#298 Jason Magnavice - SEAL Team 6 Red Squadron Operator

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You watched DJs? Well, done with GJ when he was a kid. Yeah, I saw that. I did a freaking, I did a batoon was bad. He was my dad was actually my batoon chief. I knew GJ was 13 or 14

and he was going to go hang out with his parents, they'd always, you know, they have a big

deer roast, you know, we'd go hunting and eat some venison, tell stories. His dad was the most

“incredible storytellers. Very still originated, huh? Still is, right? You still top-toam?”

No. No. What about his with GJ? DJ, I shouldn't have a text every now and then. Well, I went to Virginia Beach about a year ago to go through a, like, a workout program, their VHB, it's called. There you, it's a awesome program. And then when we were going to link up them, but our schedules didn't ever seem to, now, right on, to add up, right on. Let me start you off with an introduction. Ready? I'm ready. All right. Jason Magnevice, J Mags. Retired Navy

seal with over 26 years in the community. Eight years, it's sealed team to 15 years at J Sock Joint Special Operations Command Dev Group, which led to earning your airline transport pilot certificate and numerous FAA aviation qualifications. Sturved as a tactical communicator, sniper, lead jumper, and team leader, completed four deployments to operation and during freedom, completed four deployments to operation. Iraqi freedom closed out your career as the coordinator for recruiting

candidates for naval special warfare. Senior listed advisor for the only enlisted aviation unit in the Department of Defense currently in airline pilot flying a golf stream for a private family holding a 767 type rating in a major freight carrier raised with a Jehovah witness mother in a Vietnam vet father. Most importantly, you're the father of one daughter and the grandfather of two boys, no social media, no book, nothing to sell. Nothing to sell. Did I write that? I did write it. I found that out.

But, uh, well, since you're uh, new to media, I thought we'd kick it off with something real easy. Thank you. This is super easy to talk about every day, carry me. I got a 365, Legion, AXG. You got a 365 Legion? Yes. Nice. Nice. What do you carry? What else do you carry?

It's a little Gucci. You know what I mean? But it's an issue to like a dream. It's heavy. It's an

“XC. But it was one made. Our community actually got, it's got like a little bone frog on the”

side American flag on it. That's kind of why. And it got a pretty good deal for staccato. Nice. Yeah. It's a, it's a cool going. So what would you carry? What would you carry when you were a pilot in that development group? Nothing. Nothing. Oh, no. We flew pretty much in the states. That's pretty much it. Yeah. We'll find our bosses around gear to and from certain places. That's pretty much it. We didn't carry no firearms right on. What would you carry if you were doing some

blow pro stuff over a dev group? Look, I'll talk about pistol. What's in your go bag? Any cool

devices you may have had? We pretty much carried the 226 back then before he transitioned in a big the, the H.K. Was it Mark 21, the 45? The whole with his shit. You guys were using a bunch of couple of couple of guys carried them. Yeah. It just for the suppressed value of someone. And a Ruger Mark III. I've got a Mark IV, but we carry the one with the self suppressed Ruger to 22, self with the little hush puppy. Yeah, for shooting out street lights and stuff like that. Nice. Nice.

Anything else? What kind of medical? It's block it. That's it. We had PJs. I did all that stuff. What kind of long rifle were you using? Um, we, I had a SR25K. I like to carry it three away. It was a shorter SR25. And 300 wind mag was like delays are being backed in an hour,

“but they know of shooting six, five, creating more or another stuff. And yeah, what's your favor around?”

I'm, I like 300, 300, 300, 300, 300 black out. I got a Daniel offense PDW. Actually, that's pretty sweet. Yeah. No shit. But every time the squeeze off, it's like there's five bucks, five bucks, five bucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. Why got you a present? Would you get me? Do you want to see it? Sure. All right. It's a bag of gummy bears. Did you want to leak gummy bears? See, I do have just to sell. Like these bears. But that's a bag of vigilance leak gummy bears made in the U.S.

A legal and all 50 states so you can fly home. I got a pop positive, but they do is with anything. My pop positive for sugar and red dye. And that's about it. And I did get you one other present too. Since we're talking about weapons. And oh, yeah. This is a story behind us.

“And every day carry. Oh, no way. Yeah, man. Have you seen these?”

This is uh, then it's taken for another. This is now. This is, this is uh, this came out after the rattleer. This is better than the fucking rattleer. My opinion. But uh, this is the sig MCX spear. And so this is uh, they're replacing all of the supposedly they're replacing all the military rifles with the six point five uh, excuse me. Yes, six point shit. Now there's so many rounds coming out. I can't fucking keep it. See, there's six point five. Let's keep this point eight. Yeah, you start talking

and start talking to guns. But uh, but this one. So they got a five five six version of 300 black out version and a six point whatever version. And uh, they put their new optics on the top of Emporia. This is like, you can't get the gun early. And then are you familiar with silence or shop? Yes, I just picked up a couple of hooks, which came to five five six and a three away. No, shit. Yeah. Well, sig was ecstatic that you were coming on the show. I told Jason

have got a buddy over there. Jason, he's uh, runs a marketing over there. And uh, he was like, it's a great place. They're a great company. Have you been out there? Yes, we went out there for the event for the foundation. Oh, nice. Like two October's ago. Yeah, it was, it was a good time. A lot of good people at that place. A lot of good people. Nice. Well, uh, and then silence or shop. There you go. Silence or shop. That word that you were coming on. And, uh, you know, I don't

know, I guess you'd already have experience with them. But, you know, you put in. Once you get signed up with them, they make it super easy. They do all the paperwork for you. You go to a gun shop. It's got silence or shop kiosks in there. It just makes it super simple. And then the other

thing they do is they also fight for basically gun rights, you know, especially, obviously suppressors.

So fucking awesome company, but told them you were coming on to and they wanted to throw a

little place land passes to exist that we do some link in a nice, nice, try to eradicate the

“hog population out there because they get out of control. I hear that it could be pretty challenging.”

Yes. But, uh, from help out there's entertaining. Nice. Well, maybe we'll break that in later. We've got to range out back. So, thank you very much. You're welcome. And then, uh, one more thing to crank out before we get into the, to the real interview. So I have a Patreon account and it's a community that we've built. And so they're the reason that I get to be here with you today and, uh, and do these interviews. So, they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question

and this is from Rex Herman. What was the moment in your career that changed the way you think about

leadership the most? The moment when, um, well, I've worked for some incredible people in

this guy. So, you're like, when, when I first got to the command, I was called as guy crazy horse. He was when one of the best leaders I've ever worked for. You know, a humble guy, that didn't think he knew everything all the time. And if he had any, any quite, that's like what I wanted to be like. We respected him. He was a hard worker. He led by example. When he wasn't hard at it, right? He was just, hey, if he had a quite, he wasn't afraid to ask

a question. He wasn't afraid to delegate other people that he knew were better at certain things

“that he wasn't, and that's what, but what really made me respect leadership a lot. From then,”

right on, and a few other people. What date, what year did you get to the command? 2001. Holy shit. Yeah, I want to, I want to, I want to, and you left in 2019. I think you told me before we started. It's 2016. 2016? Holy shit. Yeah, 15 fucking years over there. I want to get for a break to my size. I saw that in your outline. You wanted a break and then decided to scream for DevGer, pre 9/11. One of their break, I was tired of doing six month appointments.

When I was a little creek, and I didn't want to worry about two and two, so it was a long workup. You know, some of the appointments were over six months, six, seven months, and my daughter was born, what year, 97, and I was going a lot. And we weren't really working at much. A little stuff in Bosnia, Kosovo, that's pretty much. If there was no work schedule back then, then I'm like, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to scream because much of my buddies are going

over there, too. I hope much of my buddies from two are going over there. Like, I'm going to scream and some of the guys are, you know, pretty setting their ways that are, like, team two, you know what I mean? They were, some didn't want to go over there. They didn't want to go through the challenge of the selection process again. And I could get, I got understand it, so some of them were trying to talk me out of it, but I'm like, nah, dude, I'm not going to be home.

Yeah, what I mean, I'll be home for three months at a time. You thought you'd be home, but the, oh, we're not going to do this. This is, I got a, I got out of the selection process, screen team in September of 2001. Holy, and I remember walking across the compound when we were talking

about the planes and the towers. And the first thought was, man, the ATC must have screwed that up.

Then when the second one hit the tower, yeah, we, they took our whole class into a briefing room, our skipper came in, gave us the brief and we're like, oh boy, excited. Yeah, excited because when you were going to be busy, but, you know, the families, it took the families were like, our guys are going to be gone for quite a bit. And we were, damn, we were, damn, yep, I know you've had one hell of a career. But let's start prior to the career.

“All right, where'd you grow up? Why bring Connecticut?”

We'll re-into. Um, I was into bikes, baseball football, pretty much. That's it. What about when you're a little bit, when you're time in the woods? Oh, yeah, when my grandfather, so that's, yeah, getting back to the, yeah, by the way, I got to get for you, we'll get that down the road. But, uh, yeah, my grandfather taught my mom's dad. He was a Korean warrior guy. He, from Kentucky, big backwoods guy. He taught me, we, we go hiking on the time where

we used to live by a reservoir, you know, whatever, Connecticut. Yeah, he taking the on hikes, point out, like poison, I had he poison oak, showed me how to make a little spears, or like with, with his little folding knife. And then, yeah, we planned this mountain. He called it Jason's mountain. Yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty good upbringing. Me, my dad also taught me a lot growing up. He was kind of a, a stickler for baseball and football. Pretty stern when it came

well, when he got out of the Navy, he started you worked for a cargo company as a supervisor

for transportation. And then he actually retired from the state of Connecticut. We're going to have a transportation supervisor for the state. What's about your mom? She pretty much say, oh, mom, or most of her life. I got a sister in four years older than her brother. I'm 10 years older than her. Okay, so you're the oldest. Yes. Your mom was a, is, is or was, was Jehovah's Witness. Yes. We have, we have a prior Jehovah's Witness work in here. Great people today. Yeah, awesome human being.

“Yeah. He's editing the show right now. But, uh, is he still, he's got some fucking stories?”

Is he? Oh, yeah. It's rough. It's rough growing up. As a kid, me, the Jehovah's Witness. They stole his kid from them. They did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess I can't say they stole his kid from them, but they, it's, uh, it's a custody battle in, like, the whole, they're all going against him. It's wild. The religion did. Yeah. He didn't all in. Really. Yeah. Well, I'm sure I'll tell you about it. Yeah, that's crazy. You had a good experience? No, uh, it's hard to explain. So my mom had me

when she was, this was a funny story, you know? My dad got drafted. He was 20. Your dad got drafted. Yeah. He got drafted. He was supposed to go to PBRs, then he volunteered for submarines, because it was also sub-trainings and grot and Connecticut too. It's, it's a sub-based there. So it's convenient for he got, yeah. So I parents are married to May. And my mom was a little miscutty, awesome. I love her to death. Little miscutty to issue. And like, my, your, your born

on, say certain date and October. And I'm at birthday's two weeks later. So she turned 18, and I was born two weeks later. Wow. Yeah. They're still married. Wow. Yeah. It's cool. But when my dad was deployed, you know, and some of the sub-trips and stuff like that, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, they go door to door and Saturdays or throughout the week, and they kind of pooled her into it. And because she was probably, it pretty

easy to influence her to have, you know, like a congregation to people like my nid, and they

do have got that they're great. They're incredible human beings for the most part. You know,

everybody's got there. I can't, I don't even have that apple. Every one I have about, that they've been super nice. But then, you know, going to church three times a week,

“what the kingdom all, that's what they call, you know, the, the church where they go,”

having to wear suit, which I still to this day. I don't like wearing a suit, get dressed up in a little suit, a little tie, go to the Bible study once a week. Like at two days, they nights, you go to church Wednesday, Sunday, for an hour and a half. Yeah, I was, oh, and you know, celebrating holidays. That's what I was going to, you don't celebrate birthday, Christmas, anything. Yeah, but, but if you dig deep into,

hey, I'm not promoting them, I'm not sending anything, but they do. And like when you go to a normal church, you have your pastor priest up there, right? They just talk off the cuff. They just give you, you know, with a lot of their knowledge, which I think they gave, and it's really as themselves. Listen, spring cleaning is here, and before you convince yourself, your kitchen's fine, go look at the pan you've been using. If it's warped, burn, or sticking to everything, it's time.

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Joe was witness as all they do is read from the Bible. That's it. You know, from Genesis

Revelation, their viewpoints are pretty good, but why you don't celebrate certain holidays, yeah, it makes sense. But it's tough when you're a kid, all your buddies are celebrating. Why don't they sell? There's a reason in the Bible for it to start off with Halloween, right? That's a pretty good day. That's a great day. Christmas, Jesus was a more than December 25th. Historians know that, right? It's just convenience, I think holidays of convenience. Easter, which I heard,

did you have a conversation with somebody talking about the weird star alignment that's going to be happening in a couple of weeks? Yeah. How do you know about that? Did you watch that episode? I got crazy family members, nobody was my mom, my mother-in-law sent me that. I think my mother-in-law sent me that. No shit. Because she's into the, yeah, she's really like off-the-cloth stuff. I'm like, "Mah, you got to calm down with this stuff." Miss, you read some sense of some stuff.

Here we go. The banks are all going to explode. This is going to happen. You know what I mean?

“That sounds like here. Yeah. That's what I try to stay away from you. I just try to do my”

one thing. You know what I mean? I try to stay busy. But yeah, get back to the holidays. Yeah,

Easter Christmas. This guy, let's, so yeah, what you're talking about this guy said the second

coming's happened in Easter 2026. So I'm excited. Yeah. We'll see what happens. You got to be ready for it on a week away. Any day and getting ready and getting back to that religion, getting back to the Jehovah's Witnesses, man. Did they believe in Armageddon? It's going to eventually have been all outlined in revelations. All the shit you see going on in the rule right now, sorry God. It's like, it's what it says. You know what I mean? People just take it for granted.

Oh, I just hold home. You know what I mean? It's starting in a ran. Yeah, that's kind of, there's certain signs. It's fucking wild. But you got to have, hey, you got to have faith in

“you know what I mean? It'd be ready for it as the big thing. Yeah. What got your mom out of it?”

What did she do when I joined a military? Really? I'll get back. Yeah. So I graduated high school 17 and I couldn't, they wouldn't, my parents wouldn't sign a waiver for me. A dad wanted me to go in as an officer. So he's like, "Jay, give me a year of college and I ate at school." Like, I told getting back to the store. I wanted to be a seal so that was 10.

Like, in 1982, when I saw the first ramble movie. Nice. But yeah, when I joined the military,

she stopped going to the kingdom wall, stopped going to church and she kind of let it. And then my sister had kids and then, oh, they started celebrating Christmas and everything, yeah. Is your dad a Christian? He was raised Protestant, but yeah, he believed in God, but really, not the nomination, I guess. Yeah, sure. So he, he, he, he, he grew up celebrating Christmas? Yes. And then you guys did not celebrate anything. Yep. He just went along for the ride to

keep my mom happy. Yeah. Do you celebrate Christmas now? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yes, I do. Man, that's fucking correct. That's just weird to me. Which, it's weird. And then just, yeah, you know, everybody talking about, yeah, it's a, hey, but they have, hey, they stand behind their faith. You know what I mean? They've really, they're really sticklers for it. Go door, door, spread in the word. It's, I've let him in all the time when I was over Junior Beach. I don't

seem too much in hospital. I don't see many going door to door there. But yeah, but I'm in, talk with them, you know, and, and give them my viewpoints and, like, one of the, they don't believe

“a really serving, you know, a particular government of country. They believe you should just serve God.”

Jesus Holy Spirit, all that. You're making this sound really good. Yeah. It's, no, if there was one true belief, yeah, I think that's one of the truths, because I've been around it all. I've heard it all from Catholicism to, are you, any denomination? I guess I, I could sort of myself Catholic. Yeah. Okay. I could sort of myself Catholic, but I bounce back and forth between that and non-denominational, because I, and I'll tell you why,

I think that the Catholics have the spiritual warfare stuff down better than anybody else. I think they really understand what's going on, you know, in the other realm. And, but I think that the, I think that the Catholics don't do the best job of teaching about the life of Jesus and the Bible. And, uh, non-denominational churches do a much, much better job of you. And so, you know, I grew up Catholic, and then left right around when I joined the Syltimes, didn't come back

so really dove into the non-denominational stuff to learn about Christ and the Bible and all that stuff,

and then actually through the show, interview and all these extra system and, um, stuff like that, it kind of got me back into, you know, I'm really interested in spiritual warfare, then that realm. Yeah, there's a whole different, yeah, there's definitely a whole different realm.

“I believe in two, definitely. Yeah. But like, when first time going to Italy, like, I walked”

into Vatican, I was at this place pretty cool, but it's very materialistic, right, very materialistic, which, um, a lot of stuff in the Bible, it sounds a lot like the Pharisees. Yes. Yeah, I'm with you. Oh, blah, blah, blah. I totally. And then how do you explain in celibacy? I'm like, it was really say, anywhere in the Bible, to be, I mean, God wouldn't have made a woman for his own image that he created. He wouldn't have made it, yeah, he wouldn't have brought it even, right? If

yeah, I'm down in the road, you got to be, hey, you got to be celibate, you can't procreate, it makes. And I'm not too sure there's a real reason behind it, I've heard a bunch of theories about keeping, you know, certain sex of the Catholic Church within each other. You know, I'm not to be sure how where to really came from. I don't know either. But it's just where, yeah, it's and once again, like you said, I don't think you just got to have faith in, and whatever you believe

in, because there's some weird, I mean, there's some weird stuff going on. Definitely some weird shit going on in the world. But so you wanted to be a seal since 11 years old. It's been a lot of time out in the woods, carve and spears, making weapons. Yeah, well, my dad is why I bought

this for you. It's a movie prop, but I saw the first rainbow at 10. Jehovah's Witness Kid,

my dad takes me to see, because he heard about this movie at work or something, he takes me to see

“first blood. Ray, Ray did our movie, 1982, '83, he came out, I think '82. And I was like, holy”

cow. I'm like, that is, I mean, that image you get in your head at 10 years old, too. Like, just being in the woods, the freaking blade that he had. Yeah, I know what I mean. The same to Jimmy Lyle, Jimmy Lyle made darkest all night, he passed away a while ago. But uh, I wasn't intrigued. And my dad's like, yeah, green berets, like I say in a movie, or somebody else, guys are real bad asses. My dad's, I worked with these guys called, you know, UDTs and seals

back in the South China Sea and some greens, they did a couple, a few things with them. And I was love the water, too. And you know that image of coming out of the water with, oh yeah, you know, all kidded up. When you're impressionable at that age, it leaves a big mark on your brain. And yeah, when I was a middle school, like Jay, what do you want to do when you grow? I said, I want to join a Navy. I want to, nobody knew in the 80s with the freak of seal was to like

1990 when, well, when Marcinkel wrote the book, wrote a warrior, whatever, and then in 1990, when the, the seals movie came out with Charlie Sheena, whatever. And I thought that was pretty cool. Like again, I was impressionable 17 years old. And um, yep, when I wanted to be a team guy since, yeah, I was a young kid. Yeah, but I couldn't, I graduated high school. My dad wanted to sign a waiver for me. Like I said, I was 17. No, I want you to go and be an officer.

No, no, it's not, I don't like college, you know, I don't like school at that time. In, um, a turn 18, enjoying back then it was on the delayed entry program. I was talking about recruited a whole time. I was in college, and uh, he's like the one recruited

at Dan Lidia, right? Like I always say recruiters bullshit. He was a quartermaster rating on the

submarine. And back then, they had the die fair program, which you joined, but as a non-rate, go to boot camp, pass a screening test, go to Buds, and then if you fail, if you make it through, you could get a rating. But if you don't make it through Buds, it's not like nowadays where you can say I'm emotionally distraught and they lay out of the Navy, if you didn't go to Buds, you're like chipping paint and, you know, swapping decks as a non-rate in the fleet, which is not good.

In my recruiters like Jade, the odds are you making it through Buds are very small. You go to what you're going to want to have, if it falls through, you're going to want to have a good rate in the Navy. So I'm a QN. It's a pretty decent rate. And I just think, I'm one of the

“shortest A school, you know, the shortest school you go to for the rating. And back then, I think it was”

singleman was three weeks and QN was six weeks. So I'm yep, I'm yep. And yeah, boot camp, base school in Orlando, then straight the Buds. Right on, what do you think of Buds? It would hold on. Let me back up. What did your parents think when you got it?

came to the graduation. They weren't happy. They weren't happy, but they knew I wanted to do it.

“They went out. Yeah. When I took 18 am outside the line, yep. Right on, they got over it though.”

Yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah. So what did you think of Buds? You get there. Well, hindsight's always

2020 when it comes to Buds, right? I got there in a year 18, right? Yep, just get ready to turn 19. And I got there in August, right when a bunch of, we had like 12 officers. In our Buds class, mostly all academy guys, we had two year of course academy guys, too. It was a good group of dudes, hard chargers, you know what I mean? But back then, you're just young and dumb. And you just, it Buds pissed me off while I was there. I never thought about

quitting. I was just mad all the time. Going through Buds, the jogging into the compound. We first got there, a yellow and getting stuck. Everybody get like, dude, you shut the, they're going to drop a drop. Told you, stop. We get yellow head by not only our own, our own nose, but by the instructors of Buds, like constantly. But it was, it's a big money game. Like they say, but like when I was doing the coordinator thing on a San Antonio kid's ass, what's the, I'm like, dude, it's a bet. It's, if you

get past a PST and just stay healthy, you know, deal with the mind games and Buds, you're going to be fine.

“Yeah, yeah, as you know, it's a big, yeah, a lot of, a lot of mind games. Did you have any hangups?”

No, not fun. When we got to, what's that stuff, guys, you get TBI, the side of their knee,

whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That little tendon, I always thought it was bullshit until I got to

the Sanctuary Island and I could barely bend my leg, but they, I made it ended up gotten it through, but that TBI, no, I forgot what it's called. Yeah, you're a typical band, yeah, something like that, but yeah, that was the one time I really got pretty much, I guess you'd say hung up. That's it, though. Time runs. A couple times in the old course. Yeah, I remember getting hammered once for that, trying to time the ropes wing and struck your yellow enemy. I said a really bad word to

am sure enough, he had duty that night in the grinder and like the whole 1000-eight-count body builders.

“Just a mental part, too. Just stay in healthy. It was the key being smart, you know what I mean?”

And not doing anything, like, it's a stupider. Yes, stay in healthy. It was the biggest, in a band-cold, wet in San Diego the time. He just got to get used to it, man. You got it.

What did your parents think when you had graduation? They were proud. My parents never fly,

either. They're home bodies. They don't fly anywhere and they flew out to California to San Diego, came out to Coronado. Yeah, they were proud. I still got to find some of those pictures back then, before digital times. How did that feel? I was going against you during the military, but then I was, I was happy that they were happy that, you know, I actually made it through, and I got pretty fortunate with the same class. But then we had to go to jump school right after that airborne,

and that was freaking throwing a bunch of gung-ho, young Navy dudes into a pretty regimented army school for bedding. We got in a lot of trouble there. We got a couple of guys got sent back to the camp of back then, and was like, all right, we'll send you back in a couple weeks. What did you get sent back for? I didn't get sent back. A couple of my buddies did for just, yeah, it was running information with each of them running around the formation. We jumped into freaking water before we

did a PST. Just being, you know, cocky, yeah, it's kind of, you look back at it now, and you're, it's kind of like, yeah, we're pretty done. Yeah, we, we weren't even that fucking bad, and they just kept picking on us, and you know what I mean? The army conjures kept picking on us, so, so one of our guys, you know, they make you do watch and shit out, you know, the barracks, and so, well, really good front of mine. He's, he's, he's passed away now, saves Kyle Pulse, and then

was Kyle Pulse, and he, he posted all his guys up there like, he's like, you go watch that door, you go watch that door, you watch the front door, you watch the back door, I'll be right back, went in to the Sergeant Major's desk and took a huge shit.

we're all out there standing. And you knew you're getting boy, you knew you're going to get boy, I know, right? Well, none of us even fucking knew, and we're just, he didn't tell, he didn't tell the guys that he had posted up on the doors, he didn't tell any of the, other guys that were coming out for Buds, you know, we're all in the same Buds class, and we're saying it out there in formation the next morning, and this guy was just a total,

it was just like, dude, we're not even doing anything, you're being a fucking asshole to us, for no reason, and he comes out. He sleeps like, he's fucking, you fucking seals, and I've were all like, what the hell? Who's shit on my fucking desk? That's me fucking starts his, he starts the buzzer with who shit on my fucking desk, and, uh, dude, I was just, it was a, I mean, did you ever get caught? Or did anybody read him out? No, he told us that night,

but now none of us wrote a thought as fucking hilarious, so, yeah, just the visualization of that dickhead, having to scrape shit off of his desk. Dude, that's freaking disgusting, yeah, I know, it is. It's also hilarious, but yeah, yeah, anyways. And you knew you were going

“to get blamed for it anyway, because yeah, they always, those freaking Navy guys, because I think we”

got a couple of EOD guys there too, but yeah, we got blamed for it pretty much, you know, the

32 foot tower, oh yeah. Well, like the second class is the E5, we're in charge of the little hill,

you jump off 32 foot tower, you hooked up a little deering, you do your four count and get down. We had this big dead blackbird on top of the, and we thought it wasn't going to go up to our blackhead. Our blackhead, where our instructor was a cool dude, he jumped into Panama, freaking, he had his little freaking mustard stain on his hair, born wings, so he, he wasn't 75th range of regiment, too, so he has, he had a little bit animosity from the other instructors looking

on him, but he was real cool to us into the future team guys that just got out of butts. But we thought he was going to be up there in, they switched sides, but we took this blackbird, shoved, it's head, it was somehow, it died up on the freaking hill. We shoved the head in the deering, so when the runners come down, I'm like, they hooked the little rope up the deering, and they're bringing in their runnin, and this bird, it wasn't small, it was like flopping like this,

so he just shook your eyes so lightly. Oh, crap, stuff. He just yells, everybody dropped, it was a different guy, and we got, they tried to hammer us, we were, we just keep doing push-ups,

because it's always been doing our lives. Well, to that point, and he was, he took everybody off the hill,

we had hammered us for a good hour, and the poor other people up on a hill that we're just going

“through here, born, where they had to pay the price for our stupidity, you know what I mean?”

Yeah, that was, yeah, the interesting times back, and well, a lot of time ago. Good times, you know, times, good memories, but definitely. So where do you go from jump school? Team 2. Team 2. Yep. What was your expectation of team 2, my team 1 and team 2, man, the seal team shoot, they called it, it was, yeah, you, you don't want to be a new guy hanging around in the locker room in the cage area on a Friday, put it that way. Yeah, hazing was pretty, pretty common.

Did you get it? Oh yeah. Give me a good hazing story. They don't do this shit, I didn't really tell you.

No, I was a, when I made third class and got my bird, we were at Fort Pickett in, in Virginia.

And my, my first betune, they all went, we all went with the Katmos Mass after the appointment for hazing incident that was actually an accident, but it went to the wrong people. But anyway, yeah, I'm talking, if you try to fight back at all, because I was a pretty good scrapper back then. Now, it's all, it's all over when somebody's got your balls in their hand and the freak, they're twisted, man, and you're getting, you're getting tied up or zip tied and getting dragged out,

freaking shaving your balls, hot sauce and the balls, getting hit with paddles. Yeah, it was, it's stupid, right? It's all fun and games until you're tied naked to a spine board, hanging upside down from an elevator shaft in their shoot and fucking simulation rounds at stress. And then tape your head up and put a little pin hole on your mouth and throw you in the

“fucking showers. Yeah, like what, what? Welcome to team too. They're like, waterboarding, like, what?”

You know what? Time, man. Yeah, drop a rag in your face while you're hanging upside down, then as soon as you take it in, hey, oh, somebody's blowing cigar smoke in your face. Yeah, I think that's not, that's not torture or whiskey down your throat. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it was stupid. I mean, back then it was just, like, and then once you actually, you got,

You were smart. When you got secured on Friday, we sneak out through the locker room,

jumped the back fence over by STV and get to your car. You parked on the road so you want to get freaking. Guys would have, yeah, kegging a locker room, you know, a Friday and freaking. Where do you guys at? You don't want to be around, man. Did you carry that forward? No, I did not. I, I, I, I can't say that I did. I wasn't a big into it. I wasn't, I wasn't really big enough.

“No, it's, I thought it was stupid when it happened to me, so I'm like, well, why do I want to do that?”

But when you were a new guy and after you got haste and they had, if somebody else was going to get, hey, they made you, like me and my buddy John, when we were to take down guys, I'm like the the most dangerous part of raising somebody that doesn't want to be haste, right? You got to go in and grab them while everybody else tries to control them, tie them up, do whatever and then I just, yeah, it wasn't for me, really. Yeah, yeah, well,

how did it feel checking into team till after buds? A lot of pride, a lot of pride in team too, because you know, they had a repita. I kind of wanted to go to four because I like South America, a jungle type stuff, which come to find out, they'll already got, I really don't like a jungle, I'm much. There's a lot of history there. You know what I mean when you walk across that quarter deck?

“And then, but you're still, you still got to go through STT and then seal tactical training back”

then before they, they stopped doing that and made it all go on in Coronado. But STT was, it was fun and challenging. I mean, summertime in Virginia at AP Hill, very hot. And then that's where you try to start, you know, building your reputation too, because nobody really cares who you are to you get, you check into your team and then you start training and that's all shooting movement community and really, really big back then. Stillness is still is, but now, you know, you've got a

little, a lot more to worry about with drones and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, actually yesterday, we brought these, um, were you involved in, were drones big when you left? They were just coming in. They were just being teeny, quite a bit. Now it's like, it's one of the debliest things in the battlefield, obviously. Dude, holy shit. I did this, uh, I did this little, um, we made a piece of content yesterday. We brought these, uh, drone operators from Ukraine down. Oh, that's a god. Yeah, those guys know what

they're doing. Dude, holy shit. So they, they kind of brief this up on everything they're doing.

I had, I had never, I've never seen it on the closest thing to drone warfare. I've seen it as a

fucking predator overhead. Yep. You know, dude, none of these like FPV drones are like, so we go, we, um, brought them on on this properties over 100 acres. They gave us, you know, hey, this is the, this is the drones, these are the capabilities, these are these type of drones. And, uh, they're like, all right, go hide. We'll give you a HUD start and then they're sending the drones after you. And you can't, dude, holy shit, you can't hear where the fuck they're at. No, you, I mean,

like, it sounds like they're right above you and they're over there and it's impossible to get the fuck away from those. Yeah. I took some shots at one just for the hell. I just wanted to see what

the side picture was like, and there's no way in hell. You know, I mean, you're basically trying

to have a forage dot. They just came out with a particular ammunition. I read some of the four drones that you could shoot out like a five, five, six or whatever, too. And it still seems like pretty hokey to me. It gets shoots in a pattern. Well, they don't want rounds, but it's like four

“little rounds. Yeah. Even if you try to jam them, you know what I mean? I think they still already”

pre-programmed from what they're going to do, where they're going to go. And the terror ones are a big problem, too. Yeah. Well, I mean, once they once you're identified, you're fucked. Yeah, because I mean, I like, I just had a pistol with them. I was like, you know, just just, I just for the hell of it. I was like, I just want to see, I just want to put myself in the fucking scenario and actually take it seriously. And you know, I was like, listen into their tactics and

ship at the beginning on how they find people and all the different capabilities and what the weaknesses are. So I was trying to utilize some of that stuff. And once once they're on you, you're fucked. Like, doesn't, doesn't. If you shoot one down, there's just going to be a swarm of them coming up. And they're even saying that you can have one on station or more than one on station and have the same pilot control and multiples. So you could, you know, fly 10 damn drones

and have nine on station. And just up that one went down, another one switched to the next one. You know what I mean? And they're already hovering on station. Just waiting for it.

You know, you don't even have that many shells to go through. You know, and maybe hit one, but

“at the time you got one coming behind you, too. It's, yeah. It's a whole, they had different battlefield.”

Like, we always say, like, get back to the STT thing. That's where they really teach it. Well,

the diving and then shoot movement communicate. And now you get a really stay low, move, with discretion and definitely have somebody watching your six or somebody that's going to, yeah, because the drones are the biggest, I mean, for when I'm here and now and all this stuff, because I've been out of the game for a while. And then talking to people that are that know a lot about it. It's, yeah, it's a different battlefield, definitely. It's a pretty wild. It's a pretty wild.

Because as you said, yeah, back then, in the beginning of OEF and OIF, all we had were predators, Drake goes up there and now they're, they're kind of outdated. Yeah. I mean, these things, one of them was like, that big, you know, said it can go 300 kilometers an hour, like, it's fucking crazy. That's insane. But, um, I actually, I could be off on that, but, anyways, back to you, back to me, STT. Yep, AP Hill, down the dive in and then, yep,

got enough first platoon. How was that? It was actually pretty good deal, because they usually don't

“give like new guys out of STT back. But like I said, we don't, we don't wear fair platoons, right?”

So we go through Alaska to do telemark skiing. You learn how to live out of a backpack for freaking almost 11 days on, unsupported. And so I got to do it when I worked with him. And great, great people in there. My first, the dive buddy was Tommy Valentine, who, unfortunately, passed away quite a time back in a jumping accident in Arizona. Yeah. But yeah, he was my first win buddy. He was a freaking stud, all in all the time, awesome, awesome dude. Um, I'm learning a lot.

You pretty much trying to gather, trying to see what we talked about earlier, like, hey, who do I want to, who do I want to be like? You know what I mean? And, they have Val was definitely one of those

guys. He led by example, hardcore super incredible combat diver too. And like, we take that

shift for granted nowadays, right? How much water's in the desert? But, uh, yeah, super square away. I pretty much everything you did. Where was your deployment? Uh, we went to a first trip, well, they moved the command, well, not the command, the unit from Scotland. Yeah, we moved on over it, but to Italy. Brendan Dizzy, the heel of the boot, because we were stage there just to go over it back at forth to Bosnia, the cereal, or Kosovo, for whatever, just to work with other little

units over there. We're really, we're doing much as far as combat wise. And teammate did a couple ship take downs in the Adriatic around that time to force the embargo, like I said, this is back in the 90s. And then we went to Norway, which was a blast. I've heard those are awesome. Went there for a month. And yeah, the funny thing is I go, I'm raising my whole life right thinking I'm Polish and Lithuanian. My first trip in Norway, I get there with talking to Noreenegers during

like diversionists, great incredible people. Do like, are you Scandinavian? Are you like Norwegian? Like,

you got a big head? You kind of like, you look like us and I'm like, oh, dude, I'm not,

“no, I'm, I'm like Polish and freaking, I think Lithuanian, you know, but back then, sure enough,”

I get my freaking, uh, the 23 meter whatever the DNA check done comes back. Hey, you're 80, like 78% from, in Norway, that area, like, straight over, you kind of a little bit to the UK. And my mom is also the same. Like, my dad, I don't know, he's even my dad. No, he is. But yeah, he don't have any, like, I don't have anything that my dad has in him from his DNA. It's weird, well, like, the ethnicity traits or whatever you want to call him. Yeah, but going back to the

first trip in Norway and they, like, dude, are you, you know, Norwegian? I'm like, nah, like, you look like, you could be, you know what I mean? They were, like I said, this was back in 93, 94 and, you know, and yep, sure enough, I am. But Norway was a blast man, a lot of skiing, those guys are born with freaking skis underneath, jump, turning with 80 pound rucks on, with telly skis down, you know, holy cow, we're just too busy picking ourselves up off the snow,

you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, damn. What was going on? I mean, I know what was going on, but what, did you wind up going to Bosnia? Yeah, we've got a cereal hang out there. Actually, that's where I started, uh, made a couple of good friends with a couple of CCTs, kind of like a

hang a hang out there, bring them food and stuff, and come back, it was a lot of, a lot of driving

around, not too much. What was the, what was the mission? The medium, back then, right? We, it's funny how America goes to one extreme, we were protecting Muslims, we were getting killed by Christians, right? The Serbs and all that, and I really wasn't clear what the mission was over there. I've really, it was just sounds like every fucking war, going, going after, uh, I'm about really sure what the fuck was going after Pifwix and like the, um, person wanted for war crimes

or whatever, like these generals that were, in charge of the masks, freaking graves and stuff, and killing just, and like towns of people, you know what I mean? Yeah, but that was very,

like, the genocide, don't know. Yeah, a lot of genocide. Yep. He, he managed to be evil at times, man. So what,

I'm just curious, I mean, this was, uh, I don't want to relate our experiences, but this sounds similar to

“when I joined, what, what was your impression of the Syltimes where you fired up or you disappointed?”

I mean, you've got this all came off of Vrembo in 1982. Yes, it did. It did. You're not doing Vrembo. No. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was just along for the ride, like waiting for something to happen, you know what I mean? And the training was fun, but we made, obviously, you know, we make things that people pay to do for fun, suck. Uh-huh. Like jumping. Like, dude, oh, we were going to skydiving. Like, don't care if I ever see a rig again, you know, diving. Like, it's not the fun,

I'm staring at a compass board, it's freaking depth gauge, and a stopwatch for freaking two hours,

under water and freezing your ass off, right? But you learn a lot and you want to be good at it. Yeah. But I, you know, you don't want to be so far, especially the biggest thing is not letting your teammates down. I think that was, so the brotherhood, you know, you definitely see for the beginning, once you're in, once you get kind of established in your role and you build that trust, but as far as being bored, yeah, it was, as far as like not actually doing what you're training

“to do. I think that's kind of what was going on in the past couple of years too, as well,”

with guys just getting bored and wanting to just, you know, but you got to be careful with your ass for, too. You got to be careful with your ass for. So you, you spend some, how long were you a team, too, before you decide? Oh, eight years. Yeah, there's something, glad you're brought that up. Something that sounded like a piece of paper right there. So I got out in '90s, eight, for eight months. I got out, I was going to be a US martial, a couple of my buddies from team four.

I already went over and doing it. I went through the whole process, got out, moved to Connecticut, moved back home, because I thought I was going to work out a new haven. Guy went to high school with, it's a martial. He was the head martial at the time. Guy went to high school with his dad's best friend. So he's like, come up, yeah, come up here, you move up here, and I'm waiting to hear back from the martial service about what I'm going to go to the

winco, you know, to start a school on here, fleecey, whatever. And then I get a letter back then, it's before emails and all that. Oh, we're sorry to tell you that you no longer consider for it. And I went through the interview and went through the, like, you're going to say, you love the fucking sealed teams to become a martial, and they denied you. But, hold, can everyone for a minute, why did you want to leave the sealed teams to become a human martial? My daughter was born,

I don't want to deploy anymore for no reason, just what we were talking about earlier, as far as, like, you know, being bored, where it really wasn't anything going on. And I thought it would be cool, you know what I mean? And just talking to other buddies too, like, hey, it's better than being

“an FBI agent, because you know, got as much red tape to cut if you want to do, but this is back then,”

you know, yeah, and I got the, you know, longer being considered for the position. And I called up one of my buddies, he's like, yeah, there's a whole, they're doing a whole scrub, they're, it was, at that time it was kind of like, because I looked away, I am, and who I am, I was going through with that class. I'll just leave it at that. So I'm like, shit, what am I going to do? Like, I got a new mourn? Well, I put his, like, hey, the federal prison's hiring, and they

invariably had to get, and I'm, what, the, the African seal, right? And so I go, I, I go interview for that job, about 23, 24 years old, and I'm like, yeah, I guess I could, and it just went from male prison to female prison. Medium security, federal correctional institution, and Daneberry

Wait, let's start off as a GS7 or GS8, whatever. I'm like, I just got out of the Navy. I got in my

buddy of mine, well, it was also in my first platoon. He got out, this was where I'm going with this,

that he moved the Florida to be an EMT. And we, we talked back and forth. He's like, he's like, fucked as I'm going back in a Navy. And back then, so this is a, I don't know where I'm going with this. But anyway, I worked on, I go to, I go to Glencoe for, for the training down in Florida, if we see where they trained the federal CEOs, and there was, that was a fun. Only one, one other dude knew what I did prior. Like, I just kept it on the download. He was a Marine, and we both

worked at the same prison, but we both went with the training together. And when you're down there, you shoot like a Ruger 9 millimeter, they old freaking AR 15s, and the shotgun, a pump shotgun. And yeah, it was, it was a, it was a good time. It was a pretty, the shotgun story I got to tell

“it though. That's what, so this, you line up in like a couple, when you shoot everything else,”

you're online, a shotgun, you get like a two lines, because I think I don't know, one of the

same money for shells, or it's just something, and it was like a Remington 870, I think, a pretty basic pump gun. And there was a lady, a DA agent, that was an instructor there, right? And I'm just having to go, I'm like, dude, I'm like, what? This isn't going to be funny. So, because she's like, milking everybody through, like, I hate this is what you do, like, you put one in the chamber this way, and then you load it like that, and she's like,

all right, be careful, kicks a little, right? And I get up there, and I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, dude, I'm like, I'm like, I'm all nervous and shit, but he was trying not to laugh, right? And she's like, hey, just relax, just relax, and like, dude, I've been, John Shaw told us how to shoot shotguns, you know what I mean? I grabbed this shell, I go and put it in backwards,

“you know, the brass face, and she's like, no, no, no, no, no, it goes up, I dropped it.”

You did this shit on purpose? I dropped it, I dropped it, and then I'm, I load up, and she's like, okay, be careful, you know, kicks a little, and like, the way they're showing how to shoot, like, boom, so, boom, boom, boom, give it back to her, she called me a fucking asshole, and the guy and he was laughing, like, dude, I just wanted to have fun with it, and one of our, one of our instructors, like, he started laughing as freaking ass off, because it was, it was a pretty, the way it went down,

you had to be there to see it, but it was pretty fucking obvious, she was like, be careful, like, yeah, no, I'm a little nervous. That's awesome. But yeah, I did that for eight months, I found out my buddy went back in a Navy, and I'm like, dude, I can't do this anymore. So I called up, I'll call him maddog, a lot of people are going to know who he is, and he was working another great guy, another great role model growing up, taught me how to ski, actually,

well growing up in the teams, and I'm like, hey, are you taking, and like, can I go back, and I know you'd be calling back, I know you'd be calling back, like, are they taking, like, yeah, you got to go see your recruiter. All right, what? I just can't, he goes, yeah, you got to go see your recruiter, and this is before, as sole was actually a rate, I was still a quartermaster. So I went to the same recruiting office, I went in, freaking, 10 years ago,

when I first started talking to him when I was in the little in high school, and obviously,

the same recruiters aren't in there, and like, hey, I want to go back to the Navy, I'm, but they called it a nav that, like, I'm a nav that I want to go back to, and like,

“well, what did you do? I was like, a quartermaster. I think it was second class, you know,”

he gets up and calls it detailer, he's like, no, they're not, they're not taking you back, I said, oh, by any season, 53, 26, and, dude, I'm wearing, I'm wearing T-Buzz, torn shorts, and my freaking beat up T-shirt, he's like, you're a fucking seal, because all you other taken you guys back, and that was another little journey. So I had to go back to the map, the military entrance processing station, up in Springfield, the same when I went to before,

and my recruiter drove me up, well, the recruiter I was working with, drove, I had to do the duck walk with it, I hope physical again to get in there, and then when we were standing there, swearing in, I'm like talking to this kid, hey, when he go to the Navy for, he goes, I think I'm going to go to Buds, you know, I want to be a seal, and like, I heard that's tough, it's shit, man, like it's it's a pretty hard, you know, line of work to choose, and my recruiter's like,

J-Level alone, like, don't be it. Yeah, I said, I'm talking, we'll talk about it after work, so it was going through the whole recruiting thing again, going through the whole, yeah, freaking, and yep, I came in two weeks later, I was in a platoon with DJs that was my student chief. Yep, how was that?

getting back in, man, it was just good getting, being around, you know, going to work, I'm not saying,

“you're going to work at FCI for like eight months, and then having a broken service, and then”

realize, and, you know, I'm what you do, and this, like the biggest thing in this when you leave, or the guys, right, in the boy, so getting back in right into another, I'm going to work every platoon, yeah, right on. It was, and then, the two years later, I screened for a damn that credo group. Well, before we dive into dev group, we'll stick a quick break, all right, perfect. If you've ever hired somebody like I'm in the middle of doing right now,

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“where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state, explained to you why it matters,”

and then aimed to leave you feeling better and form than you were before you hit play. Tarras, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. All right, Jason, we're back from the break. We left off and you took a quick, you took another break from the seal teams, became a correctional officer, went back to team 2

for about another two years and now you're sounds like you're getting ready to scream for development group also known as seal team 6. Yes, I wanted to go over there to take a break. So you wanted to go over there to take a break? Yes. Did you tell them that in your screening? No, I'm just kidding. I wanted to go over there to stop because my daughter once again was

young and I was never home, just wanted to stop with a six month deployments and I'm like

go over there and once my buddies went over there and like it's great, you know, you hang around for three months, just carrying a beeper on you back then and then you train you some very specialized training, you know, for another three months, you get to go to schools, you want to go to like civilian schools, great shooting schools, you know, lock pick and all that stuff and at a very high level and then you train with your team back then or not squad your now for

another three months. So you're your home quite a bit except when you're picking and choosing what training you want to go do and this is what you were told. Yeah, this is pre 9/11. Yeah, and I finished a training program there in September 2001 and yeah, we'll hold on. Let's talk about the screening. Like green team. Yeah, it's definitely more cerebral than like you would say like the muds as far as the shoot and moving communicating part of it.

I mean, when you got in, when you got, you know, went through green team, I mean, I'm out of fucking deaf here guys so I can't talk shit, but I know what I saw when I was in and I got out in 2006 and they went from running one green team a year to running two green

“team a year and it seemed like the majority made it through green team. I think it was a completely”

different scenario when you got it because there was nothing going on, retention was probably

really fucking hard to get in there. And harder than probably I should shove my mouth because

I'm not one of them. No, no, but you think I get your point, even when I went over here to screen, when I said, I was like, I wasn't impressed by the attitude to some of the guys over,

“you know what I mean? They were like more high in mind than you were, you know what I mean?”

We have guys come over there that have done real-world shit boardings, you know what I mean? Real-world operations, either Bosnia, Kosovo, and we knew that the guys at the command were really weren't doing anything, hanging around and maybe go grab a person wanting for crime and that was the big thing or you know, take down a ship that could tie Jack or whatever. And I wasn't impressed by the attitude because they were like, oh, it was fucking new guy, where are your blues when you

go over there in the screen and do your interview and all that stuff? And it was just like their arrogant dudes, pop a scenario and then even after green team, you could kind of see why they are because you do get some pretty good training, but like really good training and but as you said, once again there was there wasn't much going on and then 9/11 happened and they weren't taking anybody though, were they? I mean they were taken like very few people.

“It's more September 11th. Yeah, it's a good old boy network, you know what I mean?”

They go around, they ask everybody you work with and you dump a tunes with and if you don't if you don't like somebody I just give a reason why because there are a lot of great guys that don't come over to the command because they just don't want to deal with the bullshit, you know what I mean? Back then and then when we got busy and started growing you got that's when they were because we were gone, I mean quite a bit. Yeah, the three color teams were

four months, four months, four months, four months, you know, that you rotate every four months. How was green team? It was challenging. Safety's a big thing there and doing things at a very high level, you know being able to shoot well. It's a big thing. Safety violations, I said, is the biggest thing that gets people shaking from there and not being able to think, shoot an unknown

“instead of you know what you're supposed to do in the house. I think the most challenging part”

for people going through the training jump and they take it that at a very high level too, you can't go one degree off heading when you exit the plane, you got to be able to fly a tight formation under canopy and everything that diving, it was pretty, you know at a high level because you're not just in pairs anymore, you're diving as a whole group, so no, no, shit. Yeah, with the little pole, yeah, right, right on. So you get through green team, where do you go

from there? Um, I want to break into a squadron and then we'll team back then and then we, we punched out to Afghanistan, which squadron, red, red squadron is that where you met this? I met him a few years after that when he came there, yes, okay, red squadron and you graduated, it was red team, it was red team back then then they started cloning squadrons to meet up with our army counterpart to Kag, they were squadrons, so they like they would team anymore, and just make it squadrons

for the higher up at J Sock to make it easier for them. And so you graduated green team, right before September 11th, right there and we were going, we were walking across the compound

when the first plane hit and I remember one of my buddies comes out of the lock room, he was like

"Do you hear what happened?" And that's when we had just, like, phones were dead big back then, either we were just watching the news inside the team room or inside our training room and then another plane hit, then our skippers like call a meeting for all the Kajray in all the class and kind of gave a load on what's going down, and that's when he said there's another plane they're tracking down right now, after one hit the Pentagon and yeah it was kind of, it was exciting,

it was an exciting time, I think, but then it was, you know, this is shit's about to get real. What's your wife think? She was worried, obviously all the wives were, yeah that first appointment

wasn't really good for the wife and that work, yeah when we first, when we first punched out over there,

see you old on, hold on, so you get done with green team, what, and then you go right to red team, right to Afghanistan? Yes. Yep, well we had a few weeks in between and we were working on stuff that we might be doing

getting our gear set up, because it was a first move for, I mean, I mean going to Afghanistan,

just it just kicked off and we wanted to be sure were you the first to water and to go? No, no,

“second. What were you guys doing? What was the mission going to be?”

Down the line and was the big one. Obviously we first got over there looking for him all over, his, his network of people and yeah, just trying to find him and that was our big mission going first one over there. Well, let's talk about flying in there. I mean, you just had what roughly a 10-year career, it's still team two. Yeah, yeah, eight years, eight years, it's still team two, with a eight month break. You joined the SIL teams because of Rambo in 1982. Yep. And now you're

stepping foot in a country that just, we're a terracelle is that just fucking hit the 20 hours and put it on. Yeah. Yeah, we flew over there. That was freaking entertaining too. The crew that I was with, the team, the boat crew, I'm like a little squad, you call it, pretty in the teams. We moved around. We call ourselves the orphans. We moved around from, we landed, we got in Kandahar, then we went to a couple of other small towns. We were living out of a backpack,

eight memories for almost four months. Holy shit. And then you had just standing by trying to get the development intelligence to actually track down people in this network. And then they had a

big, a big military offensive operation in Kandah. And they happened during our first pump over there,

what would be lost Neil Roberts, Fifi, Chappy, controller. And yeah, that was, you were there for that. I was one, we were on the other ridge. Yeah. Holy shit. Let's go. Yeah, that. Well, getting into that was even funny because my chief, my boat crew leader, John crazy horse, he's like, "J, are you still up on your J-tax stuff?" And because he comes out of a meeting, and we're just messing with our gear. Like I said, we were moving everywhere.

Anyone in the know if I was still, could you, because I was a communicator too, as well, in my

“battoons I've done. And I'm like, yeah, he goes, do you know how to use, or like, 117 fox drive?”

Yeah, it's like, why? We had no idea what was going on. He wasn't trying to get us some work. And we were in a salt team. We weren't a wrecky team, but they wanted to put up the, like, well, we got snipers in here. We get with 10 inch barrels to those stupid, but it was two hours. You got two hours. Go do your radio checks. Meet up with the L, who was our freaking, our calm

support guy, not a team guy, but a very smart, incredible guy. And get a DMC, 120 satellite

antenna, the donkey dick, UHF, I'm like, two hours. And then we got to pack out rucks for, with people going to be out there seven to 10 days. And guys weren't really sure. I'm like, how to pack out a winter ruck, because it was freaking cold and we're at 10,000 feet, most said, not between nine and 10,000 feet. So yeah, we're doing, I'm doing radio checks as we're getting out in a freaking 47 to go in. I'm going to the back of the way to second. They're sending a

fucking assault team in to do sniper work with two hours of prep time. Yes, it was just, it was one of

“those things. Hey, well, it's better. Let's go do something instead of not doing anything, right?”

And we ended up on this point. It was jump off the rampant ass, set up our freaking bit, our OP site, STF mountain. It was the 80-second-hundred-first-year worn, as they were moving to clear out this valley. And we just called in cast for a week. And then one night that March 4th, anniversary just passed, that was a, yeah, when Neil was team with Slavy, a couple of guys, that's when they inserted and got lit up, and we're, if you fell off and ended up dying.

I just interviewed Pete Blaber about us. I think he was, yeah, he was out there as part of didn't hear about it, but he did, he did. Yep, he was at the Delta unit that was over four. How do you feel about that now? I thought it was, we helped out a lot. We did, I mean, we supported, you know, the big movement with T-F mountain and whether the hundreds of, yeah, those guys, and then was an, I didn't feel good when, you know, we found out that the few feet passed away,

you know, all of our cast went to then, and then we kind of, yeah, we took it all out and tell it to the next day, put it that way, just with more cast, yeah. Were you the one calling the cast

Connecticut, I'm assuming. Yes. Well, big time Connecticut, yeah. There's a fucking huge operation of cut your teeth on it. Do you mean, I kind of, yeah, we call the cut from, we have,

“should be 52s, B-1s, 18s, 15s. Yeah. Do you remember the first cast you called, where you killed somebody?”

Yeah, it was right there with, it would be 52s on a, on a, on a disco site, actually, can you describe? We had short, we had shorty rifles too, which was, yeah, our, our post-op, debrief, I know it was, all right, we do this again, we got to do it a lot better, but

can you describe your first cast? It was pretty, it was actually, I mean, it pretty dramatic,

I mean, as far as what would it be 52 could drop, you know what I mean? And, uh, pretty accurate, too, I mean, the, describe everything. What were you hitting? It was a disco position in the town that that was a good, maybe two, three thousand meters from us. And, but we'd see these guys come up, start lighting up the 101st, 80 second. We, we had them all greeted out already, and we were doing this with a GPS and a rangefinder. Back, if there's a lot, the editors a lot better ways to

do it nowadays, but super accurate, as soon as you give, you know, the modified 9 line, to the pilot or the controller up there in the B52, they, the program where the JDM is going to go, and yeah, took it out, and then freaking, four hours later, another guy would come out of the, there was a big cave system, it called the whale. And yeah, the guys would just come, come out of that,

“and just like, refill the roll and just keep doing it. They were like little ants, you know what I mean?”

What you said, how did it feel to, for your first cast? I felt successful in the fall good,

it was just work, you know what I mean? It's just pretty much what it's about, it's it. How many bombs do you think you dropped? Oh my goodness, did I was a long time ago, a lot, that's all I know, a lot. Yeah, I got to read, I got to read the post stop, we did, it was, yeah, pretty good amount of munitions, how bad, yep, what was the sentiment like after Neil died? Oh, revenge, I think, you know what I mean? And yeah, that whole thing, yeah, was,

I mean it was tough too, because the guys that I was with the other four dudes that were new him really, well, I knew him from two, then he came over to the command before I did, and the two guys,

I don't know if we're really good buddies of him, and when we, when his call sign came back,

that's who fell off the helicopter, they were like shit. And at this time, yeah, getting back to the wives being home, at this time, we didn't even talk, yeah, we didn't even, we haven't talked to anybody for like almost a month from home, so they were kind of worried, then that hit the news and our command did not know how to deal with that, they were hearing about Neil before the command told anybody, and that when we got out of the

“field, I never forget, L, like I said, our calm guy, when we get out, and we're going to the”

guard as mud pit, and he's, he's throwing his two radiant phones, he's like call home, like call home, now the wife network is losing their freaking mind, so that was a big lesson learned to for the command after, after 50 past. Okay, I'm after that deployment. Well, they're at the point that we did another good little Wolverine, which was a good, a good little operation, and ended up working out perfectly, we were going after Zawa Harry and his body guards,

and that was a perfect L shape. Once again, the orphans had to run around with a perfect kid, I was shaped and pushed it up with 247s, and Zawa Harry wasn't there, but yeah, we got the mission to accomplish as far as dealing with the detail. What was that mission about? Going after going after their body guards, it been loud, and we thought he was going to be with him too, and the intel wasn't that great. Where was that right outside of guard as? Do you want to just

scribe it? What was your role in that? I was a salter, yeah. Yeah, it was, we rolled up on in the 47s, you know, like L shape the ambush, they said they had squirt or this was a funny story, we're not funny. They said they had squirters up on another ridge line, and like somebody that they thought was fleeing from a par of that motorcade that we ambushed. And we, way, you ambushed a motorcade? Yeah, how did you do that? A motorcade, with the 247s. Okay, we caught them rate when they were doing

set up to in the LZs, the landing zones I put them on, it just happened to be, it perfect, in the

“guys that we were going after, didn't even, I don't even think they knew it, they started shooting”

bailing out of the vehicle, but, but a vehicle was for a three of them, but after that was over.

Then we went after the squirters, and it was just a farmer in the field, and it was the first

one off the ramp on there. I got about two buddies to get a next to me in the skies. We get back into 47 takeoff, the goal lane were right next to where the guy, the crew chiefs yelling at us, where his guy is at, I get off, I look at him, and he's got his hands in, so I'm thinking, okay, maybe he's got a suicide best, that's first, and he keeps walking towards us, and my buddy, and next to me, he's like dude, I like dude, don't, once again, this where you got to be a thinker,

right, you just don't like blast somebody, they're freaking do it. So I let three rounds rip by his feet, and he falls full run as back, like a freaking upside down turtle, hands in here, we go zip time, and my buddy was just getting ready to drill him. He was just a farmer out there, a goat, a goat or a herder, you know what I mean, and we took him down, dropped them off, and after we found out who he was, and that made me feel really good, you know what I mean, not because it could have gone another

“way, which would have been, hey, that's the fog of war, but yeah, that was something I remember”

really good about, I mean, specifically about that, that I was comfortable with, at that time,

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you know what I mean, like waiting to do something, getting approval to do something, and then yeah, one through three times, wasn't really that busy. I was going to go to the training cell until one of my chiefs said, dude, you want to go to Iraq. And I'm like, yes, I want to go to Iraq, because I've just, I've heard the stories from green or it's everything a team guy wants to do and get up at night, dinner for breakfast, and then walk out to the birds and go to your work,

“come back and do it again. Maybe all night, but yeah, Iraq was, I think with every team guy at that”

time, the type of operations they wanted to do, just going out and getting busy. That whole shipway here was a 2003 and four same squadron. Yeah. Yep.

guys from our, I think he even visited it from the newer guys, actually, to go work with

Cag, with Delta Force guys, and then we do it back and forth, and we took a lot of lessons learned to, and brought that into our training in our SOPs the way we operated, could come from each side. Like you ever remember doing a hot hallway in training? Oh yeah. Right, that's one of the stupidest things you could do, right? Just, uh, run on the way down there, instead of, you know, maybe crash in her toilet grade, and we learned at less than the

“hard way from a couple squadron guys in the army. No shit. Did you log man over there?”

No. No. No. No. You went over there with the, with Delta Force. Yes. Yep. How was it? It was cracked up to me. Yeah. It was, it was in, um, um, yeah, we were busy, you know, but it was everything, like I said earlier, that you kind of want, yeah, man,

you just load up, come with a game plan. It got to the point, like the first couple of times,

when you're planning to go, you know, go to work. It's, you overthink things a little bit too much into, you get, like, a little bit nervous, and, but then when you, once you keep doing it more and more and more, it's, it just becomes second nature. Like you could go, all right, we got to go take this down and freedom. Our officers wouldn't even come in there to dip at the team leaders, figure out, okay, yeah, I got the light side again. You got the green side, blue side, but whatever

boom, just go to work. But it was great. And walk out to the little birds or 60s or 47s, in the targets would change all the time depending on the intel and what we had, what we had going on over there. Just going after you guys going after bad guys. Just going after, yeah, that just, in bad dudes, should that we're coming over from different places to different, you know, different

“countries, and not only just in Iraq itself. How many targets you guys had in the night?”

And with the pen on the follow-ons, some nights, one, some nights, five, they're just depended on what we got off one target if we even landed on the right building and, or if they move somewhere else. And that's where the ISRS, that's where great too, helping us out. And again, back when we're talking about the drone, we're now with the drone warfare, it probably is so much easier to actually pinpoint and haven't mistakenly hit targets, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, I'll be able to, what did you, so now you're doing close quarters combat, lots of action, you've got a life or a kid at home. What's going through during all this? You don't even think about them. Yeah, if you can't let that distraction get your way, you know, that's where people make mistakes. When you leave home, it's, yeah,

it's, all right, as soon as that gate closes you walk in, they're like, yeah, if you think about that, you're going to let your boys down, you know what I mean, part metalize it, you can compartmentalize it, you're just like you do lose in a teammate. You've got to compartmentalize it and put it in the cupboard and try not to let it peek itself out, keep the cover closed. What about the cadence, cadence of ops, are you keeping up? Yeah, if you could about it. Yeah, it was, back

in that time, it was what, what we wanted to do, like what we were training to do, but uh,

“the cadence was there indefinitely. Yeah, do you remember your first kill? Um, yeah, it was on a rooftop.”

I mean, I don't want to talk about that, but yeah, it was, yeah, it was because we were a

record team. We climbed up buildings and uh, yeah, I don't know if that wasn't the first one.

Once again, you compartmentalize that too. Be a guy with a gun on a roof, sneaking over to side, as our assault team was coming up. Yeah, we'd like to climb buildings there. They're wrecking guys. Did the killing bother you? No, no, I mean, of course it's going to bother you if you sit back and like think about it, right? But no, I mean, it was just, it just had to work. And you're doing it to save the, if you put it in their minds, uh, in like, hey, I'm

protecting my guys right now, and that's pretty much what we did a lot of as a wrecky team. Yeah, I'm covering my guys protecting them, and that's, you don't, you just don't think about, yeah, the actual action that you just did. You're doing something else you want to talk about on that deployment? Um, she knows, they all kind of blend together.

he'll know one of the best operators I've ever worked with. And you're on the roof. This is actually

“a pretty funny story. I told you, he's carrying SR25K. And this was supposed to be like a can”

and like a little, it was going to be almost like a dog and pony up, because we were doing a turnover with another color team coming in. This was like our last stop before he went back to the States. And it's going to be super easy, right? Walking, once again, kind of building, there's no cover in building. It's a flat mud roof, it's stupid idea, right? It's stupid idea to kind of building. We got Rangers coming down the other side of this canal covered in elephant grass

that we're going to take out. We'll take out a tent close by not take it out, just go in there and see who the heck was in there. So we climb up the building, we're laying there, then we start getting lit up by a building that couldn't find out with 300 yards away. We start getting lit up from a PK, I'm on top of a freaking car. It looked like it was like a black in Mercedes. Then a guy comes out of a house behind us and starts lighting this up and we're like, what the, this was

supposed to be easier in this. And we're in a roof like suck in mud. My buddy's staying in up and looking through his nods. I'm like, dude, what are you doing, man? Fearless, and he worked with Cag for a little bit two day loving them over there. I'll get the fuck down, man, and he's like, dude, is that what is that? Meanwhile, I'm fishing for my inline for my scope, my night vision for for the scope I was carrying. He's still standing up. He's looking and I put the inline.

He thought I had my 556 by Recky and four when I had the 308 and I couldn't see behind. I couldn't really pick out what was going on because there's a big light behind the car where the guy was shooting with PKN. And I'm like, well, one of how far that is. And I carry the rifle, built in a 300. So I know my holds for a 100 to 500. And it's a short build in 20, 308. Take the shot, the light goes, and I'm like, oh, it's happened in seconds. Like, dude, there are 300 yards.

Great, as I'm transitioned and down to the guy shooting a PKN. Who I hit in a shoulder by the way,

I'm not through part about it. Because all this always flip flops. I come to find out. They all

duck behind the car. And they said, and I'm like, oh, I carry a mag of AP rounds right here too. And they're ducked behind the car. So I fished tail. It's got a big ass piece of Brigadier tape on it. Put it in my first round. It's like 20 yards in front of the car. And it was, but then I worked it up to the car. And then yeah, we took care of business. Kind of final the next day. After our turn over the next night, the people we were turning over with blue, they went in and said,

yeah, they're like, how do you guys see that? See that? Well, at nighttime shooting, and all that. And yeah, we did a pretty good job. Yeah. But that mission was supposed to be like freaking, just going, gather some intel and leave. And that's not the way they worked up. Yeah, damn. How many times did you go over there? Four, four times. And I left you. And then we started working out of Romadi. We started doing, you know, a transition in a lot more around instead of being

in Ellis, I mean, we moved all over the place. And we went to, when it really started getting entertaining when we brought our forces up and just north of Baghdad to Bacuba. And then we were used to bad guys weren't used to having people coming at night and do operations up there. And that's right when I got the call to get back to the beach to start fluctuating for the aviation unit that we

“have. No shit. So what is the aviation unit? And how did that pop on your radar?”

A bunch of my buddies went over to fly over there. And well, I got a funny story about that. So my

first time back from my first pump in OEF, back home, you know, basket lead for two weeks.

And my chief, my bulk leader, he's like Jay, you got to escort the weapons out the Shaws, gun box. I'm like, all right, how do I do that? I'm still a new guy. We just got back from our first trip, our first deployment when we talked about earlier. And you go over to the airport to north of get an actual on the other side of the airport. This is back in 2002, 2003, right? And you're going to see a gate, go up to that gate, ring a buzzer, whatever.

So I drive there. Govy pick up truck. We'll be busy in the back. And I see this big dude wearing a pole of shirt, khaki pants. He's waving the up. Back up, throw the guns in the caravan, see two away. A little turbo prop for four hour flight to Memphis. So we take off and his stew's asking me all kinds of questions about the deployment. And like, hey, about

“Robert's Ridge, what's going on? And I think he's just like, something normal dude, right? And”

total oblivious. I'm like, dude, are you fucking team guy? It's a cookie I am. And um, he ended up

He's always trying to get back to freaking big guy. I'm trying to get back to the blue,

you know what I mean? And I can't right now. And I'm like, dude, wait, wait, you're freaking flying an airplane? Like, you're a team guy pilot right now, flying me to freaking Memphis. So that's wouldn't, like, well, this is pretty freaking cool. Kind of scary, but pretty cool, you know. And yeah, come to find out that program was developed back in the beginning, just to learn how to steal

“airplanes if you had to do it. If you've been, I remember talking about that shit. I didn't know”

still going on. I didn't, I didn't know a clue at the time either. Apparently, yeah, I didn't know anything about it. And then come and find out. Yeah, it's kind of where they sent people that they really didn't want to, it wasn't a good thing to go to, but it was a great trade, a great skill to have, right? They sent you to civilian flight school. You, you, you get your, all your pilot licenses, even see if I flight instructor licenses, and then you just pass it on. Why do you say it's not

a good place to go? Well, back then it wasn't because we were at war, and you don't want to be a team guy flying around the United States where your buddies are off, you know, doing work overseas.

So is that, is that what you do? Well, I was burned. That was the first time. What were you talking

about flying around in the state? Yeah, it's, yep, you just, you don't deploy. At that time, yeah, you said, well, they just spent a bunch of money for you to go to school, and they, they do utilize you to a certain extent, pretty well. How do they utilize you? Flying gear, flying equipment around, just like it makes the process of moving like weapons from one place, to another place, he's up, and there's one little special program we have for our bigger, bigger plane that we have

there, the 1900, which is used for a lot of special stuff, it's far, but in the United States,

“nothing crazy. Interesting. Is it, I mean, is it still like that? I think so. And then back”

you're in a little bit. It's been a couple years. How many people were involved in that? Eight, that's 10. Yeah, it's a good, it's a close-knit unit, too. Let me, I don't know much. What's talking about it, but what, um, and we've, we talked about, you wanted to break to be with your daughter. How old is your daughter at this point? It's 2013. 13 years old. Was that the big breeze and you wanted to do it? Yeah, and just get a break from, yeah, just kind of getting, you know,

the same routine that was normally in every four months, every eight months, yeah, and also building

that skill, because when I went over there, they're like, hey, you're never going to, you're not going

to make master chief. If you don't, you know, take a certain leadership position as a troop chief. And I'm like, no, I'd rather get my pilot trade, you know, than have to worry about making any nine, you know, so, and it, it turned out to be a smart move and also being home a little bit more, but you do go to fly a school for like almost eight months in Florida. So it's a lot of back and forth. How did it feel to be on home after all that? It felt good. It felt good. We got the worst, of course.

They get divorced. Oh yeah. Yep. Yeah, we'll be separated for like three or four years and then try it again, and then I'm not, but just in a workout. Sorry. Typical, typical story about teen guys. Yeah, 90% success rate at getting divorced. Are you close with your daughter? Yes,

“I try to be a poster. We had her little problems when she was like a younger entertains, you know what I mean?”

And when me and her mom separated was kind of, she could pick and choose who is she wanted to see. Me and her mom really didn't have a ugly divorce law. We just say, hey, when you want one out, but when she was going through that age, yeah, she was typical teenage girl. And plus I was flying a lot. I was just learning the fly. Yeah, I'm pretty close to her. Yeah, she lives in Virginia Beach right now. See, you get divorced after the break. Yes. What led to that, do you think?

Me being gone. I think and then also just, yeah, just my wife, she said that when I got back from my first trip that I've get to see and like something changed. I'll bet it in Blaine. And like I'm like, I'm still me. You know what I mean? Because we could part mentalize. And there's something different. I'm like, uh, I'm good. You know what I mean? You know how we are. Our community, like we just ignore it and just keep rolling. And some people close to you actually see

the changes that you choose to ignore happen. And I think that's what led to pretty much yes,

I want to change anything. How long after you took the break, did you wind up getting divorced? We're not took a break. Well, we were separated for three years anyway. And then so it was probably five, six years. We cut the worst. Yeah, like a 2015. Yeah.

“Did you feel different when you were coming home from Iraq?”

No, I just worn out. Did you notice any changes? I didn't notice. She might have noticed. Yeah. Looking back. Do you notice any changes?

Well, hindsight's always 2020, right? So I think we had to probably,

maybe it was a little more cold. When I got home, you know what I mean? More. Guess I'm like a psychiatrist now. But, uh, I want to say, then that is caring, but not as emotional, I guess. So that's, I guess that's a side of me. She saw that would change pretty much. Let's talk about something that actually brings a lot of stress this time of year. Banking.

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PTAs, TBI? No, I didn't have PBI and I had to go through that with FAA too. That's another story. But, um, not really any PTSD. I think we're a good department analyzing, you know, the certain days, like March 4th, like we talked about August 6th, like, storage of 17, the other certain times where you, like, shit, hasn't been that long. You know what I'm like, you missed those dudes too. So it's kind of, but then you just move on, right? Because if you do all on it, it does, does you know

good at all? Yeah, you're steering the bottom of a freaking pocket bottle or something, you know what I mean? How do you deal with it now? Just good partner analyzing, stay busy, stay busy, partner analyzing. I like shoot and I've, you know what I mean?

“How many cars, motor side? That's what I do. When I come back from my deployments,”

shoot, I rebuilt 93 Mustang and my garage, that was the way I, I dealt with it. I could go back

so I like motor cycles a lot. That's how I deal with it. Keep busy. Because if you're a

stagnant mind, it's not something that's good. Yeah, what kind of motor cycle do you have? Deciding. No shit, not a Harley? Mm-hmm. It's a V4, actually. Right on, man. Not gonna. No Harley, you know, I tell you, I don't know. It's a telling. Right on. So what do you, I mean, what did you think of the aviation unit? It was good. It was monotonous, you know what I mean? But it was, you wanted a lot of freaking.

A lot of times, you're on a call. I'm like, I'm married at Edinburgh. I was flying. When Edinburgh was killed in, you know, we were on standby then. And my wife knew his wife from doing, she would do her hair, actually. And then I got a phone call from our command. I'm like, yeah, 11 o'clock. Hey, you got a flight hour. You can saw how it's burning. So my wife heard it in the phone and she's, what? I'm like, yeah, no, I don't know if you

was, that's where so-and-so lives. And at times like that, that's hard too. We fly in a K-K-O-T amount to tell, you know, and to tell the family. And this was like shoot right before the year before extortion. So, yeah. Well, other than that, the aviation unit was, it was a learning experience,

“put it that way. It was such a lot for the future too. If you want to stay with the flying”

part. Yeah, you did. Yeah, until I went to, when I did my last three years at the recruiting district, I wasn't flying much at all there. But when I got out, I got a head of an opportunity to freaking jump right back into it again. How was the recruiting duty? Oh, man, dealing with recruiters?

I was a, I don't know if fuck you did that. When I first went in there, I told him I had very

little respect for that. Anybody that could sit behind a desk in the military for a career. And have a rating of the Navy counselor. And then, I think it should be a civilian position personally. Because they want, like, our job there is to give them quality. All they care about its quantity, right? And you're, and you're schooling with the young kids, like, futures and lives. And I was glad I went there with the rank that I had as a senior chief, because I don't see

how, like, a second class at E5 could go do that job. Because they would just get stepped on as far as, hey, keep giving us bodies. You know what I mean? We're like, we're not going to just

“sign somebody off. That's how that job got created in our community when they made, as so,”

an actual job seal, EOD, Diver, Rescue Swimmer, and Swick. They recruiters would just, you know, pencil whip there, PST scores, and then they set them up to boot camp, or they already spent money on getting the sky up there, going through boot camp, and they bound the PST, like, why are you setting these guys to us? You know, and that's where they put in the shit screen at the recruiting level. So they would have more qualified candidates go up there. And it was cool, like, going out the way

came in, you know, talking to kids, answering their silly little questions about buds and training, all the book writers books that I may have read one or two. Do you know about this guy? But it was a rewarding job. It was rewarding. Even though I think, like, maybe five kids I sent, they made it through buds, but in three years, right on. So why did you, what, what led from the aviation unit to the recruiting? Why did you want to move to Texas? And I like, I used to like it when we trained on

there. In the 90s, we trained at Fort Hood and go visit Austin, back when it was a nice sleepy college town. It's not anymore, but I just like the weather there. It does get hot the people, the culture, when I was there. And it worked out. I didn't even know that job was a job. I called up my detailer. And, you know, he told me that there's a recruiting job in San Antonio who like working there.

And, like, what, I don't want to be a recruiter. He goes, no, no, it's a coordinator. I never

heard about him before. Once again, and you work with a civilian counterpart that worked for a academy. It's like a contractor. So there's two of you. And I know zero, short duty, as far as every command I was at, I was always on like C. Duty. Probably whatever I want. He's like,

“do it. I'll hook you up with this job. And that's what maybe go to Texas. So I'm like,”

anywhere seen in Antonio Houston, Dallas, and it recovers a humongous district in Texas.

A lot of driving. But, like I said, it was rewarding. It was rewarding.

“I mean, what was it like for you to just totally punch out of that command, out of steel teams?”

Oh, that was kind of believing. It was shit. It was kind of believing. Yeah. It was good just to you move on to think about the next chapter. You were done. Yeah. It was, yeah. I think it started to slow down through a little bit. But, and losing the friends, and like when we went extortion 17, got shot down now, I was sitting, I actually flew up to Boston to pick guys up that were training up there. And I'm sitting behind a home play, a family park, because I was only the one of the

top red sock and Patriot fans that everybody knew that was up there. They had tickets. So I'm sitting

behind a home play, and my phone, it was actually best. My phone vibrates. He's a two-trip.

I'm like, who the two-trip? It's not sinking in, and that was when, that was August 6, when, three-game extortion 17, got shot down with quite a few of our friends on there. But then, yeah, and that was very round the time. I was like, I just wanted to, you know, move on, and do a more close-year job. You're ready. And at the horse, just wanted to get away from, you know, the area, hand the road area, and start out new, and I had a new girlfriend to,

who's not my wife. Well, congratulations. Yeah, how do you made her? That is another interesting story. So before all the bookwriters, right? At our command, we'd have people come down, we knew people in the aviation. This is what when I was flying. We knew people in the aviation community, like higher-ups, like some of the guys that found the net jets, just doing our recurrent training in La Guardia airport. So we'd bring them down for visits.

“They visit the command. I'll never forget when I'm walking around the command, get them a tour”

of a room, kind of like, you know, the team room, and then going downstairs, showing the smiam that we're getting built. And one of the head guys of United Technologies prior Whitney, he's like, well, when's it going to be done? And we're like, well, we don't know. We need like 25,000, whenever operations guys is telling this. And he turns around to his assistant, whipped up one of those big, like notebook checkbooks, and writes it in the here, it's covered. So

through that, he was good buddies with my current wife's best friends dad. So we met up through that meeting right there, and then it just kind of, a long story short, and we went to my wife's gonna be pissed. But her best friend died, and then I called her, just to say, hey, I'm sorry about it, and then we linked up that way. Gotcha. But through that meeting that happened at the command, of course, it was, they got to shoot like free-and-get-fifty kills, the modules, they got sugarnaid launchers

prior, they had a blast, and now they don't do that anymore. I can't even get out of the command anymore, because of the notoriety. But they were very happy, and it was a pretty cool the way that went down with, you know, taken care of the memorial that they were building for the command, just as one guy I'm right to check. It was pretty, it impressed me too, and they were happy with their

“experience there. Right on. Well, what was the leg for you separate now, the Navy?”

You're, as I mean, it sounds like you're just a hundred percent ready. Yeah, yep. Well, I was offered a job to actually fly by a great company out of California, Solaris Aviation, and I thought they were rolling a dice with me too, as well, because it's flying a jet, and I'll have been flying as turbo-props, twin-turbo-props, it's like a jet with a prop liner anyway. So to see you there, you gave me the opportunity to, is like dude, I've got to give

you a job right now, I'm a fan-nice or a T-turbo, I'm like no, I'm not even Texas. Something pops up in Texas, let me know. Like two weeks before I retired, a gall-stream job popped up, then I got to figure and go to initial training for it, and it was a little bit easier in flying a prop. Things just move a little bit quicker, and then I rolled right into that. You like flying a gall-stream? Yeah, it's, it's a gorgeous airplane. It's a gorgeous plane. All the gall-streams are, we fly

a 550 though, it's a beautiful airplane. Right on, man. And then it started, yep, did that, and then flew for another guy at Austin, a single-turbo-prop, a PC-12, which is a gorgeous plane. They're

incredible. And the guy was when the best guy's ever flew for in my life, then it got hired by

big freight company, and did that for a little bit, and kind of taken a break, and just working

Yes, the retired. Do you miss it? I missed the boys. I missed the fellows. You know what I mean?

“I do, but when I think back, do I really miss it that much? Not really. I mean, I miss some of the”

cool things we did. You know, but I was ready at that time. I'm going to be, I have replaced shoulder, my knee, my back's jacked up, freaking, yeah, it took a toll. You know what I mean? And mentally, takes a toll on you. Yeah, it takes, it takes a toll. Yeah. Especially with the FAA, it takes a toll. What do you mean by that? We went to Iowa, man. I got back, and I'm trying to help other people out with this. Right. I got back from Iowa, man. Going through mail, went there for the TT races,

the motorcycle races there. It's freaking incredible experience in it. So,

going through the mail, and I got, I never get a letter from the FAA, opening it up.

Okay, we see you're disabled of it. Yeah. And you got to tell us everything that that's on

“your VA letter. And I'm like, well, when I take my physical every six months, I check off,”

like the stuff that bother, I didn't even know about half the stuff that was on my VA letter. And I read, like, oh, oh, oh, because it's kind of like a blanket when we had, yeah, long story. So, I go through everything that's on there. I got TBI, TTSD, the FAA, all this other stuff, and I got to go get a taken care of. So, I see a great doctor in Savannah, Georgia. He has me

go through everything. I go through all the testing, smoke it. I mean, my brain is, like, fried,

going through the neuropsych testing. And then I end up answering questions to a bunch of other guys that are disabled beds that are pilots that are going through the same thing. But a lot of these guys, they keep trying to push for more disability, right? But they don't report it to the FAA.

“We check everything off every six months when we get our flight physicals through our docs.”

And the job box in there, are you disabled, boom, you check it, and you get fill out, you put it at everything you have, and you're good to go. Some guys are lying, they got in trouble, they got caught, and what's weird is they're worried about some of the veterans that are at around there, and you can walk around a flight operations area and see like a five foot, four, 350 pound man pilot walking around. Like, I'd be worried about that guy more than they'd be worried about, you know,

having a vet flying in airplane. Yeah. What do you think they're worried about? That's flying our planes. I don't know. What the disabled vets? Yeah. Interesting. Well, some, I mean, there are some crazy people. They're not even vets. You know what I mean? I do stupid shit. So, so you're a grandpa now. Yep. How's that? I don't see them at often, but when I do, it's the one, the the littleish one, Braxton. He's a, he's a tear, and uh, yeah, toafers, they're both good kids. They're

good kids. They're crazy. They're good. Yeah, it was weird. That wasn't planned either. So, yeah. Yeah, they're good kids. I spoil them when I see them. You know what I mean? That's pretty much where you could. I can't, I'm looking forward to getting them out in Texas to do some shooting. I already bought them like a little 22, little Tomcat, whatever. Nice, little can on it. Yeah. Nice. I'm looking forward to that. Whether you can't get them behind that 300 black out there. Yeah, a couple more years.

I don't want to give it the Braxton. You might turn around and shoot me with it. Oh, man. You want to go break that thing in? Mm-hmm. Well, before we do, what do you get coming up next? Anything? Anything? No, this was not a big step for me. I'll tell you that coming in here talking to you. Thanks for the opportunity. My pleasure. Jay, so I got recurring training next week, so that's my next big step. Oh, man. Well, wish you the best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you, Matt. Cheers. Thanks. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.