The Craziest GWOT Battle You’ve Never Heard Of - Battle of Najaf | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 277

Uncle Jack is back with his long time friend Adam Schwarze to tell us all about his first Pepperbox feature documentary! It’s available to watch RIGHT NOW! Let us know if you enjoy this style of content and if you’d like to see more Pepperbox documentaries! https://pepperbox.tv/joinunsubscribe WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast 👕 Merch & Shoes https://bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast 🔋 Energy Drinks https://drinkechelon.com P. O BOX: Unsubscribe Podcast 17503 La Cantera Pkwy Ste 104 Box 624 San Antonio TX 78257 ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! FUM Head to https://www.tryfum.com/UNSUB and use promo code UNSUB to get your free FÜM Topper with purchase, and start The Good Habit today! QUO Try QUO for free plus get 20% off your first 6 months at https://www.quo.com/UNSUB DOSE Ready to give your liver the support it deserves? Head to https://dosedaily.co/UNSUB or enter UNSUB to get 35% off your first subscription. PONCHO OUTDOORS Get $10 off your first order at https://ponchooutdoors.com/UNSUB when you enter your email. KALSHI Download the Kalshi app and use code unsub to get $10 when you trade $10. http://kalshi.com/r/unsub ------------------------------ FOLLOW OUR SOCIALS! Unsubscribe Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unsubscribepodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@unsubscribepodcast https://x.com/unsubscribecast Eli Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts Chapters: 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! 2:52 Adam’s Introduction & Jack’s Documentary 18:26 Sammy Lee Davis 22:44 Jack’s First Pepperbox Documentary 39:30 The Battle Of Najaf 1:15:05 VA Ratings, TBIs & PTSD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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• 0:57The Fat Electrician?

  You can train for desert warfare. You can train for jungle warfare. You can train for mountain warfare. Nobody ever prepares you to go into the most holy ancient cemetery in the Shia Muslim world where there's catacombs and 12 foot tombs.

• 1:11The Fat Electrician?

  I'm sorry, how big is this cemetery?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  600,000 people and the largest cemetery in the world.

• 1:16The Fat Electrician?

  Clearing it out, uh, world war one style in 125 degree heat.

• 1:42The Fat Electrician?

  Three, two, one.

• 1:46The Fat Electrician?

  I pre, I pre popped dude. I pre popped.

• 1:49The Fat Electrician?

  Hi, welcome to the unsubscribe podcast. I am joined here today by Eli double tap, Uncle Jack Mandeville and our new friend, Adam Schwarze. And I am donut operator.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  Donut, you look beautiful. You're getting strong. You did. I think Adam Schwarze.

• 2:03The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. See?

• 2:06Speaker 04

  You guys are pros. We've done it once or twice.

• 2:09The Fat Electrician?

  It's hard. It's hard to pronounce those weird, uh, European, those.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Germans where every single syllable is pronounced emphatically aggressively.

• 2:17The Fat Electrician?

  Okay. Well, then now this is a, I don't know what the fuck they were talking before. Uh, It's a future fat electrician video that comes out after this, so we can't talk about it much more.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Hmm. This comes out Saturday, so in four days. This is a quick burn and turn of a video.

• 2:32The Fat Electrician?

  My video will not be done by then.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  So what can we talk about with that? But first we should introduce how you guys know each other.

• 2:40The Fat Electrician?

  Well, everyone knows Jack. Jack is our long time pepper box boy.

• 2:45The Fat Electrician?

  Should I have high energy or and be try to be funny on this show? Or should I come in now that I'm a, I'm a filmmaker? Should I come in more with like a Ken Burns type of tone? Should I take myself a little too seriously?

• 2:56The Fat Electrician?

  You should take the all of GWAT and apply your artistic interpretation over it. I don't want you to stick to facts. I want your artistic interpretation.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  It cuts back his feet or that was actually hoping maybe turn into a dance.

• 3:14The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. Um, I'm actually after this project that we're going to discuss today, I'm producing a guat the musical after this. Yeah. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be a 20 year long musical. So we're gonna have like eight intermissions.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Guat the musical is beautiful, Jack. I'd expect no less.

• 3:32The Fat Electrician?

  There's a number in there where it's a guy singing about, he was there for, uh, the, the original oh two, oh three years. And he's, there's a great beautiful song I wrote about him going to war with his son by 2020. So yeah, that's the guat baby.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  I hate how true that is.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Explain your friend.

• 3:49The Fat Electrician?

  This is Adam Schwarze. Uh, Pepperbox is releasing its first ever film, uh, two hour feature length documentary about the battle of, uh, Najaf that happened in 2004. I'm saying this as someone, uh, as someone who wasn't there, but has interviewed a lot of war veterans and a lot of different conflicts. This is one of the gnarliest things I've ever, uh, heard about. And, uh, I wanted to tell these guys story because unfortunately, uh, in 2004, while those guys were out there fighting, it got kind of overshadowed in the news cycle. So a lot of Americans don't know that this insane battle, um, happened. You can train for desert warfare. You can train for jungle warfare. You can train for mountain

• 4:32The Fat Electrician?

  warfare. You can train for, uh, urban warfare. Nobody ever prepares you to go into the most holy ancient cemetery in the Shia Muslim world, um, where there's catacombs and 12 foot tombs, uh, clearing it out, uh, world war one style in 125 degree heat against a well entrenched militia of a few thousand, uh, locals who, uh, know the lay of the land way better than you do.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  And I'll have, and I'll have the high ground.

• 4:59The Fat Electrician?

  And I'll have the high ground. And by the way, this wasn't a planned operation. Some lieutenant walked into the wrong, uh, place one day and then it kicked off a month long battle that, uh, he kicked a hornet's nest.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  This is a like a butter bar or just a.

• 5:13The Fat Electrician?

  First lieutenant. Yeah. He's in the film. He's one of the guys we interviewed. Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  This is, uh, so a resupply convoy just made like the wrong turn.

• 5:21The Fat Electrician?

  They, yeah, they, he, he walked into the wrong place and it, they thought McTodell solder was the.

• 5:27The Fat Electrician?

  This is like the most lit horror movie ever.

• 5:29The Fat Electrician?

  It is a horror movie. It is a horror movie.

• 5:32The Fat Electrician?

  Literally took a wrong turn down the road, wound up in a cemetery full of things trying to kill you is insane.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Well, if I can just, I don't know this story. That's why I was super excited. And then I was like, I, it's the options of like, do a bunch of research or as I am with all my friends, don't watch anything they do. So that way you get a general reaction.

• 5:53The Fat Electrician?

  Firsthand source right here.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Because it is for me, uh, all my deployments, I've never heard this and I have like a, a different deployment than your average one. But when I hear stories like this or read briefly, I'm like, holy shit. What? How did this happen? And then just you guys being able to tell that story is insane because again, fighting in catacombs? How many catacombs did you fight in, Jack?

• 6:20The Fat Electrician?

  Zero. Yeah. I stayed, I stayed my ass on that vehicle.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  I zero myself.

• 6:28The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, these guys, uh, and you know, Adam was there and he can speak to it better, but purely from the person that, uh, put this together and did the interviews, I've never heard anything like this in my life. And, and like you just said, it, it was, it is a horror movie combat that these guys were in. Uh, and again, I, I, nobody prepares you for that kind of fight. And there's never been anything like, like it before or after. And the first three days, it was just one battalion of Marines, uh, basically versus, what do you think?

• 7:02Speaker 04

  50,000.

• 7:03The Fat Electrician?

  50,000 militia members in the cemetery and surrounding the city.

• 7:07The Fat Electrician?

  How, I'm sorry, how big is this cemetery?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  600,000 people and the largest cemetery in the world.

• 7:15The Fat Electrician?

  Oh shit.

• 7:16The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. It's, I think from what I recall, it's about 14 by 14 square kilometers large. This is the holiest place in the Shia religion. So the guy, you know, there's the Sunni and Shia Muslims.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  They get along.

• 7:27The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like the Catholics and Protestants of Ireland.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Just, uh, like we had to separate them in, uh, East Rashid. We had to build barriers because the inner, just the fighting between Sunnis and Shias was so bad. It's like, okay, we'll just block them off and then they won't fight each other. Yeah. It was our fucking job somehow. So all in one place.

• 7:51The Fat Electrician?

  Who's, who's, whose call was that?

• 7:53Speaker 04

  At the military.

• 7:54The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, Jordan, I would, I would pay money to be sitting in that officer's tent being like, hear me out.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Segregation.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  We thought the same thing. It's like, we're segregating people. This is wild.

• 8:06The Fat Electrician?

  They're not going to get along. Trust me. There's a reason why Saddam acted the way he did.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, largely they just did, uh, neighborhood gentrification by the second, third GWAT deployments. It all sorted out themselves.

• 8:19The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. Yeah. These are, these are beef that beefs that go way back before America showed up. Yeah. We thought we were just gonna navigate around that one.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  What could go wrong? What could go wrong?

• 8:32The Fat Electrician?

  You know, United States of America in the last 50 years, we really think things through.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Can you imagine right now in America, if you removed all the government, all the police, what happened right now between the like, right? Our own civics right now?

• 8:43The Fat Electrician?

  That's basically what happened. Yeah.

• 8:45The Fat Electrician?

  Honestly, I bet it'd be a lot chiller than people think.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  I'd be like, I know they'd be like, boom.

• 8:52The Fat Electrician?

  Don't get me wrong.

• 8:53The Fat Electrician?

  Not in Akron, Ohio.

• 8:55The Fat Electrician?

  Well, there is that.

• 8:57The Fat Electrician?

  I'm just always finding an excuse to go after Akron. That's all. I got no real beef there. Sorry, guys.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  So how'd you guys meet though? Like?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  We literally went to boot camp together.

• 9:07The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  We met on the bus, getting shipped off to boot camp.

• 9:10The Fat Electrician?

  Okay. I didn't. So were you there when Jack got shot?

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I was not there on site, but he was the first Marine I knew that actually got shot. It was, he was like this cool guy. He was the coolest guy ever to get shot. Like national press, the base commanders going to this hospital. Like this guy was a fricking movie star before we even got out of school of M tree.

• 9:28The Fat Electrician?

  But I want to, I want to even top that. Adam didn't just do three deployments in some of the gnarliest battles of the Iraq wars as a Marine, also a Navy career Navy SEAL afterwards. So for me to be the first guy he knows that got shot, I'm really honored, dude.

• 9:41The Fat Electrician?

  Force on force.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Just guns clear slam.

• 9:47The Fat Electrician?

  And this wasn't like we are in combat and I got shot in the intensity of combat. I got shot in an armory in California. Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Know this?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:56The Fat Electrician?

  Okay.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:57The Fat Electrician?

  You bring it up every time.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I know.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  But such a great story.

• 10:00The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Of all the combat trauma, this is still one of my favorite stories. One, he didn't die too. It's just a funny marine marine story.

• 10:07The Fat Electrician?

  My battalion, by the time our enlistments were all running up, there was just nothing but purple heart license plates in that parking lot. And I was like, the only guy in the battalion had a gunshot wound from another marine on Camp Pendleton. Yeah. Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  You and Marty somehow both got shot in basic training.

• 10:23The Fat Electrician?

  Marty was a ranger who did like six deployments.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  And to get shot in basic training is absolutely wild. You know that one?

• 10:30The Fat Electrician?

  No. Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Was it Marty was just wrong place, wrong time?

• 10:35The Fat Electrician?

  Like rushes and a stray round from a different range hit his back. Yeah.

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• 11:41The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. And he told his instructor that he got shot and the guy just blew it off. Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  And then they looked and like, oh dude, he got shot.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Oh shit. Like it was like homeboy shot.

• 11:52The Fat Electrician?

  You want to hear a tie into this, this movie too? The instructor who, and I, I, the instructor who was the first instructor to show up and grab my arm and, and start attending to me after I got shot was in the battle in Najaf. And he'll actually be, be a big part of the story because of his role in the battle.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  No shit.

• 12:13The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  So you guys met in basic and then?

• 12:17The Fat Electrician?

  We did our school of infantry together and he went to one, four, and I went to LAR. And so one, four, what they were the ones that, uh, they were the ones that kicked off the battle in Najaf and then the army came in and it became, you know, a pretty big fight.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  And after that, you went and did Navy SEALs after?

• 12:37The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Damn. Okay. Like, thank you for your service.

• 12:42The Fat Electrician?

  Thank you for your service.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you. I know. We all hate that.

• 12:47The Fat Electrician?

  What if there was like a, a human centipede for thanking, for a bunch of veterans thanking each other for their service all at the same time?

• 12:53Speaker 04

  We could start it right now.

• 12:54The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Get on hands and knees.

• 12:56The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Just all.

• 12:57The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. But it's like done and so our hands are all glued together saluting each other. Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Okay. I'm, again, it's amazing to see what you did for Pepper Box and to make this possible. And thank you, like, to be able to tell a story, retell that story and then capture it for the very first time. Cause.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. Cause I, I, I got involved because Jack had some friends that were in this theater and this war. And this is such an untold story that really had some not overarching strategic implications, but there's a lot of guys that did amazing things on the, on the field of battle that nobody knows about. And I don't know how sad, we're gonna get on some of the stories, but a lot of guys made the ultimate sacrifice. And so I wanted to just get their word out for the guys that we didn't bring home. There's some really courageous American patriots and heroes that I'm so pumped to be a part of this because Jack has done honor by their, by their sacrifices for this project. So.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  I think a lot of the times it is, these stories, it's, you probably thought it was the norm. That was your first experience. And you're like, holy shit, this is what everyone's dealing with. I've talked about it multiple times. It's like, my experience was like, oh, everyone's been in at least like 20, 30 gunfights. I was like, I thought that was the norm. And then you get out and you find out, oh shit. I guarantee probably your entire SEAL career, less gunfights than that.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's brother, that's it. Nine deployments, been to like 75 plus countries. That conflict was the most kinetic environment of my entire career.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  And people do not see that and they don't understand that. That's why I think these stories are extremely important.

• 14:33The Fat Electrician?

  These stories that are going to be in the film, and it's just literally, it is a sliver. Cause I've talked to a lot of other guys offline who have helped with the film that were in Najaf. And, you know, one guy I talked to, he's like, yeah, I got a, like a navcom with a V. I picked up a 60 inch, 60 millimeter mortar tube and killed two insurgents running through the street. I'm like, what?

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Jesus.

• 14:53The Fat Electrician?

  It, this, what these guys did in the cemetery and around the city of Najaf is literally the definition of uncommon valor was a common virtue. And, and again, um, kind of the politics of it, they were in an army chain of command. So this battle has never really made itself into Marine Corps lore because this marine battalion was part of an army chain of command. As Colonel Mayer, who's in this film said, he made a, a interesting point. The Marines of one, four are probably, and in the battle in Najaf are probably more well-known in army history than they are Marine Corps history, uh, which is very interesting part of this battle. They were kind of like a bastard Mew Battalion out there on a, you know, on

• 15:38The Fat Electrician?

  a Polish army base reporting to the army. And so they, these guys never really got the coverage that Fallujah did a couple of months later, when that was a planned operation. And you had an army of media there going into the city with these Marines and soldiers where Najaf was one lieutenant, kicked up a hornet's nest, 25 day battle ensues. And, and it was a very anticlimactic ending, uh, to the battle itself.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Thankfully.

• 16:06The Fat Electrician?

  Thank, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  I mean, cause I was there when we were going to go do the big push and take the, you know, everything shrouding and would have been, you know, we lost seven directly hundreds wounded, but we would have lost like a thousand guys. It would have been a big deal had we gone in there and done that major.

• 16:22The Fat Electrician?

  One in four Marines in one, in battalion landing team one, four are documented as have having been wounded during that battle. That's not counting the, God knows how many that weren't documented because these guys were getting peppered with shrapnel and they didn't want to be pulled off the line. So dudes weren't telling people they got wounded.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  And we lost our medical officer. I think there was some drug related stuff. We lost our medical officer for the battalion. So all we had was a senior chief IDC corpsman for like the whole battalion. So.

• 16:51The Fat Electrician?

  Who had to document the purple hearts.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  And so most of our, like, it's been 20 some years later. I just found out an email yesterday, two days, three days ago that my purple heart was like tentatively approved. And like.

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• 18:48Speaker 03

  Guys are missing awards. The saddest part, and I'm so glad that you guys are getting this out there. Really appreciate it because there's guys who are missing their combat action ribbon still to this day because of the administrative paper trail. It's not because I'm talking crap about the chain of command, but we are running so hard and gunning so hard that a lot of these records just got dropped. There was nobody planning in the backend for all these awards, basic administrative things. And to Jack's point, guys didn't care about purple hearts. Guys didn't care about their combat action ribbon. They didn't care about documenting any of their shit. They just want to get their gun on. And largely just by the way the, the conflict developed, this was truly, you know, you guys are veterans, like they were just there for their guy, their left and right flank because it was a, uh.

• 19:27The Fat Electrician?

  A very kinetic situation.

• 19:29Speaker 04

  Dude, it was great. We, we were lucky enough to have Sammy Lee Davis yesterday on Medal of Honor recipient and him just telling that story of looking across the river and being like, oh, my guys need me. And he's been hit by like 30.

• 19:44The Fat Electrician?

  Got hit with like, yeah, 30 or 40 flechettes out of a beehive artillery round. And then he'd also been shot in the leg with an AK-47. And I think by this point he had broken his back.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  And then swam across, got all three guys and then tells the story of couldn't pick all three up. So he's like dragging them and then laying down in the middle of the night. And then when the NVA is walking over him, if they look at him, then they'll shoot him. And then he gets back. And this is like the Forrest Gump story, but yeah, and it is.

• 20:15The Fat Electrician?

  No, it's literally the story that inspired Forrest Gump.

• 20:17The Fat Electrician?

  Oh yeah, it's gotta be, right?

• 20:19Speaker 04

  No, it is like literally they used that in the movie.

• 20:21The Fat Electrician?

  Yes. The Forrest Gump getting the Medal of Honor is real footage of him and they just superimposed Tom Hanks over it.

• 20:27The Fat Electrician?

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  So hearing these stories is it's wild and a lot of people don't realize like medals or Purple Hearts, it's the guys, they don't realize they want to just be back out in action. Or at that time, if you're losing some of your medical command, it's you're back out the next day. There is no time off. I've told that story. You're like, I got shot and then I was back out the next day and I didn't realize there was supposed to be time off. And then I didn't realize I was getting a Purple Heart till six, 10 months later. And they're like, you get a Purple Heart? And I was like, for what? It's like you shot. And I was like, huh.

• 21:02The Fat Electrician?

  Whoa, I will say, we didn't get to cover it on the podcast. So Sammy is, he showed up in full dress uniform, wearing the Medal of Honor. Like he looked great. And like mid podcast, uh, I think Cody didn't know what a flechette round was out of a beehive round. And I go to try to explain it. And Sammy is like, I got this. And he like moves the Medal of Honor aside and unbuttons his shirt and pulls out a flechette round on a necklace. And he goes, the one of the real flechette round that was in me is at home. This one's made out of the gold from my teeth. It's like mad drip.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:41The Fat Electrician?

  Thank you for your service and I'm not being sarcastic about it.

• 21:45The Fat Electrician?

  I've never seen anything cooler than a 78 year old man be like, check out my chain. Like, bro.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Literally, he reached in, it's like this, and it's like the gold made from my teeth. And we're like.

• 21:55The Fat Electrician?

  Can, can you imagine being his grandkids for like show and tell? Like, uh, you know, everyone's bringing in, you know, their, uh, their painting or whatever. It's like, my grandpa's going to show you his war wounds.

• 22:06The Fat Electrician?

  So he was, he, he is very open about a lot of things, but like it, through asking questions, it became obvious. He didn't want to go into like excruciating detail about the battle and actions itself, which is completely fine. So we, I didn't get to ask him about it. But one of the questions I wanted to ask him about was in his book, which I read before the podcast. Um, so he was artillery guy. He was manning artillery. He, they got ambushed and they basically slammed the howitzers straight down. And he was firing anti-personnel rounds straight at oncoming waves. He runs out of, he runs out of anti-personnel beehive rounds, switches over to high explosive, runs out of high explosive. And then the only thing he has left is propaganda rounds, which we're supposed to like, you're supposed to rainbow that shit and disperse pamphlets.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, leaflets.

• 22:51The Fat Electrician?

  All he said in the book was that's all he had left. And it turned out to be really, propaganda turned out to be highly effective at close range is what he said.

• 23:01Speaker 06

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• 23:10Speaker 07

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• 23:33Speaker 04

  Dude, those guys, because I said, I was like coming from our war, looking at what they did is it, it, we can't wrap our head around it. And then he had the exact same thing about the World War II veterans, because he got to meet those four.

• 23:47The Fat Electrician?

  The scariest part about of the whole thing about like not wrapping your head around it was he talked about like 50 years after the fact. Uh, some organization had organized him to go over to Vietnam and he got to sit down and have dinner with dudes that were at.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  Looking for him.

• 24:05The Fat Electrician?

  He was up against real NVA. It wasn't Viet Cong, it was NVA.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:09The Fat Electrician?

  And he sat down with like three or four guys that were NVA at that battle. And they A, recognized him and knew who he was. Like, they're like, oh yeah, no, we saw you crossing the river on that raft carrying your guys. And then one of them asked him, so he's famous for playing a harmonica. And he was always playing a harmonica when he was up at night watching his thing. Cause like then everybody knew everything was okay. If Sammy was still playing his harmonica, everything was fine. And one of the NBA guys asked him if he brought a harmonica and asked him to play it because they knew he was the one playing the harmonica. And it's like, how fucking close were you guys to me? When they were watching him?

• 24:50The Fat Electrician?

  Dude, we're the NBA. We were watching you the whole time, brother.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Dude, this stories again, and then he played the harmonica for us. And it was, we all, I, that was one of the few times I got chills on the podcast. It's just everyone shut the fuck up. And we're like, and Sammy is fantastic of it. We all applauded afterwards. But seeing and hearing that story is just something where you're just, figure you guys would appreciate it. Cause it's that next level of holy shit, these guys went through this. And then he was talking about the World War II veterans that he met. And then him getting the Medal of Honor and then them being like, shut the fuck up and sit down new guy. And this is a Medal of Honor recipient. I'm like, holy shit. He's friends with Clint.

• 25:31The Fat Electrician?

  He, so you'll appreciate this. So his first Medal of Honor Society meeting that he went to where it's all, everybody there is Medal of Honor recipient. He talks about walking in, he walks in, the first three people he sees are Eddie Rickenbacher, Doolittle, and Pappy Boyington, all sitting next to each other.

• 25:52The Fat Electrician?

  Let's throw you less than his grand in there while we're.

• 25:54The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, no shit. Like the three of the biggest aviation legends ever. And I guess Pappy Boyington walks up and shakes his hand. So you're the fucking new guy, huh? Like coming from Pappy Boyington. Like he's like, ah, 23 year old kid, like.

• 26:11The Fat Electrician?

  That's like three people that like are solid contenders for like the Mount Rushmore of American aviation ever. And he saw all three of them at once.

• 26:22The Fat Electrician?

  And Maverick would be fourth, right?

• 26:23The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  And they're just chilling. Oh, okay. Fucking. Go on.

• 26:30The Fat Electrician?

  I'm sorry. Real quick.

• 26:30Speaker 04

  Sorry. Yeah.

• 26:31The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, does anybody want coffee?

• 26:33Speaker 04

  I'm good. Thank you.

• 26:34The Fat Electrician?

  I'm good. Thank you.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Now go on.

• 26:36The Fat Electrician?

  Okay. Well, I mean, Adam's, Adam's your, your firsthand, uh, account here of everything. But yeah, we, we're, we're putting out Pepperbox's first feature length film on, on this just insane thing these guys were a part of.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  It will drop the exact same day that this podcast airs, if I do remember right, right?

• 26:55The Fat Electrician?

  Yep. It's August 15th, Saturday, August 15th, uh, early morning, it'll be going live. And, uh, yeah, it'll, it'll be up. Uh, we've got, uh, a lot of great people that have been, uh, supporting this and, uh, a lot of great people that were involved with this, both on and off camera. The fact that these guys, um, I just want to state too, one of the hardest things about, uh, creating something this size is assembling the roster. It's getting people on board to volunteer to go on camera and talk about, you know, what can be for a lot of people, very sensitive part of their lives. Um, I started, you're going to see in this film, uh, they're going to see a lot of LAR guys in this film. You're going to be like, why they were just one, they were just one platoon while they were in this battle. Well,

• 27:40The Fat Electrician?

  the hardest thing to do is assemble the roster. So I started with the people I knew well, the guys I served with, uh, for, and it became advantageous for a couple of reasons. A, once you've shot everything, then you have to assemble all the photographs and all the imagery and all that. That can be hard getting ahold of people to do that. The good thing is the guys I served with, I can just text them and be like, hey asshole, I need these pictures from you. Um, but it became a blessing in disguise too, because these LAR guys, now guys like Adam, they were line company guys. They were, you know, they were in the cemetery. All they had, well, what, all they had with them was what was on them. Where these LAR guys had room to stash cameras. So we have a lot of never before seen, uh, video footage of this

• 28:23The Fat Electrician?

  battle that these LAR guys were able to capture with their cameras that became very instrumental to telling this story visually. Um, shots of the cemetery, all that kind of stuff.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  This is 2000.

• 28:37The Fat Electrician?

  2004, yeah. August of 2004.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  This is predated, it's like 720p. Like you're looking at 480, like it's not HD quality or it's just getting in there, which is.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  We just talked about that today. Like people didn't have cameras back then. Nobody like.

• 28:51The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  No GoPros. That was way before that. It's like.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Having a digital camera when that started like, yeah, kind of happening. We have one gun, uh, gunfight. So Farad and I filmed it on a camera from one of ours. And that again, unheard of. So 2004 is absolutely ridiculous to have that footage.

• 29:11The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Holy shit.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. The, the only thing that's even close to this severe clear. Do you remember that?

• 29:17The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  There's like one platoon commander and like Charlie company had like an old camcorder that he took to combat. And that was like the only, I think that was OIF1. That was our first one four deployment. But like, nobody had cameras. So the fact that some of that video I saw today, I was like, holy cow, I don't think it existed. So really appreciate that you found the way to get that.

• 29:36The Fat Electrician?

  Well, it was my LAR buddies. And then again, I could be like, hey asshole, I need that footage. Where if I'm hitting up Colonel Mayor for footage, you know, I gotta be a little more, Colonel Mayor, who was the battalion commander of one four is in this film and provide, what I really, I was talking to Adam about this earlier. There's great perspective from the guy who was the battalion commander down to the E3s and E4s that were in, literally in, in that cemetery. Um, so it has all perspectives from that battlefield. This isn't, this isn't some documentary about the history of the battle, or this is, we don't really touch on the politics too much. Uh, it's, it's literally just about the guys who got thrown into the thick of this fight and, and, and what their experiences were. And, and in this

• 30:19The Fat Electrician?

  battle that again, like I said, nothing like it has ever happened before since.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  And then just really quick, this is, uh, for everyone out there watching this on YouTube on Saturday, uh, this will be on Pepperbox. So go check it out on Pepperbox. You get your two week free trial. If you want to watch it and sign up, it's 799 a month, uh, a month, but you do get a two week free trial. So.

• 30:44The Fat Electrician?

  And if you want to leave a comment of how handsome Adam looks right now.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  You compliment him. Leave all the comments on everything also in the thing. Tell Jack he's more handsome.

• 30:56The Fat Electrician?

  Nah.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  There's a, there's a certain subset of women, I feel like, just are about that. Like the dude, like, just like the dude, like.

• 31:03The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, yeah. It's the typical, like, this guy doesn't give a shit.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:06The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  But like.

• 31:07The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, it did work surprisingly.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, like.

• 31:10The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. This guy doesn't care at all. Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, girls like that. Girls like that.

• 31:15The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Everybody's talking you up.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  He's a good wingman, right?

• 31:20The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, I just want a redhead. I just want a redhead with big jugs.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Jack's a simple man.

• 31:29The Fat Electrician?

  So redhead, big jugs, some freckles. I'm happy, man.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  How did, how did Wendy's girl?

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. You just described Wendy's. How, how did all of this start? What was the first like?

• 31:42Speaker 03

  What, what is the etymology of like this whole concept?

• 31:44The Fat Electrician?

  Well, first you guys did the battle.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  From the top. Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 31:50The Fat Electrician?

  Thank you for your service. Not sarcastic.

• 31:55The Fat Electrician?

  No, uh, so long story short, uh, so I served with, uh, some of the guys that were in that battle, uh, in my first deployment. And these guys have been very close with me. I've been to their weddings. Uh, I've lived with some of them. We've been, we've stayed close the last 20 years. Um, and I also know a lot of, uh, Fallujah veterans. Rightfully so, Fallujah has a lot of name recognition. That was a gnarly fight. Um, because this battle in Fallujah happened around the same time and because Fallujah was a more planned operation, um, not a lot of people know what these guys did in Najaf and it's hard for them to tell people because there's no base, you know, a Fallujah, I can say like, I was in Fallujah and be

• 32:37The Fat Electrician?

  like, oh yeah, remember that was all over the news. For the battle in Najaf, that's, I think for, correct me if I'm wrong, for a lot of you Najafets, that's been a harder thing to navigate, uh, with the public, uh, understanding what that battle was. And so, um, I wanted to basically, I wanted to tell my friends' story of what they went through. And it started with, I called my LAR buddies, because I knew who to call. And then, uh, you know, they're, they're like, oh, we gotta talk to this person. And then it was Mike Borneo, who's in the film. He's that lieutenant I talked about, who started, kicked the whole thing off. And then Mike put me in contact with a guy named Oscar Rodriguez, who lives locally here, who was the, one of the company XOs. And then I, then I

• 33:21The Fat Electrician?

  eventually I was put in contact with, uh, a guy named JD Le Hugh, who was one of the first sergeants. He had a Navy cross going into that deployment from the invasion of Iraq. So already a highly decorated guy. Um, then I was put in contact to Colonel John Mayer, who was the battalion commander, uh, for all the Marines during that fight. And, and I said, shit, we have us a film right here. And all these guys were gracious. So over a three day period, we filmed 12 interviews.

• 33:48Speaker 07

  You know that moment when you text your team and say, did anybody follow up with that guy?

• 33:53Speaker 04

  What, Ethan?

• 33:54Speaker 07

  Who?

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Habitual.

• 33:55Speaker 07

  Who?

• 33:55Speaker 04

  We call them mudflaps.

• 33:57Speaker 07

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• 35:19Speaker 07

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• 35:23The Fat Electrician?

  And, uh, recorded these guys' testimonies and recollections and everybody was perfectly vulnerable and open and honest. And I think 20 years later is almost like a sweet spot, because it was, um, far enough away that you've gained a lot of wisdom and a lot of the pain is gone. And you have wisdom from it and you've had, you know, you're, you're in your 40s now, you've had time to think about these things, but it's all, it's also still pretty fresh in your memory. Um, so we were able to capture you guys in, in a, in a way that they really weave the picture well of what their fight was like. And, and like I've said, this isn't a rah rah, guts and

• 36:04The Fat Electrician?

  glory type of, and it's certainly not one of those, oh, war made me sad kind of stories. This is just a perspective of grown men in their 40s, putting themselves back in their E3, E4 mindsets and talking about this gnarly fight that they, that they were in.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, not to pump your tires, but I will, like you, from what I've seen so far, you did a really good job of not glorifying war. But this is a matter of fact, experiential from the boots on ground of this is just what happened. From a story that you probably haven't heard of and of, can I swear? Like just.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  No, not on this podcast. Never.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Just, but just like this crazy battle that nobody knows about that deserves to be known, especially for, you know, the hundreds of casualties and, and boys we left down range. I mean, this, this is a battle that should be known. You did a good job of, just a matter of factual, like crazy experiences from the guys that were there. And I didn't think about like, yeah, this is the right spot, because five, 10 years ago, I still weren't able to open up about it. I didn't cry like a bitch, but I got close to. And if it was too much down, further down, I probably would have started to forget some of like the really salient parts of it. So if you guys did a good job of that.

• 37:12The Fat Electrician?

  I wanted to put it in the film, but there was a part where he just broke camera. He's like, you're not gonna make me cry, Jack. And I was like, I should put that in the movie, actually. No, I didn't put it in there.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, those are those moments, I think, I hope I'll put it back in. Uh, it, it's a moment where I, I, as a dude, it is hard to have that emotional response or even show that little emotional response to the public. Again, Navy SEAL or I've been to combat, you don't think of yourself that way. But it is one of the hardest things to show to the public. I have, on one of the unsub episodes, like me crying and it is, I sent that one. I was like, I am never watching that episode. I am never, I don't want to hear about it. I put that out and that's fucking it. Never tell me about it. And everyone was extremely sweet. I still never will watch that fucking thing a day.

• 38:01The Fat Electrician?

  It's like, I've never, I've never cried before. No, but we saw you, Eli. What are you talking about? You're just gaslighting people.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Didn't happen.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but real warfighters are, are two things. The, the guys who have really been there and done it for the right reasons. They're, they're quiet professionals. They don't like to talk about the deed. And they certainly don't like to show, um, you know, that weakness, a perception of weakness. So both those things, so.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  It's not romanticizing it. It's always my biggest tell. It's like, if Mike Weimer, Sergeant Major Weimer of the Army, that was one of the things we connected on instantly. They were asking about like military warriors, like, oh, and I was like, yeah, I've been, uh, joined, got in gunfights. That fucking sucked way more than I thought. And he's like, that dude's been shot at. Mike instantly was like, homie's been shot at if he's had that response.

• 38:48The Fat Electrician?

  And I got to witness it with you and Brent Downing, who's in the film. They're still very close to this day. Uh, like, think about it when you get together with your old military buddies. You guys aren't reminiscing about like this, you're like, you're laughing, man. You're happy to be around this person.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, we, I'll do, I just shout out to the guys, cause next month, September, and y'all are invited if you want to come, uh, that we're going, I haven't got to see them in a decade and we're all meeting up over a decade.

• 39:20The Fat Electrician?

  Dude, you served with?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:21The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, that's awesome. Dude, that's so important, man.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  Dude, I'm so fucking stuck.

• 39:24The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. Are you, are you doing it in Midland, Texas?

• 39:26Speaker 04

  No, God, no, Jack.

• 39:27The Fat Electrician?

  Okay, all right.

• 39:30The Fat Electrician?

  If you're ever in Midland, Texas, go to Jumbo Rito. All right?

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Thank you, Jack. Family plug right there. But how was it for you and like, watching this? And then the lieutenant's perspective, like the guy that kicked it off? Cause as you guys are saying, it's like, he kicked this off by accident. How was his?

• 39:54The Fat Electrician?

  Mike Borneo, and you served with him in your first, he was one of your, in your company, your first deployment, right?

• 39:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:59The Fat Electrician?

  So he knows Mike way better than I do. Mike Borneo is, uh, even to this day is a very high tempo. He's from Jer, he's from North Jersey. Uh, he's a Jersey guy. A lot of energy with that guy. There could have been no better person to tell the story of how this battle started than, than Mike Borneo, who started the battle. Yeah. Uh, he showed up in one of those shynesty suits that was like a camo pattern.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Urban, urban digicam suit.

• 40:27The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Hey, there I was.

• 40:32The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, I told everybody in the email before, you know, uh, before we started filming like just, just dress as you know, you would for, you know, in your everyday, however you feel comfortable. He showed up in a camo suit. Yeah.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Thank you, Mike.

• 40:46The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, Mike Borneo. And then, yeah, there's just, uh, David Lewis, who's in this film. You know, this is, uh, not to give too much, where you, you were in David Lewis's company as well.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  A miracle.

• 40:58The Fat Electrician?

  It's a, he got shot in the head, not to spoiler alert, uh, but he got shot in the head with an RPG.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  He caught an RPG with his face.

• 41:06The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, uh, and

• 41:08Speaker 03

  It didn't go off.

• 41:10The Fat Electrician?

  And he was, he was Yeah. It wasn't not a great experience for him and we'll show that in the movie. Uh,

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Not soft.

• 41:18The Fat Electrician?

  No.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  No, he's, he's a stud.

• 41:19The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  An miracle.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  He kept going.

• 41:22The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. He was a little reluctant to be in the film because he was like, well, I got taken off the battlefield the first day because of my wounds. He becomes a pertinent, important part of this story because yes, as we continue in this 25 day battle throughout this two hour film. We always go back to David Lewis in the film because people have to realize it's not just about the guys that are still in the cemetery fighting. These guys who got pulled off because their injuries were so bad that they had to be pulled off, they're going through their own fight. And they're doing it alone for the most part. So we continue David's story, even as the combat story continues. We always, throughout the film, we check in with David, what, how's his recovery going and everything like that.

• 42:07The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, and, and that's why he became so important to the story. He represented a lot of those guys in Najaf who their injuries were so bad. They had to be shipped, you know, to Germany and then Walter Reed and go through multiple surgeries.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  And they became a leader back here. Yeah. Well, the battles go on. He was like leading Marines and was like a morale guy.

• 42:25The Fat Electrician?

  He, he was in Walter Reed and he was like the only officer that was wounded in his ward. So he was walking around to every single Marine and soldier that was in that ward at Walter Reed, checking in on them every day. Raising their spirits as he's, as he's blind.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  And a lot of these guys, just from the civilian perspective, a lot of people do not realize when that happens. They get taken out day one, day two. Now they have this regret or remorse because survivor's guilt to it. To a degree where I, I'm not helping my guys. I'm not there with them and it, it's more of an emotional toll on them, even though they're out of the battle. Now they have to deal with that by themselves and a lot of people do not get

• 43:06Speaker 03

  That survivor's guilt, that's it. So the, when I, there's three of us had an LPOP and a 120 landed between the three of us. Two of us got like fragged, thrown through a wall, knocked unconscious, but largely, you know, okay. The other guy, you know, literally like you, Jack and I, like a 120 lands between the three of us. You and I get thrown this way. Jack turns into a piece of Swiss cheese. This gives the guy, his name is Sergeant Harvey Parkinson, had kids, family, was a Marines Marine, my sergeant, my section leader. How the flip does that happen? Like you and I, why, why this guy? Why Jack? It's just so threat for like a decade plus. I mean, I had so much survivor's guilt from, from that alone.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Um, but that's why I just appreciate you guys have given the time to tell like Harv's story and, and you know, Harv was we lost two of my 12 guys in my section and I think another two or three were had Purple Hearts or, you know, casualties. I mean, everybody left out of their scarred.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  It's one of the hard ones and it's the stories that need to be heard. And again, we did.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Y'all are doing the hard part with telling the story, making this possibility. We had the easy side. It was just like, give you guys a platform. Easiest fucking thing we could have ever done. It's like,

• 44:18Speaker 03

  Thank you. Like, really appreciate it.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  You guys need a platform? This is the purpose of Pepperbox.

• 44:23The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, everyone's been on board and I'm so grateful for that because I didn't do a lot of, I didn't do like a, I didn't show up with a, a PowerPoint and a, this is why we should do this movie. I was like, hey guys, I got this idea. Greenland. I'm like, really? You trust me? Yeah. I'm like, okay. Shit, this, this gotta be good. Damn.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Jack's, uh, you don't really come across as a PowerPoint kind of guy.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  He was walking out to his PowerPoint. He's like, what do I do with this?

• 44:49The Fat Electrician?

  I worked it out.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  You guys want my PowerPoint though? No, Jack, we don't want that.

• 44:53The Fat Electrician?

  Should I be using Comic Sans for this? I don't know. Joker Man font.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Wingdings.

• 45:00The Fat Electrician?

  Wingdings, yeah.

• 45:03The Fat Electrician?

  Joker Man font. The imagery is just literally a drawing I did of the, the Wadi Aslam Cemetery. Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Dude, it's still crazy. What was the fight getting kicked off and then your perspective of that where it's a wrong turn or whatever is happening in your mind? What was going on? And again, a cemetery, I don't think I've ever experienced a cemetery in any of my deployments.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

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  15 months.

• 45:33The Fat Electrician?

  Much less like nine by nine miles.

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• 45:37The Fat Electrician?

  And if I'm not mistaken, there's something like, I think it's like six to nine million bodies.

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• 46:02Speaker 06

  So what's in it actually?

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• 46:16Speaker 06

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• 46:37Speaker 04

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• 47:16The Fat Electrician?

  So the significance of that cemetery, the reason why it's considered a holy cemetery is not just because of its size. If you're Shia Muslim and you die, you, you need to be buried in that cemetery within 24 hours. If, if possible. And the reason why it's so significant is the reason the Shia split happened in the first place is because the guy that was, uh, the son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed, um, that's where he was buried. So the, the heir to Islam. That's the heir to the, you know, the prophet Mohammed is buried in that cemetery. So that's the significance of that cemetery. That's why it's so holy.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Fighting there?

• 47:56The Fat Electrician?

  Well, and that's the thing. And this is a big part of the story. This is what Fallujah didn't have, what a lot of other battles in the Guat didn't have. These guys, the holiest mosque in Shia Islam is right there in Najaf, Iraq. And these guys couldn't shoot any direction towards that mosque. And they're throwing those 120s from the mosque and there was nothing, these, they were sitting ducks in that cemetery. These guys are surrounded not just by this, the, the, uh, the Imam Ali shrine, the, the main mosque. They're surrounded by multiple other mosques. So they are surrounded by these areas that they cannot, they cannot, you guys couldn't, your hands were tied.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. The, uh, the ROEs were the craziest I've ever been in my entire life. It was completely political. And there's a lot of still distaste about that is any other battle I've ever been in my entire life. It's like, you get shot at. We're going to get some. We, we literally had our hands tied behind our back on fighting the enemy. So we literally just sat there at night tied in lines with IR fireflies that they could see from the high ground and just taking indirect fire all night, every night. Just getting picked off.

• 49:02Speaker 04

  And you like, uh, for your average person, it's like, oh, well I'd shoot them back. You cannot, you, your, your unit will not do that. No one can do that. And if people don't fucking understand that we followed the rules. Well, they would not follow the rules.

• 49:16The Fat Electrician?

  That's what makes America good. And people don't, when they say like, fuck that, I'll break through. No. The, the fact that your average 20 year old E3, E4 had the foresight and the discipline to not do that says everything about the American warfighter right there.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Well, I would have fired back, but our M16s could have got that far. We need like bigger guns. It was like around the dome. It was presidential, like two block, I'm making this up. This is like essentially what it was, like the dome, presidential approval, a block out was four star or SecDef. And then like a mile out was like four star. So it was like that. So incrementally, the closer you got to the actual bad guys, the harder it got to engage them with any actual weapons that would have effects on target. So, uh, you know, nine mile wide place, we were literally just getting the squatters that were coming down to engage us. But all the big indirect fire that they're shooting our way, we were never had the ability to shoot things back at them that would any have any effect.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  And it's that

• 50:11Speaker 03

  And we had to listen to their prayers every night. So literally they're like praying and then like shooting at us with this big indirect massive weapons. And we're like, just get

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Dude, you have to sit there and it's prayers in the morning, prayers, like I forget how many times a day, like five, six, seven times a day. I forget how many times prayer call happens. And then watching ROE change from different sectors because we had the worst in Rashid and then we went to Mokta Dya. And that was a wake up call for us. Cause again, Rashid for us, very bad. But like, we were in a gunfight every other day, every day. And then when we're going up here, it was, oh, uh, if they're filming you and they seem shady, you're allowed to encase. We're like,

• 50:55The Fat Electrician?

  That's nice.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, because we've been like, oh, they have to shoot at, they can point their guns until they shoot at you. You can't do anything. And you're like, cool, fuck. Yeah, just aimed at each other and until they pull the trigger. That's the only way. And now it's going like, hey, driving up there, it looks like the moon crater, the moon, because all the craters and like, hey, it's like really bad up here. And that was a wake up call, but having what you guys experienced where it's like, hey, it's getting more restricted.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Especially where you're getting attacked from, you just can't do shit. And then 20 something days of just experiencing that.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  I'm glad you get that, brother, because we had like weeks of that where we were just getting at the, we're getting it all. We couldn't give anything back and it was the worst and just getting KIA's after KIA's after casualties and just finally, uh, the night after my brother died in my arms, still have like his skull fragments in my kit and everything. We do this side quest called the Kufa Technical College, which in again, my entire 21 year career, the most single kinetic engagement, violence of action. Um, it should be a case study for every single war college, for every single service on the effectiveness of combined arms. It was amazing where it was just weapons free.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Uh, we found out where their, where their FOB was, where they're like, uh, our, their like remain behind element was where they're doing like their casualty collection and ammo resupply. And it turns out it was supposed to be a feint. Do you know this part? It was actually supposed to be a feint for a different direct action. That Kufa, Kufa Technical College was supposed to be a feint for a tier one hit for like a different intelligence thing. It was supposed to be like a, hey, where did this cause all this, this spin this up? So you guys could do this direct action on this intelligence thing. Well, it turns out that where we did that Kufa hit was like 10 of the top 20 bad guys from the entire country of Iraq at the time. And the reason why nobody knows about that is because it was so beautifully violent for whatever.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  This is where his LAR guys essentially to draw like a mental map. We said LAR on the hinge. I did not. I was a, an E4.

• 53:08The Fat Electrician?

  He was going through, you guys were busting through the, through that college.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, we didn't bust through. It was essentially just, uh, destruction rate. We had LAR studying the hinges. We had a line company, my company, Bravo Company. So at that point I was the assault section leader. So we had just all these rocket teams embedded and then a line company. But then we also had Spectre Gunship and the overheads spooky. Uh, and then we had Cobras and Hueys flying on top of us so close I could really touch the skids. Uh, we had 81s dropping stuff on the back end closing and artillery dropping like Willie P after we cut these buildings open. So it was about, uh, 300 to a thousand bad guys on target that we killed and we took like one casualty.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  But that was like weapons free. So you can imagine, you know, smoking 300 to a thousand bad guys. But that's because it was for three weeks. We were just getting the shit end of the stick. And finally you put a Marine Corps company online with this couple of cluster of buildings that we knew like, that's where the, that's where the bad guys are and just let the boys eat. We all went Winchester, you know, we, I carried six rockets myself, each of my gunners and teams had like three rockets, you know, the, you guys went Winchester with the LARs on the flanks.

• 54:24The Fat Electrician?

  I wasn't there, Adam.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but your boys did. I mean, this, this, this, it literally, the only other thing, uh, like this was, was Bosser and OIF1 where they cut open that, uh, medevac, uh, track that had all the wounded. And then we got the same thing like weapons free. If it moves, it dies and, and my first deployment. And it, it looked like apocalypse now. The Kufa Technical College campus looked like uh, apocalypse now, but it was bad guys, so many bad guys. And I got retribution for my, you know, I'm hoping that the guy who put that 120 and killed my brother was in that.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  You, I mean, like weapons free, going through that experience and it's going to be hard to,

• 55:09Speaker 04

  it's hard to picture if you've never been in that situation, but this weeks of buildup. And when they're saying, hey, this was a distraction for the main mission, but then the main mission, Irene, Irene, Irene, but then it's not Irene. It's you guys were the distraction, but here's actually where all the holdup was going. And then you guys were, someone was blessed enough to fuck shit up.

• 55:33Speaker 03

  Y'all got, it was like, finally like, this is our time.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  And that's what it's like, because now you have the tier ones going that way without realizing it's like, no, everything's happening right there. And you guys get that.

• 55:45The Fat Electrician?

  Take that, Delta.

• 55:47The Fat Electrician?

  Here's my question. Were you allowed to go weapons free because they weren't anticipating that that was supposed to be a legitimate target? Since it was a feint and then what, by the time they realized what was going on, it was just too late and it was done?

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Uh, unfortunately, a little bit the opposite. We knew there was going to be bad guys there. We just thought it was going to be all like low level guys, like a, like a grouping of where they do their R and R. Like we go back to our FOBs. They went back to this spot. What we didn't know was that they had like their, some of them had like families and stuff like that as well there. Cause it was literally like their base. And so that's part of why that thing never got highlighted is because of, there was some collateral damage. And I think at the time my company commander, a rumor is that like, he was about to get like court martialed because we, we literally leveled this place. And there was so much, uh, death and destruction of bad people, bad guys. Uh, and then later on the intel, uh, people, some other level tiers

• 56:42Speaker 03

  did a battle damage assessment. It turned out that there was like 10 of the top most wanted guys in the country were in that carnage. And then, oh, weird. Now you're going to go from getting court martialed to you're the best guy ever in the history of like, as military and politics go. So, uh, but so nobody knows about that, but if you're just looking like the technical Kufa raid, it was again, in a 21 year career, the most impressive, just how the military in its essence, when used appropriately, could be beautifully violent.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  And I, dude, I, we've talked about in the podcast, people do not understand. America restricts itself. The military restricts itself. It's like, even now he's like, oh, we're losing the battle in Iran. It's like, we handicap ourselves.

• 57:26The Fat Electrician?

  We hold ourselves to a high standard.

• 57:28Speaker 04

  Brandon, Brandon, look what I got you. I got you your own poncho shirt because you don't own one.

• 57:33Speaker 06

  I've never had one. Editor, play any clip of unsubscribe.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  You do always wear them. Why?

• 57:39Speaker 06

  That's because Poncho makes shirts for guys that actually go the outside.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  That's right. You will touch grass when you wear a poncho.

• 57:46Speaker 06

  You don't have to, if that scares you, but if you do like touching grass, these are a great shirt for you.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  They have an inner mesh to like.

• 57:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, dude, that's, that's why it breathes so well. Like actually like in, in West Texas summer, like I'm on the road in West Texas all the time. Ponchos are like the uniform because they, they look good. You know, the pearl snaps, everything like that. But they also actually breathe. So you can be outside and just kind of roll the sleeves up and like, you look good and you feel good.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  The boys in the pearl snaps.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  And ladies love them for the record.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  It's probably the best shirt he's ever worn.

• 58:16Speaker 06

  I'm not even kidding. On my daily attire, uh, Poncho is like 75% of it.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  I think everyone wears ponchos.

• 58:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. Cause it's great. Like it's, it's comfy. You, if you need to be professional, it can look professional. Uh, but otherwise just like going around, it breathes well. You could be outside doing sporty shit. Like it's just, it's all around, just good for anything.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  And they do have a little bit of stretch.

• 58:36Speaker 06

  But I didn't have to worry about the cost of refilling my wardrobe with ponchos because we had the code unsub.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  How much do you save with that code?

• 58:42Speaker 06

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• 58:47Speaker 04

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• 58:49Speaker 06

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• 58:51Speaker 04

  By God, I'm going to start wearing poncho. You'd be crazy not to. Yes. And people do not realize that because then when that happens, it is a completely different game.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  Well, you let the boys off the chain. Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. And

• 59:06Speaker 03

  And we could do that at any time, anywhere. We just don't.

• 59:08Speaker 04

  We choose not to.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  People don't realize that. It's fucking crazy.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  Well, we're all taught the laws of war. I mean, I could still rattle off all the 10 principles of laws of war that we got from their battle of Versailles, the treaty of Versailles. Like we still teach that and we follow that in the military and nobody else has hold that standard. And for good reason. That's why like when we go somewhere, we're fighting under just at Bellum, the wars of, for a lawfully fight. And you said below, we fight them in a lawful way.

• 59:36The Fat Electrician?

  I ain't a lawyer, man. I just make movies, dude.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  Jack living his best life.

• 59:42The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  What was one of the most emotional pieces for you to capture, Jack?

• 59:48The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, wow. Uh,

• 59:52The Fat Electrician?

  um,

• 59:56The Fat Electrician?

  you know, this was a great way for me to reconnect with some of these dudes I served with. And again, I've known these guys over the years. Um, so there, there was a couple of moments with them that just because I've known them so well over the years that, you know, it was a moment for both of us, I think. Um, but man, just talking about, um, you know, David Lewis earlier, uh, he, I, he, to me, this was a guy that was reluctant to be involved because he just didn't understand why a guy that was wounded on the first day of the battle would be a part of this story. And, but he became such an instrumental part of this story. And you'll see it, the way it plays out in the film where

• 1:00:36The Fat Electrician?

  we weave his experience with the experiences of the guys that stayed in there and, and some of the guys that didn't come back. And it, it, it all kind of almost, I hate to say it like this, it almost married up perfectly in the film. So that the average kind of person understands all the different sacrifices of war, the people that, um, that get horribly wounded, the people that get killed and, and, and are to never see their loved ones again. And the people that, um, for the most part, walk away from it physically unscathed. There's three different burdens that people carry in war.

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  What's something you didn't expect to learn? Like it surprised you?

• 1:01:19The Fat Electrician?

  Well, I just found out about the collateral damage just about five minutes ago in the Kufa Technicolor raid. Yeah, that was, I don't think anybody mentioned that in the interviews.

• 1:01:28The Fat Electrician?

  How did, I guess, how did the battle kick off? Is my, I understand, like, you guys took a wrong turn, you wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but like, how does this simply winding up at the wrong place devolve into this massive battle? Like, what, what happened?

• 1:01:41Speaker 03

  You'd probably, because I was not there. I showed up, my first night on the gun line was like, two or three days as it was starting to spin up. So I wasn't there for the first two, three days of it.

• 1:01:51The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, August 7th, or August 2nd, 2004 is when that initial firefight happened with that, that, that combined, that cap platoon, essentially like a cavalry platoon going around.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  It was like a logistic, they were, they were doing like, support for like logistical, like a food run, weren't they?

• 1:02:05The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  It was just a food run.

• 1:02:07The Fat Electrician?

  Minor. By the way, big part, we forgot to mention, this was the Marines' second day owning the AO. They had just got done with their left seat, right seat rides with the army unit that they were taking the AO from. Second day owning that AO is, so, uh, Mike Bornos platoon, they, they get contact, uh, Brent Downing, parts of Bravo Company show up, um, that fight dies off after a few hours. Uh, and then something was brewing. Nobody really knew what was going on. The, the Maori militia, who, that's who the, everyone, the Marines were fighting, and the Marines and Army were fighting in that battle. The Maori militia, they were kidnapping cops and torturing them over the radio. Everybody

• 1:02:48The Fat Electrician?

  knew something was brewing. Around the night of August 4th, um, the police station, right outside Revolutionary Circle, which is right outside the cemetery there, got overrun by these Maori, got attacked by the Maori militia. The Marines have already, had already been sent on numerous react missions at this point. So they're starting to get a little, like, this is gonna be another false alarm type thing. They show up, the sun's just coming up, it's quiet out, and then the mortars land, on call. These guys are bracketed, the mortars are landing, and then gunshots start coming out of the cemetery. Now they see guys starting to run across the street, in and out of the cemetery. So now all the Marines are engaging

• 1:03:30The Fat Electrician?

  all these guys. This is the, the morning of August 5th, you have one LAR platoon, you have one cap platoon, and one platoon of 81 millimeter mortars that, they don't have their mortars with them, they're an improvised rifle company, or rifle platoon. They are engage, they are engaging these guys in and out of the cemetery. This is gonna be a big part of the film, forgot to mention this part. About three or four, the, the, they've already suffered a bunch of wounded at this point. Um, one of the Marines of 1-4 had already been killed, and Al Jazeera reporter has been killed at this point. Uh, my buddy Mike Ball, who will be a big part of this story, he already had to, um, one of his Marines already took a, a, a trapnel from an RPG, from oral artery thing, got them out. Right about that time,

• 1:04:14The Fat Electrician?

  about, I'd say four or five hours into the fight, from what I understand, uh, the, the Hueys and Cobras were doing gun runs. The Hueys were spotting, the Cobras were launching, and a Huey got shot down. A, a Marine Corps, uh, Huey got shot down. And so now, since, for the first time since 1993 Black Hawk Down, these guys are having to recover downed aircraft personnel. So they all rushed to that, this is, that's when the fight truly, uh, that's when, that's when they were like, oh shit, this is gonna be a fight. It was after the Huey went down, they, they got the pilot out, um, uh, they got the air crew out. It was

• 1:04:56The Fat Electrician?

  after that, that Colonel John Mayer, who, uh, is in this film, basically called up to his boss and said, hey, we have to go into this cemetery, that, this, we, this is the only way we're gonna stop them at this point. We're in a full-on battle, we can't disengage, we have to go in the cemetery. The call went up, we don't know, it could have went up to the White House, to the Secretary of Defense, but the call went up, at least to the, the theater commander, General Casey, and, and they were, they said, they authorized them to go into the, into that, that cemetery, and that, that will be the turning point in the film where it becomes a horror movie. Because right as the sun's setting, two line

• 1:05:36The Fat Electrician?

  companies of Marines with one platoon of Bravo Company, and 80, and an 81's platoon, they, they shot small rockets through this wall that was separating the cemetery from the road, uh, and they found some holes that had already been busted out from RPGs during the earlier fight. And they went through these holes, and they got online in this cemetery, World War I style. And they sat there at the edge of this cemetery, looking at all these tombs, some stacked 10 feet high, catacombs underneath. And they, uh, and they were told, push. And they walked, and they pushed through that cemetery all night, uh, until they got

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  For three weeks.

• 1:06:16The Fat Electrician?

  For three weeks.

• 1:06:18The Fat Electrician?

  So, I, I get, like, you have this initial contact, and this initial battle or firefight or whatever, and then, is going into the cemetery like, the catalyst that like, got a bunch of more reinforcements and more people involved because it was like, you know, you guys weren't supposed to set foot in this holy place, or what was, or did they really just stumble upon a hornet's nest of people by, by chance, or was going into the cemetery something that made it so much worse?

• 1:06:45The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, I can't speak specifically to that, but it, I am, yes, I deduce that, once those Marines entered that cemetery, because they had to, they had no choice at that point, once those Marines entered that cemetery, that drew even more of the, the Maori militia into the cemetery. It was an inevitable going to be a grunt-on-grunt clash. Uh, just like any Civil War battle, when, when those two armies eventually land on the same chunk of land, there's no going back, you're gonna have to

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  I think you described it out perfectly, actually. Because that was our, so, half of that deployment was really battle hardened guys from our OIF-1 deployment, and the other half was new guys, and having, you know, just been in Iraq for nine months. We knew that this was like, we felt it, you could sense it, just the way you described it, actually. Uh, and I think that the, there was, it was known by higher negotiations from like geopolitical and diplomatic and go for general level officers, that there was like a 50,000 man militia, and Moktad Al-Sadr was the guy who was, you know, climbing the rung to like, fill the power vacuum from, um, Saddam. And so this was like a major figure in Iraq, and so this was gonna happen regardless.

• 1:07:55The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. And it, and it just so happened, it just almost happened by accident, but it just happened to be that battalion of Marines was there. And, and, yeah, and so the Marines were primarily in that cemetery for three days, and, and that will be, uh, 45 minutes of that film is dedicated to those first three days, uh, just the crazy stuff that happened in there. Eventually, they knew by day three that, you know, they, they, one battalion of Marines couldn't do this alone. Uh, so 1-5 and 2-7 Army Cav were sent down, I believe from Baghdad. And, uh, it's a joke from, a lot of the Marines joke about it, this will be in the film, but they're like, we don't need the Army. I was like, we don't need the Army. And then they saw all the Bradleys and tanks going down the

• 1:08:38The Fat Electrician?

  road, and one guy, Sam Rivera, says, oh, that was the first time I realized, America will never be defeated on the battlefield. He, he said he saw more Bradleys and tanks, that they had Marines in their battalion. So the Army came, and that, that was definitely a crucial part of the battle when the Army showed up, and, um,

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, they stopped shooting at me.

• 1:08:56The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, yeah. It's harder to, it's harder to, to punch a frickin Abrams than it is, you know, a, a, a fire team of Marines.

• 1:09:05The Fat Electrician?

  But they were the Army, but it's pretty fucking cool when they show up.

• 1:09:09The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  It's due to multiple

• 1:09:11The Fat Electrician?

  No, they all said, it's like, oh yeah, we need these guys.

• 1:09:13Speaker 03

  But to the enemy's credit, though, they are better than, people want to give them credit for. They, they had very good snipers, and doesn't any of them are shooting on all the thermal sites.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

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• 1:10:52The Fat Electrician?

  Think about this, a year prior, uh, uh, they disbanded the Iraqi army.

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, so where do you think those guys went?

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:00The Fat Electrician?

  Again, great call by the United States government on that one.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Jake's like, hmm. Dude, I will, I will say, just a multiple day, or a, like, 10, 20 day battle is absolutely insane, because, especially in GWAT, most battles last

• 1:11:18Speaker 06

  My longest was probably like twelve hours. Give or take, and then we'd have an engagement at last either from thirty minutes to a few hours. But a multiple engagement was so rare and those stories are extremely rare too. Yes, when we did, they pushed through uh. Diala River Province, that's multiple day, but again.

• 1:11:40The Fat Electrician?

  Hey, when were you in the Diala River area?

• 1:11:43The Fat Electrician?

  During the uh two thousand and seven.

• 1:11:46The Fat Electrician?

  Okay, I was there right before you. I'm a I'm a little older than you, Eli, as you can tell.

• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  A year.

• 1:11:51The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. Well, I got a few things.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  One year difference.

• 1:11:54The Fat Electrician?

  I've got things going for me that you don't cigarettes and white jeans. Yeah.

• 1:11:59The Fat Electrician?

  I guess kind of piggybacking off your question like, because all I do is read war history stuff and I don't cover anything newer than Vietnam generally, but one of the weird parts to me is hearing all these stories of dudes that have been in like multi day long battles that obviously have a bunch of different engagements within them. And maybe it was a little bit different because it's more recent, but going back to like World War Two and stuff. These guys are like, yeah, we were in this battle for eight days. And then it was just like every night it was, okay, we're off the clock. And there's just these weird periods and then the next morning it starts back up again. So like, I guess if you, from your perspective, if you're experiencing, what was it like with the lulls in that battle where things weren't going on like what?

• 1:12:43The Fat Electrician?

  I just, I can't imagine what are you doing at that point in time? Like you've just gone through hell for six hours and you're like, do you have to remind yourself to eat and drink water at that point? Or like, like I, I.

• 1:12:55Speaker 06

  I get dude, I love this question because again, it is I. We had our breaks where it's like, okay, you're pulling security or we're fucking with our guys like.

• 1:13:03The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 06

  Or we're living out in sector and it's like, hey, okay, we're on rotation. You're not, you're pulling security, but you're going on a mission, whatever, but living in that.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, unfortunately, there was no really like lulls because of the indirect fire. So there's twenty four hour threat of getting a one twenty. Uh, and they were, it's really eerie. The only thing I think that I hated more than IEDs is the indirect fire because IEDs, it's a boom. You know, you're gone or you're not, but you don't, you know, there's signs for like VBIDs that like triggers for those, you can pick out vehicles after a while, but, but it's essentially, it's a boom. For those, it's like a three or four second that scream of it coming in and it just mentally messes with your head. And for just twenty four hours a day, we're in direct threat of indirect fire. At night, the enemy did not have, they had some NVGs that were taken from our side, unfortunately.

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  Um, we'd lost some NVGs, not, not me personally, but the, the good guys lost some NVGs and that's what they're using to spot. And we had our hinge men set with IR firefly. So imagine just like having like second shitty generation nods, but they could see our lines being set up. And that's how they walked in indirect fire at night. And then during the daytime is when the more of like the dude on dude kinetic stuff was happening.

• 1:14:19The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, I gotta say too, this isn't sexy by any means, but it's such an important part of telling the story. We dedicated three or four minutes of this film to talking about how they were, they weren't just fighting the enemy. They were fighting the elements. One hundred and twenty five degree heat, August in southern Iraq. So these guys were fighting uh, uh, um, severe dehydration. And you mentioned in the film, hyper nutrimia, they could not replenish salt in their body at the rate that they were, they, they were drinking water and it was going right out of their body. So they, they, and the heat, the exhaustion from the heat, you know, it makes you a little delirious. Like you guys were having to fight your minds as much as you were the enemy.

• 1:15:03Speaker 06

  If I can guess this before you speak, it is you were drinking a liter or trying to drink a liter one hour. You have the white lines between your armor. And then on top of that, you will do, uh, you will self administer IV bags that just the drip, you do the squeeze. We used to give ourselves IV bags, but am I pretty, like dude.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, we hadn't adapted to the part where we could give each other IVs and we were always under threats. There was no like guys like hanging out, doing IVs. We were like literally on the gun line. Uh, but the white lines, yes, and I'm like, I have all the chaos and I probably just as much PTSD from hot water scalding my mouth than anything else. Because it was not even, we only had like a couple of liters, but again, we had two liters of canteens to last us all day.

• 1:15:51The Fat Electrician?

  Those crappy plastic.

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  Yes, before, before, before the analogies, I was still like canteens. And so it was like two of the leaders just drinking scalding hot water. I still hate water. I don't, I don't drink water anymore. Like it's.

• 1:16:03Speaker 06

  It's on your vehicle, it's on the Humvees and like, yeah, just take this, you drink it like, ah, oh, it's fucking hot. This is garbage, but.

• 1:16:10The Fat Electrician?

  And you have no choice. You're gonna die if you don't drink that water.

• 1:16:13The Fat Electrician?

  So, oh my God. I mean, the battle was twenty five days. You got there on what day three?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18The Fat Electrician?

  So I mean, you were there for twenty two days.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  No, we, so we had three platoons and it was like rotating out. So like one back in the rear and two platoons out. So I was on there for like a week, then that huge raid happened. And then my, my company commander actually stood me down after that Kufa Technical College raid for a few days because I was ready to just go berserker. Um, was it like Legends of the Fall where these rides off into the horse and like comes back with all the scalps? Like I was, I was about ready to be like Brad Pitt from that. I was so mad.

• 1:16:49The Fat Electrician?

  That's a sign of a good leader too, that, that recognized that.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  You know, that my company commander again, we are so blessed that we that, that washing machine environment that created that battle. We had one of the best company commanders and then, you know, Colonel Mayor in twenty one years of service. He's probably in the top like two dudes of leaders in my military enlisted officer, Marines, Navy SEALs. Anybody in that unit, we still talked about him in the third deployment. We were talking about how if only we had like Colonel Mayor, we would have walked through fire and ran into a naked building on fire for that guy. He was such a good leader. Um, tell them about like after like the film.

• 1:17:25The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, yeah. Like, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong, but being under, you were there for a week in combat the entire time, constant threat of indirect fire.

• 1:17:36The Fat Electrician?

  I have to imagine to some, some type of degree that you get, I don't know if comfortable is the right word, but you just get comfortable with the idea of indirect fire. Like, how did your thought process change from the first time you start taking indirect fire in that battle to just coming to accept the fact of this is the environment that I'm living in and it's not gonna stop.

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  Good, good question.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:18:01Speaker 06

  Can I?

• 1:18:03Speaker 06

  Dude, I, it's really fascinating because I haven't got to talk to somebody like with kind of the same experience, but it's it's being so used to it when we go on, it's like those first few months, you just get acclimated to the environment. You get used to it and then you get complacent where you just stop caring. We just, dude, I'd have night missions when we just smoked cigarettes and like, ah, it's not our shoes. At least it's in our cherry. We're good. And that was for a good portion of the deployment where you're just, you're so in the zone, you're like, nope, don't care. I'm gonna just go through it as long as I'm protecting the guys to my left and right. But you get complacent and

• 1:18:48Speaker 06

  hypervigilance, like the hypervigilance never leaves for me, like I would always be scanning, but I'm, I'm comfortable with what's gonna happen next is what would happen to me.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  I remember not so much complacent more is just being on the gun line at night with the IDF realizing that I had no power or control. If they dropped it on my position, then it was like my bingo card was punched. There's nothing I could do about that.

• 1:19:13The Fat Electrician?

  And that's why I ask, because there's, I just did a video on a Civil War general and it's not the general I did the video on, but um, Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general has a quote that like that situation reminds me of. And the quote was, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has a fixed time for my death. I do not concern myself about it. It's just a notion of like, there's nothing I can do. I might as well not be worried about it. Which is crazy.

• 1:19:41The Fat Electrician?

  Got shot by one of his own guys.

• 1:19:42The Fat Electrician?

  Correct.

• 1:19:44Speaker 06

  When it's your time, it's your time. I truly felt that. It was when it was my buddies times, it was the times we had a striker pull off. Uh, first platoon pulled off, IED exploded and they were like, holy shit, we got so lucky. They pulled back in base, they opened, they were eating chow, a mortar dropped right in front of the exact same, on the exact same day. Dropped in front of that on base striker with the ramp down and it took out five of our guys. They got sent home, killed, ham. And we were like, man, like when it's your time, it's your time.

• 1:20:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Speaker 06

  And that's where we just got used to that mindset. It's like, you're not controlling it. Try not to worry about it.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 06

  If it's your time, it's your time.

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I just hate IEDs and indirect fire. I'd rather be able to like see the guy, have a real fight.

• 1:20:28Speaker 06

  That we I think we lost three people to actual gunfight. Everything else was IEDs or indirect fire.

• 1:20:38The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, what's the fucking time? What's, what's the meme that was going around a while back? Ukraine veterans explaining to GWOT veterans, the IEDs fly now.

• 1:20:50Speaker 04

  That is the most terrifying.

• 1:20:54Speaker 04

  You're just running from the fucking DJI drone doing a wedding shot.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  It's funny, I actually was watching some of the similarities of like they're literally in trench warfare for a while and Ukraine was like, that was literally me in Najaf in the catacombs like just you're there like then ID comes or the 120 comes. It's like, yeah, flying IDs.

• 1:21:15The Fat Electrician?

  And, and, and remember those, those catacombs, like there were guys down there. So these guys were in a 360 degree battlefield because those, they were, they, they pushed to take, they pushed to take ground and then guys, they didn't have enough grenades to clear those catacombs. So they would push to take ground and next you know, somebody's shooting behind you and you gotta go deal with that now.

• 1:21:37The Fat Electrician?

  I know this is serious, but every time you guys say catacombs, all I can picture in my head is if there's ever like, uh, it sounds like, you know how like action video games have like a scary level, like a horror level for the video game? This is that for like modern warfare is like the catacombs map where it's supposed to be scary. It's insane.

• 1:21:58The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, they, I mean, we try to highlight it as, as visually as, as much as we can in the film and everyone's talking about it, but that it's, it again, I'm saying this purely as the person that, uh, was piecing this story together from their personal accounts. I'm like, the whole time like this is a fucking horror story. This is, this is a horror film. These guys.

• 1:22:20The Fat Electrician?

  Should have never got rid of flamethrowers.

• 1:22:22The Fat Electrician?

  Seriously, that would have come in handy for you guys.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  But even, but even with a flamethrower, there was tunnels. So I'm like, Jack, you say it right. Like you can do mount, you can do, south, you could do jungle, desert, mountain. It just, there's something about being in a city with refrigerator sized rocks everywhere and tombs that are that size to sometimes buildings and then always knowing that you've never cleared your back. There's never a clear lane where there's not a threat and that sucks. Especially when you're sitting in the two to four man LPOPs on a line. You're always like, shoot, where's the enemy coming from for, you know, days?

• 1:23:01The Fat Electrician?

  And again, I, I said it earlier and again, just talking to these guys and then talking to a lot of other dudes offline. Adam put me in contact with, uh, one of his, uh, old platoon or company, guys in this company named Freddie Osuna. Uh, I've talked to a lot of guys that aren't in the film that have helped me out with this and, and like, I can't say enough. It was the definition of uncommon valor was a common virtue with these like, and again, since there was no, um, structure paperwork wise, a lot of this heroism that happened, there was a guy, um, that there was a marine who had a second chest wound. He crawled something like a hundred guy in your company, uh,

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  Brooks?

• 1:23:45The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah. The guy who, and I don't know his name off the top of my head. I wish I did. I, I'd love to give him as much props as possible. Brooks was a guy in his company that had a second chest wound and this other marine kid, you know, dehydrated, crawled through gunfire to grab him and firemen carried him like 200 yards to get him to, uh, where the evac vehicles were and then collapsed and became a heat casualty, like literally made it just enough to get his brother back to safety. And then he basically almost died just carrying this guy out of the battlefield.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Every night when those indirect mortars were dropping, guys were carrying guys under fire. Uh, you know, Navy cross style actions that they didn't get anything for. If they got anything, it might've been like, I got an RCOM for, you know, carrying my dying brother out while he was, you know, bleeding out, but there, I got an RCOM. Most people didn't get anything. And they're doing those types of actions for three weeks straight.

• 1:24:45The Fat Electrician?

  It was the norm. And so then the elevation of, of handing out medals that because if it was a single firefight, I'm like, yeah, that guy, that's a silver star right there. But with those, those crazy things, those guys were doing, it just became the norm in that cemetery.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  That's the interesting thing about being a, an infantry marine for a decade before being a Navy SEALs on a SEAL deployment. If you're doing like a kinetic deployment, almost every guy comes back with like, uh, a B with V, a Bronze Star with valor. But every single marine in that company probably should have had a BV and me getting an RCOM was a big deal. Like that was like, I was one of like a couple of guys. I think in my company, maybe two guys got BVs from the army. And that was because they did the wildest things and they happened to also be in like leadership positions. Um, so it's, it's just interesting how those awards go and just it's almost, it saddens me to, to know that specifically I had enlisted Marines who were like the younger guys who then got out of the Marine Corps and they didn't have a combat action ribbon.

• 1:25:45Speaker 03

  Like the, the, the, the system failed them so poorly. Like I want their kids, their grandkids and the, you know, the guys. So I'm very blessed now. You know, 20 years later, whatever, they're finally approving my Purple Heart. But I know guys who, like Freddie Osuna, and I'll tell his story, up until three years ago, that guy had a zero percent VA rating. Zero percent. The VA was giving him nothing. A guy that got literally blown through a wall with me was, you know, three deployments together, zero percent VA rating. And so God willing, I'm going to, you know, correct a lot of those, those wrongs.

• 1:26:19Speaker 04

  I've, we've talked about it. I've said there's problems with it because a lot of people, I don't know how you guys feel. I know there's like both sides of the spectrum.

• 1:26:26The Fat Electrician?

  Adam has opinions. You guys could just make a whole show when you guys go back and forth.

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  Because I'm like, I got so little. And then I see people that like, I'm at a hundred. I'm like, well, how many gunfights were you in? So nine. I'm like, wow, that's crazy.

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  A crate fell next to me at boot camp and scared.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  And I got a hundred percent. I'm like, wow, that's, oh, we have, huh, huh. It's my fourth time and I'm at 60. And I have like Purple Heart, like all my list of shit and it's still a battle. And that's where I've like, what's the gentleman's name that's struggling? He got blown through a fucking wall and then what's his name?

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  Freddie Osuna.

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  Freddie, like Freddie got blown through a wall and.

• 1:27:07Speaker 03

  Rendering aid to our bleeding out guy in the heat of battle. I did three deployments with him. Zero percent VA rating. The, I don't think he even got like a combat valor for that, for that deployment.

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  Dude, and I've, thankfully I had a really good first line and really good chain of command. It's like, do not worry about your fucking medals. They are all political. Fuck those things. And we got super lucky with that because that set the standard for us. Cause we rotate on base. We've seen people getting them. We're like, wait, why are they getting it? They didn't even do anything. And like, our leadership was like, don't, their leadership filled up that paperwork different. Don't worry about it. You're like, oh, okay. That's weird. Huh.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. I have, uh, I will help your buddies get as much awards as possible for that or disability. Cause I do think people that have that paperwork that shows, hey, here, I was right here and it's all the, the proofs behind it. And it's not, well, you didn't act the proper way during a VA meeting. So you don't get, you get zero percent because you bent down, right? And you're like, what the fuck? Homie, you got sent through a wall. You were a part of the Avengers.

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  He had survivor's guilt. He's like, why do I deserve for all the stuff? Cause our brother didn't make it. Like, oh man, he's, he's still struggling with it a little bit.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  Uh, Freddie Wong, never said Freddie rocket jump Freddie.

• 1:28:25The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  One of my favorite things he ever said, he was like, Eli, do they, this is 2010, 2012. He was like, Eli, do they give, uh, Purple Hearts for PTSD? I was like, no, why? And I was like, or TBI? And I was like, no. And I'm like, oh my God, you are a hundred percent. I'd never thought about.

• 1:28:44The Fat Electrician?

  TBI is way, getting a head injury is way worse than getting shot in the foot. Like that, that's, and that's another thing about, to put into context too, I'm glad nowadays we understand about TBI. In 2004, to get blown up and your head goes smashing through a wall. We didn't understand the significance of TBIs back then, like we do now. So it was like, literally like, oh, well, you're not bleeding out. So.

• 1:29:11Speaker 03

  Your nose bleed.

• 1:29:12The Fat Electrician?

  You're still here. Yeah. It's like, that guy's puking though. There's probably not normal for him to be puking like that.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  I remember at one point you had to be like passed out for like a 30 seconds or a minute or something like, set, set the watch. Is he coming to you yet? Like give him a sternum rub like, all right, 31 seconds. All right, Purple Heart. It's like, what are we talking about right now? A guy gets blown through a wall.

• 1:29:31The Fat Electrician?

  Dude, like you, you should have Purple Hearts for TBI. That's way worse than taking a little shrapnel.

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

  Dude, I have so many buddies that like, we had like 42 or. Forty-eight Purple Hearts during my, but just my battalion in my like sixteen months. Like we want to do bad shit. And again, the amount we would have if it was TBI related. I have buddies that got like launched ID, uh, went through like five hundred, six hundred pound ID, punched through the whole of the striker, just the engine base.

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm sure her body feels jelly. Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:05Speaker 04

  Dude, they fly like.

• 1:30:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  And I think it was Markford flew from the back, from the front, driver's hatch all the way to the back, smacked his head. And when they're pulling him out, he doesn't come to until we're, he's in a building. He's like, what the fuck's going on? And we're like, oh, you're good. You're good. No, not a fucking thing.

• 1:30:22The Fat Electrician?

  We have a eight-minute musical number in Guat the Musical about TBI.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Dude, I'm so stoked for Guat the Musical. That's what we're actually, that's what this is to launch Guat the Musical.

• 1:30:34The Fat Electrician?

  I'm really only doing this film.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  For Kickstarter?

• 1:30:36The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm only doing this film to make enough money to fund Guat the Musical. Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  Where, uh, where can the people, uh, find both of you on social media? And then where can they watch this amazing documentary at?

• 1:30:51The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, I am a jacked history on YouTube, uh, and I, you can watch this on Pepperbox TV, August fifteenth, uh, it, the, the, the film is called Battle in Najaf, Whatever It Takes,

• 1:31:07The Fat Electrician?

  starring Adam Schwartz.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  I'm definitely not starring it. Uh, Adam Schwartz, I'm up on all the socials, but don't, don't even go to my stuff. Go check out this to see the Patriots.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  Well, well, you should link it in your stuff to go check.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I'll, I'll, yeah, I'll promote it on my socials. I think I have like three thousand followers on X or something. So.

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  That's a fuck down for a lot of people. Imagine three thousand people staring at you.

• 1:31:27The Fat Electrician?

  Adam, I, I do want to say this about Adam. Uh, he is a real patriot. I've known this guy since we were eighteen years old. Uh, he went off and did his thing, uh, but we have kept in touch occasionally throughout the years. Um, it's no, I, I want to just tell a funny thing about Adam. Dude, I went and did war eventually, so I don't remember fucking boot camp. Like I don't remember boot camp, but one thing dawned on me recently, I went to boot camp with Adam. This is no surprise to me that he became a Navy SEAL because Adam got bored with Marine Corps boot camp. I specifically remember him, he'd just get bored and he'd ask to, he'd fuck up on purpose just to get, uh, punished because he just was like bored. He's like, I just hope they haze me or something. So he would literally ask to be punished because he'd just get bored with it.

• 1:32:12The Fat Electrician?

  So it's no surprise. He went off and had the career he did af- after the, uh, the Marine Corps.

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  Thanks, buddy. Yeah. Good shout out.

• 1:32:20The Fat Electrician?

  He's a tough son of a bitch is what I'm trying to say. He's a hard guy. Yeah. Not me. I did four and I am making movies now. Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  Jack's going to try out to be a Navy SEAL with him. If as many, how many people have to sign up for you to become a Navy SEAL?

• 1:32:37The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, sign up for what?

• 1:32:39Speaker 04

  Pepperbox and watch this video.

• 1:32:41The Fat Electrician?

  Uh, yeah, if, uh, if we get a million views on this movie on Pepperbox, I will go do buds.

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  Oh, a hundred percent. I will make that happen. We will all make this happen because that turns on to an entire campaign.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  That's a dangerous commitment, bro.

• 1:32:55The Fat Electrician?

  The gang drops Jack off at the Navy recruiter.

• 1:32:58Speaker 04

  No, we're filming this and we're not participating.

• 1:33:00The Fat Electrician?

  You have to get me ready though.

• 1:33:01Speaker 04

  No, that's way more hilarious.

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  I will make some calls.

• 1:33:04The Fat Electrician?

  We're, we're from the same area, so I'll fly up to your neck of the woods.

• 1:33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08The Fat Electrician?

  And you train me in your backyard to get me ready. You'll do, you'll be my.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  We'll document that. We'll document that.

• 1:33:12The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  I just want buds to not let you ring the bell. Like really.

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  Like, like he's a, like he's a foreign officer, like they won't let a foreign officer like this. You can ring the bell. Okay. You're not, because it used to happen is they let the foreign officers ring the bell. They send them back home, they'd execute them. So now even if a foreign officer quits, they like still force them through. I want to like make that contract. Like they don't let you quit. You're just forced.

• 1:33:34The Fat Electrician?

  We're going to document all of it. The documentary is going to be called Jack Carries the Boats.

• 1:33:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, Jack Carries the Boats. Jack leaves a six pack.

• 1:33:43The Fat Electrician?

  Is this my own specialized personalized buzz or do I have to be around all those twenty-year-old studs?

• 1:33:48The Fat Electrician?

  No, the real one, you have to sign a Navy contract and if you fail out, you're at the, you're at the, you, you serve at the whims of the Navy.

• 1:33:53The Fat Electrician?

  Contract and then I don't have to do anything after that?

• 1:33:56Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, as long as you finish buds. If you don't finish buds, you have to do the five-year contract.

• 1:34:01The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  Three years. I like the idea where he doesn't get to quit. He just gets forced through regardless.

• 1:34:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is what I love this idea. A million views, we're going to make it happen.

• 1:34:10The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, I'm going to tell you what, I am not making it day two on that thing. Yeah.

• 1:34:16The Fat Electrician?

  I can handle a little sleep deprivation. Sure. I, I'm not making it past twelve hours, actually.

• 1:34:23The Fat Electrician?

  I, I've seen the documentary. I don't know.

• 1:34:26The Fat Electrician?

  Nick, you want to close this out? Thank you for coming to the unsubscribe podcast. I was joined here today by Eli Double Tap, Mr. Jack Mandeville, our new friend, Adam Schwartz. Still said it right twice. Fuck yeah. And I'm still me, donut operator. Thanks for coming. Okay, bye.

• 1:34:40Speaker 04

  We love you.