Jocko Podcast 257: You Have to CHOOSE to Get Stronger w/ Green Beret Ryan Hendrickson

this is jocko podcast number 257 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo the president of the united states of america takes pleasure in presenting the silver star to sergeant first class ryan michael hendrickson united states army for exceptional gallantry in the face of the enemies of the united states of america with exceptional valorous conduct as the engineer sergeant of special operational detachment bravo sfodb7220 advanced operations based north special operations task force afghanistan on 23 february 2016 during operation freedoms sentinel in support of resolute support mission four on 23 february 2016 members of the fifth eighth and tenth special operations kandak tactically advised by sfoda7223 and sfodb7220 conducted clearing operations in order to deny a known taliban safe haven sergeant first class hendrickson led a team of national mine reduction group nmrg soldiers ahead of the main effort to clear routes of improvised explosive devices ieds clearing 15 ieds in the process while conducting movement to the first compound of interest a member of this element struck a tripwire the element immediately took cover however there was no detonation sergeant first class hendrickson's team was then immediately ambushed by heavy enemy machine gun small arms and rpg fire from approximately 15 meters away sergeant first class hendrickson immediately directed his nmrg team to place suppressive fires on the enemy while providing detailed terminal attack guidance which enabled an f-16 close air support platform to conduct a strike on fortified enemy fighting positions danger close to his position sergeant first class hendrickson assessed that his element needed to maneuver away from the enemy's position to ensure the safety safety of his nmrg members he quickly led the element to bound back to a friendly position by creating additional distance between his team and the enemy air assets were able to successfully neutralize the enemy during a second air strike after the smoke cleared following air-to-ground engagements sergeant first class hendrickson immediately began clearing a path for friendly forces by leading his team to clear several complex ieds designed to target friendly dismounted elements during exfiltration the element was re-engaged by heavy and effective enemy pkm rpg sniper and mortar fire which resulted in multiple u.s and partner force casualties sergeant first class hendrickson directed afghan commandos who were pinned down and separated from the main element to maneuver to and gain cover behind his position under heavy enemy fire sergeant first class hendrickson directed friendly elements to a nearby compound where the casualty collection point ccp was established after conducting headcount sergeant first class hendrickson realized that two partner first members were missing sergeant first class hendrickson organized a team to locate and recover the separated and potentially wounded friendly forces sergeant first class hendrickson had to be held back numerous times while air support conducted additional attacks on enemy positions once the air-to-ground engagements were complete sergeant first class hendrickson selflessly maneuvered the recovery team under enemy small arms fire to retrieve the missing friendlies upon reaching the two missing soldiers they discovered that the soldiers had been mortally wounded sergeant first class hendrickson then utilized a ladder as a litter to help carry the wounded soldiers to the ccp while his element continued to engage enemy forces with suppressive fires sergeant first class hendrickson's actions prevented the taliban forces from recovering the bodies of friendly forces which ensured all partner force members were accounted for leaving no one behind sergeant first class hendrickson's actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism and reflect distinct credit upon himself the special operations task force afghanistan the north atlantic treaty organization special operation component command afghanistan special operations joint task force afghanistan and the united states army so obviously that is a silver star citation from an incredibly hard mission and this particular individual this special forces soldier ryan hendrickson he had already been through hell just to get on that mission and luckily for us he has written a book about his experiences which is called tip of the spear and it is an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his story ryan that was a doozy of a mission thanks for coming on man i really appreciate you guys having me on here yeah that was this is awesome well it's good to meet you and um we'll dive into that some of the details around that what you did there because really that's you know like i said you already been through a hell of a lot just to be on that mission in the first place you've been well we'll get there um but yeah let's let's start at the beginning and and you know i i read your book and uh it's called tip of the spear the incredible story of an injured green beret's return to battle and i always like to start at the beginning so let's start the beginning let's see what made ryan hendrickson so you start off here in the book i grew up in the unincorporated california town of fall river mills nestled between the sierra nevada and cascade mountain ranges in rugged shasta county and then you and i always have to say this i have to jump around in the book i'm not going to read the whole book you have to buy the book if you want to get the whole story but i'll i'll fast forward through a bunch of the highlights this is always a good way to start life pretty much sucked because my mother who delivered my sister and me into this world was hooked on drugs and alcohol dad sent her packing my dad was a vietnam vet who did two tours as an aviation crew chief chief before returning to the pacific northwest and eventually northern california following his honorable discharge from the u.s army during the vietnam war my dad's primary air aircraft was the dh3 otter with the 54th aviation out of vang tao but he constantly found himself flying into combat in a huey military helicopter formerly known as the bell uh-1 it was in a huey that my father experienced the true horror of war as an m60 door gunner using the deadly firepower at his fingertips to rain down death on nva troops and viet cong so your dad was in nam how many years did he do did he do like the two years like hey i was in vietnam i did two years and got out are you staying longer what do you do well yeah he actually uh he actually did two tours in vietnam so total of four years in the army but he did uh two back to back-to-back tours in vietnam as in two years straight dang yeah well there was a there was a break because he came back for r r and then went back so you know kind of a little break but but yeah he did he did his two tours over there and and what what do you know anything about his decision-making process on that his uh so what we have talked about his decision behind wanting to do multiple tours in vietnam is number one he loved the people um and uh number two it's it it's combat and combat's addicting extremely dangerously addicting and that was kind of when he was over there he's like hey i can go back to wherever northern california or oregon or i can sit here and just keep getting after it yep and the choice was pretty obvious for how old was he uh he left out of high school he volunteered for the army i know high school which uh what do you know what year it was 1966. oh dang i think yeah around in there but then he got out so he did two tours two years straight with a little break do you know why he got out um i'm not extremely sure the decision-making process behind him getting out i just as he told me you know back in those days um being in the military wasn't like it is today and so um you know getting out and moving on with your life or whatnot like that that it's just the military wasn't popular at the time um it wasn't a prestigious thing for you know like today um us serving um it's you know it means something and back then it's he's like wow yeah well if he went in in 66 so he needed two tours and nom pro so he's we're talking yeah this is 1968 1969. the war is freaking everyone's against it um you guys moved around a bunch um reading uh you you say this about your dad before wendy and that's your sister yes before wendy and i came in the world though my dad was a guy who liked his beer he'd get drunk and if you happen to cross paths with him in the wrong way you would most likely be at the losing end of a fist fight he worked hard logging putting in crazy 12-hour days but he partied even harder when the logging industry was booming and money was good coming in he was blowing a healthy portion of his dough on booze and you go into some detail here he was just sort of blazing a past of destruction um one night he's like drunk and basically feels like his life is kind of going nowhere yep and he's well i i'll go to the book here while driving in his drunken stupor my father thought about what his life had become his options had slowly dwindled down over the years with no hope and no future he believed he was facing his last choice to end it all dad pulled his truck in front of uncle steve's house right as he shifted into park a man appeared in front of the house and walked up to the driver's side window dad hadn't seen him and seen him leave the house so he didn't know how or why this man had approached his car my uncle lived in the middle of nowhere larry hendrickson the middle-aged man dressed conservatively had a smile on his face my father had never seen this man in his life how do you know my name he asked the man ignored the question larry you're out of chances aren't you he asked this time my father was too stunned to answer it doesn't have to be that way the man continued jesus has a better plan for you and your life in front of my uncle's house that night my father found god after that his hellion days slowed to a trickle that didn't mean he didn't get pissed off at the cards he was dealt in life especially after he had just polished off another six-pack but my father like everyone else i've met including myself was on a journey so that sounds like almost a mystical situation like where'd this dude come from yeah so talking out or talking it out with my dad and it's one of the most powerful stories um but yeah he was so he threw the truck in the park and he was going to bring my sister and i to my uncle's house tell my uncle to take care of us then he was going to go shoot himself in the head and that's i i don't know i mean you know i am religious and i believe you know i believe that god has a plan for everybody um and i that that was just the plan did this guy did we ever see this guy again i don't think he we ever did i i was young so but i don't think my dad ever did now crazy yeah um so you guys move around uh for a while you say we lived out it we lived out in the woods in a house that had no running water due to damaged pipes and limited electricity so the place was cheap your dad got hurt and then he gets healed up and and you say it was clear that he couldn't even afford a home with running water or steady electricity his only option was to have us move in with his mother who lived in colton oregon won a 100 miles to the south colton was even smaller than birkenfield but my grandmother could help provide the necessities of life while my father got under his feet and attended a bible college he wanted to become a preacher fast forward a little bit after my father got ordained as a preacher his first pastorate was at a small church in lincoln city on the central oregon coast he seemed happy and we as a family were happy although we were still poor it didn't matter much because life was good my dad didn't my dad being a preacher didn't lift us out of poverty actually just the opposite happened we had to live in a tent for several months while we waited to move into the upstairs of the parsonage tent living wasn't bad but it did get embarrassing when other kids saw our living conditions and teased me at school all right let's get down to brass tacks how big of a tent was this tent um i would say uh alaskan tint afghan alaskan tent and now i kind of feel bad about writing that in there because um i've definitely lived in an alaskan tent with about 15 other dudes and so we actually had it pretty nice yeah right on well that's a positive attitude man i like it um you continue on here after the tiny church in lincoln city couldn't afford to keep its doors open we were forced to pack up and move again this time we settled in the sleepy logging town of lowell oregon 20 miles southeast of eugene and populated with 1 000 residents my dad did his best to keep us in one spot until i could finish high school and move on with my life i guess having four years in one place is why i say that lowell is my hometown i was always active as a kid preferring to wander around the foothills of the cascade mountains or play sports rather than sitting on my butt watching movies or doing nothing i'm sure i was hell for my dad to raise but he instilled in me the idea that i should set the rules for my life not let life set rules for me at lowell high i gave everything i had to our football and wrestling programs i was never the most talented athlete but every coach said i was the toughest kid they'd ever trained that was when i first heard the saying that boy's too stupid to quit a backhanded compliment for sure but i wore it like a badge of honor uh how good were you at wrestling um i was mediocre and so but i did you start wrestling in in high school or did you wrestle before that uh eighth grade is when i started yeah so i so you're going against kids that were wrestling since they were whatever yeah first grade kindergarten yep yeah i was never a rock star at it or anything like that but i picked it up quickly and um and i just kind of i don't know it was a wrestling night in my mind i know um people will have their own opinions about it but it's probably one of the toughest um i guess sports out there as far as physical fitness endurance and whatnot and that also leads into you know um jujitsu and greco-roman and freestyle and whatnot but um it also what it did for me was it kind of i i already had that work ethic but it kind of like i mean you have to get tough or you're just going to get slaughtered on the mat and that's embarrassing because i've had it happen before what weight did you wrestle at um so i wrestled i started off at 1 120 whatever it was 120 20 whatever yeah yeah and then my senior year um i cut weight down to 142 which um was yeah pretty hard but i was running from the 151 weight class because the kid there was just a beast and so i cut weight down to 142 basically running from somebody and uh went to state and then you know did okay okay well damn if you went to state in oregon that's freaking legit yeah it was during the gutches period and stuff like that so um we we had a pretty organ uh was nationally known for wrestling with you know like the gutchest brothers and whatnot but that's awesome man um here's a little story one day as we were kicking around my future you're talking about your dad he told me a story there were two old men sitting on their porches staring out into the abyss they didn't know each other but they had one thing in common they were waiting on death i leaned in closer dad could always tell a good story but this was different he meant business one old man was miserable he had let life's chances passing by and now thoughts of opportunities long gone were replaced with haunted ideas of what could have been the other old man was totally fulfilled by the life he had lived he had done everything there was to do and now he could sit back and relish his golden moments and wonderful memories because he had lived life to the fullest so there you go son i wish i would have done this or that statements are a prison of misery for the mind you want to go through life and be perfectly content with the life you've lived you want to do everything there is to be done right or wrong you do it and never regret a decision you made this from a man who'd been off to war fought for his life seen the world given life taken life loved and had his heart broken he had made mistakes taking chances and failed and succeeded many times good or bad i can sit back and reminisce on my life and feel good about it he said when god tells me it's my time to go home i will leave this earth fulfilled because i've done it all and i want you to feel the same way so let me leave you with this thought what kind of old man do you want to be son freaking good guidance from the from from pops yep yeah that's um that is pretty much that guidance right there is pretty much led you know half of the the decisions i've made in my life whether or not i look back and i'm like wow i can't believe i'm alive from that um most of what he said right there is the reason why you know i can look back and like wow that was i was really dumb let's try this again so and that's sort of what made you guys start talking about you going in the military mm-hmm i know you you checked with an army recruiter um you didn't even you didn't even think about the navy no at first so the uh basically how it went down was uh my my teachers basically said hey you'll graduate if you join the military you are you are dum-dum like you need to go do something that the military will force you to so all right so the air force they looked at my test scores and they're like no sorry man you're you're real cute but no um the uh the army they actually didn't in the mid 90s they didn't need anybody it was crazy so they had like patriot missile program and it was like a six-month wait to get in and then the marines came in and that guy was so angry and mean and i was like man you're scary i'm like i don't want to be a marine you're scaring me and then so the navy recruiter i mean he might as well had on like a hawaiian t-shirt or whatnot but you know you want to you want to be an f-14 tomcat pilot like tom cruise like yeah you want to be a navy seal like charlie sheens yeah you want to go to exotic ports and see exotic women and yeah he goes cool man sign here it's like oh right yeah i didn't i didn't fly an f-14 that as a neat one oh man so so then you went to boot camp and look there's so much you cover the stuff in the book which is which is cool um but i'm going to jump through jump past some of that stuff you go on here you finally get to see being on board a ship with 900 other sailors and marines all mailing this deployment was a major culture shock and not for the faint of heart especially for low enlisted sailors like me working 16-hour days and doing maintenance duties like keeping the deck department and equipment in good condition loading and unloading cargo shining brass busting rust because of salt water and painting bulkheads walls and passageways the same battleship gray sucked what little free time i had was spending my coffin rack trying to get some much-needed sleep tell us about a coffin rack what's that all about coffin racks yes um so when people talk about quality of life in the military i just say if you've never lived on a ship that was commissioned in the 60s um then i i don't think you really understand what bad quality life is so what was worse the tent that you lived in or a ship board oh [ __ ] oh by far yeah and the marines had it even worse oh yeah they were i think they were stuck like six high down in the marine birthing base or five high yeah well i did two deployments on amphib ships and both of them were built in like 1960 something like that and they were built to transport troops over to the southeast asia yeah and so you were supposed to be on them when they originally built they're supposed to put marines on there for whatever a four-week trip and then you'd get off and go do your work well by the time the 90s rolled around like what you're talking about here we were going on six six month deployments yeah and and yes i stayed in the as a seal was staying in the birthing where where the marines stayed and so yeah there would be david we we literally had the old school canvas racks the canvas strung between metal pipes yeah and then a little cheap freaking mattress on top of that and yeah it was just and either be four or five high i think usually we would kind of adjust our our living space as seals we'd kind of like yeah we'd do some work in there so maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad but uh get some coffin rack sorry i cut you off no people yeah people don't understand but your your entire life so i've done um i was on you know the uss report which was lpd12 and fib boiler super old and then um you know the guam i did some time on that and then the camden well the camden was commissioned in the 70s so it was super it was just this great upgrade um but yeah the shreveport we we were in the persian gulf probably 10 months in 98 and um and then yeah it's your coffin rack like you have that thin mattress and then you open up the what the mattress sits on is basically a lid that you open up and now you have um your your area your where your clothes go and you know everything else and it's just this tiny like it it's it's a coffin but even a coffin has more depth than a coffin rack does on board a ship and so yeah that's that's your entire life and when you're in deck division and you're lower enlisted i mean we were stacked four high and and so it was and then you got you know you have your little uh curtain close the curtain and you know try and get some sleep or whatnot and maybe kick the rack of the guy next to you and he's being too louder so but you know you know you know all about it yeah no it's uh it's that's what's always surprising is you know when guys are going through seal training and you know even if you even if you just hear about that you think well i don't that doesn't sound like a good deal i might be wet cold and sandy right now but that sounds like maybe i don't want to go do that uh this was i thought this was interesting so fast forward a little bit at the time the uss cole was bombed i was on board my second ship the uss camden we were then 12 hours of yemen when the distress calls came out we sailed full steam ahead through the straits of hormuz and along the uss along with the uss donald cook we would be the first american military personnel to arrive and assist the coal crew in saving the ship and pulling bodies from the wreckage i'll never forget the smell of burning human flesh when i stepped on board the coal for the next week we teamed up with coal crew members to keep the ship from sinking and recovered the remains of all 17 heroes killed that day i was i had witnessed the first salvo in what would become known as the war on terror and our rescue and recovery effort with the uss cole would impact my life in the years to come yeah you you definitely being on a navy ship you feel very untouchable by the enemy for sure and especially in the 90s so that must have been a shocker i mean it was a shocker for the world but for you to actually go there that's crazy yeah seeing that i remember when we were on the um uh we call them liberty boats but you know there were the barges taking us over over to uh the uh coal and just looking at that massive hole in the side of it that had just been blown in there about 18 hours prior it was um yeah it's pretty intense it's you know you go from untouchable to all of a sudden you you can be touched and so and yeah it would set the path for you know my you know basically what i did in special operations and whatnot as a green beret and the enemy trying to kill me and that you know the um the zip and the crack and and you're not untouchable anymore and so yeah but that was the first first little idea i got of what of wow you know people they they do want to kill you yeah and that's a weird feeling yeah yeah it takes a little getting used to uh spring in 2001 you get out you get out of the navy um you got married and again there's all kinds of good this is good some good life lessons learned in this book very good life lessons in this book uh so you get married you get out of the navy you actually married a girl that was in the army and so you get out you try a bunch of different jobs you end up as a bartender um which echo supports september 11th happens and now you're feeling like you know hey maybe i want to go do something in the meantime i got to read this little section one day in early 2002 i received a phone call out of the blue hi is this ryan hendrickson yes who's this it's your big sister chris remember me barely i thought our family had been separated when i was still in diapers i had two older half sisters paula was five years old and chris was eight years older i also had a half brother who was 10 years older than me and lived with us periodically his name was robbie both my dad and his first wife were heavy drinkers one night she swept up my older siblings and disappeared i had memories of them but i was so young i didn't really have a grasp of what had happened or who they were and now this phone call came out of the blue so that's that's kind of crazy yeah yeah that was uh that was something else and she wanted to contact me because she she basically said like you won't remember all the bad stuff so i'm going to start off with you but it was when um is when that uh what is it not ancestry dna but whenever they're building your family trees yeah like the genealogy type thing yeah so that's actually when everyone you know started getting connected back again and and um it was it was yeah it was it was crazy but my dad and i we made a trip down to new mexico to see him and that was the first time he saw his kids in years years since you know um and then we just you know we started kind of building the bridges back and you know i learned i learned just how uh you know my dad like he he lived a hard life you know and so i heard some of those stories and um but that's that's the one thing that you know the people that are out there and they say ah you know people people never change are you you're not gonna change once you're once a loser always lose or something like that and now you're looking at my dad and i could be like i i 100 disagree with you and you knew your dad as this guy that was kind of you know uh on such a good path in life and was steering you in the right direction and then your older half-sister had stories that you almost seemed like a different yeah she was talking about a different guy well i remember she said hey have you talked to dad lately and i was like yeah i talk to him all the time he's a preacher and she goes no no um larry hendrickson i said yeah yeah he's a preacher she goes it's impossible wow he's like no it's not wow that's crazy um now during this time also you stayed in the navy reserves which means you were doing your one weekend a month or whatever and then we go back to the book then an unexpected opportunity came up as a naval reservist i could attend basic underwater demolition school at naval special warfare training complex in coronado california buds is a six month long training class was part was the first part of navy seal training so if i ever wanted to become a seal and member of the naval special operations community basic underwater demolition school is where i had to start my wife sarah knew that being part of special operations had always appealed to me now this opportunity was sitting right in front of me i had underground training as a rescue swimmer in the navy so i had assumed i had the swimming part down when i was approved to attend the six-month buds course visions of becoming a seal danced in my head i quickly found out how tough it was during the first phase of training a pre-buds training course that lasted around three weeks from there i went on to phase one which consisted of eight weeks of grueling exercise and conditioning topped off by hell week typically more than half the recruits wash out sheer fatigue and sleep deprivation cause every candidate to wonder what his limits are the non-stop beating that our bodies took from some of the hardest training the military has followed by long stretches of being cold wet and miserable with no time to recover took its toll when my body broke down from a leg injury and severe pneumonia i was dropped after three months of training i could have tried again after i recovered but i couldn't bring myself to go through all that [ __ ] again yeah so what was uh what was that like going through buds or attending buds yeah buds was um i mean i was class 242. uh i i have to say we're a beat down class um uh that's that's just my opinion um you know how they have the classes where some of them are oh man that's you guys got secured early from hell week or whatnot then next class is man you guys are a beat down class or whatnot well we we had a beatdown class and it was uh it was intense everything that they talk about it um yeah the only thing i can tell any listener who wants to contemplate that route is do it because it's an experience that you'll never forget they will make sure you will never forget it one hundred percent so it was the worst part you think for you because you know different guys they dislike different things what do you think was the worst part for you for me the worst part actually once i got pneumonia i couldn't breathe and so under and so when we were doing um drown proofing and whatnot like that i just my nose would just start you know opening up but i would i would have to say anything like on on the water fine under the water i i don't i don't really like that i'm not i'm not a very big fan of that so we when uh well we'll go back to the book here for the first time in my life i experienced a major setback becoming part of an elite unit was something i wanted with every inch of my being but i couldn't make the cut which prompted a series of questions why did i fail why wasn't i good enough how come my body broke down was i that weak i had no answers and i came up with every every poor me excuse in the book you'd think that for a guy who was raised the way i was excuses would be the last thing on my mind but they were my crutch i slowly but steadily turned myself into a victim if only i didn't grow up in a broken family if only the world and everyone in it weren't against me that just wasn't about buds but me not making it through brought my buried demons to the surface so even at this point you know you don't make it through buds and you kind of blame all these you know hey it's all cause i was raised this way i had these you know my dad my mom wasn't around and you kind of make those excuses for yourself yeah i buried i buried myself in excuses and it it became very easy to do that it's very easy to to make somebody else the issue instead of looking deep inside and and saying hey man just you know if if everyone can make it then it wouldn't be buds and so um instead of understanding that you know i i did i took the it was it was more it was almost more entitlement than it was victim is like well this isn't fair why why didn't i make the cut and the thing is i could have rolled back but i don't know how how far did you make it um all the way up to the end of the first phase so it was yeah it is basically they wanted me to go um back to day one of phase one and i was just like and you know i just i didn't have it in me so but yeah it's you know it's it's one of those things i look back on you know and i i do i don't ever regret anything but it is one of those things where i'm like yeah you kind of you kind of [ __ ] that one up you know so yeah well uh you know when you say you had a beatdown class more than other people it's like i'm going to tell you the classes are beat down classes they are beat down classes you're going to get beat down you know i was over there a few months ago with one of my friends that still works over there and you know he was like there's there's whatever there's like a hundred helmets by the bell and um and he goes every single one of those guys is a stud that wandered he didn't say everything he's like almost every single one of those guys is a total stud that showed up here thinking they were going to be a seal and they rang that bell man and you go i go it's crazy he's he's like it's it's crazy that's the way it is it's a crazy process it's a crazy machine yep um so now you and sarah she's done in the army you you're now out of the navy and well here we'll go to the book everything was perfect so you go to minnesota and that's because that's where her family's from yeah so you go to minnesota everything was perfect except for one major problem i could not overcome my immaturity and my sense of being a victim when i refused to take responsibility for my actions i drank partied and ran my marriage into the ground i used whatever excuses i could find so you're just on a bad path at this point yeah it's uh i was on a year's long bender like i don't think guns n roses could have held up with me you get the idea that you should go back in the military um you obviously don't want to be in the navy your wife was in the army so maybe you're thinking the army's a bad idea so you go back and check it check the air force uh you go here i looked at air force special operations combat control and jumped feet first into training i buried myself in every aspect of the course until a medical review of my records showed i had taken depression medication while in the navy a lot of people need prescriptions anti-depressants and depression ran in my family antidepressant medication and counseling helped me through a very dark period of my life but this detour came back to bite me the air force decided that i was not medically qualified for special operations and put me in a job where they needed bodies i was told i would become an ammunition specialist or ammo troop so you did they had you already enlisted when you did you did you had you already enlisted when you were gonna try for for uh cct yes yeah i was already i mean i was already a couple months into the training oh you are actually in the air force going through cct training yeah i was at air traffic control school dang and then they told you no yeah i mean the the depression medication it you know it helped me out through you know some events in my life or whatnot the one time i did it and um and but back in those days and i'm not making excuses for it but back in those days you know the go-to for counselors or whatnot is here take this take this take this and so okay i'll take this and was that when you were in the navy so then you were taking a navy prescribed thing and they they told you no even though you're taking something that was prescribed by the navy well i had gone out for um civilian counseling oh okay yep but i had reported it all you know like you're supposed to and um but yeah it was it i mean it's just back in the days when it was easier to medicate than to actually you know kind of um face your issues and fix them man up and do the right thing it's just easier to take some pills and go to uh go to the spirit world i guess um but yeah it it came back and got me so but you know it's um every you know there's a there's a path for everybody in life um and and i firmly believe that you know the way my life panned out um i i it was this this is the path that was gonna happen way before i was i was ever born i believe i'm you know god had this path laid out and you know i was going to take uh some bumps and bruises along the way some big ones but you know now you know to the point where i'm at right now so you know i still make my mistakes i'm a man but you know i think i'm doing a lot better at you know building up people around me instead of tearing them down like one of the destructive paths i was on you know in my life so yeah i know that's um that's one of the best things about this whole story is when you look at something you took some major you know like but right there right those two things you didn't make it through buds and then you try for air force combat control and you don't get that either like those are two things that people like that's that could be the last straw one of those things could be the last straw i mean and you've already been through the hard childhood so any of these things could be something that could completely derail someone's life and and yet you're sitting here so um well let's continue let's continue that telling the story of your path so you get stationed in idaho you're an ammo guy you end up going on deployment to qatar while you're in qatar you're loading up aircraft that are going and dropping bombs oh yeah they were they were winchestered every night they'd come back winchester what year was that 2003. okay um you get divorced uh now you go to iraq in 2005 you you're in kirkuk and you say this iraq was the first place out i was exposed to u.s army special forces the green berets these bearded shaggy-haired men seem to play by their own rules we would see them walking by and later that night when the rest of us were hanging out after dinner the stories of what we thought we knew about these guys would spill out you end up in the you end up in the gym one time you're lifting and a guy says you know hey can you spot me and you look over it's it's this green beret his name is johnny days later he introduced me to guys on his team one guy in particular a dude named gary was in the air force before going into the army this got the wheels in my head turning what if i tried to become a green beret could i do it do i have what it takes my failure at buds was never far from my mind when i contemplated my future one thing was for sure i did not want to be an old man sitting on my porch wondering about what might have been so you go to iraq as you're when you get back from iraq you take some leave you go to dude you you freaking get after you were talking earlier about like not leaving not leaving any any uh stone unturned you you do some serious traveling you go to you go to vietnam you go to ho chi minh city in the mekong delta and you've got all really cool stories about all that stuff in here um you come back from that you're in idaho and and again you know you're kind of drinking you're not feeling like your path you're on the right path you go on you go on a trip to europe you go you end up going to korea yeah you end up going for was that a one-year deployment to korea yes and this is still an air force deployment you're over there doing what an ammo specialist does yeah and playing rugby and playing wrongly uh you go while you're over there you go to you go to you go to bangkok so you go to thailand you go to china you go to cambodia i mean you're bro you you were getting after this were you doing military travel are you doing civilian travel uh so that was that was for my leave um so the 30 days of leave or whatnot like that but um but yeah so vietnam that was civilian backpacking around europe that was civilian everything was um civilian traveled and it was just trying to i don't know i think i don't really know if i was running from things more than you know i was just trying to figure out you know who who i was because i i had no i had no direction um you know i had uh i had my time in the navy time in the air force divorced which you know i i'm surprised she she made it that long she's a fighter but it is what it is so um i ran that one into the ground um and i i think i just buried myself in everything that i could possibly do just to kind of like keep my mind off of the fact that you know i was turning into i was turning myself into a loser basically you know and it was becoming easier and easier to give up and um and i i still i had that um i i had buds in the back of my head the entire time and um it just i don't know as i really had a i guess a come to jesus moment when i started realizing that giving up was becoming almost natural because i was i was the entitled victim everything was someone else's fault um in korea you end up with a girl named jessica which is not a real name but you end up with a girl you call jessica in here and you're just partying and you're boozing and you and jessica are i mean this is like the couple that we all knew when they were how old are you at this point uh early 20s yeah so this is like you know the couple that's fighting and yelling at each other and then all of a sudden they're you know they're going to the club just like you know i can i could i could see that scene yep uh and of course you guys decide you need to get married yep uh which ends up in a pretty quick divorce and at this point you you write this in the book i needed a win a big win i was never the type to give up but with two blown marriages a failed attempt at becoming a navy seal and the feeling that i hadn't found my calling in life i was just settling and letting life run me ragged i needed to reset my failures with a major victory that was when i decided that there would be no more losing it was time to start winning again at the time the air force was over manned in certain jobs ammo being one of them the army had a shortage of soldiers in certain career fields so the air force was offering a direct transfer to the army one thing my dad had told me years earlier kept nagging me if you don't try you'll never know and if you never know it's because you didn't try the answer was clear i wasn't going to live a life of regrets even if the high risk of failure was there after clearing my head i decided to jump head first eyes closed into the unknown that's you know you want to talk about there being a plan the fact that the air force was over manned and the army would just do a direct transfer yeah it was it wasn't it was insane because i was i was going to the uh to the s1 or the personnel office whatever to update some stuff for promotion and there was this poster on the wall and it had uh this guy in two uniforms half of them was an air air force uniform the other half was you know class a's army said blue to green and that's and it it all kind of fell within the same time frame as you know i i need a victory i need i need something because right now um you know my i am i'm 100 um heading down the path of that i that i probably won't be able to recover from um if i keep you know because everything's an excuse everything's everyone else's fault um and entitlement and victimization and i was i was i still wasn't far enough down the path to where i couldn't recognize that i totally became a victim of life's you know shitty circumstances and um so i was i was still able to see like all right you need a victory you you need something you got a whole lot of zeros going you need a one you know what's weird is i i'm whenever i talk to vets and people especially when people get out i'm like when you get out of the when you get out of the military you need a new mission you need to have something else to focus on but what's weird about this is you were in the military but the mission that you had whatever that mission was it like wasn't bringing you the satisfaction you didn't feel like it was what you should be doing you know you knew that you had more to offer and so you're traveling around you're looking for you're looking for the mission yeah and you just couldn't find it and so then what it's the same thing that happens when guys get out and they don't have a mission and all of a sudden they just go down path of least resistance and or bottle the pills or whatever and it ends up bad you were still in while you were having that go on and luckily they had this opportunity to go in the army man so you went to army boot camp and you talk about that in here was that was that a little bit of a gentleman's course do you have you heard the term gentlemen's course before um i have yeah okay so it was your boot camp like a gentleman's course which in the military gentlemen's courses is basically there it's basically you're there to actually learn it's not like this beat down thing um you're gonna actually learn stuff you get treated like a human you're not getting treated like a like a you know new guy piece of [ __ ] whatever you're getting treated well and you're there to learn that's a gentleman's course uh for instance i went to officer candidate school with all the other people coming out of college that go to officer candid school that's not a gentleman's course like you go and you get all the full benefit of people yelled and screaming at you but for warrant officers or or limited duty officers in the navy they go to a gentleman's course where hey here's how you wear the uniform and here's here's what here's how you write these reports it's like a nice transition yeah sounds like yours was somewhere in between you kind of had to go to boot camp a little bit but they were being cool to you so yeah infantry basic was that there was two things that happened there um number one so i had i had done the um the prior service uh course that they had for us in new mexico which was supposed it was supposed to suffice as you know that was the phase one of infantry basic then you go to um ait when you say infantry basic is that boot camp straight up boot camp so you went to his class in new mexico how long was that course um that was a month and then okay a normal army boot camp is what 12 weeks yeah i think so they gave you a little shortened course were they cool to you or were they yelling and screaming so uh new mexico they can't really yell and scream a bunch of you know they're a bunch of guard guys that were kind of which no offense i mean definitely but um they um they were just there to check the boxes on us so they're there to actually transition you okay this is the way it works in the army here's how you wear your uniform in the army these are the roles responsibilities so it was it was a gentleman's course it was cool that was and then i get to benning for infantry and um apparently i didn't get the memo that i was supposed to wait for ait so i started basic with everyone else and so the drill instructor he uh he came up to me hey man not like you're not supposed to be here and i basically told him like hey i need this you know i need something to bury completely just focus everything i got on it bury all of my efforts into into into a cause and and i loved it like i loved it and um he's like hey you know we're you're gonna have to play the game then i was like i'll play the game i got i got nothing but time so it was awesome i i loved it and so i would think for a private going through when i went through they probably would say it was not a gentleman's course but for me um going through basic you know our infantry basic and whatnot like that it was it was exactly what i needed at that point in time every day was awesome and it just kept my mind off of everything that i just went through everything so but it still didn't fix it it just kept my mind off it uh you end up so you go through that infantry basic you go through ait you go to airborne then you start the 18x which is when you're going into special forces and you're not exactly sure which uh specialty you're gonna get they call it 18x and you go to this 18x prep course and you say this uh 18x prep course was extremely hard and pushed me to my limits i'm talking non-stop physical training 12 hours per day getting beat down the intent of the prep program was not only to get a soldier ready mentally and physically for selection but also to weed out the week so how long is that prep course it um it depends but our um 18 x-ray um the prep course for selection i think ours was a month so four weeks and then from prep course you go to special forces selection yes so prep course is literally just to get you ready like yes hard pts and they're trying to get you in good physical shape to be ready for for special forces selection yes or to help you understand that this isn't really what you want and so they don't blow a bunch of money training you they can just send you over to the 82nd really quick and move on with life got it so now you get to special forces selection i'm gonna go to the book this was do or die time an 18 day gut check to pull out all the stops there was no way i would accept failure because i didn't think i could handle another [ __ ] up in my life this was most likely my only chance and i was going to make it happen everything that i've been through all the hard work i'd put in everything led up to this point selection as soon as we stepped off the buses at camp mccall it was game on we started with the usual army pt test a readiness assessment also known as the army physical fitness test to my surprise some soldiers showed up for a shot to be the best failed the first pt test and were gone on day zero fast forward a little bit time was flying by for me and i was killing it regardless of whether it was a 10 mile run along sandy backwoods roads a 10k rucksack march with 60 pounds on my back a 12 mile land navigation course rifle pt log pt with telephone poles or the dreaded team week events that broke the will of most of the trainees i was speeding through as excruciating as everything was i was amazed at how well i was doing the 18x prep course lived up to his name so you're kind of getting after it doing good yeah we were constantly on the move 18 to 20 hours a day whether it was a ball buster pt session or hustling from one event to the other shot i came in snatches and meals were always on the go not getting enough food for me was not getting enough food for the number of calories i was burning took its toll after the first week but i didn't care while the lack of calories depleted my energy and strength that combined with my lack of sleep was all part of the men mentally and br and physically breaking down a trainee so you're not eating very much which is one thing that i always was happy that i ended up in the navy and going to buds instead of any of the army courses where you don't get to eat man yeah they aren't the the army seems to uh they they really like the whole you don't need to eat thing yeah yeah the navy focuses on uh you don't need to sleep yeah and and also you don't need to be warm which look ranger school and freaking sf school you know it's not like you're warm or cuddly there either no no the uh just beat downs we just we're not under the water and that was good uh as the days turned into weeks our bodies were breaking down so i pressed on as we neared the end the final major obstacle in my way was a long ruck march we weren't supposed to know the distance of the final trek but every selection class got the scoop from guys are gone before we'd be going 25 to 30 miles turned out you guys went more than 25 to 30 miles again i'm jumping you give some really cool information and that's why people should get the book um fast forward a little bit after hitting the finish line we gathered in a large conference hall to hear who got selected and who didn't i could barely put one foot in front of the other but at least i walked in under my own power those left standing after the dust cleared looked like they had spent years as pows most of the guys hobbled and limped their way into the conference hall beaten down and on edge as i took my seat my tired head was filled with questions will all this physical and mental effort be for nothing did i give it the best i could do i have what they are looking for after a wait that seemed like days the selection cadre entered the hall to call off the roster numbers of the guys selected i was roster number 049 out of 185 as he went down the list he reached those in the 40s i held my breath and closed my eyes roster number zero four nine selected i melted into my chair as the relief spread over my body out of 185 only 50 or so men were selected a little more than one out of every four i was one of them but i wasn't there yet i still had more hurdles in front of me out of the 50 of us who would advance to the qualification course less than half would become green berets those concerns didn't matter to me at that point however for now i savored my accomplishment i was on my way so you you do this freaking all this training of selection how long selection 18 days yeah it it it varies there's some three week selections and whatnot but yeah i had an 18 day selection and then even if you pass everything you can still just not get selected yes there was a lot of those guys who they said hey thank you for coming out um you're just not what we're looking for good luck damn so you're sitting in there with your freaking fingers crossed yeah yeah dang yeah do you have any idea what they're like what is the kind of thing where they're saying that this guy's not not for us so the because i would be pissed yeah some of the lessons that i've learned and uh some of the things that you know i can i think make a good operator regardless of what special operations unit you're with is a guy who's always looking for work you're never stagnant look for work a guy who's always willing to carry the heaviest [ __ ] um look for work carry heavy stuff and then the guy who he just regardless of how bad it hurts smile because you're making memories that you're you're just you're not you can never recreate it ever so look for work carry heavy stuff and smile yeah that's that's very good advice uh we used to actually we used to tell guys you know especially when i was running training that was one of the things we tell guys is look for work even in a tactical sense like hey you're sitting there with your weapon pointed down the ground bro look for work go find something to cover go find some hold security somewhere look for work make something happen and that's right in there i mean that's almost the same thing as carry heavy [ __ ] yeah yeah don't be the guy that's trying to shirk that yep if uh if the 240 is on the ground and everyone's moving to a different weapon system grab the because i can promise you one thing it will not be the heaviest thing you'll carry in combat training can't touch a combat load yeah no doubt uh so from there you go to the q course and i guess in route to q course or part of the q course the q course is like a whole bunch of things racked up together right is that right so you do see your school you do crc school you you go to language school which you did spanish yes and and well this was kind of funny um you're like before selection i was given a language aptitude test my score determined the difficulty of the language i would learn well let's just say that ryan hendrickson's test results were modest at best and i would not be learning arabic or mandarin chinese oh no no no so and you also said this you would joke with your friends while you're taking spanish i can barely speak american let alone mexican yeah yeah our teacher did not like that uh so then you go to robin sage and robin sage is this famous green beret exercise that you do at the end of the q course over a period of three weeks we would plan in full train advise and assist a resistance movement that on some level back the united states and was seeking to defeat the occupying repressive forces in pineland which is a made-up place in western north carolina this would be by far the most realistic military exercise to prepare men for what we would actually encounter while deployed when times were hard and i needed to pull strength from somewhere anywhere i would see someone in the course who i had fought who i thought had no business being there someone who was riding the coattails of others performing only when the spotlight was on him i would pick these guys out and think i'm not going anywhere if this guy is still here i'm better than this [ __ ] bag and i will outlast him no matter what then that guy would fail or quit and i would target someone else i knew that i was better than i would use their weaknesses to make me stronger in a crazy way i fed off their failures be bad good or indifferent this was the mindset i used to keep pushing myself just i i mean for me when people were quitting i would i was always like damn what a loser i guess i had a little bit of that and there was a couple people that surprised me when they quit there was one guy in my bud's class that was like uh he had gone to buds before he was an e5 he was probably like 25 or 26 years old which seemed pretty freaking old to me and like mature because i was still like what not you know and i'm thinking oh he's got he's got this stuff off and he would like give me advice like hey you need to when the instructors do this you know and you need to keep this mind i was like okay you know it sounds good and then it's freaking first night of hell week he quits and i was like what freaking what's your problem but but the same thing i was kind of like all right well i'm definitely not quitting this freaking loser uh so then for 84 weeks that's 20 months from start to finish my tired and broken body performed at levels i didn't think were possible i pushed myself to my limits and through to the end life had dealt me some major blows and no one knew better than me that i dug a hole for myself that was damn near impossible to get out of despite how much i had [ __ ] things up i had pulled myself out of the pit started something and seen it through it to the end leaving nothing behind i'd given this everything and i had succeeded now as a green beret ready to write the next chapter of my life damn that's already like one full book right there just needed one victory yeah that's it damn um and i like what you said earlier you know you were talking about your dad being like able to turn himself around and that's the same you know it's the same story for you too you know you're going from a horrible spot where you've racked up some some failures and then you just get it together get focused and you win you start winning uh fast forward a little bit okay here's the sergeant major talking you're checking in okay you're the new 18 charlie i've been waiting for i'm assigning you to oda7215 i knew the seven stood for seventh special forces the two for second battalion the one for alpha company and the five for fifth team in the company i knew my job as an 18 charlie well talk about what an 18 charlie is so 18 charlie is a demolition expert on an oda and we you know we have the different mos's like the 18 bravo weapon weapons expert 18 echo comms um charlie uh demolitions and also construction but stateside you are a uh a special forces supply guy it's really sorry is it is it technically engineering right yep yep so that's the that's where the charlie is yep and then you know the fox intel and you know team sergeant zulu and whatnot like that and delta medical so um so you say this and this is a weird thing because you don't think when you think engineers you think building and and constructing and this happens in the marine corps too engineers becomes the people that handle ieds so i knew my job as an 18 charlie wasn't for the faint of heart while patrolling in enemy held areas of afghanistan i would find myself up front the tip of the spear one might say with three to five afghan counterparts who specialized in counter ied operations and we're very good at finding them we would be exposed to taliban snipers or any run-of-the-mill dumbass wanting to take a shot at us the worst part of being the man up front was that i would be the first soldier to encounter the ieds i'd rather be in a firefight with the taliban any day of the week then deal with ieds which were a nasty but very effective way to fight a war one of the senior one of the more senior guys in the back corner spoke up you got a lot to learn in a little bit of time sit down and listen but most of all keep your mouth shut keep your eyes open this will be a fire hose and you you get man you do a good job in the book of of talking about the team and checking into the team and you're a new guy and you go through all that stuff um but we're gonna skip through that and people need to buy the book to get that information i'm going straight to afghanistan you're heading toward an outpost the outpost is called the alamo which is always a good sign yeah not sure what happened there but i don't think it ended up very well uh so here you are oh [ __ ] not only was i my first mission as a green beret but i was walking into a live combat situation because you guys had heard gunfire this wasn't a video game real 762 caliber bullets would be flying this caliber of bullet would easily rip a hole the size of a silver dollar through a man's torso and tara's internal organs to shreds we wore body armor that gave some protection to our chest and upper backs but when a bullet penetrated the chest cavity nine times out of ten you were dead i was driving the lead vehicle when our convoy arrived at the last stopping point around a thousand meters from the alamo a call came over to vehicle radio communications all vehicles stop during our pre-mission brief that morning i remember being told that we would have to make a mad dash over a one kilometer over one kilometer of open ground to reach the safety of the alamo so we needed to be prepared for that the alamo was surrounded by a u-shaped ridge line a finger-like natural rock structure that ran toward the helmand river then the call came over the radio all vehicles move i hit the gas on my rg 33 mine resistant vehicle and started covering ground within seconds the taliban machine gun crew started sending rounds our way i heard pings from the bullets hitting our truck thank god the rg-33 was armored sprays of dirt and dust from incoming bullets engulfed our vehicle my senses shot up to overdrive and adrenaline pumped through my veins even though i was scared i had never felt so alive as i concentrated on keeping the heavy vehicle moving forward then crack we'd been hit the front windshield split in a hundred different directions like a spider's web crack crack two more rounds hit my windshield i didn't know how many more rounds this windshield could take drive my captain yelled from the front passenger seat we got to get the [ __ ] off this open ground i jam the gas pedal to the floorboard and push the rg-33 to its limits limits and rg 33 weighs around 38 000 pounds so maneuvering such a large bullet magnet over a thousand meters of of uneven rough terrain was no easy task i managed to rumble to safety through the alamo single entrance gate and into a large courtyard the other two vehicles arrived safely as well almost as soon as my rg33 stopped in the courtyard i jumped out and ran to the nearest elevated position in the compound i toggled the selector switch on my m4 carbine from safe to fire and started sending rounds downrange toward the enemy for the next few hours we exchanged sporadic gunfire but i have to admit that it was hard to think clearly adrenaline had really taken over my body at that point training kicked in and i reacted with muscle memory that had been honed through hundreds of hours spent training for combat when my first battle experience was over i couldn't get my hands to quit shaking my nerves were tingling as well but i felt good the question of how i would react when bullets were flying had been answered that evening some of the guys looked at the damage on my vehicle we could see where the rounds hit even though bullets hadn't made holes but the indentations were everywhere damn one more round hitting your windshield and it was gone one of my teammates said you'd have been [ __ ] up you got that right i said looks like you got your cib bro joked another buddy which is the combat infantryman's jet badge and they're telling you yeah you just got it so there's your welcome to combat yeah that was uh day three day three and um that that happened and it was uh it was awesome it was awesome i mean it's hard to explain it but it was so awesome that it you know it's it's addicting you know combats it's a rush so that's and i got that day three yeah yeah that's a that's a good welcome there it's it's uh i remember the first time i went into it was an rg33 if it was one i think it was an rg33 what was that there was one other vehicle i forget the name of it so they had um so the mat the mac vs um the rg31s they also have the um matvs or the max pro i think it was a 33 um but i remember driving through ramadis i i'd probably been in ramadi for like a month at this point and all the all my transits would either in a bradley which you can't see anything or in a humvee which you can barely see and you're all freaking having to scan so the first time i rolled down route michigan in an rg33 sitting at like 15 feet with the white lights on and the big giant bulletproof windows it's like the coolest thing ever you're like i'm good and you can look around and you can like really pay attention so that's that's it that's a good feeling as opposed to humvee where you're just waiting to suck start an ied and die uh yeah so now you guys are doing rotations out at this place the alamo it's like a forward operating base yeah it was a it was a cop that's basically we took over a compound um old chicken farm goat cow whatever compound and turned it into basically where we were going to conduct operations engage in taliban forces along the helmand river you say i learned quickly that 90 of a deployment was sheer boredom followed by 10 of heart racing terror and excitement each rush of combat left me craving more there was something about the kill or be killed aspect of fighting that gave me a high a high that was dangerously addicting during my first three months in afghanistan my detachment saw combat got caught in several intense fire fights but we didn't take any casualties the rest of the men of alpha company second battalion however 2010 was proving to be one hell of a deadly deployment two men on a different detachment were killed in action including one of our air force counterparts and more than a dozen were wounded normally a deployment to afghanistan resulted in four or five wounded guys and maybe one fallen soldier but our company more than doubled or tripled that amount one afternoon our team leader approached me to tell me that a friend of mine named jason had been killed in action that day in a different part of afghanistan jason died in a v jason died when his vehicle hit an id he said damn man this [ __ ] sucks are you gonna be okay i absorbed the emotional blow yeah i'm good i said even though my chest was closing in i hadn't known jason that long but we had gone through a large portion of special forces training together back at fort bragg it's through training that you really get to know someone i knew i could always count on jason for help there were times i felt like i was a fish out of water coming over from the air force the army but jason took the time to help me whenever i got hung up on whatever part of training i was stuck with jason was someone i looked up to i admired how everything was easy for him he was smart in great shape a super dad to his kids an amazing husband to his wife but just two months into his first deployment as a green beret he was dead in the past i had heard about guys from a different battalion or unit dying in iraq or afghanistan but this was the first time i knew someone personally death in combat was not just something i saw on the news now it was personal jason was my friend and this was the ugly reality of war i tried my best not to think about jason's death too much which was difficult i knew full well that afghanistan was not the place to mourn the death of friends there would be plenty of time back in the states to think about that and try to come to terms with it i still had a job to do to make sure no one on my team stepped on an ied and a promise to fulfill to myself i would do whatever it took to make sure my teammates returned with to their families in one piece in 2010 though afghanistan was not getting safer and the real fighting had yet to begin how long had you guys been on deployment for at that point um so when jason was killed uh i think i was we both got in the country at the same time and um so that would be two months and how long are your how long were your deployments at this point um they ran they varied um but most of them were nine months at that at that point so so you're only two months into a nine-month deployment you've already your your your battalion's lost a bunch of guys your company's had guys wounded and killed now your friend gets killed going back to the book when summer was coming to a close my team along with other odas from our company was tasked with entering chutu valley i say that right yep from different locations and clearing out the taliban to a central point which would send the bastards running for the mountains working against us however was the fact that this was not a covert mission everyone up and down the valley knew we were coming which gave the taliban ample time to place ieds and prepare for us so you go you talk through some of the planning and finally you guys go to execute this mission the date was september 10th 2010. each of us was carrying a different equipment carrying different equipment for the mission besides my body armor and m4 rifle i was toting a 60-pound assault pack on my back filled with ammunition demolition material food water extra batteries and whatever else i would need for three days my average fighting weight was 200 pounds but with body armor weapons ammo and my assault pack i probably tipped the scales at 280. 280s being generous yeah you say during our our final pre-mesh and checks i had time to let my mind wander what will be out there waiting for us do they know we're coming how hard will it be to find ieds how i react when the bullets start flying all these questions plagued my mind as i was watching the river flow in the light of the moon until it disappeared into the darkness this seemed like a good moment to take out a small pad of paper from my assault pack and write a quick note from my family in case the worst happened dad wendy paula chris and robbie i hope i made you proud if you're reading this note i did not make it death doesn't really scare me because i'm doing what i believe is right and just i guess that's really all you can ask from a man death comes to everyone at some point in life so there's no use fighting it when it's your time it's your time and there's nothing you can do about it i believed i live as good a life as possible and i'm asking you not to stay sad very long very soon you will be joining me in heaven and we will again be together i'll keep the beer cold for you all i love you ryan i don't know why i chose to write this note maybe it was the fact that i was a new guy and had no clue what would happen on my first patrol that far from the alamo maybe i had seen too many war movies and figured this was a good idea maybe deep down i really believed that this mission was destined to have a terrible outcome whatever the reason i chose to write down exactly what i felt at that moment because i wanted my family to hear from me one last time if the worst happened i folded the note placed it in a ziploc bag so it wouldn't get damaged if it got wet and stuck it to my right arm stuck it in my right arm front uniform pocket where god willing someone would find it and pass the letter along to my family uh did did you have the uh proverbial bad feeling about this op so you know looking back now and i remember you know sitting there and i and i got to thinking um everyone up and down the valley knew we were coming and the first set of um villages were deserted and so you know as as you well super bad sign um i don't i to this day i don't know why i decided to write that note um again it could just be too many war movies i i have no idea but did you save it i do i got it at home but uh but yeah it just seems didn't you think you were jinxing yourself so i do worry about that a little bit but because i never wrote i would get that like no i'm not writing that nothing's gonna happen i'm good i just had this i don't know i just had this weird feeling plus you know being up in the front it's it's kind of like oh man and i i don't know i just think i just think you know getting caught up in all the emotion of everything and um and you're amped up you're ready to go you're ready for the green light and everything like that and it's like all right let me let me bust this out man because i just really don't know so yeah it was very um uncertain what we were walking into yeah the the freaking ieds are crazy you know you're going into an ied thick area you know you're the first guy and even if you're not getting an ied you're the person that's walking into an ambush oh yeah you're gonna get shot in the face good times so finally you get the call uh from ben let's move out guys we slowly charged our way toward the village of sartutu in the distance sartutu is made up of several mud hut compounds and my group was tasked with clearing one of the sections keeping strict noise and light discipline we scanned the hillsides and the riverbank for any movement i kept my thumb on my weapon safety selector ready to switch it to engage to kill the enemy taking fire from the taliban was a risk we all knew was possible but the more likely scenario was experiencing a catastrophic ied explosion resulting in the loss of limbs and broken bodies all the team members were fully aware that one wrong step could change their lives forever my job was to make sure that did not happen these insidious bombs could be hidden anywhere buried in the ground hung in trees stashed in cooking pots inside the carcasses of dead animals within car trunks or under clothing with the infamous strap-on suicide vests while they might have been built with fertilizer and discarded spare parts and looked like a junior high school shop class project i never underestimated the lethality of these homemade bombs all i took was a handful all it took was a handful of high explosives a few inches of copper wire and a battery detonation could be triggered by compression the weight of a soldier or vehicle passing over the explosive charge remote control with cell phones or an electrical circuit from a distance the taliban were limited only by their imagination which was limitless when it came to killing americans moving up we intercepted a radio transmission from the taliban indicating that they knew we were on the move and could see us at first the news made my heart race my palms got sweaty as my arms as my eyes darted around looking for anything slightly abnormal i felt i was starting to see things that really weren't there were my eyes playing tricks on me or my ears it seemed like i was hearing all sorts of things when we stopped to get our bearings the guys called this hyperventilates hypervigilance and told me that when danger was imminent your senses rose up several notches to high alert status fueling the hypersensitivity was an overwhelming desire to stay alive the village was deserted when we entered one thing every sf guy knew was that when you entered a village and it's deserted you better figure that you're in for a big fight or a village full of ieds in our minds ieds were a coward's way of fighting but no one could deny that they were extremely effective we had to clear each compound or home so we advanced slowly and deliberately looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary that could conceal an ied we were professional soldiers details matter a slight discoloration of the dirt a suspicious pile of rocks an abandoned water pail a tree that had been tagged with a marker a disturbance in a mud wall or a lone person walking quickly directly toward us anything mattered but we didn't see any people or anything questionable even though i assumed every doorway and window had a pair of eyes looking at me and my buddies after we hit our first planned stopping point the team broke up into smaller elements to cover a bigger area in and around the village including a world war one like trench that ran adjacent to the helmand river one of the taliban's favorite positions to fight us from each element was made up of two or three green berets and a handful of afghan fighters assisting us in clearing the village my element consisted of myself our team sergeant lance and six afghans one of whom was nick our interpreter nick wasn't the man's real name but everybody who supported our team was giving given an easy to remember nickname for the ease of communication our job alongside the afghans was to clear the first set of compounds running parallel to the river once the compounds were clear we would move on to the next set as i approached within 15 meters of the first compound i watched for everything and anything from movement in the compounds to variations in the terrain where i was stepping i stopped and turned around to check on lance who was behind me with several afghans he gave me a nod meaning i could keep moving with the afghans and check out the first compound i motioned to nick to come closer tell your guys to move up and clear the compound i said keep your [ __ ] eyes open we both knew what that meant sweep the car your courtyard while watching every nook and cranny for a rifle barrel waiting to open fire nick turned and relayed my direction to the handful of afghan soldiers instead of moving they stood there like statues as precious seconds passed by it became clear to me that they were not going to move what the [ __ ] i thought do they not understand what i need them to do are they too scared to go i whispered to nick what's the problem it's too dangerous nick replied no [ __ ] of course this was dangerous this was what war was all about i knew they were scared i was too i figured they wanted the americans to go first because they felt we had better weapons and knew we were better fighters i kept my cool and refrained from losing my temper but i was pissed this is your damn country so fight for it i turned around to have a word with lance when out of the corner of my eye i saw nick moving toward the front of the compound about 15 meters from me where a wooden door into our first mud hut was slightly ajar what's he doing why is he walking into an uncleared part of the compound without afghan soldiers leading the way he was my damn interpreter not a fighter i knew better than to yell out to stop him since that could have invited a firefight even though the taliban were on the move tactically it was best to assume the enemy did not know where we were and to remain relatively undetected for as long as possible in case taliban fighters were inside the compound and waiting to spring a nasty surprise lance grabbed me by the arm get nick away from that door this wasn't the place or time for an afghan rambo even though 15 meters wasn't a lot of ground to cover each step was a gamble in taliban controlled area i carefully but quickly moved up to nick and grabbed his arm nick don't move bro we need to move back to lance's position and regroup this is uncleared ground nick looked at me we're going to back away slowly i continued i want you to place your feet over my boot prints and slowly move with me back to lance if you stay in my steps you'll be okay nick did not want to retreat we can still get our guys inside the compound he said no the time is not right i reiterated we need to get reorganized the firmness in my voice told nick that i meant business he started to move back from the compound and retreated slowly as well and i retreated slowly as well making sure i had my m4 ready to rock in case someone in the compound moved around the corner and opened fire on us my eyes were sweeping the compound as well as looking where i placed my feet i took one slow step after another when a deafening explosion pounded my eardrums at this at the same instant a hot searing brighter than midday flash of light enveloped me the blast shattered the silence across the valley sending birds into the sky as they flapped their wings and screeched the concussive explosion knocked me to the ground like a blind side hit from a line black linebacker in an instant i landed on my back just outside the compound entrance the foul ammonia smelling air clogged my lungs and choked my breathing i instinctively rubbed the grip from my eyes and waited for the dust to settle trying as hard as i could to breathe but i could only manage the barest of breaths i fought for air as i fought for air a yellow brown cloud swirled around me i couldn't see my hands in front of my face because of all the dust in the air i shook my head and yawned a couple times trying to squelch the high pitch ringing in my ears but that didn't work then i opened my mouth to scream for nick wanting to make sure he was okay but nothing came out the thickness of the dust with the overwhelming smell of ammonia saturated the air and made it impossible to yell or to take a full gulp of air i'm not sure what just happened but if i don't get fresh air i will suffocate in those first few disorienting moments i didn't feel any pain so i had to be okay i tried to stand but then i fell back over in a heap damn i tried again but i couldn't stand up what the [ __ ] what's happening to me i was having trouble thinking clearly then in a moment then a moment or two later i suddenly realized what had happened i had stepped on an ied damn um when you were going through that compound to grab nick there was still this was still there had been no compromise yet like it was just silence yeah there was no compromise it was that the quietest i think i'll ever remember any environment being was that's the scene just incredibly creepy quiet and you're trying to step in the boot prints that you made when you get when you went to get nick so you're walking backwards so kind of sort of um you know all of us know that you never turn your back or your side to the unknown and so past the breach point is the unknown so we have the breach or the doorway or whatever you want to call it and so what it what had happened was i was trying to move back but then you know how when you're the very last man in a patrol you're constantly doing the whoop sorry you're constantly doing the back look well that's kind of what i was doing making sure that my m4 was ready to start putting rounds into the compound um and yeah so and it's and it's still like the sun wasn't up yet the the sky was getting light but the sun wasn't quite up yet so you know it was yeah it's just the perfect perfect storm it's like that time where you're not sure if you're better off with nods or off nods oh yeah like that moment of the morning yep yep within about 10 minutes you're taking your nods off and storing them yeah it was that that perfect moment of zero viz back to the book i suddenly became aware of the pain it was slowly creeping in like a snake squeezing his victim to death i reached down from my left leg and wiggled it leg was still there bloody but still there when i tried to move my right leg however the pain was unbearable waving the sand and dust away with my hands to get a better view i could see my right combat boot was bent at a weird 90 degree angle it was like my combat boot made a t at the end of my leg it didn't seem possible that my leather boot could be twisted like that so i grabbed my right leg behind my right knee and lifted to get a better look as i raised my right leg up a tad my right foot flopped off to the side of my leg oh [ __ ] the only thing connecting my foot to my leg was stringy bloody red muscle tissue and ragged skin what was more disturbing was seeing the stark white bones poking out of my leg i was amazed at how glistening white they were in contrast with my bloody leg oh god this was bad i'm hit i'm hit i'm hit so what's crazy about these situations is when there's an in your any these ied environments no one can move like you can't just go oh my buddy is hurt i'm gonna go help him that's the wrong move you have to you have to actually freeze and not move yep where there's one there's five yeah and and you find out later that this was a little bit of a well not a full low order detonation detonation but there was probably 20 pounds and only seven or only only like a third of the the ied went off yep otherwise you wouldn't be here right now no there would be they they could have put what was left of me in a plastic bag if the whole thing would have went off uh these guys they do and again you know you do a great job describing the stuff in the book um i mean there's one part where you say i hear the team sergeant lanciell don't move ryan and you yell back where the [ __ ] do you think i'm going because you're sitting there wounded yeah um yeah second stretched by like hours i'd never been in so much pain or felt so alone it was like i was the only person in that village i lay on my side in the dirt waiting for the bright light everyone says you see before you die lance was the closest american to me but i knew he couldn't rush to me because i had walked into an ied filled area chances were that he would be next and then what and in that moment it was impossible it was impossible to think clearly this is it i'm going to die in this [ __ ] village in afghanistan as i lay there for what seemed like hours i prayed harder than i had in years this was serious i felt like i was on the cusp of eternity i'd always heard there were no atheists in foxholes and i guess they were right i was a christian who had accepted jesus christ into my heart years ago but i had strayed from the path of righteousness since then to say the least nonetheless i made peace with god and figured he understood the mistakes i had made in my life came back to me but so did the things i had done right i asked for forgiveness for my sins and for the people i had hurt in the state of mind i was in i felt this could be my last chance to make things right suddenly i felt a calm calm over me that i couldn't explain explain the pain lessened as i felt like i was fading into a deep sleep i thought of some of the good times i had had in my life fourth of july barbecued was loved ones watching the fireworks without a care in the world traveling around the world and all the amazing experience that brought me but most of all i was thinking about my family and how much at that moment i missed them i hoped i had made my family proud but i also felt a strong sense of nagging guilt for letting my team down no green beret wants that to happen but it did i fought back tears because i felt like i had failed my team five minutes or so after stepping on the ied i knew i was hanging on for dear life i could feel my life myself slipping away i'd heard so many say that your life flashes before your eyes just before you go but that wasn't happening i didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing stay awake lance yell don't pass out ryan we're moving and you uh i skipped over this part but you had been trying to get a tourniquet on yourself and you like couldn't get it done no i yeah i couldn't get it done because i um so i i pulled one of the rookie mistakes where usually on your kit you rubber band the tourniquet on correct well as you know what if that's security i'm gonna double secure it i'm to use zip ties oh yeah so oops oops uh fast forward a little bit i felt a slap sharp i felt a sharp slap across my face and another and another each one harder than the last what the [ __ ] i opened my eyes and i found myself lying still in the dirt of the this pissant village my teammate george screamed stay awake ryan keep your eyes open so he's just slapping you trying to so is this all just blood loss um blood loss but i think more of it was shock and i don't i don't really understand how shock works but i i know it could kill you and so um there was some blood loss there but it was you know everything that had built up to you know george um slapping the crap out of me um that was i i think i dealt with a lot of shock what was going on because i mean it's you know stepped on an ied yeah uh and then dude they give you some morphine and you get hive so it turns out you're allergic to morphine yeah it's not a good time to find out uh eventually and again you got to read the book but eventually kyle who must be a hoss lifts kyle couldn't move fast enough because he lifts you up he's buddy carrying you kyle couldn't move fast enough because it was body armor and gear along with 200 pound man over his shoulder lz was a long ways away more than 500 meters the team took turns carrying me while keeping security high the taliban knew i was hit because our afghan interpreter monitoring their radio traffic could hear them celebrating and laughing about hitting me so they get you to the lz um they get you extracted and then the next thing you know you're showing up in the in uh taren cot in the in the hospital you get pissed because they're going to cut off your shirt which is one of your what's your freaking lucky shirt my lucky oregon ducks football shirt yeah uh but they end up cutting it off um and again you know you do you give do a great job talking about the medical team and the doctors and nurses and the staff that freaking takes care of you and and keeps you alive get you stabilized and then from there you go to kaf um more surgeries they're trying to clean you know trying to clean it out and and then it's over to germany you end up in ramstein um and then at long stool i mean then again i'm just jumping through a bunch of stuff that you got to read the book because you know it's it's it's all it's all part of the story what you're going through i mean yeah yeah i'll pull one little quote you say so i'm out on patrol trying to find ieds my damn metal detector wasn't working so i closed my eyes and stomped around to clear the route boom found one mission success um you say here i've been to germany many times during my military career but this time it felt different because i was fresh off the battlefields of afghanistan i finally felt safe when the aircraft landed no longer a dangerous part of the world i could finally relax or so i thought what i didn't know is that now i'd have plenty of time to actually think about everything that had happened to me i would also have time to cry over my friends who didn't make it home alive the ones placed into coffins for the one-way flight to dover air force base in delaware a grim trip that no one wants to take i don't have time to think about the families torn apart because of war either because they lost a loved one or their soldier was coming home with a mangled body never to be the same again that was my situation as well i knew i was never going to be the same again all right um again jumping ahead here where you end up at brook army medical center bma bamc fort sam houston texas fast forward after i woke up from my 15th surgery an unexpected visitor stepped in my room where i was resting my father somewhere between me getting blown up and getting to germany my dad was notified about my injuries seeing my father standing next to my hospital bed and a sweat cake cowboy hat purse on his head and cow [ __ ] likely still on his boots gave me a much-needed sense of normality and safety this was a major surprise dad it's good to see you my father gave my leg a long look then he gave me the usual tough but correct opinion well i figured if you played with fire long enough you're going to get burnt looks like you stepped on a doozy glad you're alive son from his demeanor one would think i'd suffered a little more than a scratch for the first month of my time at bamc my father never left my hospital room on the seventh floor it was like he felt the need to be there for me observing protecting and taking everything in my oldest sister chris who is my half sister for my dad's first marriage was also there and you talk about the um just the doctors and the nurses and the health care providers that are there and what they're seeing every single freaking day yeah how hard that is on them um you get your your lead doctor a guy named dr sue and he comes in and you're talking to him the status of my right foot and leg was still uncertain i would lose the rest of my lo would i lose the less rest of my lower leg or was it worth trying to keep the damn thing dr sue never sugarcoated anything even though at times i wish he would i'll never forget one conversation we have we have enough tissue to do a limb salvage surgery he said we'll do our best to reattach your foot and lower leg but there are no guarantees because your leg is in bad shape we're giving it a 10 to 15 chance for success and if that doesn't work i asked we'll have to amputate but look on the bright side if this works we will rewrite limb salvage medical history well that was a ray of hope so do you think we should go ahead yes i do but this will be a long painful road it could be worth it in the end so what do you think i thought for a moment this was a big decision while i still have my leg i still have options but at the moment but the moment i have to cut it off there's no going back i reasoned you've been telling me that this will be the hardest thing i've ever done but if successful doctors will use my case to redefine limb salvage hell yeah i love a challenge let's do it like paint a picture for me uh what's connecting your right lower leg to your rest of your body so at that point in the hospital i had um this it was called a um x-fix it looks like this giant bird cage and there's like 20 some odd rods that they screw into your bone so my so you know obviously you need your you need your tib your tibula um but the fib they weren't really worried about it and they said ah the fib doesn't really do much for you so we're just gonna let that free float okay fine but the tib so basically what they did was they lined up the tibula the best that they could through the surgeries screwed all of the rods into my bones you know upper and lower and i had i had rods going into my toes it looked like something out of a saw movie but and then yeah they just they they uh they secure everything together with just all these rods going into your leg and then the halo devices that attach the rods and then yeah the only way you can really grow bone is through friction and just beating the crap out of yourself in physical therapy and whatnot so you know i had about two two inches ish of uh tibula to grow back and so i was yeah i was about to do some uh yeah some beat down sessions you know in physical therapy to get that bone grown so when when at like when it happened you described there's just like a p basically a piece of meat keeping your leg how about nerves did the nerves get damaged yeah so even even right now i have um i probably have half nerve function in my leg and then there's you know parts of my leg that i just don't feel at all and then there's other parts that are um hypersensitive and then and it's it's crazy but but yeah my right leg is this skin graft the bottom of my foot this skin graft it's yeah it's it's pretty uh it's pretty it was it was pretty intense but medical technology did they graph the skin on your bottom of your foot uh so i have this dream i have this dream that i want to be able to kick somebody in the face because it's from my ass okay and then i could yeah does that does that because i'm thinking is the skin that's on the bottom of your foot is that like does it did does it develop calluses and everything now like no no it's it's it'll never go past the newborn stage damn yeah so there's yeah when i damage it it it's bad so this so this whole procedure was a was like a freaking bottom of the ninth like just last ditch effort hail mary i guess we'll go football we'll go hail mary scenario yeah um well to save my leg it was but for the surgeons because i you know i remember doctor she was saying i mean flat out he's like if you if it doesn't work it's not like you had a leg anyway so you know you just move on and so um for them it was an it was an excellent opportunity to to advance some you know technology with lim salvage and whatnot like that and um and yeah it's uh 2010 was an excellent year to do it because there's a lot of dudes getting blown up lots of dudes man that's um that's crazy uh this is cool your your command sergeant major who you call brian brian was a man of his word someone who put his men before himself he understood those under his command took personal time to do what he could to ensure each and every man was taken care of he was a tough leader who would crush you if you were wrong but he would go to hell him back to defend any of his men and you go into the book here one thing among green berets is the willingness to do anything to get back in the fight i was no different toward the end of his visit i asked brian the one question that had been haunting haunting me for weeks i don't know what my future holds but i will not let this injury beat me i fully intend on being a green beret and deploying again if i can get myself healthy will you send me back into the fight brian looked at me like i had two heads then glanced down on my right leg he knew that he knew what was in the heart of every green beret but he had to drop some common sense on me you're lucky to be alive ryan let's figure out how to get you walking again you've got a long road ahead of you relax and take it easy that wasn't exactly the response i was hoping for but hell i knew i'd be lucky to walk unassisted one day so maybe the chances of returning to active duty as a green beret were a little far-fetched all it took was one look at my blown-up leg and everyone knew this was something that just wasn't going to happen but i wasn't giving up brian had my back but when i asked anyone in the hospital the same question i heard something like this it's cool the way you feel ryan but you would be limping and in pain for the rest of your life leave the fighting to the young healthy guys you've proven yourself enough but before he left my sergeant major surprised me brian leaned in looked me in the eye and made me a promise ryan if you can get medically cleared i will send you back to afghanistan yep check uh that's awesome i don't think he quite realized you know what was uh i i talked and we still keep in touch now and it's you know it's hey man did you do you guys think i was gonna you know come back man it's i mean no yeah i can't imagine he was just trying to sit you know hey yeah hey cool yeah you i know you want to come back if you can get healthy you come back but really he's thinking i hope this guy walks again yeah it was and and not you know because i they did medically retire me and i had to you know fight back on active duty um so but yeah it was uh it was one of those situations and i remember um i remember i had uh i forgot who he was he either no i don't know but um one of the doctors he said hey look man it's it's good to have goals it is but your goals aren't realistic you're setting yourself up for failure because you're not going back like this this is the doctor told you this not dr shu but one of the other doctors yes another doctor that was a part of my um therapy and whatnot um and he and i understood where he was coming from it's expectation management you know um and he said i my biggest concern is that you set these goals up for yourself and when they don't happen you can't recover from you know not uh achieving your goals especially as a wounded guy because we we all do it's you know i i i don't think there's a single military member in the united states um armed forces that got wounded and didn't want to get back in the fight as quick as they could i mean there there probably is but i don't know i don't think so yeah i've never heard of one so but yeah you just expectation management you got to understand like you can want it and it's a good drive but man it's you're you know you're you're in you're in the bottom of our you're in the bottom of the ninth just like you said so it's like you need to you need you need to do some management expectation here because like start thinking about other things start you know what are you going to do with your life out of the military and stuff like that and i understood where he was going with it because um unfortunately a very bad statistic even you know 2009 10 11 12 was um wounded dudes dying you know committing suicide what not and and so they had to manage expectations with guys because yeah so i understood it um the other the thing that you write about in here is the like you're on all these different drugs obviously for pain killers and stuff but it seems like that's just kind of sent you in like real super emotional you'd be like laughing then you'd be crying sound like that was just freaking crazy yeah yeah the the drugs i was on i mean methadone for one oh my gosh it's i don't quite know what it would be like to be a zombie but i'm pretty sure i got a good idea from that drug yeah methadone is a hell of a drug so and that's what they used to get people off of heroin and you're just they had you on it for pain obviously yep so crazy uh there's another got another got another quote in here from the old man we might have to get the old man on the podcast uh you know because you are you kind of like rock bottom you're all freaking emotional about everything and he says look son you got dealt a bad hand but this is a speed bump in life that's all how you handle this situation and pick yourself up will determine how this affects you later as bad as it seems right now as dark as the times appear to be never forget that with time you will heal and look back on this please don't allow yourselves to look back and feel ashamed about how you dealt with this take control of your life own this situation turn it into something good learn about yourself in a positive way and i promise you in the end you will be a better man dad's pep talk man pep talk meant the world to me i lay in my hospital bed that night and vowed i would never become a victim of life's circumstances i would use this situation to make myself even stronger i would face my demons which i had held close for many years and defeat them for years i had used my difficult childhood as a crutch after my father and mother divorced dad had married two more times and always seemed to find the bad ones i did not trust women or really anyone for that matter which i blamed on my past before i became a green beret i had two failed marriages and it left a path of destruction behind me but i always found ways to rationalize my behavior it was never my fault i'm this way because i grew up poor i'm this way because i had a shitty childhood i'm this way because life's not fair everything was always someone or something else's fault i did not have control over my life life controlled me even though my dad had raised me right there were some things you just had to learn on your own the hard way the saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger seemed like the story of my life but it didn't just happen on my own i had to make the choice to become stronger that's when i determined i would use this near-death experience to make myself a better man this will not beat me i will be the man i was raised to be i will take control of my life and finally be responsible for my actions even with this my come to jesus moment i knew life wasn't going to get any easier as a matter of fact the hard work was just beginning i'm going to take some ownership of what's going on yep your dad told you to own it yeah i actually um a lot of people don't understand this when i say when i say this but um stepping on that ied actually saved my life yeah and expand so the path that i was heading down i was i was going to a point to where i couldn't return from um just life controlled me a victim of everything i was just running you know i would destroy people around me instead of building them up i was not a good person um even with the victory of becoming a green beret i still hadn't i i still hadn't faced any of my issues i was just i was constantly running from issues and um and there was always i mean there was always something i was just i was weak it was easy to to uh blame somebody or something or use the excuse of i mean you name it and i came up with it instead of taking i mean i'll use it you trademark it but instead of taking an extreme ownership of your life i um you know i i allowed life to to own me and it did and it did and it wasn't until i stepped on that ied that i was actually able to get control of my life again what are the biggest things you what was what was like the core issue that you were running from what like was pent up in you that made you that you think like steered you in these directions where you would be being a tear tear people down like what do you think made you so kind of destructive i hated myself i wasn't happy um i didn't know how to like myself um i didn't i you know i always tried to live this other people's lives thing and you know i mean you see it today it's it's rampant where people they try and be something that they're not they they don't have their own identity and i had no identity because what i was as a person was was ugly and destructive and i didn't like myself at all and so i technically i was always running from myself and the easiest way to do it is to take a good situation turn it into [ __ ] blame everybody else for it tear people down around you and then move on to the next lately i've been thinking about this um it's real easy when when you got an opportunity when there's an opportunity for you to do something and you either fail or you're scared to try one of the easiest things to do is say well that's not cool or that's not important or that's not for me so it happens on every level right it happens on every level when you know oh you're not great you're not a great runner well running we should here's here's a classic example in the seal teams uh running right they're just running like going for a run and people that weren't good at running would be like running breeds cowardice meaning yeah you know we're never gonna run and it's a funny thing you know but that's like a little bit of an example of what we do as people of saying oh well uh school doesn't matter right when i was a kid right school does school stupid that was me all day long when i was going to high school school doesn't matter why because i didn't want to try you know i didn't want to put forth the effort it's like oh so therefore it doesn't matter and it's something that we do all the time and people do it with um you know like hard work like starting a business hey i'm not i'm not i'm not into all that material stuff when really they just don't want to work hard yeah so they cut it down and they actually will detract from people that are working hard there's then you could say this about really about anything right and it seems like that's sort of that's sort of it's not exactly what you're saying but it's something that i've been thinking about lately as i look at my life and i'm like oh you know oh yeah that doesn't really matter i'm like oh wait a second does that really not matter or am i just am i just throwing that thing out because it's something that i don't want to do or i'm afraid of or i'm calling it not important because oh oh really okay well let's take a look at that let's take a look at that you look puzzled no no it's it's that's interesting there that cause that's like a level deeper than like what's happening that's like kind of like okay so you know what sour grapes right you heard that before sour expression so it's kind of the same wait expand on sour grapes so i know your definition okay so sour grapes is like it's almost like jealousy almost but so this is where the expression came from i found out where there was this fox and he saw some grapes hanging on a vine kind of high up he's like oh i'm gonna jump up and eat those grapes so he jumps up and he can't jump high enough so he's like all right whatever oh and he tries again still can't jump high enough he tries one more time he's like i'm gonna get him this time they look delicious up there he jumps up he can't get him and he's like ah those grapes are probably sour good anyway you know that's it and leaves so it's kind of that right it's definitely kind of that yeah yeah definitely kind of that i don't want it you know i don't like that yeah it's not important yeah sour and if you let that if you if you continually do that if you continually to kind of shun and turn your back on everything that is a challenge you know like you could have done this like you know being in this freaking special operations you know after you after you didn't make it through buds you'd be like yeah opinion special be in the military stupid right you could have done that yeah you could done that all day long be in the military stupid those guys are freaking idiots i don't want to be like you could you could have gone into that mode and you just turn your back and then you turn your back on something else and you and pretty soon you look around and there's you're you're just you have nothing left right there's no that you've turned your back on everything yep it becomes a lifestyle and that's that's when it's dangerous and we've all we've all seen people today that they have shunned away from anything that is that that they could possibly fail at because of the fear of failure that they i mean they they've made that their life they are that person now and that's that's hard to come back from you know what i really like about what you just said i really like the fact that you just because you know everyone talks about lifestyle in like a positive thing like oh it's a jiu jitsu lifestyle or it's a healthy lifestyle or whatever and you're like oh there's another lifestyle it's called denial and making excuses that's a lifestyle too and it's a shitty one that leads to bad places that's interesting that the tearing other people down thing where you know how you say it out loud and it's like well why would anyone do that like it's so obvious not to do that but i think when like you're in it and you say you hated yourself right where even that's another one where it's like how can you hate yourself that doesn't even make sense right oh that sounds like expression right but in a way it's like literally true where if you if you don't like yourself that makes you feel a certain way and it's bad it's a bad feeling we'll say put simply so what kind of relief can you get from that bad feeling is if you make other people seem less than and it kind of like relieves you of that feeling just a little bit you know but not fully not even close to fully so you constantly got to do it to feel better about yourself essentially yep it is um it's it's a serious problem we yeah we see it in our country all the time right now i i think that's actually what made me start thinking about this because i'm talking about oh running is but you're what you're talking about it's the same thing when you look at another person instead of going damn that person's really accomplished a lot that's awesome instead you say well i'm not going to be some kind of career guy that's chasing a promotion or or yeah they just want to get all those quals so they can look good yeah you just throw all kinds of hate at them yeah but the person that you really hate those are those are the excuses i'm talking about is you make up your own demise you make up your own excuses as to why that is not your path and to basically you demonize that person to make yourself feel better even though um 90 screw it 100 of the time it's because it's it's because you are afraid to fail the yeah yeah and it's weird when you start looking at like chunks of people that look and say oh that lifestyle is bad and it's like okay what are you really mad about someone that's working hard and trying to be in good physical condition and trying to learn and trying to grow like there's people that look down on all those things which is kind of crazy when you think about it yeah yep all right uh hey tell us about the what do you call the ideal breed um brace or is it ideo like do you how do you say that yeah it's it so i called it an ideo i did okay but yeah basically it's uh it uh ryan blanek he he created these things and um it um gives me a calf and you know push uh you know i can i got plant uh i think whatever one goes down i don't know but i yeah i'm i'm sitting here trying to it's like it's like an exoskeleton type brace that you wear that makes up for whatever deficiencies you might have in your movement yes and so um it gives you know that that basically it's it gives you your life back and that's what allows you to keep your leg that's what allows you to not have to go through the prosthetic is because now you have this um this uh i'm not even going to try and say the name but it's it's long the uh you mean the intrepid dynamic exoskeleton orthosis that that's what i was going to say i understand do you wear do you have to wear that thing all the time so i've actually gotten to a point now to where i've rebuilt back my leg to where i only use that if i'm doing anything physical like jim um i'll have my ideo on or deployment i'll wear the idea or whatnot but um here um i know i came here without it on i didn't and you're walking around i mean you you walking totally normal walking upstairs downstairs i mean it's awesome to see yeah and yeah until until you uh until you get caught on that one thing and it's that's funny and that's because you have no nerves or do you have like drop foot no um i i don't have drop foot it's kind of naturally has fused itself at the the l okay yeah so but you know you can catch yourself and yeah it's it's i think it's funny i don't know what is drop foot like that like the nerve that makes you lift up your foot gets damaged and so your foot just kind of down yeah yeah the yeah it did it had naturally fused at the ankle joint so um that nerve is gone but it's just the foot just stays at an add an l and andy stumpf has a certain amount of dropped foot and from when he got shot he like lost some he got some he got a bunch of injuries but he got some nerve damage and so his foot doesn't respond really the way he wants it to and he makes some pretty funny jokes about that it's kind of funny uh so the army wanted to medically retire you mm-hmm at this point and and then they offered you kind of something called continuation on active duty which means you basically they're still going to give you your paycheck and you're going to use some kind of an admin job for your to get to 20. yep yeah so i was medically retired and then i applied for the waiver which was the continuation on active duty waiver and i got picked up for that how many years had you been in at this point total air force navy and army 12 ish yeah something like that so you now did you is that a document that you like signed do you accept that or did you fight it um the medical retirement well the medically retired medical retirement you you obviously fought yeah i mean that that was so i was medically retired and then i came back onto active duty through a waiver got it so they medically retired you and then you came back on when you came back on did you have that limited duty thing the the the continuation on active duty is that how you came back on yeah and basically what it is so they do it for um green berets seals raiders all kind of stuff if they they spent that kind of money training you up we can find something for you yeah absolutely no it's an awesome program and it's a good way to take care of take care of people yep then you find out about this program called four three yeah and so tell us about that thor 3 program so i think uh i think the seals i think you guys kind of have something similar the return to fight program yeah we got all we got awesome people that are just doing everything they can to keep guys ready and if they get hurt to get them back in the fight yep it's awesome yep um so it's basically that we call it the re uh the return to fight or the road to war program or whatever and um man it's hard i mean they bring these guys in from you know they were physical physical trainers for you know hockey teams or whatnot or like um paul uh he was he he worked um he was on tito ortiz's um group and paul did all of the athletic training for him so yeah you're not really going to tell him like it's kind of hard he's like oh that's cute so and um and i i just i knew you know i had gotten myself back to seventh group but i had a dead man's profile so i knew for me for seventh group to wave um big army's profile um i would have to i would have to tear up dudes in in the thor 3 program and um and so i just you know i i was on this path of you know i i was getting i was racking up victories in my life and um and so the thor 3 program is it was tough it was extremely hard but guys that had never been hurt before um i was just you know with all the physical events and everything like that just leaving them in the dust but you know they weren't really fighting for anything i was i was trying to get back to war so um and then you you end up pulling it off man yeah yeah uh here you go after a few months of working with it with a thor 3 program building up my body and rehabbing my sore right leg impressing my pts on how far i'd come my command gave me some great news i was good to deploy when seventh group would take full responsibility for me my waiver was signed i was jacked from the moment i got the word from brian that if i could get healthy enough he would send me back i had only one goal in my head to return to combat this was why i put in all the hard work i didn't want to be cooped up in some cubicle reading reports and looking at the clock counting down the hours until i would call today i want to be conducting missions with the guys doing what i was trained to do taking the fight to the enemy my company had already left for afghanistan but once i got the medical waiver signed by seventh group lead surgeon i was on the next flight out april 2012. i would be deployed to the panz y is that right uh panjiway panjway district in kandahar province in southern afghanistan known as the birthplace of the taliban times couldn't have been tenser in the area so there you go man yeah yeah i got my wish returned returned to war and then uh i got sent to the uh the most heavily ied area in afghanistan in 2012 bro this is this is freaking all right so here we go uh you're you're you get sent to the most heavily ied place i was reading this i was like all right i'll just read it so here we go you're on you're on a real really hard patrol to get to where you're going to get to the target area you're the freaking point man again by the way the last time you were a point man you you got freaking blown up yeah you start you start clearing this compound again this is like deja vu back to the book we were barely underway when one of my afghan special forces soldiers and i detected our first ied in a partially collapsed outside wall of the first compound there it was buried in the dirt and surrounded by rubble from a break in the wall that was likely caused by a previous id blast or an rpg strike a nice little ied all you had to do is trip this sucker all you had to do to trip the sucker was step on the pressure plates that connected the positive wires to the negative once the circuit was completed boom the charge went off and your life was changed forever welcome back to afghanistan the taliban had figured we would take this route because it was a shortcut into the compound i have to admit that finding my first ied since nearly losing my life especially a nasty one like this produced a whole range of emotions my heart was racing but i had to keep it together because my team was watching really you have to admit that you had some some emotions bro uh first i slowly pushed the dirt away exposing the corners of the pressure plate i steadied my hands and searched for the arming wires when i uncovered them i traced the wires to a battery pack hidden behind some rocks then i disconnected the power source and clamped surgical clamps to the wire my surgical clamps were attached to a 50-foot nylon cord so i could get some standoff or safe distance before pulling out the pressure plate after moving the team back i got my 50 feet of standoff and gave the cord a pull the pressure plate came flying through the air the first step was complete but the ied was not completely disarmed i then attached my cord to a plastic yellow jug buried beneath the pressure plate and returned my to my 50-foot withdrawal distance after a tug-of-war match with the jug i was finally able to yank it out of the ground crap this was a 15-pound ied more than enough to kill you or blow off both your legs how come i didn't just safely blow up the ied which is exactly what i was asking the normal procedure is when you find a freaking ied you put some explosives on you blow that thing up blow in place bip yep um usually when i come across an idea i expose part of the pressure plate to verify it was natural explosive then i would place a half block of c4 on it and blow it in place but we were trying to track down the ied makers in our area i decided to disarm the ied instead of blowing it up because of the increased pressure we were getting to collect evidence which was key to finding the culprits with this first ied out of the way i breathed the deep psi relief things had gone well and it almost felt like i knew what i was doing better yet i gave my teammates a warm fuzzy feeling about my capabilities and showed them that i could be an asset rather than a liability on the battlefield why did i deal with the ied instead of directing one of our afghan counter ieds to get on it you could call me stupid or crazy but i wanted to get some ieds under my belt okay i mean i you're not stupid so i guess we're going with crazy and i i guess you want to get some ideas under your belt is better than getting ids under your foot yeah i yeah i think i think my mindset at that time was um very i mean could have been pretty deemed as pretty reckless but i i just and that was the first one i came in contact with and i was going to own it yeah that just kind of that's the choice i made um if i was to go back i would stick half block c4 on it and move back uh and that's what you're doing man id after id cache after cache every time we'd go out on a mission one thing was certain is the sun coming up in the morning we'd run into some sort of explosive device made to kill or maim us and you know i i skipped through the part where you kind of like we're checking back in with the team and these guys are thinking hey can this guy really do his job and he's already how scared is he going to be how bad is his leg he's out here with a freaking brace on his leg what kind of you know so you had to kind of push through all that i kind of skipped through it but it's a really interesting part of the book as well yeah i mean and and that's the thing is i've i've had i've heard people's reaction to it they're like oh well that's that's that's just so messed up and it's like it's not that's special operations when you go out to the team being in war isn't a make-a-wish foundation kind of thing like oh you know here's our make-a-wish foundation green beret we're going to take them out on some missions no people people can die and um and so i understood completely like they knew what had happened to me most of the team was on the battlefield that day in the hellman saw my leg and so for me to get back out to the team in the most heavily ied area in afghanistan at that point i i don't blame him like what are you doing here dude like you have no business being out here but you got to prove it another cool i'm not going to read the whole section but you're talking about like what you're looking for and one thing you said is you were you'd you'd be looking and you'd be thinking would i put an ied there if i was a bad guy that was kind of the perception you looked at everything with oh yeah i get asked this question a lot about um how do i find ieds and they're like oh you have a mine detector mine detector doesn't really do anything for me i look at so i i take a breakdown of the battlefield or the objective that we're going on to and then i look at okay so the easiest avenues of approach they're going to be ieds there you've got a 12-foot mud hut wall and there's a break in the wall right here and then it's 12 feet again there's going to be an ied there and then i also um so before i even use my mine detector i i get ground sign ground sign tells me everything and then i verify it with my mind detector and then i i mean i've i've i've definitely come up to like breaks in the wall and whatnot and i don't even use my mind detector or anything i just put a block of c4 there get back and yeah because there's gonna be one there and so how much of uh how much do you think like one thing i was always paranoid about was like oh they've got the fake ied there and they did this in ramadi a lot like oh there's a wire and whatever and someone goes over to disarm it and they step on something else and get blown up yep the decoys yeah oh the decoys are nasty super nasty and that that goes back to that you know that saying that we've all had and i guarantee you guys probably said it in ramadi was um where there's one there's five um you know if i you know where there's one there could be ten or what but where there's one there's gonna be secondary because when that guy hits one of them then the rescue team's gonna come in and they're gonna start hitting the secondaries or we're going to use one as a decoy and then we're pretty sure we can funnel with this decoy here now i can funnel the troop movement this way and then it's all ied yeah and my point of bringing that up is like it's a it's it's not checkers it's not like oh there's an obvious place there's an ied it's chess where it's like oh there's one there but that means they're probably thinking we're going to move over there so the place we really need to watch out for it so the taliban are super good at that crazy good at trying to anticipate troop movements and then ieds you're carrying on with the deployment months go by and at one point you're in a little bit of a fire fight and you you step into basically uh a [ __ ] ditch and it's filled with [ __ ] it's filled with human sewage which is which sucks because it stinks and it's gross and all that but the real problem is you got your you know your foot which is a bunch of skin grafts is in there and this is after a long patrol so you already got blisters and whatnot because you got freaking baby skin on the bottom of your foot yeah open blisters so that is a problem yeah i mean we uh we got we gotten a bit of a tick and every every war fighter knows cover and then return fire um violence of action everything like that to you know get control of the situation again and so i remember you know we're we're engaging you know different targets and i was you know my my adrenaline was really high but it still is man something really stinks here i was like what in the heck is this and i just and then finally once you know it's like all right we got aircraft on station which means bad guys are gone um so then i start to kind of get a sense of my surroundings and as a [ __ ] trench and i was up to my uh my calves and and so all of the open sores that i had where my skin grafts were um just human feces going in yeah so you get an infection um and you're worried like you're gonna get sent home but it turns out they don't they don't send you home dude yeah go ahead uh no yeah they my team you know when we got back you know i basically i had to tell our delta you know because it was bad he's man you need to go to caf and then when i got to caf they basically said they're like okay you're done in the panzerway we need to monitor you um we don't you know we're not sure if you're going to redeploy back to the states or not i knew if i redeployed back to the states that was a death wish as in and i don't mean literally but as in the command will know that this gamble that they took to let me go back to war um it didn't pay off and i would never see combat again and so i uh i i found work um i carried heavy [ __ ] and i made myself a an important part of that and this was the first time in my life and so again it sounds really weird but stepping in this you know knee deep or i'm sorry calf deep and human feces led up to the first time in my life instead of saying poor me this happened to me why did i jump in that one trench and everything like that i owned it and i went and i found work and i and i made myself this valuable asset on calf loading helicopters to send supplies out to the guys in the field um you know and still in combat and i i made you know made a name for myself as always getting these guys the stuff they needed and whatnot like that so i found work and yeah and that was the first time that like that was a major victory for me of taking control over something that i very easily in the past what a straight went into victimization so that you're how long are you doing that job for um i was doing that for probably the last three months of the deployment um and then you do you end up healing up decently and there's one more there's there ends up being a mission and the mission is is uh to go set up there's a big mission going on but you're gonna go with the command element you're gonna set up a command post on the top of a hill and that means you're going to get inserted and you're going to have to walk two kilometers but with 3 000 feet of elevation gain and it it's it's a it's a tough mission it's a physically tough mission you have some other strap hangers with you one of those guys wants to quit one of the other guys you guys end up having to carry other people's gear on that um but you do it yeah you do it you do a good job you're healed up and luckily on the mission uh you know it's a it's a relatively peaceful mission yeah we uh we were supporting so the uh the seals and a bunch of odas we were clearing this valley together it was a joint mission and um in the command element last mission of the deployment command element wants to get you know boots on the ground say they did something and so yeah we yeah we were going up to hilltop 2000 and guys you know one guy he just flat out i mean sorry but quit and i was like i didn't think he could do that in combat yeah this is not training bro there's no training time out here and then another guy his body just failed him and so we were whole we were carrying all this stuff up to the top but i'm not big on spotlight ranger kind of stuff but i knew for sure that i could solidify my career as a green beret if the colonel and the command sergeant major all saw me as a beast even though my body was that's that was another time when i learned like your mind quits way before your body will way before your body will and if you have if you if you put this drive you you have this goal you want to reach and that goal is more important to you than your mind giving up on you then you will be able to see how much further you can actually go once your mind has told you you're done yeah i sometimes people like oh what do you do when you get like what do you tell yourself when you're when you don't want to do something and i'm like i don't tell myself anything because my mind is the one i'm just gonna go i'm gonna keep doing what i'm doing like i don't have these negotiations with myself about like well you should really no i'm like shut up keep going there's the answer yeah yeah and it's it's hard until you make it a lifestyle yeah yeah that's the positive lifestyle we're looking for uh you get done with that mission you you know a little while later you go back to america when you get back to america you actually go into the normal seventh group rotation which seventh groups ao is south america yep south central america south and central america so you end up doing some do you call them deployments if they're if they're short what do you call those um so we we have uh cnts or um jsets and i know um seals you guys do json yep um you also do cnts that counter narcotic yeah okay so it's the same thing because we um i remember all of my deployments down south central america there was always seal platoons there so so you do some of those shorter trips and you go to el salle you go to colombia you go to peru and then i think you were getting ready to deploy to guatemala and all of a sudden things change yeah they had um they requested so bravo company second battalion was heading back to afghanistan short on guys and um so i saw i saw my in right there and i i started creating you know ways of finding my way over to afghanistan somehow and that was that was all it took was i just i i gave him the sales pitch and the original answer to your sales pitch was cool you can come but you're going to be not you know not not a shooter yeah i was going to be riding a desk and managing um uh right just sources right right um so you so you're doing that that's your plan is to go over there uh you show up and uh about a month after you're there you get approached by the ops sergeant who says a new mission just got dropped in our laps you want a piece of the action uh and you say yep and so you guys start planning this mission uh going to the book here the way we drew things up the taliban would see the afghan commandos heading into the village and fire at them knowing for certain that the afghan soldiers would turn and run away like they had many times before once a bunch of taliban [ __ ] started shooting however that would be all we needed to call in close air support assets overhead which would give the taliban a healthy taste of american firepower the insurgents would know in a new york minute that the americans were in the fight and that would change the battlefield in a hurry and then you say on paper everything read well and i i put a nice little exclamation point by that because as we know things that look good on paper don't always turn out the way you expect them to nope um you proceed into this i'm gonna fast forward a little bit um you're you're now executing the mission i could see our first target compound which was about 100 meters up the path still had a long distance to clear and again this is after you you insert on the mission when you get done playing the mission you insert the mission you're moving you're moving to this first area that you're going to clear and the path started to narrow and rows of dormant fruit trees swallowed up the ground as we patrolled deeper into the orchard i reminded myself to concentrate on significant details that were almost impossible to see under night vision and then pop what the [ __ ] was that we all hit the ground unsure of the loud snap we just heard was it a gunshot sniper's in the area we waited for a [ __ ] storm of bullets to rain down on us but nothing happened then i noticed that ja weed is that right yup joey jawed and i were tangled in some type of line almost like fishing line holy [ __ ] we had hit a tripwire ied that didn't explode how did i miss that as jaw weed carefully investigated the tripwire against his chest without any quick movements i determined that the taliban had tied the wire that ran from the set of explosives hidden in a mud wall all the way to a tree on the opposite side of the path the wire had been tied at chest level not the usual ankle height a clever move on the taliban's part they knew we would be looking at our detectors to clear which meant we would be looking down at the dirt and walk right into a chest level tripwire why didn't the ied go off the best explanation i could come up with was that the when the overwatch element laid waste for five minutes firing everything they had into the orchard fragmentation from one of the mortars had hit the ied and disabled it luck was on our side so there you go you're walking through this freaking orchard you hit a wire and for whatever reason probably the the preparatory fire that had been fired by your team had disrupted the ied yep we had cleared another 15 meters of path when i saw movement in an open field near the first compound i turned to abe and abe is one of your guys that you had with you one of your one of your afghans that you had with you and that was when all hell broke out before abe could respond the night was lit up by a barrage of gunfire coming from the compound's outer wall first it was a zip zip zip followed by the crack of 762 caliber rounds flying past our heads these rounds which ripped holes in the darkness looked like a laser light show with tracer streaking across the night sky next came an explosion from an rpg being fired at us then more automatic fire we had walked directly into an ambush [ __ ] with my heart beating out of my chest i hit the ground and started returning fire the taliban the taliban had set up a complex ambush ambush and the tripwire ied was supposed to start the whole thing off one of their pkm machine guns let out a burst of 20 meters a burst of fire 20 meters from our position a distance so close that it was almost like i could grab the flame coming out of the end of the barrel jawed abe and buzmala how do you say that uh bes besmiela bismullah jumped into the ditch while kahan khan khan okay just khan while khan darted back and took cover behind a tree i hit the deck and lay as flat as i could in the middle of the dirt path bullets kicked up and rock and gravel fragments all around me stinging my skin when bullets hit the ground around me splintering fragments sprayed everywhere i could tell some fragments struck my body armor's protective plate i was engaged i engaged the flames figuring that where there were flames there was a gun and where there was an ak-47 there was a fighter ryan your strobe light my buddy zack yelled over the radio they have nvgs they can see your strobe damn bro what were you thinking when you heard that all right i need to get this off my helmet i need to get this ir strobe away from me and our jtac couldn't see me because we'd get caught up in an l-shaped ambush and um and so he wasn't sure where the pkm was and that's you know so i i took it off my helmet and i threw it as close as i could to where that pkm was at and then just hit the deck again and started engaging muzzle flashes and the could the jtac want you through the ir could he see it could the jtac see it so it was kind of funny um so i said you know you guys have visual on the ir and yeah and go okay they're they're over that direction he goes what you know i don't know so uh going back here you're there there's one guy that starts peeking out um and you you actually end up killing this guy the third time he came out he took more time in the previous two two tries attempting to a better shot off at us it was like he was daring me to light his ass up i knew i had him i locked in with a clear shot and let go a 10 to 15 round burst from my m4 i watched him drop his body lay still on the ground it felt good to kill him but i couldn't relish the moment too long we were still pinned down our main element which was about 25 to 30 meters behind our position put as much firepower on the enemy as they could hoping to keep their heads down long enough for us aircraft to start dropping bombs i knew from the many fights i'd been in before in this country that a call for air support had been made within seconds of their attack in the meantime frankie's position let loose this is one of the other team teammates but the taliban were well protected behind mud walls unless they stepped out of the open like the guy with the rpg launcher there wasn't much we could do without an airstrike at the same time i was aware given how close we were to the enemy that being killed by friendly fire was a very real worry yeah so you're you're 15 to 20 meters away from these bad guys yes the first pkm and just so anyone that's wondering um 15 to 20 meters is not a long way when you're gonna try and drop bombs uh yeah there's danger close and then there's dr calling in on your position and it's yeah it's a little dicey this is getting a lot dicey yeah yet as our situation deteriorated by the second i knew that without bombs on target jawed abe bismullah khan and i would all die this was about to turn into a body recovery mission and it would be our bodies that would be that they would be taking home within a couple of minutes the decision was made for us when our air force jay talk jtac called in a 500 pound bomb just 20 meters from my position this was considered a danger close strike i don't even know if that's considered danger that's that's called on my position yeah especially 500 pounds uh this was considered a danger close strike but one that would give us a fighting chance of making it out of the orchard alive the call went out over the radio and then i heard air force jtac's voice in my earpiece ryan we're dropping close to you man keep your [ __ ] head down after receiving the radio transmission i relayed the information to abe who told the others to get as low as they could there wasn't enough room in the ditch so i grabbed khan and pushed him into the trench while i stayed on the footpath i ordered them to hunker down and prepare for the blast since we weren't firing back at the enemy the volume of fire on our position picked up so now you guys are hunkering down because you're expecting this bomb and now these the enemies thinking they got an upper hand overhead i could hear the rocket motors of the f-16 ripping through the sky as the fighter jet came inbound i received one last warning over the radio bombs away man stay low i lay as flat as i could on the path holding my hands over my head and planting my face in the dirt then i slightly tilted my head and opened my mouth to give the over pressure or shock wave a place to exit all i could do was wait for the blast when the bomb hit the over pressure from the explosion sent grass dirt gravel dust and tree branches flying in our direction i waited for the big chunks of mud of the mud compound to land on me as well as bits of earth and other debris thankfully i was spared from the hunks of mud wall hitting me which would have broken my back instead i was covered with dirt leaves and branches but the concussive force was so great that i felt like my skeleton had just walked out of my body turned slapped me in the face and re-entered my body i tried to stand up i kept falling i almost felt like i was drunk yeah if you have a 500 pound bond go off freaking you're rocked yeah it's like you just got like when you see someone get knocked out in the in in the ufc that's what you just got hit with yep only not just to the jaw but to the entire body in all my time in afghanistan i'd get to experience a concussive explosion of that magnitude it took a good minute to regain my senses just as i was figuring out what happened i heard my guys screaming over the radio ryan are you good ryan answer your [ __ ] radio if you're alive their voices sounded like someone's yelling down a long tunnel trying to get my attention i got my bearings [ __ ] that was good that was big big but i'm good man i answered i couldn't believe what had just happened how big of a bomb was that 500 pounds brother you just ate a big one man and i'm still alive i thought i had come away without a scratch until i felt warm liquid coming out of my ears from the monstrous blast damn that was close there was no time to worry about my the ear drip because i had no idea if the enemy was still moving around or all tapped out i took a moment to shake the cobwebs out of my head then i checked on my guys to ensure they were good after everyone was accounted for uninjured i had my guys fall back to the closest position which was 20 meters behind us once we were back with the main element our jtac called in another strike which would ensure that if anyone was still moving in the compound they were sure to be dead damn that's uh that's freaking psycho crazy right there he's dropping a 500 pound bomb at 20 meters like i said that's i mean we'll have to ask a good deal dave burke and see what the you know what what the error box is on that yeah you know i were you a jtac i was a jtac in like 20 meters is tight that's a tight one but they do it that's what they do you know they got gps guided munitions and they do they do drop them right into a spot yeah they actually had to switch out aircraft or switch out platforms um to drop a non-fragmentation producing like a concussion oh wow because of how close we were and it took like five minutes to get bombs on target and anyone who's been in a tick before five minutes yeah a really long time well salute to your jtac because that's a ballsy call right there yep he's uh freaking legit yeah i remember him saying he was like man if i if i would have killed you my career is done i was like thank you don't worry about your bro yeah the deeds amazing saved my life oh yeah for sure that's crazy you know that's uh when i was a jtac they would when you had to call danger close you have to give your initials i don't know if they still do this but you have to give your initials saying like i'm signing for this bomb this is on me and you need to drop this bomb and you like they would be authenticate with you or jtac initials or something i forget the actual calls but the update juliet whiskey drop it and then boom um so you now you go you you go you clear this compound um the sun's starting to come up it's kind of settled down the situation's kind of settled down a little bit the sun start to come up you're feeling good about that because now it makes ieds easier to find um then you start moving to another compound and and once again you're just like finding ids tripping ids and still just moving from compound to compound clearing more ieds as you enter these other compounds there's there's not any movement or anything you say during the rest of our clearance i encountered more than 20 ieds i personally blew up 15 before i ran out of c4 explosives we marked the rest overall we located more than 50 ieds 470 107 millimeter rockets multiple booby traps and a complex bunker and tunnel system this this particular part of the village lived up to its reputation as a hotbed for taliban fighters the taliban had reinforced bunkers spread throughout the village many connecting with tunnels that's freaking psycho i mean running into 50 ieds carrying them all yeah it's um yeah the ones we couldn't clear we just had to mark and bypass it was yeah that village was uh super nasty super nasty so then there's this little discussion between the afghan force leader who after you guys clear these places your the goal is hey the afghans stay there to you know prohibit the taliban from coming in and taking over so there's a little bit of a discussion because you know american forces are going to leave like okay we did the hard part and we cleared everything now you stay there and occupy and build defenses and set up claymores and you know secure the area and hold on to it well they don't want to do that and so this discussion is happening and uh while this discussion is happening which by the way your team leader says the afghan says uh the americans should say not my afghan soldiers you're better equipped to fight the taliban and the team leader says if this was texas i would agree with you but we're in afghanistan this is your country i'm here to help you but not win your battles yeah uh so as this little discussion's going on one of your afghan one of the afghan commandos comes up to you and and with with the interpreter and says there's 15 to 20 men moving our way yep and you know the discussion still going on a few seconds later the afghan commando tugged on my shirt sleeve to get my attention again the men are heading this way we need to do something because i don't think these are villagers from the area he said i went back to my team sergeant was more direct we need to get out of here we have fighting age males moving in our direction i'm grabbing my guys and getting into positions to move out the team sergeant now nodded [ __ ] this he said i'm done negotiating with these guys let's move out he had barely finished this sentence when the first shot whizzed by my head with the all too familiar zip followed by a crack we were immediately in the fight for our lives rounds were coming in all around from automatic machine gun fire a series of rpg explosions took us by total surprise everything turned into total chaos in an instant everything was happening so fast it was impossible for the human brain to comprehend it instinctively i knew i was sprinting for cover but for a split second i felt frozen in pandemonium of everything happening around me while my brain scrambled to make sense of the attack's ferocity now i was moving quickly screaming instructions and returning fire to an enemy i could not see rounds sprayed everywhere hitting compound walls like a garden hose watering down a dusty road just then i heard abe grunt as if he was hurt that was that's one of your afghans but for some reason it didn't occur to me that he could have been hit i darted toward a ditch that paralleled the dirt road running through the village after diving for cover i peered out cautiously but i couldn't see any of my guys or where we were taking fire from bullets were tailing up dirt all around me as we tried to stay as low as possible then i noticed that three commandos in the ditch 10 meters from my position had drawn the attention of a taliban machine gun crew that had zeroed in on them i waved for the three afghans to move to my position which would give them more cover but they were too scared to move i knew that if they didn't get their asses in gear and start moving they were gonna die i don't know what possessed me but i climbed out from my ditch and sprinted to their position praying to god that my adaptive leg would hold up i reached the first commando and grabbed the very first thing that i could get a hold of his hair i yanked him out up and pulled him back to my ditch hoping the other two would follow they did as we ran dust kicked up and more rounds impacted around us i slid into the ditch like i was legging out a triple then i reached back and dragged the three scared shitless commandos down with me we had company in this part of the ditch frankie was providing aid to another wounded afghan frankie you okay man i'm good brother how about you yeah i'm okay you see abe or anyone else not yet man i moved closer to a small mud wall that paralleled the ditch this wall provided decent protection from enemy fire and allowed me to look down the dirt road where i saw an afghan soldier lying motionless i brought up my rifle scope to get a better look frankie i think that's bizmula in the middle of the road bro i think he's dead my heart jumped straight to my throat one of our guys was killed [ __ ] where's the rest of my team frankie and i were the only two americans in that ditch i scanned back down the road where bismillah lay i knew abe was next to him before the ambush kicked off but i could only see bismullah i hoped abe wasn't hit too what i could determine was that we had two wounded afghan commandos and bismullah lying in the middle of the road i figured bismillah was dead but until i had my hands on him i couldn't be 100 sure i knew i needed to get to him but the amount of live fire coming in was too heavy the radio crackled again and then i heard a heart-stopping message in my headset loud and clear eagles down eagles down the phrase eagles down was code for americans wounded or killed the fight had just taken the worst possible turn there were americans wounded or killed somewhere on the battlefield but i didn't know where we needed some air support in a hurry how much time has passed and what i just read and i skipped a little bit of stuff but this is all i remember a few minutes no i remember we were basically screaming for air support and they couldn't because the taliban with the tunnel systems they were in our lines and they couldn't drop because they couldn't distinguish who was who and so yeah it became a fist fight at that point here's the understatement of the year coming from you back to the book bro this [ __ ] is bad i said to frankie no sooner did the words leave my lips then i heard one sound that gives every green beret chills an explosion from a mortar round which landed 30 meters from us and shook the earth i hit the ground and turned toward frankie [ __ ] i yelled they got a mortar tube up we need to move before we get hit so for anyone that doesn't know anything about mortars when you shoot mortars you don't hit what you're aiming at on the first shot usually you have to do something called bracketing which means you fire your first shot and oh it goes long so you back your distance off a little bit you fire your next shot it's probably going to be short and then you split the difference and your next shots are on target so when you're getting mortared if you sit there they're going to bracket you they're going to find you and they're going to get you gun fire is one thing if the enemy is close enough to shoot at you he's close you're close enough to kill him mortars are different they can be two or three kilometers away and engage you with deadly fire and by the time you figure out where they're coming from it's too late another explosion hit the compound to the left of us too close for comfort that was our cue time to make a move frankie and i engaged taliban targets as much as possible trying to keep their heads down with return fire which would give us a little time to pick up our wounded afghans and move back crack a round hit directly into the wall above my head crack another round too close for comfort crack and another one then two more rounds hit the mud wall in front of us a sniper had our position dialed in every time we stuck our heads up he sent rounds our way to make matters worse the taliban were dropping mortars closer and closer to our position one of the afghan commandos besides us spoke a little english he pointed to his radio and said he heard the taliban had our position and were trying to capture us hearing that word struck fear in my heart i nudged frankie again the taliban are trying to flank us and cut us off from the rest of our guys so they can take us it's time to move brother i shouted first things first how do we avoid getting shot by the sniper i saw a protected area near a compound a couple of hundred meters from us where i recognized several americans including our medic joe frankie i see joe let's move to him so you guys gather everyone up and you finally like are able to get over to this other position where joe is joe's your medic he's working on guys uh you get their all blood moans and cries for help state of shock could be seen on the commandos faces we knew we were in a real [ __ ] storm so far we had one dead afghan commando two wounded afghans three wounded americans we were missing five afghans including abe and bismullah who are your two guys yes and still no air support um at that point in time once we were able to get back to the ccp well the first ccp um we were able to start dropping bombs on on the targets probably 45 minutes into the tick and then um they came up out of tunnels and engaged us at that first ccp which means we had to find another ccp how are you doing for ammo we're handing mags off yeah so you're in this first casualty collection point ccp so for those who don't know this is when you're in a bad situation and you've got casualties you want to get to a point where you can gather all the casualties together so you can number one provide security number two provide medical attention and then number three try and figure out where you're tactically can get them out of there so you're in this ccp i looked around for jawed and khan jawed was sitting up against the wall trying to catch his breath grabbing dost our interpreter i asked him if he knew where abe was jawed shook his head no i haven't seen abe just then i saw frankie khan and two afghan commandos carrying bismullah from the road to the ccp bismillah is alive but he can't feel his legs frankie said thank god we got biz but where's abe i asked a puzzled look came over frankie no one has seen abe since the firing started bro he's still out there fast forward a little bit now that we had most of our friendly forces back in one location our aircraft could start engaging targets up first was the white two-story former school building and these are things you explain these are areas where you're taking fire from after 45 minutes of intense fighting we finally dropped our first bomb as the f-15 jet screamed across the sky and extremely close to our position the first bomb dropped the white building was reduced to wood and debris in a nanosecond instantly killing the sniper inside fast forward a little bit at that point we had two wounded afghans three wounded americans and now two dead afghan commandos 300 meters to the right of the compound was another mud hut compound with tall walls for protection and a large open field big enough for helicopters to land in this was going to have to work because we needed to get going we picked up and quickly moved to our new location and started calling a dust off which was our call sign a radio call sign for medical evacuation so now you move into this bigger compound and you're preparing to get helicopters in there to get the wounded and dead out of there you go over to bismullah i calmly asked him if he knew where abe was abe was next to me when we started fighting he said and then he jumped into the ditch near the foot bridge at the last compound we cleared okay now i had a starting point but we couldn't move or go near that area of the village the enemy was too well dug in every time we poked our heads above the near road we got lit up by the taliban somehow i had to get abe i was not leaving him behind i had an afghan commando pointing to the footbridge saying another commando was there with abe that meant two wounded guys now which also meant i would need more help our air force jtac said he had a plan to keep the taliban's head down while we sprinted for the footbridge i'll call the apaches to fly in front of your movement and shoot the [ __ ] out of everything ahead of you guys i like the way that sounded little cover and move with the helicopters at the same time we were putting together our two-minute game plan the team sergeant stopped us we can't risk you going down there to get those guys he said too much enemy fire well we're not leaving them behind i said my team sergeant wasn't happy with my answer but he knew what we had to do i spoke up again if we leave without them we could go we could have a mutiny on our hands with the afghans we have to go no one gets left behind the team sergeant looked at us knowing this was something that must happen okay we'll go he said this was going to be an american-led recovery operation why the afghan commandos wouldn't go recover their own guys was beyond me if an american had been left behind we would go to hell and back for our to get our brothers out dead or alive the jtac interrupted the discussion stating the apaches were inbound to do a gun run on enemy positions we needed to use cover this cover as our chance to move here they come everyone ready the jtac asked it was go time the sounds of the large caliber bullets echoed off the compound walls as the apaches opened fire blanketing the area with 30 millimeter rounds frankie our jtac our team sergeant and i sprinted down the road toward the area where we assumed abe and the mission missing commando were as we ran like hell in the direction of the footbridge we took on small arms fire but nothing compared to what it could have been if those apaches weren't helping us the closer i got to the footbridge though the more i prepared myself for what i might see leading up to the bridge the terrain shifted upwards slightly making it hard to see what was in the ditch i was almost to the footbridge when i looked down there floating lifeless in the water at the bottom of the ditch was abe his body was sprawled out with a blood soaked bandage around his pelvic area abe had attempted to stop the bleeding himself but i knew that pelvic wounds were almost impossible to treat without proper medical help abe had bled out so much that the muddy water in the ditch had turned bright red my friend was dead and i could not save him a taliban sniper had perfectly placed three rounds into his pelvis oh abe they finally got you as i got to his body in the ditch frankie was providing covering fire while the team sergeant and i attempted to pull abe out lifting a lifeless body out of a six foot muddy ditch was especially difficult adding to the difficulties was the fact that ave's body was covered in blood which made him extremely slippery to hold on to we couldn't get a good grip on him and struggled to carry his body up to dry ground i became more and more drenched in abe's blood and even got some of his blood in my mouth a taste that's forever etched in my mind finally after giving it everything we had we freed abe from his watery grave but the smells the tastes and everything about that moment still haunt me to this day kind of kind of it's i mean not only does it say a lot about the american soldier and the american fighting man that eu4 go down to recover the body of these afghans also obviously says a lot about the afghans who don't go to go and recover their own people um but that's you know to me it's a lot of it just has to do with the value of human life that we have as americans like we see we we value human life more and the bond that we have is so strong and it's just it's a it's a real tribute to the american soldier that you're you're going you're risking your life and your friends are risking your lives your lives as americans to go and basically you know that these guys are dead i mean that's your suspicion you know but you're still not going to leave these guys behind no one gets left behind so you get you get abe out of the trench and you you basically you find a ladder that that you use as a stretcher you put him on this thing on this ladder you're carrying him into the compound as you're carrying them into the compound there's afghan commandos that are just standing there watching you struggle yeah back to the book don't just stand there [ __ ] help us i screamed at the commandos but they stood there like statues we continued on the landing zone to wait for the helicopter i was carrying i was helping carrie abe carry abe on the makeshift gurney when i saw the helicopter hovering over it it finally hit me my buddy was really dead my heart sank when the helicopter touched down i helped load abe on to the last flight he would ever take i reached out and grabbed his lifeless hand as the helicopter lifted off from the ground to take him away yes abe was gone but we had recovered his body so that his family could give him a proper burial a true warrior's funeral if the taliban had recovered his body they would have desecrated it instead we did right by him as american fighting men and women we have one belief we will fight and die for no one gets left behind yeah and you know in the book you go into a little bit about both abe and bismullah who you knew well and their backgrounds what kind of guys they were you know the the what they had volunteered to do right and you know like as i'm sitting here calling you crazy for wanting to go back and find ieds if you're if you're part of the afghan team guess what guess how long your deployment lasts forever right so these guys are out there hanging it out there and you know you had that bond with them and then you stayed true to that bond yep what was the what was the i mean you know obviously shortly after this you you end up getting the rest of the team out what was the total losses for that day um that day we ended up with four americans wia eight afghans kia and 12 afghans wa so it was it was pretty bad day how big was the force going in we have conflicting reports the last report i remember seeing is we killed over 400 taliban now aircraft killed over 400 taliban we you know personally probably you know 10 20 at small arms but that's still a pretty big force but um over 400. how many guys did you have total how many afghans how big was the afghan commando unit um we hundred and i think about 120 afghans and then an oda and an odb so about 25 americans about 120 um afghans how how much longer were you in country after that operation um that had actually just started the deployment off so we still had another um i think i'd say five more months and what was the what was the rest of the deployment like uh it was it was back to um just trying to trying to chase you know chase that elusive combat again but nothing uh nothing came even close to touching uh baglin and did they did they throw you back in because you your original purpose on that deployment was more of work in the intel side yep did you get moved back into that and that's kind of what you spent most of the deployment yeah deployment doing i did yeah i was i was moved back into the into the intel role of it and i would um you know i would constantly try and create work and find myself on missions and whatnot but um yeah i was back you know doing the doing those reports i'm gonna fast forward a little bit um to you're heading home when our 2016 tour of duty was over in july our team boarded a c-17 at bagram airfield and flew west until we landed at eglin air force base near pensacola florida following a fuel stop at ramstein air base in germany we basically hopped from the dangers of the afghan from the dangers of afghanistan to tranquil florida within 24 hours the quickest i ever returned home i still had afghanistan dirt underneath my fingernails i didn't realize that i had suffered traumatic brain injury during the fire fight where the 500 pound bomb had landed just 17 meters from my position binge drinking on weekends became the norm for me fast forward in a little bit including consumption of a lot of beer at home i could easily clear 12 to 15 miller lights in an evening and you know you you again it's really good because in this book you go through some of the details of what's happening when you come home from deployment you know you have that kind of what is it a little empty feeling that we get something like that and you're trying to fill it up you're trying to figure out you know what this is how to adjust back to being in florida or wherever you're going to be so you're doing you're doing the path which is easily available to us when we come home which is drinking fighting uh causing problems um a little road rage activity you're with dawn and are you married to don at this point uh no we got buried in 18. so you got your girlfriend dawn and you're you're like driving and you're with dawn and i'm gonna go to the book here the dude suddenly turned into this is oh yeah he cuts you off right driving and you get your road rage on and you follow him what kind of vehicle are you driving i was driving uh tundra okay jack uh so you're driving your tundra this dude suddenly turned into a driveway and ran into the house i slid into the curb and put my truck in park i was about to run after him when dawn grabbed my arm what are you doing she asked are you gonna chase him down beat him up and then what what if we've got guns in the house what makes you think he doesn't have them this is stupid what's going on with you right now she had a point i let out a huge breath of air which dialed back the adrenaline surging through my body [ __ ] this i mumbled as i got back into the truck i eased away from the curb and turned homeward for the next 10 minutes neither of us said a word my mind was locked on this thought you need to get your temper under control damn it i was a green beret that meant i was a professional and flipping the switch between civilian life and being in a war zone was the professional thing to do yet here i was acting like a bully if someone did something i didn't like i took some active measures over the next few days and weeks i opened up to my friend mike valkyr how do you say his name yeah valk i opened up to my friend my friend mike valk tyler and frankie about some of my struggles it turned out i wasn't alone after sharing my innermost thoughts with frankie he said he was going through the same issues as me finally someone gets it and this is where you started kind of getting control though nothing happened overnight i slowly got my [ __ ] under control my anger issues at times were still an open question but i started to focus on what triggered me which helped me ratchet my aggression way down um yeah i kind of i kind of uh spoiler alerted on the on the marriage thing but luckily i didn't spoil much because in a very romantic fashion in applebee's parking lot you asked dawn if she would marry you yeah uh you got married um you get cleared you do another seven month deployment to afghanistan in august 2018 ends in march of 2019. you say in the book here in a few words my last deployment to afghanistan was boring and cold you you detail some of these missions you also say that boring has tons of upside for coming back with all your limbs which is good and you did make it home from that deployment with all your limbs but and you did make it home and obviously as we know not everybody does and i want to close out this book you know you detail some more information and um but i want to close out the book in the actually in the acknowledgements when you address the fact that not everyone comes home and you say last i want to point out the men who epitomize heroic courage and whom i look up to for strength ben harrow will liles and levi rogers yes those guys are wounded uh yes uh levi he um he was in a um max pro or rg that hit an ied everyone died but him in it so that was chief rogers ben was my team leader when i got hit and then on the 2012 deployment he stepped on an ied lost both of his legs and then will liles he was one of my friends that i went through the course with and this basically the same time frame that i stepped on my ied he stepped on his and lost both of his legs so you say these three men are the definition of what it means to overcome astronomical odds to go through hell and back only to come out stronger on the other side i will forever be grateful for the lessons i learned from them as well as their strength and determination in putting aside their catastrophic injuries to show me the true value of life they remind me that no matter what life throws at you or how bad you think you have it you can always pick yourself up off the ground and kick life in the ass for the men in heaven keeping a watchful eye on us i salute you may god hold you close and give you the comfort you all deserve until we meet again i will do my best to live the life you all embodied while you are here still walking among us so that's that like i said this is a powerful book um and we're reading this very small percentage of it um i definitely recommend go out get this book read the full story it's just powerful and it's a powerful tribute you know that powerful tribute at the end to all these guys and it's just it's just amazing when you think about um the sacrifices that have been made by by the service men and women in this country has been just we should nev we can never ever allow that to be forgotten and i think this book is a is a personal account of some of those sacrifices what so what's going on now so i actually um i retired from the army in uh in january of 2000 or 2020. and was that was that 20 years uh yeah 21 and some change and then within a week i was back in afghanistan as a as a contractor so i gave my time about i gave myself about five days to celebrate retirement then i was i was back at it and that's what you're doing now you're doing contracting yes and you're continuing to go how how long are you going on deployments now um so these are these are four month deployments um uh chromavirus had a little something to do with the last one so we stayed longer but um the next one i have coming up is that will be a four-monther and then we'll kind of re-address readdress you know what's going on in afghanistan and whatnot like that what um you talk about in the book but i didn't read through it at what point did you start writing the book so the book actually um it started off as as therapy and when i came back from the 16 trip the road rage incident was one but there was there's multiple other ones but um and and so i actually you know i remember going to a therapist um army you know count our counselor therapist whatever they're called and he was kind of going down his list and i remember asking him is like what's my name and i saw his eyes had to go up to the top right hand corner and i was like i'm done here so i started you know i you know our chaplains and group are very close with us and um i i remember um talking to one of them just and my biggest my biggest issue was like all three of us we could be we could be sitting at a bar drinking a beer and talking about you know things and what we deal with and whatnot like that and then you go home to your family you go home to yours and i go home to mine and it's dead air it was it was talked about but nothing was really like taken off your chest and so our chaplain is like have you ever thought about writing i said no i haven't i majored in you know english in like the third grade or zombies no i've never thought about writing so the 2017 deployment um so i went to afghanistan 16 17 18. um and then back in 1920 19 2019 and 20. so pretty much since 16 i've been in afghanistan every year and um and in the 17 trip i i just remember just needing to to just get stuff off my chest and and i remember i was you know i was i was in my little uh little living area and i just opened up my laptop and just started typing and typing and it just and it felt good because i was i was taking i was taking these these these um i'll call them items but i was taking these items that that had been bothering me for years or been or just anything and i wasn't just talking about it and it was dead air not to be you know having to be readdressed again but i was putting it on something else that was tangible a word document and so i could come back to that word document anytime i wanted and it actually felt like you know i was i was taking this off of my chest and i was putting it somewhere that was actually tangible now it was something and it felt great and that's and that's when i said oh writing therapy gotcha makes sense now but and then from that um came the book so yeah you know it's uh i always talk about using detachment is is what you you have to do that as a person you have to get you have to detach from your emotions you can't get all cr look i'm not saying you need to leave all your emotions totally behind but i'm saying you have to detach from them somewhat and what's cool about writing and this is i was trying to figure out what you meant by this so it's just dead air and i was like oh wait a second i get it when you write something down you are you are actually detaching from it right you get to see those words are coming out they're going somewhere else now you're looking at those words and so it gives you a an actual physical form of detachment from the thoughts that you have from the feelings that you have from the emotions that you have and then you can read them you can read them from a distance and you can understand them better and then as you continue to work through the writing that you're doing and it it's another way to reprocess it and had you ever i i actually don't think i think i've i guess i have heard the term writing therapy but like i guess it's a thing huh i've never heard about it before until that point yeah but did you just make that up yourself or had you think of her i so when i had when when i started typing um writing therapy that was that was purely what i just thought it was but i think i've heard of it before like i do think it's a thing yeah i think it's a thing i think it's a thing too we're gonna have to find out if not we're gonna have to trademark it you should trade market uh maybe that's why i'm just writing books all the time just providing therapy for myself and so then what did you do how did you get the book published so i went yeah that that was kind of a funny situation so i basically i had all of these notes or not notes but i had all these um pages of my life 500 and some odd and i had a couple you know i i had reorganized it to kind of like the organization in the book and i had a couple people like frankie and mike read it and they're like this is me like yeah that's that's me and so i said you you know you should make this a book and so you know i did the google and and you get these you get these [ __ ] that'll take you for your money so i lost about five grand with uh with a fake ghostwriter or whatever i was like man so finally i got a hold of um you know my buddy said hey just google military authors and send them an email and i i can't remember how many but this lady named lynn vincent um she's here in san diego but she contacted me back she said hey you know i got i got a guy that yeah he'd take a look at it for you so mike yorkie who's another san diego guy um i sent it to him and he's you know he read it he's like yeah this this needs to be a book and so mike and i painstakingly sentence by sentence went back and forth over you know florida to san diego over the period of a year creating a document to send to the dod for review dod review went through good to go no no redactions and then mike had a good buddy of his who's an agent named greg johnson and greg he was able to um yeah he he sent the proposal yeah to hachette book group and they were like yeah so that's that's basically what got that started um i yeah i was i was in afghanistan most of the time but it's yeah i still i still couldn't believe it and the first time my i was in afghanistan when my book released july 7th of this year and i remember this uh this this kid came up to i call him a kid because you know i'm 42 and he's he's a young private and he said hey um can i ask you a question sir it's like yeah he goes did you uh did you write a book i was like no i didn't write a book um and he goes huh that's funny and he held the book and he goes because this kind of looks like he's like give me that book you know son of a [ __ ] you know like i'm not here to promote a book i'm here to do a job and then i was like well let me see that book and that's the first time i ever touched my book while you were on the ground in afghanistan yeah so what's the future hold um another deployment uh but my wife and i actually strangely enough we are going down the adoption route now oh right now yep so um ied kind of made it to where having kids is is going to be an issue but adoption is not so we're we're starting that whole process right now and it's very murky so so weird but you know we'll we'll get all that done and hopefully um within the next year uh we'll uh open up our home and uh give you know give a little one a a great life and so that's yep that's what we're going on and uh yeah i just i don't know other other than that just kind of living life and riding the lightning and and uh slowly trying to trying to build up people around me making up for years of destructiveness so man uh look we've i've had you over here for three over three hours um people can find you where can they find you so i um actually have a website it's uh ryan m hendrickson.com and then um they yeah i'm on i'm on instagram at um tip of the spear rmh um but yeah the the website that has the links to everything so it's so it's ryan m hendrickson.com yes right on man awesome echo you got anything else no i don't actually that's a shocking moment yeah kind of yeah that's a shocking moment any uh any clothing thoughts closing thoughts ryan yeah i mean we talked a lot about my dad but i i it's you know the guy's a hero um and some some good advice you know definitely that has helped change my life around and then you know like we were talking about with don my wife um you know we had we had dated since 2008 and yeah in 2018 when we got married it was it was kind of like like hey i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen there guy we are getting married before you go back to afghanistan i was like man what if i say no she's like you're not you're we're getting married like this is happening so okay so but yeah she's she's a stud um and i'm blessed so but there's yeah there's a lot of people that have done some you know amazing things in my life and i do um you know i think a lot of these different organizations out there like the green beret foundation and i know the seals have one and the marines have one but they really do um one of the things that i would have to say that i'm most proud of because i see it from my dad is my dad got closure on the vietnam war seeing how i was taken care of and the military has done a very good job at um taking care of us you know of of guys that we we come back change forever and there's still a lot of work to do but um i just yeah there's it's it's good it's good and um i definitely i you know i'm proud to you know i'm proud to be a soldier i'm proud to serve my country and i'm i'm proud of everybody that has and i just i think we're we're on the right path so awesome man well thanks for coming on here to to you know share this story and it's it's quite a story uh and obviously any much more important thanks for your service thanks for your sacrifice in in the navy in the air force and in the army uh thanks for being out there thanks for keeping evil at bay thanks for protecting your brothers and your comrades and most of all thanks for protecting us in this great nation appreciate it greatest nation on earth amen and with that ryan hendrickson has left the building uh to go and carry on and live the best life that he can and it certainly seems like we should do the same i agree echo any recommendations suggestions on how we can live the best life we can what do you got i would say overall there's a lot of things we can do so this might seem like an obvious one because we talk about it every single time but i'm going to say it again oh yeah i'm going to say like you are anyway we're working out i i suggest or should i say recommend reading too i was about to say we don't really talk about reading that much but technically we do talk about reading a lot well we're reading i mean i'm literally reading all the time that's what i'm saying yeah so um yes so boom we're doing a bunch of things we need improvement things not we need generative not degenerative for lack of anyway while we're working out we take a beating your body takes a beating i just got over bursitis quickly by the way again by the way i narrowed down what causes my bursitis and i heal weakness let's say the limitations of my body how about that okay from time to time weakness anyway we don't want to worry about our joints while we're taking those beatings with our workouts it's part of life but we don't want to worry about that kind of stuff so good news jocko fuel so we take our supplementation for our joints which is i'm just going to start with this which is joint warfare super krill oil it'll sort your joints right out so you don't have to worry about them also immunity right that's a big thing getting sick like these are things that like we don't want to have to worry about joint immunity so for immunity we got vitamin d also cold war take these yeah if you don't want to worry about immunity definitely take these yes sir also what do we got uh discipline kind of kind of like a not even really a supplement i mean technically supplementation but you want to go kind of lifestyle lifestyle kind of a lifestyle thing and actually now that we're so now that we're thinking about you know the way ryan used the term lifestyle it could be used negative because i'm thinking now if you think about the la the joint warfare is a lifestyle krill oil super acryl is a lifestyle yeah oh yeah yeah fully you should make vitamin d a lifestyle that should be part of your life it's the way you live cold war the way you live why would you why would you not do that there's not there's no reason to not be living this lifestyle there's zero reason this will make you better yeah that's that's that same thing with the discipline yep yeah it's true so discipline is one of those when you first came out with it i was like yeah cool like cool i'll take it but you didn't really sometimes you didn't really understand i didn't really understand i am a full understanding at this time i think uh so yes that is a lifestyle so this one has three methodologies of deployment for lack of a better way of putting it boom discipline powder pre-workout that's my i'm saying my little routine my little lifestyle if you will pre-workout is the powder discipline go the pills i don't take i just don't have to well that's me because i'm going to talk and i need that little different lifestyle exactly right a little hitter but the discipline go cans energy drink that's just like a real energy that's like a treat okay look i don't want to group this in with energy drink because we know what that means it's actually we know what that means this isn't an energy drink it's real energy a healthy energy drink it's definitely healthy somebody asked me the other day like on uh on the social media platform is this healthy imagine being asked if it's healthy and i get to say yes it is it's actually healthy yeah also i'm sure you had that feeling like kind of like tim kennedy had when you asked him if he was allowed to shoot his guns in his backyard oh yeah remember when you ask him that he's yeah he's like i'm not even gonna justify that question with an answer it's kind of like that you kind of feel that only because you know though but here's the thing that's a good question but it is a good question and also it's a good question because the chances that you go through the effort to make actually make something and spend the time and effort and money to make something that's actually good for you the chances of that are rare yeah but we did it we did it uh also got mulk which is also good for you in 47 different ways yeah one of them being protein the other one being tasty yeah so this so i have a thing right in my household lifestyle whatever with the kids they don't get dessert during the week these are only on the weekends so every once in a while like when the smashed smashing pumpkin malt came out i make a big deal out of it you know do this thing say hey you guys want to taste this or whatever this can be like the dessert but not not today it's like a thursday or whatever tomorrow so i build the hype you see what i'm saying next day they're all excited we get to try that new thing you guys got or whatever so make it up give it to them of course they love it but you got the extra hype and then on top of that it's like good for you i'm saying so i tricked them so now in the future hey this is a long game we're playing the long game over here in the future i'll make them think i'm in a better mood than normal during the week i'll be like hey and i'll be the good dad give them dessert during the during the the week and they get the health benefits i'm actually giving you a solid 94 grade on that good job man long term yeah tight i like that i like how you played that whole thing you played the psychological you played the human nature yeah you know you we we could call it manipulation but we won't because you're doing something that's good for them for everybody i see what you i like it exactly right so yes thank you charles jocko belittle my son knows brian littlefield's actual name refers to him by his first and last name when he sees when he's taking more or drinking milk eating the uh all right here's a little inside tip the milk bar is like he'll send me the samples you know so have you got the latest ones yes i got a few of them uh my son ate him yeah and and that's part of the reason why he'll be like hey call brian littlefield to call him and tell him to send more or tell him thank you or all this stuff anyway so yes thank you guys for for creating this this is helping us on many many levels if you want to get any of this stuff you can get it at origin maine.com you can get it at the vitamin shop nationwide you can actually get it on amazon prime and if you're in florida if you're in florida go to a wawa in florida and just go clear out the shelves just go clear them out why because of go discipline go and the can is there we're trying to it's beyond infiltrate but we start we have to start we have to start with infiltration it starts in florida so if you're down there go to wawa clear clean out the shelves clean them out and then we'll get you the whole east coast then we'll be out west coast and pretty soon we'll be everywhere you go you'll be able to get some you'll be able to get that little hitter and it's doing good that's the thing it's doing good for us for all of us who drink this it's doing good for us yeah yeah because you can land in wisconsin hopefully in a little while and be like oh cool i'm going into any store and i'm going to get some go yup yeah it's true so yes origin maine.com speaking of which has jiu-jitsu geese made in america by the way other clothing items made in america by the way also american denim and boots made in america again by the way which is a big deal oh it's a real big deal as far as economy as far as like what you're what the craftsmanship what you're actually wearing like the whole deal as far as rebuilding the economy and the manufacturing capabilities of our nation yes it's a big deal and you can help out you can help that you can help that go to origin maine.com if you want something get something speaking of getting something if you want jocko has a store called jocko store this is what this is a discipline equals freedom store this is what it is really okay also it's a good store oh i see where you're going disciplining freedom which is good very funny anyway you want to represent while you're on this path and the path is not easy some of us choose to represent while we're on this path it feels good this is where you go jocklestore.com uh get you know get a shirt a jacket a hat christmas is coming up we got gift cards on there even yeah i'll tell you what here's what's going on with this let me give you a little heads up christmas is coming right now covid the whole nine yards there is a shortage of aircraft there's a shortage of shipping personnel i'm talking about in the entire world we're not gonna be able to ship what needs to get shipped so if you wanna if you want stuff don't wait don't wait order it now yeah that's the facts yeah that's what i would say too and i'm not just talking about jocko store i'm talking about origin i'm talking about amazon i'm talking about wherever you're getting stuff sent from order it early let's be ahead of the power curve don't get behind the power curve this ain't the kind of year we're going to be like december 22nd ordering my wife's gift for christmas don't let it happen yeah i got to keep that in mind by the way now that you mentioned it but yeah good good tips for sure so but on the store also like i said we have gift cards so you don't got to worry about shipping for that kind of stuff for the gift card you just get it right it's like a digital thing boom yeah you get the code you get a boom boom boom easy money yeah but if you're trading you understand what i'm saying also what else we have is our jocko's t-shirt club okay oh this is a good club this is where you can get like if you're you know you can get a little bit more how should i say layered creative light-hearted sometimes shirts they're kind of like monthly one-of-a-kind once we once we pass the month we're not selling those anymore so if you're part of the club you get these kind of these shirts can you if you if you if you're in the club and there's a shirt that came out before can you get that sure probably as of right now no okay okay as of right now but you never know every once in a while it's kind of like man now down down was really good so let's you know bring it back or was maybe i don't know but as right now afraid not sorry so yes uh it's a subscription-based situation so yeah it's a t-shirt club so look into that if you want that that's cool if you want to support and you want to be on the path while representing good ones that one very much so yes so jackostore.com also subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already which is i don't know it always feels weird saying not subscribe but whatever so yes you are if if you want to subscribe just know if you didn't know that you can subscribe well there you go there's other podcasts you can leave a review yeah other podcasts we got the debrief which is already inside this throughout you're going to worry about subscribing to that one but we also have the jocko unraveling jocko unraveling podcast daryl coupe and i talking about all kinds of crazy stuff all kinds of crazy stuff on that grounded podcast which we owe for your kid podcast which your kid for is coming out so we're working on that one we got a youtube channel if you want to see what echo charles does in his spare time then you can check out the youtube channel you can see what echo charles looks like you can see what ryan hendrickson looks like because we put the whole podcast on there and a bunch of short clips of the podcast which according to echo charles are shareable yeah shareable shareable yes and we can you know obviously we're gonna you know in the in the spirit of brevity i think i use that right we're not going to go into why that's so valuable maybe we could and we don't need to but yes little excerpts you want to share with your friend boom you share the excerpt all good and let's face the fact some of the excerpts have explosions have fire have smoke have all kinds of things that users lasers just those kind of things if you're into that kind of stuff which one of the people that are speaking on this podcast right now is into yes sir maybe even two yes so yeah youtube channel look at that one um subscribe if you want to also psychological warfare if you know what that is that's that's an album of tracks of jocko helping you through moments of weakness if they may arise in your life which i think for most of us they do from time to time so boom just check that out and and if you want some visual representation of that then you can go to flipsidecampus.com owned by my brother dakota meyer where he makes awesome stuff for you to look at to keep you on the path we got a bunch of books you mentioned reading earlier i also concur that reading is important first of all tip of the spear ryan hendrickson this book is just it's a great book all kinds of good guidance i gave you 10 10 of it 5 of it today so check that out about face by david hackworth i wrote the forward to that leadership strategy and tactics field manual you got the code the evaluation the protocols you got the discipline equals freedom field manual uh look what are you gonna say is it lame to say like this is a good book gift book it's kind of lame to say that but it's also the truth yeah it's not lame to say that the truth is the truth is this is a this is a book you can give to somebody as a gift and you don't feel like you don't feel like oh i was i was wandering by the bookstore and yeah oh i thought you might like this like this isn't that book this is about like hey i got you this and people are like check so get it this one goes freedom field manual the new edition way the warrior kid one two three and guess what weigh the warrior kid four once again if you want to get this book for christmas for your kids you need to order it like now way the warrior kid four field manual mikey and the dragons that's a good one for the kids extreme ownership of the dichotomy of leadership the the og books written with my brother leif babin we have a consulting company called echelon front where we solve problems through leadership we have ef online where you can actually ask me any question you want and i will be sitting there virtually on a computer live talking to you and answering your question so go to efonline.com for that we've got the muster 2020. this is the only muster that we're doing in 2020. if you want to learn about leadership if you want to get granular information about the principles that we talk about all the time come to the muster dallas texas december 3rd and 4th extremeownership.com for details ef overwatch if you want to hire someone that understands the principles that we talk about all the time that has experienced tested leadership experience from the military we'll go to eforewatch.com if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families check out mark lee's mom's charity organization mama lee it's called america's mighty warriors and it's at america's mightywarriors.org you can go there if you want to donate or if you want to get involved and listen if you're into misery personal self-inflicted misery and you want more of it you want more of my unremarkable remarks or you need more of echoes chaotic commentary then you can find us on the interwebs on twitter instagram which echo will only refer to as the gram and on facebook echo is adequate charles i am at jocko willing ryan hendrickson you can find him tip of the spear on instagram tip of the spear rmh on twitter he's tip of the spear 42 facebook is ryan hendrickson and he's also got ryan hendrickson.com and thanks once again to ryan for coming on for sharing this story what an incredible story and obviously thank you ryan for your service and for your sacrifice and for taking care of your your comrades on the battlefield and in taking care of all of us and protecting all of us and thanks to all the military personnel out there in every branch of service in the army navy the air force the marine corps and the coast guard thank you for doing the same protecting us and that also goes for our first responders here at home police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all of you thanks for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there like ryan said in his book what doesn't kill you makes you stronger but that doesn't happen on its own you have to choose to get stronger take control of your life take responsibility for your actions something i call taking ownership extreme ownership and yes do that go out there every day and get after it and until next time this is echo and jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 718,224

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint, green berets

Id: Q-vUpQt_U3A

Length: 218min 42sec (13122 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 26 2020