Constant Combat

No Standard Operating Procedure - Shane Nylin (Part 1 of 3)

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We welcome guest Jesse Jordan to podcast cohost recording Shane Nylin’s path from signing Marine Corps papers in a peacetime world to realizing, almost overnight, that he is heading into Iraq with a thin platoon and even thinner margins. We talk through the training, injuries, leadership clashes, and dark humor moments that shaped how Weapons Company Marines got ready for Ramadi long before the first shots were fired. 

• joining the Marine Corps before 9-11
• Okinawa training as a proving ground 
• picking up Corporal and Sergeant, then navigating trust, reputation, and platoon politics 
• tearing a knee ligament, and learning from an unwanted camp guard assignment 
• March Air Force Base moments that forced seriousness and standards 
• intel shifts from Habaniya to Ramadi 
• Kuwait arrival and scrounging gear to prep vehicles 
• planning convoy security, dealing with comms failures, and crossing the border expecting contact 


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 

Meet The Marines Telling This Story

SPEAKER_01

We got Jesse Jordan helping us out. Uh illustrious as our first uh person that helped volunteer for this to come back on to introduce uh and uh help help uh help the conversation with our with our actual person in the hot seat. So why don't you tell us who you are? Remind everybody who you are.

SPEAKER_02

I was started Jordan, Jesse Jordan, also known as Tweeter, uh in Map Two. Uh and uh Shane, why don't you go ahead and tell us who you were?

SPEAKER_00

Nice. In 2004, I was Sergeant Shane Nylon, uh otherwise known as Neck in Mobile Assault Platoon 2. And that kind of that kind of kicks off where we were. And I'll uh I can start kind of from the beginning. Let's see. I think uh a lot of people talk about why they joined the Marine Corps. I won't get too much into the weeds on that, but I signed the papers in December of 2000, which was a whole different world at that time. Uh there was no war, there was no 9-11, there was no Iraq, there was no Afghanistan, it was a peacetime Marine Corps. And I had dreamed about joining the military since I was like fifth, sixth grade. And then I kind of put it aside. Uh, in high school, I was pretty focused on finding some kind of job and working my way to the top. And I was an auto shop manager uh right before I signed the papers for the Marine Corps. I got married uh to my wife in 1999 and uh got kind of in a dispute with the owners of the auto shop because we were expanding the auto shop and they put me in a in a location where it was not really making a whole lot of money, and so I was constantly having employee turnover and just different kinds of arguments, and I quit that. I took a temporary construction job, and my wife was wanting to go to college in California, and so I made the decision on my own to solve uh two

Why He Joined Before 9-11

SPEAKER_00

problems at once, and I went and signed papers to join the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_01

Uh I hear the subtle there. I picked up on that. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Uh she wasn't happy, she wasn't unhappy either, but she wasn't happy. Uh, I kind of sprung it on her and uh again signed papers in December, and by March 21st, I went to boot camp of 2001.

SPEAKER_01

Uh dressing a short time after your birthday.

SPEAKER_00

It was. My birthday was March 19th, and I was a couple days after that I was in boot camp. And it was good. I was guaranteed PFC, so I already had a little bit of a leg up, came out of boot camp as a PFC, went to the school of infantry, got out of the school of infantry, and right literally two weeks after I got out of the school of infantry, uh, 9-11 happened. And I was sitting at breakfast and watched the planes hit the towers. I was sitting with uh Rose specifically from 81s. And I remember thinking, oh shit, you know, like the first plane hit, we were like, oh, that's crazy, like some crazy tragedy, you know, pilot fell asleep or had a heart attack or some shit, and then we saw the second plane hit, and that's when everybody was rallying up all the battalions, and we did all that Operation Noble Eagle stuff. Well, fast forward, and uh, we all went to Cat Platoon, and Cat Platoon in Okinawa was where I met uh Jordan and he joined our platoon, and we got at the time Staff Sergeant Maraki, who I don't know, I don't know if I hated him, but I certainly when he first joined us, uh me and him definitely butted heads a little bit because God, he would just run us to death, man. I I appreciate it now looking back, but at the time, boy, that was it, his training tempo was much higher than anything I had experienced up to that point, and that definitely came from probably his background at Quantico and and all the other stuff that he did. You know, his ever as everybody said, his SRB always came with a armed security guard because it was double top secret or whatever the fuck. That was always the joke, but he his experience was fantastic, and he I think I feel like he taught us how to shoot better than than any other platoon. Like we were just constantly doing weapons handling skills. I don't know where he even got ammo. We were always doing ranges, we were always shooting. We did a jungle shooting package that nobody else did. We did shooting off the fan tail of the Essex, we did a ton of ranges uh on Camp Hansen, which while nobody else did, everybody else was just running around doing all kinds of stuff. And then we ran every day, like stupid amounts of miles. We ran every single day. So by the time we were looking at coming back from Okinawa, I was like, I was in phenomenal shape, and I had been trained as much as I was going to be trained, which was great. Uh, I picked up corporal in Okinawa, and I when we came back, right as we came, I think it was July or August, we came back from Okie, I picked up sergeant. Uh, I was a tow gunner, and uh, as everybody knows, toe gunners famously have a lower cutting score than everybody else, so I made by score. I got corporal meritoriously, but I made sergeant by score. And uh there was some contention when I first came back. We broke back out from cat platoon and separated into machine gunners and anti-armor, and we made an anti-armor platoon, and our anti-armor platoon was uh ran by Lieutenant Crawford and at the time Staff Sergeant Drake. And we still had first Sergeant Lee. This was before we had got first Sergeant Mac. Uh, First Sergeant Lee pulled me into his office and he's like, Can you explain to me why other Marines don't want you to be a sergeant? And I said, I have I have no idea. And uh and he's like, Well, I'm gonna ask around, and I want to see you tomorrow again, first thing in the morning, 06 in my office. And I was like, All right.

SPEAKER_02

Did he tell you who it was that didn't want you to be a sergeant?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm not gonna skylight him on the podcast, but you you could probably guess. Yeah, he could tell me who, but he could tell me who vouched for me. So he said he asked around and and nobody had anything bad to say, except for these two individuals. And uh he asked, but one of the people that convinced him was Condi, weirdly enough. Now, me and Condi didn't get along in Okinawa. I used to tease Condi all the time. I used to call him Farrakandi all the time, and all kinds of all kinds of other shit, because he was always, you know, he's just loud. He was loud and he liked to talk shit, and so did I. So it it was uh we always just I mean, not that we didn't get along in a bad way, we never fought or anything like that, but we weren't friends or anything. We always teased each other. But he said he was the one that told first sergeant he was like, Yeah, there was there's a lot of issues in that platoon towards the end of the deployment, and there was some violence, and somebody got punched and stuff like that. He's like, I don't know if that's part of it. He's like, But there's no reason that Marine, you know, shouldn't be promoted. And so I always credited Condi for getting me sergeant, and literally right after that, I picked up sergeant and I took Condi out for a beer. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's cool. I don't I don't think I remember that if I if I knew that's right, I don't remember that.

SPEAKER_00

That's uh yeah, it was a it was a weird transition time, you know, because everybody was moving.

SPEAKER_01

That was a weird I mean we like we've talked about this before, but we were decimated at that point. There was there was only like if I remember right, it was like only 300 of us. Yep. So in the entire battalion.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. Yeah, it was very small, very, very slim pickings. And I mean, we I think the senior people for anti-armor was was me, Jordan, and Anthony, and uh technically Sakaki, but Sakaki had moved to the company office by that point, and that was it. Everybody else left, all the other, all the other sergeants and corporals and everything, like there was nobody. It was us and the Lance Corporals, like there just wasn't anybody. I think uh Garcia was a corporal and Pacheco was a corporal, like there just wasn't that many people.

SPEAKER_02

So anyway, yeah, I was still a corporal until we got to Iraq, but that was

Okinawa Training That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_02

because I got out and came back in and showed they reached my time and grade to the day I came back in. Oh, that's right. I got out as a 51. And when I came back in, even though I had they had lap moved me to a 51, for some reason, my cutting scroll score was still being counted as a 50 as a 51, even though I was lap moved to a 52. So it was actually Mac that was like, Hey, why are you still a corporal? You've been in for a hot minute, and I was like, Well, here's the situation, and he's like, Wait, what's your contract? So we actually got thesked one to pull up my contract. I was like, No, this morning's a 52, like he's gonna be graded as a 52, and so the next month I was a sorry.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome. Yeah, that guy was always taking care of people. Like, I I always I I said it when we talked to him, and I was saying now, too. He was always taking care of people in one way or another. Well, right after that, we uh we all broke out of anti-armor, and it was Lieutenant Crawford who was first with our platoon. He had just come over, I think he was in Fox Company beforehand. He just came over and took charge of the platoon, and we decided to go on a long run in the backyard, and we ran through that old dry riverbed. And I don't know why he was a goat anyway. He loved to run across all kinds of weird mountains and all kinds of shit. Well, we ran across all that river rock, and we had been running as cat platoon so long I wasn't having any trouble keeping up, but I slipped on a rock, and that was when I tore the lateral collateral ligament of my left knee. And I and of course, in stubbornness, I was like, oh, these junior marines are here, I can't, I can't, you know, bitch out. So I I rolled off to the side, I took a look at it, and I could still bear weight on it. So I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna finish the run. And by the time I did that, my knee was two times the size. And I think I'm trying to remember, somebody drove me to BAS because I like couldn't even make it from the barracks because I couldn't walk. They might have been hardened, I can't remember who. Some one of the machine gunners, somebody drove me over to BAS. And uh Doc Sun uh did all kinds of weird ninja maneuvers on my knees and was like, I don't know, I don't know what's wrong with it, and finally sent me for like actual scans. And like, oh yeah, you have an almost full thickness tear of your lateral collateral ligament. We're gonna send you to PT. Well, I and you know, like, go get this knee brace and all this shit. So I get a knee brace. When was this? This was right when we came back, so August, September, August September. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, that was like right when Crawford took over. It was like one of the first PT sessions we had.

SPEAKER_00

First or second one.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I remember running down that dry riverbed going, why are we running on this rock like this?

SPEAKER_00

Like, yeah, yeah, me too. And I have a lifetime of knee trade to uh to remember that run by forever, literally forever. So next day I show up with a knee brace and Crawford starts talking shit. And he's like, Oh, you need a knee brace now. You're a fucking light duty marine, like talking, talking so much shit. And I was, dude, I was I literally was like, It's the first time I had like felt ashamed of anything, and I had not like it's the first time I fucked up, but I was like, God damn it. I literally just picked up Sergeant and like now I look like a shit bag. And he decides he's like, Okay, you're gonna wear a knee brace, we're gonna run to the hilo pad. And so, of course, I fucking do it. We get to the top of the helo pad, and I'm pulling that knee brace off because it's just my knee is screaming, it is swollen so bad. And I run back down and it's again two times the size, super swollen. I go see Rake Brandt, he pulls fluid out of it, and he's like, You can't do this anymore. And so we go to first sergeant, and he's like, and I was like, I do not want light duty, but I can't, I can't do, I need some time to finish PT. And he's like, Okay, I'm gonna stick you on camp guard. And I was like, fuck, dude, that's where all the losers go. Like, I camp guard always had the worst fucking reputation. And he's like, Don't worry, I'll send somebody with you. And he's like, he goes, I'll send another sergeant with you. So he sends me and Anthony to camp guard. Poor fucking Anthony. Anthony was so pissed off. He was so mad, and I was like, dude, I didn't select you, and he he blamed me the whole time, anyway. Yeah, yeah, it was great.

SPEAKER_02

So we went to camp. Go ahead. Didn't Anthony didn't Anthony go to the armory after that? Or was it when we got back from I think that was when we got might have been when we got back?

SPEAKER_00

I think he went before that. I think they pulled him out of the armory and he was miserable, but he was even more mad that he went to camp guard. It it ended up being good because I made friends with dudes from all the other companies from Fox, Echo, Golf, from the engineer battalion, all kinds of stuff that were on camp guard. So it was good for me as far as that goes. I had uh eight weeks of physical therapy, and we did some training actually on camp guard with the the PMO dudes that was decent. We did baton training and we did tasers and fucking pepper spray and shit. So it was actually good training. I I wasn't sad about it. Uh and that, but I just didn't have to run, which was great. And the goddamn fake ass Navy PT uh did some kind of they called it phonophoresis. Now that I know a little better about medicine, they were trying to use ultrasound to break up scar tissue that didn't exist because it hadn't scarred over yet. I didn't have an old injury. It it just hurt, and they would always be like, it shouldn't hurt. And I'm like, it fucking hurts so bad. What are you doing? And so they put in, they were injecting steroids into my knee and doing these maneuvers, and I had to do these exercises, and then they're trying to use ultrasound to break up scar tissue that wasn't even there. They probably did more damage. I have no idea. Anyway, it was fucking awful. Anyway, eight weeks of PT went by, and we finished right after Thanksgiving. And I I remember specifically having Thanksgiving with all the dudes on guard because I was on guard on the day of Thanksgiving. And my wife brought a turkey and like had made all the shit. She got it donated from she's like, Oh, these Marines, they're about to deploy. Can you give us free food? And she got a bunch of grocery stores to give free food and she cooked it and brought it to us on camp guard, which is awesome. And so we did all that, and then right after that, I got discharged off of camp guard, um, like maybe a week later. But we were all preparing to

Promotion Friction And Earning Trust

SPEAKER_00

go on Christmas leave and do all that shit. But right before that was when it literally right before that was when Gunny Maraki started doing his backyard shooting package. And that other that other gunny from Fox Company, which I can't remember, Lens? Lens, I don't know, it started with an L. Do you remember his name? No, Lens, maybe, I don't know. Anyway, he he also worked with uh Meraki somewhere, either Recon or Snipers or Quantico or wherever they worked together, yeah. And so we started doing all that, you know, combat reflexive shooting and reloading and all that stuff again. And then we went on Christmas leave and I went home, and home for me was uh coming to Phoenix, Arizona to visit uh my mom and stepdad and grandparents, and then came back. And that was when to me, so everybody swears that they knew we were going to Iraq for sure, around like the ball and all that stuff. I don't remember any of that shit at the ball. I remember going to that ball, and but maybe I was just too drunk to remember getting told we were going to Iraq. But right after Christmas, when we came back, that's when I remember they told me I was gonna be platoon sergeant, which was fucking crazy to me. And and that we were going to Iraq, and I was like, what the fuck do you mean? I literally come back and I'm like standing out in formation and like doing platoon sergeant stuff, and that's when JD Stevens came over as our platoon commander, and I'm reporting to him, and I was like, I hope we don't deploy like this. I'm I'm good enough to do it, but I don't want to. I don't have any experience. And literally a week later, Randall shows up, and then they're like, Oh, well, he's got you beat. He had been a sergeant for four weeks longer than me. And so they gave him platoon sergeant. I was like, Well, I don't want that motherfucker to be platoon sergeant because he doesn't know anybody. I was like, this isn't a better solution. But right after that, uh, is when Staff Sergeant Coleman showed up. And I know you told the story, but same same thing. I remember all we heard was that he was coming straight off the drill field, and I was like, we are fucked. He is gonna, this is gonna be like 81's number two. And I all I all I could picture was, you know, the other Gunny Coleman, right? The other Coleman.

SPEAKER_03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

And I I like that guy. He's smart and he's good, but boy, he had a rigid discipline.

SPEAKER_01

He's a hard charger.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he had a rigid discipline that does not work well when you're in a vehicle-borne platoon. You need a little bit of independent thinking, and uh it would not have worked well, especially not with the crazy ass personalities that we had going on after we did the split between map one and map two. But he showed up in the first, literally the first thing, he was like, you know, what's up, pimp? All right, it's just about beard 30, so let's go ahead and wrap this formation up. And I was like, Oh my god, this is fantastic. This is the opposite of everything I expected. And he was one of the three people, four people, because we had, because did you guys still have Gould? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I don't know. No, no, we would have lost Gould by that point, I think.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Ne Neil, Mararkey, uh, Staff Sergeant Coleman, and one other person. I think we only had three or four people who had any combat experience prior. Oh, Escabel.

SPEAKER_01

Weirdly. Well, and yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

He got shot at in Desert Fox.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah. Escabel has you remember Coleman used to uh say he had a max track on a tow missile from the tire of the Jeep? Like that was his claim to fame. Yeah, yeah. He actually had a tank kill with a toe missile.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we finally got the the gang all together, kinda sorta, but we hadn't truly split platoons yet. They they still had us as machine gunners, like kind of like mixed machine gunners and anti-armor, but not really split into platoons when we went to March Air Force Base. Because I remember we got we got all those boots. We still had like Harris and Jax and like this is so this is really interesting, man.

SPEAKER_01

I I did not uh appreciate because 81's

Knee Injury Light Duty And Camp Guard

SPEAKER_01

is a formed independent thing and it was a cohesive thing. It never crossed my mind until we started having this conversation, then specifically what you're saying now that the platoon that you left with, you guys were only together as a platoon for what a few weeks tops before you left to go to a combat zone.

SPEAKER_00

Maybe two weeks. That's insane.

SPEAKER_01

Like I didn't I didn't know that. I didn't, I did I thought I thought you guys were there by then.

SPEAKER_02

Nope. No, even when we went to Bridgeport, we were still separated into anti-armor.

SPEAKER_00

Bridgeport was anti-armor. Yeah, I didn't even mention Bridgeport, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but I thought we had split done the split, and that's why we were doing that JOB on the basketball court the night that Coleman showed up. Was that not when we did the split before right before going to March Air Force Base? Like we no, we might have.

SPEAKER_00

You might be right.

SPEAKER_02

I know I have doing it was because we were leaving to go to March Air Force Base and we had just done the split.

SPEAKER_00

That could make sense. And the only reason why that makes sense in my head is because I have picture, but we maybe we shared uh sleeping quarters. And the only reason why I say that is I have pictures of all of the guys that were with us at March Air Force Base, and we still had guys from map one that were with us sleeping in the same area doing fire watch, along with our boots, along with you know, Morris. And all the and New Meyer and those guys.

SPEAKER_02

So since we're on the topic of March Air Force Base, uh, and I haven't heard this story yet, but I remember it vividly. Someone falling asleep or not waking up for firewatch. Shane.

SPEAKER_00

Uh you remember this story vividly, do you?

SPEAKER_02

Right. But never physical, except for one time at March Air Force Base. Shane, do you want to do you want to tell a story? Do you want me to tell a story? Well, it's funny you say that.

SPEAKER_00

So that actually comes right to it. I did not know we were going for sure to Iraq until right before March Air Force Base. And that was when me, you, I think Coleman for sure, and I believe Lieutenant Crawford was sitting right next to us, even though he wasn't our platoon commander. And we went to that brief with the regimental gunner and other officers. Don't remember who. A whole bunch of other officers. I did I remember being the lowest ranking people in the room and not sure why we were there. And they were showing us pictures of Habania. They told us we were going to Habania.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I remember you and I having a conversation specifically, and there might have been other sergeants there, but I remember you and me having this conversation where it was like, those walls are close together. And this is going to be like fighting rats. Like they're going to be crawling between these walls. The buildings were so close together, we would be chasing people like literally one man deep. There'd be no way for you to cover each other. And we were like, driving vehicles through this is going to be awful. Like if they shoot at you or anything with anything, they can go right between these little alleyways and you're just fucked. Looking at all these pictures of Habanyah. And that was what we were being told is we were going to Habanya. And so that was what was on my mind when we went to March Air Force Base. Now we went to March Air Force Base and we were supposed to act as though we were in combat operations. And I took that relatively seriously. Uh, even though the training was not as serious or as good as I would have liked, just because it had more to do with 0311 style patrolling uh than it did with vehicle stuff like we were going to be doing. It still I took it very seriously. And so we're I told people to treat it seriously. And two things happen. Speaking of physical uh reminders, physical reminders, that's what I'm gonna call it. Pain retains. Poor Homewood. Homewood's the nicest dude you've ever met. If you uh if you ever talked to Homewood, you would not even imagine that he could be an infantry marine. But he he definitely was, and he's good, he was a good machine gunner, good driver, good everything. But he was so nice. He looked like such a nice young 17, 18-year-old dude. But for whatever reason, he could not get my rank right. And on the fourth time he came over and he was like Corporal Nylon, and I just reared back and slapped him as hard as I could. And I was like, Motherfucker, you have never known me as a corporal. I am Sergeant Nylon, do you? And his face was just like wide-eyed, mouth wide open, and he never ever called me corporal again. So it worked, even if it was a terrible idea. I should have never hit that kid. Anyway, my tensions were running a little high because later that night, uh, we wake up at four in the morning, 4 30 in the morning, five in the morning, whatever it is, in those shitty crack house fucking buildings to find out that the reason why I'm waking up is my alarm's going off, not because the firewatch is has woke anybody up. Turns out the firewatch had gone back to sleep. Oh, and it was Moselle who was wrapped up in his sleeping bag asleep. And somebody's yelling, and I just popped up. I was already dressed because I already slept fully dressed. And I unzipped my bag, jumped up, pushed him out of the way, went over, shoved him to the ground, put his face in a bunch of glass, and I just got right in his face, right next to his ear. And I was like, Motherfucker, if you ever fall asleep on fire watch again, I will kill you myself. And which is funny because me and Mosell are friends now. For anybody listening to this that does not know us, uh we are very much friends and we're friends during the deployment. But I wanted it to be very specific. We are going to go do real shit. You need to treat this like real shit. This is not boot camp fire watch. And Jordan's over there pulling me off, and Randall's like, You can't do that. And I was like, You don't fucking know shit.

SPEAKER_02

I saw I came around the corner and I saw you motion his face. I just kind of sat there and watched until I saw you motion his face in the glass and the rat shit. And so then I was like, that's my yeah. I don't think Shane sees both of those things. So that's why I sort of pulled them off.

SPEAKER_00

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah. Rat shit and in the cuts.

SPEAKER_00

Right after March Air Force Base, uh, we had, I don't know, what do we have, a week or two, maybe three weeks until we deploy or until we found out we were going to deploy. And we did that, uh, we did one little range out at that uh the vehicle, the bigger vehicle range that was in the backyard, where finally we had the people we were gonna deploy with, and we put people into the trucks that we thought we were gonna be with, and for whatever reason, and that was when Lieutenant Stevens decided he didn't want to be with me and wanted to be in your section instead. Uh, he was training in my vehicle, and I don't remember what the hell we were arguing about, but we were arguing about something, and that was when I don't know if you remember this, but that was when Harden's truck came downrange and almost got shot by machine gun fire on that range.

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah, uh K Springs. We were in up in K Springs. Yep. It was I it was me and Harden. We were in the truck together, yeah. And we went out to oh, I forgot what we were doing. We were going to replace road guards and we took the wrong road. Yeah, we ended up in the impact area, yeah. And we kind of popped our head over, and we were like, dude, we're in the impact area, and it was like back. Well, by then Carl had already seen us. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. I was I was like literally arguing with them that we should not be firing that direction. And you know, again, you know, we're trying to feel each other out, and I don't blame him in any way, he doesn't know who I am. I'm I never had a good filter for talking to anybody who had different rank than me. I just said the things that I thought were right, and then you make the decisions. And he didn't know that, he didn't understand that at the time, and he was telling me to shut the fuck up, and I was like, you can do whatever you want, and then literally you guys come over and I was like, See, that's why I said we shouldn't be firing over there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and so making friends and influencing people again.

SPEAKER_00

We made perfect friends later, but at that moment I was rubbing everybody the wrong way. And uh that was it. That was our last field up, and it was a 20-minute machine gun dump. Literally, everybody was just getting to shoot some targets, like it wasn't anything. We were moving vehicles around, but not in any tactical sense. We were just literally had put people into billets and been like, okay, you're a driver, you're not you're not doing anything too crazy. And strangely, Miranda got to keep being a driver, even though he flipped the Humvee on the way back from that range. You remember?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but I don't yeah, he flipped the Humvee. I think the uh He was trying to miss a deer or something like that. Yeah, didn't have it. It wasn't his fault, but yeah. It wasn't his fault, and like the one of the tires just fell off when he kind of did a face of manually to miss this deer. And the tire just fell off, and that's when he rolled the Humvee. Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, to be fair, we also had somebody flip a Humvee and still maintained being a driver when it was well, I guess it wasn't completely his fault. The he got blinded by the we were it was in the it was in the evening and he got hit in the eyes with it, and he dropped his uh tire off the side of the road. But a lot of people got hurt bad on that one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was I remember that one too.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Yeah, so that case breaks because I remember we stayed overnight.

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

And we shot into the day, and the only maneuver we really did was just kind of driving the vehicle up to the firing line and and practicing like contact, like left and contact right and all that across the vehicle. Yep. And then uh the next evening we were coming down, and I was in the gun coming down out of Cave Springs, and I you know, it's hot as hell during the day. But by the time we got down to those valleys, the temperature dropped so much, I'm wearing nothing but a ski shirt and like my PPE and my elephant, my flag. And so by the time we get down, it was freezing cold, and I ended up getting walking pneumonia the next day. I showed for work, and JV was like, go to medical and go home. You look like death. And I'm like, I'm good, boss, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00

You do so it was you and Morris both. Morris got uh pneumonia too because we yeah, we went on uh we went on a run the next day, and Morris refused to admit he had pneumonia until he was like coughing up blood and mucus, and we're like, same thing, like go to medical. We're deploying, you need antibiotics, like we're not fucking around with this right now, yeah. But that very much a testament to him that hard bastard would not would not admit he was dying, and

March Air Force Base Wake Up Call

SPEAKER_00

he was awful, awful, same as you being like, Oh no, I'm fine, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

In fact, I thought I did the wrong thing, and it was about like 10 o'clock in the morning, and JD was like, You look like death. I was like, Well, that's better than I feel. We're down for the day.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so March was really the only training package you did prior to March, or I mean, but prior to deploying, huh? Like you never went to any special schools or anything like that, huh?

SPEAKER_00

Not me. No, I was on camp card. Uh the only special schools I had were in uh Okinawa. I went to Corporal's course, and then right after that, I went to a modified version of Islick, which was put on by the people from Corporal's Course, which was fine. I went to I went to Ford Observers Course uh in Okinawa, which was fun, uh, but very weird being a tow gunner. Uh because everybody that was with me was artillery or mortars.

SPEAKER_02

Right. I did that same when I was at one three, that same Ford Observers course in Okinawa.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Was it some like crusty master guns that was teaching the thing? Or Master Master Guns?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he's about two foot tall and he's been in for 32 years or whatever it was at that time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same dude then.

SPEAKER_00

Super good. I learned a ton. I I have not nothing but respect for his methods, but uh yeah, he that was that was it. He's been there forever.

SPEAKER_02

So was he did he do a fire mission in the very last shot after he was bracketing the very last shot of uh porn picture pops up and it was like right in the look like chick's cleavage or something like that?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. My other favorite was if you stuttered on a nine line or if or on a any fire mission calls, or if you got the call wrong, like you did anything wrong, they would make you do 10 curls with the 155 round, which which was super awesome. And uh I was not a big dude. I mean, shit, I was maybe 130 pounds at that time, and I was like, oh god, well, I only had to do this once. I never got anything wrong again ever again. Yeah. Wouldn't have been a problem for you. You were in the gym all the time. I was a little scrawny bastard.

SPEAKER_02

I was I was pretty scrawny back then. That was probably 10 pounds heavier than you, maybe. Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, anyway, right before deployment, uh, again, right after Case Springs, uh, we I was at dinner with my wife on Friday night, which I'm, if I remember correctly, was the 13th of February. And we were having a Valentine's dinner when I got the phone call that we were deploying Monday, and that I needed to be there on Sunday to make sure everybody had the gear. And so we all showed up Sunday morning early ass, early as fuck, and got everybody to pull out all their gear and been like, all right, where's your fucking helmet? Where's your flash? Show me your fucking mag pouch. Like, if you don't have it, we're driving to go buy it or get it from get it issued or whatever, going to the SIF. And then Monday morning, that's when everybody fell out with gear, and uh, and we went over to March Air Force Base to fly out. Uh, I will never forget that feeling for me specifically, and I imagine it was different for everybody, but my wife drove me to the uh right there where the basketball courts were, in between all the barracks. Early as shit, she always hated get up early in the morning, she still hates getting up early in the morning. Uh and we I don't think we talked 20 words, you know, the way there. Yeah, I don't know. What did you say right before you're about to go on deployment? And I gave her a big kiss and I said, I don't want you to come watch us leave. And she's like, okay, and I said, I won't have time to talk to you even if I wanted to. And she's like, okay, and I said, I love you. I'll talk to you as soon as I can. And as soon as I turned, I don't I don't remember the lieutenant, but I remember a lieutenant, I don't remember which which company he was with. There's Lieutenant with just tears running down his face, saying the same shit to his wife, like literally in the car right next to us. And there was a feeling for me the week or two prior. I was like, I don't know. I've always been good at sort of feeling out how people feel about things. And I felt at this time that that we were gonna get into some serious shit. That was that was just my feeling. And I left, I thought I was kissing my wife for the last time. I would a lot of people talk about the day that they think they're gonna die. I anticipated dying when we left. That was how I felt. I don't know why. There was no reason, but I was just getting the vibe from all the different interactions between our meeting that we had with the Habanya slides and all this sudden, we had sudden training that was completely hasty training and people's stress levels, first sergeant's stress levels, Captain Wyler's stress levels. I was like, Yeah, we're we're going into some shit. And I'm I'm not, I'm under no illusions. I don't think I'm making it back. So I'm not having her come to the parade deck and me not talk to her, sitting there crying, and that's the last thing I remember is this long protracted goodbye where I was like, nope, this is it. We'll do a short, I love you, and I'll see you later. Well, we went to March and we stayed there overnight. I don't know if you remember, we didn't do shit, right? We went there and just sat there.

SPEAKER_01

That's but that's because we missed our that's that's because we missed well, we didn't miss our flight as much as that we were slightly delayed and that other fucking but they they took our flight.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we stayed there overnight.

SPEAKER_01

They swooped us.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I stayed there overnight. I did call my wife from there and I was like, yeah, we're delayed. I'll call you when I get to wherever we go. And then I'm not gonna go over all the shit with the all the crazy flights and everything, because I think everybody's gone over it 50 fucking times by now. But the one that I remember uh two things that I remember specifically from that flight, besides New Jersey and the Air Force Base feeling like a like a Hyatt hotel or something because we had never stayed in such nice accommodations. But was that I remember people getting so sick that in Germany when we were people were sleeping on the floor of those uh hangars or whatever the hell we were at, that we were talking about leaving people in Germany at the hospital because they were so sick. And that was when Bundy and Rick Brandt and all them dudes, were you one?

SPEAKER_01

When were you one?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't remember who was sick. I just remember we were having the conversation of leaving people there.

SPEAKER_02

Were you still sick from the no? When we got on the bird, and I think it was one of the 81s, but he got on the bird right next to me, and he was holding a trash bag in his hand. What are you okay? And he was like, he's like, Yeah, I'm just I just feel nauseated already, and like I'm I'm just sick. So Sweet was across from me. It was me, Sweet, the I can't remember who was next to Sweet, the guy next to him, and the guy on the other side of that guy. So that guy gave us all whatever stomach, it was a stomach bug, and we were just you and I both ends.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

And uh stopped shitting. And they were giving us IVs in New Jersey and everything else. And I didn't really get sick until we like that first night in New Jersey, I think the next morning, is when everybody started throwing up. And me and Sweet were like rooms right next to each other. We're like running because it was a shared bathroom. Yeah, uh, and so we're running back and forth to the bathroom just uh in a stall. I remember taking a shit and like feeling like I had to throw up. And it was like going on the floor, I've got to turn around and throw up before I do show. Uh Shane, back up just a little bit because I think we found out that we were going to Ramadi that Sunday when we had to come in so early. That was when we found out we were leaving and going to Ramadi. Yeah. Like we we thought we were going to Hawaii up until that point.

SPEAKER_00

I don't remember that news specifically. I just remember again this feeling of impending doom on Monday morning. And so uh that's probably why. Maybe that's why.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because I remember me and you were in the company office, and somebody had a map of Iraq

Ramadi Intel Ammo Shortages And Anxiety

SPEAKER_02

of that area, Habaniya, and then we had like we're trying to find Ramadi on the map and trying to kind of figure what our weight was for the city at that point. We were all just like, this was way worse.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that was the that was the clutch of it. Is once we got to Kuwait, is that when we did get more intel on Ramadi, we're like, oh, this is four times the size of what we were looking at in Habania and 10 times the area to cover. And yeah, it was less, less, uh, less appealing, even more so. The other thing I remember from that flight over, uh, besides talking with Coleman, like if we leave people in Germany, we will be combat ineffective. If we leave three people in Germany, because we were so small at the time, we had what, 22, I think, people. I don't know. I have a yeah, I have a roster somewhere. And we were the smallest platoon by far. If we lose three, we would not be able to man every truck. We would just have to to condense down to like four trucks. Anyway, the other one in Germany was uh taking Blake out to the front of the airport and being like, You're home, this is your homeland, and him like laying on the ground like a retard and being like, I'm home, and taking a picture. That was that was my favorite memory of uh flying over, besides constantly hearing that the plane was on fire and that the engines were falling out and we were gonna die. I do remember arriving in Kuwait, getting on those bongo buses and arriving in the afternoon, evening, whatever it was, and there was no food. That was the thing I remember most is that no one had eaten. People had, you know, whatever, protein bars or MREs stuffed in their cargo pockets or whatever, but nobody had any food. And I remember Gunny Maraki walking over to me and Richie and was like, No one has any food. I need you to solve this. And like, you don't get those kind of mandates from Gunny Maraki very often, but you're like, okay. And so we found where the chow tent was, and we broke in by uh we found one of the corner flaps of the tent was loose, and we pulled it up enough to where we could dig down in the sand and crawl underneath it. And we we broke into the yeah, we broke into the back of the chow tent and stole uh a couple cases of water, a couple cases of some shitty like orange Fanta or some shit, some shitty soda. And I don't remember how many, but it's like six because I remember it was way above my head when I was carrying the boxes of these pinwheel cakes uh that were uh almond. Vanilla and strawberry flavor, uh like like breakfast pastry type cakes. And we brought them back over, and I was like, all right, well, Gunny, good news we have food. Bad news is this is it. And and he was like, that's fine. He's like, all right, Marines can eat. So that's whatever means literally everybody lined up and got two pinwheel cakes and a like an orange Fanta, and that was their their dinner. Anyone who didn't have food stashed in their pack. And then we spent their whatever that was, the you know, couple weeks, the 10 days stealing as much as we could to outfit our trucks. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I spent the majority of my, I mean, we did some runs and stuff like that, but I spent the majority of the time because we got word early that it was going to be my platoon and golf company were going to be the first convoy to cross the LOD. And I knew they were like, okay, well, who's gonna go with you? And I was like, well, it's all my I mean, you're telling me I'm taking my platoon, I want my whole fucking platoon, and I'll be the first truck. If something's gonna happen, it'll be me. I want Coleman-ish right behind me, right? So I have somebody to back me up, right? So Coleman's truck was right behind me, and then I believe it was your truck was third as far as like security goes, and then we had all those seven tons, and it was this ginormous 70 truck convoy that our five-truck platoon was was providing security for. And I remember us literally putting on helmets and standing in the sand and like pretending like we were doing security patrols in the sand and being like, All right, I'm pulling off to the left, you go and cover the right, and like this is what we're gonna do. And we practiced over and over again, and uh Captain Bronze, to his credit, actually came over and hung out with us for I don't know, an hour and learned all the stuff we were talking about. He's like, What can we do in the seven tons? And I was like, fire over the sides. I I don't, I you know, I don't know. You're not gonna be able to get out. So if there's anything happens, you're not gonna be able to get out. You're sitting, you're a sitting duck. So just you know, like a like a ship, you're in the ocean, just turn the cannons to the left and start shooting.

SPEAKER_01

Something something that I remember from that though is I remember you and I were having a conversation after it was it was right before we left. And I remember because I don't I don't think that they had 50 cals on the on the seven tons at the up until that point. And we were trying to get 50 cals up there, but we were having a conversation about the fact that no one in golf company, even if they were machine gunners, none of them would be have been behind a a 50 cal in a in a really long time.

SPEAKER_00

Correct.

SPEAKER_01

And that and and then on top of that, that there was like this like uh like they didn't understand max like max effective range. And so like even ranging, like it would be different. It was static, but I remember you very specifically being like, I don't know how this is gonna fucking work. Because even if there was a machine gunner up there, I don't know that they would know what to do with the gun.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

It was, I mean, well, it was less about the 50 and more about Mark 19s because we couldn't get any more 50s, but we could get marks. And because we had a couple extra marks, but it was like if you haven't used it in a while, what you're gonna be waiting you're gonna waste ammo, it's not gonna be useful, it may even be dangerous.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, that kind of goes to remember right before we left, Shane, you and I and a couple other big Sweet was there, I don't remember maybe been all the vehicle commanders, but we were sitting in the chow hall after I think uh lunch or dinner or something like that. Was kind of there wasn't very many people in the chow hall, and uh we were talking about similar similar things, trying to work out plans and everything else, and then you started going on a rant about I don't know if you remember this rant, but uh if it's my famous hot dog rant, yes, I do. Yeah,

Goodbye At The Barracks And Travel Chaos

SPEAKER_02

started talking about showing hot dogs in magazines. I don't know if you remember anything about the this famous rant that we still bring up.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I don't know, I don't know if it's all that famous, but I I remember being very, very furious because we all had for every machine gun, we had a box of ammo. We didn't even have enough to go up. And uh yeah, I just went off as like you know, the fucking Marine Corps keeps you mad by turning the lights off right when you need them and getting rid of the gasoline right when you need it, and goddamn fuck it. We got a box of hot dogs, we're gonna stuff it in our magazines.

SPEAKER_02

You and Swede laughed about that for hours and hours because you were like in boot boot camps, should literally just be practicing sitting on different surfaces.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Uh like one day you just sit for hours on a hard rock. Uh, one day you just sit at gravel. Uh and then it just kept going and eventually was uh you know, we're shoving hot dogs in magazines. Uh yeah, I had two, I had two cans of 50 cal ammo for my truck, and they were Sago routes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they weren't even. I mean, I would have taken API routes, but no, they were sago routes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, any anything would have been better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I remember uh so we get to the staging area to go across across to Kuwait, and all these other people who don't operate in vehicles are all trying to tell me what to do with the platoon, and it's driving me insane. And they're like, you can't sleep in the vehicles. And I was like, you can't fucking tell me what to do. So I slept in my vehicle anyway. But I woke up at like three in the morning and I hear dudes talking in like a different language, and I was like, fuck, we're overrun. We're overrun by the I'm so fucking paranoid by this point. We're overrun by the enemy. It's two dudes speaking Spanish, of course. It was dudes from golf, two dudes from golf company speaking Spanish on firewatch. Dude, I was yeah, I was tripping. Yeah, it was great. But right before we left, the day that we staged, that was when I was teaching Haradski and Aldretti how to take MRE heaters and fill uh water bottles. Oh, and Hodges. Hodges was over there too. How to fill water bottles with the hydrogen gas out of the MRE heater and then wedge it in the Humvee mirror and run a lighter underneath it, and it would launch like a bottle rocket. And Staff Sergeant Walker uh freaked out, hit the deck, and then came over and lit me because he was again, he was another one who was a drill instructor right before he got there, and he like knife-handed me and started screaming at me, and I am dying laughing and cannot keep my bearing for any any fucking thing. And uh yeah, he got real fucking pissed off. That was my memory of staging before that shit.

SPEAKER_01

That's too funny.

SPEAKER_00

And uh right we had gone to the PX uh on Camp Victory right before that and bought three uh boom boxes and some CDs. And Hradsky had decided that our our theme song was gonna be from Britney Spears. He had bought the brand new Britney Spears album. And so what we decided was when we crossed the line of departure, uh I had a cigarette. I always had a pack of cool swedged in the in the fucking in between the radio and the windshield. And so I lit up a cool cigarette, and right as we went across the border, he put on Britney Spears Toxic. And so we were dancing like a bunch of goofy ass white girls drinking Coca-Cola and and uh smoking smoking cools as we went across, right? And the sun was just barely cresting over the over the hills. I mean, it would have been pretty in any other in any other way, but we were crawling across the border, it was like 20 miles an hour because all those all those seven tons. And we had got intel the day prior that enemy was setting up to hit you right after the border, and then right outside of uh Iskanderia. And so I had those two things marked on my map, and I was sure we were gonna get hit the second we crossed the border. I was like, I'm gonna die to Britney Fucking Spears. And we crossed and nothing happened. Fucking zero things happened, nothing happened. We drove like hell, we stopped at those couple of outposts uh to refuel whatever it was, Scania and uh Navistar, and refueled all the seven tons.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we stayed at night at Navistar, didn't we?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that was so that's what's funny is I I I remember sitting there and sleeping, but I think it was just because it took forever to fuel up, I think it was what 40 trucks or whatever it was. So basically everybody was sleeping. But that was when the army convoy was right next to us, and that's where we got our toolboxes. Because uh Newmeyer went over and jacked their tools.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, we had stolen toolboxes from wherever we had picked up the Humbies when we first got there. Well, remember we had to take the buses back down there and drive all the Humbies back up. So we installed three toolboxes there, and as tax to Obi-Wan, we had to give one up to the headquarters and then we kept the others.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Gunny Maraki traded us, uh he didn't trade us, he took that toolbox, but he said we could paint our toolboxes with some cami paint, so he gave us some cami spray paint, so we could have our red toolboxes now be black and green.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Driving up, I don't remember anything being of note except for the fact that the fucking com went down the whole fucking way. Yeah. And I remember the com guy being like, it's one vehicle. I don't even know, I don't understand how calm works in the military. You've worked a little more calm than I have. All I know is that doesn't make any sense, is that one has bad crypto and that everybody else is somehow can't use their radio because of one truck. And I know you're shaking your head because it doesn't make any sense to you either. But I remember specifically them being like, it's the lead vehicle, and I was taking my headset off and hanging it out the window, being like, I'm not even the radio's not even on. And everybody just all the way back just yelling at each other, like it's your fucking radio, and and I'm like, we're going to plain text. And so for the whole rest of the time, map two was talking on open

Kuwait Scrounging Convoy Planning Border Crossing

SPEAKER_00

radio, and we just used you know call signs and and you know, fake code words and all that shit while nobody else could talk. So I didn't give a fuck. We could talk.

SPEAKER_01

Was it I forgot about that? Was it that somebody had a hot mic? Yeah. Yep. It was somebody, it was somebody that couldn't get their mic off. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

That was what that was their that was their hypothesis, is that uh first it was the crypto fill, and so then they redid everybody's radios, and then they said it was a hot mic. It was a hot mic, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, because I remember and and I still use this to this day. The com chief, I don't remember his name, he was a guy, came to my vehicle and he's working on it, and he's like, I've been dealing with this shit all goddamn day because God's punishing me for being a bad person. Yep, that's right. Yeah, because I was in the very back, I was the last vehicle in our convoy, yeah, and I had no comp with anybody, and those uh big low boy haulers would share the highway with them. I don't know where they were going, what they were doing, but they would just get in the middle of our convoy all the time and cut us off. Yeah, and so at one point a Webster was driving and we're on the side of the road, we're like barreling down through the open desert trying to get around these big haulers. Yeah, and uh right before we hit a giant berm, Webster stood right in front of his hauler, like he was not a good driver, but he almost killed us and saved us at the same time in that nice lay up. Yeah, where were you guys in the convoy? Were you the lead vehicle in the convoy?

SPEAKER_00

Very first vehicle, yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if I so I had what's funny is I had everybody's positions written down on a sheet that was stuck to my windshield because and it again, nothing against the golf company people or any of the air wing or anybody else who was stuck in there. I didn't know who I could count on, I just knew I could count on the weapons company people. So I had all the positions written down on a sheet, so I could be like, that's where these trucks are. So if I need people, that's where I'm going.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and I think we had worked on that way, depending on where we took contact. Yeah, like our guys were gonna haul us up there and do what we needed to do.

SPEAKER_00

Yep, yeah, that was the plan at the time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, at that point, I wouldn't have been able to do shit.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, no, you're in a high you were in a high back with a rifle, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was gonna say I had I had a maybe a what half of what the combat load ended up being, first of all, but uh uh a partial, probably at that point, maybe four magazines and a rifle. I think Wade maybe had a 203 at that point, maybe, but we would have had two hard charging rifles. Maybe I mean we didn't have a 203 uh truck loaded down like saturns and sons with a bunch of shit in the back.

SPEAKER_00

Randall didn't get his 203 until we got to Ramadi, so we didn't even have that. And we had, as he said, we had slap rounds for all the 50s, and we had the 30 the 32 round cans for Mark 19.

SPEAKER_02

And we only had two of those per gun.

SPEAKER_00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

Jesus Christ. Yeah, it literally would have been like great contact, push through whatever ambush or whatever we had.

SPEAKER_00

So we had no missiles, we had hundred-round belts for the 240s. We had, I mean, it's just it was yeah, it it was a skeleton load. And had had anybody hit us, it would have been a mess, but that's fine. Nobody did, nothing happened. Uh, I remember to me, now I know everybody else was shocked at the desert, but I grew up in the desert growing up in the southwest, literally seeing uh the highway signs and some of the rest stops that they had on the highway and stuff, it looked like Arizona to me, some of it, which was weird to me. It was like this is like home. Like it didn't even look weird to me at all. I was surprised it was so modern and that the signs were in Arabic and English, and like I don't know. It and I know that didn't strike everybody, I was like, this is a backwards, you know, whatever. I was like, no, this looks extremely more way more modern than I than I expected. And contrasted with we did drive through uh a Bedouin group with over a thousand camels, right? That were living in tents. Like I remember seeing them and being like, this is what they were doing 2,000 years ago. And then we drive right by Baghdad and Fallujah, which are modern cities with high rises, and I'm like, those are skyscrapers. What the fuck is going on here?

SPEAKER_01

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