492: The Path Is Hard. Team Dealer Bravo Company 2-6 Infantry. With Ryan Jackson.
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This is Jocko podcast number 492 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Jocko. Good evening. The dealer NCOs carefully placed Lanzarin's remains into the ambulance for the final 100-yard ride to the helipad. First Sergeant Shaw commanded order arms and in unison, the salutes dropped. Wordlessly, the formation closed ranks behind the ambulance and followed it into the darkness to the edge of the helipad.

The chopping sound of two Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in the distance soon replaced the constant hum of generators powering Camp Ramadi. As the whir of the rotors grew louder, the members of the silent crowd stood a little straighter. As the helicopters flared to land, a dust cloud of sand and pebbles filled the air, prickling the faces of the assembled soldiers. The back ramps of the Sea Knight dropped.

and two crew chiefs moved swiftly across the helipad, came to attention, saluted, then led the dealer NCOs to the aircraft for Lanzarin's trip back home. Colonel McFarland and I stood next to the ambulance in silence. Within minutes, the back ramp rose. The assembled crowd snapped to attention. As the whine of the engines increased, First Sergeant Shaw's voice filled the air again. Present arms, sir.

With the blades spinning faster, the lifting helicopter's prop washed blue sand harder into the faces of the troops gathered in formation, this time holding their salutes until the birds were out of sight. Again, Shaw commanded the formation, order, arms. For Staff Sergeant Lanzarin, it was the beginning of his journey back to his grieving family. For the rest of us, it was time to continue the mission. Some soldiers left immediately, grieving on their own.

Others milled about in small groups telling stories about their departed friend. Remember that time or you remember when he took the some just stood Quietly sobbing or kicking the dirt and vowing vengeance as we walked down the hill from the helipad Colonel McFarland put his arm around me and asked me how I was doing sir. I'm fine. We're fine I replied as I slinked out of his embrace I had a job to do and for the sake of the unit I could not go wobbly now. My job was to lead the living I

"Tony, you know Dealer has taken 25% casualties," he asked as I was lighting a cigar, getting back into character. "Yes, sir. More counting the guys from Dagger. Chris Dilling's advisor team has lost almost 50%," I acknowledged. Colonel McFarland had seen a lot of injury and death in the past four months, as had we all. Up to that point, I had never thought of it as a percentage, but as individuals. Scotty Love and Crombie were dead.

Rosansky had lost his legs and sergeant McCool was shot now sergeant lands was gone my guess is that one of the staff officers at the brigade headquarters ran the numbers and the magnitude of what team dealer was accomplishing and the cost associated with their success Hit Colonel McFarland all at once. I'll get you guys some more help. He promised I was truly grateful I thanked him and he turned and walked away into the night and that right there is an excerpt from a book about

Called Ramadi Declassified and was written by Colonel Tony Dean as a book that I discussed with Colonel Dean on podcast 452 and in that section of the book and on the podcast we talked about Team dealer death dealers Bravo Company 2nd battalion 6th infantry 1st armored division who was attached to 135 armed armor under Colonel Dean and we talked about their aggressive drive to accomplish the mission

despite the sacrifice and the heavy losses. And while it was Colonel Sean McFarland with a strategic goal and leaders like Colonel Dean turning that strategy into operational objectives, it was the soldiers and Marines in the companies, platoons, squads, and fire teams that were out there making it happen and taking the fight to the enemy in companies like Dealer.

It is an honor to have one of the soldiers of Team Dealer with us here tonight to share his experiences in violent combat and his experiences after. Staff Sergeant, retired, Ryan Jackson.

Thank you. Ryan, thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for having us. I'm glad we got connected, which I guess we got connected again through the reunion that's coming up. Yeah. The Ready First Ramadi reunion, which is going to take place January of 2026. 20 years. That's crazy. The 20 year. That's crazy. The 20 year. And...

We'll get into the fact that you you ran a little 10-year reunion a few years back for dealer We'll get into some of that stuff But that's how we got reconnected and we of course talked about the fact that you've got a

lot of healing from a four-legged friend your dog caliber yep and we'll get into that as well with with canines for warriors an awesome organization that has helped out a lot of service members so we'll get into some of that but let's let's start about let's talk about just where you came from some of your background where were you born Dallas Texas and then and then where'd you grow up

We eventually moved to Snellville, Georgia. What's it? Snellville? Snellville, yeah. Snellville. Yeah. Everybody's somebody. It's the motto. What? Everybody's somebody? Yeah. I like it. It's right next to Stone Mountain, if you've ever heard of that. It's a big planet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So right on the road from that. And then eventually moved up to Hiawassee, Georgia, which is right outside of Helen. It's the bottom of the Appalachian Mountains. And what did your parents do?

My mom worked for the first company that had the private modem. She sold that. Oh, dang. My dad left when I was like three or four. My grandparents had a big role in raising me and stuff. My granddad worked for EMS, Electromagnetic Sciences. They actually invented the cell phone tower repeaters. Okay. And the tracking system for the Hellfire missile and all that stuff. So when you were growing up, were you spending a lot of time with your grandparents then? Yeah.

Because your dad was out of the picture. Yep. And then what was growing up? Did you actually live with your grandparents? No, no. I just, you know, I was with them on the weekends. And then some evenings, they were close enough that we'd go over there for dinner and stuff. And they'd pick me up from school, pick up my sister and stuff. Okay. And so that was the sibling scenario was one sister? Yeah. I got a half sister and two other half sisters, but no contact with them. Okay. And then what were you into when you were growing up? Dirt bikes, hockey, and trouble.

and girls georgia has a hockey scene roller hockey roller hockey okay you didn't specify roller yeah i've actually never roller skated in my life i started out on rollerblades and started playing hockey and and was there like club like what was happening are people still playing roller hockey i don't think so i don't know maybe i saw some comedy talk some comedian talking about rollerblades yeah and it was like

You know, once somebody said something negative about at Rollerblades and everyone got rid of them real quick. It's like everyone had them and then someone said, no, those are for girls. And then everyone threw them away real quick. We used to do like the aggressive skating, like grinding on sidewalks and stuff. And that's where you were into growing up. And then dirt bikes. Yeah. We had a lot of land up in North Georgia. So my granddad is always big on dirt bikes and motorcycle and stuff. So I grew up my first dirt bike. I think I was like six. Okay. Since then, I had them.

riding all the time i would race them motocross races all these motocross and everything huh do you ever look at one of those army units where they have like motorcycles i guess that's sf yeah that would be cool i know as fast motorcycles yeah they got all the cool toys yeah and and then what what about like uh school were you into school how were you doing in school oh

I was there. I had the potential, but I smoked a lot of weed and some drugs and I didn't really apply myself. That's the best answer I've ever heard for how was school. He's like, I was there. I mean, looking back, like I know I could have done a lot better. And I actually told my granddad, you know, I don't want to go to college right now because I don't feel like I'm mature enough to go. I'm going to get in trouble. I'm going to, you know, party and not.

show up to class. So I didn't really have anybody to push me to do that. Then I'd come home and do my homework if I wanted to or not. Did you ever think about the military at a young age or when did you start thinking about it? Oh, probably when I was like 10 or 11, I was in the civil air patrol. I don't know if you guys, but I did ROTC. Apparently they weren't drug testing in the civil air patrol. It was, uh, it was always something I looked up to, you know, it, uh,

I think inside I was looking for like the structure and like the discipline and, you know, male role models in my life that I didn't really have. So I was always bigger than military and kind of going that way. Uh, went to go join the Marines like 17, fell a drug test. They actually do tests. Oh yeah. This ain't the civil air patrol anymore. It's not. So were you still in high school when you tried to join the Marine Corps? Yeah. Um,

So I actually joined the Army on September 12, 2001, like right after 9-11. I came, I walked into art class under the influence, obviously, and bad decisions. And everything just kind of clicked because like we were sent home from school. We're out next couple of days. Are you a senior in high school? Your senior year in high school is when September 11th happened? Yeah. Okay. So you see it happening on TV? Yep. And then what? You go into school and... Yeah. And watch it play out, you know, on TV and stuff. And...

the whole realization of everything that was going on and looking back and, you know, we're going to war and all this stuff. And I just kind of was like, what am I doing? Like, I'm not going to go to college. You know, I'm not going to do anything else. I was going to go in the army. I'd already tried for the Marines before that. Cause they have a, what's called a delayed entry program where you join and you have to wait till you graduate. So September 12th, I went into the army recruiter's office and I watched about six or seven different VHS tapes. I recruited commercialists and,

I got an infantry and I was like, that one. So they're just telling you different MOSs? Yeah. And then you finally saw an infantry and you said, that's me. Yep. But you're only a junior, you're only a senior in high school and it's September. Yeah. And so now you have to wait another...

what six months or eight months yeah about six months but they had stuff where you had to show up um had to do pt on the weekends did they did they pee did they piss test you oh yeah yeah i was cleaning yeah so by that time you're like all right you realize you can't be smoking pot all the time yeah i mean i was in it too i was invested i was like this is what i wanted i actually had a special forces contract oh nice and uh it worked out that way because it as fast as we deployed what kind of music were you into when you were growing up

like sublime like techno stuff okay uh see I had a buddy his uh his mom or his stepdad he managed uh concerts and stuff in Atlanta so we got tickets to all the concerts and stuff Jack I actually uh Rob zombie at the Tabernacle Atlanta that's pretty cool that's legit that's a good story yeah

So once you enlisted in a delayed entry program, then you realize like, all right, I'm going for this. Stop smoking pot. Did you perform at school at all or not really? Because you didn't care. Yeah, I started picking up a little bit. One, like stopped smoking, cleared my head up a lot. Because as a kid that young, you know, smoking, that's not good for you. How long were you smoking pop for? Since I was like 13. Dang. Yeah. Bad influence in my life. Easy access to it and just...

Looking back, like I said, I had the potential to be good in school, but I just wasn't applying it. So it was a...

So are you training to like you're gonna go to a special forces selection at this time? Yeah, they do all kinds of PT and stuff I had some pretty good. I can't remember the recruiters, but I know it was aggressive like they come pick me up at the house It wasn't a mandatory thing, but they were like you want to do it? It's here and so they'd come pick me up on the weekends and I'd go do PT and just learn army stuff and I think it was my recruiter was invested in me which I wish I've learned his name. Mm-hmm That was good job. Yeah

So then you get done with high school, your senior year, you make it through with no drama, you graduate, and then it's off to boot camp? Yep. And so now it's what? So have we even gone into Afghanistan yet? We would have gone into Afghanistan, but Iraq's not going off yet. Right. Okay. How's boot camp? It was eye-opening. So, you know, I wasn't that athletic. Aside from hockey and the motocross, like I wasn't –

I didn't know I couldn't run until I got to basic training. I'm still not a fan to this day. So I had some issues with that. But, you know, that's what basic training is for. Break you down and build you back up. And that's exactly what happened. I caught on quick. I knew all the marching stuff already. So that was easy for me. Oh, that's from ROTC in high school. ROTC. Yeah. So I did like the drill team and all that stuff. Did you do ROTC all through high school? Yeah.

Even when you were smoking pot, you were going to ROTC? Yeah, I wouldn't smoke a pot. That's classic. It was just after school. That's classic. Yeah, it's crazy. Did you have that moment in boot camp or did you have a few of them where you're like, what the hell did I just do to my life? No, I really didn't. I feel like every day was more exciting. Like we'd do something different. I mean, there was a few times on 12 Mile Road March where I'm like, what did I get into? Yeah.

four o'clock in the morning, you're on mile 11 or stuff like that, or long runs. So did you feel like you kind of found your thing? Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Yeah. I know that's definitely what I felt when I got in the Navy, when I was like, okay, cool, I got this, this I can do. And the Navy is...

a different kind of bootcamp, especially when I went through, it was like, it was literally about folding underwear and just the lamest stuff. But, uh, yeah, got through it. Um, did you have any major challenges besides running? Oh, not really. I mean, I didn't really, I didn't miss home. I mean, I literally, I joined to get away from home to get away from my friends at the time. Cause you know, bad influences and all that stuff. I joined to keep myself out of trouble. And yeah,

So yeah, other than running, that was the hardest thing. And then I found out I was really good at ruck marching and really good at shooting and really good at a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's a thing, man. Like there's different types of muscle genetics that you can have and you can be like an endurance guy.

Or you can be a really fast sprinter. Right. And then there's dudes that are good at rock humping. Yeah. Which is a good thing to be good at when you're in the military. Yeah. I was like that too. I never won a damn four mile race in the SEAL teams and I never won a hundred yard dash either, but I'd win some rocks. Yeah. You know, I could rock and rock. Pay for now. Yeah. And then what was after that? Did you go to AIT after that? It was one station unit training. So infantry at Fort Benning, it's just all straight. I think it's 18 weeks, 18 weeks, whatever it is, but.

It's one station. So basic training and you just kind of phase into infantry training. They just incorporate it all together. So that's kind of unique. I don't think there's any other MOSs that do that. So after that, graduated basic training. December, went home on leave for 30 days. And I already had orders to Germany because that was part of my enlistment contract, go to Europe. How was it like when you went home for leave? It was very different, very different.

Were you disconnected from your friends enough to be like, yeah, this is... I started to realize a disconnection. Like, you know, I've been gone for six months and you guys haven't done anything. Like, you're not in school, you're not in school, you're not in school. Like, that could have been me. And then, like, people started looking up to me and I didn't really understand. I was like, I just did this thing, you know. But some of my friends even came to my graduation and they were kind of impressed with that. So...

It was definitely different, but it was quick too because I didn't have anything to take with me. So it was just my Army stuff and spent time with the family and did Christmas, and then I was off to Germany. And how was your experience getting to Germany now? Well, I was 18, 19. So that was a little eye-opening. It was my first major flight, and it was like nine hours. And then I got there.

and it was a processing unit and my name was like, they were going alphabetical order and then they skipped over my name and I was like, that can't be good. And then some guy leaned over at me, he's like, you're going to the rock. I was like, what? So Baumholder Germany is known as the rock. It's just a small military base on top of a hill in Germany.

So they called my name and said, "Jackson, go on the rock," and called a bomb loader. And then me and four other guys loaded up in a van, and the longest van ride in snow at nighttime, just going around mountains and shit. That made me a little eye-opener. I got to my unit and immediately got hazed by an entire platoon. I had no idea what I was doing.

Woke up the next morning. My squad leader told me I was going to be a 240 gunner. Get some. Yeah, 19. So that's pretty cool. I only shot it once, you know, at basic training on a range on a tripod. And at this point,

the U S army and the U S military is gearing up to invade Iraq. Right. Did you at 19 years old make that connection or did they let you know? Did you, when you landed on the ground where they're like, Hey, we're going to Iraq. Um, no, um, it wasn't for about another month after we're getting there. And then all of a sudden they had a random month long training mission. Uh,

In Hohensfeld, Germany, in Grafenwoehr. So in Grafenwoehr, they do the gunnery. Hohensfeld, it's like applying all the action and movement contact lanes and stuff like that. And we did that back to back. And then they're like, by the way, we get done with this, we're deploying. So, I mean, I was in Germany for three months before we deployed. Dang. Yeah. I didn't get to do anything.

And then you guys deployed to Kuwait? No, we went straight. Well, we were in Kuwait for like four days. We were part of the invading force and going into Baghdad in 2003. How much time were you sitting around and waiting for the invasion to take place? Less than a week. It was that quick. It was more like in processing. Here's your vehicles. Here's your guns. Here's your stuff. And we were gone. Dang. So you weren't part of that force that's like waiting on the border for months on end. No, no. You just showed up in the invasion. Yeah. Yeah. Dang.

What was your attitude as that invasion was kind of kicking off? Exciting, scared. We invaded Iraq in soft-skinned Humvees, in the back of five-ton trucks, and then Bradley's. America's finest, or the world's greatest fighting force, right? Cheapest bidder. Canvas doors on the Humvees. Yeah, the invasion was wild, just terrifying.

blasted away all over Baghdad and you were what a 240 gunner in what vehicle what kind of vehicle just a soft skin Humvee like we had it strapped down on sandbags like on the soft skin Humvee your 240 was strapped down in sandbags yeah like on a tripod it was I got pictures of it it's kind of sketchy looking back on it dude I gotta get some of those pictures they didn't have doors on them like it's

What about and you know, that's crazy This is the first person I've talked to where their lead-up time was like very short Most people were sitting there for months. Yeah, like we were going doing the drills with the with the gas masks and the mop level 4 gear and all that stuff We did a few of those. Yeah, we were walking around a mop gear for a while. We had the scut attacks But it was quick. And then what was as you guys are pushing up like? What are you doing? Are you just securing the road? What's happening? Wow, we're just in a convoy and

Our end goal was the cross sabers in Baghdad. Okay. Dang, that's a freaking legit. Yeah. That's a legit end state. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And then Saddam's palace, the one right there in between the Tigris and Euphrates. Lived there for a little while. I mean, it wasn't like crazy combat because...

Third idea had already come through, but just going, I mean, we're still getting, you're still engaging T-72s and still engaging, you know, Mooch fighters, not Mooch fighters at the time, it was still Iraqi Army at the time. But we're in, like literally we had dudes sitting on boxes of water facing out in the back of a five-ton truck and just like taking shots and

I don't think we stopped. I mean, we stopped for a couple days, but I know it was like 67 days before I took a shower. And you must have been the lowest ranking guy in your platoon. Yeah. Luckily, I was PFC because I already had all the ROTC and stuff. So I got a graduate-based training as a PFC. How was your knowledge of what was going on from like a strategic picture? Well, I didn't know. I didn't know anything.

I didn't know. I just did what I was told at the time I was supposed to do it. And when I was off, I was either burning shit or pulling guard somewhere else. And it was 67 days before you took a shower. Yeah. And that was at Saddam's palace. And somebody busted a water pipe on accident and it made like a shower. And everybody was like, oh. And some dudes came up and put some ponchos around it. And that was our shower. Do you remember getting shot at for the first time?

Yeah. Were you like, oh, this is it? Were you ready for it? I definitely wasn't ready for it. It was eye-opening. It was different. In infantry-based training, you do the... It's like a movement-to-contact lane where you have to crawl on Constantine Noir where you get shot at. So you hear the snap and the crack and stuff and bullets go by you and you're like, all right, that's what it is. But when they start hitting the vehicles and stuff, that's a different story. Luckily, they weren't that good a shot back then, so...

Did you guys take any casualties? No. And by the way, what unit had you, what company were you a part of at this point? Same thing, Bravo 26. You straight into Bravo 26 and you went right to war with them? Yep. Dang, awesome. But you didn't take any casualties? Nope. Smooth sailing, relatively speaking? Yep.

Did you see the Iraqi populace with the flags, American flags and stuff like that? Yeah. One thing, going back a little, well, that's the second deployment. Yeah, so as we were going up, we had all of our rucksacks and our A-bags strapped to the outside of the Bradley. So, you know, they'd be outside waving the white flags and stuff, and kids were excited. But also we had dudes that had sticks with knives taped at the end of them, and they were cutting our bags as we were driving by. So when we got there, nobody had anything. So...

not only not taking a shower while you don't like your you got the clothes you got if you're lucky you know if your rucksack didn't get cut open dang i guess nobody stopped to fix that there's nowhere else to put it so we're just kind of careless and then once you got up to did you settle in anywhere in baghdad is that what you settled into yeah we settled at the museum of presence for the president

It's right outside of Saddam's one palace next to the cross sabers. Okay. We had to clean out the museums attached to the cross sabers. So we live there. We had to clean it out first because looters that came in there and we had us customs agents in there that were like making sure we didn't steal anything or protecting stuff. And I know Saddam, he had like a prison in the bottom of it and there was some gold down there. And I know some SF dudes that blew a hole in there. I don't know what happened to that, but I think that's why customs was there. But yeah.

So we secured that because it was supposed to be like a tier one site. And then we moved to the power plant. Where was the power plant? Also in Baghdad? Yeah, like right down the road. And you would just set up shop there? Yeah. And then almost like a little mini combat outpost? Yeah, pretty much like one of the first ones, I guess. We just pull guard on towers and do patrols out of the base. And then how long was this whole deployment? It ended up being 15 months. So it was supposed to be 12, but we got extended three days before we were supposed to go home.

So it took you a couple of weeks to push up into Baghdad and then you settled in and then you stayed there for 15 months. Oh, we stayed in Baghdad for eight or nine months. And then we did a, we taught our solder, his body army, which is like, all right. So the way that deployment worked was the very first couple of months was like intense. And then it was nothing. This is before the insurgency started. Um, so it was kind of, it was nothing like, you know, the Iraqis were super friendly to us. They loved us being there. We were doing good stuff.

And then all of a sudden the insurgency just kicked off. And it's like they flipped a switch. Like turn the light on on the cockroach and just run away. And then they started doing all kinds of stuff. I remember like the first IED we found was literally like a bomb next to a side of a highway and a dude like sitting behind a berm. Yeah, it almost looks like a wild wolf. Like the acne thing. Yeah, that's exactly what we say. That's what I gave to my mom when you said that. What month do you remember the insurgency starting to get gnarly? So that deployment was

We were supposed to come home in September, I think, March to March. I'd say about eight or nine months through. I can't remember the months. And it was raw at that point. Like, I don't think they knew what they were doing either. They were just like, I don't want you on here anymore. Which we can't blame them. Yeah. Yeah, this is when I look back at this whole thing. So I was in, I got to Iraq in like the fall of 03 and we were doing a bunch of hits and taking down targets and blah, blah, blah. But

with the whole time we were targeting Mukhtar al-Sadr and you know like different groups were gonna go hit him but no one could ever get permission because no one knew what was gonna happen everyone's kind of afraid if we hit Mukhtar al-Sadr like does the whole country turn into a disaster

And so someone had got the bright idea to send us to go and hit Mukhtar al-Sadr's, like one of his top lieutenants was this guy named Yacoubi. And so we went and captured Yacoubi and that was in April of 2004. And like the next day it was total chaos in Iraq. And it was like, uh,

There was like, I woke up in the morning and there was, I looked out because I was right by Baghdad International Airport. And like, there was just smoke coming from vehicles all over the highway. There was people were getting mortared. It was just really bad. And so that was sort of,

a turning point looking back in when there was a real escalation of violence. And I don't think anybody predicted that. I don't think, 'cause I think we would have been smart, like we as coalition forces would have been like, well, let's continue to negotiate, let's figure something out. But they wanted to see what would happen. And that actually might've been an even worse move, right? Because now you still had Sauter leading his people

and yet you really pissed him off. It was almost like the joke about like flicking a bear, like flicking a bear in the balls, right? You might just kill the thing, but they didn't do that. And so things started getting much, much worse. And then for me,

My platoon left. Like, you know, another couple weeks later, we were out of there. And then we get back to America and we're watching just downward spiral. Right. I think the turning point I remember the most is when we killed Saddam's sons. Because we were there. We were outside security and stuff. And I remember once...

you know, they put some javelins in there and all kinds of stuff and, you know, the palace and stuff. And I remember that night or the next night, um, it was just AK fire. Every like tracers going up in the sky, just going everywhere. And we were like, what the hell is going on? And that from, I think from then on, it kind of started getting a little wild. Yeah. Some of the other things was the, uh,

Abu Ghraib prison thing. That was bad too because now you had Al Jazeera was putting that stuff. Americans are torturing Iraqis and that was not helpful at all either. So there's a bunch of things that led to it. Things are getting worse and worse. So what was your op tempo? And what were you guys doing? Like what was your mission? Securing the power plant and the palace. So it was a pretty mundane thing. I think it was like eight on,

10 off and some admin stuff. That's back when we were still literally burning our shit. Like, you know, you'd have a 50 gallon drums, you'd put some diesel fuel, JP eight in there and burn it. And as a private, you're starting with a stick.

We had one private that he decided he didn't want to do that anymore. So he put too much in there and ended up burning down our shitters. So we were sitting in boxes for a while. Then they finally got us porta potties. And that's where you were for how many months were you sitting on the power plant? So our unit, we had three different tier one sites. So they would rotate us through. So there was the power plant. There was like a gypsy camp where...

I forget. I think they were Kurds and they were just kind of like put there. So we had to like watch over them. I don't know the point behind that mission. Like I said, I was just a private. So, um, and then there was one other, I think it was something at biop or something like that. So we'd go up there and they would rotate us like every month or so go through it. It is pulling guard security, dude, just doing patrols.

It got kind of mundane. But patrols inside the wire? No, outside. Like through like downtown, back down and stuff. Oh, okay. So you were pushing out patrols. Yeah. How was the enemy activity at that time during that deployment? It wasn't really much of it. I mean, it wasn't... It didn't really kick off until...

I'd say like the last four months of our deployment. So one big thing is we were three to four days before deploying, like we were turning in ammo. Like we were getting our rallies ready to send back to Germany. And so we,

Al Sauter did his thing. There was a British CAC building or something that got overran. Oh yeah. Down in Najaf. Yeah. So I went to QRF that thing. All right. So, and I didn't get there in time. So when that popped off, we hit, we went to Machmedia, Altawatha, and then Najaf in four days and we ended up staying in Najaf and that was shitty. I mean, that was bad. We got mortared every single day.

to the point where we're putting sandbags on the roof. I remember getting up to go take a shower one time because they brought the trailers in and we came back in a mortar head laid on top of the building and my cot had shrapnel in it. I was like, well, that could have sucked. And then we had one dude that was in the shower and a mortar hit and you could see like the silhouette of his body from like where it went through. He ended up going home, but that was like, you can't do anything about that. You know, you get your outside, you

whether you're cleaning your gun or whatever you just get mortared like there's not many places to run to so that was a little shitty but and how long did you stay down in the jaw for uh we were there for three months and what were you doing down there that was a little intense um i remember

So the day we found out that we were getting extended, so when I came home mid-tour leave, I proposed to my now ex-wife. So we were supposed to go back. She was planning a wedding. It was supposed to be in June, I think. The Army had other ideas. So after we took over that British CPA building, they left behind all kinds of stuff, and they left behind a sat phone. And I remember sitting on top of a building, the CPA building, I think,

And call my ex and be like, we're not going home. And before I could get that off, a Kiowa came down straight from the middle. Because Solder's army started marching through the street. And a Kiowa just came down. And that was the last time I talked to her for about a month and a half. That's when it started getting wild. They had a lot more IEDs and stuff. And you guys were, were you guys at the CPA? Yeah. You guys went there to reinforce that thing? Yeah. Awesome.

And you're getting attacked, but you're staying in a static position, or are you still pushing out patrols? We're still pushing out patrols, and both. You'd be on a guard tower, and then you'd get down and go do a patrol or something like that. And the attacks, there was no strategy behind it. They'd just pop out from on a wall and take a pop shot. It's like we were fighting ghosts. You'd never get to really see them, and rarely. We would have actual gunfights, you know?

And so you got extended three months or four months, something like that? Yeah. And when did you end up going back to Germany? July. July of 2004. Yeah. Got it. And how was the, what do they call it? They got a word for it, reintegration. How was the reintegration to the world? Quick, fast, in a hurry. You know, I came home.

that's back I mean I won my DCU's home um one we still didn't have like the modern amenities so we would wash our our uniforms in JP8 and like water so I remember like walking to the airport one I got all the sand innovations I think dudes were buying me drinks like steak dinners waiting at the airport got all the attention stuff when I came home it was literally a hero's welcome I mean and this was coming home to Germany uh no so come home to Germany yeah sorry a little too far ahead

coming home to Germany was, it was fine. Like I was, what were you talking about before going home on your leave? Yeah. Leave after that. So coming back to Germany, it was quick. Um, I was single. I lived in the barracks, so we just kind of got pushed away. You know, the married dudes had their whole thing. I just remember like we walked into the gym and they said, welcome home. We did a whole speech and stuff. Then there's a reintegration process where you have to go through and talk to doctors and stuff for like three days.

Everybody was just whole place smelled like a brewing factory and just reeked of alcohol. Everybody was drunk. I think everybody just wanted to check the boxes and get out of there. Um, we did have to, everybody had a peanut jug for like a gallon jug cause we were shooting DU rounds. You'd put uranium rounds. So there was that. And then we were at the, to wait the power plant where there was yellow cake, enriched uranium. So I tested for that. I think that's why my kids are so smart to this day. But yeah,

Yeah. You know, the whole idea of like PTSD and stuff like that didn't really come up. Nobody wanted to admit that at the time. We had a bunch of replacements that were there. So they were just kind of blown away and

Looking up to us and so nobody wanted to like admit that like it kind of might have sucked a little bit Mm-hmm gonna get later on but and then you went home to America on leave. Yeah, and that's when you were getting like a oh, yeah a hero Yeah, 30 days leave got married. So that was August 2004 got married

went and got away for the time an id card and you know went on a little small vacation able to do christmas with the family again got to see everybody uh went back to germany and then had her sit over and that was a turning point for me um i was a just got promoted to sergeant or i was about to be at the time so i was married so out of the barracks you got housing now um

That was a shocker too, because I was like, oh, I don't have a car. I don't have any furniture. So luckily the Army has a program where they have low-knee furniture, just household Army furniture. Did you get a car? Yeah. Yeah, I eventually got a... Did you get a cool German car for cheap? It wasn't cool. It was an 85-volt sparking Golf. Okay. It was a manual, and it had like rough spots in the wall where you could see the ground. Okay. It was enough to get around base. So it was cold, not cool. Yeah.

13:30 CH: One of the things, I guess the way the German environmental stuff is, if it's that bad and you wanna junk it, you have to pay to junk it. So you just sell it from soldier to soldier. So I paid 500 bucks for it. 13:45 SJ: Uh-huh. It was... It got me around. 13:47 CH: No, 'cause I was in Germany for a while and guys would buy nice cars. They'd take out a loan and buy a BMW or something, 'cause it's way cheaper than buying a BMW or a Mercedes in America. 13:58 SJ: Yeah, but you can't ship it back.

can you not no they don't have american specs some of the windshield and seat bells or something i don't know but i didn't eventually work my way up i got a you know after i was there for another year or so i got a bmw and yeah see it's moved up in the world did it have a floorboards in it yes and what's your job when you come back now you're you're promoted you're a sergeant i was a team leader um so um

So in between that, I was a Bradley driver for a little bit too because it's just I wanted to get off the ground. I wanted to learn the Bradley. So I drove that for a while. And then I got back on the ground. I was a team leader. I got promoted. And then I wanted to be a gunner on a Bradley. So I asked my opportunity sergeant if I could be a gunner. He was like, sure. And I did that. So then I went from being on the ground to being in a mountain section. And I got really good at shooting the Bradley. Then I got promoted to be Captain Lansan's gunner. So I was his gunner.

which was pretty cool. That was the lowest ranking. I was company commander's gunner. I'm still at E5. That's legit. But that was cool. And then you guys are now preparing for another deployment at this point. Yeah, that was a quick turnaround. So we had, we got back, we got our replacements in. A lot of the old guys left. And then we already knew as soon as we got back, like we're deploying again in a year. And we're,

Our mindset started changing a lot more, you know, because now I was married and now it's not just me anymore. And also we just got back and we're going back again. And we have new guys to train up. So we're going to train them up, get them ready. Yeah. By the way, you're coming back from a 15 month. See, I don't know if you know this, but the Marine Corps and the Navy, they do six months deployments for the most part. Like maybe it's seven, maybe it's eight, but it's like,

They're just on that cycle. And the reason they're on that cycle, it's all based on ships. Like ships go out for six months, generally speaking. They used to do nine back in the day, but now they figured out that like six months is... So the Navy and the Marine Corps, it's like six months. I'd always feel like, damn, dude, these guys are doing 14, 15 month deployments. Get some. And then you come home and you have a one year turnaround. Right. And you know you're going back for... Yeah. Part of that one year was we did...

two Grafenwoehr rotations, which is the gunnery. And then we did a Grafenwoehr and Holsfeld back-to-back rotation. So, you know, the movement to contact lanes and all that stuff. We were, you know, I joke about it all the time. I was in Germany for five years. I went to one Oktoberfest. So I hardly ever got to travel anywhere. Hardly got to do stuff. Yeah.

It was a quick turnaround. Yeah, that is an interesting thing too because the Navy and the Marine Corps deploy regardless of what's going on in the world, whereas the Army doesn't really do that. The Army, you might be at home for a long time if there's no war happening. Of course, we weren't predicting two decades of war after September 11th.

So you just spend all the time on the road. All the time is training. You'd only get one Oktoberfest. You might as well not even gone to Germany. I mean, there was still block leave at times and four-day weekends. And we could get on a train and go to Paris, go all over. We went to a lot of places. It just wasn't non-wartime German living. And you got kids coming along the way at this point? No kids yet.

So now you're preparing for this deployment. How's that workup? Now that you've kind of been in combat before, you've been to Iraq before, how's that workup feel? A lot more, I wouldn't say stress, but a lot more awareness of what I'm doing. Like now I got my own soldiers I'm responsible for and we're going to war. So like the whole, you know, now I have to be responsible for them, bring them back.

So I put a lot of focus on training, a lot of focus on PT, as much as I didn't like to, still did it. So getting them ready to go was, you know, there was a lot to that. You like that leadership position? Yeah, very much, yeah. Pre-deployment leave? Do you guys get pre-deployment leave? No.

No pre-deployment leave? No. Just pack up and go? Yeah, pretty much. I think it was like a four-day weekend or something worked in there. And then where did you... You guys didn't deploy. You guys didn't... Did you deploy to Kuwait this time? Yeah. So we had to go to Kuwait and we were the ready reserve force. This was after Fallujah. So we got... Yeah. So they were expecting something like that again to happen. So we were in Kuwait waiting, which I can tell you was hell on earth, like literally. I don't...

People were ready to go to war, which is something I was thinking about earlier. You know, I had young soldiers and as much as we've been training, you know, doing CQB and houses with live rounds and stuff like they were good and they were excited. They just they wanted war. And I remember thinking, like, be careful what you wish for. This is before we left. But being in Kuwait, everything's brown. There's nothing to do. It's hot as shit. You're walking everywhere in the sand, wearing all your gear. And it's just.

I mean, Captain Lance Allen had us training every day. I mean, all the training. I think Colonel Dean mentioned in your other podcast, we were ready.

But there was nothing to do. And then, you know, we're getting paid. Part of me was like, you know, we're getting paid. We're not getting shot at. So just live life, you know, just do your job, whatever. And the soldiers just wanting to go. And I remember being like, you don't really know yet. But I didn't, you know, I was compared off the first deployment. And you guys are training hard. Do you guys get anybody injured while you're training? Anything like that?

Oh, not from training. We had a, it got to be so crazy that we had one soldier kill himself in the portal body. We had a lot of fights, like a lot of people get in trouble, you know, mailing alcohol from home, doing stupid stuff. I can't remember any significant. We had a, I think it was Alpha 26 where they're at a Bradley range and

And somebody was like cycling up the ghost round on the Bradley, the 25 millimeter, the way you do it, you have to like feed it into the chute and stuff and cycle it. And he accidentally fired off a 25 millimeter round and a Sabre pedal hit a dude in the neck. And, but that was, that was, you know, just leading up to it. At what point do you find out that you guys are going to Ramadi? Um, it's about five months in. It just, it happened quick. Like I know,

Colonel Dean, which I wasn't part of that. I didn't know anything. We just hear rumors on the streets and stuff. But I know Captain Lansan went up to Baghdad to like recon some stuff. And they came back and they said, we're going to Ramadi. And, you know, we're cut off from all the news. We don't know what's going on. So we just hear, you know, what everybody else is talking about. And I was part of the ADVON force. So I was with Captain Lansan's gunner. So I went up with him like two weeks before the rest of the company got there.

which was crazy. What was your assessment when you got on the ground there? Um, quick, fast and hard. Um, I mean, ECP three happened like the second day we were there and that we were out on a right seat ride with them and we just see, you know, the giant explosion like right in front of us and just tear off over there. And we pull up the ECP three and set up a court on, I'm a two 40 guard. Now we got armored Humvees. Thankfully. Um, I just remember sitting there and as soon as we pull up, Captain Lance, I was trying to get out and there's,

Three dudes running across the field, like pulling a cart or something. And I yelled at him to get back in the truck and I just cut them down with a 240. And I ended up getting an award for that. And I was kind of thinking about that. I was telling my wife the other day, you know, a kid or an award for like cutting down three dudes with a machine gun. Like, cool, you know, awesome engagement. But looking back, like...

Yeah, that ECP-3, so this attack happened, and this would happen when Americans would try and turn over control points to Iraqi forces, and when the insurgents would see that, they would know that that was going to be an easier target for them. Yeah. And so they would...

hit those ECPs really hard. Yeah. Then that's what happened at ECP3 and I think that's the one where the oncoming mid-team commander and the off-going mid-team commander were both killed if I remember correctly. Oh,

I don't think anybody was killed in ACP 3. That's when Sergeant Reinhart got hit and then Garza. That's when Colonel Dean was talking about like living in shit and showing up. Yeah, there was one. I guess I must be confused because there was one and it was during a turnover op because the incoming mid-team commander and the outgoing mid-team commander, one of them was wounded, one of them was killed or both of them were killed, but just it was such a terrible welcome aboard to the guys. Now you guys are coming on board. And it's like, oh man.

welcome welcome to Ramada yeah and uh like you were saying when we're changing out like the enemy they know with different vehicles different markings so that you know that they see that and they're they're going to exploit the weakness um what they didn't know is we had Bradley's on the way like they weren't there yet but so we showed up the Bradley that changed a little bit yeah there's uh

A beautiful thing about Abrams and Brad's for sure. So how long is your turnover with these guys? I think it was about a week. And you jumped in the left seat immediately and were like, we're going out. Yep. Yeah, there's another part in Ramadi Declassified where Colonel Dean was talking about the fact that, okay, we got to get guys out into the AO. Even if the guys are going to be on QRF, we got to get them out in the AO. They got to start doing patrols.

And he sent out however many patrols it was. And every single one of them got hit. Everyone. Yeah. Yep. Um, see Brett Tribble, um, got killed within the first. So once the rest of our company got there about two weeks after that, uh, I think it was like the second mission we had, um, Brett Tribble got killed. And my buddy, Tom Davis, um, lost his leg. Um, and then not even two days later, Lieutenant Love got killed and,

pfc crombie which crombie was a brand new medic i remember the dude like slept in a cot across from me and i maybe saw his face i couldn't remember his face today but like that young just like two days like two days like second patrol just annihilated i mean

The IEDs that they were hitting us with were crazy. Yeah, I got this book right here. It's actually his mom put it together. It's called Love, Nick, but it's a bunch of letters that he had written at home. And, well, as you just pointed out, what's really heartbreaking about the book is there's, I think, one letter from Ramadi because the rest of it is letters where he's writing from Kuwait, from other areas, and from just being in the Army. Yeah.

there's one letter. And actually, there's a...

It's actually not even a letter, it's a cell phone message that his mom got. She said, "Hey mom, this is Nick. "I'm in Iraq right now and it's pretty cool here. "I went on patrol the other day. "I got to save someone's life. "They got shot, he had gotten shot. "He was an Iraqi guy. "He got shot in the upper left abdomen. "We had to fix him up while we were on patrol. "It was pretty exciting. "I got to save someone's life "with all my cool medical knowledge. "That guy ended up living, "but he had to get his spleen removed. "It was exciting, as I mentioned."

As a medic, I don't really have to do anything dangerous, I guess. The only dangerous thing I have to do so far is like I raided a store. We had to search it out real quickly for a bomb or anything suspicious. We pull over cars to look for an IED or something. You know, it's just exciting. Being over here is like being BPS, Border Patrol, or a state trooper. We kind of drive around all day trying to arrest bad guys. And that's what it's about here. We're doing during these days. It's pretty safe.

Everyone's trying to make their parents think yeah It's hot dusty and sandy and yeah, that's about it I'll try and call you some other time But I don't know how often I'll get how often that's going to be because it's hard to get like on a phone or a computer out here It takes a little time and patience. So yeah, I'll try and call you to get in a bit. All right by the telephone message immediately after oh, yeah I forgot to tell you I love you mom. Yeah Yeah, I know the book was out there. Yeah, I

Like you were saying, though, it's a young, young soldier that just showed up there. And then this other guy, Lieutenant Scott Love, who is... It's interesting because when you hear first lieutenant, you think of a young guy that's kind of inexperienced. But he was like a 30-plus-year-old guy. Everybody loved the guy. And that's what you guys roll into. Yeah. Yeah, I was Lieutenant Love's gunner for a little bit. And he was a super chill dude. I mean, he was professional, but he was super chill. And he...

Colonel Dean said he was invested in the mission. He was invested in the mission. Like he spoke Arabic. He was about what we were doing. Like he was about the hearts and minds. He was still tactical leader and stuff, but he was invested in, you know, fixing Iraq and restoring peace or whatever. And his death was bad. I mean, we were looking for stuff. Stuff got blown a block away. And that was not even two weeks in. That was...

A little eye-opening for everybody. How was it getting your gear back on and going back out? At the time, it was kind of crazy. I mean, we'd go on patrols and somebody would get killed. And as a squad leader, you've got to come back and, like, pack that kid's stuff up. And, like, you were just playing spades with him last night. And now you're packing his stuff up and sending it home. And that's –

I think that's when it hit me. I was like, damn, you know, one of my good friend Tom just got blown up and then we already lost two soldiers and then that's when I wouldn't say the lights went off but are on but you know that's when I knew this was serious because the unit before 228 I think the unit before us they took casualties but I don't think they told us how many or it didn't really disseminate all the way down to our level. So it was eye-opening for everybody but

we'd go on it we go right back out like when you started the the podcast that memorial ceremony i remember they called us in from sector just so we could go to memorial service and we went right back out like we parked our humvees took our gear off carry start lands with all the squad leaders so i had to carry them on the plane or the bird and smoked a cigarette bullshitted for a little bit and we were gone we went right back out until seven in the morning that's another weird thing that i never like when i was watching war movies and stuff as a kid

It's like your base was way over here and then you'd go on helicopters to some other place where you'd go fight and then you'd get done fighting, you'd go back to... But it's like, no, you guys were out in Tamim. You go outside the gate, take a right, you're there. It's like going to the grocery store. It's not like, okay...

hey, I'm going to go to this memorial service and then I'm going to go get in a vehicle and we're going to drive and we're going to fly somewhere and it's going to take an hour or two hours or three hours. It's like, no, when I get in my vehicle and go out the front gate 30 seconds later, you're into me. Yeah, I think they got us a predator drone to like overwatch our area while we came in and we were probably back on base for like an hour. If that, you know, between getting on, getting back off and right back out. You talk about vengeance and stuff like that. It was on everybody's mind. Yeah.

And to me was like a it's like a what is a grid layout, you know, so the roads are kind of like Western, you know, you're just like driving down the road. Look left. Look right. It's very it seems like the layout is very Western and there's normal looking buildings, you know, like, okay, this seems this seems relatively normal, but it's anything but normal. Yeah.

And then what was your op tempo like? How often were you going out? How often did you come back? Every day. Every day you're going out? Every day. It was eight-hour patrols. I started out, you know, first start in Charlotte, rotate us. So I was on daytime patrols, which morning's not bad. Afternoon patrols suck because it's super hot and everybody's tired. But we would go out and...

Eight-hour patrols. You're probably going to get in contact of some kind. Were you in a Brad? No, I was in Humvee. And then we were walking. We just stopped taking Humvees. One, we kept getting blown up. I mean, we went through 16 Humvees in like less than two months. Then we started walking.

because safer that way. I think everybody felt that way. I know I hated being in Hummers and I hated being in Bradleys. For me, being in a Bradley because I'm not an armor guy, I was in the SEAL team, so being in a vehicle is already a stretch, but putting me in the back of a Bradley where it's like I have no idea where we are, it's harder than hell, and you're just waiting to get blowed up is what it felt like.

The first time I got blown up in Bradley, just dust everywhere, loud as you can't hear anything. Just nobody could understand what's going on. You just got rocked. How early was that for you in deployment? Like a week. What were you doing in the Brad? They would drive us out to the end of sector and we'd just walk. Like we'd walk. You said the grid system. We'd just walk down the streets. And we were slowly pushing our way into the city and making our presence known. But what we didn't know is the moves. They were coming behind us and intimidating the local population and everything.

watching us and filming us. Like I know we sent y'all some Intel stuff, like video cameras we captured and stuff. And they were just watching us. They were planning and just waiting. But yeah, as far as up-tempo, like we'd go on a patrol. So wait a second. So you got blown up. That was your first time getting blown up in a Brad? Yeah. Anyone get wounded? No.

Yeah. Also that's early on the Brad's because they got bigger and bigger IEDs as time went on. Yeah. So they probably had a, they probably had a bar, an IED meant for a Humvee, but they hit a Brad. Yeah. Didn't get anyone. And it was just, I remember Brad just like it hit us and just blew right through. So I think we stopped and called EOD so they could do a post-blast analysis or something. I don't know if we did that. I think we were just, everybody, the adrenaline was kicking so much, but yeah,

we go patrol and come back and you think you got eight hours to you know recoup but when we come off patrol we're immediately on qrf for another eight hours and then you get your eight hours to prep for the next patrol so we would be off sometimes you get an hour sometimes you get two hours but just be laying there on your on your cot whatever and hear an explosion or you don't have to say anything just get your gear on we're going back out and we had our own qrf we had to respond to our own guys so yeah before we hit record today i was

Well, I guess I was essentially thanking you guys because we didn't have our own QRF. We didn't have enough people to QRF ourselves. So our QRF was always an Army or Marine Corps unit. It was always you guys coming to help us when we got into trouble. And so when you hear those explosions or you hear those big gunfights happen or you hear casualties happening, you guys would know it would be you coming to get us. Yeah. I know you remember Charlie Med, you know.

They would put out announcements over the intercom, you know, we need a positive blood. And everybody, whatever it was, it didn't matter who it was. I donated blood to, you know, an Iraqi fighter. I didn't know it at the time, but you just go to give blood. And it was blood-to-blood transfusion. And it just happened every day. You just come across the loudspeakers. Yeah, they'd have the MASH casualty calls for blood. Yeah, we'd send guys up too. Yeah.

So your op tempo is eight hours on, eight hours QRF, eight hours prep for the next mission. Yeah. Somewhere. At no time did I say sleep. No. At no time did I say PT. At no time did I say relax and call home. No. No, there was no. We didn't do PT. I mean, PT was every day. But, you know, in the winter months, I think it would slow down a little bit, but not really much. Yeah.

after we go out on a QRF mission, you have a little couple hours of downtime, but you're just prepping for the next patrol. Um, with the child, if you're lucky. Luckily we had good, uh, cooks. They were, um, always there for us. I didn't have one situation where I just got off of a patrol and we are nasty. I've been covered in dirt, blood and sweat. And I had a major that was standing at the door. So we couldn't come in like that. And I was like, bro, we're going back out in like 30 minutes. Like you're going to let my guys eat. I got into it with a major. Um, I know I,

I think I called Captain Lance Song or Captain Graham at the time. And I was like, what's going on? He was like, I got it. Took care of that. Yeah, they were generally pretty friendly to the guys that were out and just getting after it. That's kind of the vibe that I got because, you know, I had one of my CB guys who –

We had a, we got mortared and we got like a big water tank blown up and he went out and like within 24 hours, actually it was probably within 12 hours. He had us a new water tank. You know, it got like, I don't know, it was probably like a thousand gallon water tank. He got it back and got a new one and blah, blah, blah. And I was like,

I was like, hey, chief, really appreciate you getting that thing done. He goes, hey, sir, as long as I just don't want no more boom boom in the camp. That's what he told me. I said, cool. I didn't even know what a CB was until we were there. And they helped us out a lot. I mean, they would come in and build bunks for us and stuff. And we started sleeping on cots. And all of a sudden, they were building us like bunk beds and stuff, hooking up AC units and stuff.

definitely shout out to those guys so as this is all going on do you have how much how much of your thought process is about like hey what progress are we making what's the overall plan here were you getting briefed on that stuff were you more thinking day to day this is what we're doing it was day to day i mean we had target practice every night at that point um i didn't think we were making any progress it didn't seem like we were definitely didn't seem like we were um if anything the enemy was getting smarter uh

genius tactics. I got to give them credit for that. What were some of the things that impressed you? Um, so their pressure plate, the way they detonated the pressure plates, um, you know, there'll be a house in the courtyard and there'd be a street, a tiny little canal road, and there'd be a garden on the other side.

We found one where they had a garden hose. They had somehow got the positive and negative wire through the hose, and we drove over it, and that triggered the IED. Or where they would take the side of the sidewalk out, and they would encase a 155 around it like styrofoam and paint it to look like the sidewalk and put it back. Or just simple things like they'd send just cardboard just laying in the street, positive and negative wire. We just run over that, debt date it. And then when we got the red and blue system, the jamming systems,

they figured out that we could because they were using cell phones or the two-way radios to detonate them um they figured out we were jamming them so they would have kids out in the street remote control cars and they would try to see which vehicle had the jammers on it and i mean

Got to give them credit for that. They're smart. Yeah, one of the things that impressed me was they would burn a tire in the street. That would melt the tar. And so one person would burn a tire. And then someone else would go and dig the tar out. And then someone else would go dig a hole. And then someone else would put a bomb in the hole. And then someone else would rig it back up. And then someone else would fill the hole back in. And then someone else would put the tar back. And then once they put the tar back on, this is what impressed me was it was like...

They would then put dust on it and sweep it and then unsweep it. And so it just, you wouldn't be able to see it. It just looked like the freaking road. Yeah. Because it's not like the roads are there for beautiful pavement anyways. But it would just, the effort that they would go through over time to make this happen and do it in a clandestine way where it's like, oh, they are...

this is their neighborhood. Yeah. There's trash and debris everywhere. I remember one crazy thing. We had the finance here, the IED cell. Like, I don't know where we got the intel from. We knew it was him. We arrested this dude three times.

And every time he gets out, we didn't have anything to keep him locked up for a while. And one of our lieutenants got the idea, you know, we're going to use the propaganda against them. So we snatched them up and we would take them to a corner to meet him and get out, take pictures of them, you know, with the cell phone, you know, with Americans and take them to the other corner and do that, take pictures. The next day we found him, hands and feet tied up behind his back, forehead split open, and they had sewn a 155 round in his back.

We were like, yeah, that's him. But also, there's wires coming out of his back. Savages. Absolute savages.

As time is going on day to day, what's your mentality? You know, at first you're, you know, you're in Kuwait, you're fired up, like, we're going to make this happen. We want to go to war. You get there, you guys are taking casualties out of the gate. You're losing guys out of the gate. Does it become at some point, I always feel like things just become kind of a blur of just like, it was interesting when I had, I know you said you mentioned you've listened to the podcast with General McFarland.

It wasn't until I did that podcast that I realized the timeline. In my mind, it was all these kind of separate events happening.

That had happened It seemed in my mind weeks if not months apart, but they were literally two days apart But every operation was so massive and so much moving parts that it seemed like this one singular event and then another singular event But in reality, it's like no we were just oh that was three days later. That was two days later Did you get into like a blur mindset? What was going on in your head? Absolutely. Um

So, you know, like they all ran together. You know, we'd have some high profile missions, but we'd just get, you know, one night, like Tuesday night, we'd go get this guy. And those were cool. But then there was always something that popped off with those things that would, you know, that's how you remember it. Like so-and-so got shot. So-and-so got blown up. That's how you remember it. And it wasn't until, let's see, about three or four years ago, I was listening to Joe Rogan's podcast. He talked about sensor deprivation tanks. And there was one opened up in Columbus, Georgia, and I went and did that.

And it was like my second or third time. And I just remember there laying there and like stuff just pops up, like missions that pop up or like certain memories that I didn't, they're just buried in the back of my head. And I think that's where a lot of PTSD stems from that people don't realize. You can't, you can't talk about stuff if, if it all blurs together. You know, I used to joke that everything we did was legit and legal, but we were always under investigation and they sent in a, you know, army CID or whatever, come down and investigate us. I'd be like,

which mission, you know, like what, which one are you talking about? And it was hard, you know, to remember, like we did this last night, we did this night before, you know, so. Yeah, that there's no doubt of the, the amount of scrutiny we were all under in terms of like rules of engagement and you

you know, collateral damage. Like there was investigations. We, I mean, my guys had to, had to sign a sworn shooter statement after every operation, every, they killed. I don't know if you guys had to do that. And at the time, you know, my guys were like, well, what's this for? And I said, Hey, listen, in the future, someone's going to dig into this and be like, well, why'd you kill this guy? Here's why we killed this guy. Here's what we're seeing. Here's why the shot was taken. And so it was a good move. Yeah. But at the time it feels like, you know,

It feels like unwanted scrutiny. It feels like you're getting it from both ends. But one of the best things I learned from the first of the 506 over on the other side of Craigador was like,

the attitude of like, come investigate. Like if you think something is wrong, please come down here and investigate. And I said that over and over again. Oh, you think something's going on? Please come and investigate. You know, send people down here. We'll take them out. You want to go see what's going on? Come on out. Come and get it. Like you want to see what's going on? You want to say why people are getting shot? Why the enemy is getting shot? Why are kill counts so high? Come and

Yeah. Come down here, bring a notebook and bring some body armor. Cause that's what's going to happen. And everyone out, you know, and that's another cool thing that you just talked about was, you know, when people talk about when they think of like special operations missions, they think of like, Oh, we get this target and we go out and hit this target. Well, it didn't take us long to figure out Ramadi that if we've got a target, cause we had great, it are my Intel shop. My guys were freaking awesome and they worked in close conjunction, but we had really good,

forms of intelligence. I'll leave it at that. And we would get targets all the time. And that didn't take me very long to realize, well, I could get my guys, spin them up, put them in Humvees, drive them out in the town, have them dismount, have them go hit a target. By the way, with Iraqi soldiers, you know, come back and

That's what they'd be doing for the next 12 hours or I could call you guys to go up. Hey, there's a guy in building 18 alpha. Yeah, that's cool. We'll call you in 20 minutes We literally they call us like you're you're you know, platoon commanders or company commanders or call something like hey We got the guy yeah, Cole send him will send our detainment facility We'll be there and we'll do the interrogations because you guys were out in the streets and you were out in the neighborhood so much and we had obviously we had three eight one three seven

the 506, so in the downtown area, it was like totally covered by US military. And you guys knew the neighborhoods and knew the buildings so well, you probably knew the guy that, you'd probably be like, oh yeah, we already talked to that guy. We talked to him yesterday, we'll go talk to him again. We'll go grab him. So the cooperation that we had with you guys was,

it was awesome. And you know, occasionally we'd be like, oh yeah, there's this guy or there's this particular thread or something like that. And so we'd roll out, I think, but we only did like, we probably only did like 35 or 40 actual direct action missions where we went out and hit a target.

Most of the time we just call you guys up. When I say you guys, I mean we'd call up you guys, whatever battalion owned the battle space. And you guys would just get it done in like 12 minutes. You're like, yeah, we're there. I had conversations like, you're in the building right now? They're like, yeah. Okay, cool. Let me get my intel, guys, and get the name for you because you guys would hit the target so fast. And that was the idea of the permanent presence inside these neighborhoods was that you guys were just always there. Yeah.

Yeah, it got to the point where we were doing so many, you know, raids like that that before we started doing the SKTs, you know, the small kill teams, that instead of doing like a hard entry, you know, where you blast a door, throw flashbangs and stuff, we would try to sneak in. I got videos that we would like, we snuck in someone's house and, you know,

One of our dudes jumped in the bed with them because we were that quiet. You know, or we'd like step over people to like clear the rest of the house and then wake them up and then zip strip and stuff. But like we got surgical with it. Yeah, that was a definite change. Same thing for us. You know, this idea of breaching the front door, which always seems exciting and it always seems and there are some tactical advantages to it. But the tactical advantage of sneaking into the building and just getting full control before you wake anybody up, that doesn't get it. There's not much more.

Advantages you can get in that that mission right there So as these things blur together in your head or you start are you feeling any combat fatigue? Are you feeling you know? the odds Starting to click up, you know I feel like you know We're playing a little bit of Russian roulette here and you start rolling the dice every day and you're rolling the dice every eight hours right every dollars rolling rolling the dice and

Were you thinking about that or were you disconnected to the point where it's like, this is your job, this is what you're doing? I think it was about a month in where I made the conscious decision, you know, it's going to happen. You know, we've already lost so many guys. We're taking so many hits that my time is my time. Hopefully it's quick. You know, hopefully, you know, snipe around or an IED or something catastrophic. Hopefully I don't like lose legs or something bad. Like I just accepted it. And yeah,

Between that, you just live off adrenaline, nicotine, and hate, I guess. I think we just made a t-shirt. Adrenaline, nicotine, and hate. That's a long stretch of time in your brain. The casualties keep coming for you guys. I know you guys lost Staff Sergeant Swanson as well. That's what, July, I think. And again, all you can do is

Go to the memorial service go to the angel flight get your gear back on and go back out. Yeah over and over and over again Yeah, um, I know you mentioned that you remember a little bit about like setting security for Colonel Dean to go meet with some shakes and Not realizing at the time what a huge impact that those meetings were gonna have on the war. Yeah, um

I don't know how I got attached to his PSD. I think Captain Lanson was out with him or something. I was just part of the whole convoy. But I remember sitting outside his compound and, you know, we were obviously out of security. So we'd sit with him and some of his guys would come up and bullshit with us and

Chevy Aztec nickel-plated AK like just hanging out with them and that's another t-shirt dude a Chevy yeah I got a Pontiac Aztec let's go sit next to dude it was a shorty too it wasn't even like a full size it was bad but just like hanging out with these guys and I was like what I didn't know what we were doing at the time you know that's above my pay grade so I know we're just there and

yeah at the time i had no idea what we were doing i thought we were just talking to like the mayor or something but lo and behold you know we're changing stuff yeah that was the beginning of the the al-anbar awakening did you get any leave during when you were in ramadi did you go home i took my mid-term leave right before we went to ramadi when we were still in kuwait which i'm very fortunate was the way it happened because i couldn't imagine you know leaving ramadi and coming back you know i don't

It's hard to turn your brain off from that, one. And just to go back and like, you know, be back in civilian world or whatever and then have to go back into that shit. So I'm glad I was fortunate enough to, you know, do it before we went up to Rwani. But a lot of guys weren't. Colonel Dean said he went in the middle of the deployment. I just can't. It's hard to turn your brain off from something like that. So it's just,

I definitely, like I said, we do shorter deployments. And so I haven't been in a position of going home and then having to come back to it. But I'll tell you, that seems like it would be very, very difficult to do. Very, very difficult to like, oh, I'm about to get killed. Go home, be in total peace and harmony with your family. And then know that as soon as you get home, okay, I got two weeks. Yeah. And then be right back in the shit again. Yeah. Right.

I measured up like American Sniper, and Chris Kyle comes home and he's watching stuff on the news, something like that. You see it. You know what's going on. You know more than anybody else does, and you know you got to go back too. So I'm just glad that wasn't a situation. Did you see the movie Warfare? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to bring that up. Yeah. Yeah.

uh well one thing that's interesting about that is i was talking to carol mcfarland about it and he was he was home on leave really yep because he asked me he's like hey what when did this happen like i'm trying to remember if this was this or this was that and i said no this was november 19th and he goes home on leave and you know he's and he sings praises of his his subordinate leadership because when he was home on leave like they did some of the

really successful operations. And he's really proud of that because he wasn't even there to take part in them. But yeah. So you did see Warfare? Yeah. By far the best war depiction of what we went through I've ever seen. And I watched it with my wife and then eventually I watched it with my 17-year-old son. I wanted to make sure. One, I watched it first by myself to just kind of get the reaction. I didn't go to theaters. I bought it off Amazon. Then I watched it with my wife and

you can't really explain to your spouses what you went through. You can't really like, you know, we got shot at, we got blown up, but until you see something like that, like that was by far the best depiction of what we went through. Yeah. Um, hands down. I went and saw it in the theater. I went with my wife as well. And it was interesting. I sat down to watch it and,

All of a sudden I hear, hey, Jocko. And I look over and it's another guy from Task Unit Cruiser when he's with his wife. And I'm like, what's up, bro? Then we sat there and watched it and it was over and the theater emptied out and we're sitting there like, okay. I think, and I haven't really directly asked my wife. I mean, my wife was kind of like, I mean, obviously she thought it was really a moving movie, but I haven't really asked her like what she thought it seemed like

From her perspective like I like I would like to say like did it seem crazy? Did seem like there was like a lot of mayhem going on I think obviously it was like that so she'd be like absolutely But we haven't really had that deep conversation about it and the other interesting thing is like she knows Elliot and So there's like another connection there, so I don't know I'll have to ask her about that yeah

But. The rest of the dudes that made it. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy that made it just, you know, well, he was there. Yeah. Yeah. So you watched it three times because I've only seen it once. Yeah. How was it the second time? How was it the third time? I mean, it wasn't as bad. That's the same comment my son made when we finished watching. He said, so you watch it three times now? I'm like, yeah.

But I had to watch it by myself first just cause I make sure, you know, one, what it was going to do to me. I don't know if that was a good idea or a bad idea, but it was fine. And then it made sure that there was no distractions and watching my wife and went through that. Yeah. I told those guys, cause I had Nick or sorry, Elliot and Joe on the podcast, the two guys that got wounded, they came on the podcast and like telling them, you know, what it was like leaving Ramadi and knowing what those guys were getting into. And yeah,

- You know how it is, man. It's kind of like you said when you turned over the 228. The 228, they probably told all your leadership, "Hey, it's really freaking bad out there." And of course, leadership's like, "Yeah, it's not that bad. "We're gonna go get some." It's like the guys from Team Five, same thing. We're like, "Hey," I remember telling them, and I said this on the podcast, "You guys are going to take casualties." And no one ever thinks they're gonna take casualties. And certainly no one ever thinks they're gonna be the casualty. It always happens to someone else.

But that is a good, you know, some of the images that they put in with the guys walking around, the moves walking around and walking in and out of buildings and like looking and not looking and talking on radios and not talking on radios. And snipers are like, wait a second, what are you seeing? Well, I got something here and I got movement. We got building with, and you're hearing the radio reports. It's like all that stuff is very Ramadi-ish. Yeah. Yeah. Like, can you shoot a guy holding a cell phone and looking at your position? Nope.

You can probably get away with it, but at that time, you can't. I mean, he's not doing anything. He might just be calling home, but you know what he's doing deep down inside. You know what he's doing. Yeah. You know, the guy at... I shot our dude at the...

Right before we did that big mission. Like we were doing overwatch to see what they're doing. Just looking at dudes. And it was two dudes with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. And I was like, you know, that gut feeling. I was like, hey, no reason to be digging right there where he was digging. I ended up shooting him. And lo and behold, he had that court. He had a pickaxe and they're putting something in. Yeah.

They weren't doing freaking road construction in 2006. That's the same thing with people with binos. It's like you're not bird watching. And by the way, someone with a radio, because the cell phone towers were actually down. And sometimes people get reported as they were talking on a cell phone. And you could say, it looked like they're talking on a cell phone, but they're talking on a radio. But even those guys, it's like they're coordinating an attack. And it's really, as soon as you see maneuvering taking place, and now you got a guy on the radio,

okay well this guy is no longer talking to his grandma yeah this guy is coordinating an attack on coalition forces and he's gonna get killed that's what's happening the other thing we did mosque monitors a lot which I thought was kind of dumb at first but then like looking back and you know they're called a prayer they give like the whole sermon over the mosque so they literally called everybody in for the

The jihad. Yeah. And they're like, bring them in. And did you guys have interpreters with us? Yeah. We would have actual mosque warranted missions and we'd go out and we just park somewhere and wait for, you know, call a prayer and listen. And the term would be like, this ain't good. Yep. Like we had, we had both Iraqi soldiers and,

interpreters like American or coalition interpreters. Yeah. Same thing. You'd be like, this isn't going to go. They're coming right now because they're straight up saying, hey, it is time for jihad. That's like what they are saying. The time for jihad is now assemble in this area. Right. Like assemble at the soccer stadium. Assemble here. That's what they're straight up doing. I don't know if they knew we were listening to them or they just didn't give a shit. But I mean, that's part of their religion. As

Time is progressing. Did you feel like your awareness, your combat, like how good did you feel like you and your team were getting? More confident as we were going. Luckily, I didn't have any serious injuries or casualties in my squad at the time. You know, everybody had their own nickname for their squad or whatever. I don't care what ours was, but

We were just getting good. I know you talked, Colonel Dean, about scooping up that EMOM. That was my squad. We were setting up for an SKT. That's one of the houses we actually snuck into. And we caught the dudes jumping the wall. And one of my soldiers grabbed him

Because the mosque was right there behind the house. And we grabbed him. We're like, where are you going? What are you doing? I got a little suspect. He's like, oh, I'm an EMOM. I was like, I don't know. EMOMs don't jump walls. You can use the door. EMOMs don't rerun it. But so we scooped him up. And at the time, I had no idea the impact that would have. So we got him and caught him up. And I remember some black SUV showed up and took him away. And how did you feel like your guys were handling it? Like on your team?

They were getting their own confidence. We'd go hit a target package or we'd do SKTs, small kill teams we'd set up. We'd walk in, Bradley's drop us off, we went into town, we'd walk in.

we'd take a building or sometimes we would go into one building and then we use the rooftops and go a couple of downs so they couldn't like target us. Um, and we'd set up and we'd catch them putting the IDs in and we'd smoke them. And that would just build confidence. Like we felt like we were protecting our dudes that were going out the next morning. That's exactly what we were doing, but we were getting good at it too. Yeah. Damn. To me was a freaking ID. It really was those IDs. Yeah.

were massive too. Like massive. Yeah. Like especially was horrific was when they started building IEDs to use against Bradleys and tanks. The shape charges. But then they would hit Humvees with them. Yeah. And it would just be like total devastation. I mean, for a mine resistant Cougar to get cut in half, I mean, that's...

They would take one of the manhole cover that Colonel Dean talked about, and then copper plates that would just make an EMP or EFP. And then they'd add the accelerant. Yeah, that's another thing I've always kind of talked about is the damn vehicle graveyard. When you're driving out the main gate and you're driving by 75 or 100 freaking vehicles that are just twisted wreckage.

and you're like wait a second aren't did all those vehicles right there come from the city that i'm driving out to right now we took 14 bradley's to ramadi didn't bring any back bradley's i mean we had we went through two fleets of home v's yeah i mean they would just get annihilated and

and up armored homies are Bradley like to take a Bradley out that's that's serious you know what it was a Bradley way uh 33 tons I think don't let me do that but I'm pretty sure that's it that's insane yeah and they took out nine I think it was nine Abrams yeah yeah which is almost 70 tons and I think it's like six inches of armor on the bottom of Bradley and um Specialist Schaefer um when he was killed he was a driver

And the IED that hit underneath his driver's seat and actually forced him up, that's what killed him, the impact. But the amount of explosives it takes for that. We had one barrel that got flipped over on its side, and the barrel just happened to be pointing to the side. It got flipped over. I got a picture. The barrel was buried in concrete, like in the cement, like up to six inches. And it's like laying on its side, barrel holding it up. So that's a lot of explosives. You guys lose Schaefer.

On September 13th and then Lazarin, which we started this thing off on September 26th. And that was pretty close to you guys going home, right? Yeah, yeah. When did you actually head home? November, I believe. Okay. 2006 or 2007. How were you guys doing at the end, coming towards the end of deployment? We didn't stop. Cop dealer was the last thing that we did. And my squad happened to be the squad that got left there. And we didn't have any broadleys left. So...

It was time for us to like rip out. And my squad walked from cop dealer all the way back to the front gate because nobody could pick us up. Like we didn't stop. Our op tempo was literally up to the day we left. And cop dealer was by the university, right? Yeah. I mean, a couple of kilometers, like three or four kilometers. But...

Did you skirt the city? No, we walked down the middle of the street. I think we all just said, fuck it. Like, sorry, excuse me. Do I want to walk four clicks through a little bit safer? We're going straight through to me. I think we were just trying to catch with our pants down. Maybe I guess just walk through and, you know, let's see what we can do. It's getting one more fight or one more thing that we're going. They didn't know we were leaving. So also nobody replaces a cop dealer that I recall that we just left. They just told us to pack it up and come home. And yeah,

just walking back down the streets. So you guys pack up, um, do you, did you know when your last mission was? Yeah, that was it. That was it. Yeah. Uh, we were doing the right left seat, right seat ride with the other unit. Um, it was first ID, um, which ironically is the unit I went to after that. I was like, can't get the break. But, um, I know ripping out with them and they had, you know, static position. So we weren't like alone. And to me, you know, we had stack was checking in with them and stuff. Um,

And, yeah, I think they told us, y'all come in, that's it. That's it. Yeah. I think two days later we were out of there. And then it's back to Germany. Yeah. And how are you doing when you get back to Germany? Dumb, I guess, is the best way to describe it. It's hard. Like, I know when I got blown up.

They had a thing where they were calling the wives. I was like, why are we doing this? Like, we don't need to do that. Like, if we're not serious, we're not going to call. But they would call the wives for any incident like that. Did they keep that up for the whole deployment? Oh, no, they didn't start until like the last three or four months. Oh, okay. So I was like, I'm going to get ahead of this. I called my wife at the time and I was like, I got blown up. But both my eardrums were ruptured and I couldn't hear shit, so I'm yelling. You know, I got blown up. She's like, what? I'm like,

I don't know if you can hear me or not, but I can't hear myself. I got blown up. Just in case somebody calls you, let you know, like I'm okay. Whatever. Okay. You know, tell her what, okay. So I felt, I felt like at the time that would be better to hear from me than like somebody calling and say, Hey, Jackson got blown up. But coming back to Germany, it was, uh, it was even wilder than it was the first deployment. Like dudes, I remember going and checking my guys the first night, like drove, driving from housing, going to the barracks and pulling up on the barracks. And there's, you know,

a three-story beer bong with a garden hose. Just, I mean, you ain't drinking a year and now you're pouring liquor and beer and whatever into like just trying to, I feel like dudes are just numbing themselves even more and just,

same thing reintegration was like three or four days and everybody just checking the box checking the box would you go to reintegration like for the is it like a psyche valve that they're doing it's a whole bunch of different stations i think it was like the gym and they had it all like sectioned off and you go to like go to audio to coherent tests you go to tbi which it wasn't really a thing back then so they were kind of figuring out um you just go to general med and you know you'll

all the different states whatever they were i can't remember what they were but you had just well you walked around this checklist and you had to get it signed off so the quicker you get done with that the quicker you get back to that three foot beer ball yeah oh three story three stories yeah they were on the three store they had a garden hose a garden hose oh man and dudes are going downtown i don't know why they lock us down the base but dude's going downtown bonnard's tiny community like when we left the community fall apart because there was no income

So when we got back, dudes were just wild. I don't know if the Germans were ready for that or not, but getting in fights, just trashing stuff. I mean... And how were you doing at this point? I mean, I was at home at the time with my wife, so, I mean... Were you sleeping all right? I don't remember. I know I was drinking a lot. Just getting after the German beer. Yeah. It's just... I don't... Yeah, it was all a daze. I mean, it was just...

waiting to go home because everybody went home. I think it was, what, even two weeks before we all got like block leave. So everybody's just trying to get through the process and get home. And then where'd you go and leave? I went back home, Gwinnett County, Georgia, Snellville area. And then I went up to my family's house in Hiawassee, North Georgia. And we just, you know, we tried to cover everything, tried to see everybody at the same time, which...

cramming it all in you know it's I don't know if that was the best idea but you've got to see everybody you know one we've been in Germany for so long and coming home and just got out of war and got to see everybody so it was non-stop going everywhere doing everything I think that was kind of a good thing because it can be distracted yes yeah I imagine it could be good in that way yeah and how it's interesting because you you did that first deployment where it was relatively

Yeah. And, you know, you got this big hero's welcome and everything. And now you come back from this deployment where it was anything but mellow. But my family didn't know any of that. They didn't know anything that we went through and didn't tell them. So it's kind of faking the funk as you go through and just kind of acting like everything's fine and smile on your face and carry on. Yeah, pretty much.

What was the next, what was your next, uh, assignment? Uh, so we came back and then a huge chunk of our, our company, um, was all getting orders to leave at the same time. Um, and weren't you going to go be a, uh, drill sergeant or something? Well, first I was, uh, I was going to go to third ID in Savannah, uh, Fort Stewart. Um, so, you know, we were looking forward to that one. Um, part of the leave was I'd knocked my ex wife up at the time. So we had, we were pregnant. So we were going to the States and, uh,

we're gonna have a baby um looking forward to that which we did actually try for so i we decided we wanted to wait till we got back in the states um so we did that um the night we left was a little rough on her but all the guys of the hotel together got trash and stuff i don't know how i made it back but um so i was supposed to go to fort stewart georgia

And so it was going to be like getting stationed by your home. Yeah. Or at least, and that's where she's, that's where she was from as well. Yeah. Yeah. So we would be like three hours from home, which is a hell of a lot closer than Germany. Yeah. Yeah. So, but two or three days before we were supposed to fly, like our household goods are gone. We got nothing. Like we're back to the army front for what we started. Um,

three days before, like I'm checking my mill purse, my army email and stuff. And my orders got changed to forehead, Texas. Um, we're staying up a new light infantry unit. First ID two, two of a tree. I was like, Oh, that's a, that's a chicken and nuts right there. So I guess we're going to Texas. So our, our household goods were on a boat already, like on the way to Georgia and we had to get to Texas. And I, you know, I decided we're not gonna live on post. We're gonna live off post. So I had to rent a house. It's my first time doing that. Um,

We did have furniture and all that stuff at that time. Didn't have to get the Army issued. No, I had grandfather's clock and all the stuff. And we got set up in Texas. And my oldest son was born in October. That was crazy. It was literally a brand new unit. They disbanded 2-2 Infantry and then restarted it at Fort Hood. And I was one of the first NCOs to get there. So out of all of us that left, they just spread us across a new battalion.

So I was like the only NCO in Charlie company to do infantry for three, four months when I got brand new privates, like out of base training. I was like, I don't know what to do with y'all. Really? Nobody's telling me what to do. I don't know what to do. So we just did PT and we'd hang around for a little bit and do some training and

And finally we got a first sergeant. Appreciate you holding it down. Here's what's going on. Then, you know, units start filling up and stuff. And they're like, we're going to Afghanistan in 11 months. I was like, Jesus Christ, I can't catch a break. And then, yeah. I was like, Afghanistan, that's a different ballgame. So about...

three months before we were supposed to go to Afghanistan, I came down on drill sergeant orders. So you, so you did like a workup with these guys? Oh yeah. We did everything. Yeah. Um, I had my own squad. I was a platoon leader for a little, a platoon sergeant for a little while. I had a whole platoon. Um, we were ready to go Afghanistan. How'd you like, how'd you like being in those leadership positions? Bob, I love it. I mean, I liked it. Um,

And are you at this point thinking you're going to be in the Army for 20 years, 30 years, whatever? Yeah, I was planning that. This is your deal. Actually, I just done the in-depth re-enlistment. What's that? Where you just, the rest of my time. So I was in like eight years and I was like- 12 more years? Yeah, 12 more years. You get a bonus for that? Yeah. It was like 15 grand. Yeah. Well, the way the Army does it, they don't get it all at once and it gets taxed like 15 times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Navy does the same thing. Yeah. You get-

It looks good on paper. Yeah, right. Sounds good whether you sign it too. Yeah, because if you think, because, well, the way the Navy did it was they would,

you'd get half of it now, but then the rest of it would be divided over the rest of your time. So you've got like five, five. Yeah. So you probably got like four grand in your pocket. I know some of my SF buddies would have like, they would get deployed to a combat zone just so they would get all tax free. It must be nice. But yeah, like I was prepared to go like mentally one, I had a son at the time, so I was mentally preparing myself to go to Afghanistan. And then I came out and drove start orders and I was relieved that

i was embarrassed and then i was like i don't torn like so do they how do you get selected for drill sergeant um it's the top one percent of your mos um i don't know i guess they just look through files and trying to find somebody like spots to fill and so is it considered

like a good thing when you get selected for drill sergeant? Okay, because I don't know. Yeah, it's really good for your career. Guaranteed to get promoted when you get done, if not while you're there. And so I was looking at that aspect. Like I just realized it in depth, going on the trail to be a drill sergeant, do that, and I'll deploy. So I was like, I'll be safe for at least two years. Okay.

Cause they've been, they, you've been, you've been earning your share. I was like, at least I get two years off. Yeah. Even if I'm working 18, 20 hour days, six days a week, coming home every night. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, so, but at the same time, you've also got the hold on these guys that I've just, just trained and now I'm going to leave them. Um,

And my worst fears actually happened. You know, they were in Afghanistan. I was, I just graduated drill sergeant school. I was on the 50 Cal range, um, yelling at some privates. And I got a call from my ex-wife saying that my squad got hit. Um, two of my soldiers got killed from suicide bomber. The lady that just walked up to him in the market and the squad leader replaced me and got blown up and lost his arm. And we were best friends. So I was like, that was rough. Um,

One of my favorite soldiers, really good friends, Josh Rath, he was killed. And then another really good soldier of mine, Keith Estrey, got killed. The two closest ones to me are the ones that got killed. My middle name's sons, named after Josh for that reason. But that really messed me up, I think, like survivor's guilt, I guess, because I couldn't be there for him. I should have been there for him. But at the same time, we've got a family now, so it should be a home and a family. Yeah.

it was kind of hard to weigh all that i think that's when stuff started piling up so what did it what does it look like when or feel like when when quote stuff starts piling up like what's happening in your life as you're dealing with the survivor's guilt and all the combat that you've been through losing guys when you say that things are piling up and it starts to take take its toll on you what does that look like um

If I wasn't a drill sergeant and didn't have that distraction, it would have been a lot worse than it was. But short temper, easily angered, drinking a lot. I go to the doctor for... I had bad headaches. Bad, like...

debilitated headaches my back was jacked up um I go to the doctor and they would give me 120 Percocet for a month they would give me hydroconin at the same time like just I had a bag of and I'm still a drill sergeant like I'm still walking around going on eight nine ten mile road marches and just eating pills and drinking in the evening when I get off and just you know

Didn't really have a relationship with my family. Luckily I was able to turn off the drill sergeant when I got home. So I had like, it's weird, I had this tree outside my house and I would like, I'd rub the tree and I would like turn off the drill sergeant, like take off my hat so I can go in the house. I could be a normal person, you know. My son at the time was three, whatever. So interact with him and that was my piece. But it was starting, it was getting bad.

and i was constantly going to appointments and i go to the tbi clinic and they're like i couldn't remember i started messing up at work um forgetting stuff you know and with tbi clinic and they're like you

it ain't gonna work. I'd get MRIs and there'd be like a mass. They didn't know what it was. They'd look at it. Well, that's reassuring when they look at your brain and go, there's some shit in there. We don't even know what it is. But then you go back for the next appointment. It's a different doctor and you have to re-explain everything. They have to look at everything else again and nobody can give you a solid answer. So,

Eventually, they're just like, I feel like they just said, we're tired of dealing with you. So they offered me a medical retirement. They didn't offer me. They told me. I asked to reclass, change my license. Give me a desk job. Give me something else. And they're like, no, you're out. So say like 18 months as a drill sergeant. I planned to stay in the Army, so I didn't have a career lined up. And all of a sudden, they're like, you're out. And they started this new program where they were getting dudes out in 90 days.

So 90 days, I mean, I was like out of the army and they told me, you know, your VA benefit, you're going to get VA benefits. You're going to get retirement, all this stuff. And I was like, all right, well, that's not so bad. You know, go work at Walmart as a career or something like that. And that did not happen at all. I got out and nothing. They said, I didn't have any money. You know, I didn't have a job. My first job was working from AT&T for a call center. It was a,

A program for veterans they did, which I didn't know at the time, but like if you call AT&T about your bill or something, you're talking to a disabled veteran. So like people would be like thinking of your service. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? How do you know that? But it was working from home. It was like from 7 to the graveyard shift, which was terrible. Couldn't spend time with my family. Couldn't do anything. And I was like, that ain't going to work. I used to be streaming. You got a little interjection there from Caliber the dog. Yeah.

It's laying down. Yeah. Yeah. He's dreaming. Oh, that's cool. Dreams, which means he's relaxed. So that's good. So, uh, so how long did you stay at AT&T for? Oh, like six months.

um the the trainer was like you know this might not be the best job for you I was like really there's a shocker he was like you want to be a trainer and I was like we can give it a shot he was like and then like a manager called me he was like this is not gonna work I was like okay um I went to some other program I can't remember who it was but this dude uh really helped me out um

He had me take these assessments and gauge your stuff and help me write a resume. I can't remember his name right now. It'll come to me in about 20 minutes. It's a Greek name. So he helped you put a resume together and said these are some jobs that you'd be good at? Yeah, he ran security for the Georgia Lottery. I was like, that sounds kind of cool. I got towards the facility and stuff and

Also, by the way, we just came back from Texas, so we didn't have anywhere to live. We were in Phoenix City, Alabama already, so we were staying there. I was like, whatever. I was still into guns, and I was like, I want a suppressor. How do you get a suppressor? So I started looking into it, and I found a company that was getting, because they hadn't passed a law yet that you can have suppressors in Alabama.

So I found a dude that was getting ready. He was like, we're going to be selling suppressor soon. And it turned out he was the ex sergeant major for three, seven, five major battalion. And he was running a shop in his backyard. Um, so I went and met with him. He was like, Oh, you're better. And I was like, looking around, I was like, can I work for you? He was like, yeah, sure. He was doing contract work, like spook stuff. Um, so he was like, he showed me how to build some guns. We custom AR 15s. Um,

i found out i love that i was like this is cool and we can build anything design stuff we were like actually cnc in our receivers and turning around barrels and stuff um i started doing that and we started what was the name of that company chattahoochee gunworks chattahoochee gun is still around yeah still around oh right now yeah he's still running out of his basement awesome i gotta drop his name because he still has to speak stuff too but uh yeah started doing that and uh ended up working out great like he was like he started paying me retainer and i started

Eventually bought into the business. That's the one time that I started feeling like pride myself and like this is something I could do. I did that for seven years, I think. And then I had a falling out with some stuff. He was deployed. We made it right after the...

But shooting at the school, which one? It was the bad one where everybody thought they were going to lose their ARs. I made like $120,000 in a month by myself. And he had to pay me commission for that. It was crazy. But I decided to separate from that. And then I started doing contract work for Raytheon. Mm-hmm.

What kind of contract work? Like gun slinging contract work or? Yeah. And then working on the ranges and stuff. Okay. That was cool. But stateside or overseas? Both. Okay. And how'd you like getting back in the mix again? It was cool. Felt like, you know, one of the cool guys, you know, get to do the cool guy stuff, but you're not in the army. Yeah.

but I did that for about three years and then went in on a Monday and they said our contract was up and then Friday was my last day. So that was that. Yeah. And so what happened after that? What was the next move? Uh, I had a, I had an applicant or a resume on indeed and a, uh, a former, uh,

Colonel found it and contacted me. He owned a budget blinds franchise. He was like, you want to homework? What kind of budget blinds? Budget blinds? Yeah. It's a French, like, uh, window coverings. Yeah. Um, blinds. I was like, blinds. What? I don't know anything about that. He was like, I'll teach you. And I was like, all right, cool. Uh, he took me in, started to pay me really good. Um, working for him and he showed me the ropes and I was doing pretty good working my way up. And,

We had a falling out. I just, I went through a couple of jobs. I just couldn't keep a job. Like after that, I went to work for the local city, um, doing maintenance stuff. That didn't go well at all. I just couldn't assimilate with anybody. Yeah. Yeah. And this is just, uh, how's the alcohol doing at this time? You drinking a lot? Yeah. It's working well.

And what about all these painkillers that you got? Were you staying on pills? Yeah, not as much because I started regulating them stuff. I had to go like a pain management center and all that, but I definitely cut down for what the army was giving me. But you made it up for that with alcohol? Yeah. Yeah. And I got back to smoke a weed again because I could. Um,

and it just started stacking up and I'd never really got any kind of treatment for it. After like my second or third job, I was like, maybe I'm the problem. And we, at this point, yeah, it takes a little while to admit that. It takes a little while to admit that. At this point, we already had like three suicides just, you know, from our unit alone. I was like, it's not like nobody, like dudes going to jail for 20 years for beating somebody up in a bar and, you know, putting them in a coma. Like,

I saw the writing on the wall and I saw where I was at. And at this point I had two kids and I was like, this is not gonna, it's not gonna end well if I keep on this path. So I made the conscious decision to start looking at his stuff. I went to a few programs for PTSD and stuff. I went to a Chad Robichaux, you know, went to his Mighty Oaks Foundation. That was huge for me. That was a big thing. Awesome. But,

I was on my, my path to like get better, but it wasn't the same at home. Like at the time I was into some other stuff and not being there to support me, I guess is the best way to say it. Um, so it was a struggle. Like I was fighting my own demons and then fighting stuff at home, trying to keep our marriage alive, trying to, you know, trying to make myself better so I could be a better dad and a husband and all that stuff. And I wasn't getting the same, you know, on the other end. Um,

So went through a little bit more. I think finally, uh, that's about the time of the reunion kicked off. Um, so we had, what sparked the idea that, cause that was your idea, the reunion. Yeah. Me and one of their soldier, but he kind of bailed on me for a couple of months, but, uh, I'll probably hear this more. Um, so we had one of our soldiers, uh,

ended up taking his own life um for reasons whatever is this before the reunion or after yeah this is what caused the reason okay so this is what caused it yeah this is like our nine years after romani probably um and we were just talking you know i just with some guys every now and then their text message facetime whatever and like nobody's seen each other in a long time you know guys are falling apart they're drifting away

- And are you looking at the whole kind of where everyone's at and saying like, bro, we need to get together? - Yeah, that's exactly what it was. That's when Facebook let you do stuff like that. So I was like, we need a reunion. 'Cause we were coming up on, it was 2016, well it was 2015 at the time, but it was coming up on 10 years. Like, well, let's have a reunion. So we got the idea and I just started plugging away. I had no idea what I was doing, but just started outsourcing stuff. One, I just put a sentence out, see who was interested. Everybody was like, yes, yes, yes. Let's meet up, let's get together.

I started, I got a friend from back home that has a laser engraving shop. So we came up with some merch, some cool logos and stuff. Started selling that. People were getting excited about that. We had like GoFundMe account. We started getting some money. We got money from private people sending around. A lot of people like helped us out. It started coming together. We did it in Helen, Georgia, right outside of my hometown. And I think we had,

about 40 50 dudes show up nice and which is a pretty big deal at the time because people come from all over the country is that like a third how many people were in the company total uh 150 200 120 120 yeah but you know based after everything else like losses and stuff like that it was a decent turnout

everything was paid for we had money to like pay for dudes I actually had money that set aside for bail funds like that's some NCO planning right there boy we took over all of Helen Georgia and uh we had a great time but to me like reconnected with my guys like that was therapy I didn't realize but I was like that was therapy and a lot of guys felt the same when we got done um but

At the reunion, one of my soldiers showed up that on Facebook, he's got all the signs and symptoms of what I had, but a lot worse. He showed up to the reunion and he had a service dog. And he was a different person. Like he was not the same person. He wasn't the guy that was, you know, borderline suicidal or anything like that. I was like, what the fuck? And he was like, it's a dog, man. It's a dog. I was like, what? And he told me about Canons for Warriors. And I was like, immediately came on from there and

Did the application? Did you have dogs growing up? Yeah, I've always had a dog. I mean...

Did you have a dog at the time? Like a non-service dog? Yeah, I had a shepherd, a German Shepherd. I even had dogs in Ramadi. You know, we'd have puppies that we'd find and they would follow us out on patrols. So I've always had a dog in my life. So what's the difference? So you had a dog. So when you went to the reunion, you already had a dog. Yeah. But it wasn't a service dog. No, it was just a really smart German Shepherd. Just a smart. And that German Shepherd...

wasn't connected to the same way as this guy you saw with his service dog? No. It was just a dog. He was my best friend. He was a good dog. He did all kinds of cool stuff, but it was just a dog. I didn't look at it that way. And then I saw him with his dog and I was like, you can do that? You can take him everywhere? You can take him to the grocery store. You can take him to Walmart. Everywhere. Yeah, man. The way he was trained was just 100% professional. And

I did the application process for canines. This is before COVID. This is right when I put my application in, which is perfect luck. The application process is super long, pretty in-depth. As I was hearing about that, I was looking at the website yesterday, too.

For the for the canons for warriors, so they're trying to figure out kind of like your personality Yeah through that application so they can figure out what kind of dog you need That's exactly what they do. They they match your dog to you before you even get there because it's not like When a lot of people when I think of a service dog because I was in the service But I think of a working dog right I think of a German Shepherd or a bear like that's all I think yeah and so I think that's just what I

like they're they're gonna give you that dog but then when i looked at the canine for warriors website they give people all kinds of different like there's no there are every different type of dog from a freaking poodle to pit bull like and everything in between buddy when i got a poodle yeah make fun about that but um i don't even know if i knew i was a gunsmith and he was named caliber before i even got him and i was like this is obviously fate um but uh backing up the application process so i had to wait a

about 14, 15 months and it's during COVID too. So the class sizes went from 12 to like four. So I was, at that point I started getting a little discouraged. I was like, well, this ain't gonna work. And I've tried everything. I went back to Mighty Oaks again. I was like, that worked for me. So that's another thing I want to touch on. Mighty Oaks, are you familiar with the program? All right. So it's more- Actually one of my buddies, well, not only Chad, who I'm friends with Chad, and he's been on this podcast, I think twice at this point, but-

but uh another guy that runs at lou rivera he was a seal teammate of mine from seal team three great dude yeah um supposed to have him on the podcast at some point but yeah so i'm i'm very familiar with it i've been briefed about it i've looked at all the literature i've talked to chat a bunch about it and and i've actually they're kind of like my emergency button when when i have a when i have one of my friends or my teammates or a veteran that reaches out that's really in a bad way

Those are the guys I call. Yeah, it's geared more towards guys in our line of work. Not just like, you know, I was on a... No discredit to them, but it's more to like direct action kind of guys that actually need it. So when I went there for the first time, seeing dudes like... One of my mentors was a PJ. And this dude was telling me crazy stories. And I'm like, if you can get help, there's no excuse for me not getting help. You know, seeing dudes like...

you know, seals and PJs and SF guys like there to get help like that. Maybe you do need to like reach out and get some help. So that was a motivating factor for me. So like when the canis thing. And real quick, the symptoms like, look, you can't hold a job. I just want to make sure that when people hear this, they go, oh,

I think they might be talking about me, but like, yeah, you're having trouble holding a job. You're taking pills. You're drinking short temper. Like what are the signs and symptoms of forgetting stuff? What are the signs and symptoms are there that people need to go? Oh, this could be me. I might need some help right now. No connection with civilians. Like it wasn't that I wasn't good at any kind of job. It was just that I can't connect with anybody. You know, like there's no camaraderie there. There's no brotherhood. There's no,

purpose, I guess. It's just kind of hard to re-assimilate into society. And people, oh, you're a veteran. And it's just one big lump. You're a veteran. There's no, like, they don't have a clue what you did. And I got a buddy of mine that, you know, highly decorated, you know, Ranger, Sergeant Major. He's got all the awards. And I was like, dude, when you go to Publix to check out, they don't care. When you walk through Walmart, they don't care. Nobody cares. Like,

the only thing they see is the way you live your life and the way you carry yourself and every, all your accolades while they're awesome in the military, they don't translate to anything outside and nobody really, they don't understand. They don't appreciate that or understand it, I guess. But yeah, that's the, the disconnection between civilians, I guess. Um, and then just everything piled up, um, ruined relationships, you know,

So the first time you go to Mighty Oaks, I cut you off, but you're talking about the first time going to Mighty Oaks, you see that there's like PJs and seals and people that you're like, oh, maybe I could use some help too. Right. And definitely like looked up to people like that. Like, you know, if you can admit that you have an issue, then there's no excuse for me doing it. I mean...

you've done 10 times the crazier stuff and I haven't seen a lot of crazier stuff. So, you know, if you can admit that you have an issue, then there's no reason why I can't do it or anybody else can't do it. So that was kind of a kick in the nuts for me, I guess. And then you ended up going back to Mighty Oaks again. Yeah. And then how was it the second time through? It was, it wasn't as impactful the first time. I just felt like I needed some accountability for myself.

you know i felt like it was i was slipping getting you know stuff getting worse i'd never had any legal problems never a dui never hit my wife never hit my kids or anything like that but i could just see the writing on the wall like i'm drinking a lot you know smoking a lot so take the pills still can't hold a job all that stuff and like it's not gonna end well like there's something catastrophic is gonna happen and it's gonna be bad and i can't afford my family to go through something like that and ultimately it would be my responsibility or it'd be my fault you know so

I had to hold myself accountable. Um, you know, Mighty Oaks is faith based program, which in the beginning they didn't really lead onto that, but now it's geared more towards that. So, you know, I encouraged my ex-wife and go to church and do this stuff and start a routine, the structure, you know, like we used to have, but that's another thing, not having the structure in your life and getting out. I mean, first thing I did was not shave. Like I got two kids that have never seen me without a beard.

just having that freedom where I can just do what I want now. Can't tell me what to do. But that also is a problem too. If you don't have that kind of structure in your life, that's how you get in trouble. - And then, so the application process, you're waiting for a dog, you don't get a dog, it's taking too much time. - Yeah, it's during COVID, so it just keeps getting stretched out. - And that's when, so you go back to Mighty Oaks, now you're done with Mighty Oaks,

And I was on a standby list because I was retired at the time and I wasn't working anymore. So I was the guy that if there was a spot open at the last minute, they could call. And damn, they did.

April of 2020, they called me and they were like, we got a spot open, graduating class in May. And I was like, I got it. How long is the class? It's three weeks. Okay. And you live there. And the class is for you to learn how to use the dog because the dog is already trained. The $40,000, I think, is what they spend to train these dogs. And like you said, as far as matching the personality of the dog, they did that to the T. I mean, I can't tell you. It's crazy the way...

Caliber is like me, we do the same thing. He adapts to my schedule and he's amazing. So, ended up going like two weeks before. I would go to Walmart and shop at three o'clock in the morning 'cause I didn't wanna be around people. Or I didn't leave my house. I just didn't wanna go out. I didn't wanna have to deal with that. Really reclusive. I didn't really have many friends. All my friends were in the military. They're either other side of the country or still active duty.

so i didn't interact with anybody and then i was like i'm gonna have a dog bring even more attention to me that's what i don't want um so i almost backed out like i was like but then i was like i need this this is i wouldn't say it's the last shot but it's like you went through this much effort for your application process and waiting all this time like just just do it and i went there and dude when i tell you it's a family like they welcome you like a family

One, the facility is amazing. Two, they have like house moms, like people from the community that volunteer, cook dinner. Like somebody from the community drops off a meal every single night. The living conditions are awesome. And it was during COVID. So we had like our own apartment to ourselves, which is kind of a funny story about Caliber and sleeping in our bed together. But just the way they take you in, like,

They had changed up the process a little bit. So we got there early Friday morning. We did all the paperwork, whatever paperwork was left. It seemed like it never ended. But the next day we wake up and we get our dogs. It's dog day, which is a huge thing. And from that moment on, we haven't been separated. And that was May 2020. But like the anxiety building up to that, like they keep you all separated. And one guy would go out at the kennel and get his dog and walk back. And I'm like, damn, that's a cool dog. And one guy walked back with a poodle. I'm like, no.

but uh so i remember they walked me back out super nervous i'm nervous to get a dog i don't understand that but um walked back there and i saw him and his favorite toy is a chicken which we still have to this day and he immediately ran up to me and sat down and just you know floppy ears and golden brown eyes and just instant connection and they're like his name's caliber and i was like what

Like, did y'all change it or something? His name's Caliber. We've been naming that for two years already. All our dogs are rescues, too. So he was a rescue. He was in doggy jail for a while when he was first born. And then you just go through the training and learn how to use your dog and learn the rules and, you know, what you can do, what people can't do to you and stuff like that. What's some of the things that you really rely on Caliber for? Oh, so he...

For one, he can identify my anxiety before I can identify it. He does this thing, which ironically hadn't done it this time, the whole, because I thought I was going to be nervous coming in here, but I'm not really nervous. But if we're like in a waiting room somewhere and I'm going to an appointment or I'm getting stressed out, he'll come and he'll jump on my lap and he'll make me focus my attention on him. So it distracts me from what I was anxious about.

One thing which he wasn't trained to do, but I had a stroke like four or five years ago. I was sitting in the living room and he came up to me and like a different way approached me and jumped on my lap and started like pawing on my chest. And next thing I know, like I'm starting to get paralyzed and left some of my face and stuff.

He legit saved my life because I was able to mumble to my son to call 911 and stuff. But he's always there. He doesn't judge me too much. He's spoiled. So if he doesn't get everything he needs. But he's just always there for me. He distracts from anxiety. One of the biggest rewards for having him is interact with people. Like I interact with people now.

Like we go out on almost a daily basis. If I don't go out, he'll start getting like kind of antsy. Like dad, we can go somewhere. You want me to just go to the gas station, whatever. But being able to interact with people. I remember the first time we were walking through Walmart and there was like an autistic kid that was having like an issue. And he was looking at the dog and the mom was like, can't pet the dog. He's working. Can't pet the dog. I was like, he can pet him. And I let him pet Caliber and that kid just immediately calmed down. I was like, Jesus, like that's why he's here.

And then talking to other veterans. Like, I can't tell you how many times other veterans would come up to me and be like, dude, how'd you get your dog? And that's an opportunity to like tell them like, if you need help, dude, like that's why they're there. And just I pointed a lot of people that direction. Hopefully it helped and worked out. Probably never see him again. But the fact that like I'm okay with like talking to other dudes about it and being like, yeah, I had problems too. Like I went through stuff.

And this didn't cure me, it didn't fix it, but this is like the best thing that's ever happened. I've been through a lot of programs for stuff like that, and this is by far the most beneficial one. - When they train the dogs, so it can go in and out of buildings, go on elevators, escalators, in cars. What are the things that make these dogs sort of like adaptable to so many different environments?

just the skill from their trainers. Like the, I think it's like a year and a half of they train these dogs. Um, so they do, do they do like straight obedience too? Oh, it's more than obedience. Like now canons program is advanced so much where they actually have like airplane seats that you can like, you practice go to the airport, you practice going through a checkpoint security, you practice like everything. I mean, they, they're always changing, always adapting. And, um,

yeah there's nowhere you can't take them well gosh i haven't legally like can't take him back to the kitchen or restaurant but i've had um my middle son had to have an emergency appendectomy a couple of months back and caliber immediately knew and climbed up in bed with him it was comforting my middle son you know because he was scared he was about to have surgery um he's done that for for my wife when she's having an anxious moment like he just picks up on it and he comforts people in a way that

I guess, I don't know if they didn't see coming or whatever, but he's there. Like, I don't know how to, I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of hard, but no, that's awesome. Um, and so it's obviously had a positive impact on you. I mean, cause you're married again now, right? Yep. How long have you been married for? It'll be one month tomorrow. Oh, okay. Yeah. Good job caliber. Yeah.

Got it done. And you're an ambassador right now for Canines for Warriors, right? Yeah. And so how big is Canines for Warriors? How many dogs are they doing a year? Just crossed 1,000 dogs overall for the whole program. I want to say like six months ago. I think they're up to like 1,200 now. They have more than, I think they have three campuses now.

Yeah, I saw the campuses on the website. They're like really nice. Yeah. They also have the Mega Kennel, which is the largest kennel in the world, I think. Don't quote me on it, but I'm pretty sure it is. It's the largest kennel in the world. So they rescue dogs from kill shelters. That's their main thing. They rescue dogs. Their thing is a new leash on life, so they're saving a dog and a veteran.

And that's how he was. He was in doggy jail for a while. He got saved by canines and the rest is history. And that's, I think it's, let me just check my notes here because I've got it written down on the canineforwarriors. Canineforwarriors.org is what it is. Yeah, canineforwarriors.org. Another big thing that helped you, obviously, because it reconnected you with your brother's

from dealer is this reunion and and that's how you and i got reconnected because we got this massive reunion coming the 11 ad ramadi reunion um january 16th and 17th to 2026 yeah so so there's a facebook site there's a website if you google i've googled it if you google uh ready first reunion you'll find it and we've got already i want to say like there's

I want to say there's like almost a thousand people that have already responded that are planning to come. I mean, this is out of a brigade of 5,600 people. I mean, it's a big brigade, but that's a huge amount of people to come 20 years later. So it's going to be a really awesome event to get to and looking forward to seeing a bunch of people there and,

And hopefully we'll be more well-behaved than you guys were. And we don't need to set aside funds for bail money. Although for contingency purposes, we may have to do that. Well, it's on Fort Bliss. So hopefully they'll just keep us there. But one thing we tried to work in, I don't know how it's going to work out now, but...

I wanted to have some of our own soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines and stuff. Um, if anybody needed the help to go through canines, my goal was to have them go through canines and graduate and have the dog presented at the reunion. Um, but the, the few that we had for medical reasons or personal reasons, whatever didn't work out. But I, I think canines will still be there for as far as advocacy, um, just to let other people know that it's a program that's out there. It's a program that I didn't know existed. Well, if somebody is hearing this right now too, like,

There's time, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody's hearing this right now, reach out and we'll get you connected and make something happen, hopefully. Definitely. And that'd be epic. So that's it, man. You got a dog. You got a wife. Yeah. Pretty good scores in that order. Yeah. She said, Tiffany said over in the corner, give me looks. But just like a huge...

Progress in your life at this juncture, you know going through some of the worst combat Losing so many guys and now here you are kind of reassembled Getting it done Does that get us up to speed then? Yeah, I think so right on right on and so for people to find canines for warriors I know you're not really a big on the social media thing but for a canine for warriors

We got canines. It's K, the letter K, then nine, and then an S and then for warriors.org. That's where it's at. And then it's on YouTube, on Instagram and on Twitter X, all those, the same handle, same call sign at same thing. K nine S for warriors, canines for warriors. And that's where people can find this program again.

trying to make something happen for the reunion, maybe do a dog presentation there. That'd be freaking epic. Very cool. But I'm sure we'll see you and Caliber at the reunion for anyone who wants to come and meet Caliber. Oh, Caliber's getting fired up. She's like, hears me talking over here. He hears me talking.

So I got to also Mighty Oaks too. Yeah. Mighty Oaks. Biggest thing is that, you know, if there's somebody out there that needs help, it's, it's not, you know, swallow your pride and admit it and go get it before something bad happens. Don't, I think suicide is kind of a selfish thing to do or get yourself in trouble illegally. You know, like there's help out there. There's plenty of places. Try them. If one don't work, try something else or,

Go to the gym. Do some MMA or something. Awesome stuff, brother. Echo, any questions? Oh, yeah. Real quick. As far as like after the process of matching you guys up, you said you have two weeks? Three weeks. Three weeks to get to know each other. You said get trained up on like how to – what do you call it? Use or –

or yeah pretty much how to interact use your dog like they know so many commands so you have to there's different commands for different things um you know i can say side and he knows to come to my side and sit down yeah i can i can go to the bathroom we're gonna urinal and say look and he'll turn around and look behind you i mean it's he's literally covering your six yeah um so you have to

you have to learn how to integrate all the commands that he's already been taught, when to use them. I mean, they actually, they can brace. Like if you've got guys with mobility issues, you can say brace and you can put your hands on his back and lift yourself up. I mean, there's commands for getting underneath the seat or riding on public transportation or at a restaurant and he sits underneath the table. So you have to, they teach you how to use the dog. Yeah, bro, that's so legit too because you don't think about that kind of stuff, you know? Where it's like, bro, this is like a straight dog

Of course, yes, companionship, all that. But it's like, this is kind of like a utility, like, friend scenario, like your little partner. It's like a motorized scooter. Like, you have to learn how to use it. Yeah. So legit. You said something real quick, too. You said...

you get to know what people can't do to you or like the, like you, you just said, I mean, those are your words or whatever. Um, so you kind of what you get trained together and you kind of, what does that mean? Like the ADA laws, like where you can take them. Um, so like, you know, I've had a couple instances, nothing big, um, going to a restaurant and,

either get seated in the back of the restaurant away from everybody or treated differently. Like hotels can't charge you for a pet fee because he's not a pet, he's a service animal. So there's a whole class they teach you on that, on like the laws and stuff. Americans with Disabilities Act, like it's a whole thing. And so they just teach you how to identify that stuff. And you can't get discriminated against. He can go anywhere. I got an Uber on the way here and the guy kind of gave me some looks and I was like,

well, we've had this issue before with Uber and it don't work out. How, um, how,

how often like that for example how often do you run into that i've had him for six years and uh probably five times maybe um but at the same time k-notes for warriors they have a team of people that's their job i i have a they have what's called a duty phone it's like a cq or whatever if you have that it's a 24-hour number you call if you have an issue whatever your dog's sick or you can't get into a restaurant or somebody discriminated against you you call them and

They have a way to fix it. You know, they have a lot of connection. They have a lot of pool. It's not something you're, you're not going to make a million dollars and sue, you know, McDonald's because they won't let you come in. They, it's more about educating everybody else and being like, you know, look, he's, it's like a wheelchair. Like, you know, you can't discriminate.

you know the va recognizes it now as you know actual therapy so um they just teach you how to navigate stuff like that and they're literally always there when i say it's a family i mean they check up on you every month um they call you every month make sure you and your dog are okay um i had a the one i was talking about earlier that you know he was going through some financial times and worried about his dog they sent him like a couple bags of dog food i mean

They're not gonna let you fail. Yeah, I think their success rates probably up there with Mighty Oaks as far as you know 99.5% I don't think they've ever had a suicide or anything like that after it another thing You know when I went to canines before I went there I was on 20 medications Yeah, you know SSR stuff that I don't haven't taken since it completely off like, you know motrin and

blood pressure medicine and stuff like that. I'm off all that stuff in the last six years. And I really feel like that's because I am in K-9's wars. Yeah. Plus you got to like go out for walks. Yeah. That's a tough thing too. Yeah. I'll tell you what we, my, my, my dog died, um, that Christmas. And you know, my wife was, my wife was heartbroken. I was heartbroken too, but my wife was like, you know, immediately after like, I don't want to get another dog. Like I, I can't go through this again. Um,

And then like a few days later I came home and like my dog wasn't there. The house is totally quiet. And I just said, darling, we need another dog. She says, yes, we do. And so we, we got, you know, new dog, but, and just awesome, you know, like,

You got to take that thing for a walk. You got to throw it with that ball. You got to get engaged. He doesn't care. He's just wanting to have a good time and wants that belly rub and the whole nine yards. And so those little things. And this is just from a dog. My dog. I mean, he's an awesome dog, but he's not a dog. He doesn't know the brace command. Not yet. He's about to go home and learn it, though.

But, you know, it's accountability for me too. Like one, representing K-Downtown Warriors and two, I have him like a highly trained service dog. Like I have to get up. I might not want to, but like it's morning in the hotel. Like I didn't want to get up, but he did. So we're getting up because I'm not cleaning anything up and not going to make him suffer because I'm too lazy to get up. So we got up and we walked. And then as soon as we started, you know,

out the elevator door and outside, start walking. Fresh air, you're walking, you start feeling better, and you're like, it's because of the dog. Life's getting better already. Awesome. Echo, you got any more questions? Good to meet you, sir. Yeah, man, you too. Ryan, any closing thoughts, bro? No, just what I emphasize on, veteran out there that needs help, just don't be afraid to ask, and there's plenty of help out there. Awesome stuff, man. Well, thank you for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it, but more important, thanks for what you and your boys did today.

From Team Dealer in Ramadi. I mean, it was relentless day after day, night after night. And you guys were always there. You guys never faltered. And we will be eternally grateful for your service and the sacrifice of your boys. Appreciate it. Thanks, brother. And with that, Ryan Jackson has left the building. Pretty awesome to hear his story and just what he's been through. What he done.

And I'm telling you, get the book Ramadi Declassified by Colonel Anthony Dean. We covered on the podcast, but we only covered a little bit of that book on the podcast. And the fighting was so hard. The losses were so heavy. And to, you know, as you heard from Ryan, he was right in the thick of it the whole time. Eight hours into me and other areas. Eight hours there, eight hours on QRF, which is getting called all the way, by the way, just to let you know.

And then eight hours to prep for your next mission and eat and sleep. It's rough. Those are some real soldiers and some real heroes. So thanks to Ryan for coming on. And just to see what Ryan went through there and then faced some struggles and then out on the other side, man, doing awesome, making progress or has made so much progress. And it's a sign to me that we can all make progress, right? And look, maybe it's getting a dog. Mm-hmm.

maybe it is man I know my dog's good dog you got a dog too right I do technically speaking because you didn't select your dog right correct what kind of dog is it again Yorkie okay we've been through this before yes we have yeah thank you do you does your dog like to get uh petted yeah do you like to pet the dog I do now to be honest with you but at one time you did not yeah how come

Just wasn't into it. You know, whatever. Oh, is it dude? You're gonna your ratings are gonna go down bro. It's possible But you know it put it this way It wasn't my idea to get the dog was like yet another thing and I'm like, you know, but it was the classic tail Plus there's something I'm gonna reveal about you right now that you play it off pretty well But let's face it. You don't like things that jam up your your system. I

You know what I'm saying? I do know what you're saying. Am I accurate? I'd say, yeah, you're accurate. You don't like things that jam up the Echo Charles world, right? Yeah. Because you're going to do what you... You like to do what Echo Charles likes to do. I'd say that's fair. So if something's going to jam that up, technically speaking...

it's not welcomed right away. - It's not gonna be welcomed right away. So the dog was gonna, you might have to feed this animal, you might have to take this animal, it might go to the bathroom in the house. There's all kinds of jamming up that could happen.

and that's where you were against in the beginning yes the you know the classic again you're going to take heavies in this and that makes sense the world's going to be against you i understand especially after you see what that what what caliber did for for ryan you're over here just not wanted keep in mind that's different okay well you know the whole classic thing where it's like oh the whole family rallies and it's like you're gonna get canceled impossible

But, you know, the family's like, hey, let's get a dog. And then the dad's like, oh, my God. Like, who's going to end up having to take care of the dog? Right. It's like, so the dad's going to be against it. And then it was like, no. Then finally, the dad's like, fine. I got to think outside my own selfish wants or whatever. Let's get the dog. And then.

The dad ends up having to train it, take care of it, and then eventually likes the dog better than everyone else does. Is that where you're at? I feel that that was the arc. What's your dog's name? Maya. Maya? Maya. Maya. All right. Well, it could be getting a dog that gets you moving in the right direction. Yeah. And this is why...

I asked the questions I did because, you know, I've seen, obviously we've seen many service dogs before, but beyond seeing them and kind of little things you hear about them, you don't really know the depth of what really a service dog does and is for, you know?

So, yeah, I know I have my dog. We have our dogs and we know what they can do. So, you know, as far as like the good scenarios where it's like, yes, it's like a little companionship, the free, you know, like that. And so but you don't really know. But when you think about it and get more details, it's kind of like, oh, sure. They're all that the companion, like that whole part of it. But they're trained in that whole direction. That's an important part because.

You know, talking about like with Mike Ritland, who literally trains dogs. But you know how dogs, they know what your mood is? Yeah. Or they know if you're nervous about something, they know it. Like even if a person makes you nervous, they're getting like aggressive towards or they'll get...

to your nervousness about someone or something. And so what they do, you know, apparently talking to Ryan, it's like they take the dogs and they take those instincts and they hone them and they train them. It's like, oh, you're sad. Here's what I should do as a dog to get you squared away. Yeah. Cause they already can sense it. Yeah.

to begin with. And that part is true too. Where, and Mike Ritland is the one who turned me onto this whole idea where it's like, bro, that makes so much sense where he's like, you know, if I, if I know known you for a little bit, I'm paraphrasing, but if I've known you for a little bit and, or if I didn't know you at all and I see, and I say like, hi, and then the way you say hi back to me, I already know as a, just another human being like that, you're kind of nervous when you said hi, or that you're really relaxed when you said hi, like I kind of know that I can pick up on that. These dogs can pick up on that even more.

So when you kind of consider that stuff, it's like, oh man. And then you pay attention to your own dog. You're like, oh, bro, this dog can pick up on all that stuff. Because think about it. They're not distracted by your words or all this or the stress of this or stress. They're not distracted by that. They're just kind of reading you from moment to moment to moment to moment. So like all these patterns are emerging in that way. So they're so in touch with it. And I noticed that too about my little silly dog. Mm-hmm.

Like she just runs around like, you know, like I think strained for sure, but she's not one of these. But sometimes I am surprised. I'm like, bro, this dog's kind of psychic in that small way. Seems like it. How do you like my new dog? I like compared to Odin. I don't think I've been around him long enough to see the difference. I think they're

I was gonna make a joke when you're like, then we got another dog. I say, yeah, same dog. He just looks slightly different, different color. That's it. But yeah, same dog. Big German chick. Check. All right. With that, speaking of making progress, there's more good things you can do to make progress. Hey, a nod to Echo Charles. Get some rest. Yeah. It's part of the whole thing. Yes, sir, it is. You don't want to get jammed up. Nope. So get some good rest. Work out.

Train jiu-jitsu, run, sprint, and make sure you're getting some clean fuel. Yep, it's true. Really, that's the three things. Yeah, well, I know. The three, well, I can tell you that many, many times. What you do for exercise, what you do for recovery, which is rest, what you do for nutrition, that's the fuel. You know what I'm saying? Well, we need fuel. Check out Jocko Fuel. Check out jockofuel.com.

- Go to jocofuel.com, couple good things, authenticity, 'cause there's, I know it sounds crazy, but there's fake Jocko Fuel. Just like there's fake Jocko t-shirts, there's fake Jocko books. Like all those things are real, but you would think like, look, you understand how to make a book, a fake Jocko book, you just take the words and print them on a photocopy, right?

to make a t-shirt oh we don't even we just need a silk screen print and a design and we put jaco on it and sell it on amazon but you can actually get fake jaco fuel which to me is crazy and again we're cracking down on it we're on it we're law enforcement involved like it's crazy that this stuff is going on but it goes on but if you go to jacob.com there's no that's not happening

Also, there's like really good deals we put out on jocklefield.com and we got free shipping over 99 bucks By the way, our shipping used to take like a while to get stuff shipped, but we're out of that phase now Ships either that day or the morning the next morning So it's squared away and we got a whole like a loyalty pro which you know when when my team started talking about loyalty programs I Quite frankly am NOT a big like loyalty

Shopper. Shopper. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even, I like, I fly all over the place. People like, what airline are you? And I'm like, I'm all airlines. I'm all of them. I'm pretty, like, I don't even know what my status is in the various airlines. Yeah. You know, I'm not like, Oh, excuse me, a Emerald member coming through. But, uh,

So I don't know that much about it, but when they told me like, Hey, you got people that are using the product all the time, shopping at jockelfield.com, we should take care of them. I'm like, Oh, well, a hundred percent. So we got a bunch of things there where, you know, you can get earned points, you get money off, you get free gifts. Again, you get like new products that come out, you get first access to, there's a bunch of cool things there. And like I said, you got the subscriptions, which, well,

like between 10 and 20% off for those when you subscribe and you have to worry about not ordering it or it not being in stock. That's another thing at jockelfield.com. Everything's in stock. For the most part, 98% of the time, maybe 97% of the time, we got it. So there you go. Check out jockelfield.com. Also, if you don't get it there, you can get it at Walmart.

I heard Ryan mentioned Walmart. He went to Walmart a lot. Today, he was like, oh, you're going to Walmart? Walmart, Walmart. So we know Ryan Jackson said, well, Ryan, you can get Jogger Fuel at Walmart. Also, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Atheist, Hanford, Dash Stores, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas, Meijer out in the Midwest, Wegmans on the East Coast primarily, Harris Teeter, Publix. It's another thing you heard.

Ryan mentioned today. He's like, you're going into Publix. We're going into Publix. Go into Publix and get Jocko Fuel. Check that out. Also, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and Small Gyms. And we got a whole team that's out getting the stuff into small gyms and chiropractors offices and hair-cutting barbers. Hair-cutting barbers. The team is out there because people want to have Jocko Fuel. So if you're in one of those situations, you got a little shop or something, email jfsales at jockofuel.com.

take care of your customer and plus make a little extra money that's what we're doing also origin usa.com you can get jeans you can get boots you can get hats belts t-shirts hoodies jiu-jitsu geese jiu-jitsu rash guards gi or no gi i don't know look sometimes people are gee sometimes they're nogi sometimes they transition they go back sometimes they're like they're doing both so

I don't know. I don't know what you're doing, but we got you covered. Like literally covered because we got rash guards or geese. Got belts, custom belts. No, that's what we're calling them. Jiu-Jitsu belts and regular belts, by the way. Oh, that's right. At the origin. It's true. And by the way, all this stuff is 100% made in America, which is a big deal.

Because, and we've been making it in America. We didn't just jump on the Made in America train like seven months ago or jump on the Made in America train when they started putting tariffs and penalizing people for supporting communism. You're getting penalized for supporting communism. Okay, cool. We're not supporting communism over here. So go to originusa.com and get some stuff that's made in America. Hunt gear, boots, whatever you need. Training gear.

I was just skiing. I was just wearing Origin. All day. So good to go. So that's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Go get some. Speaking of having you covered, if you want to represent, discipline equals freedom. We got your shirts and hoodies, hats on there. Got socks on there. I know I keep saying that, but it's true.

Also, speaking of subscription scenario, new design every month. It's called the shirt locker. Subscribe. You're wearing that one right now. That's some kind of I didn't get. You didn't get. Well, I don't understand. Like Ryan understood it immediately. Yes. What do you say was? What is it? It's a. Well, it's a kind of a.

inspired by the old Nintendo Entertainment System game cartridge of the game Contra. Okay. Remember the game Contra? Yeah, because I remember you telling me about the Super Spreader or something. Yeah, hell yeah. So no, Super Contra has the spreader just like regular Contra. And a spreader is one of the weapons you can get. You know, these two Rambo type guys. Anyway, it's a game.

For those who know, they know. So, yes, if you look at the video game cartridge from the old Nintendo Entertainment System, this was like the graphics. But instead of Contra... He's killing donuts. Yeah, it's you. Killing...

Donuts. Hell yeah. I like it. So that was one of the designs, I think, maybe a year or two years ago, something like that. Anyway, so yeah, they're different kind of designs, all representing discipline equals freedom in some capacity, but they're just a little bit kind of outside the box type stuff. Anyway, people seem to like it. Yes, again, it's called The Short Locker, and it's on jocostore.com. Check that out. Also check out coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com. This is where you can get steak. You can get burgers, burgers.

you can get jerky. You can get beef sticks. You can get beef tallow from Colorado craft beef. I've been cooking in the beef towel now, like a hundred percent. Are you doing that too? It's good to go. Good to go. Now I haven't, I'm not one of these people that's like putting it on my skin yet, but that's the thing. Yeah. For real. Yeah. I've done that. So oddly, um,

I got, it wasn't from, wait, Colorado Craft Beef doesn't give the skin, do the skin one, right? You can put it on your skin. Oh, okay. Just the straight tallow? Yeah, just beef tallow. So I heard about the beef tallow. This is good for your skin or whatever. So I was like, all right. And so I got this one freaking, what was the company? It's somebody like we know. Anyway.

So I got it. It's like the smaller thing, more expensive quality. Hell yeah. And I put it on. I was like, okay, cool. If that's what we're doing, that's what we're doing. Just got to have faith kind of a thing. And bro, my dog just keeps like chasing me around and licking me. I'm not joking either. And I never put it on after that. So,

Just know. Hey, I'm not saying it's bad for your skin. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying, hey, man. If you got the dowel or something. Just know. Just know what you're getting into. That's all. If you're going to put it on your skin. Well, even if you're not going to put it on your skin, you can cook with it. All day cooking. And it's GTG. So check that out. PrimalBeef.com and ColoradoCraftedBeef.com. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Also, check out JockoUnderground.com. Those are coming out every week. We're answering questions. Check out our YouTube channels.

Check out books. We got a few books for you. For the books I referred to today, number one, Ramadi Declassified, which is from Colonel Anthony Dean. He was the battalion commander of the 135. Great guy. And he wrote an incredible book. So detailed. And get that book if you can. Also, I mentioned a book today called Love, Nick.

which is notes, emails, recordings of David Nick Crombie. Real moving book and just shows you the kind of people that are out there serving their country and have made the sacrifice that we can never repay. So thanks for that, Nick.

And then of course I've written a bunch of books, everything from Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual. And then I've written a bunch of kids books as well. Matter of fact, I sent the whole rack of kids books to Ryan a couple months ago and he was super stoked on them. Said the kids are digging them. So Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four and five. Also Mikey and the Dragons. Bunch of books out there for you. Check those out. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership.

If you have problems inside your organization, they are leadership problems. And that means that leadership is the solution. So if you want to check that out or you need help, go to Ashlandfront.com for details. Also, we have an online training academy because leadership is skills. It's a skill that you must learn. And in order to learn it, you must be taught.

So that's why we have extremeownership.com. It's an online leadership education academy. But no matter who you are, no matter what your position at work or at home, you're in a leadership position. So if you want to learn how to lead and improve every aspect of your life, go to extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. Incredible organization. You know, we...

through that organization are able to help so many people. And things come up all the time. I know there was just a veteran in need that reached out and within hours we were able to help that individual financially. So americasmightywarriors.org, incredible organization. Thank you Mama Lee for what you do. Also heroesandhorses.org, taking veterans up into nature to find their souls again.

Micah Fink, check out heroesandhorses.org. Also, Jimmy Mays got an organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org, helping SEALs get out of the military and establish themselves, reintegrate to the world. And then, of course, you heard about it today, Canines for Warriors. You heard Ryan's story. It's an amazing organization helping out so many people. And if you want to connect with Canines for Warriors on the interwebs, it's caninesforwarriors.org.

And then they have a YouTube, an Instagram, a Twitter X and a Facebook. And that is at canines for warriors. And if you want to check us out, you go to Jocko.com. You can also check us out on social media at Jocko Willink and then at Echo Charles. And just be careful because when you're on there, there's going to be people that are going to try and destroy your life one millisecond at a time, one swipe at a time. Don't fall for it. Thanks once again.

to ryan jackson for joining us and thanks to you and your brothers for everything you did for us in ramadi for the army and for america thank you brother and thanks to all our service men and women with a reverent salute tonight to team dealer bravo company 26 infantry it's an honor to serve alongside you guys thank you for your service and your sacrifice

Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service and sacrifice here at home to keep us safe. And everyone else out there, look, man, the path is hard. Life is hard. And sometimes things don't go well. And sometimes things get dark. And when that happens, remember the services and the sacrifices that have been made to

Remember that there's people that gave their lives for our freedom. We owe it to them to go out there and live. And that's all I got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.