do you tell that guy's best friend when he's got to go back on a mission in two nights. There's nothing like that.

And so part of the survival mechanism is like, I don't really know 100% what to do there. One thing I do know is I know how to be a frog man. And what we do is we go and we go do operations. We do our mission. That's what we do. And that's what I focused on. And, you know, again, whether that's the right thing to do or wrong thing to do, I don't know 100%. I know that at the time, it was the only thing I could do.

The only thing I could do was, all right, we need to get back to work. And that's what we did. And that's what you guys did too. And by the way, it's not like, you know, the enemy is going to keep coming.

The odds, it's like when you flip a coin, you know, you flip a coin 10 times and it lands on tails every time. And now you think, well, it's bound to land on heads this time. Nope, this doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You lost a guy, you lost two guys, you lost three guys. The risk is still the same. It's the same time every time you go out. Fast forward a few, a couple weeks on the day of the mission, 19 August,

Second platoon drove to one of the outposts. Cop Grant parked their vehicles and waited for dark to insert into the sector known as Second Officers District. Again, it's so interesting how much your operations were the same as what my guys were doing, which is like, yep, go to a cop, park the vehicles, wait till it gets dark, head out on foot patrol to find a house. Same thing here. Approximately 0 to 40 miles.

They found a house, entered it, secured the family in a downstairs bedroom, which was technically the safest room in the house. Next, they went to the roof and began the painstaking procedure of drilling through the roof walls with chisels and hand drills. Second platoon identified two houses to support themselves and the tank battalion. We generally planned to be soft compromised within 12 hours, which meant people knocking on doors and looking for the family inside, and hard compromised within 24 hours, which meant an attack was imminent.

So what that means is you go into a neighborhood and you take, you go into a building and you take the family and you say, all right, family, you're going to go sit in this room for a while. Here's some food. Here's some MRI MREs. Here's some chem lights for the kids to play with. And the family sitting in there. Well, in the morning time, when the neighbor goes, oh, where's, where's Ahmed? You know, he's normally get out in the morning, check in his garden. He's not out. Oh, where's, where's the wife? She's not out. Where are the kids? They're not out. Oh, what's going on? Oh, there's, there's Americans in there.

So that's soft compromise. You're calling it 12 hours here. I usually figured it was like within the first four or five hours, my guys are going to be telling me up. Hey, we're starting to take fire. We're starting to get hit. So, yeah. And then the hard compromise, 24 hours. Again, they usually figured out where we were quicker. Our goal is if we can make it to the next night where we could X fill out. It was a good mission. Yeah.

Sometimes our best strategy was to take a house, design great defense plans, wait to get attacked, and simply kill the enemy. During this mission, the platoon had a soft compromise around the late morning after 10 to 12 hours on site. Sergeants Quick, Barr, Wall, and Rodriguez DeJesus were on the roof while Sergeant First Class Olenek, Doc Herrod, and Specialist Ruiz and the interpreter were with the family downstairs.

The platoon leader in the supporting house and Sergeant First Class Olenek began developing an extraction plan. The streets became eerily quiet, a telltale sign of bad stuff about to happen. Sergeant First Class Olenek had just radioed the plan to extract when four hand grenades came flying over the roof. "Frag! Frag! Cover!" shouted Sergeant Barr as he dove for cover.

I've been involved in or near several grenade attacks and you will never forget the sound a grenade makes as it hits the floor and explodes. Tink, tink, tink, boom. Sergeant Rodriguez was off gun and asleep when the commands were shouted, but he quickly woke and curled up into a ball as did Sergeant Wall. However, despite being closest to the stairs and the closest to safety, Sergeant Marquis quick

moved toward the grenades. Sergeant Barr screamed no. Explosions rang out as the grenades detonated. Smoke and debris was everywhere as the soldiers called out in pain. Sergeant Rodriguez was wounded in his lower back and shouting he could not feel his legs. Sergeant Wall, wounded in his leg, had already applied a tourniquet and began preparing for another attack. Sergeant Barr had been blown backward during the blast and took shrapnel to his foot and buttocks.

Sergeant Barr assumed the machine gun position and swept the roof for enemy or follow-on attacks. As Sergeant Barr and Wall secured the roof, they saw Sergeant Quick unresponsive near the stairs. He had taken the brunt of the grenade explosions. Instead of jumping down the stairs to safety, Sergeant Quick had jumped toward the grenades to protect his soldiers. On 19 August 2006, Sergeant Marquis Quick,

Selflessly sacrificed himself to save the lives of his brothers in arms. There was absolutely no doubt in our minds. He was a true hero

You guys, you say we sprang into action for the team's evacuation and the tank company vehicles assisted by infantry fighting vehicles moved toward the house. It took a while to link the vehicles and our team up to do some navigation issues, but they made it to each other. They were evacuated back to Cop Grant where they mounted their vehicles to get back to Camp Ramadi in the hospital. I was already at the field station, field aid station waiting on them. The Bradley vehicle with Sergeant Quick in it continued directly back to Camp Ramadi where I carefully helped unload marquees

and he was pronounced dead. The military doctor who pronounced the time of death was astonished to see the injuries. When I told him it was a complex grenade attack, he asked why Quick's injuries were on the front of the stomach area and not on the back where someone would turn to protect themselves. The injuries were on the front because Sergeant Marquis Quick, when faced with danger, chose to protect his soldiers and men above himself.

So several points. One, Quick was my driver earlier, and I had moved him out of the driver position to go lead soldiers. Wasn't that partially because he was a bad driver? Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of details in the book I'm skipping over. Get the book, read the book, hear these stories. But that is a fact. Bad driver and the biggest head I've ever seen. And one of the smartest brains ever.

But, and then two, just about Hector Rodriguez de Jesus. We were taking casualties and we already talked about the tent where the tent was empty. Colonel McFarland asked what he can do when we're getting ready for that angel flight earlier. And I said, he's soldiers. They had started sending us soldiers. Now we had heard like old stories of like World War II and replacement soldiers.

I received replacement soldiers in the truest sense that I got soldiers from other battalions that we had no idea who they were. Sergeant Hector Rodriguez de Jesus, I had only known for a couple days. He came from another battalion, came into our platoon for just a couple days, and I barely knew his name. And I'm not trying to sound...

Cold, mean weather. I barely got to know him. Had a previous deployment under his belt. Put him in second platoon because he had experience. And that's where I thought I didn't need the leadership. And got wounded after a week of missions. When he was evac'd back, the old battalion he came from, which I believe is 137, the rear detachment said, please let us take care of him because we have known him for two months. And I was like, thank you. Because we didn't know him.

That's replacement. So like we were getting replacements that we didn't even know. That's how we were taking losses. And then you look at Marquis quick. I mean, you have a medal of honor winner and we're going to talk. I'm going to talk about rectifying some of this stuff. This definitely needs to get rectified. This man is near the stairs and safety going down and goes towards grenades to save his brothers and save them.

They are alive because of Marquis Quick. Their lives are altered, some of them, like Hector. But he sacrificed his life for his brothers on that rooftop, no doubt in any of their minds. And I have everything ready to go. It took years once we started this project. It's all ready. So I have the procedures, and I'll talk about the end on the way forward. There's no doubt he's going to get recognized as we go forward.

But another example of heroism of people stepping up and doing it and Marquis Quick is a hero. And he saved his brother's lives. Yeah. You know, you say in the book, you know, you say Sergeant Quick is a hero and I failed him. I failed to push to have him recognize we should have. He should have received the Medal of Honor.

Believe that my heart and soul we tried to resubmit the paperwork later requesting an upgrade on his medal Unfortunately, they required sworn eyewitness testimony that Marquis had jumped on the grenade The soldiers could not confirm because they were diving for cover Alacia is that her name? Alacia your husband is a true hero and he worshipped you you two are perfect and I'm so sorry I couldn't protect him. Nevertheless. He saved lives that day and although we failed to recognize him with the award he deserves We know and we'll never forget

So I think two points, and I know you're probably going to say something, but one, I think we've corrected it, and I have the original sworn statements, Sarn O.,

Found his hard drive with the original sworn statements. So we have it. And we pieced together the entire con op for it. And then I worked with General Van Wagenen, who was the old S3 from 137 or XO from 137. And obviously I've worked with Colonel or General McFarland. So that's why I have the package together. And I have to go back through 1st Armored Division to submit it.

So we have everything ready on that front. So he will get recognized hopefully with the outcome that we believe in our hearts. And two, there's absolutely failure because I think when you're in the fight and you're in for survival, you don't recognize what people are doing because you're trying to survive and you're fighting. It's only later when you look back or see other stuff going around you, when you really recognize like, oh my gosh,

look what he did, look what she did, look what they did that I truly appreciated. Or maybe back even at my career of how much I truly appreciated great the people I served with were. And it was when I was talking with the 1st Armored Division Command Sergeant Major about this award and he was with us in Ramadi and he was a battle sergeant in 137 James Light. He was like, Dan, we had so many heroes that we just didn't fully appreciate at the time because we were in it.

And even Colonel McFarland says we should have taken better care of the BRT and the heroes of what you guys did. It's true. I wish we recognized them better. Yeah, I think one thing that was just timing-wise for Mikey, that was at the end of our deployment. So all of a sudden, Mikey dies September 29th. We were literally starting to package up stuff to go home. And so I think that little...

Just the time I could be like, oh, okay. And plus the guys were immediately like, they were just immediately like, hey, he saved us. I talked to the guys that got Kazev back to Germany. They're like, he saved us, he saved us, he saved us. And because those guys got medevaced and then I followed them home, it was like the timing of it allowed more focus to

than you had when you still had five or six months worth of deployment. You were going to go out, you know, you weren't sitting there thinking about awards when you're going out that afternoon on another mission. Well, I look forward to seeing that happen. And there's no more clear case. I mean, this is as clear as it comes. You say this while holding an angel ceremony,

For quick, our brigade commander, Colonel Sean McFarland, asked me how he could help. I need soldiers, sir, was all I could muster. He saw the pain in my voice and my eyes. I was barely holding on without breaking down. This conversation led me to meet and serve alongside one of the best human beings I would ever meet, Private David E. Dietrich. Did I say it? Dietrich. From Marysville, Pennsylvania. The night Dietrich arrived, the radio operator woke me up and told me there was a new soldier there.

My first impression of Dietrich was solid. He looked like a running back with his strong, short stature and broad shoulders. He was obviously wide-eyed, confused, and I'm sure scared like the rest of us were when we first arrived in combat. I felt good about David until I asked him a question.

Could be because Captain Wagner put a bug in my ear and maybe I had formulated an opinion already, but I immediately sensed something different. While we were talking, it was as if I could see his mind trying to comprehend what I was saying. First, his eyes would look a little blank. Then there would be an awkward silence. Then he would answer slowly. Was it nerves? I've been told that I can have an intimidating stare and demeanor. And again, I was withdrawing emotionally at this time. Plus, I was the senior enlisted person in our unit. Whatever the reason was for his behavior, I didn't have a good feeling about it.

I assigned him to 1st platoon and they were the meanest, hairiest, and most complex, or to go out on some of the meanest, hairiest, most complex missions, they would get Private Dietrich ready. Dietrich would stay back from missions while 1st platoon was gone and remain with the HQ section or me when I was not on mission. When 1st platoon returned, Dietrich went back with the platoon to learn more. So you got focused, like you met this kid.

And you're like, are we going to get this kid trained up? You didn't send him in the field immediately because you could see he needed some time. You actually ended up sending him to behavioral health to see what his deal was. And they run a bunch of tests on him to ensure he was mentally fit and his cognitive skills were up to par. This took time. In the meantime, Dietrich became everyone's little brother and my personal helper. Yeah. My battle buddy. Yeah.

Uh, they come back, behavioral health came back and stated that David was fit for the military and did not see any obstacles to serving. They noted that he'd had assessments done in basic training and those conclusions were the same as theirs. They did cost that he was a slow learner, but the method we use to teach him was appropriate. They also mentioned that he'd explained how much this unit already meant to him and that he respected and loved me.

That caught me off guard, but I understood why it was said. David was constantly complaining about staying back from missions to train, but he vowed to behavioral health that he would show us he was ready. This was around October or November. So you're working with him. You get the feedback. Look, he's a little bit of a slow learner, but he's got the cognitive capacity to get the job done. Yeah. They say he's good to go. Like I said, everybody learns differently. He needed hands-on training.

And, you know, we were trying to do our due diligence. And again, whether it was the rear D telling me something was off the initial conversation. And we had a policy just making sure when the platoon said they're ready to go out, they went out. And this was the same steps with Dietrich. We were just making sure and we took the extra step with behavioral health.

And it took a little longer and took a little bit more hands-on and he became my battle buddy when first platoon was on mission And the thing is it's not like you're I mean you got to be able to count on your soldiers And if you got a guy you can't count on you're not just putting him at risk. You're putting in everybody absolutely So you don't go oh, well, I'll just go ahead and roll the dice on this one Like that's not that that's not the move you're gonna make He became known as Heisman because of his love for football and

David could talk about football for days if you let him and he pulled the Heisman pose all the time. Yeah, absolutely He had to shut him up. He had to shut him up and you guys are doing like battle drills with him with what different weapon systems just Humvees learning how to do everything and testing him out over and over again crack I put him on every weapon system every Communication equipment we we had everything maps

Yeah, glass house drills, you know, clearing houses, entering a house, everything that I could think of or First Platoon could think of, we put him through every drill he would need to do in combat. And he got them. I would say technically and tactically, skill-wise, he was one of the best ones out there at the end of those two to three months.

Yeah, you say David passed the test with flying colors and was ready for missions. I'll never regret that decision, no matter how much it hurts. Mission comes down. The mission from Colonel McFarland required us to go into an area and figure out where a famous enemy sniper was. The sniper would most likely target and kill U.S. soldiers as they established new combat outposts.

Unfortunately, the Marine unit sectioned off this part of town with barriers and there was no way in or out for vehicles. We were about to build another cop on this area's edge, the last hurdle of enemy territory before taking back control of the entire city. This was it? Was this up by firecracker or something? Yeah, this was it. Cop firecracker. It had taken almost six months of constant fighting to reach this point. We were nearly done. 28 December 2006, 1st Platoon finished their checks and prepared to depart for their mission.

They would infiltrate between 2300 and 0300 and establish their sniper team and overwatch positions. I was the last man standing there on their way to leaving the compound. They filed by and either a nod, smart ass comment or handshake greeted each soldier as they passed. Dietrich was near the end of the line and his eye protection was all messed up, crooked on his head. ACH straps twisted. I stopped them and told them, fix your shit, Dietrich.

He adjusted his eye pro and gave me the biggest smile I'd ever seen from him. He was excited and he was proud. He was a soldier. I reached out to slap him on the back as he passed, but he threw a curve ball and turned and hugged me. A big, strong bear hug. Ask any soldier when they last hugged their first sergeant like that. Most likely, the answer is never. I'm proud of you, Dietrich. Listen to your NCOs and keep your eyes open.

This is the happiest day of my life where the last words David E. Dietrich would ever say to me. And I still believe those words. Once out on patrol, 1st Platoon established two small kill team positions overwatching where they thought the sniper would appear. Again, we got everything right about the mission planning, the houses we picked, the counter positions we found, etc. Everything was perfect until it wasn't.

On the morning of 29 December 2006, Private First Class David E. Dietrich had started his observation shift with his NCO and soon noticed something strange happening in one of the houses we'd identified. Dietrich alerted his team that someone was setting up a potato sack or mattress a few feet away from a window in one of the houses we thought the sniper would use. This is the exact technique used to mask the sound or sight of fire. Dietrich saw it and reported it. Unfortunately, the sniper saw him move.

And when Dietrich repositioned himself to get a better look, he was shot. Back at the Marine base, I jumped up and put on my boots as I gathered information. We slept in our clothes and on mission, went on mission like this. It was only seconds before we were ready. I did not know who was hit or how bad it was. All I knew is the XO pointing at the map and telling me to get there. I would get the rest as I was moved to the Humvee.

My driver specialist, Matthew Clayton, had the truck ready. Communications and GPS tracking systems were booted up. Meanwhile, the teams saw the enemy preparing for an attack on one of the houses. Captain O'Hare and Sergeant First Class Marco decided to pull both teams since they were under heavy fire now and had no way to protect the dismounted evacuation movement to the CCP. From Marine Base Camp to the CCP was about two and a half kilometers away.

From the CCP to 1st Platoon, point of injury in the Overwatch house was about 750 meters. The teams evacuated David under fire and with complete kit on for almost 800 meters. This was no easy task, and it was daytime. 1st Platoon made the right decision to pull the other team to help clear the path. Guys are going to work. Yeah, one, you know, a daytime under fire, you know, cover and move situation is

with a dead soldier, 200 plus pounds with full kit on down streets that you can't get vehicles through at that time is not a good situation. And then you have to trust your subordinate leaders to make those calls to pull the other team out.

especially if they're supporting fires and they can't cover the entire move. So they made the right call to pull the team. So for that aspect of it is exactly right. With Dietrich, he was ready for the mission. Like I said, I will have personal feelings about should I have told them to send him to Iraq. The rear detachment commander had doubts about

I made a decision as an enlisted person to tell an officer, send them, I'll make the call. I will live with that for the rest of my life. I had no regrets about him going on the mission. I stand by it, but I'll live with the decision and bring him to Iraq.

Because the rear detachment commander had no problems with me say send the one-eyed guy to Iraq But I had a problem with saying safety explain that what the one-eyed guy you had a blind Yeah, I'm literally blind and one. Yeah, we had a guy show up to the unit blind in one eye And he had to tilt his eye to read papers and the Army's like yeah He's good to go and I'm like this guy this guy can't be combat arms and then the Army's like hey, what's

Let's med board them and change MOSs. And then they tried to make a truck driver. And I'm like, this guy can't even drive. He can't scan his side of the truck. He can only be a vehicle commander. So at least he can scan that side of the truck. And then he got kicked out of truck driving school on day one and sent him back to us. So we put him in the supply. And then I told him, I said, send that guy out to Iraq. We'll put him in supply and then we'll use them on missions if we have to, which we had to.

So there's stuff I'll live with going on there. But Dietrich was ready for the mission and found the sniper. We had everything right. The sniper was better. And he said, there's stuff that you live with. And the enemy gets a vote. And they voted. And then Dietrich, you know, how many people come up and hug you, Jocko? You know, we're not talking a bro hug. You know, like, hey, bro. Like, this guy, bear hug. I love you, hug.

And I believe this was the happiest day of his life. Now, obviously hours later, not, but he became a soldier and he did exactly what he wanted to achieve in life of serving his country. And he served it with honor and he achieved his goal. Something he fought hard growing up as a young man with all the obstacles he had. And I'm proud to say I served next to him. And when I went back to his hometown to tell his story,

His talent did not understand the family he came to know in us. And we, I did not know the community that honored him after his death. So it was a closure on two sides. But Dietrich was a soldier, and I'm proud to have served next to him. But that evacuation...

That's a tough evacuation. It tells you the toughness and it talks about what you do under fire. It's tough. Yeah, the...

I mean, you read about it here in the book. This evacuation is chaotic. And like you said, you're daytime, you're under attack. And by the way, the enemy knows when they've got a little bit of an upper hand. They know when they wound a guy, they know and they're going to bring it. Like when they hit a vehicle, vehicle is down, they're going to come hard because they know they've got you on your heels.

Same thing here. Like, oh, we got they see that wounded guy. They know that you're on your heels. They know that there's going to be vehicles trying to get in there like they are going to bring it. And that's what happens here. You got a polis litter. So, yeah, one dead soldier, a polis litter carried by four more soldiers that can't shoot back.

Trying to carry them and now you so you've already taken five people out of the fight and yeah out of ten to twelve Coming down and they have all their guns on you and they're trying to run up the street with at least five alleys that they're trying to shoot at you and we can't get vehicles down as I'm trying to get a tank to move a barrier out of the way and

Yeah, they just don't don't hear you classic World War two scenario like you're correct like hey banging on the tank Okay, help us. They don't hear you Going to the book here. I saw the teams about 500 meters from me I foolishly left my Humvee by itself next to a tank that never answered and began running toward my soldiers I reached the first intersection the teams were only a block away I saw I popped a red smoke grenade and kept an eye west down the side alley for enemy the teams were

Taking fire as they crossed their last intersection. Sergeant Gonzalez, Staff Sergeant Gonzalez, one of the best combat proven leaders I'd ever seen, was the lead element in front of the evacuation team. They're shooting at you, I screamed as he ran with four soldiers carrying Dietrich on the litter behind him. First Sergeant, you're getting shot at, he screamed back as I realized rounds were hitting all around me.

I had messed up again, focused on my soldiers running toward me. I stopped paying attention to my sector. I began returning fire upon realizing my stupidity.

The teams cleared their intersection and only had my intersection to go. Just then, out of nowhere, a Humvee pulled up to my corner and began unloading their machine gun into enemy positions. It was a fantastic sight, and to this day, we have no idea how they got to us. Did you ever figure out who that is? Yeah, so it was the 16th Engineers. Outstanding. So the easiest way to say it, the cop is off to my left. It would have been my east, but the left.

And on that part of the alley, they had somehow maneuvered around the cop as they were building the barriers and come up with the .50 cal and the Humvee. And they just come from my left to the right as they're running from you to me and come right in between us. And they just unloaded. I mean, there's times where, you know, you've seen it in TV shows or movies or whatever. You're just like, ah. And that was the moment. Like, he unloaded. And you're like, oh, my gosh. Yep.

That 50 count is a little bit of a game changer in the street. I don't think he left, let up on the butterfly. It was one burst of a hundred rounds and the guys crossed behind him and it was beautiful. With the machine gun raining fire down, the evacuation teams could cross behind them. And to me, we tackled the last 50 set 50 to 75 meters to my vehicle and loaded Dietrich into the back seats, which were laid flat.

What do you want me to do? I asked Clayton. Do you know the way I still try to catch my breath? Yes, then fucking go. And off we went by ourselves through the streets of Ramadi with about three kilometers to the main camp and to our medical teams. Specialist Clayton got us back to the to the back gate of Camp Ramadi.

Had warned the base camp security we were coming through with casualties So the gate was open we flew past them to Charlie med Charlie med is the medical unit which provides higher level of care and has surgeons to create to treat casualties We pulled up and the medical teams took over getting David into the field hospital I passed all the information along to the medics and doctors and got on the radio to update our XO and to find out what was happening with the rest of the troop the platoons returned safely the Marine Base Camp without further injury or firefight and

i went back to the field aid station just as the doctor declared david dead i dealt with plenty of death and gruesome injuries and the doctors and medics knew me well but this hit hard the morgue is positioned beside charlie med for obvious reasons and they transported david there the morgue personnel would clean david up and prepare him for movement out of the country then i would be called to identify the body and sign some paperwork

My crew had already alerted the troop headquarters, so they began collecting David's belongings for inventory and shipment home while his brothers in arms were still out. I'm not sure if this was the optimal procedure, but we'd learned previously it was the best way for our troop to deal with loss. I had identified fallen soldiers before, but when the person came to get me, I physically couldn't raise myself off the bench outside the morgue.

Right then, Colonel McFarland, simply the best senior leader I have ever served under, approached and sat next to me. First Sergeant, take your time, but when ready, I need you to identify the body, the morgue assistant repeated. I can't. Please don't make me do this. I can't. I began to cry. Where do I sign, said Colonel McFarland. I will never be able to repay him for his leadership. He did what I could no longer do. Yeah, it's tough.

there's uh so i briefly talked about earlier you know about my corporal who i saw battle fatigue and i didn't understand it i understood it right there uh 29 december inside i broke uh i mean i physically could not stand up uh i mean i tried everything just hit uh

I can't to this day. I can't explain why or how or what I could not stand up And all I did I just I was crying all the medics were crying. They knew me I mean I to this day I can't explain how them all the medics what everything they saw and that Charlie med and how they dealt with all that day in day out and

And I don't know if Colonel McFarlane will ever remember stuff like this, but, you know, we do or I do. And that one moment, just saying, I'll sign, I don't think he'll ever know Dietrich. But what he did for me, I will never forget. Even me as a leader couldn't stand up that day. I know what he did, but I couldn't. I mean, I was with him when he died. I took him back.

But I couldn't go into the morgue. And inside, I broke that day. Even though within minutes, I had to go back and lead 50 other soldiers. As they were coming back, they saw none of it. The only people who saw that was me, Colonel McFarland, the morgue, the medics, and my driver and gunner. No one else saw. Five minutes later, it was over, and I had to go lead the troop again.

But I physically broke inside. Like that was the moment. Yeah, and then you had to put it back on. You had to put it back together. Yeah, you had to survive. You know, much of this book, you are explaining the heroes you got to work with. And you definitely lay some of that out here. Specialist Matthew Clayton, you were amazing. I'm so proud of you. I gave you shit the entire deployment and constantly pushed you, but you were a true hero that day.

You should have been recognized with an award for valor and your combat action badge, and I failed you, my friend. No one could have done what you did. You were brave, and I love you. Doc Rob Black. There was nothing you could have done to save David, and yet you did everything humanly possible to change that outcome. You kept David alive until we made it to the hospital. So many people need to learn how hard it is to learn, how hard the combat medical badge is to earn. It's the only combat badge that requires you to perform duties under fire, and you did that.

You would distinguish yourself that day and many more during our tour, and I love you. First platoon, you followed your extraordinary leaders, Captain O'Hare and Sergeant First Class Marco, and you fought bravely that day. You cleared the streets of the enemy as they were forming an attack on you, and you evacuated your men under fire with precision and courage. Engineer Humvee crew, you saved us from further injury and stopped a possible ambush as we evacuated. You did your unit proud. Thank you.

Marines we love serving with you and I proudly display my one and two meth patches when the army pisses me off We both made mistakes that day, but we would fight with you again as you've seen through these stories I made many mistakes in my career, but I'm proud of the soldier David became I should have thought done things some things differently But in hindsight that doesn't save him I will see you in Valhalla of my friend and drink with you in Fiddler's Green soon enough

Yeah. So, you know, one Clayton, uh, you're great. He was my driver. He had my rule. I hate leaning. I'm afraid of tipping over. Uh, and he learned, I do not like the lean and he got that down and I did. I wrote him or he was a combo guy. I wrote him hard. Uh, three times in two and a half years, three years of combat, I found myself alone from stupid decisions, uh, twice in Ramadi, uh,

And that last time Clayton was a driver and got us back. That's a long distance on Route Michigan, as you know, in enemy territory. I don't know if I could have navigated us back under that condition while trying to help Dietrich. And Clayton did. I will forever be grateful for that. He perfected getting us back with me saying nothing. It was absolutely amazing.

And then you met Rob Black earlier, and I can't wait till he comes on. Yeah, we're going to have a little chat with Rob Black. That's a funny guy, man. You got to be careful. That's a funny guy. But the stuff he did and saw. Yeah, and he was like a 20, 21, 22-year-old kid back then. That was his first deployment. Correct. Welcome to the jungle. Yeah, the stuff and just the aging of them, young boys to men.

It's just amazing. So I am forever grateful for what I witnessed and saw and who I was thankful to serve with. What we asked them to do, or even as leaders, sometimes, again, I don't pat myself on the back probably as much. And I'm not trying to be egotistic because...

I don't give myself credit. I give myself more guilt than I do credit. But I was learning to be a first sergeant in the second deployment. I learned from watching the first sergeant before. I was learning to be a platoon sergeant the first deployment. I never had second chances at any position I was ever in. Every NCO rank I was in, except for command sergeant major, I was always deployed in some theater or deployment of some sort.

I never had second chances at those positions. So you're always learning how to lead. So you're not going to get it right. So I was always amazed how well people performed around us. And I had this, I should have said thank you more. So I'm glad I'm able to try and get it right now. Well, again, the book's got all kinds of, so, so many details in it. I want to close out the book and we'll talk about some of the stuff that's in the book. Like, you know, but I do want to close out the book with this section because

It's fast forward in quite a bit, but from my retirement ceremony, my battle buddy, Brigadier General Sean Burnaby. Am I saying that right? Burnaby. Burnaby. Great man. Asked for pictures of me to show as a slideshow. Instead, we only showed pics of my family and my soldiers, and it still brings happiness to my heart when I see those pictures or think of them. I have told only a few people about this, but my life is in extra innings now.

I'm not meant to be alive, but here I am still kicking somehow. When I was leaving R&R and heading back to Iraq in 2006, so this is, you're talking about. This is Ramadi. Yeah, so you're in Ramadi and a lot of people don't know this, but especially the army when you're on a one year or a 14 or 15 month appointment, you get a break, a two week leave break to go home, which I don't know how you guys do it, but you go home, you spend two weeks at home,

And then you go right back into the fire. And that's what you're talking about here. When I was leaving R&R, when did you take R&R? What month was it? It was August. It was right at the end because I went home during my R&R. I did Quick's Memorial Service in Germany. So it was at the end of August. So you had lost three soldiers prior to going home on R&R. And...

Now you're going back and you say, when I was leaving R&R and heading back to Ramadi in 2006, I wrote letters to my wife Solvig, my two boys, Damien and Tristan. I was saying goodbye because I believed I would never see them again. In the letters, I told Solvig to move on and find someone who would love the boys as much as me and asked her not to marry another soldier so they would have a dad that was around. I told Damien and Tristan how sorry I was that I couldn't be there to raise them.

On the way to the base, I told Damien, who was only seven, that he was the man of the house and to be brave and strong to take care of Tristan, who was only one year old, and watch over their mama. I told him not to cry when I left because it was going to be okay. When I got out of the car, I hugged my wife, who was sobbing, kissed Tristan, and knelt down to kiss and hug Damien, the man of the house now. Damien stayed brave and strong as his eyes watered and his lip quivered.

I knew selfishly that if he cried, I might not get on the plane that day. I stood and turned as tears flowed from my eyes, and I walked away, never looking back for fear I would stop in my tracks. I just said goodbye to the three most precious people in my life. In that moment, I gave myself totally and fully to the army and my men, knowing I was going to die in Iraq. For whatever reason, I didn't die, and in some ways I regret it.

Not because I'm not thankful for what I have, but because the guilt of not bringing them all home alive while I got a second chance in life. This book is my final salute to those I serve with, and I hope I made them proud and told their stories with accuracy and honesty. I love everyone.

With whom I served and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to serve my country I hope someone shares stories more stories of our unit in Ramadi Iraq because there are many more details and these soldiers deserve to have their stories told or shown on the screen if you want more funny stories I have plenty these were just the tip of the iceberg Take care of your soldiers and loved ones and they will take care of you everything else will take care of itself until then roll up your fucking sleeves and

Chop that shit up. Yes. Yeah the um the idea of Accepting death. I think when people ask me about Ramadi. I was like yeah, well pretty much except you're gonna die I know I was like yeah, this is this is what I signed up for this is what we're doing and I and I think that is the

Think that I think that's the best attitude to have I really I mean I think if you're scared if you're afraid of it It's gonna be I don't I don't know how you serve. I don't know how you do that mentally. I mean, I guess you can't But coming home after losing three soldiers doing memorial service, I bet your wife must have been horrified I

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I don't share with my wife. I mean, I don't even think she's tried to read the book. I'm like, nah, don't read it. Uh, and after they say get wounded or their first phone call, like, have you heard about your wife recording? Uh, a lot of people don't know is she had a severe panic attack. My first appointment and had to get rushed to the emergency room. And my son Damien was put in the back of an ambulance, uh,

And thankfully we had our parents nearby to help take care while I was still deployed. So I was always very careful what I shared and what I did, but you were exactly correct. And accepting death is the word I have come up with now. Cause my mom's like, Oh, you can't say that. And I'm like, mom, it's true. Like if the ones who have been there understand what you're talking about. And I've tried to soldiers come back from R and R. I've tried to tell them like, you have to focus on,

the mission you can't be thinking about that R&R if you're thinking about what you just left you're not gonna make it home and that's horrible to say but it's true and I'm like you have to let the FRG take care of your family you have to let family members take care of your family you this is your family this is your fight nothing else can matter right now if you have any chance of going home we have to fight the enemy and

And I believed I was not going to go home. And I accepted it. I absolutely accepted it. And I'm thankful I'm here. And there's guilt in it as a leader that soldiers didn't. You regret decisions. You look at everything. Oh, this and that. And I have been in counseling for 15 plus years now.

Going through everything just to accept where I am at and beat depression and beat suicidal ideations and look at everything and to enjoy life and in and what I have around me to get to that point, but I accepted death. There is no doubt. And I am on, I'm in extra innings and I'm thankful for that. And I'm trying to make a difference. And that was some of the purpose of the book. The book is therapy.

And the book is making sure that they are remembered and to honor them correctly and award them the stuff that we missed and got wrong. And that was the purpose behind that. And that was, I know we haven't mentioned yet, but one of the things I wanted to do with the book was I had three rules in the book. One was in no way did I want to dishonor their story. So did tell by telling funny stories, would I dishonor them?

And then in no way did I want to dishonor the Army in any way, shape, or form. And then I didn't want to dishonor the NCO Corps that I love so much. So I gave it to many mentors, and I'm like, this is the three criteria. If any of them is a yes, then it's not getting published or written. And they came back like, no, Dan, I think you're okay, and we love it, and please publish it. So I was like, all right, let's continue to move forward. And I want to make sure that they're recognized.

Yeah, it's awesome. And you do a great job. I mean, you've got a whole section...

For each one of the soldiers that you lost you you either got input from their families or you went researched to give a description of who they are You know, I always tell people these aren't a soldier's not just a soldier their person. They have loved ones They have families they have dreams they have hopes and they sacrificed all that and you Do a beautiful memorial to each one of those soldiers The book is just it's just fantastic and another huge part of the book that I think is going to be really helpful is

And it seemed like it was your quest and during your time in was once you realized that, oh, I got some issues. You got your issue. You got help with your issues and you wanted to make sure that every, that other people could get that help as well. And you kind of describe what happened. You came home from that deployment. Of course we've changed. It changed a lot. You know, I came home from that deployment like you just came, got on a freaking metal tube in Ramadi and then,

20 hours later, I'm back here in San Diego walking down Ocean Beach, Newport Avenue, going to get a hamburger. And there's people walking around and like I'm looking at little pieces of trash on the ground. And like it's a significant change of environment. So you come back, you end up, and again, this stuff is in the book, but you end up in an ROTC unit. You end up going out and you're doing some training in Fort Lewis, Washington. Yeah.

Some guy gets mouthy with you or with one of your buddies. Yeah, you don't say me. To another buddy. He gets mouthy with one of your buddies. A ranger bad guy. You freaking, you have to rough this dude up. And I think you said you believed your past the statues of limitations. Now where you can no longer. I put my hands around his neck. We'll just put it like that. Yeah.

You end up going to see, you go into the, to the whatever, the behavior health, the behavior health. They hand you a bunch of drugs that you fill out a questionnaire for an hour with 200 questions by reading a questionnaire. They hand you a bunch of drugs. Now most, here's your bag. Most people say, okay, cool. They take the drugs, they numb their brain. They're not making any progress. You said, wait, how are you giving me these drugs?

And they say, because we read your questionnaire. You're like, what are you talking about? And so you went a little bit Richter and said, I better see a doctor right now. And luckily, this woman, Dr. Zayu down, she talked to you for 15 minutes and she canceled all her appointments. I loved it. She said she got she had her work cut out with you. She said she canceled the rest of them.

So what happens? Because I know you talk to her for like 12 hours a day for two or three days. Yeah, two days. What is she talking to you about? Is it basically the first time that you got to decompress and let some of this emotion, which you as a leader had kept bottled up? Is that what happens? No, that was exactly it. We went from everything from talk like David Dietrich is in front of you right now

How do you feel about yourself right now? To just talking about life to talking about your kids. I mean we went we explored everything marriage kids career life combat How did that suddenly feel like it was okay to talk about this? Did you know that you needed to did she just have a good approach? I think it's because she was a stranger and I was in a state

across the country of somebody who I'd probably never see again. And I felt, and she was easy to talk to and I trusted her immediately. And it was almost like confession. And I felt I was going to walk out and I was going to be healed, but I trusted her. Now, was she giving you

Is she giving you any guidance or are you just pretty much sorting stuff out as you're saying it? If she's saying like, well, it's okay to feel like that or here's another perspective. Like what, what, what is she actually saying to you? I can't remember who the, the famous prophet singer is, but she basically said it's okay not to be okay. That's basically what she was saying. And,

Yeah. And then we started exploring plans and then she's like, I think you need in treatment or yeah, in treatment facility. And I was like, ah, all right, let's keep negotiating here. I was like, look, that guy, I'm trusting you by pouring my heart out. So you're going to trust me and I don't need in treatment. You feel, but did you feel better after the first day? Absolutely. I felt a weight come off of me immediately. It all came out.

And I felt relieved. It was like weight off my shoulders that I wasn't healed, but I felt a weight come off. And I knew what it is. I recognized I needed help. That's the end result is I need help. I am not okay, but I need help. And I didn't care about my career at that time. Nothing mattered except that I needed help and I needed it for me and I needed it for my family.

And if my career continued after that, that's a bonus. But it was for me and it was for my family. One of the things that I've talked about over the years is for me, for whatever reason, when people died, I've given a lot of eulogies, right? So you saw me give one for Mark and that was, I guess it might've been the second one I did. I had a friend get killed years ago, another SEAL buddy of mine, Grizz, but

You know, when you sit down to write a eulogy, you know, you're expressing and going through all the emotions and, you know, trying to keep your freaking keyboard from short circuiting because you're crying as you write the thing. And I feel like that was very helpful for me. I didn't know at the time, but just looking back, you know, sitting there and writing down words.

what's going through my head, how much I cared about this individual, what they meant to me, how awesome they were, what I'm gonna miss. Just processing all that and writing it down, it seems to me to be a very helpful thing. And it seems like that for me was very similar to what you eventually did here. - Absolutely. - To sit down and tell this woman how you felt, what you were feeling going through those things. - And I made a mental note.

That what I felt coming out of there, I would make sure every soldier I came in contact knew it was okay to get help. And I would never be ashamed to say I was getting help. Like I knew it. Like I knew what I...

When I went in was different than the way I came out and I would make sure every soldier I came in contact with know that. And I was amazed at how many leaders discouraged me from saying that. And I refused to back down. And I'm telling you, I saw changes in soldiers lives as a command sergeant major, uh,

By actively showing them I was going to behavioral health and then watching our numbers get better when it came to domestic violence and suicide ideations and overall depression by them going to seek help. And they're like, oh, your numbers are going up to seek help. I'm like, you're damn right they are. But look what numbers are going down.

I'm like, I'd rather than. I'm like, those are going up, but those are going down. I'll take that all day long. It means it's working. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. Did you, so did they ever put you on the, on like the, the meds? Did you ever take them or did they, wasn't the counseling good enough? It did. Uh, it did.

There was one time I was on 17 medications as we tried to work through this stuff. And then I'm like, this is crazy. My head's a fog. I'm not feeling right. And then we just started working them off. And I said, you got to find... And my therapy has always been...

I want to do everything I can not to take medication. So let's work that first. And then last resort would be a medication. So you show me every technique that requires no medication before we go to medication. Medication will not be the first answer. And that's how I do everything now. And now I'm on no medication, but some people need it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just me. Yeah. That's just me. But when it comes to like a PTSD, depression, et cetera, and,

I'm generally on no medication. There's other techniques I'm using. And, and is this a, the other, like what are the other techniques? Yeah. To this day, I, I am a counseling every two weeks. I just switched from every week to every two weeks.

And then you have the mindfulness, the other stuff that we go through. What does mindfulness look like? Yeah, you know, the breathing techniques or whether you're going through the thought therapy or the sensory therapies of thinking with your breathing and your thinking to calm yourself down.

I had a problem with anxiety the last summer. So I was working through that anxiety stuff, work-related or professional-related that we worked through that required medication, but then we worked how to get that down. That required it had physical symptoms related to it. So we worked through that stuff. So, again, you know, it's still a roller coaster. But right now, you know, we're working. But I have a counselor every two weeks, every Friday, every two weeks.

And do you find yourself talking about, still talking about combat or do you, do you feel like you, you're talking about other things now? Uh, what I try and talk about now is like I said, I've had two soldiers commit suicide, uh, from this unit Ramadi. Uh, I've had four soldiers commit suicide, not directly under me while I served, but since that have served with me, uh,

Uh, so suicide is continuing to always be an issue. So I continue to talk, uh, depression and seeking treatment or help or reaching out. I, my phone number is in the book. Uh, whether you want to spam me, text me, I don't care. Uh, call me whoever. I mean, I've had two soldiers who do not know me call me just to talk. And I'm like, I will always answer the phone if you need help. Mm hmm.

Suicide is not the answer. Let's figure out what we can do. So... Yeah, you mentioned the... I talk about that more now. Jose Diaz and Jared Rogers. Jared Rogers. These are two of your soldiers that killed themselves 2018 in October and 2021. Yeah.

How did you hear about them? Like, what does the messaging look like? How did you find out that this had happened? Yeah. So a lot of it's social media, whether it's group, group pages or, you know, unit pages that we have on social media or staying in contact as we go down through, you know, like Jared Rogers was our commo sergeant. Clayton, my driver worked for Rogers as a supervisor and,

But Jared Rogers was Clinton's story's best friend. They're in the headquarters section together and they're always quoting Joe Dirt. I'd always get pissed at them. I'm like, stop quoting it. And they're always having fun. We asked a commo support soldier to man a .50 cal gun and get in the middle of a fight. And fight he did. We asked him to do stuff that our combat soldiers are doing.

And they're like, everybody's a soldier. Yeah, got it, got it. But we asked him to do stuff that were tough, and he saw stuff that some soldiers just don't see. And he battled stuff. And I can't tell you all the circumstances why he took his life, but he took his life. And Jose Diaz was a young soldier. Same again, you know, circumstances at a young age ended up taking his life. And, you know, through social media, we heard about it. And it's sad and sad.

Jared Rogers, ex-wife. In fact, I said the proceeds of the book, none of the proceeds of the book go to me. All the proceeds I make, we make no money on this book. The proceeds all go to scholarships or awards in the name of the fallen soldiers or from the families awarded to others.

So like Jared Rogers has a memorial award that we're going to award on the anniversary of his death this coming fall. His son will choose who gets the award in his name to honor his father. So through his ex-wife, who's battling cancer right now, his son will choose who gets an award named after Jared.

So that's the purpose of the book now is to name that stuff for Chris Strickland who lost a hand and blind in one eye. His son is named after Bradley Best who lost his life. His son has a race car or drives a race car coming up an amateur circuit and the race car number is 84 August 4th. And his son is named Brad after Bradley Best.

So stuff like that. We have an award named after that, the award. So it's stuff like that. So, you know, that's how we keep, and we heard about the deaths. So just keep them remembered. Yeah. You know, you mentioned these guys, these kids being young and, and you know, there's like, there's dark. If you're a human being, there's going to be, there's going to be bad things. It's going to be darkness. There's going to be, you're going to see evil things, but,

to get this level of concentration of fear and horror and death and terrible wounds, to see that over and over again and then go into that fire over and over and over and over and over and over again over time, like eventually that darkness can start to be a lot bigger than it should be in your world. And it just seems like if you're not careful,

It can take over, you know, that's another part that you mentioned in the book. And again, this is just hitting some some other sections that you talk about is, you know, you you had some physical issues as well. So you're dealing with you like your mental health type stuff. You ended up having some physical issues to that that sort of came out. Obviously, had some injuries, obviously.

But you also ended up the situation where you're talking about your you're like you would gain 30 pounds in a month Then you'd lose 30 pounds the next month your you were all over the place and you end up getting I guess would you call it fired when you when they pulled you off the list there, so you're about to be a command sergeant major and they pull you off the list and Eventually you figure eventually get a medical review and they figure out you got some medical issues. Oh

Yeah, correct. You know, so again, if you, if you grew up in a, like I said, I started my career in the early nineties. You didn't go to sick call. You know, I have a broken toe and a broken finger that never got treated because you didn't go. He's just like, yeah, I got a bent finger that they're like, it is what it is. I watched an NCO get fired and,

Because he went to sick call. They're like you work at the gym now brother. And I'm like, all right, I'm not ever going to sick call And that was the lesson in the early 90s. Um, so you never went and then You know as you're coming up, you know, you just never got seen So like I said, even after coming back to Iraq the first time all of a sudden they start doing tests on you like, you know You know, this is what's wrong with you and you're like what?

And, oh, by the way, we're going to do this. And now we got to start scanning your brain every six months to check, check the spotting in the back of your brain. And you have some pretty serious bruising. And then, you know, you come back the second time next, you know, you got, oh, by the way, you put your hands around somebody and you got severe PTSD and this is your anger issues. And now you need counseling and this and that. Oh, by the way,

You know, now we're running tests and you're going up and down and wait. And you got some guy saying, hey, I'm pulling you from the command sergeant major. And eventually, you know, at first you're like, oh, I blame everybody else and I blame everybody else. And you don't accept responsibility for yourself, you know, and then you have to accept responsibility. Like, I have to own this also. You know, there's laziness in there, too.

But there is, the army didn't, you know, this guy did mess up too. And then all of a sudden the doctor's like, no, man, there is something wrong with you. And you're like, oh, there is a reprieve. It's not just all me. And they figure it out. And you get some bad bedside manner doctor just like, bam, shot in the ass. You come back in two weeks and two weeks later, bam, shot in the ass. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, whoa. And you feel great. And next thing you know, man, I'm,

I was a beast. I mean, I was looking good, feeling good, running marathons. They figured it out. It was a good time. Then they had to put me back on the list.

And is that how you finished out your career? Yeah, sort of. So after that, I was selected for a nominative list, so general officer level. And I ended up going to Europe, serve as general officer level. Oh, nice. Yeah, it was a good finish. And I was actually selected higher, but I chose retirement, drop retirement. And they're like, I'm like, no, I'm retiring. What year did you retire?

January 31st, 2019. So six years ago. What was like, was there like a final straw that broke the camel's back in terms of deciding to write this book? Because writing a book is a big undertaking. What was the thing that made you finally decide, all right, get out my computer and start writing? Yeah, it's kind of funny because actually no. Yeah, so I used to, so I worked for the Army as a civilian after,

And I'd run major conferences and I'd always heard the cattle, the cats in the conferences. And I always tell a story to start a conference and I'd be telling some of these funny stories or sometimes I'd tell some of the sad stories and I have people crying or laughing and everybody would push me like, dude, you got to write this. And earlier when I was going through the medical stuff, I was up at Fort Benning with another Sergeant major. And again, I,

Me, you, and Echo could sit around tonight drinking beers down at Coronado Island or whatever, watching the surf, and we would just tell funny stories of our services. And we would just be laughing. And each one of us would try and up each other. And that's me and the Sergeant Major would tell stories like that. And all of a sudden, people would come in every morning and start listening. Mm-hmm.

But that's how the military is. We would just, all of us have a story. And I remember us, me and Greg looking at each other. I was like, man, we could, if 20 of us just put a story together, we'd each, we'd, we'd have a book. So the idea was always there. And then my buddies in Germany were like, Dan, you got to write this. One weekend, I wrote it. One weekend. I wrote the entire thing and I sent it away to,

And I sent it, I did some Google research and I sent it to 10 publishing companies, you know, the excerpt or whatever, like here's 250 words or one chapter within five days, seven of them wrote backs that we want you. What chapter did you send?

- What excerpt, what story? Do you remember? - Was it Chopped This Shit Up? It's probably Chopped That Shit Up. - Good one. - Yeah, it's probably the one, and then by the end of the week, all 10. And then you go through the traditional hybrid. I'm not gonna get into all those details, but I had 10 out of 10 say we want you. - Nice. - And then the idea was never to write a memoir.

But they said you got to put it chronological. Makes sense, I guess. Because of the way, and I really felt it kind of worked out because you can see me go from naive, stupid, funny story to combat to broken finishing up. So you can see a transition that was unspoken when I first wrote it. But as they start talking about it or writing it, it sort of,

It just comes out that way. We were talking before we hit record about a movie that's coming out. It's called Warfare, and it's my buddy Ray Mendoza, who was SEAL Team 5. And when we left in October of 2006, Ray Mendoza and their troop came in and took our place, and they suffered significant casualties, including a guy named Elliot Miller on—

It was November 19th. Yeah. So, and Elliot, you know, he got severely wounded, survived, thank God. But I know you were talking about that. There's a trailer out for it right now. And, you know, I watched it and it is a very powerful trailer, but just the realism of it is pretty awesome. Yeah.

I know you said the first time you saw the trailer, you shut it down. Yeah, I stood up and walked. My family, I put it on, and I was like, hey, I think this is Ramadi. And I stood up and walked out halfway. It's real. I'll watch it. There's not...

I can sit through almost everything that's related back. You know, there's thoughts and feelings and smells that will come, you know, there's stuff that reminds you of stuff. And I just talking to you, I can picture Ramadi to this day or in your book, you show map of Ramadi. I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like I know it or talk about Mike by my own stuff. It takes you right back to the stuff. But that trailer, that,

I can tell it's accurate. The scenes, it's there. Yeah. It looks like they did. And Ray's done a bunch of like movie type stuff. And Ray is, is just a freaking awesome guy. Like just, he's just an awesome guy. He's, he's like quiet. He's, uh, he was really good reputation in the seal teams, obviously. And, uh,

Yeah, it's from what I've seen of it so far. It looks like it's going to be really, really powerful and will give people the sense, some of the sense of what it was like, you know, as close as you can get without having things blow up right next to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you got it right. And I'm looking forward to seeing it. So what's next for you?

Yeah. So like I said, so the way ahead right now, if I can talk about it real quick is like I said, right now we're trying to do scholarships and awards for people, but I want to get stuff right. I want to recognize people. So like I have, we have one soldier from our previous deployment, 2003 was wounded. In fact, we took him to the green zone, to the cash there. I took him, I could see a skull and,

He refused to be evac'd back to the States, stayed with us, redeployed, and then self-medicated at Fort Lewis and ended up getting, they court-martialed him for self-medicating. That unit did whatever they thought was right and court-martialed him and got a bad conduct discharge. So I'm working with him to get it overturned and get him a good conduct or honorable discharge so he can get

VA care. He can't get VA care right now. Now this is guys who serve their country. So we last July tried to do that. We have another soldier from Ramadi who I didn't realize didn't get his purple heart because when he was getting seen at the cash, Joseph Rodriguez, um, didn't want the female medic examine them, cut off his clothes and walked out. And I didn't realize it. Uh, so I have to fix that. So we're getting, he just submitted his purple heart.

And then obviously Marquis quick. So there's stuff like that. I want to fix. So I've sort of made it. My goal is to rectify some of this stuff and then continue to give the awards like Regan bar and

I think he knows it, but I just wrote his uncle who was a Nebraska National Guard general. His uncle actually came out to Iraq when we were up north and pinned Corporal on him. How cool is that? Have your uncle come out and pin Corporal E4 on him. I just wrote his uncle a few days ago. I was like, hey, I'd like to name an award. So my goal is to continue to name awards and scholarships after these heroes so they're never forgotten. I currently live in Virginia.

I just resigned from federal government a few months ago to look at different avenues, my personal professional life, but I still continue to help the joint staff of the military as a contractor, which I love, and looking at stuff serving our country.

And then hopefully we go to this reunion. I was about to say. Yes. Let's do this. We got this ready first 2006 reunion. It's happening. It's the 20-year anniversary. It's January of 2026. The planning is already underway. If you were there, you're invited. Gold Star families are invited. And that would be awesome to see the Gold Star families there.

You know general McFarland's on the case, you know leading from the front as usual But we've already had a bunch of meetings. So anyone from any of those From any branch, you know, whether you're marine army Navy Air Force every service was represented there. I don't know if the Coast Guard was represented there They might have been I forget but if you were there you're invited Gold Star families invited so

That's the next big thing for the ready first brigade combat team from Iraq at that time. So January of 26. Yeah. Martin Luther King weekend, I believe that weekend. And it's going to be, it's going to be a couple, like maybe it's Friday, Saturday. And then I think it's those, the two big days, uh,

It's going to be great to see everybody again. Even it's been awesome. We've been jumping on these Zoom calls and it's like the battalion commanders are on there. Some of the senior NCOs are on there. And it's just awesome to see everybody again and to be talking about something that we can...

go and have a celebration as opposed to the old meetings that we used to have which were a little bit more serious, a little bit more heavy content. - Yeah, correct. And again, honor what we did. I mean, remember, they ran a 5K race just a few months from the sacrifices we did. - They did indeed. - How crazy is that? - Right down Route Michigan. - Route Michigan, 5K race. - Unbelievable. That was so unbelievable.

So does that get us up to speed? Is that where we're at? Yes. But I do have one thing. Yeah. A little bit of surprise. So cavalry has a tradition where we wear cavalry spurs and stetsons because we're pretty sexy. So when we're back in training, we go to a competition called Spur Ride. And if you complete it, you get silver spurs.

When you're in combat against the enemy in a cavalry unit, you get gold spurs.

So I reached across and talked to our commander and some other people, and I brought with me a pair of combat spurs, gold spurs for Lieutenant Commander at the time, Jocko Wilnick, to present to you today with a promise that if you give me the names of all your SEAL team at the reunion, I will bring every certificate and combat spurs for all the members of SEAL Team 3, Task Force Bruiser,

to officially award all of them.

as a member of our team, the combat spurs, uh, with you. So I have them, I have brought them my friend. Uh, they look a little used because they are mine. Uh, but I couldn't think of any better. So these are official gold combat spurs for what we did together. My friend. Outstanding man. Outstanding. That's what an honor that is. And it was just so awesome to serve alongside you guys and, and just be out there and,

Oh, man. It's an honor. And then with that, I'll tell you how to wear them at the Spur dinner so you look sexy, too. And then with that, I got our official coin. I don't think we ever awarded it, brother. Outstanding. Thanks, man. Yes. Phantom Troop. With an F. Yep. We never learned how to spell, but... It's an honor, and I'll definitely get you that list, and everyone will be...

They'll wear those with pride. Just a side note, Baima made his Bulldog coin just a hair bigger than that coin. That's Baima. Just because he designed that coin with us. And then when he left to go to Bulldog, he intentionally made his Bulldog just a hair bigger just to rub it in. That's Baima, dude. That's the way he rolls. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where can people find you right now? So you got dpinion.com. Yep. Got your own website, which is awesome. You're on Instagram, at Daniel Pinion. You're on Twitter, X, at Daniel L Pinion. And then, of course, you're on Facebook and LinkedIn, Daniel Pinion. And that's where people want to reach out to you. By the way, you said you have the phone number in the back of the book. I got to read the book to find it. Yeah, got to read the book. So if you want the phone number, read the book. Yeah.

Hopefully you don't have to set up an answering service on that time in the future if it gets overwhelming. But, you know, it just shows where your heart's at. You know, you're here to help people, which is unbelievable and awesome and exactly what we would expect from a leader like you.

echo charles you got any questions oh yeah real quick oh your boys are growing up now yeah how much um were they in the know about like kind of the things that went on and stuff like that yeah i don't think at all like i said my youngest or oldest damien was seven and during ramadi and i really didn't talk about so one thing i'll tell you so when i did go to rotc and it was pulled out right after ramadi if it wasn't for the counselor at fort louis sitting me 48 hours

And I say this honestly, and I had everybody in Connecticut crying when the Little League kids and family, the parents of Mansfield, really pulled me out of depression and saved my life. I started teaching Little League and that taking me away and giving me another purpose. Those kids and families, but my kids, so my oldest is...

26 now and he's about to join the Cincinnati Police Department. Outstanding. Yeah. And my youngest is about to transfer to University of Cincinnati, I think. We're waiting for the letter to come in and continue his college career. But they didn't really know.

- So even-- - Until they read the book. - Oh, okay, okay. - Yeah, my oldest read the book. - Okay, and what was his take? Was he like kind of blown away or was he like, okay, this makes sense now? - Yeah, I think so because there was times where they saw the anger and stuff and you try not to take it out on your family or why is he cold or, it's tough, man. It's a tough balancing act but I think he understands. We have a lot more conversations now

There's a lot more maturity now on my side, too, of how I interact with my children. It's a real strong relationship, and I think he understands what I did for my soldiers. But when it comes to combat...

I don't know if they'll truly understand what we saw and did. There was a, it was a shitty movie. I'm not going to lie, but at the end, it was some seal movie, but I'm not saying you can see, don't, don't, don't take me to the mat after this, but it was a pretty shitty movie. But at the end of it,

Uh, they had mentioned Mark Lee's name as a scroll. Uh, and I lost it at the end. Like I just came out of the movie theater had to be like 2010. Uh, and my kids were like, what's my dad? Uh, and I, I, I explained to him what was going on. I'm like, Hey, I know that guy. And my kid was like, well, that was a crappy movie. I'm like, yeah, the movie did suck, but I know that guy that they honored at the end. Um,

So I don't think they'll ever understand combat. And I hope they never have to see it. I hope the sacrifices we make, they never have to see. Yeah, when you were talking about your wife and I know with me, like I have, like my wife, she wouldn't know what we were doing. I actually have, I've gone back and looked at emails that I was sending home from Ramadi.

And they're like, hey, how's it going? Hope the kids are good. You know, food here is not great, but, you know, oh, well. And actually, I have, like, I looked at the email I sent to my wife on August 2nd and August 3rd, and they're just like the most, hey, babe, you know, hope everything is okay with the kids. Just no response.

No indication of what was going on. But then at the same time, my wife was back here. She was going to the hospital to visit my guys that are wounded. She was going to, you know, she went to Mark's funeral. She went to Mike's funeral. Like, so as much as I tried to keep her,

detached from it all like and I imagine your wife had to be the same way you know who I was thankful for Linda McFarland because I sort of shielded my wife from the army but Linda McFarland put her arms around people like my you know my wife Solvig and you know brought guided her and otherwise and you know Linda McFarland's an angel yeah she is indeed

Right on. Echo, any other questions? No, good to meet you, sir. Yeah, no, you too, Echo. Right on. Dan, any closing thoughts? No. I mean, one, it was awesome serving next to you guys. And, you know, as much as horrible as Ramadi was, I cherish our time together. And this platform is amazing.

So thank you for allowing me on. And if you get Rob Black on there. Yeah, he's evil. That's a done deal. One, that's a dangerous thing to get him on there. But I look forward to watching that episode. Just be careful what you ask. I appreciate you guys. It's awesome, man. I want to close out with some words. Speaking of McFarland's and the McFarland's and General McFarland, I want to close out with some words that he wrote in the foreword of the book.

He said, "Some may read this book as a collection of war stories, but it's really a love story. Command Sergeant Major Pinion's love for his soldiers is unmistakable as he fights the enemy, the elements, and the Army's infamous red tape on their behalf. In this series of vignettes, it's clear his love for his soldiers grew until it was put to the ultimate test in Ramadi, where he was forced to sacrifice the soldiers he loved for the sake of our brigade's mission."

I know the pain of those terrible days haunts him still. His moving story about a life dedicated to his soldiers in peace and war is full of hard truths we can all learn from. And no matter what he says or thinks, I can say with some authority, CSM retired Dan Pinion is a hero. Scouts out, ready first, iron soldiers. Lieutenant General Sean McFarland, U.S. Army, retired.

And Dan, it was an honor to serve with you and your men on the battlefield. And I agree with the general 100%. And I know your response to that. It's a response we all give. And that's that the real heroes didn't come home. Well said. Thanks for remembering them. Thanks for your service and sacrifice. Thanks for sharing the lessons and the stories of your valiant men.

Especially Staff Sergeant Clint Story, Sergeant Bradley Best, Sergeant Marquise Quick, and PFC David Dietrich. We will never forget them. Absolutely, brother. Thank you. Oh, thanks. And with that, Dan Pinion has left the building. Just an honor to talk to him. Honor to be able to share these stories. Thanks to everyone for listening to it. Much appreciated. Get the book.

You're not going to find a better name for a book, right? I don't think so. Top name for a book, man. Chop that shit up. And you know someone was like, well, you know, we're not sure if that's really a title that will... You don't want to use... No. And he was like, no, no, that's the name of the book. Yeah, yeah. Perfect, actually. Don't even deny it. And as I mentioned, like I went through some of the stories in the book, but I left out so much detail. Even the stories that I told, there's so much detail in there. So...

Get the book and you can hear from what Dan said, what is he doing with money from the book? He's forming these scholarships and whatnot to memorialize the names of these heroes. So it's just a great book. Check it out. Get the book. You'll laugh, you'll cry and everything in between. So thanks, Dan. Thanks for coming out. Awesome.

Also, if you want to support the podcast so we can do stuff like this and you also want to support yourself at the same time, you can do two things at once. We call that double podcasting.

leg takedown. - Thought you were gonna bring back the double gravitational scenario. - Wait, what's the double gravitational scenario? - Like when you get pulled in the same direction by two things. - Oh, okay, nice. - Double gravitational. - Is that something from, we're bringing that back? - Yeah, we were talking-- - Was that one of our things back in the day? - This was maybe like five years ago, to be honest with you. But hey, we back. - Okay, so we're gonna do double gravitational pull. - Sure. - You're gonna support yourself and you're gonna support the podcast.

Here's what you do. Go to jockelfield.com and get yourself some protein, get yourself some energy drinks, get yourself some pre-workout, which you occasionally might need. Look, do I take a pre-workout every day? No, I don't. But occasionally, do you need to get a little bit of, let's say, some external help with your motivational levels? Yep. Do you need that sometimes? Sometimes you do. Yeah.

Last night I got all held up on the aircraft, couldn't land in San Diego, blah, blah, blah. And I had an early call this morning. So when I get that workout today, which is going to be in the afternoon, which I already don't like doing. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Probably going to need to hit that. So jockelfield.com. Get protein. Get the good stuff. Get the clean stuff. Get immunity. Get it all.

Hydrate. Hydration is good, by the way. Greens. Greens don't need to taste like dirt. FYI. You can get greens that taste good and have the nutrients you need in them. JockoFuel.com. You can also get this stuff at Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afe's, Haniford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas, Meijer in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, ShopRite.

There you go. Publix. We're down in Publix now. Publix is a big, big chain. So check that out. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, including your jujitsu gym. If your gym doesn't have Jocko Fuel and they're making you weak or poisoning you with some other product, it's okay. Have an email, jfsales at jockofuel.com and we got you covered. Also, you probably need jujitsu clothing.

And I recommend you get American-made jiu-jitsu clothing, gi, rash guard, shorts. Go to originusa.com and get stuff that is made in America. And then when you go out to the grocery store afterwards, when you go to Wegmans or you go to H-E-B afterwards, you need clothing where you can't wear your gi there. You could technically, but you don't want to. You need a pair of jeans. You need a hoodie. You need a t-shirt. You need a pair of boots. Go to originusa.com and get American-made goods.

Get American. Look, there's been a lot of sacrifice in this country. A lot of sacrifice in this country for freedom. Support freedom. Support America. Support our workers. Go to originusa.com and get some. I will say this too. Go. Because you mentioned the hoodies. You may not even care about this. I don't know. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But there's no reason for me to think that. Nonetheless, Pete and everyone who designed this.

The hoodies and other stuff at origin, they care about the fit. Like when you put on the fit, like when you put it on, it like fits in a way, not like your regular boxy junk hoodies. Like it looks good too. The aesthetic value is very high at origin, not to mention the made in the USA. But when you put them together, you get something very unique. I'll tell you that.

I'm glad you're over there concerned with the aesthetics. Somebody's got to be. I just want stuff to work. I think we all are except you. That's what I think. Actually, and you know what I think, though? You know what I believe, whether or not you're going to admit this or not. I think aesthetics are part of your list, your priority list. I think they're just far down. That's just junk. Correct. Correct. Exactly right. So we don't want to look like an idiot. At the very least, you, we prefer it to be squared away. At the very least. How about that? A. Cool.

All day. This is something you said. Maybe I don't want to admit it. Yeah. I will admit that I want something to appear to be squared away. Aesthetically. Yes. Squared away is an okay thing. There you go. Hey, hey. You heard it here, folks. Hey, go to originusa.com and get some aesthetically squared away product. Yep. 100%.

100% made in America. Yep. All right. That too. Let's go. Also, Jocko has a store called Jocko Store. JockoStore.com. Discipline equals freedom. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts and hats and hoodies. Some shorts on there. Basically apparel in every scenario, situation.

Discipline, freedom, good. You know, these things you want to represent as far as like being on the path. Being on the path. You see what I'm saying? I like how you can't remember what you say every time. Or maybe you're just pretending you don't remember it. Or maybe you're searching for a new way of saying something. Maybe a little bit, but I think I'm just trying to keep it authentic. You know, I revisit the Jocko store thing in my mind every time we do it. Cool. Do you have any kind of a subscription thing there?

glad you asked jocko so we do have a subscription uh scenario called the shirt locker it's a sufficient scenario oh big time okay okay big time yes yes you get a new design every month designs a little bit uh outside the box we'll call them people seem to like them though and i guess you know they're all different you know in these different ways um so some some hit land how should i say they are a hit to certain types of people

And sometimes when those designs hit hard to people that I'm personally know, I'll get the wave of texts. This is the one I like. Oh yeah. The last one was one of those ones. Nonetheless, yes, it's all on Jocko's store. So go, if you check that stuff out, yeah, if you like something, get something. Right on. Speaking of stuff that you might like and shouldn't like.

Check out coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com because we got steaks that you will like. So, okay. So Colorado Craft Beef, beef sticks. Snickers bars. They're Snickers bars. Yeah. They're like a snack, like a Snickers bar, but they're awesome for you. Way better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Way better. So...

- This specifically, you know, my son, he's like, whatever, he'll just eat whatever, you know, like not eat whatever, but like he doesn't make a big deal out of like food and like he'll just-- - He's not a foodie. - No, not really. He doesn't relish all this stuff, but he runs down, right? 'Cause I guess we got some free ones at the Mustard the Beef Stick. We've been out for a while.

So he found one and he runs up to me. He's like this like points it in my face This is my favorite one right there and I looked at it He's like it's a fake my favorite and then runs upstairs 100% Colorado craft beef beef stick check out those beef sticks Snickers bar steak Snickers bars basically they're really good to go and then primal beef calm just awesome steaks awesome food from awesome people at awesome companies

Primal beef calm Colorado craft beef calm. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast Don't forget to check out Jocko underground calm the YouTube channels Psychological warfare books. We got some books obviously The book you need to get is chop that shit up by Dan pinion It's just a freaking great book and then I've written a bunch of books too that you can check out including a bunch of kids books

If you've got kids or you know kids or there's a kid that lives across the street, maybe you can see, you ever look at a kid and you go, oh, I'm worried about this kid. Like he's got that little like, maybe a little bit of an attitude where you go, oh, this kid might go down the wrong path. Let's get him on the right path. Or maybe he's a kid that's on a good path. Maybe he's gonna be a little bit, maybe he's gonna be a little bit soft. Like, oh, he's not doing enough hard things. We got you covered. Warrior kids.

Check them out. Warrior Kid books. There's a Warrior Kid movie coming. It's going to be awesome. So check all that stuff out. And then I've written a bunch of books about leadership. So we're here for you. Also, we have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for some details on that. And by the way, we have events. We have live events. The next big live event that we have is San Antonio, Texas. This is April 29th through May 1st.

It's gonna sell out. It's in San Antonio. It's the muster come and check that out We also have another battlefield coming up out of Gettysburg So if you're interested in history or you are interested in leadership or if you're interested in both This is a place for you to go the Gettysburg battlefield Review is epic. So check that out as well. Go to Ashland front comm and

for details on any of that. We also have a consultancy where we'll come into your business and help you. So we got you covered there. And then we also have an online training academy, extremeownership.com, where we can get you trained up in the skills of leadership. Look, the lessons that we learned on the battlefield, that we learned in business, that we learned with our families, that we can take and teach them to you. And they will make every aspect of your life better. Go to extremeownership.com. And also...

If you want to help service members active and retire, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. You heard about Mark Lee today. What an incredible human being. Made an incredible sacrifice. And his mom took that and turned it into something unbelievably awesome. It's americasmightywarriors.org. They do so much to help our veterans.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to that website, americasmightywarriors.org, and see how you can help out. Also, don't forget about heroesandhorses.org. And finally, Jimmy Mays' organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org. Once again, if you want to connect with us for Dan Pinion, check out. He's got his own website. It's dpinion.com. You can check that out. And he's also on Instagram, too.

Daniel Pinion and Twitter X, Daniel L. Pinion. And then he's on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. And for us, you can check out Jocko.com. Also on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink and Echo's at Echo Charles. Just don't waste a bunch of time there because time is fleeting and you're going to run out of it. And don't spend that precious time looking at a three-inch computer screen that you carry around in your pocket. It's a waste. Don't let it happen. Thanks once again.

To Dan Pinion for joining us. And thanks to the rest of Phantom Troop. It was an honor to serve alongside you guys in the Battle of Ramadi. We will not ever forget your service and sacrifice. And thanks to all our military personnel out there. There's so much sacrifice that happens to protect our freedom, and we are grateful for it.

Also, thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers Border Patrol Secret Service and all other first responders Thank you for your service and sacrifice here on the home front and everyone else out there You can probably guess what I'm gonna say right now. I think it's pretty obvious. They're gonna be obstacles in life There's gonna be big obstacles big obstacles and it's gonna be hard to make them go away but now

Thanks to Command Sergeant Major Dan Pinion. You know what to do. Roll up your sleeves and chop that shit up. That's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, Zeko and Jocko out.