[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's this perception out there was this perception. I think there's a lot of us who are working really hard to dispel it that you either go to war or you go to jail. The military has a last option resort of you can't get a job somewhere else so you should go join the military. And that's just patently false. And so, you know, it was one of those things where,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of people wanted to join the military. A lot of people with really, really stellar resumes in the aftermath of 9-11. We had a nation of people who said, send me. I want to go to war to fight for my country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now that's great for the country. It's hard if you want to go join the military. So, you know, I just graduated from college. Of course I'm going to become an officer. And of course I don't tell anyone in my family, anything that's going on. Right? So my hair was grown out. I was working out a lot to sort of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they thought I was just going off the deep end. You know, I just graduated from this expensive college. I sort of didn't really have direction or purpose.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, so I actually moved up to be closer to DC. I wanted to be closer to where I thought the action was. And by action I meant...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where service was happening and to me that was, that was New York and DC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I moved out to DC, I had some family up there. I worked as an analyst at a bank then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. Which is a great way to work a hundred hours a week by Wednesday. Right. And sleep on the floor, you know, for a couple hours before your, your boss is all 18 of them come in the next morning with more stuff for you to do. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was up in DC for, for that period because the interview processes were long and drawn out and I didn't know where I wanted to go, but all those places were in DC. So it was like going through those processes. There was a little bit easier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also the military process. So my first place that I applied was to become a Marine Corps officer and that just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going through, hey, you've been selected to go to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that just kept not happening. And eventually I was like, man, the wars are just passing me by. Like it's time. So do, do what you got to do, but you need to do it now or you will regret this for the rest of your life. So I went down and then I started talking to, uh, I went and was going to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To the Navy recruiting center, which I did and asked about becoming an officer in the Navy and how do I become a SEAL? And they're like, well, that takes forever. Right? And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he said the same thing, right? He's like, this takes forever, right? If you want to go be in special forces, that's you, you can do that when you're a captain promotable or oh three promotable or sorry. Oh, two promotable about to be a captain. I think was, was the timeframe on that. So that's years away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, the idea of going and joining an infantry unit or something, it didn't appeal to me. I wanted to be... I mean, you have these grandiose notions of what you're capable of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I wanted to be the guy in the mountains hunting bin Laden. That's what I wanted to do with my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so the guy sensed this, you know, these recruiters, they, they know when they've got something. He's like, well, we've got this special program.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? You can go straight off the street and join special forces. It's an enlistment. I'm like, ooh, that kind of sounded like a bad word to me. Enlist?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? I mean, college degree, you have all these senses of what you're entitled to or what you should be doing with your life. And part of those are pressures that you're felt from outside forces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no doubt expectations that family and loved ones, they have for what your life should be, you know, the perfect life like Edward Norton and Fight Club, right? Assigning value to the furniture in your house and what, what apartment you have and all these things that really don't matter. But you, you think about what you should do in life in order to be happy and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Enlisting to go be a ground pounder in the army was, was a little bit removed from what I thought my direction should be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yet that was my choice. It was do this or sit around and wait forever until they call and say, okay, now you're validated and can go to become an officer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, I didn't know anything about this process. I didn't have anybody that I talked to about what people did in these jobs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, the irony is that my next door neighbor that I lived next to in Florida growing up for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, since 92 was an officer, a special forces officer in the army. And it took until my mom found out, cause I told her that I'd enlisted, which just to jump to the, the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The end, a little bit here, I ended up signing a five year contract.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So x-ray just basically means that 18 series is the MOS and the x-ray is the designator for, we don't know what your job specifically within the, within special forces will be. If you pass it, we'll assign it to you later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you gotta do something. I mean, there's lots of other alternatives. You can do nothing, and you can regret it. And that's a really, that's the worst path of all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a very true, I mean I've yet to meet the person who served in the military that regretted it. Everybody says I learned so much and what you really learn is a perspective on life. I don't care if you're an officer or you're enlisted or whatever. You learn about teamwork and camaraderie not as posters on a, on a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That reward of service to a higher purpose than just myself. I want to help other people. And when you connect those dots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just, you need to go do it. Now I, I really, I caution people against thinking, oh, well I'm going to enlist so that I can become an officer. It's, it's very rare. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You sort of say it's not about the actual mechanics. It's about service and you, you get to pick your path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you need to pick your path wisely, and you need to do it when you're young. When you're 20, here's what nobody tells you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You graduate from college or you're 20 years old or whatever, your basic value in the universe is nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're just, you don't have wisdom or perspective. You don't know yourself. And that's the biggest part of this. You haven't been through enough adversity at a mature enough age, even if you've got a horrific childhood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not at a mature enough age to know yourself well enough as you get older. And so what the military does is it forces you through adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To learn more about yourself, to how you'll respond to these kinds of challenges in life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Life's a really hard place for all of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you don't get good at doing hard things by only doing easy things. So take this job offer and this cush, whatever that you got and wad it up and throw it away and find some cause that you really believe in to serve and go, go do that and see what path that leads you to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because for me, it's, it's got nothing to do at this point about, oh well, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The specifics of, well, a career or however many years in the army and it's got everything to do about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way of life that I want to lead, that I want others to lead with me, which is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Based upon the time that I spent in Special Forces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the rest of your life. For the rest of your life you get this thing. But what else, where else are you going to find this in your twenties? Yea, no. Where else? You're not. You're not. You're not. And it doesn't just have to be the military. There are a lot of other organizations that, you know, you can serve that are American needs. You can go be a teacher. You can go, there's lots of things that you can do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But ultimately you need to find something with a mission and purpose that you really believe in and just pour your heart into it. Work really, really hard. Learn what that feels like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never change, if something goes on for too long and you do not like waking up in the morning, then you've gotta change something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two jobs, one paycheck. Sometimes the second job is moonlighting is a passion, a hobby. Try to turn that into reality. Work really hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's not shortcuts in this. It's not, hey, let me, let me fire up a brand new Instagram account and that's my new passion in life and I'm gonna become a millionaire. It's ridiculous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, find something that you really love to do, and two jobs, one paycheck. That's the deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or more, sure. Ten jobs, one dude. I mean, figure it out. And by the way, traveling the world in hopes of finding yourself is not a good plan. That's my general, that's my general experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, I kind of knew I didn't want to do that. I just think there's a lot of people out there that want, especially in America, where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's so much opportunity. We can do so many things with our lives here. There's just so much freedom we don't even realize. And yet we feel enslaved to other people's expectations. And so we start falling into that trap of well, I gotta go do this and I gotta earn this much and I gotta chase that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were absolutely, my mom cried in the kitchen. She would have cried if she would have cried if I wanted, if I told her I was becoming an officer either, uh, as well. I mean, it was just one of those things where.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a time of war and that's hard for moms and god bless moms, I think they have the hardest job on the planet. And, and so, you know, that was just a really difficult time. You know, we had, it was October of 2003 that I, that I enlisted and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the war in Iraq had kicked off. I felt like I'd missed it. You know, you see them toppling the statue of Saddam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I felt like I missed it. And you know, yeah, so I came back from the recruiting station and I told my mom in the kitchen and my brother was sitting on the, my brother's younger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was sitting on the counter and I, I'd missed some calls and some stuff and my mom was upset with me and generally my mom just didn't know what I was doing with my life either. Right? Because she had expectations that I was going to do something important with my life and I wasn't doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I told her that I'd enlisted to go join special forces and she just lost it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three weeks. Oh really? So maybe I'm gonna sit around October 1st and I left 28th of October. Pretty quick turn, turn down there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and then there's the aftermath with the grandparents and my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just the, the family. So as we talked about earlier, I mean, my mom was really young when she had me. And so a lot of the rest of my family took a very vested interest in me and I'm the person that I am. I know such thing as a self-made man and I'm a product of the time and effort that they spent to help


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Raise me. Including my dad. I spent tons of time with my dad in Ohio in the summer and his parents and I just had a lot of people in my life. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My dad was actually almost relieved. Yeaah. He just said, okay, that sounds about right. Yeaah. And, but, you know, everyone worries. You have to just accept that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So selfishness is something that gets thrown around as a very negative thing. And, you know, part of what


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to do to make yourself happy is you have to be selfish. You have to say and call it whatever you want, but this makes me happy. I need to do this regardless of the consequences and it's not just a soldier that goes to war. The family is very much a part of that experience and I completely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shut them out throughout this entire process and then just dropped a bomb on him. He said, I'm, I'm leaving in a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna go to bootcamp and then I'm going to war. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there was a part of me that really felt like that. I knew I needed to do it, but it's, it's a scary thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's a lot less scary to me now. I mean, the idea of, hey, you've got to go back on the next smoking bird to Afghanistan or Iraq. I mean, it's still something, if you're not scared, at least a little bit, if you don't get an adrenaline rush, if someone's shooting at you, there's a problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like if you're not mortally aware of, of, of what's going on,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's probably something not quite right. And yet at that time, it was just so unknown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was gonna die. And I'm sure my mom did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, how miserable it was. It was, and I was a little older, so I was 24, and I was like, had a little bit more perspective maybe than some of the guys were 17 and 18, which maybe that wasn't a good thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I would sit and why are they doing this? That's the worst thing you can ask yourself. Why? It doesn't matter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just do it. You have to learn how to just do. And so, this is one of those things that you need to learn in your twenties. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because if you align yourself with something that you don't believe in with a person you don't really respect and they're telling you what to do, you're going to adapt your life to their way at that time. And the, the military.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's got a very powerful way of creating


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very strong people, wherever you started, you will end up stronger for your time in the military. And that all begins with this basic common experience of basic training. And I just, I couldn't believe how, how hard it was and how.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just, it was completely void of all social norms and etiquettes and all of those things. I mean, nothing was off limits in terms of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their ability to denigrate you for any reason whatsoever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do it or do it or quit and you can't quit bootcamp. You can quit buds or special sports qualification course. You can't quit your, you literally go AWOL.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then they go find you and one guy went 8 wall and they found him at the gas station, you know, off base or whatever, trying to get someone to buy him some coffee or something, whatever, and they brought him back and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, then he was back into it except he was a guy with a bullseye on him because he's the guy that went AWOL. And they dragged him back. And it's, it's, I can't stress enough what you just said. You have zero privacy. And this is a culture shock for a lot of people because this is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole, everything that we do, our system is based around a culture of, of I. Right? At its basic level now, you have your iPhone, you have your individually wrapped everything, you have, you know, me, me, me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, and that's gonna make you happy, or that's, you know, everything is just centered around the individual. And the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The army just doesn't prescribe to that privacy. I mean, there's all these privacy debates now, social media and your data and all of the privacy as if that's just some right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you have. And that's fine, there's some nuance to that. Well, let me just tell you,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Zero percent of that exists in the military. Zero. Like you said, I mean, there's just a lot of naked dudes, you know, with open latrines and it's just, that's what it is. And you learn that that's kind of a primordial way to exist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you are much more in touch with how our species evolved over


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so now as that evolved for me, one of, one of the most important lessons, and this is where you have to spend a lifetime mastering it is to understand that to be a great teammate, first you have to be a great individual and then you have to submit to the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because anybody on your SEAL teams or my Special Forces teams, they're, these are people that can do anything with their lives. They, if they commit themselves, they will do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so you have to become a master of your trade, a true professional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that, that requires the discipline that you have as an individual when nobody's looking over your shoulder to just continually refine and sharpen, sharpen the blade, right? Your own. And then though, you have to realize that it's not about you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's a, it's a balancing act for an entire lifetime. And the more that, the more that you do both of those in concert, the more rewarding life will be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Period. It's the ultimate motivation. Yeaah. Yeaah. Like to be a part of that community and the community sharpens itself. I mean you get guys and competition breeds excellence. Yeaah for sure. And so you've got this world where as iron sharpens iron so a friend sharpens a friend and that is just every day on the team. Everything's a competition. Everything's a competition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, for me, I, they kind of were lumped in together cause you know, it was infantry bootcamp and infantry, AIT, whatever it was. It was just the same entire crew at the same place in Fort Benning over the winter in Georgia, which was just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's, it's horrible. It's really, really cold and they just, they, they put you in formation at Odark 34 or whatever. Stand there. You just stand there and shiver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From these guys standing in this formation with all this available time to sit and think about how miserable their life is, right? And then you say, how do you come up with something sort of cute? Oh, suffering silence, you know, just stuff like that. And yeah, there's a lot of lines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's incremental. You don't just wake up one day and all of a sudden you're Abraham Lincoln, right? It doesn't work that way. You can't just sit and read books all day. You have to actually take books and apply them to harder situations incrementally. And what the military taught me that teaches all of us is what you're capable of doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what you're capable of enduring and it pushes your body and it pushes your mind in miserable, horrific ways. And you gain confidence from that and you just, you climb one rung higher on the ladder. And then when life gets really, really hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then you can draw upon what you learned throughout that process of the last rung that you, you climbed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the evolution of that for, for me was we were the early phases of the special sports qualification course. The cadre lined us all up and not just for formation, but he goes, all right, here's the task at hand. You're going to lunge around this building until I get tired.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, like, so, you know, at that point, standing in formation didn't sound so bad. You know, lunge around the building until I get tired and you're sitting there thinking, of course you don't say it, but, but Kadri, how are you gonna get tired? You're not doing the lunging.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I went to airborne school next, so you know, went straight from graduating bootcamp to then, you know, you're checking in over at those barracks at airborne school and that's three weeks. And then I got the, made the trip to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. So I drove from Benning to Bragg and checked in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So part of the 18 X-ray program is, is that there were preparation courses. So, you know, special forces selection is done out at Camp McCall, but there was a prep course that happened at Fort Bragg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was three weeks maybe. And were they trying to teach you anything or are they just trying to get you physically ready? So the main skill that they had to show you was rucking and land navigation. So all land navigation for us is 45 pounds dry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the, the pine forest of North Carolina and you do a lot of rocking, but, but the skill is how to, how to use map and compass in order to find points. And besides that, they just, there was a lot of training quote, quote, to get us ready for, for the real selection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well no, there was a ton of, of PT. I mean, a ton. Right. In, in that period of time. And these were...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so what was really, really cool, in other words, get some, it was just get some all the time. And, and so what was really, really cool though was you had, this was early 2004, spring of 2004.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And our cadre were some of the guys who had been first into Afghanistan. They were the horse soldiers in there that had literally come back. Those are the guys that I wanted to be. They were my heroes. And everybody gets uncomfortable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Taliban for us. To avenge what happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On 9-11 and now they're telling me to go run and rock and do pushups and half the time they're doing it with us because they're about to go back to war. I mean, the way this works is you come back and you do some time as a cadre or as an instructor. And then you go back on, on an ODA on an operational detachment, alpha and a team, if you will, and you deploy again. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they were gonna stay in physical, great physical shape as well. They didn't do everything with us, of course. Roll around in the gig pit and do all that stuff. They, they spent their time doing that already. But you know, how do you not, how do you quit on them?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These are the things that went through my head, I mean, it was just... Do people quit during the prep course? Oh, so it ended up being the prep, the prep course was a lot harder than actual Special Forces selection for me. And for most of us, I mean, the pass rate for those of us who went through this prep course was something like 95%.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the prep course there was significant. I don't remember all the numbers exactly. Let's say we started out with 200 and not, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't get to go to the prep course, because you're supposed to know rucking and land navigation, or you have to train on your own. You know, you want to do that, two jobs, one paycheck. You figure it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you, you find time when you're at your unit deployed in Korea to go rock and to learn land nav, cause it's, or to, to stay proficient.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just- Would you guys rock every day? So short answer is, if it's not every day, it's just about every day. And so-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For us, I mean, the, the mechanics of the Q course are all land navigation based in the pine forest of Fort Bragg. You always have, you start out on the kind of timed iterations, it's 45 pounds dry, right? So that means not counting water, not counting consumables, stuff like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're doing all of that with a rucksack on. So you just learn the way of the rock. I mean, and it just becomes an extension of your body. You're moving with that rock and it is just a really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then there's ruck PT, you know, you take your Alice pack and you put it above your head and now start lunging or, you know, you're, it's just, the ruck is just your thing. It's you have your rifle, but we didn't do a lot of marksmanship stuff in the Q course at all. I mean, there's a couple of days at the range, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once you get to your, once you get to your team, there's a time, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But everything is just with the ruck. And then you advanced to patrolling and the rucks get even heavier. And then you have, you know, your MOS phase. I went and became a communication sergeant. So it's radios. 18 echo. 18 echo. Exactly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Batteries don't weigh nothing. Radios don't weigh nothing. Just like bullets and all of that stuff and they don't weigh nothing. So you have to get comfortable moving weight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't explicitly teach you how to ruck. This is one of the things that uhm, I want to help impact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, the other part of this though, is the military takes the fun out of just about everything. Okay, they can't take the fun out of camaraderie, but everything else, like, oh, you wanna go jump out of airplanes? It'll be awesome. Was airborne school awesome? Cause for me, it wasn't awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Little fins and it's just like, you know, no idea. So rucking is not as simple as, oh, it's, it just sucks when you first do it. I mean, the military 45 dry and you're expected to move really fast. That's a, that's not what I would recommend as a beginner's weight, right? Now it's just in the army. That's kind of what it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was not good at a lot of things. I was, I had to learn how to not overthink stuff. You know, rucking was my thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I'm, I got really long legs and it just, it came easy to me. So more weight load me up. And you know, when we would go on our patrols, they would not put me at point, right? Cause when you're at point, you're sort of setting the pace and getting the hay slow down. I mean, I'm just my, I'm six, four, my legs are really long. I don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other things came a lot harder to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I would, I would do okay at the running part. I mean, there is a cardiovascular part to, to rocking and, and at the time I would you win a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rock comp. So I was, I was always very, very competitive with that. I mean, top few guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The rucks are really heavy. I mean, the heaviest ruck I carried in the Q-course was 125 pounds. We had to jump in with that and then ruck that for a day. And that was the culminating exercise called Robin Sage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so when a lot of times military folks will say rucking sucks, it's like yeaah, that kind of rucking really sucks, right? And then what you do is you show up to where you're supposed to be and you dig fighting positions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? And you, you know, and then the cadre comes and he blows you out of those fighting positions with arty sims.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, time to go. And then you go and you dig more fighting positions and you don't sleep and you don't eat and you got a rucksack on your back and you say, man, rucking sucks. Like, well, it's not just the rucking that sucks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Physical experiences of my entire life have come after a long ruck and you take that ruck off and you sit down, sort of the rucksack flop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just sort of sit down on the rock and then you take the shoulder straps off and you can feel the blood flow just going back everywhere in your body. And it's like your whole body feels like it does after you take ski boots off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's just so awesome. You can just feel what you did. I just love it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 18 echo course. It was like three months. And so it was- Did you learn Morse code? I was the first class that did not learn Morse code. So it would have been six months. Week. Week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was three months and it was run by these, god bless them, it was these two third group guys named Blade and Razor. I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You run in your military career and you have these instructors that really just teach you things about life. And it's, it's never.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, this is important because, and you know, they had just, they were dive,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were dive guys within SF, which is just, it's just another suck school that you go to down in Key West. And it's a real suck school, not a gentleman's course at all. And you're already a Green Beret and you go do that. And then you join a dive team and it's just another sort of notch, right? That you have. And so they take their physical fitness within our community, even just a little bit more and they come back and they basically said, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's gonna be no slugs that come through this course, ever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. And so, I mean, it was just, you would show up first thing in the morning and blade would drive his F nine 50 or whatever it was. This thing was just enormous and he was blasting his music and he would say, welcome to pain roulette. Right. And it was basically like, we're going to play a song and you're going to do an exercise for that entire song.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, when stairway to heaven comes on and you're doing pushups, that sucks. But the thing was, is he was doing it with us. He's like, look, I'm going to go back to third group when I'm done here. I'm going to take a team and we're going to go back to Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and we need to be ready. And you all need to be ready. And those who stress the seriousness of the job and the ways that you can become a professional in your trade, those are the ones that you respect the most. That you, you, you yearn to please them because you respect them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was how I felt in that course. So it was again, physical fitness was just the foundation and you have to have it in the community. You have to be able to do the work physically in order to fight for your, for your country. And so, yes, we learned some skills.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But most of the training was kind of outdated, right? We didn't deal with gun trucks setups. We didn't deal with any of the things that we were actually going to go do in war. We learned the basics of radio functionality and stuff like that. And we learned how to carry really heavy rucksacks full of batteries and radios.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We did. Yes. That was one of the go no go events and it's, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a lot of excuses that you can actually claim that are reality when it comes to being a radio guy, because how all that stuff happens, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sunspots and, you know, the, the universe didn't want this calm shot to happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, sir, there's, uh, sunspots in the AO today and, you know, but ultimately you have to just keep trying. It's like anything else, you have to just persevere and figure out how to make your shots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But so look, did you gain confidence from that? Of course you did, right? And is that the kind of confidence that you, you draw upon later in life when life gets really, really hard? I mean, all you had to do was figure out how to move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Move a little bit and, you know, make sure the canopy wasn't covering wherever your shots had to be made or whatever. But later in life, life gets really hard and you draw upon, Hey, I know how to do this. I just keep persevering and I'll get it. We'll get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It goes back to kind of overthinking stuff and the best example that I have of this is, you know, you learn the differences in ambushes, right? Techniques. There's a linear ambush and there's an L shaped ambush, right? And there's sectors of fire and where's the enemy coming from? You know, it's, it's terrain and all these various factors dependent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the cadre, there was, you know, our team of say 15 or so, and he's giving us a class on this, which is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sort of what you, you referenced in the intro here. Sure, you have the opportunity to ask questions. Don't ask questions. You know, that kind of deal. And of course I ask a question, you know, college boy, right? I'm like, so, I don't really understand the difference or why we would choose a linear ambush here instead of an L-shaped ambush. And it was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Took time to, to really sink in and you know, special forces in theory is a place where you're supposed to think critically and you're supposed to ask questions and you're supposed to do all these things and you are, you just have to learn when to do that and when not to, and you have to trust the judgment of the guys around you and you, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That took some time for me. And then the, the other two big things were that infill in Robin Sage with 125 pound rucksack for a day. And then, you know, that, that was, that was horrific. And every green beret you ever talked to, if you mentioned the Sage infill, they will cringe just a little bit. What's the distance?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, all I remember is you're maybe moving a mile an hour. I mean, 125 pounds patrolling through the pine forest and you're doing it for 18 hours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean the Sage Info was the culminating exercise of the Special Forces Qualification. Yea yea yea. You gotta bring it, right? If you're up there and you're setting the training agenda, you say, this needs to be something memorable, and it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There, there should be thought given to, how do you reduce the load of soldiers? Because there's an inherent bravado element that comes from being the guy that carried 125 pounds that you don't, the idea, we were borderline combat ineffective throughout this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I mean, so, we just see though...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's, there's planning for everything. Like you have to have everything on you all the time. And you know, speed is security, right? That's one of, that's a foundational doctrine thing, right? The faster you can move, the safer that is. There's more security inherently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when you weigh more, you have more stuff weighing you down, you're not gonna move as fast. So, you know, I mean, I think this is just one of those things where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the military, some conversation around that is good because bravado is great, 125 pound training rucks, great. That's a, that's a lesson in the suck, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got orders, yeaah, so they just tell you. I mean, so for us, we also have language training and stuff like that. What language did you do? So I actually passed out of German. And so that assigned me to 10th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, in college I studied abroad there and then I had a buddy who was a, he was a border.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exchange student in America, my high school. And so I lived with him for a summer while I was in college and lived in their house and picked it up. So just passed out of the language portion. And so that, that got me to 10th group, which the classic area of operations is Europe. And then there's, you know, in the global war on terror though, you get pulled everywhere. And so ours ended up being Iraq.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're supposed to be, I hung out on the B team for a little bit because the, for whatever reason, sometimes you get not the best spot to get put on. Um, and there's one B team that supports all the A teams in a company. So there's six.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Six ODAs or six A teams and one B team, aka headquarters support. And so, you know, no matter what it's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like you graduate and you think you're this great Billy bad ass green beret and right, and then you find out that in your company where you're showing up, everyone's a green beret and they've actually done stuff as a green beret in war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you've done none of that. And so, you know, the floors are never clean enough. The head's never clean enough. Like that's your, that's your job and you're supposed to shut up and learn from the people that are around you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, probably five months and then we deployed. Yeah. So about five months and I went to some schools in that process though. They sent me to a school called SOTAC, which is the army special forces equivalent of, of JTAC. So special operation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Terminal attack controllers course. So learn how to call in, in bombs out in Yuma, Arizona and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I spent some time and went to a shooting school and did that type of stuff, but didn't join a team until the spring of 2007 in Iraq.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so this was the, you know, this was the surge, right? This was a messy time in Iraq. I know, I know, I don't have to tell you that. And we were down in the south, started out in Basra, which was just,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I mean, for, for people out there, right, I mean, Basra was more aligned with Iran through the Shia connection than it was with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just a chaotic time. I mean that IEDs, so roadside bombs and then specifically EFPs, so explosively formed penetrators, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You get the point, right? It's an IED, it's a roadside bomb, rather, that would cut through anything. So it would, it would...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and then I got sent to a team in, that was operating in, out of Talio air force base. So Nazaria area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they were basically alone as an ODA. And this is, you know, the early days of this was a pick province. So provincial Iraqi control.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically what that meant, and you talked a lot about this in Extreme Ownership, was you couldn't go out without the Iraqis. The Iraqis had final say, the governor of the province determined the missions that would go out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so there was this one ODA there and the regular army that was stationed there was, was not infantry or they, they just didn't have approvals to go out at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we were working with the local police force there. So this by with and through mission that was, that's, that's what SF, that's what special forces is all about, right? Is working with local indigenous forces to achieve a greater desired in-state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so that was our mission. We were working there and there, it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was not busy until it was, but I got sent there because they didn't have the ability to call in bombs if they would go out on a mission. So I had this designator, this school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I thought it was a horrible fate to get sent to the B team when I first showed up at group at Carson cause


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you can't be Jason Bourne on the B Team, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You gotta build trust. The guys around you. So, sometimes that means you, you do a really good job of cleaning mop in the floors. You do a really good job of staying in shape. You control what you can control.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And people will eventually take notice of that. And they'll say, hey, we want to give you more responsibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, I'd been sent to this school and had this designator and got sent to a team in Nazaria and that's why I got sent out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had rotated back and we were in a bunker on base and this was one of those instances where-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it was American control base, so large, you know, large runway, stuff like that for supplies and, I mean, C-130s would land there to take your pick. There was a whole, we were just a 30 minute car ride or truck ride, you know, the Hiluxes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Around the whole airfield and stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they had their own compound in town and this is one of those things. It was kind of a coming of age story. So they thought, right, you know, okay, this is now a pick province and the team before us had lived with them and amongst them, but we don't need you guys anymore. Go back to your base. Whoa. We got this. We're, we're good to go and check.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. And it just, it's one of those things where then they wanted cash and guns, right? We need cash and guns in order to provide security in the town. And we were just, you know, paying them and we were giving them training, which was just sort of part of the deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And train them on basic tactics and all of that stuff. And that was our, you know, we were just doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so to get to the sort of crux of this, you know, it was, it was quiet until it wasn't. And, you know, when you go to war, you want to be in war. It's one of those things, be careful what you wish, what you wish for, but you want to prove your metal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's just inherent in anybody, especially when you go through the type of training that you go through in that community.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You've either been to war and seen real combat or you haven't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To really earn the respect of the guys around you, you need to, you need to do that. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We wanted to do that. I mean, I was new. Some other guys had kind of been there, done that, but they were comfortable in this environment. They viewed it as making a difference, getting out and doing stuff in town.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was, there was this one morning I'd woken up from radio watch, which, you know, you always have someone to radio watch 24 seven around the clock. The team rotates through and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, we got an intel, or sorry, the, our local police force called us and said there had been, you know, an attack and they tried to assassinate the, they, right, had tried to assassinate the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the police chief in town who were training his troops. He was the colonel and were training all his troops.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, cause now they need us, right? Their guys are pinned down, bunch of them got killed, they're in a hospital in the middle of town, and chaos, just chaos, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you start to activate the intelligence networks that, you know, other guys on our team had been developing throughout that time. And, you know, the intel that we got, of course, later was that McToddell Sodder Mookie had sent down whatever 1500 troops to assassinate the local police chief and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rain chaos down on that part of town, institute, whatever he wanted to do to destabilize the, the region. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our job was to, to make sure that it would stay stable. I mean, you don't want to give up ground and war, especially not a whole city or else you got to go back and retake it. And that's, that's really messy. You got to meet violence with violence sooner. So we had to, you know, go through all these approval processes to get out and to go out into the town.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, with our partner force and it just, it turned into a, it was a very wild, wild west type of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, the crazy part was the bureaucracy was still just rearing in full swing. I mean, we had to get the governor of the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of this province to sign something that would let us go outside, like we went out to the police compound and then had to come back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, you don't want to let more people come in and take more ground in a city. And so, you know, we eventually got to go back out and we had our, our partner force there and you know, we're just working with the, the, the guy who was in charge of the, the police colonel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was like, we're pulling out a map on the hood of a Humvee saying, where are the bad guys? Like, where are they? And then you get in your trucks, your gun trucks, and you line up and, you know, there's, realize the stakes here, there's three or four gun trucks and there's, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 1500 bad guys maybe? And that's, that's a, not good odds, right? That's a rough one. Now, that was the Intel report.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course, you know, the headquarters is scrambling to get us any type of support that we needed. And, you know, what we needed was obviously air support. So that was my role on our team was to ensure that we had cover from above from the Air Force.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the morning, this kind of spin up. Oh, that's right, you woke up. Yeah, so, well, I kept going, I was on radio watch, so it just sort of extended through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, so then by the time it really started to, to pick up, by the time we got to the hospital with our Iraqis and you know, we got our Humvees and they got their pickup trucks and there's, you know, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, exactly, and they got their saw mounted in the back and, you know, their windows are down and all that stuff and, you know, at that time it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it still is, but the IEDs were just, that was, I mean, it's the same destabilizing battlefield force as a sniper. It's just such an unknown thing, you can do absolutely everything right, and you will just still die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's, that's just the reality that you face. And so at some point, you know, in this process, everybody has to say, you know, I might die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am absolutely 100% mortal. I've seen that this is, this is very much a contact sport. Other guys playing it have died in this contact sport and you have to just remove that from your brain and you have to go do your job and you have to be smart and calculating about the risks that you're willing to take because there's this perception and I certainly had it that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Green Berets and seals and all of these types are just out there taking all of these crazy risks to take on these crazy missions. And that's just patently false. There is so much risk mitigation, both through training and planning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uh, it's a lot different than what I had expected and it's a lot more effective.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] War is just a metaphor for life, right? War, business, love, and life are all the same thing to me. If, if you...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you don't risk anything, you will not gain anything. No risk, no reward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're not willing to quit some job you hate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're not willing to tell the girl that you love that you love her and ask her on a date, Romeo,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? If you're not willing to go after what you want most in life, you're not going to get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's risk involved with that. Of what? Failure? Humiliation? None of those.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is as bad as regret. And we have regrets when we don't risk anything. So make sure that the mission and the purpose is worth the risk and do everything you can to mitigate the risk and then do everything you have. There's a lot worse things than dying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we got to the hospital, you know, we recovered. There's a lot of wounded guys that were pinned up there. They're loading them into the back of the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back of the pickup trucks, and it's dark out, you know, and there's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I'm, I'm scanning cause my basic only job. Realize this is my second mission out. I mean, it's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First mission out, I mean, there's sort of some pseudo missions, but we didn't do sort of recon by fires like you talked about with, you know, when you had your, your,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My only job was to focus on the aircraft. I don't know anything about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Conducting wartime operations yet. Nothing. This is my first real mission. So I just had to focus on the task at hand and my job for our team in order for me to not let our teammates down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was to do everything I could to trust in the training that I had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and make sure that the aircraft was doing everything that they could do to support us because they have a great vantage point up there. They can see lots of stuff. And if you've ever had a, you know, hammer was the call sign, the AC 130 gunship, I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is just, I mean, that as a battlefield asset is unrivaled. It's unrivaled. It is unbelievable. Yes. What that can do. Salute to the AC-130. I mean, God bless the Air Force.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Literally, I mean, it is just a vital support role that they play. I mean, you know, there's this idea of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you get into combat. I mean, there's a reason. All's fair in love and war, right? All's fair in war. There's no such thing as unfair. So I want, I want a gunship.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had a huge stack. I mean, so you're basically stacking all sorts of different aircraft at different levels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, we'll never fully know. What we do know is that the first building, we started taking contact as we were moving and, you know, the local fighters,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We don't, we assume that they did not think that there was Americans here, right? In, in this section of oops, where they were oops is right. Because you know, the Iraqis also had humvees that we had given them and we're not here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like my favorite color is red, white and blue together in the American flag. That's my all time favorite color. But when we go to war, we're not going to go fly that proudly on the back of our Humvees and say, Hey, the Americans are here, right? We're going to wait until you shoot at us from behind and in front. And then that big building where there was lots of barrel fire, that's going to go away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, or it's gonna have, it's gonna look like swiss cheese at the end of it. And this was not one of those...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very complicated wartime situations. I mean, we were there to support our partner force to provide security in this


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's, that's basically what it was, but it was, you know, a lot of rounds, the city where we would go back to the, back to his base and put.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The map back on the trunk of the Humvee.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we'd say, where are the bad guys? Well, it's amazing what kind of intel you can get from...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, to basically sit there and call the coordinates up to some of the fast movers, so some of the jets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they would go recon that part of town and they would say, nope, no activity there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, you know, you pull back in to bass and you got that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That chemical dump and you're just sort of, you see out there how guys can go on these missions and then just fall asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not because you're just so physically tired. I mean, it's part of it maybe, but there's just this huge kind of, okay, we're back on base or we're back wherever. And you can just fall asleep so quickly because your body is allowed to relax of sorts. You feel safe again, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, but we come back and you know, then it's right back to the priorities of work. You've got to gas up the trucks because you're going back out by the way, because it's not like one night you just, the multi-headed Hydra is just dead now. That's not how it works, but you know, our headquarters element had sent all sorts of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other A-teams and, you know, the Iraqi commandos were there and then it was for the week, the next week it was just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of actioning, all sorts of new intel that came in and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, um, yeah, it ended up not being some sort of martial law type situation that we were fighting, but it's also kind of a doctrine based thing where if you meet violence with violence and speed of action, you can, you can take back the high grant high ground or take back the, the town itself. And so that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who knows? Who knows what would have happened if the insurgents would have been more successful and would have taken over the police compound and would have done these various things? Who knows? Then you gotta fight to take the ground back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you do hard things with people and you do them well and you build trust with them, then they want to work with you. And that cuts across all different lines, right? So whether it's Navy working with Army and Marine Corps or whether it's, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Us working with the Iraqis and working with the Australians that were on base at that time as well. And they were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were great in support of the mission that we were there as well. And when you do hard things,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just develop a bond with people and that's foundational in the military. And, and so we found that we were much more effective training them. We, we were much more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were much more receptive to the intelligence gathering in their town and just working with us in general. And so then we could go on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Patrols with them or go on missions with them in their town going after the stuff that they wanted to go after, you know, and that was effective because we, we were better at the tactics, but they were better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were better as the first guys in the door. They, they speak the local. They have, they know all the local stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So ours was kind of the full scale, all encompassing special forces mission. This was not some hugely kinetic driven operation. We didn't have the commandos. That was a good mission to get. That was not what our team had, right? So the commandos were a national level Iraqi force and you would assign one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our partner force was a police force, and over there, I mean, what's the difference between soldiers and police? You know, very little. I mean, in a lot of ways. They carry around machine guns, they, you know, it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Running our own and then there's a guy on the team who's his job. He's the intelligence sergeant and he's running, you know, assets and all that stuff in the town and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, it's the buy with and through mission. So we're gathering intel in town through random sources or not random, but various sources. And then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you try to do is you try to train your force up by doing stuff, right? You don't just- OJT. On the job training, exactly. You don't just gather all your intel and just keep it to yourself. You need to get your force out doing stuff so that they can gain confidence from doing stuff in life. That's how this works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's some intel on this, and then we would go out with them, and they're the first in, because that's what you want. I mean, you sit and think, unless you've got some really high value target, where,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're gonna send in your own very best guys because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Failure is not an option. I mean Bin Laden raid is of course a good example. You're gonna send in...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The people, you're not gonna let your partner force go in first. You're gonna take care of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, this was part of the coin strategy, the counterinsurgency, right? You, you need these local trained up police forces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To go out and be able to police their own areas and it's less sexy in some ways than, hey, I got my beard and I got my guns and we're going to go after bad guys every single night. But it's a lot more effective. Train the trainer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so our job is to go out there and basically show them how to do this. And this is how you, here's the tactics and this is what we do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so they're the first in. And you know, you get good if you're a cop or you're a soldier. It's kind of the same thing. That's why there's such a bond even.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In America, between cops and soldiers, you go into a house, you can smell what that house smells like, and if the hair on the back of your neck stands up, it's probably not good. And you can walk into some house and you're like, nope, I can just tell this isn't it. Well, their sense of smell, quote, quote, is a lot better than ours. And ours is pretty good at times, but they're able to go into a house, and you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the way, the doorways are really narrow, there's 25 people sleeping on the floor, you know, half the time they're on the rooftop naturally, because it's cooler, because it's a hot country, right? So how are you kind of assessing, you got, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone's got a rooftop, so if you're dealing with aircraft above, who's on the rooftop? It's not like they're up there as snipers all the time. They're just on the rooftop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, with their kids, and so it doesn't work to go in to these places with your...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, just guns and do more than you should. And so, you know, part of what, what going through elite style training brings is the confidence to know when not to pull the trigger, when to assume greater risk to your own life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because you should not just go out and pull the trigger and the more confidence you have in your weapons and your sense and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's really important and, and it's a much more stabilizing presence there if you don't kill a bunch of innocent people, right? It's, there, there is collateral damage in war. It's just, it happens. But you have to do almost everything that you can to minimize that because the second, third order effects of, of dead women and children are, are not good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what's supposed to happen, you know, it's what year is it, we're 18 years later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, then you start to get into what's the expectation that people back home have for how long this should take and how much does it cost and is it really worth it and you know, I mean, it was just a really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just a really hard time, you know, my, it's, and it's, it's also hard when you're fighting and my family was hugely supportive and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yet at that time it was all about the casualty counts, the body counts of American soldiers in Iraq and you got a lot of moms and you got a lot of moms who can


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really relate to the moms that are suffering from losing their children.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's the- what is the desired end state? Like what is our actual goal? Is it-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is it to turn Iraq into Germany? I mean, if so, good luck. Or is it, we don't want places to be able to export violence? I mean, destabilization? I mean, I kind of never fully understood what the actual desired in-state was that was realistic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so relating back to Vietnam and then to Iraq though, to our country's credit, and this gets, nobody ever likes to say, hey, America, great job, right? But when you sit and think about how far we as a nation came from Vietnam, where they would spit on soldiers when they came home,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To Iraq, where half the country disagreed with our presence there in 2006-2007, around that time frame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was still separation between the soldiers and Marines, et cetera, and the actual support of the war. And in that, you know, I felt very supported. And so as far as I knew, did every, everyone that was there with me did as well, just the American public was not taking its anger out on


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That meant everything. That meant everything. So, you know, I cannot imagine what those soldiers went through in Vietnam when they would come back and it was just, they were spit on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it would be great to even take that one step further and just those who serve, those who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the fabric of what makes America America. Strong communities. We have aligned purpose. Our values are really clear. You know, as an American, as a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As America, what we stand for. And yet there's a lot of people that make that happen at the local level. There's teachers, there's fire, there's cops, there's first responders. There's all sorts of people that work in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, we need a call to service. In this culture where there's just a lot of emphasis and value placed on being the best individual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We need to reawaken those calls to where it's a very noble thing to go and serve your country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's kind of counterintuitive though. It is. So people, and I did this as well, we struggle to make that connection. Where we say, I've gotta be better. Me, me, me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now how do you do that is you find a mission and if, if you have a purpose and then you have a mission on top of that purpose, that's, you're, you're hitting home runs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Regardless of that, if you just dedicate your life to serving something greater than yourself, it just, it opens up a way of, of life that leads to a lot of great things with a lot of great people. And I just, I've never met the person at the end of their days who said, you know, I was just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I served too much. I gave too much to other people. I wish I had just done more for me me me. I just haven't met that person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, you know, we have the ability and the potential.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To change our lives for the better with just a mindset shift.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just to say, dedicate yourself to a greater cause. There's lots of ways to do it. The military is a very...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Romanticized way, especially in our society, we uniquely love our military, and I do too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's just, it's not for everyone and it doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be. So instead of kind of using this, oh, the military only affects 1% of the population, like it's some sort of judgment on our entire country. Like, that's okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The military is 1%, that's, that's awesome. Right? And if it needed to be more, it would be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's 1%. That's okay. There's a lot of ways to serve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and that's where the bridge is between


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Americas that we love that represents the best America and where maybe we come up a little bit short from time to time. If we just dedicate ourselves to serving instead of to being angry at the TV news at night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, go turn the TV off and go find something to serve that will benefit your community in our country. Go do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Publish some anger ridden ad that's divide and conquer tactics where you're just a pawn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're a pawn, someone's, someone's written some article that's, that's gonna just divide people and we share that stuff and people like it and we think, wow, I'm, I'm part of a community that's, that's talking about these important things. How about you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go stop doing that first and how about you go do something that actually helps other people. And I don't sit here saying this is all I do with my life. I don't just, you know, go from orphanage to orphanage, right? All day long, every day, right? I'm, I'm, I'm human like all of us. And yet, you know, when.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have these kind of this, these times when I think and reflect usually outside with a rock on like, am I doing what I can do to make my community, my family, my community.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My country stronger because I just, I feel like I owe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and that's the, the bug that I caught through, through service. I did not foresee that. I thought it was going to be about me, me, me getting my revenge for what happened over 9-11. And what I got instead was this, this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really basic primordial reaction that I just, I owe more. And I can't shake it, and I'm grateful that I can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Makes me just want to keep doing the things that are rewarding and that involves other people and building communities and building a bridge between the military and civilian worlds instead of using these divide and conquer tactics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, I don't know, seven months? So you guys are on like a seven month rotation?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, and then we, we came back and that was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Coming back was a weird thing. I mean, we stopped in Shannon Airport and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ireland and drank a bunch of beers in the, the airport there. Cause we had rented a civilian aircraft and it was just a bunch of green berets that flew back. So there's sort of a mad dash for the bar, got there and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, you know, then we got back and my car was at Fort Carson. My car was the same place where I'd parked it. I disconnected the battery. You know, the battery was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Connect the battery back. We're sort of in this parking lot, uh, around our compound at 10th group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was just sort of like, oh, I guess I went to war and came back. And it just was kind of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, there was this other compounding part of my life, which was, you know, I was married to Emily.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we had started dating, finally told the girl I loved, the love of my life that I loved her, and oh by the way I'm going to boot camp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. So we had gotten married while I was in the Q course and she had then gone through the CIA training pipeline to become a case officer. She graduated from to become a case officer five days before I became a Green Beret.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, and so she got sent to Africa and then I got sent to Colorado and then to Iraq and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Talking over secure lines with your wife and while you're at war and she kind of had some access through her friends to some of our situation or sit reps situation reports from war. And there was, it was just kind of, it was surreal, but, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I also felt just really kind of lonely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, our team was there, but then they went off and they had their families or families greeted them and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was just kind of a, it was a lonely ride and oh, by the way, right when I get back, I have my truck and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Driving off base, thankfully I waited to see this off base, but, you know, in Iraq when you're in a Humvee and you're driving, you go down the middle of the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a tactic because most roadside bombs are on the side of the road and you don't want to go. Anyway, you just, you just dominate the road. That's how it is. Get out of my way. I've got a bigger truck than you do and that's what's happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, I defaulted to that on the highway right off Fort Carson. And it wasn't some sort of, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Huge flashback or something. It was just kind of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Click my brain and say, Hey, I need to slow down. Stop, stop flooring it. Cause that's also how you drive their speed of security. It goes fast as you can and get to the target. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And move over into the right lane, take a deep breath. It'll be okay. And that's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More than the actual fact that that happened was just the weird feeling that that happened. And then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I didn't have a cell phone set up or anything and all that stuff. It wasn't quite as simple as it is now. So I went back, I was staying with my great aunt and uncle in Colorado Springs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I called, you know, had a calling card number to call Emily because she was at working out of the embassy in, in Abidjan, West Africa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was just sort of this, I'm back. And it was, it was very anticlimactic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just to be on the phone. It's not what you see in the movies where, you know, you land and there's the big parade and all of that stuff and you know, the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your, your loved ones sprinting for you and you know, you swoop her off of her feet and do all of these things. It was none of that. And then, you know, then the next day, what do you do? I go back to work, go back to work and inventory all your stuff and make sure that your team rooms clean and do all of that stuff. And that's, you know, that's the next couple of weeks of your life. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so that, and then eventually, obviously, I saw Emily, I flew over there for, for Christmas. That was, uh...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the kind of vacation, because she's in war-torn West Africa. It almost was more comfortable to go visit her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so we talk a lot about PTSD and all that stuff this day and age and it's become this kind of thing where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every veteran probably has it. So I shouldn't hire a veteran or there's something wrong with them. I'll donate money, but I'm going to kind of put them on the leper colony and let them struggle with their PTSD and send them a paycheck every once in a while. That's, that's the situation at its worst. Now there's, there's obviously various levels of that, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, you know, when you came back from war and say world war two, you know, you're on a ship with everybody that you went to war with. There's decompression time. Whereas for us, you know, we're, we're getting on a plane or.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People don't just, I mean in Iraq everyone's got that, what, eight foot wall, if you've got a house and any money, you got eight foot wall with concertina or probably, uh, barbed wire around the top of it. And when you have trash at your house, what you do is you walk out in your front yard and you throw it over your wall because you don't really care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About what happens outside your, your little wall. Well here it's just, you know, that Colorado air is pretty awesome and you know, you can stop anywhere you want and there's no roadside bombs and you know, it's like what you saw in, in hurt locker. The guy goes in and he's staring at all the cereal and there's 10 million things a cereal. That's not the decision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you're used to making and it feels weird. Just it's, it's going to happen so fast and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I remember I got off the tarmac, I was on the tarmac in, in Abidjan and I'd flown over there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they love a good coup in Africa. This it's always kind of semi permissive and it's never perfect and they could have RPGs and AKs in the street at any time and you'll be the last to know. Right. And so it got there and it just, it smelled tropical and it smelled just sort of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like not America and rolled in and it's just, there's just all this commotion at this African airport and you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Riding back, getting in her car, you know, gave her a big hug and a kiss in the airport.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then got in her car and drove home and there's checkpoints and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's guys with guns at the checkpoints and, and then you pull into her house and it's, there's two layers to the compound and she was not on an American compound per se, it was American housing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But not a compound, but it was within a compound with other locals and there's one layer of quote security where there's a local with a pickup truck. And if you're white, you're, you're fine to go in. I mean, it's, it's just how it is there. It's, and so, you know, so we drove in, they obviously knew her and her car at that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, you know, she's got a second layer of quote security and it's a rent a cop basically, and they've got a stick, you know, they're not doing anything with that stick, but it's, it's faux security and, but it just, it, it felt more normal to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then coming back to America so quickly and it was just sort of some decompression time, but then, you know, you've got the sort of relationship side and life's hard. And so, you know, she's in that job. I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The CIA works its people really hard. You have a lot of people, young people, old people, whatever, that serve America, that work really, really hard and that are true patriots and they're really committed to our way of life in America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you go that route, you are, it's a 24-7 job, just like Special Forces is. And so she's working 100 hours a week by Wednesday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the first four years of our marriage, we did not live together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Zero living together. I was at Fort Bragg. She was in Florida teaching. She was a eighth grade Spanish teacher.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So for the first year of the Q course, I'm driving back to Florida every single weekend that I have off. So if I'm not in the field, I have the weekend off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So drive back, you know, second year, she's going through, she's working out of the Langley and then, you know, out of, out of the farm. And so kind of doing some of driving North five, six hours every weekend to go see her there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, you know, she's in West Africa and I'm in Iraq and I'm in Colorado and it's, you know, eridiums were the thing back then, you know, these sort of, cause it wasn't as simple as everyone's got data connections, just pull up FaceTime or Skype or whatever the case may be. So, you know, it's eridiums and there was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A strand of probably a hundred numbers I had to dial to get the access to get, to call her cell phone or her whatever at her, uh, at the embassy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you go to the well too often, eventually the well runs dry. And so when that Christmas, it was just kind of weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With her, it wasn't bad. Like we, she babysat my siblings growing up. She was great friends with my family and my mom and all these things. Like we really were in love. And, and so we knew each other as friends for almost a decade before we started dating. And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just was kind of weird when that, that Christmas. And so it was kind of like, okay, I was going to get out of the army in October of the next year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, okay, well we, that became the target, right? Everything's going to be better at that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, you know, I was there for a month and we had fun. It just was kind of weird. Like life was kind of weird though too, right? I mean, she's in kind of war torn. I'm going to war, coming back, flying over for some quote vacation, you know, and we're finally together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's just so many balls in the air, it's hard to make sense of what's going on. And so went back and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, back at base, well we ended up forward deploying the Stuttgart to do a backfill for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our, uh, our commanders in extremist force that was in Stuttgart, so was stationed there for, I want to say four months, something like that, but in that time also went down to a different part of West Africa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On a mission to work with the Mauritanian troops out of Nauakshat, except we were in Akjut, which is, you know, a few hours to literally camels in desert and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Mauritania and you know, we trained up their commandos and we were out there and the interesting part is that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In much of the world, you know, the US has its diplomats and it has its soldiers and there's kind of a stark difference between those two. In much of the world, the soldiers are where it's at.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the, the diplomats, they don't have the real power because they can't, they can't take their soldiers and go drive to the middle of the Capitol and say, Hey, I'm in charge now. And so, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To go back to follow up on some of the earlier points about, you know, should we be in Iraq or Afghanistan? I think special forces in some capacity should be everywhere. Special operations and people who are serving this purpose of working with other host nations. I mean, that was also the lesson of post 9-11 Afghanistan was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have no presence there. You're going to have to recreate it in time of crisis. And that's very challenging. And so to have some, some presence between militaries, between, hey, the US military has, is working with these locals that are in the military and pick your country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's important because you, you, it's constant, not like spy stuff, but you just relationship around the world. That's it. And that's a really positive thing. Very positive. And so you're also able to, to be there just in case. And so in those kinds of countries, you know, there's a role for,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's definitely a role for the military. Anyway, I was there and even while I'm on that deployment, you know, M flew up on African air or whatever from Abidjan to Nwokshot and my captain gave me the time off to go,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, hang out with Emily in the capital, New York shot for a couple days while she was in town. Then our whole team went to a soccer game there in some Chinese built stadium because the Chinese are moving into Africa big time, but they, they move in and they set up their own base and they bring their thousand


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chinese, and they're not doing anything with the locals except extracting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What they can from there and they're building relationships that way with, with money and with their presence and they build soccer stadiums and the locals love soccer and that's kind of what it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, but it's just to say that our marriage was kind of, it was atypical. And so, you know, I went back and what I did not expect was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the hope at the time was that it would...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Great and, and what an honor that was and how impactful those men in that community were and will forever have been on my life. And that became something that I dreaded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it sort of just felt like this guillotine that I was facing as I, you know, cause it's not like you just show up one day and you say, all right, peace out guys. Like you have certain dates and you have to reenlist prior or you do all these things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they were really trying to keep guys in because they'd invested a lot in us and, you know, the mission wasn't stopping and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everybody around me understood what was going on with my life. My wife's in the CIA. She's in West Africa. We can't make this work. It's just not possible to be married in these kinds of jobs or roles in life. And so everyone was supportive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the same time I felt like I was quitting. And so I started to go through that process and eventually obviously did go through that process. And when I pulled off bass I had my same...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Green Nissan Xterra I'd had throughout my whole training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Life in Fort Bragg and then at Carson and your car is just this very safe place, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you, you can turn the AC on if it's hot, if it's cold, you're warm. It's, it's this small notion of privacy. You don't have a car in basic training where you have zero privacy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when, when you have a car, you have a little bit of freedom and you know, if you're able to use your car for whatever reason before formation or just in general, you have so much that is just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And driving off base in Colorado with basically everything I owned in the back of that truck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just, I cried on the way off base and I couldn't believe it because this was supposed to be this really positive step in my life. I was going to go get reunited with the love of my life and it was going to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was supposed to feel different and I already just hugely missed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My, my team, I missed that way of life and I'm, I'm, I felt like I was abandoning them and they were going to go back to war and I wanted to go with them and I was, you know, uniquely, not uniquely, I was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well trained in America's eyes to, to be on the front lines and to continue to serve. And I believe in our mission and regardless of, you don't always get to choose the destination that you go and that's fine. Right. I believe that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When America says it's time to go, I want to be the kind of person that says send me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the sacrifice of the individuality that I was very willing to submit to the team and to the mission and to our country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it, it just felt like I was losing all of that. And, and so, you know, eventually your tears dry and you wake up and you, you learn how to be resilient again, but it was just, it was very.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, so I, I drove back to Florida where my mom was and I was just gonna put my stuff, my car in storage and then I was, I was getting on a plane to fly to Africa to go live with Emily. Cause you know, I was now her dependent. Right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, it just was atypical because I had not gone with her out of the gates. I mean it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you're supposed to be together. That's kind of how this stuff works. I mean, a community of two, that's a foundational community. Sometimes it's you and your dog. Sometimes it's you and your family, but it's that's a community. And that is very important in not only my life, but our lives. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that was the plan. Drop my stuff off, get on a plane and fly over. Well, I did that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was just as weird as it was that Christmas before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just a lot weirder. Just everything was, it just, nothing felt right. And you know, I didn't have mission or purpose and she, you know, she, she was used to operating alone. I mean, it was her and her dog Java. Right. And so, you know, that was her life, a hundred hours a week by Wednesday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 24 seven all the time. And then I'm showing up almost like dead weight because I got this, I got this sort of chip on my shoulder because I just gave up everything to be with her. And you know, it was just very, it's just not fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was horrible. There was nothing to do, right? So I even applied for jobs at the embassy. I'm thinking, how do I serve for the next year? Cause she was going to be there for the next year. How do I do something here for the next year?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Literally the only job available that I could get was as the janitor of the embassy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, I'm, as, as referenced earlier, I'm not above mopping the floors and cleaning the head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was not ready for that at that time in my life though. That's just not what, I couldn't go from this, this thinking that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This, this vision that I had for myself and for working with these guys on this team to, I'm the janitor pushing the mop at the embassy. And oh, by the way, you know, my, my wife's on the top floor in this, you know, really cool job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't even exist at that time. So there was Armed Forces Network was all that we got. And you know, so then it's, it's me and Java at the house. Right. And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is where, this was the beginning of my life turning into that bad country song where a guy's got his dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, his sort of bottle of whiskey and all of his sorrows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I ended up only being in Africa for about two months. And then I, it was like, we're, this just isn't working. This is too miserable to endure. And it wasn't sort of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at this point, you know, we were just really good friends and we had gone to the well for too long and I just didn't...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wasn't a part of her journey and she wasn't a part of mine and we were trying to make it work and we said, okay, well we'll skip to the end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that just didn't work. And so I'm, then I'm flying back to, to, uh, solo of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All me or all her. This was both of us. And it was, you know, she didn't want to, she didn't want to bend her lifestyle for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so I mean, this is how, this was the ultimate irony was that, you know, part of the journey that I wanted was to go join ground branch, the CIA. That's where it started. Mike Spann, you know, rest in peace. When, when we honor our heroes, it will inspire further service. And that had inspired service in me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't know anybody in that process of hiring to get to ground branch. I didn't know anybody and I eventually started and made it through and became a Green Beret.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in Emily's training, I met lots of people in ground branch. They became friends of ours.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so it was kind of, hey, why don't you just come back and go through the process? And that's how it works, right? If you know someone, you're more of a trusted person and especially in that place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the agency's always looking for things to do with spouses. I mean, if you can, cause you're already trusted, right? I mean, there's risks in that job of, of leaks and all that stuff, but you have to trust your spouse. And so, eh, eh.