.jpg)
Constant Combat
This veteran-led podcast highlights the experiences of Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, starting with their harrowing 2004 deployment to Ramadi; a 9 month combat tour which resulted in the highest casualties in a single deployment - a deployment that most Americans have never heard about. Through candid conversations surrounding these events, the series also explores earlier experiences that shaped the Marines, emphasizing their grit, humor, and humanity while aiming to honor their stories authentically.
Constant Combat
The Pale Horse Rider in Ramadi - Justin Stadelman (part 2 of 2)
In Episode 2 with Justin Stadelman, we revisit Ramadi 2004 through the eyes of a Humvee driver bound to perimeter security, evolving tactics, and days that turned on a single blast. Between heat, boredom, and sudden violence, we weigh culture, loss, and the question no one answers the same way twice.
• Humvee-bound roles in cordons and raids
• Heat, exhaustion and staying alert at night
• Delta taskings, Operation Traveler, and July task orders
• Training for stability ops vs urban combat reality
• Government center posts and Iraqi police interactions
• Checkpoints improvised without proper training
• Armor upgrades, welding and convoy north from Kuwait
• Platoon culture, strict NCOs and hooch life
• Habbaniyah Dam blast, VBIED day and casualty rhythms
• Foreign fighters, shifting intel and prisoner releases
• Houses in disrepair vs palaces in excess
• The enduring “was it worth it” question
----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088
If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ RamadiPodcast@gmail.com, or via the podcast website above.
All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM
This is constant combat, and this is part two of two with Justin Statleman.
SPEAKER_00:You you bring uh that you saying that made me think. So just because as a vehicle commander or in in some of the other dismounted ways that I was, yeah, uh it was a very it must have been a very different experience to have to stick with the vehicle during a lot of this stuff too. Like when things kick, like you get hit and you gotta go chase somebody down. Well, somebody has you know, somebody has to stay with the vehicle, you know, the the the the driver has to stay with the vehicle and the gunner has to stay behind the gun.
SPEAKER_03:And so a lot of times it was like when you know we we're we're talking about doing hey, we're gonna do this giant like bug hunt or corn and searches off huge areas, and we're we're pulling outside security. And guess who has to stay with it? While other guys are going to like door to door. So I'm staying with the Humvee, and it was like it was almost like nine percent boredom. You're staying out there, you have to stay awake. You can't just doze off. That's not happening. So it's like you're dig that was the the struggle, too. It's like stay awake, and it's the heat, too. You know, that's what guys with the cot uh hurt a lot of guys with the heat. I mean, there's a there's a I think I found a photo, I can't find it. If I can find it, it there's a photo of us sitting white uh Contreras is giving somebody an IV, you know. Some of you had taken that photo, right? You're in it, right? Our shenanigans that went in our little our you know, our mini shenanigans today, the the plight, you know, politically correct way of shenanigans that happen inside. But oh yeah, it stayed staying with the Humvee. It was like, you know, we're doing these nighttime ops, or we're going inside these houses. I gotta have to stay with the Humvee. I wasn't privy to what was going off going on.
SPEAKER_01:Um so how many people stayed with you with the truck? Because we I think we had a different structure than you because we yeah, I mean, as 81s, you probably did not train, prep, and plan to operate out of vehicles all the time. And since I was cat prior to being mapped, the Humvee was my my mansion, that's where I lived my entire Marine Corps career. I can tell you the best way to sleep in a Humvee still, because I I lived in the damn thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was like for Blake can contest to this. I mean, the only time we really used Humvees where we're going out, we'd go out to like you know, only time we would take the Humvees out with going up to the mortar ranges or going up to the Swan Z or driving somewhere else. But it wasn't like you were you lived that like being because you were a tow gunner, right? Yeah, so um ours was sort of like we're just transporting people as it. And then once you're up there, you you you're no longer a Humvee driver, now you're part of your gun squad.
SPEAKER_01:So when you were in with these cordons and Ramadi, were it was it you and the gunner only that were staying back, or did you guys have like a any other facility element?
SPEAKER_03:The gunner, me, and the whoever the vehicle commander was, that was it, and that's who stayed back, and we're like that's not too bad, that's three people at least. Yeah, and that's pretty much what it was, you know. It was like especially during the day, it wasn't so bad. But the night one's a little tougher because it's like we're waking up at one o'clock a.m. to go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, I remember chasing us trying to chase down Zarakawi. That was a big thing out there. Um, yeah. I remember I think we early on we did uh, you know, Oliver North was driving around with us. We did uh I tell people I I I I remember us doing something for Delta Force, you know, those guys. I remember doing they come inside, you got these two bearded guys with like wearing jump boot, you know, like hiking boots. Like, who heck are these guys? And doing stuff for them and then staying out there while they went and had their their snitch, and you know, say these are guys, and they bring them back, you know, and that staying out there. I was staying with the Humvee, or ramming my Humvee, like ramming my Humvee through somebody's front gate was a fun one too. And hopefully, I remember.
SPEAKER_01:I remember you know do you remember which op that was that you ramm through the gate? Because now you've named three and I know which three those are.
SPEAKER_03:I I don't remember, I just remember like taking part of the Humvee off, not part, get like some of the and then driving through and then pulling it back so everybody can like Yeah, kind of like almost using like the Humvee front grille as a claw. Claw, right? And then pulling up getting close enough to where you're hopefully not messing up the Humvee too much and then getting over the walls and staying out there, and that was my life for towards the end, you know, and that that was you know, that was my whole life was being being a Humvee driver, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, most of the Delta missions were in July, and I I don't know if you remember July 4th specifically, but the uh the Delta had that little tiny uh section that was their base on uh right across on Blue Diamond, and so we could see where they were at across the Euphrates, and they decided to go out and fire off like a million different colored flares that was their fireworks, which was hilarious. But we looked through the sites, and it was those it was those three Delta guys, and it was the same guys, the hiking boots and beards.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I remember I think it was Neil and who was the other guy from my the other sergeant, and they went out with Zakaki.
SPEAKER_01:Zakaki, yeah, going out with Green Berets out there special forces doing yeah, and then the Zirkawi missions were all that was Operation Traveler, and Operation Traveler was August 1st through the third, more or less. I mean, it it was in three different phases, so I don't know which phase specifically.
SPEAKER_03:I just remember, you know, getting brief, like this is what you guys are doing. You're gonna stand this corner and that's all you're doing, and like, oh there, right? It's like, hey, so our Kaui's mom is over here, we're gonna go talk to where it's like our, you know, and Blake again, he can contest. It's like they tell us, go sit in this corner, and that's what we would do. And most of the time we would go sit in this corner while everybody else went in these these houses talking to people, we're like, all right, and all of a sudden they're like, hey, we're done, we're going back to Hurricane Point, and let's go back to Hurricane Point, you know. That's a good good chunk. And it's like looking back at the you know, especially me, I look back at the time, going, man, it at the time it was like, man, this is like never gonna end. And then when you look at it years later, I'm like, that was such a very short period of time, especially my life. You try to, you try to you don't want to try to overrelive it too much, but you you talk about it, you know. You don't want to make it my I don't make it my whole life, and a lot of guys do. Um make it their whole life. You know, I I my father-in-law, um, he was in Vietnam. He was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and I've talked to him about his experience, and it is like, you know, it's it's very stark contrast between Vietnam and you know what he went through. I'm like, man, that's kind of like you know, this urban warfare that we I think we kind of trained for it.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think we kind of quite knew we're getting ourselves into, but well, no, I I think in 2004, it specifically General Mattis, to my understanding, of all the details that came out later and reading all the different books and the the different military publications, yeah. General Mattis considered 2-4 as one of the first units that was going back after the initial taking of Baghdad and taking of objectives.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And they didn't know what to train us for because they didn't know what we were going to be doing. Well, and you remember you probably remember this from the March Air Force Base training is that we were supposed to be doing security and stability operations. Yeah, we were supposed to be helping to bolster up the hospitals and the schools, yeah, and get the Iraqi police to stand up and hand out soccer balls and candy, and it was a bunch of public relations type thing. We we initially our thought was that we were gonna roll through the town with no doors on our Humvees and look at people and wave. Yeah, and that's vastly different from what we did. I think we ended up inventing a lot of that stuff on the floor.
SPEAKER_03:And we I think we did that a little bit, right? Some of the some of the handing out, you know, handing out keys. Of course, yeah. And then it and then and then like that book described a little bit was like, you know, they're gonna test us. Because I I think a good some of the beginning was it like um they didn't think much of the the the army that was there, right? Because the army I think were just staying away from the main from what I remember when I first got to Ramadi taking a uh a drive around with some one of the 82nd airborne guys that were driving real quick through it and says, You guys should stay outside of here, right? And they thought we were crazy driving through the mills of Ramadi and doing all this stuff, you know. Like, what are you guys gonna do?
SPEAKER_01:Very different, yeah, very different mission for sure.
SPEAKER_03:But you know, it's like that's what's gonna happen, whether we liked it or not. I mean, that's just the way it was.
SPEAKER_01:Did you have much interaction with the Iraqis at all? I mean, uh a little bit you spent a lot of time at the government center. I know I did too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm blanking, you know, um dealing with some of the meeting some of the Iraqi like policemen too. I remember I remember one night we were standing at the uh government center because it supposedly heard that they were gonna somebody was gonna attack it. It was always the Musha Dean or some offshoot. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:But there was always a new there was always a new enemy for sure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a new enemy, right? Some sort of secret like Syrian sniper team who was I don't know, right?
SPEAKER_01:Syrian sniper team, there was the Chechen uh explosive experts who were coming into town. We got different intel, I swear, every other week. Anyway, you were at the government center.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, get so I remember Blake having a conversation with one of these, trying to have a conversation with this uh Iraqi policeman. He was asking him, like, hey, you come back to you gonna come back to Romani? And Blake's like, I don't know about that, right? He's showing them. I think you remember that, right? Having a conversation. I was standing right there when you're having a conversation like with this guy, this Iraqi policeman. I don't know who he was. He might have been a commander out of the problem.
SPEAKER_00:He was the commander, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he's like, Hey, you're gonna come back. You're like, uh uh, sure, yeah, I'll come back. Like, yeah, I'm never coming back, you know.
SPEAKER_00:He was trying to he was trying to have me come back and like stay with him. He was like, he's like, You're really he's like, You're a nice guy, you should come back. You can you can stay with me, you can stay with me, I'll show you all the sites. And I was like, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, he's never coming back. Good luck on that one, but you know, yeah, you know, and then it yeah, and it was like just kind of interacting with uh that's I think are mostly interaction, you know, some of these early morning, like you know, when I was allowed, you know, not by the Humvee, kind of hat off to the side and sitting on some of these like sections and like checking vehicles and like oh hopefully and checking hoods and oh yeah, you know, um something that we did not get any training whatsoever on.
SPEAKER_01:You were just checking cars and you were like, Yeah. I'm hoping I see something unusual.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, you know, it was something that when I went so when I went through I had to go back to I had to go back through Fletsi, right? I went through the uniform police training program, right? It's a like a 14-week stay at Fletsi in Georgia, and they have a physical security like program there, and they teach you how to like search vehicles and like searching somebody trying to teach us how to search people, and then like meh now. It's like, yeah, that probably wasn't really a great way, but that's somebody we again on the whim and how to do stuff. Like, who's who taught them how to search somebody? But that's the way people were were, you know, maybe they don't know.
SPEAKER_01:We just we just were not again, we weren't prepared specifically for that idea, and we were like, Oh, what you know what somebody thought of the idea, yeah. We're gonna start some checkpoints, that'll maybe we'll deter something, or I who knows what the actual thinking was. Yeah, but yeah, you didn't have any training to search people, you didn't have any training to search cars, you didn't have any of the gear to search cars, you certainly didn't have a mirror to look underneath cars.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and it was like, you know, hopefully all the thing all the only thing hopefully that was in a vehicle was just nothing and just the people. And luckily in my situation, it was like we didn't didn't find anything in anybody's vehicles, mostly going to these houses and we find this weapon, whatever weapons, and taking photos, remember taking photos of the weapons, and but it wasn't like I didn't my experience wasn't I didn't see anything that would be any kind of explosives, or I didn't have that was my experience. I didn't see any kind of yeah, I mean the bomb maker for the all of Ramadi or anything crazy like that, right? You know, it was just the kind of on the whim, you know. It was like I think Gunny Coleman, right? Or I think retires as sergeant major, but he he think he described it. We were kind of the guinea pigs going, I think, I think one they had a I wasn't able to go to the reunion this past year, but I think it was like them going up the hill up on First Art's Hill, this memorial, and he was talking about how us going in there, we were guinea pigs. This all this this armor stuff, and like you know, um, it was finding Danny for the invasion and go invasion Iraq and kick it's that's that's green. We were guinea pigs. It was sort of like, hey, go as it was the coal, it was the canary in the coal mine, see what happens, you know. IED, let's add more armor into it, you know. Uh this if the patrols don't go this way, we got to switch it up, do something else. Reading, reading, reading through that book, it's all like different stuff going on, and they're trying to, you know, a lot of stuff I was only previewed to through a radio and didn't wasn't there on the you know, obviously.
SPEAKER_01:Did you feel like the culture of 81s? So you to you've talked a lot actually about the culture of 81s back in Garrison and back in Okinawa, how it was very regimented, and they had a very much a hierarchical structure where the sergeants were somewhat in charge of the platoon you had and or corporals. Did you feel like that changed when you got to Ramadi?
SPEAKER_03:Because you were no, I don't think it really changed because we're split split in the oblake, and we're split into two sections. You had right, I think what were we a second section? I can't remember, and there was first.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're a sledgehammer, right?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know who came over the sledgehammer, but sure.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that's I mean, I believe that was back to dropping mortars, right? That was the idea.
SPEAKER_03:So especially with 81s, right? I mean, when we first got when we first when I first corporals were like the the people, they were the the gods, right? Especially on the grunts, and then sergeants, like you're not telling a sergeant anything, and then you use a stat sergeant, and I think it really helped the preparation and the time we're in Ramadi, is that like the how regiment, how strict they were in regiment, um, how Escavel was. Escavel was definitely in our faces all the time.
SPEAKER_00:But Escavel ended up being our platoon sergeant while we were there functionally with yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I remember when we dropped when we dropped in when we finally got to 2-4, it was Pion and another staff sergeant, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's an interesting point about the structure of your platoons. Also, when we were in Ramadi, is that you had a gunnery, uh, I mean, he started as a staff sergeant. Although, was he a gunnery sergeant by the time you hit Ramadi?
SPEAKER_03:No, he got no. Yeah, he got Marit's gunny, and now he's looked him up. Now he's like the senior enlisted personnel for the Indo-Pacific region of the Marine Corps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he's he's definitely high up in headquarters command. Yeah, and so having a gunnery sergeant, eventually a gunnery sergeant, yeah, being your platoon commander is unusual. And then having a sergeant functionally being a platoon sergeant, although Escobel had some years under his belt. Yeah, oh yeah, it's still unusual to be platoon sergeant that we did not have an officer for every platoon commander billet.
SPEAKER_03:It kind of reminds me of the character in Band of Brothers that the the Captain Sobel.
SPEAKER_01:David Schwimmer's character, Captain Sobel.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Captain Sobel was 81s, right? He hated it at the time. You did stuff, you don't understand why you're doing it. You hated it, hated it, hate a lot of them, but you understand why it was. And I think it r really helped us out in the long run because it kept us together, it made us run smoothly, and it got us out for the most part in one piece, yeah, as a whole. And uh Blake can contest to that, and it was not ever dysfunctional. That's good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's good that you uh that you found it useful.
SPEAKER_00:Um we had and do you think do you think looking at our time like actually while we were in Iraq and in relationship to the other platoons, do you did you uh did you think that we ran differently than the uh the map platoons?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, I from my perspective, um, I don't know, Shane, but our my perspective, we were definitely if you look at the uh I'm not saying the other platoons were like lazy by any stretch of imagination. That's 81s was just a different animal. Every in We did a lot more yelling. Every NCO was like, what are you doing? Where are you going? Why are you doing it? And you're trying to like just navigate everything, and they're right there in your face. And some NCOs were more than others, and you tried you just did the best you can like hopefully you didn't mess up when you did. Oh, you you you heard about it quick. And they corrected you on the spot. And it was one of those things where you know, at the time you're like, I hate these guys, I hate every one of them. But at the looking back at it, it I think it really built it, it really set us up for success. Um I'll tell you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll tell you from the outside uh looking in from me being in a mobile assault platoon, yeah. You guys seemed uh partially cultish and psychotic, which is funny to say inside the Marine Corps, which is also a giant cult.
SPEAKER_03:Cult, right?
SPEAKER_01:But but you guys were always you're right, a little bit of boot camp. It seemed very unusual. But you're you're not wrong. It was functional and it was. When you guys were in Ramadi, uh how was your setup in the hooch? Did you guys have NCOs on one side? And then so so did you have bunk racks or did you have individual racks, or did you guys I don't I I literally never went in there. Uh you guys are retarded and scare me.
SPEAKER_03:So basically we had, you know, uh Blake can contest this. We had there were bunk beds, yeah, and then the NCOs had their their thing in the back. They had kind of like blocked, they blocked like a little little thing in the back. They they blocked everything off, so they had the little thing.
SPEAKER_01:That's good. Um, who'd you bunk with?
SPEAKER_03:Uh who was Hansen. I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't talked to Hansen.
SPEAKER_03:Hansen was my bunk mate.
SPEAKER_01:Who else did you have around you?
SPEAKER_03:What's it uh Blake was think was next to me. Blake knows. He was an older guy who'd been, he was like like 26, 27 already. You think back then that was now it's like now we're all like mid-40s, push, you know, yes, 40s. I'm almost mid-40s. It's like that late, you know, late 20s. It was like, who was that? And he'd been he'd been around for a while. He went to college before he came in, and um he stayed in, and his wife was in the navy, I think, previous to Oh, you're talking about Wade. Wade, yeah, Wade, yeah, Wade. Like by me. I think was Wade your bunkmate their plate. I can't remember.
SPEAKER_00:No, I I didn't have a bunkmate. Okay, um, I had they they had put me up by the they put me up by the door. Um and then there was a big space, and and I was over there because they kept pulling me out to go do different missions, and everybody got pissed off because they kept waking everybody up trying to find me. Well, if you guys push push me up by the door so they could grab me whenever they wanted me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, at first when we got there, they wanted us to do fire watch inside those hooches. I'm like, oh great, we're gonna have to do firewatch and everything else. And then they're like, All right, we're not gonna do fire watch. We have camp guard. So did you end up playing a lot of spades in there?
SPEAKER_00:What is that is that how you occupied your time, or did you uh were you one of the bunk lay in your bunk and listen to music?
SPEAKER_03:Music. I had a DVD player, listen a lot of D. I still have my stack of like hodgy, like burned, like still have it.
SPEAKER_01:The stolen DVDs, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you go there and you know the I feel like a pirate, you know, because I'm watching a pirated DVD.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people in the country with no laws, it was fine.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you know, it's like you they always tell you can bring you can bring back just a few back with you. I have it still have the stack, it's downstairs in my basement. So it's like, you know, that's how I or we go, we go to uh whatever it was like, go to Junction City, go to the army's little their big PX, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, um, how I kept my standing is just watching DVDs, you know. Like I think we all kind of entertained each other as best we could, the you know, entertaining each other, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what'd you do, man?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. I can't tell you what we did. What did you do? Well, it's like just other just other people, you know. You get a bunch around of young Marines and we all act stupid. We do stupid stuff, and it's like you look back at that going, and I talk about it occasionally. And when I finally became a supervisor, you know, I looked at through all the people that have ever known my military time and other places, and I'm like, this is what I would do as a supervisor, um, and what I would not do. And I've I've I've taken that, not trying to be a micro, micro, the big thing is micro not being such a micromanager. That was that my whole Marine Corps career was being somebody micromanaging. Yeah, and it was something I did not want to um take with me uh is being this huge micromanager. And I think I think you know, the the officers who I I'm underneath really, I think appreciate that, that I'm they're able to come talk to me when need be. And that's something I kind of like um really value as this as a this as a line supervisors, disabled people come talk to you. Because there's times where like I was afraid to go talk to another NCO because it seemed like if you wouldn't talk to him, like you have something going on, they don't like you're bothering them. That's just a lot of how I felt like okay.
SPEAKER_01:Did you have a so you saying that is like making me think about again our platoons were structured differently?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh do you feel like you were micromanaged while you were back in Hurricane Point? Because the way we always had it, once you were off, like basically we weren't standing up on the trucks or waiting on a mission, just kind of like what Blake was alluding to. I would I had a Game Boy, I played my Game Boy, or sometimes I went and me and Richie would run around Hurricane Point to try to keep somewhat fit. Uh I spent a lot of time in the smoke pit because I was smoking a couple packs a day at that time. And yeah, you know, a lot of there's a lot of things that I I would always do, and I played a lot of cards. I played a lot of cards, I watched movies, and then our our hooch was decorated. I don't know if you guys decorated your hooch, but we we always decorated. We had lots of magazines around stuff.
SPEAKER_03:Um, not so much. I don't know what Blake remembers it, but to an extent, when our time off when we were doing like stuff, um generally it was we were left alone, but a lot of times you get those certain NCOs that just want to mess with you for no reason, they just want to bother you, and it's like make you uh they want to all of a sudden make you go do some sort of stupid working party for whatever the reason was. A lot of times I was dealing with the Humvees, yeah, because I'm a Hum V driver, and that I think that's a lot of times I was getting messed with because I was a Humvee driver, go deal with the Humvees. So it's like, yeah, when when your time was off to an extent, but other times it was like go deal with the Humvees, yeah. Especially when we started getting a lot of these armor, other armor plating that we had to go deal with. You mean putting on the uh the additional armor glass and the just little stuff that came in, you had to go put that off. So a lot of times I didn't have off times, or changing the tires out the Humvees after wheeling my way back into Hurricane Point after getting hit by a Humvee, having no tires. That got parked in the where the motor pool was, and we had to go change the tires. And it was like um it wasn't so bad when we finally got into finally got back to Junction City. We're supposed to decompress.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. What did you do for decompression? Because I literally played the same video game every day once I finally got out of there.
SPEAKER_03:Well, they so the same thing. You had I had my DVD player that you watch movies, and then they had that little recreational area. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We went over and played uh there was like a uh Nintendo 64, I think. I don't even know what it was, but it was the same game for the same game every day, all day long.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and it was uh you you you had to stand there, like they made a lot of us stand this like like you had to stand at the front desk with somebody from the army. I think it was like the first marine division or first army division division, yeah. Yeah, first ID was there with when we were there. Yeah. Uh so you had to stand, so they made a lot of us do that with the standing light. You had to do this duty. It's like that's another reason why no.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't remember you guys standing duty. When did you stand duty?
SPEAKER_03:When we finally got to Junction City and you had it like had that little wreck area, and one of us had to be in there with the they made us stand there next to the whatever the whatever the army and you had to like hand out whatever it was. And no, I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01:Well, see, I think so. This is one of those things that's different. I think that we stayed behind for the left seat right seats to hand off to two fly. That's right. Yeah, and these guys went into those CB uh huts that the CBs built. Yes, and so they probably had to do I I mean describing, yeah. Yeah, you had to stand on the NWR the NWR tent.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And it we I just remember taking like a couple shots. I remember I took like three showers a day for that my decompression time. Like I were not taking a shower for a real shower in seven months.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he is got hit and then he came into Junction City because that's where the I think that's where everybody went into that was being flighted out was from Junction City. I remember him coming in there, he being injured and coming in with his his hurt leg, and then we the them, I don't think he got flown out right away. I think he was hanging out there for a minute, and I remember seeing him on crutches, walking, you know, crunching around Diaz. You know, I I still tell people the story about how we left from March Air Force Base on the C-130s, losing oil engine pressure, and they ended up landing in Maguire Air Force Base for a week. Yep. And hanging out in that little Air Force little, and then going, I tell people this, going to like talking about the eating at the Air Force Chow Hall and hanging out in that little terminal area.
SPEAKER_01:And the Air Force Chow Hall was the best chow hall yeah I had ever been to. At that point, that was that was like going to Red Lobster.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I remember trying to pick up our trays, put them away, and they're telling us don't touch them. We're like, okay. And then remember that last day that we're like, okay, we're done hanging out in the little terminal. We got everybody rooms, everybody's getting ready to get settled, and then that same night, hey, they got the plane fixed, we're going to Kuwait. And then everybody loaded on the Kuwait and we flew there, and then we came to Kuwait, and then we flew back on Severan Airliners.
SPEAKER_01:But we didn't. We landed two more times. That's the other thing. Yeah, we landed in Canada, and then we landed in at Shannon Air Force Base in the UK. Oh, landed two more times with a broken with a broken engine. I don't remember. Yeah, okay. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. We got over the we got out over the uh Atlantic and we lost an engine, and so we had to come back. Yeah. And then when we were in Rammstein and refueling, we were gonna get back on the plane and it started pissing fuel all over the place as we were getting off of the bus. Yeah and they were like, get back on the bus, get back on the bus. Because there's fuel everywhere. Yeah, there is fuel just pissing everywhere.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I tell I tell people that story, like how even us getting there was like it was almost as dangerous trying to get there. And then we start out that our plane breaks down going there. I'm like, Yeah, right, and we finally get there, and like it's a real 2-4 story.
SPEAKER_00:It is, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Do you remember much from Kuwait? That's one thing I don't hear people talk about.
SPEAKER_03:I think we trained a little bit. It was more or less trying to get acclimatized to that that, right? The heat in the desert, yeah, for sure. The desert, right? I remember when we finally kind of put the doors on, these these metal doors on the side of the Humvees. I remember how. I remember did you know so were you part of that working?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I was part of that party too because I was one of the few people who knew how to weld.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh but I did not remember that you were part of that. So it was then it was Mew, Savage, Monroe.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I can't remember who else. It was anybody who had any mechanical experience.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I remember helping out, putting getting all this armor on, bolting everything on. Yeah. Um, and then going up there, taking that long convoy. And it took us, I didn't even like, you know, I I kind of before I got on here today, I'm like trying to figure out what it was it from Camp Victory, Kuwait to Arrimani. It was like five near 500 miles, going 50 to 60 miles an hour. And it took us, it took us, I remember took us two days to get there. And then driving, and then you hear, yeah, and us driving right by Fallujah, and you're hearing stories about Fallujah, and you're like, Oh, there's Fallujah on the side of the street, and we're going by it. And that all that all kicking off, and hearing about that, you're like, okay, what's gonna happen now? And they all come running over to Ramadi. And I what they're what they're thinking that the insurgents were trying to do with Ramadi with relation to Fallujah, and they it makes sense them trying to take the pressure off Fallujah. So let's start something in Ramadi, and it is, you know, kicked off.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, there's a lot of time in all of this that's that's downtime is always your biggest enemy. I mean, you talked the same thing about the couple of marines and the sailor who got in trouble drinking on the bridge post. I mean, that's you know, you get bored, you get bored, and that's what do you remember what it do you remember what it felt like when you got back?
SPEAKER_03:It was so I remember it, right? So my mom, my mom, like still to this day, like we so kind of geared. I don't think I really told anybody this, but when I first got in the Marine Corps, she was kind of a helicopter mom. So I went to boot camp. She was she was always part of this marine mom line groups type of thing, you know, like Mother of America type. Right? But it was to a point where she would call like the the boot, like our echo company, and like the good company Gunny knew who I was because she was I'm like, and then she was joking, like, I'm gonna call I'm gonna call your your I'm gonna call MCRD and tell them you can't play that kind of crap, right? Right? Blake can contemplate. Um but um but we got back, yeah. Yeah, when when we when I got back, because she was like a big make sure to get people sending me stuff. I remember getting sent like random stuff. I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, what'd you get, man? I love care packages.
SPEAKER_03:That was one of my favorite shit. Um there's there's this girl I still talk to. She's just a pretty good friend. She's from Texas. I still talked to her, still talked to her from after you know 20 something years. She sent me something from her church. Her church got my name. And this is how my like from my mom. So it's like when I when I got back, I I remember we we got in early in a March Air Force base, and we got in those buses, and I was sitting next to not Contreras, that other doc, like I can't forget it was his name is Hinkle? Yeah. So I when I when we went to when we went to March Air Force based to go to uh to Kuwait, it was Hinkle. I sat next to it on the bus. And then when we went back from Kuwait or back from going back to Pendleton, it was I sat next to Hinkle is weird. I don't know how it worked out, but it did. Uh when we finally got back, it was sort of like it was kind of surreal, being the fact that like we're like not over there, and then we like I remember we went and like drew I remember driving on, I think it was like what it was the I5 next to Pendleton there. Is that the I5 or I5 one of those? I5 going somewhere in a Denny somewhere, driving on that road for the first time, and it was like it was such a surreal moment, and it was like to this day, I like seeing abandoned like vehicles on the side of the road makes me like skirmish just a little bit. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Going there, it was like surreal, and it was like sitting in that Denny's going, Are we done? You know? Right?
SPEAKER_01:That was kind of I mean, realistically, you were by the time you were sitting in that Denny's, you were probably 12 days out of combat. Maybe. Maybe like that's not a decompression period.
SPEAKER_03:I don't think people really understood than they did now, especially with Wounded Warrior, um, all these different war veteran organizations that they did back then. It was sort of like we came home, people were like, Yay, you went over there, great.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, the huge difference between the push and then what we experienced in 2004, there were not significant casualties during the push. There were casualties, of course, and I don't want to minimize anybody who got wounded.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, absolutely not.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, 2004 was a vastly different animal, just between all of the Anbar province, but especially Ramadi. And again, this particular deployment with 2-4 is the most number of casualties in a single deployment, yeah, in in the global war on terror, period. Yeah, but also specifically for the Marine Corps.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. You know, I was, you know, it's unusual. And then there when I went to DC, I was able to go to Arlington National Cemetery right after we had gotten back and was able to go see um Savage's grave. Yep. Um, that's the person I was looking for. And then I don't know if you guys remember those, those, uh, I think those portraits that they had at the Arlington National Cemetery. Back then. I was I gave I gave up my remember the R Honor Courage commitment cards that we were all like had. I left it there at Arlington National Cemetery with everybody else. So um it it was very, you know, we're living a lot of stuff. It's been very surreal. 2016, you know, I had I had leave on the books from when I was working at uh the Bureau of Prisons, and we're looking around, trying to figure out where we wanted to go on vacation. And I think we finally like, hey, let's go to San Diego. So we stayed on um Cornot Island, which when I were at Pendleton, I never went even on that island. We stayed on Corn Island Island for a week, but I was able to meet Rick White, right? That's the one I've had contact with, was able to go back on a Pendleton, which was weird to begin with after all the years of being on there. It felt just weird, like I was like looking around, like, are they gonna tell me to go be on a working party or something? It was weird. Um and it was like on a it had to be like on a like a Sunday too that we came in and find in San Diego, but I was able to go to that that Fifth Marine Um Memorial that's right by the PS there and take and see it. And seeing a lot of that San Mateo, and seeing a lot of those guys, like you know, um, I think it's best to you know talk about it. Everybody has their own experience. I had my own experience. Um, whatever we thought about each other during that time as like individuals, but we all went through that all that, especially you know, you in that book they talk about a lot of the Marines that just like got picked up right after we got back from Okinawa, right? But there wasn't I don't know how much more talks about the Marines that went through Okinawa through the whole Ramadi thing.
SPEAKER_01:No, I agree. I think that's a good that's a good point and a big blind spot, and Blake has a lot of thoughts about that too.
SPEAKER_03:Right. I think the the like the talk about that, it's like um they don't yeah, they don't that I think that's kind of like kind of like what what the heck? Why I understand they're you're talking about a lot of Marines that were picked up, but you don't again talk so far I haven't talked too much about the Marines that we were all together through the whole like the whole freaking beginning of this whole global war on terrorism thing, you know, from the very beginning. Um very you know, Blake, if you want to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, just I the I the only thing that I would interject is that you know I've brought this up several times to to Shane, and I'm sure he's tired of it by now, but no that there's uh that it is I don't think it's possible to be able to talk about it unless you had that as your lived experience. It's such a wildly unique situation that there's only a few of us that can actually speak uh directly to know the the uniqueness and the amount of kismet that had to happen for all of these things and how you absolutely unique that very specific period of 2001 to 2005 2nd Battalion 4th Marines is an insanely unique uh time period that was and it's and it's historical. And that's not just because I lived it and we you know it's that's not just bravado, it's quite seriously, we saw the new shaping we helped shape the new Marine Corps. Oh, absolutely, and it's it's wild to think about when you start breaking down all of the elements that you know you've you've you've brought up quite a few of them too, and there's even more you we could add. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, it's like yeah, you know, when when the new digital uniforms came out, I remember we're in Okinawa when all came back.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like, you know, if you I'm still pissed about the fact that they made me buy those goddamn new digital ones because we were all we were gonna be out in like four months. We needed to buy two, anyways. I'm still bullshit that I had to spend like almost a it was like a grand right before I got out for can't I still have brand new digitals.
SPEAKER_01:You mean your hundred and fifty dollar a year uniform allowance didn't cover the two thousand to three thousand dollars for the uniforms we were required to buy every year?
SPEAKER_00:So bullshit.
SPEAKER_01:Now, do you find because of this unique time period? And I this I'm only saying this because I find it this way, I have not really been able to talk to most people uh about our experiences in depth, at least not specifically surrounding Ramadi. Um, because I don't think other people would understand, and that's even including other vets. Now, you you've had a ton of experience with other vets with your reserve unit, and then probably also being a law enforcement officer and working in federal service. Yeah, you're rubbing up against vets probably from every branch of service.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Do you feel like it's hard to interface with them? Because I um I have that in a in a specific capacity. There's there's some vets it's been okay with, but most I cannot.
SPEAKER_03:Some some you know, the there's another sergeant, you know. Again, I'm uh the newest sergeant. I've been a sergeant for about a year. Uh the the sergeant that's just above me. Um, no, too, yeah, he's been a sergeant for a couple years. Um we talk about Ramadi. His time, which was really funny, he spent most of his time in South Korea, right? He was a part of that group that came from South Korea that he was part of this like that second ID group that came in and replaced the first ID group. Oh we had that conversation, but a lot of the vets, like you're saying, Shane, were Afghanistan, right? I think at first we thought maybe we're going to Afghanistan, right?
SPEAKER_01:Us going to Bridgeport, like maybe that was the point of the of the mountain warfare training package was potentially to be going to Afghanistan.
SPEAKER_03:I thought we were going to Afghanistan out of Iraq, personally. And then they said we're going to Afghanistan. So a lot of the lot of like military personal vets I've talked to, a lot of them are Afghanistan, so it's hard to like relate.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Um, and then there's a few that were in Iraq, but weren't like they're in like Najar, I think that's our Najarf or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Some of these other like other places in Iraq that we like, I have no clue what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a different experience. That's oh, a different experience.
SPEAKER_03:There's really I've never met like another Ramadi Marine. Um, I listened to Jack Jocko Willock. I mean, he was a good one.
SPEAKER_01:And he was there in 2006, he was not there in 2004.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So, you know, his experience at the time going into Ramadi, I'm like, well, that doesn't, it's not surprising. But past like meeting people in person, I it's hard to like relate to other people, especially that time frame. Yeah, and even relating to the Marines like us that were there from the very beginning from my 9-11. We were in, you know, reading the book, like, oh, I was in, I was at home, or I was in everyone has their own reasons, you know. I I have family research in my family history. I got family all the way who fought back all the way to the Civil War. Yeah, Civil War and Revolutionary War. I got family members, every part of the branch of the military, every all kinds of wars. Um, I joined the military because I wanted to join the military. And a lot of guys joined the military because of the certain war. And I think we're part of the generation because we wanted to join the military. Nothing was going on. We wanted to be there. I'm not going to downplay why they wanted to join, but I think we were just a part of like it's a very different mindset. It's a different mindset going in that we don't in there because we joined because it was peacetime because we wanted to join, because we want to join, not because of a single event. That's how I personally look at it. Um, it's Admiral people want to join after 9-11, or join because X, Y, and Z because of what's going on. I think we joined because we wanted to join, we were going to join the military, and that's how I look at it because I wanted to join the military, and those events happened to happen. You know, we we kind of fell into history, right?
SPEAKER_01:It was peacetime when we graduated boot camp and infantry school. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I know it's like you look at you know, these people, these lot of these Marines and people like looking at people's ribbons even when we're graduating, like we didn't have anything because there's nothing going on.
SPEAKER_01:You didn't get your automatic uh national defense ribbon because the firewatch ribbon, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you know. Um, and then it's it's now, you know, if you don't go to combat, and one guy was like, You didn't go to combat, you're not a vet. It's like, what were you what would you be saying if 9-11 never happened, all this stuff weren't happened? What would you be in the same spot as in the military? Yeah, of course, we want to be in the same spot very much. We've gone to other places, but you know, they I think a lot of I think a lot of people anchor themselves too much into what went on, right? You didn't do X, Y, and Z, and they look at the ribbon stack. Well, I mean, the Marines, our our senior Marines, they're peacetime Marines, and they got out. I re I remember back from Okinawa, we went on that leave for a month. It was like poof, everybody they're gone, we came back, and life went on, you know. It was just a different, different time, and it it's like now it's starting to wind down kind of way it used to be.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna drag you back to Ramadi because I only have one real memory with you. Sure, sure, sure specifically. Sure. Uh, and I'll set the stage for you a little bit. Okay. So May 12th was when Savage was killed. Yeah. And not too long after that, and I this memory could be wrong because of the way memory works, but I remember seeing you standing on the road right after the engineers got killed on that IED on the dam.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Were you out there for that? Is that memory correct, or am I wrong?
SPEAKER_03:Trying to jar my memory because that actually I think uh we were out there, but I didn't see them get hit with the IED, but I was out there when the blast happened. Yeah, remember he had the blast because we're because we they were we're out there doing security for the engineers and they're yeah, clearing that dam.
SPEAKER_01:Um well, someone had a an idea that the best way to clear the dam was with standard metal detectors, and that was how they were looking for IEDs.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I re I remember just standing out and doing security and seeing the explosion kind of out on the dam, and then hearing them run up and saying somebody was hit. The engineers were like, I I do remember that because it seems like a lot of us were kind of there but weren't directly involved in the action, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, around that, like when Morris got hit, we got we're we ran out there and we're kind of there for the end of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The same thing with when Condi was killed, we went out there for the end of it. Just like when when the the you know the battle of Ramadi happened, uh, you know, we were hanging out on bridges doing bridge duty, you know, we were listening, and then I was able to go on the second day and just seeing how much of a ghost town it was on that, like I think it was like the third or fourth day out.
SPEAKER_01:But I feel like that was a common report, like the sixth and the seventh were hot and very active, and then on the eighth, I feel like everyone went out and the ninth, and then there wasn't much. But then the 10th is when we did our first bug hunt, technically. Yeah, and that was we were gonna go find out where everybody they they thought they had good actionable intel, and we went to the north area, mostly in the Sophia district and a few areas around there. Yeah, was the other active time. The reason why I specifically asked about um the 29th was again because I remembered you standing out there, but also that was like that was one of the bigger days as far as casualty numbers, and I was curious about your memories surrounding it because the engineers were hit. They I believe both of them lived, although the one lived with severe injuries.
SPEAKER_00:They both did, but like horrible injuries. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Like Blake to Blake can contest this because we got we're out there deploying that security and seeing the explosion on top of the dam and thinking nothing about it.
SPEAKER_01:You guys were at the so in my memory, you guys are at the arches. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:No. No? I don't think oh wait, no, wait, we were. That's right.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we were at the we were at the by the arches, but we could I saw the explosion because it was a pretty Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01:I mean the dam's not far from the arches, so you can't really see it from there.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, we had L we had part of our element there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay, yeah, and then so the rest of that day, the way it went was uh the engineers got evaced, and that was my cartoon that evaced them, and I remember driving. This is why I remember you specifically, because I remember you looking into my vehicle as we drove up, and I was like, I've got I've got two, and we're heading to we're heading to combat outpost for evac. And we drove by and there was that that vehicle that it was like a station wagon that was down on the side of the road, and we drove way away from it, and that vehicle ended up being a VBIED, and that was the one that hit the Echo uh reinforcement high back that came out later. And that was the that was like the highest number of casualties in a single day were I don't know how many of you guys died from that high back, but it was quite a few.
SPEAKER_00:Something that I like to remind people that um if you weren't a part of that time period especially, but if you were, that when we first got over there, our issue was not really with the Iraqis. Although there was strong elements of the Bathist Party and Republican Guard, and it was like the retirement center of where they went, the real people that were dealing with this, if you remember the term Urhabi, they which translated to the foreigner. And what we were dealing with in that first, you know, at least until June, was foreign fighters coming from Syria, Iran, and other places, and they were kidnapping Iraqi citizens, like family members, and then making the men go ambush us or set in an IED or whatever.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I I do tell people that. I would say it wasn't so much the locals.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, eventually they they rose up against us because enough family members had gotten hurt and died that they were tired of it.
SPEAKER_03:But yeah, but I said a lot of it was like some of it was foreign fighters coming in. I don't think they initially closed off the borders when we finally, you know, came in there. That was a big problem, you know, closing off those borders, which you didn't do. And then we we just had it, we we go in there and like what do we what did we get ourselves into?
SPEAKER_00:But I mean it Do you remember the uh uh when we caught those guys from uh Africa somewhere, like Sudan or Kenya? Oh yeah, like like they were just standing there they had just gotten dropped off. They were literally they had gotten um as it turned out, I think the intel came back that they had gotten dropped off like 15 minutes prior to that. They had come up from like Kenya or Sudan or something like that. Yeah, I think they remember, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Sudan is what I remember. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then had gotten trained in Syria. Yeah, and they had just gotten dropped off, and we're still figuring out which where to go to the for the like where the safe house was the safe house was, and we rolled up on them.
SPEAKER_03:Like what safe house? I remember we had uh uh it was during the day and we had uh I think an ID blast or something, and we caught some guy that was running, and we'd like put his, you know, we taped his hand pie on his back and like put a bag and he was like crying. And I remember Blake, you're like trying to calm him down. You're like, it's it's gonna be okay if you remember that guy because he would he'd been off like he he was by whatever was going on and he took off running and we caught him right and the the one thing I remember doing the the prisoner release that we did, if you remember all that. We released a bunch of these guys back into Ramadi from the the big I think they're oh wait, that's right. Yeah, we released a bunch of these guys back into Ramadi.
SPEAKER_01:That was part of the fallout of Abu Ghraib and everything that had happened during Abu Ghraib. I'm trying to remember that was April 28th, is Abu Ghraib specifically. I don't remember the prisoner release from Junction City, but it was right around that same time frame. Yeah, is that we had snatched up all these people and then Abu Ghraib happened and they were worried about abuses, and so thus we put all the enemy back out there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, it's like you know, we we captured all these guys, and then it's like, okay, you don't have the information we're looking for, and then we just like you can go back now. It's like okay, thanks.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it's like we our the at least for a while, and just lessened up a little bit, but for a while, if something went down, if you were between the ages of 16 and 60, we brought you in for questioning.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, there's that part in the book where Hodges, there's the they're they're trying to get some information out of guys, so they sent Hodges in there to try to extract the information, and the guy was trying to to get him to say he's some big, bad, scary individual. I'm like, Hodges wasn't that that freaking scary. I mean, he really popped Hodges up pretty good. I'm like, come on, Hodges was not that freaking Hodges had a mouth, but he wasn't that big, but he um trying to trying to extract information from these guys talking about the uh talking about the prisoners.
SPEAKER_00:One of my uh memories on that one is uh when we I don't think it was I can't remember where we would take them, but every once in a while we uh we would take some prisoners not to Junction City, but we'd take them somewhere else, and it was a little bit of a further run. And uh I remember we ended up having to get a separate porta shitter for them because they didn't know how to like actually sit down on a western seat. Yeah, and there is nothing that I remember more humorous, quote unquote, was uh we had gotten a couple of them and there was like five or something like that, and we kept taking them, you know, having them to use the the portageon that we were having them use. They kept trying to like get up on the top and squat and do their stuff, but they were like kind of we still had their hands bound. And to make a long story short, they ended up shitting and pissing all over the place. And the last guy got up there and slipped in all of the other guys' stuff and was just the the absolute clattering of him falling down and boom, boom. We're like, what are you doing in there? He comes out and just covered in it. The other guys, uh the uh the other Iraqis were not pleased with him because he was they were all like packed together. They were trying to keep him off to the side because he was covered in everybody's uh after that we got a different porter joke.
SPEAKER_03:You you know, you I think you talked about, you know, what am I, you know, the the some of the funny kind of things that tell it's like going in some of these houses. I always tell them it's it was sort of like the episode of hoarders, right? Some of these people, it's like was an episode of hoarders. You go in there going, I remember going to one of these houses and trying to get to the roof, and it was like trying to climb over all their crap they accumulated in these like houses. And I'm like, it's an episode of hoarders. I knew I've seen what did they have in there? Just crap, bicycles and blankets, and it just it's on this. I remember trying to go up some stairs to get to the roof, and it was as packed on these stairs, and you're climbing just debris and everything you could think of. And I'm like, this is hoarders, and that's why I remember a lot of these houses was like a case. I'm like, how are these no running water or anything?
SPEAKER_01:And like, you know, um Yeah, it's an interesting duality that most of those people didn't have running water and didn't have electricity 23 out of 24 hours of the day. No, it's like or a TV or a radio, but then they would have, like you said, 20 bicycles or whatever else.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, what what's funny is especially where headquarters was at, I don't remember. Was that one of Saddam's generals that his house that uh H that was the guest palace?
SPEAKER_00:Guest Palace.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. That was one of Saddam's guest palaces. The general's house was what ended up being our headquarters uh over in Hurricane Point.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, okay. Um that thing, you know, it it this stark contrast of how those people lived and how he lived. And um I mean I remember coming back and being I don't know how you guys feel, but it's like, you know, was it was it worth after 20 something years, was it worth that we went over there um to do all that? I I still I still don't know after 20 years, you know, was it worth going in there?
SPEAKER_01:And that's a hard, very personal question. I think everybody's probably got a different answer.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right. It's the same thing with like, you know, with my father-in-law. Like, I don't think I've ever asked him, like, was it worth like because he was he was already in the army when Vietnam he volunteered to go to Vietnam?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I I don't think I asked him, I've never asked him, like, you think it was worth this, like going over there? It was the same thing in Iraq.
SPEAKER_01:It's like I mean, you're saying it. What do you think? Was it worth it for you?
SPEAKER_03:I still don't know I have an answer for that. If it was absolutely I went where the the Marine Corps at the time was where the Corps did what your country asked of you, absolutely. That's what it was.
SPEAKER_01:Um I bet you would have a different answer probably every other day.
SPEAKER_03:Well, absolutely. Some days it's like you tell you the truth, you know. It's like I've had this conversation with my wife. It's like some days I become very dissolution. Like, you know, what what was the point of us going over there and watching 34, 35 guys? I've seen different numbers. Uh for 36, we lost 36 guys, lost 34 guys, lost 35.
SPEAKER_01:Who, you know, um I think the official number ended up being 35.
SPEAKER_03:35, okay.
SPEAKER_01:34 plus plus one. It was 34 marines plus one sailor.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Um, some days I get very due solution. It's like, why don't we go over there and watch, you know, we 34, 30, you know, 35 guys die for to kick some guy out, and then the other days it's like, well, it was a bad freaking dude, and he, you know, but it may it may change five years down the road. Um, but it's really, you know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Something I've heard people say, and I again I'm I'll keep my opinion out of it because that's not the point of this recording or this podcast. Yeah, but something I've heard people say is that the things that you did specifically had more to do with who you were with versus, I mean, I I did not think about the overarching politics in 2004, nor did I think about the state of Iraq and the world. Now I may think about that now because I'm 46 years old, but I certainly didn't think about it at 25.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. And that was, you know, that's that's exactly right. I agree with that. That's you know, you you cared about who you're with, who that your buddy, who you had, you know, you had their back, you had your back. That you didn't care about the politics of what you what your back was. You care about the mission you had at hand, what needed to be accomplished, and that was it. Um, as you got older, as we all gotten older, I think you probably maybe care about a little bit more down the road, but yeah, I didn't I could I could have cared less about what the politics were. You know, the the people in DC say, hey, you're going into somewhere, you're an infantry. unit you're do you're designed to do that you're gonna go do it and we're like okay yeah I don't think it I don't think we since because we got stuck in Okinawa cared where where we had to go no you were ready by that point you were tired of being on the bench yeah I always joke like can't wish we could have like invaded somewhere nice like Switzerland or Sweden or like something jokingly like that like I didn't at that point I said I didn't care where we went and you still keep up with anybody from Ramadi uh not too much I mean I talked to you once in a while right on through Facebook um not not too much I mean I talked to I I'll talk to Rick a little bit but he didn't go to Ramadi but like yeah but he was with you prior yeah oh yeah I mean good chunk I think we all know Rick White um but previous that I don't really I mean I I understand why you you're doing this podcast because it's like anything else it's a very dwittling herd we all kind of did disappear um well either by natural methods or I mean in your case we could have lost you in this we could have lost this story easily due due to your cancer.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah luckily you caught it early but there's plenty of people who've gotten sick uh there's plenty of people who have had their struggles and end up losing to that. Yep and there's people who are just heart disease and old age and every other thing in the world.
SPEAKER_03:You know it's one of those things and it's like you know like Richard Stayskull um we I mean me you know I mean we were in boot camp with him yeah we just went to boot camp with the guy like that's freaking crazy and then you know he ended up like going to stay and ended up getting injured and then finding out that he got out and went king army special forces and then you found out they had like lung cancer and it's like you just you just you just never know and it's like and now he has a national act and law named after the stay school act. Yeah so it's like you you you never know now who is paying to sit you know we're getting all to those age where it's like we're I'm not it's gonna be a while before the like you know like world war one vet like there's no one left but like as uh it'll come up sooner than you know yeah yeah you know that's exactly what we're trying to do here is everybody's got a little bit of a story you've uh helped jog my memory on a couple things that I had completely forgotten about. Yeah and uh and so and um yeah I mean it's like it luckily I've been especially with the mint it's heavy veteran heavy heavy of course yeah um is it last year they did a uh a veterans video thing all the veterans for veterans day and you talk about your experience and would you you know it's one of those things where I'm like would I've joined and done this thing all over again probably you know it's one of those things I told my wife today and something jobbed my memory is that when you and me were going through boot camp we had this funny little competition going on who we both I think we're like but we're gonna go be snipers right uh remember that that kind of thing like I think both I didn't do very well on the range were like well that's not gonna work out you know right that that kind of thing and it's like you know I'd I'd probably I'd probably do it over again if I had like told my 19 18 20 year old self like hey because I would have never saw had the same experience that I did do now.
SPEAKER_01:That's awesome man.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah well thank you for sharing everything if you like what you heard make sure you subscribe for future episodes on your favorite podcast service