Ramadi's Hardest Miles - Jason Mosel (part 1 of 2)

Jason Mosel tells the story of arriving in Ramadi as teenagers on a “peacekeeping” mission; then living through April 4th thru 10th, and the long grind of sustained combat. It's a blur of close-range engagements where a single turn can bring an RPG screaming into your vehicle's grill. We also unpack gear gaps, improvisation, the famous Ollie North night mission, and the politics that shaped the city and missions.

• rushed training at March Air Force Base and minimal turnover
• building hooch plumbing and fixing broken infrastructure
• April 4 loss of Morris 
• April 6-7 sustained fighting with TOWs and heavy weapons
• daily reality of IEDs, mortars, heat, and hydration
• gear shortages, half doors, and ad hoc tactics
• the Oliver North "War Stories" close-range TOW shot
• contrasts with Fallujah and the politics of Ramadi
• memory, coping, and the nine-to-five of urban combat

If you like what you’ve heard, this is a multi part episode make sure you listen to the rest of the story

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Great. Let's tell everybody who you are and who you were with in 2004.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

My name is Jason Mosell, also known as Mosey. In 2004, I was with Map 2 in uh Ramadi. And I think I was a Lance Corporal at that point. Uh 0352 tow gunner. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, that's what I remember too. I remember you being a Lance Corporal. Whose truck were you in at the time? Who always Randall? Randall and who else?

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Randall Newmeyer was the driver. Trying to remember who the fuck was in the back seats. I want to say Miranda, but I don't I can't remember if he was or not. I just remember Randall and Newmeer. Maybe Webster?

unknown 1:24

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I feel like Webster mostly rode with Jordan. And then I feel like Miranda drove most of the time. Not always, but for with Morris and the gun and Cohen and all them.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I don't I don't know if maybe you didn't have another person in your truck. You may not have either. At least not for most of it. Or if you did have anybody, you might have had Travis Day for a little while, one of our combat replacements.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Oh, that's right. We did have him. I'm just trying to remember because I remember driving up from Kuwait, we had a full truck, but I can't remember for the fucking life of me who was in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah. Yeah, that's all right. Doesn't matter.

unknown 1:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Cool. Cool, man. Wherever you want to start, you tell me.

Training Whiplash Before Deployment

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Yeah, I mean, fucking Christ. Let's go back in history, man. So it's I think I one of the most wild things, um, you know, w when thinking back to that time, especially now being 40, like how fucking young we all were. Um, but especially like the group of us that came in right before 2-4 went to Ramadi was fuck it's fucking crazy to think about. Like, you know, we got to the battalion, I want to say in like January of 04, I think, somewhere around that time frame. Yeah and like summer before, we like all of us were in fucking high school. And then it's like, okay, here's your new battalion. You're shipping out next month, you're going to Kuwait, and you're gonna go to Ramadi, and um, you know, you're gonna fucking uh just hand out some cash, it's a peacekeeping mission, and like they ain't give us any fucking uh tow missiles, very little 50 cal, no Mark 19, very little 240 uh ammo, those stupid fucking half doors. Um you know, it was it's fucking wild to think about. And then, you know, we get to we basically like when we get came to the battalion, I don't really remember much of any like training with you guys. It was very, very little training before we actually just fucking shipped out.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

I think I think if I remember correctly, you tell me, but I I'm pretty sure I remember you showed up and like two days later we went to March Air Force Base. You went to the March Air Force Base training. Yeah, I that's and that was it. That was your training package. You got the the one week at March Air Force Base or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Yep. Yeah, it was um like the one the only thing that actually stands out from like when we got to the battalion to when we left was like doing fucking Chinese field days at the barracks, and I remembered like um it was Morrison and Newmeer fucking lowering their shit from the top um balcony with 550 for it trying to get down. Like that shit stands out in my fucking head more than any of the trainings or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah.

The Chaotic Flight To Kuwait

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Um and then, yeah, I mean we did the March Air Force Base thing, um, but you know, it's we just basically jumped on the fucking plane and headed to stopped and had that go. It was such a fucked up trip because we were on that piece of shit, stopped in Maine to refuel. We leave Maine, and then we have to immediately land at fucking Maguire Air Force Base because a fucking engine went out or whatever the fuck. We were stuck there for a weekend, and then we took off, and then I think as we were coming over like England or Europe or something like that, they came across and they said, Yep, we dumped all our fuel, so we're coasting into fucking Germany and fucking got in there. We didn't know how long we were gonna be stuck there, and uh, I don't think we were there for that long before we uh actually took off and landed in Kuwait from there. But that was a fucking wild ride. Um, and then we get to Kuwait, and I can't you guys maybe remember better than me, but I can't remember how long we were in Kuwait for, but we did some like you know, small amounts of like bullshit training in in Kuwait too.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Uh we didn't have much to train with, so yeah, it was a lot of a lot of table games more than anything else, and talking about stuff.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Yeah. Yeah. I remember um Coleman, Staff Sergeant Coleman showing us like some fucking black belt McMahon moves, and I remember one thing that sticks out to me too was um when he was teaching us some shit and he called me up and he was like, shake my hands, and I went to go shake his hand, and he did something to my fucking thumb where it like he bent it back to touch my fucking elbow and dropped me quickly. Um but like that was really it for training, and then it's like man, that shit happened so fast and furious. We just like jumped in the fucking Humbies and started heading north from there, and then um, you know, I I can only remember like fueling up a handful of times, but we rare we barely stopped on that uh way up to where it was just pissing and go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

No, that was it. I was gonna say it's just a long, slow convoy. We stopped one time to refuel in uh whatever that place was, Scania. And I and we stopped for several hours there because we had so many vehicles. I feel like it was overnight. It may not have been overnight, but it we were there for like hours and hours.

Arriving At Hurricane Point

SPEAKER_03 6:42

Yeah. And fucking uh yeah, and then just pissing in those huge fucking water bottles and shitting in MRE bags and tossing them out. And uh that was always fucking hilarious too, because then whoever the poor bitch was sitting in the back seat had their fucking half door, and so then the gunner would pour the piss bottle out, and that bitch would fucking rip right back into the Humvee, into the face of whoever was sitting in the back. And then we had to do some fucking crafty shit too, because I vaguely remember where like we would be driving, and you would we would throw the fucking like Humvee in neutral and everyone would like swap chairs. Like Gunner would drop down, go in the back seat, back seat would move over, this guy would jump into the driver's seat, driver's seat goes into the passenger seat, and we just fucking rotated like that, which was fucking wild too. And then uh, so yeah, however long that fucking took, and then we get up to um hurricane point, you know, where we're we're gonna spend the rest of the, you know, however many, like we probably got up there in what February or so, February, March?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

It was March, March 6th when we arrived at Hurricane Point. We arrived at we left for Kuwait February 16th. We got there, yeah. You said it was like an extra weekend. We probably got there February 19th-ish.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah. Yeah, and then we get to Hurricane Point, and it was like, I mean, I've man, I I sometimes like struggle to remember like the early the early times there because like I think we kind of just got right into it too, and we got to hurricane point. I don't think there wasn't really any downtime. There wasn't any like, hey, let's you know train with these people or that people because that uh whoever it was, that National Guard group or whatever before us just fucking like puffed smoke and fucking took off.

Building Hooch Plumbing From Scratch

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yep. Uh we did we did a couple days of left seat right seats, and that was literally me, Randall, Jordan, uh the lieutenant, I think Coleman went on a couple of them. But it was like two days. And we went out two or three times in a day, and that was Route Michigan, really, mostly. They didn't show us much of anything else. And uh they pointed out that they were driving like 60 miles an hour and then came back and we came back to you guys. We're uh we like opened up a map and we're like 10% of the days. And that's it. Yeah, you're right. We kind of just got right into it. Uh I remember specifically when we first got there, you actually became like a construction worker essentially. You built all of our plumbing and uh half the shit for our hooch because it was half built.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

Well, that was hilarious too. I sometimes think about it because before we left, I remember, I think it may have been Coleman as the platoon, or we had to write down like any types of like trades or tricks or whatever that we knew, whether it was language or just whatever. And one thing I had written down was that I went to school to be a plumber, and everyone was like, You fucking idiot. Like, what the fuck are we gonna need that for? And we get there, and then all the hooches are half fucking done. So fucking Coleman and fucking Gunny Mararki come up to me, and they're like, You put down you're a plumber, so you're fucking doing all the plumbing in everywhere. So I ended up having to fucking redo the plumbing for like our hooch, and then um fuck where like the CO was where like Maraki and all of them slept. I remember doing that one too. Fuck, I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. That was fucking hilarious. That was like right in the beginning uh of shit.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Did you get did you get supplies for that or did you have to use what was there?

SPEAKER_03 10:28

Well, I started to use what was there, and then Gunny came up to me and he was like, What do you need? And I told him, and then by like fucking a day or two later, however the fuck he did it, he got me what I needed. Meraki magic, that's what that's what that shit was.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Oh God.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

I just remember we had a reliable working shower, and I was always like, This is the most self shower because it it always worked. It didn't work in every other hooch, but it did work in ours.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

We definitely did not have uh good plumbing in our hooch.

Early Missions And Left-Seat Right-Seat

SPEAKER_03 11:00

No, because I remember I fixed ours because like those the whoever the fuck they had, the fucking Iraqis that they brought in, like they backpitched their drain pipes to the fixtures instead of to the actual drain. So I had to dig all those out and relay all those um drainage pipes, and then they never soldered any of the fucking copper lines down from the uh storage tank that we had outside, so I just had to reroute all that shit too. And then once I think it was Meraki that saw like what I did to our hooch, and he was like, Yeah, get the fuck over here and do that to ours too. So those were those those were the only two that I did it to, which is why yours sucked. So and then like, yeah, but after after that, like it was man, I think I sometimes I think about this where it was like from that beginning of March to like April 4th, like it was I don't know, man. Like we were kind of just doing our thing, like it was we were starting to get into like just a routine. It it felt like you know, doing the missions, and every now and again you would hear things going on, um, you know, outside the wire. But for me personally, like shit didn't really kind of hit home until April 4th when Morris died. Um and that that for me, like we can get into it later, but like that for me, that was like where shit really got real um unknowingly, like further on down the line after we got back and everything, where all all those issues uh with me started from. But you know, rolling out to that one, um, from my memory, it was kind of like we were just gonna go out on this. I think it was uh overnight, and it was a checkpoint, I think we were setting up right around uh Saddam's Mosque, I want to say, or maybe pretty close to it.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah, in between the Al Haq Mosque and the Saddam's Mosque, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah, and uh, you know, I think it was Jordan uh Jordan Calais and someone else uh went out on some some I I forget what the fuck they were doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Metroca, yeah. They were the snap VCP that were hidden off in the corner, yeah.

April 4: Morris KIA

SPEAKER_03 13:25

That's right, yeah, and then um, you know, over by my rig. So then you had Cohen with Morris, you know, that was kind of looking down the road, and then me and Newmeyer were kind of by this uh these these buildings or whatever. And uh yeah, that it was like a typical day, and I've like one of the things it's one thing that it that ate me up for a while was you know, I remember that night where there was this old old dude that came and because we always had the kids around us, always looking for fucking candy or whatever, and um then this old dude came and corralled them and took them all away. And I think it was because like for that first month we didn't for our platoon we didn't really experience that yet. So seeing it for the first time, it was kind of like, oh, they're going to bed, or whatever the fuck they're doing, I don't know. And um, you know, very soon after that was when uh Cohen I I think it was Cohen took over for Morris and the gun, or someone swapped out with Morris in the gun. And that's when the RPG came down the road and uh hit him and then all fucking hell broke loose that night. And that that night semi semi-blur to me, and I know like uh the night for me and then the night for you are different um because you went with Morris back to combat outpost, and I think the rest of the I don't I can't remember if the whole platoon went to combat outpost, because I don't really remember I remember the RPG coming down, hitting Cohen coming around the corner, and then just fucking my memory goes kind of black after that. And then the only other thing I remember from that night was because in the rack I was in, I was on the top bunk, and I believe Morris was in the next one down below, just looking down and not seeing them fucked me up like bad. And it was it was interesting though because and I've done a lot of like thinking about it, research on it, and shit like that. Being at the time an 18-year-old kid, like from fucking Connecticut, then the worst thing that's ever happened to me at that time was fuck, I don't know, stubbing my fucking toe or whatever, and now all of a sudden you can watch somebody die, and it was like uh not really understanding how to control emotions or feel emotions or anything like that, you just get rage. Like I just remember being absolutely livid with rage until once April 6th kicked off, it was fucking on. Like for me and possibly other uh the whole platoon or other people in the platoon, like once uh Coleman came out and said let's roll, like man, I didn't give a fuck about much of anything. It was just like going out there to fuck some shit up because of like they took one of the guys from our platoon. Especially too, now that I I say that, it was like the next day I wanna say, we all had to go back out there and to that spot. And I forget if we were if we brought we had to bring the battalion commander out there to and LT had to go around and kind of talk about like what had happened or what but like it was just so enraging because like you still had the blood splatter on the ground and like all these fucking Iraqis around and you're just I was just overtaken with fucking anger. So then when April 6th came um came around, like it was super simple once that shit kicked off to just fucking lay rounds downrange to fucking anything. Um I mean they gave us enough targets to to shoot at, so that wasn't the hard thing, but man, that shit was fucking that that's where it really became a real life thing for me was when that shit happened.

April 6–7: Sustained Urban Fighting

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I feel like uh the few other guys I've talked to, uh you know, we haven't talked in detail to anybody or at least I haven't personally talked in detail to anybody about the name of this shit in 20 years until now with this podcast. But it seems like everybody kind of had that same feeling. It's like maybe you were just intending to kill a Marine with that RPG, but you ended up like really waking up a bit of that because everybody was uh highly motivated and on the day of April. And it was almost over the top. I don't know what to remember if we came back to it, but I remember one person. And everyone was like, Oh yeah, that was like we fucking did it. Like we did everybody was like, but like that was dead quiet when everybody first started eating opened up for us after we had been fighting for eight straight hours basically. And they weren't gonna get some food. And then everybody was kind of like finally eating. I think George was the first one to say anything. And then I think you were the second one. That's why I remember this. You were like, I shot a fucking tow into a house. Like I was like, yeah, yeah, we collapsed to half a house. Fuck yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 19:07

That was that's that was actually on April 7th. Was it? Um, it was. And the only reason I remember that is because on April 6th, we didn't have tow missiles yet.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Oh, that's right. You're right.

Gear Shortages And Daily Reality

SPEAKER_03 19:20

It wasn't until April 6th happened, and then we woke up on April 7th, and we had 16 tow missiles, and you were fucking like a 15-year-old schoolgirl, giddy, about having tow missiles. And um, so was I. Like and we just split them between your vehicle and my vehicle. We loaded the back up. Um, we had as many Mark 19 rounds as we wanted on the seventh, and we loaded that bitch up, and that's when we went out on the seventh, and we were going down, and then fucking Randall told fucking Newmeyer to turn left onto fucking um fuck, what was the name of that road? Doesn't matter. It was where we got hit on the sixth. Everybody's screaming in my ear on the fucking com to tell Randall to stop and not turn down the road, but we had already turned. I look up and I see that fucking RPG coming down the road. Everything goes into slow motion. I see that bitch spiraling down the road, and I'm like, I just think. To myself, this is going to hurt. And it hits the grill of the vehicle, drops, and I vaguely remember hearing a 50 cal go off, and I looked at Geezer because he had the 50, because I thought he started to light shit up, but he wasn't he didn't um he wasn't firing yet. So I think what it turned out being was that Russian 50 cal that was. And so that it jammed, and then that's when like we all just fucking pushed forward, and I think you were the first one to pull ahead, shoot your tow missile, and then you came back, and then there was two guys that were on top of a house that were firing RPGs at us, and I came across the Tom and I was like, I'm gonna fire a toe at the house, and you were like, Fuck it, your back glass is clear, just shoot the fucking thing. I let it loose, and then fucking idle hands himself, the um the fuck, what's his name? Uh Wilder comes up because he happened to be behind me and my backglass blew his big ass over, and so he was all pissed off at me. And then in the fucking with everything happening, I did the most boot boot toe gunner thing ever. And instead of releasing the lever of the tow missile, I disarmed just the fucking um the arming lever so the wire didn't cut. And so Metroca had to jump up. He tried to cut it with a knife and split his finger open. And fucking it was so fucking uh just laughable now. Um and then uh and yeah, I mean the seventh, like those two days fucking blurred together to me. Uh like because I don't the and there's only these like sparks that I remember like that stick out, like that whole thing sticks out, but then it's like darkness in my brain until for whatever reason fucking Wyler comes and throws a purple and a green smoke grenade, and we were all kind of like, is this motherfucker calling the Joker? Like, what the fuck are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Like Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Um, and then I think that that was probably the day when we came back of what you're talking about. Because I now that you bring it up, I remember getting back, and the uh people at the chow hall were like, Yeah, we don't have any more chow or we're closed or some shit like that. And we were like, What the fuck? And uh yeah, and it it was it was wild because then after that, like after April 6th and 7th, man, I mean, it was kind of just status quo, if you want to put it that way. Like, I've I've tried to talk to people or I've like people that have inquired to me or like other podcasts or whatever, um, who've never been in a war or an area like that or whatever, don't grasp what I'm about to say, but I mean it got to a point where that was just our fucking nine to five. Like you'd wake up, you'd go to the smoke pit, you'd rip a butt, you'd fucking go do a mission, you come back, and um I mean it was kind of like if you die, you die. It's just kind of comes with the territory type thing. You it was just what you did. Um and there's another I don't remember at what point in the uh deployment it was, but it was when ship boots and bass came to the platoon.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yep.

IEDs, Mortars, And Heat Casualties

SPEAKER_03 24:18

And it was one of it was like that first week, or maybe even like one of the first days they were here and Anderson came out to the smoke pit where we were and we were all just smoking, and then you hear the uh rockets and mortars go off, and you knew they were coming to us, and they just froze, and they're like, What do we do? And we were like, Well, you fucking run and hope it doesn't hit you. Like and we I remember because that was the time we ran I ran into the hooch, and I think that was where it hit close enough where it was either map three or map one's hooch, and it peppered the side of their um their hooch. I don't remember which one it was, but it was that it was that one, and then but what's wild about it was that like then when it was done, we just went back out to the smoke pit and just continued to smoke because what else is there to do? Like whatever. You know, you had the the fucking guy that was selling DVDs or whatever, and then you'd fucking see him pacing fucking shit off, and I think he got kicked off, or whatever the fuck happened with that. But you know, again, it was kind of just status quo, it was just like our nine to five job for from March till October was going out and doing that shit. And I mean, all throughout there, it's just wild to think back to like the little bits of like shit that we never had, and like you listen to all these fucking like Navy SEAL people, and like I was in Ramadi, Jocko, and all this fucking bullshit, and they're talking about all their fucking like gear that they had, and I'm like, we had fuck all nothing. Like when we went up there, we had the quarter-inch half doors as a tow gunner. I didn't have a gunner turret because you couldn't, because I had the tow behind me and the 240 in front of me.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 26:16

And so, like, it's just wild to think about, like, especially as we came into the marketplace, like Randall would tell me, like, Jason or Mosey, stand up and check for snipers. What the fuck do you mean stand up and check for snipers? You mean stand up and if Jason gets hit by a sniper, there's a sniper.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Like Yeah, you talked specifically about gear shortages.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Uh do you remember what you took? Now, I I'm only doing this kind of as a contrast. Do you remember what you took out before April 6th? Like from basically like March 6th until April 6th? What did you leave the wire with versus what did you leave the wire with after the uh April 6th, 7th, and 10th?

SPEAKER_03 27:03

I think the only difference um for me was the amount of ammo that I brought. And um basically I think it got to a point before before April 4th where I wouldn't even I I would load the 762 from the can into the gun, but I'd never rack it. After April 4th, it was there was always one in the chamber. There was always uh one in the chamber for my 9 and always one in the chamber for the 240. I never kept grenades on me, uh like physically on me, only because since I was in the gun and we got to the point where I would sit on the gunner strap, if I had to get up quickly, that uh grenade right here would always get caught on the tur on the turret. So I stopped wearing those and I just kept them down below. And I think like as a truck, we kept way more by by way more, I mean a box probably, but of like MREs and water. Because now all of a sudden it was like, oh fuck, we're gonna we're like, it's more than likely that we're gonna be out on this fucking thing for you know eight hours, twelve hours, fourteen, whatever the fuck. And so it was no longer of those like dumbass IED sweeps where you know LT would come and be like, okay, we're gonna leave the wire at fucking 0600, we're gonna rip 90 down Michigan, we're gonna turn over to Apple and fucking come up Nova, and then hopefully we'll get child back at fucking Junction City or whatever the fuck. Like all of a sudden, like those IED sweeps stopped because they were fucking retarded, and like we actually had missions, but because we kept getting like pop shots or like all this other shit done, um we had more like water and more uh food because we never knew how long we would be out for.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah. Yeah, I it's interesting that things that have been written and other things about the Battle of Armadi, and it it always sounds to me like, oh, it was a couple of hours. It's like, well, I I don't know what it was for anybody else. I know for my platoon on the six. We were out for seven to eight hours the first day, and almost twelve hours, seven to five. I have no idea how long. You weren't just getting pop shots shooting back five minutes, uh you did a 30-minute skirmish and then you leave. It was like, no, this is sustained combat for days.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Yeah. And there was like because there was one situation, and I I'm trying to remember if it was we were driving up Michigan, and I mean since I was the lead Humvee, it was very rare that the lead Humvee ever got hit with an IED because of the technology at the time, was either uh trigger man with an actual uh detonator or a cell phone, so they would always wait until like the third or fourth so they got the spacing down. But this particular day, it was right in front of that fucking like apartment complex or whatever the fuck it was, and it was one of those like ice shanty things that they had put one by five under. Oh, it's and they fucking lit that bitch off and ripped the R Humve, and that concussion just fucking lights out for me for I don't know how long. Um, and then came to, and I just remember yelling down to New Meyer to just keep fucking driving. But I I don't remember if it was that time or if there was another time we were doing some like bullshit and someone did pop shots and then somebody was like, you know, okay, we gotta go find them. Either way, it was like 140 fucking degrees out. And what turned out being like hours spent out there, and by the time we get back, it's everybody learning how to give each other IVs and just bleeding all over each other because we're so fucking hydrated.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

Um Jesus. I fucking remember like sitting in the smoke pit and like just we're just stabbing each other, trying to figure out how to give each other IVs, because we don't know what the fuck we're doing. It's like find a vein, okay, and just fucking jab people.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we only had one Corman by that point, too, so it was, you know, Bundy was trying to teach everybody, and he was like, just put it in the vein, and you're like, I don't know what that means, but that's fine. Yeah.

The Ollie North Night And The TOW Shot

SPEAKER_03 31:54

So and then you had like the the stuff uh like that one that one night that we had to take uh Ollie North out with us, which do you remember that night?

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:07

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

I mean, well, we did it twice at night, but I'm I you go with the one you remember.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

Well, the one I remember um was we get called, we're we were on night QRF and we got the call to go grab EOD uh from Junction City, and um it was the DB ID that was in the median down at the arches by the uh reservoir there. And we get down there, and when I tell this story to people, it's so funny because like that EOD crew, that army EOD crew we had was like just lazy bags of shit. And so they always try to make themselves out to be like more than they were, and so of course, because Ollie North is there with the camera crew, like they're spending so much fucking time and they take their stupid fucking robot out and they're explaining this whole thing and da-da-da. And I remember Ollie was standing next to our vehicle, and we hear the mortars start to fire off, and he was just like, That's incoming. This is an ambush, and I was like, Fuck. And we just like I don't think the mortars hit close to us. I don't remember them hitting super close or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

It's within about 60-70 yards, it's close enough to be like if with an adjustment they'd have hit us.

SPEAKER_03 33:24

Yeah, I mean, close enough to shit your pants, uh obviously, but um so then like before the fucking like mortars were even done, that fucking EOD crew was packed the fuck up in their Humvee, like just hit it with the toe. So I think it was Coleman who was like, Mosey, hit it with the toe. And I was like, Yes, but I feel like I'm way too close. And they were like, don't care, shoot. And of course, like before that, the only toe I had shot was on the seventh. And so I'm like, I'm still green as shit. And so line up the fucking crosshairs on like center mass on this uh on this car.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

On the night site on a vehicle that's been bumping down the road, like people are not gonna understand the level of technicality of this shot. Like it's an impossible shot in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

And I fucking I'll never forget it because I uh shoot it and the night uh optics get whited out from the back blast. And I said in in the back of my head, I'm like, you know, this this car is probably like two or three hundred yards away. Yeah, and so I won't even see like the back blast is gonna go away with the explosion, is what I'm thinking in my head. So I fire, white out, and then it clears, and I still see the missile going. And I'm like, fuck. And so it just fucking cleared the vehicle and just kept kept going down into some neighborhood and way the fuck far down there, down. You just saw it hit something, and I was like, fuck, reload. And fucking we just took it out, reloaded it, and at that point, what I did is I took my crosshairs and aimed it down to the road, at the road, because what had happened was the toe coming out, the weight of the toe dropped the launch tube, which then it came back up to correct itself. Well, because we were so close, when it came up to correct itself, it cleared the vehicle. So I had to aim at the road so that when it came up to correct itself, it hit and then blew that bitch right up, and we packed up and left.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Yeah. And you were famous because that fucking shot was on that was the opening sequence of Colonel North's war stories for every episode of uh five, six seasons, whatever it was. It was that shot. Yeah, it was badass.

Politics, Strategy, And Ramadi’s Lessons

SPEAKER_03 35:56

Yep, yeah, and then afterwards it was funny too because like they kept me after we got back, that crew kept me and Randall awake because they wanted to interview us. Yeah, so the whole platoon went to sleep or did whatever. Me and Randall are standing over there, and they finally are doing the interview. They interview Randall, and then they're like, Alright, we're done. And they just left. They never interviewed me, and I'm like, Motherfuckers, I could have been asleep or whatever the fuck. Like, ugh. I didn't give a fuck about the fame. Like, I wasn't looking for fame or anything like that. I was just pissed at the fact that they wouldn't let me go back to go to sleep. I had to sit here and then they didn't even fucking interview me.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Telling that part of it reminds me that how absolutely jealous we were of sleeping cow. Nothing else. You could do you could give me unholy hell as long as you pro as long as I could sleep when I wanted to, and you could give me some food when I wanted it. Other than that, you could abuse me.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

I wanted a cigarette and I I wanted a drink, and then I was good.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Yeah, I mean, we would all fucking like when we would go on those ID suites, I mean, we would be like, Oh, we're going to fucking Junction City to get the good chow. We're going over to Blue Diamond to get the good chow, like, oh that's it. Because all all like all we would basically have at fucking Hurricane Point or like if we ever stopped at Combat Outposts was the MREs.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yep. Yeah, those NARC hockey pucks too. Remember those uh remember those hamburgers that were goddamn, those things were gross.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

Yeah, because I was a fucking boot, like I would just get fucking beefsteak and mushrooms or the fucking like if it was an old box, I'd get the fucking uh four fingers of death or whatever, and it's like a box.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

But my favorite my favorite MRE one, though, uh I never ate it, but uh it was it I can't remember, it was a grilled chicken, but underneath it it it what it said was uh mechanically separated jump-informed chicken with caramelized grill marks.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

I do love that one. I also liked the four finger to death.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

I think I was the only person that liked it, but well what and then if you were really you're really good, if you got the uh jambalaya, and then you did some fucking trading to find the jalapeno cheese, and then you put that in the jambalaya, and then you had to trade someone else for the wheat bread, and then you would use the wheat bread to fucking scoop out the jambalaya that you put the jalapeno cheese in. Like you got fucking crafty with that shit. And then uh and then I remember me and Radsky would fucking um make mortars out of the water bottle, so we would take the heaters and we would fill up the empty water bottles with the fucking fumes coming out of that, and then we would fire we would shoot the uh bottles at each other.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah. That was my favorite. Well, yeah, we figured out that uh the MRE heater gas was a hydrogen gas, so it was flammable, so you can make mortars out of the bottles. I love that shit. Make our own bottle rocket.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

Yeah. Nope, that shit was fun. Yeah. I mean, it I that's kind of like what when we when we sit here and we think about like that whole time of uh being in Ramadi, like it it's it becomes tricky for me in my mind after really after April 6th and 7th, like when we talk about these specific stories, if you were to be like, when was that? I'd be like, I have no fucking idea. Like I could not like pinpoint a month, a day, you know, there was there's obviously certain things that had happened that are like burned into all of our brains, and we can recite the month, day, year, probably all the way down to the time and second. But some of these other things, man, I mean, that the rest of that fucking deployment just was like blended one day. Like I cannot like tell you like when when your rig got hit by the um uh when we were pulling out and you bet you drove over that mine, like I don't remember what point of the deployment that was.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Um it was after April. I don't know what day it was either, to be damn fair. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

And same with that whoever the fucking idiot. was who decided that it would be a good idea to have those fucking engineers go try to sweep the levee for IEDs with the gods metal detector.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

Um that was that was fucking stupid. Um because that was another one where like we were the lead Humvee be behind them and I remember looking up and they had the metal detectors and they found something and they looked down and the moment they looked down the trigger man hit it and fucking boom and fucking they were lucky that thing was uh very deep because I'm pretty sure they both survived.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

So me and Blake have talked about this multi multiple times. Uh neither of us know for sure. But as far as the last I had heard they both survived with severe wounds.

SPEAKER_03 41:14

Yeah oh yeah there was severe wounds because you can see the bone sticking out of places. So but yeah but like all that shit man it's like I don't and you know again still kind of super jaded more jade like jaded not as jaded as like back then but like you still hear the shit about like Fallujah this, Fallujah that and you didn't hear fucking fuck all about Ramadi until fucking like Jocko started swinging his dick around about it. And by that point they had fucking jad the goddamn marketplace. Like they had all the fucking gear they needed and what were we we were a battalion with 80% fucking 18 year olds in it that had three weeks to train to go to war. Fucking cool like it still it sometimes bothers me but I'm at the age now and I've grown up enough that I'm like it fucking was what it was.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Like I don't know I don't I don't I lose sleep but definitely not over that yeah yeah I again I I don't know that any of us will ever get answers as far as that goes but if you read enough of the flag officer publications and stuff like that and sort of infer as best you can uh this was a new mission for the Marine Corps and we were literally one of the first people doing this new mission. The Marines had never really held a city before like that and they had no idea what we were walking into. The the idea was that supposedly somehow I don't know by magic the Iraqis are going to police themselves. I don't know what they I don't know what they thought. Uh it wasn't that Iraq in 2004 was or I guess in 2002 prior to our invasion was not a civilized society because they clearly were when you drive through like Southwest United Right Yeah it was a modern infrastructure I I I never saw very many things that looked completely unfamiliar. And driving through most of Ramadi was like modern infrastructure maybe even like a rural America look but the idea that there was some form of self-governance that was going to pop up uh endogenously is crazy. Like there there just wasn't it just a perfect power vacuum for something bad to happen and we happened to be the there when the bad happened and they learned their lesson because right after we left uh within months it that city was divided into what three or four pieces so that way three or four different uh battalions could cover it. One battalion wasn't even they literally said in the publications that one battalion could not cover that size of an area and I was like well that's interesting because it did just happen for seven straight months.

SPEAKER_03 44:02

Yeah. But the the thing too like now like looking back at it and after reading a bunch of shit and everything the the bullshit politics that was involved like in that happened between like Fallujah and Ramadi and the contractors were hung and burned and so therefore Mattis sends three battalions to fucking a town that's not as big um both geographically and population wise um to Fallujah so that fucking Bush can look like you know he's a good president or whatever the fuck like that whole political bullshit it's like you know at the time I didn't really grasp it as a child but then like growing up reading and so on and so forth it's fucking gross. Like that type of shit is like kind of what hinders a lot of the work that we were trying to do there.

unknown 44:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

It's uh actually very specifically why I ended up going into the career that I did I remember very specifically uh it while in Ramadi being like I am a dumbass that barely graduated from high school from the middle of nowhere and I feel like I understand a little bit better how much we're causing our own problems here. And went back to so that that that ended up my line of study but uh it you unfortunately like Nylon said it was we were at the beginning part of a of a of something that we'd never done before and we paid for it with our blood sweat and tears if you like what you've heard this is a multi part episode make sure you listen to the rest of the story.