Combat Story (Ep 18): Dale Comstock | Delta Force | Green Beret | Mercenary | Author | Entrepreneur

so in the military i had gone from as you know we mentioned earlier i was in 82nd i was an infantryman i was a lerp you know i was a green beret as a delta course operator then i worked for oga as a paramilitary operative um you know and i thought in my mind i thought everybody thinks being a delta is the pinnacle right that's as good as it gets man even seals want to be in delta right and but then there's another level right that's even more selective which was for the us government um and it calls for polygraph testing and some serious background checks and a lot of vetting right to get to that level and i made it there and then but there's actually one more there's there's one more paradigm there's one more peak to get to that people never really think about and it's it's hard to get to that peak and that and that was being a mercenary welcome to combat story i'm ryan fugit 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 dale comstock a former delta force operator green beret paramilitary operative entrepreneur mercenary and author who has also appeared on prime time television dale is fought in almost all major u.s combat operations since granada through to afghanistan to include being one of the youngest members of first special forces operational detachment delta he's written three books including american badass and is writing a fourth on his more recent experiences dale's created several successful businesses to include tier one performance coaching and strategic outcomes dale is a force of nature who truly lives by the performance coaching mantras he preaches i hope you enjoy his energy and stories as much as i did enjoy dale thanks for taking the time to share your story today yeah man appreciate you having me on man look forward to uh tell to tell all story yeah and so i just i just wrapped up american badass great book and i know it's uh 2011 2012 it was when it came out there's a lot that's happened since then and i'd like to start out with guests talking about kind of how you grew up and how you found your way to the military but for you in particular i have this initial question which is as i look back and i'm sure i'm going to miss some here but your paratrooper lurce sf delta paramilitary contractor author business owner martial arts expert i'm curious when you're coaching somebody or you're working in business today and they're like hey what did you used to do what do you say yeah it's funny you say that because so four years ago my daughter my daughter's um she's also a performance coach and her her niche demographics are women entrepreneurs right and so that's what she focuses on internet marketing and business with them and she she does really well at it man it turns out quite a few uh millionaires she contacted me about four years ago said dad you know what i think you would really be good at this and here's why you know and she follows you know the tony robbins and grant cardone's nose and uh you know she kind of comparison he goes you know they're they're they're niche coaches they're one trick ponies man but uh you know they sleep in bed every night going man i wonder what have been like to be dil comstock right so um you know and and i'm the richest man in the world because of my experience so people do ask me all the time how did you do all these things and when they first started asking me that i really didn't think i was doing i did a lot of things i thought just keeping up with the jones and uh and then she brought this up to me and i started to look at a little closer and i realized yeah maybe compared to everybody else i have done a lot and so it's not because um you know i am a high achiever um there's no such thing as a uber achiever or overachiever right it's you're either achiever or you're not and it was actually just who i it was just part of my character my dna it was the way i was raised by my father it was way the military raised me so to speak you know being being in the unit um it was expected that we were always operating at the highest level that we could possibly perform at right at everything we do so it was already ingrained in us either it either was already in me or they basically polished it even more but either way it was there right and so um yeah i've done a lot and now i'm realizing that compared to everybody else i probably have but i can tell you i'm like a shark in the water you know i have to keep moving otherwise i'm going to die right and so that's how i feel about my achievements in life it's it's an adrenaline rush right i got to do it man you know i've got to do something else and i'll tell you i get bored really easy so once i've once i've mastered something or i've accomplished something i'm real i get bored like immediately like all right i'm doing that you know i'm find something else to do right and there is the danger um some people can you know master something a job business or whatever it is they want to be good at and then uh and they can stick with it you know and continue to develop it you know and and that's where they find their their joy and their happiness and their prosperity um i'm not that guy man as soon as i conquer something i'm ready to conquer something else so um that's the that's the the the downfall to i guess my uh my personality type so like for example this company here so for everybody that's listening out there right now i'm calling you from bali indonesia i live in bali i also have a home in florida panama city beach um but i live here in bali with my i have a indonesian wife and family here as well and we have a security company and we provide explosive detector dogs narcotic detector dogs patrol attack dogs for like the different hotels and venues in the in the local area um i also do security consulting i do a lot of different things i do government contracting for the indonesian government um bidding and so forth and so on so i have this this company here the security company we built it literally from scratch from nothing and then once i got it built and you know we were doing really really well i just handed off to my wife great true company now you know and she ran and she runs and manages the whole dagon thing and uh that allows me to start pursuing other opportunities or other things or other interests so to speak so um so that's kind of my that's why you know who i am and and i guess probably why i'm driven like that it's because it's something that was ingrained in me maybe i was born with it but i don't know i just know that i've got to keep doing something if i don't um i get in trouble um if i'm not if i'm not staying engaged man i'm you know i'm going to get in trouble and so um you know so i look for that's not and i don't do things just to stay out of trouble i do things because i enjoy the challenges right so um it's a it's a double-edged sword you know so um that's what i do man and that's why why i'm here and uh you know living the dream as i tell people all the time i wake up every day right now it's pouring rain outside it's the rainy season but uh when i get up in the mornings rain i said hey but you're still waking up in bali man so a couple of things you just mentioned reminded me i interviewed uh tom satterly who you may know a lot of time in the unit and he said something similar where in terms of like hitting an achievement and then moving on to the next thing and he said when he made it to the unit one of the unit psychologists talked to him and was like hey you've done all these other things and you just made it to this place which is pretty high up in a lot of people's eyes are you just going to be looking for the next mountain or are you going to be okay being here at this place and it sounds like i don't know maybe that's a trait that you're looking for for people who come in there like what can i do to excel at the next level when unit a lot of people would say is the top um that's an interesting uh parallel i think yeah i think and so there's there's there's two personality types i think in the unit right and uh and if you think about it closely so you have you got to have a door kicker man to be a door kicker you know you got to be a type a personality you got to be switched on on the move aggressive you know go get her right and then you have your snipers they need to be real sedate laid back you know and calm right think about that for a minute right those are more like your b type personalities um and so and i'm not speaking on for the b types but i know for as an a type in fact not just me but a lot of the guys my peer group uh as assaulters we're all like that man we're all very aggressive um you know it's it's not enough to go okay i did this i'm you know now i'm gonna relax and just chill out and i know there's guys that are doing that you know um there's some guys are just happy being retired but uh for a lot of us you know nah man dude i can't even imagine slowing down you know and i you know i'm i'll be 58 here in a few months and i feel like i've just been reborn every day and uh my life is just now beginning and i'm just now getting the zest to to explore and become even bigger and better and i keep thinking damn what else you gonna do i've experienced literally everything you can imagine um and then some everything man it's like what's what's on the bucket list and i have to keep filling the bucket list um because i got to set these long-term goals for me something to shoot for um because if i don't then i know i'll get in trouble and then the other thing is i think i'll start getting old and and i'll die off sooner man and i i truly believe that man i look at a lot of guys that retire out of the army and i think in fact at one time we were given statistics when i was in service that uh anybody got men that weren't special forces special operations um for any length of time when they retired usually had a tendency to die real soon thereafter they retired you know within a few years and uh though actually the percentages were higher and so and the reason they felt like you know the studies kind of indicated were that guys like that they all suddenly go from 100 miles an hour to 5 miles an hour and they can't adapt psychologically physiologically they don't feel like they gotta run pt anymore the you know they and i know like three guys in one month sergeants majors that freaking collapse one guy shoveling snow you know one guy tried to go out for a jog and fell out you know so there's you know so i always think about that and i think about i look around and you know and i i study people a lot and uh i feel like if you you know the human body is meant to always be in motion right we're you know we're not meant to be sedentary and i watch people that are very sedentary they just seem to get sicker faster um they're just not as happy you know and they tend to die earlier man and so um i've decided that i'm just gonna go full bore you know right up till the end you know and uh you know and uh enjoy my life man so yep here i am in that case then take take me back to dale as a kid you know in the book it describes it which is great um for those who haven't read it if you just kind of share like what was it like growing up that kind of pushed you into this mindset if who knows yeah it was environmental just genetics or later on but give us a snapshot of you as a kid dale yeah so my father was an army for 20 years and he you know when he first went in he was actually he had an 11th grade education when he went in right he was real poor he went to the army got shipped to germany i met my mom who has a ninth grade education and fell in love with her they got married and then uh and then i showed up not too long thereafter i think my mom was 17 when i was she was pregnant with me but so i grew up most of my life in germany um my german side the family i was for a long time i was raised by them and with them you know so i do speak german i'm very you know i was very immersed in the culture um and then uh you know we moved back and forth to the u.s for different assignments so but the military i grew up in the military culture and i can tell you what happened was for me um when my father retired around the age of 16 16-17 he retired out of fort huachuca arizona he got a job up in san francisco in the bay area right and we moved up there and i can tell you man it was uh it was a it was a shock for me right a culture shock because suddenly i went from being around this military mindset this culture um these you know military kids with a military mindset this discipline this regimentation that they got from their fathers and their mothers in the military suddenly i went to a a culture where that didn't really exist at the same level right and uh and i had a very hard time adapting i really had a hard time adapting people might be thinking i'd ask [ __ ] no it's actually true i had a hard time adapting if you grew up in a military culture especially as a kid um and then all of a sudden you're you know you're dropped into a civilian culture it's it's a huge culture shock really was especially that's where i am i'm in the bay area and it's no i mean it is it's a bubble compared to the rest of the u.s exactly dude and so i was really not a happy camper um i started having some issues you know i didn't do well in school because i i went to four different high schools and i changed school schools in the middle of the year and i just could not assimilate fast enough didn't want to i didn't have any friends um and all i could think about is how do i escape man how do i get out of this [ __ ] right get away from these people man and uh and i knew the answer the answer was go to back to what i know best the military and uh my father wanted me to go to college he wanted me to be the first one on both sides of family go to college and i know that's what he wanted that was where his heart was but i knew in my mind it's like there's no way man i suck at school first of all and i said i can't i can't live around these people man they're just not the same and so i snuck down a recruiter's office and enlisted and then i told him i broke his heart man when he found out i'm like damn now what did i do you know wait dale dale can you tell that story like what was it like when you told your old man that oh man you know it's uh because i knew how important it was for him for me to go to college right and he said look son you're going to college i'm going to pay for it look my dad wasn't rich you know my dad started his own insurance business out of the garage in the in the house you know um yeah literally you know he was you know he was hustling but uh because what happened was the the job in san francisco didn't work out um i can't remember why it didn't work out but i knew he wasn't happy with that either and uh he won he had an entrepreneurial mindset he realized he wanted to do something on his own so we ended up packing up and moving to sacramento we got a house and then he basically started insurance business out of the garage and he was struggling at first like anybody starting a business but he was actually very successful later on um and he had his own franchise and so forth and so on but uh um but i remember when i told him you know i could just see in his eyes he was the disappointment right and uh and he knew that you know because he was a military he didn't think i would do well in the military right he's like man i know your son you know you don't want to get up you're lazy blah blah blah you know and uh you know you won't do well in the military and i remember thinking myself well yeah watch this i'm gonna show you and uh and so but i had no choice at this point i was committed you know i had enlisted and uh so i went in with the promise that you know i told my father i would get my college degree and you know do my military service and and make him proud right and that really became um you know he really became the reason for everything i've done in life even to this day um because i have so much respect for my father he's gone he passed away a long time ago right and uh but uh he was the guy i called every week and from the day i enlisted the army for you know until he died eight years ago i called him every weekend just to shoot the [ __ ] get his opinion you know he was my mentor um my confidant and then uh you know but i remember everything i've done was to make my dad proud right i wanted to make sure my dad was proud and i i know he was but it was just never enough and then when he passed away i remember sitting there thinking to myself damn now who am i going to call right besides my mom um but i have identified my father more and my mother right because we're men and uh and then i came to the realization well now you have to be the mentor for your kids right so i've got five kids and uh and my son he's also a green beret he's a ranger he's got two bachelor's degrees and uh my daughter always an entrepreneur she's a business woman um so they're all all my kids have been very successful but i've always been their mentor for them as well right i've coached them you know especially my son um my daughter and i my old star and i are business partners um so i've always been you know they've always been a part of my life but you know what what i have is purpose and uh you know we all and a lot of times in my coaching program the first thing i ask people what's your purpose and what do you want your legacy to be and most of them can't answer that question um my purpose is to literally be all that i can be and to be an example for my kids to raise the bar for them to be better than me right my mission in life is to develop you know the next generation that will one day rule the earth right and uh that's how i see it man i'm gonna build superheroes right super people and um and that's how my mindset and so i tell my kids all the time i said your mission in life is it be better to me and to teach your kids to be better than you that's the only way the comstock you know heritage is going to continue to grow and we're not going to be bottom feeders we're not going to you know we're not going to be parasites to society um you know we're going to be the trendsetters you know we're going to be the leaders of the world and so you know i always try to instill that mindset in my kids but um but yeah my father i think died proud you know and when it was all over in fact he died when he died he was in the hospital um when i was filming for with terry crews starjourne stripes and my book was just getting ready to come out yeah and uh he he knew but he didn't get to see it when he passed away he was actually you know yeah but he knew you know i got my doctoral degree you know and i want to get my bachelor's i got my master's and my doctorate you know and uh i did all those things i promised i would do for him you know and uh and so today when i when i do things i still think about my father it's like you know would my father approve and would he be proud you know so he's always there with me in spirit and uh he's kind of like the driving force behind me because he's he's i respect my father he and because of him um he's given me purpose in life to be the best person i can be as you notice in the book i mentioned mentors right um i actually have six mentors in life now i had five in the book but now i've added an additional one i'll just run them off real quick so my first one is obviously my father uh the next one was my german grandfather and my german uncle on my mother's side they they actually kind of believe it or not man they they kind of took me in as you know they showed me how to be a man i mean that's what it came down to they were they were the example of what i would consider you know guys to be manly men you know and they were very successful in business as well and they worked from nothing it's from scratch and built an empire um and then there's uh you know gary o'neil uh he wrote the book american warrior and uh he's a guy you might want to interview someday he's a an awesome dude man he's legendary in fact uh he's sue indian american um he went he joined the army during vietnam at the age of 15 apparently he used his cousin's birth certificate to get in and he and i think he got his first silver star at the age of 15 um in vietnam right so this guy is amazing man he's got a book called american warrior um anyways he when i first met him in 1982 at camp mccall for bragg in the sea course he was out there training with colonel nick rowe and he was doing he was running the combatives program and that's how i first learned of this guy and i remember looking at him and what he was teaching and stuff was some of the stuff he was doing i realized that is the guy he is going to be my military mentor that's the guy i want to model myself after as a soldier and what's interesting is when i wrote the book american badass i had no idea he was writing the book american warrior at the same time which i thought was really cool um and he was my military mentor and uh in fact i just spoke to him a couple nights ago and so then the other guy was jim smoky west jim i consider my martial arts mentor i've trained with him for man forever um my sons and my my daughter as well and uh um he's a good friend of mine you know and this guy is a fighting machine now he's in the 60s but he's still he'll still he'll still kick your ass man i mean he's just an amazing guy man and uh he's he's scary i mean he's scary as a fighter um and he's very dangerous as a fighter but he's a good dude and so he became my martial arts mentor he trained me and my kids um my son started training with him when he was four by the time he was seven he has first degree black belt um i've earned my sixth degree black belt through the gym um my daughter earned her second degree brown belt through the gym and then went on to be a cheerleader which really irritated the [ __ ] out of me but i remember when she said she wanted to be a cheerleader i go really i said why don't you be a football player you know stand on the sideline rooting everybody along go out there and beat him anyways that didn't work out she became she actually became the captain of the varsity cheerleading team you know in high school and her boyfriend was the captain of the varsity football team they both got college scholarships he went on to play for the new york patriots or new england patriots she yeah she went on to charlotte and then they came back together years later and they got married we're still married today we got a couple grandkids so cool but um so jim was my my martial arts mentor and the sixth guy i kind of just he just kind of joined the hall of fame so to speak for me right a couple years ago now this guy's an international coach his name is david fabricious um he does a lot of coaching worldwide internationally um he's really he is probably one of the most interesting men in the world man he's he's from south africa he came to the united states on a special what i figured was called special talents and education knowledge experience visa right and uh what's interesting is when he got the visa came to us he was homeless and lived on the street for years right and uh it finally broke the code on success and then became one of the top 1 income earners and you know and uh you know he's i mean he travels the globe and he you know hangs out with dalai lama and the zulu warriors and you know just he's just this guy right he's got this cool south african you know accident you know he's got a swagger about him with his three-piece pinstripe suit he looks like a tv evangelist but he's very smart on business and marketing man yeah he's and he was in special forces he was in a south african special forces right yes wow yeah and so anyways he's you know he's pretty well-rounded but uh you know but he's you know he won't [ __ ] you until he's more more than what he really is very uh you know very humble guy but i learned a lot from him on business and marketing and uh we've been involved with some programs together um in fact last year i was in las vegas with him um at the uh ignite uh conferences for 7 000 attendees and uh he basically shared his time with me he was giving a speech but he wanted to share his time so he come his time in half give me half time to go up there and stand in front of these people and speak you know and do some coaching mentoring so he's a very good dude um very benevolent and uh and i told him one day i said man you know i got a lot of respect for you and uh you know you there's no gray areas with this guy you know and i always look man for the you know for the hidden agendas and the [ __ ] and the lies and i didn't find it man i'm like okay you you're you're headed man and i you're number six you know so those are my mentors man you know do i have a female man go ahead oh sir dale i want to ask about that well there are a couple things like from what you just said first of all at the end of your book you describe your your daughter and your son who i think you're referring to here and they're younger at the time and it's really cool to hear what you've just described like what they've become international coaches ranger green beret two bachelor's degree very cool that's just like on a personal side second for as you talk about your mentors especially the three non-family members right so it's it's gary it's jim it's david for those let's say you're in the military still you're a soldier or you're a veteran and you want to choose a mentor and i don't know if you as you coach people if you help them with this but what did like what does that relationship look like for you do you reach out to them periodically do you did you talk to like gary about how how often you would communicate like what did you do to establish the mentorship in those relationships yeah so you know um the the old saying lead by example right um that's that applies here those guys set an example for me to see and follow right and so they don't have to tell me anything i just have to watch them and just watch them playing what they do right i've known them personally i've listened to them i've been interacting with them quite a bit all of them um but it's it's not talk is cheap man i want to see what you really do right uh and i want to see what you do when nobody's you know nobody else is looking and listening and that tells me a lot about a person's character and so um you know and every guy you know every one of nobody's perfect man you know they all have you know like everybody else has a flaw or two or whatever right but they're really good in certain areas and uh you know like i you know jim west for example this guy is just an amazing martial artists man and i thought if i want my kids to learn how to fight you know and i want to learn how to fight better you know what better guy to learn from right i'm not sending my kids to learn morals and ethics from him i'm teaching them how to fight man and that's that's a huge you know a huge gift if i can give that to them you know in this particular in this world um so everybody has something to contribute right um to some level but i look at the guy as a whole and i look at things like integrity you know um you know all of them have a lot of integrity i consider them you know very honest very forthright we're like-minded in the way we think um and so that's really the reason i select them yeah there's a lot of other guys out there probably hold those qualities but the other thing about all these gentlemen is they're all senior to me right quite senior to me so i looked up to them as my role models that i want to aspire to grow up to be like you know and uh and that's important you know there's there's a lot there are younger guys i look at it go man that's pretty that guy's pretty dynamic he's pretty amazing you know and he'll go places you know but uh um there's a lot to be said for maturity you know and uh and now that i'm getting older you know i'm starting to realize as well that uh you know a lot of what i thought i knew when i was younger is [ __ ] right it's like i didn't know it i didn't know anything right you know and i was bullshitting myself you know and now that i'm older i realize i'm starting to see what's really you know fact and fiction out there in fact i tell people all the time my coaching students you know by the time we're 35 um we have 95 percent of our programming already built into us we've learned it from our parents society media you know friends everybody has basically shaped the way we think so up to 95 of what we know is already embedded into us and those that 95 of that information um is actually believe it or not half of that a minimum of fifty percent of that is actually wrong it's false information which is really and this is based on science this is not me even pulling something out of my ass this is fact right half of what we know by the time we're 35 is all [ __ ] or it's the truth has changed right or there's been a paradigm shift but usually it's just flat out freaking wrong and so if you if you if you go into today and tomorrow thinking like you did for the last you know 35 years you're gonna keep doing today and tomorrow what you did for 35 years and if you've been operating at a mediocre level or just marginal level you're just not excelling you're just going to continue to do that right so you've got to basically look back and go challenge all those paradigms just discard all that information have a fresh outlook moving forward if you want to grow um in fact um it's an interesting phenomena and again when i you know i talk about coaching here real quick when i coach people my coaching is based on science it's you know it's not about philosophy you know it's it's literally everything i teach is grounded in science metaphysics um and a way of thinking so um and personal and my personal experience to support support that right or bolster that um and or vice versa so um you know so mentorship is very important and and guys listening out there for me and listen to me you know if you don't have any kids and you plan on having kids one day man i'm tell you right now being a father figure is the most important thing you can do for your kid um i was heavy in the sports man i football baseball basketball and uh in a lot of in a large part that shaped my being as an adult right it became because i was immersed in athletics or at you know sports as a kid um you know it was a great outlet you know it was great to play with other kids social development leadership all those things that later on became very important in life especially in the military and it allowed me to i believe my my my history and sports allowed me to complete selection um because i was more physically fit i was i had i was more willing to endure hardship um and pain and go the extra mile because i learned to do that you know through sports um and today even today i mean i'm 58 and if i don't go to the gym i beat the [ __ ] out of myself all day long i'm like you know i'm gonna call myself names and stuff because it's very important right um because that's still although it's not a sport per se you know physical fitness is very important and for me actually my i did my first uh competitive bodybuilding show when i was 47. um and what was really cool about that again you guys listening out there if you have sons and daughters um i did my first bodybuilding show 47 i turned 48 and my son was 22 and we both joined went in the show together and the heavyweight division side by side on the stage in the north florida state uh championships side by side posing off with heavyweights man and uh and i actually beat my son i beat him uh and i placed 50 plays six overall and probably the only reason i beat him is because he didn't dry out enough he was one day behind the next day he would have beat me man you know he was there's a process for bodybuilding right and we call it drying it out drying out and uh he's holding just a little bit too much water weight so he wasn't quite as shredded or as lean that he would have liked it been you know so but still i took the trophy he didn't right i'm sure he never looked shut down and uh no actually there's actually more so my ex-wife right um the crazy one she was in this bodybuilding with me right so we we made a family affair the three of us and she entered the fig figure fitness um competition with the women right and uh what was funny was prior to the the show about 30 days out you go on to a uh basically a diet and you try to lean completely out and what that means is low carbohydrates you want to maintain your muscle mass but you want to lose all the water you want to lose every ounce of fat that's left and i would go from around 22 body fat to 3 body fat in 30 days right um and just b should be yolk right but it's a process you know you have to eat a certain diet certain foods you know eliminate other foods and uh so they're they're doing really good my son was staying with us and and i was cheating i was eating chocolate chip cookies and she was getting really mad at me like you're not taking this seriously you know and i'm like man i couldn't help it they're so good you know because in my mind i wasn't thinking about you know winning i didn't care about the winning part i just cared about going out there and being able to do something with the family and stand next to my son on the stage right and uh that was what was important not the winning part yeah and uh and so we went out there and what was and i actually beat him right i beat both of them they both only took six place and uh and so she was pretty pissed off because you know i've been eating cookies for the show and so i got this big ass trophy right and i as i'm walking out you know she's out in front of us kind of like poutine and i looked at my son go hey man go listen i want you to take this trophy and i want you to take it home with you because there's no way i can take this home i'll be sleeping on the couch all right i'll never hear the end of it so i said here's the deal you take this home i said one day we're gonna do another show together and i want you to beat me and give me my trophy back if you can't beat me you can't you keep the trophy of shame right until you do right so so that was the agreement right and then off we went so we haven't done a show yet just because there hasn't been time um you know as i said i mentioned earlier he's a special forces he's a ranger you know he's always deployed and so he just doesn't have that time but he's in great shape still in great shape um but i hope that one day we get to uh we get to do that show again one day yeah and it'll happen you know i mean yeah you're never too old and uh what i'm hoping is that i get to go out there again in my 60s and spank them you know [Laughter] uh you know but uh you know but i want him to win too you know i don't want to demoralize my son but it's setting the bar for him right i want to set the bar for him as well it's like man you know i got to catch up with my old man and uh so you know um let me let me ask you this because the way it's so interesting the way you described kind of sports being so important but then your dad's saying you know what you're kind of lazy you saying you didn't do so good in school clearly something changes later on in your life because that's not that's certainly not who's sitting in front of us right now so could you take us to to maybe if we could jump to your first experience in combat and i i believe if i recall so you were a paratrooper you did some time with with the lures unit was that your first combat or was it with the unit no it was with uh it was with the 82nd right so what happened was after i went into service um i was supposed to go to ranger school right and i got the you know right before i went in and said oh sorry there's no more slots but you just go to 82nd and until you start made you want to go to range of school no problem he'll send you right it was all [ __ ] um so that never happened so i ended up in 82nd i ended up in a line company second 325th airborne infantry with my two best friends from high school right which are still my best friends today um brothers man um one of them is joe he's a mexican the other guy's kenny he's a black guy the three of us are the three amigos to this day man and uh we really we really are brothers man we all joined together and then uh we ended up in the second three twenty fifth together and then about a year later um our platoon got designated the eighty second lever platoon uh by general lindsay right he wanted to reinstitute that lerp capability and so because of the maya platoon's performance um in the annual uh they're they're like evaluations that they have to we have to do in 82nd right so out of 15 000 paratroopers my platoon became the lord petunia attached to the 313th military intelligence battalion and uh and so the first deployment was literally grenada um in 1983. so we went down there and you know our job was basically to you know first of all there's not a lot of long range on the island of grenada right you can sprint the other side in 30 seconds but what we ended up doing was going to uh some of the outlying uh islands the smaller islands and setting up observation posts right surveillance positions because what was happening was the the uh the the pra it's like the grenade grenadian uh militia and the the cubans um they had caches in these other islands and they would go out at night in little boats and dig up these caches right and uh what we would do is wait for them on the islands and surprise them um so that was my first real experience but you know i didn't really see any combat per se i mean i'm like hiding in the jungle looking for people that was it right and uh but i remember before all that happened i really do remember when i was in the infantry in the 325th um always wondering what it was going to be like you know going into combat because i knew it was inevitable right um we we at one point at that time we were going to combat i think it was like every 22 years or something like that um but now it's like every four every every administration we're going to combat except the last one right uh and so i knew it was a matter of time and i always wondered what would i do what would i do what's it gonna be like you know and you wonder when to run until it actually happens um so grenada wasn't a big you know big thrill for me but uh um the one that that really kind of you know sticks out my mind even to this day there's actually two of them that stick out my mind the first one was the radon model prison the rescue kurt muse in panama um obviously you know that's a you know that's a big deal um the the level of effort that went into that the coordination the you know the salt itself on mandela prisoners prison the camadancia um it was just surreal man i mean it was really like wow you know this is a hornet's nest and um so that one that one um was interesting because in the unit you know we had a you know we trained the way we fight it's all live ammunition you know live fire everything you know shooting around each other you know um real explosives no nothing simulated man and never was right and so i remember when we went into modelo prison and uh can i stop you for just a sec because i understand it from the book could you just set the stage just a little bit with how old were you how long had you been in the unit what was your role there and then kind of okay what were you going in to do and then i would love to just hear what this was like for you going into that yeah so um so let's just back the clock up a little bit so um i was when i hit the age of 22 i was still in 82nd right my first four-year enlistment and i was at this uh you know i was at this crossroad it's like do i stay in or do i get out and i wasn't really happy with being in because let's face it man digging foxholes and cleaning your m16 under a tree for three days straight just weren't very challenging anymore right and i felt like i was better than that and so i thought about getting out you know i missed you know sacramento and you know that life and i was married and i had a little girl she that was 36 years ago she had a little girl no more and uh so i remember i remember i called my mom said mom i'm thinking about getting out um would you mind if me and my family just stayed with me for a couple months i get on my feet you know blah blah blah and i remember her answer was no not no but hell no right like damn well she just made a decision for me right so um and then i got the uh and at the same time i got the letter from the unit from delta saying that i was eligible okay i met the prerequisites to apply to put an application to apply to go to selection right everybody goes i got the letter from delta they wanted me but i turned them down that's not how it works it's [ __ ] right um don't flatter yourself uh the letter i got said listen man you met all the prerequisites right they can use all the military records and basically you know i met the minimum threshold and uh which was including the age um the age was the minimum you could be was 22 to go in the unit the average age is 33. yeah the average age is 33. in fact i was the first guy that i was i was 23 years old i was the youngest guy in the unit at the time to make it okay back then first guy 23 i was a kid man uh and so to kind of put that in perspective what happened was when i went through the selection process um they only do it twice a year so i went through all the gates right i did the initial application the shrink evaluation the pt test the background check and and uh you know came back you know as i go on that now i got to go to assessment selection and uh so i go to that and they do those twice a year and uh in my class there was 110 candidates of the 110 six of us completed the course and three of us got selected and i was a 23 year old the other two guys were in their mid-30s they were both senior e-7s and uh special forces etc etc so you know here i am right the youngest dude ever to make it and so it was not easy um but i was you know psychologically and physically you know physically i was prepared for it all um i did well on the board i answered the questions obviously pretty good i guess um so that's how i got to the got to the unit right and it was always a challenge for me because i didn't quite have the military experience a lot of the other guys did nor did i have the maturity at the age of 23. um even though i was mature i thought very mature for my age i still didn't have 33 years under my belt you know i had 23 right and so um but um it all worked out and you know i went through otc i made it through to the squadron it was while i was in the squadron that i actually got to go to uh the q course get my green beret uh and uh and i came back um so that was you know that was my you know my time in the unit and then my first experience in combat was uh panama modelo prison and as i left off a minute ago you know the reason it was so surreal is because we always trained like everything was for real right live fire live explosives no simulations and the night of the fire fight or the night of the the raid um there were a lot of people there man there were a lot of shooters everywhere man from the high-rise buildings down to us on the streets um because they had the panamanians um were pre-warned that we're gonna assault model prison right hit time was zero zero two zero hours uh december 20th and uh they already knew seven hours prior that uh we are gonna come we're coming right and the reason they knew that was a couple reasons right so if any guys out there in the military or think about the military you know we we talk about opsec a lot operational security i know of at least two incidents where um guys you know were running their mouth and they shouldn't have they compromised the mission one of them was an mp army mp he had friends on the canal on the panama canal and he knew of the impending operation apparently he told all his friends if donna said hey don't be around this area tonight bad things are going to happen right so right away the alert level went up and then another guy was a marine um he called home to his mommy and daddy you know crying i might never see you again because you know there's going to be something happening tonight and that was intercepted i won't name the country that intercepted that but again i went back to to noriega so um so we were compromised and we knew we were compromised because our snipers on target had been there for a while and they watched all of a sudden you know the you know the panamanian defense forces shoring up the corners of all the road intersections 50 caliber machine guns they were they were ramping up it's like they know something's coming because they're getting ready for something right and uh so we made the decision to go anyways i think we actually pushed the hit time 20 minutes to the right just a little bit but we went in zero zero two zero hours it ended up happening um and when we flew in there it was like going into a hornet's nest um it was amazing right but what was really cool what was very surreal was even though bullets were flying and people are dying it felt like a training mission it just felt like a training mission it did you know i was not even rattled a little bit it's like you know cool i shot that guy he fell down like a role player right but he's actually dead you know i don't know but it doesn't register anymore because you're so used to doing any training that in real life it just seemed like training right so it didn't really have that effect on you um it really didn't impact you until something started happening to you like okay wait a minute that that blank bullet actually hurt because it hit me right and so wow um and then but even then right so we went through this whole operation um and then uh i remember my helicopter was supposed to be the um the last helicopter to return to howard air force base i think we had a total of 15 ships um we had four uh four ah sixes four mh6s people pogs that were landing on the roof we had several blackhawks for command control c2 and then we had you know an assortment of cobras and apaches going in as well right so there's like total of 15 16 aircraft and uh but based on the plan we were all going to make it back to howard air force base and my helicopter would be the last one in the formation of the land well when we pulled off the roof um and got back to howard air force base we were the only helicopter to come back like what the hell is going on here right and uh the j mouth which is the melody the joint military uh medical uh unit right all the doctor surgeons everybody the nurses they're all lined up on the tarmac in front of the tents they were waiting for triage right they didn't stand their arms crossed waiting you know and and uh and we're the only helicopter landing and so my team leader got off and he went over he was talking to somebody for a second he comes running back he goes uh you know lock and load put a fresh magazine and we're going back in you know the precious cargo got shot down and uh-huh what what and then that's when i actually got scared right like oh [ __ ] because i know what we just flew out of and now we're gonna fly back into it right um i remember coming off the roof of the building and the 197th right it was um their infantry unit in panama so this was during christmas so all those guys had gone back to the us on on christmas right so the guys that were manning the m113s apcs and 50 calibers they were the you know they were the cooks and the clerks and the mechanics and stuff they were they were the stay-behind element right and so they were came in as blocking positions around the commandancia and uh and pretty much they were shooting anything that moved right and so so there was [ __ ] flying everywhere and i remember coming off the roof and i don't know if you know what a 50 caliber tracer looks like when it's coming at you but imagine a flaming basketball coming at you you know like you can see it getting bigger and bigger and bigger you know it goes under your feet um and so you know that was a little disconcerting and now i'm realizing man we got to go back into that mess right because the bird with the precious cargo did get shot down as it was coming off the roof it took a lot of ground fire you know hit some power lines and it crashed into an alley um in fact the only guy that came out of that unscathed was kurt muse the guy that we went into rescue yeah he was in the middle you know we had them all bundled up with kevlar and stuff so you know he's pretty well padded and protected it was all the other guys sitting on the pods on the outside that you know and the pilots got pretty banged up um and injured in that crash um so that was my first real experience in in combat that we were just like okay we're getting it right now man it's like close range you know and and uh they're everywhere man it was like you know fighting aliens and uh and so yeah it was it was an amazing experience but uh you know can i ask bill you in the first of all the flaming basketballs is hilarious because i was on a flight in afghanistan and our wingman was like was that a flaming basketball that just came up right i don't know what it is if we're americans and that's how we just see it but it just looks so big yeah exactly man uh when you're on that that mission what what did that feel like for you having been like if this was the first real combat you felt like you were saying like oh [ __ ] i was actually scared going back in um was it like i'm finally here this is what i was supposed to be doing god i'm in the unit i'm flying into this combat environment um or was it just like hey it was another it was another training mission just in a different place yeah so all right so let me just back up a little bit a couple steps backwards um so what happened was prior to the modelo prison before before december 15th in fact uh i graduated the q course around i think it was december 10th or something like that okay special force qualification course so i came back to the unit and the guys were already training for this mission they knew it was coming they just didn't know when it was coming right but they were getting ready for it right they built all the mock-ups doing all the training and so we were doing a lot of cqb and so i integrated right back into my team and we were out training one day and uh i remember i was stacking up with my team to go into the door and when i pulled the door open the door came apart it was kind of weird right came apart and the guy behind me threw a flashbang in the room not realizing that half the door was still in there right and uh so lesson learned before you throw a flashbang in the room you always look first right and you don't throw it you roll it and so you know and uh the rest of the army you know everybody out there i knew all that [ __ ] well the only reason you knew that [ __ ] is because it happened to us and we taught everybody else right all your lessons learned usually come from that organization so anyways that flashbang roll between the door the pieces of the door and landed right next to my heel and i didn't know it and it went off and this was the old mod what do you call a mod 15 or more something i can't remember now um it was the original ones right um these were like these were like blocks of tnt and when it went off it literally kicked my leg out from under me and threw me on my ass it blew a big giant hole in the back of my calf um it got me really good man it messed me up really bad man and uh so i fall out i end up in a hospital right and i'm you know got my leg repaired and everything and and now i'm on crutches right um first day in training coming back from two chorus and i'm already down right i'm on convalescence and so you know the unit you know basically they said okay well you know until you heal you just pull staff duty every day like [ __ ] so i'm sitting in the office every day in my suit and crutches you know limping around from a fresh flashbang injury and uh like on the third day i get the phone call from jsoc and basically they told me that operation blue spoon was in effect which essentially meant acid gambit was in effect right it's alert the unit like holy [ __ ] so i paged everybody in you know i forget what time it was like eight o'clock at night nine o'clock at night everybody came in and my troop commander came in gary harold and uh he stopped at the the office i you know i gave the waters told him what was going on and uh he said look he goes man he goes first of all the other thing that happened to me was i was going through a bad divorce my first divorce is horrible man um you know it was just a train wreck and so i'm dealing with this crazy ass divorce uh and and now i'm injured and he looked at me goes look man he goes i know you got a lot of things going on in your life right now you're obviously got one wheel left and you got you know problems at home he goes but i wouldn't feel right not inviting you to come along because this is a super bowl for us man this is what we've been training for you know and i know that's what you've been training for if you look forward to it and he goes i would hate to leave you behind and you regret it someday you know it's like because i'm not telling you have to go he says i'm giving you an opportunity if you want to go you know i'll make room on the bus for you and uh i thought about it for about two seconds man and i said yeah the hell with the ex-wife right and you know i'll fix this leg right now right rip the suit off and i'm in coach and that's how i end up going right and uh i really decided at that point to just not even look back i might die i said don't look back this is really it man i don't want to miss this chance right so i went and uh and so the night of the the raid um i had the medic pull all the staples on the back of my leg and then wrap it really really tight um you know kind of stabilize it and uh it worked it was fine and then uh you know we obviously when did the mission it was a success um i was the breacher i blew the doors off the annex to get us in um and then i went down uh inside with the assault team as well to get muse out um so it was very um the whole thing was very surreal but when it was all over i was so proud of myself i was like man you know i'm glad i didn't miss this opportunity you know and the unit took care of me so when it was all you know the dust shuttle uh probably within about 10 days two weeks max like hey comstock why don't we send you back home and take care of this other personal [ __ ] you got going you know instead of holding you down here right and i'm like yeah sir i appreciate that and i went back and i literally went back and told the wife to beat it uh moved out got me another place to live and started a whole new life and just put that whole chapter behind me yeah it took that that that incident that that night on staff duty to change my whole life for the better right so that's pretty cool yeah so it was a christening by fire and uh but uh it's an experience that you know it's part of history and i'll you know oh yeah man a big part of that and uh i'm pretty proud of that can i that i mean it's so interesting how it's how it's described in the book as well so i like i definitely recommend it for people who and i don't know as americans like we don't hear as much about that fight and it's i mean that was delta going in to pull an ambo out in yeah in yeah anyway all right so what i wanted to ask though was you talk about um autogenic conditioning and it seems like you developed that at a young age so i just wanted to talk about that a little bit and see like were you using that on missions as as you went through your time in the unit um or did you develop it later on yeah so um when i first discovered i was 15 and i was playing baseball and it's in the store you know i think it's in the book the story but basically what happened was i was playing baseball and uh i was the worst baseball player on the planet you know and so i ended up on this team called pattonville royals this was in germany and uh in the american uh communities there and that you know uh intramural sports was the past time for everybody right americana man you know everybody looked forward to watching kids play sports well it was baseball season and we had two baseball teams just in my community alone the the pattonville all-stars and the pattonville royals aka the bad news bears and uh so the all-stars were all the all-stars right the coach knew which guys to pick and then the new coach got the royals uh the bad news bears he didn't he picked all the guys that you weren't supposed to pick including me right and so i was you know terrible baseball player i played left field if i didn't play left out you know the game at all but uh i was i couldn't do too much damage in the left field right so um and i'll i'm gonna try to give you the reader's digest version of the story but basically what happened was my coach one day decided he wanted me to play third base and and i never played the infield and i was scared to death man i just didn't have any confidence so i played third base as requested and i really screwed that up so badly man i mean i was a coward right some of the [ __ ] i did and i had the parents standing on the sideline just chewing my ass man like you know i'm like this little kid like come on man you know and uh and it was so bad that when the game was over i went to the dugout and i stayed until everybody left the ball field before i let him out you know i was so embarrassed right so humiliated as a kid um but during that game our catcher got kicked in the balls right and so he was out for the season he's the only catcher we had and uh so you know the next day um we had practice and the day after we're gonna play all-stars again so it was evening time it was getting dark fast and i remember my coach goes comstock i want you to play catcher i'm like what the [ __ ] man you know catcher you know did you see me on third base i mean you know do you see me in left field if you even see me out there at all you know and uh i suck right and i'm like why would you want me to play catcher just didn't make any sense to me right none of this makes sense and uh but being the guy i am i said yes sir three bags full put me in coach you know knowing i must be a fool right and and but i'm not gonna i'm not a quitter i was never a quitter man and so i had like 30 minutes to practice catching for the first time my whole life right and everybody's giving me input you know do this don't do that look out for that this is going to happen like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa you know freaking balls hit me in the face in the chest and like what i gotta play catcher tomorrow and so um i had maybe 30 minutes of practice you know if that's what you want to call it it was like more like indoctrination slash you know an exercise of futility you know and so i remember walking home thinking oh my god would i get myself into what if i just don't show up tomorrow don't have to find another catcher right and then i i just time i was six you know sorry and then i thought nah i can't do that it's my team and i said i would do it you know i probably just wasn't gonna let me not do it right and even though i knew it was going to be a big fail i was going to go stand on the x again and get ambushed i didn't care right and so but when i got home i started thinking about it i laid down on my bed really early that night and i put on my headsets to my music um i had the boom box back then you know and i was playing my favorite song by the bar cage called disco dazz dab dab just go dad i love that song right and uh and i've listened to that song all night long and as i was listening to it i imagined myself playing catcher catching the ball you know being a one-man baseball team making double plays triple plays not letting the ball go behind me stopping with my chest my face if i had to you know i just saw my i i thought about every contingency and came up with a solution in my mind i saw myself carrying out the the response in the right manner right and uh i just keep seeing myself successfully executing my role as a catcher over and over and over i could feel that ball hit my gloves i could feel the thread on the baseball i could feel the wind the sun i could feel it i could hear the people bullshitting in the back and the bleachers right and uh it's over and over and over and finally i fell asleep i got up in the morning it's about seven o'clock in the morning i went to the baseball field um i remember the morning man it was a it was a cool spring morning you know there was still you know uh moisture on the on the on the on the clover leaves and my shoes were wet i still remember all that like it happened just now right and i get to i get to the baseball field and uh there's this real extreme sense of calm about me man i'm not excited i'm not scared i'm just like cool right and my coach says hey comstock you know kid up and uh start warming up with the picture like roger that search and put my [ __ ] on right and about that time the parents already were showing up and they saw what's going on and they come out they're like what the [ __ ] coach what is he doing playing catcher you know do you remember that's the same guy from third base that we lost yesterday you know and just on and on and it didn't phase me at all it didn't faze me at all right in fact what was really cool is my coach interceded he's like hey i'm the coach here i decide who plays when you play how long they play where they play he goes to my team he goes you are parents shut up go sit in the bleachers and basically support your kids or you can come out here you can run this damn team they're like oh and they all left right and i looked at my coach i'm like damn that's that was awesome man that was actually my first example of leadership man i was like okay that's freaking badass right and just gave me more confidence so the game goes um everything i imagined happened exactly the way i imagined it right i made zero errors in fact when the game was over they awarded me the game ball for the most valuable player and i played catcher from there they're on forever and i thought about it and i look back and go what the hell did happen you know i said i went from zero to a hero overnight right i went for playing the easiest position which if you want to call that playing because i was just kind of standing out in the field you know swatting butterflies and [ __ ] to the hardest position which is to catch it right and uh and i realized that there's there's something to this gotta be right um but i didn't know what it was later on it happened to me again so when i was in otc right going through the otc program there's a heavy emphasis on marksmanship training particularly with the 45 for the first couple months man and the theory is if you can shoot for example a handgun with iron sights very well you can play all marksmanship fundamentals right then you can do with any weapon system right and it's not just enough to apply the marksmanship fundamentals actually be able to hit what you're shooting at right being a precision shooter it was imperative because of our mission right we had to take down tubular targets like aircraft you're shooting me a little 10 target heads bobbing around you know airplane seats you got to be good so heavy emphasis on that the first two weeks we did a lot of dry fire in fact dry fire from the morning we showed up until evening around six o'clock seven o'clock when we went home right all we did is sit there with little pasties on the wall in a large bay just on command you know from from the draw to you know to position number four malfunction drills reload drills combat reloads tactical reloads just on and on and on yeah it was over and over and over the only way i can compare it is if you're in the martial arts and you think about katas and forms okay that's what we were doing because we were doing kadas and forums with you know firearms is you know marksmanship training is really martial arts in the deadliest form and that's what we're doing building those mechanics right developing that um that nervous system so that it does the same thing over and over even under stress okay it's called i call spinal tuning it's actually part of my coaching program so we're doing this day in and day out and we had you know the instructors trooping the lines you know and critiquing us and helping us and chewing our ass and uh there was one guy named max you know um and i i can only describe him as yosemite sam right a little short i'm so glad you're telling this story dale cause i i wanted to ask you about this like this guy i'm so happy this seems like such a good example of how to motivate someone and what it did for your life please absolutely absolutely his words is his words are still in my head and i still repeat them today so what happened was craig was a little short dude with this you know max little short dude with this big red bushy mustache you know a little red hair just a little dude man but he was a freaking machine man he could run you know for his age he was a stud right vietnam vet combat arms i mean he did it all in vietnam too right he's a killer and uh but he's just a rough and gruff kind of guy man um you know he wasn't married which doesn't surprise me because that attitude who could live with a guy like that because he was just all about the military man i mean he was a he was a true soldier and uh i know he'd been married before but uh at that time he wasn't but anyways i don't mean anything bad by that but i remember he walked up and down there and he was just always you know just yelling at us in our ass you know and but he admitted in a good way right he wanted to help us to to live and every day after training um we would go into a classroom and then we would do an after action review right and call a hot wash and during the day he had a camera video camera he would be recording us as well right he called the one i judge the one i judged online and so he would give us a critique at the end you know and if somebody challenged them i didn't do that i did no here's a one-eyed camera the judge look you know you're wrong okay you know so we always had a critique every afternoon well probably about maybe 10 days into it i can't remember what there's a little ways into it um something happened never happened before to anybody but it happened to me and we're getting ready to do the ar and max goes comstock stand up all right what okay so i stand up because he's never asked anybody to do that before and he's never singled me out before anybody else but now today is my i'm i'm it so i stand up and he he just commences the two of my ass he goes comstock you're the most f'ed up freaking guy in the classroom right now he goes and basically he told me he goes you're gonna get your [ __ ] together you'll be doing the duffel bag drag out the front gate right and i mean he just dressed me down and everybody like you are a piece of [ __ ] and i'm like whoa man and everybody else is looking up at me you know and and i'm like looking down down to them like yeah so what you know i mean i was like defensive and humiliated at the same time you know i'm looking down the ground going [ __ ] is this really happening to me right now yeah i was like just shocked and i think everybody else was shocked too they didn't see that coming either and uh and i thought damn you know i'm like this close to getting kicked out of [ __ ] delta force right and so i went home that night i was married um and i remember my wife was in the kitchen cook dinner i walk in and she you know offered me dinner i go no i'm going to bed i got training to do and she looked at me like what does that mean i said don't ask just don't bother me i just i got to go to sleep and she knew right she knew something was going on so she left me alone i went to bed and what did i do i put my music on like i did before because i remember what happened to me at the baseball game right and i thought if i can do it once maybe i can do it twice so i went back to bed that night and i sat there in bed laying there listening to music and i visualized everything i had learned okay the four-stroke draw i could feel that gun in my hand i could feel the weight of the guns the stippling i could see the sights i had actually two of them um 245 they were set up just a little bit different the sights were a little bit different um you know the the hand grips were a little bit different but uh to this day i can feel both those guns like they're in my hands right now um they became a part of my body right i carried the same 45s for almost 10 years and uh and i i just i felt the guns i felt the way the guns i felt myself handling the guns i felt myself going through the mechanics of the draw i saw myself doing combat reloads tactical reloads admin reloads you know you know malfunction drills stove pipes you know tap rack you know clear you know re-engage um all this stuff over and over and over and over and over i saw myself picking up the front side front side rear side alignment front sight victor you know press you know just all the shits and go go go go go and uh and i fell asleep and i woke up in the morning and then i went i went to work i went and we started training again all day nothing happens right i'm doing my thing nothing's happening nobody's yelling at me nobody's encouraging me right it's kind of like going through delta for selection nobody yells at you nobody encourages you're on your own going through delta selection it's an individual effort unlike buds and seals and all the other schools when you go to become a double force operator you go you're assessed by yourself and you make it through on your own merits the stress that you're under is the stress you put yourself under and it's a lot man um well that was here here we are again otc nobody's yelling at me nobody's encouraging me and the stress is building man like it's percolating i'm like oh my god you know you don't know and when you don't know your mind starts going crazy you know and uh you start the aung starts setting into fear right and so day two goes by nothing's happening nobody's saying nothing right like [ __ ] right even in the hallways no comment no critique day three goes by nothing crickets so now at this point i'm like damn you know if he's at least yelling at me then at least he still thinks i have potential but he's not even yelling at me right so at least yelling at me come on man nothing's happening and so at the end of day three we go into the classroom and uh we sit down and it happens again comstock stand up all right [ __ ] you know now i'm thinking okay this is it you know this is i can hear my swan song playing in the background you know freaking the violinist like this is it i stand up my shoulders are duped my head's hanging down i'm looking at the floor kind of looking at the corner of my eyes everybody else is looking at me you know now i'm like look at that i'm like yeah what the [ __ ] you looking at yeah so what you know yeah i've been kicked out so well you know i mean i'm getting like defensive now you know and i'm mad because this guy's calling me out in front of everybody he's never done that to anybody just me and so i'm feeling kind of defensive i'm feeling kind of angry i'm embarrassed you know i'm humiliated um i'm unsure you know all that shit's going through my head right now you know it's like it's just a bad feeling right and uh so i'm standing there you know and basically waiting for him to tell me to hightail it out of my duffel bag and find a job somewhere because this ain't it you know and uh and then he tells everybody in the classroom he goes i want everybody take a look at this man everybody take a look at this guy and i'm thinking yes right look at the loser that's right you know that's what i'm thinking you know just like getting really [ __ ] pissed man and uh he goes i want you guys to see this guy this guy is the most fundamentally sound student in the classroom and i predict he'll be top gun and my head went up i'm like wow what the hell is he talking about what and he goes this guy will be the most funny he's the most fundamentally sound student in the classroom i predict he'll be top gun and i'm looking like he did he really say that he goes congratulations cops like he goes job well done he goes i don't know what you did but he goes you just flipped the whole script man you did 180 on me and he goes it's amazing he goes i can't even critique you naked he goes you freaking smoking it everything and uh i'm looking at everybody else looking at me that's right that's right that's right i'm a man and uh i was like wow that really happened so and he was right so what happened was so from there it was just uphill right uh for me i was just climbing and then uh in the end we had to do a shootout right for top gun right man oh man steel plates you know on the range you know mirror effect and uh i kicked everybody's ass right something i was smoking with that 45 except one guy paul howell i actually think paul how i actually beat paul howe and what happened was there was a rule you couldn't go to your next target the last target until all the other targets fell over there were steel plates plate paste plates and pepper poppers and then there was a dueling tree the dueling tree was one tree in the middle and we would both converge on it eventually and then each side had two flags and you had to shoot your two flags and swing around the other guy's side and then you would win right so you could be there for a while knocking flags back and forth depending on how fast you could shoot reload you know pick up these targets these plates were only three inches by three inches so they're really small right and uh so i'm i'm i'm ahead of i knock i hit my last plate it starts to fall over i'm already on the dueling tree he's still over here i'm trying to hit his rest of his plates and i know it's out of the corner of my eye my plate's just teetering my pepper pops it's not falling and the rule says you gotta it's gotta fall before you can go to the tree my [ __ ] so i go back get it back on the pepper popper and then it falls over well then i come back on the dueling tree he's already on the dueling tree he already hit his first flag right and it was one one one one and he beat me by one right and i'm not good man i only lost because my plate wasn't balanced my step my pepper pot wasn't balanced otherwise i had this in the bag right but i wasn't mad i wasn't upset i wasn't going i was [ __ ] no i just said nothing man i'm like congratulations brother you win man but i knew in my heart of hearts i won and what was more important to me was i went from zero to hero man i made it man right i kicked some ass and it was at that point i realized that okay whatever i just whatever i did it's again it's a thing and i learned later on that this thing had a name uh i heard i learned later on that this thing was based in science um and i've done a lot of research over the years on it um to neck this thing down to what it really is and so you can look it up autogenic conditioning but it's more than just autogenic conditioning there's a process involved with it um there's actually a neurological response to the way you think um and it also affects not only your physical performance it can affect your mental performance and it can also affect believe this or not it can affect your your environment around you and create your reality um that's what's amazing is i can actually will a business i can will money i can create i can create things through thought through the process of power uh positive thinking right people they pause they think they don't know what the [ __ ] that means thinking positive actually means something and it's a form of meditation and it actually has an effect on your nervous system what's called myelination right so there's there's it's all rooted in science has nothing to do with philosophy absolutely nothing to do with philosophy what happened to me in otc in that baseball game wasn't willpower it was i'm going to do this i'm going to do this it had nothing to do with it had everything to do with imagination seeing the seeing my reality in the here and now and actually experiencing it as if it's really happening that was the key that was the key to success and so that's that's what my that's again what my coaching is based on um that's how i've been successful in everything i do in life that i do that in the military not initially but in otc we were trained to meditate we were trained to bring our heart rates down to kind of get realigned and refocus um and what have what i've done is taken what i've learned there what i've learned on my own and through my you know through my um academic experience realized that uh there's there's more to what we are more to this universe than what we know um everything is based on science literally everything's based on frequency so dale just quickly without giving away your secret sauce here but as you're coaching people if if you take the two examples you give and in the book they're described the same way so it's super interesting to hear this they're both physical in nature right like baseball the mechanics shooting you know it's physical as you're coaching people who are sitting in an office what is the autogenic conditioning or this the meditation what is it that you you would do in a non-physical setting to become successful in using this tool same thing right so it doesn't matter if it's physical or mental okay um it's the mechanics the process the methodology is the same okay it's a it's a framework of thinking um thinking of a certain way on creating certain conditions in your mind as you're doing this and through this process um you start invoking what's called the universal laws right um and so you have there's other laws you have to invoke as well to complement this way of thinking but i tell people all the time you don't have it's not just for physical performance it's for mental performance in fact i'm gonna give you another story um so i was coaching a guy he was a spec four in germany and he wanted to go to special forces and as we were coaching he goes hey i just found out i'm going to the e5 board on friday and this was a monday and i said awesome and uh so what i did is i said look we're going to get you through this um and you're going to get promoted right he had 40 there were 40 people going to go to this board right so there's going to be some stiff competition 40 guys aren't going to get promoted d5 and uh so what i did says okay what we're going to do is we're going to talk about getting you ready for this we're going to coach you right and so what i had him do was this one i saw him um you know visualizing again him sitting in front of this board and answering all the questions confidently right and i talked about all the you know that whole process eye contact your posture your breathing um you know and and relaxing yourself and then two telling yourself that you know all the answers right because what you're doing is when i coach people i focus on three areas the body okay the brain which is really your consciousness and the mind your subconsciousness your subconsciousness is what affects everything it determines success or failure it's not your consciousness your consciousness basically is embedded in philosophy okay it's it's centered on philosophy right and knowledge that i've got which by the way remember half of it that's wrong okay but the subconsciousness works independently okay it creates your reality it creates success and your failures depending on how you think um and then of course your body is like what i call like a radio um we're like radio to look like transmitted receivers with our own internal battery system um and that's that's another part of this program that i talked about but it has to do with frequency and laws of vibration uh so we went through this process and basically they said look okay you're uniform i said that's an easy one you you know we can you can double your triple check your uniform make sure it's perfect so you should not get gigged on a bad uniform right that's that's a given right get that out of the way um two i said i want you to think about all the answers or potential questions and start developing answers for them right um and i want you to tell yourself that you know all the answers to all the questions even if you don't imagine yourself digging deep back in the drawer and pulling out the question of the answer when the question arises right have the confidence that it's there because more than likely you've already heard the answer you just don't remember it but it's stored away in your long-term memory okay we have short-term memory short-term memory storage and we have long-term memory so it's already in your long-term memory if it's ever been presented to you it's there you just can't recall it but what you're gonna do is you're gonna tell yourself that you can recall it when the actual present question presents itself um so we go through this whole process um i'm having him meditate i'm having visualized the process of the board and then the other thing i told was the day of the board i said look i said here's what's gonna happen you're gonna show up all these guys will be standing around uniform and they're gonna be talking about you know what kind of questions they're gonna ask to the board right and everybody's what they're trying to do is is bleed energy right get energy from each other and confidence right but that's what they're doing i said stay away from that mess i said isolate yourself i said do not get in the middle of that you know freaking hornet's nest um go over here i said focus on what you got to do i said hydrate i said drink as much water as you can why because when you're down about one quarter of water you start losing about two to three percent of your cognitive abilities right you lose a little bit more than that it becomes worse right so it's imperative that you're hydrated so that your mind is functioning 100 percent too i said eat a candy bar 30 minutes out it's like why i said get those get the glucose in you because your brain only functions on glucose doesn't burn fat doesn't burn anything it burns glucose without glucose you ain't thinking right i know when if when i'm down on glucose and carbohydrates i start getting goofy i forget [ __ ] right um i start slurring my speech that's the first indicator um so i know that if i take a candy bar and get glucose in me everything shuts the computer starts operating again everything starts working again right so i said take a candy bar hydrate standard stay away from those guys focus on you and what you got to do anyway make a long story short he went in um of the 40 candidates he was one of the top five guys to get selected um he only missed one question he goes basically one of the guys was showing off from the board asked them a question that was in a manual that you know like a legal question like how the hell would i know that nobody would have got that question right right anyways but he said he got everything else right he missed one so what um it was enough to get him through the board five out of 40 guys and he was one of the nice i think he was i think he was number two um okay so um so there's there's another example of how that can be applied to cognitive development you know schools passing a test um you know business development you know if you can visualize building a business okay then you can create that reality right you know i can use my example here in indonesia you know how i got here it wasn't by i didn't just stumble on it man um what happened was six years ago i was actually chasing my wife so i was chasing tail to indonesia right look i got here and started looking around and go hey man there's some business opportunities here and remember indonesia is 97 muslim right and uh but it's not like arabic muslims they're really liberal and cool here man it's not even an issue right but uh but when i first got here i didn't know but i forgot he was like okay some opportunities and i thought you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna open up a canine company and put canines at all their hotels and all their venues and even though they don't like dogs they're gonna like it and i actually hire i actually hire a lot of muslims as hammers they're all cool about it it's no big deal but i came here and i basically against all odds saw myself building a business okay and it was not easy trust me as an expat uh they make it really hard put a lot of minefields in front of you right so but here i am right got a company doing really well um and uh but i saw i visualized what i wanted and i always always visualize it imagine the end state like it's really happening right now and it always comes comes to fruition um so it applies to everything across the board in life um it's just how do we apply it and and that's what i do is i teach people how to how to do it i teach them how to do the you know apply the science and what it really means and uh i challenge a lot of paradigms um people have a hard time believing that it's not willpower you know how many times have people you know on new year's eve go have a new year's eve resolution i'm gonna lose 50 pounds this year right and they're all motivated watch me you know i'm gonna do this you know and then two weeks later like [ __ ] okay i will start next year right and so what happened was they had the willpower the willpower is never enough willpower is never enough what you have to have is imagination you have to imagine the outcome and you have to imagine it like it's happening right now and you gotta over and over and over see it and feel it and that's the that's the key to uh success so dale i wanna jump to when you were so you went through selection for delta um but then in the book you also describe being a cadre member for selection so taking kind of this human performance aspect to that um one thing i've i've learned after reading a lot of books from folks like yourself in the tier one communities and then talking to them it almost all of them invariably talk about like showing up for selection for for buds delta whatever it is you see like a six foot four jacked guy and they don't make it through right so what is it especially like you just described 110 people only a handful come through on the other end what is it after you went through and then you observed other people going through was there anything that could tell you just starting out like this person's gonna make it this other person just doesn't have it or is it so mental you can't see it from the outside well the problem with uh all right when you're a cadre member remember i said earlier in delta for selection okay you're there's no pressure nobody's yelling at you nobody's encouraging you everybody it's very um just mum's a word everything that the cadre has a stoic look on their face they're never smiling they're never brow beating you they're like robots i mean that's part of the role right um they don't want to encourage you and they don't want to discourage you so you're like damn am i doing good am i doing bad and you're looking for body language to see you know i'm doing okay the guy's proven or is this proven you don't find that you don't see that because we're very conscious of that basically you're told as a candidate uh what your next coordinates are actually you you tell the can cadre what your coordinates are he confirms it he looks at you and goes um whatever your color number is blue 22 have a good one and just a stoic face right and looking at him like okay thanks you know and like okay thanks smiling i'm smiling okay you take off right and then and then you go do the best you can right and you don't know what your best is right because they don't say what the standard is you have no idea what the standard is you don't know when it's gonna be over how long it's gonna last how hard it's gonna get you have no idea until you show up at the last point the guy tells you grab your [ __ ] and get on the back of the truck and you're praying to god it's not going back to the barracks and get on the on the you know the jack shack and get on the bus going home it's going back to the next uh you know the next camp right um so you don't know and as from a cadre side you know i remember i've been up there several times and you would see guys like okay that guy's a stud man he's moving out um but you can kind of tell sometimes in the attitude as well you know because the course is so hard that the stress that you put on yourself changes people man it changes your whole attitude i mean when you beat the [ __ ] every day all day psychologically man it just wears down and uh guys come in just you can see the stress on their face like man i don't know if i can make another day um but the guys that come in that are like you know really spry and you know and uh you know kind of happy-go-lucky and it kind of was still moving pretty good it's like that guy's got a pretty good shot at it right but you never know really until the end because uh all of that's physical and the guy that can make it through the physical part has got to make it through mentally because i'm going to tell you right now when your body is broke and they don't want to move no more the only thing that's going to keep it moving is your mind and if your mind is done if your mind is shattered if it's broke you're demoralized you ain't talking your body into doing nothing you're just done it's over right and so but the guy that can push on regardless of that um and is lucky enough to finish the course now he's still got another obstacle and that's the commander's board and that's a big ass board that's everybody and god sitting there right judging you and uh they asked some really hard questions too man and uh you know and and then you gotta get through that right and uh you know a lot of guys don't make it through that they make it through the whole they can physically make it through they mentally make it through but they get to the board and it just can't uh they just can't cope right because there's a lot of stress the original stress and pressure that was on them in the field was from themselves right they put it on themselves right and it's a lot dude it's amazing what you can do to yourself you know psych yourself out um i remember one day standing up in a field full of mud up to my knees um it was cloudy it was raining i couldn't see my next my next point i was just beat the [ __ ] um in fact that year they had the 100 yard 100 year flood and the cheat river went 12 feet 12 feet over its bank so basically i swam through selection man um you know it was always raining and flooding right it was it was mad and i'm standing as [ __ ] farmer's field up to my knees and i can't move and i'm crying i'm trying like a little woman man just [ __ ] you know where's the truck yeah i quit you know there's not a truck around i realize man only way i can quit is i got to get up on top of that mountain because i know there's a truck up there right if i get up there then i can quit so i get up there and then i'm like well damn i made it up here why quit now it's just all downhill right i can roll down the hill so i didn't quit thank god but it it just messes your psyche up right and it's not them doing it you doing it to yourself man and uh because you the unknown just screws people up right you don't know what the standard is you don't know anything you don't know if you're doing good you're doing bad you know what the outcome is you know how long it's going to last you just know every day is a suck fest because you're making a suck fest you're going as hard as you can because you don't know you don't know if you're going fast enough or hard enough right and so then you get to the board it's like now you've literally done all you can physically do right now now you're actually sitting in the chair right and uh and now you got to mentally cope with this barrage of questions and this brow beating that's coming out your way right and uh and now it's you know that's all that's a whole nother stress level man uh that's they're putting stress on you now they're actually putting the stress on you and you're trying to internalize and cope with all the questions and hope to guide you answering it the right way you know and you know what you don't know what's the right answer right because a lot of these questions are really obscure there's really no right or wrong answer it doesn't you don't think there is right but it's like everything's a trick mind [ __ ] right and so you do the best you can and hope that's good enough you know and then uh and then you can get your verdict you know so um so that's kind of what it was like for me mentally and watching other guys but the guys that make it we had a saying um when it comes to the selection the unit is not looking for the best man they're looking for the right man not the best man the right man right and so the right man is not always hercules um the reich man is not always the super intellectual guy right you know they're the right man the right man they're looking for is a guy that can they can meet this um meet this profile that we don't know about the psychologists know about the commanders know about it um but you don't know what it is you don't know what kind of guy they're looking for and we used to stand around all the time in the unit you know on breaks look at each other go why why are you here why are you here why are we here you know we don't know why why did you pick us because you're a weirdo man when i was with you you know you pick your boogers well you dig your ass you know i was like you know it's like why do they pick us right and uh what one guy actually said one time i thought was pretty good uh accurate accurate description he said because i think the reason they picked this is because we're all controlled psychopathic killers oh yeah that kind of makes sense you know um because none of us none of us are averse to killing people and shooting and fighting you know we love that [ __ ] um but we do it you know with precision and with control right and the discrimination and uh i said that you know there might be some merit in that but that's not that can't be the only reason why because we're not just shooting people all the time either we're doing other stuff and uh you know and there's you know i did notice something about everybody everybody has some kind of quirkiness about them like one little thing it was like quirky and i was like that's a little odd you know but that's who you are that makes you who you are you know and so i accept you for you know your quirkiness you know but i mean i look at america what's my quirkiness man you know i could never forget what my crookiness was and uh nobody would tell me other than i was an [ __ ] but you know i guess that was my quirkiness i don't know i don't know um if we if we jump from from selection and and seeing that too what you can take it how you'd like on this one but if you look back on maybe one of the more dangerous events that you faced and it's hard because i know you've got like 30 years of every major conflict we've been in but if you if you look back in in the book you actually describe like the difference between being afraid to die being prepared to die um the moment for you that was maybe at your worst in combat like where was that when was that and what did that look like it was actually one time and only one time um and you know i've done quite a few operations quite a few missions between you know africa iraq afghanistan panama grenada and yemen and other places and um actually i'll describe two um miami the second one's gaming but the first one happened to me in iraq and the reason i was never out of shorts and never really afraid is because i was always prepared mentally right um and if you're prepared mentally and you've resolved your own death in other words i'm not going to say i'm not afraid to die of course everybody's afraid nobody wants to die but but i wasn't i knew that if i die my my personal orders and affairs were in place right um i know what's going to happen to me if i do check out um i know what my state of being is going to be in the afterlife or whatever right um i know that my family is going to be okay you know all those things are taken care of so i'm not going the at the that moment that final judgment moment go oh god wait wait wait wait i'm not ready you know and hesitate and then really get myself killed i've actually seen guys do that i've seen guys you know try to negotiate where the death is imminent the guy's on him he's trying to kill him and they're like no wait wait wait wait wait hold on wait wait wait wait and they still die right because they hadn't resolved their own death and they hadn't committed to their own defense into their life right and fighting you know you know fighting for all their worth and uh and so i'm not that guy i like fighting i do you know it might sound a little morbid but i actually that's why you know as a professional fighter as a professional boxer kickboxer all my life i've liked fighting i just the challenge of combat you know it's uh you know it appeals to me and uh i was reading somewhere not too long ago they actually think that um it's in some people's dna to be a soldier not everybody has that that characteristic to be a to be a soldier and i i think the more i study that i kind of agree with that i think a lot of guys want to be soldiers and then have trouble coping later on with what they've done or what what they've seen because it was not really in their heart so much um to be a soldier as much as it was in their heart to be you know human so to speak um and there's some great there's some good books out there on this on this topic um one of them is by david grossman um dr david grossman called on killing i read that you know it's he's done quite a bit of research on that uh there's quite a few other books that i read on this stuff but uh um resolving your own death is important so that when the time comes you're not thinking about oh [ __ ] i forgot to do this i've got to do that what about my family it's already behind you man all you have to do is focus on the here and now what's in front of you and getting that over with um but one time i got caught off guard in iraq and we were driving during the day it was um a total of five of us we had two vehicles we had a thin skin vehicle and it was actually a land cruiser i was driving the thin-skinned land cruiser had a 5.0 v8 5-speed manual overdrive um and then the other vehicle was a g5 mercedes it was up armored right and we were gonna drive about five hours south uh from where we were located um in fact we were in uh tikrit we're gonna go south to another base um they had a land cruiser that was damaged and we needed another alternator for our up armored land cruiser right and they had one so okay well we'll just drive these two vehicles down and go recover the the golden alternators what i call it right it's like are we we're really going to run the gauntlet for an alternator right what the [ __ ] man and i really think it was more like the chief of bases want to get out and have some fun you know go for a drive and uh so what we did is we put two grs guys in the front um in the in a hard up armored vehicle and we put my interpreter who was american named dave he always rode right behind me he said you know what why don't you ride in the vehicle up front it's armored because this one's thin skin and me and the case officer you know wrote in the in the dense game and uh so on the way down um driving there's one town and first ambush right freaking guy takes a shot at me with ak-47 and um bullets do bounce off glass because the angle that the he shot at me the bullet when the bullets actually bounced off the glass and ricocheted but when it hit the glass it sounded like a tuning fork man my ears were ringing for like an hour after you know um but it was a near miss but he missed right so and all we went right to get the golden alternator we got down to the other base recovered the alternator and we started heading back and we were driving up the the tigris river and if you go along the tigris river a lot of places there's a lot of date palm trees right it's kind of forested along the edges there because you have a lot of water and of course the water and then you also have a road that runs along that um the river so we're scooting along and uh i'm in the second vehicle now the up armor is in front of us and uh we're ripping down the road and it's a beautiful day right people were out there you know harvesting dates and working in the fields and you know water you know and farming and what doing whatever iraq and farmers do and uh you know we're winding through these roads you know through the countryside and that's kind of this open area and then we come up on a car in front of us and then the the g5 goes around it you know and then i'm up behind it and i'm waiting for my turn to get around doing about 45 miles an hour and uh i see the opportunity i downshift get on the gas go around the car start pulling from and right when the back end of my car wasn't on the nose of his car the whole world exploded man um freaking all the windows were out freaking just i mean god damn it just it's just a mess right and it was loud and my first thought was the dude in the car just opened up on us that's what i thought happened actually what i didn't know was we were being ambushed on the left side of the road right they were waiting for us and uh so they shot my vehicle to [ __ ] and uh shot out all the tires windows and and uh and i didn't hesitate i was already doing about 45 i romped on the gas man wide open got this thing going down the road and and the chief was trying to get on the radio and let the other car vehicle in front of us know we just got hit but by the time we could even talk to him i'd already passed them and we'd go blowing by them right all the windows are gone and [ __ ] and tires are flashing like what the hell right i was moving out man and uh so we get out of the we get out of the kill zone and uh we hobbled down the road for maybe another quarter mile as far as i could take the vehicle before it's like there's no way we can drive anymore so we we pull over and uh actually earlier we had passed a convoy two uh humvees and m113 that were patrolling the road way back right and uh and now we pull over and tires were flat you know things [ __ ] the bed and uh we're still in a danger area right these guys aren't far away they're just ambushes and the location we were in was kind of like there's some rolling hills forest you know and a lot of vehicle traffic suddenly coming right and slowing down and bottlenecking right there and uh i'm getting like really nervous right and so we're looking at the vehicle and we got to get one of the wheels off where we think okay we could salvage this thing if we can change the tire we can still roll on it well what was weird about the toyota land cruise at the time was in order to fit the lug nut the lug wrench onto the lug nuts on the tires you had to have an adapter it's a fitting that goes in between the two which is kind of weird and when i did a vehicle inspection make sure i had all the components i didn't realize i had to have this fitting i go okay lug wrench this spare tire you know good not knowing i'm missing a part i was missing that one critical piece like [ __ ] now we can't get the tire off right and so now we're you know we're pulling out rack socket sets and stuff we're gonna try to ratchet this thing off and it's taking a while and uh and i'm like dude all of us don't need to be standing around these vehicles changing the tire i mean we're asking for right now so i i take off and i go up to the high ground and i'm basically pulling overwatch and then the military convoy pulls up i flag him down there's a lieutenant on board and i told him what happened i said hey you mind pushing your gun jeeps out you know humvees and pulling security for us you know up and down the road you know until we get this thing sorted out and he did and then uh and then he told me you know they get ambushed like every day on that same road you know i'll get an rpg alley we get hit here all the time you know i'm like oh great you know cool and uh it's good to know but we got the vehicle together again we managed to hobble away with it but i remember when it happened when i got hit because i was literally you know daydreaming on the wheel i i lost all situational awareness i went if you if you follow cooper's color codes of readiness i was in condition white for sure you know i wasn't conditioned well i like your head just hanging back yo you know and then when it happened it shocked me uh and it scared the [ __ ] out of me and i realized oh [ __ ] you about got killed because you're literally sleeping at the wheel man figured he was sleeping at the wheel and uh and that really rattled me man that really got me nervous and got me scared and i'm like that man what was i thinking what was i doing i wasn't thinking i wasn't doing anything you know and that yeah so i i needed that moment to tighten myself back up um and realize do not ever go out there with the switch off man you need to be squished on all the time and uh so it was a good wake-up call fortunately none of us nobody got killed uh we killed a car but that was about it um and we made it back right so that was the first time and that was kind of a an awakening for me so just another reality check that you just cannot you be complacent man because [ __ ] happens when you least expect it had i been alert at the wheel um i'd have probably handled it differently and i would have probably been more aware of what's outside the vehicle you know to all sides uh rather being just fixated on driving ahead you know and getting back to the to the camp um so mindset you know um that was probably the most no doubt probably most afraid i've ever been in my whole life um and then i mentioned neiman right so i'm gonna bring that up because um it's not in the book it'll be in the next book um so actually in 2015 2016 which wasn't that long ago um i'll make the story really short i had an opportunity to work with a group um there's a team a strike team it was 11 of us seven french foreign legionnaires two vanilla seals and uh israeli and me and uh it was a mercenary team we had come together uh and we ended up working you know this is not none of this is a secret all this is out on on the news because it was supposed to be a secret but a pretty pretty good journalist figured something out started doing his work and basically it made it made international news right so it's all out there buzzfeed and all these other software and uh what we did got discovered what we did was not illegal what we did was work for the emirati army um and gave them a special operations capability because they didn't have it and our job was to go out and prosecute high value targets um so these were directed targets directed attacks on guys that needed to be removed from what they were doing um and these when i say that i mean they were heads of terrorist organizations um you know they were isis they were al-qaeda um they were they were heads of uh um adversarial political groups um but people that needed to be checked out okay they were in the way progress and uh global war on terrorism so we ended up working for them and as mercenaries and got paid a lot of money and we had a lot of we had a very long target list and so um this is all out there so it's you know it's all public information i can't run and hide from it i actually had to come out when the story broke um i had to come out and give my version of the story because i'd already been compromised my name had been given up um the whole team's name had been given up um by one guy there and now i'm being labeled as all kinds of crap you know murderer blah blah blah assassin and so i needed to get in front of it and tell the story what really happened how it went down that we weren't out murdering anybody indiscriminately um everything was targeted it was everything was planned you know we worked off intelligence uh our our techniques were surgical as we could make them um so you know so that story all that's out there um but what i wanted to talk about was um you know so in the military i had gone from as you know we mentioned earlier i was in 82nd as an infantryman i was a lerp you know as a green beret as a delta force operator then i worked for oga we talked you and i talked about that earlier right as a paramilitary operative um you know and i thought in my mind i thought everybody thinks being a delta is the pinnacle right that's as good as it gets man even seals want to be in delta right and but then there's another level right that's even more selective which was for the us government and it calls for polygraph testing and some serious background checks and a lot of vetting right to get to that level um and i made it there and then but there's actually one more there's there's one more paradigm there's one more peak to get to that people never really think about and it's it's hard to get to that peak and that and that was being a mercenary in my mind when i was in delta you know we were funded you know we had so much money you know all bells and whistles you know we always had the air force behind us the military behind us you know even if we got in trouble you know we had big army to come and get us out of [ __ ] if we needed it um and the oga was the same thing right we had we had a we built our own armies we had the u.s mill behind us we had you know everything right but when you're a mercenary all you got is you and the guy next to you that's it right so to give you an example um when i was approached for this um first i was reluctant but then i agreed for certain reasons and that's a i'll save that story from later on i'm actually writing another book about it but uh um i was told okay you know we're gonna we've already put in the equipment list um the the co-contract was worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars right because money is no problem and uh like arabs always say no problem and so you know we put an equipment list we're going to get all the you don't need to bring anything just show up you know and and uh we're good so i did i showed up on this day you know i was supposed to and um pretty interesting story behind that how that all worked out yeah i'll say that for another time but uh yeah we ended up over there and uh and i'm like all right where's all the gear at it wasn't there nothing there nothing and uh no uniforms no nothing and now we're like well how the hell we supposed to do our missions if we don't have anything to do with it so we literally had to get um weapons from the local bazaar right black market [ __ ] that may or may not work um i had a 30 year old china chai com ak-47 you know it actually worked um but then i had a macaron was it macaroni 52 that literally when you shoot it the bull would come out and travel about 15 feet and then land in the dirt in front of you you know it's like like like a squirt gun right and uh like i could use this as a hammer i guess um we had no nothing no uniforms basically what i wore in was you know a little bit of stuff in my backpack you know i had some 511 pants i had some desert boots fortunately you know um and if you look at my i have some pictures on my uh on my website um where i'm wearing you know basically a black tint a tank top you know i got bandana i got my weight training gloves on right those are my only shooting mitts and uh you know and basically you know we we we just got creative right and so we need a body armor or at least uh you know something to carry our ammo in so we we modified [ __ ] you know we made our own chess rigs you know and and uh and uh that's what we went to war with literally when i went downtown yemen in the middle of night you know with three other dudes uh with al qaeda they call them a cap their al-qaeda arabic peninsula uh a-cap and there's a lot of them there in the amen uh there's a lot of there's a lot of a-cap there's a lot of isis there's a lot of houthis um there's uh there's a lot of muslim brotherhood that's financing everything by the way um and then there's the yemenis resistance fighter which were losing bad they were the only good guys and they wouldn't know them around right otherwise it was just just a uh a hornet's nest of bad guys and uh and us and we you know we had to hide our faces all the time we didn't come out from behind the sandbags until at night you know we you know prosecuted target but um so uh you know that's what we went downrange to fight with was this stuff you know and i remember it was four of us on the street one night downtown um and uh duking it out with the bad guys we were actually targeting uh we were actually targeting this one guy and i was gonna blow him up is what happened i built an ied to take him out because he was in his office and uh he had two bodyguards behind the door with him and uh and he actually had an aide with him an assistant um how do i know that because i know i got the right place because the next guy that guy was on tv all wrapped up in bandages going they didn't get me this time you know and he was talking about how we failed the operation i'm like well you know didn't get you this time maybe um but the other guy disappeared i was told he was still alive um maybe he is maybe he's not you know but uh so that was our first operation but what was really cool about all of that was here i am you know one of the best trained soldiers in the world had all kinds of equipment support the us government the military behind me and everything else and here i am on the street with pair of 511s and a 30 year old tricom you know and a a homemade vest for my ammo bandana you know my [ __ ] weight training gloves and you know and bad attitude that's it that's all i got in the fight with you know and and if i get shot and get killed if the other three guys are still able to they'll carry me out of here if any two of one of those guys get shot none of those are getting out of here you know and uh and we're gonna end up in orange jumpsuit if if that at all right so but to me that was mano amano to me that was being um to me that was the ultimate warrior uh situation being because now i'm fighting the bad guys with the same [ __ ] they're fighting me yeah it's like let's see who's the better man who's got the better skill sets you've got the better brain right and we handed them their ass that night um but uh that's what feels really good man it's like you know what it ain't the guns and all the optics you know and all the other cool [ __ ] there you know and you know cast above it's it's the guy on the ground with the gun man and the brain who's gonna win you know so that was from an opportunity for me to really um validate you know 30-something years of military experience it was an opportunity for me to validate it you know for real and uh and validate not only my my military skill sets but also validate my courage man it's like you know i'm leaving nobody knew nobody knew where i was nobody yeah it was true my kids didn't know my fam nobody knew where i was and if i would have died they still probably would have never known where i was at what happened to me i just vanished off the face of earth but uh to me that was like the ultimate test um to see who dale comstock really is and uh you know and still here i can't wait to read that book i got two questions for dale and i'll let you get back to you two questions i try to ask everyone at the end of every interview so the first is was there anything that you carried with you into combat through all those years that had sentimental value a suit like a talisman superstitious value anything like that yeah actually i carried um i actually carried two things one i had a knife that i bought early on when i was 82nd it was it it looked like a rambo knife right it was actually a buck buckmaster but you know it was nice man survival and i i remember i paid i forget what i paid for initially like 300 bucks at a pawn shop and i carried that knife with me forever man um because a knife man i mean you can use it for a lot of [ __ ] right and uh and so i always carry that with me the other thing i always carried with me was my dad had a lindsay compass when he was the army and he gave it to me before he before i went to the army so i always carried his linsatic compass with me everywhere i went right kind of like um you know this has sentimental value and it was obviously had a use as well the other thing i carried um now this is if there's any chicks out there they're gonna start crying when they hear this part of the story right so maybe some some dudes out there too they're beta males um it's okay guys it's 20 21 if you want to cry it's okay you know i mean guys cannot participate in girl sports right um so you can cry too now anyways um i remember so when my my daughter um and i actually she's my my uh second oldest daughter she was a little girl and uh and my i would drive up to dc to go to their headquarters to get all my [ __ ] and then get on airplane and go overseas right and this happened quite a bit and there's always a tough you know for me to leave right because my little girl you know and she's dad's little girl and i remember um when i come home she was always enamored by a lot of my gear you know like my sunglasses i had these wild egg sunglasses i wore and she would put them on and then her hair would get caught in them you know she pulled out a little hair stuck in there you know and that happened one of my pairs of glasses and uh and i never took the hair out i always kept the hair in my glasses to remind me of her right it's always i always had a part of her with me um always man i always carry that a little bit i have glasses in that hair with me whenever i went down range you know and it had that it had a sentimental value and i felt like you know my little girl was uh was always with me so there's some kind of things that you know for me yeah you know it sounds uh maybe corny but uh i think we all need something like that man it's an anchor right an anchor to something from the past to kind of ground us something to give us hope that we're gonna go back to um like now actually now i carry um so over here i carry a butt pack right um because that's like sop everybody carries one because you got so much [ __ ] in it like bug juice um first aid kits you know all the necessities of for living in indonesia riding a motorcycle but in it i have a crystal um uh amethyst crystal and i carried everywhere i go now because um a while back my i'm big into crystals among things so i meet this guy here who's also into a lot of stuff i'm talking about you know but he's indonesia um and he has he sells all this stuff but he's got this one hit this one area full of crystals man every kind of crystal you can imagine right and i was really enamored by that this bullet has big wooden crate and he had about a thousand let's see if i can pull it out for you real quick to show you but he had about a thousand um shards of this crystal here it is um i don't know if you can see that but this is the crystal right that's it right there um so we had about a thousand charge like this in this big wooden box it's all the same kind same size everything he goes he goes why don't you and your wife just go go in and grab one out as a gift right um because you know good luck and it is this is that you know i said okay so i dig down into the box you know i pull out my crystal go well it looks like all the other ones you know okay this is it this is my new pet rock you know and a good boy good boy you know and so then my wife starts digging around in hers you know and she pulls out her rock is like she goes i got mine too you know okay we both got a crystal and i'm just kind of sitting there looking at mine going let me see yours and i'm looking at hers and then as i'm looking at him wait a minute they fit together perfectly they were two halves of the same crystal out of a box of about a thousand and we had to dig for these things right on the opposite ends of the box that's cool i'll be ha i go what's the chances of my wife and i pulling out two halves of the same crystal you know what somebody told me to go you didn't find the crystals they found you it has to do with energy right i talk about energy in the beginning of frequency crystals have an amazing energy to it they really do they actually absorb frequency um like cell phone frequency stuff like that um but um and i actually wear crystals here too for a lot of different reasons right because i really believe in the power of crystals because of the frequency um so my wife and i both carry our halves with us wherever we go now because we feel like we'll always be bonded through that energy no matter where we are in the universe right it's it's brought us together and everybody says you know we're a great couple you know we are i think we are you know we we're very compatible and uh we have good energy together you know so that happened to me so that's one of those things now i carry around me with me or wherever i go it's that crystal um you know grounds me to my wife it's one of those simple things again so all the girls out there should be going oh my god that's so sweet i've actually had him do that right i've had to do that on a podcast i had to tell the story with all these chicks you know and um you know all the panties came off and this bra started coming out like i love you man i want to marry you man i wish right you're usually throwing rocks and sticks at me [Laughter] so dale last question i will let you direct your day but what i try to ask everyone i'm pretty sure i know the answer for you but i i'd like to ask it anyway especially with all that you've done the years you've invested u.s military the government mercenary time the near-death experiences we didn't even touch on your helicopter crash another day if you'll allow me i'd love to talk about that all of these experiences though and the near-death moments you've had if you could go back would you do it again oh absolutely dude absolutely my father when he was in his 50s i remember he just one day out of the blue just say man i wish i could go back in the military i wish i was still in the military and i looked down like why would you want to go back you know i was like you know now i get it right i look back i'm like man the military was the best show in town the good and the bad even the worst suckiest days in the rain in the mud you know where i couldn't wait to get out i looked back like man i wish i could do that again you know um i would do it all again and then some you know i've had some bad experiences um you know on a personal level you know it's cost me a lot of marriages and relationships a lot of money um but was it worth it at the end of the day for me and uh you know my happiness yeah absolutely man i would do it all again um you know the i could you know i could do with all the bad stuff but uh that's what makes that's what made my life what it is you know it's the good and the bad and uh and how i cope with it so um it's defined me and on many levels so i would do it in a minute and you know i'd give up you know i'd go back to getting a you know an ea salary if that's what they'll give me you know and uh i'm i'm going to come in as a general though i'll probably demand that now i've come back to general but uh on the general's paycheck at least no but um yeah i would give up a lot of things just to do that again you know and that's probably what drove me into yemen i started doing that work again um is because you know for me i think it's part of my dna being a soldier and uh i long for it all the time and i'm always looking for another opportunity to get out there and mix it up and i can you know i'm almost 58 years old but man i will beat the living [ __ ] out of any 28 year old all i want wreck them i'll hump them i'll lift them i'll fight them i'll shoot them you know and uh and so i'm well worthy of it and i can still do it and that's not because you know it's not wishful thinking i can do it man i mean look at them arms man no i i i'd love to go reminisce but don't answer your question again um yeah i'd do it all again man all again man it's made me who i am today so so you i know dale you got a book you're working on um obviously i read american badass the the name suits it you've been on on tv um any anything else you work i know you're coaching anything else so people can find you that you want to share yeah you can find me on i have a website called tier one number one tier one performancecoaching.com i'm actually business partners with joe tedei from dual survival um he's a good friend of mine and i can vouch for all his credentials everything i know him personally i've known him for a long time um and he and i have become good business partners um he's the real deal we're also my my daughter my all-stars our business partner as well she does all our internet stuff marketing websites and things like that so you can definitely find us there i'm obviously on facebook um you know social media sites i'm switching over to like me we and some of the more conservative platforms um but uh i'm writing another book um so i wrote american badass i've actually written three books american badass was the third one um i wrote one for my ex-wife which is an allegory i published it and then took it off of amazon um that's that's another stupid divorce story but uh it's my book i own the copyrights to it and then the first one i wrote was the uh hand-to-hand combat book for third special forces group which from what i understand became the base document for the army white hand-hand program um so those are three of my publications i'm actually getting ready to i'm already starting to write i was writing five books i decided to compress it all into one book right now i'm not sure what i think i'm gonna call it apex man but i might change that um to american stupid ass or something like that so i don't know um but basically it's gonna have all my stories in there since 2011 um and what i've done in the in the last uh almost 10 years which has been quite a bit beside jamin uh i was talking about the story before the show i just kind of kind of attract trouble i think or find myself in these situations that no normal human being would find himself in but i'm like in it and then i gotta figure out how to get out of it or how to make money out of it or have fun with it right so i've done things from and i don't i hate to use the word human trafficking but not trafficking people like i'm actually saving people getting them out of jams i got to traffic them out of this jam right to save their ass i've done things like crazy stuff in singapore to turkey um yeah bodyguard work that i've done for you know very uh multi-millionaires you know starlets in hollywood and all the drama that goes along i got a great i got a great bodyguard story um that uh you can't make this [ __ ] up and it's pretty cool um i watched the bodyguard the other night with my wife here uh with uh whitney houston and uh and i said that is cool but that is not as cool as what i did man right so all these stories will be coming out later on because you know in my stories i you know like american badass i try to weave uh uh lessons learned in that you know there's a theme in there um hopefully people pick up on it about being a better version of yourself being a good person good patriot you know good human being good example and also being having humility being able to laugh at yourself and uh and point out your flaws and that you really are just a human being right and uh and so i try to do that in my my writings because i again i like helping people and uh and i want them to learn something from my stories not just be entertained but uh you know realize that uh there's a deeper meaning in there especially for me and hopefully they pick up on it and uh and as i always say the book's not about me as much as it's about you you know you just gotta read it to understand that and what you figured i was like yeah i got it you know so that's that's in the works among other things all right well we'll have links to all this dale so people can find you thanks so much for the time this is fascinating great stories uh best of luck yeah thanks for having me on brother appreciate it man

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 306,929

Keywords: Delta Force, The Unit, Special Forces, Special Operations Forces, Delta, Squadron, Operator, Todd Opalski, Citadel, The Citadel, Force Recon, Marine Recon, Scout Sniper, Marine Scout Sniper, Marine Sniper, Marine Corps, The Marine Corps, Hoora, Devil Dogs, NCO, Non-Commissioned Officer, Zen Commando, Camp Zen Commando, Ranger School, Ranger, Army Ranger, Costa Rica, Iraq, Afghanistan, CIA, paramilitary, 1st SFOD, Grenada, Kurt Muse, Panama, Strategic Outcomes, American Badass

Id: PFjL570XEaY

Length: 125min 35sec (7535 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021