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

We close part 3 with Sergeant Nylin on memories that never fit neatly into a timeline, from a traffic stop with buckets of body parts to the moment a Humvee hits a landmine. We also talk honestly about the long tail, grief on deployment, going numb after coming home, and what the whole thing means twenty years later. 

• pulling over a car with surprising results
• hitting a landmine... and doing self-aid under shock 
• engineers probing for mines
• searching for drowned Marines and a chemical weapons scare 
• running medevac and triage after mass casualty attacks 
• using jokes music and hooch life to keep morale up 
• regret over discipline decisions and the court-martial process 
• getting Red Cross calls while deployed 
• September ambushes gate defense and the final push home 
• struggling to feel anything after returning to civilian life 

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Transcript

Introductions And April Context

SPEAKER_04 0:07

This is part three with me, Shane Nylon of Mobile Call Platoon 2, and our guest co-host, Jesse Jordan.

SPEAKER_05 0:14

And then April kind of quieted down, at least for us. Like it was not bad until the last week of April. And the last week of April, we were going out to do an observation post on the girls' college. What a fucking good idea for a bunch of young asshole Marines is to take toe

Bucket Of Body Parts Stop

SPEAKER_05 0:35

sites and go look at girl college girls. And uh that was when we pulled over that car, and you found the bucket of feet and faces and everything else that was in there when they were trying to. I I still don't understand what was going on, but it's still one of my favorite stories is pulling them dudes over and they had buckets of parts.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah. I I don't remember, like you remember the mission that we were supposed to be on way better than I do. Yeah, I just remember calling over the radio saying there's a bucket of body parts in that, and and it looked like it was nothing but feet and hands. Yep, like nothing else, like just feet and hands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

And we were like, And probably look looking back on it, those were probably like Al-Qaeda dudes who are cutting off people's hands and feet for torture, right? Like we probably really missed an opportunity, but none of us could piece it together based on what we knew, right? And they seem like normal dudes. That was the other thing. They're like, oh no, no, no, we're just trying to make sure they get to the morgue or the the whatever, like they're trying to get it to the hospital. They're gonna take hands and feet to the hospital, and uh and still still couldn't figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I think they were Iraqi police, weren't they?

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Right, yeah, they were wearing Iraqi police uniforms, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I should say that that they were at least dressed like Iraqi police, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:02

Right, right. Anyway, we're up on the top of the only hill in the whole area, and there's a big cemetery nearby, and you know, just next to us is the Habanya Dam. It's actually kind of other than the fact it smelled like garbage and trash fires the whole time, it was kind of a pretty area. You know, it was it was a little nicer than some of the rest of the city. And we were about to break down our OP, and Homewood was driving uh Staff Sergeant Coleman's vehicle, and Richie was up in the or no, Richie was driving, and Homewood was up in the gun. He was looking at me and giving me this weird look. I remember looking out the window and giving him the finger and and uh whatever, and we started to back up and my truck blew up. And I was like, I had no fucking clue what happened. No fucking

Landmine Blast And Self-Aid

SPEAKER_05 2:51

clue. In my head, one of the AT4s had gone off in the back, or we had gotten hit by something, like indirect fire. Like we just didn't hear it, and a rocket hit the truck, or a mortar hit the truck, or something. I hit the roof and my leg had got wedged, you know, my left leg had got wedged in a weird way underneath the heater of the Humvee because I was in the vehicle commander's seat. And I looked down and my my leg is twisted and my knees dislocated, and it's just searing in pain. And by look over and Radsky is over the steering wheel looking at me with his eyes wide open, but not moving. I was like, okay, he's dead. So I look back and McCabe is making some kind of noise. He's saying something. Like, okay, he's he's alive, right? He's he's talking at least. And I'm looking around, and there's just dust everywhere, smoke and dust everywhere. I was like, I we're on fire. Like, I don't know what the fuck's going on. And I'm fucking grabbing Radsky and I'm like, hoping he's not actually dead, but he's not responding at all. Out completely with his eyes wide open. So I look down and I try to straighten my leg or try to bend my leg and I can't bend it. And I realize my kneecap is not quite right, and so I just start pushing on it until things pop back into place, and that hurt, yeah, that hurt more than anything I've ever felt in my whole fucking life. Yeah, and McCabe pops his head down, he's like, I think we hit an IED. And I was like, how the fuck do we hit not? We have been sitting here the whole fucking time. Like, okay, whatever. And so I start getting like getting oriented, and Horatsky wakes up totally fucking normal, as though he's been awake the whole time. And he's like, hey man, we're good. And he starts hitting the gas. And of course, the truck can't drive because the fucking back end is all blown off, but he's hitting the gas trying to drive, and I'm like, stop hitting the gas. We're we're something, I think we're on fire. I don't know what the fuck's going on. And finally the smoke. Yeah. Then everything starts going away, and I was like, All right. And I hear over the PRR, finally, my hearing is starting to clear up, and I I don't remember who it was, but I think it was either you or Harden is like, I think you hit a landmine. Like there's a huge hole. I think you hit a landmine. And I was like, all right. I was like, I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna walk, and you guys are gonna walk in my footsteps. If I blow up, go a different direction. And so I have to kick so with my right leg, my left leg is fucked. My right leg, I kick the door open because it's wedge shut because the the vehicle is bent at that point. Kick the fucking door open, get out, walk, they walk out through my footprints. We look over at the vehicle, sure as shit, back end is blown open, back axle on the left side is gone, tires flat on the right side, fucking all kinds of damage. We hit a landmine. Call up the engineer or the call up the EOD people, they're not interested, they don't want to come out, and nobody wants to escort them any fucking way, but they didn't want to come out. Don't I don't know why. Maybe they had another mission, but they they didn't want to come out. They get our engineers and two trucks from headquarters and Rainmaker come out. I think it was Rainmaker, maybe it was sledgehammer, I don't remember who it was. It was 81s. They come out and the fucking engineers decide it's World War II again and start probing the ground with bayonets for more fucking landmines. And we're out there for fucking ever. Like forever. And Bundy is like, hey bro, I got I got morphine and I got Motrin. And I'm like, I'll take the fucking motrin. I don't want to be out, I don't want to be passed out. I was terrified of morphine at the time. And uh because I felt like we only gave morphine to people who are dying, like at least like you know, that that was my my experience of it. Like you gave it to the and like I wasn't 100% sure it wasn't killing people. Like, I don't know, maybe that was your like that was palliative hair, right? Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

To me, like morphine was like you were gonna die, right? At the time.

SPEAKER_05 7:30

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and uh, and I took I took way too much Motrin. Like now I know I did because I ate like eight pills, and uh which was stupid as shit, but I was fine. And uh fucking Coleman was like, he's like, hey man, I I don't know. He's like, I got a cigar. I was like, I got cigarettes, I'll be fine. Like fucking and he was like, dude, you look fucked up. And I was like, Yeah, I am fucked up. I just fucking did a landmine. We get back, and uh, I don't remember how my truck got back, but they fixed it. They put the back end of another blown-up truck on my fucking truck and fixed it, and we got that truck back, and they put like new armored doors on it and shit, and we got it back. I don't even know how we got a we got like a loner vehicle in the interim, but they fixed that fucking vehicle, which is crazy as shit. I got a whole bunch more fucking stories. We're gonna go on for another hour, so but uh my my my next memories after that were working the fucking drownings from them Fox Company dudes, and I remember being so fucking mad about them dudes drowning.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Uh looking we were mad about the mission in the first place, right? That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

Yep, yep. It

River Drownings And Chemical Rumor

SPEAKER_05 8:55

all the shit that had just happened in April, and then for them to go and swim try to swim, just didn't it didn't make it, it made it made no sense to me. And uh I remember being super mad about it, but I remember going to the north side of the river and just searching for them dudes for days. But the thing that I remember most that nobody's talked about, because a lot of people have talked about the fatigue and being pissed off about the mission. But we found that house that was under construction that was being used as a some kind of ammo storage point, and we took all the enemy shit, and and our trucks didn't have room to put shit, but we took all of it. And two of the things we brought back came back positive for chemical weapons. And because I remember having to answer, like, where did you find this? And like, you know, I was like, here's the picture. You know, we had those shitty digital cameras, we had taken a picture of where we found it, and we had coordinates, and they're like, Okay, and so that same like day right after that we everybody had been searching for days for them dudes that had drowned, and then the Navy rescue people had come and got them, and whatever. Fucking Sledgehammer had to go out in fucking mop gear to go to this supposed chemical weapons thing, like full suits, boots, fucking everything, and found nothing. And I was like, God damn, dude, that's that is the craziest. Like, supposedly, whatever we found was uh either tested positive or it said in Russian sarin gas. And I was like, good, that's great. We were carrying that shit in our trucks, and uh it was not long after that, right after right after those drownings is when you know we had a couple more missions, whatever, and then Savage got hit. And I felt like from there it was just a spiral of bad news like every two to three days, to me. That's how it felt to me. I remember talking about this shit with you, tweeters, specifically, but Randall also, uh, that we had to keep everybody going, right? That we had to do, we had to do something. And so we started like just grabbing dudes and doing random shit. Uh that was when like, and Matt 3 got in on it too, right? That was when I mean they always

Keeping Morale Amid Bad News

SPEAKER_05 11:28

had stuff going, but that was when we were just like, all right, we're gonna go play basketball, we're gonna fucking go do shit. Cause like things were just it was just constant, constant bad news of like somebody's dying. We'd hear about crazy shit from Echo Company. That was when the Captain Royer stuff really started kind of hitting hard too, was in May. Like it was early, it was early in the deployment, but people had a lot of a lot of rumors, and it was fucking hard keeping people's like keeping them focused on the mission, but not dwelling on on all the bad shit that kept happening.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, because that that was around the time we had to start running log train every day. Yep. Yeah, well yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:17

Yep. Yeah, well, I mean, that was also when we started uh specifically, at least our platoon. I I assume every platoon did this, because I think I thought it was the EXO or maybe it was Gunny Maraki who kind of said, like, if you see the the guys from Echo or Golf, give them shit out of your truck, and we would carry like extra like Cokes and water and fucking chow and shit, and like just give them stuff. We were doing hearts and minds missions for our own guys.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

No, I I I very have a very specific memory of late kind of late May. It was right around when the engineers got hit. Yeah, I can't remember when. Anyways, I was talking to a buddy of mine out there, uh, Smith, and just seeing just because I don't think I can't remember when he got relieved of command, but it was but it was right before that. And that motherfucker, that like he was a really chipper, nice guy, and try trying to have a conversation with that guy, you you might as well his whole family might as well have been you know been massacred. I mean, they really had. I mean, Echo had taken so many casualties, I mean there was nothing good to say at that point, but Reuter didn't get relieved until late July, early August.

SPEAKER_05 13:42

I mean, it was late. It was super late. Oh, was it? Oh shit, I remember Shickle took over super late.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

I was remembering it was earlier than that. No, it was about a month, maybe a little bit longer before we left.

SPEAKER_05 13:54

Yeah. Okay. The I think the snipers were the tipping point. And I mean, they were killed on June 21st. I mean, that was but that was the that was the thing that that really got the that's fair. I don't know, could kind of got the magnifying glass on them.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Oh, that's fair.

SPEAKER_05 14:12

At least, at least from my memory.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

That's fair.

SPEAKER_05 14:15

Next big thing for us was was exactly what you just said. The uh the engineers getting hit by that IED on the dam was uh and again, people have covered it in great detail. I don't have to go over it much more than that. The only thing I I'll say is I remember that kid getting loaded in my truck and kept saying, please tell my wife I love her, please tell my wife I love her. I know I'm gonna die. Please, and he didn't die, and he didn't die. Uh fucking all credit

Engineers Hit And MedEvac Rush

SPEAKER_05 14:46

to everybody who was there, but Lopez and and we had just got our combat replacements. That was their first big mission for day for day Jesus. Yeah, for we had May 14th is when we got Lopez, Day, Hampton, and Gonzalez, and that mission was on May 29th. They hadn't even been with us two weeks.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Yeah, the one thing I remember from that was because you uh, if I remember correctly, you and Swede, y'all were up on the hill where the Drago, where you hit the uh the landmine before, and you guys just hauled ass down, and y'all were essentially running the medavac. I just remember you and Swede running the whole medavac and just like I was up in the dam with them, but we were getting them off, and you and Swede were just running that whole thing.

SPEAKER_05 15:40

Well, you guys couldn't drive down, there was no access for you to drive down. So again, fucking professional athlete style, uh Lopez, Miranda, um Bundy. I I don't know who else was on the litters, but running those guys down that 30, 30, whatever foot embankment, basically straight down, loaded them in our trucks, and then we just took off. And we drove right go.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

You're good. I was gonna say I remember the litter collapsing on one of those guys because it didn't get one of the fold-up litters broken out all the way, and they as they're going down the hill, the litter just collapsed on the guy, and I just remember him screaming.

SPEAKER_05 16:18

Yep. Yeah, the guy that was in my truck that was yelling at me, the only reason why I even was talking to him was because the our back of our I was in a hardback, and there was no room for the litter, and so the door the poles of the litter were hanging out the sides, and so we shut one door, and I was physically holding the leaning over the seat, holding the door, staring at that dude while Radske was driving, and uh, but holding the door so it wouldn't be open. And he his eyes were gone, he was missing a testicle, his thigh was open like uh like a book. That's how it looked like to me. Just the muscles were open like the page of a book, and I could see the bone. And uh a couple other random wounds on arms and and torso. But and I I thought he was dead too, and I remember just being like, You're gonna tell your wife yourself, like trying to be encouraging. Uh, but I thought it was a lie, and it turned out it wasn't. He lived, but fuck, I don't know how. Again, I I credit Bundy a thousand percent and Doc Ricard and or Son or whoever was out there at the time, because that was crazy as shit. But we drove right past that VBIED, and I remember uh screaming at Harden over the radio, like, I don't know what this is, but but drive all the way to the left of the road. And we did, we swerved all the way around it and we called it in, but and Sledgehammer called it in and it just never got reported. Or potentially the Echo QRF didn't call in their route on the way back. I'm not sure which one. But either way, we were up on the hill when that that VBID went off that same day, and we pulled up two minutes after it went off without any regard for secondary explosions or anything else. We all just pulled up and and literally watching dudes just take their last breath. Like it was there's literally just people dying as we're dragging them into the highback, and I was like, Well, he's dead already, like leave him here, grab that guy, he's still alive, and yeah, uh Swede Swede was having a real hard time with the triage portion of it because I was having him leave dudes that were dead. But they were dead. I mean, they were dead they had fucking holes in their head, man. There wasn't anything else you could do. I you know, I mean they were gonna get we were gonna get their bodies, but we needed to get the dudes who were alive.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:01

And uh at least for me, everybody performed at a at a fucking psychotically good level on it given what we saw. There were just marines and body parts literally everywhere, and you had no idea. Again, it had been two minutes since uh the largest VB ID I'd ever seen gone off, and nobody was worried about their safety. They were just trying to get dudes out of there. But the XO was the one he I mean, he was just like, we're going, and just started going towards it, and we all went together. And uh he he deserves a lot of credit for that. He I don't I mean, as far as I know, he didn't get any awards or anything for that deployment, and at least for that action alone, he should have got something. Like he he really ran the evac and everything on that on a terrible situation hour an hour after we just had a terrible situation.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

So yeah, I I forgot he was with you guys up there on the hill because you guys we were stuck on the levee.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Uh that was the reason they were coming out to relieve us on the levee. Yeah. And then we were gonna go get chow. And like that was the whole plan. And then uh I forgot he was with you guys because wasn't uh Wyler with 81s on the other side?

SPEAKER_05 20:22

He m must have been. He he wasn't with us.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Wyler was coming from one and 81s were coming from one direction, but we were coming from the other direction because it was clear 81s were left, and we stayed there to essentially keep security on them because they set the OP up right after that. That was the whole reason we were doing that, so they could set an OP up.

SPEAKER_04 20:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Why we're doing it in the daytime, I don't know, but yeah. Still this day.

SPEAKER_05 20:50

There's all kinds of shit I could go over for June and July, but it truly all starts to blur together to me. We did what's it what felt like 30 fucking cordon and knocks, where we were mostly the outer cordon. We just did we didn't have the numbers to do the inner kicks. I know you kicked down a lot of doors. Uh me personally, I only kicked down a few. Um I always I I remember talking shit to you a bunch that I was the only motherfucker with a nine mil kill from the only time I ever kicked down a door and and had a pistol. Uh but then on that same day that you guys got shot at with the RPG, and that stupid motherfucker who was gonna bang it with the rock was um I think it was either you or Coleman shot some dude with a nine mil on that day. So I wasn't the only one.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Anyway, it was Coleman. I didn't have a nine mil. I was busy pushing that dude out of the way that was yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:45

Yeah. Uh stuff that stands out to me uh more interpersonally and more about a little bit of hooch life from the summer because people got wild, but Coleman got it in his head. He was going to start fucking with us a little bit more. And I don't know why. I don't know why. It was funny looking back. It was not funny at the time. And that's where me and him started butting heads a little bit. He came to the platoon one time and tried to get us. He's like, All right, everybody, line up, fall

Hooch Life Jokes And Survival

SPEAKER_05 22:15

out, get your covers, uh, get get in formation. We're gonna march to Chow. And now, like you've told the story of Staff Sergeant, he could bench 300 something pounds. He was a huge black dude who uh he had probably killed 100 people on that deployment, if not more. And who knows what he had done before that? Definitely could box better than my 135-pound ass. And I just told him I I got up to him and I was like, I'm not fucking doing it. You're fucking crazy. I don't give a shit. And I walked off. And he was like, Who the fuck do you think? I was like, I don't care. This is dumb as fuck. We are not doing this. And I looked at everybody else and I was like, You guys are dumb if you get in formation. I thought he was gonna kill me. There's multiple times I thought he was gonna kill me, but he was he was fucking livid, and he was doing it to fuck with us. He was trying to play a joke, but I wouldn't even play with his joke, I was picking a fight.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

So I've never seen the fear in your eyes. I never saw fear in your eyes until the one time he woke you up. Oh, yeah, and I don't remember what he was telling you to do, but he was telling you to get everybody to do something, and you were still asleep. Yeah, and you popped off and said something, and he goes, What motherfucker? And you just go like you were wake real quick.

SPEAKER_05 23:47

Yeah, I I don't know what I said, but I remember waking up with him over the top of me, and I was like, I was asleep, I don't know what the hell you want, I'll do it.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I didn't remember the look because that was I can't who was between me and you uh Miranda, Miranda, Miranda, yeah, and then I think it was your or it might have been knife and menu, but I just wrote a go and seeing the look on your face and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:21

Some of the things that I thought about our I loved about our hooch. Early on, we all started cutting uh pictures out of all the Maxim and Porno magazines, and we had the whole entryway covered. It was a wall of women, and that was the fucking that was the thing you saw as you exited our hooch, and everybody contributed. So, whatever type of girl they liked was up on that wall, and there was some big ones and some little ones, some dark ones, some light ones. There was all sorts of things up there, and uh I I liked that. There was a lot of weird uh Harden liked to contribute to from the Easy Rider magazines, and some of those biker chips were of interesting caliber, but I I loved that. I liked that people always were playing jokes on each other and trying to keep it light, even when things were awful. Uh, I remember people playing music, people aggravating Neil playing music all the time. Uh I fucking, you know, I I didn't understand Metroca when we were in Okinawa, but I goddamn loved Metroca in Iraq. Uh he is a fucking morale booster, uh, just a human morale boost. He played guitar and sang. He would play jokes, he would run around. When we were in traffic on convoys, we called him Footloose because that motherfucker would run up and down and talk to the Iraqis like they were his friend. He'd talk to the platoon like they were his friend. He'd be running around, he'd tell people to move. And a fierce fucking combat warrior at the same time when it came down to it. But in the hooch, he was everybody's friend. He always helped everybody out. I I can't fucking I can't imagine anybody better. Groves was always good at fucking fighting with people and wrestling, but in a good way, and then doing crazy shit. Uh tasing himself in the dick with a with one of those electric fly swatters for a hat full of pogs. And uh he had a taser, one of those like little baton tasers, and we, you know, much like 81s, we all did experiments to shock each other and see who could take it the longest. Uh Monroe was what's funny is me and Monroe were the same age, but everybody thought he was ancient. They all called him geezer, that was always his name. But and he what's funny is he would talk religion. But like in the like, I don't know, like a Ned Flanders sort of way. Like he was the nicest dude about it in a weird way, like he wouldn't push it on you. He would just be like, D' you see where that RPK burst went right by the side of my head? That was God moving the bullets away from my head. And you're like, I you're crazy as shit, but I love you. Like, this is amazing. Everybody, I don't know, and it was uh New Meyer always was uh was entertaining as shit, getting duct taped to poles, and Radsky always stealing stuff. My other favorite thing Radsky did was the uh was Starfish Boy. He would he had traffic cones and he would put traffic cones over his arms and his legs, and he would walk around the hooch and talk to everybody, and he'd be like, I'm starfish boy. Like, you're what the fuck is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

That and his tree.

SPEAKER_05 27:47

Oh yeah, and he'd water his tree. Yeah, yeah, which was just a a willow branch. Yeah, you guys went back.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

No, I went back and looked at uh imagery, and that tree is like still there as of like a couple years ago, and it's huge. Nice, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:06

Yeah, yeah. Out of all that shit, my own I only had one regret, I've got a couple more stories to just kind of round this out before I get to September. I want to talk about September just before we fucking fully round this out. But out of all that shit, the only thing I regretted out of everything, because there's a lot of times, like you know, there's plenty of second guessing we could do on calls that were made where people got hurt. Sure. The only the only thing

Regret Over Discipline And Court-Martial

SPEAKER_05 28:38

I ever regretted, and I've told Natividad this, I've never unfortunately been able to talk to Emi. But after them dudes got in trouble on the bridge, I wish we would have just held fucking Natividad down and beat his ass. That's my only regret. I know that the sergeants of the guard really wanted to wake up Coleman, and then Coleman was like, well, now that I know I have to tell the first sergeant, and now the first sergeant knows we they've they had to catch charges. I have thought about that moment more than anything else. I don't regret anything in combat. I don't fucking we shot a million people. I don't know how many we fucking I don't know how many people we all we all shot, but it was a lot. I don't regret any of that. I don't regret it, not a single one of those. And some of them probably didn't even deserve it. But I wish I'd have stood up harder for E Mai and Natividad for for multiple reasons. Number one, uh at least for E Mai as far as I know, he doesn't feel connected to the platoon in any way, and that's that's a damn shame because he's a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:44

And I loved that kid when we were there, and it was a it was a gutting to watch them strip them from the platoon. But then second, they brought a fucking court-martial uh counsel or tribunal or whatever the hell those people are called when you get them all together, of a bunch of pogs who didn't fucking know anything, didn't know anything about what it was like to be in combat or be a grunt or be anything just to make an example out of him. As most stressed I'd ever been in combat was being at a court martial and trying to explain to them if you take my corpsman and my machine gunner, you will cripple my platoon and more people will get hurt. They do not deserve this. They made a mistake. This is not the and and just and looking at colonels in the eye and being like, do not do this. And then just be straight up fucking ignored and it happened anyway. I it I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what I could have done differently, but I felt like I should have done something because I sure fucking started a lot of shit in other times. There's no I had no problem telling people how I felt. But at that time, I I don't know. I wish I'd have done something different.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

And I know Natimitha Yeah, I think at the end of the day, we essentially like it was even higher than the battalion. No, it was. Like I don't Yeah, I don't even think anything we could have done there. I felt the same way, like being on the stand and getting yelled at like I was getting court martial because I told the truth about if they knocked him down in rank, he's gonna stay in the same position as my machine gun. Like I'm not changing him, I'm not taking him out of the gun. Right. He's a hell of a machine gun.

SPEAKER_05 31:36

Right. Yeah. So I mean and and literally saying, like, you know, Marines are alive because Natividad is part of the platoon. Like, yeah, it it you can't you can't take this person away. You could do anything else. Take all his rank, take all his money. Who gives a fuck? Uh anything. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Yeah, that's the only thing I feel really bad about E-Mon because I had many conversations after we got back, um, before he got out, about how he felt bad like he let down the platoon, and and we you know, I try to you know pick him up and be like, hey man, you're still part of the platoon. You're still part of us, you're still one of us. And uh yeah, you fucked up, but we love you. You're still one of us. Um well and ever tracking.

SPEAKER_05 32:29

Other people have mentioned it too. It's yes, they made a mistake, and yes, they they drank, and and something happened by fucking absolute horrible, shitty lottery style luck. Something happened when you had had a drink, and so thus you had to shoot. But they weren't the only people who were drinking. There was a million people drinking alcohol during that deployment, and it could have happened to anybody, uh a higher rank of than both of those dudes, all three of them. Anyway, that's that that was just the only thing that I went through that I I hated. I remember those July sweeps and the August sweeps being nuts. I remember the raids being nuts, just constant rolling through and rolling through neighborhoods, getting ambushed. We got to where we started shooting at cars that were that would, you know, you'd see them the third time, and you'd be like, okay, I'm gonna shoot through your hood. Because we started realizing like this is the start of an ambush. They're just figuring out where to do it. Um just constant crazy shit. Uh in the middle of you know, 120 degree heat and having to worry about dudes going down as a heat casualty.

SPEAKER_03 33:51

The that's when we started doing the IVs and the and back when we get back, put a 550 cord up, get a fucking bag thrown in you. Yeah. Splitting your sleeping bag because you're cold as fuck.

SPEAKER_05 34:02

Yeah, from the cold sailing, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

From the room temperature sailing.

SPEAKER_05 34:07

Yeah, yeah, which was colder than you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:11

Yeah. We had I have two things from August that were that I wrote in my notes. One was Randall got super sick, and it was funny at the time, it's terrifying now to think about it. He probably had some kind of meningitis. He didn't know where he was, and he started speaking German and was like screaming in German. And we were having to like hold him down and put IVs in him because he was running such a high fever, and Bundy was like having to take care of him and shit. And he was super sick and probably could have died. So that and that was, you know, again, we were always short on dudes. It was fucking terrifying of all that shit. Uh August for me, and this is just for me personally, my personal story. So, August was when I got a call from the Red Cross. And that was when I really got to, I didn't know much about First Arm Mac. I I thought he was a decent guy. I knew he took care of people. I loved his greeting and his laugh. Uh, as much as me and Coleman butted heads, I knew he always uh wanted to take care of me. Uh, especially, I mean, he offered to send me to combat stress control after the tank shot at us, uh, which was very nice of

Red Cross Calls And Losing Mom

SPEAKER_05 35:26

him. But uh August, I got a Red Cross call and they said, Your mom's in the hospital. And that was when both of them, again, two of the biggest black dudes I've ever seen in my life, uh sit me down on both of them, put their arms around me and are like, Are you okay? And I have to open up, like in the middle of all this, I'm worried about my platoon, my guys, my friends, uh, everything else. My wife, I hope she's okay. You know, we talked four or five times on the phone. Um now I've got a note from my family. Well, your mom's in the hospital and she's probably dying. So I call home on the satellite phone with Coleman and Mac sitting there, which is also super fucking weird. And uh get a hold of my mom, she's in the ICU and she's got liver failure. And I was like, all right, well, I can't come home. And she's like, Well, I'm I I miss you and I love you. And I was like, Well, I I love you too, I'm sorry, but I I can't I can't leave. I am needed here, I cannot leave. And she said, I'm never gonna see you again, am I? And I I said, Well, hang on, do as best you can, talk to the doctors. I'll see you when I see you. That was it. Hung up and they were like, Are you okay? And I I I was like, Well, this is not new to me. My mom has been an alcoholic for a dozen years or more. I'm not surprised, but it's too bad, but I gotta stay. And Coleman tried for an hour to talk me into going home. This isn't again, mind you, this is in August, and we were was supposed to leave in August originally, and I was like, absolutely not, there's no fucking way. And it it all stemmed back to that feeling from when uh you know we got hit and we stayed back, and I was telling McCabe, like, nah, man, I die, you die. I'm fucking staying until the end. I don't give a shit. But we keep going through all that, all those August raids and all that shit. And uh we had been having, again, back to the theme of the deployment. We've been having all kinds of calm problems. We couldn't get batteries uh during those last few crazy ass raids with the Delta guys. And my father-in-law had sent me uh a battery charger and a case of rechargeable double-A batteries, and that was the only batteries that that anybody could use for the the gunners' headsets or any of the headsets, and so I was trading people shit in collateral, whatever was important to them. So I had a uh fucking box of people's stuff that I would trade for batteries uh for that last those last like Al-Qaeda raids and shit we were doing with uh Zarkawi and all that stuff. I remember trading off those fucking batteries. Um and we got just literally it just got back and the sun was just coming up, and I got another Red Cross message, and uh my mom had died. It was my aunt. My aunt really needed to talk to me, and they the phone centers were open for the fucking you know, one of the weeks that they were finally open. Uh, because there were still people getting hurt even in August, although we hadn't had anybody die, you know, the last one was Condi in July. Um I went to the phone center and called, and my aunt was like, I'm I'm planning a funeral, all this stuff. When when can you be home? I was like, I don't know. I'll be home when I'm home. Have a funeral, don't have the funeral, I'll be there when I get there. And I I remember being so numb to the idea by that point because kind of like I was talking about, it was just bad news after bad news, man. So it was it was nothing new.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 39:50

Well, we rolled into September, and I think it was September 2nd, 3rd, when uh the 2-5 dudes showed up and we started, you know, deciding we're gonna do some handoffs, and we brought them around with us, and they seemed totally normal when they were riding with us. And then we got to uh what was it 7th, 8th, whatever it was? Yeah, and Rainmaker had taken them out. We we were not out at the moment on that day, but Rainmaker

September Ambushes And Gate Defense

SPEAKER_05 40:18

had taken them out for the log train and got hit, and from what I was hearing was that they had not fired back. And I was like, man, this is this sounds like a shit show. And I remember talking because everybody had moved to Junction City, right? And it was just us, like us three were there, and other, you know, the other key leaders. And I remember sitting with Tweeter and I was like, all right, man, uh look out for me, I'll look out for you. Like, you know, uh don't let me fucking die. We're we're on the end of this shit. The ninth was the day we were riding the log train, and my vehicle got just fucking stitched by a machine gun right by combat outpost. Uh they had shot the radiator and the doors and the glass out of that fucking thing, and we limped it in to Combat Outpost. And uh, I jumped in, I think it was either Randall or Tweeter's truck, one of the two, and rode back just fucking pissed because they never fired back. And uh turns out uh Heredia and Hambi uh from golf, I believe they're in golf company, pretty sure they're both in golf company. They're the ones that saved my ass. I didn't fucking know until not too long ago. Uh they had come out from the gate from combat outpost and killed the fucking machine gunner by themselves, just the two of them motherfuckers both got bronze stars for that shit. Um, because they're the one that stopped the ambush. Nobody from our from our gunners in our trucks had fired at any of them dudes.

SPEAKER_03 42:01

So those are gunners, to be clear. I mean, that that was yeah, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 42:06

The two five gunners in the vehicles we were riding in. And you know, it was it was two four grunts that fucking save saved my ass. Fucking I was sure that was it. Because I was just watching fucking machine gun rounds right up the fucking glass, and I was like, well, that bulletproof glass, we were in those up armored, but that bulletproof glass wasn't gonna last, you know, another couple bursts. We went to the the fucking 10th, and the 10th was we went out and where did we go to the government center, wherever the fuck we went.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

And I don't think we meant to go to the government center. I think we were we were taking log train, and log train pushed away and we held up at the government center.

SPEAKER_05 42:56

Maybe that might have been it. The 10th was when the RPG hit Blake's vehicle and nearly killed him. I remember that. And it it made everybody else combat ineffective. And we got into a little skirmish again. Me, you and Swede, I don't know, killed four or five guys, and that was the end of the ambush, and that was it. The 11th was when we got held up at the government center because the fucking tanks backed over the the log train.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:29

And backed over two vehicles. And I was sure we were I was that again, I was sure we were dead. That I I was not anytime we got blown up or shot at, like, yeah, you're gonna die, maybe whatever, but like surety of being dead. Uh on the 11th, I was pretty sure that was it. Because we were getting just waves of fucking dudes trying to assault the government center. They took out the lieutenant that was with us. He got hit in the knee with that fin from the RPG, and all the key leaders from our group were trying to drag him back when they got stitched up, and one of them got hit with RPG shrapnel, and they were all combat ineffective, essentially, not even wounded. They just weren't doing anything. None of the gunners would shoot. The only people that helped us, because Diaz got hit by that mortar, Blake got blown off the fucking tower. Uh all kinds of shit was happening all at the same time. Me and Randall were sitting there fucking shooting it out, and you, I remember you telling your story of you and the lieutenant were in the back. The only thing that saved our asses of even getting out of the government center was that private contractors fucking provided cover fire so we could leave. Fucking triple camp.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

Yeah. Those triple camp dudes at that government center were I'd like to shake some of their hands because you know little dudes are alone on a free in that fucking city. I watched one of them get out of a cap one day. I was in a tower just in the middle, middle of the deployment. Cab drives up in a white dude in tack gear in uh 8K, it's out. I'm like, where did where did you come from? I'm like, who is this dude with this giant balls? Yeah.

unknown 45:22

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:23

Yeah. Now, reading uh official accounts later, apparently they started giving out some kind of amphetamines to the enemy somewhere around July, August, somewhere around there. Now, I didn't see anything that reminded me of fucking meth head behavior until September. And when we were driving back from the government center, the dudes in the black pajamas that are just running at the convoy, just running at us, firing rockets and firing fucking AK, and I'm just hanging my rifle out the window, fucking shooting dudes. I I've never seen it, I can't even imagine anything like that. And I I did not think we were going to make it back. I remember getting back, me and Randall being at the clearing barrels, and the fucking platoon left us at the clearing barrels. Yeah, and that's and that's when the gate got attacked. So the gate gets attacked. Fox Company is damn near overrun, where there's fucking hundred dudes or so trying to jump the wall, and that dude, I mean, you told the story of the guy firing the small at the cyclic rate. The view that we got was we ran up to that fucking gate, and none of the gate guard dudes were firing, and there was a car parked at the front of the gate, and they're like, it's a V-bid. Randall's fucking psycho, but I love him and I'm glad he exists. He just starts firing 203 at it. He's like, Well, it'll detonate. Like, we're a hundred yards from it, but okay, carry on, sir. He's like, Well, it'll detonate if it's gonna detonate. He hits that thing everywhere with 203 and it doesn't, no sympathetic detonation. Also, the Iraqis that are trying to shoot at us are not avoiding this vehicle, so they don't think it's a V-bid either. So, like, we've got two points of information. We are just taking contact at that little fucking set of Hesco barriers that are right there on that slalom on the at the gate, and we bound forward up to the T walls, and I'm shooting dudes off the roof while Randall's shooting dudes running at us, and it's just the two of us. Nobody else is shooting. The guys at Fox Company are shooting like crazy, but nobody else from Hurricane Point is shooting. There's people on the bridge posts. Now, I don't know who they were. I I don't know if they were headquarters guys or if they were two five guys, but whoever it was, they didn't fire a goddamn shot. And me and Randall laid out I don't know how many fucking people at that front gate, but at short distance, I mean 50 feet, like they were getting very, very close. And then finally, thank fucking god, first Sarnellus shows up at the time, first Sarnellis, with like some backup, and they took where we were at because we were out of ammo, and we left and went back. That's when we met you, and you were like, You fucking left me again, which was great.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Well, I didn't realize you guys had been left at the clearing room, and so I went back to the hooch. Yeah, and I'm looking for you guys like, where the fuck are they? Yeah, and then I go walking back, and uh that's when you guys were walking back, Jesus Chrudge. Yeah, I wanted to get something, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:40

Yeah, but I was I was fucking over it because I walked right over to that sergeant who was in charge of the section that we were with, and I went up to him, and their lieutenant had already left the day that day from the fucking RPG to the knee, and I said, if you keep this up, you're all gonna die. And I was whatever, a foot from his face, and and he got real shitty about it and was like all you know yelling and whatever, you don't fucking know nothing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I've been here long enough. I've seen enough. If you keep this up, you're gonna die. I said, We had three people die from our company. You go ahead and choose three people you want to die because that's gonna happen to you for fucking sure. And he grabbed my fucking jacket and all that stuff, and he's gonna punch me. And I was like, You can punch me, you're still dead. Doesn't fucking matter to me. And Sweet is half laughing and half freaking out at the same time, and trying to like pry this dude off me. And I was like, I don't, I don't care. I don't care. And I'm it this guy will never hear this podcast, but if he does, I'm sorry, because that was that was pretty awful. And they they uh they had a hell of a time, and I uh their command lied to him.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

I'm sorry, but yeah, I want to say I saw that guy back at Mateo uh like two months later, uh walking with a cane.

SPEAKER_05 50:10

I believe it. Well, at least he's not dead. I'm glad. But yeah, they they had a bad mentality and got chewed up. Well, we left from there and we did our recovery at Junction City, and we went, I I my butthole was clenched the whole way to Al-Assad because I never wanted to be in a seven-ton. I never understood giving up my security to anybody else. I I it was not a comfortable moment for me. Getting mortared at Al-Assad was just the icing on the cake. I thought it was hilarious. And uh leaving when we got to Kuwait, I had to call my aunt again about I was like, all

Redeploying Home And Going Numb

SPEAKER_05 50:47

right, I am actually coming home. I'll be there for the funeral, just keep her on ice a little longer or whatever. And uh my body just shut the fuck down. I I was a mess. I was a mess. I had pain everywhere, I was fucking shaking, and Rake Brandt gave me a fucking trillion drugs, and I was out cold for like 20 hours. I don't know what the hell he gave me. Whatever he gave me, thank you. Because it worked. I felt I felt like jello and I couldn't get up.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

I think you slept the entire time we were at Victory John, or what what was that camp? It wasn't Victory.

SPEAKER_05 51:27

RF John. That was the one I remember. It was Camp RF John.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:34

Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, because he drugged me. And uh, I appreciate it because I was that I was fucking I was done, dude. My body was done. I remember getting back, I remember feeling weird about getting back, but the weirdest thing for me was was again kind of the capstone on this stupid story was I go into my mom's funeral and not I couldn't process it, dude. I was not I was not ready to have feelings. That that's just the the simple fact of it.

SPEAKER_01 52:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:05

And uh it it felt so fucking weird coming back off that leave because I didn't feel like I was part of the platoon anymore. I knew I was because I helped do some training and stuff, but uh my I had one foot out the door already. Like it, you know, me and Pryor went to Tam and Tap and drank, I drank way too many monster energy drinks and you know, talk shit and fucked, but like I just didn't feel like I was that was it. I wasn't part of the unit anymore. And we got to December, which is when I got out. And uh Blake came and stayed at my house for a week. We put a hardwood floor in my floor, and uh and he took off, drove back to Illinois, and and I I I literally didn't feel like I could feel anything even at that point. I was just I'd never really processed fucking shit. Went started going to college because that was the whole point of getting out, right? To go to college and get my business degree and all that stuff. Uh February of 2005, there was a protest on the college campus I was at, and I got surrounded because I they had handed me a flyer that was against the Iraq war, and I just handed it back and I said no thank you. Didn't fucking I'm sure I said it angrier than that, but to my feeling, I just said no thank you. I probably said, fuck you, no, thank you. But I feel like I just said no thank you. I got surrounded by protesters, and I was about to fuck some dude up. I was just like, all right, well, I guess this is it. I'm surrounded, I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna go out fucking swinging. And the janitor security guard looking motherfucker, but who was probably a vet because he was a janitor, uh came over and like put his arm around me and was like, it's good, dude. I got you, and like took me out of there and saved my ass. And maybe a month later, I popped off. Uh me and my wife had had an argument and I like punched the wall and like went high and right, and that's when I realized like I gotta stop drinking, I gotta fucking do something different. I was just not, I never, I never like I never let myself feel anything, and uh I was doing everything I could to stay away from it, and it was a bad fucking choice. Like, I never had like true post-traumatic stress, I never like you know backfire of a car or freaking out or any of that kind of stuff, but but I had I had like put little walls in place to where I like refused to have emotions about the deployment for so long. It was weird until now, until now, and now uh 20 years later, trying to fucking unpackage and unwrap everything.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

Yeah, well, I mean, at the end of the day, the fact that you and Blake put this thing together, I think it's helped a lot of people um unpackage some of these things.

SPEAKER_05 55:03

Well, and what's funny is it was it the idea started from a conversation in Las Vegas of us trying to figure out how to unpackage it for ourselves. Yeah, it's same thing. Like we were just like, we've never talked to anybody about this. We should just start talking to other people. And and it it kind of evolved from there.

SPEAKER_03 55:25

So, buddy, you uh got all the way to the end and I'm gonna ask you that same question uh that we tend to ask a lot of the questions. Yeah, yeah. So what 20 years on? As you said, we've uh took a while to process everything, but what what does this all mean to you? What did what what do you say to others about this? What does how does this land now?

Making Sense Of War Years Later

SPEAKER_05 55:54

It's funny. My answer would have been different in 2005, it would have been way different in 2010. Uh in 2005, I just wanted to be as far away from the Marine Corps as possible. I hated everybody and everything, and I was ready to get out. I was an angry motherfucker, as Jordan has uh enlightened the story with of stories of my anger. I was ready to get out, and then for years after I did not want to be a veteran. I wanted to be anything other than a veteran. Uh people knew it, right? It's not like you can't figure it out real fucking fast. We just move different, we act different and talk different. But I didn't I you know I just want to be distanced from the idea. But now it's quite the opposite. I wouldn't trade there's a lot of things I would trade from from the Marine Corps experience itself. Like, for example, I would trade being sick as a dog and freezing my ass off on the side of the mountain at Bridgeport uh very easily. I I don't feel like that was very useful in my life, but we got to experience something in Ramadi that I don't I don't know I don't know that anybody else does. Not very many. In all of human history, we've got to be the one percent of the one percent. And it to truly feel the bleeding edge of life like that in your face and form a bond with other people, I have never felt closer to anyone other than my wife. And it's completely different, obviously, than I do to to most of the men in my platoon and and most of the men in the company.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

SPEAKER_05 57:56

I would wish people didn't get hurt. But I'm glad to have done it, even if it was for nothing. Even if the whole point of the Iraq war 50 years from now turns out to be completely pointless, I don't care. We did an amazing fucking thing given what we were given. And it was, and again, beautiful gift for a terrible cost. As far as my service overall, I think you said it one time, Blake, uh, and you may not have said it on the podcast, but you said it privately, maybe. Probably part of the reason I joined the Marine Corps infantry is so that way I could always say, like, I've got the Trump card, right? I did something fucking badass.

SPEAKER_02 58:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:42

I agree with that. I did something badass. And I I I like it, man. I like the people I met. I like that I did it. I kind of wish I would have done a little bit more, although I'm glad that I've done other things in life too. Uh wouldn't trade it for anything. It's definitely colored and influenced everything I do now. And I'm proud of it. I probably don't talk about it ever, but I'm very I I still am proud of it.

SPEAKER_03 59:16

That's perfect, man.

unknown 59:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:18

I think that was what's well said. And I and I identify with all of what you said too. So appreciate you sharing.

SPEAKER_05 59:26

Cool, man. Has it been like three fucking hours? Did I do three hours? I'm so fucking. Yeah, you did three hours. I talk so much.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

No, I mean it was it was great because I mean you have so much detail. Like you remember so much detail about especially dates and stuff like that. Where I mean, I feel like I would remember a lot of details for certain things, but you double have.

SPEAKER_05 59:48

I mean, I could do three more I could do three more hours actually, uh, on on details of stuff. I remember a lot,

Wrap-Up And Subscribe Request

SPEAKER_05 59:55

but uh to me it's all like it's I remember being mad, but I it's all good stuff, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

So yeah, yeah, there's a lot of details about stuff that I remember like, and I think if if we all just kept doing this all night, you know, messages about one message was it would probably go on for 10 hours. Fuck that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:18

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean the the number of times, I mean it's still, I mean, fuck. I mean uh Nylan, you as you were telling some of the stories, there was like five things that popped in my head. I was like, oh fuck, that's right. You know, like I like I forgot all about that. Yeah, and so just like you said, Jordan, I mean, like the the more you talk, the more you're like, oh yeah, man, this even if it's the same story, like there's there's elements that keep coming out as like, oh, that's right. That's right. I was on the berm, you know, with with Captain Bond.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

I forgot all about that until I forgot who brought it up, and then you brought it up again tonight, but yeah, I forgot all about that craziness.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:58

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I find wild about that is is I mean, how fucked up of a situation were we in when a bucket of body parts doesn't get to the level of being the thing that I remember from that deployment because so many other insane things had to happen. But that got pushed down to the bottom of the list.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:24

Well, and even better, like we wanted to be upset about it, but we couldn't figure out a reason why. Imagine if somebody showed up at your door with a bucket of hands, you'd be like, I'm calling the cops, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

I feel like we take this guy in, but I don't really know why. Like, what I didn't see him take the body part, so yeah, I guess we're just gonna let him go.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:44

They're just like, all right, carry on.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

They're all left hands, it's fine, whatever.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:50

It's just a Tuesday, Tuesday of hands.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

Like, you remember the um the night Morris got killed. That was actually the second night we had been out doing that. Um, the night prior to that, we did the same thing. We took a little we took a different route. Uh, but we were watching Al Hawk Mosque both times. Yeah, and uh we rolled up an IED maker. That first night was the night that the lion platoon walked by us.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

And we I was like, do we stand up and get shot, or do we sit here and maybe get shot? Uh like we're just gonna lay here and see what happens. Uh and then they actually hit an IED down the road, and then we caught the trigger man as he popped out of the shadows. And so, I mean, we I guess we did a pretty good job behind that because nobody was so yeah, I mean I talked JD into that, yeah, and uh I originally wanted four dudes, and he's like, No, you get three, and so yeah, I purposely picked Calais because Calais, I mean, he was my driver, I knew the kid was smart and could make tactical decisions. He may not have had any experience, and I picked fucking Matroca because I knew he was a fucking wild man and it fucking shit hit the fan. Like I could count on him. Yep, but and I was kind of like somewhere in between.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:20

So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, dude, again, I can do three more hours. The I would love to talk about I didn't talk about lighting the gas bottles on fire in the market, shooting at the navy SEALs, uh fucking army shooting at us like three different times. There I can tell all kinds of stories as far as that goes, but a lot of people have touched on a lot of that stuff, so I haven't I was trying to go with stuff that that hadn't been uh told too deeply.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

No, dude, it was it was good, it was good perspective on shit that I've obviously because we did a lot of split platoon ops for as small as we were, yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:01

I know feeds and stuff like that. And that's wild because we didn't, yeah. Like for for the size that Sledgehammer was, we didn't do any of that. There's only a there's only a handful of times that we spread, you know, spread even spread out, but we didn't we didn't uh not we never operated as two sections, yeah. Ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

Yeah, I mean we we made sure we were able to mutually support. Um but we we did a lot of split between and that was the whole reason I tried to get JD to let me sneak around uh by myself without the trucks, is because I mean they could hear the trucks coming from a mile away at night. So I mean the idea was to let the trucks make a bunch of noise, and then we would hide, and then let the trucks move down the road a little bit, and then essentially, you know, watch anyone who was paying attention to the trucks, and we would be able to see them pick the trucks up from behind. So that was the whole idea of it. Uh in the first place. So and then you guys were mutually supporting up in the the northern part of the city.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:14

So yeah, we were no we were nowhere near you. That's the thing. If shit had really gone down, we were nowhere near you. Well, there was a we were a little too far, but it sounded good on it sounded good on paper.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

We had not gotten into the shit of things either until right after that. So I think we only had one more time after that, and it was much more controlled. And I had six dudes, it was six of us instead of just three. Yeah. That was that I was stuck up on the roof of the house and the family didn't know we were.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:47

Well, yeah. That was that was fun.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:54

Well, guys, I'm gonna let you go. I'm gonna go eat some dinner. Thanks for joining me. I'm gonna aggravate. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:06

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