Ep. 212 | John Dailey | MARSOC Detachment 1 and Recon Sniper

John Daily, Man, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today, author of Tough, Rugged Bastards, book coming out in August about your time with the Marine Corps in the recon community. You were infantrymen Recon and then you went on to Debt one, which was the experimental unit for the Marine Corps Raiders. It's pretty funny that I got this book before you did.

You wrote the book, but your publisher sent me a copy before they set you a copy, So tell them. I really appreciate that, and I've enjoyed it so far. But thanks for coming on the show man. Oh thanks, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's you're one of those guys. Man, You've done so many things, you know. I was like reading through this and I'm like, this guy, you know.

I know in the book you talk about in the first like I think it was fourteen years you basically had missed every combat opportunity that had come through you would eat. You were on embassy duty I think one time, and then you weren't. You weren't in the right rotation for Somalia and stuff like that. And as someone that was that joint in the middle of the global War on Terror, and it took me a few years to get a deployment.

In that feeling of not getting to deploy when all your friends are deploying and stuff is very frustrating. Is that did you? Is that what you felt was like frustration, like what am I doing here? You know? Yeah, absolutely, I went on embassy duty because I kind of mistaken I didn't quite understand what it was. I mistakenly thought that you actually, the career planner kind of put in my ear that I was going to get pulled away by the agency is to operate as a sniper, you know, and Budapest.

That didn't happen at all. So I spent a lot of time wearing my dress blues, like you know, saluting dignitaries and whatnot. But you know, I spent some time in Budapest, went to Buenos Airea's Argentina, which you know, by all accounts is a beautiful, great place to get be. But I got there right about the time the first Golf War was was kicking off. And when I came home from that, I was a sergeant with you know, sniper you know, some experiences, but you know, the lance corporal's running around we're you know, we're in three rows of urbans had been you know, how much combat they saw it was you know, debatable, right, but yeah, but they had been to combat and I hadn't, So it was a uh, definitely frustrating. Yeah, at

the least, oh man, I can't imagine. And people that haven't been in the military, it's I mean, maybe it's hard to explain. Maybe if you played sports you can kind of get it, but it's like practicing all the time and never getting to play the game. You're always sitting on the bench watching other people and you get to like talk about how well they did or how bad they did, but you never have your own first hand experience, and it's it can be frustrating, and I think that kind of Uh, I think that's why a lot of people get out, because they're like, I'm tired of practicing and the game's never coming, so I might as well get out of here. That certainly was the case, you know when I when I came in in eighty seven. All right, so we

were, you know, Vietnam. Everybody had been out of Vietnam for quite a while. You know, there had been a couple of little incidents but nothing significant, and uh, you know, we really valued you know, the thing that we kind of talked about was how hard our training events were. You know, how how tough the tax was, or how tough this you know, exercise open Bridgeport was because that's all we had to do, or how how tough our deployment was going to Okinawa and the you know, patrolling up in the NTA or whatever the case was. But then after that, you know, after coming back, then kind of the story changed.

You know, guys who had actually gone to to combat, you know, had a had a leg up, right, And it kind of stayed that way until until uh, you know, two thousand and one, and after that, uh, you know, once once Marsock started. You know, it was interesting when we put the Marines to the training course. I would always ad ask, how many of you guys have real combat experience? And you know, for the first formative years of Morrisok, you know, every hand went up nearly. You know, guys had tons of experience. And now obviously it's back to the point, you know, and now I think we're on the tail end of probably what was experienced at Vietnam that you know, we have a lot of guys with combat experience, and this you got

the has and they have nots. So that you know, now, I think that's driving a lot of people out. They joined, you know for a specific purpose. They've spent a lifetime watching, uh, you know, a nation at war, reading the newspapers, seeing movies about Chris Kyle and and you know, reading books. Yeah, and uh, you know, coming in and realizing that you're in a relative peace time military, even in special operations, there's still a lot happening, but it's it's a lot less kinetic obviously, Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so when you came in, you you came in and you weren't infantry men. And I know that you I want to so I know that you've tried to recon end doc right at SI and didn't make it through. And then you went on

to three seven afterward, if I'm correct, right correct? Now this was still late eighties. Were your senior leaders all Vietnam veterans or you know, were there some? Was there sprinkling of them? Like how much actual combat experience was still within the command from like Vietnam? There was very little.

I think our company first sergeant and the weapons company that I was in had had been in Vietnam. Our sergeant major had But really at that point, it was those ranks that is a TFC, a lince corporal you're not talking to anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it was uh, you know, it was it was those guys. But we were you know, nearly ten years or a little more than ten years post Vietnam, so, you know, and I think that was obviously like a turbulent time. There was a lot of people, you know, that weren't sticking around for a career, so there wasn't a lot, but there was still all of the lessons of Vietnam, and that's what we were training to fight, you know, constantly, was you know, another Vietnam. That's what we thought,

Yeah, you know, the next next war would hold for us, you know, and that's okay. So that's like a good example of what we learned over the last twenty years too, is that, you know, what we talked about at the beginning, no one has any combat experience. You look at those guys that have combat experience and you're like, this guy's a leg up on me. You know, it's so much more than me because he's been there and done that. But then as we've done this for twenty years, we now go, well, just because you have combat experience doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're talking about, and your experience may not translate to other experiences. There's so many variations of combat that can occur. So

I think that thinking of oh, this guy is legit because he has combat experience is kind of waned a little, if that makes sense, you know, Like in my own eyes, I'm like, oh, you you were in combat. Cool, that lends a little bit of credibility. Well, what did you do? Who were you with? Like what kind of operations were you doing? You know, because experiences may vary, right, you know. I my experience in saying in with an advisor team in twenty thirteen was very different than the guys of three five that went to Saying In in twenty ten, you know, and and and for me to try to say, you know, it's just just just different experiences, even though it's in the same area and the battlefield has changed in things of shaping the way they

have. So yeah, I don't know, it's a it's a weird game we play right where we want to maintain combat experience in the ranks. But you know, you can't just stay at war all the time just to maintain experience. You know, it'd be nice, but well, I guess it probably wouldn't be nice. But yeah, I mean, twenty US is a long time to to you know, for that burden to be carried by you know, a lot of the same, you know, the same people over a career for some. But yeah, and then combat you know, deployments, you know, don't necessarily equate to combat experience, you know, so there's exactly a lot of you know a lot of people who went and did what we were tasked with that you know, either or you know, left

feeling that they missed out, you know, even though they do have combat deployments, but didn't get to do what they thought they were going to do. And a lot of you know, we're seeing that now and I think across the services that the missions that people are performing now are still critical to national security, but they're they're not kinetic, you know, And we've spent twenty years building up in the young, you know, men's and women's minds that the goal of services to go shoot people in the face and blast them, and that's uh, that's you know, for good or for bad.

That's that's just not the standard at the moment. Yeah, and like you said, even during the Global War on Terror, combat deployment didn't necessarily mean combat. And that's something that is I think I've I've it's been the most surprising when I talked to civilians for them is to find out that they think that everyone that's been in the Marines or when Afghanistan were all in like crazy firefights and and I'm like, no, man, like, probably ninety five percent of them are on a base and never leave that base once they get there. That's and that's not there's nothing wrong with that because that's logistics, those medical personnel, those are people that are are setting up the infrastructure for

the guy, you know, the three eleven at the pointy end of the stick to go out and fight and be taken care of as he's doing that. Right. We could talk about how bloated it became when you know, they start shipping in fast food and stuff like that for people, But yeah, combat, I don't know, the combat experience thing is always fun to talk about. When now let's go back, like I said, you you in sy you tried out for the recon end doc and you didn't make it through because of the swimming portion, which I think is probably the story for many aspiring recon marine. Right, yeah, yeah, I uh yeah.

It shocked the hell out of me because I really did not know that I couldn't swim. I thought I could. I'd grown up in the you know, in the hills and mountains of Virginia, West Virginia kind of border area, and spent a lot of time in the water, you know, in ponds and streams and lakes, and uh, you know, really thought that I knew how to swim. So I was you know, threw my hand up as soon as uh you know, they asked, you know, for volunteers, and the screening at that point I did it out out here at Camp La June consisted of, you know, I think we did a physical fitness test, We did the obstacle course a couple of times, we did a rock up and down the beach, and the last event was the pool and I had you know, super fit, you know, done really well,

and then they threw us in a pool and I realized when when they like, hey, crosstroke five hundred meters, I'm like I don't know what the hell of cross stroke is. I kind of had a modified uh breastroke slash you had a doggy paddle with my kind of standard go to, and uh that that didn't didn't you know, allow me to get to the the end. Doc. I wound up, you know, passing out in the pool. They pulled me out and told me to go back to the infantry, you know, learned to swim and come back later. Oh man, what's that like, being under water long enough to pass out? Yeah, it's uh, it's not the first time or the only time it's happened to me, but it's I think I might I don't even know if I talk about it in the book, but it, uh, you know, not

something I recommend or suggest during training. But you just start to see the black walls kind of closing in, closing in, and it gets to the point where you're staring through a you know, a toilet paper roll, and uh, you know, you either get to the surface or you don't. But uh, fortunately we're kind of built so that, you know, if that happens, you stop trying to breathe, you know, until you get pulled up, and uh then you'll generally kick back into it again. So I've seen it enough now to understand the mechanism and what happens. But uh, you know, we have a lot of a lot of people that want really really badly to get into into reconn or and the marsks that are willing to go to that point. Yeah, it's crazy that you practice drowning like

that, so where you where you are fully aware of what is happening when it's happening. You do talk about a little bit in the book. Uh, I think during your dive training you you discussed how how it closes up your vision starts closing out. And it's funny talking to guys like you that have done that and steals that have done their kind of you know, it's all that drownd proofing training where you they take you to the edge and sometimes a little over just so you can recognize what's happening. That's got to be insanely scared. I mean, I'm I'm like most people are afraid to drown, So be put in that situation where you're you're being on the edge of drown and passing out, you know, over and over again. Doesn't sound

like a pleasant time. You know, no it's not, but it's hugely beneficial to you know, recognize it. And that's that's why we do it. You know, we do it less in the pool. We do it in the high altitude chamber during free fall parachute school, and it's similar but reverse. It's still a lack of oxygen. You know, when they take you up to thirty five thousand feet, you take off your oxygen mask.

They do that so that you can start to experience what happens to you, because what happens to you might not be the same thing that happens to me. What are the signs of symptoms? But yeah, eventually you kind of start getting goofy and lightheaded, you know, because of lack of oxygen, and then you know eventually you'll you'll pass out from lack of oxygen. But the whole function of doing that is to allow you to recognize. And I actually had an opportunity. I don't know if i'd call it an opportunity, but a parachute jumped and somewhere out in Arizona, thirty thousand foot at night and recognized I'm like, oh shit, I'm passing out. I shouldn't be passing out right now, Oh my oxygen hose, I had pulled it out.

When I pulled my rip cord, I had disconnected my oxygen hose. And but I knew, you know, I'm like, hey, I'm I think I'm getting ready to pass out. I need to do something about this. Damn man, that's crazy. At least you had your ripcord pulled. I mean, it'd be worse if you passed out before your ripcord pulled, you know that, Yeah, that would be it would be much worse.

Don't they have Don't they now have like systems where that the parachute can automatically deploy at a certain altitude if you don't deploy yourself like a back Yeah. And even even then they did, your reserve parachute will activate. There's very various firing devices, a reserve firing device, automatic opening devices that will activate it. So, by all, you know, very likely if I had a passed out, you know, that would have it would have opened it for me. But I was under you know, a good parachute at thirty thousand feet and knew that I was going to pass out, but also knew that, you know, by the time I got down the twelve thousand feet I look back up. So that's crazy though, Yeah, but you pass

out at thirty thousand feet and you're floating around forever, you know like that. Yeah. So in that case, you know, my goal was to try to dump as much you know, use the mechanisms on the parachute to dump as much altitude as I could before I passed out. When I did, I I you know, woke up like from a you know, a nap at you know, around twelve thousand feet as that's what's supposed to happen, and that's what happened. Was sayable to identify that, hey, I'm overneath or you know, flying over the downtown basically the near the airfield that we had taken off of, but close to a kind of the small small town that we were. We were in the vicinity of so I was able to just fly out land my parachute, you know, in the middle of

a field, go to a payphone and eight, okay, come get me. Oh man, I bet your team was like, oh, you know, just sweating it until you got got a whole levelm Yeah, that's fun stuff. Man. Well, let's I want to back up again and go back So when you got to three seven in the book, you talked about how you're an O three eleven but you got sent a weapons company because of a clerical error. And for those that don't know, weapons company holds like mortars, machine gunners and stuff like that. They don't generally have riflemen.

But they decided to keep you because they had a stay platoon, which is the what is it the uisition, Yeah, as a sniper platoon. Basically, what are the odds of that happening? I mean, say, doesn't normally take boots right, No, And that was I considered one of the I mean, I you know, I've had an incredibly charmed life. I I fueel like for a guy of you know, average intelligence and talent and and many you know, a guy who couldn't swim cud of across the board.

You know, I had somebody looking out for me. And then that was one of those times, you know, I reported in and I talk about it kind of humorously in the in the book, But the first sergeant who wasn't one of those guys with being m experience is just starts yelling at me for you know, not being a you know, not having the right ms, even though it was an error that somebody else made. Uh.

So he was just like, hey, we're not I'm not dealing with this typo. So you're going to go to the only place that I can send you, and that's the sniper platoon. So I of course showed up there and they all hated me because you know, they had to spend years in the infantry before they tried out to get the opportunity to go to the platoon, and then you know, spend the years training and trying out before they get the opportunity to go to sniper school. So it was would you have any kind of end doc or anything when you showed up there were they like, well, yeah, at least have to make these minimum standards. If not, we got to get rid of you. So what had happened was I back in those days sniper school was the record doesn't have the infantry doesn't

have a sniper school anymore. That was done away with pretty recently, but it was it was really tough to get through and there were very few quotas, so in order to get a quota, the units would run there in an internal sniper school to kind of see who did the best, and those guys would get to go. So right when I checked in, they were they had just started a internal you know, sniper indoctrination, So you need to go through this and uh, if you don't do well in it, then we'll we'll send you packing somewhere. Fortunately, you know, the one thing I do have or did have, I'm uh it was not quite a photographic but a really good memory. So you know that you to kind of read through stuff and and committed to memory quickly really helped. You know.

Having grown up in the in the like I said, the backwoods, you know, the idea of stalking and shooting was got a second nature to me. So I wound up doing really well in the course, they kind of acquiesced and said, hey, well we'll give you a shot. And I was able then to overtime kind of earn my place in the in the platoon.

Man, the dudes that had been there for a while were probably like, dude, f this guy just shows up and he gets a seat. Yeah, they did. But you know, once I started out shooting them and out stalking them, and they're like, what are we gonna do? Yeah, when they you know, when you become undeniable. You know, it's like, well, we can be mad that he's here because he didn't spend enough time, but he's still doing better than you. So you know, like yeah, and that's that's one. Uh, unless I come back to time after time in the book. But if you know, whatever levels success I had in the in the Marine Corps, I said, I feel like I had a pretty charmed, charmed life. But uh, the one thing that you know, you know, everybody can always do is you can

always work harder, you know, just work harder than anybody else, you know, put in more time than anybody else. And uh, you know that was right. I think the book about Carlos Halfcock Marine Sniper had come out. It hadn't come out by that point, but it I had read something in the New York Times like between book camp and going to the entry school about it, you know, about about him and his story, and uh, you know, one of my recruiters had been a sniper and the picture of his you know, guys in their gilly suits was on his wall.

And so very early, you know, I was like, you know, that's something that I want to do. I want to do that. I want to go to recun and then it's just a matter of figuring a way to make it happen, you know, working hard enough to make it happen is why I joined. You know, that book took me from My dad was army, and you know, I grew up around army stuff, and I was always like, I'm going to join the Rangers, you know, I want to be an Army ranger. And then I read Marine Sniper in high school and then was like, dude, that's dad, I'm going to the Marines. Dude, this is badass. Like this, dude, yeah, I mean that book had to have brought so many people into the military and that's such a that's one of those like, uh, you know,

much sought after, I guess jobs. The Marine Sniper. Like when you say that, people are like, oh shit, like this dude's legit, Like if he's if you're a school trained sniper, then everyone knows that you fucking went through something, you know, and that you earned your spot because that's the Marine Corps like legacy is being good shooters and having you know, we always brag about being able to shoot, and that's to say that you went through and passed Marine Sniper school. You know, was probably a huge deal when you went. Was Carlos Halfcock still in the Marines at the time. Was he still involved with the Sniper school because he was involved for a while, he was, he was not when I went through. I

did meet him, and I've got a signed copy of the book. That's so awesome. Yeah, I went through. So I went to Sniper School at Pendleton in eighty nine, and then in ninety two I had the opportunity to go to the Advanced Sniper Course in Quantico and while I was there, he came to our graduation and yeah, I got him to you know, I've been carrying around a copy of the book and got him to sign it.

So it was it was really really a cool experience. Yeah, for sure, man. I mean that's that's the cool thing about like the Marine Corps. When you when you look at these like specialized jobs and skill sets, there's always these people within those jobs that people in that community know about. They're like, oh, so and so that dude's legit. You know, this is the guy. This is the dude that started this, this is the and it's like I think that kind of even though maybe Carlos Hathcock is not as famous outside military circles or even outside of the Marine Corps circles and stuff like that. But I think guys striving to go and do that job, to go be a sniper, to be, in my case, be a jatach. You look at the guys that came before you, and

you're like, man, that's a legacy I got to uphold, you know, like this dude was bad ass, and I can't look like shit because then I make everybody look like shit. Kind of deal, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely, I think that's uh, you know, one of the biggest driving factors for most of the guys that I work with, right, just because you know, you don't want to let down the people that came before you, who set the standard, who you know, did all the awesome thing, whether that was you know, the Fort Rican, Uh, you know, guys from Vietnam. They would come and talk to us, the World War Two raiders that I get the opportunity to talk with. You know, you can't talk with one of those guys come into

work the next day and have ass. Right, you got to be totally on your game and making sure that everybody around you is is totally on their game as well, because it's such a I mean, as Marines, we have this amazing, incredible legacy a right. Uh. And then you know when you get to be around people like Carlos Hathcock or Chuck mulwhinney, who is a sniper that just passed away who's actually had more kills than than Carlos Hathcock, or like I said, the World War Two raiders, or recently had the chance to talk to a real prominent force recon uh Vietnam Marine.

Uh. And you know those guys, Uh, you know, I'm just in all of the man I'm in all of our guys today. You know, we've got uh I've been out now for sixteen years, you know, which is hard to uh, hard to believe, but I you know, the great joy of my life is that I get to uh you know, still work, you know every day with with Marine Raiders and see the you know, the amazing things that they're doing and they they do. You know, there's there's often the talk of the younger generation blah blah blah. You know, everybody always wants to shit on the younger generation. Yeah, but the Marines, you know that I work with every day are hugely uh you know, respectful of the traditions of the past and of the people that went

before them, and the are you know, definitely uphold the honored traditions and and and everything that that you know, the people that came before. Yeah. Man, that legacy is huge. You know, legacy is huge, and upholding legacies huge. And I really admire the recon and sniper and Marsaw communities and how they uphold their legacies and they really rally around like traditions and battles and stuff like that. There is there is some of that, you know, I came from Anglico. There's obviously some of that with Anglico, but it's like a smaller unit, so it's not really as it's the network is not as big, and it's when I was with artillery, you know, like you can't go to I remember going to when I first went to

tenth Marines, I think it was two ten, and there was like there's one of the unit. One of the batteries. Slogan was like three three for one or something like that, and it was a slogan back toward World War two and one of the battles. But I bet if you had asked most of the cannoneers and stuff, they probably wouldn't have known what that slogan meant. Or you know, it's just because it wasn't. Like the Marine Corps itself, history is obviously beat into everybody, but I think it's important for that those specific units to really embrace their own history and traditions and things that it's known for and you know, and that really would really build the overall spree to Corps. There's a lot of that history building online now.

The social media pages. You know, you got Goons up, which is a huge win for all the Infantry MOSS. There's a page third Battalion, fifth Marines. They do all this Marine you know, three five history. They were just posting about bellow Wood the other day because June sixth is d Day, but it's also the day that the Marines went into bellow Wood, you know, And I think that's really important that guys from those units saw it and they were like, you know what, this needs to be documented and put out there for mass consumption rather than you know, I don't know it. For me, the traditions and legacy are really what brings a unit together and like I said, I really think that the recon community more than

anyone, really upholds their traditions and takes care of each other. You know, yeah, I would. I would totally agree, and I was, you know, honored to be a part of it, the sniper community. I've got the honor now of serving on the board of the Sniper Heritage Foundation and we're One of the projects we're doing now is trying to raise money to get a monument build at the Brinkle Museum. So the Scout Sniper Heritage, I think dot to work. You can people can buy a brick, get your name on a brick there, but are really cool and it and talking of heritage, the monument is going to be built is a World War One sniper kind of spotting for a g Watt sniper like over his shoulder, uh, a point out of target. So it kind of you know, shows

the lineage from the snipers of World War One, you know, through the the Marines of today, and I think the the Marine Raiders. It's it's really a fascinating history with them. They only existed for two years in World War Two and uh, but they recognized how important that unit was, how important maintaining the legacy of that unit was and so they fought, you know, kind of tooth and nail to to continue to keep their traditions alive and to continue to keep their their legacy alive within the Marine Corps. So when we started up Detachment one, there was you know, a bunch of World War II raiders coming out and saying, hey, you know, we want you guys to be our our legacy. You know, we want your find

a way, you know, in your unit emblem to put the raider patch, and you know, we we became tasking a Raider. And then when Marsak was activated. It took a couple of years, but finally that was so stupid. That was so stupid drama, Like it's crazy that the actual like Marine raiders are like, you guys, should you know, carry on the legacy where the patch, you know, you're the future of the raiders kind of deal, and the unit's like, no, you aren't. You know, we're not special or whatever, like we don't wear that whole thing was ridiculous like that it took so long to like name to me, even to call themselves raiders. I remember seeing raiders, you know, these Marsk guys and they'd be wearing a Raider patch and you knew it was unauthorized,

and it's like, fuck, yeah, dude, you know, like you should be doing that, Like that's what's up, you know, because that's I hate that. That's that's exactly what I'm talking about. Build that a spree to corps embrace that legacy and fucking you know. I was on the Macon Island when I went on a mute and that was based off the Raider deployment there and they had some yeah, historic stuff on the ship on display, you know, and I was I always thought, I mean, like, that's an awesome way to memorialize these guys. And I don't know, I just thought that whole not wanting to call Marsk Marines raiders, you know, was just such a ridiculous thing for the longest time. Yeah, that was that was a big Marine Corps decision that they obviously eventually saw the light

on. But yeah, the last I believe the last Marine who was on that making raid just passed away a couple of years ago. I had the great honor to you know, talk to them on on quite a few occasions, and you know, that. Uh yeah, I mean you're absolutely right that the you know what drives you know, people to fight is you know, the people on the right and are left. You know, it's not you know, as much as we certainly care about people back home, but you know, it's it's the people are on your right ear and left, and it's the desire to not let your teammates down or let your legacy down.

And the more you build that legacy, you know, the layer it and build it, you know, within the mythology and lower of your unit. You know, the best units are are steeped in that. You know, the Rangers are steeped in that. The Marine Corps you know, we've always been relatively good at that, you know, and I talk, uh, I think the second chapter of the book, I go through a good bit of kind of Marine Corps fact and fiction and some legacy and history, and you know we were you know, there's a saying that this is always true, right, don't let the truth getting away. Have a good story, and the Marine Corps done that pretty well. Yeah, for sure.

That's occasions in our past. Yeah, Double Dog is a good example of that. Like that's you know, we all know the story it came from the Germans and World War One, but it did it really you know that's up in that's up in the air now like that actually was more of a pr wan for us than anything. So, but you know, it feels like your career, like looking reading the book and kind of looking over your career and stuff. All all steps led to that that spot at at Marsk Debt one, you know, creating this you know, you know you got to go Stapletoon and be a and and work as a sniper there. Following that, well, let's talk about that real quick. When you were there, what were you what was going on in the late ely eighties, early

nineties as you're working with stapletun What kind of gear were you working with? Was this M forty A one or I mean what kind of weapons did you have? Yeah, we had the A ones with the round mill dots you know they later they became oval and then different different shapes. But yeah, there was not a whole lot. The M forty nine spotting scope. I'm sure you probably use that as well. That is still I think in service.

You know, it was made in nineteen forty nine. All right, there's there's a lot better, a lot better equipment available now, so it was there was not a lot of uh you know, largely, you know, we'd carry Prick seventy seven h VHF radio one O four and then the one thirteen if we needed to talk to air UHF and that was that was it. I mean, we generally walked around with the small alice pack unless you bought your own, which you know, the staple tune guys. Generally we would in the snipers, but not a lot of high tech equipment at that time. What was the training like, was it a was it a lot of stalking training or RNs training? I mean, what did it look like for the stay guys. Did you guys kind of do your own thing

because your mission is kind of different than the rest of the infantry battalion or a little bit. But at least when I was in three seven, we would, as a rule of thumb, we would get up early Monday morning, get your weapons out of the armory, you know, with your kid already packed, hike out to a training area, spend the whole week out there, come back on on Thursday afternoon. Normally if you did, if you did well, you know, get back, you know, hike back, you know, might be fifteen twenty miles, uh, clean weapons, put them away, and then they'd let you give you off Friday through Monday, and then you'd come back and do it again and do it again.

And that's that's really all we did. I mean, it was a time you know, similar to what we're seeing now, and budgets were pretty tight, so there was a lot of money for training. You know, we did pretty well with with AMMO our ability to go to the range and make sure we kept our qualifications up. The deployments I made there were to you know, unit deployment, the Deployment Program UDP, deployments to Okinawa again all very you know, patrolling. We did a whole lot of patrolling. There was not a whole lot of focus, even in cniper school at that time on anything to do with urban I think we did one urban stalk, but yeah, a lot of a lot of stock and a lot of shooting, a lot of a lot of time in the woods, which is really no

and then that's where you know we were. We then in the Stapleton and the Infantry, Marines and the line companies were really really good at our craft because that's all we did. Now, you know, in a unit like that, we're in a position like that in Stapleton. Obviously, that's a serious job and there's some standards you got to uphold, and you got to be a little bit better than the average joe because of the mission set.

You're out by yourself or you know, with only a couple of people. Were there ever any situations where you guys have to let someone go? And if so, what would be a situation where someone would get, you know, drop from stapletoon to go back to the regular infantry. Disciplinary issues were one that I saw on a couple of occasions. That was the that was the big one. I mean, it was not uncommon for somebody to get the opportunity to go to sniper school and fail and be retained. You probably wouldn't get to go again. But in those days, in my early days there, it was I mean, I think we had one or two snipers in the whole platoon, So it wasn't a expectation that every sniper was or every man in the platoon was going to have the opportunity to go to school.

Yeah, and so I imagine if you go and you fail, I mean, what was the drop rate at school? Was it uncommon for guys to fail and come back or was that kind of like, hey man, only you know, seventy percent of the people fail kind of situation. It was. It was about I think with my class was fifty percent. I think we started with twenty four, you know, finished with twelve. It was it was very, very rare, and I don't think I had anybody when I went that if you failed, you would get to go back just because the competition was too high. You had a shot, Yeah, screwed it up, you didn't you didn't get to try again. So I was, you know, when I went, I was the one the chief or the chief instructor had been my team leader when I was in three seven,

so he got orders to sniper school on our rightfle qualification day, I was, you know, out on the range shooting at eight hundred, going back to one thousand, and it was it was only there was twenty five shots and I think you had to hit twenty three of them, twenty two something something like that. And I was doing great, you know, I get back to the eight hundred and then the thousand, and then I start missing and I'm like the hell, and I'm you know, there's no way I should be I should be missing. And I get to the last shot and I'm like, I've got to make the shot or I'm not going to qualify, and that the idea of that was just unfathomable to me. I shoot, target comes up, you know, and miss oh like yeah, I'm

and I'm urge. I'm like suicidal at the time. You know, I could have said I was suicidal, and you know that wasn't the thing, and nobody, nobody cared if your suicidal go ahead, then so we we pack up. I go back to the you know, the barracks. They tell me, they're like, hey, pack your shit, you're out of here. And I'm almost you know, I'm trying to hide tears. I'm and you know, stuff them everything into my sea bag and you know, I'm walking out to wait for a bush to take me back to camp.

It's Sam Mateo and uh They're like, yeah, we're fucking with you. I shot. I got twenty four out of twenty five. So that's the benefit of having your your former team leader as your as your chief instructor, really destroying your spirit there for a minute. Yeah, I was. I mean I had considered, you know, swallowing that last round instead of throwing it down rightning, but fortunately I didn't. You know, all was well that ends, well, there's nothing work. Man. Marines love to screw with each other, and especially when they're there's not you know, It's funny.

It's like when you're out for a long run and you're heading back and you're like, oh man, I can't wait to back, and then they just keep going. They run by the barracks or they run by the shop and you're like, I thought we were stopping, and guys just start falling out. They're like, you know, you're just putting them through mental torture.

You love it, But that I mean, yeah, there's you know, maybe not telling me that I failed, but you know in that that sort of situation that I mean, that builds the mental resiliency that hey, you know, it's never over until it's until it's over, until your your back and debrief is gone and you clean your weapons. So I'm I'm guilty of that from time to time myself. Yeah, it's got to keep people in check. Can't let the ego get too big, you know. Uh, that was probably such a swinging emotion though, you know the elation that was Yah, it was yeah, I mean I I honestly I'd forgotten about that story until we started talking about it. But yeah, it was, uh, the the saddest I think the most disgusted with my if I'd ever

been in my life at that point, potentially, other than not passing the recon swim and not the first time around. I wonder what that does to guys that have gone on to like sniper school, recon, Marsock, whatever name your your school that's extremely difficult to get through and they don't make it. There's got to be guys that literally it just destroys them, you know what I'm saying, Like, there's there's got to be guys that were like just all the way up through high school getting in the military, like my goal is to go become a raider, and then they get to ans or whatever and they don't get selected. That has got to be a mental struggle that probably takes a long time to get over, you know what I'm saying.

Absolutely, Yeah, it's uh, you know, we're in a Marsac a little bit different position obviously because we're newer but you know we've been around now sixteen years ish, but now now as sixteen years we have had kids. They grew up you know, hearing about it or you know, actually seeing things in a paper on ads or whatever the case is, reading books, and uh so we do have people that are you know, we finally caught up to the point where we have people who have grown up, you know, wanting to do this thing. And you know, for MARSK it's a little bit different than I really think all of the other Special Operations units and that you have to be a marine first. So you've got to go to boot camp, you've got to go to your your MS school, you've

got to serve for a couple of years before you have the opportunity to even apply. Yeah, there's no contract MARSK. Right, you can't go in as a with a tryout like you can with like s F. Now, yeah, s F as you know, they're the program that allows that the seals, you know, have the large lions share of folks come right out out of boot camp, but for us, you don't. So when you have and I don't, I don't work with the Assessment selection branch. But you know, when we have marines come through that get into the individual training course and then don't make it or successful. You know's that's one of the things I generally sat down with them and you know, talk to him about it, because I mean, I can only imagine, you know, I

remember that feeling that I had packing my packing my stuff and uh, you know the n s W the Seals had a couple of years ago a marine or a sailor kill himself after getting dropped from right. So yeah, I mean I and it's it's I mean, it's not the right thing to do, obviously, but it's understandable, right. You know, you wrap your entire identity in this idea that you're going to do this thing and you're going to be this guy and it's going to be super awesome, and then uh, something happens that that prevents that from happening. And that's one of the things I talked to him about is, I mean, your identity is a hell of a lot more than this, right, Your identity is a lot more than being a marine. You know, It's it's got to be more

than that. If you're going to be a well rounded person and a husband and father or someday hopefully. Yeah. It's in the thing too, is that a lot of these guys are type A personalities that have not really failed at a lot, if anything, at life, and now they have this you know, goal that they've set for themselves and they's they fail at it, and it's like I can see how how it's a struggle. It's almost like I saw this video talking about all these college or all these high school students that were applying to go to like I think MIT or something like that, and it was like the average GPA was like four point two. Their SATs were all like crazy high, you know, all of this stuff, and then they get to these courses at like MIT or something, and these

courses are extremely hard and some of them aren't passing the courses and this is like the first time that some of these students have ever failed at anything. You know. These are the A plus students all the way through school, never had an issue, and now they're having mental issues because I what do you mean I didn't do this right? What do you mean I'm too slow?

I've never been too slow? Like who. Yeah, It's it's such a when you're at that super high level of whatever it is you're doing. It's just a whole nother ballgame, you know, Yeah, yeah, no doubt. It's uh, it's you know, one of the things we looked at with with our entire assessment selection program. You know, the guys that are successful generally have about a two hundred and ninety TFT a physical finished test out of three hundred. But then when you look at the people that aren't successful, they generally have about a two ninety out of I mean they're everybody that shows up. Everybody that shows up, uh, you know, good at their job. They've been there, good marines. It's just, you know, we're not necessarily looking for the the best guy. We're looking for

the right guy. We're gal you know, to do do do the things that we we need them to be able to do. And I had Delta operator Tom Satterley on and he said the same thing, and he said it took him a while to wrap his mind around that, you know, the best guy for the job might not be the right guy for the job kind of deal. And he's like, guys, it takes a it takes a minute for people to understand that, Yeah, it's cool, you can run a three hundred pft. That's cool that you can rock out, you know, at this pace or whatever, but do you have all the other skills to be you know, it's like it's just more than that, you know, it's it's a whole package kind of deal. Yeah. Man, that's wild stuff. But so let's let's continue on. Then you were you were

a staple tune. Was there nothing going on? Why'd you end up going to MSG duty and going out and working embassy guard? There was? That was really it. There was. I had left third Battalions, seventh Marines. There was the Marine Corps redesignated one four three seven, so it was it was kind of a they just took unit flags and handed it to another unit. Yeah, and there was no no flag left at our at what had been three seven. So we were all told, hey, go find a job or we'll find one for you. So I went to the fifth Marines Regiment scouts, which was just it was I think six of us six Marines we worked at the regiment and our job was scouting and reconnaissance for the regimental headquarters, to serve as the regiment commanders eyes and ears. While I

was there, I had the opportunity to go to sniper school. So I went, got a seat to sniper school, went and like I said, was it was ultimately successful, even though I was fucked with quite a bit. Uh. But we really didn't do a lot, you know, we we didn't. There wasn't a real mission for us. It was rare for the regiment to go to the field or do operation. So we spent a lot of time teaching classes, a lot of time just setting around. It's just that wasn't what I had joined the Marine Corps. I was just insanely bored. It was the first time i'd ever like actually had my own desk, and I was just sitting there, you know, for for months, and I was like, this is driving me battye. And like I said, at a party one night in Barricks, career planner was you know,

got in my ear and he was like, hey, you know, I heard your sniper. You know, there's this thing called Marine Security Guard Duty where you'll be you know, operating in the uh, you know, all over the world that embassies the CIA will probably like pull you over to do the black ops or whatever. I'm like, sign me up, man, sounds good to me. So I was yeah, very very gullible corporal at this point. So I signed up, went to the school and quickly realized that it was not that all right. It was the career planner was not read into all the blacks were. He was trying to make some quotas he needed to get so many people to sign up. And it was a wonderful experience. I was in Budapest when the Berlin Wall fell, so that was

a really cool time. But at no point over there was I asked to take anybody out. A whole lot of like sense standing around in dress blues like it, and you know, opening doors for people. But I spent a year there, and it was there I met the woman who would become my wife. She was also an American as a school teacher. So it's kind of funny the way the way things happened. We've now been married thirty three years, I think, so it's uh, that worked out for the best. From there, I went to Argentina and spent a year and a half in Buenos Aires, and that was, like I said, whin the golf, w uh happened? So I missed out on that, although a funny story. I was the George Bush Senior came down at the at the

start of the war for a visit to Buenos Aires, and I had I would show up every day and I would fill out a I forget what the form was was called, but there was a form of personal parror hit or whatever personal action request that she could fill out and put anything you wanted. So every day I would come into the embassy and I would fill one out and I put, I want to go to you know, uh, do I want to go to the war, you know, send me to a unit that's deploying in support of combat operations. And I would just hand these off, and I didn't know what happened to him. They told me stop waste of paper, but I'm like, you know, I'm not. Ultimately, those I found out later those would go up to the regional security officer

at the embassy. Then he had his stack of papers that he had to deal with. But President Bush came and the regional security officer was had known him from another you know, known him from something previous, and we had our opportunity to meet the president and this guy had whispered in his ear and he's like when he got in front of us, he's like, which one of you is? Uh? If I was a sergeant, then yeah, which one of you sergeant? Daily, I'm like, sir, you know, he's like, you're not going to the war, all right, stop uh, you know, stop filling out papers. So I got pretty much kind of told from the top that that I was not going, uh going to get to participate. So I let it go. I guess the president

said, so, I guess I might as well give up on this one. Yeah, they won that round. Uh So when as an as a former embassy security guard, you know, actually the other day it was like four days ago, I think one of the embassies had attack right outside of it. Someone was shot or there was something that something happened right outside.

Well, local security guard for the embassy was killed. When you hear stories like that, when you hear about, hey, this embassy may have to evacuate, what kind of goes through your mind as a former embassy security guard, because I feel like you can imagine what's happening on the ground better than a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, it's having also been on the other end and done you know, neo operations, non combat evacuation operations with them you you know, getting embassy people out in Africa is uh, you know, I've seen both both sides of it. There's a whole lot of logistics, you know, if you're if you're in the embassy, the things that have to get destroyed, there's a lot of information obviously that has

to get get dealt with. The Uh. The interesting thing with being a marine security guard is that you work you're operationally under the control of the State Department. So the the ability to you know, you're not gonna go out and start running and gunning right at the State Department is probably not going to allow that. You know, your whole purpose is the security of the embassy, the classified information and the embassy the people in the embassy. So it's uh, which one's first classified people classified information or the people the information that's generally speak and there are other there are other people that are responsible for it.

And depends on which people as well. Yeah, yeah, ambassadors, you know, we want to make sure they're they're sorted out. But it uh, you know it it really kind of depends, I guess on the situation and and a lot has changed since the time that I was out there. So now that I think they're called the Embassy Security Groups and they operate a little bit differently, more a closer relationship with the fast Afleeting and I Terrorism Support teams, and they have a little more robust capability. I mean we carried around a wheel gun. I had a Smith and Weston Model nineteen and yeah, that's awesome. Now they have like submachine guns and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, now they've got got a lot more. We had like patent leather polished hulsters that we had our three fifty seven and it was pretty cool. It was cool to carry you three fifty seven around. Do you feel real cowboy like? You know, that's funny. So was there anything that interesting that happened while you're on it? I mean, I feel like I knew a couple guys that went to embassy duty and it always seemed like a great opportunity. And everyone I ever talked to that did it loved it.

They were like, yeah, the job, the watchstanding sucks, but the opportunities to see different countries, to network with high up people with then our own government, foreign governments and stuff like that, you know, to like for something later on. You know, that's that's there. You know, it just seems like a really good opportunity, but there's always that underlying thing like, hey, the MBSC could get overrun and that's we come into play. Did anything did he ever happen while you were there? It is it's the kind of a hidden maybe it's less so now, but Jewel in the Marine Corps, I mean it's for a guy who had, you know, lived in a squad bay. You know up until that point, you know, you're in a house with your own, like a nice ass house

with your own like real room or real bed, like cooks and maids and drivers right to shepherd you around and take care of you. You know, Marines from all different walks of life. It was really the first opportunity that I'd had to do to talk with a guy who was a weather was ms with weathermen. You know, he had a court stenographer who wound up being a really good friend of mine. So it's a really a broad, big experience in the Marinka always says that was really really was. Yeah, the opportunity to be in in certainly a higher level of society, you know, getting invited to cocktail parties and dinner parties at the Australian ambassador's residence or whatever.

Is not something that Pfc John Daily, you know, ever thought he would he would find himself doing. But yeah, there's i'd say the craziest when I got to Argentina Budapest. When I was there, it was right like I said, the wall was coming down and the Russians had were leaving. There was a lot of you know, we were still treating the Hungarians as a communist state, so we you know, we'd have some walk ins, people try to come in and defect. Would that would happen relatively regularly.

But right when I checked into to Buenos Aires, there was a coup attempt a general who was in prison because he had tried another coup attempt. You know, it'd got some guys to raid a tank factory and they there was tank rolling into the streets and they're trying to take over parliament and so it was pretty exciting. The only long gun that was that was available was a hunting rifle that I think it was the regional security officer had locked up in our safe, so I grab that. You know, I've got a pair of binoculars and I was the only sniper obviously, so I was up on the roof kind of reporting what was what was happening, and you know, prepared in case anything happened, but there was no nothing was directed against

the embassy. How old were you at this time? I was I was not twenty one. I've been twenty that's so fretty. That was Yeah, that was a unique, unique event. You know. I was had our our handheld radio and and just uh like, hey there's two uh you know, similar to two sixty two's. I didn't you know the nomenclature of their their tanks rolling down the street there, you know, on the side of Parliament there, you know, rounds flying. So it was it was not a combat experience, but it was a lot of the same adrenaline and much different than most twenty year old experiences. Almost twenty year olds aren't getting an experience like that in their life. They got their rifle on the top of a foreign building watching for people to overrun. That's so crazy. Yeah,

plus great great beef. You know, a lot of Argentine beef. I've heard that actually, yeah, yeah, it was really good. And then a couple of a month or two later, there was a bomb car bomb detonated some terrorists outside of not outside of our embassy, but the Israeli embassy, and so that was, you know, pretty unique experience to be on the on the edge of that seeing what happened, how the reactions went, and how we reacted. You know, it's one of those this were like combat experience or whatever you want to call it comes into play because when you have a brand new guy or maybe a guy that's been in for three years, a guy or girl that's been in for three years, and you're telling them, hey, I need you to stand on this post and just be

on the lookout for anything, it's hard. It's hard to convey to them after they stood there day after day after day after day and nothing's going on about how important what they're doing really is. Until you've been in a situation where you've seen something like that where a car bomb has gone off or they're trying to overrun the embassy, and then you have that experience to go, hey, I know it's super quiet and nothing's going on and this is super boring, but that could change in an instant, you know, and you have to be ready for that. And that's the kind of like I think experience that we lose when we start losing some of our combat veterans and our people that have gone and seen and done many things, you know. Yeah,

and the young well, the leaders need to empower the young guy or gal that hey, yeah, you it's your call. Yeah, we're putting the faith and trust and confidence you on this position. I mean that was you know, repeated itself several times. You know, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, the young young marine that certainly didn't want to be on watch, you know, made the decision that hey, I've got to you know, engage this this bb I ed and you know, you know, protect the folks that I'm supposed to be protecting. So it's uh, I think we lose you know, you know, post combat, that's one of the things we lose always, you know, the level for risk and decision making.

You know, we want to jack that back up. You know, it had gotten to uh, I feel like pretty much across the force, you know, push down to a very low level, you know, because it had to be all right, at the height, at the height of the war. Well and even I mean back in, you know, back in before the guy and stuff too is so important. You had to let the lower ranks kind of run stuff because it's not like today where we have great communications, we have UAVs where we can see what's going on on the ground, Like you know, like that persistent overwatch from higher echelons of command is wasn't there twenty thirty years ago. You kind of had to make decisions on the fly. Now. I don't know about now because I've been out,

but I know towards the latter days of the Global War on Terror, all tons of stuff you had to send up request to get approval from like these kernel and general level assets or command levels that are nowhere near you or what you're doing, but they're watching it on a UAV and you're like, what the fuck? Man, Like I got to sit here and wait twenty minutes for this guy to make a decision when we're down here dealing with this right now. It's like yeah, yeah, early in two thousand or late two thousand and one, but early in Afghanistan, you know, I remember, like, you know, we need to blow these vehicles up, all right, and the j tech that I was with, you know, well, we've got to got to call hire, and Hire's got to call higher and

it's somebody in you know, to buy, you know, ultimately saying yeah, let's let's do this thing like cheese this you know back Uh, you know, that's that's one thing that you know, technology has just certainly reduced the amount of risks that we're we're willing to accept. And some of that is beneficial, right, I mean, we don't have nearly the casualties that we had in the past. But back in uh, you know, I have a guy that I'm fortunate to know, John Stryker Meyer, who's a Macne SOG guy in Vietnam, and uh, you know, these guys would he's a writer, there's a remarkable guy as an awesome podcast, the SOG cast or he interviews those those guys. But man, these guys, would you know, helo would get uh, you know, low enough where they

could jump out, and chances were very good they were in contact immediately, all right, and then maybe the HELO could come back. Maybe you couldn't, right, They were just on their own, you know, to to persecute targets, you know, deep in the line else and with with probably no commp you know, or very very very limited. Yeah, they were walking around with a you know, a VHF with a three foot tape antenna in a lot of cases that that level of risk will never be you know, assumed. Again, I don't think, no, yeah, you're right.

I mean, it's just I think you're right. Like, the technology is definitely great for improved situational awareness, which is key into limiting fratricide to you know, negating and issues before they happen. But with that, some leaders have taken it to have have used that improved situational awareness to apply more micromanagement on their troops. You know. For an example, when I was with three six, I remember I was in I was with three six in Mars in twenty eleven and we had with our contractors work something out where we for those that don't know, we had these things called G bosses, which are cameras basically on a pole, you know, like you would see had like a Walmart parking lot or something kind of deal camera on a pole.

And all of our patrol bases had g bosses or excuse me, our company fobs and stuff like that. Multiple locations throughout the battlefield had these G boss cameras well. The technology had become so great that we could stream all those feeds into our command center, so we'd have like eight or ten g BOSS camera feeds of different parts of the battlefield so we could see what the company commanders could see and stuff. And I remember one time someone one of the higher leaders watching the camera and asking why someone on a patrol didn't have their gloves on or ipro or something like that, and they're like radio down and tell them they need to put that on. And it's like, dude, fucking really, you know what I'm saying. I mean, I get it,

may, okay, whatever, the guy should have had his ipro on whatever, But is that really I mean, if you're an E eight, E nine or you're an four five, should you really be going, hey, is this dude? You know, that's the micro management. Let the dudes say something afterwards. Let the guys on the ground take care of that kind of stuff, like I don't know. And I The other thing you said too, is that officers have to trust their junior marines. And an example of that again when I was with three six. I remember we had a patrol out and they happened upon a dude who was in placing an ID.

He was actively putting it in, and the point man took the guy out and I was in the command center. I was a fire's chief and someone came in and was like, you know, should we start an investigation for this? And the immediately the three alpha the captain, who was like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like, no, we're not gonna start an investigation, clear intent. The guy's in placing an ied, we have all this stuff, you know, like there's He's like, what you're gonna do by by starting an investigation over this marine is one, freak him out because now he thinks he might have done something wrong. Two, you're gonna make everyone else question themselves before they pull the trigger, because

they're gonna wonder if they're gonna get put under an investigation. He and I was like, dude, that's legit. Like I was so glad that he like stopped that immediately. That kind of talk. Now, don't get me wrong, if there's a situation that warrants an investigation, then there shouldn't be There should be one. But not every situation is like that, you know what I'm saying, And a lot of leaders won't step out and say things like that because they're too worried about their next promotion, their career and stuff.

You know, we got to get past that kind of deal. So yeah, and that, yeah, that's absolutely exacerbated by all of the you know, ubiquitous eyes on everything. You know, there's you know, yeah news, you know, twenty four hour news cycle and you know, like you said, ubiquitous eyes on the battlefield. You know, for a while, there was it was a program at SOCOM that was intending to count.

It was a mechanism that would go on your weapon that would count rounds fired essentially, but it was also it would also track kind of where the rounds were fired, you know, how many rounds were hired at what time, and it's it's a little computer chip, and uh, you know, people started, you know asking the kind of hard questions like, well, you know, what happens if if I had my you know, you send me across the border that you know, we don't want to be uh you know, we don't want to know them that we're across or you know, are you going to start coming back after a firefight and looking at everybody's you know, who shot when? And and uh, yes, it opens up a potential for you know, we've got this bad enough with you know, and

there's obviously good and bad. You know, we shouldn't do things that we aren't supposed to do to begin with. But you know, everybody's wearing helmet cams and everybody's uh, you know, it creates a situation where you know, marines or soldiers or sailors are afraid to defend themselves. You know. Then that's obviously not the rate the right thing. Yeah, yeah, it's just a crazy world with technic you know, and it's it gets even crazier with drone Implementing drones, we have ways to track individual troops where they're at.

You know, they're working on biometrics and stuff, so you can track bio it's like video game stuff almost, you know. Where it's it's a wild world. Too much information, you know a lot of times too much information is worse than not enough, do you speak inundated And it's more than any one person can can take in and make sense of, all right, So it's then we need AI to give us some way to to make sense of that. And that's uh, you know, it starts to open up a lot of vulnerabilities now because we've got a lot of uh, you know, things that can be screwed with, if that makes sense. No, No, it's it's all that's where we're moving to. The battlefield is moving online and through electronics and stuff like that, you know, for a lot

of stuff before we move on, because I do want to talk about you going to recon and then so OTG and all that stuff. Now you know that you mentioned the battlefield is kind of changing. Where how how does recon or other RNs elements maintain their their job? Basically in this world where I can throw up a drone that has a warhead on Why do I need a sniper when I can throw up a drone that has a warhead on it flight right to the guy I want to take out? You know, where how do they maintain that? Like we're still relevant in this futuristic world where you know, warfare is just changing constantly. Yeah, I think, yeah, there's always going to be a place for eyes, you know, boots on the ground, eyes on the target. And uh, I don't know that

we'll we'll get away from that. I do think it's going to be augmented with you know, with with uas and and and different things. But uh, you know, the ability to p I d targets at uh, you know, it's a small unit level, you know, where where we can't have you know, ubiquitous overwatch and and the level of uas that can provide you know, positive identification. You know. I think there's always and there's there's going to be you know, shifts, and there's already you know, the Mine Corps already said hey, we're doing away with our sniper platoons and or modifying them essentially to to change their mission up a little bit. It Uh, you know, Recon has been ahead of the curve. I think looking and realizing that hey, there's you know, how are we how do

we shift our mission set, our skill sets, our capabilities to make sure that we maintain relevance in the the upcoming fight, you know, whatever that may be in the Pacific, you know, or wherever that may be. I think we're learning a lot of lessons too when you see this whole Ukraine Russia combat going and and seeing how even these small drones can shape battlefields and how they can you know, I don't know, it's just the way they're being employed. Not only is it for me When I look at like a sniper's role, I look at Well, why use a guy that's got to take a shot that he might miss when we can use a drone that's more, it'll be easier to hit the target possibly one. That's one thing.

The second thing, too, is how easily is he gonna be identified by an enemy drone or an enemy technology that you know, it's not like the seventies or sixties in Vietnam where you're crawling through a jungle and you take a shot at a guy. Now we got we got the bad guys got everybody's got thermals, you know, thermals on drones, like employing yourself. I mean, that's got to be such a much more dangerous world when you're out on these RNs missions and these hide sides and stuff like uh oh absolutely, I mean the uh and I haven't been out on one quite a few years, like I said, but uh, you know, we realized even even in Afghanistan, you know you had maybe you know, you had a cycle of darkness. You know, you had twenty four hours and you're going to

be compromised. I mean out in the middle of the nowhere. You know. It's just the way that uh, you know, the situation was all right, and you really couldn't stay out for any longer than that. So that uh, you know, it's Ukraine is showing us a lot. I think more conventional like you know, battlefield is will look in the or is looking in the you know today and in the future. It's an interesting time and it's I think it's critical and I think the the Marine Corps has been really looking at this and making some changes that are uh some some I question the sniper one. Uh you know, some are or I was going to ask you what your thoughts on removing the sniper sniper from the infantry. Yeah, I understand the reason behind it. And it's a sad, sad day.

You know. I think they'll they may come back. You know. It's more of a one a history thing for me. It goes back to our talk about legacy and stuff that we were talking about before. Yeah, I did. I had a couple of months ago the privilege of attending the final Sniper course graduation for the scoff Snipper Basic course, the Marine Corps course.

The there's still the Recon has a sniper course and Marzak has a sniper course that that's still continue but uh, you know, everybody has really been looking at you know, hey, how do we get out ahead of this? How do we develop different capabilities or you know, to make sure that we stay relevant and and you know Recon has has had to do that time after time after time. So I don't see that being any sort of threat to the reconnaissance marine's future. Yeah, well let's talk about you going to recon. So did you go after you came back from MSG duty? Is that when you try it out again? I did. I came back, got sent again to third Battalion, seventh Marines, but this time, as like I said, they had moved so we were up in twenty nine palms.

So I was and got assigned to the sniper platoon as a platoon sergeant, as I was the only sniper that they had, so got to you know, spend that time, you know, taking training the Marines and the skills that I learned, getting them ready to go to sniper school. And and we lucked into a big block of quotas I got to think, I got sent eight Marines to sniper school, and I think I think they all made it. You know, we had a pretty good success rate. So as I kind of did that, and you know it's like, hey, I'm you know, as my payback, I want to go take the Force reacn end DOC. So they had actually, like I said, they sent me to the the Advanced Sniper Course in Quantico and I got to go to Army Ranger School and in the interim and then jumped school and then so I

was you know, I had a ad some of the qualifications that they were looking for. You know, this time around when I went back to Force Ricon to take the end doock and I could swim, so that that was helpful. Yeah, yeah, I'd say it. I mean it's a tough you know this, I took the end knock this time at at first Force Recon. You know it can't Pendleton and uh it's tough test. But I was much more prepared for that time around. Yeah, no, that's good.

I mean back in the day, I think it would probably be hard to be prepared necessarily because if you don't have a direct access to like information and stuff like people forget eighties, nineties, early two thousands, any kind of knowledge that you pulled if you weren't directly in that community, you were reading in books, maybe reading in a publication a magazine or something like that.

That's where the information came from. Now you can follow the Basic Reconnaissance Course Instagram page and they show you them going through BRC and what you're going to be expected to do. I can't imagine I would feel much less sympathetic for someone showing up unprepared today than they I would if someone showed up unprepared twenty years ago. You know, yeah, I'd come in to MARSK, we give you a training program, like if you follow this then you should be successful, and still a lot of people aren't. But yeah, at the time, you really had to know somebody. Everything was kept pretty close hold, and it was easy to keep things close hold, so you had to know somebody that had been through if you wanted any information. I had

benefit of having tried once unsuccessfully, so at least I knew what they did at Second Battalion, which was absolutely different than a different order and different makeup of things than they did it First Force, but it was you know, I knew I needed to be able to go for a long distance with a ruck on my back fast. I needed to be able to run fast, you know, go over obstacles and more importantly be able to swim, So I was prepared for that that time. And we did the swim earlier in the in the day, then a long rock up to the mountains and then down to the ocean, and then we went back in the water, which I was less prepared for. You know, I hadn't counted on, I guess, but at that point I said, my my swimming skills were pretty

solid. So made it that time around and got Dakota to first Force Recon and really that's I got there in ninety two and stayed until two thousand and two, so I mean that was really you know, half of my Marine Corps career was there. Now, so a lot of people know, like a sniper's mission is to do reconnaissance, surveillance and shooting, right, very similar to water recon marine. What you would think if you're outside of the bubble, can you kind of explain the difference between their missions and how how being in the sniper platoon sets you up for success to go over to recon.

Absolutely, and there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot of transition. A lot of snipers make their way into into recon. But so in a sniper platoon you work for the you're the unit commander that you're supporting as your battalion commander, so he's you're answering the questions that he has so which are very generally, you know, maybe a mile or two away from from his location, so you're working relatively close to friendly support and you're just you're answering his information requirements. When you go to reconnaissance battalion, you know, they're kind of in the same thing. They're working for the battalion command and so they're again answering his UH questions. If the force recon units are

working for the force commander, so that you know, just the senior guy on the ground. You know, when we got into Afghanistan in two thousand and one, I worked for General Mattis. I was answering General Mattis's information requirements through the MEW. You know, he would tell the new commander, Hey, I need to find these things out, then let's use the Force recon. So the UH, the big difference is really the kind of distance behind him a line or distance forward or friendly support that that we operate.

Can you tell us you know you mentioned being on the MEW and going in Afghanistan so you were you were a part of the MEW that was one of the first responders to nine to eleven. You know that at one what an honor that would have been. You know, there would have been millions of Americans that would have like traded places with guys that were, you know, heading over there. It may not have been like the most rope us battles or whatever whatever, but it was still like it had to have felt good that you were doing something so so so close to after nine to eleven happened, you know, yeah, I mean absolutely, the uh I was we were in Darwin, Australia, actually sitting in a pub. You know, it was like nine o'clock at night when the you know soccer game that was

on the bar above the TV. Was sitting at an Irish pub in Darwin for whatever reason, but drinking I don't even know what, but a lot of it. And uh, the first night that we we'd had a chance to go out, we've been out on ranges training and uh, the bartender like hollered at us, and we looked up and you know, saw the first tower getting hit and uh, you know, it took a while to kind of piece together what was happening. But then the shore patrol, the Marines were on shore patrol, came running down the street just yelling in every bar, get back to the boat, back to the boat. So by the time we got back to the boat, the sun came up. The next morning, we were at sea and you know, steamed got straight to

uh Pakistan initially and then the Afghanistan. So absolutely it was a huge honor. But I feel like and maybe other people feel differently, but I we weren't. We weren't getting a lot of information. So the full gravity of the situation and the way you know, everybody experienced that in the States was somewhat lost on us. I mean, we knew it was bad, we knew we were going to war, but you know, we weren't there for for the collective experience that that everybody in the States had. We would get some you know, pre recorded video newscasts and things after, but we were, yeah, to a person on the entire Marine Expeditionary Unit absolutely understood that we were going to be the ones to go and get some revenge. Then

worked very very glad about that, you know, to be in that that had that opportunity. Dude, that makes it. I mean, it just makes my hair stand up on my arms thinking about it, you know what I'm saying, Like people that weren't alive or don't remember, you know, nine to eleven. It was just a wild time. It was a wild time. And I remember I was a senior in high school when it happened, And I remember when the first plane got hit and my buddy coming over to my house and being like, yeah, did you hear the World Trade Center got hit? By playing I'm like, what's the World Trade Center?

You know, I'm like a teenager in Indiana, Like there's not really I don't know what the fucking World Trade Center is, you know, like this, yeah, And then and then the second one hit, and it was like oh, and I had been talking about military, joining the military forever and it was kind of like one of those, you know, kind of like nut up or shut up kind of things. And me and some of my buddies went down to the recruiter that week and it was like, holy shit, man, this is like our this is like a Pearl Harbor moment, like we've been attacked and like, what what are you gonna do?

You know, it's kind of the situation like, what did you do after America was attacked? And I can say that was the first time I went down and talked recruiter and was like, let's do this. You know, yeah, that's I mean, like I said, I'm hugely honored to have been in the position that I was in. But you know, if I could have split myself in half, I also would have liked to have been here to kind of seen you know, kind of bringing out the best in people of America's coming together, and so that that would have been would have been nice. And so now, you know, even on on anniversaries, like I don't feel that I have the full impact or understanding of it because we were as a platoon sergeant at this point. I had just on September

first, I got promoted to East seven, to gunny all right, So I mean right before this happened. So I was, you know, the first time leading, you know, as a as a platoon sergeant, as a leader at the unit of that size, knowing that you're going into combat. You know, instantly you start questioning, hey, man, did I have I done everything possible? What can I do? Do we make sure that I bring all these these guys home? Yeah, so it was you know that that trek over from from Australia to to off off of the coast of Pakistan where we eventually launched from, was you know, a flurry of activity of prepping. Let's you know, let's go over this again and again and again for the sole reason that you know, I promised your uh wives

that that I'm going to do my damn just to to make sure that y'all come home. Yeah. That's that's one of those moments where you're like, dude, training's over. You know, the next time we do this is for real, so you know, like we're ready. Either we're ready or we're not ready, you know. And it comes down to it and I see, I know what you're talking about when you're looking and you're like, man, are we ready you know? Or if you have to question it, I don't know. I think everybody kind of questions a little bit.

I remember. I remember when I deployed with three six one of my my Calm one of my Calm guys, we were waiting to get on the buses to deploy and his dad came over and was like, make sure you bring him home. And I'm like, well, and I'm a sergeant, you know, and I'm like and I'm like, dude, why would you fucking say it? I mean, I know what you're saying as his dad ship, but damn dude, like talking about put some pressure on me, Like now, if something happens to him, I'm gonna feel like a real piece of shit, you know, Like, yeah, it's that's intense, are I mean? I knew that our guys were ready, you know, ready as they were going to be, ready as they could be, and you know, ultimately proved that they were. But uh yeah, as a leader,

that's you know, always in the back of your head, what more could I have done? You know, is there is there anything else that they skipped or you know that time I let guys take off, you know two hours early, you know what, you know what maybe we could have What is that saying, don't let any man's ghost ever say he wasn't trained or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And that's you know the kind of the part of the and of leadership of you know, you've got the just the responsibility of making sure that you know, you do everything that you can to make sure that your marines or sailors or soldiers are set up for success they as they can be, and that's the responsibility but also the privilege right of being a leader. Yeah, and it's a lot when you're a

younger guy. I mean we tend to forget that. You know, a staff sergeant, a gunny in the Marine Corps who's in charge of many people sometimes will be twenty eight years old, twenty seven years old, twenty six years old, you know, and it's like that's a lot of responsibility and pressure for a twenty six year old when you think about what the average twenty six year old gets put through, and it's it's not necessarily a bad thing too, because I think it shows us what we're actually capable of. We're capable of pushing ourselves beyond what we think we can do. You train a little bit harder, be ready, and then we go and do the mission, the operation, the whatever, and we accomplish it. We can go Yeah, of course we accomplished it, you know, because we were ready,

you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird vibe. Absolutely. And at this at this point, I was I was probably thirty two, maybe i'd been around, but you know, I said, I still hadn't been shot at. You know, I've you know, seen some shooting going on. But uh so it was very shortly after we got in country again.

General Madison said, hey, you know I need you guys to go forward and you know, find the Taliban. So we wound up in uh December seventh going to set up a what was a vehicle roadblock essentially on a highway coming out of Canadaha, and uh I set and told you know, the we had air overhead telling us, hey, there's you know, some vehicles coming out of Canahara. They'll be your your way in two hours or whatever. And maybe they would turn off, maybe maybe they wouldn't. But uh, you know, as we sit there kind of joking, you know, in the freezing cold, you know, I was telling these guys, I'm like, man, I'm I'm like the anti bullet magnet, right, I'm like a bullet repelling, you know. I'm like here, if you're

with you're with me, Nothing's gonna happen, right. I've when I was in boot camp, I distinctly remember a drill instructor saying, you know, if you're a four year tour in the Marine Corps, you're going to be shot at and I'm like, man, I've been through now I'm on my third you know enlistment and uh and so far, you know, he was a fucking liar. So we were kind of joking about that, and then you know, the air comes back over and they're like, yeah, you've got you know, two vehicles suspected Taliban, uh, you know, headed your way and now they're you know, five miles out. Now they're you know, a mile out, and uh, that wound up being the first you know engagement. You know, we had run constina wire across the road,

uh, marked it so that they would have the ability to stop if they chose to do so. They didn't choose to do so, so they tried to run it. And it's a it's a wild thing to see a pick up run into Constantino Aire. It snatched them up pretty quickly, and you know, we jumped out and they tried to shoot us. We shot them, and so that was you know, the the my bad luck spell had been broken. I guess that was the official beginning of the global War on Terror for you. That was. Yeah, the Army Special Forces up in the mountains had been you know, doing some stuff already, but that was really the initial the first shots for the Marine Corps, So that was kind of a cool did after that, after that engagement, did your mindset

change at all? Did it, like, now that you've been, you know, in a situation where you could have been killed by the bad guys? Did it make you rethink how you approach different things? It? It didn't, but it absolutely confirmed what I had been taught and the training that we'd done, the way I looked at things I had, you know, always, like I think I said earlier, been a huge reader, you know, and as a professional of arms, right, I felt it my responsibility to read as much about combats as possible. So as a kid, you know tons about Vietnam. But uh, you know, when I got into Force ricon the direct action mission is uh, you know, kind of one of the things that draws people, you know, close quarter battle,

osage rescue. At the time that we were doing, there's not a whole lot written about it, but there was enough written about it that explained the kind of the mindset, you know, the humans reaction to high stress, particularly in combat, getting shot at, you know, the things that can happen to you. And so I was acutely aware while this gunfight was going on that oh man, I read about this auditory collusion, you know, this century you know, similar to when you get ready to pass out in the pool, you know, your tunnel vision that you get, you know, the just all of these things going on. I'm like, oh man, you know I've uh. One of the unique and interesting things that happens is, uh, if you're if you're well trained, your everything is been

handed over to the muscle memory, right, so you react largely on instinct. And what happens when you do that is you free up this headspace, so your mind has nothing to do because your your body is doing the thing that you've rehearsed it to you over and over and over again. So all of these crazy thoughts I'm having. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember reading about that. I'm like, oh, that that guy's ak that's shooting at me, is that's fucking cool. I'm like, once we kill him, I'm going to take that and bring it home and like put it up in the you know, in the headquarters building with a plaque, you know, because I'm like, you know, not lost, tell me that I'm the first platoon sergeant that's you know, taken a fortery complatoon into combat,

you know, and you know, since the Gulf War. So I'm like, man, that's that's pretty cool. And just all these random thoughts are going on while we're we're engaging you know, multiple uh Taliban targets. And then after after everything was over, you know, there was there were more vehicles that we used the j tech that was with us to to engage with with air and when we got back from that, you know, I sat down with all of the with with each guy individually, I'm like, hey, man, tell me, tell me what you experienced. And it was really fascinating as a as an experiment, you know, to to see you know, some people experienced a lot of the same things I did. Some people are like, nah, man, I everything was loud as shit,

you know. Well, the biggest thing that I've recognized was that, you know, the rounds were not nearly as loud as they should be, right, kind of sounds totally cut out, Like I was not quite deaf, but almost deaf. Like I said, this tunnel vision, all I could see was the guy who was shooting and trying to shoot at me and me shooting at him. So, you know, if I wanted to see what was going on to my left and right, you know, I didn't have my normal peripheral vision, so I had to turn turn my head. I was like, that's that's a weird thing. So I you know, sat down with a notebook and just took notes and I talked, interviewed everybody, uh, asked what they experienced, what they hadn't And that really started a

fascination for me of you know, trying to learn more about, you know, how all we perform in combat situations, and then how we can better train people. So that's kind of been my life's work. You know. I still get to engage in, you know, with with MARSK Marines and talking with them about that and kind of explaining some of the things that that they might experience, how to train to uh you know, enhance the good things and kind of bring down some of the negative things. Yeah, I anticipate. Yeah. It's funny because I talked to some of the people I talked to have gone on these like wild missions and stuff, and I asked them about it, and they're like, you know, it was kind of crazy how it was. They're like, I didn't really think about it.

Because it was almost exactly like training, and they would explain like, this is exactly the same thing we did in training, and it didn't really kind of dawn on me that were in combat or that we're doing this thing, and I was like, well, I guess that means the training worked, right. I mean we always joke about how this doesn't seem realistic like training, This isn't and then you go and do some of the things and you're like, wait, this is exactly the first time I remember thinking that specifically was when I was in my Advisor team and we did all this Advisor training and it's like, oh, I'm gonna walk up and there's gonna be the line of senior leaders from the Afghans and we'll introduce, you know, stand

across from your counterpart and introduce yourself. And we're doing this in training. I'm like, there's no way we're actually gonna do this in real life. And it's just the whole thing seemed kooky. And then we get to Afghanistan, it's exactly what happened. We line up right across from our counterpart, introduce ourselves, sit down, have chai, and it's just like, I don't know, it's it's weird to think that I'm surprised that the training is good. But it's also weird to think that it's so good that it's you know, it's that good. Yeah, yeah, I think, uh, you know what you come to realize and and it it seems the to me, the kind of higher more professional unit or higher tier unit or whatever that

you work with, the more they realize this and it's a fundamental that you know. The when I was a young guy and a sniper platoon, I was like, you know what I want to do. What's the cool thing? What's the cool thing? And the cool thing is is the basics? Every day we said, it brings to the basics. And you know that gets said so much that it loses its value. But you know, if you you go to a unit and you see them doing inspections and rehearsals, and I mean you can bet that you know they're a unit that's going to perform well in combat. You know, the the guys at the highest level that I've worked with, you know, are the guy I would grab you and say, hey man, look over my kit. You know, just just check me over. You know, young guys often will get, you

know, frustrated that their squad lader wants to you know, look at their their stuff. And you know, I'm a I'm a pro, I can take care of it. But you know, the professionals want to be inspected. The professionals want to get to confirm things and make sure that they they've got it right because you know, so many things depend on it. But once you've gotten to that point where you're getting all the little things right, the uh, you know, I talk about it in the book Being in the It started as a essay that I wrote that just like I was out for a run, and what it means to be good at war? Right, And it's really just recognizing the the basic things. You know, where can somebody shoot at me from? What's the most likely place that somebody get

shoot at me from? And how do I put myself in a position to prevent that? All right? And you know it's it's geometry, all right. When once you realize that, and once you if you're working with a team that realizes that, you know, everybody it's it's orchestrated chaos. You know, it's this guy's moving so you know rapidly, you know, always putting their weapon at the place that it needs to be to protect the force right or to take out whatever threat might emerge. And it's it's a kind of a weird way to say, but it's a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch. Yeah, No, I one hundred percent know what you're talking about.

And I think that is amplified in my community and the fire support community and stuff like that, where you're doing three dimensional planning. You know, you're planning where are the guys on the ground, where's aircraft in the air, where's the artillery, what's the gun target line? Look like that? Look like how is that going to affect my air? Where I can place aircraft, where I can attack from the direction I can attack from what ordinance I can use, you know? And it's it takes a certain individual to want to I loved it because it was so high pressure and it was it was very much a a brilliance and the basics thing, Like guys you've seen j Tax come out and try to get all fancy with like a control and

stuff and do these weird things. It's like, dude, just do the basic thing, follow the timeline, and if everything lines up and everything hits the target when it's supposed to do. You know, every it just works out, and it's that was a big thing that separated like guys that became j tax and guys that didn't, was that you could give me a bunch of information, a bunch of inputs, and then I could turn around and take that information and spit out here's what we're gonna do to accomplish a mission.

Here's what we're gonna do for this strike. Hey, I'm gonna put in artillery as you're maneuvering these dudes' disirection. Once they're set that, I'm gonna bring in air and they're going to attack the target. And then when they pull off, you guys are going to move forward, you know, and you work these timings out and then when you see it happen, when you got all the plan ready to go, and you're like, all right, T O T is set to one zero and you just watch everything start going, you know, Artillery starts shooting, air comes in, maneuver element starts moving up, Micklick goes off. You know, like it's just like this is fucking awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's uh, this is a beautiful thing to watch and it's uh, there have been studies done that you

know, during the in the hours before combat, it was primarily uh uh, you know on on Fob's things like that, that the the junior Marines or soldiers or whatever you know, are pretty low stress. You know, but uh, you know, the instant the fight kicks off, you know, their stress level, you know, shoots to the roof. For the leaders, you know, they're stressful time, or the j tax or the you know, the the corman, like, their stressful time is you know before you know, in the planning, because there's so much to consider, so much to but you know win. And I think the same could probably be you know, discrapolated to the special operations units. You know, because everybody's involved in the planning, everybody's involved in the rehearsals and the decision making,

so everybody knows what should be happening. So when it actually starts happening, then the you know, the stress level drops immensely and it's like, hey, let's let's do this thing. The plan is working, everything's on time, you know, And and when you become a real professional is when you can adjust on the fly. Something happened with this on timeline artillery couldn't shoot because of this. What are we going to do? You can't stop the maneuvers already going and this is already happening. What are you going to do? You know? And that's when you become like a true professionals, when you can shoot from the hip and kind of make things work out even when the situation is kind of degraded a little bit. And that's the one

thing that you can always count on is that you know, nothing's going to work plan. Yeah, something's going to happen tom idea of the and it's air, you know concept BOYD and the du You know, when when when you u when you're you have every reduced level of stress, then you have the ability to uh recognize, you know, move through the uduloop faster.

All right, So now I can orient on on what's happening because my heart's not racing a million miles a minute. I know what should be happening. I know it's not the right thing. All right, Well, let me adjust and then you know, hopefully we're moving through that, you know, much more rapidly than than our opponent is. Yeah, and that's you know, I think the the the organizations that I've been in. UH, that's kind of been the standard and the expectation is that we are people that can you know, move through the UDULU rapidly make you know, good the best decision that could be made, you know, given the certain circumstances that are in play. For sure, for sure, we're we're running out of time and I want to get to I want to get to the Debt one stuff.

So we'll have to we'll definitely have to schedule another podcast. I think we have about twenty minutes. Let's let's jump ahead and talk about how you got pulled to Debt one. So you were at Recon and from Recon you went to so OTG from what I understand, and you worked under mister Coates. Correct. Yes, yeah, I went. Like I said, I had been at First Force for almost about nine years or so, and they like, hey man, you've got to go somewhere. So I went.

I went to SOTG. I took over the the urban sniper course and the Urban Reconnaissance course. While I was there, Colonel Coates, who had been my CEO at First Force and then it had come over to so OTG. He'd pulled me over with him. He got tapped to lead this this unit, this detachment won, which was there have been rumors about it for since, you know, shortly after nine to eleven that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, Hey, we're going to need more special operations, So Marines, you're going to participate this time, And we didn't participate in eighty seven when so Com stood up. But it was back and forth, and the Marine Corps was not super keen on the idea. Special Operations Command was not super keen

on the idea. So there was a lot of a lot of uh machinations to to get to the point. But ultimately the decision was, Hey, we're going to form a small unit formed of of kind of known quantity force recon guys and uh and and you know, we had Jay Tax, we had communicators at big Intel Section, but everybody was kind of hand picked.

I had the good fortune of uh Land, largely because I was coming off of, like I said, being the first platoon sergeant to take a platoon and into combat. Colonel Coach asked me if I wanted a shot, you know, wanted the team, and you know I couldn't say yes fast enough. So when he brought me into his office, and that's where the title of the book comes from. He said, hey, Daily, it's you got a team, you get to pick them, you know, from kind of anybody in the Marine Corps or in Force Recon. Really, there were a couple of Marines actually on my team who had gotten out, you know that. I was like, Hey, can we get this guy? And I call him up see if he wants to come back in. So we had, you know, the guy who wound up being my uh kind of

right hand man, Mike, who I talk about a lot in the book, who's my sniper spotter, and uh another sniper I worked with. Uh. Brought those guys in, but he's like, pick who you want, but they have to be tough rugging bastards. And I'm like, that's you know, if I ever write a book, that's going to be the title.

So that was That was two thousand and three when I I put that in my head, I'm like, I'm going to write a book. It's gonna be called tough Rugging Bastards. So it's been a long time in the making, but uh, yeah, it was. It was a huge honor to be selected to serve in that unit. We started with eighty seven eighty seven man too, and I said, that was about thirty four street comranes, about thirty intel guys. And then it was there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the on the bone, you know, one or two you know, administrative guys. Uh, a handful of a fire cell like a supply guy. That was. That was really about it. And then we grew a little bit to about one hundred by the time we deployed. But uh, there was you know a lot of uncertainty what we were going to

be doing, you know, who we were going to work for, who we're going to work with, what where we were going. I mean we initially assumed that we would go to Afghanistan. That didn't happen. We we wound up in Iraq and it was a phenomenal opportunity and just a great opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of SOCA on what the Marine Corps was capable of.

What did you know? I mean, one, what a crazy thing to be like camp has to get to do something like that and then be told like, hey, who do you want on your team? You know, when does that ever happen? In the military, like, yeah, yeah, it was. The whole thing was was surreal and unusual, but it was uh, did you guys, did you guys know that you were working towards just one deployment, like this is a test, We're going to do one deployment and then we don't know. Did you know what the future held or what was kind of the long term mission of the of the team that you had built. Yeah, absolutely not. We did have a charter that kind of chartered us for a two year proof of concept. We wound up existing for three years. But you know, we were kind of those

of us at the team level, right, were kind of oblivious to what was going on outside of us. We thought, you know, based on the success that we had when we got back that the simple answer was, Hey, we're going to like like a fucking amba or whatever, We're going to replicate, you know, and we'll make another you know, detachment two, and then a detachment three and an attachment four, and well we'll grow that way. That was what seemed to make sense to us and and kind of what we were we were hoping for there was you know, there was questions every day, are we going to go away or you know, the Marine Corps still wasn't really interested in in providing forces to SOCOM. But ultimately the again Rumsfield came down and said, hey, you're going to create a

whole command. And so rather than you know, doubling in size, we like, you know, ten x twenty x, you know, twenty times in size. And when you go to an organization that big, a two star organization, I mean, there's just there's so much involved in that. So a lot of a lot of the Marines in Detachment one, there were not a lot of us that that went over and actually went over to Marsak.

Why is that a lot of them were very senior and and got out or retired. There were you know, some went back to the Fort Rican and then ultimately would be rolled into the Marsak when it started. But uh, there was there was some there were personalities kind of at play that you know, it didn't welcome us, I think with open arms necessarily, but you know there was some of us that said, hey, man, I welcome or not, I'm coming, you know. I uh, and that's how I got out here to the to the East coast, I you know, sought out a job working at the school or to really help start the school when when Marsk started up. Now when you're at let's say mars Sok Reunion or something like that, an event where did the Debt one people lie

within that legacy, are those original guys considered raiders or how does that work? The the it's kind of a big bawl of ship when you now just the term raiders very loaded, right, and a lot of discussions going on, you know. I mean when Marsak was stood up, it took multiple years before they even called themselves raiders. Yes, yeah, and it was in I think twenty fourteen that proclamation was made. The command came and said, hey, you know, mar Soker are raiders. It might have been twenty sixteen, but you know, they're still discussion. Is it just the guys that wear the badge? You know? Is it everybody and the command?

You know? So the Marines from Debt one are considered to be the forefathers of the of Marsak, so they're viewed as ah as raiders. That's good, absolutely, yeah, I'm not You never know when those you know, in those communities, like those little technicalities, some people will be like, oh no, they weren't you know. Yeah, well I don't yeah, I don't know that I can speak for everybody, but I can.

A couple of two years ago, we had the opportunity to have reunion and bring a lot of the Debt one folks out, and it was it was pretty awesome because a lot of them, like I said, retired and never you know, we were we were living in temporary shelters del mar Bow Basin and uh, you know, Camp Pendleton. To come out and see multi multi multi million dollar uh compound that Marsaka has now and of thousands for them, it was was really great. And you know, in every case, the CSOs and the Special Operations officers treated the Debt one guys as the forefathers, just like we treat the World War two raiders. So it was it was interesting to see. And it's interesting because I've been kind of with it since its inception, so I'm sometimes things are lost on me that, you

know, somebody who's been outside comes in and they're like, wow, you know, this is it's amazing. You know how far we've come in a in a relatively short amount, I can't imagine. I mean, well, I'm sure when it first started up, you know in the book you're talking about having to get new gear and you know, you go and you go through uh what was it, Natick or Natick Labs, Natick Labs, you know, working with them to get specialized gear and stuff to you know, you're talking about living in temporary shelters and stuff like that. To now the the logistical backbone that is so calm and MARSOC and it's all streamlined. The processes are in place. You know, all the stuff that you guys stumbled over and learned are are being put to good use to where they don't have

to do that anymore. And I mean it's a completely different unit. I remember when they built I remember when they built the MARSOC headquarters out there, completely changed the rifle range out at at campus. It almost felt like you're coming into a complete Like if you had gone to the range the year before they built it, and then you went back out there like a year after they built it, you'd almost like the roads are even different, Like change the roads and it's like what the hell? Yeah the gate, Yeah, gates been moved. Everything changed. So yeah, huge, huge impact and the product. I definitely think the product that we're producing the guys that come to the school now and are light years above where I was, you know,

as a as a staffs aren't and a gunny. So it's it's pretty awesome to see. But still the thing that I, you know, beat into him is brilliant in the basics, right, you know, humility and brilliance in the basics. Brilliance in the basics is huge. You know, I had Aaron branfast On. I'm not sure if you know him or not.

Yeah, I know Aaron. Yeah, he went im through the urban sniper course. Oh nice, years ago. It's funny. I was talking to him. You know, you assume, you know me on the outside looking in at snipers, I would assume that those guys are like just fully enveloped in guns and scope theory and ballistics, and and then you talk to some of the and some of them are. Some of these dudes will talk to you about a rifle like I would talk to someone about like a sixty five Chevy, you know, like they know the ins and outs just all this this was manufactured in this area, and the metal of that year was a little bit not you know what. They go to a different level and then you got guys like Aaron It's like, yeah, it was cool.

I like being a sniper, but I don't really shoot anymore, you know, And it's like it's kind of crazy. You go from so into it you have to be you have to be like enveloped in a job like that, to just being like, eh, it's just something I used to do. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's weird. I mean the uh, you know, guys get out and go into graphic design. You know.

I got out and got a master's degree in writing, right and creative writing. It's I told my buddy the other day, I was like, dude, I no longer have callouses. I was like, I've traded callouses and stuff for my my risk gets tired from clicking my mouth all day because I'm on my computer like a loser all day long. Like what has happened to me? Yeah, it's uh, it's progress. I guess I don't know, but uh yeah, it's one of the things that I talk all the time to guys who were transitioning, you know, and you don't feel that you go to uh, you know, you've got to stay in this you know, the government service area or the the you know, shooting bad guys area the contract. Then you know, if that's not your thing, you

know, I mean, there's the whole world is open to open to you, and you're absolutely a better person for the time you spend uniform I one hundred percent. Yeah, that's I try to tell people that all the time. I'm like, you know, it doesn't matter if you did four years, you did twenty years, whatever that period when you're getting out, if you play it right, that's an opportunity in life. That's like a once in a life opportunity in life to go after something you've always wanted to do.

A lot of guys, especially if you're a single or you're married, but you don't have any kids, and you can be a little bit more reckless, I guess, or you can take some more risk, you know. It's like, so when I got out of the Marines, I didn't know what I was going to do. Necessarily, I kind of knew I was going to go to school. Initially I thought I was going to get a business management degree or a business administration degree, and like within a semester, I was like, this fucking sucks, Like I don't want to do this. You know, this all roads lead to a cubicle at some company, and I don't know if that's what I want to do. And I started the podcast, and I started a couple websites and stuff to sell T

shirts. And I was like, you know what, like, somebody's got to do this, you know, someone's got to be the guy that does the podcast or the whatever, like, and I have this opportunity to go to school right now. And yeah, the podcast is tiny, Yeah the website's tiny, But I have three years of school that's gonna get paid for by the military, and I'm gonna get bah I'm gonna get that housing allowance and all that stuff that gives you kind of a buffer to take a chance on, like, hey, I'm gonna build a website and see if I can make it into something. You know what I'm saying. I knew.

I was like, I have three years to get this going, you know, and hopefully by the end of by the time I graduate, I don't need to go get a real job because I've built this over these couple of years and done that. And I think a lot of people don't understand. Maybe they don't realize it, or they don't care. They just want to get out and go right into the easiest job that's transferable, and you know that there's nothing wrong with that. But if there's an inkling that you want to try something different, that time you get out is a huge you know, that's an opportunity you should really embrace and you should really don't wait until that time when you're out to figure out what you want to do. Give

yourself a two year head start, and really kind of you know, when I first got out, I wanted to be I told myself I wanted to do like be a documentarian, you know, travel the world, shoot photos and do that kind of thing. I'm like, somebody's got to do it right, well, you know, and I tried. I started trying to work towards that and kind of realize that's not going to happen. Like you got to have like financial backers and stuff like, it's tough to get into that. But you know, I just knew that I wanted to do something else. I wanted to get away from the government work. I wanted to get away from all of that and try something completely different. And I guess what I'm getting at is, just don't be afraid to try that if you're

out there, you know, you gotta have that mindset of why not me? Kind of like when you're going through any of the schools in the military, these sniper school, be a j tech go, but to recon go Mars SoC you know, you got to have that why not me mentality if you go into account I could never be a rapper, I could never be a graphic designer, I could never be a movie producer. Then yeah, you're you're self selected. You're not going to be any listing. So yeah, I think there's uh, I don't know. I think that's you know, at the height of you watt, it was the thing to do.

Get out and take a you know, go to Trouble Canopy or go here or go there and get the same stuff. You all you hear about it, You're like, oh, they make six hundred bucks a day, seven hundred bucks a day. Why wouldn't I want to do that? But uh, you know what, the thing I really wished I would have done.

I retired on a Friday. I showed back up on a Monday as a you know, employed right, doing the same thing largely with with with two days of not two days of a beard all right. You know, I tell guys, you know all the time, now, man, just at least take a little bit of a do something. You know, if you if you can go hike the apple Achian Trail, you know that, if you can, if it's only a weekend, you know, do something.

But you know, take take some time before you start settling down and looking for a job. You know, that's the one one. Uh. I don't regret, well, I kind of regret, but I mean we were we were at the point where we're getting ready to start the first Marstok training course and there's a lot to be done. But yeah, I really encourage people to do that. Like you said, start start early, start thinking about, you know, what is that you want to do now that you've grown up. I mean, now I'm getting to the point where I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up again. I know. All right. That's the other thing too, when people got to realize be okay with not following through with what you thought it was that you

wanted to do. Like me saying I wanted to be a documentarian, I was one hundred percent serious about it. I was out shooting photos constantly. I was doing all these things, and then I just kind of realized, like, this isn't in the cards for me, but there may be something else that I like that is, so let's work towards that. You know.

Yeah, well, it's like being on a patrol, right you have a route laid out that you think you're going to go on, but once you actually get on the ground, you're like, hey, you know this is gonna be an easier way, or a better way or a mort shiealed way. You know, you got to play the cards as they as they lie. So yeah, one thing, so I want to get back to.

I totally kind of went on a little tangent there, but when I brought up Aaron, because when he was on he said that there, I asked him what the difference he saw between Recon and MARSK was, and his answer to me was that at Recon, everyone's a meathead. You know, everyone's in great shape. You know that everyone is a good shooter. You know, all of like they're just grunts that are ready to walk through whatever.

And then he's like, at MARSK, the guys seem to be overall smarter and some of them are meat heads, and he's like, the difference is like at Recon, everyone that's there is an infantry guy. Every guy's in infantrymen. They start in the infantry. Some of them might lap move and come into it, but for the majority, they're all infantry guys.

MARSK. Everyone comes from different backgrounds. Yeah, there's a lot of infantry guys, but you got some generator generator mechanics, you got some aircraft mechanics, and they leverage that background experience of that individual to make the overall team better because oh hey, our generators are fucked up. Well, we don't need to call a generator mechanic because Bob used to be a generator mechanic to show us how to do it ourselves. What do you think is that?

What is your take on the difference between the two you you kind of rode both sides. Yeah, I think, you know, I think it was it was acceptable when I was in, and I think things have changed a little bit more. But when I was in at forcet Ricon, you know, you can you can tolerate a couple of meatheads and a and a team.

You know, the strong guy that's not really smart but can carry a lot of stuff. You know, there's there's still I mean the requirement when we say meat d I mean you gotta you still gotta be a smart guy. Yeah, yeah, got out a lot on the wall, and you've got to have a lot of skills. And that uh at Ricon now has increased a lot as well. But definitely I think the breadth of the mission at MARSOK requires Like I said, we're you know, not every recon guy that comes to to assessment of selection gets selected, you know, and and at first people were kind of losing their mind. You know, what do you mean this is a recon guy? Well, we're we're selecting for not a recon guy, all right, We're selecting from somebody that has a whole

lot of skills at the recon guy or you know, there's a lot of commonality, but there's there's a lot more to it than that. You know, we've got to have people that are you know, interpersonal skills are really huge. You know, that was not something that was really ever considered as a discriminator when I was at Force Recon. You know, your ability to work with partner nation forces your ability to you know, learn language. There's just there's a lot of other things that go into it. So I definitely think that the average force reconnisce marine that comes over to Marsak does but you know, buy and large much better than than anybody else. But you know, it's not the same job, you know. I think sometimes like the

difference between being a rain you're in a Green beret, right, they're both special guys, they're just but it's not the same job, and there's a lot of compatibility, but not one hundred percent. Yeah, for sure. Well, man, I've really appreciated John. This has been great again for people. Tough, rugged bastards. Is the name of the book? Is this going to be out on Amazon? When? Do? Is there on Amazon? Now? You can pre order right now Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million, or you can go to your neighborhood bookstore and ask them to order it for you. So it's distributed by Simon and Schuster, so it's pretty much everywhere, but it'll be on shelves or in your mailbox on August thirteenth. That's legit, man. I really I've enjoyed it so

far. I'm over one hundred pages into it, and I'm really enjoying it. And I mean again, like I said at the beginning, your career is so in depth and there's so much so we haven't covered yet. I think we need to schedule another podcast episode, So if you're available, I'd like to get you on again before the book comes out, so that we can, you know, help promote it again and get some more of these stories out there outside of you know, people finding your book on Amazon and all that work. Can people find you The easiest way is just Jdaily dot com. That's my book website essentially, and there there's links to the substacks that I write weekly. There's one about rucking. It's largely focused on mental

toughness and rucking, and another one largely focused on the trying. It is still kind of some of the lessons that I've learned over the last fifty some odd years now, and you know, take taking the milk the things that I've observed from super successful folks in the military and other books that I've been able to work with and translate that in the ways that we can all get better. Getting better. That's awesome, man. Yeah, I'll put that link in the description for people to check out. As always, check out my website, jacrimerographics dot com. My Instagram is at Former Action Guys at Former Action News. You can support the show over on Patreon as well if you'd like to do that. And that's it. Man, another good interview.

I really appreciate it, all right, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Justin

Ep. 212 | John Dailey | MARSOC Detachment 1 and Recon Sniper

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