Ranger Regiment Platoon Sergeant in Syria and Afghanistan | Les Sandusky (throwback episode)

original air date 12/14/22 Former Ranger Les Sandusky joins the show for a candid, four-hour deep dive into combat, leadership, and life after the Regiment. From firefights in Syria and Iraq to rebuilding purpose after injury and RFS, Les opens up about resilience, loss, and redemption. A raw, unfiltered conversation on what it means to serve — and to find yourself again once the mission ends. Subscribe to our Patreon & get ad free listening ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse 00:00 – Early Ranger Life 23:40 – Combat in Syria & Iraq 1:05:00 – Mortar Tactics Explained 1:32:30 – Inside Ranger Culture 2:03:10 – The DUI & RFS Fallout 2:45:00 – Injury & Isolation 3:16:00 – Big Red One Transition 3:25:00 – Rebuilding a Platoon 3:34:00 – Live Q&A Segment 3:43:00 – Transition Out 3:54:00 – Restoring Rank & Honor 3:55:30 – Contracting & Closure 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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• 1:08Speaker 02

  The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:20Jack Murphy?

  Hey folks, welcome to episode 180 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park and our guest on the show tonight is Les Sandusky. Les served as a mortar platoon sergeant in 3rd Ranger Battalion, spent some time in 1st Ranger Battalion, had a lot of deployments to Afghanistan and Syria. You know, like I was saying the other day, I'm really glad to have you on the show because like Dave and I each represent like the Rangers of yesteryear. Yeah. Like Dave was in Ranger Battalion in the 90s. I came in, I got there in 2003. But then there's this whole other generation of dudes that came after us and... If you don't hear them talk, I mean, there's no books really out there about what you guys

• 2:04Jack Murphy?

  did yet. And I think there's some incredible stories about what that what that whole era of like, let's say, 2010 to 2022, what those guys have been up to.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely.

• 2:15Speaker 05

  And not only that, but I mean, Ranger Regiment has changed so much, especially since I was there. You know, we were just coming out of the, you know, the premier light infantry of the world and moving into, you know, the CQB JSOC support element type of thing.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I want to say within like my first three years, we changed our kit and our helmet three times and our uniform three times.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  That's funny, because when I was there, probably hadn't been changed for since Vietnam. You know, so, you know, yeah.

• 2:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's it's hard to explain that to like people on the outside, that like massive cultural shift that the unit went through. But let's talk about you. Let's talk about your origin story last kind of like, what was your upbringing like? And what was it that kind of set you on the path towards the Army and towards the Ranger Regiment?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  Okay, so I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, like, obviously, I got the Ranger shirt. At the time, they were the Tacoma Tigers. But so when I was growing up in Tacoma, I was born on Fort Lewis at Madigan. I was on Army Brat. My mom was in the military. She was working at ICOR and Personnel. And my dad worked Patient Admin at Madigan. So that's where I was born. Basically, where both my parents worked, and I kind of grew up around the Army. I grew up kind of watching Rambo films, putting on, and, you know, watching Predator, watching all those films that everyone, you know, we quote when we get to the Army. Yeah. And so I was kind of like dead set on being in the Army because I grew up around

• 3:50Speaker 04

  the Army. And we'd tell my parents all the time, I'm going in the Army. Almost every year, I was an Army guy for Halloween. I would play in the woods all day with my friends, dressed up in fatigues, do bottle rocket wars, all types of playing Army all day, right?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  So that's kind of how it was for a while. And then I know that um, there's a lot of details in there with the dynamics and how my family was like, you know, military family, I think it's kind of common. Military families don't last, it kind of divorce and stuff like that. It's kind of a common thing. So that's things that what happened, a lot of back and forth between both parents, um, spending majority of my time in the Pacific Northwest. Uh, I even moved cross country all the way to Florida before and then back up to the Pacific Northwest. And the whole time I'm just like kind of dead set and joined the army. That's kind of what I want to do. I don't even know exactly what I want to do.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Um, I do remember being out uh, near Solo Point and seeing guys jump into the water at Solo Point or being out there on American Lake. And seeing guys jump out of the back of uh, forty sevens into the water and seeing them, you know, green face paint and stuff with this like haircut I didn't like. Uh, on top of their head called high and tight, you know? And be like, man, I want to be those guys, you know? And we us- we also used to have a, I guess, like, I don't remember what it's called, like Armed Forces Day on the base. Where you could like mess around in the tanks and mess around with the the night vision goggles, which like back then was like this huge

• 5:37Speaker 04

  freaking thing and like everything looked like uh, like Atari on the computer screens or something that they're messing with. And you're like, well, I tank. So all that stuff was always like very fascinating to me. I just never really knew exactly what I wanted to do. And I was like, I want to join, I want to join, I want to join. And then uh, nine eleven happened. I was a freshman in high school and uh, you know, so I couldn't jump right into the army right there. But both my parents already, even though they were separated. It's like ESP, a light bulb goes off, like you're not doing it, you're not going, don't do it, whatever. You gotta go to college, you gotta do this and that. And so I give it the old college try, pun intended, you know?

• 6:21Speaker 04

  And I, I, I was doing well in college. I was making the dean list and stuff over there in Washington State and um, or not Washington State, up there in Seattle, so um, UW. So I'd be there doing school and everything and doing pretty well and then um,

• 6:42Speaker 04

  I wasn't really liking it. I felt like when I was there, I didn't feel like I was being educated. I felt like I was being indoctrinated because when I was looking at the screens, it was like, like a lot of handholding, like, hey, do a project. But when you did the project, it had to be exactly like, there was no.

• 6:58Jack Murphy?

  It's like very passive.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was like, in my head, I was like, do college. I'm like, man, free thinking. There's no free thinking. I'm like, so why don't I go in the army, you know, like, what am I doing here? But I kept at it. And then one day, and this is like the interesting story everyone wants to hear, right? But uh, so one day, um, I have some friends that are having a birthday party. We all work for the same company. So, you know, I'm, you know, basically a poor kid going to college, can't afford, burying myself in debt. I'm already like thirty thousand dollars in debt by this point. And, um, anyway, all these, um,

• 7:41Speaker 04

  all these guys that I work with, uh, male and female, they have birthdays around the same time, which is in February. And I'm like, you know, like, so they say, we're gonna have like a birthday party, everybody's birthday party same time, you know? And there's some people that are like, it's my birthday week, you know, and they're having a birthday every day up until that point and all that ridiculous stuff. So, anyways, like, I'm like, I guess, like, one of the last guys to show up at this thing. And I get there, some goons outside, like graffitiing the door and they're doing some, writing some slurs and stuff on there, some inappropriate stuff with a paint marker.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  And I step in, like, you know, I'm gonna tell them not to do that thing, cuz it's very bad to do that kind of thing. And, um,

• 8:33Speaker 04

  kind of like an altercation, getting an argument there. And there's a guy behind me that I didn't see.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  And next thing you know, man, all I don't even feel it. There's, I hear glass shatter. And it just goes past my head and somebody had broken a forty ounce bottle on the back of my head. I get to that minute how I found out it was forty ounces. But, so I immediately turned around like, you fucking kidding me?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Take this guy to the ground, start ground and pound immediately. I was a pretty good wrestler, like in high school, a lot of titles in the state of Washington. And so it was no problem getting this guy to the ground and just starting to beat his face in off the concrete. And there was a guy on my back.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  And he was like pummeling me, but I was like, man, this guy hits like so soft, pillows, like whatever. Subdue this guy and then get this guy off your back. So this guy was pretty much quitting on the ground. Like he was no longer a threat to me. And so I stood up and I turned, I stood and based and turned and faced the guy who was striking me. And at that point, he was coming down with another strike and I noticed that he wasn't striking me. He was stabbing me the entire time.

• 9:48Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  And so I put my arm up and the knife went into my arm and it got stuck inside my arm here. And I kind of grabbed him, tripped him, swept him, got on top of him. And I stabbed him a bunch of times in his stomach. And then somebody I was with was being attacked by another person of the group. I jumped, I tackled that guy. And as I was tackling him and crawling up him to drive the knife that I now took from his friend into him. Another guy came up and tried to kick me, like doing like a running soccer kick on me. And when he tried to run up and kick me, I blocked it partially and it was like a big like,

• 10:33Speaker 04

  like a big sneaker that was like loosely on his foot. So he like totally absorbed the blow, like everything was just like, you know? And my knife went into his calf and I know I felt it slide up his calf. So I tore through it and then I got back up and I saw these guys getting away. Next thing you know, there's this big dude in front of me and I'm like crap, man, like I, I, I'm, I feel gassed. Like I stood up and I was like, wow, like, you know, when you stand up too fast. And I was like dang man, like I'm fading. I was like, but if you fade and you go to the ground, this is like, you know, YouTube was fairly new back then and everything on YouTube was people getting curb stomped. Yeah. And I was like, that's not gonna be me. They're not gonna knock my teeth out, you know? Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  So, I was like, kill me motherfucker, kill me. I'm not dead yet, fucking kill me. Like I was with everything, like please be scary enough to get the fuck away from me. And then, uh, he's like, alright, screw this. Like this guy's not dying, like I'm out. And so, he, him and his buddy took off and I'm like, dude, I can't run. I can't chase these guys down. Nobody's gonna know who these guys are. So some dude was in the, guy, I look over and the dude was, this guy that I stabbed, he was getting buddy carried by his friend. And got loaded up in his car and when he got put in his car, um, they started that car up and then, um, it's like a, like a station wagon of some kind. It might've been a Volvo wagon. I don't remember. It's happened a long time ago, but, uh, I'm pretty sure it was like a Volvo wagon and, uh,

• 12:01Speaker 04

  man, they smashed on the gas. They didn't turn the steering wheel. They put it all apart. Bam, they hit the car in front of it and car alarm went off. And my, the party opened. Saw outside. Holy shit. And my boy comes out there, sprints up to the car and just smashes that window. Single hit. And my boy was not a fighter. My boy, like, this friend of mine, he was always the guy, like, I, he's my, one of my best friends, but it's like, he's one of those guys that's like, oh, Les can fight, so I can start shit. And I was like, dang man, he's always getting in trouble. But now finally I'm in trouble and he's helping me. Like, everything, like, you know, like, you, like, you, you know, all those favors you owe me are coming. Yeah, right.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  So he smashed the window and then like, yeah, these guys backed up. They're smashing the car behind him. Car alarm's going off and, like, all these people in these buildings, high rises, looking down, calling the police while all this is happening. These guys jet off and hit the corner and as soon as they hit like that corner, the cops come around this corner and I'm like dang, just missed them like go, go after the guys, you know, and they come out weapons drawn because I'm holding a knife. And I looked down at that point because now I have the time to focus like really on myself and assess my damage and I look down and then um I have blood, my whole shirt, which was I think like

• 13:23Speaker 04

  my shirt was like an apricot color or something. It was now blood red all the way down into my jeans, like completely soaked and my shirt was like stuck to my body, like glued to my body. And I was like, remember being like, like trying to breathe and then like feeling like nastiness like come out of my neck because I got stabbed right here in my neck is where one of the stab wounds went. And then I remember like opening my arm up and just seeing like this web of like blood and then seeing this like frothy stuff come through there. I'm like, oh, and then like my friend who's like helping me is like, hey man, like you know, and I was like, I remember, like he says it because I don't remember. He says like, dude, you were just sitting there like, I told him not to fuck with me.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  So did you have a tension pneumothorax?

• 14:11Speaker 04

  That's, that's what turns out to, to happen. So the police realized, okay, this guy's probably not a threat. I, you know, when they're saying drop your weapon, like I'm probably doing something wrong. We're like, the police were fully right to probably shoot me at that point because I, you like hands up, you know, when I put my hands up, like that, I saw that and I was like, oh, hell no. I'm dying, like I'm already dead. So I pulled out my phone, I called my dad.

• 14:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  And he said, dad, like, I don't know what to tell you. I fucked up and I fucked with the wrong people and in case I die, he's like, you know, I love you, man, all this. And so like my dad's like freaking out like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. By the time the police officer gets to me.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  He's starting to ask me questions, say, hey buddy, sit on the curb, sit on the curb buddy, like what's going on? And I was like, I was like dude, I'm fading, I'm now incoherent. I don't, I hear what he's saying, I understand what he's saying, but I can't answer him. So all I could muster to say to him was like, this is my dad, and he'll answer any questions about my identity, whatever.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Paramedic comes over, paramedic comes over, says, hey honey, hey honey, like, is there anything you're allergic to? Go ahead and laid back, is there anything you're allergic to? And as I'm laying back, I say, yeah, morphine, because I'm allergic to morphine. And, and I know that because, that's another story, maybe for another day. I have nine toes, I had my foot look like a freaking hamburger meat when I was like six years old, because my mom ran over my foot with a tractor, I think, when my dad was in the Gulf War. So anyways, back to this story, as chaotic as my life is.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  She says, you allergic to anything? And I was like, yeah, morphine.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  She's like, he's in pain, he needs morphine. And I don't know if she gave me morphine or what. But it's something, I felt something go through my veins at that point, and I was like, no.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  And it was so embarrassing, man, they like, they cut my clothes off, I'm naked, my genitals are out in the street, my coworkers are there, you know, I'm like, dang it, man, this is so bad. And it's February in Washington State, so I'm not really showing, I'm not showing.

• 16:24Jack Murphy?

  That's a story, that's a story. You're like, it's cold out, it's cold out.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  So they put me in the ambulance, and you know, the lady starts going through like her avpoo sequence, man, and she's like, hey, you know, like, talk to me, and I'm like, I can't say anything. And then she like, hey, follow my finger, I'm like, alright, bet, easy. The follow the finger thing, I crush this every time, puts the finger in front of my face, and I'm like, let's go. Throw that thing right or left, I'm gonna follow it with my eyes, and as soon as it went here. Lights out. Couldn't see nothing. I could still hear her, but couldn't see anything. So then she's like, uh-oh, uh, you know, uh, can you squeeze my hand? You know, and I felt like I was deadlifting like seven hundred pounds trying to squeeze her out. Give everything. I was like, come on, come on.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  And she was like, oh no, like, so can you wiggle your toes? And this goes to the nine toe thing, right? My head, I'm like, please, like if I had one more toe, I would have more, higher probability of wiggling these things. You know, I'm sitting there like, oh, oh, oh, like wiggling, wiggling, wiggling. And they weren't wiggling. And then I heard a lady go like, this is so sad. He's so young. I don't know if he's gonna make it.

• 17:37Jack Murphy?

  Jesus.

• 17:37Speaker 05

  So she was an EMT though, right? Apparently not a paramedic, cause.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  I don't know what they were, but the other lady, there was two ladies. This is like, you know, this isn't one of those wow, wow, wow stories. They got two ladies in the freaking. But in the back of my head.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Dear Playboy. I never thought this would happen.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  There were two females, uh, uh, working on me. And, um, you know, one, one was of, of no hope. It almost sounded like. And one was like, we're not that far from the hospital. Like we can, you know, we can get him there. And now the whole time I'm just like.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Oh, you know, I wanted to say something. It wasn't. And then, um, later, when I was in the military and I first learned about, you know, um, RFR or anything, I had tension in my thorax. It's like coming up. I, at this moment was like the jugular distension started happening. My heart started stopping. Uh, and I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what the sensation was. I felt like a steamroller was crushing my chest.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  And I remember as it was crushing, I was like, I'm going to die. And I said, I said, I remember being like, well, I was in this like abyss, you know, like, I said, like in my mind, I said, God, if you're real, don't let me die like this. Cause I was thinking like, I was like, dang man, I'm, I'm gonna die doing retail.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? It's like I'm folding t-shirts, man. Like, what am I doing? Working with these people like somehow I get stabbed for some crap and anyways,

• 19:11Speaker 04

  next thing you know, I'm in the hospital and they're using a defibrillator and I wake up and I'm in so much, there's, I'm, I'm combative because now I'm like, I'm, I'm still in the fight.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  You know?

• 19:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  I'm fighting, so I get up and I'm like, ugh, like throwing people off me like incredible hold. They're like restraining me and I have a tube down my throat. I have a camera in my stomach where it's looking around for additional stab wounds. I have two chest tubes in the side of this lung, my left lung, right here. And I have a tube up my freaking piss hole. And I'm just like, like, ugh, and the next thing you know, it's like, they did something where it's like, put them out. You know, we brought them back, but put them back, you know? Like, this was a mistake. Send them back to the other side. So then anyway, then I had it like, you know, more peaceful, like awakening again later the next day in the hospital. And I have like a detective there, police officer, a doctor and all this.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  And then I remember the, the, the detective telling me something like, hey, man, like, it's a miracle that you pulled through. Like, a lot of people, they, they don't survive this kind of attack. And like, it's, it's good that, you know, you're, you're with us. And we have a lot of officers that go through something like this and they're just done, you know what I mean? So it was kind of cool, like, to hear that from a guy in uniform. That's like, wow, like, I just woke up, like, where am I? What am I doing? Am I in trouble? Like, what's going on? And then he later informed me that, like, I guess the guy that I was in a fight with

• 20:51Speaker 04

  was taken to some studio apartment that he owned and his friends just ditched him in the bathtub and he didn't make it.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Oh, shit.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  And so I was like, man, I'm probably in trouble, you know? And luckily, you know, the amount of witnesses that were there were like, absolutely not. This guy was completely like in self-defense. And anyways, I.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  Uh, this is how I found out it was like a forty ounce. Cause the guy's like, hey, you know, you had a forty ounce, you got hit over the back of the head, a forty ounce ball. You got stabbed about eight times in your lung. You got stabbed in your back, you got stabbed in your arms, tell me where all the stab wounds are. I was like, dang, man, I don't even remember getting stabbed that much, it happened so fast. And, um, and then he's like, and you know, the way that we found out, it was like a forty ounce ball. Cause I was like, how, how did you know it was a forty ounce, you know, it wasn't matter. You know, cause I had a shard of glass sticking out the back of my head with the label still stuck to it, the forty ounce label. So I had like this huge like, you know, like a feather sticking out of my back, but glass, I was fighting these guys.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  So they did some real Sherlock Holmes work there.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  I guess.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  They assembled the clues.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  Hmm, I would say. Yeah, indubitably, elementary, all those words, yeah. So at that point, I was like, look, man.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  And I, and I, and I see some reasons why my parents wouldn't come to the hospital or visit me there necessarily. I see some reasons why my family hasn't, I have like an estranged brother, um, who has certain issues. And I understand why he wouldn't go there, so I don't really hold against these folks, but at the time, I was like, dude, nobody's in this hospital. All these people tell me, go to college. All these people, you have to do this, you have to do that. Where are they? Where's the money for college? Where's the money for food? Where's the money for rent? Where's the money for notebooks, pencils, papers, you know? Uh, laptop, something.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  You know, it's not that like, I expect that from people, but if people are gonna try to maybe control your life or push you in that direction. You know, when your passion all your life was like, I'm gonna join the military, this is like, when I set the bar very high, I joined the military. I don't think, um, but it is a very rewarding experience. You can take part in, to be a member of the armed forces and it opens up a lot of doors on the other side. And then you can go to college, um, pretty much for free, you know, and get an education. And, um, so, uh, from that experience.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  It's about, it really taught me about trajectory. Like, maybe I was on the wrong trajectory. So it also taught me like, not everything. It almost taught me like, nothing that happens is bad. Like, you can think, this is a bad thing happened. This isn't advantageous to me for maybe that time period or something. But in the long run, everything works out, you know?

• 24:06Speaker 04

  No matter what, at the end of the game, the king and the pawn go in the same box.

• 24:10Jack Murphy?

  I mean, when you realize that you could check out at any moment, even at a very young age.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:15Jack Murphy?

  Kind of like, your priorities change, right?

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And I was like, well, I gotta do what I want to do. And people, we're worried about, you can die. You could die over there. You can, I'm like, well, I could die over here.

• 24:26Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  But if I die over there, maybe it means something.

• 24:29Jack Murphy?

  Right. At least you're doing what you loved.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:31Jack Murphy?

  What you wanted.

• 24:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I already, like, going into the military, was thinking like, man, this is in, I've already kind of accepted death. I've accepted to, to, to not form an attachment with life that, don't be so attached that you're in fear of death.

• 24:55Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  To where you're not gonna live the life you want.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  And the good thing about going through that experience is, like, whether you go through basic and go through everything and it's like, feels like hell, because it's just a different experience. Whatever you're going through in the military, you're like, I did that. Like, why can't I do this? Why can't I walk 12 miles?

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Like, why can't I do that? I did that. That seems like harder.

• 25:22Jack Murphy?

  So, around 2009, 2010.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:26Jack Murphy?

  You get a shitload of waivers presumably for your gimp toe.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 25:30Jack Murphy?

  And eight stab wounds.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:32Jack Murphy?

  And every other damn thing.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:34Jack Murphy?

  And join the army.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Um, so I had relatively high ABAB score.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  You know, they're throwing everything at me and I was like, well, I want to go special forces. Um, grew up on JBLM. We had first group there. A lot of my friends' dads were special forces guys. And a lot of guys like in and around the wrestling, um, community were like ex Rangers and uh, a lot of the parents of the wrestlers I was wrestling with were Rangers at the time, kids in my school, Rangers. We had two, seven, five and we had first group up there. You have a bunch of guys. I was like, yeah, I want to go special operations, but honestly, at, in that time of my life, I was like, special forces seems easier and like, I don't want that haircut. I don't want that Ranger haircut. I didn't tie. I didn't want it. I was, I'd never combed my hair growing up. I hated it.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  And I was like, I want to like, I want to kind of look like a bag of shit, kind of like I do right now. But, um, like,

• 26:35Speaker 04

  very Seattle vibes, shark wrestling lumberjacks over there where I'm from, um, or Tacoma, more like it. Uh, so I, yeah, I, I was like, yeah, I want to be special forces and this, that and the other. And they're kind of like, no- nothing's caught really in the books yet about, so I go to MEPS, go all that. I go down to thirty, I went to MEPS in Tampa, is eventually where I made it to.

• 27:00Speaker 05

  Really? From, all the way from Tacoma?

• 27:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, because my mom was living down in Kissimmee. So I went and like stayed with her. And, um, uh, and I stayed with her while I was going through the process of trying to get in the military. So I went through MEPS in Tampa and from Tampa, went to Fort Benning, Georgia. And I was like, okay, we'll do like this eighteen x-ray thing. Cause this is like a new thing and I was over twenty-one years old, whatever. So I, um, I get there and they're kind of like, hey, you know, you have nine toes and you have this thing and like, this isn't, this is like enough to get in the military, but like you, you can't even be airborne.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And he's like, so we can like send you back home. I was like, no, no, no, like let me wait, like what's going on here? Like, let me just do my basic training. And I'll just be infantry because like you're eleven X. Uh, anyway, when you start, so I'm an eleven X-ray there at OSIT, Fort Benning, Georgia. I go through, um,

• 28:03Speaker 04

  I go through the basic training and all that stuff. I remember like how, so some, some guys like was, there's a question that like kinda irked me from line guys like, why did you pick 11 Charlie? I'm like, dude, you know, I didn't pick this.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  Right, right, right. That, yeah. 11 X, yeah, I, I think all 11 Charlies are 11 X-rays who don't get that Bravo bill.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I, I gotta touch on this cause it was like, I thought it was hilarious. I loved trolls. I loved people in leadership that control you and like totally psychologically mess with you and uh as part of like the smoking that you're gonna get. So all day, we went through this like very boring, like you know, I thought everything you see were boring, but we went through this monotonous, very boring, very hard to understand. No clear uh instruction of what is going on, order that we're getting in. And we're doing a snake line. So you know, snake line, you know, going up and down like a snake. And they're just calling out names and it doesn't make sense. Cause we're trying to figure it out. It was like, they put it in some order by this and by that.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  And nobody could really figure it out. But uh we get in the snake line and they're like, alright guys, start moving that line to the buses. Start moving the line to the buses and then like the buses get all loaded up and the buses start driving away. Alright, there's gonna be another thing of buses. And then the drill sirens pop out of the woodwork. And they go, hey man, welcome to the army. There's not another line of buses. I know that's what you're thinking. There's not. But the guys on the bus are 11 bravos. You guys are 11 Charlies. The rivalry starts now. Follow the bus.

• 29:51Speaker 06

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• 30:06Speaker 07

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• 30:17Speaker 06

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• 30:48Speaker 04

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• 31:45Speaker 04

  You're walking behind the bravos like already like, oh, and then the whole way there, these guys are like, you're going to hate your life, you're going to be a mortician, it's gonna suck. You're never gonna like it, you're never gonna do anything cool. Like everything right away was just like, and I'm like laughing and I got this like, uh, later we call them sea bags with like duffel bags. You know, Ranger, we call them the sea bag or whatever, the contingency bag. So we had this thing and I'm like, I got one in front, one in back, you know, it's all it's got is like uniforms at this point. We haven't done like the CIF with all like the stupid helmets and stuff, but we're following by and people are being dramatic. And like, I live a chaotic life.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  I think like I've walked far, I lived in the mountains, I lived by the sea. I've, you know, been exposed to a lot growing up and. Like I'm seeing these guys like behaving like they're in a Hollywood film.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like the first bad thing that's ever happened.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Like, like, oh, this is point the hawk right now. Are we at point the hawk right now? Cause guys were literally like falling on the ground. And another guy goes, brother, I have you. And then the other guy's like, no, leave me. And I'm laughing because I find it so cringe. I find it like disgusting and appalling. I'm just like, uh, I'm like, get off my boot, you know, and I'm like stepping over him like, I'm like laughing and crying while I'm stepping over these bodies and I'm like, uh, moving through the whole thing. Like, dude, this is hilarious. All we're doing is walking and it's not like we have to chase the bus. We're not even going to the same place the buses are. Just, just walk. I bet we're just gonna like turn after like 800 feet and it was like

• 33:29Speaker 04

  less than a mile that we walked.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  Come on without me, Sam Duskin.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, ah, ah, you know, like.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  Tell my wife I love her.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  She probably doesn't anymore if she saw what was happening. What if your family was right over there?

• 33:43Speaker 05

  Unless I'm gonna ask you about Rasp. I do gotta give a quick shout out here to the sponsor for this show.

• 33:50Speaker 02

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• 34:31Speaker 02

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• 35:10Speaker 02

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• 35:33Speaker 05

  I just, I just want to say that the 11 bravos, which are riflemen, they're the, when you, when you hear infantry, that's what you think of. And the 11 Charlies, which are mortar men. So the 11 bravos being on the bus and the 11 Charlie's walking is kind of like a metaphor for, for like the overall army experience when it comes to 11 bravos and 11 Charlies.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. It is, it is like pretty interesting. And then like some reason, like I didn't really fully understand rasp. I really fully understand like, because some of the drill sergeants, like, because so through basic training, getting to RAS, you're about to ask about it. Uh, I didn't have RIP or RASP or nothing like that in my contract anymore. I was like, okay, I'm going to go to the big army and I started like, well, you know, there's some lineage in the big army I can think about. There's some cool stuff. Some guys done some cool things. Maybe eventually I'll weasel my way in over there. But the whole time in basic, I was like, maybe if I just, you know, kick ass here and take initiative. So I would literally be in the, in the bay and grab like the,

• 36:37Speaker 04

  level one book and be like, hey, guys, I, I know it sucks reading these books all day, but you know, I've been reading them and I understand how to do certain things. Mind me, I can do the class right now. And I'll be like, this is your M7 bandolier, complete with M18 alpha one. Claymore mine, M57 firing device, M40 test device. Like I go through the whole thing. And then I know like the drill sergeant's like, wait, what the fuck is going in that kill zone? And then like over time, they made me like the PG, which doesn't really like mean anything, but it kind it could mean something if the right people are there that you're leading correctly. It's like, you know, and the PG is basically a leader of that basic training platoon from like the candidate position, I guess you would call it, right?

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Um, so they like immediately made me that guy and I was crushing PT and I was, um, I was like freakishly fast at running.

• 37:31Jack Murphy?

  Were you lighter? You only had nine toes.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. It's actually, yeah. Um, so I was, I was like really good at running and then by the end of it, they were like, hey, man, we have orders for you to go third ACR, uh, which was in Fort Hood at the time and I don't know, but you know, and I, and I was like, okay, yeah, Roger, Joe, sorry. And he was like, I'm not sending you third ACR, man. Like, he's like, when you came in first day, I noticed you were freaking laughing and smiling when we were smoking the dog shit out of you guys. You need to go to Ranger Regiment, like right there. He was like, you need to go to the Ranger Regiment. And then he was like, so we're gonna send you to Ranger School. And I'm like, okay, Ranger School. All right. Yeah. And I was like, like, everybody was like saying Ranger School. And clearly they didn't know that they were sending me to RIP. So I'm thinking, I'm like,

• 38:16Speaker 04

  well, and I started asking, I'm like, do I go to a unit first and they might show me how to get through Ranger School? Cause like I somewhat knew that there was a difference growing up on JBLF. I'm like, why am I going to Ranger School? It's gonna be hard. So I was gonna go to the Ranger Battalions and so I went to Airborne, then I went to RASP. And that's where I got to the RASP.

• 38:35Jack Murphy?

  All right. So the RASP story, what, what happened? What went awry?

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Okay. So RASP was kind of hilarious. Um, uh, that was pretty funny cause like we were one of the first RASP class and they had this like, uh, cause my paperwork did say RIP. And they came in and they smoked us during the brief at RIP for RIP. And then they came in like with like a fake dossier like the president just said, you know, the it's now called RASP. Oh no, we gotta give him a different brief. Guess you gotta get smoked some more, you know what I mean? And so we, I we started it over, go through RASP. Um, so phase there's RASP was different because they they they were like, haha, you thought it was gonna be like three weeks? You're gonna be here for eight.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  And we're just like, oh no, because everybody's like mentally prepared, like we're gonna knock out three. And then it's like, boom, we go through this and it's an eight week course. So it's like, man, we're gonna be here for two months and this is gonna be here for a month minus. So anyway, go through like the first, uh, half of RASP almost. I finished cold range and then, um, the NCOIC was, hey, man, fall out over here at the end of cold range. And I was like, what's up? He's like, I can't let you go on to the next, um, uh, whatever the next thing.

• 39:59Jack Murphy?

  Phase, yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I was like, why is that? And he's like, well, uh, you have some outstanding debt for, uh, I guess a hospital bill. And I was like, what? And it was me getting stabbed. So I had a hospital bill for that $36,000 that I had to like pay off or make right. And so I contacted the hospital and I said, you know, like, hey, we're gonna give you some time. Um, but you're gonna, we're gonna have to recycle you. We won't let you move on.

• 40:29Jack Murphy?

  Uh, it's correct me if I'm wrong, but under the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, can you not have debt forgiven that you incurred before you joined the military?

• 40:37Speaker 04

  I don't know the rules on that, to be honest. And I actually kind of looked into that, but it didn't necessarily really apply to me because, um, when I I I was under, uh, the impression that I was under crime victim compensation in the state of Washington.

• 40:52Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Which would pay off, uh, your medical debt if you are a victim of violent crime.

• 40:58Jack Murphy?

  There's, there's a butt coming, I think.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it was pretty hilarious because I'll tell you what cost me a full, you know, week at cold range. Uh, which both of you understand like what that can be like. And so I went at the end of cold range, you know, they sent me back and then contact this hospital and say, hey, I thought we were square. And they said, Oh, you know what? We are. But, uh, somebody didn't close out the note. Oh, man. So they reported you collections. I go, why didn't they close up the note? It's like, usually, we keep the note open, so we can get your, um, survey back and add it into the file, so we have your survey. And I was like, you're gonna make me do, I was like, you people are gonna make me do RASP again, because they didn't fill out a survey.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  You know, so, yeah, back to day one, off of that. Wow. No shit. Yeah. So then, I went through RASP again. Went through Col Range again, went through Phase Two. Um, got all the way to like, the end of Phase Two. And, um, it was like, at the end, they gave you your beret. They said, shave this thing, you know, here's your scroll, keep it in your pocket, don't put it on yet. And then, you know, for the graduation, all that, you know, your folks, if somebody comes out, puts it on, you put on your beret, et cetera. And they said, also, we're gonna give you your cellphones back. And this is back in the day where you had cellphones.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Uh, but, at the beginning of the course, you would take your cellphone, put tape on the back, write your name on the back, put it in the laundry bag. They would take it, and you wouldn't see it again until the end, or until you got dropped. So they say, you can take your cellphones into the barracks, and you can charge your phones in the barracks, but do not be on your phones in the barracks. It's like, okay, like, Roger that, we can charge our phones. Well, I was up there, people were shaving the berets, some people were playing music on their phones and stuff like that, which I thought was like, hey, that's still like transferring data, you kinda...

• 42:55Speaker 04

  But then, as I'm charging my phone, my phone is blowing up, man. Like, it's going crazy. Like, nobody else's phones are blowing up. People stopped talking to people, because they're like, oh, I don't, he's, he went into the abyss, he's not coming out. Like, you know, they already gave it up on him, you know? Nobody's calling anybody else. So, um, I grabbed my phone, and I start heading down the stairs, because I know I gotta be outside to make a phone call now. And as I'm like, pushing on that door, um, and I looked at my phone, and it was like, this RASP cadre pops out like a referee, throwing a penalty flag.

• 43:33Speaker 04

  You and I was like dang dude like I did is like he did not break the plane with the cellphone like like you know right you so he's like snatch my phone from me and I was like dang man like alright I'm wrong I'm wrong I was on my phone yeah I'm wrong like you know private mode so yeah Roger Sean I'm wrong I I looked at my phone I was in barracks so they he pulls me in the office it was guess who I saw on his phone I'm already a recycle so now this guy's like probably gunning to get rid of me you know what I mean because I'm not a straight through guy he's calling the NCOIC of RAS two and says like yeah you gotta get down here he was on his phone he paints his picture like I was on my Right, right.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  phone you know and I'm like oh no I'm a bad I'm a bad boy like I'm sitting there like I'm a bad boy no you know and then so I don't hear nothing from the rest of the day but I have that anxiety all day like oh man I had my beret man and the funny thing was man I had a 275 school and I was going back home and I was like I fucked this up I was going home

• 44:38Speaker 04

  we go to the formation like the closeout formation because RAS would always have a early as hell formation at like sometimes three or four in the morning and another one at like 2200 and like recall formation get everyone outside pull it out what's gonna happen tomorrow so at about 2200 we're all standing tall RAS two guys and then he man he he berated me and finned everybody and you know I sucked it up and I just accepted that yeah I'm wrong I was on my phone etcetera he's like why would you mess it up blah blah blah blah he's like I should drop you right here now I should makes this big speech he goes but I'm gonna give you

• 45:19Speaker 04

  a chance and I was like dude this is gonna be impossible I swear and he's like

• 45:27Speaker 04

  I want you by first call tomorrow morning.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  To present to me the blue book written five times.

• 45:36Speaker 05

  Holy shit.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  What? The entire blue book written five times. And I was like, he's like, nobody can help him. Nobody. And if you do, I'll drop you. Like puts it out and everyone's just like, I'm really sorry, man. It looks like you fucked. And I'm like, yeah, I guess I am. But I go up there and I try. I go up in my own like little room and I keep the light on. Everyone's sleeping in like these other rooms in the barracks. And I'm up there and I had blisters on my freaking fingers from writing this thing over and over. And I'm like, I was literally like, dude, can I skip like one line? Can I skip one word? He won't know. I'm like, no, dude, he'll know. I had these conversations with myself like integrity, dude, you're already integrity violation. Do it all the way through.

• 46:21Speaker 04

  So I did. And I got to three and a half copies of the blue book. At one night by, I think it was like zero four thirty or something, zero four, zero four thirty next morning. And he comes up and he goes, Hey, let me see what you got. And he looks and he's like, Go through and he goes, you know what I think? I think you started knocking this out for thirty minutes and said, this is good enough. He'll believe me. And then you racked out. And I was like, Sergeant, that's completely false. I, I wrote that all night. He's like, let me tell you something.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  When I was on the line, I was covered in camouflage and they made me write ten Ranger creeds. In my head, I'm like, creeds?

• 47:11Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Creed, the creed is in the blue book.

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  Eighteen standing orders is in the blue book, my friend.

• 47:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  I had to write five of the orders, five of the creed, and that's before I get to the, all the AR six seventy dash one stuff. Like I, I knew the standard to the letter by the time I was done with like one of those things. And I'm just sitting there like, oh no. But I was like, you know, maintain military bearing. And I was like, okay, Roger Sergeant, Roger Sergeant, Roger Sergeant, Roger Sergeant. I was like, cause maybe this is just a psychological test to see if like, Hey, I'm gonna say ridiculous shit to this guy. And if he gives me any attitude, that's the boot. So I was like, my whole thing was like air on the side of safety. Do whatever you can to not piss this guy off and just sit through it and try to make it to the next level. So anyway, he goes, I'll tell you what, one more chance.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  We have the combatives uh thing later, the tournament later.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  And if you do well, maybe I'll think about making you a Ranger. And I was like, oh, combatives is like my bread and butter. I wasn't the best at shooting. I wasn't the best at lifting weights at the time because like I wasn't like an Olympic lifter or nothing. I was like, but combatives, oh, I've tussled with these guys in the hallways and they don't stand a chance. I'm gonna do this. And dude, I cleaned house. I cleaned house at that combatives tournament. And the funny thing is, I didn't sleep.

• 48:32Jack Murphy?

  And there was a lot on the line, so you weren't pulling no punches.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. And you know, maybe some guys there were like, if I lose, he'll look good. Maybe. I don't know. Nobody ever told me they did. You know, maybe they will now. It's like, yeah, you didn't really beat me. That's, that's a good idea. That's what I did. Uh, but you know, I, I cleaned house and, and actually the, the title fight, like it was me versus the other guy. It was actually a pretty good fight. And uh, I won. And then I was like, dude, like, how are you gonna send me to the needs of the army and knowing that there's a guy that, you know, kicked all your Rangers asses? How can you do that? There's no way. He goes, thought about it. I was like, well, okay, like I'm in maybe, and you know, and he's like, no, I'm sending you to the board.

• 49:16Jack Murphy?

  Oh, Jesus Christ.

• 49:17Speaker 04

  So he sends me to the board to, you know, they can talk to me, right? And I sit there in the board. I go through answering all these questions like, what does embitter mean? And all this like stuff that most Joes across the army don't know.

• 49:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  You know, it's like a, like a knowledge board first. Then it turns into an integrity board. So first they hit you with a bunch of Ranger knowledge, Ranger history and all this stuff. Then they hit you with like integrity board stuff. And one of the questions they asked, I, it, it, it, it made like the hair stand on the back of my neck because it insinuated something happened. Cause the guy, the, the major was sitting in front of me. He goes, what's more important, training or family?

• 50:01Speaker 04

  And I said, well, sir, if I choose family, that's selfish because everybody here has a family. But if I train really hard, I may increase the probability and mitigate the risk. You know, I may increase the probability of these guys returning to their homes to see their family and mitigate the risk of them not returning all in one piece to meet their family. So I would say training is more important, sir. As a private, I felt that was the safest answer to give this guy. He goes, okay. He's like, so based on that, I'm gonna recommend a day one reset.

• 50:39Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my God.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  He goes, would you like to know why your phone was, you know, blowing up? You know, like why you were receiving so many notifications? I was like, yes, sir, I would like to know. He's like, your dad's in the hospital, he had a heart attack.

• 50:55Jack Murphy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  And they're trying to get a hold of you.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  And right there, I'm like, yes, sir. You know, and I was like, dude, like.

• 51:08Jack Murphy?

  That's pretty fucked up.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  You knew that? Like, I was like, you knew that and you played this fucking game with him?

• 51:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  You know? So I was like, you know, I'm not gonna get angry. I'm like, I'm gonna ride through this. And so I, um, he said, okay, I'll give you like a few days to go home, check on your dad. So my dad survives a heart attack. But this is when like the truth comes out about my dad, which is stuff he was hiding. Because even when I got stabbed, I went and hung out with my dad. I got out of the hospital on my 21st birthday. They said, hey, uh, we're gonna let you, we're gonna get good news and bad news. I'm letting you out of the hospital, it's your birthday, but we also know it's your birthday and you just turned 21, you can't drink. So that's what they told me, like, no booze. And I remember like being with my dad and I have like eight holes in my lung

• 51:57Speaker 04

  and bandages in my neck and my lung and walking with my dad. This is before the army, back to the, you know, Quentin Tarantino, this go back in time a little bit, right? And I was walking with my dad to my apartment in Seattle that I was living at. And him struggling more than I was to walk from the restaurant to my house and be like, ah, something's.

• 52:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  So that's why, like. When that phone was going, I was like, something might be happening. Hmm. You know, that's why when he said family or I was like, something might be happening. Hmm. You know, so I was like. Part of me is like, man, this is like the only real accomplishment that I'm gonna be able to do that like. Nobody in my family's ever done. They've been in the military. They always saw those guys on the, on the other side of the fence. Always wondered, but I'm gonna be the guy on the other side of the fence. I'm not gonna screw this up over an emotional thing. I need to get to the objective. This is, this is not a subjective thing. This is not happening to me. This is just something that's happening. I need to look at this objectively. And so I did. And I went home. He survives that. I go back day one and um.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  Go through the whole course and uh. Finish, finish the course. Um, at this point, they kind of have like a. A rasp holdover. So before you go to your unit, you're gonna maybe chill a little bit. I got to organize some certain things that had to do with my credit report to not only. So I rectified the thing with the. The hospital, but I had to go through and rectify my clearance and everything too. So they gave me time now to do all that. And um, what was really great about going through that last time I went through RASP is I think that all the cadre members there. Were like pulling for me by that point, because they were like.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  That was wrong. And they were like, some of the things are like, hey, man, you're already a ranger, like. You don't gotta do that thing, you know, like we're, we're good, because they started doing RASP and RASP was like pretty cool. We started doing breaching and all that. And like, they were letting me stand in front of people and explain the mathematical equation. To how to build a charge and I was a private. And at the time, I didn't think anything of it. I just kept my shit from every cycle that I went through phase two. And kept studying and studying and studying because I was like, this is what I have to know when I get to my platoon. You know, it's a mortar platoon. I probably have to know this. You know what I mean? I think I have to know this. And so like. Yeah, I get through that and I remember the third time I went through was um.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  The future mortar platoon star in three seven five was in the class with me because they had like a combination of rasp two rasp one you would do like a culminating event. And I think I won him over because I did the silliest thing to win our like rasp one rasp two competition they kind of had. And this is the first time we did this event like every cycle they would change the events on this like rasp one rasp two thing. So one of the things was like. There was always a, at the time, every cycle had a jump, like you both jumped onto Friar DZ with rasp two.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  The rasp one guys and you kind of like link up with your rasp two compadres like one's an NCO, one's an officer. And you both might go do some land nav or something, but there's always a ten mile ruck involved. So we go do this ten mile ruck and there's like little brain teasers along the way every time. This is a new brain teaser. There's a brain teaser on Decker Strip where you had to take like tough boxes. And they said, the only thing you can walk on top of is the tough box and your equipment. And you have to cross Decker Strip by only walking on the tough boxes and the equipment. So I see all the other guys, because we're like one of the last guys to assemble and get to Decker Strip.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  And I see all the other guys like, alright ding, stand on it, hand it to me, boom, I'm like assessing what everyone's doing, then our guys come up with a plan. Like alright, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna, you know, negotiate this obstacle? I said, can I, you know, private, and there's an officer there and an NCO. And I was like, can I ask the cadre member a question? Yeah, I was like, um. Does everything in your ruck count as equipment? And they're like, yes. And I was like, so anything on my packing list, as long as I'm standing on an item on my packing list, it counts as equipment? He's like, yes. And I look over and I was like, can I make a suggestion?

• 56:27Speaker 04

  And then the NCO stuff is like, oh yeah, go ahead. And I was like, let's put our socks over our boots and run across the field. And we did that. We picked up the tough boxes and we ran. And all the other groups, they were like, no, no, no, no, you can't do it. And it's like, hey, says the pack. And the cadre was like, yep, you can. So we got the edge. We got past everyone, you know, and then, um, so anyway.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  That guy, I didn't know who that guy was. I was like, who's this like jacked Gene Wilder looking dude? He looks like Willy Wonka, but jacked. Ended up becoming the mortar platoon sergeant. And then I didn't go to 275. He's like, no, you mean that guy at the 375?

• 57:08Jack Murphy?

  You're talking about Edwards?

• 57:10Speaker 04

  No, no, Edwards doesn't look like, this, uh, this is another guy, former 175 guy that took the, um, platoon at, um...

• 57:18Jack Murphy?

  Was I thi- I think, I think he was, uh, he did some time at, uh, as RASP, RASP cadre, right?

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was like Rip Cadre, I guess, with a bunch of like guys that later became my peers, but like, they weren't really my peers, but like, they became my peers. They were like, they came before me, but I almost blended in because of fast track.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  So for, uh, for people who might not, you know, be aware of these terms, so RIP was the Ranger Indoctr- Indoctrination Program. RASP used to be the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, but RASP back in the day was only for imports and that was NCOs who were-

• 57:54Jack Murphy?

  And officers also.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  And officers, okay. Who, oh, RASP and ROP, right? Who were in conventional units. And they were coming, they were in, they were considered imports. They were coming to the Ranger Battalion from outside units, which isn't highly smiled upon often.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:10Speaker 05

  Um, for us, at least for me, RIP was a three week, it was just, it was just a grind. It was just a, a ball buster. But we didn't do any breaching. We didn't do anything like that.

• 58:20Jack Murphy?

  Live, live fires.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, we didn't do anything like that. So can you tell us like what RASP became when you were there?

• 58:27Speaker 04

  So while I was there, it was pretty interesting. I remember, uh, oh man, and it, that just hit a memory. We had actually a Cadre member die while I was in RASP.

• 58:36Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, so Pedro LoSerto was a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He was the combatants teacher. And we were out on Peden Field and, um, man, I had tremendous respect for this guy, especially as a grappler myself, growing up doing that. And then we were doing PT out there and he pretty much, uh, went down and looked like he was having a, like a seizure and, uh, we had to flag some people down. We got him to the hospital where he later passed away. And then, uh, members of the class had to go and recite the creed at, um, a ceremony for him.

• 59:05Jack Murphy?

  Man, that's terrible.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  So, um...

• 59:07Jack Murphy?

  How old was he? Like 30?

• 59:09Speaker 04

  I don't even know, but yeah, he was very young, very young guy. And it was like weird because- It's very strange for us in the class because you have these Terminators. Like gods, yeah. Yeah, these guys that are like, they don't bleed. And then this guy goes down and then his, you know, Ranger buddy, who's also leading PT with him, automatically is an emotional response to this. Like he's hysterical that his Ranger buddy is obviously not in good condition. And he pushes towards that. And, um, and you could tell they had a history. Like these guys didn't just meet in RASP.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  These guys, these guys were probably saw gunners in the same squad. Right. At some point, you know? And it was like, oh, man, that's, that's really strange. Like that's, like, reality hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this is real, like what we're doing is real. And, um, so, you know, not to, not to, you know, turn it down a little bit, but RASP, like there's a lot of guys, I went to RIP, RASP made another, the RASP is soft. And especially like when I went through RASP, I was like, these guys are the same guys who did RIP. Mm-hmm. The, the cadre were like already doing RIP. It's not like they go, oh, all right, switch it off, make it easy. You know, they were like, still like, hey, putting hands on you a little bit, throwing you around a little bit. Um, get your hands on the blacktop type stuff, you know what I mean?

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  Like that stuff was still going on. And, um, but that's like phase one mostly. Mm-hmm. And then like phase two, cause I know like phase one, I think like the first day we had like over 10 heat cats. Mm-hmm. And it's in the winter time. So dudes were like going down. And then, um, we go to phase two. Phase two, I believe we did a lot of mobility training, which a lot of guys were like, oh, it's boring, just driving around on the Humvee. But it's like, it turns out to be really helpful because you get into the recovery techniques. So if you really delve into it, you kind of go, all right, this is, this is really cool. Like I can actually learn some different techniques and stuff. And I actually do it almost as a hobby.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  A lot of people nowadays like do overlanding and they almost get stuck on purpose. Oh, man, I got the, you know, I got the kinetic rope out, you know, like. So it's like pretty cool that you get to do that, um, a little bit of mobility, heavy marksmanship. Mm-hmm. And.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  There's a story about the freaking marksmanship stick. I never shot a gun before the army. You know, and so I was very like, do not ND, do not ND, do not ND. I've never, even to this day, I'm not exactly like comfortable. Like with the guy, I would be comfortable, I'll look comfortable. Yeah, but in the back of my mind is like, do not ND, do not ND, do not ND. Like the whole time it's just burning a hole in me. If I concealed carry anything, it's burning a hole in me like, I'm just gonna ND, ain't I? Is it loaded? Is it not loaded? I don't know. I probably loaded it. Somebody probably snuck in and loaded one. You know, like that's, that's the anxiety, you know, like don't get kicked out. But I remember like, um, the cadre guy, uh, the marksmanship instructor, he was like, um,

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  "Hey, man, like you seem real nervous around that gun. You don't need to be nervous around that gun. That gun's not gonna hurt you unless you do something stupid." Like, "Hey, think about like, uh, some girlfriend that you had before. She had really nice nipples. Let's talk about her nipples." And then, uh, I was at pre-ras, like, "Oh no, like this guy." And I remember he shot at the ground, like in front of me, like between my legs. Uh, uh, when, uh, when I was at pre-ras. And I was like, "Dude." He's like, "Are you scared of the gun now?" And I was like, "Sergeant, I'm a little worried when you have it, yeah." Like just, because we're in like phase two and it was kinda okay to like send a little back at the guy. These guys were more laid back in phase two. And I was like, "Yeah, now with you there a little bit," you know, but I was kinda also at the time like thinking like,

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  "Yeah, this is like Ranger stuff, you know, a guy shooting at the ground." But like, you know, it turns out that's not, that's not the right.

• 1:03:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's not exactly, I can't imagine that was in the, uh, training.

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  No, I, I was surprised that he did it, but, um, but I also thought about my nine toes when he did it. I'm like, "I could probably lose another one." Even it out, hit the right, hit the right side.

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  I'll run even faster.

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, but, uh, yeah, so we did marksmanship, we did combative stuff. We did mobility and we did breaching. Breaching covered like, not everything. You weren't gonna be master breacher, but you can be like maybe a low level breacher. That's why I think they stopped sending guys to the low level, low level breacher course. Cause everybody that went to ras did some sort of breaching that was like above low level breachers. Like you were, you're doing ECT charges. Deflect linear, all this stuff. You were doing mechanical breaches, manual breaches, thermal breaches, ballistic breaches. You're out there with a shotgun, which I was like. They're like, the shotgun is what gets like, is like behind a DUI. This shotgun will RFS you because NDS, like they would talk about ending the shotgun like.

• 1:04:06Speaker 04

  After the DUI, this is the second most reason why guys get RFS. Uh, the Remington eight seventy and um. Yeah, it didn't like, you know, that thing. So when I was like having that, I was like, this thing's burning a hole in me. Hopefully I don't get selected like to breach with this, but so that's essentially. I know I was probably all over the place, but essentially. Marksmanship heavy, mobility heavy. Combatives wasn't super heavy, but it was there and then they had um.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  What was the other one? Breaching.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  So it sounds like. Because you know, I got there during a peacetime military, so the idea was you get selected, you know. And then you go and you get hazed for a year while you're, while you're being trained to be a ranger.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  But it sounds like because. There were active wars going on, wars going on that they wanted you guys trained before you got there at least to have a solid foundation.

• 1:05:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, you almost touched anything that you're gonna touch on the line, you touched it there and and and. The, the cool dynamic about the Ranger Regiment is like. There's a cook right there learning how to build explosive charge next to you. You know what I mean? Like, there's a parachute rigger right there, learning to build charges next to you. And obviously we think there's bias like, hey, man, this guy's just gonna skate through. He can almost mess this up and still go through. That was always like that thing, like they need the soft skilled guys, like push him, push him, push him. The paralegal, come on.

• 1:05:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  You know, like, um.

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  But that's just like a part of that, like military occupation specialty prejudice that you have.

• 1:05:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Jack Murphy?

  So you do end up graduating from RAN.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, finally.

• 1:05:48Jack Murphy?

  After this odyssey.

• 1:05:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about showing up at your platoon. You're mortar platoon three, seven, five?

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Mortar platoon three, seven, five. That's correct.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  So it's three, seven, five because you had orders two, seven, five.

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  And then they decided to punish you and send you to three, seven, five.

• 1:06:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it's like, I thought it was a punishment. And then later I was like, this is awesome. This is great because, um, so the funny thing is like, all I had to do was walk across the street. I didn't have to be like, oh, where am I? Oh, but then I found it weird because then you had an in process post and I'm like, I've been on this post for almost a year. Why am I in process?

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• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  They're like, "Let me tell you about Fort Benning." I'm like, "I already know about Fort Benning." "Please be quiet. Wait for the end of the class. Hold all questions to the end." I'm like, "I have no questions. Please let me out of here." Kind of just, you know, "clap me out of here. I'll take a test on Fort Benning." Push me out. Like, "No." Still had to sit through the same stuff. Everyone was brand new to Fort Benning. So, um, I get to 375, and it was very strange. Um, because my first interaction with the first, the first person you meet in your company is the first sergeant. And we had a very, like, cartoon character kind of first sergeant, as many people did. And they're like, "Hey, first sergeant's in there. Uh, knock on the door and wait for him to say, 'Enter.'"

• 1:08:57Speaker 04

  And I was like, "Okay, Roger Sergeant." To whoever the headquarters platoon sergeant was at the time. I said, "Okay, Roger Sergeant." And then, uh, knock on the door. I hear "Enter" from this, like, grumbling voice on the other side. I step in, close the door behind me. Go to pray rest. And I'm immediately in shock and said, "Don't, don't show shock." Just like, you know, a thousand-yard stare. "Don't look at him and don't look at the man, a full-grown man on his hands and knees next to the first sergeant." Like, and the first sergeant's petting him like a dog. And this guy was like an FO. And he looked like a weasel. He was disgusting. And I was like, "How's that guy a Ranger?" And it was very weird. And I was like, "If I fuck this up, am I gonna have to be the dog?" You know, so he's like, "Hey."

• 1:09:42Speaker 04

  Standard tech, what's your PT? How do you run? How fast do you run? And I was like, well, usually I'm a sub thirty, sub thirty minute five mile. And he's like, I can run faster than that. I'm like, man, my first sergeant kinda big old gut too. And he's like, you know, I was like, I don't know first sergeant. But okay, Roger first sergeant, I'll get better at running. And um, I remember he's like, hey, what's your favorite stand of the creed? All right, say it. I say the creed, he's like, that's my favorite too. He's like, then he says, uh, so Sandusky, got one last question for you. I'm like, oh man, what's it gonna be? And he's like, what is best in life? And I was like, is this guy for real?

• 1:10:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 04

  And I was like, dude, send it. I was like, to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women, first sergeant. And he was like, ah, get the fuck out of here. And I got out of there and I was like, dude, what was that? What was happening? And then they're like, hey, we'll take you to your section leader.

• 1:10:36Jack Murphy?

  Every private has to know that.

• 1:10:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I kid, I go, I go to my section leader. They take me to my section leader and uh, you know, kinda introduced to him. And I remember like my first week there was EIB. And the cool thing about RASP is you do all the EIB tasks in RASP as you go through. So it's like, dude, I did RASP three times.

• 1:10:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  I'm upset. So we went to the EIB and I um, that first week there and I got the EIB. It didn't really fully integrate the platoon yet. And then I think towards the end of the expert infantry badge, once I uh, earned my expert infantry badge, I basically entered the platoon with the EIB. Which was pretty good. And then, and then on that ruck march, I was like, I have to, I have to win first place. And I got like second place out of the battalion on the EIB ruck march for the 12 miler. Because I was like, I wanna make a good impression on my platoon. So then I finally integrate with my platoon and being like, oh yeah, I saw you, you, you got second place. Like you freaking like, I was like, being mocked for almost like being like an overachiever or something like that.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  And I was like, dang it, man, like I'm, this is not a very good start. And they, I remember they told me to like, hey, like, we don't need you today. Uh, go home and meet us uh, downtown at the tap at 7pm. We're doing a go away party for the outgoing platoon sergeant. Cause the other platoon sergeant, they, they asked me, he's coming. And so, um, I'm like, all right, and I went downtown and I think everybody in the platoon punched me. Um, while I was there, they said, make sure you punch that guy. He's a new guy. I got punched by everybody while I was there. They were, buy me a drink. And I was like, huh, all right. And then like, they'd be like, buy me a drink because I killed someone and you haven't. And then the section leader would be like, whoa, no, he's killed someone.

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  And they're like, wait, what? And then, uh, cause they were like, they brought me in the cage. Like, I think the day after that part, there was like a mascot downtown. I didn't drink at all. Cause I was like, dude, I don't know what's going on. Don't drink. Just, you know, maintain homeostasis and get out of this, you know? And there was a mascot and I was the guy like loading people in vans and being like, all right, let me just help people out. And then anyway, I get to, get to work, whatever, the next day or sometime that week. And they try to pull that again, like everybody. It was like being taken into a prison cell, but like a prison cell is like, you go into a prison cell, it's like, what are you in for? I'm in for armed robbery. Hey, man, I did this, I did that. And then like the guy in the back corner is like, what's up with that guy? He's like, he killed someone, you know? It's like,

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  when I got to my platoon in the cage, like, everybody in this cage has killed someone. And you're just like, all right. Got it. You know, and like, that's where you were. I- in that aspect, you were like, oh shit, that's real. That's not even a joke. Everybody in this cage has killed somebody. Um, whether with the direct fire or indirect fire weapons systems, whether it was with the 50 cal and R- RWS, whether it was with, any type of tool that the regiment gives you to take one's life. Uh, and I was like, all right, you know, um,

• 1:13:45Speaker 04

  and I was kind of in that mode, like, man, like the way that I went about, my life is like, I didn't feel like it was for anything. I wasn't proud. Like people, like even when I got stabbed, people were like, you won that fight, man. That's badass. And what did I win? I didn't wake up that day. I was like, I don't want to win the lottery. I want to take someone's life. Right. Like you don't win nothing, you know? So. I was kinda like, alright, well, like, I have more respect for these guys cuz they weren't just like caught up in some stupid thing. There's like a purpose behind kinda like what they're doing, in a way, you know, so. Yeah, there was a lot of uh stuff going on there. I started like getting really introduced to the culture there kinda. Already kinda had a feel for it, like the mortars are gonna be crazy. And you know the mortars are gonna be crazy because.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  You just sense basic training, it's already ingrained in you. You already know how the culture outside the army. Influences the culture inside your organization and then your organization within the organization. And you're just this niche crew, there's no other mortar platoon. There might be like a, you know, like. Nine to twelve line platoons, like rifle platoons, you know, but there's only one mortar platoon per battalion. And um, yeah, so I I was there and I remember like, uh, I don't know, talking about the barracks, I remember I told you about the barracks.

• 1:15:04Jack Murphy?

  Joke stories, mortar platoon shit.

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's like, the barracks was like. Oh, that's the CCO barracks, that's the ACO barracks, and then you point at this barracks, it's got like a halo of bats and. Lightning and a dragon, just rawr, like soaring around here, like, dude, what's that? It's like, that's the mortar barracks, do not. You know, it's like, anything the light touches, symbol, you may never go there, it's the elephant graveyard, you know? And so, um, I was like, you know, I went, I was in those barracks and I remember uh. All types of crazy stuff, shenanigans happening in the barracks and it wasn't like just like little fun and games and stuff. I remember there was this guy.

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  Who um was a partner to a very famous sniper, wrote a lot of books, named Nicholas Irving. This guy's a partner to like Nick Irving. Um, he's in the books, I think, as P. And uh, so there's a guy, uh, old Sergeant P, he's there. AKA P Murder. Uh, he's there and I guess the story what I heard was that he had attempted BUDS before the army or something like washed out or something. He was definitely an older guy than anybody else that we saw. Just like the silver fox type guy.

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  So like twenty seven, twenty eight?

• 1:16:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:16:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  Maybe even older, I don't know. Um, but he, he, uh, he was in the barracks and, uh, I remember somebody apparently was walking around with like a broom handle or something was smashing all the lights in the barracks.

• 1:16:35Speaker 04

  It was like a mortar guy, you know? And, uh, old, old Sergeant P comes out and he's like, "What's going on?" You know, "I, I thought this was the Ranger Regiment, man." "What's happening? What is this?" And this dude who's smashing the lights just goes, "Shut up bitch." Just keeps smashing lights. Like, wow, like that is like the level of like zero fucks given, no morale.

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Like clearly this guy, I mean, this is, this is a guy who's in like involved in like an Osprey crash, broke his back and like had safe lives in there and lost like one of his friends and you know, there's like, at, at surface level, you're like, "That's a psychopath." Like, "Why is that, why does that guy belong there?" Whatever. It's like, man, you kind of look at like, so what's, and I learned that, I'm like, "Man, that guy." And he even told me like, "Man, I was screaming in that. I heard screaming in an Osprey and I didn't realize it was me screaming." Like while I was rolling and shit and he had to pull people out of there. But there's like, there's that level of like, "Wow, man, these are incredible people in my platoon that done incredible things and, you know, they're not really getting the recognition they should because he was in an Osprey crash in, um,

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Rooster seven three, uh, or in, uh, Afghanistan and he pulled a bunch of folks out of there and, uh, he got soldiers medal.

• 1:17:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  And, um.

• 1:18:02Jack Murphy?

  Of course.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  But the, but whoever was back at the jock, uh, commanding.

• 1:18:06Jack Murphy?

  Silver Star.

• 1:18:07Speaker 05

  Silver Star. Yeah, uh, yeah.

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 1:18:09Speaker 05

  Start with valor or Silver Star.

• 1:18:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's like, like, sometimes, like, I see guys, like, on certain podcasts and stuff, and they're, like, reading off the thing of all these awards, and I'm like, dude, not awards that people are just like, oh, yeah, let's put him for award. Oh, Levin Charlie, throw it away.

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  You know, and just feeling that, like, dang, man, I could have that rap sheet, but then, I was like, hey, man, the awards don't matter.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:18:32Speaker 04

  Like, if they don't matter, why, they always say them.

• 1:18:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  In front of everyone else, you know, but I didn't really, I seen a lot of people, like, no matter, like, the MOS, get kind of.

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Bypassed on awards, what I noticed, but what were you gonna say?

• 1:18:47Jack Murphy?

  Well, uh, before we move into some of the, uh, combat stuff and deployment stuff, um, I would like to take a couple of minutes to hear you lay out, you know, what is a mortar section for the people out there? What, what is a Ranger Regiment mortar section?

• 1:19:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:01Jack Murphy?

  Does the Navy SEALs have a mortar section?

• 1:19:03Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:19:03Jack Murphy?

  No?

• 1:19:04Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:19:04Jack Murphy?

  Does Delta Force have a mortar section? I think not.

• 1:19:07Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, well, where their mortar section?

• 1:19:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Speaker 04

  Essentially.

• 1:19:09Jack Murphy?

  So tell people.

• 1:19:10Speaker 04

  Where the Navy SEAL mortar section, where the Delta Force mortar section, where everybody's mortar section.

• 1:19:15Jack Murphy?

  So tell, tell people about your platoon.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  So, the responsibility of a Ranger mortar platoon, essentially, is you are the all-weather JSOC asset, the only all-weather JSOC asset. And we used to make a joke about it, I was like, what if we're stood down due to weather? You know, we, we can't get the bird, we can't get the striker, whatever, whatever it is, lift package that we're trying to roll out with. And, um, so essentially, there's so many ways to skin this cat on what is. And the thing is about my mortar platoon in three seven five is like, when I showed up there, I saw some really hard men that were combat hardened, but really didn't have an identity.

• 1:19:57Speaker 04

  They didn't really know exactly what their purpose was, and our mortar platoon had been there at Haditha Dam, but you know, all Haditha Dam is like, BCO, three seven five, Haditha Dam, it's like, but what about those enablers, man? That were dropping one twenties on like, and, and one canoe, as it says in the BDA, you know? Like, it's funny, but it's like.

• 1:20:20Speaker 04

  Did that generation go away? What's happening? Where are these guys? What are they doing now? They just forgot about those guys. And now you have these guys that are like, dude, what do we do? We're like, treated like, you're nothing. You don't have anything, no lineage. But I'm, I'm sitting there looking at the history and I'm thinking like, okay. So at face value, a mortar platoon is, at the top, you're gonna have your mortar PL, which is usually some sort of lieutenant or captain. Then you have your platoon sergeant, which is a master sergeant position within the Ranger Regiment. The mortar platoon sergeant is a master sergeant position. So it's supposed to be a Zulu in charge of a mortar platoon. Most of the time, you're gonna have a seven there because they're not finding Zulus around.

• 1:21:03Speaker 04

  Or they find Zulus that wanna be mortar platoon sergeant. Like, hell no, you're not saying, I've been on the line, man.

• 1:21:09Jack Murphy?

  Right. It's not a sexy position.

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  I wanna take the company. And if I'm not gonna get a company, I'm gonna go long walk. I'm gonna go do something else. You know, they don't wanna come to mortar platoon. And so under him, you have two section leaders. And I believe that first Ranger Battalion, and second Ranger Battalion, and third Ranger Battalion, all did it differently. Like, even our call signs were a little different. We were so decentralized and disorganized. As far as like platoon, we never came together holistically. We were, we were too attached for so long to the identity of our battalion, even though our battalion almost didn't, seemingly didn't care about our own identity and passing on our identity. I mean, one time, we had a chem officer as our PL. And it was like a smack in the face.

• 1:21:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's clear they're just like sticking people in there. So they punch their teeth.

• 1:21:54Speaker 04

  There you go, you know?

• 1:21:57Speaker 04

  So the way that we ran it for a while was like, you know, we had a first section, a second section, an FDC section.

• 1:22:06Speaker 04

  And the way that that ran was kinda like, you know, hey, first section, you roll through, you know, we're like working in shifts, like, hey, you do this exercise, you do this exercise. But what really put a constraint on you was like, the line would be looking at you like, man, you're really dragging ass out here. And it's like, they don't realize that mortar guy just got off supporting battalion ops. Now he's coming down to support Delta Company. Now he's gonna go from Delta Company and go support Alpha Company. And we're like, so we stretch ourself thin with this makeup that we're doing that like now you're like, and each time you're carrying like maybe 10 rounds. Maybe plus your cannon, because you don't have a, uh, you don't have an AB with you. So you have a cannon and 10 rounds in your back.

• 1:22:50Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:50Speaker 04

  Each one of those 60 rounds weighs three and a half pounds. You know what I mean? So, and then all your other gear on top of it.

• 1:22:57Jack Murphy?

  So can you, I, I, I just want to make sure we break it down a little Barney level for people out there who really have no idea about the 60s.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Jack Murphy?

  81s, the 120s.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:23:06Jack Murphy?

  What the, the fire direction center, like if you just explain to people what that is.

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  So that was kind of actually an interesting dynamic that kind of fed into my well-roundedness. So I would say the mortar platoons are jack of all trade, almost master in none.

• 1:23:23Speaker 04

  So we had a 120 millimeter mortar, which it's in the name. The, the projectile is 120 millimeters around, a 7 meter blast radius. And, um, it's about a 30 pound, um, projectile. It could be fired up to 7.2 kilometers out of the American 120 millimeter system. And, um, you know, the components of the system are like the base plate's like 136 pounds. The, the cannon itself's 110, you know, like all the components are heavy. It's like you know you busting that thing out, you're like, it's gonna be a bad day. Getting to work sucks.

• 1:24:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Speaker 04

  Leaving work sucks. Working is awesome.

• 1:24:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? And then you have the 81, which is a lot more mobile, a lot more lightweight, you know, a total of like 93 pounds altogether. And, um, you know, then you have your ammo and all that other stuff, which adds, actually adds the weight. And, you know, you're only firing like a little over five and a half K with that one. But it's a little bit more mobile. It's kind of like the happy medium. A lot of guy, they, they, they favorite the 81 and then you have the 60s. Um, 60 millimeters and those are more like for close in fight. You're attached to that platoon. You're attached to that company. You're direct line of sight, fighting with the 60.

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  And so, because usually each, um, I, I know we had like four 120 cannons, but we usually ran during up like, like before Syria for a while, that whole generation, like my earlier part of my career. We usually only ran like two 120s at a time. Sometimes we ran four, but usually only two at a time because you're so understaffed, like you can't staff four of them. Um, because nobody wants to be Rangers, nobody wants to be 11 Charlies.

• 1:25:12Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  And nobody wants to be 11 Charlie Rangers.

• 1:25:14Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  So, and um, quality of life is bad, so people leave.

• 1:25:18Jack Murphy?

  Like, yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  Very quickly. Very dog eat dog. So, you know, you would shift. Okay, today we're doing 120s. Today we're doing 81s. Alright, alright. We're gonna do 60s. Hey, these guys need you over there, pick up the 60. And you had to be expected to be an expert, every one of those systems. And you also had to be able to integrate with the line support by fire, because you usually work in very close proximity with the support by fire. To pick up that 240, to pick up that goose stuff, to be able to engage enemy forces while you're usually on isolation or support by fire. Um, and, and do it to almost like the same level that the line guys that, or those AT guys are executing all of those um, procedures.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  That's kind of like the way that we went about it. So it was very decentralized and disorganized to begin with.

• 1:26:04Jack Murphy?

  So I mean, mortars like a, a 120 you can use for base defense.

• 1:26:08Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:26:09Jack Murphy?

  Uh.

• 1:26:09Speaker 04

  I prefer it in the defense, yeah.

• 1:26:11Jack Murphy?

  And a, a 60, I mean, it's small enough that, you know, guys would carry it on a sling, wing it off their shoulder, and put rounds down the tube, like within like what, 50 meters if need be, right?

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, within 70 meters, yeah.

• 1:26:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  Within 70 meters, um, you could put it within 50 meters, it's like, you know, arming distance and all that, you could just punch a hole through somebody and it's pretty good. Like, you know, like, uh, it's still a good effect. It's an interesting, Bill and I, the Science Guy experiment, you could try. I mean, we definitely did. We used to fire, um, mortars off of our thighs with the 60s. And, um, you know, we tried to go beyond the max effective range on, uh, and shoot things beyond max effective range and, uh, it was, it was kind of cool. It was almost like that master breacher type stuff where you get to shoot things with a mortar and then analyze the effects of that mortar system and be like, this is good in this, not just out of the book. Like the guy in the book that's at MCOE said this would be a good idea, so you don't know till you're there.

• 1:27:04Jack Murphy?

  Right. Now, does, does the 60 have a base plate?

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:27:08Speaker 05

  It does.

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  Yes, they have two different kinds of base plate.

• 1:27:10Speaker 05

  But you can fire it without the base plate too, right?

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  No, well, you could. It just wouldn't be a good idea.

• 1:27:14Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  It'd be a bad day.

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  And, and how much is like the 60 base plate?

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  Uh, so you have, man, it's been so long. I don't even remember what the base plate is, but I, I remember it was like, there's one that's like 3.6 pounds. And then there is another one, cause they changed it. They changed that base plate like three times, cause you have your auxiliary base plate. And then you have your conventional base plate. Your auxiliary base plate goes with the 60 when it's in handheld mode.

• 1:27:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  And then you have conventional mode. Handheld mode means that you are trigger firing because um, the 60 millimeter mortar, the M224 Alpha 1 that the United States military uses is um, fired in two different positions, either drop fired or trigger fired.

• 1:27:57Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  They're both muzzle loaded. And um, so when you're in handheld, uh, you usually use a scale that's on the back of the 60 that's uh, has a tritium illumination and it has a one side that has a zero at the top, which stands for charge zero and another side is charge one at the top. And you um, down the scale, it tells you the range.

• 1:28:19Speaker 05

  That has a little floating ball in there.

• 1:28:20Speaker 04

  Little floating ball, yep. And you move it and then you kind of line it up and then that's uh, to the range that you desire and you make sure the cannon is on target and you hit things. And the, and this is something I used to mess with the sniper platoon about, cause uh, obviously being a sniper and stuff. I'd be like, hey, sniper guys, you always talk about, I need a new night force scope or something like that. I'm like, my guys are engaging targets at 1200 meters with their thumb.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  You know, like it's kind of funny, right? Like, but.

• 1:28:50Speaker 05

  And you said, uh, real quick, you said a lot of guys prefer the 80, like what is the 80?

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  81, yeah.

• 1:28:54Speaker 05

  What, what is the 81 weigh? Like the base plate in the tube?

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  Uh, so I remember the base plate weighed like 35 pounds. I don't remember what like the um, the next generation, cause we, we went to M252 Alpha 1 and it used to just be M252. But it went, they did like a whole weight reduction on it and I don't really remember how much it weighs. I remember used to telling guys after a while, I go, it don't matter what it weighs, the battalion is still gonna tell you to carry it.

• 1:29:20Speaker 05

  That, and that's why I asked because I think one of the things that mortar men do not, I, I think from the line guys, like they get the appreciation when, when the line guys see him humping that stuff.

• 1:29:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Speaker 05

  We all realize you're carrying everything that every line guy is carrying.

• 1:29:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Speaker 05

  In addition to

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Speaker 05

  a base plate, a tube, the rounds. Like I remember doing fast rope operations where you never wanted to be, you never wanted to go before the mortar guys.

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  Because those guys were screaming down the line.

• 1:29:49Speaker 04

  And that was kind of the cool thing about being a mortar too. It's like, you're like, we're the first boots on the ground.

• 1:29:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Speaker 04

  Like MLAT, so you know, anytime you do an airfield seizure, it's like, who's gonna be first boots on the ground? I'm the heavy dude. I'm jumping out the door first. I'm getting on the ground first. As I got older, I was like, what is the direction of flight? Where is my MFP? I wanna put myself in the stack so I'm closer to the MFP. You know, I started that kind of like, hey man, screw the scatter pattern. I wanna get next to where I need to go, you know, instead of, because if you're heavy, if you're weighed down, you gotta jump first. So you don't, you know, come burning in on somebody else.

• 1:30:26Speaker 05

  So tell us about hitting the ground in Afghanistan in 2010.

• 1:30:30Speaker 04

  Okay, so 2010, this is like towards the end. I think it was like December or something like that. I end up in this area called Kalat and it was very interesting because right away,

• 1:30:46Speaker 04

  you kind of knew what you were up against when you're in Kalat. Cause you looked out from your fob and we were in a tiny fob at a like ride of 47 to get there, very small. And you look out from your little fob and you see Alexander the Great's castle there. And you're like, dude, this has been going on. It was almost like, like a morale, kind of like, your morale kind of went away a little bit. Like dude, like this doesn't look good. That guy tried it? He's in a book. I'm not in a book. He's in lots of books and he's great, apparently. He's like, he's the one Alexander that was pretty great. You know, so like, you see that and I remember like, I, I go in there and I'm, man, I'm,

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  and it's insane because the company I was attached to was like, right away, you kind of, you're like,

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  It almost felt like you're in the locker room of like some Hall of Fame team. When you're overseas, you're like, whoa, the first sergeant was in Mogadishu. That's the son of a Medal of Honor recipient that was killed in Mogadishu.

• 1:31:54Speaker 04

  Dude, Sergeant Major just came in, he was in Panama. Like, what? Cause I remember the Sergeant Major gave his speech, and I think at the time I was like 24 by this time, my first appointment. He was like, I've been a Ranger for 24 years. And I was like, oh, that guy's been a Ranger as long as I've been alive. And I mean, you can probably tell from that voice like who I'm talking about, but um. Yeah, I was, I was like, dang, man, this guy has been around for a while and he looks like he's been around.

• 1:32:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:29Speaker 04

  Little bow to him, man.

• 1:32:31Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I know who you're talking to, this guy, son.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so.

• 1:32:35Jack Murphy?

  He was a good guy.

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that, you know, that guy ran into me in Korea one time. Yeah, uh, he was in charge of, uh, what is it, Ninth Army out there and we were doing some training.

• 1:32:47Jack Murphy?

  We're, we're talking about Sergeant Major Merritt, right?

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Speaker 04

  And, uh, I was in civilian clothes in the PX or something, getting some more stuff to grab to go back up to the Warrior Base. Where we're training at, and, uh, somebody hits me on the back, like smacks me in the back. And I turn around, there's Sergeant Major Merritt with his hand up, he's like, how you doing Ranger? And I was like, oh yeah, Raj Sergeant Major, immediately civilians go to pray rest. And all these people, like, regular army dudes, conventional, and Korea are looking at me like, why are you praying rest for, you know, and I'm like, dude, I don't care if this guy tells me not to go to pray rest, we'll pray rest, and the Manchurian candidate when this guy's around, you know what I mean?

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  Oh, never quit, oh, no, no, no, you know, like, seriously, you know, um.

• 1:33:37Jack Murphy?

  I remember shark in his air once on a, on an airfield seizure. I came down below him.

• 1:33:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Jack Murphy?

  And he burned in right behind me and I hear

• 1:33:47Jack Murphy?

  And I went, I didn't know who it was. I thought it might have been my, uh, my buddy in AT. And I ran over and I was like, oh dude, are you okay? Are you okay? And this guy rolls over like

• 1:33:59Jack Murphy?

  He was the Ops Sergeant Major at 375 at the time.

• 1:34:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:03Jack Murphy?

  He broke all the pens in his pockets. Like everything was destroyed. I felt so fucking bad about it. You know, but I, I, I stayed with him and helped him up and, and like we ran to the, uh, assembly area together.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Jack Murphy?

  But I felt, oh my God. The next day we're doing the next iteration of it.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:19Jack Murphy?

  And I'm there all kitted up and everything with, you know, 150 pounds of shit. Laying there, waiting for the plane to take off and Merritt's there on the ramp, pointing to me and laughing with the other guys. Like, oh, that fucker over there.

• 1:34:29Speaker 04

  That's the one. That's the one.

• 1:34:31Jack Murphy?

  Sky Shark. He's the ringleader. He's the ringleader. Falcon. He was, he was nice about it. He was like, he's like, lower jumper has to right away.

• 1:34:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38Jack Murphy?

  It is what it is. But yeah, good, good dude.

• 1:34:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, he, he hit me on the back and he was like, how you doing Ranger? And I was like, hey, Sergeant Major, like how, how'd you know? And he was like, he's like devil recognize zone.

• 1:34:53Speaker 04

  Awesome. Great. It's like a morale boost anytime that guy was around somehow. Like he's like, and you know, he's a thing of legend.

• 1:34:59Jack Murphy?

  He was a CSM. He loved to go be a saw gunner on your, on a fire team.

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:35:04Jack Murphy?

  Right then and there. Like go do it.

• 1:35:05Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. There are still whispers in the cages of, of him probably to this day, you know, I haven't been interacting with, you know, the organization a couple of years, but you know, that's, uh, that's pretty incredible. Yeah. But that was the guy, that was the whole thing, man. Like these interesting people to me. I'm like, dude, I am in the Hall of Fame locker room. There's like these incredible people like, oh man, that guy was in RRD when they jumped into, uh, when they jumped in like, you know, I guess like before Rhino or whatever.

• 1:35:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  I was like, that guy was, that was the guy. Like, wow. Like I don't, I don't like, you know, and then anytime my guys would be like, you don't belong here. You don't belong here. I was like, yeah, Roger, I don't belong here. You say you don't want to be here? I'm like, no, I'm looking around and you're telling me I don't belong here? Yeah, I don't belong here. I want to belong here. Like, how do I belong here? Tell me. Teach me how to belong here. Cause man, I got the dog shit smoked every, every single day. And it was not an isolated incident from orders. Like I might be up here and people watching at home be like, oh, you know, you a woe is me guy? Like, you know, I'm like, no, I'm just. Talking about the event as it was objective, not subject, where is this happening to me? It happened to every mortar guy there and it probably happened a lot worse. So they say the guys before me, you know, and I respect that they say that wasn't there for those generations.

• 1:36:16Speaker 04

  But you know, I I saw something ugly in the past, like a very brutal way of breaking in soldiers. And I can see a lot of like young guys in their early twenties, just dead in their eyes. Like they almost had no will to live. They didn't care. And it almost made them the most dangerous person on the battlefield. Because you're like, that guy is gonna send it on any enemy or not enemy opposing force, I would say. You know what I mean? Because it like, it's so complex, war is so complex. I I started getting away from calling people the enemy and be like the opposing force. Because sometimes they're the opposing force and sometimes they're like, oh, you're doing a joint operation with this. Force that was like this group of people that was somewhat questionable the other day.

• 1:37:00Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:37:01Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? It's like so unknown, I think, but yeah.

• 1:37:04Jack Murphy?

  Back to Afghanistan.

• 1:37:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Jack Murphy?

  So first deployment.

• 1:37:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:37:09Jack Murphy?

  Uh, up on this mountain top that you had to take a forty seven to.

• 1:37:15Speaker 04

  Which, I don't, I'm not.

• 1:37:17Jack Murphy?

  First deployment to Afghanistan.

• 1:37:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:20Jack Murphy?

  You were telling me it was a small fob you had to.

• 1:37:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I, yeah, we had a, it wasn't really like a mountain top per se. It was like. Like we could see um Alexander the Great's castle from there. Uh, we took, it's very tiny. It was like, there's, you can see some urban areas around. We land there, very small. I wanna say, man, this thing was like, if you ran around it in a circle, less than a mile, probably like a. Yeah, like a third of a mile if you ran a lap around it, one lap around it. I don't really remember exactly. It was tiny. So, yeah, we get there and it was a blackout fob. And I've heard about blackout fobs and I was like, man, like, my first deployment, I'm on blackout fob. Oh, no, like. All these guys are at calf and they're at bath and you know, like there are all these places like I wanna be.

• 1:38:05Speaker 04

  But I was kinda glad I wasn't in those like near the flagpole. You grew up in three, seven, five, you're at the flagpole. So when you're deployed, it's like your vacation time. You know, you're away from everything. Um, so, yeah, yeah, we deployed there to this area. Um, it was like kinda winter time, it snowed.

• 1:38:24Speaker 04

  Got smoked a lot, went out on target, um, not as much as I would have liked because I was new. Um, we were kinda had the section with us, second section is who I was, um, a part of, uh, near a line platoon. And we kinda conducted operations, um, with the line platoon and we also conducted operations supporting the line platoon. Cause I remember one day we had, um, we pushed out like a Hilux, which I was like, well, this is cool. My friends are in like a Hilux, I mean, push out a Hilux with a 120 and we're gonna go support, um, these guys as they move through. Um, and AO and I was like, wow, we're actually gonna use the 120 after like these guys invasively.

• 1:39:07Speaker 04

  You will never use the mortar, you know, you'll just be start, you're stuck on a fob and all this like, you know, stuff that maybe they were exposed to. Yeah. And we rolled out on a Hilux and then I remember like, the section leader being like, hang it. And I was the AB and I had a 120 round in there and he's like, he just sits there and I see my section leader just go.

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  And I'm like, dude, and he's like, no, just keep it there. And how much does that, how much does that round weigh? Thirty pounds, but thirty pounds up here, it's like this awkward thing and if you drop it, it's going. It's going and it's cold and you're not allowed to wear gloves as a mortar. Like it's like written in there, like you don't wear gloves because if you drop it. Yeah, if you drop the, um, mortar round, your glove can get caught inside the cannon. And then when that happens, like, you know, something could ignite, it could go down. If your gloves are stuck, like you can, you can rip your hands off, your fingers off, anything like, the list goes on. Explore the studio space. I don't want to find out, you know, like, you know, cool, but I don't really want to find out if I lose my fingers.

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  So you had me sitting there for a while and then we pulled it out and we didn't fire it. And I was kinda like bummed, like dang it, man. And then they're like, all right, pack up the ammo. And I'm like, man, I was the new guy and I think I was so cherry that even the next private was like, maybe.

• 1:40:36Speaker 04

  Had two or three deployments on me and this is my first.

• 1:40:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  So it was like, and a lot of mortar guys just didn't go to Ranger school during that day. They were like, why am I going to go Ranger?

• 1:40:46Jack Murphy?

  They're even more bitter.

• 1:40:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just, I'm just gonna go kill dudes.

• 1:40:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:50Speaker 04

  Like, why miss the deployment? You know, because mortar guys were on BP sometimes with a saw or a two forty, like they didn't care about the mortar. Like, I don't, I, I need to get away from this and go do that and then I can be, I'll carry an extra, you know, mark forty eight on target. You know, I'll do what I'll carry a ladder, do anything.

• 1:41:07Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:07Speaker 04

  And um, that's kind of the way our guys were, a lot of guys would reclass and become a FO, go do something else.

• 1:41:13Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  And or become eleven Bravo. And so, yeah, that's just kind of how it was. Like, I remember my first deployment and then um, yeah, our, our strike force actually ended up killing a lot of people.

• 1:41:29Speaker 04

  A lot of opposing forces and people that obviously stood against the interest of US foreign policy. And so they were removed uh, from the, from being alive, I guess. And yeah, so that was a very fairly successful strike force, I think, and it was pretty cool to be around.

• 1:41:50Jack Murphy?

  Was that Afghan Strike Force?

• 1:41:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were, uh, or our, um, it was um,

• 1:41:56Speaker 04

  a Ranger platoon. We did have Afghan partnership unit, it was called Afghan partnership unit at the time. We did have them co-located with this along with some other like um, glowing entities that would partner with us on target that seemed like they um, had nothing to do with the DOD. So um, yeah, we would go on to these objectives and um, it was interesting because I got to see a lot of guys who had like, and could really, pick their brains without picking their brains. You'd be like, this is the place to be. You knew it was the place to be, but you know, it's like, it's probably my duty to tough this out and try to make this better. It could be better than this. We, we need like, this mortar platoon where fate has led me to,

• 1:42:41Speaker 04

  needs to be at the level of prestige and lineage that I see in this line company.

• 1:42:50Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  That I see in these guys that I see, like, we, we need to be um, like, the, the enemy needs to, or the, anybody who opposes us needs to be in fear that um, You know, that there is this element out there such as us.

• 1:43:08Jack Murphy?

  What was, uh, objective Ares?

• 1:43:11Speaker 04

  So, objective Ares was, um, something I wasn't, um, directly a part of. But a lot of people, because I had gone through RAS three times, they were... A lot of people that I knew were affected.

• 1:43:29Speaker 04

  One guy in particular that I went through RAS with was killed.

• 1:43:35Speaker 04

  And, um, four, you know, uh, members of the strike force were killed and many people were wounded, uh, very seriously wounded where they either lost, you know, some, um, appendage or eyesight.

• 1:43:51Jack Murphy?

  Was this the Mass Cal event?

• 1:43:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Jack Murphy?

  Okay, I remember when this happened.

• 1:43:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that was like a very like hard hitting, um, thing. There's a lot of lessons to be learned from that. I did see.

• 1:44:04Speaker 06

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• 1:44:19Speaker 07

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• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  A lot of guys across the battalion, um, trajectory changed. I see a lot of guys after that, um, you know, hanging up.

• 1:46:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm getting out of here, man.

• 1:46:10Jack Murphy?

  You want to describe briefly like what happened on target?

• 1:46:13Speaker 04

  I don't really fully know or understand everything that happened on target as I understood. Um, and I don't know exactly how everything started. I just knew that, um, there was a lot of IEDs there.

• 1:46:26Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:27Speaker 04

  Um, there was a call out maybe being conducted. Um, I know that somebody squirted, uh, maybe HBI's. When I say squirted, I mean took off from the objective, kind of trying to flee coalition forces, but it was like a pre-planned route where I guess he might've had, um, some indicator on the ground showing him the, uh, safe, uh, passing across the, uh, IED belt. And, uh, what you call the interdiction team, um, tried to interdict, uh, the assailant and, um, started producing casualties, uh, from that and also I guess somebody, uh, on call out.

• 1:47:08Speaker 04

  Um, I guess it might've been a female holding an explosive device initiated that, uh, explosive device somewhere outside breach injuring people. And then, um, QRF was called, uh, members of the QRF were also injured. Um, many, many people were injured on that objective and, um,

• 1:47:28Speaker 04

  It was, it, it hit really close to home and I remember we had a ceremony when we got back for the Rangers that we lost. And I remember seeing some friends of mine in the front, um, front row, missing their eye, missing the legs and like, I broke down crying. You know, like. And I know I have like nothing to like be sorry for, but I remember telling them, I'm sorry, I'm just sorry, sorry to that.

• 1:47:51Jack Murphy?

  Well, putting their, putting their names up on the rock.

• 1:47:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Jack Murphy?

  Out there in the field and the parents, yeah, I had stuff.

• 1:47:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so like, um, but you know, that's something that. Every guy.

• 1:48:05Speaker 04

  You kind of make peace with that. When, when you step every time. You set foot in the direction of the objective. You've, you've already signed like.

• 1:48:19Speaker 04

  That contract of your life. And that is something that. Even if I'm like, ah, that guy's a douchebag. I don't ever want to talk to him again. If I see him at the bar, I might be like. Alright, man, like, you know, because you, you have that common bond.

• 1:48:33Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  Alright, like, and even if that guy maybe screwed you over. You know, um, you might be like, alright, man, like. I at least know that maybe, you know, you signed that. You know, contract, that non-verbal contract to get on the bird, like you're gonna, you're gonna, and that's, and that's something I used to ask my guys because of that.

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  Because of that event, I used to ask my guys and they come in, I was like, hey. Say the creed, you know. And, uh.

• 1:49:04Speaker 04

  You know, fully understanding the hazards is my chosen profession. I was like, what does that mean to you? He's like, I could die sergeant. I go, no, that's not what that means. That's like probably like if something does happen to you, it's probably like a very easy thing that could happen to you. I was like, but you could be maimed and disfigured and live the rest of your life disabled.

• 1:49:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:49:24Speaker 04

  And you don't know if anybody around here cares about you. You don't know that. Because there's so many people, they leave the army. And like, you're like, oh, hey, like, you know, he left the army. It's like, he's dead to us now.

• 1:49:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:49:40Speaker 04

  And then sometimes those guys, they're just isolated. They do kill themselves. And I've known plenty of people to do that.

• 1:49:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:45Speaker 04

  And I've known plenty of people that, you know, you're just thinking like, oh, happily ever after, because he was so excited to leave. And then, you know, maybe he leaves, he gets out from under the army and he's like, oh, there's some things I miss about it. Sometimes you see guys come back, guys come back through RAS, and you're like, whoa, you're in the army again? Like, what? You know, now you're like an E6 and he's still like an E4 or something, you know, like, wow, out of that. We came back here? You know, like, I'm trying to leave, you know, they should call me first. Things are getting bad.

• 1:50:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:17Speaker 04

  You know, not necessarily.

• 1:50:19Speaker 05

  Life working at Chili's just wasn't what I thought it was.

• 1:50:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:50:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's not just that. I mean, even even for people who find like successful careers afterwards. It doesn't offer the same stuff that that camaraderie and that mission. It just, there's nothing that compares to it on the outside.

• 1:50:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you're probably sitting there like, man, I miss my friends.

• 1:50:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:43Speaker 04

  To an extent.

• 1:50:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Speaker 04

  You know.

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 04

  And I mean, me personally, I mean, I only got out of the army in January. So I'm still going through it, still like, you know, going through the whole transition process and figuring out everything I want to do. You know what I mean? And, you know, and the cool thing is like, I'm still somehow loosely in contact with these guys.

• 1:51:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 04

  And I made somewhat of impression where guys were still in, call me for advice. Guys, like, I'm not even in the army. I'm like, am I the shadow governor of this mortar platoon? What's happening?

• 1:51:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:51:13Speaker 04

  Get it together. You know what I mean? Uh, but because of that, you know.

• 1:51:20Speaker 04

  Uh, that's a good segue because I kinda started this thing with a couple buddies in the Mortar Platoon where we kinda started calling like what we were doing Task Force Vermin. So Task Force Vermin was kinda like, I remember this one guy got like a Banksy tattoo where it's like the mortar rats with the, he's like, "Yeah, man, we're the Vermin." I go, "You know what?" Like, I was into street art and stuff, so I was like, "Nah," 'cause he bit on this like famous artist, like street art. I was like, "Dude, we can't use that as the logo." I was like, "Screw it, everyone's already doing it, just go with it." So we got like this Banksy street art mortar rats thing inside of an orange diamond and we're just like, "Hey, you know, let's just be this decentralized mortar company where

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  you got guys at 175 and 275 and 375. Let's stop competing and all the BS. Like, let's just share ARs with each other and be like, "Hey, man, we're the only guys like us."

• 1:52:17Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:52:17Speaker 04

  Let's, let's bring it in and be like, "Hey, what are you having problems with? What are you having successes with?" And that kinda became a thing. And then once we really started kinda that thing, I think, there's a lot of like, a lot of good cross talk and people coming into their own off of that. But that's, I mean, that's a little bit later on, that really hit.

• 1:52:39Jack Murphy?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:52:40Speaker 04

  Got to prove that in Syria.

• 1:52:42Jack Murphy?

  What was it like then as, you know, time progresses? Like, you're getting exposed to the Special Ops Task Force, all these like OGA partners, all these things that you're learning, being exposed to. You deployed several more times to Afghanistan.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:55Jack Murphy?

  I know. What, what were these deployments like? What was your impression of the war as the years ground, uh, ground on?

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  I mean, I remember my first deployment being like, the strike force was being very kinetic. And I remember my second deployment being like, "We didn't do anything." I think somebody like rifle butted somebody in the head really hard and that's it. And then like, my third deployment, I was a team leader, 'cause I went to Ranger School. And, um, and I gotta, I do have a Ranger School story, we can get back to that. But, uh, I was a, I was a team leader in my third deployment and, um, yeah, uh...

• 1:53:36Speaker 04

  We went out all the time and you know, you might have been out in country for like 90 days or more. He did like over 100 missions. And that was pretty crazy. We got to do a lot of stuff that was like really, um, really interesting too. Like we had some Taliban, um, facilitator that was also running the ANA checkpoint. And we knew that if we would have rolled in with helicopters, he would have known, they're here for me. Right. So we just got inside a marine convoy and rolled out and balled them up under the guise that we were Marines. That's cool.

• 1:54:16Speaker 04

  And so like, you know, we had, I remember like, I think the guy who actually made contact and actually blasted this dude in the face like overhand, right? It was like this big behemoth of a medic that we had. It's the big dude just ran up there and was like, bop. Cracked that dude, took him, put him in the bird. And, um, also on that deployment, I got, um, got in a fight with a detainee. It was a part of a near peer, um, intelligence agency. Um, we just had like some guy switch out on mid-rotator. So I had sent one guy home because he was having a baby. And so I got a new, uh, assistant gunner who had just graduated Ranger School.

• 1:54:59Speaker 04

  And 100% offense to the Navy SEALs out there. This kid probably should have been a SEAL. He was like turtle surfer, bro. Like, oh yeah, Roger. P N O B. Yeah. Nice hair. Yeah. Croquis. Yeah. And, uh, I told him, I go, hey, man. Um, so what I've been doing every time we load on this bird, the now they're not the Afghan partnership unit. They're the Ktehs. Yeah, the K K A. Yeah. I was like, so the K K A have been cutting the flex cuffs, uh, to a lot of detainees and the detainees like, uh, complain about the flex cuffs.

• 1:55:36Speaker 04

  I was like, hey, man, so keep an eye on them because I don't know. I've been telling these line guys, uh, that this has been happening and they've been kind of writing me off, not caring that I'm, you know, doing spot checks. And I was like, so hey, help me keep an eye on him, you know? And so while I'm clipping in, just pay attention and then like, um, while you're clipping in, I'll pay attention. And so I'm clipping in, next thing I know, I have hands around my, um, shoulder straps. And I'm thinking like, oh, this is probably like a squad leader or somebody or like the, one of the crew chief guys go, hey, man, move, move over. I need to get to, you know? Cause that's usually what happens. I look up, it's the detainee.

• 1:56:18Speaker 04

  And he's pulling on my kit like, I'm gonna pick you up and pull you off this like bird.

• 1:56:23Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 1:56:24Speaker 04

  So I was like, you just fucked up because I'm a very good wrestler. You know, I'm a grappler, I'm a fighter, uh, fought like majority of my time in the, in the army. And so I hit him with a blast double, shoved his hips up against the top of the bird of the forty seven. Forty seven's taking off and now I'm like this, I got mortar gear on me, man. So I'm heavy and my mortar cannon is going like this and I'm like, crap, man, I'm gonna fall over. So I immediately like power bomb this dude onto the floor. And all the line guys are like, what's happening? Cause they don't get it. Like they just think I'm just like crushing this detainee, you know? And I get mad at my, my partner, you know, cause he's space case over there like, whoa.

• 1:57:10Speaker 04

  I was like, get his legs, you dumb motherfucker. And like he grabbed his legs. Cause I used to train my guys. So I was like, when you go detain somebody. One of the best things is if you see a guy fighting with the other guy and we're working upper body. Take his legs off the ground. Now you're gonna take off the center of gravity. You're taking up like, don't help me up top, grab the legs. So he actually paid attention to that. I was like, grab his leg. Grab his legs, we flipped him over and I remember I was like dropping elbows on this dude too. Cause he, and, uh, another scary thing is like, I also knew just by growing up, uh, that Iranians are, sorry.

• 1:57:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Who's your ayatollah now?

• 1:57:47Speaker 04

  They're very good at wrestling. And, uh, yeah, people of the, from this country are very good at wrestling. And I respect that. We used to have one come over to, uh, wrestling camps from that country and, um, Yeah, so when, when he rotated his hips when we're on the ground, I go, this guy knows how to rust. And I was like, finish him, just, just get him, you know, and so. Violence of action until he stopped dropping elbows, Donkey Kong punching the crap out of his head. Um, and I was like flex cuffs his ankles. So my guys back there flex cuffs his ankles together. I get his feet together. I flex cuff his hands to his feet.

• 1:58:30Speaker 04

  And then I turn around and I have the base plate on my back and it's like touching my ass.

• 1:58:36Jack Murphy?

  Like teenage mutant ninja turtle.

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I have, I have a, well, not the base plate like full, but it's a cannon with the base, the, the auxiliary base plate is underneath the 60s. So it's only like 3.6, but this thing has little spikes on it.

• 1:58:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:47Speaker 04

  And it's durable enough to take, you know, charge one with it, you know, so it's. We flip him over and, uh, well, he's already flipped over. I already said that, but, uh, we flex cuff his hands that are now already flex cuff together. We take those hands and flex cuff from the, flex cuff on his feet, essentially hogtied him. Then I sit my butt with the base plate on the back of his head. And I just ride like with holding on to him all the way back to the fob. And the platoon sergeant's like, hey, what's going on and this, that and the other. And I said over the radio, I was like, I'm gonna have to fill out a sworn statement. That's all I said over the radio.

• 1:59:27Speaker 04

  And so like, I was like grabbing by his feet and we dragged this guy out of the bird and we gave him to the T-Haw guys in the van. And then, um, later on, they had some, you know, the AR and stuff like that. And the AR, they show the picture of the guy on target and they show a picture of him at the T-Haw. And I busted his orbital socket open, his eyeball was hanging out of his head. And I was like, oh my goodness. And I did my sworn statement and nothing came of it. But it was like a crazy experience because I was like, dude, is this guy trying to like rip a grenade pin off of me?

• 2:00:03Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:00:03Speaker 04

  Is he trying to grab my weapon and shoot? And that was my explanation because I was like, look, there is no way to. I couldn't like draw a nine mil and put it to his head. It's gonna go through him maybe or a slight miss and hit somebody on the bird. So you have to do it all with your hands and combatives. You know, using martial arts like um hand to hand combat to be able to detain and restrain this person. And um yeah, I was totally in fear for my life and I was like, oh man, this bird, I'm just waiting for like a pin to go up. I was waiting for a pin, a flash, and then the lights go out.

• 2:00:39Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:00:40Speaker 04

  That's what I was waiting.

• 2:00:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:42Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, that was like probably the big takeaway there. And then like going to the five board was another sweaty situation there. Like, you know, uh, my first actual um NCO board, but I already had that board in Rasp. I was like, hey, man, we're too sketchy once and whatever. Um, yeah, and I think that was like my third and then like a few other deployments down the line. It just became Groundhog's Day. Like over and over again, I'd go to Afghanistan and I would just look at Afghanistan like

• 2:01:12Speaker 04

  sometimes go back to the same outstation that I was at the year before or the, you know, you deploy every few months sometimes or extend even further than you were before. It wasn't always very consistent. But you go back to the United States and then you go back to almost the same bunk that you're sleeping in.

• 2:01:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  And like the first day I wake up in that bunk, I'm like, was that all a dream?

• 2:01:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:33Speaker 04

  You know, and it's very strange because it's like, was Afghanistan a dream up until that point? Because like I wasn't really doing many day operations. All my operations at night, it was just green people. You're fighting green people.

• 2:01:46Speaker 05

  Living in a green world.

• 2:01:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, green world.

• 2:01:49Speaker 05

  You're living in a green world.

• 2:01:50Speaker 04

  It's like stranger things, upside down.

• 2:01:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:53Speaker 04

  You know, you go ahead, everything's green, like something like that. Yeah. So it was like very surreal.

• 2:01:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  And like to, when you're constantly in this revolving door.

• 2:02:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  Going back and forth to the United States, Afghanistan.

• 2:02:04Speaker 05

  And if you were doing like a hundred ops in ninety days, you were doing back to backs where like you were going out.

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:11Speaker 05

  You know, coming back, doing it, somebody was doing a strat debrief and they were going right back out.

• 2:02:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, doing a follow on.

• 2:02:17Speaker 05

  Attack debrief, yeah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 04

  Uh, rest over day, rest over. Overnight, different things, um, you know, luckily I didn't have to do too many of those like movement to contact things. But they were, they like the, the regiment at the time, they got really into offsets for no reason. Like I went from like, hey, we're landing on the Y, we're landing on the X to for no reason at all, we bring you the 30 K offset.

• 2:02:43Speaker 04

  It's like, it's like the battalion commander came out and was like, prior to the assault force, conducting call out, no banger was thrown. That is a 5K offset penalty, repeat wheels down. You know, and you're just like, dude, what the heck? Why do we have to do this?

• 2:03:00Speaker 05

  For the people who might not be familiar with like the, the, the technical jargon. Uh, landing on the X when you're flying into an objective, landing on the X is landing right on the target. When you're doing an offset, it's generally at least winged terrain, terrain feature away. Which in Afghanistan can be a long, and, and they're doing it, or they say they're doing it to, to decrease the profile of the assault force. So you're, you're landing behind a mountain so they don't hear you and then you're walking in. But like you say, it can be a long fucking walk.

• 2:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:03:33Jack Murphy?

  Well, on that note, let's hear about the Nangahar offensive.

• 2:03:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:03:38Jack Murphy?

  Cause I, I mean, like I, we were talking before the show, I, I wrote about it. I, you know, I obviously know way less than you or anyone else out there did. But I wrote about it at the time and pissed some people off because I kind of called out some of the leadership that planned that thing.

• 2:03:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:54Jack Murphy?

  It sounded like a mess.

• 2:03:57Speaker 04

  That was a very frustrating thing and just going into it, just being a mortar. So 375 mortars have already been conducting cross-border operations into, um, an area controlled by the Islamic State in a different country by this point. So, um, they were on their way home. And they diverted that aircraft to Bagram. Those men would be like, if you're a mortar, get off.

• 2:04:24Speaker 05

  Holy shit.

• 2:04:25Speaker 04

  So they just finished their rotation. Now they're gonna roll into this thing. Now, when they get there, they have like all this knowledge and this stuff that they could like add to help. You know, like, hey, this is what I learned over here. That's very successful from a mortar standpoint. And then you had like some leadership there that maybe were a little cocky or maybe, you know, they sleep at night with their West Point certificate or something like that. You know, and they go, uh, West Point certificate says, don't listen to the mortar man. You know what I mean? I mean, you look at a guy like me, I don't look very educated, obviously. So like clearly and like, you know, like they're probably incompetent, you know, but.

• 2:05:03Speaker 04

  Whatever. It is what it is.

• 2:05:04Jack Murphy?

  Enlisted swine.

• 2:05:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. You know, I, I don't look like I belong in the country club. You know what I mean? Or the certain barbecues. But so.

• 2:05:15Speaker 04

  This guy. This, you know, these guys like, you know, hey, what about, what about this? Can we do that? I'm like, no mortar. No, go away. Like, you know, and so.

• 2:05:26Speaker 05

  I studied the Civil War in depth.

• 2:05:29Speaker 04

  We don't need this.

• 2:05:30Jack Murphy?

  Like they like. So what, what was the concept of the operation? What were you guys even attempting to do here?

• 2:05:35Speaker 04

  So concept of operation, put it very generally is like, kinda like a movement to contact clearance of an area. Were they upset? Like the number that they sent out was like, guess what, man? There's over 9,000 fighters in this valley. You're gonna die. 100% you're gonna die. Like that was almost like what was being put out. Like, and then like all these like guys were doing ridiculous stuff, like shaving high and tights in their head, like for moto. And they were, um, they were doing high, and this is like a little bit more relaxed standard.

• 2:06:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:06:05Speaker 04

  Crew of dudes and our mortar guys had just come from an area where they were definitely relaxed standard with beards and like, you know, wearing mar pads. And now you're coming into this like, okay, let's get your haircut, you know? And so. Like, we were kinda like, hey, man, it makes sense to have like, you know, maybe two M razors and two 81s. So we can like walk the guns and do bounding overwatch and be all cool. And cause like our guys at this point, we're really into this like. Not defensive mortars, this guerrilla warfare. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mujahideen, like hit and run mortars. That's like what we were training in. Like maneuver warfare. Yeah, yeah, like we want to be in hide site, send this, move to the next hide site.

• 2:06:48Speaker 04

  They go back to the hide site we were, go, ha, ha, tricked you. Now we're shooting our old hide site, you know, stuff like that, just trolling people in the battlefield. It's kind of where our guys were. We were shaping and then I don't think they had any idea of that at the staff level. Pins on a map, man. Yeah. Pins on a map. Yes. So they go, oh, oh, oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. But how about this? All right, hear me out, hear me out. You walk, right? You walk, right? Sound good? Am I right? No, no, no, no, I don't get, I don't get a vehicle? No, no, no, man, you get a walk, dude. It's awesome, right? All right. Instead of an 81, we'll triple the weight and give you a 120. And you got to carry all the. Bigger bang, man. Yeah, bigger bang, goes further, dude. It's safer. The long ball. Everyone's safe. Everyone's safe, it's cool, man.

• 2:07:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, they'll hate it when they get it with the 120. And we're going to want like your MFP to be like over here in this compound or something, man. They're like, all right. And it's like, if, if Chevy Chase made like a mortar vacation, this is what it would be.

• 2:07:49Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? So it's like, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. The third Ranger Battalion Mortar Platoon goes to Nanga. What kind of crazy mix up will they get involved in? You know what I mean? It's just like, man, it was a complete shit show. I remember like, we get out there and um, man, we, we set up and I'm looking around at this thing. And um, the compound that we took over was riddled with holes from Dishka. And I go, I wonder where these holes came from? And I looked up all around and we're down in a bowl. Right. We're surrounded by ridge line and there's DFPs all along the ridge line, DFPs. And we're just like.

• 2:08:30Speaker 04

  This is where we do the custo's last stand, you know, and we infield before any line platoon. And we, and we were like first ones in last to leave. That's what we were. We were out there flapping in the wind with less than, less than 20 guys, definitely. Cause I know we had like a small, uh, group of O D A guys with a very small and our mortar team was very small and a lot of our guys like, um, our senior level was pretty okay. Like our staff sergeants on the ground were pretty experienced. But it was like such a gap. We had our staff sergeants and then hello, private. This is your first deployment.

• 2:09:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:06Speaker 04

  And we had some guys that didn't want to be there. Like, I don't want to kill anyone, Sergeant. Like that type of mentality.

• 2:09:12Speaker 05

  Really?

• 2:09:12Speaker 04

  And we're like, you're gonna have to.

• 2:09:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:15Speaker 04

  If you want to make it out here.

• 2:09:16Speaker 05

  Wait, and I guys were in Ranger Battalion and they came out? What, why did they go to Ranger Battalion?

• 2:09:22Speaker 04

  That's a question that I try to ask and it doesn't make any sense to me.

• 2:09:27Speaker 05

  And, and I mean, obviously the, the officers who plan this on, uh, you know, because as the N B N Q showed us and many other operations that fighting out of a bull is very, very successful.

• 2:09:38Jack Murphy?

  Works every time.

• 2:09:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, works every time.

• 2:09:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was like, let's kill those guys off. You know, I'm really tired of them. Put them over there and kill them off. You know, so like you feel disrespected. You feel real disrespected.

• 2:09:50Jack Murphy?

  Cause they're using you as cannon fodder is what it feels like.

• 2:09:52Speaker 05

  And they're not even listening to you like as, as a, as a direct support or as a support element.

• 2:09:58Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Not, not accepting the consultation of their N C Os.

• 2:10:01Speaker 05

  That you know your capabilities. You, you know, you have combat experience.

• 2:10:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  And for these officers who don't understand your capabilities.

• 2:10:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Speaker 05

  To not listen to your input in the, in the implementation of you as an asset.

• 2:10:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Speaker 05

  I can see how you felt insulted.

• 2:10:19Speaker 04

  I felt insulted because like, but I also kind of understood because like. You could have like a real bonehead sniper, right? And I'm sure you met some that are like, wow dude, how's this guy sniper? But like the chain of command, like you'd be like, excuse me, sir. Here's an expert plan. He goes, you're a mortar. Get out of here. Sniper goes, I think this will be like, they act like every sniper's Bubba Fett. And they go, oh wow, show me that gun again.

• 2:10:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:47Speaker 04

  You know, ooh, it's so long. You know what I mean? I'm like, well, you know. Uh, anyways, like that's what it seems like, right? Like they give the benefit of the doubt on people as if their occupation or whatever their op con task is, is a steroid that suddenly makes them good. And then if you are a subject matter expert, if you're like the actual chief of smoke there and they're like, we don't care.

• 2:11:12Jack Murphy?

  Right, you're a gun grape.

• 2:11:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's it. And you know, part of that I also understood was like, maybe this is because of like the generation before me and I'm just gonna have to break some tackles and get through this and keep doing my job. Stay in my lane and, and do what I need to do to prove them wrong.

• 2:11:27Jack Murphy?

  So how did this op unfold as you know, the rest of the element, you know, hit the ground?

• 2:11:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, so one of the companies hit the ground finally while we were there sweating our asses off. Uh, I want to say the real feel was like 136 degrees is what we were told by weather. I mean, you squish on your helmet and water would come out of there. We were wearing tantees and shorts at the MFP, like just screw it, man. We're not going down for heat cat. We'll take a gig for uniform, but not heat cat. And so, um, first, uh, group of guys go through and they're clearing through and it's like, man, I don't even think they could clear everything. There was so much to do and you know, the pace is like, go forward, go forward, go forward. They're getting paced out and, uh, it just, there wasn't like establish foothold,

• 2:12:15Speaker 04

  establish flight, hold flight, flop maintenance, flop clearance, establish, like there was no bounding overwatch. There was bounding overwatch intermittently of like, maybe like a company minus, but that's it. It didn't seem reasonable, even from our standpoint. So then like another group of guys, another element from the Ranger Battalion gets on the ground, switches out with the other, the previous element, they start clearing through. And, um, At some point in the operation, they start taking contact. And everything's like, from what I understood is going pretty good. And mind you, there are Ranger mortar men also attached to these guys. A lot of them Winchester-ing 60s. One of my teams only fired two rounds.

• 2:13:00Speaker 04

  And the discipline in a, in that heat, to be like, we're gonna fire two rounds. Alright, that's good. We're good. And not Winchester-ing your rounds.

• 2:13:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:08Speaker 04

  That range, that much Ranger discipline. I put those guys in for a war. Be like, dude, you brought back ammo? Like, good job.

• 2:13:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:14Speaker 04

  Because they had to carry guys out of there. You know, guys that were passing out.

• 2:13:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17Speaker 04

  Record numbers of people, heat cat.

• 2:13:19Speaker 05

  You're saying that, that you would have expected a Spandex because?

• 2:13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. Just get rid of.

• 2:13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, just dump it out and.

• 2:13:27Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:13:28Speaker 04

  And get out.

• 2:13:28Speaker 05

  Throw it in the wood line.

• 2:13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And, um. You know, so they went through, before that all happened, there wasn't incident, which, you know. You might have written your paper and they probably. You know, snuck out the way because of one key incident, which said, well, everything would have went well if this didn't happen.

• 2:13:50Speaker 05

  Oh, the heat casualty where they got overrun and they had to leave the equipment behind?

• 2:13:53Speaker 04

  No. No. The plan was good. This is like, almost like, I guess what the narrative is.

• 2:13:59Speaker 05

  The PR.

• 2:13:59Speaker 04

  The plan was good. What happened was, is that an Apache pilot, you know, Apache gunship, had stray support by fire line. Nobody was injured from that. Like, there were wounded Rangers from enemy contact, but nobody was actually like, directly wounded other than what, from what I understand, and I'm not a guy who knows exactly every single detail about this stuff. But there was guys who probably experienced some type of traumatic brain injury from being lit up by a gunship. And so. Once that happened, that guy was in the vicinity, apparently, where the kit got laid behind.

• 2:14:36Speaker 05

  Gotcha. I remember, yeah.

• 2:14:37Speaker 04

  And, and, and so that would became the narrative of like, this is why the operation wasn't successful. And so it was kind of like a pawning off of, I guess, responsibility.

• 2:14:49Speaker 04

  I think there's like a, a number of things that could have gone wrong even with, when, when the, the plan is right.

• 2:14:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:55Speaker 04

  You know, that's a difficult terrain and environment to fight in, especially.

• 2:15:01Speaker 04

  As small of an element you are, you think a company or something or company minus is like a big group of dudes, it really is not, not in a valley that size when you assess that, you know, you have, you know,

• 2:15:14Jack Murphy?

  Nine thousand.

• 2:15:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, nine thousand guys, however many they say.

• 2:15:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I was told that like everyone was like a heat casualty at that point in operation, pretty much.

• 2:15:22Speaker 04

  Pretty much. There's people on the QRF, to them, that were actually supposed to backfill them. They weren't even QRF at first, I guess. They were heat catting on the bird.

• 2:15:32Jack Murphy?

  Jesus.

• 2:15:32Speaker 04

  That's crazy. Yeah. That's wild. And then, so we're out there while these guys are in the valley and they finally, like, their commander was on that radio sounded defeated. And I can't really blame him. But he was on there going like, we just need to get out of here. And then the battalion commander going, "You have every half set at your available. Drop it. Drop that building." I guess they were taking fire from some heavily fortified position like a castle or some, something like that. That was very structurally sound. They were hitting it with everything except for one twenties. And while all this gunfire was going on, we started taking indirect fire at the MFP. And

• 2:16:14Speaker 04

  I heard a boom, like a quick little pop from like, I can't remember which valley they were in and we were in, but I know like, let's say west and east and this salt forest was in an east valley and I heard the pop in the west valley. And we're like on the corner of both valleys. Here, pop. I'm like, I know exactly what that is. And like, I started like getting down low and slow.

• 2:16:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:35Speaker 04

  And I look at the Joes and it's like their first deployment. And I've always explained this to them. I'm like, all that incoming, that's for Ranger School. That's a Ranger School thing. Because if you yell incoming in combat, that's recon by fire. I fire a mortar going, "I think the enemy's over here." Then I hear, "Incoming." "I know the enemy's over there and I know roughly how many." That sounds like a company. You know, it sounds like a platoon. Alright, cool. And that's like using observation, audible observation to detect where your enemy is. So.

• 2:17:15Speaker 04

  I'm getting down slow and I look at this kid and I'm like, you might want to get down. And he looks at me with a smile on his face and I start laughing at him hysterically. Cause I'm laughing at this shitting grin he has. Cause I'm like, this kid's about to turn into Pink Mist. Or I am. And I'm trying to decide which one's more funny. Is it more funny if I explode into pieces and my body parts go on top of him? I was like, I hope my freaking genitals fly right into his face when I get blown apart. And wipe that shit off of his head and it just scars him for life. Like that was like me at that time, like, you know, just my angsty, like, uh, like crusty mortar NCO in me. And I was like, yeah, man, like, uh, you know, I was like, looking at him like, get down. And then, uh, so anyways, he, he, we hear a whoosh.

• 2:18:00Speaker 04

  Mortar fucking around coming in and that kid goes, finally, he puckers and gets down, jumps in this hole. We dug some holes around there. Our MFP was disgusting, by the way. What, what they decided, there was mounds of shit. There was mounds of ball hair that the Afghans had been shaving off and putting in piles. There's razor blades.

• 2:18:16Jack Murphy?

  The Afghans shave ball hair and keep it in piles?

• 2:18:18Speaker 04

  I guess so. There was ball hair everywhere, piles of shit everywhere. There was bees, so many bees, not the bees, but yeah. So it was a really bad MFP.

• 2:18:29Jack Murphy?

  Bees and ball hair.

• 2:18:31Speaker 04

  Bees, ball hair and piles of shit. That's like lions, tigers, bears on my, but like, try to, try to put that in a sentence. Say that three times as fast. But yeah, it was pretty disgusting. Uh, cause they had like a little shower area there. And then, then like there was a drain and all the ball hair would come out the drain and like pile up. It's disgusting. So that's where our MFP was. And I was like, dang man, like a mortar is just gonna blow all these razor blades everywhere. But, so we took some mortar fire and luckily that first round was a dud. Some dirt kind of flew over the compound wall. And got on the radio and we're like, hey, we're taking effective mortar fire from, uh, West Valley or whatever. And like, the only thing was like dead air, like Roger.

• 2:19:14Speaker 04

  So anyways, uh, Lion Company, what's going on with you? You know what I mean? We're like, fuck dude.

• 2:19:20Jack Murphy?

  So my first year at West Point, let me tell you this story.

• 2:19:24Speaker 04

  So while we're out there, then, um, they make a call to, um,

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• 2:19:45Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:19:56Speaker 06

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• 2:21:24Speaker 04

  To get all the line guys out of there, start bounding out of that valley. And that's when we search and traverse that valley with a bunch of coordinates. Like, we just dropped everything on there.

• 2:21:36Speaker 05

  That's what I was gonna ask is, they said they, you said they were taking effect of fire from, you know, a fortified structure and it had been hit with everything but 120s. Were you guys within range? Were they just not calling you for that?

• 2:21:48Speaker 04

  They just weren't calling us. It's like, we were just another forgotten thing, like, why'd you put us out here? Why have we been out here for multiple days? And, and all that, and, you know. People might get mad about me saying anything like that, but it's like, maybe it's a lesson learned that you haven't heard yet. And it's probably pissing you off because you know it to be true. And it's a change that you can make when you reach that position in the planning to actually go to those subject matter experts to handle that weapon system and say, hey, we're thinking about placing you here. Are you okay with that? Or do you have any RFIs regarding this location that we have selected for you? You know what I mean? So, um, yeah, anyway, they were, they were getting out of the valley. And I had some buddies that told me like, dude, we were just like, look over our shoulders and just see like scorched earth.

• 2:22:33Speaker 04

  Because we were just like dropping rounds on everything, I guess, and um, didn't actually get to see it, but.

• 2:22:41Speaker 05

  So you, so you guys were, were covering their movement?

• 2:22:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:22:44Speaker 05

  With the 120s?

• 2:22:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're covering their egress.

• 2:22:46Speaker 05

  Did you guys have FOs calling that in or were you just kind of like, this is, this is the FL, the FLOT, this is a flot and, and we're.

• 2:22:54Speaker 04

  Uh, we were, we were using the eyes of an air asset.

• 2:22:57Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:22:59Speaker 04

  Um, we had air asset go over and uh, put it, put us on a grid. And we started prosecuting those targets from there and decided the length, width and uh, depth of the um, target area. And just search and traverse to give ample enough uh, fire suppression, fire superiority, uh, to ensure that our guys could uh, safely and quickly um, exit the combat area.

• 2:23:26Speaker 05

  Do you know about how many rounds you guys went through with the 120s?

• 2:23:30Speaker 04

  At least uh, for that particular moment, at least a one kicker box pool. So kicker box pool of 120 million rounds. I don't remember exactly how many.

• 2:23:41Speaker 04

  Off the top of my head. I know we had dropped the speed ball and then shot some more, but yeah, we. Send a.

• 2:23:49Speaker 04

  I thought like, yeah, man, at the time it was a decent amount of ordinance, but like later on in my career, it's just the amount of ordinance I ended up firing became, made that look like child's play.

• 2:23:58Speaker 05

  What was the AAR for this mission like?

• 2:24:01Speaker 04

  I don't know. I didn't think I got a piece of it. It was almost like, um, so the thing for us is like, um, we were left there and the BCA and the, yeah, Bravo Company got out of there. We were left there and, uh, they were kind of like, oh, hey, weather's rolling in. You guys are gonna have to like, you know, defend in place. And we were like, what? And they're like, or, you know, pack up the, pack up the mortar stuff, whatever you have. And we're like, dude, we don't have a forklift and we're expanding all this.

• 2:24:30Speaker 05

  And you guys were like a mortar section plus?

• 2:24:33Speaker 04

  Like, uh, probably less than a real mortar section. Like we were, it's, it's kind of hard to say because we were not a real mortar section. We were like a hodgepodge of guys. Grab what we have. You're, you're coming from this country. You're coming from this country. Meet in the middle, get on the objective and, and, and we're gonna tell you what to do. And, um, so we had, and then we had like a bunch of junior, junior guys that they pulled from the States.

• 2:24:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:24:56Speaker 04

  They're brand new. Like these guys don't know what they're doing.

• 2:24:59Speaker 05

  And the leadership left you there to defend in place while weather rolls in.

• 2:25:03Speaker 04

  That's what they said.

• 2:25:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:25:04Speaker 04

  And then we were kind of like arguing a little bit. ODA dudes arguing a little bit. And then we got an aircraft to come in and get us. And they gave us like, I think like one forty seven to get us on and get out of there. And then, um, what was weird is like, it was like, I think we were like leaving the, like we were leaving the valley and it was like almost like three AM by the time we got out of there. It was, everything else is daytime. Everyone's heat gauged. Now it's like three AM. We're finally getting out of there. And as we're, it's like three AM and we hear this like,

• 2:25:37Speaker 04

  and we're like, that's not the time that's supposed to happen. And then we saw an alum round go over where our old, um, Where we were earlier and I'm like dude that just has to be on their target list worksheet because they've shot up that compound they have them they they're like the only place these US guys can be is in this compound so they probably go go back to known likely suspected and you know they probably had a guy on that loudspeaker calling something in or something I don't I don't really know but it was like a thing that everyone's like can we just forget about that can we forget that happened? And then a lot of guys um a lot of guys did end up like I'm going to SFAS and they did.

• 2:26:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:20Speaker 04

  Right after that.

• 2:26:21Jack Murphy?

  Well, it's interesting that you say you weren't part of it after action review.

• 2:26:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:25Jack Murphy?

  And it makes me wonder if one ever happened.

• 2:26:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:28Jack Murphy?

  Because the army has a habit of when operations go really bad.

• 2:26:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:33Jack Murphy?

  They don't do an AAR.

• 2:26:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:35Jack Murphy?

  No data, no problem.

• 2:26:36Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 2:26:37Jack Murphy?

  We we didn't collect that data that so it didn't happen.

• 2:26:40Speaker 04

  The operation's classified, we can't have an AAR.

• 2:26:42Jack Murphy?

  There there may be there may be uh like platoon internal AARs about the operation that they initiate on their own. But did the unit did the task force itself AAR the mission and I I would be interested to know the answer to that question.

• 2:26:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure that there was something that was like a very small crowd. I think like if they would have had like the whole crowd there it'd been like a town hall meeting. Welcome I had to you know.

• 2:27:09Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:27:09Speaker 04

  Some guys just standing up randomly yelling stuff that you know can articulate it very professionally.

• 2:27:16Jack Murphy?

  Some motherfuckers thrown out.

• 2:27:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it probably happened in the small meeting, you know what I mean?

• 2:27:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:22Speaker 04

  Um, I'm sure something happened. I mean, they had to do their own little investigation or anything like that. Um.

• 2:27:27Jack Murphy?

  I mean, well, hit the press here stateside. I mean, not just not just for me, but also writing about this mission.

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was um it was a very interesting time. But it seemed like a shift for the mortars from there.

• 2:27:43Jack Murphy?

  Twenty sixteen, this happens.

• 2:27:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:27:46Jack Murphy?

  You get back home twenty seventeen, what are you hearing about Syria?

• 2:27:52Speaker 04

  Um, well, it was like our guys, our our mortar guys over there doing uh very good work. Um. Cause we have like a lot of good guys in the mortar platoon that were just like. You know, like a fork is not just a eating utensil, you know, like it can close a circuit. You can kill somebody with a fork, you know, there's like, I can look at that device and turn it into multi-use. And that's the good thing about not having an identity for a while. You start having these guys who are just like, I'm cracking open every manual. I'm becoming the page master, you know, and learning this stuff. So, um, we're learning back now. We just switched out with another battalion.

• 2:28:32Speaker 04

  We're getting like some information from them and we're staying on them and we're starting to go, okay. Now this time it wasn't like, we didn't have a, a small team of guys jump the chain of command and then go with a, um, prestigious JSOC unit and cross-border operations. Now, we're starting to conduct a training cycle with a JSOC unit.

• 2:28:55Jack Murphy?

  Based around that mission profile.

• 2:28:56Speaker 04

  Based around that mission profile. And, um, yeah, so we started doing that, working that in and then, um, getting information from them, kind of things that we face.

• 2:29:06Jack Murphy?

  You made it sound a little earlier, like, almost like these mortar teams were like, becoming like the Vietcong, the way they were operating.

• 2:29:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was, it was kind of like that, except for instead of like.

• 2:29:16Jack Murphy?

  Conical hats.

• 2:29:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we, we just kind of like, we're sitting in lawn chairs and shooting. And it was, it was kind of cool. Um, so,

• 2:29:28Speaker 04

  and, and then what we had to train for was like, hey, we're gonna, this is kind of like what we're gonna be doing. We'll be operating, taking over safe house. Safe house, uh, most likely going to be overrun. This is their most likely course of action. This is the most dangerous course of action. Let's train to the most likely. Let's train for the most dangerous. Let's have all of our TTPs in place, all of our contingencies in place, in order to facilitate success, based on these courses of action that the enemy may take in this environment, this like heavily non-permissive environment. And so, certain things that we were doing, we're getting like extensive training on javelins. We were getting extensive training on other types of weapon systems that would be advantageous to us. Things to disable drones, things to like, other weapon systems that we might not have been very familiar with.

• 2:30:10Speaker 04

  To us and our partner, um, our, like, you know, sister unit that we were working with, that maybe was at a higher tier.

• 2:30:18Speaker 04

  And it was kind of funny because, you know, I was a, like, heavy weapons, um, qualified guy. And the guys from that particular, uh, element were asking me like, hey man, you know how to do this? I was like. You don't know how to do this? I was like, alright, yeah, this is how you do it, man. And I would like, you know, give a fam on how to run through the procedures to fire certain weapon systems. And it was kind of fun, it was kind of neat to be up there and it was, and it was a good kind of like learning experience. And then, you know, then we went forward. Yeah. And so.

• 2:30:57Speaker 05

  Going forward with those guys, were they different in the sense of they respected your experience and familiarity with weapon systems? So you would be actually a part of the mission planning process?

• 2:31:09Speaker 04

  Yes. And the crazy thing was, is like, I'm talking to this guy, like, I know, I don't know what your rank is, but like, you won't tell me your rank. You're just telling me to call you first name and like, so I'm calling you first name and like, I'm just like, yeah, so man, you do this and you do this. And he's like, man, like, that's really good. I'm like, wow, I've been in this abusive relationship.

• 2:31:33Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 2:31:35Speaker 04

  Like, who are you?

• 2:31:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:31:37Speaker 04

  Like, who are you?

• 2:31:38Speaker 05

  Wait, what's going on here?

• 2:31:39Speaker 04

  Pushing my hair back, like, what's going on?

• 2:31:41Speaker 05

  You're kind of flinching like, is it coming?

• 2:31:43Speaker 04

  Do I look okay? Like, when's it gonna come, you know? Like, dang, man. Like, is this positive reinforcement? He's listening, hey, hey, hey, Les, what do you think we should do here? What? You know, okay, fine, thanks, thanks. Uh, yeah, it's like, is there a problem? No, I just, no one's ever asked me that.

• 2:32:00Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:32:01Speaker 04

  I've always wanted to do this.

• 2:32:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:32:03Speaker 04

  You know? Um, yeah, so that's kind of what it was. It was like, there'd be some type of, um, operation that we were heading to, like, hey, this is the objective that we want to go take care of. And they'd kind of be like, hey, what do you see? What position? Does this position work for you? It was a very mutual, like, it wasn't like, hey, you're gonna be here.

• 2:32:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:32:25Speaker 04

  It was like, hey, man, does this look good? I don't know. I don't know what that thing does. You know, and then you're like, okay, yeah, I could do that. And then, then I would talk to them about, hey, man, like, what if, you know, we wrangled all the cattle and put them in the pen? Right, and then to get more bang for the big bang, like more buck for the big bang. You know, now we can strike. Like I was like, let's, let's fix them. Stop trying to get me to shoot guys in the open.

• 2:32:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:32:54Speaker 04

  I just want to corral. And then we started developing these certain ways and systems to really increase the effectiveness of our lethality, or effectiveness of lethality, this increase of lethality and effectiveness.

• 2:33:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:07Speaker 04

  Um, because the thing was, is like, uh, what ended up happening is I, I believe during that run out of all teams, my team was probably the most successful in conducting those up. And that, and that was largely because uh, the team that we were involved with, as you guys know, there's personality differences across all the teams in um, certain JSOC units. And um, luckily, um, the team that I was with had a personality very similar to mine. They actually almost, the team members called me like the team whisper, the team leader whisper. There's a name of the team leader. And it's like, you're the so and so whisperer, because he only listens to you. You know what I mean? Because like, this guy was like, uh, I'm kind of known for kind of being a bit of a wild card kind of guy.

• 2:33:53Speaker 04

  You know, where I'm kind of like, I joke and I can be like, kind of playful, but like also switched on. You know, and so I remember one time I was instructed to destroy bridges along the Euphrates River. So I demolished several bridges. And uh, then the SDF goes, oh, no, um, we need the bridge to cross. And I was like, alright, we'll get you another bridge. So we like built these like, whatever stupid bridges that cross this river. And at a certain point, or stream, and I was out there, and this is before I got pushed to the other team. When that guy's like, that guy's on my team. And then we had our good personality thing. I was like, I was like,

• 2:34:33Speaker 04

  you tell me take out a bridge or take out the bridge. I put a new bridge in, forget about it, whatever you want. You know, I was just, he was like, he was like, dude, you're funny. I want you on my team. Because like, I'm in combat doing this type of stuff, just having a good time. I'm usually the guy, I guess when things were really bad, like I could say things and act in a way to uplift the rest of the guy, whereas this is the morale, elevate the morale. It's really all about morale and that's why I take more pride and not like. Do you know how many people I killed or oh no shit there I was and I steadies my aim and I rack the runtime right there. It's like, I don't really care about that. I cared more about like,

• 2:35:11Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:35:12Speaker 04

  You know, hey, this is a tough job and I want this place to be more of enjoyable place to work and I want it to be a place where guys can be proud that they worked instead of miserable and just dead inside when they leave this place. You know what I mean? Like, and so, um, yeah, it's, it's pretty interesting experience there. Um, and then, um, you know, you're probably gonna ask me about.

• 2:35:34Jack Murphy?

  Well, I, I mean, just sort of a big picture. Uh, the scheme and maneuver over there at the time was, I mean, you guys were running in sort of an unconventional warfare campaign, if I understand it right. JSOC guys, you guys doing indirect fire and the SDF and this is just part of the overall campaign. You guys are pushing ISIS back towards the river.

• 2:35:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the SDF dudes like was pretty cool is like anytime I met an SDF element, I would like, um, almost like joke and act like a stereotypical Hollywood American on purpose and they knew I was doing a bit. And I'd be like toe the line maggots, you know? And they'd be like, and I go, what's your name, son? And you know, but I'd be like, um, you know, I'd be like, navi mean less, navi tachea. Like I would then say it to like translate so they know that like, okay, this is what I'm actually asking you. And I get the name of all the guys. And then I'd be like, you know, to they don't like patent motivate them almost in a way, um, to where I would like, just kind of jokingly. And then I'd go out and then conduct these

• 2:36:36Speaker 04

  operations. And a lot of times it'd be like our security, our escort through the AO. They would clear out areas to make sure that there were no mines. Obviously we had our, uh, multi purpose canines and our EOD guys that also facilitated that. But they were a very good partner for us in comparison to what I was used to seeing. And, um, And it was just funny that after a while of engaging with these guys and kind of, you know, interacting with them on a human level, like these guys, like I would walk up in a group of guys who was like drinking chai, they loved chai on the flat. And I'd walk up and he would like stand up at the position of tension. And like, whoa, hey, you know, like, I was like, well, that's kind of cool, though. Like, I haven't even met these guys before, but now

• 2:37:19Speaker 04

  they're like standing up at the position of tension. Like, you know, now there's like whispers going on like, hey, that's the guy who's like, pretty cool, you know, like, so that was like, pretty interesting to go through that. And then eventually, I would say that, so there's this thing called like, Syria.liveuamap.com, where you could track day by day, what was happening. And I was using that when I was there. I would go on open source, like that, and it would almost collect open source for me. And I would look, and I would like shoot mortars, and I would see like, a Twitter post or something from an ISIS gun. And it would be like, oh, yeah, they missed, they were like this far off. And I was like, got you now, you know, and then, you know, or something like that. But like, you would see, like,

• 2:38:04Speaker 04

  the map has different colors, like this is the SDF, this is ISIS, this is whatever. And then you would just see us roll tide, move down all the way across the sea. It's funny, because like, you know, we were at a fort bending, so all that roll tide and war damn eagles, like a thing. So we were just saying all this stupid stuff, war damn eagle, roll tide, like all this stuff the whole way. Because I'm from the Pacific Northwest, so none of that stuff really jived with me. So I thought it was comical.

• 2:38:31Speaker 05

  You were looking for a latte everywhere.

• 2:38:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I was listening to, I was listening to death, I don't know, I was listening to Kurt Cobain riding the kayak because it rained so much, sipping a frigging frappuccino on my way to work down there as a longshoreman. And a librarian, you know. Yeah. So like, yeah, I mean, we pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed. And then I think like this very decisive moment, I was like, really proud of, like operationally, was when Topka Air Base and Topka Dam.

• 2:39:01Speaker 05

  Yes, walk us through that.

• 2:39:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, there came a night where we were posturing to conduct operations south of the Euphrates. Enemy lines.

• 2:39:13Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 2:39:14Speaker 04

  You know, we're going into hornet's nest. And it was almost like a, we're gonna draw straws, man. And who's gonna do this? Pull off this little operation, you know? And I was like, no, no drawing straws. If it's ridiculous and you're gonna die, I'm gonna do it. Like, so I, I, I always had the mentality of like, if the sergeant major was standing right there and say, stack on that door. And I'm not the first one through that door. I'm gonna feel real bad for anybody who gets injured inside. So I think we had like multiple, we had multiple aircraft.

• 2:39:46Speaker 04

  Maybe like five aircraft spread across and we had about five lifts. And, um, our.

• 2:39:53Jack Murphy?

  These were Ospreys?

• 2:39:54Speaker 04

  Nope. They were forty sevens. There was a report that said Ospreys, but they were definitely forty sevens, because you can't fit a Hilux on an Osprey.

• 2:40:04Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 2:40:06Speaker 04

  So, um, yeah, so we had these, the, they were gonna tell us like, hey, man, you're gonna like, take all these SDF dudes and you're gonna load them on the aircraft and then you're gonna go behind, uh, Topka, very populated city with skyscrapers and like thousands of people living there. And they're armed to the teeth and they're very angry and they're very desperate. And there's a lot of foreign fighters there too. You know, and you're gonna go across this and we're gonna fly you and you know, they might have anti-aircraft guns and we're gonna go over the Euphrates, man. And, um, and, uh, you're gonna be inside this Hilux that's like ratchet strapped down to a, you know, and let me tell you, like, okay, bef,

• 2:40:48Speaker 04

  I don't even know where to start talking. Okay, I'll start talking about how the Hilux is kind of organized in this aircraft. So you can only have one Hilux in there.

• 2:40:57Jack Murphy?

  Per forty seven.

• 2:40:58Speaker 04

  Per forty seven, as we're flying across. You might be able to fit two. We didn't, we didn't chance it.

• 2:41:03Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:41:04Speaker 04

  Uh, so we had one in there. And they said, okay, you gotta load all these, uh, SDF guys in there with you. Now, I had some RFs. I said, we'll have any of these guys ridden in aircraft. Have any of these guys been in blacked out conditions? I was like, well, I have a problem with them being armed. And they're like, well, how do you suppose that? I was like, um, we either put the guns there first or put them there first and get the guns over there, because I don't want an ND while I'm inside there.

• 2:41:32Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:41:33Speaker 04

  Um, especially with as many people as there are, or we have them like locked up and we break the lock once we get to where we're going.

• 2:41:42Speaker 04

  They went with the option of at the end of the day, at the end of the list, now they'll have weapons. Which is like dang man, we're gonna leave these guys out in the wind. We have to conceal them. So this is a very difficult operation and to this day, when I think about it, I was like, I'll wake up. I'll wake up in the morning. Like not in like sweats, like I'm having like a PTSD, like fever dream. I'll wake up like, I'll wake up like this, like. Dude, that was such a bad idea. It was like a what did I do last night? Like to this day randomly, I'll be like, what? I'm not against it, but like dude, what was that? So, um, you know. And I'm not the only guy, but while I'm doing this, I'm by myself essentially.

• 2:42:26Speaker 04

  So what my job was, was to sit inside the Hilux. The Hilux would be ratcheted down to the floor of the forty seven. Which is this big bus of a helicopter. Um, some people call it a Chinook, but it was a very special Chinook. So, um, we would be in there, there would be the SDF guys in the back in the bed and there'd be some SDF guys in the vehicle with me. And, um, now all the Hiluxes were manual shift. And that's a very important thing, that they're manual instead of automatic and you're in blacked out conditions. Um, so.

• 2:43:05Speaker 04

  One thing was is these are up armored Hiluxes too. And when you're on the forty seven, the skin of the aircraft is not enough to open the door.

• 2:43:15Speaker 04

  The window, since it's up armored, might only go down an inch or two.

• 2:43:20Speaker 04

  And you're not, you're probably not gonna kick out that glass. So I'm like, we're going over the Euphrates. If this thing goes down, I'm drowning. I'm dying. If we get shot out of the sky and somehow we survive, I'm at least gonna die. Inside the Euphrates or Lake Asad. So, um.

• 2:43:38Speaker 04

  I guess it crosses the mind of like one of the crew chiefs, like, hey, you might need this. And he tells, he gives me a bottle of spare air. I'm like, what's this? He's like, that's ten minutes of air in case you go down. I'm like, so suffer for ten more minutes? Like, you know what I mean? Like, and it's like, I'm not getting out of this if we go down, man. And so, and.

• 2:44:01Speaker 04

  The difficulty is, there's a number of difficult points, right? Cause now I'm, I'm getting up in the sky and there's a guy next to me trying to flip the lights on the whole time. Like whoa, whoa, what's, what's happening? He has no idea we're in the sky. He has no idea we're airborne. This is a guy who's never flown in a plane, never flown in a helicopter ever in his life and doesn't speak the same language I am. And I have to be like the rude American, the brute that's like, get your hands off, you know? Don't touch my radio, you know, like, I'm like, like dude, like, don't touch that because you're going to flick on these lights and we're going to be, you know, compromised.

• 2:44:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:44:35Speaker 04

  And shot out of the sky and then all those like revelations, they might come true, you know, or. Um, anyways, the, we get to, um, we, we'll get to the other side. And what people don't understand is like, some people don't even know how to drive stick, especially from my generation. You know what I mean? Like I drove stick, but I don't drive stick all the time. So I'm like, yep, luckily I've been driving a manual inside of Syria to this point. So I was like back to being used to driving. But the thing is, is like, you have these big twin turbine engines on a 47. So you can't hear your RPMs and you can't see your RPMs because you're blacked out.

• 2:45:15Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 2:45:16Speaker 04

  Like completely. And you know, maybe down the line, we had a better solution, but like think on the feet, we didn't have a solution to, how do we illuminate this dash? And, and get to where we need to be. Um, so you have to turn that car on and then you can't even tell if it's on. And then you have to like, okay, am I, am I shifting into, you know, first gear, second gear? What, what's that? I gotta go off the ramp. I have to look at this guy to tell me, hey, you're clear, shackles clear, go, go, go. You drive off and now, now you're off on your own with a bunch of, um, you know, Kurdish guys in your vehicle. And you're driving through Topka to, towards Topka airbase. And drive off and park the car, leave it, um, you know, leave it neutral, car running.

• 2:46:01Speaker 04

  And just say, you're on your own, we'll be back. And the way that I cleared mines was I would just run down my tire tracks back to the bird. And so I'm like by myself in a very like crazy environment where there's still a very large ISIS flag visible from where I'm running from. Like running past like this huge like. Dude, that ISIS flag was like what you would see it at a football game. Like that's how big it was.

• 2:46:27Jack Murphy?

  Like the open source intel has not updated quite yet that you're there.

• 2:46:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And we're running back and forth and we do this a few times. And then the last time that we do it, I did it with a forklift. So I infilled with a forklift. So this is like the fast-

• 2:46:42Jack Murphy?

  What's the forklift for?

• 2:46:43Speaker 04

  To bring the kickers full of ammo and, and weapons to them. So I'm driving a forklift back and forth to the same bird that's just sitting there. While there's, um, JSOC guys on the bird, watching me with their rifles, like hanging out like, dude, like hurry up, you know? And-

• 2:46:59Jack Murphy?

  Get that forklift moving.

• 2:47:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. The good thing is, is like, and then I left the forklift there. The good thing was I was a very fast runner. So some of the guys were like, dude, you run really fast. Cause like I was like hauling ass back to the bird. I was like, and I was probably faster than I ever ran in my life. Cause I was like, just get the hell out of here. Cause I'm all by myself, really. I brought the weapons to those guys and dropped them off. Then we headed back and then, um, so I'm thinking like, we headed back to, you know, our staging area. And where all of our mortar stuff is and everything. And then my team leader that was in, um, you know, with that JSOC element, he comes over. He's like, Lance, we're gonna hit it now. And I was like, dude, we're doing the damn now. Like I thought I was gonna be able to take a nap or something. He's like, nope, we're gonna hit it now.

• 2:47:42Speaker 04

  So that was like an all night affair. That's like, you, you're tired. You're kind of sleepy by doing all that, those wind sprints and kit and all that. And then I, I get back to, um, wherever and we, we drive out to the dam. So we're simo hitting the airfield and the dam the same day.

• 2:48:01Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 2:48:03Speaker 04

  And on our way to the dam, man, it was like one of the most epic things I've ever seen. And maybe guys seen it in Iraq, like in the start of the Iraq stuff, like, but it was all out war. It was like, you're seeing bullets flying everywhere, all over that city, trying to shoot things out of the sky. Trying to shoot across the river, trying to shoot from the dam towards our position as we're driving in. We're seeing high mars like

• 2:48:30Speaker 04

  boom, buildings, it's

• 2:48:35Speaker 04

  aircrafts, boom, bombs from, and then marine artillery going off.

• 2:48:43Speaker 04

  Explosions everywhere, gunfire everywhere, vehicles crashing. You're like, dude, this is pure chaos.

• 2:48:53Speaker 04

  And we get to like the our MFP area and he's like this dude who was a sergeant major was like Les, it's your show. Go inside that vehicle, talk to the guys in there, tell them what you want. And dude, it was like freaking a Rainbow Six video game. I walk in there, there's French dudes in there, there's Brits in there. And there's, and then I got my dudes with me. And then there's some air force dudes I trained on how to use a mortar. And I said, guys, this is the game plan. I said, okay, let's go, let's put it in effect. We put the game plan in effect. And it was very successful. We were dropping rounds on everything. There was like, um, and this is like my joke with the SEALs is because there was a river crossing with Zodiacs similar to that other.

• 2:49:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we've talked about it here, yeah.

• 2:49:39Speaker 04

  The, there's like two SEALs or something that had come into country just to do this, fill these Zodiacs up. And they're like, um, they had all these like, SDF special like commandos with them that were crossing the river. And then, uh, I remember being on like a radio or something like talking and being like, hey, man, like, what's going on? Like you guys, stop crossing. They're kind of like stop in the middle. And the guys had said something like, hey, like the, um, the water level is like really low. Like we were having trouble moving the boat. And I was like, can you get out and walk? He's like, yeah. I was like, yeah, get out and walk.

• 2:50:20Speaker 04

  Like, that's how funny it was. Like, the guy was just like, all right, fight the plan. You know, like, you know, the, the plan was get across on a boat. It's like, no, dude, fight the fight. Like, if you can walk, just walk across. And so at whatever portion that they were at where they did make it and it got shallower, there was still water, but they were able to walk, which sucks too, because it was very cold, the water. And those guys got across. And I remember, um, what people don't realize is like, The level of like technical proficiency that was undermined about the mortar platoon. Like I I go back, I'm like, I cannot be that smart again. I cannot be that much of a multitasker. Because what I was doing was I had my controls on a drone. I was flying a drone,

• 2:51:06Speaker 04

  controlling at least four different guns, giving fire commands to four different locations, tracking four different locations of enemy movements while also keeping an eye on like this other element that's like crossing the river. I'm like, okay, I need to support them with fire at this time. Hey, you know, number three gun lay on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Take two gun, eight at my command, three gun, stand by, uh, two gun. All right. Hey, target of opportunity. We have an armored vehicle moving into this intersection, lay on to this intersection located at, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, Roger, one, two, two, five, six. Let me know when gun is laid. All right. Okay. That vehicle's moving at forty five miles per hour, uh, from a south to northeast, uh, azimuth. He's going to be at that intersection about this time. I have a fifty six second time of flight.

• 2:51:49Speaker 04

  I need to fire roughly about this time. Two gun, go hot at zero, one foot or like, you know, zero, six, forty five. And then like boom, he fires and I slew back my camera over here to the SDF commandos that are moving up the beach, trying to go hit some, um, to secure like some causeway, um, thing. I I don't really know all the terms of everything, but they were going to secure their objective and I had to make sure they were safe. And like, you know, it was almost, the funny thing is like, we were like the snipers going like, hey, man, like, I got your six, you know, like in the movies, but instead we're shooting mortars while these guys are bounding.

• 2:52:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And unlike in, you know, past conflicts, you're watching it in real time on the, on the drone feed.

• 2:52:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, watching in real time and I'm seeing rounds impact across the river from where I'm standing. So then like, I'm like, fire, boom, boom. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be sweet. Does he hit the tank? And dude, there was like one shot that definitely went through whoever the tank commander was and went through his body. And then whatever ammo he had in there went off. So it was like secondaries and a rooster tail went through. And then the turret of the tank just popped off like.

• 2:52:58Speaker 04

  Just went off his side and we were just, I was just like, I radioed another mortar team as by, I was like, "Hey, you assholes, that one's mine." Like I just said that shit, like fucking with them on the thing. And they were like, "Yeah, yeah, you're good, man."

• 2:53:11Speaker 05

  That's some crazy accurate mortar fire.

• 2:53:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was, it was, it was very accurate, very lucky, and that mortar was a newer system that, I, I'm kinda like against the newer systems because I'm like, they put me on the John Henry on that and faster, more accurate, more lethal. And we had a very specific way to lay in the guns to make sure they were more accurate.

• 2:53:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:53:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:53:34Speaker 05

  I don't need those new fangled sites, I can Kentucky wind it just.

• 2:53:38Jack Murphy?

  Again, for people out there who don't understand anything about mortar systems, it's an area weapon system. It's not, it's not a sniper system that is designed to, like, almost never do you directly hit the target.

• 2:53:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, like steel on steel is a great thing, but if you keyhole something with a mortar, it's like, oh my god. And our guys were getting pretty, pretty Johnny Roger on the spot with this system, especially doing it in real time in combat. And, uh, like every day, we would come back at the end and be like, hey, man, like, what is the smallest thing that we can fix? In terms of like how we're doing this, like, do we need to put a sandbag here? Does a guy need to stand on top of the base plate? Do we need to put sandbags on top of the base plate? Do we need to dig this out, dig this in, whatever it is? Like, we were very proactive in like mastering, um, the things. I mean, we even had a vehicle that, uh, the regiment had procured for us, uh, to carry the mortar system. We said, "This thing's a piece of shit because it doesn't drive fast enough."

• 2:54:35Speaker 04

  So, we went in there, um, a bunch of us, and what we would do is remove the hydraulic lift system and place them on the backs of, um, like pickup trucks and put them on, um, other vehicles, trailers and things like that. Other teams out there had like various things that they did and it was like a really cool, like, to see like, hey, this is what we came up with. This is what we were doing. And just seeing like the success like spread across all.

• 2:55:00Jack Murphy?

  It's a, it's a little view into perhaps the future of war.

• 2:55:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:55:04Jack Murphy?

  And you're seeing it in Ukraine now, like, two guys with anti-tank weapons scooting around on an ATV, hopping off, blowing up a tank and rolling out.

• 2:55:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, and it was, it was like, um, like during that time period when we were out there, it was kinda like, yeah, dude, this is, this is like... The new thing and and it was always something I always read in the books because something I always like read in the book there was always like You go into these manuals and some a lot of people don't read the manuals I'd be like the guys like I'm gonna read the manual. And uh it'd be like you know the mortar is actually used as a reconnaissance element. And I'm like, really? How? Tell me more. This is how you use the mortar for recon. And I was like.

• 2:55:46Speaker 04

  Now we're looking at RF signature, we're looking at all this other stuff and I'm like.

• 2:55:51Speaker 05

  Oh, so you pop them and then you see who comes up on comms?

• 2:55:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, stuff like that.

• 2:55:54Speaker 05

  A little bit of recon by fire.

• 2:55:56Speaker 04

  And then, yeah, recon by fire, exactly like we were talking about earlier. And then I would be like, hey, there's a high concentration of signature from here. We need to start soaking that.

• 2:56:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:56:06Speaker 04

  Something like that, you know what I mean? So it's like very interesting how we would take it into The 21st century there, I guess.

• 2:56:13Speaker 05

  Wait, I'm in curiosity, like what what was what was the mortar section? What was their trajectory? In regards to battalion at that time, because again, like when I was there during a peacetime. I mortars, you know, they were, people respected them a lot because Even on the old systems, like when they in a tactical situation, when they were supported by fire, like they could They'd get that mortar in position and they would be on target like that.

• 2:56:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:43Speaker 05

  Right? And maybe it's because it was more sort of light infantry operations at the time. And then in a CQB, CQB world, mortars aren't really like seen as needed.

• 2:56:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:53Speaker 05

  But but now you're back into this open terrain fighting.

• 2:56:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:56:56Speaker 05

  Like, what was your tra- trajectory at battalion and were you guys getting more respect?

• 2:57:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were getting a lot more respect and a lot more like, hey. Um, so we have this near pier fight thing, like, you know, anything about this? Like, how are we gonna use mortars in a near pier fight? And we started discussing that we already had a strategy for that because I was always training my men. I was like, Hey, man, the enemy, they they may have a capability of some type of aerial reconnaissance. And uh maybe type some type of aerial asset. So we need to figure out a way to disguise our movements. From these aerial assets at the MFP and we we came up with some good strategies to hide from them, which is funny because you would see some of these strategies pop up on Instagrams by like, hey, be the gray man or survivalist people. And you're like, dude, like, we already

• 2:57:44Speaker 04

  had that, like, you know, five years ago. And now this is like, hey, man, I got an umbrella with some stuff in it.

• 2:57:52Jack Murphy?

  So this, the Tapka Dam in Airfield, I mean, how many rounds do you think you guys fired that night?

• 2:57:59Speaker 04

  I have absolutely no idea. I know that the we we continued to adjust fire for about 36 hours. And this is starting like after I already did the the aerosol, as stupid, I hate saying aerosol.

• 2:58:13Jack Murphy?

  Aerosol.

• 2:58:14Speaker 04

  Screaming chicken.

• 2:58:15Jack Murphy?

  A half mission.

• 2:58:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, we halved into there. Yeah. So I think the news called it an airborne operation.

• 2:58:23Jack Murphy?

  There was, it was, it was, I know what website it was. They said they said that you guys jumped in.

• 2:58:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I was like, all right, whatever.

• 2:58:33Jack Murphy?

  Did you get a mustard stain on an aerosol badge?

• 2:58:36Speaker 04

  I got a mustard stain on aerosol badge, but because I was eating some glizzies. But that's it. For the for the young generation there, these are, these are hot dogs. Let me explain to you, Jack Murphy.

• 2:58:49Jack Murphy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:58:51Speaker 04

  By the way, I was joking with Jack Murphy the other day that he has like this action hero named Jack Murphy. And now he wears this like 1980s, like, service uniform sweater in here like he's Mac Bolan.

• 2:59:03Jack Murphy?

  A little Sean Conn reaction.

• 2:59:06Jack Murphy?

  It's a Chad Thundercock name.

• 2:59:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:59:11Jack Murphy?

  Well, I told you my guy I know, he calls him Mac Bolan novels Chad Thundercock.

• 2:59:18Jack Murphy?

  So tell us about the Man beach offensive then.

• 2:59:22Speaker 04

  I'm not very like, up to speed on that. But that was, that was while I was in country. And we had.

• 2:59:32Speaker 04

  We were, like I was saying, we were roll tide down there towards,

• 2:59:37Speaker 04

  towards the Euphrates, towards Top Gun and Rock. We were, we were moving pretty fast, steamrolling ISIS. And that was largely just because of the SDF. It's not like I was out there like Captain Morgan with my leg up in an M16. I single-handedly defeated ISIS. You know, I'm only talking about my contribution to the fight and how I'm proud of all the people I serve with.

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• 3:01:52Speaker 04

  That continue to contribute. But during this timeframe,

• 3:02:00Speaker 04

  I think that the country of Turkey found it advantageous to start to impose their will on the northern sector that was under the control of the SDF. Now, Turkey has a history with Kurdish forces and militants. So they, they had their reasons to conduct operations there, whether we agreed with them, those reasons or not. And we obviously did not agree with those reasons. So we had sent a contingent, I guess you could say, of strikers with these like badass American flags on the tops of them.

• 3:02:39Jack Murphy?

  USA, USA.

• 3:02:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, like a barn in the USA, rolling down to Mambijan. And, you know, I think honestly, you know, Turkey could have really made an incident there.

• 3:02:56Jack Murphy?

  Oh, it almost happened.

• 3:02:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:02:58Jack Murphy?

  It almost, it almost happened where you had Americans fighting Americans because remember weren't metted on both sides.

• 3:03:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely. It was a very politically sensitive situation. And luckily, something occurred where we, we got to a point where we were able to draw the SDF back and, you know, let them stay the course. But luckily, no, no crazy violence had occurred in that area in terms of USA on USA, blue on blue, blue on green, green on blue. And that's something to take note of is that it has a very complex environment that we were fighting in. We had, we had points of time where we were actually.

• 3:03:46Speaker 04

  A couple mortar missions where we were supporting FSA. We had a couple mortar missions we were supporting SDF, well, most of them were SDF. Then we had missions where we were fighting and combating the FSA. We had near peer threats, near uh, near peer um, elements within our AOs that got lost. We had partner um, country like SOF that would get lost and um, that luckily they were very cordial over the radio while they were getting almost punished by the enemy, like, pretty badly. Um, you know, there were so many lines drawn. It was like, it's like a Lebanon mosaic almost.

• 3:04:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredibly complex environment and it's amazing that you guys navigated it as well as you did. Um, don't envy any of the people who had to manage that shit show.

• 3:04:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it was like, much respect to a lot of people who could, like, I, I don't even know who does that kind of thing.

• 3:04:47Jack Murphy?

  What was that, um, I don't know if you were involved in the, the, the sort of end game, I guess you could say, but racing towards RAKA.

• 3:04:54Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 3:04:54Jack Murphy?

  Um, and moving along with those JSOC elements, what was it like as you kind of closed that distance towards the, that final battle?

• 3:05:01Speaker 04

  Uh, I know the IED threat became enormously high. It was ridiculous. And they even had, um, they would have some very creative uh, solutions to problems that we were causing them. So, I know, like, they had, like, a, a dishka on a hydraulic lift, um, that they could operate from an adjacent room. And uh, they could operate it with like a Play, uh, PlayStation controller or something like that.

• 3:05:29Jack Murphy?

  Really?

• 3:05:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, and um, so they were in a fortified position.

• 3:05:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:33Speaker 04

  This um, hydraulic lift could be able to peek that weapon system up and out a window and uh, fire.

• 3:05:40Jack Murphy?

  Did they have optics on that dishka so they could see what they're?

• 3:05:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they had some sort of like um, camera system or something like that. They would also have a laser, um, initiated AK-47. That was basically like a drone gun that'd be down an alleyway. You cross, you break the laser, uh, the IR laser. And um, it, this gun would just start shooting at you down the alleyway and psych, and cyclic.

• 3:06:05Jack Murphy?

  Now, could you see that IR laser if you're wearing nods?

• 3:06:08Speaker 04

  Um, I don't know. I never saw them myself. I never, I never encountered them while they were operational. Um, but they had a lot of a direct directional fragmentation charges. They had these crush wire and it would almost be like a fishing net. Of crush wire and crush wire is essentially like a plastic tube with two wires and you step on the plastic tube like you can. The wire is so thin, it's hard to find it with a metal detector, you know, and they would like put spray adhesive, roll it in sand. And now it's on the, it's like right, it's perfectly in to wherever you're walking. And I used to just tell guys like, look, you know, you do zero fives and twenty fives. I would say, don't just do five and twenty five, do zero five and twenty five. Look straight down, look out, then look out again.

• 3:06:52Speaker 04

  And I said, I don't care if you just took a leak over there five minutes ago. Somebody crawled in there and put another IED while you weren't looking.

• 3:07:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:00Speaker 04

  And it's like, it's honestly because you weren't even looking there and they would have those things. There's like. You know, like those Alexa things that like are like a home. Thing that would like detect like your body temperature and it would like raise the temperature in your home. Well, they would have that like attached to it, uh, improvised explosive device.

• 3:07:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:19Speaker 04

  So you walk in a room, it could tell that there's a human somewhere in the room and then they would uh, initiate um. The explosive chain to destroy you with an explosive.

• 3:07:29Jack Murphy?

  The diffusion of technology, when, when I was in Iraq, two thousand five and then later two thousand nine. The enemy had basically no access to night vision or thermals.

• 3:07:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:07:40Jack Murphy?

  And see how much it had changed by what, twenty seventeen we're talking?

• 3:07:43Speaker 05

  Well, it's, I mean, technology has gotten cheaper. You can get it all off the shelf now, you know, I mean, if you buy. You know, a motion sensor.

• 3:07:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:07:51Speaker 05

  Right? Send it to uh, amazon dot S Y or whatever Siri is and, and you know what I mean? And, and, and. Get a Ring motion sensor or whatever, you know, it's, that you could, that completes the loop.

• 3:08:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, they would have like a dump, the hydraulic lift of a dump truck to increase the elevation on a. Cannon that shot cannonballs. They try to shoot cannonballs at people. They would like have like a bunch of Mad Max stuff, like these Mad Max vehicles that were weighted down with a bunch of armor. They would have like um Ebon Abrams that you would see that I guess maybe they possessed from Fallujah that they stole from the Iraqi military. They would have um Russian series um armored vehicles. Some of the vehicles would have like uh extra birdcage on it with a bunch of sandbags uh put place in the birdcage for added armor.

• 3:08:43Speaker 04

  Um and that was like a funny thing. I was always told that a mortar can't destroy like a T eighty or something like that. And then I realized that if you smack the shit out of a Russian tank enough, the um or one or once or twice the the armor's pretty strong, but like the brackets are not good enough for how heavy it is. The armor is and then like the armor would just fall off. And then you can just smack it again. Unless you keyhole that thing, it was like pretty much a sure shot. But yeah, there is all kinds of um cool. So I got to be um use some ingenuity, like um I built a a trigger for a SPIG nine out of a nine volt battery. And uh

• 3:09:25Speaker 04

  to make it more consistent, I attached the wires that went to the nine volt battery to a light switch. So now I could like take like a little light switch you have in your house to fire a rocket. From a recoilless rifle. So that was like pretty cool. And then you know, I started thinking like, you know, I could probably put this on the roof, run the wire, be in the basement and then like fire it. And they think I'm up there. I started thinking of all types of stuff that I never got to do. With it, but you know, I got to shoot many vehicles with it. Um and it was pretty interesting to to have like this full-fledged like plethora of different ways to to go about warfare. And to me was not necessarily like I get it. I get to kill the bad guys. It was like, man, it's like a chess game. Yeah.

• 3:10:08Speaker 04

  It was like a really good chess game. I was becoming really into the tacticians and the tactical side and the maneuver piece and not just like because I was like, dude, I'm I'm the quarterback. I'm in I'm in the seat right now. I'm I'm running this gun line in real time and destroying a bunch of enemy guy. Uh and I know. My comrades that are on other teams are doing the same thing. Uh, because we train together and I, you know, trust that they're able to engage at a level of proficiency that I am. And, uh, you know, that's not isolated to third bat. It's a, I, that's, you know, sharing information across the battalion. It's not withholding information, no competitiveness.

• 3:10:50Speaker 04

  Looking at it holistically, like, we need to come together and get a good plan and, and because any one of us can screw this up.

• 3:10:57Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:10:58Speaker 04

  Where they say, we don't like those guys. Because it doesn't matter what battalion you come from, you're just Rangers.

• 3:11:04Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:11:05Speaker 04

  And if one of our mortar platoons screws it up,

• 3:11:07Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:11:08Speaker 04

  You know, it's like, dude, we can't screw it up. We gotta, so we held each other accountable.

• 3:11:12Jack Murphy?

  Well, Les, I mean, you came af off of a pretty like epic deployment to Syria. I mean, got to do, I mean, living the dream from everything you're telling me. I mean, pretty badass. Exactly what every guy hopes they get to do, especially dude in the Ranger Regiment.

• 3:11:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:11:28Jack Murphy?

  Came home, got in some trouble.

• 3:11:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:11:31Jack Murphy?

  You know, you did 11 years in the Army.

• 3:11:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:11:33Jack Murphy?

  Didn't really leave on the terms you'd like to. Uh, you know, the, the, the term we use in, in the Ranger Regiment, RFS or the lease for standards.

• 3:11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:11:42Jack Murphy?

  So you, you were open to talking about that. You'd like to talk about that a little bit.

• 3:11:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 3:11:46Jack Murphy?

  And what, what happened?

• 3:11:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I had one more deployment to Syria after that one. And then I was, um, just to bring it up to speed to the point where I was.

• 3:11:55Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 3:11:55Speaker 04

  At our fest. Um, I, then I went, after my next deployment to Syria, came home, I went through divorce. And so that was like, definitely not a good vibe. And then I went, um, and we did our MLAT. And on the MLAT, third battalion, I jumped out of the bird and, uh, we went into the trees, like our whole chalk went in the trees. I hurt my back. It was a tree landing. I, I tried to climb down. I ended up falling off the reserve parachute. Fell like from a very, very high distance, like, um, hit the ground, hit the ground so hard it broke. I, I jumped my radios. Um, I had a 152 and a 148 and, um, I broke them both on impact.

• 3:12:38Jack Murphy?

  Oh my goodness.

• 3:12:39Speaker 04

  And then, um, I had also my, my leg had went backwards and I tore my PCL in that. And, um, so I Charlie Mites, uh, completed that operation, uh, training mission. And then, um, I was like, man, like I'm, my back hurts. I got this, all these bruises all over my back, like, I don't know. And I'm like toughing it out. And like, uh, while I'm going through that, I get a phone call from the Sergeant Major at First Battalion to my personal phone. He says, hey, we just lost our mortar platoon sergeant and I need you to come to one seven five.

• 3:13:19Speaker 04

  And, um, so I agreed to go there because I couldn't tell him no, but I was also injured. And, um, I was like, whatever, I'm just gonna, and, and, and, like, eh, going through like the rest of their training cycle and then getting all the way over to one seven five from three seven five, um, with that torn PCL was very hard. So anyway, like, while I was there at one seven five, um, finally get there and while I was there for like a short period of time, I'd only been, um, there for four or five months. And, uh, in two thousand nineteen and, uh, I, uh, I got pulled over by a police officer. Um, he immediately came up to my,

• 3:14:05Speaker 04

  car, asked me to exit the vehicle, everything like that. Immediately put me in cuffs, everything. Went through this whole ordeal that like, hey, you have a DUI or DUI less safe because the state of Georgia, if you blow a point oh one, you're still get a DUI less safe. Because they deem you like, hey, you didn't turn on your blinker. So you're too drunk, even though you're a point oh one, you know? But, um, that wasn't the case with me. The guy kind of sat in an area where he could kind of fabricate things. And so the painful process of all this is like me sitting there going like, dude, I didn't do anything wrong. I had to sit in jail for an extended period of time. And when I say extended period of time, it was like well over twelve hours, almost eighteen hours.

• 3:14:47Speaker 05

  Well, now, what was the promise that he rushed you for a DUI less safe?

• 3:14:51Speaker 04

  A DUI less safe. So in the state of Georgia, like most states, it's like a point oh eight limit for alcohol. Um, in Georgia, a less safe, and I'm not a lawyer, you know, but from what I understood it as I went through this process was like, even if you blew a point oh one and they just said, well, you swerved out of the lane. So even though you're .01, .01 is enough to make you not safe to drive.

• 3:15:14Speaker 05

  And, and what was his reason for like pulling you over to begin with?

• 3:15:18Speaker 04

  Uh, he said that I did not stop at the stop sign before executing a left turn, which uh, wasn't true. Uh, especially according to the video footage and every, all the other evidence that came to light because there was actual um, intersection footage as well as well. And um, anyway, I, you know, I got sent um, and I, and I like, I'm totally cool talking about this because I know there's a story like this across every generation Ranger, probably like two or three. There's like some legit, there's like some legit like RFSs that go down and don't get me wrong, like you know, RFS in it, you don't want me in the organization, fine. Release me for standard or ask me to leave politely, but there was nothing polite about this, to be honest.

• 3:16:00Speaker 05

  So let, let's preface this real quick, that, that RFS is released for standards at Ranger Battalion or Ranger Regiment. And there are reasons if a guy has a negligence discharge, there are reasons that people get RFS. But one of the really weird things the regiment has always had because of the no hooligans, no brigands type of clause with the leadership is that if you're in a drinking related incident, which means that if you've had a drop of alcohol and something happens, you get in a fight, it, it, it wouldn't, it didn't even have to be your fault if it started. But if you had a drop of alcohol and you get pulled over or you get in a fight or whatever else, you will be released for.

• 3:16:41Jack Murphy?

  Well, even then though, it doesn't like, released for standards unless you're like an E7 or an E.

• 3:16:46Speaker 05

  Right, right. It's right. It's for, it's for the Joes. It's not for, yeah.

• 3:16:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And the, the, except, I was the exception to rule because I was an E7. And the thing is, is like, so I get put in this scenario where I get put in a suitability board.

• 3:17:01Jack Murphy?

  You got QMP'd, right?

• 3:17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I got a permanent GOMAR for this and there were, and I felt really. Frustrated because I I noticed that there were several other members within my organization that received DUIs roughly around the same time I did. And they actually, you know, pled to a lesser charge, went to court.

• 3:17:20Speaker 04

  Um, and they would get like these like no RFS, RFS, no GOMAR, RFS, no GOMAR. Or RFS locally filed GOMAR. Me, it was like RFS permanent.

• 3:17:33Jack Murphy?

  They threw the book at you.

• 3:17:34Speaker 04

  Now, it might not have been a personal thing. It might have been because this platoon, when I arrived there, was like in pretty bad shape. They were already investigation for hazing and half the platoon was liquidated as a part of that investigation.

• 3:17:49Jack Murphy?

  And uh, correct me if I misunderstood, were you brought in because the previous platoon sergeant was fired or he was killed?

• 3:17:56Speaker 04

  He was killed in action.

• 3:17:57Jack Murphy?

  He was killed in action.

• 3:17:57Speaker 04

  He's a Medal of Honor recipient.

• 3:17:59Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my God. Okay.

• 3:18:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, so definitely there was guys that highly revered this guy and respected him.

• 3:18:05Jack Murphy?

  Gotcha.

• 3:18:05Speaker 04

  And the crazy thing about this guy, um, you know, Chris Lee's wasn't even more guy, he's a 12 Bravo. And so they come in and like as a non eleven series and gain the respect. Like, I never met Chris Lee's. But it's like, obviously, this guy like touched a lot of lives here and he's very respected. So like me, I'm like, I don't want to let this guy down. So it was like another kick in the teeth for me is being like, man, I really screwed up coming over here. Cause I, you know, I failed at what I thought I was gonna do. And um, so I went through this process and um, I got my knee surgery. I was like, dude, I have to get the knees. I can't just range around. I'm just like screwed. Like, I don't know how to hear.

• 3:18:45Speaker 04

  Like, okay, I can't operate with the rest of the guys. They're kind of excluding me. You're becoming the, this diseased thing now in the battalion. Where now people like almost pretending not to know you.

• 3:18:57Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:18:58Speaker 04

  And um.

• 3:19:00Jack Murphy?

  You're malinging.

• 3:19:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and what and what sucked was um, you know, I'm I'm the RFS guy. I'm the guy who's only been in this battalion for a few months. Not many people know me there at, you know, one seven five, no, three seven five, but they're gonna walk into any room.

• 3:19:14Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:19:14Speaker 04

  This one, it's like, you know, they see me coming. It's like, shut the shutters, because he's the RFS disease guy. And I'm not the exception to the rule. There's a lot of people that have walked that same path.

• 3:19:23Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:19:24Speaker 04

  So I'm only explaining what I went through and I'm not saying woe is me because in fact, I actually found the, at the end of the road where I was is a very empowering experience of what I ended up going through because.

• 3:19:38Speaker 04

  I got my knee surgery. They took after my knee surgery, they took away my driving privileges. So I had to park my car off post at a grocery store. Many times I was able to get somebody to give me a lift onto the base, but many times I would have to crutch from the grocery store to the front gate. Hand my ID card to the guard, put it back in my pocket and then continue to crutch all the way to our AO. And it was roughly, I don't know, maybe about three miles. So like one mile to the gate from the grocery store, maybe, and then another two miles. Like give or take. I don't really know.

• 3:20:12Speaker 05

  So the police didn't take your drivers on it? They just took your base driving privileges?

• 3:20:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, the the US Army took my base driving. I never saw a day in court. The people in like the the state court said, dude, you don't have a DUI and they screwed this up. Like there was no even probable cause.

• 3:20:28Jack Murphy?

  So what was the Army's rationale? What did they tell you?

• 3:20:31Speaker 04

  They said, you did not submit to a breathalyzer. And I said, here's why I didn't.

• 3:20:36Jack Murphy?

  Explain to me how that's against UCMJ.

• 3:20:39Speaker 04

  Because, well, I'd never got UCMJ.

• 3:20:41Jack Murphy?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 3:20:42Speaker 04

  They never gave me UCMJ action, but they gave me a permanent GOMAR, which is funny because usually you get both.

• 3:20:47Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:20:48Speaker 04

  So, um, and when people don't know, a permanent GOMAR is a general officer memorandum of reprimand.

• 3:20:55Jack Murphy?

  It's a career killer.

• 3:20:56Speaker 04

  It's a career killer. It goes in your permanent file, a permanent, and if you're like an E7 or whatever, it's just like, sorry, you're done. You're getting out.

• 3:21:03Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:21:04Speaker 04

  And not only that, there's no due process for writing GOMAR. You don't get a stand and be like, sir, like they, it's their choice if they want to read your piece of paper that an aide will give to the general. And the aide is probably not even handed to him. It's just stamp, stamp. It's like, hey, make five of them permanent, make the rest non-permanent. You never know what they're choosing. I don't know how the process is. I've never sat on the other side of that desk. But, you know, I was frustrated. I was like, dude, this guy's an a-hole, man. Like I sacrificed. I go back in time. I'm like, man, my. You know, like.

• 3:21:37Speaker 05

  Do you want, do you want to name the general that.

• 3:21:39Speaker 04

  I don't want, I don't want to.

• 3:21:40Speaker 05

  Cause we can, we can like.

• 3:21:42Speaker 04

  Well, it's if what ends up happening later is like interesting, but like I, you know, I didn't cover this earlier, like my dad died. Later on and I go, man, I sacrificed that. I could have gone up to two, seven, five, spent some time with my dad, but like selfish platoon sergeant made me. Come over to his platoon, the three, seven, five and like, you know, I recycled because of that and I still stuck with it and stuck with the Rangers, even though I. That's a very disrespectful thing. I think that they did. I didn't hold a grudge against them, but now the grudge comes back.

• 3:22:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:22:10Speaker 04

  Like now I regret that decision because you're doing this to me and you're like, you don't realize what I sacrificed and you're taking this from me and. Part of it was I had this attachment with being a Ranger and being like, I got the laser, I got the nods, I got the helmet. It's like, dude, that's not who you are. There's something that you did and it's great and you can be proud of it and everything, but that's not like. It's almost like they killed you. They took your soul from you when you did that because you put your soul into it and that's kind of like the bad thing about that. Is you put everything into it. And so I had to like, take this freaking vision quest, man. And a part of like what I did to try to like tread water when I was there at one, seven, five was like. I started to kind of get a little bit better with my knee where I could kind of rehab it and stuff.

• 3:22:55Speaker 04

  While I was there and it, I was there almost like another six months after.

• 3:23:00Speaker 05

  After the RFS two?

• 3:23:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. After the decision down, came down to RFS.

• 3:23:04Speaker 05

  Really?

• 3:23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. Until I got my orders and then acted on those orders because another thing, they cheat sheet. If you're getting RFS and you don't want to report, don't report as early as possible, report late, collect all your special, all your special pay. Before you go to the next step, because that's, that was my, I was like, well, I'm gonna get all my special pay. I'm gonna keep getting my demo pay and keeping it. That was like my thing. So I'm gonna wait till the last minute to report to my next duty station. And also in order to hunt the good stuff. And I was like, dude, I am worthless and everybody is, I feel like everyone's against me and everyone's telling me I'm worthless. I'm gonna go where I'm appreciated. So I coached a high school wrestling team in Savannah and I coached a.

• 3:23:48Speaker 04

  Uh, wrestling program that was from kindergarten on up to twelve, uh, to middle schoolers. So I basically was doing kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school. And, um.

• 3:24:00Speaker 04

  And I remember like at one of the, one of the points like um my team versus the Battalion Commander's Kids team. And my guy just smoked the Battalion Commander's Kid. Yes, yes, yes, you know, like, you know, but like at the end of the season, you know, like, like, I mean, there's a lot of good moments there. I was like, man, I'm getting a lot like in this moment where I'm like regretting service to the Ranger Regiment. Cause at the time, like, I don't regret it anymore, but at the time, like,

• 3:24:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:24:29Speaker 04

  I'm very jaded, like, why couldn't they do this to me? You know, that's my whole identity, whatever. And I was, I might've said some inappropriate things to guys I know. Guys probably thought I was being like a sourpuss and I'm very sorry if I said inappropriate things to people. I'm sure I did. Uh, I, for the most part, I did handle every situation quite professionally, or at least held my tongue. And I would just dive into these like, you know, going in after work at like nineteen hundred to wrestling practice and, you know, wrestling with these dudes and be like, yeah, I can't bend my knee, but I can show you this thing and like mentor you and get you to where you need to be. And um, you know, by the, I mean, I, I mean, I, I got a blind kid to win his first tournament.

• 3:25:11Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:25:12Speaker 04

  And his parents were like hugging me and like crying, like, I can't believe it, you know, that this is, he's never been able to do this, you know? And like, uh, there was like a little girl and like on the little kids team that was like, you know, everybody like, you know, they ignore me because I'm a girl, but you didn't care. You just saw me as a wrestler and you taught me how to wrestle with, you know, my body type, my physique and how to beat people. And she was winning, you know? And, you know, I went through this whole thing and by the end of the season, like, I remember there being like a couple of guys from the battalion there that have kids that are in the wrestling tournament. And it was my last tournament of the season because these guys knew um my, you know, other guys on the team,

• 3:25:56Speaker 04

  other coaches on the team, they knew, and I didn't have any kids. They knew I'm just a total selfless act, you know? And they're like, oh, he's getting our fest. He's gotta go over to this other unit. And so like, kids that weren't even on my team at the end of the season, like, coach less, coach less, coach less, like cheering, you know? And it was like, it's pretty cool. Cause like, I don't know, I felt like, felt like shit.

• 3:26:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:26:21Speaker 04

  And it was like, You kids think that like I'm doing you a favor, but like at the time I was like, you guys are keeping me like helping me keep it together, you know? And it was, it was pretty intense moment. Obviously, like I'm showing emotion right now regarding that because it still resonates with me. It was a very powerful moment. And then, um, yeah, I got, I, I got RFAS and it was a long drive. It was like, like, like driving and just leaving, um,

• 3:26:54Speaker 04

  leaving Savannah in like, I'm like, dude, I hope I never have to come back to Savannah again. And I was like, I can't even live in Savannah because I'll see that freaking parade. You know, like if there's like one seven five guys in the parade, like I'll be mad, you know? That's all since changed, but that's the way I felt at that moment. Like dude, I hope I never had to see this place because it was like, I felt betrayed. You know, I felt like they, they took a future that was promised.

• 3:27:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. That you showed up there, that you went down there and then because you didn't have the report, because you didn't have the history there that you had a three seven five, that you just got thrown under the bus with, without consideration, it seems like.

• 3:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, um, I drove all the way to Kansas and it was snowing and it was crazy because it was like, here I am, like this depressed mess. Driving through the snow and I'm driving through the, uh, Super Bowl parade of the Kansas City Chiefs and everyone's like, yeah. And I'm like, I hate my life. You know what I mean? And I'm like, should have known I'm a mortar. This is supposed to happen, you know? Like, that's kind of like all these random conversations I was having with myself all the way in processing my unit and man, I get over to, uh, first infantry division.

• 3:28:18Speaker 04

  And I'm going to an armored brigade combat team. I'm going to be in tanks and Bradleys and stuff with them, supporting them with a mortar. And I'm like, this is way out of my wheelhouse. And while I'm in processing, another buddy of mine that I went through RAS with is killed. As an attachment to an O D A and, uh, I'm like losing it while I'm going through because I'm already depressed from like. Everything was like chain reaction in my life at that point. It's like, oh, look, I have a career ending injury that I try to, you know, muscle through. And by muscling through it, nobody cared about like that willpower that I had to muscle through that. I went

• 3:28:57Speaker 04

  through a divorce. I went through getting RFED and like, oh, hey, you know, like you're disposed of. And now like another one of my buddies is killed.

• 3:29:08Speaker 04

  And I'm not a part of any special operations unit. I'm like, and then you're almost like, feel like, man, if I didn't screw that up and I'm, you know, I'm trying to be accountable for myself. Like, how can I be accountable for myself? And like, the answer keeps rising, like, dude, there was nothing you could do in that situation.

• 3:29:24Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:29:24Speaker 04

  There was nothing you do. Like, you didn't drink, you didn't drive.

• 3:29:27Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:29:28Speaker 04

  Someone pulled you over and they placed you in handcuffs.

• 3:29:31Speaker 05

  Cause they were trying to meet a quota.

• 3:29:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. They placed you in handcuffs, put you in the back of the car.

• 3:29:35Speaker 05

  And then your unit fucks you because they're just, because.

• 3:29:38Speaker 04

  Because it's like, well, he says, the company commander says, this is zero tolerance policy. I was like, there's no zero tolerance policy. And in fact, in the blue book, cause I wrote it like three and a half times.

• 3:29:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:29:50Speaker 04

  It says, it says, maybe RFED, not must.

• 3:29:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:29:56Speaker 04

  May.

• 3:29:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:29:57Speaker 04

  Doesn't say must. The wording is very clear inside of this blue book. And it is up to you. You may RFED me. That's a hundred percent up to you. But I would like you to give me the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays out and allow me to continue as a non-commissioned officer, a senior non-commissioned officer in this organization. I think I can make it a better place. You know what I mean? And ultimately, that company commander, his words, pretty much verbatim, were.

• 3:30:23Speaker 06

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• 3:30:38Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 3:30:49Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a. Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 3:31:20Speaker 05

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• 3:32:26Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:32:27Speaker 04

  And so.

• 3:32:28Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:32:30Jack Murphy?

  So after they asked you to be there.

• 3:32:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:32:32Jack Murphy?

  They acted like they didn't want you there.

• 3:32:34Speaker 04

  I felt like it was like, man, I was like never here. Now, I did, I felt like it did make a small impact while I was there. I did a couple of training events. I did show some guys like some things and, you know, a lot of things that you teach, a lot of things that you do, they don't last. They don't like a new guy comes in, he doesn't like the way you do it. Hey, that's stupid, whatever, that's fine. But I felt like I was making an impact and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I felt like I was making some headway there. And I was a very positive leader, understanding the situation that I was coming into and understanding that it wasn't the most ideal situation for a platoon sergeant to walk into or senior non-commissioned officer. So, um, yeah, I get over there to Kansas and, um, man.

• 3:33:15Speaker 04

  It's like almost immediately after, you know, my buddy dies and COVID-19 lockdown happens and the military response was super difficult to navigate as a NCO, as an NCO that has already gone through, you know, as an NCO who has no idea what an armored brigade combat team is or does. And being like, dude, I don't know what a Bradley is. You know, I don't know what a 1064 is. Like, I don't know what any of this stuff is. You know, I don't know how your mortars are comprised of. Like, I walked into the wrong building trying to in-process my squadron.

• 3:33:53Speaker 04

  And I was like, and I didn't even know it was a squadron. I was like, is it called a squadron? Okay. This is, this is the company? No, it's a troop. You know, it's like stuff like that. I was like, dude, I don't, I don't know what any of this means. Really? I wasn't, I had tunnel vision. I was a Ranger and that was my future and that's everything I dedicated to. And so then it became like this thing like, ah, man, this is actually kind of pretty interesting because now, like, I know when I was in processing that squadron, all senior non-commissioned officers have to stand before the squadron commander and have a conversation. I'm standing there pre-res. I look down.

• 3:34:30Speaker 04

  I see etched on the desk and like a plaque kind of thing on the desk. It's like, this is the same desk General Patton sat at when he was at this unit. It's on the desk. It's like, hey, it could be BS, but at the time I believed it. But you go out in the hallway where it says like previous commanders, like Robert E. Lee was like the first commander of that unit. I was like, all right, there's lineage here. You don't have to think like this is trash. Like,

• 3:34:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:34:54Speaker 04

  The brainwashing that we get that like, there's like stages to the brainwashing. Every other unit is trash and insignificant. Every, every unit should be a Ranger unit and do it like us.

• 3:35:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:35:07Speaker 04

  And then like, every company is trash. Our company's the best. Every platoon is trash. And then all the way down to squad and team, right? That's kind of how it is. And it's like, hey, man, get rid of that. This is where you are now. I'm like, how do I make this kind of cool? And it was kind of funny because like, you know, like Fury didn't come out that much like before that, before that incident. You know, this whole event that happened. And I'm like, oh, you know, like there's cool stuff, like stories about, let me look at what this unit has done over the years. And it kind of delved into that and I was kind of getting into,

• 3:35:41Speaker 04

  And what sucked is like you didn't really get to train that much because of COVID-19.

• 3:35:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:46Speaker 04

  Weird stuff like hey, the answers were always ridiculous like hey, you you ha- half, half the troop come in and then the other half at home and then you guys switch but sanitize before the other guys come because you don't want to give your germs to them. Okay, now we gotta go down to eight people. Okay, only three people can do PT at a time. So you come into work and and PT one soldier at a time in your platoon. And make sure he's doing PT and then like guys, go do the, go do the PT test. So go do PT, bring one guy at a time to to run around the track.

• 3:36:15Jack Murphy?

  But if you're with each soldier.

• 3:36:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:36:17Jack Murphy?

  You're spreading the germs between him and him and then to the next guy and the next guy and then.

• 3:36:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much. And what was ridiculous, like I didn't realize in like the regular army, I would go and take like a platoon and I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna have like some E6s and I'm gonna have some like E5s. I was like, no. The gap was Sergeant First Class, Mr. Ranger Badass and Sandusky. Like, you know, and that's not what I'm like calling myself. It was, it was like, kind of disgusting how some of these guys would like, look at you there like, hey man, like, what'd you do for PT? Can you show me what, how to get through SFAS?

• 3:36:49Jack Murphy?

  Tell us what it's like to be in the shit stand.

• 3:36:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so then like, but then you'd have like, private, just graduated basic, maybe one or two guys that came from a different unit, one guy who had limited.

• 3:37:06Speaker 04

  One, like maybe like an E4 who had very limited, uh, experience overseas, like he was like, I've deployed before Sergeant, but like, I don't really know any of this stuff. And you see like, these guys have gone through generations of dereliction of duty.

• 3:37:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:23Speaker 04

  Not by them, not that they, and a lot of them, I was like, this is my platoon in the Ranger Regiment. These defeated souls are me.

• 3:37:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:33Speaker 04

  My peer group, when I showed up, I showed up to my platoon by myself, but I would see like the peer group that came before me, they almost absorbed me into their peer group. But those guys, I would like see like the dead souls in their eyes and be like, dude, you hate the army, but I'm gonna tell you, there's better places than this place. You can go to a different unit, you know, you can go up, I was like, you could like, where can make this unit real fun and real cool?

• 3:38:01Speaker 04

  You can go to another, you can go tenth mountain, you know, and and not be, you know, and maybe a A B C T. You know, you can go up to fourth, like you could do all types of stuff. And so, um. You know, I I sat there and I took every moment I could to improve. And that was like helping me keep myself together. And so one of the things I did was, I was like. I noticed a lot of these E fours were like E four mafia guys that were like dodging N C O E S schools. So I was like, you might be dodging N C O E S schools, but I'm gonna make you do the N C O job. You just won't have the N C O pay. Because I was like, here's, here's what's gonna happen.

• 3:38:41Speaker 04

  You're gonna be like, well, if I'm doing the N C O job, I should be getting paid as an N C O. It's really not that bad. So maybe I should get my ass to the N C O E S school. Maybe I should start bettering myself, improving myself. And I remember like one day when I really initiated like. Cause at first I was like really laid back. I was still kind of depressed and like, like I was defanged and declawed when I got there. There's no fire breather in me. I was like. Yeah, you guys are probably right. It's all hopeless.

• 3:39:08Speaker 04

  Don't be like me. Don't write it out. It never changes. You think it's getting better? It doesn't. Just quit. Go A wall.

• 3:39:17Jack Murphy?

  You don't have a nickel.

• 3:39:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, like I was.

• 3:39:20Jack Murphy?

  Smoking a sugar.

• 3:39:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:39:22Jack Murphy?

  The switcher's sweet.

• 3:39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I'm like, I'm like, all right. One day I was sitting there and like, no disrespect to like. Cav scouts, but yeah, all disrespect to Cav scouts. Um, so you know, we're working with a lot of scouts nearby and tankers.

• 3:39:39Jack Murphy?

  They're basically special forces from what I hear.

• 3:39:41Speaker 04

  They're better than the Rangers.

• 3:39:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:39:44Speaker 04

  They were the Rangers before the Rangers. Why do you think Abrams Charter?

• 3:39:51Jack Murphy?

  You can't even say it with a straight face.

• 3:39:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, um, I remember like something happened. I was like.

• 3:39:58Speaker 04

  I just had a buddy that got killed. And I did like the PTSD N C O freak out on these guys where I was like, all right, guys, we're gonna talk about like something very basic. How to set up a litter, how to prepare a litter, how to, we're not gonna go too far into the, you know. Um, combat lifesaver. We're just gonna talk about litters. And, um, I'm sitting there and I remember like I kept seeing this kid. Like while I was explaining the litter stuff, like how to assemble, he, he kept doing one of these like.

• 3:40:25Speaker 04

  Now I was like, are you fucking kidding me, man? I was like, you looking at those guys over there? You checking out guys? Is that what you're doing? You looking at them over there? You should be looking at me. I'm the stud. You know? And I'm, I was like, I almost like went off. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. And before I like snapped completely, I was like, I want you guys,

• 3:40:50Speaker 04

  dress right dress, full battle rattle, all your combat gear, maintain social distance, in formation in this kill zone. So we were like in the whole troop operating facility. So all the other platoons, like scout platoons were like watching this happen. And I was like, I'm trying to hold it together, man. I'm really trying. I was like, when I come back, I, I'm gonna come back when I let this demon out and I'm gonna let it out on all of you. It's like, be ready. And then, so I left. I put on all my gear.

• 3:41:30Speaker 04

  Because I know they're gonna be in their gear and I'm like, I came out there like screaming and hollering. I haven't done this in a while. Like I haven't probably done that since I was a corporal. In terms of like going off of people like, Stats R and E7, I was kinda chill guy. I kinda got into more of that operator mindset. But it was like infectious from the guys I was working with at JSO. To like learn how they operated. They don't know how to smash everyone with a hammer, you know? So I go in there smashing these guys. And I, at the same time, I was kinda giving like a motivational speech. While also, I was like, you guys are supposed to be the infantry. You're the poster boys of the United States Army.

• 3:42:12Speaker 04

  I was like, George Washington was a member of the infantry. You know, I was like, he ate leather shoes with wooden teeth. You're made it, you're, I was like, you're cut from the same fucking cloth. And I know, cause you volunteered for this shitty ass job. And they made you mortar men. They made you mortar men. Cause they looked you up and down and said, you're harder than them fucking eleven bravos? You can probably put up with it. We can abuse you, we'll make you mortar men. I was like, so stop sulking around because when you joined the United States Army and you went in there and you swore with your right hand or you asked the recruiter for a job, you didn't say, can you make me a bitch? Cause if you had, you would've been a fucking Cav Scout. You know, and I was like, you're better than them.

• 3:42:56Speaker 04

  And then I went from there and then like, you know, we went on this very physical. Um, kind of event, like we were doing physical stuff. And I mean, like, I was, I was hurt still. I was recovering from a knee reconstruction. And I was picking up like the biggest fattest guy and running up and down with him and be like, you can't do that. I need my knee doesn't work. You can't do that. You have to be able to do that. Like, we're just, you know, getting in their heads, like, I'm the old man and I'm crippled. But I have more heart than any of you, even though like you're the young guys, but I want to say it's not a fucking steroid. I say, you see the scroll? Let me put it on you. Are you strong? It's not a fucking steroid. I earned it.

• 3:43:39Speaker 04

  It wasn't given. Nobody put that on me and I became a magical fucking unicorn, you know? You can be exactly like me. It doesn't matter what unit you were in. It's like, it's a fucking mindset. That's how you're selected. So you need to start acting accordingly and stop being a defeatist piece of shit. It's like what I was telling these guys. And so I got on him. I got into that thing. I was talking about, hey, you don't want to be an NCO? You're gonna get private pay. You're especially, we, you know, we call specialists like for privates. You know, they call them specialists and those kids like, well, I'm a specialist. So I'm like, you're a fucking private.

• 3:44:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:44:15Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 3:44:16Speaker 05

  Like, you're an untapped bitch.

• 3:44:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, and so I would be like, you know, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna do this job. And the cool thing was, I was like,

• 3:44:26Speaker 04

  I might not be able to sit down and teach these guys Ranger School classes every single day. But I can make every single day a Ranger School lesson. So instead of getting Ranger School classes, I just indoctrinate them with Ranger shit in their life. So what I did was I went down to like Home Depot and I bought chalkboard paint. And I took all my desks and, uh, computers and shit out of my office and I painted and, uh, I made them paint. The fucking, uh, walls and I did help a little bit. And by saying help, it's almost laughable. I almost didn't help at all, but I, I did put some paint on some shit. I say, paint all this. So they painted the whole office wall to wall, 360 degrees with chalkboard paint. And I made it like a Ranger School planning bay.

• 3:45:12Speaker 04

  And I was like, all right. You, every day you're in charge of the timeline. You will do the timeline, you will learn reverse planning. Every single day, I want that up there. Every single day, you, I want weather and light data up here. You're gonna be the situation paragraph, blah blah. And then, once I see that you guys get a hold of that, we're gonna keep rotating guys. And we're gonna keep, you know, continue to do different paragraphs of this op order, which will be rewritten almost daily on the wall. Now, when you brief your part, if there's no change, all you have to say is no change. But don't try to pull one over and be like, "Oh, no change, huh." You know, like, you're gonna do the work. And so, I had these guys, like, not even NCOs. Like, basically, every day was like, "You're gonna live in Ranger School

• 3:45:57Speaker 04

  while you're, while I'm in charge." Because that's the impact I'm gonna make while I'm here. And, I mean, I did even other things where I was like, "There's gonna be an American flag in my, um, in my office." So, you walk in and you, you, you know where you are. You know why you're lacing up your boots every day. And, um, you know, I put some camo netting on like, one of the walls to kinda make, you know, you're getting in like, "Hey, you know, it's like, wow, it's like a little, we're in a bunker here."

• 3:46:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:46:27Speaker 04

  You know, kinda? And I remember I put like, a, a map over the top of that camo netting. So, the camo net is background, map is on a corkboard, and I have different positions. I'm like, "Yeah, brief off that map. This is our area, let me orient you. This is gonna be our route to the range today." Blah blah, and these are like, privates in the regular army that I was...

• 3:46:45Speaker 05

  So, you're, you're basically teaching them like, a five paragraph op order, mission planning process?

• 3:46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Without telling them, "Hey, guys, this is Ranger stuff."

• 3:46:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:46:54Speaker 04

  "This is an op order," and going all day. I'm just, I'm literally like, letting these guys like...

• 3:46:57Jack Murphy?

  Do we have any questions for us?

• 3:47:00Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah. Um, uh,

• 3:47:07Speaker 05

  let me, uh, refresh this real quick and see what went wrong.

• 3:47:13Speaker 05

  Why'd something go wrong?

• 3:47:20Speaker 05

  Sorry, guys.

• 3:47:21Speaker 04

  Nah, no problemo.

• 3:47:32Speaker 05

  So, uh, we have a couple of questions.

• 3:47:39Speaker 05

  Dr. Mad Respect, "Thank you very much for the Canadian donation." Uh, he said, uh, "This should equate to about 47 cents US." Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. You know, Canadian money, it's like Monopoly money, right? Uh, DJ Snead, "Thank you very much for the donation."

• 3:47:58Speaker 05

  Oh, let me see here.

• 3:48:01Speaker 05

  "In a conventional war, how does the role of the 75th vary from that of the 82nd and Big Red 1, based on where the enemy is engaged?"

• 3:48:10Jack Murphy?

  Interesting question.

• 3:48:12Speaker 04

  I've never served inside the 82nd.

• 3:48:16Speaker 04

  And, really, I would say that, um, what I've noticed is that, uh, Armor Brigade Combat Teams, they were very well-trained in the defensive ops. Cause like, so like, a defensive op is like, you might have, um, a layered defense where you're, uh, putting in your mortar teams to kinda intersect and, uh, deny enemy ingress into the, uh, perimeter or flat line that you're kinda defending. And the way that our Armor Brigade Combat Team was set up at Big Red 1 was, um, we would have,

• 3:48:54Speaker 04

  uh, different mortar, uh, sections or platoons at each troop, which we would call Company and Ranger Regiment. Now, what a Ranger really is at the core, in my own words, anyway, is a partisan force that performs harassment operations behind enemy lines, whether that's disrupting enemy logistics, uh, kinda like taking out, um, enemy morale, or even, uh, area denial on the enemy.

• 3:49:24Speaker 04

  And so that's kind of like you're more the mortars in the Ranger Regiment are mostly employed employed in offensive operations where you have to do your training is more focused on doing what we call hip shoots which are you know you drop that gun down on the ground you shoot you pick the gun back up and you move.

• 3:49:43Speaker 05

  Supporting the assault element.

• 3:49:45Speaker 04

  Yes, and yeah, you could be supporting the assault element. You could be doing a special mission with your reconnaissance and sniper observation teams where they're utilizing you in a reconnaissance aspect like there's it's like super multifaceted. Also, when you're in a brigade combat team, armored brigade combat team, you're primarily dealing with just 120s. And when you're in the Ranger Regiment, you have all three organic US mortar systems and like myself and others, you get exposure to working with foreign mortar systems a lot where maybe if you showed up in the country and you're like a smaller element and didn't have an 81

• 3:50:27Speaker 04

  or a 120 with you because you're a 60 team, you're able to have the knowledge to plug in with like an 82mm system or some type of Eastern Bloc variant of a 120mm or whatever they have.

• 3:50:42Speaker 05

  With the way with the way the systems are becoming where you said the you know they're becoming even though you prefer the old system, but if they're becoming more and more accurate, you know, one of those sniper missions is antimaterial, right? That they take in and with their 50 cows, they they destroy, you know, critical, you know, material. Do you ever seen that being like, do you ever seen mortar having sort of that that surreptitious recon mission that's antimaterial? Because the systems become that accurate?

• 3:51:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there are some missions that we've trained for in the mortars that would allow for a corridor to take out ADA. So we could either take out or displace ADA. So maybe the ADA.

• 3:51:29Speaker 04

  is heavily armored in a maybe a mortar system wouldn't necessarily damage it, but it could cause injury to the crew.

• 3:51:36Jack Murphy?

  I don't know if it ever came online, but they were developing at one point, it was like a rocket assisted mortar that you could fire would travel 12 kilometers.

• 3:51:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a lot of countries that actually employ, I know Yugoslavians have something like that as well. It increases the range of the mortar system out to, I think, like 9800 meters specifically for the 120, which is crazy because, and I think they call it a RAM, so rocket assisted mortar.

• 3:52:00Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 3:52:00Speaker 04

  And the funny thing about that, those are

• 3:52:06Speaker 04

  things with rocket boosters, I like whether they're RPG 7s, big 9s, or those type of things with RAM are very dirty, like, so they really cause like they cake those systems in like black soot, I've noticed about rocket boosters. I've also noticed that a lot of the manufacturing regarding those types of ammunition, that type of ammunition. So what it is, is like the way that a mortar works, for example, is at the bottom of the mortar in the fin assembly, where you see the fins, the fins are canted in most mortars that are a non rifle, smooth bore mortar, has the projectiles have a fin assembly, those fins are canted to mimic rifling to stabilize the round as it travels through the air.

• 3:52:50Speaker 04

  Inside that fin assembly is a primer, that primer when struck, you know, gravity brings it down the mortar tube. The firing pin at the bottom, the mortar tube strikes, that primer sets off a small explosive, that small explosive can set off these charges that are wrapped around the bottom. And those charges can be anything from some type of magnesium composite, other chemical composite, nitroglycerin, TNT, just depends on what type of ammunition that you have and what type of propellant. So, small charge, primer, small charge, propellant. Now,

• 3:53:29Speaker 04

  And just the grand scheme of things like just general physics as pressure increases, volume decreases. Okay, so on most uh US mortar rounds and mortars in the freaking world, anyone that are worth a shit are gonna have what's called the orbiter ring. And we call that the gas ring. So what that does is when the mortar goes down and it that small explosion goes off. That gas ring orbiter ring expands and creates a seal. That makes the volume decrease, so then the pressure increases and you start to lose volume. And then as that pressure builds up enough, that sends the projectile uh pretty far. Now, what I noticed with like rocket assisted munitions, I'm not well versed with the rocket assisted munitions.

• 3:54:13Speaker 04

  It's like that whole chain of events becomes more unreliable because you're adding another chain.

• 3:54:19Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:54:19Speaker 04

  To it and it makes it less accurate. You know what I mean? Especially when you're.

• 3:54:25Speaker 04

  One mil, I'm sure is like you guys been behind long guns and you know like one mil at a thousand meters, that's like one meter. You know what I mean? And then you you talk about nine grand with a thirty pound freaking bowling ball.

• 3:54:38Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:54:39Speaker 04

  That's going um over thirteen thousand feet into the sky.

• 3:54:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:54:43Speaker 04

  And so it's gonna go thirteen thousand feet up into the clouds, travel freaking nine grand down, you know what I mean? So, you know, there are some very good engineers out there and uh I would never say, hey, stop what you're doing and don't go that ride. Think it's a very valuable asset to have. So um yeah, more more power to them, but just I I just know that it's it's difficult thing to design.

• 3:55:07Speaker 05

  I- is there talk or or imagining imagination of of like smart mortar rounds?

• 3:55:14Speaker 04

  Uh, there kind of is already. There's like um so some of the mortar, there's already like these systems that are uh. The cannon itself has some type of GPS guidance that assists the gunner. Some of these systems are automatic where um the gunner doesn't have to do anything. You just type it in the computer and the gun aims at where it's supposed to aim and you just, it's pretty much dummy proof for the most part. Um, and then you have ammunition um that also can be guided, but the ammunition um what I remember is.

• 3:55:49Speaker 04

  It's like, it's like you do all the work and then the ammunition's like, hey, we did the work. Cause it's like, as long as you're within, you know, 10 mils.

• 3:55:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:55:56Speaker 04

  You know, you'll hit it.

• 3:55:57Speaker 05

  It'll kill.

• 3:55:57Speaker 04

  It'll work as long as you're within 10 mils like.

• 3:55:59Speaker 05

  As long as you get that round within 10 meters of the target, you're gonna kill it.

• 3:56:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're gonna kill it with this round.

• 3:56:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:56:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's kinda like.

• 3:56:06Jack Murphy?

  Any other questions for us?

• 3:56:09Speaker 05

  We have one last one. Baker Hitch, thank you very much. Do you think you have any inherent advantages over your near pure enemies like VDV or PLA marine mortar units? And 100% not a North Korean spy.

• 3:56:24Speaker 04

  Do I have any advantages over them? Well, I'm not in the military, so I think that's an advantage. I'm not fighting in any of those militaries. It looks like it sucks.

• 3:56:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, it does.

• 3:56:36Speaker 04

  Doesn't look like a good time.

• 3:56:37Jack Murphy?

  So Les, you had this experience trying to like flip this platoon around.

• 3:56:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:56:43Jack Murphy?

  The conventional military. What was it like getting out of the military? Tell us a little bit about transitioning into the civilian world, which I mean, it's only pretty recent for you.

• 3:56:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I, I, I just, you know, kinda made a decision while I was like, hey, you know what?

• 3:56:59Speaker 04

  I'm trying to flip this platoon around and I was like, you know what? I might be getting kicked out of the army because I'm getting Q and P, I'm getting kicked out of here.

• 3:57:09Speaker 04

  So I decided, hey, I need to focus on myself and my recovery. And so I went through the proper channels to get myself into the SRU, which is formerly known as the WTU. So it used to be the Warrior Transition Unit, then they changed it to the Soldier Recovery Unit. And I really, I would advocate for more Rangers and special operators to use that avenue to exit the military. Because you shouldn't, 18 months to get out of the military and start your transition plan is generally for guys. It's, it's just for the whole military. And it's like, if you're a guy who did like 10 years in special operations, there's probably a lot of stuff that's not gonna come to light until like a year after.

• 3:57:49Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah.

• 3:57:50Speaker 04

  You're like, whoa, that hurts. So when I went to the SRU, the cool thing was, is like, as, as stupid as it sounds, like maybe I was explaining this to other people, like.

• 3:57:59Speaker 04

  My, I'm like, I'm an E7 Ranger guy, you know, decked out in the pins and patches or whatever. I never felt that way. I didn't get too egotistical, but that's literally how people see you. You're like a unicorn out there, especially when you're in this type of unit.

• 3:58:14Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 3:58:15Speaker 04

  A lot of the people in those units are like, I'm fresh out of AIT. And I went right into this, are you? And I was like, what? You know? And uh, so anyway, I was there and like, it was kinda cool. Like you, you do, they kinda like force you to like, hey, man, you just gotta go to like three events in the week and it's not that hard. Some of the people complain, but it's like, you know, just go play wheelchair basketball. Go, go shoot the air rifle, do an air rifle, shoot, go, you know, all these like, go do like a gardening class. Like these are all things there's like, you know what I used to do with this E2 when I was at garden, you know, like useful dad, this PTSD freak out like, y'all don't know, like, hey, I could dig a hole, like, you know, like, well, I was making jokes while I was in there trying to make, cause there's some depressed kids in there, you know?

• 3:59:00Speaker 04

  Covid was happening and, you know, as they signed up for the military.

• 3:59:04Jack Murphy?

  Helicopters over Saigon shit.

• 3:59:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so, uh, yeah, I worked with, I worked there and, uh, it was kinda cool. They kinda, set me with the VA and they put me on the right appointments. They sent me like behavioral health. They sent me like caseworker. And then from there I was kinda like, you know, like what else can I do as I'm getting out? And they put me on this thing where I could ride horses. And then I started working at this ranch while I was like working in the DOD. I was getting paid, but I was just out there, riding horses and, um, learning how to take care of horses and just kinda using that therapy with the horses. Cause I was like,

• 3:59:40Speaker 04

  I was an angry soul, man. And, um, I was just like, whatever, man. Let me just, like, and it was cool that I was disgruntled and I was angry at the military. I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take you off, whatever you got. And, uh, It actually advocated for me. I was like, dude, I do have these injuries. And, you know, like I had a torn shoulder that I had not gotten surgery or looked at and they're like, yeah, that thing is completely torn. Like, how's it hanging on your arm? And they did a surgery on my shoulder. Um, did a couple more surgeries of my knees, surgery on my face. They corrected my broken face. Cause actually I was like, dude, I keep throwing up randomly. And they're like, yeah, because your orbital socket is broken. Holy shit.

• 4:00:20Speaker 04

  Cross eyed and you can't see past over here. And then they like fixed everything and then like now I could see good. And I stopped throwing up and I stopped having vertigo and I started sleeping better. And, uh, there were things I didn't really notice, you know, and, and, um, part of that is because I didn't really have family. I didn't really have like that support unit when I, cause I went solo to Kansas and that was COVID. And it was just like, you know,

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• 4:02:43Speaker 04

  I was, I was like Leon the professional. You're just sleeping alone and you think like, all I do is go to army, finish army, go back to sleeping chair, you know?

• 4:02:52Jack Murphy?

  A brooding man, yeah.

• 4:02:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's like what it was. It was very, very depressing looking from the outside, I'm sure. And there was a lot of guys that tried to tell me stuff like, reach out. I'm like, I did asshole. And you know what they told me? And that was like a big joke too, the whole reach out crap that people would say. And I know that their heart was in the right place, but like when you have a hundred people a day telling you that shit, when you're like, your life is in flames. And you're like, dude, you think I'm not reaching out? I think I'm not trying. You know, I've been ostracized. I've been banished to the wastelands.

• 4:03:23Jack Murphy?

  There's so many of those. I mean, the commander's open door policy is like, open door and I'll see you in 90 days.

• 4:03:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:03:29Jack Murphy?

  You know, I, a lot of, it causes, I know a lot of anger with enlisted ranks. A lot of these like colonels and generals who get out and they turn themselves into the poster boys for PTSD.

• 4:03:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:03:42Jack Murphy?

  And they go on the news and they're like, we need to get our boys help and everything. It's like, well, hold on, you were my commander. Give a fuck about any of these guys.

• 4:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:03:50Jack Murphy?

  You know, if somebody came to you, said they needed help, you'd fuck them.

• 4:03:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:03:54Speaker 05

  I just wanna, I just wanna put it out there because they're probably not watching this show. But if the, if the officer that told you that they didn't care about the.

• 4:04:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:04:03Speaker 05

  Court for their HR decision. I really hope you have bad dreams. I really hope you don't sleep well at night. Like, yeah, it's just a really shitty thing to do.

• 4:04:13Speaker 04

  So the, the thing was, a lot of people, I, I've done something like an impossible task. I did an impossible task in the military and it's because I was angry and I advocated, I used that inner anger in a positive light. And I never turned into substance abuse or anything. I never did anything that would, that would see, make them seem right. And anything I said unfounded.

• 4:04:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:04:33Speaker 04

  And I felt like that's what they were trying to do, even though they might have just forgot about me.

• 4:04:37Speaker 05

  Right, yeah.

• 4:04:38Speaker 04

  And, um, the way I went about it was, um, you know, I,

• 4:04:45Speaker 04

  I did the impossible, which was I reversed a permanent Gomor. And they reinstated my rank to E7 and the chief of staff wrote to that general and said, all of your allegations against Sergeant First Class Sandusky were untrue and unjust.

• 4:05:05Speaker 04

  And I, um, and all of like punishable action is hereby reversed effective immediately with back pay.

• 4:05:14Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 4:05:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So they had to like back pay me all the way to 2019.

• 4:05:18Speaker 05

  What, what was that repudiation process like? Did you have to fight it or did you have to advocate?

• 4:05:24Speaker 04

  I had to fight it and I had to advocate because I was too depressed. Like, if I was like, it was like, if he was like, hey Les, um, can you type up something? I was like, can I just give you the notes because I keep trying to type this? And every other word is motherfucker and I can't like type this without being calm.

• 4:05:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:05:44Speaker 04

  Because at that time, they, they made me a killer. They made me a war. I mean, I killed somebody before the army, whatever. But like, I was like, you know, I, that was the tool that I was, was like. I was the conduit for foreign policy when diplomacy failed. You know, they said, hey, this is our solution to that problem.

• 4:06:04Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 4:06:04Speaker 04

  And this means, you know, we need an armed force to maybe change the hearts and minds of those individuals that are not in compliance with US foreign policy. And I'm sitting there like, you're a direct representative of the President of the United States as a general in this sitting army, and you can't see what I am.

• 4:06:23Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 4:06:23Speaker 04

  And what I've done for this country and to not even take a look at my paperwork. Like it's a complete slap in the face.

• 4:06:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:30Speaker 04

  So I fought it and it did cost me $25,000.

• 4:06:34Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 4:06:35Speaker 04

  Of paying my lawyer over and over again to draft every paper and for the Human Resources Command to kick me back and kick me back and say, no, we're still gonna kick you out. No, we're still gonna kick you out. Now, it's not like they were kicking me out. It was like, it's worse than getting kicked out almost at the time.

• 4:06:49Jack Murphy?

  They're, they're, they're putting you into the corner.

• 4:06:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:06:51Jack Murphy?

  Where you have to quit.

• 4:06:52Speaker 04

  They're saying, you're fired but a year from now. You still have to do all this stuff? And then the thing that sucks is you have like the mark of Cain, you know, where everyone in your unit is like, make him do the staff duty, make him do, and if he pipes up, we can just write it to the little board.

• 4:07:13Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 4:07:13Speaker 04

  Tell them he's not being good boy. And now everybody's just dangling on there. It's like, oh, you're not so hot now Ranger. You know what I mean? So that's like stuff, I'm like shielding my men from in my new platoon, you know? And then I was like, dude, I can't fight this battle. I, I'm going to probably end up offing myself. So I'm gonna go to the SRU, not, not for my peace of mind and for, because I see that's where it's gonna go.

• 4:07:38Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 4:07:39Speaker 04

  And that's the only way, I'm, I'm gonna seek help. And I've had, and it, and it really was a Ranger buddy that I called one time. I was like, dude, I was like crying on the phone to another grown ass man who used to like, you know, smother dog shit out of me, you know? And he ended up in the Sniper Platoon too. But he's, he's telling me like, dude, dude, it's all right. Like I can call somebody and make sure you can get into that SRU. Cause my, my unit wasn't gonna try and let me go. And I, I got into it and, you know, I have him to thank for that. And it was, um, you know, you were with these guys. I was like, maybe this is my purpose too. It's like be a leader among these people who are. You know, there's some people in the S R U like gaming the system.

• 4:08:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 4:08:21Speaker 04

  And I'm, uh, maybe I can be something like, hey, you don't have to game the system. You can do the right thing.

• 4:08:26Jack Murphy?

  Uh.

• 4:08:27Speaker 04

  You know, and yeah, so I finished up there, um, and, uh, man, it was like, I, I had one of the happiest days of my life when I saw that. Like, he's like, hey dude, they reversed it. My lawyer said that over the phone. And he sent me like the letter from that chief of staff that said like, just seeing untrue and unjust from such like, a renowned, like I wrote, I wrote to the office of the president, which office of the president was Donald Trump at the same time. Luckily, my military lawyer, um, was a guy who is related to the religious advisor to Donald Trump. And he was like, we can, we can go nuclear on this if you want. I was like, no, I don't want to.

• 4:09:10Speaker 04

  I want to just, you know, I want to get my reputation back. They're destroying everything I work for.

• 4:09:16Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 4:09:17Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna get kicked out of here without my benefits, without A, B, C, X, Y, Z. And that was like my biggest fear is like going out with this, you know, and then what ended up happening, through all that, it's like they medically retired me because they actually went through all my injuries. And it was enough to warrant a retirement.

• 4:09:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:38Speaker 04

  And it was just nice to be like, all right, man, I, I restored my honor.

• 4:09:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:43Speaker 04

  I don't care about the money. And a lot of people are like, you won, man, you won. And at first I was bitter. I was like, you think I won? I just gave me back what I deserved. You know what I mean? But then I'm like, you know what? They're right. I did win. In the grand scheme of things, I won.

• 4:09:58Jack Murphy?

  So what, when did you, what year did you end up getting out of the military, getting aborted out?

• 4:10:04Speaker 04

  Earlier this year.

• 4:10:05Jack Murphy?

  Earlier this year.

• 4:10:06Speaker 04

  January, January thirteenth, two thousand twenty two.

• 4:10:09Jack Murphy?

  What, what has post-service life been like for you so far?

• 4:10:11Speaker 04

  I immediately walked out of that onto a contract and I went right back to Syria. So as soon as I got out, I went back to Syria and I was in Syria and Iraq and freaking in Iraq. We had the Fatah one missiles from Iran come in while we were there. And then I was in Syria and we had a couple of green on green events, a couple of blue on blue events. Insider threat events that weren't widely published. And then, um, yeah, we, and then a couple of events with the kind of insurgent ISIS elements that were there. And that wasn't even my job.

• 4:10:57Speaker 04

  Like I had nothing to do with shooting bad guys or opposing.

• 4:11:01Jack Murphy?

  You're, uh, what, what should I say? Uh, force pro.

• 4:11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, yeah. In a sense.

• 4:11:08Jack Murphy?

  Fair to say?

• 4:11:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I would be like, um, and, um, you know, we got like, and it was really cool experience because I, even as like a civilian, I got to walk around the streets of Iraq with no gun and like go to a coffee shop or something. And, um, like, nobody's like, and it's like, whoa, like, this used to be like a place where like, you know, we'd be like, hey, what's on that corner? And I'm in the middle of the night, walking around like, whatever. And, uh, getting some buffalo wings and stuff at a place and, uh, doing all sorts of stuff. And, uh, doing touristy stuff, going seeing the citadel there, going over there to, uh, going around in Syria and hang out in different places.

• 4:11:52Speaker 04

  And I was riding around on French birds and I was riding around on British birds. And I was like, these guys are so cool. Like the guys are, you want to manifest? I'm like, no, I was like, all right, what's your name? Just like scribble me in real quick.

• 4:12:03Jack Murphy?

  You are now.

• 4:12:04Speaker 04

  I was like, what? Like, you know?

• 4:12:06Jack Murphy?

  And here's your pint.

• 4:12:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 4:12:08Jack Murphy?

  What, uh, I mean, so do you like it? I mean, do you see yourself staying in contract then? What do you, what do you see as like your future now that, you know?

• 4:12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I do enjoy, um, contracting. I think like contracting is another bit of like a vision quest thing. It's like, it's like me, I'm doing the Forrest Gump, like, I think I'll go home now. But like, like what I'm doing is like, I was kind of like, yeah, I'll take that contract because. I wanna go back. Like, I wanted to go back to Syria and Iraq and stuff to be like, you guys couldn't stop me from going to the front. And I saw guys from my battalion there, one seven five, in Syria and Iraq. And I was like, yo, I'm here. Like, I'm back, you know, like messing with them.

• 4:12:59Speaker 04

  But, um, I was like, yeah, you know, I can get out here if I want. And then from there, it was like, alright, maybe I need to try something else, cuz like, I've been doing this, rodeo, these same areas. And so I'm like, man, let's, let's go cool places, go places that have history. So like, another place I went was Rwanda. Went to Rwanda cuz I was like, man, that's Rwanda genocide, that happened when I was alive. Five hundred thou- five hundred to six hundred thousand people murdered in a three-month period. Let's go check that out, let's see how they're doing. So I went over there and I worked with the RDF for about six weeks. And I learned a little bit of their language, ate the same food as they did. I would like, hang out with the troops all day and just get really embedded with these guys.

• 4:13:42Speaker 04

  And then these guys who were there during the genocide would tell me stories. And these are guys who are on both sides, hiding in the same army. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Both sides of genocide. And there were guys who were like, yeah, I came down across the border from Uganda. And I didn't even live here and I did it. And I was like, man, and you hear some real stuff? Like, a guy was like, I was hiding in the water over there. And there used to be a bunch of hippopotamus in there. And I was hi- I, and you know, hippos are very dangerous, they kill a lot of people. And I was hiding in the water close to the hippos, while the genociders like hacked his family to pieces. Wow. And he watched from the water and it'd be like, like this, like barely out of the water. Like, I'm with the hippos, I'd rather have the hippos kill me than those guys.

• 4:14:27Speaker 04

  And these are guys that would tell me, and these guys are like, I'm like, man, I thought what I went through was Yeah, yeah. Hard in my life, and I would see some of these guys, I'm like, dude, you were like eight years old hiding near the hippos. You know what I mean? And, and all these people are getting murdered and it's, and it's, you have to hate a person. To kill five hundred thousand people because they didn't just line, hey, face the wall and shoot. Right. They got hacked up with machetes. That is hard labor. Like, you're out there, you're gonna get tired swinging a machete that much all day. Especially in a manner that's gonna kill that many people. And so that was another, like, decent thing to, like, wow, and then look at this guy. He still gives. He's, all the money he makes, which isn't much, he gives to an orphanage. He started an orphanage.

• 4:15:09Speaker 04

  And, uh, you know, he's like this religious guy who's like, you know, he's taking what he knows that helped him through a tough time. Which to him was religion. And he's like, at this orphanage, like, taking care of kids. And whatever money that he would make, he would give it to, towards these kids. And I'm like, dang, man, you have like, nothing. And, uh, you're giving everything. I was like, look at all these selfless people, like, all over the world. Um, and it's really like, so that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like, man, I can, what, what, what's, okay. Apart from the money, because contracts, they can pay decent price, you know? Um, what else is happening there that I can, you know, look at and be like, hey, that's pretty cool. I went there and not only did I do my job,

• 4:15:54Speaker 04

  but I got this extra, like, I went on a safari. I went into, they had this, like, big ceremony where like, it's like a gorilla naming ceremony, which is a national event. And, um, that, you know, I went and checked that out and you get to see like the gorillas in the wild and how they react. And you're like, holy, this thing's scary. You could kill me. And it's like, right here. But yeah, so. Yeah, contracting is pretty interesting. Um, own my own house now too.

• 4:16:24Jack Murphy?

  Homeowner.

• 4:16:24Speaker 04

  Becoming a big boy, you know? And so like, working on my backyard. That's all I like, put down, put down the weapon, pick up the plow, kind of type of stuff going. And um, you know, uh, doing a lot of free dive. I find free diving very therapeutic. Because that's something I learned in uh, dive school is like all breath holds and going down and. It really is like a good anger management, stress relief thing because if you panic, if you do. All these things like you're gonna, you're gonna hurt yourself. So you have to be really in control of your emotions while you're doing those breath holds.

• 4:17:00Jack Murphy?

  Real, real quick, let me pick up on that thread. Like, eleven Charlies don't usually go to dive school.

• 4:17:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that was the funny thing, cause like, at the time, the mortar platoon was in HHC. So all these guys were there, were like. What company? You said you were an RRC, right? I'm like, no, I'm a mortar guy. You know, and uh, they were like, what the fuck is this guy doing here? You know, and I was a wild guy. I remember we were doing jock up. I was like the craziest motivated guy. The sergeant major of uh, Sifu was a two seven five guy. And uh, he was like. Y'all, y'all need to fucking get on the motivation this guy's on. Cause everybody was sear schooling it.

• 4:17:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Passive resistance.

• 4:17:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I was just like. Zero, you know, like I was doing like Ranger. And I was like. So incompetent. A lot of those guys had the edge on me. They had better, um, I think like. My pre dive that I went through was at fourth RTB. So the physical aspect was very good. But was not very good was the academic uh, prep. So a lot of these guys had good academic prep. Prior to going there. And I think like the academics, I was like blade running through that whole course. And then I was just like. Hey. Ranger here. What was that big word you said? And then like, you know, they would have Ranger Cadre in the school that would like laugh along and be like, yeah, okay, like we're like, we're playing the joke like we're the dumb guys, SF guys are the smart guys

• 4:18:27Speaker 04

  kind of thing, you know, like we're, you know, it was like a playful thing, but um, I looked at it as an air management course. And uh, when I finished up there and moved on, it's like, I never touched any scuba tanks ever again. You know what I mean? Yeah. And uh, but I, I, I stuck with freediving. I was like, I don't like, that's what I actually liked. I was like, I was getting tortured and like ground proofed. And then I'd be like, when are we going to put on tanks? And I was like, dude, like, the real fun is the torture. Like, I like to swim down into a cave and like pull my, like the stuff that I do, I mean, people, if they go to my Instagram, I have some videos of me with like a helmet on with some lights on it and I'm like crawl.

• 4:19:12Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:19:27Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:19:38Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:20:09Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 4:20:36Speaker 01

  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 5-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.

• 4:21:05Speaker 04

  Going through little caves inside some Florida springs and stuff, going through tight spaces, holding my breath. But for me, it's like just mastering myself while I'm down there and like flowing. It's like, hey, don't burn too much oxygen. Yeah. It's so calm. It's so cool. And like, none of my joints hurt while I'm down here. And I could do this for hours, going up and down, up and down. And I just feel like, like you're almost floating with the water so clear. You have over 300 feet of visibility. It's just like, wow, it's so beautiful. It's so calm. It's so relaxing down here. But also, it can kill me. I can die. Yeah. But you try to let those intrusive thoughts go and see yourself through the objective because anything, you know, that you produce from within, that doesn't come from within,

• 4:21:49Speaker 04

  like you, you're, there's an outside thing. And if I'm, I'm in man versus nature right now. Now, if I have man versus nature over here, and I also make man versus man over here, that's two fights. I now split myself in half. Right. So I don't really have my full self, even a one-to-one odd, and I'm gonna lose both. Right. So I need to know, hey, man, and this is like one way I talk to myself. I'm on my side. I'm on my own side right now. So I just need to agree with myself that I'm gonna go and I'm gonna complete this and I'm gonna get through this obstacle.

• 4:22:24Speaker 04

  And I'm not gonna freak out about it. I'm gonna come out to the other side and then, oh man, it feels good to be like, I've controlled my emotions.

• 4:22:31Speaker 05

  Right. And if you start panicking, not only are you burning oxygen faster, but you might make a move or you might do something that that screws you.

• 4:22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. Or somebody else. Like if you're with your buddy, because now your buddy has to come and get you.

• 4:22:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:22:46Speaker 04

  And he doesn't want to do that.

• 4:22:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:22:48Speaker 04

  Now you have to negotiate your problem.

• 4:22:50Jack Murphy?

  Les, thank you so much for coming on the show and doing this, man. We've gone for four hours.

• 4:22:55Speaker 04

  All right.

• 4:22:55Jack Murphy?

  Uh, taking up your time here, man. Um, but it's been awesome.

• 4:22:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:23:00Jack Murphy?

  It's been a marathon run, but I mean, this was all like a ton of information and a ton of your experiences and a lot of unique experiences too.

• 4:23:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:23:10Jack Murphy?

  Really appreciate you sharing all these insights with us.

• 4:23:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:23:13Speaker 05

  We deeply appreciate it.

• 4:23:14Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me. It's like, uh, it's good to be, uh, with my kind, you know, from a different generation and be able to speak with you and, um, maybe connect with some people out there that might've gone through some of the same things.

• 4:23:26Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 4:23:27Speaker 04

  Maybe it resonates with them. Maybe something I say can resonate with them. So I really appreciate it. I really appreciate everyone tuning in, supporting the podcast and, uh, you know, I, I hope it all works out.

• 4:23:36Jack Murphy?

  It was, it was great, man. I mean, thank you. You came out here, came to the Christmas party the other day and you had me laughing my ass off telling, telling some of these, uh, barracks stories about the Joes.

• 4:23:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:23:47Jack Murphy?

  Um, but I mean, yeah, all your combat experience and, uh, interactions and, and going through this terrible experience on your way out of all of me.

• 4:23:57Speaker 05

  And honestly, even though, you know, you feel that you may have acted out in ways like you handled it.

• 4:24:04Jack Murphy?

  Better than I would.

• 4:24:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, better than I ever would have. And, and, and not just from a professional viewpoint from, but from a, it's very easy to burn in, you know, and, and that's not just like when, when with an RFS. I mean, that's, that's just when you leave the life in general, right?

• 4:24:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:24:27Speaker 05

  It's very easy to burn in. And I think a lot of us burn in to a degree.

• 4:24:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:24:33Speaker 05

  Um, and you know, you something, you know, something helps us somewhere along the way. But for you to have such a, um,

• 4:24:48Speaker 05

  uh, really, um,

• 4:24:51Speaker 05

  A situation with these people that that that you know that almost like take away everything that you've accomplished and still be able to go on to a unit and still take care of the troops underneath you and still Roger up still Ranger up you know that's a hell of a lot more being a Ranger you know the idea of taking that out to uh you know the idea of a Ranger is learning it and taking it out to the to the conventional army that's a that's being a hell of a lot more Ranger than some asshole sitting behind at the desk you know looking at all of your combat experience everything you've contributed and then not even giving you the benefit of the doubt

• 4:25:33Jack Murphy?

  yeah

• 4:25:35Speaker 05

  that dude should have his tab his scroll he should take it all have it all taken away

• 4:25:40Jack Murphy?

  well when you see a lot of these disciplinary issues um a lot of the post-service issues that guys have psychological issues I think a lot of the things that you've talked about today Celeste I mean they speak to that yeah you know why why do we release guys on a three-day weekend and we have like 10 DUIs in the unit why could that be does it have something to do with how we treat these soldiers is that is that possible yeah is that is that within the realm of possibility

• 4:26:09Speaker 05

  well and and the simple fact is is like I don't agree with the RFS you know with a lot of the stuff but for you to get RFS and not even having been drinking yeah to have to for them not to even wait for a court like that's the kind of bullshit in in regiment that that tears me up because I've seen it happen to other guys yeah I've seen I've seen other guys who are out yeah they're having a beer but they're minding their own fucking business yeah and and you know

• 4:26:36Jack Murphy?

  you're supposed to drive your car into the Chattahoochee to get you know before before that happens

• 4:26:41Speaker 05

  you know you know the the way I looked at it was um

• 4:26:46Speaker 04

  It happened the way it did because it's the only way it could have happened. The only way I would have left that organization is kicking and screaming.

• 4:26:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:26:55Speaker 04

  That's what happened.

• 4:26:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:26:56Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? And at first I regretted what I gave and then I was like, you know, I'm proud of what I gave.

• 4:27:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 4:27:02Speaker 04

  And it didn't really turn out too bad because

• 4:27:07Speaker 04

  that's probably the only way I would have left. Like what I've been like sitting there until like I'm a sergeant major, maybe. And then like, which is difficult to pull off. And then what I'm going to look at a computer and like, these guys are red. Make them green. They're red on the tracker.

• 4:27:22Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 4:27:23Jack Murphy?

  You wouldn't have enjoyed that.

• 4:27:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:27:26Jack Murphy?

  Well, thank you so much for sharing your experiences, your story with us. I hope to see you again, man. I hope next time you come through the city. I hope we'll see you next December.

• 4:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:27:36Jack Murphy?

  And hear about some more shenanigans.

• 4:27:38Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 4:27:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, we deeply appreciate it. We appreciate you, man.

• 4:27:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. I appreciate you guys and I appreciate the community and everybody who's tuning in.

• 4:27:50Jack Murphy?

  Right on, man.

• 4:27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Shout out Task Force Berman.

• 4:27:54Jack Murphy?

  And we will see all you guys on Friday with Jeff Stein, editor of Spy Talk. And he was a Army case officer in the

• 4:28:03Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:28:18Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:28:29Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:29:00Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 4:29:28Jack Murphy?

  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. Vietnam War. So we'll see you guys then. Until then, take care, everyone.

• 4:30:06Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:30:20Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:30:31Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:31:02Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 4:31:30Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:32:05Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:32:20Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:32:31Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you are not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:33:02Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 4:33:29Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:34:05Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:34:20Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:34:30Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:35:01Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 4:35:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:36:06Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ashkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:36:21Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:36:32Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:37:03Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 4:37:30Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:38:07Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:38:22Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:38:33Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:39:04Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.

• 4:39:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:40:08Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:40:23Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:40:34Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:41:05Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options, like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 4:41:32Speaker 02

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• 4:42:08Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 4:42:22Speaker 07

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 4:42:33Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 4:43:04Speaker 04

  ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more. 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,

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  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. She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens. Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you

• 4:44:27Speaker 00

  are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue.

• 4:44:39Speaker 04

  Zolaire should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolaire is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolaire.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolaire. This is an advertisement for Zolaire paid for by Genentech and Novartis. ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down. Rather than giving teens the answer, study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options,

• 4:45:24Speaker 04

  like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 4:45:30Speaker 01

  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.