Ep. 198 | Ian Fritz | Airborne Cryptologic Linguist

Ian fritz Man, Welcome to the show. I really appreciate you coming on. Uh, you got this book coming out, and we pulled up what the Taliban told me. I've been I've been reading through it. I'm about halfway done. Really enjoyed it. Were the first part of it really sucked me in, just because just describing the gunships and stuff, because that's something I'm, you know, kind of have a background in as a jaytach, so it'd be cool to hear more about what you did on them as in that support role. But yeah, let's talk about why did you, uh, why did you join the Air Force and go the route that you did?

Yeah, the short entries because I have a lot going on otherwise. So I joined at TECHNICOS eight team. There was like a couple of months shy at my nineteenth birthday, Yeah, unctually right after high school because I didn't get into college out of high school. And I grew up in a small town in North Florida, and I was just a waiter at a Chinese restaurant and that was for the foreseeable future, all I could do, all I was qualified to do. So I was trying to figure out, you know what else to do with my life. And I remembered that in the tenth grade, an Air Force recruiter had come to my high school and he had talked about this job of an airborne cryptological linguist. You know, he didn't he didn't really know what it was, because like why would he He

didn't do the job, but he knew that it sounded sexy, sounded cool, and he knew how to make it sound sexy and cool. He was a good recruiter. And I had sort of had this idea that if I had gone to college, I would have studied language in some form. So I said, no, well let me go maybe let's see if that's a thing, Like is that still real? So I went to find my recruiter in the time I grew up in and he said, yes, it's still things still real, and I started the process from there. That's awesome.

So I know in the book you talked about how multiple people in your family can speak multiple languages, and that's always been like a gift that I know. It's something I tell my own sound. I'm like, look, you got to look at it like math. You know, you have to do the problem over and over again and then you start to remember it and you figure it out and then you can just do it. That's that's kind of the same deal. I was never really good at foreign languages. My dad he has that kind of that talent. He can speak fluent Spanish, you can do like sign language and stuff like that, Like he dedicates time to it. It's just not anything that I could see myself doing. You in the book, you said you had multiple people in your own family that spoke

multiple languages. You yourself weren't as a depth to it at first, did that having I mean, correct me if I'm wrong about what I'm talking about the book and the book you said. I think you were in French in high school and it wasn't really something that came to you or that you were that great at. So if that was the case, what drove you to do that job? Yeah? I was not good French in high school.

Part of that was like the high school I went to, and but most of it was me and not me, not you know, trying. I think, Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question that I don't know that I still have like our that I I probably could have answered really well then And now I'm like, I don't know, why, why did I Why was I so set on that? Because my contract said, you know when if eight x one airborne carthological winist, like that's what I was going to do, and if I had failed out, like I wasn't going to do anything else. I was dead set on that, and I the best answer I can like think of, trying to remember back, is that basically the reason my members of my family spoke multiple languages is because both of

my mother's parents are missionaries, and so they my mother grew up in West Africa. Her father and her mother you know, lived there for decades as missionaries, and there had been some idea within the family that, like, somehow I would do that work. And a major part of at least their role of missionaries was so my grandfather spoke many languages, and that's like really important, right. You can't prosselytize in English if someone doesn't understand English.

So there had always been this idea that I would do that, and I think that was the best idea I had of like what I could do in the military that wouldn't be you know, just a generative job or something, and that also wouldn't be like, like when you did, because I could never have done that. Well, I mean we all say that, right, I say, when I see like Corman or medics, you know, in actual combat scenarios, that's that's a job where I'm like, man, I couldn't do that. I mean, because you know, you're dealing with like what you're dealing with on a on a day to day. But I guess it's every person deals with it differently. But I think I probably could deal with it, deal with it if I had to. But you know,

but I know what you're saying, So I want to get back to you were saying that you came from a small town, didn't really have a lot going on, so you joined the military. You know, a lot of people dog on the military that it's like no other option kind of deal. But I don't really see it like that, especially the Air Force, because the Air Force is the hardest one to get into. I think maybe now the Space forces because of the requirements and stuff like that, but the Air Force was one where you had you had to have graduated high school.

You could not have gotten in any kind of trouble, especially a job like yours that's going to require ts clearance down the road. I don't know. I don't see it as that, but I do see it as someone that may have come from a low income background as a way to vault them into the at least lower middle class at first, and you know, give them some opportunities they may not have had had they stayed in their hometown. You know, what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean I say there's no other option, because like I had no other option. I'm not you know, I don't think of it large that way. I think it's you know, a wonderful Yeah. I grew up like quite poor many time, many years, and now I live a very good, comfortable life.

I got to go to college, I got to travel around the country all these things, and I sort of wish it was open to more people in some form or fashion, right, like a greater civil service or something, because I don't know of another way, Like if you think about the Peace Corps, Okay, but you have to live broad for two years, and like you have to learn a language, and like maybe you're not capable of doing that for whatever reason, or other small, small, small civil service, but like the military is the largest entity that could take people from places right that they just couldn't otherwise get out of and help for them exactly like you said, like move up social class or education class or income class or

whatever. But that is like maybe the greatest thing that it offers two American citizens. Yeah, for sure. And I think a miss a misconception a lot of like everyday Americans that don't have any idea of what goes on in the military. You have is that it's all focused on combat, where at some point, yes, okay, it's all focused on combat at whatever, But an admin guy isn't likely to get in combat, and most of their job is going to be like an office job, like a normal nine to five office job, and they're going to learn some stuff along the way.

You know. There's like I talk about, like the Hope and the Mercy, those two ships that get sent to different places when there's natural disasters. I'm like seeing the stuff like that that happens that people don't even realize, like you could be a part of that. I'm from a military family, so I've seen it as a I don't know, I've always kind of thought I was going to join, and then I thought it was a really good opportunity while I was in, and I took advantage of you know, when I was in, when I first came in, I didn't like my job for the first few years, and I ended up switching over from being a mechanic to being a jay tach or being a Ford observer then onto j Tech.

But and that's the kind of opportunities that it allows. And you know what you were talking about being nineteen years old being in a town, like what am I going to do? I'm not going to school. I'm kind of working at a dead end job. There's a lot of people out there like that. That's a lot of like teenagers that are trying to figure out, you know, should I go to college? Where right now college is being demonized because of you know a lot of different things that go on in colleges at the same same time, you know, blue collar work. People see that as like, well, yeah, I might get paid pretty good upfront, but I'm gonna break my back over twenty years, so is it worth it in the end kind of deal. It's a weird time frame for

kids, you know, I do I feel even if you get past like, yeah, whatever's happening in colleges or like politically or philosophically, just the outright cost of it. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. And then if you go you can look at people study you know, the trends of a return on investment of a bachelor's degree now, and it's like, okay, an the grant for what? Yeah, yeah, it's it is insane, man, And it's it's and not to get off like I guess onto like political topics. In my opinion, it's brought on by the government being involved in like the loan process. You know that shouldn't be the government shouldn't be part of the loan process for colleges. Ever since the government has gotten themselves involved in guaranteed loans, the cost has gone up because they know that the

government's guaranteed loans from the government, it's gonna get paid. And the amount of like leadership in these schools is out is just crazy. I got out and I recomm and I even though I rail on college sometimes about some of the stuff that they do, I recommend every veteran uses their GI bill. Maybe you use it to go to a four year university, maybe you use it to go to a two year school like a community college, and do some technical training. Maybe you use it to go to you know, Wiotech or something like that and learn how to work on cars. But there's so many opportunities for it. Don't get in your own mind that you think that it's just like a traditional four year experience and understand that you're getting an opportunity.

Like you said, people can go into one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a debt real quick, especially if you go to a private school like USC's right up the road. You know, imagine what the tuition there is for four years and you don't have to worry about that because you have the GI Bill and a lot of colleges have these yellow ribbon programs where they pay the difference if the GI Bill doesn't cover it. But yeah, man, there's a little quick thing about college. Let's talk about so you joined the Air Force. You know, you really didn't have that military influence in your life when you got to boot camp and stuff like was it what you thought?

You know? Did you did you see Full Metal Jacket or anything? And that's what everyone does, right, They watch Full Metal Jacket, then they go to boot camp. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean we don't like, right, Air Force. It's it's basic training. It's not a boot camp, right like I, you know, compared to what like Marines and Army and even Navy. It's probably sort of kid globy, is my guess. Okay, I mean I had I Looking back now, I think I was a little I was pretty fortunate that my uh TII or not the guys with guys and the Air Force training instructor. I think he had been Army and he had been I want to say, he'd been a mechanic and army, and so he was like real tough, uh in a really good way, like good guys like me. I just knew nothing and we're

pretty soft. It was very it was basic training I was in when I did it, it was six and a half weeks. I think it's now eight and a half. It was sort of transitioning at that time. And honest to god, the thing I most remember is that it was just super busy and sort of weeks and months after I left Basic Training, I found out that it was because they had stuffed the eight and a half week like curriculum, like all the stuff that they had planned on doing in eight and a half weeks for future big training into the six and a half weeks that we did. So all I really remember is I was just like we just never don't do anything like you hear about, you know you talk to other people who went before, or do you talk people from the branches, So

like, yeah, they spent a lot of time, you know, polishing stuff, shining things, like doing kind of like sweaty work or whatever, and we just like ran around all these like meetings and other drill and you know, Pete and all that stuff. My but my TI was maybe closer to fulmental jacket and that he did yell an awful lot, and he memorably like I don't know bed you guys had, but ours were. You know, there's like metal slats that you plunk into four corners and they're just like on poles. And he just like kicked one in the middle of the night and flipped you out because you just kick it straight up. But that was probably the closest I got to anything like that. Nice. That's still fun though, you know, that's it. I think people would be surprised by

how many kids it's just a shock to be woken up every morning and told to make their bed, you know, like so a little bit of discipline goes a long ways. Probably yes, yeah, absolutely yeah. After that experience getting and then moving on to you're gonna go to your your job training, you know what was what were the thoughts like after boot camp some people some people get out of their basic training and then go, man, this wasn't for me, and or like they just they got that training mindset where they're just getting kicked along the way. You're the new guy. You're getting marched everywhere. You're not allowed to do anything on your own. Were you still okay with your decision at that point or were you know you regretting it

at all? I was okay with it. I Mean. The thing about so like Airborne and Linguist specifically is it's my training was three years. That's long, but the average is like a year and a half. You have like five tech schools, I think. So I love basic training. And it's at last one Air Force base for the Air Force. Like everybody goes there, and there's a medina which is like an annex technically across the street.

And that's why I went like a mile across the road to my to my next school, and it's like a three week, just fundamentals. It's air grew fundamentals. It's just like here's what a plane is, right, Like, here's how flight works, here's how helicopters work, like very very simple stuff. But it was probably it was like the more introduction to like, okay, fast paced learning, that sort of thing I think to like try and answer your question. After that, I went to language school, and that is that is the real probably the most the hardest part, and it has the highest washout rate of linguist training. And that was where I was like at the very beginning. I think probably everyone has this feeling of like, oh boy that I signed up for because at first, learning a

language that quickly is like daunting. Yeah, yeah, I mean. And the Defense Language Institute is well known within the military, even people like me that haven't been. It's known to be a pretty tough and pretty like the people that come out of that are pretty well trained. You know, you're not gonna get much better training than than what they're offering there for for language before before we talk about that, you have to qualify to even take that.

And I've heard about this test where you got to take like a made up language. Can you kind of talk about those requirements to even get into a linguist job, like like what you had, Yeah, yeah, so you first have to like get it. There's a I don't know what it is anymore, if there's a minimum score in the ASPAD. So like when I met a recruiter and I had to lose bunch of weight, he was like your key bat. So I lose much weight and I came back and there's a different recruiter. It sort of shuttle through and this guy was like, hey, I want to do this job. And he's like you're from Lake City, Florida, Like he didn't think I was gonna get a high in a pass bad. So that's hurdle. And I did it and it is fine. And then yeah, you take this test called the Defense Language

Aptitude Battery or the d LAB and it's probably or like this is what people say. It's based on Esperanto, which is a synthetic language that this Polish ophthalmologist invented in like the early nineteen hundreds or something. But it's as new as I can sort of looking back. It's sort of just like a functionally like a logic test of how quickly you can assimilate rules. Like so they just and it's rules around language, but they say, you know, the structure of a sentence is going to be subject object verb or verb subject object or verb object subject or something like that, and it's all you have to very very quickly figure that out. And then there's a there's a decent amount of they play you know, sound A sound, B, sound C.

Which of these is different from the others because I do think that some people, you know, just the way that their brains are wired, they can't necessarily hear the difference in sounds. So like if you learn Chinese, right, that's a requirement. It's a tonal lenk wuige. So there's a lot of that. It is a really hard to test. I mean I barely passed it. I got like two points higher than the cutoff or something.

And I think now I wouldn't have passed because I think they've written if the Air Force at least raised the cutoff, because the Air Force did have the highest minimum requirement on it. You know, it's another thing that's interesting, like you're you're learning darry and Pashto at the time, obviously, I guess a really important language to have because we're you know, operating in the country and stuff all the time. If you if you were still in right now, you know, what would they be what would they have you be doing?

You know, is it you still work on the intel side, just doing that kind of thing, like still translating. I mean when we're not in an active country and it's not a really common language, you know, at least if I know different kinds of Chinese, that's could be pretty common in a lot of different areas, whereas Dari and Pasto are pretty specific.

I suspect by now. So you can get kind of you talked about retraining earlier, you can get re languaged, so you stay as a linguist, but they send you to learn a new language, either a Dlai or there are other places. They're just like small dalis. I guess a light I would imagine a lot of posture linguists are probably be language by now, because yeah, we're not we're not operating there like in any meaningful way, and there's not maybe maybe you know, like you know, intelligence work against the talent, and I guess, but and then maybe a bunch of darry so Dari is functionally the same language as Farsi. It's basically just like an accent in some bocabulary differences. Probably a lot of Dari people got, you know,

pushed to doing more Iran focused work right instead of Afghanistan focus work. But I would bet I would be re languaged. I bet if I joined right now right the the I mean you were in roughly the same time I was, right, Like, every service had a huge recruitment during Iraq, and then they got rid of a lot of people, and they because they like get over recruited, and sort of the same thing with languages. That'll you know, it takes a long time to train a linguist, so they train up all these languages and then by the time they have enough people, it's like, oh, maybe that mission is going down. So like, I don't know how many Russian linguists there were when ukrain got invated, but probably not enough. So probably there's a huge, huge number of students learning

Russian right now. That's so crazy to think that that you would just have Oh, hey, by the way, we're not in Afghanistan anymore, so I need you to learn this language now and be like, oh man, you know that's not eat people who yeah, they had learned like like Serbian because they've been around in the and then yeah, I was like, well, we're not doing that anymore, so go learn diary. You can do work in the next place we're in. Yeah. So when you get to the d l I, when you get to the Defense Language Institute, what's it like? You know, is it a well we a lot of us in the military, for too, is like a gentleman's course where they're not really tough. You know. The focus here is learning doing the job and

learning what we're learning. The military stuff is there, but it's not like you know, I'm not there's not drill instructors or anybody yelling at you. It's a pretty more relaxed environment. Is it like that or something. It is definitely more relaxed. It's not. I only say this because so the school I went to after the sergeants, we had their like routine, the sort of you know, would say, oh, you're not at college anymore.

They had this idea that it was like a free for all, like that we were wearing cities every day and doing whatever we want. It's not it's not that far you know, loose, but significantly lighter. Yeah, because eight hours every day, you're not getting taught by military, you're getting taught by civilian instructors, right, non native civilian instructors, Like ninety percent of the instructors are not non Americans. So there is you know, yeah, your PT few times a week or whatever. People mess up and you have to everybody has to go to formation. You know, there's a dui or something like that, but you're you wear a uniform very day. But yeah, it's it's pretty separated from big military stuff. Yeah, yeah,

I mean I could it's it kinda how could it not be, you know when you're talking about it. Yeah, I don't think there's a better I honestly, like if you tried to, it's exhausting as it is, and then there would be periods of time when you know, our squadron would say oh, or to do more PT, or to do more this, more that, and you just watch like everybody's just like falling. It's a sleep looking class or or like long a sleep on a drill field or something like that. It's like, no, if you if you're expected to be in school for forty hours a week, like that's probably all you can do.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, God, that would be so mind draining too all day long and just I don't know, just kind of going through it. It's such a weird. I mean, it's such a weird environment compared to like a lot of the other schools. Especially I didn't go to well when I was a mechanic, like it was all marines.

It was on a marine base. When I was in a Ford observer, it was on an army base, but we had a marine detachment. Do you guys stay within your own branches? There is everybody just kind of lumped together into one kind of big group union. You know, you're like separate at al Rez there's like Army stuff and maybe stuff Marine stuff and then Air Force. Like every is their own union and their own leadership and all that.

The classes are completely internexed. Yeah, you could be in school. I was in school with one yeah, one soldier and a few marines. Then maybe because's like I can't stand at Landmark country, yeah, but the other so like Chinese, that's like everybody, right, you can imagine that like everybody would be involved in that, like every service would maybe have a requirement there. Probably I think Arabic has basically everybody because of the number of countries who speak Arabic m h. Yeah, they get they get really mixed.

And the bigger languages like Chinese and Arabic, they're just like China's a much bigger country than Afghanistan, and Arabic has spoken in way more places, So you have much bigger classes like one hundred and something people or in a moment, and so you get much much more intermingling. How many people don't make it through this training, you know, make it through the language training.

Yeah, it's it's a language specific and like year specific because the language saying I think is sort of obvious, like certain languages are harder than other languages. Yeah, and then like years, a lot of it comes down to a lot of it can come down to your teachers. So my class, I think we had probably like a forty percent dropout. Wow, But like Pashto at the time, so when I learned Pashu separately, and like we can talk about that later, but at the time, Pastu had like a seventy percent fail rate or something like that, like really really really high.

And especially when you think about that could be like that's anywhere within a year where just a lot of people will fail out immediately. Right, a very smart human. I knew he was like a master mechanic at BMW, master mechanic, super smart guy. He just could not learn a language. That's not how his brain worked, so he thought out pretty early. But then other people will go through a whole course and to get to the end and you have to take a final exam and they can't pass the final exam.

Okay, well they just invested a year of training or a year and a half in some other languages, and like low and the hold, nope, you didn't make the cut. Dang, yeah, I'm that. I'm like your friend, I cannot for whatever reason. I can pick up a little bit here and there. I had to learn a little bit of I think we were doing Darry because I went as an Afghan advisor in twenty thirteen.

And language is one of those things, especially when you're in a class, especially when it's a high paced class, because they're just trying to, you know, introduce you. If you don't, if you don't learn the basics and kind of keep up with that part of it, everything else down the line is just a wash. Like I'd be sitting in a class I'm talking. I'm like, I have no idea what he's saying right now, because I was lost yesterday. You know what I'm saying. It's yeah, that was the problem I had. I mean, I just could not do it. So, like I said, I understand what your friend. It's it's no different than any other job, you know, Like I told people, that was like being a j attack. I know a lot of guys that tried out to go be a jatack and didn't. Not a lot,

but some that went tried out and just didn't make it. Super good dude, super good forward observers, you know, really good with what they do. But there's something in that high paced environment, with what we were doing that they just couldn't, you know, distinct click for them. And it's not that they're bad at their job or anything like that. It's just that just wasn't the job field for them, you know. And I imagine language learning is a lot like that, yeah, or it's like that, you know. I maybe it's the same for learning to be a jtack. But like I bet there's plenty of people who truly like one more day, but one day slower than could have got it. Yeah, for sure, has just said like, no, this is the standard, like this is what

we're gonna do that, and that's fine, Like you have to have standards. I do think that. Like it's assuming you're not like like you or like my friend, like someone who's just you know, wired that way. It's like I can never I couldn't un again, I know that because I'm spatially super dumb, like I don't like I can't see parts and cawthings interconnected, really bad at it. But assuming you're like wired something like weird, right or just different, and you you know, you pass the elbe and all that stuff. You get to language school if you really, if you try like it, you will learn. You just have to because it's so much time every day with your native instructors. But can you learn according to the military standard, Yeah, that's very different much. Yeah for sure.

Now let's talk about when you get to your unit, when you finish training, your your initial language training and you're heading off to your unit, how hard is it to maintain that language like capability because it's not like you're sitting around a whole group of dudes like you that speak the same You're probably one of one one of two, one of three at most. You know, how how hard is that to maintain? You know, what do they have you do and stuff when you first show up. Yeah, that's a good one. So what's it's maybe a little bit worse because you so got finished language school the first time, and then I went to my next tex school, which was in What's Texas at a good fellow Air Force base. I was there for like at least three months, and I was there with a

lot of my classmates, so we would, you know, just goof off like we'd still speak the language because we could. It's it's like a superpower, right you can just talk and nobody can understand yourselves, but you're not in his formal classroom environment. And then I had to go back to syr I'd already been this year before language school, but I had to go back, and then I had to do another like water survival training. So I didn't get my unit till five months, four months after I graduated language school.

And then yeah, I mean you I think bigger units and most everyone linguags they go to Omaha, they go off the Air Force base and there you'll you'll have a lot of people who speak your language and they have like a very my understanding is out there. They've like formalized ways to keep up with their likenanguage that I got assigned to applock to Air Force Special Operations Command.

It's a smaller unit where yeah, there were ten people who spoke Dari or something, so we were kind of like you're literally left your own devices, like how you decided to keep up with that for Dari for watch Too Later. It can be harder because there's not as much stuff in the world. So you can imagine if you're a Spanish linguist, like okay, good turn on the radio. The number one artist in the world is Bad Bundy right now, right, so cool Spanish is available to you. Even if you spoke Russian. There's Russian films and I'm a newspapers. That sort of thing when you get into the nicher languages gets harder because there's just like not as much material. You'd really have to sit down and be like, Okay,

I'm going to read the BBC in farc today, like that is what I'm going to do instead of like I want to go watch a movie in another language. If you beyond that, the Air Force at least has sort of every year you have to get retrained to some extent, so or every two years or something, and they send you back to school for a month and you can get like a month of dedicated you know, one on one training with not one on one but classroom training stuff, and that's that's how they sort of they help. But it's part of your job. Is your job requirement, Like you can't fail your language, you can't fail your exams.

You can, but then you have to retake and all that sort of stuff, and that affects all you're qualified of your job. So much of it is just like it's not you. You got to keep it up or you can't do this job anymore. Yeah, that's so that's what I kind of figured was like, gott to find newspapers, gotta find YouTube videos maybe you know, or whatever you can in that language, and just kind of immerse yourself as much as possible. Yeah, that's that's got to be tough though. So you're talking about going through seer and you're going through this water survival training and stuff like that. Can you explain to the listeners how you ended up going down to ass SoC compared to your guys. You know, everybody else that went to Omaha would like to I don't know that I can

because at the time, and to something extent even now, I don't know why. My so, my best friend and I there were like twelve people are in a language class that are in the Air Force, and all but one of them were gonna be airborne. So eight, I guess eight other people all got sent to Omaha and my best friend and I didn't. And we had like no idea why I got orders dropped. We all knew our orders were coming in to this day, we're all just like refreshing on computers, like you know, over and over and over again. And he and I get orders to say you're going to Herbert Field in Florida, and we're just like, what is going on now? I talked to him and he says he thinks now or somebody told him that he and I both signed six

year contracts and everybody else that signed four year contracts, and so that was why we got chosen. There was a need right APPSTOC needed. The people who thought that ASSTOC needed like Afghan languages right was actually useless. Like that's why we had to go back and under fash through. But his understanding was that it was because we had signed six year contracts, the training, you know, would take longer, and they would also have us for longer to do this very specialized, specialized job was in a specialized career field. Yeah, especially when you're talking about three years of training, I mean, you almost it's surprising. It's surprising that not everybody has to sign something like that.

It's a bummer for the guys that signed six year contracts because they hit that four year mark with everyone they're serving with, and those four year mark guys go away and you're like, man, I still got two more years. Yeah. I wasn't like that, but I know plenty of guys that got super bummed after all their four year buddies started getting out and they're like, what the fuck did I do? You know? I mean, I I was lucky that, like, none of my four year buddies were with me, right, But yeah, that almost to a man, they all got out. Yeah yeah, yeah, So, I mean that's cool.

I've been down to Hurlbert. Not everybody likes it down in that area, but I was flying out to do some training down there, and it's a pretty decent area. I thought, was it weird you're from You're not too far from there right in Florida, you're from that area kind of I agree. So I joined the Air Force to get out of Florida, and I gas stations like four and a half hours from Bridgroll. That's what I was gonna say. Like, I had a Corman in my when I was over at Anglico. He actually lived like forty five minutes north of where we were, of Camp Pendleton, And I'm like, that's got to be weird to just be able to go home on the weekends, and like it's almost like you're living a reserve life because you're seeing your family all the time, but

you're still I don't know, is that weird to be that close to home? Did you take advantage? Did you go home much? Sorry? I didn't, Like I didn't have why I'm in Lake City, Florida, Like there's nothing to go home to pass food and gas stations. I don't know, that's good stuff. And still I think Florida is like much bigger than people imagine a few so four hours, yeah you could. I guess you could go home a weekend, but it's like you have to leave Friday night and get a consu anymoreing, So I didn't really I didn't really have an incentive to. I think, like the middle I was from the middle of Florida, and I lived on some of the best beaches in the world, Like whether you like Destin or Formal Beach or whatever, is truly some of

the best beaches in the world. Beautiful, white sand, super nice. Yeah, really nice. So it's like, why would I go to Lake City, you know? Yeah, and it's right there, it's on the I'm out here in California, So if you want to get in the ocean, you know, you could contend with two to six foot waves depending on what day it is. You're not really getting that there in the Gulf of Mexico and Destin. Let's talk gunships, man, So so you get assigned to gun ships, not something normal for guys in your job at the time.

Can you kind of break us down different types of gunships, the different roles on the gun ships, and then we can get into specifically you were on the Whiskey correct, Yeah, yeah, so I I got so as time at Hoverfield. They were at us with the U boats. Okay, arguably the most famous gunships right in the round. They're in call of duty like all that stuff you've seen in the movies and someone says a gunshit in the movie. That's what they're come about. So that's why I trained on actually was was they see when they're used. That's why I got qualified out on and I didn't. I wound up like cross training to the whiskeys in Afghanistan. But sticking to the U boat right so to sea when thirty all seamen thirtys are just cargo planes, that's what they're designed for. Sometime in

non some like mad geniuses had this idea, what if we put a howitzer on a plane? And they did that. They took a one hundred and five millimeters how it's there and they stuck it in the side of a sea one thirty and they said, all right, let's make this work. And then they did. And guns that big they can only fire so fast, right, so like whatever the number of rounds per minute is, it's it's not that many for one to five. So then they said, okay, what do we what do we put some smaller guns on there? And then they so they overtime, they step a forty mili Bushmaster and a twenty five millimeter gap gun on there. So you've got the three side by side sticking out the side of the plane how itzer forty mil twenty five. That takes

a lot of people, right, So the gunship crews like thirteen fourteen people depending on whether it is a was there, so you know pilot, copilot, navigator, a flight engineer. You've got the sensor operators. So big thing about a gun ship. You know, you have the guns, you can shoot people, but like how do you find those people? So you've got the sensor operators, and then you've got a fire control officer so they're responsible for sort of aiming the guns and managing the guns. If you've got an electronic warfare officer. So that's a historic thing, like that was really important now I'm right, Like planes got shot down all the time. Then you would want to track sort of incoming service to air missiles that sort of

thing. And then you've got the gunners in the back and the gunners like physically load the guns right, like the gun the galley maybe right to beltfed. It kind of doesn't need a lot, but the the one oh five you have to physically like load, reload, load, reload, remove shells, all that kind of stuff. And then you have a load master who has to balance the plane because putting all the bullets on the plane makes it pretty weird, and so they're responsible for that. And then you have the the so Dizzo direct support operator and linguist is not like required for a gunship to fly at all. Everybody else I talked about. I think you have to have those people. You can't fly without a fland engineer. You can't

fly with that navigator. You can fly to that for sure, and plenty people would prefer to fly, but when when it does apply. As you're sitting there's a on a gunship. You can find videos of this online. There's a it's called the booth, and that's where sort of all the people, the you know, pilot copiles are up front, and then the gunners are in the back, and then everybody else is sort of in the middle in this box you're sitting in with all the various technology that exists. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting. They we did some training with them down here one time and they landed over Mere More and let us feel a walk around. They're really interesting uh, yeah, they're really interesting aircraft. You

know, to just even be inside, it's like, wow, this is the way it's all set up and everything. It's like this is a just, i don't know, not normal. Obviously. The closest thing, the closest thing that we have in the Marine Corps was when they started using the harvest hop where they took to See one thirty, put the Griffin missile on it and put hell fire missile on it, and those are really you know, we loved having those on Station two. So that was the good thing.

And we'll talk about this more. Because your aircraft was a daytime flying one. That was a thing we liked about having the harvest hackets because you couldn't get any kind of See one thirty support during the daytime. They ace one thirty support during the daytime, so a harvestalk could come on station and sit there and do scans for you and stuff for like three hours and they know an employee ordinance is necessary and stuff. It's not as cool as flying low and shooting the gun and stuff like that, but it's like, in my experience, most of the most of the stuff that happened was during the daytime. Anyway, so it was more logical for him to be up and providing close air support during that timeline. So let's talk about your role specifically

on the aircraft. What are you bringing to the mission? Why are they bringing you on board? You know you said some people may not want you guys there. Why is that? Yeah, So the job of a dessert is, uh, you know, provide threat warning. That's like to the aircraft and to ground personnel. So I always say, and I still say this day, that basically I worked for you guys. I worked for a jay Kunk, right, I'm there, you know, to protect the plane.

But in the time that I was in Afghanistan, there weren't you know, real threat for the most part, like gun Shy're still not gonna fly during day because big easy target fat you know, slow, no and the guns you got shut down in a rock for the exactly reason my flying during the day. So they stopped doing that. But for the most part of my job is provided their warning to people on the ground, so you know you can you're just listening to push a talk right radios like that's what the title went, are using so big fancy walkie talkies more or less big battery powered walky talkies. Not dissimilar to a lot of J tech radios, I think, yeah, just not as good, but not dissimilar. Not encrypted obviously, yeah right, and so yeah, you could listen to them and

you know they talk about all sorts of stuff. The reason maybe something people right, there was a running joke that like a Dizzo is not worth their weight in bullets, and it's because pretty much every other job on the plane, you can see what they're doing. And so gunner like physically puts a bullet in a gun. That's really important. The sensors, you know, they're operating their cameras. They're what you're talking about, like you have to find the guys who are shooting at you or planning, you know, the farious stuff. You can see what a sensor's doing. Foken appy, everybody same thing, Like you really understand what they're doing. You look at a Dizzo and it's just like a nerdy person with e throms on. But that's

what you see, and it's you can't explain it because you're like, well, yeah, let me explain two years of training to you, and then like maybe we'll have a conversation you know, it's not worth it. And the other thing is that a lot of the time we are not providing like actionable, you know, information, because a lot of the time there just isn't any right, there's not always firefights, there's not always like bad guys plotting, and so you could have whole missions where to the rest of the gunship they're like, why were you here and what did you do? Do anything? Yeah, yeah, it's funny. In twenty eleven, we had a guy we we were I was the fire's chief and one day I was with three six at the time, and one day we had the one of

the nets, one of the radio frequencies that we were listening to was a single channel radio frequency that we were using, and it was encrypted on our end and stuff like that. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden, I started hearing you know, Dari or pasto or something coming over, and I'm like, what the hell you know this is on our now, Like, what the heck is this? And then it stopped for a couple of minutes and it came back and I'm like, hey, we got what is this? And they brought in some dude I had never seen before on this little fob and these some nerd dude come walking in and sat down and put the headset to his ear and started writing it out and you know, writing it out in that Arabic like whatever however you describe that kind of writing.

And I was just like, who are are you? Dude? Like where where have you been? And it's just some guy locked away somewhere in a closet just listening to radios all day. I was like, man, that's a crazy job. And then I never saw him again after that. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, so there's their ground linguists and they yeah, that's what they would do. I mean, I have friends from language schools, so they did. They go work somewhere and they work like ten hour shifts. Yeah, it's all They sit there and listen and they type out, Yeah what is that like? Man, I mean just to listen to I mean obviously the weird voyeurism of it, right of just listening to conversations. Like you said, not every there's not gunfights going on all the

time, so a lot of these conversations are probably just mundane general conversations. What did you think about that? Just hearing such like personal talk from people. It was a developing thought process, that's for sure. It's sortally it's very strange, like at first, you because at least in the role I was in, right that my job is to buy threat warning, like that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And the thing that maybe people told me and I just didn't listen because I was yelling and stupid, or maybe they told me and I just I couldn't understand it, is that like the necessary part of that of doing the job of providing the threat warning is listening to all the mundane stuff because you can have mundane until it's not right, like

everything is good until shit hit the fan, and but you have to you don't know when that peak is gonna happen, so you do have to listen to all this stuff. It was very strange because it is I would be hard pressed to imagine something you could do that and not be like, oh, I'm just like listening to people, because before you know, if I describe it to maybe even to you or other people who did your job, it's like, no, you're like listening to the talent man like, and that's that's this whole idea they shot at you. And like bad stuff was happening, and yet they're they're back guys. They're absolutely bad guys. But also when you're listening to them and you're hearing all these like normal conversations like

oh, but they're people too, and maybe you know, to people who are smarter than me, that's like, well duh. But to twenty two year old me, who had like trained to do this very specific job, is not the sort of duh thing. It was like, oh wow, this is very different thing when you were in training, you know, I imagine they have some kind of audio tapes or something for you to listen to as like training guides or some or training aids or something like that. Do they is it all just military stuff that they introduce you to or is do they include a lot of just general conversation. So like in language school, right, that's what you're learning. Is there are some you know, obligatory military lessons. I think there's also changes depending on the language you're in.

So I think that like Russian language school, there's probably a lot of really complicated military stuff because they have a huge military dusty complex. Afghanistan not so much most you know, ninety percent of my training is like normal stuff. A lot of it becomes the news and you know, like reading like economic papers about economics and stuff like this, because you have to get really good at the language. Even though you listen to like really basic stuff, you do listen to other taray stuff. The things that you're talking about like get really classified, and so that training is there's not as much of it.

They're just like can't be right because you can only listen to it in certain buildings at certain hours of the day with certain people around and like that sort of stuff. And at least for for what I did there, there was also just less of that because you know, you can imagine if if you think about Russia, right, you can record how many thousands of hours of like Russian material like Russian you know, big communication networks do people record?

Probably probably quite a lot because as like if you're recording the Taliban, you're only going to record like when they're fighting, right, Like why would you or dudes asking other dudes about, you know, how's the weather? Yeah? So you you yeah, like and it's expected that you already know that, like the fighting stuff. Maybe it's not expected, you know, because that's a different type of talking the way the way you talked on a radio in the middle of a firefight is like not English to other people. Right, If you just took a random civilion and say, hey, guys talking about they'd be like, I don't know, and so that's stuff that you do have to learn about that. But why would anybody be like, oh,

yeah, also, hey, remember they're gonna ask about like house to cousin, how the weather of the road. That's yeah, I mean, would could you if you listening to them listening to conversations all the time, these normal conversations. Are they similar to the conversations you would hear if you sat down on the chow hall next to a couple guys or we're just bs and you know, and you overheard that? Is it? Is it kind of the same vibe? Or are they having conversations that you would never even consider. I don't be in conversations I would never consider because I'm not you know, these it's he's talking over a push the talks I'm not listening to like phone calls or anything. Right, So for sure, you know,

hugely, I'm never gonna hear like full in depth somebody to like wax philosophic about somebody like you probably you know, call a buddy, just notthing bad happened in your life, and I'm like, I didn't need to talk about Yeah, I'm not gonna hear any of that. I okay, you'll learn dick jokes for sure, right, but dudes are paining an attack and they're making dick jokes absolutely whining complaining, right, Like I imagine you spent many a cold night in Afghanistan, Well so did they, and so they would talk about it. Yeah you're gonna do you're bored and freezing your ass off, like of course you're gonna talk about it. We had our Afghan linguist with us and he carried a monitor where we would listen, or he carry

a radio where we would listen to some of the the transmissions back and forth. And it would be crazy because we'd be in like a firefight sometimes and he'd be talking shit to him, like in the middle of the firefight. They'd be like, we're gonna cut your head off, and he's like we're gonna kill you, you know, like this weird back and forth and we're like, dude, stop, like what are you doing? Like that's not helping this situation. Probably, Yeah, that's crazy that he talked to them, Yeah, because it was just a regular radio. It was like there, it was like one of their radios and he just had it to listen to and he would tell us, like I remember one thing that you know, I passed back to. It was like, they're not afraid of like

fixed wing aircraft, you know, They're like, oh, you know, I had a I had a harrier coming in to do a a simulated gun run and then do a show of force kind of pass because we couldn't get clearance to drop. And the commander on the radio was like, just hide the trees. They're not actually gonna drop, like they knew we weren't actually gonna drop any ordinance. And I was like, man, these fucking guys, you know, It's like, yeah, that's what I always told people.

I'm like, don't you know, you gotta you gotta respect what they're doing with what they have. You know, part of it is through brute force. You know, a lot of one thing a lot of people don't realize is a lot of these local Afghans don't care about the Taliban either. You know, when the Taliban shows up there would be we would we would hear about fights between the local Taliban guys and the international Taliban guys, the guys that would come down from Pakistan because they're coming down and like, where are you guys messing stuff up? You know, you have to give us a house to live in and give us food eat while we're here. They're like, dude, we're out here fighting every day and saying like what do

you You know you're coming down from the good life. It's such a weird dynamic when you start hearing that kind and those other conversations, and you got to hear that all the time, which is crazy. Tell us more about it, man. I mean in the book your first your first mission out was a crazy ass fire fight, and it sounds like you were just inundated kind of sensory overload from everything that you were hearing. Yeah, there's there's a son of work text of that. So I was talking about how I was trained on Acy thirty U gunship and I got to Candahar and they the MC when thirty whiskey doesn't exist anymore. It was at the time they were prototyping the next generation of gunship, right, So it's you think this is

all look stuff on the internet. It's like the Harvest talk It's right. So it's a sort of roll on roll off platform and there's a Griffins on it. So that's why they were like, we need people on this because exactly what you were talking about of like daylight something on a real gunship per se. But you know, overhead sensors and you can drop some version of ordinance. So I got switched to flying on onto that it's flying is in the job. I did, Like it sort of doesn't really matter to some extent what plane you're on, so it's very quick to just cross train.

So I got qualified on Whiskey and yeah, my first mission is this a huge battle that you know, the numbers are like three hundred Taliban tried to over on a fob and it was really it was a bad day. I mean six six Americans died. I think they're a fair number more got injured and like so many, so many Taliban died because we were dropping like just so much, so many rounds. So like fighters just are coming and dropping bombs. Was wild and it was yeah, it was absolutely center we overload where that mission was so like without getting super duper nerdy, right, you have language, like you have posture as a language, but posture in itself has dialects, so there's sort of like Eastern and Western posture, and they

there are like some letters that sound differently, and so whole words will sound different and it's the same word, but like it sounds really weird. And then you get into you know, like Afghanistan is that the countryside is wild because you've got these huge mountains and these deep valleys, and you could theoretically have like person in Valley A try and talk to person in Valley B, and like they don't have huge communication. There's a giant mount in the way, and so they didn't go back and forth, and they like maybe have a hard time understanding each other because they have really weird accents because like language of alves over time in certain locations, so where that vision was, it was really hard to understand, you is. And it was such a giant

fight. Like three hundred callows, right, let's say even ten percent of them were talking on radios, it's thirty dudes talking all once, like trying to keep track of that when it's your first time doing your job for real, I'm sure, people who am I smarter than me? You could have done that, But I was not one of those people, and I was flying as an instructor, and like together, we were sort of overwhelmed.

But it was at least for us, it was kind of okay because you know, we were on the whiskey during daylight and there was so much going on that you know, everybody else was doing all the bombing and shooting and all that kind of stuff that fortunately, you know, wasn't that like I got somebody killed or something because I couldn't do my job by day. So in a situation maybe not like that, maybe one that's less hectic. Are you listening to them go, hey we're going to move to the west.

Hey we're going to attack from the east. Is that kind of the general sense of what you're doing. Yeah, I mean they're they're basically doing, you know, in a tick, so troops and combat or is the firefight whatever. Yeah, they're doing general just like field battle communication of yeah, move move up, like the Americans are to the east, like so we need to go that way, or hey bring the gun like they you know, you know what disc it is, they guess fucking gun and there aren't that many of them, but when one shows up, it's bad day, like for you and for you know, good guys. So they would say, hey, you know, we're getting that, Like there's one that was you know, two miles away, we got to bring it in or something

like that, or it's you know, hidden somewhere in the village, we got to get it out, or you know, calling reinforcements or being like we're gonna we're gonna move around this way, or you know, we've got other guys that are waiting over at this place, that sort of thing. Have you do you? I mean, so it sounds like you're like getting called in like on the spot for different situations rather than long term. I'm not maybe in I'm only about halfway through the book, so it could be farther into it. But do you get to know anyone like by listening to the same conversations over same people over and over again, there's all these different you know, every time it's it's pretty much in my role, it's pretty

much always different because I would the whiskey ops and gunship ops just in general or sort of yeah, somebody planned to raid, talk about a gunship op at night, like you guys are gonna go raid some dillage or whatever. Okay, cool gunship gets tasked to that for that night. Big big stuff like maybe you know, like a week ahead of time where you're going maybe like usually it's sort of date day or even like I had plenty of missions where we were on you know, Op A, and a tick opened up one hundred miles away. One hundred miles a year isn't that far, so we would just be like, all right, all right, we're done with that. We're going over here. So for me, it was no.

I didn't really ever like hear the same dudes talking, okay, did when you know you're going in for a raid. I imagine you guys are coming on station before obviously the raid touches down, the rainforce touches down. Is it kind of crazy to listen to maybe no conversation or light conversation and then hear a ramp up as they realize what's going on. Yeah, So I mean night versus day. It is like cliche lead that different because during the day, right you could, people are doing all kinds of stuff. People just talk about shit, they got my planes, and they're doing stuff at night at three'clock in the morning, if you're talking on the radio, probably doing something a little shady. And yeah, they they you know, because

even on a you vote normal gunship right, you're still like ten thousand feet dog. It's like the cone of what you could listen to is fairly large, so you'd get you know, some bullshitting or whatever, like guys complaining about the cold. But then you'd also if you're really overhead them mop you're like, Okay, I'm gonna try and find here and there. Sometimes they're like truly, yeah, they're absolutely unsuspecting. They're just talking whatever, doing their check in. They're like, oh, I hear something, you know, I hear a planing man, but who knows what is gonna happen.

And then next thing they know, the doors are getting kicked in or even better, you know, better for us, worse for them. Uh it does it planned out? I mean you you know, you guys knew you were gonna get resistance, So these days you're just hanging out and then the country just lays down until we know, yeah and then everything goes wild.

It's always been kind of a weird for me. It's weird for to imagine like air crews that go out and do work in a combat environment and then just come home land and then like, oh, let's go to Greenby and and get a coffee. Like it becomes like a super chill almost environment, you know, whereas like an infantry guy, a lot of times they're out at a fob or a patrol base somewhere, living in the mud and that's kind of their life for the next seven months to a year. It's a it is it weird to come back to almost not comforts of home, but you know, not a really bad living situation, like going out and hearing these like crazy combat events and coming back and being like, all right, let's go to the chow hall, you know. Oh yeah, and that's

what we do, dude. Better. Yet it's like you wake up, you go eat breakfast, no matter of what time to dat is who cares eat breakfast? You could fly come back and yea it's dinner time, Like I'm gonna come back. Oh I gotta go to the gym. I gotta lift. Like at the time, I sort of remember, I didn't know anybody thought about it, because it's just like, you know, humans are really good or getting accustomed to whatever it is, whatever environment they're in, but absolutely comfort. It's like I'm coming, I'm not sleeping the mine, I'm sleeping in the freak container air but with air conditioning in the summer, and like Wi Fi, and yeah, I gotta walk a quarter mile to the chow like Lottie do. Those walks were the worst though they are,

But yeah, look now, yes, it's very strange. And I mean the thing that blows my mind, and you'll talk about it later in the book, later than where you are right now, is like drone operators doing that, because those guys and women are dropping, like potentially dropping missiles on dudes and then like driving home to have dinner with their family. Mm hm.

And that is absolutely banisty. I was just talking to somebody about that the other day. I was like, that's just such a crazy It's gotta be surreal, you know what I'm saying, Like, you, how can you not how can you not bring some of that home with you, especially if it's if it's a clean drop, if it's a good drop. I know this dude's a bad guy. Whatever, man, that shit like that's not gonna bother you, but it does happen where there's collateral damage or something happens, something didn't go the right way, and if you're in country, you have you know, you're in country, you can deal with it.

In country, there's like debriefs, we can maybe lessons, learn, maybe whatever, talk it out when you're doing that, and then leaving the base at the end of the day, you're back in the real world, unclassified world, you know, Las Vegas or wherever. I don't know, Man, it's so surreal to even think, like, I don't know, it's it's crazy. It's it's I hate to like compare it to playing video games, but it's almost like fucking playing video games, but the guy on the other end isn't a character in a video game. You know what I'm saying.

It's so crazy. I had, you know, because right, so, like I played Call of Duty while I was training on a gunship, like not like at the same time, right, but I would like apply and I'd do so many flights on my training, and like there's days in between you and I'm hanging out in my dorm like called Goody my buddies and the screen when there's like gunship missions and Call of Duty the video game.

It looks exactly like a gunship, right, it looks like what the centers see because it's really old, outdated technology. It's just like black and white tea screen. You're on a gunship. That's what you see like in real life. So like, yeah, it is like a video game, because like they're video games that have mimicked real life and for the for the the people are doing drone stuff. Man, you said like so real. I have a pretty significant suspicion that it's like unreal that they like because I have a friend who did similar work and it's not just seems like no, you're like you're really separated from reality. Like it creates a true break in it because that has to be reality A and your life has to be reality B.

Because exactly what you said, Like I guess the only way I put it is like otherwise you would be bringing violence home and it's not like you can bring it home and talk about it. No, and you define those people everything they're doing, like I did stuff, right, I gotta write a book about it, and you just like we can talk about this a lot, like not everything obviously, but plenty of it. I don't think a single drone operator could write a book like legally right, So how are they supposed to talk about it? Yeah? Man, it's so wild.

It's like, you know, there's probably people that doesn't bother at all. They're like, that's just what it is. I go to work and that's work. But there's definitely got to be people. It's probably kind of like if you are one of the nuke officers, the nuclear officers, you got the keys for the actual nuke and you're sitting underground, and it's like is this real life? Man? Like we're just sitting here, Like what if I actually got the phone call to push the button? You know, like wait what? You know, It's it's got to be somewhat surreal to kind of be in that position every day. I don't know, Yeah, I think a lot of it. Like definitely for me, you know, early in my deployments and stuff, the training is over is able to like override

that sort of and I think at least I can't speak to being drawn upper because I didn't do it, but at least like while you're working, you know, it's it's real high stakes. Like I had a mission y J I got shot, Like that was awful and so I can't. I can't really have that going on, you know, like if that's what's going on so much, like I can't, I shouldn't be doing my job, Like I should quit doing my job. The word the heart segnically hard things again when you get home, whether there aren't stakes to stop you from thinking, there's nothing that's going to prevent you. You don't have like some greater obligation you maybe you know your family, loved ones and all that, but your day to day interaction with your family, like that's not as high stake as

the firefight. Yeah, how are you supposed to like choose that or prioritize that or something. Yeah, So dude, that's such a thing that I tell people all the time. And I'm like, when you get out, if you had a if you had like for me, being a jatach, being in a combat arms job where even in training things can go wrong, it's like could be life and death stuff, Like even in training if someone drops a bomb wrong. My very first field up as an artillery observer, they shot a they shot a one five five round and it landed fifty meters from me. You know what I'm saying, so it's an inherently dangerous job.

On accident, they put half the powder in the gun that they were supposed to This was the check round that was supposed to determine that they were safe to continue shooting. So when you leave a job like that, it was really hard for me to care really about anything because I'm like, it's not life or death, like this doesn't really matter, like nah whatever, you know, because you're used to, like say, care about anything.

But a lot of things become like whatever. Man, which is also a good thing, because I don't let little things bother me, right, But I also don't let big things that probably should bother me bother me. Right. What I'm saying you'll get to it later in a book. But like a guy I worked with, you know, and he said to me once, no problem that anybody has is worse than any mission I was a grown but hands fucking down, there's no way what's going on in your life is as bad as a bad op in Afghanistan. And like maybe maybe that's not art century, right, Maybe you know your wife and kids die in a plain accident, okay, card accident, Like okay, there are right, but the spirit of that of what he said I think does hold true,

Like yeah, like how am I? Why would I give a flying fuck about the bad day that you had? What am I? And you? I had to and a lot of people, I know, I had to learn, you know, read me, learn how to care about those sorts of things or like unlearned how to not care about those sorts of things. Yeah, no, it's that's a go ahead, go ahead. Yeah.

So I went to I went to Columbia after I got out to study biology, and like Columbia is real hard, real rigorous university, and you know, people would ask me, well, you're I mean it's it's completely integrated. So like there are there's technically a school that has like veterans in it, but we take all the same classes as the normal undergrads, sometimes classes like nineteen year olds. People be like, man, how do you you know put up with them? Like because they're they're truly whining about exams and stuff. And eventually the conclusion I came to that is it helped me a lot, and if you can help anybody else, you know, it's like on some sort of objective level, yes, like you having one hundred and

fifty five milimeters bullet laying fifty meters from you is far more stressful than any test any kid is taking. But also, like you experienced this amount of stress from that bullet, following this nineteen year old is experiencing the same amount of stress from this. They absolutely are, because that is the most stressful event in their life for sure. And that was the thing that allowed me to be like to offer some grace. I guess. Yeah. I think I heard that on Joe Rogan. They were talking one time, or I think he said it a couple of times. He said something like, the most stressful thing you've ever done is still the most stressful thing you've ever done.

Doesn't matter in contact with other people, you know, that's the most stressful. Like crossing a street as a kid can be stressful, you know if you're a little kid and you've never really crossed it on your own kind of deal, because you're looking thinking you're gonna get ran over. It's what your mom and dad told you, you know, like, yeah, yeah, you know, you're one hundred percent right. And one thing for me was going to school afterwards. I had to kind of kind of come to the realization or not realization just these kids haven't lived life yet, you know, Like you can't judge them for not understanding or having a slanted viewpoint because they've never done anything. They're all they've come straight from high school. Now

they're in college. Everything they're being taught is second you know, secondhand knowledge, third hand knowledge from other people. They haven't a lot of them haven't got out and experienced life yet, you know. And that's what I always tried to like this, I've told the story before, I think, but there was this girl in my class who was like, man, I was in Italian. I was taking Italian when I got out, horrible idea.

She was like, oh, you know, there's no culture in the US. And I'm like, what are you talking about, Like there's tons of culture, Like it sounds like you haven't traveled any like quit letting people tell you there's no culture in the US, you know, or no culture here. And they're like, look at everything that we have, you know, look at the United States as a whole. There's so many different regions and you know, people the way people talk, the way people eat, the way people live, dance, listen to music. You know, it's just that's just such a bad thing, And it wasn't like I wasn't mad at her, and I just kind of I made my point that way is kind of like explaining because I know she's never been anywhere. You know, she's

only regurgitating what her friends and what teachers and stuff have told her. There's no culture in the US. Well that's a lie, you know. So yeah, one thing I got was just understand that they haven't lived yet, you know. And and also a big thing I always tell people too, is like, if you were in some shitty stuff overseas, do you really want people to understand that, to be able to understand that, you know, Like, why would you want to bring that kind of stress into anyone you like, love or whatever's life, you know, because that's it can be pretty heavy. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's some merit to like letting people know conceptually that those things happened, right, because I do think that there are ways that I'm going to respond to things, or

ways that you were going to respond to things their way that you know, infantry guy are going to respond to things that are rightfully quite different from how the vast majority of people in America are going to respond to things, and I like there should be some sort of le way there, like, yeah, well we're responding for a very good reason, Like we have good reasons for that. But yeah, like the like my friends who are going to read this book, who I've been friends with for ten years, who know nothing of it, they don't know any of the stories in it because I've never told them. It's like, wow, yeah, I suplicitly write about this, Like why would I Why would I share my inn certain negative emotion

of choice and be it anger or sadness or grief or whatever, Like you can't do anything about it. Why am I going to give it to you? Yeah? Yeah, you don't need to share that burden. Yeah, I've come to a different conclusion. I have come to the conclusion that somehow you do need to find a way to not share the burden because I STI don't want to give it to anybody. I think you're one hundred percent right, Like I don't want to give that negative stuff to people. But I think that we, as like possess of that negativity also can't be responsible for holding on to it completely. Like I think that that's a huge problem, right, It has been since World War two. It still is to some extent today, like yeah, like this is my you know, my burden

to bear my low of my cost and carry whatever that sort of thing sort of, but like you got to be like good stuff out there. Yeah, there's got to be an outlet for sure. There's got to be an outlet. That's why I like when guys write books, guys start podcasts. You know, people write blogs, people do artwork, whatever it is.

You know. I think a creative outlet is really important for people, especially as you get older and stuff like that. You know, it's just something to help, I don't know, be an outlet, you know, just like let that let all that energy of whatever you're feeling into whatever it is you're working on. I've had multiple people that have come on the podcast that are like, dude, it was so great, you know, stuff I haven't talked about forever. And they're like memories are getting stirred up and stuff because of different things. And I'm like, yeah, dude, it's when you're not it's so weird. People that are still in won't won't get it until they're out. But when you're in and you're like talking to people every

day and you're in the same job deal and stuff. Especially you're having these conversations and it's just like you're talking or whatever. When you get out, you're especially if you go back to your hometown, you're immediately separated from all of that. You're back, it's almost like a time machine. You're going to go back in time to where you were before you join, and no one there will understand what you're talking about it all, you know, and that's why you got to find another way to like have an outlet. If you can't, if you don't have anybody within your community that you know understands, then you got to, like, I don't know, find something, find a VFW, find an American Legion or something to join. You know,

there's always old timers airtelling stories, write a book, do a podcast. But yeah, man, I think it's important for people to share their stories. I've I've been enjoying having people on the show because I think it's a good it's a good record of people's service that will never be in history books, you know, because it's always major stuff that's in history books in generals and stuff like that, but the individual person's perspective on what they did and also, I believe is educating the general public on what actually happens in the military. Like if a recruiter calls me and says, I want to be you know, they need a radio operator, they want radio operators, Well, what does that even mean? You know, like that's I may

have the understanding kind of in my head, like what is a radio operator, But to actually hear from someone that was a radio operator what they did in country in the US whatever, I think is invaluable. But I mean, I think it's super cool too that you can get so many people from you know, special operations, special forces communities, because that stuff is all it's all movies, right, It's like everything's going to be claimorized or just change in the most part. Yeah, and it's it's super cool that you can get those stories that are very true and like not everyone, yeah, not everyone did Blackhop Down. Okay, still did a lot of crazy stuff that isn't going to be you know talking about you know, and everybody did

their part if they were in the military. I hated it as a mechanic. I was miserable, and they had to let us know, like in Iraq, like look, here's what you're doing. You know, you guys are doing good work like they need. You're fixing the armor on the vehicles, You're doing this, you're doing that, Like this is stuff being used, but it feels like you're not doing anything because you're not like in the fight or whatever. So it's a man. I hated that. I don't know. I was miserable when I did that, And I don't know what my point was. We were talking about we were talking about having people on.

Oh my point was everybody has a part. So even as a mechanic, even though I hated it, and I didn't understand the big picture of like what we were doing and how it was, you know, helping shape the battlefield or whatever. You know, I don't know, you got to come to the realization now, even if you weren't in combat, you you had a part in it. You know, you had a part in like the mission. I guess, Yeah, you are contributing to like a cause greater than you, like whatever the cause might be. If you want to get super super meta about it, right with like Defense of America, or if you just even dudes who are rolling out in and wraps like they need good functioning armor on that or bes stuff happens to them. Yeah for sure.

Yeah it's I don't know it's but yeah, like we were talking before, like we're saying, just for people finding it, find an outlet, you know, to express yourselves and kind of let things out. You know, you got to have a decompression valve to let some of the steam off, and that outlet. Maybe just call on a buddy that you served with, someone that you have talked to in a while and just kind of catching up, seeing how they're doing. And it's weird when you call someone that you served with, because it's almost like it's almost like almost no time has passed, you know, the lingo comes back, the harassment about you or your buddy or something that happened one time comes back. You know, I don't know if you've experienced that or not since you've been out. Oh yeah,

I keep saying this and hopefully it's not repetitive. Like one hundred percent of exact sentiment is in the book talking about that because I called people to be like did I remember this right? Like? Am I saying this right? Like is this true? Or what you remember too? And I think in too so so I went to school after I got out and I went to medical school after that, and they are not, you know, very many veteran positions. I think it's a lot of it's just a time, Like you did this thing in the military a long time, and like the road to med school is very long road, and like why would you do both of those unless you're stupid and stufforn like me. But there was a guy who's a year above me, who was a corman in the Navy,

and he was a very he's a really good dude, and he you know, I found out there were a couple of other veterans in my med school class, but I happen to be the only one who deployed, so send them to combat. And he even what he'd been attached to marines in Afghanistan. And within probably three minutes of meeting, we're you know, making like I'm making fun of him for being the Navy. He's making fun of me for being in the chair for us. Like never seen this man in my life, never met him before. He's five six, seven years older than me. You're above me in med school, Like we're not from the same places, we didn't join for the same reasons, but instant sort of camaraderie.

Yeah, oh yeah, cool, cool. No, we have this thing that like the other people who were you know, we well gone to a dinner. These other people in the military that they did very different things, very specialized things, like someone was in band and you know that's where it's widely different from what we did. And even from them, we had a you know, a separate level of camaraderie. We had some with them, but we had even as much closer for love of us. Yeah, I think that, like I'm hopeful that you know, there's so many bad things about COVID, but huge upside of it is that like things like this exist that you know, you're having different time zones, different places, hundred miles apart. Hopefully more people can find that sort of thing, to find

that community if it's not you know, local to them. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent for sure. Let's talk about when when you're writing the book, you know, you're pretty you're pretty honest in it. You know, you're not afraid to like call it, you know, hey this person was a dick, this guy did this, you know, not like accusatory or anything, but kind of to give a more context I guess into their personality or something like that. Did you find that hard to be honest and you're writing when you're talking maybe not in the best light about you know, some of your fellow people that you worked with. No, I mean everyone's name has changed. I think, like the there are like thirty people in the world who could identify some of these people, might you know, I

think if they were like public using personalities I met it feel different about it. But also, to some extent it's my recollection. It's not necessarily true that this person's a dick, like I felt that they wrote like also, but I was twenty two and like I was a dick, So okay, just different you know, personalities. I think I'm pretty careful to not you know, say objectively this person is bad, like you should dislike this person.

It's just like, no, this is how I interact with them, and I don't. I don't. I don't think there's a harm in that. And I think you know, saying that there is a harm in that, I'm not saying that you're saying that, but like, conceptually other people haven't been like, oh, how could you say that about that person?

It's just like human interaction. That's like everybody, And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just it's for me, it's interesting, And again I think you're right. Everything you just said is correct. For me. It's interesting because in normal human human interaction, you wouldn't go up to someone and be like, that's a kind of a dick, you know what I'm saying. But these are people that you know, did you ever have did you have anyone reach out and be like, hey man, what the fuck do you? I mean you said you talked to a lot of them anyway to make sure the stories were pretty accurate. I mean it hasn't.

The book hasn't. As we were talking, the book hasn't come out yet, right, So oh that's true. Yeah, I forgot I gues No, no one has reached out. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I don't know if they do. I'm going to say what I just said, which is like opinion like Names of Change, Like if there's a whole legal team in Simon Schuster that you know read it and you know make sure.

I wasn't like beelling anybody or anything like that. So for anybody that wants to get out and maybe write a book or something like that what advice do you give them? I mean, you're hooked up with Simon and Schuster, which is a legitimate publishing company. How do you how do you make those kind of connections, how do you move forward with writing? You know, give us some insight there. So in my case, it's like some initiative on my part and then like a big old cascade of luck. I book exists because I did. I wrote an essay that I sent to The Atlantic a couple of years ago when sort of the tallegam was taking back at game stand and it was meeting up to our withdrawal, right, which was like, I don't care about anyone's politics. The withdrawal was a shit show

for many reasons, for many people's faults, like all that stuff went wrong there, that's for sure. I wasn't necessarily interested, and I didn't write about like the fact of the withdrawal and like all the ways that it was bungled. But I was. I was writing about like the Taliban taking back Afghanistan and that, you know, ten years ago, when when you and I were there in the same year in twenty eleven. It's different for linguists that everyone I worked with knew that that was going to happen, right, So as it was happening in the months leading after that, I had a lot of feelings about this, and I had a lot of feelings about my feelings about this, And I think what you said earlier is very very true

that like outlet like etymologically like getting it out of you. For me, the only way that I could do that was to physically write it. So I just wrote this sort of essay truly to just like get a handle on my feelings. And as I wrote it, I thought, well, maybe, you know, maybe other people could benefit from this. So I was very very lucky and very grateful to a couple of professors I had from med school who write, one of them as a writing professor, one of them is a physician who writes. They helped me edit it and I sent it into the Atlantic and the Atlantic was kind enough to publish it. So that is the device I would have, is like initiative if you if you have a story that you know, unfortunately it's usually a story that other people haven't

heard. I think that's a large reason like why my story was published and like why it was as successful as it was, because how many people have ever heard of the airborlt linguist? Right? Not that many. But even if that's not the case, even if you know you did a normal write or less sexy job or whatever, I do think that if you had something to say about it that other people haven't heard, I think that taking the initiative to try and get that into a cohesive story is very good. And then after that, for me it was luck. Right. So this article got published in Atlantic. It's sort of, you know, like went viral, whatever that means. And I've got another writer's name is Kevin Mauer.

He he's like a he co wrote No Easy Day, Sorry about there'llig lot of the mission, you know. So he read the article and he called his agent, his literary agent, and he said, hey, you should you should find this guy. So that my now agent found me and called me. And he called me on a Friday or something and he said, hey, you're thinking about writing a book And I said, absolutely not.

I have not talked about writing a book once in my life, not this book. And he said you should think about writing a book. And I said, let me, let me think about it. And I thought about it and talked to my partner and she was very supportive and I said, Okay, I'll write the book. And then I said, you know, how do I write a book? And he said, yeah, you'll figure it out, and I did. He was right, I think again, just getting I think potentially a lot of people write the idea of sitting down and writing a book, like who say it's a book? That that is like this big scary thing. It's really hard, like that makes you're a writer, and like all that stuff. I think sitting down and telling a story most people I know who in the military pretty good ton stories because like

that's what you do. You're hanging out, you're training on visuals and you're just you know, shoot the ship if you're in Afghanistan and you're cold and it's night and your tone stories is your peace to just like be entertained. If you're on a plane, you're doing it. You know, you come back and you talk about the good old times. Like I think that's sitting down and telling a story is a far and more approachable way to think about it. No, yeah, I agree. I think that's that's interesting.

And with the mindset too, that not every story has to be written into a full book or has to get printed. You know, this could be a story you tell for yourself, if if for the people listening, and you're considering something like this, even if you don't want it to get printed. Maybe it's something you write up and then one day someone finds it or whatever. You know what I'm saying, that's your that's your story. But that's cool, man. What that is? Good luck? You know that, Like all I mean huge, huge amount. Look, how do you even reach out to The Atlantic? Did you have a contact there or did you just cold call, like, hey, I got this story boom?

They have like they have they call them desks. They have like a politics desk, a culture desk for everything. Had this idea's desk. It's just an email like these ideas at the Atlantic dot com or something like that, and they take they take cold submissions. Wow, that's awesome man, that's really cool. And for that to That's exactly what happens though, is you get into something like The Atlantic and then you have all these people that are in the professional world that are in that world read The Atlantic. I can see it and go, oh, hey, you know there's something more to this. Yeah, what you mentioned earlier about the Taliban taking over. I remember we were we I was an advisor in twenty thirteen and Singing, and

we were the last advisor team in Saying And when we pulled out. A couple months after we pulled out, the infantry unit that was there pulled out, and it was supposed to be just the A and A, and within like six months or a year of us leaving, it was taken back over. One of my buddies sent me a YouTube video that showed like the bizarre area was just barren, you know, nothing. It was just the whole area was just dead, when before it was like shops and people doing things and just all just all kinds of stuff. And I was like, man, so I think when Afghanistan the withdraw happened, I wasn't as surprised as a lot of people were, you know. I was like, that's what'd you think was gonna happen? You know. I remember being on Twitter and

they were like, hey, we think the military can last five months. The Afghan National Army will be able to last five months. I was like, they're not gonna last five days. And it was literally like three days later, the whole shit had just collapsed, and I was like, that's what do you expect with the level of abuse, you know, soldiers not getting food. You're talking about if a Taliban group rolls into a patrol base, an Afghan patrol base, and all those dudes each have one magazine of AMMO and not a lot of food, and they say you can either turn over, you know, join us, or we're gonna kill you all.

What do you think they're gonna do? You know, like they're yeah, they're not properly and they're not properly outfitted, they're not properly supplied, and all that comes down to corruption. We sent plenty of money over there, but where that money went. You know, for whatever reason, our politicians and our diplomats and stuff set the tone of accepting a certain level of corruption from the Afghan people because it was a part of their culture. You know, they would say, this is an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem.

Yeah, ten percent of the soldiers on this roster or ghost soldiers, meaning they don't exist. That pay is going into someone's pocket. But if we don't do that, then we're not gonna have a commander. It's like, okay, well we're setting a base of corruption. We what do we expect gonna happen? So it was very unfortunate what happened during the withdrawal. It was ridiculous the withdrawal. Trying to withdraw from a city rather than a fortified base was fucking dumb. And then I had on a guy I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but he was a contractor for the State Department and he showed up. He got a gig as a medic, like a week before the withdraw happened, and he said he showed up and everyone at the State Department in Kabul was all like business as usual.

He's like, do you guys he just came from the US where he's watching the news and he's like, do you guys know what's going on. He's like, there's still work request being put for painting walls and doing all this stuff. And then all of a sudden, it's like a switch flipped at the last minute and they're like, bring in the sledgehammers. We got to break the you know, break the computers and stuff. And it's like, I don't know. When you hear about that level in competence, it's it's very infuriating, like it we knew it was going to happen, but it didn't have to be as bad as it was, you know. I mean again like the politics entered for people different from and smarter than me. But the problem, my best guess, is that so much it has to be

just like weird, some cost fallacy, like yeah, we were there for twenty years, and it's like you're not telling yourself that, you know, business as usual, Like I'm contributing to this goal, whatever that goal is, Like how could you stand to be there? Yeah, so so much of it I has to have come down to like, well, yeah, we already put in all this effort, just just a little bit more, that's surely going to fix the problem. So much money, so much money wasted. I remember they spent when I was in Margin in twenty eleven, they spent like half a million dollars to build some kind of like fruit stand or something basically another like little stalls for them to sell fresh fresh produce and shit. And it was like the worst construction you could ever imagine, you

know. And then another thing they spent money on was building a computer cafe and internet cafe at the are in Marja and so people could access the internet. And within a week of it opening, I want to say it was only a couple of days, but I'll say within a week of it opening, the Taliban put an RPG into it. You know what I'm saying.

I'm like, God, it's crazy, dude. It's such a crazy world over there. People. I don't know. It's hard to explain, you know, and it's gotta again. I'll come back to it. It's got to be so much different for you because you have a whole other, like aspect of understanding of what was going on, because you're actually hearing the people talk. Most Marines or whatever. It's gonna be like folk to Taliban, you know, like but they've never actually heard them talk or say anything ever.

You know, they're just told those are the bad guys. And I don't disagree with that, but those are the bad guys, and it's really the only information they got. They're there, they're bad, Go get them. You're listening to just the mundane conversations and the radio calls and stuff. I mean, just such a trip, you know. Yeah, I mean this is shit coming from someone who tries right for a living. But I do also read a lot tonight. There's yeah, you can't. My job doesn't exist anymore when it did, not that many people would do it, like there's no way to do I did you read my book? And maybe that's helpful. But there are other books, Like there's a book called No good Men Amongst the Living by a non Go Paul that is like varied cycle.

He is a journalist who he's he's a wild story. He just like basically showed up Afghanistan, not as a trained journalist, and like overtime learned dar, I learned posture and somehow got way into just like hanging out with Taliban and so he he It's told through multiple points of stories, but I wanted to say it came out in twenty eleven. He was there in like the late two thousands. Just like looking at the corruption and like some of it is yeah, just people being shitty. I mean then some of it like makes sense of there's no other way to earn a living here because there's a war happening all the time, so like, yeah, I'm gonna take money from people. Who else am I gonna get by? Yeah? Or like we did a lot of good stuff and against them sure, we a

lot of that stuff. We like, you know, we listened like members of the Taliban. We're being coming to us and being informers and saying like, oh, yeah, this guy's bad. And then if you go and look at the history, how interesting that guy was, you know, that guy's political enemy. But like we had yeah popped on too, like that that guy's telling that stuff right, so and then we torture that guy and like then that guy's like, well fuck the US. Well sure, like that's a reasonable response to that, and it's not about like trying to say, like what about how are you guys? And they're not the good guys guys, But there is a lot of a lot of a ton of history and like a ton of context, and there are a few very good books

that can offer some insight into that. Yeah. I you know, man, I've thought about it before. I said something to somebody else like what if I had a Taliban guy come on the podcast, you know, I was like, that would be an interesting that could be either completely ridiculous where they're just spouting craziness the entire time, or have like an actual discussion between you know, two people that were Yeah, I don't know if that would happen. Yeah, things like that have happened in history. So like there was recently Anol was part of this too. There was a once it was on New Yorker. They got like a fifteen minute video inside of a like a Sharia court, and it's like that's never been done, like at least

in the West or whatever. And it's also stuff like that. But it yeah, like seeing seeing the other world when you're not busy trying to fight it, which like I totally you know, pay cool someone's trying to kill you, neat kill them back, but like seeing some aspect of that, I think it can be very very eliminating. It's the idea only came up because I've literally had multiple comments on Instagram and YouTube of guys who are like of Taliban guys are like, oh I was in that fight. Oh I remember that fucking id or whatever, like oh do you remember us when we attack this? And I'm like, man, that's crazy. They're like watching my videos, that's we And then I'm like, well, maybe you know, I don't obviously I don't agree with them and stuff like that, but

it would be interesting just to kind of get their perspective. You know, what was the fight for you? And then I guess it would probably be different if you talk to somebody from Afghanistan compared to somebody from like Pakistan that we're fighting and the name I mean if you yeah, probably the guys in Pakistan are like could it be non so great to talk to you? Probably more diehard? Yeah, very very logical. There are plenty of members members of the Taliban who were like they you got coerced into it, right, because like the Pakistan the Taliban showed up and was like, hey, we're taking all European that that's the only way you know how to make money.

Cool, We're taking all your pomegranates. It's only way you know how to make money. Where canna been your you know cousin, because like whatever, so join us or things get worse. Well, okay, I guess I'll do that one, you know. Yeah, and then and then those guys would have been in fights and like, yeah, that'd be fascinating. I mean, it's it may be like people hearing this may be like what the fuck is he talking about? But thincause now US vets are going back to Vietnam and seeing and talking to the guys that they fought with and seeing the battle battlefields today. Yeah, you know, this isn't like some crazy thing.

I don't know. I don't know if I'll ever actually do it, but that was something I was like after I saw a couple of comments from these talent dudes, I was like, huh, I wonder if any of them are cohering enough to do an interview. But that could probably I don't know, that may ruin me canceled off of everything. Yeah, especially with what's going on in the world today. Man, who knows what could be?

Who who could be? Said like, you're probably gonna be tied into some other rampant ideologies. It's bad timing. I just saw a I just saw an article this morning that was saying, uh, it was a Time magazine talking about how in Ukraine they're getting upset about like not getting as much funding now there's because there's more corruption being exposed and stuff like that, and now like a lot of shift is going over to this whole Israel Hamas Kaza thing. I don't know, man, it's such a wild world. Like I sometimes wonder like what would I be doing right now if I was still in you know, do you ever ever have those thoughts? I sort of don't, I think, just because what I did is so specialized, right Like if I was still in right now, I'm doing nothing like Jack,

all right, I'm gonna help other people, I guess, because how would I useful in Ukraine, in Israel or in you know, people immigrantying for South America or in other humanitary Like Yeah, I don't think about it, just because I like I would be useless. But react guys like you, it's like, are you potentially going to go train craining an army? Like that'd be wild? Yeah, that's a rough show over there, man.

I know guys that have talked about going over I'm like, dude, fuck that Like that does not I don't know nothing good. It didn't sound like anything's good coming out of that, you know, trying to go over there. I get guys, I kind of get it. I don't fully, but I kind of get people that were in the military and never deployed to combat, or guys that didn't join the military and kind of always regretted it and they volunteered to go over to do something like that because they're trying to fulfill some kind of I don't know, fantasy or whatever it is they thought they should have done in their time, you know, do that that thing.

But I'm sure many of them quickly realize that it's not a fucking game and it's not right, Like what am I doing here? You know? What am I fighting for? Like, I don't know. It's a tough call, man. I would be upset if I was in right now and I got sent to Ukraine and be like eyah, I mean, I get it, but what's the end state here? Because just I think a lot of us, you know, global war on terror vets can attest. It's like, what's the end state of what we're doing here? Like I don't mind going and doing stuff, you know, if we got to go fight whatever for the country, whatever, But don't don't be asked me with some bullshit like oh it's for the for democracy you're fighting for. Shut the fuck up, Like what's the real instate here? Because that's what I want to

know before you know, you go put your life on the line or go your buddies are putting their lives on the line and stuff like that, and the people that are making the decisions aren't doing that, you know, I mean, yeah, thinking about it now. Someone I sucking to somebody else the other day and they were like, did you have any you know, coherent politics or like ideology about the US and you joined? And I was like, I assure didn't. And that was a really good thing for me because if I did, like yeah, talking thinking about it now, absolutely, what if we you know, in two thousand and eight, nineteen eleven, all the time, if we had been saying what's the end state of this? Like who would have gone to a Kinnistan? Well? I think

you know, it's funny the mid level managers, you know, your staff and O like Lieutenant colonels in below are all kind of asking that question, but no one would ask it at that higher level, like what's the in state here? And a lot of people you hear from a lot of people it's like, we didn't do twenty years of war. We did twenty one year wars. You know, just these one year deployments. New battalion comes in. This is how we're gonna do things. I don't care what the other battalion you know. Okay, cool, thanks for let me know what you guys been doing. I'm gonna go do this now. It just never.

And the thing too, I think probably don't want to admit it, is a lot of these military guys didn't want the war to end because who wants to serve and not get a chance at combat before you you know, like a lot of those guys, that's what they wanted, was a chance at combat. And you're not gonna be the one that says we should end this, you know, I don't know. I don't know, man.

One last question, we can wrap it up writing a book about the military. What what are the steps you have to take? Like how long did it take to get through the approval process or the DoD and stuff. Yeah, took on time, So it was seven months of the review. That's not too bad. I've heard it. I was expecting over a year.

I've heard some pretty important stories for people trying to get certain releases and it's just not They just don't. I think there was a guy who was in the news recently because he was in the unit is what he had to call his book because he equally say, you know, the US has never recognized the existence of certain specialized elite task forces or whatever, and his was like two years or something like that. Yeah, he had a very fancy lawyer and like they had to fight a lot, and yeah, yeah, I've actually been told not to. One guy asked me not to put Delta on his interview. He said, just refer to me a special mission unit.

And it wasn't necessarily because he would have gotten in trouble or anything, but it was because the unit itself was looking down upon people that are coming out and telling their stories, you know, and they're like get basically gonna get kicked out of the club kind of deal. You're not gonna get invited to the reunion anymore, which I think is fucked up because one people One, all the stories these Delta guys are coming out and telling are unclassified. Tell me a story that someone has told that's been classified and I'll, you know, whatever, then we can we can figure that out. But all these stories are unclassified. One. Two, the American taxpayer deserves to know where their money's going. And these guys have stories just like everybody else. And

I don't think they signed up for a lifetime of silence. You know, they deserve to have their stories told. If you can write a movie, if you can have a movie like Blackhawk Down, come out. Then what there's no big fucking deal for a dude to come on a podcast and to talk about stuff as long as it remains unclassified, which it always does.

So yeah, I mean I will say, like, you just said something that's truly fascinating. Were a ts at least, which I have to imagine all those guys, did you sign a lifetime commitment to if you publish anything, the d D gets review it? Yeah? So I didn't know that. Yeah, nerds, I had to wear the special badge when I went into that it's truly a lifetime commitment to review. Yeah, Okay, I mean, I mean I'm not I don't agree with that. I didn't know that, like when I signed, Like someone must have said that. But you're a nineteen year old and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna write a book, what do I care? Right? Yeah, and I'm gonna read the fine print of every documentary absurdly right. But I've already signed fifteen

forms that day that signed my life away, Like what do I you know? What am I going to do about that? I do? I think it's some of it's so wild, you know, Yeah, the I think right, you if you like dev grew the you know, technically the US government has never recognized the existence or something like that. I like Delta technically the US and so if you were in Delta, you can't go write about it. Even though everyone and their mother knows about Delta. The guy that started Delta wrote a book about Delta. It's like, like everyone knows what it is, right, I mean, the worst come secret ever worst.

The most famous version of this is like, sorry, Tom Clancy wrote about nuke stuff. He sort of pieced it all together from like open source stuff source world, but he was never in, so like nobody can do anything to him. Yeah, if you wrote the exact same book, using the exact same information, but you were in, you can't publish it. That's so crazy. Yeah, I mean I get it to an extent, But like I said, I mean, everybody has a story to tell, and it's not fair that these fucking generals and these politicians can get out and write the stories, write books and stuff about the operations that these guys actually did, and then turn around and say that those guys aren't allowed to talk about it, like get out of here. You know, they deserve to make

a living or let their story be known like everybody else. That's the like, So I guess you're right in that, like seven months in the grand scheme and things isn't that big a deal. But I'm still annoyed because like, I wrote the book in three months, and he was supposed to have already been out as opposed to come out in August, and it got laid and so like you talk about I'm fine. I'm a very supportive partner, Like I'm okay, but guys are trying, if they're trying to make their living off of this, my book got delaid by three months, Like I don't get paid, maybe the book doesn't sell as well, Like there's other stuff happened, yeah, like and and for what, Like I didn't so far. So far everything I've read, and it seems pretty pretty much.

And there were there were somethings that'd changed, for sure. They they caught a couple of things. And I could argue because I found them. I found them open source, but like find whatever they're allowed to. You know, they have their preferences. That's fine, But she would have taken seven fricking months. I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Are you planning on writing another book at all. Uh yeah, not not about this. I think you know, I've said as much as I probably can say about this, but I've I wrote like for Fun for practice, they wrote a novel. I've been working on another one I had an idea for and so I went to medical school, but I don't undergraduate and anything, but I don't practice medicine sort of. I didn't want to

deal with that, and I've been thinking about writing about the kind of one of the same issues that are currently plaguing the American healthcare system because it's screwing a lot of people over and it's there are a lot of things that could be improved, dude. The healthcare system for me was something I never thought about, right because obviously military, you know, free medical is as good as it says, meaning like there's there's costs that come with the free medical I know plenty of people that I've had bad procedures in the military. You also don't get to like skip out of work whenever you want, Like, if you want to skip out of work, you have to go to your free medical and get seen and get said that you can skip out of work

and stuff like that. But when I got out and I don't have to pay for medical you know, my my VA rating was high enough where I'm covered by the VA and the VA here, and I'm in San Diego, so they got a pretty robust system here. I've only had to use them once for like back issues and immediately got like a referral out in town for a physical therapist. So I, unlike a lot of people, I've had good experience so far with the VA, but I also don't have a lot of the major issues that some of the people have. But what blew my mind was going to my first job, civilian job, and then talking about medical insurance and I'm like, oh, you know, I don't. I waived it. They don't need to pay for it for me. You know,

I've gotten covered. But I was talking to one of my workers like how much it costs? And I was like, what, like, you pay how much a month? Like that is insane, you know, And this is a girl in her twenties and it's paying like hundreds of dollars a month for medical insurance. And I'm like, wait, I didn't. I don't know. I never realized it was so much. It's just it's mind blowing the cost of it. I don't know how to fix it. There is there is an issue obviously, though Yeah, I won't claim to know how to fix it now, and even if i'd you write a book that about it, I might not. But it is it is a racket as it stands, like it's mistakes are made in private world too big. A guy who I taught at the med school I went to is just like in

the news because he was running two surgeries at the same time and like billing. He defraud at the US government, like you would just leave people open on the table and like go to another room and like come back. And he's big. He's a huge muckety muck at this massive, massive hospital institution. It's like, yeah, the you know again, politics not standing is like a political term, but like the free marketing is alf in that at least not as it stands right. The health insurance yeah, RAATI in America is not being solved by like letting you know, lots of lots of giant corporations trying to make it better whatever that means. It's got to be something with the insurance companies, you know, and how they're charging and stuff like

that to me, the Oh what was I gonna say? I don't know, man, it's just such a it's just such a messed up situation. It's just what do you do? You know, Oh what I was gonna say? When you say people say the free market isn't gonna fix this, at what point can we say is it a free market anymore? Though? Look how much how many regulations are on the medical industry and on any kind of like, yeah, it's a super regulated and a lot of ways, in a lot of ways properly, so right, you know, you're I'm talking from the outside end, so you can obviously go into more depth if you want on that. But at the same time, you can't really call it a free market when it's so overly regulated that it forces government intervention companies

to get involved, because you have to have insurance companies, you know, like I don't know, I mean a lot of it Like like yeah, different, So I mean the DA is social that's what that is for sure, And like the UK socialized healthcare, Canida solgialized healthcare, they have their own problems. Of course, other places in Europe are the places in the rest of the world, have their own problems with it, but so much of the will I will one hundred percent agree, like, no matter what my politics might be, that plenty of government regulation is just pure cud COO tape, right, that somebody lobbied in to make themselves some money. Sure, but also tons like insurance companies are who run healthcare in America, not

the government, right, the government might run do you have to have health insurance? Like as they say, this is okay, fine, but who's running healthcare? That's health insurance companies. And so they'll create all of these often like to incentivize them making money, right, they'll create these huge burles, hurdles where you hear people have to drive an hour and a half to get to a VCP because like that's the only thing that their insurance covers.

Because the company is like, well, yeah, screw you, Like I got mine, I'm making my money. And the sort of amount of money that they're making and the amount of money that they're charging if you go and look at the rest of the world, like our outcomes aren't that much better? Could you look at you know, this is a whole soap box and stopped me at any point in time that there are plenty of like metrics that you can look at. It's like, well we spend two, three, four times as much money as other places, and like people aren't healthier because of it. Yeah, no, I no, I'm with you, man.

I there's something, there's something's got to be done about it. And this is someone that, again is not really affected by it. Because my either I have just got to grin too, right, Like I don't have to go get healthcare and community at different Yeah. I know my buddy in Indiana, he prefers his private insurance because I think he's far enough away.

I think he has to drive to Indianapolis or something if he wants to get and that's an hour drive, you know, and then if you get there and the appointment's fucked up or something, then you just waste it an hour each way, and then you have to reschedule for another day. So I totally get why people don't like it. But so far I've had, I don't know, pretty good experience. But dude, it's such a weird world.

Man. Good luck. I'll be interested seeing what you come up with, you know, I'd love to learn more about it, because there's got to be smart mind's got to come together and figure something out, because that's crazy that people are just going broke just trying to afford medical insurance. I just don't. I don't know where can Ian Where can people find your stuff?

I got your book? You know what the taliband told me. I'm gonna this is being recorded for those that are listening, This is being recorded on Halloween. I'm gonna try to release this tomorrow, so that means the book is going to be available next week. I'm gonna put the link in the description. But where else can people find more out about you? Yeah?

I have a website. It's IANL Fritz dot com. Or if you just like google my name or the title of the book, my website will come up. The only plug I would make is if you have like a local bookseller that can you can get the book from if you do want to buy it. You know, support local bookshops. They're really really important and they're you know, often can struggle for whatever reason. You can't. You know, you can get the book wherever it's sold, the Amazon Big Store or something like that. But local books are really really great institutions, and if you can support them, that's a really nice thing. To do.

Yeah for sure, man. Yeah, and then everybody can check my stuff out Former Action Guys, Former Action News on Instagram. Jay Chrimeographics is my website. If you're looking for a group, orders, T shirts, all that stuff, custom graphic design, hit me up and that's it. Man. I really appreciated the conversations has been This has been good. Yeah, thank you a man, thanks for having me on

Ep. 198 | Ian Fritz | Airborne Cryptologic Linguist

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