Ep. 205 | Jeff Bodell | Marine Corps Military Police | Afghan Police Advisor

0:00 All right, Jeff Bodell, welcome to the podcast. Man. I really appreciate you coming on. You got the book The war Fighters The war Fighters Lounge coming out here pretty soon about your time in Marja, so that's pretty excited. I got a chance to look at it over the weekend start reading into it, and I've enjoyed it. I think it's always good to hear the perspective of the enlisted guy on the ground. We get these big picture general you know, huge like theater wide decision makers coming on and or talking and writing books and stuff. But you know a lot of times the guy on the ground, you know, where the meat meets the grinder, is like kind of left out of the conversation. So I always like it when

0:39 guys like you decided to do that. What made you decide to write a book? Well, my book's only about four hours of my life, unlike a lot of combat memoirs that I read that are about you know, this is what it's like to go to training, become a marine that environment, and go to pull or an entire deployment. This is just one experience of combat and it's a traumatic thing. And I started writing it not short, not too long after returning from the war. Yeah, just remembering everything that somebody said or what I saw, just wrote it down. And a big part of it was because marine was killed in action and his family was told that he was killed a certain way by the Marine Corps and by the government, and it was not accurate. And so part of that was writing it

1:37 for the family so they could at least understand how their son was killed. From my perspective, Now, when you say it wasn't accurate, was it that? Do you think was it completely misrepresented? Or I mean that must be in the book. The atmosphere part I haven't gotten to yet is that that's kind of crazy, right, that they would lie to a family about how someone was killed. I don't think it was a lie, honestly.

2:00 I try not to be that skeptical. Yeah, I think it was. You know, Marja, there's a lot of stuff going on. For sure, they want to tell the family something. So our report was, you know, we were on a dismounted patrol and he was fueled by a you know, a blast. Some of the guys in my team thought it was in our id. I had a different perspective, and I'm pretty clear he got hit in the chest by an RPG was not an ID. So when we say, you know, we were dismounted, maybe somewhere along the lines, they thought we were in trucks and we got out of the trucks.

2:32 But in Marine Corps terminology, dismounted means you were on a foot patrol. So they told the family, from my understanding, that we were driving trucks and he got out of the truck to look at something and got hit by an ID. In reality, we were on a foot patrol trying to set up an ambush on the Taliban where we knew they were, and just crossed paths at the wrong time. Damn man, that's crazy. And I could see like for someone that's outside of like your immediate chain of command or not even at FOB Marja or something like that, somewhere else where, they can get confused, like I died from an explosion. Well, the automatic assumption is and it's an ID. You know it's because it's Afghanistan. So yeah,

3:10 there's fifteen to thirty IED's. I'd here go off every single day in Marsa. Yeah, yeah, fucking Marsa, man, I was, I was at FOB Marsa for a little bit after you guys were there, so I know exactly what you were talking about that area in the book. So let's we will back up. We'll come back to this. I do want to back up and talk about why why'd you decide to join the Marine Corps.

3:32 Well, that's a long story. It wasn't just because I wanted to thinks parking spot at Low's, but it probably started because I watched too much Top Gun as a teenager and I was indoctrinated by the propaganda from the Bush administration era. Yeah. I graduated high school in two thousand and six, and in two thousand and six, my high school started a Marine Corps Junior or a TWC program my senior year. So I started that and being a senior for the first year, they put me in charge. I really liked it, and the instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Inners, told me about the officer candidate program for Marine officers, and I thought, well, that sounds pretty interesting, you know, be an officer. I was planning on going to

4:17 college, so I talked to the Marine recruiter and I said, Hey, I'm going to college. Is there a way that I can do this marine thing as well, good officer candidate school. And he said, no, you don't want to go to college, you want to be Marine infantrymen. And I said, no, no, I'm going to college. And he put out these little cards and he put them on his table and they said things like judge, justice and integrity and discipline, and he's like, picked five of these are important to you. And I said, no, I don't want to talk about this. I'm willing to join the Marine Corps.

4:49 Just tell me how to do that. And college he just told me I don't want to do that. I wanted to go Marine Infantry and listed. So I stopped talking to him because he clearly wasn't interested in listening to me or helping me. So I went to college orientation day. There was an Army officer Major Jean Misdale in his dressing uniform behind the table of information and a roster to sign up for Army RTC. So I'm like, oh, that sounds like a pretty good option. You know, get college paid for, become an officer en list. So I did that for commission when you graduate. And in Army RTC there's this club called the Ranger Club that was students that competed against other RTC schools. I was in the informal club,

5:46 which was a drinking club nice and I was at a house party one night with the Ranger Club cadets the students and a guy's roommate was also an RTC and he was a marine, and I said, how are you in college and in the Marine Corps? And he said, I'm in the reserves. Bro. So I learned that there is a Marine Reserves that night, still drunk. The next day, called the recruiter and said, hey, I want to go to Officer Candid School sophomore and junior summers, but this summer, after my freshman year, I can't go to boot camp. And they said sure. So the next day the recruiter picked me up outside my dorm at eight in the morning, drove me two hours to Maps while I filled out the security background in the back of his car, and sore in that

6:35 day because I got drunk at a house party. That's super quick, like you called him and he came and picked you up and took you right to Maps. That's usually like a it's not a one day process. Well, I told him, I said, hey, I'm in college. And I'm in RTC and they're offering me a three year scholarship to contract with Army orts and the Pennsylvania National Guard. They just offered me thirty thousand dollars to enlist and get paid as any five. Why'm a student? Uh? And it I realized that I was just kind of settling joining the army. And for some reason, I always wanted to be a marine because I don't know, they got marketing rightest they got the good marketing plan. Man, I wanted to fight dragons and love of monsters. I think for the Marine Corps,

7:25 a lot of people find that drug. You know, everyone knows that the boot camp is the hardest Marine Corps boot camp is the hardest, right, you know, it's not I mean and the marketing and stuff that they do, you know, the we don't offer you a road or we don't promise you a rose garden kind of attitude, like you're not here to get benefits, You're here to become a marine kind of deal. I mean, there are benefits that come with it, but they don't even really a lot of times they don't even use that. It's more of the challenge. And I think for a young man that a lot of young men want that challenge, you know, they want to go through something and be like, can I make it to the other end? Yeah, for sure. I remember spending

8:03 a lot of days standing in the rain doing the math of how much money and benefits I turned down from joining the Marine Corps instead of the Army, and you know, early on it didn't seem worth it, but it was yeah. Yeah, I mean the thing the Marine Corps doesn't have For those that don't know, the Marine Corps doesn't really have the bonuses and stuff that the Army does, but they do get all the same education benefits and all the general benefits are the same. The thing where you get the big differences are the Army usually has more opportunities for enlistment bonuses and for reenlistment bonuses, and they're trying to fill a job. So yeah, so when you so you came in in two thousand and six and they were trying to push you

8:46 into infantry. Yeah, the recruiter that had done like two tours in Iraq and one in Felujah, and he looked like he was a linebacker for Green Bay or something. It was this huge dude, But I kind of think he might have been an Aspab waiver. He wasn't all there, and you know, infantry sounded cool, but uh, I was like, I'm going to college and he I found that later. He just intentionally misled me.

9:15 He didn't tell me there was such a thing as the reserves, and I ended up going in this I think it's called a ninety two day reservist. So I only did my training during the summer, and the day after boot camp, I was back in college classes. Yeah, and so another year of college and then in p school and then college and MCT, then some college in Marja. That's that's such a so I heard. I remember the ninety day reservist or whatever it is. I remember guys going through that, and they were saying that They're like, yeah, after a boot camp, I just go back home and then I'll come back later. And I'm like, wait, that's so weird, like and it's got to be like a weird I don't know, going from like boot camp one day to college the

9:58 next day and then have to come back to MCT. Did were you dreading coming back for your your follow on training? So the way my unit did it was not the way the rest of the Marine Corps did it. They thought MP school was more valuable than MCT. So my second summer of the Marine Corps, I went to MP school in Fort Lenderwood for eleven weeks, then back to college. So by the time I went to MCT, I was already in the Marine Corps for over two years, as you know, somewhat senior lance corporal. And I got to be treated like I just graduated boot camp ten days prior. And that was not a fun experience. Yeah, that sucks. That sucks. That would make me, that would make me not see. I feel like it'd be hard to have one foot in

10:46 and one foot out of the military, you know, one foot in in the Marine Corps one foot out, like going back to college and stuff that that's such like change in lifestyles. I don't know. I don't know how you can do that without there being some kind of issues, you know. Yeah, and there are a lot of issues. You know, a lot of people have talked about that. When I was serving in our active duty counterparts acknowledged it that you know, if your active duty, you have one life to live. You know, you're a marine or a soldier or a sailor, but in the reserves you have that same job and same career and same life, but then you have this separate civilian life with you know, your other career and education or whatever, and you don't get to just pause

11:28 one when you want. Mm hmm. They intermingle. Yeah. The more rank you pick up, the harder it is too. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And I've known guys that were in the reserves and were like, I don't like this, I don't like playing you know, both sides here. I just want to be a Marine, and they will try to transfer from the Marines over to active duty, which is I guess kind of difficult on its own, but man, that's crazy though. I've never yeah, I so when I got out, I considered going into the reserves.

11:58 I think a lot of people do you come off active duty, it seems like a really good transition for me. I was a jay tax so I could go to any one of the Anglicos and the reserve Anglicos fourth, sixth and third, third, fourth and sixth and just be a Jaytach for the rest of my career, be an Anglico guy for the rest of my career.

12:16 But it was like, at the same time, I was planning on going to college when I got out, and I'm like, man, how much does the Marine Corps going to effect just my everyday life? Like I'm doing this, I'm thinking about this as like a part time thing and like kind of easing out of it. But it feels like if I go into the Reserves and I'm going to college, like what are the odds of me getting activated or something like that, and now I got to put school on hold, you know? Or And that was kind of my concern. Did you I mean, you know, does that make sense? Do you see how that's like a lot of guys coming off active duty wouldn't necessarily want to go do like a reserve tour. Yeah, we you know, I was in the reserves for six years. I was always reserves, and we had

13:01 a lot of people come to our unit after active duty. Some of them they are great, you know, they had typically some sort of law enforcement civilian career and then you know, drill it as an MP reservist. But I would say the majority of the active duty guys that switched into the reserves they found it just too difficult and it didn't really last more than a year because unlike me, they had already done their time and certain reserve contracts after active duty, they could get out of it when they wanted to. Yeah, you can just kind of come and go when you when you can go, like when it gets tough, Okay, I'm going to go. This is interfering with my family too much. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's my dad. My dad retired from the Army reserves. He was active duty

13:52 Army and then switched to reserves, and you know, he was always leaving for annual training, he deployed the Gulf or you know, even as a reservist and stuff like that. So I remember how much it can still affect you and that. So when I was getting out, my thought process was I just want to get away from all this, Like I'm done working for the government, I'm done working for the man. I'm done having morons in charge of me. Not necessarily everyone, but you know it is in the military. Sometimes there's someone that out ranked you, that's a moron, and now, just because of the luck of the draw that they outrank you.

14:26 You have to listen to what they say, and you're like, this guy's making horrible decisions, but I can't do anything about it because he outranks me, and I was just like, dude, do I really want to have to worry about coming in and running a PFT? Do I really want to you know, sign in all the fucking bullshit, like to get my EO classes and everything else. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, man. That's the reserves is interesting I had On my first deployment, I was a mechanic.

14:48 I first came in, I was a mechanic, and then I lap moved to be an O eight six to one. But when I came in and we deployed to Iraq, we had reservists with us from multiple units. They brought in like detachments from each of these reserve units to plus up our numbers, and it was really hit and miss about the quality of the reservist.

15:07 You know, some units were some of the guys were really good, and I was a mechanic. Again, some guys were really good and kind of knew their job and you know, were decent mechanics and stuff like that, and some dudes were like they had not even trained in the MS at all. I didn't know anything, and it was like I was teaching someone that had never even picked up a wrench before. You know. Yeah, so I was lucky. My unit was pretty high speed. We had a lot of combat vets in it from Iraq then later Afghanistan. We had good leadership, and also just regionally, we were in Pittsburgh. I'm not a Pittsburgh native, but they just make people different there, and being an MP unit, that naturally meant about half of our company was professional law enforcement in some

15:52 capacity. Yeah. And on average, the Marine reserves compared to their active duty counterpart, they're about three years older and typically have a higher level of education, So on average that that makes a different kind of professionalism. But like I said, my unit was really good. And then after I got out and some other people got out went to different units, different branches, we get back together and they're like, hey, not not all units were like ours. Like there's a lot of them out there that kind of give the reputation of, you know, the dirtbag reservists. Yeah, but I have experienced that on active duty too, like for sure, being attached to different active duty units, Like there's some that are like, these are the

16:41 greatest Marines I've ever been with, and then there's others where it's like, I guess the reservists are going to have to teach the active duties how to be marines. Yeah. Yeah, it's again it's like very unit specific, can I mean the I guess the mood of the unit can really drive the quality of the marines that are in it. You know, like if they're focused on doing MOS specific training, doing training that's going to make them better at their jobs and stuff like that. I always tell people too, it's like it's not always a reserve as fault. They have so much shit they got to cram in on that one week in a month, two weeks a year, you know, they have to do PFTs, they have to do all the the annual training and stuff that we have to do and all this

17:23 other st so it's like swim call, Like, I mean, how many of your reserve weekends are focused on just getting training checks in the box and get that stuff out of the way, and you're not even really doing a lot of your own job, you know. I mean that happens, so it probably does make it easier and something like being an MP and half the people are already police officers because there's a lot of crossover there, so that probably mechanics I don't think a lot of the dudes were mechanics. I mean, we had guys that were like probation officers and stuff like that. They weren't very So it's it's not like they're, oh, I'm not a marine right now, but I'm still doing the job as a police officer or a mechanic, and you know, they're doing something completely different. So I try

18:00 to remind people of that too, like, yeah, some of these guys suck, but that's not their fault. They don't know what they don't know kind of deal. So yeah, and I'm sure it's different now with the you know, the g WAT culture is a little bit uh, you know, yesterday's news. But I'm sure that affects the military name you know, Cross, What do you mean what do you mean by the g WAT culture?

18:23 Uh? You know, it's when every the experience of you know, the people constantly deploying and the high operational tempo. I think, uh, I think you learn more about how to prepare for war and for four weeks in the theater will teach you more than three years of stateside training. Yeah, you can't replicate the reality of a deployment. I mean, we do what we can to make training as realistic as possible in their scenarios that are really realistic and stuff like that. But yeah, there was the reality on the ground is what it is. You can't replicate that specific scenario, like you, I don't know what's happening specifically in Marsa right now. I could probably give a good overview of some tactics you should use if you go to

19:12 Afghanistan, but if you go to Marsa specifically, they may be doing something they're completely different that I don't even know about because we're so you know, we're not in contact. It's like I don't know anything about it kind of deal. So yeah, man, tell us about tell us about uh in P school. I think you're the first MP I've had on it, if I if I believe, or if I remember correctly, Oh, that was an experience I'd like to forget. Yeah, it wasn't good. We had three instructors. Two of them were sergeants and they were both like field MPs and had fought in Iraq. And then the third instructor was the staff sergeant and he was garrison PMO his entire career. Do you want to explain that real quick? Yeah, people might not even know. I would love to

20:03 do that. So the field MPs, I don't believe they exist anymore. I think I got out in twenty thirteen. I think it was late twenty twelve that the Marine Corps said we're getting rid of them. So Garrison MPs or PMO, that's the like the police officers, the law enforcement I'm going to arrescue for d UI or getting in a barracks fight, you know, the self regulating law enforcement body of the Marine Corps. The field MPs.

20:37 We never did the law enforcement stuff. It was convoy security operations, force protection operations, training local nationals for coin operations, counterinsurgency tactics and short term detail any operations, and transporting prisoners and stuff, because the Marine Corps has other people that are like jail guards essentially. Yeah, but the field MP's were mainly what do you do with these guys in a combat type environment as opposed to policing your own Yeah. And when so when I was again, when I was a mechanic, I deployed in nine to Iraq. What what happened is with maintenance Battalion is they would pull a certain group, They're like, hey, there's a deployment coming up. We're taking these forty marines from

21:34 the Motor Transport Maintenance Company to go to Iraq as mechanics, and then we're like okay, cool. And then from those forty they would pull like fifteen out of that and go, hey, you fifteen aren't going to be mechanics. You fifteen are going over with the MPs and you're going to be convoy security. And they would plus up their numbers. They'd go over and do you know, machine gun training, convoy security training, stuff like that, and get get pulled into that. So it a very important job and a pretty dangerous job being convoy security in Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, because the whole deal is you're probably the first vehicle and most likely to get hit by an I D. Yeah. I missed that on the Iraq train by

22:15 about a year. But when I joined my unit, those guys had just gotten back. So I'm like the boot PFC Lance corporal standing at parade rest for these Saal dy lance corporals that had just served, you know, in Iraq combat security. And from my understanding this, you know they got some there. You know, it was a hot environment and running operations all day long. Yeah, yeah, not a it's a crazy job. I mean I would have much rather have done it than being a mechanic sitting on base the whole time, you know, because you're actually out in the country and doing stuff. But it's definitely, you know, a dangerous gig. So you said half the people in your unit were law enforcement professionals and you know

22:56 and other careers. What did those people think about the MP school. Did they think it was comparable to like police academies or the training, like, how did they compare those? Oh? I don't know, but in P school is just kind of I remember it as being just the giant haze fest. Oh really, you know, checks and boxes. You know, we'd see the Armies, Army guys go through their MP school, and I think our instructors just wanted to treat us worse, just to show how tough we were. I never ran so much in my life as I did in in PA school because apparently their thought was, oh, you're going to be police officers, and you need to be stronger and faster than every marine in the Marine Corps so you can catch them and arrest them. You know, they

23:40 had us running you know, twenty five miles a week and until everybody got shin splints and neuropathy and their feet and everything else. But it was okay. The only parts of it that I enjoyed were like the week or two weeks we spent in the field. But then it goes back to the staff sergeant instructor that was PMO, and he told us we weren't allowed to use our slings for our weapons, so all of our rifles we didn't have slings because he said slings make you lazy. And I said, every marine since World War One has had a sling on their rifle, a bunch of lazy fucks. Yeah, that's hard doing mount operations about a sling. It's very frustrating when you're doing something that you know is complete nonsense. You're like,

24:30 what are we doing here? This is a waste of my fucking time. Like this is a waste of your time, This is a waste of my time. You know. That's the kind of stuff that drives people to get out, Like it's cool to be like we're hardcore and you know, we train harder and we do this, but a lot of times people like you're saying, like instructors are people in charge will take that to another level because they want to show how cool they are, how hardcore they are, or their dudes are, And it's like, dude, you're not doing anything that's making you tactically more proficient. You know, all you're doing is maybe making you less proficient because your dudes are injured now, you know, And like it's I don't know, I I understand, like the hazing culture. I

25:12 guess I understand where some of it comes from, but I don't agree with a lot of it, you know what I'm saying, Like yeah, And then for people that don't know what I'm talking about, there's a lot of like hazing in the Marine Corps and the military in general. I think it was after Anglico and Recon got in trouble with their gold wing like smashing their gold wings into their chest, that hazing became like a real forefront of everything.

25:37 It came out on the news. There was like a tape got released showing them get getting their gold jump wings jammed into their chest. Other things that happen are like blood stripes when you pick up corporals, so you pick up corporal and all the other corporals and NCOs come over and knee you in the leg and you have just total dead legs. I remember that was like the worst. And I remember after I picked up corporal, like a month later, my buddy picked up corporal and I was like, oh shit, you get your blood stripes. And I remember I need him once, man, and he almost passed out, like and he's just I don't know, I need him, and he like went completely white and like sat down and I thought he was going to pass out. And I felt like such a

26:15 piece of shit. And that was like the last time I did something like that. I was like, dude, my bad man. This is I'm such a dick for even doing that. You know, it's guys take it too far, right. I mean, like what's supposed to be like a nice rite of passage or whatever becomes craziness that guys take too far and dudes get injured and like someone has to be accountable for it and stuff like that.

26:40 So there's a fine line between like good hard training and like hazing. You know. Yeah, with this staff sergeant in particular at MP school, he was going through a rather nasty divorce at the time, and I remember him just going off like it was just me and an other and structor in his office because he told me to come in and sweep his office and the other instructors like this is making me uncomfortable. Can can you please not do this in front of us? And uh, you know, we have our end of course evaluations and the result of that was the staff sergeant had to get evaluated by psychiatrist. Well that's good, I mean, yeah, so hopefully got the help he needed. But yeah, he took that sucks.

27:25 I remember being in boot camp my senior drill instructor for at some point got became like usually the senior drin instructor is a dick, but they're less of a dick a lot of times because they're that kind of father figure. And like somewhere like halfway between into boot camp, he just turned it on. It became this like super dick. We're like what the fuck? Like we were all like what the fuck is going on with you know, senior drin instructor. And then at some point during like I think second phase, the end of second phase, we found out he was going through a divorce.

27:53 I don't know how we found out. I don't know if he told us or someone told us but found out he was going through a divorce, and we're like, ah, that's why he's fucking with us. That's why he's being such a dick right now because he's taking his stress out on us, which is not the right thing to do, but yeah, you know, it happens. What was the what was the most fun part about Like in peace school, did you guys get to like taze each other doing the you know, pepper spray and all that, Not that those are fun, but yeah, we did the pepper spray. You know, it's you get sprayed.

28:21 You have to say how many fingers they're holding up and do this whole course where you have to you know, hit someone with batons and then arrest two people and then do some judo moves on somebody else while sprayed. I was the last person to go, so nobody could see how cool I was. But that wasn't enjoyable either. The showers afterwards were less enjoyable because it kind of runs down. But I heard, I've heard I've never had it done. I've never done the pepper spray. I I knew a gunny who was like, it makes you want to die. He goes. The feeling is I want to die right now. I'd rather be dead than this burning in my face. He's like, and then, like you said, a few it'll go away, and then a few hours later you'll start sweating or

29:10 something like that, and then it all comes back again. Yeah. So the Marine Corps is always full of all these stories of uh, you know, boot camps so tough, the crucible is so tough, the gas chamber is so tough, and me do it and it's like, no, that's the gas chamber is super easy. Yeah, the Crucible wasn't hard. Everybody talks about how everything's so bad. I would say the only thing that is as bad as people say it was was the OC spray in Peace School.

29:37 That's hilarious. That dude, that dude I was talking about, was like sadistic or something too. He would always volunteer to do it, even though he knew how bad it was. He had he'd had it done like four or five times. I'm like, why what are you doing leading from the front. I guess, I guess, you know, I guess I used to go, uh, you know, well, so on on Camp Pendleton and Campbell June, they do this thing called Marine West and Marine East Expo, and it's where industry people within the industry. It's almost like a mini shot show at Pendleton and at Le June, and you go in and you see all this new equipment, all this new gear, different attachments and optics and vehicles and all this other stuff, and there's always a booth set up

30:22 with people with like tasers and stuff like that, and if you ever go to one, you can literally stand twenty feet from that booth and watch groups of marines come around and challenge each other to get tased. And it's always hilarious because it's a group will come over talk shit to each other like no, you do it, Yeah, I bet you won't, and then you watch a guy get tased, laugh, have a good time, they leave, and then another group comes around the corner, and it just repeats itself.

30:45 It's one of those things. I don't know why people volunteer to go do it, but it's for some reason they do. You know that sounds like a lance corporal thing. Oh very much, so, yeah, very much. Yeah, there's not too many like lieutenant colonels, you know, egging each other on to get tased and stuff. I mean, do you think as an MP guy had gone through imagine going through that school and you didn't, you were not a reservist. You go your active duty and now you're sent to like Camp La June and now you're PMO. Do you think those guys are prepared to be PMO as soon as they get there? Is there probably a lot of OJT going on. It's gonna be a lot of o j T. Yeah, for sure. I mean it's just like, uh, you know, I'm sure any other school like are you are you

31:33 a full on rife rifleman after sy or do you need your guys in the fleet to tell you how we really do things? You know? You know, it gives them the basics, you know, basically train them p you know, enough qualifications to give them their their belt with their pistol, I suppose, which is crazy though you like, you still need training, but you're a nineteen year old dude or a girl or whatever. MP. Here's your belt and here's your gun and your handcuffs. You know we're about to send you out on Campbell Zoom to take care of domestic violence or something like.

32:07 Yeah, I don't know. That just seems wild to me. Yeah, I'm sure there's OJT going on. I mean, just like civilian law enforcement, they do their academy, they don't cut them loose. Yeah, but uh, I don't know. I never did PML Yeah, that's probably a good thing though. Yeah, And I think you're right you were saying before that they got rid of the field MP's. I think at around that time frame you're talking about twenty thirteen, that's when they created the law enforcement battalions and they moved Yeah, and they moved everyone away from because there was like MLG. I think they were mpes that were part of MLG and then MPs that were part of division, and the division MPs were the field MPs that you know went out and did like the convoy security. I believe I

32:51 could be wrong about that. Yeah, I was. We had three MP reserved companies and they were under four with MLG. And then right as I was getting out, they formed the fourth Law Enforcement Battalion which was on their fourth Marine Division. I don't know where the active duty counterparts are, but they they started to get rid of them. I remember at MP school there's one guy who was former Army staff sergeant. He had like two Purple Hearts.

33:23 He fought in Fallujah with the Marines as an Army detachment. He got busted down in rank for striking a commissioned officer and he's like, wow, my career in the the Army's over. So he joined the Marine Corps as a an E too. And when they came down to like the draft selection for like who's going where after MP school, Like the reservist my spot was secured, like they couldn't tell me where I was going to go. But all the active duty guys they're like, oh, you go into this base new PMO and there's like one place where there was field MPs. And I remember he was like threatening to just kill everybody if he didn't go to the field unit. Like he wont to end at that bad. He didn't want to be like the super pogue. Yeah, that's probably not a good person

34:09 to be a h MP at all. Jeez, it was. He was a little nuts, but he was a good dude. It was always weird. I remember in boot camp we had a guy that had come from the Army and a guy that had come from the Navy to join the Marines. And and for those that don't know, like if you join from another force, from the Air Force, Army, Navy. When you come in, you come in as a private and then maybe you get a PFC automatic promotion for whatever. But it doesn't matter what rank you were before. You're coming in from the beginning, from the bottom. And I remember the Navy guy, I don't I think he was a quarman maybe or something like that, but he had more ribbons than are like drill instructors and stuff, you know

34:49 when we would do our uniform inspections because he'd been in for so long, and it's like, you know, why why did you leave that and come over here? Like I don't understand, but I guess, yes, I mean, I guess. It's the same way when you see people that do lap moves and stuff like that that switch jobs. People were like, why would you come over here? This is this is not you know, this isn't it? Yeah, do this first, then do something nice, yeah, I mean, or just get out man, you know, like if you're if you had your fill of the army or whatever, get out.

35:20 I don't know. Some people just love it though. Some people love deploying and doing all that stuff. Yeah, man, when you were at when you were at your unit, So what what was the actual unit? It was MP Company b U Bravo in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Okay, when you guys would meet up, and what kind of training were you guys doing outside of like the normal annual training stuff. You know, we do our normal annual stuff of you know, sexual harassment training, swim call, rifle call and all that. But they would put us out in a field in West Virginia or Ohio or Pennsylvania somewhere, and we'd either do machine guns shoots, heavy weapons with mock you know, convoy stuff through the forests, a lot of foot patrol training, you know, basic riflemen training. And sometimes we'd

36:21 set up like fake detainee facilities of vehicle control points, entry control points. So it might be a three four day weekend and we have this fake facility where we're going to handle and temporarily hold detainees that another squad is out training and doing foot patrols and they capture somebody bring them in, and there's another squad training doing convoys. So it would mix all these different things up in one and it would be like a round robin. You spend twelve sixteen hours on one with you know, six maybe six hours of sleep at night, you know, most time it's more like four. They're supposed to give you sleep, but when you have a limited amount of time to do as much training as you can, training is the more important thing. I remember talking

37:21 about years ago, my you know, my comrades, like the crucible at boot camp is supposed to be this hard thing for these recruits to do, and I don't think I ever had a out, like a field drill weekend that was easier than the crucible. Like our drill weekends were pretty tough a lot of times, which sounds kind of like a weird thing to say.

37:45 It's all just four days, but they cram a lot of stuff in four days or three days, and being in Pennsylvania, it's half the time. It's snow outside and we're sleeping in the snow, and we get to check another box saying we did cold weather training, you know, m but uh, a lot of machine gun shoots, a lot of detainee type ops.

38:06 Yeah. I don't think that's a surprise though, saying that it's harder than the crucible, because a lot of times you'll hear people say like this, isn't the hardest thing you're ever going to do, Like this is at that that may be the hardest thing that a lot of kids have done to that point in their lives. But the expectation is that it's going to keep going, man, you know. And really, the for those that know that haven't done it, the hardest part for the Crucible for a lot of people is the hike. And really, if you're pretty well conditioned, the hike isn't that bad, you know. I mean it's a long I don't remember how long exactly it is, but it's a it's a decent distance with decent weight, but nothing nothing crazy. And I think even in MCT, I

38:44 think the hikes are even longer there. So I don't know, I don't, I don't. That's not surprising. I guess I've done a lot of stuff I think in training that was probably also harder than the Crucible or even overseas. Obviously that's some of that shit's crazy. So did you think that the training you were doing was properly preparing you to do your job? Yeah?

39:07 I think it taught me to work with my team, my squad. You know, I got pretty good at shooting machine guns from this training that we did, even though you unlike, you know, active duty where you can get maybe I don't know. I'm assuming if you're active duty you get to shoot heavy weapons, you know, every month or two. Where in the reserves we shot heavy weapons maybe twice a year. Yeah, and we did a lot of mount training too, stuff like that. Yeah, malt is the military operations in urban train Yes. Sorry, no, you're good, You're good. No, So active duty machine gun shoots aren't that often.

39:47 I mean, maybe I don't. I guess I'm speaking out of turn because I don't really know how the MP schedule on it. But I do know we would, like at Anglico, we had machine guns, and we would do a few shoots a year, probably more than just a few, but definitely not once a month or twice a month. You know, you have the same stuff that you The problem on active duty is that you have you're expected to do all kinds of training, and then you get pulled for other stuff, for like events and stuff like that. I mean, there's a lot, it's a whole different world kind of deal. So I guess that's probably a misconception a lot of people have, is that you get to shoot a ton when you're I remember so as a mechanic, I remember,

40:31 and I've told this story multiple times, when I was a mechanic at Maintenance Battalion, I didn't even have a rifle assigned to me. The only time I had a rifle assigned to me was when I went to the rifle range. I'd go get a rifle card, a temporary rifle card, get a rifle assigned to me, go shoot, come back, turn that rifle in, and I would never see it again and go back to being a mechanic because that was my job, you know, it wasn't They're like, well, you think you're forking infentory, you don't need a you know, like what, we're not gonna go out to the field and do foot patrols.

40:59 Your turn, dude, you know, pull that engine out kind of deal. So at what point were were you starting to get tapped for your deployment? I mean, how long were you there before they the cycle came up to you? You know it was your turn? Well, it was summer of two thousand and nine and I was at MCT Marine Combat Training and I think it was Camp Geiger maybe, yeah, And we didn't weren't allowed to have our cell phones, and this is you know, flip phone days, and we had like five minutes to give us five minutes to call somebody.

41:35 So instead of calling my family, I called my team leader. I said, Hey, what's going on? Because I got a voicemail saying they're ramping up for a deployment to Afghanistan. I was like, I want to get on that. And I was like, I need more time. I need to call my my chain of command let him know I want to deploy, and the combat instructors said, no, your time's up, but I left a real quick voicemail saying, yes, I absolutely want to go. Then graduation day I got the voicemail saying I've been selected. So that was August maybe two thousand and nine, and it was like they were taking a platoon from my company about forty submarines to augment another MP company that was doing a company wide deployment. My company. It's like, you know, their first

42:25 time going to Afghanistan. So their rationale is, we're going to pick the best of the best that we have. So if I might, I think I mentioned in my book that, like I was one of very few people that wasn't a NCO that deployed. They took all the you know, the the NCOs that they thought were good and after that they did a draft.

42:49 Basically you had to have a high first class PFT and you had to have an expert rifle ball. If you didn't have that, you weren't going on the deployment. And they picked people that they thought were people they could rely upon, that were proficient at their job. And they had that group of people and then they're like, hey, most of these guys deploying are going to be out of the Marine Corps within a year of coming back. So then they got a bunch of boot drops to you filling extra people. So we have experience for building the company in the future. So that was summer and then December we go to Quantico Viper in Camp Upshure and did our pre deployment training and second to last day in Camp Upshire before the double ninety six

43:39 for the holidays, Christmas and New Year's they said the deployment's canceled. The MPEA company is not deploying anymore. And my captain and we had a captain with us, and he said, no, I got forty submarines here that are completely qualified, checked all the boxes, they're ready to go. So they started calling headquarters, the Marine Corps, third Marines, second Marines, everybody, say, hey, we got forty guys ready to go. We need a mission. And eventually they found a company or a battalion actually in Cherry Point that could use an extra forty people because they were short numbers, and so we attached with them, and that was second LAD Low Altitude Air Defense guys. Yeah, Second Lad huh. That's that's another thing too.

44:31 Like when I deployed an nine, we had a ton of reservists attached to us as a supplemental guys. And then when we got to the actual like deployment date were they were like, hey, we have too many people. So they started cutting people off the deployment. But because there's something with activating reservists and stuff like that, once they're activated, there's I don't know, there's like certain protocols that have to happen. None of the reservists could be taken off the deployment. They only they only took active duty guys off the deployment. We had reservists and we had guys that were recalls. There was like four or five guys in my unit that had been recalled from the civilian world. And then when they were like, hey, we have too many

45:12 people here, they let the active duty guys go back to their units, and the recalled dudes were like, what the fuck? You know, like this is bullshit, Like I was in college, that's rough. Yeah, So it's it's a weird game, man, when they start filling in spots for deployments and stuff like that. So what was ladd doing? Well, you know, why'd you guys get attached to them? I asked myself that every day for fourteen years, that's the infantry of the air Wing. They called themselves the Winfantry. That's what they write on the inside of the portage on walls that the wingfantry was here. They were slated through some sort of force protection mission guarding a base standing towers, and we were pretty disappointed to

45:58 hear that. That's not what we wanted to do. We had bad experiences being attached to them, but it was our only means to get in Afghanistan. So, you know, Lancecropel does as he's told, right, So we fly, we get there and I'd say within ten minutes or so of landing in Afghanistan, we were told that we're not going to be of Second LAD anymore, and it was just the biggest relief we ever had. We didn't get along with them, it was it was just an interesting culture shock being attached to that unit. I feel like I feel like I am I am. I have some videos on my Instagram documenting our time with LAD, if anybody's interested. For example, we're in a formation and their battalion commander, I think he was a major at the time, he just comes out

47:05 and starts screaming at his battalion saying that they didn't take the command climate survey seriously and that they lied about it because there is like ten marines that said that they had been sexually harassed in the workplace. And he's like, you're all marines. There's no females here. Male marines cannot be sexually harassed.

47:28 And like, I remember just looking through the guy next to me, who's, you know, a lawyer in the civilian world. I was like, that's that's illegal. What he just said, right, He's like, yep, was due? Was that dude? An enlisted guy? Also the lawyer, Yeah, that's so that's the reserves, like you get some all sorts of people. We had lawyers and carpenters and jail guards and police officers.

47:50 Everybody has a second skill set. But yeah, then we eventually got the leather neck. We're in like Candahar for like three days and we get the leather neck. I'm like, well here, but we don't have a mission. So the CEO and the gunny they go out and they start talking to people, and eventually one of the generals found out that there was a you know, forty some military police officers that didn't have a mission. And this brand new mission that I think it was McCrystal was pushing, was this police mentor team thing. Nobody knew what it was. They're like, you guys are gonna be police mentors and we're like, okay, I don't know what that is. And they broke us up into five teams, three in Marja, one in muse Keila, Musa Claw, and one in now Zad.

48:38 Yeah, so we disbanded and didn't see each other for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah, that's that was a big push. I was in thirteen. I got attached to an advisor team for the Afghan National Army, And while we were doing our training, we had a police mentor team that was also training up with us that we're going to also be in sanging, but they'd be working with the you know, the local police force and stuff like that. That's kind of crazy that they sent you there and then made you guys, I mean, that's advisor. Being a being a military advisor or form military advisor normally has its own like full training, like six months of training of language training, customs and courtesies instruction, how to teach these guys

49:22 how to do stuff and stuff. You know, So it's kind of crazy. You guys got pulled to do that right out the gate without any of that kind of prior training. You know. Yeah, it ended up being you know, pretty cool mission, pretty high speed. But it was what thirty thousand troops pushed in Afghanistan within two months, and they had this nude mission with nobody to do it. And they said, hell, hey, we don't want you know, cooks or infantry men to do this job when we have forty MPs ready to do it for sure. So no, it makes sense, it makes sense. What did you you think about the Afghan police force when you guys got to Marja. The first mission I had was to go evaluate the Afghan Civil Order of Police and COP at a certain location

50:17 and that was where one six Bravo company was at the pork Chop in Marja. And I'm evaluating them and it's like they're raping boys, They're stealing stuff. Not not the greatest thing. And we sent the report up and we were told by the generals that well, certain levels of you know, bad things are acceptable. It's what it is. But then by the time that I was to do the mission and actually be embedded with them, that company of and top policemen had left and went back to the Bull and a new company came and uh, you know, I think I had built a good rapport with them, and we had good relations. And for the most part, they're pretty professional, the the the and COP, so people know they are the national police force. Their job is to quell counterinsurgency. They were

51:28 all veterans, all the all their officers had fought their Russians and had the scars to prove it, and they were good to have in a fight for sure. And then later on my deployment, the last half of my deployment, I worked with a different police force, the Afghan National Police or the Afghan Uniformed Police, and they were more of a local police force. They were guys that you know, just went through the training at Camp Lenek.

51:59 We gave them all, gave them the uniform and they were the ones that wore the uniforms, right, Yeah, they both wore blue. They just had different patches and different things on their shoulders. Okay, yeah, Because so for those that haven't been there, there's multiple like levels of police there. There's like the ALP, the Afghan Local Police, the AUP, the Afghan Uniform Police, the and COP which is what you said, the Afghan wasn't national, Afghan National and Civil Order of Police. And then there's also the ANP, which is the Afghan National Police or something super confusing and all different levels of capabilities. And like the ALP, the Afghan Local Police were basically militia guys. I mean, they weren't even in uniforms and shit,

52:45 you'd see a vehicle cruising down the street with like barrels of guns sticking out the window and be like, oh shit, is that Talibandon, Like, oh no, it's the ALP. Like definitely interesting times for sure. Most of the officers of the commanders were motivated, good guys. Uh, the and cop enlisted were good. It was the local police enlisted that you're lucky if you get them to show up on a patrol with their their boots on or their their helmet on. But it's you know, baby steps, right, Yeah, for sure, it's And I want to go back to the corruption that you were talking about. I mean, as an advisor, that was something we were you know, faced with as well. And it was we were told, like, you have, there has to be part of

53:36 their culture. That's just part of their culture. Some of this corruption is just part of their culture, you know, and the there has they would say one thing they would always say, is there there there's an Afghan solution to an Afghan problem, you know what I'm saying. They'd be like, that's an Afghan solution. We'd be like we'd complained about something. They're like, that's an Afghan solution of an Afghan problem. Like it's not our place to to come in and change their culture. That we're just here to train them and tell them what they should do tactically and stuff like that. They're doing all this other stuff as long as it's not crazy egregious and you don't see it, then you know, what are you gonna do? And that

54:10 was kind of like when the war ended and the place fell really quickly. I wasn't surprised because I knew because having been an advisor. I was like, there's so much corruption. There's not only just corruption, but there's and I don't mean necessarily corruption at the lowest levels either. It's corruptions throughout the entire thing, which means that the guys at the lowest level may not be getting the pay that they're supposed to get, may not be getting the equipment that they're supposed to get, or the food that they're supposed to get.

54:37 So when the country's all falling and you were asking a guy that has one one magazine of AMMO to defend Marja, you know, and who hasn't really eaten anything but rice in the last couple of days, like he's not going to you know, when the Taliban rolls up and goes, hey, you can either put your arms down and live or we're gonna kill you. What would you do? You know, if you have a family and stuff like that, what are you gonna do? Because you know you're gonna die when you only have a magazine's worth of AMMO. Because the corruption is so bad that the higher ups that are getting the AMMO, they're supposed to be sourcing the AMMO for their people, are turning around and selling it or their uniforms

55:17 or whatever. You know, it wasn't uncommon to find army and police uniforms and bazaars for seal because guys would sell them to make money. You know, So that doesn't surprise me. The corrupt. What you're saying about the corruption, I would say the child rape thing, for the most part, was from what I saw, was pretty frowned upon, even from the Afghans.

55:40 It was like it was like one of those things that you knew happened sometimes, you know, the chaiboy kind of stories. But it seemed like most of the Afghans, if they found out, actually I think it happened one time they found out one of their police officers had been raping some kid, they beat the fuck out of them. You know. It was not so I don't want to I don't want to make it sound like they were all like, yeah, let's ripe kids, you know. Definite, definitely weren't. Uh, that would not have happened with the the hand cup that I actually worked with. It was the people that they replaced, Yeah did that, And that was just you know a couple of bad actors. But I think I only experienced maybe two times where I didn't support the policemen and

56:29 there what they wanted to do. One time it caused some bad relations with the Afghan commander and my team leader because we got called out because the one six Bravo guys they had just gotten a real bad firefight and one of the infantry men he was he was pointing at the Afghan policeman and said he called the Taliban and he told him he we we were here, and then they set up an ambush on it. I heard him on his cell phone.

57:00 You know, he was convinced that this police officer just sold him out to the Taliban. And I said, did he get shot at too? He's like yeah, but he come on, man like. So I was like, well, let's just settle this. Let's search his phone. So the police commander searched his phone begrudgingly, and you know, we absolved him.

57:22 Of course, this guy still has really high tensions because he just got shot at in a real nasty firefight. So the marine was not happy still, but like we're like, look, he didn't call the Taliban, Like, we don't have any evidence of this. We just searched all this stuff. And he also got shot at right next to you. But because we searched his phone and we didn't trust the police commander on his word, that really hurt our relationship. Yeah. The second time was the local breadmaker got threatened by the Taliban to stop making bread, and the police commander said, well, we're going to go arrest him and beat him them up if he doesn't start making bread because he's not allowed to uh back down to the Taliban,

58:07 and I said, I read the Afghan Constitution a couple of times when I first landed in Marja, so I could understand it. And I was like, you can't do this. This is illegal. You can't go arrest the guy because he doesn't want to make bread. And I said, the Marines are having no pardon this. If you do this, you're doing this without marine support. So he was pretty upset with me. But I eat bread in the next day. So did they actually go beat the ship out of the dude? For not making They just they just threatened them. They said they're going to arrest him start making bread. The Taliban and the police.

58:44 Damn man, it's that's it, man, that's the craziness. Like it's sad that the politicians never heard these kind of stories and stuff, because then they wouldn't have wasted so much fucking time in Afghanistan. They'd have been like, oh, we got bin Laden, it's over. That's it, all right, let's get it. Everybody out of here, like it's your guys show now, because like that's the kind of corruption, you know. It's like you're forcing a local dude to choose between getting his ass kicked by the Taliban or his ass kicked by the police who are supposed to be like protecting him. Kind of deal. I mean, oh man. This was the same thing with the Marines too. You know. We'd go through our foot patrols and we'd walk and talk to a local, be like, hey,

59:25 how can we help you wear the Taliban? We will go kill them if you tell them, tell us where they are. And the story was always the same, like they watched you come into my house, they're watching you talk with me. Yeah, you can keep me safe right now, But in ten minutes you may not be here. In two hours, you may not be here. In two days, you may not be here. So that it was always really hard to try to build relations and trust and then also try to provide some sort of security with the Taliban, who roam the area freely. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and they would also.

1:00:00 Did you guys ever see any cases where they would distribute those like night letters is what we called them. They would go around and put a letter like almost like propaganda leaflets, you know, and it was basically like help the Americans, We're going to kill you, dah, that kind of deal. I haven't seen that, but I did. I did see them execute people.

1:00:22 They just take them and kill them. They helped us or with they're friends with us. Happened a few times. That's crazy, dude. I don't remember seeing anything like that when I was there. Yeah, the I'm sure it happened, But I don't know if you ever saw the Battle of Marja by the HBO, I don't think I've actually seen that. No, there's they had a film crew with the one six private company guys when they first got in there, and then they came back in about in May, but early on in February, they're interviewing some Afghans and there's this little guy dwarf. He was twenty nine years old, and he's telling the camera crew.

1:01:04 They translated that like we don't want you here. We were fine with the Taliban, like now we're not safe because you're making conflict. I don't know his name, but I used to hang out with his older brother, who was also a dwarf, and he was forty nine. I had had breakfast with him almost every day of the police commander, and he told us some stories about like he was kidnapped the day before when I was having breakfast with them by the Taliban. This low level Taliban picked him up, took him to the Taliban leader after he left our police station. And he's like, this guy, he's a police officer. I just captured a police officer.

1:01:39 He's always going in and out of their police station, and the Taliban leaders like, no, you're an idiot. He's too small. He can't even pick up a rifle. The guy weighed about twenty pounds. To put in perspective, really and yeah, real small. I got some videos of him posted on my social media that's crazy small, Jesus, Yeah, crazy small, and said, well, if he was a police officer, he'd be able to have a rifle. But they won't get they won't make anybody a police officer. They can't hold a rifle. So they put a loaded kishnikoff on the ground in front of them and told him to shoot the low level Taliban guy that captured him. He couldn't even pick up the rifle.

1:02:17 So he's like, see, you're you're an idiot. He's not a police officer. And they let him go. And then I had breakfast with him the next day and he told you that story. Yeah, yeah, what were you thinking is he's telling you this? It was just surreal. That wasn't the first time he was kidnapped either, So that's again. I mean, so when I was in when I was in Sanging in twenty thirteen, we had Sardin Major Hassan who was the Sardain major of the Afghan National Army in the area. And he's an old muja Dean guy as well. He spoke English pretty well, as you know. I sits there and have a conversation with him without a linguist, which was cool, and about I think two thirds through our deployment or something like that. Maybe a little farther,

1:03:02 his son had been captured by Taliban at a checkpoint. They set up checkpoints on the roads for those that don't know, and they killed him. And the last thing we did before we left saying In, was he asked us to get him a flight to I think leather Neck or somewhere else. He was basically trying to get back home, but he knew if he drove he would die on the way, He would get captured and get killed on the way. And he was a high value target because he was a sardin major of a unit, and saying in and there's a lot of fighting there obviously, so that was like the last thing we did. But I remember thinking, like, man, like, what a crazy life that you're living where you can't even drive down the streets or whatever without you know, possibly running

1:03:44 into one of these checkpoints and getting rolled up and then fucking executed. You know. Yeah, man, So let's talk about what did like an average mission with the Afghan Police look like it was kind of like a crawl, walk run phase, right. We would the Marines would play in the mission. We would walk through we would conduct it and it would be one of a couple things. Generally it would be is a patrol. Either we'd go to a local place and patrol around the bizarre starts around it, do satellite patrols around the main patrol area. Or we'd go out to a police checkpoint, do satellite patrols around the police checkpoint. Or we'd go in and talk to locals see what they need. Most of it was just general presence foot

1:04:38 patrol kind of things. Occasionally we would have based on until they would get We would do counter narcotics or counter weapons raids, which were interesting and then were rolling a little heavier for those. But our missions were typically as a four man team for the first half of my deployment, so it'd before marines and six maybe eight police officers and we would just walk around see what happens.

1:05:10 But then later my team's merged and we would have more marines, so we'd have six to eight marines and about eight police officers and go out. Were you going out with the Afghan police or were you doing like joint patrols with like the marine infantry and stuff. Sometimes so one of the squads in one six Bravo company. They had like two trucks and he needed four I think at the time to go outside the wire and we had two humpies and we were walking everywhere, and we couldn't get to all of our police checkpoints because we'd be walking on super dangerous areas for very long distances. So we partnered with them and they would drive us out and they would sit and park and we would do our missions. If it was something bigger, like hey,

1:05:58 we think there's IDs here, we would go out sometimes with our police officers in Afghan National Army and the U D sometimes CIA, not ci A and DEA and other other other governmental agency operatives would come to us and be like, Hey, I need to go talk to an informant in this village. Can you take ten fifteen police officers out there and just pretend like you're doing something? Why they go and talk to their person. And we did that quite a bit too. Yeah, those those strange people that only go by one first name that sometimes changes you get into Yeah, no name tapes on their uniforms and stuff, no rank. Yeah uh. When so this was this was around the same time as Mostrak was going on. Did you guys get there before the big push or was it already going on or was

1:06:59 it already completed? Like how did that look? Much? Tarik launched I think February fourteenth. I was in the sky over Europe, landing in manesk Krghyzstan on February fourteenth. Then we got the leather Neck and while they were trying to figure out what for us, what we're going to do, we volunteered to help with the base security there, which was probably a stupid idea, but I spent about three weeks doing towers and entry control points and searching trucks on leather Neck. So by the time I got to Marja it was mid to late March, I believe, so I was there from March until September. Okay, personally I was in central Marja for most of that.

1:07:51 For the tower security thing at Leatherneck. I want to touch on that real quick. What did you think about the security of the towers and stuff like that, because a few years later, actually like a year later, Yeah, it was it was attacked, right. Yeah, we had bought Rainy's I think there that were gifted to the coalition by the king, and they weren't allowed to die so they couldn't do anything more dangerous than stand towers and short adians. I think interesting just looking at a desert and there's nothing there.

1:08:28 I didn't take it very seriously. Should I have. Probably well. One thing that blew my mind was when I was there in twenty eleven. I went to Leatherneck for like a fires conference or something like that, and I remember jumping on one of the buses. Because this is for those who don't know, Leatherneck is pretty big and it's connected. It's like Leatherneck and Bastion, which is the British side or whatever, and it's a big airfield and all that stuff, so it's a pretty big, big base. And I remember jumping on one of the buses and we were cruising the perimeter, heading out to somewhere, and it was like almost none of the towers people in them. I'm like, they're like silhouettes and shit. And I remember

1:09:04 we didn't. I got yelled at for having a uh the day I got there, for having a magazine in my weapon, for not clearing my rifle, and I'm like, I just came out of Marsa. I was. I was at fub Marsia and I'm like, what, Like, this is crazy. And then after I left and went back to Marsa, a few months later, Bashian was attacked, or maybe the next year Bashan was attacked.

1:09:27 And then when I came back in twenty thirteen for my Advisor Team tour, like Leatherneck was completely different. Everyone was walking around, you know, the condition three weapon. There were more people in the towers, there was. The area that had been attacked by the airfield was way more secure. They had like bunkers basically set up, like machine gun bunkers and stuff like.

1:09:46 It was kind of crazy that it wasn't that fortified from the get go, you know what I'm saying. I mean, the fighting positions were there. I just think the mentality was who was going to do a frontal assault on a giant base. It's the size of a city. Yeah, we found out and we lost a few aircraft and stuff like that. Yeah, it was interesting. My old air officer when I was in Anglico, his harrier is one of the ones that got blown up. You know, he was there when all the shit was happening, and like he was talking about it firsthand, his first hand account of it, and I'm like man, that's just so crazy that, you know, a handful of guys. I think it was like ten or twelve people were able to breach the wire and

1:10:29 do what they were. It's not crazy, but it also is you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, man. Back to Marja though, what you what'd you think about Fob Marja. You know, I landed in a super stallion I think, right in a poppy field right outside the wall, and it's like, how do we get in? And somebody just moved the piece of plywood and that was the gate. It It got built up a lot. I think as I was there, they started putting They had the CBS come in start putting tents up and stuff like that. But when I first got there, it was just sunshades. It was a big place.

1:11:14 Uh, you know, we got rocketed a few times. It wasn't too serious. It got a little weird later on when two six took over. You know, it was very strict. We got yelled at, like we we had to do a basically a combat patrol from the district center to Bob Marja to get our mail. And uh, that's the only reason we would go there. And we would go Hey, marine, where's your eight point cover? And I'm like, I'm one, I'm on patrol. I'm not your marine like they would really. Yeah, I got threatened with the NJPS court martials, all sorts of stuff because my sleeves were rolled, our magazines were inside, fingers were cut off, gloves. I had a bracelet on that my girlfriend made. I bet you were wearing white socks too,

1:12:02 you piece of shit. Briefly because I had no socks, and I asked my dad to mail me socks and he mailed me some white tube socks. And then uh, then later we went into fob Marja and uh, we're had a clipboard and we're just like taking one of those, one of those and just walked out of socks and underwear and magazines because if we asked, they wouldn't have given them to us. That's for the uninitiated, that's what it's actually like to be deployed. You still have to it fills like Garrison.

1:12:32 Sometimes you got people that are like, oh, you go drudge in your buckets, roll your boots are blouse y, Like what the fuck are you talking about, dude. We're in Marja. We're like, we're in a combat zone. I will tell you I never once experienced anything like that with my three months with one six that's it was two six. They were watching us on the g BOSS and they would get on the radio saying, hey, Shadow one four, why is your marines kept are unbuckled? Why is your marine sleeves rolled up to his forearms. I've talked about that.

1:13:05 I've talked about that kind of thing before on the podcast, and it's like the amount that's part of the that's part of the reason why things couldn't get accomplished like they should have probably or fast as they should have in like combat zones, because you have this weird level of oversight that's never been available before.

1:13:28 You know, where a full bird kernel and leather net can be watching an ISR feed, a UAV feed like a predator feed or something like that and say something like, hey, so and so doesn't have his gloves on. Call down there, and it's like, what are you doing, dude? If Lance Corporal So's you know, it's like, I don't know.

1:13:45 And maybe maybe people will say, you know, they should have had their gloves on, they should have had their ipro on or whatever. But the amount of like micromanagement is outrageous. Is outrageous, and that's why, like me as a fire guy, it was frustrating because normally, like in training and stuff, you come up with a call for fire or a fire support plan, you know, an airstrike or something like that. You get all the stuff, you look over at the guy next to you, who's the co approval authority. He goes, yeah, looks looks good, it's approved.

1:14:15 When you go into combat, you don't just look over the guy next to you and goes that good. Nope, No, you got to There's like layers, you know, depending on what kind of weapon you're using, what ordnance is being employed, there's like layers of bureaucracy, some kernel or general over at some fucking base, you know, seventy miles away, who doesn't actually know what's going on on the ground, is making the decision of whether you can drop a piece of ordnance or not because of one reason or another. It was absolutely ridiculous. And I remember in twenty eleven when I was there with three six, one of the best things that happened while we were there is that we finally got high Mar's approval authority down to the battalion

1:14:53 level, because before that you had to call regiment who was at dwire, you know, you had to call outside to you. I'm trying to strike a guy that's putting in an IED that only takes a few minutes, and every step of bureaucracy between me and that strike is just slows everything down. And I mean, I mean one time we missed, we miss some guys probably by twenty seconds because we're waiting on approval from fucking higher. You know.

1:15:18 It's like, I don't know, it's very fre experienced that too. It's very frustrating when you're watching a guy right in front of you putting an ID in the ground that marines are going to drive over in half an hour, and there's a predator with a hell fire, but you need a general to say fire and he doesn't answer the phone. And it's at all levels though, it's it's at all levels. Because when I was there, and when I was there and sang it in thirteen, I was we had three four was THEU. It was their AO. They came in about a third of the way through the deployment and they took over. It was their AO.

1:15:55 And I remember my buddy store he was another jatack. He was with three four. I would go over to three Force command center and sit down and there with him and just kind of bullshit with him and maybe help him out if he had stuff going on. And I remember one time I was over there bullshitting with them and there was a guy's putting in an ID.

1:16:15 We're watching it. We're watching these dudes run from this blown up compound out to a culvert and they would you know, the first little sprint over, they brought the jugs out, the second sprint over, they brought the wires out. You know, they were one at a time, bringing pieces one out of time. And we're watching all this and Stork requests harrier request.

1:16:35 A harrier gets it and talks him onto target has everything ready to go, and he's getting ready to do this strike, and he gets approval from battalion. From the battalion and as the aircraft is getting set and calls his in call, meaning he's getting ready to drop ordinance. And that's when the JA attack would be like cleared hot. Well, when he's getting he's coming around get his in call. The company commander goes, hey, abort him aboard and he goes a board a board, you know, like what's going on.

1:17:05 He looked back at the company commander and he's like, sir, well, you know, like is this not good? And he's like, well, I just want to make sure the battalion is sure they want to do this strike. And we're like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude? These guys are putting it so in in state is we didn't strike the guys. They didn't. They got away, I mean. And it's funny because the building that they were like staging out of to run all this shit out, there was no roof on it had been blown up already, and you could see a machine gun on an RPG like leaning against a wall.

1:17:32 We couldn't strike them in that building because it was a compound, even though it had been blown up before. So these guys got away, and then we had to send someone out to go dismantle the ied. And then every time we went over that culvert, every every time after that, I just like, you know, braced a little like oh shit, and we it became a checkpoint on our maps, were like hey, preparing to go over the culvert, and you'd see everybody kind of okay, No, id, but they was. That's the frustrating part of it, you know.

1:18:04 Yeah, I think combat is confusing and it can be very frustrating. Yeah. You know, the movies make it look like it's some action packed thing, but most of the time, it's what's going on? Where the enemy? What do I need to do? You know? In my book, I talk about some of that stuff. Our reinforcement Our reinforcements came. There's a marine rifleman squad nearby, and we're just getting pounded by the Taliban and we're yelling at them the fire back, and they don't. They don't fire back like they're right there. We're giving them adjracts where to you know, directions and where to shoot distance and all that stuff, and they're like a corporal. We don't have PID, we don't have positive identification on who's shooting

1:18:53 at us, and it's like that whole three hundred meter tree line is shooting at you. Just shoot something. I don't know if it's like the mentality, but I think they're probably more afraid of the punishment that their leadership told them they were going to get if they shot somebody they weren't supposed to.

1:19:12 And we had a marine dead like right next to them, and they were just laying there, not shooting. And then I talk about it. You know, then the QRF finally shows up, and I'm screaming at the machine gun or on the QRF to just get the fifty going and just start cutting down trees, and he goes, oh, I don't have PID. You know, what do you do? Yeah, it's just frustrating. Yeah, they're not going to wave a flag and say I'm right here. But if I'm getting shot at from a tree line, it's pretty you know, you're not having green ivans pop up on a range. It's people shooting from covering concealment. Yeah. And that's at all levels, man, That's at all levels. People are worried about their career or if they're going to get in

1:19:51 trouble rather than engaging the enemy. You know, I had a I had that example of that company commander, and then I had another example with a with the battalion commander of three four who we were. I was pinned down on a rooftop and I had a guy shooting at me and I had I was literally laying flat on my back with rounds like flying over my face, like fucking super close. I remember Fosberg, one of the other guys on the on my team. I was anytime we stopped anywhere, because I was the JA attack. Anytime we stopped anywhere, I'm like, are we gonna be here for more than five minutes? Okay, well, I'm gonna get on the rooftop, you know, because I'd start scanning shit, and I remember him just peeking, just his eyes over the edge of the roof be

1:20:32 like are you okay, And I'm like, I'm fine, you know, I'm okay, but I'm like pinned down. Rounds are flying right over my face. And I got a harrier on station and I have this ISR feed, which is the video feed from his camera on his pod. I'm looking at it through this little sensor that I have and I'm talking to him and I got the guy and I'm requesting to drop ordnance on him, and the battalion commander denied it because he was standing next to a mud wall. They considered at that time, any mud wall is considered a compound and you could not be destroyed. And I'm like, dude, we're sitting here pinned down.

1:21:08 You know that happened twice on that deployment where that battalion commander would not give approval to drop ordinance for one reason or another, and both times I it was very frustrating, and I'm like, it must be very nice to sit in the command center listening to people getting shot at and go, nah, nah, we're not going to drop that bomb. Nah. Sorry, guys, figure it out. And it's like, dude, I'm out here fucking living through this right now, Like what the fuck? You know?

1:21:36 I don't know. Yeah, I think for my experiences, I was very lucky that we were not part of a battalion. We were considering an independent team that just operated in another battalion's AO, and the only person I answered to was a captain who you know, he let us do whatever we wanted. So we were, you know, kind of just cowboys out there, and we got to be able to do our missions how we needed to do them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's kind of how we were too.

1:22:11 But we were also still within their battle space, so any kind of everything had to be approved by them basically, you know, And it was just they didn't necessarily like having us out there because we were doing at in thirteen nobody was going outside the wire at that point and saying it except for us, because they were trying to make it Afghan front and center, like, hey, the Afghan Army has to take over this fight. And so the Marines with three four were basically told to stay on base the whole time.

1:22:42 I remember we'd come back from missions and they the company gunny or whatever would be pissed because we weren't helping them police call fucking do stuff on the base, and we're like, bro, we just got back from a patrol and we got another one tomorrow. Like, you guys aren't doing shit, go ahead and do police call and do this bullshit like what, I don't know, man, that kind of stuff made me so mad. I'm like, why are you fucking sending dudes out here if you're not even gonna use them. If they're gonna if they're here to pull weeds and police call.

1:23:13 Yeah, I remember I got threatened by a first sergeant with you said it's gonna write me up on charges. So I don't know if that means court martial or NJP or something, because I wouldn't walk him back to his base. And it's like, dude, I'm not part of your battalion. For one and two, I just had a sniper around go like an instrom my ear half an hour ago. This is my downtime. And uh, you know, luckily, you know, we had a commissioned officer with us, and I went to him and he diplomatically sorted things out. But uh, yeah, yeah, shenanigans. So you know, something I really enjoyed about working with the Afghans was like eating meals with home and just kind of having discussions. Is that the same with you? Yeah. Some of the guys

1:24:04 that I served with in the team, they didn't really like in their downtown. They didn't really hang out the Afghans very much. I kind of knew that I would never have this opportunity again in my life, and I'm the kind of person that wants to try to experience something new, and I wanted to experience as much of this culture as I could while I had the opportunity.

1:24:25 So most mornings I had breakfast with the Afghans or or dinner hung out with them a lot. Did that enjoyable? Did that change your perspective of the Afghans in general or what was going on in Afghanistan? Yeah? Yeah, for sure. I remember. I remember being on patrol and just looking at the people going by, little kids working, you know, men work in their fields, you know, harvesting their crops, and I realized that these people are you know, I'm twenty two years old. I haven't really experienced much life at this point, and then I see all this happening in this other side of the world that everybody's been telling me is like the world's worst place to live in my entire life, and I experience it and like

1:25:08 they're no different than us. They're just trying to provide for their family. Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean yeah, there were guys that I always said, there were guys in the Afghan Army that were straight warriors that wanted to fight for their country or make it a better place. And then there were pieces of shit that were there just because they got a paycheck or whatever. You know. It sounds like the Marine Corps. And the other thing that I tried to explain to people too, is like when they talked about how bad the Afghan soldiers were or something, you know, how bad they were whatever, they weren't as capable as us, I'm like, well, let's also remember that we have a Marine Corps that's over two hundred

1:25:45 years old and has two hundred years of experience refining the little things and making it the easiest to train. You know. Like that, there's a lot that you get lost in that experience over hundreds of years. You know. That's one and two. Like when we would go to Sangin, that's a seven month rotation. You know, I'm going there for seven months, maybe a year at most, and then I'm coming home. Well, these fucking Afghan guys are living there. You know, they're in Sangin In sanging for a long time. You know, they don't get to like, oh, seven months, it's over, Let's go back home and crack a beer and relax. No, no, dude, they're still fighting. You know.

1:26:25 Those are the same soldiers that were there for multiple rotations of Marines. And you see how how like affected Marines could could be after some of their deployments because of how dangerous they were things that happened. Now, put yourself in the mindset of a dude that doesn't get to leave. He's been there for two years. You know, he's seen all these atrocities for it just doesn't end for him. You know, and I think people forget that, you know, when they're talking about the Afghans and the Afghan National Army and police and stuff. Yeah, for sure. And then now with the Taliban in charge, it's if they're still alive, you know. I was reading an article on NPR, I think it was where they interviewed an Afghan, a

1:27:06 former Afghan policeman, and he's like in Marja or Kandahar or something, picking apples and he can't get a better job because the people know he used to be a police officer and if he makes too much noise then they'll just make them disappear. Yeah, so fucking yeah, it's fucking crazy, man. Yeah, I don't know, it's uh, it's tough. It's uh.

1:27:32 That's why I think a lot of people, especially people that knew Afghans personally and like actually had con There was a lot of marines and soldiers and whoever that went over to Afghanistan that never had a conversation with an Afghan. They never sat down and had meals with them. It just wasn't part of their job, you know, So they don't really necessarily understand that. And that was part that was one of the rough things for guys that knew Afghans when the war when everything went to shit, and you're like, dude, You're like, I think about our major Hassan. I'm like, is that dude's still alive? Probably not, you know, he's probably got killed by Taliban at some point. And it's shitty, you know, it's a it's a

1:28:13 it's a shitty feeling thinking about that. Yeah, And uh, you know, I don't really talk bad about the Afghan police officers because they you know, they saved my life, you know, and they they put themselves in harm's way to help us retrieve a fallen marine. In my book, I talk about one policeman in particular during this firefight that if it was a marine, he would have got the Medal of Honor then maybe cross Oh he was he was an Afghan police officer, so it's just another day. Yeah.

1:28:45 They thought it was a big deal. Like sometimes we would give them like a nam or something like that, like the command would go back an award and that was like a big deal. They would wear that, you they would wear that ribbon on their uniform for like forever after that, you know. M Yeah, I don't know, man, it's crazy. So I don't want to give away anything from the book. Do you want to talk about anything else that happened in that I mean, it's all non fiction, so there's no real spoilers. But you know, it's a story about me going on the second patrol of the day in late July. We were going out to set up an ambush on the Taliban and we became engaged by after action report said thirty to forty Taliban, which if that's accurate, that's pretty

1:29:38 extreme, that is, and we had eight marines and eight police officers with us. One of the marines was killed at the beginning of the fight, a couple others were wounded or knocked unconscious. And it's not, you know, a story of my career. It's just this is what if you want to know what combat's like, you know, I'd write pretty detailed of the chaos and the emotions you go through a while engaged. And I honestly believe that if you change the characters and the backdrop of my story to anything else, you know, Vietnam or anything, it really wouldn't change a whole lot of the story. Yeah, I've had some Vietnam guys reading They're like, yeah, that's that's what it was like for me. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I liked that. I was going to point out

1:30:32 to the I assume that range flag behind you is the one that from the book, Yes it is. Yeah, you want to explain stolen. Yeah, So when we were doing our pre deployment training and Camp Upshire, I think there's only a couple of guys that are still on the ucum Jay, but I'm sure the statute limitations is over. We had it was Christmas time and we had a Secret Santa thing going off the Marines, and it only had one rule. Whatever gift that you get for your secret Santa person, it had to be stolen. It couldn't be something that you already had or purchased. So we had a platoon of military police officers going around in Quantico stealing everything they could. I got a range flag that was stolen from the

1:31:21 Marine Corps Rifle team and it's uh, I've had it ever since. That's awesome. The angl Code attachment on the eleventh MEW did something similar. The one of the teams did something similar. I remember I didn't know I was the team chief. I think for that when I was a team chief. No, it was my second when I was the mew fire chief, so I wasn't part of it. But I remember when they were like, yeah, when they were getting ready to give their gifts, we had to steal these and I'm like, wait what it was like a watch cap for one of the naval officers and shit like that. It was like all these random things. I'm like, Jesus, dude, I didn't hear any of this.

1:31:57 I don't want to know anything about it. Uh, it's funny, yoh. Our staff sergeant got four pool balls it was like zero three six and nine or something like that for because he was a No. Three sixty nine and they were stolen from the d de e A facility in Upshire. And our our gunnery sergeant got a firing pin from a rifle and he started freaking out and then we told him it was from his rifle. How did you guys? I saw I remember reading that. How did you guys get his rifle pin without or his firing pin without him knowing? Yeah? I I served with kleptomaniacs. Yeah, when we were deploying, it was probably just sitting. He probably stole when he was sleeping firewatch or something. When we were flying out from Cherry Point, we landed in Maine and there was

1:32:57 another unit flying out there on a different floor. Army guys. They left all their rifles on the benches and the terminal with no gear guard. So we stole everything that was bolted under their rifles that wasn't serialized. Yeah, you know, grip pods, you know, all sorts of stuff. That's a very marine thing to do. That's classic, still from the army.

1:33:23 Still what you need. And we stole a humbie and leather neck too and return that after we did what we needed with it. Yeah. Do you think you'll write another book or do you think that this is it for you? You just want to get that one story out. I think this is probably it. The reason I was able to write this is because I started writing it as the memories were there. Yeah, And for like a couple of years, every time I remembered anything, anything at all, whether it was what somebody said or how they looked, I wrote it down. And then after several years I had this huge pile of on a word document, and then I turned it into a narrative that somebody could enjoy reading. I think I'm probably going to write a little book for my kids based on their

1:34:12 like D and D type adventures. But that's not a Marine Corps book. I'll just be something for them. Yeah, that's awesome, man, I think that's really cool. And I really, I mean, that was kind of one of the reasons I started the podcast because I was like, there's so many stories out there that people have that will never be known to anyone because it's not something that's going to get put in a history book. It's not a major event. You know, we're not general, so no one cares kind of deal. But it doesn't mean that it's not worth being told and recorded and stuff. And I encourage all veterans that you know, did anything that they you know, I don't know. I encourage everyone to put something down, you know, either write a book or do a podcast interview

1:34:51 with somebody, or or write a journal. That way, your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids can know from from the horse's mouth what it was like for you to be in the military, what it was like for you to deploy. And I mean, imagine, I wish I'd be so crazy. My my grandfather was in Japan at the end of World War two.

1:35:14 Like, imagine what I could have known if I had like a recorded his like recorded history of what he did there, you know, like that would be such a cherished part of what I have. And it's like and now in twenty twenty four, there's no reason not to. Even if you record something just for yourself, you know, you make a voice memo on your phone that you can share with people later on. I really highly encourage people to do what you did. At a minimum, memories come up, write it down, or record it somewhere so it's not forgotten, you know, because these things are important. Yeah, and you know what you're saying about your grandfather in the end of the book, I have a little bit of that stuff, and I've kind of put naturally in there. I'm the

1:36:01 only person that has heard certain stories from some of my family members on Ewajima or Vietnam, and uh, you know, nobody else knows them except for me. So if I put a little bit of that in here, then at least it has some history that they aren't, you know, gone. I think it's important. I mean people you may have heard this phrase, like people die twice, right when you die and then the last time someone says your name, you know, so you're never actually dead until someone the last time somebody says your name. And I think it's just important to I don't know, it's important to record this stuff. And it also is good for perspective, you know, like why relearn things? Why go through And it's the cycles of us doing dumb shit over and over again because no one

1:36:48 had the will or whatever to write it down and be like, hey, this is what we did and it didn't work, or it did work, and this is why and use that as a guide for I don't know, history, repeat, I don't know. I think it's great. Man. What did the other people that were part of your unit think about you writing the book? They're supportive, you know. We it's again going back to the reserves. It's different being a reservist because you're in the same unit the entire time, and you're all geographically in the same place. So the guys that I served with in Afghanistan, we get together every summer on the anniversary of Abe Howard's death. His parents host us and it brought us into their family. Uh So people have known I've been working on this for a while.

1:37:42 Uh. It wasn't until recently that I was like, yeah, I'm I'm actually gonna put this into a published work and not just have it as a personal project. But a few of them read it, and you know, they they've told me they've cried already reading it. I filled in a lot of playing of what happened, and you know, they're they're very supportive, and I'm glad for that support. You know, I got a phone call last summer from a marine that I went to MP school with, Alvaro Alvarez, and you know, I haven't seen this guy in a long time, and somehow he got a very early, very early early draft of this that nobody was supposed to read. And he's like, hey, man, you know that's that's a great thing. I make every one of my squad

1:38:28 leaders read this when they become a squad leader, because they need to know that being a Marine reservist isn't one week in a month, two weeks a year that you can go at any time. You can go to war and you need to be prepared for it. Sure. So he's like, he thanked me. He said, hell, you know this early draft that he saw, you know, that it's influenced him and his marines and he makes all his marines read it. It kind of gave me the motivation of, like, all right, every night after my kids go to bed, I want to start working on this. And then I had three months of prinoal leage that gave me enough time to get it finished and edited and polished and out to an editor and do all that stuff, so that positive feedback is

1:39:11 key. I mean, I don't know, I don't know what you think are your thoughts on it? But sometimes I ask myself, like, am I the right person to be like the podcast host? You know who am I? Who? Am I to be the guy to share some of these stories, like like we talked about before we started. You know, I've had some pretty amazing people on multiple Delta guys, multiple you know, SF dudes, MARSOK, guys that have done all these crazy things, things that I've never done. You know who am I to be the one to share their stories and stuff like that? And even within my own community, within the j tech community, so many guys have done way more stuff than I've ever done, you know, And those guys were out the door on the

1:39:54 deployment knowing about their next deployment before they even got home, you know, just wrote just doing work, And sometimes I question, like, why am I the guy that's doing the podcast? Why am I the guy? But I got a lot of good feedback from dudes that were like glad to hear the stories and see the stuff was being shared, and I kind of made me feel better about it. But I went through this phase for a while, like am I really like, you know, who am I to be telling this story kind of deal? Did you have any kind of thoughts like that? I mean, I'm kind of kind of nervous and anxious that it's, you know, a deeply personal story with you know. My wife read it and she's like, I think some people's feelings might be hurt when they

1:40:36 read it. And I was like, nothing I say in there didn't happen. Yeah, even the dialogue that happens in there. If I have written dialogue, it's because somebody said that. Yeah, So you know, if people's feelings are hurt, you know, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to give an accurate representation of what it's like to be in combat. Well, I would rather read an accurate representation and what actually happened, rather than something that's fluffed up to make people look better or feel better about themselves. That's how we lead, that's how we go down the road of bullshit. And you know, because because if you did do that, if you did fluff it up so that someone didn't look as incompetent or whatever, maybe mistakes were

1:41:15 made in decision making. If you if you changed the narrative and tried to say it wasn't that way, the people that were there would be like, bullshit, that's not what happened, you know, And it's that's way worse because then you're lying. Yeah, you know. I mean, I don't know if what we did where crimes or not, but it's in there.

1:41:33 It doesn't make everybody look very good, but uh ten, tensions get pretty high when you know your buddy's laying dead next to you and you got platoon of Taliban on the other side of the road. So I you know, it's pretty graphic. So I don't suggest people read it if they're not okay with that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean they got to know the truth, man, People got to know the truth. Yeah, man, I think it's good stuff. What do you do now? What are you up to nowadays? I'm a federal employee. Okay, so yeah, we'll leave it at that. Then I used the I finished college and did some stuff and wasn't enjoying life. So I used folk rehab through the VA and went to a trade school and became a gunsmith and the gunsmithing school. Worked in

1:42:28 that for a while, and now i'd work in the firearms realm for the federal government. Somebody else just said something to me about that a week ago, Like my buddy was just like, dude, you know how many people get out and go get a gunsmithing license or get training and gunsmithing. I'm like, really, I was like, I've heard a couple of people, but that's a huge thing. Like a lot of people use their GI bill or voke rehab for that kind of training. Where did you get that training?

1:42:50 At the Pennsylvania gunsmith School out in Pittsburgh. It was a sixteen month program. It's one of the better schools the country. I would recommend it, but I think people need to know that you really just don't make a whole lot of money as a gunsmith. If you want to make money, be a welder or a plumber. Well, it's good work. Uh you do make money and gun sales if that's something somebody wants to go into, but that's not really being a gunsmith. But uh I enjoy it because it's very mechanical and the hands on trade. Yeah, with opens a lot of doors too. Yeah, I mean you probably meet so many interesting people too.

1:43:32 You probably get your hands on a lot of different like interesting firearms, you know when you're when someone's bringing you, I mean, what's the what's the oddest gun that you've worked on? Uh? Well, my current job with the federal government probably the most odd stuff you could ever imagine. Yeah, so we'll just leave it at that's it. Okay. You know, gunsmithing in the private you know, and the on your own you know, it's it's either making them tactical guns or stuff like that. I worked in a rural area, so it was like cleaning people's hunting rifles and thirty twenty two's and you know, occasionally building rifles for folks. But you know, do you have a lot of people bring you a gun after they've already tried

1:44:23 to be a gunsmith and messed it up pretty good, and they're like, oh, bring a profession. No, they never mess it up. It's always their son or their cousin. But yeah, you know, it's the same thing with the mechanic. I'm sure. Hey, my my son started working on my car and now it doesn't run, so right, okay, sure do you feel I mean, how is that the gunsmithing world. I mean, you're doing it for the government, so it's not a big of a deal. But for a private gun smith person, what kind of that feels like? There's like a lot of rules and regulations behind that. Is there a lot of liability in that job? I mean, because if you fuck something up on a gun, you know, that's yeah, obviously there's always liability because if somebody gets hurt, they're going to try to sue somebody.

1:45:08 Yeah, so you protect yourself and your assets, you know by having a you know whatever business license. You need to separate yourself or work for somebody else so they have the liability, not you. But yeah, you know there's federal regulations for you know, having a working on firearms or having firearms be your business, buying selling stuff like that, where you get a federal farm's license, and that's all a very simple process, simple record keeping it's nothing too intensive or intrusive. It's mainly just dealing with customers was the hard part, which is one of the reasons why I got out of it.

1:45:49 But the federal employment adds a lot of stability that you don't get as a small business owner. So are you so are you a full time employee or are you like contract or contracted employee. I'm a full time employee. Okay, Yeah, that's cool. I mean get benefits and all that stuff with it, right, you know, like does that roll into your normal like your retirement that you earned time that you earned in the Marine Corps.

1:46:15 Uh? Yeah, So as a reservist, most of my time doesn't count. Yeah, but my deployment and some of my active duty trainings that time I got credited and I purchased it back. So I had about thirteen months of active duty time and it cost me six hundred dollars. So now I get to retire thirteen months earlier, So for six that's yeah, that's pretty It's like a buyback thing. So you have your your military time and you got paid for it and all this stuff. I don't I don't know the things of it, but I had to send forms in my DD two fourteen means the dfast. They told me how much I made. Then I sent that form to an office of personnel management and they said, okay, you will six hundred dollars if you want to count your military time as your federal

1:47:13 employment time. That's weird. It was worth it? Yeah, I mean it sounds like it is, but that's just like a weird. If you have like twenty years in and you have a military retirement, it's probably not worth it because you're already you know, getting a retirement benefit. Yeah. Yeah, Well, man, I've enjoyed the conversation. You know, I think people people need to check out the book. It's not out yet, right, When does it come out? February twenty ninth, Okay, so this will probably I'm probably going to release this podcast tomorrow, so that's like a week and a half for people that are that are listening check it out.

1:47:49 I'll put a link to the book in the show description. Where where can people find you at? Man, they can find me primarily on Instagram at the Warfighters Lounge. I love to have it too, thanks, And there's a Facebook page that's just a link from that. The name though I didn't know what to name it until about a month ago, and it's just the sign that we had hanging from our living area just said the Warfighters Lounge, Combat Action Marines only, and I'm like, it's a little pretentious, but we're a little bit arrogant, so it makes for a good name, makes for a good name. It's cool too. I bet when you, like, when it clicked like that should be the name, it was probably like ah, Like you know, once you get the name and it clicks,

1:48:35 you're like, that's such a good name, and it's something that's probably right in front of you the whole time. Yeah, I had like six other names and then I was just reading through my book one day I was like, huh maybe yep, just clicked. Yeah, Well that's awesome, man, Everybody. You can check out my stuff, former Action Guys, former Action News on Instagram, my website Streecreamographics dot Com. And that's it.

1:48:58 Dude. I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.