Ep. 210 | Nick Aicardi | Military Police and Afghan Advisor

0:00 Well, you went to boot camp out in the West Coast right. No, no, no, I went to Paris Island two thousand and six, so I know you went to Paris Island also, And I was gonna ask you about this because you went to boot camp under the Buddy program whichever A lot of people had heard about. You know. In this for those that don't know, it's where literally you and your buddy sign up together and you guys get to go to boot camp together. You didn't have that. You didn't have that. No, it was an option, and I was gonna do it with I think we talked about it on your episode. I was gonna do it with my buddy, but then I got arrested my senior year of high school and he ended up going a little bit before I did.

0:33 So what was that like? I mean, can you tell us tell people that may not know, like what the Buddy program entails. Does it extend beyond boot camp or just boot camp? Uh? It can, but you guys would have to do the same. MOS know you and your buddy didn't No, no, no. He would call him that engineer and I would be why'd you pick MP? I was I was gonna be state caught when I got out. Oh really, steady a man, what's that? Yeah?

1:02 Departed? Departed? Yeah, yeah, it's a it's it's a pretty good job up here. But I don't know, I got a I got a bad taste in my mouth for for it, man, because once you get once you get into the system, I guess you see it a lot different. And I guess the thing I always wanted to do. I always always wanted to be like murder police, uh detective to some degree. I've always just been good at like breaking ship down, itemizing it and and seeing patterns. I don't know what it is with my brain and connecting patterns with things, but they stick out to me for some reason. But yeah, I always wanted to do that. And I don't know. Once you get a taste for leadership and how it breaks connects to hierarchy, especially in the

1:46 Marine corps, and seeing how just constantly you have just the absolute imbeciles and positions of leadership that you have to just listen to, and it just fucks up your your outlook on the job to a certain degree because you have to somehow do things the way they want to do it, and it kind of just like I don't know, I don't know at at the age I was at the time, I just put a bad taste in my mouth. And I didn't go that way because when I was an MP, at least the on the like the cop side, because as an MP, you could be a field MP or you could be like PMO. And the first year I was in the Marine Corps, I was PMO down in South Carolina and they were just dead set on fucking people over, man, and I'm just really,

2:29 I can't, Yeah, I can't do I couldn't. I couldn't do that. Like what do you mean, like in what way? Like for instance, I mean there's two ways you could do, Like you can be a PMO guy and you can just write mad speeding tickets for like fucking five miles an hour over, dude, like give me a break, or just busting sign some guy up over not wearing a seatbelt driving on base through Like I can't. I can't do that. I can't. I couldn't do that shit. And even when it got down to like the duys dude, because as you know, as a as a marine, when you get a dui, dude, you get they fucking fry you for that shit, dude, and it just could and it could affect your whole fucking enlistment, man, you know what I'm saying. Like, and I don't know, I just

3:14 I got really like I see how that affected marines, and I just I really didn't like doing it. Yeah, I can see that. I mean people say they're blue falcons all the time, right, you know, like, is there any incentive in the PMO world to like, yeah, yeah, yeah, because if you don't do that shit, they stick you on a gate in the middle of nowhere, and then it's just like a long fucking shift. Actually, honestly, I didn't mind sitting on the gates because I was a lifter and honestly I could do whatever. It's like, as long as my work was just like I didn't have to do anything. I could just lift all I wanted, and I could bring food on the gate.

3:53 I could eat all I wanted. It was fine for me. But when you get when you go PMO to get promote and to get into like the good positions like in a in a car, you know, driving around and actually doing shit, you have to fund. They incentivize just burning people, pulling tickets on the gate, you know what I'm saying, trying to find people drinking in the cars, or drugs in the webs, or weapons, just just being that go getter trying to find jam people up. And I don't know. Sometimes it would it would be alright, because you find some legit shit, you know what I mean. But other times, like if you're just trying to fucking screw people over, dude, it's it's not for me. I got I had my vehicle searched one time coming in the

4:35 gate. It was like one am, like a Wednesday night. I think I went to like a car meet or something like that. I had an EVO at the time, and I was, yeah, oh dude, it was such a missing year was twenty eleven. It was an EVO ten. I had like all kinds of stuff done to it. And then when I got out, it was blue. Nice, it was blue. It had a carbon fire were a front bumper on it, not the full bumper, but like that front bar it was. I didn't do no, no, no, it's a five speed. I didn't do any like a lot, like you know, a lot of people they get cars and stuff, they they do stupid mods like risers will call them. You know. I was like, hey, dude, I'm not here for the looks. I'm not buying these super expensive wheels and stuff and being all flashy I'm putting in.

5:27 I did full exhaust manifold back. The from the manifold all the way back was a fully upgraded exhaust. Intercooler was upgraded to a three and a half inch intercooler boost controller custom tune. Anyways, so I'm coming back from this car meet one am. They're like, hey, can you pull over to the side here, And I'm like, yeah, you know Pendleton, you know. And they're like, you know, open the glove bucks, dude, And I was like, you want me to do this? I was like, listen all this stuff that because I was like, I've been trained to do this as well, dude, you know, like to search a car. But they were cool about it. But I get it. You know, it's probably also boring when you're on the gate right when you're sitting

6:05 there kind of you probably want to do something like yeah, yeah, yes, I know. It depends what kind of dude you are, honestly, and once I got I remember this when the first serious call I went on, when I when I got in the car. I was in base housing Laurel Bay over on uh Paris Island, because they had base housing was like across the street from the air station over there at Buford MCF and it was this. You see a lot of this, man. You see a lot of young couples getting married in the military and they're partying, and they got a kid and they don't know how to fucking take care of it. And I guess this couple was shaking the baby. And when we got there, it was fucking purple bro like the thing was dead. That's why I would

6:54 not want to be like one. Imagine killing your son, dude, Dude, I mean, I don't want to deal with death at all. Like I don't want to be a corman. I don't want to be a fucking paramedic. Talk about it, dude, because it's negative as fuck. Dude, You don't You don't see that. You don't really you know, we're not used to seeing death up close and personal, and when you do all the time, it really does affect you. Yeah, I mean, like people's guts hanging out and shit like man, That's why I always thought, you know, back in the day when I was when I was a kid, really, I thought being a firefighter would be super cool. Probably still is, especially specifically when I was a kid, I really wanted to do after the military, I told myself I would go become a wildland firefighter and

7:35 become a smoke chod. That's why, Oh did you that's awesome? Man. I always thought I was like, man, fucking smoke jumper, that'd be sick, you know. I just went normal firefighter, dude. I didn't do the smoke jumper or anything like that, but with the normal firefighters, like I think a lot of people may not realize the reality of it is is depending on where you're at, You're responding to a lot of vehicle accidents and fucking shit like that, and it's a lot of like messed up.

8:01 I don't want to see, you know. It was actually the hardest part for me, and I didn't realize that I had claustrophobia until then. And I have been blown up in a few different vehicles when I was in Afghanistan and I didn't realize it had affected me. And when I got a full, When you have a full, fucking we have the coat, the jacket on and the pants, it's you know you're you're buffed out with it, especially being a bigger dude. Yeah, and when you have the fucking uh the air tank on the back too, dude, and they in the in the academy, they make you do a like HVAC crawling through h VAC units and you have to go through this maze. And when I say it's like literally like this, dude wasn't fun, bro, Because in an environment

8:46 like that, when you're in they time, you you have to get through fast. If you start getting agitated, as you know, it's just you start like hyperventilated, you start freaking out to a certain degree because you can't move, and once you start like breathing heavy, everything goes wrong. And I'll tell you right now, dude, Claustrophobia is a bitch. And I and I and I never realized it affected me until then. I had to fucking like it go back out of it. I couldn't. I was like fuck that, I'm not doing it. Yeah, that would suck. That's why I Sometimes I for whatever reason, on my algorithm, these fucking uh splunkers will pop up, these cave dudes, and I'm like, you see him like breathing in to make room to or breathing out to make room to

9:33 slide through a spot. You're like, no way, dude, No no, I've seen recently people mounting climbing with just not even attached by ropes at all, dude, Like just using their body to like contain themselves between rocks and not being tied in, Like no, thank you. Yeah, what's that one? Dude? Alex Donald, I think is one of them that does that yet, and he does it fast too. His whole thing is he does like speed records too. I think that you've got to be jacked to do that, dude. Oh way, man, So when you were doing firefighting, were you so were you uh like residential or were you like federal residential? Okay, like my local area. Yeah, yeah, exactly, dude. That's a lot of vehicle accidents and stuff like that. I

10:18 wouldn't want to mess with that kind of thing. Yeah, you see some darly ship, that's for sure. Yeah. You know, honestly, vehicle accidents dude are some of the worst too, dude, because people aren't expecting it and like and a movable object hits another one, bro, Like, yeah, they're just we're just meat sacks. You know what I'm saying, Like, yeah, it's not it's not a good site. Those are tough to get into. A lot of places, you know, in bigger areas back home, there's a lot of volunteer fire departments because there it's all there's farmland and stuff out in the country more and so I know a lot of guys that do that. But to get into like the city departments, it's like a process. You know, Yeah, well you have to live in

10:58 the city too. You have to live in like a big one where I'm at is the city in Boston, and you have to live there for at least a year, and you have to get you have to know someone in the in the department to you know, give you a recommendation, and it's it's it's a long process. So comparing that to like your police training, which one did you find more like exciting? Uh? Definitely the police?

11:22 Yeah, police and stuff? Yeah? Yeah, is it crazy? I mean, as someone that has done it, is it not kind of wild that we're unleashing eighteen and nineteen year old police onto like marine bases, you know, likes corporal with a power trip. Most definitely that there should be some kind of like checks and balances on that because it shouldn't be happening.

11:45 It should it shouldn't fall down. I don't know. I think I think, honestly, I think transitioning over to a civilian police force for like base policing and stuff like that is is a better look on that because you get rid of a lot of the biases because you'll you'll see that a lot, you know, good old boy clubs and and just exactly what you just said.

12:05 Uh, you know, some some PFC lance corporal with a power trip, like using the badge because you know, they've been getting railed on for two years being a lance corporal at the bottom of the totem pole, and all of a sudden they get a badge and they think they're you know, gee, I Joe, all of a sudden, dude, there's nothing worse than getting a fucking ticket on base. Then you gotta go tell your command you're like yo, Then you get fucked with your command and then get Yeah, that's what I mean, dude. I couldn't. I saw how it affected people, and I just couldn't do it. I got I got in trouble for talking on my cell phone because I was I was a boot.

12:39 I was like within a month, probably a month in the fleet, maybe two months in the fleet, and I was talking to my brother in law on speakerphone or my half brother on speakerphone, and he said something or I said something. He didn't hear me, and I picked it up long enough to say it again. And when I picked it up, I looked over and the PMO had just pulled up right next to me. Gotcha, And I was like fuck, So I set it down, got pulled over, and then it was just like, Oh, you're the dude that fucking got pulled over. You gotta go see the master guns at the PMO place or whatever. And yeah, it was actually really fun, dude, was being a road unit on Paris Island. Yeah? Why is that? Because because you had to deal with all the recruits that went a wall that, yeah,

13:22 you have to go hunt them down and ship. That was fun. You like a prison guard basically, but you really like to recruits that like go a wall. They have no rights and you end up a lot of them like they do like wild ship, so you can thump them around and it's fun. Was it weird going back to Paris Island after just being there definitely definitely you see it. You see it through a different lens, you know what I mean, Because I mean, as you know, in boot camp, you kind of like, I don't know, you you just look at it differently. Man, they do a great job at that. You got the metrical side of Bukitt, you know, like make it. You think like you're just on this remote island of fuck where if you do the

14:07 littlest thing like you're getting fucking destroyed. You know, like, they definitely do a great job at that, because when you go back and you see it through the lens of someone of the fleet, you're like, oh, this wasn't that bad, you know, like this is just blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I remember the weirdest thing.

14:24 So I went back to Paris Island. When I was I had to go down to Somerville, South Carolina for a school about m raps. That's where they That's where the factory was that built the yeah, the cougar cat one and kattoos and the what's the big ass one with the arm on it? The oh the buffalo, yep, buffalo, the buffalo. Yeah.

14:46 So if you were a mechanic. I was a mechanic at the time, and I was getting ready to go to Iraq. They sent us there to learn how to work on these vehicles and stuff, and I think we're fucking huge. Dude. Oh yeah, dude, And oh man. The first time I over a buffalo, I was so hungover. And because it was the day after the Marine Corps birthday and we're at this school, we got like kicked out of a Texas roadhouse because we were fucking drinking. There's of course, I mean, you know, we were in and the next day they're like, you get on the buffalo and it's the one from if you've ever seen Transformers, the first one. It's the one from Transformers that's skating down the highways. There's a Decepticon logo welded on the back door of it,

15:24 and that's the one we would work on. And they when it's your turn to drive it, you jump in the driver's seat of this like eighty thousand pounds vehicle, drive around the parking lot, once back into a parking spot, and then they're like, all right, let's take it out along the highway. And it's just like little you know, South Carolina two lane highway. You're driving this big ass truck down and tell me WHIPI right.

15:46 Uh, it wasn't too bad, actually, I mean, it is super fucking tall. You'd have to be going fast and turned real hard to tip it. I think, because it's just so big, it would be hard to get it fast enough to turn it. You know what I'm saying, Like, because it's such a fucking land beast. But yeah, we probably should have been driving them right after the ye. It was a bad idea of that day. But anyways, so I went down to Paris Island to to check it out because I was like, I haven't been there since I was a recruit. And I remember driving on and being like, Oh, there's a rifle range. Oh there's third Battalion. What I didn't realize the entire time I was there that it was next to the rifle range and we

16:29 were right next to it. I was like, because you do a hike, you do like a five mile hike to get to it, and they must take you all these weird I didn't know for the longest time that it was literally right next to each other. And I remember when I graduated a boot camp and we left my parents were like, how do we get off the base, And I'm like, I have no idea. I don't even know where we're at right now. Yeah, yeah, you're it's like getting off the mood when you when you get out of boot camp. Dude, you have no idea where anything is. It's it's just it's very surreal.

17:03 Were you a PFC when you went back there? Yep, you were still a PFC? Yeah, yeah that I remember seeing like some of the kids in supply and shit like that that were like hanging out uniforms that were like PFCs And I'm like, dude, that must suck to just come right back here after finishing boot camp. Yeah, you just want to be away from all this stuff. So yeah, dude, I don't know, because you have that difficult feeling of the fleet, you know what I mean, and that you go back to that, it's like yucky. Yeah, that's like the fleet, but like the most less, you know, farthest from it as it could be. I guess when you're in a trice and I imagine they're very stickler about what you do because you're around recruit, so you can't

17:45 sure what was like a weird I want to move on to like the field MP and your deployment to Afghanistan. But I want to know as a guy that you know, we always say about like domestic violence and all these like crazy things talk about you talked about a kid that died, Like what's like the easiest kind of call you would get or something that's just like this is this is mind blowing? Uh? There, I mean there were there was there was a few murders when I was there. Uh really would always yeah, it would be always would always be around the best or you know what suicides. There was There was a there was a I think he was at one Star. I know he's very high up, but he went right up to the gate, right up to the on housing gate. I think his

18:26 wife had cheated on him or something, and uh, he blew his brains out of the shotgun, hold up to the gate, put put put the double barrel in his mouth and fucking kickstarted it. Well, that crazy way to do it. Why would you do it like that? I have no idea think about the mindset behind that dude. To do that, like accept death, just to even accept death taking your own life is a huge You've got to be really gold for some ship to do that, but to drive up to the fucking gate and know it, dude, Like, do you want people to see it like you that vain? You want people to know you're pain like that? I don't know, and you're fucking up those people probably, yeah, they have to live with that shit. Fucking suicides.

19:08 Man, there was a guy knew he was a major who got out Zimmerman who recently committed suicide. And it's like, dude, what the fuck man? Did anyone kill themselves in your boot camp class? No? And during boot camp no? Yeah, I had two guys killed themselves. Dude, Wow really yeah? Yeah, one hug himself and then another slit his wrists.

19:30 It is rack, dude, Oh my god, it's like really, dude, it really wasn't that bad. It just it makes you think, like who is actually coming to join the military, you know, because you have people from all over the place. We had guys that, like, I remember a guy that like faked asthma. He's like, oh you like, pretending like he couldn't breathe. And they're like, okay, well we're gonna take you to medical and now we got to do all these medical tests to see if you have asthma, and it's basically like you're sitting and holding for weeks in the medical platoon. And and he ended up not having asthma, so now he was like a month behind us, you know, and it was like, dude, fuck and he they brought him back to the

20:07 platoon to be like, hey, don't be an idiot like me. He came back to that. He came back to the platoon just to tell us, don't fuck around because now I'm a month behind you guys. To reinforce it. That was like the worst possible thing that could happen to you in boot camp is if you like fell out of your platoon and then you were stuck in that like holding platoon at boot camp. Yeah, thank you.

20:26 I'm glad that didn't happen to me. That happened to my buddy that I got to join. He got what's an infection the people, oh, cellulitis. He got cellulitis and his knee and he had to sit through that ship. I remember, man, when I left, so we flew out of I came from Indiana. Normally you would go to the West coast from Indiana.

20:51 I requested Paris Island, and they sent me there and there was one other dude that was going. It was me, another dude in a female I don't remember what happened to her, but me and this other kid were put in the same platoon and he just wasn't he wasn't there. He was just not in shape, like he couldn't do any pull ups, like immediately, just you know, the private pile basically, And after like a month of just not being good at anything, they dropped him to another platoon and then or no, they dropped him to the PCP the physical conditioning platoon port chop platoons what we called it. And then after that he got dropped to a platoon and we saw him at the rifle range one time, and I think he got dropped from that platoon also. And when at the end of

21:36 boot camp at this time at Paris Island, you would get family Day and or you had like a Libo Friday or something like that where they'd let you walk around anyway. It was like family Day and stuff like that, and your weapons are still in the in the squad bay and they can't leave them alone. And everybody gets this off. So they bring in recruits from other platoons. They brought this kid back that was supposed to graduate with us, so he just had to watch that shit. He had to stand fire watch and watch our weapons. And he still had like over a month and a half left to go. He'd been dropped back multiple times. And I was like, dude, if if someone's gonn commit suicide, that's a yeah, keep an eye on that fucking dude, because he's probably super depressed right now.

22:21 There is, I mean, no matter where you look at it, dude, suicide is just all over the Marines, all over the military in general. Man, Like I think, just society, it's bad, it's getting worse. I don't get it, man. You know that permanent solution to a temporary problem kind of thing. I would understand. If I'm like eighty and I'm ill and the next ten years or five years or a year or whatever, I'm terminally ill and I'm just gonna be laying in a bed waiting to die. I get I understand that. Maybe that I get it, But when you're like twenty thirties, like if you're doing it over a woman or like a temporary thing like that, Yeah, exactly. I used to see I remember being in and at Le June, I would always buy

23:03 Marine Corps Times. Every week. I'd always buy the Marine Corps Times and read it and it always would list a combat casualties for that week through Iraq and Afghanistan, and there would always be these casualties that were like non combat incident, non combat incident, and I always just assumed they were like accidents like uh fucking recta hum v or something like that, and some of them were, but a lot of those were suicides. A lot of those were people, often themselves in country. Damn. Yeah, it's crazy, man.

23:32 I mean when I was going through TRS, I found out that my roommate that I we shared a living quarters in Iraq and nine killed himself. You know. So I found out like a couple of days before I got out of the Marines. I was just like, what the fuck, man, you know, you know, it's I don't know why I thought of this, but today I was I was on Instagram, but I was going through some stuff and it was a interview of Jewish person that his father had been at Hitz Ashquitz and he was talking about how his dad told him that they would just in mass quantities, just burn Jewish people and and it would just be like a sea of bodies in this pit. And like really think about that, think about like get like remember when you got to boot camp

24:26 and you just like could like observe what was going on. You could you like saw the drill instructors, You understood what you were going to be dealing with, and you just accepted it. That just getting to a fucking just death camp like that and seeing that evil, you know what I mean, and like and and understanding that is how you're about to go. And I was just thinking about how far removed as Americans we are from just any kind of evil or death like that, you know what I mean. Yeah, Like like even think about how like when we went over and deployed and some of U Scots and some of us did whatever, but that was like the extent of like the evil we saw, and people in America like they we I mean, we're so removed from any kind of anything like that. Yeah,

25:15 I can kind of understand why I don't know the climate that we're in today to a certain degree, Like well, yeah, I mean people are for sure ignorant about what's going on world events. It's stuff that's outside of their purview, they have no reason to. If no one in my family's in the military, my industry is not military related at all, Why would I look up anything unless I'm just like an adventurer or I'm fascinated with that topic, Like a lot of people aren't even going to think about that, And then yeah, dude, you're right. I remember being in Afghanistan and being you know, I'm on watch, working in the command center a lot, and nothing to do. I'm just scrolling through Sipper, which, for those know what sippers, that's a secret Internet. And on the Sipper side

26:03 there is like a version not it's like YouTube. They have like different websites on the secret Internet where you can go and watch like videos and stuff, and there's some crazy shit on there. I mean everything from air strikes and stuff like that, you know, which we could look up our air strikes and stuff that once they got uploaded to like cartel people chopping people's heads off, fucking South America and shit. And I remember there was a dude I worked with that would always be looking up these beheading videos and I'm like, bro, what the fuck, dude. It would be like you'd checked this out and I'm like, no, man, I mean remember when remember when ISIS was making those crazy, like super slick videos of where they're like torturing

26:48 people and killing them. That's what I was over there, dude. Yeah yeah, we used that for like motivation for a lot of the shit we did. Yeah yeah, man, I mean that's kind of that stuff. Is like, you don't realize how evil people can be, but certain ideologies push people getting fucking kidnapped by ISIS and realizing happen to you. I wouldn't want to be a pow of anybody, Oh my god. I mean, dude, even Vietnam, how those guys got just like emancipated. And you want to read a fucked up book? Man, read There's a book called why Didn't You Get Me Out? And it's from a pow uh from Vietnam and it's like his story about how he got captured and how he's treated.

27:36 And I think it was I think it's called why Didn't You get Me Out? Seven Years of Freedom? Or that might be two different books. I think I have him both in my bookshelf. I'm trying to see it, but why didn't you get Me Out? Like he's he thinks that they could have saved him but they didn't, and it's just like, yeah, it's such a crazy book, man. I read a few like I said that seven Years to Freedom, I think, why didn't you get me out?

27:57 And there's some more. I'll definitely look that up, dude. It's so fun. I mean, you read that and you're like, man, you're and when they're talking about it, they're like, yeah, I was tied down and this I had a broken back and they had me tied down so that mosquitos would attack me at night. Oh and I couldn't do anything about it. And I'm like you just you just named like multiple horrible things in one sentence, and it's like, yeah, these things happen. And it's like, how could I ever even imagine having a broken back being stretched out and tied down in the jungle so mosquitoes could feast on me and I can't even really move because my back is broke. You can imagine that, you know that in your head? Bro, No, I can't. That would

28:41 be horrible, dude. I mean some of the worst of the worst, like torture, dude, is actually like some of the simplest things, Like I think I one of the worst ones I heard of was just straight sleep deprivation not allowed someone to fall asleep for weeks and it does something terrible to you where I think, I don't know. I read up on this Russian blood dude where they did this kept these guys alive for so long that right when they fell asleep, they had a heart attack and died just because of how like it like fucks with your body. Yeah. I think the person that stayed awake the longest record in like in like a laboratory setting or whatever so they could actually you know, study, It was like eleven and a

29:36 half days or something like that. Yeah, it's fatal, Like if you don't fall asleep, it's fatal. But yeah, they have like you know, stress boxes and stuff where you can't it's like shaped where you can't sit, you can't stand, but it's like if you're like hunched over so your back is fucked and or the music is just cranking. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, being tortured would fucking Yeah. Did you ever do sears your school? No, not the actual Seier school. We just did when I was on my advisor team. We did what do they call it, seir Alpha or something like that. Basically like classroom training, but none of the actual like it full full what do they call it? Full spectrum sere, there's like an actual would you water board each other? No?

30:18 No, no no. It was basically like how you get out of like cuffs, how you get out of like tape, how you get out you know, like just different kind of techniques stuff to look out for. It was, well, you were an advisor, so we could talk about you go in Afghanistan as a as a military police officer, you got pulled.

30:34 This was a huge thing. You were part of a police transition team, right, was it transition or training team? Police mentoring? Yeah? So, and then you guys would go and help You're supposed to be there to be subject matter experts on different topics to help them, the Afghans get better at their job. When you were doing your training, I went through my training in twenty twelve. What year did you do your advisor training? Two thousand ladder of twenty ten? Was there a specific like training curriculum that you had to go through to be an advisor at that time? Uh? So we had to learn all their weapons systems once you can do oh yeah, oh Yeah, yep. I went to a foreign machine gun course, dude, which was fucking awesome. Dude. I had a great time in California

31:29 and doing that. But other than that, we had to learn their language, just like the hey, how are you where you're from? Ask you just the holy hobly hoby hoby, and you just had to learn how to keep a conversation with them, tell them how to do certain things. Basically, really all we were was they made us grunts to a certain degree, and we had to teach them how to do basic patrols, how to do like just contact contact left contact right, move into fire drills, teach them that. And we just basically had to learn their language and teach them that.

32:19 All we did over there, dude, oh at bats and hines. That's what's big. That was big what I was in there too. Really, all it was was they would send me five other Marines and maybe twenty Afghan RB or Afghan police to this fucking rinke dick fob that we had to set up, and we would just go on patrols with them and teach them how to like upkeep a fob. That's really all it was. So we were right in Helmand in the Della Ram district. Okay. So it was right on the in the middle of Route one and Route six oh six, right where those two interjected, and actually was an old NDS compound, So it was I guess it was the sketchy ass compound we were at. Dude.

33:14 They were doing some fucking wild shit there because there was there was like this jail right in the middle of this compound and there was blood stains in there, dude, like they were doing They were definitely doing some torture shit in there. But yeah, they were doing some spooky shit in there. But it was I mean, we had a fucking high speed deployment, dude.

33:34 I was really happy with the deployment that I did not expect it to go the way it did, and I learned a lot very quickly. For sure. What do you think about your Afghan partners half and half man like, I don't know if you've ever dealt with I think you told me you did. Basically, you know, half of them were fucking farmers or young kids that just were forced into it, and then the other half were just old muj guys, old musa Idan guys do so they were legit definitely.

34:05 If there were mus guys they were legit. Yeah, we had you know something I try to tell people to consider. When they'd be like, oh, these Afghans are shitty blah blah blah blah blah, I'd be like, you know, we're in Sanging right now, and we know how shitty Sanging is, and we want to get here and get our deployment over with and get back home. Well, these dudes aren't fucking leaving. They're insane.

34:30 They live here, that's their spot, and those dudes are getting fucking killed all the time. So I understand when dudes are like hesitant to do stuff or like it's like, man, we had one op where or one attack really where? Uh? I think it was like six Afghans got killed, including the company commander, you know, and it's like when shit like that's happening. Of course, some of those dudes are like fuck this. If they've been there for a long time, yeah, they're not all motivated and go know like the Marines are because they've been there for fucking four months.

35:01 You know what I'm saying. You want to get a taste. Some of some of them were legit for sure, So did I you know about that guy Rambo I talk about all the time, right, I saw Actually I don't think we talked about him before, but I did see the short on your on your YouTube channel. Just this super legit dude that was with us.

35:21 Dude, he clearly been fighting for a while, knew a ship and was and you could trust him in a firefight, you know what I mean. And that meant a lot because I gotten a few different firefights with them, and he always we just had a good back and forth being him. He respected that I learned his language and I would fuck around with him a lot, so he just respected me. He saw that I could bang it out. Me and him definitely off some talents together. Whenever you do that with somebody, you have this just kind of fucking weird bond that you have together. But anyways, towards the end of our deployment, we got a QRF to one of like basically it was like our last fob at the end them this highway wicked far from where we were where we were stationed at,

36:04 and it was right on technically, it was right out of our ao, and we had a couple of our Afghans over there and we went all the way out there, right, and the OIC had changed because the captain that was with us had just got blown up and they had sent them to Germany. So it was it fell down to my staff sergeant. He really wasn't he really wasn't a field guy, and he was one of those dudes that was just like a ribbon chaser. And if he would not like put his name out there, like if it if it came to a situation where he had to put his name out there and possibly get in trouble, he would always do the opposite thing. And dude, these these Afghans, basically they I think like six of them got killed and we could have We could have

36:47 definitely helped them. That we did it. We turned around and Rambo do that, he because he called us for q RF and he he didn't talk to us after that. After that moment, he would talk to us because a bunch of the got killed and we could have helped him. But anyways, I had my interpreter with my podcast, probably like six months ago, and he told me that Rambo. It sounds like a sketchy story, but he said that Rabo went to see his family and on his way there, he got stopped at a Taliban checkpoint and they found out it was him, and they chopped his head off and sent it to his commander. Oh power move. You know, I don't. It wouldn't surprise me if that's true, because I remember the last thing my advisor team did before we left Afghanistan

37:31 was get the Afghan stardan major for the battalion. We were advising a flight to leather Neck to get another flight because basically he was going home to see his family, but he couldn't take the roads because if he did, he'd get killed. And his son had already had within like a month, had been stop what you're saying, by a Taliban checkpoint and was killed and so he knew. So that was the last thing we did, was get him a flight out of there to go see his family. I don't know whatever happened to him, probably something similar, But dude, I'm sure all those guys are dead. A lot of them probably are for sure. Yeah, or they just like switch sides, you know what I mean? Yeah, to survive, to survive, you know, yeah, yeah, one hundred

38:15 yeah, And like what you're saying, man, that's that's a fucked up situation, you know, where you can help him out. But someone in the in the Chiney command says no, like that's it, and they know they will definitely hold that against you for sure, of course they will. Dude, I would, I would hold it against you know, if I was him, that would that would that would that would bother me if if we're coming over there, we're like, yo, we got your back if you do this, this and this, and you just do what we say and then we don't. You know, that's what happened to a lot of the guys over there, man, Like we would sing this story that we were there together to make a difference and then we just fucking pack up and

38:53 leave like that. Dude, like that was the ship that left such a bad taste in my mouth. How we got out of Afghanistan? Dude, anyone that served in Afghanistan, dude that that you know, if you had, if you did legit shit over there, maybe lost a couple of guys and you know, did your thing a little bit. It hurts because we I think we all like to think we made a difference over there, or we least left the place a little bit better than it was, you know, what I mean after something like that. I mean, I don't know how'd you feel about it? I you know, I've said it. I think I've said it a few times on the show, but it's like for me, we were the last advisor team in saying like when we left, no one came and replaced us, gotcha, And there was a battalion there.

39:37 I think three four was there for a few more months after we left, and then I don't know if they got replaced what I was there in twenty thirteen, Okay, yeah, I was are in twenty thirteen and oh dam that's right when I got out of the Rene Corps. So yeah, you're right, you were definitely the last, like advisor Shee would say, and gotcha okay, yeah, And it was I mean, it was fucking it was a wild summer too. It was like, you know, we were there for the entire fighting season and shit. So when after we left, like a year, year and a half or something, one of the guys that was on my advisor team sent me a YouTube video that was a video of the bazar and it went when we were there, we would drive through the bazar and it would be like people everywhere motorcycles everywhere, cars everywhere,

40:22 shops open, you know, shit's bustling and stuff. And he sent me this video and it had been taken over by like ISIS. Was like when ISIS first got into Afghanistan and they had come through and basically blown out the entire bazar. It was like completely empty. It was like a ghost town. So when Afghanistan itself fell, I was like, I remember being on Twitter and someone said something like Afghanistan or the president or someone believes that Afghanistan can hold for six more weeks, and I was like six weeks, no way. I was like six days at most. And it wasn't a shock to me because I already seen it happen, you know. It was like yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised, especially when we pulled everybody

41:06 out. It was a fuck. It was a huge fuck up. Uh. It deserves to be talked about, at least through the next election cycle. It shouldn't be forgotten. You know. There was just no there's no reason to try to evacuate all these people from a fucking huge ass metropolitan city on a runway, a single runway, dude. It was all It was all a politics bullshit dude, so would try to make it seem like he could handle the situation, and just unfortunately all that shit is tied into politics.

41:37 Dude. I really feel like military and shit like that needs to be somehow separated from the whole politics gambit, dude, because it up significantly. I know, I know that sounds crazy. It's yeah, you can't really separate them. Yeah, but think about it, dude. Would they rush shit like that and it's done halphazardly, shit like that happens. Well.

41:58 Part of the problem is too that over fucking twenty years, we never figured out what the hell we were even doing, you know, Like you couldn't have asked me in twenty thirteen, like what's the strategic goal and tactical goal of your deployment? You know, what are we working towards to the end this war? Like I would not have known. I'd have been like, I don't know. I'm just here to do my fucking in seven months and be advisor and whatever. And then really was just there to hold hold steady and not get killed. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I was talking to I don't know if it was on the last episode I did or a couple episodes ago was talking to a guy and I was like, part of the problem is that no officer wanted to be the officer that didn't get

42:36 to go to Afghanistan. So no one's gonna advocate to stop going to Afghanistan until they got to go and get their shit so that they can make sure they had the pedigree to get promoted to become a general one day. Facts, you know, And it was like that kind of stuff no one talks about that. Yeah, you're right, and that's for sure true. I mean, that's for sure, Like, you know, people had questions, but I'm not gonna say anything if I still haven't got my deployment on am I gonna be the only country officer that hasn't deployed, you know, Yeah, yeah, exactly, You're right, You're right. Yeah. So for me it sucked, but it was like man, I was also the only time I ever saw anybody get fucked up or anything in person would be when

43:16 I was with my Afghans. None of the Marines I was there. I have friends that were killed in Afghanistan. Jason Kayla was one of them. He was a Marine j tech that was killed with one six during the pushing to Marsia, and you know, it's fucked up for guys like that's family and stuff like that. I would probably be more upset about it. If I'd been in person and seen one of my buddies get killed in person, it would have been way more traumatic and the whole thing probably would be even worse. But luckily I guess that never happened. Yeah, you're right, it was. It definitely does hit different when you have someone close to you go die over there, you know what I mean, Because it's like, for what the fuck was that life sacrifice for? Bro? You know,

44:02 like you want to think that, like you know it was for something, but shit, we got to play the ultimate game, man. Yeah, that's what it is. It's like, I mean, if you, I don't know, you have a kid, right, I don't would you would you say if your kid was seventeen or eighteen, would you recommend him to join the military today? Absolutely? No? Why not? No, dude, it's it's it's it's it doesn't have the leaders that that that are necessary for me to feel comfortable with putting anyone in my family into the military.

44:36 I just I've talked to enough people, and honestly, the people that are necessary to trade people for combat are far removed from the military now, and it's it's a completely different, completely different beast, I think at least. And how different is it though, than like the Marine Corps in two thousand, you know, a year before September eleventh, it's probably exactly the same, you know what I mean? And think about it. It was rough.

45:06 It was rough at first the first couple of guys that went over and deployed, because you know, they had no idea what to expect over there. Honestly, the guys that really were tuned in we went you know what I'm saying, because they got a few cycles went over there. Then they started training us, and then we got trained from the guys that got really fucked up over there. They told us, you know, this is what you should expect. This is how to move with certain things. Zero fives and twenty fives are absolutely necessary whenever you get out of a vehicle. This is what IDs are going to be looking like. At least we got warned, you know what I'm saying, Like the first guys that started dealing with IED's bro they got fucked up. Yeah, think about think about the vehicles

45:45 they were using dude, no up armored soft back humbies. You serious. Yeah, But we also gotta remember what we saw in Afghanistan. The IDs were more prevalent, and I rack, I think they were stronger, but also when they were when they first went in, when they first went in, and they didn't really have them any IDs, like during the invasion, that wasn't a thing. The following year is when it kind of started to become a thing. And initially those IDs were pretty small, so a lot of times it blow a tire off or something like that. You wouldn't actually it would kill and main people obviously, but not to the extent we saw.

46:24 And part of that is because as we got better at like, oh shit, these guys need armor, we started armoring up vehicles in different levels. You know. It started stayed adjusted their TTPs for us. Well yeah, yeah, so they started increasing the size of their IDs and they started they got down to like I know, I remember the first time we saw an EFP where the explosively formed projectile yeah strike hit in Iraq and it was like, holy shit, nothing stopping that little things that were smoldering hot that would just go through up armored like fucking butter Bro dude. I was a mechanic and I remember we went to this We had to go to the shop to learn how to put on these new turrets we were getting, and they

47:04 had a max Pro Armored vehicle, which is the army armored vehicle. Well, it got hit by an EFP and you could see in the driver excuse me, the pass Yeah, in the passenger side door. There was a hole in the glass. I don't think it was in the glass. I think he was in the actual door, and it went through the door.

47:23 You could see where it went through the passenger dude's wrist, right wrist, through his left knee into the doghouse like the transmission center console area, through that into the driver's right knee, into the driver's left ankle, and then buried itself in the floorboard. It completely fucked up, like these two dudes in the inside of this truck, and you're just like looking at the you know, the after effects like the bloodstains and ship. Yeah, fuck dude, Yeah, it HiT's different when you see that, dude, Yeah, and you're like, fuck man, you can't do anything about it, like something like that, You can't stop it. I mean unless you have like reactive armor, and you don't have that on a fucking you know. I'm

48:01 start dude, I'm really I'm really starting to think that like the EP, the radioactive you know, those hoods that we had on our vehicles to stop any kind of like oh, the jammers R C, I, D S. Yeah, yeah, think about it, dude. They rolled those out fresh when we went over there. Like, I really feel like that's going to affect us somehow. Yeah, maybe, especially the guys that carried the what do they call them the packs? Yeah, there was a I can't remember the name for them, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

48:34 Yeah, having that antenna right next to their head, Yeah, eating up all that radiation coming off of it. Yeah, we're talking about. For those that don't know, they have these like jammers that you put on the vehicle so that in Iraq and stuff, a lot of times they would use IEDs that were connected to a cell phone. So I could be sitting on a rooftop or across the field or something away from the IED and when I see you getting close, I just have to dial the phone number to the cell phone connected to the idea is the trigger and that would set it off.

49:02 Well, the jammers that we had would put out radio signals that were stronger than a cell phone signal, and it was basically just covering it up so that that cell phone couldn't hear that signal and it wouldn't set it off. They obviously shifted tactics. I know in Afghanistan we had what was called a poll string ID, where it was literally a string connected to uh whatever you want to call it, an initiator, I'm not gonna describe it an initiator for the ID. And again, they could sit across the field with this like kite string in their hand and whenever you hit the trigger mark that they've set up, they just pull. It connects two things, connects to battery and fucking sets it off. You see copper wire all over the place

49:45 over there, dude, from just like all those debt chords sketchy. Yeah, I remember they told us to like look out for yellow jugs. It's like, dude, yellow jugs are fucking yellow jugs. Dude, there's yellow jugs everywhere, literally everywhere. Like how that's like the ID training like things for that track. The ID trading was absolutely useless because I mean, go ahead, it may have changed. Why what did you get for ID defeat.

50:12 Well, one, we learned about the jammers and stuff like that, and then in thirteen, no, no, in twenty eleven when I went, that's when they started using the what do they call them, the sickle sticks, the sickles where you'd have like the oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, if a possible ID in front of you is basically like a twenty foot pole and you just kind of, yeah, reach out, I had a little hook on it, and you'd reach out and tee if you could grab an edge of a pressure plate or something like that to try to investigate it. And if it became if you were like, oh shit, that is a pressure plate, then you call it an EOD. And yeah, for in general, you get much better ID like training, I guess once you get there, because you can talk very specific

50:55 of your AO, whereas any pre deployment training is kind of you know, months behind. Well, it's basic because they gotta yeah, they gotta bring everybody up that you know, assume everybody, no one knows anything, bring everybody up. And then not only that, but any new you know, tactics techniques and procedures that are going on, those have to get disseminated to that those guys, and then they have to create classroom materials to teach the people. So it's a little behind, but I thought, you know, there was it was very correct due like depending on the AO that you're in, there's gonna be different bomb bakers for each AO, and each one has a little bit different ways that he does his ship. Whether it's gonna be

51:36 a more pressure plated guy or if it's gonna be more RC. Some of them are a combination of both. Where like if you guys are doing dismounted patrols in the in the AO, a lot of them where we were at, they were putting it on the doors so there would be like a contactor on the door, so if you open the door at all, it would just blow particles into your face. Ball bearings, HMB, anything like that.

51:55 But yeah, a lot those guys were fucking I guess I really really made me feel like they had a bunch of like old school mechanics making IEDs because they were got definitely somebody good with a wrench, because they were just so ghettoly put together, like they made anything work like barbecue starters or just like cell phone pieces with deck cord. The pressure plates were old one to five to five shells or two by four's with like a little glass fial when you stepped on it, if that broke, then the charger would hit and you would go to fucking allah. You know what I'm saying. Like they had very very like smart ways to just make something out of nothing over there.

52:37 Yeah, yeah, I mean, and they brought in people too. I remember the first dude I did a Himar strike on in Afghanistan had only been there for like after we did the investigation and shit, he'd only been there for like two days, and he was there to teach the dudes that we smoked how to build and in place IEDs, you know, and we ended up just happened to get him in that timeframe. And that's what they do, is they figure out how to how to do something like how'd you ideal? Oh they were they were putting jugs into the ground. Oh okay, yeah, we actually uh we were. It was it was Marja twenty eleven and I was with three six as the fire's chief and someone on one of the g BOSS or PGSS I can't remember which is for those that don't

53:23 know, the g BOSS is like a like a camera like you'd see on the front of a helicopter, and then the PGSS is like a blimp with that same kind of camera on it, but much thurbal vision type. Yeah. So we saw this guy putting in an I D and they were like, oh shit, that guy's got an ID and all my data went down on my computer because at the time Heimar's call for fire was basically all digital and all my data my dad, I lost all my Internet and show like that. So I had a radio. I'd been doing radio checks with the firing battery and with the approval authority, which was at Leatherneck and dwired respectively, and I just got on the radio and was like, hey you, this is me fire for effect grid one, two, three, four,

54:07 five six, And then yeah, I did one single rocket smoked a group of them, the three dudes. One of them got up and started walking around, and my opso asked me if I could do it again, and I was like, I was like, yeah, repeat, repeat target number one, you know, and uh sent a second rocket and that one smoked.

54:30 That finished it off. And then you know, I don't know why we Oh yeah, so yeah, we would always that's I think we talked about this when I did your your show. But there there was always like a double check you're not just slinging round at dudes and thinking like, oh, well, that was just a farmer. My bad. That happened one time that a farmer got killed that they thought was a dude putting an id and that was because they designated marksmen out of patrol base saw a guy digging in the road and they authorized him to shoot. And it turns out he wasn't digging in the road. He was digging right next to it. And at the time in Marja, if you were farming at night, you were supposed to be using a lantern so that coalition and troops would know that you

55:16 were just out there farming. And he wasn't doing that, and he was right next to the road digging, and so the DM, the designated marksman, thought that, you know, his dude's placing an ied, I see it and all that. So that was the one time that I know a civilian got killed when I was there. Could you ever feel like impact from the rockets from your pause? Oh yeah, yeah, when my last tigh mars I remember, I think it was like two kilometers away or maybe I don't remember how far away, but you just hear who And I remember after like I would do a strike or something like that, and then we'd be sitting there for a little bit. Everything's good. We got full motion video because when you would do it strike, you had to keep full motion video

56:01 on that strike area for at least twenty four hours I think, or until a coalition troops could come there and do a button. Yeah. Yeah, because what would happen is they would bring in like an injured civila and be like, oh, you blew up this kid, and it's like, no, we didn't. Like the kid wasn't there and we could see you.

56:16 We have the video of you bring in that person there. That happened. But yeah, my last strike, we did a high mar shot and two high Mar's rockets on some guys that were putting in an ID and it was literally like twenty minutes. I was doing my turnover with my buddy and it was like twenty minutes after I just told him like, hey man, this deployment's been kind of slow. We've been doing some high mar strikes and stuff, but it's been a little bit since we've done anything, so, you know, and he's like, cool, that's awesome. Twenty minutes later, Hey, I think we got an ID in plase, sir. And it's like these dudes putting in an ID and we see him carrying a PKM around and stuff like that, and we're this is their advance party. It's like

57:01 ninth Race. I can't remember which battalion, if it was like two nine or three nine. I think it might have been three to nine. Their advance party was there and we were doing our turnover briefs with them to let them know what's been going on in the AO, and I get pulled out of the brief because we have this ied in placers and yeah, we do the call for fire and it was just like whoom, whoom, and the whole everyone felt it and they were all like, oh shit, like this is what's going on here, you know, But I don't know. I remember there was a corman that worked at headquarters, in the headquarter section of three six, and when I would come out of the command center to go get Chao or something like that, and if we had done a strike,

57:38 he'd be like was that you, you know, he'd be like fucking new. I heard boom and I knew it was you, and I'm like, yeah, we're doing work in here, yeah, buddy, yeah buddy. Yeah. Man. I mean that was a good time. But I still like my twenty thirteen deployment better when I was an Afghan advisor. So I don't know, did you only do the one deployment as an advisor? Ye?

58:00 Just having that type of on ground experience with actual Afghans man is, I've never experienced something like that, and it gave me just such a different outlook from like other deployments because just actually being able to talk with them and like hear some of their stories. Man. Like I became friends with a few of them, dude, And I didn't expect that because I was completely like that type of hard headed marine that kind of like I thought I was just gonna think of them all as dirt bags and just these towel heads cliche, the typical cliche marine view, jar head view of just you know, the enemy. But yeah, honestly living on a small patrol base with these guys and talking with them and just living with them on a day to day

58:45 basis. I really really opened my mind up to these guys man, especially because like we'd get into small firefights with them and they'd fight with us, and to them, you know, they have nothing, dirt, dirt poor, and after a firefight, they would feel like it was very important for them to provide food for us. And these guys we weren't supposed to be driving at night, and there would always be these two Afghans. They would be like, oh, we go get they would go rab bakeries, drive their a little piece of shit car down to the bazaar and they'd raw bakeries and they'd bring you know, numb that fresh bread bread. So they'd come back with fresh bread, dude, and like food, and they'd make us all sit down, they'd wash our hands, they put all that food in

59:31 the middle, and they'd force us to eat with them. And it was just like this feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, in this dangerous area with these guys, and this feeling of camaraderie with these people that you had no idea who they were, and you could tell they were they had just been through squalor and they had lived hard, hard lives, you know, And I don't know that. It was just so surreal just being there with them, man, and I really appreciated that time with them for sure.

59:57 Did they ever make French fries for you? Yeah, dude, the French fries were always so fucking good. I don't know why we loved eating with our Afghans because we weren't getting any food. We didn't get very much, so we were like starving. So it'd be like, you don't like that vitigary stuff they put on beat? Do you know what I'm talking about?

1:00:15 It was like a I wish I figured. I don't know what seasonings they were using, but it was pretty good most of the time. I never got sick from it. Either. We had a lieutenant that got like dysentery or something. He ship twenty times in a day. We had to put them up to an ivy and stuff. Yeah, it was probably something with the food, but I mean, I never asked what it was that we were eating. But you know, it's a whole low so it's probably clean. It's probably good with the flies, you too, Oh yeah, oh yeah, dude. You go to the piss tube, you go take a piss, and they would start crawling out and flying around your face, landing on you. You're like, oh, this thing just came out of the piss tube. See. We would uh, we would sleep outside at

1:00:52 night and you'd wake up and you have to put the blanket over your head because we'd wake up. You would just have swarms of bugs sleeping on you slept outside at night. Yeah, we we would sleep like up top of our we had we had we had like it's hard to explain what we slept. It was. It kind of like a bunker, like a Hesco dirt bunker thing with the metal roof. Yep. Yeah, I liked it.

1:01:17 There would be like DM's on the roof at night and we would just sleep out by them and it was so badass. Dude. I love I love I really. I had a great deployment over it. Other than like the hard ship that we went through like guys dyed and you know, the occasional kill it and ship like that, I really loved just being at the desert just finally doing like that legit marine ship, you know what I mean.

1:01:38 Yeah, it makes you when you when you have an appointment like that, like the Living Standard suck, but it makes you feel like you're doing you appreciate it. You appreciate it, because yeah, yeah, you appreciate showers. You appreciate. Even when I was with three six, I spent most of the time in the command center. I did go out sometimes, but not very often because I was the fire's chief. I flew. At one point, I flew from Marja to leather Neck for some kind of fires conference.

1:02:02 I don't know why they sent me, but I remember going to leather Neck and being like kind of pumped to get there, and then after a day, I'm like, give me the fuck back out to the fob. You know what I'm saying, Like it's annoying to go to the chow hall. This was before Leatherneck had been attacked, so it was like, it's clear your weapon every time you go into any building, talking about all those douchebags that would focus on shaves and cleaning forbes and shit, It's like, exactly, if you're over here, why are you brigging that. I never understood that, like the guys that did that, dude, Dude. I remember walking through leather Neck and being able to smell a female marine like from two hundred yards away because I'm down winning from them, because We're out here

1:02:43 in Marja where there's no running water or anything, and these chips are shampooing their hair every day, go to the gym and all that, and it was just this like smell. I hadn't smelled in months, and it just it's so crazy. It's like a primal feeling, you know, yeah, like h jaw, like that that shark in Finding Deebo when he first snow blood. You're just like, but dude, it's so crazy when you when you're out there and it's like that because it's you're just so removed from everything.

1:03:12 But that's what I liked. I enjoyed it. I mean, it was much better than some of the other deployments I did where I was like in Iraq. I mean, I my most miserable deployment was a toss up between Iraq and where I had like a chow haul a green bean. You know, it'd be like being on leather neck almost and being on ship, which was just fucking prison. I fucking hated being on ship. Dude, that's the What was your favorite What was your favorite part of the FLU Was it being like the fire's chief type role where you could actually like control drop it bars, high bars or stuff like that. Or did you did you like doing like mounted conboys or just out of conboys? What was your well I get. I mean, so for my three six deployment twenty eleven,

1:03:54 I would say that doing my job, yeah, doing targeting. I was the only PISSOFF curt OFF, which is Precision Strikes Suite Special Operation Forces, Meaning I was doing targeting. I was doing like, hey, this grid I'm giving you is really fucking close. I'm doing actual like targeting to give like super refined grids and to ensure that we're not striking anything from the no strike list, mosque, cultural building, stuff like that. Being involved in that was awesome. I was super bummed on that first apployment because I was a lap mover and usually lap movers would go and your first apployment you'd be a scout, so you'd go down to the line company and you'd go on foot patrols every day as a ford observer. Well, they needed fires chiefs

1:04:35 and I was under like, I got taught by a dude that was like the best fires guy. So when I deployed, I went as a fire's chief and I was like, man, this kind of sucks. But then I got there and I was controlling all the fires. I was doing all the high mars and stuff. All the cult of fire came from me. I sat next to the JATACK. I was in a j A TACK at the time. I sat next to the jay tax. So whenever we would come up with a target grid, it was basically like me, the jatach or air officer, and the OPSO all in this little huddle kind of where they're looking at my map. Yeah that looks good. It's not going to strike anything, you know. I'm checking. You have different what's called CDE collateral damage estimate rings for each type of ordnance, So I'm laying those on

1:05:17 top of maps, going yeah, this isn't gonna hurt anything. This is good, you know, for whatever ordinance. So that was really cool. In twenty thirteen, when I was on my advisor team as a JTACH team JTACK, that was my favorite deployment because I was on my own program. I was the only jatach, the only fire support guy on the team, and I could do whatever not whatever I wanted, but it was on me to make it happen. You know what, I'm saying, and it was awesome. I mean it sucked because I had to go out on every mission because I was the only Jaytack. But it was also cool because I guet to go out on every mission because I'm the only Jtack And for that one, just like you talked about living with the Afghans and working with home and

1:06:00 dude, I spent hours sitting on pillows, drinking chai and watching Pakistani soap operas with fucking Afghan soldiers and talking about everything, religion, family, you know, just all kinds of stuff and liked nice to see the outlook things. But you know, you see some fucked up shit too, dude, because they like their boys over there. We didn't know, you know, we didn't. I didn't necessarily see that. I heard about it, I didn't necessarily see that. But I think the police team that was there had some issues cause I think one of the dudes on the police team like raped the kid, and the other police officers like beat the fuck out of the dude, and the police advisor team was kind of like, all right,

1:06:45 we're just gonna kind of stay out of this. This is like, it was weird how sub Afghans were like about that, and others weren't you know what I mean, Like it's just like one of those old Yeah, true, there's weirdos out there. I remember when I was with three six, we watched the most fucked up thing probably in that kind of context, is we watched on a I think it was on the PGSS blimp. Two Afghan dudes fuck a donkey. One of them was like one of them would hold the donkey's head while the other one was banging him. And they were sitting there banging. This donkey pulls out and you see all this shit's come out of the donkey where it's literally taking a shit. When he walks around, grabs the donkey's head and the other dude comes around and it's his turn now,

1:07:30 so he's doing double you know, he's dirty second, you know, whatever you want to call it. He's going in second. And this thing just took a ship and I was just like, and we had at this time, we had started to they wanted us to integrate Afghans into the command center. So we had Afghans in the COC with us, and we're like, what the fuck and they're like, not us. Those are marsa dudes.

1:07:50 Those are Marsia dudes, and we're like, we're giving a little shit, like, what the fuck is that so fucked up? Remember that vividly? Oh man? Man? Yeah, well, shit, you'd never see their women over there, dude. No, I mean we saw them because you could see them through the blimp and stuff. You could see in the compounds and not voyeuristic like watching them naked or anything like that, but you could just see them because normally, for those that don't know these these compounds, walls are super high. They're like ten feet high or whatever. You know, you can't just look over it. The women never leave the comps.

1:08:29 Yeah, and when you come to a compound, all the women go into one room, so you don't ever even even when you're in their compound, you don't ever really see them because they push them all into one room. And that's when you had like the fet Marines, the female engagement team. They would come in and they would go talk to the females so that they didn't talk to any of the men, and that was kind of a thing. So the only time you'd see them is if you had like we had vehicles with like mass antennas. Sometimes we would have that up while we were cruising, so we could look over a compound wall before we went into it and you'd see them that way. Or but honestly, if any Afghan man saw a female talking to the Berets or any other they'd probably killed him,

1:09:08 probably killed Yeah, for sure. I was talking to the Afghan stardan major for the A and A, you know we were with and he was staying in his hometown. There was a guy who got a shot at because he looked at a girl when he walked by her. They were walking down the street. He looked at a girl as he walked by her, and her dad saw him and like him and his brothers tried to kill him, or the dad and his sons tried to kill the dude because he looked at their daughter and sister. I was like, that's fucking crazy, because we were kind of comparing, like, you know, we were watching a Pakistani soap opera and there was a girl getting smacked around on it because she had gotten pregnant from a dude she wasn't married too, And he was asking me

1:09:51 like, what would it be like in your country if that happened, And I'm like, well, it really depends on where you're at. You know. Some some people don't care, like, oh that's the you know, uh yeah, you know, we'll all love them and raise them or whatever. And some families are like, go get the dude, you're getting married, you know, like that's not happening, you know. I was like, so I was, that's kind of how it came up. But it was, like you said previously, it's cool to like have these real conversations and kind of see how much alike and different and kind of for sure we are. So makes you appreciate certain things. Man. I could definitely say when I got back, I took I took a lot of things for granted.

1:10:28 Yeah, over there, you definitely see it firsthand, you know. Yeah. I mean I think that's what anybody that's in the military that's traveled needs to come away from that. If they didn't learn something about the world life lessons, then they failed themselves, because you got to take in these world experiences and use that to show yourself like this is way ways we could be better, and this is ways that we are already better. And that's how you improve your own society, and you appreciate that with narrow mindsets that all that tells me is that person hasn't traveled the world. I've never left their little bubble, you know. Like if that's how you think, dude, like go over there and see how these people live. They can talk

1:11:08 to me, you know. Yeah. Man, When I was in college, I remember a girl saying that, like, the US has no culture, and I'm like, you haven't gone anywhere. What are you talking about? I'm like, what about bb king, you know what I'm saying, Like what about fucking blue grass? You know, like bluegrass? Like she's probably talking about white people, she's probably talking about She's just regurgitating what she's been told to say, And it's like listen, like absolutely, I took I took like two weeks and drove cross country just to see sites and stuff in the country. And it's ridiculous for anybody to say that every every state has its own culture, every region has its own culture. There's food cultures

1:11:40 in every area, there's people, you know, like people got to get out more. One thing that kills me is like, well, I'm from Indiana, and people from Indiana a lot of times based their whole year, like every year, the big vacation a lot of people will do is like a trip to Florida, you know, and that's like every year spring break.

1:11:59 Hey, We're driving out of Florida and I'm like, dude, change it up. Go west. Yeah, you know, go out to the fucking rockies, go see some you know, go to somewhere you've never been. Go to Utah, you know, go to Dude, that's so funny you just said that. I just went to Utah recently. Be beautiful. Where'd you go? Never? Uh? Park City? H were you skiing?

1:12:18 Well? I know, I was actually doing private security out there. Yeah, the I was guarding get a rapper out there and he lived right in Park City. Was literally in between a mountain range. Bro. Like, I I've never seen something as beautiful as that. Dude. If I were to live anywhere, I'd want to live there for sure. Most definitely, I've never seen something like that. Yeah, it's fucking cool, man.

1:12:41 I went to Utah. Me and a couple of guys when I got out of the Marines went to Zion National Park and we did the Zion Traverse, which is like a forty five mile trail across the entire park. Yeah. It was again, you know, people got to get out and appreciate people that It's just like in the Marine Corps everywhere, staying in the barracks, being miserable, getting drunk, saying life sucks, everything shitty, but they don't want to go out and like go hunting or get out and go do stuff. I had my EVO, right, So what did I do?

1:13:11 I started looking up uh, autocross events, and I started doing autocross racing. They even sponsored it over on Cherry Point and they shut down an airfield a whole way. Yeah, they shut down a whole airstrip, airstrip and turned it into a track, into a course, and we'd go out there and do auto cross. And I was like, dude, this is you know, and if if you don't, yeah, if you sit around and put yourself out there, dude, you're never gonna experience some things.

1:13:35 Yeah. I agree with you completely exactly. Yeah, but yeah, man, I know you were limited. We went over a little bit. What the time you were talking about? Sorry about that? Uh you want to shout out la, where's all your you know, hard to kill the podcast? Where's all you stuff out? Hard? So I'm on Instagram, I'm on Spotify, I'm on Apple Pods. If you type in the hard to Kill podcast, you're you're gonna find me the emblems to ak forty sevens or the microphone in the middle. I'm on Instagram at hard to Kill pod p zero D and other than that, you can find me on YouTube. I got a couple of software at Underbelly Interviews if you want to check those out.

1:14:15 Check those out. Other than that hard to Kill podcasts you can find me. I'm on Instagram at snap like a seven six' two. My my tags on my podcast as well. But if you look up hard to Kill podcast here you'll be sure to find me over there. Did you know that hard to Kill is the name of Steve Yes? And I also found someone else has a hard to Kill podcast as well. Uh yeah, who started first? I think we started at the exact same time. Actually, Man, if either one of you become famous, it'll become a copyright issue.

1:14:48 You get the name trademarked. I know I need to. If you get that trademark before they do, then you have more standing in court to keep that. He's a military guy too, But he's a fitness page. Well I'm not. Just because you get a trademark. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to like sue the guy to get him to stop using it, but that protects you from getting sued as well. I'm gonna do that tomorrow, to talk to a trademark lawyer or something like that and just have them fill out the pay. You could probably do it yourself, get on Chad Gibt or something and probably figure that out. But yeah, I saw that I was like hard to kill. That's Stephen Sigal, Like, I wonder if you even knows. I didn't know if you were old enough to even

1:15:23 know, you know. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. I honestly, when I thought it hard to kill, dude, I wasn't even thinking of like the corny stuff like that. I was going through like some hard times and I'm a big Mike Tyson fan. And to just be able to just take punches and keep going, I love that shit.

1:15:39 I love being able to just take take a beating and keep coming. Because if you're someone that like sees that. I know, if I hit someone as hard as I can hit someone and they just shrug it off and they keep coming, that bothers me and that makes me worried. So if you can be that motherfucker that can take a beating and keep coming, that means something to me. And that's that's kind of where I got the podcast name from. Where do you think about Tyson fighting Jake Paul? I'm nervous, dude. I'm nervous he might be, dude because the last fight I saw with him in what's his name of that other old boxer? No he no, no, no, he just fought probably two years ago. The fast, he's fast. He's also black. What is his name? I don't

1:16:26 keep up with it enough, but he looked he looked old. No no, no, no, no, no no, it's the fun is his name. I'm not going to think of it in time. He thought he fought recently and he looked old, so hopefully he's traded. I would love to see him knock the Jake Paul. I love that and we I think America needs that. But together, yeah, that that'll make America a great agree right there. It is just that Mike Tyson ships all over Jake Paul knock him down. Unfortunately, I don't I don't know if I don't know if that's going to happen. But I Paul needs to quit being a fucking bitch and like fight actual fighters. That's what you gonna think. He's being smart about making millions, That's what I mean. He's making a ship ton

1:17:09 of money. Bro. But you're not a boxer yet, dude. You have not fought a real boxer in your weight and that has like the skills of someone that you can actually call you yourself a boxer, you know what I'm saying. Like he's fighting all these bums or at least old UFC guys that are like on the edge of their career, which is you know, smart for him, he's picking the smart fights and he's building And honestly, if I was someone that hasn't bedded boxing, that's how I would do.

1:17:35 I would The way to build your confidence up is get little wins like that. Oh for sure, confidence grows and all of a sudden you have faith in your right hand and you all of a sudden consider yourself a boxer. You know that confidence goes a long way in the ring, and it pad your resume a little bit too. You could be like five and whatever, I'm seven and whatever are you though? Are you? Yeah? Yeah, for sure, I'm not to check that out. I hope he beats the fuck out of them, but me too. Yeah, everybody, you can check out my show or my stuff Former Action Guys, Former Action News on Instagram. Jakrimographics is my website. If you need any help with search engine optimization, all that stuff, digital marketing work, hit me up. And

1:18:15 that's really it, man. I really appreciate you coming on. Yeah, I appreciate you having me brother. We'll definitely try to get you out again.