Ep. 225 | Scott Lyng | Army Tanker, Firefighter, and OIF Veteran

Hey, it was Welcome to the former podcast. Before we get started, I want to let you know that you could support the show by going over to Jkramergraphics dot com and picking up an item. We also do discounts for group orders. So if you're looking at your unit, your business, whatever, is looking to do a large purchase, reach out and I'll send you a discount code that allows you to also let everyone order individually. That way you're not stuck like collecting money making rosters for sizes, colors and all the other stuff. You know, that's the worst part about it. I remember doing it when I was in Also, we offer free shipping on orders of seventy five dollars or more. And as always, if you're looking for a custom design for your unit, then reach

out and we can facilitate that as well. So again, support the show, go over to Jcramergraphics dot com and let's get to it. There's nothing else we can go ahead and just kick it off. Due, all right, So Scott Ling, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. So Army tanker correct and you got out in twenty ten.

Also a firefighter, you know that's a I don't think I've had any tankers on. Someone can remind me if I have, but I'm pretty sure I haven't had any I've had I don't even know if I've had anybody that served with tanks in the Marine Corps. Becuse tank the tank community in the Marine Corps is pretty small before they got.

Rid of it, and they got rid of them.

Yeah, yeah, now it's gone. So I have a couple of questions for you. I want to get into all your military stuff and the army stuff, but first, because you know, we have these fires out here in California and you're a firefighter, You're you're a residential firefighter, correct, Yeah, yeah, what have you ever gone to a fire hydrant that was not that didn't work, that was empty? Has that ever been an issue?

Not in not in the sense that I needed it right then and there. Yeah, the department I worked for, we bordered Chicago, so we're only like four point eight square miles, but we're the west side of Chicago, so we're very busy. For three stations, we run about nine thousand calls a year. Every year we do fire hydrant testing.

And yeah, there's been a couple of times when you come up to a hydrant and we test, we flush them that you'll snap the snap the oh gosh, what the heck's it called? The rod that runs down to the to the waterman. You'll snap that and you'll get nothing out of it, or you just spin it and then nothing happens. So it happens.

Yeah, Yeah, I just thought it's so crazy, like what's happening out here? I'm in San Diego. For those that may not have seen the show before, we just had some fires nearby. I mean I've had them. I mean, if you're in California, you know the fires happen, but too Yeah, it's like an ongoing thing and then the rain comes and then the mudslides come and then everybody's like, how did this happen?

It's like, what do you mean?

It happens literally every year, but this one was a little bit more devastating than normal. And it's just crazy. How like funding for like a fire department, I don't know how that's ever questioned, you know what I'm saying. And it wasn't like they they the leadership that people criticized at the fire depart that the fire chief she pulled out documents showing how like she had been requesting funding and saying that they were understaffed and stuff like that.

And I think that's an issue in a lot of fire departments across the country nationwide. Idea, what is like, I mean, what are what what do you see like in your I don't want you to like get yourself in trouble, but like in general, what do firefighters need more of?

Oh man, right now, it's staffing. Nobody wants to do the job. When I was testing, you know, because it's a municipal test, you know, So I got out of the fire I got out of the Army, went into the Fire Service, and you got to take municipal tests, and those to take the test, then you would get on an eligibility list, and the eligibility list would be good for two years. I would go take these tests and this is all Chicago, suburban Chicago area, maybe two three hundred sometimes, you know, I think what the one Aurora, like two thousand people took this test. Nowadays host COVID and I don't know if it's just a COVID thing or whatever it is. We're lucky we get fifty people to take the test, and out of that fifty maybe

fifty percent pass out of that fifty percent, You're lucky if they passed the background test. That's just staffing right now, where everyone nationwide is hurting for staffing.

That's crazy to hear because I always thought that, see what you said before, Like, hey, two thousand people came in to take the test, everybody I ever taught. I had a buddy who got out and he wanted to apply for the Chicago Fire Department and he was like, dude, the weight on this is like years. This was like in twenty ten. So he's like, the weight is literally like years. All I can really do is go maybe go become an EMT and work in that field until a spot opens up maybe, you know what I'm saying.

And I was like, oh, that sucks. So you're saying that's not the case anymore. People aren't even applying anymore.

People aren't applying. No, huge And it's it's across it's I mean obviously public service, but it's across. Uh. Police especially whether that be whatever reason, political or whatever, but fire service were taking a hit too.

Yeah. Police, I mean especially in the Chicago area. Those guys, man, they get So there was that police officer that was killed recently, you know, like a month ago or a month and a half ago or something like that.

The one that happened to day for Thanksgiving.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean he was my city, our village, oh was it?

And he was what on the hours for less than two years, wasn't he He was a younger police officer.

He had been with our department for cart and the police department the village that I worked. Yeah, he'd been under it was under five. I knew that much.

It's crazy because like for people that don't, I'm from Lotfand, Indiana originally, which is not too far from Chicago, and my dad lived in Chicago. He actually worked on Great Lakes and lived in the west of that area. I can't remember the area, the actual town he lived in, but it was right outside of like the area you're talking about. But like they have that civilian there's like a civilian group that can investigate police shootings and stuff.

Oh yeah, and it's like every which I get it, and I you know, on its surface, you hear that and you're like, oh that makes sense, Like people should you know, see what we should all get the facts of anytime the government kills somebody right, But it becomes like a witch hunt for even stuff that is obviously you know, like the officers being shot at, he returns fire and kills the guy, and now he's being investigated and and all these there's like all these issues and stuff like I don't know.

Man, I think I think it's almost nationwide now everybody wears body camera. Yeah, you know, you can't hide from that stuff.

Well. I was just talking to my buddy yesterday who's a police officer, and he was saying that what has happened is that people are realizing that the police aren't lying as much as everyone says. You know, someone comes out and says, oh, this guy, the police came up and just shot him, he wasn't doing anything wrong. Well then the bodycam footage comes out and you see him running at him with a knife or pulling a gun out of his waistband or something like that. And it's like what people thought they were going to uncover a lot of like crimes by police officers, which there have been some, you know cases of that, but a lot of times it's just normal interactions. You know, cops are just like every other person, you know. I think that's

something that has come from that, which is good.

Absolutely absolutely, And that was even as officer reddens. They released the body cam footage of him, and it was, Yeah, they were casually talking to him, trying to get him to come to them, and he pulled a gun and you know, unfortunately killed killed him and he survived. He was shot once or twice, but he survived.

So yeah, man, I just can't believe. I get why people don't want to be police officers, especially in cities like Chicago or something where it's like the politics of it can be very you know, you can get burned so fast for just doing your job. But we thought there was a push for that.

You would think, and you know, and it is the great it is probably to me, it's the greatest job I've ever had. Well, next next to shooting one hundred and twenty millimeters smooth board. But yeah, you would think, I know, the political climate that we were in a couple of years ago, they even talked about us getting body camps on the ambulance, which I mean that threw a bunch of red flags for us because of hippo laws and you know, patient privacy and all that stuff.

But well, I mean wasn't those same hippolaws apply to police officers that are providing first aid to.

People though, So my understanding of that because we do have officers get in the back of the ambulance with us, depending on the call, right, if it's a combat patient, psychiatric something like that, or if they're under arrest. Obviously some of them, and don't don't quote me, I believe they do turn off the camera, but at they're undercust If they're in custody, I think they leave the camera on.

But I think everything's blurred out. Even if you like foid it, they'd blur it out. They'd edit the audio so you can't hear, so you're protecting that person.

Yeah, So yeah, that's crazy. Man. I was actually just telling my kid recently, because he's getting ready to graduate from high school. I was like, I saw a notice on Instagram. I don't remember which page put it out there, but it was one of the firefighting pages and there was a openings listed for seasonal positions as a wildland firefighter up in Trucky And I was like, dude, like, if you're coming out of high school and you don't really, he doesn't really he's not really sure what he wants to do and stuff like that, you know, And I'm like, if you don't know what you want to do, a job like that is really cool because it lasts a few months. You know, it lasts a fire, so you can and you can walk away anytime. Really, but if

you go up there, you're living on the job. It's one of those things you were like fully immersed in at the whole time you're there. Always like it'd be like an intense summer camp. Dude. I was like, you'd come back, you'd be super jacked from hiking up and down the mountains up in Trucky. You'd have all these skills, and you'd have probably at least ten thousand or more dollars in the bank now that you can just go buy a car, get a place, whatever you want to do as an eighteen year old kid, which is awesome.

Yeah, it's like a deployment.

Yeah, it's definitely. I was like I was telling him, I was like, if you don't know what you're gonna do, man, maybe that's not a bad idea. He's got another job lined up, so I think he's gonna do that one. But I I don't know, man, when I was younger, I used to think being a firefighter would be super cool.

I used to. You know, maybe it's because I grew up in that era where we're watching like Backdraft and stuff like that, and it was like.

Yes, oh, if you go, we go.

You know what kind of deal?

Oh no, yeah, that's uh I joke that that's I mean there's a bunch of firefighters out there that will say that movie me or movies like The Towering Inferno, the TV show Emergency. Uh. You know that that kind of got us into the fire Service. I knew. I knew at a young age the two things I was really interested in was the military or the fire Service, and that was it for me. So yeah, I love it, and you'll you'll you'll never find a fireman that says.

What do they say, I find a job you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Yeah, and that's that's the fire Service.

Yeah, it looks like a cool job. I mean it really does. I mean it's obviously hard on families and stuff because of the crazy schedule, but I think it's one of those things, like the military, you kind of have to adapt, you know. So let's jump backwards then, because you're doing that stuff now. Before that, you decided to join the army. What made you decide to join the army over other branches? And then did you decide to go into tanks or was that where you were placed?

Oh that's a funny story. No, so I I honestly so. Oh. Going into freshman year of high school, I found this program down in Texas called Marine Military Academy, which is a marine I don't know the sponsored or whatever whatever it is, but they're a bunch of retired Marines and they run a high school program. What's for you, you know, for your high school. So they had a summer camp program for like a month, and uh, you know, I begged completed my parents, Hey I want to go. I want to go, So they sent me. It's pretty much basic training for high school kids. You know, a bunch of bunch of wayward boys down there that you know, parents are trying to straighten them up. And then there's me, like, I volunteered for this. What did I do? So that

was you know, I really like I really when I came out of that, I had that confidence going into high school and I was like, man, this is kind of the path I want to go down. Weirdly enough, that was two thousand. That was two thousand and one. So my freshman year of high school, nine to eleven happened, and you know, that was that was kind of it for me. It was all right, we're at war. I know when I got and I get out three years, I this is what I'm gonna do. I had a friend, a really close friend of mine, he enlisted prior to prior to nine to eleven, and he was actually in the invasion. I want to say he was with three seven Marines. Eric, if you're listening, I apologie if I got that wrong, but uh, yeah, he he went on

the invasion. So we stayed in contact and it's still in contact with him to the stay. So I kind of knew, like that's what I wanted to do. Senior year of high school. Uh, buddy of mine went to talk to a Marine Corps career and he trying to I guess they do like a like a buddy program or something. So he was going to be crash rescuing in the Marine Corps. Yeah, and he ended up doing it.

He ended up spending five years in Okinawa. So you know, he loved it. We had the same contract. I was going to do it with him, and like last minute, I was just kind of like, I don't know, Like you know, we're in Iraq, we're in Afghanistan. I kind of want to go combat, Like I feel like that's something that I needed to do. So I took a step back from the Marine Corps and it was just a fluke. I graduated high school. I was driving a tow truck actually, and it was like three or four days after I talked to the recruiter, and an Army recruiter call me and I was like okay, Like he's like, hey, you want to come in talk. Sure, let's go sit down with him. And for whatever reason, whatever he was selling me like sounded good. But mechanic stories. He was

a he was a mechanic in the invasion. He was like I don't know what unit he was in, but he was an army mechanic for Humpies. So he just kept on talking to me like, hey, man, you want to be a mechanic, Like that's the best job in the army. Man Like here going to get out have some skills. Yeah, Like I kind of want to do combat, man, Like I'm young, I'm dumb. Let's go. So I signed, uh, you know, I did my initial stuff there and uh, I didn't sign a contract or anything, but I had infantry, calf scout or tanker or my three choices. So like, I don't know, Like a month goes by and I'm supposed to go to MEPs, not MEPs. Yeah, I'm not supposed to go to MEPs to uh, you know, do the whole duck walk cough, you know, fun stuff.

Show your butthole to the old Air Force guy. Everybody doesn't matter what MEPs he went to has that same story. It's hilarious.

He was air I thought he was a Navy.

Well Air Force guy, some old old dude.

Yeah. So I show up because they had us stay over at a hotel so we would go the night before. I show up at the recruiting station and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm here to go to APPS. They forgot about me, which there's there's a history of that happening in my army, my military career. So like, oh, they're scrambling, they're trying to find somebody to take me to MAPS, and there's this brand new E five they just got in, Hey, can you take him to the maps and say, yeah, sure, get in the car with this guy. He asked me.

He's like, hey, you know, what are you gonna What are you gonna sign up for? I was like class, thinking infantry, but I really kind of like CAVS scout. Uh, you know, I want to be combat He chuckled, and he's like, you don't want the CAVS scout. I'm like, why is that? He's like, you want to be a tanker? Oh?

Like what? Well? The guy had just come from an armored unit and he was a nineteen kilo So forty five minutes car ride with him, I was like, shoot, I want to be a tanker.

I guess yeah, it's it's It's funny, how like if you sit down with someone that enjoys their job, how the way they talk about it and explain it to you can really convince you that you want to do that job. Now, someone that really enjoys being a mechanic trying to convince someone else that's one of those jobs you got to you gotta want. I mean, all of them are jobs that you gotta kind of want. But I didn't want to be a mechanic. When I came in and that was miserable for me. I will say I learned a lot and I've probably saved thousands of dollars on doing my own maintenance and stuff on my own vehicle. But outside of that, like that was not you know. So if you're like, if that's that's what you're all about, then go for it. But yeah, I mean,

I think that's good that you kind of stuck with what you wanted though, you know, rather than letting them talk you into something else, because this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity and that kind of decision can I mean, how much different would your career have been had you been like, yeah, you know what, let's do mechanic. You know, like that's a completely different side of the army than being a tanker. You know, yeah, how does that work? So, you know, obviously most of my audience and a lot of my guests are like Marine veterans and stuff like that, or people that know more about the Marine Corps. We have thirteen weeks boot camp, then we go to a month of MCT, which is Marine Combat Training or SI. If you're infantry, you go

to the School of Infantry and then following MCT. If you're not infantry, you go to your MS school and that's however long it is. Some of them are on Army basis. When I went through to be a Ford observer, a fire support man, my school was on Fort Sill. You know, there's a marine battery a board at Fort Sill that is works alongside, but you're not like mixed classes or anything. Can you kind of explain that process for people that may not know. For the army side, Yeah, So the.

Army they do a thing called OSUT, which is one station unit training, So that's certain MOSS have that where you do your basic training and you do your ait all at one station. You're not moving. I think medics, you know, medics would maybe go to like Fort Jacks And for basic training and then they'd get shipped down to Fort sam Houston for a t But for US infantry, tankers and CAF scouts, Entree tankers, CAF scouts and probably field artillery guys, and there's probably a lot more than I don't know. We do what we suck. So it's nine weeks of basic training. I went to Fort Knox, which is the home of what was the Homo Armor before they moved it in twenty twenty ten to Fort Benning and then Fort Benning got changed to the Maneuver Center.

But yeah, Fort Knox trained CAF scouts and tankers. So we did nine weeks there and then we had like a weekend off, graduated basic training, and then we went straight into a T with the same drill sergeants, the same company everything. So for us, it was sixteen weeks. Yeah, I want to say it was sixteen weeks.

Does the drill sergeant start treating you different after that weekend off? Is it more laid back? I mean, you're still a junior soldier, You're still a new guy, so there's gonna be a little kind of dickish probably, But is it different than the drill instructor or drill sergeant mentality.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's more laid back. I think we had like Sundays off. I mean, I think we always had Sundays off, I remember, right, But I mean it's there's still the juill sergeants. There's still I mean anytime I think because we do what do they call it? They do red, red face, white blue and then gold and gold being a T. You know, they always tell us, hey, you can always go back to red phase and we can always treat you like children, you know, in case you do something stupid like leave a rifle or you know whatever. So they were a little bit better, but it was more at that point we transitioned more into like, hey, this is your job set, this is what you're going to learn. And these guys are all tankers and a

lot of them this is I went to basic January of six. So a lot of these guys were like, oh, if the invasion got back from the invasion and you know, PCs to drill and then like this was like their second or third cycle. So a lot of these guys were like the invasion going into Iraq, which was kind of intimidating eighteen year old you know, like what did I get myself into? But how did I say? On the same on the same context, we did have a marine detachment down the down the street from us that were Marine Corps uh tankers recruits I guess you could only call, but they were learning how to be the Marine Corps. At four knocks.

Yeah, well at that point they're done with boot camps, so their marine so they've gone through m CT. Also and now they're like, you know, marines in MS school, you're just junior marines. And then what we say is like, hey, when you finish MOS school, then you hit the fleet and that's when you get to your unit and stuff like that, and that's what so that's what we call it, you know, in tanker school. I remember watching i think on the Discovery Channel or something like that, like Forever Ago a doc documentary about Fort Knox and like the Tanker School, and it's like, don't you guys have like these like almost like simulators that are like big pods, oh that you guys jump into. Tell us about that,

like what's the actual what's it like to be inside of one of those tanks?

You know? Also that we do have sims, we never really got to where we did them a little bit. They have a for the most part, when you become a tanker and you're a junior guy, you're a private E two, E three whatever, you're a driver or you're a loader. Right, the gunner's position and the tank commander's position are n COO positions. So in basic training they really harp on weapon systems at two forty bravo loading the the m two, five six main gun and then driving those like the three main things they really want you to be good at. And they do some maintenance stuff which when you get to when you get down range to your unit, everything's ten level apparently. But yeah, so they have a simulator. It's on gimbals and it's

focused for driving, and it's it's pretty wicked. It's pretty cool. I will say, like the first five minutes you're in it, you get really at least I did, you get really kind of nauseous and monching sickness. But then once you get used to it, it's pretty cool. They have the driving stimulator, and then they had these pods and I want to say it was like c C T closed circuit something. Oh, I can't think of the acronym for it, but they have these pods where you have like a driver and then you have it's set up. You have a driver by himself, and you have your crew which is four man crew, so you have your three guys, your lowder, your gun or your tank commander, and it's just a big warehouse full of them. And they can

set up maps and they can set up enemy and you know, you just they set up missions and you go and you can do it, you know, and it's as in basic training. He's like, this is a game. This is really cool. Like I love it. When you get to your unit, every unit has these things. Was like we had him. I was stationed at Fort Benning.

Benning had them down on main Post and that was part of our train up to go over to Iraq was we would go as a company. We'd go as to tune first, then we go as a company and then do company movements to tone movements, actions on contact things like that. Uh, that was I mean, I'm sure we had like things we had to accomplish. The one that was really focused and it was really cool simulator and it was right down the street from our company.

And again I forget the I forget the name of it, but it was for gunnery and that was the tank commander and the gunner and then you'd get another n CEO, usually another gunner to run it for you and you would go through all the tables, you know, for gunnery, and that was your that was your build up before you actually got in the tank, went down range and then actually shot gunnery. We would do that at probably for like two weeks before it went down range and because it's I think we only had like two two in their cargo containers. Two cargo containers for two armored regiments.

He'd be doing that at like three in the morning, like jacked up on Red Bull or something like because that was just like our time slot, you know. Yeah, and the next thing then you walk out of there, you go do pet and normal day. So but they were really cool, they were really fun. I enjoyed. I enjoyed the sims. The sims were I mean, it's I'm sure they were built in like the nineties, so this the the graphics weren't that great, Like you can play like Gunner Heat PC. I think graphics are a little bit better.

But yeah, oh you know, we used to have sims that we'd work as. Uh like DVT is what we call it an s a ET. Those are two different things. The DVT is like a laptop set up, and the SAVT is like more immersive. You're in like a dome kind of deal and there's like a one hundred and eighty degree view or something like that that you can see.

But the even with the laptop setup, which is pretty basic, you're basically playing a video game. You're watching people and you're calling in artillery, and I would run it as an instructor, and like you were saying, with those guys, I could I could basically build an enemy army and then put them anywhere I want and have them come in at different times, and then you had to like kind of attack it and deal with it. Even as basic as that was, we I think I think the training that you get out of it is is really good because what it does is it reinforces, Like it reinforces like your what am I trying to say here, how you get how you do the mission and stuff like that, the steps, you know what I'm saying, It's

like get you working through the steps. Every once in a while they could throw like a weird thing at them just to kind of throw them off, throw somebody off and see how they'd react to it. But it's like really good about reinforce. Reinforcing like communication drills and just like the basic steps of doing close air support, doing artillery, call for fire and things like that.

Yeah, our big thing for that the build up for gunnery. Our big thing was fire commands. And that's because when you go to gunnery, you have you have open comms, and you have guys in the tower. So they send two tanks down range for gunnery, and they have guys in the tower, and you have multiple tables get to complete, and you have guys with a stopwatch, like I remember it because I had to do it a couple of times for our sister battalion. You would have to sit there and the minute they say like identify tank, you hit your stopwatch, and you have to hear them say you know distance, you know what it is, U direction, you know what fire, you know what what what round you're sending down range. Then you have to hear the

safety stuff, so you have to hear if the loader actually yelled you know, you know, if he armed the gun, if he yelled up, if you know, and you get you get knocked when you go down when you shoot gun, or you get knocked for certain things, and there's safety violations you can get knocked for. So for that part, it was huge, huge on fire commands, so that it was the second nature that when you did it, you just did it. And then like I said, when we would go do like the platoon size company sized stuff, initially it would start out like we're moving as an.

Element, you know, like a a lot of the stuff and I granted it was two thousand and six, but a lot of the stuff we did was still set in like the nineteen eighties, fold a gam mission, you know, on tank on tank battle stuff.

And then usually you know, by the end of the day because we're be there all day. You know, it was just kind of like, all right, let's have fun, you know, ram a tank, let's go do some stupid stuff and the shoot you know whatever. But yeah, it's really big for us. I'm sure it was for you guys too, like fire commands, getting all your fire commands and you know, uperly you.

Know, oh yeah, I mean, artillery is notoriously anal for very you're the the script is very you know structured, like I'm gonna say this, and you're gonna say this, and then I'm gonna say this, and if I don't say if I don't repeat back what you said, then it's like all these things. Artillery guys are all about correcting each other. On comms, It's like almost the most efficient comms that you can get in the military is probably in the artillery world because a lot of it has to do it's just like one, it speeds up.

The process. Artillery is notoriously slow, you know, because you got to get you got to send in a fire mission. The fire direction control has to process the fire mission. Then they have to send their data down to the gun lines, and the gun lines have to set the guns. And then while they're setting the guns, they got to set the rounds and all that, you know, the same thing as kind of intakes and that's that takes time.

All that takes time. So the whole thing is to speed up and also be safe, you know, so you don't actually say fire when you meant five, you know, or something like that. It's just it's important, you know. And it's Oh, that's why I tell people. When you get out of the military, you're you're still in a job where lives kind of obviously are in your hands kind of deal, like it's a life or death situation sometimes, but for most jobs it's not like that. So when you go from a job where literally how you speak on the radio can fuck up something and cost of life, and then you get out to the real world, you're like, like none of this matters, you know, Like how if I say something wrong? No one's gonna die or anything.

It's I don't know. So let's talk about for the next topic, let's talk about tanks. Let's talk about the tank itself. I know that I think they're on the version three now, which is I think you what were you on when the N one A two, no A one?

So I was, Yeah, I was like A one. So I was with a third Day Street Division out of Fort Benning. We were third Brigade, which that brigade doesn't even exist anymore. They they closed up shop I think like twenty twelve. But yeah, so we were third I D and we got all M one A once I think we had when I first got to the unit. So I got to I graduated basic in May May six, got down to the unit in June, and these guys had just gotten off the plane like the month prior Ramadi from Iraq. So they were on o IF three and actually my Battalion two six nine armor they were attached to second MEW so they were they were attached to the Marine Corps unit in Ramadi. So we had a bunch of guys that just come back. We didn't

have tanks, and big Army found us tanks. I think they came from like Georgia National Guard or something. They were probably like Gulf War, you know, like era Abrams. They were rough. They were all just one one heavies, very basic, nothing really fancy about them. We spent we spent like four months building up to go to gunnery, my tank specifically, Uh yeah, uh well we we you know, we built up to go to gunnery and uh we pulled out the the the motor pool. We made it two miles down down down the trail, and I hadn't really ever driven that that specific vehicle for more than two three minutes, right, We got about like two miles down range and drive and all of a sudden, my engine just winds down. And the engine on the Abrams

is I think it's that AGT fifteen hundred gas turbine engine. So it's it's from what I was told or I believe it's like the same engine that using the Chinook. But they just converted it to sit into the back of an Abrams. And the main reason for that was when they designed the tank, they wanted to get away from diesel from like the M sixties because the M sixties diesels throw black smoke, white smoke, and they make themselves very prominently known when they're driving around or a gas turbine other than it being sound like a jet engine, no smoke more or less. So we're driving down this road and the engine just kills on me. I'm e to nobody like, uh driving, I'm in the driver's all.

If you've ever seen the schematic of a tank, the driver's in the hole by himself. So he's up in the front part and it's a really nice scene. Actually, you're you're laid back, you're kind of in a reclined position with these a t bar kind of like a motorcycle, and you can turn it and you get a brake pedal and then everybody else is behind me in the turret.

Engine shuts off. I come to a halt and I'm like, hey, uh started, Like I don't know what to tell you. The engine's dead, like oh, restarted, go to restart at nothing? So you know, we call a halt and jump out and it's just hissing and oil out of the belly plane. Really okay, Well something happened, no idea what so? Uh?

We call our our that was in That was third platoon. I was three four so we call our our wing tank three three to come hook us up and tow us the rest of the way. So they back up to us, We hook up the tow bar, throw the final drives in the neutral start going down the road, which is a horrible ride to be towed down the gravel road being the rear vehicle. And we made it four or five miles. Maybe one of the final drives somebody didn't put a bolt in final drive, flipped back, re engaged into the transmission, locked up the whole left side track, and then just bound us put us like lead Victor. We went sideways and ended up stopping. So we're like, all right, well, looked at the final drive.

The final drive which sticks out like that much, had sucked all the way into the transmission. So we called the mechanics. They came back with a pickup truck and they're like or the humbie and they're like, yeah, I gotta gotta get you guys back to the motor pool. Nothing we can do. Like it's good shot. So we set my wing tank forward. Well, the eighty eight, the MIC eighty eight, which is a heavy covery vehicle which is built on an old them sixty platform was at the head of the head of the column. Couldn't get it back down this dirt road. I don't think anone's gonna get in trouble because this was twenty oh yeah, it's going on nineteen years ago. One of the mechanics he had a buddy that was I think it was

expecting a He had a soldier that was expecting a kid or something. So he calls him up because he wasn't going on and arrange with us, and he goes, hey, man, I need you to go to the motor pool. I need you to get it an eighty eight and I need you to drive down whatever road. And he's like, what are you talking about. He's like, I'm on leave right now.

He's like, I know, but I need you to do this, Like can you go do this? They're like, okay, fine. So these guys commandeered a random eighty eight that's sitting in the motor poole drive down, pick us up, bring us back to the motor pool where we spent three days with a settling torches, plasma torches, everything, just cutting away all the gears and the final drive to get the final drive out and even we had some general dynamic guys that were like, I've never seen this happen before.

So ultimately three days later we get a new engine, we get a new transmission, a new final drive, bring the tank back out to gunnery. We go to shoot gunnery, like two days before. Table late, which is our qualifying table. Uh, my doghouse went on mine my my gunner's doghouse, which is the all the Christmas tree for all the optics, all the ballistics, the computer, the blissed computer, everything you know, takes the dump on us and they have to replace that.

So we we shoot, We shot gunnery. We qualified. It was it was a great thing. But by the time we were done with that tank thing with damn your brand.

New it's almost a brand new tank.

Uh. And it was a shame because we before I went to Iran in seven, we went to NTC, the National Training Center up in Fort Irwin, and we railheaded over our vehicles out there, and instead of rail heading them back to Georgia or putting them on a boat and shipping them to the Middle East, we left them and we ended up and we got to Kuwait. We ended up drawing refurbished tanks from Kuwait. So it was kind of a shame because I was like, well, I put so much blood, sweat and tears in this thing and it was damn near brand new. No, then we pretty much picked up brand new tanks and in Kuwait.

So, yeah, they got a whole lot out there of like different different things for the guys that do N eighty eight. Are those like actual did tankers drive those or do mechanics take mechanics?

Yeah, those those guys are actually tank mechanics. Great guys, I love them. My buddy Tyler, he's actually fireman as well down in Pop County, Georgia, but he was my tank commander by tank mechanic for shit the five years that was yet two six nine and uh, great guy, Like, yeah, we love our tank mechanics up until the point, up until the point we would bring them something like hey, you know this XYZ is broken. Ah, yeah, that's ten level.

You guys can fix it. It's suck ship everything's ten level on this thing. Now.

Yeah, we used to call out, I mean we'd call operator level. That's like operator level main it's homie. Yeah, yeah, that was It suck being a mechanic because you have to fix other people's screw up. Yes, it's like, dude, you screwed that up. That's your fault, but I'm gonna fix it. And then you're gonna go screw it up again and I'll fix it again. Oh yeah, all right, for the take itself, like what kind of weapons are we talking about on the tank? You obviously got the main gun, you got a machine gun. What can you tell us about the weaponing the weapons on the tank and then the different rounds that the tank carries.

So the main gun round obviously it's uh, the M two five six one hundred and twenty milimeters smooth bore. The original Abrams, which was developed in the seventies, late seventies and eighties, had one hundred and five millimeters rifle which was the same the same barrel and breach that was on the sixty. Somewhere in the eighties they upgraded it to the one twenty, which actually, funny fact it came from the Germans, the Leopard two, which is the Germans main battle tank. They created the one twenty smooth board, We created the rounds for it, and then that was kind of the trade offs since they're NATO and you know our allies. Really, Hey, you know you got a really amazing weapon system. Let's put it on the abrams

and the rest is history. It's smooth board, which is really cool because it's like that inaccurate. So that's the main gun. With the rounds. You have the sable round, which is a uranium depleted dark the round old casee. That's just a dart that's in the middle. So I think the the the nomenclatures like armor. It's a armor piercing, fin stabilizing discarding sable with tracer, so everything kind of falls off around it except for this you know, two and a half foot uranium dark that just punches holes through damn or anything. Yeah, and that's your main that's your main one that we use against tank on tank.

From there, you have a heat round, which is a high explosive anti tank. Actually, I have a demo round of the heat round right here, So that's the training round where this is the dummy round for the heat round. This big part here, the whole bottom part is all propelled and then the explosive is this stuff all explosive is just this tip right here, and that's that can be used for you know, tanks that can be used for APC's buildings things of that nature.

Is that actual size?

Is that the correct size, that's actual size.

That seems a lot unless you're really short, that seems a lot bigger than I expected.

I'm five ten and that thing, I think comes up to my waist.

Yeah, that's I didn't know it was that big.

No, the Heat rounds the bigger one, the biggest of them, all the stables a little bit smaller. Then we have a round called the Impact, which is a multipurpose anti tank. That one's really cool because that one, similar to the Heat round, a big chunk of explosives up at the top. It has a air to ground moote little selector so you can switch it from ground, which is kind of like a bunker buster. It will go into a building and then detonate you know X amount of feet yards or whatever inside of it, or it will work off kinetic energy where you can shoot down helicopters. So part of what we did in the simulator was actually targeting like am I, am I twenty four, am I eighteen Hines and their transport helicopters and shooting them down. How

realistic in real life. Never done it. I did it in the sim.

So you know, did it seem like in the sim? Did it seem like pretty possible? Or is it every once in a while?

Yeah? Hit, no, I hit yeah, but I was a gunner. Yeah, I hit them in the SIM.

So I wonder what they have now, you know, I bet now it's more advanced.

When when I got to Iraq and seven, we had just gotten a new round called the cannon there's canster round. It was five hundred tongues and tungsten steel ball bearings. And they're like, oh, by the way, like this thing only has a range of five hundred yards because it's a giant shotgun show.

Yeah, so we had that said deadly five hundred yards. Man, you don't want to be in that.

We used it. It was yeah, it was. It was impressive. But they when I was talking to General Dynamics guys when we got it, they were they were talking about they were developing like a missile that you could put into the main gun and shoot out, kind of like a tow missile at the Bradley's that the Bradley Fighting Vehicle has. So, I mean, I know it was in development.

I don't think it ever it ever made light. But yeah, they keep on, they keep on changing the rounds, making them a little bit better, making them, you know, or lethal, which is kind of kind of neat.

But yeah, that was.

Pretty much the two main rounds we carried for SABO and heat rounds, and then they ended up when we went in O seven. They didn't give us any heat, any sable rounds because they're like, hey, there's no more there's no more tanks. You know, you're not fighting tanks, you're fighting the insurgency and so forth. So they gave us heat rounds and PAT rounds and then canister round So that's the three rounds we carried. And in the tank we have behind the loader, so you have the breach of the main gun. Here, the gunner sits right to the right, tank commander sits behind the gunner. Then on the other side you have the loader. The loader has like like sixteen rounds in the semi ready rack, and then behind the tank commander you can cross load.

He's got like fourteen rounds and then there's like four more on like in the hall. I could be wrong with my map, but I want to say we had somewhere around like thirty mid thirties to maybe forty rounds that we carried on the tank and we could fearfully loaded.

Yeah, isn't in the the ammo stored behind some kind of barrier in case, like you guys take a hit.

Yep. So it's a really small door. It's about you. They the loader has a knee panel that he hits with his knee and the door flies open, and then the cool thing is on the top of the tank. There's blow off panels. So the idea is that if you get hit in the back or the ammal cooks off or whatever, it's going to blow up and out instead of into the crew compartment. Russian tanks don't have that.

The Russian tanks their ammos pretty much all around the hole, and you take a hit, it's going to blow up, which is a lot of guys in the Gulf. For if you saw a lot of pictures of like T fifty five fifty fours seventy two, their turret would blow off because it was just wrapped with ammo and then once that cooked off, it would and their cast iron the Abrams. The Abrams is all welded, but I think it has over like two like I think it was like four miles worth of welds on that thing.

Wow, and you guys have the reactive armor correct or they know they do now.

Yeah, we we were the first tank in Iraq and eight to get them. Michael Tune was, it's it's interesting, uh the idea behind it. I was blown up with the reactive armor on, and I don't know what gave me the concussion, the I D or the reactive.

Armor because it's just another explosion, right for those that don't know what that is. I mean, I don't know how much of that's classified, but can you kind of explain what it is?

Yeah, So when we went to Iraq and O seven we were just giving M one A one heavies, so they just had the regular complements of armor on them, which is, you know, the skirts and then the Chatham armor, which is still classified. I don't even know, like General Dynamics want to tell us what it is, but it's it's like a layering armor. So around I think it was eight, maybe it was O seven, It might have been O seven seven, General Dynamics was like, hey, we're gonna put some reactive armor on the Abrams, which they had already been doing on the brandings. So what it was was I think it was like twenty four rows of these boxes that were like forty five pounds each, you know, rectangular boxes, double stacked all down the skirts.

And it's essentially cop B. And the way that it works is that when kinetic energy hits the side of it, it's a projectile explosion, and it hits and then it takes that force. It detonates, but it blows it out away from the vehicle. So yeah, it's two explosions. You get hit and then it blows up and blows the takes the force and sends it away from the from the vehicle.

It's supposed to be a counter to like shape charges and stuff. Correct and how I mean, I mean, how effective do you think it is?

Why it will work wrong? I got it, let me tell you that much.

Yeah.

Yeah, So we were battling. We were battling a lot. Most on my unit was battling a lot of e fps, which were the copper you know, they take copper and make like a forged projectile.

Yeah, the explosively formed projectiles for those that.

Are yeah, and uh, and then we also had well not well my unit had they were dealing with RPG twenty nine's, which were from my understanding, they were like a modern day version of a German Panzer Faust from World War Two, and uh we we took some casualties in the tanks. They would go right through the turret.

We took my buddy Keith Nurnberg and our medic doctor Paradis were killed by a RPG twenty nine that went through, went through the sponsor box, went through the turret right at the load at the tank commander position, and it went across the loader and killed both of them. So, like, you know, you think like the tank and that's probably one of the reasons why I liked being a tanker.

Was like, oh, I'm in the biggest, baddest, you know, vehicle out here.

I'm protected.

Yeah yeah, Well you're also the biggest, baddest target too. Yeah yeah. So they started putting they started putting the reactive armor on, I want to say, towards the mid end of seven we were Michaelton was the first one to get him in country.

Oh was it after those guys were killed? Yeah yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we got we got them after those After we lost our guys, they also added a belly plate, which a couple of thousand pounds belly plate to help with.

I mean, it already sits so low to the ground. That's the problem is that it's so low to the ground. So adding more stuff yeah may help some, but the problem, the central problem is it sits so low to the ground.

You know. That's well, and that's and it's design too, it's designed to be a lower silhouette.

Yeah, but you're right.

Yeah, it did limit and it did create some issues. I know they had not unfortunately not us. But they have rolled tanks because you know, you got those berms in Iraq, you know along waterways or canals. Yeah, and they've rolled. They rolled abrams really pretty easy.

They drove. I remember one drove into a river during the invasion. I think one of the tankers fell asleep because they had been up for like thirty six hours or something. Then one of the drivers like, yeah, damn, that'd be crazy, dude, Real quick, one, go ahead.

I was just gonna keep on talking about the weapon systems of the other ones that we have real quick, Well.

Real quick. You said that the medic was killed as well. Do the medics ride in the tank with you?

So arts did I can. I can say ours did when we went to Iraq and so we got orders. I want to say like October of six. Let me let me fact, let me go back when I got to the unit. If you want to know what unit back then was going overseas, like just look at who's the basic training, who's sending everybody because anybody who didn't have order somewhere or National Guard or like Germany or Korea, we were going to Third I D. You know, Fort Stewart or Fort Bennings, like we all knew, like okay, well Third ID is going back over When we got our orders to go to Iraq, I think we were only at like sixty six percent strength brigade wide. So when we went to go shoot gunnery, my first gunnery, which was horrible. There's a there's a whole story behind that.

But we had tank crews that only had two guys. My tank crew had three. I think we had each each. So in a tank platoon, you have four tanks per platoon, right, sixteen guys, four guys per tank. We have three platoons in a tank company. Each platoon had one tank crew of two guys, the gunner and the and the tank commanders.

So when we went to go shoot gunnery, if you were if you were an E four below man, it sucks because they're like, hey, look we need a loader, Hey we need to we need a driver. And it may it may be a first platoon tank and maybe the second between and maybe headquarters, but like we never all of us are are you know E four and below guys, we were running around I don't remember sleeping for two weeks, you know, and this is this is gunnery.

It was wasn't even in Iraq. So when we deployed, we were a little bit better. I think we all had three man crews and like a couple of us had four man crews. So when we got our medics assigned to us, we were like, hey, guess what you're gonna learn how to do? You're going to learn how to be a loader, you know, And we weren't really shooting main gun in seven Yeah.

I mean, I feel like at that point, you guys are more of a show of force than anything, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we would we would teach those guys like, hey, you're going to be a loader. The older station has a two forty Bravo here's how to operate the two forty Bravo. And there was a couple of times and Michael too, specifically, we had mar Medoc. He drove, he loved it, he loved driving. And even even his.

Boss drive a tank.

Yeah okay, even his his uh his boss, sergeant Orbis. Yeah, start in Orbis Like he's like, hey, I'm going to get on that. So we would occasionally take you know, non tankers, like all right, here's the driver's hole, here's what you do, and there you go, like thank you.

Kind of shows you how easy it is to drive.

Right it is. Yeah, it's very simple.

It's pretty straightforward, basically keep it on the road. The thing too, because it's so low you don't really have to worry about I mean, you said that you've had rollovers, but that's not unless you go on some like hilly terrain or something like that. If it's flat, that's not really a concern, right.

No, No, Like I said, the main thing for us was the Burbs. If you get up on a berm with the canal and you go to like get off sideways, and I have a picture somewhere of one of our tanks, like it was. It was you could see underneath this right side track. Yeah, that's where your issue becomes, or like the bridges, you know, stuff like that.

There was a problem. Well, I mean, I guess there is a problem in the Marine Corps. Not really a problem, but it's known. Like the LAVs. They sit really high and they the light armored or yeah, light armored reconnaissance vehicles. They sit really high and if you turn them roll hard, they can roll over. Outside of that, those are the most comfortable rides I've ever been in in the military.

Oh yeah, the Abrams was the same way. I remember when I first drove one in basic training. I think the instructor was telling us like, oh yeah, they spent multiple millions of dollars to make this suspension drive like a Cadillac, and it was it was. That was. It was an amazing ride. And every now and then we would do stuff with the Brandley guys, the mechanized infantry guys, and I'd ride in the back of Bradley. This sucks.

I'm in an up armored aluminum vehicle that's gonna melt if we get hit, and then the rides sucks.

No, I wasn't like that with the LAVs. The Lav's, which I think were what the Army was going to buy before they decided to go with the Bradleys. I think they were looking at the Lav's and then went with the Bradleys. But the same thing, I mean, the suspension, the ride, you don't feel like the terrain and stuff, you don't really feel it. It's like, I don't know, it's a really good ride. And honestly, in that one, you stand up most of the time, unless you're in some weird conditions and you're down inside the vehicle, but generally stand up when you guys, you know, cruising around.

I mean, how often are you guys? What's the training look like for a tanker because are you out driving the tanks every day? I imagine you're not one, you know, I imagine you're There's parts of the year I assume they're working towards their gunnery qualifications. This is let's imagine that you don't have a deployment coming up or whatever.

I imagine there's parts of the year that you're working towards your gunnery qualification. Outside of that, what kind of training are you guys doing? Are you are are you working and doing training with the infantry and stuff to work on your integration with infantry units and supporting infantry and all that kind of deal.

So was I was there at a transition time when I got to my unit two six's nine Armor. When they came back from Amadi, they were strictly an armored battalion, so they had three they had three tank platoons and their mechanics and then their HHC. When I got there, they had just restructured and we went from an armored armored battalion to like an armored combines battalion, a combined arms battalion, I believe it's the term. Yeah, combined arms battalion.

So what they did was they took my sister battalion, which is one fifteen infantry AUDI Murphy's of whole thing AUTI Murphy's unit. They took two of their mechanized infantry companies, put them in my battalion, and then picked out, you know, one of the companies, and they essentially they created combined Arms battalion of headquarters, two mechanized infantry, two armor companies, Fox uh Fox Company which is engineers, and then our mechanics.

So like a self sufficient unit. We were still when I got there, we were still really just focused on tank stuff. We did the build up to gunnering. Like I said, go into the simulator, the two different sims, a lot of vehicle maintenance because I think the tanks were just they were they needed them. I don't remember doing much driving until we went to gunnery. And then once we went to gunnery, that was kind of it for us. After you qualify, we do a really cool operation.

It's called the table twelve, which Table twelve is when they integrate the mechanized guys as well as air assets. So we would do like a combined actions on contact where the tanks pull up, were engaging targets and the Bradleys run down, dismounts, get out Bradley's engaged targets, dismounts, attack of house. They call in mortar fire, and then after the mortar fire they call in like apaches and the apaches coming, you know, do do what they do.

That was really it. It wasn't until they were like, hey, by the way, we're going back to Iraq, maybe we should train you guys had to do some like kicking indoors and and uh, you know, so infantry stuff. That's when we started actually doing a little bit of infantry stuff, but for the most part, the build up to OIF II was mostly all, Hey, we're going to be in tanks and that's what you're gonna do when we went.

When we went back in oh seven, there was a lot more. We still did gunnery, we still qualified did all that, and then there was just a lot more like we went to shoot house, we did squad life fire stuff. You guys were doing, you guys were doing provisional infantry as a majority, right or how often were you guys in tanks compared to like on patrol Towards the end of the deployment, like fifty fifty we ended up getting we ended up getting four humbies, And yeah, we were like, hey, you guys have your mission of Route Clearance with the ABRAMS and QRF with the ABRAMS.

If you're not doing that, we want you guys to start doing stuff, you know, going over the door, walking down patrols or doing whatever. Which that's when I learned, like, as much as I love being a tanker, like we're not supposed to get off the tank, but we only have fourteen guys on a platoon and an infantry platoon.

It's got like fifty like, yeah, well it's a.

Good party over there. Man, that's route clearance with the tank.

Hmm.

That doesn't seem like a good idea. That seems like a vehicle you don't want to get blown up again because it's so low to the ground.

Yeah yeah, I mean we did a lot of so when we first got into country, well we fresh Scott to Kuwait. It was an interesting, interesting situation that happened. For whatever reason, somebody up higher again. I was an eight three at this time, and we the main unit went to Rustamaya. My brigade went to Rustamaya and Bob Hammer and somebody with the tenth Mountain who was in the USAFIA. A lot of Amadia area been talking to Big Army like, hey, we need help. Those guys have been getting the lightastre unit and they've been getting kind of pounded. So they came up with this idea that they would take a patuone of tanks for four tanks, put it in a mechanized infantry company, swap the platoons right, so they they'll pull mechanized infantry guys, put them in

my armor company and then send that mechanized infantry to which has two platunes of Bradley's our tanks. I think we left with like a mortar section and a couple other you know stuff. We needed mechanics, medics, and then they sent us. They sent us up north to tenth Mountain Infantry Division, and we weren't even we weren't even with third Infantry Division anymore. We got kind of oy, you'll have fun, be safe, we'll see it. We'll see you in sixteen months. Right. So when we got to tenth Mountain and they all all they had was humbies.

This is pre pre m wraps, right. Those guys were just getting id blown up off these you know, little roads, and they really needed they really needed something to come in there, kind of like show like I said, show of force. So we did. We did that for about three months. Hardcore just showed up with tanks and bread and just would roll, you know, five six patrols a day just for route clearance.

When when so, when you move up to that area, do you drive the tanks there or do you guys truck them up because that seems like a long distance, right they Yeah.

They we loaded them up on on heads. Yeah, and then they we picked we flew into Bagdad buy up and then we picked them up and buy up and then yeah, we drove them out to uh Ufa, which is like maybe an hour two hours.

Yeah, they put them on those low boy trailers, right, and then truck them up. Yeah, okay, yeah. The so I guess I would assume then, were the trucks that were trucking them up were driven by civilian contractors.

Yeah.

Yeah, those trucks looked like mad Max trucks. I remember that because those were up armor too. Those were these weird up armored semis that the civilian contractors would drive. Yeah, I remember those things. Fuck man. Yeah, I assume you guys didn't drive the tanks from one side of the area, you know, down there. I can't imagine like the maintenance that would be involved just in trying to do that, So that makes more sense. Uh oh yeah yeah, shit Ton, How you know, how did you feel like you guys were utilized while you were up there? Were there any like missions that stood out?

Yeah? We honestly, like like I said, our first three months there, it was just it was just a lot of hour long patrols. You know, you'd have three during the day and two at night, maybe three at night. So it would just be like, hey, we got a patrol at like six hundred, We're going to a run down to Usafiel. We'll cut some side streets, we'll go up and down. It's just a show of force to say, hey, we're here. You guys want to fuck around.

Well, describe a patrol. Describe a patrol? I mean does that when you say you're you go on to patrol? Is it is it a mounted patrol? Is it a mixed patrol?

Like?

Uh, how does that look? I mean I understand you're driving the tank around just to let them know that you're around, But is it only mounted or is it dismounted as well?

Only mounted for us?

Okay, so yeah, we would we would just get.

In the tank and drive just the Yeah, they would have pre plotted streets would go down. Obviously, you know, you don't want to have a routine or anything, so it would always change. But yeah, we would just drive around.

And that's so crazy. That's so crazy to just drive a tank around town. What was the reaction of like the locals where like, oh fuck, Like when they see you coming down the street, like oh what the hell.

Now, you know, a little bit of everything, a little a little old fuck or a little confusion, you know, you know, like you point, you point a barrel at them that they're they keep on driving. You know. It was a little bit of everything, you know, kept us on our toes.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty Were you guys utilizing the optics on the tank? You know, I don't know, the optics on the tank are really you know, they have really good optics, same with like you know, a lot of the like toe gunners and stuff. Some of the optics that they make for these these weapons systems are really good.

So were you guys utilizing those optics to maybe like find ID in placers or infantry moving stuff like that.

Yeah, so the tanks, the tanks have the infrared on them, which is great at finding copper wires that are sitting in the sun. You know, command you know, command death stuff. So yeah, we would generally it was all up to the gunner whatever the gunner wanted to do. It's very easy when you're behind the gun to switch between you know, normal vision daylight vision to uh, you know, thermal imaging or you know, and then you have three power fifteen power and then on the second point, you know, we got we got upgraded stuff. So I think we had like three fifteen, like twenty twenty five and fifty powers.

So yeah, it actually worked out really well, especially like I said, copper wires. Copper wires always showed white hot or black hot whatever you had during the daytime, and that was really beneficial to see.

Yeah, what was the biggest idea that you guys had found?

Uh, the one that I blew up, the one that blew me up?

Bummer way to find that one? Huh yeah, how much? How big was it?

I think EO. D. Came out and said that it was like three one, five five already rounds with like six sixty millimeter mortars and like twenty pounds of C four or something. Wow. Yeah, it has an interesting story. We so we moved. We moved a couple of times in country, and the last time we moved, we were at we were right outside BIOP. I can't think of the name of the patrol based US patrol based lines done, but we had all these we had all these you know Iraqi mails walking around, you know, with no jobs, no, no nothing. So somebody created and this is around the time of SI the Sons of Iraq, the creating a militia.

So we ended up going around and really, hey, what do you guys need? What do you what can we do for you? You know, day typical. We can build your schools, we can build you water, we can give you you know, you know, whatever you need. And of course the answers like, we need you to leave because we don't want you here. But it's like, well, too bad, We're not leaving. What can we can just throw you, throw money at you, what do you want? So we ended up building multiple like that's pretty funny, uh, these little wood huts, and we created own militia guys that, you know, guys that couldn't get hired in the Iraqi Police Force or Iraqi Army, the ia. And we're like, hey, we'll pay you whatever. We'll give you a rifle with

like twenty rounds in it. You protect this, this intersection, this is your intersection, like this is your home. You protect us. So we built like, I don't know, maybe eight, eight or ten of these little checkpoints and it worked great, Like it really did. We We no longer we're getting sniper fire from stuff if we were no longer hitting IDs weird. It all worked out, so it went good for about a month or two, and Iraqi Army hated it, like they just did not like it because they thought like, hey, this is our our ao, this is what we are area to protect, and we're like, okay, cool guys, Like if you guys were great, we wouldn't need these guys to help. But whatever. So I was on and a patrol.

I don't even remember the control. I ended up somehow driving a Humbye that night for our company commander, and that firefighter started between the Iraqi Army and our militia guys, and I remember like sons coming up were watching tracer fire going back and forth, and it's like I think I even asked the CEO like uh or are we gonna shoot at like like those are our allies and those are the guys we pay for, Like what do we do? He's like, Oh, we don't thing we can do.

We got to watch. So after that, you know, big Army got a wind of what we were doing and it was like, hey, you got to shut it down. You can't can't do this. So we went to every checkpoint. We tore down these wood shacks that we built and really, hey guys, sorry, have a good day. Bye. So that week, like the week after, we were doing the census mission, which, like I said, we have been given four humbies, and we're told like, hey, you should go down in this like city block and go door to door pretty much asking like how many women do you have living here?

How many children? How many men? Just doing this census, you know. So Monday through Friday we were doing that in humbies and you know, complacency kills and I think, oh god, what was it. It was January o waight, so we've been in country like ten months and we still had like six more to go.

Oh my god, dude, the army is so crazy about that. That is so nuts.

Oh yeah. So we had always gone down this one road across the berm and then ran back. And when we ran back, my section would split off and go right, and bravo section would split off and go left, and then the road kind of made this you and then we had stopped and you just you'd foot patrol down the streets, knocking on doors and stuff. Done that Monday through Friday, right, very complacent, very like whatever. And uh it was It was weird because I remember I was a specialist at the time, and I was I think I was gunning that day. I was supposed to have done that day. So I have the vehicle, I have my my humbill set up ready to go. And my lieutenant walks out, David Cannaday, and he's like, hey, you know, ling,

what's up. And I'm like, yeah, I got the vehicles ready to go, sir man behind us, we had our our tanks parked in the motor pool on our patrol base. And he looks back and he sees three of them. He's like, where's uh, you know, three three two or whatever. And I says, oh, you know, it's down for service.

Mechanics are doing PMCs on it or whatever. He's like, huh, we haven't been in the tanks in a while, have we. I'm like, no, no, we haven't. He's like, you know, he's like, screw this, I'm gonna go scratch this ticket. We're just gonna go do a route clearance in the tanks since we haven't run them. I was like, okay, cool, whatever, you know, you're the boss. I'm just whatever. So, you know, I holler at the other guys, and hey, we're taking tanks.

We're not taking humbies. We're just going on a route clearance, you know. So we ended up putting three tanks up. I ended up driving the middle tank, which was my tank, like thetoon sergeant's tank, and he chose, hey, let's let's take the opposite route that we've been doing the whole week. Okay, cool, So we're coming, you know, we take I don't know, it's like forty five minutes. We come up around. We're coming back to where that area was, and right at that turn, we had a checkpoint. When you come across the berm, you turn right and you make that use there's a checkpoint like right here. But we had just you know, we had dismantled it like a week prior.

So we're driving down. I'm the middle tank out of three, and I remember the lead tank comes up to this ninety degree turn and the driver, who was not not the best driver in the world, Uh, he takes this turn and it's jerky and choppy. You can see the tank commander like flailing in the hatch and my tank commanders like, god, damn it, ling, you better make this.

Make it smooth. Okay, cool. So I remember throttling up, stepping on the brake a little bit, and then turning, and I mean it was just this perfect, like twenty five miles per hour, just nice, hard right nine ninety to return. I saw behind the minute we made the turn, I could see the tank in front of me, and then just everything went black, orange flash. Everything went black on me right where that checkpoint had been. They had put a crushure plate, put the idea underneath it and hit us. The guys behind me said they thought we were dead. There was four of us inside. They said.

It actually picked up the tank and went kind of sideways because I was going so fast, I had enough momentum that it carried it on and dropped it. And then we ended up going into that berm on the left side. I think it set off like four four reactive armor, and then the projectile or something came up, went through two of the shock housings which holds the control arms on which linked to the the torsion bars for the suspension, and projectile went penetrated through that came up behind my head and uh embedded itself like underneath the breach of the main gun. And then warped the whole of the of the main gun. I don't remember much.

I remember being pulled out of the tank and like sitting on the front slope and looking around like I was in la la land, like, oh, what happened?

Yeah?

Apparently I had my pistol in my hand the whole time. And when the guys finally got my hatch open, I was sitting with my nine mil like on my chest, like just staring at I don't remember it, and then they threw me. They threw me in a in her wing tank and that's when I remember. That's what I do remember. I remember sitting in the wing tank in the loader's hatch, kind of like just dazed. I was looking at a Sergeant Graves and start an infant and they were like, yeah, good, and I was like, I don't know, am I? And you know hands me a cigarette which I had just quit smoking, and I was like, hey, I quit smoking. Grades It's like, well, you could be a fucking dead right now, so I have a cigarette.

I was like, okay, IDs are also unhealthy for you a little bit. Yeah, man, I'm so glad. That's crazy, man, Like, how long before you think you were you know, how long did the concussion last?

You think, Oh, I was back on control in like three days.

So yeah, yeah, I don't know.

They they sent us back to the patrol base. They did like that a concussion protocol test test, and then they sent us to Bagdad to get X rays and should I had three days off. It gave you like a bag of flex row and a couple of valume and say here you go, relax.

Go chill for a little bit. That's yeah, man, Yeah, that's just getting blown up in a tank that doesn't seem like just because it's so low I mean, and that I mean what you described before, having multiple artillery rounds and all that stuff. That's a lot of explosives you know that that could have breached it all pretty easily.

Yeah, it was a big hole. They ended up. They ended up coding that tank out. General Dynamics came and looked at it and we're like, yeah, we can't fix it because it warped the whole. So that one four point something millions.

Millions millions of dollars damaged by how much you know, in an ID set up. That's our problem right now, is like, yeah, we can spend a major amount of money on this like advanced whatever, but then it gets defeated by something that costs twenty bucks. You know, well, if they can build twenty dollars defeation devices over and over and over again, eventually the US is run out of money or you know, whatever nation is fighting that kind of fight, they're just like slowly bleeding you to death.

You know.

Yeah, I don't know, I'm We had tanks when I was insanging, and we would tell them like, hey, stay out of the stay out of the valley because that's where like the fighting was happening. They mostly stayed up on a mountain side and they were there for like observation, doing overwatch and stuff using their optics, and we would always tell them like don't come down here in the valley, and then are we I was on an advisor team at the time, and we left, and as soon as we left, the unit that was there was like, come on, bring the tanks down. And the tanks came down and one of them got blown up and fucking stranded in like a field, you know, because it hit an ID and dudes got injured and stuff, and it was like, dude,

this is not this isn't this isn't your fight. You know, this is not a tanks fight like this is. You're there for Overwatch and maybe some like like we said, show a force kind of deal. But if you come down here where it's all I eds and like some small arms attacks, you're just risking yourself more than you need to. Like there's no reason for tanks to be in that valley, and they brought them anyways. But we also had those police like you like the militia you stood up, that was the Afghan local police. We would have those same kind of deals where it would be like a sand bagged spot on like an intersection with like plywood and stuff, a little watch hut kind of deal, and that was our Afghan local police and same deal.

They would be in like their normal clothes though, and then have an a k and we'd be like, wait is that can local police are telling? Those are the local police?

Yeah? Yeah, we had we had. I remember when we first moved to that area, uh control Baselines. Then our one of our first patrols, they had had something set up like that, and I remember we came around like it was our first time going on patrol. Beca we're on a corner and there was a long burm with like tall grass and whatever. And as we're coming up, I was, oh god, I think I was trail Victor.

I was gunning, and I remember my like lead, my lead tanks are freaking out, and he's like, oh, dude, there's a there's a recoil less rifle over here, and like what And sure enough, like they had to set up their own checkpoint and they had I don't they'd have any ammo, but they had this big ass Russian recoil was rightful on a iPod or whatever. And I'm just like, like, I'm not sure what that would do.

I don't want to find out, but.

Yeah, I mean those are those will fuck you up, you know. I mean that's just a little mini almost like a main round, you know, it's just like that by itself standing there. Those things. They would shoot those in Afghanistan, and man, I would I hated it so much every time our when I was an advisor and our Afghans would shoot that thing, the recoilless rifle. It was the I'm trying to remember the name of it.

It's I can't remember the name of the recoil's rifle that they had. But man, the problem was is we never knew what the fuck they were doing. They would go to load it and you're like, sometimes they'd have problems with the rounds. You see them just take around and just kind of toss off to the side. You're like, what what are you doing, dude, and like what is this round right here? And then they would be fucking around with it and you're not sure when they're shooting and we're sitting here with no like ear protection or anything, and you're just kind of waiting. You're like, come on, dude, is this guy gonna shoot it? And every time it was like a surprise, and it was like almost getting you know, probably kind of like shooting that main gun.

It's like a punch in the face almost because of that concussion from the blast. That made me more jumpy than anything I think from my deployment in Afghanistan was those were Coloss rifles. Lets dude shooting those? Yeah.

Ours. So like when our when we first got to our first our first battle position, our first control base, which is in Yusophia, we had over we had taken over they had taken over a water treatment plant and built this troll base around this water treatment plant right on the Euphrates River. And I mean to me watching a bunch of Vietnam movies and reading a bunch of Vietnam books, like it was a firebase. Like this was solely a firebase. We had the patrol base. They had a mortar pit where they could drop one twenties, eighties or sixties one of the two. I know they had one twenties that probably had sixties, yeah, I think. And then we had these little checkpoints all around all the patrol the patrol base, pretty much keeping people away from

the patrol base, or we would you know, had them if they were just walking, had them down out there walking through. But uh yeah, that was I think my first night in the guard tower at our checkpoint, which was, you know, a w I don't know, had a quarter mile from the from the patrol base. You know, when those guys drop a loom round at two in the morning and they don't call out, hey, we're dropping a loom round, like yeah, your your asses on the bottom of a tower, going who was that nice? I'm sorry?

All right, guys like ship yeah, yeah, man, it's a it's a different world over there, like people that haven't deployed or anything like that. It's hard to understand it, but it's a different world when you're in a place like that. Let's talk real quick about how do you guys come up with the names for your tanks and when you guys switched tanks when you went from the ones you had at home to the ones you picked up in Kuwait, did you keep the same name or did you rename them?

So initially we weren't allowed to name our tanks. Really yeah, when we were state side, I don't know whose call it was in O six, we weren't allowed to name them. When we got into Iraq, we we eventually named them when we got I think we named them when we got attached to the hundred first Airborne.

That's like a tradition. And then like a huge tradition is like naming them the tank like the tank group comes up with something.

I want to say, it was like brigade brigade level permission and whoever our brigade commander or whomever it was, was like, no, we're not doing that, lame uh No. So how they named the tanks now is it has to have to start with the first letter of your company. So, like I was Delta Company, so all of our tanks had to have you know, d something or whatever, you know, DS nuts or dirt nap or you know something along something witty, you know, something cool and witty. Ever, so yeah, it was generally the gunner. The gunner would name it since he was the one shooting. You could ask ask the driver or the loader for input, but for the most part, the gunners just like, hey, I'm gonna name it this.

And you're like, okay, what was the most offensive like tank name you saw?

Oh, most offense? Say, you know, we were we were we were kind of told to keep a PC.

Were there unofficial names for tanks?

No, I mean maybe I think my favorite was dirt nap. Yeah, that was my favorite. Uh my first tank, my gunner named it Diplomat. I was like, okay, cool, you know.

Yeah, there's worse, there's better. Yeah, Like, man, I'm surprised it's just a gunner. I mean I get that. I feel like I feel like it would you guys would all come together kind of like they do in the air wing side when they're doing call signs, you know, for their pilots and stuff, and come up with something as like a crew for something like that. I know, the artillery, the artillery batteries in the Marine Corps and the tanks. When then we had them name name the tubes and you know, spray paint them on and stuff like that, and you see some funny ones sometimes, you know.

I seen one with a Bible verse on it. It just said the verse. I can't remember which one it was, and it was something about the like Lord reining down thunder and lightning or something like that, and that was the Bible verse that they put on the tube. The artillery too, but I was like, that's a good one.

I was like, that's probably offensive when you send it over to the Middle East, but that's a that's a pretty good one. Yeah, dude, what was your You said yours was dirt nap, that was your tank or my first.

One was Diplomat. And then when I became a gunner, I just named it Dinga okay, ding that was yeah, that was my unofficial you know, I platoon start company. Yeah, pretty much. I got I got to the unit. My platoon start is like, oh you're Dingling And I'm like, oh cool, thanks, never heard that before. Yeah, how how big is the competition within like a platoon, company, battalion, whatever, on the different levels of being like the best gunner.

They'll say, what now, I said, what's what's like the level of competition between like the company, the platoon, you know whatever, to be like the best gunner. Oh, it's it's pretty high. You qualify, So I think it's like seven hundred thousand, right, you get a thousand thousand points qualify. You get a little patch, you know, depending on what rate you're kind of like, you know, if you're a marksman, sharp shoot or whatever, so you get you get that.

But it's bragging rights. And I think if you shot top Tank in the company, I think you got like a four day weekend. If you shot top Tank in the Italian, you know, then you would go, uh, you'd shoot again against our sister battalion. And if you did that, I want to say, you know, a army they would give you like, oh, here's a Gates arm Majors Coin or it's you know, yeah, and me I think you probably get an r COM like Armyccommodation medal for But there's a lot of bragging rights. I can't remember who shot top Pankhack the tune. It wasn't me, I can tell you that much. Unfortunately, yeah he was. I know it was uh As the famous like do use as h God, he would not let that down. I would always yell top terk and like, all right, fuck you.

That's another unfortunate name though. Douche that's his name. That was his last name.

That was his last name.

Oh man, Yeah, he had to have been kind of tough because growing up with a name like I had a buddy whose last name was Gay and this dude could probably beat the ship out of a bunch of dudes. And I'm like, that's from growing up with the last name of Gay and dealing with the repercussions of that.

Oh yeah, that's you know.

The Submarine Artillery has something similar when we would go to Brag. We would go to Fort Bragg twice a year at tenth Marines out of Campbell June and we would do a regimental artillery shoot that's a month long in both March and then October, and during either one or the other or both. I don't remember if we did it every time we went, but I think at least once a year they did a top gun competition and it was best battalion in the regiment, you know, best battery within the battalion, and then best gun within that battery. And it was a big deal. It was the same thing. It was bragging rights kind of deal.

It was kind of a big deal. I mean, I was a Ford observer, so it was less of a big deal for us. They would all blame us. They would say that it was us that fucked them, why they didn't win top gun, like they weren't shooting right. We're like, dude, don't blame us. We're giving you a point on the ground that we know where the point is.

Like you can't hit it, that's on you, homie, Like.

We've been here all week, we know where that is.

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, And it would come at the end of a month long of every day shooting every day except for man, I think we even shot on some Sundays. Maybe not, I don't remember, but constant shooting, and so these guys were skilled by the end of it. So it was always cool to see, you know, the competition and stuff like that. I like that kind of that rivalry in there, and you know, the bragging rights.

You know, you can come out, but then you got the people, you know, walk around all the time.

Yeah, I mean it was it was it was fun. I love shooting. Shooting was especially the tank. I remember well, last time I shot we were in we were in Iraq in twenty ten and I remember, you know, hey, I looked at my tank commander. I was a gunner. I looked at my tank commander. I'm like, hey, man, like this is I knew I was getting out, this is this is going to be the last time I'm ever going to shoot something that is cool. And he's like yeah, man, and uh he gave me the fire command.

Look down range that identified you know tank thousand yards you know firefire heat or firefire sable on the way, pull the triggers and I mean, I shoot you not. I had tears in my eyes. I was like, fuck, that's like never going to top that shooting wise.

Yeah, last one. I still I did my last control on San Clemente Island with the section of skids, section of of cobras. It might have been a hue cobra. Actually, yeah, it's a bummer when it's over. It's like, man, because that's the cool part about doing the actual job is cool. It's all the other stuff that's like that makes it not where you don't want to keep doing it. What do you think as a former armor guy, what do you think about what's going on in Ukraine specific not the politics of it, but the specifically the ability of armor and the disadvantage it has against some drones.

I mean, you want to talk about technology, that's it's showing you out the weakness that you have to You have to now figure out how to how to combat, right, Yeah, you know, it's always it's what are we We're reactive? I feel like a lot of the times we're we have a great idea what we need to do and how we need to do it, but when we get there, we're always like, uh shit, we're like a day late, you know, or we're behind the power curve. And I felt that way in Iraq when we built up, always on tanks and it's like oh shit, now we're on patrol and now we're foot patrol. Yeah, moving forward. I mean it's cool. I'm it's cool people are you know, people are in contact getting killed and whatever. But it's

cool to see tanks actually being utilized. It sucks that, hey, they can be knocked out by a drone. But shit, you know, like you said in two thousand and three to thirteen, like they're getting knocked out by IDs, which is, like you said, like a twenty dollars you know device. So it's it's interesting, it's interesting. I don't know how the US would go about operational wise on the Russian's doctrine for armors antiquated. From my perspective, Yeah, they got to figure something out though well.

I mean, I think we saw most of the dramatic like tank kills early on in the war, especially when they were still trying to figure out what the fuck they were doing. You know, they had a really bad habit of all bunching up on roads and kind of being in these massive columns and just like sitting there like open targets. And you would see too, like you still, I guess you still kind of see it where these guys are going around with their hatch open and they'll fly a drone right into the hatch. It's like, fuck, dude, you know, once that and once that ammo cooks off, that you're done for. I mean, once it goes in there and it blows up that ammo. Some of those videos that have come out of that war are crazy

watching the turrets blow off and everything and and that.

I said, that's that's just how Russian tanks they're built. They're not they're not built for crew survivability. As horrible as that sounds. The Abrams is built relatively, you know, cru survivability and ease of use. The marcavo are israelis that that's like, that thing's huge. It's huge because it is designed to keep the crew safe. You know, the ammo's ammos stored separately. They even have like an escape patch which they haven't used that, you know since like World War two era tanks, Russians were all all about the numbers, right, push them out, push them out, push them out. And yeah, they're deadly vehicles. I think the T eighty eight has like one hundred and twenty five millimeter barrel like in that round, that round will penetrate

and destroying Abrams. You know, hitting the right spot even at T seventy two, you know, you can knock a tank out. Yeah, it's they're not built for sub probability and their tactics and maybe it's just pissed for training. Obviously, the Russian government since the fall of the Soviet Union. They've been you know, lacking on on funding and training and you know, look at the curse. You know, there's a reason why, you know, they lost that stuff. Unfortunately, you know, we we kind of have that unlimited budget in the United States or we can continue to train and continue to improve over stuff.

We definitely look at military and military like objectives, how to take an objective in different ways. You know, the Russians will definitely what do they call them, uh like meat barrages or something like that. They're still like just pushing people just just into the grinder. It's like, hey, we're just going to keep pushing bodies at the problem until we wear it down so that you know, and they have in Ukraine Russia. The big thing that nobody actually wants to talk about is that Ukraine has way less people to throw out this problem than in Russia.

So it's like it doesn't matter what equipment we send them. At the end of the day, they just don't have enough people. And the Russians just keep throwing bodies at this, you know, into this meat grind or just and now these Koreans are getting killed over there. Like I saw something that said like forty percent of the Korean force had been killed or injured or something like that. I can't they were pulling them back from the front lines because of their casualties, I mean or missing. Yeah, it's a yeah. I think there are some defectors, for sure.

It's such a weird I don't know. Since the whole Ukraine Russian thing kicked off, I've wanted to ask more questions of armor people, because it seems like a situation where, you know, it's like a decision point do we continue how much do we can put into armor in the future. The Marine Corps got rid of our armor, Like we're saying, no tanks, it's not agile enough for what we need, what our mission is, and stuff like that. And again it can be taken out if it can be taken out with like a own that has a EFP on it and it just has to slam into the side of the tank, you know, how good of a weapon system is it. I don't think that. I don't think that they are obsolete, but I also think that, you know,

using them in the future is going to be different than like the how they were utilized previously.

You know, oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely and you know you look at like I mean, in the armor community we always say, uh, the last greatest tank battle was seventy three Eastings East think that seventy three Eastings in the Gulf War, and that that's an amazing story. What you know, I mechanized you and it can do the bradleys with the toe and then you know battalion or ALPNY size of Hanks Abrams just going to town.

On outrange. They were outraging all the Iraqis. You just couldn't range.

Them right yep. And that's the that's the amazing thing too. The weapons system on that, the computer everything, like when you have that that vehicle bore site, when you have that that that barrel boor site perfectly you have a laser you know, and it's it's as simple as oh, there's my target, get the side of it, hit my laser, I get an instant return, you know. And that that ballistic solution will compute up to three ninety five yards I believe.

And that was in two thousand and ten.

Yeah, so who knows, I don't know what it is now, you know. And then it's as simple as the minute you do that. The computers taking in curvature of the earth, aarometric pressure, heats, you know, elevation wind, and it's that and you may not even notice it. As a gunner. When you do that, the gun will move wherever it needs to move. Your site stays right on that target.

You know, tank matters is five, Are you on the way and target target? Like game over man.

Yeah, that's it's fair. That battle is a good battle for people to look up if they want to look up something on YouTube or something like that. There's a lot of good documentaries that discuss that. But you're right, that's a really cool, uh example of the usage of armor prior to what we're seeing now, you know, yeah run yeah.

Because I mean like the invasion of Iraq and O three you know, uh, and there were they were they were there were targets, armored targets that they were shooting. But I mean you look at like and that's the picture I have back here is thunder Run, which was Third Industry Divisions pushing the down Highway Highway one and Highway eight in the uh uh, the airport said, I'm international biop. Now, like there's some cool video and there's great books on it, but Uh, yeah, it's it's different.

It's changed. Like we were not that that uh, that seventy three Eastings shock Force, that the blitz Creek, if you will. Well, you know that we've kind of became when in the Gulf for of speed and power, I mean that's that's the Abrams gas turbine engine. I think we'll go forty five miles per hour, you know, and fly and you can still hit targets, you know, actually just just moving. But you know what moves faster than a tank, well, zoom, he's up top, you know, the Air Force, the Marine Wing, the Navy, like you know, there's a reason why those guys fly in and drop bombs and take out you know, important the targets before we even get to go in and do stuff. Just fights. Yeah, the fight's changed.

Yeah, yeah, it's uh. And then we'll keep changing, you know. That's how it works. I guess the technology and stuff. So I guess let's wrap it up, and I guess my final question is have you seen Fury and what did you think about it?

Yeah? Yeah, no, I saw fury. You know, every tanker's Brad Pitt. I don't know if you knew that or not.

Obvious.

Yeah, clearly it was a good movie. One of my tank one of my tank commanders. Uh. Actually I was involved in training those guys for that movie. He worked with He worked with Brad Pitt, So they got the fire commands. You know, it's Hollywood, so they got the fire commands pretty pretty down. But I mean, yeah, it's uh for what you see happens inside a tank. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's goofy. But I always joke with guys or you know people nowadays, and I'm like, well, listen, like you don't know what happens inside of tank in the middle in the Middle East. You don't want to know what happens inside the tank in the Middle East.

You know, it's four dudes just being dumb and young, you know, saying stupid ship, doing stupid ship. But uh, that was a good movie. It really, you know, the realisticness of it, what those guys did in World War two and and the the casualties those guys took was unreal. You know, I don't know why anybody would want to be a tanker back then, Like those guys were just getting knocked out left and right. There's a great book, Uh, who's I can't think of who wrote it. I can't think of the name of the book. It's from the author Animatos. He wrote Devotion. He also wrote a book I want to say it was like a armored or something about the first Pershing tank in World War Two.

And uh, they actually had video footage of that tank going toe to toe against the panther in the city of Cologne. There was a cameraman filming and it's it's wicked again. It's a completely different battle, completely different battle from then to now.

I think it was Rommel who said I think he yeah, I think he said that the German pans Aer tank could take out four American tanks, but unfortunately there was always five American tanks. That was like his quote, like their tanks aren't as good, but they just have so many more of them than we do. Kind of deal. Yeah, I get what you're saying too, about you know, four guys locked into a thing the conversations. People don't realize how you know, this is why you talk about other military people's like family, because you're around them so much.

Like it's hard for people to realize. Like in the real world, you get up in the morning and you go to work and you have your people that you see at work all day, and then you go home and you do your stuff at home. In the military, you get up in the morning and the same guys you see all day long. You're gonna go peete together.

Then you're probably gonna go eat together. Then you're gonna go to actual work together. And then when work's done, you're gonna go hang out together after it's over with. And then when you want these long training exercises or deployments, when it's a small team like that and it's the same four to ten guys that are all always together, the stuff you talk about just is out of this world, like off the wall shit, because you've talked about everything and you're like and sometimes you're just talking to like try to stay awake if it's a long day or something like that, and it's like some of this stuff, man, you definitely couldn't talk about it in polite society, you know.

But it's a good time, and I think, you know, it's not that's not a bad thing. I think it's good for people to get close like that and kind of really interact with other people and kind of see, you know, how people truly are.

But yeah, that was the one thing I loved. I did love about being a tanker. I mean, other than old free Ammo, the brother I mean's And that's probably why I went into the Fire Service right afterwards. It was the brotherhood. You get so close to these guys. You know, we're only a sixteen man sixteen man platoon, whereas an infantry platoon you got fifty guys, fifty sixty whatever it is. So you know these guys, these guys are your brothers. And yeah, I loved I obviously don't get along with everybody, but yeah, I love it. I loved it.

And it's good though, because you learn how to deal with people that you may not agree with because you have no choice but to deal with them. And that's something that's wrong with society today is they demonize everybody they don't agree with, and they want to even have a conversation with them or associate with them or anything like that because they have a choice. In the military, you don't have a choice. This guy you may completely degree with, disagree with everything he's about, his politics, his life choices, whatever, it doesn't matter. He's the dude next to you that you have to work with every day, so get over it, you know, and you find some common ground with those people. Yeah. Man, well, I really

appreciate you coming on and giving your perspective. Like I said, I don't think i've had another tanker on I. If I have, I feel bad. I'm sorry for whoever that may be. But I appreciate you coming on. Is there any kind of organizations or anything that you were looking to promote?

No, the only one I can think of is, like I said, I don't really have a channel or anything or whatever. I am a fireman outside cargo and uh, through our union, the International Association of Firefighters, we have.

Oh dude, I lost yet when you're promoting I'm gonna pause it until he comes to back on.

I suffered with survivors guilt.

Hold on just a second. Yeah, right, when you said the International Associating at Firefighters did froze, so everybody after that, okay? Yeah, Like I said, no, we have an organization through the International Associations Association of Firefighters, which is our nationwide union, called the Center of Excellence out in Maryland, and I believe they're trying to open one out in California. And uh, you know, when I got back from Iraq.

I suffered from PTSD, survivors guilt, t B, I, all that fun stuff. You know. We had lost We lost seven guys over there, my lieutenant being one of them, who I still you know, I have his name tattooed on my leg and I named my my firstborn daughter. His last name was Aids, John John Eads. My first born daughter is a frey Ida, kind of an honor to him. Since I couldn't I never made a boy.

But yeah, so I ended up, through the course of my time in the Fire Service and life progressing and a divorce, I ended up calling the Center of Excellence and going out there. Then when I got there and I was, you know, you know, whatever I tell my story, I'm you know, army veteran, two combat tourists to Iraq.

There was like sixty five percent of the guys there or gals there were veterans, and even even the counselors were like, yeah, there's a reason why you guys are here. You know, you guys think you can handle everything. You go from you know, the military, where you know it's go, go go, and you go right into like the Fire Service, the police, serre, you know, and your same deal. You're just you're just moving forward and you never stopped to like take care of yourself. So if there's any first responders, uh, you know, obviously suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And and uh, you know, I'm sure you justin as well as anybody listening, they know way too many people that have chosen that path. I know, I

know we have lost. I know more people that I've lost from that path than than combat, which is horrible. There's help out there, if there's anybody in the Fire Service through the I f F, reach out. If you need help, reach out to the CEO. It's a great facility, great great program, a bunch of veterans there. I still have a buddy that I talked to that I met out there who's a he's a dispatcher in Virginia Air Force guy. He's an Air Force cop. I don't even know that was a thing.

Apparently it is security forces, ye.

Security forces. But yeah, oh that's you know, there's programs out there, and I know a lot of us suffer, a lot of us suffer in silence, but you know, reach out for help, and if you're a fireman, that's a phenomenal, phenomenal place to go. So that's kind of my my push for mental health.

Good man. I think it's great, and I've said multiple times on the show before, one big thing that everyone can do is just reach out to somebody every once in a while and say what's up someone that you served with. You're like, hey, man, it's been a while, Hope you're doing well. They may not even respond to you, but at least you reached out and they see that someone is thinking about them, you know what I'm saying.

Like some people, some people leave the service and kind of become a recluse, you know, they don't wanna they don't associate with military at all. They don't talk to anybody that we're in with. That's fine, that's totally cool. But I think the best thing that we could do. I mean that no one can figure out suicide, and as much money as they put into it, we're just never going to figure it out. And I don't know what the answer to it is. And but I think that the best thing that we could do on this level is so just to reach out to people and say what's up, man, Hope you're doing well, you know, And I don't know. I do it every once in a while, you know. Actually, it's funny. Is this guy that I went to boot camp with. I was randomly like,

I wonder what he's up to these days, and I looked him up on LinkedIn and shot him a message, are like, hey, man, been a long time. Hope you're doing well. You know, I hope the military service as well. Found out he did a couple of deployments, he got up blown up once too, and and all that stuff and everything kind of caught up with him. But it's like that little thing. I don't know how he perceived it on his end, but that kind of conversation, you know, is a positive and it reminds people that you're someone's thinking about you. And the organization. You know, that brotherhood we always talk about shouldn't end when you pick up your DD two fourteen, you know, and it shouldn't be up to the government to make something happen. We should

do something on our own to kind of support people going through problems or anything like that. Even if you're not going through problems, you should still reach out to people.

Yeah, you know, and you know that's that's really right. It's us. We're the ones that can push the hardest to make things better, you know, moving forward for the next group, you know, for the next kind of ration, for the.

Next you know. And one of the leadership traits that the Marine Corps pushes is knowing yourself and seek self improvement. And you have to be honest with yourself. Man, Am I having problems right now? Is there an issue here? And if there is, go do something about it, because no one is going to be an advocate for your issues more than yourself. And if you don't do anything about it, you can't complain that no one's helping you, because it's it's kind of on you. You know what I'm saying to to have a positive mindset or a forward thinking mindset where you're taking you know, there's an issue coming up, or you're having problems with something and rather let it, letting it spiral out of control and

something horrible happening, get in front of it and kind of realize, hey, man, maybe I need to talk to somebody, or maybe I don't know. I ramble about this only because, like you said, I know guys that commit suicide. I mean, my roommate when I was in Iraq, we stayed in these things called Choose, which is the containerized housing units. Right, my roommate in Iraq and nine like I was on my I was doing my classes to get out of the Marine Corps. And I thought he committed suicide. Someone told me, and I was like, God, damn it, dude, you know, And that was like the first. Then you start hearing about guys dying, and it's like not always suicide, but I just don't get it, man, I don't get to suicides. We had a guy commit suicide on my

last appoyment on ship. He hung himself on the ship, and it was just like, damn, man, there's a whole ship full of people you could have talked to, you know, there's like over a thousand people on this ship, and he still felt lonely, you know what I'm saying. And it's just like I don't know how you can I don't know what you can do about that.

But I know for myself, I was so far into my own head, you know, and I isolated myself and it was the opener for me. And I always tell this to people, and I used to I used to be a fire instructor at a local college around here, so I would teach fire academy stuff and I'd always end with like, hey, you know, because obviously very silly.

And it's similar, right, like the stressors that we do within the fire service, the things we see and deal with. Suicide rate is huge in the fire service, sadly, and it's it's huge in the police, the party, you know, police service. The minute I I remember just hitting a wall and uh, one of my lieutenants, who is a Navy guy, is uh Navy guy. Uh. One of my lieutenants looked at me and he's like, hey, dude, you're good.

And I was like, no, I'm not good. And prior to that, I'd always said yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, Roger, Roger, carry on, I'm good. And uh He's like what's up? And I told him. And then from there it was just like man, everybody came out of the woodwork. Hey, I'm here for you. What do you need, I'm here for you. What can I do for you? Like it's like, holy shit, I'm out of one. And then even even when I went to the Coe, same deal. I reached out to guys i'd served I was like, hey man, like I'm at this place essentially rehab, what's going on?

And it was it was very therapeutic, and I'm sure it was for them to some extent, you know, just to talk to guys about things that you know, because it's it's the shitty thing, right we Unless you're a career, career military guy, you get out audio is by right, you don't. You don't really see anybody else. The closest, the closest I had. I have a buddy in uh Munster, Indiana, I rarely see anymore. I served within my unit, and then my buddy Mike Nixon who's from Displains and unfortunately Mikey you know, product of suicide. And you don't see these guys. You don't see them anymore. And we have technology, right, you have your phone, you have FaceTime, you can call them, you can do whatever. But everyone's life just kind of

goes on and you kind of separate.

Yeah.

But yeah, now now afterwards, like you said, I make a point of it that I will talk to random guys say hey man, just they remember this time in Iraq, Remember this time in training where we're like, you know, just checking in.

Yeah, you never know what's going to happen. I had one of my old radio operators called me up one day out of the blue, and we fucking talked for like an hour. It was like and it was like rolling back into the old days, talking shit, you know, harassing each other a little bit, kind of just catching up.

It was a It was a good thing. I will say, though, I think it's almost harder for career guys that get out because they put so much more into it. And that's not a dig on. I mean, I didn't retire, you know, I didn't stay in for twenty and retire. But those guys that that's all they've ever done. Like most guys like you and me and a lot of people get out with enough time to kind of get another job and maybe even start a whole new career.

When you get out of the military after twenty five years, maybe it might be hard to find another job. You may not need another job. But it's like, I don't know any every person that leaves the base for the very last time, it's a weird feeling because you're driving away and you're like, holy shit, I'm not going like that was it? You know, that's yeah, that's the end of that.

You hate it when you're in, but then you'd miss it when you're gone.

Yeah man, yeah, so yeah, Like we were saying, though, reach out to people, reach out for help if you need it. Be your own self advocate, you know, know your self, seek self improvement, Understand that there's something going on, and maybe you need some outside influences, either just a BS with a buddy, or maybe reach out for professional help, you know, in whatever area that you need help in.

You know, and as veterans, we have so many resources between the VA, which can can be hit or missed depending on where you're at. You know, I personally don't have and here in San Diego, the VA has been okay for me, but there's a you know, it's a military town. There's like two VA hospitals here. If I lived in the middle of nowhere in Indiana, it's gonna be a little different because the closest VA is gonna be farther away. But use like the VA. If you're in a business, you have a veteran business, you know, look at the Small Business Association or a Small Business is it Association SBA. Look at the SBA. They got programmed there's so many programs for veterans that you have these personal issues, professional issues. Use these programs like we've

been They've been funded in everything by the government. There's no reason not to use them. So look those things up, like you said, the Center of Excellence, if you're a firefighter, use those kind of programs. That's what they're for, is for people to utilize and become better, you know, at their job, better citizens, just better all around. And you know, it's good for all of us. So again, Scott, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Everybody. Yeah, man, everybody can check out my stuff. Jakremergraphics dot com is my website and at Former Action Guys at Former Action News is my Instagram, and that's it.

Man.

I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you very much, sir,

Ep. 225 | Scott Lyng | Army Tanker, Firefighter, and OIF Veteran

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin