[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it took my company Saja Major a little bit of time, couple days to think about where to put me. Because I met him that day, my very first day. I made my way over to the company, met the Saja Major, introduced himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, cool man, like what are your goals? I said, I want to get in Afghanistan, like now. He's like, of course you do, but like the entire company is coming back. It doesn't make any sense. By the time you get there and get situated, you're going to just be packing things up and come home. So the timing is not there, but I do have this team that's set to go forward in a few months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like, cool, can I go with that one? He's like, well, it's, it's a different type of team. So like, let me think about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He did, uh, eventually I sat down with the, with the team sergeant of that team, and this team focused on preparation of the environment, is the task that we were assigned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So kind of like left a bang type stuff, which isn't exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to go kick down doors and shoot bad guys in the face. This team was not designed to do that, but it was my


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's designed to facilitate the door kickers to get to the guy or get to the area, right? So I mean, it was that type of work. And it was a very senior team because most guys would go spend, you know, a few years on a standard ODA and then they would migrate over into this type of stuff. So senior dudes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but eventually that's the route that I went when I was on that team within a couple weeks of getting in the group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, there was a work-up. Uhm, I think maybe, yeah, like I said, I think I was on the team about four months before we, we infilled. So I went and I learned Dari.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is a prominent language of Afghanistan. So I spent six months in the Q course, getting my ass kicked, learning Russian. Show it to my group, and they're like, welcome, go learn Dari. I'm like, ugh, kidding me, I can't get away from this language thing, man, which...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I understand the value of it now, actually, even once I was able to employ it. So it was three months of that, and then...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some, like, preparatory collective training that we did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was pretty fast and furious before I was out the door.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, initially I wanted to come in, do my 5 year contract, get some payback for 9-11, learn some skills, and then get out. This was not gonna be like my profession, or my career.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I got to the ground, I got on the ground in Afghanistan. It was a 9 month rotation, mostly down in Kandahar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were mostly doing split team stuff. Uh, so one team was on the Paki border and the other team was in like downtown Canada. So I was getting a chance to see


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More rural in a urban environment and because of the team I was on I was seeing


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The more overt stuff where we get in like mounted gun trucks to go support a particular op to being in a soft skinned Corolla driving through downtown Kandahar and just being close. So I was exposed to a lot of what ODAs can do, what SF guys can do aside from the thing I really wanted to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so we did end up getting into a couple little things somewhat by accident, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was in that deployment that I, uh, I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I decided, like, this is what I'm gonna do for my career. And I re-enlisted actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In Afghanistan for like another six, I think it was beyond my current contract that I was on. So it was great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah and I was, again I was with all these senior guys, so I was an E5 and everyone else was E7 or 8 or an officer. So I'm just learning from these dudes that have been around for a really long time and you know, some of them were on their 5th, 6th Afghanistan pump. So I'm just, I'm drinking from a fire hose, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, just the knowledge that was coming in from these dudes, it just, I caught the bug and I was like yeaah, this is it, this is for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, no, it was not anything all that serious. But what's funny about it is because the mission that we were on is not designed for us to be in those environments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, you know, there would be like a LURSE unit or like a another unit over here that was going out to this area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe there's, I don't know, something. So we would just get added on to their ConOps. And then some things would happen, but because of our team and our reporting channels, it was different than the other units in the AO. So even though we had been in these engagements, there was no reporting of it happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At one point, the commander that we actually worked for heard about some stuff, and he showed up to our site. We were working under, uh, NSW, so like, there was a SEAL 05 that showed up. And he's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A ton of schools and training. Individual schools. At that time we were doing, usually it was six months on, nine months off before we would re-rotate. Uh, for me, I think it was, ended up being around nine to ten. I was back in the States, but it was just individual school, one after another. And then, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went back over into Afghanistan for a short period of time with, on a tasking from another unit that needed some support and so I went over there for a quick little thing and came back and then


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Until I get back from Afghanistan and then my company Sergeant Major decides he wants to put me on a standard ODA or a direct action focused ODA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That there are, uh, other units within the SOCOM enterprise that operate at an entire different stratosphere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I could tell even as a junior green beret working on, you know, around OD, I guess.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are other people out there that are really good at what they do, and they know


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't know really like what I was doing. I understood like PSD work, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who I was with and what we were doing, it took me like a while to like figure that out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I learned a ton. And that was really what sunk my teeth into what my next thing would be post ODA time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every trip I've been on, I've built a little fight house. Even in like austere stuff, we get into the next actual rotation, we're in the mountains doing VSO and I've built us a fight house up there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I get back and my, my, my deal was I would do two rotations on the first team I was on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I committed to that, uh, cause there's a lot of time they spend in training, you know, how to do certain stuff. So I was like, yep, that's no problem. Sajid Major came in, uhm, right after I got back and he's like, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey man, I'm gonna talk to your team sergeant, but I think you need to be on like a DA team. You know, you're like, you don't fit in in this team you're on now. You don't blend anywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yea man, so it didn't make sense from that lens, and I was young and hungry, and he wanted to, like, you know, maximize on that, leverage that, get me into the fight in a more traditional sense, so, he met with my team side, and the team side was like, cool man, this is what he wants, this is what's best for him, Roger that, so he let me go, and then I went to a DA team, uh, this is now in, like, early 2012.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was with them just in time to go through a full train up of that type of work before we went in on what was my second actual combat rotation in the fall of 2012.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was night and day, man. My first pump, doing what we were doing, we were living cush. We were living cush. Everyone had their own shoe, I had air conditioning, I had a full sized bed, I had a plasma TV in my room, two different chow halls, two different gyms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Full blown fight house. Cause one of our camps was in the, was like on the back end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We went in to do VSO, Village Stability Operations, and that by design is very austere. You actually have limitations on what you can do to build up your physical infrastructure to keep it within line with what your partner force, or those within that area, with how they live. We assimilate to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is exactly the mission we wanted, but when you get dropped off on a, you know, mountaintop helicopter, the 03, and you're the first team that's occupied this site, there's nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was like, oh, this is what ODAs do. This is, okay, this is what this, so it was a night and day shift from my first trip to my second.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the middle of nowhere. So there were three teams that they inserted into Wardak along the Chalk Valley. Uhm, two on one side, one on the other. But it was really just us to mutually support each other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a turnover only because the team that was on the ground when we got there, they had closed down their site, which is where we were originally planning on going. But as things changed operationally, they shut that site down, they packed up all their stuff, they moved to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This secondary location, they were on the ground for 24 hours before we landed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So. So there's nothing there. There's nothing there. There was a team there, but they hadn't been working out of that site.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so they handed over their partner force to us, which was an ANASF team. So the regiment, the Army Special Forces, had created an Afghan National Army Special Forces unit, and they looked structurally the same way as us. Same MOS, same breakdown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, it was, it was busy, it was hot, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got our footprint, you know, we were like, patrol-based activities for the first, like 48, until we got some semblance of some Force Pro going. And then on maybe day three or four, we, uh, we went to drive down the street to, uh, Afghan local police checkpoint, which you could see from our camp. It was maybe 400 meters down the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we had a four vehicle convoy. I was in a little trail vehicle working out of a hatch. And by the time our second vehicle got on the road, we were ambushed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, at this point we've got like some ratty chain link fence and some half filled Hesco as like force pro, there's nothing. You know, other than guys that are up there with 240s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, tink, tink, tink, tink, and I'm like, what? I don't know what's happening. What kind of vehicles? We were in Mat Vs, uhm, and then IG-33, IG-31, so uhm, a bomber, you know, they're legit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But even though I had been around a couple, you know, engagements prior, it was nothing like this. Like we were, like, ambushed. This wasn't some, you know, moron who got creative with an AK-47 who wanted to get his jihad on for a second and then drop his gun and run away. This was like a no shit, we're gonna fight right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So. And this is, you're not even all the way out of the gate. No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's all right there. So they dropped us off into a hornet's nest, you know, which we kinda knew, although we were prepping for location A.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We ended up at location B, but they were relatively close where a lot of our intel and prep, in terms of personalities and leadership and cells and who we would be targeting, was still considered the same. I didn't realize it was going to be quite that level of, of beehive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So zero white space, uh, which became our primary mission was just to open that up. So every day or every other day, whenever we rolled, it was just like move to contact. Like that's the, that's the mission for today. That's what we're doing. Let's go find the ambush and like set it off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we also had, uh, an infantry squad that was there as an uplift. So about 20-22, uh, sorry, maybe about 15 dudes. All super young, minus their squad leader. Most of them were just fresh out of basic. Right on. Young and hungry though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Afghan National Army SF team was our dedicated partner force. Eventually, within I say the first month or so, we started doing little bigger ops, and we'd bring in


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Afghan National Army guys, or another commando element, or Afghan National Police guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With an insider attack is because when you start getting all these different dudes from different units, there's no practical way to establish a baseline with these, with these guys. You know, if you're living with somebody, you get to know them. That way you can tell if something's off. Like the Spidey sense can start to go off because it's different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're getting new bodies as frequent as eventually we were, uh, it drastically opens up the risk for an insider threat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, uhm, I mentioned I had taken some shrapnel to the back of my shoulder. We were on the ground for, I don't know, just a few weeks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we, you know, we drove to contact. We actually had an actual mission other than like, let's go find a fight to get into. We did get ambushed on the way, uh, from what ended up being what we considered to be the Taliban strong point village within our immediate AO. It was the first time that we actually maneuvered into it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, my team sergeant would tell you himself, like he made a, he made an aggressive decision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had a SWAT by fire machine gun coming from the trucks and some mortars, but like we were in a village. Now you're in like a more urban environment with three US, three partner for us. We've been on the ground just a few weeks, you know, an era. And he would tell you the same thing. I think it was a mistake. Me actually getting hurt may have,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] May have saved that because we fought our way to a two story structure where we were taking tishka fire from up to the road. So the guys are engaged in that way. There's some other dudes on some rooftops and there's six of us maneuvering through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An urban environment, an Afghanistan urban environment, different than like Iraq, but you're still dealing with buildings and multiple leveled structures and windows and doors and all the hallways and alleyways, all the things, right? So I even noticed at one point, I'm like, we shouldn't be here right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we shouldn't be here right now. This is a mistake. I didn't voice that. I was like, Roger that. Like, let's keep going. And we made it to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The structure that we were trying to breach to deal with the, with the dish that was coming out of the second story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, we had been receiving some, some indirect that were coming in and uh, dudes were dropping grenades out of structures as well. So we're at the breach point to enter the courtyard into this structure that is still actively engaging.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And something just blows up behind me and there's a grenade and it just ripped into the back of my shoulder and it was like getting hit with a sledgehammer. And you think about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Shrapnel penetrating your body, you may think it's like this like piercing, stabbing sensation, like a piece of metal going into you, but it's more just impact. Someone just hits you with a bat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I look back, and there's just like a lemon-sized hole in the back of my shoulder. I'm like, oh, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This just happened. So, uh, I immediately just like, now I'm fine. Now adrenaline's pumping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. Oh, that's good times. Yup. So that's still going off. The boys in the trucks are really the ones that are getting it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And our partner for us had dared send in a separate dismount just themselves to stop moving in towards the building as well. So they're treating me, some gauze comp, you know, pressure dressing, wrap it up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, my team sergeant's like, we're, we're aborting this mission right now. We're getting, we're getting back to the trucks. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm fine. Like, let's go. We just fought our way all the way to this door that we're in front of now. Like, let's, let's get in there. He's like, no, no, no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is, we're in Alvarez. So that was the, that was the trigger for him to be like, yep, let's detach and take a look at what I'm doing. Uh, so a lot of ways I think I'm grateful because I don't know what was on the other side of that door, but those guys were still getting it and it could have been, it could have been a lot of different things. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't, it wasn't bad. You know, I get back to the trucks and we, we ITB and my medic takes a look at it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's like, dude, you're good, but there's like a pretty good hole here, man. So this was the first time anyone had been wounded. We'd have been in the ground maybe just like a few weeks, like I said, and so he gets me medevacked out and I throw a temper tantrum at the camp. I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. And my team sergeant's like, yes, you are. I'm like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, I think I'm going to Germany, I think I'm going home, like we just got here, this is where I need to be, uh, you know, I'm really childish in my response to that. But I do, and I get back to, they sent me to one of the, one of the outstations where there actually was a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a forward surgical team and they treated it. And the way they treat that is they pack it with this antiseptic gauze because they can't just sew it shut because it'll leave this open cavity for infection. So they pack it and then you just change that dressing out, you know, 3-4 times a day so it closes from the inside out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was it. It really wasn't a big deal. I was supposed to stay at that location until it was completely healed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was made aware of my wound, and he said, Nick will stay where you are. Until it's closed. To make sure there's no infection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. After about, I don't know, three, four days, I start getting anxious. And the only rotary wing flights that were going into my site where my team was, was coming out of Bagram. So either way, I had to get to Bagram before I could initiate movement back to Jalrez, which is where we were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well I grabbed one of my buddies who's on that support team that was there and I said bring me down to the Tomac. Which he does. And I go from one C130 to another one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had been to Bagram before, that's where we originally landed when we got there, but I was only on Bagram for like a day. Until we just got all our stuff together and then we flew out to our site.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I wasn't familiar with Bagram at all. Which, back then, it was like a city. I mean, Bagram's huge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I land, I have no idea really where I am, I know that the special ops camp is in the vicinity of this, so I find my way over there, and I walk into the jock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was my first time actually being in like a real jock. I hadn't seen one before. With all the TVs and all the different staff sections and they're all wired in. It was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is kind of cool. I hadn't seen it before. I walk in and the SOTIF commander, who's my battalion level command team, they're the ones that are running the SOTIF, Special Operations Task Force. He's like, hey, what are you, what are you doing here?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, hey sir, how you doing? You know, I need a ride back to, uh, to Jarez. This dude's from Boston. So he starts going off. He had actually brought in a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bleacher seat chair that he bought that used to be in Fenway Park. As his like, battle chair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any Jedi thing happening with him. He's like, why are you here? And I'm like coming up with some bullshit that doesn't float and then the phone rings and he picks it up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I hear him screaming, and CSM is like, oh no, he's right here in front of me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, okay, now I know this is about me. I don't, am I going to get court martialed? Like what happens? I don't know. I know I'm in trouble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he hands me the phone and my company Sergeant Major just loses his mind on me, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For like 10 minutes, and I'm just like, roger that, roger that, a lot of that going on. And at the end, he's like, okay, dude, listen, like I get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get it, I've been there before, I get it, but like, don't ever do that again. When I say Roger that, hang up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, now everyone's kind of joking about it a little bit. CSM thinks it's kind of cool, but he's also trying to be professional. There's a lot of people around. I've clearly just done something insubordinate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, my team's on a mission, right, at that point. My first time in a jock, I just got yelled at, which was fine, we're kind of joking. And, uh, I look up, red lights, that's going off, you know, essential personnel only inside the jock, people are leaving, people are coming in, people are getting spun up, I can tell something's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's my team on and off, and my team sergeant takes a round to the abdomen. And I'm watching this for the first time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through the lens of, you know, an ISR feed. You've never seen it before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it takes me a minute to realize what's happening and I put two and two together and I have, you know, an emotional breakdown of like rage and I'm like throwing chairs, uh, immature, completely emotionally charged response or reaction. And I'm like, you guys need to give me a ride now. I'm going back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or the SOTIF commander and the SOTIF CSM and the doc comes over and, uh, he's like, why are you here? You need to wait till you're healed. You're not going back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I started yelling at him and then the commander's like, listen doc, I don't think you want to tell this dude, like, no, like he's, he just like jumped on a plane and flew here. Like he's like, he's gonna, he's going back. So they overrode that decision and I was back on a bird the next day or the day after that back out with the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. So he came in. I was there to meet him at the hospital when he showed up to Bagram, which was good. He went into surgery. He was medevaced out of country. He was over in Germany. I don't think he ended up going back to the States because he returned back in to the team. He was out of the game for maybe a month or two and then he came back over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, every dude does play a big role. Uhm, we didn't get outfitted with the, with the new team sergeant, just the next senior guy on the team picked it up. Yup. Uhm, oftentimes we will get augmented by, by one of the support teams that's in the area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The writings on the wall that we're about to close down Afghanistan, so the units on the ground are making those preparations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be able to get men, weapons and equipment to Bagram and to Kandahar. So we needed to open up some lanes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, so the Afghan local police concept was built specifically for this, where we would build and or reinforce


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Checkpoints along the major avenues throughout the AO. So there were these Afghan local police checkpoints that were all down the major roads. So we were either building those out, validating the ones that were already there, training the guys that were there, or bringing in like resources and stuff to make them more effective.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that and then we were tied also into the local and regional government officials, uhm, to help them with their structure and their building out and just gaining more control of the area from like a civil and diplomatic perspective, which


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a tough task to do that in Afghanistan. So we mostly focused on Afghan local police enhancement via checkpoints along the major routes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hit or miss, in an area like that, you're really putting the local populace in a lose-lose scenario.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We come in, big, big white guys, big American guys, tatted up with all the guns and the stuff. And we come in and be like, you're gonna help us. Were they gonna say no?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The problem is when they say yes, the actual dudes that run the show in that whole area, they're gonna come back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At this point, the biggest threat on the ground was IEDs and then a close second would be the insider attack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which, once that happened to us, uh, in what ended up being early 2013 on the same deployment, that was kind of the catalyst that drove that threat up to supersede IEDs within that immediate area. Because it was just so effective.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the what? In the face? In the face. Yup. I took an AK round, uhm, which sounds worse than it was. It really just grazed my cheek and, you know, ripped a chunk open. It did clip an ottery, so it bled a bit, but I didn't know that I had been shot for like an hour or two after the fact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it was the result of a massive IED that hit our lead vehicle, decimated the truck. And when I showed up to that vehicle,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were some dismounts that had showed up as well. This was a full on ambush.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had, I think it was four trucks and a couple side-by-side razors, uh, on that. We were returning to base from the, from the thing. We just did like a KLE, a key leader engagement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a little longer. This one we drove out along the main road, maybe 9 miles, 10 miles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we were on the way back when we hit this. And we had driven down this road multiple times before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and this thing had been in place before all that. It just, they never set it off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lead vehicle, which has my team leader in it, he, uh, that vehicle gets just decimated. What vehicle are you in? I'm in vehicle four, working out of a hatch.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I see it go off in front of me, and we had hit a bunch of smaller IEDs before, so I was familiar with it, but this thing was the biggest and the most accurately timed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was perfect. Picks up the truck and just launches it off the side of the road. Down into this apple, apple orchard. Off to the side and it was down this little ravine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, off the side of the road. And that was the initiation of a complex ambush. So PKM, uh, IPG, some indirect are all coming in and, uh, you know, I know what


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] React to ideas. We have that SOP established. And I don't do my job. It's an important note.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Instead, I jump out of this hatch, the vehicle's still moving, and I take off on foot towards the truck. Which was, you know, a couple hundred meters away from me. Not a tactical movement by me, like rifle in hand, and I'm just at a dead sprint. To the vehicle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I slide down off the side of the road into this, into this orchard. And I, I know everywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, I'm by myself. I know everyone's dead, right? There's no way anyone survived that level of destruction. Truck is on its side, so driver's side door is pinned against the ground, passenger's side door would be facing the sky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, I slide off the road and I trip and fall, and what I had tripped over was my teammate who was in the turret of that truck, who was ejected and landed about 30 meters from the vehicle. I didn't see him, I trip over him, look back and it's him, and he's alive, and I can't believe it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His leg snapped in half just below his knee. Uh, he's got a whole bunch of other, like, lacerations on his face. But he's alive. He's suffering from immediate blast injury for sure. He's incoherent, but he's alive. He's breathing. He's not bleeding from anywhere profusely.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do like a quick assessment of him and then I start hearing different rounds impacting the truck which is behind me about 30 meters and some dismounts had showed up and they were just kind of randomly shooting at the vehicle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're shooting at the blown up vehicle? Yeaah. So just ting ting ting. I turn around. There's three of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I smoke two, the third one takes off running, and this isn't, again, an apple orchard, but it's in October, or it's November, so there's not a lot of vegetation, there's just mostly trees and branches, so you can, I can see kinda, but there's just a lot of, so I'm maneuvering through this, he's running away from me,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On an angle, with his AK over his shoulder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Firing in my general direction while running away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt an impact, I'm looking up at the sky, and I thought that I had run into a branch from a tree, and it just knocked me over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I pop up, and I like kinda look around and I'm fine, and I go to reengage on this dude, and I notice the vehicle is on fire. And I hadn't checked the vehicle, I've only seen one of my buddies. So I was bad, I really wanted to go kill this dude. I was like, I'm gonna go check the vehicle instead, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fortunately the passenger door, which again is facing the sky, had been blown off the hinges because the truck had basically collapsed on itself so the turret was, you couldn't, there was no access point inside the cab other than that door. Climb up the vehicle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, look in, and my team leader is buried kinda where the driver's seat would be, and he's trying to establish comms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which just says a lot about like training and like just doing what you need to do regardless of how bad it gets. I mean he's in an exploded vehicle and he's a mess. Both his legs are nasty, he's a below the knee amputee now. Both his legs are completely mangled. He's got an arterial bleed through his arm, his face is completely


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Riddled with Spall, and he's on the radio in a destroyed, decimated truck trying to establish comms, communicate to Haya what's going on. Says a lot about that dude.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I'm looking inside this vehicle. You know, we're still taking PKM and RPG. Now our trucks are set up. They're returning fire. We got a couple of our 60 millimeter mortars out. They're returning fire. Team Sergeant, uh, who, uh, they're acting Team Sergeant at the time. He's got a maneuver element that's maneuvering on the ambush line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think anyone really knew where I even was. Cause I'm in the middle of all this that's happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I look inside the truck, I see him. Okay. Truck's on fire. It's burning from the back towards the cab.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I look inside, the rounds from inside the vehicle are starting to pop off from the heat. So it's like looking into a, like a popcorn bag. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Rounds are still tinging off the front of the truck from the enemy machine gun fire. I'm like, this is a really bad day here and this is where it ends. There's no way either one of us are making out of this. My team leader played offensive line at West Point. Big cat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Big boy. I wouldn't say jacked, but just a hoss. Six, seven, about 290, 225 without Kit. Big boy. With Kit, he's well over 300 pounds. And we used to joke about this, you know, which is kind of ironic that he and I can never


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being the same vehicle because we were the only ones big enough to move the other guy. If we needed to. Which is what played out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two got ejected, uh, or three got ejected. There were two in the back, the guy in the turret, and then the driver.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All Americans except for one of my Terps, one of my interpreters, was in that truck. God, I can't believe these guys made it out of there. Yeaah. That's freaking crazy. It is, it is crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, cause I, they all lived, but I assumed that everyone would be dead, based on the level of damage. So I jump in the truck, and uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I kind of just wedge him up a little bit out of the area where he was, kind of pressed him into the dash.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I climbed myself back out and then just grabbed his kit and just like dead lifted him out of this thing and just chucked him over the side of the truck. And at this point, some of our Patent of Force guys had showed up. A couple of my teammates had showed up. So they took him, busted out a litter, began, you know, moving him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The truck pretty much burnt up completely, you know, within like a minute or so after we were both out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we just circled around to find, scoop up all the rest of the guys that were just in like random areas around, set up a CCP and then, you know, finished the fight and then went to, you know, our med course of action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, we set up an HLZ right there. Um, Bird came in, we pushed out the dudes. They did launch a ground QRF element from one of the Sista teams that was in the valley with us. They showed up on the ground. We medevacked the five or six guys that were in that truck right from there. And uhm, then eventually I got medevacked out after.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charlie, they strapped a couple of charges to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was pretty much destroyed anyway. They recovered some of the combo stuff and then dipped like the rest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I was treating one of the guys in the vehicle, once we established the CCP, his, uh, one of our attachments, one of our nerdier attachments, although important, his eye had come out of his head. So his eye was like dangling down where his cheek is. So I was treating him, you know, put the eye back in the socket and I'm wrapping it up with gauze.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of my teammates comes over and just slaps some gauze against the side of my face. And this is like 90 minutes after initial contact. And I'm looking up at him like, what are you doing? And he's like, bro, you're like gushing blood. I'm like, really?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like alright, so he's holding this thing against my face, I'm putting this guy's eye back in his head. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then I, you know, stand up, I take a look at it, I didn't take a look at it, I'm like talking to him, I'm talking to him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, my medic was like, yeah, I think we're gonna need to get you out of here to get that looked at. And, uh, you know, I threw another childish temper tantrum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right there, I refused to leave until the other guys were out and then the QRF showed up, so they showed up, situation under control. They were gonna escort them back to base. Uhm, there was one bird that had come back in, so I jumped on that and then I was medipacked out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah, they had to cauterize it, uhm, I think it's cause of clip and ottery. So they sent me to Bagram, which is where the rest of the guys were at. And, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanted to just be with those dudes. I wasn't sure if some of them were gonna live. I mean, some of them were like real banged up, so I wanted to get there and be with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a little bit of a situation with some of the army staff that were at the, at the hospital. They have this protocol where they don't allow a kit, grenades, weapons, like they secure all that stuff into like a separate area. I had never been in a hospital like this before and I just come blasting in the front door, angry, looking for my teammates and you know, two or three of these little


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like E3 med kids were like stop physically like getting in my way to try to take my weapons and kit from me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I did not appreciate that at all. Fortunately, another SF guy that was there came over and grabbed me and pulled me in real tight and was like, you need to calm down, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he's an amy doctor and then he's a plastic surgeon in civilian life. He was the guy that treated me. So he pulls me over and he's like, Hey man, I gotta, I'm going to cauterize your wound and then I'm going to, I'm going to sew it back up. Um, I'm going to get you on some pain management stuff like now, like intravenously. And I'm like, no, you're not doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, he's like, nah, it's like gonna, it's gonna be unpleasant. I'm like, dude, doc, listen, doc, like hit me with some lidocaine if you want. That's fine. Some like numb it up, but you're not going to put me out of my mind. I'm not going to be stoned and drifting around this place in Pixieland.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two of my teammates are in surgery. Three other ones are bedside, right there. You need to hurry up and do whatever this is, so I can go do my job, which is to be next to those guys, right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the sort of commander had showed up because there's six or now I think seven of us wounded. He shows up and the doctor looks over at him and sort of command is like, just, just go ahead and do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm laying down on my side and he, this little medical welder that goes in and you know like burns it back together and then sews it shut and you know it sucked but I was so angry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and Phil was just rage and concern that it really wasn't that big of a deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Out of the, out of the six, only two were SF guys. Okay. Our captain, and our, uh, another one of our weapons guys. Another one, another Bravo. The guy who was in the turret.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they replaced my, our captain. They gave us a new captain who was already in country. He was working as like a staff support officer in one of the other locations. They pushed him to us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right around early December was when the snow came in anyway. And when you're at 75, 7800 feet in the mountains, I mean that's like real snow. Like feet of snow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the timing was kind of good for us because no one can move when you've got nine feet of snow outside in the mountains. So everything just kind of goes on pause for a little bit. From like December through like the end of January. That's where we got our new captain. We got plussed up with a couple more attachments to backfill the dudes that we had lost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had, you know, eight, nine weeks together just to kind of get our stuff together, bring the new captain of the speed. So by the time we were ready to kind of get back into it, come early February timeframe, he was, he was good to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like a broken down clay, you know, structures. Like when I say we were living together, I mean we were living together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? So you, you, you gain that bond with those, with those guys, and you learn them. You learn their personalities, their character, their, their quirks. When you start throwing, you know, 100 random dudes at us, because we're gonna go do some massive village clearance, you don't know any of these guys. We have been training them, like randomly,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Within our training cycle, where we would run through, you know, a couple days with the Afghan National Army, a couple days with the Afghan National Police, a couple days with the ALP, the local police guys, our own guys. So there was a, there was a system in place, but they're still just sending us whoever they wanted to go to training that day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we were, uhm, we didn't take it as seriously as we should have. Uhm, we didn't prioritize it enough to instill greater mitigation criteria. We had some stuff in place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got, uh, we were sloppy, I think as a detachment. It's, it's not anything you can prevent by any means, but we could have done a better job to mitigate it, you know, and a lot of the lessons that have gone out from the event with us, which is still considered the most catastrophic insider attack since 9-11.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is, uh, the lessons learned from that are being employed now really much as like, as like pretty much a baseline for all the guys that work with, with indige.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we were doing a Lodja village clearance, I believe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clearance with a, with a Ron and we would sit tight. I think it was more of an ALP checkpoint establishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mission, to like, begin building something from nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so our compound had two layers to it, internal, which is where we lived and where our op center was. And then we had outside that perimeter was where our motor pool was. So we kept our vehicles, fuel, weapons, or not weapons, but other storage. So our SOP was for an op,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The units would show up, they would stay outside of our entire perimeter. The leadership would come into our motor pool area. Uhm, so we could brief them on what we were doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Standard practice is you want to keep that window where you notify your partner for us where you're going as narrow as you can because they talk. So in an attempt to reduce


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that word getting out, we would just tell them right there and then and then we would roll.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that worked for us, you know, and the Bravo section, 18 Bravo section is responsible for base defense, right? So me, my team and I, or my, my section and I, we're the ones that put this together. Team Sergeant obviously is the one that says yes, because we roll with and it worked, um, that entire time on this particular day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I immediately see it, obviously, it sticks out to me, because it's a violation of the SOP that we developed and we've been executing two, three times a week for five and a half months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think a technical, I mean I was in Eastern Africa and there's like different kinds of like Mad Max technicals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But a mounted PKM in the back. 100%. Mounted PKM in the back that a machine gunner could operate from a standing position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that rolls in with two dudes, and I see it, and my first response wasn't, oh shit, this is a threat. It was, you know, these idiots just can't follow instruction, which is pretty common in Afghanistan. So my first response was just, I'm annoyed that you're doing this. And now I'm at a crossroads, man, and it's either,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do I address this problem right now? An error on the side of security? Or, do I let it ride? I go the more diplomatic route.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where my team sergeant talks to his leadership or my commander talks to his leadership and we handle it after the fact. I went with the more diplomatic option.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you know, and it's easy to look back and judge, which I do to myself, about how easy you can get complacent. Which is true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when you've seen so many things that could have gone wrong, that didn't, you become conditioned to these types of mistakes or these types, these types of acts by your partner force. It's not, they don't jump out as these glaring red flashing holy shit lights.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I noticed it and I'm like, you know what, I'll deal with this later. Let's just get through, let's just get through this mission and we'll address it, uh, after the fact. And, uh, this is the perfect storm because we, we do the mission brief, get our Patent of Force leadership up to speed on what we're doing. And then we're doing our own team internal comps checks. So we're in a circle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, you go around, you go around the circle, right? Like, alpha up, bravo one up, bravo two up, everyone's just checking comms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The trucks are all pretty much right behind me. They're all up and running. Comms are good in the truck. Weapons are good in the truck. First thing we do, well, when I got our vehicle set up, I had left my go bag, my rifle,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have my Glock on me and I'm over doing mission brief and final comps checks. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My radio's good to go, and I immediately turn and start walking towards my truck. Right? Kinda.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In subordinate, because you're really supposed to stay there until everyone's good to go. I'm like, I'm good, I can hear you, you can hear me, I'm gonna go get in my vehicle. And I'm walking away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the group and that's when I hear the rounds crack off from behind me. And my first thought again was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But after the second round, third round, fourth round, you know, I can tell it's coming from a belt-fed machine gun. Like, no, no, no, someone's deliberately shooting at something. And I snap my head around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of those guys, sure enough, had jumped up on the back of that four ranger and was just opening up into the crowd. Perfect setup for that. We're all lumped together and he's, you know, 20 feet away with a PKM. Ripping into the crew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I see that, and my first thought is move to cover, eliminate the threat. Like just react to near ambush.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And although I've played this game now, I don't know, infinite amount of times in my mind, I wonder if I had my primary weapon system on me, would I have done what I am supposed to do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I had cover right there. There were four or five armored trucks right next to me. Take a couple steps over, weapon system comes up, problem goes away, and we move on with life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After I see the shooter, is one of our infantry uplift.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soldiers, who was scheduled to be a driver for us that day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Frozen. And he's maybe 8 feet in front of me. And he's like a deer in headlights. And he's staring at a guy with a machine gun shooting in his direction. 15, 20 feet in front of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Although I know what I'm supposed to do, my love of a teammate superseded me doing my actual job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So instead of moving to some cover and eliminating the threat, I moved towards this kid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I take maybe just like three, four aggressive steps. I'm coming in pretty hot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I get my back to the gunner, and I get in front of this kid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's when I'm hit for the first time, just below my right ass cheek. Upper thigh. Boom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Knocks me down on top of the soldier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I feel another 2-3 impacts to my legs. So I know I'm hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know the severity of it, but I've been hit before, I'm hit again, okay, we'll deal with this here in a second. And I drag myself and this kid, you know, maybe four or five feet behind the front corner of another truck to get us a little bit of cover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are dropping all around us. People are scrambling. Uh, I get to this, this next location. I don't have my rifle on me. There was a rifle laying on the ground next to me that our senior medic, it was his weapon. He had been hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I roll over, I grab that, I throw that into action, I'm laying on my back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I put a couple horribly placed rounds towards this threat who's still engaging. And then one of my teammates comes in and smokes this dude.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was the initiation of a complex ambush. So we start taking machine gun fire and rockets from outside of the camp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can tell that we're in a firefight, but I'm in no position to address any of those problems. So I go to my next course action and I check this soldier who I'm still kind of laying on top of, who's


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just in shock, but there's no holes in him and he can breathe. So, no massive hem, no massive hemorrhaging. He got an airway. Okay, we're good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my right leg is just mangled, right? Docs estimated it was probably four or five rounds I took to that leg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I took one to my lower left leg, which I didn't even know about for like, weeks, weeks later. The right leg was definitely the problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the river of blood that was flowing from me to where I had initially been hit was substantial. So I know my femoral artery has been clipped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So time is, uh, is of the essence, right? I know due to training, I have probably maybe 8 to 12 minutes before I'm completely bled out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I grab a kid, uh, grab a tourniquet off my kid, I slap that on, wrench it down, lock in the windlass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bleeding doesn't stop. Second one goes on. I put a second one on myself, put that down. Looks like the bleeding may have slowed down a little bit. Uhm, but I can tell I'm still bleeding. A teammate gets to me and he's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're in bad shit. Like the look on his face said everything I needed to know. He puts on a third tourniquet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then he gets IV access for blood or for meds or whatever. And I was trying to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like get him away from me, originally. Like I know I'm dead. Like I'm in the expecting category. Like I don't know who's doing triage right now, but I need to be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the group that isn't gonna make it, I'm with the group that you don't waste your time on. Because I know there's a lot of people that are down right now, and I know that I'm not one that can be saved. So get, like, get away from me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He ignores me and does what he needs to do. Third tourniquet, IV access, and then his work was pretty much done. So he moves on. Well, I'm still confident that I'm still bleeding out. So I'm thinking, man, have I done everything I can do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I decided to grab some gauze out of my kit and, uh, ball it up into what we call a little power ball. Just taking gauze and creating this little ball out of it. I loosen up one of the tourniquets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just wedge this gauze up into my thigh, and I'm kind of reaching up towards my hip, looking for the, to feel the pulse of the artery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we do training to be able to do this, but it's on something else other than, you know, you. And when you're bleeding at that volume,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the blood starts to shunt inwards to your organs to protect your body to survive as long as you can. So my hands are real numb, I can't really feel anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I feel something. I'm brushing past broken femur. My femur was shattered. So now the pain is really kicking in for the first time. And I'm trying to stay conscious.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel something, I think, I just wedge down as hard as I can, press that gauze in, feed the rest of the gauze in on top of it, re-secure the tourniquet on top, lock that in, and then, uh, my work there was pretty much done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just hearing that you read that, like, puts me back in that place, man. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wasn't sure how long I had been still on the ground, but I knew it was quite a bit of time. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was convinced that that was it though. That was where it was ending.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember being at that aid station. It's spotty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I do remember getting pulled off the bird and getting thrown on the table.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then just, you know, the med staff scrambling to work on me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't know what the problem is with me other than I'm crashing hot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, they put me on a helicopter to send me to Bagram where there's a full scale hospital. At this location that I was at first was a forward surgical team that certainly has medical capability.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But once they put me on that transfusion, everything began shutting down. They didn't know why, but they knew I needed to get to Bagram immediately.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was while I was flying to Bagram, which was maybe a 9-10 minute flight, that they realized what happened with the blood. Because they were giving my teammate my blood type, and they were giving me his. We have very similar last names. Both begin with L-A, so they just switched up the names.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well they're pumping him full of O positive, which is my blood type, which is I'm a universal donor, I can give blood to anybody, so he's fine. But when they looked to see what they were giving him,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were like, wait a minute. And they looked to check to see what they just gave me. And it was like 8 units. I mean it was a ton.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what they, that's when they realize what happened. So I'm airborne.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they call Bagram and they say, we just pump Nick full of AB negative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no way he survives this flight. I was already in a critical condition to begin with. There's no way he survives the flight. Just be prepared to receive his body when he gets there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in a lot of ways they were right. I mean, I coded on that flight and to your point, the flight medics were getting real creative with keeping me alive. So panels and the whole thing is out. I think they were hitting me with like shots of adrenaline and just like whatever tools they had, uh, to keep me clinging on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pull me off the bird, get me into surgery. They take my foot off immediately. Uh, really, I mean, it was, it was probably dead at that point because now we're talking 90 minutes, close to two hours since the point of injury. But really it was just try, try to minimize how much damage my body was trying to recover from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, uh, in a baited dialysis transfusion machines are just keeping me alive, you know, at this point. And that was the, that was the case for like three or four days at pop room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember uhm, coming to with Bagram a couple times and I was restrained to the bed because I had been trying to rip the breathing tube out when I would wake up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're, when you're intubated, you know, a machine is breathing for you, but when you try to breathe yourself against that, it can throw off the timing of the machine, so it feels like you're like suffocating. It's a horrible feeling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was trying to get this tube out of my mouth when I would come to. I don't remember doing that, but I just remember coming to and being like restrained to a bed and wanting to for someone to put me out of my misery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, so I remember my now wife who was deployed and working at a Bagram. I remember coming to her a couple of times and seeing her bedside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I remember my sort of commando being bedside a lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but my last real memory is when they were moving me from Bagram to load me on to a fixed winged bird to fly me to Germany. Which took about 5 days for them to stabilize me enough to survive the flight to Germany.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember getting loaded on that bird, which is wild. Those, those C-130s that are outfitted. It's like a hospital on, you know, with wings. I remember getting on that flight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't remember much from Germany. I was only there a day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No. No. No recollection of that, no knowledge of that. They took my leg up to the knee at Germany and then they flew me from there to Walter Reed the next day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, I get to Walter Reed and my father was there, my mother was there. I went straight into the intensive care unit, which is where I spent the next like six weeks, cause it was still real touch and go. And it was around that, it was at that point that I realized my leg was, was gone, or at least a part of it was gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time I realized it was already above the knee. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had taken it above the knee at Walter Reed, and the chief of ortho came in to the intensive care unit. And he looks at me, and I'm whacked out, I'm on ketamine and Dilaudid, you know, I'm on a high cocktail of pain management meds. But he looks at me and he's like, hey man, I'm Dr. So-and-so, chief of ortho.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's the situation. You've been here about three or four days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your leg, most of your leg is gone. What's left of it is riddled with bacteria and infection. Any one of these things could kill you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So my staff wants to take you into surgery right now and amputate your leg at the hip and just get rid of this problem that could kill you and just get you on with life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think I can save more of your leg. It's just gonna be a street fight. And I need you, like, in the fight with me. And I just met this guy, you know, he's telling me that this problem could kill me at any moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was, that was it. I think I just heard that and I said, let's do that. And he said, okay. So, that began my regiment of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Surgeries three or four times a week and they were just going in and amputating more and more and more cutting out dead tissue, cutting out more bone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Monday, Wednesday, Friday was kind of my typical, uh, routine, and then flushing me with antibiotics, hoping that the infection would get taken care of, and then it was just rinse and repeat like that for, you know, a month or so, five weeks, six weeks, something like that, until the infection eventually stopped, which left me with pretty much what I have today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I got fitted for my first prosthetic probably 10-12 weeks after getting there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And which is, you know, a monumental step in the process. Unfortunately, this is quite common. I needed a couple surgical revisions after that had happened, which is really difficult to deal with because it pretty much puts you back at square one. You know, your leg changes shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the swelling sets in, you have to wait until you can get recasted for another prosthetic. It kind of starts that clock all over again. I had to go through that twice, you know, in those setbacks. And I talk about this often, you know, like that's what separates those that can continue to make the strides.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And often times is what just derails people. They just can't deal with that, with that setback.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so what you just read was probably around July timeframe where I was done with surgeries and I was really making substantial progress working with my prosthetic. I got to the hospital and matched, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know a few months after that was when I was done with surgeries completely and I was, I was really getting after it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was, I mean my level of obsession, uh, cause I could already see where I was going. Like I knew what was in front of me was getting back to the team. That happened in the hospital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even before I was on a prosthetic, I was like, I'm going back to my lifestyle and my profession. So these training sessions, this was, this was my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While I was in the hospital, and you know, they come visit me every now and then, and we, we just, we maintain comms, but it wasn't so much about...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tell me what your, what your goals are when you get back. It was just, how you doing? Do you need anything? How's your family? Right? That was the focus. When I left Walter Reed, got back to brag.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I reported back over to the third group and I met with the group command team, uh, the first day in their office, you know, and of course they're like, welcome back, you look great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm still early on in the process. You know, I've been an amputee for about a year, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm no physical specimen, I'm still hobbling, you know, I'm still limping, I'm still trying to figure out how to live life with one leg. And I'm sitting in their office. And they eventually asked me, so like, what are your goals? What are you looking to do? And I told them that, I was, I'm going back to the team. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that something that you think you can do now? And I said no. No, no, no. I have a lot of work I still need to do. But that's where things are going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the interim, you know, I need a job. I need to provide value here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I requested to go to the combatives committee to work as an instructor, which was a great fit, you know, long time like combatives dude. And, uh, and they granted that they granted that request. I haven't talked to these guys, you know, years later about this exact moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'll, they'll, they'll, they'll have all told me. Like we had to do everything in our power to hold back. Like the crazy one-eyed look. Like what did you just say? Or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go down the expectation management kind of brief that I was getting quite a bit at the hospital. They had to fight the urge to do both of those things and just stay kind of cool and neutral. Cause they wanted to be supportive of me, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but as a leader, right, like you also want to be practical to a degree. So, you know, I understand that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They did grant me the request to work as an instructor and that's when the game really like went up significantly. Cause as amazing as the staff is at Walter Reed, their job is to keep you alive and then get you as functional as you can be to live the rest of your life with whatever condition you're dealing with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're not there to train someone to go back to an ODA. That's not their job. The guys in my unit, that is their job. So I knew I needed to get back to brag ASAP.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To begin training with those guys and gals.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First I needed a job, which my unit gave me, and then I knew I needed to fight this thing administratively, which I didn't know what that looked like, but I knew it was going to trigger a medical evaluation board, which I referred to as a military eviction board, because that's really what the, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they do place a lot of emphasis on, let's make sure we get your VA rating where it needs to be, all the documentation, get you maybe an internship for what life looks like as a civilian, that's what they're there to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I walked in and I'm like, I'm going back to the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the first person I got linked up with that kind of quarterbacks you through that process just didn't get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, he just didn't get it. And uh, I fired that guy, which I didn't know I could do. Uh, but I threw enough of a tapetantrum and talked to his boss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was like, you either need to get me someone who's on the same page as me or I'm just going to do this myself. So, he was cool. He linked me up with this girl who is amazing. Her name is Rachel and she had worked with some SF guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm working as an instructor, day to day, and I've really just taken the same mentality I had at Walter Reed, which in a lot of ways is easier to maintain this because you're living in this bubble where your only job is to go to these appointments and you're like living at Walter Reed. Once you get home,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You got, you know, your friends. In my instance, I had my girl, who I moved in with. Like, there's these other factors that are part of your life that can distract you or detract from the mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had to take the same mentality I had in the hospital and apply that to a normal living environment. And with just within the first week of being home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had to make some real hard choices and eliminate anything that didn't need to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Complete and total reevaluation of how I spend every single minute of my day. And if you didn't need to be there, if it didn't need to be there, both tasks and people, it was removed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And with tasks, I think it's, it's easier to say I'm not going to watch Netflix anymore. But when you start talking about removing relationships from your life, that can, that can be real difficult to do. I sat down with my now wife,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's active duty, uhm, at the time she was doing psychological operations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we hadn't spent any like, real time together, you know? And then I move in with her, and within the first week I sit down with her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said, hey babe, here's the deal, uh, I'm going all in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, it was the truth though. Like there was no alternative. This is the deal. This isn't like a course of action. This is the way it's going to be. I just wanted to be transparent.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm going all in on this. Like, complete and total burn the boats. Like, I'm either going to be successful or I'm going to die trying. That's it. Non-negotiable. I have to do this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, what that means on the tactical level is that there are no dinners, there's no, we're gonna go to this wedding, there's no, like, nothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing. Everything's gone. It's eat, sleep, train, repeat until I get successful or they kick me out of the army. That's it. And uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I look back at that conversation now with the family we have, we're married now six years, two young kids. The highlight of my life, most important thing in my life by a mile and all that could have very easily just not existed if she didn't have the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The strength to be okay with the somewhat craziness that I was communicating to her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'm incredibly grateful that that happened. You know, it's like, it can be tough to talk about because, uh, it could have all, have just not, not been a thing. She was like, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Roger that, you know. And I think what enabled that was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was also aggressively pursuing kind of her next echelon, her next evolution in her career. So she was really dialed in professionally as well. So we were both kind of going down in parallel these hyper-focused roads towards our professional ambitions at the same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which helped, cause you know, she had stuff that she needed to do, I had stuff I needed to do, we'd come together when we could, but it was, it was an interesting, you know, introduction to our relationship, cause all this was going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So eight month process of a med board. I'm working as an instructor and I'm just, I'm living just this completely and total dialed in, you know, minute to minute, hour to hour.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lifestyle, uh, obviously a lot of physical training was involved. And uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, after about 8 months, med board complete, the AMI allowed me to stay in on active duty, then that check, that box was checked and then it was, okay, now I need to get back to the team. And now I need to figure out how to go about doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was created in real time by my chain of command. There wasn't this laid out pipeline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It started off simple, it was go do an AMI physical fitness test. Okay, you did that and then they threw every AMI physical fitness program of record at me. And once I checked all those blocks,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then they started just throwing other stuff at me. So they had me, I was getting evaluated cognitively, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Proficiency. They ran me back over to the 18 Bravo committee, which is where I learned how to be an 18 Bravo. They threw me back over there for like a one week, two week train up evaluation to see if I could still do my job as a Bravo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They, uh, they put me in for a psych screening, which no one's admitted this to me yet directly, but I'm confident when I say I was, I was operating at such an insane pace and intensity that people thought I was like legitimately crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, people thought I had like a diagnosable problem, whether that was delusional or like psychopathic. Like we need to get this guy's mental well-being checked out because I think he's insane and needs like treatment. The site came back and was like, yeah, he's no crazier than he was before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, PTN doing a ton of jiu-jitsu, uhm, competing in jiu-jitsu as well, which is a huge part of this overall journey, is what, is that piece of it, not just from a training perspective, but just mentality and structure and like technical focus on what I'm doing, adaptation to how do I, how do I do this with just one limb now, one leg now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got my blue and my purple after I lost my leg. Check. But you trained before you lost your leg. I did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I trained. I got into jiu-jitsu right after I graduated the Q course, so I did that on two legs for a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then my jiu-jitsu journey as an amputee started at Walter Reed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jose, it's like Ortiz is his name. We're good on him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Awesome dude. I met him at the hospital and then I began training. He invited me over to his...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In his dojo, so I began training there like 3-4 nights a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I'd say that, you know, having been in the military and special ops for a bit before this, I was used to living, you know, structured, disciplined lifestyle, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The forcing function of knowing I needed to be able to execute at the highest possible level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In order to do that, I need to be as efficient as possible. You said it. It was about efficiency. How do I maximize every moment I have upright on two legs? And I got, I developed a bit of OCD on that because if I would, if I would go to leave my house and I would leave something and I'd walk 12 steps before I realized I forgot it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That would irritate me. Cause now that's 24 steps I'm not getting back. So there's a glitch in my system. There's a glitch in my protocol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Things aren't prepped where they need to be. This mistake can't happen again because I just lost 24 steps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I mean, I was dissecting, like, where I put my phone, my keys, my work, like to the, like to the inch within my life so that I didn't lose 24 steps ever again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the, the final, the final physical evaluation, uh, which was my final overall evaluation, was the, was by far the hottest one. This was at the end of about 12 weeks, where I was doing one or two assessments a week. And third group, again,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Only operate in Afghanistan, they were dealing with a lot of injuries. So third group took it upon themselves to create what they called originally the return to duty physical fitness assessment. And that was specifically for guys that were wounded that wanted to go back to operational status.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They spent months putting this thing together. This was while I was at the hospital. And they were telling me about it a little bit and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They developed it out, they ran, you know, able-bodied guys through it to develop their standards, and it was more of, more tasks that were more in line with a combat scenario. So as opposed to just, you know, push-ups, sit-ups, and running, it was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tactical tasks, like move to cover type drills. Everything's done with a 50 pound weighted vest to simulate kit. Most were done with a rubber duck rifle, so it was more tactical tasks. 12 events in total.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well the day before I took mine, this was like my Superbowl, and my training for about 6 weeks or so leading up to that point was mostly focused on those particular tasks. The day before,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went in the gym just to loosen up, get some blood flow, get ready for my next, for the, for the test that happened the following morning. And the group of Command Sergeant Major and another dude who had been shot through the hand who was trying to go back to the team, they both took it that morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I walk in the gym to loosen up and they're both sprawled out on the turf, drenched and exhausted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Group Command Sergeant Major's name is Mak Eked. He just recently retired. He was the most recent, uh, USASOC CSM.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's a stud. He's a PT stud. Able-bodied dude stud. He's out on the turf. Both of them are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I walk over and, hey, Sgt. Major, how you doing? He's like, uh, not great because that test just kicked my ass. He's like, you're taking this thing tomorrow morning. I said, yeah. He's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This thing's no joke. And I knew it was, it was, it was brutal. I had never taken it entirety, in the, in its entirety.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To standard once, because I knew it was just going to break me off. So in my training, I was playing around with different resistances, but I would just lump together different groups of them and go back to back to back in repetition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said yea, tomorrow morning. He's like, okay, well I'll be here. You know, good luck. I said thank you. So I show up the next morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Group command team, battalion command team, company command team, and about 50 other dudes are all there. It was a massive entourage. They basically closed the gym. Uhm, or at least no one was training because everyone was just there to watch this. My teammates are there. And uh, I knocked that out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the final event on this thing is, it doesn't sound bad, but it's actually quite miserable. The twelfth event, and I think you had, I think it was two minutes in between each event.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The final one, the twelfth one, is just as a walk on a treadmill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it starts off flat and then every two minutes it increases in elevation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So at the final point, you're walking at a 45 degree angle, which is steep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's at a slow pace, you know, it's like a fast, like a brisk walk. So you're doing this 50 pound weighted vest, 12th event. Well, my issue, similar to the way I wiped out there at Walter Reed, was because of the lack of range of motion I have in my hip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the angle is that steep, I can't get my foot out in front of me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had to develop a technique where once it hit a certain degree of elevation, I would rotate my body laterally and I would laterally shuffle uphill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So my prosthetic is the trail leg, my sound leg is the uphill leg, and that's essentially just pulling me up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm on the verge of passing out. I'm on the verge of going to see the wizard. I'm losing peripheral vision. It's getting real sparkly around me and I'm standing there trying to look tough. Like I could do it again if I needed to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, group CSN comes over and he says, hey man, you know I just took this test yesterday, and it kicked my ass. He's like, if I wasn't here to witness you just do what you just did, I would never believe that that was possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright dude, thank you, but like what else do you need from me? You know, which my teammates were kind of laughing. I'm talking to the group command sergeant major and I'm like, uh, thanks for the, thanks for that. But like what, like what's next? Come on man. What else, what else is it going to take? He looks over at the group commander.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he just goes, hey, Mark, this is your decision, but I don't know how we're going to tell this dude no after what we just put him through. So he, Mark Echid looked at me and he goes, all right, man, uhm, you'll have your orders come Monday and you'll be back, back on the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, back in my, when I was like big, big, before I came into the military, uhm, I was around, I was in the 600s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being successful, doing what I, what I knew I needed to do, proving that they say is wrong, proving myself right, all that kind of stuff. It was about me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And once I began going through this assessment, I'm knocking one out after another, boom, boom, boom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right around that time, uh, I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I realized in that moment that I was going back to a team and I hadn't thought about them once before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And these are guys that are around me, they're in the gym, we're training together. I'm seeing them all the time, but I was so target fixated on me doing what I needed to do that I didn't consider them. And uh, it's just, it scared the hell out of me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that day at work, I tracked down a couple of the guys that were local, had some phone conversations with some guys that were offsite doing some stuff. And I was like, guys, you know, I apologize for having not even done this up until this point, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Care about me and you want me to be happy. Have you guys thought about this? Cause I haven't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, I, I don't think I can give this an objective look because I'm so obsessed with success. I need you guys there to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this was maybe four or five different conversations and I got pretty much the same answer from all of them and they said, listen dude, we've all talked about this already amongst ourselves and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the hard truth is, is we don't know if this is gonna work. But what I can promise you is, we want you to keep working towards it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We will be the ones to tell you if this isn't gonna work. If you're able to make it back, we'll assess the situation then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and we'll make that hard call for you, so you don't have to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had to put my trust into them, into my teammates to be able to look at it objectively that way. And Jimmy Rooney, who you just read about, he was set to take the team as the team sergeant.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, he may have already taken it at that point, but he and I were working together when I was working as an instructor. He was the head instructor of our, uh, Sephalic committee, Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat Committee, and we worked at our offices right down the hall. We worked together, that committee and the combatives committee. So we had a working relationship, and it wasn't till,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much farther down the road that he told me he was going to take, take two sex, take my team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, he was the last one I talked to on that day, at work. And we had a, you know, a candid...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, emotional conversation and he said the same thing and hearing it from him as the guy that I know is going to put the best interest of the team above all else because that's his job. I can trust him and the guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To give me that, that no shit objective feedback.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when I'm walking into my fourth training session for the day and I'm exhausted and tired and beat up, rather than thinking about taking those first steps off the plane in Afghanistan with my arms raised in the, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was thinking about my teammates son. I was thinking about my teammates wife and I needed to annihilate this workout right now. There's no other option for them, for that kid or for that woman. And it took what was already an extraordinarily intense and rigid lifestyle to another level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like electric that now I'm walking into these training sessions. It was just that much easier to get up at zero three. It was just that much easier to do those extra two, three reps when everything in my body and my mind is telling me to stop. The image of my teammates five year old is what fueled that to happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a, you know, there was a quick, you know, celebration that I had just with myself. Uhm, the boy, collectively, we were, it was all business, but I did have that glorifying moment that I dreamed of, taking the steps off the plane. That was real short-lived because I realized how fast


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The tailgate hasn't even dropped yet, and the SOTIF command team is running onto the plane. Which is unusual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're all looking around. We had a horrible infill. I mean, we went through like five different countries, delays and flights. It was a mess. It took us like a week to get in. So we're all operating on random time zone times coming off an ambient, you know, half asleep, like, okay, we finally made it. And this, this meeting is happening on the plane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we get the equipment off, and our team leadership's like, we need to go into the meeting and briefing room, like, now.


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[Assistant] We go in now and there was a 19th group team. So army special forces, national guide team that was operating down in helmet that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had a real bad situation going on with their partner for us. Like we use the term catastrophic loss of rapport.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we needed to get spun up even though on that trip we weren't falling directly under the SOTIF. We were falling under a separate task force for that deployment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The task force gave us over to the SOTIF to be the answer to this problem as like a temporary solution. So we were getting spun up the second, literally the second we landed and it was game time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We didn't take over, but we went down there and, uh, assisted them to get the situation under control for a couple weeks.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna piss off a lot of National God guys on this, but this is my opinion, is National God SF teams provide an enormous value, uh, across the operational continuum. Where I've seen it work the best is when they take


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] National God SF guys and they attach them to active duty ODAs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 2012-13, we had a National God medic that was attached to us for that duration of that deployment. That always works out great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you put them into a combat environment. This is, I'm generally speaking. They just don't have the time that they train together to the same level that we do as in the active side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To bring that same level of tactical capability to a fight, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're hamstrung oftentimes because they group these teams together kind of as of a hodgepodge of different dudes in the unit to send them over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you don't have that organic chemistry that you have on an active duty side. Uh, so from just a management and operational perspective, they're fighting upstream because of that dynamic. And when you put them into a hostile environment, like in Helmand, and you're given that type of mission, it can be, uh, it can be really tough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause by the time I got to the team, man, they were, they were already past their collective training phase. They had already finished PMT. They were basically just...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting gear prepped, taking some leave, and then heading into the box. So I had just like six weeks on the team before we were back in Afghanistan. So these tactical tasks, you know, they would have been fleshed out in training if I was with the guys leading up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't, I didn't have that time, so things became real on the ground the first time I tried to climb into a, a MatV or an MRAP and I'm like, how the hell do I even do this? You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that's just an example and, you know, it's a list of tasks that I, I performed the same way and I, you know, downtime in between training and ops, I would just identify one of these things that I knew needed work and I would just like go crazy and just do it a thousand times. And I'm like, if I do this a thousand times, I'm going to figure out how to do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I do it a thousand times, I'm gonna find a way to do it. I just need to do it a thousand times. So like, how do I do that? I'll do it a hundred times a day, you know, for a hundred days, or whatever. Ten days.


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[Assistant] Uh, which is an Afghan commando unit. That's their tier one unit that was, um, established by CAG years prior that they handed off to us to run.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, that's the premier, uhm, direct action CT force. So we were running those guys based primarily, uhm, up out of the cobble area. Not cobble prop up, but in that vicinity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so we had, we moved around the, basically the entire AO.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't as busy as the deployment I had prior.