#79 - Facing Fallujah: A Marine's Survival, PTSD & Building Beauty From Battle w/Nick Jeffries

When Nick Jeffries joined the Marine Corps at 18, he couldn't have imagined how profoundly his life would transform. From clearing houses during the brutal Fallujah offensive to crafting exquisite antler chandeliers that hang in celebrities' homes, his journey reveals the remarkable resilience of the human spirit.

Nick takes us deep into the chaos of urban combat in Iraq, where as a SAW gunner with Lima Company, 3/5 Marines (Dark Horse), he faced death daily during two deployments. His raw accounts of firefights, IED attacks, and the psychological toll of constant combat provide a rare glimpse into one of the most intense battles of the Iraq War. "Every day, the amount of times you almost died was significant," he explains, describing a combat mindset where emotions were necessarily shut down.

The real battle began after leaving the service. Struggling with undiagnosed PTSD and traumatic brain injury, Nick faced overwhelming anxiety and depression while trying to build a civilian life. His turning point came unexpectedly when he discovered working with antlers provided therapeutic relief—eventually growing into Custom Antler Designs, his thriving business creating museum-quality chandeliers shipped worldwide.

What makes Nick's story so powerful is how it demonstrates alternative paths to healing. Beyond traditional therapy and medication, he found purpose through craftsmanship, sobriety, and outdoor activities. Now balancing his antler business with work as a wildland resource planner, Nick emphasizes how staying busy with meaningful pursuits has been crucial to his recovery.

For veterans struggling with their own transitions, Nick offers practical wisdom earned through hard experience: "Get help, exercise, get outside, and find your purpose." His journey from battlefield to workshop serves as a testament that even after experiencing war's darkest moments, there remains the possibility of creating something beautiful.

Check out Nick's incredible craftsman ship and designs by visiting him at: https://customantlerdesigns.com/ or follow his journey at: https://www.instagram.com/Custom.antler.designs/

Chapters

• 0:00 Combat Stories From Iraq
• 13:48 Joining the Marine Corps
• 30:13 First Deployment Experiences
• 52:23 The Push Through Fallujah
• 1:24:41 Second Deployment to Iraq
• 1:44:11 Transitioning to Civilian Life
• 2:00:42 Custom Antler Designs Business
• 2:24:12 Wildfire Career and Moving Forward
• 2:39:08 Advice for Veterans

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

We're waving at another car that's coming up on the convoy. I'm just sitting a little further back in the Humvee, and the metal grate is sitting on the back. So I pop this flare. Fucker hits the top of that, comes back in, lights me on fire. All this shit's on fire. We're screaming. It lights the fucking 240 bullets on fire. It lights the small rockets, which are like, you know, high explosives. I'm jumping and rolling off the hood. Just caught myself on fire with a flare that burned 3,000 you know degrees.

SPEAKER_02: 0:27

Those things are cooking.

SPEAKER_03: 0:48

Welcome. Thank you. I'm really pumped about this episode for a few reasons. One, you obviously served your country in a crazy time. You did the push through Fallujah with 3-5, which the Dark Horse is notorious. I mean, it's it's what they swing a hammer in the Marine Corps when it comes to names and battalions, things like that. So I I really want to dive into because you guys you guys fucked up a lot of shit. Yeah, we did. In Iraq. It's kind of your guys' glory of of the new the new generation of uh the dark horse. So I want to dive into a lot of the military times, and then obviously a lot of the shit that you guys dealt with, it probably wasn't the easiest transition coming back to the civilian world. Right. And then I want to talk about the success that you've had with starting your own business, custom antler designs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 1:43

And where that's going and how that's helped you along the way. Uh so those are, I guess, our two main focus points. And obviously, you're you're you got a job, you're working for the fire department out of Washington, doing a lot of cool things there too. So I guess let's just dive right into it in old true fashion of wild chaos. Um, but before we get started here, we're gonna send you home with a fresh sourdough loaf. Um, I think they said that one's the girls baked you up the RPG, which is our roasted garlic, parmesan, rosemary, all of it's from obviously not the parmesan, but the rosemary and garlic are from the garden. So it's all all our own ingredients. So the girls are gonna hook you up because you got a flight home and you get the munch on some delicious bread. Thank you. So, dude, let's dive right into it. Where are you from?

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

From Spokane, Washington. Uh, grew up there, went to high school there. Um, I was not a good student in high school. Okay. Not really a very good kid. How so in general, just causing trouble, ruckus, drinking a lot, uh, smoking a lot of weed, okay, doing whatever I wanted to do. Um, my plan was to go in the military.

SPEAKER_03: 2:50

Okay. Um straighten you out real quick.

SPEAKER_01: 2:53

It'll straighten you out real quick, but you know, the the thing that I didn't think about then is like what what after the military, what is it in the military, you know, all that. Um, but I was just gonna go in the military. But I I actually was raised by my mom and dad, Juan and Dave, and they uh they actually did a good job overall, you know, for how stubborn and disobedient I was. They were uh they've been married, they're still married, and we still hang out pretty often. And um they took good care of me, but I just made a lot of poor choices. And I like to say that I was the only kid in uh that that went to Gonzaga eventually um in my career, okay, in my lifetime that doubled his high school GPA. So I had a 1.6 cumulative GPA in high school. And I like to share that because I think it's important that we see that you know that things are different as you grow up in life. Sure. So um kind of a vulnerable point, but you know, it is it is what it is. Yeah, it's who I was and the decisions that I was making based on that.

SPEAKER_03: 3:52

Young and dumb. I mean, we all go through those phases. I mean, we get full of piss and vinegar at a certain age. I think it's a biological thing that happens in us. My my dad, we've had this conversation now in life, like you know, both my parents are still together and grew up great home, not any like money-wise, we grew up pretty poor and getting by, but I mean my parents provided everything they could, but then there's just like that switch in me that one day I I just started fighting the world. Yeah, and my dad says he's like, You there was one day you just woke up and just chose violence for until I joined the Marine Corps, you know, and he's and all the way through that, yeah. Then it's promoted, you know. So, you know, you're it's more accepted there and it's a way of life, but it that is where I'm so torn on the military, especially everything that we're finding out now in life and right and all this stuff. But it's it's one of those things that I think if you are a kid and you need a direction, the military is probably one of the greatest options besides the blue-collar work, like line becoming like a like a lineman or a welder along those lines. But yeah, if you'd need your kids line to get locked in and I agree 100%, 100%.

SPEAKER_01: 5:02

I think the military did everything that I needed in life for sure. You know, and as we'll talk about, it gave me a lot of good experience, it gave me a lot of bad experience, but it gave me a lot of life experience.

SPEAKER_03: 5:13

100%.

SPEAKER_01: 5:14

And I think that's really what I needed at that point in my life.

SPEAKER_03: 5:17

100%. Okay, so spoke hand kid. Spokane kid kind of got a little bit of a rough childhood. What's going to boot camp like? I mean, so you went from no structure to extreme structure overnight.

SPEAKER_01: 5:31

Yeah, so you know, I signed up for the the depth or whatever they called it, you know, um when I was uh 17 and a half, and so when I was when I turned 18, um then you signed your your contract, and then I knew I was going in the military, so I was literally not even graduated yet, knew I was going to the Marine Corps. Okay. So I shipped off that in November, went off to boot camp, um, somewhere in that order. Um, and it was it was eye-opening, you know. I was I was very good at listening, which I think was a to my benefit.

SPEAKER_04: 6:01

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 6:02

Um, but you know, Marine Corps boot camps, what, 13 weeks, and then straight into that, we went straight into school of infantry because I was an infantryman in the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_03: 6:13

So let me ask you this why did you want to join the Marine Corps?

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

Go kill shit.

SPEAKER_03: 6:17

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 6:18

Yep, 100%.

SPEAKER_03: 6:19

You were set, huh?

SPEAKER_01: 6:19

I was set, man. I was gonna go, just like you said, that violence piece. Like, I'm gonna go kill shit, and you know, my dad always likes to say, Oh, you did it because you wanted the college benefits. And I'm thinking to myself, like, that was not where my mind was at when I was 17. Like, I barely graduated high school. Yeah, literally, that's not where my mind was at.

SPEAKER_03: 6:37

You would have joined the army for that.

SPEAKER_01: 6:39

Probably the Navy, but yeah, you know, I I just I don't I don't remember anything other than the violent aspect of like I want to go kill shit.

SPEAKER_03: 6:48

And what year was this?

SPEAKER_01: 6:49

This would have been 2003. Okay. So 9-11 happened, everything just getting kicked off. Yep. Um, you know, joining during a time of war. I remember, you know, 9-11, I was sitting in a classroom in high school. I think I was a sophomore that year, was at 01. Um, and you know, I don't know. I I think I already knew I was going to the military. That was always my plan.

SPEAKER_03: 7:11

Yeah. Some guys they just know. It's in their blood. They didn't I was I dabbled with it. And then once I realized like college was not gonna be my thing, that's when I was like, okay, this is my way out of here.

SPEAKER_01: 7:21

What are my options, right? What are my options? And I I I thought that that was the best one. Yeah. So long line of there was not a long line of military service in my family. There was a little bit of Navy with one of my grandpas and an uncle that was a Vietnam vet. Um, and that Vietnam vet actually tried to talk me out of the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_02: 7:40

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 7:41

Um, and I didn't understand it at the time, but I I do now, right? So it was like, hey man, you should go in the Coast Guard and run one of these cutters and we'll go do a tour, and he set up a tour and everything. He's like, you do not want to go in the infantry, but I I never understood what the the big picture was and like what what it was that he was talking about. It was obviously the PTSD. He ended he ended up being a hell's angel, and you know, he straightened out his life and he lived off you know his service connection disability for a lot of years and you know just didn't do a whole lot. Um he ended eventually passing, but you know, I looked up to that guy thinking back to that point that he was trying to steer me away from the PTSD, not away from the military, for sure, but the PTSD.

SPEAKER_03: 8:25

He knew. I mean, look what the Vietnam guys went through, and they came back to nothing. They came back to nothing, yeah. Country that hated him.

unknown: 8:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 8:31

So he's he saw, you know, but I mean, at least he wasn't the anti-military side, he was just trying to have you get a cushier job. So I mean he knew where I was. But as a 17-year-old kid, we don't we don't process it like that, especially if you have it in your veins that you just want to go kill shit and full of piss and vinegar. It's no matter what anybody says, you're like, this is what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01: 8:50

Yeah, for sure. And that's that's exactly where I was. So so then we end up going through boot camp. Um, I did well in boot camp. I wasn't anything extraordinary. Um, just did as I was told, and you know, I think I was a PFC by then, you know, they give you the PFC for getting people recruited or whatever. Oh, really? An E2. I don't know if they had that when you were in, but when you were signing up, if you were getting other people to come in with you, they give you a promotion to E2 by the time you get out of boot camp. So by the time I got out of boot camp, I was uh a PFC. Oh shit. Yeah. Okay. What year was did you go to boot camp? What time? It had been uh December 03 is when I joined. Oh, okay. So and then the beginning of 04. So got it. Um then I went through school of infantry. Um so think about this.

SPEAKER_03: 9:37

You're a month, you were literally a month ahead. I went January of 04.

SPEAKER_01: 9:41

Okay, but think about that. Yes, yes, I was a month ahead of you.

SPEAKER_03: 9:44

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 9:45

I didn't realize we were that close, but here's the here's the other thing. So I joined in December of 03. By November of 04, that was the push. So we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_03: 9:55

But so what was boot camp like? I mean, you're you're was it you just fell right into line into line or what? I felt like I did.

SPEAKER_01: 10:02

I was the kid that got, you know, my my dad would send deer jerky and elk jerky in the package, and the deal instructor would be like, you know, you just chew on a little of this, and then I'm eating the fucking rest of this, you know. Yeah, yeah. Uh but I don't know, man. I I feel like there's a lot of military stuff that I I kind of have suppressed um for you know good reason, I guess. My brain's done that, but so I don't remember a lot of too much ins and outs, but uh yeah, I just kind of got through it, man. You know, survived it writing letters and you know talking to my parents and getting smoked all the time. And yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:38

So then off to school of infantry. So you're going from San Diego up to Pendleton.

SPEAKER_01: 10:42

Correct. Yep. So then we went straight to Pendleton to School of Infantry. Um and that that was kind of like when we when you really get to start playing with the cool stuff, you know, the grenades and the saws and all the other stuff. Um and just learn how to be an infantryman. Again, I I feel like I at that point in my life I was already drinking alcohol even though I wasn't 21. Um like any good Marine.

SPEAKER_04: 11:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:08

But I feel like I was abusing alcohol probably because that's what you do in the core, or that's what I did at least. And then uh, you know, just playing playing commando, you know. Um I was really good, and I feel like this is where I started to to strive at things, but I was really good at stuff outdoors because I grew up in the outdoors. Um, so like the land nav course, man, I just I was like the first one done with that thing, and they're like, holy smack, you know. And I was like, you know, I don't know, I just did what I knew how to do, I guess. And I'm no expert with a lot of things, but the outdoor stuff I just really thrived at, and that's that's part of the Marine Corps, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 11:44

For sure. Especially for you guys. Yeah. It's a big part of it. How long is SOI for you guys? I want to say it was like two or two and a half months, and that is just learning everything grunt 101.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

Yeah, so there's ITB and MTB, right? Um, infantry training battalion was what we were with, and so you know, all everybody goes to uh MCT. Yep, right? Yeah, yep. So you went there and you were there for what, like a month, maybe?

SPEAKER_04: 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:10

So they just push you through the infantry side and then you go on to your MLS school. Yep. And then us, we just stick around for another month and a half and play war. Um it wasn't really as serious as it was when you got to the fleet, you know, the fleet marine force, like when you get to your unit. But um, as far as the experiences that I had, that there was a lot of good training. For sure. You know, learning.

SPEAKER_03: 12:34

Well, and things are spinning up too. So did you realize how serious it was at this point? That you I mean, like the wars, obviously, they're doing the push into Iraq, that's all happened. It was the tempo, did you realize like the tempo was a higher tempo, or was it was everything pretty relaxed for you guys?

SPEAKER_01: 12:53

No, I I feel like the tempo was real high. Um, no matter what we did, we knew that we were going to war. Like that was that was the end goal, right? Remember, but um I I do think that the tempo was pretty pretty gnarly. Um and I don't think that a lot of our instructors had already been over yet. Because remember, because we're still early, so we're we're really and and so I don't think that there was that, but when I got to the fleet, my unit had been already OIF one.

SPEAKER_03: 13:23

Okay, so let's talk about this. So as a boot marine, you're just trash to anybody, but then you're dealing with the fresh guys that are coming back from the initial push, which all have a chip on their shoulder. They're the new war dog generation, and now they came back to a bunch of boots waiting for them in the barracks. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01: 13:44

Yeah, so so I I think that uh overall they they supported us, but in the but in the end, they were hard, man. They were hard. And this was I I don't know what the Marine Corps, you know, people say it's soft nowadays, but you know, I'm sure it's I'm sure it's still hard in some regards, you know. But I I would say that back then, man, it was like the serious deal. Like you'd get smoked, you'd go on gas mask runs, you'd, you know, these guys, these guys had already been to war, and you don't know what that entails really, you know, other than they shot a lot of shit when they were over there. Um but OIF-1 was kind of the free reign of Iraq, you know, it's where the initial push, initial invasion, so they're they're going through and they're clearing city to city and they're shooting everything, and the rules of engagement are real open. And yeah, um, and so they they just have a lot of ability to do stuff that, you know, as the wars progressed, got tightened and tightened and tight. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 14:37

So sure.

SPEAKER_01: 14:38

Um, even by my second deployment, it was it was just a different world, man, talking to Jag, you know, the the lawyers and all that. So um, yeah, it was it was good. So I ended up with this uh a badass fire team leader and a badass squad leader. Okay. My squad leader had not deployed yet, um, but he was already a sergeant and he'd already been through the sergeant's course and a bunch of other stuff. He'd been to Quantico, and he was just a badass. He actually just retired from the military as a CW05 Marine gunner. Damn good for him. I'm bringing him up to Idaho for an elk hunt this year. So that's cool. Just a bad mofo. So he was actually my my platoon or my um my squad leader, and then he was my platoon sergeant, my second deployment. So I I got a long history with the guy's name was Carmindy, and he was just a badass.

SPEAKER_03: 15:27

It's cool when you get to spend lit like time with guys, like build that relationship and deploy. Yep. And then you come back, and a lot of you, you know, because to the winds you go, a lot of guys just disappear and you never really deal with them and see them again. But if you have a chunk of dudes, I was fortunate enough, like a whole platoon we got back and just rolled right into another platoon. A few guys went to different units, but right, so we spent a lot of us spent a lot of years together building that bond.

SPEAKER_01: 15:53

You have that camaraderie. Oh, yeah, you have that camaraderie. Um, so we we start with this this fire team leader, and and he's a big tattooed guy, man. He's probably 280, tattooed up, you know, but he had tats on his neck and all the way down to his you know part of his hand, and and he'd been to OIF one, and this guy was hard, man. He's salty. He saw he's salty and he saw it, man. And um I think he was a corporal by then, but um, so we uh got to experience a lot in the fleet, you know. We get there and it's just wind up, man. It's tempo full on. We did um the Mojave Desert. We did um God, all the workups. What what were they even, man? I don't even like again. I blanked out a lot of that Mojave. Mojave Viper was 29 palms. That was a month. We did 30 days of that in the gnarliest heat ever. You know, um, we did um there was uh Air Force Base that they closed down. March Air Force Base. Yep. Okay, and I think it had a bunch of abests or something cool, you know, something exciting like that. We did we did a couple weeks there doing training. Um we did, you know, in Mount, uh, I guess to explain what that is, is it's is it's like um urban urban training, right? Yeah, house to house stuff. And so they're they're trying to ramp this up and they're trying to make it the most realistic possible. So they brought us down to a uh film studio in San Diego called the Stewigal Studio. Have you ever heard of that? No, and they had real actors playing war, and you literally had to evacuate people, they had fake blood, it was a whole deal, man. Really? And so I remember that. I remember the ranges that we'd go to, just tens of thousands of rounds, man. Like one of them was uh God, what was it? Um I wish I knew the guy's name, but it was based on this professional shooter. But he they literally brought in these pallets of ammo, and you would shoot like mount style, you know, uh moving and you know, knee and all the other stuff. But literally we'd go through pallets of ammo.

SPEAKER_03: 17:59

Are you talking just M16s or are you shooting saws and everything else?

SPEAKER_01: 18:02

M16s specifically for this shoot.

SPEAKER_03: 18:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 18:05

Um, but literally there'd be so many casings on the ground, you'd just be stepping in piles of casings. And then at the end of the day, what do you got to do? You gotta pick them all up. Police call all that shit up.

SPEAKER_03: 18:14

That's where they don't they don't tell you that part of the five print. Like, you want to shoot machine guns, son, sign here. You're like, yeah, I want to shoot machine guns. And you're like, okay, I get to shoot for one day on the range, and you spend two days police calling the brass, and then you spend a week cleaning that son of a bitch, and you're just like, This sucks. Like, okay, I'm done with that.

SPEAKER_01: 18:32

Tens of thousands of rounds, man. And then, you know, all the other, all the other workup stuff. I remember just um thousands of rounds and saws and you know, uh Claymore mind training and uh, you know, explosives training and rocket launchers, you know, AT force, just an extreme amount of stuff thrown at us. And so I do feel like the vibe was real there, you know, like we knew we were getting into the shit. Like they wouldn't be throwing this 10 million of dollars and you know, shit at you to to not be going into it. Um so so that was that was there was like what what is that? If you did the math, it's like December to to February, February, March, April. I hit the fleet in May, June, July, August, September. I think we were deployed by about September, man. So shit. It was a quick turnaround. And I don't remember the exact dates, but yeah, I know I was already there for at least a month before the push. So the push was uh beginning of November. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 19:35

So yeah, you're November 04.

SPEAKER_01: 19:37

So I I was already there for all of October, maybe part of September.

SPEAKER_03: 19:40

Um how was the fleet as a boot marine hitting the fleet? I mean, were there a lot of seniors? Because there's only really, I guess, probably one or two waves ahead of you then. So it wasn't like you're going to a battalion full of like salt dogs that are coming back.

SPEAKER_01: 19:53

I mean, are there no, there'd only been one wave. So OF one, we were OAF two. Got it. That is literally the second deployment. Um, so we were the second wave going in. Um we relieved we it was interesting because I think we relieved even a um God, uh a guard, a guard unit or something. Guard um, but anyway, so we went in and we do in route security with uh that was the the the first in introduction is the route security piece. So we we go in from the fleet uh straight overseas. We flew on an airplane, commercial I think's interesting. Yeah, it's commercial airplane. Okay, so people always think that you know they're taking boats or whatever, you know, ships to get overseas. That's not true. Like they literally rented out a giant commercial airplane, put us all in there with our gear, and flew us to Iraq. We flew to Kuwait and then we flew into Iraq.

SPEAKER_03: 20:48

With your packs, like on the plane.

SPEAKER_01: 20:50

I don't even remember, but I just remember having my gun and just having too much shit. And I don't even remember, man. I really don't. All a blur. It's all a blur, but it, you know, you just remember, like, I'm I'm not a small dude. You aren't either. You you get it, like an airplane seat's only so big anyway. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03: 21:05

Um and they don't care.

SPEAKER_01: 21:08

Oh, they don't give a shit. And you're a freaking PFC, you know. Shut up, get in the back. Shut up and get in the back. Um and I I do remember kind of being in the back. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 21:22

So you guys l where did you land? Kuwait. Okay, so you flew what Kuwaiti naval base, where'd you guys go into?

SPEAKER_01: 21:28

I don't even remember, man. There's there's gonna be a lot of details that you're like, well, he should know that. Well, no, this shit's a blur, man.

SPEAKER_03: 21:34

I'm the same way.

SPEAKER_01: 21:35

It's a blur. There's there's a blur in my life, and you know, it's probably because I've suppressed some of that, but we're gonna talk about some good shit today, but yeah, you know, stuff that I haven't talked about in a long time. I think the uh the th we flew into Kuwait and we remember I remember being in a big tent, and then they put us on like I I think it was a C 130 at that point. Yep. Um and it was kind of open. Yep. And and then and then they uh they flew us in at at the dark. And you know, that's the first realization. Hey man, I'm here, I'm I'm in a war zone. Okay, you know, they're flying in at night.

SPEAKER_04: 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:09

Um did you guys do a combat landing? You know, I don't I don't even remember, but we did do um some form of convoy to get from there to our next stop. Okay. You know, in Kuwait, we took one bus, a bus, and then when we got to Iraq, we did kind of like a combat convoy, and that was my first introduction to like, you know, other than training convoys, like an actual convoy. I remember just getting out, it was just hotter than piss, you know. Oh, yeah. You know, I it had to it had to have been like September, October, you know, and in the desert.

SPEAKER_03: 22:42

I don't know, 100, 110, or whatever it is with all your Kuwait being the hottest only way you can describe Kuwait was like a blow dryer in your face. It was so bright. I remember it being it just hurt your eyes every time you walked outside and it was so hot, you're just like, What the fuck? Like you go in a portageon, take a shit, you come out drenched. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:02

Just just remember that when you're thinking about your first world problems over here, right? For sure. Yeah, for sure, exactly. Going in the Portageon, coming out and sweating, you know? Yeah, that's a third world problem, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 23:12

When you open a Portageon, you're like, uh, it feels good, it's 120 outside. You're like, or you're taking a shit and you got the door held open with your foot, just the air gets a flow in there. Smoking yourself. Yeah. That's the shit that you you know, that's that's the stuff that's ingrained in you forever.

SPEAKER_01: 23:28

There are other reasons you went in the Portageon, too, other than you come out sweating.

SPEAKER_03: 23:33

Yeah, there was a couple little DVD players getting shit done.

SPEAKER_02: 23:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 23:40

So you guys get to Kuwait and then you you just immediately load up in a convoy and off you go.

SPEAKER_01: 23:45

I don't remember. No, I think we took the C-130. I think we were in Kuwait for a day, and then we took C-130s into Iraq. Okay. At one of like I it had to have been like TQ or one of the big bases. Yeah, yeah. Okay. They're flying in at this point, you know, they're flying in, and then we took a convoy. So then we get to uh the Euphrates River, and I don't remember the name of the route, but we're right up against Fallujah, right off the bat. Our AO, our area of operations is route security up against the um Euphrates River and Fallujah on one side. So um, you know, my introduction to Iraq, you know, was um roadside bombs really weren't a thing yet. Yeah, they were starting to be, and we'll talk about that, but uh it was like you're holding security, trying to make sure convoys make it through. Okay, they're breaking in slowly, basically. Um I remember one of my first experiences. I have a few good first experiences, but like listen, within a month, the amount of times that you almost died was significant, right? And like I joke about it now because that's that's all you can do. Yeah, and like military guys laugh at it, uh-huh. But in the civilian world, you would think like, oh, you almost died. No, like you almost died every day. You almost died every day multiple times. So there was this uh we're sitting on this OP like an observation post just watching the highway, and that was what we were doing. And I'm I'm like sitting there with my rifle, and we see this motorcycle pull up on the side of the highway at this little hut, and we're like, oh, that's suspicious, you know. They got these roadside bombs they're trying to start figuring out, and this guy gets off the motorcycle and leaves it. And we're like, okay, well, that's obviously probably a bomb, right? And so the commander like does something, and one of the one of the Iraqi civilians wants to see this thing or wants to to take this thing, and and the commander's like, the commander at the time, platoon commander's like, go ahead, you know, go do it. So, anyway, so so we're watching this all unfold, and I don't know what's going on in the background. Like, somebody told somebody to go get it. So this guy goes up, freaking moves that thing, boom, kaboom. Innocent. I don't know whether the guy was innocent or the guy was uh, you know, actually like up to no good, but the guy was trying to steal the motorcycle, and it didn't it wasn't his motorcycle and detonated, and it was a V-bed. It was my first you know, introduction to a V-bed, and it was instantaneous. Like I'm on the ground like a week, you know, and I'm like, well shit, now there's you know, blood and guts all over, and you know, we go out there and there's a leg in the road, and that was the opening to the deployment.

SPEAKER_03: 26:23

Really? So that's how you started watching as you get both.

SPEAKER_01: 26:29

All hell the craziest, the craziest deployment.

SPEAKER_03: 26:33

Um I don't think people understand what we're about to dive into. Because you I had I was fortunate enough, I was I spent some time with a good buddy of mine that was did the push, and there's nothing nothing like what you guys went through. I mean, it was besides I pretty pretty much fist fighting Iraqis, which I'm sure happened, that's like it was face-to-face, door-to-door, all day, every day. And so, yeah, so you have no idea what's coming.

SPEAKER_01: 27:03

No, we do no, we don't. We don't, we don't have a clue. All we know is that we're we're route security in, and again, at this point, I'm a I'm a PFC man. I just do as I'm told. I carry my freaking saw. I had a squad automatic weapon, an M249 machine gun. Oh god, uh, 200-round drum on the bastard. Had a my night vision for that entire deployment was a three-power press against your face against your saw to clear shit. A three-power scope. That was my night vision. No pistol, so I had an open bolt weapon, they didn't have enough pistols to go around. Yep. Who needs a pistol anyway when you got an open bolt weapon? Yep. Um, and so you know, that was really like I I don't know. I I think I was already in the game. Like I knew what I was in for, and I was there to do a job, and I've I I think at that point you start to realize, you know, the people around you are as important, right? You know, your team is the most important piece of the deployment. Like, we're not I don't think at the time I realized that we're not gonna save the world, but like I understood that like my team was the most important piece. Like they got my back, I got theirs. So so we were hard, hard motherfuckers, man. Um, you know, again, I told you I had that squad leader, and then I had that tatted up um team leader, Sill was the guy's name. And you know, he kind of fell off the earth after the Marine Corps, and he's still I don't know where he is. Um I'd love to talk to him, but you know, he was a hard fucker, but he always had you in mind.

SPEAKER_03: 28:32

Okay, which makes it makes a good leader.

SPEAKER_01: 28:35

So I felt like I had a good leadership going into this. Okay. Um guys in the squad were uh were obviously all locked on, you know, they were pretty pretty ham hard hard dudes, man. But um overall, um I I still keep in contact with a couple of them, but you know, we were a pretty tight-knit group.

SPEAKER_04: 28:58

Oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 28:59

Um gosh, the stories just just start flowing as I think through stuff that I haven't thought about in a long time.

SPEAKER_03: 29:09

Okay, so you guys see this dude on a motorcycle get blown up.

SPEAKER_01: 29:13

V-bed, dude's dead, legs laying in the middle of the road.

SPEAKER_03: 29:17

That's your introduction to Iraq. And so you did mobile security for a month. What's happening in that first month that to break you guys in?

SPEAKER_01: 29:24

Well, a a lot of crazy shit, really. Um, a lot of death and destruction. How so? Um You know, I don't I don't probably want to go into detail on that story on like how I watched it, but like we watched a family, an innocent family die, and it was kind of our fault, kind of like the rules of engagement. Like at that point in the rules of engagement, what we were doing is we were waving at people, we were shouting, we were sh uh shooting a flare at their uh at their car coming towards our trucks because at that point we didn't know what an ID was, and so um and then You'd shoot ground grill grape, and by ground grill grape, I mean ground engine block, face, face, literally kill them, and so that was your rules of engagement. That was what you were supposed to be doing. So, so we're trying to follow this, and as a freaking young Marine man, I listen to this. I was I was 18 years old, you know, like I was a freaking kid, dude. I was a freaking kid, just doing what I was told. And so, you know, I don't I probably have I don't know if I have regret, but I I was a very good Marine. I listened well, I did exactly what I was told to do when I was told to do it, and sometimes shit got fucked up. That's just the reality. So, you know, in this in this one circumstance, we did some ground, we we yelled, we shouted, we uh we actually I was standing on a 50 cal, which I wasn't really trained to use other than pull the goddamn trigger, um, a 50 cal machine gun, and we yelled, so you're gonna go yell, then you're gonna shoot the flare, then you're gonna shoot him with a a rifle first, not the 50 cal. And so it's gonna go ground, grill, grape. Well, he got ground, he got grill, fuck, he went to great, fucking shot this dude in the head. And I haven't shot the big gun yet because it's like right at that moment when I should be shooting it, car swerves right into the canal. So, long story short, we pulled the dude out, took him to the hospital. He had a bullet hole in his head, right? He was still alive, but he had a bullet hole, 556. And then we go back to secure the area because the rest of our squad was still there when we got back, and they pull out uh three women, two children, and an infant. And so your introduction is just death, dude. Just nasty, nasty death. Um and it was sad. I think it was sad at that moment. Um, it's still sad, like it probably makes me sadder now because like then I was in kill mode, you know. Like uh you know, one of the jokes in the Marine Corps is like, hey, let's kill babies, yeah, get some. But you know, in that reality of the situation, it was like, hey, babies just died, literally.

SPEAKER_03: 31:58

Yeah, not so cool.

SPEAKER_01: 32:00

No, not so cool, man. And so so at that point, still just hard Marines, man. Such a different mindset.

SPEAKER_03: 32:06

Like, I look at this shit we used to joke, and the fuck shit we were doing, I'm like, yeah, like God, you know, it's just but this is how we're bred. Um, that's what separates, I think, us from all the other branches, is uh we're so indoctrinated of this Ura kill mentality because we're Marines, and that's how it should be. Yep. We the world needs the this country needs Marines for for that particular reason because it's just it's it's who we are, but at the same time, it's like okay, here we are 20 years later, and it's like fuck, like it's not so cool anymore. We all have families, and yeah, you know, so I I get it for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 32:40

Yeah, and I I I think he nailed it on the head, man. It's just like it's a different world from here to then, and I think we need the Marines, man. We need the Marines if we want to be the strongest fighting force, or you know, this country wants to be the strongest fighting force. It doesn't happen without the Marines, man. And you need Marines in that mindset to be able to kill one that needs to kill. And and we did, and we did that on the enemy too. But you know, that story was obviously civilians and and it happened, and and then you you look back at it afterward, and you're like, fuck, these people are just dumb.

SPEAKER_03: 33:09

They don't know. Yeah, like you have all the signs in the world, doesn't mean they don't even know how to read. Yeah, exactly. They're blown through checkpoints, and then you're gonna see in a van getting mowed down, you're like, like, what are you supposed to do? How do you how do you know? Yeah, okay, it could be because you know, we were when we were there, v bids were a big deal, so it's like you weren't letting a car within vehicle bombs, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 33:29

Yeah, so you never know, you don't know, you know. So hitting on the IED point, so improvised explosive device wasn't it was just starting to be a thing, and the only thing we knew is that they put the shit on the side of the road in garbage. So, what do you think the best way to go look for uh an IED is? Well, you go fucking walk and you kick the garbage to see if there's a bomb in it.

SPEAKER_04: 33:50

Oh god.

SPEAKER_01: 33:51

So literally, our first IED sweep was us walking the edge, seeing if we can find anything. Um, this and we didn't we didn't that one, thankfully. Yeah, you know, thankfully they weren't very good at it then, and um, it was way early on. But you know, to progress from that to them hitting us every other day with an IED, my second deployment, you know, it's just a totally a different ball game. So, you know, in that in that couple year span, they just got really good at what they did and they they have nothing, nothing but time, nothing but time, yeah. That's why or nothing to lose, too.

SPEAKER_03: 34:22

Exactly. I've had people ask, like, how do they how are they so good at it? I'm like, imagine prisoners that can figure out the most innovative shit. You've got flushing things down toilets and dudes are fishing out of their toilet, the can passing notes. I'm like, that's Iraq. They have nothing to do besides just figure shit out. And they got good at it. They got good, man. Okay, so a month in, you guys have finished up your patrol.

SPEAKER_01: 34:45

So we're we're almost to well, so every time we're driving by to get supplies at the camp, at the big camp, Camp Fallujah, we're getting shot at by fucking Fallujah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 34:55

Shit's coming hitting us, fucking people are dying. An IED hit, and there was this uh this kid, and I and I wish I remembered his name, but he was a he got meritoriously promoted to Lance Corporal in SOI School of Infantry. Yeah, he was a bad motherfucker, dude. Anderson, I think was the kid's name. Just really locked on. They had him sitting up front higher on Humvee, IED hit, boom, killed his ass.

SPEAKER_03: 35:17

You know, and so you're first killed over there?

SPEAKER_01: 35:19

That was within the battalion. Okay. Um and so I I think it was, I think it was the first KIA. But you know, that was the reality of hey man, fucking you could die here, dude. This is this is real, you know. So that first month was the break-in. There was one other one other time. So that same that same month, you know, I like I said, I almost died so many times. And I just have stories for days about almost dying. Well, we're waving at another another, you know, car that's coming up on the convoy. We're shouting. I I'm sitting a little further back in the in the Humvee, and the the metal grate is sitting on the back. It's called the high back.

SPEAKER_04: 35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:58

So I pop this flare. The fucker hits the top of that, comes back in. So it lights me on fire, it lights the fucking 240 bullets on fire, it lights the small rockets, which are like you know, high explosive, it writes, it lights an AT4. So all this shit's on fire. All the while we're screaming, they stopped the Humvee. I'm jumping and rolling off the hood, and my buddy's fucking launching rockets. My buddy Casey's launching fucking rockets off the side of the fucking Humvee. So I don't die, no one dies, thank God. Yeah, nothing blew up. Um, just caught myself on fire with a flare that burned 3,000, you know, degrees.

SPEAKER_02: 36:37

Yeah, those things are cooking.

SPEAKER_01: 36:39

So they got me a new pair of camis somehow. They got me a new pair of boots, and then the fucking it was like one of the only ballistic Kevlar blankets we had at the time. Okay. They dumped it by the pond. Well, the the the platoon that was there was supposed to dump it in the pond. Well, they never did. So, long story short, I could have gotten demoted and demoted and demoted and been the biggest shit back in the Marine Corps. Um, but somehow they made up a story that something happened, something else happened, and they didn't drop any names, and it was just a whole shenanigan. So, like, right off the bat, crazy shit's happening. I'm fucking 18 years old trying to do what I can do, fucking lighting Humvees on fire. And just total chaos, man. Total chaos. It's war. It's war, man. But you know, let's not light the high explosive fucking small rockets on fire and be throwing them off the side of the Humvee. So it's probably not what you want to do.

SPEAKER_03: 37:33

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01: 37:35

I'd been in the military like what 10 months, 12 months by then.

SPEAKER_03: 37:39

And here you are. That's what a lot of people I don't think realize in you that initial OAF 1, 2, and 3. There were dudes that were graduating boot camp and within shipped right over, man. Months or weeks, we're straight to Iraq. Shipped right over. And it's like they're we're just children at this time. And so it's it's crazy to think back like how how do we even function half the time and getting getting anything done with the leadership, the chaos, nobody knows what the hell's going on ever, and but it somehow it always worked.

SPEAKER_01: 38:14

Well, I I look back now and God had a plan. For sure. That's not the way I felt back then.

SPEAKER_03: 38:20

No, none of us, I don't think any of us did.

SPEAKER_01: 38:22

I think I was just out to kill shit and protect my buddies, but yeah. Um, yeah, see it now.

SPEAKER_03: 38:28

God always had a plan. Daddy does. So as it escalated and time went off, or time went on, you guys are right outside of Fallujah the whole entire time. So you're seeing what's the atmosphere in Fallujah at this point? Because Fallujah hasn't been pushed yet, correct? Correct. So correct me if I'm wrong. During this time, a lot of the insurgents through not just Iraq, you had Syria, you have other other people coming flu flooding into Iraq to fight Fallujah. They were in Fallujah, Romadi, all the major cities are now hubs for what did we call them then? The all the the Mujadim, I think it was Mujadin. Yeah, there's so many different names.

SPEAKER_01: 39:11

They weren't really the Taliban at that point. No, but um, you know, it was just like the bad guys, the fucking shitheads, man.

SPEAKER_03: 39:18

So they're building up this whole thing.

SPEAKER_01: 39:20

They're building up, they're building up Fallujah, they're digging in, they're fucking cashing weapons, they're fortifying shit. And every time we're driving by there, we're getting fucking pop shots. Uh I remember Carmen, I think it was Carmen D's fucking Humvee. A fucking bullet went through three like the three panes of glass and was like lodged in there right by his head, you know. And then the AT4 or the um, God, what's their rockets? The fucking RPGs, RPG fucking hit the side of the door and didn't go off, but it dented the door right there, right where he's sitting. Like it dented it like, you know, four or five inches, like like just like almost dying all the time. And it's at this point, it's just like I don't I I I still think we're in that tempo of working up, but we're not to that point of like, hey, we could die right this second. Okay, like so they put us at this lake, I think it was Bahria right next to Fallujah. Camp Flugia was the big one, but they put us in this shitty little, shitty little place, and you know, basically they're prepping us to go into this Fallujah, this push. Like it's there's something big coming, but you don't know what it is. And to be honest with you, I don't remember a lot of the in-between, but I could tell you that I remember when the general came out and said, Oh, he gave a speech? You're all going to war and you're not all coming home.

SPEAKER_03: 40:35

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 40:36

100%. 100%, dude. And just the hair on the back of my neck standing up.

SPEAKER_02: 40:41

Yeah, I got goosebumps.

SPEAKER_01: 40:42

It legitimate was there, man. It it was the it was the thing like they see in the fucking movies, man.

SPEAKER_03: 40:47

It happened. So they got the battalion together and gave a speech?

SPEAKER_01: 40:51

Yeah, they got the battalion together and gave a speech. Never a good sign. And so we knew and you know, it's already, you know, we already lost people. People have already died. We've only been here weeks, yeah. You know. Um, and so that that was leading up to the push. So I kind of remember coming in on tracks um and them dumping us. You know, it was hours and hours and hours, maybe even a day, sitting in that track. I don't remember. Um, they dumped us off, and like we were right outside the city and we slept in the rain. It rained that night in the desert. The only reason I remember is because I woke up. We only had one poncho cover for all of us, for three of us, because of my fire team. We were really short back then, so there wasn't like uh 20 people in a squad. There was literally like eight of us. Okay. Eight plus a doc, I think. So there was three of us, and I woke up in the morning and we were sleeping, we slept on this big pile of boulders. It was just horrible. And you know, and now I can sleep through anything, imagine that.

SPEAKER_04: 41:53

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 41:54

Uh my gun was orange because it was all fucking rusted, you know, so I had to give it a little a little grease down. Okay. Um and then we start pushing on foot, and you know, then you start it it starts to be a normal occurrence that there's bombs and explosions and um, you know, small arms fire and gunfights and all that. And that's a constant. And so I can tell you that that was a constant for the next what six months of my life, probably.

SPEAKER_02: 42:21

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 42:21

Like, I don't I think during the push, obviously, was the biggest, you know, 30 days of whatever. I think it was 26 days or something. I you can read the history book if you want the exacts, but I just remember living it, you know. Um, it was just a constant of action, always. There was always some form of action, and so nothing really like you're not surprised because you're already in it. Okay, you know what I mean? Um, so we push into the first the first couple houses. I slept on the roof. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 42:53

When you're talking the push, did you guys get online outside of the city or did you have your own? Because I hear so many different stories where you got the city, because this is, I mean, we did it too for but not Fallujah, but literally lined up and you're just walking as like a battalion to push through a city. What was it like for you guys?

SPEAKER_01: 43:11

It's kind of like gritting, you know, like gritting on a wildfire would be similar, you know. But you know, basically you had you had uh sectors, you know. Basically, this was your sector to clear this section and make sure that there's nothing and and make sure that nothing crosses this way because then they'd be behind us all. Got it. And so it was uh basically four battalions pushing through. I think it was two Marine Corps and two two uh army. Okay. And I and a shit ton of support. So people say they're in Fallujah, and and that's legit. They were in Fallujah. Um, but there was a million people there, you know. There was there was a lot of support aspects and a lot of other things. So um, but I was in one of the line companies that was actually pushing on a on a on a sector. So I again was a was a PFC then, so I didn't have the who, the no of what of anything, you know, and still I talked to my old squad leader and uh old buddy now, and he's like, Oh, you don't remember that? Well, I wasn't at that level in life, man. I was an 18-year-old with a sawgun. Like I was just following directions and shooting shit. That was what I was doing.

SPEAKER_04: 44:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 44:14

So I remember the very first night, you know, uh gunfights erupt, all that shit, and then there was a quiet in the lull, and it would always slow down in the uh at night when it got pitch black, right? And I remember sitting on the roof, and me and my buddy were just shivering, just cuddling, trying to stay warm. It's freezing. And like cuddling is not anything abnormal when you were doing um, you know, uh like traveling from one place to the other, you know, sitting on post and stuff. Like you had to cuddle to stay warm. Like I realistic.

SPEAKER_03: 44:47

I got in a sleeping bag with a buddy of mine because we were I thought we were gonna freeze to death. Yeah. It was that cold. That's one thing that nobody will ever experience unless you were in the Marine Corps during these eras is cuddling with other dudes just stay just to stay warm. I mean, I've slept, I remember holding a buddy on a rooftop because we were we were supposed to be on watch. It was so cold. We just filled sandbags all night to try to stay warm and to build just enough of a berm to like get us out of the wind. And I mean, you'd sit there and hold the dude just just to try to stay warm. And like you explained it now, people are like, oh, that's the gayest shit ever heard. Survival.

SPEAKER_01: 45:26

Well, you didn't you didn't have the QU for kidding gear either. You know, you had the shittiest gear. And literally, I don't even remember having long johns, you know, like hell no, we didn't have long johns. We were in what you had is what you had.

SPEAKER_03: 45:38

We were in flight suits where were even thinner than Camis. I mean, dude, you it was miserable.

SPEAKER_01: 45:44

Yeah, so I remember I remember having you know all my gear, the 1200 rounds or whatever we had as our freaking you know, carry for our saw, and then the uh breech gear because it had those big steel gates. So I remember cuddling with my buddy up on this roof, it was just eerie as shit, didn't get any sleep. I don't even think I slept yet, because you know the PFCs are now up on watch, right? And so it was a rotation of this never sleep thing. Um and so I remember kind of phasing into these houses and we clear house after house after house, and and I remember the really the first bite in that shit got crazy was we came up to this house, and and this house, let's uh it's right by the I'd call them like the lily pads. Like, um, like there's a story I can tell you later about like where Chris Kyle was there later, but like this section of Fallujah, I almost died more times than I can literally count. More times in a day, more times in a week, more times in a month. Like just craziness. I remember we were shooting at some guys that were dug in at the house, and the Marine Corps has what, Apaches, right? They have Apache or the Cobras, Cobras, Cobras. So the Cobras are flying overhead, and they're literally shooting rockets like a video game, and the fucking casings from the coax guns are hitting us.

SPEAKER_04: 47:10

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 47:10

And so we're in a gunfight with helicopters flying over, blowing and shooting, brass falling on you, giant brass. Well, and the the brass was like 240 or something, like coax like a like a machine gun. Okay, okay, okay. And then the rockets are shooting. So, like everything you see in that movie that's like you know, Hollywooded up, like, dude, I don't think I've ever played a video game since, but you know, the reality was we we were in one.

SPEAKER_03: 47:35

Um damn. So you guys are in a firefight and you have brass raining down on you from the helicopters. Real shit, man. That's how you know you're in the shit.

SPEAKER_01: 47:43

You're in the shit, man. And and I don't I don't know that my mentality changed a lot for the next 30 days. Like it was that. It was literally just combat, man. It was shit when you shit, eat when you eat, drink when you drink, fight, get a nap, clear houses, try not to die. Um for 30 days straight. For how many ever days the push was. I think it was 26 or something, but yeah. And so, you know, being a sawgunner, you're not always in the very front. Okay. They don't want to put an open bolt weapon because there's room for air when that when that bolt slams forward that you could misfire a jam. But that's not wasn't the case. It was it was a mix of everybody.

SPEAKER_04: 48:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 48:31

It was you get in the house with with whoever, and then it was always you helping clear everything. It didn't fucking matter.

SPEAKER_03: 48:41

So you're clearing houses with your 240.

SPEAKER_01: 48:43

Oh, yeah. With my M249 saw. Okay. So so the difference between a 240, and this is for them to understand, 240 is like they were the machine gunners were kind of back behind us. They're big, heavier guns, they're shooting 762, and and they're really suppressing the fire while we make the moves. And then the saws are where you carry them in the actual line company, in the actual um infantry unit, and you you can push in. So you that's a 5'5. That's 5'5. So I'm literally clearing houses with a 5'5. And then I have this fucking three-power scope. So as it got dark, I have a three-power scope that I have to suppress by lifting up my 30-pound fucking saw and be able to see through it, man. It was just not ideal.

SPEAKER_04: 49:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 49:29

Not ideal. Marine Corps. Marine Corps. For sure. Fucking ain't got no money, man. They didn't have enough nine mills to go around. Like, what is this? We didn't have enough nine mills. Should have just borrowed some from the streets. Marine Corps. So clearing houses, you know, it was uh it started as a you know, breach the gate with C4. It started with uh breach the gate with a Humvee. If there was a Humvee close by, we'd pull them up and breach the gate. We'd use bulldozers sometimes. We'd use um tanks, tracks, tanks, tracks, we'd use mortars, um, kicking them in, breaking them down, big steel gates that go into the houses and then steel doors as a steel fucking gate. So then what happened is we figured out we can go from top to bottom. So we would literally push the wall over, jump from fucking house to house, and clear it from the top down. Oh, interesting. Oh, dude, it was super effective.

SPEAKER_03: 50:22

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 50:23

Super effective. Really? So that's what we did a lot of.

SPEAKER_03: 50:26

Because all those dudes were built, they were dug into a lot of these houses. Like I've heard stories of dudes kicking indoors and they had like machine guns bunkered in, sandbagged and pointed right at the front door. So now you guys are coming in from the top.

SPEAKER_01: 50:38

You know, the problem is they probably hear us in in in some of the circumstances, but um, you know, in the gunfights that we did get into, um, and and they would go through and they would bomb and artillery. So they bomb with planes and then they'd artillery, the section that we'd go through.

SPEAKER_04: 50:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 50:55

So the day prior, it's just getting fucking hammered, right? And so there was a lot of close air support, man. Uh, I remember it was like right in that that same place that I almost died a million times um by the lilies. I freaking they called in a bomb, and I don't know, it was a thousand or two thousand pound bomb on the fucking house next door on the guys that were shooting at us. So there's bullets whizzing by your head, literally whizzing, like the the full whistle, like that was a real thing. Yep. Um, and then the bomb goes off, and this house is so fucked up from us shooting at it and fucking with the cobras and all the other stuff prior that the fucking walls collapsing on us. The house that you're in, yes, so so it was literally that collateral, and so like I I I think about this story, and I really haven't thought about it in a long time, but I relate to like my TBI, my traumatic brain injury stuff to this type of situation because you have you're in a full combat mode, uh-huh, you're shooting and killing, and then you have these explosions, and you know, it's so much so that walls are collapsing on you, you know, losing consciousness, not losing consciousness. I don't fucking know, man. Listen, we were just killing shit. Like it was what it was, it was the real deal, man. Um and so that was kind of like the top of the pyramid with you know, death and destruction, man. And it was just it was it was a lot.

SPEAKER_03: 52:22

Um How dug in, like how often are you going into a house with an insurgent in it?

SPEAKER_01: 52:30

I don't know about how often, but I'd tell you that there was insurgents in houses, some would give up, some would shoot back, and then we'd call an air support or we'd shoot them or try to shoot them, you know. Um the platoon had one casualty during the push, a KIA.

SPEAKER_04: 52:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 52:48

Um, we had a lot of minor shit, you know, from fucking, you know, light bullet wounds to but my platoon, and I'm talking my platoon specific, because in the battalion we lost fucking 40.

SPEAKER_03: 53:00

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 53:01

30 or 40. It was a lot, man. It was a lot. 20, 30, 40, I don't know. It was a lot of people. A lot of killed people, man. A lot of people died. Like one of the platoons lost like seven in one day. Uh yeah, it was it was fucking it was sad. And so you're hearing these things as you're pushing through the city, like, hey, Kilo lost this, India lost this. I was Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Um I remember one I went in and I had my open bolt weapon. There I am, first one through the fucking gate. And all of a sudden, this guy puts his fucking hands up, dude. And I didn't shoot him. And all of a sudden, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop whistling right by my head. Green tip from my fucking other Marine behind me. I'm like, what the fuck was that? So we we ended up getting this guy, and there was another guy in the back, and they had a weapons cache, but they didn't we caught him off guard, so they just put their hands up. It's like, why the fuck didn't you kill him? I was like, because he had fucking hands up, dude. What the fuck am I gonna do? Shoot the guy for fucking having his hands up, yeah. So it was just like that intense, I guess. You know, there was a lot of just chaos, you know. You don't understand what's gonna happen or why it's gonna happen, and I almost died that day. Well, lots of different reasons, but like that one circumstantially, those bolts were right next to my head, literally. So the green tip to you know, the green on green would have could have happened instantaneously. It was a it was a pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, you know, it wasn't shooting at the guy, it was like freaking out type thing.

SPEAKER_04: 54:31

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:32

Because that's that's what happened. And I won't mention the guy's name, but and I don't blame him now. Like I look back and I'm like, fuck, man, we were all scared, you know, to some extent. Kids, we're just kids, man. I think that on that topic of like scared though, I don't think it was like I don't think you process it that way. You didn't process it as scared, you process it as kill shit. I'm not scared, I'm gonna do this. I do remember one piece looking back, I was patrolling through some and and fucking gunshots going off, bombs going off, and it was night, and I couldn't see shit. And I remember just grabbing the back of my team leader, that big fucking tattooed dude. He's like, What the fuck you doing? I was like, dude, I can't see fucking shit, man. Scared fucking shitless back here, and I'm in the back, you know, trying to protect the back. Fucking, I don't know what the fuck. Cats meowing, dogs, dogs, dogs trying to attack you. The dogs and the cats were a riot over there. Shot a lot of those, but yeah, a lot of dogs. A lot of dogs lost their lives in every city. Yeah, a lot of cats, too. They weren't our nice ones, they were some mangy things, but oh yeah. So house to house, man.

SPEAKER_03: 55:44

I don't think people will ever grasp how intense you guys had it during those times. Because I mean, one, the physical just draining on you of going in homes, you're you're not just like going in a house, you're searching, you're tearing everything apart, upstairs, downstairs, on the roof, in and out, going through, and then it's the next house, and then it's the next house, and you're doing that from sun up to sundown. Then whenever you were you guys just were you guys extracting every day, or were you taking over a house and sleeping in it?

SPEAKER_01: 56:18

No, we just stayed, man. We just stayed in the house.

SPEAKER_03: 56:20

So then you're providing security all night after 15 hours of fighting your ass off. You didn't sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 56:26

Like you didn't sleep. I I don't remember sleeping in Fallujah much. Uh I was a boot, you know. And and and so like my second deployment, I I I kind of like have a little regret because I didn't do a lot of post because I was in charge.

SPEAKER_02: 56:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 56:39

But it was because like that first one was so drastic. I was like, Oh, for sure, fuck that, man. I ain't never doing fucking post again. That's perks, yeah. Perks of fucking getting promoted, baby. Pick up. Fuck. Uh you guys lose any guys out of your platoon? Yes. Victor Lou.

SPEAKER_02: 56:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 56:56

Yeah. How was that?

SPEAKER_01: 56:58

So I won't mention the other guy's name, but one of my one of my other buddies, uh, he he he I still keep in cut contact with him. He's he's a little rough around the edges still. I think I think that's just what he's gonna be forever. Um they went into a room and my buddy had the saw and Lou had uh an M16. They got in right away, Lou got sprayed with 11 shots.

SPEAKER_03: 57:24

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 57:25

Seven or eleven. You know, some went through a sap he plate, some didn't, you know. Um so instantaneously they tra the the guy grabs Lou, pulls him out, um throws a grenade in there, boom, it blows up, he goes in there, empties his 200-round drum, and that was the end of it. Lou was already dead when they started treating him. Okay, but the doc didn't tell them that. He was just treating him. But he was dead. He was dead, you know, he didn't make it. Um so yeah. So that was the first, like, and that wasn't that far in.

SPEAKER_03: 58:14

Um I don't remember the exact date, but pretty recent though. I mean, when you guys started.

SPEAKER_01: 58:21

You know, I think it was a few days in. A few days.

SPEAKER_03: 58:24

So that hits hard. Was he tight with you guys? I mean, obviously.

SPEAKER_01: 58:27

He was tighter with his squad. Yeah, he was in a different squad than me. So that you know, the platoons broke down, let's say 30 people, then it's three squads of ten, essentially. Yeah, it was a little less than that, really. It was only like 26 guys, so it was a pretty tight-knit group. Um yeah, so it it hit us all in a different way. Some guys he'd actually been to Iraq once, Lou had, um, with the first deployment. And so, like, he'd already been salted with a lot of these other guys. So he was actually the fire team leader going in that that day. Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 58:56

Um so that hits a platoon pretty hard, especially when a senior that has experience gets taken out.

SPEAKER_01: 59:02

Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like, hey, one of your own. I I again feel like I was in that war mode that you know you just turned off all emotion. 100%. You know that one that took 15 years to get back? Yeah. I turned that sucker off in war, man, and it took 15 years to get it back. But if you're lucky. 100%, yeah, yeah, I agree. 100% turned off. I I don't think that I shed a tear during the push or in that deployment at all. And that's saying something, you know, like I'm sitting here damn near shedding a tear, you know, trying not to be trying not to let the emotional side of the the feeling, you know, take over.

SPEAKER_03: 59:46

But at the same time, man, like that was some of the wildest shit we've ever done. I mean, since Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01: 59:53

Yeah, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_03: 59:55

I mean, door to door. I uh I remember watching, you know, and and I couldn't even imagine what you guys were having to do during the you hear, oh dude, he's a Fallujah Mariner. That dude did the push of Fallujah. I think a lot of it's like, oh, cool. Like that's I don't know. I don't even think you've even scratched the surface yet on the shit that's even was even going down. And and and how violent in the death. I mean, the I have buddies that have some videos, and I mean, dude, there's just bodies everywhere.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:25

Rotting corpses everywhere. Now they weren't all marines, no, but there was literally civilians and insurgents, and there's body parts laying places, there's hands and feet, there's you know, rotting corpses with freaking uh fly larvae and flies all over, dogs chewing on people, dogs chewing on people, cats eating people. I remember sitting down one day holding security on something as we moved to the next house or whatever. Thousands of flies. And it's not that flies bug me. Like I'm gonna be in Alaska here soon, and the the mosquitoes and bugs are gonna be all over you, and that's gonna bug you, but it's not gonna bug you like knowing that they were on a corpse next to you. And they're in your on the corner of your mouth now, and they're now on the corner of your mouth, just absolute, just filthy disgust.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:11

So how so you're not even processing this? This is just your straight war kill kill mode. Yeah, you guys are just stepping over bodies daily. Yeah, that's normal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:20

That's normal, 100%.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:22

Yeah. Did it it never affect you seeing civilians at that time?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:26

Not at that time. No, there was you know, we laugh about it. For sure. Oh, for sure. It was all it was all funny. Um because if you can't cry, you laugh. Really, that's an emotional response. So um Marines laugh at it, and so yeah. Different times. Different times, long time ago.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:49

Oh yeah, I just the fluja, man. I wild, I think it's one of the craziest battles of that whole entire war. And you're smack dab on the tip of the spear of it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:03

Yeah, we were. So we're pushing the city day after day. Remember the there wasn't a lot of food. Um one of my buddies balls chafed. I'll make him listen to this podcast, but his balls chafed so bad they had to pull him to the back. Really? Literally, because we weren't showering, you know. I think there was a stint in one of my deployments that I went like 42 days without a shower.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:25

I believe it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:26

You know, um just was what it was, man. Chafe, rash. It didn't matter. It didn't matter, suck it up. Um so we get through the initial push, and I'm still alive, and they want us to back clear a section. Oh my gosh. That supposedly someone had missed a section, and then some insurgents had snuck back through. So we go back and we start another clearing section, and you know, while we were pushing, the goal off the books was to make it so that they didn't want to come back.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:07

And if you think about that, who? And I didn't really think through that at that point in my life. It was like, don't make them come back, okay, we'll destroy everything, burn it down, blow it up, whatever, it doesn't matter. But whose house was I blowing up? Was I blowing up the insurgents' house or the Fallujah Iraqi that was actually pushed out of the city prior to the push? Yeah, right, because they pushed some of the civilians out, they tried to push some of the civilians out before the push so that there wasn't, you know, that much casualty in that. And a lot of them left just because it was so ridden with insurgents, too. And so, you know, we destroyed everything, man. Um, I look back and you know, like whole just pushing over the the um kerosene and lighting it on fire, like it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing mattered. The rules of engagement were like shoot if you're getting shot at or if they have a gun, right? But it was really, really lax. Like our goal wasn't to drop a gun ever, you know, but like the mentality was if they had a weapon of any kind, then you could kill them, and there was no question about it. There was no question at that point.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:17

Yeah. Militar military age mail with weapon, shovel, yeah, digging material, motorcycle. I think that was all shoot on site.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:25

And that changed a lot as the deployments went on.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:29

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:29

And and I think that a lot of people that could relate to this that you know, that was the hardest part of being in war because we experienced firsthand what the lax ones were, and then as we went on, you know, every shooting we're getting into, we're talking to lawyers and other things, you know, for the next deployment. I can talk a little about that, but um it was just it was just a different beast.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:52

What was the scariest part of Fallujah?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:57

That night when it was dark and the dogs were barking and gunfights going off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:02

Honestly, I don't I don't know that there was a scared bone because you didn't you weren't processing it like that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:08

You know, you were in combat mode. I I I honestly to this day do not remember a day that I was actually scared really per se, rather than just in combat mode, man. I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know how you relate that to like the civilian world. Like, um I just I it's not that I'm a tough guy. I I am a tough guy, but I'm not I'm not saying that I don't get scared of shit, man. You know? Um it's just like that's not what my mindset was. I was there to do a job and fucking just kill shit, man.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:42

I used to saying that it's it's such a true statement, though, because you hear a lot of these guys, and I've had a lot of conversations with vets that they going to combat was almost like peaceful for them because they were in that mindset and they knew the job and they had to get it done and they had the same outlook, but then when they come back to the states, like having a family terrified them. Yeah, having somebody dependent on them, terrifying. Yeah, and they were like, just send me back, like that's where they belong. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, war was easy to a lot of vets, like they they wanted to be there, that's where they thrived because they didn't have that switch that made them fear, made them think like, oh, I have this at home. But then when they come to the States, having to get a job is terrifying.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:25

It's because they were trained so fucking well. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, they did a damn good job of training me to be a marine. They did a damn horrible job training me to be a civilian. Because they didn't once uh they taught me how to be a marine.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:38

Yeah, there's no they don't undo it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:40

They don't undo it. There's no there's no four years of undoing what they just did. Yeah, and that's really, you know, I like to talk about my struggle because it was real and people can relate to it. But for sure, man, you know, there's been it's been 20 years and I still take VA meds, man. Listen, I'm dry, I don't drink. There's reasons for that, right? Yeah, you know, stuff that I experienced in my life have you know compounded into this today. For sure. Um so we back pushed. Um not near as much action, but still the same tempo. So so as this this deployment is rolling on, we're holding the city empty and we're looking for weapon caches. So we're back clearing stuff, um, we're breaking shit, blowing shit up. Um, we're looking for munitions, and then we're marking it with a triangle if there's explosives. I don't know if that was normal. Um you'd find shit, you know, IEDs rigged up in houses and you know, still scary shit.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:39

Did you guys run in any booby traps?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:41

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Oh some of that. There was there was booby traps and there's all sorts of shit.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:45

Really? Like what?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:47

I dude, I don't even remember all of them, but I I do remember us running into a few of them with like IEDs or guns pointed or whatever. Um we didn't want to wait on EOD one day, and this one we had to wait for them for whatever reason. I don't know whether it was earlier or later, but it was uh like a Russian hand grenade. And I don't know how we we just said, fuck it, one of us are gonna throw it. Hope it's not a fucking IED. And so we popped the pin and it clicked as soon as you popped the pin. Oh god. It made a clicking noise or something. Yeah. Anyway, then we threw it and then it didn't go off. And so we had to call a EOD anyway, but um, yeah, just scared the shit out of you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:26

Leave it to the reads if I'd rush in grenades.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:30

We weren't gonna wait. This uh they used to collect up all the munitions, and there'd be just piles and piles of guns, and incendiary grenades really didn't melt them enough to make them unusable. So they'd they'd put all these big weapons caches into these buildings with all these explosives, and then I I don't remember if they put the guns in there, but they put all the explosives in one one building, and then they'd clear it, and then they'd say, Okay, you guys hold security on this side, fucking open your open your mouth and plug your ears, and kaboom, the whole fucking two city blocks would be gone, man. And you're like the third block over, you know what I mean? So, like all these concussions or whatever you want to call them. Just getting rocked, dude. Just getting rocked still.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:11

My buddy that did Fallujah, he said they would find cachets and they would radio, like, yo, who's got who's got C4 and everybody would come running, and he's like, they would just level that house, and like every house that touched that house would all just be leveled, and they would over like two RPGs they'd find. They were just leveling everything that everything got C4 slapped to it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:31

It literally didn't matter, really, it did not matter, man.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:34

So it would have been fun at the time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:36

Oh, it was badass, dude. That's why I probably get such a rush out of hunting, because I'm like, nothing in this world has given me the rush like hunting has that the military did. Yeah. And and maybe I'm not even getting what I got there, but you know, the problem was that you were on a 24-hour adrenaline rush and you never shut it off. But um so many years later, I get a call, and this is relating back to Flugia. We had we'd been holding this area um against the Euphrates River, and it was right up against the Blackwater Bridge. All that's right there in that section, right next to that section of that place that I almost died a million times. Um I get a call from a marine buddy, and he says, Hey, send me that picture of Chris Kyle's gun. I'm like, Who the fuck's Chris Kyle? And he says, He's that fucking seal that was attached to us, him and his buddy. I'm like, Oh yeah, I know who you're talking about. And so I'm still not recognizing who Chris Kyle is at this point.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:40

So I sent him the picture of the rifle, and it was his it was an M16, it was like an it was like an Air 10, so it was a 762 platform, and then they had their sniper rifles too. And so one of the pictures is like half of half of a seal and then the the rifle. And I don't know whether that's Chris sitting here or it's Chris's rifle, but either way, Chris is right there, Chris Kyle. So in the city, we were holding security at this we were on this, we were at this palace, and then we had all these little houses because we just lived in people's houses. We just took over their shit, shit in their kitchen sink and did whatever the fuck we wanted to do. Literally. Literally. Um like there was no there was no filter because it didn't fucking matter.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:22

Looking back at it now, looking at it then, every house was an insurgent's house.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:31

Correct. There was no It was destroy it, it was destroy the city so that no one wanted to come back.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:36

Yeah. I mean, and when you tell Marines to destroy something, like they're gonna go above and beyond just out of the pure just sadistic side of us being Marines.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:45

And no one cared, man. No one cared, sadly. So we ended up holding security on an OP that Chris Kyle and our sniper team was holding and shooting insurgents out of because we had an insurgent stronghold coming out of the marsh, filtering weapons into the city.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:05

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:06

So I think it's in the book, if I remember right, but basically, like that OP was we were doing security patrols all around, in and around that. I remember sleeping out on this, we were watching this boat one night because we thought it was, you know, and it had the snipers in the background somewhere and all this other shit. Um But yeah, so I met Chris Kyle at one point in my life. Yeah. He was just a Navy SEAL, and I remember I remember this, and just the Navy SEAL, man, they're bad motherfuckers, don't get me wrong. Um I remember this one point in the conversation, and this is the only part of the whole conversation that I remember, is man, I wish I could be a Marine. You guys can do whatever the fuck you want. And that was that was something humbling and that just something that I remembered. Um and I don't remember a lot from this period, man. There's a lot of blank spots, um, and for good reason, right? But um yeah, sadly, Chris Kyle is not no longer with us, but his legacy lives on, and um Thanksgiving dinner. So we're still in the city. Um we're patrolling, doing security and co uh combat patrols. Again, I was just a sawgunner. I think I got promoted to Lance Corporal somewhere, somewhere along the way. Um they tell us to come get Thanksgiving. Well, as a Lance Corporal or PFC, you don't ever sleep. So they bring chow from one of the big chow halls because all we're eating is MREs. We're surviving on MREs for for months now.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:42

You don't get any good food. And so I don't know whether they thought it was gonna be a treat or what, but they ruined me for life for Thanksgiving. Really was I can't think of any Thanksgiving that I want to go to and I relate it back to this moment. They forced us to put on all our gear and go patrol over and go get some Thanksgiving, and there was some fucking general there shaking our hands, telling us to do a good job.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:06

Every time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:07

Some fucking two-star. And he's probably a bad motherfucker if I read back in the history book. But it was like the point of like getting the green weenie again, like you hadn't slept, you hadn't showered.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:19

Leave us alone.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:20

Like, I don't want any Thanksgiving fucking dinner. I don't want any of your fucking turkey that's fucking a half mile that way because you want me to go patrol back to get some.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:28

You guys had the patrol to go get Thanksgiving dinner?

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:31

Yeah. They put you guys at that's what I remember, and that's how I remember hating Thanksgiving. Like, I just I have this thing where I'm just not into Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:39

You guys are in middle toward the tail end of pushing Fallujah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:44

So the push, when it when is Thanksgiving's November 20 last Thursday?

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:50

25th, third Thursday.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:52

So it had to have just ended.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:54

So you guys just finished the push of Fallujah and now they're making you patrol to a chow hall to go get Thanksgiving dinner?

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:01

Patrol to a FM Fob, this fucking mansion, same mansion that Chris Cow's in, down the road from where I almost died a million times, right across from the Blackwater Bridge. Like all this is right here, dude.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:13

You were in it. In it, man. It you brought the Blackwater Bridge up a couple times. What's significant about that?

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:20

Well, so on the bridge, so the bridge is where the whole Fallujah thing started. They they captured some, and and I'm I'm not a I don't read history, so I I'll give you the the the black and white of the facts, but some Blackwater employees were captured, uh, killed, and hung and burned on that bridge. Yep. And so it was significant because it was like our turning point in the war where we're saying that we're gonna, you know, smash this enemy, and Fallujah was the hotspot for it. On the bridge, written. It says, This is for the Blackwater employees that were killed. Um and then it says and and the history books will show this. You can Google, Google um Blackwater Bridge, um Fallujah, and it'll show this writing. And at the bottom it says PS, and it's crossed out now, but it said PS fuck you 911, and then the dark horse was written on it, and dark horse was my unit's call call sign, the dark horse. Yeah. Um, and so that was significant because obviously it was uh a big part of the the reason we went to Fallujah, but and the that bridge lit went into Fallujah. That bridge went into Fallujah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:42

So that was the Iraqis making a statement by hanging these contractors like come and get it. Insurgents or whoever they were, yeah. Yeah, it what did I call them?

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:51

Tell you called them Iraqis, but who knows who they were, right? We don't even we don't do we really know who they were? No, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:57

So I mean there was dudes out of Afghan, Syria. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Pakistan, they were flooding in from. I mean they're they were just going to kill shit. They just want to kill Americans. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:07

So so anyway, the significance is that in our kids' history books, it's gonna say this is for the Americans that were murdered here from Blackwater Bridge, okay? And and in the fucking end, it says PS fuck you 911 Dark Horse, and the Marine Corps is the 911 Force of the U.S. So when it's crossed out, you'll know exactly what it says.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:24

That's pretty dope, though.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:25

It's pretty cool. I got a picture on my phone. I'll I'll send it to you. I'll text it to that. You got a little permanent copy of it. Um so we were just another day. Um I think there were some kids. I remember I remember some positive, some positive stuff in there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:43

You know, I remember um well the shitter wasn't positive, but the uh the kids that were there, we um gave food to. And so they'd come up a couple of the village kids while we were holding security on shit, because people started to filter back in and we were on the outs right on the edge of fluja. Okay. Um and so we'd give the kids food. I I got a picture I think of me and my buddy with these kids and no gear on, which is like, you know, the first step in a long time that we haven't had full gear on to even be outside anywhere. And so we were out right outside the house with the OP right above us with our gear off. No, what I was joking about about the shitter is I don't know why I thought about this, but that same house that the kids were at, we used to have to shit in. Um, you shit wherever you could, but like when they start putting you into spaces and you keep you there for multiple days, they'd bring you these shit tents and these bags that you shit in. Wag bags. But the thing was, we there was never enough bags, so you had to reuse the bag. For sure. So you'd fill that some bitch up until it was full. And I'm just thinking to myself, yeah, no what? That's nasty, man. Just nasty. Fill that thing up, tell it hit you in the nuts. Someone's gonna tie it off and then someone's gonna tie it off and fucking go burn it. Uh-huh. You remember burning shit?

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:02

Bro, I've talked about it on this podcast so many times. I have burned so much shit. I've spent months of my life stirring shit.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:10

Stirring shit in the barrels with the JP8.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:13

Nobody, nobody, no one understands, bro, how I get it. I get it. Only the few. Because I was labeled like the shitty NCO because I was just belligerent and didn't give a fuck about anything. So like I had chops, like I had my beard, like I trimmed it, I didn't even shave, like, I was getting snatched up left and right every time we'd come back.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:31

Working party, working party.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:33

Yeah, and so yeah, we uh I was I burned a lot of shit. There's pictures, I'll show you these pictures afterward, and I could put them over this. There's pictures of me, because dude, I'll never forget. My my gunny ended up getting pinned on a master. He was the biggest piece of shit you've ever met in your life. Just a just a coward of a man. And uh, I have no problem saying that because he I truly feel to this day he still is a piece of shit. But um, I you could tell I had this dude, he's one he's on that list. One of those. And uh he comes in, he's like, hey, fucking shitters are full, take care of them. I'm like, what the fuck? So I I I would do it just obviously to help my guys out too. And um, dude, I had two like we just I lined up a bunch, I pulled a bunch of pallets apart just to get the plywood or you know, the the little strips, yep, and I laid them all flat so then I could push these barrels through the dirt into a a uh the burn pit for our trash, and I was just dumping the shit down into the because dude, you're there for hours. I mean it takes 12-15 hours to burn a barrel of shit. Like, yeah, and so there was one though that I was burning just to make it look like I was doing something, so I would just sit out there and fuck off on my day off. You know, I was burning shit, but I don't I already dumped two barrels, and that was the easy job, dude. Escape, bro. I was like, Yeah, I'll do this all day. You just stand up, win from it, and you you're good. Yeah, and so he's like he comes back out, and this keep in mind he's never gone on a patrol, he never left the house. This dude is sat in the COC with his coffee, just yelling at everybody the whole half the deployment. So he comes like, Where's my shitter? Where's my shitter? And this one had just finished. You know how the fumes are just I was like, I got one for you, guns. I slide this in the shitter, bro. He's in there just coughing and gagging because those fumes are just, I mean, dude, that'd burn your butthole. That diesel fume. Shouldn't have been good for him. No, and I sat there just laughing my ass off, just like getting it, just knowing that he was just miserable. But yeah, I burned a lot of shit. Those wag bags, dude. We were in uh Egypt doing Operation Bright Star with the Egyptians and I think the Jordanians, somebody else was there. But uh, dude, we had a shitter where we had to sit back to back with a dude and the flies when you would flies would just hit ya, come up your crotch. Bro, you just feel them on your nuts, just oh my god. Swarm and they're in your mouth, and you're trying to shit, you're you're just trying to dodge it, and you know they're coming, and then we had a little cameonetting that was just enough to like crawl and walk in, and then you'd sit down, and the cameonetting was maybe like two feet above your head. So there it's like a dome with these, like, but not a tall dome. So it trapped all these flies. Oh my god. So it's not like they're flying and flushing out of there, they're just swarming in there shit and getting on ear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:19

Bro, that's the military.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:22

That's that's war when people like you just think you're just hooking and jabbing. It's the little shit like that where you're like, bro, what am I doing with my life? Like, why am I here?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:31

One of the times we went, you know, we we only got to go to the big camp like a couple times during that whole deployment. And we went to the big camp and we hadn't shaven or got a haircut. Um, or maybe we tried to shave and we had didn't have a haircut.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:46

No, we didn't shave because here's the thing they said some sergeant major gunny came out and like, what the fuck, you fucking Marines need to fucking shave your goddamn face and cut your goddamn hair and fucking just lining you out, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:59

And you're like, We said we haven't had a shower in like 30 or 40 days. I don't remember what it was, but it was you know 30 or 40 days, literally. Yeah, and he literally just went quiet. And we went in there and we went into that child hall. He he didn't he didn't say another word, like he understood at that point. Like that never happens. Most of that that doesn't that doesn't happen. No, but I would tell you that it was like at that point that like he probably realized that he was in the wrong, that we were just coming off the fucking line from Fallujah. We went in there and just got platters of everything that we could eat, yeah. And then we tried to eat, you know, I don't think we ate even a fraction of what we got, but it's so shrunk. Yeah, we hadn't had any of that food. So that was kind of a highlight slash, you know, good old Marine Corps. That's that's a typical make sure you shave your face and get your fucking haircut. Well, haven't had a shower. Why would I get a fucking haircut?

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:48

Where where? Yeah, where's this gonna where's this gonna happen? Downtown Fallujah. Yeah, you go let not keep knife handing me. Yeah, and of course, he's standing there in his perfect uniform, perfectly clean, everything's pressed, fresh shave. Like, yeah, bro. Like, we're we're in two different wars right now. Yeah, I remember we went back to Al-Assad to resupply, and um there was a we I don't know if you've ever you probably never no, you were Fallujah, so you never did went to Al-Assad where we had parked, we called it Tent City. It was kind of like where if you were like the transients coming in and out, if you didn't have like permanent station or permanent time there, there were these big tents. Okay, and then right next it was a chow hall, like a couple hundred yards up the road. And so we got in and I grabbed my crewman because they had those they had hooabs, like those apple cinnamon hoo-bars, and then they had the cinnamon pop-tarts. It was just anything besides MREs, you know, and that and that wouldn't rot or you know, go bad. So I had a grenade, an empty grenade box, and we'd I'd carry that to the chow hall, and we would stuff that. We're stuffing pockets. We're I'm literally at a buffet, like like just pulling piles of shit into this grenade box. And uh, you know, we lock it up and my crewman's holding one side because you don't have the rope handles. Yeah, so he's got one, I got one, and we come walking out of the chow hall, and I got like a beanie on and a gator neck, like you're we're coming back, we're only gonna be in Al Assad for like a couple hours. Grab whatever any supplies and we're out. So it was literally once we got everything, I'm like, let's go to the chow hall and get this shit, dude. We I got so lifed out. Like I knew it was coming because as soon as we walked out, there's like three sergeant majors standing there, all perfect, and I'm like, just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking out here. Hey, Marine! I was like, Don't look, don't look, don't look. And they they scream like four or five times before we stop. And this dude chewed my ass. Who the fuck do you think you are coming to my channel? Just rips my ass. And of course, and I'm like, Roger that. Like, what do you like? What do you want me to say, bro? We're literally leaving, like, our vehicles are running right now, like we're prepped and we're out of here, back on the road to go to bum fuck nowhere. Yeah, and you're chewing my ass because I just want a pop tart. Like, yeah, chill, bro.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:57

Like, same team. There's no such thing as that in the Marine Corps, you know, it's it's one or the other.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:03

There's no one or the other, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:04

You know, I know we talked about it earlier, man, that you know, one of the reasons we got out was just that that negative piece. Oh gosh. That negative piece to the military that's just so rough, at least the Marine Corps, you know. I don't know how it is in other branches, but yeah, especially when I was in, man, it was just a rough time to be in. And you know, at this point I was still committed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:25

Uh so Fallujah. What was your most memorable part of Fallujah, good or bad? What what stands out to you the most?

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:35

Probably my second deployment. Okay. Uh we went back to Fallujah. So we went back and we were south of Fallujah. Oh, okay. But we were right up against the Euphrates and right up against the other side of the Blackwater. So we were literally on the other side of the river from where we were at. Okay. Um Yeah, well, there's a lot of good memories, bad memories, memories. Um But I'll I'll tell you this one. I I haven't I haven't told anyone in a long time, but so I was I was jacking off, and and and I was in this like little hut thing, and all of a sudden stuff started to explode around me. And I'm like, oh fuck. And I'm like sitting there, and all I have is my skivys, a 17-inch laptop, because I had my you know my laptop, my go-to. With the hard drive. With the hard drive, and there there was no gun, there was no flak jacket. We were holding security on this dam. I was in charge, or I was supposed to be in charge at least, and freaking they were walking in these mortars, so they hit them and they like hit them back and forth, and and what'll happen is they'll eventually hit their target of what they're aiming at. Um, there's also small arms going off in the front. For whatever reason, my gunner that was up front in the 240s, not shooting at them, but there's a truck and they're launching mortars out of the back of this truck.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:55

So I come out in my skivvies, and I'm like, bring me my fucking gear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:59

So, you know, at half salute in my skivys, fucking bombs dropping, gunfire going off, and we uh we deterred the enemy by fire and maneuver. Um, I don't even remember. I think we I think we threw our gear on and chased after them with one of our uh rapid response teams or whatever we call them back then. But um so I always like to say that I almost died jacking off. So it legitimately was that. So um the uh getting Marines, man.

SPEAKER_03: 1:28:36

That is the most Marie Course story I've ever heard in a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:39

It's legit, man. It's legit. You can't even make that up. You were just probably laughing the whole entire time. I mean, it's just I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what my mentality was, other than I wasn't putting my laptop down until I got my flak jacket and shit. Yeah. Wasn't leaving that behind. God, deployments, bro. So I got promoted. So we got back from so Fallujah was like Fallujah 1. Fallujah one. Yeah, we'll call it Fallujah 1. It's OIF2. Uh the push through Fallujah. Technically, it was the second push through Fallujah. If you read the history books, they started a push and they didn't get very far. Then they did the the second push, which was the actual push, Phantom Fury.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:22

And then there was technically a little back clearing push that we did, and you know, that's not really even talked about. So then we we come home from this deployment, and it's fucking uh a month off. Uh, you know, post-deployment. Post-deployment. They give you a month, man. They gave us a month, legit. Yeah. So I don't remember a whole lot of it other than I drank a lot of alcohol. Sure. Um which, you know, not abnormal. Um so then we're working up. So literally, the tempo went from fallusia back to work up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:55

Immediately.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:56

A month off, then you're back into it. Okay. So I think I was only home. Eight months.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:00

Like if I do the math on six of those months, you're doing workups.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:04

Seven of those months. Okay. So back for eight months, off for one, work up for seven.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:10

So you're literally back into it. So this time I'm like, you know, I was a squared away Marine, man. They uh they meritoriously promoted me to corporal, and then they sent me to all these cool schools. So like I got to go to Bridgeport and be rock climbing course, and you know, why my whole unit was getting that was California. Yep, my whole unit was getting just slaughtered on the mountain, and I'm doing a fucking uh urban rock climbing course to teach them, you know, if we had to do like Afghanistan for the next deployment. Yep. Um, and so we're doing all this cool shit. Me and my buddy Rahma um thrived in that environment because we were from the outdoors, and so we we learned all the knots and shit, and there was like there was supposed to be like a lot of us, but there wasn't at the end. Um they'd take us on this deer run trail every day, and this was the only slaughter that I got at Bridgeport, but they'd take us on Deer Run Trail, and dude, it would just like seven or eight miles up this mountain and then back down at you know, the elevation that you're at, it would just smoke your ass.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:08

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:09

So it wasn't that it was like all you know fun and games, but it wasn't what they were, they were playing war all night every night up there on the mountain.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:17

Then we did so I'm I'm a corporal. At this point, they're starting to put me in charge of shit. I'm uh, you know, they gave me a squad at that point. Um we did uh an ex a demo course, and like we'd already played with a lot of demo, like I was in Fallujah and shit, but this demo course, none of the 0341s, which is the demolition guys, wanted to, or 41s are mortars, uh 51s are the um the demo guys. So none of the 51s wanted to carry the shit up the hill to blow it up. So it was again me and Rhema. So me and Rhema are fucking carrying this shit up the fucking mountain, and we had to blow it all up. Like, dude, I'm talking every type of explosive you can name in the military, like we got to blow up on this range of this one day. Really fucking epic, dude. Fucking epic. Oh, I bet. We did Bangalores, uh Claymores, uh C4, TNT, shape charges, like everything you can think of. We got to blow up. Um, and because I'm like promoting fast, I'm like, you know, large and in charge, they're putting me in all these cool things. They send us to uh an AK-47 course. Yep. Um, and they were probably doing this throughout the Marine Corps because they want you to be familiar with the enemy's weapon, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We show up at the course and there's there's 12 guns, one squad showed up and the instructors, and then the whole other battalion or whatever that was supposed to be there didn't show up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:40

So you got to shoot all their ammo?

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:42

Because you have to shoot all the ammo or they have to count it to give it back. Yup. We shot an entire fucking pallet. Yup. No, it was 22 guns. It was there was 22 guns there. And the reason I know that is because we would shoot them till they were red fucking hot.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:55

And then swap them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:56

Go back, grab ammo that the instructors were loading, and swap them and go back and shoot more. Dude, just tens of thousands of rounds. That's we shot so much that we shot them off the fucking the T-post. We shot the T-posts off. Like there was no target left. It was just like fucking blow the rest of these bullets. You're just squeezing. You're just squeezing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:15

Dude, we screwed up one time we were on the range doing the heavies, the the moduce and the Mark 19, so the 50 cal and the grenade launcher. We were a bunch of little eager beaver young troops, and I was like, dude, let's just prep all this ammo. Like, let's get it all opened up. The staff are kind of all fucking off. We had some downtime, so like a bunch of us just start popping cans. You know, the little safety twist wire. Once you pop that, you have to shoot it, you have to shoot it, or you have to count every round that you turn back in. So we're over here just like bop, bop, just popping cans and staging them. Well, on the range out in Pendleton, these bison come cruising out. Yep. So then they shut down the whole range, and we sat there for like two days.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:58

And my gunny, they finally get these bison off the range, and my gunny is like, listen, you fucking retards. You're gonna spend the next three days counting all this ammo, or we gotta burn it in like the next two hours. Dudes were just linking like six cans together, and you were just holding, holding that button, and you were just ripping thousand-round bursts, bro. You just like you're just sitting there like trying to plug it. You weren't even looking. You just like you know, in the turret, once you're done, and you just sit there and just rip, and then as they were reloading the 50 cal, you would just burn through as much Mark 19 as they had linked together, and then they would start loading Mark 19, and you just burn through the 50 cal. Dude, you would look at the turds, and we were just everything open. You'd open it up. You know the LSAT in the kit in the the little the the white lube shit. Did you ever use that? Yeah, dude, we had bottles of it. You just open up that feed tray, just the oil, slam it shut, put it around and slam it, rack, rack, ba-ba-ba. And so it was so hot, bro. There was smoke. All every turret looked like chimneys because we burned thousands and thousands of. I mean, dude, the barrels were glowing on these things, it was insane.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:05

You guys ever have the bush monster where they eat the bullets? The bush monster. So we'd go on ranges and they'd give you so many that you'd just give them to the bush monster, and the bush monster would eat them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:16

Bro, we were in 29 Ponds, we were out in 29 Ponds, Lovic Lake, doing like live fire maneuvers. And uh we were I was actually an instructor, so we were teaching a bunch of officers at the time, and you'd have to collect all your brass, and at the end they had giant tarps laid out, and we have big if you were smart, you gotta they had the little tube that would drop into like the brass box and collect everything. Well, that'd fill up. So we would just do like a sea bag and ratchet strap a sea bag on there, and you just fill a whole entire sea bag with brass. Well, then we're coming back, and then each vehicle how you had to separate your the brass from the links, you know, like brass in one pile, links in the other. Yeah, I'm sitting here like, fuck this. Like, I'm not doing this. So every time we'd finish our maneuvers, you're miles out in the desert because you're just your bag as you drive in. So we would we'd pull up, I'd dump the whole sea bag and I'd have my driver just pivot the vehicle because we're trapped. So we'd throw this giant berm and just bury all the brass, and I'm like, let's roll. And I'd close the back hatch and we would get back, and everybody's sitting there all night sorting brass and links. And we went, we'd go to bed every night. I'd tell I'd tell the officers like, yo, if you guys want to separate all this shit, say something. Like, if you want to shut the fuck up and get some sleep, don't say anything. We got it all. So, yeah, we used to I used to bury all the old marine corps tricks. Oh, little marine corps tricks. It's fine anyway. Anyway, yeah, we ended up figuring out, because you know, the clean the 50 cal, you're that's three days to get guns armor ready, you know, to turn back in.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:41

Oh, I'm sure, dude.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:42

We would get back to the ramp and we had we had pressure washers, and so I would get my pressure washer and I'd go behind the vehicle and I'd have my crewmen bring me like chunks at a time, like, you know, just take the bolt out, and I just boom. And I'm pressure washing the whole inside of the sear, everything. I'm just blasting it. We would finish in 30 minutes. I'd be like, we'd dry it off, lube it all down, I'd give it to the armor, I'd be like, they'd be like, there's no way. And I'm like, I won't fucking inspect it. They'd be like, all right, you're good. People like I never even told anybody, none of the other crew chiefs, nothing, because I didn't want them jumping on the train and then getting caught. So I just busted, yeah. So I would just like walk over with pieces here and there and just pressure wash all that grease out of it, lube them back up, turn them in, and we would be done in like literally less than an hour, and it would take you days to clean that shit with q-tips.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:30

Yeah, q-tip inspection. People don't understand that, but dude, boxes of q-tips, boxes, you're there for clean this rifle a little more. It's weapon, sorry. So you're back, round two. Round two working up. Um, we did the Mojave, we did uh Yuma for a month.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:49

Did you do Apple Valley at all? Victorville?

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:52

No, no, Yuma was gnarly. We almost got in a helicopter crash with some helicopter came over the other side, and man, they almost got in a crash, literally. Um yeah, hot, miserable place, you know, illegals or un you know, running amok down there during that time period. Yeah. Um that'd have been what 2006, 2005, 2006. And then uh Yeah, so we're working up. We're working up for the second deployment. Still pretty serious tempo. Um I'd already seen a lot, you know, I'm pretty hard at that point. Sure. I hadn't processed anything. I think that's one thing that people don't don't see is I haven't processed anything, and I don't I don't know that I w knew that I was supposed to. You know?

SPEAKER_04: 1:38:43

It's not talked about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:44

It's not talked about. So PTSD, just to give you an example, PTSD in the Marine Corps is non-existent. Yeah, you do not believe in PTSD. I remember guy getting out saying he had PTSD and everybody like, you know, making jokes about it and talking shit. Yelling and talking shit as he walked off the base. And you know, I I just I think back to that and I'm like, you know, PTSD didn't exist. It was a form of it was a sign of weakness, in my opinion. That's probably what you thought it was, but obviously it's not, but um that's what we thought, I guess. And you know, just the way you're ingrained that it was uh yeah, not talked about. So so I didn't process anything. So I'm I'm working up, so then we deploy south of Flugia. So this this deployment's whole tempo was completely different, right? So going right into it, the rules of engagement um were different. You had to have um at the beginning, I I think at the beginning it was just a little lighter. You know, they could just point a gun, but there was a point where they had to shoot at you, dude. Yeah. Like if they weren't shooting at you, you can't fucking shoot them. Um like not just point a gun, but shoot.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:52

What year is this?

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:53

0506. Yep. Yeah, it'd have been 0506. Um, so we I'm a corporal, I'm in charge. We uh held security, did a lot of combat um and reconnaissance patrols. Um shit. I was reading something of mine the other day and it said like 200 combat and reconnaissance patrols that I led, and I'm thinking, man, that's a lot, dude. That was a lot of shit. You know, think about this. I was only there for seven days multiple a day. I was only I was only there for seven months. I'm like, shit.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:32

Do the math.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:33

Do the math. So um, you know, some of the some of the IEDs were getting a lot better, and so at that period of time, V beds and and uh IEDs were a big deal. Um and so every other day within the company, um, and and people aren't gonna understand company, battalion, you know, platoon, all that, but you know, of the of the four big platoons in a company, we are getting hit at least every other day.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:01

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:01

And we were having finding or having explosions every day with IEDs. So it was like serious IED Ville.

SPEAKER_04: 1:41:08

So everything's changed now.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:09

Everything's changed. Like it's it's not a lot of skirmishes because they know they'll lose. It's a lot of IEDs. Now there was some skirmishes that we had, but a lot of the stuff that happened was IEDs and then IED, then an ambush, or IED, and then they're just recording it or whatever they're doing, you know. Um, we did have one cat get shot in the throat and passed away. Um he was from another platoon. He was one of the junior Marines, uh, just standing on watch one day. So there was still some death. Um we had a vehicle-borne IED at one of the weapons units. So the weapons was pulling in at night and they had it all sandbagged up and they had all their vehicles stacked out front, all five Humvees. Fucking massive V-bed pulled in, dude, a dump truck, and fucking blew them all up. Every truck, every truck was destroyed.

SPEAKER_04: 1:42:00

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:01

All the glass from the windows that they didn't break out went through the sandbags and hit the wall and impaled some guys, and then you know, just it was massive IED V-bed. Um a lot of injuries, I don't think any deaths on that one. Um, that was our weapons company, but um we had a pretty good gunfight. We had a couple pretty good gunfights, but one of the one of the days we uh we pulled up. I was I was running the patrol, and um the guy that was driving my truck was actually my machine gunner. And the reason I'm gonna tell this story is because he's no longer with us. He he actually committed suicide. Um but he was in the he was in the driver's seat instead of being on the machine gun. So I had the same uh fucker that didn't shoot the machine gun over there, had the machine gun up here. So he um he was on the machine gun, but he wasn't super trained on the 240. Okay, like that wasn't his MOS. He knew how to use it, but he wasn't super trained. So if I can get the story right, we see this guy uh lining up a rocket at our uh at our house that we're living at. We literally just pulled around the corner, and as they're shooting this rocket, we pull up, the guy grab another guy grabs an AK, starts pointing it. So, of course, I get out and I'm just dumping rounds in this guy, and so he gets shot and he spins and he starts running. The other guy's getting shot, chaos is happening, the 240's going off. Not sure why the 240 is not on this guy, the 240s on the other guy, and so I went through like shit, four mags at this guy, fucking run it away from me. And I'd already put it, I'd already put a bullet or two in him. Really? So then we go in there and we we patrol out to where he's at from where we held some security on our vehicles, we patrol out to where he went in. We can't find this guy, so it was hotter than shit, man. Like, like hotter than shit, like 120 fucking, you're just dripping sweat. So we patrol back to the truck, patrol back to base, um, kind of downloading everything. Well, the next day they come back and they're like, oh, those were Syrians. Our intel showed us that they were Syrians. Two of the three, there was three guys, two of the three had died. Um, one of them, one of them had died on scene, and then one of them had gotten shot from the one that was we I'd shot and he chased, and he ended up dying, and then the other guy, I don't know. But they were Syrians that were paid to come attack our base. Really? So, like, you know, the details are a little foggy for all of it, but the reality was the story is that Syrians were paid to come attack our base in Iraq next to Fallujah. And so, like, again, it's like who is your enemy, right? Yeah, who is your enemy?

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:50

Um But yeah, just another day, man. Wasn't even a big deal. Literally, wasn't even a big deal.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:57

Did you either deployment get into any close engagements? I'm talking like same room, same house type of deal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:09

I'm trying to think, and and I'm not trying to think outside yes and no. Um none that like stand out like when when Lou passed away, I didn't I didn't get into a room with an insurgent, but a lot of like the building of. Yeah. Um a lot of the building of, and if that makes any sense. Um I bet if I could think back, there'd be some a lot of this has been suppressed, and so I haven't really thought about it. Like it's not something I think about every day by any means. Um But there were there was a lot of good gunfights. We had, you know, same room or same we we got hit with an IED one day, and I actually got a a Navy com written on this, but really um we we got hit with an IED, and uh a couple of my Marines got blown up, the front of the Humvee did. So they pop out, they're all shell-shocked. At the same time, an ambush hit us with machine guns, and so we're deterring the machine guns with with small arms, and I'm I'm now trying to coordinate QRF to get the wounded out. At the same time the wounded are getting out. I have my doc pick up an M4 or an A4, which is an M16, and the the sight post was different than his because he carried a shotgun and he was just suppressing fire, man. Like it was everybody fucking shoot or you fucking die. And so he picks up this gun and he shoots and it ricochets off the side of the high back and hits one of my Iraqi army guys in in a couple spots, once in the face and once in the hand, because the the scope was higher than the barrel. So he was looking through the scope, but he was taking cover, you know. You get what I'm saying? So anyway, so there's green uh green tip on green tip as this is happening. So I got another casualty here. I got the two guys in the front plus the guy in the back. Um and we ended up just the QRF showed up pretty quick, and it was this fucking bad motherfucker, Gunny Brewer, and he just pulls up with these fucking machine guns, and they were just roaring. Mark 19 grenade launchers and 240s, just fucking ripping these guys. The thing was at that time in Iraq, like when you'd go shoot someone, they would go pick up their casualties before you even knew what the fuck happened. By the time we got a patrol, by the time we got rid of our casualties, got our casualties to help, got rid of the Humvee, because we're not leaving it in the middle of the road, and got to where those trucks were where the the we'd shot a bunch of people, they were already gone. There was blood, but there was no people left. Like they pick up their wounded, they it was weird, man.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:50

I've heard that quite a bit. I've heard it in Afghan too, how dudes I've talked to guys and they're like, dude, I I I dropped a Taliban, watch them crumble. Yep. He's like, Did you hike up there? Gone. There's just blood. And they're like, you never it's like they pick them up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:05

I didn't really understand it at the time, but um, you know, thankfully everybody in my squad survived that. I'm sure they got a claim for TBI from that fucking IED that hit that truck direct, but fucking just shocked the shit out of 'em, rocked them. Um and then that Iraqi army guy, he was like one of the only good Iraqi army guys during that period, man. They just they they just didn't have what it took. They didn't care enough about their country.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:32

They just still don't.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:33

Yeah. And so I I don't know how it was for other people, man, but our experience was we had like one really good guy, and he actually spoke English from movies, from watching movies. And so I'd really take care of that guy. That guy called me like four years after I got out of the military.

SPEAKER_02: 1:48:45

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:46

He called me on my cell phone. It was some fucking, you know, uh Iraqi number. I'm like, what the fuck? I picked it up. He's like, Oh, fucking Jeffreys. I was like, dude, let me pay for you to get to America.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:55

And he said, No, no, I'm fighting for my country still. And then was he more of a terp for you guys? He played both.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:02

He wasn't a terp, but he you he I used him as a terp. Did you have terps? Yeah. How were they? Barely spoke English. Fuck. That's where people tell this motherfucker to show me where the bombs are. And then, you know, who knows what he told the guy? He probably told him to fuck off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:17

But my favorite terp story ever is we had this terp, and this dude was god-awful. And we're interrogating this dude. And I look at my turf, I'm like, ask him where he's coming from. And he literally turns and he looks at the people, he goes, Where are you coming from? I'm like, motherfucker, it's in Arabic. Like, ask him, and then he's like, uh oh. And then he would ask, and then they would repeat it back, and then he'd speak it to me. I'm like, okay, now English.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:41

He just didn't understand how to interpret all day, every day.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:43

And I'd be like, dude, where where what where were they headed? Where are you headed? I'm like, oh my god. Like it was the funniest shit looking back on it. Like, because you know, for us, like grunt units, support units, whatever, because that's being tracks, we don't get the high-tier terps. Those are going to oh yeah, intelligent deaf units, Intel, like the sure the the American. Never thought about that. And so you'd always run into it, like, yo, how's your terp? It was like a thing for us. How's your terp? Like, God, get this dude out of here. Like, it was because they're usually just some guy that wants to help, and they don't even know how to barely speak English. You're now you're trying to be a terp to your terp as he's trying to talk to them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:20

So that's why I like the Iraqi dude because he like he fucking understood. He he knew the purpose. He knew the purpose. That was the thing. Like, yeah, you could fucking relate the words all you want, but if they don't know the fucking purpose, like they're gonna get it. So second deployment was good, man. We we did I didn't lose any Marines in my uh platoon, I didn't lose any Marines in my squad. Um, I don't know that they loved me, but they ain't dead, so there's that. Um the they tried to meritoriously combat promote me to sergeant.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:59

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:00

Which is really a difficult thing in the infantry. Like getting promoted to corporal and sergeant within four years is corporal is doable, but sergeant is not really obtainable.

SPEAKER_04: 1:51:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:09

And so I I was at like that was like two years and six months in or something.

SPEAKER_04: 1:51:15

That's quick for you guys.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:16

So they tried to combat meritously promote me, but because I just got meritously promoted to corporal, meritoris means they just give it to you. Yep. So they they couldn't get me the sergeant because I didn't have enough of the paperwork done. So my my fucking leadership helps me do the paperwork while we're in Iraq.

unknown: 1:51:34

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:35

Remember, I remember it was it was Brewer and uh that badass Gunny and this other um, and I forget his name, but he was a badass too. I actually saw Brewer here last summer in a reunion that I threw, but um they helped me do my paperwork. So right when I got back, the very first thing they did is got me promoted meritoriously to sergeant. And it was just like I that made me feel good in life. Like, like those are validations that have shown that I worked hard and I got rewarded.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:04

Sure. Um which doesn't happen very often in in grant units.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:08

Correct.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:09

So the fact that that's happening and the fact that your staff actually fought for it and acknowledge it, that's even a a success or a something that doesn't happen by itself.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:19

I had some badass leadership. My lieutenant was badass, my my captain was badass, my uh platoon sergeant, all of them, man. They were all just good dudes. Good. I did turn 21 in Iraq that second deployment. Okay. Um had an NA beer and a fucking balloon, that's what I remember. So an NA beer. Yeah, an NA beer, man.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:40

Tiger beer that was 100 degrees. It was my.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:43

I I don't think those were easy to come by. Yeah. So so we uh we get home, and at this point, still no PTSD. Um I only had I don't remember the exact months, but I think I had about 11 months left on my contract to get out of the Marine Corps. So I was I I played around a little bit with the fleet with my unit, and then they were working up to deploy again. They're going back to fucking fluja. I'm like, fuck that, dude. I've had enough of this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:12

Yeah. Two back-to-back trips to flugia, I'd say so.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:15

This would have been the third.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:16

And so luckily for them, that that deployment was relatively slow and calm. But the reality was we didn't know what the tempo was going to be, man. The last one was gnarly, you know. Um, flugia was horrible. The second one was gnarly, and then and then they want to go back. So I I let myself go to the M military police. Now, I'd say I learned a lot there, like there was bomb threats and domestics and all sorts of craziness because you're on Camp Pendleton where there's a bunch of combat fucking Marines and just being fucking drunkards, alcoholics, abusers.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:53

So you're dealing with the whole first and second wave that have come back from war that have zero help, nobody's even knowing how to cope, correct, handle, tree, deal with dudes that are coming back from your era, and now you're a cop having to deal with them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:11

Yep, but I again at this point I didn't have PTSD, didn't believe in it, still didn't see it. Okay. So I'm just helping these fucked up people. Okay, they're just fucked up in my eyes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:20

Yeah. So you're good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:23

I'm good. I'm good. I got my shit together, but I'm working every day. Literally, I worked every day for like months and months on end. Okay. At the time, I I was I married my wife in 06. So it was somewhere in that that transition that I got married on leave. Um, and this is to the same woman that I'm still married to.

SPEAKER_04: 1:54:44

Good for you guys.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:44

Yeah, fucking lucky to have her. So we got married and then she got pregnant somewhere in there. And so as I'm phasing out of the Marine Corps because I know I have a date that I'm leaving, my EAS, she's pregnant. I'm dealing with all this bullshit as an MP, and at the same time, I'm getting belittled by some of the command at the MPs that hadn't deployed, and they were just they were just picking on me, man. I was I was a I was a stud MP. I was a stud Marine. Okay, I was a stud MP, and I was doing everything and above. They even made me a patrol sergeant or a patrol, a patrol man as a sergeant when I was an MP, which is really just not what they do. They don't give patrol cars to just anyone, they give those to the MP MOS. Yeah. But because I was so good at the gate, I was promotable, you know, they gave me all this all this rain. So it wasn't that I wasn't still doing a good job. Um, it was just, I don't know, man. It just part of the Marine Corps. And and so that really just gave me a horrible distaste, and I was definitely getting out at that point. My squad leader at the time, or my platoon sergeant from the the the last unit really wanted me to stay in and thrive, and you know, hey man, you're gonna be a freaking staff sergeant in six years, you're gonna be a bad motherfucker, you know. But I I I wasn't gonna have that, especially once I went to the MPs, man. It was just foul taste.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:07

That'll do it, dude. Units like that, it just takes one little thing. Like I had no problem until I went to the schoolhouse.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:14

And that's when it ruined it for me. I was like, I can't. That's it's time, it's time for me. So you you solidify the reason of getting out. Yep. So you're a hundred percent out. How was your transition out of the military?

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:29

So I remember my um actual taps class or whatever that was that they tap or whatever. Yeah, I remember it being like one day or four hours or something. Like, here's how to be a civilian, here's a little book on the VA, fuck off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:41

Here's how you write a resume.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:43

No idea, dude. No idea. I got out, uh, got a job, my brother got me a job with the place that he worked, and I was busting tires for about a week, and I said to myself, I do not want to be a PFC again. And so this same transition time, I went from that to I'm gonna go to school because I don't want to work from the bottom, I want to uh be promotable and you know, all these other things. And like again, I barely graduated high school, so this is like a big feat going into the college, but I have a GI bill at my ready. So I start in the community college, and at the same time as I transition into the community college, and I'll tell you, I was fighting for my life. Um and this was the other side of the deployment, right? So, so the the the combat side was you almost died by bullets, by bombs, by explosions, by IEDs, and all these things. At the point in which I got out of the military and transitioned into being a civilian, I didn't know what to do with the anxiety and the depression that I had. I didn't know what it was, I didn't believe in PTSD. Um, I didn't believe in I didn't even know what the fuck TBI was. Um, and I was fucked up, man. I was deeply fucked up. And um I survived college and survived my wife and survived my daughter being born somehow, some way.

unknown: 1:58:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:11

During this whole period. So so I don't want you to think that I was out there using drugs on the streets. I was in really bad shape, but I was still doing the things that I had to do to live.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:23

Bad shape as in how.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:25

I was in bad shape emotionally. Uh, I was trauma tra traumatically just fucked, man. I had the worst anxiety ever. And so I I I now know that it was anxiety. Um, but basically what it was, it was like an anvil sitting on your chest. And this this was years, man, years of this. But what would trigger it? Everything. Listen, I didn't I didn't leave the house for freaking, you know, without having anxiety or so.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:51

Now all of this time is now catching up to you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:55

Correct.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:55

And you're not you and you don't even know how to process it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:57

I don't even know how to process it. You know, the VA has its I I everybody's gonna have their opinion on the VA. Here's what I'll tell you. I'll tell you if you fight for what you want or you know what you need, you can get what you need out of the VA. It just takes a lot of jumping, man. Yeah, you just gotta jump through a lot of hoops.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:14

And so I jumped through every hoop I had to, man, and I pushed on. And I'm I'm a very strong-willed individual.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:21

And I I pushed and I pushed and I pushed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:23

How did you know to push? Was your wife helping you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:25

I mean You know, my wife was there as a support, but she didn't know what the fuck to do. I actually, what what I had was a couple good people in the in the veteran service centers.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:35

Um, there's something called vet centers, and I would tell you to this day, I I did a documentary on it a few years back. There's quite a few years now, but I would say the the the veteran center are what saved my life.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:47

And it's not so they're paid for through the VA, but they're counselors, they're not necessarily medication. And I think that the thing was the day that I walked in there and I went in there, he read my fucking my combat, you know. You know, certificate and my, you know, my D D 214, and he read, you know, he he read that I had a Navy COM with meritor or with combat meritorious stuff on there. And he's like, You're a fucking war hero. You deserve all the benefits that I'm gonna help you get. And he started pushing stuff, and that was the first time that I heard of a service connection disability. Really? He was the guy that pushed me into the next guy that pushed me into the next guy or gal that that helped me start getting those services. And so I feel like us introducing people to those services is one of the number one things we can do to help our veterans.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:36

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:36

Um the services that are there, they're not always easy, man. They don't always make sense.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:41

No.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:42

Um over the course of 15 years, I went through uh personal counseling, um, family counseling. I went through an inpatient, I went to outpatient. I did a 30-day inpatient in Seattle where I actually separated from my wife.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:58

What led to that, if you don't mind me asking? Well, so hold up to this.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:02

I was on a med dose and then I was working, I got a job working graves, and my career's been pretty good, but I had this one little stint where I worked for the railroad and I was working graveyards for about eight months, and we think that it probably fucked with my meds enough that it just flipped the switch. And I I literally flipped the switch. I lost my shit, man. I left my wife, left my family, fucking fuck you guys. I'm done with this shit. Just hated the world, just hated the world, man. Couldn't couldn't function. And I ended up in a 30-day impatient, which then put me back onto my track of strong willed, getting shit done, surviving.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:34

And your wife stuck all this out. My wife stuck all this out, man. Yeah, dude. Good for her.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:38

We've been almost divorced twice. Like, she's a fucking my my wife's name's Rochelle. Um, we've been married for I think 19 years this year. We we got married in 06, so it'll be 20 next year. Damn, good for you guys. Good for her. Yeah, she she actually tells me this story that she thinks that we were married in another life, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01:58

So I don't know, man. Good for you guys, man. You've you've uh it's not easy. It's not easy to stick it out with with us. Yeah, yeah. Who who you become, especially guys like you that have been through absolute hell, and then the military's like, thanks for service, have a nice life. Have a nice life. You don't even know how to process anything, you don't even know what you're coping with, dealing with, you don't even know why you hate, why do you have the hate? Yeah. And so the fact I I love hearing these stories of of marriages working because it's so easy to quit, especially on us as men, as these big fucking dumb retards. We don't know what we're doing, and then when you have a good one, that's why I'm so fortunate over my wife, and I I give her so much props because it is not easy. Yeah, we are not easy to love, that is for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:47

So, yeah. So, all these troubles, PTSD. So, yeah, I think part of my success, I can lead it to a few things counseling.

SPEAKER_02: 2:02:57

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:58

I had some fucking amazing counselors, Audra and uh Joan. So I had one at the vet center that really stuck it out with me for a couple years through some hard shit. Um, and then I had multiple others, and like you're gonna go through counselors, man. You're gonna go into counselor and you're gonna be like, I don't fucking like this person.

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:15

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03:15

That's not the person that's gonna work for you then. Yeah, then you find a fucking other one, man, and you try again. And you'll eventually find a reason or a purpose. EMDR, like all these different therapies, man. I've tried everything. I also had another one that the VA kicked me out of their counseling because they were full. So they sent me to Civilian World. So I get this counselor, and she's a badass. Her name's Joan. She's now retired. Um, she's like in her 80s now. So this wasn't really too long in the distant future. This is within the last 10 years. So she was older in life when I met her. She would meet me at like four and five in the morning to have these sessions before I'd go to work fighting wildfire and doing all these other jobs that I've done over the years. I've I've had a whole career in wildfire, and I don't know how deep we'll get into that. But, you know, the idea would be that I would still go to counseling, even though I had to go work a 16, and this lady would stick it out with me. So the VA then takes the resource back and says, Oh, you're coming back to the VA. I said, The fuck I am. I'm staying with this private, you know, I just built a two-year relationship with this person. Why would I leave? So I freaking I'm brainstorming with her. I'm like, you know, listen, I don't have the money to pay you copays and deductibles of the whatever I got for the state insurance bullshit, you know. She's like, Well, just bring me antler lights. And so at the time I was building antler lamps, and so I would trade her my copay and deductible to get through the counseling while I was still working another job. So I feel like that's that's a lot, man. That's a lot for anybody. But I I feel like those are some of the reasons that the counseling is one of the major reasons uh to my success.

SPEAKER_04: 2:04:56

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:57

I say the VA meds. I fucking hate them, man. They're a love hate. Um I am so leveled on the meds. We tried to uh I tried to wean off one of them for another reason. Um and it just literally, I just went off like half of the pill and my whole world got turned upside down. And this is within the last year I tried that.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:21

So it's like that little bit made that much of a difference.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:24

A little bit made that much of a difference, man. And I'm like, dude, I don't know how other people feel. Like maybe they're not feeling 100%, and maybe there's another med to throw into the category. I'm I'm literally taking one, two, three, four, four, I think. Crazy, dude. Crazy amount of med, but yeah, I'm on four meds. So I was met heavily medicated in college and I quit drinking. And I feel like that's part of the reason I survived college because I didn't have something else to focus. I focused on school. That's all I did is focus on school. I was sober, I was just like, this is fucking horrible college, you know, experience. Like I had a great college experience, but you know, I'm sitting in there with a bunch of kids, man. I'm freaking, I just got back from war. I'm having, you know, mental health issues. I'm watching, you know, what do they call them? Intrusive thoughts. I'm watching people's heads get blown off sitting in class. Like that was that was a real thing, man. That happened to me all the time. So it was just like I got through my college experience, but I never stated a frat. I had owned a house, I went to school locally, so I went to Spokane Community College and I went to Gonzaga University.

SPEAKER_04: 2:06:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:31

Everybody's like, oh, you must be smart. I was like, man, I was a Marine First, dude. You know, shit. Don't forget that. Yeah, don't forget that, man. But you know, I made it through college and I doubled my high school GPA. So um so I made it through college, I got these jobs, and with the medication, um, the alcohol use kind of kick back in. But when you're on when you're using alcohol and you're using those heavy med doses, they actually counteract each other. So you're not helping yourself as much as you could. And it's not that, you know, you know, it's not good for your body, but the reality is you're gonna do what you fucking want. You know, if you want to use shit and abuse your body, you do that all you want. It's gonna catch up to you. But I I think in the end, I ended up having enough issues with alcohol always. I could never just have one. It was always, you know, I'm gonna have a fucking six-pack, or I'm always drinking, or you know, I used to call them production beers and you know, drink some light beer and do shit. But you know, the reality is it was a crutch. It was a crutch, man. I quit drinking about four and a half years ago. I've been dry, man, and I'm never going back. Just like tobacco, nicotine. Like, I don't care how good your nicotine pouch or that cigar is, I'm not gonna have it with you because I just I have to have a zero tolerance because that's me. Yeah, that's how I operate.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:48

Yeah, and at least you know that. A lot of guys I don't feel ever get to figure that out. Yeah. And then it's just like, man, if you just if you just quit this, why don't you just try? And then they get so they I think it's a coping mechanism or it's a crutch or a band-aid as far as taking distractions away from stuff, and instead of focusing on the problem, okay, I gotta if I just clean myself up for two months, let's just see how I act. And a lot of guys just can't do that. I mean everybody battles their own demons, but the fact that you are able to process, like, hey, I'm I don't want any of it, and then you see the outcome and how things start to turn around, your your attitude probably starts to increase, you're not looking at everything negatively. Yep, because of your, I mean, like you said, dude, you put mix alcohol with some of these meds that the VA will give you. Holy fuck, bro. It's not a good combination, man. No, and that's why I think a lot of these dudes end up suicide by cop or killing themselves because they're mixing so much shit with the meds from the VA, and it's just a cocktail for a disaster. Yeah. Like I'm I'm huge, I'm against meds unless I feel we just m over medicate everybody. We just we do a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:57

We're putting a band-aid on a on a on a permanent problem.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:01

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:02

Listen, I got a giant band-aid on it. But if it's working, I also I also have other people to be like, well, well, you can do these other therapies and you know, these microdosing and these different science stuff, and I I like that. I like to talk about stuff that's options. I cannot get off the med dose to know if it's ever gonna work. So even if I did it, I wouldn't know the difference because I feel good now and I'm not getting off the med dose to check because I've I tried that. I tried that recently and it it went horribly.

SPEAKER_04: 2:09:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:31

Um, and so like for me, that's gonna be my demon forever. You know, I'm probably gonna be on meds till I die or till something happens, right?

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:39

So um have you looked into possibly doing like a ayahuasca trip? Would you be open to something like that? Mexico stuff? I mean, yeah, but we could do it here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:51

Well, so like microdose stuff?

SPEAKER_03: 2:09:54

No, this is like a full ayahuasca, you're you're gonna face all your demons type of shit.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:58

See, I think the the problem is that I'm I'm not really anxious or I'm not really motivated to do any of that stuff because what I have works great.

SPEAKER_02: 2:10:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:08

And so in order for me to try something, I would have to either taper off, because even if I did that, then I would still not know if it worked or not. It's kind of a muddy mix. I'd have to do some reading on it.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:23

For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:24

I'd have to do some reading. I'm open to anything, man. I'm I'm I'm easy, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:10:27

I haven't done it yet, but I have a lot of friends that are deep into it. I have a buddy, man. He was he was a very angry, just hateful person for a long time. And dude, that dude is like a teddy bear. I mean, he is a 180. Really? If you meet him now, you're like, man, that's a great deal. I'm like, yeah, you should have known him ten years ago. Like he would have fucking throat punched you just for looking at him wrong. I mean, crazy, borderline crazy. And now he's like the most gentle. He's got like this fucking hippie music playing in his house when you walk in, he's all about peace and love. And I'm like, it's been it's been wild. So like that that's the type of stuff where I'm like, okay, something's working, but then at the same time, when I really I've dug into this, yeah. There's a I personally feel that there's a demonic side to ayahuasca, especially being a Christian and like getting back into the faith of things. I feel you're there's a potential of opening up some doors there.

SPEAKER_04: 2:11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:11:26

So that's where my hesitation has come. That's where my hesitation comes from with that. But at the same time, then I look at these dudes and I got a guy sitting right across from me that's done 10 years in prison, been shot, shot a couple people, and he says, he's like, dude, I've walked with God. Like I I have I have that relationship when he's done his ayahuasca trip. So like I'm so conflicted and torn because I want to do it, but then at the same time, it's like I have my questions, and it's weird. It's a weird thing, but I see it helping a lot of guys.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:56

Well, so the other thing that I think that helps me is keeping busy.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:02

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:03

So the guy that is bored is gonna just drink or be in his thoughts and be a negative. And listen, I I I work two jobs. I have two jobs, and I can explain those, but I also hunt excessively. As it sounds like as much as you, but um listen, I don't I don't I can't say no to a tag, literally. I I literally can't say no. This is the first year I think it's a first world problem.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:31

This is my first year saying no to a tag, so I I understand the struggle.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:34

It's hard, dude. It's hard. And so I just stay so busy and do these positive things that you know I have no time to be negative. Like I feel like that's a lot of veterans in depression and other things, you know, uh law enforcement. It's where they where they sit at home and mulk on their rot, on their negative stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:54

I I a hundred percent agree with you. I think that's something as in the veteran community. The do the therapy, get your meds dialed, but it none of that is going to get the full effect if you're just sitting home soaking in your sorrows and just thinking and thoughts and all this shit that fester. Like, look on deployment when guys get bored. I mean, it doesn't sound like you guys were bored, but like my second appointment, people were bored, and that's when the guys start getting in trouble. Yep, shit starts happening, you your mind starts wandering. That's that's when problems happen when guys do not have shit to do, and that's where over the years of me working with vets, and it's like, man, you're still struggling. Like, well, what do you do? I just sit at home. I'm like, yeah, everybody, anybody's gonna be miserable, you don't have a purpose. So it's finding that goal, that purpose in that drive to take your mind off of all of that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:41

And purpose and drive doesn't always mean job.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:43

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:45

I happen to have two jobs that I've purpose and drive in.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:48

Very lucky, you're fortunate with that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:49

Very fortunate. Um, so another thing that I've kept busy with is the antlers.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:56

Let's talk about this because this is how we got connected. So you own, you're the owner operator of custom antler designs, right? Correct. Did I fuck that up? No, that's good there, right? You build the most beautiful antler chandeliers lamps. You just brought me one as a gift, which I fucked it. I'm so stoked over that. And this is, I think, where how I ended up finding out you because I'm friends with Brantley Gilbert, you built a badass chandelier for in his closet.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:26

And this is my favorite part about the veteran community is veterans that are doing something and contributing, doesn't matter how it is, and it's I want to hear how you got into this. So, but I this is to me is the best part of where we're at as our generation is getting away from the identity in the crisis of just being a disabled veteran. And I talk about it a lot on this show. I'm very open, and I will die on that hill that the most miserable vets are the ones that don't have a purpose. And these guys that their identity becomes being a disabled vet, and they live for being a disabled vet, which keeps you as a victim. Yep. And my biggest goal is to get guys to start anything. It doesn't even need to be a business, it could just start as a hobby.

SPEAKER_00: 2:15:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 2:15:17

So let's walk through custom antler designs because you are doing a little bit of everything from railings that are just woven with in the most beautiful horns you've ever seen, the sh the most beautiful chandeliers to a lamp. So, how did all of this happen?

SPEAKER_01: 2:15:33

Well, it started in 2008. Okay. So I was still super messed up, you know, PTSD ridden, TBI, broken in some regards. Um, and I I was driving down a highway and I saw a guy selling antler lamps on a side of the road. I'm still friends with this guy to this day, but basically I went there and I spent more money than I had. I think the lamp was, you know,$400 and I had$300. So I literally zeroed out my checking, put it in a negative, and bought this antler lamp. At the same time, my wife is pregnant and we just got out of the Marine Corps, and we have no money or nothing, you know, not even a job to even start anything. So it was like, it was a big deal that I bought this thing. So I bought this lamp and I take it home and I'm like, dude, this is the coolest thing I've ever had. My wife supports me in everything that I do, just like she always has. Well, over the years, it was kind of like it was almost a burden to the family because I would spend three or four hundred dollars on antlers. So here's what I figured out. I figured out that I could build a lamp. So I took apart that lamp, I rebuilt it, that I built my own lamp, then I built a coat rack, that I built an antler handled pizza cutter, that I built, you know, and I started selling them to friends and family and putting them on Craigslist, and then, you know, it it progressed. Well then then I'm then I'm spending three or four hundred dollars of our money that, you know, when you only get eleven hundred dollar paycheck, three or four hundred dollars is big dollars. So I'd take this money and I'd buy antlers, and it was a burden. So fast forward to about two thousand, probably it'd have been two thousand twelve, thirteen probably. I'm working for the state, and uh one of the foresters approached me and said that they had a giant pile of antlers, like a whole truckload, and they would pay me that if I built them an antler chandelier. And so I hadn't built a chandelier yet. Um, I'd messed with one little one, but it hadn't really been completed. It was gonna be a gift to a friend. So the whole thing is it's intimidating. Like working with antlers is a whole niche in itself, but like learning how to wire and figuring out all the other stuff, man, it's intimidating. You know, you're putting this in someone's home, so it's gotta be safe, right? So I um I built this chandelier over the course of six months. Literally, it took me six months to build this six-foot chandelier, and I built it and finished, and it looks it looks okay. Uh you know, it looks all right. And I helped him hang it, my first one. Um, and so I built a lot of shitty stuff for a number of years.

SPEAKER_03: 2:18:01

Okay. Um your shitty quality? Are you considered it shitty or 100% my shitty quality?

SPEAKER_01: 2:18:07

Okay, you know, um, and there was a certain turning point when I really started to hone in and figure out quality was where I wanted to be. And so I'm one of the only crafters. Well, there's not really many crafters in the country, but really there's not many that don't stain the whole chandelier. So basically, like the big companies they'll they'll build the chandelier, drill it all out, putty it all up, and then they'll stain it. Well, I don't do that. So it matches, so it matches. I only color match the antlers and I only paint the holes that we epoxy. Got it. So that makes me different. So as this has progressed, so is my skills in the in the building the chandeliers. So I build these extravagant chandeliers now, and I ship them all over the country, and I built I've built all over the world now. Um I've built them in New Zealand, I built them in Alaska, um, I've rebuilt stuff. I've uh just had a lot of really cool experiences with a lot of cool people. And um Brantley was one of those. Hannah Barron was one. Um, just some really positive people that have impacted my life. And I I I build these custom antler chandeliers and I ship them to your door. And and the beauty is that like I don't have a point of sale website where you just click on and be like, I want that one. You know, if you like something, I can rebuild it. Yeah, but the reality is that we can custom build for any spot, any space, any size, any type of antler that you like, any type of piece of wood that you want me to hang above it or whatever, we can build it. Um, all custom. There was a point that the switch from being a negative in my family to making it a positive switched in the business.

SPEAKER_03: 2:19:46

How did that feel?

SPEAKER_01: 2:19:47

I don't even know that I saw it. Okay. But I think that now that I look back in hindsight, it's like, oh my gosh, this has been the biggest blessing on my family. Yeah. The chandelier business. You know, I don't know, I don't know how people don't survive with a side hustle in this economy, but you know, it I I work another nine to five job for the fire department that we can mention too. But basically the the chandelier business, I I'm shipping these chandeliers all over the country. Um I had a therapist that that one therapist that I love so much that I saw in the morning, she finally pointed out at one point she says, She says, Nick, did you know that antlers is therapy to you? And I said, Holy shit. Holy shit. I can't believe I never thought about that. Um and so really, you know, the buying, selling, trading, you know, last month I bought, you know, 2,000 pounds of antlers. And so this is a serious operation, man. We got some we can build you anything with any type of antler you can ever dream of.

SPEAKER_03: 2:20:44

Good for you, man. So what's the biggest challenge of working with horn like that with antler?

SPEAKER_01: 2:20:51

Uh for me, yeah, it's a matter of like engineering the whole piece.

SPEAKER_03: 2:20:58

How does it start? How like I'm fascinated with this because you you've been looking at your stuff, I mean, how it all just flows and then it'll all curl at the same point. Is that a nightmare trying to match it? Like, how many different pieces are you going through?

SPEAKER_01: 2:21:12

So I I think that you know, I'll give you so much because I don't always share all the trade secrets, but the idea is that I can imagine a piece and I can imagine it in my brain enough that I can engineer it because realistically you have to drill out all these antlers. So every antler is going to have wiring running through it, and then every antler is gonna be screwed together, so you can't put screws where the wiring are, right? So then you have that dynamic, and then like on the bottom tier of something, you might have like on Hannah Barron's. Shoot, we probably put, let's see, nine, eighteen, twenty-seven, um, and then another eighteen, um, probably a hundred antlers just in the bottom tier, all lefts, all the same size, just one tier. So you have to have the right quality and quantity of antler to build a nice light, too. Yeah. I tell people that they're like, Can I ship you my antlers? I was like, absolutely. And if if you got a bunch of trophies, maybe we can work with it. If you got a bunch of stuff that's not trophies, maybe we use my stuff for the bottom, and then we build yours up. Like I just built this guy this monster whitetail chandelier. It's like six foot tall. And I used a big tier of my my stuff on the bottom, and so it's beautiful and perfect. And then I used all his small stuff, his cutoff stuff, stuff that was skull plated. I only use naturally shed antlers. So um, yeah, but I've gotten really, really good. And we got quite the process, man. I got I got a nephew that helps me full that helps me part-time. I got an employee that does epoxy and paint full time. I got my cousin that helps me create and ship part-time, got accountants and all that good stuff, and it's it's quite the operation.

SPEAKER_03: 2:22:54

What's the biggest piece you've done?

SPEAKER_01: 2:22:57

Um so I did a railing project that was like a hundred and something foot of railing, but the biggest lights that I'm building are about eight foot. Tall? Eight foot tall or eight foot long, depending on yeah, they're massive. They weigh hundreds of pounds. I was gonna say, what's something like that weight? Hundreds of pounds, depending on what it is. You know, I just built one, I just commissioned one for a a gentleman, and it it was a pleasure because it was all his antler from their ranch that they're actually building the house on. Oh, okay. They sent me two pallets of antlers.

SPEAKER_04: 2:23:30

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23:30

Incredible, man. Incredible. And you know, some of it was nice, some of it was not so nice, but the beauty was that it's all his. And so I built him this beautiful piece out of all his antler.

SPEAKER_03: 2:23:41

How much money does that save somebody by using their own?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23:43

Um, it depends on how crazy it is. Okay. So, like, I I tell people like on smaller medium stuff, it's sometimes it's even more work if I use your antler because I'm having to cut and sand and do all this other stuff, and then they're not symmetrical. You know, like in my piles, man, I can go through and I can pick out 10 rights that are the exact same size, exact same shape, exact same weight. Okay, and that's how you're getting symmetry.

SPEAKER_03: 2:24:05

Okay. Yeah, because if you look at them, it almost looks like they're fake, like molded because they at least looking at yours. Like Brandley Gilbert is a perfect example. Like, they're so perfect. Yep, they almost look fake. And so you're individually picking every single one of them for their own spot.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24:21

Yeah. So now I want you to think about all the antlers hanging in your house, cut them all off, put them in a pile, and make a chandelier out of it. Are you gonna get that symmetry? You're not, you're not, you're not. So, so I I don't mind using people's antlers, and like I like doing projects for like I got a gentleman that's uh I'm working with right now that we're gonna do one for his his his dad passed away, and it was all his dad's antlers. And so that that's a great project. You know, let me build the bottom to it, let me put yours in the top, and you know, commission me to build you something or add. And the the antler chandelier game is a pretty good niche, man. There's there's not a lot of people that do it. So um good for you.

SPEAKER_03: 2:24:58

Yeah, but what a what a a way to turn something that was therapy that you didn't even realize at first into a growing, very successful business. Now that you have employees and you're building out a shop, you're scaling everything. I mean, what what a success story that is, and that's that's pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25:16

I appreciate that, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25:17

Good for you, man. That's that that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25:19

I appreciate that. Yeah, I've worked hard at it, man. But you know, I'd say the one thing that I can tell people is, you know, find a hobby, man. I you're yours is it it doesn't always have to pay, but if it pays for itself, you're doing something and you're keeping your mind busy, right? Yeah. You know, it doesn't have to be golf, woodwork, do something. Sell them and rebuy your materials. Yeah, I have a buddy. That's how this started.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25:40

I got a buddy that does he smokes briskets for people.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25:42

Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25:43

He just loves he loves barbecueing, and you can place an order and he'll fill do the whole br and just drop it off your house all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25:48

Guarantee he's paying his whole grocery bill with the briskets that he's selling. You know, something that he loves.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25:53

I think that's the problem, the mindset with a lot of veterans that they feel like everything has to be this extravagant, big. I gotta, because you know, you look at social now and you're on, it's like everybody's got a successful business. Nobody sees the days where you're screwing everything up and putting holes in the wrong spots. And you know, there's there's the the years of struggle to get to where now you're building out hundred plus foot railings for giant log cabins that are the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Yeah, it's so I I think where a lot of veterans, what they need to do is just just jump. Just whatever you find it sucks turning a hobby into a job because it could take away the fun, but if it's lucrative enough and you're distracted long enough and you love it, run with it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26:36

But I love it, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:26:38

Even if it's just tying flies, figure something out to get your mind busy. You're not rotting, you're not stagnant, and it's just you're you're you're thinking, you're working, your hands. I mean, it's just it's all those little things that I think help guys get back on track, but it's the stagnant is where the biggest problem is.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26:57

Oh, I agree with that. I agree. And you know, like part of the antler game is not just building, it's buying and selling and dealing with clients, it's doing the back-end bookwork. It's it's like, dude, that's just keeping me occupied. You know, that's that's literally what it's doing. So it's not always the pretty side of you know, the building and create and showing it off, right? And I I put these videos on my Instagram, it's custom period antler period designs on Instagram, but I put these things on there and I put them on these videos and I put music to them, dude. It's rad. I got this good view off my back porch, and so it it turns out pretty cool. It's yeah, I didn't know that it was a marketing campaign, but apparently I'm a good marketer.

SPEAKER_03: 2:27:34

Well, yeah, your house is up on a hill, so it's it's a beautiful backdrop, and then you got this giant chandelier or whatever it is, yeah. Spinning right there and how you hang them. Yeah, you're you're crushing it, man. It's pretty badass. Like to be able to see it. I love a success story with vets because I feel we hear more negative, there's more failures in the veteran community than guys like yourself that are out there grinding it out, man.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27:58

I'm grinding, man. So my other job, I have this career in wildfire, yeah, wildfire mitigation. So I'll give you the short version. Basically, I fought fire in college, didn't have any job skills, got a job with the state, worked for the state for 10 years, doing private lands, forestry, running inmate crews, doing hand crew work, doing fire, wildfire. Oh shit. You know, all the all the wildfire action, and like guys that are into wildfire that are listening to this, like probably really like wildfire or really like the OT. I don't like either. I don't like either. Now it's not that I don't like money, but I have an antler business, so I'm I'm supplementing my my income that way. But the uh the actual wildfire thing, man, it reminded me of the Marine Corps. Reminded me of like being in Iraq, just at a shitty place, you know. Like I I I don't mind being outside all the time, but on the same note, like, you know, being next to a hot fire digging line for 10 hours does not seem like something I want to put on my calendar for next week. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03: 2:28:54

I think wildland guys don't get enough credit. They're oh, they're ham, man. I love I I want more wildland firefighters. I want to have a couple on the show because they just they're a special breed. And yeah, the Marines that I have known that used to be Wildlands firefighters, it's it's almost the perfect transition to go from college while fighting wildfires and then transitioning to the military. It's the just listening to them talk, like the living conditions, the work tempo, the just the hazards that they're in all day, every day, breaking their back, carrying hose up mountain. I mean, it and you hear it, you're like, Jesus Christ, like this is brutal. And so, yeah, it's uh it's a crazy environment.

SPEAKER_01: 2:29:42

Dude, dumping big snags, burning, man. That was my thing, dude. What's that? Like bumping dumping big trees with chainsaw.

SPEAKER_02: 2:29:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:29:49

So I was uh in the in the state, they they call it a B certifier, but they they never went to the extreme side with the state. They were they were very reluctant to give those certifications. Out, I think for uh, you know, just liability purposes. But I man, I used to dump some crazy stuff, just just crazy burning stuff. They'd be like, hey, call Jeffries, and I'd be getting off on it. You know, that was the one thing that really probably pumped my adrenaline, you know, getting under this big burning tree and having to put it right where it needed to go while everybody was watching, or what maybe they weren't. It's a rush dropping a big tree because these things are on fire, all cat-faced out, all burned out. Oh yeah. Yeah, and it's there's I I follow some fellers online that are uh, you know, guys that I used to work with and stuff, and it's just it's a riot. You know, I know what their adrenaline's going like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03: 2:30:34

So you have any close calls with trees coming back on you or limbs?

SPEAKER_01: 2:30:37

Oh yeah, really? Oh yeah. Burning trees, man, that's a dangerous game. It's probably one of the most dangerous. Fire and wildfire and burning trees is a very dangerous game. Oh I have seriously.

SPEAKER_03: 2:30:49

I'll be honest, I'm surprised we don't hear more about more guys getting killed out there. Um maybe they are and they just don't per they just don't put it out to the public. But that is I think they're very well prepared. Crazy ass job.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:01

Yeah, no, they do, man. I think you should pull up a pull up someone on a shot crew or something that's just running and gunning all summer long, dude. Yeah. And just from the most extreme environment to the most extreme environment all summer. That's what they do.

SPEAKER_04: 2:31:14

Just banking.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:15

Yeah, and you find some vet that does it, you know. So easy. Yeah. I can help you connect.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31:20

But yeah, I'd like to.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:21

Um so then that led me into the city job. So I I work for the city, I'm the manager, I'm the I'm the wildland resource planner for the Spokane Fire Department. So I I basically help the city manage for wildfire fuels. Okay. And I write grants for grant for fuels mu for fuels projects.

SPEAKER_03: 2:31:36

When you speak of fuels, you're talking fi fuel for fires.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:39

Yeah, so like wildfire forest health, if you think about it this way. So basically what we do is we go in and we thin the forest.

SPEAKER_02: 2:31:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:31:45

We thin the small stuff out. So eight inches and under, we prune the trees up and we dispose of the slash by chipping or masticating. Got it. We are not doing prescribed fire where I'm at because the the county that I live in is very uh wildline urban interface, houses everywhere. And so it just it wouldn't work. Got it. And so we're doing this mechanical treatment. And so like I I got there about four or four and a half years ago. In the last like 32 months, we've done like 16 or 1700 acres of treatments. We're crushing it. We're crushing it, dude.

SPEAKER_03: 2:32:16

Okay. So they're actually, this isn't like California where they're just nothing's happening.

SPEAKER_01: 2:32:20

So you guys are actually I think that there's work happening. I think that the scale is just not relative to what the wildfire problem is. Okay. So no matter where we go, like here in Boise, they have a fuel specialist, and and I guarantee they're out doing work. But are they capturing uh are we getting ahead of the problem? Like in Spokane County, we're not. I'm also the chair of the Spokane County Wildfire Mitigation Coalition that we stood up here a year, year and a half ago. And our goal is to do more fuels work in the county. And I I think it's important, I'm passionate about it. I think that we are extreme risk in the county for wildfire. Dude, we we've had some ripping fires this year, but man, you know, two years ago we lost uh 20,000 acres and and over 600 primary residences in a couple lives in our county, in our county, man. And so, like, for me, I'm at this point where I got this great career and these people that are working with me on my time off and my my other business, and and then I have this antler business, and I'm like, which what which direction do I go? And like for now, I'm just gonna do both, which is crazy. But for sure, I'm just gonna hustle. I'm just gonna hustle and do what I have to do where I have to do it until somebody makes me make a decision. Um, but like we wrote a grant and we're we're uh we were successful in that in 22. We're gonna write another grant this year. We we wrote another grant, we're waiting on the results for 5.4 million this year.

SPEAKER_03: 2:33:37

So what would you do with that five million?

SPEAKER_01: 2:33:39

Fuels work. So we'd basically do more thinning projects within the city and and make Spokane safer. And like I said, I I think that there's work happening. I think it's it's less than where we're gonna be to catch the par. So we're behind the curve, right? We've suppressed fire, we've done a damn good job suppressing fire. Um, we got these unmanaged forests that have been high graded and logged, and you know, just a lot of unmanaged forests, and then and then the Forest Service goes to do a logging operation and they get sued in nine different directions. So they they maybe stand up one of their five timber harvests that they have lined up for the fall. Well, that is reducing our ability to get work done, right? Long term, longevity, and the whole big picture.

SPEAKER_02: 2:34:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:34:21

And so, you know, um, I won't get into anything politics-wise, but the reality is we need to do more treatments, logging, fuels, treatments, burning, prescribed fire, all these things in the Western U.S. if we're gonna catch up to the curve. And like wildfire smoke, dude, I don't know how it affects your hunting, but man, it's really screwed up some of my hunts.

SPEAKER_03: 2:34:41

Oh, year after year.

SPEAKER_01: 2:34:42

Year after year, man, and it's not getting any better. From Oregon to burning to Washington, burning to Idaho burning. All the smoke comes here. The Canada on fire, smoke coming here, California on fire. So the reality is, you know, to get it in check, we we need strong individuals that are that are willing to go out and you know do prevention work and and really work on the back end of the suppression side. Because the suppression side, they do a great job. Okay, they put out these fires well. Um, it's an expensive task, but they put them out well, and they've done that great for a hundred years. But if we do more on the prevention side, I think we can we can make a difference. Do they use a lot of um inmates? Yeah, so this work? So, yeah, in in the county, in the county that I live, we have a six, six, ten-man cruise, inmate cruise. That's actually how I started with the state. I used to run those crews. How was that?

SPEAKER_03: 2:35:33

It was badass. Are those guys pretty open for it? I mean, because they get some freedom. I mean, you're not having problems, right?

SPEAKER_01: 2:35:38

They get free food. We buy them food every night.

SPEAKER_03: 2:35:40

Really?

SPEAKER_01: 2:35:41

Yeah, it was it was it's a horrible man. It's like anybody that works with offenders, like it's it's it's a task in itself to work with offenders. Then you got to teach them how to fight fire. Then you got the stress of taking these guys out. We didn't have guns, like we were just civilians.

SPEAKER_03: 2:35:54

But I mean, at this point, if they have the privilege of being let free on a work program, I mean, obviously they're probably not a high threat. They could they could I guess okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36:03

They could be on their last four years. Okay. That was the catch. So they could be in for murder too and be in for 20 years, but still be out on a wildfire because they're in their last four years.

SPEAKER_02: 2:36:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36:12

So it's not that their their crimes were less, it's just the time of the period that they were in before they got out. Okay. It is a great program, and I truly believe that it helps recidivism and the ability or the inability to go back to prison. Um and it's a great program. A great program, and we get a lot of shit done for very cheap.

SPEAKER_04: 2:36:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36:34

Now they're getting minimum wage in Washington, now they're getting minimum wage on wildfire, and they're getting two bucks an hour uh off of fire season. I they were getting they were getting 63 cents when I worked there 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_03: 2:36:47

Do you agree with the money that they're making now?

SPEAKER_01: 2:36:49

If it goes to a good cause, you know, a lot of it's getting paid back to the court systems and uh child supports and different things because it gets put in the system, and then if you have money in the system, then they take it, right? Okay. So it's not all just going to an offender that's going to go out and blow it on stuff. So um, yes and no. I think that we spend a lot of money on wildfire, and I think we should spend a lot of money on prevention.

SPEAKER_03: 2:37:10

Um well, I mean, imagine if they grew those programs, because uh well, that's one of my biggest questions. It's like I remember when I was young, you'd see inmates, I mean it was a big thing. I don't even know how much they're doing it in California anymore, but it's like if we truly cared about rehabilitating men and women to get them out of the system, that those are the type of jobs that it should be strict, like not strictly, but the majority of those numbers should be coming from the inmates that that want the opportunity to learn and to and then they could get out and then they get hired on.

SPEAKER_01: 2:37:44

They do, and they totally do. I had guys I had guys get out, and like I still know I I know of a couple that I worked with at that program that are out in the civilian world doing okay. Yeah. A couple.

SPEAKER_03: 2:37:58

A couple, but yeah, but I mean it gives them the opportunity instead of oh, hey, you've been locked up for 15 years, have a nice life. Yeah, no, it's like, hey, you got a couple years left. Here's this program. Do you want to learn a skill? Up to the inmate, obviously, and if they want to continue it, but it gives them an opportunity. But I feel with how bad our forests are here, both especially the West Coast, like you know, Oregon, California, Washington, obviously, it's like, man, put their asses to work.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38:23

Man, we could do so much fields work. Like uh, what do they call that back in the day? The uh Civilian Conservation Corps, CCC, they used to bring work camps in and do all this stuff back in during during the recession.

SPEAKER_04: 2:38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38:34

Um or during the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_04: 2:38:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38:37

I I don't know all the history. I'm not a history buff, but you know, basically, like if we came together and had these crews of young individuals or incarcerated individuals and actually did some fuels work and did some serious prevention work, I think we could, you know, it's not getting any better, man. Listen, we've had, by definition, in in the county that I live in, we've had 10 of the worst fire seasons in the last or five of the worst fire seasons in the last 15 years. Five or ten of them, man. It's unbelievable. Like these fires are just ripping. Like we got a 500 acre going right now or an 800 acre right out, right out in an area that I used to do fuels treatments in, and it's in the county, you know, burning up houses and just scary stuff, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:39:16

Yeah, it is. I think uh I don't understand. I don't know who thought it was a great idea to end those programs and because you're not helping anybody at the end of the day, you're you're making it worse out in the forest. You're you're you have the ability to have busloads of these inmates putting their ass to work. I don't care if they're on a chain gang, you put an axe in their hand, tie them all together, and they're digging.

SPEAKER_01: 2:39:36

I don't know if that would work so good these days. I don't know that would I don't know if we sneak by with that one.

SPEAKER_03: 2:39:42

Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, you had these guys putting in trenches, you know, they're putting in brakes. It's like put their asses to work. I I support, I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 2:39:51

You know, sitting in a cell rotten out is not gonna solve anybody's problem.

SPEAKER_03: 2:39:55

Worrying about who what play you got next going on in prison, and okay, how am I just surviving here? Or it's like, hey, come learn a skill. Yeah. Okay, so all of the vets that are listening, man, you've been through hell. But through two, you did the initial push through Fallujah, you went back to Fallujah, you've gotten out, you've got a great job. You started a side business which is exploding right now, which I feel your main job's not gonna be around much longer once once the fire catches. We'll see. And I hope that I hope that's the planning. I mean, either way, you're living life. What would be advice to the veteran community that's out there right now that that are era vets?

SPEAKER_01: 2:40:32

Go get the help. Because that you're not gonna do anything if you don't have the help. Like if you can't function, like I I started a um I started a deal a while back, but the the sole purpose was to find purpose in the guys sitting down listening. Okay. And like on this platform right now, if you're sitting down listening, go get the help. Go to a veteran center, find a veteran center, go to the VA, get your service connection. Listen, they they'll pay you for your disabilities, and that will help life be a little easier. Okay, and that'll give you a little less anxiety or depression. And then you go to the VA and you maybe you get some meds, and and the first med dose probably isn't gonna work very well, and the second dose might not work well either, but the third dose might be the one that's gonna make you feel better. So pay attention. Pay attention. Exercise, get outside. Exercise, get outside, exercise, get outside. Listen, do not sit on yourself. You know, I don't I don't formally go to a gym as much as I'd like to, but I hunt excessively and I fish excessively. I've been all over and I just get the blessing to be able to do that. But if you get out in the outside in nature, like that is therapy in itself, man. Like I don't know anybody who has a bad day when they go out to nature, whether they're hunting, whether they're fishing, whether they're sitting on by a lake. Like, there's no bad day out there. It's healing. It's healing, yeah, 100%. Um and the last thing I'd say is just stay busy, man. You know, you're you're the only one that's gonna be able to motivate yourself. I I can't motivate you, you know. Um, your spouse isn't gonna be able to motivate you. You know, you got to make that decision and and and make that that strong decision that you you know go ahead and move forward and do those things that are gonna be hard, man. There's gonna be shitty feelings, and you know, I I feel great today, but who knows? I was thinking about it actually when we as we were finishing discussing a lot of the military stuff, but like flying home today, I'm probably gonna be anxious as hell, man, because I haven't talked about any of that stuff in a long time. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? That's me working through some of that, and that's me, you know, I feel like this this podcast is important because I can talk and and hit an audience that I haven't in the past with my veteran story of like you can be successful, right?

SPEAKER_03: 2:42:45

Yeah, absolutely. Have you found faith in any of this?

SPEAKER_01: 2:42:49

Yeah, so funny that you say that. So um, you know, the Marine Corps, I I felt like it was uh a big blur, but it's like kill everything, God isn't helping, you know, like the things you see in war, like God can't be part of that, or that's the understanding that you might have.

SPEAKER_03: 2:43:09

Why would God let this happen?

SPEAKER_01: 2:43:10

Why would God let this happen? No, that that'd be the statement I'd say. And so I had a really hard time with it, and you know, as times progressed, I felt like God has become a way bigger part of my life. How? Um, I don't go preaching to people, but I would tell you this. I would tell you that God has a plan, and if you step up and and be participate in that plan, if you don't participate, nothing's gonna happen for you. But if you participate, things are gonna start to go your way. And and the more positive that you put into the world, the more positive you're gonna get back. They call it karma, but you know, honestly, it's not karma, it's God making a plan for you.

SPEAKER_03: 2:43:50

Blessings.

SPEAKER_01: 2:43:50

It's blessings in your in your life and and blessings in others around you. Um you know, not everything is gonna be perfect, and not everybody's perfect. I'm no I'm no perfect example, man. Just because I've survived it doesn't mean I haven't put my wife and kids through hell, through the you know, the the stuff that we went through over the years. But the reality is I'm here to talk about it today. So that's the difference, right?

SPEAKER_03: 2:44:15

I see you get pretty emotional with things. What what comes back to you?

SPEAKER_01: 2:44:19

Well, I I think that just the the heartache of um you know everything that I've been through. I think that um I haven't talked about a lot of that stuff in a long time, but you know, like veterans helping veterans is probably my number one thing in life. Over hunting, overwork, over family, like all of it. Like I I just feel so much for other veterans because I know I've been there. And it's just so hard to change, man. So hard to make decisions and so hard to go forward with stuff. Those vet centers are very non-VA oriented. Okay. Um so if if like I I feel like a lot of vets are like, I don't want to deal with the VA. Well, the vet center is paid for by the VA, but they're very um, it's very buddy to buddy.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45:07

We're where are vet centers?

SPEAKER_01: 2:45:09

They're all over.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45:10

Okay. Google them.

SPEAKER_01: 2:45:11

Veteran centers. And and the whole thing is they have mobile ones too. Um and and maybe you're not in an area that that has one, um, but you know, there's resources there that can still help you. You know, there's so just search VA vet centers. VA vet centers, yeah. Okay. And they're they're they're spread out all over.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45:29

Yeah. Okay, good to know. I appreciate this conversation, man.

SPEAKER_01: 2:45:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45:36

It's pretty good. I I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing some wild ass stories. I feel most people don't have a clue what went on in Fallujah. And I'm not a Fallujah Marine. I'm I mean this in the most respectful way. I'm glad I'm not a Fallujah Marine because I know a lot of dudes that are, and there's a lot of problems that came from there, and I'm glad that you were on the successful side. I don't know if you see it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:45:58

I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45:59

Talk to a lot of vets, and there's a lot that are not where you're at. Because they let it get to them and they let the they let the hate, they let the whatever it is, man, they let it just consume them. And so it's it's been pretty awesome to be able to talk to you and to see. I know it's not probably always the easiest to have these conversations. I personally feel having these conversations helps a lot because it just it builds. Even though you're not talking about it, I personally feel it inside of you, it festers and it just smolders. And then and then eventually it might it might go from every couple weeks to maybe now it's once a month, and now maybe every six months I have a my wife calls them a tax, like you know, and where you just you know get on that part again. But guys like you, it's like you slowly have just built and built and worked on yourself, and now it might be every few years, but if you don't talk about it and you don't communicate it, it's still there, it's never gonna go away. Yeah, we just have to face that. That's the dotted line that we signed, and so that's what our whole generation has to deal with now is you know, guys going through Fallujah. And so I'm I'm super proud of you, bro. It's pretty, I know we just met, but it's it's pretty cool. I love vet successful veteran stories. There's there's nothing to me that's greater than vets helping vets, vets being successful. That's why I always and whenever I hear a vet's got their own thing going on, I want to give them the platform to be able to just come and talk because to me that's the ultimate success story to me is watching these guys as children going to war. Yeah, and then the Marine Corps or the military goes, have a nice life and throws you out into society, and all you've known is killing and hate and discontent and drinking and partying and sex and whatever else we were chasing is young boots and running around oceanside. You know, it's just how your life becomes. And so for you to transition out and I and to have these conversations and to build what you've built, proud of you, dude. I'm proud of all anybody, any vet that has these stories. Like it's it means a lot to you you come on here and share this with us. So thank you. As soon as she jumps out of the bathroom, I want to get a shot. I'm gonna shout out the the lamp. Hurry up, kid! Right when you go to the bathroom. I'm gonna grab the lamp so you can see it. So so everybody's seeing the work that you do. Listen to the shot. We got our new, we got our new lamp for the podcast. I don't know if we're gonna get it all in the camera, but so this is the work that you do, man. Is that all in there, kid, or no?

SPEAKER_05: 2:48:39

Uh kind of. I'll do the middle camera.

SPEAKER_03: 2:48:41

Right here? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you either or the middle camera. This thing is absolutely beautiful. It's uh made out of real birch. You have a woman that goes out there and harvests this and then sews it together with sinew, right? Are my own Mike, you got me? Yeah, and then you have the most beautiful antlers, and this is this is your creation, man. Like, who would have thought from Fallujah to the antler lights? To the antler lights and building the most beautiful chandeliers that you've ever seen in your life, and to something I don't want to say as simple as this, because there's no fucking way I'd ever be able to build this, but good for you, dude.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49:15

I appreciate it, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:49:16

Yeah, hope you enjoy it, dude. Thank you. I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate your time. And this was rad. This is exactly why we do this. So appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49:28

Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_03: 2:49:29

That's it.