Ep. 224 | Ben Fortier | Marine Infantry, Musician, and Poet

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out and we can facilitate that as well. So again, support the show. Go over to Jacramergraphics dot com and let's get to it. When you joined, did you, I mean, what was your goal? Did you want to you know, you joined as an infantryman, right, did you want to get into combat right off the bat or anything? I mean, did you even you're a musician. So before we started we were talking that you know, you're a poet, you play guitar, you're learning drums, you're playing drums, you all these things. Did you consider trying to join the Marine band or anything like that.

No. I guess the top prospect for me was the reserves, because as I was growing up, I'd always kind of been enthralled by like the local National Guard bases and stuff. We have a lot of National Guard Air Guard bases up here in the Northeast, and as a young Civil Air Patrol cadet, I was kind of scoping out some of those nic spots and that kind of led me to finding out about the Marine Corps Reserve. And obviously I was always like into like the military, really like a military history aspect, and then getting into movies and books and stuff like that really made me feel like wanting to embody that warrior spirit would be like a real calling for me as like a you know, as a citizen of the United States and kind of taking

that extra step to perform service. And whether it's you know, for the person of the left and right of me in combat or a humanitarian kind of thing. I always knew that the Marines excelled in both. So when I found out about the Marine Reserves. I really locked in on that because I'm not really like a super athletic dude, Like I didn't really do like fucking sports and shit.

I played like soccer as a little kid, but then I got into like boy scouts and karate, Civil Air Patrol and it was more into like lifting weights at home versus getting into like competitive sports and stuff. So when I joined, it wasn't like I was completely out of shape, but I had never really experience that sort of tightly team, tightly knit, team oriented training. I was kind of more of a you know, smaller groups or by myself thing. So it was it was pretty eye opening in that I had basically two options on my plate.

For me is combat camera was my first interest because it's outside of being a musician. I had always been very interested in a media film. So once I found out that that was not an option because that was active duty only and I was pretty locked in on going reserves, I was like, all right, well, infantry sounds great, So.

I'm surprised that's active duty only. I would figure that like there would be a reserve ner combat camera for I mean, did you never have combat camera come out in document? Training or anything like that when you're out.

Oh dude, we had a combat camera guy like attached to our unit, but he was active. Yeah. So, and so when I found out that that was the case, I was like, well, I don't want to do that. So so and it was basically like unit specific either you. Yeah, so when you were signing the paperwork for you know, being a reservist, it was like, all right, well, here are the drill stations within the fifty mile radius of you know, where you're going to be coming from. It's either motor tea or infantry. And I was like, well, that's my first choice as infantry at this point.

That's an easy choice. Yeah. Yeah, that's the only I mean, that's not the only good thing, but that is a good thing about the reserves is that you can guarantee an MLS. You can guarantee because like I was telling it, I was on that other podcast and we were talking about it, and I was like, you know, the marine recruiter, for the most part, and people can correct this in the comments if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right here. The marine recruiter can guarantee like a job field like he can guarantee that your artillery, but he can't guarantee that you can become a forward observer. You have to hope that you get picked for that BYE based on the needs of the Marine Corps and you're scoring and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying,

And that's that's kind of that kind of sucks.

I think you're exactly right, because that happened to me. I was originally when I went to MEPs, I remember signing as an O three fifty one, which I think is now a defunct MOS. It was assaultment at the time. And then like right before I think, I think right before I went to boot camp because I was in the delayed enter program for a whiles. And when I for like a year, because I signed at seventeen, I had my parents sign me over. Those fools they the government.

Yeah they did, dude. They handed me right up, get in that machine and so yeah. And then so then I switched over to three forty one, which I was not super thrilled about because I thought it was going to be super lame, but it actually ended up being pretty fun. It is an interesting MOS.

You want to explain people what that is. People that are outside the military and kind of maybe break down the different aspects of the job.

Yeah, so the three forty one, it's directly comparable to what the army calls the indirect fire support. So at the level that we trained at, because I was going into a weapons company, we trained with the I guess like what the marine considered the heavier mortars, which at the time were eighty one's. Eighty one millimeter mortars are pretty big artillery pieces basically, and kind of old school in that you would just drive the little artillery around down this tube and it would hit the bottom of the tube and this little firing pin would engage the little part of the artillery round that would detonate it and it would go off. And so it's a pretty like archaic kind of weapon. But the way that we

had the usage of math and trigonometry and you alluded to it like forward observers, and you know that I got to spy a little bit behind the scenes of how that all sets up, like how like somebody will call over the radio the coordinates and then you know, you adjust the sites on like these little stakes and it's wild. Man, there's a whole like science behind it.

And so you know, part of what the indirect fire. How you start basically is you start at the bottom level in that you are part of the gun team. And the gun team usually consists of three, four, maybe five people depending on the you know, how many resources you have or whatever. And you start as the person dropping the rounds down the tube. It's very simple, and then you kind of have more knowledge of the system by becoming you know, the next spot. You can be the one adjusting the site and making the corrections on the site. And so there's this whole team of people that are operating this this weapon that is very very much used by the forward elements of the infantry units to either you know, put the flares in the air

or put down smoke or you know, put down explosive rounds on the enemy. So it's just it's it was a really cool different part of the military that I didn't really expect, you know, because I had been very much read up on, like it's reading a lot of like Navy seal books and like Doff books and stuff like that. So I you know, to me, like the infantry was like the O three eleven's maybe a guy's got like an AT four and like a sniper like that was the infantry to me. So to like see these other parts with the indirect fire, with the forward observers, with the fire direction center, with stuff like Jtach, you know, stuff where there's lots of like coordinating elements, I was like, holy shit, dude, this is this truly is a machine man,

this is the machine of war.

Fire support coordination is so cool to watch, like especially when you start to understand what's actually happening. Like if you walk in and you walk in and you look at a map and you don't really know what they're doing, it's like super confusing. It's like walking up to a board game you've never played and then you know and they're talking about it and you have no idea what's happening.

But if you know what's happening, you're looking at it and you're like, oh, they're gonna use They've got this whole timeline set up, so they're gonna use mortars from this time to this time to let the infantry move up, and at the same time, artillery is gonna be shooting at this you know, indirect or anti aircraft asset, so that right after that finishes. F eighteens are gonna come in and drop five hundred pound bombs on this. And while that's happening, the second you know, element of the infantry is gonna push up to the objective and it's like like when you see it all and you're watching it happen in real time, it's like, this is crazy, you know, it's it's a it's really interesting people. It's

hard to describe sometime, Like I always kind of put it back to when as being a jatach was kind of like being a the dude in charge of an orchestra. You know, you're up there kind of like checking the timing. It's like, all right, you you you're up, you're up, okay, artillery shooting, okay, you over here mortars start shooting, okay, bring in the air, you know, and it's all on timing and stuff like that. It's such a I missed that part of it.

Yeah, and I really got to experience it because over here at Fort Devons, which is the main drill center where I drilled at, shooting mortars was a very it was it wasn't as fun as it was like out in Mojave Viper basically out in twenty nine Palms because you got to see that element of it. We got to see, okay, you know, here's weapons companies set up with their machine gun teams and their mortar teams, and then you got the line companies moving through the valley and we're shooting over them and so it's it's wild.

Whereas at Devon's it was like, all right, we put the round down and then it goes off and that's it, and there's just just trees everywhere. We don't get to see any impacts or anything like that. So I feel pretty lucky in that. My reserve experience was a pretty hard and fast one in that went from the time that I hit the Yellow footprints about nine months later we were in Fallujah, so it was oh, it was yeah, so I had I did have my you know leaves, my two you know, my breaks between boot camp and infantry school. But right after Infantry school, I signed into the unit and they were like, hey, we have orders like coming next week, and I was like, cool, man, that's what I'm here for.

I guess it's probably easier to I guess accept that when you when you're right out of school and stuff and you're kind of like in it if you were like a reservist that had been like taking the next month or two off and then you roll into it then and be like, oh, man, like I don't know, Yeah, it seems like, uh, that's crazy. You don't hear about that on the reserve side very often. It's usually the active duty side where it's like, hey, welcome to the unit.

We had a PFC when I deployed with three six in twenty eleven. I remember we got a PFC. Actually, I think he might have been a private. He was like brand new, straight out of MS school, literally in the fleet for less than a month, and we're in Afghanistan. And what's that like? You know, I mean, is it easier because you're going through all this military training and you're kind of in that environment and stuff like that.

Is it easier to roll into it or were you kind of like damn, I thought I joined the reserve so I didn't have to do all this.

Well, I guess I got lucky in that I caught wind of the deployment probably about a month and a half before it even became official. You know, the power of the lance corporal underground. I did not. I always kind of kept my ear to the ground for that stuff and kind of had a smart enough filter to be like, all right, well that's nonsense, but I think there might be some truth to that. So yeah, I had heard about it when I was down at the Infantry Battalion Training Battalion Forms school, and when we checked in, like I said, that, the orders were basically right there.

I think I would have rather had it been that way, really, because like you said, I think it would have been tougher to like, you know, kind of ease into the whole reserve once a month thing and start getting fat and lazy. You know, I was at tip top shape. I was at peak physical shape. You know, I'd gone through boot camp and Infantry School. I would say Infantry school is a bit more physically demanding than boot camp was.

You know. We were one of the last classes, I think, to do the hikes with the We did the twenty k with the eighty ones, which was fucking brutal, But that's that's that's how they like to do things. Not anymore, I don't think, but either way, I'm sure they still hike the shit out of those kids.

Did Knowing a deployment was on the horizon while you're in school, make you pay attention more were you're like, oh shit, this is about to be for real.

Yeah, I think I was trying. I think I was about as locked on as I as I could have been at that point, and it didn't really become real until I checked in and it was like, hey, like we are now working up to this deployment. And it was funny because we knew we were going to the Middle East, but here it was January in Massachusetts. There was about, you know, eight inches of snow on the ground and we're trying to do like combat shoots and we're like freezing our asses off, and like what, I know that we're supposed to be like a cold weather unit or whatever, but this doesn't feel right. But eventually we ended up in California. We ended up attaching with first Marine Division under Regimental Combat Team five, so we

were technically based out of Camp Pendleton, So we spent a couple weeks out of Camp Margarita doing just more mortar shoots for us. That was kind of we were still kind of in MOS mode, and then once we got over to twenty nine Palms, we kind of switched over to what was called then mobile assault platoons, which was basically the equivalent of a combined action you know, combined anti armor team. The platoon had vehicle assets, we had humbies, and we basically acted as a roving kind of I guess the army equivalent like a mechanized assault unit kind of thing. So light assets and your vehicles, light and medium assets in your in your machine guns.

You know, you had two forties, you had saws up in the up in the trucks and you know, and then everybody else was armed and stuff like that, so a little heavier hitting. So we were kind of upset to break away from our you know. Respective you know, the mortar platoon got switched up with all the different moss They wanted to combine them so that way you'd have a little bit more of a broadened skill set.

So the machine gunners and the mortar was in the you know, the assaultment and the tow gunners, they were all mixed up into one platoon and it made sense. You know. Obviously we were a little bit shaken up because we didn't see it coming down the pike. But when you're at the Mercy of the Marine Corps you're just gonna take it in the ass.

Do what the man says. Do what the man says. Did you guys have toe on your turts? Did you guys put any tow guns up?

Not undeployment, I don't think, but we definitely had. We called them broken Arrow guys because there were a detachment from an Oklahoma based unit that were specifically all toe guys. They were all tow gunners. But when we deployed, I don't think we had them. I think maybe the heaviest thing we had was like a Mark nineteen.

Okay, yeah, I know some units would run a toe gunner is it what is it a saber site or something like that saber system because of the optics on it. The optics on it would were really good, so they could like, hey, if we need to see something that's a little bit further out, the tow gunner can usually spot it pretty well because of the optics that he's using.

I think it was tow I'm pretty sure it's a toe missage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. That was a little bit before our time, so like by the time we got in there, it was they had kind of locked down that sort of dude.

After you bro, I joined in six, I didn't see we were we had guys with tow missiles on vehicles in Afghanistan in twenty eleven.

Okay, that makes sense for buildings.

They would have buildings if they needed to.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, No that now that I'm thinking about everybody that ran all the weapons on our trucks were were just machine guns and maybe in Mark nineteen, but even then, because I feel like at that time, like Iraq had, you know, started out as like it's like, let's get in there, guess you know kind of thing, the normal invasion, yeah right, right right, and then they were like so this was after Phantom Fury when we got to Fallujah, and one of the reasons why they put the brakes on the first push through Fallujah was because it was getting to be too brutal. So, you know, I feel like when while we were there, you couldn't call in a main gun round from a tank. We were rolling with tanks. We were one of the you know,

last units to roll with I think it was second tanks, and but you had to get like like a fucking colonel's permission to set that thing off. It was very There were there were lots of restrictions in terms of you know, how we were to be treating this city and our you know, we were in contact act, a lot of the units were in contact quite a bit, but there were definitely a lot of rules of engagement that we had to follow as well.

You know, how'd the city look? This is what a year and a half after Phantom Fury? Was it still pretty trashed? Was it getting cleaned up?

Like there were there were some spots that were still like rubble. Yeah, it was. It was wild to see just like buildings with like giant holes in them from clearly you know, tank shooting through them or you know, just bombed out buildings, collapse roofs. Even when we were getting out of there, it was still like that. And it was it was surreal, man, it was. It was absolutely surreal.

Yeah. It was like so I have had a similar kind of experience going through the going through Singing. When you get outside of the bizarre and you get into like the kind of the farmland or the kind of the village area, and then the farmland, you'd see some of these huts that were bombed out there were collapsed or whatever it was basically like if if a hut is collapsed, if one of these mud huts is collapsed, it's because we blew it up. Like there's no these things don't collapse. Those things. Those things last literally forever because they're made out of mud bricks and they have mud coating over them, and they're just they withstand so much.

So if it's like if you saw one that's like collapsed in, it's probably because it got bombed, you know. And that was because of just the brutality of the area kind of required it.

You know.

The fighting was that like I don't know. And then and then once you get through the main part of the fighting kind of like what fifth Marines seventh Marines was there, Fifth Marines. Once you get through that, then you have what we had where it was like the rules of engagement are scaled way back because now we're trying to rebuild. We don't want to we're not trying to decimate this area. We don't want to kill local, we don't want to do anything like that. We're just trying to root out the bad guys. Let's rebuild the area and get the bizarre going.

You know.

That was one thing and saying, and when we were there is that the bazaar was really busy all the time, which it never was before that because and then it wasn't after that because not long after we left we were the last advisor team Isis came in and fucking took it over. So that was kind of the whole goal.

When you were in Fallujah, it was the city. Did it seem like it was recovering? Were people out and about? Like, how how was the like atmospherics in the city. Yeah, it was.

It was very active. And that was kind of one of the clues that we utilized when we knew bad guys were about is you would the people would leave and the did the typical foot traffic would disappear, and because they either saw something or they heard something coming down the line. It was wild. Man. I had never been to a bigger city. Well, I'd been to New York and London before, right, and those are probably two of the biggest cities on the planet, But I had never been to a city that was basically like in ruins and yet to see the resilience of the people was just astonishing. And you know, these people were just trying to live their fucking lives, whether it was slinging cell phones and cigarettes or you know, they had a

little bakery or something like that. So it was wild to kind of see that sort of mix of, yeah, this is an active war zone and there's bad guys crawling about for sure, but we don't know like who they are, what they're up to. You know. We got a little bit into we can raid here and there, but it was very much like a time where the city was starting to come back to life and we were trying to one secure it and to help them rebuild that infrastructure. But obviously that was very difficult with the politics the Sunni and the Shia, something that I don't think anybody had a fucking clue on how to deal with, even at the higher levels. It took a long time, it seems like, for them to finally realize actually after we left, they basically just started throwing money

into the problem. That's when you had the Sunni Awakening and things like that. So it was it was just kind of an interesting time in terms of, like I said, I love like military history, and I look back at that time and I've watched a lot of things that kind of go over that time. And I've sat in on classes and stuff budies that talk about that time period in Iraq, and you know, to think of my own part, and it is pretty interesting. But to just see it from sort of an objective standpoint, it's like, damn, that was like I don't think anybody really had expected that situation to go down like that, that sort of time frame between like two thousand and four and two thousand and like seven ish in Iraq, it was just

the wild West, but with some sort of you know, bureaucratic oversight and like state oversight in terms of you know, whoever wanted to get their you know, their hands on stuff and make sure that the Marines weren't over there just slaughtering people. It was an interesting time to be over there, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, I bet man. And it's it's tough when you're in a war zone like that where there's an active population because you, I mean, you definitely feel bad for them. You're like, dude, we're not It's like I'm not here because of you. I'm not here to harm you. I'm not here. We're looking for the dudes that are planning IDEs. We're looking for the guys that are shooting at us. It's like and we had the same thing in saying too. When what you were talking about, like if there was gonna something was gonna happen, you'd see like everything kind of clear out. You're like, what the hell? Like we would see I've been on many a rooftop and be, well, yeah, I've been sitting there looking for whatever. You know, we're stopped for whatever reason.

I'm sitting on a rooftop doing my fo thing. And then suddenly I see like women, kids and like goats. You know, they're getting the women and the kids, and they just start and you see them all like moving towards the main road you're getting out of the village area, and you see kites start popping up and stuff, and that's how the Taliban would signal each other's with kites.

And and then we'd see all these people start moving out, and you're like, oh shit, something's about to happen, you know, like like not these people leaving, you know mean something. So it's a weird. It's weird when that happens because you're like, oh, here we go, Like what's about to happen? I start me. I would start like requesting error. I'm like, hey, something's about to happen. Can I just get an aircraft on station so we can start looking around? But right, yeah, man, what I mean, what was your guys's mission at that point just to hold the city and make sure that you know, they can rebuild or were you actively I mean, were you being more reactive or or were you guys me you know, how was it?

It was? It was a mixed bag. There were definitely opportunities that we were utilized to uh be part of, and like you know, major regimen level operations and stuff. I can remember one particular operation and we would get word, you know, a couple of days ahead of time, Hey something big is about to go down. We're gonna stop our typical schedule, you know, just get ready for the unusual.

And uh, there was you know, so, like I said, we were kind of we were associated with second tanks. So I remember one kind of like battalion regimental level operation. They had us up and they had a secure like a flower factory or something like that. It was like part of like the industrial area, and like it was several stories and I was up on the up on the rooftop with a saw just kind of do an overwatch and stuff, and I was very outside of what I was typically doing. I was a driver for basically the entire seven months. So I got to do some O three eleven stuff and run up on the in a building and in man a saw for a little bit.

Nothing happened. I think there's a video of me up on the roof with the saw, and I think somebody like shoots like a like a pen flare or something, and I like fucking fart, and I like pretty sure I like shit my pants or something. So but yeah, it's just so we did get to do some stuff like that. There was another operation, uh it was Operations Startlight, I think it was called, but that was another lots of assets, lots of uh moving parts, And what we had basically done is a someone in Intel found that there was a hostage situation happening and some insurgents had taken some people and were like they had like these underground tunnels and stuff like that. So we basically kind of surrounded the area slowly pushed in on uh where

the suspected insurgents were. We ended up finding them. We ended up rescuing a couple hostages blew up a bunch of ordnance. I found a car bomb that was not being used, thankfully. I mean it was probably about to be used. But my friend went to go take a piss and he he runs back to me. He's like, he's like, hey, I see something over there. And it was like a like a little opal you know, like which is I don't know, comparable to like a little like a nineties early nineties like Honda's Civic, you know, Toyota camer little four door car kind of thing. And it was like covered with like reeds, and so we pulled the reeds out of the way and it was like the whole back seat had like fucking like acetylene

tanks and propane tanks and shit. And we're like, okay, we're fucking leaving there.

Yeah, no shit damn.

So yeah, it was it was like a hideout for probably a whole little squad of dudes too. And I think we only found two or three bad guys. I don't know where the rest of them were. Who cares. But there wasn't even a I don't even think there was a shot fired. But as we were cleaning up and like rounding up all the ordinance they started to shoot IDF and hit us with some mortars, but nobody got hurt or anything. It was just pretty blind fire.

But yeah, so that was Those were two events that kind of stand out in my mind as being atypical. But the standard stuff for US was patrols QRF reactions. If the rifle companies were out and about, we would usually be on standby in case something happened. It was nice for them because we could the Not all of them had vehicle assets. A lot of them were out on foot. Maybe they would have one or two trucks available.

We would typically be a reaction for us for the rifle companies if they got hit. We had at least one truck that we could throw somebody in the back of and rush them off to the medcenter, which was you know, a mile and a half away or whatever. You know. We weren't pulling in, we were not calling in nine lines for choppers, for metavacts or anything like that.

We would basically load people up and rush them right to Fallujah Surgical. It was just easier that way.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think when I was there in two thousand and nine, we had a team. It was an advisor team, and they had a guy, their corman actually got hit by a what is that called the RKG three I believe it is. It's like a it looks like a hand grenade kind of but it's a shape charge and they threw it against the vehicle and it blew through the humb and kind of like shot the shit charged through I think the corman's wrist and knee or something like that. But they said the same thing. They're like, they drove straight from Fallujah to TQ, to the out to the medical center on TQ. I don't know if Camp Fallujah was a thing still in nine and I think that's why they drove all the way to TQ. But I don't think they could have

brought in a helo in the city in Fallujah itself. I don't think that was really practical or safe, you know, yeah, yeah, totally.

I mean, you might be able to land one like somewhere on the outskirts, but at that point you're spending all this time and energy and you know, setting up a fucking landing zone and securing it. It's like, Nope, just zip over the closest battalion level, you know, surgical center or whatever.

Yeah, let it go from there. Yeah, that's I mean, how are the IEDs at that time, you know, were they pravel at all occasional? I mean you're in home V's this is did you guys not have m raps yet? So this is pre m RAP timeframe.

Yeah, like EOD had m raps at that point, kind of like the specialized units, the I d s were very prevalent, uh, And that was kind of what we had expected. I would say daily IED hits on any one that was out patrolling small arms ambushes were pretty infrequent. The battlefield started to change though, towards the end of the deployment. I think it was you'd be I think it was August there was a massive expulsion of prisoners from Abu Grabe, and it was a few weeks after that time where we start to see the violence increase in the tactics change. I wonder why, Yeah, because these guys were in Terrace University basically, right. So come September we hit. We started seeing very very different tactics. They

started instead of doing side shots with like artillery rounds or mortars, they would use mines or pressure plates to blow up underneath the vehicle. That's when we started taking catastrophic kills. We were out on a patrol one day and two platoons were patrolling to do kind of disruption activity in the south part of the city and we were just driving around and fucking, you know, fucking you could hear that stuff when they go off, and we came up up on our sister platoon. They had hit an I basically a mine basically, you know, and three of the guys in that truck were killed instantly, and one of the guys was very badly burned. And then that same evening, our platoon hit a similar type of ID was I think it was like the third to

last truck in our We were just kind of moving across the city the city and my friend's truck hit the mine and my friend Cheane lost his leg, my friend pat lost his leg, my friend John was blown out of the turret, and then we were engaged in an ambush. So it got really interesting. About a month before we had to leave, and we warned the incoming unit.

We were like, hey, guys, like the first few months here we're you know, it was touch and go oh kind of you know, an ID hit there, kind of maybe hit a chain of IDs somewhere else, maybe a the vehicle born explosive or something. But by the time we started getting ready to Leaven turn the city over, it was another reserve unit one twenty four out of Michigan, I believe it is. I think it's out of Michigan.

We handed over a very deadly AO to them and they lost a lot of marines. I think it was like twenty two casualties and like hundreds injured at that point.

But yeah, that had a I think it was an Amtrak or some kind of vehicle get hit that had a bunch of guys in it.

That was so that was three twenty five, and they were before us, and they had they were in like I think they were in that AO. I don't think they were working out a fallusive specifically, but they were definitely in the anbar. And I remember before we were deployed, a couple guys from that unit talked to us and they put the they put the fear of God into us. Dude.

All all I remember for that conversation is leaving there being like, oh God, I hope I don't die.

Yeah, yeah, which is probably a good thing, you know, Like you gotta have a realistic understanding of what you're about to get into. That sucks, man. So many of your dudes, some of your buddies lost their legs and stuff like that, like god man getting killed and getting losing limbs. And I was never present when a marine got something like that happened. I was there when it happened to our Afghans when I was an Afghan advisor.

I remember a guy getting his foot blown off. I remember a guy getting shot in the stomach, like these different things. It's like another guy I think lost his leg, blow his knee, and it's just so I don't know, it's horrible to see obviously, and it feels like such a waste and it's crazy like before, like if it's your first deployment, you're like, eh, I'll be good, you know, or I don't know. Everyone has a little bit of fear at them. But I think most of the time it's like what are the odds, you know kind of deal, and then it happens to somebody and you're like, oh fuck, you know, then the odds feel significantly higher than it could happen. Yeah, I don't know, I mean, how did how did you and your guys react to that, to

these injuries occurring, like you know, and you're on your way home or you're you're wanting to be on your way home in the next month, right, So it's like that sucks, especially at the very end, and you're like almost made it back with nothing happening.

Yeah, it was. I mean, I gotta say there was that time period. I don't I don't really remember a lot of it in the sense that I was just so dissociated and just kind of survival mode because I was fucking traumatized, you know, by just that one particular that one particular day within the span of about you know, fourteen hours, I saw several people get injured. I was shot at and had to return fire, and you know, all this crazy shit happened. And while you know, the part of you that trains to you know, be that warrior, that marine, that infantry fucking killer or whatever like that is like turned on, of course, but like I could feel my humanity just completely turn off. Like I was in just utter survival mode and hoping that I'm not

the next guy. And from there, I think it was I felt this need to try and pass on the sense of urgency and danger to the next unit. And I think I wrote about it in in Phantoms, there's a line in there. But I remember kind of just kind of standing around at like the the base that we would operate out of, which was like about a mile a mile and a half outside of the city, just kind of staying around, shooting the shit with one of the new guys who was coming in, and you know, once again and fucking like a big, dark, dark plume of smoke comes out of the horizon and I was like, welcome to Fallujah, man, You're gonna do great and fucking you know, like all I could do was just like try to pass on, like I said, that sense of

urgency and just the idea that your training is going to kick in. But there were also certain things that you need to be aware of in this type of environment, and there was no real good one to one. I mean, they tried during the work up. They they did some like simulated like mount towns, you know, urban operations, little fake towns made out of shipping containers and might have had like some kind of shitty replica of a mosque or something like that to make it feel like you're, you know, in the Middle East, but there was no real good one to one because it was just such a fucking disaster zone really like it was. It was a war zone and it felt like a war zone.

And you know, so at that point, all I could really do was try to just warn these kids, like and a lot of them were. They were fucking kids, you know, but I was too, so I guess, you know, just give it another other kid's advice.

So yeah, well you grow up fast, right, I mean, the you know, you tell people the I always tell people, like a lot of the rules and being a jatak and stuff are written in blood, is what we say. And it's because we don't do certain things because it could end up in your own dudes getting killed and stuff like that. And that's how the lessons learned should be, and that's why you should be passing on to people.

And it's no good to sugarcoat something or downplay something, you know, like if someone was like, hey, you know, id's are kind of bad, but they're not that big of a deal. And then you get to like Afghanistan and suddenly you're getting multiple guys get killed with IDs really quickly. They'll be like, what the fuck man like we should have We should have known it was just bad.

We should have done more like tournique training. We should have So I think it's important to push those lessons down to people and try to I think when you've never deployed some people, when you get there, you're kind of in a state of denial. It's kind of like it doesn't feel real yet until something real happens. Till something actually happens, you're just kind of like whatever. It's almost like training, you know, because it's our training is so pretty good that you do in what you're doing in country and training a lot of times. And I remember I've told this story before on the podcast, but I think it was one of our calm officers. I can't remember one of the officers on my advisor team.

We landed in Leatherneck, which is like the main base in Afghanistan. From there you go out to your different bases. We went to Singing, and I remember we landed in Leatherneck and we're pulling our bags off our aircraft and we're sitting there for a second. Wait, you know, you're waiting to check in and all that stuff, and three METAVAC birds took off and I was like, oh man, that's not good. And this is my third deployment and this lieutenant this is first deployment. He's like, well, maybe they're maybe they're doing a training run or something. And I'm like, dude, we're in country, man, the training's over.

Like this is something happened, you know, this is the training's done. Now we're you know, And it was just like I think that was a real And then like an hour later, the base got hit with a couple of rockets, and I would think that kind of woke a few people up, like, oh, Okay, the training is over, Like we're here.

For real, there's just training rockets. Don't worry about it. Yeah.

But it's like and that's not a dig on that guy. It's just like one of those things like until you realize the situation you're in. I remember my first day in Marja with three six A dude tried to set off a suicide vest and it malfunctioned. He caught on fire and the Afghan shot him and killed him. And that was like day one. I was like, Oh, it's gonna be that kind of deployment, you know, Like I don't know, it's it's a crazy concept, man, when you try to explain these lessons. I was like that on my way out of the military, you know, I wanted to.

I remember my last time on the OP. I sat down with the junior Marines. They were all in the OP and I was like, hey, guys, this is my last field OP. Like, what questions do you have? Like ask me anything, you know, Like this is it? Because now, if you look at the Marine Corps today, a sergeant probably's never deployed or never definitely hasn't deployed to combat, most likely hasn't employed combat. You know what I'm saying.

It's been so long. The wars are ending, and that's not a bad thing, but now that experience is starting to age out, right, Guys are getting out, Guys are starting to retire, And it's like, that's why I like doing these podcasts and stuff like that, because it's like we can take some of these lessons, learn and record them so that we don't have to relearn them, you know, and everybody benefits from sharing the knowledge of this is what happened, this is the tactics that we did to counter it, or you know, you know what I'm saying, Like it's just important because it's hard to con that seriousness to a guy that's never done it, you know, And if I'm a junior guy and I'm looking at my sergeanty, I'm like, you've never deployed either, What the

are you talking about? You know, it's hard to take Now. I'm not saying it's hard to take him serious. It kind of is. But you know, if a guy that has been like, if you come to me and you're like, I was in Phantom Fury, this is what happened, this is why we did this, you'd be like, Okay, I'm listening because I know for sure, you know you were tested, and you're telling me things that actually worked. You know, I don't know.

Yeah, No, I got really lucky in that. My my vehicle commander was in Fantom Fury. He was with dark Horse in Phantom Fury, and he heard that we were going to Felujah and he raised his hand because he's a fucking maniac.

He wanted to go.

Yeah no, I guess he had some unsettled debt and yeah, no, he was awesome. He is now a police officer out and Decatur. He actually gotten a really gnarly shootout situation. I think a couple of years ago. He like, yeah, he had to. He pulled somebody over, they pulled the gun on him, then tried to shoot him in the head, and he gave him the room. He gave him the room temperature challenge. Man. It was I watched the video once and I was like, Okay, don't need to see that again.

Man, you saw the video of his shooting.

Yeah, yeah, there's there's body cam footage of it and shit, and yeah, like, yeah, that's tough.

That's a tough gig.

Man.

People hate our cops, but that's a top that's a There are cops that should be hated on, for sure, that are douchebags and like dickheads, you know when they don't need to be. But the average I think the average guys, guy and girl are just trying to do their job and trying to make their community better. And people forget that that could happen anytime they're walking up to a car window and someone can already have a gun out ready to just pull the trigger as soon as they walk up.

You know.

It's that's like people, I don't think cops get enough credit. We talk about combat veterans, all the time and stuff like that. But combat veterans go to combat for seven months and come back, you know, and you know, as well as I do, a lot of that can be downtime. There's a lot of like boredom and combat and stuff.

And cops go out every day. There's like, there's the training, is the job, you're out there doing it every day. It's like, that's such a that's such an early gig. I can imagine the stress for something like that is just off the charts.

Yeah, and I think that's why I didn't want to do it. And I was like, I was like, yeah, I got out of the Marine Corps because it was fucking stressful and why would I want to do that. So so yeah, I know, I definitely give those people credit. My mom is a police officer, and give her tons of credit. And uh, you know, all my friends at her cops or for the most part, they're not shitty, So you know, it's it's yeah, most of them are fine.

And there are reflection of society. Just like the military, there's gonna be bad people in there. Every job has bad people.

Yeah, yeah, and I think that there are when you have bureaucratic elements. There's gonna be levels of corruption, right. I think it's just to kind of go hand in hand. And I'm not like a poly side person or anything like that. I'm speaking anecdotally in that I think that there is corruption that's going to happen, that there's going to be people that fall through the cracks and take advantage of things. And you know, when you I think I said this the other day in a writing group that I was in. Of course violence is going to be exacerbated, and there's going to be more bad people in the world because there's just a billion people in the world. So it's one of those things you start adding the numbers in and it's like, yeah, of course

you're gonna have some bad folks in there. And is the system perfect in terms of policing. No, I don't think it is. But how do you change that. I think that's a long, arduous sort of process that isn't going to happen overnight. And is the answer to like rip all their funding away? No? But is it that you know, is the system like working? No? I don't think that it is either. So it's kind of a weird, weird thing.

I don't know I think it works decently well. I think we under credit. We don't give enough credit to the law. Certain areas are better than others, obviously, right. And my take on it is like people complain about cops where they are like, oh, they're uneducated. It takes more time to become a barber than it does to become a police officer. You know, it takes more of this.

And it's like, well you can't. Then you can't require them to have more skills and no more things and have more abilities, while also saying you're gonna pay them less, like it's skilled labor or it's not. You know what I'm saying. If you're if you want to pay them almost nothing, then you're gonna get what you pay for. Now, do you want to have a police department that is well funded, well staffed, everyone has time to do training.

That's the other thing too, is if you you don't have enough people, how can you expect these police officers to go and do extra training to learn new things, learn new skills when they don't even have enough people to cover you know, patrols and stuff like that. So it's it's a weird. The problem is, like you said, when you look at the numbers game of it. You know, if point one percent of them are bad, well we're look at that point one percent compared to three hundred thousand police officers or whatever the number is in the United States. That's still a bunch of people that are bad, you know, within the system. And it's unfortunate because the thing with a police officer is they can They are

like the only people that can violate your constitutional rights, you know what I'm saying. And they can detain you. And that's what I mean by that, not that they can make you do something that you're not allowed to do, but they can detain a person, which is a violation of your constitutional rights. But they have a real they you know, they're allowed to do it because the law says they can. You don't want people with bad intentions to have that kind of power. Unfortunately it happens. I think the institution of body cams and a lot of places has done the opposite of what activists said they would do, where they said that it would reveal cop corruption and all this, and I think in some cases it has. We have seen correct police officers, we have

seen negative things. But I think in the most part. We've seen how professional a lot of police officers are. You know what I'm saying, You don't those videos don't go viral the normal interaction where the you know, the police officer is very professional and have a good interaction with the public. The only ones that go viral are the ones where it's like a meltdown or someone screaming at them, and there's a ton of those. Like it's That's the other thing. We see how people treat police officers, you know, and if you walk up and they're just immediately like shith heads to them, It's like, well, what'd you expect? What was gonna happen? You know, like you this whole situation was completely overblown. So it's a weird

game for sure. It's kind of like military funding. People argue for and against. I'm generally I'm for both increasing the funding for the military and increasing the funding for police only because if you want high quality individuals, then you should be giving them high quality salaries, you know what I'm saying. And they're out risking their lives every day, they should be paid in a manner that kind of reflects what they're doing. But I also think that there should be requirements that make it hard so that not everybody just gets into it. You know, Like, if I'm gonna pay you one hundred thousand dollars a year to be a cop, well, then I want you to know some jiu jitsu. I want you you got to have

you know, jiu jitsu training, you to have some kind of understanding of the law itself, Like taking law classes, not just how to arrest somebody in policing, but actual law theory and things so you understand the law better.

You know.

There's like those are the kind of things. Just like if we increase the funding for the military, I'd be totally fine with shedding that ten percent just to have high quality, more high quality people. You know what I'm saying, Because I think that's a better I don't know. I think that's overall. I think that would be better for us.

But what do I know.

I'm just a regular guy, a former action guy.

I'm a former action guy with an opinion.

That's it.

Well, they're giving do you see they're giving a pay raise to junior Marines or junior troops like fifteen percent this year. Wow, this next year they're getting fifteen percent. Then I think the E five and above crowd is getting like a ten percent raise. Nice, So that's cool, and I think that should be. You know, I don't like that the military is seen as am no other choice kind of profession when there's so many people, you know as well as I do. There's so many people that join not because they had to, but because they wanted to, not because that they're in a position where they had to. You know, my first one of my not my first, one of my first platoon sergeants was a infantry guy and he had a bachelor's degree. He

was a sergeant. He was had a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. You know, he got bored working at a cubicle or whatever it was he was doing, and was like, Hey, I'm going to join the Marine Corps for an enlistment and then you know, use the benefits to go back and get my master's degree. And I was like, you know, that guy didn't have to do it, so.

Yeah, And I met people like that in the reserves who walked away from you know, six figure jobs to go under deployment and possibly not make it back to their six figure job or whatever. And it's wild. You know, the reserves had this very diverse group of people from different backgrounds. Yeah, bachelor's degrees, lots of firefighters, lots of police officers, HVAC repair people. So you know we would have our you know, our tents, air conditioner go down, and you know, here's Chris fucking running over using his years of HVAC repair knowledge to get us back up and comfortable, and so we could sleep between patrols. So it was it was pretty cool to kind of see how the backgrounds of the reservists were.

Yeah, the only issue. So my first appointment, I deployed as a mechanic to Iraq to Alta Cottam. And the way it worked when I was with Maintenance Battalion was that we would they would take like a group of us from Maintenance Battalion, like a small group to'd be like, hey, twenty or thirty guys, Hey, you're going on this next Iraq rotation, and then they would attach us to a group of reservists that were all put together, you know, multiple reserve units put up guys and built a unit, and then we would all together deploy. And it was there was like a big difference between some of the reserve units, like some of the guys were really good and squared away and like knew their job and kind of you know, they just did their thing, and then

there were other guys that didn't know anything. Like it was like and I understand, and you can kind of talk to this. There's only so much time to actually do your job in the reserves because you got to do all your annual training. You meet one weekend a month, right, one week a year, and you're doing annual training, You're doing you know, all these other things that are required of you, plus your MOS. So what's your take on interacting with other reserve units? You kind of feel like that's the same way, like some are better than others.

Obviously, Yeah, I think it's that way too between active Duny units, right, So for sure, probably you know, more honed away, and they probably even within those units, there's probably some companies and platoons and squads that are more squared away and stuff. My I didn't really interact with any other reserve units other than the one twenty four who came and relieved us, but there was definitely sort of a mixed bag of professionalism and in within one twenty five, And I think particularly within Weapons Company, there was a lot of you know, it's kind of loudmouth, troublemaker types, and uh, I think that that it bode well for for where they were at, you know, But I mean, as far as knowledge goes, there were definitely

Marines who had their shit together, and I think I was pretty lucky I was, you know, a private, a PFC or whatever. I don't even think actually, I don't think I got PFC until I was in Iraq. But you know, so when we did our work up, we did a division level school using mortars out in California. This was prior to Iraq, and I had the real privilege of working with one of our NCOs who was really hot shit at his job, and so I was able to kind of take my knowledge just coming out of itb and you know, he and I worked well together.

We had a couple other guys on our team, so we ended up getting like the best gun team or whatever in that two week training evolution or whatever it was. And he unfortunately ended up getting killed by a sniper. And it was just kind of one of those things where, yeah, for sure, there were people who knew their job more than others. I think at one point after I had gotten out, somebody told me they were like, yeah, all that stuff that our platoon sergeant was telling us, like about like laying down, like fucking some kind of thing or whatever. He was like he didn't know what he was talking about. And I was like, Okay, that makes sense.

But you know, I think that that the Marines do a pretty good job of making sure that if you're going to be deployed to a forward area like we were, that we had a lot of active duty experience in our ranks. Like I said that my vehicle commander was a phantom Fury VET. We had other kind of NCOs with combat experience scattered throughout the battalion. I think we had a couple officers that had at least one or two deployments under their belt, kind of scattered throughout the battalion.

So we had a big budget from what I heard after the fact, and we had real luck in terms of being able to either attract or recruit guys who wanted to go to Iraq, maybe for the first or the second time, and so was that was utterly valuable because I would imagine that if you had taken all of us green dudes who had never done a combat deployment.

I think it would have been a little different. I think it would have been much different.

Actually, yeah, you're relearning some lessons learned, you know, the little things. It's like the little things that can make life a little bit more comfortable or easier when you're in a situation like that. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense though. I mean, you get a lot of guys that are active duty that decide to get out and we're like, hey, I don't want to hang up completely out go in the reserves. I'll do that. And then the reserves are interesting because you do get a good mix of stuff.

I think it's kind of weird. I think one issue we had with some of our reservists were, like you said, some of these guys are they work for the government. Some of them are like lawyer, some of them are the police officers. Like there's a little bit of everything, and it was always kind of weird for some of them when we would all be together and some of these guys, like if you're a junior marine, some of these guys were used to like hanging out with like the corporals and sergeants because they're all reservists together. They stay in the same hotel. When they're going, you know, for their weekend drill and all that stuff. They're like all buddies and everything, whereas on the act of duty side,

like that's not really happening. And when we were all together and then you see them doing that, you see them like going to their start like a PFC or lance corporal, like hanging out with a sergeant or something like that, or it was just the way they would interact or like what are you guys doing? Like what the hell?

What is this?

And there was some like we butted heads because we just didn't do that. You know what I'm saying, Like a lance corporal is not gonna go talk to a staff sergeant. You know what I'm saying, You're gonna talk. You're gonna go through the chain of command. You're gonna talk to your corporal or your sergeant and then and then the world will get passed along. It was just like a weird I remember being a corporal and I told this lance corporal to take the trash out. He's like, you fucking take the trash out. I was like what, Like, what the fuck did you just say to me?

Dude?

And it was just like, it's not necessarily their fault because that's how they were, you know, came up. But you see that in different units, how different units would interact like that, and how comfortable they were with each other. It was varying, so it was always fun, you know. But I considered the Reserves, But when I got out, I was like, you know what, I just don't want to do. I feel like, I feel like if I do the Reserves, it's gonna be more of the things I just don't I just want to get away from, you know, the stupid annual training, the nonsense, the leadership that may be inept, you know, having you do stupid stuff just because that's the way it is, or you know or whatever. I was just like, I just don't

want to be And I was gonna go to college, and I was like, what are the odds that I get activated and I can't finish school, you know, or I have to delay school. So I don't know, but I think it's a good option for a lot of people. I actually recently told my son about it specifically because I was like, if you wanted to join the Marines and you wanted a specific job, you'd have to join the reserves, you know, m yeah, right, yeah, man, So you get back from that first apployment. You know what when you guys come back from a deployment like a reserve U and it comes back and then are you guys still active? Do you guys? How does that work?

Because we're all, you know, on the active duty side. Even if you get part of a BLT, become part of a BLT like a Italian Landing team or like us, we were attachments with three six. We come back from deployment, we're still attached to three six. We still go into work every day until for like a month or so, and then we get sent back to our other units and everything. You guys are coming back as one whole unit.

But it's not like active duty where you're all there centrally located anyways. Everyone lives in all kinds of different places. So how does that work post deployment?

Yeah, we demobilized out at Pendleton, so we basically came out of Iraq into Pendleton, kind of spent some time doing like workdown off boarding kind of training and stuff like that, and then we all came back to Massachusetts. And because Fort Devns is kind of the centrally located. That's where the headquarters in weapons is. They basically we went from Cali to our respective drill centers, which with mostly everybody was Devans, so yeah, and then from there it was like Christmas time. Uh So we you know, got a couple of weeks off and I think we even had a couple those of us who had just come off the deployment, we had a couple months off.

We didn't have to drill for a couple months, and then we basically kind of picked up the drill schedule, which was typically like a Friday through Sunday kind of thing. So the demobilization was it was pretty straightforward. It didn't feel like it was anything unusual in that, you know, we all basically kind of got on our flights, all landed in Pendleton, spent a few weeks there doing you know, VA training and don't kill yourself training and don't do your family?

Do your family see you in California? Can they come out to California or did they do you wait until you guys got back to your actual reserve centers.

Yeah, no, they met us at the on the East coast. Yeah, so they they had to wait until we got to to Devin's or wherever. Yeah. So but that was really bittersweet, you know, it was it was really nice to have that kind of you know, we're back at home, we're seeing our families, so it was that was really nice.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool man. Yeah, it's always it's always fun coming back.

You know.

I don't know how you guys did it, but like, I don't know, it's just a whole, the whole event, like you don't want to you're ready to be.

Done with it though.

You're like, I'm ready to just get away from everything, Like I don't know. Our our battalions are in major with three six had us march back. We formed up as a battalion and parked the buses one place and then marched and I was like, come on, man, let's can we just just release this to the families. But then we did it, and I was like, Okay, that was probably pretty cool for the families. I bet the families thought that was super cool that we all marched up and then got released to them that way, rather than just running off the bus kind of deal. But yeah, yeah, man, those feelings of leaving and coming home are crazy it's like an emotional roller coaster. I bet it's kind of It kind of sucks that if you're in California and

you can't see your family yet, you're like fuck man. Like I'm sure some of the families are frustrated, like why can't we see you? You know, like we're already you know, you're in country or you're in the US, blah blah blah kind of deal. Because people obviously want to get back together. But I think it is important for guys to have a decompression period where they can kind of just you know, kind of talk about stuff and everything like that. You know, I think that's more important.

Like you mentioned all those classes that you have to take, the VA classes you have to do, like the little cognitive tests and all these different things. Those are important, But I think the biggest thing is just being able to like decompress for a little bit and kind of bs with your dudes. Because for you guys, as specifically, when you go back, you're getting released to your families and stuff, and there's really no other military around right at least active duty guys. We get released to my family. Well, I'm going to be back in on Tuesday, and see all the same guys again, you know, right.

Yeah, No, I was back living with my parents. Dude, I was nineteen years old. Like, I did not go back to the bricks. I went back to my parents' house and I was sleeping in the same room that I grew up.

And did that feel weird? Was that weird? Like just coming back now?

Like what is like? Yeah, it was like I walked through like a portal or something like that. It was. It was very bizarre. But yeah, no, I actually I'm glad that you mentioned, you know, spending some time with the boys or whatever, because that's why I did. You know. We we demoged in Pendleton and we spent a few days down in San Diego. We went to the zoo, and I think that that was really the point that I realized. I was like, damn, it feels good to be back, Like it feels good to be back in our society and hanging out with friends. And that was kind of one of the first times to where I realized that, Like I think I was that we were all at like a restaurant, you know, I was like thirty of us or whatever, and like they started bringing

up some memories and talking about stuff, and I just like broke down in the middle of the restaurant, like had to like walk out, you know. One of my friends came outside like consoled me and stuff, and that's when I started to realize. I was like, I'm taking a lot of the shit back with me and pretty much immediately started to see some counseling and things like that when I got home and kind of settled into the the VA system and stuff like that too. So yeah, it was it was. It was wild man to like be like sleeping in the barracks out at you know, Fifth Marines, and then like two weeks later, I'm like sleeping in the little twin sized bed in the my childhood bedroom. I was like, what the fuck, dude, what is.

That is crazy? Dude, That's like what I kind of That's the extreme version of what I always tell people. It's like getting out for a lot of people. You know, one day you're you're at work and you're in the military, and then the next day you're back home in your hometown and there's no one to talk to. That's like the extreme version of that. It's a little bit more manageable.

I think if you're just coming from like garrison life working normal to that, but going from like literal combat situation where what within two months before that, dudes were actually dying in front of you or getting shot or injured or you know, like that's a lot to it's for people that haven't been there, it's kind of hard to like things that you don't worry about here at all over there, you're like hyper sensitive too, like noises and stuff. I used to be super jumpy when I came back, and it was not because it was mostly because our fucking Afghans would shoot this no I said, RKG three year earlier. This it was this recoil less rifle and you never knew when they were gonna and they were super sketchy with it when they were doing it,

handling the munitions and stuff. And it was always like and that was what I think made me most jumpy. When I first came back, I'd hear a loud noise, I'd be like, oh, you know, and for a while it was pretty bad, you know, when I got back from saying it, it was pretty bad for a little while. I would jump at everything. I was just constantly kind of like that. But it's just like those little things like that, like it didn't actually bother me like that.

I was like kind of jumpy. It was just like a more annoying than anything. It was like I wish I would stop, you know, going from something like that straight and like sleeping in my home down bed, you know, my childhood bed would be that would be a mind fuck. For sure. That's good that you that's good that you saw that. You're like, hey, maybe I should talk to somebody, and you got counseling. You know, how is that for How does the VA system work for reservist? Do you think it's robust enough and that you think it's like, how's it working out for you?

I've had a really good experience in that the systems around here pretty highly rated. Between I live closer to the Providence Rhode Island system, so that's the one that I've basically been out of, but even the ones up in Boston are pretty well received. So yeah, I think I've been pretty lucky in that. And I was talking to my mother too. My grandfather is a Navy CD veteran Korean War era. He never deployed to Korea, but you know he was deploying while that war was going on, but he never stepped foot in Korea regardless, like they are.

We've just now kind of started to get him into the system. And that's the VA. The healthcare system is the only one I've ever known, basically, like I've signed up when I was twenty and they've you know, I've gotten all my treatments and stuff there. Like I said, very ninety good experiences. You know, there have been a couple times here and there where communicationing get through, or I showed up to an appointment I didn't know where the hell I was going, or you know, just kind of you know, we weren't on the same page in terms of like booking an appointment or something. But I've never, like nobody's ever like left me for dead in the middle of of an operating room or something like that.

So I've had very very good experiences and that's good. Yeah. Yeah, And honestly, like the mental health care for me has been it's been a journey, and I think that that's kind of part of what you have to look at it as it's a long road. It's not going to be this sort of a good fu two years of CBT and it'll be squared away. It's like, no, you should probably invest more time into probably unpacking, not only like your military stuff, of probably also like childhood stuff and other kinds of just kind of the knots that we kind of weave in our life in that we may not even realize are kind of holding us back until do you talk about it or your journal about it, or you you know, have some wild epiphany or something.

So I think journaling is a good outlet for a lot of people because a lot of people don't want to talk to a counselor or a psychiatrist or something like that, you know, but they need to get get things out. I think getting a book and just writing some stuff down every once in a while is definitely a good idea for me. The podcast is a good outlet for mainly military stuff obviously, but I can talk about sometimes we'll talk about current events or something. But it's like a good way to like just talk to other people and kind of understand perspectives, and honestly it helps me. It helps me like realize how lucky I am, you know, because some guys had it way worse than I.

You know, you're you're talking about guys losing legs and you know, getting killed and stuff like that. Like I said, I was never in the presence. I've had friends that have gotten killed. I've never been there when someone a marine was shot blown up or something like that. Again, I've been there in the Afghans, but it's a little different when it's like one of your dudes you know that you know and you hung out with and everything.

I don't know, I just yeah, having an outlet is important, and that's why we talked. We were talking before we started recording about how I think it's cool that you're into the arts. You know, you use music, you know, you do like guitar drumming, you do poetry. That kind of thing is that's a good outlet, you know. And I I try to reinforce to guys that are getting out, like telling them, like, you got to find something that you are passionate about, you know, because when you're in the military, especially if you're in like combat arms, it becomes it becomes your identity. It becomes like you are because you don't want to be bad at it, and you understand how serious it is, you know, how people

these actual lives can be on the line.

Here.

You get fully engulfed in it, and you know, you gotta find something when you get out that you probably won't ever find anything that you'll be that involved in, like the military is, because it's you know, every part of your day, going to work out, going to lunch, going to you know, going to work, going to you know everything, You're hanging out with the guys and stuff like that. But you gotta find something that drives you, you know, something to have a passion about. And I think that's great these I like doing photography, I like doing the podcast, I like doing I do graphic design work for some people, and I think it's a good way to like, I don't know, man, you know, cope with the real world. I guess you know, this is

how normal people act.

Yeah. No. A Dead Reckoning Collective has done this thing for the last few years where every January they have a handwritten challenge and it's basically on their Instagram page. They post a prompt every day for those of us are interested in just journaling and just handwriting that based on that prompt. And I've always done journaling. That's always kind of been part of my own sort of introspection that coupled with the professional objectivity of a counselor somebody who knows how to kind of navigate those spaces and knows the sort of right questions to ask, the sort of things that are going to get you to have those aha moments, to have those those doors kind of unlocked.

That's been super helpful for me. So I think, like anything else, you know, we talked about like coordinated fire and stuff earlier, like you need to have that kind of toolbox. You need to have that that mac taff of you know, healing and and I don't even think you have to be somebody who is like in our situation, you know, marines or you know, combat vets or whatever.

Like everybody's going to have their own hang ups in life. Life is challenging and it's full of adversity, and I think, especially now, you know, people need to be really resilient, and there's this idea of having the sorts of that toolbox of things that are just going to kind of keep you at peace and just kind of keep you focused on the things that you're passionate about. And for me it is writing and music and art and stuff like that. And so yeah, no, I think that there's all kinds of ways that folks can kind of take their you know, their monkey chatter and their nonsense and the stuff that's keeping them down and hurting them, and just kind of channeling that in a way that's going to be not only productive for them, but maybe also

productive for society.

Yeah. No, I agree. I think it's good. And I've also had pretty good I don't really ask a lot from the VA. I think the most I've had is when I've had a back issue, I've gone in and almost immediately recommended someone out in town for me, you know, and then obviously paid for it because they didn't have like physical therapy available or something like that. I'm in San Diego, so there's it's pretty robust here as well.

My biggest complaint has been every time I go in for an annual checkup, I have a different doctor. You know, like in the real world, you have a family doctor or something like that, you see that same dude or that person or woman or whatever every year and they kind of get to know you. And in the VA, it's like every time I've gone in it's been I've got a been to sign a different doctor and it's like, oh okay, and I don't know if it's something where they're moving up in the system or how it works or but I'm like, that's kind of I'm a bummer.

But I'm lucky enough where I don't have you know, I have my own issues, like I said, my back, my shoulders and stuff like that, but I haven't had to have like ongoing you know, therapy or rehabilitative things like you know, some guys get out that are injured and they end up having surgeries for years after they get out because just ongoing issues with the injury that they had. Luckily, I've never had to deal with anything like that, So I understand how if you live in a more rural area, you know, it's a little bit more difficult because you have to travel to a VA center and stuff like that. But from my understanding, the same program that allowed them to recommend a physical therapy place out in town for me is available as what

they're using now. Where you're like in a rural area, they will recommend like services at a local hospital and pay for it, which I think that's smart, you know what I'm saying, Like, because if you're an elderly person, you know, you're talking about these Korean War veterans, Vietnam War veterans, you know, they can't travel an hour hour and a half to go get a check up or something like that. You know, a lot of times it's just, uh, it's not possible. So there are ways that it needs to be improved. But there are ways that I you know, when I got out, I worked an advertising agency and we were talking about medical insurance. I was like, I go through the VA. I don't need to worry about it.

But that was the first time it kind of made me see how much people are paying for medical coverage. And I was like, holy shit, Like you're paying like four hundred bucks a month, five hundred bucks a month, you know, or or way more depending on how big your family is in your coverage. But I was just like, damn, man, I'm glad I don't have to I don't have to worry about that. Like I've never even really having gone from the military, where obviously it's medical coverage free, to uh having VA coverage. After I got out, I'm like, damn, that's something. It's it was hard to relate for a while.

I'm like, what are they complaining about? You know, But then when I saw the actual costs that some of my fellow workers were paying. I was like, damn, that's crazy, man. How does here's a question? How does that work in the reserves? You know, do you have you have trycare while you're in the reserve so that you can go to any facilities? How does that work?

Yeah? I didn't really, I can't even remember. It's been so long now that I really was only like an active reservist for like a couple of years.

And then I got out, like, if you're sick, who do you go see? Do you have your like hometown doctor and it's covered by the military insurance or do you have to find a base or a VA place or something like that to get coverage.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you would have. I would have gone to the VA.

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah, well this has been interesting. I really I want to say, I appreciate you coming on. Where can people find your stuff?

At? Best way for people to find out you know what I'm up to probably www dot Benjamin Fortier dot com. Fairly active on Instagram, but at the BENFO creates. I get a couple pages on social media, but I think that's probably the best one. Uh yeah, I think really any time that I get to be involved with something like this is a just a great opportunity for me to just chat with other folks. And like you said, it's always a just an opportunity to get some of those spots mass massage that we don't always have the ability to because I mean, when people get out, they don't always kind of have that community that they're able to lean into a little bit. So you know, it's always good to have this kind of outlet and to

just chat about this kind of stuff. And I appreciate you having me on today. It's been great.

Yeah, man. And you're also part of the one twenty five Association, correct, Yeah, that's right.

I'm a board member of the one twenty five Association. I basically kind of run the website, do some of the tech stuff behind the scenes. That's a very small group of one twenty five veterans, some Gulf War veterans, some Afghanistan veterans, but majority of us are the Fallujah vets. And we have a long, well not long though, but a short history of helping out with the reunions. We've done that since twenty sixteen. We had our ten year reunion in twenty sixteen for the ten year Fallujah Reunion, and then kind of from there we've had the opportunities to host other smaller reunions. Our last big reunion was up in Maine and Portland, Maine had the opportunity to meet Rudy Reyes. He came out. He was one of

our guests of honor, along with a Major General Jerry Humble, who's other guests of honor. So it's been part of our mission to help marines by reuniting, throwing small reunions, big reunions together because we started to see the unfortunate side effect of not having that. Like I said, you know, we were just talking about community and not having the outlets for marines to be marines and FMF sailors to be FMF sailors and just kind of to gather and talk and eat, drink, be merry, kind of share those memories.

And we've had a lot of really great assistance from simperi Fi Fund, which I now believe is Simplify America's Fund because they're branching out and helping other branches. Yeah. No, they're not just not just marine based anymore, which is cool, which is good for them, but they've been a huge Yeah, it's actually America's Fund here, so.

Oh okay, so changed the name completely. You know, I've only heard good things about Simple five Fund, so I guess now America's Fun. So, I mean, if that's something people are interested in checking out, they should do that. That's awesome though. Man, getting people together is very important because we all speak a different language, right, and it's easier to kind of relate and stuff. So that's good stuff. Yeah, I guess that's really it, man. I really appreciate it.

People check out my stuff. Jcramergraphics dot com is my website. Former Action News and Former Action Guys is my Instagram, and that's it. Dude, really appreciate it.

Ep. 224 | Ben Fortier | Marine Infantry, Musician, and Poet

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