When Optimism Meets Combat - Elijah Mann (part 1 of 2)

This interview starts out with Eli Mann about arriving in Ramadi in 2004 and watching early optimism get replaced by a new kind of focus built from heat, mortars, and the grind of convoy life. He walks us through a bicycle IED, the long recovery missions, and the small moments of humor and music. 

• first days at Hurricane Point and adapting to the squad bay life 
• downtime rituals, music, writing, and the pranks
• incoming mortars, near misses
• the bicycle IED and the shock of civilian reactions 
• switching roles from dismount to driver and up-armored Humvees 
• QRF missions, overwatch at key sites, and seeing death up close 
• searching the Euphrates River for missing Marines, the toll of exhaustion 
• recovering fallen Marines, rumors, media presence
• the mosque incident, the sandstorm, and leadership moments

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

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If you are a member of Weapons Company or someone with a story about Weapons Company 2/4 in 2004, please come tell some stories with us - 20 mins or 20 hours! Help paint the canvas of an archival story for others to know what it was like. Contact us @ RamadiPodcast@gmail.com, or via the podcast website above. 

All music used with permission by soundbay: https://www.youtube.com/@soundbay_RFM 

Transcript

Meeting Eli And First Impressions

SPEAKER_02 0:13

All right, man, let's tell everybody who you are.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Uh, my name is Eli Mann. I went by PFC Mann in 2004. I was um brand new to 2-4 when we uh deployed to Aramadi Iraq. Um went in there pretty optimistic that we were gonna be winning hearts and minds. Um I remember rolling in on the seven-ton uh and seeing all the people in the marketplace and everything, and uh just not knowing what was gonna happen. Um and uh yeah, it was just different from what I thought it was gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

And you were a mortarman as far as I remember. Were you I mean you guys got split? Were you in Sledgehammer or Rainmaker?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I was in Sledgehammer.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

That was what I thought.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

So what are you and what do you see speaking of coming into Ramadi for the first time, what do you what do you remember coming into Hurricane Point for the first time, jumping off the back of the seven-ton Hurricane Point?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Um, I thought it was pretty interesting. I'd never seen a place with a cloth ceiling before. Um so I walked into it. I'm like, well, this I'm sure this will be nice. Uh I'm thankful that it had AC because those days were like really, really hot. Uh yeah, just uh getting in there, getting acclimated to everything. Uh being able to um be in like a squad bay environment was kind of fun too. Uh, because like you had minimal privacy there, uh and lots of shenanigans.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Best way to pass time.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Well, yeah, I mean, you're already talking about it. What kind of shenanigans do you remember? How'd you guys pass the time with your minimal privacy, unfortunately?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Um when I came back after our missions out, I would uh focus on like music and uh some writing. Um, I used the old Guitar Pro app uh to dub music or you know, write guitar tabs. Um I remember a time when uh everyone got a wild hair, and uh I think either pinned down or taped uh Sefuentes to a pole and shaved 81s in his back, uh, which was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Uh

Hurricane Point Life And Downtime

SPEAKER_03 3:02

he was a hair suit young uh young man, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, he he would have been a lot cooler if he would have taken that sweater off that he had under his uniform.

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Yeah, I remember that one.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

I wish I was there for that. He was not he was not a small individual. It probably was a hell of a wrestling match.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

No, he did not go quietly.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

No. No, he didn't.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

Did you end up playing cards too, or did you uh just uh stick to stick to your bunk for the most part?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I stuck to my bunk and to the smoke pit. Um one of those that helped fill sandbags to put around the structure that they built um because they didn't want us standing out in the open, of course, because of all the mortars that came in. Although most of them were uh poorly aimed. Um there were a few that got kind of close, which um around the end of the deployment, we had one that got pretty close and it went off very loudly, and we were all standing there like, well, that one missed us too.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, it was always good when you heard it.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

It's uh it was definitely an interesting frame of mind that you kind of got towards at the end in particular, where it was kind of like it's not complete apathy, but it was like, well, that wasn't mine.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yep, yep. I remember one night um we actually had one go off in between the the hoochas that we had. Um it was a CS mortar, and uh I think it took out a couple, well, it didn't take out it um got shratten to a couple vehicles and got into the ventilation or whatever. Um and like we all had to get up and put our gear on and stuff. Uh so yeah, that one was pretty interesting to wake up to.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

I remember being particularly angry because it did take out one of the AC units, and so yeah. So remind me, what now we ran as as we've had these conversations, I didn't fully appreciate that we ran uh a little bit differently than everybody else. That we didn't really that we did move our our truck teams around a little bit. Uh we weren't set the entire time. But uh what do you what do you what roles did you end up having? I know you were a driver a little bit because I think you drove for me at least once. Um, but I did you were you also a gunner, uh dismount? Did you perform a lot of the different roles? And who do you remember going out with the most?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

I started as a dismount on the pale horse. Uh Statleman was the driver, and Corporal Worth was the A driver. Um after our, I think it was our first IED, um, Corporal Worth was hit. He got hit in the eye. Um, that one was on a 10-speed bike with a black package on the back of it, and the man standing before it uh on our first time around that block was um wearing a uh black mandress, or uh what do they call him?

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Distacha.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Um a black distosha and clean shaved, you know, nice haircut. Um so we make a wrong turn and we go back around. Um and uh next thing I know, this thing's about maybe uh 10 feet away um at two o'clock on our truck and just goes off. And it was the most violent sound that I've ever heard in my entire life. Um, I hear that they found the frame of the bike so many yards away from the vehicle. Um so as a dismount for that vehicle, we all dismounted. Um, we went out and cordoned off the area. I was at the far end of that courtyard um where the school was. And um something that really confused me is that the kids were like laughing and throwing rocks and just uh it uh it really got to me actually because I thought that they would be happy that we were there, but uh to see them um be happy that this happened was uh something that kind of got to me. Um after Corporal Worth was hit, um I became a driver eventually. I drove one of the old M998s with the two slabs of steel on the side for a while. Um, they eventually gave us doors in the back, which was really nice for the dismounts. Um and I got an up armored about maybe five months in. Um it was one of the 1119s or something like that. Um, the gray, just regular uh up armored vehicles, which was really nice because we could move faster. Um, they were equipped with a turbo that could

The Bicycle IED That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 8:40

handle the load that was on the vehicle because of the armor and um the guns and everything. Um still no AC, which I'm kind of mad about, but all right.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Oh, I was just gonna say is like that was a huge improvement because that we finally got it, we finally got rid of that that older model Humvee that we had that just could not keep that the transmission just couldn't keep up, and everybody else had to slow down just to stay, and it was the vehicle that I was in a lot. But I remember there was a couple times people would floor it and my driver had the pedal mashed to the floor and it was just screaming, but it was still only going like 40 miles an hour. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Yeah, they geared them for whatever reason, they geared those old ones like the old jeeps, like it was still, you know, Korea-Vietnam era where you're just climbing around through. I mean, you know, it meant to be an off-road vehicle, so it's meant to dig in, but not very good when you're running the streets.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

So yeah, uh I was really glad for the Uparmoreds uh that they gave us a lot more protection uh from the IEDs and everything. Um more notably for the gunners, they had a bit more protection from just standing in the back of an um open back 998. Um, I think Gwizdak was my gunner uh for a little bit um until we moved to the up armors, and then uh George Hernandez was uh my gunner from then on.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Nice. So what do you do you remember so when if you were then the driver for the rest of the deployment, you probably didn't get into much dismounted activity. But uh what do you remember of some of the early some of those missions that you that we went on at that point? Um any stick out?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Uh the there are a couple that really do stick out. One of them was a night mission where uh at the time Staff Sergeant Cook uh shot a guy through the back of the neck or the head um that decided to shoot at our convoy um with a pistol, um, which was not that smart, obviously. Um we dismounted and uh and uh held security there just to make sure that everything was squared away. Got the guy to I'm not sure where he went, but got him somewhere. Um as a driver, one of the uh more interesting um reactions that we had was on the QRF uh to the peace uh what do they call it? The peace center. Um they there was a platoon that was attacked from the peace center and um they went in and took care of business like 2-4 does. Um and we went to cordon off the area. A lot of us had just woken up and we're trying to chug water, you know, uh, because it's toasty out there. Uh and some of them chugged water a bit too fast. I saw a gunner hop off and just blow his guts all over the ground and then get back into that turret. Uh um saw my first uh dead person there being lifted up into a seven ton. Um it was a sight uh that you know no one wants to see that, but you know, it's combat, so you will. Um what else? Just uh the amount of IEDs that we hit was kind of uh it was a lot. I mean, um I think I counted um 12 that um our convoy got hit with um either indirectly or directly. Um one of those that we caught actually was on Nova Avenue. I was a new dismount at the time, and um I was standing watch, uh it's like on a dirt hill, and the engineer was right beside me, and he said, Hey, have you ever blown an IED before? And I said no. And he was like, Do you want to? I'm like, Fuck yes, I do. Uh so he hands me this uh you know, the old style uh trigger where you push, twist, and pull. And he's like, just push, twist, and pull. And I'm like, okay, so I'm standing there, and he's like, Anytime now. And I'm like, oh, okay. So I push, twist, pull. That thing fires off, and boom, that IED goes off. Best day of my life.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

That's cool.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

So we did a lot of uh Overwatch missions at uh the government center at the hospital. I remember running out there all the time and stuff. Um you would have been sticking with the truck most of the time. What's uh did you guys rotate out with the with your with your gunner, get be able to stretch your legs and stuff, or how how did you guys handle that? I was I was usually up on an overwatch, so I don't I wasn't really near the trucks when that was going on.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Um we would switch out. Uh there was one time where I was on the government center roof uh early on. Might have been early on. Yeah, well, early on. Um stand and watch, and there was a really quick skirmish uh down the road to the right um that went off and got us all like on guard and everything. And then, you know, nothing else happened. Um yeah, that's just about it there.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yeah, it was interesting with the government center. It felt like, at least to me, uh, it felt like there would be firefights all around it, at least initially. There was some big

Convoy Roles And Vehicle Upgrades

SPEAKER_02 15:10

stuff at the end, but throughout most of the deployment, there was there wasn't any big engagements at the actual government center, I think, just because there were just always so many guns there. There was always private contractors there, there were always multiple military units there, there was obviously plenty of Iraqi police and and some of the civil defense corps and and random other people with guns. So I think it they just stayed away from it, you know, just as a general principle. But or maybe the government was paying them to stay away, who knows?

SPEAKER_03 15:39

I think there was also something to be said about the how the uh the barriers were set up. Like you couldn't you really couldn't get up on top of it to include you couldn't engage people very easily. Even when you were up in the watchtowers, there was I mean you did have lines of fire, obviously, but they weren't they weren't reached out enough. And because I at the end when I was in the firefight that I was in, it was because I was on the rooftop next to the government center that I was actually able to see some shit. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah. Well, man, you got kind of baptism by fire really, really early. I mean, we got there into Hurricane Point on March 6th, and then or 7th, depending on when you got there. And then Warth's ID, that bike ID you were describing, was on the 20th. I mean, that was like two weeks later. Uh, do you remember anything else of those like sort of early missions before everything sort of kicked off in April?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Um the earlier missions, uh I remember walking out of the gate the first time. Well, uh driving out of the gate and then dismounting, um, walking along uh the early part of Nova right there by the dam. Um just walking along the what is it, the Euphrates River. It is uh walking along the Euphrates River, just um watching everything, watching definitely the ground, definitely uh the buildings, you know, everything. Um there was one mission uh where we were on a QRF um where uh Neil, I think he turned out to be a gunny or something like that. He had fired at uh a couple guys that were lighting off rockets um at the at the base. So we went out and we swept the area and there was a wire going across the road. Um, I looked down and I see it, and I was like, uh Sergeant Diaz, um, there's a wire across the road. And he looks back, he was like, Well, cut it. And I'm like, I don't think that's a very great idea, Sergeant.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

That that sounds like a terrible idea.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah, yeah. I was like, that's that's not such a good idea. So uh I don't know who it was, but they came over with the leatherman and cut it, and we traced uh one side of it back to a car battery and the other side to a makeshift uh I'd say makeshift mortar. It had um rocket tubes uh with metal bars that were um welded together vertically and horizontally, um, and a wire sticking in the bottom of um of the tubes to where when they hit the battery it would shock the rocket and send it off. So um those are pretty neat phone.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Did you ever launch model rockets as a kid? That's what that I remember when you guys brought that back to Hurricane Point. That's what that reminded me of. It reminded me of model rockets as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Yeah, those were those are fun to shoot off.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yeah, yeah, it's the same, like the same design, just a little bit more deadly.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

If I if I remember correctly, man, you were uh I I think you were part of my patrol when we were looking for the uh the swimmers when we were on the north side of uh the Euphrates and we were stomping through all of the um well, everything on the north side. It was all farmland and stuff like that. And so we were jumping those uh drainage ditches and stuff like that. Um I remembering that correctly that you were dismounted. I think it was if I rem I feel it was you and Gwizdak and can't remember who else. They had there was like six of they had like six guys, I thought.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I was in a

QRF Calls And Overwatch Tension

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Humvee with Alderady. Um he was in I I wasn't usually on that truck, but I was put in that truck for some reason. Um we were out there, I think for two days uh looking for those guys. Um and I it was it was hard on me. Like I I would be like trying to stay awake and everything, like chugging bang energy drinks and you know, just uh bouncing myself in the in the seat and stuff. One time Alderady kicked me, he's like, hey man, you awake? I'm like, yeah, I'm trying. And uh we eventually switched out to where he was in the driver's seat and I was on the gun, um, so that I could stand up for a bit and um just focus my mind to try and stay awake. Um those were hard.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

Those were hard pulls being I I don't envy being a driver during that time period, especially when those slow rolls were happening when you're just going just inching along and sometimes having to wait. Those trucks were so hot and the vibration just equals sleep.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah, and searching the riverbank, that was it was four days of searching, but I I don't think everybody went out every day. I know we went out three of the days, and it I mean, all day. It was 16, 18 hour days, just obnoxious, man. And uh, I mean, worth it, you know, those guys need to be found. But it was uh God, those those are just rough. Walking through and the mud was deep and it was just uh stinky and messy and didn't know what you were looking for anyway. You're just hoping to find anything.

SPEAKER_03 21:26

Yeah, that that was ours uh where we were, we were just up and we were supposed to be sweeping like the upper part of the field to see if anybody like drag marks or something. Like there was very little that we were told to like go look for them. I was like, what it I don't okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Is it correct that they were eventually found like um inside of the river after they uh stopped the dam up?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

So they stopped the dam. Uh the divers found one of them very close. To where he went under. He went under and basically stuck in a pocket of mud or a pocket of something, uh, not very far underneath, due to a the hypothesis was an undertow or an undercurrent. And then the other one was down river some ways, not too far, but some ways. And then uh I don't remember if he was lodged in the bank or near some reeds or whatever. Anyway, not out of the water. They were both in the water. Okay. And it was the the Navy. Uh the I mean, I don't know if you remember the boat that came out, but it looked like something out of Vietnam. It was one of those swift water rescue crafts that came up and brought actual divers, and we were on there were so many of us on both sides of the river making sure that they could do their dives. Yeah, it's a big pain in the ass. But uh, I mean it's good. Good they recovered their bodies, better than leaving them there.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

Yeah, it's very true.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Anything else stand out? That was actually in May. If you if you're looking for a timeline, that was actually in the beginning of May.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Um the Corden and Knox were uh were very long days as well. Um we would um as as drivers pull security, scoop forward, pull security, scoot forward. You know, uh the very first one, I think that

Searching The Euphrates For Missing Marines

SPEAKER_00 23:30

um I was with uh Jamie Rocha, um, or at least we ended up with him. Um yeah, just uh really long days, really long, hot days, uh trying to keep it together, you know.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Sure. Did you were you a part of any of the kick elements? Did you ever go into any of the houses, or were you by the time we were doing that stuff, you were already a driver?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I was already a driver, but I did get to ram a gate, which was pretty cool. Um it was a night mission, and uh we went up. I rammed a little bit too hard because it broke my uh gunner's mount, but you know, I was I was all hardcore into it, so I just ran the shit out of it and backed up. Everyone went in and cleared the house.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

So nice. We've I think it's funny because a lot of times we found out later that nine times out of ten it wasn't it wasn't locked, locked, it was just latched from the inside. And so if you could like just get somebody over the wall and just open up the door, yeah. But it took us a took us a few to realize that it was just easier to just to open the door than it is to than violence of action.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Yeah. Um one of the the saddest missions that I was on was uh when the sniper squad was taken out, we were on QRF again for that. Uh we went and helped recover them. Seeing those guys get uh carried out in those body bags and stuff just just it really set a reality uh even more so into um into what we're doing over there. That it's not a game. I mean, it's not, you know, like these kids play these games, just get shot, come back and do it again, you can't, man. Um one guy uh falls asleep, it's it's everyone. Um I remember seeing uh Jamie Rocha uh get the bodies up in the back of the Humvee and actually be back there on the ride to uh one of the air bases, uh to the um yeah, Al-Assad um to the mortuary there. Uh yeah, that uh it wasn't a good feeling to see that happen.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Agreed. That was that was one of the more somber ones for me too. There was there's there's just something different. I mean, obviously it was a very different situation than coming to a cure, you know, like I don't know why an IED was different than that. Um the level of treachery, I guess. But it definitely that one sucked for sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Well, I mean, um I don't know about I I don't know what you guys were told prior to the mission. Uh there were there was already footage of their bodies on Al Jazeera, and we saw it in the CP before not all of us, maybe not everybody, but I I don't know, man. The uh the Marine Corps in general, but especially when you're in a company or a platoon, it's like a giant sewing circle, the rumors fly fast, and everybody's happy to have a new piece of gossip. And so I imagine what we were looking at in this on the that constant 24-hour stream of news in the CP uh was probably passed pretty quick by somebody to your platoon. So you probably knew that the news was there. You probably knew that the guys were it it looked like executed, as best we could tell. And when we got there, there were there was it was a it was chaotic, right? You had the lion company dudes, some of them freaking out, some of them just I mean, just angry, like red-faced angry, wanted to. You could tell if you let them loose, they would have destroyed the city. And you had Al Jazeera there already filming. We were already had two different news crews, one on either side of the street filming everybody and everything. And civilians were some were just watching, but some were laughing and like taking pictures and like all kinds of stuff. I don't know. It was it was just a rough scene, dude. It was something you wouldn't ever want to be in.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right on that because I think we might have been day taskable on that one. That's why we were tasked to then drive the bodies up to Al-Assad. And so that would have meant that we would have been, we would have had more content before we went out in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Maybe. Yeah. I don't I don't know what everybody else was told. I just remember seeing the footage. Yeah. That was a rough one.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Um, as for memorable missions, I think that's really that's the gist of the ones that I have.

SPEAKER_03 28:33

Do you remember the the mosque mission when we all went in and they uh and the interpreter shot up the uh the mosque accidentally? It was a night mission.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Oh yeah, I remember that one.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Anything stick out to you on that one?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Um no, I was uh in the back of the convoy um in my vehicle with that. I remember hearing the shots and everything. And um did they eventually go into that one or did they stay out of it?

SPEAKER_03 29:06

No, well, it happened because they went in, and so it was Oh, okay. The long the long story short on it is that the the other interpreters, they were going to use the interpreters to go into the mosque to search it to see if there was stuff there. And we had given one of the interpreters a video camera. Well, he got in there later than the other interpreters, and when he ran in, it scared the shit out of the one interpreter, and he ended up shooting the place up and hit not only himself, but uh one of at a uh police officer. And anyways, there was just a lot of pandemonium for zero reason, and it was shortly after that that uh it was only Rocco that was allowed to have an AK.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yep. Yeah, Rocco, great guy.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Yeah. Actually, speaking of that, uh I uh oh go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Some pandemonium that happened actually in Hurricane Point was the day that uh we had the sandstorm. Uh there were uh the that's back when the hoochas had the cloth uh roofs at the time. Uh one of the interpreters hutches the uh the the cloth roof roof had ripped off the pegs and was just flapping all over the place while uh people were out there trying to pin it down.

SPEAKER_03 30:29

That's right. It ripped it ripped off of theirs and also uh partially off of uh Rainmakers, too. They had sand all through their shit.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

They're probably still finding it. No doubt.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Go ahead. I was gonna ask, did you end up on the working party to try to hold down the uh the flaps and end up flying in the wind like a kite?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Um I was holding down one, but I don't think I flew away too bad. Nice, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 30:56

I do remember seeing a I I don't remember who it was. I know it was an 81, but holding on to one of the straps for dear life and like it tossing him back and forth. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Yeah.

Recoveries, Rumors, And The Cost

SPEAKER_03 31:10

I was uh what I was gonna ask is uh I I don't know if it's true or not, but it felt like we the sledgehammer that is, ended up having a lot of um the special guests. We went out a lot with the if there is someone special needing to be escorted somewhere. Um we had Oliver North, obviously, several times, a lot of other reporters, several other people. Uh my my question though is did you end up uh driving any of the uh of our special guests?

SPEAKER_00 31:41

And if you do, do you have any memories of them or um I drove a colonel to uh I think it was Blue Diamond. I don't really know his name, I just saw his rank and decided to shut up. Um I was there. Two years later, I'm still proud of you. Good job. Thank you, thank you very much. Um, I was there when uh General Mattis touched down at Hurricane Point. Yeah, um he walked by us and again, good boot. Uh I saw his rank and I shut up. Um there were a few guys that actually got to shake his hand, which was pretty cool. Um so we watched him walk by and then we just went back to our hooches and you know just uh did our thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Yeah, I never got to see him at Hurricane Point. I heard that he was there, and I know some of the guys from Rainmaker actually got to talk to him. Um well, I I saw him over at Blue Diamond a few times, but I never saw him at Hurricane Point. That was you guys got to see some celebrities as far as that goes.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Yeah, and I don't know why. We I don't know if it's just how the tempo was where we were just day taskable and that's why we ended up with it, but my god, I felt like we had Yeah, just weird timing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

No, the only uh I mean, I guess you could say big deal that I ever met in person was that when the Commandant came.

SPEAKER_03 33:13

I got to shake hands and meet the Commandant, but you know, now that we're saying that, I wonder if it might have been due to our size. You know, if you're gonna have somebody special, let's make sure that there's some firepower. And so when we would roll out, we were able to be a little bit heavier, maybe you you know, a larger escort, let's just say.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:33

Um I'm I'm hypothesizing, obviously, but sure.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

Yeah, I mean uh also Staff Sergeant Cook was uh not to like shit on any of the other staff NCOs, but he was the most no most exactly most polished presenter, right? I would not I I I believe in the technical skill of Staff Sergeant Rapazzo or Gunny Murray, but I do not believe in their ability to not say the F-word.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

So no yeah, no, Gunny Gunny Cook uh definitely Well, there's a reason why he went, he's uh still in and as right in in in the places that he is, he's a consummate professional. Right, right. No, we were lucky with I mean, we were all I mean, I don't have hardly a single bad thing to say about any of the platoon commanders, platoon sergeants, and really any of the staff at all. Uh, but I know I'm deeply appreciative of Cunningham's leadership while we're there.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

But yeah. Yeah, man, who I mean, other than obviously you had Corporal Muser at the time and you had Staff Sergeant Cook. Who else? What other leadership did you work with? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Um the guys that I was around, Sergeant Escobel, um, man, he was a character. He's full of piss and vinegar, that guy. Uh uh Corporal Reeves at the time, he came from Fast. Um I remember hanging out in the back of the hooch with uh Corporal Adams and Martinez. Um we he would actually play the guitar and I'd uh sing with him um sometimes, which was pretty cool. I that's one of my best memories over there. Um, besides small smoked shenanigans.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

I don't think I remember that. That's I know Metroca had a guitar, and I didn't I didn't remember that Martinez did. That's cool, man.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Adams.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Adams did?

SPEAKER_03 35:37

Yeah, Jason Adams. Okay, I didn't realize he did. That's cool. Yeah, he's quite the musician. He ended up having a band for a while back in the States.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Yeah, I I knew after the McCorm, but I didn't know anything about during their deployment. I just never made it over there, I guess. That's nice.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Where we burn our mail and just uh just hang out and you know, sing and stuff. Uh let's see.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

You know what's funny? I fucking forgot about burning mail. That was uh an SOP. You are the first person to bring that up, but we all burned our mail because we didn't want anything falling into enemy hands as far as like personal information. That's yeah, that's that's ridiculous. But yeah, you're the first person to mention that though.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Yeah, we'd uh we had like a row grade over it so that it would stay in its place at least a little bit, you know. We won't want to catch those awesome roofs that we had on fire, so yeah, yeah. Um I uh got to be with Gunny Cook

VIP Visits, Leadership, And The Next Part

SPEAKER_00 36:40

for a bit, um, although he was uh usually in the front of the convoy, I think. Uh um Lieutenant Dobbs at the time, um he was our platoon commander, or was it uh Captain Wyler?

SPEAKER_03 37:01

Officially, Lieutenant Dobb was our platoon commander for 81's platoon as a unit. Okay, but but when we were functionally while we were deployed in Iraq, Gunny Cook took the place of our platoon commander with uh Escobel as our platoon sergeant. So then we had and then there's Sergeant Diaz and Corporal Clark also were kind of rounded out our NCO corps at that time.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

But a bunch of great men. I was glad to be able to serve under them um at the time and um have their leadership and everything.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

You mentioned Captain Weiler, who was our company CEO. Uh and we had Lieutenant Wells, who was our XO. We had first Sergeant Mac. Any you have any interactions with our sort of headquarters portion?

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Um, yeah, uh Captain Wyler at the time, did he make uh is he colonel or is he general? He's a general.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

He is a general wow two-star now, actually. He's a major general.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Well, I'll have to address him by his right name so I don't have to stay on a parade rest now. Major Major General Weiler uh asked me to come over and sing this song that uh uh Defon Seca wrote. It was uh it was like Hotel California, but it was made in the city of Arumadi. Oh nice because the the syllables match up. I never did because I was kind of shy, but um yeah, I um he was a great guy uh to talk with too. Um just the epitome of a leader, you know. Um who else? Uh first Sergeant Mack, uh eventually Sergeant Major Mack. He was um he was with us actually until I got out. Um so there were there were a few times that I was able to talk with him and uh the iconic err when he was walked up. Yeah, you know. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

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