Ep. 203 | Shamus Flynn | Motor Transport Mechanic

Do you have a family history of people being in the military. Yeah, My grandfather was a boatsman's mate in World War Two at the tail end, uh doing like logistics. He was in like a I guess you could call it like a logistics ship. He was in and around Okanawa, I think when the battle was going. I have an uncle who was a medic in Vietnam in the Army. You know, he kind of lucked out though, because he was more of like a rear area medic. He was at like the second at the trauma level. You know. He never talked about it.

The only thing he ever said was make your bed, and the original I'm sixteen wasn't very good. You know. My uncle is a CB, retired CB from the reserves. He did Iraq in Afghanistan. And then my brother, Mason is a current serving Senior Chief Petty Officer over with the Rescue Stummer School in Pensacola. H. He's a door He was a door gunner with NSW in Coronado forever H five. That's awesome. And then I had another My great grandfather was a he's actually a mathematics teacher, as a as a seaman, as like an e three prior to World War Two, Like he went through boot camp and they figured out he was really good at math, so they just retained him at the depot and he taught mathematics. Wow, that's crazy. That would have been a crazy time World War two timeframe,

going through like boot camp and training. It would have been also rushed and crazy. You hear weird stories like that, or you know earlier times I have. I talked about a couple episodes ago in the podcast. Uh, I read Chesty Pohler's biography I'm looking forward to. I think it's the Chess. There's like two of them, and I think I read Chesty and he talks about he got pulled out of boot camp immediately to be a drill instructor, I believe for a little bit right after he finished like his training Paris Island. And I was like, that's so crazy, Like to think about that now, like some kid that just finishes boot camp is into the new drill instructor, but they're probably be pretty prepared for it. So with

your family, you said, was it your uncle was in Vietnam? Yes, man, that would have been crazy. Like the medical field, even at like a trauma center or something like that. I mean, that is one job I never wanted while I was in It was like the medical stuff because I'm like, dude, I just couldn't know. I couldn't stand being around that all the time. You know, the death and the I don't know, that's tough work, you know. Well, and then I mean, helicopters did exist during the Korean War, but the Vietnam War was the first conflict where the gold like the golden hour thing came in right where you can get dust off to trauma care within that that golden hour of blood loss, et cetera, et cetera. Right, and you know, I know

you have a lot of experience on the radio, right, so and you know controlling and moving moving, you know, uh, rotary wing and all that. So I mean that's a huge deal. Like you're getting you're getting WIA, so like that were literally in that tick like thirty minutes ago, you know, or less. Right, It's just crazy. I've interviewed a few people and I've asked that had been injured, and I asked him, I'm like, what's that like to go from like, you know, one minute you're out with the dudes out on a patrol or whatever, getting no firefight or maybe get by an ID and then suddenly you wake up and you're in a hospital in Germany or you're somewhere else, and like you know they're and they're all like, it's just such a low point in your life,

and it's like a mind fuck, especially if you're in an active ward and you have all these other injured people around you and you're just seeing the worst, literally the worst of a war zone, you know, and you and it would suck, man, because you just can't escape it. You know, like that's just such a right God that that would be miserable. I'm so glad I never got injured. I mean, we saw guys, obviously saw guys get injured stuff like that, and we meta backed a lot of people. But that's it's it's tough, man, it's a tough thing.

I mean again, I'm glad it never happened to me. I think Ryan hendricks And who was a Green Beret, was talking about stepping on his first ied and like broke his leg and he's out with a Green Bray team and it was just like crushing because you also feel bad because you feel like you're leaving your dudes behind, you know, like, what are they getting into now? And I'm gone, you know, are they picking on my slack kind of deal? So that's crazy. And you and you you came out of the artillery community, right and went into being a J tack. Is that accurate? Yeah? Yeah? So I started out as a mechanic like you, thirty five forty one, and then I lap moved when I was a corporal. I was in Iraq, I did a lap move and went

to eight six to' one, got promoted the sergeant and then went into tenth Marines and then onto TCP school JTAC and all that stuff. God, that's right, yeah, yeah man. Yeah, So when you joined, you know what was like the catalyst to get you to sign up? You know really it was something I definitely was always interested in. I mean, and some of my earliest memories were watching the Persian golf invasion, right, So I would have been six years old when that happened, you know, small like black and white TV in our house in nineteen ninety one, right, and you know, watching like the Army MLRS rocket launchers and then like the footage of all that ANA aircraft fire going up over Baghdad and stuff. It

just was like, I mean, it spurred some interests, right, So I started reading military history at a pretty young age. I don't honestly, I read every night right from a very very young Age's kind of how I put myself to sleep. You know, we didn't have video games in the house, didn't really have cable TV or any of that kind of stuff.

So I kind of immersed myself into into military history and just became more interested and more interested in it. And you know, my uncle he joined the CB Reserve US Navy CB Reserve as an electrician probably in like ninety six probably, and they had a good program back then where if you were you know, if you were a certified guy, he's a certified electrician. He went in like pretty much direct to Petty Officer third class. And anybody who's worked with the CBS, especially the Reserve CBS know like they are very proficient.

You know, you're a contractor in your civilian world. You go put your you know, BDUs on and you go be a you know, essentially a journeyman contractor for the Navy. Right and you know, back in the nineties, the CBS would send some of their petty officers down to Camp Lejune to get marketmanship instructor qualifications. So he came back. He's the one who kind of taught me how to handle firearms, you know. So that's just gaining more interest or gaining more interest. And then you know, combined with the with the reading, I get into middle school, high school, and I figure out, like, this is what I'm going to do, right, you know, Army recruiting is a little more or flashy, I guess you could say back then, with like money and moss and schools. You know,

like, hey, you know, we can make you a heavy equipment operator airborne qualified guy with the support Battalion in the eighty second Airborne. That's like literally what they would they would pitch you. And I'm like, wow, that's pretty legit, right because I grew up in a construction family. So I'm like, yeah, I'll go, I'll go run a dozer for the army or something, you know. And eventually, you know, the Marine Corps was at the state fair they call it the Biggie in Massachusetts and they had the pull up bar there and I'm on the wrestling team, you know, not particularly a good wrestler. But I'm there right, I see the pull up bar and I'm like, They're like, how many can you do? I'm like, I don't know. They get up and find out.

So I do a few, fill out the card, and they gave me a call. I went in for an interview the summer before my senior year and decided that the Marine Corps was was the right way. You know, I don't have bad recruiter stories. I had at the time Sergeant Stephen Lee, he was a mortarman, and then after that he got promoted, moved up to MEPs. Then I got starting Jason Auger, who was a military police officer. They had me pet in the right way. They had me studying the book, they had me doing drill. They literally had me completely prepared for recruit training, you know, which transferred into a squally to position and recruit training. Meritorist promotion, you know which further down the line, graduate MLST school, already a lance corporal, go to the fleet,

put my hand up, get on on IRAQ tour right away, right, So like, and I bring that up because small things matter. You know that that meritoriost promotion time gave me enough time and grade to be competitive for a meritorious corporal board in Iraq. Right, So I ended up getting meritorious corporal in Iraq, right, and it just and then I ended up getting freaking sergeants super early because in two thousand and six the composite scores were like super low to get promoted because everybody was getting out right, So things happened.

Example, things happened. But being a Motor Ta Marine, after I hit sergeant, I spent every every rank was five years pretty much after that. Yeah, so I moved it up. It's a rough uh, it's a rough go in the motor t world for promotions. Like when I did my lap move from eight six or from thirty five to twenty one to eight six one, I basically got promoted immediately like the fall after it was approved, like the following month, I got promoted because my cutting score was like I already like one hundred points over what it would needed to be because the eight six ones were going through that phase and kind of always are where guys, a lot of people are getting out. It's a high tempo job.

You know, you're in the field a lot and stuff like that, so a lot of people get out four years, eight years. It's it's pretty common. So getting promoted is not that hard as a motor t guy. So as an example, I remember I was a corporal. My buddy, I met my buddy before we deployed, Matt Gay, Sergeant Gay. At the time, I was a corporal. He just come from the reserves.

He he wanted to go active duty, so he came off reserve orders, became an active duty marine, got second sent a second maintenance battalion, and I was a corporal. He was a sergeant. We go on, we're going going to go on the deployment or actually when we first got there, was a lance corporal. I got promoted to corporal when he first got there.

And then while we were in Iraq, I was still a corporal, did my lap move, came back, got promoted to sergeant immediately, and then I remember being selected to staff sergeant as an O eight six to one, and he still hadn't been selected. And it wasn't because he was a ship bag. He was like a top guy in the field. But it was just such a hard it's hard to get promoted as a thirty five to twenty one at the time. Yeah, yeah, and that job field.

You know, I elected to go in that job field. Honestly, you know, my parents signed the paperwork at seventeen, you know, look looking for a job skill like I may have chose something different if I was eighteen, but you know, life goes its ways, right, you know. I remember one of one of the recruiters, the military police officer, Jason Auger, he told me, he's like, you know, the war starting, you know, who knows how it's going to go. But just remember, like you know, the Marine Corps says every Marine's a rifle man.

Like that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone embraces that or actually trains to it, but the mentality is there for a reason. A quick history lesson like that saying essentially comes from the Korean War, with General Gray right being a young enlisted Marine during the first Marine Divisions Battle and chosen reservoir right even before that first rate of rettalion in World War Two. You know Colonel Edson right, he I have a book in my library I highlighted he demanded that every single raider in his battalion, regardless of job, whether they were infantry, whether they were a cook, or whether they were an administration, every single one of them would be proficient in every weapon that they had within the battalion,

to include like the anti tank rifles and stuff that they had. Right, So I mean that whole thing. I kind of went into the I kind of went into my first deployment with that mentality. But you know, backing up to like, you know, everyone has this idea or they get this idea pitched to them by their recruiters, right, mind set me up appropriately.

You know, you go to recruit training, and you know, recruit training in two thousand and three was was hard, right, physically mentally hard. They did a good job of doing what the dron instructor is supposed to do, and you know, you have I had this really good example of a two recruiters. I had really good examples of four drone instructors on my team. And I get to Marine Combat Training Battalion and I have good and bad examples of NCO and stepan seal leadership, right, and the bad examples, like some of them are just weird man like weird stuff that you know, like weirdos, like weird stuff with the women, like just stuff that didn't need to that wasn't professional, right, But we had We had a

really good uh three eleven sergeant who probably didn't want to be an MCT, He probably wanted to be teaching an ITB right, but he told us he's like every single person in my battalion saw combat on the march up the Bagdad, So every single one of you better fucking listen because you are going to Iraq Afghanistan in the next couple of years, every single one of you.

Right, good leadership there, and then you get to your MS producing school Camp Johnson in our case, right, and you kind of hit like a wall because it turns into like it's almost like puppy mill production of make this basically qualified marine into an MS Right. They have a timeline they have that they and hell, in the case of the reservists, they have a BIC they need to fill, like they need to get them to that BIC.

You can't just recycle people unless they're like egregiously like not trying to study and not passing everything. But bring I bring it up because I think that where we start to lose marine's you know, mental investment, right is during the entry level train line and knowing that, knowing that people kind of like drop off their motivation, especially if they're in a longer mos producing school. The NCOs and then the staff starns, gunnies, chief one officer to worn officer lieutenants, even if they're brand new and not Mustangs, they need to understand that the first six months that that young marine is in the fleet, it's going to make or break their general attitude about their next four, you know,

to five years of their enlistment, right like, that's where they're going to. That's where, especially in Okinawa, but across the whole fleet, they're going to make the decision where either this is something I could see myself doing for the next eight too whatever years, or this is not me. I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna go pursue something else, which is fine too, but many of them their attitude is turned by lack of small unit leadership, attention investment. Right. And you can give that intention and get and put in that investment while still being a very you know, challenging leader, right. You can, you ptum heart. You can hold them the standard with their job both you know, physically and administratively. You can hold

them the standard when they're in their in their in their in the barracks, right, you can hold them as standard, you know, and make sure they understand that they need to be a professional at all times. I just think that the small unit leadership crew, whether that's a platoon, a shop, a section, whatever it is, right, that is where we make or break the marine's future, you know, as a blanket statement, that's just something I believe in. So even as a gunnery sergeant, like fast forward to Okinawa, I got like fifteen sixteen seventeen years in the Marine Corps, Like I'm still a gunnery sergeant who I'm a piltoon sergeant at the time, and I am taking marines on PT. I'm bringing into the armory,

were drawing weapons, We're doing disaster with the fifty kel. We are doing tourniquet drills in the middle of PT. Right, I'm smoking them and then making them plot a freaking grid on a map, right, like all the basics where that you can get in and keep them fresh on those individual skills, and honestly, it keeps them motivated. Like young men particularly, they want to be challenged in general. Right, So you know that's kind of like that's kind of all over the placetie. But that's kind of like how it went through the beginning of my career was Yeah, more school kind of sucks, Like it's super humid and hot here in Campbell June. You know, we're going to get this job skill like they expect us to be a

full time mechanic. But I didn't really learn much. Okay, boom first mat spation. It's called Combat Service Support Pattion twelve back then, Yeah, and it's it's like, welcome to the fleet. Go out there that five ton wrecker and prep the main hydraulic line off the PTO from the h further recovery system, you know, alone un afraid Lance Corporal green coveralls toolbox on my own right. So it was it was just kind of like learn as you go back then, and to be honest with you, like Michaeltoon was like a bunch of they just got back off oif one. They all had their President's Unit campaign ribbon, they all had their combat action ribbon. You know, they freaking thought they were you know, I mean I get it

because I probably was there too at one point, but there was definitely a degree of like you're the boot, You're doing all the work. All the guys in the old candies are sitting around the table like shine their boots. You know. There was a couple of good dudes, but it was it was interesting time, you know. That's how it was when I first got to the fleet as a mechanic. Also, I got to second Maintenance Battalion at Campbell June, and I remember showing up and all the sergeants and most of the corporals would set in the shop office. There was like a platoon Startan's office or something like that down in the shop and they would sit in there and play spades and bullshit all day. And it was all the lance

corporals and like one or two corporals out on the shop floor actually doing the work. And I was like, man, this is fucked up. I remember, like my first or second day, they brought me into the shop office with all of them sitting there and they wanted me to They're like clean up, clean up the office, and I was like okay. And as I'm doing it, these fucking dudes are like they'd gotten the boxes of Girl Scout cookies and they were just throwing Girl Scout cookies out into the motor pool for the seagulls to eat and they were throwing the plastic and bullshit on the ground like right in front of me, and I'm like, you know, I'm a new guy, so I'm not saying anything, but I'm like, this is this is fucked up, you know, like this is stupid and

like my my whole thing coming up in the Marine Corps was always like, look at these bad leadership examples and don't ever do that. You know, don't ever be a dick like that to somebody, because that makes you feel like an asshole. You know what I'm saying. That makes you feel like what am I doing it? You know? This is this is my value is you're gonna have you throw You're gonna sit here and throw trash down in front of me and have me pick it up for your pleasure and enjoyment.

Like I mean, I don't know. Maintenance Battalion was a tough spot to go to as a new guy because there is no at Second Maintenance Battalion. When I got there, there was no focus on combat. You were there to turn wrenches. You know. It was like come in at five thirty or five for PT. Something crazy, Come in and do PT and then you get like an hour to go shower, change, eat breakfast, and be in coveralls in formation ready to start turning wrenches. And then you turn wrenches until seventeen or eighteen hundred every day. And I remember one time we got off at noon on a Friday and our certain major, it was a certain major, our first art, and was like, you know, don't you guys get used to this? And we're like, how the fuck would

we get used to it? This is the first time you guys have ever let us off early. Like it's a tough life, man. And I didn't like it because I came an open contract. I didn't want to be a mechanic. I wanted to be infantry. And I was just fucking miserable. I was just like, like you're talking about, you know, like you show up and you're expecting all this, you know, it's the Marine Corps, and and little steps along the way, the facade of the Marine Corps gets chipped away at you know, you get that shitty first platoon sergeant, or you get a you know, it's just like the stupid stuff that just really starts to bother you. And it wouldn't have been unheard of for me to get out after my first enlistment. But I was like, you

know what, I'm gonna give it a try with another job, you know, cause I like them Marine Corps itself. I had some cool opportunities. I got to go. I got to go work on the ITV, the e FSS. I was on the test team for that, So I got to go to like Alaska twenty nine palms and do all kinds of other stuff. But had I been at Maintenance Battalion the entire time, I'm not sure I would have stayed in because I never would have seen that other side of the Marine Corps, like go into the field, you know, going and shooting fifty cows and stuff like that. That didn't happen. That just wasn't There wasn't time for that. Yeah, And you know, a lot of it's just leadership dependent, right, you know, in the in the Fleet

Marine Force, you know, probably every single unit in the entire Fleet Marine Force has an ammunition allocation. Right and now whether or not your your unit has curiser weapons that your you know, your unit may only have you know, pistols, rifles and car beans, right. Like, that's not to say that you can't liaison with other units. You got to make friends, right, like that unit right there, MWCS thirty eight. You know we only had shotguns, pistols, rifles and carbings, right, and got to take what you can do with it. But I was a staffs aren't at the time, and the squadron commander looked at me in a battalion or a sorry, a squadron meeting, and he told me, he's like, there's one hundred and twenty thousand rounds of green Hip five five six in our inventory

and we're going to use it this year. And stassarn Flynn, you're going to train the squadron how you see fit? Because I had come from Marsac and they're looking for people, like, so what did I do? Like I found every marine that had been with division. Right. That dude's in RTO he was with you know two eight, Okay, that guy was eleventh Marines, right, that guy was with you know some over other ings like that guy was Anglico, right, And I'd bring him in and we're like, hey, we are going to train these marines because you know it's twenty twelve, like the Bastion attack just happened. This is third Marine Air Wing like it should be a wake up call to everybody that we all need to train and it doesn't need to tracked from it doesn't need to detract from from

the mission. Like how many times do you see people that stand around the smoke pit? Or one of my favorite things is the first time I brought my old man, you know, he's an old salty construction company owner. We go to Camp Penalton. We're at the PX at like nine forty five in the morning and he's looking around. He's like, why are all these marines at work? You know, like, I don't understand it. You know, there's there's time. You can find time to make things happen.

And if you have because I get a lot of d ms about this topic on Instagram, right, you know, hey, first sard and you know I really want to train the Marines, but you know the Stepan sealest want support it, right, Uh, you know, the Batian commander has his priorities, right, And I'm like, look, that's understandable, and it happens all the time. What you need to do is you need to affect like your sphirit, you know, your sphere of influence. Right. If if live fire training is not happening. You can still train for the fight, I guess said before. You can do turnaica drills, you can you know, do land navigation, you know UH training, you can do gun drills. You can do this and ask like there and you could pe to

your body. Right, There's a lot of ways to prepare for combat other than just going to range, because going out and doing live fire training requires a lot of things. Are so oh, I see Corman safety vehicle as I'm a range control rifmus account Like, there's a million things that we need to conduct live fire training. However, the majority of your repetitions can be off the range right. That way, when you get promoted, get into a higher level of influence, you can do that. And that's what I always told myself, like, when I get to a point where I can influence this, I'm going to make it happen. And I literally was able to do it for the entirety of my career. Sometimes you get exercise some patients and be and be creative, right, and and I get it,

like it can be absolutely frustrating, Like there's a lot of there's a lot of folks out out there right now that are kind of in this. You know we're in a time period, like I don't. I don't talk about peacetime Marine Corps because I'm a student of history and I know the Marine Corps hasn't gone like more than a year and a half without some type of conflict across the world, right, like Marine Corps force and readiness, right, war fighting mission, crisis response mission. If you don't have that mentality, like, you're wrong, you know, a garrison. That's why I talk about like the garrison cult. Right. The garrison cult is leaders who don't invest in training their guys. Right. Okay, so you are you're a

motor transport guy and you haven't taken or figured out a way to get your guys to drive on nods. Like that's wrong, Like that has nothing to do with the firearm, but it's definitely part of freaking war fighting, right, like doing your job in combat. You know, talk about communications equipment, right, Like setting up all that communications equipment in the backyard is a lot easier than doing it out in a field environment. When I say the backyard, I mean like the compound. Right, You've got to invest and find ways to get your guys training and try to like actively combat the garrison Colt mindset man, because and I'm not saying that this this sometimes comes out wrong, but Leatherneck and Alis Odd literally had green bean coffee and freaking salsa

nite at the MWR, right, And there's an entire community of staff and CEO's and probably some officers who that was their experience and they have it in their mind that like deploying forward to combat is going to have that type of environment and that's not new. Hackworth talks about it in Vietnam, and yeah, Hackworth is probably his own biggest fan, right, but like he was absolutely right when he talked about the rear area. Motherfuckers right in Vietnam where they had all these comforts are getting the combat pay while the soldiers and Marines and Corman and everybody were out in the bush. Right, That mentality has grown, like they experienced that when they were a young marine or a young n CEO or young step and co. And now it's to the point where

I know people who've been like, we don't need a train, We're just gonna go forward and we're gonna turn wrenches in a freaking compound. Bro, watch some footage from Ukraine and watch the watch the convoys, the supply convoys of Russian soldiers that have been caught in the open by trained forward observers.

Right, and I get one five to five. You know that we gave them, you know, artillery that we gave them has caught supply convoys in the open and absolutely destroyed you know, dozens, hundreds at a time of people in vehicles. Right the next fight. When you talk about near far recognition, you know uh uas encounter uas, Like, it's it's a different it's a different mentality. And I think that like the if we if we practice brilliants in the basics, like we have a solid foundation, like saying that every marine or riflemen, right, you can either you can leave you can leave it at as a lowercase are and keep saying it. You can switch out riflemen with warfighter and I'd be happy with it. Right, as long as everybody is training in the basics of thriving in combat. Right,

we always say like survive in combat. Fuck no, Like we want to have our troops thrive in combat and destroy the enemy or support people who are directly destroying the enemy. Right, you know, the whole argument, like and if you're here. Here's what I asked to the to the infantry community, right, because I never had this problem in Marsk and I never had this problem when I when I had the when I was supporting reconnaissance. Either would you rather have a capable, fit smart you know, young enabler who knows how to save a life and take a life, navigate, be aware, communicate in the radio, or would you rather have someone who only can do their mos in the fight that we might have in the future, Like

it was acceptable on Alisade and Leatherneck when literally like you're just turning wrenches there by the MWR and then you leave and go get your green bean coffee. But is that going to be acceptable in a in a in a conceptual like horror fight like in the future, like I don't think so, right, or even another fight like Yemen Iran, like look at all the hot in the world. Yeah. My thing is, yeah, my thing is just train for the fight. There's a difference between training how you fight and training for the fight. Train for the fight and take care of your folks while you do it. Right, It's not you know, it's not a slight on the infantry. It's it's a in a very very very real way, it is actively supporting the ground combat element, actively supporting the main effort,

which all the way down the line is the three eleven. Right, Yeah, no, you're right. I mean it was hard. I was a mechanic in Iraq and TQ on the air base air so I would do the same thing. I would turn wrenches and go get a green bean coffee or something. Actually we didn't have green bean on our side. I don't remember anyways we would. It would be tad. It would be hard to like stay motivated because it's like what am I doing? I'm a mechanic, Like this is miserable. There's all the the trucks never end. There's always another truck to work on. What am I doing? What am I helping?

You know? And we didn't have very good leadership when I was there, but it was like, guys, you tried to like let people know, like dude, people are using these trucks man, you know, Like we were assigned to put on new new armor kits for them, one of the m RAT variants, and I was like this is important. You know, We're doing new turrets, new new armor. Like this is like real shit and this is actually going out and you know it became real sometimes because sometimes you get a vehicle in that just got blown up. You know, we had one that got hit by like an RKG three and you saw the fucking hole in it and the blood and all that shit from you know, everything that happened. So it's like, ah, it's it. It is hard

to stay motivated when you're sitting on a base and you're just like I can go to the chow hall, you know. I mean a lot of people had internet access and stuff like that. I hated it. Man as a mechanic, I hated it. It was like I always tell people, like, my best apployment was my twenty thirteen Advisor team deployment and it was the worst living conditions I could have been in, and it was probably the most dangerous deployment I would have went on. But it was one where I felt like I was doing my job and you know, it was like and I was contributing, like I felt like I was doing marine shit. You know what I'm saying. I'm like I'm a Jay attack on it Advisor team with Afghans and saying it, you know, like we're doing some cool shit,

and that first deployment to TQ is like my most comfortable deployment. You know. We had a cans that we were sleeping in, we had a chow haul, all that shit. But it was my worst deployment because with all that luxury, I guess comes a bunch of bullshit. You know. It's that garrison mentality while you're deployed, and I don't know, it's tough, man, it's a tough balancing act to keep guys motivated but also getting them to do their job. And I know what you're saying, by every marine's a rifleman and everybody has to maintain that mentality, you know, like hey, I'm here to be a marine and like they do great things on the battlefield, but a lot of people to convince them that that's what can happen

is it's hard because they have no examples when their leadership are all people that have never deployed now or have seen combat. You know, why am I going to listen to this guy who doesn't even know what he's talking about? Now, I will say, you know, I'm out. I'm talking a lot about being motor ta and sitting on base and not doing a lot.

But you know that's not that's not always the case. You know, people that have listened to the podcast for a long time have heard interviews with my buddy Michael Hanthorne. He was a motor T operator and he got sent into Fallujah to help. They got tasked to clean up dead bodies, you know, for a whole month, they're just cleaning up dead insurgeons. And he's he's talking about how they're one house behind the house that's being cleared, like the grunts are clearing this house and we're going into the one they just finished clearing, pulling the bodies out of it and stuff, and that's like legitimate combat, fucking you know, shit blowing up like craziness. And he's a Motor T guy. So anyone that says like, oh, you can go

be motor T and you won't see any combat, like, that's not true. So motor T guys for sure should be guys and girls should should be ready for something, you know, because then you if not, you end up with that five oh first mechanic, you know, shit from the army at the beginning of the war. Situations like that, Yeah, And I mean people do forget when it comes to the thirty five hundred field. You know it is actually classified as a combats in the Marine Corps, right, you know, you go on a man Yeah, you go on to manpower and you look at the separation between the moss. It's classified as a common MS. You know. You go up to the marsh building and you look at where the monitors are, you know, combat and Wes is on this

side, and you've got everybody else on this side, right, so it you know, that's the job field where you're you know, my I've been the guy who turned wrenches on you know, Camp Korean village all day and from sun up to sundown, right, and then went and worked out, went to a really good show hall and went to sleep. Right. But maybe two hours after I went to sleep, I got a call for an ID strike because I'm I was a record operator too, and I'd have to get in the record put the two forty nine on top of the wreckord and go out there and recover the downed asset. And we took fire when I was on recoveries, right, We took mortar fire on recoveries before. That's a cool job. Record record operator job is a good one, and it

puts you, It gives you a lot of different experiences because you're supporting your general support. So you're seeing how a lot of different elements are doing different things and what they're getting into, and sometimes you find yourself in the mix. You know, that's a that's a if you're a mechanic, I would probably try to get on a wrecker if you were going to stay in a mechanic field. Yeah, we we use the crane to take the engines and the rotors off of the Cobra helicopters so you know, the wing comes over and they didn't have any overhead lift. You know, the weight wasn't the problem at all. So we went out there middle of the night December of two thousand and six, multiple nights, and you know, it was saw

some good leadership out there. Actually, you know, we're out there, I'm running the crane and the mechanics are you know, the aviation mechanics are turning wrenches on the Cobra and the pilot and the co pilot came out there and like they're like literally not allowed to work on the bird. Understandable, right, but they came out there and they you know, hung out bullshited, stood there with their freaking hands and their you know, inside their flight suits like cold as hell, and just were present, even though they could have been back in their tent warm getting ready for flight outs to go kill bad guys the next day, like they were out there with their guys.

So I guess that's a shout out to whatever air combat element was on the fifteenth U in two thousand and six and seven. You know, if you if you're a cover gunship pilot, you know, you're a good dude. So yeah, I get it, you know. And and really these days, with how much the Marine Corps is changing, we also have some I don't want to call it outside influence, but we have some retired general officer influence that is really making some you know, people who read you know, people who stay up on it, and people who read like there's some question marks that We've got retired generals who are publicly stated that what we are doing to change the Marine Corps. One of them literally said, it's gonna make

the Marine Corps like lose its ethos, right, paraphrasing like it's war fighting crisis response mission like and it's a lot of noise from a crowd. And some of that crowd are like Medal of honor recipients, former secretaries of the Navy, right, I mean three four star generals, former commandants. Right.

So when you start seeing in all of the articles that are written, they just scream like emotion. Right, They're not backed with any like vote, you know, with any any like real like source documentation besides their their opinion, right. And while their opinion is to be respected and valued, especially based off of their experience, like we have, the Marine Corps been directed by the United States government via multiple uh national defense strategies, to shift this focus towards great power competition. So it's not even an option like we we can't say, sorry, Congress, we're not We're just not going to abide by the direction in the national defense strategy. We can't like you, General Burger and now General Smith. They have to go on this path and

continue to learn. And what did they do. They made some recommendations. We wargamed it, and we uh we physically practiced it and and assessed it. And some of those recommendations have been curtailed. The Infratruy Battalion was at one level now it's been increased right to uh, you know, to fit the recommendation of the people, you know, who are boots on the ground artillery. A certain amount of artillery is going to go away to artillery now a little bit more is going to stay. But you know the thing about the rockets and and the and the missiles, we need that stuff to be competitive against literally the People's Republic with China. The PLA has their own rocket force, like it's a whole wing of their entire military is a rocket missile

force. Like, we've got to be competitive. But when young marines see and read all of this negativity from these from the retired crowd, it in a way undermines the progress. And I mean like the mental progress right, the buy in, the attitude about force design twenty thirty. It it is a it is a barrier to progress. Right, So I could easily see how a young marine right now is kind of like, Okay, I mean even if you're an infantryman, right, train train train train train go on a MEW or unit deployment program, come back train train train going to new uniploying PLU program while you're training there, obviously come back, Like I can see that being monotonous away, right, But but we got to remember,

like the United States Marine Corps is the nation's crisis response for us, right, Like we have to be ready to go anywhere in the world. You know, I'm from New England, so I was you know, I talk about the newing the Patriots, right like Tom Brady. Tom Brady didn't practice so hard to lose Super Bowls, right, Like, we don't train hard to fail in combat. Right Like, and if it never comes, like you can walk away and say I gave it my all, you know, and be part of a you can be part of a veteran community that the Marine Corps veteran community in my opinion, you know, I'd like to hear your thoughts, Like the Marine veteran community is tighter than the rest of the services. Right this part of the country, specifically, there's a lot of

Marines in the Dallasport work area. Like when you when you get out and you look back on it, you know, and if you can look back and look at the mirror and be like, yeah, I give it my all, then thank you for your service. Right. But if you're gonna take if you're going to take the mentality of Oh, it's a peacetime Marine Corps, right or whatever, and just give fifty effort. Uh, you know, you're not making anybody better, and in reality you're affecting the lethality of your small unit, you know. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of u There's always got to be debate anytime there's changes, right, I'm I'm on the side of like, why I can't believe they got rid of so much tube artillery. You know, I understand like the rockets and and

using high mars, but I also look at the cost of using high mars. You know, what's the cost of a high mar's rocket compared to a one five to five round. It's much cheaper and sometimes the same. You know, a one five five round can do the same job that the that they're going to use the high mars for. So it's about having tools in the toolbox and have them a thing. I you know, there was a lot there. So I guess one of the things I would say is it doesn't matter what the retire ease and people like our myself, yourself that are out of the military say, if there's an issue with the Marines accepting their plan, then that's on the Marine Corps. You know, they have to be able to they have to be able to hear dissenting viewpoints. And also

I'm trying to think of how to say it. They have to be able to hear those dissenting viewpoints. Take them in and if they're credible, you know, dig into it and see what's what's good and what's bad. But it's not up to us that got out to motivate the guys that are in. Now, that's the Marine Corps job, you know, and if they're doing a bad job about it, that's on them. I don't know, it's just it's a it's a weird thing with this FD twenty thirty. I think the huge one was like removing the scout sniper platoons from the battalions.

I think that was huge that, you know, a lot of pushback from that. Yeah, I don't get don't. I don't get that one, to be honest with you, I don't. I don't know either. I mean, there's still Scout snipers, but they go through the Recon sniper school rather than the traditional sniper schools that they had. If I if I'm understanding that correctly, to my understanding, the the Reconnaissance Sniper school and then the Marsock Sniper School is tailored for the reconnaissance and Marsock mission. The Scout platoon will maintain the rifles, so they're maintaining the capability. But there they just aren't going to the Scout sniper school to get the or three seventeen ms anymore.

And that is the big one that I just don't understand. And I've reached out to some people who are who I mean, I've reached out probably the most lethal snipers in all of g WATT that I know, and I've talked to them about it. You bring up a really good point about the Marine Corps responsibility of really it's incentivizing like buy in right like it is.

It is absolutely General smith Sarmit Luiz and every leader below them. It's their job to educate the force right and to make it clear right, clear defined objectives, clear defined tie into our war fighting crisis response mission. And I think that constrat like the constract community, right, you know, all of public public affairs, COMMA photographers, all those guys. I think that they're doing a very good job of highlighting and just leveraging media in these days I think, you know, we're not slaying dragons anymore or freaking it's not all about dress blues with the color guard and drill and all that. All that stuff has its place, maybe except with the dragon monster. But if you look at the recruiting and the essentially like all the advertisements lately, it does

have more of a war fighting focus, right, or more of a crisis response focused. And I've talked to some kind of senior members of Comstrat about that, and there has been a deliberate shift towards that, right. But you know, honestly, like if you're already in the Marine corps, like who paid you know, a lot of marines don't pay attention to that kind of stuff unless it's November tenth and you're three beers deep and you're watching the commandants message. Right, A lot of folks don't pay attention to that stuff.

So again, like what the only way to get what you're talking about is for the leadership to communicate it in a way that makes sense to the individual. M Wes's right. Bulk fuel right is a good example. I mean, if we're gonna be if we're going to be operating in a distributive fashion. We're going to have to you know, fuel ower equipment, right, and then we're gonna have to We're gonna have to aed, We're gonna have to provide water, all that kind of stuff. So boat fuel and marcation specialists, supply warehousers, and clerks. The list goes out to combat service support. How am I as a as a as a leader, corporal, sergeant, staff aren't about? How am I communicating? How the changes in the Marine Corps are affecting our m west Field? Do I even know?

Has my maybe it's not the monitor's job, but has the Auckfield sponsor communicate this stuff? Is the schoolhouse changing to are the Marine Corps? Is training? Education command changing in support of force design? You know question mark, you know the foraging stuff and you know how to how to gut and kill animals and live off the land is a good example of it, right, They were doing that and deep in the basic school things that may happen in the future when you're distributed. You know the rocket and the tube artillery stuff. How are we how are we going to attack the critical vulnerability of the hi mars right, which one of the critical vulnerabilities is maintenance, right, you know, are we going to get more mechanics so we're going to

train them better, We're still going to rely on freaking contractors, et cetera, et cetera. Right, So you're absolutely right, Like there should there should be dissenting opinions, but I would hope that the leadership at the highest level has a plan to try to combat or meet meet halfway when it comes to the dissenting opinions and communicate positive information or clarifying information to the to the force. Yeah, I mean part of the problem is also the last three years the military has been one shit show after another coming out of Afghanistan.

Look at recruiting. I think they said, like, your your main demographic, white males are down like forty percent on recruiting, you know, because of the messaging that they're seeing. Why would I want to go fight when I seen something like Afghanistan the withdrawal there, Like, why would I want to go put myself in a situation like that. It's tough, man, and we're not the people that have to be convinced because we're done. The people that they want to join have to be convinced that this is still an organization that's worth joining, and the people that are in have to be you know. I was talking to David Armstrong, the host of the Moments in Leadership podcasts, and I was saying, you know, really, Marines just

want to do cool shit. You know what I'm saying, Like, if my job is to come in and turn wrenches from zero seven to seventeen hundred every day, then I'm fucking miserable. I'm covered in Greece. I'm ready to just to go home. It's like working in a factory. Like what am I doing? It's the same thing every day, you know, It's it's not that was my experience at Maintenance Battalion. My saving grace was going and doing cool shit by getting selected to go work on that EFSS program and getting to go shoot mortars and do I mean there's got to be something where guys. I mean, it's just miserable. I mean again, I remember being a mechanic and being at Maintenance Battalion and not even having a rifle.

We didn't even have rifles assigned to us. You got a rifle card right before you went to the rifle range, and then when you came back you turned in the rifle and you never saw again until the following year when you went to the rifle range. It was like and you don't even clean them either. They would just send working parties to the rate, to the to the armory to clean the rifles. It was like, what is this?

Yeah, so the Marine Corps has to somehow, you know, make it the job that people wanted when they came in. And you know, like, I don't know, and that's really it. People want to do cool shit. That's that's part of the reason they joined, you know, So let them do cool shit every once in a while. Like it doesn't have to be I don't know, it's just it's rough. And especially when you're looking at the leadership, we're talking about generals and stuff that tell us, you know, this is the way to be, this is the way to go, this is the best way forward. Well, no offense, sir, but you were a senior leader when we just lost Iraq and Afghanistan, Like, who am I? Who are you to trust? You know?

Why should I trust you when all the officers are part of the reason why we don't we you know, turned out badly in Afghanistan and instead of fighting one war for twenty years. We fought twenty one year wars and there was no objective. There was nothing. So that's that's the tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. It's like, you know, you guys are making changes, but do I really trust you to be the expert on that.

I know you're a general or I know you're a a whatever and you've been in for twenty five years or thirty years or whatever. But you know, the results speak for themselves, you know what I'm saying, right, Yeah, And I mean it makes me I just make Yeah, I still know a few recruiters out there, right, so yeah, I see them in you know, we've got some recruiters, you know, leveraging social media.

Some of them kind of do it in ways that I kind of question, but either way, you got to you got to make those contracts right. And unfortunately, unfortunately the beast that is mycrick right, Marine Corps Recruiting Command puts a ton of pressure on that young you know, sergeant's staffs aren't that's out there. I can only imagine being, you know, being a recruiter right now and having to kind of receive, you know, information like that, Like we just had this pull out from Afghanistan. We've got all this we we there's a lot of policies that you know, uh, we're looking at like you know, the Army wheeling back. It's it's general neutral standards for PT based off of they didn't like the scores, right, you

know, Yeah, everybody was failing. So they're like, all right, well what set the lord of the scores? Then we're going to roll back. That's what they did, straight up. We'll never admit it. That's what they did. Right. It's funny too, you know, because my final position was inspector instructor. First, aren't down there in Austin with Weapons Company one twenty three so Reserve Infantry Weapons Company, And we were in an Army Army uh you know building, and they were out there doing the Army combat fitness tests right when the leg tucks were still part of it, and they came over they asked to use our pull up bars. And I'm watching it and I'm like, hey, can can I jump up there and try them pull up or try the leg tucks? And I'm like, what's the

standard? I think it was twenty twenty was the max standard? And I jumped up I did him. I did the twenty I got off. I'm like, that was pretty hard, but I maxed it, right, And I'm like, what's the minimum standard? They're like one. You know, I might have been for females, but they're like they're like one, one singular leg tuck right, and that much of the force, that much of the army couldn't do it, and you know, they made the comfort based decision to roll it back, right, And maybe there's more to it, but face value, that's what it looks like, right, you know.

We well, the Navy also just waved all their failure failed PT tests for the last It was in the news like a week or two ago that they just any failed PT tests for the last year or two have been waved and those people will get an opportunity to redo it or something like that, you know, same because so many people failed it, that's crazy. Yeah, Like I said, my brother's in the Navy, and you know, when I talked to him, you know, my brother is probably one of the most fit people in the whole United States military, and that's not an exaggeration.

So it burns him up pretty hard to see the state of some of the units around there Luckily he Luckily he works with a bunch of super pipe hitters, you know in that MS. But it's real quick. It's what it comes down to is week leadership not being okay with going, hey, this isn't right. These guys are weak, instead of saying these guys are weak. Can we fix them? Yes? Okay, well let's fix them.

Can we fix them no? Well then they need to move along. Like you're a great guy, and you know you're super nice dude, but maybe this isn't the job for you, you know. I mean, there's one thing that always stood out to me was when I was with Anglico and I was in Kuwait. We were doing some training at Bewing and there was the Apache squadron there and we used to go over and talk to those guys to see, you know, we try to get as much work as we can make relationships, so we're like, hey, anytime you guys want to go out, let's And one day we were walking over to their compound and it was two captains came out and they're like, hey, what's your what's your minimum score for crunches on your PT test? And I was like,

I don't know. I was like, I don't even know. It was like two other guys like, do you guys know, and like none of us knew, and he looked at the other Captain's like that's what I'm talking about. He's like, the Marines don't even know what the minimum score is. They know what the maximum score is and that's it. And I was like, and that doesn't mean everybody's getting a maximum score and all their shits for the people that aren't in the Marine Corps. You know, that doesn't mean that. But you're never thought like, oh well, if I just do three pull ups, I'm good. That's the minimum. That's or it used to be. I don't know what it is now, but it used to be three pull ups, that's the minimum. No one would ever do

three pull ups. If you did three pull ups, you would be harassed, you know. Like so the mentality is, the mentality has to come back that it is a war fighting organization. The military is a war fighting organization. It's not all the other shit. You know, it can be other stuff. You know, we do other things. We do humanitari and you know, we do the humanitarian aid and stuff like that, disaster relief.

But the at the end of the day. It's the end state is that they're supposed to be fighting, and you're supposed to be ready to fight. And when you say, a lot of the force can't pass the PT test, so we're going to change the PT test. Like that's ridiculous, you know, that's just and again that's what I was talking about the beginning.

That's where the facade starts to get chipped away. Like you get to your unit and you find out that so and so can't do anything. But he's a super nice guy and the platoon sergeant likes him, so they still let him do whatever, you know, and it's like just a little chip at the facade. And after a while, dudes are like, fuck this, I'm out. You know, I don't want this. This isn't for me anymore. You know, I had my fill. I'm out of here.

So yeah, that doesn't you know, luckily you know not to say. I mean, there are phenomenal units in all of the branches, right, Yeah. I served with guys from the big Red one, the first Infantry Division, you know, fought shoulders shoulder with those guys. You know, there were cavalry scouts, you know, you know, the we the seventy fifth Range Arrangement in the Army, literally the world's most premier light infantry force, right. You know. I did a deployment to Guam, worked with the Air Force, the thirty six Security Forces Squadron in Guam, and they had some phenomenal airmen, you know, their their their leadership, their E eights and E nine. We were in great shape and had a great mentality, and they're you know, they had been through uh Iraq and Afghanistan,

and like, there's great folks out there. But what I think the difference is, right, is the war fighting mentality, right, you know, we you know, the Marine Corps has a mentality of every Marine's a war fighter, it doesn't matter what you do, uh, you know, And and you know the fact that we go to the rifle range, the fact that we have a common fitness test and a physical fitness test, the Marine Corps Martial Arts program. When it's done right, it is aids that in a lot, right, you know, a lot of those guys just stand there with their arms crossed and with their freaking mcmap built red tab and just haze kids. But the real ones, the real ones, are fighting their students right, the real ones are out there, pete and hard like

all that stuff aids right in the you know, in the mentality of the war fighting concept, right Like people talk about Marine Corps doctional Publication one war fighting and they they say it's a mentality, right, Like, it's not. It's not like this. It's not like this source document where you can read war fighting and be like that's the answer right there. Like it's more of a concept or a mentality of maneuver warfare. Right. So doesn't we get right? You know, we don't get everything right, you know.

You know, I think that there's probably too much of an emphasis on close order drill and recruit training. You know, I think that, you know, when we had the battle skills test around, they put too much crap into it. And that's how why went away, because it was too much stuff. If they had just focused on weapons, medical, land, navigation, and radio comms, we would have been fine. It would have stuck around and every marine would be tested out every year on his rifle a freaking basic you know, one seventeen or a one fifty two? Right, Uh, you know, how to put a turncut on? How to you you know, control a massive hemorrhage. Uh. And you know, and how to read a map and shoot it asthmouth in the compass, right, like

the basics, right, And maybe we'll go back to that at some point. You know, there's a lot of good initiatives going on right now, and it's cool to see it. You know, it's interesting being retired man, Like you know it you can say whatever you want. Yeah, you know, I I you can say whatever you want. And you know, you don't get phone calls after work typically, like I managed I managed fifty people at work. You know, I work for a concrete company. I run all the logistics. Like I'm a motor t marine again, you know, I'm a motor chief civilian right like yeah, and I approached literally the six partfolders, remember the red six partfolders. They're the same, the same ones that were right, So it I run it. I have fire teams.

I literally have training. You know, every four drivers has one freaking like fire team member in for the concrete drivers. Like it's really cool, uh to now be able to sit back and look at it and be like, okay, you know, like when Sarmandr Ruiz dropped that video today about the what are they calling it quality of Life twenty thirty. Fixing the barracks right, phenomenal plan. There's gonna be like a CrossFit gym and every barracks, you know, I mean awesome. You know that's well, that kind of stuff. We'll see. Let's not get our hopes up. Yeah, that's a lot of that's a lot of barracks that rip down in French Creek over there, right, but in the street, all the French Creek in street, all those I remember going from French Creek, I did live in

the I lived in the barracks for a little bit, and I was married when I got to the fleet, so I moved out pretty quickly. But when I got became an artillery guy and went over to N Street, the tenth Marines barracks were the worst. Those were worse than the French Creek ones. And I was like, dude, what the fuck? Like these some of these dudes didn't even have like blinds. They were using poncho liners as like their blinds and shit, And I'm like what. And I remember one time when I was with two ten Liaison, we were out there and we got a new battery gunny that had just come off the drill field and we're all standing in formation and it's like it's like Thursday field day, everybody's out there, and he's like, you know, no, he just got off

the drill field. He was like, no civilian linen's on racks, all zeros, all locks have to be set to zero on the in the in your room, like on your wall walkers and shit. It was all this crazy shit, and then the barracks manager came over to him, was like, hey, Gunny, we don't have enough linen to give everybody linen, like they have to use their civilian lenning because we don't even have not to give them. And I was just like this dude man like he doesn't even know what he walked into, Like this isn't it'd be nice to have all that stuff and it'd be super nice. I think, personally, I think the barracks should be ran more like an apartment, you know what I'm saying.

I think you should get some sort of kind of like least document. You come in, you do an inspection with your barracks manager, you sign for the room, and then if you fuck it up, then you're paying for it's coming out of your pay and it's taken care of. But on the opposite side, you're taking care of it, and the military should be taking care of it. One of the biggest issues is is we grab some random dude from the S three or something and go, hey, oh, I think like at Anglico, we had a kid who was like a sergeant.

He was our S two chief because Anglico had an S two chief, but he was a sergeant. And they're like, well, you can also be the barracks manager. And it's like, this kid has no idea how to do that. You're you're throwing them in there, and it's that's a recipe for disaster. Luckily, there's a lot of mature people over there, and like, my guys did a really good I know personally for my team, we did a really good job of keeping everything in order and stuff like that. But that's the way it is that a lot of units, some random dude gets put in this position. It's like, all right, you're the barracks manager now, and like, I have no idea how to be a barracks manager. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't know.

So part of the part of the plan, apparently I've been talking about this for years, Like you're saying the barracks are going to be managed by hired civilians now right, So you're not going to have the S three kid or the S two kid or whatever, the one that the motor pool doesn't want running the barracks. So it could work. It could work. I mean, are they going to do the fun watch? Also? Maybe?

Yeah, I don't know. Out there're going to have funded They're going to have to fund it too, you know you're gonna have to. That's a significant you know, is that going to be a GS worker, Is that going to be a contractor what if the contract goes up? Right? I don't necessarily think that civilians need to take over something like that. I think the Marines are more than capable of doing it. There should be some kind of civilian oversight where there are people that do know how to do these things, can manage the program and make it feasible. The biggest thing to me is like just treat people like adults. You know what I'm saying, Like if I was eighteen, I mean when I when I so it took me a little while to join. I first want to come in when September eleventh

happened. I was eighteen at the time, I was a senior in high school. I ended up not joining until I was twenty two. So from that eighteen to twenty because I got arrested in shit. So from eighteen to twenty two, I'm living on my own. I'm working a job, I'm paying rent, I'm paying a car payment, and like that, I'm learning these life skills. Part of the reason guys get out have so many issues is because we've negated all those life skills. They don't have to worry about rent, they don't have to worry about paying their electric bill, they don't have to worry about none of that. It's all taken care of. So when they get out, they don't know how to do that shit on their own. Because they went from their mom's house to the Marine Corps house and

mom paid the electricity or the Marine Corps paid the electricity. They don't even know that's a thing, you know, it's not something you just don't even think about. I think if that's one way to like help prepare people to get out also is to just treat them like adults. Treat it like an apartment, you know, somewhat there's got to be some kind of middle ground between. It's like an apartment that you can't just go into, you know, pull a star major bull and go into someone's fucking place without you know, not allowed to kind of deal or I don't know. There's got to be some kind of middle ground. You gotta make it. You got to make people want to join the Marine Corps, be in the Marine Corps, that whole, the whole, do it for the pride, you know,

your your marine like cool. That doesn't feed me, that doesn't keep me happy, Like, yeah, there's got to be some good benefits, right, I can get out and go get a real job, you know, yeah, for sure. And and a lot of them do, right. You know, you have folks that come in for four years, and you know what, the Marine Corps got like a eighty five percent first term YAS turnover rate, you know, and it's kind of always going to be like that. Is that that's a lot? Yeah, I think eighty eighty five something like that, you know, I mean you hear numbers thrown out, you know, it varies, but and and and the folks that generally the ones I've noticed that that work real hard and they're you know, maybe you

know, they might not have been fully bought in, but they stayed within regulations, they learned their ms, they they were you know, they had good work relations with everybody. They get out, they go to college or they get into an occupation, and they do very well. You know, the folks in mine from my final motor pool, the truck company, guys from third Marine Division in Okinawa, the ones that got out there doing great, you know, and it's always gonna it's always gonna be like that.

But you know, we've got to we've got to try to incentivize some of them to stay in. And one thing I'll tell you right now, no sergeant wants to re enlist and stay in the barracks, right, Like that's ought to be like bah package, like with the re enlistment package. Right but you know, you know that's just out of control. Like you're what twenty you know, minimum twenty three, twenty two years old at that point, you know, you're kind of you're kind of past, like babysitting eighteen year olds in the barracks, right Like I remember when I first got to the fleet, the some order had changed and they were making any marines that moved out in town the sergeants because they, I guess when the barracks over

a certain capacity, they can get waivers to move out in town, and a bunch of guys did, and then something got rescinded and they had to move back in the barracks. And all these guys had like leases for apartments and shit furniture, you know, and stuff like that, and they I remember they moved back in and had brought like their furniture and shit, and then the unit made them throw away their furniture because it wasn't allowed. You know, personal furniture is not allowed in the barracks. And it's like, dude, yeah, so, oh hey, you got to use our shitty chair that we issued you instead of that leather like recliner that you want to sit in when you get off work every day. Like that kind of crazy.

There were some wacky stuff that happened back then, right Like that was like the drawdown in the and the increases right there happening around that probably happened around like twenty twelve or something, right, you know, maybe around that timeframe. And yeah, the whole thing, you know that the tattoo policy coming in and out in the ten year sergeant time and service policy. Like the amount of folks that I saw get forced out either like overtly forced out right based off their tattoos or whatever, or just say I'm done with this because of dumbassing like you're talking about. It was crazy. And then and then you know, they come out with a volunteer voluntary early release program and dudes are like, I'm done done. Great phenomenal guys cutting cutting it right

away, like getting out six months early. And then they had the volunteer step the voluntary separation program, which was essentially a check cut to you. You got twelve years in, you don't want to go to retirement, We're going to cut you freaking seventy grand and then you don't get paid your VA benefits until seventy grand worth would have been paid off. So depending on your disability rating like years right, yeah, you know, and there there were definitely some decisions like that I saw when I would say, you said, I've been a step starn't at that time, and I'm like, so you're telling me you've got a E five sergeant who has Iraq experience, Afghanist Afghanistan experienced new UDP, you know whatever, whatever crisis response over the past ten

years, think about it, earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, like all the things the Marine Corps was involved with the ten years prior to that. And you're gonna make that sergeant leave because he's got ten years time in service? What and because he's not super competitive, like he doesn't have a two eighty five or above or whatever like. And yes, there's all sorts of manpower things that I'm not privy too, but at the end of the day, face value is what matters to a lot of people. Right. They forced a lot of folks out back then that had a lot of damn experience. Man.

Yeah, like they really did, you know. And we could talk about the we could talk about the hiss, you know, the forcing people that go recruiting or force them to depot like there, I mean there's that. Yeah, you've got to feed the beast, right, You've got to have recruiters, you got to have journal instructors, right, but man, like, it's tough out there. I think they should I think they should go to like the UK style where you can stay in at the lowest rank till you retire for twenty years if you want, you know, if you want that's what you want to be. You want to be a lance corporal and shithead. You know, not necessarily a shithead, but you know, you just you don't want to move up. Some guys don't want to move

up. They just want to be out and doing the things with their buddies, you know what I'm saying. I think if a guy wants to stay in, he's got this experience, let him stay in, you know. Like I also didn't like that. I remember a guy Lopez, who was with three six, and this dude was like a war hero, you know, not not well probably literally, but he did Iraq, he did Afghanistan.

He had you know coms with v's and all that stuff. Uh. He was in Marja Marja one when they went through and did the clear and shit. And then when we were there for our second deployment with three six, he was like working on getting letters of recommendation from like he got one from like a like a general or battalion command like all these people. Because he had a shitty tour on recruiting duty, so they were going to force him out. And I'm like, this dude is like the dude you want.

This is the guy you want to be your squad leader, platoon sergeant, and you're forcing him out because he did shitty on recruiting that has nothing to do with him being an infantryman. That's crazy, Like it just it blew my mind, and I'm like, that's when when you start seeing stuff like that, that's when you're like, you know what, it doesn't matter what I care about or what I want because the wheel, the machine is going to keep going. The wheel is going to keep turning. I'm just a cog in the wheel and if I break off, there's a million other cogs out there that are going to keep the wheel turning, so it doesn't even matter. And when you get to that point where you're like the machine doesn't care anymore, Like they don't give a fuck about me, then why

do I care about it? You know? Like I don't know? Yep. Well that and it's funny too because and I've heard this come out of general officers mouths, like the joke the Internal Marine Corps joke about the Army's nineteenth Special Forces Group, the National Guard Special Forces Group is like the percentage of former Marines that are in that special Forces group like it because marine infantruremen and racondos and and raiders and enablers like they get out and they're like, okay, so I can't do what I want here. I can go try to be competitive, try to get selected, make it through the Q course, et cetera, et cetera. And now I'm a green Beret. You know, I'm going to get activated for something, right, Like, yeah,

you're a National Guard, but you're going to do something. I mean, I imagine a bunch of snipers are about to be going a freaking green bray selection, right, you know, based off of what happens. So you know, in a lot of cases, we shoot ourselves in the foot by these policies, and we lose, we lose great you know, great uh great folks, you know, and it's the cycle, right, and they get replaced. And if they're retraining people, and you know, they talk about maturing the force, that's a catchphrase. We hear, well, what you're talking about. If we really want to mature the force, we'll use motor tis to enable as easy. Maybe that mechanic likes being a shop chief. Maybe he likes being a shop chief. Maybe he doesn't ever want

to be like the thirty five to twenty nine maintenance chief and work all the way up in the big office. Maybe he wants to be on the floor facilitating, managing and sometimes turning wrenches with the guys. Okay, so if he wants to stay a sergeant, let him stay a sergeant. He gets an incremental incremental compensation change up to twenty years or whatever. It's not a huge compensation yet because he doesn't want the responsibility of being a staffs are in a warrant officer, right, but it's enough to keep him, keep his livelihood going, keep his family supported, tricare, et cetera, right, decent pay, and he makes it to twenty years five service strip e five twenty years. Thank you for your service. You turned wrenches and were a

shop chief, a warehouse chief, and an admin NCI see an infantry squad leader for freaking twenty years. Right? Why not? I mean, like you said, the UK does that, right, Maybe in the army. I'm not sure what branch, but it's possible. I bet other European nations do that. I think all the I think the UK, Canada, Australia, all those you know, former qualities I think they all do that.

They all run, you know, they allow their dudes to stay in basically as long as they want to. You know, up until that retirement point, I used to tell people all the time. I was like, dude, if they would let me be a jaytack, I'll stay a staffs art and the rest of my career, Like this is all I want to do, Like I enjoy it. It's it's a tough job, and having experience is making me a better you know, be a better jay tack. And it's like, I don't know, I was in at a time where they were taking jay tax and you do two deployments or a couple of years as a jaytack, and then you get histed and go get pulled to go be a recruiter. And then now you're a recruiter for two and a half years or whatever, long enough where all your certifications are now canceled, none of

those none of all that experience you have is now gone, and now you're a salesman. And then when you come back to the fleet, if you wanted to be a jaytack again, you'd have to go all the way back through all this really expensive training and stuff and it's like, what are we doing here? This is you're getting rid of like all this really good experience in these specialized jobs and shit, I don't know, it's frustrating, man.

But it was not uncommon. There was not on I got out at twelve years and I was like, not oncommon for an eight six' one to do twelve years and be like, this is that's it for me because I'm not getting anything back. You're asking so much of me. Hey we got a field up. Hey, we got a field up. Hey, we got a deployment. Hey, we got this, we got that, And then when I asked for something, you don't want to give it to me or you know, I don't know, it's just for me. One of the things too, was that I was, you know, I was a jay tach. I got that specialty. And I would look at other staff sergeant eight six y one fire support guys that weren't Jaytax, that weren't going to the field all the time, that weren't deploying as much because they

didn't have that qualification. I mean, we're still making the same amount of money. But then I look over at the Air Force, and the Air Force Jaytax are getting like four hundred extra dollars a month depending on how long they've been a jay tach because that experience was something that they need, you know what I'm saying. And it's like, that's the shit. That's why the best soldier a former Marine. That's that's the phrase I used to hear all the time. The best soldier is a former Marine. That's why a lot of guys go over to the Army and do those special operations jobs because they're tired of getting kicked around for for nothing and to go do training and then come back from a hard training exercise and get yelled at for having your

hands in your pockets. You know what I'm saying, It's like, dude, fuck off. So yeah, years ago on Camp Pendleton, there was a National Guard recruiting poster that would be a p X or whatever, and it would say it literally said, sometimes the best soldier for the job is a marine. Yeah, contact your prior service recruiter here in Oceanside right, Like it was hilarious. I mean, it definitely does happen. I know of two former Marines who are now lieutenants in the Army Reserve or Army National Guard, and you know, they you know, they're happy with what they're doing. You know, they're they're platoon leaders now in the infantry, and and they're getting after it right, and they have a lot of good things

to say. They say they draw from a lot of their experience as an NCO in the Marine Corps. But you know what, if we could have retained them a few years ago, you know, where would they be now? I mean, they'll I mean they'd be almost retired at this point. They'd be they'd be master sar versus our chief born officer three. Right, they'd be an ld O. Right, they'd be a Mustang major or whatever.

You know, they'd be a lot of different things. So not gonna not going to retain them all, but we could, we could definitely do a better job of retaining I mean, hell, we don't even we don't even incentivize living in Okinawa, man, Like we don't even advertise our incentivize. Like it's like this rock that people talk about, Like it's gorgeous over there, dude, Like there's no crime, Like your kids can walk around and do whatever, Like there's it's a semi tropical island. Like I'm snorkeling with like nemo fish, you know I mean, and that Oakanawa tour is like a big barrier. If if you ever talk to any monitor, ask them about sentence staff and c's with family to Okinawa and how people get out of that shit. And I understand why people get out of it. Your

wife has a career, You've got big ass dogs that can't go over there, Like dogs are really integral parts of some people's family. Like I get things like that, But I really think if we did a better job of advertising and incentivizing service over there, the monitors wouldn't have such problems fulfilling and then we wouldn't have folks that get, hey, you can either go to open out for two years, or go to open Out for three years with your family, go to Okinawa unaccompanied for two years obviously without your family, or you can get out. That's what people are being told. Yeah, but we don't do a good job. You know, what if your spouse has some awareness of what it's like over in Okawa. What if there was

a better monetary incentive, What if there was a board promotion and consideration just for serving in the commandants number one area right now, right that place to the national defense strategy has told us to focus on right the indo paycom like, there's ways to get better about this, tame people, to encourage people to serve in different areas. We just got to be creative with it, and sometimes you got to pay, right, Yeah, you probably got to pay, you know. Did you ever go over there? No? I never made it to Oki. No. I kind of I wanted to even just to go train and like check it out. But I had. I had when I was at two ten, I had two guys I remember, two staff sergeants in my shop. One had been to Okinawa already and he

was married to an Okinawan woman and they were living in North Carolina. And then another guy who was married as well, and he they were both Jay tax, both staff sergeants, both new staff sergeants, I believe, and both had done one deployment. One one of the guys, the guy without the Okinawan wife, got orders to Okinawa and was like I don't want these, like I this isn't what I want to do. And the other dude was like, well fuck, I'll take them. You know, I'd like to go back to Okinawa with my Okinawan wife. Right. They called them monitor I was here. I watched this happen. They called them monitor and they're like, hey, it's so and so. You know, these are the orders for them. I would rather not do that. I got this

guy here, same job, same ms, same rank, experience. He's ready to take these orders, and the monitor told him, like, you can take them or get out. So the guy got out, and then they gave those orders to the other dude that he was trying to give them to anyways. So it's like you just lost a Jaytach. You just lost an O eight six' to one with experience because you're playing these fucking games.

You know what I'm saying, Like, well, if he doesn't want to do it, I'm gonna punish him for it. Like he came with a solution. I would get it. If a guy came in, bitch and was like, I don't want to do it, that's one thing. But if I'm coming to you with a solution, like here's a you know, maybe there's something I don't understand. You know, there's obviously a lot of shit that happens that headquarters the Marine Corps that we're not privy to, don't understand and stuff like that. But like that When you see that, you're like, man, you know, you just lost a dude that's had a million dollars worth of training over some bullshit. So yeah, for sure, Yeah the that Uh. I said this to Dave Armstrong on Loans Leadership

podcast, Right, I said, the Marine Corps as a service that prides itself off of decentralized command, right, but we have completely centralized the enlisted placement process. Right. It's one dude, you know, kind of calling the shots. And man, I wish there was a way that they would kind of separate that, or there'd be like some type of I don't know better. I don't know if it's a math equation or if it's a it's more incentivization. I'm not sure what it is. But yeah, I've watched that. Well, I've watched guys have to go do two years on a company tours overseas, Like two years is a long time in your kids, So I did ten years or ten years, I did ten months away.

I had to send my family home from Okinawa early based off some family medical problems, and that fucking sucked, man. And I'll tell you right now, like that affected my kids, dude, you know it really did. So, yeah, we got to get better about that. But yeah, man, that there's it's always going to be room for progress, you know.

Yeah, again, it's it's interesting. It's interesting to watch it from here. You know. Uh, you know, being retired, you get you know, being retired of being out right, you get new priorities, right, you know. I find it interesting. You know. The Instagram thing keeps me kind of connected. I'm shifting towards keeping my business going for martmanship instruction. But this is a damn man. It's a saturated market out here trying to teach people, and honestly, a lot of folks in Texas don't think they need training because they grew up around guns. And I'm like that, everyone who has that mentality, I guarantee you suck shooting. But whatever. So, yeah, it's interesting to watch. But I don't know if you were if you were coming out for a day and you can make

one change, what would it be. I think I've thought about this before, and I would like I broke it down to like tactical, operational, and strategic level. Right at the tactical level that I'm going to give you three things, right, but at the tactical level. I would I would buy a combat uniform for the Marines to we're in the field on the range, Like the utilities are too the utilities are too old of a design.

We need like cry precision combat uniform or something made by somebody with you know, breathable fab fabrics, et cetera. Right, like the shit that I was issued with MARSOC freaking thirteen years ago. Is it is an industry standard and it's available in the market cry Precisions in Brooklyn. They'll make it.

Just buy it, make it in marpat and give it to the Marines, and then go to the range in the field. Right, operational level, it'd be all about the barracks, right, I call it like operational like quality of life level. It would be one hundred percent of the barracks. It would be a complete, an entire overhaul of the facilities itself. The process. The things you were talking about I thought are really interesting, Like why doesn't that kid track his freaking you know, we got to teach them something, right, So if we're going to fix the barracks, maybe we can teach them something about life in the same way I hadn't thought about, like utilities and stuff. Yet but it's I like the conversation, right,

So operational level they you know, as a as a comparison, it'd be all about the barracks and the facilities around the base, right. And then at the institutional level or like the strategic level, it'd probably be taking enlisted education and having it have some type of parody with officer education, right, because it just isn't there. You know, if you do twenty years in the Marine Corps as a as an officer, you know, the Marine Corps facilitates you getting a master's degree in something, right, Like you know, you get you get sent to not everyone but good you know, high performing officers gets sent to the you know, a school of Amphibious Warfare, right, and then you go to the Naval War College or you know, you

get to go to the Air Force War College or whatever, and you get these degrees given to you. You get to take literally years off of leading people to go focus on yourself, right as an officer, and it's ridiculous that the enlisted, Like you got a senior listed advisor who's got twenty years in any education he has, like any degree he has, he's used to his tuition assistance, and he's done that shit after work at two in the morning, right after he put his kids to bed. Right, there are some opportunities for enlisted marines to go degree completion program. There's a couple other things, right, but there's not any type of you know, parody or quality or whatever, like there's no there's no way you can tell me that

the enlisted education pipeline is preparing you once you make eight nine to be on the same level of doctrinal information or really the same education level as your as your counterpart who you're supposed to be advising, right, And I don't know how you do it. Maybe it's a merit based thing where maybe you know, maybe that gunners are and staffs aren't wants to go to ews, right, and he wants to sit in and learn that stuff alongside the Captain's Like that's a good thing, right, you know, there's so many more enlisted folks than there are officers. But we've got to do a better job of, you know, and making all that enlisted education transfer into something, right, a degree in organizational leadership, right, or whatever whatever it is,

because it's just not there like you've seen it. Man, you've seen freaking eight and nine is both first Arm, Master Arm, Master guns, Star major who are just not educated man like they made it all the way up. They've got freaking they did the right stas or they you know, they ran a three hundred pf T and they just got promoted, promoted, promoted, promoter promoted, and then all they can talk about in front of the whole squadron is like clean your rooms, right or freaking you know, get ready for that ceremony. Or you've got the Master Gunnery sargint who all he cares about is the maintenance readiness report, right like, there's no other input except for that. If you even see the guy, right and we that's

that's a long answer to a three lawn, three part answer, But that's that's what I would do. That's what I would focus on. If I were their, you know, comment out Star Majer and Marine Corps team, Yeah I was, I would say, I mean, I guess their counter would be, well, you have PM you know, you have the corporals course and certaint course and what lands corporal seminar now and all that stuff, And I will say that's not it, you know, and this is coming from someone that never went to PMME. I made it to because I was in O eight six to one. You have that luxury of getting promoted without doing PME, so I never did it. And the only thing I feel like I missed out on was networking with PMME. Everything else I heard from

people it was it was like basic leadership stuff. It was like naval letter format stuff, and that was really it. Like the benefit I think I missed out on a lot was the networking. But you're right, I mean education, it needs to be prioritized. I remember being like a junior Marine and going, hey, i'm gonna do TA. I'm gonna do tuition assistance and do some college. And then we're they're they're like, hey, you're getting You're going to Iraq And I'm like, oh, well, I'm not gonna have enough time to do college. Now you know, I'm getting ready for deployment and I have plenty of time. And I did that every deployment, like oh, I'm gonna do TA, and then it was like, oh, you got disapployment. I'm like, ah, dang it, I'm

not gonna have time. And then when I finally decided to get out, I was two years out. I was like, all right, I'm getting out. I got two years. I'm on a MEW. You know, time to crush some ta for real. I'm gonna have plenty of time. Anybody who's been on the ship knows you have plenty of time. And so I knocked out like thirty credits, you know, Darren. While I was at the MEW, and it was just like I had captains that were like, fuck yeah, sign off on it, Like sign off, but you have some units where guys, well he hasn't been to PMME yet, he can't take this class. Well has he been to PM because he's been afforded the opportunity or because he's being a shit bag or you know what I'm saying, Like let it, do you take a college class? It was like,

I don't know, You're right. I mean, I one hundred percent would recommend everybody while they're in to be using their tuition assistance for the simple fact that let's say you decide to go to college. When you get out, you want to do a four year degree or whatever. I got out, I had thirty credits done. And what I did also was that I went through Central Texas College I think is the one that they offered here on base. I went through Central Texas College, and every class I took I went on the articulation agreement for USC, and I was like, well, if USC will accept this class from Central Texas College, and basically any other school is going to accept it. And I only took classes that were going

to be accepted by a four year university, so I made sure they were. Because a lot of these schools are diploma mills. You could take bullshit classes and do half ass work and you'll still get a degree out of it. So it's on you, like how much work do you want to do? I wanted to take quality stuff, so I did that, got out, had thirty had thirty units done or whatever, started school, and I graduated with my degree and I still have a year's worth of benefits left because I took that time to do classes while I was in and then when I got out and started doing classes, I took most. I took it once with six classes, which was too much. It was a little much.

It was a little I did five and then I was like, all right, I'm gonna try six next semester. And I was like, this is fucking miserable. But I don't know. Education is important, not necessarily. It doesn't necessarily have to be a bachelor's degree or something like that. But like I remember being a mechanic and they said that there was some kind of trade program where you could go down to the education center and get hour signed up for the amount of work that you did, and there was something like you could get some kind of certification or something like that. You may know more about it. You became more of a senior guy. What is that?

So the see you've heard of it being ASC certified, right, yeah, yeah, So if you just google ASC Military Certification, right, and that'll bring you the homepage and if you want to get into you know, essentially it used to be your supervisor would like sign off and you'd submit it through the mail and all this stuff. I think it's a little more professional now, so you can work towards getting that AC Military certification while you're in right. And I think it probably is a combination of like online classes, you know, theory of I'm sure it has like air conditioning, you know, combustion theory, et cetera, et cetera. Like you got to put the time in but more than likely your time served while turning physically turning the

wrenches that somehow gets codified and submitted. Right, But now it's something you can do, I mean, and what I would say. I actually just sent it the other day to our mechanic down in Austin at one twenty three, but I didn't research it enough. Maybe it's something I can make a post out of my on my on my page at some point, because you know that's important. I mean, I got my associates degree while I was in and I almost got my bachelor's degree. I kind of got lazy at the end, and once I got promoted first Art and I went like full bore first art man. I was on the range every day, freaking pt and the NCOs like it was fun, man, I mean it was a combat instructor still as a first art and it was rad was what was that

like? Though, I don't want to cut you off, sorry, but what was it like to do that train position? From gunny to first sergeant? You know, that's a huge that's a huge jump. That's a really really good question. Like so Motor Team Maintenance gunnery sergeant with Truck Company third MARDV Camp Haansen Okinawa, right, you know, running it as a platoon sardant where turn wrenches, et cetera, et cetera. I had like seventeen years and at the point at that point, I was putting them on my finished reports for a long time. That's why I end up standing gunny for almost five years. At the last minute, I changed it back to F got selected right away. I did exactly what people say not to do.

I was like, f F F M m M kind of done with this. I want to be a first round and put F got selected, right. That was I reported to Third Marie or sorry, third law Enforcement BETIGN so like field MPs right, so, like rear security doing koes, brig guards and pow epw kind of mission, right, but you know it's a it's a maneuver unit really, like we had fifty cows Mark nineteen's, we had M one ten SaaS sniper rifles. We had M two forty nine.

Still we had M two forties obviously like so and when I got there, you know, I got uh paired up with Captain Tom Fiametta. He's a major now and uh you know I told him, I was like, I'm here to train for the fight. Man, Like at the end of the day, like you're a skipper, I'm a freaking you know, senior enlisted here, Like we have this number of marines below us, We have a huge AMMO allocation. We had the third most AMMO on Okinawa, EOTG, third recon and then us. Right, we're going to train with this shit COVID was going on. I was like, we're not gonna let COVID turn this place into a bunch of like barracks rats that just play video games all day. Like, we're going to the field. We need to train,

And he's like, I completely agree with you, right, phenomenal man and marine officer. Right, so we just started training. Man, and I went out, you know, I went out to the range and I was like, look like I already knew that we had these family medical complications going on, and I knew, like, I'm not going to make stard Majors someday, I'm going to have to retire at twenty, Right, I was like, I have limited time left in the Marine Corps. I saw a lot of combat in Iraq, in Afghanistan as a motor t guy. You know, I've seen all these different m West is performing combat like you are all going to get trained and as allers to it. The company Gunny I had been a combat instructor with at s Y West. One of the platoon

sartants Purple Heart recipient dog handler. The other platoon sartant legitimate combat veteran as well from Afghanistan. They're both staff sargants, brand new lieutenants, motivated young marines. But like COVID, COVID put like a damper on stuff, man, Like the attitude like you got locked in your room for freaking weeks at a time, like it was bullshit. Like the way that the way that we handled COVID as the niceties military was freaking shameful. Like it was like we treated this thing like it was a damn plague. Like you're talking about one of the arguably most fit populations in the Holy United States population and we're we're treating it like we're it's destroying us, right, and like no,

we're not doing this, Like get outside, Oh we can't, we have to have a mask on inside. Cool, We're gonna go outside. We're going to train request the animal, go to range Patrolling Convoy Operations epwpuw T triple C you know, medical stuff like it didn't matter. Over and over and over. I'm like, every single one of you need to understand.

We might have to go do something right, you never know. And we did. We had to go to Guam to help the Air Force do additional security on their F twenty two's and do the jungle mission where there were we were. We were fucking patrolling and tracking down poachers and Chinese informants bro in the in the in the Guam jungle like on nods like I'm chasing after dudes with my m foward loaded pistol on nods like in the Guam jungle man like it was. It was radd So yeah, it was. We caught dudes like freaking it was. It was cool. So I mean, in another perfect example of anything could happen is the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The mus got called up for that, you know, then you got called in to support that. Those are probably guys and girls that were sitting on ship, Like

this sucks. I can't wait to the next port call. You know, I'm not gonna Yeah, this is not a real I hated them, and then all of a sudden you get that that call that like something real is happening and you guys are on tap and it's like, oh shit, like you know, and and I tell people, I'm like, when that call comes and you get called up, it's like, hey, we need you guys. You know this mission we've been training for that we never thought we'd get. It's happening. You know how well you were trained and how ready you are internally, and you everybody will go through their own like oh shit, am I ready for this? You know kind of deal. It's like, I don't know, people talk a big game about how good they are

at their jobs and stuff, but when it comes down to it, you are gonna know there's gonna be questions in your own mind if you're having issues doing your own job or whatever. So yeah, and you need to like I'll tell you, like, as an individual, you got to like do some self analysis when it comes to like training, right, Like if you know I did Iraq, you know four or five, I did Iraq again, O six oh seven, I did a westpac mew to Koy and Jordan and you know all sorts of other places in o Wait, and then I got to Marsak and I did Afghanistan with Fox Company second uh Brain Special Operation of Vatian you know, second rate of battalion, right, and the Iraq experience. I saw combat mortars, rockets, I D strikes, small arms

fire, but nothing like you know what I'm talking about, right, Like nothing like really like troops in contact, engaging other engaging other people like real wounded motherfuckers. Like Afghanistan was different. You know. My opinion about the Talban was they would fight anybody, and I found that out real quick, right, So I do some reflection. You know, I'm at this point, I've got like seven years time in service. I'm a you know, newly promoted staff stardant. I'm going to Afghanistan with the Fox Company second Raater Battalion back then was like a blue collar battalion man like you had you know, you had critical skills operators who could weld and fabricate. You had eod tex who could freaking make things right, electrical work. You had other CSOs

who were carpenters. Right. You know, I'm generally capable with a bunch of different things, right, but not really graded a lot of it, you know. I Mean we were a unit that we didn't even need CBS man as much as all of the CBS. We didn't have to call them because we could do it all our own, right. But I specifically remember we were out in wend Dover, Nevada. Right. So when over Nevada is where the and Nola Gay in nineteen forty five would do its training for the Nordon bomb site to drop the first Tomic bomb. Right, So we're out there doing some training and we were doing a comment marksmanship range. Super simple stuff that the MLG and the Wing does, right, but it's you know, right every time. I remember the drill was like two rounds on

paper boat lock taking, knee reload, two rounds on paper stand an assessor target, right, very very simple drill, and it's all the S four A Fox Company first arns out there. He's an old machine gunner, and the Master Sartant is out there, old Ricondo right, stand by contact press, press, drop the knee reload, press press, stand up, assess.

Because I've been taught that ship by the EOD team on the MEW years before, right, and I'd done the drills, I'd gone to the armory, I've drawn my own weapon. I'm you know, generally interested in training, and I remember the Master Sartant and the first arn right. Uh, they were looking at me and they're like, so you know what you're doing.

I'm like, yeah, you know, I've been did I rack? I did? You know? I did? Did a couple of mews and stuff like I've been training for a long time and you know, been in for seven years, you know, like Roger, I started trying to wrenches for the teams and keep training and keep training and generally built trust for the teams to By the time we got to Afghanistan, I was rolling out the wires a provisional rifleman with them man like straight out like on the mission card, you know, three twenty one O three twenty one, O three twenty one, twenty nine O three twenty one right, and it just you gained the trust. Now I didn't have to be out there. I wanted to.

I want to go get something man like, you know, I really did, and and it came, you know, but it wasn't just like provisional riflement stuff like you're out there doing convoy operations or patrol mounted patrol operations on motorcycles right side by side of ATV's regular traditional style ATVs, Like I'd bring tools out, I'd be the on site mechanic. Right, We'd have to go out there sometimes do like census patrols where you get the remember the BAT system for the eyes, right, you know we're we're collecting information where what was this saying to gain atmospherics and human terrain? Right, you know there's all those things that like we would go out there and do and we would get in gunfights man, and it's like, you know, I'm I'm

there as a as a mechanics staff startant, and I'm engaging other humans. Man. And this is after seven years in the Marine Corps. I had been consistently training for that seven years. I could disnasked functions, check and hot brail procedures with all the all the cruiser weapons to include the Mark nineteen.

Right. I knew how to apply a tourniquit, massive manage a massive hemorrhage the whole pete march p you know acronym. I could read a map. I had to shoot an asthmuth with a compass in dense fog on a motorcycle to get myself back when I got separated from my element. Right, I had to use a compass again to shoot an asmuth for a sniper on a rooftop because we were getting information from equipment that I won't talk about right now, right, he asked for the asthmuth. I shot the asmuth and he engaged like I mean, and all of the things I'm talking about right now, curser of weapons, rifle, map and compass, radio comms.

It's all basics, right, There's nothing sexy about that. That's all three zero zero basic skills taught MCT, right. I used every single thing I learned at MCT, except I didn't shoot a rocket at anybody, and I didn't throw a hanger in ad at anybody. Everything else I use, man like literally every single other tea in our task. I never placed a claymore.

That's about it, right, So you know, But you know, in Afghanistan, Man, I don't know how your experience was, but the Taliban would come out and fight, bro like they didn't care, like they they would come out and fight, and sometimes we teach them a lesson man A two one one team A two one one. They freaking smoked some dudes so quick that the Taliban got on the net and called back to Daddy Taliban in Pakistan and said, do not fight the Marines with beards and the skull patch uh in Balla McGraw. They will track you down and kill you.

But yeah, yeah, you know that's what you are, right, that's who we want, right. Yeah. They printed off, they printed it off, and they put the narrative on the on the talk wall. It's pretty cool. But what I saw in that battalion and in Fox Company specifically, was everybody fights. Everybody's taught to fight. You know, they don't expect you, you know, because we came from the Marine Special Operations Support Group over the second Marine Special Operation Battalion, right, and they would say, we don't expect the support group to supply us with shooters. We want good mechanics. We'll make you into it. We'll teach you the war fighting skills. Man. And you know, I don't really talk about it much,

but like my finished reports and my personal awards from the deployment specifically talk about that stuff, right like, this is a combat server support marine who is performing directly in combat against an arm enemy engaging, right like, And if I fully believe if I had not trained my body and mind mind via a lot of reading, right, I wouldn't have been that prepared for that deployment, right, getting a tick, immediately react. You know what's the old acronym, the non doctoral l abernam return fire, takeover return, accurate fire, right, like that kind of stuff. If you didn't practice that stuff, or at least and read about it right and do immediate action drills and stuff, you won't. People aren't just going to perform without the training.

But sometimes you got to kind of get it in on your own, you know. Yeah, I mean there were times where I'd get to the roof first, I'd be the first person on the roof and we're taking accurate fire, and you know what you gotta do, grab that two forty load it, make ready and get after it. You know. I had a buddy who's who was a mechanic who also went over to Marsak and got to do a lot of that as well. He got where I can't remember where exactly they were deployed to, was in Afghanistan, but he was like the team mechanic for them and a Green Bray team. There was a Green Brake team. They didn't have their own mechanic. So he's like yeah, I just I was a mechanic slash mortarman, slash machine gunners slash. You know,

like He's like, they I just had whatever job they needed to be filled. I was doing it, and I was like, that's badass, man, you know, that's like, that's pretty cool as a mechanic at the time. I was a mechanic at the time. I'm like that sounds fucking awesome. You know, like, if I have to be a mechanic, I want to be one at Marsac, I guess, you know, and like that whole ms Field man. When I went to my motor transport maintenance chiefs course in twenty fourteen, so staff Starns and Gunnies, right, we had one day that we wore service Charlie's. We walk in, I was like the last guy to show up. We walk in. You look at everybody sitting there in Charlie's and I'm like, holy shit, bronze star would be two purple hearts, that dude's gonna namvy and a kom V two

combin action ribbons like like almost everybody and at the bare minimum, Iraq Campaign Medal, Afghan Campaign Medal, like every like almost every single person right, and you look at the you look at the community and you're like, oh, who are you with? Like I was with Victor three five right, I was with two ten. I was with three eleven five eleven first Angle Coo right for Anglico was another one in the early days the dudes I knew Anglico was really good about throwing the mechanics in the trucks too, to have on site maintenance when they were out, and about doing their thing right.

And you know, it's just one of those m westfields where your job or your battalion rather or your your main your major subbort a command wing, MLG division, Marsak, it's gonna your job's gonna change a lot, right. But I mean there were days in Afghanistan where I would be turning wrenches throughout the day and we would be in four to five firefights in the day.

Like you'd stop what you're doing, take cover real quick, get get your gear, get to the roof or get to the wall and fight back. Like and like you said about your buddy, I'm also operating heavy equipment building fighting positions with the Bobcat, you know, digging trench lines, right, you know, fixing the generators for the army because we don't have a generator mechanic on site. I'm like opening the generator up, like it's a white gear from Halliburton, Right, I'm like, all right, let's figure this out, right. Yeah, it's being resourceful. And that's where I like to talk about the difference between being a support guy and being an enabler.

Right. You know, you can have the support guy mentality, which is green bean coffee and freaking salsonite the MWR like I only do this and that's all I'm gonna all that's ever gonna happen to me. Or you can be an enabler and you can enable the main effort, right, and sometimes you're going to participate in some of the main efforts stuff. I mean, you know, I was in some engagements over there. We had wounded people and I had a sark you know, recon corman, and I had to drag a jsack off the road under fire. He weighed like three hundred pounds of this gear on man, and then we had to carry him about seven hundred meters to the you know the pickup you know, the Kaza back pickup site.

And we didn't have a litter. Like four of us carried that dude wounded with no litter for like seven hundred meters and they had to run him out there to the Army freaking dust off bird, get him up in there, run back and this is like active tick happening, right, So you better be in shape, right, Like you better be ready for that type of stuff, like, because you know, experiences may vary, right, you know, I mean I could have. I almost didn't go to Marsak man, but I was thinking about going to the to be a drun structure in two thousand and seven. I really was, Yeah, for the wrong reasons too. I just wanted to go Hayes kids, right, I'm going to go wear kids out, wear the freaking hat, right. And I

one of my mentors, Master guns Ryan Hendrick, you know, he told me, he said, hey, man, those force recon guys from last meet, they're talking about this Marstok thing. They need mechanics. So I freaking called the monitor, got orders from Marstak and way better left Marstock Way Better went. Oh it was awesome. I got to go to Army Airborne School and sto. You know, it was cool, you know, yeah, work with the work with the green berets and stuff in Afghanistan. It was rad. I leave Marsac, I go to the wing, which is like whoa kind of a big disparity, right. It worked out perfectly, man. I trained those dudes the entire time I was there. I had all that one hundred and twenty thousand rounds of green tip hand grenades. It

was funny, like we we had the ten fourteen shotgun right and I'm like, okay, we're gonna take those out. They sent the ammal request up and it got denied. I'm like, what I know the G four MO chief. I called Tommy Russell up. I'm like, Tommy, you denied my twelve gage request. He's like, oh, that's you. I hear him on the computer. He approves it. Right there. I get twelve gage for the freaking Marines. Right. How would have denied in the first place because we didn't Probably the S four didn't put like a good it's probably who's this unit? Yeah exactly, it was. Yeah, that's the bureaucracy though. That slows down training and stops good training, right, because that's the step like, oh what if you would have been like shit, we

got denied? Well, I guess we're not doing that, guys. You know what I'm saying. That's it right, there is another red tape. Yeah yeah. And then you know, after the wing, I was like, I got all this combat experience as an enabler, Like, I guess I should go. I should just go to Soy West. I should be a combat structure. And like, sometimes you can't take no for an answer with things, man, because if something doesn't sound right, you need to take a step further. Like I go, and I'm like, I talked to our career planner on it gonna be a combat structure. They're like, oh, they're not taking they're not taking non infantrymen. I'm like, there's no fucking way. There's no fucking way that the entire I'm like, I

had two out of four of my combat instructors were non infantry. They take non infantry women obviously on the East coast back then, not in the West coast yet. But I'm like, there's no way. I do some more research. I call around, I call our monitor, I call the Motor Team monitor, and I'm like, hey, I've been doing I've been going you know, six gear for twelve years now. I'm in zone for gunny.

I need to go do a special DV assignment for consideration later on my career. And the Monitor, I'm like, I'm being told that uh sy West does not take mails non infantry and he's like, who told you that? Like on my career planner, He's like, your currerent planner is an idiot. I got the number, you know, to the Soy Monitor, put a naval message in and literally two days later, I got ordered s Y West for Combat Instructor School, right, go to combat structor. You know, I'm a gunny at this point I got selected for gunny. They make me the company gunny at Quilo Company, then Hotel Company, and then I get moved over to uh Combat Instructor School to make combat instructors. Right, and I got to run the regiment Regimentals shooting team and go compete in

division matches, you know, and you know earn earn those the different badges that I have. Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Yeah, yeah, so you know we had we won the West Coast Pistol Team team match one year and you know I got rifle rifle bronze out there and continue to compete in Okanawa. But it was just this whole long line of like, I'm gonna do what the Marine Corps tells me to do. Right.

They made me a company gunny multiple times, and I didn't want to be one, right, But I'd get back into motor tea and then get pulled back out. And I remember one time I was talking to a captain. He was a Mustang too, and I'm like, hey, sir, I need to be the maintenance chief. There's this entire squadron. You've got to find somebody else to be this company gunny that we just don't trust anybody else to do it. And I fucking went back and forth with the damn captain and he's a good dude. I ended up getting the highest finished report of my entire career from that company gunny stint and right before the gunnery started board, and it got me promoted. So I freaking cursed it, and I was like, this is bullshit, blah bah blah. Ended up doing well,

got promoted gunny because of it. So you never know, you got to take you got to take the position you're put in, and you gotta just perform, right, Yeah, take care of the folks. I've said it multiple times on the show. You know, you got to take your own career in your hands. Nobody cares about your career more than you do.

So there's something you want to do and someone says no, don't take that as the ultimate roadblock, like find out why is he saying no? Is he right? Is that correct? I remember, yeah, all the way back to when I was a mechanic and I was working on that ITV. There was two, actually two test phases. I did the first one and we went to like twenty nine Palms with a bridgeport and obviously all around North Carolina. Came back, and then I was at work one day being miserable as second maintenance Battalion, and I saw one of the itvs drive by and I was like, oh shit, I think they're back, and I'm like going around, I'm looking for them, you know, I'm like, where are these things? And I'm like, you know what, I bet

throw over at tenth Marine. So one day during lunch I drove over there and found out where they were walked up and the same guys that were working on it before the major swap was one of them, the civilian contractors. Because it was a test team. They were all the same guys. So I showed back up and they're like, what's up? Are you here to work on these? And I'm like, dude, I will totally come back, you know, like please, you know. They're like, we'll put in a buy name request for you. And I'm like, fuck yeah.

I go back to my unit and they're like, no, you're not going over there for that. So and so has already been selected. He's going and he he doesn't even want to go, but he's gonna go anyways. And I'm like what you know, Like this is bullshit. And and then one of the guys was like one of the sergeants was like, you know, I know the guy running that program, and you really don't want to get in on it. And I'm like, who the fuck I was on the program? I know everybody, Like you don't know anybody, dude.

And I ended up contacting that major again and he did the buy name request and had me pulled over. And had I just been like, well so and so is doing it, you know, I'm not going to do it, then I would have never had that opportunity. I got to go to Alaska. I got to go back to twenty nine palms, which you know could be good or bad. But you know, I got to do all these really awesome things. But it was only because I knew that I had to take my own career into my hands. You know, at some point I can't be let around by the hand by my cores and sergeants and shit like. At some point I got to, you know, take an interest in my own career. So it's that's just good general advice. Like a closed mouth doesn't get fed. If you don't tell me you need something,

then I don't know you need it, you know what I'm saying, Or you want to do something. If you never told me you want to go to the school, then maybe I didn't know you wanted to go to it, so of course you're never going to go to it. Yeah, it's it's also a good because you asked about the transition from you know, gunny to first arm, right, you know, don't don't think that that that box. Like in a lot of ways, the eighty nine ninety nine's you know, the first R and start major ms, like especially when like you and I came in the leadership we saw from the mid nineties, right going through they they put themselves in a box, right, and it's like admin and legal, right. And I don't understand why because you talk to any

of these you know, company commanders that have written books about Fallujah uh or really even the all the way back to Vietnam, they always talk about how their first arms are saying advisor being there for them what they need, like, and this applies to master Startain too. Being a master Sartin doesn't mean you need to be only like in the operations office, right, Like you are not put inside a box like the box. Parameters are what you make of it, right. You know, top top and first arm right, don't need to be meshing into each other's stuff if you've got both in your in your company. But you can take the promotion and you can make it your own, right. And I really did, like you know, there was there, trust me. There were plenty of people who asked me like,

why are you out there training with marines like that? Like, and I would I'd give them a freaking like the unapproving emoji face, like the flat eyes and the flat mouth, right, and I'd be like, did you really just ask me why I'm out there leading troops right, like, somebody have to teach these Yeah, somebody has to advise the company commander, right, somebody has to be the senior listed presence like example. And to be honest with you, in the Marine Corps right now, there's a lot of folks who don't know how to conduct training man like, because they were never taught. They were never taught. They never ask questions either. Yeah, you know, yeah, they never asked questions. They were never taught,

they were never put in that position. You've got people who are actively dodging, you know, going to get rs and YC qualified so they can facilitate training. People who are content to show up at eight thirty in the morning or I guess eight to run the morning report and then leave by sixteen hundred to make sure that the sergants close the shop up. Never pt with the Marines, never never participate in any type of you know, training outside that compound. There's a lot of folks that exist like that, man.

And that's the garrison Colt. Like I talk about, if you're getting promoted to first star on or masters suard right now, you can make it yours. You can make it however you want it to be. Because I know that the majority of people are going to fulfill the obligations of their billet description in their MOS, right, they're going to do it. Like you've made Master Sardant. You're a really good administrator at this point, you know what I mean. You're a really good mechanic or at least maintenance manager at this point. You are a really good creu chief or whatever it is. If you made first Arden, like, you did something right. That's a twenty two percent selection rate, man, Like, it's not easy to get promoted

to that rank. Like you did something else prior in your career. You probably did an SDA that you can draw some type of experience from, right, take it, teer it towards your unit. Like, and I will say this, if you're a first art and you're not embracing your unit's mission statement, you're wrong, right, Like you need to look at the mission statement of that unit and you need to tear your your leadership. You're advising, you're mentoring towards what that job does. Like, Okay, you used to be an aviation ordnanceman, but now you're an infantry rightful company, you better understand like Lokey closer to destroy the enemy and be able to speak towards that because if you're the first earn an infantry company, you're probably going to

be the mass cas coordinator, right. You know, you you're probably going to go and patrol skipper is going to be at somewhere under patrol and you're going to be somewhere else. Right. You know, you need to understand the fact that you're going to have a company going to re sardeant who's the you know, lead oh through sixty nine maybe in the future that might be a Master sargeant, right, and be able to have a good relationship with that senior MOS advisor to be able to enable the company commander to make good decisions. But you can you can make it your own, Like, I mean, how many times do you seem like I personally know multiple Master sergeants and Chief one officer threes that still teach MCMAP like LEGITIMATEMAP, like fight their

students. I know dudes that go out there and teach marksmanship and it doesn't even have to be something that's like a Marine Corps thing. Like I know dudes that are damn near millionaires because they're so good with their their money and they do like financial management mentorship as like a part of their leadership as a senior and listed advisor. They just do it because why not, right, why not spread the master that's realist. State real estate is another good one too, right, you know college. I know there's a first start in the Marine Corps who's got his PhD. Right now. I think his name is Las, name's Flores. He's got a social media presence, right, I mean, I guarantee you that I can tear it a little bit and

at least at the bare minimum, show how to leverage TA, what schools to go to, et cetera, et cetera. Right, So that's my biggest advice, Like don't think you've got to fit inside the diamond or the cross. Trafles only means that you only do your job. You can do more with it. You can do what you want with it. You know, as long as ambition is geting accomplished. You know, a lot of people would probably be surprised by how much better morale would be with just a little bit of presence, you know, just be there. There was nothing.

I remember one time when I was at Anglico, I there was something that happened. I don't remember what it was, but our guys had to come in like super early at like four am to lay out radios because we had something going on and we had to get all the shit laid out before it was something super early, And I remember I got there at like three point fifty or something like that. Rolled up, The other marines rolled up, and one of the marines from the other team, because it was two teams doing it, the marine from the other team's like, why are you here? Staff start and I'm like, cause you're here, Like what are you talking about? Like he's like, oh, okay, And I'm like, the how is that even a thing? Like you know what you mean?

Why am I here? Like if I told you to be here at three point fifty to do some bullshit, that'd be fucked up. If I'm sleeping at home or whatever, not not participating. Yeah, And that was a thing that I saw a lot of, is that when guy A lot of times when officers and stuff had issues, it was the officers that didn't stay out on the range with the guys. It was the officers that didn't go on hikes with the guys that got out of stuff. You know, they they had a reason to not be there. You know, they had officers stuff to do, and it's like, dude, you know that.

And that doesn't mean go out and crush your dudes at running because you're probably a better runner because you're an officer and shit like that. That doesn't mean anything like that. Just be present, you know what I'm saying. The Marines notice if you're never on the range. The marine noticed that they never see you at the armory. You know what I'm saying. It's like it's like that. Yep, yeah, completely, that was a big That was a big part of the two. Like you know, I mean we're dealing with pronominantly like young men here, right. You know, young men generally are looking for some type of example period. Right, You've got to be the example, you know, and the the the presence that like they are

one percent going to notice that you're not there and in many cases mentally hold it against you if you're not. You know, hell, sometimes I've been in I was in units where there'd be like staff and co way ends, it'd be separate from the mass way, right, It's like, Okay, you're not It's not like a mission thing like that is one looked at as well. Some of the stuff these are fat, so the start major retret guns are weighing them differently, you know, weighing them step hooking them up, you know. Yeah, just a little bit of presence like I would do when I was a gunny. I would do Thursdays. Thursdays was my PT day with the with the Marines, and at the time, the battalion commander, which is a full bird at Headquarters Battalion of Therm Marine Division,

he had a kind of an unwritten policy or guidance that was, hey, at least once a week, the Marines in this battalion should be doing physical training with some type of combat load on. He didn't dictate what he'd say, you know, literally anything from boots and mutes up to full gear. He didn't care. But he's like, we should be doing it at least once a week. Get the Marines to shake their gear out, understand how to move under a load, et cetera. Right, So I was like, well, that's my day, you know, and it was generally boots and utes with your play carrier. And you know, I made it.

It was a policy in my in my platoon, my guidance that you would have your your your combat equipment is always set up bare minimum. I fact magazine pouches, uh and then h yeah and your and your plates. And someone's like, oh, well they're what if they lose the stuff? I'm like, what if you enforced accountability? Right? Like what if you?

And like what are you talking about? Yeah? And that's crazy. I always breath in that. I I did that my whole career. I can tell you right now. I got to play car right there, it's still set up. I had my play carrier or my flat jacket set up my entire career the and to the point where I didn't want to take it apart.

So I got another one slick when I had to do freaking mcmap. Like, guys are the worst about that too, because mostly the truckers you know, will give it the thirty five thirty ones on this one. They like to roll slick because they're in the truck all day, they don't, you know, And I remember, oh, go ahead, go ahead.

Well they they they acted all like I was fucked up when I got there and made that a policy. I'm like, what do we I'm like, first of all, it's it's the gear that we go to combat in and they need to operate in that equipment period. Have your MVG mount on your helmet, have your helmet cover on because it's camouflage, right, Have your freaking magazines pouches on your ipac. If you want to wear a dump pouch, you can put it on there. If you want to have your gun belt set up, you can you can do that. If you want to purchase an aftermarket gun belt from Ordnance Tactical up by Schwab, as long as that's Kyoti, you can wear that shit too, I don't care. You will have your plates in front and back. Didn't make them more of their

side plates because again, there's a difference between training for the fight and training how you fight right bare minimum, the bare minimum combat load you know you would have set up because like you don't know, remember how close the seven ton steering wheel was to your body, right? You better you better know how to maneuver around that steering whee if that truck fucking flips right with your with your kit on that And I never understood, like I literally when I went to check out of SITH in Okinawa, there were staff and CEO's in there bragging that they never took their equipment out of the packaging. I've been here for three years. I never had to take it out. And I'm like that, that's three years that you never trained with your marines. That's

what it is, like, that's that's three years where you somehow got and maybe you're with Mickey Pack or something. I understand maybe you didn't go to the field, but you probably could have facilitated it somehow. You could have at least I don't even know, gone to the armory and dremon drawn weapons and built your gear. I mean, you're living within the Chinese weapons engagement zone and you don't have your personal combat load set up? The fuck is that? Yeah? Yeah, no, one hundred percent. I mean again, so when I was at Anglico, I remember we did it. We were going on a range and we just got some brand new motor tee operators and it was like literally their first day or second day in the fleet and

they were going to be driving us out to the range in the seven time. And we get out to the range and I was like, hey, Pine, that was a kid's name, was like Pine, you know you're gonna shoot next? And he's like I don't have my rifle, you know, and like his plate carrier had nothing on it. And I'm like, this is the last time you ever come to a range without your rifle, without your Because the motor tea guys always think that they're just I'm just here to drive you out there and then you do what you do and I'll drive you back. I'm like, no, dude, when you drive us out here, you're doing the range with us, like the whole there's no reason for you to just go sit in the truck and do nothing. You might

as well take part in the range. So every time you come out, your gears ready to go. And that was the last time. And you know, and that's the precedent you got to set. You know, like, hey, when you when we're doing this, we're doing it for real because once you know, you never know when you're gonna get that call and you and you don't have it's no more time to practice. It's it's time to go for real, you know, do you want to be right?

So I got to the point where I would bring two safety vehicles out to the range. That way I could rotate the Satan Diegle drivers and training. Right, you know, because of course like that, again, they'd be out there all day. I'd bring if I could, I bring two corman out to the range. That way Cormick could cover down and the other corman could train if possible. Right, And sometimes you get some pushback with that, But then you know, you call over to the hum Water, you call with the chief pay officer, or you call over the motor Chie chief and be like, the reason why I'm requesting this much support is so I can also train your guys. And you know, sometimes half the time they'd be like, Roger that and thanks for training my guys. You know.

Yeah, it's good for the dudes too. Like a lot of motor Ta guys never get to go shoot a bunch of stuff. And it's like when you when you're with an Anglo Coe team and you have all this ammo, like, why wouldn't I let you come out and shoot? You here's you know, you want to shoot the two forty. Let's get on, let me show you how to do it. Hey, Corporal so and so get down there and show them how to use the two forty. You know, let's let's do it. It's it's a it's an opportunity. So man, I've really I mean, I've really enjoyed the conversation. We're we're pushing a little over two hours, which is kind of where I cut off at, So I'm gonna stop it here. This has been interesting talk to another.

We haven't normally, I like, talk in depth about people's careers. We're mostly talking policy and stuff like that. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool to talk to another, like former motor tea guy, because you know, you understand how much it sucks or I mean, if you wanted to do it. Some people enjoy it. I just didn't. I didn't really like it. I did learn a lot, though, I will say, just like you mentioned before, like grow where you're planted kind of deal. I didn't want to be a mechanic. I hate it being a mechanic, but I learned a lot and I've saved I've saved probably thousands of dollars being able to work on my own stuff. You know, I could do some basic stuff before I joined, like change breaks, change oil, and then I

got it. And then I got to the point where I could pull engines out and stuff like that. I'm like, oh shit, you know, it's like it's not that hard, so grow where you're planet. Yeah, but I appreciate you coming on talking about your experience and stuff like that. Can you you want to throw out your social media and anything else you want to plug? Yeah, real quick, I wanted to kind of plug you and the general effort of like documenting this stuff. Right. So, you know, in history, everyone wrote letters and we have those letters to go off of his primary source documentation. Right, Well, we don't really do that anymore. Everyone sends emails and those emails are locked away with passwords and stuff like that. So the effort of podcasts like yours to capture both the

military and then the combat experience is going to be saved you know, on YouTube and other mediums for for generations, where if you guys weren't doing this, a lot of this information and experience would be absolutely lost to time because it wasn't documented in any other way. And a lot of units don't do a very good job of their command chronologies, right they have asked that stuff.

So thank you for doing this. You know, at some point, you know, my great grandkids or something are going to you know, be appreciative of it. Folks like you and Dave Armstrong Moments and Leadership, and the American Veteran Center and everybody else that's doing this stuff. It's it's it's it's really really worth it. And I think I think maybe in a generation or so we're going to really realize how worth it it was when we can go back and like listen to the GWAT experience or the military experience in this time. So, but yeah, my my social media is at Constellation Group one thirty eight on ig. We also just started Constellation Group Underscore Defense for the marksmanship side, the training side of things. And then and then I'll

plug Patrol Base of bat a nonprofit for all veterans. I have been involved with them since they're I was the original Austin chapter captain. There a phenomenal all veteran group. All you have to do is have raised your right hand. It doesn't matter what you did, where you served. It's a it's a home base for everybody. So check them out at PBA bat on on Instagram. Yeah, for sure. Major Schumer has been on a couple of times and has talked about that. I need to have him come back and see what he's up to nowadays. I think he was. I think he just left three five if I'm if I'm correct, Yeah, he was a real pusher of that stuff. People should definitely check that out. Yeah, man, I like doing the podcast. I think I've told you know when

I first started and people weren't sure if they wanted to come on, I always said, I'm like, you know, you gotta think, like, this is a recorded this is an opportunity to record your story so that, like you said, your great grandkids could listen to you talk about what you did. You know, it's not written in a history book and a little blurb about whatever operation or whatever a general idea. You can hear from the person, you know, what they were thinking, what they were feeling, you know, in these different experiences. And the military is such a diverse group of people from all over the country and all over the world, and they've been all over the country, and they've been all over the world on

deployments and training and and just I don't know, it's it's it's a shame that more stories aren't recorded. And yeah, that's kind of why I do it, man. I really think it's a I think it's a good opportunity, Like I said, just to keep those stories alive, you know, because a lot of people have done so much stuff that people don't even realize, you know, and then you'll never hear about them. They'll never be a history book about them, they'll never none of that. And I've been lucky enough to have some of those people that have done extraordinary things come on here and talk about them. And it's like, man, if I just saw you walking on the street, I would never know that was you.

You know that you're that guy. But man, it's truly my honor, and I really appreciate it. I really appreciate the people that that keep tuning in. It's been a you know, last year was cool. I had one point five million views and it's been you know, really exciting and stuff like that. Keep checking my stuff out, Former Action Guys, former Action News on Instagram, My website's Jakramergraphics dot com. And that's it. Man, I really appreciate it.

Ep. 203 | Shamus Flynn | Motor Transport Mechanic

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