They Thought He Was Dead- Navy SEALs Intense Gunfight

as we're getting ready to go in uh you know our guys uh DJ being one of them says open open open so front door was open so they start going in but as we're going in we notice off to the left in the courtyard there's like 11 women and children sleeping there so right as the guys make entrance we say hey kick kick some people grab these women and children it was right about that time that a couple of grenades were dropped off the roof and all of a sudden gunfire starts uh erupting from all around so grenades go off a couple of guys get fragged our interpreter really gets fragged he takes the brunt of it up the side of his body he takes a big piece in his neck he's screaming on the porch we're trying to shuffle all these women and children in who are now screaming and Chaos push them into the house I went in started making entries started making entries that was kind of the time that DJ and them went up on the roof and as soon as they made entrance on the roof uh three Fighters one directly engages DJ they smoke check him and they fall come back down the stairs but they realized hey you know we gotta embed it you know we got a machine gun on the roof that that machine gun was sliding off now on the two other buildings we also started taking fire from another building about I don't know 75 yards behind this house so um for me as a as a the assault Force Commander like chaos like you know screaming women and children I got a guy that's bleeding out uh guys that are all you know chills that are hurt but not bad just minor frag um but still checking on that making sure they're okay um you know DJing them come down the stairs or like hey man we got this embedded machine gunner um and we're taking fire from the back so my first thought is okay we need to let let's let's kill these guys behind us so we had some uh helicopter gunships so I said okay I need a full I need a full head count first so it's kind of chaotic uh our medic I said hey casualty collection Point let me know what you can do and I started moving around the target to kind of make sure I got an account see where everybody was so some of our guys were still outside pinned down that were laying down fire um came around the corner at the rear of the building and like three of our guys are like so there's kind of the back porch is like right here and this is like a brick wall that you could stand behind and the three of them are like in a one two three like just out in the open like like shoot out at the okay Corral and I'm like hey like dude get some cover like you know you ain't gonna stop bullets and uh so they they got back behind the wall and at this point dude like it keeps raining grenades like these dudes on the roof just keep dropping grenades down on us um so I finished coming around the building to try and get this full head count and I'm down one every single time and I'm like dude where is this other guy so I'm like like this problem I can't call in this fire mission until I figure out where this guy is so talking to the Ground Force Commander I'm like hey man I'm navigating this out he's like hey man we're ready we'll release this fireman so I'm like I'm down a guy like Gotta Wait um so suddenly it Dawns on me how many guys stepped off for those sleepers at that other house 60 yards away so because I was counting them I was counting two um so I'm like dude I need somebody to go like check this and then I'm like who the [ __ ] gonna do that like we're in the middle of this gunfight so finally I was like I guess it'll be me so came out the door told uh my team leader I'm like hey man I'll be right back I'm going to this other house to get this head count and um I we had two guys that were kind of out next to this little building this concrete building that they were behind laying down fire one of them a machine gunner and I said hey I'm going to that other house 60 yards away I need you to lay down fire on that rooftop and uh which they did and dude uh I don't I don't know what it was like I felt like my gear weighed 500 pounds I feel like that's the longest run I've ever done in my life um I don't know because there was all that's gotten fire but I was just like I felt like I was running in slow motion but and I was expecting to get shot at any minute um but I finally uh got to the other house sure [ __ ] three guys and not two had my full head count ran back and uh we released the first fire mission uh on the house behind us I get back still chaotic our Medics trying to and he's like hey dude you know the our terms gonna bleed out if we can't get them out of here soon so uh guys on the rooftop still dropping grenades and firing in all directions so I'm like hey we got to take these guys out on the roof and uh uh Mark Weiss who no longer is with us uh mark ended up crazy drowning in a diving Mission they're in a diving he was on vacation and drowned diving on leave several years later but good [ __ ] dude so Mark was one of the more experienced guys on the target I come back in I was like Mark we got to take these dudes out on the roof and he's like yeah I agree I was like we need to send guys up there and take them out and uh and DJ talked about we sent this when we started to take the when we started trying to take the roof the second time um we grabbed a I don't know this this 15 16 year old kid and we were like do you know who's on the roof and he was like yeah you know it's so and so we're like you need to go up there and tell them that if they don't stop firing you know we're gonna we're gonna come up there and kill them and uh and he was like okay okay and we're like all right go up there so you know how in a lot of the Iraqi house you have the stairwell that comes up it's kind of a landing and then it comes back up onto the roof yep so we were standing down at the bottom of the stairwell he went up to the landing and literally I'm standing from here I mean maybe a little further than where you are and he went up to that landing and took two steps up and man they unloaded on him with that machine gun and literally cut that kid in half um so he drops we uh we back up at this point and uh I'm like Mark we dude like we gotta we gotta take this these guys out and uh he was like no man that's a suicide mission yeah and I was like okay yeah you're right so I thought then I said okay here's what we're going to do I said we are going to get everybody out of this house and we are going to fall back to the house that's 60 yards away because we already got our Iraqis over there holding it and I said and then we're going to crush you know we're gonna we're gonna Crush uh we're gonna drop this house with fire mission so but we had all these women and children and like you know we couldn't leave them on the Target so I said here's what's going to happen everybody's going to grab a woman and child you guys are out there when I tell you you're going to lay down you're just going to [ __ ] rain hell on that rooftop and uh so all of us grab these women and children we started basically you know bounding back laying down fire just crushing this rooftop so got back to that other house and uh got inside and got up on the roof and you know at that point called in the gunship that just hammered hammered this rooftop and we got a whole bunch of secondary explosions so we had been told these guys uh so I don't know if that was we were joking did they have a giant duffel bag full of grenades because yeah they kept they dropped a lot of grenades on them so we don't know if it was a bag of grenades or if it was suicide best we had been told that these guys had suicide vests so but we had kind of a big secondary explosion and uh and that took that Target out so everything went calm and but that that night was probably the most chaotic night we'd had on that deployment so we extracted uh went to um I flew myself in the OIC and I think our chief went to uh Fallujah medical took our two guys that have been fragged and our terp who they worked on and we stayed there and then you know before we came back but that was kind of my um guys were like dude red did a good job yeah I was gonna ask that yeah and dude that was uh it was pretty awesome for me like it was kind of the full circle to finally say hey man you got this like you can do this how did it feel to you not not from the acceptance yet but how did it feel to you to finally I mean I it obviously had clicked and you had pulled yourself from the platoon as a leader you know and instead of you know you're Leading Men you know you're actually [ __ ] Leading Men now you're not trying to do their job because you want to get in the fight you're leading [ __ ] men how did that feel did it click for you that you did one of us into a leader at this point uh yes but I think the implications I I think before that that had come into place I think this was kind of the final like hey man this is how this works and I think such a great point was I think the old Jason Redman young immature Jason Redman when he said hey man we got to take that stairwell and you know the guy had said no man that's a suicide mission hey [ __ ] that get off the stairwell you know but it was a it was totally a good call it was rikal I mean we would have got guys killed trying to send guys back up that stairwell so you know kudos to Mark uh he was 100 right I mean just trying to process all this information I'm like so um and and you know it wasn't you know the thing I tell people leadership is not like this perfect Road you're gonna [ __ ] up I don't care who you are that's a lot of [ __ ] going on I mean you got women and children you got a sealed been shot in the chest DJ you know who's okay you got [ __ ] a missing head count two people at another house yeah and you got an uh a turb [ __ ] bleeding out of his neck yep I mean that's a lot of uh [ __ ] to process and an ongoing threat on the roof yeah but it was good man the guys did an amazing job I mean it just further showed me what an amazing group of guys we had to work with yeah but that was kind of the most chaotic night we had in the night that I kind of felt like the Tipping Point had occurred so we saw a lot more we had quite a few more engagements we had a lot of close calls on that deployment I don't know we we made entry into a house one night um outskirts of Fallujah someplace where um we went in we had made entry into the target uh and uh and we noticed that the carpet and everything had been pushed up against the walls and um house worn IEDs were becoming a very big thing so uh a house born improvised explosive devices where guys are rigging houses with explosives to blow up the house when when friendly forces you know U.S other allies get into the house so as we're going through our EOD guide noticed it immediately and quickly looked over and sure enough there was a command wire that was running out the back of the house off into the field so immediately yelled out our call for get the [ __ ] out of the Target and and uh and I won't use the word but that word got yelled at man it made your heart freeze and dude all of us like you know 100 yard dash man as fast as you [ __ ] could because I mean we didn't know if the house were going to blow up any second um some of the guys from Dam Neck got caught in a in a house for an IED a few years earlier and it killed the EOD guy um and and [ __ ] some dudes up so we got away from the house I don't know if nobody was on the end of the command mire the guy was asleep but the house never blew but we ended up calling in uh two 500 Pounders and huge actually it was Kyle Milliken who called in that airstrike that night and uh uh who's no longer with us but uh big big secondary explosions damn so we had that we um we took down some other really complicated targets that uh just very hairy but guys have done well we had a night another real close call so we were we were going to take down a Target it was a Mobility op so we were we were in our Humvees getting ready to leave base and we were racking our weapons getting everything ready and the 50 cal something broke on the 50 in the lead vehicle and um we were like hey you know all right well we got to fix this so they were like yeah we got repair stuff in one of the rear Vehicles we need to go get it we need some time okay Roger that so we pulled over on the side waiting for them to repair this um as we're waiting a Marine Corps Convoy drives up next to us and uh the platoon Commander talks to me and says hey man where are you guys going we're like Hey we're heading uh we're heading uh West and uh I'm sorry East and he said okay Roger that so are we I said okay just be advised you know we're going to be leaving we're going to be coming up behind you guys you know at some point he's like okay no problem so they were brand new and Country like they had only been there like a week or something so they went out and turned down uh Michigan and started heading same path we were going to go get our gun back up 10 minutes have gone by and we leave we're heading down the road and uh you know we've been driving maybe 10 or 15 minutes and big explosion down the road in front of us so the Marines hit an IED like so if our gun had not gone down that would have been us uh and we we came up behind them and the kid in the rear vehicle all amped up [ __ ] shot at us with a 50. uh which thank God he he missed he went wide but he skipped rounds under uh our Humvee my home B the number one uh so yeah so we had just had all these crazy close calls um leading up to the the end of the deployment um but for me it was awesome it was an amazing deployment like I'd gotten everything back on track um I was up for orders in my next position so I had a couple of choices one of those choices was uh to screen and go over to damn now can I I requested I said hey I'd really like to do this and I didn't know if they'd give me the thumbs up after screwing up but I got a positive thumbs up across board so I was approved to come back and Screen um you know which is you know it's a first step but even just to get the CEO to say hey I'm gonna let you do this is a big deal so uh so I had that uh I had a couple other leadership positions that were my secondary choices and we were just kind of working on wrapping things up um I also we were waiting for um our next level of missions we had kind of shelved some of the missions so that we had turnover Ops with the next team that was coming in which I believe was two and uh so um my boss came up to me and said hey read this next mission you're going to run as the gfc's Ground Force Commander so I had been running assault Force Commander Mobility Force Commander your next position which is the senior position leadership position on the ground is Ground Force Commander so which is a big deal I mean they're they were grooming me for that next level leadership so I was like wow man this is awesome like I finally like I did it like you got your career back on track you did The Impossible um all my marks were really high um we were working on Awards we were working on flow to get guys back home everything was good and uh literally we were we were we were one week from sending the first wave of guys home um and I was on the last bird which is fine because that come late anyways um so we were just you know everything was good but we we got word that the um the leader the al-Qaeda leader who they had gotten in the big gun fight at the beginning who had you know killed Clark swedler uh was going to be in karma as a matter of fact not far from where we had gotten into that big gun fight in June it was only a couple hundred yards away which wasn't far from where Mike day got shot up also so um there was a lot of um interesting they would put the top guy in an area where you guys have been [ __ ] up you know what I mean not [ __ ] up but bringing it to him it's just interesting that an area where there's so much seal activity you know going after bad guys and and killing them that they would put the leader right in that same vicinity well I I don't think he stayed there regularly I think he came in for a meeting okay is what it was so is it because it was a time-sensitive Target we got word that he was going to be there for a small period of time so I did not think that mission was going to go uh there was a lot of amplifying info that is classified that I'll leave but I just didn't think that mission was going to go so um it was I think we first heard about it around 4 P.M in the afternoon and you know right about time we woke up and we're starting to gear up you know because we slept during the day and then just worked at night so um got um you know kind of heard the Rumblings and the murmurines and and because of some of the things in the background it had to go all the way up the chain of command um the Iraqi chain of command you know senior leadership chain and command in order to get approved I also thought maybe another unit may take that mission so that's why I just thought this probably is not happening so I went to the gym and was working out um when one of the guys came in like eight o'clock or so and he's like hey man like just missions ago so went back we started Mission planning and uh about midnight we launched and it was a pure uh helicopter insertion and we were going to land right on the ax right on the target itself hey guys let me tell you about this subscription service that I've been working real hard on called vigilance Elite patreon basically on patreon we have it broken up into three different tiers we've got tier one tier two and tier three let's Dive In our tier one patrons get all the behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan show that could include behind the scenes photos that could be side conversations that we have in between breaks that could be specific questions that our patrons give 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makes this show drive on so thank you for all the support see you on patreon I was uh I was the assault Force Commander so originally I was supposed to be the Ground Force Commander but my boss came to me and he's like red like I don't know he's like this could be a very hairy Mission uh you know because we were told this guy ran with a pretty heavy security detail we were told they wore suicide vests that they had been trained to Clack themselves off if we got too close to him he was like I know you're up for the GFC but why don't you uh he said I'm going to take Jeff she he said you'll be the assault Wars Commander for the Target takedown I said okay Roger that no no issues uh so we we flew in and we ended up having three groups we had the assault team we had an external security team and we had the headquarters team and um we had briefed that the assault team that we were going to come in and we're going to land directly across from the gate and we had stacked our our breachers and our you know initial entry team and uh our appointment all on the left side door of the helicopter so that they can land when Pilots got turned around somehow and we ended up coming in the opposite way so uh instead of all our you know initial entry team it's myself my team leader and our Communicator sitting in the door on the opposite side of the Helo but you know you don't have time you know it's not like oh rejock rejock it was like [ __ ] go time um so already my team leader was I mean that about four feet he was already out of the bird running I jumped out after him and we're running to the door look back the guys are all behind us um he is number one I Am Number Two uh so I start prepping a crash um uh flash crash grenade is a grenade designed to stun create a bright light and a loud bag to stun people inside of a room so I had the crash in my hand he gets up test the door doors open I I crash it and he and I uh go to make entry with the other guys behind us and I uh um I didn't you know I'd probably done I don't know 100 combat entries at this point but uh I think that's probably the first one where like literally my ass was puckered so tight it was probably up in my chest uh I just I don't know something in me was like you're about to get shot the [ __ ] up uh and and we entered and fully expected to to be riddled as soon as we made that entry in nothing happened uh entered into a very large room uh you know we called a few more guys in um ended up clearing the entire building and no one was there uh we could tell someone had been there recently there was a lot of activity you know uh cigarettes that still had a little burn um things like that that let us know somebody had been there uh but a lot of anti-coalition propaganda and stuff like that but that was it so called the target secure and started our search and we started finding uh weapons buried in the walls we started finding explosives ID making stuff so we're like okay we missed the guy but obviously this is probably the place where you know he would be someone's here with him so it's probably 2 A.M in the morning at that point or you guys are grabbing all this there was a car parked outside we put all that stuff in the trunk and we were gonna blow it in place and that was going to be it we're gonna call it it was gonna be a quiet night you know so myself and the team are waiting for EOD to finish and then we were going to get off Target and that was going to be it so we're just sitting there waiting and my boss comes up to me and says hey man um snipers are watching and we just watched Five Guys run out of a house about 150 yards away and run out of the house and run across the street into some vegetation so I want you to take your team and go up there let's wrap these guys up and find out who they are because that's unusual you know if you just flew in on helicopters and took down a Target uh people aren't moving at night like that yeah uh especially if they're running and hiding and we had seen that before we had seen that on other targets so I got our guys online there were nine of us uh DJ being one of them and we pushed up from the south going north towards his house and there was where our house was there was a road and it kind of made a s the target house was kind of here at the first Bend and underneath that curve was kind of this large vegetated field and on the North side was nothing but thousands of yards of desert so we're we're pushing through the vegetation we pushed uh we had a gunship um overhead as a matter of fact things have gotten so hairy we had been getting into so many engagements and had so many close calls the gunship became a go no-go criteria for us at the end of that deployment like if we didn't have a gunship we weren't going so we had the gunship overhead and were um you know I was talking to them hey what do you see uh we just see some guys that are laying there so any movement any guns no we're not seeing anything okay Roger that so we pushed into this vegetation and dude it was so [ __ ] thick um loud crackly um it was almost it reminded me of like a bamboo Grove um but it was so dense like your night vision didn't work at all you couldn't see [ __ ] you just had this green blob uh and we're trying to crack through this stuff so my Spidey Sense is like going bonkers and um and this is I tell a lot of people now and I try and tell young leaders man listen to your Sixth Sense um I wrongly chalked it up as fear I was like it's just fear this is a hairy situation you know there's just fear this how we this is our tactics you know continue to push through and you know everybody's online we're good you know gunship doesn't see anything but uh but I didn't listen to that I should uh hindsight being 2020 I would have grabbed my team leader and said hey man my Spidey Sense going nuts how's yours what's going on um and maybe he would have said hey bro I think it's just fear let's try Ford or he would have said yeah dude let's maybe we should approach this different way so we kind of kept pushing forward as we're driving through the gunship comes over and says hey you're going to miss those guys you need to turn to the Northeast so Roger that so we we make this turn on our left we're two new guys and our EOD guy so apparently uh those guys weren't monitoring the right freak so they didn't hear the call to make that turn so when we made that turn that kept going straight so as we're pushing we realize you know it was the The Interpreter was off to my left and he said read hey the guys aren't with us anymore I'm like what so we stopped took a knee and we're waiting can't really hear them um at this point we had moved up to the Northeast and um I don't know who was on the far right flank but they they were like hey I'm on the edge of the field why don't we push out let's get out of this vegetation and then we can push up to the north at that point our EOD guy came up and said hey yeah we missed you guys somehow he said I can push out to the West I said yeah do that let's you know because now you know all I'm thinking about is we have two maneuvering elements and an unknown enemy Force so I'm like Roger that we're pushing out to the east you guys push out to the West let's move up in the open area let's reconnect and then we'll we'll go in and wrap these guys up from the north so as we're pushing out that corner um I I was now closer to the front myself and The Interpreter DJ our medic uh one of the other guys Matt is behind me and our team leader and uh it was about that time I'm now out in the open myself and The Interpreter and pushed to the left to start moving down you know to the west to link up with those three guys um and right as our medic is coming out of the vegetation he literally stepped right on an enemy fighter this enemy fighter rolls over and goes to engage him and he shoots him so at this point now I'm out front interpreters out front there's at least one other guy with us that's out front and what we didn't realize is we were we were directly in the Kill Zone you [ __ ] who stepped on him our medic stuff on an enemy fighter yep so what we what we didn't know uh so what the the gunship saw was only a few guys what actually was there was almost a what we estimated to be a 12 to 15 man element that had a Ambush line set up about five yards back in that vegetation facing north um so um what we think probably happened was the leader had been in the building we took down earlier and then moved up to this house you know 100 yards away to the north to sleep for the night and probably had his security detail set up so that if Vehicles came in because our vehicles would have to pull right in front of that vegetation or if helicopters landed in that open field either way they would have been in perfect position to engage us we ended up coming up from the south um very disciplined Force because man we were cracking all kinds of brush behind them and they didn't they didn't engage us from the south they waited until we were in The Kill Zone so um yeah Luke engage that guy had not started that gun fight the whole world erupted at that point um Luke was the first one shot took a round right below the knee uh he had a um uh compound fracture uh bone came out and and anchored him right into the ground uh he's screaming pinned down that's when Maddie ran forward grabbed him the only thing behind us was this uh large John Deere tractor tire and that tree that I guess DJ got behind I was out front I'm laying down fire and I'll be honest um what happened next was I started yelling out ceasefire ceasefire because I knew the angle we were at like we were in this corner and those other guys were off uh to the to the West so I'm thinking dude we are [ __ ] totally gonna shoot each other um so I was initially yelling ceasefire which I quickly realized okay we're in the middle of a gunfight look we can't cease fire so when I started yelling make sure you know who you're shooting at um but yeah at this point we're getting all shot up um Maddie had been stitched up the leg and in the in the arm he he still managed to get Luke back behind that tire um I guess my yelling and shooting I attracted a lot of attention because at this point I had both machine guns turned on me and I was stitched across the body armor two rounds in the left elbow I took rounds off my gun um rounds off my helmet had my left night vision tube shot off um holy [ __ ] turned to try and move back to the tire at this point and I guess that's when I caught the round from behind that hit me in the face so it caught me right in front of the ear traveled through my face took off most of my nose um vaporized my orbital floor broke all the bones above my eye shattered the head of the head of my broke the head of my jaw and shattered my jaw down to my chin and and knocked me out and and Jay and those guys saw that they saw me fall so they thought I was dead um so I'm unconscious at this point um not aware of that uh and and this gunfight's now raging like they're behind the tire and the tree and they're just you know raging gunfight uh about I don't know 15 20 yards 15 yards I mean it's pretty close apart apart yeah from where the tire and the tree was to this vegetation where these guys are but we can't see that all you can see is muzzle flashes um so I come to at whatever Point um the the gunfight we know lasted 30 to 40 minutes you know 35 to 40 minutes um I don't know how long I was unconscious maybe 10 minutes um so I come to at this point and uh and I was I knew I was way [ __ ] up like when I got shot in the arm like that that [ __ ] hurt um a lot as a matter of fact I thought my arm was shot off um after I'd been shot in the face when I came to I really wasn't feeling any pain I just was [ __ ] up I was trying to like okay where am I what's happening and then kind of the world started to open back up and like I could hear the gunfire uh I'll just started to notice um rounds traveling over me the the Tracer fire literally traveling over me I was at this point I was laying flat on my back and uh I'm like okay holy [ __ ] like you're still in this gunfight and that's Tracer fire like Do not sit up um at uh at one point I don't know why um I took my helmet off I'm laying there and I unclipped my helmet and took my helmet off and that's when uh at some point I heard it I took that round through my helmet that now it's drawn in my skull so right through the forehead of my helmet uh I took another round while I was laying on the ground off my right side plate uh and the interesting thing about side plates is I normally didn't wear them I uh the only reason I wore side plates at night one a little voice before that mission was like wear your side plates I was like I don't normally wear my side plates I you know I want to be lighter I normally only wore them on Mobility Ops to give me more protection against IEDs but I don't know little boys just like wear side plates so I wore my side plates and I took a round right off the right side plate um so should show chaos shooting and uh I remember there was a lone on fire and I called out to my team leader and was like how long till the Medevac and he was like red you're still alive I was like yeah how long in the Medevac and he was like five minutes um so I like focused on you got to stay awake stay alive like like um yeah you got to make it to the Medevac like if you're gonna get out of here alive so um I tried to get I knew my arm had been [ __ ] up I tried to get my tourniquet on my arm and uh I'll be honest I'd lost so much blood I couldn't even break the rubber bands on my tourniquet oh my God so which is a lesson learned I used three of those really thick uh rigging rubber bands we use for our parachutes that's what I used to use yeah well lesson learned when you're really weak I couldn't break them I couldn't I couldn't get enough leverage with my good arm to break them so I'm laying there I'm bleeding out this gunfight continues to rage and um more time goes by and I ask um our team leader again hey how long to the medic he's like five more minutes I'm like you said that last time so um were you by yourself over there yeah I'm out front I'm literally pinned down about 10 yards 15 yards in front of the guys so um and and what I realized though is dude you know there's nothing they can do you know they've got to win this fight they can't run out and get you they're going to get all shot up so you just got to be patient uh which is a hard thing to do yeah you know when you realize you're you're bleeding out [ __ ] man um so uh at what point um Jay you know calls me or yells out hey well let me back up for a second he asked for a fire mission and the gunship is like absolutely not he's like you guys are so close we'll [ __ ] kill you like we were we were well within danger close parameters so um they're like you have to figure out a way to fall back from these guys and Jay's like dude there's no place for us to go it's like thousands of yards of empty desert it's like not only that you know I got two dudes all shot up one you know super shot up and you know we can't even get to him and uh they're like you got to figure something out because we can't bring this fire mission in we'll kill you guys [Music] so period of time goes by he calls back again they're like no absolutely not so the third time he calls back and he's like look like and I don't know how long this has been and this has been probably 25 minutes at this point in a very intense gunfight he's like we're running out of ammo he's like nobody's going to be left if you don't bring this fire mission in so finally they said okay well uh what's your jtac number so Jay tax in the military are guys who've been officially trained to it's called a joint tactile air controller so that means they have been blessed by Special Operations to have the skills to bring in gunfire from aircraft and uh and they have to know all the different parameters and all these things so that we don't mistakenly kill friendly forces which we have done with fire emissions from the sky so um they they say to Jay what's your jtac number because they wanted to put the onus on him that if they accidentally killed us it would be Jay's fault and not the gunship's fault and I mean I respect that I don't know sometime anyways um so he gave it to him and I remember him yelling out to me hey incoming and I remember laying there and and you can hear the gun go off and you know there's a there's a delay you know this period of time before the rounds hit the ground I mean decent amount and I remember waiting and waiting and all of a sudden boom it was 40 Mike Mike and it literally hit the ground directly in front of me and well you know in front of me enough that it blew up and I felt the congressive blast and the dust and debris and uh immediately the machine gun in front of me went cold and I heard the guy yelling out ah and I was like Roger that stand by bro because here he comes and sure enough they called in the next couple of fire missions so in between those fire missions Jay ran forward and got me and dragged me back to the tire um so there was that they were still engaging and fighting so some of the things I don't remember to this day I found this out years later uh we were all hanging out one night and our medic was like hey man do you remember when you yelled at me for throwing that grenade I was like what no and he's like yeah like we're in you know we were back you were by the tire you were totally [ __ ] unconscious and I said hey I'm going to throw a grenade and dude you sat straight up and we're like put that [ __ ] grenade away before you kill us at all um and the reason being is because we were I I guess it's a training lesson from Seal Team Four back in the day you don't throw grenades into vegetation because it'll bounce off vegetation and come back at you um so um I don't know but he was like yeah man like like dude I didn't he was like dude you like bark Thunder and then you lay back down and went back unconscious so I don't know I don't I don't remember that story at all I mean I don't remember anything about that um but um finally called in additional fire emissions got the that took the enemy out and uh they called in the Medevac and the Medevac landed about 75 yards from us and um my team leader started to drag me and it was at that point I suddenly felt all the pain I was like holy [ __ ] this hurts so I stopped him and I said no hey stop let me let me get up and uh I still believe my arm had been shot off and I had taken my helmet off so I was like Jay grab my arm and grab my helmet and I'm going to the helicopter we get about 200 meters out and you could see the entire posture shift of everybody in that hotel Force everybody switched you could smell it like this is a [ __ ] Ambush like it just is walking down the road the houses we were walking past like you just you were waiting it was a breath hold the entire way um and I say that because people started doing things they've never done before the pace they were moving we've never moved at that pace before um when we would um when we would do petroleum and training like there's a lackadaisical Patrol and there's a patrol to contact like we're gonna get hit right now everybody was in Patrol to contact mode like it's happening right now you're waiting for a trade at to throw Rd Sims and kick the whole thing off like it was it's right there and I remember the last 50 feet sprinting to the building they had a big overhang and we've been getting ISR updates there's multiple guys on the roof you're like okay so as we Patrol up there's a bunch of guys in a courtyard of this and it's uh it's an Iranian influence cell that we're kind of going after now and they fight completely different we locked down some guys on these on these sleepers on a courtyard and we we maneuver up um made silent entry we go in we're doing our whole clearance and I bolt straight for the stairs it's a huge open room um I don't know how to describe it um just a huge open room with little offshoot bedrooms made no sense to be a house it was like a structure um and they had a two-tier Landing that came up and banked and then it basically just opened into the roof just a an opening in the middle of the roof and you walked up and you're surrounded 360 720 by the roof stacked up the train got right there right at the last little breach of it so I'm about this High underneath it and uh I stood up and threw on my laser and there was a dude sprinting at me at full blast with a pistol in his hand and unloaded six shots at me no [ __ ] yeah so he unloaded um I unloaded on him got off three rounds in a boat lock so dropped my knees and we called X fill um I ran around the back everybody got their guns um up and running and grenades started coming off the roof um so in rally would it happen is so hold on did you eliminate the threat yep he's dead he didn't hit you he did he did hit you he hit me in the in the chest plate in uh one of the magazines so pistol caliber like 45 dead center um I mean dead center um system acne there which I don't know how we did it with a downward angle because that was presented so blind luck smacking the plates were good I don't know where the other five went I don't know how they didn't hit anybody else um but I mean he was probably within six feet and he's there what you didn't realize um in the ISR update we did not get is he was standing at the base of the stairs waiting they never told us that he's standing here waiting for us to come up and there is a another shooter in a sandbag position with a belt fed a PK aimed at top of the stairs and he's pulled off a suicide vest and laid it at the base of the stairs and pulled back a command wire and you can see him he's holding it he's waiting to clock it off and we never know so if I would have made entry if I shot that dude and would have continued to go that guy would have cut me in half so just blind luck that I got bolt lock and I'm forced to retreat um so we started trading grenades on the roof back and forth a bunch of different maneuver elements are happening we've got three or four guys that are fragged from the grenades our chief included um like a Corman our turb or jtac to a bunch of guys not bad but bad enough I mean it's your first time being wounded like um takes you by surprise like your wounded Eagle it's like oh no like how bad do you actually think the worst um but we had to win the fight so we're trading grenades on the roof we're doing that whole thing and um one of the guys wanted to send a one of the mams from the courtyard could grab some perfect English um he's like I know who that is oh yeah he's like it's my cousin like sir tells him again like send that dude up there and tell him to tell his cousin to come down here like we don't know who's up there um this slant was really weird that night with how many women and kids were supposed to be there it was bad Intel he was kind of just hodgepodge and we sent that dude back up there and he's calling out to his cousin you know whatever you're saying whatever you're saying he got halfway up the stairs and poked his head up and that dude Let It Go killed his own cousin and here we go more grenades are coming off the roof so the whole Force now we're basically locked down inside of this building and grenades are coming off we don't know how many dudes are on the roof and now there's multiple maneuver elements of bad guys in and around the city we have to fall back now um we have super badass new guy posted up the saw basically everybody wants that opportunity Rock the front of this building so we can all run underneath it that dude stepped out and just sent it we all ran back and um we got our first fire mission in like a a first like no [ __ ] fire mission yeah so um that was cool I didn't know um I've been hit yet you didn't know you've been hit again I had no idea we um I kept having a boat lock so I had five or three rounds bolt lock I dumped out a MAG and grabbed a new one and when I did it cut my fingers so where the round hit it it had blown out the back of it the big spider web so when I grabbed it it fully my hands open so I dropped the mag and grabbed a new one got the gun back up and running and for whatever reason I grabbed it off the ground and put it in my back pocket I don't know why I didn't I just I did it um so we got back on the Helo we're flying out after that whole thing um we got all the Medevac guys out they refined minimal injuries nothing crazy we're flying back on the Hilo and I'm sitting next to uh to Jay Redmond and I held up the mag and I'm looking I'm trying to focus it with my nods back and forth and I don't know what it is like it never it never even enter my conscious thought that I took around there yeah I didn't know what it was put it back in my pocket we get back to the ready room we're going in for the debrief and I dropped my gear and I looked at it and it still in disbelief me what the [ __ ] is that and I hand it to one of the other guys and he's like that's a [ __ ] bullet dude oh sh that is a bullet that is a bullet dead center um but it was weird when you look at the bullet and the angle it came into um we did a lot of breaching back then we land a lot um I used to run around with the charges captain and I had them all capped in and I had my primary charges and a pouch right there and it nicked the edge of the pouch where the Caps were exposed to so obviously if it would have hit that blasting cap that would have been a whole damn open them on a bad day so for the audience just real quick I'm just going to interrupt uh when he's talking about the Caps man and exposed basically a breaching charge is a bomb you know that they use to blow a door blow a hole in the wall blow whatever up and uh the blasting caps are uh extremely sensitive so if that would have hit one of those uh it would have been the end of the road for you yeah we were running on big charges and we blew everything um who blew everything that was the SOP back then if you could uh if you could blow it you blew it so you didn't even [ __ ] feel you didn't feel the fact that you got [ __ ] packed by a 45 in the chest plate so thinking back on it um the guys behind me said they saw me I'm like take a reflex I didn't feel it the next morning um when I stood up and I arched back it felt like I did too many sit-ups like sore in the sternum um kind of hard to take a full breath but nothing like what you'd imagine like I imagine I would have known instantly like oh my God and then the adrenaline was so high that that's kind of what we use for like a training analogy now like when that adrenaline dumps you won't know yeah you won't know like in approximately a gunfight that is that close would you see muzzle flash and you feel it it's very different it's not being shot out from 300 meters it's not uh it's not hitting the wall it's inside of six feet it's a very different experience no no a Norman shot I don't know you know what that feels like but I always imagined it would knock you on your [ __ ] ass damn you know luckily it didn't yeah no [ __ ] so yeah we got through that one that was like reality is set in now and it's like okay all the stuff in training now now everything has slowed down the CQB is super crisp now it's all real world we're very current and it's good like business is great we're going out every night every other night um we've got assets it's like it's it's awesome as good as it ever could have been um and we go back this is um to the firefight you were referencing was uh the one with Jay Redmond and those guys um that was September 10th um so almost on the anniversary and uh everything that could have gone wrong went wrong but in a positive way um zero Loom there wasn't an ounce of moonlight out nothing and for the guys that don't run around with night vision those things aren't perfect they're not man you don't have any ambient light out there like they don't work very well they just don't so we were going back to the exact same spot two houses down from where that thing happened so we called it to Karma house pretty bad karma here we go and we were going to land on the X gonna blow the front door and take this thing down hard that's what we did back then um so flying helos right to the front door and this is what we're doing and we knew from past experiences exactly what kind of resistance we were going to meet and we planned for the worst like I went in on that thing completely knowing in that first room I was going to get shot damn like they had belt feds they had suicide vests like these guys are committed for sure if we going right now that first room is going to be sketchy and we landed on the ax and we ran through that thing like we've done a million other times and there was no one there dry hole and we get an update that all those guys had left and it ran out the back and now they are an adjacent essentially a corn field but if you imagine um imagine an endless field of nothing just a plowed field and then right in the middle of it is about 500 yards of six foot tall I don't even know what you'd call it it's like straw but it's not I mean you can't see anything um and they're trying to walk us down on top of this guy so we all switch over it's um like 67 of us and we all get online and we're all starting to walk down we've all switched over to fires and we're listening and to the new guys in one of the EOD guys had not switched over to fires they were we literally interlocked arms that's how bad it was you couldn't see [ __ ] we couldn't lose anybody inside there um we'd never walked through the Palm grows before we didn't have a dog we didn't have the experience and looking back on is one of the most dangerous things I've ever done because you knew the guy in there had a gun like for sure you knew that uh they run out with s best you know they're committed so now we are walking on there so if you imagine just a big open field with a big Sparkle in the center of it and we're going to walk towards it and we're going to walk until we find this guy okay so we do completely committed interlocked arms and we are walking forward and we're getting the updates 15 feet 10 feet you're standing on him and you see everybody looking down like he's not here third person from the right you are standing on him and we all look over to the right nothing like what the [ __ ] so we're all online standing right there and Jay calls an audible he's like home maneuver element take a right-hand turn because we know this in an open field we just have to cross and now it's completely open now we can regather our [ __ ] and we can assault from this side by walking through all this all this crazy brush we can approach it from the open side and just walk in the brush a little bit maybe call him out do something else and when we turn right this element stayed they didn't get the word so now we have a bad guy or element and then another element now we're in a Polish ambush we turn we walk out and we enter this beautiful manicured open field at least not an ounce of cover anywhere in it there's not a rut there's nothing there's not a rock there's a single Tire and it's about 20 feet yeah 30 feet from the edge of the uh from the edge of the brush line it's just out there and we're standing there and a team guy gaggle standing around like wondering what the [ __ ] is this guy really there is it a dog is it some animal like these guys are clearly lost and we don't realize that that bad guy is in there probably six feet inside and he's looking at us and we're from the middle of the wall and we're close we're having a full-on conversation and at one point we're trying to relay to the other guys because now we know we've lost three now they're lost and Brush Country we have to reconsolidate them so we can deal with this guy because now we know the reality we've turned the entire profile blue forces bad guy blue forces we've got all the rest of the guys over here on on the west side and now we're trying to do a link up we have to get them around to reconsolidate with us um the Blue Force picture and knowing where everybody is um it's challenging at times but you really have to know them we basically walked right up to the edge it's um Jay's there or Corman or terp the JTAG and a guy what's called Maddie is standing there with me and we're all in kind of a team guy gaggle and Jay hears something in the bushes and I think he believed at the time it was the guys and he screamed out hey and when he did that dude let off the biggest Hollywood belt-fed burst I've ever heard everybody dropped it was like um we used to do the new guy scenarios you know you're doing land Warfare the first Contact and all the Head Shed dies just and now you gotta drag around like you know playing war games that's what it was like everybody hit the deck and there was a tree probably 30 feet that way and I remember I turned I heard it watched them drop and I was sprinting so fast to that thing I remember the dust kicking up in front of me when he was tracking me um I dove behind the tree and he pounded on that tree for what seemed like an eternity um I was on my back looking up I mean you can imagine helmets cockeyed there's no ambient light I can't see [ __ ] through my nods um and there's just dirt blowing all over me I mean I am consumed by this I don't even know where he's at now I don't know if he's on his feet chasing me down like I'm just overcome with withering [ __ ] fire um and then it stops and he pans back over and he starts to engage the dudes um this thing goes on for um for a little bit we're trying to reconsolidate um the jtac has went out and he's trying to grab people now he's behind a tire I remember looking over and seeing um Jay and I remember him sitting upright and I watched him get shot one more time um right in the face and it looked like that was it he hit the ground so hard you knew he was dead um so it's an audible it has to be made we have the jtac and behind this tractor tire that I mean it's a it's a tractor tire it's not big it's about that half the ground serves no purpose and he's behind it and I'm directly adjacent from him looking at him like I have an out out this way we can't because we have all these dudes that are shot up and I remember it was like the scene from Black Hawk Down come to me [ __ ] you come to me ready yep and I got up and I ran as fast I could and I dove um like a baseball slider in behind that thing in it it was such a sigh of relief to feel another human next to me um I was so thankful that he was there and now we have to figure out how to get out there and bring those people back here and this whole thing is happening very very fast so G's been shot multiple times he's uh he's discombobulated he's talking and this guy's still trying to shoot him but he can't see [ __ ] because it's black so if you're quiet he can't hear you my the bravest thing I have ever seen in 17 years happen on that night um I watch Maddie get up and run forward after he'd already been shot and grab our corpsman is dragging him backwards just like on the movies Corman pulls out his pistol and he's shooting into this push line um and Matty get shot again oh spins him around and dumps him he gets back up grabs him and gets shot again dumps him and he gets back up and continue to drag him back until he got them all back to the tractor tire you know we're all pulling them in there we basically just dog piled on him just plates on plates um just trying to build up a human wall to not let these people be shot again um and he's still shooting us the entire time he hasn't let up um he just doesn't know where we're at now so if we can keep everybody quiet we've got hands over mouths like people are screaming we had uh the Corman got shot through tib fib shattered his leg Maddie got shot through the brachial artery hit his humerus and shattered that and it flipped over the back of his neck and I remember because we talked about it later and it made sense he looked very confused at one point um in between dragging the corpsman back and he said he was looking for his arm um when it broke it snapped and went over his neck and he looked down and just saw those um couldn't see it um I mean there's no Moonlight you can't see anything you can't see under nods right there it's just gone you look down and just stumped her so he doesn't know he's been shot in the leg um Jason shot the leg in the side plates I think he took a double stack to the Elbow so it blew out his entire arm and he took one through the face that basically removed his jaw removed his nose um and you could look inside him it was as bad as it could have been um so we get them back and we go into T Triple C mode tourniquets on there we're packing wounds we're doing that and thank God for that course my um I don't know where we'd be without that the live tissue training and all that that was um I was so prepared for that um we were in and out of that blowout kit so fast to uh and I I joke with Maddie about it he was um I put the tourniquet on and he was begging for me to stop I was like two more two more turns finally got the blood to stop I'm gonna head my fingers inside his arm feeling out that thing um the Medics working on Jay and um the corpsman putting on tourniquets pressure dress and all that I remember having a distinct conversation with Maddie he's begging me for quicklot he's like quickly over and over and over I remember from talking to uh the surgeons during the training he's like if you dump quicklot in there the only way to remove it is to cut it out and it's inside of his bicep and I mean to me I have the bleeding stopped I have it under control and I'm not pointing quickly to you because they're going to have to cut it out of you like I'm saving you you're not dying here like you don't need that quicklot um we had a bunch of hemostatic dressings like I'm packing and saying it's fine and uh he wouldn't shut the [ __ ] up about it so I told him yeah and I grabbed a thing a quick Lut and I mean this is underneath a tractor type where rounds are coming over it's like I've got it and I pretended like I did it and I went like that and uh he's like thank you so much so yeah you never got quickly um so the next thing we um we have tourniquets on them we are talking about what we're going to do now and he is still engaging and the jtac-j um starts prep in a fire mission and it's close um it's the closest uh at that point is the closest uh fire mission the Coalition forces the entire war no [ __ ] yeah last night um 10 meters 15 meters 10 [ __ ] meters I mean close enough where you could take a grenade and throw it holy [ __ ] I mean like it was they started walking him in by this time the other element we had had maneuvered away um nobody was firing because we didn't have um we didn't have a picture we didn't know where this dude was coming from we didn't know where our forces were and we thought we thought that if we were to engage this guy we would have hit our own blue forces so there's a big flow in the fire and we were basically just being withered that we were we were just getting chewed up um I mean strobes getting shot off helmets like it's like it's in there and they're everywhere but hitting human beings so we've essentially taken the tractor and we've stacked up plates in between them on our sides and now we're just working on people we're laying on top of people um doing whatever we can in Jace prepping for fire mission and he's asking for 25 Mike and 40 Mike Mike and basically to start walking at him and I remember a distinct conversation they said no they said it's too close and he said we're gonna [ __ ] die anyway Juliet Alpha sent it gave his initials and he they started dropping it and you could feel it you could you could feel the vibration start to get closer and closer and start to bounce you off the ground a little bit and kept coming kept coming kept coming and then they started going tally On Target and uh I mean you could hear that dude the impacts you'd hear him smack um you could hear him screaming and it was very satisfying I just let him go like let him go we're not walking back up that tree line again let that dude die we called in um we called in for a Medevac they landed right on the X um right there where we were we loaded him on there and I jumped in the corn had already been shot so we had him Maddie and Jay Redmond and we talked about the typical team guy [ __ ] sometimes about if this happens just put me out of my misery you know what I mean yeah if I get hit by an IED and it blows my dick off just finish me like people say that [ __ ] yeah that would have been one of the times um if my face looks like this put me down and he was the most coherent the most calm dude I have ever seen sitting upright leaning forward letting [ __ ] pour out of his face so he could breathe um and he didn't say much man um I don't know if the shock hit him I don't think he knew how bad it really was um so I'm working on Maddie and the Hilo we're kind of doing the whole comb thing running down his fingers for finding bullet holes we're trying to patch all this stuff up and we'd get him back um those Hilo Pilots flew that bird so fast um I thought they were going to suck us out of the bird but we had to shut the doors I've never been in the 60s that flew that fast ever hey everybody I'm Sean Ryan click here to subscribe to the Sean Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest and most compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find you can find that right here

Channel: Shawn Ryan Clips

Views: 508,306

Keywords: vigilance elite, shawn ryan, shawn ryan show, the shawn ryan show, shawn ryan podcast, vigilance elite podcast, shawn ryan navy seal, navy seal podcast, navy seal, talk show, podcast, podcast show, real talk

Id: H0izQBHUqFE

Length: 69min 35sec (4175 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022