75th Ranger Regiment Recce Platoon Leader | Dustin Ward (throwback episode)

original airdate 4/7/23 Dustin Ward served with the 75th Ranger Regiment with the Recce section and worked on special programs in Afghanistan. Grab Dustin's Lite Sleeping Bag!⬇️ https://thelitesleeper.com/ To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Speaker 02

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

• 1:22Jack Murphy?

  Welcome to episode 201 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with David Park. And our guest on tonight's show is Dustin Ward. Dustin served in the infantry as a sniper and in the long-range reconnaissance teams, and then went over to the Ranger Regiment and served as a platoon sergeant in the Battalion Recce Section, amongst other positions that you had over there. Dustin, thank you for coming out here to godless New York City.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  I appreciate it, man. Thanks for the invite.

• 1:53Jack Murphy?

  Fly it up here, man. It's awesome to have you here in person.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:57Jack Murphy?

  So, look, we're going to start at the beginning. So, tell us about, you know, kind of like how you grew up and sort of like what it was that sort of like directed you towards the military.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  What's your origin story? My origin story? Yeah. Um, so I was born to a military family. My dad was in the air force, served twenty-two years. Uh, my mom was a typical stay-at-home mom, military spouse. I have a brother as well, who's five years younger. Uh, moved around a lot, was born in Mississippi. And then we pretty much ended up in North Dakota for the majority of my life. Uh, my dad worked on B-52s. So, might not, North Dakota, a great place, if you've got a chance to go. Um, towards the end of that, uh, moved down to Texas, and that's where I graduated high school and joined the army and stuff. But, you know, growing up, I said, had an awesome

• 2:47Speaker 04

  household. Uh, my dad was gone a lot, T D Y, taking care of the family. Mom took care of us at home, and I just had this, uh, outdoorsman, military mentality growing up. Like, I wanted to, I was always one of my dad's B D U's, where I was outside playing, uh, set up hide-and-seek, we called it manhunt.

• 3:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  To make it more manly. Uh, but anytime I went back to my grandparents' house in Missouri, I was out in the woods. Um, you know, I've probably, I've probably been shooting guns since I was, you know, six years old. Um, shooting twenty-twos and, you know, hunting squirrels, hunting deer. Um, I always knew I was gonna join the military. I think one of my favorite movies still to this day, as dumb as it is, is, uh, The Rock.

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. It's a great movie. It's a lot of fun.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a good movie, and I, I just remember having like a little play MP5, and I had this, somewhere this little battery charger for a Game Boy that had a cord, and I'd put it in my ear like it's an earpiece. My dad freaking out, he thought I was gonna shock myself with this battery charger. But, I don't, I don't know, I always had this, uh, this war mentality. Um, I think every able-bodied male should serve their country in some aspect, and that's the route I took. Um, I did initially join the air force after high school. I was in the DEP program. I was gonna pass all the pre-rex, and I was gonna be a PJ.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  But they told me, hey, we'll call you within six months to leave for basic. And I was like, no, man, I quit my job yesterday. So I took a year off after high school, just kind of enjoy after high school life. And uh, they're like, well, that's not gonna happen because there's only so many pipelines a year and you have to hit the pipeline at a certain time or go to basic at a certain time, something like that. So I walked across the hall, the army recruiter and walked in and there's this big cardboard cutout of a, you know, Green Beret standing there. He's like, what do you want to do? I was like,

• 4:49Speaker 04

  I jump out of planes and shoot people, man.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  How do I do that? And he showed me the old cliche, you know, Ranger recruiter view, guy coming up out of the swamp.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  He's actually my friend now. I know. It's kind of funny.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  We, we have that. Well, we have the, the documentary over there.

• 5:05Jack Murphy?

  The VHS.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, the VHS.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  His name's Mike Connor. But uh, show me that and this, like I say, cliche, he put his arm around me. I was like, that could be you, man.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  I was like, you're right.

• 5:15Jack Murphy?

  Got another one.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  I was like, that could be me. He's like, yeah, sign here, you leave in two weeks and here's $20,000. I was like, sweet.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Uh, you got an enlistment bonus for that?

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  That's fantastic. What, what year was this?

• 5:28Speaker 04

  It was oh, five.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 05

  So the world was already kind of on fire in terms of like,

• 5:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 05

  Military and yeah.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I remember, I remember when the war kicked off in oh, three, not the Afghan war, obviously, but the Iraq war and my buddy and I, you know, at the time, I think it was AOL, IM, you know, AIM, so they're messaging each other like, oh my God, we need to hurry up. The war's gonna be over by the time we get out of high school. Lo and behold, 20 years later, still going on. So plenty of time to enjoy the war. But uh, yeah, they gave me a bonus. It was a special forces intent bonus. Just the intent, didn't actually have to go.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Joined the army in oh, five, January oh, five.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Now, did they have an X-ray program at that time?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  They did. I was in 11 X-ray.

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Dodge that bullet.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  Oh, an 11 X-ray. Yeah, I went in 11 X-ray too. I meant an 18 X-ray though. Could you go, could you enlist straight into it?

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Uh,

• 6:27Jack Murphy?

  So you dodged that bullet. What, what does Les say about all this?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Les, awesome guy, man. That's why I'm here. It's because of Les. He told me to give a shout out. So I'll give a shout out to Les. But um, yeah, did not become an 11 Charlie, became 11 Bravo. I don't know if 18 X-ray program was a thing at that time.

• 6:43Jack Murphy?

  I think it was around by then.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Was it? Okay. So I went to, I went to S of A S in oh, seven, and there was some 18 X-rays there. So it might have been.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Now, so for people who are watching and don't know, uh, in, you know, in the military jobs, the MOSs, the 11 series is the infantry series. And, uh, the Charlie, well, uh, Bravo is rifleman, Charlie is mortar man. They also used to have 11 mics, which was motorized and all that was still a thing.

• 7:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  But when you go in X, you're gambling, you're rolling the dice.

• 7:19Jack Murphy?

  I, I think, I, I think all of us were 11 X-ray. I don't think you can go in specifically for a Bravo.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  Oh, you can't.

• 7:26Jack Murphy?

  I don't think you can, no.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Now, did you know you were rolling the dice?

• 7:30Speaker 04

  No, I did not.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  They did not explain that at MIPs, so.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, uh, so you, you go to basic, um, do all that. And then where, where do you go from, from there?

• 7:50Speaker 04

  So I graduated basic training in May of oh, five.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  And you got 11 Bravo.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Got 11 Bravo, went to Fort Lewis, Washington, um, kind of my basic training cohort. At that time, there was a unit standing up at Fort Lewis called a second cavalry regiment, T C R. Uh, they just moved up there from Fort Polk, I think. But they're standing there, ended up. So we were the first lower enlisted guys there besides, you know, senior leadership. Um, when we showed up,

• 8:19Speaker 04

  the first question they asked was, hey, out of all you who qualified expert in basic training, kind of raised my hand like sniper section. I was like, hell, yes.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  Sweet.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  That worked out.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  And the funny backstory with that is, you know, my mom would tell the story and she'll laugh about it, but, uh, I was probably in fifth or sixth grade. We're at like a family reunion down in Missouri somewhere. And one of my relatives asked me what I, what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I said something about being an assassin.

• 8:54Speaker 04

  And my mom, my mom looked at me and looked at my relatives like Dustin, shut up. Do not say that. I was like, sorry. But, uh, well, I went to sniper section. I called my mom like next day. I was like, guess what?

• 9:08Jack Murphy?

  I made the same mistake when my, my high school guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to do with my life. And I said, I want to join the military and be a sniper. This very nice woman sat there. She said, well, follow your dreams.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  I, I, I mean, if we're all going to embarrass ourselves, like when I went to the army recruiter and asked them about special forces, I asked them if there was a knife guy. I wanted to be the knife guy.

• 9:34Jack Murphy?

  The knife throwing expert.

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, because I thought there was a demo guy. There was a gun guy. There was.

• 9:41Jack Murphy?

  That's what G I Joe led us to believe.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  That is where G I Joe and the A team is where I got my knowledge on special forces.

• 9:48Jack Murphy?

  Nice.

• 9:51Jack Murphy?

  So you became an assassin for the army?

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Came an assassin for the army. I did that from oh, five to oh, eight. In that timeframe, I did a, uh, well, that unit I was in reflagged to second infantry division. And then we deployed to Iraq for 15 months during the surge. We spent three months in, uh,

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Baghdad. That was about three months in Baghdad and then went and ripped out with a new unit or unit replacing in, uh, Bakuba or Bakuba, however you want to say it. And five warhorse. We spent the rest of deployment there. And that was, uh, that was the wild west. That was a.

• 10:29Speaker 05

  Now, out of curiosity, uh, you know, you were one of the first guys to show up to the sniper section, this newly formed unit. Um, did they send you to the army sniper school like immediately?

• 10:40Speaker 04

  No, I didn't go until it's like March of oh, six.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  And then did they have anybody with experience come on to be like the?

• 10:49Speaker 04

  We all went together.

• 10:51Speaker 05

  So there was.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Team leader and all shooters went to sniper school together.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  So.

• 10:58Speaker 05

  One of the, one of the challenges with snipers sometimes is having somebody who can teach young officers how to properly employ snipers, right? How did you guys manage that, especially for your first deployment?

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Uh, so they had this course at the time called the Sniper Employment Officer Course.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  And I can't remember if our P L went to it or not, but I mean, he was all about letting us do our thing and he didn't micromanage us at all. He's like, hey, whatever ranges you want, whatever shooting you have to do, you know, you guys go do that and just be proficient at your task. And we got a, we got the M one, M one oh seven Barrett's. We got those and they held a course kind of locally on Fort Lewis for that, just to kind of break them in and get to know the weapon system. Um, so he came to that to kind of learned, learned the job a little bit.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  But yeah, um, the squad leader I had at the time, one of my favorite squad leaders I've ever had. I look up to him to this day and kind of based my leadership skills off him. Um, he was, he had that S F mentality of everyone needs to know everybody's job and, you know, just kind of spread the knowledge. And he, uh, he was prior service, got out, came back in. So he had some experience, already done a couple of deployments, but he was a, he let us do our thing. It was good.

• 12:24Speaker 05

  That was awesome.

• 12:24Jack Murphy?

  So what was the mission up at Bakuba?

• 12:28Speaker 04

  So it's funny, uh, when we were in Baghdad, uh, JSOC was obviously operating in Iraq. And they were doing the, at the time, I think we called them T S T missions at time system target missions and they would, you know, get a lock on a guy and launch. Well, there were so many targets, they didn't have enough personnel to get all these targets. So they came down and trained us how to do it. The sniper platoon or sniper team, battalion snipers and battalion recce platoon, which I was in. Snipers are part of battalion recce in the big army. Trained us how to do it and how to use the assets and everything. So we tagged along to that mission. We were sharing targets with them, which was probably one of the better ways to spend 15 months.

• 13:11Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Cause the rest of the line companies, they were out in a little outpost in the middle of the city, just burning poop in a barrel, you know, it felt so bad for those guys. Cause we just got hit a target, come back and go to sleep.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  And like, but that's, uh, that was our target set or mission set of what we did for 15 months, go out almost every night. And we did, you know, it varied from based off the target and based off what happened when we got to the target, you know, doing silent entries and silent clears and waking them up in their sleep and like taking their guns from them while they're sleeping.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Legit, like taking their guns from them while they're sleeping and then waking them up.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Like, hey, sorry, we're here.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Um, or be a, you know, cord on and call out, that just depend on the situation.

• 13:59Speaker 05

  And about what year was this?

• 14:01Speaker 04

  That was oh, seven, oh, eight.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  Okay. Yeah. So people had kind of moved beyond the explosive breaching when they could do something else generally. Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. We didn't do any explosive breaching.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Well, we didn't have that capability in the big army.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  I think the most explosive breaching we did, we'd drive a striker through the gate.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  It worked. So they kept you guys pretty busy. And I mean, that was a busy time in Iraq to begin with. Like I said, uh, Baku is the wild west. When we showed up, the sister unit we were replacing from third brigade to ID, we were fourth brigade to ID, they were third brigade to ID. And, um,

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I think they had like 12 working strikers at the time when we showed up, cause they were just getting blown up. There was like 70 SIGACs a week when we got there. And then after us for, after us being there for.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  I don't know, three or four weeks, it dropped to like 12 cig acts a week. And we put hurting hurting on them so bad. I mean, the biggest ID is going off, maybe pop a tire on the striker. And there were some suicide bombers that, you know, hit us, hit personnel. But as far as like vehicle IDs, they weren't doing much.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  What, what did you guys do to change the tempo?

• 15:20Speaker 04

  A strict curfew. And then every military age male got

• 15:26Speaker 04

  pretty much rounded up and then put in the bat hide system.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Um, so biometrics.

• 15:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Rounding them all up, put them in bat hide system and then yeah, strict curfew. And then

• 15:39Speaker 04

  I won't say any names, but uh, I mean, like an ID would go off somewhere. And this wasn't my directing it as another company. But I remember ID would go off. And if he saw a dude on a phone anywhere near that, he'd just shoot him.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  And they learned like, hey,

• 15:57Speaker 04

  don't mess around.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  These guys aren't playing. And uh,

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Baghdad was uh, that was hot at the time too, before we went to Bakma.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  We were responsible for uh,

• 16:12Speaker 04

  putting in all the T walls. I don't know if you guys remember that. All the T walls through Baghdad, Dora Sector, uh, which was, there's a lot of infighting between Sunni and Shia. They were just murdering each other left and right. And I think it was like our second or third week during RACI rides for the entire deployment. I mean, we just pulled out and there's like five dudes hogtied and executed on the side of the road. And like, what the heck is going on? And you bang on the door and like, hey, what's up with the bodies in the road? They're like, what bodies?

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  This house is gonna be, huh?

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  And uh, it was, it was hot.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  It was a good time.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  So what were, what were your, uh, when you weren't working for, you know, doing the T S Ts? What was sort of the conventional army? Were you guys doing a lot of presence patrols? Was there a lot of, were there a lot of targets that you?

• 17:06Speaker 04

  They, uh, they did just clearance ops. It was almost like a, it was just a vicious endless cycle. You start in this sector and start working your way around the city. And by the time you get back here, you're starting all over again. Cause all the guys you pushed out of here are down here now, you know? So they just, just kept doing that. We did a lot of, uh,

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Palm Grove clearing.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  Um, just online, walking through these palm groves and 120 degree heat, you know, trying to find caches.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  IEDs and stuff.

• 17:38Jack Murphy?

  Did you find a lot?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, we did.

• 17:39Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. I remember distinctly one time, it got handed over to us. We didn't find it specifically. We went out and took it over because I think the people that found it, uh, detained the personnel and then left with them. And then we took over the site. But I mean, there was over 500 anti-tank mines double stacked, like in rows, like almost in a, like a farmer's field. They're just lined up, you know? Like five or six 55 gallon drums filled with initiators and timers and God, how many, uh, like 200 five gallon jugs of nitric acid. There's a suburban rigged with a VBID like ready to go. I mean,

• 18:21Speaker 04

  the funny thing is after we gathered all that and bipped it and whatever, um,

• 18:27Speaker 04

  the EOD guy, he's like, yeah, we probably knocked this cell out for like two weeks. I'm like, that's it? Two weeks, like all that for two weeks? It was crazy, man.

• 18:37Jack Murphy?

  You guys demo it in site?

• 18:39Speaker 04

  EOD did.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  Did you, now being in like the sniper, was it a section or a platoon?

• 18:47Speaker 04

  Uh, we had, it was just a section. Two teams, a team, a squad. In the recce platoon.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  Okay. So, so you were, you fell under recce then?

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:57Speaker 05

  So how did you guys operate in that environment? Were there a lot of sniper specific missions? Were you working with recce a lot? Or were you just kind of folded in to the line units?

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Folded in, um, we didn't fold in with the line units. We did our own thing with the T S T missions with recce.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  Uh-huh.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Pretty much Overwatch as the regular platoon was hitting a compound. Or if a, if a line company was doing like a med cap, we would go out there and do Overwatch while they're doing like a med, med cap. Or uh, hand out soccer balls at a school. We'd pull Overwatch while they're doing that. Leader, platoon leadership changed out through deployment. And we had one, one PL that he was a, he was an ex SF guy, enlisted SF guy and went OCS.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  But he, he was all about us doing what snipers do. And he's like, hey, I don't care where you guys go, what you do, as long as you follow ROE, give me attendance to grid and have a radio. So we'd trunch off into the hinterlands with, you know, three or four guys and radio.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  That's fantastic. I mean, it, you know.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Just watch for guys in place and IDs.

• 20:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, and the reason I said it's fantastic for people to know, like, and especially in conventional, but in any unit. There, there's really a lot of, there are a lot of rules. There's a lot of control. There's not a lot of uh, freedom for you guys to do. But if you guys kind of do your own missions.

• 20:27Jack Murphy?

  A lot of younger PLs don't understand how to utilize any sort of like special unit or special team, be it mortars, snipers, reconnaissance, you know? So it's cool that.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  I'd say they don't, not to bash new PLs, but they don't understand. They don't want to get, they don't want to get in trouble. They don't want to get in trouble either. They don't want to overstep.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  But that mission, I wouldn't say mission, but letting us go out and three or four guys do our own thing was, you know.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  We're sitting in this house one, one day, and just an example. Sitting in this house, over watching this river and this bridge and just waiting for something to happen. But unbeknownst to us, there was a big army. I think it was first cav or something like that. Whatever the big army unit is with the horse and the slash.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  Cav.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Cav, yeah. They were doing this big clearing operation through the palm groves that we were in that they didn't know we were there.

• 21:27Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  And they, we saw them coming, we could hear them coming and they ended up hitting the house that we were up in.

• 21:33Speaker 05

  Oh shit.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  We were yelling down the stairs like, hey eagle, eagle, eagle.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  You know, and I remember this first time where he kind of like stomped in like, it's my house.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Why aren't you wearing your patrol belt?

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 05

  PT belt. Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Pretty much what it seemed like, but uh, he's like, who are you guys? I'm like, hey, we're sniper section with this unit. And he's like, okay.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  What are you guys doing? And we kind of told him. And it was towards the end of our mission time window anyways. And we're getting ready to exfil. And uh, we're like, hey, you're going the direction we're going, right? He was like, yeah. I was like, do you mind if we exfil with you guys? He's like, nah, man, go ahead. Thank you.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  Just keep it out of your camp. Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. It was like middle of the day.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  That's awesome.

• 22:18Jack Murphy?

  And I also just want to give a, a quick promo to the show. If you guys go.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  A shout out to us.

• 22:24Jack Murphy?

  A shout out to us.

• 22:25Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 22:27Jack Murphy?

  If you look down the description, uh, there is a link to our Patreon if you want to support the channel and you want to have access to all of these episodes ad free. Um, so go down there and you jump on our Patreon. It's uh, just $5 a month. And also please uh, like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Really appreciate it, guys.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  Look, I, I, uh, you know, your $5 a month keeps us in the booze.

• 22:51Jack Murphy?

  And also pays for our legitimate uh, FiOS internet connection. So we don't have uh, inappropriate hiccups in the stream.

• 22:59Speaker 05

  And also keeps us in the booze.

• 23:01Jack Murphy?

  More, more of that. Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 06

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• 23:18Speaker 07

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• 23:29Speaker 06

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• 24:58Jack Murphy?

  So Dustin, you're, after this deployment, you, at that point, you went over to LERS, right?

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, towards the tail end of that deployment, the first time I came over and said they're setting up a core long-range surveillance unit at Fort Lewis. And if anybody was interested in going and kind of a military history buff, like even when I was a kid, I had like flashcards of, you know, Fokker airplanes from World War I and World War II and everything. Big military buff. So I knew what LERS was based off Vietnam LERS books and everything. So I raised my hand, I raised my hand and I was like, yeah, I'm interested because I always wanted to go do something special. I looked at it as like the next step up the ladder. I wanted to do it right. And my eyes, right, was working your way up. I mean, ask me, you just go to selection, but, or just join as

• 25:49Speaker 04

  an ATX. But, uh, yeah, so I went to that.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  October oh eight is when I went to LURS tryouts. And it was, it wasn't anything crazy, just road march, PT test, swim test, stuff like that, land nav. And then.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I went there October oh eight, then January oh nine. I mean, went straight to pre ranger ranger school, airborne school, everything, and then. Deployed that next summer in oh nine. I was only home for like a year, went for another year to Iraq.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  Now, can you tell us the difference between how a recce unit, a recce element might be used in a LURS unit? Is there a functional difference between them?

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Compared to?

• 26:36Speaker 05

  The recce, like the rec, you know, you went from snipers, you know, kind of under recce to LURS.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  So LURS reconnaissance detachment operates at a company level.

• 26:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  By itself. The LURS company operates at a battalion level.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  So at a platoon detachment level, we're doing M D M P. Instead of T L Ps.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  So we're. Mission planning at a battalion level for a six man operation. Or a platoon operation. Versus a big army recce platoon, just doing T L Ps like in ranger school.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  And our reporting criteria and C C I R is going much higher than.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  A big army battalion recce. Is going to a brigade, battlefields of rounds brigade, which then reports to the core. And can really shape strategically, I wouldn't say strategically, but theater.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Instead of tactically.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  Strategically theater, in terms of theater.

• 27:40Jack Murphy?

  And you, and the, the worse units are interesting in that they really are, other than maybe R R C. The closest to the Vietnam WARP teams, six man teams going out and if you'll pardon my little digression, my little rant I have, and I'd be interested to hear your opinion, Dustin. The Army keeps disbanding WURF units and then restanding them up. And how many times have we seen them do that just during the GWOT era? You kind of lived through some of that. I mean, what's your feelings about how we keep seesawing between this and really the capabilities of WURF and what you guys bring to the table as opposed to all the drones and the SIGINT and IMINT and all these other technological capabilities that have been great for the military.

• 28:25Jack Murphy?

  But is there still a relevancy to that six man team on the ground?

• 28:30Speaker 04

  In my personal opinion, professional opinion, there will always be a relevance for boots on the ground intelligence. Yes, you know, IMINT and drones and SIGINT and all that is great. Technology is awesome. The stuff we do with technology is mind blowing. But can a drone see through the clouds?

• 28:49Jack Murphy?

  Bad weather?

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, bad weather.

• 28:52Jack Murphy?

  Inside a building?

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Can those vehicles drive through a muddy road? No. Can six guys walk through that muddy road? Yeah. Can six guys sit in a hide site for four to five days at a time and watch an objective, you know, the entire time persistently? Yeah. Can a drone do that? No, it has to go refuel.

• 29:09Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  It's got to bring up another drone and hopefully have a good handoff on IMINT or SIGINT and then bad weather can force them out too. I would say that the limiting factor for, you know, six guys on the ground is depending on who the commander is, just medevac.

• 29:27Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  You know, bad weather obviously affects medevac. Is that saying that nothing can stop the US military? Well, that's false. Lightning within five will stop it every time.

• 29:38Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, the whole disbanding and restanding up and just they just need to stand them up and keep them.

• 29:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  There's still National Guard LRS units. I think there's one in Indiana, maybe one in California. I don't know where they're all at. But um, they need to stand them up and they need to move them underneath special operations, honestly. Um, if you look at all the other armies in the world, their Pathfinder units, their LRS units are special operations.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 30:08Jack Murphy?

  They're Jagger units.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Why are we the only ones that don't have those guys as special operations?

• 30:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  It's a special task and they go to special schools to learn how to do that. And they're, you know, being asked to do extraordinary missions.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Well, and it's funny and sad, funny sad. There's probably a German word for that, but um, but that, that the same time the conventional army is saying these LRS units, eh, whatever. Like there, there are other things that we can use to replace them. You have RRD, the Ranger Recce Detachment, getting bigger and becoming a national level asset where it's not, it doesn't even have anything much to do with, like it's not a regimental level asset anymore. It's a national level asset now because we're like, oh shit, this is really good stuff. You know, and meanwhile, they're like, oh, LRS units, but.

• 31:08Jack Murphy?

  When, when you went over to worse, uh, did you, as far as like the special training, did your team get to go to ARSLIC or any of that?

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty much everybody went to ARSLIC. We did send

• 31:21Speaker 04

  the first shot of guys going to Ranger School. I mean,

• 31:27Speaker 04

  I think we sent 12 to 16 guys at one time. It's unheard of.

• 31:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  To Ranger School from one company, you know, to Ranger School one time, you know, half passed, half recycled or whatever. And then while we're there, the rest of the guys went to ARSLIC. And then after that first push, everybody's kind of trickled into Ranger School and ARSLIC.

• 31:44Jack Murphy?

  Could, uh, could you tell the, the squares out there who don't know the benefit of ARSLIC, what that course is and what, what they, what you learned there?

• 31:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, ARSLIC is the Reconnaissance Surveillance Leadership School or Leadership Course. Uh, it's called something else now, I believe, because it falls under a CAV unit now.

• 31:59Jack Murphy?

  Really? Oh, I thought it was like a tradoc unit attached to Ranger School and all that.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  They transitioned because uh,

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Fort Knox shut down, moved all the armor to Fort Benning.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  So now Fort Benning is the maneuver center of excellence.

• 32:15Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Um, so it's now part of the

• 32:18Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Cav schools, I think. Don't quote me on that. It's just what I remember, what I think I've heard.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, the arslick course is awesome course. It teaches you how to operate in a six man element, teaches you how to do the M D M P process, not T L Ps. Communications and then all your optics and observing equipment. It teaches how to do that and how to build a hide site and sit there and watch a target for, you know, four to five days at a time. And then how to possibly break contact as a six man element, how to land nav as a six man element.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Just everything that.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between a T L P as the troop leading procedures and the M D M P? Like, why is that? What's the difference in that and why is it meaningful?

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Uh, troop leading procedures in a nutshell is company level and below. That's for smaller unit operations.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  It's faster. It doesn't take as much planning. Uh, when you get to M D M P, it's battalion echelon planning. So now you're looking at all the back, like major backside support that goes along with an operation. It just takes a long time to plan that.

• 33:34Speaker 05

  Can I say something really sarcastic for a second? Um, just, uh, I wanted to say that, you know, they got rid of Lurs units because they don't need them and they can't afford them. But there was enough, there were enough officers that they wouldn't fire enough general, you know, general level officers to rename the arslick to something, you know, to get their, uh, get their Bennys.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Cause we don't let go of general officers anymore.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  Or, yeah, admirals and, uh, yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Uh, so second round in Iraq with worse, uh, what was the mission this time around? So we were on the Iranian border and the Hawazza marshes, kind of near Basra.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  I think our cob, we're at a cob, not a fob. It was a cob adder, I believe it was called. And, uh, we would go out to the Iranian border for two weeks at a time. Legit living in a patrol base. We were at a border fort. So the Iraqis and Iranians have a border fort system. So along the entire border, there's these forts and it's it's legit, like Saddam

• 34:40Speaker 04

  told his guys he wants forts. And they just Googled fort.

• 34:46Speaker 04

  It's, it's a square with like four turrets, like four turret towers and that's it. So there's all these dotted up and down the border and the Iranians have the same thing. Just mirrored.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  So sort of, almost like a DMZ in a way?

• 34:58Speaker 04

  It is. There's, I think it's like a five kilometer DMZ in between. Uh, but yeah, they just mirrored each other all the way up another border. So we'd go out and link up with the border patrol, Iraqi border patrol. Um, worth, worthless. But, uh,

• 35:14Speaker 04

  we'd go out there for two weeks at a time, living out of our trucks, you know? MREs for two weeks, no shower for two weeks, uh, shitting in a hole for two weeks.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  We would take trailers, attach them to our Humvees for enough fuel so we can get back. Cause it's,

• 35:33Speaker 04

  it was a three to six hour drive, depending on what happened on the way there to get to where we're going.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  So enough fuel, enough water, enough food. We did do a couple of air, aerial resupplies while we're out there. But yeah, we'd go out there for two weeks with our trucks. Um, and our main objective, our main mission was to stop lethal aid from coming from Iran into Iraq. So whether that be money, weapons, um, explosives, whatever. Um, but we'd sit in that patrol base for two weeks and we'd kick out a six man team per night to go do a patrol. And we're pretty free to plan our missions however we wanted.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  I don't remember there being any restrictions on how far we could go away from the patrol base. It was like, hey, as long as you got six guys and know where you're going, you know, I trust you and your training.

• 36:27Speaker 05

  How's the food and tail run?

• 36:30Speaker 04

  It's alright.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  So were, did you, did you have at all any kind of interdiction mission with, with that? Or was it observation?

• 36:38Speaker 04

  No, that was our mission.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  It was interdiction?

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Did we interdict anybody? No. But did we stop them? Cause they knew we were out there. Yeah. They knew we were out there. Um, cause I remember

• 36:54Speaker 04

  it was middle of the day and we were looking at something, we're taking pictures and I was like, man, this would be a good, good place for a hindsight over here. Next time we come out and the Iranian guard tower, it was, it was a good distance away, but they had those big giant drop a quarter in.

• 37:09Speaker 05

  Right.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Binos like on the Statue of Liberty. Um, and we could see them looking at us. So they knew we were out there and they also lobbed some mortars at us and shot some PK at us one time.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  I would say one of the coolest things from that, and I was talking to Jack earlier about it and I felt bad for the younger guys because they had not deployed yet and this is towards the tail end of the war.

• 37:32Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  There wasn't a lot of conflict, you know, direct engagements going on and they just wanted to go to war.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  And we are doing this recce mission. Well, cool. Like if you're getting shot at when you're doing recce, you're not doing recce properly.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 37:45Speaker 04

  So we didn't get shot at. So did a good job.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  But they didn't see all the bigger picture stuff we were doing or they didn't understand it. Maybe it was our fault as team leaders, not telling them, you know, directly what we're doing. But Iran was flying drones, um, over us and our unit, our company, not my platoon, but our company was responsible for, you know, creating the first like SOP for dealing with Iranian drones. Um, cause we were seeing them and we were tracking them on Falcon view, like drawing their routes back in Iran. And remember, we scrambled some F-16s to come try to shoot it down. And these F-16s flew out and they radioed down like, hey,

• 38:31Speaker 04

  we can't fly slow enough to shoot those things. Sorry.

• 38:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  It is what it is. We're like, all right. But when we scrambled those F-16s and they're flying up and down the border, trying to find this drone. I ran scrambled the F-14s. And they're just going up and down again, mirroring each other. And we're sitting there like, oh shit.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  We're gonna restart World War III.

• 38:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  We got front row seats. This is cool.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  That was just one of, you know, one of the cool things that we did, like one of the unspoken things that we did that no one really saw or heard about. We did some other stuff. You know, me and probably three other team leaders.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  All, we're all still really good friends. Probably the only 11 bravos that could get their basic aviator badge.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Because we did some ISR missions where we flew in the aircraft.

• 39:30Jack Murphy?

  Oh, cool.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  We actually got to fly there. Pilot was like, yeah, take over.

• 39:35Jack Murphy?

  What aircraft?

• 39:38Speaker 04

  It's a Cessna, it's like a Cessna 333 maybe. It's a push-pull. It's like Bat 21. Think Bat 21 is that aircraft. Even their callsign was Bat and had emblems on it and stuff. But it was just pilot, us, and then a sensor operator in the back.

• 39:54Jack Murphy?

  Really?

• 39:54Speaker 04

  And flew out to where we were operating. So

• 39:59Speaker 04

  we'd go out there for two weeks, come back for two weeks. During that refit time, we would fly with ISR to go continue watching.

• 40:04Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  What we were supposed to be watching.

• 40:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Again, it's like a throwback to like Vietnam era where you'd have WURPS flying around with bird, bird, was it bird dog, right? The FACS.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's exactly what it was.

• 40:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, we liked it. We like to joke. So we're like, eh, we're probably the only 11 bravos that can say that.

• 40:21Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  It's, it's pretty cool. So that was a good mission.

• 40:25Speaker 05

  That's awesome. Now, when, when you guys, because you.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  I assume you were pretty far from the nearest airbase. How long would it take? Like F-16s to get to you when you guys called them or scrambled them?

• 40:38Speaker 04

  I couldn't even give you a guesstimate on that.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  I don't remember.

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Did you have air, air assets if, if the Iranians or?

• 40:45Speaker 04

  We did. We had Apaches on call. F-16s, obviously. It's funny you bring that up because I remember the,

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I remember this guy's name, General Cone.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  I won't say bad things, but uh,

• 41:01Speaker 04

  not a fan. He flew out one time to visit us. He was like the, our MNCI South General.

• 41:07Speaker 05

  Gotcha, yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  He came out to visit us.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  And he was just, he was flabbergasted. He's like, you guys have this support and this support? I'm like, yeah. He's like, I don't even have that.

• 41:21Speaker 05

  Well, you're a general. You're, you're in a jock.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  You're not, you're not 30 guys out here sitting by yourselves.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  You know? But yeah, we, we did have that support.

• 41:32Jack Murphy?

  So that deployment winds down and uh, when does the Ranger Regiment start to enter into your peripheral vision?

• 41:43Speaker 04

  Oh, towards the end of that deployment.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Probably the year after. We kind of got in that training mindset, you know, the war pretty much over in Iraq. I was still trying to keep my guys in shape and ready to go for Afghanistan. So we were doing a lot of rucking and a lot of hill climbs and stuff like that.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  But the Lurssy unit at Fort Lewis was the only other airborne unit. Besides first group and 275. So a lot of guys that got RFS from 275 came to the Lurssy unit because it's the only other airborne unit. They don't want to lose their jump pay and then we keep doing Ranger things.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Um, so I'd say, you know, like 75% of our leadership, senior leadership at the Lord Senate was 275. My potential was a 275 guy and so and so. Um, and they pushed that Ranger mentality, you know, which I I loved the discipline mentality and the respect and everything that you don't see in other units. Honestly, you don't. And then I had a potential sergeant, Zach, who was a rec guy at 275, super awesome mentor. He just texted me the other day talking about, you know, just how proud he is of me and everything. And he's

• 43:05Speaker 04

  a, he's a good guy. And he talked about 275 rec and rec this and rec that, forced us to have an SOP book and just all the little things that people don't think about, you know? And then RC came around and gave a recruiting brief for RC. And I sat in on it and I was like, I'm gonna go do that because that's like the next step in my rec path, you know? So I went to RC selection and went to spring selection in 2012, did not make it. Um, and then I went to the fall selection that same year and got picked

• 43:50Speaker 04

  up. And then immediately following RC selection, you go to RASP to get selected for regiment.

• 43:58Jack Murphy?

  So that's an interesting.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  What is, is RC like rope? Is it the new rope?

• 44:03Jack Murphy?

  Uh, RASP 2 is what replaced rope. Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 44:08Jack Murphy?

  And, and I'd like to like just talk about this for a moment because I think it's really interesting that, again, another little digression, but RRD was the Regimental Reconnaissance Detachment, then became the Regimental Reconnaissance Company. And for the longest time, from, when did it stand up? Like 1984? It was the 1980s. It was like 84, I think. And their job was really just to do reconnaissance for airfield seizures. So there were three teams, each team was for each battalion, each of the three battalions. And then they kind of grew, especially as the war kicked off, they grew into something else. But those guys were always drawn from within the regiment.

• 44:47Jack Murphy?

  And then you were, I think, about probably the first like generation of guys that they started recruiting from the conventional military.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, I'm not trying to put words in anybody's mouths or anything, but I think they realized like, there's some good dudes in the big army that could be beneficial.

• 45:01Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Just like any unit, I mean, it's like CAG, I mean, they recruit from everybody.

• 45:06Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  So why weren't they doing the same thing? And I think that's what they realized.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Maybe because some guys went from big army to regiment and then RD. That might be a reason. I don't know why specifically. I guess I'm not gonna put words in anybody's mouth, so I don't know.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, back then it was just, because it was regimental, like it was, it was someplace you went from battalion, like, you know what I mean? Then I think it got bigger and then they also.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it was, RD was a detachment from regimental headquarters.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  Then they became a company.

• 45:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Under RSTB, Special Troops Battalion. And went from, you know, the three teams to eight, eight teams, maybe six now, I don't know.

• 45:53Jack Murphy?

  What was, I'm interested in, you know, your experience, what was it like going to selection for that course or for that unit?

• 46:00Speaker 04

  I won't get into the specifics of selection because I don't want to ruin it for other people going.

• 46:05Speaker 05

  It's like a spoiler.

• 46:06Speaker 04

  It's part of the fun.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  I probably signed an NDA too, I don't know.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  No, it was, it's fun. It's your typical army selection, a lot of rucking, a lot of rucking. I would say total, if you don't get lost, you're probably looking at 200 miles, you're walking, total, for the three weeks. But I mean, it's the typical, you know, your 12 mile road march, your PT test, your Ranger PT test, not Army PT test.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  Some psychological testing and IQ tests and stuff like that. And then you have, you know, a practice week where, you know, you learn how to land nav.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  Cause I'm pretty sure CAG does it the same way. It's they're going under the assumption that nobody knows how to land nav.

• 46:54Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  So they want to make sure everyone's on the same playing field. And they teach you, it's like two or three days of land nav classes.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  They teach you land nav and you go out and do some cadre lead. And uh, now there's another road march in there.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  That's disguised as, you know, another training event.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  But it's a timed event. And then uh, then you move on to stress phase and you're doing land nav every day and sleeping out in the woods.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  With the culmination event that I won't spoil.

• 47:27Jack Murphy?

  And after you, on the second time around, getting selected, uh, and then you go, and then you had to go to RASP. So that's an interesting thing, too. You had to go to two selection courses essentially to get picked up for the regiment.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the RRD selection, RRC selection was for the company.

• 47:44Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  And then RASP is for the regiment.

• 47:46Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  And uh, yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  RASP sucked.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Even though it was RASP too, like it sucked, man. It was not fun.

• 47:57Jack Murphy?

  What, can you tell us about it? Cause it wasn't, it so it wasn't a gentleman's course?

• 48:02Speaker 04

  At all? I mean, it was, there's no yelling and screaming.

• 48:04Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  But it's just, it's physical, physically and mentally training at the time when I went through, I don't know what it's like now.

• 48:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  But a lot of class learning about the regiment and the history of the regiment and how the regiment operates. Cause you're a, you know, non-commissioned officer or officer, officers go to it too.

• 48:22Jack Murphy?

  They're an import.

• 48:22Speaker 04

  So you're learning how the regiment operates. Um, and then, you know, again, you're going out and doing land nav. The land nav piece is interesting because you, they pair you up with the RASP one guys, so RIP guys. They pair you up with one of them or two of them. And it's your job as an NCO to teach them how to land nav. So you're doing land nav with RASP one guys.

• 48:45Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  So if they suck, I was just like, it's a nightmare.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  But I was good. And uh, we got all our points and I was like, all right, guys, sit down. Sit down, eat a Murray, let's hang out.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Just a couple other physical events.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  FTX, you do an FTX as a class and there's some stressful events during that and you really kind of see who can handle being an NCO.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  In the regiment or an officer under a stressful situation, you know.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, because the, the, so I, you, it's RASP two, it used to be rope, which was different than RIP because, so for people who don't know, for a lot, the way regiment works is you're a private, 18 years old or 27, however old you are when you go in. And, and you know, you go to your infantry basic, you go to the Ranger indoctrination program, or now it is rope one, right, Ranger Orientation Program?

• 49:53Speaker 04

  Ranger Assessment and Selection Program.

• 49:55Speaker 05

  Rangers, okay. And then you go to Ranger Battalion and you grow up in Ranger Battalion, you go through private and, you know, to specialists and, and, you know, whatnot in Ranger Battalion. But they also have opportunities for people who did not grow up in battalion to come, to come into battalion.

• 50:15Jack Murphy?

  Well, the, the interesting thing is they're really, the regiment's really strict about making guys go back through selection to get back into the regiment. So even if you were an enlisted Ranger, you go green to gold, become an officer, and now you go do your PL time in the 82nd, wherever you're at, and now you want to come back to the Ranger Regiment and take a Ranger Platoon, you got to go back through RASP.

• 50:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's a thing.

• 50:37Jack Murphy?

  They don't mess around.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  So that's a thing now too with NCOs. Started about 2014, 2015. Abrams Charter, which is why officers went out and came back, went out and came back. Now, NCOs also have to go out.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  Oh, do they really?

• 50:53Jack Murphy?

  They're bringing that back.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, so every time you go from like Platoon Sergeant to First Sergeant, or First Sergeant to Ops or whatever.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  You're taking the next leadership position as an NCO. You gotta go out for a year and come back.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  Oh, you have to go after the big army.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  So. I say big army.

• 51:08Jack Murphy?

  Again.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Going sitting on a desk is so common still.

• 51:10Jack Murphy?

  Abrams Abrams charter was, you know, when they stood up the Ranger Regiment in the eighties or no, I'm sorry, in the seventies. It was supposed to be like a role model for the rest of the post Vietnam Army.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 51:23Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And so the idea, I'm, I'm not trying to lecture you, Dustin. I'm trying to just tell folks out there who maybe don't know what we're talking about. That the idea was that you would grow this nucleus of highly skilled, trained soldiers, and then they would go out into the larger army. And spread that knowledge and those skills around.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  And that's, yeah, that's why they brought back NCOs going out was to do that.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 51:49Speaker 04

  Two problems though, is some guys are going out to the big army and like, oh, it's not that bad.

• 51:54Speaker 05

  Right. I can kick it.

• 51:56Jack Murphy?

  I can just sit back and chill.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  I'm kind of a legend here. Yeah, I'm kind of a legend and it's history.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  Guys would go out and not come back. I'm a big fish in a little pond.

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Instead of a little fish.

• 52:09Jack Murphy?

  Even if they're chilling down at MacDill in Tampa, they're like, ah, beach is pretty nice.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 52:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  And the other problem was Regiment realized that guys weren't coming back by choice. And numbers started kind of getting depleted. So instead of sending guys out to the regular army to spread the knowledge, guys would go to SOCOM or JSOC or USOC and do an ops job for a year instead of doing what they're supposed to.

• 52:37Jack Murphy?

  You're gonna make them miserable on staff. They'll come right back.

• 52:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  So that's what happened with that. I love Regiment to death. I will always love Regiment. It's the best time of my life.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  But Regiment is a snake eating its own tail.

• 52:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Like just, you know, it keeps moving and keeps getting rid of good guys, keeps moving, keeps getting rid of guys. Cause you could have a guy that gave his whole life to the regiment from private to, you know, E6, E7. He steps on his dick one time.

• 53:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  A minor thing.

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 04

  And then gone.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. I was actually gonna bring that up because you mentioned that when you were at like the Lurs unit, that you had. Uh, I think a Lurs unit or, or RACU, but, but you would have guys who would RFS now in Ranger Battalion in the regiment, RFS is released for standards. And what that means is you did something and it may have been something heinous, um, but generally something heinous will get you kicked out of the military.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Subjective.

• 53:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. But generally it's something that, that, you know, you might, you might get RFS for getting.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  It could be you got into a bar fight.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  A bar fight and you had had a drink, even if the fight wasn't your fault, it was an alcohol related incident. Like, and it really depends on what your chain of command feels about you and feels about covering their ass at that point in time, whether or not you get released for standards. And so when you get released for standards, it, it's not, you, you don't get kicked out of the military. You're just like, you can't be a Ranger anymore. You gotta go down the road. Uh, and, and second, or like in Fort Lewis, down the road is.

• 54:17Speaker 04

  Lurs.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  Lurs or, or hopefully, hopefully it's lurs because they could be condemned to like.

• 54:24Speaker 04

  Korea.

• 54:25Speaker 05

  A fate worse.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  Korea is always a threat.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  I mean, like another, another example of the whole go to RASP thing, you know?

• 54:37Speaker 04

  One of my guys I worked with at the Lurs unit that go RFS, um, he spent 12 years at 275.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  And then he had to go to RASP again because he made E7, he's going to take up two star job. And, and the board, they said, no. And the reason was he's not aggressive enough. His mentality wasn't aggressive enough to be in regiment. I was like, what? Like, cause he's, he's like us. Like he's, he's just laid back, man. You don't need to be a chest beaten gorilla all the time.

• 55:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:06Jack Murphy?

  Well, when you, when you say it's a snake eating its tail, it's exactly what you're alluding to there is that you recruit and select and breed a, a generation of soldiers that are really tightly wound and really intense. And then it's like you cut them loose on a three day weekend. It's like, no shit. They got a DUI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You stress these guys the hell out.

• 55:26Speaker 05

  They get in, they got in a bar fight in Seattle.

• 55:28Jack Murphy?

  I'm shocked.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Figure.

• 55:30Jack Murphy?

  I am shocked. How did that happen?

• 55:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 04

  The thing with, the thing with being a regiment too is it's.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  There's only so many positions available.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  Someone's always trying to get your job.

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  But no, no matter what position you're in, someone's waiting for you to mess up or for you to leave. So it's almost like you're always kind of walking on eggshells all the time, too. Like, it's a stressful place to work.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  Honestly, especially when I was there, the position I had, now was, we haven't got there yet, but I was the youngest platoon sergeant in the most senior platoon sergeant position. And it was just, every day I felt like I was gonna just mess up, get sent home.

• 56:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, let's, let's, uh, yeah, let's walk towards that you, uh, make it through RASP. And then the next step is there's the, RRC has its own sort of like operator training course, right?

• 56:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, they call it RTC, the Reconnaissance Training Course, um, roughly 10 months long.

• 56:29Speaker 04

  I think it's 10 months long. I started that in January of 13.

• 56:35Speaker 04

  It just broke up into three phases. Phase one ended in May. I'm not going to get into what the training is for their training course, but, um, RSLK on steroids and a bunch of shooting programs and then free fall school and all that stuff.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I made it through phase one and the phase one board. Uh, I got the thanks but no thanks. Not really, they don't give you a reason why, they don't tell you why. It's just, hey, you're not a good fit. I think I know why. But, um, yeah, so I left there. Went to the three shop at RSTB and I was the air NCO for a couple of weeks. And then the sergeant major came over and was like, hey, I think I got a job for you. Are you interested? I was like, yeah, what do you got? And he said 375 recce. And that's where I went.

• 57:29Speaker 05

  And so what are you, what rank are you right now?

• 57:33Speaker 04

  A master, a retired master.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  No, no, not right now, but at this point in time.

• 57:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, E six.

• 57:38Speaker 05

  E six? And what year is this?

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Thirteen.

• 57:42Speaker 05

  Okay, so things are still hot. Relatively hot, like things are still happening. Um, and you get offered the shot for recce.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 57:52Speaker 05

  You're an E six. Is that a, is that a TL in recce?

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a TL joke.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Um, I showed up to three seven five recce, uh, the platoon starting at the time, uh, my buddy Matt. He, uh, he's a prior R C guy too, except he got out of the army, went national guard. Realized the real world sucks, came back in the army and was at three seven five recce now. But I showed up, he kind of knew my background, did an interview with me, knew, got to know me. And then was like, hey, man, I need your help. Like, I need your help shaping this platoon and what it should be into a recce platoon, not, um.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  I call it a senior squalider hangout platoon. A lot of guys did their squalider time and their reward was to go to recce and go do, uh, the omega thing and stuff like that.

• 58:45Jack Murphy?

  Grow a, go have a beard.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, go, go grow a beard.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. How old was recce at this point in time in, in, in regiment?

• 58:52Speaker 04

  And you were there and they stood up, was it oh, three?

• 58:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the battalion recce was two thousand four.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Two thousand four.

• 58:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, so I was on, I was a sniper, but I was on the first deployment with, with a battalion recce guys.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so just about 10 years old.

• 59:06Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  But, uh, the guy I was talking about, Matt, when he was in the national guard, he was in a LRS unit.

• 59:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  So went from R C to national guard LRS and then came back to three seven five recce. So he knew what LRS is and what recce is and had a very good understanding of what it should be. And me and him kind of molded this platoon into what it should be.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  And I'd say about, was it three to six months later?

• 59:35Speaker 04

  I was just bebopping down the hallway going to my office and he stopped me and he was like, hey, man, did the first sergeant talk to you yet? I was like, no, why? He's like, well, him and Sergeant Major talked and he needs to talk to you. I was like, fuck.

• 59:50Speaker 04

  I just got here, man. What's going on now? So I go to First Sergeant's office and I walked in, he's like, hey, what do you think about being a platoon sergeant? You want to take over rec. I was like, oh, shit. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I'm not going to turn it down, you know? And that's, that's when I became the platoon sergeant for three seven five rec. And I was platoon sergeant for three and a half, three and a half years.

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  So, so rec wasn't new. It was 10 years old. But you guys sort of created this thing. Is it because at that time or during that time, there wasn't that LRS experience that nobody knew what rec should actually look like?

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  I think that's exactly what the problem was.

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  They didn't have a, a good rec background, as you said, and there just wasn't a, there wasn't a mission for them.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  You know, overseas. There was a strike forces going out and hitting targets. Like, what's, what's rec going to do?

• 1:00:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  You know, you got, you know, you got the Preds.

• 1:00:53Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  You got every ISR asset you can think of for all the task force over your target. Why do you need rec out there? That was the mentality and they didn't have a mission.

• 1:01:03Jack Murphy?

  When, when, I mean, this is like ancient history, you know, taking baby steps, but that first deployment, I remember the guys doing some CTRs, doing some, you know, on foot kind of reconnaissance stuff. And then when we did get some strike operations, I remember the guys going out and like doing like, because actually we started doing FID too with a SWAT team out in, in Caust. And so taking those guys out and doing like BPs and, you know, black side security. And so that, that was sort, but it was all very like a nascent sort of form, right?

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like if you're doing CTR, so CTR is close target reconnaissance and in that environment, if you're doing CTR, you're either like in a vehicle or you're tasking indige to do it. Like, it's very hard sometimes to do it.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  And that was, that was our CSE's mission was the CTRs.

• 1:01:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  Like an airfield.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  They would drive by in vehicles and film. Or do whatever like recy wouldn't do that.

• 1:01:59Jack Murphy?

  But now we're at the point where RRC is out doing secret squirrel stuff. And so you're saying that when you got there, sort of the battalion recy teams were sort of in limbo that not quite sure.

• 1:02:12Speaker 04

  They were in limbo. We had the interagency mission program and then also had guys tasked to RRC to help them with their program.

• 1:02:21Jack Murphy?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  So they were filling billets for RRC as well.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  And that was a funny story too. When I left RRC.

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  Went over three, seven, five. When I showed up three, seven, five. I mean, like the next day is like, hey, you need to go over RRC.

• 1:02:39Speaker 04

  To talk to them about this deployment coming up. I was like, what the fuck?

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Go back over there knocking the door and guy that was on my board, Terry. He answered the door and he's like, what's up, man? I was like, I was told to come over here. I guess I'm working with you now. And he's like, huh.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  He's like, that worked out, didn't it?

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 04

  Guess so.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. So was there a formal? And Jack, you can answer this. Was there a formal? Because like in the sniper section, you went to SOTC, right? You know, at least SOTC two, if not SOTC one, where you'd go to SOTC. The special operations target interdiction course. For recy, when they stood them up, was there a formal training program for them?

• 1:03:24Jack Murphy?

  I don't know when they stood up. Well, back when they stood up, it was like, again, they were all, you know, building an airplane in flight, but they did have a training program that they were standing up. Yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  But it was an in-house training?

• 1:03:34Jack Murphy?

  Yes.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:03:35Jack Murphy?

  And I can't remember if they went to RSLIC or not. Man, I would have to hit up some of those guys from back in the day and talk to them. But I mean, what was it like when you got there?

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  When I got there, when I was a platoon sergeant, I didn't send anybody to RSLIC. Because I could teach RSLIC.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  And that's what I did with my guys.

• 1:03:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 04

  Taught the squad leaders how to, or the team leaders how to do it, and then they taught their guys how to do it. The way the army should work. Um, in my, in my mind at the time, all RSLIC would do for me is, yeah, cool, gave them an identifier.

• 1:04:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  But I also lost, I just lost that guy for three or four weeks.

• 1:04:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  You know, um, so I would rather, instead of top down training, I would go bottom up. Like, you know, go to my team leaders, what does your team need to learn? What do you guys need? You know, you have the manuals, what do you not know in the manual? And then we would go over.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  And now was RSLIC taught like a trade doc school or was it taught like a SOF school?

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Trade doc school.

• 1:04:38Speaker 05

  Trade doc school, okay.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  The trade doc school. Um, and again, that's another reason like, we don't want to go do that.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Not saying we're better than that, but.

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  But you are, and, and, and, and the, so when we talk about trade doc and SOF, we're talking about, uh, training and indoctrination?

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  Training and doctrine.

• 1:04:56Speaker 05

  Doctrine, indoctrination, yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  Which is all the schools, all the army schools are under that.

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  So, yeah, so it's very formalized process that's been put together by an officer who may or may not know what they're doing. And like, it's very formalized training that teaches to standard, not to, or whatever it is like. But, but they don't necessarily always teach things the way they need to be taught. So you're sending somebody to a school that is an army taught school, which means it's a bureaucrat taught school.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:05:30Speaker 05

  And not saying that the RSLIC instructors aren't great at their job or anything like that. But, but the curriculum itself has been laid out by the bureaucracy.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  And, yeah, that's true. It's been laid out by the bureaucracy and 75% of stuff they're teaching is from Vietnam.

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  Which, I mean, it's still applicable, you know, but I would rather teach my guys what I know and what has worked.

• 1:05:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:55Speaker 04

  And what does work.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  Versus what trade doc is telling me to teach them.

• 1:06:01Speaker 05

  So when you guys turn this, or when you sort of, you know, develop this rec-y element, this rec-y, uh, section.

• 1:06:11Speaker 05

  How do you impress upon the command what your new improved capabilities are or get sort of operational okays?

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  So that was, well, you have a couple of different avenues. You got your TFTs, your Task Force Trainer missions, and you got MLAT, multilateral training missions. TFT is just kind of a smaller MLAT per se, minus the airfield, we're not seizing airfield during TFT. But the real big kicker for us, we went to NTC, and it was like the first time regiment's gotten to NTC in who knows how long.

• 1:06:51Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  And we were supporting a big army unit that was going through their rotation as a soft capability enabler.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  So we were separated from them, but we knew what their mission was. We had, I think, our BC and a small staff was in their jock with them, and then they tasked us, I think we had one or two line platoons there, and then recce platoon. And the BC called us in, or called me in, and he was like, Dustin, check it out. He's like, I don't care what we have to do, we're here to win.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  He's like, so, duty I do to win. I was like, Roger that, sir.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  But we did our thing. We went and got our four-wheelers and our M razors and drove out, climbed up a mountain, the biggest mountain we could find, I think it's Tefort Mountain in NTC. I don't know why I remember that name, but probably because it was big. We climbed up there, and we climbed up there knowing OP-4 is not coming up there.

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  No one's climbed this mountain to come find us. Like, it's a pain in the ass. It took us, you know, all night to get up there and set up our hide site, and we're observing the battlefield, and the battlefield we could see, the battle space we could see was the staging area for the OP-4 before they moved into the engagement area with the rotational unit.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  To start off before the war, simulated war even kicked off, we could see something way off in the distance and me and my JTAC are sitting up there and I'm like looking through a spotting scope and looking at a map and just looking, we probably spent 30 minutes, an hour, just kind of, you know, just guesstimating where it was at. And finally, we just fat fingered on a map. It was like, whatever, whatever that is, is right here. And it's not friendly because the friendly is over there. And you can tell it was a big development. And so we called up a simulated HIMARS strike and it ended up being the enemy brigade, like their, their talk, their staging area. And did the simulated HIMARS strike, wiped out

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  their brigade talk, task force launched a strike force in Osprey's to go clear through. And I remember the NTC general, whatever general's in charge of NTC, came storming in the talk. I was like, no, no, no, no. Like, they're still alive. Send them back. Like, brought the strike force back. Like, they didn't even get to land and clear.

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  It's sort of like when you're playing war when you're a kid. Do-overs.

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like, we just won, like, hour 12 of this war. What's, what's the problem? Anyway, so they, they came back alive, whatever. And then they were staging in that little court, the corridor where I was talking about, and they just had all their armor, Abrams, Paladins, Bradleys, everything just in a line. And we took pictures of it all and sent it up via HPW, sat to the talk with reports and everything, intel reports. And then they struck that. Alive again. Anyways, I say all that to say we exfilled, got back to the, back to our talk.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  And as soon as I walked in my office, the phone rings and it's the B C who's at the rotational units talk. And he's like, Ward, he's like, that was awesome. He's like, this unit is eating up everything you're giving us. Can you go back out in 24 hours? I was like, oh my God. That's what you get for being good. We just spent four days out there like, you know, freezing our butts off. So yeah, we went back out, you know, 24 hours later to the other side of that corridor I was talking about and did some more stuff back there. I think that was a real proving point for us. Yeah. Cause they saw what we were capable of doing.

• 1:10:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  On top of that, when he said, uh, you know, I'm here to win. Do what you gotta do for us to win. I sent my guys to go do a, you know, low vis AFO type operation. I was like, you know, go put your civilian clothes on, take one of our beacons, go into the enemy motor pool and tag their triple A pieces. Which they did. I was like, give me a plan. Don't just go out there and wing it. Right. So they gave me a plan and they went out there and tagged their triple A pieces, their anti-air. And we just tracked them all through the box at N T C. As soon as they stopped, we struck those.

• 1:11:35Jack Murphy?

  The E4 mafia strikes again?

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  So we eliminated their anti-air like right off the rip. And it was, it was pretty awesome. What was even better is when the war was over and the op fours back in their motor pool, you know, downgrading whatever they're doing. And, uh, sent my guys back over to recover the beacons. Right. And they didn't put on civvies. They just walked in and was like, hey, there's something on that vehicle I need to get. And the guy's like, who are you? Like, what, what are you getting? He's like, don't worry about it. Just like, pull this Pelican box off the under.

• 1:12:06Jack Murphy?

  I mean, when you guys did the A A R for N T C, I mean, they must've been fairly pissed. Overall of this.

• 1:12:14Speaker 04

  I didn't sit in on it, but I'm sure it was.

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. So to catch people up, so NTC and it's JRTC, right?

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  In Louisiana.

• 1:12:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. So they're, they're basically war games and I never went to either of them. But they're basically war games and the OPFOR, the people who are actually stationed on those bases are good and it doesn't necessarily mean they're great combatants. I don't know, but they're good at war gaming. It's like, it's like going, it's like a SWAT team going up against professional paintballers.

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  I mean, those guys are probably the most well-trained unit in the army. Realistically, because they're doing it all the time.

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  All the time, right? And they know, they know the train, they know everything else like that. So like I said, I don't know about combatants because I don't know, but, but they're good at what they do there. And it's very hard to beat those units in, in these war games. So, and you guys basically beat them three times.

• 1:13:07Speaker 04

  They weren't, they weren't used to fighting a special operations unit.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Cause we had ISR, which the army units typically don't have all the time.

• 1:13:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  We had HIMARS, we had CAS, we had everything and we just, I mean, we just sat there and called it in all day. And I remember watching, there was one unit that was close enough to us when I called in a strike on them. I remember watching them through just minnows. Like look up in the sky and like throw his hands up.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  And like a guy, give them a casualty card, like you're dead. And they packed up and drove off. And I was like, yeah.

• 1:13:38Jack Murphy?

  So meanwhile, back at battalion, uh, your, your platoon's getting deployed now. So walk us through some of that, like what, what's going on in the war at this point?

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  Um, in 2013 or 2014, 2013.

• 1:13:54Jack Murphy?

  You tell me, start where you want to start.

• 1:13:56Speaker 04

  2013, I didn't, I did not deploy as a platoon sergeant.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  I was a JOC NCO and then I went out to coast to do the interagency thing for a little bit.

• 1:14:09Speaker 04

  Twenty fourteen, the strike force was still going out.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  I don't remember how many platoons we had over there or companies.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Wasn't really involved in that. I was, the Recce platoon was tasked with an interagency mission. And we supported that by sending, you know, five guys to five different locations. So as platoons aren't like, not only did I have a platoon to manage, but now I had to manage, you know, four to five different teams.

• 1:14:43Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Four to five different outstations and what those outstations were doing. Granted, those guys that I sent out there, they were their, their own team leader out there, which is cool.

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• 1:16:40Speaker 04

  Very hands-off as a leader. Like, only hit me up if you need something, bro. You know, like, I'm not gonna micromanage you. You're a big boy. Do your thing.

• 1:16:48Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:16:50Speaker 04

  But the recoup team did the inter-agency mission for that deployment, or every deployment I did. And, I mean, we were going out every night, just about, hitting targets. Could you describe that mission as far as you're able to? Like, what it entailed, what you guys were tasked with? Yeah, with the inter-agency mission, again, I say inter-agency, it's a conglomerate of agencies, right? You got any three-letter acronym you can think of, or three-letter agency you can think of that we're working with. It's just a, it is a task force. And as the big, not big army, but as the army representative of that task force,

• 1:17:35Speaker 04

  our team was responsible for being enablers to provide capabilities to those civilian agencies. Because civilian agencies don't have Apaches, they don't have F-16s, they don't have, you know, ISR as much as we do. They have ISR, but not as much as we do.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  And we provide further intel support, more targeting abilities, you know, it's, you always want as many tools in a tool bag as you can have, and that's what we did. The team leaders, including myself at each outstation was, we're the eyes and ears and voice of the task force commander for that interagency commander.

• 1:18:29Speaker 05

  So like if you're going out with, for instance, maybe, maybe like the FBI is there because there's a poppy field they want to investigate, they can't talk to the military, they don't have air support, they don't have whatever.

• 1:18:40Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I, I'll just say, I, I talked to somebody who was part of a other governmental agency and he was describing to me how when they tried to call, the only thing they really could call, he said, was ECAS, like emergency close air support, which takes, you know, who knows how long that's going to take, but when you have Rangers out there on target with you, close air support, medevac, all this sort of like good army stuff, support stuff that comes along with you guys is suddenly available and drastically shortens the amount of time that all of these things take.

• 1:19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, because our, our teams that we had at each outstation was comprised of, you have the team leader, an assistant team leader, and then you had a JTAC, a medic, an RTO, and an AOD guy. So you have pretty much every capability you think of in one team. Not everyone, you know, not everyone's loving Bravo, not everyone's a trigger puller, but everyone's either a Ranger or better. And can really bring, bring some hurt to the battlefield when needed.

• 1:19:41Jack Murphy?

  And now we're, we're also getting into another sort of like interesting role change in that, yeah, there's a recce component, but also like you guys are going out on like strike operations, right?

• 1:19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, we were going out more, more than the strike force.

• 1:19:56Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:19:59Speaker 04

  Honestly, I felt bad for the strike force and the line companies that would deploy for regiment. Because you had, you had squad leaders on two star and set grew up through the early 2000s, I mean, getting after it.

• 1:20:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  With Team Merrill, Team Darby and all these things. And then you get to the mid 2010s and it slows down drastically.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  And like Taliban wasn't allowed to be targeted because we're in peace talks with them.

• 1:20:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:20:26Jack Murphy?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  But the interagency task force was allowed to target them. So we were going out after them because we were part of that task force.

• 1:20:37Speaker 04

  But strike force, yeah, I mean, five to 10 times the entire deployment they're going out.

• 1:20:45Speaker 05

  And that's gotta be a frustrating thing, especially for a young Ranger.

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:20:49Speaker 05

  Who came in to get at it.

• 1:20:51Speaker 04

  I mean, they're just.

• 1:20:52Jack Murphy?

  They, they did do, and we're referencing like Les's, uh, when he was talking, when Les was talking about, um, doing the Nangahar clearing operation. And, and I've talked to other folks where like the Ranger Regiment sounds like they were involved in some, like, a couple really substantial, large-scale combat operations in Afghanistan.

• 1:21:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, uh, that Nangahar clearance operation, um, happened multiple times. Uh, the first time was in, you know, it was in 2016, towards the tail end of our deployment. We actually extended for like 30 days for that operation to happen. And, uh,

• 1:21:30Speaker 04

  it sucked for us. I was at JBAD during that time. And it sucked for us because Task Force was saturating that Nangahar Valley. And JBAD's right there in Nangahar, if not, you know, next to Nangahar. They're saturating that valley with fires. There's a HIMARS strike, you know, two to three times a day, every day. And then just ISR. And so they took all of my assets as inter-agency team leader. I'm like, ah, man, I can't do anything. Give my assets back. But, uh, yeah, they flexed over.

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  Man, I think we pushed over the rest, like, the rest of the battalion. So almost all of 375 was there for the operation Les was talking about. And before that operation kicked off,

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  the, uh, SIR Major and some other first SIRs came down to JBAD to kind of do a PDSS, because that's where the warm base was that they were going to launch out of.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  And that's my opinion. He's like, hey, he's like, Warden, you know, what do you think about this? And I looked at him, I was like, I think you're gonna die, man.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  He was like, what? I was like, it is hot. This is middle of July and you're gonna send an entire Ranger Battalion, quote unquote, online.

• 1:22:52Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:52Speaker 04

  Through, like, we are not built for that.

• 1:22:54Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  We are a direct action.

• 1:22:56Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:22:56Speaker 04

  Hit a target and leave.

• 1:22:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Speaker 04

  Not get online and walk.

• 1:23:01Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  For a valley, you know, and long behold, guess what happened? You know, guys had.

• 1:23:05Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  I mean, there's multiple heat cats.

• 1:23:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Speaker 04

  I think one dude had kidney failure because his heat cat was so bad.

• 1:23:11Jack Murphy?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:23:12Speaker 04

  And it was just terrible. Personal professional opinion.

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  They can chalk it up as a success because we killed some ISIS guys. But like, in the grand scheme of things, it was a failure. Like, it was just utter failure. The fact that we had to do it, you know, version one, version two, version three, version four.

• 1:23:35Jack Murphy?

  Should be.

• 1:23:36Speaker 04

  It should just be version one, you know?

• 1:23:38Jack Murphy?

  And if you guys go back and watch the episode with Les Sandusky, you'll hear the sort of like boots on the ground account of it.

• 1:23:45Speaker 04

  We tried to get boots on the ground from where I was at as the

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  interagency task force

• 1:23:54Speaker 04

  that we had there at JBAD. Because we could provide with our task force, you know, all the stuff that we talked about earlier, providing as far as fires and medevac.

• 1:24:05Speaker 04

  But with the indigenous personnel that we had, we would be able to be able to provide, you know,

• 1:24:14Speaker 04

  a hundred, a hundred trucks and dishkas and RPGs and mortars. Anything on the sun you can think of, and we can just drive there. It was right down the road. Instead of flying guys in and not be able to leave unless the birds came back. That was a big problem.

• 1:24:30Speaker 04

  But we got shut down. We couldn't, couldn't go because of interagency hire said no, so.

• 1:24:37Jack Murphy?

  Could, can you talk a little bit about the indigenous force that you worked with?

• 1:24:43Speaker 04

  I will say

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  it is a conglomerate of Afghans from the entire country.

• 1:24:54Speaker 04

  And it's really awesome to watch them work together.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  That was one of the coolest things I seen in country because there's a lot of infighting. You know, there's tribes and

• 1:25:05Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  Hostile and Dari and

• 1:25:07Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:25:07Speaker 04

  Uzbek's and Tajiks and just everybody hates everybody. But those guys that I worked with genuinely wanted Afghanistan to be better. And they genuinely liked each other and they worked together and

• 1:25:25Speaker 04

  sounds bad to say, but they hated the the typical Afghan almost more than we did. Like they would put boots to the head and mess these guys up. You know, the Taliban and ISIS and everybody and they would, they'd rough them up good and make it a point like, hey, quit, you know, quit fucking our country up, man.

• 1:25:44Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. You, you told me, you know, as sort of a point of reference that it reminded you of like the American military in the sense that it's like some dude from North Dakota and some cat from New York working together and

• 1:25:56Speaker 04

  That's exactly what it was like.

• 1:25:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  So they worked so well together. They were paid very good. Um, I'll say

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  a Afghan in that unit, a private in that unit made about $900 a month.

• 1:26:14Jack Murphy?

  Good money.

• 1:26:15Speaker 04

  Compared, yeah, in Afghanistan, yeah.

• 1:26:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 04

  If you compare that to Afghan National Army General, he got $900 a month. So we paid them very well. Uh, we treated them very well. They had good food, they had air conditioning, good barracks. And, uh,

• 1:26:34Speaker 04

  worked on the referral program. So I vouch for you, you vouch for me. I'm like, hey, Jack's a good guy. He should come work here. But if you mess up, I'm gone too.

• 1:26:44Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 04

  And that's how you keep them loyal along with the money.

• 1:26:47Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  And unfortunately, you know, some of those guys didn't make it out. A lot of them did. Thank goodness.

• 1:26:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:54Speaker 04

  Don't know where they're at. They might be sitting in some other country right now, waiting to get their visas or whatever, but a lot of them made it out. Some didn't and it's terrible.

• 1:27:05Speaker 05

  What uh, what was, was there a minimum rank to go to recce at, at the time?

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  I tried to put E5 on it.

• 1:27:13Speaker 05

  E5?

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Speaker 05

  So they at least had to be tabbed?

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 05

  They had to have time in?

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  You had to be tabbed, yeah.

• 1:27:19Speaker 05

  So is that why, is, I was trying to figure out why recce got this essential, essentially LNO job, basically, right? Or this liaison job? Um, was it because of the overall maturity of the recce elements?

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  I think it was the maturity and mentality.

• 1:27:45Speaker 04

  Because those inter-agency jobs, you gotta have the right personality and the right person

• 1:27:52Speaker 04

  in those positions. Um, if you know anything about Ranger Regiment, you know, you're from private on up, you know, it's

• 1:28:03Speaker 05

  Ranger, Ranger.

• 1:28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to think of the words without like offending somebody, but

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  Ranger smash.

• 1:28:08Speaker 04

  Just chest beating, you know, fire, fire breathing team leader.

• 1:28:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:28:12Speaker 04

  You know, you don't, you don't want that in those positions. You need somebody that can is kind of mellow, can read the room.

• 1:28:20Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:21Speaker 04

  Speak intelligently.

• 1:28:22Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  And know when to talk.

• 1:28:25Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  And when to listen. Um, not embarrass the regiment or the army.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:28:31Speaker 04

  You know, because you never know, when you're working with a bunch of civilians, you never know who's who.

• 1:28:35Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:28:36Speaker 04

  So, um, I think that's why we got that, that job.

• 1:28:40Speaker 05

  And, and what works great as a, a TL or a, uh, you know, a squad leader, whatever, on the line,

• 1:28:50Speaker 05

  like get, you know, lighting a fire under people's asses, like getting them, especially when you're dealing with, you know, 18 year olds fresh off the street, like, there's nothing wrong with that. They're, it's great for that job.

• 1:29:00Speaker 04

  They need it.

• 1:29:01Speaker 05

  Right. But sometimes it takes a different sensibility to work in each other, in these other positions.

• 1:29:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, then we're not, when I was at the Dunes aren't, like I, I pride myself when I was at the Dunes aren't, did not have a single incident.

• 1:29:16Speaker 04

  Not a single incident alcohol related or other. And I think a big part of that was treating them like men.

• 1:29:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  And then also, I don't think I yelled one time.

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  I don't think I smoked anybody one time. I did more of the disappointed dad leadership.

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 1:29:35Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 1:29:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Jack Murphy?

  Well, you treat, you treat a boy like a man and they man up, right?

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  Well, also, the, I think one of the keys to avoiding alcohol related incidents, incidents is like a tight team and a hasty exfil. Like, like.

• 1:29:49Speaker 04

  Combat park.

• 1:29:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:50Speaker 04

  Get up.

• 1:29:50Speaker 05

  Pre prior planning, right?

• 1:29:55Speaker 04

  I mean, it was like two weeks after I left, there was a DUI.

• 1:29:59Speaker 04

  You know, two weeks after and they're like, why did you leave us?

• 1:30:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  It's not my choice. I'm sorry.

• 1:30:04Jack Murphy?

  So is, uh, as you're going on these deployments, I mean, and I mean, it's, it's really cool to hear about this because I think that the cliche about Rangers even to this day with some folks is that Rangers are like a blocking force for, you know, Delta Force operations. And it's like.

• 1:30:18Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  Far from the truth.

• 1:30:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, the boys have gone off and done all sorts of interesting, unique things, uh, be it direct action or otherwise.

• 1:30:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was the Arkansas National Guard, like the Rangers, yeah.

• 1:30:31Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, you know, as you're going off on these, these sorts of unique missions, I mean, are there any of them that kind of like stand out in your mind that, you know, you'd like to talk about?

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  I'd say one of the, one of the most impressive ones we did was a kind of proof of concept, a national strike, proof of concept, you know? For that, that deployment, I was stationed just outside Kabul and we wanted to see, we want to prove that we could go as far as we can go. Mez, which was, you know, northern Afghanistan. So we, uh, came up with a plan, found a target that was still active up there and, uh, We, you know, we sent some guys in civilian vehicles. They drove all the way up there.

• 1:31:22Speaker 04

  Afghans, our indigenous force. And then we flew some guys, commercial air up there undercover.

• 1:31:31Speaker 04

  And then the rest of us took a private jet, which I thought was ridiculous.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  I was like, are we really in a private jet right now? And the pilot was like, ah, it's a, nah, it's a ninety-three model. It's still a private jet, dude. Like, are you kidding me right now?

• 1:31:44Jack Murphy?

  You guys are, I mean, that's, that's about as baller as it gets, man. You're like, uh,

• 1:31:48Speaker 04

  Probably four of us, yeah.

• 1:31:48Jack Murphy?

  Ranger hunter killer team.

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  It's like riding.

• 1:31:51Jack Murphy?

  Cruise around in a private jet.

• 1:31:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like riding in a two thousand five limousine. It's like, I don't care it's two thousand.

• 1:31:56Speaker 04

  Still limo, man.

• 1:31:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:57Speaker 04

  You got a booze cart?

• 1:31:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:32:00Speaker 04

  And then we sent, uh, it's like a civilian C one thirty, it's called L one hundred. So we loaded up some, call them Scooby vans. Looks like a mystery machine. Scooby doo. Loaded those on there and flew those up there. And, uh, we all linked up up there. Uh, me and one of my interagency partners, we walked up to the gate guard. There's a big army, like probably a National Guard guy or something. And, you know, here I am, or here we are, you know, looking like this. And I was like, hey, man, and, you know, like fifteen minutes, you're gonna have, you know, about twenty Afghans show up in civilian vehicles with weapons.

• 1:32:41Speaker 04

  I was like, you can't stop them. Don't search them. They're with us. Just let them through. They're coming over here. And he's just like,

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  I was like, thank you.

• 1:32:51Speaker 04

  That was easier than I thought it was gonna be. I was gonna have to go talk to somebody else. But, uh, we all link up, get our vans, vehicles, guns, everything together. And we go out and hit this target out in Mez that, I mean, no one's operated a Mez in probably five years-ish.

• 1:33:09Speaker 04

  So he had no idea we were there. We'd show up and, you know, banged out his door, scoop him up and he just looked at us like, who the hell are you? Where'd you guys come from? I haven't been bad. Like, I stopped being bad, you know? And detain him, take him back to the hangar and kind of felt bad for the guy because he honestly hadn't done anything bad in a couple of years. And I don't know what he did before that, you know, he was still a target, so whatever. And, uh,

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  but he sat in the corner of that hangar, you know, earmuffed, blindfolded and handcuffed for about 12 hours. Like, it was kind of, I felt bad. I was like, man, this guy has no idea what's going on right now. And then we load him up on the L-100, a 45 minute flight back to Kabul. And he's peeing himself and pooping himself and throwing up the entire time because he has no idea where he's going. Probably the first time he's ever been on a plane ever.

• 1:34:10Speaker 04

  Land in Kabul.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  Take him off that. We get on an MI-17 helicopter, fly to our base. Again, he has no idea what's going on, where he's going. He just lost in the sauce. And then take him back there and debrief him and I think they just put him on a car spare and flew him back.

• 1:34:29Speaker 05

  Gave him a few hundred bucks.

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  It's like, hey, thanks for the proof of concept.

• 1:34:32Speaker 05

  Sorry, bro.

• 1:34:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, uh, that was pretty cool to be a part of that.

• 1:34:35Jack Murphy?

  It shows, uh, you know, I think we were talking a little bit before we started the show. I mean, it kind of shows like what could have been. And, you know, like in full disclosure, I was like definitely in favor of us pulling out of Afghanistan. But on the flip side to it, what you guys were doing shows, I think that there could have been a very light footprint, American presence in Afghanistan, maintaining that sort of residual counterterrorism force, large or really almost entirely working through Afghan partners. Um, and that operation shows, you know, it could have been a national asset, not just regional.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:35:17Speaker 04

  Another, I mean, another mission that comes to mind was, you know, my, my JTAC, he got, he got shot up one night. He was, he got shot four times. And, uh, we were going after this SFS facility.

• 1:35:34Speaker 04

  So we hit, hit the suspected SFS facility and there's like a, a legit family in there. And he's like, eh, not us. Might want to talk to the guys across the street though.

• 1:35:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Speaker 04

  So we go across the street and, uh,

• 1:35:47Speaker 04

  as we were maneuvering, they squirted out the back and took off running. We had Apaches overhead already. We collapsed, collapsed them in overhead. So they had eyes on. We're kind of chasing after these guys and in the, the farm fields in Afghanistan, you have a field and then there's like an irrigation dish that runs through them. Or it's raised for a walkway. So e- either one, it's either sunken down or raised up. And, uh, we were getting ready to come up to a cross section or intersection where these irrigation ditches and walkways crossed. And my JTAC was standing up on the raised section and he's talking to the birds and he's like, hey, do you have,

• 1:36:33Speaker 04

  you know, eyes on hotspot? Like, yeah, it's about, you know, 25 meters in front of you. And as soon as he said that, they just started ripping rounds at us. And he was the first person that they could hear and see, cause he was, it was probably a full moon for all I know, but he was lit up. You could see him playing his day, standing on this berm and,

• 1:36:56Speaker 04

  you know, he took it in the thigh, the abdomen, the ribs and his helmet. And he didn't have his chin strap buckled, which I think saved his life, honestly. Because that round was sticking through the inside of his helmet. So if it was tight, it would have had something to,

• 1:37:15Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:37:16Speaker 04

  Some type of, that was the word I'm looking for. Some type of resistance.

• 1:37:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it would have been stabilized. Yeah.

• 1:37:22Speaker 04

  But his helmet was unbuckled, so it knocked it off. And, uh, you know, I was about 50 meters to his left, a couple of guys down from him.

• 1:37:31Jack Murphy?

  So he got a full burst.

• 1:37:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, straight up.

• 1:37:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Speaker 04

  And I said, knock his helmet off. He's yelling, I'm hit. And I'm shooting back and yelling him to put a tourniquet on it. The rest of the team is shooting back. Yelling for the medic, shooting back, yelling for the medic again, because he's shooting, so he can't hear me.

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  Like, come over here, you know, medic. Because he was probably about 25 meters to my left. So he's running across all these, all this fire to get to him. Meanwhile, my JTAC had the wherewithal to scoop his helmet back up, put it on his head, key up to the birds, you know, while he's bleeding out. And tell them that he's hit. Take all commands from two, one, who's me, the GFC. And I thought that was pretty cool that he had the.

• 1:38:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 04

  You know.

• 1:38:23Speaker 05

  Wherewithal.

• 1:38:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was able to do that.

• 1:38:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:26Speaker 04

  He could think through things. He wasn't freaking out. But as he's yelling, I'm, I'm hit, I'm yelling at him to put a tourniquet on him. I'm like, shooting like, I can't help you right now, man. Trying to kill these guys first.

• 1:38:39Speaker 04

  Started trading grenades back and forth. It was like playing hot potato with grenades. I mean, legit, like, grenade landing from me to you. And, you know, the entire time you've grown up in the army, when a grenade comes at you, what do you say?

• 1:38:52Speaker 05

  Well, you're supposed to jump away.

• 1:38:53Speaker 04

  You say grenade, you know, you yell grenade.

• 1:38:55Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 1:38:56Speaker 04

  When you throw one, you say frag out. And one comes in, you yell grenade.

• 1:39:01Speaker 04

  My buddy, I don't know if it was like the stress of the moment or something, but he was like, frag in. I was like, what?

• 1:39:09Speaker 04

  Blew up right there in front of us. I was like, oh, my God. And we start, started throwing them back. I watched some guys just like limp wrist one, had to, you know, kind of die from that. But we ended up, you know, taking care of that problem. But those guys actually had like a defended fortified sandbag position.

• 1:39:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Speaker 04

  Like they ran to it, waiting for us to come to them. And it was a near ambush. We were within 25 meters. I mean, we were, you could see him.

• 1:39:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, they had a fallback position.

• 1:39:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 04

  We ended up smoking them.

• 1:39:40Speaker 04

  Worked on the JTAC. He.

• 1:39:44Speaker 04

  Remember him like laying on the stretcher and he like passed out and I was like, oh shit, he just died. And he was like, you're my best friend. I was like, fuck. I kind of look at him, I look at the medic, I'm like, medic's not freaking out. I'm like, what the hell, man? I kind of slap him in the face. I'm like, Trevor, come back to me, man. And he uh stayed passed out. And the medic was like, hey dude, he's in uh, he's in that K-hole.

• 1:40:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:06Speaker 04

  Ketamine.

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:07Speaker 04

  He's like, just let him go. He's, he's in a good place right now.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  He's happy.

• 1:40:10Speaker 04

  I was like, alright, if you say so. But uh, he had popped back up. He like woke up and like popped back up and he's like, Dustin. I was like, what's up? What's stopping you all, man? What's up? He's like, hey, man. Make sure you eat big, lift big, get big. And he like passed back out. I was like, seriously? And then he woke back up again and uh called out to our RTO Jeremy. He's like, Jeremy. He's like, yeah, what's up? And he's like, give me a dip. He's like, I looked at him, I was like, you're not getting a dip right now. You're not, you're not getting a dip, sorry. He's like,

• 1:40:46Speaker 04

  alright. Passed back out. Um, Doc Bowman at that time did a fricking phenomenal job saving that guy's life, man. I mean, from tourniquets to freeze dried plasma. Um, I don't know if anybody, if anybody knows what freeze dried plasma is?

• 1:41:09Speaker 04

  At the time, it's still, we were the only ones using it. It was kind of experimental. We're the guinea pigs. It's French. Um, it comes in two glass bottles. One's powdered plasma, one's the solution to mix it. And you gotta like suck it out of the syringe, it's vacuum sealed. And I, I was pulling on that syringe as hard as I could, trying to get as much solution as I could and shoot it into the powder mix in the other glass bottle. So Doc always had this, it was like a C O S bag with these two glass bottles. And you think carrying glass bottles on like a mission, like they're gonna break, you know? But they're like bubble wrapped and everything. But then you swirl, you can't shake it, you gotta swirl it. So I'm sitting here like swirling the solution, like.

• 1:41:51Speaker 05

  Like you're mixing a drink.

• 1:41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm like sitting here swirling the solution, like waiting. Like, is it good yet? And he's like, yeah, give it to me. Gave him the freeze dried plasma. Um, you know, like I said, tourniquets, the dressings, freeze dried plasma. Uh.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  Fentanyl pop, ketamine, just everything was awesome. Doc did a phenomenal job.

• 1:42:10Jack Murphy?

  So you guys did like, I mean, I know there's a difference between blood and plasma, but essentially you kind of gave him like a blood transfusion.

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  So it's almost like an infusion. Can it, so it can carry oxygen unlike an IV?

• 1:42:24Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:42:24Speaker 05

  Fascinating. That's amazing.

• 1:42:26Speaker 04

  Really, when you give somebody an IV, all you're doing is increasing their blood pressure.

• 1:42:28Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  But the plasma actually carries the oxygen.

• 1:42:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:42:35Speaker 04

  Bird came in, pissed me off because the LZ we were lazing, they said they couldn't land at. They said it was too small. They're like, hey, we gotta push over some LZ lazing.

• 1:42:47Speaker 05

  So this was a conventional bird then?

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was just regular dust off.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  And they landed like two fields over, which was the exact same size of the fields that I freaking was. But what pissed me off about it was, is like, that field wasn't cleared.

• 1:42:58Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:42:59Speaker 04

  They could have landed on an IED or something.

• 1:43:01Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  So they land and we, you know, come walking over there to like, try to clear a path as best as we could visually to bring the casualty over. Load him up, the doors are off, the, the, uh, the Blackhawk, the pilot and copilot doors, cockpit doors, they had off. And the pilot's sitting there, you know, looking down at his screen, just waiting. And I kind of walked up and I slapped him on the shoulder and scared the shit out of him. He's like, what the? I was like, hey. He's like, I was like, thank you. Like shook his hand and they took off.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  Got back to, uh, got back to JBAD base and, uh, yeah, same, yeah. He's alive today.

• 1:43:43Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome, man.

• 1:43:44Speaker 05

  That's amazing.

• 1:43:45Speaker 04

  He's a really good dude, really good friend. It was exciting at the time because I said he was shot.

• 1:43:54Speaker 04

  And he said, take all commands from two one. I'm not a JTAC.

• 1:43:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Speaker 04

  Um, but when you call up the task force, you say Eagles wounded, they're pushing everything they have to you.

• 1:44:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  Luckily, me and him had worked together for three years. He's, he had been my personal JTAC for three years and we had this bond and we were always kind of cross-training. Like he'd quiz me on things and I, I'd just listen, just listen to him talk to aircraft. You learn, you know, what to do and how to talk to him. And, uh, once he gave me control of the assets and task force pushed me every asset. So like I was in control of like three ISR birds, two Apaches, two F-16s, two A-10s, AC-130. I just had all this stuff and I was like, instead of stressing out.

• 1:44:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:42Speaker 04

  Like I knew what to do.

• 1:44:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Speaker 04

  It was cool and it.

• 1:44:45Speaker 05

  At that point you're like, let's go to war.

• 1:44:47Speaker 04

  I was thinking, yeah, we were blown up today.

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:50Jack Murphy?

  It fell on you then to like smoke check that position, right?

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 04

  Um, smoke check it and then the Apaches left with the dust off. I let them escort.

• 1:44:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Speaker 04

  Cause they were pretty much bingo anyways.

• 1:45:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  Um, but then just controlling all the sensors, like watching us on the way back and if something happened on the way back, how to control them as well. And it was, uh,

• 1:45:12Speaker 04

  yeah, I'd say cool. It was just cool to be able to do, like know how to do that.

• 1:45:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Speaker 04

  Paying attention to him.

• 1:45:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Speaker 04

  Cause the first time me and him worked together and got into an engagement, I think I was an E6 at the time. Yeah, I was an E6 at the time. And we had some guys maneuvering on us and he came over and he's like, hey, we got guys, you know, coming up. Can I shoot? I was like, yeah, man, tell the Apaches, tell them to shoot.

• 1:45:38Speaker 04

  And he walked away. He came back like a minute later. He's like, hey, are you sure? I was like, yeah, dude. Like as long as you don't hit any civilians. Or blow up any civilian buildings like, I don't care, shoot them. And uh, he's like, okay, I just, I just never had an E6 clear me hot before.

• 1:45:58Speaker 04

  You have now.

• 1:45:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  And like, it was at that point, like our synchronicity.

• 1:46:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:46:04Speaker 04

  We just kind of, we just kind of mind melded.

• 1:46:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:46:07Speaker 04

  And worked, worked together very well after that. Cause he knew what my expectations were and I knew he wasn't gonna do anything stupid. And uh, we just, I mean, half the time we used fires. That's like, you know what I want, man?

• 1:46:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:46:20Speaker 04

  I just do it.

• 1:46:21Speaker 05

  And, and, and those guys, and we've talked about on the show before, whether they're JTACs or CCTs or, or uh, TACPs or, those guys were so good at their job.

• 1:46:33Jack Murphy?

  Here's, here's the interesting thing. Tell, tell them who this JTAC was though.

• 1:46:37Speaker 04

  He was an army JTAC. He's a Ranger. He's a Fister thirteen fox.

• 1:46:43Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 1:46:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. I, I, to get to that level, like calling our, an artillery and calling a naval gunfire, I mean, it's, it's one thing. Calling an air in a, in a, in an engagement like that, the, you've just got to be cool as a cucumber to be able to do that and quick. And they're just.

• 1:47:01Speaker 04

  He was awesome. And uh, I said, he was an army JTAC, which for people out there, far and few between.

• 1:47:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  Like it's usually an air force job. Um, but regiment has their own. He's a thirteen fox. So he's an artillery.

• 1:47:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 04

  Artilleryman.

• 1:47:16Speaker 05

  So he was a Fister in the regiment? He wasn't an attached JTAC?

• 1:47:20Speaker 04

  No, he's a Fister in the regiment.

• 1:47:22Speaker 05

  That's amazing.

• 1:47:23Speaker 04

  But we don't have artillery assets.

• 1:47:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:47:25Speaker 04

  That's their job. They're JTACs. Um, which kind of screws them, talking to him, you know, throughout our time together. Kind of screws them career wise.

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  Because.

• 1:47:36Jack Murphy?

  They don't have artillery time.

• 1:47:37Speaker 04

  Exactly. They're going to like E78 boards.

• 1:47:39Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:47:40Speaker 04

  And the sergeant major in charge of their boards is like, I don't give a shit about your JTAC stuff. Like that has nothing to do with being an artilleryman.

• 1:47:45Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  Which is stupid because it's better than being an artilleryman.

• 1:47:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like they're, they're, they're actually more like, they sound more like they're Anglico guys, you know, the more like the Marine Anglico, they're a naval gunfire liaison. Yeah.

• 1:47:59Speaker 05

  It's interesting because I had a similar experience early on in Afghanistan. Nobody got uh, injured fortunately. But it made me realize that there are no like squitters. They're only maneuver elements.

• 1:48:11Speaker 04

  I like your style.

• 1:48:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, his uh, I was saying, I showed him a picture earlier today.

• 1:48:22Speaker 04

  You know, he took a round to the helmet and it was a PK round. And if it wasn't for his helmet being unbuckled, it probably would punch all the way through because in the picture you can, it's sticking through his helmet. It scratched his head. There's a scratch.

• 1:48:33Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:48:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. And what's crazy is the Ops Core helmet is only rated to nine millimeter. And as a PK round.

• 1:48:42Speaker 05

  Yes, it's a lightweight.

• 1:48:43Speaker 04

  Seven sixty by.

• 1:48:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Jack Murphy?

  Fifty, fifty four.

• 1:48:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Speaker 04

  And it punched through and stopped when it touched his head. But I mean, it was right here in his temple. Like it went through where the rail is on the helmet.

• 1:48:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  If anybody knows what I'm talking about. And uh, I mean, if he would have been looking to the left, to the right or up, he would have took it to the face.

• 1:49:02Jack Murphy?

  It looked, it looked like either the bullet came at like maybe an upward angle or, or, or the round key hold through the helmet. I, I, I wasn't there. I have no idea which it was, but it was interesting. The, the, the hole in the side of the helmet.

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  I think what it, what happened was because obviously he got hit here first, second, third, fourth.

• 1:49:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  I think it zipped up. As that one hit, he, you know, flinched.

• 1:49:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:27Speaker 04

  Or whatever and it's bang, hit right in the head.

• 1:49:29Jack Murphy?

  That, yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:49:30Speaker 04

  It was just a fraction of a second that saved his life.

• 1:49:33Speaker 05

  What did uh, you said that the, that the um,

• 1:49:38Speaker 05

  the Afghans that you worked with, that they got along. How were they in terms of combat?

• 1:49:45Speaker 04

  Um, I would say I, I trusted them with my life. I still do. I mean, I did. I had to trust them with my life because there's five of us and five interagency people and then, you know, a hundred Afghans or however many we had.

• 1:50:02Speaker 04

  And sitting,

• 1:50:05Speaker 04

  they're the ones that are hitting the targets. They're, they're primary breach. They're primary everything. We are technically advisors. And to kind of sit back a couple of times, you know, every now and then and just watch them, put a ladder on the wall, climb up the ladder, pull security, go over, open the gate from the inside, everybody flow in and, and secure everything.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  It was awesome. It was like watching us hit a target. They're well trained. They know what they're doing and they need to be utilized. Still, to this day, like, we need to be utilizing those guys. They're very well trained. I'll caveat it with.

• 1:50:48Speaker 04

  If one of those Afghans has been carrying a ladder for 10 years. It doesn't matter if you're gonna go hit a tent in the middle of the desert, he's still gonna carry a ladder. Because if you take that ladder away, he doesn't know what to do.

• 1:51:04Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:51:06Speaker 04

  If that makes sense.

• 1:51:07Speaker 05

  They, they, they were very good at what they were trained on, but if there was a complex problem or something was out of the ordinary that, that they might.

• 1:51:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:15Jack Murphy?

  It, something I, I would also like to, to point out is to, as far as I'm aware. That program that you guys were working on, pretty large, a lot of Afghans, uh, throughout 20, you know, essentially 20 years of war. I'm not aware of any green on blue incidents.

• 1:51:34Speaker 04

  Zero.

• 1:51:34Jack Murphy?

  At all.

• 1:51:35Speaker 04

  Zero.

• 1:51:35Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Which I think, I think speaks a lot to the efficacy of the program and whatever you guys were doing, i- i- it was working in that regard.

• 1:51:43Speaker 04

  There's zero green on blue. We thought we might have had one, one, not an actual green on blue, like a developing green on blue. We were able to nip it in the bud, um, and fired both those guys and got them out of here because of the referral program.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 04

  So they were gone, but, uh, yeah, not a single green on blue incident. And even, you know, some of those outstations that we had shut down, like the one in Assadabad shut down. However, those guys stayed there and operated on their own. Those Afghans stayed there and operated on their own with no American help.

• 1:52:21Speaker 04

  They finally did get some American help, uh, towards the end of 2016 through. Uh, just some, just some funding and weapons here and there. Um, but they stay there and police their own community and they would come down to J bad like once a month and kind of give us a debriefing of what they've been doing and they're still getting after it.

• 1:52:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:44Speaker 04

  On their own.

• 1:52:44Jack Murphy?

  Did, did they ever get to the point where they were able to have their own JTACs and like talk to Afghan helicopters? No.

• 1:52:51Speaker 04

  No, not our guys.

• 1:52:53Speaker 04

  Hailed to the no.

• 1:52:55Jack Murphy?

  No, I mean, even talking to Afghan air force.

• 1:52:57Speaker 04

  Uh, I'm sure the KKA probably did or regular Afghan army.

• 1:53:03Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  But our guys weren't Afghan army. So they wouldn't talk to them anyways.

• 1:53:08Jack Murphy?

  Got you. Oh yeah. I see what you're saying. Um, so as your, your three years as recce platoon sergeant are winding down, what's sort of the next step for you?

• 1:53:19Speaker 04

  Uh, got finished as platoon sergeant, got moved to the three shop.

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  You know, glorious three shop. Um, spent about a year there as the AOPC NCO and I was just miserable. But the guys deployed again without me and I even emailed sergeant major. I was like, hey, I'll go just as a trigger puller.

• 1:53:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:46Speaker 04

  I won't be in charge of anything.

• 1:53:47Jack Murphy?

  I'll be a saw gunner.

• 1:53:48Speaker 04

  Just let me go.

• 1:53:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Speaker 04

  And he's like, no, we need you back here. And I was like, oh, this sucks. Like, working an office job is my nightmare. Like that is my nightmare and I like working with my hands. I like being in the field. I like teaching. I like, you know, being with the guys and, uh, I was just miserable in my job.

• 1:54:07Speaker 06

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• 1:54:21Speaker 07

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• 1:54:32Speaker 06

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• 1:56:00Speaker 04

  My performance was probably not great. Like, I tried to go to work as less as possible. Like, I just, some days I wouldn't even show up. Whatever. And it showed. Not ashamed to say it. And I finally got the invite to leave. Like, the officer or major pulled me in. He's like, hey, man, like, you know, I think it might be time for you to find somewhere else to go.

• 1:56:23Jack Murphy?

  Thank you for your service.

• 1:56:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I asked him, I was like, am I being RFS? He's like, no, no, no. He's like, you're not being RFS. Don't take it that way. He's like, you personally need to find somewhere else.

• 1:56:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Speaker 04

  He's like, you're miserable. And I was like, all right. So I kind of went and hunted around, went to Ranger Training Brigade, where Ranger School is. And the sergeant major of the brigade was my previous sergeant major of battalion. Awesome guy. Vic is one of the best sergeants majors you could ever work for. And

• 1:56:58Speaker 04

  You know, just cold knocked his office. Actually, I knocked on his office. He wasn't there. I waited in the parking lot till he got there. Watched him walk in and I walked in behind him and I was like, hey, what's up?

• 1:57:09Speaker 04

  But I told him what was going on and he can give me a job because the retention guy at battalion was like, hey, man.

• 1:57:16Speaker 04

  You're either gonna go to the S fab, which screw that. And or go to Fort Polk, JRTC. And I was like, I will go AWOL.

• 1:57:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:57:28Speaker 04

  Before I go to JRTC. I was like, there's always another way. I was like, I refuse to let the army tell me what I'm gonna do. And so I went and talked to Vic and he was like, hey, what do you, what do you want to do? I was like, I'll be a ranger instructor, man. Like, I don't, I don't care. I'll be on the woods. And he kind of looked at me and he like, he's like, you don't want to do that. I was like, what? And he's like, this sucks. He's like, you're gonna be out there, rain, shine, snow, heat, holidays, away from your family, twenty four on, like forty eight off. He's like, it's not fun. I was like, all right, well, never mind then.

• 1:58:05Speaker 04

  Then he goes, but we just took over jump master airborne and Pathfinder.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:58:11Speaker 04

  So that all falls, falls under ARTB now.

• 1:58:15Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 1:58:15Speaker 04

  Airborne Ranger Training.

• 1:58:16Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:58:18Speaker 04

  And I was like, well, I'll do jump master or Pathfinder.

• 1:58:21Speaker 05

  That's a nice badge. You haven't had it before.

• 1:58:24Speaker 04

  So I went to be a, I already had Pathfinder.

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  You did. Well, can you tell us about the Pathfinder school? Cause it's not, it's, it's a coveted school and not a lot of people get it.

• 1:58:33Jack Murphy?

  Does it still exist?

• 1:58:34Speaker 04

  Nope, it's gone.

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  It's gone.

• 1:58:35Speaker 04

  No longer coveted.

• 1:58:37Speaker 05

  Well, now it's doubly coveted. You should go back and just wear that badge. Right.

• 1:58:41Speaker 04

  They still have them for the National Guard.

• 1:58:42Jack Murphy?

  It's like a glider badge. Not so many people with that.

• 1:58:45Speaker 04

  I want the Army Space Badge, dude. Have you seen that thing?

• 1:58:47Jack Murphy?

  They have that?

• 1:58:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like Space Ghost.

• 1:58:49Jack Murphy?

  Holy shit.

• 1:58:50Speaker 04

  Looks awesome.

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  But yeah, so I went to be a Pathfinder, Pathfinder instructor.

• 1:58:55Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:58:55Speaker 04

  That's where I went. After regiment, be a Pathfinder instructor, as a drop zones instructor. So Pathfinder School

• 1:59:04Speaker 04

  teaches sling loads.

• 1:59:05Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:59:06Speaker 04

  HLZ operations and drop zone operations. Teaches all three of those.

• 1:59:13Speaker 04

  You don't have to be airborne to go.

• 1:59:16Speaker 04

  You can get sling load certified from the sling load certification course. It's called SLIC. You can get air assault HLZ certified from air assault school, but Pathfinder is the only one that teaches all three in one shot. The only one that teaches drop zone operations. And basically you're learning and the history of Pathfinder school comes from World War II.

• 1:59:40Speaker 04

  When the Pathfinders went into Europe before the invasion and set up drop zones for the parachuters from eighty second hundred for us to jump in. And that's why everybody goes to Pathfinder schools to learn drop zone operations. They're not going there for sling loads. Or HLZs because like I said, you can go to other schools for those.

• 2:00:01Speaker 04

  You're going there to learn drop zones and that's what we're known for. And

• 2:00:07Speaker 04

  you learn how to calculate width and length of drop zones. And green light time of drop zones, how many jumpers and equipment you can put on a drop zone. What type of aircraft a drop zone can accommodate. Just everything along those lines.

• 2:00:21Jack Murphy?

  What is it? The L? The L shaped?

• 2:00:25Jack Murphy?

  With the flares that you put out when they, I'm talking about bundle drops.

• 2:00:29Speaker 04

  Talking about like a GMRS drop.

• 2:00:32Jack Murphy?

  This might be more high tech than even what, what we were doing back in that, those, that time.

• 2:00:36Speaker 04

  Now, there's a, I think what you're talking about is a, it's a ground marked release system.

• 2:00:40Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:00:41Speaker 04

  So you pretty much make an L with VS seventeen panels for the daytime or strobes or flares at nighttime.

• 2:00:49Speaker 04

  But you make an L shape and as the aircraft flies over that jump master is looking out the door.

• 2:00:55Speaker 04

  You know, the L is this way. This is the long axis of the drop zone. So they're flying up this way. As soon as these lights get online and they're in line, that's his green light. That's when he's pushing everything. So he didn't have to talk to anybody on the radio. So for special forces or recy teams, GMRS is very.

• 2:01:15Speaker 04

  Enticing because I can go out and set up a GMRS drop zone to receive my resupply of food, ammo, whatever, equipment, whatever I need. I can set that up and not even have to be there. I can go back off into my hide site or my patrol base and hear the plane fly over. Don't have to talk to anybody. They're just going to line those panels or strobes up or flares up, kick out where they're kicking out, and then I'm gonna go out and pick it up, break everything down.

• 2:01:43Speaker 05

  Do they do any adjustments for like the wind at the time or anything like that?

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  Or? Oh, during the, the drop?

• 2:01:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:01:50Speaker 04

  The aircraft is not. No, that's, that's on you on the ground.

• 2:01:53Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:01:55Speaker 04

  So.

• 2:01:56Speaker 05

  So you just have to beat the villagers and everything?

• 2:01:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I kind of wing it.

• 2:01:59Jack Murphy?

  They're also like 500 feet off the ground too, right?

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  You can be. Yeah. 300 to 500.

• 2:02:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fascinating. And like I said, I, they don't talk, like you don't hear much about what happens at the course. It's just, it was always one of the most coveted badges. It's, it's, it's a beautiful badge. And you know, the army is all about.

• 2:02:22Speaker 04

  They still have, uh, they still have the National Guard Warrior Training Center at Fort Benning.

• 2:02:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Speaker 04

  They still run their Pathfinder School. Um, Fort Campbell still has their Pathfinder School. But the regular army deemed it necessary to shut down the Pathfinder School.

• 2:02:43Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:02:44Speaker 04

  The proponent for all Pathfinder operations. Cause like we were at that schoolhouse, we were responsible for the trainings. We're National Guard. We're a training center and responsible for Fort Campbell. Like we'd go up and audit them, you know, but then you're going to shut down the schoolhouse.

• 2:02:59Jack Murphy?

  Well, like, like the worst teams, it'll be back one day.

• 2:03:03Speaker 04

  It will.

• 2:03:03Speaker 05

  Okay. No, don't reinvent it.

• 2:03:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I get guys, you know, guys that came through Pathfinder when I was an instructor there at regiment. I mean, I had a guy hit me up like three or four weeks ago. He was like, hey, I'm doing this and this, like on this drop zone. Can I do this or this? And I sat there and explained it to him like, yeah, you can do this, but think about this and whatever. And he was like, can I get you to come out here? And like go over the stuff. He's like, I feel like this is a dying art and it needs to be taught. I was like, yeah, man.

• 2:03:32Speaker 05

  So if if they didn't have a specific school for the drop zone, they had it for the other things, but they don't have it. Who, where do people learn those DZ skills now?

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  Warrior Training Center, National Guard, or Campbell.

• 2:03:47Speaker 04

  They tried a pilot program.

• 2:03:52Speaker 04

  I don't know. Well, so Jump Master teaches a little bit. Jump Master teaches CARP drop zones, which is Air Force drop zones. So there's Army drop zones and Air Force drop zones. Army drop zones is GMRS and VERS. GMRS is ground marked release system. And VERS is verbally initiated release system. So you're talking on the radio, telling them when to drop. So those are Army. Air Force is CARP, Computed Air Release Points.

• 2:04:21Speaker 04

  Which means the computer on the aircraft, that C seventeen or C one thirty is calculating everything.

• 2:04:25Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:04:26Speaker 04

  Give them a grid and it does everything. And that's the green light. So the green light in the aircraft, if it's C one thirty or C seventeen we jump. That's all ran by a computer.

• 2:04:37Speaker 04

  Jump Master teaches that. So Jump Master still teaches CARP. Not sure if they started teaching VERS or GMRS at all.

• 2:04:47Speaker 04

  There was a pilot program where they were just gonna do. I think, I think Pathfinder were just gonna do drop zones. Which I could see be a viable option, because you can get those other certifications at other schools. So why not just teach drop zones? But we fall back in what we talked about at the beginning of the interview was. Pathfinders and LRS are not viewed as special.

• 2:05:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:05:15Speaker 04

  In the American Army.

• 2:05:16Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:05:16Speaker 04

  For whatever reason, I don't know.

• 2:05:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:05:18Speaker 04

  I don't know why they don't. I think it's honestly a senior people.

• 2:05:25Speaker 04

  This is my personal opinion. Senior people went to these schools or tried out for these units and didn't make it. And they're like, no, no, no, you know, they're never going to be special. I didn't make it, no one can make it. You know, so they don't want them to be special or elevated to something higher than them.

• 2:05:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:05:42Speaker 04

  If that makes sense.

• 2:05:43Speaker 05

  No, it, I mean, look, it's sort of like giving. I mean, if Rangers are special, it obviously is the Black Beret that makes them so. So let's give it to the whole army and the whole army will be special.

• 2:05:55Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 2:05:56Speaker 05

  I, I mean, I get it, but, but it just seems like a real lack of foresight in that. You know, we're moving to this near perimeter. We don't know at any given time what combat will look like. And, you know, we can say that we have, you know, drones and ISR platforms and all these things. But as SIGINT, uh, or is, is like, uh, signals warfare, electronic warfare, cyber warfare come online. All of those things may be countered.

• 2:06:23Jack Murphy?

  I think just looking at what we are planning for right now, what, what DOD is looking at is potential, uh, expeditionary warfare in the Pacific, looking at

• 2:06:35Speaker 04

  Exactly where I'm going to go.

• 2:06:36Jack Murphy?

  Very like long, long range, like it's not going to be these, uh, like a, a 30 minute helicopter trip. These new, um, vertical takeoff and landing helicopters, we're going to adapt. They're looking at like much longer insertions, having people way out there. Uh, so I think that, yeah, having DZs and, and these sorts of skills are going to be imperative to

• 2:06:56Speaker 04

  When you have this in the Indo-Pacific Paycom area, an island hopping campaign.

• 2:07:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:07:04Speaker 04

  Who's on the ground setting up?

• 2:07:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:07:05Speaker 04

  These HZs and DZs.

• 2:07:07Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:07Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 2:07:08Speaker 04

  You gotta have somebody there.

• 2:07:09Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely.

• 2:07:10Speaker 05

  And, you know, and we can throw all the electronics in the world out there, but again, there are countermeasures to that. And even if they're just setting up like, you know, isolated random EMP burst to like, to clear areas. It, it, there, there are so many countermeasures, uh, that e- even when we start talking about augmented reality and, and, you know, blue force trackers and what people might see in their headsets. If somebody hacks into that, you have a lot of blue on blue. Like, we still need to have the old techniques. Well, like people still need to be able to navigate via compass and map. They still need to be able to set up, uh, uh, you know, uh, Uh, you know, a non-computer, you know, assisted

• 2:07:55Speaker 05

  uh, drop, you know, these things, because the other thing is you can encrypt your signal so that nobody knows what you're saying, but they still know somebody's saying it. If you're blasting out, you know.

• 2:08:08Jack Murphy?

  Might be able to jam it.

• 2:08:09Speaker 04

  Not only do they know that you're saying something, they can direction.

• 2:08:13Speaker 05

  They, they can figure it out.

• 2:08:14Speaker 04

  They can get a clock.

• 2:08:15Speaker 05

  And with AI, like, it's gonna, they're gonna be able to try and so quickly, once that comes online and is like, set up, that, you know, it's, it amazes me that we have to relearn these lessons every single, after World War II, after Vietnam, like, we, you know, we have to relearn them every time.

• 2:08:37Jack Murphy?

  You know, but because I'm a mega nerd, uh, I, I read like, the publications from Fort Benning and stuff like that, and they talk about how, you know, the electronic warfare environment may become so intense, that, you know, sniper teams using these old school techniques, being bolt-action rifles, glass scopes, making field sketches with pencil and paper, that they can actually penetrate into that EW bubble, and do their operations, and, and maybe take out the jam, take out jammers, or whatever else needs to be done out there, um, you know, without having their, their, uh, equipment, uh, interfered with.

• 2:09:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, without having a signature.

• 2:09:13Jack Murphy?

  Right, right. So, yeah, it's, it's very interesting. So, after, uh, you do your time at Pathfinder, working as an instructor there, and, uh, what's the next assignment for you?

• 2:09:25Speaker 04

  I was a Pathfinder instructor for, uh, two years, and I moved on to, uh, so, Infantry, Ranger Branch called, and was like, hey, are you tied up for Benning? I was like, kinda.

• 2:09:38Speaker 04

  He was like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? I was like, man, like, I would, uh, would mind RTC if you got it. And he was like, all right, what, uh, what region? And I said, southeast. And he's like, all right, I'll call you tomorrow. Calls back, and he's like, hey, how does, uh, University of Alabama sound? I was like, dude, that sounds great. Like, roll tide, man.

• 2:10:01Speaker 04

  He's like, all right, you'll have orders in like thirty minutes. And I was like, cool. I get these orders and I look at them and it says, University of Alabama at Birmingham. I was like, what is this? University at Birmingham? So I had to like Google it. It's a whole nother university. I don't even know existed. It's called U A B. University of Alabama at Birmingham. So not the Roll Tide I was thinking.

• 2:10:29Speaker 04

  But yeah, it was only two hours away and it actually worked out better, I think, than going to University of Alabama. A smaller program. I was the MS three instructor. So I taught the juniors and got them ready for their summer camp that they go to.

• 2:10:53Speaker 04

  One of the most rewarding assignments I've ever been to.

• 2:10:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, all the other stuff is cool and you can write books and movies and stuff about, but teaching those young future army officers. What right is and showing them the ways and just kind of making that first impression on them before they come in and be an army officer.

• 2:11:23Speaker 04

  And to have them still contact me almost daily like, hey, this is an update. Like, hey, I'm an XO now, you know? Are you proud of me? Yeah, I'm proud of you. But, um.

• 2:11:35Speaker 04

  Just kind of guiding them through their college career and their, their life, you know, I can't tell you how many times.

• 2:11:43Speaker 04

  I've had a cadet on my couch in my office just break down crying because something's going on in their life.

• 2:11:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:49Speaker 04

  So here I am again.

• 2:11:50Speaker 05

  Dad.

• 2:11:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. Being, being a, being a mentor.

• 2:11:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:56Speaker 04

  They looked at me as like a big brother. You know, there was still an NCO in charge of me. He was like the dad figure. And he was awesome guy. I fucking love working with him. Travis is one of the best NCOs I've ever worked with. But, uh, he's very professional, you know, he's very.

• 2:12:16Speaker 04

  I told him when I left, I was like, you're so professional, it pisses me off.

• 2:12:21Speaker 04

  Why do you have a hind tight?

• 2:12:23Jack Murphy?

  We've had a couple of guys on here who their NCOs who their final assignment was ROTC. Javier Mackey and Paul Howe both come to come to mind and they had similar things to say that it was a very rewarding experience.

• 2:12:37Speaker 04

  It was very rewarding and is is also, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to get out of the army too. Cause I, you know, the ones that I enjoyed teaching and the ones that were receptive, awesome. But there's always ones that slip through the cracks.

• 2:12:57Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:12:57Speaker 04

  You know, and you see that caliber of people coming in the army and then also and they're going to be leading the army.

• 2:13:03Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:13:04Speaker 04

  And then the direction the army was going at the time too is, you know, not what we're used to.

• 2:13:12Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:13:13Speaker 04

  I was like, man, this is gonna be my last assignment. Like I'm done after this. But ROTC was fun. It was a good, I think, I think the best last assignments.

• 2:13:22Jack Murphy?

  I think Paul had something similar to say and I don't want to put words in in Paul Howe's mouth because I'm a little afraid of him. But, uh, but I think I think he had a similar impression that he loved working with the soldiers and mentoring those guys. But it was like also like not totally happy with the direction the army was going in.

• 2:13:41Speaker 04

  Cause that that was my last assignment. I medically retired at 17 years and I made that decision. It wasn't a light decision to make, you know, and three, three years to go.

• 2:13:51Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:52Speaker 04

  But I looked at it and I was like, can I do three more years? Cause that what if I was gonna do three more years, that was not gonna be my last assignment.

• 2:14:00Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:14:01Speaker 04

  Like where was I going after that?

• 2:14:02Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:14:03Speaker 04

  And to that point in my career, the army had never told me where to go.

• 2:14:09Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:14:09Speaker 04

  I had always chosen or volunteered. Like they never told me, hey, you're going here, you're going here. Um, so I didn't want the army to tell me to go somewhere that I didn't want to go.

• 2:14:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:22Speaker 04

  And uh, I don't want to spend three more years unhappy in a assignment that possibly sucks. Or don't want to medically retire now and get the same benefits I would as if I retired.

• 2:14:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:14:36Speaker 04

  Actually even better benefits and uh.

• 2:14:39Speaker 05

  And go out on high note, like go.

• 2:14:41Speaker 04

  Go out on a high note.

• 2:14:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:42Speaker 04

  And go off and be happy and make more money and do my own thing.

• 2:14:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:47Speaker 04

  Not be told what to do every day.

• 2:14:48Speaker 05

  For, out of curiosity, for the ones you say that were like slipping through the cracks, like what was their motivation? For going into the military, like why did they want to put themselves through it? Money?

• 2:14:59Speaker 04

  Money.

• 2:15:01Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, not really the right reason to be there in that kind of job.

• 2:15:05Speaker 04

  Money or just, you know, to get out of where they were.

• 2:15:09Jack Murphy?

  Well, that, that I can sort of guess.

• 2:15:11Speaker 04

  Well, the army, well, I don't mean like that, but like the army paid for their school. They couldn't pay for their school, so the army paid for it, which is, I guess, money, but.

• 2:15:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:15:18Speaker 04

  Same thing.

• 2:15:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:15:19Jack Murphy?

  Do uh, Dee, do we have any questions for uh, okay?

• 2:15:26Jack Murphy?

  Questions for Dustin from the chat?

• 2:15:28Speaker 04

  Why are you so monotone?

• 2:15:35Speaker 02

  It's from Jackson, um.

• 2:15:41Speaker 02

  How much cross pollination is there between uh BN, Recce and RRC? Also are BN, Recce guys more likely on the take CAC selection than line rangers?

• 2:15:53Speaker 04

  Much cross pollination between what?

• 2:15:54Speaker 05

  Battalion Recce, Battalion Recce and RRC.

• 2:15:57Speaker 04

  Uh, I'd say cross pollination is de- or was decent when I was there. Um, like I said, we filled.

• 2:16:05Speaker 04

  Filled some of their billets, um, because they didn't have enough people to fill all their teams, so a natural.

• 2:16:12Jack Murphy?

  A lot, a lot of those guys go to selection too for RRC?

• 2:16:15Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 2:16:17Speaker 04

  My time there, I maybe had two guys go.

• 2:16:20Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 2:16:20Speaker 05

  Do, does, I, I mean, a lot of line Rangers go to, to, well, not a lot, but you know, it's, it's a thing to go to CAG selection. Is that also with R C? Or do they more, I mean, not R C, but recy?

• 2:16:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:35Speaker 05

  Or do they?

• 2:16:35Speaker 04

  Cause you still, you still have that mentality.

• 2:16:37Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 2:16:37Speaker 04

  You still have that, I want to go kill ship mentality.

• 2:16:40Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:16:40Speaker 04

  I want to go be the best of the best.

• 2:16:42Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:16:42Speaker 04

  You know, um, I had a couple of guys go, a couple of peers go as well while I was there. Um, I had another guy. He was on the fence of, you know, should I go to R C selection or should I go to CAG selection?

• 2:16:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:16:58Speaker 04

  And one of my buddies that's R C guy told him like, go to CAG selection, dude. Like, why not go varsity if you can go varsity?

• 2:17:06Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:07Speaker 04

  You know, go try out for varsity. And I think that's, that's one of the biggest issues in today's society as a whole, civilian and military, is it's so easy to be a rock star because mediocrity is just rampant.

• 2:17:26Speaker 04

  Like it, God's honest truth, like people are so mediocre, they will self-select and like, oh, I'm not good enough.

• 2:17:33Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:17:34Speaker 04

  They'll never select me.

• 2:17:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:35Speaker 04

  Like, you don't know that, man. Just go try.

• 2:17:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:17:38Speaker 04

  Go, I can't tell you how many selections I've been to.

• 2:17:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:41Speaker 04

  I've tried out for everything under the sun. I've been told numerous times, um, you throw enough shit at the wall, eventually something will stick.

• 2:17:49Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:17:50Speaker 04

  You know, so it works out in the end.

• 2:17:52Jack Murphy?

  And you got to do some of the coolest stuff that the army had going on, in my humble opinion.

• 2:17:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. And, and you know, and that's one of the things that we've talked about on the show before is, like, we've had some people from the conventional side on before. But like the conventional army and the Marine Corps, like they were out there hooking and jabbing, like non-stop on these long ass deployments.

• 2:18:17Speaker 04

  I've been there.

• 2:18:18Speaker 05

  And, and they do not get, they don't, right? Like they don't get the credit that they deserve at all.

• 2:18:25Speaker 04

  And I have a lot of guys that I did the long fifteen month or year long deployment with. And then they got out afterwards.

• 2:18:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:33Speaker 04

  And, you know, that's, that's what they have. They have that fifteen month.

• 2:18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Speaker 04

  And that no one gives them enough credit for that.

• 2:18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:39Speaker 04

  And some of the best dudes, I mean, I have a group chat on my phone. It's like six of us from my very first platoon. And we talk every day.

• 2:18:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:47Speaker 04

  You know, bullshitting.

• 2:18:48Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 2:18:49Speaker 04

  And, uh, that's what they have and they deserve the credit.

• 2:18:52Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Speaker 04

  And, uh, cause they went through some shit, man.

• 2:18:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:56Speaker 04

  You spend fifteen months somewhere.

• 2:18:57Jack Murphy?

  You get to know someone.

• 2:18:59Speaker 04

  You, you learn somebody and also in that environment, you kind of lose your community a little bit, man.

• 2:19:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19:04Speaker 04

  And it takes a little bit to get it back.

• 2:19:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19:07Speaker 04

  And some didn't get it back.

• 2:19:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19:10Speaker 05

  How, how was it for you when you went, uh, when you went to regiment? Because like I was in Rangers during a peacetime military and it's, and it's very different. But there was always this stigma until a guy earned his, like, it earned his way, right? Like until he showed that he was a good leader and, and, you know, was a good, uh, I don't say operator, cause at the time, like the Rangers were still, you know, like CQB and stuff like that were just coming on board. Like it was still the premier light infantry and, you know, we still did patrol bases and, and shit like that. But, but there was that stigma of being an import. Right? How was it for you when you first showed up?

• 2:19:56Speaker 04

  I never had that impression, impressed on me.

• 2:19:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:00Speaker 04

  I'm sure it was there. Um, the only time I ever saw it happen, um,

• 2:20:06Speaker 04

  is our very first, it was like the first month or so I was at the platoon and we're doing team live fire exercises. And there it was just a hot mess. And the platoon sergeant that I was talking about earlier, that was like, I need your help.

• 2:20:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:21Speaker 04

  I was like, hey, man, can you go grab those guys and like, teach them how to really break contact as a team? I was like, yeah, man, sure. So I kind of had to, you know, kind of nut up and overstep the other team leaders that are already there.

• 2:20:36Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:20:37Speaker 04

  And pull all their teams in. It was like, hey, guys, like, bring it in. Let me, let me show you guys how to do this, you know? And those team leaders, they kind of stepped off to the side and was like.

• 2:20:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're fueling you out.

• 2:20:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Who the fuck is this guy? I think he is, you know, like. But, uh, I think it was like, you know, the week after that, I was sitting in the team room, the cages, and I was back there and had my big old SOP binder that my platoon sergeant forced me to make as a team leader in Lurs. And it went everything from individual movement techniques to platoon operations. I was just sitting there flipping through, just kind of refreshing myself because it'd been a minute. And a squad leader or one of the recce team leaders came over. For people that don't know, a squad leader in recce is a team leader. It's the same, same, same. It's a E6. But, uh, he came over, he kind of stood there in my show. He's like, what are you looking at? I was like, my SOP book?

• 2:21:33Speaker 04

  And he was like, can I see that? I was like, just take it, dude. I was like, you need it. I was like, just take it. You can have it, copy it, you know, whatever. Cause every team should have their own SOP because they want to operate independently, you know, or teams operate independently. But I said, as an import, like, I mean, no one was walking down the hallway hitting me in the nuts.

• 2:21:51Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 2:21:52Speaker 04

  Like, nothing bad happened.

• 2:21:55Speaker 06

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

• 2:22:10Speaker 07

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

• 2:22:21Speaker 06

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

• 2:22:52Speaker 07

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com slash parents to learn more. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat.

• 2:23:33Speaker 04

  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. I was kind of intimidated, to be honest, because I didn't have a scroll on my right shoulder.

• 2:23:54Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 2:23:55Speaker 04

  I had my LERS patch or my 2ID patch until I did that first deployment. And I put a scroll on, never took it off.

• 2:24:04Speaker 04

  And people

• 2:24:08Speaker 04

  got my respect.

• 2:24:11Speaker 04

  It was interesting because I didn't grow up in regiment.

• 2:24:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:16Speaker 04

  So a lot of the E6s and below had no idea who I was. Because I didn't go to RIP with them, I didn't do platoon operations with them, I wasn't in the line with them. But everybody from like platoons starting above or first aren't above knew who I was. And respected me and it was a it's an interesting dynamic for a little bit.

• 2:24:37Jack Murphy?

  Any more questions for Dustin?

• 2:24:41Speaker 02

  Jop here, thank you. Hey, all Dustin, you talked about your conventional leaders, but what was your experience with officers at regiment? As I understand, operating is really the role of enlisted. So how are they at employing your guys' enhanced skill sets?

• 2:24:57Speaker 04

  So officers in regiment, um, I'll talk about regiment as a whole and we can talk about recce PL if we want. Um, officers as a whole in regiment are very good at managing tasks and shielding their platoons.

• 2:25:18Speaker 04

  For lack of a better word bullshit. Um, their main job is, you know, be a politician with battalion.

• 2:25:25Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:25Speaker 04

  Especially company level and platoon level.

• 2:25:30Speaker 04

  The PLs I had at regiment, I mean, I was there for three years. I think I went through five PLs. As a platoon sergeant. Um, and that PL, he was in charge of

• 2:25:40Speaker 04

  not only the recce platoon, but also the RISTA platoon. Um, which is the reconnaissance, surveillance, targeted acquisition. They do a lot of tech stuff.

• 2:25:52Speaker 04

  So he kinda had, he was in charge of two platoons, but each platoon had their own platoon sergeant. It was a weird dynamic.

• 2:26:00Speaker 04

  Simultaneously, K nine and snipers had one PL with two platoon sergeants. So that's kinda how that was set up as far as specialty platoons.

• 2:26:09Jack Murphy?

  Interesting.

• 2:26:10Speaker 04

  Um, but every PL I had was rock solid. Um, they all, actually they

• 2:26:19Speaker 04

  they all left and went to SF.

• 2:26:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26:25Jack Murphy?

  Questions for Dustin?

• 2:26:26Speaker 02

  Uh, one from, uh, Chris Ward. I have a question. What was your favorite moment out of your entire career outside of retirement, obviously?

• 2:26:35Speaker 04

  Chris Ward, that's my brother.

• 2:26:38Speaker 04

  Uh, graduating Ranger School, like that is,

• 2:26:43Speaker 04

  I, I would think, yeah, graduating Ranger School was probably the,

• 2:26:48Speaker 04

  not the highlight of my career, but one of the proudest moments. Cause it is the premier leadership school of the army, one of the hardest schools anybody could ever go to. Never been to Bud's, but I'd venture to say it's harder than Bud's.

• 2:27:02Speaker 04

  Sorry Navy SEALs.

• 2:27:03Jack Murphy?

  Spicy take.

• 2:27:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, spicy take. I mean, Navy SEALs get to go home every night.

• 2:27:08Speaker 04

  Not Bud's, you get, you have a bearish room, bro, or you can go to your house. Don't do that at Ranger School.

• 2:27:15Speaker 04

  But yeah, cause once you're a Ranger, you're always a Ranger, man. And that's the way I look at it.

• 2:27:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:20Speaker 04

  Super proud to graduate Ranger School.

• 2:27:23Jack Murphy?

  Anything else?

• 2:27:24Speaker 02

  Last one from a Stacy Ward.

• 2:27:26Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 2:27:27Speaker 02

  My favorite moment was being able to present him with a flag that had been flown on a B-52 that hit a target he called for.

• 2:27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. So that's my dad. The Stacy Ward. He's talking about, uh, the operation. We're talking about the big push. Uh, so my dad was in the Air Force. He's a B-52 guy.

• 2:27:46Speaker 04

  Still has friends in the B-52 community. He's an electronic warfare officer or electronic warfare technician guy.

• 2:27:53Speaker 04

  Uh, B-52s during that time, they were flying over and dropping bombs. Um, the Moab, which wasn't from B-52, but

• 2:28:03Speaker 04

  it was that time Mattis was in charge. Shit was just raining, you know? But, uh, my dad caught wind that we were also there in Nagahar and talked to the pilots and they flew a flag for me and gave me a certificate.

• 2:28:18Jack Murphy?

  That's pretty cool.

• 2:28:19Speaker 05

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 2:28:20Speaker 04

  Got some pull pins from like the, the arming pins from the, from the bombs.

• 2:28:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:28:25Speaker 04

  And like the little leaflets they dropped too. And he brought it to me on my birthday and stuff. It was pretty cool.

• 2:28:30Jack Murphy?

  So how, uh, has post military service life been treating you? What are you up to nowadays?

• 2:28:36Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 2:28:39Speaker 04

  Retirement's awesome.

• 2:28:42Speaker 04

  Don't have to shave anymore. Um, uh, yeah, when I first got out, so my actual job, job, I'm a, I'm a contractor for Department of State right now.

• 2:28:55Speaker 04

  Doing stuff overseas. Uh, when I'm stateside, uh, I've started a company called The Light Sleeper. And we make, uh, ultra light. It's basically a woobie. I'll explain. It is a woobie with a sleeve to put a sleeping pad in and a pillow attachment.

• 2:29:13Speaker 04

  It's just a light sleeping system for light backpackers. It weighs two pounds. So you don't gotta take a whole sleep system or stuff sack and all that, you know, bivvy sack. Started that company, is doing very well. We just started shipping last week.

• 2:29:26Speaker 05

  Oh, congrats. You started shipping last week?

• 2:29:28Jack Murphy?

  You were showing me on, on your website earlier and it's inexpensive. It's like, what, 70 bucks?

• 2:29:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, 70 bucks.

• 2:29:35Jack Murphy?

  And, yeah, I looked at it. I was like, I want, I want one.

• 2:29:37Speaker 05

  What, what? Yeah, I'm, yeah, absolutely. What's the website where people can get it?

• 2:29:41Speaker 04

  Thelightsleeper.com.

• 2:29:42Speaker 05

  Thelightsleeper.com? Thelightsleeper.com is gonna be down in the video description.

• 2:29:51Speaker 05

  Buy yourself a woobie with a sleeping pad. That's the most amazing.

• 2:29:55Jack Murphy?

  That's, that's the Taj Mahal.

• 2:29:57Speaker 05

  It is? Yeah.

• 2:29:58Speaker 04

  Caveat, it doesn't come with a sleeping pad.

• 2:30:00Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:30:00Speaker 04

  It comes with a pocket to put your own sleeping pad in, because everyone has their own preferences, so I'm not gonna.

• 2:30:04Speaker 05

  Look, you had me a woobie.

• 2:30:08Speaker 05

  You had me a woobie. Like, the, the only piece of army gear that ever

• 2:30:14Speaker 04

  That's what I went with.

• 2:30:15Speaker 05

  Did what it's meant to do.

• 2:30:16Speaker 04

  I came up with the idea because I was, I was sitting there packing my son's nap mat for school. I don't know if you know what nap mat is.

• 2:30:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:23Speaker 04

  So I was rolling his, uh, got it out of the dryer, I was like rolling it up, putting it in his backpack for school and kindergarten. And, uh, I looked at it and I looked at my wife and I was like, what, why is this not a thing for adults? She's like, what? I was like, I love taking naps.

• 2:30:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:30:37Speaker 04

  And I kinda like, just sat there and thought about it for a minute. I was like, why did not I have this in the field? And I hit up some buddies, like a buddy in Marsoc, Andy. And I was like, you think this is a good idea? He's like, dude, yeah. Why is that not a thing already? I was like, I don't know. I'm gonna go, I'm.

• 2:30:52Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm, I'm buying one. Hey, everybody, make sure buy the light sleeper, the lightsleeper.com.

• 2:30:58Jack Murphy?

  I know.

• 2:30:58Speaker 05

  You owe it to yourself.

• 2:31:00Jack Murphy?

  I got, I got a scout's, uh, field trip coming up, camping trip with my daughter, so.

• 2:31:05Speaker 04

  Actually, I just had a guy, uh, he just bought three for his scouts.

• 2:31:08Jack Murphy?

  All right, all right.

• 2:31:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, we shipped over a hundred orders this past week.

• 2:31:13Speaker 05

  That's amazing.

• 2:31:13Speaker 04

  We just started shipping this last week and over a hundred orders already. It's been.

• 2:31:16Speaker 05

  That's fantastic.

• 2:31:18Jack Murphy?

  Off to the races, man.

• 2:31:20Speaker 04

  Other than that, though, I went and got certified as a bounty hunter. Just kind of keep things spicy at home.

• 2:31:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta do that. So you go and knock on people's doors, unpaid parking tickets, bitch, you're coming with me.

• 2:31:30Speaker 04

  Haven't done it yet. Yeah, I just got certified last October, November.

• 2:31:35Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 2:31:36Speaker 04

  Me and my buddy from R C that retired also, yeah, we went and got certified together. I was like, dude, we should do this. I was talking to a guy overseas that used to do it. It sounded really easy. I was like, why are we not doing this?

• 2:31:46Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, like I, I talked to a dude who did bounty hunting at one point and he had some wild stories. Um, but yeah, suffice to say, if like a dude that looks like Dustin comes and knocks on my door and is like, yeah, yeah, you're going to jail now. It's like, how much, how much of a fight am I going to put up? Like, I'm probably just going to go along.

• 2:32:05Speaker 04

  That's kind of what the guy I was talking to said. And so I asked him, I was like, you know, what's the,

• 2:32:11Speaker 04

  you know, it was kind of like a bro code, like you don't know me, so you're not going to hire me type thing.

• 2:32:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:16Speaker 04

  He was like, no, no, no. He's like, if you and your buddy ask to work for me with your resumes and looking the way you do, he's like, I'm giving you every bounty I got.

• 2:32:23Jack Murphy?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:32:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we just got our company certified, uh, back in March, so we haven't had the ability to go out and get anybody yet, but looking forward to it.

• 2:32:32Jack Murphy?

  This dude, I remember him telling me a story about how he got on a flight to Honolulu and they had like forty eight hours to find this guy or they were going to eat like a fifty thousand dollar bounty. I was like, holy shit. But then at the same time, the same guy told me, he's like, if I knock on a guy's door and it's like over unpaid parking tickets or something and the bounty is, you know, two thousand dollars and he offers me three thousand, I'm taking the money.

• 2:32:55Speaker 04

  They do. Yeah, that's perfectly legal too.

• 2:32:57Speaker 05

  Oh, is it really?

• 2:32:58Jack Murphy?

  It's not, it's not like you're bribing a public official or.

• 2:33:01Speaker 04

  They're paying their bounty. It's, it's perfectly legal.

• 2:33:04Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:33:06Speaker 04

  As long as they pay their contractual fee, like you're good. You don't have to take them to jail every time. If they can pay it right there on the spot, you don't got to take them to jail.

• 2:33:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:15Jack Murphy?

  Nope to self.

• 2:33:16Speaker 05

  I, I knew a guy who did it and he said it's just, it's a lot of detective work. It's like finding out who their girlfriends were, stuff like, like where are they holding up? You know, and.

• 2:33:23Speaker 04

  And that's why we.

• 2:33:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:25Speaker 04

  Why we haven't done anything yet because.

• 2:33:28Speaker 04

  There's federal databases you can get access to.

• 2:33:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:31Speaker 04

  But you have to have a company. They give those accesses to a company, not a person. So we had to wait for a company to get certified.

• 2:33:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know if I can wrestle a 300 pound felon, but I'll be the guy with the paintball pepper pellet gun.

• 2:33:45Speaker 05

  The beanbag.

• 2:33:46Jack Murphy?

  I'll do that for you. I'll do that.

• 2:33:48Speaker 04

  Exactly. I was thinking about buying a taser.

• 2:33:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:33:50Speaker 04

  And I said, no, I'll just go beanbag shotgun.

• 2:33:52Speaker 05

  No, I think there's.

• 2:33:52Jack Murphy?

  I can, I can do that for, I can do that for you. I'll be your backup.

• 2:33:56Speaker 04

  Would you rather? I don't know. I think I would be more rebellious against a taser than a shotgun racking.

• 2:34:05Jack Murphy?

  No, but I'm telling you, man, you just go and knock on the door like, hey, come on, man. Like, let's go. And like, you know.

• 2:34:09Speaker 04

  That's, if you talk to a lot of bounty hunters, that's, that's the process.

• 2:34:13Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:14Speaker 04

  Just treat them like a man. Like, it's a, it's a business thing.

• 2:34:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:17Speaker 04

  Hey dude, like, you messed up. Come on.

• 2:34:19Speaker 05

  Right. And they've already been to court. It's not like, yeah.

• 2:34:22Speaker 04

  They're gonna go spend like a day or two.

• 2:34:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:34:24Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 2:34:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:34:26Jack Murphy?

  So bounty hunting, we got some Dustin the Bounty Hunter live TV coming. And anything else you want to throw out there that you're working on?

• 2:34:38Speaker 04

  Nothing to think of, man.

• 2:34:39Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Shit, man. I mean, it's been a hell of an interesting military career and post-service life.

• 2:34:47Speaker 04

  It was a ride.

• 2:34:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's a ride.

• 2:34:50Speaker 05

  Dee, was there anything on Patreon? Uh, nothing I saw, no. Okay.

• 2:34:56Jack Murphy?

  Well, dude, thank you so much for flying in and doing this interview. It's been, it's been super cool, man.

• 2:35:01Speaker 04

  Appreciate you guys having me.

• 2:35:03Jack Murphy?

  Absolutely. And thank you Les for.

• 2:35:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, thanks Les.

• 2:35:08Jack Murphy?

  Putting the, putting the shout out for us.

• 2:35:12Jack Murphy?

  Next week, I cannot, so after, after this whole interview, I cannot for the life of me remember who's on next week. I'm so sorry. Uh, but I promise it's gonna be cool. Every episode of the T and T.

• 2:35:23Speaker 05

  It's gonna be amazing.

• 2:35:24Jack Murphy?

  It's gonna be a thing.

• 2:35:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:35:26Jack Murphy?

  It's gonna be an event.

• 2:35:27Speaker 05

  Jack will be there.

• 2:35:28Jack Murphy?

  I'll be there. Dave will be there.

• 2:35:29Speaker 05

  I'll be there.

• 2:35:30Jack Murphy?

  Dee will probably be there if he doesn't quit on us.

• 2:35:33Speaker 04

  If Dee's not there, he's somewhere else.

• 2:35:35Speaker 05

  Back doesn't go out again.

• 2:35:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:38Speaker 02

  Gary knows her?

• 2:35:39Jack Murphy?

  Yes, Gary. So Gary was an FBI negotiator. He was recently on the Netflix documentary, uh, Waco, American Apocalypse. He was in that documentary because he was one of the FBI negotiators, uh, early on. And then they, they kicked him out. There's a whole thing there that we will, we will no doubt talk about. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm excited to talk to Gary and I'm sorry that I couldn't remember initially. Um, so we'll see you guys next Friday, episode, we're in the 200s now. So episode 202.

• 2:36:12Speaker 05

  And also go to the lightsleeper.com.

• 2:36:14Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:36:15Speaker 05

  If you don't, the commies win.

• 2:36:17Jack Murphy?

  Exactly. The terrorists win. If you don't, if you don't get yourself a, a high-speed whoopee stuff sack. And also, uh, check out our Patreon. Again, I'm going to plug it. Go down there, get ad-free episodes, man.

• 2:36:29Speaker 05

  Less than a cup of coffee a month.

• 2:36:31Jack Murphy?

  Exactly.

• 2:36:32Speaker 05

  You can support our alcohol habit.

• 2:36:35Jack Murphy?

  Uh, so we will see all of you next Friday. Thank you for joining us. Thank you again, Dustin.

• 2:36:40Speaker 06

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

• 2:36:54Speaker 07

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

• 2:37:05Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:37:10Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:37:16Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the Food Allergy Podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:37:36Speaker 07

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

• 2:38:17Speaker 07

  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.

• 2:38:34Speaker 05

  And, uh...

• 2:38:40Speaker 06

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

• 2:38:55Speaker 07

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

• 2:39:06Speaker 06

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

• 2:39:37Speaker 07

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

• 2:40:04Speaker 06

  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.

• 2:40:39Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic," in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:41:10Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:41:16Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:41:36Speaker 07

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

• 2:42:18Speaker 07

  of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply

• 2:42:23Speaker 06

  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.

• 2:42:39Speaker 06

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

• 2:42:53Speaker 07

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

• 2:43:04Speaker 06

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

• 2:43:35Speaker 07

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

• 2:44:03Speaker 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 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.

• 2:44:36Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

• 2:45:21Speaker 06

  Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:45:32Speaker 07

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

• 2:46:00Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck'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.

• 2:46:36Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:47:06Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:47:12Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 2:47:32Speaker 07

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

• 2:48:17Speaker 06

  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.

• 2:48:36Speaker 06

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

• 2:48:50Speaker 07

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

• 2:49:01Speaker 06

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

• 2:49:32Speaker 07

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

• 2:50:00Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch on Deck. 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.

• 2:50:36Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

• 2:51:21Speaker 06

  Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:51:32Speaker 07

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

• 2:52:00Speaker 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.

• 2:52:35Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic", in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table.

• 2:53:20Speaker 06

  Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:53:32Speaker 07

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

• 2:54:00Speaker 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 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.

• 2:54:33Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table.

• 2:55:18Speaker 06

  Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 2:55:30Speaker 07

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

• 2:55:57Speaker 05

  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. She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 2:56:40Speaker 07

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 2:57:23Speaker 07

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

• 2:57:55Speaker 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 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.