Jamey Caldwell | Unit Operator | Ep. 109

special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your hosts jack murphy and david park [Music] hi everyone this is episode 109 of the team house i'm jack murphy here with dave park tonight our guest on the show is retired sergeant major jamie caldwell he served in the ranger regiment and then in a tier one unit he deployed to afghanistan and iraq uh we're going to talk about all this stuff tonight jamie uh is a great guy had a very uh eventful career from the beginning of the war on terror through a pretty broad swath of it so we're excited to talk to him and jamie welcome to the show man thank you for coming hey thanks for having me on guys uh really looking forward to this and uh yeah it's friday night right yeah absolutely and get our party on i would be i would be remiss uh if i didn't mention jamie is also a pro bass fisherman uh man of many talents uh you you still you fish competitively right jamie i do yeah i actually fish professionally uh there's no there's no pro card in bass fishing like there is in golf but yeah i fish uh i fished at the highest level of professional anglers been on tv uh done tv shows and a bunch of stuff and still compete not at the highest level anymore my tactical training company's kind of uh taking over a little bit and a lot of other things in life but yeah i still fish as much as i can and compete as much as i can i love it got sponsors and a lot of companies that backed me so it's awesome enjoying life now yeah i want to ask you a lot about that later on because i wonder what like the uh the training regimen is to do it work at the highest level but well yeah and uh and what why don't we just mention right up front uh your tactical training company is one minute out right yes that's correct and you guys do a lot of uh correct me if i'm wrong jamie it's been a while since i think we last talked but you're doing a lot of stuff under night vision goggles a lot of like low vis shooting things like that yeah so i i mean i do everything a bunch of different tactical training rifled pistol stuff um cqb to law enforcement government agencies but my bread and butter is the night vision aspect of it and it's just because um you know we'll get into my background and why i do it but yeah we do a lot of night vision training i i specialize in that just because of my background and things that i've done and you know not a lot of people are doing it and they're becoming more of a need for it especially as law enforcement gets grants and they're finding more money they you know they usually nail down hey who was in the military okay you're our night vision guy most of those guys are like yeah i used it once or i was handed this bag for one mission and told go use this and he had to be the subject matter expert so it's it's very rewarding and it allows me to give back to the law enforcement community and you know the guys now that are protecting us here make sure that they're well protected while they're out there so jamie the first question we usually ask our guests is about their origin story uh so we want to hear about what your origin story is what kind of was your trajectory where you grew up in that sort of life path that ended up taking you into the military yeah so i i grew up in new england um in connecticut specifically and from a young age knew i wanted to join the military there was just no doubt about it um you know grew up in the era where we didn't we didn't have airsoft we the uh paintball guns kind of were a thing when i was in high school but we grew up playing bb gun wars so we're running around the woods shooting each other you know the rule with the one pump rule that nobody did but i you know i loved i loved playing cops and robbers as a kid my dad was in law enforcement he retired um 30 plus years my grandfather retired law enforcement my grandfather was in the army air corps my other grandfather that retired from law enforcement had also served he was in the navy so had some military background you know in the family had an uncle that was in vietnam um you know and but a lot of law enforcement and and just kind of grew up playing outdoors all the time and just loving that and wanting to you know join the military and do something do something you know for my country and you know something selfless was always my goal when when you were growing up you know thinking about being the military like were you aware of special operations or different units at that time or was the army just the army you know it was at young in my life it was just the army like i just wanted to play cops and robbers and you know and and do that and you know all the the playing outside and you know i just wanted to to experience that but as i got older um my my first introduction to special operations was charlie sheen's movie navy seals right that came out i think it was like late 80s or something and i remember seeing that in the hostage rescue scene is is was like i mean that just stuck in my brain when you know they come in and they get mp5's and you know they come in kill all the bad guys rescue the hostages um and of course a famous quote from that uh movie which still always stuck in my head and i was able to actually use in combat uh later on uh you know we're navy seals we're here to get you out but that was um that was that was sort of like my introduction to special operations and that's where i was like holy cow like okay there's the army or there's you know joining the military but then there's this like that's what i want to do you know i i want to go after bad guys i want to be you know on the two-way live fire range all the time um you know that that was just my plan but i was very fortunate in because i i wanted to be a seal that was what i wanted to do you know from high school but i was very fortunate that my sister at the time was dating a guy connecticut national guard had his ranger tab had been in first range of italian he was surrounded by three or four other guys that were in his unit that had all been in ranger battalion we're all tabbed out and i got to hang out with them and he really coached me along to say look hey here's what the seals do great job you know you'll you'll fulfill what you want to do but you know here's the route to get there and if something happens in buds or whatever you get injured he's like you could be needs of the navy you know your needs at the army uh saying where you could end up anywhere but he says you could end up swabbing a deck somewhere yeah and he's like look if you join the army you could get ranger contract um you know you'll go through rip granted you know you still have to make it through that but he says from there you get to range of italian you'll really be taught a lot of stuff at a you know at a young age it'll it'll mold you he'll groom you and then from there he says you can go sf you know you could go to the unit he says there's a few other places in the army and or he says if you still want to be a seal he says i am sure at that point you know you've done whatever you wanted to do in the army you could transfer over and go do that so that that's what set me on that course was like yeah okay i want to join the army and nope now i want special operations but then i really was like hey i want to arrange your contract i want to go to ranger battalion i want to live the ranger life um and then figure it out from there yeah really interesting i mean i just have to know since you got to clear a room and you got to use the line did you also ever get to jump out of the you know jump off the back of a moving jeep over a bridge into the not on a mission but uh maybe you know some late night in some porn the line i always wanted to use in an aar was i vaporize hostiles so you you gotta range your contract and uh what went down that path going through uh well you were you were not coming in as an 11 bravo right no i wanted to that that was that was the advice i got was go to meps and you tell them i want infantry unassigned ranger that's all i knew i knew those words and i went in there and i was like this is what i want and not knocking any 11 bravo's out there but i think i may have scored a little high on my asvab and the guy was like yeah we don't have that he's right you know we have this uh he wanted to give me all these technical jobs yeah so um believe it or not i i looked at him after he offered me this 31 charlie so single channel radio operator with a uh with a ranger contract and i said uh can i make a phone call and he's like yeah sure you got five minutes or something so i ran out to a pay phone and i called my brother-in-law and you know he had told me he goes take it he says you'll actually learn a skill you'll have something useful for later on in life uh he's a take it you'll enjoy it um i'm like okay so didn't know what i was getting into had no idea but yeah so i went in with a with a signal a ranger contract so basically my path was a little bit different i went to basic at fort jackson in south carolina after basic i went to fort gordon and did 12 weeks of ait then went to fort benning did jump school did rip and then i was very lucky when i got to 175 i remember standing there in the s1 office and you know some peop some people from each company and headquarters company came in there and you know they're grabbing up the newbies and i i was very fortunate i got to go to um health company so i got to go to a line company where most of the camo guys end up going to hhc um so i got right to alf company and i am not going to say by any means that you know oh i was in a line company so i did more infantry stuff i didn't do anything infantry i mean i did everything the 11 bravos were doing minus cqb and a lot of the shooting but i mean every time i had i had a rucksack on and i had a radio on my back but you know jumping on a plane is faster open i just i had more weight and always had that radio on my back right like you know the heavy tick um we call the rucksack the tick but this was the heavy tick because i always had that radio on my back but i enjoyed my time there um it was it was a great time in range regiment i learned a ton i wanted to be a career ranger i really i loved it you know we worked with the unit while i was there we we saw glimpses of them um you know we'd do an airfield seizure and we'd have our our hostage or you know our pc and they would bring them to the talk and then this little bird would fly in a couple dudes would get off all dressed in black and looking cool come over grab the dude and then he'd be off and everybody'd be like whoa those guys are so cool you know yeah yeah so that was my first introduction i guess to to the unit that was pretty cool and this was uh in the 1990s before 9 11 and all that so i mean ranger battalion a lot of hard training in those years right it was it was a lot yeah because i got there um i got two battalion in spring of 94 and you know i remember being in awe there still was like panama guys running around they're still grenada guys running around but you know you saw the old scroll we've seen guys from panama that were running around there so you saw that combat scroll and you know everybody wanted their combat scroll but we did we trained hard we tons of airfield seizures so i mean lots of jumps on airfields and landing on you know trying not to land on the tarmac but it happens um lots of rocking i mean there was one point where we were doing 20 mile road marches lots of 10 mile road marches running i mean pt every day was you ran you ran every single day you did push-ups you did sit-ups um i mean you got your butt smoked every day it was it was it was it was fun i i enjoyed it um lots of lots of hazing during that time um that's kind of what motivated you to get your tabs so that you could get your feet from being the elevated position and uh you know then actually sit on the seat on the five ton on the drive down to fort stewart because you ain't got you you got your tab hit the slab what's the saying so you couldn't even sit in the seat um on the five ton you had to sit on the bottom yeah on the floor it's it's really interesting that you know you mentioned the training that you guys were going through at the time because you know it suited the mission at the time a lot of you know vietnam style you know a lot of patrol base activities a lot of long you know uh rocks and things like that and if you look at rangers then and rangers now and because they were you're both training for the mission rangers then all look like they were like baton death march survivors um and now they're just they're jacked i mean they're you know they're they're ready to kick in a door and knock some dudes over um yeah yeah there was definitely um from the era when i was there um until now so i i left i left ranger battalion in 2000 um and when i left there was still this same mentality uh there really wasn't kind of a more of a special ops mission like it is now and it was kind of it was it was very eye-opening because when i got to the unit and even like going through um our shooting program and what we do i mean a lot of it i kept looking back and i'm like why are we not doing that why are the rangers not doing this like why weren't we doing this and ranger battalion like you know i saw how advanced the unit was on marksmanship on everything that they did and i'm like why weren't we doing this in rangers you know why didn't weren't we putting this much emphasis on marksmanship and and everything else and and now they do i mean it's um it's it's almost i don't want to say uh you can't tell the two apart but they the rangers have changed that mission up it is very focused on special ops um you know now being or since i was in the unit we worked a lot closer with the rangers especially once iraq kicked off i mean we're living in houses right next to each other and we're going out you know every night we were hitting the target they were our outside security or we'd give them a target you know down the road or something like that um but it definitely changed over those years which is all for the better i mean i the rangers today are not what they were when i was there i mean they are um jacked just like you said and they are very very well trained they are a force to be reckoned with for sure yeah we've talked about that before how kind of professionalized they've become um and how many more options they have now in in the regiment you know in terms of career choices and things like that it's it's a it's great it's a great advance sure it is the ranger regiment is a great place to go to be anybody out there that's looking you know that's listening right now if if you are thinking about what do i want to do i want to join the military i mean obviously the seal thing is is very popular a lot of guys wanting to go do that but i will tell you you know i'll take a ranger over a seal any day um you know worked a lot with both and a lot with seal team six guys and they're great guys they're they're very professional they're very well trained they have a great budget but the rangers you know you start there as a private and you are groomed you are brought up their mission is unbelievable their training is unbelievable um just great guys and and it's a it's a great way to start your career and and still from there i mean the world is your plate you could do whatever you want yeah you're successful there in range of the time so what was that point uh in ranger battalion that you decided you wanted to make the jump and go down to fort bragg like what when did that kind of coal less in your mind and make you want to go to selection so i had just got picked up for e7 so i was an e6 promotable and my plan was to take because at this point i had moved to hhc and i was the top one commander so i was colonel votel decided he wasn't going to retire and i'm literally like oh my gosh i got to find a job and i really did not want to leave savannah absolutely loved it my wife loved it it was a great place to be um so i had to find a job and i didn't want to go to any other ranger battalion i mean didn't really want to go to 375 or hhc just they don't want to go to benning um and after living in savannah for almost you know seven years like i am not going to washington state like it rains all the time there like that is not my weather no way so uh i had met the the unit signal sergeant major at a jrx um less than six months or so before all this happened and he invited me to come up and and try out you know and be a signal guy up there so i still had his card i gave him a call and said hey is that offer still stand he's like yeah love to have you come up here try out love to have you as one of our communicators anything i ask you one question first he said have you ever thought about being an operator and i thought about it i'm like yeah you know i would thought about it i'd love to do it i didn't honestly you know totally honest i didn't think i could make it um you know being a being a support guy growing up as a support guy and ranger battalion you are looked down upon you know you're not an 11 bravo so you know morale wasn't all that high i mean i was great at my job no issues i could always make cons or know why i didn't and i was going to fix it and i took my job very seriously and was very good at it but in the back of my mind i really didn't know if i could make it but he he asked me that and and i said yeah i have thought about it and he says do me a favor just go to selection first it says if you don't make it we'll take in a heartbeat i said all right well let me give this a shot so i did took me twice um but you know once i got there and and made it quite a ways through i'm like yeah this is for me like this is what i want to do i was so driven um i got injured ended up coming back and and probably should have waited a full year until i went back but i was like no i think i can i can do this so i took the time i healed and got right back at it and went right back to the next class and uh and made it and yeah it was uh i'm i'm grateful for you know my brother-in-law for sending me on my path originally and then very grateful for that signal server major to to just ask me that question you know and the reason that he did i mean it totally makes sense because what he didn't want to have happen because this does happen is you know a support guy gets her a direct support guy gets there and you see that shiny little light right you see what operators are doing and nobody can stop you from going to selection so he didn't want to waste a lot of time and effort and money training me up to be a great communicator there and then i say hey i'm going to selection and he loses me so you know it's for his benefit but i'm grateful that he gave me that advice or asked me that question and i'm you know i took the path i did because i enjoyed it i spent 14 years there in the unit before i retired and it was busy as i got there you know i got there in november of 2000 and 9 11 happened yeah right after that but it was busy but it was fun i imagine that the the uh direct support folks you know the uh the camo guys they they have their own sort of training and and whatnot right it's not just you just show up and then you're there and and you know you're part of the group uh correct so they they go through a different selection um there's there's kind of multiple selections to get there but they go through a different selection um operators have their own and of course you know they're they're invited because they are the best at their job um there's you know not just oh hey i'm a medic i want to go try it you know it's like no you know you got to be good at your job you got to kind of be invited um to come up there but you'll go through a selection and then you get there and yeah you're you know you're doing a lot of especially the medics and the medics are doing a ton of medical training even as an operator we did a lot of medical training um but the medics unbelievable i mean most of them leave there and and they're nearly qualified to be a doctor um doesn't take much more schooling and you know and there's a few that have that have taken that pass but yeah it is it's a little different for those guys um and they do a lot of extensive training but then their goal is to get to a squadron so that is the job i mean they still when they get there they have to do their kind of headquarters time and they have to prove themselves then they earn a slot to otc they go through with all the operators that are coming through from selection and then once they make it through that then they get assigned to a squadron and um and deploy right right with you alongside you yeah that's impressive um what so when you kind of went to your first time you're sort of having these maybe doubts about yourself or or your ability to do it what even though you got injured you said that like you you realize that you could do it when was that point that you're like oh you know what i've got this you know it was it was probably about i mean about halfway through you know i once you you know once you get there anything that's new you're kind of like okay trying to feel things out what's going on but once you know once i got about halfway through and started seeing and you know the way that it's hard to compare yourself to others that are going through just because it's a individual process but you can you can tell some and uh you know i knew that um that i could do it and then the interaction that you have with the other operators because it is completely run by operators um and that i mean that that makes it special in itself but seeing some of those guys you know and and just looking at them and it's you you put those guys on this pedestal and the guys that i've seen you know when i was marine battalion and we worked with you know you always just looked at as oh my gosh these guys are gods right um but then when i was there in selection and they were the cadre i'm like man these guys are just like me like there's no difference you know i mean it's i i didn't feel like you know yes i they were they were great they had already done it they were very successful in what they did in their jobs and everything i'm not demeaning any of that but i really just felt like you know they're they're just dudes you know like they're human yeah yep exactly it's like i can i can do this you know and that's sort of where it flipped the switch for me and you know i just continued to drive on but like i said the first time i just um i i kind of peaked out too early um and i did i you know i trained up prior to which most guys do you want to be in great shape when you get there and and i over trained right first time i went and um and just peaked too early and yeah as it got closer to the end i i had nothing left i mean i kept on trucking as fast as i could but i knew i i knew i was i was not going to meet time standards and you know just waiting on them to pull me but they said they would appreciate i didn't quit yeah so they're like i appreciate that you didn't quit you got an invite to come back i'm like i'm coming back i will be back yeah it was good time so you get through the second time uh make it through otc arrive at the unit i mean ostensibly now you're living the life this you're living the dream but then of course something happens in september uh that year i could you walk us through that that sort of interesting time frame late you know now you're in the year 2000 and 9 11 happens and what that was like for you and your teammates yeah so it was definitely different because the whole mindset when i got there was somalia i mean it was still a very somalia mindset you know carry everything take everything with you um you know we were doing a lot of wrecking and running i mean that's what you saw from somalia like how would you retrain up and and that's what we were doing a lot of and then 911 happened we were actually forward deployed we were at the jrx um i think we're in hungary or something and um that's when when 9 11 happened and you know we're we're ready to go right from there we didn't think we were even going home because we have everything with us and um yeah ends up you know we have to figure it out for a couple days i didn't even know where we were going or what was going to happen but we ended up coming back home and then um yeah it was once we figured out hey we're going to afghanistan um it was definitely different you know we brought all our kit with us but we we quickly and that's a great thing about you know most of the guys there is they're all thinkers so they can quickly easily adapt adjust you know it wasn't like we just started running around because i was in tor bora you know chasing bin laden that we were up there with full kit and you know carrying everything with us right i was up in torabora walking around with just an lce i mean it was like we were just patrolling more or less so we didn't have any we had carried body armor with us to a point because my team was the team that was tasked to go in and clear the caves so we had brought some body armor with us but after humping up to like 8 000 feet you know prior to even getting there we're like yeah this is i guess we're just going in without it because we ain't humping this anymore like this is dumb you know so we ended up cashing it um up in the mountains and continued moving on but yeah it was just you know we made those adjustments on the fly for the terrain we were in what we were doing um we you know we changed our kit up and um you know downsize went very light and just being able to move um and do the mission that we needed to at that point in time right right and so what was it like going into afghanistan for the first time and uh starting to hit the ground there it was it was it was really cool but it was i mean it was it was freaky you know it was it was scary i mean this is my first time in combat you know i'm 24 25 years old um had only been you know now in the unit for not even a year and we we went into cutter first we staged there for a little bit i remember having some meetings um you know figuring out exactly where we're going we linked up with some guys that were forward um i want to say i remember when we hit the ground in in bagram we basically we landed in bagram on a c-130 they couldn't get anything bigger in there because the runway still had been you know holes and they'd been blown up from the from the afghan soviet war um but we landed on the ground i remember getting off the plane and my team leader going over and seeing you know bargewell and a couple of other bigwigs that were there already sort of appointed us in direction of of a couple of buildings that they secured for us which were [Music] now or not now anymore but uh was the spear clinic for a long time um but that whole compound now is you know it was built up crazy but that area i mean that's what we took ground on first and i remember and i've got pictures sleeping in that building which became the spirit clinic um chris speer and i were good friends we went through otc together um but that building and then there was another building next to it that at that point we had made our talk um that was kind of half blown up but yeah we we took that ground right there and we're just trying to figure it out you know it was all about human at that point um you know working with the agency quite a bit and trying to figure out where we were going from there but you know as we as we started figuring things out you know going into kabul to link up with the agency i mean you're driving around you know we had our toyotas we're trying to blend in and sort of dress um you know dress local garb just to give you that extra second or two where they might you know look where you can get the advantage um if you had you know if you got into a fight or something but um yeah it was it was weird i mean the the only way to describe it and we said it multiple times was it was like the wild wild west i mean you had guys just walking around that you didn't know friendly enemy whatever but they're just walking around with aks and you know i mean from what we read or what i grew up thinking of okay this is what combat's like you know you go in you see a guy with a gun you kill him you know this was like total opposite i mean everybody had a gun everybody was walking around ak on them and you know i mean they were armed and it was just daily life for them so it was eerie i'm driving to the first couple check points you know i mean i was a little on the edge pulling into a place where four or five guys have guns and you don't know what's gonna go down they don't know what's gonna go down you know it's all and how you vote and what you decide when you pull up to that checkpoint so it was it was a little hairy it took a little getting used to um but you know after after one or two checkpoints you're like okay all right yeah i got this and you just figure it out as you go along but it was it was interesting to say the least and what were you know you said you're meeting up or working with the agency what like what were those initial meetings like and how how are you determining what your mission was going to be um because there's not much command and control in the country at this time right like bagram isn't really built up it's kind of like everybody's left to their own devices in a way yep yeah there was there was really nothing um you know the agency had a safe house in kabul that's where we went to to have meetings um bagram wasn't much at all there wasn't you know there wasn't much presence there the um the british i think the royal marines were there in a hangar across from us big army was there down the road i remember going over there to grab some uh some mermaid ciao that was a treat to go down there and get some hot chow they were in some old blown-up building but as far as the meetings and the intel and stuff i mean to be completely honest i was a five ic at this point so i wasn't in any immediate i didn't know what was going on i waited for my team leader to come out of a meeting and tell me hey this is what we're doing it's like okay got it you know so i i don't know i'm not i'm not sure you know what was going on exactly in the meetings um you know i do know it was it was very it was very human based at that point in time so it was you know those guys had were on the ground and you know they're on the ground everywhere so they had been there and just kind of starting to run sources and figure out and gather intel but the main focus was was ubl and it was where is he you know let's let's get some some idea on on where he's at and um you know that's what drove us to torible or pretty quickly yeah we we got in there we got in there pretty quickly headed that direction and you know that wasn't a whole other adventure in itself yeah yeah so could you tell us about that about getting um whatever you're you're able to say about the initial intel that led you guys to tora bora and then making the infiltration there yeah so um again an initial intel you know other than just what the team leader you know would put out like hey here's where we're going uh you know this is what they said this is where he's at this is where we're going here's the plan so we we had sent one of our guys forward um and a lot of this is in the book you know dalton fury's book um kill bin laden um we we had some one of our guys that was working um with the agency as an illinois he had set up a safe house for us in jbad so we took you know did the drive to jbad um driving our toyotas and that was oh god that was that was horrendous i mean that was 10 hours plus just driving back roads and you know switch backs up mountains and you're driving on roads that were barely wide enough for that toyota and now you're splitting the road with this big old jenga truck that's coming the other direction um i mean and you could see you look over the edge of the mountain and you could see other trucks that you know had fallen off the mountain and yeah you know i mean it just it was hairy um just getting there and you know the number of checkpoints you go through to get there but we we got there you know in in all during daylight um was the goal so we got there in one period of daylight uh right about dark we linked up with our illinois he took us into jbad brought us to the safe house um you know and even that was sketchy because it was there was afghans that were regarding the safe house and there were some in the safe house and still at this point you're like who's good who's bad you're not trust you really don't and then you got to get some sleep in this room where these guys are walking around and you know so we still took shifts just internally um between you know between the element that was there um you know just somebody staying up and watching our gear and doing whatnot even as we're in a safe house so we stayed there that first night and then the plan was that they were going to drop a blue 82 so they were dropping the big one right there on the mountains and then we were coming in like right behind it um so they they did that and i remember as we were driving up there you know watching seeing the bird all right getting the countdown like the calms of what's going to happen and then they dropped it and everybody was kind of like was that a low order like what i mean it was not as as spectacular as we all thought we ended up but after they dropped it we ended up spinning around um heading back and i think at that point um we ended up having having dalton fury you know having um tom had linked up through the agency with one of the local tribal chiefs and he was going to house us take us in um so we go there we stay at his place and again it's the same thing i mean there's afghanis all over you know you you trust them only because the agency was paying them a lot of money right um but if somebody else came in and paid them more money then they would have slid all our throats in the middle of the night you know they didn't care they really didn't um so we ended up staging out of there and working our way into tour board to get dropped off we had to make one pass going in and actually come back out um because we had to go by this uh i think we called it media hill or press hill where a lot of the press were they were just outside of mortar range so they're all sitting up on this hill but that was the only way for us to get to the base of the trails in the mountain for us to start working our way up and as we pass through there on the first attempt going in during daylight a couple guys got spotted and some pitchers got leaked out and the whole thing was we didn't we wanted we did not want to get any u.s presence no we were not in torabora we were you know kind of denying it we wanted you know the northern alliance to take credit for whatever we were going to do there um it's kind of part of the part of the drug deal so we ended up having to turn around the first attempt we made going in and i i want to say one of the pictures that leaked out is shrek um sir john mcphee in the back of one of the trucks um that some reporter snapped um you know of course we're dressed in all local garb and we're you know we're hiding our guns are hidden you know we're not trying to show any u.s gear nothing um as as we get in there but we end up going in the second day i think we went in like real early early morning trying to get there before the press you know really got up on the hill and we inserted in hung out at the base for a little bit linked up with a couple of of guides um that were gonna sort of take us up through some of the mountain paths and trails and and get us to ubl um you know but it was uh it was a little hairy getting in there and and um some of the other adventures that we had as we were moving through the mountain range and getting i mean all getting rpg'd and getting mortared and getting shot at by bishka i mean it was yeah there were there were some hairy times i'm i'm kind of surprised we got through it as as well as we did um so you were taking sporadic fire as you went through those mountain passes we were um one of the times as that we that we were we were up in there um there was a disco that was sitting up on some high ground and they were shooting up shooting at our convoy uh as we were coming through cause of course it was nighttime we had some lights on and we even had you know i think we had some nods and we had blackout lights on the trucks and everything but um you know they still were able to see us coming through they started shooting us up um and i remember you know i remember moving up to some high ground my team got tasked to go move up to some high ground and try to you know overwatch or see if we could see it to try to take take it out um another one of them was hearing on the radio because we were we had a comms guy with us that spoke the language and doing radio intercepts so we could listen to all their transmissions and i remember him coming over the way it was the eeriest feeling because you're sitting there in this truck on this on this road on the side of a mountain that you can't just turn around like you're not going anywhere you're going forward or everybody's gotta back out of this place and that's even hairier to do so we're sitting there and we're stopped at this one location and he chimes onto the to the radio and he's like hey i'm hearing the chat over the radio they see us and then he comes back on about 10 seconds later and he's like yeah they're getting ready to fire an rpg at us he's like yeah they're firing rpg now i mean and then you just you know you hear this and all my rpgs flying by and he's calling it over the radio as they're talking to each other saying talking to talk you know their gunner on to our positions and you know we're getting all the calls and it's just like there is nothing we could do right now we're like i hope he is a bad shot right yeah we're just sitting ducks yeah and to sort of catch people up who who haven't been in the military or may not be you know military buffs or whatever the discus is a heavy machine gun um and when um would you be talking about blackout lights talking about basically ir lights that that flood you know that flood the air with with you know the you can only see under night vision yeah you can see under night vision but the thing with the afghanis is because they didn't live in cities they didn't have all the light pollution their night vision was so good um that i mean i talked about that in my night vision classes too because we you know we've experienced it we have all this ir capability and we have ir lasers and we have ir lights and all this stuff but you know there's times in afghanistan we're doing like a 10-click walk-in and you know we're trying to be disciplined with all of our lights but we're walking in the middle of nowhere nothing out there open desert and then you know you look over and somebody's you know shining shining a laser on something you know and you look over and you're like okay yeah there's a sheep herder or something out here in the middle of nowhere yeah and he's a good 200 300 yards away from us and he's just standing there staring at us i mean it's pitch dark at night yeah you can't see nothing and he's watching us just like it's daylight so yeah they they don't live in cities they don't have all that light at night you know once the sun goes down that's pretty much it light's done for them so their eyes are are so better adapted to the nighttime they can see better at night and and even you know a lot of our ir lights and blackout stuff they can pick up some of it but you know i will say that technology's gotten better we have gone higher in our frequencies now on the ir stuff just to get away from because i'm gonna geek out on you a little bit here right so um the color spectrum red right so we see when we see red red is the tail end of the visible spectrum so red runs up to around 800 really about 840 nanometers is where we can still see red and the ir spectrum the beginning of the ir spectrum is around that 820 nanometers so there are a lot of devices that are still using like even leds but they fall in that 840 nanometer range and if you look at them like some of some of the strobe lights like ir strobe lights um if you turn it on and you just pop it in your hand and you look at it you'll see like a faint red light glowing okay you can see that you're close to it looking but if you think somebody at night pitch dark better night vision than what we have just natural night vision they can see some of that stuff you know and that's that's one of the products that you know i worked with a company called core survival and we developed a strobe light the healthstar6 and i was adamant about hey we need to use 890 nanometer leds and you turn that light on and you can't see anything i don't care how dark the room is how close you put it you're not seeing anything with the naked eye very well you still see it fine under night vision but yeah so that you know learning points of combat in different situations i've been in and now taking that in my afterlife of helping with some product development stuff and saying oh you know this is what we need on the battlefield the health star six is a better life so so to to encourage you to geek out a little bit more and satisfy my own curiosity um and i know that night vision has advanced a lot since you know the the late 2000s and whatnot but but why was why was night vision green if if we're talking about beyond red why was why did we see the world in green so the original phosphor screen so it's it's the phosphor screen in in the tube that makes it green and or white originally green came about because and now we're actually seeing this again with green um green optics like the the red dots and stuff and green lasers so green is 550 nanometers that is the very middle of the spectrum of light that the human eye can see so green is is generally easier for the human eye to pick up because it's right there dead center in the middle so the original thought as i know it and i could be wrong um but the original thought that i know they made the phosphor screen one of the reasons was that um just hey thinking that the human eye could see this better it might be you know better for the human eye at night now putting this device on to be able to see but now we have learned since going to white that white allows the tube to be brighter it allows for better contrast light is is definitely predominantly better than the green because we can see a lot more and of course the technology's got so much better with the bomb ratings for the figure merit you know how they rate a tube um the clarity on them is is unbelievable now so going to that white having a higher contrast having more light come into the tube now with thin film than filmless tubes uh yeah it's the white is just absolutely amazing now does i've never looked through white you know uh night vision does the green felt warm like you could wear it night after night after night for hours and it never felt like once you got used to it it never felt like your eyes fatigued does white does white still have that sense of where it doesn't fatigue your eyes yeah actually white is better really yeah because it's just that it's that gray scale you know the the human eye i believe is is just um it's easier on the eye you just have more of that black and white picture um you know grayscale so it is it's easier and i don't you know i don't notice any issues and i still spend quite a bit of time under night vision now um so yeah the white is just all around better for your eyes it's better picture better quality um definitely i mean all the military's moving to white with with everything that they have you know we were running white in special operations for quite a while um but yeah now the most all the services and everybody's going to white and amazing how far the technology is it really is yeah you know jamie you probably had the pvs sevens in ranger battalion back in the day sure did yeah yeah oh man uh so yeah different world nowadays um back to tora bora you guys did uh make it through those mountain passes and and thankfully the rpg guys uh the rocket men were not uh quite as accurate as they wanted to be um what was the rest of that operation like when you got up there i mean you're trying to vector in on where presumably bin laden is yeah so we're still gathering intel getting intel sent to us you know trying to pinpoint exactly his location and make our way there but a majority of it was just fire missions you know we had at one point i mean i want to say like 12 aircraft stacked and it was continual i mean it was like they were they were pilots that got in the stack waited waited waited dropped their munitions would fly all the way back to like spain or i mean there were pilots coming in from all over the world they would fly back get refitted and then come back and get in the stack again wow so it was continual continual bombing like we did not let up did not stop until we were told to and then that's the whole deal with how ubi all got out and blah blah blah but yeah and that's what's that's what's behind you on the background is it right as a shot of torah yep that is a shot of toro bora that is uh one of the runs that we did um i think those were a bunch of uh 500 pounders um dropping in there at the same time yeah just continue nighttime was pretty cool though because um all you had to do was look out on the other mountain ranges and look for the fires and it was like oh there's the bad guys and you just lays it and call in the fire mission and drop the bombs on fires yeah it was pretty easy and so you're you're produ you know at this point softening the enemy up with all these air strikes but you you had mentioned that your team was also designated to go in clear caves yeah so we we were tasked with that and we were tasked with taking lead on the cave when we got there to bin laden um and going in and clearing that you know that cave particularly and we didn't run into a bunch of caves up in them and we covered a lot of terrain we got you know over 8 000 feet um while we were there and we got close to bin laden um but yeah we didn't run into a bunch i mean there were some that we did run into but you know i didn't see any crazy elaborate caves you know like we read about where they're you know drop a truck in them and they're so far deep and all this i mean most of them because they're up there dug by hand now they were elaborate for some hand dug caves um you know and they had like little l turns into them going into them so you know they knew hey if somebody drops a bomb at the entrance of this cave we could survive this like it's not the shrapnel everything's not going to come directly in so they had turns in there their camouflaging was great i mean these guys lived up there you know they fought wars for years up there they knew what they were doing and you could see it um it was it was you know somewhat impressive uh as we move through to see what we saw and how they were working and how they were you know living up there it was elaborate how deep would you say like the main cave or some of the bigger caves were um that you went into i mean could they have been cleared with like thermo barracks or did you have to go into them yeah yeah oh yeah easily yup yeah they they weren't they weren't very big or very deep at all yeah from the ones that we saw yeah they could have been cleared easily with their mubarak or even one you know one grenade or something and you know going in there was the entrance was small and you know one one man kind of trying to get in there and um and do what you had to do but yeah it was uh it was me i mean that terrain was was was rocky and you know you could see where they had to chip away at it and i mean i couldn't even tell you how long some of those cases have been up there i guarantee you from the 80s you know so yeah some were still there do you want to talk about that uh the actual operation where you guys were trying where you did get close to bin laden i know as you mentioned uh tom mentions it in his book which we have over here somewhere um oh cool but yeah yeah if you want to talk about that a little bit i'd love to hear about it yeah i mean what had happened that i knew of you know from from what i knew again i'm kind of nobody still right i'm still just trying to keep my mouth shut and not get fired in my first year or six months on a team um we had gotten the intel you know kind of knowing where he was we were continuing to hammer and drop bombs on the cave system that you know where we knew we he was and we had actually heard over the radio that he had been injured um in one of the bombing runs or something so i think there you know they were scrambling they knew hey we were getting pretty damn close and they wanted to get him out of there um from what i know of it they they i don't know who the hell they called or how they got the word but you know they asked for a ceasefire they had basically said probably through some of their sources or whatever um or sent some guys down and said hey we're gonna give up like just stop the bombing so that we can come out and they had i think they gave us a number that i had heard was something like 2 000 soldiers or something i honestly don't even think there was two thousand soldiers up in that whole mountain range um but they had said oh we got two thousand fighters you know they're gonna they're gonna give up we're gonna walk down through the you know right here through the main valley and and come down to the base and you know they're giving up they're giving up we just you know we need to cease fire so of course you know way way above me decided all right you know hey two hours of a ceasefire so no bombing no nothing right and that's when ubl snuck out the backside um of the mountain range there in the pakistan and gone right so i mean right at the two hour mark use me fire mission over um i mean we started right back up but at that point it took a little while for us to learn like hey we're not hearing him on the radio anymore right you know or nobody's talking there's no chatter like it's this is a dry hole you know the fish the fish had left this spot they moved somewhere else it's unbelievably frustrating and i mean it really comes through in in tom's book as well just the frustration with that entire mission yeah it was it was very frustrating and and i would say it was it was a goal of his on our next rotation which was again in you know the winter time it was a fun back-to-back christmas rotations um but yeah we went right back in there he i would say he didn't sleep like the whole time we were back home and all he did was work the intel and figure out how he got out who helped him get out and that was his mission when we went back there was to go get that dude and we did it was a that was a pretty elaborate mission to get in there to get the dude that we did because we hung it out there and we we went through bad guy territory in the middle of the day um to get in there and and walk a long ways to up to this guy's house but um yeah we rolled in there and grabbed that dude in the middle of the night and uh i think tom was was was pretty happy um that we got to do that it's it's kind of interesting because i mean mcdonald sauter and others have always played that time out game with us and and relied on our sense of fair play it's sort of like when when somebody says uncle i give up i give up and then i start fighting again as soon as you let them up but um it's kind of interesting that i don't know if it was a gamble on their part or if they just sort of knew that americans would be like okay cool like we'll stop bombing you come on out and yeah i don't i don't i mean they probably played that game with the soviets you know um that would be my guess i mean it seems like it's some some old cartoon looney tunes cartoon idea from way back in the day but yeah they gambled tried it again and you know it worked so there's nothing we could do about it i mean obviously we were very frustrated you know we our mission was to go there and to go get them and and we were ready to do that but it didn't didn't work out for us and you know unfortunately it took a long time so you know we were finally able to go get them or the seals were but yeah just glad we did another 10 years yeah completely insane oh no there it is wow man so you said you the the next rotation was back to afghanistan uh where you grabbed up that one guy back again winner yeah so we went because what we were doing at that point is we were rotating with dev group so um it was us and until team six so they would go and then one of our squadrons would go and then one of theirs would go then one of ours would go so it was longer between rotations initially just you know because we didn't need a big tier one presence um at that point so it was just one squadron at a time and and us you know flopping back and forth with with dev group guys so it wasn't until october october of 2002 now that that we went back so we were back in country in october and stayed there through um into january out of curiosity on that first trip when you guys uh drove uh from kabul down to jalalabad and then out into you know the hinterlands was there did you drive specifically so you would have your vehicles and do vehicular patrols out there did you not have the air assets to do like air mobile operations uh was there because there's a big risk to drive right it was yeah definitely well we we had figured that we were gonna need a way to get into tora bora okay um we knew we'd be able to drive in there to a certain point we weren't sure how far um but we knew that we you know we needed our vehicles to get around and to have vehicles we got there and we we've done you know helos and put vehicles on hilos but at that point going all the way from you know bagram all the way out there even to jaybad to that airstrip um and just shuttling vehicles you know all the trucks that we had we took quite a quite a lot i mean there was a lot of us that were there right um so trying to get and shuttle those trucks it you know i don't know who made that decision but they were just like yeah hey let's just load all our gear up you know the backs of the trucks cover it and you know let's just convoy out there and um you know that way we we had what we needed um i want to say you know my memory is not what it used to be but when we i know when we left when we when we pulled out we were done in torabora we went back because obviously we got into a point and we had to be dropped off so we shuttled in got dropped off and then the trucks that was it we didn't see the trucks again because we ended up flying back um i mean after spending you know quite a while up in the mountains in torboro when we came out of the mountains we ended up airlifting we got on the 47s and flew back to bagram which was nice because i was not looking forward to having to drive all the way back you you mentioned you know that when you got uh when you got there you know originally to like the unit that they were still that they were training for somalian i think every force does that right they trained for the last where they fought and i know that i know that you know you guys have an extensive training program but was doing the vehicle operations and nighttime vehicle operations had you guys because that that's a skill all of its own and had you guys been training for specifically that type of operation or was that sort of learning as you went once you hit the ground in afghanistan um no i mean you again it sort of goes to you know all the guys that are there are great thinkers and they can figure things out you know and it almost seems like you know and that's that's why we get thrown at a lot of things it's like hey here's this problem you guys you know this team gets it hey go figure it out and you do you just you just figure it out and it just seems like nothing like oh we've done this but i guess we do so much of everything that driving at night blacked out or under nods you're just like yeah that's nothing i mean we walk around other knobs all the time we use our lights we drive a ton we go to a bunch of driving schools and everything like that it's like just combining a couple things that we do all the time and putting them into one doesn't seem like it's anything new or anything we have to train up for um so yeah that's the [ __ ] you know that's one of the fun things about that place is you never know what you're going to do the next day know especially in combat you get some mission and you're like oh yep guess we need to you know halo into that thing and then swim up that creek and you know do whatever i mean it was one op where this was pretty awesome because all my fishing background and everything and connections that i had i was literally ordering batteries and trolling motors and getting them sent over and we were rigging up some boats because we had to cross some river you know and i'm like oh we need to do this okay we need to apply it everybody's like yeah jamie what do we need you know i was like yeah all right well we need you know we want at least 48 volt motors because we got to go against some current we're gonna have all this stuff you know so oh yeah i was ordering like minn kota motors and getting them sent over there and oh yeah some it just it was awesome but i'm like this is the best way to do this hop you know they're like okay cool let's do it this this was in afghanistan this was in iraq oh okay yeah i i heard some i heard some stories about you guys doing like some ops with zodiacs down the tigris river or whatever something of this nature so maybe maybe that's what i'm thinking of yeah we've done all kinds of stuff all over that family and numerous other countries in the world yeah it sounds like the kind of place that if you had a hobby or if you geeked out about something in particular that you could probably find find a use for it there you know convince somebody that that hey you know my you know my love my passion has value here i will tell you i i don't know that i hold the record anymore but i know some guys still talk about uh one of the team trips i put together what i've done in quite a few team trips that i've spent quite a bit of money but yeah like one of them i went to my troop star major and i said hey i want to go on a team trip i want to take the guys i said i want to learn how to drift and he's like what he's like no you're not going to go we're not going to just send you guys out to go drift and i go wait a minute i'm like hear me out i said everything we've been to tons of driving schools right i said every time that we go we you learn that when the car is skidding it's out of control right you counter it but if you don't counter it right the car can spin 180 around now you're facing the opposite direction you want to be going or the bad guy that might be chasing you so i said i want the guys to learn that the car is never out of control like you can drive a skid and continue to drive it you know i want if they're comfortable learning how to drift then when they get in a skid they're like oh yeah heck yeah this is awesome you know and they'll drive it and i've used that for not you know not only doing that training but i've taken my guys to kevin schwab suzuki school so literally full leathers you know crotch rockets dragging a knee on a track um and everybody that i've taken at school because i think i went to it five times because i love motorcycle and i love riding a motorcycle i had a motorcycle since i was in high school absolutely love it and again just taking a passion i had or something i loved and figuring out how can i get you know the government to pay for me to go drive and have fun um related it to some mission and some stuff right but the big thing was whenever we go to these driving schools we get on the track we run around you know racing each other and it is it becomes a testosterone competition right you're just trying to pass your buddy but if you go into a corner too hot because you're trying to pass him and you skid out or you go off the track and spin out you're laughing the whole entire time right and then you just stomp on the gas you spin out the grass you get back on the track and you're trying to pass them in the next corner you can't doing that on a motorcycle right like you the edge of the track is the edge of the world so everybody that i've brought to those schools they they all have said it they're like look i learned the absolute most about driving about vehicle dynamics about cornering braking about everything because they all paid attention because they did not want to go off the edge of the track right because that's injury i mean i did it yes a couple of guys have done it you know pushing the envelope um laid one down you know went off the track um but that's the last thing you want to happen so you do you pay attention yeah i've done that with my guys skydiving you know we were taught in free fall that if you end up on your back like oh that's bad like you know you're taught to roll over and get on your belly like look dude free flying like guys fly on their back all the time they fly standing up they fly sitting up i was like i want i bought a week of tunnel time in rayford at the tunnel which i don't even remember that phil but it was very expensive we were there for a week straight in the tunnel from open to close right and i every one of my guys learned how to fly on their back everything that they could do on their belly they could do on their back and some guys even worked up to sit flying um you know and doing some type of free flying but it made them more comfortable in the air and in a combat situation you know jumping a rock doing whatever if they ended up on their back because we did this in the tunnel they were completely comfortable they were like look yeah i can fly this i know how to do this so they don't fly do what they need to do and then when they were ready okay then they easily roll over to their stomach you know you just don't want to get freaked out and it goes with life it goes with everything you know you think about uncomfortable situations that you're in and you've got to put yourself in those or you know learn how to get through those situations so that now when it happens you're not uncomfortable you're like oh i know this and i know what to do to get out of it or or do something else so yeah i just took that to the training i feel like i missed out on something in life by not being on jamie's team the tokyo drift team yeah i was gonna ask if it was tokyo adrift that inspired you to get you know it's interesting because like what you said about the motorcycle uh you know about the you know sort of the motorcycle racing where you know the the edge of the the track is the end of the world it's sort of like that when you go to a rally school too like you don't get to make those big mistakes uh when you go to a rally school around a tree exactly yeah you know um i want to take one second uh here to give a word to the sponsor of tonight's show it is par weber is the name of the company they are make these spiffy watches here they are uh assembled in switzerland pretty cool dave you've been wearing yours i have i i you know i actually love it it's so it has this always on a loom right you don't have to hit your button you don't have to like bathe it under a light uh it's it's driven by the battery and it lasts like three to four years yeah so when you get it into a dark environment that you you can see your watch um it's it's really nice um like you said it's made in switzerland the the crystal or the glass is uh i think it's like a sapphire crystal i wanna i wanna get this right um it you know watches are one of those things that spec out guys like oh i got thirty it's you're like a a johnson measuring contest sometimes right i mean we love our watches i mean we really do um and this is these are really nice watches they're made by a veteran um a pvd coated 316 stainless steel construction and yeah sapphire glass crystal with anti-reflective coating um it's got the bi-directional uh aperture i mean you're a big watch fan right i am i've got a collection of watches i love watches um yeah if anybody follows my instagram they'll see i usually do a um timepiece tuesday so i highlight one of my watches or something uh try to do it every time jamie jamie does not have a par weber watch so i'm gonna send him this one i'm holding here uh this week i'll mail this out yeah add to my collection i'm gonna highlight it as soon as i get it it's nice it's it's a nice hefty watch i mean it's a it's a solid i mean it is a solid watch like it is a well-made uh it is a well-made watch it it is a watch yeah so i want to thank uh thank you paul weber for sponsoring this show yeah sure br bringing you the jamie caldwell episode and uh if you guys enter you use the uh code team house at checkout when you buy one of these bad boys you get a free uh you get free two-day shipping courtesy of the team house yeah so that promo code is team house one word yeah if if you are a watch geek or even if you just need a good watch i this is a this is a sweet why so jamie i talked about those two deployments to afghanistan now we're getting in 2000 to 2003. when is iraq starting to come into your peripheral vision iraq came to my attention while i was in good old fort gordon for like regular army enoch oh my goodness it was i'm gonna tell you it was a good break in the beginning um you know not that i needed any type of a break yet i had no idea what i was in store for over the next 10 years but you know two rotations um lots of training in between i mean just very very busy and it was nice to literally like throw the pager and we had pagers at this point but you know throw the pager in the drawer know that most likely there still was the chance but most likely hey i'm not gonna get bothered like i'm in an army school so because i had my signal mls right um i kept it so once i finished otc and got to a um greg birch was was my um squadron sergeant major he had told me he said hey look a lot of guys reclass that aren't 11 or 18 series you're more than welcome to do it we will do whatever you want to do if you want to go 18 series we'll send you to you know most guys just go to the bravo course you just kind of we had a good deal with sf but it's short you can go there knock that out get your 18 series mls or since i had my ranger tab it was just 41.87 you know i could have got my tab but to be honest um i looked at it and said man i'm which i i think i had [Music] i think at that point i don't remember if i had pin seven or not anyway i i was i was close or something but i looked at it and said you know what promotion wise um i said i'm i'm if i if i reclass right now to 11 series i have no team leader time i have no squad leader time like this is gonna hurt me so i decided to stay signal mos in in the um you know my team leader was great the troops are major everybody was great they said look we'll back you on that decision we will you know you'll be the team combo guy um doesn't really mean much but you know we'll write some ncr bullets that support it you know and and it was kind of cool back up but in afghanistan i got to go on a mission as a 5ic with my team leader because i knew how to run hpw satcom all this stuff where we had you know it was just him and i out on something and we had to make comms back with the talk and um you know of course i got the stank eye from some of the senior guys on the team team leader was just like you know how to run hpw do you know how to do satcom you know do you know how to send data they're all like no well jamie does that's why he's going um but uh having that mos i had to go back through a knock at fort gordon and that was five months long so here i was at fort gordon again initially it was kind of a nice break um you know ran into some issues obviously while i was there because i was off the grid and this is big army you know i mean one of my instructors i remember at one point this sheet came around as we're sitting in class it was like first day of of of class and he's like okay you know everybody has to put their name and put their email address on there so the sheet goes around and everybody's you know john smith john smith you know at ako whatever everybody had just gotten like ako accounts and all this stuff and it comes around to me and i'm like jamie caldwell you know jamie caldwell yahoo or something you know com and it gets back up to the instructor and he looks at it and he's like shark called well he's like i need your ako account not your personal yahoo account and i'm like uh i don't have one and he's like sorry calm well everybody in the army has got an ak account i'm like uh i don't i mean this went back and forth for a few minutes i finally had to be like hey can we go out in the hallway i had to step out in the hallway with him i had to get one of my other instructors to explain to him like look dude i am off the system like i don't have an ako i will not have an ako all you're getting is that you either email me at that or you don't email me i got nothing else for you man can't fix it ain't happening you know so he finally understood but yeah it took a while to get through so um yeah i spent five months there but towards the tail end of it is when iraq kicked off and i was actually kind of hoping i was going to get pulled out early to go but uh they they didn't they're like no this is you know an army school you know one one operator we're you know we're good you just come over once you're done but yeah i finally graduated from there and it was very trying i would say the last two months i mean here i am been to combat twice already you know unit operator and i am mowing lawns and you know and breaking dirt i mean just typical regular army school yeah when uh when we had sergeant major vining on here you remember he had that funny story about it had something to do with him getting promoted to sergeant major because there are only so many sergeant major slots for eod guys but he was he was an operator but he was an eod guy that was his mos so he had he reclassed to infantry as like an e8 or e9 like something ridiculous and i think they had to be done with the nonsense yeah well and also he'd be taking up one of the you know he's not working in the classroom taking up one of the and i mean it was just funny i mean he was he's a vietnam veteran i mean he wrote quote unquote old guy you know in the unit having to go to reclass but uh i think they kind of pistol-whipped it for or yeah pencil whipped it for him but i tell you that was a concern in my mind just for promotions because i'm like well what's going to happen as my packets go in front of the board right you're going to have combo guys look at it and they're either going to be like yeah why are we wasting one of our slots on this guy he's not even doing the right job you know or what his mls is or and i don't know what happened i wasn't at the board but luckily you know i got picked up for eight and nine no problem um you know it worked hopefully in my favor where they were like oh hey we got a combo guy doing this cool you know yeah promote him um so it was it was a gamble to keep that mos but i kept it the whole time i retired as a well we ended up getting switched over from 31 to 25 series but i retired as a 25 whiskey i think yeah i didn't keep up with what my mos so just to civilianize this for everybody for for people who aren't you know familiar with the army so there are three great moments in an army career for a special operator and you're for somebody in special operations and those those are uh pldc vinok and a9 and and what those are is they are army leadership schools that uh everybody has to go through at a certain stage in their career right so pldc is for e4 right e5 e5 e4 to e5 enoch is e5 e6 and then a knock bnock is basic pld's is primary leadership development we're we're old dave i mean it's even changed since then it has different acronyms now pldc is like the warrior leadership course why wouldn't it be why wouldn't it be and but you go to this course you you're you're in this course with everybody with like with just ran anybody from any mos from the army and it's a very conventional course um and and so anyway so you were at the event the uh you know so jb is an e7 operator badass picking up pine cones on fort court right going to go into a gene going to a generic army leadership most of these people have no idea about you know you know army special operations there was only a couple of people in my class that actually knew who i was or what i did right most of the instructors didn't know um yeah it was it was pretty quiet um you know i mean we don't announce it anyway there's no reason to sure right i was just you know i was e7 actually i think i was i think i may even have already pinned i don't i don't remember but yeah you're a senior nco and here i was yeah supposed to be this badass and i'm raking dirt and mowing lawns and picking up pine cones a good old fort gordon that's so crazy and and when you're talking about reclassing the challenge for those who don't know becomes that you know you go into an a military occupation special you have a job and just because you go to certain um certain units in the army your your mos hasn't changed even though no matter what your mos is you everybody's doing the same thing the same kind of special mission or what so where these other like people with common mosses are getting progressive leadership in like common departments you're shooting bad guys in the face and so now when it goes to promotion your package and everything that you've done as a communicator the leadership positions you've held in communications go to the you know go to the promotion board for communications you're like well he's not running a combo shack right like what's he doing yeah you know luckily we had camo bullets in there because i was still you know staying tied in with our commonwealth and i and i loved it i loved my time as a com oh god i absolutely did i loved you know the radios and i i geeked out i learned them inside now you know i could still make comms no matter what but you know so i i did i mean i um i tried to stay um tied in with it and different things and my team leader was always great and just you know putting some comma bullets on my ncoers you know just to keep that in there but yeah when i got to enoch we were having to set up like these area networks like through vehicle networks and i mean it was oh my gosh i'm a tech guy but this was like i had never seen this stuff before in my life and you know luckily there was a couple of guys in my class that knew my background you know knew where i was coming from and they helped me out with a lot of it you know getting me read up on being caught up so i could pass tests and and do what i had to do to set these networks up and you know the stuff these guys were doing all the time yeah and i'm just like completely lost yeah so while uh while you're enjoying your time at a knock iraq gets invaded uh what what happens when you uh you you get back to your unit and you try to get caught up or get into that rotation start heading over there yeah so my my team was already over so so a was over um already they left a couple weeks before i graduated um from enoch so i graduated um ended up ended up going to savannah for just a little vacation just to take a break and clear my mind prior to going you know fire going over but spend some time you know with my wife um because i had been at fort gordon for five months um but yeah so i took a little bit of a vacation and then jumped right into it i mean just jumped on the next rotator uh and was right there linked back up with my team and i you know i do remember i remember walking off the plane we landed i think we landed in biop and i remember walking off it was a c-130 walking off the back of the plane and then walking through the prop wash and anybody that's come off of a plane hot load you know the props are still spinning all that heat is coming off the engine that thing just flew in from i don't remember where it was we came in from but um just flew in i mean those engines are smoking hot and i remember walking through all that prop wash just getting burned right and then i'm walking out of the prop washer i'm walking out from away from the plane and i'm like god that prop wash is huge like what the heck i mean it was like 130 degrees outside i am 100 yards from that plane and i still thought i was in the prop wash i'm like god it is hot here yeah and i link up with my guys and they're all like sleeves are cut and everybody's you know just about shorts you know combat gear picking me up at the airport and they're just like oh yeah they're like yeah man it's scorching hot here like you cut your uniform you can yeah do what you got to do to survive yeah holy cow yeah but yeah we we got right into it i mean it was um again at this point it was it was still a lot of human but we were you know we weren't that busy in afghanistan it was pretty slow iraq was the complete total opposite um you know i ended up doing ten tours to iraq and there were rotations where we did over a hundred hits you know in 90 days yeah i mean there were plenty of nights where we were out doing three and four hits a night um it was it was busy we were getting after it um you know it was great you know that's that's what we wanted to do that's what we trained for that was our mission and you know we were getting after it it was the heyday of it and guys still talk about that you know that that generation um you know of of my guys and my era nobody's seen combat like that at that pace and for that long of a time um and even as it started to taper down you know towards the end of my stint i think my last rotation to iraq was maybe 20 or 2012 i think was my i think 2012 was my last trip to iraq and it was it was slowing down you know we were getting force-fed indigenous forces and you know having to go out and hits and take those guys and then let them do stuff and you know it wasn't just pure us anymore you know having to get permission to go explosive now and get permission it was just you know as you try to let the country take over and let you get established and you've got to give them more permissions and then ask for permission to do things we still didn't have you know high level target sure we could go do what we needed to go do but a majority of the targets um even though we targeted a lot of high-level guys um you you want to give them that courtesy of you know hey we're going to be operating over here or you know can we go do this and bring some of their guys with us um but it just it wasn't the same you know those early days were they were awesome they were actually awesome we were getting after it some of the uh the pictures that you post online uh some of them are very like nostalgic for me and remind me of things like oh yeah i remember that and then there's other ones you post where i'm like damn that guy's way cooler than i am but one of the ones that that actually like i look at i was like oh i know exactly when that was and what that what was going on there that picture of you playing video games all kidded up i was wondering if you could you could you could explain that point in time what you were talking about this sort of sustained constant rolling out on operations what what that moment was in that in that photograph yeah so the photo i'm kicked back on a couch i'm sweaty because we just got back from from a hit and i think we had just paused the game that we were playing um so jumping right back into it you know some of the guys were going to grab chow um and i'm just like i'm getting back into my game but i'm you know i'm still in kit because you just never knew i mean to be honest and this is a serious point of all that we we got called out so much and so sporadically that um you know you could never you could never like really um turn off you know in that you know still have issues with that today and a lot of guys have issues with that from combat where you're on edge all the time like you can't turn off just because you know you you are sitting there trying to wind down and do something fun and get your mind off of you know some hit that you just got back from and you may finally like find some peace and then and you're like oh my and then poof you just ping i mean you you skyrocket again you're like oh getting it on okay let's what is this target you know who do we have going in there get the brief next i mean within 10 minutes you're in a vehicle around a helo and you're flying you know you're going to the hornet's nest you i mean it's it is so you you ride this consistent just roller coaster and that's that's why our rotations are a lot shorter we do way more of them but they're shorter because we are so busy we're right there that you have to get a break you know i mean not you know three months four months of that right at the end of that rotation i mean you are smoked you're right yeah but it's back to the pitcher sorry i digress sometimes um yeah at that pitcher i was playing some game and yeah it's just it is um it's a perfect example of that time frame of just i'm sitting there in kit you don't know what's going to happen next but i'm trying to i'm trying to cycle my mind down and get in you know a little bit of fun you know shut down a little bit or just just take my mind off of something because you never know what is about to happen right um and just hitting that pause button putting the controller down go out and doing a raid coming back taking your helmet off picking the controller back up hit the pause button again all right here we go just wait just wait for the call to go and i think everybody wants to know what were your games of choice oh man we back then we played a ton of halo um we had all the rooms linked i mean we had like hubs and everything linked that was oh yeah we're just battling each other um whatever the new game was we we were fortunate we every team got like five grand of mwr money yeah before every deployment you went to best buy and you bought the latest video games you bought the latest movies and box sets and all this stuff it was you know our entertainment when we had down time there um but i think that rotation uh one of the golf games was out i remember playing that a ton and i was the champ at that one like nobody could beat me um it was like tiger woods 0.304 or something i don't know um but yeah i was playing a golf game quite a bit which i am not a golfer at all um but that halo um we we used to play some call of duty um getting getting that in i mean i don't even remember what else we play we had a stack of games about about how old were you at this at this time um so you're gonna make me do some math gosh uh well i was born in 75 okay so yeah two say you know 2005. yeah yeah so 29 or so or whatever yeah i played the hell out of uh never winter nights on my uh on my laptop nerd alert well we we would like play like halo and call of duty too and but then you know you've got like the ranger the young rangers in there that just [ __ ] smoke they just [ __ ] you up because oh yeah they were they're the bear explain that yeah i mean they just grew up playing that stuff where i flew up we were playing ultima and [ __ ] but uh yeah we didn't we didn't play any of those videos yeah deployment yeah yeah so yeah exactly i mean i i got pretty good but still there was there were some rotations where we did link in like we were living close enough to the rangers that we linked in on a hub yeah there were times that we unplugged them from the hub oh my god and it's so funny that you go out on a combat operation and then you come back and you're gonna play halo or call of duty it's like you know it's not just those games aren't just for like want to be like you know whatever that's it's entertainment no matter you know without risk you have to have something mentally to turn it off yeah you you got to get out of that mindset and just do something fun to turn it off and yeah and and do something it's either that or stare at a fire for hours at a time which works also which works too oh and you you can't really get too drunk when you're on doing time-sensitive targets i was under general order number one so i'm sure he never had a single drink within theater anyway oh when when i was well i can't speak for for the jsoc guys but when i was in ranger battalion there was definitely no alcohol out in iraq when we were doing tst missions like now well yeah well for the unlisted i bet i i guarantee you and you may be right every colonel and above yeah jamie i was wondering if you could tell us the story behind the picture of you and your teammates standing there where the front door is on fire i always wanted to know what the back story was um i'm not i i won't get into too much detail on that one um we we completely pissed our squadron commander off on that one but um yeah we more or less it was a it was a known that was a known bad guy house um we had watched them like only that you know only males go in there never any women kids nothing um seeing tons of munitions and weapons and everything you know go come in and out of that house consistently like it was it was a candidate for just drop a bomb on it like why do we need to even go hit this thing go clear it we know it is just full of bad guys you know numerous of our guys that we're after have shown up at this house um you know all the weapons ammunition everything that's been there and he wouldn't let us do it uh he's like nope i want you guys to go in there and and go figure it out on the ground so needless to say we used a certain we couldn't use aircraft to drop a bomb on it but we kind of did it from the ground and ended up catching the house on fire uh so then we were like photo op let's take some pictures by the burning house um yeah so so there's a picture of me and i think it was my team leader at the time i was like two i see at this point now and uh yeah we're standing there by the by the burning house it's literally going up in flames burning that thing down um and just taking some taking some pics because it was it was kind of epic how it all went down and how we were told we couldn't do something so we're like okay you're gonna let us do that i got something for you sure don't tell us no again right it happens yeah how how was that because uh you know bank or iraq and in a lot of places in iraq was the type of combat uh at least started out much more aligned with i think how you guys originally trained afghanistan was more of this kind of rural area how was that for you guys kind of switching back and forth and then you know and then winding up in iraq where you were now it's this urban environment that you would really hope you know yeah it was an easy transition you know again just um that was our meat and potatoes you know cqb and hostage rescue um so it was a blast i mean we absolutely loved it you know going out explosively breaching cqb every target every night um you know clearing it and you know it just improved our skill set and you know the more that you practice something and do it the better that you get at it um and we absolutely absolutely loved it but it was it was an easy switch and then what was really cool and you know again i'm very fortunate for the time frame that i was there because at that point in time when we first got to iraq our kit was definitely different um where then we saw hey we have all this g-watt money so global war on terrorism funds which was near endless um so we were buying a lot of different gear new gear at this point you know we have our own research and development section there at the unit so we're able to drive a lot of the industry and say hey here's the fight that we're currently in this gear doesn't exist but the guys in the fight have got great ideas and say hey if we could develop or make this this or this it would make their job easier and a lot of the manufacturers are like uh yeah because they know hey if we get it we run it everybody else is gonna want it right um so we you know i saw a great um a great error and a great time frame where we had um a ton of new gear flood the market and we were still seeing it today the technology the gear everything just just boomed in this time frame and of course you know we were at the lead of it with driving a lot of it um you know we we had a lot of influence on you know we worked a lot with cry precision on a lot of their gear and their designs along with developing multicam helping them out with you know the patterns and the testing stuff um you know various night vision and lasers and and optics um you know weapon scopes and and you know ammunition and all kinds of different stuff that you know we were able to really drive that train on and see that and now you know it's nice because when i finished my my team leader time i went to our research development section and that's sort of where and why you know i do a lot of night vision teaching now is i worked in our our vast section so lasers night vision weapon sights and scopes that was my thing so i worked a lot with industry i worked a lot with l3 with wilcox industries you know of course survival um did a bunch of stuff with various companies that are making night vision help to develop some of the stuff um you know and and still today because of my relationships that i developed while i was there still working on projects now um you know with with both the unit with um you know right now working on a project that should be getting released here very shortly um but yeah working on a new a new um helmet that's coming out that is pretty pretty killer um but yeah doing some stuff with wilcox right now also got some stuff uh coming out any project i'm working on with them i'm supposed to be working on a new thermal project um that's coming out so yeah it's fun to stay tied in and and then of course it helps me just you know stay relevant you know once you get out your clock kind of starts ticking sure um yeah my mine stopped a long time ago so i totally get it yeah i mean you got to stay relevant out there especially in the instructor world so yeah being able to still be tied in and help with developments and help um you know work with all these companies and know and have the latest and greatest gear out there um as i'm teaching these classes you know it really helps to show and you know now dabbling somewhere selling night vision um you know it's it is it's it's nice but yeah that's that's sort of my meat and potatoes and the reason why i'm doing it now i think it's interesting that you mentioned how uh you know the unit kind of drives the industry because in addition to driving the industry it also it also sort of drives the army by sort of a second or third order effect right because whatever the unit sort of gets the industry to do and and then uh adopts eventually the realtors the range of battalion and then and this isn't just gear but this is tactics too and then eventually filters to you know maybe the much slower pace during a peacetime army but also slow it eventually gets into the big army um but i know that you know like ranger battalion started doing the cqb you know before before 9 11. that was it sort of became this kind of push and pull thing where some people in the regiment were really embracing this and some people were really fighting it like we need to stick to you know the vietnam era patrol-based activities that's who we are that's what we do but but still they had that influence from you and then it also sort of bled you know into the big army especially during the g-1 um oh yeah definitely in a lot of that you know just the cqb aspect a lot of it has to do with you know iraq days and a lot of clearing and even afghanistan you know getting into a village in towns and you know hey we have to you know look for this guy or you know whoever and you you end up having to clear things but yeah i mean definitely gear wise um you know perfect example is the hk-416 right you know we larry had a big part larry vickers in in developing that um in the unit because you know i was issued an m4 um when i got there and our armors were cutting the barrels down they were cutting them down to like 11 inches and some even shorter but then we were starting to see gas problems so we're like oh hey wait a minute we have to fix this you know we don't have enough gas coming back to cycle the weapon system so that's where the whole pinchment system came in with the piston and um and now we see you know after years and years of the unit still running a 416 a lot of other people are starting you know are looking at it want to go to it you know the army's looked at i don't know the current status of everybody that has it right now but um a lot of guys are you know no and that that is a bacon shoots i mean i'm here to tell you i got one of the first the first 20 uppers that we got were in spring of 05 and they came to us because we were forward deployed i was in missoula at the time and they were like hey we're getting a new gun who wants it you know the uppers are coming first and then we'll get the lowers shortly after but i'm like i'll take one i don't remember what serial number i had but it was it was the first 20 that came in and i still had that same upper for years and every single time i pulled the trigger on that thing it went bang very reliable weapon system i loved it because you know shorter barrel i'm not a big guy so you know clearing and doing everything i just liked it it fit me better um but yeah it's a great system and i know a lot of their units are looking at going to it or something similar and a lot of guns nowadays are modeled after that and trying to compete with that platform yeah something else i wanted to ask you about jamie i don't know how in-depth uh you may or may not be able to go but the uh the stuff where you're showing uh some pictures of the jungle warfare training or jungle survival training down in belize now i was just wondering how in depth you'd be able to speak to all of that yeah that was um i know we had there was a reason we went down there there were there was obviously some stuff happening in the world um so we were like yeah this is a you know a good time for us to go there so we we ended up you know our ops and everybody set it all up but yeah we went into belize basically to do jungle training and it was a little different than any other units that may go down there like it wasn't the typical you know and you have panama and i've been to jotc um before down in panama in ranger battalion and this was completely different you know it wasn't just that let's just jump through this and have some missions we did some real unique stuff um we tied in directly with the 22 sas i mean they they train there a lot they do a lot of stuff there i want to say that's part of their like ootc they they spend a section in you know jungle training down there so we every troop had uh one guy from the 2-2 that was that was attached to them assigned to them and he you know he'd help us out with some stuff and some of the pictures i've recently shown on there show his a-frame so he built their typical a-frame to show us you know of course we're uh say you know a little more gucci we had all bought like you know the highest the latest and greatest like hammock with the bug netting on it and everything where you get into it in the middle underneath and unique i've never seen anything like this but it velcro's on the bottom it you open it up you slide into it yeah and then when you get in the pressure in whatever of you laying down seals the velcro back on the bottom wow so the whole thing is is an enclosed hammock um that has bug netting on the top and then you have a rain shield over the top of it um to set up but yeah so he you know he would show us a lot of their unique stuff and we did you know we did a bunch of land nav and some other you know some other training but it was it was an amazing time and of course we always have and find a way to have fun while we were there um we we ended up we had an atv in the campsite that we were at the middle of the jungle and we were living out there for about a week a couple of the guys got on the atv and just started driving around the jungle and you know just seeing what they could find they ended up finding a resort and came back with a couple cases of beer and it was a daily run now back to that resort to go fill up our milk crates with beer so every time we got back to the campsite after a day of training we had i mean we were drinking like every night and at this point the squadrons are major in the squadron commander because we were just alone as our troop right um the squadron uh leadership was at a whole other location like a little bit more of a headquarters type area i remember at the very end of this trip they were like oh we had this big land nav movement we were all worn out and pissed off by the end of this thing and then they throw this on us like hey you know this big land nav movement we're going to give you some great coordinates you got to move to them you know as teams and it was like some competition thing or something and we're all just like whatever you know we're done at this point so we get to the final to the final grid coordinate and everybody shows up everybody's there and it's sort of at like this little picnic area on the side of this river it was cool you know set up and they have beer for everybody and some food and we're all just like yeah we're good yeah yeah they're just like wait what like you've been in the jungle for you know a week straight and you guys haven't drank anything we're giving you we're just like yeah we're good we're like we've been getting hammered every night in camp they had absolutely no idea oh yeah so you know we're always going to find a way to have a good time no matter where we go yeah what we're doing you know we're always going to get the job done take it serious but once we know that we're done it's like okay you know what it's time to kick back and have fun i mean we were by a river we were swimming in the river every day and you know just enjoying the time while we were there so guys were just bringing beer back from the resort they weren't bringing any tourists back from the result i resorted no no no trust me no tourists wanted to come into that camp at all yeah yeah the jungle stink going so oh yeah i do want to push a little bit further i got to ask or at least ask if you'd be willing to talk about some of the regional events that were at play at that moment that kind of led you guys down that that road of what a what was going on that made us go there right right i mean there was obviously there was some there was some jungle uh there was some jungle type stuff going on shenanigans yeah jungle shenanigans that we were told to prep for yeah so we're like all right i guess we're going to the jungle you know but the the mission never got off the ground for you guys i take it no no it never did no and then you know there was a bunch of that there was there's many times that you know we're training up for something um where it's like okay you know this is on the radar and you know that that's part of but part of um a lot of military stuff is you know you're always as leaders the leadership is always looking at where is the next fight what's our next deployment okay let's make sure our guys are ready you know for whatever prep cycle that you're in or you know pre-deployment cycle and and for us it just was it was global so you really you know yes okay in the heydays we knew all right hey we know that in you know six months or in a year or whatever we're going back to iraq or afghanistan or wherever it may be but we still have to you know become you know we're still the world police so right we still have to train on everything that we do and then look at other hot spots in the world and you know at that point in time there was you know there was some stuff happening down south and we're like all right well this could possibly pop so we gotta be ready for it you know you you're you've been a regiment for quite a while and i'm sure you had your share of like false starts there but you got to the unit and within like a year you know the g watts starts but i imagine that there were senior guys there who had basically been in a peacetime military probably a lot of false starts and finally like near the end of their career they actually go get they get to go do their job how was i mean i'm just curious kind of what that interaction was like with guys who had been there for a long time and now they finally get to do something yeah i mean it was um it was really you know i was invisible to you know to guys like myself just because we you know we still looked up to them you know they were our leaders um they were the guys that had been there and and that place is unique because it's all about time there like rank is immaterial you don't wear it it doesn't mean anything you know and i've had as an ea team leader i remember i had an e9 on my team but i was a team leader he was a three ic and that's the way it was it didn't matter that i was an eight he was a nine or you know or something like that um but you still always looked up to those guys and i you know and i still do you know even some of them i've i've surpassed and things i've done there um from their careers but it's like well wait that was my team leader that was my troops arm major he was above me so it you know i still hold that like you know when i do see him even nowadays you know it's like no he was my leader you know it's it's kind of unique and weird but a lot of those guys had spent a lot of time there and yeah you know the the main thing that happened there prior to me getting there was somalia you know i was in basic training when somalia kicked off and there was a good still a great you know handful i mean kyle lamb was one of my otc instructors um he shot he taught shooting program um and you know he was a he was a legendary somalia guy and you know still legendary to this day i mean i still look up to him a lot you know he's a he's a great instructor a great individual um you know a great dude and yeah he did a lot in his career but yeah i mean towards the tail end of it is when all that kicked off so a lot of those guys didn't get to spend you know as much time as i did um there in combat or multiple theaters and as many rotations and now today it's i mean it's it's almost the same guys aren't deploying as much you know we there's there's guys that are coming to the unit right now that have never deployed i know you know it's weird yeah yeah it is uh jamie i'm gonna jump into some uh some of the viewers had questions for you um jackson says what advice do you have for guys attempting selection what would you do differently and it's a true that you can only attend twice uh okay some of this is gonna be dated right um i retired in december 14. um it's not it's not a hard fast rule that you can only go twice um and i i think i heard you question was what would i have done different what would you do differently what do you what do you what advice would you give a guy who's going to selection now so i would say you should have been given a train up program follow it to a t don't fear from it don't try to over do it um i would tell a lot of people do not put a rucksack on and go run with a rucksack that is the worst thing you could do for your knees that's the worst thing you could do for your body go run distance and if you're gonna put a rucksack on just go get in the woods and just go walk or go to a stadium and walk stairs if you don't have elevation but if you can get into some terrain just put the weight on 35 45 pounds at the most ain't got to go crazy um and just go walk that's it i mean go i i know i i went to the i went to um uh second to uh i'd say second range italian no i didn't go up there um i went to mountain phase um ranger school so up at camp darby and i went up there and stayed there me and another guy did for a couple days and we just put our rucks on and just got on the appalachian trail and just walked that was it that's what we did just to get some altitude and to get our knees and legs working so yeah that'd be my advice is don't don't over train um follow the program that they give you and if you want to do anything run distances i mean five six miles go run a 10 mile you know um and and do some rocking would you say that guys like over training uh is as much of a problem as guys under training or something like that um yes i i would say not too many people under train right but here's here's a way to look at it is and everybody is going to do a little bit more and you want to be in the best shape when you go there right because you don't want to fail you know it's going to be physically demanding but you have to think about this like what what's going to happen like you you want to go there and be in good shape but if you're not generally in good shape all the time you're not going to make it there because anybody could completely train it up and make it through there but if then you go back to because you're going to go back to what you naturally and normally do and get in your normal natural body shape and in cadence then you're not going to make it there you know so you either got to say hey i'm going to step it up for the rest of my time right um in the military and maintain that or you just have to be that guy that you know and that's why a lot of rangers make it a lot of sf guys make it because that's what they do that's that's their life all the time you know as is that i don't know if you can answer this one or not but he this guy asks what's life like on a water team how similar is it to what nsw does i'd have to imagine with an influx of raiders or are seeing sf5 guys equal um i was on a water team um for a while actually when i first got there i was and um it goes in waves we we we do stuff with them we were doing a lot of stuff on our own um boat stuff and dive stuff and at one point we actually got told to stop like slow down we were doing too much and they were getting pissed um so it's gonna depend on the team there's no hard rule like if you get on a motivated water team um and the team leader is into it i know then you're gonna do more but some of them are just like yeah whatever and you know you're gonna do your normal stuff but you may only do a little bit of water stuff take the zodiacs out with pulling motors every now and again uh jackson says how rare is it seeing former operators become troop commanders does it earn more respect from the guys and how difficult is it for guys to pull it off um you got to be the right guy like not everybody there that makes it and is an operator is number one going to be a team leader and or be a troop star major um you obviously have to earn it um and and you know be respected and and because appear your your your seniors are going to vote on whether or not you get that position um so yeah it's uh but it is you know very well respected it's i would say i never i i was never a troop sergeant major um i got asked to be but i turned it down um i don't know that i would have gotten it all the guys wanted me to be like below me wanted me to take the troop um i just i was done i i did i was a team leader for three years uh normal is two i did three i got asked to stay an extra year and again it was you know i had been hard and fast at it now i was coming up on like my 13th deployment um straight without a break at all and i needed a break at that point um i was done and i i was burnt out i mean i went to cdd and i knew like hey at 20 i'm dropping my i'm dropping my packet like i'm i'm getting out like understandable something else yeah but um yeah definitely a lot of respect for anybody that makes it as a troop server major um a lot of guys that our troops are majors will tell you though that the best job there is team leader because once you become a troop server major you're not you're not doing you're not doing a lot anymore i mean you're there you're on target but all the teams and team leaders and everybody are going in and you're coming in after him so uh jackson says mike glover said you were one of the best team leaders he ever saw in action what do you think makes a good team leader and is that advice applicable to troop sergeant majors and troop commander so i guess he's asking about you know uh what makes for a good team leader in the unit yeah um well first i'll say thanks mike um i doubt he's paying attention or listening to this but um i didn't know he ever said that um i mean the way that i looked at it and some of it so here's why and i've had other guys tell me you know that really enjoyed working with me um my time in leadership roles or even there and the the advice i would tell anybody is you you have to be very well-rounded and you got to get along with everybody and i attribute the way that i am today and the way that i was there to my upbringing um you know from my parents i mean treat everybody as you want to be treated i mean just basic rules you know my dad was the cop i looked up to him and what he did you know and the sacrifices that he made for our family and the things that we did you know um i was you know spanked as a kid i've had wooden spoons broke over me and hit with plastic spoons and belts and you know but i knew when i messed up like i messed up and did things and i always then wanted to fix it and and you know not do it again but the biggest thing i would say is growing up in range of italian as a support guy so growing up in ranger battalion as a support guy i saw how i got dumped on and when i got to the unit and i was an operator i was never gonna dump on any support dude like i didn't care what his job you know what he did whatever he was there for a reason because he was good at his job and i couldn't do my job without any of those guys and i understood it because i was one of those guys in ranger battalion right so i treated everybody as an equal and most of the guys do but there are a good handful of guys that you know are there and they're pounding their chests like i'm an operator i'm i'm the man i'm the king of the hill all of you are here for me to make sure that i can do my job you know you're here to make that happen i never looked at it that way um i treated everybody the same and you know enjoyed working with everybody because we couldn't do our job without everybody else right you know i was actually wanted to ask you about that earlier that you know you went from sort of being kind of isolated as an rto as a radio guy you know you were part you were a ranger and you're part of the team but i'm sure that the lion guys you know they were lying guys right and you were you know you're the common dude and then you and then you go become an operator you're one of you're one of the team um was that a significant like shift for you i i i i'm just curious like how did you feel isolated a bit when you're at you know ranger battalion because like you were dumped on um and then what was that shift or change for you like when you were one of the children yeah so it it was um yeah i mean you know being him being a battalion and being a soft skill i mean i had lots of friends that were 11 bravo's and you know went to ranger school with those guys and they saw that hey man you know i went for ranger school i got my tab and that was a big part of range of time life is you know you were a nobody even if you were 11 bravo until you got your tab once you got your tab then you gained all this respect um so i was you know i was very happy when i got my tab to gain that respect um and show like yeah hey i'm one of the guys i'm just carrying a radio on my back um but no i mean once i became an operator it more or less it was like now i have the tool to not dump on everybody else right if you don't like and i told a lot of guys i'm like don't look at me as anything special i'm like i just went through and made it through this course and i'm just doing this job but i can't do my job without you you know like i felt like i i was on that pedestal to be able to get up on that soapbox now and people just listen but more left me to say like hey man come up on this box with me like i'm i'm not on the box and you're down there like you get up here with me now like i have the power to say that right and be respected to say no you guys all get up here with me you know and and that that was that was great for me to get to that level to just be able to do that and to you know really honor you know all the other guys below that you know so they didn't get dumped on right it was like another one here which tends to be the better experience assault trooper recce troop oh everybody has their own opinion for me it was the assault side yeah i mean i i spent i spent a while initially on the salt team i went to recce and i knew when i went to recce that i wanted to go back and i made it clear like hey i'm coming to recce um i enjoyed i enjoyed soda i enjoyed shooting a long gun i still do today i enjoyed my time in recce i learned a lot while i was there um worked with great guys while i was there but i let it be known right when i got there like hey i don't want to be a two i see here because that was usually the nail in the coffin that okay now you're going to be a team leader in recce i was like nope i want to go back to the assault you know once it works out i want to go back and i was lucky that i was only there six months did one rotation um over there you know while i was with recce and then my a new team leader that was uh that was taking a team in the troop i had just left requested me as his two ic and um i jumped on it i was like yep yeah heck yeah i mean one i'd love to work for that guy but also then that's my chance to go back i mean i was i was a little upset that i needed to spend longer you know as a sniper because i did enjoy it but my heart definitely was was in the assault side it's really a personality thing right based on i mean if somebody says oh assault's better oh recce is better i mean it really oh yeah it's very much like personal yeah it's more personal preference you know what what guys like and you know the missions are you do on the wrecky side you do all the same stuff but more right i mean it's just a little bit more like a little low vis i mean obviously you have the long gun aspect but there's way more to it um and and i liked it because there was more technical aspect to it you know i mean i it's all the calm stuff that you have to know and you've got to be able to be out there on your own or onesie 2z and be able to make com so that stuff i already knew i'm like oh yeah this is easy you know so i enjoyed it because i didn't have to go over there and learn a ton of different stuff i knew a lot of it and now it was just applying those skills to a different you know a different uh mission uh what did you make of fbi hrt one former unit sergeant major said hrp is the only other unit that could compare is that true yeah yeah we worked pretty closely with those guys early in iraq and um they were they were good enough that they weren't supposed to but we had them we had them working directly with us and in our stack and clearing with us i mean yeah awesome and one of the guys i still keep in contact with today yeah i'm sure they were there in a purely law enforcement capacity when they were in your stack i mean i don't know if you saw but we had danny coulson on who was sort of the founder of that and he talked about you know how closely he worked with you know beckwith and a lot of people to to make sure that they they were just there dustin for fingerprint standards in baghdad i'm sure yeah that was it yeah exactly uh what separates oh boy this is a spicy one it's a little spicy what separates the unit from dev group one former operator says the unit's morality and loyalty to mission is what makes them more effective than dev crew it's a little spicy a little spicy so here's what here's what separates it selection we have a selection they don't you selection works uh we get a better quality product out of guys that make it through selection and then uh and then get there and you know still otc and vet themselves where their good old boy network you know oh they go through their green platoon or green team or whatever they call it kind of their equivalent to otc but that's about it so it's just a there's a maturity level difference and yeah it's it it's different but yeah this uh this one is probably uh chris maybe you want to go back and watch the episodes we did with mike edwards um who was in rrc but uh he's asking did jaime ever consider joining rrc or rrd and like what's the difference between them and the unit um i did at one point um had thought about going there it was rrd when i was in when i was in ranger regiment but um and and and knew a handful of those guys pretty well um but yeah it just nah it really wasn't for me um i think once i you know figured out the unit path and that was kind of that was it that was my focus yeah this well this is a actually a good one what's the most untraditional or non-army background you heard of in the unit um maybe hard hat diver yeah really i went to dive school with him did you really yes yeah yeah he's he is a unique dude that's pretty cool awesome yeah awesome guy yeah we had another guy in there that was a helicopter crew chief um i went through selection with the kid that was in the 82nd airborne division band didn't make it made it pretty damn far um i actually liked him a lot of guys were rooting for him to make it but yeah that's cool unique yeah it was it was funny because yeah i went to dive school with him like way back when that's pretty cool oh wow that's awesome great dude chris uh he says this is a question for for jack uh did the regiment have to develop wrecky platoons in the regiment since rrc got pulled away to do jsoc yeah that that's exactly what happened they got sucked up into something else so for the range of batons to have some sort of reconnaissance or scouting capability they develop those wrecky sex uh alejandro says can't stay the whole episode thank you jamie for coming on and sharing your story suspenta cheers from a second battalion guy uh what was the okay here's a little uh war uh what was the preferred loading for five five six or the most popular loading for five five six in your time um i don't know i'm not totally sure what he means by that like brain yeah i i won't talk ammo because we may do some different stuff i would say here's a good there's a good answer here that and i do talk about this in my classes sort of talk about loading magazines like there's there's people like 28 rounds 29 rounds 30 rounds here's my take on it i'm gonna pack as many rounds as i can in that gun so that i have every single round i can bring into combat right or into a firefight um every gun is different like there are some guns that you can't put 30 rounds in a magazine and the magazine is going to see magazines are different um guns are different you know bolt whatever it may be you're lower make sure that you try it pack try to pack 30 make sure that the bolt is forward and see if that magazine seats if that magazine will not seat then you may have to only have 29 in there initially though i'm gonna have 30 because i'm going to have one in the tube and then 29 in the magazine but the rest of your magazines are going to have 29 but nowadays most guns should you should be able to pack 30 rounds into that magazine try to go in with as many as you can what's what's your p like some people will say and i'm not a gun guy at all but some people say like if you keep on putting 30 rounds in your magazine that you'll fatigue the spring and then it won't the magazine won't beat as well so you should put a heavy load on it now now you're the only mess in with a spring you're going to do is if you pack it with 30 rounds and you let it sit for a long time you know like you're going to have your load so i you know even at home i've got magazines that are loaded but then you know maybe every two months or something i'll go you know i make sure i shoot through those magazines and then reload other ones to sit there if you do compress the spring yes the spring may have some memory and you know you you're you can mess with the magazine a little bit but as long as you're continuing to cycle those through on your range time or your range days then you'll have no issues uh sfn thank you uh bpz uh i started with an anps 5a i thought it was the coolest thing i feel so old now yeah that that was like looking at black and white tv that just you had no reception i mean it was so snowy they're better than nothing but not far from just yeah you're almost better off with your regular night vision uh peter asks do you think if you were allowed to infiltrate from the pakistan side of orobora could you have gotten bin laden could the war have ended right there um yeah i think we could have got him definitely if we were able to come in from that direction but the war wouldn't ended right there no andrew's saying is he saying he doesn't love my beloved augusta ooh i actually love augusta yeah um you got you've got clarksville i mean there's some great lakes right there i did bring my boat to enoch and fished quite a bit while i was there so no i i actually like fort gordon um it's a nice post they got a great hospital there um yeah i've actually would love to get an invite maybe to come speak at like a signal graduation or something like that i may not yeah i think it'd be it'd be kind of cool because there's there's quite i mean a lot of those guys are you know wanting to head towards special operations careers or something like that and yeah it'd be it'd be cool to go back there but nope i love i do love augusta andrew also asks should the army use rhodesian style short shorts like ranger panties all the time chris says when did they incorporate quad tube nvgs and what was jamie's opinion of them um we we incorporated them just to get that wider field of view so your monocular and any of the dual tubes you only have 40 degree field of view human eye has 200 degree field of view so now you're throwing night vision on now you're down to 40 degrees so trying to open that up the quad tubes give you 98 degrees um so it's still not 200 but it just opens up your vision so that you're you're picking up some additional movement with your peripheral um i you know i didn't run them um it was no reason like i didn't like you know i'd not that i didn't like them or anything they they're nice um but we were we were offered hey you can run panos or you can run the fusion goggle which is the dual tube with thermal capability and i'm like yeah i want to have an additional sensor so i have thermal capability i can see in a whole nother spectrum you know because with night vision you still have shadows and people can hide in shadows and whatnot where when you have that thermal capability nobody's hiding at all i've got a couple of you know stories that i tell in my classes and everything but i mean i'm i'm standing here talking to you right now um on this podcast because of thermal and thermal save saved my my individual life in combat one time um and then another time definitely saved some guys in our troop um having having that thermal capability that's amazing that that can fit i mean considering that you know it used to be the big the big it's amazing that that fits into that technology now oh yeah the new goggle that the army's getting um the new enhanced uh night vision uh binocular is amazing and the the fpa the thermal sensor that's inside of that is is amazing it's awesome that's amazing uh jorah organ says uh was the boat op in iraq the one mentioned in sean naylor's book to capture gassan amin where the unit crossed the river and pretended to be farm hands now this was uh this was a different mission where we were actually crossing a border going to another country oh my yeah uh brendan says great episode listening from australia keep safe andrew says uh good i'm glad you like our beloved augusta so this is uh jamie can you tell us a little bit about one minute out uh and what you're what you're doing today yep so one minute out is my is my uh tactical training company um we started the company kind of as like one minute out is sort of a lifestyle um you know we hear the word you know you get the the one minute out call when we're flying into target that's sort of when we flip the switch right prior to that you know we get on the bird we're still smoking and joking and having a good time and you know poking fun at each other on the flight in but when you get that one-minute call i mean that's really where everybody flips the switch and um you know you're firing at 100 all your senses are up i mean it's it's game time right and you know that doesn't necessarily just pertain to us on the tactical side i mean that's anybody you think about anything that you do in life when you're one minute out from you know us getting ready to get on this podcast right you guys are prepared you guys are dialed in you know what you want to talk about you know everything that's going to happen you know one minute out you're like all right you know let's go it's game time i like your confidence in us thank you jamie yeah yeah exactly i knew you guys are squared away um you know one minute out from going to brief you know board members in your company or whatever on on the latest pitch i mean you know at one minute you're like all right you've memorized your presentation you're ready to hit a home run you know whatever it is so just getting people to live like that all the time you know like why do we slack off in a lot of what we do but then when we're one minute out from some big event it's like okay now i'm at 100 right because i live like that all the time um but what what we're doing is you know a lot of training so um the night vision piece doing a lot of night vision training around the country um some rifle pistol stuff um training wise but there's a million people doing that so i don't i don't focus real heavy on that piece of it we've got some swag so if you visit you know oneminuteout.com we've got some shirts and um working on some new hats um just other little swag stuff for people to to wear the brand and you know just remind themselves to you know live like you're one minute out to live like that all the time and that's a one with number one correct yes yep number one minute out yup and that's the same on on instagram one minute out and um i also have a new page one minute out rocky so that's my uh yeah that's our new yeah let me see him that's our new our new puppy um our doberman we had to put down not too long ago i'm sorry um no she was she was old she went from from old age so this is the new assault puppet oh my god is that a mo that is rock yeah he's a uh a blue merrell uh chihuahua so he's he's kind of uh he's a killer color pattern yeah he reminds me a lot like the colors if anybody follows tactical tazz um you know he's a he's a chowini but he's very unique colors they he the guy that owns them puts them in tactical vests and helmets and he's got little guns and machine guns and stuff um yeah he's he's a riot he's adorable get on a dog team yeah exactly yeah he's he's got a little bit of growing to do still he's only like uh eight weeks he's he's 10 weeks old now yep so he's still got he's still got a good bit of growing to go but we're going to get him a tactical vest and oh my god he's adorable yeah we have to have some fun with him and and he he where's he at one minute out yeah this is one minute out rocky rocky one minute out rocky uh on instagram right oh yeah yep yep on instagram go check it out guys extra points for the puppy uh at the end of the show we did have one last question coming uh did uh the squadrons in the unit have any kind of competitive nature between each other yeah competitive nature between teams between troops oh yeah yeah oh yeah definitely definitely oh man jamie there's so many other questions and things i'd love to talk about with you i think we've kept you for quite a while tonight um and maybe we will have to do it again sometime um but i want to i want to thank everyone who joined us tonight there's like 450 people watching this live uh showing up for showing up for jamie and more people see it throughout the week so thank you everyone and um please make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon and hit on all notifications yeah all notifications so you get notified when we go live next time we'll be back next week with john newman jan is a fsb defector defected from the russian intelligence services lives here in the united states now we're going to be talking to him about his whole story um make sure you check out jamie at oneminuteout.com uh check out our sponsor at rweber.com p-a-r-w-e-b-e-r for a kick-ass watch and the promo code is team house together promo code is to get free shipping um yeah and join our patreon like keep us in the booth guys keep our rent pay our lights on down down the description you'd find so yeah thank you everybody uh thank you jamie jamie thank you very much we really appreciate your time man yeah this is awesome guys i really appreciate it and uh thanks to everybody that tuned in i mean that is awesome those numbers are great i appreciate everybody hanging out and and listening to me babble and and tell stories um so make sure that you guys hit them up on their instagram hit them up on the on this youtube put a comment in there if you want me to come back and uh yeah i definitely i'd love to come back and chat with you guys some more and we'd love to have some more stories and next time next time i'll have a bourbon in my hand okay you know not a 300 to get through it fair enough fair enough yeah for sure but i appreciate it next time we'll expect it appreciate everybody following

Channel: The Team House

Views: 47,374

Rating: 4.9379592 out of 5

Keywords: The Team House, Jack Murphy, JSOC, delta force, Special operations, Special forces, Socom, Operators, Tier 1, Army rangers, The unit

Id: fqi4EJwhsME

Length: 138min 9sec (8289 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021

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I like the team house