Combat Story (Ep 25): John "Shrek" McPhee | Delta Force | Green Beret | Ranger | SOB Tactical

what i learned going on these solo missions was a hundred fold every day i was on my own compared to doing the helicopter raid with 30 guys 50 whatever right like you don't learn [ __ ] that way you want to you want to learn how to solve problems [ __ ] be alone have no support and try to stay alive i think i'm either the only or one of the only guys to ever go out alone and pull off a successful raid in afghanistan 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 sergeant major retired john shrek mcphee aka the sheriff of baghdad who spent 20 years in the army special operations community from ranger battalion to group to delta force he's one of a handful of operators to have served in multiple theaters including bosnia and south america to iraq and afghanistan john's one of an even smaller group of operators to successfully execute raids in combat by himself during hundreds of solo operations after leaving the military john created sob tactical that helps people law enforcement and special operators improve shooting skills and security he also hosts a channel called boos and views that talks about current events and new whiskey john brings me to tears with laughter in this episode which is just a byproduct of john's sense of humor and way of life i hope that like me your jaw hurts from laughing by the end of this enjoy so john thanks for taking the time to share your story with us today oh thank you so just right off the bat from from reading about you and some of the other interviews you've done i noticed uh you have two of the most unique and interesting nicknames out there right so you got the sheriff of baghdad which just admittedly sounds badass there's also shrek so i kind of want to get into both of these but i'm wondering like john as a kid was there a different nickname that you had like rolling around the block when you were growing up or was shrek something you got early on you know i kind of never had a nickname in my life you know um and you know in the unit some guys get them immediately some guys you know how nicknames work right i mean you know in the navy you can call yourself thor in the army you get like booger and that's as good as it's going to get right so i never really had a nickname per se why i don't know it's just first off i think because i don't care what you call me you know what i mean and uh i believe talking [ __ ] should be a phd in school right um especially in the army i think um i was i was kind of hard to name so dudes have called me a lot of things and none of it really stuck until shrek one day and then and i knew that was it there's no fight in it so i just it is what it is right embrace it or this is going to get worse and what why do you why do you say that people should have a phd in this from school because all we did was talk [ __ ] in the army to each other when you work with the same like five guys for three four seven eight years like you know what i mean like you gotta you gotta say something to kill the boredom you know what i mean like what makes it good though i think oh god yeah i uh i miss the the trash talk and then what you know i teach classes right and in the classes if i get a group of guys that are doing that to each other like i will hop right in tight like uh i just in phoenix teaching a class and the guy who hosts my classes invited me and three of his best friends like all childhood grown up together best friends right uh and like the the one best friend married the other best friend sister the i mean like like literally they grew up together you know what i mean and so these guys you know they've been they've been hanging out since grade school talking smack to each other and i the first guy i just chimed in i top broke them i already remember what i said the guy was just like he gave me a blank stare blinking at me and he's like oh it's going to be like that and i'm like no it's about to get worse this is what it's about to get and like uh like it just we just roped in you know that's i don't miss much but that's one of the things i do miss is just being able to just talk trash let it out you know what i mean make fun of guys you could be serious and funny you could be it doesn't matter right for sure and john i know a lot of people who watch this will recognize you and the classes but just briefly the classes you're talking about are shooting classes is that right yeah mostly like pistol training tactical i don't know what you call it pistol stuff rifle stuff you name it i'm teaching it got it all right so if if we like rolled back the clock and looked at john growing up did you have that same kind of uh trash talk light-hearted yeah demeter back in the day like what was john like as a kid oh man uh i was little i was always the little guy like i was little like my my parents in the 70s took me to a doctor to have me measured to see if i'd be full size i was so little right um and then you know i had old i had an older brother and he had friends and i got beat up all the time like a little brother should who never shuts up and is all over the map uh and i think that's really where it started and then you know um i think i was really little when i was small um and uh but i was like i had an older brother i got beat up a ton i grew up on the south side of chicago it's tough for a little guy you know what i mean and if you're going to be the little guy you got to learn to be tough real quick right so uh but you know me and my friends all we did was like your mom jokes and like you know like this is this is kind of how we talk to each other so when i joined the army it was kind of like yeah i don't you know how to do this it's like you were trained yeah yeah it's really what it was damn okay so you grew up then on the south side of chicago like in the city or in suburbs so you're a city kid growing up running around yeah yeah so i would imagine then you did not pick up a weapon until maybe you got into the military or is that a false assumption pretty much i mean like uh no hunting in chicago no you know what i mean um i had my my step-grandpa which really one of my grandpas right me and him were really close he was from mississippi and he grew up on a farm um you know and he like he fished he every day we we go out we go fishing we catch turtles we'd eat turtles like he was like the polar opposite of living in the city and he lived they lived in the city and then finally when they got older like i think it's the age i am now right but uh um i think they moved out of the city they moved uh southern illinois and like in the summer we just stay there we'd hunt every morning he'd wake up we'd hunt we'd fish we'd hunt for rabbits or squirrels like most of what he ate or him and my grandma ate was like all stuff that he could hunt and fish for and that's just what he did wow so i learned a little bit from him but i didn't learn like i didn't learn anything that was really good or you know like son he's a redneck too you'd be like son hit the can i'd be like okay grandpa i need to eat you chewing chewing tobacco yeah you get the cans huh and uh i'd be like okay grandpa right i'd hit the kid and he'd like snatch it on my hands okay that's good for today uh but like besides that man yeah like guns south chicago guns are seen as bad you know what i mean and just so you know i grew up like this and this is still the mindset of where i grew up not only guns are bad but you know who has guns cops you know what that means then you know what that makes them bad right and i grew up like that matter of fact uh i go to chicago i helped a lot of police departments in illinois and uh only because like i'm kind of from there so i'll go to the good towns where i know the good food and stuff is i won't go back to where i'm from but um and a lot of those uh illinois towns when i go teach those classes like i'll stop by my aunt's house on the way because they still live in the area and they'll be like what are you doing i'll be like oh yeah you know so-and-so police department hired me for like a few days or a week whatever and they're like you need to be careful you know wow cops got cops got guns and i'm like that's when they hire me like it doesn't even make sense but uh what i've learned over the years is that's their mindset even though i'm on the range every day teaching people to shoot i was just gonna say like do they know you and what you've done i know i know right but that's the mindset it's crazy to me and i see every time i go home i kind of see that this is what it is so you said something that i feel like not many people from the south side of chicago would say you said your grandfather your step grandfather was a was a redneck too yeah i mean i feel like most people from chicago don't consider themselves rednecks um do you see yourself as a redneck like from i don't know the the amount of time you spent in the south uh i don't see myself as a yankee for sure you know what i mean like uh so uh a redneck i mean uh you know look i learned growing up in chicago there was still rednecks where i lived you know what i mean like people that were just country but i'd say a lot of the older you know all my grandparents were all older and they were all more country than kind of city folk yeah you know what i mean so yeah i i think i am i drive a truck i wear flannel shirts i own guns i hunt i mean i mean i if i gave you a list of all the stuff i do it would point you know stereo it's it's not a stereotype if it's true right like perfect all right so you mentioned your you had an older brother uh you talked about your your step grandfather like what what was it that brought you to the military then like what did was there some family history there did you find your way there yourself what was it that brought you over uh for me my all my grandparents are world war ii vets right so everyone had served in my family everybody serves in my family you know what i mean and then you know they do their time they do their service they get out they go get a job right so kind of everybody had done that and um i figured that's what i was gonna do now as a late bloomer i joined at 21 but um you know i knew i would serve one day so i guess i kind of always knew that you know what i mean i never thought about it never like dawned on me but i just think you know i kind of knew i would always serve and why were you a late bloomer like what did you try college first what what happened no hell no college are you kidding me uh yeah uh i was um from an early age i've always been incredibly mechanically inclined like i just am um you know as my parents were on my older brother to read and get good grades because he could do that on me it was always fiction around the house cut the grass fix the lawnmower and then my stepdad was a truck driver he hauled gravel um out of south chicago and uh i was like fully servicing his truck by the time i was 12. he taught me how to grease all the joints you know what i mean adjust the brakes do breaks like you name it change the oil so i was servicing his 18 wheeler by the time i was like 12. and i'll tell you he paid me probably a fraction of what uh he actually would have paid you know what i mean but that was a lot of money for me he's like hey you service the truck i will pay you this which is probably like half price of a normal service but i that was a lot of money for me so he always kind of pushed me to be mechanically inclined and then i worked in the shops and so you know i think i was like 14 i started you know pumping diesel at a truck shop and then before you know it you know i was fixing them um and that's kind of how i did my childhood but you know i probably made it probably after i joined the army it probably took me 10 years to make the same amount of money as i was making as a mechanic and welder in south chicago wow so yeah so i was a late bloomer in the fact that i was 21 when i joined i was making good money i had a job and just one day i realized like you know my hands were black with grease and you know welding and i'm burned and like you know what it's like trying to pick up chicks as a 21 year old when your hands are like black your nails are black like they'll never be cleaner like you know what i mean like i know what girls were thinking like those hands ain't touching me right and i can't say i blame them and so you thought you keep your hands clean by going into the army basically no no that is not how that played out no i know obviously yeah that is not uh yeah uh i wanted to go be a mechanic i wanted to learn how to work on jet engines in the air force yeah so what happened yeah oh i took the asvab and the air force recruiter was like son have you talked to the army or marines yet and i'm like what he's like you only qualify for admin in the air force i'm like okay what's that he was like you'd like write memos and type stuff up i'm like i qualified to be a secretary my mom is a secretary like i was like i'm a mechanic now i didn't qualify to be a mechanic and they're like son your scores ain't high enough like okay wow yeah i couldn't even get a job as a mechanic in the air force and i already wasn't damn i it's funny i interviewed uh eddie penny who was in dev crew and he was saying like he took the asvab and they were like it's a good thing you want to be a ground pounder because that's the only thing we could qualify you for you know like there's nothing else in your future yeah oh man all right very interesting okay so so when you joined up you tried to go to the air force route they say no you go talk to an army recruiter and then what happens was it like what what took you into the infantry so i didn't know what i wanted to do in the army because i didn't want to be an army mechanic like you know look airplane mechanics work on airplanes you know where i could work at the airport you know what i mean when i get out army mechanics work on tanks you know where i fix those when i get out same place i work now you know what i mean like so it kind of it the army being a mechanic in the army never interested me because it would have ended up i thought at the same place i was then right so um yeah uh as we uh as i as i started to go down that road i realized i didn't want to do that in the army so i was at the i was at the legion we had a legion or vfw across the street from my house i don't know which one it was i was uh that was a long time ago but a buddy of mine was he was a ranger right he was a a ford an fo 13 fox at uh uh regimental headquarters so he's like you got to be a ranger i'm like okay what do they do he's like they wake up in the morning and they run and i'm like really like that's what you do and he's like yeah but it's fun and i'm like running's fun he's like running do they do a lot of it and i'm like okay and then he was like can you get to play with machine guns and i'm like now this ranger thing you jump out of planes i'm like this ranger thing sounds awesome so i went to the army recruiter right i'd already taken the fvab and uh he's like um what do you want to do i was like i want to be an airborne ranger and you know i got to you know he's like hey bob we got another airborne ranger guy up here check this kid out and like some old krusty 7 comes up and they're like son have you seen the video i'm like what there's a video no [ __ ] let's see it and like wait you haven't how do you know about airborne rangers i was like a buddy of mine says it's awesome and uh so they signed me up damn so i i don't know john does it surprise you then like looking back on the career you had that it was kind of that you wanted to do this mechanic route instead like could you have seen yourself doing that now as you look back after all the door kicking and you know like all the stuff you've done yeah that's a great question i've never thought of that um i don't know i don't know you know what i mean like yeah i think i'd have to to give you an honest answer i'd have to subtract every experience i ever had and try to think of 20 years of working on jets like so i don't know if i could give you a good answer for real you know but yeah i mean look uh you know this is me know both my boys are in the army and you can't follow my path because i didn't have one you know everyone's like oh you got to know you'll know what path you're on you know what you want to do when you grow up i still [ __ ] don't you know what i mean i'm just trying to figure it out day by day uh so you know this whole past thing like i never had a pass you know so to think about like i don't know doing something else i i don't know i don't know what i would have done or how i would have done god so i wonder and i know we're going to get into your time in service but just as a prelude here for folks who don't know right and you can fact check me here but you go to the ranger battalion you're in seventh group you go to the unit like you work your way up this chain of the elite to the most elite and some of the other gentlemen that i've talked to including tom saverley talks about this like always wanting to get to the next mountain i wonder like for you if you had been a mechanic for instance would you have just wanted to be like the best mechanic humanly possible did you have that ambition in you did you recognize that early on yeah um i don't know if i'm like overtly competitive but i want to win it no matter what it is i want to win right so i don't you know i'm not like you know and you've seen this in the army there's a guy that's so competitive no matter what you know no matter what it's like hey we're going 10 percent here you know the guy's coming in with an elbow to your face so there's always that guy i was never that guy but i definitely like to win yeah that for sure okay so let's let's talk about you um after you join up john if you could because you're the career from what i what i've read is pretty interesting because you have like a split between post and pre 911 time frame right so if you could share when you when you joined up into the army what year are we talking and then what was your i think you go right into the ranger battalion right like can you talk us through what that initial experience was like yeah so i joined december of 90 which um basically turned into i sat in fort benning for a week eating memories until january when the cadre came back but i joined december 90 january 91 kind of post desert storm so i i kind of missed some a desert storm but not all of it right um and uh i went airborne rip which is now or the ranger program which was only three weeks then and it was truly [ __ ] survival of the fittest every day like wow yeah they didn't train good rangers but they trained rangers who weren't gonna quit that's for sure you know what i mean um and then uh i went to first ranger battalion and i was there for i don't know 95 ish somewhere in there 96. uh and then i went to seventh group and i was there well the q course in seventh group i think i went to the unit in the december of 96 ish so i wasn't in seventh grade that long wow if we could just yeah good no no go ahead john sorry i didn't mean to cut yourself i'm just gonna say i was only in group like 10 months the first time okay so for the time that you're in the ranger battalion did you guys end up deploying during that time was it all in the training environment um we did deploy to uh egypt the sinai when third battalion was in uh mogadishu uh we were on forward strip alert i don't know [Music] i don't [ __ ] know um and then we did i know we did it and then um we did december 91 we jumped in iraq into one of the airfields um and that was brutal so oh damn all right perfect so that's a great setup because that's one year into like you're one year into the military at that time going into that so just before we jump into that experience i just wanted to ask about rip the way you described it i don't know if i've if i've seen anybody kind of have that reaction that you just shared about how difficult it was was it um for you was that like your first real indoctrination to something that difficult was that harder than what you'd experience later like going through the cue course or selection for the unit yeah rip well first off they're their own animals and it's really hard to compare it's it's it's not apples to apples uh but rip you know well first off being 21 being hungover every single day no matter what really doesn't help anything you do you know what i mean yeah and i'm just gonna throw that out there um and it made rasp really difficult but yeah that's the first hard thing i've ever done and i'll tell you when that dude you know look um i wasn't the best runner in basic training i think i scored my 300 like everybody else that was in the 300 club which was probably a small percentage ish you know of my platoon or whatever and you know of all the high pt guys we all went to rip and i think one was in my platoon two were in my company so like from basic training on there was a few of us that went all the way through and we always hung out because it was always us basic training airborne school uh rip but yeah i'd never seen anyone like [ __ ] run like that you know what i mean like you think of running you join the army and it's like well you're running to be fit because you got to have a certain amount of cardio but the army never kind of ran fast or hard and the two miles is like man you know the two mile run uh back then being a young guy wasn't that bad but it sucked but it wasn't that bad and i think uh you know the first day that that dude i remember his name and he was in my squadron in the unit he used to freak me out because i'd hear his voice like what the [ __ ] and then he and he was he was a he had a deep voice and he was a southern guy and he'd be like we're going out for a run boys and like he took off and held a five minute mile for i don't even know how long cause i couldn't keep up you know what i mean oh man that's great okay and and then and then when i got to my squadron i got to my in i'm in my team room and i hear from down the hall let's go get the let's go back to the range boys and i'm like what the [ __ ] i peek out in the hallway i'm like what the [ __ ] did he remember you [ __ ] no no no [ __ ] no uh he he absolutely didn't remember me but like like i was scared of that guy because that was the guy when you were in trouble or [ __ ] was bad they're like go get so and so and that dude used to just crush us every [ __ ] day every day like he was the punishment guys and then he turned out to be in my spotter later oh jesus i used to kind of freak it freaked me out for a while and then uh you know and just working next to him next door to him all the time like you know i'd go over his house for dinner and that but at first it freaked me the [ __ ] out did you tell him that [ __ ] yeah i told him that i love it i and i think like in the unit everyone's on a first name basis and i think the first time he walked in my team room i like jumped the parade rest i'm like uh roger that's sort of it he's like what the [ __ ] you talking about you know what and i think he said to my boss look at my boss he's like what the [ __ ] up with your new guy right oh that's great all right so for that first year that you're in just before we get to your that that jump with iraq um did you feel like you had made the right choice as you're in that first year there going through the training like this is the right place for me this is where i'm supposed to be [ __ ] i have no idea um i don't know if it was the right face for me or not i have no idea in that aspect but i did know this i had nowhere else to go i wasn't going back why is that why do you say that you're kidding me south chicago i can [ __ ] that i ain't going back i had i haven't been at fort benning enough to know there's a big world out there i ain't going back to [ __ ] [ __ ] you know what i mean so it's like i'm not going back and just like still to this day i've never gone back because i have no desire even when i drive through going to do police departments in the area my brother my brother's always like you're gonna swing by i'm like [ __ ] no i'm not it's a [ __ ] [ __ ] why would i go back it doesn't even make sense there's nothing there right wow um so i think that was more of my motivation then the like this is right for me oh that's super interesting okay great great lead in then so if we go to december of 91 i think you said it was right john is this you guys are are going into desert storm is that what you're saying yeah so we jumped in i still don't know the details because that's just a private ranger battalion you know what i mean but uh we jumped in [ __ ] combat jump or so you think and i'm gonna tell you this the plane was really [ __ ] low um uh so yeah we jumped into some airfield in iraq can you just take me through like what was it like this is your first experience i mean not many people have done a combat jump certainly at that time and then even later on there just aren't many static line jumps right i mean what was going through your head as this 21 22 year old so first off we jumped all the [ __ ] time in range of battalion all the time and it was always a [ __ ] [ __ ] show we barely hit the drop zone most nights look i'm just being honest you know what i mean i love it like look i still do i jumped the 75th anniversary of d-day i static lined it as a [ __ ] 50 year old um and i'll tell you this i was [ __ ] scared but everyone was so positive at jumping and my partner was 77. i figured i could do this too but the reality is is in ranger battalion we had so many [ __ ] bad jumps that [ __ ] dudes up like static lining like this sucks you know what i mean like i don't know how anyone likes this you know what i'm saying yeah so we had jumped so many times and then you know we're loading up at the airfield and they're like [ __ ] throwing grenades around like you know who wants more grenades like you know what i mean like uh i had so you know i was a 203 gunner you know what a [ __ ] 203 vest full of frags ways it's more than any one person should wear like um like it you know it was crazy right so anyway um with ton you know everyone had to carry two more rounds so you got two more rounds and then as a pride all kinds of [ __ ] ammo and [ __ ] on me which made me really heavy you know and we flew from savannah in flight rig to jump in come on what's that flight time how long is it i don't know [ __ ] day you know what i mean i wouldn't even use hours for this i'd be like we'll be there tomorrow or sometime all rigged up well you rig up like an hour out you start rigging up geez oh man you're packed on the airplane you know and then well you know you got to wear your those days there's lbe right you've got to wear your load-bearing equipment like no one has that these days and then you know so we get on the airplane we fly in flight rig no big deal just like every other time except for everything's heavy um [ __ ] doors open uh who was it [ __ ] colonel grange was on my bird david l grange and uh so he uh [ __ ] jump master gives the wins and it's like you know when and the guy's like and you're like well that wasn't like one or two fingers you know what i mean like the guy was flashing some [ __ ] right well wind speed is that wind speed jump okay 30 knots so he did 10 three times but he did it really fast and grange comes up talks to him we raise track and then finally grange is talking to him after a couple race tracks you know and then the guy's like when zero then you're like i've been lied to before you know what i mean like just tell me you're gonna lie to me i'll accept it better like uh yeah so 30 knot wins man i went out my parachute open but i stayed parallel to the ground the whole time i lowered my [ __ ] uh my backpack hung up i didn't even make the airfield like i landed in a blown-up building that was rubble and rebar my backpack caught the rubble rebar right which kind of made a pendulum and slammed me into the more rebar i had a [ __ ] i broke the front bone in my leg or one of the bones in my leg is a compound fracture i had to [ __ ] patch myself up like and then oh and then when i got out of the rubble pile i was in a minefield and i had to cross the minefield luckily you could see him and across the minefield jump offense to get to the first aid point hold on john did you you literally had a compound fracture yeah i put the bone back in my leg and tied it all up myself oh my god oh man all right when i landed in the rebar i was like i was [ __ ] up it took me a minute like i was groggy you know what i mean i'm like okay ooh post landing check left arm fingers arm okay right arm right and then i'm like oh man my left leg hurts so i look at it and it's like twice a big around but it's all sand and the sand was just sticking to the blood so i kind of washed it with my canteen i seen it kind of pushed the bone back in there and then i did two old-school pressure dressings myself next to each other to stop the bleeding and i tied it tight enough so i could walk damn all right so it's making more sense i think one of the things that i read about in online was you describing how much you hate missing drop zones and how you you like make such a concerted effort to make sure guys are gonna hit the drop zones in the future maybe it comes from this [ __ ] it does man like seriously right like we could all hit the drop zone if you drop us in the right [ __ ] place but if you start late someone's going in the trees like can't we just do this [ __ ] right like and then the army it's a simple they got them the army's got a check checklist like it's not even it's like maybe third grade math you know i'm not so good at the math but the math ain't that hard i'll do the math i'll tell you where we get out it's not hard god all right so i mean after you patch yourself up what uh was this sorry was this a night jump and what's a normal wind speed like what what is your usual never to exceed on wind speed for a static line i can't remember from this for the army it's what 13 knots so it's like almost triple what you should right for real and it was day or night the jump ah day okay all right so you're you're down there you treat yourself you go through a minefield yeah what happens next like were you guys into you landed in a secured area what what was happening yeah uh so i guess we were gonna take i don't know i don't know what the whole deal was right but essentially we took an airfield and we're supposed to go move on some iraqi dudes with missiles or something i don't know uh i i really i'm kind of vague of the details because i don't know i was just happy to get like grenades and [ __ ] so uh i could have cared less um but i get to the i get to my company link up and i'm one of the first guys there and as i'm walking to the to where i'm supposed to link up with my company there's literally dudes strung out everywhere on the ground still in parachutes getting drug getting you know i seen guys drug like like you know a magazine i mean this is my phone but a magazine ground in half where all the bullets are still in and everything like like it's just ground in half magazines backpacks like helmets helmets ground on the back so like the head didn't touch the pavement but it was a hole like that big from the wind man so i make link up i'm one of the first guys there and and i told my first start my first time was this guy named ivan and ivan was a little mexican guy and he was cool as [ __ ] has a paper card i think i'm [ __ ] up and he's like oh god damn it man let me see so i had the two pressure dressings like damn it man you should talk to the medic doc so this e6 my company medic comes over and like he's a total dick he's never liked that wow yeah total dick right so he's like he throws me some scissors cut it off let's look so i cut it off who did the bandages i was like uh i did so i could walk here he's like that's pretty good he's like uh compound fracture here's some more bandages put put the same thing back on and walked up i'm like what this is how we [ __ ] do it here like i gotta do it myself again so uh i re-bandaged it what i didn't know is like i think on the out of a battalion i don't know how many we had back then but out of a battalion i think there was like 70 something backboards hauled dudes off okay and then the guys that weren't screwed up like raped me for my [ __ ] like rucksack straps right got burned off he takes mine so here i am having a limp around everywhere and these guys just raped me for my equipment so now i got equipment i can't even care why are they taking your gear because they lost theirs in the jump well cause they got drug or their [ __ ] broke or you know their ammo is no good because they ground all the tips off and the gunpowder came out on the on the face down on the tarmac you know what i mean like just just weird [ __ ] so uh yeah they raped me for my gear man and little did they know is the mission whatever it was got scrubbed and they had to walk like 40 miles for no reason just to shoot all the ammo they didn't have anyway so i didn't miss anything wow but at the time like i thought i was gonna mess up was there any fighting that went on for that unit after that that initial foray into iraq on no nothing i'm aware i don't know maybe damn oh that's fascinating all right so so you jumped in there you come back home um when is between then and 95 then do you have any other deployments that you go on with the rangers or no oh man yeah we went all kinds of places but like no combats training deployments [ __ ] jungle school you name it and then what was the decision to go to a group and um after so many [ __ ] up static line jumps i was like look i don't know if i can do this for 20 years i mean i can't tell you how many of my buddies got [ __ ] up and then they're just done like you break a knee you you [ __ ] [ __ ] up a shoulder you're just done you know what i mean i mean think about how many guys we [ __ ] broke for no reason you know it's just it's unnecessary but um yeah i just knew i couldn't do it you know so i figured i'd try something else and then i didn't know [ __ ] about the unit like there wasn't [ __ ] 1991 in the army no one knew no one knew about it yeah no one right and then a guy would make it like there's there was other selections guys went to but you'll never [ __ ] see him again so how you how you know what happened so when you went to there's no cell phones there's no internet there's no anything right just people talking to people when you went to uh group them was it for you was it going straight to the unit or it was truly like you were just going into the green beret route and then you found your way to the unit yeah so uh i was just going to do the green beret thing and then the q course was kind of lame uh there were some fun parts but it was kind of lame anyone who tells you it's challenging stupid um and uh yeah seriously like lame it doesn't give you any special skill or make you smarter at any [ __ ] thing you just do a lot of stupid [ __ ] you gotta pass um and then i was in group for like 10 months to the day when i left what happened like yeah well one when i was in group like we didn't do [ __ ] [ __ ] bill clinton army we didn't have no um you know we were a rucksack team you know we did we road marched you know what everyone else did they rode march because they didn't have ammo or nothing either so like i was like dude we did more [ __ ] than this in ranger battalion like i'll just go back like [ __ ] this place and then um the northern virginia guy came and was like you know hey you know we we went through your packet we're trying to recruit you or true crew guys like you i'm like okay and like the guys i'm like okay well what what kind of jobs do you guys do and the guy's like you'll have great job satisfaction i was like i could have great job satisfaction working in a break stamping plant but i don't do that like so what does that mean and like the guy couldn't give me an answer so a buddy of mine he had already been to unit selection he was like hey man let's let's both go i was like okay i'm in right and then um i passed and he didn't but um i just kind of went like [ __ ] it like this sucks you know what i mean got to be something better out there yeah god it's funny the different times i've talked to folks who are in the unit and the way that somebody comes and pitches them on it it's such like an obscure no information and like what am i even signing up for you have no idea but it sounds cool so i'll try it you know well you know the unit gives you a better explanation of what you'll be doing than you know northern virginia life's about expectation management i i guess um when you when you went to selection you know i've heard folks talk about the long walk how difficult it was obviously the q course wasn't that tough as you're saying um how hard was that selection for you john like do you remember just being grueling um yeah like on the verge of quitting how was that for you without getting into anything you know too sensitive i gotta be honest i thought it was [ __ ] great man it was like no one [ __ ] with me everyone left me alone all i gotta do is go from this point to that point and then like no one talks to me then either like this is my [ __ ] jam where's this [ __ ] been my [ __ ] whole time you know what i mean no stupid [ __ ] hey you get done walking if you wanna go to sleep go to sleep till they [ __ ] wake you up until you gotta walk again like like literally like this is like the best thing i've ever done you know all it is is land nav don't walk too far right don't walk too short and [ __ ] try to go in that direction like it ain't rocket science so i loved it there was a couple times where like i believe it was like the first big hill i encountered uh and on the i think it's on the initial road march and uh like i convinced myself into quitting growing my hair out doing drugs becoming a low life and then i made it to the top of the hill and i was like well i'm already here [ __ ] it keep going damn but uh yeah there was only like maybe one or two times where i'm like this [ __ ] sucks and the rest of the time man i thought it was great like no one [ __ ] with me uh i could sleep i could wake up like this is truly like me and my element so um i didn't think it was hard i didn't think it was i didn't think it was easy you know what i mean but uh i definitely didn't think it was hard or grueling or or too much to do you know like i gotta be honest you know you're walking around with like five map sheets in your pocket and like the guy will be like where are you going where are you going where where are you going where are you going too and you'll be like okay map one i'm over here map oh yeah end up there there the guy who'll give you a map point you're just opening maps like that point is not on this map okay that point is not on this map right oh i'm three map sheets over today okay all right [ __ ] and so i read something um online about an interview that you did john and it was really about like i think this positive laugh laugh your issues away kind of a mentality that you had i just want to see if i can find it again um yeah i'm extremely positive or trying to be yeah so and and i can tell yeah so here it is i learned the hard way i can be an [ __ ] today or i can smile and try to enjoy life i choose to smile enjoy life and ever since then my life has been amazing every day this is how you start enjoying life right so yeah like did you have that at that time like you just you just seemed so like positive about hey it's great i was just out here walking around in the woods nobody's bothering me like did you have that back then or did you develop this later from all the hellholes you've been in i think i started with this and from all the [ __ ] over the years i became burn out i became an [ __ ] when i was a sergeant major i was a [ __ ] [ __ ] uh and if anyone ever is like well that guy was an [ __ ] he's probably right and you know it's like uh i don't know i just got burned out and i lost kind of who i was and then i think when you when you deal in negativity every day of your life you'll start to think negatively and that doesn't help you at all you know what i mean and i think human nature is you know the way your memory works is stove hot stove burn hand don't touch stove that's negative reinforcement so i think it's the way stuff really works and it was later in my career like there was a few years where i was just a [ __ ] [ __ ] to everybody like as a sergeant major someone walk in my business i'd be like state your business too slow get the [ __ ] out come back when you know what the [ __ ] you want and you know and then i was just i was miserable all the time having miserable days and then i realized like look i could do this or i could try to at least have some fun it sucks for everybody so let's have fun and that's when i realized kind of who i was again man if so i don't want to jump too far ahead but i i don't want to lose sight of what you just mentioned like why do you think that you were like that i mean certainly the deployments i know that doing 10 to 15 hits a night in some cases and the places you've been could probably make anybody like that do you feel like that's how you had to be to become a sergeant major or that was someone else you were emulating that you saw did that as a sergeant major like what what made you like that at the time john i think i was just burned out you know once you step on you know it's great to be in the unit it's great on your resume but once you step on the train you ain't [ __ ] getting off you don't get any time off there's no days off you know what i mean guys are lucky when they finally get to a point where they go to training or they go somewhere else and they're not deploying over time but the guys that go to these places are like oh man you know [ __ ] not going to kill anybody if you just train guys on brag but the truth is is like the army's really good at bringing you in the army is really good getting you trained up and if you're smart and professional you can achieve a lot just on you um and then having said that what there isn't is a place for good guys to go [ __ ] decompress and then and then you wonder why you know and then [ __ ] people wonder why duis have gone up they wonder why domestic violence goes up they wonder why well you know your buddies [ __ ] die you've seen plenty of people die that you didn't give a [ __ ] about them but that's there's still a lot of people dying when you add it all up right and then you see all this [ __ ] but you [ __ ] something up and it's [ __ ] you and the truth is there's nowhere like hey you know after two or three years we now consider you a mid-level guy we want to send you to this mid-level course you know what i mean like what do you do i don't know but decompress go go have some family time whatever the [ __ ] you want to do right like uh so there's no cycle in human beings and i know [ __ ] the soft imperatives say people are [ __ ] more important than hardware but yet we'll break a dozen [ __ ] for no reason tonight we'll we'll burn out everyone everyone that's been through the system you know what i mean now [ __ ] generals in socom and [ __ ] od'd on the job with [ __ ] narcs because they're [ __ ] up so i think you know having said all that this is why i'm like you know what [ __ ] this i'm gonna be positive you know what i mean like the army and the va way is keep you full of drugs and shut the [ __ ] up but the reality is is you could have a good time you could do a lot of other things to control your life again and have fun and i think people miss that and i think for all the reasons i said i ended up being miserable like everyone else damn because if i'm doing the math right like we're talking 15 years right at the unit is that right john like 96 i think you get out yeah 96 yeah to 2011 if i'm getting that right i left earlier than that because i had to be a sergeant major i did other jobs okay yeah that's a long time yeah so i did about what eight nine years in the unit total god all right so let's jump into that then that's interesting context to start with so you're done with selection you roll in you hear the voice of this guy who tormented you when you were at rip right yeah yeah um when do you pick up shrek as as your nickname i was uh i had already been i was kind of like a senior guy just waiting to be like uh the next two i see or something um and uh that's kind of when i got it and are you able to share how you got it like oftentimes with navy pilots they'll share their call sign but yeah no it was kind of simple i mean we were somewhere we had to move some like really big heavy object and like guys are like hey we're gonna go get equipment or something and me and another guy was like all right we'll wait here and then while we were waiting i'm like [ __ ] this i can move this and i moved it and the other guy with he's just laughing that i'm pushing this thing he's like because uh guys always used to say i had [ __ ] strength um so he's like you and that [ __ ] strength and uh he's like you're like a [ __ ] ogre and he's laughing and he's like you're like [ __ ] shrek and then when everyone came back he's like hey check it out [ __ ] shrek the ogre move the [ __ ] [ __ ] right and then and then just stop that's great okay does everybody in the unit get one like some type of nickname or pretty much i mean it's good you know like look not everyone gets a good nickname but i would say this is uh like you know if your name is your last name is smith you're probably getting smitty yeah it's the easiest [ __ ] thing right uh if your last name is jones you're probably jonesy right like there's some there's names out there that like you know you're gonna get a variation of your real name right like so and then there's other guys that get crazy [ __ ] god all right so i would like to jump now into the first time you go into combat with with the unit you know as much as you can say i know there's time in bosnia that's out there and then there's post 911. could you just take us through like that first time you're geared up and you're going into a mission with the unit like what are you feeling as much as you can say about where you're at what was that one like for you um yeah i think for me my first like combat real combat experience was tora bora the battle of tarboro and um yeah it's kind of weird like getting there going to afghanistan riding in trucks and planes and [ __ ] helicopters and driving all that [ __ ] is [ __ ] we do all the time right so really for me i think you know being in afghanistan um was a kind of eye-opener but you know we really kind of landed went right to tora bora with kind of no time no days no nothing off um and uh you know we drove we drove up on the top of the mountains one day looking for the fight we just drove to the noise and bombs uh we had already dropped uh what is it a 20 000 pound bomb and watched this huge mushroom cloud you know what i mean and then when i got up there later is like is all white powder like gravel and made this huge crater but um when we drove up we first get there we get out of the trucks and they're the mujah dean or whoever the [ __ ] those guys are i think they're good guys but i don't know i can't tell and they prove themselves not to be so good later but whatever they got like tanks and we drive underneath tanks that are shooting into the mountains and [ __ ] and we get to the top of the hill and i get out of my truck and i my truck was the red one uh you've seen a lot of trucks with a red toyota that started out as mine before we gave it to the seals and then um so uh i'm in the red truck i get out and me and another guy in the unit who was uh uh kurt muse panama guy right he was on the prison raid and he did the he dumped a just a predator pack of [ __ ] saw ammo into the barracks and no one came out of the barracks and there's plenty of people in there um so you know dude bombs are going off there's dust you could bury you couldn't even see that fire there's smoke there's dust there's [ __ ] and there's explosions everywhere you know what i mean and i'm just on the top of the hill and i asked him i was like yo man is this incoming or outgoing and he looked at me he's like i don't [ __ ] know and i'm like this is awesome so i just stood there for a while right little do i know we were actually getting mortared and the commander uh dalton fury and those guys uh are with the commander and the commander's like your men are brave weathering the mortar barrage like any [ __ ] no i don't know what a border barrage is uh so and then about 10 years later that guy was like hey remember that day we were on the top of that hill and like yeah that was awesome wasn't it he was like he's like dude i knew we were getting shot at but the smile on your face like i couldn't tell you like we needed to get the [ __ ] out of there i'm like what i was like hey i thought you were more experienced if you would have said we needed to leave i'd have been like let's leave right he was like he's like i was like you could have used your [ __ ] words and told me like i didn't know i was trying to figure it out and you told me you didn't know so how dangerous could this be right so um i kind of knew right then like i realized chaos is my jam and i know i say that all the time but like i love chaos when no one knows what the [ __ ] is going on i'll do just fine thank you all right john tell me like what dig into that one for me that's super interesting to hear like what what uh makes you so comfortable in that was it all the training was it something about growing up where you did like what was it that made you so good at that yeah or sorry john i'm gonna interrupt if because you're a humble guy if somebody else who had fought with you was asked this question how might they answer it about you [ __ ] i don't know i'd say i was [ __ ] nuts they say i'm an aggressive psychopath that has no no no uh regards for my own life um i don't i think that's what someone will say about me but i don't know i think they'd say i was an [ __ ] but i was really technically and tactically proficient at everything i do yeah but the chaos but don't forget i'm an [ __ ] too right kim it's hard to see it's hard to see that you would be that [ __ ] but i guess so hey hey it's hard to see that you are becoming that [ __ ] it's hard to see that you're no longer the funny guy anymore it's hard to see that you're bitter it's hard to see that you're jaded like so it is hard to see but on more levels than what you're talking about god so when you're in uh tora bora can you talk through like maybe the first time you're going on um you're in contact beyond kind of what you describe as almost like looking out on a mountain at at a battlefield like the first time you're closing in with somebody what was that one like for you oh it's a [ __ ] [ __ ] show man everything we did was a complete [ __ ] [ __ ] show uh we did all kinds of stuff in the battle of tora bora we took sniper shots with a [ __ ] you know i had a 50 cal mcmillan we shot some machine gun nest in like 2500 meters and all these guys claiming these [ __ ] kills and [ __ ] it's like it's like we aimed at the [ __ ] sun the [ __ ] 10 power scope doesn't have enough travel to [ __ ] for 50 cal drop shooting mountain a mountain so essentially it ends up like just aim at the [ __ ] sun pow looks like a hit keep [ __ ] shooting there so so it's like i hear all these sniper kills [ __ ] and it's just like complete [ __ ] [ __ ] show and i know the equipment that they're using in that so these guys talk about how great all this [ __ ] [ __ ] was it's like uh your memory eludes you from the entire [ __ ] show that happened before that right so i would say it was entire [ __ ] show we got [ __ ] rpg and [ __ ] 50 cal machine guns shooting at us from the other mountain we had to bomb them because we can't get there like you're not getting there from here right and why would you right so um we had everything we did was just making it happen the best we could right now there's some stuff we were incredibly careful with you never give your location to a [ __ ] airplane ever never right so you know i i i say this all the time there's a few things where do not do that you'll probably survive you you don't do one of those do not do's like it's not you john can you hit some of those like i know why you want to do that but i think there might be people listening who don't like why would you not give your position to it because yeah yeah go ahead yeah because this there's some guy some kid kid now to me some kid is flying a plane to drop the bomb he's got to plug in a gps coordinate we got to give him that gps coordinate over the radio and if you give him your gps coordinate he could type that in and that's where these [ __ ] bombs are coming you know what i mean i'll tell you another thing that was a [ __ ] show the soft lamb we had to bring this soft lamb and it's this big almost as big as a [ __ ] rifle or bigger fatter thicker and it uses like [ __ ] dozens of 55 90 the big q batteries right so the soft lamb it's a laser and it's for laser guided bombs and we had we had to [ __ ] bring this right and it's like okay is the laser directional how the [ __ ] does the plane does the bomb know what end of the laser that it's going to come to a laser is a laser in my opinion so what end is this going to come to and then you know it's like no it'll go to where we're pointing well how does it know which way we're pointing air force guys i was like look check this out i'm about to we've already written everything off as a combat loss because combat already happened right i was like i'll throw this [ __ ] thing down the mountain so we ain't got to pay for it or carry it ever again but you know how how do you how does the laser guided bomb know which way the lasers point what if it comes in the middle right like so so never [ __ ] use lasers either right like um you know don't run across a ridge while they're shooting machine guns like wait till they reload you know i mean we got rocks just hide for a little bit you know what i mean like watch out for rpgs you know what i mean if the if the specter gunship is circling you right don't let him assume that those thermal bodies laying by the tree are bad guys right so there's there's a lot of do not do and maybe common knowledge even though like most people wouldn't have that common knowledge you know but if you don't do one of those you're probably look the only way the enemy has killed more americans than anything else is a simple reason of ego on the soldier's part we fought a hardened enemy so the enemy's easy you know you can stand in front of those guys as almost as much as you want you're probably not gonna die you [ __ ] some other [ __ ] but [ __ ] up this is gonna be a lot worse for you yeah and even the like just that idea of not giving away your own position i think some people might say like oh that's odd um like of course you wouldn't give up your own position but i mean that's part of a nine line is like here's where the friendly troops are here's where the target is so that an aircraft could line up and make sure they don't shoot you but i it sounds like you have like a very healthy skepticism maybe that you've had for a long time right but you had you say that but i think a lot of people don't they're like this we got this trained super skilled pilot up there but hell we had like 19 year olds in apaches flying around 19 year olds you know like they're they're just trying to do their best thing in the aircraft and it's there's a lot going on it makes sense why you say that but i think other people might not realize that oftentimes you're getting a ground position right gps yeah it's interesting all right so within the unit i was going to ask um almost the way you described your first jump into iraq with the rangers i think people who are outside these organizations might be like those things are wired so tight everything's smooth they never mess up right and then you kind of describe scattered across the drop zone right and then now like you're talking about you're in the unit you're the forward line of troops basically in this fight the most important fight we've had to that time and and all of a sudden it's like what's going on why are we using this equipment um for you like why i would look at it and think the unit is ready to go into this fight no problem was the unit more designed to do direct hits with like a more structured like like the curtain use raid right that you described very clear mission in and out this is more of like an open battlefield was that just not what they were used to uh yeah i wouldn't say not what they're used to i would say not what um not what the unit really trains for these big raids that that they do right like you know those are super easy to pull off the objective here mission success is very defined right we fly in we land kill bad guys if necessary capture good guy if necessary bring good guy back mission success right the unit does that the unit will do that really well and the unit planning process is great but though the reason the unit is a lot better than that in most stuff is because we don't need the planning process because we do this all the time we're sending 33 year old guys out there where the average age amongst everybody's 22. you know what i mean we're sending a guy out there that has [ __ ] dozens of years of experience you know rip uh q course sfas unit selection this guy's been selected he's been tested he's you know so we're sending our best out there and everyone else is just everyone else right so i think this is where the unit does really well the unit also does really well in these chaotic situations where we don't know what mission success is here go make it happen right so the unit will give you problem sets that there is not an answer to and that's what the unit does best so all those planned raids like while the unit's probably operating at 30 percent of their capacity for these plan raids that you hear and read about you think the unit does the ranges are probably like 80 90 they're maxed out just to pull that off the seals are probably sixty percent maxed out to pull that off the internet even close to being maxed out so these chaotic situations i believe is really where the unit shines over everything else when you got time to plan and organize you should be able to pull off your own plan yeah when you don't have plan when you don't have time to plan and organize how do you win and that that makes total sense and i would i would say as i was reading some of the interviews you've done there are times where you're describing like a singleton operation right like you it sounds like and i just wanted to check here like you were going out on hundreds hundreds can you just talk about that john like what why would you not go out in a team especially in those environments and could you just talk through one as much as you're able to say well when you're in denied areas you're not getting [ __ ] five super fit buff [ __ ] dressed up [ __ ] anyway like you know it doesn't make sense right so but just one person can blend in a lot easier and no one expects that one person to be the super commando who's you know passing through or gaining intelligence or whatever right so um you know i think i'm either the only or one of the only guys to ever go out alone and pull off a successful raid in afghanistan you know um and what i learned going on these solo missions was a hundred fold every day i was on my own compared to doing the helicopter raid with 30 guys 50 whatever right like you don't learn [ __ ] that way you want us you want to learn how to solve problems [ __ ] be alone have no support and try to stay alive god and i mean we're talk just for context from what i read like we're talking about in a war zone you're you're kind of like here's your weapon dress up like somebody else and get on out there we need someone to go get eyes on this target good luck yeah i'd hitchhike i'd get rides i'd ride in trucks i'd stay in strangers houses i do the muslim right of if i'm here you gotta feed me and protect me did you have the language capability john i just never said [ __ ] ever never make a noise and the times i was forced to speak i'd do like this over loud [ __ ] voice so they thought i was retired we're like i'm telling but you're serious aren't you like to act like you were like you had a problem right yeah i did it all the time yeah because in iraq and afghanistan in these war zones you know you're you're you know mentally challenged uncle you know well here in the united states he's in a hospital but in afghanistan what are you going to do with him you know you keep him chained to the corner of the compound so he doesn't go too far and i'm not joking right so yeah um there is a lot of mentally challenged folks in afghanistan in iraq and i'd say this their disease rates their mentally their handicap rates all their [ __ ] is way higher than us so there's even more of them per capita i think um so you know you want to um you know look everybody knows you know and and maybe this is unpolitically correct but you don't mess with the [ __ ] they know he's super strong and who knows where the [ __ ] he's going so well you know checkpoints a guy with ak barrel to my chest and i'd give him the old mama and like the guy'd be like what the [ __ ] get the [ __ ] out of here go damn and you didn't look like an american i mean you just had the beard and i used to have a big red beard so i kind of blended in pretty well i mean i i mean look at me uh i could blend in now also but blending in is part clothing part attitude part look you know what i mean so there's a lot more you know and oh by the way in afghanistan and iraq because of you know um you know uh what is a colonial whatever the brits ran you know afghanistan for 200 years and then the russians had it so if you think there's guys that don't look like me there you're crazy because there's been guys like me there having babies for generations right so that's the same in iraq i i gotta say i would never put myself in that type of league by any means but certainly going from the u.s military where you're typically around a bunch of people to the cia where you're out on your own running and up like it's a totally different environment when you're solo just out on your own like it often no comms right and it sounds like you may not have had comps when you were rolling around depending on what you were doing like you are dependent on yourself and no one else it's a different level of stress i think at those times yeah i agree and then in uh by the time baghdad came around i just had hundreds of solo missions driving around in my little taxi most of the time i tell people i was a cab driver in baghdad which i was but would you pick anyone up and drive them oh yeah all the time this is great yeah all the time i picked a lot of people up i picked a lot of people up for your guys because i could go out alone where your protocols would you know you know after the pickup and drop off a guy would end up dead getting in a taxi somewhere near one of the big circles all right so i'd like to to hear one of the more difficult missions you found yourself on john and like you could choose one of the singletons maybe it's something else that happens on a raid but maybe one that you look back and you're like i can't even believe i got out of that one alive that was crazy if you could just take us through it as much as you can share the craziest [ __ ] i've done was never the mission i'll take my chances with the bad guys and they're only so well trained so that stuff kind of never worried me it was always the uh coming back into friendly lines with a big beard and a taxi you know what i mean yeah um i got shot at a lot coming at checkpoints so all my craziest hairy [ __ ] is always checkpoints with joe and the truth is i never blame joe because joe gets blown up all day like it's his job sit here until you get blown up okay i'll be here every day boss right like so you can't blame him for this taxi coming up to the checkpoint when taxis aren't supposed to do that right so um yeah checkpoints were always the worst ones i i think one of the hairiest nights was we were out in western iraq we snatched some guys in a place where no one ever goes and then have the task force won't come pick us up not a cloud in the sky whether we can't come get you just left us so um you know i was i was a troop sergeant then so my whole troop is [ __ ] stranded in bad guy land that no one ever goes to in that sector and then we walked all night with [ __ ] [ __ ] uh we came to this marine corps base and uh i had my snipers leading the way and i was like hey when we get to this grid you tell me so he comes back he's like we're at that grid and i'm like okay there's a marine corps base here somewhere and i'm like looking and i'm like constantino wire let's go over there and then uh is this like 200 yard walled off fenced off to a machine gun nest you know 20 feet above the ground you know there's the entrance to this marine corps base so i told one of my guys i was like hey leave your body armor off take your gun off take your helmet off raise your [ __ ] hands and say as much [ __ ] in american with [ __ ] slang as you can and he was like like this is how you do this i'm like this is how we do this you know so i'm like hey don't [ __ ] shoot me [ __ ] like uh so we do that all the way up to the bottom of the shingle nest it's just some [ __ ] private marine that wanted to shoot us up because no one's supposed to come down that road and uh so i was like look it's almost sunup you know and i'm like look i got like i don't know 50 40 50 guys uh i was like you know can we come in he's like well no we got to talk to the officer on on duty and then my sergeant of the guards got to talk to the officer on duty and it's like okay okay i get it right i totally get it right i was like but hey let my guys at least sit at the base of the tower here until you let us in if you don't let us in if they say we can't come in we'll go somewhere else right but at least let us wait under the machine gun he was like yeah that's fine so like we waited you know it's like 15 feet up or something 10 15 feet up the big machine gun nest you know uh so we just sat at the base of machine gun until they let us in but it was always crossing back into american lines that worried me i don't give a [ __ ] about savages you know look when i was out alone you know i'd be like huh there's eight people in this house i will kill everybody take the vehicle and i will be out of here and it's not a thing uh don't you know joe like how do you blame joe his job yeah you can only imagine and and i i'm guessing john like you guys don't look like americans at the time like when you're coming yeah yeah right yeah yeah we didn't even wear uniforms like i see all these guys in uniform pictures these days and i'm like who the [ __ ] had uniforms like that we just wore whatever [ __ ] khaki pants most of the time you know what i mean so yeah and then i wore a lot of local clothes too so i'm dressed like a local in a in an orange taxi in [ __ ] baghdad trying to come in a checkpoint a bag and an ak probably right like it's not like you're packing an m4 no yeah i'd pack an ak for sure geez and i'd have to i'd have to i'd have to park early walk up with my hands up show my id to somebody and you know i was e8 at the time and they'd be like dang top what are you doing out here like look i'm gonna be coming through here a lot just don't shoot me up man like you know what do i gotta do to not get shot coming here right damn and then one of the other things i read that i thought was really interesting was how you talk about downtime and like the need for mental downtime and a break coming out of like you describe 10 to 15 or 20 hits a night in some cases and how you decompress um like how did you do that for yourself and how did you make sure the soldiers were doing it when you were in charge well first off [ __ ] no one's doing what they need you're doing what you can which probably ain't enough um but yeah you know look you'd have i'd i would have to become incredibly regular um in my schedule i would wake up right before dinner i do an hour of cardio i work out i do my weights i go eat dinner we do planning right um you know so i think regularity and schedule helps you know what i mean um i think uh i think sleep helps right like you gotta get sleep sometimes it's hard to wind down right like uh but you gotta get sleep you gotta force yourself to sleep whatever you know you need to look at sleeping like you look at cutting the grass if you don't cut the grass it ain't gonna [ __ ] happen to start pushing the lawn more you need to take that same seriousness with sleep of if i don't force myself to sleep i'm not getting any again right like how long can you go without good decisions so uh i would say you know regularity is a big thing i'd also think you know decompressing having fun getting your mind off of [ __ ] you know a lot of guys play video games i never did that i used to have uh there's pictures of me i used to play this little solitaire game like yep um you know so there's a lot of little things you could do to just kind of you know do stuff you enjoy um to just try to get your mind off of [ __ ] and and then i'll tell you this is drinking helps um however drinking can become a hall pass if you drink too much can you describe that because i was going to ask i read about that i think it's a really important point yeah so why you call it a hall pass yeah uh yeah i had to do this i had a yeah i had to do this before before i was positive when i was an [ __ ] i had to figure this out for myself and here's why i called the hall past you have some type of issues or whatever right a buddy dies he gets killed in combat or you just see some gruesome [ __ ] [ __ ] i don't know right whatever whatever whatever pushes you to your limit of humanity right so then you you know you're like you're trying to unwind so you have a couple drinks but then tomorrow you do the same thing and the next day you do a thing and then before you know it you know you're you got this ptsd or pt whatever you want to call it you're traumatized call it whatever you want i don't care um but what has to happen is you have to understand how you got the feeling that way to begin with and the problem is is you know with a lot of alcohol or any abusing any substance i would imagine but i'll speak to alcohol um here you are three five years later trying to unfuck why you feel the way you do when that happened three or five years later right so it's a hall pass you're you're eventually gonna have to go back to class but you can be out here right now right so the truth is if you if you understood it was a hall pass you would do the things as a person to not get there in the first place and i'll tell you like when i had uh guys shoot guys the first thing i would tell a guy is man [ __ ] good job you did everything you were supposed to do right because if that's the first thing you hear you're more than likely going to be okay with this later but if if you're under a [ __ ] up leadership and they're like why the [ __ ] you shoot that what the [ __ ] are you doing you're always going to have those questions in your head there's a time for that but it's not now right even if a guy did everything wrong i would still say hey [ __ ] good job it's why we're here you know what i mean like uh i would still try to be as positive i could with them and i and i did that with my guys and i had better success than no one ever saying [ __ ] [ __ ] to you yeah and you talk about something i read was like making sure they get it out instead of having the hall pass and then three years go by and they don't ever talk about it right right and i've heard other folks say it right yeah let it go it's kind of how you described it yeah i so i can i when i was a sergeant major i started judging guys by this like and and i'll i'll give you the test right now if you're willing to play the game oh [ __ ] damn it jon all right let's do it all right all you got to do is think about like [ __ ] up [ __ ] what [ __ ] you up and all you got to do is look at me and say let it go out loud and mean it let it go see how you had to pause yeah you're not [ __ ] ready whatever it is i don't even know what it is but every time a guy paused hey there were some guys some of my buddies i could never get him to say [ __ ] you shut the [ __ ] up like just [ __ ] let it go whatever it is let it go right now just say let it go just say the words and a guy will be like right because he wants to hold on to it but the truth is he's holding onto it ain't helping him and what he doesn't know is you could still hold on to it and you could still let it go you can let it go where it doesn't bother you and you can still have the experience the memory that all of it you know what i mean so it could still be there yeah so yeah i used to and i'm telling you i used to work with guys it took me i worked with a guy he was a ranger first sergeant he got [ __ ] up he was working on the staff and like i think he [ __ ] his head up a little bit he was getting divorced because he's not the same person right his wife's leaving him [ __ ] all the [ __ ] right and then um i'd be like dude just just say let it go right in my office right now and i couldn't get him to say it once for like three or four months but as soon as you say let it go you know what's gonna happen it's the same thing you did you smiled right and that's the power of it and i also say this is like i know this is a little off topic but just bear with me fear is contagious if you've ever run around someone who's scared in a combat environment or whatever where someone's scared it'll trigger everyone else it's contagious makes sense yep why couldn't positivity be contagious as well hey it's gonna be okay don't worry about it we got this why couldn't that be as contagious because it is right and this is the premise of the let it go that's so true it's so true right like yeah and look it's not like i've had any formal training or anything i don't it took a lot of booze to figure this out it took a lot of booze to figure out i should be drinking less booze and letting more [ __ ] go oh god no it's great and i mean in the unit and sorry john we'll wrap up here soon i know you got other stuff to do in your life but at the unit i think you you guys work with psychologists right and i'm not talking about for ptsd but just like you guys are the elite athletes of that world so it's like human performance did they talk to you about this kind of thing yeah kinda you know you try to avoid those guys i mean what you know i mean i think about this like and i'll just i'll just keep it real for a second we murdered people last night what am i going to talk to that guy about today you know what i mean no one wants to talk to him and it's not like some of those guys became great friends of mine like when i was a sergeant major the old unit shrink worked right underneath me i'd go down we'd drink beer at the end of the day like that guy was great but the reality is i never wanted to talk to those guys yeah you know because they're going to find something wrong with me but there's kind of got to be something wrong with me if i'm going to do what you expect me to do so you know most people don't want to talk to him i think just my opinion i try to stay away from him and i try to be uh never too cordial you know because like you're [ __ ] with your buddies like you know you say something you let something slip once in a while you know you don't know what the shrinks right so i think a lot of guys stay away from them even though it could be a great resource for them and so the outlet then becomes one of the other guys in the unit i'm guessing or family maybe but probably more likely somebody who's been through it right right yeah all right well i want to talk about some of the other stuff you're doing now one more question from your fighting days i saw a picture of you receiving an award i think after uh some of the work in bosnia maybe and you have the porn stash and i'm just curious how long did the porn stash last john oh man are you kidding me the 90s was about to park i love the fun with my wife won't let me like my wife is an amazing human being and like she keeps me straight she's got to put up with me but like i got like one rule i need to live by no porn stash that's the red line it's the only red one that's it that's it that's the porn stash is too far is that is that it oh god yes i'll have the picture up so people could see it it's a good one it's a good one i love seeing this it's great yeah yeah man yeah uh yeah uh and then uh if you watch the nat geo history of the 2000s so normally i have a beard and i don't know i kind of didn't trust nat geo or i didn't know how they were going to tell the story you know what i mean i didn't know about my identity so i put on a trucker hat big kind of mirror sunglasses and normally i was i had a bigger beard back then but uh normally i so i just shaved the goatee into the porn stash just so at a glance you're looking for a guy with a porn stash when really i have a beard right and so i talked my wife into it and she's like as soon as it's over you shave and i'm like yeah no problem like literally we got back to the hotel she's like it's now and i'm like i just got back she's like i said it soon get rid of it okay but um yeah i kind of shaved my beard into a porn stash right so i love it i i personally love the porn stash um but i gotta be honest i'd rather just do one length for my chin and head so all so the the frugal guy in me says [ __ ] i don't need anything fancy but the reality is a good porn stash can get you a lot of places i'm not going to say it's going to help you get laid because i don't think that's true at all but it gives you a lot of places other than that i i did interview dale comstock who i think was on the curtain use raid former delta guy and he has that today and there were a lot of comments on youtube about that stash very positive very positive comments so yeah yeah yeah all right but i don't think it ever had for the record i don't think it ever helped me get lit got it um john can we talk just a bit about uh sob tactical actually the the name the sheriff of baghdad right like maybe where did that come from and then what what did it become with sob tactical yeah man so uh when i was uh before i retired i was a sergeant major i worked on the j staff and um there was a guy he was a retired sergeant major out of the 82nd i think he was like the number two number three star major in the whole division when he retired he went to work for the state department and he ran the crisis action center for the state department in baghdad during the war do you know what an embassy crisis center does during a war nothing what's that nothing there's a war going on they don't do [ __ ] like every day is a crisis right so literally he he made some big [ __ ] money and then finally his wife told him like hey no more deployments like i'm i'm done you're retired like find a job here we don't need the money right so he had to come home well he worked for the state department he made these t-shirts i could probably go get one out of my closet but uh on the front it had the state department kind of emblem embassy baghdad and on the back it said real big letter sheriff and underneath it said a baghdad and under that smaller letters it said serving strategic policy one one citizen at a time [Music] so so the writing was yellow and the shirt was either brown or uh like evergreen color i don't know whatever color it is so um he was like one day comes in my office and that guy's a riot man he's the only person i ever thumbed up as a sergeant major that we hire because like his his that guy's a riot man he just gets me rolling right so and and for the record i thumbed down my own wife by the way during the recruitment process the hiring process yeah i never thumbed up anybody but this guy wow yeah matter of fact when i thumbed them up my commander and everyone was like you thumb this guy up you've never thumbed up anybody and i'm like yeah this guy's money he's gonna fit in here i know but uh so anyway he gave me these t-shirts he's like hey he came in my office when they started major what size are you and i'm like i don't know double triple x somewhere in there depending and he was like i got a bunch of old t-shirts i had a maid when i worked at the state department uh you want them like i got a ton in your size i'm like dude if they're my size like you know because you know you'd wear what you wear to the gym you know we didn't have a pt uniform so it's like you know i'll i love t-shirts to ruin right they're free like i'm gonna ruin them anyway so so he gave me a bunch of them and i just started wearing them every time i worked out every sniper match every fiscal match every everything i did i wore that stupid shirt or one of those stupid chair for baghdad shirts and then when i retired uh a buddy of mine like he's a he's a kind of big business guy and he's like hey you're gonna have to open your own company and blah blah blah for taxes then i was like all right he's like we gotta have name what are you gonna call it i was like i don't know he's like you need to call it the sheriff a bag that's the funniest [ __ ] i ever heard he's like it'll be the best business name ever and i'm like okay yeah that sounds good to me that makes sense right because i always wear the stupid shirt uh and then it just kind of like grew from there that's great and it's sob which is an even better you know like it's got a double meaning that's perfect so what what is what is uh the sheriff of baghdad tactical like it looks like it's got a lot going on i just wanted to give some time to talk about it okay so uh i started out teaching classes right just regular firearms like classes long range firearms kind of you know uh kind of my wheelhouse stuff and then um 2011-ish i started doing the video diagnostics where i videotape you and i'll tell you exactly what you need to do and then 2012 i took about a year and a half of looking at the video to go what the [ __ ] am i looking at and what what is right what does right look like you know because we talk to ourselves in a certain way on the range every day but the reality is is we're not communicating effectively because what i see on the video ain't what we tell ourselves on the range to do the same thing so it took me about a year and a half to figure the video out i taught my first video class in 2012. i'm almost a decade of exclusively teaching everything i do on video um and then so i started the online membership 2013 ish where you could send me videos online um i coach you online i did it all kind of facetime skype stuff and then um and then it morphed into i now have the sob tv on google play or the itunes store so i have my own app matter of fact i've been updating the app and all the content i think i'm at a total of 469 videos all of just [ __ ] different [ __ ] you know um i wonder if it tells me how many videos is on here i don't know i think it's 469 but um and i just i videotape it i talk about it i'll share my experiences um most of it's video based stuff i put up old coaching videos and i've coached everything from getting out of a car and running behind it like a cop should to uh you name it cqb i do it all on video and i have all those videos on the app these days and i created the online stuff because i figured there'll be a day you're not bringing guns to the range they might exactly not be illegal but you don't want to get caught driving one with in your car you know what i mean so i started the online stuff so you can train at home with me right i do lectures uh you know online lectures the zoom lectures i do all kinds of stuff um you don't have to come to me you could do the app and it's all part of the membership so uh yeah it's really expanded i do home security i do online coaching like you can drive fire with me online um you know you kind of zoom me or facetime me and i'll watch your dry fire i'll give you those few things you're missing make you some videos train this until next week or next month hit me again let's see what you do what do we tweak now so uh it's just a better way to train in general in my opinion that way we don't gotta waste any time of you going you know i didn't shoot that guy right because my whole adult life and any unit guy or any hostage rescue guy will tell you this you know how many hours i have wasted in the who shot the hostage game when there's only four of us in the [ __ ] room anyway but if it would have been on video there'd be no argument yep right so um and that's really the premise of what i do now is all the video diagnostic stuff man and um it's been really good man i mean who knew that um the [ __ ] man who knew i would be here like not me for sure i mean you were ahead of this whole isolation video only world that we've been in yeah totally damn you're ready for it seven years in advance i know right well i got to where we needed to be under different pretenses but yeah so um yeah people submit me videos you know i have i have the membership i kind of run my own it looks like netflix is what it looks like to me i kind of run my own netflix and you just go through training knowledge gear you can go through watch the videos matter of fact i just i was on trigger time tv on the i think it's a pursuit or outdoor channel for a few seasons um i just got all those seasons and i put up like season 8 of trigger time tv today like nice and it's old episodes but they're they're kind of good you know um they're good in the sense that like what you're hearing from me is raw like i'll just tell you like it is you probably don't ask my opinion if you don't really want to hear it you know what i mean um they're good in that aspect but um you know it's my first kind of time making videos so some of the topics i end up talking about three things where maybe it should have been three separate videos you know what i mean like it kind of muddies down each topic because they blend together and but uh they're really good man i've been having fun so i uploaded those the other day so we got a ton of free content for guys um i'll tell you the biggest thing i've been doing lately is the booze and views have you watched those no no you have not seen a booze and news okay so for the audience not you go to watch.sobtactical.com right and that's kind of my membership site right and then you'll see you know you'll see free the first thing that should pop up is kind of free videos it'll say free right and that's where the booze and views is and basically i don't know name something that happened in the world right i sit down i pour a glass i get a i like good whiskey so i don't know how many bottles a different whiskey i have i'm on number 52 because i'm looking at it and i haven't drank the same bottle twice what so yeah i got quite a collection and and since i've been doing booze and views people have been giving me booze because they want to see the booze they give me on booze and views and it's like oh you'll see it i may not remember who gave it to me but you'll see it i'll do it for sure um so i sit down i pour a drink and then i just kind of like you know i think the last one i did was on the mass shooting in in colorado yeah i just kind of give my opinion and i get a little overly fired up i think people you know they're more successful when i i did a few where i didn't cuss at all and no one liked that like it was kind of weird uh you know but so uh i gratuitously dropped off i talked like a disgruntled army guy should talk and it i kind of got to get myself pumped up because it's kind of out of my norm you know what i mean but yeah and i talk about whatever um and you know so the the boos and views are up there that's been incredibly popular and i gotta be honest like it started out as booze and news um it started i started this like last august um just talking about new stuff and then around the election time frame i couldn't put them up no more so i host them on my own site like so we tell people when they're up we'll give you the link but basically watch.sob tactical.com it'll take you to the home page of all the all the stuff right you'll see the welcome and then the first thing is boos and views and you click on it i've done 52 i've uploaded 10. i've spent 10 since i couldn't get them up anymore okay so all right yeah i did not see that so and i'll have all the links to this stuff in the description so people can find you yeah yeah put a link don't put a link i mean you know for sure yeah we'll put it in there p i just shamelessly said the website twice yeah watch.sob tackle that's three um but all the videos are on there so you know if you're a member you get to see them all but the free ones and you'll see trigger time season 8 you'll see like the members events we just record little things we do at the members event most of it's just for fun i got some uh some normandy some static line jump stuff in there um yeah so um and i got a little everything man in the in the member site it's growing and uh it's been good it's been good i'm glad uh i knew this was the future even though i didn't know the real reason was the flu was the flu and i i did see some merchandise up there that i'm going to go ahead and get as well i think on your site some of the yes what'd you see which one well you got like a whole merch side of the site don't you when i went to uh yeah so i just want to get i got to get a couple t-shirts i like this sweatshirt you got i got to get me some of that yep i can't tell you look we've done a ton of different shirts over the years the the hat that says s period oh period be period and the team sob t-shirts is like and it's been so popular i can't even keep up so if you want one what we'll do is a few times a year we'll open a window we'll it's a like you know merch man don't spend any money on [ __ ] you're not willing to just give away anyway because you're gonna it if you think you're selling merch you're going to get stuck with 30 sh mediums in your garage you know what i mean i don't even know anyone on that side whatever right so what we do is we do it's the custom ink you ever heard of those guys so we open a window it's open for 60 days it costs what it costs the more people to buy the more the price goes down right and i don't make any money on it but you get you know i think the last time these team sob t-shirts were like cents so all right i need to be on that list so yeah yeah yeah eight we'll keep hey keep it we're pretty good about uh sending stuff out like that so and then the sweatshirts were like cheap because i'm not trying to make money on it and i want to get you the right size yeah yeah no does that make sense all good and then just before we wrap up john there's two questions i'd like to ask everybody so what i'm interested to hear your your answers so the first one is when you were in the military and going on missions was there anything that you carried with you that had like sentimental value good luck something that somebody gave you that you always had with you yeah my good luck charm was a savage screwdriver and you couldn't just get one you had to steal it excuse me borrow it from someone that didn't need it anymore a savage screwdriver what like what is that normally it's a common screwdriver right it's got a flat head it's got a yellow handle and the the hand the shank will go all the way through the handle so you can bang it with a hammer i broke into more [ __ ] with savage screwdriver so i'd always carry my savage screwdriver got it i've never heard that one before that's cool well yeah because you got to get in the cabinets and you know if there's a padlock you know driving you can't just cut some padlocks the bolt cutters ain't got the ass to cut it i just jam my little screw screwdriver in the house and be like frank okay let's go dude it's like i'm telling you everyone should be carrying a savage screwdriver so that wasn't out of sentimentality that was like out of utility that was could do the job yeah all right got it um what would i carry that was sentimental i don't know i always wore the same belt every mission i've ever been on i wear the same belt like a tactical belt uh no another gun belt tactical belt suck that [ __ ] like just a good leather gun belt all you gotta do is hold your pants up and hold it down you know what i mean like yep yep i don't need anything fancy and then last question is after all the years of service that you did the different units the fighting um all the loss the [ __ ] that you had to overcome like would you go back and do all that again i would do everything again exact same way i'd [ __ ] up the same [ __ ] matter of fact if i had to do it again and i knew i was gonna [ __ ] this up i'd [ __ ] it up big where they're like wow you got that truck in the top of the tree well all right good job like i'd [ __ ] it up if i was gonna fight if i was gonna do something good i'd try to do better if i was gonna [ __ ] it up i'd [ __ ] it up big time love it i do everything the same man i mean look i had a great life i never knew i was gonna stay in for 20 years i thought i was just doing college money thing i never knew i was going to end up in the unit i never knew i was gonna make it in other rangers and every day i was there i just did my best to be here today even when i was an [ __ ] that was still my thought of my service right so um i just did my best every day i didn't worry about you know i get asked a lot of questions probably just like you like you know what was your mindset on what were you thinking on this like i wasn't [ __ ] thinking like that should be obvious a or b like [ __ ] you know like they're like what do you think about so-and-so like i didn't have random thoughts of strange dudes you know never you know what i mean like so people ask these questions but the truth is like yeah when you're drinking from the bottle of hindsight that sounds fascinating but the reality is is like yo this i wake up in the morning i do cardio you know what i mean i shoot in the morning or we do cqb in the morning i go to lunch i do hand-to-hand right i hit the dojo i fight i do weights i eat lunch i go back to the range cqb whatever right and then i probably try to get one more workout in i go home i'll do it again tomorrow and i'll do my best on all of it tomorrow right like i was never there's guys in the unit that are just genetic specimens and they'll be that way till they die and then there's everyone else who's just [ __ ] working hard and grinding it out yeah god this was so much fun john i really appreciate it uh we'll have links to everything that we talked about here so people can find you if they haven't already thanks man thanks so much for the time yeah anytime anytime

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 189,579

Rating: 4.958611 out of 5

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: 6hvQj06fQUQ

Length: 106min 26sec (6386 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021