#15 DJ Shipley SEAL - Team 6 / DEVGRU Operator

This episode of The Shawn Ryan Show I sit down with former SEAL TEAM 6/DEVGRU Operator DJ Shipley. Shipley has 17 years serving the United States at the highest level as a Navy SEAL Tier 1 operator. Shipley gives us the most descriptive interview I have ever done. His service goes unmatched. Shipley is also the founder of GBRS Group, a tactical training group that only employs Tier 1 Operators and the founder of Tribe Sk8z a company that makes one of a kind skate boards that are works of art, and employs only Gold Star family members (The title, which is reserved for families of military members who have died in the line of duty). Enjoy the show. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 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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  I'm not the first then.

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• 1:35Speaker 04

  War's not fair. I think that was the lesson learned out of that. Doesn't matter how good you are. If you don't get the chance to fight, the chance to show how good you are, it doesn't matter.

• 1:58Shawn Ryan?

  Hey guys, let me tell you about this subscription service that I've been working real hard on called Vigilance Elite Patreon. Basically on Patreon, we have it broken up into three different tiers. We've got Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Let's dive in. Our Tier 1 patrons get all the behind the scenes footage of the Sean Ryan Show. That could include behind the scenes photos, that could be side conversations that we have in between breaks, that could be specific questions that our patrons give us for the guests on the Sean Ryan Show, and a ton of bonus content that doesn't really fit into any specific category.

• 2:37Shawn Ryan?

  For our Tier 2 patrons, they get access to our Tactical Training Library, which consists of well over 100 videos. We've broken those videos up into separate categories, and those categories are rifle fundamentals, pistol fundamentals, drills, tactics, driving, gear and weapon setups, and everybody's favorite, mindset. Also on Tier 2, you will get a live update from me on the 1st and the 15th of every month, where we talk about the upcoming guests on the Sean Ryan Show, plus all the benefits of Tier 1.

• 3:20Shawn Ryan?

  Our top tier, which is Tier 3, gets full access to all the other tiers, plus they get full access to me, where we do video teleconferencing, VTC. Once a month, we discuss anything from tactics, to current events, to who's coming on the show. I take suggestions, and it's very interactive. No matter what tier you choose, the support is greatly appreciated, and it is the only thing that makes this show drive on. So, thank you for all the support. See you on Patreon.

• 4:02Shawn Ryan?

  First deployment in the SEAL Teams, you get in, biggest loss in SEAL Team history happens. Then you get through Green Team, and right after you graduate, what, maybe six, less than a year afterwards?

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, August of, uh, August of 11.

• 4:21Shawn Ryan?

  Extortion 17 happens, which again, is the biggest loss in SEAL Team history.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  I remember looking over and seeing, um, Jay, and I remember him sitting upright, and I watched him get shot, one more time, um, right in the face. And it looked like that was it. He hit the ground so hard, you knew he was dead. So the way it was, it's a front door and there's a long ass hallway going down, and there's a dude who's in a sandbag position with a belt fed at the end of the hallway. And he's just chewing down the hallway. Boom, spins him around and dumps him. He gets back up, grabs him and gets shot again.

• 5:09Shawn Ryan?

  So hold on, did you eliminate the threat?

• 5:12Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 5:13Shawn Ryan?

  He's dead.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did he, he didn't hit you?

• 5:15Speaker 04

  He did.

• 5:16Shawn Ryan?

  He did hit you.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  He hit me in the, in the chest plate. I unloaded on him, got off three rounds in a bolt lock. I think he took a double stack to the elbow, so it blew out his entire arm. And then he took one to the face, that basically removed his jaw, removed his nose, um, and you could look inside him. You could hear that dude, the impacts, you could hear him smack, you could hear him screaming, and it was very satisfying. And as we go to the vibe, this dude opens up on the front door, and lets it go, and just, you just see splinters of wood and it just fucking traces us.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  It's not reality until it's reality. That's not gonna happen. Yes it is. Whether you want it to or not, it's happening right now.

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I want to start by giving everybody a couple of updates on what we have going on here at Vigilance Elite. And I want to start off by saying thank you to everybody that left us an iTunes review. Guys, The Sean Ryan Show now has 10,000 iTunes reviews in only 14 episodes. That is unheard of. So if you haven't left us a review yet, please head over to iTunes, there's a link down in the description. Just leave us one word if you're short on time and help us get to 20,000 reviews. I would really appreciate it.

• 7:02Shawn Ryan?

  Moving on, to our patrons, our subscription network where we put behind the scenes content. Guys, it is patrons like you that make all of these one-of-a-kind stories from these gentlemen that are on this show possible. These stories, most of these stories have never been told before, and it really is your support that allows all of these productions to happen. So thank you very much. Moving on, we're now getting into the YouTube Shorts game. So, we have all these different artifacts, a lot of them are from guests on the show, maybe you've seen some of them in the background of the show.

• 7:46Shawn Ryan?

  And we are now doing a studio tour of each and every piece on YouTube Shorts. You can click the link right there, and it'll show you the YouTube Short, the first one. So we'll be doing that. Alright, let's get on with it. Ladies and gentlemen, and now what you've all been waiting for, my next guest. He's a former Navy SEAL and a former development group, also known as SEAL Team 6 Operator. He's got the better part of 17 years of operational experience. He's also the founder of Tribe Skates, which is a skateboard company that employs only

• 8:31Shawn Ryan?

  Gold Star family members. If you don't know what a Gold Star family member is, it's basically a family member who has lost an immediate family member in war.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's who he employs, which is very solid work. He's also the founder of GBRS Group, which is the premier training group in the United States and most up to date at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my next guest, Mr. DJ Shipley. DJ Shipley, welcome to the show, man.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  Appreciate you having me.

• 9:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's an honor.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  It's good to be here.

• 9:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's good to have you. Been wanting to get one of you guys over here for a while and, you know, finally it happened, so. But just a quick snapshot of your career before we get started, 17 years in the military, most of, pretty much all of which is in Naval Special Warfare, went through, but straight into the SEAL teams and then over to DEF Group. So medically retired, now you are the owner of two successful companies, one being Tribe Skates, where you employ all, everyone employed there is a Gold Star family member, correct?

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 9:56Shawn Ryan?

  And you guys make skateboards apparel, you gave me one of those boards, it looks really awesome, it's gonna look great here in the studio. And then the other company, you co-own with your best friend and former teammate Cole Fackler, GBRS Group, which in my opinion is probably the most relevant premier exclusive training group in the country right now. I mean, you guys are definitely the most relevant and up to speed, fresh out and from tier one unit, so.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  That means a lot, thanks.

• 10:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, so if you haven't checked out GBRS Group, check them out. So who do you, when you guys are hiring, are you only hiring SEALs, are you only hiring tier one, or?

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Tier one, we got a couple of Air Force guys we've worked with, a couple of guys from the Army side, call in and bring some favors and some niche stuff. We got a couple of long range guys that we pull in when we need to, and now we have a full-time recce guy for Chris, so, you know, CQB is the bread and butter, but. Not afraid to branch out, but yeah, it's gotta be the tier one resume.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. What are you guys teaching? Are you teaching, last night at dinner, we were kinda talking about it. It was private lessons, it sounds like, groups, all the way up to SWAT?

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we do everything. Military, local law enforcement, got a couple of government contracts, stuff like that. And then the civilian market. The open enrollment stuff scared us. It did. After the Chris Kyle thing especially.

• 11:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  A lot of people on the yard line, a lot of people brandy to guns, a lot of people that really wanna shoot somebody, really wanna become famous, and there was no real good way to vet them unless you do private. So we do phone calls, talk to them for an hour, and then we Google search the shit out of them. Gotta do a little bit of vetting.

• 11:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  And set up a call with those guys, and if they have five or six friends of all equal skill set or the same end state, then we'll set up a, set up a training event. We'll drive down there, we'll fly in, bring them up to us, and kinda do everything.

• 12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. And you guys are based out of Virginia Beach?

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, we've got a gym there, got kitchen, showers, kil house, got everything.

• 12:12Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:13Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. How long you been doing that?

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Almost two years now.

• 12:19Shawn Ryan?

  Two years?

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Yep. Yeah, we started that in 19.

• 12:23Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well, it looks like it's online, looking in, you know, from the outside, it looks like it's exploding, so.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 12:30Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Appreciate it.

• 12:32Shawn Ryan?

  But, well, before we get started, I always give everybody a gift. There you go. Jesus.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 12:49Shawn Ryan?

  Merry Christmas.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Somebody must have told you. Dude.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  I mean, you talked about, should you tell you how much I eat this shit?

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  What's that?

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Should you tell you how much candy I eat? Dude, I do, man. I have a sweet tooth, bro. Thank you, really.

• 13:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, we talked about the gummy bear stuff last night. I love it.

• 13:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, so before we get started, I have a subscription account and as much as I'd love to tell everybody that gummy bears, finances, everything that's going on here, really it's my patrons on Patreon that support the show. That's how you're able to sit here, how I'm here, how all this was built. And so one of the things I do for them is I tell them who's coming on before they get here. And I let them, you know, comment and a bunch of questions, and then I pick one to ask. So this is from Will on Patreon to you. He says, "I know his

• 13:51Shawn Ryan?

  company does a lot for Gold Star families, and I'm sure he's experienced his fair share of losing friends, either through physical or mental combat. Would he be willing to give any advice on how he deals with these feelings?"

• 14:07Speaker 04

  That's the first one?

• 14:08Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's, that's the only one I'm gonna give you.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  It's new softballs, okay.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  How I deal with it personally?

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Shawn Ryan?

  We get a lot of questions on how to deal with loss, and I've done some videos on it, and it's just, everybody's always curious, you know, how guys like me or you and our colleagues deal with that, get through it.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  You know, each one's different. For me, for the longest time, I just ignored, overruled, I just compartmentalized everything. Didn't happen to me, it's not me. I don't have to worry about it. It's easier just to not accept it to be reality.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  When you do a dangerous job long enough, it'll eventually get you.

• 15:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Unless you're fortunate enough to retire, you can't let it, can't let that be your defining moment. Almost like you're waiting for it to happen. The Gold Star thing happens, you do a dangerous job, firemen, police, military, doesn't matter. We all have our Gold Star community, people that die in the line of service.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  And for me, it's a, it's a show of their loyalty. Like, want to see how far they'll go, they just showed you. They just went the whole way. Like, what an honor to be part of that organization where people will give up their lives for people they've never even met. Like, that's how I process it now. When I see it and I see the families, it hurts, it sucks.

• 15:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  There's so many dudes I miss. You know, you're at Harris Seater buying groceries and I look over and there's the whole family.

• 15:51Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, the two platoons with their husband. What are you gonna say? Go ahead and give them a hug and pretend like it's okay, it's not okay. But they did exactly what they wanted to do.

• 16:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  At that moment, like, he was right where he wanted to be, surrounded with the best people on earth. Dudes he loved, dudes he would gladly die for. And they got the opportunity to show how committed they were to the cause. So I honor their sacrifice now. It took me a long time to get there, but that's what I do now. I just honor them.

• 16:23Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, man, that's a great answer.

• 16:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I think a lot of people experience loss and one thing I always tell them is, you know, you have to, you know, it's, it's good to mourn, but

• 16:35Shawn Ryan?

  you gotta think of how that person would want you to live, you know, and I don't think that anybody that I know and I'm sure anybody that you know wants you moping around for the rest of your life because they died doing what they want to do. And so it's, it's always good to keep that in mind. But, well, great answer, so let's get on with it. So, we're gonna just start with childhood and go down a timeline of kind of your, all the way up until now. But you've been surrounded by the SEAL teams your entire life, you're born into it. Your dad was a SEAL, several family members of yours are SEALs.

• 17:17Shawn Ryan?

  And then you wound up joining at a very young age, but let's just start right at the very beginning with some of the childhood stuff, what was it like?

• 17:28Shawn Ryan?

  You know, growing up with your dad being an operational SEAL, going on deployments all the time and that's a, that's a very high standard to live up to as a kid. So, let's start there.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  So, yeah, when my dad graduated BUDS, I was, my mom was six months pregnant. So, he checked in Team One, she gave birth to me and I essentially grew up in a platoon hut. He was the only guy who had a kid at the time. So, basically got raised by wolves, which was cool. We transitioned, we moved over to the East Coast in like 89, like I was young, four. I don't remember anything. Started up school, typical stuff, but he was gone the entire time. Some of the time we went to the East Coast, I forget what the rotations were back then. I mean, they were six, eight month deployments and he did eight of them back to back. So, I mean, he was gone.

• 18:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  Gone 200, 300 days out of the year. I mean, you remember the workup schedule. Gone a lot. Grew up on a small farm, five acres, but God, man, we had everything. Chickens, ducks, geese, guinea hens, pheasants, quail, raised Chesapeake Bay retrievers, cows, horses, everything. And I'd take care of it all. Slopping hogs at 5:00 AM, hot water heater blows out, pipes freeze, like the whole thing. I remember doing that my entire life, just dealing with the farm life. And then he'd come back home, we'd go hunting and it was

• 19:11Speaker 04

  like, now looking back on it's kind of surreal. It was awesome. It was great. Like, your dad's Superman.

• 19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  How fucking cool is that? But back in the 90s, like, you remember, nobody knew what a Navy SEAL was. No one. So, like, my dad was in the Navy, your dad's in the Army, it doesn't really matter, nobody gets it. As we started coming up, you know, Charlie Sheen, that whole thing, like, people started to know, but nobody really knew. There wasn't a war going on. It was 80s, 90s, small little skirmishes, but losing people in combat wasn't a thing. We never had to live through it. It didn't happen. It'd be a training accident every now and then, and that was it.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  So yeah, kinda went through that whole thing, found my outlets. Cause I spent a lot of time alone, you know, me and my mom, had my sister growing up and.

• 20:08Shawn Ryan?

  Your sister older or younger?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Younger, five years. So yeah, it was kinda just the three of us, living on that farm, making things happen. He'd come back home and gear up for another deployment and we kinda just picked up where we left off.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  But it was weird, like people who, uh, who aren't in the special operations community or don't know anybody like that, they think when your dad's, uh, in the military, it's,

• 20:34Speaker 04

  I don't know, like gunny highway, like flat top haircuts and yes sir, no sir.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  My dad treated me like I was a new guy.

• 20:42Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 20:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, like we were, we were best friends. We were like, that's who I wanted to be.

• 20:48Shawn Ryan?

  Well, when did you, at what point did you know you wanted to become a team guy?

• 20:58Speaker 04

  It was always just assumed and it was always said, like we were always doing something, like, uh, when I'd have friends come over and stay the night. We wouldn't do typical things. We would do, uh, we'd do a physical challenge. So we would run out, we'd pick up 10 logs, we'd throw it over here, we'd run back 10 pushups, do five pullups, run over here. We'd do like an O course, like a circuit. And if I didn't win, I better win. It was one of those things. So it was always kind of assumed and then when I hit skateboarding, um, that's all I wanted to do. I was addicted, man. I, I bought in hook, line and sinker. I lived out in the middle of nowhere in Chesapeake, Virginia. And we had a little cul-de-sac next door, some older kids skating. I kinda got in that and

• 21:42Speaker 04

  when he would leave on deployment, I'd have six months of no interruptions. I'd knock out chores and straight over there and that's all I did all day. I obsessed.

• 21:50Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Started competing and that's what I wanted to do.

• 21:54Shawn Ryan?

  You started competing?

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:56Shawn Ryan?

  What, like the half pipe and shit like that?

• 21:57Speaker 04

  Nah, I did street. Um, he built me a big vert ramp in the backyard, so we did the whole thing. Wrote it all, but I really liked street, park.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  And that was kind of the punishment. I'd get hurt. Like, you broke your arm. They're not gonna let you in the Navy. You can't be a SEAL. If you get a plate and screws, they're not gonna take you. You're gonna ruin your entire life over riding a skateboard.

• 22:17Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So it really was just assumed you're gonna be a fucking team guy.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. You know, I didn't know any better. I didn't care.

• 22:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  I mean, I remember, um, maybe like middle school. I remember talking to my mom one day and I was like,

• 22:32Speaker 04

  would dad be upset if I became a veterinarian? Cause I love animals. I do. I really like dogs. Like a kind of a weird obsession, but a healthy one. Um, I like dogs more than people and I wanted to be a vet. And, um, it was kind of just pushed off. Like, why would you want to be a vet when you can be a Navy SEAL?

• 22:53Speaker 04

  True.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  There we went. So quickly dismissed. Can't be a professional skateboarder. You can't be a veterinarian. You could be a Navy SEAL.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Um, some things kind of fell into place that, uh, forced that hand a little sooner than probably it should have.

• 23:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Shawn Ryan?

  You talk about, uh, being addicted to the pressure to perform, uh, during your childhood and then, and then you kind of talk about it again, uh, later on. And I think when you got to Dev Group. But what, what were you addicted to performing to when you were a kid? What pressure was it to your dad?

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, I mean, there's all kinds of pressure, but for me, I wanted praise. I have this long analogy I get into where I equate everybody to a certain type of dog. That dog's upbringing.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  And I'm a Labrador. I am. I just want a people please. Just bounce that tennis ball on the ground and let me go chase it. I'll do whatever you want to. Just pat me on the head at the end of the day. And that's all I wanted. I just wanted him to acknowledge me. That's all I wanted. It's like, I'm not good in school.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  Like, we go out and we hunt and I shoot everything. Like, I had a good boy doing that, but I didn't enjoy it. I didn't. I did it because it was a thing to do with him. I don't care what we did. If that dude would have been a fly fisherman, I'd be fly fishing. Like, I didn't care. I just wanted to be next to him. But I didn't enjoy hunting. I didn't send him a deer stand. I didn't get it. Yeah. I mean, I shot him.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Went duck hunting, snow goose hunting. I mean, I had a blast. But if you ask me what I wanted to do at 4:30 in the morning, it wasn't go shoot snow geese. Not back then.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  I wish he just would have wanted to do anything. So. Yeah. But the, yeah, the pressure to perform. Everything became a competition. And then I just started competing at everything. Not good things. Yeah.

• 24:54Speaker 04

  Doing young childhood stuff. But, um, you know. So you joined. You joined at 17 years old? Yeah, I got into a little bit of trouble when I was 16. And, um.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Long story short, had to go to court and the old man threw me at the mercy of the court. And said, um, "Your Honor, he, he can't be charged with this. You know, we have to get this off his record because he's gonna go to the Navy and he's gonna be a Navy SEAL." What was it?

• 25:24Speaker 04

  It was a, an assault charge with a robbery. With a robbery? What were you? What were you robbing? Me and, uh, me and a bunch of my buddies got into a fight. And in the course of the fight. Reached into, um, somebody's jacket and grabbed her phone and spiked it on the ground. And because of the dollar amount associated, because it was fiscal altercation. It became robbery and his parents wanted to press charges and make it a big deal.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  At the end of the day, we bought him a cellphone and it got expunged off my record. I mean, it came up years later, but yeah. So I had to get a waiver for that. I had to get an age waiver, underage possession tobacco. So I had a bunch of waivers going in, um, which wasn't good.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Didn't really help my case and the judge looked at me. Deal, community service and let me leave. And, uh, I didn't realize at the time, but he had already gone to school. Uh, and talked to my guidance counselors, all my principals. And had signed me up for summer school, so that was.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  My sophomore year going into my junior year and it already signed me up. So the end of my junior year, I graduate or we finish that year in June and I basically do summer school until August and then I'm gone. Already had me signed up for delayed entry program, everything. Like I was going to Navy.

• 26:45Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  There wasn't any doubt about it.

• 26:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  No SEAL contract, no A school.

• 26:52Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Undesignated, send it.

• 26:55Shawn Ryan?

  So how the hell did you get to BUDS on it if there was no contract?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Passed a screen test at boot camp.

• 27:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 27:01Speaker 04

  I didn't realize how, um, I didn't realize how dangerous a maneuver that was. Like my entire career, for the people that don't know, if you don't have a SEAL contract, I tell people, do not go to MAPS. Do not sign that contract because now they own you.

• 27:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  And they do. If I would have gotten sick, if, um, if the whole class would have gotten the flu and they just don't give you the screen test, I'm going to the fleet for four years. Like that's a long way to get back from.

• 27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  No A school, so if I didn't make it through BUDS, I was going to be a deck seam and be a bosun's mate. I didn't get in. I already had a Trident. I didn't have a rating.

• 27:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:40Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, just for the audience that they don't know what the hell an A school is. An A school, basically, um, I kind of describe it as it's almost a marketing play of the teams. Like they need SEALs, but so many people quit that what they do is they find all the jobs in the Navy that have a shortage. Most of them are the ones you have to be either really intelligent to get into or the complete shit jobs. And, uh, it's kind of a mixed bag of nuts there. You pick one, you go through the, the training, you go to BUDS, uh, whatever, 80, 85% people quit and then they fill those job descriptions. So, so you didn't have any A school, you went right into, you went right from boot camp to BUDS, so were you 17 when you got to BUDS?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:25Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, he, um, he was getting ready to retire, so the way we did it is he retired, I think on the same day that I became active, we did a one for one swap. We had the exact same name, he's a junior, I'm the third and we just swapped them. So he pulled strings. Um, I graduated boot camp, I came back to Little Creek, I was a white shirt, a little scruff rollback waiting for my BUDS class.

• 28:46Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  Did that for three months and flew out to. California with a C-bag and sent it. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a driver's license the entire time I was back. I didn't have anything. Like, I didn't, I didn't know anything. Like, my senior year, I was in BUDS. I knew nothing. I didn't know anything. I didn't have a cellphone. I had nothing. I just sent it. So you grew up in the teams? Yeah. Oh, you'd take me on training trips. It was a blast. I'd go to AP Hill for the demo courses and a bunch of the guys I worked with later in the teams, I remember them when they were new guys. And they remember me. Damn, that's crazy. Being out there taking a skateboard out of AP Hill and doing kickflips over cases of beer for the guys and, yeah, man. Oh, dude. Like, we did the whole thing. I'm like,

• 29:32Speaker 04

  my childhood was fucking awesome. It was. Like, growing up in the teams, it was cool. But my entire time, because I never saw the reality of war, I thought BUDS was, I thought that's what we were doing for, for a career. Because you get a Team Two back in the day, the Rudy Bosch errors, and they do log PT. Buddy Carey ruck runs and all kinds of weird shit. Like, it was miserable. Like, the PT, two-mile ocean swims every week, like, it looked like it just continued. So when we went to BUDS, I was, I was not in, I was too young to be in good shape. I was in good enough shape, and I was just too dumb to quit. I didn't know any better. Like, when people would quit on the, the very first day,

• 30:16Speaker 04

  I couldn't get it through my mind. This isn't gonna stop anytime soon, boys. And it would, it'd confirm my biases when I'd look down the beach and see SEAL Team One doing log PT. Like, yeah, dude, they're paying us to work out. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Like, I, I didn't care. I was superhuman. Like, the whole chafing thing, I didn't get it. Didn't bother you? No. Nothing. When I graduated Hell Week, my dad was, he was contracting then. My mom flew out to pick me up. And, um... She was having me take pictures. There's a famous photo, they've got that, they've got that Bud's class book they did. The only easy day was yesterday. That's on my Bud's class, you can see a bunch of pictures of me in there.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  And my mom came to pick me up. We had to spend 24 hours in the barracks and then you could go out in town and do whatever.

• 31:10Speaker 04

  My mom wanted to take a bunch of photos, do all this, and I missed the bus back to the barracks. Like that, that 500 yards. And I sprinted the whole way back there barefoot. Went back to my room and checked in and, um. It was probably 8 a.m. the next morning. Mom took out a bunch of the boys out for Marie Callender's breakfast. Did the whole thing, the whole den mother. And then made me go run the Oak Horse so she could take pictures of my dad.

• 31:34Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, man. Went out and ran a full Oak Horse.

• 31:38Shawn Ryan?

  When you got to Bud's, I mean, probably everybody over there knew your dad, right?

• 31:42Speaker 04

  A bunch of the cadre did.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  My, um, I guess, kind of my quasi-godfather was the XO at Group One at the time. So he picked me up and actually walked me through the quarter deck and it started. A bunch of the, uh, a bunch of the guys were old Team Two dudes. So, they already knew.

• 31:59Shawn Ryan?

  Full benefit?

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah?

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Full Benny.

• 32:04Shawn Ryan?

  How about everybody around you? Were they getting full benefit because of you two?

• 32:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, um. Yeah, they did, but a lot of it was just isolation.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Which is fine.

• 32:15Shawn Ryan?

  How many ti- how many guys did you start with, do you remember?

• 32:19Speaker 04

  I'll mess the number up, um. I mean, I thought it was in the 200s.

• 32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  It was, it was a ton. I started with 246 and I got rolled, graduated with 247. And I think 20 originals, something like that. Wasn't many.

• 32:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. If you had to pick one portion of Bud's, uh, who was your hardest? What was it?

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Second phase, pool comp.

• 32:43Shawn Ryan?

  Pool comp?

• 32:44Speaker 04

  I got rolled for that.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Just bad advice. Yeah. Bad advice. I um, I mean, when you do it, you have to do a bunch of sequences. You know, they hit you with the whammy knot, they do the whole thing. It's a whole series of procedures you have to do exactly correct. And the advice that I was given was, they just want to see you not panic. They want to see you calm, cool, and collected. Don't get wrapped over the procedures. Just show them they are not going to rattle you. Done. And I went down, they smashed me, and I didn't do basically any of those procedures. They completely flustered me. I did everything I could do, and then I came up, fail. Ooh, there's one. Same thing happened again. It was a, the final check was a J-val flick.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  That was the final thing, and I kept missing it. I was just overcome by events. I let them rattle my cage, and they did. Yeah. Got rolled back the next year, or the next class. Couple of weeks. But it was what I needed. I needed it.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  So you graduate, and you head over to Team 10? Yep, we um, finished at BUDS. We all went out to Kodiak, Alaska for winter warfare training. And at the very end of that, they asked for 10 volunteers to deploy early with Team 10. It was a weird cycle. Everybody was getting kind of messed up, and they needed people to go right now. I think they were giving guys a month off in between getting your try-in and checking into the team. Some guys wanted to go home, they wanted to see wives, and see moms, and all that stuff, and... Nope. Every dude in that class, under 19 years old, hand rocketed in the air as fast as they could. No shit, so they had to... Everybody. They had to make a decision. Mm-hmm.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  Every, we had a, so Cole, he had orders to Team 1. We already knew where we were going. He had orders to Team 1, he traded in the middle of our class to go to Team 10. He was from Virginia Beach and he was big into surfing and he wanted to stay out there. And I guess he didn't want to break up the bromance, so yeah, he swapped right there.

• 34:56Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, we drove straight across.

• 35:00Shawn Ryan?

  How did they pick the 10 guys?

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Volunteer.

• 35:03Shawn Ryan?

  So there was only 10 volunteers?

• 35:05Speaker 04

  They needed 10 people and yeah, 10 people volunteered.

• 35:09Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know you were going to war?

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, for sure.

• 35:13Shawn Ryan?

  They told you?

• 35:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there was no, Team 10, they weren't doing a UCOM rotation anymore.

• 35:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  It was men manning, I think we only had two groups. We had one going to Afghanistan and one going to Iraq. And that's what we knew.

• 35:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  So, yeah.

• 35:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, before we get into that deployment, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll pick up there.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 35:41Shawn Ryan?

  What's going on Patreon?

• 35:51Shawn Ryan?

  Join me on Vigilance Elite Patreon for a live video teleconference.

• 36:02Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, so we're back. You just graduated SGT. You volunteered to go to war, show up to Team 10, and you're 19 years old on your first deployment to Iraq.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 36:15Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Humbling.

• 36:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Was there any, before we get into that, was there, did you mesh with, did you have any time with your platoon before you went out the door? Or did you just show up and it's like, hey, guess what? I graduated early and I'll be heading out the door with you tomorrow.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  We showed up in, don't quote me exactly, I think we showed up in August and we deployed in March. So, a little bit, a couple of months. We got to the major blocks, we got CQB, land warfare.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  Missed all the pro dev, so didn't, wasn't one of the guys, went to sniper school or any of that as a new guy, so no new guy schools at all. They gave us hazmat demo driver, which I couldn't do because I didn't have a driver's license. You had to be 25, so I couldn't do that. I couldn't get a rental car.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was basically just the, it was like the lowest life form on earth. But we had, we had nine new guys and nine old guys. So it was good, man. The mesh was good. The learning curve was high.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  The standard in that platoon was extremely high. But it should have been. I'm glad it was now. I didn't understand at the time, I thought they were being dicks just to be dicks.

• 37:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  But if I could have done it all over again, I wish I would have paid attention more. A lot of that, a lot of that resistance came from feeling like I was already part of it. Because I'd been born into it. So it was hard for me to let go of. You know, a little bit of arrogance, I'm sure. The fact that I knew everybody. Like, I already knew them. Like, the CMC was my dad's best friend. I've known him my entire life.

• 38:07Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  So it's, it's weird to see him in the hallway like, "Hey, Master Chief." And then see him on the weekend, like, "Hey, Master Chief." You know what I mean?

• 38:17Shawn Ryan?

  What was your dad thinking? What was his reaction that you were going to war right after that, 19?

• 38:24Speaker 04

  I mean, he was happy for me.

• 38:25Shawn Ryan?

  Was he?

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:26Shawn Ryan?

  Was pretty stoked about it?

• 38:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:29Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean,

• 38:34Speaker 04

  you could tell he was nervous. You could tell my mom was really nervous. I mean, Iraq in 2004 or 05.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  Being shot never entered my mind. Like, Navy SEALs hadn't been shot. That's not a thing. We're good. It happened sporadically. Nobody's died yet, not in Iraq. It was the IDs we were worried about. It was like, they were hitting them all day, every day. So when we got there, I mean, that was pretty surreal, like, flying in, you know, take off 19 years old and, you know, you're on a C-17, getting ready to land, and people start, you know, two hours out, they're breaking into Novans, body armor, helmet, nods, loading guns.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  I've never deployed, apparently this is completely normal. Like, we landed like we were gonna be under fire the entire time. Like, you had no idea. And when, I mean, now that you've deployed, you open it up, and there's a guy with a flatbed pulling off ISU 90s, like I thought we would be shot down. Like, the way they were flying in, it was crazy. Everybody's getting sick. Just, it was early in the war. It was a different environment. No one had any, any real combat experience.

• 39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Even the older guys in the platoon had been to Afghanistan, but it was more of the presence patrols. It wasn't sustained combat. They hadn't had it before. So, we were all kind of new guys together.

• 39:51Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you guys?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Baghdad.

• 39:54Shawn Ryan?

  Baghdad?

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Yep. So, we, we split. We did PSD for a little bit. And then, we do two weeks of that to doing the, all the dignitaries in Iraq.

• 40:06Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, PSD is personal security detail. So, a lot of teams were doing that for the Iraqi government officials.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was a way to, way to stay busy. Way to be employed. Like, hey, if they have to put us here for this, maybe they'll let us do DAs too. So, we had a strike force set up. And because I was so young, I mean, a lot of the new guys got pushed over to the strike force. Like, they didn't want a 19-year-old kid standing in front of CNN, you know, driving around the President of Iraq, or whatever else we were doing. So, I was lucky in that sense. I got to go over with, we did a weird conglomerate with Team 10 and Team 4 from the East Coast. We all deployed together in the same compound. And I think we had 5 and 7, the same thing. So, we were just overflowed with people. So, we got to work with everybody. It was pretty cool.

• 40:53Shawn Ryan?

  So, what were you guys doing then, if you weren't on the PSD team?

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Doing raids.

• 40:58Shawn Ryan?

  Raids?

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 41:00Shawn Ryan?

  How many raids were you doing?

• 41:02Speaker 04

  A couple a week.

• 41:03Shawn Ryan?

  Couple a week?

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, four or five, like, staying busy. They, but they were all mobility packages. We'd pull out of that base, and there was no armor. There was no, no armor and turret gunner. So, I'd rock the 50 up front. And it was bad, man. Like, we, you'd just see the rubble on the side of the road, expecting to hit one. You just wouldn't. And we'd make it through, and you'd come back, and like...

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Okay. Gotta get some pancakes. Here we go. Gotta make it back. We'd drive back and nothing would happen. Every day was a breath hold, just waiting to get hit and you'd hear it. Sigax would get reported. All the significant activity, all the IDs that were hit the day before. And it's the same route in and out. You have to drive there to start everything. It's like, you know, Marine convoy here, Army convoy there, 10 people killed here. God, like, when is this gonna happen? And because the curfew was so strict at that time,

• 42:02Speaker 04

  you never saw anybody. We didn't do anything during the day. So at night, I mean, I didn't see in Iraqi, an actual local for months. No shit. No, not until we started doing DAs. We just didn't. It'd be a couple of dry holes and you're like,

• 42:17Speaker 04

  are there people in this country? Like, where are they? The curfew was so stringent right then. You didn't see them. And then all of a sudden you got on a good target set and now there's a bunch of people out and you're like, okay, this is it. It's weird, man. Like, Iraq was a weird animal, especially then being so young, just not really known. Like, the training, I felt, uh, the training was good, but the mindset wasn't. Like, I had no idea mentally how to prepare for that. I just didn't. It was like we're doing land warfare in, you know, Arkansas. I don't know what that has to do with driving around Iraq right now. Like, yeah, I'm really good at running a saw on a 60. But we're gonna get blown up right now. Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  I mean, uh, target discrimination. You'd see people on the rooftop, ski masks, carrying dishkas or, you know, PKs, whatever. Are they good? Are they bad? Are we gonna shoot these people? Don't fire until you're fired upon. And they wouldn't shoot at you.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  Are they good? He's like, ah, sometimes the neighborhood watch.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  That's a lot of pressure on a 19-year-old kid to not shoot or do with a PK. Like, you want me to wait until he shoots me? That's kind of a weird thing to say.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 43:31Shawn Ryan?

  Well then, how far so?

• 43:35Speaker 04

  So we get-

• 43:35Shawn Ryan?

  You're on your first deployment and the biggest loss in SEAL Team history happens.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, man. So we're in the compound. Everybody was there. Four, ten, five, seven, we're all in there. We've got a centralized jock and new guys never came to the jock. We just didn't. We stayed out of it. We stayed in our own little bat cave doing new guy stuff. But I remember I was walking back from the gym one night and the double doors opened and it was a huge TV screens, you know, typical jock cinematic screens all over the place. And this frantic O stuck his head out and grabbed me and he goes, "You at SEAL Team 10?" And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "Go get you OIC right now." And I looked over his shoulder and I saw what looked to be the side of a mountain and a big smoldering thing sitting on it. And I ran back out there and I grabbed him as fast as I could and told everybody.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  All the new guys stayed put and all the old guys ran into the jock. And it only took a couple of minutes and you could hear it. You could hear grown men wailing. And they knew. I got goosebumps thinking about it. Fuck, man.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  You didn't know. So I was supposed to be in Echo Platoon. I was. And my LPO of Golf Platoon pulled me out because he knew my dad. So I was supposed to be in Afghanistan and now I'm in Iraq. But all of our best friends that volunteered all went to Echo Platoon. And Echo Platoon is on deployment in Afghanistan. So I think all of our best friends are dead. We think everybody's on the same bird and they're all dead right now. And we hear nothing for like two weeks.

• 45:05Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't hear anything for two fucking weeks?

• 45:08Speaker 04

  Nothing. Everything converged in Afghanistan and they put us on River City and we heard nothing.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  I saw pictures of dead guys in the gym when it came out in Navy Times.

• 45:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  We didn't know anything. We didn't have email accounts back then. Like we weren't it wasn't like you were on some secure access. Like you didn't you didn't get anything. They shut down the phones and um-

• 45:33Speaker 04

  When the CMC finally came in, he briefed on the entire thing and they broad brushed the actual ground element. I didn't find out about Marcus Luttrell and all of those people for months later. I'd never heard this story. He was so overtaken by the Hilo going down that Marcus who? Like I had no idea. Never even heard that story. He came in and I remember asking him. Everybody walked away and I grabbed him. I was like, "Are any new guys dead?" He said, "Nope." And it was a sigh of relief selfishly because the new guys are who I knew. And then I thought, "Oh, fuck. All of that experience is gone right now."

• 46:16Speaker 04

  He didn't have a total. He just said, "No new guys," but you knew it was an entire birdfall. Like you knew that. It's like now the names started to come out. And I remember they, uh, they set us all down. We were sitting down, uh, outside of a bunch of trailers, big gravel, big, uh, fire pit and we put up the Proxmo, like typical team guy shit. And they're playing the memorial service. They shot at Little Creek. They're playing it for everybody. And, uh, you know, you see, uh, see Seth Lucas coming to frame. They pin his old man's award on him and I'm fucking bawling my eyes out. It keeps going through and through. And it gets to a point, um, Patsy gets up and speaks on Danny's behalf. And I remember I said it, "What the fuck is

• 47:00Speaker 04

  an SDV2 guy doing there?" And then SDV1, I'm like, "What the fuck is that?" But no one knew. No one said anything. Um, at least not at that time. It didn't make any sense to us. Are they just augments? Or they just, yeah, they're just assisting echo. We had no idea it was a QRF. At least I didn't for a long time. Um, and then it started to come out about the lone survivor and everything else. And we started to piece the story back together. But until I was in, back at Stateside, mid-second deployment or mid-second workup 2006, I finally heard the story from someone who was there. I had no idea. They, um, yeah, that Hilo was the only thing that mattered. Like that was, that was our entire world.

• 47:43Shawn Ryan?

  Did that, um, because we were right around the same age that time when I was into and uh, did that, did that hit you? Like, did the magnitude of what happened actually hit you being that young?

• 47:55Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 47:56Shawn Ryan?

  And you didn't know anybody. You know, you didn't know those guys. I didn't know them either.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 48:01Shawn Ryan?

  It didn't hit me.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  No, the old guys I didn't know. Um, I mean, you knew some of them. Um, got really tight with their wives afterwards, all the kids, obviously. Um, but no, like they were, you were platoon chief at Echo Platoon. I don't know you.

• 48:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  I didn't know you at Echo Platoon. Um, known from a reputation and stuff like that, but at that time, there's no way you could understand the magnitude of what that did to the community.

• 48:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Talk about a dose of reality. That's reality. Like, that's what you're doing.

• 48:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Like, these people are actively trying to kill you. It's like, like, to me, it wasn't, it wasn't real yet. It was like a cowardice thing, like, oh, yeah, they're playing IEDs, like this and that, but team guys weren't getting shot. Like, they weren't dying. Had a couple, random ones, but not like that. Not like that.

• 48:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  It's like SEALs don't die like that. Like, you can't just take out that many. It's not a thing. So, yeah, heavy dose of reality on the way back, but yeah, the magnitude wasn't, probably until extortion, actually.

• 49:07Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. Dead law. It didn't hit me until I got, we relieved those guys over there and uh, it didn't, it didn't really sink in until we started seeing some of the intel reports and they were, I remember, uh, I was with a good friend of mine, sitting next to him and they, it was showing, they were showing DEETS on there and he just started fucking crying and he would, uh, they were stripping his clothes off and he was like, I remember when he got that fucking tattoo on his rib cage and I was like, oh shit. This is fucking, the real deal, but um.

• 49:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, it's real deal. Like, there's some evil people on this earth, really committed to the cause.

• 49:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah. It's really hard to train for that scenario, though. It's like, how good everybody was on that helo.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  They were all bad motherfuckers, dude. They were awesome. And it didn't matter. It's like, God, if you just would've let him sit on the ground and then ambushed him like some coward's ass shit.

• 50:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  Like, yeah. Like, war's not fair. And I think that was the lesson learned out of that. Doesn't matter how good you are. If you don't get the, the chance to fight, the chance to show how good you are, doesn't matter.

• 50:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:32Shawn Ryan?

  We'll take another quick break. When we come back, we'll, uh, get into your second deployment.

• 50:36Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 50:41Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and support The Sean Ryan Show today.

• 51:04Shawn Ryan?

  All right, DJ, so we're back from your first deployment. And it's 2007. I think you're 22 years old now. And you're getting ready to go back to Iraq again for a second time. And, uh, you found yourself in somewhat of a historic firefight uh, that's been talked about a lot. So, um, I'd love to get your take on what happened and, and how that deployment went.

• 51:33Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, kind of leading up to that, um, we'll kind of segue back to it. We, um, on our turnover up when we first flew in there, the, so we had our, our platoon, our sister platoon, and we had a, we were relieving SEAL Team Four. So that was Mike Day's platoon. So our turnover up with our sister platoon is when Mike Day's incident happened. He got shot 27 times.

• 51:57Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  That's how we kicked off the deployment.

• 52:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's how it started.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:01Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking A, man.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  So we had one of the guys in the sister platoon got shot, got medically retired, took a, a crazy, um, round through the arm, and it, um, had a bunch of nerve damage and it balled his hand up. He's out and he was one of our corpsmen too. He's an awesome dude. So we automatically lost him and we basically just combined forces.

• 52:19Shawn Ryan?

  Were you on that operation?

• 52:20Speaker 04

  I wasn't. That was our sister platoon and it was one of the handover ops. So it was team four heavy and then a little bit of team ten. You know, the HQ element, a couple of senior guys just to see how he did business. These are what the routes are like. This is what the target sets like. And it just so happened they were going after an AQ cell that had just shot down a marine helo. So they had all their guns, had their body armor, had helmets, had night vision, had the whole thing.

• 52:47Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  So we kind of rode that wave pretty much the whole deployment. It was super busy, a different area, working for a, working for the west coast teams. So it was great. We were busy, like super busy and it, it felt like how I thought it would feel.

• 53:05Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:07Shawn Ryan?

  Like this is what you envisioned when you joined?

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Like even, even some of the animosity stuff like we'd go to the chow hall and they'd bitch about it because we'd come in wearing tank tops. And now you gotta wear, like even the stuff we would complain about, it made you feel like, I feel like a Navy SEAL now.

• 53:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Like I feel like I'm in a strike force. Like this is how it's supposed to feel. Like we're gelling, we're going out every night. Like this is, this is what it is. But the reality hadn't set in yet on what we're actually doing because it hasn't happened to you yet. So it's not, it's not a real thing.

• 53:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 04

  A couple of months in that deployment, we're, we're steady, engaging with the enemy. It's fine.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  And one night we go out and we're in a really bad, in a really bad section.

• 53:52Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you guys at?

• 53:54Speaker 04

  Just outside of Fallujah, but we were operating in this little town called Karma.

• 53:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  And it was good, but a lot of palm groves, a lot of, a lot of nasty shit out there. We just, we were not trained to do. So kind of come into play later about our inexperience.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  But one night, we do an offset info, we're patrolling a target and we get about 200 meters out and you could see the entire posture shift of everybody in that assault force. Everybody switched. You could smell it. Like, this is a fucking ambush. Like, it just is. Walking down the road, the houses we were walking past, like, you were waiting. It was a breath hold the entire way. And I say that because people started doing things they've never done before. The pace they were moving, we've never moved at that pace before.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  When we would do patrolling in training, like, there's a lackadaisical patrol and there's a patrol to contact, like, we're gonna get hit right now. Everybody was in patrol to contact mode. Like, it's happening right now. You're waiting for a traitor to throw RD Sims and kick the whole thing off. Like, it's right there. And I remember the last 50 feet, sprinting to the building, they had a big overhang, and we'd been getting ISR updates, there's multiple guys on a roof. Okay? So as we patrol up, there's a bunch of guys in the courtyard of this, and it's an Iranian influence cell that we're kinda going after now, and they fight completely different.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  We locked down some guys on these, on these sleepers in the courtyard, and we maneuver up. Made silent entry, we go in, we're doing our whole clearance, and I bolt straight for the stairs. It's a huge, open room.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  I don't know how to describe it, just a huge, open room with little offshoot bedrooms. Made no sense to be a house, it's like a structure. And they had a two-tier landing. It came up and banged, and then it basically just opened into the roof. Just an opening in the middle of the roof, and you walked up and you're surrounded 360, 720 by the roof.

• 56:02Speaker 04

  Stacked up the train, got right there, right at the last little breach of it. Something about this high underneath it, and I stood up and threw on my laser, and there was a dude sprinting at me at full blast with a pistol in his hand, and unloaded six shots at me. No shit. Yep, so he unloaded, I unloaded on him, got off three rounds in a bolt lock. So dropped to my knees and we called Exfil. Ran around the back. Everybody got their guns up and running and grenades started coming off the roof.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  So in rally, what had happened is- So, hold on. Did you eliminate the threat? Yep. He's dead. Mm-hmm. He didn't hit you. He did. He did hit you. He hit me in the chest plate in one of the magazines. So pistol caliber, like 45, dead center. I mean, dead center. So snuck me there, which I don't know how he did it with a downward angle because that was presented. So blind luck. Snacking the plates were good. I don't know where the other five went. I don't know how they didn't hit anybody else. But I mean, he was probably within six feet. And he was there. What you didn't realize, in the ISR update we did not get, is he was standing at the base of stairs waiting.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  They never told us that. He's standing there waiting for us to come up. And there is another shooter in a sandbag position with a belt fed, a PK, aimed at the top of the stairs. And he's pulled off a suicide vest and laid it at the base of the stairs and pulled back a command wire. And you can see him. He's holding it. He's waiting to clock it off. And we never know. So if I would have made entry, if I shot that dude and would have continued to go, that guy would have cut me in half. So just blind luck that I got bolt lock and I forced to retreat. So we start trading grenades on the roof back and forth. A bunch of different maneuver elements are happening. We've got three or four guys that are fragged from the grenades, our chief included. And our corpsman, our TERP. Our JTAC.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  So a bunch of guys, not bad, but bad enough. I mean, if your first time being wounded, like, takes you by surprise. Like you're Wounded Eagle. It's like, oh no. Like, how bad? You actually think the worst. But we had to win the fight. So we're trading grenades on the roof. We're doing that whole thing. And one of the guys wanted to send a, one of the ma'ams from the courtyard. He grabs him, TERP, perfect English. He's like, I know who that is.

• 58:38Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, and he's like, it's my cousin. Turk tells him again, like, send that dude up there and tell him to tell his cousin to come down here. Like, we don't know who's up there. Um, the slant was really weird that night with how many women and kids were supposed to be there. It was bad intel. He was kind of just hodgepodge and we sent that dude back up there. And he's calling out to his cousin, you know. Whatever he's saying, whatever he's saying. And he got halfway up the stairs and poked his head up and that dude let it go. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Killed his own cousin. And here we go. More grenades are coming off the roof. Um, so the whole force now, we're basically locked down inside of this building and grenades are coming off. We don't know how many dudes are on the roof. And now there's multiple maneuver elements of bad guys in and around the city. We have to fall back now.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  We had a super badass new guy posted up with a saw. Basically, everybody wants that opportunity. Rock the front of this building so we can all run underneath it. That dude stepped out and just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, sent it. We all ran back and um, we got our first fire mission in, like a, a first like new shit fire mission. Damn. So um, that was cool. I didn't know, um, I'd been hit yet. You didn't know you've been hit yet? I had no idea. We uh, I kept having a bolt lock. So I fired three rounds, bolt lock. I dumped out a mag, grabbed a new one, and when I did, it cut my fingers. So where the round hit it, it had blown out the back of it, a big spider web. So when I grabbed it, it fully my hands open. So I dropped the mag and grabbed a new one.

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  Got the gun back up and running and for whatever reason, I grabbed it off the ground and put it in my back pocket. I don't know why I did it. I just, I did it.

• 1:00:17Speaker 04

  So when we got back on the helo, we're flying out after that whole thing. Um, we got all the medevac guys out. They were fine, minimal injuries, nothing crazy. Um, we're flying back on the helo and I'm sitting next to uh, to Jay Redman. And I held up the mag and I'm looking, I'm trying to focus it with my nods. Back and forth and I, I don't know what it is, like. It never, it never even entered my conscious thought that I took a round there. I didn't know what it was. Put it back in my pocket. We get back to the ready room and we're going in for the debrief. And I dropped my gear and I looked at it and it's still in disbelief. I'm like, what the fuck is that? And I hand it to one of the other guys and he's like, that's a fucking bullet dude.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  Oh, that is a bullet. That is a bullet. Dead center. But it was weird, when you look at the bullet and the angle it came into, we did a lot of breaching back then. We landed a lot, I used to run around with the charges capped in. And I had them all capped in and I had my primary charges in a pouch right there. And it nicked the edge of the pouch. Where the caps were exposed to. So obviously if it would have hit that blasting cap, that would have been a hole.

• 1:01:24Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:01:24Speaker 04

  That would have been a bad day.

• 1:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  So for the audience, just real quick, I'm just gonna interrupt. When he's talking about the caps being exposed. Basically a breaching charge is a bomb, you know, that they use to blow a door, blow a hole in the wall, blow whatever up. And the blasting caps are extremely sensitive. So if that would have hit one of those, it would have been end of the road for you.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, we ran around on big charges and we blew everything.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  We blew everything. That was the SOP back then. If you could, if you could blow it, you blew it.

• 1:02:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you didn't even fucking feel? You didn't feel the fact that you got fucking pegged by a 45 in the chest plate?

• 1:02:09Speaker 04

  So thinking back on it,

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  the guys behind me said they saw me. Take a reflex, I didn't feel it. The next morning, when I stood up and I arched back, it felt like I did too many sit-ups, like sore in the sternum. Kind of hard to take a full breath, but nothing like what you'd imagine. Like I imagine I would have known instantly like, oh my god. I didn't, the adrenaline was so high that that's kind of what we use for like a training analogy now, like when that adrenaline dumps, you won't know.

• 1:02:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  You won't know. Like, in a proximity, a gunfight that is that close, when you see muscle flash and you feel it, it's very different. It's not being shot at from 300 meters. It's not, it's not hitting the wall. It's inside of six feet, it's a very different experience.

• 1:02:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Shawn Ryan?

  I've never been shot, I don't know, you know, what that feels like, but I always imagined it would knock you on your fucking ass.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  Damn it. Luckily it didn't. Yeah, no shit. So, yeah, we got through that one. That was like, reality has set in now. And it's like, okay, all the stuff in training now, now everything is slowed down. The CQB is super crisp now. It's all real world. We're very current. And it's good. Like, business is great. We're going out every night, every other night. We've got assets. Like, it's awesome. As good as it ever could have been.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  And we go back. This is, um, to the firefight you were referencing was, uh, the one with Jay Redman and those guys. That was September 10th.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  So almost on the anniversary. And, uh,

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. But in a positive way.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  Zero loom. There wasn't an ounce of moonlight out, nothing. And for the guys that don't run around with night vision, those things aren't perfect. They're not, man. You don't have any ambient light out there.

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  They don't work very well. They just don't. So we were going back to the exact same spot, two houses down from where that thing happened. So we called it the karma house. Bad karma, here we go. And we went to land on the ax.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Going to blow the front door and take this thing down hard. That's what we did back then. So flying helos right to the front door, and this is what we're doing. And we knew from past experiences exactly what kind of resistance we were going to meet. And we planned for the worst. Like, I went in on that thing completely knowing, in that first room, I was going to get shot. Like, they had belt feds, they had suicide vests, like, these guys are committed for sure. If we go in right now, that first room is going to be sketchy. And we landed on the ax and we ran through that thing like, we've done a million other times, and there was no one there. Dry hole.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  And then we get an update that all those guys had left and had ran out the back. And now they're in adjacent, essentially a cornfield. But if you imagine, um,

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  imagine an endless field of nothing, just a plowed field, and then right in the middle of it is about 500 yards of six foot tall.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  I don't even know what you'd call it. It's like straw, but it's not. I mean, you can't see anything. And they're trying to walk us down on top of this guy. So we all switch over.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  Probably six or seven of us. And we all get online and we were all starting to walk down. We've all switched over to fires and we're lifting. And two of the new guys and one of the EOD guys had not switched over to fires. They were, we literally interlocked arms. That's how bad it was. You couldn't see shit. We couldn't lose anybody inside there. We'd never walked through the palm groves before. We didn't have a dog. We didn't have the experience. And looking back on it is one of the most dangerous things I've ever done. Because you knew the guy in there had a gun. Like, for sure. You knew that they run around with the S-Bass and you know they're committed. So now we are walking on there. So if you imagine just a big, open field with a big sparkle in the center of it,

• 1:06:24Speaker 04

  and we're gonna walk towards it. And we're gonna walk until we find this guy. Okay, so we do. Completely committed, interlocked arms, and we are walking forward and we're getting the updates. Fifteen feet.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  Ten feet.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  You're standing on him.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  And you see everybody looking down like, he's not here. Third person from the right, you are standing on him. And we all look over to the right. Nothing. Like, what the fuck? So we're all on a line, standing right there. And Jay calls an audible. He's like,

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  "Home maneuver element. Take a right-hand turn because we know there's an open field. We just have to cross and now it's completely open. Now we can regather our shit and we can assault from this side." By just walking through all this, all this crazy brush, we can approach it from the open side. And just walk in the brush a little bit, maybe call him out, do something else. And when we turn right, this element stayed. They didn't get the word. So now, we have a bad guy. Our element, and then another element. Now we're in a Polish ambush. We turn, we walk out, and we enter this beautiful manicured, open field. There's not an ounce of cover anywhere in it. There's not a rut. There's nothing. There's not a rock. There's a single tire. And it's about twenty feet, eh, thirty feet from the edge of the, from the edge of the brush line.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  It's just out there. And we're standing there. And a team guy gaggle, standing around like wondering what the fuck is this guy really there is it a dog is it some animal like these guys are clearly lost and we don't realize that that bad guy is in there probably six feet inside and he's looking at us and we're from middle of the wall and we're close we're having a full on conversation and at one point we're trying to relay to the other guys because now we know we've lost three now they're lost and brush country and we have to reconsolidate them so we can deal with this guy because now we know the reality we've turned the entire profile blue forces

• 1:08:31Speaker 04

  bad guy blue forces we've got all the rest of the guys over here on on the west side and now we're trying to do a link up like we have to get them around to reconsolidate with us the blue force picture and knowing where everybody is is challenging at times but you really have to know them we basically walked right up to the edge it's um Jay's there our corpsman our turp the JTAC and a guy we'll just call Matty is standing there with me and we're all in kind of a team guy gaggle and Jay hears something in the bushes and I think he believed at the time it was the guys and he screamed out hey and when

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  he did that dude let off the biggest Hollywood belt fed burst I've ever heard and everybody dropped it was like um we used to do the new guy scenarios you know you're doing land warfare the first contact and all the head shed dies just and now you've got to drag around like you know playing war games that's what it was like everybody hit the deck and there was a tree probably thirty feet

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  That way? And I remember I turned, I heard it, watched them drop, and I was sprinting so fast to that thing. I remember the dust kicking up in front of me when he was tracking me. I dove behind the tree and he pounded on that tree for what seemed like an eternity. I was on my back looking up. I mean, you can imagine, helmet's cockeyed, there's no ambient light, I can't see shit through my nods, and there's just dirt blowing all over me. I mean, I am consumed by this. I don't even know where he's at now. I don't know if he's on his feet chasing me down like I'm just overcome with withering fucking fire. And then it stops. And he pans back over and he starts to engage the dudes.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  This thing goes on for a little bit and we're trying to reconsolidate. The JTAC has went out and he's trying to grab people now, he's behind a tire. I remember looking over and seeing Jay, and I remember him sitting upright and I watched him get shot one more time, right in the face, and it looked like that was it. He hit the ground so hard and you knew he was dead. So, there's an audible that has to be made. We have the JTAC and behind this tractor tire, and I mean, it's a tractor tire. It's not big. It's about that high off the ground, serves no purpose, and he's behind it, and I'm directly

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  adjacent from him looking at him, like I have an out, out this way. We can't because we have all these dudes that are shot up. And I remember it was like the scene from Black Hawk Down. Come to me. Fuck you, come to me. Ready? Yep. And I got up and I ran as fast as I could and I dove like a baseball slider in behind that thing, and it, it was such a sigh of relief to feel another human next to me. I was so thankful that he was there. And now we have to figure out how to get out there and bring those people back here. And this whole thing's happening very, very fast. So Jay's been shot multiple times. He's discombobulated, he's talking, and this guy's still trying to shoot him, but he can't

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  see shit because it's black. So if you're quiet, he can't hear you.

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  The bravest thing I have ever seen in 17 years happened on that night. I watched Matty get up and run forward after he'd already been shot and grab our corpsman and is dragging him backwards, just like on the movies. The corpsman pulls out his pistol and is shooting into this bush line. And Matty gets shot again. Spins him around and dumps him. He gets back up, grabs him and gets shot again. Dumps him and he gets back up and continued to drag him back until we got them all back to the tractor tire. You know, we're all pulling them in there and we basically just dog piled on them, just plates on plates, just trying to build up a human wall to not let these people be shot again. And he's still shooting at us the entire time. He hasn't let up.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  He just doesn't know where we're at now. So if we can keep everybody quiet, we've got hands over mouths, like people are screaming. We had, uh, the corpsman got shot through tib fib, shattered his leg. Matty got shot through the brachial artery, hit his humerus and shattered that and it flipped over the back of his neck. And I remember, because we talked about it later and it made sense, he looked very confused at one point, in between dragging the corpsman back. And he said he was looking for his arm. When it broke, it snapped and went over his neck and he looked down and just saw this. Couldn't see it. I mean, there's no moonlight, you can't see anything. You can't see under nods right there, it's just gone. You look down and there's a stump there. So he doesn't know. He's been shot in the leg.

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  Jay's been shot in the leg and the, um, the side plates. I think he took a double stack to the elbow, so it blew out his entire arm. And then he took one to the face that basically removed his jaw, removed his nose, and you could look inside him. It was as bad as it could have been. So we get them back and we go into T-triple-C mode. Tourniquets on there, we're packing wounds, we're doing that, and thank God for that course. My, um, I don't know where we'd be without that. Uh, the live tissue training and all that. That was, um, I was so prepared for that. Um, we were in and out of that blowout kit so fast. To, uh, and I, I joked with Matty about it. He was, um, I put the tourniquet on him, he was begging me to stop.

• 1:14:14Speaker 04

  I was like, two more, two more turns. Finally got the blood to stop. I mean, I had my fingers inside his arm, feeling out that thing. Um, the medics working on Jay and, um, the corpsmen putting on tourniquets, pressure dressings, all that. And I remember having a distinct conversation with Matty. He's begging me for quick clot. He's like, quick clot, over and over and over. I remember from talking to, uh, the surgeons during the training. He's like, if you dump quick clot in there, the only way to remove it is to cut it out. And it's inside of his bicep. And, I mean, to me, I have the bleeding stopped. I have it under control and I'm not pouring quick clot in you because they're gonna have to cut it out of you. Like, I'm saving you, you're not dying here. Like, you don't need that quick clot. We had a bunch of hemostatic dressings, like, I'm packing this thing, it's fine.

• 1:14:59Speaker 04

  And, uh, he wouldn't shut the fuck up about it.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  So I told him, yeah, and I grabbed, uh, a thing of quick clot. And I mean, this is underneath a tractor tightwire, rounds are coming over. I was like, I've got it. And I pretended like I did it and I went like that. And, uh, he's like, thank you so much. So, yeah, you never got quick clot.

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  So the next thing, we, uh, we have tourniquets on them. We are talking about what we're going to do now, and he is still engaging. And the JTAC Jay, um, starts prepping a fire mission and it's close. Um, it's the closest, uh, at that point is the closest, uh, fire mission to coalition forces in the entire war. No shit. Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  That's amazing.

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  Ten meters, fifteen meters? Ten fucking meters? I mean, close enough where you could take a grenade and throw it. Holy shit. I mean, like, it was... And they started walking him in. By this time, the other element we had had maneuvered away.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  Nobody was firing because we didn't have, um, we didn't have a picture. We didn't know where this dude was coming from. We didn't know where our forces were. And we thought, we thought that if we were to engage this guy, we would have hit our own blue forces. So there was a big flow in the fire and we were basically just being withered. We were, we were just getting chewed up. I mean, strobes are getting shot off helmets like it's, like it's in there. And they're everywhere but hitting human beings, so we've essentially taken the tractor and we stacked up plates in between them on our sides and now we're just working on people. We're laying on top of people, um, doing whatever we can. And Jay's prepping for a fire mission and he's asking for 25 Mike Mike and 40 Mike Mike and basically to start walking it in. And I remember a distinct conversation. They said, "No." They said, "It's too close."

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  And he said, "We're gonna fucking die anyway." Juliet Alpha, send it." Gave us initials and they started dropping it and you could feel it.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  You could, you could feel the vibrations start to get closer and closer and start to bounce you off the ground a little bit and it kept coming, kept coming, kept coming. And then they started going tally on target. And, uh, I mean, you could hear that dude, the impacts. You'd hear him smack. You could hear him screaming and it was very satisfying. I just let him go. Like, let him go. Like, we're not walking back up that tree line again. Let that dude die. We called in, um...

• 1:17:23Speaker 04

  We called in for a medevac. They landed right on the X. Right there where we were. We loaded him on there and I jumped in. The corner had already been shot, so we had him, Matty and Jay Redman.

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  And we talk about the typical team guy shit sometimes about if this happens, just put me out of my misery. You know what I mean? Yeah. If I get hit by an IED and it blows my dick off, just finish me. Like, people say that shit. Yeah. That would have been one of the times. If my face looks like this, put me down. And he was the most coherent, the most calm dude I have ever seen. Sitting upright, leaning forward, letting shit pour out of his face so he could breathe.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  And he didn't say much, man. I don't know if the shock hit him. I don't think he knew how bad it really was.

• 1:18:12Speaker 04

  So I'm working on Matty in the helo. We're kind of doing the whole comb thing. Running down his fingers, we're finding bullet holes, we're trying to patch all this stuff up and we get him back. Those helo pilots flew that bird so fast. I thought they were gonna suck us out of the bird, but we had to shut the doors. I've never been in a 60 that flew that fast, ever. I mean, to this day, that thing, that thing was in a full attack mode the entire way back. It was the fastest shit I've ever been in. And thank God for it.

• 1:18:41Speaker 04

  Some of the stuff you don't think about, like the tourniquet's slipping. Now the compartment syndrome sets in, all the blood's getting pushed out, now it gets loose. Now we start blowing blood all out of it, like it's in my mouth, it's all over me, like I'm covered in it head to toe, like it's... I mean, it looks like a scene out of Black Hawk Down, the back of the helo. Like, there's just med kits everywhere and just people laid out. It's like another dose of reality.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Team guys do get shot. If you're, if you're not trained to handle that situation, you won't. You won't, you won't rise to that. Like, if I wouldn't have been through T-triple-C, if all those dudes wouldn't have played out that exact scenario hundreds of times in training, I don't know what would have happened. Like, it's a testament to how good those dudes were prepared, that JTAC, the balls he had.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  To drop that, the confidence he had in that AC-130 crew. Like, if you miss that thing, like your first round for windage, it was so close it could have killed us. It's like, that's the confidence.

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  It was humbling, man, to get back from that thing. I remember we, we dropped those guys off. I wasn't there for the rest of the target, what happened after that. I was probably gone for an extra two hours and I came back from the debrief and I walked in and...

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  You know, I'm an emotional fucking rag.

• 1:20:00Speaker 04

  I would have sworn that Matt was gonna die for sure, like Jerry looked like he was dead. I never thought he'd make it. I mean, just the way his face looked, like it looked so bad.

• 1:20:11Speaker 04

  But outside of his arm, no real life-threatening injuries, outside of a shit-ton of cosmetic stuff. I mean, it's a really lucky way to get shot. Matty was a, he was a different animal. He got a bad infection. External fixators, you know, it's all over the place in the hospital.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  A very surreal moment, especially for that deployment. Just, that's how we're gonna end this whole thing? Just, it's a somber way to go home on that deployment. And I never really got to process it, I didn't have time. Just the whole reality of what had happened, kinda what we'd been through, being together as a group. Being in firefights is one thing, like, being in that is completely different. I'm just helpless. I couldn't shoot back, I couldn't do anything. I could just lay there and put my plates in front of that guy and hope he shoots me and not you. I can give you a tourniquet. Outside of that, man, outside of moral support, like, we're all just in this together.

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  And I would've bet anything, there's no way we would've walked away from that. There's no, I thought we were dead after the initial contact. It was so close, it was so violent. And I think it was kinda that, um, not lackadaisical attitude, because we were definitely wired tight for that, but it's not reality until it's reality. Like, that's not gonna happen. Yes it is. Whether you want it to or not, it's happening right now. So, um, yeah, a lot of good lessons learned from that. A lot of stuff that I carry with me my entire life, even in training. Usually, you know, a lot of guys will put on this Hollywood show during training, they'll, um,

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  they'll run out there and they'll like try to save the princess or some kinda crazy shit. No, sometimes you have to. Sometimes you have to get up and you have to say, "Cover me," and you have to go out and do that. And sometimes you have to call in danger close fire missions. Sometimes you have to run out there being shot already and drag back a dude to save his life. Like, there's no argument with that, that's the most heroic shit I have ever seen, ever. I mean, to this day, like, if I had one defining moment where I stood back and I was just starstruck, that's it. Like, if I had to, if I had to capture a, you know, a 30-second clip of, "You wanna be a Navy SEAL?

• 1:22:37Speaker 04

  Why do you wanna be one? Because people will do this for me." That'd be it. That'd be Jay calling a fire mission, Matty run out there grabbing back the corpsman, dragging him back. It was a badass move.

• 1:22:50Shawn Ryan?

  That is some heavy shit.

• 1:22:52Speaker 04

  Oh, fuck, man.

• 1:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:22:56Speaker 04

  So yeah, I um, I'd almost been killed like six, seven times on a deployment. It was, it was getting rough and that was kind of the, the last straw. We were about to do turnover. They medevacced all those guys home and then they sent me back on the first bird. And when I landed, I went and saw, um, went and saw Matty in the hospital. His mom was in there and um, it was cool, man, like. Then the connection to reality, because we hadn't had that before. I've never had a guy in a platoon be shot. And it gave me a really good insight on what happens when you actually get shot. Like it's not the movies. It's not a graze. It's like, oh yeah, he took and he continued to fight for six hours and he doesn't miss a rotation. That bullet hits your bone.

• 1:23:39Speaker 04

  You're out of this program, maybe forever. You're definitely out of it for nine months. Multiple surgeries, now infections and rehab and physical therapy and getting cleared by the doctors and everything else, everything that goes in behind the backside to get you back up and running. It wasn't a reality. We never had to deal with it. Like I definitely take that forward now to training. Like we do simunition shit. I use that as a prime example. If you haven't seen what happens when a bullet hits human bone, on the blue side or on the bad side, the bullet doesn't care. It's doing the exact same amount of damage. Like you're out of the game for six months, man. Yeah. So. But yeah, that was uh, that was how we wrapped up 2007. That's pretty fucking rough.

• 1:24:24Speaker 04

  You keep in touch with all those guys still or? Yeah, I was just texting with um, with the JTAC, actually the day before yesterday. Really? Trying to get them to come in and do the skateboard thing. Yeah, get some art therapy on, get the boys back together. I think everybody um, well those guys will met or not, I don't give a shit, like that really fucked us up.

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Speaker 04

  It's rough, man. Yeah. Got to sit there and just wait to die. Damn. Yeah. It was, um...

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a real experience, just the proximity of it.

• 1:25:01Speaker 04

  That's something that can't be, um... It can't be overlooked. Like, it's different being pinned down from a couple hundred meters away, like you can get up and maneuver. Not this one. Like, if that dude would've stood up and just walked us down, it would've been over. So, it's like all the lessons learned on laser placement, how to focus your nods, ambient conditions, everything else. It's like, I know now. It's like one more pearl. Yeah, lock that one away, I won't ever forget that again. Damn. So, it's like everything... You know, I think we kind of take that forward in the training now. It's like, all these lessons have been learned, not because, you know, we're superhuman, but because we're honest and we fuck things up. And everything you're doing right now, I've fucked up before. There's no reason for you to make the same mistake. Yeah. So...

• 1:25:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, um...

• 1:25:49Speaker 04

  I think the big thing's just not being, um...

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Not being mentally prepared for that situation. You thought you were, but I hadn't... I hadn't looked at it in a, in a realistic lens yet. It was still video game mode, it was still training mode, it was... "That's not gonna happen to me." Even though we were walking down, interlocked arms, waiting to get shot, wasn't reality yet. We was scared shitless. I knew it was coming, any moment, but in... "Tulip goes loud, it's not real."

• 1:26:20Speaker 04

  Fuck, man.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  How was it being home after that? Terrible. I was fucked up, man. I had a... I was dating a chick at the time, um...

• 1:26:33Speaker 04

  She, uh...

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  Shit just went south, dude. I was just, I was in a bad spot.

• 1:26:42Speaker 04

  Everything sent me over the edge, just super, hyper vigilant. I just couldn't shake it. And, uh... I think I really started to obsess over everything then. Like, the details in training, training methodology, and just...

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  Like, I really became a student of the craft then. Like, then I got it. All the shit, all these old dudes had been talking. This is why. This is what they were trying to prepare me for, but they didn't have a formula to give it to me. They didn't have a... They didn't have a movie, they didn't have, uh... They didn't have their own C story to tell me this. They just knew from training over and over and over, "This is what it has to be," and they were right. Like, if you make training so realistic, you don't know the difference because of your mindset,

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  it's very hard to trip people up. If I paint it real in my mind during training,

• 1:27:35Speaker 04

  my body won't know the difference.

• 1:27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 1:27:42Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break. That was heavy.

• 1:27:45Speaker 04

  Fuck, man.

• 1:27:49Shawn Ryan?

  I hope you're enjoying The Sean Ryan Show. Let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patron community receives exclusive behind-the-scenes content from The Sean Ryan Show, as well as an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else. I also engage in live video chat with Tier 3 members once a month, where we discuss a variety of topics. Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes The Sean Ryan Show possible. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And head over to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and get your subscription today.

• 1:28:34Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Ben, so we're back. That was a pretty fucking devastating deployment. But you came back and a little bit of good happened. You met your wife.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:28:48Shawn Ryan?

  So how did that happen?

• 1:28:50Speaker 04

  So after 2005, we had the Red Wings thing go down and most of the wives stayed local. So we all stayed there. They all, a bunch of them lived offshore drives, so that became just our, our running crew. We'd go over there and do family dinners at Laura McGreevy's house all the time. This became a big melting pot of Gold Star families. Internet Patsy through them. So, yeah, never met her before, didn't know Danny, didn't know any of that. I'd seen her for, you know, a five-minute segment before.

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, Gold Star community kinda brought us together, which was pretty taboo.

• 1:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  Let me backtrack just real quick, because the audience doesn't know this. So you eventually wound up marrying Patsy, who previously was married to Danny Dietz, who died in Operation Red Wings. So she's a Gold Star.

• 1:29:47Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:29:48Shawn Ryan?

  So...

• 1:29:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, which at the time was, it was taboo. Nobody did that. They, um, this is gonna sound bad, but I'll say it. We kinda wrote them off. Like, they're untouchable. Once your husband dies, like, you can't date again. And I know team guys did it, I did it too. You judge them, like, how long are they supposed to wait? Do they wait 10 years? Like, you can't judge people for that. You have no idea what they're going through. And kinda the school of thought, where I came up in the teams. I fell in love with her right off the bat, and I didn't give a shit if she was Gold Star or not.

• 1:30:24Speaker 04

  And I caught hate for it. I did. Had answers to tough questions. I didn't care.

• 1:30:30Shawn Ryan?

  What was it about her that you liked so much?

• 1:30:34Speaker 04

  Her understanding. She got it. She knew exactly what it was. Reality had smacked her. Her stepdad was a SEAL, so she'd been in the Navy. She knew the commitment.

• 1:30:48Speaker 04

  And she served herself. Like, she knew exactly what it was. She knew what her deployment was, and she knew the reality of it. I didn't have to explain it to her. I feel like that's a big thing in the teams is... People marry their high school sweetheart. After you've been gone for four years and you come back and she has no idea that you're gonna be gone. Two hundred and fifty plus days out of every year. Like she has no idea you're gonna come home with, you know, three weeks of nasty ass laundry, drop it off and leave for a two week training trip. I didn't have to explain that to her, she already knew and she was bought in. So it made, uh, it made that transition so easy. Cause she was as dedicated as I was. So she, uh, she really let me. She let me obsess.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  Like she knew where I had to go to get to the level I wanted to get and she encouraged it. So, yeah, I mean, she saved me for sure.

• 1:31:38Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you guys dating before you got engaged?

• 1:31:40Speaker 04

  Um. About a year and a half, so.

• 1:31:44Shawn Ryan?

  Year and a half?

• 1:31:45Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:31:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, so you met her pretty much right when you got home? And then by the end of the next workup?

• 1:31:51Speaker 04

  By the next workup, um, I think around, I think it was Thanksgiving that year or something like that. Proposed to her in front of her old family, my old family and, the community kind of erupted in a positive way. It was awesome.

• 1:32:04Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, dude, it was as it was supposed to be.

• 1:32:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So on the, on this trip home, it sounds like it was pretty eventful. You, you met your wife. You got engaged. You screened for Green Team.

• 1:32:20Speaker 04

  Yep, um, started my third workup. We, um, I was in a very, uh, I was riding an emotional roller coaster daily. I just was, um, I was drinking back then, a lot. Um, just trying to numb my senses. I didn't care what it was. Luckily, I never did anything really stupid. Um, definitely had my moments. Um, that was the only thing I knew. I didn't know what else to do. Um, people that I could talk to, wouldn't talk. Other people that had been exposed to similar things. They, uh, they put up this facade like, um,

• 1:33:02Speaker 04

  What's wrong with you?

• 1:33:04Speaker 04

  So I just, I did the exact same thing. I walled it up like, nope. I won't even address that. I won't address any of these feelings I have. I won't address the anxiety. My performance anxiety going into like that 2008, 2009 year was through the roof. Like having panic attacks and I didn't know what they were. I thought I was having little mini strokes. If you haven't had one, they're, it's alarming. Like just sitting down in a cold sweat. Yeah, I have no idea what's coming over me right now, but I know it's not good. And I know I can't say anything to anybody because they'll pull me out of this job. And that's not happening.

• 1:33:42Speaker 04

  So we have to do what we do, suffer in silence. Just be quiet and continue doing your job and that's what you have to do.

• 1:33:51Speaker 04

  Fortunately for me, right around that time, we started a new workup and I got a, I got a new platoon chief. Who used to be over at the command. His name's Barrett and he was everything I needed. Like, I mean, you couldn't have, you couldn't have molded a better dude at that moment in time for me. He, he talked the talk, he walked the walk and he performed and he was, he was nasty. He was, he was, um, cause usually, you know, guys kinda, they have a shelf life and they don't, you know, your platoon chief or your, your troop chief isn't making the entries every time. He doesn't need to be the best shot anymore because he's commanding, controlling everything. It wasn't like that with that dude. He outperformed everybody.

• 1:34:34Speaker 04

  And he basically set the bar at what development group is supposed to be. I'm like, that's what it became. Like, I can't outshoot him. I can't out PT him. I don't know more about CQB than him. I don't have the combat experience he does.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  And it humbled you, which is exactly what I needed. Exactly what everybody needed. We needed, we needed to see the insight. I needed to see what you could accomplish if you, if you went all the way. And that's what that dude did. He showed us like, if you want to be a professional, if you want to be the guy, you have to go all the way.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  Whether that was good advice or bad advice, I took it literally. And I started to set up little walls, little break off points in relationships and friendships and everything else. If you impede anything on this progression, I'm done. Not one fucking second will I give to you because you're not worth the end state. You're not, you're not worth me sacrificing my dreams and my hopes and all my wants and wishes. I want to be the best Navy SEAL I can possibly be. And if you slow me down one second, I'll never talk to you again. I don't have time for it. Like this community, that organization, this job deserves the very best to me. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, everything, tactically.

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  And you have to completely, in my opinion, to reach the highest level you possibly can, you have to cut out all the other bullshit. And I thought that job deserved it. I did. I grew up with it my entire life and you've never met a dude who loved being a Navy SEAL more than me. I just did. Every day I woke up, even through the bullshit where everybody's complaining in the platoon space on this and that, I loved it. I came home and I just, I just smiled, man. Just thankful to be there. Thankful that I'm doing exactly what I, what I was put on this earth to do. I loved it.

• 1:36:32Shawn Ryan?

  Did you cut any, did you cut any important relationships or was it just acquaintances and little bullshit?

• 1:36:39Speaker 04

  No, I cut all kinds of shit out. We had, people in a platoon life, people that spread a lot of hate, a lot of discontent, a lot of shit talking, a lot of guys that call them nine to fivers. The last one in here, you show up five minutes before our first muster and you're the first dude bouncing out of here at 4pm.

• 1:37:08Speaker 04

  What are you doing?

• 1:37:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Speaker 04

  Birds of a feather. I'm gonna shun myself and I'm gonna isolate myself with only people that are better than me and that are gonna help me achieve the level I want to achieve. The people that wanna stay late and train, the guys that wanna show up early and work out, the guys that are doing Oak courses on Saturday and Sunday, like, the guys who are gonna fully commit. That's who I'm gonna surround myself with. And it's the best thing I ever did.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  It gave me the focus. I could just strip out everything and I could just tunnel vision. Every day had a purpose. Like, today, I'm doing fitness. I'm not checking my phone. I don't have... Social media wasn't a thing. You didn't have to deal with any... Any kind of bullshit like that. You could just scrub away bad relationship toxicity out of your life. So,

• 1:37:55Speaker 04

  we do that deployment. It was a long stand down. It was really eating away at, uh, at the boys, the overall collective. Long story short, we, uh, we deployed in a big joint fashion. And the Rangers, uh, had an issue.

• 1:38:09Shawn Ryan?

  Back to Iraqi deployed.

• 1:38:11Speaker 04

  Back to Iraq, back to Baghdad. Had all the assets. Third time. Full rotation. And, uh, it was awesome. Like, the target set we inherited was amazing. Like, we were going to be getting it. And I think we were there for ten or fifteen days, um, and we were just feeling ourselves out. The the asset schedule and everything else, like, all the things that actually make the machine run. We were slowly figuring out. I was a team leader at the time. So I'm in all the briefings and all the meetings, and the Rangers go out and they get into a firefight. And they kill a guy. And it happens to be one of the sheik's son-in-laws. And they threw some political shitstorm into the air. And they stood us down for ninety consecutive days.

• 1:38:57Speaker 04

  So we have all the task force people there. We have everything. Pilots, everything. And every day, they'd come in. Roll twenty-four. Roll twenty-four. Should be on Friday. It's a long weekend. It's a four-day weekend. On Tuesday, we'll get an update. Friday, we'll get an update. And they kept doing that the entire time. So, I mean, you can imagine.

• 1:39:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:18Speaker 04

  Got a bunch of guys overseas that just wanna fight, just wanna get out of the door, and you're not letting them, and you're not telling them why. And we didn't do anything. I didn't shoot that dude. I wasn't on that target. None of our people were. Why are you punishing us?

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  Then you got to feel being a political pawn. Then you realize that it was nothing to do with us. Just some guy flexing is not going to let you do your job. But it eroded the cohesion of that entire organization. Like, we were at each other's throats, man. It was bad. Just the living conditions, like, you could, you wouldn't see people for days. There was no reason to have a meeting. It's like, we weren't training. We were just rusting. And luckily, Barrett kind of pulled us out of that, and he'd have, um, basically pulled all the guys together. We'd do CQB, we'd go to flat range, we started training that group within the group. That spread to collective, and we kind of just, you know. It took a little bit, but we all got back on step. And on around the 90th day, he came in, and he said, "Fuck it, we're moving."

• 1:40:18Speaker 04

  And we lifted that entire package, and we drove it down the road a couple hours to FOB Warhorse. And we set up there. And it was busy. Like, it was, uh, it was everything we wanted to do. We inherited a bunch of target sets from, uh, from the Army side, which is really good. Got to interface with those guys a lot. Got to learn about palm groves and a bunch of new TTPs that we hadn't even thought about. Things that would have really helped us in 2007. We're now learning now. Like, yep, I've been there. I know exactly what he's talking about. So, we got to learn a shit ton. Uh, we got to put it to, put it to good use. It was good. Who were you working with from the Army? Um, so, we had a Ranger element with us. Um, we had the Tier One personality there.

• 1:41:02Speaker 04

  Um, 22SES was in the same compound. Um, so, he was a, he was so funny, man. The, uh, the SES, I fucking love those dudes. They'd, uh, they'd roll through the chow hall, and they've all got American flag patches on. I'm like, "What's with the patch?" And he said, "Gotta blame it on somebody." Fuck assholes. Like, okay, cool. But those guys were great, man. Just, um, I remember seeing them. You see all the unit guys, you see the SES guys, and I mean, I'm a kid. And they look like they're seven foot tall, like, they look like Marcus Cabone. Like, they look enormous. They've all got huge beards and long hair, and you're like, "Holy shit." That's what the pros look like. Like, now you get to see it up close. Just before, I mean, it's just, it's just us. You get to see the other organization.

• 1:41:46Speaker 04

  You're like, and you get to hear what they're doing, going out at night, and you don't get to. So you get to hear about this huge firefight they got into and you can't. You gotta sit there with the Rangers and twiddle your thumbs and play reindeer games. Until we got the lift and shift and it's like, okay, let's all be big boys again. And he was fine. He was, he was a decent deployment. Nothing, nothing to really write home about. But it showed me how, shooting the seesaw method. If the op tempo goes up, morale and where for can go down. Like you don't need to have Xbox and flat screen TVs and all this crazy shit. If you're working every night, you sleep on cots in a tent with no AC, eating MREs.

• 1:42:29Speaker 04

  The happiest dude you'll ever see. Nobody gives a shit. When that doesn't happen, morale has to go up somehow. And it was nothing to give you. You can't booze. You can't leave the country. There's nothing to do. You're just stuck there and you just have to watch other people go out and work. Just to watch how, how that eroded the unit cohesion. And did, and it took a while to get it back. Like me, you had to really, really bring the boys in. Like movie time, just, you know, not, not mandatory fun, but you had to do things to bring everybody back in. To re-explain the why. I think part of the training, part of the mindset conversations, the mission planning conversations would,

• 1:43:11Speaker 04

  they take such a philosophical role then because of him, that everybody would buy in. It was like nothing you've ever heard before. His thought process on mission planning. That's a completely different school of thought. Like that is a, okay, that's, it's a new concept to us. Just the whole thing, just everything. The target approach, the methodology between everything, everything was to the why. So he was teaching all you guys that, that's a fucking hell of a leader. He is, man. He's amazing. He got to stay and do a troop chief right after that, which, I mean, anybody who's worked with him.

• 1:43:54Speaker 04

  I mean, he's a demigod in my eyes. Like I fucking love that dude. If I had to pick one dude right now that I'd put on my dream team, like that'd be one of my first picks. He was a great night. Needed him so bad at that moment. And we came back from that deployment and I was kinda on a negative crash. I was trying to stay positive because I had green team to look forward to. And.

• 1:44:19Speaker 04

  You know, I got married, did all that. We flew over to Spain, had the honeymoon, came back.

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  Got into a blowout with uh with my old man.

• 1:44:31Speaker 04

  Like um, not a big blowout, just an argument and it escalated into uh not speaking.

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  Basically starting Green Team in the blind. So in January of 2010, had an argument and it escalated from there and it got worse and worse and worse. And um I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I couldn't have any distractions.

• 1:45:00Speaker 04

  The platoon chief told me exactly what Green Team is going to be like. I'd seen my buddies go through it. I've heard the horror stories. I know how much pressure is on it. And um, that's what he kept saying. He's like, you have to have a perfect day every day. No distractions, no booze, no chick drama, breakup with your girlfriend, do whatever. Don't buy a puppy right now. Like, it's the only thing that matters. Lock it in right now and give it your total commitment and you'll be successful. And that's what I had to do.

• 1:45:32Speaker 04

  So, yeah, um, a couple of months turned into a really long time.

• 1:45:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How many guys started the Green Team?

• 1:45:45Speaker 04

  Called somewhere between um eighty and ninety.

• 1:45:48Shawn Ryan?

  How many came out?

• 1:45:56Speaker 04

  Twenty, twenty twenty-two? Not many.

• 1:46:00Shawn Ryan?

  Low twenties?

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Shawn Ryan?

  You want to go into any of that?

• 1:46:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, we can.

• 1:46:07Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 1:46:10Speaker 04

  What do you want to talk about?

• 1:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the first day of Green Team. What happens?

• 1:46:18Speaker 04

  We show up and do a screen test, show up and do a physical test. It's the only known in the entire selection process. You know exactly what it is. It's written on a piece of paper. Everybody knows what it is. And it doesn't matter. That is the most stressful thing.

• 1:46:35Speaker 04

  You'll ever do. It just is. It's by design. It was like a dream come true just to be there.

• 1:46:44Speaker 04

  Until we started the screen test.

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  And you get a bunch of dudes, a bunch of the guys that have already made it, come out and they watch you. And they hold for you for sit-ups. They count your push-ups. They count your sit-ups. They tell you if your pull-ups are right. And that is a very intimidating thing. Like you're

• 1:47:03Speaker 04

  you're a college football player and you're coming out for your pro debut and Tom Brady's throwing footballs to you. Oh shit. Yeah. No pressure. And back in the day, they looked like Vikings. I mean, super long hair, big, long beards, and they looked fucking mean. They did. And it was intimidating. And I loved it. I did, man. I got off that bus, dude. I used to take Benadryl before green tea.

• 1:47:33Speaker 04

  I'd get so excited. I'd get so, I'd get so amped up. I'd take Benadryl to try to calm myself down. It was like a cheap man's beta blocker. But I loved every minute of it. It was two different schools of thought. You could try to survive it. You could try to polish all the way through and come out at the end and be more capable.

• 1:47:53Speaker 04

  My advice that I was given to me was take every day, like it's your last day, and try to absorb as much knowledge out of that fucking place as possible. And that's what I did. Every day.

• 1:48:05Speaker 04

  There's a lot of pressure to perform. We talked about that addiction.

• 1:48:09Speaker 04

  Every day you want to perform and the fear of, because now I had that falling out with my parents. The thought of not making it now

• 1:48:19Speaker 04

  really set home. The thought that I would have to come home and look at Patsy after all the shit she's been through and tell her I didn't make it. I couldn't fathom it. It haunted me at night.

• 1:48:31Speaker 04

  Wasn't sleeping.

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, the pressure consumed me.

• 1:48:38Speaker 04

  I try to use it to my advantage, but it's hard, man. It's hard when every day. It's like you see the best dude I've ever worked with just got dropped.

• 1:48:49Speaker 04

  Why the fuck am I still here? I don't really care. It's one more day.

• 1:48:54Shawn Ryan?

  Do they tell you why you get dropped?

• 1:48:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  They do?

• 1:48:57Speaker 04

  No, yeah, they tell you. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's team guy to team guy. They tell you exactly why. And looking back on it now,

• 1:49:05Speaker 04

  that's exactly how it has to be because you know what the end state is.

• 1:49:10Speaker 04

  I mean, it's hard for people to hear like your ego gets put in check, but you're not good enough to be here. Whether that be a personality thing, a performance thing, it doesn't really matter. Like you can try to come back or you can't.

• 1:49:25Shawn Ryan?

  Does everybody have the option to come back?

• 1:49:27Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:49:27Shawn Ryan?

  Or you have to be invited back?

• 1:49:29Speaker 04

  I'm invited back.

• 1:49:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you go through the screening again or they give you a class of?

• 1:49:34Speaker 04

  I'm sure it's different every time though. And a lot of guys have to re-screen. Some guys will stay there and they'll roll back if they get hurt or they mess something up. It's kind of like how we can sense if you get past a certain block, sometimes you don't have to redo that block. Unless you really mess it up, you gotta redo the whole thing. Which, I mean, that's what, that's what most people don't realize is how hard that place is physically. Like the screen test are double what it is to get in the buds. That's the bare minimum. Like if you're not, if you're not cranking a 120 pushups, 140 situps, 30 pullups, like you're, you're last. Like if you do the minimums, you're not going. You have to be a freak.

• 1:50:16Speaker 04

  Which was good. We were afforded a lot of time to train and get ready for it and a lot of time in the shoot house, a lot of time shooting, mentally preparing for it. And that was right,

• 1:50:26Speaker 04

  that was right at the height of like the human performance aspect. So we had a badass strength and conditioning coach at Group Two. That really helped us out. He went over to the Eagles and runs their, their stuff. I mean, so we were ready. Like the crew we had assembled. I mean, that was, that was as prepared as you could have been.

• 1:50:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:50:47Speaker 04

  So we shoot up the first day.

• 1:50:51Speaker 04

  I've never been so nervous in my fucking life, dude. I could barely breathe. And I was a freak. I mean, I say that cocky because I was. Like, I was in shape when I showed up. That was the one thing I had going for me. Is I could pass that screen test. And I'll tell you what, the pressure of that day, I barely got through that fucking thing. It just, cranking out 140 pushups and a single set, like, no issue. Now I've got that dude who I want to be like is counting for me and I'm at 70 and I'm blowing snot out of my face. Like, oh my god. Like, I'm just gonna try to do these perfect and hopefully he doesn't say anything to me and let's just hope for the best, like.

• 1:51:30Speaker 04

  That's what it was. I mean, it's fucking stressful. And then every day it just continues. I mean, it's all CQB based and, you know, everything else you gotta do over there. But, um, the pressure to perform, you can't have a bad day.

• 1:51:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:43Speaker 04

  And it becomes a dickin'.

• 1:51:46Shawn Ryan?

  What would you say got most guys?

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  CQB.

• 1:51:49Shawn Ryan?

  CQB?

• 1:51:50Speaker 04

  And that's all, yeah.

• 1:51:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Speaker 04

  You get a couple guys for some other stuff, some jumping, some personality stuff. The officers have a hard time at the end because now it's, all the pressure's on them.

• 1:52:02Speaker 04

  But, no, man, it's a,

• 1:52:05Speaker 04

  it's a humbling experience.

• 1:52:06Shawn Ryan?

  What's the pipeline look like? What are the different blocks of training?

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Um, I don't know how much I can really get into, but I mean, it's basically, um, if you were to assault a, a target, it's basically what it is. A bunch of CQB, a bunch of shooting, a bunch of jumping, do all the land warfare type stuff, and then it's all the other external stuff you have to do.

• 1:52:27Shawn Ryan?

  Do they tie it all together at the end?

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:29Shawn Ryan?

  Like a big,

• 1:52:30Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:30Shawn Ryan?

  You know, a couple exercises?

• 1:52:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:52:33Speaker 04

  And I mean, it's, it's as real as it could be. Like, it feels real.

• 1:52:36Shawn Ryan?

  So what's it like when you, uh, when you graduate, when you're in?

• 1:52:42Speaker 04

  Anti-climatic.

• 1:52:46Shawn Ryan?

  Really? No tradition, is there any traditions you can talk about when you make it in?

• 1:52:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, when you get in there, but we graduated green team, they came in, they read a bunch of names off. And then they said what squadron they were going to and read off a bunch of names. He's like, alright, get in the trucks.

• 1:53:04Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, we got in the trucks and we went out and we did an FNP that night. Big full mission profile, like we knew where we were going. And it was like, I didn't have a cellphone, I couldn't, couldn't tell my wife and just like, because where I wanted to go was exactly where I went. And I wasn't shy about asking where I wanted to go. So, I mean,

• 1:53:27Speaker 04

  it was like all my dreams had come true. Just

• 1:53:31Speaker 04

  finished up green team, well, actually, let's go back in green team. We do a big jump block. I'd already had like 150, 200 sky knives before I had my own parachute, because I knew what I had to be able to do, so I started training on my own. And

• 1:53:49Speaker 04

  it's in August.

• 1:53:52Speaker 04

  We had to do mandatory downwind landings. It's where they want you to run with the wind, so you got a lot of speed coming in. It's to teach you that the parachute doesn't know the difference. If you're going into the wind or downwind, if you do the flare the same, you can manage it.

• 1:54:06Speaker 04

  And I hit a divot going hard. I panicked, disco and Cobra struck this thing and I smashed in. And I thought I broke my back. I heard a fucking loud pop and my whole right leg went numb. And I freaked out and I jumped up real quick and I dusted myself off and I

• 1:54:24Speaker 04

  okay, we're good. And I went back in there and I walked over to the corpsman and I told him, I was like, I don't know what the fuck I just did, but it did something bad. He's like, you want to do your x-rays? No, no. I finished jumping for the rest of the day and I think that was on a Friday. And I grabbed him, I was like, I gotta do x-rays right now. Like, we gotta keep this hush hush. We drove over to the ER. We shot x-rays, came back benign. They thought I tore my hip flexor. So I just kept training on it, kept jumping, probably did another 50, 60 jumps on it. And we're doing all the normal stuff, you know.

• 1:55:03Speaker 04

  10 mile rucks, conditioning runs, buddy carries, we're doing the whole thing. And now it's developed to, I can't lift my leg up. Like, I'm dragging this thing now. If I wanted to drive a car, I'd lift it off the gas and put on the brake. Oh shit. Like, it's, it's done. And I don't know what it is, but I know I'm not saying anything because I don't want to get rolled. So we finish up jumping and we're about to do, um, we're about to get to the very end. We already know where we're gonna go and we've got some little bullshit admin block thing we have to do. And my leg's still messed up. And I call back into rehab. We start going through the whole thing and he's like, let's go in, let's get some CT scans, let's get an MRI and let's see if, maybe you've broke your back. Like, maybe that's what it is.

• 1:55:47Speaker 04

  And they came back to get me. I never forget, we were doing the NFL Combine.

• 1:55:52Speaker 04

  And I was on, I think I was on crutches at the time. We, uh, we did the broad jump, the vertical, max bench press, squat, deadlift. We did a bunch of shit like that, a bunch of cone drills. And we had just got done and they walked in and he's like, um, CMC needs to see you in rehab. I was like, oh, fuck.

• 1:56:15Speaker 04

  I walked over there and he's, he's sitting down, he's got a big smile on his face and puts his hand on my knee. He's like, it's gonna be okay. And my heart fucking dropped, like, you could have just shot my fucking puppy. Like, my whole life is over. And, um, I looked at rehab guys who were super fucking awesome. And I was like, what's going on? I was like, back broken? He went, nope. Your hip's broken. Your femoral neck snapped off. He goes, I don't know how the fuck you're walking.

• 1:56:44Speaker 04

  And I looked at him and I was like, I think it's my back. And he goes, well, this x-ray right here, this MRI, and they pull it up and you see it. Like, femoral neck, the ball and socket snapped all the way off. So that impact had broke it and somehow it had relocked in position and it just hadn't sheared. If it had shifted one inch left or right, all the blood supply goes to the hip, it dies. Total hip reconstruction, you're out of the military. Damn. So it's like that. And I looked at him, I've never had surgery.

• 1:57:12Speaker 04

  I mean, I've been hurt a lot growing up as a kid, I've broken everything, but I've never had surgery. And he's like, we're gonna have to do emergency surgery. And I looked right at him, right in front of that CMC, and I said, during the fucking way, no. And he looked at me and he goes,

• 1:57:26Speaker 04

  that's the only option. He's like, you're not deploying.

• 1:57:31Speaker 04

  How fast can we do it? And he goes, we can get it done tomorrow at 7 a.m. Let's go. I walked in, they pumped in three titanium, five inch lag bolts through my hip. And I showed up to rehab the next day and we started physical therapy. We had to finish SERE school. I got a gnarly infection out there. You know, they put you in the box, they play the whole game. It's really well ran. That was actually one of my favorite blocks.

• 1:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:57:58Speaker 04

  It was really well done. It's a different SERE school than one we did. It was really well ran. I learned a lot at that school, but I got a nasty infection. So I had this wound on the side of my hip. I could press on my thigh and blow pus out of it. I mean, it was bad. Like they were doing pick lines in my arms. It was, it was bad. And my body started rejecting the screws. I didn't know how bad it was gonna be, but I knew that I had to deploy soon. So we're coming up on the new year and we're supposed to deploy. They're gonna let us have Christmas there and then we're gonna deploy in January. So we made it through green team, got a broken hip. I think we had surgery in, end of November and I'm gonna deploy in January.

• 1:58:39Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 1:58:40Speaker 04

  And they're saying it's a four to six month recovery time. I, I heal superhuman. I was even faster back then. And those guys, they're not dumb, man. We, we do vitamin D3, we do calcium, all the supplements to try to get that bone to grow as fast. I quit dipping. I started right back up after I healed, but yeah, I quit anything to try to get myself in the best position to deploy. And I still wasn't, I still wasn't cleared. So the rehab guy, so badass, he deployed with me. I met over there and he stayed for like two or three weeks and we did physical therapy there and I tested out in Afghanistan.

• 1:59:16Shawn Ryan?

  They, they flew a fucking rehab specialist, physical therapist with you on deployment?

• 1:59:23Speaker 04

  I don't know if we, we had one of those huge box jumps, like one of the ones like waist high. And the final test was I had to put on all my gear and I had to do a depth jump off of that and land on one leg. And I never forget, I looked at him, I looked him right in the fucking eyes and I was like, Mike, I don't know about this one, brother. And he went, if you're not sure, don't do it. And I stepped off and it fucking hurt. It hurt bad. And he went, how do you feel? And I went, 100%. He went, okay. He signed me off and we started going.

• 1:59:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 2:00:00Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking A.

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

  Cleared it out and had a good deployment. It was a half one, it was probably two or three months long. Cause I caught, you know, the half of it with all the guys who graduated green team with. And then came back and kind of geared it up for the next one, just the constant rotation.

• 2:00:18Shawn Ryan?

  So you've been through three Iraq deployments before you did your first deployment with Dev Group.

• 2:00:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:26Shawn Ryan?

  And they were all pretty eventful deployments.

• 2:00:29Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:00:30Shawn Ryan?

  How did that first deployment compare to your other three?

• 2:00:36Shawn Ryan?

  Especially your second.

• 2:00:39Speaker 04

  That one was okay because we were new guys and it wasn't my element, I was attached to it.

• 2:00:46Speaker 04

  The team that I was supposed to go to was doing some other shit that wasn't really conducive for new guys to be there. It was more like an older senior position. We were kind of doing the outstation thing. So they didn't want us to get bogged down with that, so we got to stay with the strike force. And it was cool, we got to do a bunch of stuff.

• 2:01:03Speaker 04

  We were, we were battling kind of a weather cycle, just the way it did. So not as super busy as it was, but we turned right back around the next year and that was 11 into 12 and then it was good.

• 2:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:01:18Speaker 04

  It was good, it was, it was humbling just to see. God, I hate to say how nonchalant, but just nothing raised them. They'd go out and whatever would happen and it would be like, holy shit. It wouldn't even get debriefed.

• 2:01:39Speaker 04

  Like it was so, it was so effortless to watch the move. It was, I mean, it's like watching Gretzky take the fucking ice. Like, oh my God. Like, that's what, that's norm.

• 2:01:54Shawn Ryan?

  So what do you mean by that? Do you mean there's no buildup?

• 2:01:56Speaker 04

  No, I mean.

• 2:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  Like it's just.

• 2:01:58Speaker 04

  It's that.

• 2:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  Even keel all the way through.

• 2:02:00Speaker 04

  They are, man.

• 2:02:01Shawn Ryan?

  Pre-op, on the op, post-op, it's just even keel.

• 2:02:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like it doesn't matter what happened. It.

• 2:02:10Speaker 04

  Professional. Like, that's the way it's supposed to be done. And then you saw it, and then it all started to click. That's why, that's why, that's why. It's to achieve that. It's where, I mean, one of the guys, I mean, I, one of the guys who was out there,

• 2:02:30Speaker 04

  did some pretty amazing shit on it, on one of these fucking things, and I made a comment during the debrief like, "Are we not gonna address that?" And I'll never forget, dude, he looked right at me, almost with a little bit of snap, and he's like,

• 2:02:45Speaker 04

  "When you get in the end zone, act like you've been there before," and walked away.

• 2:02:50Speaker 04

  And that was the, that was the tone. Like, "Don't pound your chest, it doesn't matter. You gotta prove it again in five hours." Okay.

• 2:02:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:59Speaker 04

  It was like, the, the level of proficiency was so fucking high, that it was like, you were just, you were just in a constant run to maintain. It's, it's humbling, man. Like, to watch it at its finest. It was, uh, it was everything I ever wanted to see. Yeah, I mean, it's like, growing up playing baseball your entire life, and you finally get to go watch the Yankees play. Like, you're in the dugout with them, you get to see them, you get to touch them.

• 2:03:26Speaker 04

  I mean, to me, it's like, my entire life was nothing but SEAL Team, that was it. That's all I ever knew. Now I get to see it at the highest level, and it's... I mean, it really gives me goosebumps, man. Like, to see it that good, and you're like, "Holy shit, I had no idea." Because you get stuck in a, get stuck, not in a falsehood, but, um, the standard becomes the standard, until someone exceeds it. And then the collective exceeds it, it became a dynasty.

• 2:03:53Speaker 04

  I can't believe how good it was. Looking back on it now, like, that's as close to perfection as I've ever seen it. And it was the norm. Like, no chest pounding, just go. Like, humbling.

• 2:04:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Especially, I mean, they really set the tone, it sounds like, when you, when you get through Green Team, and they're just, "Yep, Shipley here, so-and-so here, getting the fucking truck." You know?

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  Damn, man.

• 2:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  So, makes, uh, makes a lot of sense.

• 2:04:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:28Shawn Ryan?

  But, alright, let's take, uh, let's take a quick break, and then when we get back, we'll get into, uh, one of your, a specific deployment you were on.

• 2:04:39Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right. So we're back. You're, we're getting into some deployments, but I wanted to bring something up, reading through your timeline. You know, first deployment in the SEAL Teams, you get in, biggest loss in SEAL Team history happens.

• 2:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  Then you get through Green Team and right after you graduate, what, maybe six, less than a year afterwards?

• 2:05:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, August of, uh, August of 11.

• 2:05:30Shawn Ryan?

  Extortion 17 happens, which again, is the biggest loss in SEAL Team history. So, let's start there.

• 2:05:39Speaker 04

  Um, kind of the way we talk about it is where were you? Where were you when 9/11 happened?

• 2:05:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:48Speaker 04

  Where were you when June 28th happened? And where were you when August 6th happened? I know exactly where I was. I was sitting in a movie theater with my wife sitting next to me, my shooting buddy's wife, and then my shooting buddy. We're all watching a movie and we're probably 45 minutes into it and phone goes off and you're glued to these things. Can't miss a text message, like, I mean, the addiction, the addiction to your phone becomes a real thing, like you can't miss a text message, you can't miss a phone call, ever. And his phone goes off and mine does too, and we both crack them. And we both looked at each other at the same time and he had got a text from somebody in

• 2:06:27Speaker 04

  the White House, a staffer, used to be a team guy, and he said, "Call me right now." And I had the exact same thing, the exact same time, just said, "Call me right now", from a different guy.

• 2:06:41Speaker 04

  Okay, and he texts back, what's up? And uh, he said Afghanistan, Hilo, get to work.

• 2:06:51Speaker 04

  Like right at my all evenings, get up, walked right out of that movie. They split and drove each other home and I jumped in the car with him. We drove straight to work and everybody was in there. Like it was spreading fast. Nobody had any real details, I mean, we did, but um, it went into um,

• 2:07:10Speaker 04

  it turned into a fucking circus. It was like I was reliving a movie that I'd already seen that I didn't want to know the ending of.

• 2:07:18Speaker 04

  I've been here before, like I already knew what this is. All the notifications, basically everybody's throwing on dress blues, they're driving out.

• 2:07:27Speaker 04

  Me and my wife are grabbing groceries and gallons of Starbucks and dropping off at Gold Star Houses. Just really trying to take care of our own. It's one good thing about the Gold Star community is they know exactly what they need. So basically notification team would go out and then we would roll in behind and drop off gifts. You know, groceries, we'd pick up kids from, from school, we'd do whatever we could. And that's the collective, that's everybody, it's just what you did, trying to make sense of what had actually happened.

• 2:07:59Speaker 04

  There's just no good way to, there's just no good way to go about that. I mean, that loss is felt this fucking moment. Like, that didn't happen, that, how did this happen again? And you couldn't explain why? I mean, things happen in war, things that you wish didn't happen, you wish it wasn't a reality. It's absolutely a reality, it's another reality check. Doesn't matter how good those dudes were, you couldn't have picked a better, there wasn't a more capable fighting force on the fucking earth than dudes were on that helicopter. And it didn't matter, did not matter, gone in an instant. It's like, fuck. Like, how are you going to come back from that?

• 2:08:43Speaker 04

  And then selfishly, how are we gonna take care of all these families?

• 2:08:48Speaker 04

  Like, what do we do now? It's like every foundation just dumped in, trying to support, trying to do whatever they could.

• 2:08:56Speaker 04

  I mean, inside of that, we're trying to rebuild. Like, we still have, we're still fighting the GWAT. Like, we can't let this be our defining moment, we just can't. We've been through this thing before, unfortunately, the, the CEO at the time had been through, had been through this exact same thing. He was a Group Two Commodore when Red Wings happened, he had been through this whole fucking thing. So, put a plan in action, we had to rebuild the force, had to take care of all the families, take care of all the kids, me and Pathy started making memorial t-shirts

• 2:09:29Speaker 04

  within 12 hours. Just trying to raise money, just trying to do anything. That's what a lot of people don't realize is, uh, there's a, there's a gap. Like, if you're pronounced dead, your paycheck stops. There's a long gap before any kind of life insurance comes in or any kind of support. So, the only thing that puts food on the table, the only thing that puts gas in the car is our foundations. Like, people that are raising money, and we don't know how long that gap's gonna be. Like, now, we've got, you know, big-name foundations that really lend a helping hand, but it doesn't matter. To them, to that singular family, the whole world just keeps crashing down, it's over. Like, it'll never fucking be okay now. It's like, anything you can do to try to lighten that burden, you try to. That's making a memorial t-shirt, that's,

• 2:10:15Speaker 04

  you know, picking up the kids and having to make skateboards, whatever it might be, you have to do something.

• 2:10:25Speaker 04

  But I'll tell you what, that was, um, that was a super dose of reality.

• 2:10:30Speaker 04

  Because doing a lot of shit in Helos, and it's like, that's the reality. That is exactly what is going to happen. There's nothing you can do for them. It doesn't matter. Like, you can't plan for that. You just can't. I mean, you can, you can try to do things, but a helo gets shot down with all those people on board. There's no good scenario out of that. And it crippled us. We had to rebuild the force and every team had to give up bodies. And that was the whole point of contention, like, people wanting to rebuild, people not wanting to rebuild. I don't want to go, I want to go. Just, it was a, it was a circus here for a couple of weeks. It was.

• 2:11:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to describe a little bit more in detail? How many lost? What happened?

• 2:11:20Speaker 04

  Without getting many specifics, the weather was not in favor. It was a high-lum night. And a force went out and got contacted. It needed to launch a QRF. And they launched in that troop to be a QRF and on final they got shot down.

• 2:11:43Speaker 04

  Everybody's in there, like, you've got an amazing force. You've got the world's best sitting in the back of this flying school bus. It lands down, they shoot it out of the sky.

• 2:11:54Speaker 04

  You just can't plan for it. I mean, you just can't. It's 31 people gone, including some Afghan partner forces, but an entire troop of people.

• 2:12:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:03Speaker 04

  It's just gone. And I mean, things that people don't think about, things that I know that haunt other individuals is, think about the guy who missed that deployment. Had a shoulder surgery and wasn't there. Think about the guy who had to go home for a birth of his kid. You should have been there. Like, that's going to weigh on that dude forever. And it is.

• 2:12:31Speaker 04

  I don't know, I just remember walking into the building, it being so fucking somber, just,

• 2:12:37Speaker 04

  you didn't know where the smile, like, you wanted to have fun at work, but you couldn't. Like, how dare you smile right now? It was one of those things like, and it wasn't a forced,

• 2:12:50Speaker 04

  it wasn't a forced thing, it's just, it's what it was. We were in the trenches for a long fucking time then. We just were, you know? It felt like it was so hard to get back out of it. We tried to rebuild, and we've got the force, and they're back, and they're... I mean, they dumped. Every dude. They pulled guys from all the other teams and tried to rebuild that one troop, and they grabbed some fucking all-stars, man. They did. Like, they spared no expense, they grabbed some serious fucking talent. And they rebuilt, and they built a dynasty. Like, they built some fucking badass dudes.

• 2:13:26Speaker 04

  And it was like one thing after another, so we get them all back up, and that's 2011.

• 2:13:31Speaker 04

  So I had Nick check in my team. We were in the same five-man team, and he got pulled out to go over there, to backfill, when all the guys got killed in extortion.

• 2:13:40Speaker 04

  And it didn't feel right. Didn't seem right. Him and my wife were really tight. We did our first platoons together. And when he went over, I rolled into his team, as a new guy. And I fucking loved him, man. God, he was awesome. He just was. He was, uh, he was everything you wanted in a teammate.

• 2:14:05Speaker 04

  He came over and re-tiled my entire kitchen. Him and my wife, when I was on deployment, before his first deployment with Command. Up until the last hour, he drove to the Command, covered in tile soot,

• 2:14:19Speaker 04

  and put on fresh clothes and got on the plane.

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  Damn. Like,

• 2:14:25Speaker 04

  fucking great dude. And, uh,

• 2:14:29Speaker 04

  and we just came back from a... We just came back from Afghanistan deployment in between extortion. So we backfilled them, had to sleep in their beds, had to do that whole thing, that's a very sombering, sombering thing to have to do.

• 2:14:45Speaker 04

  I mean, it's a reality. Like, this is what it is.

• 2:14:50Speaker 04

  Sleeping in a dead guy's bed. So, um. Just another reality check. Trying to get in there and hit a really good target set and everything's great and we're we're going to work. It's all steady in the back of your mind. It's like.

• 2:15:04Speaker 04

  Any moment here. Any moment, this thing's gonna get us. And it almost did a couple times. The exact same thing. I mean, we took RPGs off the refueler. Getting shot on Infowlexville and just close ones.

• 2:15:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:19Speaker 04

  Testament to the pilot's capabilities, just how good they were.

• 2:15:25Speaker 04

  But right after that, um.

• 2:15:28Speaker 04

  That was a really good deployment. That was probably my favorite deployment. Because of people we were with, like that team. God, man. I, uh, I did not deserve to be on that team. I fucking loved that. If you could have, uh, if you could have locked me in a time capsule, I'd still be in there. I would have never came home. I loved it so much. I had separated myself from everything outside of that.

• 2:15:52Speaker 04

  And it was the only thing that made me feel normal. Was being there. I, I loved it. I loved the banter. I loved the shit talking. I loved the pranks.

• 2:16:01Speaker 04

  I loved the professionalism. I loved the absolute obsession to the detail. I loved it.

• 2:16:08Speaker 04

  And to watch those guys work, um.

• 2:16:14Shawn Ryan?

  So, were you in or mixed with the team that took the loss?

• 2:16:18Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 2:16:19Shawn Ryan?

  Or was this, okay.

• 2:16:20Speaker 04

  This is after. We just rolled the base in the same, kinda like you guys on June 28th.

• 2:16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:16:25Speaker 04

  You guys rolled in, same thing.

• 2:16:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:16:27Speaker 04

  At the same base.

• 2:16:27Shawn Ryan?

  So, you relieved them?

• 2:16:29Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:16:29Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:16:31Speaker 04

  It was, uh, it was weird, man. Just, the whole thing was dicey and we came back. Kinda like my mentor at that point, like my, my true north was my team leader then. He, um. His wife is best friends with Patsy. I'm best friends with him. He grooms my wedding. I knew him before. I screamed and all that. I fucking loved him.

• 2:16:52Speaker 04

  And he got hurt, got medically retired after that deployment. Our number two did, three or four of the guys got fucked up pretty bad. And it just, I hate to say I had all my eggs in one basket, but I, I love being in that team so much. The energy, the collective. I was not, I was not ready to lose that. I wasn't. And when he was going to medically retire, he'd fucking crush me. Is this, okay, nevermind, keep going. So it crushed me. It was like, that's who I want to be. This is the whole team. Like if we can just freeze this shit, like, everybody will re-enlist. We'll just stay here. It was amazing.

• 2:17:36Speaker 04

  We came back from that deployment, we're kind of rebuilding, he's moving out, we've got new guys coming in, everything's good. And Nick check deploys. He deploys out. I'll never forget, man, I'm, I'm sitting with my wife at Yard House. I've got both my uncles, like I'm from a long military background. On my dad's side, I've got him, my grandfather was a fighter pilot, US air, US Airways pilot after that. My other uncle was 75th Ranger Regiment, jumped into Panama and did 25 years in the Secret Service, counter sniper team. My other one was a Marine, was a Marine infantry guy. So I'm sitting across from my two uncles, we're having an honest conversation.

• 2:18:21Speaker 04

  And my phone goes off. And it's one of the guys from the team, like, we're not doing anything, we're just, we're in Virginia Beach hanging out. And I grab it, he's like, hey, what's up? He's like, walk outside real quick and be bop outside. And there's cars driving by, I'm like plugging one ear, I'm like, hey, what's up? He's like, you sitting down? No, should I be? And there's a long pause. Fuck, man.

• 2:18:53Speaker 04

  This is a long pause and he said, Nick got shot. And I waited and I said,

• 2:19:01Speaker 04

  "Okay, where is he? When do we need to go pick him up?" He's getting a longer pause.

• 2:19:08Speaker 04

  And I can feel it, I can feel it building up inside me. It feels like it's resting on my fucking sternum. It's about to come out of my fucking mouth and I don't know what it is, but it's something. And uh,

• 2:19:19Speaker 04

  in the shakiest fucking voice he could muster, he said, "He's gone." And I uh, I let out a whimper, I let out something, I started fucking bawling. I, "I'll be in work in 15 minutes." I hung up the phone, I dried my eyes real quick, I'm like, "I'm gonna walk in there, I'm gonna sit down in this fucking booth, I'm gonna eat my kung pao chicken, I'm gonna drink this Moscow Mule, I'm gonna get through dinner and then I'm gonna drive to work and I'll tell Patsy tomorrow." I mean, she loved Nick, she fucking loved him.

• 2:19:52Speaker 04

  And I sat down and I stared right in between my uncles, I picked a spot on the wall and I stared there. And they're all looking at me, I can feel it. And she put her hand on my shoulder and I looked over at the corner of my eye and she said, "Tell me." And I fucking, I fucking lost it.

• 2:20:14Speaker 04

  It uh,

• 2:20:16Speaker 04

  fuck, man.

• 2:20:20Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about what he was doing?

• 2:20:23Speaker 04

  He was doing a hostage rescue for a doctor named Dilib Joseph in Afghanistan.

• 2:20:32Speaker 04

  Bad scenario. Obviously Ed Byers got the Medal of Honor. There were a bunch of Navy crosses that came out of that op.

• 2:20:39Speaker 04

  But long story short, they uh, they patrolled up Nick's walking point and one of the sentries came out and they had a brief engagement. And he ran up to make a dynamic entry, super fast, like, "Gigs up, we have to go." So he closed the distance and um, they had a bunch of blankets in the doorway. He's clearing the blankets, trying to get inside and as he makes entry, he takes a round.

• 2:21:05Speaker 04

  Kind of over. The rest is history, you guys came in, killed all the bad guys, saved all the good guys.

• 2:21:12Speaker 04

  You know, I talked to the guys that, that worked on him.

• 2:21:19Speaker 04

  You know, the only positive out of the whole fucking thing is they got the hostage. That's why you sign, that's why you go there, is to do that mission only.

• 2:21:31Speaker 04

  And to know that you gave your last breath trying to save another human.

• 2:21:40Speaker 04

  That's exactly who he is. So it was an honor to know him.

• 2:21:46Speaker 04

  But fuck, man, I did not want him to go.

• 2:21:53Shawn Ryan?

  Was that your hardest loss?

• 2:22:01Speaker 04

  Probably. I didn't even process it, I didn't. I, um, I stonewalled that shit. I fucking threw up a wall so fucking thick, I did. And about five days later, I ran all the, uh, all the schwag, so all the, all the t-shirts and hats. I made the shadow boxes, I did the going away shit. And I had to go make his shadow box. And, uh, I had all his awards, had all his shit, all the patches, all the stuff we were gonna put inside of, uh,

• 2:22:32Speaker 04

  inside of his shadow box. And I walked into John Will's studio, same guy that made all your deployment plots. And I walked in, I got a really good relationship with him and all the ladies that work in there. And I walked in, um, and his number two lifted her head up from the office, walked out and saw me, and I was totally normal, just like this. And she went, "I am so sorry," and she said it.

• 2:22:56Speaker 04

  I haven't cried like that. Probably ever. That was probably it.

• 2:23:06Speaker 04

  I dropped my fucking knees, man, I was dry even.

• 2:23:17Speaker 04

  He was such a good fucking dude. He was so talented. And he trained all the fucking time. And you couldn't have done better. And the reality, he was gone. I wasn't ready for it. I tried to wall it up, tried to pretend like it didn't happen. And then I tried to make excuses. Like, why did that happen to him? And then I had to justify it to Paty. Why that's not gonna happen to me? It's like, I've gotta cut out more negative shit. I've gotta cut out everything. I've gotta completely obsess now. Like, this is what I have to do now. And it just justified it. Like, we're playing for fucking keeps, man. Like, it became another thing that I'd slide in there. You know, you want me to spend more time at home?

• 2:24:02Speaker 04

  You want me to do this? I have to obsess. This is fucking for real. If I have a bad day at the office, that's what happens.

• 2:24:12Shawn Ryan?

  Being that Paty was a Gold Star wife and her previous husband, you know, died. Killed in combat. Were you able to lean on her a little bit more? Was she, like, could you relate?

• 2:24:28Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:29Shawn Ryan?

  To her a lot more than most guys could relate with their wives? And, I mean...

• 2:24:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, and especially because, you know, because I grew up in the teams. I grew up in it. I felt like, I felt like I was as much part of that community as anything else. And, yeah, we leaned heavy on each other. And a lot of it was, she convinced me it was okay. She's like, DJ, that dude loved everything he fucking did. He loved it. There's no, there's nothing else that dude would have done. If you would have given him an option of dying at 80 in a fucking bed alone, or dying on that, he would have picked that. That's just the dude he was. Like, he doesn't want you to be here depressed, mourning him all day. He wants you to go fucking get it on. That's what he wants.

• 2:25:16Speaker 04

  He wants you to go back to fucking work and be as good as you can. Fair enough. And the obsession continued. It's like, I wasn't in touch with myself. I didn't know anything about Grieve. I just, I walled it up. I did. We stopped talking about it. We made, uh, we made shrines for him. We made memorial patches. We did everything. But I had to go do the notification and knock at his door for his fiance at the time.

• 2:25:47Speaker 04

  Dude, I don't know how people do that. But, uh, I can remember every detail of that. It was fucking terrible. We all met at my house, um, at 7:00 AM. Had me, um, Will Chesney.

• 2:26:04Speaker 04

  And one of the guys, um, who was on Nick's new team, who's an ops chief. We all met at my house. Patsy was there. She kind of gave us a brief on kind of what to expect. Cause we've done notifications before for August 6th, but you never know. So, you know, we kind of powwow it like, hey, who, who's ringing the doorbell? Who's saying this? We're all in dress blues. And it started pissing down rain. It's like torrential downpour. And our shoes, you know, we wear the black core frame dress shoes. It was so hot in Virginia Beach when extortion happened from sitting on the tarmac. It had melted all our shoes. It melted the heels off. So when we got out of the car and we took a step, all the heels blew off our core frames. And Nick check is a neat freak. He's OCD. He's got white fucking carpet.

• 2:26:48Speaker 04

  So I get out. I've got Patsy in the car behind us. She's got, uh, groceries. She's got Starbucks. She's got a bunch of shit. Just, uh, like you're not leaving a house for 48 hours. Here, like this will, this will tide you over until we can figure out what we're gonna do. Cause you're not a wife. It's kind of a weird, you know, predicament you're in. So it's really like, we had to take care of her. Notification teams went out to the families and all that. But I remember ringing that doorbell. And hearing her upstairs directly above the front door. I remember hearing her walk down the stairs. Turning the corner and as it got closer and closer, the footsteps got louder and louder. And I was on a fucking breath hold, man. I did not want that door to open. I was hoping she wouldn't answer it. I was hoping we get turned around and somebody else would have to do that.

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  And, uh,

• 2:27:38Speaker 04

  Throw bolt flips.

• 2:27:41Speaker 04

  Door knob opens, slowly starts to crack and as soon as she fucking saw us, she knew. She didn't cry. She just looked at me, kinda cocked her head and like, she knew me.

• 2:27:53Speaker 04

  Tell me. And I fucking came and I gave her a big hug and fucking bawling.

• 2:27:59Speaker 04

  And I told her. We had a very, um,

• 2:28:04Speaker 04

  very, um, no bullshit conversation about what's gonna happen over the next seventy-two hours. Kinda everything we need to, to get done.

• 2:28:17Speaker 04

  And we kinda just went from there, like, you gotta go buy a fucking dress. You gotta go buy this, you gotta get this right now. Like, these are all the things that has to happen.

• 2:28:27Speaker 04

  And you've got about twelve hours. Cause this thing's gonna go and you're not gonna have time. So, whatever you need, let's get on it right now. I remember her making a comment on the black shoe marks, we track black shit all throughout his house. And she's like, "God, you're lucky he's dead or he'd fucking kill you." We all started laughing, like, no doubt. Stanley steam over there, we're vacuuming the carpets and shit.

• 2:28:51Speaker 04

  We all drove up to DC together. We, uh, that was the coolest thing.

• 2:28:57Speaker 04

  Drove there and picked him up. Same thing we did for the guys at extortion, we all drove there in unison, met all the planes and did all that and she drove up there with us. It was, uh,

• 2:29:09Speaker 04

  oh, fuck, man. Just, it's like one of those things you just wanted to be over and you didn't. Cause now you have to do the memorial. Now you have to get up and speak. Now you have to go through all your photo albums and pick all the photos you like. They have to put it to a montage and you have to watch it over and over and over. Now the family starts to fly and you gotta meet all of them. Like, it just, it never ends. It felt like that, that process was five years long. Like, I was fucking crippled at the end of that one. I just was. I was in a fucking bad spot. Some key people in, um, the organization were shifting out, they were retiring, they were getting medically retired. And, um, I felt a void. I did with him being gone, it, um,

• 2:29:56Speaker 04

  I really felt a void.

• 2:30:00Speaker 04

  That takes us to twenty thirteen.

• 2:30:07Speaker 04

  I think that transition from Nick dying until basically the rest of the career, I am confirmation bias.

• 2:30:17Speaker 04

  Everything I had ever said, everything I had ever told Patsy was coming true.

• 2:30:23Speaker 04

  Everything. I used to tell her things, because I'd obsess.

• 2:30:30Speaker 04

  I bet you in my entire time in the teams,

• 2:30:35Speaker 04

  I bet you I went into that building every day I've been in Virginia Beach minus 25.

• 2:30:42Speaker 04

  Every Saturday and Sunday, I'd go through there just to show face to make sure my cage was still there. Like I had to touch the magic every fucking day to make sure it was real. Yeah. I had to. I was fucking obsessed. But it was good because everybody else with me was just obsessed. But I justified it to her. I'd start to separate myself from her. Separate myself from different friends outside of the organization. Just it was a linear focus. This is it. This is the only thing that fucking matters. There's no distractions. And it reminded me of my childhood. The only thing that matters is the team. Like dad's got to go on deployment. You can't do this because of that. Like you can't do this because it'll affect deployment. I can't get shoulder surgery because I need to go on deployment. I can't do this because of that.

• 2:31:25Speaker 04

  We can't take a vacation because of this. And I self justified it.

• 2:31:30Speaker 04

  I was like, no one's going to die if I'm a 65% husband. No one. Like, I'll be a husband when I retire. Would you change anything, looking back now, doing that? Yes and no. What would you change?

• 2:31:53Speaker 04

  I would have retired sooner. They tried to retire me in 2014.

• 2:32:00Speaker 04

  I wish I would have let them. I was in such a fucking bad spot, man. I just.

• 2:32:08Speaker 04

  I let it take me. I let it take me. I don't regret it. Some days I do. But um, I thought it needed it. I thought um, I thought it was a worthy cause, man. Everything we did. All the training, the late nights, the early mornings.

• 2:32:26Speaker 04

  It gave you a, it gave you a purpose. It did, it gave you the why.

• 2:32:31Speaker 04

  And it became very easy to just judge people.

• 2:32:36Speaker 04

  You don't work out, you don't shoot, you don't care, you're not a professional. You don't wanna do this, like, get the fuck away from me. I'm gonna surround myself with these dudes, cuz they only give a shit. It's the only thing that matters. And it became addictive. It did because you got to see the performance. You got to feel it, like. I mean, it's a measurable thing. Like, I started here and I ended here. And I only did that because I didn't let anything else distract me. There's no skateboard and there's no snowboard trips for me. I couldn't justify it. I couldn't justify breaking my wrist and missing deployment. I couldn't justify wakeboarding and blowing out an ACL, I couldn't justify it. I could justify the skydiving thing, cuz it's part of work. I couldn't justify anything else. I couldn't justify drinking.

• 2:33:21Speaker 04

  When you fucking drink? Two drinks in a single sitting? Like, I haven't been drunk since 2010. Wow. I don't do it. Can I safely operate a vehicle? Can I speak to the police? Can I discharge a firearm? Can I provide lifesaving medical aid? If the answer's yes, then I'm good to go. If I'm shitfaced, I can't do any of those, that's a metric.

• 2:33:41Speaker 04

  If I can't articulate my speech and police officer to get you out of a fucking jam, I've gone too far.

• 2:33:49Speaker 04

  I pull up on a car wreck on the side of the road. I gotta save him. Looking at my shitfaced, and that's why I blow past him, cuz I'm afraid he'll get a DUI? That's not an answer. That's not a professional answer. The answer is, I don't have to worry about that because I'm professional, I'm not drunk.

• 2:34:07Speaker 04

  I'm professional. I don't need to put booze in my system, I don't need to be shitfaced at 2:30 in the morning.

• 2:34:13Speaker 04

  That doesn't make the group better.

• 2:34:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:15Speaker 04

  The group before the individual became the standard. And fuck, man, it made it made life so much easier. Does what you're doing now make the group better? No. And why are you doing it? True. Negative people in your life? Static, whatever. Does that make you better?

• 2:34:31Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing to cope then? Because a lot of people, you know, they cope with booze. They cope with drugs. They cope, you know?

• 2:34:41Shawn Ryan?

  All kinds of ways to cope. You had to be coping somehow.

• 2:34:45Speaker 04

  So. After I broke that hip.

• 2:34:49Speaker 04

  I'm on some painkillers.

• 2:34:54Speaker 04

  So, long story short, I blew out that hip. I rushed rehab, I did. And the way they put those screws in. They lifted my IT band on the side of your leg and pumped in the screws. Laid the IT band back. And we did that twenty, uh, twenty twelve deployment. I had a, I had a pretty bad fall down the side of a mountain. And those screws came out and they blew through my IT band. Had to do another surgery, like it was bad. And the rehab that came after that.

• 2:35:23Speaker 04

  So I'm painkillers and I needed to be on them. Had a bunch of surgeries that I needed to get. And I was just, I was held together with, you know? Rigor stave chewing gum. Like I was, I was banged up, man. And, um. Started eating Tramadol and everything else and it just, it became the norm. Like, I wasn't high. I just, I didn't want to feel the way I felt. Like I'd wake up in the morning, it's like. I feel like this at thirty two, holy shit.

• 2:35:51Shawn Ryan?

  You're just numb to it.

• 2:35:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. You're just numb.

• 2:35:53Shawn Ryan?

  How much Tramadol were you taking, you know?

• 2:35:54Speaker 04

  I shit done.

• 2:35:57Speaker 04

  I mean, I eat them in three hundred milligrams a pop.

• 2:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  How bad?

• 2:36:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I had your shit done.

• 2:36:02Shawn Ryan?

  Several a day?

• 2:36:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. But it's like. I didn't realize what it was doing because it wasn't a, it wasn't an narcotic. You couldn't be addicted to it. Bullshit.

• 2:36:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:14Speaker 04

  You get addicted to not feeling pain. That's what you get addicted to. And I didn't realize it, but that continued. From essentially ten until.

• 2:36:27Speaker 04

  When I retired.

• 2:36:30Speaker 04

  Like eighteen.

• 2:36:34Shawn Ryan?

  I rode that train for a while, tram and all. And I'm just curious, how did you know, how did you know it was an issue? What, what happened? With me personally, I know it was an issue when I ran out. And I felt what, what that felt like without having any. And that fucking hurts.

• 2:37:00Shawn Ryan?

  Is that?

• 2:37:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:37:04Speaker 04

  So I had just came back from a deployment.

• 2:37:10Speaker 04

  Been to a nasty firefight, a bad one.

• 2:37:14Speaker 04

  A lot of really close proximity shit, ate a bunch of grenades.

• 2:37:19Speaker 04

  The long and short of it was

• 2:37:23Speaker 04

  because of the proximity to it, we had to use some breathing charges and some ordinance.

• 2:37:31Speaker 04

  Essentially on top of yourself to get out of this certain situation. And it fucked us up, man. Like no eye pro, no ear pro, I mean grenades landing between me and you.

• 2:37:42Speaker 04

  Just a cumulative effect, these little concussions that blew out both ears.

• 2:37:48Speaker 04

  Oh, man, I mean, just.

• 2:37:51Speaker 04

  By the, by the end of it, I'd blown out both ears. I've torn both labrum and both shoulders, both hip labrums. Gone.

• 2:38:00Speaker 04

  Crunch a bunch of shit in my lower back and my neck. So I needed to have surgery on both shoulders and both hips and my back. By the time the whole thing was done. And I didn't realize how bad it was.

• 2:38:15Speaker 04

  Fuck, I don't know, do we get into it? Do we talk about the?

• 2:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, let's get into it.

• 2:38:20Speaker 04

  Okay, fuck it. We.

• 2:38:25Speaker 04

  So the backside of this is we had a dude that did the Kenya Mal attack. Remember that? So it's that dude. So it's around the Horn of Africa and we are going to go get this dude. It's a president directed mission. So it's a big one, the biggest one that I've ever done for sure. Intel's painting a picture that's maybe not accurate. Beachside bungalow. He goes there to watch TV, hang out, be super benign in and out. Cool. Not the fucking gays. We get there, we've planned, we've rehearsed and we've done all our shit.

• 2:39:06Speaker 04

  I am, I'm running the primary breach on the first floor. I go up and over the gate. I should probably start off with, we swim in. So that's a whole different set of problems. We swim in a slaughterhouse offshoot. So you can imagine all the great white sharks. It's a real fucking thing. That's the fastest I ever swam in my life. So we swim in, we do our whole thing. I go up and over and I mess around with the locking mechanism on the gate to try to get it open. And there's a string going from the gate. It looks like it's going inside. And now I think that was a, an early warning device.

• 2:39:51Speaker 04

  I think it was hooked to a bell, it was hooked to something. We get the gate open, we bring everybody in and as we are rolling up to the front door, they start getting contacted on the roof. Guy comes out, shoots, skips off one of the guy's helmet, now the firefighting suits. And it's three stories and it's getting fucking chaotic, dude. Like they had been prepping for this for a long fucking time and this is not a beachside bungalow. There's a, there's no doors.

• 2:40:21Speaker 04

  They're all walled up from the inside. There's nothing to attack. You can't see anything. It's like I'm trying to get the door open, but you don't know where the hinges are. You don't know what it is. It's this huge, um, super thick door. Fuck, man, it probably must have been six inches thick. This is a fucking fortress. It's a fucking fortress, dude. It's a fucking, it's a literal fortress. They start getting contact on the roof and we sprint up the front door. And as we go to divide, this dude opens up on the front door. And lets it go and just, you just see splinters of wood and it just fucking traces us. And doesn't hit anybody. We rolled to either side and now we're trying to deal with this problem. The heat coming out of that front door was nothing like I've ever seen.

• 2:41:04Speaker 04

  It just continuous, sending it. And the way it ended up being was a long wall, the door in the center. I'm on one side and I've got, um, my shooting buddy on the other side and I've got my team leader behind me. And we're trying to figure this out, like, we have to get inside. But we're not supposed to kill this dude. That was the whole thing is for whatever reason, the powers that be really wanted this dude alive and the last thing they told us before we went, "I, I would rather you shoot him a hundred times and he lives than shoot him one time and he dies. Bring him back alive." Well, I'm fucking committed. We all are. We're gonna bring that dude back alive. We came up with every plan we could have.

• 2:41:47Speaker 04

  And at the end of the day, if you don't want to be captured, you're not capturing the dude. You're just not. Especially in that part of the world, which is how violent they are. I mean, you've seen Black Hawk Down. That's the most realistic war movie I've ever fucking watched. That's exactly how it is. They are fucking, huh. And they come on quick. So we're in this, we're in this shitstorm in the middle of the door. And I'm trying to decide how I'm gonna blow this thing. I've got my charge in my hand. It's already capped in. I've got my hydrogel peeled. I'm ready to stick this thing and I'm timing between his bursts coming through the door. So you see it all chew up, like three, two, wah, goes live again. Motherfucker, man. You're just timing it. He finally goes and I slap this thing.

• 2:42:31Speaker 04

  And there's nowhere to roll. There's just nothing to do. Um, you gotta eat it. It's like, luckily for me, the guy behind me is super experienced. Um, and we all are very experienced preachers and we knew we could take it. We've been there before. Just unfortunate. Turn your head and exhale and send it. And that concussion blew out everybody's ears. We were all done. And when it blew, I could see the locking mechanism behind it. It looked like a fucking railroad tie. Was stuck down. It's a big New York lock and we weren't getting through it, but it blew out a slat. About waist high down, about this wide.

• 2:43:09Speaker 04

  And grenades started coming out of it. Accurate. So the way it was, it's a front door and there's a long ass hallway going down. And there's a dude who's in a sandbag position with a belt fed at the end of the hallway. And he's just chewing down the hallway. There's a dude in the first room off to the right who's shooting at us through the window. So I've got my shooting buddy pinned. He's taking fire over this shoulder and he's taking fire down the hallway and he can't move. Can't do anything. It's like a big railing. We've got all the rest of the guys on, so we're the only three that are stuck on there. We're trying to get this door open.

• 2:43:44Speaker 04

  And let me back up. When I placed the charge, I roll back and I look at him and I was like turning steel and I turned my head and I blew it. And when I looked back up, he was gone. And I looked down and I saw the hole and I thought he went. And I dropped to my knees and I start going for the door and my team leader's pulling me back. I guess he had jumped over the wall. I thought he went. And I was not gonna let that fucking dude go alone.

• 2:44:13Speaker 04

  I'm on my hands and knees trying to crawl through this fucking hole and he's pulling me back. Like, we're good, we're good. Well, now we can't get out. This thing's been going on for a couple of minutes. The guys on the second deck are in the same shitstorm. The guys on the roof are in the exact same thing. Now there's people that are surrounding us. We're taking fire from. The whole thing's getting dicey.

• 2:44:32Speaker 04

  And we've got to fucking leave. Like, we can't sit here and do this for another 10 more minutes. Like, you're not gonna let us kill this guy. We can. We've got to get out. Unfortunately for us, the only egress route was directly behind us, which is directly in line with that dude's PK. So the only way out is to run straight through his alley. Can't go up and over the walls. There's not enough time. We don't have enough ladders and there's quite a few guys inside the courtyard.

• 2:44:57Speaker 04

  We're trading grenades back and forth with this dude and it finally comes time. The enemy QRF is upon us and they're in technicals heading our way. And we gotta fucking go.

• 2:45:08Speaker 04

  So, look at the TL, what do you want, man? And he's like, get ready for an RPG. I'm like, oh, fuck. I mean, like, bells already rang, like, we've got shit coming out of our nose, like, we're we're super concussed. And we ate a, for the guys that know, I mean, we ate a 1200 grain ECT from arms length away. Jesus. No ear pro, I mean, we just sent it. I mean, I know what that charge is gonna do. The overpressure is gonna fuck me up, but it's not gonna blow me up. I know what that charge will do and what it won't, and I was confident in it. And we had to send it, there was no other way. I wasn't going to turn around and leave without giving it every every bit of effort I could. And I looked back at him and I don't know how the fuck we're gonna get out of here.

• 2:45:52Speaker 04

  It's like, get a T-bomb. So my buddy was, uh, down in the courtyard, he had a T-bomb, because we had to swim in a bunch of this shit, so we had spread loaded a bunch of stuff. So I'd already launched one in, and I looked at him and we did a, we did a real world flea flicker, which was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Fucking threw it across the doorway, caught it, untaped it, and launched it. But it was funny, it was so funny to see, uh, the TL, he's like pushing on the walls, he's like doing the doing the, the math in his head, like, this means square square feet, the concussion, this overpressure, what's it gonna do to us? And, um, we launched it, we sent a bunch of rounds down there, and basically called for

• 2:46:33Speaker 04

  exfil, like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let this thing loose. This overpressure charge, and then when it goes boom, we're all gonna take off and run. And that's what we did. Um, and I'm doing the peek-a-boo thing, he's shooting, I'm trying to see where he is, and I finally see it, and I've got that T-bomb, like, you ready? Pulled the pin, and I've launched the most beautiful toss I've ever had. And, uh, when I turned, the overpressure was so bad, it blew me off the porch, and we took off at a dead run, as fast as we could go. Had a big, uh, a big guy there blow through the gate, we didn't even open the gate. Everybody came up and over, that's how it was taking too long, we didn't have time to fuck with it, so he shouldered the gate and blew through it, that's how we got out. And that dude never skipped a beat firing that PK, never. Wow.

• 2:47:18Speaker 04

  Like, I'm, I threw a T-bomb, essentially what I thought in that dude's lap. Nothing. Fufufufu. Continued. I don't know how he didn't shoot us. I don't know how he didn't. Shot one of the recce guys off the ladder. Like chewing up the wall that he was on. I mean, fucking crazy. Just the continuous hate that was coming out of the thing. We made it back down. We got a quick head count. We had everybody there. The enemy's massing and we've got to get the fuck out. And the surf was shitty. So the X-Track platform, long story short, gets rolled over in the surf zone. So now this whole thing, it happens on X-ville. Just in the confusion and everything else, just trying to get boats in alignment.

• 2:48:03Speaker 04

  And I mean, we had dudes get not left out at sea, but basically like this is such a shit show right now. And it is so fucking dangerous. We're just going to swim as far as we can. We turn on an iris strobe and we just swam. Got picked up by a bunch of X-ville platforms and everything else. But in the course of that, essentially the only way to get out is I grabbed a hold of the bowline and I wrapped it around my wrist and I had them tow me out on a Zodiac. And when they picked up enough speed, the weight, it spun me and it popped my shoulder. So now my arm is essentially paralyzed. Like it's not working. It's like, holy fuck. I do the exact same thing and I wrap it up with this one. The same thing. Pow.

• 2:48:47Speaker 04

  Oh my God. Now I'm treading water like I've got use of my arms, but it feels like, um, it feels like it dislocated. Like it feels strange. An exorbitant amount of pain. We get on a jet ski, round two, and that thing flips. And because we're straddling it, the way it flipped with such force, it blew out this.

• 2:49:15Speaker 04

  Blew out the uh, the label my right hip and my left hip. So now I'm essentially bobbing like a bag of shit.

• 2:49:22Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:49:23Speaker 04

  So me and my swim buddy, we make it out, we get on there, we, we do our debrief, they're, they strip us down naked. With all those frags that we ate, everything, none of the frags stuck in us. I mean, we were super concussed, we were fucked up, but you could brush it and it was like a, like metal shavings everywhere. It was like, it was like God came down and just said, not today. I mean, it was everywhere, inside your ears, inside your eyelids, fucking everywhere. I mean, it was the strangest thing. We got back on, we started doing like the TBI reporting, um, you know, what's your name? And I was feeling fucking weird. The three guys who were on that porch were feeling very weird.

• 2:50:05Speaker 04

  And you couldn't explain it, um, cause I've been, I've been knocked out a bunch. With Fight Club and skateboarding, like I am no stranger concussion, this is very different.

• 2:50:14Speaker 04

  I went into a med check and they shined the eyes, uh, the white light of my eyes and I threw up. And then I started getting scared. I still can't hear shit, both my ears were perked.

• 2:50:26Speaker 04

  I've got a bunch of other wounds pre-existing that are nasty, I've got a nasty stomach infection, um, like an open wound that I had. We had a surgically superglue before we did it. So I had all kinds of shit, I was battling anyway, and it kept getting worse. We finally got back to base, it's about five days later. And I remember laying in my bed with my sunglasses on, wanting to die. I didn't know what the fuck was going on with me. I couldn't make rhyme or reason, I um, I couldn't get my thoughts together, I couldn't get anything. I couldn't be there for the debrief, I was just, I was fucking out of it. Um, and I didn't know what was going on. And they drove me to a French hospital out in town. And they ran a CT scan.

• 2:51:07Speaker 04

  In the back of my skull, right back here, was jet black, my brain. And uh, the uh, the doctor came back and she's like, what, what is that? I was like, I don't know, you tell me. And she's like, I don't know how you're standing right now. She's like, that's a major, that's a major blow to the back of your head. Nothing hit me in the back of the head. She's like, well, something did. I don't remember any of that.

• 2:51:34Speaker 04

  I remember seeing the MRI and I remember just telling them like, that's just over pressure, man. Like, that's just over pressure. And they said whatever they did, it got documented. You know, we finish all that and we fly home. I'm on the next flight home to a new deployment. That's the last thing to happen. We fly home and I land and I have a six-month-old waiting for me. I land, I drive straight home and there is a newborn laying in that crib. Be dead. Dude, the next forty-eight hours of my fucking life. I didn't know what to say. I just, I couldn't, everything started to go to shit. I couldn't remember that. I couldn't remember my wife's name. I couldn't remember my daughter's name. I got lost driving to

• 2:52:18Speaker 04

  fucking work. You been to Virginia Beach? I called my wife one time in the fucking Norfolk Scope parking lot, crying my eyes out. I don't know where the fuck I'm at. Amnesia set in. I'd wake up in places. I'd go to drive to work on a Sunday and I'd end up at, like, the farmer's market. I called past it. I was like, I don't know where the fuck I'm at. I couldn't remember anything. And I had no rhyme or reason. I couldn't say it to anybody, but everybody else was having the exact same fucking thing going on. And it was only getting worse. Every day it would get worse and the headaches were so bad. The photophobia was so bad. I wore sunglasses for years. I didn't until we got it under

• 2:53:02Speaker 04

  control. I remember, I remember coming to, one day I was in the gym, out in town, wife doing CrossFit or some shit, and I woke up, I'm flat on my back and I'm looking up at her and she's kneeling over me and she is bawling her eyes out, like, tears are falling on my face. And I look at her, I was like, what, what's going on? She's like, what the fuck have you been? She's like, you've been laying there for fifteen minutes.

• 2:53:29Speaker 04

  I don't remember going to the gym. I don't remember doing anything. I don't remember anything about that morning. I don't remember that night. I remember shit. Like my long-term memory. People, places, things, like it's, it escapes me. It does. And it was getting real bad and we had a, we had a heavy breaching trip coming up. And my boss at the time knew I was in a fucking jam. Like he knew I was. He didn't know how bad, but he's like, I don't think you should go on this breaching trip, man. He's like, you're, you're good. You're current. There's no reason to go down there and ring your bell anymore than you need to. Just take some time off.

• 2:54:09Speaker 04

  Okay, and I didn't want to. And I end up going down to medical to fill out some kind of paperwork or something. I'm having a conversation with one of the docs there. And I don't know how I said it. I don't know what I said, but it was something to the effect of, I don't know if I'm gonna kill myself or kill my wife.

• 2:54:29Speaker 04

  But there was something going on with me and you have to fucking stop me.

• 2:54:33Speaker 04

  And the next thing I remember is the command doc, the command psych, who's a fucking angel, my boss, are sitting in a chair with their hands on my shoulder, giving me volume, telling me it'll be okay.

• 2:54:47Speaker 04

  And then I go to NICO. So my trip to NICO was not, not something I wanted. I was in a bad jam and when I, when I showed up there, I didn't know, I didn't know what was going on with me. I had no idea.

• 2:55:00Shawn Ryan?

  Well, before we get into NICO, I talked to your wife for maybe forty-five minutes the other day and she had some kind of intuition while, while that op was going on that you were in trouble. She said she just felt something and sure as shit, she was right. So you got home. She said, one of the first things she noticed was your dinner was right in front of you. And you didn't even realize it and you're asking when,

• 2:55:34Shawn Ryan?

  when the fuck are we gonna have dinner? She's like, dinner's right in front of you.

• 2:55:39Speaker 04

  She, she took one. I'd pull up, I'd pull up videos on her phone because I know she was sending to people. I mean, there was a video specifically, I was cutting steak. And it was like six minutes, just over and over the same piece, just cutting it.

• 2:55:54Speaker 04

  I'd go into these trances. And I remember it now, like going into a trance and telling myself to come out of it. And I couldn't. It just, I'd forget to come out of it. I would, I just, I'd lose track of time.

• 2:56:11Speaker 04

  I didn't know, I thought I was going fucking crazy. And then it was the whole CTE thing was coming on board and it's like, yep, this is exactly what this shit is.

• 2:56:21Speaker 04

  Everything got super dark.

• 2:56:24Speaker 04

  Oh fuck, and I'd sit in my, uh, I just wanted to die, I did. I've, I wanted to fucking die and I didn't know why. I had the picture perfect life. I had a badass wife, gorgeous kid, dream job, fucking, my life was heaven. And all I wanted to do was die. Yeah. I didn't know why. I'd sit in my guest room with that fucking dog of mine. And, uh, I'd talk to him. I would, like that, that dog saved me more times than any fucking thing else, dude. I'd sit there and, uh, the obsession over the details are probably what saved me the most. Because I'd think about putting Patsy through that. I'd think about the reality of shooting myself and the scene it would make in this house. The mess it would make, that she's gonna have to clean that up.

• 2:57:09Speaker 04

  What am I, what's my kid gonna find out? Or what are they gonna say when they find out? And I didn't have just not doing it. But I wanted to. And then I started to turn to other things, like,

• 2:57:22Speaker 04

  I gotta get my rocks off somehow. What's my outlet gonna be? Threading the needle. Like that was the only thing that made me feel alive is, the sketchier shit would go, the more I liked it.

• 2:57:36Speaker 04

  Man, it just,

• 2:57:39Speaker 04

  that TBI shit gets away from you fast.

• 2:57:47Speaker 04

  And nobody talks about it. Yeah. Sitting in those fucking rooms and I know those dudes feel the exact same way I do and they're not saying anything. And they never did. I think that started to drive a wedge because I needed it so bad. I needed someone to confirm that I wasn't going fucking crazy. And because the, because of the teams, you know, not wanting to show weakness, no one did. And I thought I was the one. Other people, you know, they check in, they do this, they do that, but it didn't matter. Like, I'm not, I'm not telling anybody I'm fucked up. I'm just wondering why no one else has anything wrong with them. Yeah. Like, none of this shit ever affects you? Nothing?

• 2:58:31Speaker 04

  You're not human? No? You never get headaches? Nope.

• 2:58:36Speaker 04

  You ever feel weird after a full day of breaching? Nope.

• 2:58:40Speaker 04

  You ever piss blood? Nope.

• 2:58:43Speaker 04

  You ever forget where the fuck you're at? Nope.

• 2:58:47Speaker 04

  Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am the only fucking one. That drove me way down the fucking rabbit hole. Because now I've spent my entire life to hit a fucking pinnacle and I can't remember anything. It's all escaping me.

• 2:59:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, Patsy, uh, she called the command. She called my boss and she's like, you have no idea what the fuck is going on with him. She's like, he's gonna kill himself. She's like, he needs you guys right fucking now. We have to figure this out. And Niko was very new, um, on the scene right then.

• 2:59:18Speaker 04

  So that was, uh, 2014.

• 2:59:22Speaker 04

  I went inpatient Niko for 30 days and they did a whole workup on me and put me on all kinds of fancy, uh, prescriptions. And, uh, they helped. They did. Um.

• 2:59:35Speaker 04

  I thought I was having seizures. Um, I didn't know what a panic attack was. Um, I didn't know what, uh, real anxiety was. I remember sitting in the chow hall and, um, I remember sweating into, uh, into my food and people looking at me, like sweating through my beard.

• 2:59:53Speaker 04

  Because of so much sensory overload in that fucking cafeteria. Chopping, chewing, hitting the fork, banging, the dude in the back washing pots and pans, it all just consumed me. And I just sat there and I just started fucking sweating. Like, fuck, man, I gotta get the fuck out of here. And I'd have to leave. And I tried to make it not a big deal, but it was a big deal because I was so low. Actually, I wasn't so low. Just no one fucking told me.

• 3:00:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:21Speaker 04

  So, yeah, we went up to Nyco, we did the full workup, got put on a bunch of different meds, probably fifteen prescriptions. Got put on a stimulant, Adderall, to kind of keep me focused, which helped. Cymbalta, we did Zoloft, we did everything. Prazistin at night to stop the dreams. We did beta blockers. We did everything. And basically ran that concoction along with tramadol and everything else. Basically, the duration, and it wasn't until the very end when I got hurt one more time when I realized what that shit actually was.

• 3:01:05Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break there. I hope you're enjoying the Sean Ryan Show. Let me take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our Patreon community receives exclusive behind the scenes content from the Sean Ryan Show, as well as an extensive library of Vigilance Elite videos not seen anywhere else. I also engage in live video chat with Tier 3 members once a month where we discuss a variety of topics. Vigilance Elite Patreon is what makes the Sean Ryan Show possible. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And head over to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and get your subscription today.

• 3:01:48Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so we're back from Nyco. You got the prescriptions. Did they give you any insight as to what was going on with you medically?

• 3:01:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, they went through the full body, head to toe, every MRI, contrast, I mean, everything you could do to the human body, they ran tests for. Had a couple of spots in the brain, but nothing crazy. But they also back it up with, we've had people come in here in wheelchairs pushing themselves around on straws with no spots in our brain. So they couldn't really make rhyme or reason, just concussion, operator syndrome, a bunch of that kind of stuff. The TVI ocular stuff, so I, the overpressure messed up my right eye, so I can't really focus it. So they called it TVI related ocular dysfunction. So I've got to wear glasses.

• 3:02:38Speaker 04

  If I really try to dial in a shot, it all goes to a haze. I can't do a super finite focus. So it makes shooting kind of weird. My depth perception is kind of off, but I'm used to it now. And then I had five surgeries I had to get. They wanted to do both shoulders, both hips, my lower back. The neck was a, they wanted to do a,

• 3:03:03Speaker 04

  fuck, I can't even remember.

• 3:03:07Speaker 04

  Some kind of surgery on my neck and I did not want to do it. All the docs were like, hey, if you can get by, then push it off. Like I didn't want to get surgery. I didn't want to miss a deployment. We were gearing back up. I mean, I was in that thing for 30 days. Like I was going fucking crazy.

• 3:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  All this shit is happening to you and you're worried about missing a fucking deployment?

• 3:03:26Speaker 04

  That's the only fucking thing I cared. That's why I was so pissed. I was like, why can't I just go to Portsmouth right up the road and come to work every day? And I didn't realize what NICA was. It's to get away from the phone, decompress completely. And it was fucking rough, man. That I was not, I was not good with that shit. To be able to pull the phone away because you're glued to it. You're waiting for that thing to ring to say to come to work all fucking day. And it becomes, my nightly routine, dude, I'd, I'd check that phone. Team guys exaggerate. This is no exaggeration. I bet you I checked that phone 50 times a day.

• 3:04:01Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:04:02Speaker 04

  To make sure my battery was charged, was my, was the charging cable plugged in right? Like all that different shit. Like I have a, I have a serious phobia with being late, like an unhealthy one. And the thought of missing a movement was not a fucking option.

• 3:04:19Speaker 04

  I wouldn't go on family vacations that involve flying or long distance travel. If we had a trip coming up, like, no. I can't miss work. I can't do it.

• 3:04:29Speaker 04

  So we get there and we're in NICO and we're doing the whole thing and that facility was amazing. From the acupuncture to, I mean, everything they did there was amazing. And they fucking saved me. I was in a bad spot and they see all kinds of people. That staff really bent over backwards to me and I think it's because they they saw where I worked, they saw how young I was and they saw how devastated I was. That I was potentially done. And they came in at the end of 30 days, they diagnosed me with all kinds of crazy shit.

• 3:05:06Speaker 04

  Everything. And they recommended I get medically retired. He's like, hey, it's not gonna get better, dude. He's like, you need major surgery all over.

• 3:05:20Speaker 04

  And they almost got me, they, they almost got me. They pulled a guilt trip and they were like, do you think you can perform your best like this? And I knew the answer was no, but my ego caught me and I went, fucking outperform you?

• 3:05:38Speaker 04

  Give me these meds and let me go see. And dude, I, I ran hard.

• 3:05:45Speaker 04

  I ran full tilt for the next four years, from 14 to 18, as hard as I could go, never missed a day of work.

• 3:05:53Speaker 04

  It was the best time of my life. What did your wife think? Did she want you to retire? Yeah, because what nobody else saw is what I was like at home.

• 3:06:03Speaker 04

  I was fucking vile, man. I spit venom out of my mouth all day long. I was just fucking hateful. I hated everything, anything that wasn't to do with work. I didn't want anything to do with it.

• 3:06:16Speaker 04

  You know, my daughter was a burden, being married was a burden, having a dog was a burden, you know, having to do taxes was a fucking burden. Like, why can't you just let me be like one of the 300 fucking Spartans and let me just do this? This is my profession. Can everybody just cater to me and walk around and fucking fan me? That's what I wanted. I did, like, my ego consumed me and...

• 3:06:40Speaker 04

  Anything that potentially could derail me or

• 3:06:45Speaker 04

  slow me down in any way was not an option. It just wasn't. I couldn't let it happen.

• 3:06:53Speaker 04

  And the only way to obsess over work, and I felt and do it at the full commitment that I needed to, was to have no attachments. So I emotionally started to separate from my wife, from my kids. You know, I tried to play the game and I came home, but it wasn't. I was thinking about work the entire time and I wanted to change diapers.

• 3:07:14Speaker 04

  It was just, it was, I wanted a kid so fucking bad with her.

• 3:07:20Speaker 04

  And in 2013, I got one and I was fucking, I was through the fucking roof, man. I've never been so happy my whole life. And I went overseas. She was, you know, two months old and I got hurt and when I came back, I just, it ate me alive. And when I went to Nikko, it got even worse. Now I'm, I'm separated. Now they're telling me there's something wrong with me and it's not going to get better. Now I look at my family and I start to resent them like, you fucking did this to me. If I wasn't thinking about being a fucking father, if I wasn't thinking about being a husband, it probably wouldn't have fucking happened to me. I started to blame shift on everybody. That's what I did. I threw my walls back up, like,

• 3:08:00Speaker 04

  yep, we're gonna lean forward in this. I'm gonna give this thing everything I can and I'm gonna ride this fucker all the way through. I never in a million years thought I'd get medically retired. Never. I never fucking let him. No. There's no fucking way. I'm too hurt.

• 3:08:15Speaker 04

  But I'm medicated. I'm fine. Like, I'm good. I was shooting Imetrex probably five, six times a week. Auto injectors for migraines. I was taking essentially a lethal dose of Maxol for migraines. Supposed to take three a week. I'd take three a day.

• 3:08:35Speaker 04

  I was in a fucking jam, man. When the sun would come up and crust, my world ended. When that sunlight hit my eyes, it was over. Were you deploying with all this? Yep. I wore sunglasses all the time. Medicated.

• 3:08:50Speaker 04

  It got real bad one night. It was probably 10 o'clock at night.

• 3:08:55Speaker 04

  I walked into the, uh, walked into the kitchen. And I don't know why, I don't know what the fuck I was doing, but I hit the, uh, I hit the microwave and the light came on and hit my eyes just right and I fucking collapsed. I pissed myself, started dry heaving, I'm in the fetal position, just shaking. I was shaking so hard and I didn't know why, I couldn't control it, it felt like I was gonna break my own hands. It was all I could do, it was like I was trying to pop my own head off by squeezing everything as tight as I could. And I hadn't had a migraine like that in a while, because I stayed doped up all the time. I was constantly taking Maxol and Imetrex and everything else and I thought I had him at bay and this fucking thing hit me dude.

• 3:09:35Speaker 04

  And it, uh, she was trying to call 911, I'm screaming at her, I'm calling her every name in the book. Um, "Don't you fucking dare", she's, that was her big threat, she's like, "I'm gonna call your troop chief." "Don't you fucking dare, don't you fucking dare." And she should have. I was in fucking, I was in a bad spot, man. And everything on me hurt, it's like you said, if I'm, um, if I'd miss a dose of Tramadol, I felt everything I had. I'd go to the gym in the morning and I'd fake it and I was fucking miserable. Like I had never felt that much pain. I got diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was, uh, when I was up there and for the ones that don't know, it's, uh, it's basically a made up term.

• 3:10:20Speaker 04

  It's when you have agonizing pain and they can't tell you why, they label it fibromyalgia. But for me, um, it felt like I had shin splints on every ounce of my body. Um, like when you shook my hand, it felt like you were breaking my hands. My feet, when I would walk, I could feel it, it felt like my feet were splintering. It was terrible, every step I took, I was just in agonizing fucking pain. So I just ate painkillers all day. And I masked it and I trained and I deployed and I didn't. Every trip I could, anything to get me away from Virginia Beach to just escape reality.

• 3:11:00Speaker 04

  And it didn't pay off. I was hurt a lot worse than I really thought I was.

• 3:11:06Speaker 04

  I mean, I felt bad. I didn't realize it was only a matter of time before I all came apart.

• 3:11:13Speaker 04

  I'd go through these long bouts of depression, weeks on end. I wouldn't want to speak. I'd sit there, I wouldn't want to eat. I'd lose motivation. I wouldn't want to go work out and then I'd start to make excuses.

• 3:11:27Speaker 04

  You know, when you lose focus on the why, you know, you don't have the targets that you want. You don't have funding. You don't have the leadership you want. You don't have this. You don't have that. And you lose focus on why you're actually there because none of that shit fucking matters. The enemy hopes you're not training. He hopes you don't have funding. He hopes you haven't seen the inside of the gym in two fucking weeks. He hopes you don't know where your guns are right now. That's what he's hoping. And I let it consume me and I just started the hate, everything.

• 3:11:56Speaker 04

  And then I found skydiving.

• 3:12:01Speaker 04

  You started doing that recreational? Yeah. I really started to obsess over it. Like that was, that was kind of my thing when I was at the command anyway. I wanted to be a breacher. That's all I wanted to be. I fucking love breaching. And the team I rolled into had a bunch of badass breachers already. They don't need another one. They need a guy to run all the air stuff. So I went way down the jump rabbit hole.

• 3:12:24Speaker 04

  The only bad thing about that is it's so far removed from what the teams are because it's such a civilian dominated sport. But I started to hang out with everybody who wasn't a team guy. I'd go on these long trips to Arizona to support courses and, you know, I had four or 500 jumps a year and wanted to start competing. And that was so unlike me to do anything outside of work. The fact that I would go recreationally, skydive, like that's, that's what my wife said. She said, "What the fuck are you doing?" I was like, "I'm doing it for work. I'm doing it because they asked me. I don't need you to be a breacher. I need for you to be an air subject matter expert. I need for you to be the best jumper in the room."

• 3:13:07Speaker 04

  Done. If you would've asked me to be a fucking dental tech,

• 3:13:11Speaker 04

  I'd be a tier one fucking dental tech. It didn't matter. If that's what you wanted me to do, that's what I'm gonna do. And I obsessed over it. I spent a lot of personal money and a shit ton of time out there jumping and wind tunnel and got all my instructor certifications and, you know, throwing out tandems and everything else. But it started to remove me from the group.

• 3:13:31Speaker 04

  I started running a bunch of solo projects or me or one or two guys and we'd go out there and we'd just jump. We'd go do a hundred jumps in a week. I mean, we jumped.

• 3:13:43Speaker 04

  And it really started to take a toll on the family life. Like, I was gone a lot. I can remember her sick as a fucking dog, like puking over the toilet, begging me not to go on this trip. And I looked at her, no sympathy.

• 3:14:00Speaker 04

  Gotta go. I didn't have to go. It was a made up trip. That was a fun trip for me. And we'd have a work trip that started on Monday. I'd fly out the Friday before. And I'd get a whole weekend, we'll jump with all my friends and the work trip would start. And then I'd stay late. So I turned a two week trip into a three week trip. So was it the fun you were after or was it just getting the fuck out of, uh? It was getting the fuck out of Virginia Beach. It was something completely different that I didn't have to answer to anybody for. It was my own. Completely separate group of friends who didn't know me, didn't, they didn't give a shit about my background. I mean, they knew. They didn't ask.

• 3:14:36Speaker 04

  They didn't care about the politics. They didn't care about what happened overseas. They just, they liked me for me and they liked skydiving. And I used that as an outlet. But I really used it to just separate myself from my family and, um, just like threw up another wall. Like, I had my Virginia Beach life and I had my jump life.

• 3:14:57Speaker 04

  And I'm just running straight this way. And she hated, I mean, she begged me. She begged me. Stop going. Stop jumping. Stop doing this. Stop doing that. And I wouldn't. I couldn't. I was so addicted to it. And it wasn't even the jumping itself. It was just escaping reality. When I'm flying around, when I'm jumping these super small parachutes and doing whatever, I'm escaping reality. My reality is I am fucking miserable and I am waiting to die. And I'm just unhappy. I don't have any justification for it. I can't make rhyme or reason, but if I say anything, they're definitely going to kick me out of here. So I'm going to suffer in silence and I'm going to run this fucking thing until the wheels fall off. That's what I did.

• 3:15:43Speaker 04

  I ran it all away.

• 3:15:46Shawn Ryan?

  What was the wake up call? Was it the accident?

• 3:15:49Speaker 04

  I, um, I went down to Florida, me and my shooting buddy and a couple of the guys. We were doing a civilian scout out trip. It's like a big camp.

• 3:16:00Speaker 04

  It's a certain type of free flying we were doing and, um, it was amazing, a great time. But I was so broken from everything else.

• 3:16:10Speaker 04

  Things you just don't realize.

• 3:16:13Speaker 04

  So we're on a, we're on the first day of the jump trip and we're flying in a, a formation. It's called upright. Basically you're standing and you're flying across the sky on two feet and flying that way. And you have to lean back with your arm as far as you can. You have to press down into the relative wind to get the throw to launch you forward.

• 3:16:34Speaker 04

  So it's understanding all the details and everything else. You know, it's trick flying, but it's fun. You build a lot of speed. And I was so broken up top.

• 3:16:43Speaker 04

  I have the video I'll show to you. I leaned back as far as I could and we're hauling ass and all of a sudden.

• 3:16:51Speaker 04

  I flip over and I feel a weird pop in my chin locks to my shoulder. I'm in freefall and I can't move my arm. It's pinned behind my back. I'm like, what the fuck? I roll over and I start to track away to try to get away from the group. We're probably at 7,000 feet and we're taking it low. We exited 14,000 feet, so we're, you know, a little over halfway through the skydive, but that's the dangerous part. It's when we have to break away so we don't open on top of each other. And I turn, I track away and I go to pull and I can't pull. My hand's in a knot. It's locked up. I can't deploy. I jump a small parachute anyway and I'm not a packet of peanuts. So I had to open up my reserve. And I open that thing up and it's super small.

• 3:17:32Speaker 04

  And that's something you don't think about, having to land a small parachute with one hand. So I lift my arm up and I instill the toggle and I loop it in here and I'm flying super, super casual pattern on the way in. I come in with one hand, I land, I get up and I've got a jumpsuit on and my arm is paralyzed. It's, it's hanging down on my hip. I don't know what the fuck is going on. But the only thing that kept coming up in my mind is they were concerned on taking Cymbalta, taking the tramadol and three or four of the medications that I've been taking forever. And they're like, you have to stop taking that or you're going to stroke out, man. Like you'll have a fucking stroke. I thought that's what it was. I thought I had a stroke mid-freefall.

• 3:18:16Speaker 04

  I mean, like when I came down, I was pinned like this. I couldn't do shit. I couldn't lift my arm. I couldn't do anything. They couldn't get my jumpsuit off. When they did, my humeral head was down to here. So what happened is I reached my arms back to fly and my arm dislocated through my armpit. So humeral head attached and it came through my armpit. That's a very bad dislocation. It's very hard to reset, especially when I'm a little bigger than us, probably like, you know, bigger. And I landed on the ground and I remember standing on my hand, trying to lift up to try to pop it. It still hadn't hit my mind that my shoulders have a socket. I've never had one dislocate like that. I've had them in and out, but not like that.

• 3:19:01Speaker 04

  My teammate's here, he's like, dude, what the fuck? I don't know what to do. We've got an ER, a mile and a half down the road. I was like, I'm going. I jump in a Remacron, I drive myself right to the ER, still in my jumpsuit.

• 3:19:14Speaker 04

  They go up on the next lift, they continue jumping. I check myself into the ER, I tell them what happened, and they spend two hours trying to get this thing back in socket.

• 3:19:24Speaker 04

  Let me preface this, I pride myself on my pain tolerance. It's world-class. I can take an extraordinary amount of pain. I can. That shit, oh my god. That dude cranked on my shoulder. I was sweating, I was dry heaving. I wanted to fucking die, he was bad. And finally, they gave me propofol, whatever it is, knocked me out, reset it. And they put me in a sling, he's like, hey, you gotta go back. I'm freaking out because I don't want to tell work what has happened. So now, my little hamster wheel's going around, I'm like, I don't have to tell anybody about this. Like, we're good. I drive back out to the drop zone, I see all the instructors, all the guys, what happened? I was like, fucking arm came out, I'm like, Jesus.

• 3:20:09Speaker 04

  And all the guys are like, hey man, we'll refund you for your, for the camp, because you can't jump. What the fuck are you talking about? I'm jumping. He's like, you can't jump, your shoulders just came out of socket. I was like,

• 3:20:23Speaker 04

  I'm jumping. I'll take the rest of the day off, I'll be back tomorrow.

• 3:20:27Speaker 04

  We went out to, went out to like a food line or whatever and bought a bunch of KT tape and YouTube'd it and KT taped my shoulder in place.

• 3:20:35Speaker 04

  Put on a quasi brace that we bought from, you know, whatever. Pin my shoulder in, just taped it. So all I could do was deploy and I could reach up, and I could grab my toggles and I could steer it, which made landing very, very challenging because I jump a high-performance parachute. So I really have to be able to control this thing. And I just let my ego get a hold of me. And I didn't give a fuck. They, I showed up the next morning, they did not want me to jump. We had a conversation. And we settled on a wager. If you can do 10 pull-ups right now, I'll let you jump. And I jumped on that barn, did 10 pull-ups so fucking fast, and he went, "Go ahead." And I put my suit back on, I went up and did a jump, very gingerly.

• 3:21:19Speaker 04

  Not getting real dynamic. Did a second one, did a third one, did a fourth one, and on the fourth one, I got a little cocky. And I leaned into it a little bit too much on final, bringing in the parachute, and it popped out of socket again.

• 3:21:34Speaker 04

  The exact same thing, through the armpit, the exact same fucking way. And the instructor looked at me, cause it's not common to fall on landing, um, not at that level. And they looked at me and gave me a weird look and I was like, I was like, getting more fucking banana peels out here? Trying to, you know, brush it off. And then I looked at him, I was like, hey man, like, I kinda tweaked my neck on that opening, I'm just gonna sit out the rest of the day. And I walked around that DZ for an hour, faking it, cause I was so fucking embarrassed. And I was like, yeah, you don't, guys, thing, we go back to the hotel, we back in an hour to pick you guys up. And I drove straight over to ER, now in civilian clothes, had changed. And I walked in, the exact same doctor is working the exact same desk, and looks at me. And went, what are we gonna do for you? I was like, I was putting on this t-shirt, and my, uh, my shoulder came out.

• 3:22:20Speaker 04

  We gotta put it back in. Then he looked at me and smiled, and he reached out and grabbed a blade of grass out of my ear, and went, getting dressed out in the field, are we? Come on. Went back, knocked me out, popped it back in place.

• 3:22:37Speaker 04

  And I didn't jump the rest of that trip. I couldn't, it was so bad, um, and I knew how bad it was. Like, the amount of pain that was going through my body was uncommon, and it couldn't be good.

• 3:22:50Speaker 04

  We get back to the command, um, I walk into rehab and I tell him, I was like, hey man, I got some serious shit going on. He's like, oh, we'll go in there, we've got, you know, great shoulder surgeons, um, super experienced. And we went in there and looked at that thing, and he went, dude,

• 3:23:07Speaker 04

  this is gonna be the one. Like, this is it. I'm like, whatever, we'll do a quick one. It wasn't a quick one, we, um, we went and did that shoulder surgery, we, uh, we did the Mumford, we cut out a section of my collarbone. We did the bicep tendinitis, so relocated my bicep tendon. We put in two anchors in the front, five in the back. I got a nasty infection. We found out that I'm allergic to the waterproof bandages they put on me. So I got a infliculitis, almost like cellulitis, just gnarly infections all over me, dude, like bad. And the rehab process after shoulder surgery is not fun. It's long. You can't rush it. It takes six months.

• 3:23:50Speaker 04

  And by the time I got done with that, the medical paperwork had already been pushed. He's like, you gotta do the exact same thing to the left and we've still gotta do both your hips. Like, we gotta fuse your neck, we gotta fuse your lower back. Like, it's it, man. And I was in so much pain at that point when we got done with that shoulder surgery.

• 3:24:15Speaker 04

  Not throwing anybody under the bus, but I will. They forgot to do my nerve block when I got that shoulder surgery. So I went in, we do the whole thing, and I wake up in recovery room and this, that operation was supposed to be two hours, and I was in there almost six, long fucking surgery, a bunch of stuff in there, a bunch of bone fragments are floating around. Your shoulder dislocates and slams back in, it chips away the corners. I've got a couple four millimeter pieces of bone floating around in there they can't get to.

• 3:24:46Speaker 04

  Four millimeters? Uh huh. Yep. So my humeral head, it just broke off big chunks of it. Now it's just free floating in there, just grinding everything out.

• 3:24:56Speaker 04

  So I wake up and this shoulder surgery, you get your arm pinned, you're in the sling, and I wake up and I'm overcome by it. Like, if you would have had a pistol sitting on the thing, I would have shot myself. It, it's indescribable how bad that pain was. It was, it was everything. It was reality. And that doctor walked over and he's like, how are you feeling?

• 3:25:24Speaker 04

  I've never felt this much pain in my entire life.

• 3:25:28Speaker 04

  He's like, nerve block not help? Did you do one?

• 3:25:36Speaker 04

  Size get real big and he looks at me, he's like, I'll be right back. He leaves, comes back three minutes later with two other doctors and uh, he's like, hey. So we decided not to give you the nerve block now, we're gonna give it to you post-surgery. So it'll be more effective for you. Okay? And they free, they freehand this thing, usually you do it under uh, under like an x-ray or whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, and they don't, they just drop this thing in, they hit me. It's from the spine, right? What's that? It's from the spine, right? Uh, they did it through my neck. Through your neck? Yeah, so he hit some nerve bundle just above your collarbone, it basically just paralyzes everything from here to here. Oh, good. So he misses it. And a couple of minutes later, I remember sitting there, I'm doing touch and goes, you're

• 3:26:21Speaker 04

  all fucked up from the anesthesia. And I remember leaning my head back and my tongue was paralyzed and it rolled in the back of my throat. And I, I essentially started to swallow my own tongue and I remember throwing my head over the side and scooping my tongue out and I couldn't breathe, I was gasping and it was nothing.

• 3:26:41Speaker 04

  Trying to scream, I can't get anything out, there's no nurse there, it's after hours. I had a later surgery, um, this is probably eight o'clock at night, it's, everybody's gone at this point, men manning at the hospital. And I remember I grabbed the uh, the little monitor, the EKG thing, and I knocked it on the ground. And this lady came running out of the back and I'm holding my throat like this and her eyes got as big as silver dollars and I remember them shoving an O2 mask on me and then I remember waking up later. Um, so what had happened was, they hit the wrong nerve bundle and it paralyzed my throat, my voice box, my tongue and my right lung. Um, man, I was just drifting off the- Holy shit. I just would've passed out, would've been over.

• 3:27:28Speaker 04

  So the whole rehab process comes after that. But after that, because the pain was so bad, we go to pain management. And now I get on more meds. And now I'm on all kinds of weird shit now. It's like they're just stacking it on top of me over and over and over. And it's not getting better. It's only getting worse. To the point where I don't know what I'm gonna do anymore. But I'm having some very hard conversations with Patsy and everybody else. Like if this is what I have to live with daily. Oh, no. Like, I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do. Like, I can't lift my arm. Like, just the whole rehab process was so fucking bad.

• 3:28:10Speaker 04

  And luckily, you know, we start the medical retirement thing, but it takes so long to actually get there.

• 3:28:18Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of conversations are you having? Are you talking suicidal? Yeah? You're having conversations about suicide with your wife? How many times does that happen? More than you can count?

• 3:28:34Speaker 04

  And it was one of those things, like I told her, I was like, I don't, I don't know what the fuck is going on with me. Like, I sit here and I just, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired. Kind of just everything from my childhood and everything through the teens and just everything just felt like it was hanging around my fucking neck, man. I couldn't do it anymore. I was just, I was fucking tired. I feel like that's the common theme with dudes when they hit that spot is that's what they say. Just so fucking tired. I just don't want to do it anymore. Just, like, reality set in, like, that was it. I'm not coming back from that one. And we got through rehab. The med board had already started. We had hip surgery scheduled.

• 3:29:19Speaker 04

  We had my left shoulder scheduled. And it was gonna be three years of surgery windows. I'm like, I can't fucking do this, man. That rehab was so bad. It took everything out of me. It was fucking miserable. The Navy SEAL Foundation stepped in and they had a rehab program ran by an ex-team guy, actually from the Command, Virginia High Performance. They chop you with a world-class strength and conditioning coach. They cater your meals, you do two workouts a day, do the float tank, massage, hyperbaric, you do everything. And it's basically a four-week block. You can extend and do eight weeks. So I did eight weeks with those guys. And I came out of that no shit in the best shape of my entire life. Really?

• 3:30:03Speaker 04

  I felt like I don't need to be retired. Like, I'm good. I was high as a kite. I was on every med I was already on. But I looked the part. I looked fucking great. And I still wanted to die inside. But I still, my ego, it wouldn't let it go. Like, I can still do this. I can still do this. And then I couldn't. I just couldn't do it anymore. I ended up going to a neurobehavior ward at Bethesda. So, right across the street from NICO. It's called Seven East. And it is for a, it's essentially a detox clinic.

• 3:30:48Speaker 04

  So in between all of that, I go back in to refill my prescriptions. And our physician's assistant, he was brand new and he inputted all my stuff in and hit Enter, and an error code popped up. And he went, "I can't give you that." He's like, "You can't take that and this." It's like, "No." Well, that's a problem because I've been taking that for a long time and I fucking need it. And he had a very candid conversation with me and he's like, "No." "What do we do now?" Whole team came together and they're like, "I've got a med washout we want to do. You know, if you're starting a med board right now, let's get you off all these meds and we'll figure out what your baseline really is and we'll go from there." Okay, and somehow they suckered me into it.

• 3:31:32Speaker 04

  And I was not expecting that. I expected to go back to Niko. And it was not Niko. We walked in, they took shoe strings, dental floss, tooth, they went through everything. You couldn't have anything. And there were a couple SF guys in there, a couple Rangers, a bunch of guys, like some some pretty bad TBI shit. One of the guys, he was a fighter pilot, had a, had an ejection ride and it gave him Parkinson's. So to be able to watch people, how bad it can get, it really made me feel, feel like a giant pussy. Like you see how bad some of these dudes are.

• 3:32:11Speaker 04

  And I got there, and I'll never forget, man, she walked in and this sweet little black lady, she looked at me and she goes, "You ready?" "Yeah." "Oh child, okay." She reached in, grabbed all my meds and she's like, "Not anymore." And she locked me in that room. I bet you I was in her seven days. I didn't really leave that room for seven days. I laid in a fetal position and I detoxed off everything I had been on. And it was the worst thing that's ever fucking happened to me. I had piss in the bed, throwing up. I mean, everything.

• 3:32:56Speaker 04

  Talking about the spirit world, man, like, being alone in isolation, no cellphone, no nothing, it, it consumed me. I didn't have skydiving, I didn't have the team, I didn't have my wife, I didn't have anything. I was just, I was ate up, dude. I was ate the fuck up. It, it was bad. And around the seven, 10 day mark, I kind of came out of the haze. And I walked out for one of the first times and sat down with a group and had breakfast. I was sober for the first time. And I was in agonizing pain. Like, oh my god. This is, this is normal, this is reality right here. This is where I'm at.

• 3:33:39Speaker 04

  And we slowly started to input a couple meds. They left me on a couple things, just no, no painkillers. I couldn't do anymore, from the NSAID use over the years. I've got like stomach ulcers, so if I take an 800mg Motrin, I piss blood, like weird stuff, so.

• 3:33:59Speaker 04

  Had to come off all the NSAIDs and the only thing they left me with was Cymbalta and Adderall. With hindsight being 2020, I probably should have came off those.

• 3:34:07Speaker 04

  But at the time I couldn't, I couldn't even fathom it. My anxiety was so bad, my depression was so bad, and those pills were the only thing that kept me sane. And I say sane relatively, I was in a bad spot. The patsy came up, seen me in the hospital, drove up there and um.

• 3:34:25Speaker 04

  You think it would have gotten better and it didn't.

• 3:34:29Speaker 04

  So now we've got two kids, got a brand newborn and I'm just in a bag of shit. So I come back from that and essentially got Neela, my youngest, who's now my therapy baby. I'm just laying in the bed, just feeling sorry for myself. I don't really know where I'm going from here, but I know my career is over. I know I'm miserable. I know I really want to take a bunch of pills to stop feeling like this, but I can't. And I don't know what I'm gonna do.

• 3:34:56Speaker 04

  They introduced art therapy. It's kind of where the whole tribescape thing started to go. There's a spillover from NICO. I started art therapy at NICO and then the whole staff knew me and they all remembered me. So when they heard I was next door, they opened up the facility and I could go over there as much as I wanted to. They let me do the dog program, so I got to hang out with puppies all day, therapy dogs and do all that.

• 3:35:23Speaker 04

  And the Red Cross walked in one day, she's like, what can I bring you?

• 3:35:28Speaker 04

  How about a blank skateboard deck and some paintbrushes? She went, I'll make that happen. And she wasn't supposed to, you're not supposed to leave that place and she snuck me out. She walked me downstairs and put me in her car and drove me out downtown Bethesda to a skateboard shop and bought me a blank skateboard. With her own fucking money, snuck me out, told me she could have gotten in trouble. And brought me back and she's like, if anybody asks, it just showed up here. Yes ma'am. And I made my first board. Big paper mache thing with a bunch of fucking hands coming out of it.

• 3:36:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know the whole mask concept you do? Yeah. Neither? It was essentially that, but I did it on a skateboard. And I just dumped everything I had in me on that board and I felt better. Had an SF guy who's going through a dark spot, a real bad spot. Same thing, his career, he was not ready to go. Had him do the same thing, like, just try it.

• 3:36:23Speaker 04

  Paint this whole thing white. Paint the whole fucking thing black. Now do this, now do that. Started to help, conversations started to go and we got to relive experiences and, you know. That art therapy shit. It helped. Uh, we were in that thing for thirty-one consecutive days. Inpatient. Detoxing off meds, having to talk to all kinds of therapists about your feelings and pain management specialist. And the big thing I got out of it.

• 3:36:56Speaker 04

  I was able to override pain so well, um, that I couldn't tell if I was hurt or if I was injured. I couldn't tell the difference anymore. Everything felt the same. If I stub my big toe, or if you break my leg, it, it all felt the same. I didn't care.

• 3:37:14Speaker 04

  I mean, we'd go in there for some of these things and I'd have these long conversations with the doc and they'd ask and they wanted to know tips and tricks on how I get over this and,

• 3:37:25Speaker 04

  I'd talk about things I do mentally to try to flush out some of the pain I was feeling. You know, I was doing breathing drills way before it was a cool thing to do and, I'd imagine, like, I'd, I'd go deep thought concentration, I would, I'd pan away pain. I'd just spread load throughout my entire body, so it wasn't isolated in one spot. And I became successful at it.

• 3:37:49Speaker 04

  But it doesn't last forever.

• 3:37:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:55Speaker 04

  It was so bad when I came out of that fucking place.

• 3:37:59Shawn Ryan?

  So that's how Tribe's case was born. Art therapy.

• 3:38:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, man. Like, I came out of there and, you know, you're getting ready to retire, the reality of the thing's gonna happen, and you don't know what you're gonna do. I got a contract. What is it?

• 3:38:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know you were retiring at this point?

• 3:38:16Speaker 04

  I knew, yeah. The med board had already started. We're into, we've crested into twenty nineteen now.

• 3:38:27Speaker 04

  I'm still jumping a little bit from what I can. I'm contracting, working some courses in my off time, just maintaining currency, all that. And then that's when we get to, to tribe skates and like I actually made it a thing. I brought in Cole, we had a shop and it was my, it was my little therapeutic outlet. Didn't make any money, but it kept me sane. Was Cole still in at this point? Yeah, he was still in. Okay. Yep. He transitioned over. He was doing a, like a training position. But his med board was about to start. He was banged up. He's had multiple surgeries. He's chewed up.

• 3:39:10Speaker 04

  And that's when I got into fracture burning. It's like I had to replace something, some sort of danger element with something else. So the skydiving I couldn't do right now, I'm going to the med board. If I got hurt again, they are definitely going to fry me. I just have to sit back here and I just have to. When you go through that, they take all your specialty pays away. So you used to make an X amount, chop that in half, and that's what they maintain you at. And that process can last as long as they need it to. And I had a lot of injuries. My medical record's two volumes. They take your fucking pays away? The day, the day you start it. Every specialty pay goes away. Sometimes, you know, I've heard rumors, guys having to pay back reenlistment bonuses.

• 3:39:55Speaker 04

  All kinds of shit, man. Like it's bad, but they hold you to that. So now the lifestyle you've been accustomed to living, you can't afford to live that anymore. So now what do you do? Just get depressed. You can't get a job. They won't let you have outside employment. So what do you do? Just miserable. Just waiting to finally retire. If they would have given the option just to leave, I just would have left. I was so over by then. I was fucking hateful, dude. I didn't want to accept that was actually happening to me. And then, you know, I had to kind of close out that chapter and accept it like this is what is happening. And I finally got my retirement date. The med board is over. It's probably May or June.

• 3:40:39Speaker 04

  There's an invite for the world record for a skydiving thing. And I went out there and I did my training jumps and I got picked up and I got a slot, invitee for the, for the world record. It's gonna be held in Chicago that year and it was like, that was the fucking best thing that's ever happened to me, I'm so excited. Came back home and, you know, got zapped with the voltage, kind of reset everything. So, at that point when that had happened, I had been through NICO, done four more deployments, been through Seven East, came off all the meds except Cymbalta and Adderall.

• 3:41:19Speaker 04

  Now I've got the, um, the world record thing coming up, super excited. Basically leaning in heavy on trieb skates, um, just doing that all day long, just trying to keep myself sane. Um, I'm in the best shape of my life with, uh, with VHP, I'm training every day and I feel like a million bucks, like I'm finally starting to come out of it, at least on the surface. Things were still rocky with the family, I was still, um, any moment I could to separate myself, I did. I mean, I do it now, um, just out of habit, but I'd be up at 5:00 AM every morning, there's no reason, I don't answer to anybody. And I'd go sand skateboards out in a fucking empty parking lot at 5:00 AM, just to be by myself.

• 3:42:01Speaker 04

  I didn't want anybody there with me, I just, I didn't know what I was gonna do, man, but I knew it wasn't anything positive.

• 3:42:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:42:10Shawn Ryan?

  All right, let's move into, let's move into Father's Day.

• 3:42:15Speaker 04

  2019.

• 3:42:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:42:18Speaker 04

  So, I started the trieb skates, um, started doing fracture burning. We were laying graphics, doing normal stuff and fracture burning was kind of introduced to me. So you take a microwave transformer, pull it out and you hook it up to jumper cables, run a lead out to 110. There's no real safety measure, um, there wasn't on that machine. So I ran the extension cord out of my house to an octopus outlet, take said machine, plug into said octopus outlet and then hit the button. Hit the button, unplug it, now there's no power going to it, the unit's good. I've been doing it for months, burned hundreds of boards at this point, um, I've got my, got

• 3:42:59Speaker 04

  my chi down, I've got my, got my whole system down and it's therapeutic, cause it's fucking dangerous. Like you gotta be, you gotta be locked on. So I'm in super good shape. It's Father's Day. I am burning paddles for an EOD unit. It's about to retire, so they're giveaway paddles. I fractured, burned them now, and they do a bunch of cool stuff with them.

• 3:43:22Speaker 04

  And a buddy calls me and he's like, hey, I've got a couple more. Can I drop them off? And I've been out there since 6 a.m. Like, send it.

• 3:43:30Speaker 04

  Fast forward, I burned probably 10 boards that morning. And he shows up and they're not sanded. They've got lacquer all over them. I've still got a bunch more boards I gotta do, and you have to sand off every ounce of that lacquer or it won't conduct. It just won't do it. You gotta spray electrolyte solution on it, hit it with the voltage. So he is, I'm fracture burning boards. I stop, I take a break. He's plugged into the octopus outlet with a sander, sanding them down.

• 3:43:58Speaker 04

  In the confusion, the sander gets unplugged. My machine gets plugged.

• 3:44:05Speaker 04

  And the switch gets turned on. Shit. So I've got sawhorses set up. I'm sanding down boards with a bristle brush, knocking all the, knocking all the ash off. I'm spraying it down with a hose, so the whole backyard is covered in water. I'm in a, I'm in a tank top and board shorts, no shoes on, doing my thing.

• 3:44:27Speaker 04

  I remember it like it was yesterday. We're in front of my bay window, and it's probably from here to there. I mean, it's close. Standing essentially on the back porch. Both my kids are there. They're watching the iPad, they're watching cartoons, eating breakfast. It's probably 8 a.m. And the old lady knocks on the window. She gets me one of these, like, it's fucking Father's Day, let's go. Trying to go have a family breakfast and do the whole thing. I'm like, last burn.

• 3:44:52Speaker 04

  Last burn.

• 3:44:54Speaker 04

  And I was like, alright, man, let's knock out this last one. And I grabbed those leads and I readjusted my hands.

• 3:45:00Speaker 04

  And if you're true north, that's where he was. I was about in this fashion. And when I grabbed those leads, it snapped me and spun me towards him, and every muscle in my body contracted. And I can remember my head fighting the urge. It wanted to slam back and touch my own spine, and I remember fighting it as hard as I could. I can remember my teeth heating up, and it felt like there was a copper spool. I could taste copper in the roof of my mouth, fucking spinning.

• 3:45:29Speaker 04

  We made eye contact. I remember him screaming, fuck, fuck. Oh, no, no, no, fuck.

• 3:45:36Speaker 04

  And the contraction got so fucking hard. I ended up taking a step back at some point and I landed in a puddle of water. But when I did that, I heard a loud pop. And it was my collarbone shattering. And if you listen to Patsy, I leveled out in the air and I shot across the yard, still holding on to these things. Holy shit. I remember hitting the ground and skipping and having this thing.

• 3:46:06Speaker 04

  It felt like my entire body was being burned alive. It was intense and it was static, but it was static you could, you could feel. Like the static on a TV, like everything went to that and it was, um. The static sound was inside of your fucking brain.

• 3:46:28Speaker 04

  And he unplugged me and everything went black. And I don't know how long I was out for, I don't remember. Um, but I remember opening my eyes and he was in my face. And I remember exhaling and smoke coming out. I remember looking down at my hands and I had a burn through my palm, had one coming out of my finger. A shot came out of my head, some arc spots out of my thigh, had one come out next to my ass. And I remember laying there and he looked at me and he goes, you know where you are? On the ground? And he said, are you okay? And I said, no. I'm not okay. I was like, my collarbone's broken and my left shoulder's out of socket for sure.

• 3:47:07Speaker 04

  And he kind of rocked me up forward and I had a big mouth of Copenhagen and I bit through my tongue. So you can imagine what that feels like. Just kind of opened my mouth and just let this shit pour out of me. It was just a steady pool of blood. I didn't know how bad it was, but I knew it was bad. My wife's freaking the fuck out. The kids are freaking the fuck out. He's freaking the fuck out. Rightfully so.

• 3:47:31Speaker 04

  I told them, I uh, I do pretty good at keeping my composure in situations like that. And I was like, we're good. I looked at Patsy and I was like, I'm driving myself to the hospital. I'll go get checked out, go eat breakfast. I'm not ruining Father's Day. And that was the stupidest thing I've ever left my mouth. You're gonna drive yourself to the hospital now after this? And I remember I stood up, they were trying to find me shoes, um, trying to find a hat and trying to find my wallet. I live maybe two miles from a, like a level three trauma center.

• 3:48:05Speaker 04

  And he is gonna drive me there. My wife is gonna call her mother to come over and watch my kids and they're gonna meet me there. They've already called Cole, they've called everybody in the shop, um, to let everybody know what's happened.

• 3:48:18Speaker 04

  I stood up and I said, alright, I'm walking to the truck and I turned. And I got to the gate and it's probably maybe forty feet to my truck and I took a step and everything went.

• 3:48:31Speaker 04

  Took another step.

• 3:48:34Speaker 04

  And it reminded me, in the moment, I thought about it. You remember Kill Bill? You remember the five fingered death punch?

• 3:48:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:40Speaker 04

  Take five steps, on the fifth one, you die. Exactly like that. I got to four and I was fucking right here. I was a fucking cyclops. I couldn't see shit and I was scared to fucking death.

• 3:48:52Speaker 04

  I could feel my heart rate slowing down, like I could feel it.

• 3:48:56Speaker 04

  I mean, you'd think it'd be blowing through my chest, it wasn't. I could feel it, um, and I didn't feel right. I felt very strange. And I took one more step and everything went jet black. It's fucking totally blind. And I'm just on the side of my house. I can't feel anything. I can't put my arms out because everything is broken. So I'm just, I'm, I'm hoping that someone's going to come save me and I can't see a fucking thing, nothing. And I start to breathe, I start to hyperventilate, trying to flood myself with oxygen.

• 3:49:26Speaker 04

  And I forced it. I opened my eyes as wide as I could and I started the deep breathe until lights started to come back in and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was him and he guided me to the truck and by the time I got there, my vision had came back, but it wasn't normal vision. It was like superhuman vision. It was the brightest colors I've ever seen in my whole life.

• 3:49:48Speaker 04

  It was like I could see like Superman. I saw everything. I felt everything. I've never been so in tune with my body, ever. I could feel.

• 3:50:01Speaker 04

  I could feel everything. We got in the truck and we drove to the hospital and we hit every pothole on the way. So my collarbone's in like thirty pieces, it just kinda gravel, just moving around, my scapula's blown out. And um, every bump we hit, it felt like a shard was gonna go into my lung. I didn't know how bad it was at the time, but I had a pretty good fucking idea.

• 3:50:25Speaker 04

  And we walked back there. Walked in, told them exactly what had happened. We don't know the voltage, I don't know the ampage, I don't know anything, except that everything I've ever read is no one survives this shit. So I should have been dead. They brought me back on the table, they stripped me down. They're going through everything. They shoot the x-rays, they see the collarbone shattered, they see the scapula. They see everything else and this doctor comes back. And he tells me, he's like, hey man. What do you do? And I told him. He's like, here's the issue, is with electrocution injuries, your body starts to produce some kind of enzyme, like I'll fuck up the names, I'm not gonna try, but he goes, if that number hits, we'll call it ten, if it hits ten,

• 3:51:10Speaker 04

  your whole body's gonna turn into essentially like rabdo. Muscles are gonna liquefy and I have to start chopping shit out of you, a lot bigger then than I was now, or than I am now. And he goes, I gotta start cutting out big things, dude. He's like, pecs gotta go, lats gotta go, glutes, thighs, hamstrings, we gotta cut it out of you, because if not, it turns to mush, it turns septic, and you'll fucking die. He's like, so when this thing goes, we gotta go. So I'm imagining now, I'm laying in a hospital bed, and this dude's gonna walk around the corner with a fucking piece of paper and start cutting pieces off of me.

• 3:51:42Shawn Ryan?

  So it's just, your tissue, it's dead tissue that's rotting?

• 3:51:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, essentially like, there's so much trauma all the way through, your body produces this natural enzyme that basically turns shit septic. And he's like, that's what happens with rabdo, like muscles liquefy or whatever, and he was concerned about it. And um, they did an ambulance ride all the way up to the burn unit. Put me in there, ran every test they could, all the x-rays, you know, stayed there for a couple of days. And that dude came back in, and he goes, I don't know what the fuck is going on with you. He's like, everybody on earth produces this enzyme, everybody. You know, if at ten, we've gotta start cutting shit out, everybody sets at a five. He goes, not only are you not at a five, he goes, I can't find a trace of it in your whole fucking body.

• 3:52:29Speaker 04

  He goes, "It's a medical fucking mystery. Why you're alive? I don't know." There were a bunch of theories about because I was holding on to both leads, kind of connected a circuit, my muscles just contracted until I blew shit out. And if he wouldn't have unplugged me, I just would have stayed like that and cooked. You know, another second longer. They were talking about, uh, it's kind of like doing a, um, a defib on somebody. He's like, "We don't know what your heart was doing. If he would have unplugged it, you know, .25 seconds pre or post, maybe you were flatlined and died. We don't know." He's like, "Because no one survives it, so we can't forget test data for it." So, I remember laying in the hospital.

• 3:53:10Speaker 04

  This is right after it happened and I was supposed to work a jump course the following day. This happened on a Sunday, I'm supposed to work on Monday. And I remember calling the, uh, the people I was working for. Um, at Scottive Suffolk and, uh, I was crying. I was like, "I am so sorry, like, I can't believe I did this to you." He's like, "I'm, I'm gonna be there, I'll be there tomorrow at 07." And I was like, "I just don't think I'll be able to jump." And that fucking doctor looked over me and he's like, "You ain't going any fucking way, just like that." Patsy jumped my ass and I was like, "Patsy, like, I'm just gonna go down there, I'm in slings, I'm not doing any of this shit." And he's like, "You could fucking die, just like that."

• 3:53:49Speaker 04

  Hand the phone over, Patsy talked to her and basically, like, he, he's not gonna make this trip. And I didn't want to hear that. And then I instantly asked him, like, "Well, I've got the world record coming up in four weeks." And he looked at me and he's like, "Your days are done, dude. You're not fucking jumping." He's like, "You're gonna need major, major reconstructive surgery." And I had just went through it. Like, I had just gotten done.

• 3:54:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:19Speaker 04

  Like, I just went through a year-long rehab process, like, again? What the fuck, man? Like, you're talking about driving a dude in a hole. Like, not again, man, not a fucking again. And the things you don't think about, like, putting on socks. Couldn't put on fucking socks, I couldn't wipe my own ass, I couldn't bathe myself, I couldn't do shit. I could do nothing. I was worthless for months. I mean, I've got two plates and 27 screws from here to here. Like it's over. My, my collarbone doesn't hinge on my sternum right. Like this scapula thing, when that thing blew out. That was an injury that I never respected before. You hear about people breaking shoulder blades and scapulas and like, ah, that's a terrible injury. It's terrible.

• 3:55:04Speaker 04

  And it blew out of my hand, it kind of fused my hand. So when people would shake it. It blew a hole through and hit the nerve and hit the nerve bundle and hit the tendon. So anytime you would move my thumb, it felt like you were ripping my thumb off. I couldn't, I couldn't draw a pistol. Holding a carbine was miserable. And I had to basically just deal with that.

• 3:55:25Shawn Ryan?

  And you were gonna contract as well when you retired, correct?

• 3:55:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was supposed to go in September, December.

• 3:55:32Shawn Ryan?

  So that was out the window now.

• 3:55:33Speaker 04

  Oh, there's no way. Yeah, with the rehab it took, there's no way. Just had to keep pushing that date back further and further. Try to lean in heavy on triadskates, but now I'm hurt. Now what do I do? Like, now what do I do? Went back out at 6:00 AM, five days later, and I finished for actually burning all those fucking skateboards, what I did.

• 3:55:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:55:54Speaker 04

  My wife woke up and you've never seen her look like that. Dude, she stood on that, she stood on that back porch and looked at me and if looks could kill, I'd be fucking dead. Called me everything she could. Selfish motherfucker.

• 3:56:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:09Speaker 04

  And she was right. But I told her, I was like, it's, it's like skydiving. You have a cutaway, you have to get back on the next load and go back up. You're gonna build it up too much in your head. And I was like, it's a freak accident. I'm lucky enough to be alive and if I don't do it right now, it's like this thing will define me right now. I was like, this isn't who I am. I can't let this fucking thing beat me. I have to do it again. And I think she understood. We obviously have a different system now and it's very controlled now. I don't let anybody do it around me. We, we cut that out of it. But that rehab coming back, the very next day we started. I called Vernon Griffith, my trainer, and we started the very next day with a two pound dumbo.

• 3:56:50Speaker 04

  Doing the whole thing over again. And it was, it was measurable.

• 3:56:55Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. And you started GBRS group.

• 3:56:59Speaker 04

  So we had, yeah, we had Tribe Skates and then, um, yeah, in 2019, right after that, we started GBRS. So that happened and I retired in August. That happened in, it's Father's Day, July, June.

• 3:57:14Shawn Ryan?

  June 19th.

• 3:57:15Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. Yeah, we started out in September, GBRS. It's like, full steam ahead, we gotta go. I just focused on rehab every day. Hired a full-time trainer and just focused on rehab, trying to get back.

• 3:57:34Speaker 04

  It's not really what happened. I, uh, I separated myself from everything. I, um, I used to skateboard shit as a, as a coping mechanism. It was really just an excuse. I, um, I had to, I had to replace my love for the teams, my love for jumping and my love for being away from my family. I had to give myself something else and, um, it was the worst thing I ever fucking did, man. I, um, I let my ego get the best of me and started cheating on the old lady. And just pushed them away. I just did.

• 3:58:12Speaker 04

  I, um, I ran multiple affairs for the better part of two years. All the way through. And, uh, I pushed out my fucking whole family, man. I, um,

• 3:58:26Shawn Ryan?

  You were able to keep that shit together for two years. You ran two businesses. You're retiring. You have a family with two kids and you're doing multiple affairs.

• 3:58:40Speaker 04

  And the thing that disgusts me the most about it is because I love the team so much. I put Patsy on a fucking pedestal because of who she was, what she'd already been through.

• 3:58:55Speaker 04

  And you know, we pride ourselves on loyalty. And that's the biggest loyalty breach on fucking earth. I had no justification for it. She's badass dude. Like, I don't deserve her. I mean, she's hot as shit too.

• 3:59:12Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like, I had no excuse. She's perfect. I just didn't want it. I wanted to consume myself with toxic people, and that's exactly what I did. I hid it for a while. And then I couldn't hide it anymore. I just, I couldn't. I was gonna fuck kill myself.

• 3:59:31Speaker 04

  I was back on pain pills. I just, I couldn't do it anymore. I had all my stuff from,

• 3:59:37Speaker 04

  from before. I was back on tramadol, back on Percocet, the electrocution. And I went back on status quo. I was like, I don't do anything half-assed. I'm gonna do it and go the whole way. And basically, everything I did before, I just kept doing again. I just subbed out the teams for businesses and affairs. And I went.

• 3:59:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well,

• 4:00:00Shawn Ryan?

  then you kinda came into contact. Well, I mean, I know you guys knew each other before, but Patsy made a call to Amber Capone. What, what?

• 4:00:11Speaker 04

  So we heard about it. We heard what Marks and Amber were doing, and,

• 4:00:15Shawn Ryan?

  What was the final straw? I mean, it sounded like it was like the last call in desperation there.

• 4:00:20Speaker 04

  So, Marks and Amber did,

• 4:00:25Speaker 04

  I guess you'd call it a commercial. It was kinda like their story, and we knew their story, like we know them the entire time, so we knew everything they'd been through. I mean, broad brush, I mean, we know. And they made this,

• 4:00:38Speaker 04

  they made this trailer, I guess, and,

• 4:00:42Speaker 04

  I was gone on a trip, and she sent it to me. And I was laying in bed at a fucking Marriott, and I watched that thing, and I bawled my eyes out.

• 4:00:51Speaker 04

  Uncontrollably.

• 4:00:54Speaker 04

  Because I knew how bad I had taken. I knew how far I had went. And I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't think it was able to be fixed. I didn't. And she sent it to me, and she went, "If you love me, you'll go."

• 4:01:09Speaker 04

  It's kinda a weird thing for a wife to ask your husband to go to Mexico and do drugs, try to fix yourself, and I went,

• 4:01:16Speaker 04

  "I'll go." "I'll go."

• 4:01:23Speaker 04

  It didn't matter, though. I wasn't hopeful.

• 4:01:28Speaker 04

  Once she said she wanted me to go, it was like a beacon of light. It let in some hope. She does give a shit. She does want me better. Like, she wants me back. She's willing to work this out. She's willing to accept me. She didn't know everything that was going on. She didn't. She might have had an assumption, but she didn't know. She definitely didn't know the severity of the affairs. She didn't.

• 4:01:56Speaker 04

  So by the time we get there, now we're in business with three other team guys. And now we're all gonna go. We're all gonna go together. We're all gonna heal together, who's all been through some serious shit, and we're gonna go process this entire thing together in one fell swoop. What I didn't do...

• 4:02:17Speaker 04

  What I didn't do was be honest to the people around me on what I was going through. I didn't tell them everything I had going on.

• 4:02:27Speaker 04

  The shit overseas, the disappointments on retirement, the transition life, the affairs.

• 4:02:36Speaker 04

  You know, drama with my family, just everything. I didn't let them know how bad it was.

• 4:02:45Speaker 04

  And I had a fucking serious secret. I had one that I couldn't come back from. There's no way. It's my defining moment, and that'll be the last thing that anyone ever hears about me is how bad I fucked this up. And there's no way to fix it. So it's every day, we got closer and closer to Mexico, I fell more and more in love with my wife and kids, every fucking day.

• 4:03:09Speaker 04

  I still wasn't homesick. I still wanted to be gone, but I would see it, and it made me regret everything I had done. For the last two years, I just, every time I saw him, there's just a guilt. It hung around me. It hung around my fucking neck, man.

• 4:03:27Speaker 04

  You wanna go through the whole story? You wanna take it all the way?

• 4:03:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:32Speaker 04

  So we, uh, we link up with Marcus and Amber. And, uh, we fly out there.

• 4:03:39Speaker 04

  And, uh, we put in some serious fucking work, man. That, uh, that medicine, that entire experience is nothing on this universe. It can't be quantified. You, you can't do an experience and pass it off and tell somebody your story and it sounds too bizarre. It just does. Divine intervention and everything else. You believe in aliens after that shit. Like it, it doesn't make sense.

• 4:04:04Speaker 04

  The word cosmic comes up a lot when people do it. Like you feel like you're one with the universe. It's weird. You become interconnected to everything. And you understand everything you've ever done. And it is at the forefront of your mind when you wake up the next day.

• 4:04:19Shawn Ryan?

  So how does it happen then? I mean, is it immediate? Or you feel it the next day or?

• 4:04:25Speaker 04

  No, I mean, you process that thing for weeks. It's in your system for a long time. At least it felt like. But, you know, you go down there, you do a ceremony, you give out your intentions and I haven't told anybody my intentions. I haven't told anybody what I'm trying to deal with. None of them. They have no idea. They assume that we're, um, dealing with some PTSD shit and some, uh, some stress, some operator syndrome, maybe some other stuff. And, uh, we did Iba game. Had a very profound experience and I woke up the next morning for the first time in a decade. I would have cut off a fucking arm to teleport home. I've never wanted to be home that bad in my entire life.

• 4:05:07Speaker 04

  And I knew it was all for nothing. I knew it didn't matter. There's no going home for me.

• 4:05:13Speaker 04

  Just the thoughts that go through your mind when you know you fucked up so bad. You can't come back from it. What do you say? Like, how do you enjoy that experience? How do you process the information knowing you'll never get to share it with another human being? Cause if you're on this road, I gotta fucking kill myself. And that's what it was. That's a hard thing to wrap your head around. Like, I'm so selfish. I'm a, I'm such a fucking coward, but instead of facing music, this is what's gonna happen.

• 4:05:44Speaker 04

  We process the entire day. We wake up the next morning, we do a ceremony, we all come together and we're working through trauma together. It's a bunch of team guys in the same room, a bunch of them we know, a couple of them we don't know. And the common theme, because I'll just say it now, after I begin, I'll just say it. I looked at all of them and they were pouring out some, some serious shit, some serious childhood traumas and dumping them on the table for everyone to see. And I called them all out. Fuck you guys. I've been sitting here for 16 fucking years alone, thinking I'm the only fucking dude. You've been my best friend my entire time, you've never told me that. Why'd you let me do this alone? Why?

• 4:06:29Speaker 04

  Like how many fucking times I almost blew my head off in a fucking guest room? Why? Why didn't you fucking tell me, man? It's fucking rough, dude. And you see the collective, everyone, everyone in the fucking room, the exact same way dudes have been 25 years. Had a fucking 30-year master chief in there, same fucking thing. Like, why? Why the fuck didn't you say it? I want a fucking answer, tell me. I didn't have one. I wasn't ready. You better fucking get ready. Like if any of you dudes go back home and you don't jump on the first building and scream from the fucking rooftops, this shit will save you, then fuck you.

• 4:07:12Speaker 04

  Don't be a senior man with a secret, not with this shit. I would have been so much better off if people would have just said it. Like, this happened and this is how I'm feeling. It's okay to not be okay. This shit is fucking, this is life, man. Like as bad as we want to feel like we're universal soldiers and fucking Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude, we're not. We're grown ass men that have kids, they call us papa. You gotta stay up late and do homework, we gotta drop kids off on school buses, and you gotta get on a fucking airplane and fly away and never see them again. You gotta be okay with that. And it's a hard thing to do, especially when you do it solo, when you never say it. Not that it's not there, it's there, it's on the forefront of everybody's mind and you're just not saying it.

• 4:07:59Speaker 04

  So we had a beautiful, beautiful couple hours, processed a lot of shit. And a nice family dinner and we're just constantly just on topic, talking about just everything. Fuck, man, I felt so relieved to be able to just say it.

• 4:08:14Speaker 04

  But I hadn't said it yet. Yeah. Hadn't said a fucking thing yet. We wake up the next morning and we're gonna do five MEO DMT. We sent up a couple of guys and they were saving me last life.

• 4:08:30Speaker 04

  I think maybe they thought I was gonna have a conniption. Because everybody knew I was really working through some shit and they just didn't know how bad it was.

• 4:08:40Speaker 04

  And I laid back. You know, we smoked a five, laid back and I've never cried like that in my whole fucking life. Every ounce of pain I have caused my wife, I've caused my kids and anyone else, I felt right then. And I did it over and over. I was chasing the release. All this negative shit had filled up and it was coming out of my mouth and I couldn't stop it.

• 4:09:08Speaker 04

  I just, I needed to purge all of this hate that I had inside me and it was really just hatred for myself. And um.

• 4:09:22Speaker 04

  They told you, you'll know when you're done. You'll wake up and it could be on the first dose, it could be on the fifth dose, it doesn't matter, you'll know when you're done. And I rolled over and I was done, like I was at complete peace with everything.

• 4:09:37Speaker 04

  I've never felt so alive. I've never felt so connected to this earth. I've never wanted to go strap on body armor and deploy more in my entire fucking life. I felt like I had a superpower. We all did and we all talked about it. I feel like I know something that no one else on this earth knows. It's like you do. It's like you have a secret no one else knows. Like this medicine will save everybody. Fuck, I wish I could just give it to everybody right now and fix everybody. It's not how it works and we're still processing all this information. So we've done that. We do our final ceremony and we're flying home the next day. They've, we've been in River City, there's no phones, there's no email, there's nothing. We had to write a letter home.

• 4:10:20Speaker 04

  And they basically gave us a blanket statement. They were like, hey,

• 4:10:25Speaker 04

  send this text out to your significant other, everybody's married, so send it out to your wife that says, hey, I'd love to, I'm through with the ceremony. I can't wait to see you and I can't wait to tell you about everything that I've experienced. Blanket statement. And I knew Pat, he was itching

• 4:10:41Speaker 04

  to hear from me. We haven't heard from days. You go to River City on Friday and now it's on Monday at like noon. So we're in San Diego, we're all at an Airbnb waiting for our flights. And like, okay, because you know, we're all business partners, all the wives are interconnected. So like you can't text your wife before I text mine. Yeah. Right? So like, all right, ready, three, two, we all send it. All their phones go off, not mine. She's probably at the gym. I hit her, hit her location. She's at the house. Okay. Send another text. Hey, are you available for a call? I called the house, they don't answer. Click back on location. She's not sharing her location with me anymore.

• 4:11:26Speaker 04

  That's strange. Call her cellphone. Straight to voicemail.

• 4:11:32Speaker 04

  The fuck? Like, maybe the kids are on the phone, maybe they're just swiping up. They're watching YouTube, whatever. So I let it go. Three or four hours go by, nothing. And I know the other wives have talked to them. They're not saying anything to me. They haven't heard anything. And they're tight. Like all the, they're, we're tight. We get a drive to the airport. We get to the airport and I'm on, I'm on pins and needles, man. I can't even fucking breathe. Because I have this secret. And I don't know how it's going to get out. And now I'm certain question, like, does she know?

• 4:12:08Speaker 04

  She find out that it fares, like what the fuck is going on? We get into the airport. We stop in a layover in Atlanta and I power on my phone and there's a notification that pops up. It says, password's been changed to my email.

• 4:12:24Speaker 04

  Hmm, that's weird. And then I go to log on to, I had a ghost Instagram account. That I've run all these affairs on. And she had hacked into that. She changed the password and opened it up. And she opened it up on Friday when we went to River City. And she had all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and all day Monday. To read through everything I had said and done the last two years. Everything. And you're a team guy, so you know exactly what those were. And she read it all. And at the very end of it, um, she found out that one of the,

• 4:13:07Speaker 04

  one of the people I was having an affair with was pregnant.

• 4:13:15Speaker 04

  Oh, fuck.

• 4:13:18Speaker 04

  So I don't know any of this. I just know that now she's in there. And now I'm panicking disco and now I'm telling them, oh, my God. Like, she's hacked into my Instagram account. She knows. Like, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. We landed in Virginia Beach, we drive back to the shop. All the wives are there, except mine. Take a big breath and I walk upstairs in my office and every fucking thing I owned is in cardboard boxes sitting in my office. Everything. And there was just printouts of all these text messages that I'd been sending out. Screenshots of pictures and all kinds of shit. There's a, there's everything in there. And I knew.

• 4:14:03Speaker 04

  You know, coming back from that one. There's no coming back from that one. It's heavy, man.

• 4:14:11Speaker 04

  And I, uh, I saw the other wives, give everybody a hug. And I, uh, I looked over Cole, kissed him on the cheek, told him I loved him. And, uh, and said, I'll call him in a little bit. And I had no intention of calling him in a little bit. I jumped in my truck and I drove straight out to, uh, to Sandbridge, right out by the ocean. And I backed my truck up right next to, uh, right next to the command gate. And I sit there in my truck. And I contemplated everything I had done my entire fucking life. From the fallout with my parents to the, you know, having kids and the affairs and everything in between, actions overseas, everything I'd ever done. It was so crystal clear.

• 4:14:54Speaker 04

  It was like I had superhuman memory for the first time. I remembered everything, but it wasn't anything positive. It was just all the terrible shit I had done. It was in the forefront of my mind and I didn't have the courage to call Patsy. I didn't.

• 4:15:10Speaker 04

  Thinking about, um, thinking about making that phone call and her not answering. But her just dismissing me, I couldn't do it. Um, all I wanted to do was see my kids. That was it. Just let me see my two girls. Just let me, give me one fucking glimpse of them. And I'll be out of your hair. Just let me say goodbye to them. And I'm, uh, I'm parked over there and she called me. Out of the fucking blue, just called me. And she was tracking me. Um, the call had actually followed me, so she knew where I was going. She tracked my location, knew exactly what I was gonna do. And she called me. And she's like, "Hey, um, I need to see you. I need to see you fucking face to face right now."

• 4:15:56Speaker 04

  I said, "Okay."

• 4:15:56Shawn Ryan?

  Had you made your mind up how you were gonna do it?

• 4:15:59Speaker 04

  Yep. I shoot myself right in the front seat of that truck. Made a video of the kids, whole thing. Selfie video, that's it. Fuck, man.

• 4:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  So she found you?

• 4:16:17Speaker 04

  She fucking drove up, parked right next to me. Um, she got out of that car like she had a thousand times and I was sitting on the tailgate and, uh... She walked over to me. I'm sitting on the tailgate and she walked right in between my legs and pulled my glasses off my fucking face. And she cried. Um...

• 4:16:42Speaker 04

  I've never seen a woman cry like that.

• 4:16:48Speaker 04

  Fuck.

• 4:16:52Speaker 04

  Bolted her fucking eyes out, so did I. I mean, one of those uncontrollable ones with shit just coming out of your face. And, um,

• 4:17:02Speaker 04

  I was trying to tell her how sorry I was, how much I regretted everything and,

• 4:17:08Speaker 04

  she looked at me right in fucking eyes and she knew that I was back. It's the weirdest thing, you can't explain it.

• 4:17:17Speaker 04

  But she looked at me and my eyes were clear for the first time. I was off all pain meds. When I woke up from IberGang, never had another painkiller. No Simbala, no Adderall, no Copenhagen, no nothing. No affairs, nothing, um, since then. But she saw it. She saw that I was completely sober for the first time ever. And she looked me right in fucking eyes and she said, "Are you willing to try to work this out?"

• 4:17:43Speaker 04

  I said, "Absolutely." And she was like, "I don't know if that means we're married." But she's like, "I can't have you kill yourself." She's like, "These fucking kids need you too much. The shop needs you. Don't do this to these families." Like, "You and me can, you and me can figure out a common ground." And that's all I wanted. I knew we'd never stay married. I don't fucking deserve her. I just didn't want to lose it all. I didn't want her to...

• 4:18:09Speaker 04

  I didn't want to end it like that.

• 4:18:12Speaker 04

  And we went back, we had a, a super hard conversation, um,

• 4:18:17Speaker 04

  and she asked me, she's like, "I want to know everything right now." And I fucking told her everything. I fell on my sword and for the first time in my life, I didn't, I didn't filter a fucking thing. I sent it. The whole way. I told her every ounce of it, every detail. How long it'd been going on, why it'd been going on. And what I'm gonna do now, um. And I told her, I was like, "I don't want, I don't want you to stay with me. I don't want you to stay married to me. I just want, I want the opportunity to make it up to you. Just give me one fucking chance to prove to you every day that I'm fucking sorry."

• 4:18:54Speaker 04

  Like, "I don't need to be forgiven. Just give me the opportunity to make it okay." And every day I wake up with that on the forefront of my mind. Like, I'm gonna show you today how committed I am. I'll show you today how far I'm willing to go for the family. And that's the, that's the goal every day. And ever since that fucking day, since I landed in Virginia Beach, we have never been better. It's, um, fuck, it's hard to say, man, but we have never been better. My kids have never, my kids have never loved me more. It's weird, um, my oldest called me DJ. Until I retired. All of them.

• 4:19:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. And now it's,

• 4:19:38Speaker 04

  like, that's my why now.

• 4:19:42Speaker 04

  It is.

• 4:19:44Speaker 04

  I'm the luckiest fucking dude I know. I am, and I don't deserve to be. I don't deserve, uh, I don't deserve to have her, I don't deserve to have those kids, but I'll fucking take it.

• 4:19:55Speaker 04

  She stuck with it through all that shit. She fucking did, man. She stuck through with all of that. Everything she's fucking been through. All that shit I put her through. Not the affairs. Like, that life in teams with me was fucking rough, man.

• 4:20:13Speaker 04

  I mean, she used to look forward to me being gone. All I cared about was that fucking place. I did, I just, I cared about the teams, I just,

• 4:20:22Speaker 04

  I wanted to do that and I didn't want any distractions, and then

• 4:20:26Speaker 04

  I let it consume me. And then I needed to find, I needed to find something else. Skydiving, I couldn't do that anymore, now what? Now we're doing this. It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me, it's the worst thing I've ever done. And it's the only thing in my life that I wish I could take back. The rest of that shit I'll take. The scars I'll take. Bad memories I'll take. The look on her face. That's what keeps me up at night.

• 4:20:54Speaker 04

  Just the breach of loyalty. She trusted me. Everybody did. They trusted me to,

• 4:21:03Speaker 04

  to do her right, and I fucking didn't.

• 4:21:06Speaker 04

  I let my ego take control. And it fucking sucks.

• 4:21:14Speaker 04

  Some fucking heavy shit, man.

• 4:21:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that is some, uh, real heavy shit. That's an amazing woman.

• 4:21:21Speaker 04

  No shit. If we think back to not going to Mexico, just imagine if that happens on a Tuesday. She finds out, there's no Mexico.

• 4:21:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:21:30Speaker 04

  I'm the same way that I was before.

• 4:21:33Speaker 04

  I wouldn't be here. I was too fucking suicidal.

• 4:21:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:21:37Speaker 04

  Like, I mean, I was hinging on it. Like,

• 4:21:42Speaker 04

  I was, man. I was just, I was itching for a reason. And that was my reason. Without her, man, I wouldn't be here.

• 4:21:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I was actually gonna have her call in, but, uh,

• 4:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  things didn't go as planned, but we're wrapping this up, but I gotta tell you, man, you've gotta be one of the most resilient people I've ever fucking met. That is, uh,

• 4:22:13Shawn Ryan?

  been through a lot of shit.

• 4:22:16Speaker 04

  The daily struggle. It is, man. Like, that fucking road ain't easy. And I'll tell you what, after I, um, after the whole thing kinda came out, you know, it spread through the community like fucking wildfire.

• 4:22:30Speaker 04

  I was surprised how many other people it happened to.

• 4:22:34Speaker 04

  A shit ton of people. A bunch of people that I knew, I had no fucking idea.

• 4:22:40Speaker 04

  Like, I mean, cheating's a, it's a common theme in the military, I mean, it just is. Gone on the road a lot, it's a common thing.

• 4:22:50Speaker 04

  I feel like she should've gotten an exemption. It's like I owed that to her, you've been through enough. You didn't deserve some fucking typical team guy, piece of shit cheating on you, didn't. She's fucking perfect. And I took her for granted.

• 4:23:05Speaker 04

  It's fucking terrible.

• 4:23:08Speaker 04

  Every day I wake up, and I prove you one more time.

• 4:23:13Speaker 04

  That's a struggle.

• 4:23:14Shawn Ryan?

  She said that when, uh, when I talked to her, that every day, and that's the first thing you say when you guys wake up.

• 4:23:20Speaker 04

  Yep. It's the truth. I mean, she gives me accountable. And that's what I needed.

• 4:23:28Speaker 04

  I needed someone to hold me accountable.

• 4:23:32Speaker 04

  It's like, since that's happened.

• 4:23:37Speaker 04

  And we turned over, um, the gold star thing started right after that. And it's like,

• 4:23:45Speaker 04

  every day I'm dealing with that. And I'm also dealing with everything else that goes along with it. So I mean, me and her,

• 4:23:54Speaker 04

  we're thick as thieves now. I mean, we have to be. Like, put our backs against the wall and it's just you and me.

• 4:24:02Speaker 04

  At the end of the day, it's just us. The rest of it's just noise. Doesn't matter.

• 4:24:09Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you.

• 4:24:10Speaker 04

  But the big thing about Mexico, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is is family. Things I can control, things I can reach out and grab and pull in. Everything else is fake. Social media, it's not real. People pretending like they're happy and they're fucking not. And I see it now. I know exactly who that guy is. I know exactly the pain he's in. I know the pain that she's in.

• 4:24:37Speaker 04

  Doesn't have to be that way. If we just open up and we just say it, it can save people. Like, I'm sick of people killing themselves over what feels like a mountain of time. It's not. Doesn't have to be.

• 4:24:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:54Speaker 04

  No, I think we were just more open about it, just say it. Be a lot better off.

• 4:25:00Shawn Ryan?

  If you had one piece of advice for guys coming out now, because we're hidden 20 years, you know, what would it be?

• 4:25:12Speaker 04

  Guys transitioning?

• 4:25:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 4:25:14Speaker 04

  It's gonna be a lot harder than you think it is.

• 4:25:18Speaker 04

  I see a lot of guys who do a failed transition now because they try to do it alone. You didn't do anything in the military alone. Nothing. You didn't, you didn't write your own eval. You didn't do anything. You didn't do your own med checkups. You didn't.

• 4:25:33Speaker 04

  You had a team supporting you the entire way through. Guys try to get out and they try to reinvent themselves into something brand new with no experience. And they try to do it as a singleton and when it doesn't fail.

• 4:25:43Shawn Ryan?

  It's a damn good point.

• 4:25:46Speaker 04

  They hit rock bottom, like, why? Like, I get it, you want to go to Goldman Sachs, that's awesome. You're the only Navy SEAL in that fucking place. Who are you going to talk to? Who are you going to have a conversation with? When you're having a bad day, a fucking bad day, what are you going to do? Who are you going to call? Everybody else is busy. Like, you have to have people to check in with. I think that's the... I mean, that was the thing that saved us. After Mexico, we'd just say it. Like, there was open dialogue in that place now. All the Gold Star kids that are in there, we'd just say it. Like, we're not having this shit anymore. We have open forum conversations. You got something on your mind, say it. Say it right fucking now, don't hold it. Don't let it fester. It won't get better with time.

• 4:26:30Speaker 04

  You won't just get over it in five years. You won't. It'll compound, it'll snowball, and it'll consume you.

• 4:26:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm glad you're spearheading that.

• 4:26:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I appreciate it.

• 4:26:42Shawn Ryan?

  I've got one last question. You have kids. After all you've been through, all those deployments, all those injuries, mental, physical, would you want your kid doing that?

• 4:26:55Speaker 04

  Yes and no. If they were going to do it with true believers, with the right crowd, that dedicated to the mission, and really obsessed with it, absolutely. If it turns into some watered-down thing in 15 or 20 years where it becomes like a part-time thing, no. In my opinion, that career field, Special Operations in general, cannot be a part-time approach. You can't mass produce that.

• 4:27:39Speaker 04

  You need people that'll obsess over every detail. The nation deserves it.

• 4:27:46Speaker 04

  I have a kid who's lucky enough to be a part of that, absolutely. But I don't want some watered down bullshit. I don't want that. It's too dangerous to have that. It's like the only way to do it is to do it right. Do it the best of your ability.

• 4:28:01Speaker 04

  I know I'd do it all over again. I'd do every ounce of it. Except for the last two years. As far as military. Every bit that I hated. Every time I was motherfucking somebody. It's all part of the story.

• 4:28:17Speaker 04

  I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to do. And I'd do it all again.

• 4:28:23Shawn Ryan?

  Well, man. I just want to say it was a real honor interviewing you and, uh...

• 4:28:32Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 4:28:35Shawn Ryan?

  Seriously, truly, it was an honor.

• 4:28:38Speaker 04

  I appreciate it.

• 4:28:39Shawn Ryan?

  So, anybody looking to find you? The links are below and, uh... And I just wish you the best of success and, uh, most happiness.

• 4:28:49Speaker 04

  I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

• 4:28:51Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.