No Standard Operating Procedure - Shane Nylin (Part 2 of 3)

We pick up part 2 with Shane Nylin from MAP 2 as first missions in Ramadi turn into minefields, EOD chaos, and an IED. We also walk through the loss of a platoon member and the street fights that follow, including what it feels like when adrenaline, grief, and leadership collide. 

• first impressions of Ramadi
• Hurricane Point’s design problems 
• early patrol learning curves and why handoffs rarely feel complete 
• backing out of a minefield 
• responding to a convoy attack and changing armor and vehicle habits 
• the EOD robot failure, crowd control, and how fast tension spikes 
• night missions, the March 17-18 blast, concussion, and staying in the fight 
• Morris’s injury, protecting dignity, and the quiet after the news 
• April 6 to April 7 urban combat
• the lasting pull of the combat “flow state” and the cost of sleepless days 

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

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Transcript

Part Two Setup And Context

SPEAKER_04 0:07

This is part two with me, Shane Nylan of Mobile Assault Platoon 2.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

My first impression of driving through Ramadi, uh, we had talked and this ended up being like an SOP was that when if we got into traffic that we had to have dismounts. And so being the very first vehicle going into Ramadi, and the plan was to drive right through the fucking market in the middle of market time,

First Drive Through Ramadi Market

SPEAKER_05 0:36

uh, I jumped out and was walking ahead of the vehicle, maybe 50 yards ahead of the vehicle. And the fucking death stares from people uh were very palpable. But one guy stood out out of all of it. He spoke perfect English, but he had been burned at some point, and he looked like a human piece of beef jerky. And he was like, What's up, bro? And like trying to get like get my attention and like fuck with me because he knew he looked fucked up. And I watched him like as I passed it off. He, I don't know if he made it all the way to the end of the convoy, but he went like six or seven trucks back and fucked with all the dismounts trying to get their attention. I was like, This is a distractor. I'm gonna get fucking shot. And uh, but he spoke perfect English, like as though we were on the streets of New York or Florida or some shit. Like it was it was crazy. I never saw that guy again. I'm sure we shot him at some point or something, but but uh you know, very distinctive that he was fried. And then we drove through, we dropped all the guys off at combat outpost, and we hung out there for a couple hours while they got everything in there, and then we took the seven tons to uh to Hurricane Point. And I remember driving up and thinking, I'm glad there's a super tall wall, but this is a terrible tactical outpost for a vehicle-based unit because there's only one way in and one way out. And that slalom

Hurricane Point And Bad Gate Design

SPEAKER_05 2:08

to get in there was designed by somebody who's never had to do tactical deployment of vehicles. Like you had no line of sight, you had nothing. You were coming out blind and going in blind, and coming into our traffic circle.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yes, yeah. I mean, like, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Well, I remember them teaching us bomb bursting out the gate, and that's all we did was bomb burst it out the gate as long as there wasn't anybody in the traffic circle.

SPEAKER_05 2:35

So you didn't know a choice because you just drove out as fast as possible, hoping, hoping that you weren't gonna get killed. Yeah, and surprisingly, nothing happened. Uh, we did our left seat, right seats, and you know, everybody's touched on that too. I don't remember having a bad opinion of the army guys, I just remember not seeing anything. We drove up and down Michigan and we went on Nova one time, and they just point, they just pointed out the windows, and that was it, and drove as fast as possible. And knowing now, again, 20 some odd years later, I they didn't tell us anything of what their mission was or how long they had been there or anything. I didn't realize they were literally like a platoon reinforced and were just holding in place so that we could come be the actual element. So they were just trying to stay alive. Well, fucking, I don't blame. If I had a platoon, I would have done the same thing. I'm not gonna risk any of my guys.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

The guys who we did the left seat, right seat with Romani wasn't even their AO. No, no, like they just they essentially like took us out just to show us uh where we were gonna be operating. So they really didn't know Romani. They knew the roads, but they didn't really know a whole lot about it.

SPEAKER_05 3:49

Yeah, the unit that Hurricane Point was named after from Florida had left a ton of equipment, gear, ammo, all that shit, buried grenades and all kinds of stuff in the sand. And they left and gave it over to this. I think there was an 82nd Airborne platoon, is who we were riding with.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:09

And and that they were like, Yeah, we've we haven't even been, you know, we don't know, we know this, we know that, we know where things are, but we don't, you know, we don't know anything about the neighborhoods or anything. All right, great, whatever. And our like I think our first or second mission was the one that uh Rake Brandt talked about. The first mission that we had was a night mission, the very first mission. And we went out with the CO, and you might remember this, Jordan, because I was fucking pissed when I came back. And now looking back on it, I actually credit Captain Weiler with being brave enough to fucking drag us out

Early Patrols And Learning The Area

SPEAKER_05 4:42

there. But at the time, I was furious. We just drove out to the to over on Nova to some farm area, and he just had us get out and start walking through fields, farm fields in the middle of the night. I was fucking furious. I was like, we are just targets. This is stupid. What the fuck are we doing? Also, this is this guy's field. We're just pissing him off, stomping on his crops. Like, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Was that I kind of remember that where was the field like had they like uh flooded the field and it was all like mud? Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:20

Yeah, it was deep mud, yes. Yeah, yeah. We if we'd have got again, this is another one of those times where I'm so glad nothing happened, but if we'd have got shot, we'd have got murdered because you couldn't run in it, it was all ankle deep mud.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

And I think we went in, I think that mission was supposed to go longer, but after we hit that flooded field, we were like, we can't do anything in this, and then we ended up getting back in the trucks and the system going home. I don't remember. I think we were just doing a presence patrol.

SPEAKER_05 5:48

That was that was it. We were just trying to learn, and what's again where I credit him is he realized we just need to get out there and see the city and get comfortable with being out of the trucks and see shit. Where to me, I was like, this is an unnecessary risk. This has nothing to do with our mission. We are just wandering around in neighborhoods for no fucking reason. And I yeah, I didn't understand at the time. Twenty-two years later, I understand a little bit better, but uh yeah, I was so fucking mad. Our first day mission that I remember, it was escorting the wing to Ticatum Airbase, and that was when we hadn't really set up truck teams exactly, but there was something wrong with one of the trucks, and so we were like all condensed and packed into four trucks instead of five. We hadn't got the high back back yet. I don't remember what would happen to it, couldn't remember, or maybe we didn't even get it yet.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, I don't think we had gotten it yet.

SPEAKER_05 6:44

Either way, uh, Swede was in my truck and up in the gun, and that was when we were uh we dropped off the wing at TQ. We came out of the southern gate, and we went by an old Iraqi ammo supply point, and we had deviated

Wrong Turn Into A Minefield

SPEAKER_05 7:05

off of the main road, and that was when I drove into that minefield. Well, not me, when Horadsky drove into the minefield. And I looked out the window and I remember specifically looking at these yellow cluster mines, still with the parachutes on, they're American cluster mines. And I was like, stop. And I look up at Harden and I was like, I need you to guide the vehicle back on our tracks. We're in a minefield. And fucking Coleman coming over the radio and be like, how do you know you're in a minefield? I was like, I can see the mine, they're they're two feet away. I can see a cluster mine right outside my door. And him being like, You're fucked. Over the over the fucking radio. And I was like, All right, cool, great. Might as well be foreshadowing for the future. Uh apparently landmines love me. But uh we we drove backwards on our tracks, and uh Aldretti was in the back, like swearing up a storm. Horadsky's fucking sweating his balls off, backing up as slow as possible. And we backed out of that minefield and got back on a different road and went home and nothing happened. And we called it in, and nobody nobody had even knew there was mines there. And the army was like, Thanks, it's noted. We'll go mark that minefield so that doesn't happen again. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

I think their reason we got off the road because it was an army unit on that road.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

Yes, yeah, yeah, we're moving out of the way of of bigger vehicles.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah, and it well, it was Randall and my vehicle and JD's vehicle, we were like butt up against him, and we couldn't move. And you guys came around and started going through the open desert, and that's when you were I just remember looking out at the side and seeing you just come to a complete stop and then start backing up, and that's when you're like, we're about to go back up.

SPEAKER_04 9:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 9:19

Yep, that was I I truly don't remember. I just remember the fucking minefield and uh my my butthole sucking up the fucking Humvee seat because I I was like, these are the most deadly things, because if one goes off, they're all going off. We're just fucked. Like this is and I am not saying that to any of them because they don't, you know, they don't know. Maharden knows that he was sweating bullets, but I didn't say anything to Radsky because I just wanted him to do it and just get it done with. Either we're gonna die or we're gonna get out of the minefield. We got out of minefield. And then shortly thereafter, right before we went on night missions, uh, was when we responded, I don't know, 14, 15 clicks north of the city to that army convoy on the other highway that was north.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Mobile?

SPEAKER_05 10:11

Whatever it was, I don't remember the name of that one.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah, that was because that was a big one. That was Route Mobile. That's the one that went straight into Baghdad.

SPEAKER_05 10:20

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. It was the bypass

Convoy Aftermath And Armor Changes

SPEAKER_05 10:22

from Heat and uh the Western Syrian border that went straight to Baghdad. And that was when we responded to that convoy where they had got the explosive charge thrown on the hood of the vehicle. And that I had seen a dead, I'm well probably I don't know. I know a lot of people say I've never seen a dead body until I was in Iraq or whatever. I had seen dead people before. You know, I grew up in a weird neighborhood where I had seen a dead body before or whatever. That was the worst death. I that was the craziest shit I had ever seen up front because there were like just pieces of American people, and and those guys were not the lieutenant, it was okay, the army lieutenant of that. I think it was a military police unit, but everybody else was just in pieces, and we were providing security, and we were, you know, trying to scoop up the vehicle, and then that recovery vehicle came and we left. And we had started talking about like, okay, this is the threat, like it's IEDs, and so we had bolted on lots and lots of armor, but we went and got more right after that, and we stopped putting the concertina wire on the hood because that is what happened to those guys. They had thrown the explosive into the concertina wire on the hood, and it just murked that vehicle. Uh, our next mission right after that, literally, we had come back into Ramadi, we got chow at Junction City, we had got water, and we got called out to an EOD call, and we took an EOD out by Route Nova for a pipe bomb that was strapped to a telephone pole. Yeah, and that was where they were actually. I I

EOD Pipe Bomb And Crowd Tension

SPEAKER_05 12:06

think this was the either right after Warth or right before Warth, which is the only reason why we had even like known, I think it was right after, because I think that was the only reason why we knew to look at that level to see a bomb that was strapped to a pole. And they brought out that stupid robot, and it you know, they dropped the bomb down and they put a piece of C4 on it, and as the guy was driving the robot back, it died. The robot died. And you probably remember this. He low crawled in the ditch with a lasso, with a 550 cord lasso, and threw it around the robot to try to drag it back. And I remember it was uh, I think it was E who was like right there next to him. He was like, You're fucking stupid. What the fuck are you doing? Just grab that thing and let's go. And that was when the crowd started to form, and they were getting hostile with us and throwing rocks at us and all kinds of shit. And uh Coleman was like, fix bayonets, they'll back up, fix bayonets. And and we did, we put bayonets on, we didn't do anything with them. We still had, you know, we put them on and and uh and they did, they backed up, but then I'm I don't remember who else, I think it was first sergeant, somebody else was with us, and they were like, Okay, calm down, move over here, and like we're not gonna do this, and and we left and nothing happened. But just the fucking goat rodeo of being out there for four hours or whatever it was, after scraping these dudes off the highway was just a crazy ass day. And then right after that, we switched to night missions, and that was that led us into April, and that was when uh obviously Morris getting wounded on the fourth and then dying on the morning of the fifth. So for my part of Morris, just going into it, and you guys stop me anytime you remember anything that you want to say, otherwise, I'm gonna keep telling stories. But for my part of Morris, oh I didn't want to hear for it. You know what? I actually skipped, I skipped a thing. So uh no, we went on we had night missions right before that. The second night missions was when Morris happened. The first time we went on nights was when we were doing that raid out past the dam on March 17th to 18th, is when my vehicle got blown up.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah, yeah, it's that money. Right in front of the Alhoc mosque. Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:40

Yeah, so uh first recon came in

Night Raid And The IED Blast

SPEAKER_05 14:44

on the night of the 17th, and we saw McCullough. And I remember this specifically because we were saying stupid Irish shit, like, oh, it's St. Patrick's Day, and I get to see my Irish brother, and uh blah blah blah. I wish we had a Guinness. And McCulliffe barely even drank anyway. I don't know, he wouldn't even care, but he's funny fucker, and and uh he was talking about they had been doing all these anti-mortar ops and stuff like that. And what all right, great, we were catching up, it was cool. They had way cooler vehicles than we did, but zero armor. They had those little like dune buggy looking things, which were super cool.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

The uh scissor mounts on the doors with the machine guns, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:17

Yeah, looked super cool. Uh would have sucked with an IED, but they were they looked super cool. Anyway, we all geared up for that fucking stupid ass raid and ran 900 vehicles right down Michigan to go stage at combat outposts. And for whatever reason, that was, you know, we were driving along, our convoy, you're right. We just passed, we passed Saddam's Mosque a little ways, we got to the Al Hawk Mosque, and we had just passed it. Pitch black, we were running blacked out, and uh a car pulled out behind the convoy. I remember looking in the rearview mirror specifically and seeing that car following us, and it was during curfew, there was all that curfew you weren't supposed to have any cars out there. I was like, all right, something's gonna happen. You know, I don't I don't know what, but something. And they turned their headlights off. The second they turned their headlights off, I got knocked out. I had no shit. And uh woke up with my head underneath the radio mount because we had got blown up. I give all credit to Radsky. I tried to ride him up for multiple fucking awards specifically for this because he drove through it. I have no fucking clue how he drove through it. It was a big ass blast, but he drove through that bomb and he was the only one not wounded. I was wounded. I had shrapnel in my head, face, neck, uh, right hand, right shoulder. And McCabe was sitting in the backseat. All the shrapnel had hit the roll bar and bounced straight down and went into his thigh. And he was having difficulty standing up to get out of the vehicle. So he stayed in the vehicle to provide security. And Alderdi was had shrapnel everywhere, basically, because he was up in the gun and it had blown parts of the toe side off. And he's up there screaming and yelling, you know, which is how I knew he was okay. Uh, but Horadsky was totally dead silent, just kept driving perfectly, pulled it off to the side of the road, got out, checked the truck. We had two flat tires. He was like, all right, we can still drive, blah, blah, and like giving me like this sit rep, which is great. I ran down the road and teamed up with Coleman, and us two plus I don't remember who it was. I believe it was Cohen, but I could be wrong. Ran over to this shop, was the only place we could find anybody doing anything. And there was uh what looked like a father and a son stacking rice bags, and we yelled at them, Did you fucking see anybody? And they're like, No, Mr. Like, you know, they didn't know anything. They're just, you know, we're mad and whatever. But it clearly it was whoever these dudes were in a car had buried some shit, or you know, whatever, whatever had happened. We got over to combat outpost, and that was when you know, we're we're checking everything out. Uh all of us that were peppered with shit went to go see uh Kricard, the the surgeon, and I couldn't get my gear off. My arm, my right arm was just dead, I couldn't lift it at all. And so Randall helped peel my flack off of me, and I was wearing one of those uh sexy uh underarm or skivvy shirts, but my whole right sleeve was just soaked in blood, and then I was like, oh shit, I'm hit. And uh go over, and I I just caught a mirror for one second, and I didn't realize my face was all covered in blood, too. I had been hit all over the place, and those stupid Wiley X glasses probably saved my eyeball because I had shrapnel above my head, all up in my face. I had a big piece lodged, went through my cheek and lodged itself into my uh mandible. I had a piece in my shoulder, piece in the back of my neck, and one in my I still have one in my finger, my ring finger that's still in there. And I don't, I mean, I I just knocked me stupid. I was I was out cold for maybe two seconds or three seconds, whatever it was, just long enough to wake up and and see the smoke clearing. And saw Kricard and and all the corpsmen, they didn't do it, they just kind of washed me, they cleaned me with some kind of alcohol and soap which burned like hell. And then they're like, All right, you're fine. Like that, you know, they peeled they pulled a piece out of my earlobe, but nothing else. And they're like, Yeah, the rest of it'll work its way out. And I was like, all right, great. Stayed up all night with them fucking with me. Uh Radsky changed the two tires on the truck by himself, and then we drove to that raid, and I remember being just fucking dead ass, stupid, exhausted uh for a raid that that yielded nothing. We didn't find anything. But I remember Sergeant Major Booker coming over and wanting to look through the tow system so he could watch the raid on the tow system. So I had to be awake. So I was like standing up and like falling asleep, smoking cigarettes behind the truck trying to stay awake. You're concussed. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

Yeah.

unknown 20:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:03

Not only was I up on IB right, I was concussed. But at that time, so nobody had been significantly hit. Well, uh, I think we were the first ones to get significantly wounded, and so everybody wanted us to go see uh the Charlie Med guys because we didn't nobody knew, nobody knew what you know what to do. And so we stayed behind and sat in the hooch, and everybody else went on a mission, and that was the worst goddamn feeling I I ever had. I and I told McCabe right then, and I was like, We're never doing this again. I was like, I don't give a shit. If I can walk, we're getting in the truck and we're going on mission. I was like, if they get hurt right now, I will never fucking forgive myself. And he's like, What the fuck do you mean? I was like, if I die, you die. And he's like, that's the stupidest agreement ever. I was like, I can't, I can't do this. I can't sit here. And you guys came back and took us to Charlie Med, and then you guys went and got chow at the fucking chow hall, and we didn't get any because we were over there getting looked at. I was so fucking pissed off because we were always always excited about that shitty fucking chow, but it was better than what we got.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Shitty chow, man. That was that was like five-star Michelin diamond bait.

SPEAKER_05 21:15

Yeah, it was high class for the muddy.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

There were uh there were many a times where uh I could just I just wanted one of those corn dogs that they had over there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Chicken corn and blue. I still dream of that chicken corn on blue. That was that was it.

SPEAKER_05 21:28

That was the thing. Yeah, yeah. Blue Diamond had the onion rings. That was the one I always liked.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:37

Anyway, they did x-rays and they were like, they're like, you're fine, you know, whatever will happen will happen. And uh good luck. You know, didn't give me any antibiotics or anything, which just you know, whatever, nothing happened, but total waste as far as like nobody, but it was it was early, nobody knew what to do. And then uh literally two days later was when the bike bomb went off and hit Warth. So it was like it ramped up fucking super fast right after that. And then uh I remember getting word it f to me, it felt like it was the next day, but I know on the calendar it was not. It was March 30th or 31st when the Blackwater contractors got killed. And then we were on that was the next time we were on night missions or at night QRF or whatever we are. That was when uh we split the platoon. So they had ramped up the mortars heavily, and my section's goal for that night on April 4th was to go up by the Euphrates River and set up an anti-mortar OP. We had a general idea

Morris Is Hit And The Hooch Goes Silent

SPEAKER_05 22:44

based on the the poo from the the counter battery where we thought they were firing from and we could get uh eyes on with the toe sights. At least that was that was our guess. We couldn't see shit. That's the the the end of the story is that we couldn't see shit. But we set up in two different places, and both times we couldn't really see much across the river. The the foliage was just too heavy. But what we did find on our second place we set up with our three trucks was a house where it was all young military-age males going in, just car after car, dropping off two, three, four guys at a time. Now, it could have been a church group, it could have been a family reunion, it could have been a gay orgy, it could have been fucking anything. But we were sure it was an insurgent meeting, and so we stayed and took notes and wrote down as many people like I don't know what you know, we don't know anything. We're not private detectives. So we're just writing down the number of people and the coordinates to this house, but we get the brilliant idea, we got to get a better look. I don't know what the fuck we thought we were gonna do. But that's when knife crawls, crawls along this farm field, and he's right next to where they're going in. Like, can't be more than 20, 25 feet away. And he's telling us, like, oh yeah, I can hear him, and this and that is like, well, what are they saying? I don't speak Arabic. Like, fucking, this is super useful. Like, what we didn't record anything. I don't know what the fuck we thought we were doing. But he's out there still, and that's when I can. I'm always I literally made it my habit from the time we left to always be trying to listen to the radio because somebody had to be. Nobody else was, so somebody had to be. And I was listening to the radio, and that's when I heard that somebody from our platoon was hit. And I just said, I don't give a shit what you do, get your ass back here, we'll cover you. And I don't know how Neil got back, but he got back without standing up and running, but he was back in two minutes, so I don't know if he low crawled. I mean, the dude was in super shape, so he might have. But he got back over without standing up and running and jumped in the vehicle, and we hauled ass through neighborhoods. At that point, I didn't know the fucking city that well, but I knew it, you know, and those shitty maps we had. I was like, we got to go this way, that way, this way. And we got from our position to combat outpost in 11 minutes. And the second we got there was right when they Morris was just about to come out, and me and Swede walked into where they were had stabilized him, and they were just finishing doing the burrito wrap to package him up to get on the bird, and I walked over to Krickard and I said, What happened? And he's like, Well, he he got hit by an explosion. I said, Is he gonna make it? And he's like, he just looked at me and he was he didn't know what to do either, right? This is the worst thing he had seen by that point. Maybe I don't know. I mean, he had seen a bunch of shit by that point, maybe not. But he just said the human body's an amazing thing, and I was like, Well, that that means he's gonna die. Like that that's that's what that meant to me. I don't know what anybody else thought. But Harden was pissed, and he was right, he was right over my right shoulder, and we walked out, and as we walked out, they were putting, you know, they were loading Morris up onto the the truck to drive him over and then unload him to carry him to put him on the Hilo. And that was when Swanson and his cameraman, Dave Swanson, and his cameraman were coming to take pictures, and uh Harden pushed the camera away, and I told Swanson I was gonna fucking kill him if he takes a picture of his face. And I said, I don't care what you're taking pictures of, you're not taking a picture of his face. And he's like, I'm here to report the good or the bad or whatever is here, and I was like, That's that's not what his family's gonna see. I don't give a fuck what you say. And he did snap two pictures. I've seen those two pictures, and they're pretty blurry, so I guess good or bad. I don't know if I don't know if I've we accomplished our mission.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

I don't know, maybe I'd have it as Swede's like pushing his face away.

SPEAKER_05 27:14

Yeah, yeah, and you know anybody, you know, most of the people who listen to this podcast have seen Swede, but anybody who hasn't, he's you know, a little over six foot and just a huge barrel chest of a man. Like he's just a big fucking monster of a dude. And when he's mad, he's and he's not usually mad, he's usually a really nice dude, but when he's mad, he's fucking terrifying and uh bright red in the face. So I imagine you know they were like, okay, well, we're not gonna push it. So and uh that was we we didn't see anybody from your section. Uh I don't know if you guys had already gone back out to reinforce. I don't even I have no idea what had happened, but we rallied back up and I I said, Well, I know where they were supposed to be. We're driving there. I don't know where they're at, but we're going there. And Coleman's trying to raise anybody on the radio, and and come to find out now after hearing your story and other people's stories. You guys didn't have comms because the fucking antennas were blown off and all kinds of other shit had happened to comms or whatever. Calm was down. That's the that's the fucking story of the deployment. Calm was down, yeah. But we drove up, and that was uh, I saw the high back and I saw two Marines sitting there with bandages, and we came, we got out, and that was I I was like, and I saw the vehicle blown up from the RPG, and I was like, what the fuck happened? And they're like, Yeah, we got ambushed. And uh right about that time, Rainmaker had already been there. They were setting up some outer cordon or something like that. And I remember everybody was just just zombified. I don't I don't even know how else to put it. Everybody had like literally had like the thousand-yard stare from a Vietnam movie. Like, I don't know, it made it must have made everything very real. I had not seen any action like that. I got blown up, but I had not seen any, I hadn't seen any shooting, and you guys got shot at. But you didn't, I to my understanding, you didn't get to shoot back, and I definitely didn't get to shoot back, and I was fucking mad. I was like, we you know, we got to do something, but there's nothing to do. And Miranda was hurt, and Cohen was hurt. I remember talking to Cohen and completely ignoring Miranda, but not on purpose. I was just stunned, and uh, and seeing Cohen all bleeding and shit, and I was like, you know, there's blood all down his his leg, and I was like, are you guys alright? And I don't know, it was it was a crazy fucking thing. But we all we got that vehicle lashed up, towed it back the old school hillbilly way with a toe strap, got back to Hurricane Point, and everybody wanted to, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if everybody was going to bed or what, but I don't remember anybody sleeping. People just tossing around, and I was sitting in my rack, and I remember having my my the fleece beanie pulled way down over my eyes, and just remember thinking like he's dead, he's already dead, and nobody else knows it. And that was right about the time Staff Sergeant Coleman walked in and said it, and just I remember Newmeier howling and falling to the floor crying. And I think I remember you putting your arm around him and giving him a hug. And then it got real it got quiet, it got so quiet in there. Our hooch was never quiet. Arhooch was a fucking goddamn chaos all the time. People laughing and yelling and farting and jerking off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wrestling each other and go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I think Bondi after after he came in and told us, I think Bundy came around with phenagram and just started giving people shots of fenigrine just to help people sleep. I think it was fenagrin that he was giving everybody.

SPEAKER_05 31:15

Or Benadryl or something, yeah, who knows? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

He was just giving people shots and to help people uh actually try to get some rest after that. Nobody slept, nobody like the lights were still on until Colin came back in and told us.

SPEAKER_05 31:38

Yep. Yeah, and where where the fuck are we gonna go?

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Yeah, we didn't know.

SPEAKER_05 31:43

Like Yeah, we're gonna go do something.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah. You were you were probably the voice of reason like just get the fuck out. Let's let's figure out what's going on first.

SPEAKER_05 31:57

Once it got dead quiet, uh you and I walked over and grabbed his gear and pulled it to the back of the hooch. And we split up his grenades and his his uh ammo between everybody, like you know, four between three or four people.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:14

And got all his personal stuff, his letters, his pictures of his dad, his diary, and all that shit, and stuck it in a box and took it over. And uh, I don't remember who he gave it to. I it was either Gunny Maraki or Furs Art. And we're like, somebody needs to send this to his family. And we just threw all his gear in the back, and that was our extra gear. Yeah, and nobody ever questioned it, which I I looking back on that now, I think was interesting. But we I don't know, it became a thing uh pretty quickly because you know, we did the same thing when the engineers got wounded. We took their mags, when you know, like shit like that. Like we just that was it, man. You know, you don't need this anymore. We're gonna we're gonna split this up because we were short, we were always short. And the day, like the day prior to us going out on that mission. I have I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again now. Uh Morris was like, I don't know, he was a weird apparently he argued with people all the time, is what I hear from other people, which I didn't know as a sergeant because he never argued with me.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

He didn't argue with me.

SPEAKER_05 33:22

That's exactly right. Yeah. He he was like a little brother to me. He was always like coming to ask me to ask me things, anything, ask me to hang out, ask me about music, ask me about shit. But he had never learned how to play cards, and he was infatuated with playing spades. And I was sitting in the smoke pit when he came and asked me to play spades, and I made some joke about fucking his mom. I have no idea what joke I made, but literally I didn't realize his mom died of cancer on that day. Like, and and and that and I was and he's like, Come on, Sard, any other day you could say that, just not today, not today. My mom died on this day, and I was like, I have a fucking dead body, I don't give a fuck. Like, I was saying awful shit. Awful shit.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Yeah, I mean, even if you didn't mean it, you were gonna double down because you're for sure.

SPEAKER_05 34:11

Yeah, absolutely. But uh he he didn't care, he took it, he didn't give a fuck, and uh sat there, and I don't think he smoked, I but he sat with me while I smoked a cigarette and then we played spades. Somewhere I still have that pack of cards. It's from a carton of cools, it was a blue deck of cards from the cool carton. And uh I I literally have never played with those cards again. Uh that was the last time we played, and I threw them, I threw them in the bottom of my gear, and I never played with them again. They've been in a foot locker in my garage for 20 years. And I I just remember really fucking liking that kid. Like there's no real reason. I didn't like any of the other boots that much, but I just liked him a lot. He was just very, I don't know, he was a good dude. He was just weirdly a good dude. And he always rolled with the punches, he didn't bitch, he did everything. I mean, he was just he was just good. I remember the training at March Air Force Base, he was always a stand-up guy. We'd tell him to get in the gun, he'd get in the gun, tell him to fucking do this. Like he was just he was about it. He was there for business, it was great. And he didn't, he never complained. I don't know. It was uh, it fucking sucked. And then the next mission, the next day after he died, we had to go out and show everybody where he died. And that was like a kick in the fucking dick. We drove out there and they wanted to know well, where did it happen? How did it happen? What did you do? And it felt super fucking accusatory, is the way it felt to me. And some kid, we found a car with bullet holes in it, and some kid came out acting like it was his car and already put him in an arm bar and bounced his face off the car about 16 times. That was where he got the the nickname uh Jedi because I'd never seen anybody move that fast in my life. He was everybody was on fucking fire at that point, like so mad.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

I don't know if you remember this, but uh what was our church's name? Rocco. Rocco pulled the guy out of a cab right when we pulled into like the industrial area back there. Yeah, pulled the guy out of the cab. The cab was still rolling. He pulled him out of the window and started just wookie slapping him to the point to where I started feeling bad for the guy. And I was like, Rocco, we're not gonna be able to ask him questions if you can't talk. He's like, he's like, okay, okay, okay. But he's I mean, he he checked him off the cab a couple times, and the cab finally started kind of slowing to a roll to a stop. But yeah, that was right probably around the same time that uh Aldredy was putting that kid in the arm bar.

SPEAKER_05 36:57

Yeah, so yeah, people were again. That was one of those things like where you could feel the pulse of everything that was going on. Our platoon was was angry, like fucking, I I mean, angry isn't even a good enough word.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:13

Ready, very ready for blood, and didn't give a fuck, didn't care. Like, I and people I've uh the only way I can liken it to anything is is I read those stories of them dudes who committed the Mila massacre in Vietnam and how their guys had got wounded, and then they went the same, you know, went to the village that they thought was responsible and then like burned the village and killed people. And I'm like, people are like, I can't understand how you could do that. I was like, Oh, I can understand it. Yeah I can understand it. You watch somebody who, again, who's your little brother, you know, gasp their last couple of breaths after half their bodies blown apart. Yeah, you could do it. Believe me, you could do it. And that's that was how it felt. Everybody was just ready for vengeance. It was it was crazy. Uh, and then we got our we got our chance. The morning of the 6th, uh we didn't have any idea what the fuck was gonna happen, but everything was popping off and the radios were going off, and I was sitting outside. I I didn't, I don't think I I don't remember sleeping after Morris until the 10th. Now maybe I did. I didn't sleep much that whole deployment, but I I don't remember sleeping more than an hour or so between the 5th and the 10th. And I was sitting on the radio

April 6 Firefight And Getting The Wounded Out

SPEAKER_05 38:28

and I went to grab you and knife, I think Matroca, I can't remember who else, whoever was like right at the front of the hooch is who I grabbed. And I was like, hey, shit's shit's going. Like, we're gonna have to go. And you guys started waking everybody up and suiting everybody up, and we were on the trucks, and guys were I don't even know. I mean, like you're like pacing, like it was like waiting, wait, like a watching a bull at a at a rodeo, went waiting for them to pull the the lever to let the bull out of the pen. Like they were just pacing back and forth in front of the trucks. You could hear the gunshots going off way off in the distance, and on the radio, it was just fucking chaos. Nobody knew where anybody was. Rainmaker had already gone out the gate, map three had already gone out the gate, and map one was on their trucks, but they weren't suited up. And we were like, we were like, let's let's fucking go. Put us on it, let's go.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Yeah, because I think we had transitioned to night QRF at that point. Yep. And so we were fourth in the shoot.

SPEAKER_05 39:37

Yep, but we went out third, and uh, I remember rolling past map one. I don't I don't again, I don't know who made that call. I have no idea why.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

And then driving down and and uh you're the one that made the call, King. I'm not gonna lie, like there's a good chance that we were already ready to go and you were just like, let's go, and we start dropping out the gate.

SPEAKER_05 39:59

That is possible. I I I had the uh idea, I definitely was more aggressive. Uh, so it's possible, but I don't know why anybody would listen to me. But I would have called it over the radio and be like, hey, we're ready. Fug it.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:15

But we rolled and uh we went straight out Michigan initially out the traffic circle and then bank to left up through where all those ice blocks were on the side of the road where the ice huts were, and got onto racetrack and went up to the Sophia district with what we were we were catching intel as we were driving. We didn't even know. All we knew was that golf was in contact, or no, Echo, sorry, Echo was in contact. And as we're going, we're like, no, the snipers are wounded. There's a guy missing, and they're surrounded. And you have to go this specific location. And they gave us coordinates, and so I wasn't the one leading the convoy. Shit, I was in the back, and I'm getting this shit, and I'm yelling, hey, head on a swivel, it's fucking real today. And Aldredy's screaming back to me, if anybody does anything, I'm gonna just fire a whole mag. And McCabe is McCabe had combat experience too. He he was with 3-5, and he got so low on that gun like he was damn near laying on the roof of the Humvee and just ready. He already had the gun off the pendle mount and was like looking through the sights, and I was like, okay, I guess this is it. And we turned down that fucking street and got, I don't know, however far, and you guys said they lit a fire at the front with diesel fuel. I didn't see that shit. I was on the back, and we got lit up from all sides uh in the back. It was small arms fire all over the place, and then reinforced like within minutes, 15 minutes, reinforcements of the enemy started coming from the rear. They were trying to close us off. The CO's vehicle was back there, and Pryor was up on that saw. And honestly, I think Pryor saved my ass for sure, and probably the back end of the convoy's asses that day. He probably killed 20 people in 20 minutes easily uh with that saw that from the reinforcements.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Was he the very rear vehicle?

SPEAKER_05 42:21

No, uh, our very rear vehicle was Rit Richie and Big Boy. They were the very last vehicle. I was fifth, they were sixth. And but what it but when we pulled up into that street, he was on uh prior was on the further east side of the street, and we were all on the west side. He just had a better angle, and he was just again just laying down hell. Uh it was great. And then I have no idea what happened in the front, but I know what was happening in the back was ambulances were dropping off dudes with AKs. Uh we got a couple RPGs shot at us from the back, but not many. You guys were getting a lot more rocket fire and machine gun fire in the front than we were in the back. It was mostly dudes with AKs and pistols. And then we got uh the motorcycles started coming. And the motorcycle guys were doing stupid shit, pulling up, firing off AKs, pulling off down alleys, and and just fast enough to where we couldn't shoot them every time. And I was one of the few people that had an ACOG, and I just started waiting because they were coming from the same spot every time. So I was just waiting, and I picked off the first guy, motorcycle flew off. Next guy came and I fired, but the motorcycle lit on fire, and the guy lit on fire, and he's driving on fire, and we're fucking laughing. Everybody's just laughing our ass off because you never see it. Looks like a stupid fucking action movie. And he lays down the bike and he's on fire, and we're just like, oh shit. And uh it got quoted in that Bing West book. Like way wrong. Like that, you know, the bike was smoking, and and uh we were like, Oh, that's so cool. It's like, nah, man, that nobody said it was cool. We were just we were confused, like, what the hell was going on?

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Yeah, that whole book was uh nothing but wall, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:18

Yeah, yeah. We finally moved up the street. I I don't even know, quarter mile, maybe a half mile. Like it was a constant slog moving up that street. But I walked my ass down, jumping vehicle to vehicle up to the front of the convoy to get people to start moving forward because nobody was moving. The trucks were staying as set machine gun platforms, and you guys were off clearing houses and kicking down doors, and the CO was dragging Perez with the fucking radio left and right across the and I uh he's so fucking big, he's so tall and so big. I was just sure he was gonna be dead. And I was like, sir, just choose a side. I don't give a fuck, choose a side, like we're gonna get the vehicles moving. And we started finally moving the vehicles forward. I feel like it was an hour, could have been three hours into the battle. I have no fucking clue. But as we moved forward, we got grenades over the wall, and I watched Harden somehow make himself this fucking tiny little thing into a little crack in the wall as a grenade went off and it missed him completely, even though he should have been dead by some magic. And then the next grenade, uh God, I want to say it was him, but it might not have been him. It might have been another dismount. Picked it up and threw it back over the wall. Didn't hit anybody, but like just threw it back over the wall. And it blew up one of those fucking Russian grenades with a long fucking stem on it. And we kept going up the street, and we were basically under constant fire until Rainmaker got there and doubled our numbers, or probably almost tripled our numbers because they had so many people. And that was when we finally got to push up the street. I from my memory, when they got there, we cleared a house, we put some enemy EPWs in the back of Rainmaker's high back and pushed up finally to where the snipers were, lit up that field. There was maybe six, seven guys left in the field from the surrounding element. The Echo guys had held their own. Uh, the shit we saw when we pulled up was just dead bodies outside of doorways of where they had just been shooting dudes that were trying to get into the into there. I have I don't know how they fucking alamoed that shit. And knife tells it as he went out to the pump house and found that kid uh that was lost out in the pump house. I don't remember who it was. I remember snatching up people that were alive, some guys who had dropped their weapons and surrendered. And Bundy and some other corpsmen were rendering, I think maybe it was uh Rudy, were rendering aid. And one of the Echo guys came out of the house and was just fucked up. He had wounded and tears in his eyes and came over to shoot to shoot them guys in the head. Uh and we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he was like, and he was like, fuck that. And like, hey man, they surrendered, like we have to now. And Coleman, like putting his arm around, was like, hey, big dog, like fucking calm Coleman voice, in the middle of a gunfight. There's still a firefight, go on. In the middle of a gunfight, like giving this dude like, it's all right, little bro, we're gonna take care of you. Like, like telling him like it's gonna be fine, gives him a cold bottle of water, sits him down in the front of the truck. I I I even the story I'm telling now wouldn't be do enough justice of watching you, tweeter, Randall, Stevens, E my fucking shooting off that 50. He fucking had to, he probably killed 30, 40 people that I saw. Monroe, everybody I saw was doing shit that should have earned him an award, that should have worn him fucking several awards. Bronze Star, Silver Star, some crazy shit. Clearing houses, clearing yards by yourself, stuff that you weren't trained to fucking do by any stretch. And we ended up in a literally outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded on a street. And somehow all of us walked out of it. A lot of people were wounded. I mean, I think our half our platoon or more was wounded. People coming out, shrapnel in their face. Uh Bundy got shot in the ass. Like, you know, everybody uh people had all kinds of wounds and shit. And it it I can't do it enough justice, even if I I got we can sit and have a whole podcast of me just describing April 6th.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Yeah, I think Bundy got shot in the butt the next day.

SPEAKER_05 49:08

He did, he did, but i either way, he still got shot in the butt. Yeah, yeah. It it was it it was unbelievable to watch. Anyway, we got to them snipers and they unloaded. I I remember one dude shot through the shoulder and the lung. One guy's eye has popped out of his fucking head and bandaged up.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

That's one I remember that. That that's like one of my most favorite memories.

SPEAKER_05 49:40

Yeah, even now working in the medical field and seeing all the shit I do, I still remember his wounds. Yeah, uh and one other guy was real seriously injured, had bled out, he was like white as a ghost. And I remember going over, and we grabbed Regelsberger and their high back from Rainmaker, and it was like, This is the ambulance. I need you to keep up. We're gonna drive back to get medical. We can't wait. The Bradleys were hemmed up because of an IED or whatever the fuck. They couldn't even get there, but they got there right as we were leaving to start treating wounded. And we weren't gonna get a bird we had called. We weren't gonna get a helicopter. They're like, no, it's too hot, can't bring a bird in the city. Okay, great. We drove back, and I was hanging out the window, firing at people on the side of the road with AKs, and Horadsky's running cars off the road. I don't remember who was in the back of the high back with Regalsberger, but they didn't have a machine gun. They had a fucking M16A4 shooting, shooting at people over the side of the fucking truck, and we just shot our way back all the way down Nova till we got to combat outpost and dropped them three dudes off. And I remember you guys calling over the radio and like, we're good, we're good. Shooting stopped, we're good. Casualties are evaced, we're stable, uh, we're low on ammo, we're coming back to retool. Okay. So we all pulled out and met at Hurricane Point. There's uh there was some kind of argument between Gunny Maraki or First Sergeant Mac or whoever and the chow hall guy to open the chow hall for us. I remember that because it was after sunset by the time we got there. And I remember sitting at that shitty fucking chow hall, and everybody was dead ass silent as we're eating that garbage fucking chow, those hockey puck meat. And I was so excited because I had two Haji Cokes fucking stacked on each other. And I was sitting right across from you. I usually sat right across from you and Randall.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:53

And I just looked to you and I said, This is the best I've ever felt in my life. And you started fucking howling, and you're like, hell fucking yeah. And everybody started going back and forth and just telling, like, did you see that shit? That fucking dude exploded. That fucking dude got shot. This fucking and everybody just started going off, and it was it was like we won the Super Bowl. It was so fucking it would that there's no I can't I can't explain that feeling to anybody, and the only better thing than that was the next day because on the seventh it wasn't new anymore. We were again third out the gate, we went right back to that same spot because Randall made a wrong turn, yeah, but that was fine.

April 7 Push And The TOW Shots

SPEAKER_05 52:40

But then we had triple the ammo, and nobody was under any illusions of what we were about to do. Everybody knew for fucking sure what we were about to do. And watching two and three-man teams forming spontaneously and kicking down doors, and we had Gunny Meraki, which was like a weapon system unto and of itself, walking on the street and fucking sniping people. It was it again. I could tell all the combat stories of all the cool things. There's three things that really stood out to me. Me and Swede cleared a house where we shot two dudes in the fucking courtyard as we were going through. We got up on the roof, and I had forgot my water, number one. I didn't forget my cigarettes, but I forgot my fucking water, and I was dying of thirst because it was like the third house we had cleared. And then we realized uh, much like your story, Blake, where you realize all the leadership element was not with the trucks. I was we were up on me and Sweeter up on the top of this two-story, so basically we're three stories up. I can see Tweeter and Randall clearing shit, like two or three houses away. I can see Staff Sergeant Coleman in a courtyard of another house, and uh Lieutenant Stevens is out also in a courtyard of another house with other Marines, and I look back and it's PFCs running the trucks, and I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing this ever again. From here on out, I'm with the trucks. And uh I can't, I'm like, can't fucking do anything because I'm so cotton mouthed, I can't even call over the radio. And and uh I'm Swede fortunately had a camelback and I took a drink off his camelback. And right as I did that, we were about to go down off the roof, but just seeing the whole battlefield and what was going on was a very surreal moment of watching. I could just see like I don't know. Again, it was like a movie, like seeing different dudes doing shit. And nobody was shooting at us, so we could actually sit there and watch for a minute. But right as we were about to go down, I'm looking over in the direction of Jordan and Randall, and Randall that that was when he had his 203, and he fires a 203 and hits some dude square in the fucking back. And because he never shot at M, not never, but he didn't shoot M16 first, he shot that 203 first, didn't matter what it was. And he and he just laid that dude in half, and I was like, holy shit. And Swedes up there, laughing. And we walked down and get back with the trucks. And right as we got there is when the just enfilade of fire came from the mosque that was down at the end of the street, and they started the RPGs, and every everybody was pinned down at that point. There was just so much gunfire that was coming down the street at the time. And that was where you told the story, where you and Randall were way, you, Randall, and Metroca were way ahead, and you guys threw the magazine out in the road to mark your position as to where you were, and I was leading the trucks up with, and I brought Groves up and we picked you guys up. Right after that, it was constant movement of the truck slowly, just bounding back and forth and taking out targets. And we moved, I don't know, I want to say like six, eight blocks, maybe that way. There was a feeling that I started to get while I was moving the trucks around, and that's where I say there was no better feeling than the sixth than there was on the seventh. I got into a weird, like it's it's something that everybody describes as like a flow state, and you hear artists talk about it, right? Where they're like so into their music or so into their work, or whatever, professional athletes. I have never felt that at that time. I never did anything like that before. And telling trucks where to go and running back and forth, and I it was like it was like I could feel everything going on at once, and I just I don't know. It I chased that feeling for 20 years. I've chased that feeling ever since. I would give anything, I'd give anything to relive that day again. It felt beyond good watching dudes do that shit. It was amazing. Uh it was my truck, and Mosell's truck ended up at the front finally, towards the end, when we were really getting hit with uh big machine gun fire and the RPGs. And Mosell was very accurate with that 240, and Monroe was providing good cover fire with the 50 from the third truck behind, and that was when we started taking uh a ton of RPG fire down by the mosque, and so that's when I decided to call up uh my vehicle. I actually took the time to do the full systems check on the toe before I fired it, which by that point was like 65 seconds, but 65 seconds when you're getting fucking shot at is forever and a half. And uh I crawled up on the hood and jumped over the top and got down in there and did the full systems check and fired that fucking tow missile at that motherfucker who kept peeking out around with those RPGs and watching him flip through the fucking air uh with an effective toe shot and literally everybody just erupting and cheering at the same time. I was like, that was it. I won that literally again. I don't know, I won the Super Bowl, the World Series, and everything all at the same time. Um right if it was very short-lived because right after that, a guy came, popped out with an RPG, and shot at Metroca and buried his ass in rubble. And we were trying to get angle on that right side of the road to shoot the guys from the roof, but they kept coming out.

SPEAKER_02 58:42

We were walking side by side, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:44

Yeah, yeah. I thought Metroca was dead. That was what I thought because I did not see him come out. I saw you come out, I did not see him come out.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

I wish we'd been hit.

SPEAKER_05 58:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

I thought I'd been shot.

SPEAKER_05 58:55

Yeah. And uh I was like, fuck it. Fucking somebody fire something, like, do something. We're gonna clear this house or something. But there was no entry to that compound from the area where we were. And so Mosel was like, I'm gonna fire the toe. Like, yeah, hell yeah, fucking do it. Now, Mosey fired two really great toe shots during that deployment, but that one was an impossible shot. That was minimum distance, arming distance for that fucking toe. Fired a damn near like across a street, basically, and perfect, perfect hit and collapsed the roof of that building. And never heard shit from them guys again. And that that was it. That ended the fucking that ended the battle. Like the two toe shots, and that was it. Like there's nobody else to fight anymore.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

Yeah, I don't remember a whole lot of shooting happening after that.

unknown 59:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:50

Yep. Now I don't remember I didn't remember at the time like everybody being pissed that we broke contact until I started hearing some of these stories of like everybody being pissed off that we broke contact, but we were running out of ammo.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:04

Well, that was it. We were out of Mart 19. And uh and the 50s were great, but they weren't punching through those block walls. So there was no, I mean, we were we were gonna lose if we stayed there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

And I think you and I had gone up and told JD, like, hey boss, we need we need ammo to get home. Yep. Because who knows what we're gonna run into on the way back. And that's when uh he told Wiler, like, hey, we gotta go.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:28

Yeah, and we had to pull one of the Martin 19s down and put a 240 up because it was out, we were out.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

And fortunately whole percent.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:37

Yeah, and there's a lot of other stuff that happened on that day, people firing AT4s, all kinds of stuff like that, but not not a lot of those things are real memorable. A couple of different vehicles starting on fire from being shot to shit with Mark 19 because enemy kept hiding behind it. But I don't know, that was uh that was a hell of a day too. But it I mean uh shit, I don't know. We were out six, seven hours on the sixth. It felt like forever on the seventh, but it was probably only seven or eight hours. We went back out on the eighth, didn't do shit. Back out on the ninth, we got in a couple of like little tiny run and gun fights that were nothing. Like an RPK fired at us, and we fired back, like that, you know, wasn't much. On the

Exhaustion Intel Rumors And Closing Ask

SPEAKER_05 1:01:26

and again, I don't feel like I had slept. I spent half my time in the battalion CP trying to talk to Major Harold to try to figure out anything, or Major Wiley, either one, to try to get any kind of intel about anything. And the intel we were getting was fucking crazy, like just stuff that didn't make any sense whatsoever. At one point we were, I mean, this is all like through the whole deployment, but at one point we were told they were gonna bring a they had a thousand-pound bomb loaded on a truck and they were gonna drive it up and that I don't even remember all this. We had the Chechen snipers, we've mentioned that one. Uh we had the what was the other one? All kinds of chemical weapons scares, all kinds of just all kinds of different stuff. And some of it was was based in reality, but some of it was just crazy, crazy shit. And uh on the 10th, we went out and we were part of the southern portion of that cordon, damn near right where we had just been in that huge gunfight on the 7th. And so I was sure we were gonna get fucking lit up, but I was so exhausted from not sleeping. I remember dozing off for maybe 10-15 minutes in the front seat of the Humvee when that dude ran the checkpoint, and Miranda saved his ass by shooting out the tires of that car. Because everybody else was gonna kill that motherfucker.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:48

And then uh we got in one little gunfight towards the end of the afternoon while everybody else was was shooting and everything else. But nothing nothing crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:01

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