Green Beret Javier Mackey: fierce firefights in Afghanistan and MOH recipient Robbie Miller, Ep. 41

hello everyone good evening happy friday i'm jack murphy here with co-host dave park this is the team house episode 41. our guest this evening is javier javier mackey make sure i get your name right sorry man javier was a 18 charlie a special forces engineer and third special forces group he was also a canine handler so he did some additional training and uh deployed with a canine later on in his career he deployed uh every year for how many years matt uh javier yeah from 2005 to 2015. every year he was deployed to afghanistan uh places like kunar places like uh cop keaning uh anaconda uh you know just places where there's insane uh firefights going on um and places that some of you are probably already familiar with from uh from books and movies and things like that but javier is going to share his own experiences and maybe some things that you're probably not aware of and some stories you haven't heard before uh in particular javier served alongside staff sergeant robbie miller who is a medal of honor recipient he was awarded the medal uh after he was killed in action in a fire fight that javier was present for so we're going to talk about how javier got into special forces started off as a mormon missionary and then joined the army and then everything that happened afterwards so i've been looking forward to this episode for a long time javier thank you very much for joining us tonight hey thanks for having me on jack it's been uh this is going to be this is going to be fun um and it will be a little bit somber at the same time yeah absolutely uh these things go hand in hand uh as you know and i mean i don't know how you feel or how you think back reflect back on your military service and special forces but um i think for you so many of us it is it's like bittersweet in the sense you probably have some great experiences and some funny experiences and uh just terrific camaraderie but then at the same time some really heavy things that that stick with you and weigh on you yeah you know it's funny because i i was that kid that wanted to when i was in you know people who knew me growing up if i if it was halloween guess what javier is going to dress as you know a gi joe i was the same you know you know i was roadblock you know [Laughter] i could never pull off a snow job though but uh i i was always geared pointing towards the military in high school i was in the marching band um i played baseball and basketball but marching band was my thing man i i don't know there was something about it that uh i don't know i liked music i played the tuba so and then uh during that time period i uh i was a drum major so i was the guy that was either twirling the baton in front of the in front of the the band as we're marching down the street or i was if we're doing field competitions i was sitting there waving my arms like an idiot um conducting the band through some maneuvers did you come from a military family were you surrounded by like where did that come from for you so my my my step my uncles all join were all they served in vietnam my stepfather who was a big influence on me he uh served in vietnam as well and um he served clear he served i think he retired in like 2000 2005-ish after 30 years of service in the reserves uh he spent most of his time after vietnam and uh in the reserves so but he did his time and and he just instilled that that milk like you know just the you know i i went through a lot as a kid and he when he came into our life he was like an answer to a prayer and um like he you know i remember getting down on my knees hey yeah i want my mom to be the man who loves her check the block you know i want to meet him i want my mom to meet a man who loves us check the block and oh yeah by the way he had to be in the military and so um and that was a check the block and he was a good father he was you know he was really good to us and um still is and um i always looked up to him and uh i would say he's the main reason why john ended up joining the military and but you know he was kind of trying to steer me towards being like a cook or a mechanic i was like nah dude no what did he do in the military he was a co he started off as a combat engineer okay and then uh he ended up doing some miscellaneous job like you know when your reserves yeah you can get tagged tasks for any mos so um i think he ended up being like what they call it at the time as a 31 lima which is a uh a cable a linesman okay basically running line uh fiber optic lines and back in the day it was telephone lines and that's what he was trying to steer me towards so when i finally did join the military um i told him i wanted to be a ranger because as a when i was a as a mormon missionary um i guess i can dive into that yeah yeah yeah so after high school i was really i already found some spirituality and i found it in the mormon church and so i was baptized in 1993 july of 1993 by my best friend and i already knew i was like you know i'm gonna go serve a mission because if i'm gonna be successful in life i gotta give the lord his time first and that was two years and so i put everything i put everything on hold and i threw all my shirt my suit and tie and i got my calling to macon georgia and the way it works is they assign you to a mission and the mission covers a geographical territory and then you get when you get there they pair you up with a senior guy who's been there for a few months and uh he kind of walks you through the ropes of everything and then you just kind of bounce around from one area to another the the first area i served in was in augusta georgia which i ended up going to ait for uh as a 31 sierra but i bounced i think i hit every military most of the military bases in georgia for i was at warner robins for a little bit but then i spent most of my i spent a good portion of time at uh fort benning and when you say missionary work i mean that's like literally going door-to-door you know you're trying to bring people to the faith right proselyting yeah that's what we do uh we did that and it was a scary time because it's 1993. a black kid from california moving to the south for the first time and everything you heard about the south was you know bad you know and i landed in atlanta and it was everything the op you know everybody was friendly uh and i ended up having a really good time i got to meet a lot of really good people and i got a chance to serve you know think about others before thinking about myself and i was able to put the lord first in everything that i did and so when i was at fort benning this is when i bit the like i got i got i was all in you know i i was around uh guys who were in the military of the same faith in ranger battalion and um the at the time the regimental sergeant major sergeant major command sergeant major rockow was a member of my congregation and um and he was like he was your stereotypical of the time of the period ranger you know chiseled jawline high and tight like when i say high and tight you can like see the it might as well have been like his scalp he had been scalped and the only thing was like a little buzz on top um but uh we would go over to his house for dinner and his boys like if they were in trouble they would be outside they'll be right in the threshold of the door in a stack you know at parade rest because because they were in trouble and they would stay there while we have dinner and it was kind of awkward you know we kind of looking at his kids and like hey dude he's already going to eat you know and they're not moving a muscle because they they messed up that day um but then i met some other guys who were some other you know uh a couple other rangers that were talking about going sf and i had no clue what special forces was i had no clue what a ranger did at the time you know and so uh i had a good time hanging out there at fort benning um fast forward i get home from my mission and i'm like i'm working for sony i'm not really sure what i want to do in life and uh a recruiter walks in where i was working in sacramento and uh he was there to buy a bunch of uh televisions for his uh for his uh recruiting station i was like hey man what's the fastest you can get me in the army because what do you want to do i go i want to be an airborne ranger he goes like well you know he started him and humming and you know because that wasn't in his in his quota at the time you know i he goes well let's come and talk so on my lunch break i went and talked and then uh i went and talked to my dad afterwards and i said yeah i think i'm gonna go to i'm gonna go to basic training and be uh uh uh you know airborne ranger and he was like well let's talk about this son you know you might my dad comes from a different time period you know and um you know the rumors of ranger battalion back in the day and he he just he was just like nah man you know you might want to pump your brakes he talks some sense you know like he start to make sense he goes look at least get a trade start off get a trade so if you get hurt you walk out of the army with something under your belt i'm like all right and then if you don't like it go to infantry school and be a ranger like all right cool you know so i signed up as a 31 sierra which is a satellite communication specialist um and i did that you know my ait was i was super stoked about it because i was going to go to fort gordon and like i said i was in augusta georgia where fort gordon is on my mission so i was going to go into a familiar place where i knew people so i was pretty excited and at ait was uh the advance of individual training was nine months so i was like i'm gonna be in heaven you know and so that was fun i was like it was an mls of nerds let me put it to you that way they're a bunch of nerds there are larpers uh but the guy in predator that wears the glasses and carries the radio yeah yeah i don't know if you're following like one of the on a twitter feed one of the guys go hey we went to ait together and i was like yeah i remember you and um yeah these guys were larpers man they were like uh i didn't even know what like a hacker is i didn't know where larping was man and uh we would go to the mall and these guys are like they were dressed up like werewolves and yeah empires for for our uh for our viewers who don't know larper and we're not talking about like the the uh cosplay girls yeah or or like the airsoft guys we're talking about actual larpers which is live action role play which are people who dress up in medieval garb or they were playing i know when i went to dli i was a little bit older when i went but the young kids were playing vampire which was a live-action role-playing game where they would dress up like vampires and and play this game and i don't know i don't know what the rules were yeah i was on a date i was on a date once man and we you know we it was like a four day weekend and these guys show up i'm at like at the eatery with this girl you know from church and then we're sitting there eating and there i see like the vampire group show up and then i see that the werewolf guys show up and they're like stan like they got the django jeans and yeah you know the chains the trench coats though the whole nine yards and um and they started rolling dice and saying stuff i was like all right whatever man but but but you're right but it but i mean fields like you know uh interpreters or satellite you know com you know things like that they bring in very intelligent but also you know i mean i'm not going to say anything jack and i play dungeons dragons so i mean it's it's it's not like we have too much for just to talk and we but you're not dressing up like a necromancer right not yet yeah i mean i i don't wear elf ears yeah maybe we'll get there but one year jack three months yep yeah so i signed up with the airborne contract right so i was pretty stoked about it but then when my orders got cut i was they were going to send me to fort campbell and i was like huh and i started wargaming in my head well they're gonna it's my contract to send me to airborne school but i can probably squeeze air assault out of this if i go to campbell i'll probably lose my airborne slot so what i did was i didn't say anything and i went straight to campbell with the idea of going to air assault school and then throw out my trump card here's my airborne uh slot and it ended up working in my favor i i i played it pretty good so i ended up i was like the only private with both airborne wings and air stop wings which correct yeah so i mean 101st i wanted i in basic training i bit the bug of i went to fort jackson for basic training but i bit a bit in on the infantry um all the infantry uh stuff that we were teaching us and i was like man i hope my mos is better than this and it wasn't man i i would never be out in the woods i you know i can't i'm not it's just not me so uh i did everything anytime we vomit i volunteered i got a opportunity to volunteer to roll with the rocket songs or roll with the pathfinders to support them with communications i did um then i met my wife we got married in saint louis and then i uh we moved to fort bragg and i was in the 82nd and i really missed 101st when i got to the 82nd i really liked the 101st i hated the 82nd so much um i the leadership i was more of a tactical leader and when i was in 101st meaning when we hit the ground i had that i i can set up my my little team of common guys i can be like all right let's get it we can get off the helicopter that we knew to go pull security and then once the infantry guys went out and you know set up all the uh the security outwardly we can start setting up comms to start supporting the infantry in their movements we get to the 82nd we're not carrying any radios when we do jumps um there's no like we do a mass tactical exercise you know where you have half the division in the air jumping and um we get to the ground and you know you move out as a squad to your to your uh to wherever your steiner aide is and you get there you take a knee and then they say get on the truck that's it and like this sucks and then you know you're doing this three or four times a week um and it's it's like you're just doing it just to do it so and i spent a lot of time in the motor pool so uh 911 i was in my i was in my joe's room we were shining boots you know i was in the bdu army at first and so we're sitting here spit shining our boots and uh on 9 11 and uh i remember you know we turn it on the news after pt and we're looking i was like man that's weird you know plane crashes into the world trade center and then um specialist barry and i were sitting there just bs and talking about politics and then the second plane hit and that's when we were like holy crap so the so i i drank the kool-aid in 80 seconds thinking 18 hour 18 18 hour response we're gonna go somewhere so and that that ended up not being the case you know it sucked three days later or a week or two later we see you know tenth mountain rolling deep in afghanistan with the rangers and here we are you know offloading our trucks you know wondering what we're going to do so i i looked at my platoon sergeant and i said hey i'm uh i'm gonna i'm gonna try out first i'm gonna go to selection now what what how long have you been in and what rank were you at this point um i have been in at this point i enlisted in the army in 1998 january of 1998 and in so 911 i was a promotable i was just waiting for points i was a promotable uh specialist waiting to pin on uh sergeant okay and so uh yeah so i dropped my packet and and then on in november um i spent thanksgiving that thanksgiving and selection um where i met a lot of you know i was really intimidated uh i was a real i went there thinking you know i'm gonna be everybody who's here is the best the best of the best and i just didn't see myself i didn't have that confidence but uh while i was out on a uh you know i was more i went through selection too when you didn't we didn't do team week it was it was uh 28 days in total and um instead of team week we had this long uh this two 48 hour uh death star you know you and i think they ended up being like 60 miles uh you couldn't um and this is where i came this is where i came up with the youtube channel name of uh looking over strange terrain i found myself lost quite a bit and um and while i was there i was doing really good you know i think i only missed like one point um i had to i had a i mean they had to take me and i'm a big dude so they you know they had to wait weigh me several times i took the pt test twice it just i i was confident that i was gonna make it through but there was a lot of little things that you know they play a lot of mind games you know and uh my roster number was 181 and there was another mackie his was one um one eight zero no i was one eight zero he was one eight one and uh he when he didn't get selected he was like you must be talking about the elder mackie because we were both black guys right you know so he was like you must be talking about the other mackie i was like dude shut up am i going through this again you know but i made all my points um in good time but while i was out there on that death star you know i i was making good time on all my points i think i finished in like under 30 hours but i got down on my knees and i was like you know god i really want to be a green beret i'll pay the price whatever price that is i just want to live long enough to be a great grandfather and i would i i want to stay married to the woman that i'm with now and i want to walk away with no physical um damage and so and then the promise i made was my butt will be in church i try to do what's right all the time you know and then you know the couple days you know a couple hours later you know they were calling out my uh calling out my name or my roster number as being a uh 28-day select and so that's what's that was the the beginning of my special operations career this was year three for me um open command i hate you saying this but just all full disclosure i pretty much recycled every phase of the queue course so um but it was you know and i i talked to the cadre uh since then if you know a lot of them came to third group and um you know they're they're like hey you know what i i saw something in you i always saw something in you you were always motivated um when you didn't know something you let it be known you you know one of the things about being a mormon is to try to be humble um but not don't be a pushover so uh i um you know that's how my my time in the q course went um i was my my biggest fear was all those recycles were gonna get to group you know people were gonna like when i got the group people are gonna be like uh here we go you know this guy got recycled through and plus he didn't go through team league and oh the standards are dropping and look what we're getting right um but really cool things that happened during that time in the uh q course was you know they started the 18 x-ray program so i was able to go through with the first since i recycled a lot the first three classes of of 18 x-rays so um and what was the 18 x-ray program 18 x-ray program is a program where you can uh join the army as a on a 18 x-ray contract meaning you get an opportunity you'll get it you'll be trained as an infantryman but you'll get the opportunity to go to selection and um be selected uh to try out for special forces and if you're selected you get to you will enter the pipeline which is called the q uh sfqc and then um once you complete that then you go to group to one of the five groups which was different than it had been because before before that it was only like eligible e5 or e6's could go it was due to a copy here what's that it was dudes like javier uh before the 18 x-ray program yeah you had to be a promotable specialist um to be able to go to selection and then or you can be a pfc but you had to be promotable by the time you got to the q course okay if you were if you were selected um but it wasn't the first time they did the uh eight uh the x-ray or the sf baby program what they call you know they they did it a couple times before so back in the 80s yeah um so i ended up going reporting um i went you know i got french as a language and i end up reporting to third special forces group i originally was supposed to go to tenth group but i didn't my my logic was if i take tenth group i'll either go to you know colorado springs or germany right and i'll you know or a flip-flop during that time period and i'll oh yeah and by the way i might end up back at fort bragg so i was like you know what i'm just going to stay here at brag i want my i don't want my daughters jumping around i want them to grow up with the same people so um i traded out um i i'm glad i did i traded out a third group did most people think you were insane for doing that um no i don't know i mean no everybody had their reasons man you know yeah so tenth group uh was uh covered europe for the people who who don't know 10 crew covered europe and third group covered africa and a lot of times the third group guys would complain that they'd get stuck someplace with a palette full of mres while the tenth group guys were standing but you know the jokes was the joke was on them because 10th group spent a lot of time in africa and third group spent a hell of a lot of time in war in afghanistan yeah yeah so i got to so about so in 2005 january 2005 i reported the third group uh third battalion char alpha company uh and i was on operational detachment 372. and i get there and one of the i had been up to battalion um because you you know you got to report to a group then you had to report to battalion and then you go to your company so i was up at battalion they got these big posters of um guys from the previous deployment like these huge posters like cool guy posters but they're actual uh deployment posters you know and i was i remember sitting there looking at them like man i love to be on that team and um so you know the sergeant major gave my assignment at the battalion and then he gave he sent me down to the company and i talked to the company sergeant major and he sent me to 372. and all those posters i saw these big from that deployment was of that team and so i walk in and um immediately i was greeted by the senior bravo one one of the senior bravo's because at the time we had like i was the seventh person on the team you know the teams were small um the worst time to come to an oda is right after a deployment and uh these guys had just gotten back from uh afghanistan from their second deployment as a team together and i was an outsider and i did not feel welcome at all the team sergeant told me the only two people i was allowed to talk to was the uh was the t was him or three people him my senior who was by the way getting ready to leave to go to sedan and the the team leader those are only three people i can talk to and um i thought it was i was like all right i'm the new guy i'm a buck sergeant you know i'm gonna do you know i'm gonna do new guy stuff you know and um that lasted for a little bit and and then finally we got a new like our real team sergeant and he came in and uh pat rotzer he was a good dude uh really good dude um he we got a new team sergeant and a new team leader at the same time so we had like a whole new team leadership and that was great because they were really family oriented and everybody on the team was family oriented everything we did together was a family if we had a team party it was together as a family so my team um my team got to know my family i got to know the other team teammates family and and slowly during that time period our team began to grow to where we actually had two echoes we actually had two bravos two charlie's sorta because my senior like i said had took it off to sudan to go do a mission um we actually had a functioning fox um personally i i think you just need 11 18 bravos and one delta and you should be good to go i don't understand why we have all these other moss but one man's opinion take it for what it's worth what was the motivation behind you being told to only talk to three people like did did he not want you like asking like the other guys what was like what was his motivation behind that i think he wanted me to earn my way not take it take it for granted you know earn my spot on the team um i think there were some other aspects involved like some insecurities on his part um because he had been around now this guy's been around since 1975 went to vietnam lied about his age uh maureen [Music] he later left the marines to join the navy then he went back to the marines and he went back to the navy then he tried out for special forces and he had like this really crazy career and um sounds like an [ __ ] i'm just kidding i only said that because i was in three brands three branches no he was a good at the end of the day you know he meant well he was my entertainment actually um this guy like we my first deployment was in jordan when this guy i mean he he was our inner because we didn't have a hard drive with movies on it so he was our entertainment this is 2005. so there even if you did you had a bunch of dvds you know you're watching the same dvds yeah and then you're also watching people walk in front of screens on those dvds so right right so you know there we are in jordan he's keeping us entertained and um that's when uh you know that was my first deployment it was in the um jordan we were out there doing a training mission with the jordanians the italians the the yemenis and the kuwaitis the kuwaiti commandos and uh it was a good time we had a really good time uh i started off oh i didn't tell you guys this i was i started off as a 18 echo and i like i said i failed out of the echo course over some bs but uh i ended up uh they ended up reclassing me because it because the reason why they were recycling me was stupid and i wasn't and keeping me in the 18 charlie or the 18 echo program wouldn't have been good for me so they sent me to the 18 charlie program and that's how i became at 18 charlie but um we didn't have a we needed all the we didn't have a lot of 18 echoes in our company on that mission and so i had you know i was able to take the training i got from an 18 echo and do a lot of 18 echo type activities to help out with that but 18 echo being the comma which was your background right and then that you you cross-trained into engineer right but we did a lot of cross-training anyway so um a lot some of the things we don't do cross-training in is like uh hf and i was able to do h you know help out with the hf aspect of it and stuff like that um but yeah it was a good trip i got t-boned by uh by asadi and you know we thought we were under attack during that time period you know at at that time so me and my senior bravo are you know we're dazed and confused and we got this uh this uh this this uh saudi coming up and you know he's just sitting there yelling at us like he's he's actually wanting to know if we're all right but we thought he was just you know because we were in we're in the middle of the invasion in iraq right here you know so i don't we don't know what the threat level is at this base and um we ended up drawing down on this guy and then because it happened in front of the military base there the guard was drawing down on us and then we all were able to like calm down and but i walked away with a cracked rib and um my bravo walked away with the uh with a concussion um later on when we were leaving that trip and then um we ended up where we were our plane ended up breaking down in uh i'm on and so while we were there we were staying at all these different hotels and we were bouncing around and for you know i'm i'm being i'm not really being i'm not i'm not being mindful of my my space and time you know i'm walking around town like there's nobody's business and um next thing you know bro um you know we're here like we're we're bouncing from one hotel to another hotel and the reason why they're doing this because you know we're actually getting targeted and so a day or two after we we actually left country the uh all the hotels were at got bombed holy [ __ ] um and uh you remember that that isis that i that uh pilot that got capped that jordanian pilot that got shot down well though you remember what the kings how he reacted he executed that lady i i don't know yeah she was the hotel i was staying at was the hotel she didn't her husband uh popped his vest but she didn't and so she's the one who got executed you know in retaliation for what happened to that pilot so um i saw you know that's where i saw my first pimp pimp slap um so that that was pretty funny but uh yeah so we get back wait how you have to explain that what happened the hotel we were staying at that hotel that blew and blown up there was a irish pub probably the only irish pub and i'm out i'm on and um my team sergeant was in there and i went to go get him you know it was a bar it wasn't like a strip club or anything yeah and um he had been talking to he had been talking to this uh russian girl for about two hours and um because he had you know he had no intentions and taken it any further and when she didn't close a deal this arab dude you know pull you know comes behind a little beady curtain and says something to her and smacks her and she goes oh i gotta leave so you know his the pimp came out and you know did a little laying up on her hands damn yeah so she was not mean as standard apparently yeah yeah so we started getting plused up uh the team after that trip we got we were starting plussed up with uh the bravo we had during that time period was leaving the team and or no he was going to sephardic and then we got robbie so this whole time man nobody's talking to me you know well i i take that back my social standing on the team has gotten up you know having still a little bit of the outsider just a little bit not much i still get a little bit of haze you know a little hate verbal hazing you know it was all good you know it was it was really all that fun uh and that's when we get robbie and i wasn't the only one on the team that was getting treated like this our delta you know was getting treated the same way um but the two of us were doing stupid things on purpose you know just to get a rise out of the senior guys and then robbie walks in and they all like you know he walks in you know the start uh the the op sergeant was like hey this is rob miller he's your x-ray and we all knew we were getting the x-ray and i thought oh you know me and me and my delta are looking at him like yep here he comes what's an x-ray yeah yeah robbie was 18 x-rays what is an 18 x-ray well we also you know we already went through all that oh okay sorry so robbie walks in and instead of giving them the cold shoulder and whatnot i mean the same guy who was giving me a hard time was like what's up man welcome to the team slapping them on the back and so me and my delta are looking at each other like like what's going on here and the the whole the whole dynamic change and i think it had a lot to do with him being the x-ray and um they wanted they wanted the experience of being on the team and so i was a little bit i was a little bit jealous just a little bit and that quickly went away because uh once we got to know robbie within the next couple days i mean we we all fell in love with the guy um and so shortly after that we uh we go to uh we go to have ace down in florida down here in florida and we you know do some call for fires with him and you know he you know he gets drunk one night in jacksonville and runs through a water fountain um then he's put on restriction he can't you know the team started you're not gonna drink for the rest of the trip and then um and because he was a good boy about two two uh about a week into that um that tdy they were like i go out and so he went out and got drunk and hooked up with some stripper and yeah you know it was just it was just all fun um and we get back from there and you know he decides you know we're getting we're getting rolled up for our first uh af trip to afghanistan and um everything is all fun and games you know it right now it's we we feel really good about our training we we did some really creative training we feel really good about the team the team is gelling there's no like the dynamics are really smooth yeah no melodrama everybody's doing their job yeah you know and um we all got you know our delta ended up getting married during that time period and um we all bought bought some bowling shirts and we went down to the courthouse with them and you know it was like we were a family and so we went through that first trip we you know we go to afghanistan we're up in the kunar in kunar province and this is where you know we're all our sops and everything are you know we're training we're going out the the first three days in afghanistan um you know you land you know you're doing accountability of your equipment and stuff and then our team sergeant is like hey we're moving out to jbat so we get the jbad and while we're there we team up with uh with the seventh group team you know we just started doing missions back to back so for for like three or four days man we're just back-to-back missions you know what i mean is we're going out coming back sleep for an hour up order back out and this went on for about three three four days um no fire fights or anything really tame uh we're you know a lot of dry holes we found a couple ieds some ied making material things like the fertilizer and stuff like that and then we finally pushed out to norae um north northern afghanistan um we get there you know we get settled in and everything and we start going out on missions we started you know we rip out with the team it's like normal normal um day in the life and so robbie is like trying to get like uh familiar with some of the weapon systems we got some a couple of z uh zsus uh we got a uh a spig nine so csu what 23s not really sure um uh yeah so but anti-anti-aircraft we have that spg recoilless rifle yeah spg uh record this rifle we got a couple double dishkas you know and so the bravos are have they're in heaven you know they're they're sitting around you know playing with bang bangs and robbie is doing some weapons familiarization with the spg9 and um he decides he's going to shoot at this mountain so we have this whole mountain where nobody lived that we can shoot at so and there's across the river and so robbie's over there and and you know he's they're running drills they're running drills and drills and so they get they get they get it down because the the spg9 is on the back of a truck so they're shooting at the mountain shooting at the mountain and then it was like indexed for a little bit and about two hours later you know we're sitting back watching some movies or whatever and i get a i get a call to the front gate and um so i roll up on the atv and i'm like and i got this old man and he has a cow head and a leg and a hoof and a tail and a hunch and i'm like what the heck is this he goes you guys shot my shot my cow like are you kidding me so we end up paying like 500 dollars for a stupid cow does somebody have more with an spg9 yeah that that somebody hit with the spg now um but yeah uh and then he bought a monkey he wanted a monkey you know he was like robbie wanted a monkey yeah he wanted a monkey and so we got a monkey again you know he he played around with the monkey until the you know team sergeant's like you got to get rid of the monkey and so you know next thing you know you know we're playing monkey launch operations over a river you know with a parachute and the monkey you know scurries away um so yeah we put a parachute on the monkey you put the pop player parachute uh the the pilot shoot for a pilot shoot for the uh for cargo where did he get the monkey was there a suit that you guys went to was it a traveling monkey salesman how did this happen well robbie had this gift of uh he could speak he he came to the team speaking spanish french and german already he he learned french in the queue course while he was in country he started to learn dari and posh2 and he spent all his time with the local security forces that we worked with and so month two and a half you know robbie is gone native and you know he's brokering deals for gems and and um rocks and stuff and he's brokering deals for monkeys and next thing you know he has a monkey because that's just what robbie wants you know you know we even built a cage for him you know and so but you know the the delta's booed and you're like hey you know that's a disease that's a vector you know you're going to get us all sick and so the monkeys had to go and so you know we sent them to that pair you know that airborne soldier in the sky it was a good time um during this time period we went on a mission with uh with a with another group of guys that we were work that were working in the ao in this place guy called guy or dash and um goward dash so the afghan mountains the the terrain in this area um let me see if i can pull up that hey jack can you can you pull up that powerpoint or whoever has it yes i can um you want me to share it on the screen yeah would you yeah okay so this is our firebase you can't really tell here um how narrow this valley is if you can you click go to the fourth slide [Music] this is you know this from left to right that's a pretty tight it's a pretty tight valley and this is what we call ambush ambush alley and this this ambush uh alley goes from um the very from the uh border of pakistan back into afghanistan about 100 miles and um the mountain range in this area is like a maze so going getting off the msr and going into the valley systems you can easily get lost um and you're you're in the uh in some really tight steep terrain and um we got into our we went to this place just north of this location called uh gower dash it was our very big big operation it was about 50 vehicles about maybe 120 dudes and we were just we're up there to do a humanitarian assistance operation where we brought food and um clothing to the local villagers to try to win hearts and minds and on the way back we were expected to get into an ambush just south of this location um on this road um prior to the uh prior to the ambush we were kind of like meandering in the in this area right here before we uh continued on and as we started our convoy back we get into a fire fight i don't know it was probably maybe like eight or nine guys at most um it was my first fire fight it was our first firefight as a team and um robbie this is where robbie uh he came to shine this is where uh i didn't see what he did but you know at the end of the day he was awarded the uh army commendation medal with valor but apparently you know he he did some really good work he was coordinating fires i do know he was coordinating fires with the uh with the local afghans security forces he was taking charge of the uh of the the maneuver element um we couldn't maneuver across the river but you know he was getting getting afghans to move on high ground so they can you know at least be shooting um shooting at guys um and rather than uh plunging fire you know we can get some direct fire going back and forth um the the whole firefight maybe lasted like the whole gun fight itself maybe lasted 10 minutes right um i had a total of 16 magazines i think i shot every one except for the ones um my bravo my senior bravo was like mack you need to get some keep shooting keep shooting so i'm just sitting there like ah you know and and i had a i had like maybe eight uh two four two oh four uh eight rounds and uh i shot i shot all eight of those and then my my senior you know my team sergeant was like hey go get control of your junior and so he comes up to me he's like hey man how many magazines you have left and uh i go one he goes the one in your in your gun i'm like yeah you looking dummy and he just walked away you know and so it was a pretty humbling experience but after that i realized you know shoot at what you can see uh take take control you know control fire you know control games you know i was just praying and spraying not really looking at what i was doing but i was also getting egged on by my senior bravo [Laughter] uh yeah we can go we can you can close this out okay so robbie was like a natural it sounds like i mean he uh he came to you guys speaking a whole bunch of languages he knew the guns uh he integrated with the locals very easily i was taking charge in a fire fight i like like this guy was it sounds like he was just born to be a green beret yeah yeah he was his uh you know and i would say a lot has to do with our leadership at the time our leadership was really i wouldn't say hands off but they maximized they they took they maximized our talent you know he they managed our talent really well uh instead of you know you know he is hey hey team daddy i got an idea you're like yeah what do you got i'll tell them whatever it is that i had an idea for he goes all right it makes sense run with it you know or if one of us you know part of our sop was is one of us see something that the others didn't see we take charge you know hey we need you guys you know no questions asked we need to get we need five guys to move over here now do it and so um that's how the way our team functioned and um it was we were very very fluent with it um we did some more we did some more operations with that that same uh element and um we didn't get it we didn't get they got into you know we we got to support some of the fighting we went to uh cop keating uh so you you know cop keaton was overran right right right we talked about cop keating on uh one of our episodes with ron moeller who was uh air branch guy for the cia and he told some pretty uh harrowing stories about keating yeah those guys were flying out there all the time they're flying out there quite a bit um and we went out there to do an assessment 10th mountain they did you know 10th mountain did a really good job in that area i'm going to tell you that right now hands hands down 7 173 came in and they were they were they were doing really good but the colonel the battalion commander the guy was a he was hard to work with you know it was really hard to work with he you know he bought in the coin but didn't understand what he bought into and you know he had his intent he has on his his own intentions and he ran with it the way he the way he knew how but he ended up giving up the msr at the end of the day 10th mountain on the other hand they owned it um they had a national guard element that ran that road at least once a day getting it into a fire fight once a day and i felt sorry for them because the biggest weapon they had on any of their trucks was a 249 not a 249 a 240 bravo and i was like are you kidding me they're like yeah you know they they didn't trust them with a mark 19 or a or a uh or a uh 50 cal or anything you know yeah and just for people who are listening uh m240 bravo is just like a general purpose machine gun fire 762 rounds and it's in a in a firefight over long range in afghanistan you really want a 50 caliber machine gun yeah yeah and so yeah when you say 173 gave up the msr you're talking about the main service route right or the main surface road yeah the the main way that everybody travels once they lost that lost you know lost the ability to control and 10th mountain came back in and reestablished it no no no so 2006 uh 10th mountain that was their ao okay 2 000 that's 2006 2007 2007 2008 they ripped out with 173rd okay and so we had it once again lost it they gave it up they gave it up they gave it up because there was this transition of afghan governance so we're going to have the afghan security forces patrol those roads okay that was like the dumbest thing they can do in that area but the insurgents didn't want to ied that road because all the locals were going to be on it so uh but that opened up a big gap where you can get anything you wanted across the border because we're right there next to that to the afghan [ __ ] border and alts all sorts of stuff can be facilitated from the pakistan side into afghanistan so um that's what that was some of the challenges that we were faced with um with the road given up it made it really hard for us to move around beyond the open valley into ambush the ambush alley um it put we couldn't do it as an oda um because that's not our job to just run roads you know so in 2006 we're working with the same uh group of guys we uh and this is kind of leading up to 2008 when we get into the fire fight with uh where robbie passes we go into the same we're just south of where um we go into the same uh valley system and um there's about 200 of us and we're we're going through some pretty gnarly terrain like you're talking about rocks bowling ball size at the riverbed bottom in a dry riverbed and you got you got under nods limited visit like no viz whatsoever and we got the only thing we have above our head is a gunship you know doing rotations so we're walking through this this maze of a valley on the low ground at night dark and uh rob myself the lead we're in the lead element with uh the guys we're partnered up with and we're going up through and we get like maybe 200 meters from the objective we're like setting up this huge orp and getting guys moving and and the the guy who's leading the element looks over at us and it's like he's like you gotta be [ __ ] kidding me and then like he's on a radio and he's like are you anything like he's like now he's getting loud you know and it's dark in a valley and he's pissed and you know generally 200 people we were pretty quiet we were moving pretty quiet and then you can hear this guy just talking the gunship was like hey we gotta check out if you guys don't if you guys don't if you guys don't punch the button now guess what we're not going to be here in 45 minutes so they we had an abort mission turn around get everyone back um just because they were bingo on fuel and had to turn around no this uh daylight okay so so you know we had they had they had this re they had this restriction at the time gotcha um so so when you say 200 people 200 guys you're you you have your oda you know your green beret you have another small american element with you and then are are the bulk of this then indigenous is that where your 200 people are yeah the rest so it was probably 30 u.s personnel total probably less than that and then the rest was made up of our afghan force okay and so you know we had to turn around um it sucked but that's just the way way things worked out for us during that time period um the rest of that trip man it was really quiet really tame we went back got new leadership and we returned about eight months later we were back in at the same fob uh conducting operations um javier when you say operations at this time frame uh were these high value target strikes was were you doing village stability operations i wonder if you could just get a little bit into so we were doing um a lot of it was key like at in the beginning was a lot of key leader engagements because um which trying to try to build their own relationship with the world yeah we're building the relationships but there are some there's other things going on at the same time and um kind of like develop a target developing an area things of that nature and we were also i was meeting up with uh me robbie and our or our bravos were meeting up with our security forces and we're you know going over sops uh getting inventory of gear stuff like that um making schedules to training schedules so they can come down and get trained and everything um but there's all there's a bunch of stuff going on target development wise um and you know every now and then we will get like a hvt will pop up and then we were like all right we're going to get you know we're we're standing by ready to go and then we we punch out and an hvt is a high value target so it's like information intelligence on on a on somebody who you want to capture or kill the u.s government wants capture kill and you guys need a role okay right and so um things kind of got slowed down because we went from uh we went from one like a five paragraph op order to a 42-page con and i just kind of like you know that kind of pumped the brakes on getting out of the wire but they they've eventually worked it out so um we we were in the middle of uh planning so we had so that the target we just went after was a hvt facilitator uh in the area that you know to control the cash so all this money was flowing because through this through this little uh network of valleys from pakistan into afghanistan and we were trying to you know put a put a kibosh to it so in 2008 we went after the same target i'm a fast forward because there's a bunch of things that really don't matter but we fast forward and we're going after the same target and we go through the same valley system only this time um the guys that we normally played with aren't playing they're like hey man this is on you you guys it wasn't like a damaging in uh there wasn't a like there was a loss of rapport between us and them it was there was something else going on that i wasn't um privy to any other americans that you guys normally engaged with yeah um they didn't come out to play that day and uh so we went out to the same to conduct the same hit but everything about this mission was different um we have been training in the afghan force um they were infantry for they were infantry guys that we were training with um with the afghan army nothing special about them just regular joes um and we left and so they would come to us to our base and train with us and then go back to wherever they came from well when this mission popped off um the afghans just sent us whoever they had on hand you know a bunch of admin guys cooks whatever you know it was like hey you know you guys are gonna go out and do a mission with the americans tonight and you know so we meet up this at this place called checkpoint delta and uh checkpoint delta in the in the kunar valley there's a river that runs north and south um checkpoint delta as you're looking at the map splits into one arm of the river splits into pakistan and the other splits into northern afghanistan and right off to the left there is checkpoint delta and it goes that's the mouth of ambush alley so we get there in this daylight we already did our mission planning for everything um all of us except for our team leadership have been in this valley system before we we knew what to expect except for the afghans the only guys javier could you just take a moment to describe the the geography because for everything i've heard about kunar is that it's like straight vertical slopes that's right yeah so when you go into ambush alley you're looking at straight vertical slopes um the from from the left from the east wall of the bottom of the valley to the west wall the bottom of the valley and some spots can be as narrow as 20 20 to 40 meters that's including the river um there's a road the msr the main supply route the main service route runs north and south and it's wide enough for a vehicle and a half without falling into the river uh if you get out the the the hills it's about a 70 grade um going up to the east in the mountains from from the ceiling up to the tip top range from you're at it like so the elevation to start off with is like nine thousand between seven and nine thousand and then you add another eight eight you know eight eight hundred to twelve hundred feet on either side of the river you have this big rocky terrain um no trees very few trees we were always you know this time both times we were in kunar it was winter time so it was the what you know it gets about the lowest we got about 15 degrees fahrenheit and the hottest i can remember getting is about 70. and you must have a lot of snow at that altitude yeah so what you must have a lot of snow at that altitude also when it snowed when it snowed we got it pretty good um but it didn't snow too often you didn't have big snow drifts so in this area like you know i mean tactically you're always taught you know take a different weight out then you go in on on a raid or something like that was that a possibility in this area or because of the train you were channeled to go one way in one way out and that's it one way in one way out and they took advantage of this um during this particular i'm not i'm not really sure if we there was something different about this about this uh this mission from the outset so once we got there and we started moving into ambush alley at night it was a full moon it was january 24th full moon and once you get past checkpoint delta the next major terrain feature that was familiar to us on the ground was six fingers house there's a guy who's an afghan that he's kind of like the troll the you know you had to pay the toll to get past the troll you know and six fingers was that guy that the afghans would get you know swindled by and he actually had six fingers on one of his hands um so we you know we passed six fingers house and about maybe 600 meters past this house was a boulder a good sized boulder big enough that the um lead truck which was uh we got we were we also got partnered up with the national guard unit for this mission and they were they were end up being our left and right security so they're leading and they you know we get a call with a radio it's like hey uh our call sign at the time was gremlin they're like hey gremlin uh we got a boulder in the road and i'm like all right cool and team sergeant comes up to me he goes you got it yep so he comes up there with me my and by this point i have a junior charlie we're doing some assessments of the boulder we look at it i'm like we can we can blow this this no problem so you know i take i think it was like four four blocks of uh tie uli knot i already had it all prepped anyway i just taped it up shoved it underneath the space of the boulder uh back the convoy up about 200 meters blew it and we continued on um so this was about 10 o'clock maybe close to 11 o'clock at night 21 2300 um and then um we continue forward so i at this point we got about 800 meters where we're going to go to our original drop-off point and we really had no choice to go to this mouth because that's the only place we if we if we could turn around that's the only place we could do it we can get all our vehicles to turn around and go back head south so we head up to this point to this point we dismount and uh jtac uh rob gutierrez is on on on the radio talking to the uh to the uh predator i think it was a predator on station and you know they got some intercepts that the target that we were looking for wasn't in the location that we were heading to but he's rather across the river and in a different location so we continue so you know the leadership gets together it's like all right let's go let's go um take care of this so mind you this is at night i just blew up a boulder we're in a narrow valley you would imagine that who we we should have we should have spooked anybody that was in the area away but you know the afghans are kind of they're different yeah it didn't phase them one bit so uh we continue on and we the valley so now this is a one point in an ambush uh ambush alley where the valley opens up just a bit and we get some switchbacks so we're like the convoy is negotiating these switchbacks and right when the switchbacks in there's another boulder now at this point we're about 600 meters away from the target where we're where we're going team sergeant's like all right hey blow it so we blow the boulder again no change in behavior from the guys on the other side um they're still doing what they're doing and we continue on and so we we get to this like plateau and hey um can you share that screen again yeah so so the switchbacks are back here or wait you can't even see my mouse so switchbacks are where it says screenshot and our ambush is along this line here so say what up this white line here yeah so that's the road that want low falls a line um the lead element is our left side if as you're looking at it would be our right side security to the north or our left side security to the north and our right side security is going to be to the south and everything in between our vehicles are all kind of like parked on this level ground over where it says screenshot and uh our left side security identifies um identifies you know people with uh with some guns with you know they they positive identify targets for us to interdict and they take a couple shots at us and that's when our left our our left side security at that point opened up um it took us a minute to because it cut this this whole ambush that we have set up kind of took us off guard because we really didn't expect i at least i didn't really expect anything at this point i thought was this going to be a dry hole and at some point we're just going to go we're going to rtb back to return to base um with out there being anything going on did you guys have air support at this point in time did you have an ac 130 or anything like that above no no no we didn't um yeah the guys who had all the toys didn't come out to play and so we didn't have a lot of the assets okay all right so um so we're set up the left side security opens up to [Music] um up in the there's a gap uh so the second arrow from the top where that bends right here yep the where it terminates at the end the other side down to the right jack down to the right oh down here no uh go go to the middle of the screen and down a little bit right yep is that what you're talking about yeah so that's here yeah this is the area where we start uh everybody starts to open up and there's a video the one of the guys on the left side security uh took a video he actually hasn't posted on youtube and um it's titled the us army special forces kick ass part one through five and um they're the ones who initially opened up the ambush yeah you can if you're watching you can go ahead and you go to part one and then part and watch them all in sequence i'll put these in chat so people can take a look when they're ready so they end up opening up and then we followed up in for about it seemed like it was forever man we you know like in the you know doctor you know according to you know 7-8 ranger handbook you know your your immediate contact is usually like what 30 seconds or a minute we kept shooting we had to change barrels that's how long we shot um i jumped on the carl gustav part of our sop was to shoot all our you know the fight from our trucks first before we start fighting from our kit so one of my one of my jobs as a charlie was i shot i love i made it my job to shoot all the big guns so i i was the uh carl gustav gunner on the team and um i got i was on that robbie was on the he was on truck too which on our team was our where we had the mark 19 and then i was in truck one we with our senior bravo and he was on a 50 cal we had three 240s on that truck so all the 240s to 50 cows all the big guns from the truck are firing into this area and the mark 19 is a 40 millimeter uh like automatic grenade launcher automatic grenade launcher yeah um i believe my senior my senior bro my senior charlie he's you know he's using direct lay on the 60 millimeter uh mortar um and so he's just he you know he's triggering you know he's in the trigger fire mode dropping you know with the with the mortar on safe he's just dropping rounds on charge you know zero or charge one and squeezing off rounds and so we're we're laying some scanning down um and this is like the first time i never thought in my military career that i would actually do an ambush and here we are doing it right now so this goes on for a bit and uh robbie the whole time he's doing well you know he's oh as when he's you know when our ag on the mark 19 is you know reloading him you know he's he's with the aft you know he's yelling commands at the afghans hey you know shift fire here because they had a dishka and so he was trying to maintain control of that disk um while they were shooting it but they went the discus were so unreliable that we probably got like a good five round burst out of that thing before it just you know before it went to crap so this goes on and then finally the captain you know your hero radio cease fire and there's like a lull and uh rob gutierrez you know they they got they positively id some um some guys still meandering around so he was he was clear to engage so he sent the cleared hot to by this time we got aircraft on station i believe we had like a an a-10 in the stack and um i think we had a couple a couple flights in the stack so um we had a couple of 500 pound j dams get uh get dropped into ao and because we dropped those uh those j dams the you know after talking to hire the commander was given the directive to go conduct a bda and the vda is a battle damage assessment yeah yeah so um it was seven members of um of my operational detachment and uh that's that included robbie um my team sergeant my warrant my captain um and two others and then the rest in a marine we had a marine uh embedded with us he was actually uh embedded with the afghans that we were working with and um robbie and so we you know we get our little brit trucks i brief uh the commander you know bob cusick at the time was like hey you know this is what we got to do we're going to go do it go over there come back you know we're going to be smart about this don't do anything dumb so we just dropped the whole crapload of ordnance we just shot a bunch um i don't know how anybody lived through this uh i don't know how we you know it was it was if you watch the video we we we put a hurting on this mountainside to say the least but um so we walk so we walk along the road we have to go north about another 500 meters and there's a bridge and then we cross the bridge and we're coming down and uh we're coming down and we're we're right in a tree line when and so let me just kind of give you an idea who's leading the element so we have the afghans up front it's their country they're leading it um they're up front robbie's with them and his this so this is our second deployment now and his language his posh2 and his dari is spot on so he's able to talk to the afghans in their language and you know control them along with the marine they're up front and then fall behind them as me uh the bravo the jtac rob gutierrez um and the rest of the team the team sergeant team leader uh in our fox and so we're we're in like basically a file at this point because it's dark and the team at least has we have our sop for traveling at night and limited visibility we still have the predator on station and we still have the a-10s uh i believe they're still on station um hey is there a way i can how can i gain control of this uh jack go go down to share screen and or whatever you have to do to stop sharing it i got it and then have you need to share you need to pull it up on your computer and share a screen all right you got it have you yeah okay all right so we just came down from we're on we're on the north west side of the river here and we're coming around this area and we get about here now this is where i'm at where i'm pointing at right now this is where i'm at ahead of me i have robbie in the afghans in the file what you see right here this is a thing hold on one second hey jack are you still screen sharn uh says waiting for a javier to control my screen i see somebody's cursor on there is that you javier that's me yeah okay okay all right all right we're good all right sorry about that go ahead can you see my mouse are we good uh yeah i see it i see it on the screen javier all right cool so we're we're like in this area right here what you don't see there's a wall there's a wall like right here that runs north and south uh there's a building right here and these these trees right here but this finger right here is where this is our this is where we'll take end up taking contact from um that contact so this is a little a little draw that goes back into the mountain this is high ground here this is all high ground this is low ground here all right so robbie is up front with the afghans and they take contact from here there's a boulder right here and they had an ambush line set up all in this wood line and all right here um some estimates some you know some say there was like anywhere from 50 to 80 guys uh i've heard as high as 115. either way you know we start we received a a ton of fire and so since we're in a file and robbie's just ahead of me you know we we break apart left and right so robbie's off to my right so that means i'm to the left and there's like a little gap in between us and we're spread out about maybe 20 meters and we all started we those of us that are in the ambush here i'm really sorry but i do not see your cursor um it's coming on and off i'm not sure what it is um i hey hob can you jack can you stop sharing your screen real quick okay hi can you pull up can you pull this slide up on your computer yeah can you go down to the bottom and where it says share screen um would not allow you to share screen hold on a second yeah well i just got to find the powerpoint slide sorry guys i apologize for interrupting but um um [Music] yeah hey while javier is doing that only just take the moment right now just say hey thank you everyone who's joining us live right now really appreciate it please uh give the video a thumbs up um you know share the video comment on it etc etc all that stuff really helps spread the word please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already there's a little button down there you can subscribe to this bad boy uh and welcome to all of our new subscribers because we have a whole bunch uh after uh last episode you guys really enjoyed sergeant major mike vinings video so we got a bunch of new subscribers um thank you for joining us tonight and when you subscribe also make sure you hit that bell icon um and that will make sure you get notified the next time we go live oh sorry jack go for it dave what's up i just want to do some quick shout outs here andrew thank you very much uh andrew said dave knows about the reserves and random mls's yeah like eight of them i think uh also this is kind of a random question what is the fastest possible time frame someone can make sergeant what kind of person winds up pulling that off i would say about two years about two years and that is that's probably like an 18 x-ray program like going from from a recruit to uh to a sergeant through through the uh through sfas and the queue right out two years uh jp uh thanks for service keep bringing uh keep bringing in these heroes thanks jp uh and i think that's it so uh can you pull that screen up huh yeah just give me a second i guess take your time uh we just really i just want to see it because i i just want to as you're illustrating this and talking about it um i think that we would all love to kind of be able to visualize it yeah and javier i just emailed you back the powerpoint if you need it oh there we go all right there we go all right hold on oh come on open up there we go okay cool all right so this is ambush out this is this is the opening is ambush alley okay all right this is checkpoint delta right here uh the this is where it goes into pakistan and this is afghanistan so six fingers house would be right here all right let me go to the next image all right here we go see that yep yep all right so so yeah we had the ambush set up right along here in this area all our vehicles left side security uh opened up into this area right here where that boulder is and now we're conducting the bda and we're coming down here so rob in his element they're taking uh they they they start taking fire from right here the guy jumps up from behind this boulder right here with the pkm and he's like alawa akbar and he just starts shooting that at this point the afghans just they bail they they bounce and they run down to this area right here the marine is trying to herd cats and get them stay keep them in the fight and rob is kind of rob is kind of left floundering kind of out in the open by himself at this point i'm about 20 meters be um to his left back into this left with the bravo with or with my uh 18 bravo and weapon sergeant and the jtac air force jtac so we're kind of clustered right here at this time robbie's engaging everything in this area right here and he we are engaging because we're in a nearby we're in a near a close ambush right here and so me the jtac and the uh bravo we're engaging you know four dukes that keep popping up in this little cluster right here um during this time period robbie's like he he throws his first hand grenade and it goes back up into this area i'm shooting by this time um the spotlight uh from the isr the uh it it was uh we had this area lit up that we can see under knots the isr is the entire intelligent surveillance reconnaissance it's it's some sort of platform a aerial platform and it has an ir spotlight illuminating the area for anybody who's wearing night vision right so we can see now it has this whole area light up but we can we can only see what's in this area right here and um and this is these two four guys playing whack-a-mole and they're just kind of like and so i get ready to throw a grenade but my bravo stops me because he's like hey man we're too close and so i put my grenade away and and we start engaging them and we eventually neutralize this area and we start engaging targets in here and then the whole time robbie is just doing nothing he's he's on his saw and he's just engaging targets all up in this area because he's taken a lot of fire um we were the reason why we weren't taking as much fire is because we had our uh he was he was he was uh shooting a m249 squad automatic weapon and he in that you can't put a nowadays you can put a a a suppressor on it but we he didn't have a suppressor on his um he was also was shooting a saw with a 10 inch barrel and i think they're normally what 16 inches so the the blowback on that is even bigger than the bigger flash it has a bigger flash so but the rest of us were we're we're shooting um m4s with uh with suppressors you know surefire suppressors and we're engaging all our targets so we're not we're not we're not we're taking fire but we're not taking this much fire at some point the captain he's back here and he gets hit so he was the first one that says hey you know i'm hit and so we knew the the the team back here can take care of him but it was we were in the x we're in the kill zone um so when it the kill zone is the area where everybo where all the volume of fire is going to be centered on so we're taking a huge volume of fire in this area um we were or robbie's taking a huge volley of fire in this area it's not so much impacting us but at some point i get hit uh the first time here in my uh it hit my magazine it hit my uh my my magazine square on on my chest rig i stay in the fight robbie at this time uh calls for a break contact and so i get down in the prone position and i'm i'm engaging targets off into this area laying down suppressive fire to this area and i hear the saw sing its last note and i didn't hear moving so i stopped for a second i see robbie on the ground um i go hey robbie's hit so i run up to him and i s i um i run up to robbie and uh i i need i'm i'm sitting out in the open just like he is so i run back and i say hey we need to go get robbie so my bravo said all right hey i'm gonna hold down and do give you some suppressing fire so he stays in this area and the jtac and i run to where robbie is over here in this area um at the time we were there there was a wall right here but we're we're we're right here in the open and you know t triple c was fairly it was fairly new to us and so we had gotten uh tactical combat care training prior to the deployment but that went out the window and i just and that basically what you're supposed to do in that scenario if you're hit you fight you know you you fight in place and take care of your moon and wait for somebody to come to you um but i i immediately ran to my buddy and um we started i started rendering first aid um he was he was laying on his back and uh the saw was like off to his off to his left and the worst part about it was i can see his face but i i you know i went right into training you know i started from the head and worked my way down um there was no uh there weren't any um head wounds and so i went back to his neck you know did a sweep looked at my hands no blood and then i was like all right i bust open his uh his kit and um he's he's taking really shallow breaths at this time and i'm looking for a bullet wound and i i do a sweep down the sides i do a sweep down his back no blood and i continue down to his legs and i set it up and they are here to my right and [Music] [Music] um [Music] good hold on a second guys what's up our uh internet connection is unstable could just be that there's a lot of people on zoom this time tonight yeah uh do you close it close that screen and see if that helps all right well how's the sound oh you cut out there again um see if not sharing the story see if i've done this the share screen and close that out and see if that helps i'm so up to that moment we were just uh really choppy are you good all right javier um i'm sorry do you want to try to pick it back up yeah so i'm i'm moving now um i just i start checking them and i can follow them to save my life so i pulled a shirt and cold it's like maybe 10 degrees out and uh i finally triple blood on his his left arm and that's where i looked immediately and i was like go look for a channel i pulled it out i throw it on and uh it wouldn't stick and so i pulled out my chest to seal it on and i got the seal but by this point he expired um in between i got hit second time um this time he hit push to talk to radio so i'm sitting there on a radio and rob gutierrez is talking on the radio and gunfire kind of died down at this point he says to me i said to him i go hey man rob's dead we gotta get him back and rob bob gutierrez is like hey i gotta i had a have a gun run coming dang close so we passed on the the the first you know dash one came in cleared hot and about 75 meters and away from us in the strafing room so dash two comes in and go back into the overhead and so while that's after second volley comes through um me and rob first attempt gravity before and bringing cece because of the train and um the the we just couldn't get a good grip on on robbie so we put him back down and i i can't remember if uh gutierrez called in another gun run i believe he did and um i looked at him and i was like hey man we gotta leave robbie here and then turn around can you still hear me yeah yeah i got you javier we've got you now yeah your screen is frozen uh okay but but the audio sounds okay yeah yeah that's definitely more worried about yeah so rob so robbie is uh so we're trying to move robbie we couldn't move him and by this time the marine who was with the afghans he kind of sees what's going on and he runs to our location i'm like hey grab the saw um and i look at rob gutierrez and i was like hey man we gotta leave them because we at this point we started taking fire a lot of fire and he was like no ride or die dude we're going to sit this one i go look man i i wait i weigh 250 i'm like dude i'm too big i'm not gonna i'm not gonna risk the lives of the team to try to come get me and you and this marine we're go get over the wall we're gonna get back to the ccp so um you know rob gutierrez being he you know he's a stud man he was like roger and he was laser focused on the job uh if it wasn't for him you know those gun runs i'd probably be dead but we hop over that wall i was telling you about with the marine and we laid down we took a couple rp you know a couple rpgs at this point and it really sucked because i felt like a lot of guilt you know leaving my buddy i can see him still you know and and there's a lot of guilt you know that that tears me up to this day but anyway we um we make i so we get to a point where gutierrez is like hey bro i gotta get to a better position i gotta drop some bombs i'm like all right roger so i go hey and the marine said hey i'ma go with him i'll go all right i'm gonna go back to the ccp let them know you guys get the guns you know you know we basically came up with a plan and um and at this point i was i was still in the fight mentally so i make it back to the ccp rob gutierrez is now he's closer to the river he's closer to the river and he's taking gunfire and um and he and at this point his i believe he lost uh he's doing everything analog now as far as calling in uh you know grids and everything he's doing it he's got a he's got a protractor paper compass rather than having a dagger and a in the plurf there to you know the laser rangefinders to do all you know come up with all the solutions he's doing it all analog and at the same time oh yeah by the way he's getting shot at um you know he's he's an awesome jtac anyway so i make it back to the uh to the ccp and um you know i get there and i see rob or bob um bob um cusick my captain and he's blue and he's got like a sucking chest wound and attention nemo thorax and um we're just in a bad place man and uh i say to him i go hey robbie you know robbie's dead and everything just kind of stopped for a second and the team sergeant was like hey what happened to your magazine hey you got shot and after that man i was done i i just i had it was hard to stay in the fight at that point and then on top of that i'm looking 100 meters away from me and there's robbie you know in there i'm like i gotta go get him and my bravo at this point he had made it back to the ccp and he saw me get ready to get up and he stopped me he goes dude what are you doing i go i gotta get robbie and they're like no stop and um so our warrant he started assessing the situation and he was like all right huff i need you to pull security yeah you know i'm gonna take care of the captain gucci you know hey we need you know jim or my team sergeant start that nine line you know he started calling the shots and everything's just we went right back to sop and things started to happen um about an hour or so later the uh medevac came and picked uh and i was told to get on the bird with the captain take him back and the team still had to go back and get ravi um the rest of the team performer you know awesomely they went out and uh by this point our partner forces that we've been working with a while back became um qrf's are you know had a qrf sent to our location and um they were able to meet up with uh the oda sometime after that and uh it was like a period of time when we getting robbie wasn't like a you know last time like you know i started this story i was telling you it was like 11 o'clock at night by this time the sun was up it was still overcast it's like four in the afternoon and it seemed like it is it was only 30 minutes really feel like only 30 minutes had passed and i can't even tell you when the sun came up um at what point because you know there's just so much that happened that day but uh they recovered robbie's body um the captain was uh sent to the um what does it call the uh field surgical tip fst and um the field surgical team uh started working on him now he ended up getting the uh chest tube um and they uh shipped him out to bagram to get him to a long stool and then from long stool back to walter reed and then walter reed back home we didn't see rob bob cusick for the rest of the trip um rob they recovered the body and there was a fire fight broke back out and a couple guys got injured from the team and they were medevaced out and then it was index everybody you know end of mission returned back to their respective places came back to the firebase and um i had to go i went to the bur i was i went out to the medevac bird to pick up robbie when he came in and um that was that was the i was able to at least we were able to at least get him back and um we took them to our uh to our med shed and um you know we immediately went into accountability you know we had to you know get the trucks filled uh filled up i tried to get my i did all that stuff just to keep my mind off of what just happened you know i was still processing it from you know all this stuff you know we got the trucks fueled up you know or we at least attempted to get things um operational ready to roll back out if you have to yeah and um it was rough you know it wasn't it wasn't really easy uh to do but uh about another two hours passed and um our senior medic was like hey come say our last goodbyes to robbie um yeah when we carried them out to the to the helicopter and that was the last time i saw him um javier this this story you know it really sheds light on the fact that i think a lot of people out there think that combat is you make nice clean head shots on the bad guys everybody goes home in time for you know sandwiches and uh and it's all good it's nice and clean it's static it's uh it's sterile right but in real life you know these things happen and you have to make really difficult decisions under combat under fire and in this case one of the worst things that probably could have happened where you know you had to at least for a temporarily you had to leave one of your teammates behind so that you could you know re re-kit uh reconfigure your forces and then go and recover his remains so that you could live i mean right you know that the other teammates could live yeah yeah i i think i you know um i was interviewed by stars and stripes and i you know that whole leaving robbie behind was the hardest thing i the hardest decision i could make as an nco the leader um placed in that situation at that time um i don't regret leaving behind i just don't like the fact that i did yeah and robbie robbie would want you guys to live yeah well you know he laid his life down for you there's no question that that's he would have wanted that for you you know and the thing about it was he was straight gangster about it too you know he he there was no just like his shots were like it was like we were on a range he was like everything was sharp it was a flash that's where his muzzle was going same with us you know and i want to really attribute to the team especially the element i was with um the you know the bravo the jtac robbie myself we did things the way we were trained to do you know um i let emotion and attachment get the best of me and when robbie was initially hit but i think any guy would have done that it's hard it's something that's hard to to fight against but yeah yeah it was it was a it was a tough scenario to be in and you're right you know he gave his life for us so that we can make it back um but that event would go on to haunt me for years and um i i ended up doing things i should have done like instead of taking a break i ended up deploying again i should have deployed you know i i had no business deploying you know i went to go be a dog handler thinking now get that break being around a dog would help me out with this and um it didn't you know i i and i i feel like i failed myself on that um i wouldn't necessarily blame my leadership because it was my choice to redeploy it was my choice to become a dog handler and then i'm the type of person that takes responsibility for the decisions i make but that was the attitude at the time you know stay in the fight you know and we should mention here also that robbie was posthumously awarded the medal of honor for his actions that day right yeah i i i yeah he was um the team i feel like the team was able to move on a lot better than i was able to i think gutierrez i mean i can't speak for gutierrez but some of the things we've talked about since that that period has really um kind of haunted both of us and kind of helped shape the rest of our career you know um so you know after that event like four months later so that was january in april uh my my team minus me in a in a handful like so half my team uh i was on the qrf and the other half was on the assaulting element with uh oda three three three six um with uh in shock the battle of shock valley and um that's where ron ronshur and matt williams both were awarded the uh medal of honor as well as the majority almost everybody on the team receiving silver stars being awarded silver stars and purple hearts i think there was only like two guys two guys at the time who didn't get a silver star um but that is for you know for a couple of new guys in the company that was their first mission you know so imagine that you know you just yeah you want to go into that battle it in itself uh as your first you know welcome to group welcome to afghanistan oh yeah by the way here's a narrow here's another narrow valley that will fight in and uh oh yeah you're shooting uphill you know you're fighting uphill so do you mind if i ask you and if we if you want to bypass us we can and it's fine we can talk more about you know the his the history that you know you experienced but what robbie i i i what where does the guilt come from you didn't leave a you didn't leave a teammate you know who was in the fight you didn't like abandon him um you you you made a tactical decision made a tactical decision after he passed where does where do you have you explored like where does that guilt come from or what do you feel guilty about even though his remains were recovered and everything so the guilt the kill comes from the fact that when i got back to the ccp and the moment i realized like it finally like it took the team sergeant saying hey you were shot there was something that clicked to me like i'm done and that the fact that i was done at that point i felt like i i i was like it was one less gun in a fight and i became combat ineffective the point where i was not able to stay to recover robbie's body um and yet but but at the same time they had to stop you from going back to to to attempt to get his body at that same time correct yeah that was that was an irrational reaction on my part and i would could i could have potentially put the lives of my my teammates in danger because of that and so um this is the first time you know i've talked about this in uh um in other settings before uh more private settings this is the first time i've ever said it out loud in the public setting and since that point you know i've mentioned i've talked to teammates about that and at the time um rightfully so they weren't comfortable with that reaction from me um and that's understandable and uh i but there were some because of that there were some there was some bitterness in me because um we were all reacting to robbie's death and that's the way we all ended up coping with it you know right and um so at the time it sucked at the time i was pissed at the time i was embarrassed um but you know now we're looking at back at it 20 years you know 10 years 12 years later you know and i see it differently they see it differently they understand like hey dude you just found out you just saw your buddy died and then oh yeah on top of that you were blocking out the fact that you got shot and yeah and by mistake just by mis you know he didn't mean it intentionally it was just like hey you got shot too and it was like oh sh eating and then it's like i'm done um so you know it was a good call that i i'm really grateful for my my warrant officer who uh took charge you know um i was grateful for my team sergeant for getting that nine line in um and uh but that just you know a lot of that that whole their that that whole event that that little event i just told you about just kind of drove a wedge with me mentally with the team because i feel like now i'm on the outs because i was doing really good up until this point per se and because of the where we're at emotionally dealing with robbie's death i felt like i just got recycled over an a.d you know or kicked out of a q course over an a.d right and i think to be fair there's yes everybody's dealing with robbie's death there's a significant difference between being you know being in one position and saying hey one of our teammates is down is dead over there and having been the person there trying to to save him and and watching him pass you know even though to the outside world everybody's sharing this experience our teammate passed there's a significant difference between being 100 yards from it and being right there right there when it happens you know there's there's a significant difference and there's a significant difference in how people are going to process that you know so i and so this is where like having some spirituality behind me ended up at least getting me through the rest of that deployment um i wish i had listened to the premonitions i was having of you know taking a year off you know to get to get squared away take a knee but instead you know what i thought was going to be a year the the need the need for that capability of being a dog handler happened just like that i um i want to talk about that next um but i just want to say thank you for sharing that story uh with with everyone you know not just dave and i but with all the people who watch this um because i think people need to know about robbie and what he sacrificed and i think people need to know about your team um you know your story the way in the story you just told and the way you told it it doesn't really make it into the war movies you know that's the part of it that the public doesn't really get to see but it's what they need to be aware of and it's what people need to know these are the sorts of things our soldiers have to deal with overseas you know that's real that's real life yeah because you know it's easy for me to sit here and say i'm embarrassed that i was emotionally that i got mentally shut down but but i can also say that you know i put a hundred percent into that effort of trying to save his life into trying to get him back so at the end of the day that effort is worth more than than embarrassment in an embarrassment so you should never feel embarrassed about what you did over there javier you you know you did the right thing your teammates did the right thing but it it really shaped the way i approached everything after that you know um so tell tell us about that what happened after you know that you decided to go and become a dog handler and you thought maybe this would be a little bit of a lighter duty assignment but it ended up sort of not being that at all right so so uh i got lucky the dog program i think third group was like third and seventh group was the last of the groups to start using the uh multi-purpose canines and um but i was in the first batch of guys at third group to volunteer for that duty and so the team sergeant was my was my cadre my uh my team sergeant while i was going through robin sage in the queue course our culminating exercise before we uh were awarded our green berets um and he was my cadre and he i really liked him you know he was a former uh task force guy and uh he was a team sergeant at one point my company and they gave him an opportunity to uh take on the dog program and he he took he like he he took it and ran with it and um because of his background you know having been you know a guy working behind the fence he uh he he brought that that that training mentality and mindset with them to the dog program so it wasn't about just training and then going every day was a training day literally you know and so um our train-ups were were were pretty rough and um they were fun and it was a good time and um i thought hey you know i'm i'm in a group of good dudes and that are in group um they weren't like the they you know they weren't the supposed ash and trash of the of the teams you know there were actually you know stand-up guys who uh who who love doing the pro you know they love the program just as much um and i was hoping to go into that and be like all right get a year figure things out get to know my dog polish my posh my skills and nope you know i got my dog and the next thing you know man i'm on a c-130 going to afghanistan you know flying into kandahar who who is your dog and what was your relationship with this dog like i mean that this you know furry creature is your new teammate and uh what was that like well so my dog was ramp uh was andy he was a belgian maliwan and uh he he looked kind of like wiley coyote in in a muzzle and um he was squirrely man he was just like like he was that dog that his tongue hung out the side of his face and but he was like a hard worker he loved he loved to uh detect for bombs he loved to uh he loved doing patrolling or bite work you know biting he was a good you know he was awesome at tracking and um he and i we we had a we had a really strenuous uh relationship because it was hard for me to get to know him because he was such a all the other dogs were you know you tell them to sit they sit you tell them to lay they lay and he did it but he was goofy about it like he it was like that was just the way he was those are his characteristics and so um but we grew we grew we grew into a pretty good team um not as not as good as a team as i wanted to be but we were we were we we did some really good things together um we deployed in 2009 to uh fob anaconda in the uruzgan province and we're out in the middle of nowhere um a week prior to me getting there dave uh operational detachment three one two three um they lost their team sergeant and three other members of their team and their i believe their jtac all in one week um one was i believe a sniper was from sniper fire and the other the other four deaths were from um an ied blasts dave hurst truck so um national guard team was um moved out to their location and i joined that national guard team shortly after they got there and then we were teamed up with the czechoslovakian special special forces and um we had a small a small detachment of afghan national army guys that we went on patrols with but for the most part anything that we did it was almost unilateral because of the the scope of our relationship with the national army guys they they weren't they weren't too trustworthy to work with and um it was inter it was an interesting dynamic but that national guard team i was there with them for about three months and then i went to go work with dave hertz or the dave hertz team uh blaine uh was captain blaine or that was his first name blaine smith i think is his name i forget his name anyway i ended up working with their team and they weren't doing much of anything and so that was nice we did a couple of missions with the uh navy seals um i got i got kind of like tasked out to go work with another team um and you know that's where andy and i we we hit three ieds in one night uh on a route red dog and um that sucked and i think that was part of the ptsd that you know got because andy wasn't injured um he ended up the ieds were offset so offset meaning that the pressure plate was it was on the right side of the road so in the direction of travel but the pressure plate was so that the front tire would hit it and it would go off underneath the passenger compartment and so we found the ieds going in the opposite direction so they were on the left side of the road so the pressure plate was closest to us and so there was usually like a distance from that so andy indicated um and he went to go sit sit but instead of sitting where the ied is he took a couple steps and he actually hit the pressure plate and it was a um these iads didn't like they went off but it didn't like it wasn't like a it was a very small explosion i mean it was like the equivalent of those already sims yeah yeah yeah so it was it wasn't that big and we hit three of those and i think that's so it not only rattled my nerves but you know he uh it rattled his quite a bit um so i was trying to work that issue out um in between missions and i thought i had it worked out and we did rest we did we did fine we went out uh we went on a couple missions with the navy seals was still team three that year and then um and a couple other guys in a couple other agencies we were working with at the time and then um every rtb back home and so because our you know andy has you know because of this i went i ended up going um i ended up doing my train up and the next thing you know they were like hey we need a dog handler mackie you're on board so this is like three months i've been home for three months and now i'm back in afghanistan in january my wife is pissed at me but i'm getting i'm i'm i got teamed up with uh um oda 3336 they were doing the commando mission so that meant i wasn't going to be uh on the road as much i was going to be flying quite a bit uh andy and i you know we i felt we were ready we landed in bagram we were walking down the ramp and andy you know he takes a nice big sniff and he looks left and right he's like nope i ain't getting off this bird sorry buddy you're going you're doing this by yourself i'm like what the heck and uh you know my master trainer and my team sergeant they're looking at the dog and i'm like so i i go and i'm like come on come on buddy try to give him a treat or his ball he's like nope i don't want my ball i'm not getting off this airplane so we're going in the crate and we're like what the you know my dog just literally broke on the aircraft so after some some discussion um they asked me if i wanted to stay and i was like yeah i want to stay so they shipped out another dog um and then i got marco and marco was a uh shepherd um awesome dog and uh working with od836 was very awesome because we we were kinetic a lot like and this time i was i was i was mentally i was on i was in in the game i was in the zone um and i was able to provide the the support we needed through throughout that mission um we were you know we we got surround we were surrounded quite a bit throughout that deployment um we returned back from that from the 2010 deployment that was the that was a surge into marjah and then we went to uh um three six we got some low vis missions in central asia so i you know we ended up in kyrgyzstan and tajikistan for 2011 and 2012 and then 2013 i was um i went over to work for uh the uh headquarter support company and i was running the fleatac mission with uh with all our support bubbas um in the sixth cent and that was a good that was a really good time it was my it was a good it was my first time i was given the opportunity to be in a leadership position and uh plan my missions and run my own missions with uh with another uh with another officer so that was cool um the 2010 trip was the last trip i did with the canine and i went back to you know regular oda stuff 2014 i was anticipating on getting a team so um it was anticipated that if i made the seven the eight list i would get a team that didn't happen and so i was a senior charlie on a on uh oda 3331 and we we were operating up in kunduz um that year we lost uh our in our company we lost or in our battalion we lost mike cathcart that was a rough that was a that was a tough loss right there and so who was who was mike i mean can you tell us a little bit about him and yeah mike mike cathcart he was on um oda operational detachment 1 4 our halo team and i believe he was an echo he was married he loved hockey i didn't know my i went through unit level uh advanced marksmanship training with him uh i didn't get a chance of knowing much because we weren't uh we weren't shooting partners um but he was a good dude awesome dude uh everybody loved him um i happen to have a pitcher happen to have a picture of his weapon he was killed we were conducting operations in on conduce and uh he was with my junior bravo um with a element from a special afghan special forces team an actual afghan oda and they were kicking in doors and um yeah he he came in through he got shot going through the uh the breach point so um that was a tough loss um we ended up loot you know you know that was just a that whole trip was just a it was it was a painful it was a painful uh trip um i got an opportunity to work with the uh the german special forces uh whatever they call themselves they were yeah and they were they were good um a good bunch of guys and um you know it was a i really enjoyed it you know and um that time was short you know i did that for a bit you know and then i ended up going to the b team uh for a little bit uh and that's when i started executing my uh my bailout plan for getting out of the army your was that the first time that you thought about getting out of the army had you had you considered it like after losing robert like what what kept you in the army what kept you going what kept you going on all these trips i i was trying to make up for the fact that i didn't stay in the game when robbie died that was if anything i was trying to prove to i was trying to prove to myself that i can still do i can still stay in the game um 2000 you know in 2011 and 2012 when i was in the kyrgyzstan tajikistan those are those are well well those deployments um even though we didn't go we didn't go kinetic in those deployments those they were a break for me you know i was able to uh to reset uh to the 2010 trip i was able to reset uh 2011 2012 kind of solidified it but there was still uh i was still struggling um i was you know robbie and i were talking quite a bit i would literally see robbie and we would have full-on conversations you know and i guess it was my way of coping with his loss um i was uh i felt like he was with me um during that time period it was a very lonely time period you know my deployments i felt extremely lonely i miss my wife i miss my kids [Music] so i try to hang out with the guys on the team as much as possible i went through depression you know battling ghosts um hating on myself uh but i never felt like you know i i i never tried to let it get in the way of my the way i performed on the team with on the deployments um i felt like i always had something to prove i felt like everybody knew what happened you know and i felt like i was you know no way would never outrightly say anything but i always felt like there was like well yeah he choked up on a mission you know javier you uh you read my book so you must understand that i had a lot of the same feelings and that you know probably had an impact on why i did some of the things i have in life that i'm feeling the feeling that the kind of embarrassment and shame and feeling that you have to prove something to yourself to like you're trying to make up for something yeah most definitely man and um my wife took the brunt in out of it you know i never you know i you i did it like i never like yelled at her or hit her or cheated on her or anything like that it was always like i was emotionally distant right right you know like a week like the week of me leaving there was no physical interaction with my wife very little talking i my mind was totally focused on afghanistan and you know she was she was lucky if she got like a phone call once a week when you were when you were deployed yeah when i was deployed did did you ever i mean you're a man of faith um was was that ever a refuge for you were you ever able to talk to your your uh your stepfather your father about it i mean were were there any resources that you turned to or did you just feel kind of completely isolated at that point in time i was man i i was angry um everybody that i you know the people i my my my church tribe back in fayetteville i didn't think they understood they didn't you know a lot of them were sf guys um but a lot of them were officers and you know i didn't think that i i didn't and when i did try talking about it i i didn't feel like they they understood me you know even though they were probably going through the same thing they i didn't feel like they understood me um trying to talk about it with teammates that's like preaching to the choir um you know they're you know they're busy self-medicating uh whether they do alcohol you know yeah you know yeah you know not you know you know just doing the things that we do yeah and so i i really didn't feel like i had anybody to talk to you know i i was my own island you know and um my wife she i couldn't talk to her you know because i just i was afraid i was going to scare the crap out of her um you know the nightmares she had to live through the nightmares you know the uh me talking through my sleep um the emotional distance distancing you know and i try to make it up in other ways like hey i'm gonna buy her an expensive you know piece of jewelry or hey i'm gonna take her on a nice vacation go on a cruise you know you know i always try to make it up but i just didn't feel like that was a thing and so um i ran into so one in 2015 i got back from my last deployment and i already knew i was going i i know it was 2014 i was sitting in a gym and i hadn't executed my exit strategy yet i had about three years four years left in the army at this time and i was like you know i gotta figure out what i was gonna do and so i ran into sergeant major charlie thorpe you know anybody's in the 82nd and you're an 82nd back in the day you everybody knew charlie thorpe was and uh charlie dark was the division sergeant major at the time and i saw him and he's since been retired he's been retired for about 10 years at this point and i i see him in the in the in the gym in the in sitting on the bench and he's kind of like i was we were in a sauna together and he stepped out and i was getting dressed taking the shower and stuff and he was just sitting on the bench khan just zoned out and i said h uh you know hey sorry major you know why are you still here well i thought you would probably just retire and just move somewhere else and he was like man i just can't leave this place i got you know i i i need to be near the soldiers and i and there's nothing wrong with that but that's not where i wanted to be when i retired i didn't want to be stuck in faith i didn't want to be in fayetteville um amongst everybody else who's dysfunction just as this is dysfunctional as i am and hasn't been able to build a life for themselves outside of the military right you know and i'm not you know that that's very that varies from one person to another but um and you know i'm not trying to down anybody who's who stayed in in the brag area but i i needed to leave yeah i i needed to leave i i think different like different people handled different like some people cling to it and some people like jettison right try to distance themselves as much as possible from it not out of any animosity or anything it's just to create create just to get away right and i didn't see myself growing you know i felt like i i felt like i was uh i was stuck so um i came home from my 2015 trip and i told my wife we're going to florida to go and i'm going to be teaching rotc and uh at the university of central florida and this is all part of my plan anyway um i wanted to be you know part of that plan was to get away from a military installation be around civilians get my education and retire you know grab you know graduated and adjusted to being a civilian and um the plan was executed well and then when i got to orlando everything just something happened to me emotionally um there's a string of events that occurred and i told my wife that i wanted a divorce um and we were going through that for a little bit and because i had i had some suicidal ideations um that was fighting and the whole you know there wasn't another woman or anything like that it was just like i needed a i needed her i wanted her to be away from me so when it happened she was you know um it didn't affect her yeah you didn't put her through that right yeah so um then my buddy uh my buddy uh tom or uh tim hankins uh he called me up on he called me up and he was like hey man i'm moving from texas i'm done with this assignment i'm being reassigned to tampa just bought a house i'm closing on it hey let's get together and uh let's do some catching up and i was like yeah man cool you know i was excited to have another sf brother in in the vicinity you know even though tampa is like a two-hour drive from here so i'm all excited and then thursday thursday uh evening i get home and i'm on facebook and my buddy is like dang you know tim why did you do it why did you do it so i called my buddy up and i'm like hey what happened to tim he's like hey man he committed suicide and i was like holy crap um another big event occurred and then this i felt like the world was just like kind of crashing on my shoulders right and um i uh i i decided i needed help you know i was like i don't i don't want to leave my wife um if i sk if i commit suicide the tech those little bastards i was fighting in afghanistan will win and so that was the mentality i can't let them win because if i commit suicide they got me you know so um between uh my wife my you know i told my wife look hey i'm going through some stuff i need to get help and we started making those steps to getting help and she stood by my side and she was you know she's you know she went you know she she held my hand through it all and um you know if if i had you know she she was like my battle buddy through the whole thing and faithfully you know i'm i'm truly grateful for for that um and then um i started i tried to start recognize reconciling myself with god because at this point i have just pretty much said you know i'm just going through the motions i go to church i sit in the pew i don't care i'm angry i lash out at people you know don't talk to me type thing um and i started wrecking i was like you know i need a i need to strengthen my foundation so to speak and um go back to my roots you know and with that i had to start thinking about why am i here in orlando i'm here to make trained officers train students to be officers so i need to have a purpose so i threw my heart and soul into training these kids these cadets to be officers and the more involved i got into that the more involved i got into church i started going back to school working on my degree um but the whole time i'm still fighting these demons um i'm still i'm still having these conversations with robbie um he's visiting me just as often as he ever has at least once or twice a day um and um i you know i i shared this with my wife i really hadn't never shared the fact that i've talked to robbie on a regular basis with anybody else but once i i opened up that to um it stopped and then i figured i there's a lot of stuff i have to get off my chest and this premium i got this this feeling in my gut that if i talk about these things i can start letting go i can start forgiving myself um i can start forgiving people that i felt wronged me um i can start building that relationship with my wife and my daughter my daughters i can start um you know taking my you know taking my talents and giving you know maximizing what i can do for the cadets that i'm working with and um we got a there's a couple people that are instrumental you know um i was so i taught the juniors um before i became the ncoic i was doing playing both hats but i taught the juniors and the juniors uh it's important uh in the junior year this is where they're getting assessed um they're gonna find out what um they're assessing for the branch they're gonna get they're assessing for uh national uh placement so they can get the branch they want there's a number of things that they're competing for and so i wanted to be that guy who um brought you know who got them to where they needed to be and um it was it was awesome and i got to develop these relationships and the the highlight of every graduate every semester is these these kids with commission and um the uh what's awesome is they they choose a nco in their life um to give their first salute and i was able to give like like 10 first salutes during that time period and these kids to this day call me up i've been retired for two years some of them have been they're they're second lieutenants or first lieutenants now and or and they're calling me up for advice you know um i flew out to um i flew out to idaho and a couple years ago my high school band director uh son uh pj he uh he commissioned into the navy and he wanted me to give him his first salute so i was able to give him a given his i flew out there to do that um my band teacher my band teacher in high school it was a big influence on me and we still you know 27 years later still keep in touch with one another so i i couldn't i couldn't i couldn't let the taliban win you know because i would have let all these people down i could have you know because that suicide could have affected one of those cadets you know so you're you're you know maybe not even halfway through your life javier i mean your kids are still young i mean you got you got a lot of miles left on you nope my i'm 45 years old i got a 19 year old and a 16 year old you know you're the young guy i mean javier when when you were you said that you got a lot of stuff off your chest was that primarily your wife was it through the church was it through um did you find a therapist you trusted was it your teammates how did your va started with the va yep the va here in orlando is if you saw this hospital it's it's like it's a university campus man it's awesome um my doctor we we're doing this what they call cognitive behavior therapy is where you uh identify they call them stuck points like what are your stuck point was a stuck point and you had to write about it right yeah you write about it and then you you rate it and then you start asking questions like is this a is this an assumption is this a fact you know and then you start breaking down these little stuck points and then you come up with a solution at the end like so what do you think about that stunt point now what would you say and then you you know your feelings change towards it and you're like huh you know like let me let me uh let me i felt like for even though the team had no indicator made no indication or never said a word or never did anything in this in remotely close to this in my head um i thought the team before i left on the team left the team i thought they it was a race issue i thought i had convinced myself that the guys on my team wanted me off the team because i was a black guy yeah i was black they it's like this is this this is stuff that was going through my head and it was there was nothing too substantiated so i'm sitting there with my therapist and i say hey i felt like this i felt like brace could have played a thing in this and i started working it out through this cognitive therapy and at the end of the day i was like dude that was all in my head i made it all up in my head for no reason you know and those guys love me you know those you know they i still keep in touch that you know oda three three one two slash three seven two we are still a family you know um to this day you know i my uh my senior charlie i've gone to both his you know he has three daughters i went i've been to both of i've been involved in both of their weddings um my team sergeant you know i was you know pat rotzer he remembers my daughter you know he was like hey how's pooh bear doing you know i'm like oh she's doing good you know yeah you know we we we're a family that team is a family and we've been it's been 14 years since we were a team and uh or 12 years since we were 18 and but we still keep in contact we still have this love from one another through this cognitive therapy i was able to you know tell you know the bravo but i had some animosity tomorrow you know i was like i dude i i i resented you you know and and then you know the things i resented was all in my head you know and so i was able to work through that and then you know when i as i'm going through this forgiveness and reconciliation with my feelings and my thoughts my relationship with god became stronger and um the light by the the love i feel that god has for me grew stronger and the things that i um you know the the you know that i am a child of god i am a son of god um and he does love me and he he he has me i am here and i'm alive because he's not yeah i still have a mission you know and so and i now that i'm done with school i'm trying to figure this all out and every day i learn something new you know my my part of that spirituality is every day my wife and my daughters and i we sit down at the table for right before we eat breakfast and we start work and we read our scriptures you know um every night before we go to bed we say a prayer together as a family um we in these are things that i can't live without now these are things and i'm not saying that i think spirit being spiritual is a step towards recovery you don't have to believe but i think spirituality you know understanding your nothingness um suppressing your ego um being humble these are things that can definitely help with the path of recovery out of you know out of this mire that we find ourselves emotionally um right there's nothing that you know jesus turned water into one right so there's nothing you know i don't see nothing really too wrong with with drinking but when you when it becomes a priority over other things um when you're using it to to numb the pain you know that's where you got to start you know doing this do a self-assess uh a needs assessment and start looking at your priorities in life um so there's a number of things i started doing um i had one of the big key things is when you get out you need a man tribe right yeah i can you know so i got a group of friends at church i got my church friends my church guy tribe i got my fraternity guy tribe i got my um i got my team like my uh my senior he lives up in gainesville and we get together we used to get together every weekend but since this covet thing you know we haven't seen any you know we've been social distancing so um there's some good healthy options versus partying and drinking and and there's nothing wrong with any of that it's just you know at some point we got to grow up yeah with with the the church man tribe and the fraternity man tribe um have you have you have you felt a difficulty integrating due to your military experience or or do you focus on different areas where you're still able to sort of integrate with them you know where you're still able to kind of mess with them regardless of your individual backgrounds right so like my fraternity tribe and my church tribe they're separate and i compartmentalize my my relationships um because my fraternity tribe they they're i can say and do things around them like nothing bad or anything there's things i can say i feel more comfortable having joking around with uh i can get spiritual with them um i can and at the same time you know i you know we can you know they can tell a dirty joke and i sit there and laugh at it you know whereas my church my church tribe that's a little more special to me um like those those guys when i have something where i'm hurting inside i can rely upon both tribes for dealing with the pain but they they help me deal with it different ways yeah yeah and um and then there's my my you know my senior he's happened to be you know i i i like to call him my best friend um i bet my best guy friend uh we didn't always get along as like we got along as team members but we didn't it was kind of like a it was like a brother relationship you know like f you uh you know i hate you you'll shut up you know you know how it is javier um i think we should probably get to some questions before we roll out um but uh before we uh lose track of time again i just wanted to make sure that i get you to talk to us uh about this uh new endeavor that you're starting called lost and you know you want to start doing some videos i mean tell us what you want to do with it all right so my the audience i'm trying to look at here is the college student thinking about going into the army okay the uh the high school student who's trying to who's going out of high school and thinking about joining the army and what i want to do is present leadership military leadership um you know pamphlets uh little stuff that i took from the rotc that would work with the uh with the cadets and then i also want to like teach them skill sets like land you know map reading lion navigation um i want to conduct some interviews with uh guys like yourself you know talking about you know hey i got some kids who were thinking about going to ranger battalion or you know hit me like hey what do i need to do to prepare for that what i need to do to prepare for basic training if i want to do um one thing or another so i really want to like really focus on because i feel like the most dangerous age group is the 14 the fighting age males you know 14 to 32 you know and um if we can get if we can if we can get out there and you know reach that target our audience i think it'd be fun um florida it's really hard down here you know it's the everything is flat and land navigation it was like one of my favorite things to do it still is to this day i love i love hiking i love getting outdoors i like i like being able to have a map in my hand and like say to my my daughter hey this is a ridgeline yeah you see that this is this is what that terrain feature is here you can't do you know we used to be able to do that in north carolina but not so much here in florida you know everything's flat but um i think it's going to be be a lot of fun with it the first the first the first couple episodes are going to be like a little introductory but then it's going to be like one's going to be a a tribute to the use of sock following okay yeah so um and what's that what's that youtube channel called or what it will be called united it would be called looking over strange terrain lost and uh nice yeah uh i got this from a cadre in uh and uh when i was in pldc primary leadership uh uh leadership course and he would always say you know when he was teaching land nav you know you don't want to get lost you don't want to find yourself looking over strange terrain and just like for whatever reason that just stuck and i like the way it sounded so um well uh we'll we'll link to it when you get it up and uh and we'll have you back on the show sometime we'll you know once you get it going get it rolling and we'll talk more about it yeah most definitely um so i actually got a text from uh old teammate of mine who was a dog handler and uh he wanted me to ask you about your vlk experience oh [Laughter] um well it depends on which time so i don't even know what that is so when we when the dog program for special forces was initially contracted it was through von lick kennels it was a retired who's a retired air force special or security forces military dog handler okay back from back in the 80s 70s and 80s and um that von lick experience was pretty interesting it was fun you know um i went twice uh because i had two dogs uh initially i had two dogs i had one bart which was a uh but he wasn't you know there were some quirky things about him so they sent me back and i went and got andy and um one of those times i went back i was with uh the first time i went i was it was a bunch of us third group guys with a bunch of navy seals and a bunch of first group guys and uh one of my teammates uh decides there's this bar called the whiskey river and it's not far from the team house where we where we stayed and um it was the middle of winter and it was snowing in indiana we're in peru indiana and in peru indiana is a uh that's where all the carnies go [Laughter] it's it's the circus capital of the world so all the circus folk really live in this town and um uh in the winter time they kind of come back and then in the summertime they go out and work the carnivals in uh circuses anyway um the guys go to the whiskey river that uh one night and uh one of my teammates who said you know you know i'm just going to stay in the house and get drunk and uh you know watch some tv we're like all right whatever next thing you know he's coming in my room with the first group with uh i was i was bumped in with the first group guy and i forget the guy's name he goes hey man i'm going to the whiskey river you want to go i'm like no you go ahead and he so the first group guy was like yeah i'll go so they they take off and uh like this really bad snowstorm comes in right horrible snowstorm comes in and uh they stay at the bar until closing they close it down and they're walking back they're both drunk and uh my teammate says to the first group guys let's fight he's like nah man it's it's cold out we only got another block to go this let's go let's go mess around at the team house and he's like no let's do it now so my my teammate takes off his clothes and he's in his like skivvies and he's like hey he goes hey dude just sit down put it back in your clothes and so oh boy uh so they sit down on this on some random person's porch and the first group guy falls asleep and it's snowing outside dude like when i woke up that morning there was at least a foot and a half of snow but he falls asleep for a couple minutes and he wakes up and all is left is kenny's or yeah that's his name kenny kenny wilson he uh all is left is his jeans his shirt and his jacket that's it we don't like there's nothing else so he i get back so he gets back so instead of coming back and telling me that hey kenny's missing he goes to sleep so i wake up uh about i don't know nine o'clock that morning and um because i've been up all night like watching movies and i wake up and i have to do it i gotta do a head count you know all the seals are in and um the first guy comes to me goes yeah man so something strange happened last night we get drunk and uh kenny wants to fight and next thing you know he you know we're tussling in the snow i said you know i sit down on this guy's porch i fall asleep for a few minutes wake up and all i see is his clothes i'm like are you kidding me and i'm looking outside and i was like it it's it's cold outside so i'm like crap so i'm calling the i called every hotel in that area i called all the hospitals police departments and i'm like he has to be in the drunk tank and so next thing you know i get a phone call and it's the it's the sheriff's deputy who's like hey are you missing somebody you're like yeah because everybody knew that when we were in town they knew this is a small enough town when we showed right over there and he was like come get your guy so i'll go bail him out of jail and um he's pissed man he's like he's he's like he's pissed at himself and i was like hey man this shouldn't show up the guys the police officer said it's not gonna show up on the blogger they're not gonna call brag so let's just continue on and he's a good dude he's a dude of integrity he's like nope you know i'm gonna call a team sergeant let him know and uh team serge is like yeah why don't you come back let's talk about it so you know he ended up as he ended up his uh he had to turn in his dog and uh um go back to brag that he ended up going back again anyway to get a dog but yeah then that that was that that was a that was a pretty funny experience there i really thought this story was going to end with a contortionist oh i wish dave do we have any uh viewer questions we do so alex uh thank you alex uh alex uh what was what was your favorite meal when you're in the army maybe like when you're in afghanistan or even maybe uh you said kyrgyzstan tajikistan like was there ever anything you ate out there that you just loved so when i was in russia when i was in kurdistan we ate a lot of russian food there's this noodle called uh this fried noodle thing called uh fried uh lagman uh-huh and it was really good it is like all the food i had in kyrgyzstan was the best food i ever had it was you know but it was the same but you can get the same food in afghanistan yes i love afghan food to pin it down on one thing uh would be i would be lying to you yeah but yeah i had i did have a goat face go face yolk face yeah and uh if i ask me if you guys find yourselves in afghanistan and the afghan uh gives you food and it's dark don't eat it you don't know what you're getting yeah did you i mean did you know it was goat face did they pull it off the yeah yeah yeah so we were yeah so you know so the tradition goes in kurdistan um this is a big deal you know for them to do to make the goat that cook the goat head it's a huge deal um so you minus the fur everything is on the go eyeballs brain ears you know the whole nine yards so they bring it out and um the tradition in the russian military is that the youngest gets the best parts which is the i could be i might be wrong i think it's the eyeball and the brain i could be but are you the young guy on our team he was like you got to be kidding me no but and so i i just went ahead and did it because you know the type of mission we were doing you know there was no room for um there was no room for uh guys being you know picky eaters you know you're trying to build that that bond yeah so it was like you know hey young guy let me show you how to do this you know let me show you what it's all about uh gustavo thank you uh he just said thanks for the content and thank you for the very generous donation uh philip thank you very much um brendan gray grand hill thank you you said happy to contribute uh max uh thank you for sharing uh javier uh you and robbie are inspirations thank you i appreciate it robbie let me tell you what the team and the the team the team did what it's supposed to do and it's it's nice to when you're working with a team like a special forces oda it's awesome to see guys put into action sops the way they train you know one of the things at the end of the day i remember during that fire fight everything was going so well during that little bit because one thing is that you like this is something i hate about training if it's not realistic then it's everything's like going to jrtc at the joint readiness training center where you're shooting with lasers it's like a finger drift you know what i mean and so you lose there's so much loss in that type of training um and let me tell you what all the missions i went on prior to this was like going to a jrtc you know like a joint training where you're doing these laser laser tag type missions and it sucked because now i'm in a real thing and you can't replicate your heart racing a thousand miles per minute as you're trying to literally save your best when your best friend's lives you can't replicate um the anguish you can't replicate there's a lot of things you just can't replicate and um there's a lot of things that were i wasn't ready to to deal with afterwards um when like during a training exercise at one of those events when someone dies no there's no there's nobody that's there you know checking out mentally you know what i mean everybody's it's a training exercise and everybody knows it's not real right but um and uh i happen to work in the simulations arena now and so they're they're they're definitely trying to work on i believe there's programs out there really trying to fix that yeah it's very hard to simulate that i mean you know using simulation you know there are ways to elevate and and get things going but at the end of the day it's it's very hard to uh you know to prepare somebody for that to get them ready for that type of resilience training or or i mean and i i in it's uh there's also like this this divergent sort of this is really happening is this really happening this is really happening this sort of conscious battle going on sometimes uh particularly in a casualty situation where you're you're trying to mesh reality with your idea of what what's supposed to be happening right we're the good guys we don't we don't lose you know like the this isn't happening to somebody that i care about you know and you know so it i totally understand yeah it's it's really is it's a really weird thing when because the feelings that you have during the you fork the euphoric feelings you have when you're actually oh crap this is actually working right and then oh crap what just happened right you know um it was awesome seeing robbie transition target transition it was awesome you know you know watching rob gutierrez with both push to talks looking up in the sky and doing this coral this this choreography and you know this choreography of aircraft you know in this stack you know um and uh it's i didn't because i didn't realize how how difficult that was until you know i went through the so-tac training i was like holy crap this sucks yeah so but yeah javier this has been uh incredible uh this has probably been you know the heaviest episode we've done but also at the same time one of the funniest too with some of these stories you've told so i mean it really runs the gamut of all of the emotions that you know come uh come come to the surface when we start talking about these sorts of things i i've got just a couple more i'm so sorry jack i'm so sorry hob i just i want to get to these people we got all the time in the world dj thank you very much she said thank you for sharing the story uh javier um five seven six five seven five sierra said uh uh our partner force is disciplined for their [ __ ] ups see what our partner forces disciplined for their fuck-ups like when the indians kind of bailed on that situation are there ramifications for them or not really not really no no um it depends on the unit like if that was a commando unit yeah this somebody would have probably got their you know their their poop pushed in on that one but you said those were kind of cooks and admin and whoever was around you know partner forces are very sensitive things that you you gotta massage right if you can massage the partner force relationship the trip will be good and that's them actually being in power you got to empower them if they don't feel empowered guess what it's you're the whole point of the the foreign internal defense is done you know if there's if you're going there uh f these dudes you know they're they're just gonna run out on this anyway no dude that's the wrong no you gotta be there with them side by side eat you gotta eat their food you gotta dress like they do you gotta you know you gotta engage hey man you have a family hey how many kids you have you know hey here's a picture even if you have a fake family hey here's a picture of my family you know it because the afghans they're no different than us right they have families you know they hurt they you know they they cry uh and sometimes we think you know there's like a d some there's some people that can have this uh and leaders can have this attitude that they're not even human you know like yeah people that we partner with not even human right you know and just the way they talk about them you know i can always tell like a guy who doesn't talk crap about his partner force when they're not around is a guy i like to be around with yeah you know if they're talking crap about them when we're not around then you know what i don't i don't want i'm i'm not going to hang out with you because i need that partnership with them right so and not and not talking like oh my god you share with it but more like like these idiots or these savages like guys who use like racial epithets yeah and all that kind of stuff well i've never seen i've i've i've never seen that in sf racial effort pets but i've i've seen the f these dudes i don't care yeah yeah well i i mean in fairness i felt that way a few times getting frustrated with them but i i i absolutely agree with with everything you said javier just i'm sorry guys couple more uh thank you dj uh thank you again uh javier for sharing your story and robbie's your endeavor lost sounds badass and i hope it gains traction um andrew uh gregorio rasputin's daughter was mauled by a bear in peru uh indiana and then uh keith thank you very much when i was younger i wrote a book titled equal or greater force by kit cessna uh the book was life-changing do any of you know kit if not can we get a team house interview with him i've never heard of kit cessna no yeah so we'll look into that keith maybe i'll show it up all right hi thank you so much thank you man yeah um let me just give a real quick shout out to our sponsor for this podcast it's highspeeddaddy.com they are a local veteran-owned business over in new jersey and these guys make everyday kind of gear for dads lunch pails diaper bags things like that sewn out of tactical nylon um so go over and take a look at their shop it's highspeeddaddy.com and there's a discount code it's actually my name jack jack if you use that discount code you'll get 15 percent off on your purchase so demi cordem with high speed daddy.com exactly so thank you everyone who tuned into this show thank you for uh sticking with us hearing javier's story um and you know again just please subscribe to the channel if you haven't check out our link to our patreon down in the description if you haven't already and javier thank you so much man you are awesome really all right thanks man appreciate it thanks everybody uh and javier you if you're going to stay on real quick but thanks everybody have a great night yep oh no hold on sorry

Channel: The Team House

Views: 24,343

Rating: 4.8842974 out of 5

Keywords: JSOC, SOCOM, Global War on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, Green Beret, Special Forces, Military Working Dog, Afghanistan, Medal of Honor

Id: TzSaZhZEmZ8

Length: 185min 40sec (11140 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/1_Esk]

Hey I know him! SFC Mackey taught my class at UCF. He is a professional through and through and an awesome guy to be around.

[u/Lethrowaway8]

He was my instructor for ROTC. I will always do give everything I have just to say I was a product and student of SFC Mackey

[u/Catswagger11]

I like Jack Murphy. Glad he left that dumpster fire that is SOFREP.

[u/[deleted]]

De Opresso Liber

[u/DunkingOnInfants]

Funny how he talks about the Taliban guys having their DsHk jam.

I've watched a lot of combat footage from the taliban side, and that happens frequently. I think the real issue is that they just do not service them at all (don't know how/don't give a fuck... some combo?), don't know how to oil them properly, and basically just run them until they blow up.

Mother Russia design good heavy machine gun... is not Mother Russia's fault. Is user's fault.