[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It felt like, okay, well I guess I can go do that, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, started reapplying for some of that stuff, but frankly, I mean, I was not in the, I did not have the headspace at that time to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went from hero to zero real fast. And I'm sleeping on my buddy's slanted floor couch, you know, apartment with a slanted floor on his couch in New York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lower East Side for four months. I mean, he's a bartender. Most of the only times I leave the place, I'm going for his shift to, you know, drink free booze at where he was working. I mean, like it was just, it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, call it what you want, some state of depression or not having mission or purpose in my life and feeling like now I don't have no job, no mission, no purpose, no wife, which I was kind of banking on as the foundation for the rest of my life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the other part of this is I'm actually insufferable on a beach with nothing to do. Right? Insufferable. What am I supposed to do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're kind of, you know, in touch again and doing this weird long distance thing. And it just, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And it's sort of confused. She comes back to America and has Java.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Java, I formed a really big bond with him while I was in Africa because he was kind of my only friend. Java and Francis, Francis was our, our housekeeper and sort of like almost like Em's chief of staff for the house. She would have parties to, you know, over their house or she would host people or whatever. And he would just make that train roll.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I became really good friends with him and he was my best friend in Java and I was at the house all day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a period of months. And this is anyway, really fast transition to doing nothing and having no purpose. So eventually she comes back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's still really bad and we're, we're just sort of subjecting ourselves to further misery, right? But you say, you, you hope, oh, this is going to get better. It's going to get better. How's it going to get better? Right? I mean, something's got to give. And then eventually you just, you can't endure it anymore. And so it's like, you know, she's like, Hey, I'm, I'm done. And so went through that. I stalled that cause I'm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The eternal optimist, right? I mean, this, everything can work out if given enough time and, and, and then it almost becomes a competition of who can suffer more. Right. And I, I think I can suffer a lot and I'm willing to kind of be that kind of martyr if, if left to, if left in a situation where.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want what I want. I'll suffer almost anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually you just move on and you know, I started business school, which I had applied to. And I also had this little hobby for go rock that was kind of nothing at that time, but she had actually recommended it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first time I went to Africa, cause I built her a go bag. I built her a go rock. And that was a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something that then, I just was applying what I didn't wore. You have a go-bag.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You put it in the trunk of the Humvee in case your vehicle gets disabled and you gotta fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? So you have bombs and guns and batteries, all that kind of stuff. And it's just extra supplies that you don't want to have on your back all the time. And you might as well have more if the, if the truck's going to carry it around with you. So, or for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had done that for her and made one at her house and made some others for some of the other folks that she was working with at the embassy and when I was trying to figure out what to do, we were trying to figure out what I could do. She's like, you should do the go-ruck thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that just kind of meant teach people what you know from sexual forces or build them go bags or whatever. Figure it out. Like here's something. Do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that idea kind of stayed alive as I came home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, but I was not in any position to commit to anything as significant as kind of starting a business and going full throttle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing happens fast even when you're a spouse, and I'm still technically a spouse, so it's easier and I know all the right people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through, through Emily, which, you know, cause I'm her dependent now. Like we joked because one time when she was at the farm and we went to, uh, we went to bush gardens in, in Williamsburg and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we got a discount on the, the entrance because we're active duty. I was active duty military and she was my quote dependent, right? It's a, it's a military term. Like it's not a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not, like we're equals. Emma and I are very much equals and always have been, but she's my dependent legally. And I was then later her dependent legally, but at Busch Gardens, they gave her a necklace that said hero dependent. She loved that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I was in a box somewhere like everything else. I still, I still have it in my work desk at, now at GOROC, and it's uh, it's something that makes both of us smile now. But,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So basically I had these, these kind of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm applying for more stuff, trying to do something. I mean, the idea of filling out an application to go to grad school was just a hugely daunting task. This should take, you know, two or three hours. It was months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Indecisiveness, inability to function.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, we talk about military transitions are hard, but whoever you are, if you lose all of your support structures, everyone's got a breaking point. I mean, this is one of the lessons of Sears school survival school, no matter how tough you think you are, you are breakable and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, all of my support structures were gone and, but go rock became a hobby. So I had this idea for, okay, well I guess I'll try to figure out how to design a backpack or a rucksack. And thankfully I actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unbeknownst to me, almost knew a lot about this topic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just sort of gravitated toward it because I knew a lot about it, even though I didn't have some conversation that said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really know about rucking and rucksacks. I, I, I was not my own id boosting my own, my own, you know, sense of self-worth through something that I thought would be a great way to spend time. It was just something to do. And so, you know, didn't know anything about manufacturing, didn't know anything about anything, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually he was like, okay well I got, I'll start doing something with this, put an ad in Craigslist New York City for a backpack designer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like alright, well let's see what we get. I got kind of some sketches and I got some samples and I want something that's kind of like these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And got a response back from this team in Montana that was basically trolling the internet for work because in 2000...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nine? The economy was not in a good place. So you have to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put yourself into those kinds of perspectives, you know, you, you like to say good about a lot of stuff, you know, bad stuff happens good. Well, look, the economy was in a really bad spot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good, good if you're looking for work, good if you're trying to do something awesome because there's a lot more opportunity. Whereas when nobody's looking for work and everything's really expensive and you can't find any deals because the economy is just purring forward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just, it's harder. You gotta, you gotta speed things up faster. So anyway, found this great team out there and basically worked on the rocks and how to do them throughout my first year in business school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So business school was from 2009 to 2011.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, even business school is, I applied to a couple schools.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, I don't even know if I want to go to business school. I mean, it's like, it's so weird to think about now. I've got these chapters in my life and I look back at them and it's hard to relate to myself now in some of those chapters. It's like, when I think about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deploying to war and all the training that I went through and the people that I served with, it feels like I'm reading my own book sometimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, my own kind of narrative in my head, I don't wake up like Rambo every day or anything, you know? I've taken a ton of lessons from that, but I don't, I don't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also can't relate to being just depressed. Like, why don't you just stop being depressed? That's what I would sit and just stop doing this. And the right answer is move forward any way you can. If you're feeling sorry for yourself, go do something for someone else and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, eventually Em came back. We sort of separated our ways. We fought about, this is in the middle of business school. So I went to business school at Georgetown because they gave me a full ride, a scholarship.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. In no small part because of my military service. And that was one of those decisions in life, a lucky break where they just made the decision for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like you, I mean, how do you conceivably turn down a full ride to go to business school at Georgetown? Well, the answer is you don't. You, you, you send thank you letters and you're very grateful. And you know, also the post nine 11 GI bill and you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Transitioning veterans out there, you should use that. It is a great way for you to buy some time and reacclimate yourself to America and gain a skill, some knowledge, some whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's structure. And so I'm grateful to the American taxpayer for, you know, they pay for some housing allowance and some books and it de-stressed my life a little bit at a time when I needed less stress in my life. And, and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somewhere else down south, either Brazil or Mexico or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, she had Java and she's living in a hotel in DC cause she's only supposed to be there for a few months and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Java was the fight between the two of us. Is the only, we never fought about money. We, we always loved each other. We were always friends, but Java was the fight because there, there's not two jobs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, you know, I'll never forget this moment where I was staying and I had a condo in not too far from Georgetown, the university in Georgetown, and she was staying at a hotel on P street. It's a hotel Palomar because it's dog friendly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we sort of have dual custody of our dog, Java, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, this is what we both got really emotional about. Cause he had been with her, he was kinda her dog, but he also was kinda my dog. And he had been on, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So just to put some of her work in perspective, you know, she's going as a 110 pound girl out to go on termination meetings with assets, meaning you're telling them you're not going to pay them anymore, which is their only livelihood in life. Thanks for your service.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the, the intelligence that you got us, but we don't need you anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're threatening someone's livelihood, be very careful how you are around them. And in her case, there was Java in the back seat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With fangs at the ready, should anyone get elevated or, you know, escalation of tone, temper or whatever Java was back there and he was very much her protector and they had obviously a very.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Close relationship as well. And so it just got so bad about Java. She gave me a really big hug. We were standing on the sidewalk, uh, off of her hotel. So a little bit closer towards the Georgetown side on, on P street. And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She goes, you need him even more than I do. So here you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and then, you know, then it was, Java was mine. And, and, you know, I felt guilty. Right, and it was just really, I didn't,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I was also really happy. But you still took him. I still took him. You are absolutely right. I still absolutely took that dog. And that dog is uniquely responsible for my turnaround in life. So, because here's the thing. You need,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mission, you need purpose, you need community. You and your dog, that's a community of two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that is a lot, that is a million times better place to be than a community of one, which is not a community at all, right? It's even the military side of it. If there's two of you, you can cover 360 degrees of security. If there's one of you, you can't, you're alone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I have Java and you know, dogs have to do things like go to the bathroom and Java needed exercise and he would let me know in no uncertain terms that he needed to go out and that he wanted to go to the creek and that he wanted to then go a little bit further down the, down the path and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I just, I poured all of my grief into that dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I felt so much better for it. And then, you know, you start, you take one step and you can take many.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and so that was just the start of kind of slowly and it doesn't happen like that. It's like, when did you become a great leader? I mean, if people ask you that, you're like, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. You've got to just take one step forward and see where that path goes. And.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When, when you're at a low spot in life, I mean, get a dog, work hard, stuff like that. I mean, Java got me out and was just my absolute rock in life for the next several years. And he passed away in 2013, got sick and passed away of something. We don't know what.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, anyway, by that, by that point I was doing much, much better and used the time in business school to kind of incubate GoRuck and met a lot of people there that, that hugely impacted the, the direction that GoRuck would take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. So it started out with one Rucksack GR1 and you know, there's an, I did a napkin sketch of it and eventually figured out how to get that through the process of you get something R and D and then you find a factory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the thing is, at that point, that was May of 2010, was when the first Rucks were for sale. And I thought, man, we've been working on this officially since, you know, the original idea was late 2007. Officially started the company in February of 2008. It's just a way to,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While I was in, while I was still a Green Bray, as just a way to catalog costs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, oh, there's a, I gotta take a trip here. I gotta pay this person to design these things. I guess it's a company, right? I never had a lemonade stand as a kid. Okay. I was not some.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eager entrepreneur, like this is what I have to do in my life. I just kind of backed into this and then I have a company and then, you know, it starts to kick in. I hate to lose. I hate losing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hate it, right? And so I don't want to lose. I don't want to quit on this, right? I've already quit on a marriage. That's how it felt. I already quit on a team already quit on what I held most sacred in life. And that's what it felt like. And so I don't want to quit on this. So I took all of my kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perception of failure and I had my dog by my side and I just refused to quit at this. And so in May of 2010, the Rucks came out and I thought, Oh, this is awesome. I spent a lot of time developing this. Everyone's going to want one of these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yup. Yup. The name is great. Every pixel on our one page website is perfect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, it's silence was the world's answer. It just was absolute silence and nobody bought anything. And I was like, man, this is terrible. So I had this great and by great, I mean, horrible idea to drive around the country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To 48 states, by the way, with my dog, Java, and go meet anybody I could meet that would possibly be interested in buying a rucksack. I felt like Willy Loman, except I wasn't selling shoes in death of a salesman. I'm like selling rucksacks out of the back of my trunk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So did that, drove to 48 states and went to sort of small retail shops and got the Heisman from everybody, right? Like no, you know, arm out front, this is too expensive. You know, the retail price was 295 bucks for a, for a rucksack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're all, they were all made in America and they're, it's just really expensive. When I first saw the cost side of what it was going to cost, like this is insanity. And basically it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, luckily you knew that everyone would want these. Exactly. So the question became, what I did not know how to do was anything related to business doctrine. I don't know anything about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Online advertising, I don't know anything about wholesale, I don't know anything about ads, I don't know anything. But what I did know how to do was to work with these designers and they gave me a heck of an education in just the manufacturing world and I'm just grateful that I found them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just a huge education about all the trade-offs in product and you know, what you can and can't do. And that became my foundation. They became teachers to me for two years as we were developing this and eventually got a great piece of gear. And that wasn't enough though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so went back to the basics and said, what do I know how to do? Cause I didn't want to slave over a computer and figure out Facebook ads. I just didn't. And I should have probably, except maybe I shouldn't have. Cause what I did know how to do was to teach others and how to train others and how to build teams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I learned that from the guys who had taught me that in special forces and then working with them by with and through partner forces in Iraq and in Africa and so


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Came up with something called the Go Ruck Challenge, which was a rocking based event, imagine that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because that's all my training was, and now we have rucksacks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anybody could sign up and it would be led by a special forces guy. And at that time it was just me. And so, you know, it was sort of details, not forthcoming and you show up at one in the morning and this could go a very long time. There's no published route. There's no published distance. It's just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is, is you're going to do what's told of you lunge around the building until I get tired style, right? And yet the other part of it was I didn't want it to be like bootcamp. That was the one thing out of the gates was yelling and screaming has its place, but in bootcamp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because you have to get people's attention and you have to tear them down. You just don't have that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When people are actually giving you their time and paying you to be there. So, you know, it was, we weigh the rucksacks down and they would put bricks in the rocks and then we would do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] PT and a guided tour of the city and they would face a lot of adversity and I would just apply the lessons that I'd learned in my training to building a team out of this small crew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so what turned out to happen is that those people did the work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For me, they went on Facebook and Google and used their networks and told people about go rock and oh yeah, there's gear that we manufacture. Like at a foundational level, we design and manufacture all of our own gear. And it's meant to withstand this really difficult and challenging stuff. And it's really good at carrying weight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the things that I would have wanted out of an assault pack, that's kind of what we did with this. We just sort of streamlined it so it didn't look like a military assault pack, right? And, and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So the next one happened the next month, and it was basically in, it was in DC. After the first one were you like, okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was in the parking lot of, like, right along the, the ocean, just west of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. They have, you know, parking for beach access. And that was a start and end point. And it was, I don't know, 12 or 15 people were in that first class. Where'd you advertise it? Craigslist or?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had a partnership with a, uh, an event series called Tough Mudder. And, and so we were actually meant to be the prequel to the Tough Mudder that was going to happen in Lake Tahoe in that region. Like a little fight club, if you will, that would then show up and do the Tough Mudder together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a team there and it was something for them to talk about and it was obviously good for us. So they had, they had hit a home run on their, their first.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Event, which was in, in, uh, May of, yeah, it was May of 2010. Cause that's, we went to that as well. Got together a bunch of my special forces buddies and put bricks in our rocks that we had and went and did Tough Mudder together. And it was sort of something to talk about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course nobody bought anything. We had inventory. That's where I thought everyone was going to buy everything. Nobody bought anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like one person named Neil bought one rucksack at Half-Off, right? So I almost got my money back or so for the ruck. And it was just, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they drew, we got a little bit of their press and so people showed up. And, but that first one, I actually had to really hustle to get people out there because it was just a proof of concept and it was crazy. I mean this idea of unknown distance, unknown time, unpublished route and some special forces guy is going to put you through special forces style training. That was the marketing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so that will speak to a certain kind of person. The question becomes, how do you reach them?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, Tough Mudder certainly helped in, in that. And then, you know, you get one person that signs up and they want to bring in a buddy and that's kind of how that worked and, and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did the first one and, and, you know, we went over Golden Gate Bridge and back and, you know, they rode around in the sand and did, you know, all that Navy SEAL style stuff in the ocean that I was less.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Familiar with ocean PT. So, you know, there were a couple, you know, Hey, I had to learn how to make sure they locked arms when the surf was coming, right? Like lock elbows and everybody make an unbreakable chain. Well, that became sort of the teamwork part of it. And when we were done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We hung out in that parking lot and drank beer together for hours. And everyone was just sort of had this huge smile on their face and, you know, brought some peanut butter and jellies and people were...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the people that want to push a little harder, a little tougher, demand a little more and want to be around, just have that sense of camaraderie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just push a little harder, find something hard and do it because it's hard. It's very counterculture these days, right? Everything is sold on being easy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, we build gear that's designed for the toughest situations on planet earth, like war. And we put on events that are designed to challenge people and push them harder. And now we have a lot of different events, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At that time, that was it, and it sort of made the rounds, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The people that did it, they told the people that they thought I know. Cause when you're done, you say, I know just the person that needs to do this. Right. And so, you know, the next one was again, a really small class, like six people in DC, four of whom were personal friends of mine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Half the price of the rucksack and you got to keep the rucksack. So I'm making no money on any of this and I'm spending to travel and go places, but you have to bet on yourself sometimes and you have to bet on something that you believe in. And I felt it. I felt it in my gut that it felt really good to give back to people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To show them not only what this bridge between the military and civilian worlds look like, but, but just as individuals how to push a little.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Further in life, in this small microcosm of special forces training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that was very just rewarding. So come what may, this is what I want to do. I don't, I don't want to sit in front of a computer and figure out how to do AdWords. I don't. That's not, I want to be out and use, and I'm going to lose that fight. I'm going to lose because there's people who,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They just grew up on that stuff and they've been doing it for forever and that's sort of fighting a war on their terms. A business war. Now I wanted to fight this on my terms and my terms were


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have this background and I can apply what I know and I can provide real value to people. And if you're starting a business, think about that first, provide real value, get real feedback from people and follow that. Do more of that and good things will happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so there was some startup costs to this though, you know, traveling around and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's, the events were 12 and then 14 hours and you know, they were really, really challenging and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every single time it was like a little fight club that happened and there was just a very passionate base.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That became the foundation for this GoRuck community. And if that would not have happened, I would have gone back and figured out how to serve America in some other capacity, you know, ground branch or go back into the military or whatever. I mean, that's what I wanted to do, but I just got that sense of satisfaction from, from this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're, they're, they're led by current and former special operations guys. And so that means just, I mean, we have SEALs, Green Berets, Delta guys. We have, you know, uh, PJs from the air force. We have all, you know, we have force reconnaissance Marines and what's important is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Empowering veterans to give back on the home front because all of us are united in this belief that we owe. We owe more. We owe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You think back to the friends that you lost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when I say that I know for a fact in your head, you're thinking about them right now. And you think that they died in service to our nation for values that we hold dear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what they wanted to do was to continue doing that for the rest of their lives. That's what they wanted to do. And so we honor their memory by continuing that mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As, as us. And we, we get huge inspiration.


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[Assistant] By drawing upon the fact that we owe. We just owe them. And...


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[Assistant] Not just for their memory, but, but for...


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[Assistant] Our way of life and the generations that will follow. Because if we don't honor their memory, then we'll forget.


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[Assistant] And not, this doesn't mean just write it down and forget about it. It means you have to live it and you have to talk about it and you have to share what you've learned and you have to get out there with other people that maybe have not been exposed to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you have to, you have to show them what that, why that matters and why service is so important.


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[Assistant] For me that the inspiration is the guys that I served with in that, that way of life that they taught me. And so everyone in our community has that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To get that feeling of making a difference on, on the home front. And so GoRuck became this bridge for me. I was part of the building of this bridge along with the people who showed up for these events. We were building it together along with my dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And every, every event, I just, my, the well that was empty in my life, it just filled up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more because I gave back what I knew and people said, thank you. If someone says, thank you, take them at their word. You did something good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do more of that. It's, this just doesn't have to be that, that hard. Right. And so.


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[Assistant] That, that is something that we're just passionate about. We, we put veterans as the face of our organization at all of these events all over the country and the world. And it's just, it's, there's just a little bit of magic that happens and we're all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're all strengthening and reinforcing that bridge and it's a, it's a very different.


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[Assistant] Thing than getting angry and talking about how different we are. I just, I don't see it.


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[Assistant] I see, we literally don't care if you are young, old, black, white, male, female, gay, straight, military, civilian, pink, purple, polka dotted, striped, whatever, right? If you want to show up and be a part of this team and do the work, we want you on our team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just that simple. And there's something very liberating about that. It's apolitical, it's pure. And that's what the military and its


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Best form represents, there's just absolute purity. It's, it's.


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[Assistant] To be a part of that is just, it's great. And so to be able to lead that for others is just hugely rewarding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was so desperate, she gave me her dog, right? So she moved down to, uh, she moved down to South America, got remarried.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had a, had a daughter, Natalie, who, who lives with us now, still visits her father. Her father's in the...


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[Assistant] You know, I mean, that's just sort of what happened at that time, but the chaos train continued a little bit for, for both of us. It just, it was, it wasn't just easy. There was just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just wasn't easy. And, you know, I'm driving around with a dog.


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[Assistant] To 48 states trying to start a backpack business. Good luck by the way, right? Against all odds, you know, and, and, you know, she fell in love, got remarried and had Natalie who's just the world's greatest big sister now. Cause we have two other boys, um, or two boys, I should say Jack and Ryan. Um, but so how did we get back together? You know,


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[Assistant] We just kind of stayed in touch. We were always friends. And it wasn't some kind of...


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[Assistant] What happens when you make decisions in the moment is that when there are


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[Assistant] When there are big decisions and there are forks in the road and you, you go left or you go right or one of you goes left and one of you goes right. I mean, eventually you will get perspective on your own decisions and you have to come to terms with that. And the thing that I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just, I don't, I think about will I regret this with either my time or my effort or energy, whatever before, and this is fast forwarding to just sort of business or life or whatever decisions, but at that time, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know. I really don't know what it was. I remember she wanted to see Java cause she was back in America one time. So.


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[Assistant] The love never really dies. I mean, you, you fall in love with someone. I hear these stories, you know, you love someone and then you hate them because whatever. That's not my story, right? My story is we were really good friends for a really long time and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We hope that our strategy of having, uh, this


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[Assistant] We stayed in touch, saw Java and then at some point she was, she sent me a handwritten letter, which is a really, you know, it's one of those things that if you want to get someone's attention in a very busy world, send them something that you've actually written by hand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It implies a degree of time and thoughtfulness and all these things. And so we traded a couple of notes. It's not like this is just radio silence, but she sent me a note and you know, it was just like, I'm, I'm moving back to America and I would love to see you. There's probably more to it. I don't want to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it was, it was complicated, but you know, I mean, and then we saw each other and it just kind of clicked again. Like the love came back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and the love never left, but it was...


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[Assistant] I don't know, Jarko, it was just magic. It was just magic. And it's just one of those things where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The surprising thing I guess was that, you know, she had gotten remarried and she got divorced, right? And then we got back together and, you know, I had not moved on. I mean, I had dated other people and, and I wasn't really ready.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, to really move on. I had not gotten over her by any stretch. And so that kind of held me back in lots of other things, especially the, the love department of life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I also was very skeptical. I didn't really want to just throw myself back into what our relationship was in 2008 and 2009.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, it took time after that. We, it was actually, you know, work. We had to talk about stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get stuff out there, imagine that. Like if you're gonna get remarried to your ex-wife, you've got some work to do, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, you know, now we have two boys and she works at GoRuck as well and it's, it's not some perfect life that everyone thinks that everyone else has because nothing is perfect, but we're really happy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so that was one of those situations. It was one of the easiest. Some things in life are really hard and you've got to do them. Some things that are hard in life you should not do because there's probably other things that you could spend more time on. This was one of those situations where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They do at their core, the very same thing in so many ways, right? They empower veterans to give back, right? They, they operate from this assumption of we, we owe, we owe and let's be servant leaders and let's get out into the community. Let's be more physically active. Let's build communities. Let's show the next generation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What our values are and let's, let's allow them and afford them the opportunity to become servant leaders themselves. And so our community basically linked us up. I mean, there was a, uh, Heather who works at Travis Manion foundation was doing go rock events.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And TMF or Travis Manny foundation was, was putting on these heroes runs over 9 11 every year to get people and bring them together in honor of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just kind of happened. I mean, the, the communities, they're doing service projects. We have communities, the communities just sort of aligned. And then we partnered officially on these nine 11 heroes runs and turn them into rocks or runs or walks, whatever. But it's about bringing people together and you know, raising awareness and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Spreading goodwill around the, uh, the veteran space. And so, you know, we had been working together as partners on this stuff and service stuff at the community level, ground up long before I'd ever met Ryan. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Since then I've gotten to spend a lot of time with her and we, we just rocked the Marine Corps marathon together, which was awesome. Yeah, it was great. You know, you, you spend some time with someone doing something hard, you get to know them and it's great. You develop a bond and that's, you can't get it if you don't do something hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was great and we just share a lot of the same values and so, you know, they're part of our vessel for fundraising and for getting people out and getting people active and aligning around a cause. And one of the things that I love about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her story and the story of the Travis Mania Foundation is that she goes,


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[Assistant] I hate the fact that we've called this organization the Travis Mannion Foundation because, you know, he, he, she, she's like, it's not about me, right? That's the sort of way of life that you live and you really do live it when you, when you serve in these kinds of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their, their other thing that they say of these last five words that he said before his, or these five words he said before he deployed on his last deployment to Iraq was, if not me, then who?


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[Assistant] And you know, the way he said it, it wasn't really a question. It was just, uh, I'm going to go because this is what I'm trained to do. And if not me, then they're going to send someone else. That's why I'm going. Like this is, this is my mission. America's sending me and these are the values I hold dear. I'm going to go forth and, and go. And so my, I've kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The idea that now his kind of cross to bear if you will sitting up talking to the big guy upstairs is if not me then who it might as well be my name on the organization to represent this sort of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Veterans space and trying to get more of us out there to raise awareness and to really empower the next generation as well. And so we're just so aligned that it's such an easy, rewarding partnership for us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's also on, on the website. There's events that are, that are on there. I mean, there's, you'll, if you go to the site, you'll see a lot of gear and stuff as well. Like that's, that's the other part of what we do. It's kind of complicated like that, right? It's really like a fitness thing with backpacks though, right? We manufacture gear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You've got this rucksack or this backpack. You can do a lot with it. And so, um, yeah, there's a lot of events and nobody wanted the name go rock except for us. And so all of our social media stuff is, is go rock. Oh yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Except, except, there was this Hungarian photographer early on.


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[Assistant] And so he, he had the Twitter handle and I pestered him for forever and eventually he canceled his account and then that triggered all these other things. Eventually we claimed it. We're not hugely on the Twitter space, but it's everything's go rock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, we had this really big event. We'd done an obstacle course race out in, in, uh, Virginia. Like, a confidence course. I mean, wood trees with nets and stuff and, you know, balance walks and all this stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was our first venture into that as a way to get people out there. We ended up never doing that again because it was just too labor intensive. But Java got really sick right before that and spent a lot of time and I slept on the floor at the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the, the vet's office in Northern Virginia for like two weeks, became really good friends with Heather, who was the veterinarian there, still a really close personal friend of mine. Um, but he, he,


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[Assistant] It was basically diagnosis by exclusion. It just got some autoimmune disease like lupus and I just watched him wither away to nothing. And so.


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[Assistant] That's the sad part of the story, it comes to all of us, you just have to kind of deal with it.


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[Assistant] And, and then we got monster. So if you go to our site or you see pictures now, most of them are of monster. He's also a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An English chocolate lab. So he's got this kind of block head and those two dogs, they look kind of similar, but monster is literally.


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[Assistant] The nicest dog ever. I mean, Java was kind of had those fangs at the ready and the great protector and monster just he'll roll over on his back with, you know, all four paws in the air and just no, no predator to that dog exists whatsoever. And you know.


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[Assistant] Life's a funny place like that sometimes. They're, they're both great. They're just complete opposite.


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[Assistant] That's it. Good to meet you, thanks for coming. Thanks so much for having me guys, this has been fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You tell me, you got any big advice for me? I'm sure you've dug into GORUCK and you've seen sort of our stuff with a fresh set of eyes. You do a lot of business consulting. You solve a lot of problems. You've seen a lot of leaders along the way. I mean, what do you see of what we're doing and what are we doing well and what could be doing better?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, big time. And he said something that kinda, this was real small, but I was like, this is different. When you were talking about uhm, how, or when he was talking about how he didn't drink and do that, and his dad's alcoholic. So, that's like,


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[Assistant] That's not just, oh yea, I just didn't. But the way he said it was this, he was like, uhm, I knew that that wasn't a path I was gonna go, go down.


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[Assistant] Because it, in my mind anyway, it seemed like, like giving up seems like such a viable option.


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[Assistant] And then he's like, oh no, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. Kinda like, no, you can actually do this other thing. Kinda thing. Like, he made it sound so casual, but almost like, hey, the-


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[Assistant] It, it's almost like he, he reversed it all the way back down to the bare decision making of it, you know, rather than like, oh, there's hard battle or whatever. It's hard battle, hundred percent, but that's not what he was focusing on the way he said it. That's what it sounded like. And I was like, oh man, that's kind of a interesting sort of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unless we're here. Uh, and yes, so this is where we can do Jiu Jitsu. Kudos, more mat space here by the way. Side note.


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[Assistant] Okay, so it's, so Dak Savage is the name of the flavor of discipline from Dakota Meyer that tastes like Dr. Pepper.


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[Assistant] Well there was a lot left, we didn't eat that much. But, so I busted it out, left it on the counter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kind of ate some and sort of forgot about it in my whatever. It melted. Oh. But it's in the, what do you call, I don't know if it's a pint, the bigger one. Half gallon, half gallon, half gallon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm pounding marshmallows. There's little marshmallows in there, little nuts. What's in Rockerwood? Like almonds or not? Walnuts? Regular nuts?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, those Lucky Charmers marshmallows though, they're kinda odd, cause like, I mean, I guess, hey, if you dig em, I dig it. But, those, the dehydrated ones, when you eat em, you get that, you know that like nails against the chalkboard feeling when you chomp those dehydrated mushrooms? You don't have that?


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[Assistant] Yes, also, Jocko has a store, it's called Jocko's Store, and this is where you can get, and I know, we are, me saying this again, it feels like, hey everyone knows, but here's the thing, not everyone knows.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So anyway, Jocko is a store, it's called JockoStore. JockoStore.com is where you can get t-shirts, discipline equals freedom, if you want to represent while you're on the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes. Discipline equals freedom. It's a... I call it... I don't even know what I call it. Deaf...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's layers right there. It is. Not gonna disclose what the X is for. Some people know. Some people know already. Actually, on Twitter, someone was like, hey, I see you did the, the, and he explained what it was. I was like, ooh, this guy knows. Nonetheless, yes. New shirt, just putting equals freedom. It's on there. Java store. We got hoodies on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beanie's on the way, I, I sweat, like, I, I, we were out of beanies for a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, yeah, and even just as impressive as, or maybe even more impressive, of the fact that he has his own business, cause when I was 13, cause that's when he started when he was 13, right? Or 12, 13. No, 12. Yeah, so when I was at, yeah, and I was 12 too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's like a dollar for the whole raw material bucket.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You made buttons too? Okay. Nonetheless, I was like, yeah, that's cool. And it is cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To have a little business with her, but Aiden's making some- Bro, let's face it, man. If someone goes without their buttons, like, who cares? But-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, that's like, you can't just make soap, you know? You gotta know how to do that stuff. And then he's making soap from actual goat's milk that he raises.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You wanna see what everybody looks like, if you care. I dig it if you don't, but nonetheless, you wanna see the video version of this podcast, that's where you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is Jocko Podcasts number 203 with me, Jocko Willink.


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[Assistant] I want to make sure everyone makes it home alive.


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[Assistant] Corporal Jason Dunham told his friend Lance Corporal Mark Dean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was explaining to Dean why he was extending his enlistment.


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[Assistant] Their battalion was headed for a six month deployment to Iraq.


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[Assistant] Which meant his time was up, and he could carry on with his life.


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[Assistant] So he signed on for enough time to complete that deployment.


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[Assistant] In order to make sure that his friends, his comrades, his fellow marines made it home alive.


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[Assistant] And it is an honor tonight to have some of those men with us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sergeant Bill Hampton, Staff Sergeant John Ferguson, and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson.


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[Assistant] Gentlemen, thank you for showing up here. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for making the trip. And thanks for sitting in those seats to talk about this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I want to get right into it. Let's go back to 2003. And you guys are, you guys are in the best place in the world to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little place called 29 Palms, and you're all in Kilo Company, I believe. Is that right? You were all in Kilo Company at the time?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're a boot at this point. Yea, I don't know. And you're checking in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's, it's legit, like here's your gear, and now we're going on some training exercises now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you guys get done with that deployment, and you guys are doing a quick turnaround to go back again, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Check. Uh, so that's, that's the time you're going back. Hey, what do you guys remember about uhm, when you're meeting Jason for the first time?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's kind of like an unfair advantage for you to, cause you knew the guys, you knew the guys better than...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and you kinda rip the bandaid off, just like, hey, we're just gonna do this. We gotta do it. We got no choice. Let's do it. Otherwise you wait till in country and all of a sudden you're looking around going, damn, this isn't working the way it's supposed to work and I need to start moving people around and that's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's infinitely worse than just getting it done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bill and Kelly, you guys, were you guys immediately in Jason's squad? Is that how that worked?


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's a tough spot to get put into. You got no combat experience, you're rolling in here and you're gonna start taking over for guys that do have combat experience that certainly think that they deserve that role. That's a tough one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. That's, that's, that's good across the board.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, and then just, it's loadout time. Because you guys are deploying in February. Andy, did you guys know where you were going on deployment to? Yep. Yep. What was the, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's your deployment, the actual logistics of the deployment you guys are, you guys are flying over?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How long were they gonna be uhm, you know, take on to this other, to this other company?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this was because they were going to be rolling in and, and trying to, this is in,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, we're talking early 04, so one thing that's interesting is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were IEDs, but they weren't as bad as they got. I mean, they weren't as bad as they got, you know, five, you know, six, you know, seven. I mean, they just got worse and worse. So at this time,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're see, I mean obviously like I said, I'm not saying there wasn't any IDs, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was that, would you consider rolling out into town? Your main threat was IEDs or was it, you know, uh, or uh, just small arms fire?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so you guys are rolling in, how often, what's your op tempo like? Uh, I don't, you want to take that one Bill?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well did you guys, did you guys prefer to be in vehicles or on foot?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We didn't like meeting vehicles. Yeaah. I mean cause you just don't have any control. You know, I mean I was a damn vehicle commander and I didn't feel like I had any control cause you just can't see what's happening fast enough, you can't see an IED fast enough, whatever. Uh, and so I always felt, and we pretty much did everything we could to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was the, uh, how long did it take for you guys to take casualties rolling in there? You remember?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you guys got there in February and St. Patty's Day is what? End of March? Middle of March? End of March?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, what are you thinking at this point? Now you know, how much did it change your perception, perception and perspective when all of a sudden you, you know that the battalion has taken casualties?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, talking to a lot of these guys that I've brought on that were going into the most horrible situations, whether it was Tarawa, Guadalcanal, wherever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's a, there's something that the young man has, which I think we all know, which is, it's gonna happen to someone else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, people are gonna get hurt, people are gonna get wounded, people are gonna get killed. Not gonna be me. And I was just telling you guys about Dean Ladd who I just had on the podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who is Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. And he's never even thought about, you know, he was like, oh yeah, I'm sure some, we're gonna take casualties as we cross the beach to Guadalcanal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, and then, and then, I know you guys know this too. I had guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seemed like people fell into those camps for the most part, and I'm sure, you know, occasionally someone goes, uh, it's just, you know, we're taking casualties, I could be one of them. But for the most part, I think people are either, hey, probably gonna happen to someone else.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I definitely, from my perspective,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was always, hey, I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about my guys, you know? And, and I was always in a leadership position because I was a platoon commander, I was a tasking commander, so for me it was always, I'm worried about my guys, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I know, I know for us certainly rolling into Ramadi in 2006, you know, there was, there was memorial services going on every other day, every two days for soldiers and Marines that were getting killed. I mean, it was, it was that. And so much like you're talking about, I knew every time we rolled out the gate or every time my guys rolled out the gate, there's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All you can do is do everything you can to mitigate that risk. But there's no possible way to mitigate all the risk. It just doesn't happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, my attitude was default aggressive, we're gonna go and take the fight to the enemy, and that was certainly the attitude of the troops that were in Ramadi was, we're not gonna sit back and wait for it, we're gonna take the fight to the enemy. And, and I believe that's the best thing you can do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's also interesting to think about when you say American sons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, Americans come from all different kinds of backgrounds, but...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fact of the matter is, when you live in America, you are a privileged human being. Like you have opportunity, hey, even if you're


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you compare it to that of a grunt overseas, living in some outstation somewhere, off of MREs and crappy bottled water, shitting in a damn outhouse, burning, I mean just the whole nine yards. So when these, you know, it's not like, hey, people join the military.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe there's that idea, hey, I'm trying to get out of my hometown, which I know I certainly did, hey, I want to get out of my hometown, I want to go somewhere, I want to be in the world. But, you're signing up to, to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put all that American privilege on hold. You're gonna put it on hold and you're gonna go out there and you're gonna live.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In horrible situations with the threat of being wounded and killed and that's the way it is. And, and so yeaah, when you see that, and when you see those service members,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rolling out like that, day after day after day. And that's, you know, I've talked about this in Ramadi. You might remember this, Kelly, but they had the, uh,


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[Assistant] And yet, Americans sign up for it voluntarily. Every single day. And then they go out there and do the work.


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[Assistant] What was morale? Overall? Strong. That's what I'm hearing. Strong.


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[Assistant] One of my small elements was out in Ramadi, got into a big gunfight, they were with some Iraqi soldiers, one Iraqi soldier got wounded, one Iraqi soldier got killed, got called in the tanks, the tanks went in, escorted them, put down fire, Kazevac, the whole nine yards. As they were patrolling back in, one of the Overwatch, the SEAL Overwatch positions was videoing them.


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[Assistant] That's how, so, so to your sentiment exactly, yes. If you take everything too seriously, uh, you're gonna go crazy. So, there's, that's another thing that can't be stopped. The American resolve can't be stopped, and the American sense of humor can't be stopped. No doubt about it. Alright, let's roll into, let's roll into April 14th. So, April 14th, this is pretty much,


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[Assistant] What are we dealing with another day at the races for you guys is what you're looking at. Nothing abnormal. It seems like pretty standard type of operations that you guys were doing at the time.


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[Assistant] Uh, this idea of the Iraqi police became a national program in 2006. Uh, before that, it had become something called, it was something called Desert Protector, which was sort of the same thing, like we're gonna get homegrown kids, young men to help police. And a lot of that,


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[Assistant] From what I've been told came from Al-Qaim when the push happened through Al-Qaim, but that was in 2005. That the big push happened in Al-Qaim was Operation Matador. And those Marines got


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[Assistant] Civilians that came up and said, hey, there's bad guys over there. Hey, there's bad guys over there. And the idea was, okay, let's get the, let's, let's hire those people. So we're talking now 2004 and, and your battalion commander, uh, Colonel Lopez was already in the game thinking that way. That's impressive foresight right there. That's outstanding.


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[Assistant] Man, this is, this is, this is incredible foresight from Colonel Lopez, for sure. That's brilliant.


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[Assistant] Was that going to be a permanent base? Like hey, we're looking for somewhere. Four days. Okay, okay. But you were looking for something for four days.


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[Assistant] So for you guys, this was like a recon to find out where you could establish this four day firebase and then you were gonna conduct patrols out of there for four days with the Iraqi police.


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[Assistant] Alright, so you guys roll in. Did you roll in with the colonel's, uh, with his convoy?


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[Assistant] Okay, so you, who showed up first, you guys? Nah, Colonel Lopez was there. Okay, so Colonel Lopez was there, they're doing their meet and greet, he's paying people, he's, he's shaking hands and, and establishing that, and then you guys roll in there afterwards, meet with him, and, and now you're doing your assessment.


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[Assistant] Is it? Kilo 42. So it's kilo 42, that's who you have. They were your escort going in there basically. Correct. So.


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[Assistant] In a certain sense of invincibility, I think. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. The Abrams main battle tank is a, is a badass machine.


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[Assistant] It can give anyone a sense of invincibility until of course they hit IEDs that can take them out. So you guys get there and now you're


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[Assistant] You know, uh, the Colonel's doing his kind of thing, and then at some point, he's gonna leave, or he leaves, and you guys are now doing a deeper assessment, you're checking things out, probably looking where you're gonna set up sniper overwatches and whatnot.


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[Assistant] Heading into this mission where you're gonna, where you're gonna stay for a few days, was there anything from a planning perspective that was different or that you noticed heading into it?


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[Assistant] Yeah, you know, Ferg was talking earlier about...


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[Assistant] You know, making sure that people understand why they're doing what they're doing and how important that is.


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[Assistant] No doubt, you know, for me, that's the key of decentralized command is making sure that everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing. But the other thing that happens is when, like what you're saying, when you give people the opportunity to come up with part of the plan, it's like, it's elevates them and makes them


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[Assistant] And so that's, that's exactly what you're talking about. And those are the kind of things that


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[Assistant] Those are the kind of things that make, you know, young, young troopers crown their leader. Not because their leader's barking at them, but because their leader's going, hey,


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[Assistant] I'll do this. I'll take care of this. I'll handle it. You guys get some rest. You guys take care of yourselves. And at the same time,


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[Assistant] For him, he's like, oh, you know what leadership boils down to is that you care about your men.


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[Assistant] You care about your men, because if you care about your men, and your men know that, then it goes back to what you said, Trent. If you take care of your men, then your men are going to take care of you.


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[Assistant] And the minute you see a leader that's walking around barking orders,


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[Assistant] That's the one that will get the crown of leadership.


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[Assistant] Taking us back now, you've, you've, you've executed the plan.


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[Assistant] And now we're out in the field. We're in that. So are you in the police station or are you in the water treatment facility? What's the difference between the two? What's going on right now?


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[Assistant] Where they had casualties in Huseba. Casualties, they had a sniper over Watts position getting hit. They had wounded Marines. I mean it was, so all that chaos is breaking out in the morning.


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[Assistant] Kind of all morning, right? So we know this is a, we're going into, we're going into a rough day in the city.


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[Assistant] And they got hit hard and they, they took multiple casualties and had pushed, they pushed through the kill zone though, right? Yea. But now they had casualties and


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[Assistant] And that's what, so you guys drove through the exact same killzone. We rolled into it.


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[Assistant] Now, there's a book. There's a book called The Gift of Valor. And it's a book written by a guy named Michael Phillips.


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[Assistant] Who's a Wall Street Journal reporter? Which may make you think, oh, well what is that? Well, he actually did four tours in Iraq. And...


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[Assistant] He was with the 3-7 a bunch and he did a great job of interviewing.


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[Assistant] So many people to kind of capture this story. The book is called The Gift of Valor.


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[Assistant] And he spells out this section, well, pretty good, pretty comprehensively. Uhm, and I'm sure you guys will have stuff to add, but I'm actually gonna go and read a little bit of this book, picking up from that situation.


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[Assistant] On the right, the alleyway widened out into the courtyard of a concrete and cinder block house. A rusty, twisted car chassis lying forlornly amid the trash.


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[Assistant] On the north side by a tumbled down stone wall and a couple dozen yards further to the west, a straight ahead cinder block wall.


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[Assistant] Stopped in the lane were eight vehicles, pointing from east, pointing east toward the approaching marines.


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[Assistant] From the corner, Dunham and his men could see a small bus, a van, a white Toyota Land Cruiser, a second SUV, a red tractor, a black BMW.


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[Assistant] A white truck frozen in the middle of an attempt to turn around in a narrow lane.


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[Assistant] And finally, a white sedan with all four doors open.


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[Assistant] Appoint man Miller had just reached the T-junction when Staff Sergeant Ferguson, a few dozen yards back, noticed the lineups, lineup of vehicles. What's going on? He asked Corporal Dunham. What are you doing?


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[Assistant] Dunham wanted to keep moving, but Ferguson recalled the white SUV that Sergeant Reynolds had seen hightailing across Jade a few minutes earlier and thought the cars were worth a quick look. No, Ferguson told Dunham, we're going to search these calls. Cars.


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[Assistant] So there you go. You guys, and I, you know, we didn't really cover that part of the story, but there have been, uh, vehicles that were PID leaving the ambush site, and so that's what you're seeing. Positively identifying or at least suspected vehicles that had left the ambush site. Cause Trent, as you said,


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[Assistant] And now you see these vehicles lined up and they're looking sketchy.


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[Assistant] Hampton walked alongside the small bus and peered through the windows. He saw only women and children and decided not to bother searching the interior. The driver of the second vehicle, the tan, the van, was middle-aged with a younger man next to him.


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[Assistant] Search vehicle, Hampton said in Arabic, a phrase he'd picked up from the Marines' pocket language cards.


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[Assistant] Pretty straightforward. Back to the book, Corporal Dunham and PFC Miller moved quickly up the street until they came to the Elderly White Land Cruiser, which was some 50 yards from the intersection where the alleyway met the road.


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[Assistant] Miller edged along the passenger side and saw the muzzle and wood front grip of an AK-47 rifle poking out from under the floor mat.


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[Assistant] He looked up in time to see the driver, a young Iraqi man in a black tracksuit, open the door, and lunge at Dunham.


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[Assistant] The people, a lot of people don't know about the Mujahideen uniform of the tracksuit. The tracksuit. So you see the guy in the tracksuit. Uhm.


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[Assistant] Again, these things you can't, when you explain them to people, it's almost like a bad movie, right? Like you see the AK-47 hidden under a floor mat. Like you guys are gonna get away with this.


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[Assistant] How many guys were in the vehicle? One. Oh, so it was just one guy in the vehicle. So as you're coming up on the passenger side, you look in one window, you see it. Next thing you know, you look up the driver in a tracksuit gets out and he's on Dunham like in an instant. Yes. Yes.


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[Assistant] So continuing on, the Iraqi, which again, as you just pointed out, this guy is a foreign fighter from any number of countries.


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[Assistant] Dunham pulled his right knee up and drove it into the Iraqi stomach. The Iraqi doubled over from the blow and the men fell to the ground in an angry embrace.


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[Assistant] Miller's brother, a sheriff's deputy in California had brought, had bought Kelly a telescoping police baton and shipped it to Iraq. Miller didn't really think he'd ever need it.


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[Assistant] But he liked the idea of having one and kept it in a holster zip tied to his flak vest. Up until that point, Millard used it mostly to fend off stray dogs. But as he ran around the front of the SUV toward Dunham and the Iraqi,


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[Assistant] Miller planted his left knee in the Iraqi's ribs. Bracing his left hand on Dunham's back, he slammed the butt of the baton as hard as he could into the Iraqi's forehead.


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[Assistant] The blow was so sharp that the metal baton collapsed back into itself.


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[Assistant] Miller was amazed the man was still conscious, much less still fighting. He drove the baton into the Iraqi's forehead again, then jabbed it into the left side of the man's neck, a blood choke he had been told would pinch off circulation to the brain through the carotid artery.


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[Assistant] Lance Corporal Hampton saw the melee and charged around the van and up the street, his adrenaline surging.


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[Assistant] Marines are taught to poke their rifle barrels into the eyes of their enemies to make sure they're dead.


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[Assistant] Only the dead or comatose could resist flinching when poked hard in the eye with a long piece of metal. The muzzle thumb could also be delivered to the chest to get someone aggressive to back off without resorting to deadly force. Hampton planned to thump the Iraqi in the temple.


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[Assistant] If it knocked him out, fine. If it killed him, that was fine with Bill too. Hamkin picked out a spot on the wriggling Iraqi's temple and pulled his rifle back to get some force behind it.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, it's a, it's hairy, those, the, uh, grappling situation.


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[Assistant] When that's going down and you have a weapon and you're, you're, you know, one of your guys is grappling with an insurgent that can, that's a, that's a tough shot to take because it's not like, uh,


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[Assistant] A movie where the bad guy is holding the hostage still. Cause this is a fight that's going on. And you know anything can happen at any point.


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[Assistant] You gotta think, you know, I'd be thinking to myself, okay, well this guy didn't shoot us. He didn't, he didn't blow, he didn't, he didn't blow us up. So how do we know this guy's armed or not? That's another question that can be going through your head. Uhm, I'm sure people sit back and say, oh, I'll just kill him.


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[Assistant] And, and that's why I'm thinking both of you guys are thinking, well you're kind of got the thought in your mind, I'll shoot this guy. And you guys, but both of you are going non-lethal at this point in time.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you know, uh, again, for young people in any employment like this, whether you're a cop or you're a soldier, you're a marine, whatever situation you're in, this is one thing that we learned. There's this idea that when you hit someone, if you hit them hard enough, they're going to get knocked out and


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[Assistant] We learned this over and over again that it's not true.


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[Assistant] And there's a chance when you hit someone, you can knock them out. But there's a chance that they don't get knocked out. One of my, my assistant platoon commander,


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[Assistant] And, you know, we had learned muzzle strike, muzzle strike, you know, muzzle strike to the face. It'll, it'll knock him out for sure, it may kill him, so you gotta be a little bit careful, whatever.


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[Assistant] My assistant platoon commander did the hardest muzzle strike I think a person could. He took a running start of about 8 yards and fully cocked back his weapon and then drove it into this guy's head. And it deflected a little bit like around the brow and carved out a big giant chunk of his scalp.


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[Assistant] No factor. The guy is bleeding like a stuck pig, but he kept fighting.


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[Assistant] So, all that's going on, and here we go back to the book. While Dunham, Miller and Hampton wrestled with the Iraqi, Sergeant Reynolds, the sniper, told Sanders to provide cover in case the Iraqi had friends around.


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[Assistant] So Sanders was more than a dozen yards away from the fight when he heard Dunham yell a warning. No, no, no. Watch his hand. Hampton heard nothing except the beating of his own heart.


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[Assistant] But he ca- caught a fleeting glimpse of Dunham's helmet on the ground next to the Iraqi.


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[Assistant] Dunham was on his stomach with his arms outstretched in front of him and wrapped around the sides of his helmet as if he were holding it down on top of something.


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[Assistant] Bill Hampton saw a flash of light, but the explosion didn't sound very loud to him.


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[Assistant] His vision blurred and he knew that something had happened to him. He just didn't know what.


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[Assistant] His first thought was whether his teeth had been hit. He ran his tongue along them and was relieved to find them all in place. But his face, leg, and arm leaked red. The concussion had broken his nose. One tiny metal fragment hit him under the nostrils and another embedded itself in his top lip.


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[Assistant] A piece of shrapnel about the size of a pen tip hit him in the right knuckle. Several shards of metal hit him in the left arm and left leg. One piece hit a bone in his forearm, broke up and opened an inch wide hole as it exited.


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[Assistant] Another traveled up his arm and cut away, cut its way out the middle of his elbow, leaving an X-shaped tear. Tear. Then lodged in his bicep.


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[Assistant] He remembered that slowing his breathing would slow the bleeding and he tried to do so. He staggered against the cinder block wall and back toward the intersection. He couldn't lift his rifle with his left arm so he held it in his right by the trigger guard and pistol grip trying to keep an eye out for enemy fighters.


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[Assistant] Then Miller saw the sky as he fell over backwards onto the rocket launcher slung from his shoulder. He heard a steady ring like the sound of a hospital heart monitor makes when the patient flatlines.


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[Assistant] Miller's face hurt and his, and felt hot as if he had a bad sunburn. He tasted blood in his mouth and had the vague feeling he was being shot at.


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[Assistant] His left arm hurt next. He tried to grab his rifle with his left hand but nothing happened. He wondered why his arm wasn't working. He looked down to see blood streaming off the fingertips.


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[Assistant] And punctured the brachial artery. But for some reason it didn't hurt as badly as his upper left arm, which had been hit by five or six big chunks of metal and sprayed with pebble sized fragments.


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[Assistant] The explosion left Sanders, the radio operator, temporarily deaf. He saw Dunham, Miller, and Hampton knocked back by the blast and thought


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[Assistant] With that, the insurgent that was laying there actually gets up and runs and Sanders


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[Assistant] The radio operator then unloads on him and kills him.


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[Assistant] But it's interesting in the book, it was like Sanders didn't really understand, he was looking for someone else as well. He thought there's no way that whoever was there survived. So he was looking for someone else, another insurgent.


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[Assistant] And that leaves you, Ferg, kind of trying to organize a Cazavac at this point, right?


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[Assistant] Yeah, and it would make sense, you know, when you start talking about getting shot at, obviously if you're those insurgents that bailed out of those first, uh, the sedan, and then the other guys that jumped out of the cru- the, uh, land cruiser,


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[Assistant] They know what's about to happen, and they're gonna set up on you. As soon as they get a good distance, they're gonna set up positions so they can start shooting at you once this suicide guy gets- does- executes his part of the mission, they're gonna be coming in hot.


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[Assistant] And all this is unfolding. While... Kelly and Bill, you guys are getting Cas of Act out of country.


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[Assistant] As, again, now it's, you say it's two days after this event that you're getting, you're starting, you piece this together. You know, it's like, you had one and now you get the other one and now you got one and one equals two.


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[Assistant] You got Bull starting to write up the citation for forwarding up the chain of command.


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[Assistant] Get to win, they don't back off. In fact, often times they step it up. Which means, we get no rest.


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[Assistant] From a leadership perspective, you guys now looking at your troops going, okay, here's what happened. We have ops to do. What did that look like from your all's perspective?


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[Assistant] This, this guy, uh, Phillips, he, he literally interviewed


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[Assistant] Like everyone that came in contact with Jason over that time period. Uhm, and the story as it unfolds is...


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[Assistant] Is very, uhm, well it's so detailed and it lets you, it gives people an insight into not just the frontline troops, whatever, that's in that, that's in the service and what they're doing, the medical folks.


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[Assistant] It says, Al-Assad, Iraq, on the morning of April 14th, Becky Sparks, commander of Alpha Surgical Company, received an email with new instructions from the chief surgeon of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. The title, Treatment of Expectant Patients. Patients would have struck a civilian as out of place in a hospital in the middle of a combat zone. But in Battlefield Medicine,


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[Assistant] Expectant means quite the opposite of what it does in the faraway world of maternity wards and delivery rooms. An expectant mother is expected to create life. An expected soldier


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[Assistant] With multiple casualties, these patients have our lowest priority for care, but they have the highest priority for care for another member of our Navy Marine Corps team, the Chaplain.


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[Assistant] Expectant means you expect something to happen and most often it is death but sometimes after the higher priority patients have been treated an expectant patient survives.


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[Assistant] This is when judgments are critical and I would dare say that very, very few of us have enough experience to make these decisions easily. When the decisions must be made, talk about it, include your entire team in your decisions and move on.


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[Assistant] If the patient is expectant, make sure that he is comfortable and that someone stays with him until something happens. If the patient does die, document the death appropriately.


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[Assistant] At the 7am staff meeting, Commander Sparks, a brisk woman whose auburn hair and bright lip- lipstick stood out next to the black 9mm pistol hanging from her shoulder, passed the chief surgeon's message along to her physicians.


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[Assistant] She briefly discussed it with them, highlighting the advice that doctors revisit the expected ones once they have treated the other patients. Then she moved on to other issues.


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[Assistant] That afternoon, Jason Dunham arrived at Alpha Surgical Company.


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[Assistant] They had enough general knowledge to push intravenous fluids into a dying man, but not enough to be much use in the trauma ward operating.


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[Assistant] Graham and three other, Graham and three others carried Corporal Dunham's letter to a dim, white tiled room with a pair of broken shower stalls.


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[Assistant] Navy Lieutenant James L. Harris III, a 32 year old dentist from Crockett, Texas, joined them in the expectant ward and did as the Chaplain, as did the Chaplain Lieutenant Lentz.


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[Assistant] Holding his hands and stroking his limp muscular arms as Lieutenant Harris pushed fluids and painkillers into his veins from an IV sack.


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[Assistant] The Marine Corps is proud of you, and we're all proud of you. Graham told him.


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[Assistant] Situation he was in. Jason was hooked up to a plethora of medical equipment over the course of the day. There was an intercranial pressure monitor.


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[Assistant] Compressant sleeves on both calves, alternately squeezed and relaxed to keep blood moving through his legs to prevent clots. Five pads on his chest monitors heart rate.


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[Assistant] A blood oxygen monitor was clipped onto his finger. A blood pressure cuff was on his arm in case the automatic reading failed.


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[Assistant] The nurses put a sterile plastic cup under each ear to collect the cerebral spinal fluid that continued to drain out of his eardrums.


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[Assistant] So, he's in horrible condition.


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[Assistant] Medical folks in the military are doing everything they can. They're making heroic efforts.


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[Assistant] Uhm. And they, they want to get him stable enough.


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[Assistant] At a minimum. And they're, they're actually able to do that. And of course at this time,


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[Assistant] Jason's mom and dad had been notified, uh, of a, of a, that their son had been wounded. And this is one thing that's...


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[Assistant] I don't know what the protocol is, uhm, when someone gets killed, there's a knock on the door. When someone's wounded,


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[Assistant] Depending on the severity and how well it's known and I don't know what they do in the Marine Corps in the SEAL teams, they're going to still try and give someone a knock on the door. But what Deb and Dan got was a phone call. Hey, we don't know what's going on. We don't have much information, but Jason's been wounded.


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[Assistant] And if I remember correctly, they didn't even get like a massive amount of...


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[Assistant] Criticality, you know, they weren't quite sure.


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[Assistant] But they, they do find out that he's coming.


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[Assistant] They get down to DC, Bethesda area.


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[Assistant] 39 year old Lieutenant Colonel Jim Byrne was working as a federal prosecutor.


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[Assistant] Going after Colombian drug traffickers when he volunteered for active duty. He expected to end up at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prosecuting the Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects.


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[Assistant] Instead, the Marines sent him to Bethesda to head the liaison unit.


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[Assistant] Burns drove to Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday night to meet the plane from Germany and watch the crew load Corporal Dunham's litter into a private ambulance waiting on the tarmac.


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[Assistant] Colonel sat for a few minutes next to Jason. The noise from the plane was deafening, and Byrne leaned over to speak into his ear.


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[Assistant] Byrne had no idea if Jason could hear him, but just in case, he explained that they were at the air base where the President's plane landed, and that he was going to be taken to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda.


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[Assistant] Dan and Deb walked into the room and saw Jason lying naked on his back, a towel covering his groin and a catheter tube running to a urine bag by the foot of his bed. His head was wrapped in gauze.


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[Assistant] He wore a neck brace that tilted his head slightly. Both eyes were still swollen shut, and the Dunham's imagined an empty left eye socket beneath the inflammation. His lips and tongue, which protruded next to the plastic breathing tube, looked parched. The ventilator moved his chest up and down in perfect robotic rhythm.


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[Assistant] His feet curled down towards each other in an exaggerated pigeon toed position. Dan thought he looked thin as if his muscles were already fading.


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[Assistant] Deb thought he looked cold. I'd love to put a blanket on him, she said. I know that's the instinct, the nurse responded, but we're trying to keep him cool.


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[Assistant] Deb sat in a chair on Jason's more heavily damaged left side and Dan sat across from her. They each held one of Jason's hands. And they held each other's hands across Jason's stomach. We love you. Dan assured Jason. You're gonna be alright.


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[Assistant] Again, at this point, I mean, you guys still are working. Did you guys have


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[Assistant] I mean, Ferg, you had seen, you had seen Jason and probably were the most, uh,


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[Assistant] Whatever, aware, you know, mentally, while you're getting him casevact, what were you thinking? Do you think, did you think he was gonna live? Did you think?


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[Assistant] One thing that uhm, it's interesting, both of you guys mentioned, is like, and this is a double edged sword, but I'll take it, is, you had work to do. And,


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[Assistant] We're gonna have to deal with these things at some point. But, you know, when I lost my first guy, Mark Lee,


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[Assistant] We had, there's no instruction manual on protocols to follow, uhm, there's no, there's no, uh, book procedure that we could follow. There was nothing like that.


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[Assistant] And it was just me. And, and, you know, Mark was the first CO killed in Iraq. And, you know.


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[Assistant] There wasn't a lot of experience in dealing with that. And what I said to the guys was


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[Assistant] We're gonna go back to work. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go back to work. And I believe there is, uh,


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[Assistant] A lot of times I see it's guys that don't have a new mission of some kind. What is your new mission going to be? And that's one of the things that I advise.


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[Assistant] You know, military folks that are, that are transitioning out of the military, you need a new mission. You gotta have something else to focus on. Because if you don't do that, then you're stuck, you're stuck thinking about this stuff. And those thoughts,


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[Assistant] You have to have them, right? You have to have them. You're gonna have them over time. You know, we were talking about this earlier. You're gonna have those thoughts over time. You gotta sort this out in your head. But, just like when you have, when you get sick, and you take medicine, you don't take all the medicine at once.


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[Assistant] And we don't always get that opportunity. And especially guys that get home and get out.


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[Assistant] It could be really hard because they don't have a new mission and they're, they're, they try and take all that medicine at once, which is, which is hard to take, hard to take all that medicine at the same time. Hey, the medicine is going to be there. Like it's, your, your brain has to get sorted out over time.


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[Assistant] And Bill, you, you're, it sounds like you're the one that actually saw, oh, you saw him with his helmet reached out and you're probably the first person that said, I know what just happened.


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[Assistant] Talk a lot about decision making and, and as combat leaders.


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[Assistant] You gotta make decisions. You gotta make decisions. You gotta make hard decisions. And as hard as those decisions are, I, I, there's a,


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[Assistant] The absolute, uh, most horrible of all decisions.


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[Assistant] Trying to make is one that Dan and Deb were faced with.


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[Assistant] And this is based on the fact that they're getting told that, I mean this, this is what they get told.


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[Assistant] She explained that the biggest grenade fragment had caused so much damage that even if he survived, Jason would likely be paralyzed on one side and unable to speak or understand those who spoke to him.


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[Assistant] The swelling of his brainstem had destroyed its ability to keep the body alive unless a machine did his breathing for him. What you see is what you have, she said. He will never be able to hear you or know you are there.


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[Assistant] Mulligan said there was an operation she could do to relieve the pressure in Jason's brain, but she warned she wasn't sure that Jason was strong enough to survive the surgery or that it would do any good even if he did survive. The damage she believed had already been done and could not be reversed.


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[Assistant] The chances for a full neurological recovery are non-existent.


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[Assistant] I can't sit here and watch this anymore, Dan told Deb. Dr. Dunn described how they would disconnect the ventilator and what would happen after work.


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[Assistant] The doctors assured her that he would not.


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[Assistant] The Dunham stepped out of the room, the medical staff pulled the curtain closed and at 4.35 PM the respiratory therapist slid the tube from Jason's throat.


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[Assistant] Deb sat on Jason's right side across from Dan. Dr. Dunn stood at the foot of the bed watching Jason and the monitors.


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[Assistant] Lieutenant Colonel Byrne and two of his men stood there in silence.