From Boot to Battle - Daniel Ackles (part 2 of 2)

Part 2 with Dan Ackles from Rainmaker Platoon to recall Ramadi’s chaos, the missions that went right... until they didn’t, and the people who made it possible to keep going. Language barriers, split-second choices, and the loss of a close mentor anchor a hard look at meaning, duty, and memory.

• language barriers
• raids with potential intel issues and gestures over words
• the IED that wounded 2 Marines and a stalled recovery
• the blast that killed Savage
• leadership under fire and Doc Contreras’ lifesaving work
• culture shocks and unit humor as relief
• sandstorms, broken roofs, and improvising logistics
• the Barwana MEU follow-up deployment
• weighing whether Iraq changed and what brotherhood means now

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:36

This is part two of our conversation with Dan Ackles from Rainmaker Platoon.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Unfortunately, you know, like I remember it must have been the seventh. Like I said, if they're out today, they're bad. And like then you get out there and you realize some of these people, it was a city of what 400,000 or something.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Some of these people didn't have food today, you know, like they don't have a good news service to tell them that we're treating them all bad, you know, as bad guys if they come out today. We have a hump that goes around from the army base with a loudspeaker. How many of them didn't understand the shitty Arabic said on that, you know, or whatever?

Language Barriers And Miscommunication

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Right. No, that's well that I actually saying that reminds me that when when they sent us through that, I I was one of the people that went through that the short uh Arabic school, they taught us classical Arabic. They taught us like the Arabic that was like done in like movies and and whatnot, but that would have been like based out of Egypt. Yeah. And so Iraqi is is as you know as different as it is from Spanish to like Portuguese. I mean, there's some crossover for sure, but like it it wasn't it. And that's why we had such difficulty with some of our translating processes, is because we weren't speaking the same exact language.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Marine Corway.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah.

Raids, Rules, And Moral Ambiguity

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah. I remember uh one day Hercher also went through that class and he tried teaching us some stuff in Kuwait or something like that. And uh I remember practicing it and then using it over and over again, and they never knew what I was saying, and they bumped wide wide, wide wide and really the best communication was you just point the rifle at them and then point, you know, get on the ground or whatever. I mean, how many houses did we raid where that was the only thing that really got through to them, you know, like lay down, you know, as you're pointing your muzzle right in their face, you know. Um it's a shitty thing to do to people, but it's what we did.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

So well, you have to set it. I I I don't, I mean, and maybe I'm just not hearing the stories or not, but I I can confidently say I don't know anyone that I mean I think you can regret some of the stuff that had to happen, but I don't think I don't know anybody that that has maybe the guilt because they felt like they went too far. Um I I think we ran some pretty clean missions, even though it was in a really fucked up way.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

But um yeah, no, I I I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think um everyone I knew and you know worked with was trying to do their best. We weren't trying to take it out on any family members or anyone that's innocent in any way, shape, or form. Um, sometimes we got it wrong, right? Um you look at the map and you think, you know, the maybe the intelligence was wrong from the get-go, you know, or whatever, and we raided the wrong house because you know, coming through the pipeline playing the telephone game, it got messed up somewhere. I mean, I'm trying to think of how many thousands of mattresses, you know, because they all pile those mattresses up in one room. How many thousands of those I've tipped over looking for stuff, you know? Um, and doing the bug hunts and just raids, night raids, day raids, all that stuff, you know. And I'm sure we took in a lot of innocent guys because towards the end there, it was like you're at the house we're raiding, and you're a military-age male. You're going with us. You'll get sorted through at Junction City or wherever. But you're going with us, and you're gonna be in the back of the high back with a sandbag on your head, zip ties on your hands, and we're gonna sort through this later, you know. But and I'm sure I I don't know what percentage were completely innocent, you know.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Like, I mean, I was I was yeah, more than half, probably realistically, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, and and you know, like I was whatever, you know, like we we did our best, you know. We we we couldn't communicate with them, you know, like couldn't talk to them.

The IED Hit On Holm And Hurley

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Um well I took to heart what I think was Mattis that said, you know, be kind, be professional, have a plan to kill everybody in the room, um, to paraphrase. And I took that, I took that very much to heart. You know, I you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna lead with lead with that, and then and if if I need to, I'll I'll I'll fix the situation. Um, I don't know if I've told this story before, but uh a wild thing happened to me uh much after I had gotten out. I was living in DC and I I used to do presentations at schools and um about veterans since you know time the time in Iraq and everything. This is still when the war was going on. Um and to make a long story short, I was at I was doing it once, and uh after I had done my bio, I he would open it up to you know, be like, Are there any questions? And this girl raised her hand in the back of the classroom and I called on her and she said, What time? And she had a very thick accent. She's like, When where were you? When were you there? And I said, you know, you know, February to September 2004, Ramadi. She's like, I think I remember you. You would have, uh I would we're I'm a refugee. And uh as it turns out, we had she was at one of our raids where we kicked down the door and take and took all the all the guys. And I was like, you know, this is in the middle of a classroom. These are all juniors and stuff like that. And so it's like, fuck, like, how do I navigate this conversation? Um, and I was like, you know, I'm so sorry. I like, are you okay? And she's like, no, it's okay. Um, it was, you know, I can't remember exactly what she said, but she basically but then she's like, she's like, no, no, no. That's why we're here. Um, we turned in my uncle. He was a bad guy. And so, anyways, uh that was that was one of the more intense uh experiences of my entire life, uh trying to navigate that in front of uh, you know, 25 other students. Can't even imagine. Yeah, no, we we stepped after after the class, I stepped out in the hallway with her and had a quick conversation. And I mean it was she was being a refugee and and whatnot. That was a that was a it was I was I was happy to have met her. I'll just say that.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah. I don't know what I'd do if I was in that situation. I I'd like to think I wouldn't drop the dime on my uncle, though. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Depends on how bad of a guy he was. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

No, I mean, I know uh their culture's very different. He probably deserved it for a lot of different reasons.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Well, not only that, I I'm now I can't speak for every situation, but we kicked down a few doors where they may have been related or maybe not related, I don't know, but they were beating the children, beating even people back, hell holding their own family members at gunpoint, like you know, some sometimes you got a little self-preservation, so I I guess I understand, but yeah, and boy rape, raping little boys was very common over there. Yeah, there's the whole uh I talked to somebody else about that recently. The whole chai boy culture of uh keeping a young male as as a sexual consort was something that we ran into that was a cross-cultural thing that we didn't understand at all.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

No, no, that's terrible. I don't want to say anything. That's no, that's totally fun.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

I I honestly I think what you just said was more than enough about that particular topic, but it it to see it in your face is uh was a again huge culture shock. Something that you have never you had never thought of and you had never dealt with.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Well, let's reel you back just a touch. You kind of touched on it a little bit, but I'm curious. You were involved in uh quite a few big events. If you're willing to talk about it, great. If you're not, we'll skip over it and go to something else. But do you want to talk about what happened with Holm and Hurley and then also Savage later?

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah, we'll start with Holm and Hurley. Yeah, I don't know what mission we were on or what we were doing. I think it might have just been a night patrol, and we're out not far from Snake Bit, you know, right across the road from Hurricane Point in kind of a neighborhood back there, probably not too far from the canal. We got hit by an IED, and you know it it that second IED really put the first one into perspective because the first one felt pretty big at the time. You know, it was a loud explosion. You know, I kind of turned around and Hurley was immediately hurt, type of thing, and just about in my lap. Um, he was kind of peppered from his face down his arm and stuff like that. And uh I remember hearing home screaming up front, type of thing. Lieutenant Dobb calling for Doc. And I think, you know, I I can't remember exactly, but I remember our home V wasn't working anymore because of the explosion. Um so we were stuck in place, immediately trying to get those guys patched up. Doc did it all pretty much. Um but then I remember helping him get which doc did you have with you?

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Was it Contreras?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah, it was Contreras. Yeah, which I'm thankful for him almost every day because he was the one of the best docks I've ever met, you know. Really had his shit together um when we needed him, and he was just a really fun guy, too, all around. So but yeah, he he patched them up, and I remember helping Holm get to the Medevac vehicle because his ankle had some shrapnel in it, if I remember correctly, and he just couldn't walk, so I kind of put my arm under him and was his crutch getting over there. And then it seemed like we stayed there for hours trying, you know, in the dark, trying to watch for anything else with our NVGs and stuff, and you know, nothing really happened after that. We got the vehicle out and we left, and then um got back to Hurricane Point. They were Metavact. I think it was dynamite with some bolts and just other shrapnel added onto it, if I remember correctly, for that IED.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Um yeah, I don't know. I so we were your responding QRF as map to, and I think we estimated that it was mounted up on a wall or up on a telephone pole, it was higher up than street level, but yeah, it was like a it was like a pipe bomb. Like that was our guess, but we really didn't know. You're just you're basing it on pictures and looking at stuff in the middle. I mean, it was in the dark, like trying to figure it out in the dark, but there was no way to figure it out, and that's actually you bring up another point. We had for as much as we were vehicle bound, we had no real battalion plan for what to do with downed vehicles, and so you were out there for a couple of hours waiting for who knows what, you know, to get hit again, basically.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Right, being easy to hit, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Because we were, I think if I remember correctly, the original thought was we were gonna pick up the wrecker from Junction City, and then they declined. They weren't, they wouldn't come out. And I mean, I don't know why, right? Maybe the record was broken, maybe they didn't want to come out, maybe they had a different mission, but uh we were waiting to go pick up the wrecker. We were all sitting there on the trucks geared up, like we need to fucking go. And then finally we get the word, like, no, you just go. And we did. We trowed we towed that truck back ourselves with a toe bar that that we fucking made. I think we made that tow bar. I don't even think it was a real tow bar. One time we towed one back with a strap, like like some redneck four-wheel driving shit. Like it, you know, this was not we had no real plans on how to do any of this stuff. We just made it up as we went, yeah. And that that was a an insane situation. And I remember showing up, and it's exactly what you said the vehicles down in the worst possible spot. There's a high rise on one side.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, I remember looking up at all those windows, just waiting for someone to pop out with an RPG and take out more, right? You know, and and the just open to sniper fire, and you know, being the new guy, it's like, well, my job is to watch from here to here and make sure nothing happens. I can't worry about that stuff, you know. Like, yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing I'm gonna say that's going to say, you know, change anything or make anyone think we should do something differently, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

But and interesting, I remember showing up and jumping out of the truck to go like interface with whoever was in charge of everything so that way we can make a comprehensive plan. And it wasn't Lieutenant Dobb that came up to me or even a sergeant, it was Hodges. And Hodges is yelling, like just yelling and pointing at what's funny is it worked. I don't give a fuck. He he he was like, This is what's happening, this is where they are, this is what's going on. I was like, all right, cool, let's do this. But he he had taken charge at that point.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Hodges is great, I love that man.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Yeah, and uh that was the one I remember it had blown down power lines, and there was live power lines like crackling on the side of the road right next to the vehicle before we were going to evacuate it. And that was I was really worried that we were gonna kill somebody uh with a power line because they were they were high enough voltage that you could hear them crackling on the ground. And I was like, Yeah, that's that's a bad sign. Let's get everyone away.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Right by them.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure everybody did.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, yep. Yeah, the next one was Savage. I think uh that's that one caused us to reshuffle the trucks, and uh Regal was driving, Savage was machine gunning. He had his 50 cal by that point, and he loved that gun. He was absolutely obsessed with that 50 cal. Like I remember a few days he got to teach me a little bit about it and stuff like that, and uh but yeah, he loved that 50 cal. Um I don't know what our mission was. I feel like we were out there trying to do the hearts and minds thing. It was middle of the day, reopening a school or something like that, generator to the hospital. I don't remember us carrying any real equipment or anything, but I do remember we had those three-quarter doors, and we had made one out of five stops or something, and Lieutenant Dobbs three-quarter door had just fallen off. Like it wasn't there anymore. So we threw it in the back of our high back, and he got one of those like Kevlar blankets that we had in the back. Yeah, yeah, that for a door type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Uh-huh.

Culture Shock And Unit Lore

SPEAKER_00 15:53

And uh, I remember thinking, oh, fuck, this guy's kind of a badass. You know, like there's any any reason to you know call off the mission, this would be it. Like, you know, maybe maybe we, you know, could, you know, like go back and get chow and stuff, you know. My head was always in chow. Um but any excuse to get over to Junction City or Blue Diamond and get something other than T Rats. But we didn't, you know, and we were going and uh it was in that uh farm area not far from the river where the roads were twenty feet higher than the farm fields that they would irrigate with the old ditches type of system. We're just cruising, and uh next thing I know my ears are ringing and I'm kinda waking up on the bottom of a pile of marines in the back of the highback, and the tires are still spinning on the high back type of thing, but we're down in one of those flooded farm fields and uh just stuck in the mud. I think I was on the bottom of the pile. I remember Savage being directly on top of me. I remember telling him, Savage, you gotta get off of me, and him just almost whispering back, I can't. I was a lot bigger than him, so I just kind of got up and turned around and looked at him. He was already pale. And uh Lieutenant Dobb was screaming for Doc to help Regal. I'm looking at Savage and Doc, we need you back here. No, Doc, come back here. And I just started screaming for him. And uh he when he does come back, I ended up going and trying to help Regal a little bit, to put a bandage on his arm or something. I think Doc had his jaw was pretty much blown off. Um but I remember putting like a pressure dressing on his arm and uh trying to carry him up that hill as best as I could to get him to the Medevac vehicle. I don't know how they got savage up there. But that ringing never leaves your ears, you know, like the concussive force had fucked up my eardrums or whatever. I'm sure I got a TVI that day. Sharon Garcia was there and uh you know, asked me if I'm okay. I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine. I can barely hear or whatever, but we sat for what must have been hours until we get that vehicle out of there watching some of the other farm fields, you know, crouch next to a palm tree and you know, the median or whatever between farm fields and uh we eventually get the vehicle out of there and go back to Hurricane Point. Yeah, I don't know if it was that day or if it was the first thing I think it was that day. But it was pretty somber, you know. Um and then uh Sarah and Garcia ended up being the one to tell us that Savage had died. It was just I don't know, it was it was kind of crushing, to be honest with you. Um because it was just so fast, you know. Um and Savage was a guy I really looked up to, you know, like he was always working on the trucks, you know, pulling me in a couple of the other boots to help get Constantina wire out of axles or change tires or doing weapons maintenance and teaching, you know. He was uh said I must have he I don't know how long he had that 50 cal, maybe a couple weeks, you know. Um but if I didn't go over it with him half a dozen times, you know, to with him teaching me how to use it, I'd be surprised, you know, and uh yeah, he was just someone I really looked up to. Um there's a lot of guys I really looked up to, but he was he was definitely one of them.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Um that was a hard one to remember guys after I don't I don't remember the sequence of events, but I remember them having us all fall out of sledgehammer to come over and met up between the hooches to break the news to us. That was a That was a hard blow. You know, no one's Savage from the beginning too, you know, and it's uh there's a lot of weird feelings when they split the split the platoon. Yeah. Because, you know, not being able to be a part of some of the missions, especially with Savage, you know, it's uh gets a lot of weird emotions. I don't know, I don't know what how to describe it, but you know wishing you were kind of you know, wishing you were there, but don't know if you could have helped type stuff.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

It's uh Yeah, and I mean I remember American is the shrapnel that hit him in his aorta pretty soon afterwards. There's nothing that could be done, you know. Um but you always wonder, you know, you always wonder.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

So well I appreciate you sharing that. I imagine that is hard to share even 20 years later. Savage is one of those people that uh you know, I it it's weird. We didn't lose a lot of people in weapons company, but the three people that we lost uh were extrem I mean, we lost a lot of people as far as casualties in general, but the three that actually died in combat, all three were extremely dynamic individuals. A lot of personality, talk to a lot of people, very outgoing. That was not everybody in weapons company. It's not like we were just a bunch of extroverts. So it's it's interesting that it's three people that touch so many people and have so many, everyone has so many memories of all three of them. And Savage, very specifically, your description is very apt. He's uh yeah, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Secretly transport equipment to alternate locations. That guy would he had some balls on him. Like, as soon as there wasn't a gear watch on any army equipment anywhere, we were getting it for ourselves, you know. Yeah, no matter what it was, he's like, they haven't got no one here, and I mean that helped us so much, you know. Like it was all the stuff we needed, you know.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Like one of the days that we did not get chow in Kuwait when we first got there, he helped me and someone else uh steal chow from the army chow hall. Uh we snuck under the tent flaps and and stole chow. I believe just to feed the company, like because nobody was gonna feed us and we didn't have anything. Yeah, he he was a big personality. And what's funny is he's not a big guy, right? I anybody listening to this who has never Googled a picture of him, he couldn't have been 110 pounds. I don't know how big he was. He was not a big fella. And but just his personality was 10 feet tall and 300 pounds. Like he was a real dynamic person and a loss to the world.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Absolutely, absolutely. I remember uh one time in the hooch, I was in the smoke pit, kept asking him how bad the hazing could have been back in the old days. He kept talking about ninja turtles, and I said, I'll do one, it can't be that bad. And uh he gave it to me proper. It was it was fun, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yeah, for uh for those that don't know, I uh uh I'm I'm intimately aware of Ninja Turtles because I was in that that time time frame. But not everybody does. Describe uh describe a Ninja Turtle, uh Dan.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

For me, I was in uh you know boots and newts, you know, just a no flak jacket on, but you put your Kevlar on the ground and you uh stay on parade rest on it. Um with your chest.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

That's right, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Sitting on the Kevlar type of thing. And obviously it's not very comfortable. Um your body is being held up by the Kevlar pushing into your chest, and generally you're reciting some kind of knowledge or um something along those lines, maybe singing the Marine Corps hymn. That's the kind of shit I joined the Marine Corps to do, right? Like, like people like I understand hazing has gone too far in a lot of situations, and there's a lot of people that didn't like it, but that is what makes you a part of the club to a certain extent, right? Like, we've all done this shit. Let's be stupid and let you join the club, you know. Like, does it go too far sometimes? Yeah, I'm sure, but it never went too far with me. Like, like after that, we went and had a couple cigarettes together and laughed, and you know, like well, and now it's a fond memory.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

You're not like that son of a bitch, right? You're like, no, that was awesome. We we bullshit and laughed.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yep. Uh I mean, I guess it helps that I literally asked them for it, you know, like but um I mean I much would have rather done that than any of the NJPs I got later in my Marine Corps career.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yeah. Well, that used that used to be the joke when we first got to 2-4, and 2-4 had changed drastically in the just the four years we were in. I imagine four years after, even more so. But it used to be they would they would proposition you, they would say, You want pain or paper? And uh everybody said pain, nobody said fucking paper, because you knew what paper meant. Paper meant you were losing rank, money, freedom, all kinds of shit. Right, and pain just meant you get the shit kicked out of you for you know 24 hours at the most, right? If it was the worst possible thing, and then it was and then you laughed about it later, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah, no, I I would have made that same choice every single time.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Yeah, every everybody did. Nobody chose paper. If you chose paper, there was something wrong with you anyway, and you deserve the paper, you deserve to get out.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Well, I hate to reel you back into Ramadi for a minute, but that shit was funny. What you just told me. Yeah, um, anything else stand out, man? Anything else? I don't I don't want you, you know, even funny shit, anything that you remember from the rest of the deployment.

Sandstorms, Bases, And “Tomorrow” Time

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Um, I remember uh the Haji DVD stand.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Uh at one point, Anchorman had just come out on DVD or whatever, and we all we had a TV in the front of the hooch, and it was probably the whole platoon sitting there watching it together and just roaring with laughter. Um you know, that that was uh real highlight of that deployment and all the anchor man quotes that just kept going the rest of the deployment and on and on, you know, like that was a really great bonding moment type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Um yeah, this before the internet and memes were big, so we just yelled movie quotes at each other.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Yeah, yeah. And you'd always get a chuckle out of them, you know, like everyone, everyone knew the movies together type of thing, and and uh there's some real zingers in there, you know. Oh, uh, I don't know what I did to get on it, but I was on shitter duty for most of Iraq with uh Gunny Murray. At first it was just, hey, I don't like how some of these guys are leaving it. You gotta come through here and check, make sure we got toilet paper, wipe shit down real quick. But then the guys emptying the Portigons weren't allowed on base anymore.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Well, we also killed it.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

I was gonna say two of two of them, yeah, two of them got killed. One got killed by the enemy, one got killed by us. Uh one time the shitter truck got blown up. Like, there's a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, I'll never forget him uh showing me the technique of using an engineer stake to deep the shit from the center and just push it to the side so we had room to shit still.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

And uh important life skills, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

And and I I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I was 19 at the time. That was my only place to get intimate with myself. So that was uh the the rush, the rush of uh you know, in the middle of the day, those would be 130 degrees sometimes. Yeah, and you rub one out faster than you will pass out from the sauna heat, you know the flies tickling while while you're doing anything you need to in there, type of thing with an old magazine.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Those fucking Iraqi flies are still like give me trauma. Like they would land, they would land, those goddamn things would land like on your lip or inside your nose, and you'd swat them away, and then it would come back and land exactly in the exact same spot over and over again. I'd rather be waterboarded than having one of those Iraqi shit flies land inside my corner of my mouth again.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Yeah, absolutely disgusting. But I do remember uh one time I got off of shitter duty for two weeks because Gunny Murray hated Leilong. And uh for whatever reason we were grappling, me and Lee Long were I choked him out, and Gunny really liked that. So he's like, Yeah, did I hear you choked out Leilong? Yeah, like I did. He's like, You're off shitter duty the next two weeks. So happy. So yeah, that was that was another fond memory, not having to push the shit to the side for a couple weeks. But now I think about it, he probably didn't call me Ackles. He probably I think it was just red. Hey Red time because hair and face red all the time over there, just sunburned.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

So yeah, Gunny Mararke liked uh a naked black woman and and fit and physical violence, and so yeah, if you had either one of those, you were able to get out of some something.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

He was he was uh he was a bad motherfucker, yeah. We had we had a lot of bad motherfuckers, you know. Like, I don't I you know, like there's him and then there's the biggest black man you ever saw in First Sergeant. And oh yeah, and not only was he giant, he was ripped too.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Like yeah, he was on the bodybuilding team or whatever for the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

I remember a few times I went to the gym and he was there and he was you know doing the most god-awful weight, like he was Ronnie Coleman or something, and you could see the veins through his shirt type of thing in his chest, and you know, like and it wasn't that tight of a shirt, you know, like he was just jacked, yeah, he would he would carry an old 12-gauge shotgun around. You know, whenever he went out on missions with us, like, you don't want a rifle first, Sergeant? He's like, I don't need one, this will cut somebody right in half, you know. Yeah, so you know, our officers were great. Captain Weiler was always leading from the front. Lieutenant Dobb was incredible. And then, you know, I had Sergeant Garcia for our senior enlisted guy, my squad leader type of thing. He was just fantastic. Yeah, no, I you know, as terrible as a lot of that shit was, I couldn't have asked for a better group of guys. And um 100% makes me thankful, you know, a lot of days.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

We got incredibly lucky with having leaders that were actual fighters.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah, yeah. No, I was listening to the one about uh the 2-5 guy wouldn't leave the wire.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

What what do you mean? Like, how'd how'd you become a captain?

SPEAKER_02 32:43

You know, like that that's the thing that blew my mind is not only did you make it all the way to that rank or all the way that you got all the way to in country. Yeah, and you're like, nope, not gonna do it. I I realize it just got real, but it come on, man.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Yeah. Well, I mean, you have to, I mean, part I I mean, he's a marine officer, so that's crazy. But if you go back to the guys that we relieved the uh National Unit, that's National, thank you, the National Guard, their tactics was not to fight. They they just they put it in in high, zip down Michigan to do a sweep, quote unquote, of of IEDs and then rip back to the wire and then pack it up for the day. Uh, and so that's what a lot of people were kind of thinking it was going to be again, but that was definitely not the reality after the April for sure.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

I just thought of another great little story. I remember uh one time we had like a sandstorm blow through, and like you couldn't see 20 feet in front of your face. We were on night mission, night taskable or whatever. And I don't know what our mission was, because new, not you know, and it doesn't really matter, anyways. But we get loaded up in the trucks, and you can kind of see the doubt in Lieutenant Dobbs' face on whether or not we're gonna be able to do it. We went out of Hurricane Point, pretty much went around that traffic circle, maybe up Michigan a hundred yards, and we canceled the mission. And we get back into Hurricane Point, and by the time we were back, our hooch top was like a half mile away. Everyone else had people out there holding down those stupid half shelter tents, you know, like I forgot about yeah, yeah, and ours ours was gone. It was ripped and it was gone type of thing. Like, um, and then they put in those sheet metal roofs after that, which you know, were better, but still nothing but a pop can for anything to go through if they want, you know, got good aim with their mortars. But but yeah, I remember just sweeping up sand for days after that. All the sand was in everything in our hooch because the the the top was gone, you know, like it wasn't so much rain, it was just wind and sand everywhere. Couldn't see shit.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Fucking terrible.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

So that was my job to keep those Iraqi contractors to to on focused on finishing those roofs on. Because they kept uh well, it was horrible because they they uh their standard SOP was to like do like 60% of the job, ask for their money, and then be like, Well, I'll come back, I'll come back, I'll come back. And uh Gunny Mararke like was like you're gonna babysit these motherfuckers. This will get done.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah. Yeah, I believe that. I'm sure they wanted a lot of breaks for cigarettes along the way, too. Well, it was it was I was constantly hollering. No, I'm not into bad about a whole civilization, but I didn't see a lot of work ethic in their people.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

They definitely had a different uh idea of what uh done looked like and what what was it was it was more that their relationship to time, as I've I've studied more of this stuff, it's like their relationship to time is just so different than ours. Like we're we're like when we say tomorrow, we literally mean 24 hours from now. And when they say tomorrow, that's upwards of a of a year. And then and then that's not, I mean, I'm not I mean, it's just you know very difficult. I make yeah, I don't I don't I I'm not saying that in a good or bad way, it's just the fucking reality. And that's part of what caused us a lot of our headaches over there is that we didn't understand what the fuck, you know, we we would say tomorrow and we thought they were committing to 24 hours, and then something else would happen and be like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah. Inshallah. Inshallah.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah. Uh good shit.

Meaning, Regret, And Brotherhood

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Something I've asked most people. How do you make sense of it all? What does it mean to you now that it's 20 years on? Or do you? Do you not make sense of it all? That's also okay too.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Um I mean, I think it's difficult, right? Because uh can we say Iraq isn't a better place now in any way, shape, or form? I don't think we can say yes. But I can say, like I was saying earlier, I think we all tried. I think we were we were trying to open schools, we were trying to make life better for those people. And I don't think it was on us. I think they were handed uh opportunity and they fumbled it, right? I wish they were in a better place, right? You know, I I it's hard to justify the lives we lost, you know, um, for no substantial gain in their society. And you know, I mean I was still in in 2006. I didn't go back to Ramadi, but I went to Barwana. Well, I think it was Echo Company went to Ramadi and uh got to see some of those guys afterwards, and it was an even shittier place by the time they went back, right? Like nothing got repaired. All the bullet holes from our first tour there were still there. Um, if anything, it got worse. And that's obviously the opposite of what we were trying to do. So that's disappointing in that way. But at the same time, I got I got to go through that hell with, like I was saying earlier, the best group of guys I've ever known. And I I wouldn't trade that for anything, you know. Um you know what little stuff I did to help out, I'm proud of. And uh just knowing all of you bastards is uh something that's very near and dear to me.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

So I appreciate that, man.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

You would have uh I I I forg I always forget that there's a handful of guys like you because of when you landed, you would have done those three deployments, you know, ours and then Ramon or uh Oki and then had to go back. What what was I mean that had to be what was the difference between the spin? I mean, obviously with you getting dropped like only a few weeks before we went over, so you wouldn't see that that first spin-up, but do you feel like there was a big difference and being you know, quote unquote prepared for Iraq to for you?

SPEAKER_00 39:53

No, no, I I so we left on uh a Mew and up until two weeks before we went to Iraq, they were telling us we're not going to Iraq or Afghanistan, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Oh wait, you were pulled off of a Mew to go do that?

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Oh shit, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Yeah, we we did uh the the West Coast Mew left from San Diego, stopped in Hawaii, stopped in uh Asia somewhere. I think we stopped in Australia on the way over there, but it might have been the way back. I can't really remember. But yeah, we were supposed to do the the training circuit throughout throughout the Pacific.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Cover gold and all that shit. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:35

Yeah. Yeah. And then like I said, it was two weeks before that. They're like, yeah, plans change. We're going to Iraq. And uh you're gonna and they split up the whole battalion and it was just a shit show. Uh we went to Barwana, which was uh a very small town. Um and we're supposed to be there for 30 days, and up being four months, maybe maybe five months, you know, type of thing. And uh towards the end of it, they were trying to get a lot of the guys in my class, if you will, to uh voluntarily extend their contracts so they could go back with the Mew. And no one did. No one would re-enlist, no one, you know, they're like, no, like we're not doing this. Morale was low.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

You know, it doesn't sound like there was even there was it even registering. No shit.

The Barwana Deployment And Low Morale

SPEAKER_00 41:32

So funny story about that deployment. So we started off in this house that was half finished that we took over right in Barwana, and then at some point, being weapons company, we went out to a train station. I had one good pair of boots when the deployment started, and another one just to say I had one for inspection and I didn't want to spend the money for any. Well, they issued us guys that needed boots, another pair of boots, so I threw out my old ones into the burn pile and burned them up with my new ones on. And uh, about a week later, the company gunny came up to me. He was like, Hey, uh, if you want to keep those boots, you gotta uh extend. What you got the boots back on and get handed him his boots back. He's like, What are you doing? I was like, I guess I'm patrolling in these now. You know, those are the only boots you have? Yes, they are, Gunny. That's fine, it's no big deal. Just keep the fucking boots ackles. So, yeah, no, morale was real low. Um, I mean, that was I live in Michigan now, but I can honestly say sleeping in that open, you know, no-roof house was some of the coldest I've ever been in my entire life. Like it was cold. And a lot of us didn't have both sleeping bags because I mean when we were in Ramadi, it was hot. Right. We didn't expect it. We left shit on ship, you know, and and uh and it felt completely worthless. I don't remember seeing a fighting age male. Like my entire time in Barwana. I I don't remember seeing any fighting age males at all. Much less to shoot at.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

So you were in no engagements on that one?

SPEAKER_00 43:28

No, I don't remember raising my gun in anger at all.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

It's wild. Barwana's an interesting totally different. Yeah. Barwana's interesting as far as historically, just because that's where there was um intelligence-wise, there were some of the heads of like AQI and ISIS ended up being in Barwana. And I don't ask me why. I have no fucking clue. I just know that's where uh like key leaders of like Zarkawi's inner circle and stuff like that were end up being captured in Barwana. But I I mean I don't fuck, I don't know anything about it other than that. That's all I know.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

I know I believe it was golf company replaced us in the city when we moved out to the train station or whatever. And uh the month we were in the city, there's this mean ass donkey tied to a post um that would occasionally get loose and almost trample some guys, but we weren't allowed to shoot it. And then we went up to the train station, the guys from golf company shot that motherfucker.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Your biggest enemy was a donkey. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

So wait, so did you if you're if you didn't re-enlist, did you get pulled out of country back to the straight back to the states then, like on a Freedom Bird, and then get out?

SPEAKER_00 44:46

No, there's there were some guys that did. Um, they must have gotten out in Juloon, June. I got out in July. Um, but so like taking the Mew back, a lot of the senior Lance Corporals, corporals type of thing at the end of their four years did not ride back. Um, maybe half of us in my class type of, you know, like did not ride back, and then the other half did. We had tap of tamps on ship, you know, and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 45:14

Jesus gross.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Yeah. Yeah, it was it was fun. And then uh somehow I managed to squeeze in one more NJP in the weekend before I was supposed to go on terminal leave.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

So you don't have to tell details, but what were your three NJPs for?

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Drinking.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Okay, good. Okay, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 45:34

That that checks out.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean, uh well done, well done. First one was drinking and fighting in the barracks. Yeah, it's kind of a fun, long story, but that's that's the basis of it. Second one was for drinking and not getting back to the barracks before formation in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Third one is for drinking and fighting out in town. So that's it.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

You're uh you're a true, true and blue 2-4 weapons company.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Yeah, well done. Well done.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yep. Senior Packles reporting.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Uh well, man, this has been great. We're hitting on just about two hours. Uh if there's anything else you want to add in, feel free. If not, we'll wrap it up here and uh uh I can't think of anything.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

I really appreciate you guys doing this. Uh it's been listening to all the other stories and uh really uh helped me out a lot. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

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