20 Years at War: A Ranger Regiment Story | Luis Saucedo

Luis Saucedo recounts his journey from the streets of Baghdad to high-value target raids in Afghanistan as a sniper in the 75th Ranger Regiment. He shares stories of brutal firefights, near-death experiences, and life inside one of America’s most elite combat units. Luis also reflects on the injury that ended his career, the difficult transition out of the military, and his new mission helping veterans rediscover purpose and brotherhood. Today's Sponsors: GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Stash ⬇️ https://www.stash.com/HOUSE for 15% off your monthly subscription or 30% off your annual subscription. GLD ⬇️ https://www.gld.com/ code "teamhouse" for 40% your first order Quince⬇️ go to: https://www.quince.com/house for free shipping and 365 day returns For ad free video and audio and access to live streams... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ GRAB JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured Jack Murphy's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 – Start 01:02 – How 9/11 Put Him on the Path to War 05:57 – Iraq in 2004: Welcome to the Wild West 13:00 – Baghdad During the Bloodiest Years of the War 17:48 – The Night Their Outpost Was Nearly Overrun 23:12 – The Haunted Iraqi Base No One Wanted to Enter 31:15 – The Brutal Moment That Pushed Him Toward Regiment 40:58 – From Ranger Selection Straight Into Combat 42:41 – Surviving the Ruthless Culture of Ranger Regiment 50:29 – Brawls, Booze and Life Behind the Brown Fence 01:07:16 – Inside the Ranger Sniper Selection Process 01:15:31 – Hunting High-Value Targets as a Ranger Sniper 01:31:05 – When the Afghanistan War Began Feeling Pointless 01:34:50 – Learning He Wasn’t as Good a Shooter as He Thought 01:40:18 – Inside the Army’s Controversial SFAB Experiment 01:53:21 – Running Sources and Watching Spies in Kurdistan 02:01:29 – The Injury That Ended His Military Career 02:10:08 – Turning Combat Veterans Into School Protectors 02:17:31 – Why So Many Veterans Struggle After Leaving 02:26:50 – Rebuilding the Brotherhood After the War Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder warrants.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 0:39Speaker 03

  What's a homicide detective doing here?

• 0:40Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 0:44Speaker 04

  That will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 0:47Speaker 03

  That's one of the plagues for bio.

• 0:49Speaker 04

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 0:58Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with our guest tonight, Louis Sosido. He served in a number of different infantry units, worse, and then went to the 75th Ranger Regiment, served in 375, went over to snipers, lots of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and some other interesting stuff, too, before he went over to the SFAB, which was a new unit, a train and advise unit that we'll get into. But Louis, first of all, thank you for joining us on the show.

• 1:32Speaker 06

  Hey, man, thanks for having me. It's a, it's a real pleasure. I love, love everything about your books.

• 1:37Jack Murphy?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:38Speaker 06

  I need to get, yeah, awesome. I really liked the, the genre and everything that I know you, I've met Jack Carr a couple of times, and that dude's an awesome guy, too, but just how y'all write's fantastic.

• 1:51Jack Murphy?

  Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that, man.

• 1:56Jack Murphy?

  So let's, let's start at the beginning. If you can tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how that took you into the military.

• 2:05Speaker 06

  Man, so yeah, so that's a funny story. So I grew up to, my dad's a cop in Dallas, he's like a 37-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. My mom was a dental hygienist of all things, and kind of middle-class, but we had the, I always tell people, it's like we had the, me and my brother had the picturesque, like growing up, kind of American experience where we went to high school, I played soccer, I played a ton of sports, me and my brother got into wrestling roughly about the same time, and we did wrestling all through high school. And so that, I think, especially the wrestling portion, because you hear a lot about guys,

• 2:49Speaker 06

  I think I ran into mostly guys in regiment that had, they were all wrestlers, every single one of them. And so it's, it's, I, I kind of laugh about that, is like, I think the same amount of suffering that you did in wrestling kind of translated into suffering in other parts of your life, so you could do it real well. Like when you were, a lot of the times, we were running around, not eating, sitting in bags, and wearing trash bags while we're doing everything. So it's like, it was a level of suffering that you put yourself through to attain a goal, to just get out and fight on the mat, to get to that wrestling match. And that, I think, really, really translated into the type of suffering that you would do later.

• 3:30Speaker 06

  Past that, like, my dad had had a lot of aspiration, big aspirations for us. He wanted us to be an officer, or one of us to be, he was like, hey, if you're gonna go in the Army, I always knew that I was gonna go into the military. And so he had always had big aspirations for, he was like, you're gonna go an officer, we're gonna try to send you to West Point, or Annapolis, or this is, I, I wanted to be a pilot until I found out I was dyslexic, and that doesn't work real well with pilots.

• 3:59Speaker 06

  So it, I'd gotten into all of that, wrestling and everything, kind of knew that my path was gonna be in the military, and then 9/11 happened, and I was a junior in high school when 9/11 happened. So, and everybody, you get the same kind of response from everybody where they're like, hey, where were you during 9/11? And I can remember exactly where I was, and then the thought process of, okay, now, now I know I'm going into the military.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  I didn't know how long I was going in the military for. I thought I was gonna do a, like a four-year stint, and I was gonna follow my dad's footsteps and go to the Dallas Police Department. So that's, that's kind of really like the, the growing up portion that led me into going into the military. Had there not been a war, I probably wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. But definitely the way my father and my mother raised us, we were Americans, we lived in a place called Little Mexico for a little while, and then we moved to Carrollton. And my dad was always like, you're not a, you're not a Mexican, like, don't, don't listen to what everybody says, you're not Mexican, you're an American.

• 5:16Speaker 06

  So me and my brother pretty much raised on that, took that into heart, and then, then we just liked doing the hard stuff. We got into, I had the, the risk factor that was always there, I think with all, all guys that did, do what we do. I got into a lot of trouble, like a ton of trouble. I, I went to parties, I drank, and I really knew that college kind of wasn't gonna be for me, so I didn't, never planned on it, planned on it. And then, yeah, so I joined, I tried one year, one semester of college, and then I, I called it.

• 5:55Jack Murphy?

  And you and your brother both joined, were, there a few years gap between the two of you?

• 6:02Speaker 06

  So there's a two-year gap between when, so me and him are actually two years apart, and there's a year and a half to two-year gap between when we joined. So I had joined in 2004 and graduated everything in May, and I was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, and then as soon as I got there, I was gone, probably, I think it was like three months later. Like, I got promoted to Star in First Class, or not Star in First Class, Private First Class, like, on the airfield when it was snowing, getting on the bird to go to, go back, go into Iraq.

• 6:41Jack Murphy?

  And what was Iraq like for you in 2004?

• 6:46Speaker 06

  Oh, gosh, that place was the Wild West. Like, the, so, everything had just, had just stopped, and it had just transferred over to OIO2.

• 6:58Speaker 06

  We got there, landed in Biop, they're still doing the, I don't know if you had ever gotten into Biop, probably did, but they were still doing the drops, so they were, the, the combat drops, when they would fly, and they'd just, they'd take that, that aircraft, and then they'd be like, okay, everybody hold on, and they just nose that thing right into, like, right to the ground. And we, that was, I think that was the first time I realized, like, that, hey, this could be real, because I'm, I'm sitting there, and I'm just like, have all my, I'm like, like, 19, 20 years old, and I'm looking down the road, and there's people throwing up into their shirts, on the floor, it's going all over the place, you've got the loadies

• 7:40Speaker 06

  are laughing on the other side, and it's just like, okay, so this is, they're, they're try, either trying to scare us, or we're, we're scared of something. Yeah, we landed in the middle of the night, got there, and then that deployment was pretty, I was in Camp Taji, Iraq, and so we're right there on MSR Tampa, and it was funny, because we just knew that that was the big IEDs, the EFPs hadn't started go, happening yet. I would meet those later on, early 2006, '07. And so we were really just scared of the 155s, and it was just random firefights. It was, all of it was super surreal, when I think back about it, because we would go

• 8:23Speaker 06

  down Route Irish, we'd do stuff, we'd be heading down into the Green Zone, taking people in, or pulling people out, or going on mission, and right there on Route Irish, there was a bridge, and as soon as you cross that bridge... First little tick I got into was we're coming out and as soon as you cross that bridge, everybody's shooting from both sides of the freeway and it's just all fires coming in on you. Everybody's, you're driving, you, the gunners are shooting, they're, we're shooting back at them, they're shooting at us. And then you cross probably about a mile over, you cross back over and it's over. It's like somebody turned like a stick it off. And so I was just like, this is, it, it got really surreal at one, at a couple of points where it was just like, this isn't real life. Like we're living, we're living

• 9:07Speaker 06

  in some alternate universe where this is happening. Um,

• 9:11Jack Murphy?

  Where you're just sort of like, I can't believe that happened.

• 9:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, like it's like, I was like, so that's my first firefight is me sitting in this like the rear, the rear of this vehicle and we're just getting ding, you know, we're getting stitched up a little bit, but we're not really scared of what they're doing. Um, and it was funny because the, the unit that was bringing us in, because we were ripping out with them was just like, everybody good? And they, like it was a normal day. Like that was just, there's like, hey, somebody pass me that rip it down there. We're like, I'm like, sure. Here you go, buddy. Uh, so yeah, so just, just a very, um, surreal experience as soon as like how Iraq was then. Um, and then through the entirety of it, it was, it

• 9:56Speaker 06

  was that, it was kind of that the entire time. We had a couple of things. Uh, there was a road right on MSR Tampa going north towards Anaconda. There was a, a mosque, it was called Mashada Mosque. And for some odd reason, they really liked shooting down Black Hawks and they, they did it a couple of times. And so every time it happened, the response was is we'd go down there and we'd get into a huge firefight with them. And it'd be like a two day tick. And then we'd be like, all right, that's it. The show's over. Everybody go back home. We did what we said. And then we'd go back to, we'd go back to, uh, Tajji and hang out there. And the surreal part about it was funny. And later on, I thought about this was that we were having like Friday night boxing matches

• 10:37Speaker 06

  at the USOs at the, uh, or at, yeah, the MWR, uh, right in front of that PX right there on Camp Tajji. Uh, they were having like volleyball tournaments. And so it was like a little town. We had a haunted house, uh, in October. I didn't get to go to it because we were running missions out, but like they put together in these old abandoned buildings in, on that camp. They put together like haunted houses and stuff like that. So we were getting, I was getting like this weird feel of like, hey, like outside, I go outside the gate a lot and it's like every man for himself, the wild west. And then you come back in here and it's like, hey, there's just people.

• 11:14Jack Murphy?

  It's like a boy scouts jamboree or something.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, like it's, it's, it was, it, it was a introduction that I probably will never forget. Cause you go into, you read books and you watch movies and you think war's one way. And then you get there and you're just like, oh, this is, this is nothing like what they told me it was gonna be. You'd be mad if you didn't get the, the next Hodge DVD, you know, that month.

• 11:41Jack Murphy?

  Those, those were the years where like you guys would be playing video games, hit the pause button when you had to go on a mission, go and do it, get into a firefight, come back, sit right back down on the couch.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:54Jack Murphy?

  And start the game again.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was all, yeah, you just come right back and you'd start playing or, um, what was the, the, my favorite thing was, uh, we would just come in, hang out and we had chess games going on for like days and we'd go leave. It was just like that. We'd go leave and then we'd come back and we'd play chess and we'd be like, all right, whose move is it? Or the biggest one is you start a fistfight over risk because somebody, somebody moved your part. I think our platoon got banned from risk a couple of times because they, it started a massive like fight. It was like, you're a cheater. It was like, they were like, all right, well, we can't do this anymore because, uh, the privates are out there getting wild with each other. And that was the other thing too. The army was a lot

• 12:37Speaker 06

  different. Uh, then, uh, it was, I would say it was more kind of what we, we knew it to be. Um, where like, if I had a problem with another private, I'd just walk outside and we just fought it out and.

• 12:52Jack Murphy?

  So wall-to-wall counseling was a thing.

• 12:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Like E5s would, I'm not going to say they'd hit you, but they would, they'd rough you up a little bit, like just to, just to get it through your head.

• 13:04Jack Murphy?

  Some privates were physically corrected. That's all.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  Yes. They're physically into the wall several times. I was one of those hard-headed privates. So I think any good, I think any good NCO, when you get, when you did well in the military, you, you always remember, you're like, yeah, I was that hard private. I was the one that was, that was slightly out of control. Um, and me at 20, I had, I had the biggest ego on the planet. I was like, I can outdo you at everything. Could I? No, not really, but I tried.

• 13:35Jack Murphy?

  Well, that's a, uh, that's a good, uh, personality asset that sort of have that to take you into special operations. Um, but we'll get there. Uh, but you, after that deployment, you went over to, uh, WURS.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. So I went out to, uh, fourth ID. Uh, I was started, I was an E4 and it was funny because you get there. Um, I'm pretty much volunteering for, to get on to the next thing. So I moved from Riley to Hood, uh, get there and I was just like, hey, like, uh, like I want to get on to the next thing. Uh, got picked up, uh, physically fit. I'm at that point, like I'm in a, a good place, kind of, uh, like I said, physically, which is really the only thing that matters. I could have been dumb as a box of hair, but as long as you can run your two mile in like, you know, 11 minutes, you're great. Like you're the, you're the, you're the best, next best thing. Uh, so got into that and

• 14:31Speaker 06

  immediately, uh, 2006 redeployed over to, um, Rustamaya, uh, Iraq. So we were right in the middle of Baghdad. Uh, and we get there and this is not the most scared that I was ever, but when I realized I was just like, oh, things, things are slightly out of hand here. Cause the surge was just starting up. Uh, we get in there and we get into it. So the normal thing, we get into a buy up, get taken to buy up. By this time I've done it already. And so we're getting in and they get us in in the middle of the night. Well, as we're coming in, there's rockets slamming into this camp. And if anybody, if you know

• 15:10Speaker 06

  anything about Rustamaya, it sat, uh, in between two large radio towers. And so bracket, that's a bracketing, that's perfect for bracketing. And so we were getting, uh, we were driving in that night and getting rockets. Uh, rockets were hitting like, hitting vehicles that we were coming, not our vehicles that we were coming in on, but where they were having the motor pool. You could see them slamming into the motor pool. Um, and as we're coming in, they're like, the people like get, it's, it was almost like a Vietnam movie where they're just like, get off, get off, we gotta go. And we're getting off and running right into a bunker and getting into these bunkers. And that's, that's, hey, welcome to Rustamaya,

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Iraq. Um, and it was funny because that day, uh, the next morning, we're getting everything set up. Uh, we hadn't slept. We're getting, we're getting, finding our, where we're going to be living for the next year. And this guy, uh, they come and tell us, they're like, hey, we had a casualty last night, uh, from one of the other companies. And we're like, what happened? This guy has been in country for 18 hours and a rocket had snuck its way between, because it was built, it was hard sand buildings, but they had the, um, sandbags that were built up with barriers and one had snuck right between the barrier and the roof of the building and hit his door and frag, put frag all over him. Uh, so he was

• 16:32Speaker 06

  in, I think he, they said he was in the country for 18 hours and was being evac that day.

• 16:38Jack Murphy?

  Jesus.

• 16:39Speaker 06

  And so that was kind of the realization that we were in, things, things weren't at, like the surge was real, things were getting kind of crazy. Uh, and we, as soon as we got in, they were like, hey, y'all are going out. I think we, we did a sort of left seat, right seat ride. And then we were, we were to the races.

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• 20:11Speaker 01

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• 21:47Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? We need help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder warnings.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  It's a homicide detective down here. Three bodies on the ground.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Oh, since swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 22:16Jack Murphy?

  What was that? I mean, what did that consist of? Because worst team, of course, is long-range reconnaissance. I mean, that's what they're designed for anyway. But what was the actual mission that you guys had when you got to Iraq?

• 22:30Speaker 06

  So it was, it was strange because it was, we were, but we were basically like an area denial. We sat in, we sat in a cop, and then we were running operations out of that cop. And we were, we were tasked to watch an MSR. We were tasked to do operations on that MSR. So they, essentially, we got used as just a, a normal infantry company. So not saying it was mismanaged, but I think that was the sign of the time. It's like, yeah, that, that time during the surge, we were just trying to regain control. Um, and Russamai, that area was one of the areas that was really contested at that point in

• 23:09Speaker 06

  time. Uh, I can't remember the cop's name, but we, we were in a cop, uh, and we had been in this cop for maybe, this is a great one. Uh, and we, we actually have a yearly retelling of this story. Um, so we're in a cop. We'd been in there for maybe like, uh, four or five weeks, running operations out of it. Uh, it's, it's pretty much like, there's a barracks on the top floor. Uh, the bottom floor has another set of barracks. And then we have like a bay that operated and all of our trucks were in this like courtyard. And that's kind of where we did everything out of it. We had fuel tanks. We had like small guard shacks, but this thing wasn't very, this thing wasn't very big. It was maybe five, 600 meters.

• 23:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, those, those cops were like Vietnam era firebases.

• 23:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. No. And so, and so one night, uh, a guy named, uh, Pritchard and another guy named, uh, Sprouse were, they were sitting on top of this deck smoking. And the normal night, like we had gotten out of the mission. Everybody comes in, some people are eating. I was in, uh, I was in the barracks playing cards. And so we hear a thump, thump, thump, and then like explosions on the building, like not, not around the building. It was on the building. And then we start hearing the guns go off on the towers. Uh, as we're running out, Sprouse and Pritchard are running back in and they're screaming at everybody like, don't go out there. So what kicked this off was they were smoking and Sprouse

• 24:41Speaker 06

  and Pritchard look up and Sprouse even says, and Pritchard says this every day. It's like, he told me, he looked at me in the face and told me this. He goes, man, that's a weird shooting star. As they're looking at it, it keeps getting closer and closer and closer. And as it does, it lands right in the middle of their smoke pit. It's an inner, uh, mortar. Doesn't, it doesn't go off. And by all rights, that thing should have killed both of them. So they're running in, they're scared. Like they, they've just had this near death experience, trying to keep us from all running out. So we're pinned. That's the only way out is that little stairway. Uh, we're pinned inside of that, that little thing while there's a huge fight going on. And the tanker company that we're attached to is downstairs. They're

• 25:25Speaker 06

  trying to get, they don't have tanks at this point. So they're doing their best. They're trying to get out to the walls. Um, and it was funny because my best friend, he was the best friend, uh, he was my best man at my first wedding, uh, in true Ranger fashion. Um, he's the best man at my first wedding. Uh, his name's James Dyer. Uh, he's now major, which he, this man, he's amazing. He was an amazing soldier. He still is. Uh, I laugh every time I say major because I'm like, nobody should have ever given him that. But, uh, so James is, luckily enough, James had been, had been a washout in EOD school and like the last week washout. Like he got drunk and they, they got, they got upset at him.

• 26:10Speaker 06

  So he washed out the last week. So he's got, he knows a little bit. So what does he do? He's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna see if I can at least put some sandbags around this thing. So he goes out there, does the EOD thing, puts a bunch of sandbags, and we all take off and run. Uh, we spend the entire next, that night repelling an attack, uh, where they knocked down of the four walls that was at that cop, they knocked down three of them.

• 26:36Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  And one of the major things that happened and James and Sean Myers, another guy, so we were all in the same squad. Uh, Sean was the squad leader. Me and James were his, uh, team leaders. And so during all of this action, the trucks are all sitting right there. They get hit by mortars, uh, and they get a, a fuel tank goes off on them. And so they're kind of, they're burning on the side. And we, so we now have no vehicles either. Uh, but all of the AT4s are in there and somebody's like, is the, they were like, hey, are all the AT4s still on the trucks? Like, yeah. And they're like, if those things go off, we're fucked. Uh, and so James and Sean run into this raging fire and start plucking

• 27:20Speaker 06

  out all these AT4s. Uh, both of them end up with bronze stars, uh, for it, which was that one of, one of the many actions that they did, uh, during that entire deployment that actually got recognized. But, um, that was one of the nights where it was just like, holy crap. It was like, this is like, like you said, like Vietnam style.

• 27:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 06

  Attack on a, on a base.

• 27:42Jack Murphy?

  Were, were you guys like preparing to be potentially overrun? No, I mean, was it that bad?

• 27:48Speaker 06

  So once they are, I want to say that our own, maybe mortars had knocked down our own walls at some point in time. And so, uh, I wasn't sure because we're busy on one side. Um, but there was a point where we, yeah, we had thought, we were like, hey, like if this, if this goes down the way everybody thinks is luckily, we had gotten, um, air support overhead. So we'd gotten, uh, attack helicopters. But we end up like, we're saying, hey, like if we have to, we're gonna have to drop back into the buildings. And once that happens, like we are, we are in a bad way. Um, luckily, we had repelled enough of the attack. And I think we had, we'd had enough firepower out there. We, you know,

• 28:30Speaker 06

  we come with a bunch of machine guns and everything like that. Um, that we had gotten them to get away from us. And once the attack aviation shows up, they pretty, that was their, it was like, hey, we're not, we're not messing with this.

• 28:41Jack Murphy?

  It's like a Bosch on that.

• 28:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. Uh, what ended up happening with that cop is they, that was unusable anymore. They weren't gonna send anybody out. That thing was gone. And we ended up having to move to another one that we lovingly called Castle Gracold, uh, because it was a, all it was, was a five-story, uh, unfinished parking garage.

• 29:01Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 29:02Speaker 06

  That they put, that they put barriers around.

• 29:06Jack Murphy?

  And you finished your deployment out of there?

• 29:09Speaker 06

  What's up?

• 29:09Jack Murphy?

  You finished the deployment out of there?

• 29:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, we ended up finishing the deployment out of there. Um, lots of good stories with that. Actually, uh, have you heard of Tales from the Grid Square?

• 29:19Jack Murphy?

  No.

• 29:20Speaker 06

  Uh, it's a like, collection of ghost stories from the GWOT.

• 29:25Jack Murphy?

  Oh, really?

• 29:26Speaker 06

  Super. Yeah, it's, uh, it's on, uh, IG. I love reading their stuff and I listen to, uh, wartime stories, gets a lot of their stuff off of YouTube, but, uh, I love reading the stuff. I'm about to write one because we're pretty sure that place was haunted. Uh, what it ended up happening.

• 29:40Jack Murphy?

  Parking garage.

• 29:42Speaker 06

  Yes. Well, so the reason why we had gotten it at such a good price was because during the invasion before the American forces came in, the Baathists, uh, had taken all the people who were, um, not friendly to the Baathists. And they, the story was, and we've gotten told this by an elder, was that they had gotten all these guys and rounded them up in that building and then took them to the top, uh, right above, above the top floor. So you have the, you had the overlook to the top floor where all of our, uh, machine gun nests were, but right underneath that, they brought them all up there and then they had, uh, shot them and set them on fire in there. And so what was the crazy thing is when we were first looking at it, we walked up to that and I, I've smelled a dead body or two burned before.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  Uh, and I walked up there, I was like, hmm, that's a familiar smell. And a couple of the other guys who had been around burning bodies have been like, this smells weird. Uh, and then we were like, what's all these marks on these, these burn marks on the ground? And turns out like any, the, even the Iraqi police, the IA, they would, whenever we were staging to do missions, would not go into that building. At all period. And we definitely heard some weird stuff up there. So I don't know if it was like large animals or something, but there was, there was a point in time where guys would not go up there with their nods on. They would turn their nods off. They would, they would follow the stairwell and then they turned their nods on as soon as they got to the, the very top.

• 31:07Jack Murphy?

  I mean, were they like hearing voices or something? What do you think?

• 31:10Speaker 06

  So at night when we knew nobody was up there, uh, you would hear like things moving around. Um, one of the big complaints was either nods would completely go dead. They were the old PBS 14. So like, they would go dead for any, any reason. But the, it was the, uh, everybody had seen, and I saw a little bit of something and I'm, you know, you never want to say that you saw something to anybody else outside of it, but, uh, you would see shadows do things that like they weren't really supposed to be doing. And so, and I would, I would always chalk it up to, oh, there's a light somewhere way out in the distance. It's shining and it's, it's moving shadows like that, but, uh, and a lot of guys would be like, yeah, I just don't turn my nods on.

• 31:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, like you're, you're trying to talk yourself out of it.

• 31:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. You're like, I have to go to this guard shift if they don't, if I don't go up there, somebody's gonna be real mad. Uh, and I'm more scared of that sergeant than I am or whatever's up here. So I'm just gonna go up there and just pretend it didn't exist.

• 32:09Jack Murphy?

  I did, uh, many years ago now, I did a, uh, a Halloween episode for a different podcast where I kind of cover some of these stories. And, uh, I got a guy to tell a pretty cool story about Okinawa. There's a lot of ghost stories out there.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  Oh, about the, what is it? Gate three? I hear a lot about, uh,

• 32:26Jack Murphy?

  Some abandoned buildings and stuff. There's some weird, weird stuff. And, and actually they're from, uh, from Iraq, there are quite a few UFO stories. Which is probably, probably it's our guys seeing our own aircraft, you know?

• 32:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:40Jack Murphy?

  More, more than likely, but there are some stories that you hear and like, like things that an entire marine battalion saw that like, doesn't really make sense, you know?

• 32:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. I like too how like a lot of these stories get, uh, cause you'd hear a lot of stuff. Um, we spent a night out in the old, uh, Iraqi intelligence. Um, uh, their complex, I'd like, so on a lot of the videos, you watch tomahawks slamming into like a, uh, like almost triangle building. And then there's a, uh, they would be like, that's still Iraqi intelligence, uh, compound. Uh, and we actually stayed the night in that and they have legit cells that were very strange and that's where we were sleeping. And none of us slept in there. We slept in the, we went ahead and slept in, and it's jail, it's jail cells, cells.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  And then there's a walkway that you go up and you can see that there's, um, uh, eyelet, uh, metal eyelets on the ground. And you could pretty much guess what they were for, but you would look up and it's a walkway. And it's completely, there's no cover, there's no nothing. It's a walkway. And then there's these eyelets on the ground. And they're, they're spaced pretty evenly, evenly. Uh, and well, later on, we asked about that, we were like, hey, what's going on with this? And they're like, oh, that's where they chained them. That's where they just sat them out in the sun. And chained them down there. And I was like, yeah. And it was funny because our platoon sergeant, he was like, yeah, we're not sleeping in there. Like we'll just, we'll just sleep out on our trucks.

• 34:10Jack Murphy?

  Well, I, I think I know some platoon sergeants that would have loved to lock their privates up in that.

• 34:14Speaker 06

  Oh, God, yeah. We would have been, there would have been privates chained in there then.

• 34:21Jack Murphy?

  Oh man, it's so wild. I mean, Iraq does have this, like, parts of it have this quality. It does have a haunted quality to it. I remember like seeing places where you can see just the very top of the foundations of buildings that no longer exist. And then, and then the new buildings built like perpendicular or opposite to it, like the, the city plan actually changed. And these new buildings are built over these old ones. And it's just like, this place is so ancient, it's unreal.

• 34:52Speaker 06

  Oh man, we got into, uh, so, uh, one of the ticks that we got into was right outside of the Babylon Gate. So there's Babylon Gates right, uh, to the north of, uh, to the north of, uh, Bi- right in when you're getting into the green zone. There's like ancient, there was, there was a wall there that they were like, yeah, that's part of that used to be, this is where the Babylon Gate was. We got it. It was like, I remember like being by that gate or by that wall and being shot at from it. And be like, this is, I was like, this must be where he said that this was. I was like, this is super cool.

• 35:28Speaker 06

  So, uh, but yeah, I think that's one of the coolest things about the military in general, going to that area, like the GWOT was, the GWOT was the GWOT. But the things that you got to go and see, like who, how many people can say that they've been to Baghdad and Baghdad is, was almost the, that's in the cradle of civilization. So you're, all of the history that you hear about and read about, Bible, everything like that. A lot of that stuff went through there. Uh, and I was, so I, I love history. And I was always really a, really cognizant of stuff like that. Um, when I was in northern Iraq, I'd be looking up, uh, names and stuff like that, and they can almost get translated into the Bible. And that's part of, northern Iraq is part of where like, uh, a lot of the Old Testament.

• 36:13Jack Murphy?

  I, I mean, Nineveh is in the Bible. I, I believe, I believe the Nineveh forest is actually in the Bible.

• 36:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so that's, it's, it's weird because you're traveling all through these places and, uh, like one of the cooler trips I did is we were going to check on, uh, on some of the Kurds and we were going towards the Iranian border. It's gorgeous. Beautiful, like mountains, like I, uh, there's a couple of pictures of us where it looks like we're at the top of the world there.

• 36:43Jack Murphy?

  I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, and you're just like, and I'm like, man, I was like, it's crazy that there's this much conflict and war going on in such a gorgeous place. Um, I think like part of where we were at, there was an old ski resort there and it's like, these people used to be pretty, uh, especially Iraq. If you think about Iraq in the eighties, um, that was like a thriving metropolis. Like it was, they had nightclubs. They had, uh, they had industry, uh, and then, you know, the wars kind of set them back probably about like 60 or 70 years, but, you know?

• 37:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, man. Uh, and, and so after that deployment, you get back and when does like the 75th Ranger Regiment start sort of like entering into your mind?

• 37:29Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm fantastic. You asked that question, but, uh, I know exactly when it happened. So, uh,

• 37:37Speaker 06

  We were walking down a route that had had an ID strike, probably an EF, it wasn't ID, it was an EFP. So, one of the terrible things about the EFP, when that started filtering in from Iran, was that they were blowing holes and chunks through all of our armor. And so, I was there during the, the period of time where it was like, all our vehicles looked like they had come out of Mad Max because they were trying to find anyway, crazy ways. It was like ammo cans with glow plugs in them because hopefully, like, maybe we can catch them if they have heat, if they're not victim operated. Um, so, going through that, we would see these vehicles just get crushed by EFPs,

• 38:18Speaker 06

  you know, a couple of them the size of like 55 gallon drums that would just nuke an entire thing. You'd hear about all, they would drag, I think that was one of the worst things, that they'd drag them into Rustamaya, and there's still blood and gore all over it. You were like, yeah, they didn't. And it's funny, because whenever I think about that, did you ever see the movie Memphis Mel?

• 38:37Jack Murphy?

  No.

• 38:38Speaker 06

  World War II movie about the bombers, the bomber crews. Uh, and it was about one bomber that had made it all the way through. Uh, but, the, it reminded me, because I saw that movie when I was a kid, and then it reminded me of that, of them pulling these planes out, like, back down the runway after they'd gotten in a fight. And there's, you could tell somebody had died in it. And that was a lot of, when they were pulling these vehicles out from EFPs, uh, was that you could tell, nobody, like, there's a huge, there's a hole that goes in one door, out the other, through the radio mount, and there's gore and blood everywhere on it. No one made it out of that. Um, so, that was happening a lot. So, what did they do? Instead of it, they're like, hey, this, uh, they're gonna walk us in front of it because we're gonna do a route reconnaissance.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  So, in a V, in an inverted V, we're walking down a route, picking at things, hoping that that EFP doesn't hit us first. Uh, and when I asked the question, because there's a, you know, million dollar vehicle behind me, the Buffalos, and I was like, these things are meant to take that.

• 39:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 06

  I was like, why am I walking in front of it? And they're like, you cost less than that would to load up your, whatever we have to pay your family.

• 39:46Jack Murphy?

  I never understood why, why they did that. I mean, if you study World War II, the Nazis always have their infantry behind the tank. It's not, not in front. Nobody does that. That's stupid.

• 39:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was, it was, and we were doing it down the routes. And what, I think, the, whenever we got the training and everything for it, uh, it was that you did that, and maybe that first guy would be far enough away from the road to catch anything that was victim operated. But if it was a pressure plate or anything like that, you're, you're done.

• 40:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you're toast.

• 40:14Speaker 06

  Um, so, I'm walking down there, and I'm just like, so wait a second, that, that Buffalo is more important than I am at this point, or any of my friends, or anybody else. And it was, uh, they were like, yeah, yeah, pretty much. So, uh, we'd gotten into a couple of things, and Command, I think, was making some bad decisions. We had a friend of ours get killed. Um, I won't put out any names, but in an instance where a person of leadership had put their TC into the back position, or into the TC position, because they knew they were targeting those, they were targeting the TCs. And that's exactly what happened. And then that guy, that leader survived, while a bunch of our friends did not.

• 40:59Speaker 06

  Uh, and so, we had taken a couple casualties at that point. Um, a guy named Josh Plasek, uh, Plaseka, who was a E4 at the time, um, he got killed by an EFP. Uh, and so, we had had a lot of, we'd started getting casualties, and that's when it started becoming real. And I had a epiphany at one point in time where I'm sitting there, I'm just like, like, I gotta get somewhere where like, my life matters a little bit more, like, that I'm up the, I up the price tag on, on me, myself, uh, so that if I'm gonna keep doing this, like, I'm gonna survive. Uh, so, my brother had just gotten in the Army and just passed RIP, and had gotten into 375.

• 41:42Speaker 06

  And so, that was one of my phone calls to him. I was just like, hey, I was like, I think I'm gonna go, I'm, I'm gonna go to selection. Like, and if I don't make selection, I'm getting out. I'm not gonna do this anymore. My brother's a very like, was a very liked person in 37, even from a private, everybody really liked him. Um, he's just one of those guys. And so, as, uh, I'm talking to him about this, I'm getting close, uh, I was just like, hey, uh, I'm going to selection as soon as I get, the second I get back, second they'll let me, I get off that plane, I'm going to selection. My brother's like, so you wanna go what? Be a teacher? He's like, you wanna, you wanna go teach people to do stuff? And I was just like, what does that mean? I'm a regular Army dude, so I always, at this point, I think Green Beret is just like, I'm gonna be kicking in doors,

• 42:25Speaker 06

  I'm gonna be doing all the cool stuff, like, it's gonna be fun. Uh, and my brother's just like, yeah, he's like, uh, so, here's the thing, he was just like, Green Berets don't do direct action. He's like, and he's in the reg, regiment, he's like, we do direct action, he's like, that's all we do. And I was just, at that point, I was like, cool, how do I do this? He's like, oh, he's like, let me, let me get back to you, let me figure some stuff out, I'll, I'll, uh, email you here in a bit. The next email I get is from Ben Durham, uh, from 375, or he was at the point, I think at that point, he was the, um, career counselor, and it's basically an email.

• 43:01Jack Murphy?

  I, I'm almost positive I know Durham.

• 43:04Speaker 06

  You probably do, Ben is, uh,

• 43:06Jack Murphy?

  He was, he was, uh, on a, a jump into Iraq?

• 43:11Speaker 06

  Yes, yeah.

• 43:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I know Durham, yeah, he's a good guy.

• 43:14Speaker 06

  Durham's, uh, one of the best guys in the world, one of the most shadiest people I've ever met.

• 43:20Jack Murphy?

  Maybe that's why they had him working in the arms room.

• 43:23Speaker 06

  Uh, so, he was actually, uh, he climbed up all the way to, uh, be the regimental, uh, career counselor.

• 43:30Jack Murphy?

  Good for him.

• 43:30Speaker 06

  And like, yeah, he did, uh, real well. He was, uh, in charge of the fight teams.

• 43:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, he was a boxer.

• 43:37Speaker 06

  For regiment, yeah, he did all of that.

• 43:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  Uh, ran his own fight program and everything. He did a lot, but I didn't know him at that time yet, but he, he sends me, it's just an email, and it's like, click here to apply. Like, and it's like, I click it, and they're like, have this printed out, have your commander sign it, give it back to me. So, I'm just like, alright, so I go, get my commander to sign it. Um, and it was funny, because I was, at that point, I was really good friends, uh, me and my friend, my squad leader at the time, Sean Myers and, uh, James, we were kind of all at the same point where we were disenchanted with the war and how things were going, and kind of the regular Army lifestyle. So, uh, I get everything together, I get it, everybody signs my paperwork, and I'm, uh, pretty much on board.

• 44:23Speaker 06

  Like, I think I was gonna get back, I was gonna have the two weeks of leave, and then I was going right to, um, uh, RIP. And so, I, we do that, I'm, I'm having a conversation with them, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna do this. And they were both like, no, I think we're done. And I'm like, I was like, why don't you all just come with me? I was like, I'm pretty sure they're looking for people, we can, we can all get into this. Both of them said no, I'm the only one that said yes. And, uh, to this day, when I talk to, uh, James, Sean actually, uh, died a couple of years ago. Uh, but, when I talked to both of them, when he was still alive, they were both like, I should have gone with you. Like, we should have done that. Because it was the, we were in a squad that was,

• 45:06Speaker 06

  was like-minded, like regiment was. Like, and I always tell people, it's like, the, the thing you can't, the thing, the difference between regiment and the big Army is in regiment, or the big Army, you'll find one or two guys that are about it, that they're, they're about the lifestyle, they are warriors. That's what they wanted to do. For whatever, whatever reason, they didn't get into that, they couldn't make their way. Because getting into regiment's luck too. Like, I tell people that all the time, like, it's, like, getting through selection, that's luck. Like, partially luck. Like, you could, uh, I watched a guy walk out in, in RIP, and he was wearing the wrong T-shirt. And that, that was the end of his, that was the end of his, uh, RIP.

• 45:48Jack Murphy?

  Forgot your two court, out.

• 45:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, yeah, you bring the wrong one, you don't like, oh wait, you didn't bring X, Y, and Z, yeah, you're done, thanks for playing. Um, so, but that's the difference between, what I thought the difference between, uh, regiment and big Army was, is that I, in the big Army, I found a group few and far between, but I found a group that was gonna watch my back during combat, was gonna fight, like, we were always fighting. We were always trying to get to the forefront of the fight. We were trying to do, um, close with and destroy the enemy. Um, regiment, it's everybody. Every single swing, swinging guy out there is about that luck. That's what he does. And if he doesn't, he doesn't belong, and he won't be there anymore.

• 46:31Speaker 06

  So, it's like a very stark difference between the big Army, but you can still kind of find those pockets. Um, but going back to it, that's, that's pretty much my epiphany, where I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. Uh, and then I, uh, because I was an E5 at the time. Uh, and it's, I don't know if you've ever heard of E5s going through, uh, as a, um, import?

• 46:55Speaker 06

  Hard, very hard.

• 46:56Jack Murphy?

  They go through rope though, right? Or RAS2 now?

• 47:00Speaker 06

  Uh, well, still no, uh, if you're an E5, you go through RIP.

• 47:02Jack Murphy?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 47:03Speaker 06

  Or not RIP, uh, RAS, uh, you go through RAS1.

• 47:06Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 47:06Speaker 06

  Uh, I went through RIP, so that's still the four week course. Um, I get, and the way it happened was, is I got back from Iraq, two weeks later, I'm at, uh, Benning for jump school. Uh, and then immediately picked up, it was in August, immediately picked up, and then I got into, and then you go, I went right down to,

• 47:28Jack Murphy?

  Yup.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  Got into RIP. And then, four weeks in RIP, uh, the four weeks in RIP, and then immediately after that, it's, um, because I'm an NCO, and I can't have an, I can't be an NCO in regiment without a tab. So, right after RIP, I'm right into, um, uh, CERT. Right after CERT, I'm right into Ranger School. And then, it was funny, because I got out of Ranger School, and Sergeant Major Merritt was the, it was First Sergeant Bohannon, comes in, pretty much tells us we didn't do anything special, like, you're not special, everybody does this. Immediately after, Sergeant Major, uh, Merritt walks up, and he's just like, he's like, congratulations, Rangers! And we're like, yeah, he's like, who here's in, uh, he's like, who here's in DECO?

• 48:14Speaker 06

  Like, raised my hand, and he's like, you'll be meeting your platoon in two, in, uh, in 72 hours. You get a pass, and then you're gonna be on a plane. I was just like, perfect. And then, a week later, I found myself, uh, since I was, my, that was my first deployment, and I didn't do any of the train up, but I still have to shadow, and they still needed guys. Uh, I found myself in DECO, and they were like, you're a, uh, goose, you're the AG for a goose, and you're gonna learn how to be a team leader. Uh, so, there I am with goose rounds, like, walking up a mountain, like, a couple of weeks after Ranger School, just being like, well, this is great.

• 48:50Jack Murphy?

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• 49:35Jack Murphy?

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• 50:15Jack Murphy?

  That's ghostbed.com/ house, promo code HOUSE. Some exclusions apply. See site for details.

• 50:24Jack Murphy?

  So you mentioned, you know, some of the challenges of being an import, coming as an E5 rather than kind of growing up in the regiment. I mean, what was that experience like for you?

• 50:34Speaker 06

  Oh, rough. The learning curve was just massive, especially not having been able to do any of the workup. Like, I wasn't in the trainups. I didn't do any of it. So my first, like, induction into the regiment was meeting them overseas in Afghanistan and starting to go out on missions. Like, here's your kit, here's all your stuff. Like, follow us. Don't get lost. Don't get, don't fall behind. And that's kind of when, like, I kind of pumped myself up. I was like, all right, like, it's gonna be normal. It was a, the beast of regiment, as far as going and actually doing operations, was something just wildly different. In the

• 51:19Speaker 06

  big army, you sit around and it's like, you know, hours of boredom, like, or days, months of boredom, with a couple of stark moments of terror mixed in here and there. There, it was like, off the gate, weird. And I was, I was, I was a deco. First Arm Bully was the first sergeant, and we, we did not like walking at all. So everything was X landing, like, we called it the deco bum rush, where you just took off off the back of that bird, and beat feet right to that target. Like, if they're shooting at you, doesn't matter, keep going, get to the doors, like, we'll be fine. But, yeah, the learning curve, that,

• 51:59Speaker 06

  it was a, it was a rough learning curve, and I can see where a lot of guys don't survive that. Where it's like, hey, you just can't keep up. You're not, this isn't for you. You don't, it is a very different place than the big army. Just what they expect of you, what the knowledge you're supposed to have as an E5, the, getting anybody to actually respect you at that point, because they know you're an import. So I got lucky again, because my brother was well-known. And so they were just like, hey, like, this is Sauce's, this, by that time, I think he was an E, he was a tab spec 42. And he was just like, they're just like, hey, he's, you know, he's Sauce's brother. So I got, I probably got

• 52:40Speaker 06

  a little bit of leeway on that. But it was that deployment, and as hard as it was, though, that's kind of where I knew, I was like, no, this is where I'm supposed to be. This was, this was the road I was supposed to take. But that, that road, I did eight months of schooling to get into the regiment as an E5, because they don't, I don't know if they do it anymore, but it was almost a gauntlet. It was the airborne school, RIP, CERT, then it was Ranger School, then it was deployment. Hey, cool, you get, you get 72 hours with your family, and then you gotta go.

• 53:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's hardcore.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. But, I mean, as a Ranger, like, again, like, and especially like, right after, I was pumped up. I got a Ranger tab.

• 53:24Jack Murphy?

  Hell, yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 06

  And then I was, and as soon as they said, hey, you're going, I was like, fantastic, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna get to, and the biggest thing I was impressed with, was the chow hall at a, man, where were we? We were down in a Hellman, Damp Leatherneck. I love the chow hall there. It was great. That's what I was doing. I was just eating the whole time.

• 53:47Jack Murphy?

  So this first deployment, you guys were doing time-sensitive targets, I take it, and you're learning the ins and outs of doing direct action raids?

• 53:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it was, we were doing a lot of direct action. If, in fact, it was all direct, direct action. And so I had actually gotten there, right, Cubic and Centora had gotten killed, probably about a week and a half before. And we had gotten sent to that, that mission set, because Marsoc had had two snipers killed in that area. Like, it was when they, they'd gotten actually surrounded, tracked down, surrounded, killed, almost kind of a, a Red Wing situation. And then they had, they'd been like, tossed off a cliff, I think, at that point. So that's what they brought two strike forces in to go and start,

• 54:36Speaker 06

  like, handling that mission set. And that was a, it was a really kinetic, that was a kinetic, kinetic deployment, where we were out getting, getting into fights, going to man, we had one, it had to have been a, we got there pretty early, right after, right after the, what's it called, nighttime had fallen, get there, land, and immediately start fighting. And we didn't leave until that next morning. We'd been fighting the entire morning. Or had been fighting that night into the morning. And that was one of the, and I'm sure you've had it, the, I had one of the most, again, going that, like, weird,

• 55:20Speaker 06

  but surreal things that it ever had, that I'd ever seen. And it's the, the moments you take. So I always tell new guys or guys getting into this, like, hey, take that, like, even if you're in a firefight, don't, you know, don't get dangerous or anything, but take a moment to look around and realize where you're at. And one of the things I realized when I was there is, so, it was like a movie. We had exiled, these guys decided to follow us from, like, because we had kicked up the hornets, and this is right out, I think it was right outside CAF. And we get on top of this hill, and we're, we're, we're fighting, like, the back of our formation's fighting the entire time, and pretty much

• 56:01Speaker 06

  just withdrawing to our HLC. Get onto our HLC, it's on the top of this hill, the sun's coming up over the mountain, so you can, on the right side, you can see the mountains. And the sun's already lifting up, we're already, we're already in the day. And there's bombers, F-15s, that are making runs on the top of these mountains, dropping bombs on the side of these mountains. And we're in this kind of a half-moon shape, I'm a goose gunner at this point, so I'm helping load a gun. And then I'm shooting, and we're repelling another, an attack on this hill. And, like, I look around, and everybody's shooting, and you see A-10s come over, they're, they're like, you see A-10s just laying waste to people.

• 56:42Speaker 06

  We're all firing on the side, or we're all firing. And then, I, you hear the womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. And we look back, and this Chinook comes right over the top of us, turns its ass around, and the gunners just start shooting off the back of it. And we all, like, soon as they land, we all start running onto the birds, we get it. And we got, we got the guy that we were looking for, like, I think he was like, at the time, he was like, number two or three in the country. And we get him on, we're on, and we're flying away. And everybody's just jacked up. We're, we're high-fiving each other. We're sitting there, like, everybody's fist bumping, high-fiving each other, we're all sitting on the ground. And one of the things I did is I looked out, and we're, we're flying pretty

• 57:25Speaker 06

  high at this point, and both of these A-10s are pretty much doing circles around the formation, as we're doing. And I'm like, sitting there, and as I'm like, thinking about all of that stuff, I'm like, this is like a movie. Like, this is unreal. And this is my induction into regiment. This is my first deployment. I was just like, at that point, I was just like, I'm gonna do this forever. This is, this is all I ever wanted to do. So it was, I think, if you can, especially as an import, if you can make the road, it's worth, it's worth it at the end.

• 57:56Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. If you get through the, the culture shock, as you mentioned.

• 57:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. And a lot of guys don't. Not their fault, because big army, that, that dropped from big armies, Ross.

• 58:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:07Jack Murphy?

  Um, and then you get, uh, after that, the first deployment, um, what happens when you get back to, uh, the States? And now you're kind of like that Ranger Battalion garrison life at Fort Benning.

• 58:20Speaker 06

  Oh, man, uh, completely different from, again, completely different from the big army. Uh, A, you're, you're always training, but, uh, the good old boys club, like, I'm a, at that point, uh, you know, I'm a tab D5. So, you know, the world is my oyster. Um, you know, I'm getting privates, you're running around and I just remember it being, you just wanted to be the best at everything.

• 58:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 06

  Like you wanted to be the fastest runner. You wanted to do all the rucks. You wanted to, um, you wanted to be the team that did the best. Um, so that you could get the best missions.

• 58:54Jack Murphy?

  Everything's a competition.

• 58:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then, uh, especially then being there with my brother too, was a good, was a good time because we palmed around a lot. Like I'd always go and hang out with him. Uh, I think he had just made the move over to, uh, recy. And so I'd always go and like hang out with him in his, in his office and stuff like that. And then, uh, just kind of the small stuff that you would see where it's the, um, you're walking around with your tambourade at that point. And you're nearly untouchable on that base. Like everybody knows that they give you the wide berth. They pretty much, hey, uh, you know, you're behind the brown fence and everybody knows it. Everybody knows who you are. Uh, which is, is kind of the difference in, uh, in the big army is that nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares.

• 59:40Speaker 06

  Uh, and I had an interesting thing. So, uh, when I graduated RAS, uh, and was going to CERT. I graduate RAS and they're saying, hey, um, you know, you're, uh, or no, it was Ranger School. No, it was RAS. It was RAS. And I graduate RAS. So I have a tambourade at that point. And they're like, hey, uh, I got a, um, I got a couple of weeks before my class picked up for CERT. So they were like, hey, you need to go out to, you need to go back to Fort Hood. I'll process that. Um, so I'm walking around Fort Hood with a tambourade and a scroll on and man, like, couldn't get any better. Like I didn't have to do nothing. Like everybody was just like, oh God, that guy. They didn't know. And it's funny because in the big army, you know, especially I didn't know anything about it.

• 1:00:26Speaker 06

  Uh, and then I didn't know that like, if I, if you would have been in the know, you would have looked at me and be like, that dude doesn't have a tab. So, uh, it was funny because that was the garrison life was so much. It was fun, but it was also hard. And it was definitely that warrior culture.

• 1:00:44Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 06

  Like you're, everybody's trying to be the best. Everybody's like, I'd never seen so many guys go to the gym in my life. It was like, we went for morning PT and then you see everybody in there going to the gym. Uh, if they were in ACO, they were all getting hairless and, uh, canning out somewhere. Um, the drinking was a lot. Like that's, that's another part of the culture is man, we, we drank. Uh, when we got back from that deployment, that was the funny thing too, is that they always had, uh, pizza and kegs waiting for you when you got back. So that you could have a couple of drinks while you're trying to go to the.

• 1:01:17Jack Murphy?

  Queen weapons. Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. The rigmarole and getting all your weapons in there. And then you'd have the, uh, we'd always get into the, uh, the platoon fights over in the zoo. Where people are going over, they block off all the stuff on the side. So nobody could get through. So it almost looked like a world war, uh, one movie where you got people blowing whistles. They got the, uh, the caving ladders that they've extended so that they could go over the top. It was great.

• 1:01:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. The platoon brawls get a little out of hand sometimes.

• 1:01:46Speaker 06

  Oh, it was so much fun though. Uh, we got into one, uh, while we were doing elevators out on, uh, the airfield with, um, CCO of all people. And I was in H, uh, I was in HHC, but I was attached to BCO, uh, as their sniper. And we get into this huge platoon brawls and it's that they, they have their guide-ons there. And there's the first sergeants are talking shit to each other. Uh, and I remember getting into that fight and I don't know, do you know Cessna?

• 1:02:13Jack Murphy?

  No, uh-uh.

• 1:02:15Speaker 06

  Um, so Cessna, uh, he actually went to, um, CAG later on, Giant. He's a Giant. He was an ACO, uh, no, he's a CCO dude. He was a massive man, like a six, three, 200 something pounds. I'm at that point, probably 170 pounds, uh, in kit. And I'm, I'm all, I'm every bit of five, like five, six, five, seven, maybe. And during the whole brawl, everybody, you know how it is, everybody's like falling or beating each other up. And I like lock eyes with Cessna after he had just flung somebody else.

• 1:02:51Speaker 06

  And he comes running at me and I just latch on to one of his legs and so he's dragging me around. It was great. There's a, we had, uh, the platoon brawls were probably the most fun I'd had. Uh, but the medics probably hated it because they were always fixing somebody like all these, these fingers are broken.

• 1:03:08Jack Murphy?

  What, what was it when we had like battalion field games? You remember that?

• 1:03:12Speaker 06

  Oh God, field day?

• 1:03:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, field day. Yeah. Get those banners, you know, and we, uh, our battalion can, I'm trying to think now.

• 1:03:24Jack Murphy?

  Was it the battalion or was it between companies or was it from platoons? I think it was platoons in, in my company and he had us play this game, Washington over the Delaware, I think he called it. Where they put like, or maybe it was two different companies because I think it was our first sergeant and the company commander in one Zodiac from our company. And, uh, another first sergeant and company commander from another company and the other Zodiac. And the NCOs had to hold the zodes up and go from like point A to point B, like 200 meters. And all the privates were lined on the edge of the field. And if those boats, God help them, got too close to those lines, dudes were getting pulled in, bam, bam.

• 1:04:04Jack Murphy?

  Guys getting thrown off the Zodiacs. I mean, I saw guys get their PTs ripped right off of themselves as they're walking around naked. It was, it was totally nuts.

• 1:04:14Speaker 06

  We did, uh, I think one of ours was dodgeball and they had, that got like, it was like, people are sitting there calling other people cheaters. You're like trying to like slam this ball as hard as, well, there was one guy who was going up to get a ball slips. And gets his face like demolished by this ball. Like somebody stands like runs right over him, hits him with the ball. It's, uh, in true Ranger fashion, everybody takes everything just as seriously.

• 1:04:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Like any advice I'd give to like a, a young like Ranger lieutenant, it would be, you gotta be very careful. When you pit Rangers against each other.

• 1:04:51Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:52Jack Murphy?

  And tell them like, hey, it's game on. Go get that, you know, win that banner for us. Like something really bad is going to happen.

• 1:04:59Speaker 06

  It was, so when you got new guys, it was like their first week was rough because it would be the, you'd get all these new guys and in the company to get them. I remember when I was a squad leader, I'd get new guys and I'd be like, hey, go into, uh, go into first platoons. I want you to fight every single one of them. And I'll give like, I will give those guys, uh, credit. The new guys didn't, wouldn't even blink at, like Roger, Roger. And they run over there and tackle the first person they saw. And it was, and then all of a sudden it's more brawling, other people are coming in. And I think one of the best ones we had was in CCO, uh, we almost had a hostage exchange at one point. Where all the squad leaders and team leaders sitting there and we're like, we had them locked in the lockers.

• 1:05:42Speaker 06

  And we're like, all right, I'll train you the fat one, uh, for my skinny guy. And be like, no, he's going to be two.

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  So it was great. That like, when we got bored, we got bored.

• 1:05:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. No, my, my privates did that in Iraq where they were, um, they were kind of sneaking around. They put on their balaclavas and were sneaking around. If you remember the old cold weather gear was all black. So they're dressing up like ninjas and stuff and they're going out in the middle of the night in those chews. And they'd wait for guys from other squads to go to the showers. So they're like walking with a towel around them, waddling over there. And privates would just ball this guy up and flex cuff them and drag them into their chew. And they'd take like trophy photos with them and stuff. It was, yeah.

• 1:06:29Jack Murphy?

  And then, yeah, it becomes a hostage negotiation where we're like, you gotta let my guy go. No, fuck you. I'm not doing it.

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Oh gosh. Uh, yeah. We took everything from, I think that's what I miss about it is like, it was fun. The culture was always like about, about the fight, but it was, everybody was in, in good, uh, even in snipers, we did stuff like that. Uh, we had a guy named Baker who had a birthday and this is my favorite Sergeant Major Merritt story. Um, and a guy named Baker, uh, had a birthday. And so, uh, right outside of, uh, the chow hall, they had those, uh, uh, the, uh, pull-up bars. And we caught Baker out there and we had duct tape and wa, uh, and buckets of water. And so we toss them up there, we duct tape and, and then we throw rag over his face. We start like waterboarding him right there.

• 1:07:21Speaker 06

  Uh, and so we're sitting there doing all this stuff to, to Baker and, uh, they, uh, Sergeant Major Merritt drives by. You know, Sergeant Major Merritt drives by, Baker thinks it's like, oh God, thank God, somebody's going to stop this. Looks over at him and Sergeant Major Merritt like rolls down his window, like looks from side to side and goes, happy birthday Ranger. And then just drives.

• 1:07:45Speaker 06

  It's just like, we like kind of look around like, all right, I guess we're going to go back to what we did, what we're up to. So.

• 1:07:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Sergeant Major Merritt was awesome.

• 1:07:55Speaker 06

  Oh yeah. Everybody loves that guy. Um, I don't think there's a, I don't know anybody who didn't like, and I'm sure, uh, everybody has like that Sergeant Major Merritt story on.

• 1:08:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 06

  On objective. He went out a lot. He always went out on a mission. Um, there was a guy named Bailey in DCO that, uh, we were up on, we were pulling security out, uh, cause we'd already taken the compound. So we're pulling security out and there's a big moon out, like it's pretty high biz. And, uh, Bailey's on the ground, um, we're wandering around on the ground too. And Bailey looks up and he goes, he goes, hey, whoever that is, he's like, he starts cursing at him. He's like, get down. And all you hear out of the darkness is a, oh yeah, yeah. Roger, Roger Ranger. And like gets out and he goes, shit. It's like, that was Sergeant Major Merritt. And so we go back to, we're going, uh, we're going back to get the deeper, like, download all the debrief stuff.

• 1:08:47Speaker 06

  Sergeant Major Merritt walks in and he's just like, where's that Ranger who told me to, to get the F down? And Bailey's just, everybody looks over at him and Bailey's like, like that. He's like, good job Ranger coins him and like walks out.

• 1:09:01Jack Murphy?

  But my Sergeant Major Merritt story was when we were doing airfield seizures and I was in snipers at the time. And I mean, it's dark out, it's on Lawson Airfield, you have no idea who's who in the air. But I came underneath Sergeant Major Merritt and sharked his air. And he dropped, he dropped like an anchor. I don't know how many feet, but came all the way down and I heard him come down and like, and you can hear, yeah, that Sergeant Major Merritt like, and he told me later, all of his pens in his pocket exploded when he hit the ground. I felt so bad. Like I was horrified. But he was a good sport about it. He was like, lower jumper has the right of way.

• 1:09:47Speaker 06

  That guy. Yeah. Good times, man. That was a

• 1:09:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:52Speaker 06

  I missed him a lot.

• 1:09:53Jack Murphy?

  So I, after that first deployment to Afghanistan, and you know, now you're living the Ranger life, what was the next deployment for you?

• 1:10:03Speaker 06

  So after that deployment in Afghanistan, the next one was back to Afghanistan. Where have we? I'm trying to remember where we ended up. It was Salerno. So we ended up in Salerno,

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  out there doing a bunch of missions. At that point, I was with two Delta and pretty, that one was also pretty kinetic. We were actually there with then Sergeant Major, oh man.

• 1:10:33Speaker 06

  I just brain dumped his name. We were just talking about him. Not Merritt, Sergeant Major, then right now, the current Sergeant Major.

• 1:10:42Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah, your buddy. I didn't, I didn't know him, I'm afraid.

• 1:10:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. Anyways, he was a platoon sergeant there for one Alpha or two Alpha, I can't remember which, which Alpha. So, but we had like, we were all there, Major Taylor was there, one of the, he was the HHC. And that was a fun deployment because my brother was actually supporting Salerno too. So he was the recce guy supporting them. So, you know, he went out on a bunch of missions. We tried, we didn't go out on missions together as much on that deployment, just because I think they were being kind of cognizant of the atmosphere, what was going on during those deployments. And so, yeah, did that

• 1:11:28Speaker 06

  deployment. And that was a fun one. Had a real good time. We got into a lot of stuff on that, like, kind of the normal thing, though. There wasn't anything like big about it. It was the normal. We got into ticks, we did, we did a bunch of stuff. There was a bunch of shenanigans on Salerno as a base, just that Rangers do, kind of like, I think one of my, we were talking about video, people playing video games. There was times where the weather was, because Salerno is right there by the KG Pass, and that's where we were doing a lot of our operations. But during that time period, you know, weather could come in and they'd be like, hey, weather's red. Or you'd be waiting for weather to clear so that we could go on mission. And so there was a lot of times during that deployment

• 1:12:13Speaker 06

  where we were sitting there playing like Nazi zombies in full kit. Like, we were just all sitting there like, playing Nazi zombies. Like, is the weather, is it so black? And they're like, yeah. Like, all right. Like, push two hours. Like, fantastic.

• 1:12:28Jack Murphy?

  I think I saw, I think it was one of the medics in Charlie Company, I saw him get flex cuffed to the chain link fence at Salerno on his birthday.

• 1:12:38Speaker 06

  We had a guy named Tujo, who's also an officer now. And we found out that it was his birthday, but he kind of knew it was coming. So he went and got tasers from the box. And so as soon as the privates rushed in, he started just tasing the crap out of the first couple of them. Eventually, he went down and they got him and we put him on a backboard, wrapped him up, and then pink bellied him, put all sorts of stuff on him, and then paraded him around the, the camp. And that was funny because that was the, they were just testing out CST on that deployment. And so we had one and she was horrified. Naked, getting drug around this thing. And she's just like, I'm sure she was like, oh, my God, what have I done?

• 1:13:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you're shaving the guy's eyebrows off.

• 1:13:27Speaker 06

  Oh, gosh. We did that to a guy. I feel bad. To this day, I was the squad leader. I watched a team leader do that. To this day, I was just, I'd actually pull him, I was like, hey, like, maybe not shave one of his eyebrows off before he goes to Ranger School. Like, because he's kind of a representation of us, and right now, he looks weird. But yeah, like, they found out his birthday and he, I just remember the first guy that came in, because I was outside watching it, because all the team leaders and squad leaders are outside, watching all these privates rush in. And that first dude who came in, got it, took it right in the neck, and went right down. Like, was unconscious for a little bit. And like, some of them stopped, and then the team leaders started like, why are

• 1:14:12Speaker 06

  you stopping? And then they just all rushed in. And it was funny, because I, one of the tasers that he had, actually ran out of bat. He had tased so many guys, he'd actually run out of bat. So, but, but yeah, that was a really fun deployment, too. I think by that time, I'd kind of already gotten my feet wet, went through an entire workup for for the deployment. So I was getting, getting better at being a team leader.

• 1:14:43Jack Murphy?

  Were you a team leader or squad leader around this time?

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  So I was a team leader around that time.

• 1:14:48Jack Murphy?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 1:14:49Speaker 06

  And then after that deployment, I went into snipers.

• 1:14:52Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:14:52Speaker 06

  So did, actually went over to Snot.

• 1:14:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that. What was the process like for making the transition from Line Company to snipers?

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  So, snipers was looking for people. I'd actually wanted to get into recce, because I wanted to go be with my brother. And, but they had been like, hey, you know, maybe you do something in HHC, but you're not going to do, we're probably not going to send you over to recce to do that. So I was just like, all right, that's cool. Went over to snipers, got it, you know, they talked it up. I never thought I'd be a sniper. In fact, I'd, for a long time, had been like, yeah, I don't have the patience to do any of that. But we did the selection, you do another selection to get into snipers. So you do the RPAT, you do your PT test, you do your RPAT, and then we would do a group in, just to kind of see if you could. Luckily, I was an okay shot then. I wasn't, I wasn't a great shot

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  by any means, but I was okay. But did well enough to get in, and then started getting in. And then they started putting us through, almost like pre sniper, of 375, that you would be in the section, and they'd be, that's all they're doing is getting you ready for sniper school. So a lot of shooting, a lot of just learning. Mike Pemberton was my, pretty much my training partner. He was my early training partner. So, and Nick, I think, had just left, as I was getting in there. So, kind of the whole Mike, if you've ever met P. Murder.

• 1:16:27Jack Murphy?

  I've never, I've never met Pemberton, but I've just heard many stories about him from guys over the years. But I'm really happy to hear that, you know, they, they had a really good like induction program for you. Because when I went to snipers, it was kind of like, okay, you're here, now we're going to haze you for a year. And, you know, maybe we'll teach you something at some point. But I mean, I had to wait to go to sniper school to learn my entire job.

• 1:16:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. And what's crazy is that you don't learn, especially in regiment, like, what we did was a close in support, like, we were direct support. And so we really didn't, as the shooting stuff, which is, I think, what regiment really concentrated on was making, making accurate shots at distance, under pressure was one of our, and that was, this is before all of the PRS stuff and everything, all that stuff was coming out. But we did, we concentrated on that because I think they knew that, I think they knew that that's what we did. We made, we made, we were having to make accurate shots under pressure around

• 1:17:37Speaker 06

  an assault force. And so, when you go, it's funny, because when I went to sniper school, and then having done a, kind of a process to get to what they wanted us to be, and then go into sniper school, I was like, this is two different skillsets, like, of what they're asking us to do. Like, this is

• 1:17:56Jack Murphy?

  Oh, because in sniper school, you're still doing like stocks and ghillie suits and stuff.

• 1:17:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're doing stocks, ghillie suits, and stuff like that. And, but in regiment, I'm a, you're a direct support for the assault force. I'm trying to make, like, I'm trying to figure out if I can make this shot, like, into this building, as guys are moving in, and how far off I, you know, how far off their barrels I have. Then also too, you're kind of doing a scouting mission. So if the assault force is walking in, you're pretty much up there with the dog. I have a funny story about that. But it's, the, the skillset is completely different from what sniper school is. But I think you go to other, you go to other schools in the Army, and then you, you kind of realize that that's more,

• 1:18:41Speaker 06

  it's more of an assaulter mindset there than it is sniper school. But I, I think everybody should go to sniper school if you're going to be a sniper, because you have to traditionally know how to do the job.

• 1:18:51Jack Murphy?

  Did you find that the ranges also were quite a bit shorter in your job, as opposed to like, I think the, you know, kind of the standard at sniper school is shooting out to a thousand meters. But when you're doing direct support, it's more realistically, like, what, 300 meters at most?

• 1:19:09Speaker 06

  I think, yeah, I think, so it was funny, because during the, any of the TFTs or the, the Valuxes for platoon live fire, you had as far as the optics then could get you. So they could probably get you 600. So you're, you're shooting out, you're making slots out, 600. If you're, if Loom would, would let you do it, if you had the right optics for it, you could, we were making those shots out to about 600. But on mission, there were sometimes guys, I've heard of guys that were shooting out to like four, five, but nothing really past that. Because you're really focused in on, like, A, when everybody's

• 1:19:52Speaker 06

  going up, you're probably, you've climbed a roof, and you're sitting on that roof, watching doors, watching windows, making sure that like, there's nobody in, and then making that shot into those windows if you have to. You really become, I think, an asset as far as target identification. Like, hey, this is what you have here. This is what I'm seeing, you know, kind of calling out door heights, wall heights, where entries are, if things are locked. They used us a lot for that kind of, setting up the assault force to get into the target.

• 1:20:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, as overwatch for the assault teams.

• 1:20:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Jack Murphy?

  Uh, any other sniper courses that they sent you to, uh, where you, you know, had some interesting, uh, takeaways?

• 1:20:35Speaker 06

  No, uh, I think during the time period that we were going to, we did rifles only, um, and then the Todd Hodnett, the Todd Hodnett. Uh, we went out there with him because he was, he was out in Texas. We did those courses. Uh, we really didn't get sent to a lot of like army, army courses. And then towards the, now the guys go to, uh, uh, Sephardic, uh, they go to Sodik, uh, I think, and some of the guys had actually gotten into Sodik. Uh, I know Chris Tofer, who was, uh, had been my partner, he'd actually turned out to be my partner for the longest. Uh, Chris had gone to Sodik and done all that stuff. So it's, uh, I think it was at the point in time, they tried to get you to what they could, but during that point in the war, like we were, we were getting out.

• 1:21:19Jack Murphy?

  We had, we had, we had a couple of guys that they sent to, uh, Marine Scout Sniper.

• 1:21:24Speaker 06

  Uh, man, uh, we did, we had one too, and that's all he talked about. It was rough. It was rough being around him.

• 1:21:31Jack Murphy?

  Like he's a Marine.

• 1:21:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was just like, oh, it's so great. And this is the things they do. And I was just like, when's the last time you ghillied up, man?

• 1:21:40Speaker 06

  So, uh, we were just like, and not to take anyway, I think those guys are fantastic.

• 1:21:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they are.

• 1:21:47Speaker 06

  The, again, I think they, that school from what I saw uh, later on, really concentrated on skill craft, like skill craft was their thing, like stalking, getting, uh, gilling up, how to move, um, and I think the army, and especially because they were going more towards the, uh, like again, the rifles only Todd Hodnett stuff, uh, they were going a lot towards more accuracy. They were going to accuracy first, like we were going to accuracy first. We were going rifles only, stuff like that. And that was, we were really concentrated on accuracy, getting the ABCs like tuned up and actually, um, pushing that gun to the limit.

• 1:22:30Speaker 06

  Um, as opposed to, I think, from what I saw from Marine Scout Sniper, it was a lot of field crap. We were a lot of shooting and right now I want to say that sniper school, that's what it's based off of is a lot of technical shooting.

• 1:22:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Speaker 06

  Um, which I think is great. I think that's kind of what you needed because this day and age, if you're talking about warfare now, um, a sniper is a dangerous thing, um, but as far as skill craft is concerned, like we have thermals, we have, everybody's got thermals, everybody's got all sorts of things. So it's like you can sneak around the woods all you want in a ghillie. Like if that thing doesn't have thermal shielding on it, then you're, you're kind of dead in the water.

• 1:23:14Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and then what was your first deployment like with, uh, snipers?

• 1:23:20Speaker 06

  So, uh, again, uh, going, going back to, that was another one where it was learning a new skill set, having to, um, readjust my mindset from door kicker, always wanting to get into, hey, like you gotta look for, you're almost a vanguard, you're ahead of everybody, you gotta get into, you gotta get into good positions, you gotta climb, you gotta look for where you're gonna climb. Um, and then afterwards, after everything's set, you gotta kind of get yourself into a position that you could be able to defend the assault force and make shots, whether that's on, like you put yourself on BP's or whether you put yourself, uh, up on top of a roof or wherever it is can be on the target.

• 1:24:00Speaker 06

  The, I always thought the interesting thing about, um, especially being an E5, coming from being a team leader and then being an E5 is that as an E5 in, in regiment, you, you kind of get told, hey, this is where you're going to be at. And then you have your left and right limits of the decisions you get to make right there and then on that spot. As a sniper, it was, oh, it was new to me because I went into mission planning and then I told the PL where I was gonna be. I was like, hey, I think I'm, I should be, you know, here, or I think I should travel here in the formation because I have the best. So that was the

• 1:24:42Speaker 06

  growing, growing up and having that experience. Um, but that was, I think the learning curve was having to realize that, hey, like now you have real input into this mission set, into this mission planning, uh, especially as a sniper because, um, you know, you gotta decide where, you gotta think like the enemy, where's that contact going to come from? And where can I place myself best to make the best shots, uh, on that to end whatever contact that is as fast as possible? So a lot of, you know, you didn't always end up at the BP's. Sometimes you were out of BP. Um, sometimes you were, you were on a roof, like I said, or you were in, you were in some area or you had to decide, hey, uh, I, we had one mission, uh, where

• 1:25:26Speaker 06

  they decided that the building next to us was higher than the compound and that we were going to go in. And so we actually went in, made entry, pulled pistols, cleared all the way up top, got on top of it. And then they were like, hey, we don't want to clear back down because we don't know what's down there. Uh, we don't have anybody on the bottom floor, uh, because we were pulling our own security. So we shimmyed down like a pipe, which was probably one of the more sketchiest things I've done. Uh, I did that, uh, it was, uh, App. I don't know, did you know Paparella?

• 1:25:57Jack Murphy?

  No.

• 1:25:58Speaker 06

  Uh, BCO Paparella, uh, he's a, now he's a, he's also a sergeant major. Uh, and so, but that was one of the things where he was like, and Pat was a, was the platoon sergeant at that time and I, and he had put himself on that mission and he's like, let's go. And we did that. And I was like, this is one of the sketchier things I've I was just like, and I've done some sketchy, I've kicked some rocks that were real sus and this is more sketchier than that.

• 1:26:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. In full kit? That doesn't sound fun.

• 1:26:27Speaker 06

  Oh no, it wasn't. But that was one of the things too, is that as a sniper, you started kind of learning like your kit setup and like what you need and didn't need and what, what was advantageous for your mission. As a team leader, it's shooter preference, but hey, this is, this is what you're going to wear. You're wearing all of this stuff and you gotta carry, by the way, you gotta carry the shotgun, you gotta carry, uh, this. Yeah, you're, you're, or yeah, you've got a Sketco on you. And the, as a sniper, it was, I could tailor my kit to my mission. I could figure out how best, what was going to work for me and they let you do that. I think as like, that's part of your learning process as a team leader, like you pretty much, you're getting told a lot of what to do. You're just like, hey, you're going to be here and you're going to do this. And then like, that's it.

• 1:27:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're like dropping down to a plate carrier and a couple of magazines.

• 1:27:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. Like, or you're running, um, plate carrier, a couple of magazines, or you're running, um, you're trying to figure out like how you're going to carry some stuff on your belt, uh, differently, or, um, where your radio really needs to be because you don't have all that stuff. So you have a lot more leeway. Um, a lot of the time, you know, uh, I think one of the biggest things with snipers is that that's where I learned is like, hey, you don't want a lot of stuff on the front of your plate carrier. You want to be as light as you can on there because I gotta climb up walls. Um, if you're on sport or an addiction, I gotta go chase somebody. Like that's, you know, how hard is that in full, like in, if you're carrying everything known to man?

• 1:27:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, any memorable missions from that deployment?

• 1:28:02Speaker 06

  Uh, man.

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  Uh, particularly, I remember one where we almost got left, uh, we almost got left for, um, uh, a remain over day because we hit the target really late and then, um, some stuff happened on the target where we were looking for, for a couple of things and they were just like, hey, like if we don't get to the HLZ and like, I think the HLZ was like 3K away and I think we had like 25 minutes to get there. And so it was a legit kit run that we, we just, the entire assault force just running and you could see the sun coming up and everybody's sitting there trying to get everybody. Like guys are like, the gun team's just dying. And so people are trying to take stuff from the gun team.

• 1:28:49Speaker 06

  And, uh, I just, I will, I remember that. The only reason I remember that is because A, snow everywhere. It was just the most snow I've ever seen. Um, and a lot of that deployment was like, my first deployment with snipers was like that where we were, everything was snowy because we were in deep snow. Uh, I hopped off one of the, uh, birds on one mission and sunk right in. I'm a short guy. I sunk right in the snow and real far enough, far enough to where it startled me. So I was like, I'm going to get, I'm left in here. And so I took my, uh, uh, I took my rifle, my rifle rifle and I just shoved it up so that somebody could and pull me out. And I was like, don't leave me. It was like trying to get somebody on the radio.

• 1:29:34Speaker 06

  Uh, but I remember that one because the air crew got onto our net and was like, hey, it's, uh, it's negative 25 degrees, boys. Have a nice night. And they're like, thanks. Appreciate you. Uh, but that, that deployment was relatively quiet. Um, we didn't, we got into some stuff. We didn't do anything real crazy. Uh, it's, and it's funny because the relatively quiet for regiment is we'd get into tics, but nothing was ever like, you never really thought too much about it. Um, it was the next deployment when I was in snipers where I was a senior sniper that it got, it got like real, we got into some hairy stuff.

• 1:30:16Jack Murphy?

  Where, where was that?

• 1:30:19Speaker 06

  So I started out in Shank, uh, with BCO, but they weren't doing too many missions. And so, um, we had two snipers that were down in JBAD. And as they were in JBAD, uh, we, there was a really bad, uh, strike on JBAD where so, uh, two of our guys, it was two of our snipers had gone to, they were doing something. It was a normal morning. And mornings are night. So everybody's getting kind of timed down, getting ready, um, to go. And so they go.

• 1:30:51Speaker 06

  They're getting ready for bed and a tick starts off on the legionnaire. We were on the legionnaire side of J-Bad and so they're outside the gate. A tick starts. And so a couple of guys run up to the, to see what's going on. National Guards on the towers. And our, two of our snipers run up to the tower because they're like, hey, like maybe we'll get some, maybe we'll get some trigger timing. They get up there and one of the National Guard, it was a girl and she was, from the story that we were told by these guys, she was cowering down on the side and because they were shooting at that tower. They were putting effective fire on the tower. So one of our guys gets on the machine gun, starts shooting, like takes the machine gun over, starts shooting. The other guy's sitting there, he's on his rifle calling out shots.

• 1:31:37Speaker 06

  And they look down and as soon as they look down, they're like, hey, how long has that boxcar been here? And as soon as she was just like, oh, it pulled up like 15 minutes before this started. And as soon as they had said that, the boxcar blew up. Uh, ended up throwing both as a sniper, kills, they killed the female, throws both the snipers out of the tower. And, uh, one of the guys was, it took, it almost took his arm completely off. Uh, so, uh, it blows a hole inside of, uh, on that, uh, that side of the thing. And the, it was elements of, uh, it was the SEALs, elements of the SEALs.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  And then the, uh, Rangers end up fighting over a like four foot hole in the wall, trying to push these guys back. Uh, one of the, one of the, uh, tyrant, the, uh, uh, J-Tax ends up getting like, uh, I want to say he got like a Silver Star for call, calls in a random, a flight randomly going by, gets them to come and respond to it and actually repels the rest of the attack. Uh, so at that deployment, we, or on that one, we had lost two, got two guys ended up getting, going home because they were both really messed up. Uh, so me and Chris get the call, uh, and we're down in Shank and they call us up and they're just like, hey, you guys need to head up to, uh, uh, J-Bad.

• 1:32:59Speaker 06

  So we take their spot down there and then the rest of that deployment was, was a little crazy. Um, we had gotten into a lot of ticks. We had been, uh, kind of running around J-Bad and that was around the time that, uh, UBL had gotten, uh,

• 1:33:14Jack Murphy?

  Twenty eleven-ish.

• 1:33:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so, uh,

• 1:33:20Speaker 06

  that was just a, that was the deployment where I think I kind of learned like,

• 1:33:27Speaker 06

  how to maneuver under fire a lot better. And then, um, me and Chris are, we're still best friends to this day, but me and him like hung around each other. It's kind of where we learned to trust each other a little bit because that platoon liked sending the snipers up. And there was one where I'm, it was actually, it was funny because, uh, there were two twins in regiment when I came through, when I came through RIT. And they were, they were called the Drady Brothers, um, and one went to BCO, one went to CCO and I went through RIT with both of them. Uh, and so we're good friends and one of them's in the platoon with me and they end up sending, he's a team leader at that time, they send me, uh, they send me as a sniper, him and one of the dogs

• 1:34:09Speaker 06

  in the, the, uh, one of the canines up and we're operating four or 500 meters and we're walking through a town, like in the middle of the night and we're sitting there but like whispering each other like, this is it. This is how it ends. So, uh, but kind of the, being in that sniper role, that kind of, that was the deployment where I really got used to it. Um, and actually being able to, uh, move like it, operate like it, get to, that was kind of the identity that I had taken on and I, I did snipers for a real long time after that. Um, but yeah, that was, uh, that was probably one of the, the more memorable moments in that, in that deployment.

• 1:34:52Speaker 06

  And again, I go back to memorable moments, we were getting into fights every night. So it's one of those things where from the first part of my career, where I can remember every single firefight, uh, that I got into towards in regiment, it was just so.

• 1:35:06Jack Murphy?

  Blending together.

• 1:35:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, that it was, it was just like, oh, like you'd be, I remember being in one fight and being ducked behind a wall, going trading shots and ducking down, uh, to reload or just kind of move positions and looking over at one of the guys and be like, what do you think they're serving at, uh, midnight show? Like, you think we'll get back before this? So it's just, it, you just became numb to everything at that point.

• 1:35:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:32Speaker 06

  Just how, how all that would happen. And, and then I think you take that for granted too, when you got new guys in and then you'd see them kind of reacting a different way. You'd just be like, what's his problem? And it's because he has his, his, uh, you know, uh, uh, neurological system hasn't gone, like his CNS is, is not tuned up, like is not tuned down to it. He's still hopped up on it. So I think that was the, psychologically, I think that was a cool point where you go back to the first part of your career, you think about your first firefight and you're like, I remember what it smelled like. And then you go to the middle of your career and you're just like, I can't even remember this. But like this one blended in with that one, blended in with this other one. It was just really.

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• 1:38:24Speaker 06

  Like some of them were just like anticlimactic.

• 1:38:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. But now, now you're learning like the operational art of the job, it sounds like.

• 1:38:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think at that point, like I was,

• 1:38:39Speaker 06

  you always think you're good, but at that point and during, with as much as we were doing it,

• 1:38:45Speaker 06

  we go back to like Green Berets and all like that, other, other, uh, like tier T units, regular army units. Um, like I think we just were better because we did it so much more often. Like every night we went out, we were looking for a fight or we were going to get into a fight, one or the other. Um, and so it's the, I think it's really that, that's what sets us apart from it. So you have the Green Berets and it's not their fault, but they weren't getting into things like that every single night. The operational, their tempo wasn't that bad.

• 1:39:19Speaker 06

  Um, I think the worst part for them is they were just stuck out all the time because you'd always hear the transmissions where they'd be like, they're off on their own in, in the wild west.

• 1:39:27Jack Murphy?

  Doing like, doing like three or four day patrols sometimes.

• 1:39:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Speaker 06

  And as opposed to us where we were sitting there and like anytime we got into a fight, it was, we could just bring the, the might of everything that we had in country down on top of you, depending on where we were in the mission set.

• 1:39:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. If you really get into it, I mean, AC 130 is going to be overhead.

• 1:39:47Speaker 06

  Oh gosh, we saw one, um, it was my, and then that was, that was one of the first times, the first time I'd ever seen it was that first deployment was watching an AC 130 and then the, the green beam of death, uh, that they, that they put out there where it's just like playing whack a mole with people is basically all it was doing. It's like some guys would pop up, we saw a group running parallel to us and you know, I'm tapping Haley, who was one of the gutters. He gets it and he starts firing on them and as he's firing on them, you see the blinking light and then just it just, the ground exploding and disappearing around these people and they're gone. Uh, or you see their, the gun go off and, uh, uh, the 30 millimeters and, uh, it looks like they tossed somebody into a blender.

• 1:40:33Speaker 06

  And I was like, that was the, but then you're on these missions where like, I don't have to worry about too much because I know somebody's coming for me. It's the Green Berets, I think that's where I give them a lot of credit is that like, there's times where they, they didn't know if anybody was coming. They, they were their experts.

• 1:40:51Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:40:51Speaker 06

  So, um, but yeah.

• 1:40:55Jack Murphy?

  And what were, uh, your other trips with snipers?

• 1:41:00Speaker 06

  Uh, so I did, uh, man.

• 1:41:05Speaker 06

  So I did one more after that and it was to uh CAF.

• 1:41:12Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:41:12Speaker 06

  Last one there. So um and again, that was another one where it was me and Chris. We kind of just palled around. Uh we were out with BCO again. Um and again, it was uh, we were just kind of hanging around. And getting into these like little tics, but it wasn't, I think during that point in time of the war, everything was starting to not wind down, but kind of settle into a very, at that point in time. The uh, the networks, the Hakani network, um, you know, ISIS, all these people, uh, not ISIS yet, but uh, the precursors to it and Al Qaeda were, they kind of realized that like, we were the guys that you didn't fight. Because we would kill you. Uh, it was almost better for you to just get captured.

• 1:41:57Speaker 06

  Because then all we were doing is we would, we would detain you, hand you off to um, the Afghans. And then the Afghans would release you and we'd pay you for the pleasure. Um, and so they were kind of figuring that out around that time. So it started to be less fights, uh, not dry holes, but we were actually going in and be like, yeah, this is the dude. And the dude would, we had one where we uh, at, at that deployment. Where me and Chris climbed, we climbed ladders, we're going in and this guy like popped his own uh, M light, threw it out there. Had zip cuffs, put a zip cuff on one hand and then worked the other one and then walked out. And all the, the females and males started separating each other. And I was just like, hey, uh, it looks like they've done this before.

• 1:42:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, they know the fire drill.

• 1:42:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. So we're like, they, they know what's going on here. And the guy just seems like, yeah, it's like, uh, you know, the turp, uh. They get the uh, EQ and bit out there. You got the turp out there and then they're like, yeah, he knows we're here for him and he's ready to go.

• 1:42:57Jack Murphy?

  That's crazy.

• 1:42:59Speaker 06

  So, uh, but that, I think that was the sign of the time of the, this was uh.

• 1:43:03Jack Murphy?

  The futility of what we're trying to do over there.

• 1:43:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like fifteen, sixteen.

• 1:43:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 06

  And it was almost the, they're just like, it's better off for us to just go with you guys like, cause we'll, like, we were just gonna show up and kill you and we weren't. If we showed up at night to come and get you, that was bad. Uh, and you'd rather not just deal with that. And so you were still have, I know the BSO, the uh, Battle, uh, Battle, Battle Space owners. Um, the regular army guys were still having a lot of tics and stuff like that, like small attacks on their cops. Uh, uh, or other forward operating bases, but they would uh, pretty much. Like, they're pretty much, everything was settled into a, a even keel lull of, we thought that we were gonna be, that was what, like?

• 1:43:51Speaker 06

  Fifteen, like eighteen years into the war?

• 1:43:54Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:54Speaker 06

  Something like that. Like, so like, everything's pretty much settled at that point. We're just, it's, we were almost doing like, hey, oh, here's the. We killed the last guy in an airstrike, you know, two weeks ago. Here's the new guy, let's go get him. Like, and so it was like, every time they promoted somebody, we would just either kill them or go get them. Um, and like I said, I think at that point, they'd kind of realize that it's, it's pretty much better off if we just go get you.

• 1:44:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the game's rigged.

• 1:44:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:24Jack Murphy?

  Um, and then when you went to uh, Europe as an SME, was that with regiment?

• 1:44:31Speaker 06

  Uh, no, so it actually, it was a, a, almost a detachment off of uh, SM.

• 1:44:36Jack Murphy?

  Oh, okay. Well, let's, we'll get to that.

• 1:44:39Speaker 06

  I picked it back off the first cab, yeah.

• 1:44:40Jack Murphy?

  So, so when, when you got back from that deployment with uh, to CAF. Um, you went to the Army Marksmanship Unit? Was that the next thing?

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, so um, kind of just like anything else, you get offers to do stuff. Um, and so uh, me and my partner, Chris, had actually gone there together. Uh, went down to the uh, uh, I had done some deployment, uh, deployment with CCO. Uh, was in E6 now, had done my squad leader time and uh, they just, it was an offer that was on the table. And I was just like, yeah, sure, that sounds fun. It's on base and uh, that sounds fun. So we went, uh, me and Chris went down to the instructor training group. Uh, and we actually were there with other regiment guys. A lot of snipers were there. Uh, there was a couple of cat, uh, Delta guys there. Um, and it, it was basically they hired people who were to go out to the army to teach them marksmanship. Um.

• 1:45:37Speaker 06

  And I always say this, it was like, I thought I could shoot when I was in the regiment. Um, I basically didn't, I, I realized I didn't know anything because they start training you upstairs. So I get there, I go through, shoot through, uh, they look at my resume. It's almost like uh, applying for a job and then they say yes or no. Uh, so they say yes. And so we, immediately we come in and we start training with um, uh, uh. Oh, man.

• 1:46:02Jack Murphy?

  Iron Sliders.

• 1:46:03Speaker 06

  We just first, we start training with like Dan Horner.

• 1:46:06Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:46:07Speaker 06

  And there's a couple of other like, uh, uh, Green is there. And all these are like kind of superstars within the, the shooting world is there. And so we start going through all the shooting and I was like, I thought I was a good pistol shooter. I had no idea what I was doing with a pistol until I got there. Um, and you start learning that you don't know what, you, you didn't know what you didn't know. And I was, I was like, cause I was a, I had gone through uh, Armite, the Regimental uh, Marksmanship Instructor Course. So I thought I was a good shooter at that point. And then, so I get there, I do that, uh, and realize that I'm not nearly as good of a shooter. And so that's almost the

• 1:46:47Speaker 06

  uh, kind of work up to what I started doing, especially with sniper stuff. So I did, uh, the time with the ITG, uh, trained, um. Went around and started teaching uh, regular army units how to, how to train. Uh, we were, we were in charge of teaching uh, eye bullock. We're uh, and uh, or the um, infantry basic uh, officer course. Uh, we started treat, teaching the captain's career course, guys coming through, the sergeant majors academies coming through because uh, and I really appreciate this about how regiment does is they want to send guys out to know, to get to know things. We want to be the best at, at our, our craft. So any ranger does.

• 1:47:30Speaker 06

  And where do you send, you got to send them to the guys that are gonna know how to do that. So we started, we learned to shoot really well. Uh, and when I mean, we learned to shoot, like, we were shooting every day. They had a really cool program. Where I could go to their bunker with my gun, I'd sign my guns out from my uh, cage. I would walk over to the bunker and we'd walk up and I'd be like, oh yeah, I want two grand of five five six. And I need, you know, four grand of nine mil. And then I would take that and I would go and shoot all day long. Just all day. So it was great. Uh, just that, but you, you learn the skills of actually marksmanship.

• 1:48:08Speaker 06

  Uh, how to run a gun, how to hold a gun. Um, all the small nuances of footwork when you're shooting. And that really, I think. Is something that regiment later on took back home and said, there's like, um, one of the biggest things we got taught from uh, AMU was that uh, shooting, marksmanship, combat shooting is a, almost like a martial art. There's footwork involved in this. There's where you place your foot, where you place your hand. Uh, the little movements that you make with your head. Those all come into play and that's something that you all have to train so that you can optimally take targets down. Um, and make good shots uh, on, good shots on a body.

• 1:48:49Speaker 06

  And so we took all of that out. We, we went and we were giving that to the army. Cause like I said. Uh, coming out of regiment, I thought I knew how to shoot. I did not. And if you look at the army holistically, there's a lot of NCOs, officers who think it's sergeant majors. Who really think that they're very good at shooting and they, they are not. They are not, they were not the best. And so having a instructor training group like that to go out to the army to actually do that was great. Uh, one of the notable things I did is I was the NCOIC for the uh, XM seventeen, which became the M seventeen. Uh, project. So I went down to Aberdeen and I actually did a lot of the testing for that.

• 1:49:30Speaker 06

  Um, uh, and while I was in uh, the AMU, or me and Chris also shot international sniper together. So it's really cool. My partner from regiment. Uh, we both go over to AMU and then we both shoot international sniper, which was a great time.

• 1:49:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:49:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, so uh, but I really appreciate my time in AMU because that's where I learned to do. To actually enjoy the skill craft, the craft of marksmanship. Uh, and then that actually carried me over into kind of the rest of my career. That's what I ended up teaching, uh, and being known for wherever I went.

• 1:50:08Jack Murphy?

  And how, how did that take place that you went from AMU to the S Fab?

• 1:50:14Speaker 06

  Uh, so uh, went through some stuff uh, personally, as most Rangers do.

• 1:50:19Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 1:50:20Speaker 06

  A uh, marriage fell apart and I'm from Texas. And so the closest place to Texas is, is, or the closest base to Texas is Fort Hood. Um, so there's an S Fab standing up at Fort Hood, uh, asked a favor, uh, and they let me come, they let me leave and come uh, kind of to follow my family. Uh, so as soon as I got into that, um, it's actually a strange place because there's a lot of Rangers. If there's a ton of Rangers there, not the, not RFS Rangers, it's guys who are like, oh hey, I need to get out to do something else. I need to go somewhere else and do uh, for whatever reason they had. Um, so. Ended up in there, the SFAB, and started doing pretty much took control of the marksmanship

• 1:51:05Speaker 06

  program there, got a team and started running that. And that's how I ended up in the European deployment.

• 1:51:11Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to tell folks out there what the SFAB was?

• 1:51:15Speaker 06

  So the SFAB is a, is pretty much a, I'm sorry, security forces.

• 1:51:23Jack Murphy?

  Advisory battalion?

• 1:51:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, advisory battalion. So we would go to partner forces and we would advise them on how to do it. So they're really big into troop leading procedures, operations procedures. We were teaching, at first, I think it started when it first got kicked off, guys were doing low level tasks, almost like an SF job without having been SF.

• 1:51:46Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:51:47Speaker 06

  But then they kind of started taking, when I got there, it was more strategic level. So it was battalion, it was battalion and brigade up for the partner forces. So.

• 1:51:58Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I got you. Teaching like their staff.

• 1:52:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, how to move formations, how to actually be able to get your equipment and sustainment out to that. That was one of the big things. They would send you sustainment courses and they had for each operation, for each level in operation, they had their, we had a counterpart for us. So whether that be intelligence, so each part of the operations order, we would have like, we had an intelligence guy, we had a sustainment guy, we had a command and control guy, we had a maneuver. And so they would take people from each part of the army who were subject matter experts in that, and then they would put them in those positions

• 1:52:41Speaker 06

  to be able to advise other units. So essentially, it was taking, I don't want to say it was taking work from SF, but it was taking the, the strategic level work from it. So now they would have to put people strategically in their commands. There could be this, this overarching. And it wasn't for, I think, special forces kind of had their knit, their, their thing in, in special, in a special operations mindset. This was a big, like, we were a big army mindset. We were like, hey, like, this is how you put an army together.

• 1:53:16Jack Murphy?

  There's, there's another organization, I believe it's called SMATCO. Does that ring any bells? Yeah. It were, I mean, did you guys dovetail with them at all?

• 1:53:28Speaker 06

  Uh, we ran around with them, but we weren't, we never really like worked, worked with them, but we, we would be in commonplaces.

• 1:53:36Jack Murphy?

  Because those are like, as I recall, that organization would have like, here's our expert on the Bradley fighting vehicle, and they'd send them to like, a country like Ukraine and be like, teach these guys how to do that.

• 1:53:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, and that's what I said is I, I think that's taking, you're starting to take it down more. We were more in the, into the operations. So like when we would send guys over, it was just like, hey, here's how to conduct the defense. Like, this is how we do defense, this is how we do offense, this is how we do route reconnaissance. And we would take that and we would have our, whoever our counterpart was, we would be training them on that portion of it. So generally, your maneuver guy was a infantry guy. Generally, your sustainment guy was somebody who did sustainment at whatever brigade he was at. He did a high level brigade operation. So it's, that's where we were going. I know

• 1:54:31Speaker 06

  that's where SFAB was going with it. I think they're kind of coming away from that now, though. I know they're closing down a lot of them.

• 1:54:40Jack Murphy?

  But when you were there, you were the sniper SME, I take it?

• 1:54:44Speaker 06

  Well, they had, they had stuff that was going on. They got requests for things that were going on. And so I was a sniper. I'd done all the stuff. And as much as I was that, I'd done a lot of shooting too. It was funny because when I got sent over there, I competed in the European Best Warrior while I was there. So they actually pulled me out to go to Germany to do European Best Warrior. So I do European Best Warrior there, but I'm not allowed to win it, which was funny.

• 1:55:12Jack Murphy?

  They actually told you that?

• 1:55:13Speaker 06

  They did. They told me. They was like, hey, you're competing, but this is more for, for us to get our name out there and not for you to like, you can't specifically win because you have to be, the European Best Warrior has to be in a unit that's currently stationed, like home stationed in, in Europe. So I go there and I do the whole dance, which was, it was fun, but like, I got, I got top shot and I did really well in combatives, got top, and I got the top shot out of the thing. It was out of the competition. It was funny because when they were giving the award, they were like, hey, no surprise here. You know, Sergeant First Class Osato blew y'all out a little bit with the shooting.

• 1:55:58Speaker 06

  And so it was funny because during the qual, I was really cocky at that point in time because I knew I was winning. I got down and they have this known distance range with an M4 and it's iron sights M4. And so you have so many shots and I was knocking all of them down. I was just out there. I was just like bam, down, down, hitting all of them. And I was like, this is super easy. Hit the last one out at 400. And as soon as I do it, I immediately like unload my rifle. I'm like, yeah. And the cadre looks down at me and he's like, target up. And I look out and I had like, the last round I had, I had ejected and the magazine's empty. I had ejected this round, it falls on the

• 1:56:40Speaker 06

  floor. I look out and this pop just goes just right up. And it's like, it's the, it's like a hundred meter popper. I immediately reached down, grabbed the bullet, shove it in, finger, put my finger in the magazine well, slam the bolt shut and then fire from almost the shoulder position. I wasn't even on the shot. Thing goes down and I immediately go, yeah. It was funny because the cadre was there. It's like, I've never seen anything like that. He's like, that's, he was like, that was crazy. So.

• 1:57:11Jack Murphy?

  So you kicked, you kicked ass the first couple of days and then the last day you had to go get drunk off your ass and not show up so that you, you lost the thing?

• 1:57:19Speaker 06

  No, man, no. It was the, the road march. I didn't prepare at all for it. So I came in top of the pack, but not first. But the, so they did, I'll give it to them, like the, the way they put this competition on was good. There was an unknown event at the end of the competition after the road march. We all knew that. So I was just like, man, I was like, it's probably going to be an O course or something weird like that. I was like, I can handle it of course. Came in probably top middle of the pack, not great, but not terrible. Like in true Ranger fashion, I'm like, I'm kind of sprinting the whole time. And I got like short little legs because I'm a 375 Ranger and all of us are tiny.

• 1:57:58Speaker 06

  And so we get to the end and as we're getting in, they'd made us have a uniform on the very top of our, our ruck. So I get in and they go, hey, go inside. As soon as you get in, it's immediate. It's like, as soon as everybody gets in, they're like, go inside to the gem, get into that new uniform and then you guys are going to line up underneath the stadium steps. And we're like, all right. So we go and do it real quick. They were like, they gave us something like 10 minutes to do. So we get dressed, we go out there. Well, as soon as we go out there, you walk out and they're introducing everybody and there's a mat on there and they've got shin guards and, and gloves. And it's a round robin combatives

• 1:58:40Speaker 06

  tournament. And it is, you can do, you can kick and it was fists, you could do fists to the body and it was open hand slaps. And we had, so it was the European Best Warrior. So it was a lot of, it was a little bit of everybody. There's females with us, 110 pound females and they were, it was a round robin fight. So we're going out there, watching like a chick get picked up and humped across this mat on one match. And then everybody had to fight each other. And so like, and it was right after a ruck march. And I was just like, it was, I think it was like my third or fourth match. I was just like, I'll give it to them. This sucks. Like this is rough. Like, I'm so tired of fighting this

• 1:59:22Speaker 06

  guy. But I was, it was, it was an experience. That was a really good experience. That whole deployment was a good experience. Being able to work with a Eastern European army who like, didn't have the equipment, but definitely had the guys, like, the, the want and the want and the know-how without the equipment and then kind of showing us how we, showing them how we do things and then showing them how they do things. And it's a completely different mindset. Like we talked earlier about like the close in support, like direct support for assault forces. That's not a thing to them. They're, when we, when they

• 2:00:04Speaker 06

  talk cybers, Eastern Europeans talk like, like old time.

• 2:00:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we're shooting a Nazi general from the bell tower of a church.

• 2:00:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then you're exfilting like, you know, back to your lines or you're, you're in it. Like they, we did one scenario where we talked about, we, they had it on their actual compound where they had a bell tower. And it was like, hey, you're going to shoot from this bell, from this bell tower.

• 2:00:32Jack Murphy?

  No, I'm not.

• 2:00:34Speaker 06

  And they were just like, yeah. So we go over mission planning because that's our job. We're like, all right. So how would you do this? And they're like, oh no. It's like, so what's your exfil plan? And he was like, exfil. I was like, no, I get it. Yeah. There, I was like, you're on a bell tower. You're probably not getting out of that tower. Like, maybe you should make some kind of plan or maybe we don't even do it from this bell tower. Like. So, uh, that was, that was a really, really cool experience. Um, and then just the ability to travel Europe, uh, cause in regiment, we, you don't really do that a lot. It was all, it was all mission, mission, mission, mission. Um, and we were, the only place we went to is, you know, bad third world countries. Uh, and then-

• 2:01:16Jack Murphy?

  Not a lot of opportunities to meet women, uh, in the Ranger Regiment.

• 2:01:20Speaker 06

  Oh, no, not, not, not even a little bit. Um, and then you go to this other place and it's like, it's, you know, Germany. Um, it was, uh, oh, man. Uh, the base was MK and that was in, uh, Romania. And I always tell people, I was like, hey, if you want, uh, if you want a good vacation for bottom dollar, go to Romania. So you're having a lot of fun. We had, it was, it was bad. There was like a, a beach there that was a topless beach. And so like you know, nobody was, uh, that unit that was there, nobody was ever there. Like we were like, hey, it's, you know, Wednesday. Where is everybody? It's in the summer. They're like, oh, they're all on the beach. Like, of course they are. What kind of PT are we doing? Oh, we're doing beach PT. Okay, cool.

• 2:02:01Jack Murphy?

  Hey, a- ask the Secret Service about Moldova. They had a great time out there.

• 2:02:05Speaker 06

  I have a, I have a buddy that I work with now. One of the guys that I work now on the team is, uh, he's an ex-secret service guy. And I always give him hell about Columbia.

• 2:02:13Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah, Columbia.

• 2:02:15Speaker 06

  Like, you know, they'll just pay the hookers. They'll, they won't tell on you.

• 2:02:19Jack Murphy?

  Uh, my understanding was that was kind of like a setup, like it's a scam where like the girl pretends that she's just a normal girl that wants to sleep with you. And then they get to the hotel room and it's like, oh, but yeah, you gotta pay me.

• 2:02:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I would have been like, I'll just get out and here's some money. I'm, I'm gonna pay you to leave. How about that?

• 2:02:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Here, here's a five spot. See you later.

• 2:02:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:02:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:40Speaker 06

  Those guys, uh, it was like SF, they're like SF, like those guys, like constantly getting, the seventh group, man, constantly getting in trouble.

• 2:02:49Jack Murphy?

  I know.

• 2:02:50Speaker 06

  I always give, uh, I think you know Alejandro.

• 2:02:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, me and him are good friends. Like me and him are good friends. Every time I go to Colorado, we, we stop and visit him. Uh, but, uh, and I talk to him all the time, but I always give him that. I was just like, yeah, man, it's like a Ranger, a Ranger in a green beret is like, sounds like you might've had a hooker problem.

• 2:03:12Jack Murphy?

  So after, or no, you're still in the SFAB and you got deployed to, uh, Urbil.

• 2:03:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. So my last deployment was in, uh, Urbil, Iraq, and we were working, uh, hand in hand with the Kurds. So, uh, at that point, I kind of worked my way and, uh, being a sniper, I think everybody kind of says that they're just like, oh, you're kind of like a, you're, you know, scout intel guy. You know, stuff about intel. And then I went to a school or two, and then I found myself as the, uh, uh, chief intel guy for my, uh, for the SFAB in Urbil. Uh, so, uh, apart from, a lot of the stuff was, I wouldn't call it human stuff that we were doing. It was a lot of, um, checking in on guys. And then that's kind of where I learned a lot about the culture.

• 2:04:02Jack Murphy?

  Oh, like, like liaison?

• 2:04:04Speaker 06

  It wasn't a liaison because we were definitely, we were being used by, uh, other entities, uh, to collect, to give out like good information. So there was a lot of entities that we'd get downloads from. They'd be like, what'd you see? What'd you do? Okay. I need you to ask for this when you go back. I need you to do this. Um, there was points where we were, were pretty much running sources just because we were very in with the Kurds. Um, and so we talked a lot to them. And like I said, like, we try, like, as, as, as we are an army, we trust people to a point. Um, but then we're also keeping tabs on everybody too. So that's a lot of what we were doing. So we had our side reports that we were writing, um, kind

• 2:04:48Speaker 06

  of collecting on other people, uh, which was a super interesting job, especially for a Ranger, because I'm going out there and I'm just like, okay, like, uh, you know, we'd go and look at their storehouses. One of us pair up, like peel off and go look at what they had. And then you compare it to numbers of what we, they actually said. And you'd be like, this dude just lying. And then not only is he lying, he's asking us for more stuff. And it was funny because one day I asked one of the, uh, our Kurds counterparts. It's like, what are you getting ready for? I was like, like, you got enough. I was like, you got enough AT weapons in there to, to kickstart the next war. I was like, so what is it? And he was just like, oh, y'all are leaving soon. And he's like, straight up looked at me in

• 2:05:31Speaker 06

  face. It's like, he's like, as nice as you guys are, it's like, y'all aren't gonna be here for very much longer. And he's like, and then the Kurds are gonna be left alone. Like Kurdistan's gonna be, they called it Kurdistan. Nobody else wanted to call it that. Um, but they were like, the Kurds are gonna be left alone and we're gonna have to fight them. And I was just like, there was a point where I was like, no, you're right. Like, yeah. Okay. Fair enough, man.

• 2:05:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's always like one of those things where like, man, could you guys not like start a war with the Arabs, at least while I'm here, please?

• 2:05:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. Like, and then, so it was funny, cause the, that was right when I think the precursor to what's going on in Iran was going on then. Uh, cause we had an ICBM like alert where we all had to get in. They were like, hey.

• 2:06:13Jack Murphy?

  Oh, is this, is this when we smoked Soleimani and then they fired the ballistic missiles?

• 2:06:18Speaker 06

  They fired the, they fired ICBM and they were like, everybody get to a bunker. And I was like, why? It goes, it's like, you know, we should really just get on top of one of these, uh, one of these chiefs and enjoy, enjoy what we, while we can. Um, but it's, it's that deployment kind of, um, as far as my military career is concerned, uh, really kind of opened my eyes to a lot. I know people get into a lot cooler stuff, but like having a career of kind of like that where you end it, you're in like this intel world of you're playing, like I was playing checkers and now I'm, I'm watching chess getting played with

• 2:06:56Speaker 06

  everybody. Um, and it was, it's, it's funny to come from kind of that, to be able to see all of that in a career. Uh, uh, just, uh, very odd. Like I said, there was times where I was listening to things and I was just like, this should be in a book. I was like, sometimes somewhere like this is like the truth is stranger than fiction. Like as much as we can write about things and make these stories up, it's like stranger things are happening.

• 2:07:28Jack Murphy?

  Uh, any stories like that that you can tell or that you can share?

• 2:07:32Speaker 06

  One of my favorite stories was me and my partner got sent out to, with some other agency guys to talk to two people. And it was because we were the only ones around. So they were just like, hey, we need you to go look at this. It ended up being two Russians that had stuff their face full of, um, they were trying to get in, they had fake accents. They were trying to use fake accents, saying they were from Tennessee, but in a really bad way. Uh, and what they were trying to do is they had gotten a bunch of dip and they were putting in their mouth, like the chaw in their mouth so that they would, they were spitting and trying to do it. One of them never done it before.

• 2:08:11Jack Murphy?

  So it's puking everywhere.

• 2:08:12Speaker 06

  And throwing up everywhere. Yeah. And cursing in Russian. It's like they called, they were, the gate guards like, hey, you all come and talk to these people? And we go over there and it's like, oh, and immediately it was what you think. They were trying to gain access to the, the camp and get on. But we had a lot of stuff like that going on because our offices were outside of camp. Like we weren't on Urbil.

• 2:08:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:36Speaker 06

  We were out in, we were out in the town. So we were like constantly going, we were in civilian clothes going around doing, um.

• 2:08:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. The, the Russian SVR has a, uh, station out there in Kurdistan. Yeah.

• 2:08:49Speaker 06

  And we knew, and we knew exactly where it was too. So, um, but the, having be, having been there and to see all of that and others, other stories of you were watching international play happen kind of right there, like Portugal. And like, and you can't, I can't really get into a lot of it. Um, but you know, in 25 years, maybe I can write a book about some.

• 2:09:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I hope so.

• 2:09:17Speaker 06

  But it's the, uh, being, going from like, like I said, uh, we were talking before, going from the start of the war, me getting there as a, as a 19 year old and being in Baghdad, fighting and stuff like that. And then the end of my career, I think one of the times I was, uh, sitting on top of the, uh, uh, one of the airfield, uh, not bunkers, but the, uh, we'd climbed up on top of the, uh, oh gosh, I'm trying to remember what it was. Uh, the hangars and we were, there was a group of us sitting there smoking cigars on a hangar. And I was just like, it was, I didn't know at the time that that was gonna be my last deployment, but I would, knew I was coming towards the end. Um, just I had

• 2:10:02Speaker 06

  had a back injury, uh, and it had, it progressed to the point where I didn't know if I was gonna be able to keep going. And I was up on the eight list, but it was just like, I knew it was the, I was like, hey, my time's coming close to, to the end of this. So standing up there on the, again, going back to that, like you take snapshots of your service and the times you did stuff. And you think about like, from the time, from the firefights to the guys laughing to watching sunrises come up over the like Hindu Kush, or you know, being, watching, uh, suns go down, like the sun go down over Baghdad by the Babylon gates, or doing all of that and then being cursed in and, you know, being on the, uh,

• 2:10:45Speaker 06

  over by the Iranian border, but watching, looking down and out of the mountains and seeing how gorgeous it is. And then I think one of the last things I remember is being like on that hangar and smoking a cigar, watching these CRAMs go off and being like, this was cool. This was a, this was a cool experience. And realizing that like the things that you touched through it, maybe it didn't affect so much, but it affected a lot to you. So I think that's, that was kind of the, the end cap to my, uh, military career.

• 2:11:20Jack Murphy?

  And when you got home, you went through the med board process?

• 2:11:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, so uh, went through med boards, the worst thing I think you can ever do. Um, the, what was rough about that was I thought I had more left in me. I, I was still doing a bunch of stuff. I, like, uh, I think I was in my, I was like thirty six. I did best ranger at like thirty six, thirty seven years old.

• 2:11:43Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 2:11:43Speaker 06

  And, and I still had, I was still doing a lot of stuff. Like I was still going out and training, running, uh, crossfit. Uh, I'd gotten into jujitsu and I started competing in jujitsu. And I was just like, man, I got a ton. But there would be times where I couldn't get out of bed and I had to call somebody to my house to be like, hey, I need you to come and help me out of bed. Uh, and so I'd been getting, um, shots in my L, uh, or my S, it's like L five, S one. Yeah. And I'd been getting epidurals for a long time. And when we were in Rebeal, uh, we'd gotten into a little car wreck. Uh, we were with the Brits. Uh, you know, crazy, crazy Iraqi drivers, don't know how tra- traffic circles work.

• 2:12:27Speaker 06

  Uh, wanna go in the wrong way, hit our, hit my car. Back was a little messed up after it and I was like, ah, it'll be fine. I'll get back and it'll be good. Uh, I was on the E eight list, you know, getting ready to, uh, look at where I was gonna go next, what I was gonna do next. And I was actually looking at selection, another selection. And, uh, doctor comes in, he's like, I've done all the x-rays and stuff. And she comes in and she's like, hey, she's the first thing she says is like, do you, do you wanna walk when you're sixty? I was like, what kind of question is that? Yeah, I wanna walk when I'm sixty. She's like, okay, then you're done. Like you're my bad med board, we're recommending med board right now. Um, we're gonna start going through the process and you're, and you're, essentially you're finished.

• 2:13:05Speaker 06

  And I was just like, that took, that took a little bit to, um, kind of internalize.

• 2:13:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that took the wind out of your sails in that moment, didn't it?

• 2:13:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, I wasn't ready for that. I was just like, I, I didn't think I was gonna do, in fact, I'd made a promise to my ex-wife that I was gonna die at my desk so that she didn't get anything in retirement. Um, and so, uh, I was like, I was, I was fully intending on following through with that. Uh, so, uh, you know, I had, that had kinda taken, taken me aback a little bit. But then, at that point, I'd met somebody, uh, she was in Dallas and I was just like, I was over the moon for her. And so I was just like, okay, maybe this isn't too bad. Uh, kinda started getting the feeling that I was on my way out, trying to make peace with it.

• 2:13:56Speaker 06

  And then started trying to like, make those plans, but the army makes it really hard to make plans for that. So eventually, uh, they approved it. Uh, I got out. Uh, what I will say is the army does need to do a better job in taps. The regiment does a fantastic job, I will say that. Uh, regiment is, I think, one of the, and that's just because now I work a little bit with them. But the Ranger for Life program and the, uh, the way they do it is so much better for, for Rangers in general. Um, I didn't have that option at that point, or I had the option, I just, I think there was a point in time where I was in a little bit of a denial. I was like, well, maybe this won't go through.

• 2:14:40Speaker 06

  And then it came to a point in time where I was just like, oh no, it's time for you to leave now. Like you're, you're done. So, uh, yeah, um, med boarded out, um, started my transition. Uh, the transition's probably, like I said, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Uh, it's, uh, I can see where guys just self-destruct at the end of it. You come from, you're coming from like me, uh, I think I have seventy one months deployed, uh, seventy one to seventy five months deployed overseas.

• 2:15:13Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 2:15:15Speaker 06

  And it's, that was like, you can't tell me that like at nineteen, like when my frontal lobe's not even really developed yet. At nineteen, this is the way of life I learned. And then at the end of it, say, hey, thanks for playing, talk to you later.

• 2:15:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, good game.

• 2:15:33Speaker 06

  Uh, and then all of a sudden, one day you find yourself in like, I'm not that thing anymore. I'm not, I'm not ranger, I'm not a ranger, I'm not a, uh, I'm not operating in austere environments anymore. There's no next deployment for me. Uh, and I think that's kind of what took a long time to, even when I got out. Um, so I got out, uh, actually, I did the very private thing. Uh, I feel like when I got out of, I did everything in one year. So I, uh, like I said, met somebody I was over the moon for. We'd kinda, we have a, a very, uh, that's an interesting story and that's something I'm kinda, I'm writing about now because of how funny that was.

• 2:16:17Speaker 06

  Uh, but met, uh, got married, uh, moved, uh, blended families, bought a house, uh, all in that year that I got out of the, like, right before I got out of the army and that, uh, got out of the army. So it was, that probably didn't help the situation any much more, but, uh, just going through it and having to realize that that wasn't me and then find a new purpose. So that was the, that was the, the hard part.

• 2:16:44Jack Murphy?

  And, and I mean, how did that come about? Uh, you mentioned to me that you worked in project management for like six months and that helped teach you what you didn't wanna do.

• 2:16:53Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. I don't recommend, uh, for, for, for men of our ilk and, uh, people, men of our, uh, stature and, uh, I'm gonna say men of action, I don't recommend going to be a project manager. Like that's the, like, you gotta kinda be dishonest to everybody, everything's for those better. Um, and then like, you're like, yeah, this building may fall down, but like, I got it done under budget.

• 2:17:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, we got a lot of that here in New York City.

• 2:17:22Speaker 06

  Oh God, yeah. And so I hated it. I hated, when I realized what it was, um, I was just like, this is not for me. And I would go to work and just dread it. I would, I'd tell my, I'd wake up and tell my wife, I was like, I don't wanna go to work today. Like, I really don't. Uh, and then, you know, being, learning that like, nobody was gonna yell at me if I didn't go to work was fun because then I would just be like, you know what, I'm not going to work and I don't have to give you a reason why.

• 2:17:49Speaker 06

  And so that was the, that was the funny part of the whole thing. Um, and it was fun because I was working with, uh, one of my best friends, uh, Anthony, uh, Wilstrom, who's a, a mentor in jujitsu for me. And me and him kinda worked together a little bit too. And we had those conversations all the time. I was just like, man, I was just like, what would happen if I just, you know, broke my leg and didn't show up? And he's just like, you don't have to go that far, just don't, just don't show up.

• 2:18:15Speaker 06

  So, uh, it got into that and really learned that that's not where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I wanted a little bit more purpose in, uh, in my life. So, uh, kicked around being a cop, uh, talked to my dad, who's, he's a, a, a Dal- he retired Dallas police officer. And he's like, don't be a cop right now. He's like, it's rough. Uh, he's like, and you, you stand a good chance of going to jail, like more than anybody else, just because of our service. Uh, talked to some other guys and it's like, I think especially coming from where we came from, violence is a thing that we do well and it's our spoken language. And so with normal B cops, that's something that they have to learn over time.

• 2:18:58Speaker 06

  When you put a guy like us in it and we already know it, um, our threshold for I'm going to kill you is so much lower. And so when it's the, when that threshold is lower, you're, you, you, I think we don't understand why, like, the, you know, this guy pulls out a knife and I blast him like, but I did it like, I shot him twenty times instead of like the, the cursory three or four. Uh, and it was like, yeah.

• 2:19:24Jack Murphy?

  You don't, you don't comply and the nightstick is coming out, bro.

• 2:19:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, yeah, like it's that or like, uh, ooh, a fight, like, I'm in the bed.

• 2:19:34Speaker 06

  So it was funny cause my dad was just like, hey, maybe that's not something you, you wanna get into right now. Um, and honestly, I still kick that around, uh, a little bit. My, uh, my wife is in law enforcement, uh, she's in federal law enforcement. And so, um, you know, she's always the one kinda telling me, she's like, yeah, maybe, maybe not that. Maybe we don't get sued this month. So, learning that though, from the project management point and then trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I got really lucky and stumbled into what I'm doing now. And so essentially, that is, I work for Allegiance Project Security.

• 2:20:14Speaker 06

  And it is a company, a security company that takes veterans and we try to put them into schools and churches. Which is, it's funny because after Yvaldi happened, I remember having a conversation, I was in AMU. Having a conversation with my partner, Chris, and it was just like, hey, what, like, we should put like special operations guys in. Like, they don't want to be cops or anything like that. They should, we should stick them into schools. Well, Matthew Easter, who's the president and the owner of the company, had that idea. He's not a special operations guy. He's never been in the military. He never did anything like that. What he does have is a wife that's a teacher that he's worried about. And he was just like, why aren't we taking these guys who already did this?

• 2:20:59Speaker 06

  And put them into these schools and churches. And it's funny because I say that when I think about Yvaldi and situations like that, because now it's my job to think about those security risks in schools and churches and red team that, take that intelligence background, red team it and say, what would I do? If I was, if I really wanted to cause damage, what would I do?

• 2:21:21Speaker 06

  And I take Yvaldi as a, I always tell the story around people, but people we're talking to. I take Yvaldi and what I take from that is, it's not that police officer's fault.

• 2:21:34Speaker 06

  He learned that he was not about that life at that door, at that breach. Realized that's not what he's built for. What now, kind of the, the mission is, is to take guys that are built for that, that pretty much did a year, years in their lifetime of running through doors. And not only that, but made that decision, life or death, like, hey, I could die in this room. Because you remember what they told us when we were doing CQB and stuff like that. They're like, you're running into a room with four guys, like four or five guys, you're running in a group with four or five guys on your team. And then a room with a couple of guys who have guns, somebody's getting shot, somebody's getting killed. And there's a really good chance that a lot of you are, are getting shot in that room.

• 2:22:20Speaker 06

  So, the, that, when I say that that it's not that cop's fault, it's because he had that thought right at that door. We had probably the same thoughts that we did during training, where you kind of internalize it, you're like, oh god. But we got indoctrinated into it, we lived it, we were, that's, we understood that that was our purpose. Like, we, our purpose was to run into doors, like run into danger, run into doors, we were going to breach that threshold. We were going to jump out of that airplane. So, the question of life and death never stopped entering our mind. And it was like, how do I get in here and how do I stop the threat? So, that's what this, this organization basically does, is we're trying to take guys

• 2:23:02Speaker 06

  like that, usher them into civilian life by easing them into it. Not taking everything away that they are, not taking the gun away from them, not taking the brotherhood away from them. Not taking that culture away from them. And slowly kind of saying, hey, like, you're not running through those doors, there's not, this isn't a TST right now. Could be, but what your job is, is we're going to give you that new mission to protect these children, protect these churches. Once you do that, like, you start kind of easing them into it. And then eventually, the, the point of the whole thing is for that guy one day to say, hey, I'm done. I think I got it out of my system. I think I've transitioned enough to

• 2:23:42Jack Murphy?

  Like a stepping stone.

• 2:23:44Speaker 06

  Yes. So, it's almost like, essentially, we're drug addicts when you leave the regiment, when you leave the military. We're, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I still do it. I fight, I go fight people on my off time for competition because I like it, because I like the way it makes me feel.

• 2:24:01Speaker 06

  I'm a drug addict as far as like that adrenaline. I'm always looking for that next rush, that next thing. We are all like that and you got to kind of step yourself down from it. So, you never just take a dude off cold turkey. And essentially, that's why I have a problem with the TAPs in the military, the way they do offloading of, in retirements and pushing people out of the army. Is they essentially just drop you off at the bus stop and say, hey, good luck, man. Like, and so, getting into that though, has, has really kind of made me

• 2:24:34Speaker 06

  really kind of given me that new purpose. And then aside from that, I do the, the mercenary thing. I'm a gun for hire. I always tell guys, we'll have gun, we'll travel. I've done a lot of executive protection work, done some overseas stuff. And that's, I think, for a lot of us, and especially Rangers and special operations, that's where we, we end up there. Not because we want to, but because that's what we know. I know a lot of guys that do a good job in the transition.

• 2:25:09Speaker 06

  I just, stepping away from it's always been one of those things where it's, it's, it's hard to do. And I'm only a year out, so.

• 2:25:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm, I'm still in that point where I'm not looking for a fight, but still kind of stepping myself down from it.

• 2:25:22Jack Murphy?

  I, I totally get it, man. And I mean, like you said, you're a year out from retirement. And, I mean, I swear to God, I was only in the army for eight years, but it took me at least another eight years to like de-army myself. You know, it becomes something else and do something else. So, for a guy like you, you know, somebody that did 20 years or whatever, it's, it's just fundamentally a part of who you are. And like you said, I mean, it's, it's, you can't really deny it, you know? That's, that's who you are.

• 2:25:55Speaker 06

  I don't think you're ever going to really get away from it either. Like, I tell my wife all the time, I was like, I, I still have dreams and I dream in green sometimes. I dream, I dream of running off a ramp. I dream in, you know, white phosphorus, like, I, I dream in those colors.

• 2:26:13Jack Murphy?

  White hot, yeah.

• 2:26:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. In those places that I don't think they'll ever leave you. I think, I think that'll always be a part of us. And it's just a, figuring out how to, to combine those worlds, if that's what you want to do. There's some guys that get out, Kyle, Kyle Masters, a farmer. You know, and he was, he was in B code for a long time, did a lot of stuff. That guy's a farmer now. One of my buddies, Chris, he's, I would say like, I used to say that that guy killed more people than plague. And he's a therapist now.

• 2:26:53Speaker 06

  It says the people, there's people who do well at it.

• 2:26:56Jack Murphy?

  Well, sometimes people go into a profession because they're trying to learn it for themselves.

• 2:27:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, and I, that's definitely, that is, that is definitely Chris.

• 2:27:08Speaker 06

  And he's another one that, he got injured. It just, the beating that your body takes out of, from a lifetime of that, you're not going to be able to sustain it, you're not going to be able to keep going. There's a point where your body's going to fail you. So, yeah, so it's the, I think for guys like us, the most important thing is, and again, that's what Allegiance Project Foundation does, is we're, we're trying to offer you, or we try to offer the guys a community again. Say, hey, don't step away, like, we isolate, every Ranger that I ever knew that killed themselves, isolated themselves. It was a, they, they took themselves from the pack, they, they decided that they were going to do it by themselves.

• 2:27:50Speaker 06

  And then never made it. And we don't make it through Ranger School by ourselves, we never made it through those deployment by ourselves. So, I'm not, I don't understand why guys think that you're going to make it through the rest of this by yourself.

• 2:28:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:28:02Speaker 06

  So, so three Rangers, Allegiance Projects Foundation, both of them are offering that tribe. We're a tribe, like special, especially in special operations, other big armies, their own tribe. Or whatever service that you did, you have that tribe in there. And then, I have friends, I have really good friends that are SEALs, that I met here. And they're their own tribe, they have their own jokes. And then, we have Green Berets. They're their own tribe, they have their own jokes. Rangers, we're, we have our own tribe, we're, we're all tribal and we stay within those. But especially when you get out, it's important that, I don't have friends that are just Ranger, I don't just stick around with Rangers, because I never find them. There's not, they're feeling far between out here, most of us are scattered.

• 2:28:47Speaker 06

  I have friends that are SEALs and we sit around and talk about everything, anything.

• 2:28:52Speaker 06

  So, finding horses and nations, A, that's, I think, one of the biggest things that's helped me. It's fine, because I was in a deep, dark hole too. My wife, God bless her, she married me and probably at the worst, the furthest down I could be at that point. And so, but finding, A, finding those communities, getting with those, getting with your tribe, find your tribe, find the other special operations guys, and then fight off the drop zone together, which is now life.

• 2:29:22Speaker 06

  And then, the other thing too, is that like, a lot of these guys, I don't know what it is, we get divorced like it's going out of style. Just maybe that's the Ranger way. But realize that like, you've made mistakes in your life and to find that person. Like you said, my wife, I met her, this is actually a really funny story and, and something I'm writing about. But, we met on Hinge, and I'm not afraid to say that. Like, I was getting out, kind of knew I was coming back to Dallas. So, I get on Hinge, we get, we get on Hinge and we meet each other. And it's funny because at the time, I was still working kind of some of the intel piece. And her Hinge profile said, said like law, something like that. I didn't know what that meant.

• 2:30:07Speaker 06

  And so, we start meeting, we start talking. And through conversations, we're not being 100% open with what we are, but you can kind of tell. And so, I go to the first date, hug her, realize that there's a gun on her. And so, when I hug her.

• 2:30:25Jack Murphy?

  You brought a gun to the date?

• 2:30:27Speaker 06

  I was like, there's a gun, there's, I was like, there's a gun. I was like, maybe he's just super 2A or something. And so, like, I was like, this is Dallas, you know, maybe. And so, we sit down and we start talking and I start realizing from training, I'm in, I'm in interrogation.

• 2:30:45Speaker 06

  Like it is going, it is going exactly.

• 2:30:47Jack Murphy?

  I'm in danger.

• 2:30:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's immediately it's like, oh no, like, who is she? What is this? What have I gotten myself into? Uh, and so I start going through your usual, like what they train you, you like, you start, uh, answering with one word, asking like certain question, like if you're gonna ask questions, you're asking questions and then you know, if they say anything, it's, you know, deny, deny, deny, make counter accusations. It's like, no, you're gorgeous.

• 2:31:14Jack Murphy?

  Uh, yeah, you're ready to karate chop her in the neck and run.

• 2:31:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I'm like sitting there looking at exits being like, all right, so how am I getting out of here? I was like, cause she's definitely armed. Uh, and so through the course of this date, um, we're kind of very subversive. Uh, and during the speaking to each other, just texting. Uh, meanwhile, I don't know that behind, later on I find out behind the scenes, like an entire dossier is getting made about me. She's like open sourcing me. She's looking up all this stuff. She's found a video that was in, that I had made in AMU like years before, uh, about trick, like teaching. Uh, and so we start going through this song.

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  And dance. And there's a point where at the end of it, I was just like, yeah, I was like, I think you're something else. And she was just like, I think you're something else. And I was just like, I was like, I am in the army. I was like, I work intel stuff. And I was like, I'm a, I'm a ranger. Uh, I was like, I was a ranger. And she goes, uh, and she just comes out with it. She's like, oh yeah, I'm federal law enforcement.

• 2:34:23Speaker 06

  So then that starts the whole thing where, uh, we've, we're kind of have grown in that where I did all that. I made a mistake one time where we were, we were talking and I hadn't sent her this, but this picture showed up late. Uh, it was at Halloween and I was like, oh, I'm a Navy SEAL. And apparently so many Navy SEALs have said that they're Navy SEALs here that, and as far as dating is concerned, that she was just like, oh yeah, she, another Navy SEAL. Go great. You know, that joke that there's, you know, a thousand Navy SEALs and I've all, I've met all 7,000 of them. Um, so she kind of went through that, almost dropped me off the app, but it's kind of cool because I found somebody who understands

• 2:35:05Speaker 06

  the work, understands me. Uh, and then we actually started, uh, she's a firearms instructor too. And so we actually trained together.

• 2:35:13Jack Murphy?

  Cool.

• 2:35:14Speaker 06

  Um, she got me into this police week, uh, thing where I went in and, uh, got to shoot with her in armor. We did some stuff. And so I have this picture that's pretty funny where we're sitting on a car, a shot up car and it says, uh, I have the, the black box over our eyes and mine says Merck and hers says Stun. So it's, uh, but the story is too, that I think we're hard on ourselves in our lives. Um, as a ranger, you're, you're oh, you're so hard, you know, you're so hard that you don't find the connections and you don't connect to somebody. And so I think as far as finding your tribe, finding your community, the other like important thing is like, find that person, like find that

• 2:35:58Speaker 06

  person for you. Um, cause we do, we do a lot of damage to ourselves and our relationships in, while we were in the regiment, we, we put everything first. Like you, everything, nothing circumvented the mission. Nothing circum, you wanted to go on that next deployment. You wanted to do the next thing. And to survive all of that, you had to put your family on the back burner. So once guys get out, they still get in that mindset. And it's like, hey, you don't have to ruin everything now. You can, you can go be happy. Um, so I really think out of all the friends that I've seen that have Rangers, uh, that have taken their

• 2:36:42Speaker 06

  lives, those are the two key components that I think they need to realize. Um, and, uh, reach out and actually say, hey, I'm gonna give life a try and help that. That happened.

• 2:36:56Jack Murphy?

  That, that's like such a, like when we say it out loud, it's such an odd thing to say, but it's, it's totally true that, you know, you have to give your, yourself permission to enjoy life and to find something that you like. You know, it's, it's beyond, you know, that sense of duty, but something for yourself.

• 2:37:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's, and I think it's just hard for us. It's because you don't, you don't do all of that without coming out of it without some kind of identity crisis that could take it away from you. Um, it's just a, it's so ingrained in us, everything. Like if you think back to like, anything we did in the regiment, um, it's funny because I laugh about the like, it's so indoctrinated in us and anything in the regiment, we sing songs about us. Like, we're like, and not only do we sing songs about us, the army sings songs about us. So we're this big giant thing and we don't stop to realize that we're also human in the, in that.

• 2:37:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:55Speaker 06

  Like there's a point where we got, we have to say, hey, like, I was that for that reason, for that time, and now it's time to be something else. It's time to, um, and, and I'll admit, um, you, it's not time to lose the ranger in you. It's not time to lose that identity, but it's time to take on another mission.

• 2:38:12Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:13Speaker 06

  I'm a ranger and I can be used at anything. And that's, I think our biggest strength. I can literally do anything. I can do anything that anybody wants me to do. And I've suffered so much that I can suffer through a whole lot more. Um, but that gives us a unique skill set in this world now, where now you can, you, you are probably more driven than 99.9% of society.

• 2:38:38Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely.

• 2:38:38Speaker 06

  And all, and then all you have to do is go out and find that thing. Um, so yeah.

• 2:38:46Jack Murphy?

  Louis, tell us where people can go to find, uh, what is it? Alliance and Three Ranger?

• 2:38:53Speaker 06

  So Three Rangers Foundation is, uh, the one you can go to, uh, three rangers, uh, foundation.org, dot, dot org. Yeah. Yes. Dot org. And then I'd ask, I'd ask my better app. Uh, and then, uh, the Allegiance Project, uh, Foundation is also is a dot org. And then there's allegianceprojectsecurity.com.

• 2:39:21Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 2:39:21Speaker 06

  But the security side is actually a security company. So if guys need any help with like getting into the security industry, man, I got it in spades. You guys come to me and, uh, uh, I'm sure there's a way we can leave my email up. Email me, talk to me. Um, I'll get you the know-how. I'll even help get you your level three, level four in Texas if you need it. We have guys for that.

• 2:39:43Jack Murphy?

  We'll put some links down in the description, but if you want to give out your email, I mean, feel free.

• 2:39:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, uh, my, uh, uh, my work email is, uh, Luis, L U I S at allegianceproject.org, uh, all one word. And, uh, just like I said, email me there, uh, for any guys that want it and I can, uh, we're very connected. Uh, the other thing we're doing, uh, if anybody's in Texas, uh, during October 3rd, everybody knows what October 3rd is. Uh, I'm assuming it's the, uh, Gothic, yeah, it's Gothic serpent. So we're actually putting on, uh, Three Rangers and, uh, Allegiance Project Foundation is actually putting on the first Mogadishu Mile in Dallas. Uh, so we're going to be in Corinth, Texas. Uh, we got a great place. We're trying to get as many Rangers out. And again, that's that community thing,

• 2:40:32Speaker 06

  finding your tribe. We're inviting SEALs. I'm gonna make fun of some SEALs. Uh, you know, I'll be like, hey, do you need me to carry you out of here? Like, do we get to the halfway point? You want me to carry you back? Like, how are we doing this? Don't get on a ridge or anything. Uh, but the, it's finding that, it's being able to, to kind of chat it up and find this. But we're putting on, uh, that run for the guys that aren't at Benning, uh, that think that can make it here so that we can, we can get communities going everywhere. The goal is that one day, like on October 3rd, we're celebrating all of that. Like all of us are celebrating, um, Gothic serpent. We're celebrating that, that portion of our history and actually just making it almost like a big reunion. We don't have to get together during funerals. We can.

• 2:41:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Hell yeah.

• 2:41:20Jack Murphy?

  Are you also on social media at all, anywhere else people can go to find you?

• 2:41:26Speaker 06

  Uh, yeah. So IG, uh, from the later days is, uh, Diego Del Vega. Does it, uh, so, uh, I'm a, I'm a reader and aspiring writer too. So, uh, Diego Del Vega was a, uh, was the real name of Zorro, but that's my name on Instagram, uh, and Facebook. So anybody can go on and find me there. Uh, also, uh, we run a company, a training company, Sand Strategic, uh, and that's on IG too. And you guys, I can answer there too. And if anybody's in Texas and just wants to come out and shoot, that'd be awesome.

• 2:42:02Jack Murphy?

  Well, Louis, thank you so much for this interview and telling your story. It's been great. Uh, is there anything else that you'd like to bring up? Anything that I didn't ask during this interview that you'd like to talk about?

• 2:42:13Speaker 06

  Oh, man. Uh, there's some, like, again, you go through that and I'm sure you, you run into this. It's like, you remember things. You're like, oh, remember that story and remember that story. Um, I'm sure I'll be sitting around one day and I'll be like, oh, I could have, I could have, uh, I could have said this is this, you know, X, Y, and Z, or I could have gone through something else.

• 2:42:36Jack Murphy?

  It's okay. You come here to the studio. If you're ever coming through New York City and we'll smoke some cigars and we'll tell the other stories.

• 2:42:42Speaker 06

  You know, I saw you, you were smoking cigars. I'm a big fan of cigars too. I smoke a lot of them. I smoke them out back because my wife hates to smell. Uh, I have to come in and shower if I do do it. Um, which was great because when we were dating, uh, she takes me, when we, so two months into dating, uh, my now wife, uh, says, hey, you want to go to Vegas? And I was like, yeah, what for? I've never been to Vegas, but sure. And she goes, oh, we're gonna go to SHOT Show. It's like, this is like two months into dating. And I was like, I'm gonna marry you. So I, the cursory thing is two months into dating, you don't know a lot about each other, other than you like each other. So I don't know some things. And I was just

• 2:43:22Speaker 06

  like, oh, man, I really want to go to a cigar bar in Vegas. And so she's like, yeah, let's go. Little did I know that she was in the bathroom, like, snorting, uh, um, a Zyrtec because she's extremely allergic to cigars. And then let's meet, we go into the cigar bar and like, she's, she's a champ about it. Like, I didn't realize it until like a year later where she told me, she's like, yeah, I'm super allergic to cigars.

• 2:43:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, there's like 30 people in there puffing away.

• 2:43:50Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. She, and she was a champ too. When I was deployed, uh, she, um, goes to every, uh, every few, like every month she would go over to, uh, this place with cigar internationals and she would get the cigars I like. And she would buy them in boxes and then ship them over to my rack.

• 2:44:08Jack Murphy?

  Bless her soul.

• 2:44:10Speaker 06

  Do what?

• 2:44:11Jack Murphy?

  Bless her soul.

• 2:44:12Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. No, she, uh, fantastic. I realized that I was getting married real quick. Uh, but it was funny because she ended up winning a Drew Estate, uh, humidor. And she doesn't smoke cigars at all. And so she had got, she had entered this, uh, they'd given her a couple of tickets because she buys cigars there. And they call her and they're like, oh, you won this. And she said she, she was walking out of there. She was like, I almost got jumped. Everybody wanted this thing. It's really cool. It's, uh, uh, it's, if you do any of the Drew Estate stuff, uh, they got the Deadwood series and it's all the, like, the old Deadwood, uh, hookers, basically. And, uh, but the, the humidor that she got holds, I

• 2:44:56Speaker 06

  think it holds like 240 cigars, but it's, uh, Spanish wood and it's in the shape of a coffin.

• 2:45:06Jack Murphy?

  I have seen those, yes.

• 2:45:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So she won that and like, she doesn't smoke. They, they were just like, oh, do you smoke cigars? She's like, no, it's for my boyfriend.

• 2:45:16Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome.

• 2:45:18Speaker 06

  So, super cool. Uh, but yeah.

• 2:45:23Jack Murphy?

  Well, I'm gonna go and check out Drew Estate humidors. Uh, Louis, thanks again, man. Really appreciate it.

• 2:45:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate, really appreciate the time, guys, um, to be able to tell my story and, and really to get them, uh, kinda the reliving of the mission of, A, Rangers and helping out my tribe. Um, cause I owe everything to the Ranger Regiment. Uh, and then the other thing is, is like, being able to get that message out of helping the guys at the end of it. Like, we, we should all be able to tell our stories, uh, tell how we got there, the times we got to look at things, the, the hurts, the pains, whatever it is. And then at the end of it, say, because of that, I'm this. Uh, and I hope that everybody, like you, you're like, spent like a writer, uh, which, amazing. Like, I wanted to

• 2:46:16Speaker 06

  writing too. I'm just, I'm, I don't think I'm as articulate as I could be.

• 2:46:19Jack Murphy?

  It's a skill. It's a, it's a learnable skill like anything else.

• 2:46:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:46:22Jack Murphy?

  Promise you.

• 2:46:24Speaker 06

  But I think being able to say, get the message out there that we, we are Rangers, but that means that we can do anything. We, we were given the, we were picked. We were specially selected to, to do that job. But specially selected means we can almost do anything we want. That wasn't just for the Ranger Regiment. It was a specially selected person, a type of person who, who would have succeeded at anything.

• 2:46:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. To not pigeonhole yourself that if you want to go and get, uh, MBA, or you want to become an astrophysicist, like you, you can do those things. Uh,

• 2:47:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:47:06Jack Murphy?

  Don't, don't get down, you know, some of the guys I find, uh, get down on themselves and think, I'm just a dumb Ranger. I can't do anything. It's like, no, that's, that's bullshit.

• 2:47:15Speaker 06

  No, just, uh, you're a Ranger. You can do everything.

• 2:47:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:20Speaker 06

  Like, our, we have innate abilities that were, that were given to us, A, by the generations before, other Rangers that we learned from. And then we pass down to other Rangers that learned from us, that we would, we are the type of people, and I think this is true of most special operations, we're the type of people who would have been successful almost at anything. You could have put us anywhere. You always look at these other Rangers that are, are other, uh, special operations guys that are doing businesses, doing this and that. You're literally taking somebody who would have been, he, he would have been a professional athlete if it wasn't for the war. He would have been a, like, if he had gotten the college education, that he can still go and get. You would have been a Fortune

• 2:48:01Speaker 06

  500. You would have been leading, leading titans of industry. We can do anything. I think it's just, we pigeonhole ourselves into what we were. And being that warrior, the fighter, the soldier, and we say, that's, that's the only thing I could have done. It's like, no,

• 2:48:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:20Speaker 06

  it means a lot more. So.

• 2:48:21Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely.

• 2:48:22Speaker 06

  I appreciate being able to get that message out anytime I can, though.

• 2:48:25Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, absolutely, man. And thank you to everyone who joined us tonight. Uh, appreciate you coming by and checking out the Team House again. And, uh, we will see you guys next week. So thank you, Louis. Hope you have a good time.

• 2:48:40Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 2:48:40Jack Murphy?

  Hit us up if you're ever coming through the city.

• 2:48:42Speaker 06

  Yes, sir, I will.

• 2:48:47Speaker 06

  Hey, guys.

• 2:48:48Speaker 01

  Hey, y'all. It's Lauren LaRosa. And y'all know, I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. You know, the thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it, it isn't

• 2:49:30Speaker 01

  some, it's not a judgment thing. It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together. And that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 2:49:55Speaker 00

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

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 2:50:32Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 2:50:34Speaker 04

  There's a homicide detective down here. Three bodies on the ground.

• 2:50:37Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 2:50:40Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 2:50:47Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 2:50:53Jack Murphy?

  I want to take a moment to tell you about the Team House Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, uh, the things that are on the Team House, on our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, uh, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, uh, anything else that we have going on, books we recommend, uh, upcoming guests that we have coming on the show, and also, you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. Um, if you go and check it out, we send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of all of our content on a

• 2:51:35Jack Murphy?

  weekly basis. You can find our newsletter at teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Again, the website for that is teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join. Uh, so we hope to see you there. The link will be down in the description.

• 2:51:53Speaker 01

  Hey, y'all. It's Lauren LaRosa, and y'all know, I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. You know, the thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it.

• 2:52:27Speaker 02

  And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't, it's not a judgment thing. It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 2:53:01Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 2:53:39Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 2:53:41Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 2:53:43Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 2:53:44Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 2:53:47Speaker 04

  Oh, sin swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 2:53:54Speaker 02

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 2:54:06Speaker 02

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't, it's not a judgment thing.

• 2:54:50Speaker 02

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 2:55:14Speaker 00

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

• 2:55:45Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 2:55:48Speaker 01

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 2:55:52Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 2:55:55Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 2:55:57Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 2:55:58Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 2:56:01Speaker 04

  Oh, sin swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 2:56:20Speaker 02

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't, it's not a judgment thing.

• 2:57:03Speaker 02

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 2:57:27Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency?

• 2:58:01Speaker 01

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 2:58:05Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 2:58:08Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 2:58:10Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 2:58:11Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 2:58:14Speaker 04

  Oh, sin swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 2:58:21Speaker 02

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 2:58:33Speaker 02

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't, it's not a judgment thing.

• 2:59:17Speaker 02

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 2:59:41Speaker 00

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

• 3:00:10Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 3:00:13Speaker 01

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 3:00:17Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 3:00:20Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:00:21Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:00:23Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:00:25Speaker 04

  Oh, sin swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:00:33Speaker 02

  Brian Philippi joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:00:46Speaker 02

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest.

• 3:01:16Speaker 04

  So many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't something, it's not a judgment thing. It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:01:53Speaker 00

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

• 3:02:24Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency? Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  We think they're murder hornets. 911 Nashville returns.

• 3:02:34Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:02:36Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:02:38Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:02:40Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:02:47Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:03:01Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all, get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't something, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:03:44Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:04:08Speaker 01

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

• 3:04:39Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 3:04:42Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets. 911 Nashville returns.

• 3:04:49Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:04:50Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:04:52Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:04:54Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:05:02Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:05:13Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all, get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't something, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:05:56Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:06:20Speaker 01

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

• 3:06:51Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 3:06:54Speaker 01

  Please help us, they're everywhere.

• 3:06:56Speaker 03

  We think they're murder hornets.

• 3:06:58Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 3:07:01Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:07:03Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:07:04Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:07:07Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:07:14Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:07:25Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all, get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't something, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:08:08Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:08:32Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency?

• 3:09:07Speaker 02

  Please help us, they're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets. 911 Nashville returns.

• 3:09:14Speaker 03

  It's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:09:16Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:09:17Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:09:20Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people. That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:09:27Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:09:39Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says, and helping make sense of it all, get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like, how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it. And they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself. And it isn't something, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:10:23Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just... Do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:10:47Speaker 01

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency? Please help us.

• 3:11:22Speaker 02

  They're everywhere.

• 3:11:24Speaker 01

  We think they're murder hornets.

• 3:11:26Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 3:11:28Speaker 03

  There's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:11:30Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:11:32Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:11:34Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 3:11:37Speaker 03

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 3:11:38Speaker 04

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:11:41Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:11:56Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it and they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself and it isn't, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:12:39Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:13:03Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. 911, what's your emergency?

• 3:13:37Speaker 01

  Please help us.

• 3:13:38Speaker 02

  They're everywhere.

• 3:13:39Speaker 01

  We think they're murder hornets.

• 3:13:41Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 3:13:44Speaker 03

  There's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:13:45Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:13:47Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:13:49Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 3:13:52Speaker 03

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 3:13:54Speaker 04

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:13:56Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:14:09Speaker 04

  Hey y'all, it's Lauren LaRosa and y'all know I always have the latest. So on my new audio series, Love Lately, I'm getting into the conversations we're really having about love, relationships, and our sexual health. Every week, it's me and Dr. Contessa Metcalf, my big sister with a medical degree, breaking down what the culture says versus what the doctor says and helping make sense of it all. Get into it. Another thing me and my friends don't really talk about is like how you're having conversations with people about getting tested. I'll be honest, so many women don't feel comfortable talking about it and they don't feel comfortable advocating for themselves. But let's go ahead and just put you in a position to where you can kind of empower yourself and it isn't, it's not a judgment thing.

• 3:14:53Speaker 04

  It brings that peace of mind that y'all can just do what y'all do and have a good time. Yeah. I say get tested together and that's beautiful. Brings you closer together. Listen to Love Lately with Lauren LaRosa from iHeart's Ruby Studio on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Gilead Sciences.

• 3:15:17Speaker 00

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

• 3:15:45Speaker 01

  911, what's your emergency?

• 3:15:49Speaker 02

  Please help us. They're everywhere.

• 3:15:51Speaker 01

  We think they're murder hornets.

• 3:15:53Speaker 02

  911 Nashville returns.

• 3:15:56Speaker 03

  There's a homicide detective down here.

• 3:15:57Speaker 04

  Three bodies on the ground.

• 3:15:59Speaker 02

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 3:16:01Speaker 04

  I will send swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 3:16:04Speaker 03

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 3:16:06Speaker 04

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 3:16:08Speaker 02

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 3:16:15Speaker 01

  Some days, it's the little things you look forward to most. And with Pepperidge Farm's thoughtfully crafted cookies, there's always something worth savoring. Maybe it's a Milano made with premium chocolate between two delicate biscuits. A Sausalito, baked with rich milk chocolate chunks and macadamia nuts. Or the simple buttery goodness of a chestman. So pour the coffee, find a comfy chair, and take a moment to treat yourself to a cookie. Or two. Pepperidge Farm, have a little taste.

• 3:16:45Speaker 06

  This is Gemma Spieg from The Psychology of Your 20s. You know that feeling when your skin just needs a tall drink of water? That's what Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer is for. Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer absorbs instantly and hydrates for 100 hours for plump, glowing skin. That's right, 100 hours. It is a lightweight, oil-free gel cream, safe for sensitive skin. It's allergy-tested and fragrance-free. I use this all the time. It makes my skin feel so fresh and plump and glowy. Even under makeup, I still see an amazing difference. It never leaves my skin oily or tacky.

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  Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at clinique.com. Feels like moisture surge.

• 3:17:38Speaker 06

  What would you like today? Can I get a number two? Anything else? Same shift, different day.

• 3:17:44Speaker 01

  I need a smoke. What can I get you? Can I get a number four, number seven, number eight? Same shift. I need a smoke. Different day. Using nicotine to relieve stress might just make you feel worse. Break the cycle and quit nicotine with free daily texts, expert tips, and community support from X Program. By Truth Initiative. Visit Xprogram.com to start your quit journey today.