Constant Combat

Keep Them Alive - Michael Rakebrandt (part 1 of 2)

• Ramadi Podcast

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 46:50

Send us Fan Mail

We talk with Mike Rakebrandt about what it takes to prepare Navy Corpsmen when everything is fast, messy, and unforgiving. You can train for trauma medicine, but you can’t rehearse the moment you’re staring at a catastrophic wound and the only objective is “get him to the bird alive.” We also dig into the hidden work: medevac planning, moral injury, and the quiet counseling Corpsmen do so Marines can stay focused and make it home. 

• rebuilding a battalion Corpsman team after turnover
• gearing training and medical loadouts for IEDs, blast trauma, and head injuries 
• scrounging supplies from hospitals
• carrying every loss personally and the leadership mindset behind it 
• the cluster minefield incident and how discipline beats panic 
• Kuwait transit problems, illness management, and early deployment friction 
• planning medevac sites and integrating corpsmen input into raids 
• psychological first aid, grief control, and being the “rock” for Marines 
• moral ambiguity in an insurgency and a role for faith 

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


----------------------------------------------
If you like what you heard, please subscribe on your favorite podcast service or follow our webpage for direct downloads @ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2525088

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

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

Reunion And Respect Earned

unknown

Great.

SPEAKER_01

Let's start over to here, y'all.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Uh Mike Rakebrandt. I was with you guys in Ryan 2004. I was the senior colon for weapons company. Good time. I love you guys.

SPEAKER_03

And we loved you.

SPEAKER_00

Honestly, the best way I could describe it, and the way I describe it now to people who ask is it was the most humbling experience ever. I got to walk with giants for a long time, and it was it was truly amazing. I got to what I got to watch you guys do things that anybody else would say was absolutely impossible, you know, and and and do it really well and be really, really funny while you were doing it. So it was uh it was an awesome, it was an awesome experience, it really was.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and my kudos back to you is is that I saw you do some uh basically some black magic over there. Oh, that's bad. Keeping peep keeping people alive. So you uh make you your your your name has come up many times over the last 20 years of being like uh you doing straight up witchcraft over there, keeping keeping at least getting guys on the bird alive. That was all what we were asking for.

SPEAKER_00

That was it was it was and Sheena probably cringe when I say this, but it's like completely ghetto medicine. It was like whatever the hell you had to do to keep Humpty alive so that the the guys like Shane that are real smart can actually go fix them. I'm sure they were horrified with what they got from us, but they got them alive, so that's all that's right.

SPEAKER_03

That's right. They're breathing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, not much more, but it was it was uh it was crazy.

SPEAKER_01

Now, if I remember you were uh HM2.

SPEAKER_00

HM2, that's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Nice, all right. And where where did you come to us from? You were with us for a long time because I remember got to you guys in Okinawa, 31st Mew, right?

SPEAKER_00

You guys were already um I got to you guys after you had the infamous uh the infamous uh roll call, whatever with the with the Sergeant Middle Marine Corps said you guys look kind of like the the blunt end of the spear or whatever. Yes, yeah. I think I didn't like right after that. Like I that was still a very hot issue when I got there, so I'm guessing I got to like right after that. Okay. Um I was at the naval hospital in San Diego before that. And then before that, and then maybe I was on uh submarine duty in Pearl Harbor, which is an interesting experience, you know. Definitely wasn't expected, but it was uh it was it was interesting. Definitely mental gymnastics, man. You can qualifying submarines is they call it mental gymnastics, and they're not lying, it's a lot of information, but it was awesome. It definitely prepped me, I think, for a lot of things just to be able to think independently and um actually be able to work under pressure, you know. So it kind of set me up for what came next. But yeah, it was uh interesting ride, but yeah, I got there and you guys are still pretty heated. I'm like, oh, that was probably not the best thing to say. I'm like, how do you tell a marine unit that's the forward deployed for how long you guys were? You got extended, and this guy's like, Yeah, you guys are the blunt under the spear. I'm like, oh my god, that is the worst possible. Like talk about lighting the fuse.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it gave us definite motivation for uh for Hermati, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Well, listen, you did right you did the impossible, you guys won the Alamo, you know. Fallujah fell, they had what five battalions or something like that. And I don't think they fought anywhere near as hard or as much initially, and when they when I first gave up Fallujah, and uh that fell with five battalions, and you guys were one and you held that city like it was, you know, like I had no doubt at any point in any time in that city. Did I have any doubt that we were going anywhere? I'm like, no, no, they will never own this city as long as the Marine Corps decides they want to keep it. That's like it was it was there was no doubt, there was never a question about what was happening in that city. It was like, we don't we're holding this, and you know, you're all gonna die. So good times.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm I'm kind of curious about uh what your thoughts were and what you kind of did during the prep of the workup because we had that short period. Basically, we came back from Okinawa, and every everybody who was pissed off about being called bench warmers or the blood end of the spear, they bounced, they bounced. Or look, or many people got orders

From Submarines To Weapons Company

SPEAKER_01

to other units. That happened quite a lot too. Yep. Uh people went to MSG duty, people went to any, they'd go to anything to get out of 2-4 because they thought we were not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

And so then we did a short workup starting right around like Thanksgiving, right after that time. We did Bridgeport and some other schools and stuff. What was your uh what was your take on everything? Because you were trying to get everybody spun up uh on the medical side of things.

SPEAKER_00

It was um, you know, it's like it's always that admin side, right? There's like always that ton of admins, all the shots and all the other stuff, and having to get everybody kind of like all the medical records together, and then get the the corpsmen together, the platoon corpsmen together, and make sure they had what they needed and they were up to speed on what they had to do and what their responsibilities were, that they understood how to do what needed to be done. You know, they got the message. Um, and then it's it's fine. The BAS had, I'm sure it's like everywhere else, right? The BAS had a lot of ego involved. So you had, you know, different factions within the BAS that were kind of trying to push things one way or another, or trying to make things one way or another. And I think a lot of them are coming from a good place overall, like they meant well, but a lot of them just didn't understand what it was really truly, you know, gonna probably look like. I remember having a conversation with um with uh Keith Grimes one time. It was a golf corner, city foreman, about it. And we were both kind of the same mind, like, you know, it's gonna be an insurgent war there. It's gonna be the insurgent war craft, so the IEDs and all that stuff kind of it was starting up, I think, just prior to that, or it not really gone to the flood level we saw, but it had it definitely been something that had been seen already. So our thought was like, okay, so close head injuries and like you know, explosive trauma, things of that nature. So we were kind of trying to gear guys up to get into that mindset and just trying to honestly read the tea leaves and figure out what we were gonna have to deal with, so we knew best what to bring, what to have, how to work. So that was like a lot of it. It was a lot, but was so much admin, you know. It was like even in country, bro. It was a ton of admin. Military Lozer administration.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, how much insight, or I've not even been insight, how much input did you have into what kind of gear all the corpsmen were gonna get and what kind of things you were gonna be able to bring over?

SPEAKER_00

They were very um, they had their obviously they had their like their standard, like this is what we bring, everybody gets surgery kit, whatever, minor surgery kits, and all that stuff. But they were very um, they were actually very good about it. Lieutenant Cricket and Lieutenant Sun were both very, very smart people. Very smart people, very different um approaches to handling the medical side, to handling the clinic side, to handling things as far as just overall. But they were smart and they got it, and they understood that like at the very forefront was going to be these guys, and most of them, you know, this would be their first deployment, much less their first anything. So they they they kind of got the point. So they spent a lot of time on trying to make sure that they got the input from guys that you'd already deployed before, or had been in circumstances where they had to do things and had that kind of, I guess, somewhat of a knowledge of what to expect. And then the smartest thing I think they did was they reached out to these units that were coming back or that were already there and figuring out what they were using, figuring out what they were going through the most, figuring out what they were seeing the most, so that they had a kind of a real-world answer to okay, what can we really truly expect? And then they geared things towards that. The training was geared towards that. The, you know, the the loadout was geared towards that. So it was smart, you know, they were smart about it. They did uh they did a good job of kind of getting things in the right places. And we had weapons company, I mean, all the corpsmen in 2-4 at that time were met some, they were just really some amazing people. But the guys we had in Weapons Company were were definitely top-notch. I mean, all of them, they were they were very, very knowledgeable guys. They all came with very, very strong skill sets in different arenas, and it balanced things out really well because you're able to kind of what one somebody wasn't so strong, another guy could definitely fill back in on, so it made things very easy to kind of get everything ready to go and get everybody kind of up to speed. So it was an interesting time, right? It's like trying to get my stuff together, had a baby on the way, my first one. And then trying to get everything. Yeah, my son was born while we were in country. He was born on uh August 26th.

SPEAKER_02

So wow.

SPEAKER_00

It's funny I called it. I called my wife on a satellite phone, the due date, and uh they told me, Oh, she's at the hospital, she had a baby or whatever, called the naval hospital, and uh I spoke to her, and it was pretty funny. Time I said, Oh, now you always gotta do is figure out who the dad is, and she's like, Yeah, and they're putting out flyers or something. So it was uh it was good. But it was definitely like it was very, very busy. I just remember like the medical records, Chief Foster was the chief of time on the BAS, and like he was obsessed with those records. So it was like getting all the records up to date, getting the shots up to date. Um you know, guys who lost shot records unfortunately got turned into pin cushions by Danny Brown. That was uh I felt bad, man. That's the guy's gonna get like 10 shots. I'm like, you're gonna be hurting for about a week, bro.

SPEAKER_02

Good luck.

SPEAKER_00

You know, it was crazy. It was crazy. It was a crazy build-up, it was very quick, right? It was like very rapid.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

Remember the hit being like a really, really fast like build-up, like, okay, we're going, okay, get your shit together, okay. Good, we're out. You know what I mean? Like, it's fast.

SPEAKER_03

Did you end up? I mean, did you end up having any schools that you were able to write coming back from Okinawa? And then in between that time, did you go to any specialty schools, or were you just grinding away?

SPEAKER_00

Um we were just getting ready. We were training, getting like training done, getting uh records up to date, getting all the equipment and material needed. Like I think three-quarters of what I brought with me, I probably stole from a naval hospital somewhere. You know what I mean? Medicine, IV bags, IV setups, you know. We you don't get much of the supply. Like they they kind of like sure change you a lot. So we weren't going without stuff. So between all of us, we were uh, you know, raiding everywhere we'd been before. Myself and um Keith Grimes would come from uh Balboa from Naval Hospital San Diego. So we went back there and got a lot of stuff from them for the for the entire battalion for the BAS that they'd have it, everything from medications to IV fluids and you know, trauma kits, you name

Spinning Up Corpsmen Fast

SPEAKER_00

it, everything we can get our hands on. A lot of bandages and stuff that came from there, the Ace wraps and stuff. Um and then a lot of it was just there was no school so much, it's just kind of like getting guys indoctrinated and trained up. A lot of the guys we got were like forward deployed from a naval hospital or somewhere like that, and they'd never actually been in like that kind of environment before. So it was like kind of getting them up to speed, getting them trained, getting them ready, getting them kind of in a place where they could at least, you know, they could do what they had to do, you know. So it was um extremely busy time, and it was somewhat not I remember being stressful more so much as uh just I don't have time to stress time, right? It's like okay, we got these uh 40 or 50 guys that just came out of naval hospitals that have no idea what they're up against or what it even really looks like, and like, all right, let's get them up to speed in a week. All right, here we go. So it was it was very, very busy. Jeez, very busy, it was crazy, it's crazy. X-ray techs and stuff. And you're like, okay, you were an x-ray tech. Now you're a combat casualty care guy. So here's what it looks like, you know. So trying to get guys to kind of change their mindset and everything, it was it was definitely interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Now that's interesting. I I don't think I knew that anybody was like an x-ray tech, for example. Like you see, you just said that. I didn't I don't think I knew anybody was that right beforehand. I thought everybody was sort of on the at least on the more direct care aspect of things.

SPEAKER_00

They would they were more um, you know, a lot of them were like x-ray techs, uh, things like that. They were it they came from everywhere. I mean, they sent them from everywhere. It was like, you know, it was your backfilling at that time. Sure, sure, sure, everywhere. And they'd been through field medical service school, so they had that that base knowledge, and most of them had been, you know, a few years before. So they really weren't retaining any of that, and they weren't really aware, and it was like, okay, this is an operational environment, it's completely different, you know, because they're looking for you know clean offices to do uh patient care in, and they're looking for all these things, and we're like, Yeah, we're gonna get a medicine, you know, get things flipped and get these guys back in the fight. So good luck. Here you go.

SPEAKER_03

Well, you you definitely did your job because I I had nothing but uh full faith and in our docs. Um and Rudy, I mean, we're just absolutely phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you could have you you could have never told me that any of these guys weren't experienced because every single person that I had from the guys at Combat Outpost digging shrapnel out of me and and everybody at at uh Hurricane Point and the guys and weapons company were all fantastic.

SPEAKER_00

We had we had amazing people. I mean, just these guys like I was so impressed the whole way through. I still am when I think about it, like how impressed I was with what these guys did. They were uh just absolute superstars, like they leaned into it completely. You know, they completely leaned into it and they and they just did whatever it took. And that was kind of the mandate before we left. I told my like our guys, the weapons company Corman, I told them, look, I don't care what you have to do, just keep them alive, you know? Keep them alive and and let's get them out of there. Let's get them to somewhere where they can possibly save them. You know, are we able to see everybody? Probably not. But do the absolute best to keep the guy alive. You gotta keep the devil on the dick to do it, do it. You know what I mean? Just keep the guy alive. I don't give a shit. Just keep them alive. And that was the mandate, you know. And I know they did their best. I mean, we lost guys, obviously, but you know, it was a catastrophic injury, usually for us.

SPEAKER_01

Actually, any of the guys. Yeah, go ahead. So well, I mean, that's a very I hadn't thought about that till this very moment, and you saying that. All three of those guys that we did lose should have been dead right there. They should have been dead right there on the field. And every one of them had a pulse and was breathing on their own when they got on. Yeah, gone back to outpost and they were yeah, which with my experience and knowledge now, that's actually insane. That is actually uh that is uh that is a super heroic feat. Just thinking about it. Because I I'm all three of them had terrible, yeah, terrible.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was it was bad.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, those were some some i i if I I'm not a doctor, but from what I've understood that a couple of those guys could have had those injuries in the OR and still not have survived.

SPEAKER_00

No, they were yeah, they would well Shane, you know now, obviously, right? You're probably better than I do now. Yeah, you must cringe when you think about the medicine that went on there to what now you're like, oh god, no, it's awful. But those guys were so I just don't know how you see a guy like that. Like, I wouldn't even know where to begin with someone like that. And like if they had such such heavy injuries. But every one of those was like personal. Like I felt like for every one of those deaths to me was like almost like a failure to me. Like, like, boy, I should have been right there, or we should have done this, or we like there's always that Monday morning quarterback you do with stuff like that, because you feel like you want to bring everybody home. That was the goal, right? Yeah, through the devil, we're not paying a toll this time, we're bringing everybody home. And when you can't, it's like becomes very uh for us, for like for me, like back then it was very ego-driven. It was like I'm saving, we're saving everybody, me or Grimes or Adam Clayton, who was Echo Company senior corpsman, or uh Raymond Parrow was uh Fox Company senior corpsman.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like we would talk, and it was always that same mentality amongst all of us. It was like, you know, we do any damn thing possible and everything possible to bring these guys home. So when you couldn't, it became a very I won't say a burden, but it was definitely something you carried. You know, it was uh very personal. Every single, every single guy we lost was personal.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's appreci a I'll thank you 20 years on because it was that mentality that pushed you guys for that level of excellence that did keep us alive. And I I know that that was a mental and emotional burden that I know you guys still carry. Um, and so thank you for doing that for us.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you. You guys are like I said, I got to walk with giants. You know, you guys were amazing. I've never been I've worked a lot of bad places, I've seen a lot of crazy things in the town since and before, but uh I've never worked with such a professional, motivated, amazing group of people anywhere at any time. I've never been more impressed with people anywhere at any time. Like I've

Building Loadouts With Real Intel

SPEAKER_00

I've worked with some amazing people, some amazing detectives, and even beyond that, but that that that deployment with you guys was there was nothing like that. That team that was there. It was really truly amazing. Amazing, you know. So I remember uh just the sheer confidence of being able to go into a city that was completely covered and controlled by these psychopaths or whatever, and just owning it every day, just owning it. And then they come out at night and think they had it at night, and we're like, Oh yeah, and here we come again, it would take you know at night. But you know, it was just a very, very impressive thing. Although you guys did drive me into a minefield outside. Remember, we were moving into the country with the wing, we were dropping the wing off. Yeah, the army, right? They sent us uh the army said, Oh no, you gotta post up over there and drive in, look out the window of the Humvee, and uh there's this nice big yellow mine with a silver tabs on top.

SPEAKER_01

So no one has told that story yet. I've been I've been waiting. I've been I've been waiting because I figured it'd be either me, you, or Harden that would tell that story. Oh, we were we were dropping off the wing over at Ticatum Air Base. Yep, and we were supposed to be posting up a uh like a right flank security off the side of the road. Two other trucks punched off to the left, nobody thought about it. There was an old ammo supply point, pretty close, and so we were like, okay, you know, if there was insurgent activity, it might make sense. They'd be out here, you know, scrounging up some old bullets or rounds, or who knows what, because there was still stuff in there. Yep. And we punched out and we're driving, and I'm like, I just scream, stop. We stop and look out the window, and there are uh uh cluster mines literally everywhere, literally everywhere, American cut like new American cluster mines, yep, sticking out of the sand. Yep, and harden was up in the gun, and he's like, Fuck, fuck, we're so rounded. What the fuck are we gonna do? And I and I was like, Well, we're gonna drive back on our tire tracks because we made it here.

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

There's no rear view mirror in a fucking hubby.

SPEAKER_00

So literally shut out and walking backwards.

SPEAKER_01

Yep, yep. Harden was out there, and I was walking the truck back down the tire track, and I was like, Nope, don't turn, stop, let and oh god, absolutely a thousand percent sure we were dead that day.

SPEAKER_00

Thousand that was oh, but it was uh the the the to me, it still stands out as like the best example of the professionalism and like the motivation that entire deployment because as bad as that looked, or as bad as that could have been or as it was, you know, it was still the laughing, it was still the joking, it was still the you know, talking shit to each other, it was still the and it got handled just like everything else. It got handled, you know. Like remember um April 7th when we had the firefight April 7th and morning 7th or whatever? We turned that corner, right? No name road, right up route Michigan. We turned that corner and all hell breaks loose, right? All the rounds are flying. And uh Rob Wilder kept him while I jump side of the Humvee, so I jump out behind him and I can feel like like three or four rounds in a row. Like I felt the heat, they were close up to my face. I felt the heat flat snap by. And uh he turned around, smiled at me. He's like, Maybe next time duck. I was like, man, it didn't hit me. And it was that was like the and maybe laugh because that was the entire deployment. It was just like that, it was like every day, like shit's happening, but we're gonna do what we gotta do, and nobody was gonna get really down about it, or get like you know, too caught up in it, or just get you know too crazy about it, you know, and and just it was just excellent leadership and just excellent people. It was really such an impressive time. But that uh I think about that minefield, the thing I know it cracks me up still because I'm like, these guys are out there talking smack, joking around, and we drove into the middle of the minefield, but we walked out again, so we're fun.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's funny. I I I'll I almost hope nobody ever remembered that because we drove into the middle of a fucking cluster minefield. But I'm glad you remember it, I'm glad somebody does.

SPEAKER_00

Uh time and that one was on the army, right? Rob Rob uh said it was on the army. It was uh they had they had given us the position. They're like, no, no, it's clear, it's cleared. No, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yep, that was exactly right. Everybody's like, You're calling it over the radio, you're in a what? We're in a minefield, we're in the middle of a minefield.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, was that that was early on?

SPEAKER_00

That was like right after we came into country where we were escorting the wing.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, oh, it was on the drive up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so we're literally like dropping the wing off at Takata. We're just doing like uh exterior security, whatever, permanent to kind of get settled in base.

SPEAKER_01

Yep, okay.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, so we haven't gotten to Ramadi yet, and they're trying to kill us already. So, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Country was a mess. And it was good though. It was it was watching you guys work was amazing. I mean, everybody there. It was watching you guys work from the leadership on down. From I mean, obviously, you know, Sergeant Major Booker is uh that guy's a legend, you know, he's a god amongst men. Oh truly, truly impressive man, and just straight on down, Sergeant Major Ellis. God rest him, you know. Everybody down the line was just amazing. Just to remember Stas Sergeant Singleton playing the hurricane in his truck when you guys are punching out.

SPEAKER_01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

Remember that? That was uh he's a great guy. There's so many great people on Carl Marockey Gunmaraki. Another good guy. Just all the leadership and everybody down the line was just impressive. It was a really, really impressive. And weapons company, to me, weapons company really was the very much as much as 2-4 was absolutely like you know, the tip of the spear in that entire time frame in that country. Weapons company was the very point. It really was. I mean, you guys took it to brunt of everything. You know, it was you were the QRF, you did you coordinated the raids, you did all the snatches, and I mean how many playing cards did we take? A bunch of those guys. Yeah. Everything we did was always us. It was our guys, it was you guys out there every single night, every single day, just keeping the city held down, keeping everybody else supported. Um, when Echo got crushed that day, unfortunately, in April,

The Only Rule Keep Them Alive

SPEAKER_00

you know, it was us that went in to get them out, you know, to get them to push back and get those guys some kind of measure of justice and at least bring them home, you know?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Crazy.

SPEAKER_01

Well I'm gonna reel you back just a tiny bit. Yep. So I again I know who you went up with because you just mentioned it, but you uh kind of tell me a little bit about getting into getting into remote or getting into Kuwait, right? Flying over. We flew over and uh getting into Kuwait and getting organized. Kind of how you I mean again, you were sort of senior leadership as far as uh I mean you were the C senior staff NCO for all of our corpsmen, so you were taking care of everything.

SPEAKER_00

Remember uh remember when the uh the plane lost an engine, we had a stop off 141 Star Lift lost an engine, like we lost an engine, it took like it failed. Like, no, it fell off the plane. That was crazy. Then we had uh we stop off, we had it with the Air Force Base, and like everybody got uh got uh viral gas enteritis. Everybody was down, everybody was sick. So going around scrounging up um, you know, antinause med, Zofran, and um Ivy Zofran and just IV sit-ups for everybody because they're all in like rooms, and I'm like, all right, we're not gonna contaminate the rest of the world, so we're gonna try to hold this thing together and keep as few as possible from getting it. And then from there, I just punched into Kuwait. Was um the waiting in Kuwait was kind of uh the adjusting period was kind of like honestly, it was pretty boring, right? It was like, okay, let's go. You know, like you're there, you're like, all right, let's go. Then Kellogg got sick, he got the flu, and then with a belt palsy case. So there's I didn't fluids with him every day and the IV, antibiotics for him every day. And like dealing with stuff like that, then punching in from there with a convoy. So it was um it was definitely a unique experience. Remember pulling into Ramadi when we actually left like the comrade coming into Ramadi. We were on the road, I'm pretty sure it was Rob Michigan, but I could be wrong. Coming into the city, and there's this old guy standing outside like the small house, and he's doing uh you know, finger across the neck thing and smiling, and I kept laughing to myself, thinking, like, man, you have no idea what just drove into your city. You know what I mean? Like, you know, this is this is uh death on a pale horse, man. Like, you don't get like I was just thinking like this old guy has no clue. Like these guys really think they're the end OBO. I'm like, good luck, you know. Like some were thinking that clearly, like, good luck, you know, and uh, but the buildup was uh it was definitely weird to be sitting in Kuwait waiting all that time. I mean, it had like fast food restaurants or everything else, but then you put you had also those guys coming back that were coming back from you know uh Baghdad or Missoula or Ramadi or whatever else, driving in with their Humvees all shot to pieces. You know, or uh one of the army medics I talked to when we were there had uh the ear flange, the little green case they had for the ear flange. He had that on the front of his BDU, but in it was like a whole bunch of pieces of frag. And he's like, Oh, this is what I pulled out of my legs. I'm like, Oh, they're for you. You know what I mean? Nice souvenir. You know what I mean? I probably wouldn't keep it, but okay. Yeah, that's weird. Some guys, I guess, just want it.

SPEAKER_03

So were you being with on on the being on the Corman side of things, were you being brought in on some of these planning meetings and getting spun up and making helping to to shape how we were moving into Iraq and uh eventually getting up to Ramadi?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there was a lot of um, there was a lot. It was a lot. I mean, obviously, like uh Doc Cricker, Doc Son, you know, they were very much essential on that. Um, Chief Jordan. But there was a lot. They included Deline Cormann, like they included us very much in that in the planning. The bigger part of that being like the Medivac plans and being able to kind of say, hey, you know, like it for each individual area or site where they were planning on being at. So even when we did raids, when we're in Ramadi, we're doing raids. You know, they would ask you, ask me, like, okay, you know, here's our satellite images, here's where we're going. What's our best location? You know, we can put a bird here, we can put a bird here, where, you know, what's where do you would you prefer to stage? Or so it was a lot of input. They asked for a lot of input on stuff like that. So it definitely made a I think it made a big difference because it helped them to kind of understand where we were coming from, how we were thinking, our rationale as far as okay, here's what we can realistically do, and here's what the best course forward for us would be, and then being able to kind of match it up to the strategic goal, you know. So it definitely a lot of direction.

SPEAKER_03

Because I'm kind of remembering it was it was I think we were already in Kuwait, if not even Ramadi, when we made our kill cards. Like we like I remember that coming later. That I and I'm I'm I'm only bringing that up, kind of thinking about what you just said there of like your guys' input was like, okay, well, this is something new. We haven't really been thinking about this. Let's make sure that you guys have, you know, this needs to be in your left sleeve. So we we have all your information if we if we need it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot. I mean, uh, I remember when uh like uh trying to explain to guys before we left over like talking to the junior corpsman, like my guys or the guys in weapons company, and even talking with the other line company corpsman about preparing yourself. Like, look, you you might be your best friend, but you might have to put them in a body bag. Like, just do your job. And like instructing the guys, like my thing for the Corpsman, and and it was the same throughout was it's okay to grieve, it's okay to be upset, just not in front of the Marines. You know, you have to be that rock because you know, they're gonna grieve, they're gonna turn to each other, and that's great, and that's good, and they should do that, they should get out of their systems. And we need to also, but you need to do that separately so that they you still represent because you represent something to them that's that point of hope for these guys that like you know, they have to know you're there, they have to know you're solid. Save that shit for a time when you can do it, you know, away from them so that they have that same point. Don't take that hope from them, don't take that that image away. So that was like a big thing. I forgot about that, honestly. I hadn't thought about that, but yeah, that was a big one. And like Cornwall, his wife lost a baby while we were there. That was tough. That was a tough, tough conversation to have with the kid like sitting out behind where our hooch is where they're right, sitting out there like the by the water and talking with him about that and trying to get him to kind of, you know, I guess some semblance of back to uh in my mind, I was like, well, you didn't need some help to get back to like, you know, focus, but he was completely like, you know, he was very upset. It was very obviously very upsetting for him, it was very frustrating for him, but he was still very much focused

The Minefield Story And Dark Humor

SPEAKER_00

on what he was doing there. He's like, I can deal with that when I get home. I just need to deal with this right now. And I was like, okay. You know, not healthy, but the best mentality you could have while we're doing this. He did, he did, he performed really well. He did really well. So just like times like that, it's crazy, right? The little things you forget about that you think about later. But uh, it was a very, very it was it was hard. Like when uh Dan got killed, you know, BSC Dang at the RPG. That was a nasty, nasty thing. They hadn't thought about that, I don't think, and they moved the Humvee to Motorpool. And they wanted some like Lance Corpus and Motorpool to like clean out the Humvee or whatever. And I'm like, absolutely not. So I went over with uh Josh Fonsey, HM2 Fonzi from BAS. I went over with him, I said we'll clean it up. You know, because the last thing you should ever have you guys doing is is loading your friends into a bag or cleaning up what's left, you know what I mean? Like that's not you know, that's not what you do. You you're stripping somebody their ability, I think, to kind of really stay focused on the fight at that point or something like that. That definitely is something that should have fallen on us more. And to the most part it did. I mean, for the most part it did. So but yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_03

I never uh talking to you guys, the docs that is, I I I always had the deepest respect for you guys for what you you know the this the support that you've provide, the the the critical mission that you've you provide for us, but I never fully appreciated the mental emotional uh load that you guys carried for us, also until these conversations with with docs that we've been able to talk with, and you're doing it again here just um did never I mean I mean and perhaps as a testament to how well you guys carried carried it that just never crossed my mind that that there was this whole other uh mental game load um strategy that was coming along with that. I just thought it was a lot more linear. It was like, you know, marine hurt, fix marine. Like you're gonna be. That was it. That was the instruction, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That was basically it. There was a lot. And they were smart. I mean, like all these guys, Come, Gibbons, uh Dialka, and all of them were very, very smart guys, very smart. So it was easy to like kind of guide them. It was easy to kind of steer them, you know. They had their moments here and there, their issues here and there, but overall they were amazing people, and they were truly, truly dedicated to you guys. So that would make it so much easier to kind of say, okay, here's the direction, go, you know, and just tweak here and there. So, but yeah, there was a lot that was going on in the background. Um, all our guys, all our corpsmen had uh had prayer cards. We got I got those from the chapel when we were actually in Kuwait. So told them, I said, look, you're probably gonna be the last person with somebody when they're gone. You know what I mean? So if someone's religious or they're faithful, they want the last rights, or they want something of of like faith like that, you're gonna have to be the one. So good luck. Here's your card, and you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02

No shit.

SPEAKER_00

You can do it in therapy later. You know what I mean? Like, what are you gonna do? It's reality's reality. And like, I remember like loading body bags for deployment, you know, and uh I think that was probably the most sobering moment for the guys in the BAS was when we were getting our gear out ready before we even left to Kuwait, loading up all these body bags, you know, a lot of body bags. And uh and guys were kind of like, you know, I think that was probably the the for most of them, I think that was probably like when reality kind of kicked in, you know, and you're like, oh shit, we really are going there, you know? Um, but these guys were amazing, man. They made it so easy, they made such a complicated, heavy task, so light, so easy, just they were just absolute, you know, motivated guys are just 100% about it, 100% about getting things done. I mean, Rudy Contreras is probably the most like uh outwardly obvious example. Rudy's the Rudy's a superstar, man. That guy was he's a superstar, he still is. But every one of them had that same kind of um dedication and and motivation and everything else. Maybe not as a parent, but every one of them. So I had the easiest job in the world, honestly. You know, I really did. You know, it was awesome. I got to really, really experience uh truly giants, you know, and you guys are such professionals, you really were. I remember uh you know, we lost guys, right? And um but like specifically comes to mind when Condi, the day Kondi died, you guys openly grieving, you know, nobody hit it, nobody made it out to be anything it wasn't, nobody tried to twist it in any way, you guys just openly grieved and you got right back to work, you know. And I was so I was heartbroken because Condé was such an amazing person. He really was an amazing Marine, an amazing man. That was a huge loss, but beyond that, like I was so impressed just with the professionalism, with the degree that you guys, you know, you honored him, but you got right back to work. You didn't you didn't hesitate, you got right back in the fight, you got right back to work. So and that was throughout every single day it was that way. So it was uh it was definitely a humbling experience to see people like you know. I've never been anywhere where I felt like that so consistently so much, you know.

Getting To Kuwait The Chaos Begins

SPEAKER_01

I would imagine I would imagine you ended up I mean, because I don't remember anybody going to the chaplain, and I don't think that was anything against the chaplain.

SPEAKER_00

No, he's a nice guy.

SPEAKER_01

No, he was. I remember uh Wiggill, right? That was his name.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_01

Uh see I remember being a super nice guy, but I don't remember anybody going to the chaplain, and maybe they did, and I just didn't know it, and they just didn't tell me because they thought I wouldn't understand or something. But uh I remember people going to you and to other senior corpsmen. Yeah. Were you were you providing a lot of psychiatric care as well? Like while we were there?

SPEAKER_00

Without a doubt.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Without a doubt, without a doubt. It was a lot of um, you know, I mean, you have guys who felt guilty, you had guys who felt, you know, uh like they could have done more, or they could have done they shouldn't have done what they did, or like there was a lot, there was a lot there for guys to unpack, I think, especially like the younger guys a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but the NCOs, like, you guys are amazing at keeping you guys motivated and keeping them moving and stuff. Some of these guys was more personal stuff, the wife cheating or whatever, the girl from Dear Johnny, whatever. You got a lot of that stuff. But then when the fighting really started, it started to become more like, you know, um, you know, dead kids or you know, maybe a woman got shot or something like that, you know, but like, you know, she's holding a weapon, you know, she makes herself an engaged target, she's a target, you know. But guys felt like I think a certain kind of way about it because to them it was like, you know, you're fighting other men, like this is what we do, right? We go to war. But then when when kids show up carrying munitions, or you get like a woman carrying a rifle, it it tends to muddy that water for people. So there was definitely a lot of that side of it too, where people come quietly and talk about what was frustrating them, and then even some senior people who I think were just having those moments of insecurity about their position or about their ability to kind of get things done or like feeling like they screwed up or they lost some, you know what I mean? But you know, so there was a lot of that. There's a lot of like psychological first aid, I would say. You know, I'm definitely not the best therapist. I'm not gentle at all. I'm a blunt instrument, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think over there you don't uh you need blunt instruments when it comes to that because the it we needed we needed the black and whiteness. I mean, and you said it yourself, you know, like there's it's it's it's due. And we'll deal with it later. Unfortun you know, like it's I mean, if in the perfect situation, yes, let's let's unpack. Let's unpack this and and come and and really deal with this. But right, if you're gonna if the the danger's too high to do that. We need you to have your head in the game. So here, I'll help you fold this up, we'll put it in the box, put it on the shelf, and uh we'll deal with this in nine months.

SPEAKER_00

That's that's exactly what it was, too, right? It was like uh let the steam out of it, let the air out of the bag, whatever, you know. Let it let it kind of get out what you have to get out for now, and then we'll come back to it later, you know, and kind of get them just basically psychological band-aids, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Did you know you were gonna need to do that, or is that just something that you kind of found yourself falling into?

SPEAKER_00

It was something we spoke about beforehand, it's something that occurred to me beforehand that, you know, I tried to research as much as I could. I tried before we we deployed, I tried to figure out, okay, I tried to look at like previous historical data and see, okay, what kind of issues were faced before? What kind of issues can we expect in this? What kind of issues because it was a different fight. It wasn't uh, you know, the Iraqi invasion was the world's biggest drive by, right? They just kind of blew through past everything and killed everything in a way.

SPEAKER_02

You know, so I love that analogy.

SPEAKER_00

So this is uh this was more of a like, we're gonna stay put, we're taking this city, we're gonna hold this city. So I actually ended up looking back at like um like historical data from like even like World War II and stuff, where they were, you know, what kind of experiences were people having, or what kind of combat was unit seeing, or what kind of issues were they experiencing. And it was like it surprised me how much I guess psychological like breakdowns or things of that nature came up just because of the constant, you know, anxiety of is it gonna be today? Are we gonna get mortared? Are we gonna get hit with rockets? Are we gonna get you know into a firefight? Like, and it was constant for them, even back then, it was that constant, constant fear, like living in that constant fear. So for me, it seemed like, okay, that's definitely something we need to be aware of and kind of ready for. And I told the guys before we left, like, look, you know, these guys are gonna come talk to you about what's bothering them. A, keep their strictest confidence, and B, you know, don't show them, you know, your side of things is as tempting as it might

Medivac Planning And Field Reality

SPEAKER_00

be to try and you know, empathize with them and show them, like, oh, yeah, look, I feel the same way. It's not the right thing to do, you know. You need to be the rock that they come and unleash on. So let them unleash on you, and then you go find somebody else, me or somebody else, and you dump it, and we keep passing it along. You know, and the running joke was well, just keep giving it to Doc Cricker because he's indestructible. So that would be the end point, you know. So but uh they were they were great guys, but there was definitely something that we talked about prior to. I know myself, actually, all the line corpsmen, like all four of us, like the senior line corpsmen, we all would were definitely looking at that and trying to understand what the hell we were gonna be up against so that we knew exactly what we needed exactly, how we needed to be ready. And and we just wanted to, you know, you want to do the best you can. You want to bring home everybody possible if you can. So we were trying everything possible to kind of any scenario, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, we were like, all right, if it did happen, what will we need? How will we need to address it? What would need to be in place for us to minimize the casues on something like that, or to minimize the damage to casues on something like that, and then we will work from there. So it was a lot of like time spent talking, trying to plan within the VAS, trying to trying to figure out where you know we needed to put our energy and our focus so that we were absolutely ready for what was probably gonna come. So that psych was a big part of that. And um, Chief Jardam was big on that. He was he very much pushed that. Um Dave Carbunko, you know, the IDC Corpsman, he was a phenomenal guy. Dave's a phenomenal guy, and he was very, very good at teaching and very, very good at at kind of instilling in these guys the need to be able to, you know, be that rock like we were talking about and bring it back when they need to bring it back, bring it back into the BAS, so to speak, like to the leadership there or to somebody else. So it was a lot, there was a lot going on, but that was definitely a big part of it. I'm sure you guys had the same thing on. I mean, we had long, long nights. It was a very, very short spin-up. You guys are the same.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Uh you something you said just struck me and it's running through my brain. I I don't I also think you're the first person to bring up the sort of the moral injury portion of it, but also how ugly an insurgency really is, because a lot of people have they've mentioned it, but not in the same way. Often the fighters were teenagers, which which some issues, yeah. I mean, some of our guys had close to teenage or preteen kids, right? So it you know it it's weird to see that.

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, and definitely there were women who took up arms. Uh there were plenty of times the insurgents were using women specifically because they thought that we would not shoot them.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, and so a lot of the moral ambiguity had to been unusual. And I know there's again, you you've brought up the history component of it, which I think is also interesting, because that was that was something in World War II, and that was definitely something in Vietnam of using women women and children and moral injury being a thing. Did you did you find I I don't remember you specifically being highly religious. Did you remember yourself leaning on faith or anything like that? Or did you bring any of that component to it? I don't I I really don't remember. I I didn't we me and you didn't talk like that much.

SPEAKER_00

I um I was not like I always had faith. I never doubted like God exists, right? I never had a a doubt for me. It was never a moment where I doubted it was true or he existed. I never had much faith in like organized religion, I guess. I grew up Roman Catholic, so like you know, it was very uh a standoff kind of religion.

SPEAKER_01

You had an adversarial religion religious experience, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, so it was like so if the the religious part never really took hold, I guess with me, but uh the faith was always there. But for me, it was more like um, especially in Ramadi at the time, my whole, my whole like faith, my whole thought, my whole everything was like, okay, we gotta get these guys through this and get them home. You know, that that was my only like overriding thought. So every single day, every single moment, it was just uh, what can I be doing right now, or what can I do right now to make things better? How can I fix this, or how can I get that moving, or how can I make sure this guy's okay, you know, and trying to keep on top of guys and make sure guys weren't getting um too caught up in things they had to do, you know, because it was again it was a lot of it's a combat zone, an insurgency in a city where you know ugly, ugly things happen. So there was definitely a lot of that, like a lot of time spent on that. But it wasn't so much of a face-based thing. I mean, I definitely talked to Choppin a couple of times when we were there about like faith and everything. Um, but it wasn't like my priority, it was my primary, it was mostly just my overall, like overriding goal was I want to bring everybody home in the best possible shape I can, you know. My concern was post-traumatic stress and

Moral Injury Faith And PTSD Fears

SPEAKER_00

the things that go after, because that's something that definitely needs to be thought about. Sure. That was important to me that that we were making sure guys are getting a chance to kind of express it, get it out of their system, talk it out so that it wasn't becoming that little poison seed that that blows up in their head later, you know. And I mean we said now, right? 22 a day.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it shouldn't be that way. But um that was definitely something that was in the forefront of my mind the whole time, especially when we were there, because it was such an ugly place. You know, I think people ask me now, I tell them like Ramadi's a meat grinder. That's really that city was a meat grinder, and that's really all it was there to do, just grind meat. It was just an ugly, ugly place, as far as uh at that time, how how really violent it was, and just how I was like it seemed like um we were doing the absolute best we could to be constructive, building a hospital, build a school for the kids, doing things like that. And like remember when the school got built for the kids, and I think it was Fox Company was there.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

We were there, and they RPG'd the kids in the middle of the, you know, like they were just so indiscriminately disgusting as people. So it was it was things like that to me were like, okay, these are things that definitely need to be. Spoken about or dealt with appropriately now. Because if we do a little bit now just to make sure that this guy's okay, we're planting the seed for later for when he's not okay for him to be able to bring it out more easily rather than just letting him bury it and live with it. And so it was definitely something that uh I thought about. But faith was always there. I was always uh I think I tell people all the time, like I was always believed in God. I just turned my back on him when I wanted to do things that I didn't think he would approve of.

SPEAKER_02

You know, that's true.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So I uh I used to say a very similar thing. I there's four years that we agreed not to talk.

SPEAKER_00

You're not gonna want to see this, so hook it back to me.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, that's that's good.

SPEAKER_00

It's funny.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was just curious because you were kind of put in a position of counseling, and so that might have been, I don't know, I might have been something you leaned on. I wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_00

There were guys who definitely came with like from it from that position. There were guys who um I don't want to mention names or specifics, but there were definitely guys who um and people who did things that they they they truly truly had a hard time accepting, and and so and they came to it from that place of uh of faith, you know, and I said, Okay, and my my answer to that was always the same. No, it was like, you know, God's not gonna put you where you're not supposed to be, he's not gonna put you somewhere doing something that he didn't want you to do, you know, and it so as ugly as it might be, he's given you a burden to carry, but it's a burden he knows you can carry. So, you know, you have to kind of keep that in perspective. And then also the fact of the reality side of things, like or as far as uh our version of reality where we are right now, you have to be able to kind of look at things in a way that that you know is honestly realism, right? So I couldn't help where that Mark 19 round went, or I couldn't help who put the weapon in that woman's hands or that child's hands or whatever it was. You know, I can't help the circumstance that created that person being there at that exact moment. I can only deal with that exact moment. So I would kind of try and approach it that way with guys to kind of give them, like I said, it's really just uh psychological band-aid, right? You put this band-aid on and uh band aid on your bullet wound, and we'll deal with you later.

SPEAKER_03

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