82nd Airborne in Iraq Tasked with TST Missions | Lance Strong | Ep. 325

Enlisting in the Army at 17 under the Delayed Entry Program, Lance began his military journey as an Airborne Infantryman, inspired by Band of Brothers. After completing training at Ft. Benning, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg and quickly deployed to Iraq in 2007. Integrated into a RSTA Squadron, he participated in high-intensity combat operations, including nightly raids and Hunter-Killer Team missions. On September 10, 2007, during a major operation targeting 19 high-value individuals, his convoy suffered a catastrophic accident, resulting in multiple casualties. Severely wounded, he underwent extensive medical treatment and a grueling 10-month recovery before being medically retired at just 20 years old. Transitioning to civilian life was challenging, but he became an advocate for veterans, working with high-profile figures, including Gov. Schwarzenegger, to push for veteran-friendly programs. https://saddlesinservice.org/ https://dothethingmovies.com/ Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured —————————————————————- Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 50% OFF!!! Fabric Gerber Life Insurance ⬇️ https://hello.meetfabric.com/term-life-insurance-partner-teamhouse?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=premium_podcast_vanityurl&utm_content=teamhouse ____________________________________ Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— To help support the show and for all bonus content including: https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] 0:00 start Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:43Speaker 02

  Special Operations.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 3:03Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 324 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. I'm here with our guest tonight Lance Strong, who served in the 82nd Airborne with Arista Squadron. They are, we'll get into it, but Recon Squadron, but they ended up with a very direct action mission, as we'll get into. He was, you know, seriously injured in Baghdad in a pretty horrific accident we'll talk about. Med boarded out of the Army and have done all kinds of interesting things, varied things in the interim since he got out of the military. So Lance, thank you for joining us tonight.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. I definitely feel privileged and honored, you know, not having served in special operations or done anything too special. And I probably hold the record for all of your guests of having the shortest, most condensed military career in your podcast history.

• 3:57Jack Murphy?

  Well, this is what I offer to you and those like you is that at least you're not a dirty nasty leg. I don't know if I could tolerate that. I don't know if I can tolerate that. But seriously, though, this isn't just a special ops podcast. I don't want people to think that. We try to include people all across the military, across the intelligence community, including some law enforcement and things like that.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  For sure. Awesome. All right. I'll fit right in then.

• 4:27Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, tell us a little bit about growing up. You came out of a small town, right?

• 4:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. San Luis Obispo, um, which is the central coast of California. So, most people have heard of, uh, Santa Barbara. A lot of famous people, you know, it's, uh, north of, um, of LA. And then San Luis Obispo is kind of smack dab in the middle between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Rolling Green Hills, uh, lots of vineyards these days. When I was born and raised, it was mostly cattle ranches. Those are all vineyards, pretty much. Um, small town, it's getting bigger and bigger every time we go back and visit. But, yeah, you know, what, what was interesting, I think, um, you know, and unique, uh, where I grew up.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  I, I think out of my class, you know, graduating high school, there was two or three of us, you know, that, that entered the military. And it was, um, 2005 when I, when I signed up.

• 5:25Jack Murphy?

  What, what was the size of your, uh, graduating class in high school?

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Probably 400-ish, you know?

• 5:31Jack Murphy?

  Oh, okay. So a small town, but that's a pretty big graduating class.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  Really the only high school in the entire town, right? So that's it.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Uh, I think there was one other private high school that was much smaller, but yeah, so big, big class, um, I suppose. Maybe it was only 300. I, I honestly don't remember, but, um, yeah, only high school in town. So Tigers. Yeah, it was good. So my dad went there too. So it was funny is I, so I go, you know, the same high school my dad went to. He was born and raised, um, same, you know, same town. And we had one auto shop teacher and maybe like an English or math, uh, teacher, right? That was the same, like they started when my dad.

• 6:13Jack Murphy?

  Oh, right.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  The year after having me, they all retired. They could not handle two of us. So, yeah.

• 6:22Jack Murphy?

  So three, three people from your graduating class end up in the military. And one of them joins the army with you, right?

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, so one of, one of my best friends that we, uh, you know, we grew up, I probably knew him since the first grade, you know, um, awesome friends and we, we kind of were on our own path going to join, you know, and obviously, I mean, just like any other veteran in our generation, nine 11, you know, had a huge, huge part of that. I think my buddy, he, um, he was always gonna go. I mean, like, you know, I, I don't know when it was for him, but I think Black Hawk Down, the movie, you know, he was gonna be a Ranger from the day he was, you know, born kind of thing. Um, and for me, I probably didn't get serious about it until nine 11.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  Um, I would have been like eighth grade, 14 or so. Um, you know, really, really had an impact like it did all of us. And really, you know, I, I always looked up to veterans, you know, I know a lot of young people, never really saw, but I mean, whether it was movies or, or real stories or, you know, I had all the books, you know, everything growing up and I just, I always wanted to say thank you, especially to like the Vietnam era. Um, I knew a lot of Vietnam veterans who were kind of my heroes and, um, just the crap that they went through and everything they dealt with. Um, like I felt so called to somehow say thank you. And the only way I kind of knew how was to be like, okay, I'm gonna,

• 7:57Speaker 04

  you know, walk a mile in their boots, you know, and, um, so that's what I did. Um, I was 17 when I, when I joined, I needed my, uh, parents, you know, permission slip, you know, to Uncle Sam. Um, and they weren't super stoked on it just because there was two wars going on in 2005 and, you know, my recruiter had been told him like, oh, don't, I've been in the infantry for 10 years. I've never been deployed, you know, and stuff and, and they, they knew I was going right over there. Um, and that's what I wanted. Um, I think they knew as soon as I turned 18, I was gonna go anyway. So they, they signed that. Was in the delayed entry program for the rest of my senior year with my buddy. Um, so I think we even

• 8:38Speaker 04

  got promoted once, you know, or something like that in that delayed entry program. If you, yeah, I don't know.

• 8:44Jack Murphy?

  You like take a PT test and, you know, something like that.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, PT tests and then like learning all the ranks and some, you know, military stuff, whatever. So yeah, and for me, I never looked at any other branch. There was no way I was gonna go in the Navy. I don't like water, don't really like boats. The last, the last cool ship to me was a pirate ship, and there's none of those in the Navy, you know, so wasn't gonna join the Navy. And the Marines, I, I mean, the Army for airborne infantry was giving out $20,000 signing bonuses too in 2005. So it was always gonna be the Army. I felt like the way they looked at obstacles, you know, and tried to figure out how to get around them instead of just, you know, bashing

• 9:32Speaker 04

  right through, although some units, you know, do that. But I don't know, yeah, I think if I could live another life, I'd try to be a pilot, you know, or something like that. But I'm, I probably, from the time I watched Band of Brothers, airborne infantry was what I wanted to be. I wanted so badly to go to 101st Airborne. I didn't, had no idea they weren't jumping. I just, you know, thought they were so cool in, in Band of Brothers. And, uh, yeah, so, um, I think I graduated 2006, June 2006, and I mean, within a few weeks, I was, you know, headed to Georgia, Fort Benning, the whole, you know, Sand Hill experience, OSA.

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• 11:43Speaker 04

  So it was, it says like 16-week basic and infantry school all in one. I don't know if it was the same when you were going through or not.

• 11:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's pretty similar. And so, I mean, yeah, you, 16 weeks later, you're a highly-trained combat killer and you're also rich with your $20,000 sign-in bonus.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  So rich, yeah.

• 12:04Jack Murphy?

  King of the castle.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I probably was the only private from our class that didn't blow that on the lemon lot cars and, you know, strippers and the whole bit. I, I saved all that up, luckily. Yeah, saved every dime of it. You know, I really didn't have time to buy much of anything either. So as soon as I finished, it was kind of a weird time, too, for all the training because they, like, there were so many people joining at that time. They didn't have like enough cadre to keep things like super moving. So even when we got there, like, we waited around, basically, just getting smoked and just, it sucked, like, waiting around to even start basic. And so you never knew, like, wait, when does it start?

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Because it all sucked so bad. And it was like, man, I made a mistake. And those like two or three weeks of waiting for basic to start, you know, were almost worse because it was just like, I'm wasting my life, like, let's go, you know, let's do this. And then same thing kind of happened after I graduated for airborne school. There was a lot of, had airborne on my contract, everything. There was just like a backlog, right? So we're like waiting for the school to accept us and just doing stupid stuff, right? Details and running a lot and, and all that.

• 13:21Jack Murphy?

  Picking up bank accounts.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Got to go home for Thanksgiving. Yeah, and then, and then finally started. Um, yeah, but it was, um, airborne school was my, was by far my favorite time in the military. I think, uh, uh, you know, nights and weekends off. It was, it was, it was fun. I loved airborne school. I, I didn't, I don't know if, did you get to do the towers?

• 13:43Jack Murphy?

  No.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Okay. So I lucked out too, cause I, you know, the whole time I was like, I want to do the towers, but then you're like there and you're like, I don't, I don't want to do the towers. So that, that doesn't look fun at all. And like the guy before us, like our chock or whatever, he flew into the tower and got stuck. And it was just like, yeah. So they call it off, right? When that happens, they call it off. It takes forever to get him down, all that. Um, and, and it was great. Cause I heard the towers were even worse than the, the actual jumps. I don't know if that's true. Cause I never did the tower, but.

• 14:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. It's a little, it's a little iffy, right? I don't know what it is. Like, like heights hit you differently psychologically. Like jumping out of that, like you, for sure. Did, what was it? A 34 foot tower?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. Yeah. 36, right?

• 14:26Jack Murphy?

  Something like that.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  It's like at the

• 14:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  scientific height of being afraid of heights.

• 14:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  So it's high enough. Yeah. To make people not want to jump out. Yeah. For sure.

• 14:37Jack Murphy?

  And then when you jump, uh, you know, at, well, 1500 feet or whatever it is. I mean, that's still low enough. You can see like little pine trees down there and you're like, well, I don't know if I want to go and do this. Um, but then years, years later, when I did the free fall course, it's like you get that high up at like 12,000 feet. The earth just looks like a painting. Like your brain doesn't really register.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  No. Yeah. For sure. For sure. It's a, all those are different experiences.

• 15:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Loved airborne school. Um, I, my, I'll just share one jump story, right? Cause I have to, I'm on a podcast, right? So my fourth jump, um, everything had gone pretty well. Actually I got a concussion on the first jump. Hit the back of my head. Um, and I was like throwing up all night and like passing out and stuff. But if you go to sick hall, like you're done. You're, you know, you wash out or whatever. So I'm like, no way. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. You know, they always make you run, right? So if you break anything, a foot or a leg or something like that, there's no way they can, they'll weed you out because they'll know you'll be limping, you know, and fall out of the runs.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  But so the fourth jump, as I'm going out the door, like I'm handing, you know, I'm handing my line to the jump master, he, he's like, goes like, whoa, whoa, whoa. As I'm like jumping and it made me hesitate, right? And I think he was talking to the person behind me who was like rushing me or something. But that whoa, whoa, whoa made me hesitate. So I didn't get a good jump out of the aircraft. And I bounced the down the side of the fuselage, like bounced off the fuselage, got sucked underneath. My chute ends up opening and, and I'm twisted, like completely twisted up. And the guy from the other side jumping out lands on my chute.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  And then he like runs across my chute and I just hear him go like, ah, and like scream and fall. And his chute opens again and, and, and I'm like trying to get out, trying to get out, doing the bicycle kick thing, you know, to get, get everything straightened out. And as soon as it does, you got the rucksack and your weapon and everything, right? As soon as it does, like I have almost no time to, to get this off of me, right? And I pulled the quick release and I, as soon as I got my weapon like off, like I just hit the ground so, so hard. And there was a black hat there and he was like, you know, screaming now the bullhorn. And he's like, my God, private, you're gonna die, you know, all this stuff. And, and then I like look up and I see a dude coming in real hot, right to the black hat's truck.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  And I, and I like, you know, I'm like, hey, hey, hey. And he turns around, he's like, what's going on? And the guy just puts that taco sized dent in the side of his, you know, F-150 or whatever. Boom. And he's like, you know, God, you guys are gonna kill me today, you know? And he's, you know, all mad and everything. So I was actually pretty nervous for the fifth jump because, you know, two of them have already hurt really bad. And I was like, maybe, maybe this wasn't a great idea. The whole, one of the reasons too is like, I loved flying, loved taking off. I love flying around, but I hated the landing part. So I thought, well, if I jump out of the plane before the landing part, like, hey, I'll skip my least favorite part. Well, again, I loved jumping out, I loved floating down. I hated the landing part, that part sucked.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  But that fifth jump just went perfect. It was, it was like, Textbook, like I didn't even feel it. It was amazing. Um, so graduated my, my grandpa, Papa Strong came out with my mom. He, he got to pin my wings on me. Um, that was a pretty proud moment for me, uh, especially because that, that was my, you know, my, my goal. And as I mentioned to you before, um, some probably towards the end of, uh, the school, they, they, um, took a lot of us infantry guys in from Sand Hill. And, you know, if, if you didn't have a RIP on your contract, they asked if you, you know, wanted to go to RIP, um, Ranger Indoctrination

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Program. I think it's called RASP now. Um, and I, I don't know, just being like young and dumb and already having to wait for the different schools already. I just, I wa- I wanted to get with the unit. I wanted to get over there. I didn't want to miss the surge, you know, all that kind of stuff. Um, so that's what they were kind of talking about was this huge, you know, mobilization. Um, and yeah, like I said, I wanted, I wanted to go 101st. So when I got my orders, you know, it said 82nd on it. And I remember just being like, oh, man, like I, I missed, I'm going to the rival, you know? Um, and I remember one of the, one of the cadre like took me aside and he's like, you know, you're, you're an idiot, man. You're, you're super lucky.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Like this is the best, you know, this is the most prestigious, um, you know, airborne unit there is. Um, you know, don't worry about that Band of Brothers crap. They don't even jump anymore. You know, they're, they're, um, dopes on a rope now, you know, uh, rappelling out of helicopters. So you're, you're lucky. And I was, I was like the only guy that I knew of in any of the chocks around me that was going to, uh, Fort Bragg. So I think I went straight from airborne school home to do Christmas. Um, so had a couple, couple of days, did Christmas with my family and then got on a plane and, and then got to, uh, got to go to the famous, uh, Fort Bragg, which is Fort Liberty now.

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• 21:23Jack Murphy?

  So you get to your unit. Your unit's already deployed, right, when you get there?

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I don't even, I don't know if anyone knew like what unit, you know, I'd be in. So when I got to Bragg, it would have been December, like real late December. I don't know, like 26th, 27th of December. It is a ghost town, like a ghost town. All of the, you know, divisions or the brigades are already mobilized. One had just gotten back, I think, from Afghanistan. And kind of the word on the street was, you know, the new guys will probably go there and train up for like a year and then go back, you know, for another 12 or 15-month deployment, you know, to Afghanistan.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  So I had, I remember calling my parents and be like, hey, don't worry. I'm not gonna deploy for like a year. I'm pretty bummed, you know, whatever. Um, and then within like a couple of days, um, it was like, actually, um, you're assigned to the first of the three, two, five. Um, so they, they always said one thing will change three times, twice every five minutes in the first of the three, two, five. So I get to, I get to them and it's just their rear D. Um, there's, you know, hardly anybody there. Um, so some guys recovering from some things. Um, and yeah, I get to them and we, I mean, I thought,

• 22:52Speaker 04

  I thought I knew what running a lot was. Um, when you get to the eight second, especially when you're a new guy, you know, they, they, you find out real fast. Like if you didn't already have shin splints, like you're gonna get shin splints. And, um, that was the first time, probably my first run with, um, that unit, the rear D guys. I'm not talking about the big slow, like division wide runs. I'm talking about just the unit runs in the morning, first thing in the morning. Um, I think that first run was like nine, 10 miles. I don't think I've ever, I had ever run that far. I, it was first time I got runner's high, like legit runner's high. My legs were not stopping after I was done, you know, and the pace was just insane.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  So I spent, um, a few weeks, which again, I'm like in this waiting period, don't have a unit, just kind of waiting around. Um, and yeah, it was just, it was kind of a weird, weird experience, but then yeah, had to tell them, call the family and say, hey, I'm a, getting on a plane, it's headed for Germany and then Kuwait, uh, like the next day, you know, so yeah. Couple of weeks there, I remember watching a few football games at this, at the, uh, they have a little sports bar there, you know, in Fort Bragg and, um, yeah, and then headed on out, um, to Kuwait, did, did like the most ridiculous, um, pre-deployment training in Kuwait like you've ever.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  So again, you were saying like, I'm highly trained, you know, this, this infantry graduate, right? Um, I know how to dig a Vietnam style hasty fighting position. I've never held an M4 yet, I don't think. We, we, we had M4s. Just not the same ones, you know, that the, that the, the units had. Um, maybe we had M16s. I can't even remember. That's crazy. It was like 20 years ago, right? So.

• 24:38Jack Murphy?

  It happens, man.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  But I don't think we had M4s, but who knows, someone's gonna tell me I'm an idiot at some point here. But yeah, so we um, I get there and you know, they had those like Conex, like trucks with the

• 24:55Speaker 04

  computer screen and you had the little air guns and you'd like, you know, OK Corral, Western style, like shoot, you know, the the little guys off the tops of building. I mean, legitimately, the dumbest thing you could think of. Like you're all on a line and you're like, oh yeah, the Iraqis pop out and you just, you know, make sure you shoot the right ones. Um, it was, it was hilarious. And then like maybe a couple like rollover, you know, Humvee things, you know, where you simulate like grabbing the gunner's legs, like that's gonna save his life and stuff, you know, so um, silly stuff. And I remember sleeping a ton, like just sleeping and then eating and sleeping and eating and doing some dumb training.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  So I get sent, uh, you know, take the plane ride over to Baghdad, um, land in the green zone. Get told, and it's just me and a few guys, like 10 or 12 guys, you know, from rear D for the first of the 325. Um, they tell us to get on this Chinook and they take us to Camp Tajji. So it's a little north of Baghdad. Um, and that was the first time, you know, I'd been on a Chinook, you know, or anything like, I'm like, you know, had no idea we're gonna get shot down, you know, like no, no idea what's going on. Don't, not really assigned to a unit yet, right? Or anything yet. Um, and so then we land at Camp Tajji. And I get off, get into like a big truck, like an LMTV that takes us to this little um,

• 26:24Speaker 04

  like hut thing they built, you know, with like plywood, plywood still bare and everything. And we go in there and all right, you know, so and so, and so and so, you're in Alpha Company, go with this guy. You guys are in Bravo Company, go with that guy. And nobody, nobody calls my name. I'm sitting there like alone and I'm like, am I even supposed to be in Iraq right now? You know, like, am I, am I even qualified to be in Iraq? Like, I'm not even on a list, right? Like, what's going on? And then somebody walks out and he asked me, like, do you know anybody in the military? And I said, yeah, my, you know, my best friend from San Luis Obispo, you know, we went to boot camp together, all this. He's like, no, you idiot. Because do you know anybody like high up in the military? Any family or anything like that?

• 27:09Speaker 04

  No, no, you know, my grandpa was in World War II and he's just like, you're an idiot. He goes, well, don't expect a warm welcome, but you're going to Charlie troop, first squadron, seventy-third Cav.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Like, I'm not, I'm not Cav. And he's like, no, no, you're going to, all the Charlie troops in the squadrons are airborne infantry. It's purely infantry, you know, unit, troop, you know? So this is the only infantry troop in these Cav units. And these units are attached to each brigade and they're the RISTA squadrons. So they're the reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition. You know, and he was like, you know, most of these guys, you know, have all the, you know, they got the Ranger tab. They, they're, they're arslick, you know, they've done all the schools and stuff. Like, I don't know why you're going to these guys, but like, good luck and don't expect a warm welcome, right?

• 28:05Jack Murphy?

  I, I don't know how much you know or can speak to about sort of like the lineage of RISTA. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's always interesting and frustrating to me. It seems like the Army is always disbanding these, you know, dismounted or airborne light reconnaissance elements. You know, we had LURS, there was Division LURS at eighty-second Airborne.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 28:29Jack Murphy?

  That, the LURS teams kind of go away. And then it seems like the RISTA guys were the, the kind of replacements that got stood up.

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you know, it's interesting you say that. I'm glad that you reminded me before this podcast, I kind of wanted to like, look, you know, look up my old unit. And it just got disbanded, like in June of twenty twenty-four. They, they, they killed the unit. Yeah. So I think they're now moving to.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  I don't know if they're they're do more mechanized, you know, RISTA stuff now or whatever, drones and stuff too. I think they're gonna be replaced with like different, you know, different stuff, I guess, as the battlefield changes. So I was a little bit bummed out. It's like, no way. My old unit is is gone. But yeah, so the lineage goes back, like even, I think even before Vietnam, but probably got pretty famous in Vietnam for that for the LERPs, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. And I have a cool story of meeting a a LERPs guy when I was medically retired and heading home. So if I forget that story and you remember, let me let me share it. But he was in my same unit, but in a LERPs in, you know, 82nd Airborne

• 29:38Speaker 04

  LERPs guy in Vietnam. It was pretty cool. He's the he was the Sheriff of Amarillo. So if you don't, if I don't remember Sheriff of Amarillo story, make make sure you let me tell you that. So yeah, so the RISTA units are basically, you know, or were the brigades recon teams, right? And so if you were thinking of it in like, you know, conventional terms of, you know, like, if we remember World War, you know, two or whatever, again, the RISTA would would be out there doing the scouting, the recon, all that target acquisition, they would do some some engagement, you know, when necessary, some direct action. But really,

• 30:23Speaker 04

  their mission was, you know, to get in, get the lay of the land, get all the intel you possibly can, eyes on, again, target acquisition, piece of it there, too. And then, you know, that was all before the brigades, the airborne infantry would then come in and take care of that. So the way the RISTA squadrons were were built up, I wish I wish I had it pulled up here, but like the Alpha Alpha Troop would A Troop would be Cav Scouts and they might be like, you know, mounted. Scouts and then you know B troop is going to be Cav Scouts and they have a different mission and then that that Charlie troop is always

• 31:08Speaker 04

  more of the heavy hitter, fully infantry guys that are all, you know, reconed up. And again, like our slick Pathfinder. I think we even had some Sapper guys and and I mean, all all the schools, you know, a lot of our leadership had done and were incredible. And so, yeah, so going back to that story. So I get on another truck. I get taken to a part of Camp Tajji where there's just like these warehouses. There's like maybe eight eight or more warehouses like in a row. Two rows of them. And it's it's not fully like a compound inside of Camp Tajji, but it is its own like area.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  And there was like kind of cat corner from us was was a SEAL team. And I'm not sure like who our neighbors were or anything, but you know,

• 32:06Speaker 04

  just to kind of paint the picture of the people I'm coming to with a high end type, just so, just so we can figure this out. So these guys had had just done five months in in Iraq, mostly into Kirit. They were one of the first units or the first unit to support CAG during the Torch missions. They had been flying around

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Chinooks, Blackhawks, doing, you know, direct action raids, taking out huge caches of of, you know, IEDs or whatever, doing like super high speed badass shit for five months. You know, they weren't wearing 80 second patches. They weren't wearing US Army patches. They had the black patch under the shoulder. It said OCFI, other coalition forces in Iraq. So they are and they've they've all survived this five month, you know, high speed deployment. They go home for December. And right around Christmas, like the day that I, you know, basically get to brag, they were all told, hey, you're going back for another five month deployment.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  We need you back there. So not only are they kind of mad that they're back there, but they're also like Again, like total badasses that it's almost like when you're when you're doing stuff like above your pay grade, you you you then have the mentality like we're really special and awesome, right? Like, there's no way to not have that. But then a guy like me coming straight from building, you know, hasty fighting positions in the woods of Georgia with, you know, I'm a five jump chump. Um, I have nothing but airborne school.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  And I'm useless to these guys, pretty much, right? I'm just a body. So when I get to them, they're just like, oh, God, you know, there's, you know, and and luckily I got, I got put with a really awesome sergeant. My, uh, um, I guess he was like the squad leader. Um, so I was gonna say team leader, but he was our squad leader at first and he, um, Sergeant Meyer was just an awesome dude. I mean, one of the well, the first thing he told me is he said, uh, you look like an idiot. Don't cut your hair for two weeks. That was the first thing he said to me. Uh, and then he said, look, we play by the big boy rules here. You know, I'm not gonna mess you up unless you mess up.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Um, uh, don't expect to go out on missions with us for a few weeks. Like, you don't even have a Humvee license. You don't have, um, you, uh, we didn't do any like air assaults. But, um, you know, I did, I have zero experience. I I've worn nods for all of five minutes in basic training, right? Um, I have like the the the lamest amount of experience with close quarter combat. All the all the stuff you need in Iraq, especially with a unit like these guys, I don't have, I don't have any of it. So they're not gonna take me out until they know, like, um, you know, I'm not gonna shoot one of them on accident or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So my chores were like at night, when they'd go out on a mission,

• 35:19Speaker 04

  I would run around with nods on, fully geared up, like behind our warehouses. There was all these like, just like metal garbage, like all over the place. And they would have like me run and jump over these things and like just get super acquainted with nods. Cause we we always, um, you know, rolled out in darkness, um, drove with nods. You know, we had no lights, nothing. Um, and so it was just like, you gotta, you gotta show us that you can drive a Humvee with, you know, all that kind of stuff with with nods, you know, whatever. So it probably took a little bit before I went out. It was kind of like that puppy dog left on the front porch, you know, as they rolled out. And then I'd always have

• 35:59Speaker 04

  tasks or something to do, but it was kind of lame. And then, um, yeah, I remember the first, the first mission I did, uh, started.

• 36:10Speaker 05

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• 37:37Speaker 04

  In the day, and I think going back, so I've really, I've really tried to piece this together because again, I wasn't in, obviously in any leadership role, had no privy of exactly what our mission was or anything. I knew what the surge was supposed to be about. Um, I knew what the 82nd was, um, what their mission was. Each of the, um, you know, units and battalions are taking a piece of Baghdad. So we'd have AOs, right? And we were assigned, my RISTA unit was assigned an AO. And, um, we were going out and we were checking, we were getting to know our AO was the first thing, right? And then we were checking on sites that we could actually build like a COP. Everyone was going and building up a COP, um, and we were going to occupy, you know, Baghdad.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  I think our leadership after doing all the cool stuff that, you know, just a month earlier, was kind of like, yeah, F that. We're not doing that. We're gonna do cool stuff. And because really quickly, kind of, it was like, oh, no, we're gonna stay at Camp Tajee in these awesome warehouses with bunk beds and porcelain and showers and stuff. But we're gonna, we're just gonna start hitting like all the insurgent stuff. I don't know where we got our intel from completely or whatnot, but we would build, you know, target packages and then we would go after, after, you know, high value targets. And again, I don't know what kind of level these high value targets were.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  I knew some of them were pretty big deals at the time in 2007. And that's, I think we just proved that that is what we were really good at. I, again, it'd be awesome to have some of my leadership on at some point to talk about what exactly happened. But we just, we're doing time sensitive target raids. Sure, you know, we would do some presence patrols and some knock and talks and stuff in our AOs during the days. But then almost every night, it was just hitting targets. And at first, we would, we would kind of switch it up. So, you know, first platoon would be the court on, and they'd court on off the area.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  Second platoon, we would hit the, we would hit the, you know, target houses. There might be like two or three target houses.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  And then we'd kind of switch that up, right? And we would be the court on the next night or whatnot. And then as things developed, we kind of got more and more specific kind of in everyone's roles. And especially at the beginning, I mean, we were so successful. Like, there were hardly any dry holes. We were, we were just bagging and tagging dudes left and right every single night. We were waking them up in their sleep. We were using this new technology tracking cell phones. It was like find your friends that we have now, you know, but it was like the old school version where someone's sitting in the Humvee with like an arrow, you know, and like, yeah, yeah, right there, right there. Hit that house, you know?

• 40:36Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, and, and then as, as we, I guess, became successful in that or whatnot, or word got out, or I don't really know. Um, and there's rumors, there's like the, you know, like your unit talk, like, yeah, war talk where guys are like, well, so and so's dad is actually a JSOC commander. So that's probably why we're getting these, you know, uh, missions or whatever. And that is true. But, um, I've never been able to confirm that. Um, and then I think it was kind of, you know, from the previous experience they had or whatnot, I don't know. But after we cleaned up our AO, which was super quick, I mean, we cleaned it up fast.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  And we got in some gnarly firefights early on. Um, I don't know like what number mission it was or what night or whatnot. Um, I guess, I guess before a firefight was an EFP that, that rocked us real bad. So, um, I'll talk about these hunter boxes we used, but we had these big, huge LMTV or deuce and a half trucks that up armored and everything, open tops. We draped some like sniper netting over the top. Um, and we had some guns mounted on the side and I think on the top. Um, and then we had Humvees, right? So the, the, the platoon that was hitting the target buildings would be in the hunter boxes. And then the cord on off would be the Humvees.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Um, and, and again, we would switch it up. But, um, we were doing, there was like a huge operation in all of Baghdad where they were like going through and we were gonna go like house to house, like everybody had their AO and they were gonna clear their entire AO and stuff. So I remember doing this really long, like all day. Maybe all night and then into the next day kinda mission where you're just literally going house to house to house. And on our way back, so they saw us drive out of Camp Tajji in these LMTVs with all like we we used to stand up in them. So it was like we packed these things out and they saw all of our heads back there and everything. Well, on our way back, um, we got hit right outside Camp Tajji like at where one of the

• 42:45Speaker 04

  guard towers was. We got hit with a huge EFP angled up because they knew they were gonna hit this LMTV with this big box, trying to get like mass casualties. And fortunately and unfortunately, uh, we had a few take shrapnel and one guy who uh ended up losing his hand, they couldn't save it. Um, McCart was his name. And um, that that first experience, you know, getting hit with the EFP was like, holy, yeah, it was, you can't even describe like um, the the power. It's like getting hit with an invisible wall, you know, like four hundred miles an hour and like rocks your brain, rocks all the senses, couldn't can't hear for a second.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  So everything's filled with smoke, you know, um, the smoke cleared because there's no top and everything pretty fast. Like as your hearing's coming back, you're kinda trying to like, especially me just being a super green cherry, like what the, I didn't even know an ID hit us. Um, then I just start hearing the screams, you know, of the couple of people that had gotten hit, you know, noticing blood at different places. And then um, my squad leader, who I talked about Sergeant Meyer, um, just basically took charge. I mean, there were, there were like some pretty high ranking dudes in that truck and there was a newsweek, um, like an embedded journalist. I'll never forget that too, on that same same truck. And he, you know, everyone's kinda stunned and my my squad leader was like, you know,

• 44:14Speaker 04

  everybody off the truck and got got everybody moving, got them off the truck. And then we started kinda trying to see if we could go after anybody that might be in the vicinity. And there was really no one around. Um, I I ended up falling into one of those like shit creeks, you know, where like the sewage goes. So we're running through one of those and I mean, I was like one step, two step, boom, face plant right into this crap. Um, and so I'm covered head to toe in like poop and mud. Oh my god. And I'm trying to run through this like, like, I don't know, like a field to get online with everybody. And I was like one of the last people like huffing and puffing and I had swallowed my eyes are burning like you know I'm having a really hard time.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  I remember getting back um back to our warehouse and showering and everything and my squad leader was like. Come with me and he like takes me to the gym which is across the street. And we had this little gym and he like tells me to get on a treadmill and he's like I don't ever want you to be last again you're gonna like run every single day on this treadmill until. You know you can prove that you're not gonna be like the last guy when stuff happens and I was like I couldn't really say like I was like it's because I literally swallowed. Poop and I'm covered head to toe you know wet.

• 45:28Jack Murphy?

  Like like no no no joke like you're lucky to survive that alone um guys who went into those pits. I mean they got hepatitis A through Z like bad stuff happened.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I mean maybe that's why I have Crohn's disease there's a few other other uh things that might have gave me that yeah I. Who knows yeah I yeah fortunate that that yeah that that happened. That was kind of my first you know taste of actual real combat you know the missions I'd gone on. Um we're just kind of like hey when is when is when are things like when do we get in a firefight like when do we you know like what happens you know. And we were like doing things too where there was like the guys would have these um uh scavenger hunts right you kick a chicken it was like five hundred points you slap a donkey was like thousand points. You know one night you know there there was like a donkey noise you know going off and it was like found one you know over the comms.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  And uh yeah we kind of did did some fun stuff like that but then you know as as it progressed it got more and more serious um.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  What one day we had uh we had a new um platoon leader join us and he was right out of Ranger school. Super awesome dude his first time out with us he gets hit by a sniper in the side plate. Right hits him in the side plate and part of the fragments went in when I don't know if the side plate or whatever something was like burning in his side. And it was some shrapnel from that bullet or whatever um and he was totally fine but we had all like. A lot of guys were some of the guys were wearing plate carriers at least by the end um but you know I had the I the the cherry IBA and everything. But I had noticed everybody's taking their side plates out this is super heavy. And so my side plates were out, you know, and I was ditching things left and right whenever I could

• 47:17Speaker 04

  because we were all usually moving pretty quick. And as soon as he got hit in the side plate, I know I look around and we get back and everybody is reaching into their footlocker, grabbing the side plates and like making sure no one's looking but putting their side plates back in. And so, yeah, so. Yeah. And again, like I said with the TST missions, like we, you know, at first we weren't really getting into anything heavy. We were just taking, you know, taking guys pretty quick. And as we started moving into other areas of operation and doing things all over the place. So Ghazali, Ghazali, Kotomiya, and then Shula was the worst place we always got in firefights there. But then, yeah, it's like they started getting smarter.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  They started having, you know, their guards or whatever out. They started swapping SIM cards. They started. One time we hit this place, so eerie. We go in and there's just a cell phone propped up against the wall. And the whole building is empty and there's just a cell phone like on. It's like, yeah, and we, we thought the building was going to blow up, you know, we were trying to get out of there super fast. And so as they started getting smarter, you know, is when we started really, especially when we started moving into Shula. The Cav, I can't remember what Cav unit was there, but they had taken crazy casualties in Shula in 2007. And when we started operating in there, ODAs were operating in there.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  Different task force and stuff were, were working in there with us.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  We had some AWG asymmetric warfare group guys join us. I think the word was getting out, hey, these guys go out every night, like you got in bed with them or whatever. I would love again for some leadership to come on here and tell me exactly how that all went down. But for me being like the cherry guy, it was like, hey, see those two guys over there that look super cool and have all that awesome gear? Yeah, don't, don't even look at them. Don't talk to them. You know, nothing. So those were like the, the AWG guys and other dudes that were embedded with us, but.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were getting in some crazy firefights. I remember my first firefight was was it was funny. It was eerily similar to that Black Hawk Down scene at the very beginning where like, how do they know? How do you know they're shooting at us? Right? I remember asking, telling my squad leader like, it's so loud. Right? And when you're in in that urban environment, I mean, a bullet that's, you know, getting sent from over here. Sounds like it's, you know, over here and all that stuff. And when you're really inexperienced, like you just, you have no idea what's going on. And, you know, it's really up to the sergeants and squad leaders to be like, hey, like, this is your sector of fire. This is where you're, you know, during our quarter off, like this is the only thing you need to know is like this corner. But the problem is, as you know, is like missions change and things go haywire.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Suddenly, it's like, you know, I realized like, no, I need to like, even though I'm not in those briefs, those like pre op briefs and stuff. Like, I need to make sure I understand the area, understand where we're going. Because if if if squad leader goes down or my sergeant, you know, whoever goes down or things change. Like, I really need to make sure that I'm on it and know where to go, know where the other guys are. Because a lot of times, I mean, you're just kind of a little bit, it feels like you're a little bit alone, right?

• 50:35Speaker 04

  With a few guys, I don't mean solo. I just mean, you know, you're kind of, you know.

• 50:39Jack Murphy?

  You feel isolated and kind of out there flapping.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I remember going, hey, how do, because it was getting, it was starting to sound really different. And I'm like, hey, are we getting shot at? No, no, I don't think so. Hey, are we getting shot at? And it was like, it's like, now we're getting shot at, you know, and I remember, I'll never forget that snapping, you know? Because you could be on a range, you know, where where you're getting shot from over the top and hear that snapping. But when it's like aimed at you, there's like a throaty noise to that, you know, almost like you could hear the barrel like spitting at you and that snapping is different. And and when things start moving, um, yeah, things get get crazy really fast. And so I'll never forget that. I'll never forget.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  There was a few times where we would hit a dry hole, but we were like really positive that it was the dude's house. So there was a couple of times where we left and I was with him. It was like me and four other guys just stayed in the house. And our Humvees and everybody drove off, you know, to a distance, you know, that was gonna be quite a while if we got into some, you know, bad stuff. Um, and we just waited for the guy to come home and, you know, bagged him up and called everybody in and, and, um, and, and rolled out again, you know, or whatever. But there's, there was some cool stuff like that. We did a lot of, um, like overt denial stuff. There's a lot of IEDs on this Route Vernon that were taking out tons of

• 52:09Speaker 04

  people and we'd roll up on them. Some of the worst things I saw were rolling up on people that had gotten hit with, you know, EFPs, um, trying to, you know, they'd be stuck in like their Humvee on fire, trying to help pull them out. And we even, we even would, if we weren't like on a TST mission that night, you know, we were like helping rush them to the nearest TAC or FOB or whatever and, um, and stuff. So we saw a lot of crazy, crazy things. Um, we, Sergeant Meyer, my, my squad leader, he ended up, um, becoming the head of like the sniper section while we were there. Um, he, he taught me a lot of awesome stuff.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Um, when I was recovering in the hospital, he actually got second place in the Army, um, uh, marksmanship competition, sniper competition that year, uh, which is really cool. So I'm like watching him on TV while I'm recovering in the hospital.

• 53:04Jack Murphy?

  The International Sniper Competition?

• 53:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. The Military Sniper Competition. Yeah. It was incredible. So he was, he is, he's an amazing dude. But yeah, yeah. Um, I think too, towards the end, so we were supposed to do another, you know, five month deployment. We get done with that five and they're like, actually we're gonna extend for another five. And they now, now they've already been there for 10 and this, this is high, you know, off tempo stuff. You guys were exhausted. Not a lot of sleep. Yeah. So exhaustion setting in kind of that like zombie, not enough sleep starts started kind of playing into it too. Um, so guys were starting to kind of just, it was taking a toll on all of us.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  Um, and anytime I wanted to complain, you know, I mean, they'd already been doing this for five months. So, you know, I definitely, you know, couldn't. But we started kind of doing some things where we'd leave a guy or two back one night just to kind of clear the head. Right. Um, kind of rotate and shift off just because there was just no end in sight.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  And then when we started, you know, I think like we hadn't lost any guys yet, but, um, one night, one night I'll, I'll never forget. Um, I definitely thought I wasn't gonna make it that night.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  So we're going back into Shula.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  We, we hit a house, we hit this house and I want to say we had been there before, like it was a dry hole, you know? And so we go back like the next night or a couple of nights later, whatever. But this night when we go back, we're like, instead of rushing the Humvees in and cording off the area and letting them escape, we'll run like super far. So we'll get dropped off way, super far away and we'll like run,

• 54:56Speaker 04

  um, a real far distance and we'll, and we'd done this a few times and been really successful. And then once the shit hit the fan, then the Humvees would come in and kind of support and stuff. And this had been super successful, but as we're like running,

• 55:10Speaker 04

  we come to this like line of people that are waiting for like gas, the gasoline, like supply or whatever, like they're literally like lined up and they're supposed to be, you know, like, um, uh, curfews and stuff and nobody in Shula really, really, uh, ever listened to that. And then we'd roll in and they'd, things would get serious and there'd be some pop shots and everyone would disappear. And then you would know like, oh, we're about to like, you know, get it. And, and, um, and we get in our firefights and everything, but yeah, as we were like running through this line of people, they're like, you know, on their cell phone, like, hey, by the way, there's like this group of dudes running through here, probably coming to you, you know? So it was a, it's kind of a blown.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Thing and you know, maybe we should have not kept going, but how do you stop? Once you're kind of running and getting closer? So we hit it and we just were prob- we were probably a small element. I don't think we had everybody and we just got kind of surrounded and pinned down a little bit. I remember being with a buddy of mine, kind of like face down in a kitchen and just like rounds, just we're like face pinned face down rounds are just like, just ruining everything in this house. And I remember looking at him being like, hey, like, I, I, how are we going to get out of here? You know, and he like looked at me, grabbed me and he's like, you know, like we're gonna

• 56:40Speaker 04

  make it. Don't you worry, you know, everything. It was just one of those like crazy moments, you know? And unfortunately, right around this time, one of our guys who was outside got hit in the head with, with a round, an AK round and, and collapsed. And this Eddie Sandmeyer, interesting story. His sister is Bridget from Hugh Hefner's like third girlfriend. That's his sister. So I never got to experience this, but all the, all that unit would get to go to the mansion and hang out with his sister and stuff. And I, I, I'm not sure they would have invited me anyway, but yeah, they got, they would get to do that.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  So, and yeah, and one of the other platoon leaders, his, uh, his babysitter was Fergie. Yeah, I couldn't, can't confirm that one, but definitely can confirm Sergeant Sandmeyer. But anyway, Sandmeyer ran, ran out from his, you know, covered position to, to the, you know, middle of the road where, where Mur- Murphy had gotten hit and he grabbed him and like pulls him, you know, back into a house into safety, starts doing first aid, called the medic, you know, all that kind of stuff. And kind of we starting to piece together like, oh, somebody, somebody got hit, you know? And I'm not, I don't have comms like, like the squad leader and stuff have, but, um, so it's starting to get serious. The trucks finally make it there.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  We always had, um,

• 58:13Speaker 04

  We always had Apaches and drones and all kinds of stuff, you know, for us. So anytime we got like really in in it, we would call in the the the Apaches and we could always, you know, make it out of there luckily, you know, because we could just start messing stuff up big time. And so, yeah, so we got him out and then it started getting light and we got to a clearing where they could get, you know, bring in a medevac and they put him on the medevac. And I remember going back to our warehouse and like seeing guys cleaning out his helmet and there's like, you know, bone fragments in his helmet and stuff and like, you know, everybody's just like really, really not doing well.

• 58:58Speaker 04

  And he ended up making it, so we got.

• 59:01Speaker 05

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• 59:44Speaker 05

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• 1:00:02Speaker 00

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• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Word that he that he had kind of pulled through and he was going to make it. The bullet went through his frontal lobe. Ricocheted in um the skull came and then came out the other backside.

• 1:00:45Jack Murphy?

  Oh shit.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  Wrapped around. Yeah, and um I ended up getting to see him um after I was wounded. Um I got to see him at a dinner at our platoon sergeant's house in in the um Fort Bragg area.

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  A while later, obviously. Um but yeah, um that was that was kind of our biggest, you know, closest um brush with with losing someone at that point. Um and and kind of from then on, I don't even remember what what um like how far into the deployment that was, but it was pretty far. And you know, guys were just starting to talk about death and like having bad feelings and thinking, you know, it was kind of the end and it just was getting. It was getting dark and weird and.

• 1:01:32Jack Murphy?

  Everyone's getting strung out, yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think all of us had really seen seen kind of enough in a way, you know. We had a commander or or um yeah, our unit commander was um they called him T one thousand, super ripped dude, good looking guy, blonde hair. So T one thousand from Terminator and he was just always like, when's the next, you know, T S T target? Why aren't they sending us target? Like he was just always wanted us out there and um. And uh is as awesome as he was, uh you know, some of the guys were kind of being like, dude, we need to like scale back a little bit. Like it's just getting too much, you know, and stuff.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  But yeah, um I remember.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  I remember um, you know, getting my first guys, uh we got ambushed on the way back from a mission and um I was up in the turret that night. And I remember I remember one of the it was like third squad, their squad leader, um sergeant.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  Sergeant Gray, he, at one point, he was like, you know, don't talk to me cherry until, you know, you've killed someone or whatever, you know, and I remember after that mission going back to his bunk and just being like, hey Sergeant, so we can, we can, uh, talk now, huh? And he's like, get out of here, mother effer, you know, you on that me, and I'm like, what the heck? So, you know, for a while there, people were putting up like ace cards, you know, on their bed and stuff and then, and then it just got so much that nobody cared at all. It was just like, we're just trying to survive. I even remember like one mission, I was up in a turret, started getting shot at and I'm like shooting back and it was like so constant and so often that like, I had no adrenaline. There

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  was, there was, there was like, I'm getting shot at and there's no bump, like no drug hit or anything. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's, that's probably not good. Like, that's like a broken, something's broken.

• 1:03:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's like after a while, you transcend the, the danger reaction, right? And you're like, kind of like, just letting it hang out there, not necessarily giving a fuck.

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there were some guys that like really didn't care if they died. I mean, they were doing dumb stuff, like getting out of the Humvees and chasing dudes down like an alley and taking them out, you know, when we'd get in contact and stuff and, um, they didn't care, you know, at a certain point, they just, we just kind of stopped caring. And I, I, I never got quite there where I was like, yeah, I'm gonna, you know, I'm just gonna be fine dying, but you definitely thought it was gonna probably happen, you know, it was either gonna be, um, yeah, something. So, yeah, I should probably go into kind of the final mission for me. Um, so, the final, the final mission, um, was September

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  10th, 2007. Um, just like all the other TST missions, you know, it was like, are we gonna sleep tonight? Are we gonna go out on mission? You know, the lights would go off and we'd start to get in our bunks and maybe we're gonna get some sleep. And then like, you know, middle of the night, you know, boom, the lights would come on and, you know, TST, let's go, let's go and grab all your stuff. And like, I always had like a task, like getting the trucks ready or something while they're getting like the op briefing, like all the leaderships, like going through everything. Here are the targets, here's where we're gonna hit, you know, all that stuff. Um, and my job was like making sure everything was ready to go outside. Um, you know, everything's lined up and we're ready

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  At least it was, you know, a lot of the time. So, um, so they kind of come, you know, we start kind of hearing like, oh, this is like a huge one, like everybody's going, um, we had some like our sister unit, which was, which was Cav guys. They were going, I want to say we had like nine Humvees and three of those Hunter boxes and each Hunter box had eighteen Americans in them. Um, and so this is huge. Usually it was like one or two hundred boxes, you know, a few Humvees, maybe, you know, the most guys we'd probably ever gone after was probably like four, probably before that.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  So nineteen dudes having a meeting, um, was massive. We knew that if that many dudes are all together, they were gonna have a lot of people. Kind of looking out for them too. So we were, we were pretty preparing for some heavy stuff. Um, so we get to the area, which again was in Shula. Um, and that night I'm with, um, Sergeant Meyer again. Um, we're in the, uh, no, I wasn't. He was in the, oh, no, I, okay. So I was in, I was in the Hunter box, like I said. Um, but that night, instead of hitting the target buildings, I was gonna go with the sniper section, link up with them, hit the building and go on top.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Um, you know, one of the highest, tallest buildings or whatever in the area and we were overlooking kind of this, um, this field or like, kind of like a, I don't know, playground type area, you know, but you know, Iraq style. Um, and there was probably three or four buildings gonna get hit. And before we were totally set up up there, um, it was already like coming down, like we got them all, like we got them like, we, we got them all. And so they're strapping them up and everything. And so it was super quick and kind of disorienting. We get back down.

• 1:07:04Jack Murphy?

  You say strapping them up. Is this back in the day when we were like ratchet strapping the HVTs down to the bed of the truck?

• 1:07:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't the super nice like flex cuffs. I don't remember the super nice flex cuffs. I remember like probably your, you know, your harbor freight zip ties, you know, the thick ones.

• 1:07:22Jack Murphy?

  Those were different times.

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean, like our Humvees were up armored to a sense, but you know, and like the turret's pretty exposed. Like you've got some glass on three sides, but you know, sniper netting on top, you know, just, just, yeah, different times. So they're trying to figure out, how do we get 19 guys like out of here? You know, like they're gonna be, people are gonna be sitting on them in the Humvees and people, um, you know, we can only fit a couple in each Hunter box. So I think we had three of the 19 in our Hunter box. We're starting to get loaded back on that, but we're also starting to get engaged. So there's a couple RPGs and some, and a firefight starting to break out. So they're trying to like, figure out, hey, how do we, um, do we, do we stay and kind

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  of finish the fight like we usually do? We kind of leave on our own terms? Or like, we kind of, we're kind of in this like weird transition and we kind of needed to just get out of there. So they're like, everybody like load up and we're just gonna shoot our way out of here. So we're all loading up and I remember, um, so my squad leader Sergeant Meyer had taken over the sniper section. Sergeant Rivera had taken over our squad. And he was getting, he was one of the last in the truck and we had this big ladder. We had this rope down one side. So you can actually kind of like air assault, you know, off of this LMTV on one side. You can climb and jump off the front or kind of slide down the ladder in the back. And I was like the last guy. So as soon as you'd get in, I was kind of

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  the last guy in the very back, right by the rope that we'd slide down. And, um, he's getting on the Humvee, he's getting on the LMTV and slips and like, I think he broke his jaw, like slips and hits his face and his blood and he's like pretty messed up and we get, and he's kind of a little bit. You know, out of it and we're kind of getting him on that truck and we're like, oh, goddamn. And trying to figure out what to do. We get him on and then um, once you're in the hunter box and you're like leaving, there's a little bit of like, security you can do, like if you see anybody with an RPG or something, obviously you gotta take them out or or

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  they, I mean, you're really exposed, especially when the buildings are high, like there's eighteen Americans, it's a big target. Um, so it was always like, just like the worst time trying to drive out, you're either gonna be hit with an IED or you're gonna get shot or blown up from the, you know, up top. Um, so you just wanted to like, get out of the town, you know, or the, the urban area and get out and head back to Tajji. And so um, we're getting out of there. And we get up onto Route Vernon, which the north of Baghdad, there's like this massive overpass. And it literally goes from like thirty to eighty, hundred feet, like massive, goes in different directions.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  And on this overpass, and we're still like, we're not taking probably like direct fire, but people are, people would always be pop shotting us, you know, the entire way out of there, especially like we got their guys, like they're just, you know, trying to get whatever they can. And the driver of the truck like hits some debris from like a previous IED or something, or like a half HESCO barrier type thing, because we're kind of going through it, this weird checkpoint up there as well. And we're hauling butt. We always drove, you know, no lights with nods. Um, the driver's an eighty-eight Mike like attached to us, because none of us could drive the big trucks.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  And um, it's right in that horrible period of the day where it's too a little bit too bright at dawn to be wearing the nods, but too dark for um, to just be line of sight.

• 1:11:12Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:11:13Speaker 04

  And for some reason or whatever, yeah, he loses control of the, of the LMTV, we end up going through the guardrail.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  I remember the whole thing kind of lifting up and going this way and you're kind of having this in and out of body experience like you know you're on this huge high overpass. You know, the truck is losing control. He trying to make sense of everything. And then as we're going, there was almost this moment where it was like, maybe we aren't gonna go off. And then it was just like that splash mountain, you know, where it's like, no, we're going for sure. And then I fully like blackout. Like I just, I remember, I remember as we're falling and like seeing the truck and like all the guys like are now not decided they're like down, right? And as we're going down, um, I just remember everything just closed off.

• 1:12:03Speaker 04

  And so when I wake up, um, when I wake up, I kind of like, you know, like when they talk about hell, it being like dark and gnashing teeth and all that stuff like it literally was pitch dark. I'm crushed under this truck and all these bodies and um, they're screaming and like metallic noises and stuff and um,

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  I remember like just thinking like, holy shit, like I died and this is hell. Like that's so messed up, you know? And then I was like, well, it's not hot. And the Bible said it was supposed to be hot, right? So it's not, maybe this isn't hell. And then the next thing was like, oh my God, I can't breathe. Like I couldn't even, I was so crushed, I couldn't even breathe out. Um, let alone take like a breath in. And then I started to panic and then I started hearing just all the screams and yells and, and you go into like a very weird. I don't know, pre-death space or something like where just like, it was just unlike anything I'd ever experienced.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  And right when like, I'm like, I'm, this is it. Like this is the last moment. I feel this tugging on my foot, on my, I think it was my left, left like foot, boot. It's like tugging and I start, I start just wiggling my foot as much as possible to kind of be like, I'm alive, like, like get me out of here. And so then I remember some of the weight kind of being rolled off me. And someone who I haven't talked about yet was my best friend, the only dude who was even close to looking my age. I looked, I literally looked 12. And like, you know, in basic training, when they check, check your facial hair, you know, and stuff like, I remember not shaving and being put into the like, you shaved, good

• 1:13:54Speaker 04

  job line, you know, and everyone else getting in trouble. I'm like, yeah, I haven't shaved for a couple of days, but if they find out, you know. But anyway, so my bud, my best buddy, Richard Brendel, he would, I didn't know this at the time, but he had actually grabbed me and the pole that the, that the rope was attached to and rode us like into the ground that way. And then when I lost consciousness and was crushed, one of the detainees was like on me and he was like a huge dude and a couple other dead bodies. And he was able to, now, mind you, this dude has like five ribs snapped off from the spine, like back there. He has like a ruptured spleen, I think. He lost some organs, I know that. A collapsed lung,

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  broken nose, broken arm, broken wrist. And he's able to somehow save my life. Like, he pulls me out, he pulls me out from the back of the IBA where that handle is. He pulls me out from the wreckage. And now I have four shattered vertebrae, like, like shattered vertebrae, some spinal cord damage, some of the bone fragments were kind of pressed up to the spine. I think a collapsed lung, at least big time lung contusions, sternum was crushed. I had like fluid around my heart. So there was like trauma to like the whole chest cavity. And then I broke a bunch of bones in my face. This ear was taken off,

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  like completely like scooped out and hanging on by like a flap of skin, like scooped out deep. And then there were 70s staples. So my entire skull was kind of like flayed open and falling off. And so when he's like dragging me out and like sitting me up with all these shattered vertebrae and everything, I mean, like, I was in like the most pain I've ever can ever describe, but also this weird like, shouldn't this hurt even more?

• 1:15:49Jack Murphy?

  Out of body experience.

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's super out of body experience. And I also am like blind. Um, and I don't know if it was from the blood or from the impact, like the head trauma or whatever, but I'm blind. Like I could see like light a little bit on the outer rims, but like super dark in the center.

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  And um, and I could barely breathe, just like, you know, just trying to like stay alive. And then I think Richard passes out behind me. Um, and now, now our entire element's up on this overpass and it is a long way to get down and around. We're in a trash field, like this trash field.

• 1:16:30Jack Murphy?

  Lance, about how now, you know, in retrospect, about how far did you guys fall?

• 1:16:37Speaker 04

  So if you read the official report, which is total bullshit, they say, I think they say thirty to fifty feet. My buddy who pulled me out of the wreckage, he ended up reclassing and went back to the same area like several years later. He says it was like seventy-five to eighty feet. Um, I'll settle on fifty feet. It doesn't really matter to me how tall it was. It was really fricking high. I remember on submissions, like being up there and like peeing off of this overpass and thinking to myself like, this would really suck to fall off. Like, this is gnarly, you know? I even have some pictures I sent, um, Dee of that overpass. I'd like clicked a picture of it randomly and it turned out to be the exact overpass, you know, that we go off of.

• 1:17:23Speaker 04

  So this is, this is super high. Um, unfortunately, seven, seven of my guys, um, die. Um, I think three, like pretty instantly. Um, and then the, the rest either died on the bird's back, um, to the hospital, to, to the Baghdad like green zone, big hospital there.

• 1:17:47Speaker 04

  And then the rest of us, yeah, we're pretty messed up. Um, and yeah, I remember, I remember finally our element getting, getting down to us. So I, so after he pulled me out, I pass out again. And when I wake up the next time, it's, um, my, my lieutenant who was in the, actually the passenger seat. And he's trying to wrap my head. He's like pulling my ear up and my head and he's trying to wrap my head. And as soon as he lets go, he had like shattered like everything, like his arm. So he's only trying to do it like one arm. And as soon as he goes, I gotta go help the other guys. And he takes off and I, he, when he lets go, like I just feel my head and ear just kind of fall back down again.

• 1:18:30Speaker 04

  And, and so then I pass out again. And when I wake up again, it's the other platoon's platoon leader. And I remember thinking like, what the heck's with, up with all these lieutenants like coming and waking me up, you know? And so he starts saying, hey, we're gonna move everybody out from under this overpass and get you guys staged up for the bird. We got birds coming in by twos, like as many as we possibly could find. So the medevacs come in and I was probably on one of the last birds, I think, if not the last bird.

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  And to my left was, was Hardegri and, um, he was not doing well. Like he was, he was not doing well at all. So I kind of knew he probably wasn't gonna make it. I didn't know if I was gonna make it either, but, um,

• 1:19:21Speaker 04

  I didn't know like who, I didn't know for maybe several days because of the surgeries and stuff and, and all that. I remember getting flown to Balad after all my surgeries in Baghdad. And I was telling you earlier, there was a plastic surgeon visiting the Baghdad hospital who went to work. And he reattached my right ear, put 70 staples on my head. Um, and I have like a perfect full head of hair, like you wouldn't even know my ear. There's like little scars I could point out, but I mean, he had to like reattach the little lobe. He had to reattach that other little part and the canal. There was like 50 sutures inside the canal, like putting everything back together. And had he not been there, I definitely would not have an ear.

• 1:20:05Speaker 04

  I definitely my top of my head would not look the same, even my face, you know?

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

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• 1:20:52Speaker 05

  Common colds, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flu-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensor. Learn more at extensor.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

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• 1:21:37Speaker 04

  Ensure everything wasn't gonna like collapse.

• 1:21:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, because I mean, looking at you, like, I can't tell that you received these injuries. So, I mean, they clearly did a good job putting you back together.

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, unfortunately, you know, I used to look like a really young Brad Pitt, and then I remember waking up and there, "This is the best we can do. I'm really sorry." So, yeah, I got fortunate, for sure, for sure. Yeah, so, um, so as quick as it all started for me, it kind of all ended, you know, my military career. Like I said, I spent a little bit, probably... A short amount of time there at the Green Zone and then they flew me to Balad and probably one night there before they could get me on like an ICU bird to Longstool. Spent a while in Longstool, probably a few weeks. And I was in and out of like probably like a morphine induced coma type thing, you know,

• 1:22:30Speaker 04

  just like, I don't remember a ton. I do remember some guy from like the Wounded Warrior Project, I think had like just started with the backpacks, right? Like out of a garage. I remember getting one of those backpacks and that was like the only clothes I had was like a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and then like some crap in this backpack. I'd lost, you know, just lost everything, basically. So yeah, but I remember in Balad, I remember seeing Simpson. And he came over to my bed and he, and he was pretty messed up, like he had, he had some crazy scars and staples and stuff too, and him coming up to me. And I remember asking like, are he, maybe he asked me, he's like, hey, do you want

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  to know who made it? And I was like, I, I can't take it yet. Like I can't, I can't handle knowing who didn't make it and who did. I knew my best buddy made it, Richard Brendel. I knew he was alive, but I didn't know. And then I remember telling him, you know, I don't know how much long later, right? I remember saying like, okay, I'm ready. And like each one was just a dagger, you know, as he's going through it. Sergeant Patterson and Rivera and Hardigri and Weeks was another really good buddy of mine, Ari Weeks. And just going through it, Mora, you know, and he's just going through all seven of

• 1:23:55Speaker 04

  the guys and, uh, boy, yeah, took everything in me just to kind of, I don't know, that was the worst crap you could go through, honestly. Yeah. And then like I said, flew to Longstool. And what was so hard too about all this was like I get placed in this unit, I have this crazy nine month experience, ends with this, you know, crazy traumatic thing. And when I fly to Germany, when, when I leave Germany after like a week or so, or whatever it was, and I take an ICU bird to Walter Reed for one night. And then they decided to take me to Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon.

• 1:24:41Speaker 04

  When, when they, um, it, that was the last time I really got to see my guys.

• 1:24:48Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:24:48Speaker 04

  So it was like, I got put in there and then it was like, I got taken out. And even the wounded ones, like all the wounded ones went to different places.

• 1:24:55Jack Murphy?

  You don't really get closure on that experience.

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  No closure. And I missed all the funerals because it was a 10 month recovery. It was supposed to be like a year and a half. I did the, the whole, you know, walking with the, the, like the gymnastic looking thing and, and the back brace and,

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  all that stuff. And, um, yeah, and I never, I never got to go to the funerals. I never got to, um, yeah, have any, any kind of closure, anything like that. And, um, yeah, that's, that started my 10 months, um, recovery in the, in the hospital. Part, um, and that was, that was, that was really crappy 10 months for sure. Um, like I was thankful to be alive, obviously. Um, the physical stuff was, was crazy getting through all that. And I, I remember being like, hey, like I'm broken. Now I can't do that job anymore. Like just let me go home, you know? I just remember thinking like, just let me, let me go home. Don't let me.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  I, and I was actually really fortunate because after they kind of got me to a place, um, instead of just like sending me, they couldn't, I was convalescing, like I was still really bad, right? So I got to go to the very first active duty rehab unit, which was at the Uptown VA in Augusta, Georgia, right by the masters.

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  And I was one of like 20 guys in this unit and every single day for, I don't know how many months, like I'm doing vision therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, pool therapy. Um, seeing a shrink, right? Seeing a, seeing a guy. I remember, I remember sharing stories with the shrink dude and his, his like dad was in the military, but he wasn't. And I remember like,

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  Thinking like this, this isn't for me because the dude was just like the whole time listening to my stories, everything I was saying, like couldn't believe it like, oh my gosh. I'm like, this is, this is such a weird thing to, like, I thought I was coming, you know, you're gonna have answers for me and, you know, I'm on all these medications and I'm, so I'm kind of numb to a lot of things as far as like, I'm not having like PTSD yet, you know, like, and I'm almost thinking like PTSD at this point, like, is fake, like.

• 1:27:12Jack Murphy?

  Cause it hasn't hit you yet.

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, hadn't hit me yet. Nothing had really hit me yet. Um.

• 1:27:19Speaker 04

  The, and then once I started getting off all the pain meds and getting a little bit better, maybe getting out of the back brace, cause I was in the back brace for like six months or something, maybe even longer.

• 1:27:30Speaker 04

  Uh, I remember kind of the nightmare starting and a lot of the, um, like, I, like, to be honest, I was more afraid of Iraq. In the hospital, thinking about everything that had happened than I was when I was there.

• 1:27:45Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  Like scary as all, all of it was like, I, I mean, I really honestly was like horrified by everything I'd gone through.

• 1:27:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, now, now you have time to process all of it.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So that really sucked. Um, and then. I'll tell one funny story from recovery. So, you know, after six months of being in the, I mean, you're literally in the hospital. Monday through Friday, they'd have this formation where they, where you'd be like, wheel, if you're in a wheelchair, wheel into this like little cafeteria area and they'd literally like, it was a wounded warrior battalion, right? And they would like roll call and they'd be like, okay, Lance has got vision therapy. Make sure you don't miss any or whatever, you know, and they would like, you know, and then you'd go off and everybody would do their therapies and everything. Um, and, and so on the weekends, you know, we didn't have those roll calls.

• 1:28:37Speaker 04

  And so one of the guys recovering in there had like, had some gnarly break to like his leg. So he could just limp it around. He was like out of all of his stuff and not using anything but a cane, I think. But he couldn't like move his leg very well. And I was in a back brace and everything, so I couldn't drive or anything. But he's like, hey, if I rent a car, like, do you want to go to North Charleston with me? And like, we'll go to this Taylor Swift and Brad Paisley concert and like, yeah, like we'll, like, we'll like peace out of here for like a weekend. And so we totally went like AWOL and we had this whole thing set up where we would like tell the nurses like, we were going somewhere close or something. I don't remember. And then we, I got, I got in this car and I'm literally in a back brace.

• 1:29:20Speaker 04

  We're gonna spend a night in a hotel. Like I hadn't been out of the hospital at all, you know, up until this point. I, I actually, I did get to go home for a little while while I was in a back brace. I got to go home for like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I can't remember. And my parents like rented a hospital bed that like, cause I had to stay like, my spine had to like heal like, straight, you know, so I couldn't like just sleep in a normal bed and stuff. So they got this hospital bed and everything. But um, yeah, so anyway, we snuck out of there and we went to a concert in North Charleston and like, went to the, the fort out on the island there and yeah, totally snuck out of there for a while and.

• 1:30:01Jack Murphy?

  Is this also about the time to tell the Sheriff of Amarillo story?

• 1:30:05Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, yeah, let's transition to that. Perfect. So we, so I finally, I remember having to sit down, so we'll get to that. So I have to sit down with one of the, I think it was the back surgeon guy. Who tragically, I tried to look him up because I love this guy, Dr. Burke. He was a, I don't know what rank he was, but he was, he was an officer and he was the back surgeon there, the main back surgeon. And he ended up getting, when I tried to look him up, he, I found his obituary. And he had gotten run over by a truck while he was cycling with a big group of cyclists. And a dude killed him there in Augusta, Georgia. And left behind a wife and like a newborn baby.

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  And that killed me learning that. But anyway, he sat me down and he said, look, he goes, how badly do you want to stay in the army? You know, and I was like, can I jump out of planes? And he's like, no. And and he's like, if you really want to stay in and make a career out of it, like you could do, you know, you could do paperwork stuff and everything. I said, look, I, I gave the army, it was super short, but I gave the army everything I had. And I did what I wanted to do, right? I was airborne infantry, had a crazy deployment, did all the things, got wounded real bad. I said, no, I just want to go home. So he's like, okay, I'm I'm going to medically retire you. So I got medically retired at twenty years old, turned nineteen in Baghdad, turned twenty in the hospital,

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  medically retired at twenty. So I leave the military with a with a E four retired ID card. So getting, you know, on base with with a retired, I still look twelve or thirteen, getting on base with a retired card, you know, the gate guards are just like, what the like, you know, still to this day, they they're like, how how are you retired E four?

• 1:31:51Speaker 04

  But yeah, so my my, again, I was young and dumb, right? And I was like, I'm gonna pack my car with the little belongings I have, and I'm gonna drive all the way from Augusta, Georgia to San Luis Obispo. I'm gonna do it as fast as I possibly can. So I end up doing that in forty five or forty six hours straight with one stop in Amarillo, Texas. And on my way, so I left at midnight, like literally got to the place where I was gonna sign out for the last time, like eleven fifty nine, boom, you know, I I I sign out. And I leave. So I'm leaving in the middle of the night, didn't get much sleep. And as the sun is coming up in Arkansas,

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  I'm like nodding off while I'm driving. But I'm thinking to myself like, man, I, I, you know how many times we were on like multi-day missions and I stayed up, you know, like, you know, I'm fine. Well, I fell asleep and went into the median at seventy some miles per hour and spun out several times and almost hit oncoming like semis at the last second, like it swerved me back this way. And it was like the only strip, if you've been in Arkansas on the highway, it's like mostly trees and boulders and stuff. It's like the one grass patch that I like luckily like survive. And even the tires were still on the rims. So I just kept driving. I'm passing people calling nine one one, you know, they're like, what? This dude's passing

• 1:33:16Speaker 04

  me. He just crashed. And, and I got a bunch of energy drinks at a gas station and finally make it to Amarillo, Texas, where I had a hotel and stuff. And I wanted to eat at the Big Texan. So I go to the Big Texan, I'm famished. And I'm like, I just survived another near death experience, right? So I'm gonna get the most expensive thing on the menu. And it was like a ninety dollar humongous filet mignon, like a thirty-two ounce filet mignon, like biggest thing ever. And the Big Texan had that seventy-eight ounce steak or whatever. And if you ate all of it, you would get it for free, you know, and you get your name on the wall. It was like on all the, you know, food documentaries back in the day. So I'm there and I get the most basic, you get this, you know, boot

• 1:34:00Speaker 04

  of coke and you get all these sides and I'm just chowing down and they have this band that comes around and they, they play music and they ask, you know, what, what you, where, where are you coming from? All that kind of stuff. And I told them. So after I finish it, I'm like trying to wave down the waitress. I'm like, you know, hey, I really want to go get some sleep real quick because I got half of the drive left. And she goes, oh, it's been taken care of. And I went, that, that was the most expensive thing like on the menu, like, who was it? Like, I want to thank them. She goes, no, no, he doesn't want to be thanked. Like, you know, just, he, he took care of it. You're good. And I was like, listen, I, I have to know who did it. She's like, it's the guy right over there. So I go over to him and I say, sir, thank you so much for, for the meal. Like this was so

• 1:34:45Speaker 04

  nice. Like, you know, why did you do it? You know? And he's like, well, I heard you talking to the band that you were wounded in Iraq and on your way home. I was in the 82nd Airborne in a LRS unit in Vietnam. I was like, I was, I'm 82nd in a, in a RISTA unit, you know, in Iraq. So we got to talking and he gives me his card and he's the sheriff of, of Amarillo. He said, if you ever need a job, son, here's my card. You could be a deputy in Amarillo. And I never been back to Amarillo, unfortunately, but yeah, so I made it, made it, made it home, medically retired, the ripe age of 20 before I could legally buy a beer with all that. Yeah. And then, yeah, and the transition started.

• 1:35:29Jack Murphy?

  And they, they med boarded you. I think you said that they gave you 30% disability for all that shit that you had going on, which is like, what PX privilege is?

• 1:35:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, I don't, so being medically retired, I always had the base access and any, any type of thing that you would get as a retired member, I, I would have got, I still get, right? So I had all that, but my, yeah, my rating was 30%. So then the VA comes and they assume that 30%. Well, I, I had no idea that you could add more. And back, back in 2007, 2008, I mean, it was not like today. Like today, you know, like people are getting out, you know, that spent all their time on a, on a boat and never saw combat and they're leaving with a hundred percent. So it's, it's way, way, way different. But, and I just had no idea, you know, I'm young and I kind of like

• 1:36:22Speaker 04

  putting the military kind of like, oh, in that chapter and hey, I'm going to move on. And, and yeah, and so, yeah, 30%, I think mostly for like scars and like maybe headaches or something like, you know, my back generated like almost nothing. I didn't have any PTSD earrings, nothing on there, you know? Um, at all. And it took a long time. It actually took me kind of almost hitting like rock bottom. So I remember I told you I saved that that signing bonus. And the entire time I'm in Iraq, I'm like getting jump pay and hazardous duty pay. And I'm like investing everything and before the crash investments are doing pretty well.

• 1:37:06Speaker 04

  And I'm making, you know, a nice little goose egg. And I'm gonna go, um, or nest egg. I think I said goose egg. Um, I'm gonna go buy like, I'm in the hospital and I'm like, Mom, Dad, there's this awesome like F one fifty like I can custom, you know, build this thing and I'm, I'm gonna pay cash for it. And they're like, you idiot, like, that's gonna be worth nothing in a few years. Like, you know?

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• 1:38:57Speaker 04

  Save your money and like, you know, buy a house when you get back. And I'm like, houses are so expensive, especially in California and everything. Well, the the crash happens while I'm in the hospital. And housing became a little more affordable. And so, yeah, I was able to get a house while I'm in the hospital.

• 1:39:15Jack Murphy?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:39:16Speaker 04

  So I had a house to come back to. Um, my sister and parents had gone in on it as well. Um, and so, yeah, so I got this house to go back to. Um, um, yeah, thanks to that signing bonus, I guess, that helped. Oh, and the TSGLI. The TSGLI was the Traumatic Service Members Life Insurance Policy. So that helped too. So I had all these things going for me and I'm kind of this like small town hero, right? Everybody knows me. Um, everybody's coming up to me when I go to the grocery store because they see me on the news and I was wounded and, you know, some people thought I died, you know, and all this stuff. And so I'm getting all this fanfare and everything, but things are kind of getting worse and worse.

• 1:39:57Speaker 04

  Uh, mentally, you know, and nightmares, not sleeping, all the, all the stuff. Um, and then, um, I get to a place where, oh, so my thought was I was gonna go into law enforcement, go into SWAT or something. But I'm also developing this Crohn's disease that I don't know about, right? And I almost died, I didn't say this, but I almost died of MRSA after my wounds landing in that trash field. Like, I was in the ICU for a while before my parents could even see me when I got back trying to beat MRSA. Um, so maybe from that and the antibiotics and everything, whatever, even combat stress, you know, can trigger, um, Crohn's disease. There's Crohn's disease trying to kill me.

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  Um, and I cannot go through another, you know, boot camp, you know, cop, uh, whatever it's called. The cop boot camp, police boot camp, what, um?

• 1:40:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, okay, uh, police academy.

• 1:40:52Speaker 04

  There you go, police academy. So like, it just, it, it ends up like, it's not gonna work out. Um, and I don't know what to do with my life, like, I have no, I would thought I was gonna be in the army for a long time, you know? Um, and.

• 1:41:07Speaker 04

  And so I think my grandma saw this article in a newspaper and said, hey, like she knew I was unemployed. I'm like, super depressed, like have no direction. And she tells my wife, like, hey, you should um, take Lance to this, you know, it was this VA all hands meeting type thing. Learn about benefits, job opportunities, all that kind of stuff, right? And my wife's like, hey, we should go to this. And I'm like, absolutely not. It's just gonna be a bunch of Vietnam vets who are pissed off at the VA. I don't want anything to do with that, you know, yada, yada. So um, I end up going. Uh, she takes me there and we're sitting in this auditorium at a junior college and sure enough, it's a bunch of Vietnam vets who are pissed off yelling at, you know, these VA guys.

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  And I literally, my wife is grabbing my hand. She's like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You were right. You were right. And it's not even the VA. It's the California Department of Veteran Affairs, by the way. And um, so they're yelling at the wrong people. But my wife grabs my hand. She goes, we can leave. So I stand up and at the time Roger Brodigan, he was the secretary of um, the VA, or sorry, the Calvet, California Department of VA. And he goes, hey, young man, he's speaking. And he's like, young man, please stay there. Um, please sit back down. I'm almost done. I came here for you. And I was like, oh, shoot. So I sit down, make it through. You know, I mean, they're literally yelling about like, you know, impotence and, you know, all kinds of weird stuff. Like, it was, it was bad news.

• 1:42:36Speaker 04

  So when it finishes, he comes up to me and the first thing he does is he hands me gift cards to In-N-Out when they had those like In-N-Out bucks. So he's already, I'm already gonna listen to you now, right? And he's like, hey, there's this new program in California called Operation Welcome Home. I want you to go through it. I want you to meet this representative. We're gonna get you all squared away. Um, so he ends up like getting me this um, Army Emergency Relief thing to help me like, pay the mortgage we were about to, you know, not pay. Um, he helps me get a job as a contractor. So I, I end up working for SRI, um, doing-

• 1:43:13Jack Murphy?

  Stanford Research Institute?

• 1:43:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the Stanford Research Institute had this, had this branch of contractors, um, CONUS and OCONUS that would um, train and put on XTCs and exercises all over the country, getting units deployable. So-

• 1:43:33Speaker 04

  And it paid amazing. Like, I'd be gone for like four to six weeks, but the pay was incredible. And I'd go out and I'd help put on these huge exercises, or I'd go and I'd hide and I'd blow up, you know, Humvees with SIM IEDs. It was amazing. Um, so they get me plugged in doing that. Uh, oh, and at the time, they hit, my GI bill had been denied. The VA said, hey, you didn't complete your full term of service. You don't get your GI bill. I just took that as gospel. Well, then he goes through the whole thing and he's like in the line of duty, combat wound, sends it off. I get my GI bill. So during the school year, I start going to school using my GI bill. During the summer, I'm contracting, um, you know, working as a, as a civilian, um, getting our, you know,

• 1:44:14Speaker 04

  men and women deployable. One, one time I got to work with Arista Unit, which was super cool because they're like taking helicopters everywhere. And I'm load them on birds and I'm, you know, it was, it was legit to kind of have that experience again.

• 1:44:28Speaker 04

  So one day I'm driving down the road and I get a call from someone who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right? He's the governor at the time. And I'm like, no, who is this? Come on. Like, you know, and I pull over because, you know, back then you had to like hold the cell phone up and everything. And, um, and then his, his chief of staff guy comes on. He's like, hey, this is David. I'm with the, with the governor. Um, that was Governor Schwarzenegger. Uh, we'd love to invite you down to San Diego for you to give a speech, you know, about your experiences with Operation Welcome Home, um, and how it's helped you. I'm like, whoa, okay. So I end up doing this big old speech down in San Diego, um, about how Operation Welcome Home helped me. I didn't realize I was the first freaking veteran through Operation Welcome Home.

• 1:45:13Speaker 04

  I thought it was this robust thing. It'd just been set up by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I meet Governor Schwarzenegger. Um, he, he, the first time I met him was in a live, or not a live, but, uh, they were interviewing for Nightline and like, they just like pushed me into his like scene as he's walking down the aircraft carrier. And you know what? Yeah, I told you my story. I told you what happened, right? So he has to have been briefed. The first thing he says to me is, is he goes, Lance Yonker, he's a true American hero. He, he, uh, was crushed by a boulder in Iraq. And I'm just like, oh, oh no. Like my guys are going to kill me if they think I told him like a boulder crushed us, right? Like this, this is not good. And so I'm freaking out, but luckily they overdubbed like that whole thing.

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  And it was just like Governor Schwarzenegger's legacy will be helping veterans. You know, whatever, like while he's saying these outlandish things. But I end up, um, after I give my speech, he ends up, um, basically asking me to be his like poster child for veterans and takes me to DC several times and I meet everyone. I mean, I got a coin from the president, um, spoke at the White House, the Pentagon. Every caucuses like, you know, I'm, I'm like riding this wave of like, whoa, I'm this like poster child guy. You know, I have like the keys to the city of California, um, was veteran of the year of Cal, one of the first veteran of the year for California. Um, so, um, it's like all this good stuff's happening.

• 1:46:43Speaker 04

  And I remember I'm in one of these meetings, you know, talking about my experiences and stuff. And this guy was one of like a staffer for like some major, you know, some, some major congressman, I don't know who, I don't remember who, or was a governor or something. And he comes up to me and he goes like, hey, what makes you different? And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you don't seem to be like struggling with anything like you're not dealing with like, um, um, you know, like survivor's guilt or any of that stuff. Like what makes you different? I remember thinking like, I don't, I don't know. Like, I don't know. And I swear from that moment on, like everything hit the fan as far as like PTSD and like,

• 1:47:25Speaker 04

  like, yeah, just all like things were getting bad too. Working in that space where just getting taken advantage of like you're the token veteran, not, not by Governor Schwarzenegger. He, he was amazing. That whole staff was amazing, but other congressmen and women would be like, oh, I'm posing with the veteran, I'm helping veterans. And, and this one, this one congressman from down here in San Diego, he, he's no longer, I'm not gonna say his name or anything. Thank God he got voted out right after this, but we're leaving his office and he says, um, I don't care that you brought the veteran, I'm just glad you brought his hot wife. Wow. I like turn around to like, like, you know, I'm stunned. And the door shuts, you know, and we're like off running late to the next meeting.

• 1:48:10Speaker 04

  We gotta go to the next meeting and I just, as I'm walking back, I'm like, that couldn't have just happened. Yeah. And I remember going, like, I almost just lost my poster boy status. Like, I just about decked a congressman and I would have lost that poster boy status. So, yeah, I remember that.

• 1:48:28Speaker 04

  So, yeah, as that wave was kind of ending, and I'm getting my political, political science degree. A lot of that Crohn's disease is like trying to kill me and PTSD is just getting super, super bad.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  And, yeah, and luckily, you know, I have just an amazing wife who never let me, you know, get too far without dragging me to something because that, that first thing really helped. And then I had an amazing counselor at the vet centers for a really, really long time. That helped a lot, too. And it probably wasn't until, so some things helped with like the flashbacks and the nightmares was neurofeedback therapy. I kind of was one of the first veterans through this program that did all this neurofeed, neurofeedback. And they thought like they could fix me in 20 sessions. They're like, we'll give you 20 free sessions. I mean, nothing, I don't think anything happened and they're like, they just kept doing it.

• 1:49:25Speaker 04

  And probably like 70 some sessions into this, I was like, I, I slept through the night. I didn't have a nightmare, like, and I, my flashback, because I was having flashback, like legit, like, see, smell, hear, feel an explosion or a sniper shooting at me or something.

• 1:49:44Speaker 04

  Gnarly, yeah. And so that, as that started going away,

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  and you start sleeping, sleeping is so important to healing all that. So, you know, that's one of the biggest things is, is you gotta sleep and you gotta sleep deep. You gotta get into those core deep and REM cycles and you gotta start, you know, rebuilding all that from that trauma.

• 1:50:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then, yeah, counseling really helped. And then it probably wasn't until my daughter was born six years ago. And when she was born, I remember having a panic attack while she was crying and like in her room, like screaming or something as a baby.

• 1:50:29Speaker 04

  And I remember like, I can't, I can't do this right now. Like, I'm having a full-blown panic attack and I'm like, I have to get her. I have to take care of her. Like, she's my daughter. And I remember almost being able to like, force the panic attack, like, it left. And I was just like, whoa. Um, and then I started learning more about our nervous system and about PTSD. And really, you're just researching everything, um, the sleep side of things, meditation, brainwaves, the chemical side of your brain, trying to get those neurochemicals, um, set up. So when I got the, like, the brainwaves better. And then there was another group called the Angel Warrior Foundation that Dr. Gordon,

• 1:51:13Speaker 04

  he's been on Joe Rogan podcast a lot. He's, um, I went through that program, got kind of the, um, chemical side of things better. The, the neurohormones and everything. You get those better and now everything's kind of working symbiotically, um, healing. And then, um, you know, I had tried meditation a bunch, VA settings, that kind of stuff. Never thought it was helpful at all, didn't even understand it. Um, but then I tried it on the Calm app, um, especially there's this Jeff guy on there, um, who does the daily trip. And he has this one, like, meditation for beginners or whatever. And I did this 30-day course.

• 1:51:55Speaker 04

  And I remember, like, at first I was just using the app when I was having an anxiety attack or like a panic attack or something. And I was using it very symptomatically, like, it was a reaction. I'd use it, I could calm myself down. And then as I started going through these different programs in there and realizing like, okay, if my body and my mind, if I can like, get my heart rate so jacked up and I can have these panic attacks, if I have that kind of power here, well, then I also have that kind of power here to kind of like, start to like, regulate things, right? So it took a really long time, but I had a goal to do, to meditate every day for a year, and I did that. And that was super, super helpful. And I started getting like, ahead of the panic attacks. I started getting ahead of the anxiety.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  I started building up like, you know.

• 1:52:43Jack Murphy?

  The resiliency to it.

• 1:52:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, resilience to it, right? So that was really huge. And another group that was super beneficial to me was Operation Surf. They take you for like a week long surf camp type thing. Incredible. Everybody should

• 1:53:02Speaker 04

  go through that if they can. That was incredible too. And that really pieced together the meditation side too, because when you're on a wave, especially a big one, if you're doing anything where you have to be in the present moment, you can't be thinking about the future. You can't be worried in, you know, about the past, right? You have, you're on that wave. You're gonna get crushed if you're not. Same with, you know, riding horses, whatever it is, you know, if you're in that present moment.

• 1:53:29Jack Murphy?

  Those are, those are interesting things that like I, I was talking to somebody about this earlier, or last week, actually, about high performance driving. How it puts you in this moment. You have to focus on this thing. For me, you know, I've gotten really in the past into painting scale miniatures. You're there. You're super focused on this one thing. And that, that does sort of like relieve some of the stress and the anxiety, right?

• 1:53:56Speaker 04

  Hundred percent. And what it is, that's a flow state. Okay. So being in that, and you can get in a flow state with meditation, you get in a flow state with sports, you can get, now, when you and I were doing raids and stuff, you're in like a team flow state. You're, you're at the pinnacle of a flow state. Combat is, is the drug when it comes to being in a flow state, right? Because if you mess up, you're dead, or your guys die. And so luckily, doing things like surfing and riding horses, stuff like that, I mean, there's still danger involved, but it's not, it's not, you know, at that level of combat, at least. But I think, you know, that addiction that everybody talks about with war really is those neurochemicals that flood you, no epinephrine,

• 1:54:41Speaker 04

  endorphins, all that stuff that gets rushed when we're in combat, we're, it's really hard to get more of that, you know? And usually, we try to find pretty. Damaging ways to, you know, fill that need. So yeah, so now, now that I've kind of come, you know, all this way, I actually, full circle, work for the California Department of Veteran Affairs as like the San Diego rep, the local interhauser network coordinator. So my whole job is trying to get veterans plugged into benefits and benefits to veterans, plugging organizations together that help veterans, all that kind of stuff. So it's really awesome to, to be so involved in that space. I go to

• 1:55:25Speaker 04

  all eight military installations here in San Diego and do like a California-specific TAPS class and help in that transition space, trying to teach people like, hey, you know, don't do what I did, you know, like if you think something's wrong, like bring it up to the VA. And it's all changed, you know, it's a lot better.

• 1:55:44Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year, just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a

• 1:56:25Speaker 05

  parasitic infection. Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flu-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 1:56:44Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:57:13Speaker 04

  And streamline down and stuff, but. From all of us old guys that had to, you know, trail blaze and pathfind our way through the VA at the early stages. But yeah, so I love, I love, you know, the job I have. And then the biggest thing that I've, that I've gotten into the last few years here has been an organization called Saddles in Service. And it is a, you know, we, you've probably heard of the, like equine therapy, right? So it is not necessarily, it's really not like a, you're not going there and getting therapy, right?

• 1:57:55Speaker 04

  And it's, it's an organization that was started by veterans and a spouse of a veteran who was dealing with all those kinds of stuff and really just found healing and hope through horsemanship. And then decided, you know, hey, let's try to bring this to as many veterans as we can. And for me, when I was growing up in San Luis Obispo, my, my grandfather, Papa Strong, he lived in San Yen, as still does, and he was a cattle rancher. And so after he, he was actually an LA city fireman and when he retired, he became a cattle rancher. So he had been doing cattle ranching for quite a while before I was born.

• 1:58:39Speaker 04

  And when I was born, since the day I could walk, you know, had cowboy boots and cowboy hat and was out there as much as I could, helping my grandpa and learning that kind of way of life. And then when he retired, I was probably like, I don't know, eight or 10 or something. And you know, you kind of grow, you have to grow out of like the wanting to be a cowboy, you know, phase of your life, right? And I never thought that, that I would ever have that opportunity or get to do those kinds of things again or anything. And when I saw Saddles in Service, I was actually doing physical therapy.

• 1:59:17Speaker 04

  So the Crohn's disease, after it, you know, decimated my digestive tract and we finally got some medicine that was helping to stop that, it went around that and started attacking my SI joints and my hips and everything and I could barely walk. I could, it was so much pain all the time. And I'm doing physical therapy and my physical therapist owned a horse ranch. And she said, hey, I've got this guy, Smareen, who, um, he's kind of struggling. And I've been inviting him out to my horse ranch and he, um, seems to open up when he's out there around the horses. Like, would you come and talk to him about benefits and stuff? I know what you do for a living and all that. So I go out there

• 1:59:58Speaker 04

  and, and I'm like, oh, I like, want to keep coming back. Like, I want to, I will kind of, I love this horse thing and this might be a way to get back in there. And then one day she's like, hey, there's this really awesome group called Saddles and Service. I'm doing a fundraiser for them, um, for Veterans Day or whatever. And so I see this, this Saddles and Service and I research and everything and it's like the seven-phase program for veterans and first responders. And it takes you, these seven phases where the first, you know, you're learning like the physiology and psychology of horses, the predator-prey relationship, all this stuff, um, all about the horses. Then you're like learning how to groom them, learning how to lead them, walk them, you know, all that

• 2:00:42Speaker 04

  kind of stuff, all the groundwork stuff. And then you learn how to ride and you learn the different phases of that. And then you end up doing like advanced cowboy skills and all that. Start, ended up working cattle, doing all the Yellowstone stuff. And then the final thing is they send you, um, to Yellowstone or another work, or sorry, Wyoming, or another working ranch, um, and you do a week-long, you know, full-blown cowboy, uh, cattle drives, the whole bit, brandings, all that kind of stuff. Um, and so when I saw it, I was like, oh my gosh, like, that's my little kid cowboy dream, like, come true again. Like, I gotta do this. But I'm also like, can't walk.

• 2:01:24Speaker 04

  So they found this other drug they can give me. It's like an injection. And, um, and the day that I got that approved and I took my first injection, um, I signed up and I got my other buddy, that marine to sign up. And we signed up and we, you know, went through the program and, um, now he's a ranch manager at one of the ranches that was donated to them, the Circle T. And then, um, and now I'm, you know, I work a lot of the baby colts that they have. They got eight, um, or seven colts that were, um, what did you think of that? That I lost seven guys in Iraq and we got donated seven colts that were going to slaughter.

• 2:02:04Speaker 04

  And they were rescued and we took them and we've been training them up, doing a whole cult starting program. Shoot dude, I've never made that connection. Seven and seven. That's incredible. Um, but I've been working with these babies and learning myself, you know, how to train them from their earliest stages, all the way up to riding them and everything.

• 2:02:28Speaker 04

  But yeah, it's been an incredible life-changing, you know, opportunity for me. It's felt like coming home, you know, like back to when my grandpa and I'd go out to the ranch. And now, yeah, it's kind of like all I think about is getting out to the ranch and working horses and cattle and stuff like that. So.

• 2:02:48Jack Murphy?

  I, I want to ask you about the next chapter, um, but real quick, I'm going to pitch to the audience. Um, if you haven't already, please sign up for our Patreon. $5 a month gets you access to all of these Team House episodes as well as Eyes On ad free. Uh, you can ask questions to our guests, uh, all that good stuff. If you sign up at $10 a month, we will send you a Team House patch. These are pretty cool. We just got these in recently. Um, so really appreciate it folks. Um, and thank you for supporting the podcast. And, uh, so Lance, tell us a little bit about, uh, getting into screenplay writing.

• 2:03:25Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. So we'll go there. So this is a super random thing that, that just happened to me. With, um, so your producer Dee. Yeah. Has a good friend named George and George has been a producer writer for quite a while.

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  Movies, um, I, I can't go into his whole background because I, I can't remember it all, but you know, one of those producer writer guys and somehow he got connected with Saddles and Service and the ranch. And, um, and actually in August, I had another real bad Crohn's flare and couldn't go to the ranch for quite a while. And then, um, as I started getting better, um, she was like, you know, hey, you need to come out. We're having this writer producer guy come out, you need to come out again. And, and, um, I, I had started coming back out, working the babies and everything. She's like, make sure you're there tomorrow. This guy's coming out. I want you to share your story.

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  So he came out and George, uh, lost, um, his cousin, I think, or nephew, um, uh, to suicide. He's a veteran. He was a, um, marine and it's been really, you know, pressed on his heart to do something in that space. Right. And the whole goal of Saddles and Service is to help in that reduction of veteran and first responder suicide.

• 2:04:50Speaker 04

  And so, so, um, I share my story and then I have over the years been kind of doing some writing here and there of just, you know, you know, random kind of veteran related, kind of like, like a novel, but you know, just super piecemeal stuff. And then my story and that you've heard and all that. And so sharing that with him and he was like, hey, like, you know, the goal here is to like, make a short film, like a fictional short film that encompasses like a lot of the stories. Cause there's, they've helped over a thousand veterans at this ranch. And so taking a lot of these stories. Putting it into like one character, right?

• 2:05:32Speaker 04

  So it's kind of manageable and making a fiction, you know, movie story about a veteran who is, you know, helped by horsemanship, natural horsemanship and, and all that. So it just kind of organically happened where I would kind of send him some stuff and, and he, you know, would, would give me feedback and find it was like, dude, you're gonna join the like riding team. You're gonna be a part of this. You're gonna help make this, you know, kind of as believable and as honest and authentic as possible. Cause this happens all the time, right? Where people, you know, want to honor the veteran community and military and service and stuff,

• 2:06:13Speaker 04

  but it just comes off super cheesy, Hallmark-y, especially when it has to do with horses and stuff. So the whole goal is to try and do something that does justice to all of our stories and what we do there at the ranch. And I'm just there to help, help out as much as possible. And you can learn more about it at dothethingmovies.com. It's going to be called At Liberty. So, you know, slash At Liberty. You can find it. Maybe Dee can put that link. Yeah, yeah. It'll be down in the description. Cool. So that's, people can learn more about that. saddlesinservice.org. They can, you know, you know, go there as well.

• 2:06:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, just amazing stuff. So really excited about it. So, quick little thing. When I was five years old, you know, I was a real cowboy, right? Helping my grandpa out at the ranch and everything. Somehow the Bank of America was doing this huge marketing thing where they're doing billboards all over the country with like, you know, real cowboys and real, you know, workers and stuff, like kids. And so I was chosen because I was a real cowboy kid. And I was all over the country on billboards, right? Cowboy hat, like my 15 minutes of fame. I made like a hundred, a hundred dollars an hour doing this photo shoot back in, you know, like early nineties, which, which is still the most money I think I've ever

• 2:07:42Speaker 04

  made per hour, especially if you count inflation. I think in the military, I made like 23 cents an hour in, in Iraq, you know? So when that was done, this producer or whatever wanted me to play this cowboy kid in, in a movie. I was going to be shot on the set of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, and I really thought I was going to be like, you know, the next, uh, you know, kid cowboy actor. Well, it ended up like falling through, but since I was five years old, like all I've ever wanted to do is be in like, you know, a cowboy movie. And so now, um, he's like-

• 2:08:20Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extentur, Depamocumab ULAa. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extentur is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extentur is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report

• 2:09:02Speaker 05

  if you have a parasitic infection. Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extentur. Learn more at extentur.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:09:21Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:09:48Speaker 04

  Okay, you're gonna get your shot. We're gonna make this movie and you're gonna, you're gonna help write it, but you're also gonna be in it. So I'm really looking forward to finally getting to do that as well.

• 2:09:58Jack Murphy?

  Dee, do we have any questions for Lance?

• 2:10:03Jack Murphy?

  That's right, we'll pull, pull it up here.

• 2:10:05Speaker 04

  No worries.

• 2:10:12Jack Murphy?

  Littering and, Littering and? One question, uh, from M. Corbin, is his friend's last name really Grendel?

• 2:10:20Speaker 04

  Brendel, B with a B, B R, Brendel, yeah. Um, we didn't, hardly any of us went by real names when we were over there either, right? Um, he had a pretty funny nickname, I won't say it on here. Um, yeah, they, yeah, we all had nicknames, but yeah, Brendel.

• 2:10:40Jack Murphy?

  So Lance, uh, anything else you wanna tell people about before we get going tonight? Um, anywhere you wanna direct the audience to, to go take a look? I, I mean, I, we'll have a URL down in the description for folks, but is there anything else that you want them to know about?

• 2:10:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a, there's a couple of things, I think, you know, one is, um, everybody's journey is different, right? Um, the most important thing, I think, is not, not giving up, is always trying to find that thing that's gonna get you out of bed in the morning. Um, it might not be horses for you, it might not be surfing, but it might be archery, it might be, you know, painting the little things like you were talking about. It could be, there's so, there's, the world is humongous, there's so many things that you can do. Um, I, I, I hate it when veterans think, um, even, you know, sharing my war stories and stuff, it doesn't like, I don't know, it doesn't make me,

• 2:11:34Speaker 04

  I'm not super jazzed on that, I'm more jazzed on like this part, like, don't let those stories be the best thing you ever did in your life.

• 2:11:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:41Speaker 04

  Like, let that be like one chapter, you know, you've written a book and I read it and, and it's like, there's, you, there's chapters of your life, there's things that you're doing, you're not stopping, right? Um, it's, it, it, it could be one of the best things you did in your life, but it shouldn't be the and only best thing you did in your life. Um, you know, for me, as like, my, I'm not really trying to be anybody and I don't have social media really or anything like that. Um, since having kids, like, my focus has been... Pretty much solely on, I wanna be like the best father and I wanna be the best husband. And, and really, you know, really putting everything into that.

• 2:12:21Speaker 04

  Um, and being a good dad is not, is not doing this, you know, all day, you know, with your kids next to you and stuff. So, um, I just want other veterans, um, you know, for me, I try like meditation and different things. Um, even different like medical things. I tried several times and, and would think they didn't work, right? And I always encourage people like, try it like at least three different times. Even like waiting a while and trying it again. Try, try that thing three different times with three different providers or three different groups or whatever. And to make to, before you know, you write off, you write that off or whatever, you know? And, um, some veterans that, you know, it might be a service animal is really, you know, all they need.

• 2:13:04Speaker 04

  It might be, um, you know, might not even be like a veteran group, you know? It might be a completely separate thing, you know, getting involved, um, in journalism, you know? Something super, um, you know, different. But, uh, yeah, anybody that's, you know, struggling, it's, I think it's easy to look at the news and your phone and social media and just get so bogged down with all the negativity and all the, you know, bull crap and think it's so important. If, if, if the political theater, you know, that happens constantly in this country, you know? It's like, if you were to, like literally I turned the, the news app off on my phone, you know? No social media and it's like my six foot world, this house, everything's great. Yeah. This house and I have control over it.

• 2:13:50Speaker 04

  I don't have control over anything out there. Uh, I didn't have control in the military. I didn't have control in war. Um, but the things I can control is what you need to put your, put your focus in, in all your time and energy into. Um, getting mad about every single thing and all that stuff, um, that you can't control, you know?

• 2:14:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's pretty useless. With that said, um,

• 2:14:18Speaker 04

  You should still do things like, you know, your last episode is about Chapman and everything going on with him, right? So by all means, absolutely sign that petition like I did that David, you know, started.

• 2:14:33Speaker 04

  You know, there's not a guy that I served with that would be in that situation where, you know, two people would have gotten an award. And the dude that's alive would take the exhibit that got everyone I served with would be like, absolutely not. Like, don't even include me in the museum, the guy that died, you know, and, and, and I don't know a single person that would do that. So sign that petition, um, you know, and we all got it, all of us veterans who, you know, we all have to police ourselves and our own and, and, and, you know, look out for things like that and try and make a difference. And I don't mean, you know, don't do those kinds of things or have your head so far in the sand that you don't know what's going on.

• 2:15:16Speaker 04

  But the more of the negativity that you can get out of your life and focus on the things that you can control, the happier, the happier you're going to be. And your recovery is going to be better too.

• 2:15:26Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely.

• 2:15:26Speaker 04

  You know? Yeah.

• 2:15:29Jack Murphy?

  Well, Lance, thank you for sharing your experiences with us tonight, man. I mean, it's a wild ride. I mean, yeah, ups and downs, but I mean, a good, good, overall, I mean, some really good things too.

• 2:15:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, people always ask me like, hey, would you do it, you know, over again, you know? And if I had to do the same life over again, I don't think I'd change a thing because of all the good things that have come out of all the bad things. You know, and it's one obstacle, you get over the next one and there's another obstacle and you know, it's going to come, but you know, never give up.

• 2:16:03Speaker 04

  I think if I got to live two lives, I would really love to try, uh, being a pilot, you know, like, uh, a jet, jet fighter pilot, you know, or whatever. I think that'd be fun, um, but you don't get to live two lives, so I wouldn't change it.

• 2:16:16Jack Murphy?

  Well, there's still time to get your pilot's license.

• 2:16:18Speaker 04

  Well, that's true. That's true.

• 2:16:21Jack Murphy?

  So, thank you again Lance. We'll have some links down in the description. Go check out the projects that he's working on and some of the charity organizations. And thank you everyone who joined us tonight. We will see you again next either, if you're on Patreon, we'll see you on Wednesday, live.

• 2:16:40Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture. Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a

• 2:17:22Speaker 05

  parasitic infection. Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flul-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:17:41Speaker 00

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:18:08Jack Murphy?

  Otherwise, the episode will premiere on Friday. So we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.

• 2:18:14Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture. Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting,

• 2:18:22Speaker 05

  It may be time to try something else. Extensure is an ultra-long-acting prescription-maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extensure is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection. Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or flulike symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur.

• 2:19:04Speaker 05

  Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensure. Learn more at extensure.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:19:14Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

• 2:19:46Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely. Stay in touch, man.

• 2:19:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks.

• 2:19:52Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extensure, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extensure is an ultra-long-acting prescription-maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extensure is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids. Unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection.

• 2:20:35Speaker 05

  Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensura. Learn more at Extensura.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:20:52Speaker 00

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at OnDeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:21:29Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extensura, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting,

• 2:21:37Speaker 05

  it may be time to try something else. Extensura is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extensura is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection. Common cold, sinus infection, inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur.

• 2:22:19Speaker 05

  Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extensura. Learn more at Extensura.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:22:29Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at OnDeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:23:01Speaker 05

  Sponsored by GSK, the makers of Extenture, Depamocumab ULAA. If your asthma keeps interrupting, it may be time to try something else. Extenture is an ultra-long-acting prescription maintenance treatment for severe asthma, eosinophilic type, ages 12 and older. It isn't for sudden breathing problems. Extenture is the first and only add-on treatment that can help deliver protection from asthma attacks with two doses a year. Just one dose every six months. That's a lot of time for everything in between. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. Don't change or stop medicines, including steroids, unless told by your doctor. Report if you have a parasitic infection, common cold, sinus infection,

• 2:23:46Speaker 05

  inflammation in the nose, flu or fluke-like symptoms, joint pain or sore throat may occur. Carry on with fewer attacks and ask your doctor about Extenture. Learn more at Extenture.com or call 1-833-393-3678.

• 2:24:01Speaker 07

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• 2:25:07Speaker 06

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