#80 John Lovell - 75th Rangers’ Deadly Gunfight and Near-Death Ambush | Part 2

John Lovell is a former Army Ranger turned creator, homesteader and best-selling author. Lovell is the founder of the Warrior Poet Society, a values-based community geared towards training, preparedness, and spirituality. Part two of this four part series is all about Lovell's career as an Army Ranger in 2nd Ranger Battalion. Lovell served on multiple combat deployments during the Global War On Terror. Lovell vividly recounts the early days of the war, shortly after the 9/11 attacks and a deadly ambush that would be one of the closest calls of his career. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://helixsleep.com/srs - USE CODE "HELIXPARTNER20" https://firecracker.farm/shawn - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://puretalk.com/ryan John Lovell Links: Book — http://warriorpoetway.com Website — http://warriorpoetsociety.com X — https://twitter.com/johnlovell275 YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/johnlovell275 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:00Shawn Ryan?

  Previously on The Sean Ryan Show. Did you grow up with parents that had strong faith?

• 1:06John Lovell?

  My parents were on their own journey as I was growing up.

• 1:09Shawn Ryan?

  What happened at 19?

• 1:10John Lovell?

  I ended up going into college, but somewhere, somewhere in that year, I'm just kind of like, I don't really want to be here. I want to do something else. So I knew about pushing myself, and I knew I can push myself to death.

• 1:25Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:31John Lovell?

  Nobody who was close to me was really a fan of this.

• 1:35Shawn Ryan?

  You get in, you go to boot camp. What was your impression?

• 1:40John Lovell?

  Uh, not too hard.

• 1:42Shawn Ryan?

  What did you find the most challenging?

• 1:45John Lovell?

  Uh, probably the mental games.

• 1:52Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:01Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to dive into your combat career. But before we get started, I can tell you are extremely uncomfortable digging into your background and I don't want you to think that we're just getting into war story time to brag. So my method here is childhood, military, we do go into the war stuff, we go into the struggles afterwards, and here's why. One reason is because nobody's documenting this history anymore. And this is modern history that is not being documented. Two, I want to talk about what made the man that you are today.

• 2:43Shawn Ryan?

  The guy that wrote that book, the Warrior Poet Way, the Warrior Poets Society guy, you know, you have, you have a massive following and people want to know who the man is behind that, you know, and it's important to talk about your history. And it, it almost, I don't know any other way to say it, but it, it, it's what qualifies you to be up there and talking about the issues today and, and talking about the sacrifices that you made for this country. And that's why you're so passionate about it. So that's, I don't want you to think of it as like a chest pounding war story podcast. The only reason we do it is because, is for what I'm saying.

• 3:27Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it, it, it's, it's what made the man today. It's, it qualifies you when we get into the struggles of whatever struggles you've had that we're going to dive into, especially post military career, maybe you had a tough transition, you know, it, it's, this is why I had a tough transition, because I experienced these traumatic events in wartime. This is how I got through them and that brings a lot of hope to the guys that are getting out today. You know what I mean? They, they see, oh, this guy went through X, Y, and Z. He overcame it this way. There's a ton of different methods that, that the men and women coming out of the military today who have been to war and have experienced trauma and have, you know, maybe taken life,

• 4:11Shawn Ryan?

  you know, how they got through all that.

• 4:15Shawn Ryan?

  Walked through that fire and found success. You know, some guys find it through psychedelics. Some guys find it through faith. Some guys find it through therapy. Some guys find it through business. Some, you know, and so there's all these different methods. And, and what I like to do is, is display all of these methods so that, that the men and women coming out now, they, they watch this, you know, and, and they see all these different methods and it gives them different avenues to try, you know, to find their own success and get through their own traumas. And it, and it also carries over into civilians. I mean, a lot of civilians watch this and, and, you know, civilians go through a lot too. Women that have been raped.

• 4:57John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Shawn Ryan?

  Men that have been molested as kids, you know, um, all kinds of stuff. And, and, and so when, when, when people like us, I hate to group us in together, but you know, when people like us open up about that and become vulnerable and talk about our experiences in, in, in a non bragging way, it, it, and it, it does, man. It brings a lot of hope to a lot of people, you know, by hearing this. So, so I hope that makes you a little more comfortable digging into your past and, and, and giving you the reason on why we do it. It's not, like I said, this isn't, this isn't a chest pounding war story podcast.

• 5:39Shawn Ryan?

  This is, there's a lot of, of healing and, and, and wisdom that comes from this. So.

• 5:46John Lovell?

  That's good. Sounds serious enough that I'll put my gummy bears down. These have been fantastic. And that's a big, that's a, I put the gun, I put the gummy bears down for you, bro. So I'd like a little appreciation. I'd make that sacrifice for you and your viewers, your listeners. I wouldn't say I'm uncomfortable talking about my past. Uh, the more, the stuff I'm most uncomfortable talking about is kind of like, you know, Rebel John growing up is this just punk teenage kid. Uh, you know, like that, that's a little more uncomfortable because uh, you know, I'm not proud of that. Um, the military stuff's fine. It's not that I'm uncomfortable. It's that, uh, I'm just not that interested.

• 6:27John Lovell?

  You know, now I'm finding, like in my book, I pull out biographical elements. And I tell some war stories and I tell other kind of stories from my past, which I'm not shy about. I just want it to serve a greater purpose to the reader. It's not like, ta-da, I did. Cool guy stuff in the desert with Ranger Battalion, but I'm just not that interested. I, I, I want to talk about how can I help the viewer? How, how can we on mission together become better? And make a mark on a world that is twisted and going down fast. I want to be a, a change agent and a force for good.

• 7:09John Lovell?

  And my ego isn't big enough that I care at all about reliving my glory days unless it in some way, somehow. Serves other people out there that are grasping. So if they're, you know, want to, hey, how do I structure my life? So that I could live a life worthy of my calling? How could I structure my life so that I do it well? You know, my relationships, my mission, my legacy? How do I make an impact? So that at the end of my days, I don't have regrets on my deathbed, wishing I had. Repro- prioritize myself this way. Now, folks like you and I, we've had. Some near death experiences, you know, of like, man, I should have died quite a few times.

• 7:52John Lovell?

  Uh, and didn't. And that brought a certain sobriety to me and a sincerity. And an intentionality about how I would live my life. And what I would be focusing on, what I would be doing. And a lot of people have never faced their own death. Uh, don't really know how to structure their life in a way that is ultimately satisfying. And so when we're reliving old glory days, if it's to that end, I'm all about it. If it's just about like, oh, me, milita- I'm so bored by all the egotism and chess beating that'll happen. Um, you know, it, it, at least I don't care to participate, but that's what we're.

• 8:33John Lovell?

  Uh, I, I understand what you're doing. That's different. Let's just, let's dive in. Nothing's off limits, man. Let's rock and roll.

• 8:39Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it. So we're getting ready to go on your first deployment.

• 8:44John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 8:44Shawn Ryan?

  And so what I would like to ask is, what was that? What was the brief? When, when did you know you were going overseas and where were you going?

• 8:54John Lovell?

  I don't remember the exact moment when we were told. There's always these whisperings of things happening, especially like when you're overseas. The, uh, you know, you've been, uh, hitting it hard. You're doing your combat tour and there's rumors of like, hey, guys, I hear we're flying home. Two weeks we're up, but like two weeks, really? And then that spreads like wildfire and then it's like, no, no, I hear it's like a week. We're like, I hear it's one month and you never really know. And then this expression comes about of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll believe it when I'm on the bird. And that's a C, that, that's more of a seasoned, you know, soldier or warfare. You're not giving in to gossip. Hey, I don't know when, maybe it's tomorrow. I don't care. I'll believe it when I'm on the bird. That helps me in life in general too.

• 9:37John Lovell?

  Uh, but, uh, anyway, of it, it kind of came down like it, it's a bit of a rumor. Uh, a lot, a lot of combat tours that went on. The first one was more of a scheduled date. Guys were, were leaving in whatever it was a month or two. And, but it was pretty hush, hush in those days. So you couldn't let your family know. You couldn't let your girlfriend know. Uh, and then you were given extremely specific instructions. Once you got over there, what you're allowed to say and not say. So I remember once I deployed, I just disappeared the first time. And I think I was over there for a week, maybe three weeks, but I, before I was able to call home on a satellite phone. That's a, a radium phone.

• 10:19John Lovell?

  And I had to have like, hey, before you say anything, I have to read you this. Do not ask me what time it is. Do not ask me how the weather is. Do not ask me where I am. Do not ask me what I am doing. Do not ask me. And I have to tell them all this stuff because it's.

• 10:33Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding. They had you guys doing that over there.

• 10:35John Lovell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Operational security stuff. And so we had to do that, uh, kind of song and dance, uh, in, in the initial, uh, the very first tours. Cause it was, I mean, like the war kicked off and I was there right away.

• 10:50Shawn Ryan?

  What year, what year were you over there?

• 10:52John Lovell?

  Uh, I think 2001.

• 10:53Shawn Ryan?

  You, you were.

• 10:54John Lovell?

  No, no, no, uh, early, early 2002.

• 10:57Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:58John Lovell?

  Yeah, early 2002. We were, we were immediately there, uh, on the ground.

• 11:02Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Well, I can't wait to dive into this.

• 11:05John Lovell?

  Yeah, man, let's do it.

• 11:05Shawn Ryan?

  Cause I didn't get there till oh five.

• 11:07John Lovell?

  Okay.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  So, um.

• 11:10Shawn Ryan?

  So what, what, so you knew that you were going right when you showed up to Ranger Battalion?

• 11:16John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Shawn Ryan?

  Correct? Did you know you were going to Afghanistan?

• 11:19John Lovell?

  Yes, I think so.

• 11:20Shawn Ryan?

  You did?

• 11:21John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Shawn Ryan?

  How were you kind of mentally preparing for that deployment?

• 11:25John Lovell?

  I had my hands so full with just surviving the scariness of Ranger Battalion and doing what you're told. I was a bit distracted from war, you know, of like, uh, it was very serious and you could kind of feel it in the air as well of like, oh, this is, there's, there's, there's a gravity, there's sincerity, there's an intensity, uh, that is here. Now, I don't know what it was like before, because day one I show up, everyone knows we're, we're about to go to war.

• 11:57Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:57John Lovell?

  Um, and so, um, I don't think I had a lot of headspace left to dwell on it. I'm just trying to do what I'm told at that point. And so, uh, yeah, I, I did have some fears about that. The other guy seemed a lot more confident, a lot more blood lusty, uh, and when you're an unseasoned guy, you don't even know what you don't know, uh, you know, that, that would be a, a slower warm-up for me.

• 12:26Shawn Ryan?

  You never felt any bloodlust?

• 12:29John Lovell?

  I didn't say that. I said, I didn't feel it when I was initially in. I'm just a skinhead, wide-eyed private, trying not to get fired or yelled at or hassled anymore.

• 12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Got you.

• 12:43John Lovell?

  Uh, when, when you're, when you're that new of a, a private in Ranger Battalion then, of like, you were probably equal parts scared of your leadership and the Rangers around you than, than you are about bad guys on the field.

• 12:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I, I would.

• 13:01Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting because I don't know if I've interviewed anybody that was one of the first in over there. You know, and so even when I went, it was, I mean, there had been a lot of after action reports. You know, we, I'm not going to say that I knew what to expect, but you guys had nothing. I mean, going in that early, September 2001 is when it hit. So if you're in early oh two, I mean, that's only.

• 13:27John Lovell?

  I was there before the FOBs were built.

• 13:29Shawn Ryan?

  You know.

• 13:30John Lovell?

  You know, I, I was there when, uh, you know, Bagram airfield, uh, or, you know, any of these places, uh, you know, um, airports in Iraq of like, I remember we had just seized it. We're pushing vehicles off and trying to hotwire stuff to, so we can commandeer vehicle. Like it was completely fresh. There were no like bunk houses built up of like a lot of the, the, the FOBs, the Ford operating bases would be, you know, they're, they're skeletonized. There are nothing.

• 14:01Shawn Ryan?

  This is fascinating. This is, this is about to get real good. I mean, you have no frame of reference, no way of knowing what you're about to walk into because nobody's been there before. The towers just came down and you're going right into the hornet's nest.

• 14:18John Lovell?

  Right away.

• 14:19Shawn Ryan?

  So where did you guys land? You, you know, you're going to Afghanistan, your battalion deploys, where do you land?

• 14:27John Lovell?

  So, uh, we, you know, do the long trek over and we're what, um, we're the west coast of Washington state. And you're going all the way across the world, landing in Germany. Uh, you know, and so we'd always, uh, pick off there in Afghanistan. Um, I think, um, yeah, maybe somewhere around Kabul. I don't even remember. I don't even remember. I went Afghanistan four different times. It all just kind of runs together and it was a very long time ago. This was the start of the war 22 years ago. Uh, and so my pay grade at that time, I was just trying not to lose my rifle.

• 15:05John Lovell?

  Don't get yelled at. And so, um, yeah, you don't even know where you are half the time.

• 15:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I guess what I'm getting at is walking off, I mean, everybody else after you, there was some sort of infrastructure there.

• 15:18John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Shawn Ryan?

  So what is it? What's it like when you land? I mean, what do you eat? Where do you land? Is it Kabul Airport? Is it, is it out in the desert? I mean, what?

• 15:30John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you go?

• 15:31John Lovell?

  You landed one of the major airports, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq. Uh, so we, we didn't do the initial seizures of those. Those were already seized when we land. So the, the, um, runway was open for us. And then we come in as kind of to make, uh, beefing up the first line of defenses that were there. So, yeah, there was also times where, uh, I remember, uh, spending a few days in Oman before we, uh, punched over, uh, and Saudi Arabia. I remember being based out of RR and kind of running, uh, across the border there. So, um, those were two checkpoints. Those were two stop places, uh, on the journey as well.

• 16:17Shawn Ryan?

  Did you? So let's just describe, you're walking off the burb. What are you seeing?

• 16:22Speaker 06

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• 16:52Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:16Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 17:23John Lovell?

  Yeah, you see dust and you see, uh, you know, just desert. You see an entirely different type of architecture. You see a bunch of just trash and busted out vehicles, you know? Uh, you see troops from all different kind of countries. And so you're seeing of, uh, you know, different camo patterns that you're not used to. And as a brand new private, I'm just expecting immediately to have to, you know, IMT off the bird and immediately get in the thick of it. And I don't know enough about war to realize no war is oftentimes long periods of droll boredom followed by incredibly intense short moments of excitement. I don't know that. I don't know how good I'm about to get at gin rummy, you know?

• 18:11Shawn Ryan?

  What were the living conditions like?

• 18:14John Lovell?

  Uh, they weren't awesome. Uh, and it depends on the tour. I remember one specific early, early tour, uh, we're doing operations with, um, Delta. And so Delta loves Rangers. Uh, they have such small numbers. Most Delta operators come out of Ranger Battalion anyway. And so it's just peanut butter and jelly. Uh, we're, we're kind of a sledgehammer for them. So in case things go wrong, uh, them doing their incredibly like surgical operations. When things go bad, you, you got a sledgehammer called Rangers around you. And so, uh, a lot of the Delta operations, it would always have Rangers. There's, um, early on, maybe

• 18:57John Lovell?

  it was my first tour. It may have been my first tour. Our platoon, um, was, uh, pulled aside to be attached to one of these. And we just took over, uh, this kind of like warlord's property is, uh, not castle by any ways. You know, the, you know, kind of the warlord structures that they would have over there. And we just kind of lived in that, uh, us and some of these guys. And so I remember, uh,

• 19:25Shawn Ryan?

  Some of these guys being Delta or some of these guys being the warlords?

• 19:28John Lovell?

  No, no, the Delta guys. And so, uh, we were, most of my missions or most of- Most of the joint operations I ever did was with those guys. I did very little with the SEALs. I did some with you guys. We didn't go together as well. We were more oil and water. You know, if y'all had your way of doing stuff, we had our way of doing stuff and it just didn't work out awesome. And so y'all liked it. Y'all were good at what you did. Go do SEAL things. We'll go do Ranger things. Uh, but Delta liked us a lot. That went, there was a better fit.

• 20:01John Lovell?

  But uh, sometimes we're kicked out and uh, I remember at one point for it was at least a couple of weeks where we were just living in one of these small compounds uh, with a small Delta, you know, that we're rolling with. And then another time of like, all right, now we're in a bigger compound, but we're with some SBS guys and some SAS guys.

• 20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, you worked with them as well? Interesting.

• 20:24John Lovell?

  At least we're cohabitating and kind of playing leapfrog with each other uh, through the desert. And so they're just, you know, when you're spearheading a lot of this stuff before the, the big armored divisions and you know, guys are able to roll through with a bunch of infrastructure. Uh, we're out there probing and scooping up HVTs as big army is rolling through. You're trying to travel and pick guys up as they're squirting to and fro before main force comes in. And so we're kind of banding together in these little compounds for safety and security.

• 20:57Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 20:57John Lovell?

  It's for survival.

• 20:58Shawn Ryan?

  Just for the audience, HVT is high value target. Those would be, those would be your top terrorists.

• 21:05John Lovell?

  Right.

• 21:05Shawn Ryan?

  So, let's go through.

• 21:09Shawn Ryan?

  We got a lot of stuff to cover, it sounds like. Let's start with the very first operation. You get in country. Actually, let's start with logistics. Cause I'm actually curious about this. What were logistics like? What were fuel points, chow? Showering? What was, what was just everyday logistics like when you, when you got there at that time period?

• 21:32John Lovell?

  So because there weren't big forward operating bases, you just had to do the best you could. So. Um, sometimes you'd pay locals to bring you food, which was scary because you're like, maybe they're poisoning this. And then you look out in the compound and I'm like, oh, there's a bloody goat head. I guess we're having goat tonight. So you have a bunch of rations. Uh, sometimes we're eating MREs, especially in those first few combat tours before you had like chow halls and stuff. Uh, you're just eating tons of MREs, local beans and rice and goat head.

• 22:05Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 22:06John Lovell?

  Uh, you know, showers. I remember, uh, having to pump my own water, put it in a bucket. When you wanted to be real fancy, and I did this a few times, uh, I would build a fire, heat the water up over the fire. Uh, then using an old parachute, we created a kind of like a, a shower place. So it's just this flapping parachute in the wind to make your little shower. And then you climb up a ladder to pour your hot water that you just made into a bucket with a bunch of tiny holes poked in it. And then you try to shower. The problem is, is it's so much work that you're just profusely sweating. And when you take that shower, it's kind of quick and over. You're wondering of like,

• 22:51John Lovell?

  I'm pouring sweat. I don't think that shower did anything. Uh, and then you're also, you're just showering with wet wipes. And so early part of the war of like, there, there's some tons of like, the worst was, I think I went 18 or 19 days without any kind of shower. The infrastructure didn't exist. It wasn't there. Uh, so, uh, laundry. I did my laundry by hand in a bucket. Took hours, hours to do laundry. And then you hang it up to dry and you're trying to dry it and it just like, you know, you got open desert and sands blowing all into your wet socks and shirt. And so you're trying to shake that out and it's just kind of like gets ingrained in the pore. It's just nasty. It's just nasty. But yeah, we didn't have any, we didn't have any infrastructure.

• 23:34Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take before you started seeing infrastructure and logistics show up?

• 23:39John Lovell?

  It was impressive. I mean, by the, kind of my third tour, you got over and you're like, holy cow, you guys have built stuff. Wow. This is amazing. Like you guys have beds?

• 23:52John Lovell?

  You had bathrooms. I always wanted a bathroom. So man, the luxury and by like my fifth tour, I'm like, you guys are living like kings. This is incredible. None of that existed. None of it existed. And we'd roll in and I remember, uh, you know, we'd go into one of these compounds like Asadabad or Jalalabad, which are, you know, operating bases now. I was the first ones in there. We, we like kick folks out, secured the perimeter, pulling sectors while the rest of us strung up Konstantin wire around the perimeter. There was nothing there.

• 24:28Shawn Ryan?

  How many locations did you guys go to where there was zero infrastructure at the first?

• 24:32John Lovell?

  None of them had infrastructure.

• 24:34Shawn Ryan?

  Asadabad is one of the, one of the hottest regions of Afghanistan.

• 24:41John Lovell?

  It was awful. I spent a full day under a Humvee, uh, trying not to move because I was sweating the heat index in with that particular one. Before we pushed through and seized it was 127 degrees.

• 24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 24:54John Lovell?

  That was, that's the temperature outside and you just, I literally, I sat, I laid completely still under a Humvee because there was no shade anywhere. And then we rolled in and we took over Asadabad. Or maybe it was Jalalabad. It was something bad. I don't remember.

• 25:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a lot of bads.

• 25:10John Lovell?

  The bads run together.

• 25:12Shawn Ryan?

  There, there was a lot of bads over there.

• 25:14John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, if I remember correctly, Jalalabad was more flatter, very hot. Asadabad was colder, up in the mountains.

• 25:24John Lovell?

  Okay, then this would have been Jalalabad.

• 25:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. But, well, let's go back to, let's go back to, you get in country, you get settled, zero logistics, zero infrastructure. You guys are seizing all these things. What, what is, what is mission number one and how long does it take you to get to? How long are you in country before you're running and gunning, before you're running operations?

• 25:47John Lovell?

  Well, I think, uh, the day we got there, maybe within. Somewhere within 24 hours, we were already doing kind of just a reconnaissance around our general area. It was kind of like, uh, we loaded up some trucks and just kind of drove around the perimeter of our, our structure.

• 26:04Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys, you hit the ground running?

• 26:06John Lovell?

  Yeah. There was no infrastructure. So you're like, uh, let's kind of probe. Where are we bedding down tonight? Let's make sure, uh, if there's an ambu- if there's an ambush, let's go ahead and do a little recon by fire. Uh, so it's not recon by fire, but try to punch out around and see some stuff. And I remember just white knuckling whatever gun I had. Now, I think it was a 203, uh, but just white knuckling expecting like, here they come. The, the hordes are coming for me and I'm ready. You know, hunkered down, head on a swivel, hyper alert, you know? After a while, you're kind of

• 26:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 26:39John Lovell?

  Completely different demeanor. You're chilling.

• 26:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 26:42John Lovell?

  You may be singing a song to yourself, just bebopping. You're looking around, you're alert, but you're entirely different organism after a few tours. After you been in a few run-ins, some close scrapes, you know, you've, uh, you have, uh, lost your combat virginity. Uh, you loosen up a lot. It's kind of like a day one jujitsu guy. He's like, oh, clenched up. And then after a while, you're kind of pretty loose and flowing and doing your thing. And so it was much nicer to be able to, uh, chill out a bit. But those first ones, you know, even though there wasn't anything super hot and nothing, nothing happened and, uh, really no big run-ins, uh, my first tour.

• 27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 27:28John Lovell?

  Which is pretty incredible. Uh, I mean, we had some stuff we're shot at and you shoot back, but me particularly, I didn't have a ton of that, you know, like it was really, um, you know, uh, leapfrogging and finding some key positions and I, I guess we're trying to wedge a spear into a country, not immediately, because it just wasn't a ton of us at the time, not immediately thin our ranks even more and go all over the place to make ourselves easy targets. And so, you know, You plunge in and you know, you have a footprint and then that starts to to grow

• 28:11John Lovell?

  out and you kind of push out inch by inch.

• 28:17John Lovell?

  That'll be different once you know, big army gets there as well and now you have infrastructure to your back and now you can aggressively run some plays out and so it'd be my later later tours, particularly my second and third tours, fourth, fifth tours where we're find more action, but.

• 28:36Shawn Ryan?

  So you you would say basically that your first deployment was the footprint. It was.

• 28:41John Lovell?

  I would say so.

• 28:41Shawn Ryan?

  We have a very small footprint. Let's expand this footprint out in this country and start pushing out slowly and slowly, slowly into the other regions.

• 28:50John Lovell?

  Yep.

• 28:52Shawn Ryan?

  Did you stay around Kabul, Bagram area on your first one or?

• 28:57John Lovell?

  Yeah, we did and we just kind of punch out, loop around, come back, you know?

• 29:00Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have Hilo assets and all that kind of stuff there already?

• 29:03John Lovell?

  We had some, but it was limited and we'd had to coordinate what we were doing based on what assets were available. So it's kind of like, we want to do this and this, make, you know, and and we'll tell them what we're doing. No, it's like what assets are available and let's reverse plan around that and especially you want to go out at nighttime, you know, most of the time and so you just got to figure out what assets you can get. But again, in my first tour, I, I mean, I'm not mission planning anything. I'm just, I'm going to lock down this sector and try not to screw anything up.

• 29:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:36John Lovell?

  So I'm not very helpful and kind of like, what was the strategy? What was the, I don't know.

• 29:40Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 29:40John Lovell?

  I was an idiot private, you know, and so that was my first one. I was falling in line, trying not to screw up, didn't want to get shot, even more so, didn't want to get in trouble with my team leader.

• 29:52Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:52John Lovell?

  It was in that order.

• 29:53Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember the first mission? What it was for?

• 29:57John Lovell?

  No, it was that just let's recon outside the wire kind of thing. We just got on some trucks, drove around, came back, you know, hyper, that was our very first kind of mission.

• 30:07Shawn Ryan?

  Well, reason I'm asking is at least for me, first mission, even though.

• 30:15Shawn Ryan?

  My first mission, real mission, was in Haiti. And we didn't really see much.

• 30:20John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Shawn Ryan?

  But at the time, it's, it was, it was the biggest deal that I had ever encountered. You know what I mean? Is this is important, we're about ready to get into some shit. You know, what was, how did you?

• 30:34Shawn Ryan?

  So where I'm going with this is how did you kind of mentally prepare? Did you think that?

• 30:41Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have the same mindset, even though nothing maybe happened? Or nothing major happened? Did you have the mindset like, oh, man, this is it? We're going out, we're gonna leave the wire?

• 30:51John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Shawn Ryan?

  Shit's gonna go down.

• 30:53John Lovell?

  That all, it's, it's such a joke that, you know, all throughout my just different tours, you get these spool ups of like, hey, guys, this is it, we're going out tonight. Two thousand enemy packs. Bin Laden himself, he's replaced both of his arms with twin Gatlin guns and he knows you're coming. And John, he called you out specifically. You know, you know, in your head.

• 31:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 31:18John Lovell?

  You, you feel like it's coming and you'll even get some type of intelligence of like, hey, this is a huge hit, big deal, verified, you know, two thousand enemy personnel right there, something ridiculous, two hundred, uh, something crazy. And then you get there and it's just like a dude and his goat. You know, like nobody's there, nothing, just dry hole. And then you go out on something else that you don't feel like it's gonna be anything and you get in a gunfight, uh, or you get ambushed and you had no idea. And so, um, after you get hyper spooled up, just adrenaline and you feel like this is it, this is it, and you hit enough dry holes, you kind of learn to just relax a little bit and then it does come at you.

• 31:59John Lovell?

  And if you got the training for it and you react, well, it, it may go very well for you. Uh, and you just make decisions based on what's in front of you at the time and try to keep your cool, even though, though the world's around, uh, the world around you is on fire. And that, that's, that's what we're called to do. And sometimes, uh, you know, when things went really bad, I was able to just kind of do that of raging fire underneath, calm waters on the surface. Uh, but that took, uh, that took a bit of time, uh, um, of going in and out on these just different little reciemissions and, you know, uh,

• 32:39John Lovell?

  Going after of like, hey, there's these, these, these buildings offside of the road. Let's check them out and you hop out and uh, you know, you execute your battle drill and you kick it, open some doors and you're clear, clear, you know, you're doing all your hurrah ranger stuff. Um, and after you do that enough, it just becomes the thing that you're doing. And the intensity of it, which is just as big as a mountain, ends up shrinking of this is the thing. It doesn't mean you're not as alert. It doesn't mean you're not as proficient. It doesn't mean you're being lazy and not checking your sectors and, and you know, digging your corners. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means that you're not so emotionally freaking out. Um, in wrestling, you know, you're about to go out on a mat and fight another dude

• 33:23John Lovell?

  in front of a gymnasium of people and that's a scary, scary thing. And so I had some stress inoculation in, in the fighting element for years throughout high school. That was helpful in being able to overcome some of that. Fear is fear, you know, you get used to of like, if you're having trouble conquering one fear, well, you know, if, if I'm scared to go, uh, you know, get in my fight, uh, well, rock climbing and conquering a, a, a heights fear can help because stress inoculation can kind of help carry over from one or the other.

• 34:00John Lovell?

  And so, um, I needed to grow in my capacity for stress inoculation so that fear wouldn't overpower me, uh, and fatigue me. Cause that's the danger. You get your big adrenaline dump at a time when you didn't need the adrenaline dump, you get adrenal fatigue and it'll wear you out. It's kind of like drinking way too much coffee and you're way up high for two hours and then you crash. Well, if you're high strung, high alert, everyone's coming to get me and you're doing a combat mission that may last for eight hours, that's unsustainable. You gotta chill out, bro. You're gonna burn yourself out. And so I had to learn how to kind of relax and allow things to just happen.

• 34:45John Lovell?

  Um, and so calm, cool, smooth calculation in your mind, calm waters here, uh, on the surface. You, you need to chill out when everything else is going bad or you're just not gonna make it.

• 34:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Did you have, so how did you prepare yourself for the first, for the very first mission? The reason I'm asking is I want to compare to.

• 35:06Shawn Ryan?

  Before your first engagements, you know, your close calls, what was the preparation before a mission? And then I'm gonna ask that again afterwards, after you had it for real.

• 35:17John Lovell?

  So.

• 35:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know, so.

• 35:19John Lovell?

  My hand was really held by, you know, my more senior leadership. They're making sure I've got all my stuff. They're telling me what I'm doing. They're, you know, watching me and I'm doing all that and I'm just trying to do what I am told to do. In my own heart and mind, I'm just, man, I've never prayed so hard so much of like, man, my prayer life is on point, you know, of like, help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus. And so I'm taking this very, very seriously and I'm spun up, uh, heart and mind for that. And so, you know, you're doing your pre-mission checks and you're just trying to do the right thing and what I'm told. And that, that's, that's the first, that's where I started.

• 35:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So you're just trying, you're just trying not to screw up.

• 36:01John Lovell?

  Don't screw up.

• 36:02Shawn Ryan?

  The fear is getting pushed aside a little bit, probably until the last minute.

• 36:05John Lovell?

  I'm so distracted by just doing what I'm told, remembering all the things. You don't have a lot of time to just freak out. Now, once you're kind of rolling out now and no one's talking to me and I've got this sector, you know, and I mean, like, strain in your eyes to see 10 miles, you know, like doing everything you can, you know.

• 36:28Shawn Ryan?

  How long did it take you before that routine, before that became routine?

• 36:33John Lovell?

  Even after, you know, just, you know, a few weeks or a month, you start to relax a, a good bit. You realize I can pull security it just as well without freaking out. Freaking out isn't actually my internal freak out. Nobody knows, but internally, oh, oh, I'm freaking out. That internal freak out does nothing to help my eyes and ears work better. It's not doing anything. It's just wearing me out. Uh, and so, I mean, I can pull security much better if I'm, you know, I'm kind of like, I'm eating an apple, you know, it's just doing my thing. I got my gun. I'm ready for anybody shoots at me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill them, you know? It's kind of like cold, hard math. It needs to become dispassionate

• 37:18John Lovell?

  cold, hard math. And the sooner you can get to that, I would say the better. Now, I can still utilize in the horrible fray when all of a sudden bullets start flying, you know, that adrenal dump, that's useful. Maybe a little bit of anger can help a little bit. A little bit of fear can help kind of elevate some stuff. So I can borrow some superhuman elements of adrenaline and adrenaline and stuff. But by and large, cold, hard math, man. They're doing this, and this is the response. And the better you're at, you know, not just white knuckling and doing the thing. You need to be an asymmetric thinker that can

• 38:03John Lovell?

  see the battlefield for what it is, know what you should do, and outthink the enemy. Be where you need to be. It's not your effort and your intensity that wins the battle. It's shoot, move, communicate. And me being all jazzed, it's like if you watch MMA and somebody loses their cool and just comes out flailing, they're either gonna knock the guy out real quick. But more often than not, somebody loses their cool, they're done. You're gonna get crushed. You lose your cool and you just start freaking out, you're gonna make horrible mistakes. And it's, it's gonna get you killed, or even worse, it's gonna get your buddies killed.

• 38:39Shawn Ryan?

  Have you seen that happen?

• 38:42John Lovell?

  I've seen, I've seen folks lose their cool, but never to an extent that it actually cost somebody their lives. And, you know, I have not always performed awesome. I've been everywhere on the scale of hero to coward. I've done it all. You know, and so what I'm thankful of is, in my more cowardly moments, they were short, I got delivered through them, and it didn't cost anyone their lives. So it was my own private crime.

• 39:14Shawn Ryan?

  Could you expound on one of those moments?

• 39:19Shawn Ryan?

  Knowing it may be a little humiliating.

• 39:21John Lovell?

  Yeah, sure. So, uh, this was my, uh, second tour. This was to Iraq. Uh, we were, uh, after, uh, High Value Target. This is a guy up on, uh, the FBI's Most Wanted List. So it was a, you know, uh, we had good intel. We thought we were gonna get him. I was kicking open some palace doors, um, and, or no, palace doors. It was just a really nice house. Um, and so, kick, kick, kick. And then the door flings open. Um, I could tell that it was, uh, though it was nighttime outside, the lights were on inside. And so I was already, I'd already flipped nods up, came in and immediately coming through the fatal funnel, the doorway, uh, there, we were,

• 40:03John Lovell?

  we, uh, took incoming fire, SKS rounds screaming right past me, stuck in the wall, right over my, uh, uh, head, over my left shoulder. Uh, SKS, close range, same room, you know, same kind of open, great room. Uh, and I was a saw gunner at the time, uh, and I, I, I came up and I shot him in the face and just dropped him. Uh, and it was after that of like, I'd, I'd never killed someone that close before. Of like, man, he, that's, that was very close. And he had to jump on us, you know, of like, I, you know, coming through a funnel with that, that man, I still remember the sight picture to this day, coming up. And, um, that was really, uh,

• 40:48John Lovell?

  that wasn't scary, by the way. I was just doing my job at that time. And all right, I'm kicking open the door and I'm gonna clear another room in another building. I'd cleared hundreds of rooms now by this point, uh, real world. And so, we're clearing our thing. Now, there's always the thought, it might happen, um, and things had happened, uh, but cold hard math. You're just doing your thing. And so, when I shot that dude, uh, there was no room for fear. I wasn't really, I don't remember being particularly afraid, uh, before, during, not, not at least more than any other time. It was right after. When it just flooded me. And I remember a Delta operator, uh, uh, uh, he came up behind me.

• 41:32John Lovell?

  Cause as soon as you fire shots on a battlefield, um, Rangers and Delta guys are immediately competing for confirmed kills. And it's a different culture. It's, it's in, and this was the culture that I was growing up into. I'm not, I'm not the wide eyed private anymore. Now it's kinda like, you got some action over there, bro? I wanna play, you know? So it's an entirely different animal. I'm not looking at combat as this horrible thing that I can't handle anymore. Now it's kinda like I'm seeing the chess of this whole thing, just like wrestling. I saw it as a huge chess game and combat was too. Now the stakes were higher, but I was learning the game and I was getting pretty good at it. Uh, well, when I came up and, and shot, I didn't think about that.

• 42:16John Lovell?

  It just kind of all happened, but that call was really close. And then also, and I tell this story of this is kinda like, this was, this was different than shooting somebody at a little bit more of a distance or, uh, something like that. This was up, I, I mean, I.

• 42:35Shawn Ryan?

  From me to you?

• 42:36John Lovell?

  No, it was probably, um, I don't know, in, into this room, no, that's too big. Uh, if you doubled our distance, tripled our distance or so, somewhere in there. No, not 10 feet, more than that. Uh, uh, maybe, uh, maybe eight meters.

• 42:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 42:54John Lovell?

  You know, um, 24ish feet, somewhere in there. It, it, that, that's about the, so that was close to me.

• 43:04Shawn Ryan?

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• 43:47Shawn Ryan?

  ingredients available, no matter where they come from. And it.

• 43:53Shawn Ryan?

  It got to this point where I was just gonna start my own brand. And so we started going to trade shows and looking for the finest ingredients. And in doing that, I ran into this guy, maybe you've heard of him. His name's Laird Hamilton and his wife Gabby Reese. And they have an entire line of supplements with all the finest ingredients. And we got to talking. Turns out they have the perfect functional mushroom supplement. It's actually called Performance Mushrooms. And this has everything. It's USDA organic. It's got chaga, cordyceps, lion's mane, miyataki.

• 44:36Shawn Ryan?

  This stuff is amazing for energy balance, for cognition. Look, just being honest, I see a lot of people taking care of their bodies. I do not see a lot of people taking care of their brain. This is the product, guys. And so we got to talking and our values seemed very aligned. We're both into the functional mushrooms. And after a lot of back and forth, I am now a shareholder in the company. I have a small amount of ownership and I'm just, look, I'm just really proud to be repping and be a part of the company that's making the best functional mushroom supplement on

• 45:21Shawn Ryan?

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• 46:24John Lovell?

  10 feet, I would have eaten those bullets. Yeah. That was too close, too close. He only got, he got, I think, two rounds off. I'm not, don't think, I remember counting them, two, two rounds off. But it was just this flood of fear that came over me afterwards. And it wasn't just, hey, I just capped a dude. It was, the room clearing problem was beyond me. It was, uh, it was a lit up room. There was a balcony over top. So, open room, a balcony that went, uh, all the way around the room. So, aerial advantage. There was open danger areas all the way around. Open doorways. Open doorways, all the way around. And then, this was the thing that was freaking me out and I had such a problem with. It was lit inside the house.

• 47:09John Lovell?

  It was dark outside and the back wall of the house was windows. So, anyone out in that courtyard could see in, but I could not see them. And I just shot a guy and we have this huge uncleared structure. And in our priorities of work, everything was dangerous of like, I couldn't figure out where to go. How do I even take a bite out of this thing? The, the, the layout of this particular building was beyond me. I did not know how to clear this and I knew how to clear rooms at this point. I was pretty good at room clearing. I liked room clearing. I didn't know where to go. Everywhere you went, you were vulnerable, you know, of like in, anyway.

• 47:53John Lovell?

  And there's a Delta operator that, that showed up behind me, just materialized. He's like, hey, I got you, bro, go right. I'm like, no, wait, wait. We're saying, like, wait, hold on, Del, let me teach you something. Wait, I have a good reason to wait. I just, I felt like, I can't go. But I was frozen and he just waited for me. He just waited. Maybe he said something else of like, hey, come on, let's go, let's go. I don't, I don't remember. I just remember him going and I told him, no, wait. And it was, I needed to get my head around this thing. I had frozen in place. And whether it was two seconds or 15 seconds, I have no idea.

• 48:32John Lovell?

  Now, the truth is, is I was, um, clogging up that hallway right in front of the doorway. Oh, okay. And if we had received incoming fire, in my after-action review, that would have been my fault. And what happened? I froze. I was stuck. It was too horrible for me to go forward. I just couldn't do it. I was stuck. Now, I, I, I think the Lord helped me and just all of a sudden, and here's one more step and two steps, and then I'm in my flow. And then I didn't have any problems again. We cleared the structure. We did very well. No more hits of contact. We, uh, you know, uh, you know, bagged up some more bad guys, flex cup them and X filled

• 49:17John Lovell?

  them. Uh, and so that one went pretty darn well, uh, after that, but I froze. Um, and that, that's upsetting because I'd love, I, I would have loved to, though it's like, well, hey, you're just on second tour. I'm like, man, the op tempo for us in the early parts of the war, it was high. So we were constantly doing stuff. And so in a very short amount of time, you can kind of get a taste for clearing rooms and taking down buildings and, and doing vehicle patrols and, uh, airfield seizures. And you've got, you're doing a lot of stuff. I'm not just hanging out and once every week or two, we go out and do a mission. I'm like, no, no, it's constant.

• 50:01John Lovell?

  And that was what early global war and terrorism was like.

• 50:05Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting. How, how long, how long were you beating yourself up about freezing in the doorway?

• 50:11John Lovell?

  Um, let's see. It happened in 2002 and it's 2023.

• 50:17Shawn Ryan?

  Still today?

• 50:18John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Man, John.

• 50:20John Lovell?

  21 years.

• 50:21Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta let that go.

• 50:22John Lovell?

  No, no. So I'm grateful that, uh, it, it's kind of like, uh, come on, bro. Uh, it's a good thing that it happened. One, because I have the leadership lesson from it. I have the learning point. I, it was painful enough of a mistake that I'll always remember it. I can learn from it and I can teach other people from it. And it didn't cost anyone anything.

• 50:42Shawn Ryan?

  Did it get brought up again afterwards from your peers or was this, this was just self-reflection?

• 50:48John Lovell?

  This was self-reflection.

• 50:49Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 50:51John Lovell?

  And I'd done a good job. I'd done a good job. So it was my own private crime that I don't think anyone else was privy to and nobody else had much. We all had the same amount of combat experience. You know, whether you're, you know, you're the platoon sergeant, or whether you're, you know, a private or specialist, you're the same, you know, combat level of experience. We're all newbies. And so everyone's kind of freaking out that that, you know, that just happened. Like, bro, first squad just got in a gunfight inside a room. You know, that's scary. And so I did well. I performed well. I shot him real quick. No misses, you know, right away. And so I did a good thing. But I knew, and I don't think

• 51:36John Lovell?

  I confess this, this was, I just knew. And later, I would really think on, man, that could have been bad. I had one other freezing point, you know, and it was similar kind of quality, but it was more of the thing of, rather than a freezing point for that, it was, I just couldn't see, I couldn't understand the battlefield in front of me. And I had this feeling that the bad guys were about to materialize right in front of me. And I had no way to, to narrow my battlefield and reduce my own exposure. I just felt like a sitting duck. And that was horrifying to me. And we had just had, we'd

• 52:20John Lovell?

  received a lot of contact. I just had a buddy lose a leg. You know, and so we got, we're medevac-ing him. And, you know, he's screaming and wanting to fight the dudes who just blew him up. And so I'm like, this is a hot, this is a hot battlefield. There's, there's parts of terrorists on the ground. You know, there's, there's fires and we just, you know, this is a serious situation. And meanwhile, I'm all like fogged up night vision and overlooking this ravine and I can't see Jack. And I don't know whether someone said it, or, or, you know, I thought it, but I

• 52:58John Lovell?

  Um, I thought I heard someone say they're climbing up the ravine. I realized you couldn't see him coming up if that was true. And then you'd be just nose to nose. And so, uh, my part in that, you know, that fight was very minimal. You know, I threw some grenades in the grass, you know, and because they're hiding in the grass. You're like, all right, let's blow up those guys. My, my, my involvement that night was, was nothing spectacular, but it was my, it was the confusion and the fear of the unknown. It, it, that was, that was a difficult pill. Whereas other times you kind of, okay, I know how to play this game. They shoot it. You flank it by own cover. You shoot them back. All right. Good to go.

• 53:41John Lovell?

  Not, not as big of it. I mean, it's scary and you don't like that because it really ticks you off to get shot at. But, um, at least it was a little bit more straightforward. I knew where they were. They knew where I was. Let's see how this goes. Um, and then other times when something happens and it's just real fast of like, I've been in a near ambush. That was scary, but you're so busy reacting. There's not a lot of time or mental space for fear. You can get afraid later. Um, so.

• 54:11Shawn Ryan?

  That guy coming through the doorway that you killed with the saw?

• 54:14John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Shawn Ryan?

  Was that your first kill?

• 54:16John Lovell?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah.

• 54:20Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel afterwards?

• 54:23John Lovell?

  Um, I didn't, didn't bother me.

• 54:24Shawn Ryan?

  It didn't bother you one bit?

• 54:26John Lovell?

  Uh-uh. Never has.

• 54:28Shawn Ryan?

  You know that?

• 54:29John Lovell?

  He was a bad guy. He tried to kill me and my buddies. He was a terrorist. He was a known terrorist. Um, and so I slept like a baby and I've never had a problem. Uh, and so, uh, now I do think if I'd ever shot a noncombatant accidentally, cause that, man, you get real close. You, you're, you're hunting for bad, bad guys. You're clearing hundreds of rooms. I remember there's certain missions, you know, we would do where we would, where we were taking down entire city blocks. We might be clearing nonstop for four hours, six hours, seven hours of nonstop rangering. Uh, and so it was exhausting. Sometimes you'll see the old picture of old school Rangers grasping their magazine for the support. And I've had dudes judge that of like, why are you doing that? Like, oh, well, it's probably

• 55:14John Lovell?

  because he has been fighting for so long, his muscles have failed working. And so he's propping his tricep up on his body armor and his hand like this because it's the only way he can actually hold a rifle now. Because now you have the, you run the handout, thumb over, and you're able to drive the gun really well. I'm like, yeah, that works great, you know, for a couple of minutes. And then you fatigue and you can't hold your rifle very well. And then you get the muscle tremors and all the advantages you would have with that aggressive, way out, far competitive shooter grip on your rifle, all of them are gone as soon as your muscles fatigue. Yeah. And so, and now I run my handout, you know, and shoot.

• 55:55John Lovell?

  I'm not way out, like as if I was a competitive shooter and I'm not way in as if I've been clearing rooms for seven hours. Uh, I'm kinda the warm cup of porridge. So I've got good control and recoil mitigation for my rifle. But I'm just saying, some of the, that was our reality. We, we were clearing for hours sometimes. And so you just get used to clearing, but you're expecting, you, you, you don't want to be complacent and assume, never assume a room is clear before you go in it because you always have a prejudice. You always have a suspicion. And so you all, what the, the goal is, is to, all right, I am, I am a lion seeking prey. You know, I am a predator.

• 56:40John Lovell?

  Don't think about getting shot. You think about taking the fight to the enemy. Real important to mentally jazz yourself up toward aggression. I'm not playing defense. I am playing offense and I am a terror and I am seek and destroy and I am fast and I am dead. I'm, these are the words I'm speaking to myself, room to room. Ready? Hold, hold, take it now, mine. And this is how I would speak to myself as if constantly for hours as I'm clearing, I'm giving myself my own little mental pep rally to stay sharp and to not get complacent. Now, in the midst of that, which is a life-saving device and mindset,

• 57:23John Lovell?

  all of a sudden you're expecting to find a guy with a gun and instead it's some lady in full burka and she's got a pan in her hand. Now your mind, under severe stress, can project and turn that pan into a gun. You can mentally project that, that so many case studies from officers and soldiers where they swear they saw him holding something like a gun. Or a detonator or something like that. And I think they actually did see that. It wasn't the reality. It wasn't there, but your mind literally expecting it mentally transfigured that under horrible stress. And so you gotta be real careful to acquire, identify and engage.

• 58:07John Lovell?

  Uh, this is where the muzzle thump would come in. Muzzle thump is where you take your rifle and you jam it into someone's chest to put them down and hurt them bad. A lot of dudes who don't understand military context and stuff don't realize a muzzle thump is meant to save someone's life. So you can determine in adequate time and space, whether you should take their life. That's the point. If, if it was a bad guy, don't muzzle them, just shoot them. But if, if it's a good person, well, don't shoot them and don't, you know, assault them. That's a good person. If you don't know and they're right up on you, hurt them really bad, uh, really sudden and don't compromise your ability to shoot them. So wham muzzle thump.

• 58:51John Lovell?

  You take that muzzle and you crush it in, uh, to their stern or wherever else, not in the face, cause that's going to kill them. Uh, and so you jack them up or you just bulldog them over, uh, whatever you can to make sure that they, uh, they are knocked out of you on your path of travel to your point of domination. That's where you're going in the room and they don't ham in your ability to clear your sector, uh, but a muzzle thump or something that's meant to, to, to buy you a little time to figure out whether to kill that person or not. There's been a lot of times where somebody all of a sudden is there and you didn't expect someone there, whoa, oh man, oh, and you almost kill someone. If I had ever killed someone that didn't need killing, I don't think I'd ever recover from that.

• 59:35John Lovell?

  I don't think I would ever really full, make a full recovery of that. A lot of people don't. I know. And because I've been there, though it is no excuse to shoot a non-combatant, I understand.

• 59:49John Lovell?

  I am sympathetic because I have also almost killed people that didn't need killing. Got real close. Not a couple of times. More. Uh, scary. Friendly fire as well as it's something that happens in war. There's zero wars where there isn't friendly fire. It is absolutely unpreventable. You cannot possibly engage in warfare without friendly fire. That being said, it's not an excuse. There's an explanation. Doesn't matter. You gotta mitigate it. Uh, people don't understand how confusing battlefields are. That's the number one killer. That if I had to use any word to describe a battlefield, it wouldn't be scary or it'd be confusing. It's just confusing.

• 1:00:32John Lovell?

  All of a sudden you see some dudes jump out and you're like, there they are. Is that our guys? Is that somebody else's? Who are those guys? Who are those guys? I'm like, that's second squad. Second squad should be over there. That's their A O of like map check. Dude, shoot those guys. Do not shoot those guys. And so it gets really confused. You can get turned around in just a moment. You just, you know, you, you had your good azimuth and you had your big sectors. And then you wandered around a couple of blocks and you didn't realize these streets kind of tilted. You left and you were off, you were off azimuth here. And you didn't do a compass check and you're not checking your GPS and you don't realize you have wandered into a different squad's sector of fire. And you realize it was such a gradual shift of the road and you should have gone there.

• 1:01:14John Lovell?

  And so that's just an example of battlefields are so, so confusing. And so if you are, um, shackled to your fear and you can't see anything except the intensity and they're coming to get me, then you're not going to be able to do just basic stuff like understand what you're looking at and where you're at, where everyone else is at and where you should be going. It's a zoo. It is a mental mess to sort out.

• 1:01:40Shawn Ryan?

  War can become extremely complicated very fast.

• 1:01:43John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, it's a great, great depiction of, uh, the experience. Thank you. I have a question. I've been, I knew there would be a good time to bring this up. And, um, I think this is the perfect time. This is from a patron and he wants to know, "How do you reconcile the duality of being a Christian warrior? The balance of loving God with your whole heart, mind and strength, and yet prepare for war in the removal of threats to human life? I've been in search of an answer for this conundrum."

• 1:02:15John Lovell?

  Pretty easy. The Bible is real clear on this. It's harder for us to understand for some reason, I think, because we just don't do a very good job in a lot of pulpits in America. But for this, I mean, Ecclesiastes 3, there's a time to kill, time to heal. There's a time to plant, time to destroy, tear up. And so, there's a time to kill. The Bible says, "Do not murder," and this is a bad translation where we take the Ten Commandments, and we take one of those commandments, "Thou shalt not kill." It's actually, "Thou shalt not murder." That is actually the word. It's murder is the context and what it should be. Because, I mean, God is commanding people to kill in the Bible. The Israelites who are

• 1:03:00John Lovell?

  taken out of Egypt and taken to their homeland, Canaan, this is where they lived before, this where, you know, their ancestors were from, and more importantly, this is where God promised that this is your land forever. Now, there are some horrible, horrible humans living there that are committing atrocities and crimes against humanity. Picture Third Reich has rolled up on your homeland, and you've been stuck in slavery, and now you're coming back to a land that God promised was yours. And God's saying, "Clear them out. Take it back. That is your land. That is your house. That is your property. Take them back." And Israel instead said, "They actually look quite scary. Would rather not." And God said,

• 1:03:42John Lovell?

  "Very well, you cowards. You can all die in the desert." And so, for 40 years, they wandered around in the desert until that entire generation was killed, except for Caleb and Joshua. Those were the only two spies that went out and saw this superior force in their homeland and said, "Let's go. Stack bodies. Let's go. The Lord is with us. No one stands a chance."

• 1:04:06Shawn Ryan?

  That is a better answer than I ever could have expected. Thank you.

• 1:04:09John Lovell?

  No sweat.

• 1:04:12Shawn Ryan?

  So getting back to getting back to your career, we jumped around a lot. You we're wrapping up Afghanistan, then we got into moments in combat that you necessarily aren't proud of. Coming back from Afghanistan, how much time down do you have before you're redeployed?

• 1:04:32John Lovell?

  Uh, it varied, but yeah, I mean, you hope for something like six months.

• 1:04:37Shawn Ryan?

  How long, how long are your deployments?

• 1:04:39John Lovell?

  It's shorter, about three, four months.

• 1:04:41Shawn Ryan?

  Three to four months?

• 1:04:42John Lovell?

  There was one that was only one month, and that was a winter surge. And this is famous. If you go into Regiment Headquarters in Georgia, there's the winter surge pictures, and that's where we're up, living at like 9,000 feet elevation in the foothills of the Hindu Kush and like Peronis and Astiwi and some of these remote places where no American has ever stepped foot. And, you know, we had this intel spin up that they're hiding up in this and we confiscated a whole bunch of, uh, you know, um, old Russian munitions and stuff, any aircraft, uh, things and whatnot. But really, we just went up,

• 1:05:23John Lovell?

  got altitude sickness, ran a lot of extremely dangerous missions, just in the nature of the climate could kill you. Um, and that that's famous in Ranger history, that winter surge. And I was there and that sucked. Um, it freezing. I remember we heloed in the very first night, we heloed in, uh, 47s and, uh, we fast roped out, which was tough because your hands are so freezing cold. You lean out, grab that fast rope, you know, to slide down that rope out of the helicopter and your hands just don't work. You have to look to make sure that you are holding the rope, you know?

• 1:06:02John Lovell?

  Uh, but it's ink black outside, so looking doesn't do you much good either. And so miracle of miracles, you don't bounce on some of these uh, fast ropes we've done. Um, You know, and so funny stories are flooding through my head now of fast rope misadventures. But this one, we, you know, did our fast rope in infilled and the birds punched out. And as we're surveying our surroundings, it's just snow, ice everywhere. Nods down, looking around, and we realize, oh, we're in between two rivers. How do you get through these rivers? And so we were like, you know, it's super late.

• 1:06:45John Lovell?

  We've infilled, you know, it wasn't, though we were kind of boxed in, we felt like, given the more remote geographical location, and we're just going to wait for daylight to figure out how we can cross this, rather than, well, if you cross on the wrong spot and you go in, the temperature is just such an extreme low, that person may die before you're able to rescue them. So it's like, well, shorty death through the river, or maybe chance fate under daylight and gunfire. I'm like, oh, we'll choose gunfire. So we instituted a rest plan, you know, and so some of the rangers are pulling security and other rangers go ahead and bed down and pull out your bivvy sacks and try to get

• 1:07:29John Lovell?

  some shut eye. So that was the plan and we instituted that rest plan. However, it was so cold, even with our cool sleep systems, which were very effective, one by one, everyone who was sleeping got up out of their, out of their bivvies, sleep systems, packed it away, and everyone pulled security all night. It was too cold to sleep. You couldn't sleep, even in your sleeps, it was too cold in between those icy rivers with the wind screaming down in between high peaks of Hindu Kush, straight onto us, fully exposed.

• 1:08:13John Lovell?

  And it was, and so what you did is you did calisthenics all night long. I ran in place.

• 1:08:21John Lovell?

  I don't know, six hours until the sun came up. I just jogged in place the entire night. It's the only way I could keep my limbs warm enough. So you didn't lose a toe to frostbite or something. So, uh, and that was the, that was night one.

• 1:08:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. Let's, let's go back to, let's go back to Iraq.

• 1:08:43John Lovell?

  Okay.

• 1:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So we're getting into that. What year do you deploy to Iraq ish?

• 1:08:47John Lovell?

  Two thousand and three.

• 1:08:49Shawn Ryan?

  So that was the, were you there for the invasion?

• 1:08:52John Lovell?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:53Shawn Ryan?

  You were there for the invasion.

• 1:08:55John Lovell?

  Uh, yeah. So, well, uh, what happened is, is, um, you know, we had big army doing a big push through and we're grabbing high value targets up as they kind of squirt. So it's a, it's a coordination and I wasn't first boots on the ground, but I'm still early enough into Iraq where I could be like, yeah, I was, I was there. I just looked at my DD two 14 and I've already forgotten the exact dates that I was there.

• 1:09:21Shawn Ryan?

  That's okay. We don't need exact dates.

• 1:09:23John Lovell?

  Anyway, I, it was somewhere in two thousand and three ish.

• 1:09:26Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So you deploy there. Is it heavy right off the bat? What is, what are they briefing you?

• 1:09:35John Lovell?

  This was a different thing where in Afghanistan, I had, you know, mud huts and what, whatnot. These are very like, in your cities, you find really, really, uh, impressive architecture and you see infrastructure and build up and you've got like cities, not just kind of like haji villages. And so this is a different animal and, uh, a bit scarier. In Afghanistan, I think I was running, uh, um, uh, one of the, uh, Trigicon ACOGS.

• 1:10:09Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:10John Lovell?

  Cause you want to be able to see farther. I don't remember the first deployment. Maybe it was a, uh, aim point comp in, but, uh, we decided in Afghanistan, we liked running the ACOGS. Iraq, nope. Give me a red dot site because it was all up close. It was moving in urban terrain and kicking in palace doors and stuff. And so.

• 1:10:31John Lovell?

  That that was a scarier animal. It was easier living. Afghanistan was harder on the body. It was harder living conditions. Iraq was a lot easier, but it was a bit scarier and the op tempo is crazier.

• 1:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  A lot more violent.

• 1:10:47John Lovell?

  It was more violent. Yeah, for sure.

• 1:10:49Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you in country before you started running ops this time?

• 1:10:52John Lovell?

  I mean, you're running ops pretty much immediately, immediately. And it's really nonstop.

• 1:10:57Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you guys don't mess around.

• 1:10:58John Lovell?

  No, it was early in June. There was so much work. Everywhere you went, there was work to do. And it was all special operations driven. And so they just used us up. And that led to a lot of dudes getting out in a short time. By, um, by the time I had, yeah, hit my fifth tour, I was smoked. I was just tired of war and all that stuff. Yeah.

• 1:11:23Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get to that point. So you get to Iraq. Where do you go? Baghdad? And you're running ops right off the bat. What's the op tempo?

• 1:11:34John Lovell?

  Um, nearly every night, maybe. I mean, it's hard to say because it's like, we didn't do anything for four days. And then we're like, and then we went every single day and night for something else. So, um, I'm comfortable saying, pretty much, you're going to do something a little scary every 24 hours.

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• 1:12:30Shawn Ryan?

  What was, let's talk about your, your very first engagement.

• 1:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  What was that like for you?

• 1:12:38John Lovell?

  Oh, I already told you that, that was, that was Iraq.

• 1:12:41Shawn Ryan?

  That was your first engagement?

• 1:12:43John Lovell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  First mission?

• 1:12:44John Lovell?

  No, you mean my first like engage, my first mission?

• 1:12:48Shawn Ryan?

  First gunfight, first?

• 1:12:50John Lovell?

  That was that inside the room. That was an Iraq story.

• 1:12:52Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is a hell of an op to cut your teeth on.

• 1:12:55John Lovell?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  So was the rest of the time very similar there?

• 1:12:59John Lovell?

  Um, uh, touch and go. I, I, in, in that tour, I'm not going to experience anything as scary as that in Iraq. Um, but yeah, you're, I mean, we're grabbing up a bunch of bad guys and flex cuffing them and exfil them for, you know, questioning from the psy ops dudes and we're, uh, running all over the place, taking ground and, I mean, just clearing, clearing, clearing all the time.

• 1:13:31Shawn Ryan?

  Three or four months there, come back. Now you're going to Afghanistan.

• 1:13:36John Lovell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:36Shawn Ryan?

  Where are you going in Afghanistan this time?

• 1:13:39John Lovell?

  All over.

• 1:13:39Shawn Ryan?

  All over.

• 1:13:40John Lovell?

  All over. So this is the thing is, forward operating bases weren't places that we lived. We just went in to refit and so we may come in, uh, one night, uh, get a bunch of water, uh, get our fuel, uh, maybe if we have time, grab some hot chow. Uh, you know, switch out some busted out tires, grab some Humvee parts and we're out the same night.

• 1:14:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:08John Lovell?

  And so.

• 1:14:08Shawn Ryan?

  So these are reset points for you. These aren't, you don't live here.

• 1:14:12John Lovell?

  We weren't living in FAW, well, later we would.

• 1:14:14Shawn Ryan?

  So your entire deployment is a, is an operation?

• 1:14:17John Lovell?

  Yes. It's non-stop movement. It's just like, where were you? I'm like, I was everywhere. Everywhere. We didn't, we didn't stay put anywhere of like, there, there were some Afghanistan tours. I already alluded to, I think this is tour three or maybe four, they all just run together now, especially so long ago.

• 1:14:37John Lovell?

  We're, we're just got on trucks. We had like five different Humvees and they were open, you know, we don't like the armored coffins. No ceilings, no doors. And so it's a stripped down Humvee with a bunch of just angry Rangers, some, you know, something saucy on top. The Maude's 50 cal or a Mark 19, you know, grenade launcher, something like that. And then you got a 240 mounted on the back. It's a machine, medium machine gun. And then everyone else is just, you're rolling thunder. Everybody's guns pointing out in sectors and you're just pushing through. And we just drove all over, looking to pick a fight. Is that what it was? That, that's somehow. Patrol to contact type mission? Some of it.

• 1:15:23John Lovell?

  So, um, I, I remember, uh, it was fun of like, is, you think about terrorists. And I had this perception of like the brave suicide bomber, you know, of like, oh, these guys are ready to die for what they believe in. And it's funny, the high value targets, they're the first guys to immediately roll over and they wouldn't put up a fight. The underlings sometimes would put up a fight, uh, but a lot of times like guys would run off into the darkness, not knowing that we could see you through our night vision. You'd grab them and they'd smell like crap and piss because they just, in fear, just evacuate all over themselves.

• 1:15:59John Lovell?

  And so, anyway, I, I saw some of that, but oftentimes you want to get in a fight, but these are terrorists even in their own country. I'm rolling through your area of operations and they just let you go. And then they spray AK and then they disappear in the crowd. I'm like, fight me, you cowards, come on here, I'm here.

• 1:16:18John Lovell?

  In one of these deployments, maybe it was three or four, we had, um, we had taken our bottom pockets off of our BDU uniform. And we had, it, it just started to become tactical. Uh, probably Delta did it first or somebody did it first, but we're right there like, oh, that's a good idea. And so you take your, uh, your pockets and you put them on your sleeves. No one had ever done this before. This is the first time it ever existed. Now it's on everything. It's kind of like, whoa, you got pockets on your shoulders. That didn't exist ever until global war on terrorism. And we started doing that. Uh, cause you know, you can reach stuff in your pockets and you realize the utility of. So we're, you know, kind of in, in the forces. I don't know where

• 1:17:02John Lovell?

  it started, but we adopted it early and we're kind of some of the only ones that were rolling around. It was the special operations community that was doing that. We were it. Um, and we were listening in on some of the signal intelligence going on and, uh, the bad guys who would, you know, fight different forces. There's a rumor of them. Don't take shots at the guys with the, the pockets on their sleeves. They always kill us. And so that was the intelligence that got through. And so then we took them off because we were trying to roll through and we were trying to get people to shoot at us. And, uh, we realized, oh, they, they recognized, hey, we're the good killers. Don't shoot at them. They'll kill you. Go shoot the other people. And so we took them

• 1:17:47John Lovell?

  right back off. And so, uh, anyway, now, now it's adopted all the way across and, but that was just one little snapshot in time. And, uh, what you take away from that is, is, uh, these were not these brave, idealistic warriors as I had thought. Most of them were cowards within even their own country, engaging in guerrilla terroristic tactics. And so we were trying to do stuff to strip our numbers down. Now, if we roll too heavy, no one's ever going to shoot at you because they know we're going to annihilate you. So we would purposefully have less numbers and look a little bit more inviting for them to kill. We were, we were trying to be a little

• 1:18:28John Lovell?

  bit more like human bait. Now whether higher would recognize of like, who knows, some, some former Ranger military commander, like that never happened. I'm like, you may not have known about it. This is what we were doing on the ground. This is absolutely what we were doing. We were looking for a fight. Um, so a, a wild departure from my first tour to my third. It's like, oh, please don't shoot at me. And then I'm like, you can shoot at me, but I'm going to shoot back. And the third one, I'm kind of like, come on, give me your bullets.

• 1:18:58John Lovell?

  A little more Scarface-esque.

• 1:19:00Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, I asked you about an hour ago about what was pre-mission like for you preparation?

• 1:19:08Shawn Ryan?

  As a new guy, who had not experienced combat. Now you are a seasoned operator. You've done countless raids, cleared countless rooms, been in countless engagements. What is your preparation like before a, before an actual hit, an operation, a takedown, whatever you want to call it? Not a patrol, a hit.

• 1:19:31John Lovell?

  And I, I wouldn't say I was a seasoned operator. I would say I was being seasoned. I was better than I was before. Cause I have some dudes that, you know, Ranger buddies that stayed in for a full like 18, 20 year career.

• 1:19:47Shawn Ryan?

  Fair enough.

• 1:19:47John Lovell?

  You know, and I moved on, so I don't want, I'm going to assign that to them. I was certainly, I was, I was a Ranger. I was a very stereotypical Ranger in the way that I was ready. I'm, I'm ready to fight. I'm ready to fight. And I know how to fight and I've done some of it. So now pre-mission checks are, I'm really thinking,

• 1:20:10John Lovell?

  it's not so scary and intense. I mean, you definitely have basic spool up. You get a, a little bit of a frag out, like a, an operations order. You figure out what's coming down the pipeline and you're like, ooh, that one looks scary. Or like this one, probably another dry hole. Trade it real. Let's go gents. And you're doing your thing. But you know, you still get those spikes, but really it's kind of like you're thinking through stuff. I remember earlier on, I'm getting ready and I remember one mission I went out on, I had 11 magazines on me. For my M4, I had 11 magazines.

• 1:20:43Shawn Ryan?

  That's a lot.

• 1:20:44John Lovell?

  It is a lot.

• 1:20:45Shawn Ryan?

  On your chest?

• 1:20:46John Lovell?

  I mean, just a belt chest, wherever of like maybe, yes, my loadout, my personal loadout, 11 magazines. Now the operations order had clearly spooked all of us.

• 1:20:59John Lovell?

  And so my, my leadership even, and this was.

• 1:21:02Shawn Ryan?

  What was the op order?

• 1:21:03John Lovell?

  I have no idea.

• 1:21:04Shawn Ryan?

  What were you going to do?

• 1:21:04John Lovell?

  I have no idea, but it looked, it sounded really scary. It sounded like. And you know Ranger history, we have like, oh, it's we're waiting for our Mogadishu, where we run out of ammo and we're pinned down and we're behind enemy lines and we're, yeah, we're gonna run out of ammo. So it's like, ammo. Um, that's, that's young Ranger John. You know, more seasoned Ranger John of like, I'm carrying five mags. If I need more, I'll take it off one of these privates, you know, who's under my command. I'll take their ammo. You guys carry 11. You're carrying it for me, though. So I'm like, I'm a little more practical.

• 1:21:47John Lovell?

  I'm gonna run out of ammo before them and then I'm gonna take their ammo. Uh, but I realized the human body doesn't run on 556. And after, you know, like sucking on a battlefield, or not even a battlefield, just, you know, doing your infill and you're walking and you're sucking. I mean, you need water. You need water. I would have traded four magazines for one cup of water. I need water. You can't function long without it, you know, and you may have to walk in to, you know, your mission area of operations. And you may be pouring sweat. And after a little while, you would like a snack. And so, man, I jettisoned a

• 1:22:30John Lovell?

  lot of magazines and instead I had snacks all over me. And I had different stuff of like, alright, I got my GPS, you know, you had some pingo flares. I had a short shotgun under my left arm strapped to my belt and hooked to my body armor so I could roll it in and do some ballistic breaching. Um, I had a bunch of Skittles, uh, you know, a couple packs and like some orange drink powder that came in the MREs for some quick sugar. I had Camelbacks and, you know, I had an assault pack with some Nowgene bottles in there and an MRE. You know, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to fight. Before, it never would have crossed my mind of like, in the MRE, I'm going into the thick of it. You know,

• 1:23:15John Lovell?

  I'm about to Rambo, Rambo out. I'm like, yeah, sure you are a hero.

• 1:23:21John Lovell?

  You can grimace at the enemy while I eat my snack over there during because I thought it was all gonna be like this huge fight and really it's you make clear hours and hours and then it's a dry hole and then you go home and that's it and and then all of a sudden you get intelligence of like, hey, we need to actually stay here overnight and you don't have a space blanket and you're gonna freeze tonight. I'm like, no, you should have brought a blanket. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find the big ranger, he'll be the big spoon and we're gonna get under the space blanket tonight and I'm actually gonna get some shadi. And you heroes with your 11 mags aren't sleeping. You're not gonna sleep at all. You're going to shiver, freeze because you're idiots.

• 1:24:03John Lovell?

  And so, pre-mission checks and prep and a realistic and sober assessment of what it takes to keep the human machine running on a battlefield or

• 1:24:16John Lovell?

  in a potential place where you're doing operations.

• 1:24:21Shawn Ryan?

  You see, there's already a lot of wisdom coming from this stuff that people are gonna learn from, especially young Rangers. But we had kinda talked a little bit about some of your near-death experiences and so I wanna, I wanna dig into that. What were

• 1:24:41Shawn Ryan?

  some of your most memorable near-death experiences and how did you, how did you mentally overcome

• 1:24:51Shawn Ryan?

  whatever happened and

• 1:24:57Shawn Ryan?

  be able to perform through that?

• 1:24:59John Lovell?

  So, one of the most memorable I refer to is my walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. That comes out of Psalm 23, but I have commandeered it and applied it to this story. We had just been in a near ambush. This is right next to the PAK border in Afghanistan. We had gone up a road, which was actually a dried up creek bed that even in our, you know, amazing Humvees, getting up to four miles an hour without high centering or blowing out a tire, getting stuck, you'd be doing very good to go four or five miles an hour. So this is extremely

• 1:25:40John Lovell?

  difficult terrain to negotiate. Um, and so there, we got ambushed and whatnot. And so that, that was scary and it was a zone contact and fight. Uh, and that was a near death experience. Uh, but that wasn't the one I was going to tell. Is it all right to skip that whole story?

• 1:25:58Shawn Ryan?

  Skip it.

• 1:25:59John Lovell?

  Okay. So, um, and that, that was where we were, we were getting shot at and we were shooting. And so that, that was scary and we all should have died, but we didn't. Um, it was the next day, we were going to go do a like sensitive site exploitation of, or we're going to recon that area where it all went down. Why? I don't know. We're just going to go take a look at it. Um, now that didn't make too good a tactical sense, except that we just really lit some dudes up the day before who meant to kill us and we killed them instead. So that went very, very well. I credit the entire grace of God because it was a pretty miraculous thing. You shouldn't live through a near ambush and we didn't just live through it. We crushed. Uh, and so that was cool. You're going to make me go back, aren't you?

• 1:26:44Shawn Ryan?

  I'm going to make you go back. This sounds interesting. Walk us through it.

• 1:26:47John Lovell?

  Okay, sure. So, um, I am lead driver, uh, at that time, which sounds a little bit lowly, uh, because at that time I was a team leader. So I'm, I think I'm a sergeant at this point. And I am driving, uh, down this terrible road. I'm vehicle number one in a convoy of at least four or five trucks. As I'm going down,

• 1:27:13John Lovell?

  I have all of a sudden incoming boom, huge explosion, uh, front right. And my tire is just exploded. It it's gone. Uh, I don't know whether it was RPG or IED. I don't know to this day, uh, but that's what happened. And then automatic gunfire from both sides, elevated position starts raining down on us. And so that's really, really bad. Near ambush means inside hand grenade range. Now, nobody had a tape measure, but just based on proximity and later intel of like, it was, it was right on that line of like, they, they were, they were close. And I'd already walked up that terrain the day before on the right side.

• 1:27:55John Lovell?

  And so, um, I did what I was supposed to do as a team leader and a sergeant at that time. You want a, somebody reliable who's going to do the right thing as driver. Uh, the driver in one of these Humvee trucks, if, if, if you is target number one of the bad guy. If you've got a vehicle convoy going through someone and you kill the lead driver and you shut him down, then the whole convoy stops, then you kill the rear driver and then it's just kill all the fish in the barrel. So there's the bookends. Kill that driver, kill that driver, kill everyone in between. Uh, and so, uh, I am, I am selected to be the driver because I was a good driver and I was aggressive.

• 1:28:40John Lovell?

  And I knew how to use the vehicle as a weapon and to take care of the guys and I'm not going to lock up. I'm not going to freeze up. And so when this happened, it was really difficult for me because I wanted to fight, you know? But I did the right thing and I punched it. And that means get off the X. If you're ever in an ambush, uh, military tactics 101, get off the ambush. Get out of the, don't fight through the, get off the X. And so, uh, I punched it and, and got off the X. And so that that's tough because I'm I got this steering wheel and it's wanting to favor right because I don't have a front tire. So it's taken both arms to do this. I'm trying to get it and set it and lock it so I can grab my M4. And I tried to do that and there was no chance of doing that. And then there's this 50 cow from the Maude up in the turret

• 1:29:23John Lovell?

  that is somehow jumped out of the can and it is hitting me in the face as we're driving through this. And it's just a nightmare and gunfire is going out all of the way. Anyway, we we got down punched around the corner, dismounted, got down low behind whatever cover we could find, which was just little rocks and pieces of defilade. At that time, we saw some of the bad guys who had ambushed us on the left side had kind of gone around the military crest of this. They lit us up from distance now. And then we just we we put them all down. So that was that was that encounter. Now, that wasn't the that was

• 1:30:05John Lovell?

  it was all fast and it was pretty reactive and it kind of it was scary. But for me, it was kind of cold hard math. It wasn't as memorable to me as this next part, which isn't like guns flying anything. This one was actual like danger. The next one was scary because it was a bit of a minescrew and it was perceived danger. Okay. And so the second one was worse to me, though anybody listening in or viewing this would be like, dude, the ambush is worse. I'm like, all I can tell you is, you know, what the pucker factor was in either of the second either one of these and the second one, though less dangerous, was certainly a bigger pucker factor because this is what

• 1:30:48John Lovell?

  happened. The next day, we wanted to go back into that AFC exactly what had happened there. Now, that was the excuse. The real rationale was probably

• 1:31:01John Lovell?

  Hey, let's go try to get shot at again and maybe we can kill some more bad guys. So anyone discerning of like, hey, why would you go back through the same spot? There was nothing mission critical. Why? And it's because, well, we came up with an excuse to dangle some bait out, draw some fire and then hit them with a counter ambush that they weren't expecting. So we positioned some machine guns up on the high ground that could overlook this entire valley that we got ambushed in the day before. Uh, we had, uh, mortars, uh, ready and dialed in and we had aircraft on station. So we have our, we have our counter ambush ready. All we need is bait.

• 1:31:43John Lovell?

  Now I, as a Christian, uh, you know, had gained, I had the respect of the dudes. I wasn't all like preachy or whatever, but everyone knew, all right, John's a Christian. And I think there was an unspoken sentiment that the Lord's going to take care of me. Um, and I'd been in some brushes and so anyway, I was selected as the bait.

• 1:32:09John Lovell?

  And I was actually okay with it. I'm kind of like, okay, let's do the bait thing. And I feel like I'm invincible until the Lord calls me home. And so I was actually okay with this plan, but it was a little bit nuts. Cause I'm like, dude, we, we almost all died right there. And now without any trucks and without any of my buddies, I'm going to take two dudes with me and we're just going to walk up that valley. Just the three of us. We're just going to walk up there. Broad daylight.

• 1:32:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:32:36John Lovell?

  So, uh, I was the bait. Uh, and so I was strangely, I was okay with it. Uh, and, uh, so we just kind of start walking.

• 1:32:45Shawn Ryan?

  How are you okay with it? That's, this is what I want to hit. Well, how are you altering your mindset and overcoming the fear?

• 1:32:53John Lovell?

  Um, I think, I think I was a little excited, like, I wouldn't mind another fight and I felt good of like, I was scared, I was scared, I'm not minimizing that, but, um, and so, uh, and as I'm walking up this valley, I'm like, this is stupid, this is crazy, but I could do it, you know, and it was, I was okay with the plan. I don't know, it was scary, but I'm good with it, you know, and so, I don't know, of, um, I had enough stress inoculation and I was okay. And so I'm like, I'm gonna just stroll up this. So we did, me and two buddies. And so we had our, our little modified wedge and we're just kinda pushing up the valley, uh, making sure we got our intervals spaced out, head on a swivel, um, we're, we're,

• 1:33:37John Lovell?

  we're just taking a stroll up the valley of the shadow of death. Um, we get way up there and so, I mean, maybe I'm 500 meters away from my gunners on top of, uh, the ridge line. So I'm kinda like, man, can they even help me about this? Uh, and it's about this time where my radio squawks and somebody says, hey, man, you got movement from Pac Mill coming to you. Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, let me back up. Uh, as I'm walking up, there's a dude, an, an older man, uh, he, he looks like 90 years old, so he's probably like 45 in Afghan years. Like, I mean, that climate, that culture, that, uh, that does not treat

• 1:34:18John Lovell?

  the body well. These people fall apart from malnutrition and difficult, so, so he starts strolling down and so, we're walking toward each other. I'm watching hands and I'm, I'm pretty high alert, but I'm like, and, and my big thing is of like, as the wind is hitting his, you know, uh, man dress, his Aji man dress, I'm like, is there some type of bomb under there? Is this a suicide bomber? Cause that makes sense, but why is this guy walking down this valley toward me in the middle of the day when everyone in this region knows what just went down here? There's no way. Everyone doesn't know what happened here yesterday. So this guy is dirty, one way or another, whether he's direct or whether he is walking

• 1:35:01John Lovell?

  down to scout out, gather intelligence and then report back. No question, this guy's dirty. And so I grab him up, you know, we, we hold him at gun, we, we do a search, we maintain security. And at this point, I am letting him lean into my radio so our interpreter can speak back and forth to him. It's at that time where somebody comes in like, hey, you got movement on the pack, uh, pack mill border. Uh, some, it looks like some trucks are rolling down on your location. And I'm like, oh, no. Whereas I was kind of okay with doing the walk, which is already here, brain. For me, I am way too far away to beat feet down. I'm way too far away. And this terrain is going to take quite a while for

• 1:35:45John Lovell?

  me to get down. And I got mountains on either side of me. I am boxed in. I am stuck in this valley. And here I've got this informant dude. So even me hiding in the bushes, if they see this guy, he's just gonna be like, there, there, or kill him. And I got trucks rolling in, multiple trucks. And I'm like, dude, this is bad, bad. So I ended up grabbing the guy. And me and my, uh, uh, two dudes, my two Joes who are with me, we pushed up uh, on to, you know, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 meters up as, as much as I could get up. I didn't want to go too crazy with it, kick up a bunch of dust. And so I needed to be kind of settled quick. So the dust wasn't giving away my location by the time

• 1:36:29John Lovell?

  the trucks got to us. So I wanted to get up, get behind some type of sparse vegetation because there was vegetation, but not a ton of it. And I got down behind that. And then uh, our, um, I sat down behind the guy. I put him in between my legs right here. Uh, and I took out a knife and I showed him the blade and then I just put it up under his neck. Uh, so, uh, you know, and I, I, I even leaned out gestured of like,

• 1:36:58John Lovell?

  Like this. And so, you know, um, I was able to gesture, hey, if you make a sound, uh, I'm gonna give you a smile in a place you don't want it, you know? And so, uh, then we just kind of waited it out, hoping that these trucks didn't stop in front of us. Cause if they do, you gotta kill this guy, fight the trucks as best you can, and we hope that my buddy save us in time. Because that, we're screwed. Uh, we're screwed. We don't have cover. We just have a little bit of concealment and we're boxed in and you can't run up the mountain while you're getting shot. You can't go left and right in this terrain, wouldn't do you any good. And you can't push it. You're, I'm screwed. Now, uh,

• 1:37:38Shawn Ryan?

  I definitely see the poker factor in this.

• 1:37:41John Lovell?

  It was scary. It was scary. Now, the trucks didn't stop at our location. That's good. And, uh, my, uh, my hostage here was a sweetie pie. Very, very quiet. Really still appreciate that man and his, uh, his, his choice to be quiet.

• 1:37:58Shawn Ryan?

  His willingness to cooperate.

• 1:38:00John Lovell?

  In retrospect, you know, all the operators out there, I'm like, man, you almost got a knife kill. I'm like, bro, I'm, so, uh, anyway, sorry to disappoint you pipe headers out there. Didn't get the knife kill. Um, so, uh, anyway, the tru- the trucks rolled down and then, uh, our dudes were already ready to flex on them, picked them up. I think they were, uh, exfil in some dead bodies from the day before. Uh, I, I don't remember and I wasn't there because I was all punched up, but those got pulled over, interrogated and did all that, that stuff and questioned. Uh, and then by the time I actually, uh, got down, uh, handed that dude off for questioning to one of our Terps and then linked up, trucks were gone

• 1:38:44John Lovell?

  and everyone, uh, interfaced with them. But that, that was, nothing really awful happened in that moment. It did the day before, but that one was a, that was just a, because I was kicked off in such a small group, that was a, a, that was puck.

• 1:39:00Shawn Ryan?

  You felt naked.

• 1:39:00John Lovell?

  5,000. I felt naked.

• 1:39:01Shawn Ryan?

  Hanging it out there.

• 1:39:02John Lovell?

  I felt naked.

• 1:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  A place you do not want to be naked.

• 1:39:04John Lovell?

  I was, yeah, a almost Lone Ranger.

• 1:39:08Shawn Ryan?

  Good one.

• 1:39:09John Lovell?

  Heyo.

• 1:39:10Shawn Ryan?

  Another dad joke.

• 1:39:11John Lovell?

  Mmm.

• 1:39:12Shawn Ryan?

  But John, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll start to talk about why you left the military and get into your transition into civilian life.

• 1:39:21John Lovell?

  Sounds good.

• 1:39:22Shawn Ryan?

  Next, on the Sean Ryan Show.

• 1:39:26Shawn Ryan?

  You had mentioned that you had lost some buddies. How do you, how do you deal with loss? How did you overcome that?

• 1:39:34John Lovell?

  I don't think I've overcome loss any more than I've overcome fear. Me going out would strengthen your resolve to perform your mission better. Or you get out of the military, find a new mission and then go out and crush.

• 1:39:52Shawn Ryan?

  And you're in your 17th year of marriage now. What is the secret to a successful marriage?

• 1:39:59John Lovell?

  Some of you listeners are like, oh, come on, don't say this. I'm like, it's not cliche. It's true.

• 1:40:04Shawn Ryan?

  You and I both know this. There's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community. Talk about it all the time. Now they're calling it operator syndrome. What kind of challenges did you face reintegrating in?

• 1:40:17John Lovell?

  Some guys that were like my platoon, you know, and some of my buddies who got shot up. It's not this huge tragedy on their part. It is on ours who are left behind and missing them.