Mark "Oz" Geist Talks About the Battle of Benghazi at NCLS 18

[Music] first off I just want to thank the Air Force Academy for having me and inviting me out for a speaker and anybody that was a part of that thank you so much you know it's an honor to be out here and to speak to you all the upcoming leaders of this country those of you that have served and those of you that are serving as as we speak thank you so much for what you guys do you know I grew up here at Eastern Colorado about two hours from here and that sense of service was something that was always kind of just part of us I had a grandfather that served in World War two he was a tank commander served in North Africa then was back with Patton going across Europe had five Purple Hearts a Silver Star and a Bronze Star so he was my hero I had three uncles that served in Vietnam two in the Navy one in the Marine Corps so when I got ready to graduate high school I was walk I knew I wasn't going to go to college might my path was either gonna be rodeo and working on a ranch or going into the military and so I was walking down the hall with one of my best friends getting ready to go to math class and he started walking past the classroom and I'm like so what are you going he says well I'm gonna go talk to the recruiter and I'm like so you're getting out of math class for that he's like yeah I'm like well I'm joining you that's probably also why he joined the Marine Corps it says a little bit about me right but you know 10 days after I graduated high school I was in boot camp in San Diego I served 12 years in the Marine Corps various jobs I finished up as an interrogator translator in 1996 is when I got out I speak persian/farsi as a second language and I got to serve in a lot of different places in a lot of different jobs while I was in the service while I was in the Marine Corps and got to travel the world and meet a lot of wonderful people that made great impact on my life and that training is what took me to my next level and I was a chief or I was a deputy sheriff up here in teller County just east of ALPA or west of El Paso County and served about three years there good portion of that I was a forensic interviewer of children worked on crimes against children left fat and became a chief of police down in Fowler Colorado near where I grew up so having that sense of service and sense of doing something for the community has always been there well come 9/11 you know it's a state it's the date that changed my life both one in 2001 and the one in 2012 that's when I knew I had to get back in and help this country and serve this country and started working as a private security contractor and I started out working in Iraq and I was in Iraq in 2004 until 2009 2010 and each every year I served about six months to nine months overseas well that ended up gearing me for my next job and my next job was with the CIA everybody knows that's right the Culinary Institute of America not that other one no but uh and that was it was where I wanted to go and where I wanted to work and my job there was a security guard or a personal protection detail and I worked for a group that was called GRS which is Global Response staff and our job was to protect CIA case officers in some of the worst places of the world I kind of joke about it if they if the country ends in stem I've probably been in that country Pakistan Afghanistan Uzbekistan I mean any of those that's probably where I've been but that ended up taking me to Benghazi on Sept 2 in July of September 2012 and I had been there towards the air about 45 days come 9/11 and Benghazi and kind of paint the story was it I didn't feel that was the most dangerous place I'd ever been the people the average citizen there they loved the fact that the Westerners the Western countries had helped them get rid of Qaddafi you know because they wanted the same thing that most of us want they want to be able to send their kids to school without getting blown up or shot they want to be able to work get an education and they don't want the government sticking their hand in their back pocket taking 2/3 of what they make every day that's pretty much the for me that's what boils down what we want in life if you have that I mean everything after that's pretty much gravy right well we got to learn the city and my job was to know every back alley how to get around that city in that country just as if it was my own well that led up to September 11th and the Ambassador came in the day before ambassador Chris Stevens and the reason he came in is we had a pilot during from 2011 when we were helping overthrow Qaddafi there was a Air Force pilot that got shot down and there was a local Libyan that were that lived in Benghazi that had found him and hid him out from the bad guys until he could get to US personnel and so the Ambassador wanted to come down that guy had a had a school and he was opening an english-speaking wing of that school to teach the kids of Benghazi to speak English and the Ambassador was coming down to honor him for saving that Americans life to do a ribbon cutting ceremony well the thing with Benghazi is roughly there was after the overthrow of Gaddafi there was roughly 10 or 15 militias that kind of took over the city there really wasn't any government infrastructure we had one Melissa that controlled the airport and they taxed anything that came in and out of there another one controlled the Seaport they taxed anything that came across there another one Overland traffic there was another militia that went out and bought a bunch of cars painted him like police cars and wanted to enforce their idea of one Sharia law too exploiting the public because they would have strong-armed the public to pay for that security and there we had this the consulate was about eight acres to kind of paint that picture and they had five diplomatic security officers on eight acres to protect the Ambassador now anybody who's been in the military probably more in three days realizes that five guys to protect eight acres is way inadequate part of that comes from we wanted as a foreign policy we wanted to let the Libyans think that they were you know doing that we didn't want it to seem like the America was dictating what they do in their country we didn't want that big footprint they wanted to be a little bit more low-key about a mile from there as the crow flies is the annex and that's where we had our cooking school that's co-linear Institute of America that's where the CIA was that we our facility was about the size of a football field and there were six security guards or six guys from GRS there and we had about 20 some-odd people that we were protecting there that and that's either you know case officers I mean we have our own cooks our own maintenance guys and all that so we can have everything internal well September 11th comes around and we weren't going to do any movement that day while we ended up having me and a female case officer had to I'll call it a dinner date we had a dinner date with a local Libyan couple and we had left the compound about 5:30 6 o'clock at night got over we sat down had dinner with them and about 9:30 I get a phone call from Tyrone woods Tyrone is one of my teammates for with GRS he was our team leader Tyrone says hey us you need to get back to the annex stay away from the consulate and get here as soon as you can he's on a cell phone so it's open-source he's not going to talk too much about anything else details because anybody could be intercepting and listening in on us so I gather up the female case officer I get her in the car and that's when we're heading back if we have encrypted communications in the car so I turned it on and that's when I hear what's going on over to consulate because we share communications with them well what you're hearing is gunfire explosions and after about five minutes ten minutes I hear one of the State Department guys come over the radio and he says if you don't get here now we're gonna all die now there was a few expletives in there too you could hear the panic and the fear in his voice I mean what we found out is there was it they had gotten overrun by 40 armed insurgents they did their job as they were trained to do their job they take the Ambassador put him in a safe room they gather up their guns and then try to protect their and take back their compound well there was 40 guys that took over the compound they got all separated in getting their equipment and they got trapped in their own safe rooms in their rooms in their actual residences because there was about five different buildings on that compound they couldn't get out the only Calvary around because we're in Benghazi is this us over at the annex now our job wasn't to do anything for the State Department but we knew that they had inadequate training that we knew that they didn't have enough experience and they didn't have enough guys there so we had told them long before if anything happens you guys call us we'll be there for you and that all kind of goes back to that Brotherhood in arms that we have I mean I'm not gonna let an American die if I can make a difference in that person's life and whether or not they live or not and we had all kind of agreed on that ahead of time so when they came across with that phone call saying hey we need help the only people that were there was us the problem that we had is I mean we work for the CIA a covert base in the middle of a country a foreign country that doesn't know that we're there well when we first got the call we were hoping because the State Department had an agreement with one of the militias that was called February 17th martyrs brigade and that group was kind of the umbrella group that L helped overthrow Qaddafi all the other militias came underneath during the overthrow well like anything you get rid of that one bad guy now all those factions are kind of fighting for control over lit over Benghazi in the Libya area and they wouldn't respond February Feb 17th brigade would not respond to help the Ambassador we were ready our guys while I'm driving back the rest of the team gets ready they're sitting there sick going up to Bob and Bob's our chief of base they go up to Bob that hey Bob we're ready to go we're gonna go get eyes on so we can at least feed you back some Intel from an American source instead of having to depend on a third country national or a local national bob said now you need to stand down you need to wait and at first you know okay maybe we thought that's that's not a bad decision he's trying to gather up as much information as he can to make his decisions well after about 10 minutes we go back up to him ting goes up to him says hey we need to get going now because we're gonna lose the initiative now we're going to be going on to a compound that is instead of guys that are disorganized in the initial phases of an attack have had time to establish defensive positions have gotten ready to repel any assault that's going to be coming from any other help so Bob said no you need to wait well what I didn't know is when that guy came over the radio from State Department said if you don't get here now we're all going to die tig Tyrone Jack dB Tonto said heck with what Bob had to say we got Americans who were gonna die we can make a difference and left so they headed out they got over there it was about a mile mile and a half if you had the way they the route that they took they get over there they couldn't get right into the compound they got within 300 yards and what do they encounter guys that had been set up down the road and that's we called it it councilman alley is the road that ran in front of it and the road that they came down is called gunfighter and gunfighter is a code word we give the road and we did that because we've gotten into a gunfight there before but we ran into guys with RPGs and ak-47s and pkms and they're receiving gunfire coming down from in front of the consulate so TIG jumps out he has a 40 millimeter grenade launcher and launches three grenades and lands right in front of the consulate and pretty much dispersed all the guys that were coming that were shooting at him the decision was made that three guys were going to move down the main alley way to more which was Tonto and D be moved around into a higher elevated position at a building to provide cover fire as the other three moved in so Todd are Jack and Tyrone and TIG moved down the front out or down that roadway to the consulate and as they come through the front gate what they are faced with is 40 armed insurgents you got a building to your right that's it that's engulfed in flames and directly in front of him about 45 yards in front of him was the ambassador's residence just totally engulfed in flames smoke billowing out of every window and out of part of the rooftop and you've got three guys coming on well the reason they were able to push off 40 armed insurgents is because of three things superior training and tactics element of surprise and sheer violence of action when the guys to their left and right the bad guys to the left and right of the attackers start seeing their buddies getting shot in the head it changes their will to stay in the fight they all pulled back and went out the back gate well that went on Tonto and DB had been able to make their way around and come in to help facilitate searching for the Ambassador secure in the site and gathering up all sensitive material that we didn't want to leave behind and we're getting on it's about 10 15 Jack immediately when he goes up the State Department guys are making it out of there they pull out Shawn Smith's body Shawn Smith had died of smoke inhalation while they're doing that they're going to try to revive him Tyrone and TIG start going inside the ambassador's residence because that's the only person that we don't have a counter on is where the Ambassador is last known position was he was in one of the back bedrooms which it was the safe room by the bathroom well the building now I had probably 15 foot 20 foot ceilings but everything from there to about 3 foot above the ground was covered in smoke was filled with smoke and that hot gas you got to get on your hands and knees and crawl to be able to find anything or to be able to see because you couldn't see your hand in front of your face couldn't see the end of the muzzle of your rifle well we didn't have any firefighting equipment any scbas or any gas masks or anything like that so what did TIG and saw Tyrone do they held their breath would go in as far as they could and then search as much as they could didn't come back out catch another breath go back in over the next hour and a half they probably went in and out of this building 10 to 12 different times looking for the Ambassador check in a different room getting in as far as it could the last time they were coming out they got separated and TIG came out and Tyrone was it left inside he got lost in the smoke and take here's him yelling if you know you know take TIG where yeah well TIG with total no concern for his own safety having just been holding his breath for as long as he could comes out takes a gasp of breath that goes back in and he finds Tyrone now later in the in the morning before we the final attack at the annex me and Tyrone up on the rooftop he'd explain how ticket saved his life because he couldn't hold his breath any longer had take not come back and got him he would have been dead over at the consulate well he gets him pulled out and while he's doing that a counter assault starts happening from the back gate a bunch of the insurgents it started up again gathered up about 50 60 guys and they're going to try to take the compound back they realized that the force wasn't as big as what they thought well there was one guy kind of leading the attack and he has an RPG stop stepping out into the gate the back gate to the Casa he'd step out and behind cover and he'd fire an RPG and he'd step back he'd load back up and then he'd get ready to step back out and fire another one well the third time he steps out and starts to fire tig had made his way up on the rooftop and right is that guy come out to shoot that third RPG or as he shot that third RPG tig let go about ten rounds most of them hitting the guy and now ting didn't realize this and most people didn't till after when we saw some of the overhead footage we did have a drone overhead and I got to see that when I got out of the hospital in mid-october and what you saw was you could see the guy get hit the RPG had already left the tube and it was basically heading directly towards tick and all sudden about halfway there you can see some of the tracer rounds impact that our PG and it turns and goes off into the right into the right now I don't know what people think about their faith in who we had there that night but I can tell you if you don't have a relationship with God you probably haven't been shot out enough it'll change your faith it'll change your relationship trust me well we had somebody else helping us out that night we had a seventh member of our team and thank God thank goodness we did because a lot of things happened that night that wouldn't they are unexplainable why six guys were able to do what they did well when that guy got killed that our shooting on RPG it took the air out of that counter assault and they just pulled back because everybody else started shooting down that way his guys was trying to come through the RPG was their main force hoping they could destroy the the main element are in our main element well took the air out of that stop that now the decision had to make it's getting on about 12 o'clock the decision had to be made do six five guys because I'm not over there I'm back at the annex now taking care of security they're protecting the 20 IB people that were there I'm controlling that the rest of the guys had to make the decision do we stay here continue searching for the ambassador who we've been searching for for an hour and a half were not confirmed on his location because he could have been taken out of there before we got there he might have been kidnapped no one that was there could give us a positive information other than one of the State Department guys because he got City that was with the Ambassador got separated and had been separated from him for about 30 minutes so there's no telling what happened during that time now five guys trying to defend an eight acre compound with an unknown enemy force or falling back to the annex where we knew we had 20 other people that we had to protect and that decision had to be made so that's what happened and when that happened the catalyst to it was one of our informants came on and said there's a hundred more people mountain outside for another counter assault so we had to get out of there the State Department guys they sent them out and they told them make sure you turn left when you go out of the front gate because if you turn right three houses down there was an al Qaeda safe house which is where the attack generated from for most likely well and here it comes to that thing of doing the same thing how many of you drive to work or come to school or drive to your place of employment the same way every day probably most everybody does and you do it without thinking you do it without thinking because it's the path of least resistance you got other things on your mind and that's how you operate and you become a pattern well the State Department guys when they left the consulate every day if they were going somewhere or if they came over to the annex they would go out and turn right that's how they always did it on a regular day so now when their minds are overcome with stress anxiety and fear guess what they do no matter what you tell them they still do the same thing they went out and turned right and when they did they drove into another ambush and they got ambushed on the way back over the annex now thank goodness they we're in a level 6 armored Toyota Land Cruiser that thing can take a lot of a lot of hits well when they pulled up to the annex the front windscreen front windshield had probably twenty-five bullet holes up and down each side had 30 or 40 bullet holes all the tires were shot out luckily none of them penetrated and hurt anybody on the inside but when they showed up at the annex I meet them and they're pretty much in at that position of fight-or-flight and their brains have pretty much shut down because the amount of gentleman that's being pumped through their body and at this point I've got to make them combat effective I need guys to do something the way I do that and the way I've always done that is I give them a specific task because I need to change their brain from what they just went through to the importance of what they've got to do now and I direct each one of them specifically on what I need them to do and where I need them to do it on what rooftop so we have security because you know the bad guys are coming over afterwards so I got each one of them up on a rooftop except for the team leader in Scott Wicklund Scott had been in with the Ambassador and he was pretty much taken out because of the smoke inhalation he was not combat effective so I got him inside the our main building which what I call building C which was our talk or Tactical Operations Center and his team leader went in there well while we're doing this the rest of the team the GRS team ended up leaving and they went out took a left came around about way unopposed and made it back to the annex when the Marine Corps I used to have this thing I call it my six pieces prior planning prevents piss-poor performance okay for us at GRS on our days that we weren't doing something or our downtime what we for us what we would do is one of us would draw a map up of our compound into the area we'd take a map and we would game an attack one of us would have to come up with how we would attack the console or the annex the rest of us had come up how we would defend it and through that we had pretty much gone over the last 45 days I'd been there about every scenario you could think of everything from a big attack like we ended up having it to a lone guy coming over the wall in the middle of the night things like that so and from our chart talking about it and going through it and our selves on what to do everybody knew what they were gonna do that night we didn't have to talk about it again no one had to worry about where they were gonna go all they did was when they got there they said Oz where do you got guys I'm like I've got one here here and here and so they just filled in where they needed to and prior to 9 September 11th a month or so ahead of time we had pre-arranged and pre placed animal cats 50 Cal animal cans full of m16 magazines in various fighting positions and we did that so as if you were there by yourself or there's not as big a force defending you can move from position to position and not have to worry about carrying ammo not have to worry about carrying water because we had water pre-staged so we were ready to make yourself look like a bigger target than what you were you could manure you could do your fire and maneuver and that's what we did that night I ended up in the northeast corner Tonto and DB were on building B and they were provide over cover to the east the rest of the guys filled in on the other parts of the perimeter and TIG has been making his way over to my location and as he's coming over we had started seeing movement out on our eastern flank and you could see him coming up while there was there been a house over there that some civilians lived in so we didn't want to engage if we didn't have to and we weren't confirmed that they were the friendlies or enemies because of them we had civilians that could be living in the impact area well as they're starting to move up we start seeing guns and RPG flies over our head at the same time I see something with sparks come flying over the wall it lands in between me and TIG as he's walking up he's probably 15 yards from me it lands in between us and it explodes it was an IEE d luckily it didn't have any shrapnel it went off and that's when we opened fire on him and there was about 15 to 20 guys attacking us now we had VG's night-vision goggles we could see through the night we had infrared lasers on all our weapons so we could identify targets each of us could see where the others are shooting and TIG comes running up he's shooting right beside me and we've got him in a pretty good crossfire I mean not to be too crass about it but you know I grew up out east shootin prairie dogs and there was a lot like that you'd shoot when he'd go down his buddy comes up to take his spot you take that one down well after about five to seven minutes they decided that the sheepdog guarding this compound had a few more teeth in it than what happened over at the ant over at the consulate so they pulled back they drugged they're dead and they're wounded out and pulled back well now we're feeling pretty good because you know we had been over to the consulate pushed off 40 armed insurgents we were able to locate everybody but the Ambassador repelled two counters or a counter assault make their way back we've been fired upon and all of us don't have any major injuries I think TIG got hit in the side and he was kind of whining from a ricochet didn't penetrate the skin he was kind of whining a little bit and you know we've got enough the wall in front of us and the lights that were our floodlights had got shot so you got a little bit of debris or glass in your face a few cuts on your face but I mean nothing major so we're sitting we're thinking we're doing good and about this time we also get a notification that Glen Doherty or bob is call science buff he was our the team leader of our GRS team in Tripoli they had been able to make a gather up an aircraft make their way down to Benghazi Airport it was a private civilian plane it was kind of like a commuter jet that runs back and forth from Springs to Denver fairly big size but it couldn't carry everybody if we had to get everybody out so the plan was get all the non-essential or the non shooters out and then the rest of us when Glenn's team came in they were going to take all them out our team was gonna stay and kind of hold the Alamo and if we had to make our way and fight our way out after that then that's we had planned for that as well well the downside to that is no one on Glenn's team had ever been to Benghazi and imagine Landon in a foreign Airport in a private plane with a bunch of guns and a bag full of money I mean you think TSA security is bad right so and remember that Melissa that's controlling the airport that militia knows what's going on over at ours I mean they're communicating they know what's going on at our place and they're thinking hey this is a great plan or this is a great time for us to get as many hundred dollar bills out of that bag so Glen's team has to negotiate with them and basically bribe them to get WEP or get vehicles and a guide to take them to the annex so they can come to us while that's going on we start seeing movement again on our eastern and our northern flanks that's all Zombieland out there and again this time they're coming back at us this time they're coming at us with about 40 guys 30 40 guys something like that and you know again we're seeing them move up on us and as they pull as they're getting right to that position of where they would get into our floodlights a car comes streaming out of the out of the darkness and we are back gate is on the eastern side and we had the jersey barriers to SEMA at highway dividers we had those out there and that's kind of what we used to stop anything from getting to our back gate well that car skids to a stop almost hitting that guy jumps out and I see him out of korah Maya he's got his arm back like he's getting ready to throw something so I put about three rounds into him he falls like a sack of potatoes of what he was thrown was another IAD trying to hit our back gate to breach our wall it's Lance short well Tonto and DB and TIG open up they open up on us and we're back into another firefight now this one lasted a little bit longer I mean it was probably closer to 20 minutes and in the middle of this Bob our chief of bass comes over and says hey guys February 17th says you're firing at him and it tick comes over the rail says well why don't you tell them to quit shooting at us and then we can quit shooting at them Bob and his infinite wisdom says it's okay you guys keep shooting at him like we were gonna ask permission for that one right so about 20 minutes we in that one and now we're really feeling good we did get a call from a phone that was the Ambassador had his body or he was at the hospital so there was some discussion on whether or not we were going to go over to the hospital and take it out take and recover the Ambassador because we didn't know if he was alive or dead what we did is because my first thought was this was a hoax and they were just trying to get us out of our defensive positions so they could get us out in their territory instead of from reinforced defensive positions and where we have our supplies and ammo so we sent a source over to double-check what we found out as the ambassador's body was there but he had been he was deceased we also found out that Ansar al-sharia the militia that was attacking us had taken over the hospital because of all their dead and wounded they had taken pretty much over taking over every bed there the numbers they said were somewhere around 200 300 200 dead and a bunch of they didn't say how many wounded but you could figure probably two-thirds more than that glints team ended up coming in to us it's getting on about five o'clock getting 4:30 4:45 glints team shows up because they were finally able to get the bribed those guys into giving them vehicles and as they pull up they get out about seven eight guys they all come in all of them going to our Tactical Operations Center except for one and that was Glenn Glenn was a snot has was a former sniper in the Navy SEALs I didn't know him personally but I knew his reputation and he kind of had that reputation if there was a gunfight going on he wanted to get in it so instead of going in the building he came up on top of the rooftop I had moved from my position up to where Tyrone was on building C and there was Dave who was the state department guy he was in the corner the building was about 40 feet by 30 feet in a rectangle and so dave was in this corner over here Tyrone was over there I had been over there talking with Tyrone that's when he kind of conveyed to me the story about take saving his life earlier that night we talked about our kids because he had a baby boy at that time that was think about nine ten months old my little girl was seven seven months old to get a set of twins a boy and a girl that were two weeks older than my little girl all of us there had a lot of young children and we just kind of got into that conversation about our kids and getting home and that kind of thing because it was that downtime in the firefight because Tyrone had extended he was supposed to have been gone he was going to rotate out but he extended twice for the ambassador's visit because he didn't want somebody coming in that was had never been to the city and didn't know it so he wanted to stay and finish out and do the job so the Ambassador had the best protection and we had the best protection at our place while he was there and about that time bub comes up and now prior to kind of goes back to those six-piece we had built ladders to get up and top up and down from the rooftops cuz anybody who's been in the Middle East knows there's really two types of rooftops they're either flat or domed if it's a dome it's usually a mosque and traditionally the houses have a flat roof top and there's always about a 3-foot wall around the top kind of like a a barrier because traditionally you know if that's my house that culture my sons are going to go out they get married they bring their daughters back they live with the same family to build instead of building a whole new house you just build another floor and the families all lived together so we took inch and a half square tubing cut it up welded it together and then bolted it to the walls so we could get up and down well Glenn comes up and he comes over to where me and Ty are and ty introduces him to me and I had said you know hey it's great to have another gunfighter up here it's been quiet for since about 1:30 two o'clock so we're thinking hey maybe that's over maybe they pulled back Glenn steps across it starts talking to Ty and it's that time of mourning you know if you look off into the east you know it's pitch black but didn't ride along the horizon you see that band of light blue a little bit up it gets darker and darker and still it's pitch black you know the sun's getting ready to come up military you know that it's beginning morning nautical Twilight it's at 30 minutes 45 minutes before the Sun actually comes over the horizon that is the time that a the cowboys and Indians that's when you attack right historically attacks come BM and T or ending evening nautical Twilight it's that hour after the Sun Goes Down because the light as it's changing with the night changes how you see things changes how your eyes perceive shadows you can start seeing silhouettes and I kind of turn over to the guys I'm like you know if the attacks coming it's going to come here in the next 20-30 minutes well call for prayer goes off it's about 507 508 once prayer ends it was 5:11 when the first attacked when the attacks started they launched an RPG and hit in front of the hit the wall right in front of where me and Ty and Glenn were there's about thirty yards in front of us is our outer wall they opened up with small arms fire ak-47s pkms RP Ches and also Samos simultaneously they had launched a mortar which hit right in front of where Dave was and but it hit the outer wall and Dave yells out that he's hit and as I glanced over in between shooting I can see him and he's kneeling on this box that we had Seville to step up over the wall to get on that ladder and you could see him he's holding his head and he's yelling out that he's hit that his head you know in every fiber in your body wants you to go over and help him because your brother's bleeding you got somebody that's hurt and injured but you can because you got to secure the scene first you got to secure because if I pull out of there and go help him that's one less gun in the gunfight which leaves the ability of the enemy to take over that position and everybody dies so as much as we call it self aid first you got to take care of yourself you got to train yourself to take care of yourself how many of you have medical kits in your cars how many of them if you've got trapped in your car and the stick and if you went off the road and got trapped can reach it most of them are in the trunk right most everybody what good does a medical kit do you in the trunk it doesn't it's great that I can use that to help somebody else but I got to be able to help myself first I mean in every vehicle I own there's three tourniquets within arm's reach okay yeah I'm paranoid cuz I almost have more blown off I mean who cares right but if you get trapped somewhere and you can't stop the bleeding how long does it take for a person to bleed out you got a why I think seven seven or eight quarts of blood or something like that takes about three four minutes if you I mean if that long if you hit a major artery well the only way to stop that and save yourself as a tourniquet if nothing else out of this make sure you have a med kit where you can get to it so that's my thought is I was going to go over and help him but no I got to stay there and I'm shooting I go through a magazine I kneel down change mags as I'm coming back up that's when the next mortar hits and it hit about 15 feet to my right and when that one hit it kind of knocked me back and as I stand back up to shoot that's when I noticed it ties in a fetal position of my feet and he'd been shooting a belt-fed machine gun and that thing's gone now it's that's one another gun out of the fight so I bring my gun up to shoot and that's when I realized that I'm injured because I bring up my left arm to grab my gun and about six inches above the wrist it's kind of hanging off at a ninety degree angle now adrenaline is a hell of a drug okay and that sheer will to survive and keep going in my mind another guns out of the fight I'd got to stay in the fight I'm swinging my arm up trying to make it work trying to make it grab while I'm trying to shoot and that's when the next mortar hits it hit about about seven feet short in the same areas the first one on the rooftop and that one I know I glanced over my shoulder and I saw Glenn go face down on the rooftop now he's out of the fight so I turned back again to try to shoot and that's when the third one had when the third one hit that's when I felt the first time I felt pain and it felt like I got stung by a thousand bees and at that point that stubborn hard-headed jarhead and he said you know you better get to some cover because if another one comes it's your turn so I kind of dove down and everything went quiet got to the ground and everything's quiet I could hear all I could see was dust and debris coming down well I sat up pulled the tourniquet out because I needed to get something on my arm but I got distracted because I knew ty was there and I looked over and I saw ty so I started crawling over at a time to see if I could find a pulse on him I couldn't find it so I sat back up and about that's when I see a shadow come up over the rooftop and it was tick he's the first woman to come up over and he runs into Dave now Dave his arm was almost severed off from the mortar blast as well but then about four inches six inches above his ankle his left leg was almost severed off tig got two tourniquets put on him saving his life and then he comes over to me now when he tells the story he says he came over to me because he heard some crying I was there hey I was there and what didn't happen I'm telling you it didn't happen none of it did okay so he so he's a liar so don't trust him okay so he's walking over to me and I was thinking of my tourniquet and I'm trying to get my arm to I lift my arm up and I'd hold it in place and try to make it stay there well then I go to grab my tourniquet and it would fall down I just couldn't I was back and forth doing that and he walks up he says hey you might want to quit playing with that you're not gonna make it any better right he grabs my tourniquet gets it put on and stands me up and he says hey can you make it over the ladder on your own everybody here knows that you don't volunteer for anything right I did I make sure I get over there because I knew in the back of my mind I was still hoping ty and Glenn is still alive I didn't think so but I still hoping that I knew TIG needed to take care of them I get over to the ladder and the next guy comes up on top of the rooftop to help out and he's like hey can you get down on your own again hard-headed marine I'm not sure I'd do that I'm tough and they help me sit on the ledge and the ladders right here and that about that time is when I'm sorry reality comes into effect and I'm sitting there looking down see now I don't mind if I go out with a pile of bras I'm out around my feet and a bunch of dead guys trying to kill Americans out in the field I mean that's a that's ok that's the life I choose but the last thing I want my kids to read is in the old my obituary says survived gunfights survived explosions fell off a roof broke neck ain't going out that way not this guy right no so I'm sitting there thinking how do I get off this roof and I'm like okay if I just lean down I hooked my good arm around that top rung of the ladder and I slide off I mean physics right I'm gonna gravity I'm gonna go down my body's gonna turn and I'm gonna land on the ladder I can just walk my way down and get off right well Murphy's Law what can go wrong will go wrong luckily I hooked that good arm but as I'm sliding I'm thinking everything's going great and then one foot goes through one hole in the ladder and the other foot goes through the whole other hole and I fall about halfway down the ladder catching myself end up pulling myself back up to walk around another guy who meets me up he walks me in and lays me down on the floor well when I'm laying on the floor and sitting there therefore of the agency guys sitting there just fly shining the flashlight on me nobody's doing nothing and I'm like hey somebody needs to get my clothes off because I know I'm bleeding for more than just my arm I mean I just got three 81-millimeter mortar 81-millimeter mortar has a kill radius of 22 feet which means if you're within 22 feet of it you've got a 98 percent chance of dying I was in 15 feet of three of them like I said there was a there was another person there helping out that night well the female case officer she runs to the Med room it says here I'll get the medical shears and I hear her throwing through stuff and she yells out Oz where they act and I'm like they first set of shelves third from the top the reason goes back to that I'm kind of OCD when I set up a med room or something I take a water bottle and I cut the top off and I tape it to something right by where the gurney is or where the rest of the flies are certain things go in there morphine and medical shears the three things I know that I need all times to save my life is my gun my ammos at my met equipment everything after that especially you know in a war zone is superfluous so I've got to know where those things are at or at all times I yell out where they're at she comes running back well in the meantime the deputy chief of bass pulls out a buck knife right about a five-inch blade on it he says here I'll cut your clothes off and he's shaking like a dog crap and a peach seed and I'm sitting there going back through that thing survived mortar attack all of this obituary says got killed by the guy that was trying to cut his clothes off because he was shaking so bad he stabbed him I talked him into putting his knife away they end up getting my clothes cut off we end up fighting about 25 holes most of them weren't too bad I got hit in the neck for chest four times femoral artery didn't hit the femoral artery but pretty close and then a bunch of little things it's up and down both arms and legs a few in my face but we got all the major ones stopped got Dave down off the roof we made it to the airport we got out to the airport and I rode in the back of a pickup truck on a stretcher and they pulled up to the airport and they were gonna stop one of the guys comes over and they were gonna grab the stretcher and I knew I could walk so I'm kind of like brushed him aside and says you know I walked into Benghazi I'm gonna walk out and I stood up started walking to the plane and there's a flight attendant a female flight attendant Arab lady had her Shabab on and her eyes are about the size of saucer plates and I'm not sure if that's because I was bleeding so bad her it's the first time she ever saw a white guy naked remember they cut all my clothes off right she disappears into the back of the airplane and I'm like okay I guess I look really bad naked so I climb up the stairs and I get there and she's coming back to the front with a handful of towels and I'm thinking she's wanting me to put one around me so I reached out to grab it and she stopped about five feet in front of me started laying him down now this woman had a job to do she was hired to take care of the plane her job was to make sure I didn't bleed on the guy on her bosses she laid towels down and I'm like I just walked past her I think you think I'm bad wait till we bring Dave on because dave was bleeding I mean he had lost consciousness he was in and out a lot well that's how we got out of there we got everybody loaded up and headed back to Tripoli and then the rest of the shooters Ty and Glenn and the rest of our team and the GRS team from Tripoli had to wait it wasn't sure how they were going to get out of there all sudden they see they we'd send a source to get the ambassador's body we retrieved that brought it back to the airport a c-130 lands and we're thinking okay great they finally got an aircraft there right well it comes up takes a right turn and there's a big Libyan flag on the tail feather wasn't one of ours luckily they still had that big bag of money so a couple guys went over talked to the pilot and the copilot and convinced him that it was in their financial benefit to fly out of Benghazi so we got everybody loaded up got out of Benghazi and the way we come up with the name for the movie was 13 hours because it started about 10 9 39 40 he depends on whose watch and the last guy got out of Benghazi 13 hours later with the ambassador's body we didn't leave anybody behind we took care of our own and we didn't depend on anything else you got to do that if you're in that kind of situation it comes down to leadership comes down to trust to your people to your left and right and knowing what you can do and knowing your limits and I got to thank you all so much for inviting me here to speak god bless you all thank you for all you do thank you for your service to our country god bless [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: U.S. Air Force Academy

Views: 398,743

Rating: 4.8811321 out of 5

Keywords: geist, 13 hours, benghazi, air force, af academy, ncls, usafa, training, decision making, leadership, mentorship, respect, libya

Id: G97HrkJEPRQ

Length: 47min 9sec (2829 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 04 2018