486: Warfare: The Missions, The Men, and The Movie. W/ Elliott Miller and Joe Hildebrand.
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This is Jocko podcast number 486 with me Jocko Willink. In October of 2006 Task Unit Bruiser was turning over with our replacements from SEAL Team 5 and Leif had been at Team 5 and had just deployed with Team 5 and Tony had been at Team 5 and you know it's the team so we kind of know some of their boys and their task unit but it was definitely going to be a different type of turnover because it had been a different type of deployment

The guys from team five had been back in San Diego reading the after-action reports for months and they'd read about what had been happening in Ramadi the enemy contacts the gunfights the killing the casualties the enemy casualties and of course the the friendlies killed in action and wounded in action and these guys from team five had many of them gone to the funerals and memorial services for our guys from task unit bruiser and

And when they showed up, of course, we wanted to stay longer. We wanted to keep fighting, but that's not the way it works. And we spent, I don't know, a couple weeks downloading as much information as we could to them, trying to give them a good turnover. And I remember the first kind of full muster when all the guys, because guys come, guys show up in theater in bits and pieces, many cases. So it was like the first full muster of the Team 5 task unit was,

And I was, we were kind of giving the official turnover brief. And I was talking about the op tempo and I was talking about the relationships with the army and the Marine Corps and how important those were. And I was talking about the strategic impact of the battle. And I remember telling them something very direct. I told them, you will take casualties. And it seemed a little strange telling them that because...

I wondered to myself, you know, before I told them that, is this defeatist to tell them that? Is it like it's unavoidable? It's a foregone conclusion. Maybe it would scare some of the guys. And I kind of debated whether I should tell them that or not. But I decided ultimately that it was the right thing to do because it was the truth. The fighting was so heavy. The enemy was so immersed in the city. If you were out there day after day, night after night, eventually the odds would come into play.

And men would be wounded or killed and they needed to know that. And I thought to myself that at a minimum, they would think about how to handle it when it did happen. And I hoped it would land hard enough that it would maximize their focus for planning and preparation for

Execution and like I said, we poured into him, you know at every level the calm guys talking to calm guys the snipers talked to the snipers the the senior enlisted guys talking to senior enlisted guys the officers talking the officers trying to turn over the tactics the techniques the procedures that we were using the loopholes the the radio procedures the breaching protocols the common enemy tactics the best practices for for planning and executing operations everything that we could

We tried to give to them and then we said good luck Godspeed and I left with the last group of Troops from task unit bruiser because we also go home sort of in in bits I lasted the left with the last group of task unit bruiser guys on October 21st 2006 and we get home and of course it's a

It's a whole nother kind of administrative drama going home. You got to do turn in gear and you got to do debriefs and there's a bunch of administrative things you got to turn over. But of course we're tracking, trying to pay attention to what's going on with the boys that relieved us, the guys from team five. But you're also, you know, interacting with your family again. And so you're, you're, you're, you have other things to do. But a few weeks later,

On November 19th, 2006, we got word that an operation for them had gone sideways. An overwatched position had been hit. We got reports that there was grenades. There were small arms, massive IED, severely wounded guys. It was really kind of heart-wrenching to hear it. And also because the military rumor mill...

It was hard to figure out what actually was going on. The story was all over the place. Some of it was like a bunch of guys were dead. Then another one was no guys were dead. And then no one was wounded that bad. And then guys were wounded really bad. It took a while for the information to settle. And it went something like this. The guys were out in an overwatch position and they had been attacked. A guy got wounded and then they called the army for a casualty evacuation. And when they were going to load the evacuation vehicle,

hit a massive IED and it killed some Iraqi soldiers and severely wounded two SEALs. And it sounded like a nightmare. And that nightmare has now been captured for everyone to see in a movie that just came out and it's called Warfare. And it was written and directed by a guy named Ray Mendoza, Ray Ray. He's also a guy that made a, a while ago, he made a show called

On the History Channel called war fighters and he did one episode That was called Charlie platoon in the story of Mark Lee. Well, he was also wrote and directed this movie warfare and this movie warfare he was on that operation and This movie depicts that single operation and it's really depicts it with no holds barred There's no

There's no sugarcoating anything that goes on in that movie. It is ground truth. It is rough to watch and it includes everything. Includes the horrible wounds that were suffered by the two SEALs that day, Elliot Miller and Joe Hildebrand. And Joe received devastating injuries to his legs and Elliot suffered severe injuries throughout his body. He got shrapnel. He got grievous burns.

wounds that eventually resulted in the loss of his leg and he also received traumatic brain injury that impaired his motor skills and significantly inhibited his ability to speak but thankfully both of them survived through the hard work of the guys on the ground with them and the Army and the Marine Corps risking their lives to go and help out they made it and it's an honor to have both of them here to share their stories their lessons learned

and their thoughts on the movie that captures this horrific story. Joe, Elliot, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it, boys. Now, for Elliot, since his speech is inhibited by his brain injury, I asked him a bunch of questions beforehand, and he wrote out some answers, which I'm going to read through. And then he's also got an iPad that he uses to communicate and insult the people around him and make fun of everybody, which is fine.

But let's get into it. Let's get into some background. So thanks for coming down, guys. Really appreciate it. It's good to see you both.

Let's start with you, Elliot. So I was asking about where you were, what your background was, where you came from. And you said this. I was born the third out of four kids into a modest family. We lived on a small farm in southern Illinois, where we had some heads of cattle as well as a little amount of agricultural land. It was there that I developed my love of the outdoors and hunt shooting and hunting.

I was always very interested in firearms as my grandmother on my mom's side was a Marine, or sorry, my grandfather on my mom's side was a Marine. He was probably the reason I had become a Marine, which we're going to find out that you joined the Marine Corps. And he had fought on the island of Tarawa and Saipan too, I believe. He had a small shop in town where he sold guns and other knickknacks.

I was thinking, besides, what do you sell? Guns and ramen noodles? What's going on there? Zippo lighters. Zippo lighters and ramen noodles. It's like a country store where you happen to have 12 gauges in the back. And a plug of tobacco. Yeah, and he also sold some food as well. Check. So you can get a hamburger at a nine mil. Yeah.

You say my younger brother and I would go to work for him almost every day during the summer and then one day he just decided he was gonna retire so we had a big auction where he sold oh hell I don't know let's just say somewhere in the neighborhood between four and five hundred or so firearms as well as some other stuff that he acquired over the years but I don't require I don't recall anything other than that. You say I was also in the Scouts where I had obtained the rank of Eagle Scout.

which would pay off for me in the very near future as I was promoted to E2 right out of boot camp. Congratulations. You put in a lot of work to make Eagle Scout and just get E2 out of it. That's harder work than going to college and those people get a commission. Which is just an eight month, eight months later you get advanced. Which back in those days meant around 150 bucks a month raise, which was a lot.

So what about you, Joe? Where'd you grow up? So I grew up in Arkansas, small town, 556 people, definitely country living. What'd your parents do? So my dad didn't really do a whole lot of work outside of, he was retired from a Caterpillar tractor company and my mom worked for a, she does like use cars. How many brothers and sisters? I got one brother. He's older.

And what sports were you playing growing up? So I played baseball. Any good? It was pretty good. Yeah, I mean, I was pretty decent. I liked it. But as I got a little bit older, I figured out I could do work instead of play baseball and fund some beverages for the weekends and pay for gas so I could go dirt roading with my friends. What kind of car did you have? Well, my first vehicle was a 1979 Chevy Love. I traded a horse for it. Was that that little tiny...

Yeah. It had a Mitsubishi motor in it. It opened backwards like a Corvette. It had big buckshot mutters on it. Elliot, first vehicle. What was it? Maybe he had some kind of a pimp car, like a Camaro or something like that. Yeah. It's a Chevy. Oh, S10. I was close. There you go. That's the Chevy's version. Yeah. Well, that's actually the version ahead of my Chevy Love. The next thing was an S10. The 1985 Chevy S10 Blazer. Chuck. Chuck.

That's a womanizing vehicle right there, bro. How did you find out about the... So you didn't... I know you end up joining just the regular Navy. Yes. Did you know you wanted to be a CB? No. Okay. No. So I was post high school, small town. Was white? So small town Arkansas, there wasn't much future there. So you either...

get out of high school and just go to work at a local whatever company and stay there or

And I didn't want to do that. So I knew the Navy was a way to get out of there and go do something. And I had read some books about the SEAL teams, and that was something that was pretty interesting to me. But at the time, I just needed to get out of the town. And I was doing construction, so kind of the easy translation was Navy Seabees. Yeah, the Seabees is a great job, a great job for people to get, and a great opportunity. And they had a cool job in the military, too. Oh, yeah.

One thing that's cool about the CBs is you get to do your job for real all the time. You're building stuff. All right, Elliot. So you obviously didn't know about the SEAL teams yet because you ended up joining the Marine Corps. You say this. So I joined the Marine Corps in 1996 straight out of high school as an infantryman, but I was actually just like a LAV crewman, light armored vehicle crewman. Went on two deployments to Okie.

One in 97 and again in 99. But on number two, I was the Mew platoon. So I got to go to Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines. No combat or anything like that. I mean, that was the Clinton era. That was me too. I did some time in the... I actually got the tail end of the first Bush. I joined in 1990. So yeah, not a lot going on.

But I'm sure there was some things going on in Australia and the Philippines. From that smirk. For Lance Corporal Elliott over here. Corporal Miller. You say then, then I got out of the crotch, which is a slang term for the Marine Corps. I got out of the crotch and moved back home, southern Illinois, to go to college at SIU for just one year.

but I couldn't stand not having to carry a weapon. So I got the harebrained idea that I would become an LAPD officer. How come you didn't want to become a local officer? Because I wanted some action. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I remember in the 90s, you know, we would look at the LAPD, the LAPD SWAT team, the SEALs would work with them back in the day and they were getting, you know, they do a bunch of hits every month. So pretty good call. You figured that out.

Back to what you're saying here. So I packed my shit along with a friend and we set out for LA Then along the way and I mean that too as we were driving through Arizona those chicken fuckers Flew into the World Trade Center So almost immediately I went in the recruiters office there in Redondo Beach and my original intention was to reenlist the Marines But they told me that if I was to reenlist I would have to go back to e3 so I told them to get fucked and

Walked right next door to the Navy and told them that I wanted buds and Corman too So I had to go to core school in Great Lakes first, which was a joke But I got that done and reported to buds in March of o2 and finished in November that same year. Yeah, dude That's right. No rollbacks for me made it through one shot, huh? It's legit. So you must have been what 24 23 So that's

- That's probably average, I don't know. That's probably average 'cause there's not many guys that actually graduate that are young. Most guys are like 23, 24, 25. I think those are the kind of prime years. - Especially back then. - Yeah.

- And so, but you Joe, so that's what you did. So Joe, you joined the Navy, you go to boot camp, you end up in the Seabees. And then how long do you spend in the Seabees for? - So about almost six years. So, 'cause I went to Camp David, so I didn't really get into the full Seabee work, like in a battalion. So I went to Camp David, worked for the president there, did that for two years. - What'd you do there?

So Camp David's 100% well it's 99% military so there's one person that comes and plays an organ you know for church but everybody else is military so you maintain the whole facility. Got it. So I was brand new to the Navy so I was the junior guy at the camp so basically all the young guys are mowing grass and I got to go learn how to take care of a golf green.

so i took care of the president's golf green there's two of us and there was only one green seven seven t's what a weird way to kick off your navy career really weird really weird but it was it was it was cool it was fun i enjoyed it looking back it was a great great time yeah and then from there you went to a cb battalion so i ended up going to guam so when i headed overseas and did um worked in guam and then from there

back to a CB unit and then to Bud's from there. At what point did you like make the decision that you were going? So going to Bud's? Yeah. So early on, you know, every day was a battle. Like you love the Navy, you hate the Navy.

and I can't wait to get out. And then I realized, I was in the Seabees, I loved the Seabees, but I realized if I wanted to join the Marine Corps, I would join the Marine Corps. 'Cause they're very structured. And then I saw a SEAL platoon, and I'm like, oh. You know what SEALs do? 'Cause you read the books.

But when you actually see them, you're like, wow, you guys are grownups. They treat you like grownups. You talk to each other like grownups. I'm like, that's what I want to do. So then I went to, I was at Self Help, which is a CB job in Point Loma. And then I got my orders to Bud's from there. And what class were you in? 244. So I was just behind Elliot a couple classes. Right on, right on. Any big challenges for you? You're like a freaking stud athlete.

I tried to be, yeah. Like, okay, you're being humble, but you're... Even talking to guys, talking to Leigh from Team 5, he's like, yeah, you'd go on a...

Like they'd be doing an ocean swim, team five would do an ocean swim and you would do the ocean swim with no fins and still beat 90% of the people, which is totally ridiculous. That's like being on a motorcycle versus a bicycle. And he said, and anyone that you didn't beat or anyone that beat you on the swim, you would just destroy them on the run. And where did, were you, did you do triathlons or something? I did. Yeah. So I did. Um,

just, I enjoyed it. You know, I enjoyed working out and that was just kind of part of my life. Um, post small town living and you know, once I got in the military, I'm like, Oh yeah, I enjoy this. I'm actually, I realized I'm actually kind of good at it. Um, so that, yeah. So you didn't start that until you didn't run, you didn't run track or cross country in high school or anything? No swim team, nothing like that. Well, so I, I, I was on a track team in high school for a short amount of time, but we, I was a fat kid, so we weren't,

I wasn't out crushing it. So matter of fact, our town, I told you, is 556 people.

One of the, you know, so we didn't even have a track. So I got on this track team. I don't know how I got on it. And we had a little, there was a little road just by the school that we would go run our track home, but there was a little restaurant there. So I would go over there and just sit and eat ice cream at this little store. I wasn't even running. And then, and then I had this big event. It was the mile and I was going to run the mile and I'm sitting on the bus, you know, track meets are all day long. You're sitting there and,

I'm just sitting on the bus waiting for my time to go. Well, I ended up getting in a fight with a kid. So I punched him in the face and then the coach wouldn't let me go run my one event. So I ended up, that was my whole track career. So I ended up, yeah, not running track. But you know, to be fair, as I got a little bit older in high school,

um i didn't i did not like being overweight so i figured that i figured out real quick if i go run you know it was helping me manage that weight and get to get into some sort of shape and then it became something that i don't know if i just internally challenged myself but it became easy and then when i did eventually run with people in the navy i was like wow these people were slow i didn't know i was i didn't know i was fast i thought wow you know these people are slow and then i realized actually you know was pretty decent runner it's more of a natural thing so was buds

- What challenged you in BUDZ? Like if you're good at running and swimming, that's real nice. - Yeah, it was real nice. Well, yes, and then, you know, because I ran so much, lower extremity injuries wasn't, I was not prone to those. So I didn't, you know, I had no issues. I thought BUDZ was, well for me coming from the Seabees, had a good work ethic to start with. I just remember, you know, just laying in the water and people quitting and thinking, well, I'm getting paid to do this. And I could see where I just came from across the bay there in Point Loma, and I'm like, I'm not going back to that.

So, you know, I did not think Bud's was that hard. I think if I was to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me and Bud's was the dirty name. And that was something I got over real quick. You know, I cracked some ribs on it to start with. I didn't understand it. But after that, yeah, I thought Bud's was fun. What was your biggest challenge, Elliot, in Bud's? Leif said it was keeping your mouth shut. That's still his challenge. Probably the swimming. Yeah. That's what I'm surprised with you, Joe, like,

For someone that didn't grow up in the water, didn't grow up on the swim, to win swims is a big deal. Like, that's a big deal. That's challenging. I spent a lot of time in the water. So I've always been comfortable in the water and always been good swimming. So I started doing Ironman. So I did five Ironman before I went to Bud's. Damn, dude. But as a disclaimer, I did them all in one year. So I got trained up, just started crushing them. Freaking epic. But I think for me, to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me is I was 27 in Bud's.

So those are dog years. Anything over 25 is dog years. So those young kids, they'll go get beat up during the day and then they go out and drink at night. I'm like icing. It's not the same.

Fast forward a little bit. So you guys get done with buds. Elliot, you say after that, so you get done with buds. After that, I got my jump wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was back to Coronado so I could get my trident, which I did in May of 03. Since I was a corpsman, I had to go back across the country yet again for my additional medical training at Fort Bragg, North Kakalaki for about another six or so months. So after that, I got sent back to Coronado to team five and was assigned to Bravo platoon.

Where I did two platoons, the first of which was split. The first part we did PSD for the interim VP of Iraq. And yeah, that sucked. But that only lasted a couple months because then we got slaughtered to go to PACOM. We left Iraq and headed to Guam. And so...

This is how you knew Leif. Were you in buds with Leif too? So you guys were in buds together. And I think Leif actually knew that you were, when you were at medical school, he kind of talked and figured out a way to get you put into his platoon with Zowie and Ray Ray. And so you guys got a little core group of new guys in there. Were you a new guy in that platoon too? Yeah. Yeah. First platoon. Yep. Yes, sir. Hey, Bob, that's right. Yeah.

You guys had a good little crew then. You say from there, I'd gone to Thailand, South Korea, and finally to Singapore. Also, whilst in Guam, I was heloed down to the USS San Francisco. It was a submarine that had actually hit an underwater sea mountain. And one of the crew had smashed his head into something. And in doing so, that pretty much killed him. But that doesn't mean I didn't try everything I could to save him, up to and including giving him a tracheotomy.

but that was no avail so i had to pack them up and send them off to get pronounced dead so this was a interesting event that took place it was 8th january 2005 the uss san francisco was going max speed and i think that's classified but it's fast and it hit a damn undersea mountain that wasn't on the charts or and it was at a depth of 525 feet

They almost lost the vessel. It was a, and I was looking at pictures of it yesterday. Like it was all jacked up. Oh yeah. It looked like a car getting in a head on collision going 50 miles or probably 45 or 50 miles an hour. That's how bad it looked. Were you the, were you the only guy that went on or did send all the medics you had? No, we also got the group dive medical officer down there too. Got it. Got it.

- Ultimately, like you said, machinist mate, second class, Joseph Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, was killed in that tragedy. So he's a medic. What was your job in platoons, in your first platoon? - Because I was so senior, I was in E6 going through buds, so I eventually became the LPO in my first platoon. - Oh really?

When you say eventually, did someone make chief or? No. So our LPL got relieved. Got it. Yeah. So I just kind of took over. That's pretty impressive to step up. But that was all because I believe that the seas were too rough. Yeah. Yeah. So I started off as first lieutenant. Got it. So I was running first lieutenant and then eventually I just took over the LPL. Yeah. That's a big step, man. Yeah. To go from new guy to LPL. Yeah.

Yeah. How'd the boys like that? So the interesting thing is, you know, we're talking about the core guys, you know, all of us knew guys that got there. We were new to the SEAL teams, but none of us were new to the military. So everybody had some, you know, life experience and military experience. So there was a lot of maturity there. To be honest, I think the core group getting there had more maturity than some of the older guys. And to be honest, it's 100% true.

So the core, you know, we all, there was not a power struggle. I think when the LPO was relieved, I think everybody was kind of, you know how it is, like you have that person, everybody already knows they need to be relieved. And then once he was relieved, it was kind of like this sigh of relief. And the two senior guys we had, it was really one senior guy, they didn't want the responsibility, you know? So they were kind of like all about just,

Yeah, falling in line. Yeah. The dynamics in a SEAL platoon, and now that I've seen so much leadership in so many different organizations, it's like if someone...

stepping up. If there's a leadership vacuum and someone steps up and is going to make things happen and they're listening, they're not being arrogant, it's like, it works fine. In fact, that's what officers do, right? The junior officers, they don't have any experience and yet they're supposed to step up and lead and as long as they do it and humble and they listen and they take advice, it works. Yeah, I felt like it was, you know, the guys want leadership and they don't care where it comes from.

So it didn't have to have the experience, because I certainly didn't have the experience, the team experience, but I had leadership experience from being in the Seabees for so long. And that first deployment, you guys did half the time in Iraq doing PSD and half the time in Guam doing exercises. And I know Leif was telling me that...

He and a couple other guys, Ellie was one of them, went up to Samara and did some sniper operations. Nothing really huge, great happened, but he was at least excited to be able to do that. Did you guys, did you get in on some DAs at least or something like that? In Iraq? Yeah. So, unfortunately, I did not because I was, I eventually...

Me and Kevin Katie are OIC. We took the principal. He was from London. So we ended up spending, we did a whirlwind tour of London and Saudi Arabia and all these places. But we moved the platoon over to where they could do DAs of Team 3 because Team 3 was deployed at the same time that we were there doing PSD. Right on. So they got to go do some DAs. So you were like doing full on just...

diplomatic yes suit the whole nine yards yes yes but it was you know it wasn't too bad we got to some countries like you know you know England you turn them right over to Scotland Yard you know we're just off is like hanging out so that's crazy yeah you had a freaking weird career like that oh super weird doing the freaking golf course thing I know and now you're going to London it gets weird yeah peel it apart it gets weird yeah um you see you guys get done with that deployment

You get home, Elliot, you say, after I got done with my first platoon, I'd gone to sniper school as well as some other schools and then deployed to Iraq in the fall of 06, where we were supporting the Army's 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, providing sniper overwatch.

You say, now this is where things get funky because I don't have any kind of recollection of what happened to me on my alive day. The last memory I have of Iraq is that of my room and all the pornographic photos I had up on my wall in my little cubby. None of, nothing of any missions that I had gone on and especially nothing. And I mean, zero recollection of the day when I was blowed up.

So they say that it'll come back, but I'm not buying it. Just because Joe Hildebrandt, who was also injured, though not nearly to the extent that I was, has told me the story probably a dozen fucking times, and then I'll just forget. Yeah, dude, TBI is a real fucking bitch. Yeah.

Want to talk a little bit about preparing Preparing for Ramadi as you guys are getting ready to go there as I mentioned earlier You know and I didn't really think too much about this while I was in Ramadi That our after-actions reports like one of my buddies when I got back he said dude. We were reading those things to the command daily What was that like for you like as you're hearing the shit that's going on and and you guys know where you're going so I can

I can probably speak for the whole platoon at the time. You know, we were reading that stuff and it was the most real anything had ever been in our lives because we know what we're preparing to go do. And there was no shortcuts. We were, you know, we were honing our skills. We were sharpening our knives, learning how to keep our powder dry every single day. And it was not, you know, ULT was a whole new beast for us at the time because, you know, we'd taken diving out. We just whittled it down to like what really is important. And then we were taking,

that time for set, which it wasn't called sit back then, but we were taking that, that integration time to really hone down on what we're learning from your after action reports and, uh, to try to be as, as mentally and physically and, you know, tactically prepared as we possibly could be. And, you know, even for the rest of my career, I don't know, you know, we always, you always think, you know, even as platoon chief, I was trying to focus my platoon on what really matters, but that was a time where, you know, you were really paying attention to every little detail. Uh,

Yeah, I think that, I mean, I did seven deployments and there was no time where I was in your guys' shoes, which is like even when we were going to Ramadi, oh, I knew it was bad, but it was sort of bad in a good way. You know, oh, there's lots of bad guys there and it's going to be a great deployment and whatever.

So I kind of had that feeling, not the, and by the way, we only found out we were going to Ramadi two weeks before we deployed. So we were really focused on Baghdad and Baghdad. I had been to Baghdad and kind of done the same kind of operations that were done in Baghdad. So it was very much, okay, cool. Like it's going to be a great deployment, but then we find out we're going to Ramadi and you know, we get, we barely even had time to talk to guys that were over there. No, uh, pre-deployment site survey. We just show up.

And it was real obvious when we got there though, like, oh, okay. And I knew it. I mean, I knew how bad it was because you're seeing the casualty reports in Al-Anbar province and most of the casualties are in Ramadi. But I never went on a deployment where like you guys knew 100% what you were getting into as much as a human being can know what it's going to be like. And there's only so much you can convey. You know, I was talking to a kid that was

Going through pool comp he was gonna go through pool comp and I said hey man like it is pool comp is really really messed up in buds and You know the kids like, you know, he's a surfer and comfortable in the water and he was doing good and all the other Aspects and he's like, you know, how bad can it be type thing and he failed it? He failed at the first one failed the second one and

finally passed on the third try and I said to him, I was like, "Hey, you know, I tried to tell you how messed up Pool Comp was." And he looked at me and said, "Nothing you could have told me would have conveyed to me how fucked up Pool Comp is." And so I feel like that was kind of where you guys were at. Like we're telling you guys, hey,

you know, it's gnarly. And as much as you guys could possibly understand that you guys understood it. Well, you know, I think we fully understood it because, you know, after action reports, you're always getting in, they're always inflated. They're always, you know, trying to make something, you know, we did this J set or whatever, and you build it up to do it. We did all these things, but this was the first time that we were reading these after action reports. We knew it was true. These things were very truthful and this is what we were preparing to go do. And I think that was across the board. Everybody knew that. Mm-hmm.

I got some emails between Elliot and Leif and Leif and Elliot. This one is from Elliot to Leif, May 17th. So this is like we're only a couple, we're like a month and a half into deployment. From Elliot to Leif. Damn, dude. What are you task unit bruiser dudes doing over there? All the different rumors and stories we're getting back here on the Strand make it sound like blood, spit, and ass are just flying everywhere you go, including chow. Good stuff.

Too bad about Cowie. So Cowie was in your Bud's class with Leif and Elliot, and he was wounded bad in May of 2006. You said too bad about Cowie. Anyways, dude, anyway, dude, holler back whenever you get the chance.

Then lay fro back that day broseph what's happening you guys finished up with you LT. We're doing a lot man There's a few places out here there in cow town that are gonna need a little remodeling if you guys are headed out to relieve us then you are set because this is the place to be Downtown has got some crazy shit going on. How are things in Sandog fast forward a little bit July 24th from from Elliot dude

And I'm not 100% sure what this means. Dude, you boys got the top down with your lean on or what? For those of you that don't know, and I'm assuming this is a gangster rap thing because Leif Babin is like a gangster rap aficionado. And so I'm assuming that's a gangster rap thing. Got your top down with your lean on. We be hearing good stuff coming out of your hood.

"Just try and save some for your old boys in Bravo. "We don't want to get over there. "You guys have turned that place into a ghost town. "All the fellows are doing good though, "and everyone gives you a shout. "I'll tell them you said what's up. "Anyhow, take care, dude." And it's funny, you can't, it's very hard to understand the mind of team guys where that's, you know, he's kind of half joking, Elliot's kind of half joking, but like leave some for us. Like, you know what I mean? That's the attitude. Leif replied,

Elliot, all is good here. Lots of shooting going on regularly. Always a good time. Be ready to get your sniper on. Make sure the 300 Win Mag is doped in as you should be putting her to good use. Slap Al in the nuts for me. Keep it real and take it to the house. Fast forward a little bit. And again, this is what's happening as you guys are preparing to deploy. Do you know when you guys found out you were going to relieve us when that like got confirmed?

I don't remember exactly when it was. I think it was later in ULT, but we knew. Our leadership was very keen on people knowing where they're going as early as possible. It wasn't that little game at the end. I think about six months out was when we knew. Check. Yeah, and that's basically when we got there. So as we got there, you guys were probably, all right, let's see what these guys are doing, and then you're tracking. Yep.

Here's another email. This one's from August 19th from Elliot. Sorry to hear about everything. And that right there is just a reference to Mark Lee and Ryan Jobe. You know, Ryan getting wounded so bad and Mark getting killed on August 2nd. But I'm glad to hear you're all right. Everyone is pretty anxious to get over there and replace you guys so we can put a little hurt on too. Got to admit though, TU Bruiser has set the bar good and high, but who are we kidding? You're only as good as I taught you, young Jedi. Yeah.

Well, as usual, I don't have much to say. Take care, brother. And always remember, Elvis isn't dead. Mickey Mouse is really a master conspirator of communism. And Chuck Norris is just a fucking actor. Have fun, dude. Leif replied the same day, E-Rex, which is one of your nicknames. Your other nickname is Booger, which you got that from your parents? No. Who gave you the nickname Booger? One of the things you wrote, E-Rex, thanks for your words, brother. Rough times here, but we are driving on with the mission. I don't remember.

You just became Booger at some point. Fair enough. Reply to that email. Another nickname that you had was E-Rex.

It said this is from Leif erex. Thanks for your words brother rough times But we are driving on with the mission There will be lots to do here as long as your head shed lets you do it depends on how much risk they want to run Obviously, it's some dangerous shit as always I'm still your daddy Enjoy your last six weeks in the world and we'll see you out here soonest Give a shout out to Al Ray Ray Casey Jojo and baby Lou for me. Peace out your grandpappy So

- There was still the rest of, that was in August that you sent that email. There's still August, the rest of August, September, October before you guys deployed and we would send home more wounded. And of course, September 29th, Mikey Monsoor was killed. Were you guys still, did you guys go to his funeral? - Yeah. - That, I mean, I just can't imagine a more sobering pre-deployment event. - Yeah, it was tough. It was tough watching the guys too.

we're getting ready to step out the door and seeing him come back and go to his funeral, yeah, it was hard. It was hard to keep focused on what was going on or where we're going, but it was also a good way to focus on where we're going. So it was a hard time though. - So you guys show up.

- Do you remember me saying like, hey, you gotta take casualties? I don't know if-- - I do, yeah. Yeah, that happened right as we got there. We did a quick, so Elliot and I, when we got on the ground there, we got back over to Mark Lee and we re-org'd really quick 'cause we headed to Corregidor to go turn over Seth. So yeah, that happened really quick when we were there. - How was the turnover?

it was good. Yeah. I mean, it was a typical Seth turnover. You know, we, uh, we walked right out into a gunfight. Like, what are we doing? We just went out and, um, on the turnover op, we just went out just blowing loopholes everywhere, just getting after it. And I remember we got back, we're like, what the hell just happened? Like, but it was a good turnover. You know, we got out and, um, cause you know, none of us had been, um, in any real gunfights up to that point. So that was a good way for us to like kind of break into it. And then, um,

And then they were gone. You know that, you know how fast that rip happened. We, we basically got a lay of the land one night, two nights. And it was like, okay, we're out. And, you know, normally you have these long turnovers in places that doesn't even really matter. And this is one of them that really mattered. And, but then again, it's good to get that leadership to get those people out of the way. So you can start focusing on what's next. Yeah. It,

It definitely felt like we wanted to give you more turnover. Absolutely. I remember, so I don't know, maybe a couple weeks before you guys started showing up, we were out doing some operation and I was like out there with the platoon and we're peeling back and I'm looking at the platoon. You know, I happen to be like holding security or waiting for my turn and I'm watching the platoon.

And you could see like they're just freaking good. You know, everyone is just so in the game mode that and everyone had learned a million little tiny lessons, a million little tiny lessons. Every guy had their own little thing that they'd figured out and shared. But it's just like the experience. There's no other way to get it, you know. And I just remember thinking like, man, like.

like just praying, like, please, like, let it, let you guys get some time to kind of, uh, get more experienced, you know, like,

Let you get some time before shit hits the fan and of course it just doesn't work that way The enemy doesn't give a shit in fact the enemy knows and they can say they they have their own little Intel network And they all the new group took over they did that shit all the time when when when uh the army would start to turn over with the Iraqis somewhere or a new unit came in it was like guaranteed you're getting hit yeah, and They did that when the one one ad showed up like

New Humvees are out in town. That means there's new people. That means they're not experienced yet, and they hit them. And I remember actually Leif was talking about it with me yesterday. You know, he was watching. You guys were getting ready to head over Corregidor. And...

You know, he was just telling me like how Elliot, you were so like fired up because after however many years in the military, you're going to go and you're a sniper. You're going to go do a hundred percent. You're going to go do the thing that we trained to do. And he's, he was telling me he was watching you. You guys were getting ready to take your convoy over to Corregidor. And, and,

He's like watching you in the 50 Cal turret and locking load in your, he's just sitting there looking at you and he was telling me he could see how freaking stoked you were and he was super pumped. But at the same time, he was just like, man, like it's the same feeling we all had. Like it's freaking, it's real, man. And it's gonna, it's real. And just pray. Like we're praying for you guys. Like please just pray.

let these guys get their bearings and please let them, you know, you just feel like no matter what we did in that short period of time, you just leave going, damn it, you know? You're out in the streets in Ramadi and I don't even know if you guys had the opportunity to get there. We were out there so much, it was like, we know exactly, you could just drop us off anywhere and it'd be like getting dropped off by my local freaking, you know,

I think I know exactly where I am. I can walk home. I can go. And, but it takes a little bit of time to get that, but it's so useful to have that when you know exactly like, you know, the, we knew the building numbers, you know, we know the building numbers without having to look at a battle map. That's just time. And, uh, yeah, it was definitely, it was hard to leave. It was hard to leave. Um,

And by the way, one interesting fact that I always like to point out, we were, we had the CJ SOTIF came down to do a visit with us. We were like, had been there for maybe a month and the CJ SOTIF came down to visit and we were giving them a brief. And I was in the middle of telling the colonel that the guys out at Corregidor had done 23 straight operations and had been in enemy contact on 23 straight operations and

And I'm not kidding and I didn't plan this, but as I'm saying that, the talk chief comes in and is like, hey boss, just a heads up, the guys in Correga are on a tick right now. And I'm like, Roger, and I looked at the colonel, I said, make that 24 straight. And because that's the level of enemy contact that was happening. So for you guys to roll out with Seth on your first operation to get in a big gunfight, it's like...

welcome to craig or welcome to the moolah yeah that's exactly what it was but you know what you were saying is interesting you know the combat maturity you know that's something that you don't typically have you know unless you've been in a lot of combat and even if you had every every every conflict's different so getting that that and every deployment's different getting your your bearings and getting that combat maturity um we just didn't have it you know we got there and

And, you know, unfortunately these, these rips happen on a timeline, you know, it's the, you know, the, the air force is directing, you know, how we're going to move our troops around. And this was a time that, you know, had we had the opportunity to push back and keep two platoons or two teams deployed at one time and have that overlap by, by a month,

you know, something, you know, I think that was, that would have been important, but you know, like team guys do, we figured, we figured it out. Um, and luckily, you know, we, you learn those lessons cause there's a lot, there's a lot of risk in learning those small little lessons and there's no way to pass that, you know, that knowledge quickly, you know, especially in a couple of days, you know, turnover. So,

But, you know, God loves frogmen. And, you know, we were pretty lucky, you know. So we learned along the same lines. And what was your op tempo like when those first out at Corregidor, those first? We just turned it and burned right into it.

you know one of the one of the last things seth told us and he did just right on our turnover up he's pointing on a map like papa 10. he's like where mikey got killed that's where we got hurt he's like don't go there he's like papa 10 he's like that's bad he goes unless you want to go there you know he's like such a seth thing to say he's like don't go there bad unless you want to go there and then go there it's gonna be good you know so we the next time we went in there was when we got hurt so that was definitely a gnarly little area um what was the

So like how many, how many opposite you guys think you did between, between when you landed and November 19th, probably like 10, 12, 15, like a bunch. A bunch. You guys were racking them up. Yeah. Because you know, sometimes you go direct action into an overwatch. So, you know, he's like multiple operations going on. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about this.

This operation that's the the subject of the movie and if you haven't gone to see the movie go see the movie go See it while it's in the theaters. Yeah for sure I max it is it is I didn't get to do the I max thing Maybe I'll try and find that so I actually went with my wife and watched on IMAX when it came out Totally different than seeing it You know in a regular theater, but theaters still a million times better than on TV. Um, I

Normal, you guys are planning for it. Planning cycle goes, you probably aren't, that's the other thing. Some people talk to me about the movie, they're like, well, it just kind of started and ended. I'm like, exactly. I'm like, that's exactly right. This is one day in, it's one day. And there was many, many, many, many days like this. You guys do nighttime insert,

nighttime infiltration, you know, and this was, this was something that was kind of new at the time, like going into a building, you know, what we learned in the, in the nineties, you know, you're breaching everything. And even, even up until that time, a lot of people, everything that you go in, you're going to smash the door and you're going to kick the door in. And we probably turned over with you guys. Hey, listen,

if your Iraqi soldiers are good for anything, it's they know how to get in and out of these houses. They know how to open the doors. They know how to deal with what's gonna be in the courtyard and all that stuff. And that's portrayed pretty cool in the film. - But we didn't start off that way. We got on the ground there and just like always, we're like, hey, let's blow this front door through the house at 3,000 miles an hour.

And then we learned real quick, like, hey, did you check to see if the door was open? You know, it's like there's a lot better way. But again, that's at operational maturity. Yeah. And this is another thing is, I mean, we had to have told you guys, hey, listen, if you can, go quiet. Oh, you did. But guess what a breacher wants to do? Oh, yeah. And the other thing is your...

Your propensity for risk, you know, it seems like are you serious? You're gonna walk in there like quietly that seems crazy Let's breach the freaking door and get the advantage and that seems like a logical thing until you realize that you were pretty easy to sneak in those houses and when you breach the door all now all of a sudden you're giving away your position etc etc etc And what's interesting about the movie is urine? There's there's actually two elements out there. You're set up set up in mutually supporting overwatch positions and

And they only show your guys' house. That's the whole movie. There's actually three elements. There's three elements. There's three they talk about in the movie, OP1, OP2. But there is a scene in the movie where the two elements that are moving to us, in OP1, they link up. That's right. One thing I've been telling people about the movie is that it doesn't give the audience any clues. No.

- No. - There's no clues for the audience. Like a great example of that is there's Anglico in the building with you guys that play a pivotal role. Anglico played a pivotal role with us. One of my great friends right now is Dave Burke who was one of our Anglico guys and they did scores of missions with us. There's no way that anybody that's watching that movie that doesn't know like what Jocko Willink knows, knows that that's an Anglico guy.

And there's no hint. You know, a normal movie, they'd say, hey, throw a piece of dialogue in there to explain that those are Anglico Marines. Like, you know, and someone would say, hey, check with the Anglico Marines and see what they say. Hey, Anglico Marine, what's the deal here? Well, here's what's happening. But there's none of that. They're just like, we're moving forward. And there's no clues for the audience. Just like there's no clues...

About what's you know, what's the plan? Well, no you're on the mission. There's no clues and it's it's It's a different feeling for watching a movie and I'm I have it with all my knowledge like oh I know exactly what they're doing. I had freaking know about a yo, I know like oh you didn't pop a 10 like oh, yeah, I

I was looking at some of the scenes and I was like, wait, they might've used pictures of my guys on some of those street corners. Cause it's like, we have, there's good pictures of tasking bridge. I was like, they might've used, it looks exactly like that. It was exactly like, yeah, it's the same stuff. But the way the movie is done, you don't get those clues as the audience. You're just immersed in it. And it's a really powerful thing. You know, they did a great job of your, the first half hour of the movie is just like,

sitting on an overwatch position yeah boring slow yeah yeah and i was like man if they they should do this for a long time and they did yeah and the other interesting thing there's no soundtrack no no there's just the noises and i was i was uh reading an uh interview i think it was with ray ray and they would like when a hollywood hollywood makes a movie a shot is like one minute yeah

They were doing like 12, 15 minute shots because they would capture what the guys were really doing. They're hot, they're uncomfortable, they're itching their head, they're adjusting their gear. Like that's what an actual over a watch is like and they captured it all. They got Elliot sitting on the gun looking, scanning, man. You want to talk about getting the blood flowing? Like I'm sitting there watching this stuff and just like called prayer comes.

This stuff is just so emblematic of what these operations were like. Call to prayer comes, interpreter comes in, hey, here's what they're saying. Those call to prayer would be followed by like, hey, it's time to get our jihad on. Oh, yeah. Finally end up

After this massive suspenseful and do I need to say spoiler alert? Is that a thing? Cause we're about to talk about this whole freaking movie. No, I think the trailer shows it all. I think spoiler alert. So grenade comes in. Um, Ellie gets wounded. Now when Ellie gets wounded, what was the, what were those initial wounds? He just had, uh, just some frag in his, in his, uh, upper arm, like underneath. It was nothing. Uh, you know, the interesting thing, there's three guys in that room.

and that frag came in it wasn't a big room and it only hurt just just Elliot and uh it takes me back to like there was a lot of things that we would talk about sitting around the platoon space or you know sitting around the uh the hooch there and Elliot used to say as a medic you get hurt you get shot you hit the street you better get your ass off the street he goes you better start getting we're not coming to get you we come get you we're gonna get shot too you know and that wasn't a selfish thing that was like just kind of a wise like hey start trying to get out of the street

And then the same thing with the grenade. Because you know, at Full Metal Jacket there at Corregidor, we got mortared every day. And we would go up on the roof and see where the mortars would hit. And there was always this, they would hit and then it would spray upwards. So Elliot would say, hey, just lay on the ground. If a mortar comes in or a grenade, just lay on the ground. Don't jump on top of it. Just lay on the ground. It'll hopefully get around you. And that's what they did. And three people in a small room with a grenade and it only hit Elliot. And it didn't even hit him bad. He was fine. He would have been fine.

That being said...

the call gets made like, hey, he might be fine, but we need to make sure let's, let's casavac him. Yeah. So the plan was we were, he'd been hit. So we needed to get him out of there no matter what. And obviously now you're fully compromised when they were putting grenades into your. The mission was pretty much over anyway. You know, this was kind of typical, like, hey, we need to, it's time to just go ahead and call it anyway. We've done what we need to do. And, you know, cause we always got shot off target by the end of the, the end of the overwatch, it was always like, okay, we're, you know, we're going to leave, you know, we'll extract hot.

You know, we'll get out of there. So this was time to get him out of there. He'd been hurt. No reason to keep him there. So the plan was calling a section of Bradley's, get him in a Bradley, get him out of there, link up all of our units, call him more Bradley's and get out of there or leave on foot. Cause we, we patrolled in on foot. We were just down the street from Eagle's nest. That's another crazy thing is like you,

you're probably 300, 400 meters away from like full friendly forces. I mean, Ecos Nest was a fully, you know. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah, it was just right down the street. Freaking what a wild scene to be in. Yeah.

um so that was the plan we're going to get him out of here and then we'll really either foot patrol or consolidate the troops because we knew at that point it was a consolidated uh or a coordinated attack because they had just contacted alpha platoon which was over at mark lee and they pulled our air over to support them so we could only suspect that they knew what they were doing so pull our air so they could get on our roof and get a grenade through loophole

They were good. They were, they were. And, you know, I think that's something that we back to your after actions, you know, up until that point, you know, we like to call them booger eaters. And I think you downplay your enemy a lot, especially going, you know, through the whole pipeline of buds and, you know, instructors are always talking about how, you know, they're the enemy's stupid or whatever. They're not. And if you underestimate them, you will have a bad day. I would tell guys they did everything that we did, meaning they had comms. They didn't have cell phones, but they had radios. Yeah.

They would call for reinforcements. You could watch reinforcements come in. They had CASAVAC. They would take guys that were wounded and bring them up to the Ramadi General Hospital before it was secured by the Marines. So...

And they did supporting arms and coordinated arms. So they'd start an attack with machine gun fire, get the heads down, then RPGs to get the heads even further down, and then in would come mortars, and the final thing would be a vehicle-borne IED. That's what they were doing. That is advanced combined arms operations by the enemy. And this is a classic case. Like what you just said, they do an attack somewhere else,

Get air support pulled off and then now they can get to rooftops They can they can maneuver on your element. So that's a lot of coordination that has to happen Yeah, you guys recognize what was happening? It's like alright, we're calling it and and that's a there's no right answer It was always you know Okay, do we stay here? Because we don't want to leave in the daytime because we we generally speaking didn't want to leave an overwatch during the daytime, right and

But at a certain point, like this is no longer, or this won't be a defendable position much longer. Let's get out of here. And it's always, it's a decision. And there's no right answer. And sometimes you're going to be right. Sometimes you're going to be wrong. That's the way it is. Same thing with being on the rooftop. There's another debate we would have.

You can put guys on the rooftop, they're exposed to grenades. If you put them on the top floor inside the building, well, you're blowing loopholes, but you still don't have quite the same amount of angles that you can see, so there's more threat. So it was a constant game of, okay, what risk do we want to take? Do we want to take the risk of putting guys on the rooftop?

Or do we want to take the risk of putting guys one level down where now we don't have the full visibility? And that's what we had to calculate that night is because we typically were on the rooftops. But this time in Papa 10, that's where, you know, Mikey got a grenade thrown up on the roof. So we're like, hey, let's go the one, the top story below the roof. And we definitely lost a lot of situational awareness by that. And, you know, and then, you know, those roofs were really close together. So they were able to just kind of step roof to, you know, roof to roof. And we couldn't see them without our air support. Sure.

So the decision gets made. Bradleys are coming. And by the way, this is something I always point out and I've heard Ray talking about it. Of course, again, there's no clues. You don't get these clues in the movie. It doesn't spell everything out for you. When we would call the Army or the Marine Corps for a CASAVAC or for fire support, they would risk their lives to come and give that to us. Those roads that they were coming down,

The 11AD lost nine Abrams main battle tanks and 15 Bradley fighting vehicles while we were there. So when these guys were jumping in their vehicles to come and rescue us, it was at great peril and risk to themselves, their vehicles, their forces. But they did it.

over and over and over again, and they did it here. - Yeah, without hesitation. - Yep, no hesitation ever. It was just awesome, awesome that these guys would, and you know, sometimes you're calling a CASVAC from some company or element that you never met before, you haven't worked with them before. Over time you get to know them, but they don't care. They don't care if they know you or not. You're an American,

they're going to come and do everything they can to help you. So that's the situation you guys are in. So they come in and what is, who's, you guys are just going to break out. It's like a couple Iraqis go first or a few Iraqis go first. Yeah. We had four, yeah, four Iraqi scouts. And then you two. And then me and Elliot. And are you just going to throw him in the back of the Brad? Yeah, we're just going to get him in the Brad and then we're going to head back in the house.

What do you remember about what happened next? So I remember, I mean, I remember pretty, pretty well, most everything, but a lot of smoke. You know, we got our smokes out and heading to the Bradley. I just remember we stacked up in the, you know, in the house. We got our scouts out first and then, you know, Elliot and I were going to go to, we're going to go to a Bradley. So even though I, like I said earlier, he was barely wounded, but he was still wounded. I wanted to keep him close because of the smoke. So I had my hand on his shoulder as we went out the gate and,

and then as soon as we got right to that bradley because the bradley was just right there as soon as we got to the brow they ramped down that's when the blast came in and uh yeah and that's when yeah everything started to go south the way it's portrayed in the film like slow motion yeah overwhelming noise but then overwhelming like silence and slow and muffled

How does that compare to, I think you worked with them to try and give your perspective on it. - Absolutely, and that's exactly, it's kind of how it plays out in the movie. It's very realistic to me. That's the way it seemed, that slow motion. There's a lot of pain that's coming. It's like when you stub your toe and you know it's gonna hurt here in a minute, but it's not hurting yet. Same thing, you have that deafening, you know,

slow motion pain, but the pain's like dull and it's starting to come more and more acute as the seconds go on. And you start to, as the seconds go, start going on, you start to realize that, you know, things start to speed back up. You're starting to hear things like gunfire,

and you're starting to see a little bit better 'cause the smoke's starting to clear and your haze is starting to go away a little bit. And then I started to realize where I was as far as in a bad place. But to be honest, my very first thought, and I don't know why I remember this, but I thought that I got hit by an RPG-7. I thought it landed right at my feet.

Um, because we had just been talking about these RPG sevens and how much more powerful they were than, you know, so that in my mind I just got hit with an RPG seven, which obviously was not the case. And what was your recognition that your legs were jacked? So, yeah, I, I knew that immediately cause, uh,

obviously the pain, but I remember it being real, like real smoky, not just from our smokes, but just from the blast and the dust. And I remember I could see the sun up in the sky. And I remember raising, trying to raise my feet up a little bit, or my legs up so I could see. You know, to be fair, I've been watching Band of Brothers, you know, so, you know, I just expected this gruesome, you know, this is it. But as I could see, my pants just kind of went up and fell. So I thought my feet were both gone. You know, I mean, in my mind, they're not there.

But that's not something you're really worried about at the time. More worried about getting shot at still. So getting back in the house. And that's something that we don't, it doesn't, Ray and I talked about this later, but I remember telling Ray, because he said I was fine. He said, hey, you're going to be fine. He checked and he's like, your junk's still there. And I remember, I appreciate that. Because we talked about these things. But I remember saying that my feet were gone. And I remember him looking and he's like, no, they're there. There's some wrong place. Because they were pretty jacked up.

- And how many Iraqis got killed? - Two. - So two. So you, just to clarify for people that don't know, you said scouts. You said scouts went out and those were Iraqi soldiers that were like a scout platoon. And so we'd call them scouts. And so two of those guys were killed. Your OIC is like concussed bad and it's like,

They get you guys inside. And again, go see the movie. We can sit here and talk about it. Go see the movie. We're sitting here with two guys that were there that, and the movie was made by a guy that was there and we're not going to do it justice. We're not going to do the movie justice. And you know, it's, it's funny. I've, I put it out on social media and people were saying like, well, I guess, you know,

I haven't approved, I don't approve a lot of war movies, right? Like, oh, this is a good one. But man, this is a good one. And like I said, there's no punches pulled. And so getting the details of that, go see the movie. You end up, you guys both end up, you're in pain. You guys get morophine. There's confusion. There's chaos. And it really is portrayed well in the film, like the mayhem. And at one point,

I was really paying attention to it, but they have all the radio calls are coming in and radio calls, radio calls, and they circle radio calls on top of radio calls on top of radio calls, which is 100%.

what can happen in chaotic situations and it's 100% what's happening and finally Ray just unplugs his headphones because he can't like he needs to just get to the what's right in front of him yeah but they did a great job of portraying that and

you notice it because all of a sudden when he pulls that out, all that crazy traffic stops. And, you know, I had like in my platoon, in my task, you weren't allowed to talk on the radio. Like no one talked on the radio. It was like unless you had something just level 10 critical. But that doesn't apply to everybody because you've got different units that are out there and they're trying to figure out what's going on. They're trying to coordinate. They got wounded. There's other firefights going on.

- Finally, the other squad, and again, I'm just, go see the movie. This is as good as you're gonna get. The guy that was there made the movie. The guy that was there that made the movie got the input from all the guys that were there. And he had pretty free reign, it sounds like, to do what he wanted to do. And so go see it. Finally, the other

Like you'd mentioned earlier. There's actually two other overwatch positions. They consolidate they move to your position How freakin stoked were you to see those guys? Yeah. Yeah, really stoked Let's take a step step back. You know, so one thing the movie does not capture and we had one medic Elliot was our medic So now we're you know, we're in a really bad place We have two wounded seals the rest of them are either holding some sort of overwatch or keeping us alive and

So we were in desperate need of getting these other guys consolidated to us, which they're in a tick. And, you know, these bad guys were talking about being coordinated. It's as if they were coordinated enough to keep them from coming to us. That was their goal was not necessarily to kill them. I mean, that was their overall goal, but to prevent them from consolidating on us, to give them an opportunity to get into and on top of us and do what they needed to do there.

But yeah, so the movie doesn't even start to allude to Elliot being our medic. Elliot was our medic. So we had Ray working on me, which is a comm guy, and then Anglico working on Elliot because they thought Elliot was going to die. And I hate to say it that way, but he did not look like there was anything they could do to help him. So that's why Anglico was working on him. So yeah, we were in pretty dire straits. We went through every contingency you could possibly go through at that point.

Yeah, well, it's dire in the movie. You're definitely feeling it. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know from being in the teams myself if it seems worse in the movie or not.

If a civilian would look at it and go, that's level 10 bad. Or if they'd be like, well, probably like level seven. Or if they're like, no, that's a 12. Or if, you know, I don't know how a civilian, but reading reviews of it, people get the message. Like this is a terrible, terrible situation. And yeah, just to give a little more clarity, you got...

Two severely wounded guys. You got guys trying to keep them alive. There's not that many freaking people on the team. The Iraqi soldiers, they're gone. They bailed. Two dead, two gone. Two gone. You cannot hold security barely in a building like that. Like basically you can't. So you're trying to, you know the enemy's closing in on you. It's just a nightmare. The other squads consolidate. They show up. Yeah.

They now they can start to actually make progress. It's like you guys as a as a smaller element. You guys are just treading water, just barely keeping your head above water. Just your lips. And just your lips barely one nostril. And so finally, when the other guys show up now, you can start making progress towards coordinating and getting out of there. And that was a that was a glorious moment when I came in.

because you could hear the gunfire coming and you could tell it was our gunfire and then when they got there they set security and then you could hear those 60s rocking and rolling and it's a good feeling and then you get you know these fast movers doing show of forces and I've never had an aircraft that you know a fast mover that low I thought the buildings were going to collapse I mean it felt like they were going to collapse you guys get extract um and then like I mentioned earlier

The movie, look, they show the family come out. The family's kind of looking around like, damn, what the hell just happened? And then they show the insurgents kind of coming out and debriefing, walking around, seeing what's happening. And then just the movie ends. And, you know, I've read, actually not just read, but I've been talking to people and they're like, well, it just kind of ended and ended.

My response is like this is just another day and these freaking extreme heroics By the army guys that came to get you out by your guys But by you guys be in there by the people trying to keep you alive by the other squad maneuver to like those heroics That's what happened on a daily basis almost a daily basis of

in that city. And so to say, yep, it's over, there's no like, oh, we go back and we're gonna have a party now and we're gonna celebrate our hero. It's like, no, actually you're gonna go back, debrief, and go out the next day and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. And that's, to me, one of the most important messages. It's like, no, we're not glorifying this one day. It's like,

These guys did heroic things and made huge sacrifices. And yup, we're on to the next day. Yeah. When you went, so you went and saw the movie. Yeah.

Did you see it with civilians like a normal day? So I've seen it. I saw it several times through the process. I actually went to the red carpet and watched Elliot and all his picture taken there. But yeah, so I was able to see the movie several times. But yeah, when it came out, my wife and I decided like, hey, let's go watch an IMAX. And yeah, just a bunch of civilians.

But funny is they put our pictures at the end of the movie. Well, all these clowns, you don't think anybody recognizes, you know, I don't think I would see somebody and be like, Oh, that's him. They knew, they knew right away to the end of the movie. People started looking at me like, Hey, that's, that's you. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's pretty interesting. But, uh, when I max, um, yeah, it was really cool. Loud. Yeah. So I went down opening night, my wife and I went down, I sit down in the theater and sure enough,

All of a sudden, a guy comes over, taps me on the shoulder. What's up, bro? And it's one of my brothers from Tasking to Bruiser and his wife. And we sat there and watched this thing, like totally uncoordinated. But yeah, it was definitely, it's wild to see. And plus, because like just knowing, you know,

everybody, you know, knowing all you guys. I'm not like best friends with anyone, but know all those guys, worked with all those guys over the years, so knowing and seeing it and seeing what you guys went through is freaking definitely go see the movie.

you guys get Kazevac. Uh, where'd you go when you guys get Kazevac? So we kind of stayed together for quite a while, actually all the way to out of country. So from there, you know, we went back to the con to the med station across street from Crigador and that's where we, we left, you know, went there for just a hot minute. They got us in a 46 and flew us. I think it was a 46. I know I eventually ended up in a 46 at some point. Um,

Because yeah, so we flew us from there to TQ and in TQ to blood real and then while we're in blood We're there for maybe four or five days got stable there and in food Germany by the time you guys um, you know We're getting this word. Like I mentioned earlier. I'm gonna go to Elliot a little bit by the time you get back So Leif, you know who's your brother Leif? he was like immediately engaged and

You know it's interesting talking to Leif he because you ended up in San Antonio pretty quickly Elliot and Talking to Leif like when Leif got his stuff together to go to San Antonio He packed his blues and for those of you that aren't in the in the military on the Navy like when you pack your blues That means there's only one reason you there's two reasons you put your blues on wedding funeral

And so here's your brother Leif like back here in San Diego getting ready to go and he packs his blues because from the reports that we're getting, it was not looking good for Elliott. He wrote this to a group of us on December 2nd. Leif did kind of send out the email

He said, what's happening brothers? I'm in San Antonio with Elliot. I wish I could say things were better than they are. It's a fucking bad, bad deal and it hit me like a freight train when I walked in there to see him early this morning. He has suffered some brain damage so no one can say for sure how minor or severe it will be. A distant second is that the doctors have not made a decision yet on whether or not he will keep his left leg. This problem, however, seems insignificant to the brain injury.

there are some small signs of hope however eye movement response to pain we are all just hoping and praying that he wakes up and comes and slowly comes back to the elliot we all know and love as bad as all this sounds he certainly has a fighting chance and the fact that he's probably the toughest most bullheaded bastard i know gives me confidence that if anybody can pull through it he will it's time to get down on our knees and ask

Almighty God with all our hearts to heal our friend and brother Leif Here's what you write about this time Elliot You say I woke up in the ICU room in Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio with my left leg still attached though is pretty much useless because it was just a big club of a foot and my calf was also blown off and surgically reattached with a giant fixator on my left leg and also I had one on my right arm too and

They told me that I would probably need an amputation, but I declined at first. I guess that I was actually just hoping that it would get better and I would be able to join my team and finish my 20 years and retire. However, looking back now, I see just how naive of thinking it was because I've never seen a one-legged frogman that couldn't speak. Have you? Didn't think so. I know one of my old assistant platoon commanders from SEAL Team 7, he actually brought his whole platoon out

They were in Texas doing training and he brought his whole platoon. They all like scrubbed, all went in to see you. And what was the nature of your injuries? Like how, I thought you were losing both your legs. That was kind of the reports that I was getting. How'd they save them? I don't know. You know, I mean, at first, I mean, by grace of God and the right surgeons, and all reasonable, I guess,

They should have just taken them off in Iraq. And that's what my doctors here were like, hey, they kept them on. They kept it on through Germany. So we'll see what we can do to fix them. So just a lot of surgery. And then eventually they put nails in them, rods in both tibias and one fibula. One of my fibulas is still broken. And just a lot of hardware. And then just a lot of rehab.

Metal and riggers tape. That's right. Some bailing wire in there. But yeah, I mean, they really probably should have, for simplicity, just taken at least my left one off in our rack. But...

And was it just broken bones? Broken bones and a lot of flesh missing. So they eventually had to harvest the inner gastric calf muscle to put over to flap over the front because you could just see my tibia. There was just a big hole where my tibia was there. And you could see the tendon that went down to my big toe, which traveled right along the tibia, which did not get injured, which is crazy because it was just exposed.

But they were able to cover it up and get it up and going. So bilateral tib-bib fractures, missing a lot of flesh. How long was, like when they started putting your legs back together, how long did that take to put them back together? Where you could walk again, when could you run again? Yeah, so...

So after all the surgeries, I was in the hospital here in San Diego. I eventually made it back to San Diego for my surgery. So I did all my big surgeries here. So I was in the hospital up until almost Christmas time. And then I had to break out of the hospital. I could not stay in the hospital anymore.

And then it was a few more months before I was able to kind of stand, um, on a Walker. And then, yeah, so probably running was a while. So they, they ended up group one bought a underwater treadmill, which I thought was really cool. State of the art at the time, not so state of the art anymore. So I was able to kind of get in this treadmill, you know, flood it with water and run. Um,

But to actually be on my feet, like, non-assisted, it was probably, I think, six months or a little better. Was the prognosis from the beginning, like, hey, you're going to be... You'll be able to walk again? Or were they kind of... No, no. Everybody was...

And I don't know why some of these surgeons or these doctors would just kind of default to the worst. And at first, they're like, you're probably not going to walk normal with the way your legs are. And then as I started kind of getting better, they're like, well, you're going to always walk with a limp, but you won't run. And all these things, and not to take them and turn them into kind of a motivational thing, but it was more of like, okay, I didn't believe them. I'm like, we'll see. We'll see what we can do.

And then to find, you know, that new, uh, you know, cause basically you got to find where you can work from. Cause I didn't know where my, where my baseline was now. Once I found my baseline and started working, real quick before we move on, also suffered an injury to my junk too. And when I was in the hospital there in Iraq, I believe, but any who, there was a surgeon there who was a urologist and he put my junk back together for me. God bless that guy. Yeah.

We need to give that guy at least a Navy achievement medal. At least. If you're out there and you're listening and you did that, we want to have you on the podcast to talk about the heroic achievement, especially that type of micro surgery on Elliot's junk.

Here's another update email from Leif. And I remember this one. The subject line was, Bugger is still in there. It says, The miraculous breakthrough that we have been praying for happened tonight. Me, Dave, and Elliot's dad, Joe Miller, went to see Elliot tonight and immediately noticed that his eyes were wide open, much more so than before, and was clearly looking around. He very perceptibly looked over at each of us

As we talked to him and focused on us, I asked him to blink for me if he clearly, and he clearly responded. His dad talked to him, let him know where he was and that he had been out for a while. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Sue. No response. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Elliot. Two definite blinks.

He then indicated that he knew it was his dad, me, and Dave. "Eli has always given me a lot of shit "from my Lone Star State heritage, "and I told him that since we were in San Antonio, "when he's well enough, I would take him "to the Alamo to pay his respects.

he clearly furrowed his brow at me. First indicators that I have seen that Booger is still there. I can't describe how incredibly uplifting it was to witness this. While he still has a long road ahead and many challenges ahead for recovery, just knowing that Elliot is in there, that he hears us and that he knows who he is and who we are is a huge step in the right direction. I hope all is well with each of you and we'll keep you updated as often as I can. Word to your moms, Leif.

And then in January, you got a visit from your platoon commander who is actually the platoon commander that's in the movie that's on the mission, the guy that was severely concussed. And he wrote an update to the guys in Ramadi and some of us about both of you guys. And this is what he said. And he's still active duty. Obviously, we're not using his name. You don't use his name in the movie.

Joe is awesome physically, mentally, spiritually. He makes me feel like a little bitch. He is kicking ass and I'll put money down that he will be walking unassisted when we all return from deployment. Joe and I went and visited Elliot this weekend. We spent two days with him and left amazed. Elliot makes Joe feel like a bitch. So where does that put me?

When we all talk about Elliot, you have to understand that his improvement is all relative. That doesn't discredit his progress though. I think some of the things have gotten lost in the rumor mill and the email chain, so I want to try and paint an accurate but relative picture. To do that, I have to give a little background that I didn't quite know all the details about. When Elliot finally made it to San Antonio, he was in intensive care unit and his parents and Leif didn't know if he was going to live through the night.

He was rough, so many wounds, so much trauma to the body and brain, so many complications and treatments were slowed and put on hold until his body could handle the extra stress. He was in a coma, had brain swelling, his stomach sliced open to see if he had any internal damage, covered in burns, had pockets of swelling where the pressure had to be relieved by cutting open his skin, etc. Now let me tell you the awesome shit. Three days ago, he was moved out of the ICU, which means he's going to make it.

He's still drugged up on pain medication and gets extra when they change his bandages or have to do something that they know is going to hurt. This makes him pretty incoherent. He goes in and out of conscious and sleeps a lot. When he isn't too drugged up, he's totally different.

From the coma and from having tubes down his throat for so long all the muscles in his bodies have atrophied His speech suffers from this but if you spent even just a little time with him, you know Elliot is in there He mumbles a lot and repeats things which I think he does because he knows people can't understand him very well that being said Joe and I had some alone time with him and we had some awesome short conversations where we could totally understand him and

No shit, he listed all the guys at Camp Corregidor and his close friends at Camp Mark Lee and he said he missed them. We think he has some short-term memory issues, but I think a lot has to do with the drugs he's on. You just can't always tell if he's listening or on a morphine trip, so that's probably why he forgets things. The second we came in, he recognized us. His eyes widened like hockey pucks. He looked at his dad and then back at us in amazement. We were fired up and it took everything we had to keep the tears away.

I'm not gonna lie, he's not in the shape that I expected, I was not prepared for the scene, but when you hear the state he was in only weeks ago, he is doing awesome. Elliot gets the best care in the building just because his dad is by his side every second he can be. There's no one that I want more to be with Elliot than his dad. Elliot makes me so fucking proud because he's fighting hard. Last night around 11 p.m., he asked Joe and I to take him to the gym. You already know this, he is an absolute beast.

Joe and I did our best to represent you guys. We told him everyone loves him about a thousand times. He said he loves us too. So progress is being made. It's slow, but it's there. You say this, Elliot.

After I spent two to three months down there I'd gone up to San Francisco to the VA Poly Trauma Center at Palo Alto because of my TBI I was there for another three or four months which totally sucked ass So after about five or six months in a goddamn hospital, I finally got back to SD Balboa to be exact and Before you return to San Diego you send an email there everybody on 24 May 2007 you said hey everyone

I'm coming home in like a week and a half for good. So put the women and children to bed because it's going to be on like Donkey Kong. No, but seriously, I will be home soon enough. Can't wait to see all of you again. And you get home. You got after it. This is how it looked. This is another thing you say here. It was there that I decided to go ahead and get my leg chopped off almost nine months after my actual alive day. So I went under the knife for the second time.

for the second of the last time in july and got my leg amputated i went to rehab there at balboa which is where i met my wife as she was my physical therapist but we didn't start dating until about till about a little over a year and a half after we met because i had gone to omaha nebraska for another rehab center it was then that we started dating so like a typical frog man you go and you start going out with your freaking physical therapist

And you hook up with her and eventually get married to her. Awesome woman, kids, two kids. So that the surgeon in Balad or wherever did a good job, fully functional, uh, fire equipment. And then after, after I was done with all my rehab centers and whatnot, I finally returned to SD to begin my retirement process almost two years after I was injured. Um,

What did you do afterwards, Joe? So you get healed up. It takes, what, a year before you're functional again? It does. It takes a while. So funny, the first phase, though, which I never met the guy up until this point, he actually came to Bob Boa to the hospital, and he offered me a job. He's like, hey, because he knew the platoon was gone. He knew the team was gone, and he knew I was going to be in a pretty dark spot or a pretty dark place. And looking back at the time, I had no idea. It's pretty crazy.

that he was thinking that far ahead. And anyway, so once I got out, the day I got out of the hospital, checked into physical therapy in the trailer. It's like we think of the SEAL teams having this state of the art, which they do now. - They do now. - But then it was a trailer behind team five and checked in there, started my rehab or at least started the process. - Freaking Jason. - That's right, Jason. - The man. - He is. Yeah, that guy, incredible.

I just talked to him the other day in Coronado. I hadn't seen him and he's like, what? He didn't even know I was part of this. He's like, you got hurt there? I'm like, Jason, what do you think you were doing the whole time?

But anyway, so then I went to Bud's and I'm in Bud's. I'm at Bud's first phase in a wheelchair, you know, and it was just a liability. But I at least was there and around all those young men. And it was interesting. But yeah, so I did that. I did that. And then once I was able to to be back on my feet, I got orders to Bud's. So I did the next few years of the first phase instructor, which really helped me.

Get back on my feet because you got to, you know, you're in front of these students. You know, you can't let them, you know, push you around. You know, you can't be the weak guy around there. So you got to heal up. But funny story is the first class, I don't remember what class it was, but during Hell Week, I was out there on my crutches. And there was a Hildebrand and a Miller. And they were in the same boat group.

And they both quit during Hell Week at the same time. Freaking shame. I remember telling Elliot, like, hey, our replacements are here. And they both quit. I said, they're out of here. Can't replace you two now. Well, it was weird because, you know, it's like both of them in the same book here, too. That's wild. Yeah. But anyway, so I stayed at Bud's for a few years. And then once I was really fully healed up, then I was off to, I did my platoon chief at Team 1. Mm-hmm.

How is it going back to a team? You're now like you got this experience and you're going to be put in charge. This time kind of not getting thrown in the last minute as the LPO, but you're platoon chief, man. Yeah. Like God in a SEAL platoon. Yeah. Well, so actually that was my second LPO when I got hurt. So that was our second platoon. Oh, that's right. That's right. So I did a partial, full one. And then a full one. Yeah. But I think, you know, preparing a platoon is a little different.

now as a platoon chief i had a whole different mindset on what is important you know and what you should be preparing towards so we did a lot of um and actually um you know flynn was my platoon commander so yeah so we had a good time we had a good time but we were able to focus on what was really important um yeah for the platoon yeah and we you know the things that we did in trade at you know when i got back and just really stepping it up to try and

make sure guys were as ready as we possibly could, you know, give them everything we could. Oh yeah. We've carried our whole platoon through an island for you. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where in the nineties and the teams, like a down man, like, Oh, okay. You're like, Oh yeah, we'll find the lightest guy. I'll find the lightest guy and put him down and he can help you get up and all this stuff. And, and by the way, you know, in the nineties there was no body armor. Um, you,

It just was a totally, no helmets. Not every single guy had a radio. So you're picking up like a 200 pound guy. Okay, cool. Well, now you get to the war and now the guy's wearing body armor. He has a radio, he has a helmet, he has night vision. This guy all of a sudden weighs 250 pounds. And by the way, as it's depicted in the movie, it ain't freaking easy to carry a downed man. And

we did a lot of down man yeah well it's important you know i mean like like you said it's not so easy picking up a down man not when they're not assisting you not when they really weigh a bunch they have gear um and you don't the adrenaline doesn't kick in and you have superhuman strength yeah it just doesn't happen

You get done with that platoon. What's next after that? So did that platoon and then I went off to Kodiak for a couple of years. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, and then, so I was a senior chief out there and then, uh, Kodiak came back, did my troop chief at team three. Nice. Yeah. Did that. And then after troop chief, I ran SQT, um, for a year and then I was a mass chief there and then back over to team one, ops, my chief CMC. Nice. Yeah. And finished out your career. Finished out there. Um,

- And then you retired out of there? - I did. So I retired in September of '21.

And then I just, I've worked here at a tech company here in San Diego. - Okay. - And yeah, floating around here. - Just working at a tech company now. - Yeah. - Isn't that weird? You go to, what's your job at the tech company? - I'm a trainer. So I work a lot with special operations still. - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - Check. - So I'm not the techie kind of guy. - I was gonna say, if you're like, "Hey, go check with that guy Joe and see if he can get your computer back up." - I can't even get my computer back up. That's always the jokes. Like my little group of people are a bunch of, you know, prior seals. It's like, we don't know anything about computers.

We were a tech company. That's awesome. Um, any other, any, any closing thoughts from you, Joe? Um,

Well, I mean, just, you know, this whole process, you know, like Ray writing the story or I guess he didn't write the story, but telling the story, you know, getting it out there. It's definitely been very therapeutic, I think, for most of us, if not all of us, because as you know, these operations, we all carry a certain amount of guilt with us, a certain amount of, you know, that that baggage that, you know, we never had an opportunity to kind of decompress it and like lay it out on the table.

So I think we all carried a certain amount and through this process, we were able to kind of lay it out there and, uh, and realize like, Hey, you know, there was a, there was a lot of, you know, bad things that happened that weren't people's decision process that got us there. So we were able to kind of lay all that out and that's been very therapeutic for all of us. And then just, you know, for Elliot, for him to finally be able to really see on the screen, you know, what, what happened. Um, yeah, it's been, it's been a huge thing.

Yeah, the decision part, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit But you know, like I said you go on the roof or you go on the top floor in the building Which one of those is correct? Yeah. Well, you don't know do you leave during do you leave during the day or do you hold all out all night? You don't know you're making a decision with the information that you have at the time and you're gonna make the best decision you can and you might you might get it, right and

And you might extract you get in Bradley's and everyone's okay and that happens and it happened plenty of times and you might It might not happen that way you might walk out there hit an ID you might lose a guy in a firefight you know we all those decisions are Their decisions that are being made at the time with the most information that you have with the information that you have available at the time and

The other option is no decision, which that doesn't work. You can't just sit there. You have to make a decision of what we're going to do. I think that, and this is something that I learned when I lost guys and I lost friends. For some reason, I ended up a lot of times being the guy that was delivering the eulogy at the memorial service. And so what does that mean? That means...

12 hours after you lose one of your friends you're sitting down. I'm sitting down writing thoughts and I didn't think about this at all at the time but over time I Recognized that sitting down and writing down what my thoughts were what my feelings were what I was thinking what I'm gonna miss about him what good memories I have that seemed to be a therapeutic thing

And then, you know, writing about the stuff and talking about on the podcast with different people and being able to talk through what our experiences were, I think was very helpful to me. Being able to, for you guys to have never sat down and talked about it,

that I can't imagine, you know, you're thinking, well, what if I would have done this? It's like, all you need is someone to say, actually, Joe, you couldn't have done that because of this thing over here. You go, shit, I didn't know that. Or, well, what if I think we should have done this? Well, we couldn't have done that because of this thing over here. And people's perception is,

You know, what do we do as seals? A lot of times we just look at what, okay, this is what I did wrong. This is on me. I wrote a freaking book about it. Extreme ownership. Like this is on me. But if you take that and you go, oh, this all happened because of me. And someone goes, hey, actually, Joe, like you couldn't have done anything over there. Or yeah, that didn't happen that way. And so I think the fact that this is, that you guys were able to,

Sit down rehash it see all the different perspectives and go alright and get to a point for lack of a better word Get to a point of like get to a point of forgiveness forgive yourself Forgive your teammate forgive your you know, whoever and go yeah, this is what happened There's nothing we can do to change it we all were doing everything we could at the time that we were capable of doing and

to try and get through this situation. That's what happened. And I think that's a huge part of overcoming and what's that word? I think it's a huge part of processing these situations is the recognition that everyone was doing the best they could.

including myself, including yourself. Everyone's doing the best they could at the time and this is the shit sandwich that happened.

No, you're right. And just writing it down, you know, and having Ray write it down for us here, you know, so that, you know, this was the beginning of our journeys, you know, like this, like, you know, talk about the snapshot of the movie as a snapshot of, you know, us getting hurt. But that was kind of the, that's one battle, stepping into the next battle. And I've been, you know, writing kind of a memoir on that for my kids, because my kids, my older kids are kind of, you know, they kind of lived a lot of it there, or at least were around it.

I got two younger kids. I've got one that's two and one that's seven months. So I've been kind of jotting it all down to try to put it into perspective so they can see what that process, that next battle was really like. And so that's kind of progressing. And I think I'm going to release that out as an actual, an actual, like more like a self-help book, not a sealed book, but more of like, Hey, this is what you have to do. Um, when you kind of hit bottom, you find your bottom, whether it's through war, through trauma, uh,

you know, loss, failure. How do you find a new roadmap? How do you find that blueprint to get out of that and claw your way back to being a new normal person? You know, maybe somebody that's stronger, more wise. So yeah, kind of working on that right now. Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah. It's a, it's another thing is the expectations and going into the, like the movie,

- I mean of course people get portrayed in the military as superheroes. And like oh yeah they're gonna do everything awesome and they're gonna be awesome. It's like oh no. It's like you just got your freaking legs blown in half. Like what's gonna happen now? And the realism of the movie in that perspective is freaking legit.

How far are you? How deep are you into that book? I'm pretty deep. So it's not hard to write. I'm not a writer, but it's not hard to write when it's kind of a, it's a true story. So yeah. And you know, I'm tied alone in the platoon space because I think that's something that we, we kind of miss a lot. We think that we're,

you know, you, people can help you on these recovery paths. Nobody can help you. You're, you're, you're by yourself. People can be around you and root you on. Um, but you got to find your own, you know, you can't quit on your own. You got to find your own, your own grit to, to kind of, you know, get through those, those hard times. People can rally around you all they want, but you have to do it yourself. And I think that's a culture or that's a thing that we've gotten our culture. Now we try to, you know, we, we ask for all this help, but nobody can really help you. They can provide you things. They can provide you assistance. Um,

They can give you resources, but they can't do it for you. - Yeah, Dan Knosson. You know Dan, right? So probably five, six years ago, Leif and I were in, wherever he was, I think we were in Colorado, and we meet up with him. We go out to dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're talking, of course, it's like heavy talk about what's happening. And at the end of the night, he was kind of like, he said something along the lines of like, "Hey, when I go home,

Like when I head home right now, I still don't have legs. And, you know, we sit there and interact with him for an hour and talk two hours dinner and like, oh yeah, you're doing this, you're doing that. And hey, you're training for this. And he just was letting us know that like, this is the everyday thing that he deals with every single day. And that's just what I thought of when you said alone in the platoon space, like, look, your platoon mates, they want to help you.

But ultimately, you're going to be alone in that platoon space. I didn't go home with him that night and help him get in and out of his car. He did all that stuff himself. So that's a powerful concept that you're talking about there. Definitely. Yeah, I'm trying to get out there. I'm actually wanting to get it out by November 19th. That's kind of what I'm looking at.

Right on. Right on. Yeah. Kind of a special day for us. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. But I think it's gonna be helpful for people, you know what I mean? Cause it's not about a, it's not about a seal. It's about being human, you know, and humans have, you got to fight through things and just not quit. I want to close this out. And by the way, when you, when that comes out, we'll have you back on here. We'll go into the details of the rest of this stuff. Um, uh, but I want to close out with what Elliot, uh, closed out his notes to me.

He said, "Today I'm just waking up each and every day with the memory of my old self thinking, 'What if?'" What if I just shot that dude? Would it have made any difference? I don't know, but maybe, just maybe it would. But I'm doubtful because I know now that it was just an IED and even, and that even if I had gotten the shot, it still would have caught up to me. I mean, those IEDs don't give two shits whom they get. And I guess that it was just my time. Better me than anyone else, eh?

I'm glad that it happened to me and not anyone else just because I don't think that anyone else would have the intestinal Fortitude to be able to handle what I've gone through and I'm referring to all the surgeries and rehab and the worst part of all Was the separation anxiety that I suffered from my teammates who were still fighting the enemy and still are to this day Well, Elliot

Agree, I don't think I know anyone else I could have gone through what you went through and what you've gone through with the same Intestinal fortitude and the same incredible attitude that you have and I and I actually know this and you should know this that while you were forced off the battlefield you continued to inspire your teammates and to this day to this day

The next generation is inspired by you and the example that you have set as a true frog man. And it's shown in the movie and it's shown in what you've done since then. And it's an inspiration. Thanks to both of you guys for coming out, for joining us. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice for the nation, for the Navy, and for the teams. Thank you for your kind words.

I don't know what else to say, other than thank you for the opportunity to be able to share my story and experiences. I'm not a talker, but before we go, you wanna hear a funny story about my stay in the hospital there in San Antonio? I had recently seen a pic of me with Joe and Clint, where I am staring off into space, and when I asked my dad about the picture, he said, "Morphine, it's a hell of a drug."

I've got it in my phone if you guys want to see it. After we're done. Outstanding, man. I guess that says it, man. Yeah, awesome. It's an honor to be able to share your story. I'm glad that your story of your platoon is getting out there to the world. Thanks to Ray Ray for making that happen and all the people that put that thing together. It's really going to help people understand the nature of

of warfare. Also one more thing real quick like a bunny, but if anyone from Brown Ability is listening to this podcast, I've got just two words for you. Fuck you. And I really do mean that too, because you guys just plain old suck. I have sent you a couple emails, but since you guys probably have a lot of complaints about your product, I guess that it just fell on deaf ears.

Never miss an opportunity to talk shit. That's right. Yeah. They're the makers of the wheelchair lift that I've got for my truck. Roger that. I'm sure we can put some pressure on them and get you a kick-ass wheelchair lift for your truck. We'll do it, brother. Right on. Awesome, fellas. Thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you. Right on, brother. Thank you, guys.

And with that, Elliot and Joe have left the building. And also we have left the building. We relocated back to our normal studio closet. Sure. If you're watching this on video apparatus, you'll see that. And interestingly, you know, talking to the boys afterwards, as hard as that mission was, as hard as Bud's is, as hard as SEAL training is, all that stuff, the recovery was,

Both those guys, the recovery that they went through, you know, they're both saying the recovery is the hardest part of the story. So, you know, Joe having to get his legs repaired, Elliot having to get his leg amputated, relearn just life, reap both of them. You've got a new starting point. So for both them to go through what they went through, it's a,

Pretty awesome to be able to sit down and talk with those boys. And especially because I haven't seen him in quite a few years now. Yeah. Seen Elliot a little bit more often. I haven't seen Joe in a bit. But if they can go through that, I think that we can all step up and work a little harder. If you remember correctly, it's been, I remember after we did episode 50. That's when you first introduced the idea of Elliot coming on. Yeah.

Really? How do you remember that? Because you said you were like, hey, he has an iPad to talk and it'll like you're explaining that. Did I say that on the podcast? Well, how can you remember it? Because I remember thinking that's a very unique approach for an all audio scenario. And then we were kind of spitballing it for a little bit and you're explaining kind of what happened. I was like, man, that could come out kind of crazy.

Oh, but yeah. So yeah, I always remembered that. And it was interesting to connect all the dots with like the movie. Cause I saw the trailer for that movie when it like on, this is before you, when it first came out, you didn't talk about it at all. I just saw it. Yeah. And I was like, damn, this is like very, a very well done promo like trailer, you know, you know, that's my channel. The trailers, let's face it. Yeah. Um, and yeah, the way that came out was so good. So that was always on my radar. Like, okay, this is going to be like a different kind of,

presentation for a for a war movie you know and then kind of presentation for any kind of movie yeah and then just with the hype or whatever and then it's like okay that was about elliot the guy jocko was talking about back then so i'm like connecting the dots i'm like wow that's crazy that's cool though yeah and i had some emails going back and forth with elliot for years

of like, you know, hey dude, you need to get on here. You need to come on the podcast. And then he was fired up, you know? Like, so I'm glad we were able to finally get it done. And, you know, I think people hearing that part of the story, even especially after seeing the movie Warfare, after seeing the movie and then listening to this, or maybe they'll listen to this and then go see the movie. But either way, you get a more,

you get a bigger connection. You get more context, I should say more context to the whole thing. Um, when Joe was talking about recovering and you know, the doctors tell him like, Hey, you won't really walk that good again, or you won't walk or, or then you'll always walk with a limp or whatever. And so I was, I think I was talking to cake call about this, where it's cake nuts. Hell yeah. And he had his pack reattached cause he had, you know, tore it or whatever. And then, you know, they give you the, your percentages and all this stuff.

And we're kind of, I don't know if this is true, but I think this is true. This is something to think about. And what Joe was talking about really reminded me of this, made me think even more about it. Where when the doctors tell you, oh yeah, you have like a 25% chance or 1% chance or whatever, right? It's based on the past. It's not based on like other stuff that might land as actual probability goes. It's based on the past. So it's essentially...

let's say a hundred people got this particular ailment that, that you got out of those hundred people, 25 have gotten to a certain level of recovery. That's for the sake of this discussion to say a hundred, 25% get full recovery. Yeah. Okay. And then they'll say you have about a 25% chance of going full recovery. Right. So it's kind of like, okay, cool. That, that actually does make sense. Right. Cause the only, we'll say factor that they're kind of,

considering is your injury and out of 100 people you know we'll say roughly 25 so that's 25 chance okay so it doesn't really take into consideration your approach your mindset your your work ethic which is a big one because they told me that when i broke blew out my knee they're like oh yeah it'll be about a nine month recovery that's how it is like a nine month recovery

So I'm like, all right. I was like, what are the chances of me getting like back cleared to play? Meaning you got to pass all these physical tests and stuff before that they're like, it goes down and all this stuff to give me all this probability. So freaking three and a half months, I was cleared to play three and a half months. But it's because I approached it like a, like an actual like fitness program that I had a goal, you know? And I was like, I remember thinking again, I made up my own fitness program.

So I was like, all right, I feel like that's when I first started believing, okay, they didn't take into consideration the work ethic that people take because everyone takes different work ethic. You see what I'm saying? They have different work ethic and they approach it differently. Now, when you consider an injury as like, let's say I'm a 47-year-old average person and I get a pec tear or whatever at work.

And you're not used to being into fitness or whatever, you're going to approach it way different. So they're taking into consideration those people as well in that 25%. See what I'm saying? So it kind of in a way doesn't apply to you if you don't let it, which is kind of the point of kind of Joe's thing. Not even kind of, that's straight up the point where Joe probably was hitting on this notion without even knowing it, where it's like, I didn't believe the straight up doctor. No, I didn't believe it.

Because this doctor doesn't know me. He doesn't know my work ethic, right? That's what he was thinking. And guess what? He was right. It's absolutely right. And I think that applies to everybody because it's true. They don't know your work ethic, you know? That being said, I'm sure that the doctors are trying to set expectations properly, right? I imagine so. Because what I don't want to say is like, don't worry, you'll be back to 100% and you never get there and now you're mad.

That being said, I would hope that someone say, Hey, listen, you got a 25% chance of getting full recovery from your peck tear. If you apply discipline, work ethic, follow the protocols, you're going to increase that by a lot. And so then they at least recognize that it's kind of, that it's on them. No, that's the thing. Physical therapy is on you. You know, physical therapy is on you. You gotta, you gotta fix it and you gotta protect it. You know, you gotta be the, use your judgment, you know,

To know when, because like, I'm glad you got cleared at three and a half months, but sometimes people think they're okay and they start doing stuff when they shouldn't be doing stuff. Yeah. And something's not fully healed and they do it anyways and they can get hurt or they don't do things soon enough and now they're not pushing. Now the thing doesn't heal right. Yeah. Yeah. Fully. And, oh, I don't doubt that. And I don't doubt that there's probably even more to it than that. But I'm saying this factor when you're, when you have like a really, really strong work ethic,

And you know a lot about, you know, physical like training and stuff like that. You're lumped in with the rest of the people who got that same exact ailment and don't have your work ethic. See what I'm saying? So you're part of that 25%. But if you just isolated you and everyone like you, right, it might not be 25%. And we don't know what that is. I get it. Of course we don't. All I'm saying is probably what Joe's thinking in his brain where it's like, I don't care. You give me a 1%, guess who's the 1%? Me. See what I'm saying? And now it, it,

if you kind of do the numbers kind of in retrospect after you, he can walk again. It's kind of like, well, isn't that a hundred percent? Cause I'm the, I'm the, what do you call the sample size? Me a hundred percent. See what I'm saying? And everyone like me, 100%. So it's not, you know, it's not a cut and dry thing, but it is almost like a, in a way, like a practical and logical way to look at these quote unquote odds that people can impose on you. Yeah. I didn't listen to the odds on it.

Yeah, because it kind of like, you know, you don't have to apply anything. They don't accept it, bro. Yeah, but it not only boils down to discipline and work ethic, it also boils down to fuel. Gotta have the right fuel. So imagine you've got some kind of a physical ailment. Get the right fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Check it out. Get the Jocko protein, milk protein, ready-to-drink powders. We got new flavors of powders coming out.

We got, it just tastes delicious, by the way. Joint warfare, super krill. These are things you should take every day. Time war, these are things you should take every day. These are things that are so helpful. I got, I'm so stoked, like my kids, who are young adults, they're all, because Rana, like a few months ago, she's like, dude, oh no, this was more than a few months ago, but she's like, I see you rolling with freaking drugs.

Miha, Wes, Dean, young bucks, right? People that are Sloan, Wyatt, like people that are legit competitive grapplers. She's like, I see you doing that. And you're almost 54 years old. She's like, how is that? I said, lift weights. I said, never stop lifting weights, never stop working out and take the stuff that I take.

Take joint warfare. Take super curl. Take time war. Please. I go, if you do that, it's going to just make you so much more durable over time. Keep you right in the game. Keep you in the game, bro. You got to stay in the game. So we got all that stuff. We got hydration. We got greens. Creatine. I'm on the mega creatine right now. Yeah, with you.

You're with me. Well, you know, 10 grams a day. I just got back from the, I know we call that the land. Yeah. Yeah. The land.

And I failed to bring the creatine. So the moment I got back, I started double-dosing. Creatine sticks, by the way. We have the little creatine stick packs now. Oh, right, right. So it's so awesome. So I go on travel. And I just, oh, I'm going for four days? Cool. Eight creatine stick packs. Boom. Done. Easy. Ten grams a day. We're in the game. And then I get home because the creatine stick packs are obviously a little bit more expensive because it's packaging. But then when I get home, you get the big bucket. Yeah.

It's like, well, it's not a big, but I got, I have a small, like a small bucket of creatine morning and night, five grams, five grams. I'm even thinking I was listening to Rhonda Patrick. You know who that is? Yeah. She was talking about, she had an individual on there and she was talking about like, Oh, sleep deprivation up your creatine. I'm like, cool. I'm in the game. Oh, if you don't get that much, don't get that much sleep, more creatine. Oh, that helps. Okay. All right.

Good to know. See what I'm saying? Good to know. So now when I travel, I'm probably going to put two extra stick packs so I can do a little, maybe a 15, maybe a 20. Cause sometimes that jet lag, you stayed up too late, still got to get up early. So get yourself some creatine. So the packs of creatine is 10.

10 grams. No, it's five. Okay. So I bring, if I'm going for four days, I bring eight. I have one in the morning, one at night. And by the way, I'm just straight dry scooping this all the time. I'm not mixing it with water or nothing. Just pouring it in my mouth and then drinking some water. That's what we're doing. Hey, do it, man. I don't know if I can get there, but all good.

You can get all this stuff that you need here, jocofuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissary, Zafi's, Haniford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas has walls of Jocko Fuel. Thank you, Texas. Meijer has walls of Jocko Fuel up in the Midwest. Wegmans, pallets of Jocko Fuel. Harris Teeter, Publix. Hey, Florida. What's happening, Florida? Florida.

Publix, crushing. Thank you, Florida. If you want Jocko Fuel, go to Publix. You can get it. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and whatever gym you're at. Hopefully they have Jocko Fuel. If they don't, email jfsales at jockofuel.com. We'll hook you up. Also, America. We have people that fought for America, and yet there's people that take their money and spend it in a foreign country, a communist country.

A country, do you like communism? I don't, you know, no, not really. Okay, you don't like communism. Do you like slavery? No, I don't. Okay, do you like child abuse? No, I don't. Okay, you see what I'm saying? You see where I'm going with this? I see what you're saying. There are nations in the world that that's how they roll. Communists, slavery, child labor, child abuse, it's heinous. And yet, just giving them money. Just giving them money.

You don't need to do that anymore. Origin USA. Originusa.com. Go there. You need jeans, gi for jiu-jitsu, rash guard, hoodie, t-shirt, pants.

We got different types of pants too. By the way, we got like hey, I'm gonna go Casual day We got I'm gonna go adventuring Like I'm gonna be you know, possibly sweating possibly maybe getting wet possibly having to leap over small things. Yeah, we got you Hunt gear We got what you need boots and it's all 100% made in America with American made materiel

So don't support communism. Don't support child labor. Don't support slave labor. Support America. Support your America. OriginUSA.com. Go check it out. Also, check out a store called Jocko's Store. So it's Jocko's Store. Anyway, you want to represent discipline equals freedom? We've got your shirts there. Merch there. The idea of good. We've got those shirts as well. A few options there. We've got some socks on there. Hyped about the socks.

Socks are on there right now? And hats. They're on there right now, yeah. Okay. Send me some socks. I will. Just like two pairs. Two pair. You got it. And then, yeah, also the short locker, which is a different shirt design every month. It's a subscription scenario. People seem to like that one. A little bit different types of design, but still, design's representative of the path, big time. So check that out. You go on jockelstore.com, click on the top, it says short locker. You can kind of see some of the past designs, see what it's all about.

Anyway, check it out. If you like something, get something. Also check out primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Awesome people, awesome steaks, awesome jerky, meat sticks, beef tallow. What do you need? We got you. primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Also subscribe to the podcast. Check out jacounderground.com. It's another little podcast that we do answering your questions. Check out our YouTube channel.

jaco fuel youtube channel origin usa youtube channel check out some books final spin the way the warrior kid books we got a movie coming with that mikey and the dragons i just read through that the other day randomly it's a good one it's a good one man it's a good one get that for your kid get that for your neighbors it's gonna it's gonna help them also echelon front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership all the things we talked about today

The combat that we went through, the combat that we went through required leadership and we utilized leadership principles that were tested on the battlefield and now we teach them to people. If you need them inside your organization, go to eslomfront.com. If you want to come to one of our events, go to eslomfront.com. If you want to come to the muster, the next muster, April 29th through May 1st, there still are some seats available. You need to get there quickly. Check it out, eslomfront.com. We also have an online training academy.

Extremeownership.com, learn these leadership principles through the online academy, interact, live questions and answers, tests. It's an awesome program. And you can learn these actual principles so you can have a better life. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org.

Check that out also heroes and horses org Micah Fink helping our vets find themselves up in the wilderness and finally Jimmy May Jimmy May's got an organization beyond the Brotherhood organ actually didn't mention this today forgot about it in the moment Jimmy May was in Ramadi with tasking a bruiser he joined us probably halfway through deployment and

Then he stayed a little extra time remember how saying like we didn't want to go home Well because Jimmy hadn't been there long. He didn't have to go home. So he stayed a little bit longer and He actually got shot. I want to say a couple days before November 19th, but he he wasn't wounded too badly Thank God, but he was gonna leave so he wasn't on this operation and

When these guys got hurt, he's the one that escorted him home. So Jimmy May, he's got his organization beyondthebrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, first of all, for Elliot Miller, if you want to follow Elliot Miller, he is on Instagram. He is at dudebro78. D-U-D-E-B-R-O underscore 78. I don't have...

Don't have Joe's we figured out will will link everybody and also for the movie the warfare movie on Instagram It's at warfare movie and then for us you can check out Jocko calm and on social media I'm at Jocko willing and echo is at echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm They're trying to destroy your life Don't let it and thanks to all of our military around the globe right now and a special thanks obviously to Joe Hildebrand and Elliot Miller and

So severely wounded, but who survived thanks to their teammates from SEAL Team 5 and to the Army and the Marine Corps. You saw the Anglico in action in the movie. You saw the Army in action in the movie. That happened time and time and time again. Our service members working together as a team. That was the Ready First Brigade Combat Team. We thank you all for taking care of our teammates.

And thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for taking care of us here at home. And for everyone else out there, do you need a better example of fortitude and perseverance than Elliot Miller? Because if you need someone better than that, I don't have anything for you. If he can get up

and drive on every day and get married and have kids and carry on, if he can do that, then we have no excuses and we have no other option other than to get up every day and get after it. Thanks, Elliot. Thanks, Joe. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.