#80 John Lovell - Army Spec Ops Dude Recounts the Hardest Portion of Ranger School | Part 1

John Lovell is a former Army Ranger turned creator, homesteader and best-selling author. Lovell is the founder of the Warrior Poet Society, a values-based community geared towards training, preparedness, and spirituality. Part one of this four part series is all about Lovell's childhood and early life. Lovell is a successful and well known creator, but his origin story has largely remained a mystery until now. We also explore his entry into the 2nd Ranger Battalion and his radical transformation into a believer. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://goldco.com/ryan | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner John Lovell Links: Book — http://warriorpoetway.com Website — http://warriorpoetsociety.com X — https://twitter.com/johnlovell275 YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/johnlovell275 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Shawn Ryan?

  My next guest is somebody that I have been wanting to interview since I started this podcast about three and a half years ago. And it's finally happening. This guy's got a massive footprint in the veteran space. He's a former Army Ranger, a YouTuber now with millions of subscribers, and who knows how many, how many views. But, um, look, this guy's putting out really good word. He cares a lot about the country. I even got him to dive into his background, which was like pulling teeth. You know what I'm talking about.

• 1:46Shawn Ryan?

  But ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it is my honor to present to you Mr. John Lovell to The Sean Ryan Show. Please like and subscribe. Comment to the YouTube channel. Head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review. And those of you that have been watching for a while, you know there is a ton of raw, cut-up reels for you to download for free. Download those, put them on your channel, monetize them, make money. Patreon, we love you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. John Lovell to The Sean Ryan Show. Love you all. Cheers.

• 2:32Shawn Ryan?

  John Lovell, welcome to the show, man.

• 2:35John Lovell?

  Thanks for having me, man. Good to be here.

• 2:37Shawn Ryan?

  This has been a very long time coming. You know, we were gonna collab back in the, back several years ago when I was doing tactics and you were a lot heavier into tactics, I believe, and, and I don't know why that fell off, but you're here now and I have been really excited to finally meet you in person, man. I love the content you pump out. I love the, excuse me for saying this, but I love the kind of turn that you made at the right point in time, talking about some of the issues in the country and getting loud about things. I don't think there's enough people doing that these days and, and you're one of the few.

• 3:19John Lovell?

  Well, it seems like we made the same turn around the same time. We talked about that last night at dinner, too, and it's like, I was happy doing my kind of gun-tastic kung fu thing in the world of tactics and, but man, the world's just, I mean, really careening towards some disastrous things and I just felt this inner compulsion of like, I can't just, you know, make mine and do my merry thing when so many crises are happening around me. I've like, I got a platform to steward and I want to do it well and I want to be a change agent for good. And so I just, I just couldn't stop by and watch every value

• 4:02John Lovell?

  I had and everything I loved be, yeah, destroyed. And so we made that change seemingly to me at like the same time, right?

• 4:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, we did. Almost the exact same time. You know, I, I feel like it is a responsibility that if you have a platform that's big enough to actually make an impact and hopefully lift the veil on some people that, that it's, it's your responsibility to do that. And I take it extremely seriously. I know you do, too, and I've, I've watched a lot of...

• 4:39Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of your stuff where you're interviewing different people. I saw one where you were at a golf course. This was several years ago. I believe it was a golf course. I think you were you were interviewing congressmen or it was. It's just good stuff, you know, and it's things that people need to hear and it's stuff that you don't hear on the mainstream, you know? And it's a it's just another perspective that is an important one. So I. It's good to have you here, John. We got a lot to talk about.

• 5:08John Lovell?

  Let's do it, man.

• 5:09Shawn Ryan?

  But let me give you a quick introduction here. So John Lovell, Christian missionary, Army Ranger from Second Battalion. Five combat tours and four in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. Husband married for 17 years.

• 5:26John Lovell?

  We're in our 17th, yeah.

• 5:28Shawn Ryan?

  Father of two boys, author of the Warrior Poets Society, firearms trainer, speaker. Founder of the Warrior Poets Society and YouTuber.

• 5:40John Lovell?

  Yeah, and I'm pretty into dad jokes. That's the big bio bullet point for me. Dad joke connoisseur, you know, really love dad jokes.

• 5:49Shawn Ryan?

  You got one off the top of your head? It's your favorite?

• 5:52John Lovell?

  Favorite, man. Why I just did the lead and now I can't I can't stall out.

• 5:59Shawn Ryan?

  Put you on the spot.

• 5:59John Lovell?

  Do you know why you don't see elephants hiding in trees?

• 6:08Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 6:08John Lovell?

  It's because they're so good at it.

• 6:13Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 6:14John Lovell?

  The dumber it is, the more I enjoy it.

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice. But, you know.

• 6:22Shawn Ryan?

  I am really excited to dig into your backstory. I wasn't messing around. We just did a little Instagram story. But I was saying that that you are one of the number one, you are one of the top requested interviews that we get. A lot of people want to know your backstory and I know it's like pulling teeth trying to get it out of you, but I will do it. But I just want to tell you, man, I'm I'm really excited about this and and then on the back end. I'd love to discuss some current events.

• 6:51John Lovell?

  Yeah, love to.

• 6:52Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 6:55Shawn Ryan?

  But just getting into it, little warm up here. I like talking to folks similar to yourself about school shootings and the Second Amendment and how do we, how do we fix this problem? We've, you know, the politicians just bat the Second Amendment back and forth time and time again. Nothing really happens.

• 7:19Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody's really pumping money into the school safety and, and what do you think this solution here is? You know, we see red flag laws on the left. We see the right doesn't want to do, doesn't want to bend on that. And, and how do we fix this?

• 7:40John Lovell?

  I think the moment we start protecting our kids the same way that we protect our congresspeople and our politicians, all the school shootings are just going to disappear immediately. Even the lefty anti-gun politicians are protected by people with guns, which is extremely hypocritical. We should pause on that, but they're protected by people with guns. Uh, and yet our kids are protected with signs? That's it, really? This isn't a serious solution and they know it. And so I think, uh, the moment you take it, uh, seriously of like, no, let's protect our kids with, with people with guns, just like our politicians are. And the moment you do that, it's just going to disappear. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

• 8:24John Lovell?

  That's it. That's the way to do it.

• 8:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. How exactly would you do it? I mean, the politicians aren't going to do it. They're not going to release the funding. Some things that I've noticed are there are actually some grants available. And so one thing that I think that would help is there's all these companies popping up and some of them actually have pretty cool products. You know, I know there's one company, I think it's Fox Two Sierra. They have the bulletproof whiteboard that you can lock it down in front of a door. Um, there's the new, actually it's not new. We were using this, um, a long time ago and, and various combat zones. The film that you put over the windows. You know, but there are actually grants for these things and.

• 9:09Shawn Ryan?

  I think if the companies that are selling these things actually educated themselves on the grants and had a team to go into these schools and private schools and daycares and preschools and anything where there's kids and not only educated the, the, the business entity on the actual product that they're selling, but also educated them on the grants, this would be a lot, we would see a lot more school security coming into play.

• 9:43John Lovell?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 9:44Shawn Ryan?

  And another thing that, that I see is all these parents, you know, that it's, they don't want to teach their kids anything. They want to, they want the quick fix and it's, hey, let's get a $15 an hour security guard in here because, you know, anybody that gets paid $15 an hour is going to want to put their life on the line for your kid.

• 10:05John Lovell?

  Right.

• 10:06Shawn Ryan?

  Right? And, um, so do you want to expound on that at all, any of that stuff?

• 10:11John Lovell?

  It's pretty straightforward to me of like, hey, if you want to fund it, just take a little fraction of what we're spending on weird gender study ideology or drag shows, whatever craziness is going on. You just pay a cop overtime, uh, to be able to come and just park your car outside, park your cop car outside the building and hang out. And guess what? Bad guys are going to find a different school.

• 10:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:40John Lovell?

  It's just that simple. Now, we can do locks and security windows and all that stuff and that's all good. That's icing on the cake, but you put a cop car outside with an armed cop inside and they're going to find a different place.

• 10:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I'm with you.

• 10:53John Lovell?

  That's it.

• 10:54Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you.

• 10:55John Lovell?

  It's that simple.

• 10:56Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you. But, um, well, hey, everybody gets a gift.

• 11:01Shawn Ryan?

  Before the show actually starts.

• 11:04John Lovell?

  There you go. Awesome.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  So, we take, I don't know how many of these you listen to, maybe you haven't listened to any, but we take mental health extremely seriously here. And I want to get into some mental health stuff with you, especially with your transition back into civilian life, but part of keeping it sharp, part of keeping your mental health, health, part of keeping your mental health up is keeping your brain sharp and giving it the proper fuel. And so, put some stuff in there for you from Laird Superfoods.

• 11:36John Lovell?

  I open now?

• 11:37Shawn Ryan?

  Open it up.

• 11:38John Lovell?

  Alright, I'm looking for one thing in particular.

• 11:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, those are the gummy bears. I know that's the only reason you came.

• 11:46John Lovell?

  It is, it is. And now that I've got them, uh, thanks for having me on, man. I'm gonna, I'm gonna punch out now.

• 11:55Shawn Ryan?

  You're out.

• 11:55John Lovell?

  This has been, this has been real. You know, it's been a ride. Thanks, man.

• 12:01Shawn Ryan?

  But that is, this is all stuff to promote brain health. So, that's performance mushrooms, functional mushrooms have a lot of benefits for your brain. Basically, it regenerates your brain. You can dump that into, there's some functional mushroom coffee in there. And some functional mushroom with adaptogen creamer.

• 12:22John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Shawn Ryan?

  So, if you like the sweet stuff, you want to put the creamer in there, but super good for your brain, clean ingredients, the performance mushrooms, all the ingredients are from the US. We try to source all the ingredients from the US, but main focus is the best and cleanest ingredients. And so, that's what's in there.

• 12:41John Lovell?

  Cool, man.

• 12:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, cool.

• 12:45John Lovell?

  Cool, man.

• 12:46Shawn Ryan?

  Alright, enough of the gifts. Let's move on. Let's get into it.

• 12:51John Lovell?

  How tacky is it to eat my gummy bears while you talk?

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  Hit him up. There's only been one other person that's done that.

• 12:58John Lovell?

  Who was it?

• 12:59Shawn Ryan?

  It was Vivek Ramaswamy.

• 13:02John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Shawn Ryan?

  And right after his first one, I told him that the, I said, don't worry, you'll feel that kick in in about 30 minutes. And I think he thought they were cannabis gummies, but it's just candy.

• 13:15John Lovell?

  Got it.

• 13:15Shawn Ryan?

  So, but, well, John, the way I want to structure the interview is let's dive into, we're going to go through childhood, military career, business career, and then we'll get into some current event stuff and some stuff that we think is some of the biggest issues that are going on in the country today and, and, and address them and hopefully come up with some solutions on how to solve that stuff. But, um, so where did you grow up?

• 13:46John Lovell?

  I grew up in Georgia, kind of the suburbs of Atlanta. So neighborhoods, we had a lot of woods around us. So I had a real happy childhood, being able to just disappear into the woods for the entire day. You come in for a tick check, you know, at the end, hope you don't hit a poison ivy bush. You make forts and, you know, swimming in the lake. And so kind of wild and free.

• 14:09Shawn Ryan?

  Brothers and sisters?

• 14:10John Lovell?

  Two sisters. We had some neighbors as well, and we're kind of sequestered out in our own little private neighborhood. And so, um, yeah, but a lot of alone time, a lot of playing with neighborhood kids, but really in the woods doing stuff.

• 14:29Shawn Ryan?

  Close with your parents?

• 14:31John Lovell?

  Uh, kind of hit and miss, but yeah, pretty much. I've like, I've definitely got a relationship with them. And so, uh, yeah, yeah.

• 14:40Shawn Ryan?

  What did your dad do growing up?

• 14:42John Lovell?

  A businessman. And so he was a really good as a life coach. And so really preparing me for, you know, he wanted to grow you up, get you tough, get you focused, get you disciplined. And so those were the elements my dad really, you know, focused on. Mom, great nurturer. She's shuttling us to soccer practices and to and fro from school and just doing anything she can to. To, you know, be there.

• 15:08Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of stuff were you into? Sports? Anything like that?

• 15:12John Lovell?

  Yeah, soccer, you know, we're talking just when I'm a little guy, right?

• 15:16Shawn Ryan?

  Anytime.

• 15:17John Lovell?

  Okay, well, I got hardcore into wrestling in, in high school years, but before that it was soccer and just playing in the woods kind of stuff, or go karts, or, uh, I was-

• 15:29Shawn Ryan?

  You had go, were you, did your parents put you in racing?

• 15:33John Lovell?

  No, uh-uh. I just had, one year I got the sweetest Christmas present ever, like this, uh, go kart with big doughnut tires on the back and just, that was a great gift.

• 15:44Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. That's one thing we want to try to get our kid into is go kart racing. You can start him at age five.

• 15:49John Lovell?

  Really?

• 15:50Shawn Ryan?

  I'm really excited about this.

• 15:51John Lovell?

  You could, but should you?

• 15:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 15:54John Lovell?

  You won me over. You won me over. I agree then.

• 15:59Shawn Ryan?

  No, we took him to, we took him to a track and it was, he loved it. So I can't wait till he's five. I think they put him in the racing suit, the helmet, and it's pretty neat.

• 16:09John Lovell?

  That's cute.

• 16:09Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, yeah, but, so, were you a troublemaker? A lot of guys that go into special operations were troublemakers when they were littler.

• 16:20John Lovell?

  Uh, so, yeah, I was, I was into trouble, but it's kind of like a little bit more innocent, a little bit more harmless, benign. Uh, now, as a teenager, I'll start getting into real trouble.

• 16:34Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 16:35John Lovell?

  And so, yeah, I was a bad kid. I was a, I was definitely a troublemaker. Uh, but I, I played a smart enough game that my parents weren't really aware of it for a, quite a while.

• 16:48Shawn Ryan?

  A bad kid, so what, what is a, what were you doing?

• 16:52John Lovell?

  I mean, uh, you know, chasing girls, you know, drugs, nothing too hardcore, uh, but, uh, I mean vandalism and sneaking out. Got arrested a couple of times.

• 17:04Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you get arrested for?

• 17:05John Lovell?

  Vandalism.

• 17:07John Lovell?

  Stupid.

• 17:08Shawn Ryan?

  What revandalizing?

• 17:09John Lovell?

  This is, this is all exposed, this is all gone. Uh, cause it was, you know, teenage years, I was pre 18 and I didn't get like cuffed or anything, but you know, it was there. Uh, so, you know, they just release you to your parents immediately. And so, I was sneaking out and just ripping down stop signs and, uh, breaking into like houses under construction and tearing stuff up and just being crazy kids wandering around high as gites and so stupid.

• 17:40Shawn Ryan?

  Well, last night, I believe you had mentioned some type of a traumatic experience that happened maybe when you were 19?

• 17:51John Lovell?

  Yeah, that was a, a, a pretty big pivotal point, uh, for me, uh, leading up to that, at 15, uh, I got busted, you know, just, uh, into some stuff that my dad particularly was real hard on. Mom was too, but dad was ready to take action and they, uh, punched me out to a boarding school. And so I got sent away at 15.

• 18:15Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 18:15John Lovell?

  Uh, and yeah, so I was gone at 15 and I guess the idea is, well, a boarding school will fix him.

• 18:22Shawn Ryan?

  What, what did you, what was the, what was the issue of 15? Why did you get, what was the final straw?

• 18:28John Lovell?

  Uh, my dad particularly looked at all the kids around. It's like, this is the biggest bunch of losers going nowhere I've ever seen. And so he wanted something, uh, he saw, hey, this, this is a way to, to fix it. And so he kind of sent me to this boarding school. It was a real prestigious one. And so it was really good. I, I hated it. I didn't want to be there. And I set records at that school for how much I got in trouble. I was like in-house suspension every week. Uh, I was in trouble all the time.

• 18:58Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 18:59John Lovell?

  Yeah, man.

• 18:59Shawn Ryan?

  What were you getting in trouble for?

• 19:01John Lovell?

  Stupid stuff. A lot of skipping class. I just didn't want to go to class.

• 19:05Shawn Ryan?

  What do you, what do you do if you skips class in a boarding school?

• 19:09John Lovell?

  Uh, you would have in-house suspension and so that was like, uh, they had it arranged where you would have three hours of mandatory study to hall on like, uh, Friday night. And so basically you're in this kind of like cubicle, uh, head down working. There's a mod in the center of the room so you can kind of see everything. So if you're looking around, you get in trouble and you just got to read or do homework. And then Saturday morning, you have another one. And then Saturday afternoon, you have another three hours to, and then, um, I think Sunday after church, which you're required to go to as well. Um, you know, so they really fill up your whole weekend with that. And then guess what? If you really don't want to go to suspension, you just skip that and then you get a double suspension. And so, man, I, I, I got into some trouble.

• 19:54Shawn Ryan?

  What would you do when you skip? Where do you go in a boarding school?

• 19:58John Lovell?

  Well, I had a car.

• 20:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:02John Lovell?

  So I, I'd get in my vehicle and I'd punch out and go do whatever. And so anyway, yeah, I was, you know, uh, yeah.

• 20:11Shawn Ryan?

  So do you live at the school?

• 20:13John Lovell?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. You had alarms on the doors so you couldn't get out at night. You had RAs and then you had adults that lived at the ends of the halls to kind of check in and make sure you weren't doing anything too stupid. So, uh, but even then of like, I was, uh, you know, I wasn't all bad. I wasn't like, you know, devil horns, horrible, you know, kid rail. I, I was really just after having a really good time.

• 20:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:40John Lovell?

  Uh, and I didn't care about school and I didn't really get along with most of the people at school. I had a small circle of friends and we were all devoted to let's have the best time possible. And that, that's what we were really after. Uh, and so, yeah, I, I was, I was a bit wild.

• 20:58Shawn Ryan?

  Did that bring, did that bring a lot of resentment towards your parents that you were in a boarding school?

• 21:05John Lovell?

  It was, you know, I recognized that I was really at fault and I think my parents felt like they were doing the best thing they could. And so, and I'm close to my parents now of like, I love my mom and dad. And so, all water under the bridge. They were, you know, certainly cost them a lot to send me there. And as part of my journey, I certainly didn't want to go there. I hated it. There were some elements I really liked, but generally speaking, I was there because I was forced to be.

• 21:37Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have, did you have, did you grow up with parents that had strong faith? I know you have extremely strong faith now, and you're pretty open about it. And did that develop later on in life, or was that from childhood?

• 21:52John Lovell?

  So, we were kind of, my parents were on their own journey as I was growing up. So, sometimes we'd go to like, an Episcopal church, and then we'd be like, a Methodist church, and then we'd switch and be a Baptist church, and then a non-denominational church, and then kind of back off a little bit. And so, we'd just shuttle around, and I felt like we were all of it, and so, we were kind of none of it. So, I did have some pieces of my background that were definitely of like, under the shadow of the steeple, but none of that really stuck. I played the game some, but that wasn't, that wasn't important to me. And especially when I moved out at 15, I was just kind of done with all the religious stuff. I didn't really, I didn't really care. And so, my parents wanted to

• 22:36John Lovell?

  raise me more in a faith. And I would catch, you know, my dad reading the Bible every once in a while, mom in it more. But anyway, of, and we'd pray before meals, you know? And, you know, they want to hold you to those values, but none of that was really taken very seriously for me. It's kind of check the block nominal Christianity, and I punched out at 15, for sure.

• 23:04John Lovell?

  Well, what happened? What happened at nineteen? I ended up going into college. I majored in fraternity. Uh, I just went wild. That means I'm like, I didn't have a major. I just went nuts. I'm the kid that's like drunk on a Tuesday morning. You're like, why? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So I don't remember a whole lot of that year of college, but somewhere, somewhere in that year, I'm just kinda like, I don't really wanna be here. I wanna do something else. And however the thought came across my brain, and for a whole bunch of reasons that seemed really important at the time, but in retrospect, if it's kinda like, it's hard to even name them, like,

• 23:44John Lovell?

  patriotism, or do something, high speed, army, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I wanted to go special operations, you know? And I had pushed myself really hard in wrestling in, in high school where I'm living it up and being, you know, after party and whatever. I'm also a wrestler and I'm a good wrestler. I'm the school's wrestler, especially at boarding school. So I'm setting records and I am, I'm known for wrestling. I'm very good. Really? Uh, I was good. I was good. Um, so I knew about pushing myself and I knew I can push myself to death.

• 24:21John Lovell?

  I can push myself far past where everyone will give up. I, I realized I, I had heart, uh, and I could just endure horrible misery and suck. Uh, especially my sophomore year, uh, I was, I was weighing about a hundred and twenty by the end of my sophomore year and I wrestled one oh three. So I was cutting seventeen pounds a week, um, by the end of it. It hurt bad. Yeah. Uh, worst I did was eight pounds in a day. That was murder. That was awful. Uh, and the discipline and the drive it took just to cut weight, much less to go out as this just feeling crappy, emaciated wrestler and going out and, and fighting that way for six minutes. It, it was.

• 25:03John Lovell?

  It was tough. It was tough, but uh, that's what I really cared about, you know, wrestling. And it was on the back of that, you know, of, I guess I wanted some challenge. I wanted some fight. I wanted some drive. And whereas in wrestling, I could party it up and I had something for my masculine spirit to contend with. When I got to college, it was kinda like, I was just floating. I was just adrift, having a good time, but I didn't have a mission. And so, uh, special operations, just kind of, I'm gonna go do that.

• 25:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how did that even come on your radar?

• 25:40John Lovell?

  I do not know. I do not know.

• 25:42Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't grow up like infatuated with military, watching the movies, old Vietnam stuff? None of that? It just hit you?

• 25:50John Lovell?

  Just hit me. I thought I could do it and I decided I wanted to do it. And then that, that became the mission. That became what I wanted to do. And so I dropped out of school and I informed my parents and everyone else that I'm gonna go, uh, go into the military. And I'm gonna do something special operations-y. And then I started training myself for it. I was initially gonna go, uh, Navy SEAL.

• 26:16Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 26:16John Lovell?

  Yeah, y'all, yeah, I had all the good PR. You had all the movies, all the books. And so, and I thought I had the hair for it, you know, and so...

• 26:24Shawn Ryan?

  You do have the hair for it, John.

• 26:26John Lovell?

  Yeah, shoulda, woulda, coulda. Um, and so I started doing like cold water training of like, I, I was torturing myself of like just ice cold everything and hold my breath underwater and doing laps all the time and running and doing all this stuff. And in training myself for this, I grew to hate cold water so much. I'm like, is there, can I do the same stuff without all the cold water? And so I discovered what an Army Ranger was. And I'm like, oh yeah, all the SEAL with none of the water.

• 27:02John Lovell?

  And so I jumped tracks. Uh, now the irony is, is I made it through all the Ranger stuff, made it Ranger Battalion and went hypothermic my first week in from Coldwater.

• 27:13Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 27:13John Lovell?

  So that's the, that's the, the funny joke in it all of, I didn't escape the Coldwater after all, but uh.

• 27:20Shawn Ryan?

  When you, what year is this that you're gaining interest in the military and special operations?

• 27:25John Lovell?

  Two thousand.

• 27:26Shawn Ryan?

  Two thousand, so right before nine eleven.

• 27:28John Lovell?

  Right.

• 27:29Shawn Ryan?

  Were you in before nine eleven?

• 27:31John Lovell?

  I was in jump school, or I was in airborne hold. So I was about to go in airborne school when the towers fell.

• 27:39Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 27:39John Lovell?

  So we weren't at war. Uh, but once I got through, you know, your basic A I T, your airborne school, uh, which was a joke, uh, and then RIP, which wasn't a joke, Ranger Indoctrination Program. Now it's called R A S P, Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. By the way, the worst departure from the coolest acronym, RIP. That's a, that's a cool acronym, bro. And, and Army went R A S P, which is a sucky one. So I went through RIP. That was not funny. Like, basic training, you know, A I T, that, that kind of, that wasn't very hard for me. I mean, it was, it was challenging. I had some hard elements, but by and large, I, I thought a lot of it was kind of funny. I got the game and I could play it. Uh, didn't

• 28:19John Lovell?

  really bother me much. And I, I was, I'd really done my, um, I'd done hard work to train. And so I'm annihilating P T tests and, you know, it's my wrestling background. I, I choked out a drill sergeant when we did combatives day. Like, that was a fun thing. And that's, I'm just excelling, uh, you know, throughout, uh, those things. I got through RIP and stuff.

• 28:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's, let's rewind a little bit.

• 28:45John Lovell?

  RIP wasn't fun at all, uh, but.

• 28:47Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's rewind just a little bit. So, how many years of college did you do?

• 28:54John Lovell?

  I did one.

• 28:55Shawn Ryan?

  One year of college?

• 28:56John Lovell?

  Yeah, one year of college. I think I did the summer school in there. Uh, but, um, yeah, later I'd go back after I got in the military and complete a degree and do all that, but.

• 29:05Shawn Ryan?

  Where I'm going is what? What is your, what did your parents think when you told them, hey, I'm done with this, done with school, I'm gonna join the military?

• 29:14John Lovell?

  Nobody who was close to me was really a fan of this. Yeah, nobody, nobody seemed to be a big fan of this. When my parents saw that I could not be dissuaded,

• 29:29John Lovell?

  you know, my dad would be, I think, one of the first to kind of warm up toward it. But I don't recall him being really on board. We did make a bet that if I made it, he'd buy me a motorcycle. And so I still got that Harley Davidson I won in a bet.

• 29:46Shawn Ryan?

  Do you really?

• 29:47John Lovell?

  Yeah, I did.

• 29:48Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 29:48John Lovell?

  Yeah, so.

• 29:49Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of Harley?

• 29:50John Lovell?

  It's a Sportster 1200 and it's all custom out in chrome. So anyway, it's pretty cool.

• 29:56Shawn Ryan?

  You still ride it?

• 29:57John Lovell?

  But, uh, no, I don't, not much, a couple of times a year, just to take it out. But me and my dad, later, much later, we'd do a cross-country motorcycle trip, the two of us, riding side by side in the same lanes. I think we had like 15 different states. That was pretty cool. Kind of closed the loop on that, but jumping way ahead.

• 30:17Shawn Ryan?

  So your parents aren't for you going in the military. You get in, you go to boot camp. What was your impression?

• 30:25John Lovell?

  Uh, not too hard. None of that was extremely difficult. Drill sergeants are yelling at you and you're doing pushups and you're a bunch of wide-eyed privates. And it wasn't particularly scary for me and it wasn't particularly difficult.

• 30:43John Lovell?

  I'd moved out of the house a long time before, you know, and so, and I'd done hard things. And I thought a lot of it was very funny, uh, which caused me to do a lot of pushups. You know, drill sergeant gets up in your face and he's trying to intimidate you. And I just try not to smile and then I'd smile. And after a while, you know, I got dropped for pushups so much more than everyone else because I just couldn't help smiling. I would just, as soon as it would start, I'd just drop myself and do pushups. Got really good at pushups. Uh, but that wasn't, uh, hard. What was ridiculously hard would be the big U-turn that happened in my life, that dramatic experience that you, uh, you had alluded to.

• 31:26John Lovell?

  And this was before basic. So right as I'm transferring from civilian life to military life, you're going to like this holding cell, 30th Oggetent Battalion, 80th AG. And there's where you're like staying in line to get your dog tags and haircuts and here you're getting your BDUs and duffel bags and you're getting shots and whatnot. It's, it's a pretty chill, calm time. You're standing around waiting in line all day. That's it. Uh, there, which would be most people's easiest time in the military was my hardest. And the reason why is I had been, I think through just a divine, um, reckoning,

• 32:08John Lovell?

  uh, God would change my life in that moment. It happened around May 22nd, May 20th, May 22nd of 2001. It's one of the most important dates in my life, uh, because everything that was John level died and I was completely remade in a way that is inexplicable and impossible else to define the massive departure of I was one way and legit, I became completely different in the course of a couple of days. And what happened was, is I had this dramatic conversion to Christian faith. It felt awful. It felt like I was being unmade. It felt

• 32:51John Lovell?

  like my heart was being broken and destroyed. Uh, and then through that, uh, Jesus, uh, would, I felt like in, in, not in this, you know, divine kind of voice, but I just knew in my new knower that Jesus, uh, had called me to give him my life. And it wasn't as much a question of would I, it was more of a directive, you, you will. And I did. And so he crushed me and remade me. And somewhere through all that, I could, I was converted to Christianity. It felt like death and birth at the same time. And I realize how kind of mystical and unsatisfying that would, that would sound for a lot of folks, but I don't really understand what happened to me. I wasn't in church. I wasn't talking

• 33:36John Lovell?

  to a pastor. I wasn't reading a Bible. I wasn't, you know, I didn't feel like this big void in my life. There, there certainly was one. I wasn't after God at all. And he it's like he found me on the road and accosted me. That's what it felt like.

• 33:50Shawn Ryan?

  Can you be a little more descriptive? What were you doing at the exact moment where you when you got that first feeling?

• 34:01John Lovell?

  It was kind of a picture, a water pot or a kettle warming up. And then it comes to a head of like that water's warming, warming, warming, warming. And that's that's happening over the course of a few days. And I didn't let anyone know what was going on with me. But what it felt like is if you've ever had your heart broken, it felt like my heart was being broken. And then if you've ever had a tragedy before you, something awful that just destroyed your heart, felt like that, too. The problem is, is I had no tragedy and I had no heartbreak. But those were the feelings. Through it all, what was happening is I was receiving a miraculous conversion to Christianity,

• 34:44John Lovell?

  where God was giving me a new heart. This is the only way I can describe it. And so, once given that new heart, I was deeply sorry for all the horrible things I'd done throughout my life. You know, through just, I was repenting. I was confessing sin. I had offended God. I had I had not lived to him. And so, you know, through that, he remade me. And I was converted to begin not only resist, you know, not resisting Jesus anymore, but but I've I love Jesus, you know, and that that made every difference. And so, I was truly converted. I became a different man. And I don't know how else to describe it.

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• 36:03Speaker 01

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• 36:34Shawn Ryan?

  Can you maybe describe when you realized? At what point did you realize what was happening?

• 36:42John Lovell?

  So I remember I was making, I was going to call like someone on the phone. Maybe it was my girlfriend, or maybe it was my family. But I found myself, I couldn't even call them. Because I felt like the inside was so tumultuous, I would have just broke down and cried. And I remember not making that call, and I just broke. And I remember praying. And I don't remember what was in that prayer. But I had realized that I had just become a Christian. I was already loaded with enough kind of gospel facts from my upbringing. I'm like, Jesus loves you, and you've sinned, and you should confess your sin. All the things, the gospel facts. You're a sinner separated from God. Jesus, who is God, became a man,

• 37:27John Lovell?

  paid a penalty for you so that you should receive salvation and forgiveness of sins, so that you might as, and so I knew the gospel fact. I just didn't care. It just didn't stick. I hadn't been converted. I knew some facts, but I hadn't been converted. And then I got converted in His time.

• 37:44Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel?

• 37:47John Lovell?

  It was the worst and best moment of my life.

• 37:53John Lovell?

  Felt like death, felt like birth.

• 37:55Shawn Ryan?

  Have you stuck with it the entire, throughout the duration up until now?

• 38:02John Lovell?

  Yes.

• 38:02Shawn Ryan?

  In your life?

• 38:03John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting.

• 38:05John Lovell?

  So I've been, no, not, not perfect. I mean, I, I suck. The, the more I try to be like Jesus, the more I realize I'm nothing like him. And so it, it's, it's a horrible process of just like, man, oh, I, I still suck. So like, but no, I, I've loved Jesus and followed him ever since. It was a permanent change. It was a permanent stick. Now that didn't mean I didn't run, you know, you know, lapse in and do stupid stuff. And, you know, then have to repent again. But the difference is I was actually sorry this time. I actually wanted to please Jesus, not because I had to, because I wanted to. That was a new heart. That was a different change. And I was just, I was a different man.

• 38:47John Lovell?

  And so now today, it's impossible to understand my life without understanding that piece. Some people are like, I'm not religious and, you know, the sky God, your myth, whatever, blah, blah. I get it. I get, but you can't possibly understand the departure from who I was to who I became without that. Because literally all of my success, all victories, all of it, uh, happened, uh, as a result of that pivotal change. That didn't come from me. It wasn't me.

• 39:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Very, very interesting. So this happened at the very beginning of your army career.

• 39:22John Lovell?

  Yeah. And then basic wasn't very hard. And, you know, at this point, I'm like, I remember standing up, uh, after the first night of getting yelled at, and I could tell everybody was taking this bad, this wasn't bad for me. And I stood up, I'm like, hey, guys, anybody want to pray afterwards? I'll be in the center. And so I started leading prayer groups and I'm like, I didn't know jack about Bible, not really. And people had like these questions about Christianity versus other religions versus, and I, I didn't know how to defend that either. And so, um,

• 39:53John Lovell?

  Anyway, I just kind of jumped in, you know, both feet. And I'm like, I guess I'm doing the Christian thing now. And I didn't really know much. So I grabbed a Bible from a local chapel. And I'm just like, all right, let me figure this out. And I started at Genesis one, and I read all the way through to Revelation 22. I just read the whole Bible and fast. And when I was done, I flipped it over and I did it again, and then again, and again, and again. And that's where I learned Bible is through military, you know, trainings and overseas and Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm like, I'm just, I'm just reading it. You know how we are, we're kicked off in these small elements. You don't have access to a chaplain most of the time when you're rolling in special operations units, too small, you know, like

• 40:33John Lovell?

  every once in a while, you go back to some FOB to refit, and then you see your chaplain, you know, like, and that's cool, but they can't be where all these little groups kicked out. And so it was really just me and my Bible.

• 40:45Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 40:46John Lovell?

  For a lot of times. But man, the Lord's grace was great, because I grew in leaps and bounds.

• 40:56Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet. Moving past boot camp.

• 41:01John Lovell?

  Yep.

• 41:01Shawn Ryan?

  Or basic. Where do you go from there? Do you go to airborne? Or do you go to?

• 41:06John Lovell?

  Yeah. You do airborne to figure out that, you know, you just, you just kind of fall out of a plane. You know, you're trying to steer a D10 Charlie, which you can't do. You realize, oh, the slip, which, you know, it's not really doing jacks. And then you just learn how to do a controlled disastrous fall. Airborne school was a bit of a joke. Rip wasn't a joke. That was hard. That was awful.

• 41:32Shawn Ryan?

  Were you nervous going into it?

• 41:34John Lovell?

  Yeah, because you knew that you, it's kind of like brace for impact. And, you know, if like, you hold, you know, out of my basic training class of, I don't know, 70 dudes, every one of them was going Ranger, because it was an infantry basic training. Everyone's going Ranger, and everyone's all pumped up, and they're standing up after lights out, and they're singing the Ranger Creed, or saying the Ranger Creed. And so everyone's super motivated. And you're seeing these guys that you're in basic with go through, and the crowd keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And I think, you know, that Had been whittled down through RIP to be a smaller group. I think out of, you know, all the basics of the guys I knew, I think seven went to second bat with me.

• 42:17John Lovell?

  And after a year, um, I think I was the only one standing from my company. Uh, I think that's right. Um, that was in my rob, you know, uh, in second batter, Bravo company. Yeah. So.

• 42:30Shawn Ryan?

  Let's walk through that entire process. So you show up to RIP. How, how many total are there?

• 42:36John Lovell?

  I don't know.

• 42:37Shawn Ryan?

  Hundred, two hundred?

• 42:38John Lovell?

  Couple hundred, I bet.

• 42:39Shawn Ryan?

  Couple hundred?

• 42:40John Lovell?

  I bet.

• 42:40Shawn Ryan?

  What's the, what's the drop? You're the first Ranger we've had on.

• 42:43John Lovell?

  Oh, well, all right.

• 42:44Shawn Ryan?

  So you're breaking the mold here.

• 42:46John Lovell?

  Yeah. And so the hardest part isn't getting, it, it isn't, uh, getting to Ranger Battalion. It's staying there, you know, that every day is an audition for your own job. See if you get to keep it. Uh, you gotta be good at everything. Uh, when I became a team leader, that was my opening brief when I had new privates. I'm like, all right, guys, it's very simple. I need you to be excellent at everything. That's the job. You know, if you're hotwiring cars, you need to be excellent at that. If you're doing PT, excellent at whatever guns or land nav or radio. I need you to be excellent at everywhere, everything, or you'll be fired. That's the job.

• 43:25Shawn Ryan?

  So anything less than perfection, you're done.

• 43:28John Lovell?

  You say that, obviously you can't, that's not attainable. That's not realistic, but you shoot for the goal and you land it. You're, you become good or great at just about everything that you can be. And, uh, so, uh, RIP was.

• 43:43Shawn Ryan?

  What's the attrition rate?

• 43:44John Lovell?

  I don't know. I just don't know. Ranger School, which would come later, uh, that's more known. You know, of like, I think we started with a few hundred and then that boiled down to, I think like 60 or so. Out of a few hundred and so that Ranger School was less, but you know, it's.

• 44:04Shawn Ryan?

  So there's two. Let's just keep, let's just try to keep it in chronological order.

• 44:09John Lovell?

  Sure.

• 44:09Shawn Ryan?

  So you show up to RIP, correct?

• 44:12John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Shawn Ryan?

  Let's just walk us through day one. What are you saying?

• 44:16John Lovell?

  So what RIP is, is it wants to see what you're made of. And so whereas you're doing some stuff of some land navigation and you're doing road marches and obstacle courses and now we're going to learn knots. And so they have an excuse of what you're doing as if they're teaching you, but really they're just trying to mentally jack you up and make you quit. They're trying to find out whether you're worth investing in. So really it's just a haze fest where they're playing physical and mental games. You know, all the silly games to just jack with people's minds and crush their bodies to see who's going to be standing. And so RIP was just that. It was just four weeks of mental, physical torture.

• 44:58John Lovell?

  Nothing is super intense as something like Hell Week, but maybe something a little bit more general of like BUDs. And I don't know BUDs, but you know, it's like, it's hard, but it's not like crazy hard.

• 45:12Shawn Ryan?

  Are you learning anything or is it strictly a

• 45:17Shawn Ryan?

  an assessment?

• 45:18John Lovell?

  You're learning stuff, but I think in the back, like we're doing combatives and so you are learning stuff. There's the excuse of we're learning this stuff, but really what's under the excuse is we're here to thin the herd. We're here so that we don't send Ranger Battalion, a bunch of dudes that are going to wash out in two months. That's what it is. Like let's, let's get rid of the chaff so that we can just have the wheat left. That's what RIP is.

• 45:46Shawn Ryan?

  Could you walk us through the entire process of RIP from day one to graduation?

• 45:54John Lovell?

  Probably not.

• 45:55Shawn Ryan?

  Why not?

• 45:56John Lovell?

  It's just too far in the past. I don't remember it.

• 45:59Shawn Ryan?

  Is it broken into phases?

• 46:02John Lovell?

  Probably, but now it's even rasp. So I don't even know what they're doing now. I don't even know the length of time, but for me, when it was in, it was four weeks and you know, I mean, road marches, obstacle courses, you're going to do some shooting, you're going to do some land nav. And so you're always doing stuff, learning stuff, but how you're going about it is you gotta screw everything up, pushups right here and like everything, little random PT suck sessions were inserted everywhere. And so there's the excuse, we're giving you training, but really it's just a haze fest.

• 46:34Shawn Ryan?

  What did you find the most challenging in RIP?

• 46:38John Lovell?

  Uh, probably the mental games. Uh, this always worked the wor- you know, best on me and means the worst is when, uh, everyone was punished because of something you did or didn't or failed to do. Uh, that's where I kind of, I had a couple of breakdown points in Ranger School. Actually, one breakdown point Ranger School is where I was failing my Ranger buddy. I, I did not, I could not handle that well. Whereas you torture me, I'm, I'm good with it, but I let that dude down. Uh, I don't really remember doing that necessarily in RIP, but that, that right there is the hardest thing that I had to ever struggle with. My buddy was counting on me. I failed him, you know, and I've done that. I failed someone

• 47:22John Lovell?

  in training before and, and that sucks. That sucks. So with RIP, I just tried to gray man out as best I could, keep my head down and, uh, make it through.

• 47:34Shawn Ryan?

  And sorry, just to backtrack one more time. Where were you when nine 11 happened? You were in jump school, you said?

• 47:40John Lovell?

  Airborne hold. So I was about to go in jump school and then RIP would come after that. And so I think because the war was kicking off, we got a specially potent RIP class because you're about to deploy to war. They don't have a lot of time to fiddle with you. So it was that, I remember it being particularly brutal. And I think there, uh, the, um, you know, Ranger instructor, the RIP instructors, their adrenaline's up because hey, packing for war. You boys better be ready. Let's give you a test. So my assumption is, is that they were really, uh, pretty serious.

• 48:16Shawn Ryan?

  How did that affect your mindset when you saw those towers go down? Did you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to do exactly what I came here to do?

• 48:26John Lovell?

  Yeah, I didn't really think I was going to do the war thing. I thought I was going to live out the army commercial. Then I saw the towers fall and then it got real. Uh, but it kind of hit me in phases of like, at first it's just surreal and then you work out the effects and you're all talking it out like you have any idea. Uh, but, uh, after a couple of weeks, you knew you were going to war. And so it made what you were learning all the more important. I wasn't doing it because this is what we do. I'm like, I need to know this stuff. Uh, things got real. Uh, I wasn't training just to pass. I was training because I wanted to be trained. I wanted to be lethal. I wanted to be hard to kill.

• 49:05Shawn Ryan?

  Did the fact, not the fact that the towers fell, but the fact that you knew you were, you knew you were going to war. I mean, did that excite you? Did that give you any fulfillment? The patriotism, any of that? I mean, you were young.

• 49:22John Lovell?

  Um, I mean, I was deeply angered by the almost 3,000 civilians that were murdered. I was very, very upset with that. And so there's part of me of like, let's go stack some bodies and let's, let's make sure they're so busy playing defense, they never think about offense again against us. And so there was that. Uh, and so whether you wrap that up into, all right, patriotism or whatever, I didn't have a bloodlust. I didn't want to go kill people. My team leader, when I got in, uh, he picked me out of line of, uh, privates, you know, wide-eyed privates. We got to Ranger Battalion, we're standing in a line and he's first down there and he's

• 50:04John Lovell?

  looking at all our records and kind of the paperwork that accompanies you. And he selected me out of the line. And so like, he thought I was going to be the one, you know? And so he, he picked me and I went up to him, but he ended up being quite a sadist, you know, of like, he had a bloodlust. He really, really just, he really wanted to kill people, you know? And I thought it was kind of like, all right, that's the macho game and whatnot. And I, I knew enough about the military, or I was able to be discerning enough to, perspective-wise, back out of the, the pain and the suffering. And I just saw it as one big kind of, all right, this is the game. This is what's happening, you know? Uh, and

• 50:45John Lovell?

  so I was able to kind of, to, to do that a bit. But, um, when I looked at him, I'm like, okay, all right, you're playing the macho guy card. You're, you're the hardcore. You just want to, okay, right, right on. And over time, I'm like, no, I think he's, you know, wax is pretty heavy on the psychopath scale. I think you just wanted to kill people. And so that was my team leader. Now he found out quickly I was a Christian. Reasoned from there that I would be a conscientious objector and where he wanted to raise a psychopathic, cold-blooded killer attack dog, sick 'em. He realized that wasn't gonna be me. Had buyer's remorse and then tried for the next year to make my life a living hell, you know?

• 51:27John Lovell?

  And especially, he wanted to undermine my faith. And so while I am collapsing in pools of my own sweat, he's nonchalantly casually walking circles around me, poking holes in my worldview. So that was my first year in Ranger Battalion. Now, once you're in Ranger Battalion and you prove that, hey, I'm not going anywhere, I can be counted on, I can follow orders, I am no fool, I am tough, I am strong, I am worth investing in. If you prove yourself over a year in Ranger Battalion or so, they'll say, alright, we'll send you to Ranger School. Ranger School is a sixty-ish day suck fest where you learn a lot about leadership

• 52:08John Lovell?

  and embracing the suck, intestinal fortitude, that kind of stuff. So it's just misery and leadership. And they teach a bunch of old outdated Vietnam tactics, which do have some merit if you're, you know, in jungles and stuff like that. But anyway, you make it through that. If you don't make it through that, you're fired. And so I made it through, just straight through, did well, went back, and that's where you can start really developing rank. That's where you're kind of fully welcome in as a brother. Now you, you don't just wear the scroll, the scroll is the unit patch. And that's what makes you a Ranger. Then you get the tab, and that's kind of like now you're a fully initiated brother. Oh, good. You know, and so it's, it's kind of like you go from Padawan to Master.

• 52:54John Lovell?

  So you could have a tab, you've been to Ranger School, and not a scroll, you're not, you're Ranger qualified, but you're not a Ranger. You're not an Army Ranger. It's the unit that makes you a Ranger. That's where, that's what the deadly dude is. It, that, that's the, you are, that is your job. You are among Rangers doing Ranger-y things. You didn't just attend a school and got a tab. So, um, anyway, the kind of full initiated Ranger is Ranger Scroll, unit, Ranger Tab. I proved myself for leadership. And then you can, you know, you come back as a tab spec four, that's a specialist or a corporal. And so you occupy a more respected position in a fire team. And if you do really well there,

• 53:39John Lovell?

  you're going to become a fire team leader. That'll be a sergeant and I'd make it through that. And then if you do real well as a team leader, you become a squad leader and that's what end up, I'd tap out at squad leader.

• 53:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:51John Lovell?

  And then I'd, I'd punch out, go on and do other stuff.

• 53:54Shawn Ryan?

  What was, so getting back to Ranger Battalion, what is, what's a, I can't say a typical day because I'm sure you guys are on the road doing different things all the time, but how is the, how was the training broken up within Ranger Battalion? Do you guys have a cycle? Like, like for example, when I was in, in the SEAL teams, it was pro dev was your school time. That was about six months. Then you have your workup. That's six months. That's working with your platoon, going to all the different, um, you know, dives, a diving block, a CQB block, a land, land warfare block, a maritime block, a jump block. And then you go to, um, I can't even remember what they call it, but that's where you work with

• 54:39Shawn Ryan?

  your counterparts that you're going to deploy with. Maybe you're going to do some training operations with a Ranger Battalion or some, I was an East Coast SEAL. So maybe you're working with some of the West Coast teams, ODAs, whatever. How is, how is sustainment training in Ranger Battalion? How is it broken up? What's the cycle?

• 54:57John Lovell?

  My first day at Ranger Battalion, they packed me for war. So.

• 55:00Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 55:01John Lovell?

  Yeah, that very, step one, packed for war because we were gone immediately. I don't remember how long it was, but a month or two or three, and then we were, we punched out and went over across the pond. So.

• 55:13Shawn Ryan?

  So hold on. So you show up to Ranger Battalion and they're like, get ready in 30 days, we're going to Afghanistan.

• 55:19John Lovell?

  I don't know what the timeline was. It could have been one month. It could have been three months. I don't remember when we punched out, but I know day one, packed for war. Uh, and that's, you know, you always have kind of like they're rotating the Ranger battalions across. So right now, second bat's over, for instance. Uh, first bat's in the hole and third's on deck. And so third is now in kind of like a. Reposture, refit, they're gonna go ahead and take leave and go see family and take a little vacation and and knock out these items where you know, make sure their teeth are fixed and their medical and they're gonna do some training opportunities that you can't do when you're on deck because

• 55:59John Lovell?

  at any moment, you may be wheels up in forty-eight hours or seventy-two hours of like, hey, we're going. You know, there's one time I went to war of like, uh, we didn't know and we're just on alert and any day you could have gone and we lived that way for, you know, a month or three and then all of a sudden it was the day and you can't tell anyone you remember how it was. You can't tell anyone you're leaving, you just disappear. Uh, and so you had to be ready. Uh, so I don't know what Ranger Battalion was like before war, because all I did was war with a Ranger Battalion. Uh, but much like the teams, we had areas of, uh, focus. So I'm like, all right, we're gonna do

• 56:37John Lovell?

  uh, a rotary wing, uh, operation. We're gonna go down to, you know, Texas and do such and such and it's gonna be the CQB hit with moving an urban terrain around and then we're gonna move at, you know, after that, uh, the dust has settled on that. We're gonna go learn explosive breaching and we get bring in this person uh, to do that. And, uh, now we're doing range workup and now we're gonna travel and do some medical stuff. Then we're gonna do some vehicle stuff and then, uh, you're just always being cross-trained so that you can be this renaissance man of lethality, you know, so. Uh, much the same that you guys are doing of like, you got the fundamentals and basics. You're always shooting

• 57:21John Lovell?

  and you're always working on movement and communication, all that jazz. And then you're, you know, kind of using these con skills, these pushouts where you're, you're, you're getting specialized training in areas of focus, so.

• 57:34Shawn Ryan?

  How is the, how was the team broken up? Or the entire battalion?

• 57:39John Lovell?

  Sure.

• 57:39Shawn Ryan?

  How was it broken up?

• 57:40John Lovell?

  So battalion is separated into like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie Company. And then you'll have a headquarters or, you know, in that headquarters, you may have like a recce element or your snipers and stuff, you know, so it's kind of, that's the junk drawer of Rangers. But an Alpha Bravo and Charlie Companies. And so, and then within that, you're going to have platoons, a first, second and third platoon. And then you have like a headquarters platoon or a weapons platoon, fourth. And then of that, a platoon, which 30 ish, 40 ish dudes, depending on how heavy. Right now recruitment's so low, that may be like eight dudes, you know? I have no idea.

• 58:22John Lovell?

  So, but you know, 30, 40 dudes, you know, guns attached or mortars or snipers, you know, you're kind of flexing here and there and just based on numbers. We got down real lean, you know, after we're around year of 2005. They use special operations so much in the war. We all just got burnt out and people just started ETSing or punched out of like, this is too much. Just constantly going back and forth and just wore you out. And it's not like we're guarding gates, we're hunting bad guys. We may run two or three different missions in a night. You know, I remember in Afghanistan, on one particular deployment, I slept in a different geographical location in that country every single night for a month.

• 59:03John Lovell?

  Cause we're just traveling at the speed of human, SIG, we're punching around just wherever, hey, somebody made a phone call up here, we think we're, you know, it's the jack of clubs and we're going to go up and try to find that dude. And so, for example, and so we're just traveling at the speed of intelligence all over the place and just wear you out after a while. And so we got down to a real lean and then other times you get.

• 59:28John Lovell?

  Pretty fat, but uh, oh, and then a platoon's broken up into uh, uh, four squads. First, second, third, and a weapons squad. Uh, and then a squad is broken up into teams and that's, you know, three or four dudes.

• 59:42Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. How, so when you guys deploy, when second bat deploys, do you all deploy together as one? Or are different, is Alpha, Bravo, Charlie going to different locations, different countries?

• 59:56John Lovell?

  The typical plan is, is a battalion would uh, deploy all together. That did not always happen.

• 1:00:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:04John Lovell?

  But that, that's the general idea.

• 1:00:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. What about, how is the team kind of broken up into, is it different expertises? Like, do you have

• 1:00:17Shawn Ryan?

  breachers, snipers, communications guys, or is everybody? Does everybody do everybody's job?

• 1:00:25John Lovell?

  The general idea is, is to have as much uh, cross-training as humanly possible. So, we're not going to be nearly as uh, specified as something like a group guy. You know, where they'll get real into the weeds, but you'll do certain con skills. And so, uh, Jason here is going to be like our master breacher. And he's been to the schools and we're all pretty good at breaching of like, I love blowing doors. And so I had this leg bag I always carried, leg bags are, are dorky, but when it's filled with a bunch of deck cord, it's pretty cool. So I had the leg bag whenever we were running around uh, clearing cities. Cause I'm like, yeah, let's blow some doors open. And so I kicked open a lot of doors.

• 1:01:06John Lovell?

  I blew open a lot of doors, but um, you know, and so all of us knew how to blow open doors, of course. But when there was something spicy of like, we want to, we want to shape charge. You know, hey, we got a safe and Jason's like, I got it. You know, he's the guy who's gonna be able to do that. Uh, in the absence of a medic, one of us is going to be pretty darn schooled up. I, I took the medical con skills. So I went and got my EMT certificate. Uh, you know, and I went through EMT school so that I was pretty good at the medical stuff. I liked doing the medical stuff. Now, that wasn't my job. I just. I dorked out on that. And so we were all generally cross-trained, but in all the necessary

• 1:01:47John Lovell?

  areas, you wanted your, within your squad, somebody who really rocked at that.

• 1:01:54Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:54John Lovell?

  You know, you need somebody who is not just good at land nav. They're a savant. All of us can land nav. Anybody can, most of us, especially a TAB spec four or a sergeant, you can pick up and do good land nav. But you got Blaine, who is, he's the dude. You want him on point. He's gonna rock it. You know, and so we have some specificity within, but everyone's pretty cross-trained.

• 1:02:20Shawn Ryan?

  What, um, so what's the kind of the culture for a new guy showing up? I mean, it's, you kind of went through it a little bit. You definitely got hazed. What, what happens? I mean, when do you start to get accepted and people quit messing with you? You know, and it's like, hey, John's gonna be here. John's solid layoff him. Like he's part of us now. When, at what point, what does it take to prove yourself within Ranger Battalion?

• 1:02:46John Lovell?

  Everything's become so sissified in culture and in the military. I have no idea.

• 1:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  Not now, back then.

• 1:02:54John Lovell?

  But back then, man, you, you show up and they, uh, your life is gonna be real bad because they don't care that you've been through RIP or whatever. They'll look down on the stuff of like, no, no, you, you know, nothing and now you start. Now it starts. So it's like, oh, well, he's been to RIP, so he must be good. Nope. They're gonna see for themselves. And you wanna know whether, hey, is this guy really got my six? Can I really count on this dude? Is this a quitter? Does his, what's his character like? What's his attitude like? Do I want to be around this guy? And so all elements of the person come together. It's not just how good of a shooter you are of like, do you fit within this culture?

• 1:03:36John Lovell?

  Can I count on you? Are you tough? Are you an idiot? You know, of like, what am I dealing with here? And so everything is a test. You know, and yeah, uh, and it's gonna be real painful. Mental, physical games until you prove yourself. Now, once you get back from Ranger school and you got a TAB. Now, it's a completely different culture shift. Now, it's kind of like, you're not getting dropped for pushups. You know, unless you did something really jacked up. And if you did something really jacked up, you're going to be given the respect of you'll be pulled into a room. Typically, if you've got good leadership, and you'll be privately reprimanded. Privates will be publicly reprimanded and shamed and anything. Depends on the leadership.

• 1:04:21John Lovell?

  I led differently than those who led me initially. I was on an entirely different leadership journey where I kept some stuff and then incorporated my own leadership strategies as well, which I found better in some ways. So, yeah.

• 1:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you came in at, we came into the military at basically the same time period. And so, you know, there was, I don't know a lot of the history of the Rangers, but we came in, well, me and you came in in 2001 timeframe, you know, pre 9/11. There was a long stretch minus, or maybe just with a few things where where men could have gotten combat experience.

• 1:05:08John Lovell?

  Right.

• 1:05:08Shawn Ryan?

  For Rangers, I know Somalia was a big one, obviously. And, you know, I guess maybe a little bit, maybe in Desert Storm.

• 1:05:18John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Shawn Ryan?

  But there wasn't, there wasn't a lot. There was a long time period from Vietnam to 9/11, 2001, when it was really peacetime. So, so I was a little hesitant to ask you, you know, what was the turning point? Because you, you kind of mentioned you had been rushed. It was almost a rush to get you out the door to war. So, what was that, did that create any kind of animosity from a guy? Let's say a guy that's been in Ranger Bat for 15 years and it was all training and peacetime. And now you have John Lovell, who joins in 2001 and is going to war.

• 1:06:04Shawn Ryan?

  His first year at Ranger Bat. You know, did that create a lot of animosity within the community? Because you have junior Rangers who now have more experience and had seen more, done it for real than guys that have been in 10, 15, 20 years.

• 1:06:21John Lovell?

  I don't know, because I wouldn't have been fraternizing with those dudes who were fuller up. Now, guys who are like, alright, you got your squad and your low man on totem pole, and you got your spec fours, and you got your team leaders, and you got squad leader, platoon sergeant. There, I don't think at that level, at the platoon level, you're gonna have a lot of that, because they need you to be awesome. You know, and so, we were ready to gear up to be a dangerous, well-oiled, functioning machine. And, you know, I don't think they were looking down on that bolt with condemnation, knowing you need that bolt to stay in place for that engine to run well.

• 1:07:05John Lovell?

  So, I didn't get that sense, but I was in such dire straits of just scary war. I am undertrained. I am trying to, you know, stay alive. There's lots of kind of hazing amidst this. There's the power curve is so immense. The sociological, you know, grudges that high ranks would have toward me, I would be oblivious of.

• 1:07:34Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Well, hey, let's, let's take a break. And then when we come back, we'll pick up with your first deployment, what that brief was like, what you felt.

• 1:07:42John Lovell?

  Sounds good.

• 1:07:43Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. Next, on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:07:49John Lovell?

  I was kicking open some palace doors. Kick, kick, kick. And then the door flings open. And immediately coming through the fatal funnel of the doorway, we took incoming fire screaming right past me.

• 1:08:07John Lovell?

  I was a sawgunner at the time. I came up and I shot him in the face and just dropped him. I'd never killed someone that close.

• 1:08:15Shawn Ryan?

  My first mission, real mission, was in Haiti. And we didn't really see much. At the time, it was the biggest deal that I had ever encountered. How did you mentally prepare?