Combat Story (Ep 17): Greg "Gravy" Coker | Special Ops 160th Aviator | AH-6 Gun Pilot | Author

again the gunfire would intensify every time he keyed the mic and i said man we've got to hurry we got to get there and he i think he said i don't i don't know if we can hold on that long or made some reference to that but they were being overrun and there's a huge lake to the north of dam we came in right on top of the water staying low and there was about a company-sized element attacking their position against five or six ravers and we shot our first engagement was approximately 12 meters in front of those rangers it was it was danger close welcome to combat story i'm ryan fugent and i serve war zone tours as an army attack helicopter pilot and cia officer over a 15-year career i'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show i interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today we hear the combat story of greg gravy coker a legend from the elite 160th special operations aviation regiment or night stalkers greg is a longtime tier one gun pilot who flew little birds apaches and cobras in multiple combat theaters logging 1 500 combat hours across 11 deployments delivering danger close support to delta rangers seals and the other tier 1 elements who have a special bond with 160th greg cheated death many times including a combat shoot down in fallujah during the first daylight op for 160th since blackhawk down since leaving the military greg has written a memoir about these experiences and more titled death weights in the dark and has a children's book coming out with his daughter called v is for veterans i hope you enjoy his personality stories and outlook on life as much as i did greg thanks so much for taking the time to share your story today oh thank you ryan it's it's an honor to be here and i greatly appreciate you asking me to come on with you of course and i i'm gonna make just a brief confession to people who listen to this if you'll bear with me for a minute greg like you i was an apache pilot at one point in time i left that and went to cia and did ops cool things all over the world met interesting people but a truly a big regret that i have is never having flown guns in 160th so i am so excited to talk to you with the experiences you've had clearly outlined in your book uh death weights in the dark and really looking forward to this so i i just had to get that off my chest and i'm really excited to hear about these these stories myself yes sir it's it's an extremely hard time it is but it's the best job on the planet you're making it even worse for me now greg so hey let's uh let's let's jump into your life as a kid before you got to the army growing up because i think you got some good stories there too just what was your childhood like and and was it a was it something that guided you to the army eventually the way you grew up yes sir it is i was raised in a very faith-based christian family and you know that's carried me through my life and i'm i'm a very faithful man and i believe in jesus christ and and god has been watching over me i think he got tired there after a while and said okay gregory has time to go home but it was my father was in the military and i was born out in the west coast in california he was stationed out there at the time and then moved around and wound up in central illinois for probably i don't know 11 12 years and you know just like every other kid or every other guy that's written books like these i mean i trade chased critters and hunted and fished and ran trap lines and worked on a ranch and you know just and being a child of the 60s and the 70s of course back then the three channels that we had choices of was the vietnam war and you know i grew up with that of course with my father in the in the air force and but it was the helicopter war so i i think that's where my you know i always wanted to fly number one and two i was intrigued by those whirlybirds and you know the old hueys and the loaches and the cobras that you'd see in the you know the tv war back then was your was your dad a pilot in the air force no sir he he was enlisted he retired as a command chief so he always kids me says yeah he said command chiefs walk over water you walk on the water yeah so some of the stories in the book uh it describes you growing up um what you just alluded to i think chasing critters working on a ranch do you just talk a little bit more about that i mean i know to you that sounds like a lot of people grew up like that but i think today not many people have lives that sounded like that no sir you know it goes back to to our core values you know when i was younger and of course my parents and my grandparents grew up in some very hard times world war one world war ii my grandfather doc neil actually he lied about his age when he was 14 and went into france in 1916 i believe and fought the germans at age 14 and then came back of course finished his schooling in college and he was a he was a surgeon and a doctor and then after pearl harbor went in as a regimental surgeon for a unit for all of world war ii from 1941 to 1945 and he was he was quite a character but yeah i mean it was a real rural community and farming and ranching raising cattle and corn soybeans and you know we just worked hard and we didn't have internet or you know mom always kicked us out and don't come home until a whistle or the light street light come on yeah we we had bb gun fights and we never wore helmets when we rode horses or bikes and yo we turned out okay yeah but yeah it was a way of life and you know just it was just being a kid back in that time and you know i shot bows and bow hunted and of course hunted birds and deer and squirrels and i ran a trap line for i had a hundred trap trap line when i was a kid and that's how i made extra money you know and i delivered newspapers get up 4 30 in the morning roll papers and go and go to school or go check fences or you know dr cattle or whatever needed to be done that's just that's how we were that was our we're creatures of our environment and all my buddies we did the same course we'd have an argument and we'd fight and have a fist fight and shake hands and that was it you know there wasn't any calling the cops or it's just the way it was man yeah and uh how about you you talked about riding horses did you do some rodeo stuff back in the day yeah you bet you bet i rodeoed for oh goodness probably almost 25 30 years and i trained trained cutting horses i trained rope horses worked on some pretty big ranches nurse maiden cows and and yeah i bulldogged and roped calves in the rodeo so steer wrestling is that pretty close to the little bird feeling of uh riding out in the wild i guess you know it's an adrenaline thing sure you bet yeah it's nothing like riding bulls or riding broncs but anyway so did you hear yeah i don't have the physiological build that you know those guys are 140 150 pounds and just hard as nails and i was a bigger guy i'm 5 11 and 2 10 220 so yeah they the the physics part of getting on a bull or a [ __ ] horse just you know they don't work you know and it's yeah i have a lot of respect for those fellas and it's a hard life and that back then we didn't have sponsors or you know million dollar purses or it's just it's crazy now but i'm i'm glad that it you know it it finally got there and it's recognized and you know being a cowboys is a is a dying breed in this country and it's it's hard work man it just that transitioned into my army career and working hard in 101st as an enlisted guy and then aviation and then 160th so you know that good work ethics there and like everybody else so yeah so let's let's then before we jump into some of those roles if you can just take me back to when you decided to sign up clearly you were watching the vietnam war the helicopter wars you described it probably like a lot of folks at that time um what was the the moment for you did you walk into a recruiting office was it a discussion with your with your dad like what was it that got you in initially and why did you choose the path you did out of the gates i didn't choose it god chose it for me and and i tell this to every man i've ever known that when and the bible says when god's weaving you in your mother's womb your path is already chosen for you and that for me and the fellas that we serve with that is a path of a warrior so for and at one point uh shall i say a very kind judge in texas said kind of gave me a choice one morning and that's back when again that's back when they be like okay you can either do this or you're gonna go here so wait greg if i could just pause you for a sec because i understand what you're talking about but a lot of people who listen to this aren't from this community necessarily and i have met folks who have had this moment with a judge could you just give a little context to like what this decision making was for you and how this judge impacted your life goodness gracious well me and a couple of buddies and we've done our research i don't i've never told this story this is my i don't know eighth or ninth podcast oh and it's not in the book so but we had this hadn't occurred since 1939 and that was and it was two brothers in el paso texas had robbed a train that was the last train robbery so me and a couple buddies after some refreshing beverages we were gonna hold up the amtrak train coming out of marshall texas on horseback well one of the guys let's just say the local sheriff had pretty close contact and they got word of it and the sheriff and about 20 of his friends and no and we went through the process it was just to scare us you know and you know i'll never forget he says you know that's a federal offense and we're like oh we didn't you know we didn't look we didn't see that part of it but we weren't armed or anything we were just having fun going to do something historic and our end state was like man we'll be on the front page of every paper in the world because this hasn't happened since 1939 oh man what a great idea so so yeah the the kind judge said well what's your choice and all four of us went and raised our right hands and went and served our country and the choice was you can join the military or go to jail yes sir yeah dang that's all right so so that forced your hand a little bit yeah but that was my my thinking and i and i'd talked to dad about it and i was because i wanted to go fly and i didn't have any college at the time so that was the warrant officer program was in the army you know they're there's they always said hey you can go from high school to flight school and we'll teach you how to fly helicopters and you'll join the warren officer corps so that's that's the path for me and is that what you did greg you and you went straight in into the into what people refer to as that high school to flight school program no sir i went i enlisted first upon my father's recommendation to and at the time i think i was you know of course i was looking for to further my education so the gi bill was something that i you know wanted and i could use to further my education and i enlisted for four years i went to the 101st and 327th infantry where i served infantry there for almost three years and had applied for flight school and oh god only knows i got accepted and headed the head of the fort record in 1989. okay so so you you're in rucker in 89 and it's funny i just i took a little note down how you're planning with your buddies was this that event was going to be a historic event yeah and it's just so funny because i know we'll touch on some of this but truly like you were the first guys in that fight in afghanistan in iraq there's a lot of first and historic moments that you ended up having that were that were uh illegal i guess you would say you got that chance later on yes yes absolutely so talk talk me through that flight school experience the decision was it apache running out of the gate i mean that was early on uh made your career is that what you wanted or no yeah the apache was just coming on and then they i think we were i was class 89 15 and they just started or we were right in the beginning of the multi-track what they called it and so we started out flying of course we you go to warren officer basic course that was seven or eight weeks and then you went to primary which was flying the huey so we flew it and learned to fly soloed in it and then you got tracked so they tested us at certain points and from that testing it was somewhat very similar to an iq test from what i've heard or what i've read and you know the smart guys go to guns that's all that's the only way i can put it no i'm just kidding i got to agree i mean sorry yeah so there was the lift track the scout track and then the gun track and i told my my senior attack i never will forget when we were getting ready to you fill out a dream sheet you know what you want to go fly of course the army has their needs but i said i want to fly cobras man i i like shooting stuff and blowing stuff up so that's that's where i want to go and so i tracked cobras in flight school for the gun guys it was it was a year it was exactly one year from the time i started to the time i left fort rucker in 1990 march of 90. wow and you so you were a cobra pilot at first yes yeah okay and and then just talk talk me through i guess what i'm going to want to touch on if we can greg is the first time you were in combat but given that it was the 90s not clear when that was so um did you did you see any action with the cobra i'm assuming not but then when did you transition to the apache and what was that like for you yeah the my first tour out of flight school was in the south korea flying flying ah-1f models with the 517 cav and it was uh it's just a great place for a young aviator to go because one you know we had mountains all all the different terrains we had mountain we had over water you had snow in the winter you had urban and uh and we flew a lot of night vision goggles and we had a real world mission of course because we were most furthest deployed at the time so we had the border between north and south korea and it was yeah it was very serious business at that time that was from 90 to 91 and then i had i had gotten orders for the apache course while i was there in korea so i got home the day desert storm ended in february of 91 or maybe it was the next day but i had to get actually a captain from fort rucker called me that night and says hey we need you at fort rucker tomorrow because we're starting this it was a very shortened course for guys that had already raided aviators and and gun guys so i got back in the truck and drove the fort record at night was there the next morning to sign in and and yeah just things happened and so i got flew apaches went to first to the 101st no mercy hoorah and yep another great great unit what company were you in craig i was in what company was i in aco yeah spectres okay yep specters yeah very cool i was spectre10 got it hey let me ask you this greg so you were in you're in korea you get back just as desert storm ends was there any was there any concern for you like oh my gosh i may have missed this war and this is my chance or was it just like there'll be more to come absolutely because i i was i mean all of us were like that's dog you know and i mean that's just blood that runs through our veins as a gun guy and this is attack guy and former infantry guy you want to get in a fight you know and i i guess my analogy is imagine the professional professional athlete that practices practices practices and never plays a game and that's you know that's how we were and that's that was the time and the age and a war is a terrible thing it really is but you know we're all patriots and we love our brothers and we're ready to go get it on yeah dude that's what they pass that large salary for every year right that's right that flight pay yeah yeah i have to imagine when you went you came out of the apache course and you went to no mercy i'm pretty sure they were in that fight right so like did you show up to a unit with everybody just coming back with a combat patch all right yes sir i did and they they fired the first shots colonel cody led the led the fellas and yeah they took out a bunch of early warning with hellfires and it was it was very historic event for for that that group of guys man what what a great group of fellas that was there and actually recruited a couple and a couple went on to be company jamie weeks greg gilman myself a couple others christian walters uh yeah so yeah it was i was the guy that you know the cherry of course i'm standing there right they're like uh you know combat flying sound again and i was like this is what it is you know you know how attack guys are we feed off each other so greg i wanted to ask then and i was in a very similar position i mean i got out of flight school in 2003 i went to a unit in germany that literally just redeployed from iraq so i'm i'm the guy without a combat patch how did you mentally make it through that and like keep your you know persevere i guess because it's tough on your ego especially as an attack guy to be there and not have that combat experience how did you do it because you clearly did it well yes sir and i mean for me i just i focus on the task at hand and i wanted to be the best apache pilot in the united states army and you know you continue to strive and work on your trade and learn and of course at that time i was learning a new aircraft and yeah when i got to campbell man we had we just had great ip sean hope and tim roderick and you know some of those old guys the old crew from from ugly eddie and yeah they all they took me under their wing and you know and you're continuing continuously preparing for the next battle i mean that's that's our jobs and being in an apache unit back then it was it was high speed and uh of course i knew about the little black helicopters flying around fort campbell i'd known about them for years and it just you know it interested me in in their mission and i knew i knew a few of the guys from bee company from the little bird gun company and you know that was just that's god's path for me to go and do that so let's just before we jump into you moving into 160th could you provide and i am genuinely curious here i'm sure a lot of people would be can you provide just a little bit of a comparison if somebody was like all right you flew cobras apaches and little birds how do you kind of describe the difference in just power the the flight mode what it felt like to fly those three different aircraft because very few people have been able to do all of this sure and it was it was interesting moving from literally 60s technology to 80s 90s technology in the apache and then going to the md 530 ah-6 and then going back to 50s and but they're all great aircraft i loved every one of them one of my my favorite seats is the front seat of a cobra because you're just hanging out in space and very much like an f-16 if you've ever been in an f-16 but that that was just a feeling of power and and it was just it was cool flying from the front seat and you get lost in it and you're looking around at god's great creation and yeah it's it's just but the little bird is and i i try to explain to people the difference because they ask all the time and they're like oh the 58 and i said no it's not no age 58 it's it's actually a civilian it's an md 530 mr hughes designed that aircraft back in the 50s and it's a it's a great design and very crash survivable great platform for lift for guns for scout for you know any of those roles that it that if you look at the history of that little helicopter but yeah the the little bird has there's no hydraulics in that aircraft and you know there wasn't a whole lot of technology and there and it's due to the standard you have to be able to get to that target plus or minus 30 seconds okay using a map a compass and a clock and that's the standard if you don't meet the standard you don't stay or if you don't meet that standard when you get there you don't you don't go to the 160th and it's continuously practiced and it's it's hard to do it's a lot of hard work and not to even mention the planning process that we conduct to to just get into the helicopter and start it there's hours or days of planning to get that aircraft or that assault force or that ground force to that target plus or minus 30 seconds all at night so you become an expert in reading terrain and reading winds and no gps no i think we had like a doppler maybe attack in back in the old j heavies and then we went to the jade light and uh looking back at apache you know it's a lot more technologically advanced there were i think i remember like 112 switch positions just to shoot a hellfire you know and little bird is one switch you flip it up many guns go and the rockets go and you're like oh yeah let me find my grease pencil you know again that's there's no siding system it's it's literally a grease pencil mark on the windscreen that's our sight system for the little bird when it comes to speed and maneuverability and kind of power how would you talk about those different aircraft or like what what comes to mind yeah the as far as maneuverability the the little bird is the ferrari of helicopters is that's my analogy as far as speed as you know the apache is just a fast big gun ship but it it can't turn and burn like you can in little bird i mean when we get over the target it looks like a fur ball with two ah sixes whereas you know a little more room and that cobra took a little more room and you had to be very careful flying the cobra because you couldn't pull any negative g's because it has a semi-rigid rotor system well you do it once and then you get mass bumping and then the rotor breaks off and you fall to the earth and yeah it's a bad day so but yeah both it's it's is very interesting to me if you look at the little bird and you look at the apache both built by the same company the rotor head of the apache is the same as a 1950s loach same same from that that many years ago same technology in a fully rigid you know rotor system so you can do all kind of whiffer deals and aerobatics and not that i've ever done any uh you know of course yes sir well i gotta say my um my father-in-law was a loach crew chief in vietnam so literally greg from the moment i started flying apaches he was like that's cool but yeah but it's not a it's not a little bird so i've heard this time and again the survivability is no joke i mean those things and i'm sure we're talking i know so i'll tell you it's survivable um i want to pick up something that you just mentioned and that was about the the selection process so i've talked to some guys from delta before some seals and their their selection process is legendary yes i think fewer people hear about how brutal it is getting into 160th and you mentioned plus or minus 30 seconds you mentioned map compass timepiece and no kidding at night hitting that target at that time you know plus or minus 30 seconds can you just talk through how difficult it was for you and what that selection process was like yes sir it's extremely difficult it's it's hard and it's not for everybody it just isn't and but you know there's and i told my peers and my commanders that hey i'm gonna go try that you know i've got to because that's just where god's path was leading me at the time i prayed about it and but it's the selection process is extremely hard and it's physical it's mentally challenging it's a gut check and and as an aviator it's you know it's yeah it's just it's hard it's hard work and it's even harder to stay there once you get there because you know you just can't afford to make mistakes and it's life-or-death situations every time we go train and um yeah it was it was quite a challenging event for me and i think i drowned a couple times on the swim last thing i remember seeing was a diver's hand reaching out for me that was the last thing i remembered but i i wasn't gonna quit and that's our motto nice talkers don't quit and i was raised to never ever quit and i just i don't know maybe i'm too dumb to quit i'm like i'm not quitting i want to stay right here until somebody comes and gets me i'll sink to the bottom it's it's so funny you say that great because certainly the guys that i've interviewed who have been in these tier 1 units like you have they had they all have that story of like not quitting and i do remember one of my one of my own assessment things at the agency somebody else was asking me later like hey i'm on the fence here what should i do and i said like make them literally pull you out of that thing because you're not going to quit like make them physically remove you from the training yes force them to do it you know like and that is just i think the mindset that you have to have but i would say for some of these other units they talk about there's a physical component a mental component i think you've talked about both but did they have like i assume there's not a hell week in 160th but there's a physical component but certainly could you talk about the the planning and the the mission execution side which i i believe is legendary within the aviation community yes sir and the night stalkers are held in high regard by the ground force for our customers as we used to refer to them but everything's out there now so everyone knows who we work with who we support but yeah it it's you have to first of all is that a pilot in the unit especially the gun guy you have to learn the ground scheme maneuver so that has to be learned so you have to work with you know rangers with delta other folks that we support and learn how they operate so that takes time and oh by the way you have to learn to navigate to the target plus or minus 30 seconds it might be 100 miles it might be 2 000 miles you don't know so and and to include every train on earth so mountains over water urban desert you name it we go there and we train in it because we don't know where the next balloons gonna pop so you have to be prepared and getting the bee company for me was just an endeavor in itself and i was very proud and i always said you know why am i here i don't i don't i mean i i walk among giants literally and i you know those guys are my heroes is jamie weeks and gilmans and those fellas and of course i you know i flew apaches with them and knew them had known them for many years but it was just an honor to be there and and it was it was scary as heck i'm not kidding you every day you're like well am i gonna get fired today you know i hit my target last night and i'm you know my accuracy is very good with my shooting and what's next because every flight's a check ride everyone for 15 years i was there it doesn't matter who you are or who you're with with every flight as a check drive so greg i i made a note of this and i want to talk about it in particular but i'm i'm i want to hold it to the end because i want to talk through some of these experiences that you had and how difficult they were and then i want to circle back to this because i think a lot of people can relate to this feeling whether it's in the military um corporate america with a lot of smart people and you're like how am i how did i even get in here yes you know but i want i want people to hear some of the stuff you've done because the guys i know who know you are like this dude's a legend i want them to hear that first and then i want to i know you'll say you're not and they've also said you're very humble but i i at least want them to hear that and then i want to talk about this we we call it imposter syndrome you know like you feel like you don't belong there but the work that you've done clearly speaks to that so let's if we can let's dive in to if you could take me to your first combat experience just set the stage for where you were kind of where you were in your career at that time and what your role was and then let's just dive into what that felt like for you you bet it was well i got to i got to the unit in 93 so the guys were in mogadishu and then came back greg hold on so you got to the unit is apache is just after gulf war and then you got to guns in 160th after black ops the other one yes sir holy cow all right yeah sorry didn't rock keep going no no but you know i knew the history of the unit and i'm like well my you know my times my time will come in due time and so that you know that part of course i was there in the 90s and it was a different time for the world for our country but it didn't stop the train at the 160th it didn't stop the train in united states army special operations command i mean man you better hang on because because you train train train and i i figured it up at one point i spent like 290 days a year tdy or deployed training so all over the world peacetime during peace yeah peace time so no combat frog gravy so and you know and and i'd always been told and i would tell junior guys that be careful what you wish for be careful what you wish for but as a gun guy as an attack helicopter pilot flying a86s in you know the best aviation unit in the world the only special operations aviation unit in the world yeah man i want to go i want to go test myself i do and i thought about that every day so and then 9 11 popped and like i said be careful what you wish for because then it was yeah it was time to get it on and that we did so take me take me to that first flight when you're in the combat theater in well the bruce 911 era like what were you what was your first experience there in the ah my first combat mission was with jamie weeks and man what an honor and jamie and i have been friends for so so long but oh my gosh man we were just we were giddy we were like kids and in a candy store and it was it i just i can't explain it really the the emotions the feelings and both of us talked about it when we were on the 130 flying into afghanistan that you know we just wanted to do a good job we just wanted to do a good job and we were we were wingman or dash two that night for that that first mission into afghanistan and uh it it was it was a it was a pretty busy evening yeah so take take me through some of that greg like you guys what was the target set you were going after that night um and then were you a ship of two two ah sixes and how long were you out like just talk me through that first set of flight time yes sir we offloaded from the 130 built up jumped in cranked up took off and we weren't all gone probably three and a half four minutes after we took off headed north we were gonna work highway one between kandahar and lashkar-gah so that's where the that's where the main force of enemy were all in that southern desert area of course you saw bin laden or ubl al-qaeda training camps and you know enemy were everywhere and it was pretty much a free fire zone so if it was moving and it wasn't positively identified as friendly it got it got engaged it got shot but we got a call from an asset that they had some movement at at our start point i mean the physical point on the ground jamie and i looked at each other we're like oh man let's get ready you know and and jamie was fine i had my m4 up that's kind of our standard whoever's not on the controls you've got your m4 ready to go to engage anything any targets that might pop up sorry craig can i just interrupt i'm glad you brought that up could you just give us a readout like what is your weapons load it could be just a standard or what it was that night but um just briefly what what what did that look like on board yeah we had dual mini guns so we were carrying dylan m134 miniguns on each side on the inboard pods and then the outboard we had two seven shot rocket pods we're carrying 10 pound he rockets 14 total and then both pilots carry an m4 with a basic load of probably eight to ten magazines so up to 300 rounds and then yeah our pistols hand grenades yes sir so we get that call and oh man it was just it's the darkest place i'd ever been in my life and jamie and i were talking about it and you find yourself leaning forward you know thinking you know okay i can see better if i lean forward but no you can't because there's no it's like going back 2 000 years i'm not kidding there's there's no cultural lighting and it was a moonless night so it was extremely dark probably you know you could make things out half to three quarters of a mile it was clear skies light winds it was cool that evening and uh so lead we we're trying to make this out we're seeing something we see some movement and i mean we're not we're not half a mile away and leed says hey i'm gonna drop down and i'm you guys cover me and i'm we're gonna wrecky well as soon as they drop down i'm looking i'm looking well i see this big tube and it was uh it was a d30 i believe it was uh howitzer you know an artillery or an s60 no s60 and i go jamie it's an s60 and there are two vehicles there with it one was a truck and you could see some dudes running around by then i'm sure they could hear you know that that faithful grind of that tail rotor and the ah so they started moving around and and lead they started they engaged him with small arms and we were set up to engage so as soon as he he broke hard right man we'd let him have it with the miniguns and then we fired a rocket into that artillery piece we came around we followed him in and he engaged and then we engaged again we hit the trucks and got secondaries and killed everybody there at the site and went on down a route and headed up to highway one so oh man all right just a couple things that i'm gonna hit on especially from the just the aviator side of it um i think it's worth pointing out you described it being a very dark knight even though you have nvgs on and for those who are not familiar like you still need light like ambient light to help amplify so it's great that you had on nvgs but it sounds like it's not what people picture when they see a movie and it's like crystal clear just green you know so that's different um i what i loved in the book is how you really get into what it feels like to go into an engagement right and you just described like you're at a different altitude your wingman's down low he breaks can you talk through that sequence in your mind like you'd practiced it tens of thousands of times but how you go into a bump what you're feeling about can you talk about target torque trim and what that means and then the grease pencil and going in you bet yeah target torque trim that's just basic gun pilot verbiage or that's we're looking at the target so we have to find the target positively identify the target all right we have to set we have to set our torque so our power is set with the collective that's what that's what adds angle of attack in the blades up down and then the cyclic is our directional control so forward right left back so we're and we're we're hauling hauling the mail going in there we're doing probably 90 95 knots to ground speed and as soon as as soon as i mean we jamie and i both saw the small arms fire so he executed a bump so it's just a smooth application of af cycling what that does is we gain altitude because we're only about 50 feet off the ground at that point so we gain altitude up to 100 to 200 feet to help us see the target area better and then it also reduces our speed so we want to bleed some of that speed off to about 60 knots 65 knots and then we'll push over and then each pilot has a grease pencil mark on the windscreen that's that's your sight so you'll put that grease pencil mark on the target and every every gun pilot knows in beco that as soon as he presses that trigger those first rounds are going to impact where that grease pencil mark is and then we'll shoot you know one rocket or a pair just whatever we need to service that target so that's another responsibility of being an attack guy also to help with the ground force is weaponrying that target okay what what do we need do we have buildings do we have light armor do we have armor you know what's that target set so we'll configure the aircraft as as we need to service that target and you certainly but you bump up you're coming in on on your shots there you can get target fixation i'm sure and i only bring this up because in an apache when we were doing these bumps you're bumping up to 1500 feet and you're coming in on like a really slow um gradual i mean it feels fast but i'm sure it's nothing like what you're talking about and you're taking shots from a distance if you're bumping up to 200 and taking those shots like you're in pretty close proximity to the target yeah and again like we talked about the illumination or the cultural lighting or starlight or moonlight but yeah you have it and it's just it's kind of blurry or hazy is the best way i can describe it so we have to press the target in order to you know to see that person running or just to see that vehicle clearly so i can get my my gun side on my pepper on that target before i engage it and press trigger for miniguns and yeah it's it we got i'd say we got pretty close on that first one i i'm gonna say i don't know maybe 250 300 meters to get a good sight picture but they you know they can't see us they can hear us and then kind of shoot at the noise or whatever the case so did was that jamie on the controls for that first one gregor were you on that yeah yeah he was on the controls he was in the right seat i was in the left seat and uh yeah so let me ask this then you had talked about you you know you had missed just missed desert storm you just missed somalia this is your first engagement in combat and you're taking out vehicles and people and in the book you you really touch on something that not a lot of people do which is having to talk to folks who had difficulty doing that um what was that like for you coming out of that first break or was it not even on your mind because you were just so in the moment yeah it's it wasn't even on my mind and we as gun guys as warriors we would we talked about it a lot and to me and it's simply because of how we train we train with live people running on the ground we live fire all the time and but it was just a target for me and it was the enemy and and all of us had you know we were all mad we were angry at these people that had attacked the united states and killed 3 000 of our mates and so absolutely and we wanted some payback and that's you know we're driven that way but to me and throughout my combat career it was you know they're just targets and and it and it comes down to it's either you or them and it's about your buddies on your left and right or behind you so you just go do your job and i know god was watching over us and i want to jump forward because i think that same night you are on the on the controls with your first i mean it's not to say you weren't in the engagement with jamie but the first time you're on the sticks going in what was that target for you yeah we well as a rule about every 20 minutes you'll swap off because the guy not on the controls you're navigating on a map and out there there's it's it's hard to navigate because there's no roads there's no tires to look at there's no cities in the background you know there's and you have to you have to navigate that line on your map it's critical especially in enemy territory because we try to use terrain and we use tactics to the best of our advantage to give us the advantage over the enemy but yeah we were this was i don't know we'd swapped off multiple times but we were in kandahar on the west side and one of our missions were to engage any tractor trailer tank trucks because they were hauling fuel or whatever the case so there was a this big tanker truck started rolling west and i remember jamie he he scooted up his seat he was like oh boy he's like co get you some of this brother did you bet so yeah i bumped up and uh got my steady state target torque trim made sure the aircraft was in trim my torque was set and you know you just you wait that few seconds to let the aircraft settle down and that that helicopter is just a very stable platform for firing for shooting and i just yeah i'll let everything settle in put my pepper right in the middle of that tank and let it rip and uh and we have tracers so you know you'll have bullets and then every so many bullets you have a tracer and at that 60 rounds per second you're putting a lot of a lot of 762 down there on the target and then a one or two second squirt and yeah it hit the tanker and man that thing exploded and i got target fixation because it was just a huge explosion you could feel i i pressed the target again it was dark and i wanted to make sure my first rounds were on target and jamie kind of elbowed me and says hey you quit admiring your work you probably need to break and i was like oh yeah you're right so i went to a real hard right hand break at about i don't know 60 70 80 meters from that burning bulky anchor truck and he was over giggling he you know he's like i got the controls because another truck popped up and i was about at the end of my 20 minutes so yeah it's worth saying i mean that target fixation is no joke and it kills pilots i mean it literally they die because of it so you got to have that the crew coordination and just not get too locked in so that's just i guess just to anchor that point for people who hear it but don't understand the blood that has been uh spilled because of it um situational awareness is very pretty cool as an attack helicopter pilot and it was just blowing my mind here and you talk about um navigating off a map at night without a gps like all right i mean i mean i'm gonna blow past it because it just blows my mind how you could do it i wanted to talk about something that you've alluded to a couple times here that i think is one of the other really special things it sounds like when you're in that tier one community and that is how close you get to those operators on the ground and when i say close to them i don't just mean like in combat but you become very close friends with them from all of the training and trying to understand as you said how they operate their scheme of maneuver could you just talk to that a little bit because it sounds like some of your best friends were from that community delta guys rangers that sort of thing you bet yeah some of the yeah some of my best friends are from those communities or those units and you you form a very very close relationship with those guys because you literally spend years with each other and training and sleeping in hangers together or sleeping out in the desert together and and you know then on your down time you're with each other and you hold their babies and you laugh with them you cry with them and it is it is a very tight brotherhood and you're very very close and and for me you know i always told the guys that i was always scared for them and i i needed to get in there and service that target so they wouldn't get hurt you know and the delta guys and the razors be like man quit killing everybody on target we need something to shoot okay you know we'll back off but yeah it's it's just a lifelong lifetime friendship that you build and and you bond over those years you bet you bet and it's worth saying that's something that i at least did not experience and i think you don't get that if you're not in 160th because you end up servicing targets for if you're a conventional pilot for dozens of units and you just pop on station you help them out when they're in a gunfight and then you're off and they you never meet them like you may hear their call sign again but it's rare so it's it sounds really special that you got to do that yes sir and it's it's you know i would hear a voice on the radio and i'd be like oh okay that's mo that's leon yeah give me your you know and that's yeah they got a call sign but you know each other they'd hear you you're like okay that's coke and or that's jamie or but that that just comes from years and years of working together and debriefing and beating each other up and planning and sure the whole process and then you know then you go into a combat scenario and situation and war then i think you become tighter and you become closer because it is life or death and those guys depend on you and you depend on them so that's that's about the best way i can put it well let's talk haditha damn then if you can and i've read some some interviews that you've done about it and i can see why you you gravitate to that could you just talk through like where you're at in your career um where for those who aren't familiar with that fight just briefly kind of like why it was so important and then talk us through what that fight felt like yes sir it was this was into march 2003 and we've been asked to go and support 375 rangers because we were at that point we were moving north rapidly moving west and haditha dam is it's one of the largest dams in the world it's a huge structure and in my mind you know i heard damn and i'm like okay yeah i understand what dams are with it but i had i really hadn't studied it to look at the you know the length of that dam it was that thing was like four miles wide and it was 300 feet tall but it was the most critical key piece of terrain in that country at that time it was hydroelectric so it it serviced all the way down the river to baghdad and all the you know small towns so of course we were all pretty excited to get to go there camp out you know in the desert for a week or so a few days but we went up and met with the rangers and they were they had a gaff or a ground assault force and then the two ahs the weather was had really been bad so it was low ceilings it was overcast so there was again there's there's no cultural lighting and it just it just sucked it really did i i would say at times visibility was maybe 300 meters maybe but we had a mission and we were all very competent aviators and gun pilots and we trusted each other and the ground force trusted us and they needed us so they conducted a movement to the dam and colonel bailey he was the third battalion commander he put out that it was 24 to 30 hours you know classic special operations ranger mission take hold the dam and then be relieved the next day by an armory unit that was coming to relieve us we're like okay easy day a very very minimal force enemy force at the dam is what they told us and i know they had they had had some fixed wing in their day or two days prior when they had good weather of course overcast skies so very cloudy and very dark it was very windy and so we we met with the ground force we took off and and the rangers had gotten to the dam and they had dropped us off a farp a forward arming refueling point we had some fuel in these these rubber bags that carries 100 pounds of fuel for each aircraft we had three or four of those and then probably three or four loads of ammo rockets we had the 50 we were carrying the gal 19 that's a three barrel 50 caliber batman gun and on the left side and then we had mini gun rocket on the right side so we were we were in lead and departed and i kept trying to call the fire support nco i could hear him on the radio and but i couldn't i couldn't talk to him i was getting very very frustrated it was approximately about a 17 minute flight to the dam from h1 hotel one was a was an old runway it was an old pumping station back i don't know some years ago it was it had been abandoned and the rangers had done a combat jump into that airfield did an airfield seizure to secure it and we came in on a c-17 two ahs i was like that was a little bit overkill but here we are of course our crew chiefs and our armament dogs and the guys that you know we need to support our operations with fuel ammo those type of things but i kept trying to call mo and i couldn't get him i couldn't get him i could hear him and i could hear gunfire every time he keyed the mic and over those next several minutes which seemed like a lifetime to me that the gunfire intensified got louder it got higher volume i could hear guys screaming at each other you know action left you know 12 o'clock action right the machine guns going off m4 fire and i kept trying to call and kept trying to call him one to get a situation report or a sit wrap they were on the west side of the dam i think they were they're in a blocking position i think there were five or six rangers the whole company was spread out over that damn they were clearing it and they had heavy breachers with them so they could breach and clear the damn or find any people or information or intelligence but we our job was to save that damn you know we didn't want the iraqis blowing it up and we surely weren't going to because it was a very critical key piece of terrain finally i don't know we were probably four or five minutes out and i said okay i said i i've i've got to talk to moe he's the fire support nco non-commissioned officer the senior sergeant for fire support with the rangers there so i went up on sat on satellite radio i said i gotta talk to him so i i just said hey clear the net this is you know i don't remember our call sign i and i called him and he answered back and he says you know what's your eta and i said we're about four minutes and man i could just tell the because again i knew him had known him for several years and good friend of mine but he was he was worried and again the gunfire would intensify every time he keyed the mic and i said man we've got to hurry we got to get there and he i think he said i don't i don't know if we can hold on that long or made some reference to that but they were being overrun and there's a huge lake to the north of dam we came in right on top of the water staying low and using that terrain the dam and to stay hidden from enemy fire and i looked out and i you kind of see over the top we were below the top of the dam at the time that i could just trace your fire just filled the sky and the guys fly with we looked at each other we just started laughing we were like oh dude this ain't good so we got to the damn bumped up and right we knew where their position was physically on the dam it was on that west side and sure enough they were you know they're right there and there was about a company size element attacking their position against five or six rangers and we shot our first engagement was approximately 12 meters in front of those rangers yes sir it was it was danger close i i told mike um or uh gosh man i can't remember now but anyway i was thinking to myself i'm like a man standing on the moon can talk to houston texas in 1969 and i can't i could see these guys like you know i can't talk to them but it was it was frustrating and i was scared to death for them and i wanted to you know make sure they were safe and protect those guys so and so were you then in just a re-attack mode to push this company back yes sir yeah we we made two two attacks the two ahs two attacks on them we neutralized that target and then it wasn't 30 seconds later the blocking position on the east side was calling us for a call for fire because now they knew you know they could see a shooting and knew we were on station and you know there's no no distinguished sound like a pair of miniguns going off so yeah and oh my gosh he was this poor kid was frantic and and it's ingrained in every special operator the standard call for fire you know hey you this is me my position you know 360 degrees 200 meters go and and that's what he you know under stress we revert to what we've learned and that was his ranger standard call for fire bless his heart and i i let him finish and i said i have your position just mark the target so here come the laser spirit and it was another large pretty large element couple platoon size and they were attacking them on that and and i looked i remember looking down river of course there's wires everywhere because it was a hydroelectric and i'm like oh my gosh boy it just keeps getting better we're like wait a minute there's like they said there are 10 or 12 people on this damn well down to the south there was a very large army base with i think a division a republican guards and then fedeen so that's their kind of their special operations they thought we were coming to blow the dam up well we weren't so they were fighting to take the damn back but we weren't you know that wasn't our mission and again the fog of war yeah so they just continuous waves of attack attack after attack after attack all night long and how we the guy's flying with he swears to this day in a break i had engaged broke hard right that a bullet passed through the cockpit he said i heard it snap i was like oh my lord of course there was a little bit of road rubber blade damage and but that's just fixed with 100 mile an hour taper we'll put a new blade on it and uh yeah it was continuous engagements all night long all night how how many hours did you end up flying that evening i think we were there about eight hours yes sir yes i recall shooting 11 loads of ammo times two ahs so we ran our little drop off fart we ran out of it and i i got on the satellite radio just i was trying to find somebody that could help us and bring us more ammo and you know chinook blackhawk little birds i didn't a c130 i was like man but you know it was in the i mean the the war was going full steam and everybody was everybody was engaged everybody was busy so we'd have to fly back to h1 17 minutes one way load get gas and then fly fly back to the dam and just we got right back in the fight everytime so yeah we were whoever wasn't flying you had your m4 up engaging personnel on the ground or dropping hand grenades on groups of people or mortar positions and uh yeah it was a night to behold jeez so you you mentioned that you had the gal mounted on that one and in the book you describe the way it kind of put it has so much backfire pressure torque on the aircraft that it requires a slightly different input on the controls could you just talk about that briefly for the aviation nuts out there because it sounded pretty cool well the just you can look up gal 19 just see what that weapon system does but it's a 50 caliber three barrel gatling gun it fires 1 000 rounds per minute of 50 caliber ammo so we would on the left side it would when that thing started firing at a low speed or you know 60 to 80 knots it would torque the aircraft to the left so you just just as you press the trigger you start sneaking in just a little bit of right pedal to keep it because you know it's coming it's physics man and you just and you got to do it a bunch to you know really get good at it and yeah so you as you press that trigger on the cyclic you just start sneaking a little bit of right pedal in and that pepper stays you know right there as as that 50 goes off but it's it's an incredible weapon system um i i wanted to just ask and i'm sure you cover this every time but i i just wanted to get uh a snapshot of you getting shot down because it's so like not many people have have made it through something like that if you could just talk about flight profile you're in how you got hit and how you got out of there yes sir yeah it was again it was another day at the office and yo mr murphy he's always with us dog gone but it was a daytime mission it was our first daytime mission since october 3rd 1993. and it was 19 march 2004 approximately 12 30 in the afternoon we had we'd been operating in fallujah for several days and man it was it was the wild wild west i mean it was it was game on every night we were hitting i don't six seven eight targets a night and we had there been several i think there'd been seven helicopters shot down and we call it the devil's triangle so if you drew from fallujah to ramadi and down to amarillo which is about 16 17 miles south of fallujah and that triangle all those helicopters have been shot down chinooks blackhawks i think a 58d i know two of the chinooks nope they were packed full of soldiers and i don't think they're any survivors from them so the ground force that we were supporting had gotten in trouble they'd we'd hit a target the night before got some information off of that target which led to another target that next day on the 19th at 10 o'clock in the morning and so we were all like no no daytime you know but they're like no we don't you know we want you guys just crank and stay on the radios and if we get in trouble we'll call you yup roger that's our major got that so then they got information off that target that morning that another dude we were looking for was an amarillo which was to the south so they said hey you guys go and get some rest go back to baghdad we're at baghdad international airport still and so we did they said we'll just drive down there and we'll we'll either kill this guy or capture him you know whatever whatever happens and but he was a high-ranking al-qaeda official bad bad guy so we went back and then they got in a tick so troops in contact they'd hit the target and made some radio calls so we ran out to the aircraft jumped in because we weren't that far away probably 10 11 minute flight away from them and got on station and we stayed there for a little bit and i i i mean i was i you just have a sixth sense and i i did it that time i mean the hair stood up on the back of my neck and the guy that was flying with me he was in the left seat he had his m4 up and i said hey you see any any armed targets you engage them i said i'm you know i'm going to watch out here and you've got that side and i've got the right side so they had they'd done the mission there were three humvee gun trucks and then two panders or a six-wheeled big armored vehicle that they were in also and so they the troop commander just called and says hey we're going to depart in one minute and we were just i mean we're all like long tail cats in a room full of rocking chairs and again it's just a bad it's just a bad bad place and it's daytime and here's two little black helicopters flying around but they had they had come out of the target area and they were lined up on the road we were getting ready to depart and i came around and i always do a low pass over them you know and we do the international wave to each other and uh kind of you know thumbs up or whatever and um but we were just you know i was like man we got to get out of here and i had pulled up into a climbing right hand turn i was headed kind of south was a clear day winds were 20 knots out of the north and i i climbed up to about 160 165 feet and boom this giant explosion and this fireball came right by my right shoulder and it got real quiet and i says okay we've been hit of course for the ins and out audio and all those bells and whistles are going off and i'm thinking to myself i'm like okay i know the engine's out i wish these during bells and whistles had stopped whistling at me i'm trying to focus on my job here in my task at hand so i entered an auto rotation and i'm an ip and instructor pilot so done hundreds if not thousands of auto rotations to the ground unlike you know big army or those other or any of the other military units but that's that's how we train and we you know we do them to the ground both side or runways or streets or asphalt or whatever the case so but at that moment in time the best way i can explain this is like watching a movie frame by frame by frame i mean it went to slow motion and and i understand the physiological effects under stress what happens to our bodies what was happening to my body and so i i entered my auto i lowered the collective put my pedal in and and it was you know it's just dirt out there and there's there's no trees there were no buildings so so during an emergency procedure we have standards that we have to follow in procedure so at 75 feet i have to start a deceleration so i'm going to try to start to bleed some of that airspeed off and i hold that at about 15 to 20 feet i'll pull what's called initial so i'll pull the collective up just a little bit to get get those blades to bite and to slow us down a little more a rate of descent because that helicopter falls like a greased crowbar about 2600 feet per minute for the pilots out there so we're screaming out of the sky plus i'm loaded i've got a tailwind i'm in the worst conditions that i could possibly be in to conduct an auto rotation in that helicopter so i'm i'm i got my scan going again it's just a snapshot by snapshot by snapshot i'm focused on the task at hand and i'm like okay i got this and i'm watching the radar altimeter you know i see 75 feet 70 feet i start my d cell and i'm thinking to myself i said okay i want a real aggressive d cell because i don't want much ground run when i touch down because i don't know what the terrain is like is it rocky is it there's no trees or anything to judge my height but my radar altimeter thank goodness so at that point i'm i'm just looking right in my circle of action so the point in which i'm going to land or touch down this controlled flight but you just don't have any engine you don't have any power to the rotor system the rotor keeps turning in an auto rotation the tail rotor keeps turning so i think at about 20 feet and again i thought okay i'm gonna at about 20 feet i'm going to level the aircraft and i'm gonna pull everything i've got whatever rotor i got left to cushion to soften that landing and we touched down and later on my co-pilot he's like dude that was a beautiful touchdown man he said i didn't even feel it i said well it was probably about a 2g impact our adrenaline was going and you know this fireball just passed us and you know we're on fire i didn't know it at the time but we were on fire it was an sa-16 shoulder-fired ir seeker is what hit us and it works okay i'm just here to tell you so i touched down on the ground and i'm like yes okay we got this thing you know no hey i'll get another aircraft come back and we'll go kill these guys so we're sliding and of course dust just fills the cockpit you can't see anything and and i remember the the aircraft of course back in my cowboy days and and breaking bronx and stuff well you know when a horse dives down we sit back you know you kick your feet out in the stirrups and you set back so you don't get pulled over in front of that well it reminded me of a horse because that helicopter just kept coming up kept coming up and i'm like oh lord and i was pushing back on the pedals and and later my co-pilot said that i'd throw my arm out you know because you got kids like you know you're stopping the car fast you throw your arm in front of your kids so they don't you know go forward and he he laughed about that and uh but it's just crazy the things that you do you don't remember well we slid about 35 40 meters and the dirt was soft and went down just a bit of a slope into some really soft dirt and the stick the skid stuck and dirt well that started rolling flip this end over in i think we went like three times two and a half or three times and then now i'm thinking okay that dog gone murphy i had i had this auto nailed you know we're gonna dust ourselves off grab our rifles and go get on the trucks and go home well no but god was surely watching over us that day and uh so it came to and i i recall that i was like what in the world i was hearing popcorn popping you know popcorn well it was the 762 ammo cooking off right right behind my back in the ammo can and now there was a raging fire going right behind us and i i checked my co-pilot he had blood all over his face so now i'm like oh man did he get hit or did the little birds somewhat famous for the the shoulder harness not locking in a crash sequence so the pilot kisses the cyclic when you do that forward roll so i put my hand on his shoulder we were inverted we came to rest upside down and so i put my hand on his shoulder and i said hey i said get out and and i pointed you know where our standard is to meet at the three o'clock position because you don't want to get in front or behind because of our rockets and ammo and stuff and he kind of nodded his head so i grabbed my rifle and i crawled out of the front of it and i did my checks you know move my toes my feet my legs check your package you're like okay everything's good bad and uh my my right shoulder was hurt i dislocated both shoulders and i crawled out had my rifle because my first priority was security of that helicopter and that crash site i knew the guys but then i could hear the other a8 shooting i could hear the pander shooting i could hear the 50s i could hear the you know machine gun shooting so they were two guys actually saw the shot and it came from a two-story building and they were suppressing that building as soon as they saw the shot and then they saw the missile hit me and then us go down we're about 300 meters away and uh and i did i did think about oh man here's a little black helicopter we're down in bad guy country and you know it's time to go to work so i did security around the aircraft i checked 360 degrees then i looked for my co-pilot and i was like where in the world is he i mean i mean this helicopter's on fire man ammo is cooking off and i was i thought about the rockets i'm like man what are those things going to do when they you know when they start burning are they going to explode are they going to go off or i didn't know so that was a concern and then i thought oh i got to get my my rug we each carry a little ruck behind us in there where my night vision goggles hand grenades water and ammo well the whole cargo area of the aircraft was on it was on fire it was burning of course the ox tanks right there too full of you know jet fuel and so i i went back around to the front and i told co-pilot i said hey man you've got to get out right now okay understand he nodded his head and so i went back just kind of watching towards the ville there i could hear the guy shooting they were getting it on and then i looked back and i was like okay he's not he's not getting out i crawled i went back to the front of the aircraft i crawled in there i reached up and i grabbed the latch on his seat belt and then i just pulled the latch and he went don't you know head he hit and then he was like oh yeah you know oh okay yeah and i just i pulled him out right on top of him pull him out helicopter and then he got up we got up on hands and knees and i just i checked him real well and he had he had bitten through his tongue in the crash sequence and that's where all the blood came from and uh yeah we were both we were both hurt pretty bad and so we we got out we moved to that three o'clock position and the aircraft now was fully engulfed and when i pulled his seat latch i never will forget but the flames were like licking around his arm on that side and i was just like i gotta get him out right now the last time you had like one 160th in the daytime with the shoot down you know your mind goes to durant and what happened in somalia um certainly like you you know you got some good guys around you but is there anything in your mind saying like oh my god i might get captured here this could be it oh yes yeah you bet absolutely it didn't absolutely and i told my co-pilot i said look i'd say i put him in the prone face of north and i was on a knee facing east towards the villain towards the guys and i said hey if you see something let me know you know just sing out let's put two sets of eyes on it we'll put two guns on it we'll talk before we engage okay because we're kind of jacked up right now and you know he nodded and so i went back to watching to the east but yeah that absolutely it did i'm like okay are these guys gonna you know flank around to the south come toward us or you know and i know the the ground force they had split and watching over us keeping us under their gun sites to make sure that they everybody told me they're like dude we knew you guys were dead and uh then i heard i heard a truck and i kind of elbowed co-pilot and i said hey man i got action my 12. so he kind of scooted around came up on a knee and i had my my rifle low ready and i i saw a ball cap and bouncing you know because i'd put us in a bit of a definite a little shallow area just for a little bit of cover and then i saw a face and i saw a beard and i'm like i know that guy that's like we're good and uh we yeah we stood up and an old chazz and he stopped and he looked i think it was like i can't believe these guys are alive you know and here they are set up ready to fight he's like only beat company man there's both parts their m4s are up ready and ready to go their helicopters burning and what do you say but that's what we're trained to do and uh you know we always we want to be considered an asset not a liability just didn't even something like that happen and we're all good shooters and we shoot a lot with our with our rifles and pistols but he came running up and grabbed us and hugged us and uh chas yeah and uh he looked at me and i said hey i said yeah fire extinguisher he said greg turn around he said that it's not going to help if man he said come on come on let's get in the truck and he goes what do you want to do i said i want to find that son of a gun i'm going to kill him he goes let's go find him so we got in the truck and it was a long day man we yeah we were we were done fighting for about six hours after that geez yeah yeah so i i guess i just want to anchor the point of an auto an auto rotation like you have no engine daytime in fallujah in this fight and you land it and i think people who just haven't done autos don't even understand how painful those are without any weight you know and you got an ip sitting next to you but certainly in those conditions you had to have gotten a dfc for that i'm assuming no what hey it's another day at the office bro all right all right well i guess just in the interest of not taking your whole day um i wanted to jump back to something that we had talked a little bit about earlier and that was you saying you know like how am i even in this unit this be co 160th like i don't belong here i'm among giants and then we hear these stories right and what you you've kind of touched on that i would also highlight for people who aren't familiar with this community is not only did you advance into 160th but then your fmq you uh your flight lead in i think in oif you are an ip at that level like you have hit all the markers that show you've moved up the ladder right so for those i think anybody who's in those communities you still feel like you're always you don't want to be a liability you want to be an asset and and make everyone better and how do you compete like how can you after talking like this i i'm talking from the outside now greg looking at you how could you think that you're an imposter in that environment i i don't know you know it it's to me and you know it doesn't matter what i'm doing digging a ditch or flipping burgers or branding cattle i just i always wanted to be the best at what i did and and i always want to help my mates absolutely and yeah it was it was a it was a job and god put me there to do this job and i'm just thankful that you know i'm here today and i know my purpose so it's it's all good man it is every day is a bonus that's my motto were you ever able to get out of that mindset of damn i might not be here tomorrow like in terms of i might not be good enough tomorrow because i spoke to tom satterly who's in delta and he said the same thing just every day they might they might say you know what you're not good enough get on out of here yes sir and it's hard to see from the outside looking at someone like you but did you ever get out of that mindset or to the day you left it was like i survived my last check ride and they're gonna let me retire yes sir yep every day and i think that just the men that we are that's what drives us that's one of those components yep i yeah and i know tom well and yeah we we talked about that and i was actually on several of the missions that he writes about in his book oh man that's right i was like that's all good i said i'm writing a book he goes man so yeah it's it's just a driving force for we're all type a plus and uh yeah yeah we do it for each other we sure do fair enough well i just i have three other things i just wanted to touch on two of them are quick and the one is you know if you're okay talking about it you do mention in the book your own battles when you're back home with with emotions and ptsd and how that impacted you and i think it's it's worth talking about as an aviator because you have this different perspective and i certainly feel this way where i wasn't breaching a door and kicking it in and going in so therefore i shouldn't be able to have something like ptsd but you describe what you lived through and those experiences and you could see it um i wanted to ask greg because you do a great job explaining this in the book is good the fact that you didn't you kind of tried to do this yourself you didn't talk to people about it um when you could have and i would just how did how did you notice that you had it and did you notice it first or did did your wife identify it who saw it first and how did you then try to deal with it the everyone around me saw it okay but it was my god bless him it was our one of our docs at the unit and i'd gone in for my annual physical in 2005 and been fighting these demons you know i've been hurt surgery and then i go deploy and then i come back get another surgery and i go deploy and you just push that stuff down as a professional warrior you do but i and again you know the docs did everything they could to help me and and to try to figure this out i mean there there just wasn't a whole lot of information on and i i really i'll just put it out now i don't like that word pts i i truly feel it should be pcs post combat stress because if you read and study about ptsd and what it does to our brains and our emotions but a lot of different people can be classified with ptsd it could be child abuse it could be a car wreck it could be rape it could be any of those things but if you look at the at the warrior and look how many years that we spend in combat especially at our level at the special operations level i mean guys are 8 9 10 11 12 combat tours man and it just i don't like that because ours is long term okay and i want to make that very clear but the best thing in and that's my primary message in that book is go talk to somebody because greg coker didn't and thank god for doc chastey when i was i was doing my annual physical in june that year and he goes what's going on and man i just i broke down i did i don't know if it's called a nervous breakdown or break but we sat there and cried for two hours and i just i just let it all out and then we walked over and we met with our sight we have you know god bless them and um we're not crazy they're there to help us you know to talk with us and our families so it's a very close-knit community and we are we are a big big family and uh so yeah it was then and then i started the process of getting some help and man i was they sent me all over to see specialists and psychiatrists psychologists doctors and all types of folks but yeah you gotta fight the demons man you gotta you know god loves you and he's got a plan and a purpose for you and and a lot of prayer got me through it and i've been right there i've been right there at that dark dark d door and i talk about it in detail that's one of the things that scared me about writing this was i don't want people knowing greg coker but i i truly feel and god said it was okay to do this but i'm going to help some vets out there and i'm going to help their families their wives their kids you know their moms or dads as to you know why am i feeling like go talk to somebody and man get some help because it's there and i love you and you can call me i get calls 24 7. i i do and that's that's fine because we're all in this thing together and we got to help each other we sure do and you know call a buddy and tell them you love them that's all that you may save his life that day or next week or whatever yeah it's true and thanks thanks to you for just being willing to write about it because within our community like you guys are the tip of the spear so i think a lot of people can hear you say it and then they could think like all right it's okay for me to do it too yeah because you know people look at us they're like oh man those guys they got the armor and they you know they are at the top of their profession and hey we're all humans and yeah and things happen they do but again i hate that pts i talked to tom i've talked to senators representatives and i'm like look we need to change this because we're different and it is what it is so thank you for trying to help us yeah it's it's combat it's it's mutually supporting it is but yeah there so there are two things greg that i try to ask every guest and these are usually quick um i think i read about some of these for you so um take it either any way you want but was there something that you carried with you in combat that had sentimental value or superstitious qualities to it for good luck or whatever reason absolutely i did i carried a horseshoe off of my one of my old roping horses in my kit in my between my plate and my soft arm the whole time it was it was a horseshoe and and then i had a my youngest daughter when i went to afghanistan 0-1 gave me a a small texas flag and i carried it and then yeah a couple other little trinkets that's i think that's some indian in me coming from way back you know you carry your little pouch things that'll keep you safe and of course my my faith you know that that carried me through everything but yeah she she gave that to me the day before i was leaving she was eight at the time and uh says daddy says if you get in trouble you pull this texas flag out and you just wave it and they'll know you're a good guy [Music] i still have it i sure just yeah wow all right and then my last question is and i'm pretty sure i know the answer to this but i'd like to ask everyone certainly for you though greg starting out when you did the way you got into the military the fights that you saw the battles the times you were in winchester and had to reload like and and the pcs that you dealt with later on knowing all of that would you go back and do that again every day every day absolutely yes i would i sure would yes well that's i'm not surprised to hear it from you i mean it comes out in the book loud and clear and just the way you talk about things now so just just to let you go i i will ask what are i know you got the book death weights in the dark and you i know you you've either worked on or you've released something else and i just wanted to have a chance to talk about that briefly yes i worked with with my daughter nancy creel and another friend of ours and we wrote a children's book and it's called b for veteran so it's for young kids it's an alphabet book but it's it's about military things in our country and we're real real excited about she had she had asked me to if i would do that with her and i said absolutely that'll be fun and so it's coming out soon it's it's about ready to get published and so yeah i got that and then i've got the book out on amazon it's out in kindle right now it's doing very well and then i just uploaded i did the reading for the for the audible book and about kyle lamb and bunch of my buddies like no man you got to be the one reading the book but a couple people have listened to it and they really enjoyed it so i just so uploaded it on amazon last night so it'll be probably a couple weeks it'll be out the the softback books i'll have i'll have them on amazon also they're they're physically on three pallets in a tractor trailer somewhere headed headed to the house right now and uh you know mentioned george han the fourth chick and he was my co-author in this he was in a squadron in delta and good good friend long time friend he was he was one that poked and prodded me over the years of course kyle lamb sergeant major lamb and he had always told me he says gravy if it ain't written it never happened so please please please write and i didn't it's true but i had a great great support crew you know the the cover of the book i'm really really proud of it it came out very well but that's a rob wentz print and rob was in the 160th he flew blackhawks i don't know if you're familiar with he does a lot of the nightstalker prints and man just a just a talented guy he's a faithful man and loves christ and but i i've got the six gun print here in my office and we were trying to get a book cover together you know and i had a little committee put together and i look at this print i'm like oh my gosh there it is right there and so i called rob and long story short he goes absolutely i'd be honored for you to use that print for your book cover awesome you know all the graphics folks and editors and it's a journey it's it is a journey but i just i pray pray pray that i can help help a vet help their family and i'm donating all my proceeds to nonprofits every penny because god's blessed me and i that's just it needs to be done and i i want to help vets and first responders for sure yeah it's exciting well i mean this this was a lot of fun i have to say greg especially just the aviator in me and i'm even more frustrated that i didn't get to do what you did and i will say you were right when we started when you said that uh god was working overtime keeping you safe for sure well thank you for your service brother and we're yeah we're we're gun brothers and we're we're all ugly eddie brothers too so right that's right very cool that's great thanks so much yes sir thank you it's an honor you

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 69,603

Rating: 4.9302483 out of 5

Keywords: Army, Night Stalker, 160th, AH-6, Pilot, Gun Pilot, Delta Force, 1st SOFD-D, Rangers, Ranger Battalion, Guns, MH-6, MH-47, MH-60, Veteran, Veterans, VA, PTSD, Aviator, TF 160th, Greg Coker, Greg Gravy Coker, M-4, GAU-19, Little Bird, Death Waits in the Dark, Afghanistan, Iraq, Texas, OEF, OIF, Invasion, SEALs, Operation Gothic Serpent, Somalia, Gulf War, JSOC, Special Operations, Special Operator, SpecOps, SOCCOM, ARSOC, Apache, AH-64, Cobra, AH-1, SOAR, Special Operations Aviation Regiment

Id: aLToBQKRd8Y

Length: 101min 20sec (6080 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021