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Constant Combat
This veteran-led podcast highlights the experiences of Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, starting with their harrowing 2004 deployment to Ramadi; a 9 month combat tour which resulted in the highest casualties in a single deployment - a deployment that most Americans have never heard about. Through candid conversations surrounding these events, the series also explores earlier experiences that shaped the Marines, emphasizing their grit, humor, and humanity while aiming to honor their stories authentically.
Constant Combat
How to Tame a Dragon - Kevin Sakaki (part 1 of 2)
Great conversation with Kevin Sakaki. The heart of this conversation is a ground-level look at Iraq in 2004 through the eyes of a Marine sergeant who straddled two worlds: headquarters platoon responsibilities and a rare, high-trust integration with an ODA team. His experience and resourcefulness threaded through everything; tracing how training, trust, and improvisation shaped survival in a city on fire. Blue-on-blue incidents, comms failures, and leadership moments reveal what kept people alive when luck ran thin.
• weapons training standard set by Gunny Carl Mararchi
• selection and integration with ODA... and direct action
• CQB, breaching, foreign weapons and tradecraft drills
• surreal life with ODA amid daily risk
• return to battalion and Map 3 after a KIA
• late-stage operations near the government center
• improvised armor and innovative gun mounts
• Kevin's NJP story and leadership standards under stress
• M1 Abrams Tank blue-on-blue incident
• repeated friendly fire and inter-service comms failures
• memory, loss, survivor’s guilt and moving forward
If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.
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If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ RamadiPodcast@gmail.com, or via the podcast website above.
All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM
There you go. So let's tell everybody who you are and what rank you were back in 2004.
SPEAKER_01:Uh Kevin Sakaki and Sergeant in 2004. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Nice. And so my memory serves you started in headquarters platoon, is that right?
SPEAKER_01:In Iraq?
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So before we left, we were doing the workup. That was when they kind of started doing the re-org, sort of, if you will. Like we down. I think that's when we started going with uh instead of weapons, uh we went with mobile assault platoon, you know. And so right before we left, I think that's when um at the time Gunny Maraki got pulled to HS to be the company gunny. Am I am I right about that? I'm I'm gonna need help with a lot of this stuff too.
SPEAKER_03:That's okay. But I think if he wasn't he wasn't HS's company gunny, he was still weapons company's company gunny, but he was part of headquarters platoon, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Headquarters, not H S headquarters platoon, yeah as company gunny. So that's when he pulled me to headquarters platoon, you know. And uh I remember him saying everybody has to do their time. But but but though he made up for it though. He man, I I give that man uh so much credit for Cap Platoon was like with him and the training that we got, it was unlike anything that anybody else was doing except maybe the recompletons, like the shooting that we did on ship, the shooting that we did in Okinawa with the jungle warfare package and all the other stuff getting us like into and uh you know training like big boys, you know, instead of unload, show clear, safe let it hang, all these things we got to do. So I I credit him a lot for a lot of my career path, so to speak. But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The training we did prior to leaving Okinawa, especially, uh, with and he started with really nailing it down with Capplatoon and Okinawa, but then he spread it to the whole company and and made the weapons handling skills second nature. Oh, yeah. Uh when he put on that little mini, uh made other people in the company as sort of like actors to act like they were insurgents, and we went and did like that uh uh using the sim rounds to shoot each other and throw in the fake RD sims as grenades and stuff. And it was just him and that dude from Echo Company that put that on. Like there was nobody else that did that in the backyard of our uh of San Mateo.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, that's right. I forgot about that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he he built he designed and built that himself, and and the weapons handling skills and the scenarios were all of it all in his brain.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he he did I I I still talk to quite a few people, and a lot of people, especially if you were in cat, like give him credit for you know the reason why they feel like they came home, you know.
SPEAKER_02:100 uh as a as an 81s man, uh I I'm often saying how he 100% made sure that we were as successful as we were. Yep, 100%. There's absolutely no doubt.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Yeah, I remember uh like when I say he made it up from to me, like going to to headquarters platoon. That was uh that was a huge kind of kick in the nuts, if you will, you know, like I with everybody else. But I got to the plus side of that was I got to go out with everybody. I think at one point, I think I went out with every platoon on you know on patrol for something, whether it was Rainmaker, whether it was map one, two, or three. Um, you know, and then when uh ODA came into the picture and was trying to get a recon element to attach to them, and they got uh shut down on that. Then they even asked for like our snipers to be attached to them for direct action, and and higher ups were like, no, we're not giving them up, but we can give you like a 10 marine detachment. But I that's when Gunny Marky at the time threw my hat and the name of the hat, and I got to go do that, which was amazing.
SPEAKER_03:Uh I I would love for you to talk in detail about that because that's something I don't think anybody knows about because it was just you and knife and bearded ladies. Well, that was different. Your bearded ladies was with uh Sergeant Major Booker, was a Sergeant Major Booker's private attempt to do that, but the uh the ODA thing is again as much as you can tell would be wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, yeah, that was life-changing for me. I learned more in the I think it was two months that I was with them I did in 10 years in the Marine Corps. Um, like it was, I mean, we did so they came to I think battalion and asked asked for what they asked for. They got given what they got given, which was 10 Marines.
SPEAKER_02:And you remember who the Marines were that were with you?
SPEAKER_01:I just remember it was it was me, uh Neil, uh, I think it was Sergeant Langford, and I think he was with HS Company. I'm not sure where No, it's right.
SPEAKER_03:I have a picture of you and Neil and Langford sitting together, and I was like, oh shit, he was with them too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, he so and it was it was it was beautiful the way they set this up because of Langford's connections with you know his direct access to HS, like the reason ODA wanted this in the first place was because they wanted to be able to do like hits on high value targets and and direct things without having to go through the red tape because they were kind of operating an RAO. And so what they did, uh they came and they they wanted this relationship, so they didn't have to waste time going to blue diamond processing everything, having it be you know put out from there back down who was gonna do what, like, and usually it was us providing a cordon for them or something else. No, to wait for it. So when we came together with them, it it streamlined that to it's genius, actually. Yeah, it was really beautiful, uh, you know, just amazing for us to be able to kind of just if there was something that needed to be handled, we just did it. And Langford could just even get on the horn and call over to the CP and say, Hey, you know, this is where we're gonna be, this is what we're doing, you know, and boom, you know, off we go. And so um, but that's kind of how the whole relationship got started with because of what they wanted to do. They didn't want to have to wait, they didn't want to have to go through the red tape, and they wanted kind of a direct act, direct action like trailer platoon, if you will.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's kind of what we became. Um, but it was actually gold, it was more than that though, because we really were fortunate that the team that we were with integrated us into their team instead of kind of just being like a outside trailer platoon sort of thing. We got to actually we had to kind of earn their trust first. So they put us through a whole lot of their training, everything from like foreign weapons training to uh a lot of housework. They had their own little kill house on the base over there. It was freaking awesome. That's cool. Um and so we did a lot of training, a lot, a lot of training, like with you know how they operate and how they do CQB, doing you know, like free flow, you know, dynamic entry, all the different things. Like we had to learn how to make charges to blow doors and all these things, and then integrate into a stack with them going into a house. It was kind of brutal because I remember like one time, I don't remember who the one man was, but you know, you show the bang and then you the two man shows the bang and throws it in. But if one goes, we all go, kind of thing. Nope. So the one man just followed the bang in the room and they're like, follow it. I'm like, shoot. Yeah. So you know, you go in and it's just like that happened a couple different times that I remember, but but it worked out the bugs, you know, it was really cool. But I mean, we were learning everything from like surreptitious entry to which was like picking locks to hot wiring vehicles to all kinds of things. It was like drinking from a fire hose for like a week, yeah. Yeah, I mean, all of this stuff that it was like, but it the really crazy part about it was if the Marine Corps had been doing it, it would have been kind of like a boot camp style thing, not a gentleman's course. But this was just like, hey guys, tell me you guys want to hit the range tomorrow, you know. We'd show up and and the the guys would should come down in uh like shorts and flip-flops, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's what I remember is uh on July 4th, they were launching off the flares because we could see their camp and they're shooting flares off as their own fireworks display. Yeah, and so we looked through the tow site to see who's doing it, and there's two dudes in board shorts and flip-flops just pounding flares, and we're like, Oh my god, that's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that day was hilarious because they actually they had a it was it was nuts. Like, I remember one time we were we went back to we drove all the way back to Baghdad. Oh, and uh like while we were there, like I we went into the PX n because they we know we had to get like civilian clothes too to be able to because I remember going over to Blue Diamond a couple times with them to go into the CP and I'm wearing like the digi bottoms and like GoFasters and like a t-shirt and a baseball cap, and people are like, What the fuck? Who's this guy? Like with a 1911 on my hip and uh M4, because none of us had M4s, we all had the damn long guns and all that. Yeah, so it was kind of funny, man. But I went into the PX to go buy, you know, just like, oh, I'm gonna get a swisher sweep while I'm here, some stogies, and they had cigars, and the guy was like, Don't don't pay for those, we'll just put it on our budget, you know. I was like, Damn, okay. So they pay for all our clothes and everything. But I remember for 4th of July, this was this was fucking hilarious. They had uh one of their dudes was like planning it, and he actually bought a swarm a swarma machine to be able to cook swarma, make swarm dancer, and uh oh my gosh, it was hilarious. Well, you guys heard the the festivities, it was it was just you know, like here, all this is how I think that was probably one of the most surreal things that happened there because it was just like you know, here we are in the middle of the shit, and it's like you know, we're we're all sitting down watching a belly dancer and and drinking a beer, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I couldn't see the belly dancer through the toe site, but that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was pretty good though. I like we we did a whole lot with with them and what they would call um ASO Advanced Special Operations, which would be like uh, well, when I would go to work for Blackwater and then later start working for the CIA, they called it tradecraft, yeah, like meeting with assets, developing assets, doing um you know CPUs, clandestine pickups, and and all these different things that we were doing all over the place, rolling around in like soft skin, you know, indige vehicles dressed like indige.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Um, there's a lot of different groups that get to call themselves special forces, but uh ODA, Operational Detachment Alpha is like the I mean, they're the Green Berets, right? But that's like people don't realize how they're they're like, I don't know, such an interesting operational asset in that they get to operate in the in-between portion of like the the State Department, the CIA, like all these other they they they operate differently.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was really cool and and the way they lived and like and then even um I actually got to see like um McCulliffe when he got he went to recon before we left. And those guys would come over and use the range to train. Nice, like hang out in the house, you know, and eat eat all the snacks and the food, and you know, it sounds about right all the lickies and chewy, and and go, you know, yeah, that was kind of cool.
SPEAKER_02:Uh no, but you didn't spend that entire time with them, or how did that how did that work? I mean too much because you came back.
SPEAKER_01:So we we got chopped to them to to one team in ODA. And when that team rotated out, was kind of on the tail end of their deployment. The the oncoming team we stayed with for a short while, but each team within an ODA unit kind of does things differently. So, like that team didn't have the same, I guess, like operational need that the other team did, or they they were going at it from a different angle. I don't know what their deal was, but they just we stayed with them for a little while, and then they just said, Hey, we don't really have a need for y'all, and they just cut us back to the to the battalion.
SPEAKER_03:From my memory, now you'll have to correct me. That was kind of almost I don't know, I don't know. Our deployment was short, it was eight months, so it was like mid to end of deployment because you came back to us right after Operation Traveler with all the Zerkawi stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Well, we actually were kind of doing something in conjunction with that with y'all.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I remember one time. Oh, I think I was talking to Heath about this recently, but um you guys were I think the company was actually setting a cordon for us.
SPEAKER_03:Correct.
SPEAKER_01:And um, yeah, that's when I shot a guy jumping across the roof. That was funny. Um but yeah, it was a lot of stuff like that. It was pretty cool, you know. It was just uh so I came back around that time, and I think that was I was not with y'all when Condi um was KIA.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then uh when I came back, that's when they um sent me to map three, which was Condi's platoon. That was hard. That was something I didn't really, you know, of all the platoon platoons I could have gone to, I I didn't want to go to map three under those circumstances, you know. Like to to be like it was really awkward for me, really awkward, because I felt like you know how tight everybody is. Every platoon has their own.
SPEAKER_04:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we all love each other, we all get along great, like we're you know, like there's you know, there's a whole lot of interaction between everybody, but as a platoon stands on its own, the inner workings of that platoon are just really unique in that when you're operating together, it's hey, we already got who we got. We don't need anybody else. You know, so it was hard because I mean I knew a lot of the guys in map three, I knew Latham and and Heath and I mean we were anti-armor platoon together pervocate all that.
SPEAKER_03:So basically all the 51s and 52s knew each other well.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, all the shenanigans in Okinawa from IF back back then it was IFAV platoon, yeah, right. Which was funny. Rolling around in G3s before they were G3s or G Wagon. Right. Yeah, so I came back to do that and um fill a spillet, so to speak, which really sucked. But it was I'm I'm glad that I got to, and the guys were great, you know. Uh I think I was in a truck with like Latham and Pepper. I don't remember who my driver was at the time, but I definitely remember Pepper was my gunner.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. Is uh you so you were in the high back with Pepper and Latham in the back, Cox sometimes in the back, vigil.
SPEAKER_01:Nope, we were not not in a high back.
SPEAKER_03:I think we were in a they had dumped the high back by that point, and they were in one of the up armored, yep.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, yeah, because I just remember Pepper being in the gun in the turret, yep, and always having a bag of candy with him, and always like trying to hand down candy. Hey, we want some, which was funny, like never without candy.
SPEAKER_03:I think if I and this is I'm just going off everybody else's stories, but I think the driver was either Valenzuela or uh Ortiz. Does that sound right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it was Ortiz.
SPEAKER_03:Could have been.
SPEAKER_01:Ortiz.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe that's funny. He might have been in map one, also. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So after you gotten over to uh map three, did you did you have any uh bigger operations at that point? Because we started, I think some of our bigger operations had just finished.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we not so much bigger operations. We we you know we were still gosh, did we have another bug hunt after that? I don't remember.
SPEAKER_03:So we did. We had uh I don't remember the name of it, but it was August 9th, and it was it was in the industrial district, right? Uh just just north of um Saddam's mosque.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, we were part of that. Like I remember that too. Not a whole lot then. We were going out a lot. Um but you know, and then I think we were stuck doing some of the left seat, right seat before we retrograded back. And I remember being at the government center when everyone else was going to Junction City for a bit.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so you were there on September 11th and 12th for all the shenanigans that happened with the government center and everything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just just got there before I think uh oh, what was his name? Diaz.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, got hit by the mortar.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, and then he got evaced. Um, didn't you get hit too? Didn't you?
SPEAKER_02:So I got I got my truck got hit with that RPG the day before and fucked me all up. And then I stayed in the game, but then I was going up the ladder to see Diaz and got blown off the ladder, but I didn't get I got rattled, but I didn't get right hurt hurt.
SPEAKER_01:Crazy, crazy. A lot of the stuff that happened happened before I got cut to ODA. I mean, that's when I was really going out a lot with um like map Shane. You were in map two, right? Or map one? Map two. Map two, yeah. I got to go out with you guys a lot because of uh Lieutenant Stevens. Stevens, he was he was awesome. He didn't care if I rolled with you guys at all. So every chance I got you guys got to go out, I got to go with you guys. Not every chance, but a lot of the times I did between that and map one, not so much. Um, a few times. Uh that was Lieutenant Crawford Crawford.
SPEAKER_02:I think he only came out once or twice with Sledgehammer.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And then I don't think I don't remember that many times with you. I I remember a couple, but I don't remember that many.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And then uh anything else that I went out with was with Gunny Maraki as his gunner in a high back where with the the homemade uh pental mount, you know, like the I don't even know who made those. I don't remember. Wasn't that you, Shane? Didn't you weld some of that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was a whole there was a couple of working parties, but that specific weird pental mount system we built from scrap uh Gunny Marare had scratched those plans that he made in his head on some paper and came over and traded a bunch of MREs to the CBS for us to use a plasma cutter and a welder. That's right. He had a big pile of scrap, it was angle iron and all this other stuff, and he drew this thing out on paper and he's like, build this. And so it was me and Savage and Monroe and uh just a whole bunch of people idea of what we came into Iraq with what we ended up man, like the we came in with no armor, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Like I remember, do you remember rolling? Did you did you fly or did you drive?
SPEAKER_03:We drove up, right?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so yeah, like when we rolled out, like it was the soft skins, and we just took the doors off so we could get out easier if we needed to.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I had half doors. Um, there was a National Guard unit that had come uh and they had dumped a bunch of extra armor, and so we had jacked some armored half doors. They were half doors, I mean they literally came up to mid mid-arm.
SPEAKER_01:Now I I I can't can you confirm this for me or not? Because I think sometimes some of the memories are like a little off for me and crazy, but like I won't use names, but were we? I think at one point when before we LOD'd, it was like we were two Humvees short, and the next morning, you know, like I had I think it was uh Scrat and like Lance Corporal Underground, right? Like we I remember doing a count going down the line, and we were right on the money. We had two extra Humvees, don't know where they came from, nobody asked, nobody cared.
SPEAKER_03:We did get an extra Humvee. I don't know where that came from. Just one though. I don't remember two.
SPEAKER_02:So I I can't I can't speak to the Humvee, but I I have a I just found a letter recently and I just told the story a little bit ago. But uh like when they would come down on the convoy coming back into Kuwait, they had like a dump off space that was supposed to be shared amongst everybody.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I found out when the next guy, which when the next convoy was coming in at like like 21 or 22, and I took a ponte over there and we we scavenged everything. It was like a it was a Stanford and Sons like back of the high back, just filled with new tires and jerry cans and armor.
SPEAKER_01:And we we I think were the most like I don't think there's any other branch that's as as resourceful as we are, like literally for for what we left with, what we ended up doing, what we came, you know, how we managed to get through the things that we did. Um it's like super impressive. You know, I mean, here's a funny story, nothing to do with armor, but um, you guys remember how like like we were always eating fucking carrot cake, the syrup carrot cakes, like like and then like we thought for like I don't know about you, but for a while I thought that's all that was coming. And then we later we found out there was chocolate and vanilla, and like and uh that was HS company that was hoarding them because it would come into them and they would divvy out who got what. And so I remember once the same person like rolls down like in a hummer, a high back hummer, and he's doing his normal little giggle, and he's like running back and like filling everyone's freezers, but he stole all of the chocolate and vanilla cakes, like out to all the different so like he left them all the carrot cake.
SPEAKER_03:Uh-huh. Yeah, new New Meyer was my we uh we used to joke and call him and Horadsky, I think Horadsky. Yeah, we used to call them the ferrets because they would they would disappear and come back with new treasures, yeah, all the time.
SPEAKER_01:So great, you know, yeah, those are some funny stories.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, my favorite one of them doing that was when right before we were about to cross the Kuwait-Iraq border, uh, an army convoy was next to us at whatever camp that was that we parked at. It was more like a parking lot, like a desert parking lot. And they snuck over to that convoy and took three toolboxes full of tools from their mechanics. And I was like, Did they need those? And they're like, no, no, they had 10 more. And I was like, okay, I'll allow it. Great, great.
SPEAKER_01:I remember walking into the hooch one time to to go see Jimmy, and uh, like we were talking. I just walked in, and and New Meyer came up with that goofy grin on his face, and he was just like, and and you know, Jimmy, he was like, What do you need, New Meyer? And he was just like, huh, huh? And I was like, What, scrat? And he was like, and then he just yelled out, not rates against the NCOs, and then like everybody jumped us, like so. We're throwing these guys around. And do you remember that, Shane? Oh, yeah, and like I remember this. Jimmy had Harden had a a wrist rocket, one of those slingshots, yep, and grabbing Jolly Ranchers out of a bag, unwrapping them, and he would he would shoot them into the ceiling that we finally just got hard top ceilings. Remember that? Shatter and explode and send these shards of Jolly Rancher candy into everybody, and they'd be screaming like they were getting hit with glass. It was so fucking funny. That was some funny shit. That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So while you were with uh head what with headquarters platoon, you stayed with in the headquarters shop, right?
SPEAKER_01:Pretty much.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh yeah. Until I had to, oh gosh, I forgot about that. I had to may have been the only Marine. Actually, no, there was one more I remember now. Um, that got NJP'd in Iraq, and that's and then my which was all that that whole Sergeant Cook thing.
SPEAKER_03:Um Yeah, dude, tell the story. That's the one I want to hear, man.
SPEAKER_01:He's the only person. Well, first Sergeant Mac at the time, now you know Sergeant Major, but he's I think he's the only person that ever made first Sergeant Mac cuss. Ever cuss. Or say that he wanted to whoop his ass. So y'all remember Sergeant Cook. He got like right before we deployed. Like, God, I remember Shane. Do you remember what our numbers were? They were super low before we left. We were not at T O and E.
SPEAKER_03:We weren't even close to T O. Yeah, we I do not remember our numbers, but we were very low.
SPEAKER_01:Very low, right? And we got that huge boot boot dump. There's a lot of shit. People just it pisses me off that uh everyone talks about Fallujah, where there was like four battalions, they had tanks, they had air, they had six six battalions plus six reinforced in a city that the population at the time was like 200,000. Now, now compare Ramadi 400,000, one battalion. That's it.
SPEAKER_03:Non-reinforced, yeah, yeah, non-reinforced.
SPEAKER_01:That's it. Just us holding down the whole fucking city. And uh yeah, gosh.
SPEAKER_02:And they ended up splitting after us, they they ended up splitting it up because it was too big. It was it was it was operationally impossible, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right. Um, because we were yeah, a bunch of cowboys. But uh when we got but we held it if you can hey, motherfucker. Um we we got uh a huge boot drop before we left. Yeah, and and then we got I I think Cook was one of was he the only NCO that came from somewhere else?
SPEAKER_03:Like he was he was new to uh not the only one, but he was new to us. There was a couple others. We had Lechard and Lechard came kind of late.
SPEAKER_01:They were in their MOS, like Cook came from somewhere doing some pogue unit job for like he was trying to get out of infantry, and he even made claim to that that he didn't want to be in the infantry and doing his job as a I don't even remember what he was. Was he a Blake? Was he a mortarman at the time? Do you remember?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't remember his eyes.
SPEAKER_02:I I'll I'll be honest, like until you just started the story, I had completely forgotten about him. And so I'm like having I'm like I'm barely grabbing, like I still don't even have his face in front of me yet.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, so he he was special. Um, he didn't want to go out on once we got into country, he was a gosh. When we were training and we were doing all this other stuff, he would always disappear when we got to Kuwait. Um Gunny Maraki made me be his battle buddy. So I had to follow him around, like we had to be paired up everywhere so that he couldn't just disappear anymore. And he would still try to. We were getting the CP set up, and like we had to put that that big ass map on the on the wall of the AO.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:We had to may or may not have one. We had to build that, like we had to go get imagery from Blue Diamond, bring it back, draw all the grid lines on there. Uh couldn't do it without help, but um, he would always disappear, like disappear, disappear. And so I'd have to send people to go find him. And then once it got time for like ops to go on, he refused to go out of the wire, like he refused to leave. So I remember getting in his face. Um, he got up and got back in mine, and I grabbed him by the throat and threw him on the ground. I think actually, I was just checking his neck for a pulse. But um, he he left and he went to the chaplain and told the chaplain that I was threatened that I threatened to kill him, and then he was suicidal, and he got put on suicide watch for a while. And it pissed me off because that's when things started ramping up. And I think right around that time is when we took our first KIA, which was Morris. Yep. And Danny Coleman came to me and asked for if we could if I had any extra gear to send back or to consolidate or for whatever reason he needed, he just did. And I said, Yeah, I got the perfect guy. You know, so I went to Cook and I said, Hey man, I need your magazines, and you're not, you know, you're not going out anyway. So I need some magazine pouches and magazines, and he was he wouldn't give them up. And he he made the comment something about I don't care better him than me or something like that. Just snapped. I slapped him so hard he like off his feet off his cot. He got up and ran out the door, and I just walked out behind him. He picked up this big rock like like overhead, like he was gonna like like like hit me in the head with it, and I punched him. And next thing I know, I'm being tackled by like Moo Mu and Heath and somebody else were like pulling me off of him. Oh, yeah, I got told when he went on suicide watch. I got told that I couldn't touch him, talk to him, anything. So after this, he went back to like he went to the chaplain, and then chaplain took him to like battalion or something like that. I don't remember how the whole thing went down. I really don't care. What ended up happening though was I ended up having to get NJP'd like to where they and it was very almost comical. You know, first Sergeant Mack told me to just shut my mouth and go through the motions. And take it, and that if I could, you know, keep myself clean for the rest of the deployment, nothing would ever happen with it, kind of thing, I guess. My punishment was I couldn't go out on ops. I couldn't leak, I couldn't leave the wire, and I had to actually move my move move a cot into the CP for a week. Radio watch for a week, no ops, no leaving the wire for a week. And it it sucked. It sucked. Yeah. I remember that.
SPEAKER_02:I got grounded in combat.
SPEAKER_01:You can't go play with your friends.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, a thousand percent. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I love that man. Like he was between him and and Gunny Maraki, he was probably those were two of the men that uh I looked up to quite a bit, you know. Different different ends of the scale, but but wisdom nonetheless from both.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And uh added to that fact too, Gunny Coleman um must must have like he I remember he was man, we when we were on ship, I don't remember when or where this was, and I don't even remember who it happened with, but I had uh gotten into a fight with somebody, and he pulled me down to the well deck and just ripped my ass. And he's like, if you have to put hands on somebody, you failed, and just like just completely ripped my ass and then stopped. Like he had me locked up, you know, POA and everything, and then and then told me at ease, and then started talking to me like a human being, and was just telling me, you know, that he expects better from me and that that's not leadership. And like we had this just amazing conversation about I would have never I I think he just believed in me, and you know, he made he told me that and he expected better from me. It was one of those times where you walk away feeling like you let dad down, you know, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03:I remember first meeting Gunny Coleman, and he was I think fresh off the drill field when he came to 81s, and yes, the day before, yeah, yeah. And it trust me, it showed, and I remember thinking, like, what the fuck is this? This guy is all boot shine and bullshit, and nothing, and I don't remember what happened, but somebody got hurt when we were doing the the land navigation course in Okinawa, and and all of a sudden he appeared and had like he was very concerned about this marine, he had all kinds of things to say, he organized how we were gonna get that dude out of there. Somebody rolled their ankle, it was something simple, but it was like oh wait, this is like a this is a real person. This is not a caricature of a marine drill instructor, which is what he had been up until that point, right? And then all the stuff like he left us and went over to Echo Company, and by all accounts, he was like the savior for, I mean, he really was the person who kept Echo Company together, I think. Uh at least that's what it seemed like. Every time I saw him over there, I always saw Marines talking to him and like really leaning on him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he I I have mad respect for him, you know. Um far different leadership style that like you know, Kenny Maraki was kind of the standard for me, you know. Like I I really, you know, like he was the Marines Marine, you know, like I wanted, I didn't like comparatively to Coleman, like I didn't want anything to do with that. I didn't want to go drill field, I wanted to go, like I wanted to go do CQB, Sniper's Course, all those things that he did. Like his his jacket was like everything every Marine, every infantry marine ever wanted to be.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and so I think um you know, gosh, we were lucky in Capitune, not just fortunate for for all the training that we got from him.
SPEAKER_03:Well, that explains why you wanted to uh choke slam another marine, because I remember him chokeslamming someone too. So yeah, you took all the lessons to heart.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh. Uh I know who you're talking about too. That was Cutter. That was so funny. I remember him him coming back into my room right after that with tears in his eyes, and he's like, I thought I was gonna die. Like you very well could have.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um that was funny. Holy shit.
SPEAKER_02:We we we got lucky with a lot. There you could there isn't just too many people in our in our larger leadership teams that weren't really, really solid. But I've talked to a lot of friends that have gone in other places and uh actually I was just hanging out with Markshot um uh for the break of her birthday and uh he ended up uh you know, he got out right after Oki. Well, he got involuntarily extended, so you know the second we we hit Conus, he was gone. Well, he decided to go back into the reserves and he went to Iraq in 06. And and he uh he did not have solid leadership, yeah. And so um that is a huge blessing for us.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, we were really fortunate. We had some really great leadership. Um gosh, I mean, like I said, you guys had Coleman and Cook and you know, like their you know, the other Colm um Staff Sergeant Coleman, yep, yeah, Pat Coleman.
SPEAKER_03:And then it was map three was Gunny Cr Gunny Crutcher and uh Staff Sergeant Rapazo. Yeah, and then map one was Crawford and Drake. Yep, and then uh yeah, they had Gunny Cook and Lieutenant Dobbs.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Drake. I I I think yeah, Drake was another good one too. You know, like I didn't always see eye to eye with him, but like I mean his leadership was pretty solid. I learned a lot from him. Yeah, I was just gonna say, do you remember we you and I were talking earlier? Do you remember the time when we um when I went out with y'all when we got uh a little blue on blue with an Abrams, and Abrams shot at us?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yeah, please. If you you feel free, I will chime in my part as well.
SPEAKER_01:Holy shit. Oh my gosh. I just remember we were going out to the edge of our AO. Supposedly, there was there was intel on like am I wrong on this? It was like Chechens coming through, Chechen snipers that we were supposed to be looking for.
SPEAKER_03:So the back end, yeah, the back end of that was they the guys in Fallujah had taken down a uh some kill house, and there was there was a Chechen found in there, and so it was nicknamed like the Chechen house, only because there was one Chechen in there. And so, yes, we got the intel that there were Chechen snipers that were coming.
SPEAKER_01:I remember that, and so I remember going out to the AO. I remember the road was high. There was like a little village down as you're heading out of town towards the left, if I'm not correct, and we pulled off down into this ravine to hide the vehicles and employ our dismounts, which was Neil and his team, and he took some uh dismounts to the other side of the road to set up an ambush. They were going to prepare to do a snap VCP if we needed to, and like so we I don't remember how long we were hanging out, it was a while. Long time, long freaking time, and we finally got the call to just index and just you know bring it in. And I remember we were standing by the vehicles and someone was uh smoking a cigarette in a can. Uh that was me.
SPEAKER_03:I know that was me. Hell yeah, we've been out there forever. I'm gonna have a fucking cigarette.
SPEAKER_01:I was laughing about it because we were all just kind of like just chilling, like stretching our legs, getting ready to just we hadn't even fired up the vehicles yet. We were waiting. Actually, I think we were waiting for Neil to still bring his guys back across the road, but they hadn't even no sitting underneath the brush.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it was Neil and Miranda and one of the junior marines, and I cannot remember who else was over there, but I know it was Neil and Miranda.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I remember standing there in that little ravine, and all of a sudden, like there was no sound, no nothing. It was just this flash and like this red ball of fire, like heading right at us, but so fast, like I couldn't even get out. I thought it was RPG, and I I started to yell RP. I was like RP, boom, and it blew up behind us. Yep, it went right down the row of vehicles, right between all of us. Yep. Am I right? Is that how that happened?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, by some fucking magic, it did not hit anyone or anything. Yeah, but the shockwave knocked all of us over.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because the the it so then all of a sudden we like everyone just instantly starts returning fire, not even looking, opens up, returns fire. I think somebody was on one of the vehicles parked there in the gun in the tow, uh, in the tow system, and they're like, I can't, I've got a thermal, but I can't tell what it is. Can I shoot?
SPEAKER_03:It was McCabe because he's he was a machine gunner, not a tow gunner, right? And he was like, I don't know what I'm looking at. Yeah, and so I jumped on the back of the vehicle and climbed down. He went down, I went over, yep, and I looked in, I was like, That's a fucking tank.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right when like everything like bullshit, and all of a sudden you heard the turbine kick up that weep, and everybody was like, Son of a bitch, motherfuck. So then they came rolling down, you heard that clack clack clack clack clack clack because they were hitting the pavement, they rolled right down the road. I remember hardened climbing up that thing like a monkey, faster than I've ever seen anybody climb something. Grab the the the guy in the hatch and start slamming him into the hatch and yelling, I couldn't even tell what he was saying. Yep, but and then come to find out later that they the gunner got the order to to hit to spray the he saw dismounted troops and he said spray him with a coax. Is that right? Do you remember that? When we went back to the CD and and he actually fired the main gun on purpose and missed on purpose because he wasn't sure of what he was shooting at. Had that guy just followed orders and done what he did, I think, man, that would have been catastrophic.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, we would have just fired back, we would have been who knows what would have happened. Later, I can't remember who who met that guy or why. Somebody got evacued or something. Anyway, they were on a they were on an evac with that or on a bird with that guy. Um, one of the people that was in the tank, the Abrams tank that shot at us. And they said we knew it was Marines because no one else would have fired back instantly, instantly. He's like, You there was no delay, you all fired back. Yeah, that ended up being a double blue-on-blue incident. Uh, Monroe opened up with the 50, but when he first shot, he shot at Neil and Miranda. And Harden screamed at him, and he turned the gun and then fired at the tank as well. But his first shot, he did not have a good ID as to the where our dismounts were in the bushes, and he shot at the bushes. I found out later that he skipped a 50 round right off of Miranda's back. What? Yeah, and everybody was fine. We had to replace his his gear, but all you want to talk about, uh Guardian Angel was sitting over the top of us that day. There's there's so reason why somebody shouldn't have died.
SPEAKER_01:So many times, like I can tell you things that like just didn't make sense. I remember I don't remember what vehicle we had to escort back with the wrecker. Hercules was the call sign, I think, for the wrecker. Was that with you with map two with you guys where we we got hit because we had to oh, you know what it was? It was a seven ton that got hit. They got everybody out, they got them to combat outposts, I think. But then we had to go back for the vehicle and escort the vehicle all the way back to her. Did we have to take it to Hurricane Point?
SPEAKER_02:I think that's I think that was with us. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh. But I remember being with you guys, it was one of the times I got to roll with you guys, and following so we had to double, like we went through the same area twice and then would have to cut back through it again. And so the the likelihood of getting hit was high probability, and then all of a sudden the street lights go off and everyone's like, hey, head on a swivel, and then the flares pop, and then like was that the time that like an RPG fell out of a window and hit the street? Like I don't remember that. There were times of stories like that crazy like I remember somebody's vehicle got an RP stuck in the grill.
SPEAKER_03:That was our platoon, that was Randall.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they didn't pull the tag off it.
SPEAKER_03:No, it wasn't that they didn't fire, it was a uh training round. What they didn't know the difference between an AT and a training round because the most of the rounds were either older or the guys just didn't know, but they fired a training round and it just stuck in the grill.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, nuts.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We had some serious guardian angels watching out over.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We all I mean a lot of blue on blue. Like I remember the strikers fired Mark 19 on us. Yep. Man, just some some nutty shit.
SPEAKER_03:Now the strikers fired that was uh you, right, Blake? That was a sledgehammer. Uh no. It was it was an 80, it might have been Rainmaker then. I believe it was an 81 Splatoon.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, crazy, crazy, crazy.
SPEAKER_03:And then we had the same thing, we had the strikers fire the uh machine guns across the river at us, driving down Nova. Oh yeah, yeah. The only reason why they stopped is uh Richie was on the Mart 19 and hit direct hits with uh almost all the belt of Mark 19 right on top of them. Yeah, and they stopped and then started blowing up red flares, started going up, and and everybody was like, Oh, oh, oh shit.
SPEAKER_02:Crazy. And then uh we had uh when we won't name who, when they decided to drop uh HE to start a bug hunt, but they had their grid squares way off and they were dropping rounds right on top of our heads. Um and uh nothing I remember being curled up on the backside of that berm being like this is gonna be absolutely most ironic way to go. The FDC chief of the 81s getting killed by friendly mortar fire.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. The uh this is I we've talked with Jordan quite a lot about this when we first interviewed him because he remembers a lot of shit with com failures, and I I feel like all of this is the perfect example of we had no inner service comms with anybody in the air force or the army or the navy, all of which were in our AO at some point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Uh I remember being up on top of the the the cemetery the one time, and we were trying to we were trying to send it up through the chain, and we couldn't get it past battalion, and then we couldn't get it, anyways. Like we we couldn't talk inner inner service a lot. There was almost no way to talk inner service.
SPEAKER_01:Just like you said, it had to go, it had to go start back at at headquarters and go up.
SPEAKER_03:Right, which which is insane.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like that's like that night that we got uh shot up by the Abrams. Like when we got when we called that in, nobody believed us. Yeah, they're like, What? No, no, come to the CP when you guys get back. We're like, Are you fucking kidding me?
SPEAKER_03:Yep, that was I I distinctly remember like uh that was so harden jumped the the uh driver in the hatch, but then it was JD who jumped on top of the tank and was screaming down through the hatch at the commander, and we were like, we were dragging him off. Like, I was like, Okay, what is this? This is gonna go badly. Like, he's gonna, I don't know. Anyway, that was funny, but uh yeah, that was I was calling it in over the radio, and we had cranked off, we had cranked off red flares as well. Uh saying, yeah, and Abrams just shot at us, and that was no, just come back to the CP. And they're like, Are you sure? It's like it drove up. Here's a picture of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, the good old days, huh?
SPEAKER_03:So let me uh let me try to take you back on the timeline as far as that goes. I know you were with me on the seventh, but who were you with on the sixth of April?
SPEAKER_01:I don't remember, man. Like all of dates and times for me are kind of a blur. You know, there was a while when I could recall everything. And, you know, like there was a time when, you know, I carried, you know, like like I made it a point to remember every name of every Marine that we lost.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:Everything changed when I had my son for me, you know, like not trying to jump ahead, but like I kind of tried to put some of that behind me. I kind of gave myself permission to start trying to live my best life, you know, instead of you know, for for you know, I ended up I would end up getting out, going right to work for Blackwater, the CIA, and doing all of that for another 10 years. I'd and then I'd have a son and I I quit it all. I gave it all up. But uh when I got out of that, I started working with veterans and I just remember dealing a lot with survivor's guilt and thinking to myself, hey, well, if these people were standing right in front of you, would they tell you, hey, congratulations for throwing your life away and pissing away your family and drinking everything away because I died? Thank, thank you for using my life as an excuse to fall apart, you know. And so, like, I remember thinking that, and at some point I just remember being able to just not in a dishonorable way, like I I, you know, like here, I'll show you this if you guys can see this. I still have oh, this won't let me do it. Put the screen around that.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, picture of the memorial. That man, when was that? That was right after uh the first battle of Ramadi, right? That was April, uh uh Easter Sunday when they did the service for all the fallen.
SPEAKER_01:And you got a great memory, Shane. You know, that's when that was. That was the picture somebody took in the in the of that whole memorial thing. And I just I have that I I've never forgotten, you know. I have you know, I tell the story to my son, I talk about it, you know. I've done a whole lot of guest speaking on at different events, and and I talk about it, you know, like what it means to remember like Memorial Day. What does that mean for for for veterans? You know, like you know, do you thank a veteran for Memorial Day? Do you not? And I'm like, you know, like you hear guys getting upset about oh well, people just don't understand, and you know, Veterans Day isn't a date. And I was like, shut the fuck up. Look, dude, we did what we did so that these people can go out, act stupid, drink, go take a boat out on the lake and flip it if they want. Who cares? We did what we did for us, not them. It doesn't matter what they do, they don't have to, there's no right or wrong way. If somebody comes up to you and says, Thank you for your service, you don't have to be a dick and say, Well, I didn't do it for you, or happy memorial day. It's not happy, they're not happy about just thank them. Just say, hey, thank you for your support. You know, they're they're never gonna get it and they won't. And don't try to. It's just just things that we that they'll never understand and things I don't think we can ever explain to people. Our service, the the losses. Like, how can you? You know, I think that's what makes us who we are.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, man. Yeah, 20 years on, it's uh it's a weird feeling, and and you have 10 years on top of that, so it's uh it adds more weight.
SPEAKER_01:I uh but to answer your question, I don't remember where I was on the sixth.
SPEAKER_03:That's right, that was a good sidetrack. I I can tell you where you were on the seventh because you rode in my truck specifically. Uh and we got engaged uh up in the Soviet district, and that was when both you and Gunny Maraki were riding with our platoon, and I I got to see magic in action. Uh you dove out one way and went up the left side of the street, and Gunny Maraki dove out the other way and went up the right side of the street. And I I distinctly remember just we took heavy, heavy contact after the first shot, it was shots from all directions. And he hadn't even Gunny Maraki hadn't even got out of the vehicle, and he turned left-handed, he was not left-handed, and in the offhand, just sort of leaned over and shot two dudes off the roof with his left hand. And I was like, Oh wow! Like, I almost couldn't shoot back because I was in awe of the things I was witnessing.
SPEAKER_00:The Meraki magic, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he was, yep.
SPEAKER_03:And then him and Neil, uh, he grabbed Neil because I think Neil was in his truck at that point, and he and they went up like up these stairs and like up on the top of this building, and like came back down, were like going down the street, clearing houses by themselves. I was like, what the hell is going on? I've never seen anything like this. This is great.
SPEAKER_01:That was uh I almost forgot about that. So you just so you just brought it up. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:If you like what you've heard, this is a multi part episode. Make sure you listen to the rest of the story.