Speaker 1: So now it's like Happy Veterans Day. I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not directed to me. It's directed at the
Speaker 1: other guy that wears camouflage and low crawls to the
Speaker 1: coffee of you sheet. You're that guy. He wants everyone
Speaker 1: to know he's a vet. He's got his you know,
Speaker 1: airborne wings on his car, and he's a happy I'm
Speaker 1: I'm staying low. Then this phone call comes and it's
Speaker 1: like this is all happening, And I'm thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not really happening. Maybe there's a way to do
Speaker 1: this on the download. Maybe you can say no, maybe
Speaker 1: you can say I don't need it, I'm good, thanks,
Speaker 1: give it to someone else. And when that news broke
Speaker 1: and I had like a guy at work that was like,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna believe this.
Speaker 2: There's a guy with your name get the Metal of.
Speaker 1: GN But he was like, you can't be you. You're
Speaker 1: the You're the guy that is on my fantasy football league.
Speaker 2: You're not that guy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 3: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 3: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
Speaker 3: Inner City Memphis, and the last part it unintentionally led
Speaker 3: to an oscar for the film about our team, it's
Speaker 3: called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never be
Speaker 3: solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
Speaker 3: talking big words that nobody uses on CNN and Fox,
Speaker 3: but rather by an army of normal folks US just
Speaker 3: you and me deciding, hey, I can help. That's what
Speaker 3: Staff Sergeant David Bellavia the voice we just heard is done. Now,
Speaker 3: David isn't exactly normal. This guy. He's a Medal of
Speaker 3: Honor recipient, but we're featuring him as part of our
Speaker 3: special series called Supporting Greatness, where we interview those who
Speaker 3: have achieved public greatness about the unsung heroes and normal
Speaker 3: folks who supported them and shaped their lives. However, David
Speaker 3: still kin of is a normal dude. He wasn't some
Speaker 3: big wig general in an office, but he literally went
Speaker 3: house to house in a rock clearing each of those
Speaker 3: houses of insurgents alongside his men, often fighting literally in
Speaker 3: hand to hand combat. And it's not like he asked
Speaker 3: for the Medal of Honor or campaigned for it. That's
Speaker 3: why I call this episode A betweener, a little bit
Speaker 3: normal folks, and a little bit of supporting greatness. I
Speaker 3: cannot wait for you to meet David. Right after these
Speaker 3: brief messages from our general sponsors, David Belle Via, what's up, bro?
Speaker 2: How you doing?
Speaker 3: You know how you're doing? I'm good? How you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm fantastic. I'm learning so much. Life is an education,
Speaker 1: and I've got a master's degree on football college Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Everything.
Speaker 3: Bringing New Yorker to Memphis, anything could happen.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful town, though I appreciate it. Welcome to
Speaker 3: an army of normal folks. So occasionally inside our little
Speaker 3: podcast of an army of normal folks, we do special
Speaker 3: segments called supporting Greatness. And what that's about is people
Speaker 3: who've reached what we would call great heights and briefly
Speaker 3: talking about what they've done, but more importantly talking about
Speaker 3: who helped the normal people, the army of normal people
Speaker 3: that supported them to reach their greatness. But you're kind
Speaker 3: of a you're kind of a tweener because not only
Speaker 3: have you reached greatness, you're also just a normal folk.
Speaker 3: And and so we're gonna unpack all of that today
Speaker 3: if you will allow me to unpack that with you
Speaker 3: and start kind of with who you are, where you
Speaker 3: came from, why you ended up, where you ended up,
Speaker 3: what you did, and what you've done afterwards. But we're
Speaker 3: gonna reverse engineer this, so I'm gonna I'm gonna start
Speaker 3: at part of toward the end game of your story,
Speaker 3: and then we'll back into it. But I don't think
Speaker 3: anything would explain to our listeners any better than a
Speaker 3: VID you at the Hall of Heroes right at the Pentagon,
Speaker 3: I think, is am I saying that? Right?
Speaker 2: Yes, sir?
Speaker 3: And this is the day after you received the Medal
Speaker 3: of Honor, which is the highest military honor that our
Speaker 3: country gives. And there's only what sixty three or four
Speaker 3: current living Medal of Honor winners in the world, right, right,
Speaker 3: and there's only one from Iraq, that's right, and that's you.
Speaker 2: That's living, living, living. Yeah, you're one of one, bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, yeah, crazy, that's weird to think about.
Speaker 3: But well you are. You're a set of one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And we're going to unpack that. And I know you
Speaker 3: have a lot of humility about it, but you have
Speaker 3: a deep story about it too. But first, for our
Speaker 3: listeners and viewers. I want to play the clip of
Speaker 3: you at the Hall here. There are things that you
Speaker 3: say in this that I've watched it fifteen times and
Speaker 3: people have watched Undefeated and heard speeches and read my
Speaker 3: book and stuff and said, you know, coach, I'm so inspirational.
Speaker 3: All I got to do is listen to you for
Speaker 3: three minutes. I'm ready to run through a wall. Well, dude,
Speaker 3: I hear this, and I'm ready to I'm ready to
Speaker 3: defend every person inside our borders. It just absolutely shakes
Speaker 3: me every time I hear it. So here we are
Speaker 3: your brief acceptance speech at the Hall of Heroes and
Speaker 3: the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: Our military should not be mistaken for a cable news
Speaker 1: gab fest show. We don't care what you look like.
Speaker 1: We don't care who you voted for, who you worship,
Speaker 1: what you worship, who you love. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: your dad left you millions when he died, or if
Speaker 1: he knew who your father was. We have been honed
Speaker 1: into a machine of lethal moving parts that you would
Speaker 1: be one to avoid. If you know what's good for you,
Speaker 1: we will not be intimidated. We will not back down.
Speaker 1: We've seen war We don't want war, but if you
Speaker 1: want war with the United States of America, there's one
Speaker 1: thing I could promise you. So help me, God, someone
Speaker 1: else will raise your sons and daughters. We fight. We
Speaker 1: fight so our children never have to. We fight for
Speaker 1: one day when our children and our enemies children can
Speaker 1: discuss their differences without fear or loathing. We fight so
Speaker 1: that anyone out there thinking about raising arms against our
Speaker 1: citizens or allies realize the futility of attrition against a discipline,
Speaker 1: professional and lethal force. Build to a stand anything you
Speaker 1: can dream of throwing at us. Americans want this kind
Speaker 1: of country, want this kind of world, and we stand
Speaker 1: ready to defend it, to protect us. So help us God.
Speaker 1: May God bless this beautiful army. May God bless our
Speaker 1: Marine Corps, our Navy, our Air Force and Coast Guard.
Speaker 1: May God bless our allies. And we already know that
Speaker 1: God blessed America because he gave us the greatest fighting
Speaker 1: force this world has ever seen. Two to two infantry
Speaker 1: at the first Infantry Division, Thank you, Ramrods Duty First Dukes,
Speaker 1: thank you very much.
Speaker 3: I do not know how any American cannot hear that
Speaker 3: and bristle with humility and pride for men like you
Speaker 3: who served our country. When you hear yourself say that,
Speaker 3: what do you feel?
Speaker 2: You know, it's so weird.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's not supposed to be like applause
Speaker 1: line in those speeches. You're supposed to get the medal
Speaker 1: of honor, eat big shrimp, and like go work at raytheon.
Speaker 2: You know, that's what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: You get there, have a wait, you're supposed to That
Speaker 1: speech has traditionally been a speech where you're like, you know,
Speaker 1: the country has bestowed this upon one person. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you why that was the best decision you've ever made,
Speaker 1: you know, And then you do like an Audie Murphy
Speaker 1: and do a Christmas cookbook. It releaves the country album
Speaker 1: or something. I didn't know. There's no guidebook as to
Speaker 1: what to do with this thing. And all I thought
Speaker 1: about the entire time is that I sat at for
Speaker 1: betting Georgia, polishing my boots and cleaning my weapon every
Speaker 1: single day. Read these citations and I thought they were
Speaker 1: like the Marvel Adventures to me. You know, I'm reading
Speaker 1: about Gary Latrell from Vietnam, Gary Biker Drew dis you know,
Speaker 1: all these legends Hershey Maya Mora from the Korean War
Speaker 1: whose family was interned as Japanese Americans and a camp.
Speaker 1: No reason to service country, no reason to defend America.
Speaker 1: His country put him in a prison camp just because
Speaker 1: of who he was. That guy joins in the Korean
Speaker 1: War and piles up Communist Chinese like Lincoln Logs and
Speaker 1: taking prisoner war gets the is told he comes home
Speaker 1: as a prisoner of war after the war ends, and
Speaker 1: has told the President wants to meet him. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm good, just let.
Speaker 2: Me go home.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, you get the medal of other budd
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't care. I just want to go home.
Speaker 1: These these stories are legendary. You meet these guys and
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, I would. I just want to
Speaker 1: meet you. I just want to be in your presence.
Speaker 1: I just want to you never consider yourself. So what
Speaker 1: I decided to do was be the first. You know, well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to reinvent the way the Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: is given because I'm not naive enough to think that
Speaker 1: we're not going to have wars in the future and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have other recipients. I want them to realize
Speaker 1: that everything we've done is because someone you know, like
Speaker 1: that old country, you Southerners tell these stories. If you
Speaker 1: ever see a turtle on a fence post, it's because
Speaker 1: someone put them there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, live up right.
Speaker 1: Everything we've got is because someone put us there. They
Speaker 1: put us in a position. And so I want this
Speaker 1: to be about the team. I want this to be
Speaker 1: about what we truly say we are. This is who
Speaker 1: we are. No one wants to be a machine gunner.
Speaker 1: They want to be a machine gunner and a squad
Speaker 1: with a leader that cares just enough about them as
Speaker 1: they do them. And that that was important to me,
Speaker 1: and I wanted I wanted people to know who my
Speaker 1: team was, why they were important, and most importantly, we
Speaker 1: fought with the tenacity we fought with because we lost
Speaker 1: our friends and we defended an avenge.
Speaker 3: Then I want to again, I prefaced the conversation we're
Speaker 3: having with that, because to me, what you're talking about
Speaker 3: now is the end game. But let's get there first.
Speaker 3: What you grow up, tell me about you as a kid.
Speaker 3: Tell me you weren't the guy standing up there, the
Speaker 3: guy we just saw and heard. That wasn't That wasn't
Speaker 3: David the kid. Tell me, yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Tell me tell me about the normal guy David and
Speaker 3: the kid and who he grew up and what he
Speaker 3: did and all that.
Speaker 2: I'm the youngest of four boys, got it. My dad
Speaker 2: was a dentist.
Speaker 1: Success in my family in right outside of an hour
Speaker 1: north of Buffalo, but right between Buffalo and Rochester, New York,
Speaker 1: right off Lake Ontario, farmtown, population eight hundred. You played sports,
Speaker 1: you were in the science club. We needed the bodies,
Speaker 1: and you were also playing travone. You know, we didn't
Speaker 1: have a very large school. It was New York in
Speaker 1: name only. You know, more cows and apples than you
Speaker 1: know population or visitors.
Speaker 2: No traffic light, No traffic light in my hometown.
Speaker 1: So we grew up in this town called Lenville, New York,
Speaker 1: and my dad put everything. Everything was about education. You
Speaker 1: went and got a degree and became a professional. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to make Bellevius proud, you were a professional.
Speaker 2: That's what you had to do. So oldest brother.
Speaker 1: Went out, two brothers went to seminary. One became a
Speaker 1: I got three professors in my family, all with masters.
Speaker 1: I think we got a PhD and double masters. Like
Speaker 1: they weren't just set with one. They were all extremely intelligent,
Speaker 1: extremely at the top. You know, they're they're successful at
Speaker 1: the top of what they did. And I was like
Speaker 1: my and then my granddad would come around all the time,
Speaker 1: and he was a World War Two vet, and for
Speaker 1: some reason, because I was the youngest, I just found
Speaker 1: myself going on walks with him and he would just
Speaker 1: start rattling off these stories at like a six year
Speaker 1: old Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like graphic.
Speaker 3: But I didn't think those guys often told war stories.
Speaker 1: I don't know what was wrong with him because he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't do it to anyone else.
Speaker 2: It was just me.
Speaker 1: But it was like wait at an age where I
Speaker 1: was like, so the femeral artery is the bleeder, Grandpa, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Like he would tell me stuff that I was.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, but there was nobility. He was talking
Speaker 1: about stuff not to shock me. He was talking about
Speaker 1: like true nobility, like this is when you can get
Speaker 1: together in a world that you don't understand. You don't
Speaker 1: understand adults, you don't understand people that are different than you.
Speaker 1: You got all these people, all the reasons why we're
Speaker 1: tribal and separated. If there's one thing that could just
Speaker 1: put you together as a unit. It's the greatest experience.
Speaker 2: In your life.
Speaker 1: And and you will never have experienced life until you've
Speaker 1: gone through that.
Speaker 3: Where did your grandfather start?
Speaker 1: When?
Speaker 3: Where?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 1: Oh? So he is a Normandy vet. Wow, he did
Speaker 1: D day plus twenty nine. He got the hedge, your.
Speaker 3: Own day plus twenty nine.
Speaker 1: So so D day everyone thinks it the Normandy beach landing, right, right,
Speaker 1: So that's D day h hour. That's the first day
Speaker 1: d D plus one means the day after that.
Speaker 2: Beach land so he's days there.
Speaker 1: He was twenty nine days after the beach landing is
Speaker 1: when he got there. So he came in with patent.
Speaker 1: And really, when you think of.
Speaker 3: Your your grandfather served under patent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a patent's army and he did sicily
Speaker 1: North Africa.
Speaker 2: He did the Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 3: He did pretty much Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got it all.
Speaker 1: He got the Tour of Italy.
Speaker 3: So looking back on it, did those walks and the
Speaker 3: stories about grouping shots at the fival artery, do you
Speaker 3: think subconsciously that might have just planted a seed for
Speaker 3: you later in life.
Speaker 1: I just know I wanted to do it. From that day,
Speaker 1: I was just afraid to tell my parents that I.
Speaker 3: Wanted to because they wanted to.
Speaker 2: I was a dentist.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to be a dinner store, a theologian or soundlasters,
Speaker 3: not a meat head.
Speaker 1: My dad would say that life is about taking people
Speaker 1: out of pain, and it took me until I was
Speaker 1: like twenty two to realize, I think I want to
Speaker 1: focus on the pain part. I want to be the
Speaker 1: deliverance of that. How do I break that down? Look,
Speaker 1: you're religious, you're Christian. You don't hit people, you you
Speaker 1: turn the other cheek, you pray for people, you.
Speaker 2: Talk about love.
Speaker 1: I understood all these things growing up, but I also
Speaker 1: could not stand injustice. I could not stand you know this,
Speaker 1: this fight between this is wrong and we're not going
Speaker 1: to do anything about it. That is what kept me
Speaker 1: up at night, and I got far too into when
Speaker 1: Saddan got assassinated in Egypt. I wanted to you know.
Speaker 1: I remember telling like, we can't you can't go to work, dad,
Speaker 1: Saddad has been assassinated. It was like, no one cares
Speaker 1: about Saddad. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: But these were the things that that I was I
Speaker 1: was focused on because I thought it was noble. I
Speaker 1: thought it was an adventure. But I also realized that
Speaker 1: I don't want to be that person. That everything is
Speaker 1: hyperbole in every sport I played, and we weren't good
Speaker 1: at any of them. You know, we were so small,
Speaker 1: we were just getting But I remember sitting on the
Speaker 1: bench down forty points and a guy goes for a
Speaker 1: three point shot, and I thought, no one's gonna say this.
Speaker 1: I've got to be the one to say this. I
Speaker 1: don't care how big you are, I don't care how
Speaker 1: strong you are. If you shoot another three point shot
Speaker 1: and you're up by forty points, I'm gonna break your arm.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break your arm. I'm gonna do it for
Speaker 1: the team, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I just it was an injustice.
Speaker 1: He was absolutely unnecessary, and I will stand up and
Speaker 1: say it. Stop it. But losing as a crew, that
Speaker 1: was something that I found. We're in this together, no
Speaker 1: matter what, We're in this together. The rich kid, the
Speaker 1: poor kid, the white kid, the black kid, were doing
Speaker 1: this together. It's us against them. I loved that, and
Speaker 1: the army, you know, presented that for me.
Speaker 3: I I'm going to invoke the Rich Middle Miss So
Speaker 3: Rich was the producer for Undefeated. And if it wasn't
Speaker 3: for Rich, I wouldn't be sitting here interviewing you because
Speaker 3: nobody would have ever made a movie. It wouldn't win
Speaker 3: the Academy Award, nobody would care about anything I have
Speaker 3: to say. Through meeting Rich, I thought he was this
Speaker 3: Hollywood weirdo because he and Dan and TJ, the directors,
Speaker 3: you know, they were at twenty nine thirty showed up
Speaker 3: to Memphis and skinny legged jeans and goofy shirts wearing
Speaker 3: scarves in September in Memphis. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 3: you just don't Let's just don't do that, right, right,
Speaker 3: that's a get a lot of yeah. Well, so anyway,
Speaker 3: I found out Rich was actually a East Coast guy
Speaker 3: from went to the University Tennessee, and Dan and TJ
Speaker 3: and Rich are now three of my best friends, and
Speaker 3: so obviously I've stayed I mean I talked to Rich
Speaker 3: and Dan and TJ, you know, at least bi weekly
Speaker 3: and have for ten years, and saw him always asking,
Speaker 3: you know, what are you guys working on. I remember
Speaker 3: when Dan and TJ did the Tina movie in LA
Speaker 3: ninety two and they won an Emmy, and after winning
Speaker 3: the Oscar and celebrating with him that and of course
Speaker 3: all the things Rich has done after. And I remember
Speaker 3: sitting at home one night. I said, what's new and
Speaker 3: he said, man, I've just got an option to this book.
Speaker 3: And I said what is it? And he said, well,
Speaker 3: have you ever heard of David Bellavia? And I said,
Speaker 3: believe it or not, I think I have. I heard
Speaker 3: an interview and he said, yeah, man, he's this awesome guy.
Speaker 3: Medal of Honor, dude. And he wrote this book about
Speaker 3: how they went house to house in Fallujah, and he said,
Speaker 3: and I want to try to do something with that project.
Speaker 3: And so that's how I was introduced to you, was
Speaker 3: through Rich. And he sent me the book on my
Speaker 3: cell phone and I it was like nine point thirty
Speaker 3: at night, and so I just opened the book on this,
Speaker 3: you know. He sent an attachment on a text really
Speaker 3: and I opened it and at four in the morning,
Speaker 3: I'd finished your book five straight hours. I read your
Speaker 3: book on my cell phone. I did not wear glasses
Speaker 3: prior to this moment, but you ruined my eyes. I
Speaker 3: was absolutely there. I would I woke Lisa up in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night twice to say listen to this.
Speaker 3: It yeah, it affected me. And we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about some of those stories. But first, the most important
Speaker 3: story is you were I think a theater arts major.
Speaker 1: You know, I get so much hell for this and it.
Speaker 1: I want to preface by saying I was a pre
Speaker 1: med major okay, and I was a minor in theater.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: But but but with.
Speaker 1: The Army, No, no, but with the Army, they're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is too good, you know, and this guy's wearing
Speaker 1: tights and Pippin we got to get that photos.
Speaker 3: I don't want to sensationalize. So I was, I was
Speaker 3: a student.
Speaker 1: I love theater because again I went to a school
Speaker 1: where you could play sports, do theater, do the band.
Speaker 2: It was one of those things.
Speaker 3: And you got the Robert DeNiro look going now, I
Speaker 3: got the Robbert.
Speaker 1: So don't get me wrong. I'm still doing my headshots
Speaker 1: and going to auditions. I'm still working on my one
Speaker 1: act play. But no theater for me, though. Was it
Speaker 1: was interesting to just meet again. I was so I
Speaker 1: was blown away by these kids like the Warlert, like
Speaker 1: you know, Mascara and and Berets with the scars, the
Speaker 1: middle Mast and they walk around, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a part of just understand these guys where they're from,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, I believe in my life and I see
Speaker 1: this with young people today.
Speaker 2: When I was young and I'm reading.
Speaker 1: History, it's we are searching for that drama in our life.
Speaker 1: And what really, what the combat experience is is everything
Speaker 1: that we talk about. And I'd die for you. I'd
Speaker 1: kill for that, I would do anything. Now you're in
Speaker 1: a situation where everything is real. That is real drama there,
Speaker 1: there's I don't need to I don't need to perform
Speaker 1: grapes of wrath being shot at with a physical I'm good,
Speaker 1: I'm set.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I need to focus on being the best person I
Speaker 1: could be, treated people with dignity, respect and making America better.
Speaker 1: But everything else is like the audition to that moment.
Speaker 2: Well, I think people are in search for it.
Speaker 3: I was as a young kid too, and along those lines,
Speaker 3: and you know, I'm drawing an odd parallel here, but
Speaker 3: it's something I've thought about since You and I when
Speaker 3: you graciously agreed to join me, was interestingly to me,
Speaker 3: A big part of your story started with things going
Speaker 3: on in your house and ended with things going on
Speaker 3: in a house in Felujah. Tell us about the story
Speaker 3: in your house.
Speaker 1: So you know, I had this idea of who I
Speaker 1: was because I told myself that every day, this is
Speaker 1: the man I was going to be, this is the
Speaker 1: man I want to be. And when I was confronted
Speaker 1: with the opportunity to be that man and I realized,
Speaker 1: I'm none.
Speaker 2: Of those things.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that story.
Speaker 1: I'm home from school and I'm just I'm doing some
Speaker 1: yard work. My mom had had next surgery, so my
Speaker 1: dad was taking care of her, and I had my
Speaker 1: dog out back and I heard a car door close.
Speaker 1: Figured they had guests, but thought it was weird because
Speaker 1: parents weren't taking guess. My mom was in bed and
Speaker 1: she was pretty recovering from major next surgery, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I just I see people walking through
Speaker 1: the house in the back window, and one of them
Speaker 1: doesn't have a shirt on, and I'm thinking, now, that's
Speaker 1: that's definitely not a guess.
Speaker 3: That's no one.
Speaker 1: You know you better you might take your shoes off
Speaker 1: out of respect that you're not taking that shirt off.
Speaker 1: That's some crazy stuff. So I kind of approach him.
Speaker 1: I could front one of them and have a conversation.
Speaker 1: I could just see that his eyes are just glassy
Speaker 1: and he's not there, and know my dog is trying
Speaker 1: to go at him. I got a Rottwile about one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty pound rodi and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: I don't want a lawsuit. You know, if that dog
Speaker 1: rips into shreds, you know, they might ensue us or something.
Speaker 1: We there's a way to get these boys out. It's
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding. Maybe they're fishermen lost from the water and
Speaker 1: just came.
Speaker 3: Up lost, shirtless fishermen in your house.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you it doesn't make any sense, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to rationalize what's going on when I see what's
Speaker 1: what's a parent where they've taken you know, garbage cans
Speaker 1: and they're just cutting cords and throwing you know VCRs.
Speaker 2: And this was in the late.
Speaker 1: Night US, right, so it's a home invasion. So I
Speaker 1: immediately use the basement door and head down and grab
Speaker 1: that remuton eight seventy And I'm thinking, for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life, I'm going to be the guy who
Speaker 1: just blasted someone's head off. How are you going to
Speaker 1: be treated? Are you doing it for you know, are
Speaker 1: you giving them a right to in New York State?
Speaker 1: They better have AK forty seven in their hand. I mean,
Speaker 1: the laws of New York about defending your home are
Speaker 1: pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 2: I say that to a.
Speaker 1: Man from you know, who's used to the way to
Speaker 1: properly defend your So I'm going through all this stuff
Speaker 1: in my head and I realize I don't even have
Speaker 1: the guts to do this. I'm reading that script in
Speaker 1: my head that I want to be this person, but
Speaker 1: I'm not. And I get upstairs and these guys just
Speaker 1: walk by me and no fear, and they're just like
Speaker 1: with all your stuff, with all of the stuff loaded
Speaker 1: in the car, loading the vehicle.
Speaker 3: And you're just sitting there, and I just, you know.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know if it was the flesh
Speaker 1: that was weak or the heart that was weak, or
Speaker 1: what was weak, but something was weak. But I could
Speaker 1: deal with that because that was just me and them.
Speaker 1: Know that, no one's gonna tell that story. You were high,
Speaker 1: you were, you know you were, That's not true at all.
Speaker 1: I'm put of a fight. But when my dad came
Speaker 1: out and saw everything, and his first reaction was to
Speaker 1: get in his car, with a forty four and head
Speaker 1: out after him.
Speaker 2: That's what the father does.
Speaker 1: Right as soon as he was aware of what the
Speaker 1: problem was, he took it upon himself to go give chase.
Speaker 2: Now, these guys end up.
Speaker 1: Arrested, they do seven years, you know, they they got
Speaker 1: they punished, They were punished for their crimes. But the
Speaker 1: look my father gave me was worse than what those
Speaker 1: guys did, because that that is what comes at me
Speaker 1: at two o'clock in the morning, was.
Speaker 2: Embarrassment.
Speaker 1: You're not what I hoped you'd be at this age.
Speaker 2: You're not ready.
Speaker 1: You obviously don't have this thing handled. I'm going to
Speaker 1: handle it, and I just was like, I gotta get it.
Speaker 1: I got to get to a place where I can
Speaker 1: do something that I'm uncomfortable doing.
Speaker 3: Does it not the irony to me that it started
Speaker 3: for you with guns and perpetrators in a house and
Speaker 3: it came to you, which we'll get to in a
Speaker 3: little bit, in a house. Does the irony of that
Speaker 3: strike you?
Speaker 1: After the after rich Mendal Moss explained that to me,
Speaker 1: which a Hollywood guy with a scarf and in Tennessee
Speaker 1: to know it would would to me was far more
Speaker 1: that I just never wanted to disappoint someone I loved
Speaker 1: so much. And I looked and disappointed my dad.
Speaker 3: You mean, you're just a normal kid. That's normal, folks.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: I just my dad meant every he was Superman.
Speaker 3: People can talk big and bad all they want, but
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I've played football and sports against much
Speaker 3: bigger people. I've been in a few fistfights in my life.
Speaker 3: I've been shot at down a hallway inside of home before,
Speaker 3: and I know what the I know a bullet sounds
Speaker 3: like this when it goes past you goes It's got
Speaker 3: that sound to it because I remember it. But having
Speaker 3: said all that, if a guy's got a VC, aren't
Speaker 3: a bag and he's probably on meth even if I'm
Speaker 3: holding a gun. People can talk all they want to,
Speaker 3: but the ability to level off and take that life
Speaker 3: gives more than nine percent of the people in the
Speaker 3: world paws. And But that just makes you normal to me,
Speaker 3: I mean absolutely and now.
Speaker 1: But the craziest thing is that just understanding that you
Speaker 1: have to do that inventory to know where you're at,
Speaker 1: because if you're building your life on just delusion and
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, well, these opportunities. Have it happened
Speaker 1: because you know the stars aren't aligned. You don't even
Speaker 1: have the skill set, you don't even have the emotional
Speaker 1: temperament to deal with it if it comes your way.
Speaker 1: There's so much more about you know, understanding that violence
Speaker 1: is what everyone.
Speaker 2: No one wants it in their life.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be the one that has to
Speaker 1: perform anything in a violent act. I live my entire
Speaker 1: life to be away from violence and to never be
Speaker 1: in a situation where I have to be around it.
Speaker 1: But controlling fear was something I had know idea. Fear
Speaker 1: was always get away from it. It's your instinct, your body, right,
Speaker 1: and once you realize that, your brain is just there
Speaker 1: to protect us, and the brain is going to put
Speaker 1: crazy messages and you've got to just put barricades in
Speaker 1: your brain to say you're not in charge. My heart's
Speaker 1: going to take over.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Would you say at that moment in Tom, this is
Speaker 3: my word, would you say that you were a coward?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yeah, I would. I used the other words.
Speaker 3: That sounds like Mississippi right, a little bit, a little bit,
Speaker 3: but that's what I would say.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, It's what I said.
Speaker 1: It's why I mean listen, I I my whole trajectory
Speaker 1: was planned. Uh, I know what school I was going to.
Speaker 1: I was taking the m CAT. I was on that trajectory.
Speaker 1: This was that life fork in the road where I said,
Speaker 1: no matter what comes out of this, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be that person.
Speaker 3: And so then you said I'm going to boot camp.
Speaker 1: I'm joined the army, I'm joining the infantry. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to I don't want to be a combat campra Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right. But it was more important that I wanted
Speaker 1: the whole experience. I wanted to punch the ticket I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get a skill. My skill has
Speaker 1: to be me.
Speaker 3: Was this I never want my father to look at
Speaker 3: me this way again.
Speaker 1: No, this was I don't ever want to be in
Speaker 1: a position where I ever can't handle it. I want
Speaker 1: to handle every situation. I want to know when to
Speaker 1: use my brain. I want to know when to put
Speaker 1: my foot in their face. I want to know when
Speaker 1: the proper time is. I want to know how to
Speaker 1: how to be way over my head and be able
Speaker 1: to say I don't even have any idea of how
Speaker 1: to handle this, So now I'm going to use what
Speaker 1: I have in front of me and the people around
Speaker 1: me to get myself out of it.
Speaker 3: So it's safe to say you grew up the youngest
Speaker 3: of four with a very small town, almost like a
Speaker 3: he Haw salute town, right, And you grew up with
Speaker 3: expectations of school with a father as a dentist, probably
Speaker 3: not wealthy, but just good white collar family, and had
Speaker 3: full expectations are going off to school, and this significant
Speaker 3: incident happened, and when you looked in the mirror, you
Speaker 3: saw yourself to be, as you describe, a coward, and
Speaker 3: you wanted to rise above that. And your answer was,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the army and I'm going
Speaker 3: to grow up and grow myself into more strength.
Speaker 1: I knew I had it in me. I knew that
Speaker 1: I was. I knew that it was important enough to
Speaker 1: me that I wasn't afraid to get my act kicked.
Speaker 1: I wasn't afraid to stand up to a kid that
Speaker 1: was eighteen when I was twelve. I wasn't afraid to
Speaker 1: say something that no one wanted to say.
Speaker 3: But you weren't tapped into it yet, but I was not.
Speaker 1: I did not have the ability to know really how
Speaker 1: to You don't believe it or not. Everyone talks about
Speaker 1: the military as you know, the thinking that's involved. This
Speaker 1: is where you go when you can't go to college
Speaker 1: or you get so impregnant. All I was surrounded by
Speaker 1: were intellects in the army.
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 1: I'm really and sometimes you know you don't have a degree.
Speaker 1: You know you're not going out there for the Rhodes
Speaker 1: Scholar program. But it's the smartest person I've ever met
Speaker 1: my life is a person that just says, take a
Speaker 1: step back to explain something difficult to a layman is
Speaker 1: actually the definition of intelligence. Take something really super difficult
Speaker 1: and explain it to someone who doesn't know anything about it,
Speaker 1: and they walk away with saying, I get something complicated.
Speaker 1: That's the person I want to be around now. It's
Speaker 1: you're a coach. That's all my life mentors where people
Speaker 1: that cared enough about me to tell me the things
Speaker 1: Mom and dad loved me too much.
Speaker 3: To tell me.
Speaker 1: You know, it was always the coach that was you
Speaker 1: suck and you're not working hard, and you're telling me
Speaker 1: that you're in the gym. You're in the gym, but
Speaker 1: what are you doing in the gym? You know you're
Speaker 1: not doing the things. I'm going to hold you accountable.
Speaker 1: That accountability. All these drill sergeants, all these noncommissioned officers,
Speaker 1: all they did was give me the tough love no
Speaker 1: one in my world had ever given me.
Speaker 3: And you were looking for it.
Speaker 1: I needed it.
Speaker 3: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 3: I hope you'll consider following an Army of normal Folks
Speaker 3: on all of our social media channels for more powerful content,
Speaker 3: which is also great for sharing, to help grow the army.
Speaker 3: Our handle is at Army of Normal Folks on all
Speaker 3: of them except Twitter, which I guess is X these days,
Speaker 3: which is interesting because everybody says X formally called Twitter,
Speaker 3: so we might as well just call it Twitter whatever.
Speaker 3: At Army normal Folks, we'll be right back. So we're
Speaker 3: gonna skip ahead, and then we're gonna we're gonna skip
Speaker 3: ahead in your world, and then we're gonna go back,
Speaker 3: because again I think we've established you just grew up
Speaker 3: a normal kid, but you're by definition not normal. You
Speaker 3: are one of one in this country, and we want
Speaker 3: to understand all of the people that supported that. But first,
Speaker 3: it's really important that all our listeners hear the story
Speaker 3: that got you there, and I want to ask first
Speaker 3: how comfortable you are going through the day you walk
Speaker 3: through that front door of that house in Felujah. Okay, good,
Speaker 3: So we're going to get how that happened. But again
Speaker 3: we're jumping forward. Everything I've read is that you guys
Speaker 3: were literally clearing houses and Flujah door to door, and
Speaker 3: it was the most intense urban warfare since Vietnam. And
Speaker 3: there were American soldiers getting wounded and some dying daily
Speaker 3: in this requirement for you guys to literally go house
Speaker 3: to house, door to door, clearing out buildings of people
Speaker 3: whose soul desire on earth was to eliminate you. And
Speaker 3: you happen on one of these houses, and I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna let you take it from there, because at the
Speaker 3: end of it, you lived, and five bad guys were dead,
Speaker 3: and I think some of it even included hand to
Speaker 3: hand combat. And I really want you in your own words.
Speaker 3: I've read all about it. I want to hear from you,
Speaker 3: and I want our listeners to hear what that was
Speaker 3: that day.
Speaker 1: So just for people to understand that American fight in history,
Speaker 1: if you look at our military in our wars, the
Speaker 1: urban fights that we trained to fight. Our standard operating
Speaker 1: procedure is the Battle of Verdun, which Americans weren't involved in.
Speaker 1: That was the French and the Germans of World War One.
Speaker 1: We talk about the Battle of Grosny in modern day Georgia.
Speaker 1: That's the Soviet Union and the Nazis, and the Battle
Speaker 1: of Berlin. Another three epic fights that we trained for
Speaker 1: that we've never participated in. So America's got the Battle
Speaker 1: of Soul, Korea in fifty one, We've got Way City
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. If you look at those engagements, just like
Speaker 1: Somalia in Blackhawk Down, ninety seven percent of our casualties
Speaker 1: are outside of the building. The danger in an urban
Speaker 1: fight is getting to the objective. That's where you're getting
Speaker 1: hit right.
Speaker 3: Well, because they've got covered of building and you're in
Speaker 3: a street.
Speaker 1: And you're in the street in the middle of a city,
Speaker 1: and you've got you know, everything's built up, so you're
Speaker 1: getting popped from all sides, doors, windows, everything, alleyway. Getting
Speaker 1: to the objective is where traditionally casualties come from. In
Speaker 1: the first you know, two and a half three years
Speaker 1: of the war in Iraq, we are literally writing the
Speaker 1: book on urban close quarter combat. To the point where
Speaker 1: we're changing basic training in real time. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about by the year two thousand and five, a kid
Speaker 1: is coming through basic training, they're going in a shootouse.
Speaker 1: In basic training, you're on a range, you learn how
Speaker 1: to salute, you figure out how to get your sideburns.
Speaker 1: Even in basic training you don't go you don't go
Speaker 1: in a shootouse. I mean, this is we're totally changing
Speaker 1: the way we fight because of that urban fight. That's
Speaker 1: how absolutely of a dice roll it is. So now
Speaker 1: you got Seal Team six and all these high speed guys.
Speaker 1: I don't care if your Seal Team six, your Delta
Speaker 1: Force or your thor you walk through a door there's
Speaker 1: a machine gun on the other end of that building.
Speaker 1: You're getting shot. It's the way it is. So you
Speaker 1: take a all the training and all the skill, and
Speaker 1: then you realize, I'm not in control of any of this.
Speaker 1: None of this I'm in control of. So what I
Speaker 1: have to do is not only physically train you for
Speaker 1: the fight, but I've got to psychologically train that nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty year old kid for what's gonna happen in the fight.
Speaker 1: Because it's not enough about killing you or injuring you.
Speaker 1: It's leaving you to psychologically destroy the people coming in
Speaker 1: after you. That's what the enemy's trying to do. They're
Speaker 1: trying to fix you. There's no way they're gonna make
Speaker 1: it out. Bomb drops on their building, there's no way
Speaker 1: they're gonna make it out. They know they're dead the
Speaker 1: moment they fight us. Their job is to hurt you,
Speaker 1: kill you, and mess with your brain so you can't
Speaker 1: fight tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So I got to.
Speaker 1: Take these guys and put them through something I've never
Speaker 1: experienced myself and get them in a way where they're
Speaker 1: able to hopefully get my rank and be able to
Speaker 1: educate that next time nineteen year old kid coming along,
Speaker 1: because I think you're gonna die, no doubt that we're
Speaker 1: all gonna die. I mean, it was Fitzy, you know,
Speaker 1: my best friend.
Speaker 3: So you're you're given orders to go clear. So so
Speaker 3: many movies and so much is written that we get
Speaker 3: desensitized to the reality of nineteen and twenty year old
Speaker 3: kids waking up and saying, this is my job. I'm
Speaker 3: going to do it for the guy next to me,
Speaker 3: but I'm probably gonna die today.
Speaker 1: So the key is that there's two parts of your brain.
Speaker 1: There's everyone is Look, you put on your best suit
Speaker 1: and you go to the dance, but you know full
Speaker 1: well what you look like, right, you know what you
Speaker 1: look like, and you know the type of yah average
Speaker 1: doesn't date the prom queen dude. The point is you
Speaker 1: know the truth and then you have what you have
Speaker 1: to tell yourself to be able to get through the
Speaker 1: prom without a date. Right, you know that this is real,
Speaker 1: and you know that people are coming home and boxes
Speaker 1: every single day, but you also know it's not going
Speaker 1: to happen to you or anyone around you. So you
Speaker 1: are constantly living in the world of your subordinates. You
Speaker 1: love them like they're your children. You know them like
Speaker 1: they're your children. You know how to motivate them. You
Speaker 1: know what pisses them off, you know what they appreciate,
Speaker 1: you know what they hate, you know what they're allergic to,
Speaker 1: you know who they like at home, every aspect of
Speaker 1: my subordinates. I have to if I'm going to lead people,
Speaker 1: I gotta know who they are. I gotta know what
Speaker 1: motivates them, where they come from. So now I want
Speaker 1: to tell them. All you have to do is the
Speaker 1: easiest job of the world. Just do what I tell
Speaker 1: you to do right, and if something happens to me,
Speaker 1: your job is to think about what I would do
Speaker 1: and leave me behind and move forward. The biggest mistake
Speaker 1: you can make in a fight is the failure to
Speaker 1: make a decision. That's the sin that's unforgivable. You screw up.
Speaker 1: I can fix it. You make the right decision, we
Speaker 1: all copy you and we do the right thing. But
Speaker 1: if you can't make a decision and you nut up,
Speaker 1: and that's what happens. When bullets are flying, you want
Speaker 1: to stop and take your shot. You want to stop,
Speaker 1: and when you stop, that train stops. And now we
Speaker 1: get what's called that funnel of death. Right that that breach,
Speaker 1: that doorway becomes a kill sack because everyone is stopped.
Speaker 1: So the job is, if I'm screaming for Jesus and
Speaker 1: for my mom, your job is to not render aid.
Speaker 1: You leave me there screaming, You move forward, You take
Speaker 1: out that threat, or we're all dead.
Speaker 3: Everyone hopefully hopefully they remember that part now, just continuing
Speaker 3: to move on.
Speaker 1: But you're right though, then after it's secure, that's when
Speaker 1: we come back.
Speaker 2: So you're taking.
Speaker 1: Away all of the thought process of a subbortive to say,
Speaker 1: if I'm not worried, you're not worried. If I don't stop,
Speaker 1: you don't stop. Now that's great for them because now
Speaker 1: they have to be like, my sergeant is in charge,
Speaker 1: he's rock, he's running this thing.
Speaker 2: Now you've got to be that guy.
Speaker 1: Right, So now you can say all you want, but
Speaker 1: you better not go back to when you were in
Speaker 1: that house and you nutted up because you got scared.
Speaker 3: That's a long way from a dude who watched two
Speaker 3: guys carry his dad's VCR out of his house.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, combat has a way to fix them out. Well,
Speaker 1: but you can't. You can't lie, you can't, but you can't.
Speaker 1: There's no performance art in the world. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know these guys that you.
Speaker 2: Can't.
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks might convince the d m V you know
Speaker 1: that his registration's got overdue. You can't when it when
Speaker 1: it's real, and you're either going to be that person
Speaker 1: or you're not going to be that person. House we
Speaker 1: get into a building, uh you know, tend to eight
Speaker 1: to ten bad guys, block of houses. We got a
Speaker 1: reporter with us from Time magazine and uh, every by
Speaker 1: the way, Fallujah's you know, everyone's embedded. Everyone wants to
Speaker 1: know what's going on back home. You've got everyone's covering
Speaker 1: the story in real time. Just press everywhere, everywhere. So
Speaker 1: now you're all worried about you know. So so is.
Speaker 3: It your drive to protect him too?
Speaker 1: It's our yeah, it would be well the army. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the story's got to get filed. But the fact is
Speaker 1: is that he's our responsibility. He's one of us. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got to be safe. We walk into uh, we
Speaker 1: know it's a We got guys, We trapped them, We
Speaker 1: locked them into a section, and that is such a gift.
Speaker 1: In Iraq, we're fighting ghosts. They clack off a bomb.
Speaker 1: You never saw the enemy. You never made when you've
Speaker 1: got a chance to see the enemy, you had to
Speaker 1: fix them.
Speaker 2: You had to. They're not moving where.
Speaker 1: If I know you're in a house, I want to
Speaker 1: run in there because you're not gonna hurt someone tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna hurt me tomorrow. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take you out right now. We got these guys locked
Speaker 1: in and now it's just this methodic door to door
Speaker 1: to house to you know, it's you know, twenty thirty
Speaker 1: buildings and each building.
Speaker 3: So was am I imagining right to think like a
Speaker 3: small apartment complex.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's like a city block, and it's an
Speaker 1: upscale section. It would be like the night the rich
Speaker 1: section of Fallujah.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding? Oh no, So it's houses inside of.
Speaker 1: Buildings, concrete, three story structures. Each building probably had fifteen rooms.
Speaker 3: So we're talking like three or four thousand square foot houses, some.
Speaker 2: Of them larger than that.
Speaker 1: But you gotta understand that that the Iraqi people are
Speaker 1: very insecure people, so they build their homes to be invaded.
Speaker 1: They're protecting themselves from the Saddam regime.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Actually a neighborhood of high walled, thick structure. The stall
Speaker 1: houses all multi upscale mansion houses with literally gun slits
Speaker 1: in the roof uh protection areas.
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever, It's my own prejudice, but
Speaker 3: I just thought Fallujah a rock armpit. Oh yeah, just
Speaker 3: a bunch of slumps like you see in some all
Speaker 3: or something. They got their share of slumps, but this
Speaker 3: is this is just a nice neighborhood with big houses.
Speaker 1: There's sections of Fallujah that were just like you said,
Speaker 1: and we'd bombed them. And there's rubble everywhere, and that's
Speaker 1: rough too, because when you got the rubble, you can
Speaker 1: hide in that rubble and you got to be careful.
Speaker 1: But this area was untouched and it was the scary district,
Speaker 1: like nice beautiful.
Speaker 3: Oh no, listen, are you rolling through Beverly Hills of Fallujah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like houses.
Speaker 1: It was like the home and gardens cartel versions.
Speaker 2: Like you should.
Speaker 1: You've got the ascari district, literally in Arabic means soldiers district.
Speaker 1: So all the retired generals, if they serve Todam with
Speaker 1: honor and distinction, they.
Speaker 2: Got a big, old, beautiful house.
Speaker 1: But those generals also knew they might find something out
Speaker 1: and so I want to make sure no one else comes.
Speaker 2: So my wall.
Speaker 1: Each of these houses are little forts all for at
Speaker 1: walled compounds, wire on the top, broken glass, embedded in
Speaker 1: the concrete. It was it sucked. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is that they're dense and they're thick, and so you
Speaker 1: can't hear did that was at a gunshot and the
Speaker 1: whole city is blown up. Got marines over here, you
Speaker 1: got army. The whole city is you know, a city
Speaker 1: inside of Tampa Bay, Florida is invaded every Missiles and
Speaker 1: rockets are going everywhere. So what we realized with a
Speaker 1: five five six with our M fours, if you shoot
Speaker 1: through drywall, that's going through drywall, right, They'll tell you
Speaker 1: that an.
Speaker 2: Ar is not a home defense weapon.
Speaker 1: You're gonna reach out and touchstone with an ail in
Speaker 1: concrete that bullet for the five five six, the two
Speaker 1: two three, it's like tic tac toe's we don't ricochet everywhere.
Speaker 3: So it so you got to shoot.
Speaker 1: So now I am the King, Fitzie and I when
Speaker 1: we were rolling out, whether we were on the Iranian border,
Speaker 1: north south, no matter where we were, we were the
Speaker 1: win in doubt. Shoot about crew, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We were not afraid to overpower you with gunfire. That's
Speaker 1: how we got through as many fights as we got through.
Speaker 1: But in a confined space that is absolutely dangerous because
Speaker 1: now you're gonna hit your own, You're gonna shoot your own,
Speaker 1: and what's the point. Frags are great in the movies,
Speaker 1: in the video games. Throw a grenade and let the
Speaker 1: good people, the defense contractor that made that fuse worry
Speaker 1: about the aftermath. In a confined space with no ventilation.
Speaker 2: It's smoke.
Speaker 1: It's a frag It shot little pieces everywhere.
Speaker 2: But now it just filled the room with smile. You
Speaker 2: can't see.
Speaker 1: But guess what they're in that house. They know where
Speaker 1: the door is. You've never been in that house. I
Speaker 1: mean the bin laden rate is. Seal Team six are studs.
Speaker 1: They spent three months going through what they thought that
Speaker 1: house looked like. These kids from National Guard active duty
Speaker 1: nineteen year old, twenty year old, forty year olds. Every
Speaker 1: adventure is you know, what's the door look like?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 1: What does a house look like? No one has any
Speaker 1: idea of what's going on. But in Felujah, they were
Speaker 1: knocking stairwells out, they were knocking floors out. We like
Speaker 1: to go from roof to roof instead of going roof
Speaker 1: all the way down, go through the front door, get
Speaker 1: shot at. We'd like to surprise them. Maybe go on
Speaker 1: the roof, maybe jump through a window. You would jump
Speaker 1: onto a rooftop and there was no floor, wow, and
Speaker 1: you would drop to the next story that out. You
Speaker 1: would go from the roof all the way down to
Speaker 1: the bottom floor of that home. And they had, you know,
Speaker 1: metal spikes put up and you know, everything was a trap,
Speaker 1: and you know the trip wires. The building contained, the
Speaker 1: b SID building contained and improvised explosive device. A b
Speaker 1: SID building bomb was our biggest fear because you walk
Speaker 1: in a building bomb, it's done.
Speaker 2: You're done.
Speaker 1: When we got in that house, as soon as we
Speaker 1: get into the area, it just opens up. And I'm
Speaker 1: on one side of the building and my entire platoon
Speaker 1: is on the other side. And so because of the
Speaker 1: fact that we got complacent and we were just going
Speaker 1: building after building, we're seeing blood, we see a little
Speaker 1: bit of this. A tanker got one guy, we're looking
Speaker 1: at him. We knew three, maybe four, one or two.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're separated. There's just one per house for the
Speaker 1: rest of the way. When we get in there and
Speaker 1: these machine guns open up. The machine gun fire was
Speaker 1: so overwhelming, belt fed machine guns and it's just coming
Speaker 1: through a door that my first reaction was cease fire.
Speaker 1: I thought it was our guys shooting because they saw
Speaker 1: something squirrely and they're conditioned and trained to shoot. So
Speaker 1: I'm yelling ceasefire, and my team leader yells to me,
Speaker 1: tell thee tell the bad.
Speaker 2: Guys to stop firing. Confessor's doing it.
Speaker 1: So we had no opportunity to do anything from the kitchen.
Speaker 2: We're in one little living room.
Speaker 1: Fires coming in from the kitchen, our rest of our
Speaker 1: platoon coming through. Our machine gunners they open up on them.
Speaker 1: So now my machine gunners, you know, you see Rambo
Speaker 1: with the six on one, that two forty Bravos not
Speaker 1: meant to be. You're gonna be at a aircraft fire
Speaker 1: if you shoot it with one arm. This kid, these
Speaker 1: two Swanny and mcdaniald McDaniel, they were shoulder fire into
Speaker 1: two forty, which is something I haven't seen on a range.
Speaker 1: You do that, but not in a fight. And so
Speaker 1: now they're shooting two American two forty Bravo machine guns
Speaker 1: into the kitchen. Those rounds are going right through our wall.
Speaker 1: So our bad guys heads down in the kitchen, but
Speaker 1: our good guys are shooting this way. Bad guys are
Speaker 1: shooting that way. And I noticed that when anyone they're
Speaker 1: all on the prone, but when they'd get their head up,
Speaker 1: that kevlar would get ticked and someone would get hit
Speaker 1: with a piece of shrapnel or a piece of whatever.
Speaker 1: And I'm the only guy that's totally protected because I'm
Speaker 1: against a wall that's not a firewall. Not no one's
Speaker 1: shooting in me. And so I knew that I just
Speaker 1: had to get into that fusilade of tracers. That part
Speaker 1: was going to be the worst part. But if we
Speaker 1: stayed where we were at, those walls were going to
Speaker 1: collapse on us. And that's but there were there were
Speaker 1: things in the house that I smell. Again, you can't
Speaker 1: really trust your vision because you're so tired and you're
Speaker 1: hearing your hearing shot. But you could smell a man.
Speaker 1: You could smell his breath, you can smell his body odor,
Speaker 1: you can smell if you use the bathroom in there.
Speaker 1: But you can also smell fuel and gas. And I
Speaker 1: was just like there was so much cordite and so
Speaker 1: much powder cordite, there was so much gunpowder in that
Speaker 1: room that it was just all I could see was
Speaker 1: the tracer fire coming through and our good guy's coming through.
Speaker 1: And I was the only one that could make a decision.
Speaker 1: So my thought was Australian peel. I'm gonna stand in front,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna empty an automatic machine gun as many rounds
Speaker 1: as I can and under that fire, everyone's gonna peel
Speaker 1: off on me. And I just need to know who
Speaker 1: the last man is and then I'm gonna run with him.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna break contact and drop the bomb. That's
Speaker 1: the plan. But man, now that's a plan that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Let's go do You're the guy that's gonna do it.
Speaker 1: So now you're like, oh, I need some time, you know.
Speaker 1: Like my legs were concrete, I mean, could not move them,
Speaker 1: and these I'm like, give me a machine gun, and
Speaker 1: they're and I'm thinking that's gonna take at least a minute.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: machine got like slides over.
Speaker 1: Hush. You know.
Speaker 2: That was rather.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, how many are in the We got
Speaker 1: like a little pouch of machine got a drum? How
Speaker 1: many are in there? They're like, you know, there's two hundred.
Speaker 1: I'm like, are we positive? They're like yes. I'm like
Speaker 1: you double checked, you know, doing everything to eat waste time.
Speaker 1: I get that thing in my hand, I could my
Speaker 1: rifle got hit. I took a round and the rifles
Speaker 1: and my rifle was dead. The magazine was all shot up,
Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, all right, I'm gonna get as
Speaker 1: low as possible and if they're gonna kill me they're
Speaker 1: gonna shoot me in the face, but they're not. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna absorb anything with my sappy plate, but try to
Speaker 1: get as uncomfortably low as I can. But I'm gonna hook.
Speaker 1: So we we trained just a little finger. I just
Speaker 1: want to butterfly kiss that that trigger. Never gonna hook
Speaker 1: a trigger, right, because I want to get as many
Speaker 1: rounds off in a stable position. So I just want
Speaker 1: to kiss my trigger right. And and a machine gun,
Speaker 1: I want to burst it. I want to, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to. So I'm hooking second knuckle on this trigger.
Speaker 1: So if you do get shot, I'm gonna fall and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go forward. And that bolt, I'm still gonna
Speaker 1: fire that thing even when I'm dead. That's what I'm thinking, right,
Speaker 1: And so they're like are you ready, And I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm ready. Here we go, and I look
Speaker 1: into the room. I get one angle and I see
Speaker 1: these guys and they're just so cocky, They're so happy,
Speaker 1: They're so cocky and over you know, and I just
Speaker 1: now it's like, okay, I needed that. Now I'm pissed
Speaker 1: to get the fear is good. I can harness that,
Speaker 1: but get me a little pissy in there. Piss and
Speaker 1: fear is the perfect cocktail for something this stupid. And
Speaker 1: I look over it at Fitzie, who's you know, the commas,
Speaker 1: the coolest, the most. He's been in the army longer,
Speaker 1: done more, been shot three times.
Speaker 2: That guy.
Speaker 1: Anything I asked him to do, he'd do, and he's
Speaker 1: never asked me to do anything. And he's all about
Speaker 1: your number, pulling your number, you go do it, And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's that's fits telling me, like that's
Speaker 1: my So I'm like, all right, here's the deal. I
Speaker 1: walk in there and there's a stairwell that goes right
Speaker 1: up to the second story and there's a Jersey barrier
Speaker 1: underneath that stairwell.
Speaker 2: These guys built a bunker in this house, so.
Speaker 1: They got the Jersey barrier concrete like you see at
Speaker 1: the airport, and then the stairwell that goes up and
Speaker 1: they're just right over the top of it. And I
Speaker 1: was like, did not have that. That was out of
Speaker 1: the plan at all. These shots have to be perfect.
Speaker 1: And I'm going there with like a lass of of bullets,
Speaker 1: you know, like just spray it everywhere. I get up
Speaker 1: there and I just find myself moving up the stairs
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, I'm gonna bend that saw machine gun
Speaker 1: into that bunker and try to just you know, stitch them.
Speaker 1: And as I'm doing that, I'm seeing these boys run out.
Speaker 1: I hear gunfire from the kitchen. I'm trying to mix
Speaker 1: it a little bit, give them something to think about.
Speaker 1: And I just hear that that machine gun.
Speaker 2: Empty, and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, wow, that was very fast, not at all
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. So we you know, the saw
Speaker 1: has a little feed for the M four magazines and
Speaker 1: we did that in basic like one time, and I'm
Speaker 1: like it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Then see if they fixed it, you know.
Speaker 1: Nothing, I couldn't it just it was so now I
Speaker 1: had a magazine and I was like, I could hear
Speaker 1: him talking. I knew no no screams, no pains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a small window anyway, but I was hoping
Speaker 1: that leap. But they're they're not shooting anymore, right, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm hoping that they're not going to shoot. So
Speaker 1: now it's got I got to get out of there
Speaker 1: and get a new weapon system or get a bomb
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: I got to get out of there.
Speaker 1: And I see that there's a door right next to
Speaker 1: them on the other side of their bunker, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, do I I can't run in front of it.
Speaker 1: I can't go through the kitchen, you know, I got
Speaker 1: to get the way I came in. So I just
Speaker 1: took my my magazine and chucked it. And they reacted
Speaker 1: to that, and I just, I mean, I mean, I ran.
Speaker 1: If there was a four, if there was a forty time,
Speaker 1: I would have I would have been up there. It
Speaker 1: was quick, and I just remember feeling the heat of
Speaker 1: those rounds, like, I mean, they were just there was
Speaker 1: they were all over on the way out, and then
Speaker 1: in the courtyard the ground getting hit, you know, just
Speaker 1: there was gunfire as I was running out and I
Speaker 1: got out of the gate, and then I was right
Speaker 1: back to that dad. Look that look my father gave
Speaker 1: me of like that was your shot. That was it?
Speaker 2: Like you had all of.
Speaker 1: This garbage for that moment that you screamed about forever,
Speaker 1: and you had that moment and you had the initiative,
Speaker 1: and you nutted up again.
Speaker 2: You didn't finish the job.
Speaker 1: And now I got kids getting shot at in the road.
Speaker 2: It's chaos.
Speaker 1: There's people on the roof and I'm like how many.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do the math, like, is that the
Speaker 1: same guy? Did I see one guy that I see
Speaker 1: two guys? I think I saw two, But there's a
Speaker 1: guy in the kitchen who's shooting from the roof.
Speaker 2: Is it just one guy running around?
Speaker 1: What's the deal? And then we asked for a bomb.
Speaker 1: At that point, a bomb in Fallujah was like you
Speaker 1: know the Butcher with twenty, you know the DMV. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants a bomb. We got like forty two. Gonna wait
Speaker 1: for forty two by it's not gonna happen, right, And
Speaker 1: then when you get a bomb, the battle's over. There's
Speaker 1: no more artillery and mortars coming in, no helicopters. They
Speaker 1: clear that airspace for one bomb. You better be worth
Speaker 1: that one bomb, right. You know, someone could be losing
Speaker 1: their life and you're taking their bomb. You better need it.
Speaker 1: So I was like, we're not getting a bomb. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be an hour for a bomb. These guys are
Speaker 1: gonna run away and they're gonna kill someone. We'd already
Speaker 1: lost oursar Major. This neighborhood was a bad neighborhood. In
Speaker 1: the morning, we'd end up losing Lieutenant Iwan and Madison.
Speaker 1: So we lose two more guys in that same block
Speaker 1: of neighborhood. This was our chance to give them a
Speaker 1: knockout blow and our bradleys. The streets were too narrow
Speaker 1: and you can't really traverse the gates are high. So
Speaker 1: guess what if you can't maneuver, you just you can
Speaker 1: only shoot on the plane that you have. It was
Speaker 1: enough to tear up some of the building, some of
Speaker 1: the rooms, but not effective fire. There was only one
Speaker 1: way to do, and that was to smoke them out
Speaker 1: and go in there and go after them. So I
Speaker 1: figured this was mine, it was my mission. I didn't
Speaker 1: get it done. I'm gonna get it done the second time.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make sure I'm not gonna bring all
Speaker 1: the guys because it's not worth it to lose, because
Speaker 1: I don't know what's in there. I'm thinking hopefully two,
Speaker 1: maybe three. Never would have thought, you know, six or seven.
Speaker 2: That wasn't. That wasn't in my head, but that might.
Speaker 2: I was getting them out and so got a new rifle.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I walk in, the bradley had
Speaker 1: ruptured all the water reserves and the different third world
Speaker 1: nation you know, bladders that were in there. So now
Speaker 1: we got standing water in this water smelled like all
Speaker 1: my fish just I want to vomit, But it was
Speaker 1: I was got my mind off of death just to
Speaker 1: be like these people they're dealing with this too. But
Speaker 1: the problem with the water is that now every time
Speaker 1: I walk through the water, that ripple, So now they
Speaker 1: know I'm in and I'm looking at like broken mirrors everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is how they tracked us.
Speaker 2: It's like a seven to eleven they know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's plastic explosives everywhere everywhere and propane hooked
Speaker 1: up to it. And I'm like, well that's great. You know,
Speaker 1: Like now I gotta be careful where I'm shooting because
Speaker 1: if I had a C four block, I'm going to
Speaker 1: lose a whole house. You know what's going on? Lost
Speaker 1: in is U My buddy, he's got a nine mill
Speaker 1: that's all he had because he had a M fourteen
Speaker 1: that didn't have night vision. And my night vision's acting squirrely,
Speaker 1: so it's on, it's off, it's it's just it's too much.
Speaker 1: Were So we just got to take the initiative and
Speaker 1: just go. And I I look in the mirror and
Speaker 1: I see him putting a few. This one guy was
Speaker 1: putting a fuse on an RPG five. You're adding a
Speaker 1: fuse to a rocket. You stick the rocket in the launcher,
Speaker 1: then you fire it. And I was like, that's gonna go.
Speaker 1: That's going to go to the one of these bombs.
Speaker 1: You know, he's gonna shoot up rocket inside of a
Speaker 1: I put guys around the house. My initial goal was
Speaker 1: just to act like an idiot, chase him outside and
Speaker 1: get shot up by the boys waiting, you know, outside.
Speaker 1: As soon as I turned the corner, I engaged the
Speaker 1: rocket guy and I just caught him. He was standing.
Speaker 1: He was just there's no moving for him. He's just unlucky.
Speaker 2: Where he was. The other guy ran into the kitchen
Speaker 2: and I tagged.
Speaker 3: These guys that were on the machine gun.
Speaker 2: There on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I tagged the other guy in the back
Speaker 1: pretty good. And I could see, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: you know, the blood is now in the water and
Speaker 1: it's you could see that it's murky, and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's good. But I'm not seeing that he's in the water.
Speaker 1: You know, Hollywood, you drop, I shoot you, you fall
Speaker 1: in real life, you know, you're a and and I
Speaker 1: got I got a needle and a spoon, and these
Speaker 1: boys are shooting up. The one guy that we hit
Speaker 1: with a rocket had a tourniquet on, so I mean
Speaker 1: he they were hitting heroin right there. And but honestly,
Speaker 1: if I was fighting Americans are probably with two, I'd
Speaker 1: probably get a good buzz on too, because that's not
Speaker 1: ending well. You know, you might want to go, you know,
Speaker 1: comfortably numb while you're fighting.
Speaker 2: One guy is down, the other guy's hurt.
Speaker 1: And now I'm on the other side of that stairwell
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm in this big dark room and
Speaker 1: I've just got my eyes on the on the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I haven't even cleared this room behind me,
Speaker 1: so I might as well do that. And so as
Speaker 1: I'm clearing this big it's a big master bedroom with
Speaker 1: a wardrobe, foot locker, big wardrobe, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I just start hearing not only footsteps upstairs, but I
Speaker 1: start hearing guys charging into that door. And so now I'm,
Speaker 1: you know, fighting these guys in the doorway, and I
Speaker 1: got one, I hit a second guy, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: is this the same guy?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: You know how many times am I hitting him? How
Speaker 1: many people are coming through the door. But in the
Speaker 1: middle of that firefight, like a bullet went sideways across
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, I know my zero's off, but
Speaker 1: it can't be. I mean, I can't be shooting to
Speaker 1: a ninety degree angle. But it just confused me that
Speaker 1: I could hear like wood was like like disintegrating, and
Speaker 1: there were tracers hitting the wall as I was shooting,
Speaker 1: and I just I just got like a pucker factor one,
Speaker 1: just you know what that there's something someone's in this
Speaker 1: room and I cleared it, and that wardrobe just bursts open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this dude just he just jumps out of it.
Speaker 1: But like you talk about these little luck things, right,
Speaker 1: little little things, that wardrobe falls on its doors, doesn't
Speaker 1: fall flat, it falls on its doors. And that elevation
Speaker 1: gave me just enough. He put his ak under his
Speaker 1: arm and he was running this way and shooting behind him,
Speaker 1: so he had the trigger and he was shooting out
Speaker 1: of the armpit as he was running.
Speaker 3: Shooting backwards behind him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to get out of there, right, And he
Speaker 1: steps over this mushy bed, and the mushy bed he
Speaker 1: loses his foot. It's dark can't see. He loses his
Speaker 1: focus and he falls. But when he does that, those
Speaker 1: rounds just hit that wardrobe and it's high enough because
Speaker 1: it's on its doors that it's just absorbing rounds. I
Speaker 1: was literally standing right there. If that door, if that
Speaker 1: wardrobe would have gone flush, that would have been it.
Speaker 1: That would have been my first know that would have
Speaker 1: been I would have been out. But he goes up
Speaker 1: those stairs and I got him when he fell against
Speaker 1: that door after falling off the bed. I really I
Speaker 1: hit him good, and I hit him lower back, and
Speaker 1: then I got him on the hip. As he turned
Speaker 1: and I saw what he was wearing. I saw his
Speaker 1: beard and older guy, he was the leader, gray in
Speaker 1: his beard, but that that look on his face as
Speaker 1: he ran up and I could just see the blood.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh this, this guy's hurt. You know
Speaker 1: this that guy I'm going after. I like my odds
Speaker 1: with a dude I've shot repeatedly, and it's scared out
Speaker 1: of his mind. You know, I don't want him. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's upstairs. I've never been up there, but
Speaker 1: it was the water is now only on the first floor.
Speaker 2: But I'm following him.
Speaker 1: Blood, But that slick water and that blood my foot.
Speaker 1: I put my foot on a stair and it just
Speaker 1: wiped out from like the slick and that guy was
Speaker 1: right at the landing, and so I wiped out, and
Speaker 1: right at the landing I just heard the loudest. My
Speaker 1: ears were shot. I had little hearing, but after that
Speaker 1: I was done. That AK was right here and as
Speaker 1: I wiped out, that round just hit the I mean.
Speaker 3: Once again, had you not slipped, it might have killed you.
Speaker 1: Hey, what I'm telling you, a seven six two, an
Speaker 1: AK forty seven round against concrete does mushrooms anyway. Fitz's
Speaker 1: body will show you the mushroom of a seven six
Speaker 1: two will do. But when it's at a concrete wall,
Speaker 1: that proximity, that is like a thunder punch. I mean
Speaker 1: that literally was. And that's intimidating as hell because you're
Speaker 1: like that was me. My round would have gone bean
Speaker 1: bong boom, you know, it would have tick tacted around.
Speaker 1: This one just punched that wall right by your head,
Speaker 1: right by my head. And so he's making again my
Speaker 1: hearing a shot and the bill is huge, and now
Speaker 1: I can't hear what's happened on the ground floor, but
Speaker 1: I'm focused on him, and that panting, that moaning, that's
Speaker 1: that's a guy who's hurt. I mean, he's he's really
Speaker 1: going through a lot of pain. And so as I turned,
Speaker 1: the only thing I could get through the night vision
Speaker 1: and through the pop was just one shot of his face.
Speaker 1: And that fear on his face was like all I
Speaker 1: needed to motivate me to close in on him. And
Speaker 1: I cooked a grenade off and I threw it in
Speaker 1: that room, and I did. The room was an l shape,
Speaker 1: but that grenade went long, and I just the fires
Speaker 1: just started roaring from that grenade. It was a bunch
Speaker 1: of mattresses in there, and it was quite apparent that
Speaker 1: the smoke was thick, black, oily smoke. But that room,
Speaker 1: as soon as I walked in on my shin bone.
Speaker 1: I ripped my shin bone on just a bunch of
Speaker 1: clanging propane tanks. I'm the whole room was full of propane.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so now I'm like, I'm not shooting anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: So I use my rifle to kind of wave the
Speaker 1: smoke around, but really to find him where is he?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hit him with the butt of this rifle
Speaker 1: and just put him down. And he was.
Speaker 2: There was a whole lot of fight left in him.
Speaker 1: You know, I learned a valuable lesson that if someone
Speaker 1: you know they're gonna fight for their life, they're gonna
Speaker 1: fight for their life, They're gonna do whatever they have
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: And so now you're literally fighting this guy with your hands.
Speaker 1: In a way that was really surreal because while this
Speaker 1: is happening, there's a guy screaming. I knew enough Arabic,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't picking up This wasn't Arabic. It was
Speaker 1: it was either Urdu or it was it wasn't what
Speaker 1: we had been hearing. And uh, I'm so so I
Speaker 1: just I know he's yelling to a guy and that
Speaker 1: guy's responding to him, and I can hear multiple voices,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, this is just gotta I gotta gotta
Speaker 1: shut him up. So I can just hear how many
Speaker 1: are left and where they are. I don't I can't,
Speaker 1: for life for me understand how I'm on the top
Speaker 1: floor of a building, but there's something above me, Like
Speaker 1: who's talking above me? Is that the roof is at
Speaker 1: another you know this he there's a giant patio outside
Speaker 1: of this big room that we were in, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: is he on that patio?
Speaker 2: Is he above the patio?
Speaker 1: And as you're trying to do that inventory, this guy's biting,
Speaker 1: he's paunching.
Speaker 3: Uh, you're literally fighting the guy.
Speaker 1: Because I'm I'm what, I'm okay. My My biggest fear is,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna get killed, right, That's number one,
Speaker 1: And then number two is my guys are coming in
Speaker 1: and they're just gonna shoot. I trained him.
Speaker 3: I know, I know they don't want them shooting the propane.
Speaker 1: I don't want them shooting me and the propane. I
Speaker 1: don't want him, you know, blowing the house up.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I got to at least get hold
Speaker 2: of what's happening.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's happening, and I'm getting my act
Speaker 1: kick simultaneously. So the goal was that every time he
Speaker 1: would resist, where I hit him was clear that when
Speaker 1: I put my fingers in those areas that he just
Speaker 1: totally gave up like that hurt. You know, that pain.
Speaker 1: Being able to control him with pain was enough for
Speaker 1: me to get the upper hand, and you know, it
Speaker 1: just kind of went down and then I just forty
Speaker 1: five went off and I didn't even know he had
Speaker 1: a handgun on him, but that was a big Soviet
Speaker 1: forty five, like that was.
Speaker 2: Right next to my head, or at least it felt
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wasn't in danger of being shot by it,
Speaker 1: but I was in danger of him knowing where I
Speaker 1: was for the second shot. So now we're fighting over that,
Speaker 1: and I just remembered I had a gerber and my helmet.
Speaker 1: I used my helmet. I used a gerber and you know, NiFe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was it. That was it, And then I
Speaker 1: was no helmet. My rifle is on the ground somewhere.
Speaker 1: I kicked it a few times, so I knew it
Speaker 1: was near the door, but I needed to get in
Speaker 1: that air, that patio and just kind of like take
Speaker 1: a wall, keep my profile low. I'm an infantryman, so
Speaker 1: I know how to smoke a cigarette at night, and
Speaker 1: so I just kind of cut my hand and took
Speaker 1: a few drags of a cigarette just to calm myself down.
Speaker 1: But also I didn't have my night vision. My helmet
Speaker 1: was gone. I needed that cherry to kind of look
Speaker 1: around a little bit, you know, use it as a
Speaker 1: little guide. And now I don't have my vest is open,
Speaker 1: my helmet's gone, no rifle, and I could hear the
Speaker 1: guys outside coming up with a plan. I can't yell
Speaker 1: to him because I know that there's someone else here.
Speaker 1: But I'm just thinking I'm dead. If I don't hang
Speaker 1: on this wall, I'm done. And then and I just
Speaker 1: hear a guy land and I heard the pop of
Speaker 1: his leg or his knee or whatever he broke. But
Speaker 1: he jump He jumped on and the patio again. Was
Speaker 1: he trying to jump on me if he didn't know
Speaker 1: where I was, If he smelled the cigarette, I don't
Speaker 1: know what his intention was to help his buddy out.
Speaker 1: There was no I wasn't making any sound. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he smelled me.
Speaker 2: He couldn't see me. But he landed.
Speaker 1: And the way he landed, that scream was you know
Speaker 1: he was in trouble. That ak that he was holding
Speaker 1: fell and the magazine metallic sound. I just grabbed that
Speaker 1: and when I when I chambered the round, it was
Speaker 1: on fully automatic, and it was no butt It was
Speaker 1: a snub, no buttstock.
Speaker 2: It went everywhere. I didn't. I didn't hit him there.
Speaker 2: I got my rifle.
Speaker 1: I put rounds on him, but he ended up either
Speaker 1: jumping down, falling down. He came, he went off that
Speaker 1: patio and the sawgunners opened up right after that, so,
Speaker 1: you know, we figured that was that was done. But
Speaker 1: it was a you know, and and I still there
Speaker 1: was another guy that one of the other boys took
Speaker 1: care of that was in a closet. They don't put
Speaker 1: him in the total, but he was there. And then
Speaker 1: the bomb came. The bomb came, and they were like
Speaker 1: the bombs in coming and we were like, oh no,
Speaker 1: I gotta find my helmet, you know, so we grabbed everything.
Speaker 1: That bomb was a dud. Next bomb wasn't a dud,
Speaker 1: but it blew up that the building. And the bomb
Speaker 1: that was a dud. That was a pretty big boom.
Speaker 1: But I didn't No one said medal of honor, no
Speaker 1: one said this is awesome. They just said, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a day, good work, let's go, let's go
Speaker 1: get him.
Speaker 3: So wow, And I've read it, but nothing's like listen
Speaker 3: to you say it.
Speaker 2: It was crazy. It was a crazy day.
Speaker 1: But honestly, it was a fight that taught me so
Speaker 1: much about there's luck. Luck isn't supposed to be involved.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to train, we're supposed to be ready, but
Speaker 1: it's dumb luck.
Speaker 3: So but David, you had your fingers and a guy's
Speaker 3: wound who you created, fighting for your life, hitting each
Speaker 3: other with helmets and stuff, and you end up killing
Speaker 3: him with a knife. What does that feel like?
Speaker 1: What was most disturbing to me is that it didn't
Speaker 1: feel like anything. It didn't feel just it didn't feel
Speaker 1: I felt I was trying to show mercy. I was
Speaker 1: trying to rationalize him, which ioually. He didn't speak the
Speaker 1: language I was trying to speak, which I was in Arabic.
Speaker 1: I was saying it constantly. He spoke English to me,
Speaker 1: I spoke broken Arabic.
Speaker 3: I mean you spoke to one another.
Speaker 1: There was a time, there was a time that they
Speaker 1: were screaming at me when I was in that little room.
Speaker 1: They called me a jew. They said they were gonna
Speaker 1: cut my head off and my dog tags something sending
Speaker 1: my dog tags home or and I was all I
Speaker 1: knew was the basic Arabic, which was, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: the first infantry, stop shoot, you know, like surrender, first infantry?
Speaker 2: Why had to move shot?
Speaker 1: You know, all the stuff that they were trained, But
Speaker 1: they weren't speaking Arabic. But they were speaking a British
Speaker 1: They had a British accent in their English, which was
Speaker 1: even weirder. It was like being assaulted by the you know,
Speaker 1: the BBC so for you know, like the Downtown Abbey
Speaker 1: cast was joined l Kainda.
Speaker 2: It was weird.
Speaker 1: And then but upstairs I was just telling him to
Speaker 1: basically stop. And you know what I could see from
Speaker 1: that guy was that he was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna stop.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna stop.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was weird. It was weird.
Speaker 1: I didn't but I really thought that there'd be an
Speaker 1: inventory where I'd be like, do you know what you
Speaker 1: just did? And does that mean anything? And it was like,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you're not in the fight.
Speaker 2: And then you're you're.
Speaker 1: My executive officer got killed an hour two hours later,
Speaker 1: and then we lost Madison, jac Madison, who's from Buffalo,
Speaker 1: good awesome kid, and he you know, basically gave his
Speaker 1: life for his you know, scouts, and and all of
Speaker 1: this is happening and and and then more guys are
Speaker 1: getting hit more and it's like, all right, look, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have time to sit by a fire and talk
Speaker 1: to a shrink. Work it out, you know, but not now.
Speaker 1: But it's not the time. Now, now is the time
Speaker 1: that are you sound?
Speaker 2: Are you good?
Speaker 1: Let's let's, you know, keep going at it.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. So the world is this story
Speaker 3: gets told because you happen to have this media guy
Speaker 3: with you. And there's one living Medal of Honor recipient
Speaker 3: from that war and it's you. And now we go
Speaker 3: to the supporting greatness because what you just told me
Speaker 3: is phenomenal. It's it's disturbing that human beings are ever
Speaker 3: put in a position to have to do that. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: So so now I think about this though it because
Speaker 1: this is the other piece of it is the other
Speaker 1: piece of it is nobody knows this right, And I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to tell anyone this because now I'm
Speaker 1: in a position where I'm telling my guys, by the way,
Speaker 1: this is, there's some horrible stuff. They don't need. They
Speaker 1: need to focus on what's in front of them. What's
Speaker 1: in front of them is actually getting more progressively chaotic
Speaker 1: for them, So they don't need to be burdened with
Speaker 1: my two am thoughts. They're tired, they're hungry. These guys
Speaker 1: are throwing themselves in front of wounded guys protecting their
Speaker 1: own dudes, you know, snipers and bombs, and everyone is
Speaker 1: doing exactly what I didn't have the capable of doing.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm their age when I'm in my
Speaker 1: house being afraid of a guy who and these guys
Speaker 1: are saving the world. So they've already exceeded me as
Speaker 1: far as where they're at. They've proven all they need
Speaker 1: to prove. I need to focus on them. And then
Speaker 1: this reporter who filmed it, and now it's it's a
Speaker 1: story and it's in a Time magazine front page story
Speaker 1: and everyone's reading this and so like this world is
Speaker 1: happening outside of your bubble.
Speaker 2: No one said anything other than who wants it?
Speaker 1: This is the worst. I mean, no one wants to
Speaker 1: be that. That's not something. Maybe some people love it.
Speaker 1: This has been hell. Really it's not fun at all.
Speaker 1: But everyone they're they're talking about good job. But it's
Speaker 1: an at a boy, you caught a ball, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: Now this video in this world live amongst itself. And
Speaker 1: then you find out that you're nominated for something but
Speaker 1: you don't get it. And in the Army, if you're
Speaker 1: nominated for Medal of honor. You don't get like a
Speaker 1: you know, you don't end up with a trip to
Speaker 1: Jamaica if you don't.
Speaker 2: Get the consolation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't get like you know, that's he didn't
Speaker 3: he gets Johnny Fers there was a wonderful air fryer.
Speaker 1: You know, like, there's no there's no secondary. So they
Speaker 1: say you're nominated, and now the Army wants to make
Speaker 1: a big deal. Commanders love you know, that's one of theirs,
Speaker 1: that you're their kid, and it just doesn't happen. So
Speaker 1: now there's this thought process of, well, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: BS story, Maybe you made that crap up.
Speaker 2: Maybe it didn't happen the way you said.
Speaker 3: It happened, because you know, now you're dealing with that.
Speaker 1: So now it's like, wait a second, you know, now
Speaker 1: I got to prove what. So there's a tape out there.
Speaker 1: Everything was just a written narrative, but Michael ware had
Speaker 1: a camera, so Michael wears camera, which I don't even
Speaker 1: know existed until years after. But there's a bit of
Speaker 1: scar tissue that builds where you're just like, you know,
Speaker 1: what's screws? Okay, fine, I didn't get the award. I'm
Speaker 1: fine with it. I'm sure you know at some point
Speaker 1: it would have been awesome. I'm totally changing by I've
Speaker 1: got kids, I've got a job, I'm doing my thing.
Speaker 1: I'm at the point where no one knows about my
Speaker 1: army life. No one's Veterans Day comes along and you're happy,
Speaker 1: loving it. No one's it used to be Veterans Day.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the guy nominated for the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the guy with the silver star. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the guy with the bron Let's go to
Speaker 1: the guy we know about in Time magazine. Those days
Speaker 1: are done fifteen years going on. So now it's like
Speaker 1: happy Veterans Day. I'm like, well, yeah, but it's not
Speaker 1: directed to me. It's directed at the other guy that
Speaker 1: where camouflage and low crawls to the coffee sheet.
Speaker 2: You're that guy.
Speaker 1: He wants everyone to know he's a Vet. He's got
Speaker 1: his you know, Airborne wings on his car, and he's
Speaker 1: not appy. I'm not I'm staying low. If you know
Speaker 1: about it, you know about the book, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1: And at that point the book was fifteen years old too,
Speaker 1: so everything's cool. Then this phone call comes and it's like,
Speaker 1: this is all happening, and I'm thinking, well, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not really happening. Maybe there's a way to do this
Speaker 1: on the download. Maybe you can say no, maybe you
Speaker 1: can say I don't need it, I'm good, thanks, give
Speaker 1: it to someone else. And when that news broke and
Speaker 1: I had like a guy at work that was like,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna believe this. There's a guy with your
Speaker 1: name get the Metal of gn But he was like,
Speaker 1: you can't be you. You're the you're the guy that
Speaker 1: is on my fantasy football league. You're not that guy.
Speaker 1: You're not ever talking about. You don't have any tattoos,
Speaker 1: you can't be that guy. You don't dip anymore, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't spin in a cup, and you're
Speaker 1: not that guy. And so I was like, that's over.
Speaker 1: That's let's do other things, you know, And it became
Speaker 1: a parent that not only is it not over, but
Speaker 1: now being the only living guy now it's like, was
Speaker 1: a wrack the right war, let's discuss here to join it.
Speaker 3: But all the Iraq guys I've talked to, they didn't
Speaker 3: even care if it was the right war or not.
Speaker 3: It was they were there. They were there because they
Speaker 3: were asked to go or they were ordered to go there,
Speaker 3: and they were fighting alongside the men that they loved.
Speaker 3: And the politics of it when you're I imagine, when
Speaker 3: you're in a stinky, water filled house full of pro
Speaker 3: paane tanks and blood's going everywhere, and you're shoving your
Speaker 3: fingers in wounds of a man who's trying to kill
Speaker 3: you and you're having to literally fight him hand to hand,
Speaker 3: you're not thinking or do you care at all about
Speaker 3: the politics.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about the politics to begin with, That's
Speaker 1: what I mean. But it's like this, you know, Afghan
Speaker 1: I'm pro army, I'm pro America, and I want to
Speaker 1: win our wars. If you don't want to, if you
Speaker 1: don't want us to fight your war, don't vote to
Speaker 1: send us to fight. I mean, it's that simple. Don't
Speaker 1: send us to wards you don't expect us to win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've got to win a war.
Speaker 2: It's going to get ugly.
Speaker 1: So make sure that your va is ready, make sure
Speaker 1: your home front's ready, make sure you have enough bullets,
Speaker 1: and make sure that it's not a political soccer ball.
Speaker 1: But I talk to people all the time. They get
Speaker 1: all pussy with me. But I say, you know, if
Speaker 1: draft Kings had a probability right now of who's more
Speaker 1: likely to host the Summer Olympic Games, Baghdad or Kabul.
Speaker 2: It's Baghdad.
Speaker 1: So I mean, you can say all you want about
Speaker 1: you know, Iraq was the bad war, and those veterans
Speaker 1: got news for you. Iraq's on lockdown. Iraq doesn't have
Speaker 1: Iranian puppets anymore. Iraq isn't you know, they're dinar is
Speaker 1: strong and their oil is being sold and they don't
Speaker 1: have suicide bombs going off. The Taliban still lopping heads
Speaker 1: off and you know, treating women like garbage. So I mean,
Speaker 1: let's be honest. The good war got screwed up by
Speaker 1: politicians that screw up wars. Our military. You let us
Speaker 1: hooking jab and break that chain and let us go
Speaker 1: at them. We're gonna keep America safe and we're gonna
Speaker 1: stack bad guys up. But you get your politics in there,
Speaker 1: and it's what everything else is. It's the story of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: We haven't learned any talk to Vietnam vet What battle
Speaker 1: was lost in Vietnam? Zero, not a single.
Speaker 2: Firefight when you ever actually were able to go fight,
Speaker 2: a fire in a.
Speaker 1: Serious incident report, In an engagement where Americans were firing
Speaker 1: against North Korean or North or viet Cong, not a
Speaker 1: single battle was lost. IA drag outnumbered by four divisions
Speaker 1: to our two battalions won that fight, outnumbered out gunn SF,
Speaker 1: special warfare, you name it. We won every battle in
Speaker 1: the Vietna. You go to my kid is in history
Speaker 1: class and he's learned about the test Tet defensive and
Speaker 1: you know, my kid, He'll be like, well, we lost
Speaker 1: the Tet offensive. I'm like, who's your teacher, who's your teacher?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? We did not lose the
Speaker 1: Tet offensive. They did a surprise attack. Did we lose
Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bulge? Is that the argument that we.
Speaker 2: Lost the battle?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? I mean, these are not accurate.
Speaker 1: We're totally insane. So yeah, the narrative is going to
Speaker 1: get twisted. History and politics are going to get in
Speaker 1: the way. But those are Iraq war veterans. Every time
Speaker 1: you see a guy with a hat on, you have
Speaker 1: no idea what they've been through, you have no idea
Speaker 1: what they've done, and you know what you want those
Speaker 1: veterans in your community you want them coaching your kids
Speaker 1: sports teams.
Speaker 2: You want them teaching, you want them as your next
Speaker 2: door neighbor.
Speaker 1: They're not broken, they're not discarded, they're not you know,
Speaker 1: putting shotguns in their mouth every day. They're dominating the
Speaker 1: world because unfortunately, we don't even have beta males anymore.
Speaker 1: We've gone Charlie to Delta. You know, we're far beyond
Speaker 1: beta males. We need men and women that can handle adversity,
Speaker 1: handle stress. And those men and women that are coming
Speaker 1: home from our military are those men and women who
Speaker 1: are going to be leaders in our society. And it
Speaker 1: annoys me when we victimize veterans like, oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry you had to endure that, so am I, but
Speaker 1: it happened. How many people cor accidents, disease, they've been
Speaker 1: abused when their kids they had no choice this this happened.
Speaker 1: Are we victimized by that for life? Or do we
Speaker 1: use that and say, look, this is what happened, this
Speaker 1: is what I'm capable of. Now I'm gonna flank this
Speaker 1: issue and be better for it, stronger for it, ready
Speaker 1: for it never happened again, and proactive so it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen to other people. That's the lesson of that trauma.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to empower, be empowered by it.
Speaker 2: I hope.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. So now we transition to the
Speaker 3: supporting greatness part of this, Yeah, which is I mean
Speaker 3: almost nobody listening to this. I guess there's veterans listen
Speaker 3: to this that can probably identify with the story, but
Speaker 3: the vast majority of people can identify with it. And
Speaker 3: the reason I wanted to tell you to tell it
Speaker 3: is because you are the only living Medal of Honor
Speaker 3: recipient and it's I mean, I don't know the difference
Speaker 3: in deserving or not deserving, but I would say that's
Speaker 3: very deserving. It's certainly inspirational. But what I want to
Speaker 3: hear is what's that you have you ever seen one? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's pretty phenomenal that people, how many folks, how many
Speaker 3: folks would never put this in front of mine because
Speaker 3: I didn't earn that, but that is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 1: You wear that some places and they're like, that's the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor and then you go to l A
Speaker 1: and they're like, what's that of? Like I bowled a
Speaker 1: three hundred, I sold so more magazines than anyone in
Speaker 1: my youth group.
Speaker 3: And I got that says it says I wish people
Speaker 3: could see. It says Valor under the Eagle. And there's
Speaker 3: an inscription around the medallion. It says United States of America.
Speaker 3: And I assume that is that Lady Liberty.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's that's our little Angel of a Fight.
Speaker 1: That's a Lincoln version that he designed in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: three for the Civil War. That's the first time that
Speaker 1: that's the Army's medal of honor. The Navy's is different,
Speaker 1: the Air Force is different. But on the back of
Speaker 1: it is the legitimate one that's got all the writing
Speaker 1: on it the recipients have. So that's your name, the
Speaker 1: date it happened, the area it happened, and the unit
Speaker 1: that you were with.
Speaker 2: Back it all up.
Speaker 1: But but the Army has their version, the Navy's got theirs,
Speaker 1: you got the Air Force, and I'm sure Space Force
Speaker 1: is going to have one.
Speaker 2: You know it's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I want the next person to interview is the person
Speaker 3: in the Space Force Coast House house, because at that
Speaker 3: point we've discovered it's a bad days. You're fighting folks
Speaker 3: with tentacles.
Speaker 1: Space force. Space force is like Bigfoot. I hear story
Speaker 1: that they're out there.
Speaker 2: I've never met a person in it.
Speaker 3: But all right, So here's the deal in supporting yours David,
Speaker 3: certainly your grandfather absolutely to you. Yeah, your father supported
Speaker 3: your greatness by basically your shame.
Speaker 2: Well that's I think.
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm not at all the person I am
Speaker 1: Without my dad.
Speaker 2: He was every example of.
Speaker 1: So I lost him in twenty seventeen to cancer and
Speaker 1: one of the well, hey, listen, the world is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they lost a wonderful man.
Speaker 2: The thing about my dad, I saw valor.
Speaker 1: If you were to talk to me about valor, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a fireman, it's a cop, it's a
Speaker 1: teacher in a school shooting, it's a soldier, you know,
Speaker 1: kinetically going against danger and fear.
Speaker 2: I saw, you know, when you fight disease at the end.
Speaker 1: That's the one of the bravest things I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life, with my dad accepting reality and saying
Speaker 1: I have nothing but faith and I'm not afraid. I
Speaker 1: never looked for valor and anything other than fireman, cops,
Speaker 1: soldiers and people you know that deal with violence.
Speaker 2: Violence is what where we get valor.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. And then I met people at
Speaker 1: hospice and people fighting disease and all the different problems
Speaker 1: in the world, divorce, heartache, you name it. People show
Speaker 1: that every single day.
Speaker 2: It's uh.
Speaker 1: It really taught me a lot of lessons. But my
Speaker 1: dad was definitely there. My grandfather is still alive. He's
Speaker 1: one hundred and three, which is insane, insane. The Nazis
Speaker 1: couldn't kill him, and neither could you know the people
Speaker 1: at Olive Garden because he's definitely.
Speaker 2: There's a weight.
Speaker 3: And if you had breadsticks, if you had one word, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you're only allowed one, even if it's hyphenated. We'll
Speaker 3: let you allow that. What do you take from your grandfather?
Speaker 1: Steady dad, unflappable.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I've read where you are more than humble
Speaker 3: when talking about this thing, and you're always trying to
Speaker 3: talk about how countless other people that served with you
Speaker 3: and around you had as much bravery, if not more
Speaker 3: than you, and would have done the same thing. And
Speaker 3: you you talk with such honor and respecting your voice
Speaker 3: when you talk about the Ramrods. Tell me some other
Speaker 3: names you've met, You've you've you've evoked Fitch. Uh Fitch
Speaker 3: fits fits fits fits right, who is also in the book.
Speaker 3: So give me, uh, give me the story of a
Speaker 3: few of these Ramrods. First, who are the Ramrods? And
Speaker 3: then give me the story of some other people that
Speaker 3: you feel like your greatness would have never happened had
Speaker 3: it not been for them.
Speaker 1: I mean that's yeah. So two two Infantry is the
Speaker 1: Rambros Second regiment.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, I just you know, went to the the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Museum and they've got a class here in Memphis.
Speaker 1: Here in Memphis, there's a class A jacket in there
Speaker 1: from a Vietnam stud and he's a two to two
Speaker 1: infantry ram Rod. First idea. Yeah, it's pretty cool, Broadstar
Speaker 1: of Valor. So our unit is the first infantan division
Speaker 1: obviously was the first for a reason. We're started off
Speaker 1: by Alexander hamp Is that the Big Red One, Big
Speaker 1: Red One?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the movie.
Speaker 1: Well, the movie has Luke Skywalker in it, a young
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill is in it, and a very old squad leader.
Speaker 2: The Big Red One. Oh yeah I know that class.
Speaker 3: No, I just the big Red One is the big
Speaker 3: red one that's on your uniform?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, it's the Yeah, the Big Red One
Speaker 1: is a unit that really cut its teeth in World
Speaker 1: War One.
Speaker 2: Got Big Red One?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: So are those de ramrods or no ram rods are
Speaker 1: so the ram rods were just attached to the Big
Speaker 1: Red One?
Speaker 3: Got it?
Speaker 1: And we went through Vietnam together. Vietnam is where two
Speaker 1: to infantry in the first id really really showed a lot.
Speaker 3: There's the Big Red One. Yeah, to explain what's going
Speaker 3: on here, guys, we're looking at a picture together and
Speaker 3: commenting on it. This episode was a little bit out
Speaker 3: of the ordinary because David was such a special guest
Speaker 3: to us. We we actually filmed it at the Memphis
Speaker 3: Grizzly studio at the Fedeck's Forum, and while we were filming,
Speaker 3: we got to look at some visuals on a screen there.
Speaker 3: Make sure to check out our social media at the
Speaker 3: handle at Army of Normal Folks to see some of
Speaker 3: the cool video clips from this episode.
Speaker 1: You know, that's funny that guy walking away from us.
Speaker 1: He's not a part of our unit. He's just in
Speaker 1: the division. We don't know him, but he was an
Speaker 1: engineer who we found. This building next to that building
Speaker 1: is full of I'm not gonna exaggerate and say two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand land mines. And this guy was wiring it
Speaker 1: with a radio and he was like, they're gonna detonate it,
Speaker 1: and right as that photo was taken a second afterwards,
Speaker 1: he just was like five four and just started running
Speaker 1: out of the building. And I'm like, dude, your whole
Speaker 1: job was to tell us when was this gonna have
Speaker 1: And so that look of me that's nap on the
Speaker 1: right and fits over there is We're standing there waiting
Speaker 1: for this to detonate. And when they blew it that
Speaker 1: all those walls came down, the ones around. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was that that entire building was just subsumed with smoke.
Speaker 1: And that guy literally was just like he was like
Speaker 1: he started counting down and he ran and everyone he
Speaker 1: was like, what is it? What's going on here? And
Speaker 1: he just slowly walked out. We were all in that
Speaker 1: room and boom. But that's a funny show. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget that Nap on the right was my team leader,
Speaker 1: and he was he was that stud in sports.
Speaker 2: In high school.
Speaker 1: He was so I'm out of college and these guys
Speaker 1: are all right out of high school. So there's a
Speaker 1: good age Gap, I'm their sergeant. But it's it's definitely plus.
Speaker 1: It's ten years, ten plus years in time. Normally your
Speaker 1: squad leader is about five years older than you. So
Speaker 1: I was like doubling that. But Nap was the guy
Speaker 1: that was so cocky and he was such a stud
Speaker 1: and he was so good that they always put him
Speaker 1: in the other squads because they were making him, getting
Speaker 1: him ready to be a squad leader. So I always
Speaker 1: I loved him and I respected him, but I was
Speaker 1: always annoyed by just the swagger of this kid. But
Speaker 1: when we were going to Fallujah, They're like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: can I pick who I'm if I'm going, I want
Speaker 1: my guys. Can I pick my guys? They're like, you
Speaker 1: can have whoever you want. I'm like, just give me Nap.
Speaker 2: I could.
Speaker 1: I'll clear that city with him. If you let me
Speaker 1: have Nap for one fight, I'm gonna will turn him
Speaker 1: into Automurphy. Trust me. And Nap was everything is advertising.
Speaker 1: He is working, it's got a great job, awesome families
Speaker 1: out in Missouri. He's got a daughter with cisteric fibrosis,
Speaker 1: and what he showed me a daughter of three girls.
Speaker 1: I mean everything he's done in the army. I could
Speaker 1: write two books on Nap of what he's done for America.
Speaker 1: But what he showed me as a dad and as
Speaker 1: a man in that hospital room. All the work doesn't
Speaker 1: give you sickly for your kid. He takes vacation, He
Speaker 1: goes when there's a hurricane and puts those power lines
Speaker 1: back up.
Speaker 2: That's I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You want to judge a soldier by his awards, That's
Speaker 1: not what you judge me by what my subordinates are doing.
Speaker 1: Because if you're not eclipsed, you're not a leader.
Speaker 3: That's funny. One of my biggest sayings is the greatest
Speaker 3: measure of the success of the leaders the actions of
Speaker 3: the followers.
Speaker 1: Amen, a leader is replaced. And I'm telling you, I
Speaker 1: got a soldier, John Ruiz. John Ruiz is a guy
Speaker 1: who if you were to tell me so, John Ruiz
Speaker 1: was the soldier I had from Kosovo and we were
Speaker 1: stationed in Germany. That was our home was in Germany,
Speaker 1: and Kosovo was our first deployment. We did a rack
Speaker 1: from Kosovo. I've had the guy had the longest. I
Speaker 1: got him straight off the bus. My job in my
Speaker 1: battalion was I would hang out with my Alpha company,
Speaker 1: and I was I was a scout and I'd see
Speaker 1: these guys walking off the bus and I'd see like
Speaker 1: a broad, just a yoked out kid from like Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: drinks like goat milk.
Speaker 3: You want him?
Speaker 1: I want that.
Speaker 2: I want that kid right there.
Speaker 1: Some dudes like, yeah, I'm from south central Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and he's like field dressed at ak. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: want that dude. I want that guy, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I could tell the guys that were like,
Speaker 1: why do you join the army like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I beat my principal with a tire iron. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can work with him, you know, I whatever. Whatever
Speaker 1: they come off the bus. But occasionally the big strong
Speaker 1: stud would go a wall. The big tough kid from
Speaker 1: South Central would be like, I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to war. And then you're like that one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty pound nerd from Kansas. I remember this kid from Kansas.
Speaker 1: We had this kid, Herman, amazing soldier, good kid. But
Speaker 1: every time we go on a road march, he's like,
Speaker 1: we don't have hills in Kansas. I can't walk up hills.
Speaker 1: I have no ability. And I'll tell you what. Once
Speaker 1: he learned how to walk up a hill, that kid
Speaker 1: was right. I mean, he was his soldier. That's the
Speaker 1: guy I want. I want herman, I want this guy.
Speaker 1: But they'd always these little issues that all the other
Speaker 1: scouts from the other platoons would be like, I don't
Speaker 1: want him, I don't want them. I'm like, I know
Speaker 1: what to look for. I know what to look for
Speaker 1: if you if you're carrying a book in the infantry.
Speaker 1: I want that guy. He's got a book, but it's
Speaker 1: not a paperweight.
Speaker 2: He reads, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I was impressed. I could I could judge him pretty good.
Speaker 1: Nap. Obviously, I didn't get to pick I didn't pick him,
Speaker 1: but he was chosen for Uce. But I picked John Ruiz,
Speaker 1: and I could just tell John Ruise. You asked John
Speaker 1: Ruiz what he is. He doesn't know what he is.
Speaker 1: I love that. He's like I could be Cherokee or
Speaker 1: Mexican or scotch Irish. I'm not really, I'm like, you
Speaker 1: know what, that's my dude. Right. He was a wiry
Speaker 1: and could run for days. His endurance was like unbelievable.
Speaker 2: He was a stud.
Speaker 1: But man, he just had a way of looking at
Speaker 1: every situation, always with never too excited, never too depressed,
Speaker 1: bring it on. And now he's working for like the
Speaker 1: Space program. And if you would have told me that
Speaker 1: we're gonna land on Mars because of John Ruiz, I
Speaker 1: would have lost my house. I would have lost my
Speaker 1: four oh one k. That kid is a brainiac and
Speaker 1: he's got incredible discipline and he's such an incredible man,
Speaker 1: and he's a father and he's a husband and I'm
Speaker 1: but he's also a guy who shot like twelve eighty
Speaker 1: four millimeters rockets when you're only supposed to do two
Speaker 1: in a lifetime. He shot them reflectively.
Speaker 2: He can.
Speaker 1: They would shoot RPGs at us, and they were loud.
Speaker 1: Because they're so loud they rattle your brain and and
Speaker 1: and and they're like, look, they just shot a rocket
Speaker 1: us to scare us. It's loud and it has no
Speaker 1: sense of direction. I'll tell you what. We've got our
Speaker 1: own rocket. It's also loud and there's no sense of direction.
Speaker 1: Shoot that flaming pencil. And then, dude, if we got
Speaker 1: hit with contact, I'd be like Ruiz and he'd be like,
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, it would break contact. No one would
Speaker 1: want to fight with the eighty four was fired, So
Speaker 1: we fired him all that. Every time we got shot
Speaker 1: at there was Rui's with an eighty four millimeter and
Speaker 1: he was accurate and he was killing people with it.
Speaker 1: But it was just he shot too many of them
Speaker 1: blasted his hearing. But man, he is in science now
Speaker 1: working with lasers. He just did that fusion project where
Speaker 1: we replicated like my start. He's a part of a
Speaker 1: project that created fusion. And I'm like, this guy couldn't
Speaker 1: get a Cydeburns even like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But I have nothing to do with that.
Speaker 1: That's not me, that's him, that's him, and that's that's
Speaker 1: what my guys were about. I got him to a
Speaker 1: part where I played my role and they took that
Speaker 1: and they added seven pieces to it. And now they
Speaker 1: are who they are because of who they are, and
Speaker 1: I just had the fortunate to uh spend time with them.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. We now returned to David on
Speaker 3: another Ramrod who supported him. Fits Fitz is just I mean,
Speaker 3: I tell tell us who Fits was. Fitz was.
Speaker 2: He was a stab. He was the same.
Speaker 1: Fitz's thing was, this is a guy who's one hundred
Speaker 1: if he's one hundred and forty pounds, that might be
Speaker 1: given him extra weight. Maybe he got up to one
Speaker 1: forty five, five foot nine five from no one knows
Speaker 1: Mississippi right, and literally would just won't talk. He just
Speaker 1: he would spit his tobacco juice. And all he wanted
Speaker 1: to do was he was army life. He was tactically.
Speaker 1: He would study his field manuals. He knew everything, but
Speaker 1: his whole thing was his kids were his kids. N
Speaker 1: c o s were n c o's. If you were
Speaker 1: an officer and you tried to correct starn Fitch, you
Speaker 1: better know what you were talking about, because if you didn't,
Speaker 1: he would emasculate you. That he was the king of emasculation.
Speaker 1: And if anyone started anything his own soldier, an officer,
Speaker 1: a person from another unit, he would knock. He would
Speaker 1: fight anyone at any given time. So this guy would
Speaker 1: go from six to E four five six eve seven
Speaker 1: E five His D two FOURT is you're going through
Speaker 1: O many ranks. He's bounced everywhere, always gets his rank back.
Speaker 1: But he's just basically he suffers no fool, no fool.
Speaker 1: And there was this giant dude that came into our
Speaker 1: tent once we're training in Germany and this guy had
Speaker 1: like tattoos everywhere, just yoked out, you know, you probably
Speaker 1: might want to check his urine and uh. And he
Speaker 1: comes into the tent and he just starts talking and
Speaker 1: Fitz is like, hey man, but that he had like
Speaker 1: a ross parrot. John Wayne fused the accent and be like,
Speaker 1: hey man, I want to I'm gonna tell you one time.
Speaker 2: Shut your face. I'm gonna tell you show you.
Speaker 1: And this guy was like. This guy's like, who, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do by He's like, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: that E tool. I'm gonna assemble a shovel.
Speaker 2: The little fold ofle shovels, the excavation tool.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna assemble that E tool in front
Speaker 1: of you and then I'm gonna lop an ear off
Speaker 1: your head. And like everyone was like, is this a joke?
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, it's not a joke. Fitz will
Speaker 1: hit you in the hand with an E tool. He will,
Speaker 1: and he has no fear and and is it's one
Speaker 1: thing to act that way, it's another thing when you're
Speaker 1: in a fight.
Speaker 2: Are you that way?
Speaker 1: That man is like that every day of his life.
Speaker 1: He will and does anyone like him. You know, that's
Speaker 1: a tough personality. It's a tough personality.
Speaker 3: It's an acquired taste.
Speaker 1: It's an acquired taste. But I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2: That's loyalty driven.
Speaker 1: And that guy will literally and and when he got
Speaker 1: shot three times a month into a rack that is,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to sit on your farm and collect a
Speaker 1: tax free paycheck for the rest of your life. And
Speaker 1: he came back from Walter Reed, he did whatever he
Speaker 1: had to do to pass a PT test. That guy
Speaker 1: wasn't walking right. He was in pain every single day
Speaker 1: every time those bullets got fired. He knew what it
Speaker 1: felt like when it impacted his bones and his flesh.
Speaker 1: And he was there every step of the way. I
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what they are doing out
Speaker 1: there in Mississippi if they're all like that. But that's
Speaker 1: one that's a that's an American patriot, that's a stud.
Speaker 1: He's a bravest guy ever I met. And and he's
Speaker 1: he's fine. He's still pissy and he's still you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, he drinks, he has his beer.
Speaker 2: He likes his beer.
Speaker 1: He's got a beautiful family, a wonderful wife. He's live
Speaker 1: in his life and you're not going to change it.
Speaker 1: You're not going to change any of it.
Speaker 3: And and we should sleep better at night. No one
Speaker 3: fits the.
Speaker 1: Wall unless he's you're on his property, you're not sleeping
Speaker 1: at all, or you might be asleeping forever.
Speaker 2: No, he's he's awesome. Yes we are. We're a better
Speaker 2: country for having men like him.
Speaker 3: Tell me, tell me about the uh, the other gentleman
Speaker 3: North Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Who do we got North?
Speaker 1: The beer guy? Okay, so he just he showed up
Speaker 1: to so he doesn't leave Mississippi. He's comfortable, he's happy,
Speaker 1: and so now this whole thing is happening, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go back there. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go to a raq. I don't want to I
Speaker 1: don't want to put my mind back there. I was
Speaker 1: asking a lot of these guys. I was going on
Speaker 1: this little trip. You're supposed to bring two guests to
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor. I want to bring them all.
Speaker 1: I want to put them all on the stage. But
Speaker 1: I also realized that I was asking him to go
Speaker 1: back to said maybe they didn't want to go, and
Speaker 1: that was that was very selfless of them to want
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 3: Memories and thoughts and friends having died, and pain that
Speaker 3: they somehow figured out a way to move on from
Speaker 3: and live the life of. And so even though this
Speaker 3: award for you and their support, Without their support, this
Speaker 3: ward would have never happened.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that is their award.
Speaker 3: But asking them to come back means maybe scratching open
Speaker 3: some old scars.
Speaker 1: And so now the baby of the fallen soldier that
Speaker 1: gutted you and ripped your heart out because you lost them,
Speaker 1: And you think, well, if I zigged and zagged, would
Speaker 1: that have changed?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it would have.
Speaker 1: I mean you could everyone said, oh you can't, say
Speaker 1: no you can and a fire for you can. I'm
Speaker 1: you make a decision and you go on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the fight, and and this guy went on
Speaker 1: the other side, and you're like, that was not my plan.
Speaker 2: I screwed that up.
Speaker 1: And those three guys are dead because I screwed You
Speaker 1: could literally say that's what happened. That baby and that widow.
Speaker 1: You're not ever gonna see him again anyway in the army.
Speaker 1: You're gonna PCs go to a different station, get deployed again.
Speaker 1: Death isn't real. You die, we put you in a bag.
Speaker 1: We lie and say that they're fine. You don't get
Speaker 1: any call from home to tell you otherwise. But we're
Speaker 1: all telling stories of Oh, he's great, he's just got
Speaker 1: a surgery, it's gonna be all right, everything's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: Let's focus on this.
Speaker 1: And you don't go to the memorial, you don't go
Speaker 1: to the cemetery, you don't see the taps played, you.
Speaker 2: Don't do any of that.
Speaker 1: You're fighting, and you're fighting until it's over. When it's over,
Speaker 1: you have a choice to make. Do I just keep
Speaker 1: living in this Oh that guy's still there. I'm just
Speaker 1: not gonna call him because I don't call anyone. I'm
Speaker 1: living my life. Or do I have to face the
Speaker 1: reality that he's gone. Those men that chowse to make
Speaker 1: that decision of I'm just gonna live my life and
Speaker 1: put this behind me, they were all forced to see
Speaker 1: that that little baby is now seventeen.
Speaker 2: Without a dad.
Speaker 1: Now now you have to do the inventory you didn't
Speaker 1: do with my life, that this guy gave his life
Speaker 1: for mine. Did I live up to the expectations of
Speaker 1: what I would want someone that I gave my life
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: Am I the man I should be?
Speaker 1: As I look at this kid, I'm now telling him
Speaker 1: about his dad for the first time, knowing full well,
Speaker 1: we all promised ourselves we were going to visit the families.
Speaker 1: We're gonna sit those babies down, We're gonna go to
Speaker 1: their football game, We're gonna go to their prom We
Speaker 1: didn't do it. We didn't do it because we had
Speaker 1: our own kids, had our own life, and it sucked,
Speaker 1: it hurt, and we didn't want to face it. So
Speaker 1: now you're forcing these men to go right back there
Speaker 1: and address all the things we all promised, all to celebrate,
Speaker 1: all to celebrate something no one wants to celebrate. And so,
Speaker 1: and you know, Fitch shows up to the Pentagon and
Speaker 1: I dragged him out there. He didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: and so he's like, listen, I'm not changing anything about me.
Speaker 1: I'm not changing anything about me. You can't change me.
Speaker 1: You're not going to change me. I said, put a
Speaker 1: suit on. He looked like, you know, he had the beard,
Speaker 1: and he looked like an attorney, which was fighting. But
Speaker 1: he carried around this cooler and I'm like, is that
Speaker 1: are you doing an organ delivery? Like, what do you
Speaker 1: got it? Why are you walking around with a cooler
Speaker 1: of ice?
Speaker 2: What's in it?
Speaker 1: And he this is, you know, before the uh he
Speaker 1: was a bud light guy before the controversy, and he
Speaker 1: loved his beer and he drank his beard.
Speaker 2: He was going to carry his beer everywhere. And so
Speaker 2: we we go through the.
Speaker 1: Pedagon security and the alarm goes off and they're like,
Speaker 1: what do you have in your pockets?
Speaker 2: He's like, just beer, and they're like you can't. You
Speaker 2: can't bring beer to the Pentagon. But this guy was
Speaker 2: so smart that.
Speaker 1: He knew that he had like throwaway beers. He gave
Speaker 1: them the throwaway beers while the other beers were in
Speaker 1: his pocket, right, and he's like, I'm with the Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor recipient. I got the Chief of Staff of
Speaker 1: the Army, General Million Trump is gonna be here in
Speaker 1: a second, like shut up and sit down. And so
Speaker 1: they they're like, dude, like he literally he gave them
Speaker 1: the throwaway beers where they're like, don't do that again.
Speaker 1: And then he had like like two others in his
Speaker 1: back pocket and just kind of weasel his way out
Speaker 1: and he's like, yeah, I kept the beer and and
Speaker 1: He also he also was like, I'm now back where
Speaker 1: I never thought i'd ever be. I'm in this uniform
Speaker 1: I never wore my lifetime that. They're just like and
Speaker 1: they cardboard that uniform, like they stick cardboard behind it
Speaker 1: so it just looks perfect. And they're like, go throw
Speaker 1: out the first pitch against the Yankees and Mets.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm like the tid man.
Speaker 1: I can't even I can't even move. I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: like Obama up here.
Speaker 2: They're like, I can't throw this like a normal So uh.
Speaker 1: They we get out there and and fits is like, listen,
Speaker 1: we're right back to where we wanted to be. Uh.
Speaker 1: No one asked for this, but we're here. So what
Speaker 1: did you need in the day? You need Copenhagen. I
Speaker 1: got Copenhagen shortcut just for you, and I want you
Speaker 1: to put this in your lip, and we're gonna do
Speaker 1: it together. So I put a chaw in there, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I mean it, Yeah, I'm done. But I
Speaker 1: I got like, you know, anyone who dips for a
Speaker 1: long time, you got that little crater and it's a
Speaker 1: lonely little crater when you quit, but it's.
Speaker 2: Still a hole.
Speaker 1: In your face, and and that Copenhagen goes back into
Speaker 1: its little sleep area and I'm just like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: just a life is so much better. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's going on? And that that taste and it's like
Speaker 1: you want And then I'm like, oh, I gotta spit.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm in the White House. I gotta find it.
Speaker 1: And so everyone gets ushered out and the President shows
Speaker 1: up and he's like, what do you What do you.
Speaker 2: Have in your mouth?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I got a I got
Speaker 1: a tobacco product in there, and I don't even know
Speaker 1: what to tell you, but I am. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's too late. They're playing Hail and the Chief. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go out and do this thing. And so every
Speaker 1: time I look at a photo, I'll do an interview
Speaker 1: with someone and they'll be like, you know, I look
Speaker 1: at that and I just see so much emotion. You
Speaker 1: look like you look like there it is right there.
Speaker 1: That is a guy that has a small kittens worth
Speaker 1: of tobacco juice trickling down a esophagus and he's trying
Speaker 1: not to vomit because I'm swallowing bits and bits and bits,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, you're not only the first
Speaker 1: and only living Medal of Honor recipient from Iraq, you're
Speaker 1: also the first idiot to do that with a full
Speaker 1: shaw in his mouth trying to displace it. And it
Speaker 1: was the word yeah right there there it is under
Speaker 1: the look I'm sick. I look at my face. I
Speaker 1: looked with jaundice. I love a just crawled. I am
Speaker 1: so sick from all of that.
Speaker 5: That's uh.
Speaker 1: Ed Bayer's Navy Seal. By the way, you see the
Speaker 1: difference in the Metal of Honor. He's got the Navy one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like the Cowboys logo. They made it, you know,
Speaker 1: the Navy insecure. They made it big and bold. He's
Speaker 1: a Navy Seal. His story is incredible. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just took out a bunch of ices guys that were
Speaker 1: kidnapping Americans. But Ed Buyer's I'll look at him and
Speaker 1: let me tell you another thing. That photo right, So
Speaker 1: he's got his cook whites. Navy Seals. Navy Seals are
Speaker 1: they're like the uh they're the division one quarterback going
Speaker 1: first round. They are. Yeah, I mean even but they're
Speaker 1: told it's like it's like you see you watch top
Speaker 1: gun and you're like, Tom Cruise is like five foot
Speaker 1: two and he's got his little aviators. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: pilots are. They're like jockeys. They're five foot two, little butts.
Speaker 1: They got little butts, they got little pants on, giant aviators,
Speaker 1: and they're just the cockiest dudes. Would they play volleyball shirtless?
Speaker 1: They do? And they are right now somewhere in America.
Speaker 1: There's a shirtless group of pilots playing volleyball. That's what
Speaker 1: they do, right. They're very confident, and God, we want
Speaker 1: confident pilots. We want our Navy Seals are the most
Speaker 1: confident boys in the universe.
Speaker 2: And they know it. They and so they're cook whites,
Speaker 2: their uniform perfect.
Speaker 1: Right. I'm in a jilt. We're doing this thing for
Speaker 1: the in July and it's a down pour in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: and I got my brand new uniform I've never worn
Speaker 1: and it's just soaking up rainwater and ed Byers has
Speaker 1: got his cook whites and he looks over and he's like,
Speaker 1: I still look better than you and these cook whites,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you're right, you do. You look amazing.
Speaker 1: But my dress blues because they're new are just oozing
Speaker 1: out blue Die Die, and it sucks onto his cook whites.
Speaker 1: It starts to spread all throughout his brand new uniform,
Speaker 1: destroyed his cook whites. And I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I've destroyed your uniform.
Speaker 1: That's what I feel good about. Ed byers a great guy.
Speaker 1: Those seals are awesome. But yeah, that's him, and he's
Speaker 1: a stud and it's it's an honor to be associated
Speaker 1: with guys like that.
Speaker 3: All right, So supporting greatness God, I mean all those
Speaker 3: guys that served under you are are part of it.
Speaker 3: Tell me about Doug Walter.
Speaker 1: Oh, man, I that's if I was going to put
Speaker 1: a non If there's a man in my life that
Speaker 1: has impacted me just in humanity and just the decency,
Speaker 1: Doug Walter is that guy. So Doug Walter is my
Speaker 1: commander in or in Germany and we go to Kosovo
Speaker 1: and he gets like this alternative colitis. You ever heard
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 3: No, it's like the word.
Speaker 1: It's just like your body rejects food and you start
Speaker 1: getting super sick. And he's going through all this stuff
Speaker 1: and it's got to change his diet. But he literally
Speaker 1: goes from like he's a West Point Ranger Baseball team
Speaker 1: Division one second baseman PTI stud I mean, and the
Speaker 1: bald head. You know, they got like the little Jesse
Speaker 1: Ventura bunch, you know what I mean. Like those guys
Speaker 1: just like built in a garage, you know, like testosterone
Speaker 1: two hundred parts.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like they made him, they made him to be like
Speaker 1: an alpha dude. And he now is like one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty pounds and the stud to like one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty loses everything and just looks like he's got
Speaker 1: he's dying. And we get ready to leave that day
Speaker 1: for a rack and a formation in the winner of
Speaker 1: you know, Bavaria in Germany, and he's like, I can't go.
Speaker 1: I'm not healthy enough. But my best friend is gonna
Speaker 1: go in my place. Sean Simms. He's our commander. Sean
Speaker 1: Simms is killed in Fallujah about two days after a
Speaker 1: day after my fight. Sean Simms, same thing I'm doing.
Speaker 1: He wants to lead from the front. He goes into
Speaker 1: a house and the house wins and he loses. He's
Speaker 1: a captain's he knows what he's doing. He got unlucky
Speaker 1: where I got lucky.
Speaker 2: Same story.
Speaker 1: He dies, He's got a wife and a little boy
Speaker 1: at home. Captain Walter is our commander that gave up
Speaker 1: that command for his best friend. His best friends killed.
Speaker 1: Walter comes in that day that that photo of nap
Speaker 1: and fits in some random guy. That was the day
Speaker 1: Walter came back to us. And Walter, they flew him
Speaker 1: into Fallujah and he took over the company that he
Speaker 1: led with absolutely yeah, he did it because I can't
Speaker 1: say enough about him and and and this and his fight,
Speaker 1: his he was these officers, the West Point guys, cerebral
Speaker 1: and Connecticut at the same time, but the decency and
Speaker 1: Captain Walter, he loved us like we were.
Speaker 2: You know, his family.
Speaker 1: And and I never as a as a young guy,
Speaker 1: I don't I couldn't say that to another man. I
Speaker 1: couldn't say that I loved a guy. It was always weird.
Speaker 1: You're in the army, You're not like by the way,
Speaker 1: you might want to be warned of the people that
Speaker 1: look gloggle your eyes and tell you I love you.
Speaker 2: It was weird.
Speaker 1: Today as a middle aged man, I could I could tell.
Speaker 1: I could say that because I mean it and I
Speaker 1: care about them. And now we're old and We're being
Speaker 1: honest with our feelings and how we feel, and we do.
Speaker 1: We care about each other a lot. I think that's
Speaker 1: the building block of valor is love. I don't think
Speaker 1: you can do something for someone else unless that's the
Speaker 1: ultimate way to love someone.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna group all of these guys collectively as
Speaker 3: the Ramrods. So if your grandfather is study and your
Speaker 3: dad is unflappable, what are the ram Rods in supporting you?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: What tenant from them supported you?
Speaker 1: I mean they I always think of that relationship of
Speaker 1: just the accountability. They force you every day to be accountable.
Speaker 1: You can't words. Anything that comes out of your mouth
Speaker 1: has to automatically that check is automatically withdrawn from that
Speaker 1: account the minute you say it. Every aspect of who
Speaker 1: you are and what you do, that trust is earned
Speaker 1: and it means something. And that honor, that integrity, that character,
Speaker 1: that all is what keeps me going. And there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of things. You know, this award, everyone talks
Speaker 1: about the good. There's a lot of crazy that comes
Speaker 1: with it, they believe it or not. We're a divided
Speaker 1: country today.
Speaker 3: Did you know how that you know I was slightly
Speaker 3: aware of it. And that's only one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why I'm sitting here talking to you about an army
Speaker 3: and normal FI.
Speaker 1: There's a very re litigious faction of people in this
Speaker 1: world that, for whatever reason, they see you as a mascot,
Speaker 1: not as a veteran and a mascot.
Speaker 3: A mascot, you're You're a mascot of the machine.
Speaker 1: You're a mascot of whatever political party they want to
Speaker 1: put you in. You're a mascot of the president who
Speaker 1: gave you the award. Even though Obama approved this award,
Speaker 1: Trump put it on me, and so naturally I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm now a spokesperson for the Trump administration, and all
Speaker 1: that vitriol that goes towards him is you know, comes
Speaker 1: at you and because you're it's not fair, it's it's
Speaker 1: i would say, it's criminal into some of the actions
Speaker 1: that have that have occurred where you know that video
Speaker 1: that you're talking just.
Speaker 3: About to say it went. In the video you say,
Speaker 3: I don't care how you vote, I don't care how
Speaker 3: you worship, I don't care, I don't care who you love,
Speaker 3: how you I don't care any of it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, they're like, I'm a gay soldier. Awesome, be
Speaker 1: super gay. We're fighting the communists Chinese tomorrow and you
Speaker 1: and your Gloria astevon iPod are gonna come with us
Speaker 1: and we're going to fight China together.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I don't care where you are a soldier. You're a professional.
Speaker 1: And by the way, all of the distractions of heterosexuals, homosexuals,
Speaker 1: you name it, they are superseded by professionalism.
Speaker 2: We don't. You're not if you're in an office.
Speaker 3: And by the way, this comes from a Christian man.
Speaker 1: Exactly, I'm not even it's not even to me.
Speaker 2: My whole point is is that.
Speaker 3: But it's not even about that.
Speaker 1: It's not even about that. If you're a headosexual that
Speaker 1: cannot separate what you're attracted to in the middle of
Speaker 1: the confines of a of a work day, I got
Speaker 1: problems with that too, all right. If I walk into
Speaker 1: a conference room and you're slapping fannies when we're trying
Speaker 1: to get work, you're a distraction. You need to go.
Speaker 2: I don't want that.
Speaker 1: I don't want that in my unit. I don't want
Speaker 1: that on my team. I want a profession at all.
Speaker 1: And if you happen to be born a woman, and
Speaker 1: you're here as a female. You are not a woman.
Speaker 1: You're not a female. You are a soldier and you're
Speaker 1: gonna do the job. But if you can't do the job,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You're on the cutting line too, and I
Speaker 1: watch you there.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: We're here to win, and winning means saving lives. That's
Speaker 1: what it means. It's not about feeling good. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that want to be like I feel
Speaker 1: good about the direction the military.
Speaker 2: Is going, and you're not. You don't have skin in
Speaker 2: the game.
Speaker 1: You could, you know, the best way to feel good
Speaker 1: is watching him a bunch of veterans and a parade
Speaker 1: at the end of the war, walking in a formation
Speaker 1: that makes you feel good. But your policies of whatever,
Speaker 1: you're trying to turn this thing into a peatri dish
Speaker 1: of horrible idea. I mean, this is a it doesn't
Speaker 1: work at Harvard. Let's try in the United States. Paratupers.
Speaker 1: But what are we doing? You're you're just you're gutting
Speaker 1: all of the things that make you know there was
Speaker 1: a time America, whether it's board versus you know, of education,
Speaker 1: or brown versus Board of Education, or plusy versus ferguson
Speaker 1: all of the issues that we had with integration in America.
Speaker 1: The military led the way the military was integrated before
Speaker 1: our government was integrated, and all of the promises from
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson to George Washington, if you black men have
Speaker 1: died along white men since this nation's inception, from the
Speaker 1: Boston massacre to you know, our first battles of the revolution,
Speaker 1: African Americans have bled along with white people. This our
Speaker 1: failure is man and leadership. Leadership has failed America. It's
Speaker 1: never defined our Declaration or our Constitution the way it
Speaker 1: was written to be. But that's man, and that's leadership.
Speaker 1: The institution is what needs to be preserved. The institution
Speaker 1: made the steps when our society couldn't make the steps.
Speaker 1: We don't need to tinker with that. You're not a
Speaker 1: black man in the military and you're not a white man.
Speaker 1: My old sar major who died in Felujah said, you're green.
Speaker 1: That's your color. You're green, and we're all green. And
Speaker 1: we're all gonna go two days without food, we're all
Speaker 1: gonna go three days without sleep, and at the end,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be there for each other. And that's what
Speaker 1: we did from all parts of this contrary, all backgrounds,
Speaker 1: all suspective sexualities. I never was like, I need four
Speaker 1: machine gunning Democrats, and I need them at a four hundred.
Speaker 1: I need some people that are a four partil birth abortion,
Speaker 1: and we need them on this chalk at zero seven.
Speaker 1: No one gives a damn. Do your job, do it
Speaker 1: to the best of your ability. I know we cancel
Speaker 1: each other's vote out. I don't care. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't care what your team is, what college. With
Speaker 1: all these rivalries Oklahoma, Texas, we got a huge you're
Speaker 1: you're an American and that's beautiful. And to play with
Speaker 1: that now, at this time in our country shows that
Speaker 1: we just we just have petulant children. We don't have
Speaker 1: mature adults, and we need more emotionally stable adults running
Speaker 1: our government. And we have a lot of of and
Speaker 1: they're on both sides, but it's it's really gutting. Our
Speaker 1: West Point is a joke. They're just they are going
Speaker 1: to war with our military academies, the Air Force Academy.
Speaker 1: The graduation this year was famous because Biden fell over
Speaker 1: a sandbag and and we talked about him falling, but
Speaker 1: the real story of the what the Air Force graduation
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the President of United States.
Speaker 1: It had to do with the two designated huggers. What
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that again, designated huggers. What is that
Speaker 1: when you got your diploma, these two air men and
Speaker 1: women hugged you because you were a graduate. The Air
Speaker 1: Force Academy put hugging designators at the end of that ceremony.
Speaker 1: To me, far far outweighs any president and his inability
Speaker 1: to keep his equilibrium. That is, this is the way.
Speaker 1: You can't say mom and dad at the Air Force
Speaker 1: Academy anymore because it offends people. Do a mom and dad.
Speaker 1: Get all this crap out. That's the that's universities. You
Speaker 1: want to do that in your public school systems. Elections
Speaker 1: have consequences, you know, Go ahead, go go do all that,
Speaker 1: but don't touch our military. Our military has had proud
Speaker 1: men and women serving, dying and sat Arlington Cemetery has
Speaker 1: gay soldiers buried in it. So not a single one
Speaker 1: of them would have would have wanted to be identified
Speaker 1: as anything other than American patriot. We are cheapening that sacrifice.
Speaker 1: He got four hundred thousand men and women who gave
Speaker 1: their lives to this country, and we're gonna put their
Speaker 1: entire life's worth into what they're attracted to and who
Speaker 1: they love. No one gives a dim about that, no cares.
Speaker 1: You're not reading Audie Murphy. You know what takeaway from
Speaker 1: Autie Murphy? He was attracted to women? Did you know that?
Speaker 2: Does anyone give it?
Speaker 1: Does anyone care? Do I need to know in your designation?
Speaker 1: He killed forty seven Germans, beat them with a hatchet,
Speaker 1: and he loved men, like who cares?
Speaker 2: That's the takeaway.
Speaker 1: If that's the takeaway, you're just in the wrong job.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a Silicon Valley job that puts that
Speaker 1: as they're hiring. You know, none of that is. I
Speaker 1: don't care what you love or who you vote for,
Speaker 1: if you're willing to say, worship how you worship, if
Speaker 1: you're willing to I got Muslims all over this army
Speaker 1: that are serving, that are dying and said we don't
Speaker 1: do anything in Iraq without a Rakis that are willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice for Americans. Those turps and those soldiers, interpreters,
Speaker 1: they died ten to one over Americans over the contractors.
Speaker 3: Look, how about this I bet people would be surprised
Speaker 3: to find out that about five percent of the people
Speaker 3: serving the United States military are not American citizens.
Speaker 2: Hey, listen, that's a great pathway to citizenship.
Speaker 1: That's that's joint serve. All I need you to know
Speaker 1: is that America is more worthy and important than we are.
Speaker 2: That's what it takes.
Speaker 1: Is this country going to just implode on our differences
Speaker 1: or are we willing to say the great part about
Speaker 1: America is we acknowledge our faults. We achieve to be
Speaker 1: better than yesterday. And most importantly, there are bad people
Speaker 1: in this world. There are evil people in this world,
Speaker 1: and they want to take, they want to rape, they
Speaker 1: want to kill, and they want to dominate. We have
Speaker 1: to stand as the greatest force of good. And if
Speaker 1: you are willing to say that, America is emblematic of that,
Speaker 1: and my life is going to be dedicated to the
Speaker 1: service of the greatest force of good in this world.
Speaker 1: I want you here and all that other stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll talk about it eventually when it comes to
Speaker 1: when we have a banquet and you know you have
Speaker 1: a different partner than I have, we'll talk. It's not
Speaker 1: going to at all diminish my professionalism. It cheapens my
Speaker 1: professionalism to assume that your difference is going to take
Speaker 1: me off my stride. And it's disrespectful to you to
Speaker 1: believe that your difference is going to impact your job.
Speaker 1: This is a problem. It's a problem, and if we
Speaker 1: don't fix this problem, we're going to lose the only
Speaker 1: aspect of our federal government that had ninety percent approval rating,
Speaker 1: which is our military. People love our military, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to turn it into you know, Stanford University, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out swinging to make sure that
Speaker 1: never happens.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, it is so good to hear the
Speaker 3: truth of that perspective.
Speaker 2: But that brings me to the lawsuits.
Speaker 1: That's what the problem tends to be. Sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: little fear of litigation here and there.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Tell me about marily Carlson.
Speaker 2: So she is a gold star mother.
Speaker 1: She's the mother, Yes, gold stars, blue star parents have
Speaker 1: a son or daughter that serves in the military. A
Speaker 1: gold star parent is someone who loses someone in the military.
Speaker 1: Uh a son or daughter, son or daughter, son or
Speaker 1: daughter who loses someone in the military. And she was
Speaker 1: a gold Star Mom that I had met in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. At a gold Star Mom event, and she
Speaker 1: started talking about her son, and you know, she's from Minnesota.
Speaker 1: I didn't think anything of it. And then she had
Speaker 1: mentioned that her son's nickname was Shrek, and that just
Speaker 1: kind of dropped me because immediately he's that guy. He
Speaker 1: went to school in Minnesota with the stud first Basement
Speaker 1: for the twins. They went to high school together. He
Speaker 1: was just a great football player. This kid was about
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty five pounds in the military, carried
Speaker 1: a machine gun like it was a toothpick. I mean,
Speaker 1: just a big, big Minnesota bread Viking kid. But he
Speaker 1: was one of my dearest friends. And he was in
Speaker 1: second Platoon in Alpha Company, and he died at the
Speaker 1: very end of the deployment with five other guys in
Speaker 1: a really horrible situation. But her, she was constantly trying
Speaker 1: to get me to see Michael Carlson at Arlington, and
Speaker 1: I just I knew what that meant. It knew that
Speaker 1: the little game I'd been playing since I came home
Speaker 1: of it's not real. Michael's just off somewhere. I'll never
Speaker 1: talk to him again. People get, you know, how many
Speaker 1: people from your high school class do you talk to? Well,
Speaker 1: what if I told you they're all dead? You could
Speaker 1: rationalize not talking to them Again, life takes you separate ways.
Speaker 1: We don't begrudge the people that we don't talk to
Speaker 1: every Arlington and now it's real, real, Now it's real,
Speaker 1: it's in. Granted, it's in. He's right there. And I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do that, and so she was constantly
Speaker 1: trying to get me to do it in a way
Speaker 1: that I didn't want to do it. And then I
Speaker 1: saw her doing this for so many other parents that
Speaker 1: have gone with lost soldiers, that her entire life is
Speaker 1: living for other people and trying to bring them through
Speaker 1: this horrific journey of getting that notification, making sense of it,
Speaker 1: trying to love and be a part of all the
Speaker 1: people who survived, but also be there for whether their
Speaker 1: friend who happens to be her boy. I can't. I
Speaker 1: I was very stubborn. And then finally she just broke
Speaker 1: me down and and we did it, and I realized
Speaker 1: that I was It was unnatural to hold that those
Speaker 1: feelings back. It was unnatural to not be able to grieve.
Speaker 1: It was it was occupying space in my life that
Speaker 1: wasn't needed to be there, and I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: have anything to be ashamed of, because honestly, I couldn't
Speaker 1: support and love and be kind to her unless I
Speaker 1: showed her that her son actually meant enough to me,
Speaker 1: enough to me where I could honor him in a
Speaker 1: way that.
Speaker 3: Had I had to. You had to succumb to your
Speaker 3: own vulnerability to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: I didn't exactly do it, And that's the part that
Speaker 1: I had a hard time with because it would always
Speaker 1: be like there would always be steps that we would
Speaker 1: go and I would find a reason not to and
Speaker 1: it wasn't a matter of you know, the vulnerability thing. True,
Speaker 1: I'm not good with that emotions. I'm probably not the
Speaker 1: best person to do a Dear Abby column, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Everything's going to end with their losers
Speaker 1: leave them, you know what I mean? Like, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, no matter what the situation. But but
Speaker 1: I do find I do find that when a mother
Speaker 1: is grieving her son, that there are things that you
Speaker 1: owe it. It's an obligation. If I had to make
Speaker 1: the choice to do this for me, it never would
Speaker 1: have happened because I don't want to feel that way,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be put in that position,
Speaker 1: but being obligated to do it for someone who gave
Speaker 1: us their son. Now it's not about me, it's about her.
Speaker 1: And she kind of used that reverse psychology to get
Speaker 1: me away to mourn.
Speaker 3: And I mean, how honorable of her.
Speaker 1: She's incredible. She's again I I she's a she was,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously respected in our she's like the adopted mom.
Speaker 2: And our and our group.
Speaker 1: Uh and in a sense, that's her own vour Listen,
Speaker 1: that's everywhere again, that's that's the now you're talking about
Speaker 1: my mission statement. Everyone has it. Everyone has it, everyone
Speaker 1: displays it, everyone goes through it bad. You know, we
Speaker 1: we we talk about the different things that we want
Speaker 1: to Well this is more impressive than that.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: That's human nature and everyone's gonna but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, those stories are going to go away.
Speaker 1: And the people we don't talk about eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about nineteen ten. We talk about our
Speaker 1: real world in our lifetime. Our lifetimes are going to go.
Speaker 1: But as a society and as a culture, we have
Speaker 1: to be the group. There's something uniquely in our pedigree
Speaker 1: as American citizens that Europeans don't have.
Speaker 2: I've seen it for myself.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have. There's certain parts of the world where
Speaker 1: you don't stand up and speak your mind.
Speaker 2: It's not worth it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no ambition to do anything outside your
Speaker 1: comfort zone because there is a force, or there's a government,
Speaker 1: or there's something out there that will kinetically put you down. Americans,
Speaker 1: this city is built on standing up when everyone else
Speaker 1: tells you not to stand up, to represent things that
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to represent. And how that changes everything,
Speaker 1: and how one little town that's not even the town
Speaker 1: you think of when you think of the state, you
Speaker 1: think of Nashville, of that Memphis changed America and America
Speaker 1: changed the world. So, I mean, there's so much to
Speaker 1: be said about encouraging That's who we are as a people.
Speaker 1: And we can never forget the group that literally said life,
Speaker 1: whether it's a cop, a fireman, or a soldier that
Speaker 1: literally gives their life for the greater good in the community.
Speaker 2: That's something you've got.
Speaker 1: To Mourning it is one thing if it's personal, but
Speaker 1: celebrating it. I tell people that the memorial days should
Speaker 1: be celebrated with turkey and gravy and mashed potatoes. That
Speaker 1: should be Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Our Thanksgiving should be a memorial day.
Speaker 1: We should be grateful that our nation exists where people
Speaker 1: are willing to say and all this crazy chaos, this
Speaker 1: country's worth it.
Speaker 2: You're worth it.
Speaker 1: I had a Vietnam vet. Everyone thanks me for my
Speaker 1: service everywhere I go, and they're like, thank you for
Speaker 1: your service, and you don't know what to say, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: college wasn't working out, you know, a pretty good shot,
Speaker 1: I figured, you know, like, what what do you say
Speaker 1: where they say thank you for your service?
Speaker 2: Like you're welcome.
Speaker 1: So it's pretentious, this Vietnam vet told me Gary Biker.
Speaker 1: He said, next time someone does that, look him in
Speaker 1: the eye and say you're worth it.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: And that, by the way, do that in La. They'll
Speaker 2: think you're saying you know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like I tell people, it's like substituting
Speaker 1: God bless you with someone sneezes and you say, Jesus
Speaker 1: loves you.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like this totally freaking their freak.
Speaker 2: They're not accustomce to it.
Speaker 1: But but the fact is, when someone thanks you for
Speaker 1: your service, you say you know what, you're worth it,
Speaker 1: and it totally changes the dynamic. It does ultimately, that's
Speaker 1: exactly why everyone does something for the community, because you're
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 3: What you gained from your experience with her, she.
Speaker 1: Taught me that she didn't Those weren't her words, but
Speaker 1: those were her actions, and that's the love she showed me.
Speaker 1: And I'm a fever grateful Marrily Carlson is a.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love her and I appreciate her.
Speaker 3: Since it's talking about a metal celebrating valor and her
Speaker 3: valor and the Rambrod's valor, there's another little piece of
Speaker 3: valor that has inspired you, and it oddly was at
Speaker 3: the end of your father's life. Yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Everyone that I had seen, everyone fought for their life,
Speaker 1: and it was usually in a very small window, and
Speaker 1: whether they won the fight or they lost the fight,
Speaker 1: no one gave into it. And I had the perception
Speaker 1: through seeing people was that death is horrible and death
Speaker 1: is the worst thing in the world, and we avoided
Speaker 1: at all costs, and when we die, we failed and
Speaker 1: we lost.
Speaker 2: You lose the battle, you lose the fight, you pass away.
Speaker 1: My dad was first time I saw death and I
Speaker 1: saw strength in it, and I saw a person that
Speaker 1: the way they went into death was so fearless.
Speaker 2: It was just I have faith, and I believe this.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of people have faith until
Speaker 1: they see their own blood on the ground, or they
Speaker 1: realized that the end is near, and then there's a panic.
Speaker 1: This is a guy who just absolutely had no panic
Speaker 1: to him. He had no panic, he had no fear.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, almost like he was looking at
Speaker 1: an almanac of so Saint Peter, I'm gonna take a
Speaker 1: rite at that accent.
Speaker 5: You know, like it was.
Speaker 1: But he was so confident of what was going to
Speaker 1: happen when he died, that he had a trip take
Speaker 1: you know, the whole thing. It was so I never
Speaker 1: seen anything like it before, and I was forever changed
Speaker 1: by it. And so do I think of you know,
Speaker 1: we all think of our parents at an age. I
Speaker 1: think of my dad thirty or I was twelve, or
Speaker 1: I was whatever. Every image I have with my dad
Speaker 1: is of that image, because as though I lionized him
Speaker 1: and thought he was Superman when I was nine, I
Speaker 1: never saw him stronger, tougher, or more worthy of the
Speaker 1: title of being, you know, my hero than.
Speaker 3: When he died, which is incredible that the strongest you
Speaker 3: see him was at his dad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, because he just went in it with there
Speaker 1: was this. He didn't lose. He didn't lose. He didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't quit. He was just like, it's gonna this
Speaker 1: is happening and I have no control over it. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, I'd love to have another twenty
Speaker 1: years with you. I love to have another twenty years
Speaker 1: with my grandkids, but I'm not going to have that.
Speaker 2: So I'm I'm I know where I'm going, I know
Speaker 2: what I'm what I was promised.
Speaker 1: I know who I am, But more importantly, I know
Speaker 1: who you are, and I know that this was the
Speaker 1: perfect amount of time time to get you out there
Speaker 1: to do what you have to do. And just know that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be with you, and You're You're loved,
Speaker 1: You'll always be loved, You'll I'll always be proud of you.
Speaker 1: But I'm just not going to be here for it.
Speaker 3: What I'm awesome? What what I'm awesome? Into a story
Speaker 3: that started with the sickening feeling you got from the
Speaker 3: look from your father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shame, Yeah, absolutely shame.
Speaker 4: Two completing other pride, Yeah, yeah, no, he returned that
Speaker 4: to me and and uh and that that's that's cool.
Speaker 2: I I won't.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 2: That's you.
Speaker 1: Those are experiences that you have and you're just like,
Speaker 1: I can't be the same person, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: it's too profound.
Speaker 3: And clearly that helps support your greatness.
Speaker 2: Well, I know it's weird to be called great normal folk.
Speaker 3: That's no, you're right.
Speaker 1: I listen, this has been a everything that you're talking
Speaker 1: about now. It plays so perfectly into you know, are
Speaker 1: there veterans out there and listening to this program. Maybe
Speaker 1: there are, maybe there aren't. But I can tell you
Speaker 1: that whatever separates us and what we decide to do
Speaker 1: to serve that element of service is identical why we
Speaker 1: do the things we do to make the group better,
Speaker 1: to make the team better. I know, a quality team
Speaker 1: is going to have individuals that will remember these life
Speaker 1: lessons when they're out.
Speaker 3: Of work, and in your experience and in what we're
Speaker 3: talking about, that team, as our country and the army,
Speaker 3: is each of us. Yes, absolutely, we'll be right back
Speaker 3: so as you as listeners and viewers can see David's
Speaker 3: far from just a meathead soldier. After service, you wrote
Speaker 3: the first book that I read, which by and large
Speaker 3: is the account of what you've just shared with us. Right,
Speaker 3: what year did you write it?
Speaker 2: That was two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: It came out in seven, two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: Came out in two thousand and seven. And was it
Speaker 3: with the help of the I actually don't know this.
Speaker 2: The John Bruney.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, John Bruney has awesome one of my dearest friends.
Speaker 1: I've known him since then.
Speaker 2: I love him.
Speaker 1: John Bruney is I think one of the most talented
Speaker 1: writers today. And Rayporter, who did the reporter who did
Speaker 1: that is the Harry Potter guy. He did the voice.
Speaker 1: He does all the great books. If there's a bestseller
Speaker 1: out there, Rayporter does the voices.
Speaker 2: He's amazing.
Speaker 3: So House to House I read it in five hours
Speaker 3: on my cell phone one night, and that's when I,
Speaker 3: I guess I gained a man crush on you.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate the House to House is a guy
Speaker 1: coming home from war that's just really doesn't know what's
Speaker 1: going on. And and you know, I when they read
Speaker 1: did they did a new version of House to House?
Speaker 1: And and I just started deleting, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of cuss words that I don't you know. I wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly proud at one point. I think there was like
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy seven on one page, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, maybe they get the point after
Speaker 1: the first Well, well we'll change that. But it was
Speaker 1: a guy coming up from war that was sick of,
Speaker 1: you know, writing what I thought was like war pornography
Speaker 1: and it and it didn't war. Yeah, the sense that
Speaker 1: people want to just read about killing people and shooting
Speaker 1: peopleship rather than.
Speaker 3: What what this is?
Speaker 1: That was a themoir, you know, it was about my
Speaker 1: team and my unit. And then when The Metal Honor
Speaker 1: comes out, there like please write a book. It has
Speaker 1: it could be about anything, and I'm like, well I
Speaker 1: want that to be a middle aged man looking back,
Speaker 1: which is which is remember Them, and it's a more
Speaker 1: mature Twenty two came out in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Two Remember the Rods, which is your homage to many
Speaker 3: of the names and others that we've done.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you if you zoom in on
Speaker 1: the you don't know if you can't do that. But
Speaker 1: that Metal of Honor is the Air Force Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor there, and that really bothers men and uh, I
Speaker 1: wish I would have caught that, But anyway, neither here
Speaker 1: to there. It's a book that it's a more mature book.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just trying to look back and make sense
Speaker 1: of kinds.
Speaker 3: It really is not about a plug to sell books.
Speaker 2: It's no, let's turn into it if you know.
Speaker 3: For me, it's about the greater the greater story of
Speaker 3: an army in normal folks exactly, and the greater story
Speaker 3: of supporting greatness. Which is a normal kid that grew
Speaker 3: up in New York with in a town without a stoplight,
Speaker 3: who doesn't even have the temerity or the courage to
Speaker 3: confront shirtless methaddicts while they walk around stealing VCRs from
Speaker 3: your family home. Who is mortified by the look of
Speaker 3: shame in his father's eyes. Who joins the army to
Speaker 3: find something inside him so that he can better himself.
Speaker 3: Who ends up clearing a house of insurgents I guess
Speaker 3: they're called insurgents of the enemy in Felujah literally hand
Speaker 3: to hand. And who leaves all that behind and has
Speaker 3: a story written about him that leads to the Medal
Speaker 3: of honor, where you're one of one in the world,
Speaker 3: Which is the only guy with that thing that's living
Speaker 3: today from those battles. Who writes a book about not
Speaker 3: only that experience, but then a second book celebrating the
Speaker 3: very people that did support his greatness and obviously has
Speaker 3: an enormous passion for the vitality of our diverse military.
Speaker 3: And it's just this, this story wrought with love and
Speaker 3: honor and valor and irony, and you're the tip of
Speaker 3: a spear that's entire shaft is held together about all
Speaker 3: of these people, your father, your grandfather, the Ramrods, the
Speaker 3: media that was around you, And I just got to
Speaker 3: ask you, you know, does the does the weight bear
Speaker 3: down on your shoulders? I?
Speaker 1: You know, I so hearing you tell them whole story.
Speaker 1: I really should have been tipped off that they were shirtless.
Speaker 5: That I think about it really was to take away
Speaker 5: away say that I was like, what the hell was
Speaker 5: I think? Shirtless David? But you could tell that really
Speaker 5: sunk into his head because he was like, they were shirtless?
Speaker 2: Well, what were you thinking? Like telling the.
Speaker 3: Shirts?
Speaker 1: Watched I watched your your documentary, and I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you that there's it started a cottage industry of things
Speaker 1: that are all trying to be what undefeated was and
Speaker 1: uh I, I was obviously taken by what you were
Speaker 1: trying to do with that program, the kids that you
Speaker 1: were working with, the intent in which you conducted yourself,
Speaker 1: and then of course everything you've done since then. It's
Speaker 1: in a way one of the things that I was.
Speaker 1: I wanted to meet you, but I also wanted to
Speaker 1: do this podcast because I believe in my heart that
Speaker 1: our biggest problem is that we take you know, military people, police,
Speaker 1: fire all the folks out there that are doing the jobs, education, hospitals,
Speaker 1: all the people we need in our world, and we
Speaker 1: put them on pedestals that say, I can never do that.
Speaker 1: I'll never be that guy, right, And in a way,
Speaker 1: that inoculates a lot of people whom never trying to
Speaker 1: be that person in their world. Now, I hope you
Speaker 1: never ever get into a situation we have to kick
Speaker 1: down a door, because I mean, honestly, people always ask me, David,
Speaker 1: if you could do it over again, would you And
Speaker 1: I tell them no, not.
Speaker 2: A change to drop the bomb, And you mean, why
Speaker 2: would I want to go through that again?
Speaker 1: No, not a chance of that. I would have waited
Speaker 1: for the a ten I would have waited. I would
Speaker 1: have put a ten out waiting for that eight ten.
Speaker 1: I never would have done that again. So they're like, well,
Speaker 1: but what is it about you that's different? My entire
Speaker 1: life's mission is to remind people that there is no difference,
Speaker 1: and there should be no difference. There is a moment
Speaker 1: in your life that you're going to have a Medal
Speaker 1: of honor moment. It might not come with a reporter,
Speaker 1: and hopefully not with machine guns and rockets, but you're
Speaker 1: going to see a kid who's going to get who's bullied.
Speaker 1: You're going to see a person who's overweight and everyone's
Speaker 1: making fun of them. There's going to be a you know,
Speaker 1: someone with mental difficulties that everyone's trying to take advantage of.
Speaker 1: That's the moment that you stand up and say not
Speaker 1: a chance. I'm not going to tolerate that. I'm going
Speaker 1: to stand up for weak people. I'm going to stand
Speaker 1: up for people who can't defend themselves. I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: a kid that doesn't have a mom or dad at
Speaker 1: home and tell that kid that they're loved, they have value,
Speaker 1: and change their direction. That's a metal of Honor moment
Speaker 1: in our lives, and the more people that we can
Speaker 1: look at and say, Wow, this kid, when no mom
Speaker 1: and dad worked hard, went Division one, is now a
Speaker 1: multi millionaire. He's so lucky. That's when I think we
Speaker 1: just add to the corrosion in our world. They're not lucky, right.
Speaker 1: You could have done that too. You chose not to
Speaker 1: go and you don't have the gifts to play football.
Speaker 1: You have the gifts to be an intellect. You can
Speaker 1: go to school, you can get a degree. You could
Speaker 1: work the extra hours no one wants to work to
Speaker 1: get promoted. You can decide not to put people in
Speaker 1: your lives that get you pregnant and run away from you.
Speaker 1: You can make all of these decisions that better you.
Speaker 1: Do you find value in yourself and do you have
Speaker 1: the greatness in yourself to realize that needs to be protected.
Speaker 1: Everyone has individual greatness. You have to protect it. You
Speaker 1: have to keep it from the outside world. And when
Speaker 1: there are the thugs and the idiots that are out
Speaker 1: there that want to try to steal from your great
Speaker 1: because that's the thing about idiots, they're attracted to greatness.
Speaker 1: They barnacle to the uss greatness. When you're out there
Speaker 1: doing your thing, you ever notice in your life everything
Speaker 1: you're doing wrong, and man, you are just getting through.
Speaker 1: Everything's great. You're lying, you're being an idiot, you're misrepresenting,
Speaker 1: You're not doing the things you're supposed to do. You
Speaker 1: wake up at a lot and a clock. You don't
Speaker 1: brush your teeth anymore, you smoke menthols. You've mixed it
Speaker 1: up right. You're living your life and you're just a
Speaker 1: complete loser. And there is no obstacle in your world.
Speaker 1: Everything is just moving alone. The moment you decide no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna discipline myself, I'm gonna show integrity when people
Speaker 1: aren't looking. I'm gonna do the right things, say the
Speaker 1: right things, be the right person. That's when everything comes
Speaker 1: your way. Everything comes your way to tell you you sure,
Speaker 1: you sure you don't want to just not go to
Speaker 1: the gym. You sure you just want to eat whatever
Speaker 1: you want to eat. You're sure you just want to
Speaker 1: You know, no one's gonna know, no one's gonna know
Speaker 1: who you're talking to or who you're hanging out with.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 1: Those are the times that everything comes crashing down, and
Speaker 1: that's when you realize that if a moron can get
Speaker 1: you to get in their car when they're drunk, they're
Speaker 1: not a moron, because they got you. And if a
Speaker 1: moron can get you to cheat on a test, guess what,
Speaker 1: they're not so stupid.
Speaker 2: They got you to do it.
Speaker 1: You've got to realize that once you're living a life
Speaker 1: and you have identified your greatness, you've got to protect it.
Speaker 2: We got to protect it.
Speaker 1: I get so upset when I hear adults asking young
Speaker 1: people what do you want to be when you grow up?
Speaker 1: Right now, that's a slippery slope. At some point, you
Speaker 1: want to have the world to know this is what
Speaker 1: I want to do. At the other point, you want
Speaker 1: to protect that dream because you know that once you
Speaker 1: tell the world I want to play Division one football,
Speaker 1: everyone of the right mind is going to invite you
Speaker 1: to a party on Friday night. Everyone in the right
Speaker 1: mind is going to want you to hang out with
Speaker 1: a crowd that's going to be around drugs and alcohol
Speaker 1: and guns and all this other crap. They know that
Speaker 1: because you have a destiny and a path, and idiots
Speaker 1: are going to want to get on that path and
Speaker 1: take you off it. And so not only do we
Speaker 1: have to remind people that there is no separation between
Speaker 1: people who achieve and people who don't. The separation is
Speaker 1: the discip and the will and the ability to say
Speaker 1: the one word I learned in my forties, and that
Speaker 1: is no. And then I learned another word that goes
Speaker 1: with it, which is hell. No.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I don't want this. I don't want you. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be associated with you. I don't want to say.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in that group. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be in this crowd. I don't want to
Speaker 1: hang out with you people. I have no obligation. My
Speaker 1: obligation is to my family and to my own honor
Speaker 1: and my own sense of spirit, and that is I'm
Speaker 1: not betraying that. Not because it looks good on a
Speaker 1: Wiki entry, not because I get a beer with my
Speaker 1: face on it. I do it because it's my obligation
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: It's me.
Speaker 1: I'm more important than you and some of these generation
Speaker 1: you know, we look at Generation ZE and say they're
Speaker 1: narcissistic and they're selfish.
Speaker 2: I'd like some of that.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people that sacrifice so much
Speaker 1: they have no sense of self. Why are you doing?
Speaker 1: Why are you standing out constructing a knit piece of
Speaker 1: your anatomy and wearing it on your head and punching
Speaker 1: police horses. You're doing it for the cause. The cause
Speaker 1: doesn't get a damn about you. You're an idiot and
Speaker 1: you're following the herd. Maybe these young kids that are
Speaker 1: all about them, we need to empower them to truly
Speaker 1: be about them and realize, if you want a great community,
Speaker 1: we got great individuals that make a great community. Be
Speaker 1: a strong individual, protect the people that can't protect themselves,
Speaker 1: Be a mentor to as many people as possible, and
Speaker 1: be a part of the most dynamic community in the
Speaker 1: greatest country in the world. You mean an army of
Speaker 1: an army of normal I thought we weren't plugging. Now
Speaker 1: we are, well plug the book, but we'll.
Speaker 3: That's what you are in a New York accent and
Speaker 3: a different layout, but exactly what I believe.
Speaker 1: Well, I really I know a person that has come
Speaker 1: from all the ups and downs, all the things that
Speaker 1: you've endured, and why you do it.
Speaker 2: I mean, are great.
Speaker 1: You know, coaching at that level is awesome. That the
Speaker 1: the attention is fun. But if you're if you're on
Speaker 1: your deathbed and you're like, you know, if I only
Speaker 1: had three more days to play that app, you know
Speaker 1: what I feel like who on their deathbed is like, man,
Speaker 1: if I would have got that extra Coach of the year,
Speaker 1: you know, I could have one more plaque and I
Speaker 1: could just suck up the slag and meet the hereafter.
Speaker 1: No one gives a damn about it. But I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: what if if to be able to look at yourself
Speaker 1: and realize that that there is a young person out
Speaker 1: there that's that's going to do something that makes them
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and grow and be their own person. That's what
Speaker 1: the inner city needs, That's what our country rural area needs,
Speaker 1: That's what the suburbs need. You know, they want to
Speaker 1: separate us by music, skin, color, socioeconomic backround, sexual preference, religion, politics.
Speaker 1: There is so much more that we have in common, right,
Speaker 1: and the toxicity that's out there are people who need
Speaker 1: it to be toxic. They're the ones that are profiting
Speaker 1: off this toxicity. And all I'm saying is they're scumbags.
Speaker 1: They're no different than the people in the garage on
Speaker 1: a Friday night going to the Division one athlete. Let's
Speaker 1: get high and drunk and shoot guns in the air.
Speaker 1: It's the same type of person. They've just graduated at astrays.
Speaker 3: So David, you have served this country and lost friends,
Speaker 3: I guess brothers in arms. You've reached the host honor
Speaker 3: there is for any military man in the United States.
Speaker 3: And now after all of that, you are clearly you
Speaker 3: clearly have a message to tell in your books and
Speaker 3: and the things you speak about and in supporting greatness.
Speaker 3: You know, we talk about your grandfather teaching how to
Speaker 3: be studying, your father teaching how to be unflappable, and
Speaker 3: the Ramrod's giving you accountability. What's the most important tenant
Speaker 3: that God's your life today?
Speaker 2: Accountability?
Speaker 3: Accountability more than anything, More.
Speaker 2: Than anything I I.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to make mistakes, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be imperfect, I'm going to be loud, I'm going to
Speaker 1: want to, you know, do things that I'm that frustrate me.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, I
Speaker 1: have to be accountable. And that's a proactive thing too.
Speaker 1: Right when you're accountable, you could be proactive to not
Speaker 1: do the things that you know are are not things
Speaker 1: that you should be doing.
Speaker 3: My football coach always said, the true measure of accountability
Speaker 3: is what you do when you're alone, and nobody will
Speaker 3: to absolutely. In other words, it's easy to be accountable
Speaker 3: when you know that if you do something, your parents,
Speaker 3: your coach or teacher going to find out. But when
Speaker 3: when you have the opportunity to do something you shouldn't
Speaker 3: be doing that nobody would ever know, and you don't
Speaker 3: do it anyway because it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: that's when you become truly accountable.
Speaker 1: Do you know What's funny? Though? Like, Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: right now as a coach, you're far better than you
Speaker 1: were when you were in your late twenties.
Speaker 3: Or gosh right, I was Listen, I loved kids just
Speaker 3: as much back then as I do now. But I'm
Speaker 3: gonna tell you something I sucked from that X as
Speaker 3: an O standpoint.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's no reason that Paul McCartney is not
Speaker 1: a better musician today than he was when he was
Speaker 1: twenty two.
Speaker 3: And this is a I think with reguard to that,
Speaker 3: doesn't don't you think age has something to do?
Speaker 1: I don't. I think it has to do with suffering. Really,
Speaker 1: suffering is what there's a moment of everything that you
Speaker 1: get in life. You know, they say the ancient saying
Speaker 1: is that everything you want is on the other side
Speaker 1: of fear, right, but the artist will tell you you
Speaker 1: have to suffer for your art.
Speaker 2: The professional will.
Speaker 1: Tell you you have to be in that windowless room
Speaker 1: and do your ten thousand hours before you can get
Speaker 1: a business card. And then you get your office and
Speaker 1: your staff, and then you hit your stride and then
Speaker 1: you work hard. But at some point everyone says this
Speaker 1: is enough. And it's okay to say that, but you
Speaker 1: can say this is enough.
Speaker 3: I've had enough.
Speaker 2: I've had enough.
Speaker 1: I don't need it, I don't want it. There's other
Speaker 1: things that are important. Paul McCartney doesn't need to go
Speaker 1: on the road when he's eighty, right, Mick Jagger evidently
Speaker 1: does right. It's a totally different but it just shows
Speaker 1: you it's it's.
Speaker 2: Not what he wants.
Speaker 1: Right. But somehow we have taken out that suffering part
Speaker 1: along the journey, that it really sucks to get up
Speaker 1: at five am every day and do exercises. No one
Speaker 1: wants that. Do you have to do it at five am?
Speaker 1: Some people have to because they have to suffer. They
Speaker 1: have to put themselves through something to say I worked
Speaker 1: for it and it was needed and and what I
Speaker 1: think we we've done in the era of helicopter parents
Speaker 1: to the parents that are the bulldozer parents. We used
Speaker 1: to want to be there when you made a decision.
Speaker 1: Now we want to eliminate the obstacle completely so you
Speaker 1: have a perfect life.
Speaker 3: So you're stripping the opportunity for your children to suffer.
Speaker 1: To suffer us because ultimately, what it is is it.
Speaker 3: You take away their ability to learn how to be accountable.
Speaker 2: That's what it all.
Speaker 1: That's that's what we're getting back to everything. If there's
Speaker 1: one thing I could tell the young people we do
Speaker 1: it all over the high schools and the colleges, every
Speaker 1: where we go, is we tell them the one thing
Speaker 1: that's different about you than any other generation is adults
Speaker 1: have failed you in reminding you that that it's it's
Speaker 1: negative and bad to fail. That's how we failed you.
Speaker 1: We failed you because of failure. You are afraid to
Speaker 1: make a mistake and you're afraid to make to screw up.
Speaker 1: And that is the essence of everything we do. We
Speaker 1: don't practice. At the end of practice, guys, I don't
Speaker 1: know why we're gonna do this tomorrow. That was brilliant,
Speaker 1: that was awesome. We're good, right, what are you doing? No,
Speaker 1: there's always there's always a correction. There's always going to
Speaker 1: be a mistake.
Speaker 3: Iron That metal wouldn't be sitting on the stable if
Speaker 3: you hadn't failed in your parents' house one night.
Speaker 1: Or if I hadn't failed in that house. Let's be honest,
Speaker 1: you're gonna fail throughout everything. There's mistakes that you make
Speaker 1: that you realize. I don't want to be in a
Speaker 1: house full of six people. That's not a by plan.
Speaker 1: You know, you got through it, whatever lessons you learned,
Speaker 1: you got through it. But a Valor award is based
Speaker 1: on really bad intelligence and really bad situation. Little where
Speaker 1: it is. You know.
Speaker 2: That's why we have these things. They're not supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we go to base of training and the first
Speaker 1: day would be like we're gonna send twelve guys at you.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't require you to be in the house. If
Speaker 3: everything worked out perfectly.
Speaker 1: It has to be a mistake. Everything is about mistake.
Speaker 1: Those failures others more successes and you. All we have
Speaker 1: to do is remind young people you're gonna screw up.
Speaker 1: We want controlled failure, controlled failure where we know, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're gonna learn how to
Speaker 1: drive a car.
Speaker 2: But just in case. I'm putting a brake pedal on
Speaker 2: this side too. I'm just saying you're allowed to screw up, but.
Speaker 1: I do have access to the breaking system because I
Speaker 1: don't exactly try. I want controlled failure. Give a kid
Speaker 1: a left limit and a right limit, discipline them, give
Speaker 1: them that controlled failure, and you're gonna have the best
Speaker 1: adult we have in our society. We're gonna be better
Speaker 1: than World War to, better than Vietnam, better than my generation.
Speaker 1: If we continue down this path, no accountability failure doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Go be perfect and go create an R and B
Speaker 1: album that's gonna get five hundred million downloads. We're gonna fail,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna unfortunately, that's gonna be a failure that
Speaker 1: you can't get out of.
Speaker 3: So as we before, we rout, what are you doing now?
Speaker 3: I do this.
Speaker 1: This is what I do now. I did a radio
Speaker 1: show before I was, you know, given the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 1: and it was just something I love in my hometown.
Speaker 1: Buffalo is such a great town and we're just Buffalo
Speaker 1: is a place where you could be like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was on the Tonight Show yesterday and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you weren't on the couch, you were standing. I
Speaker 1: mean technically I was on the Tonight Show and I
Speaker 1: wasn't even there. You know, like they have a way
Speaker 1: to just humble you, and they're brilliantly exquisitely rough about it.
Speaker 1: But it's just that blue collar don't ever think you're
Speaker 1: better than got But really, yeah, but what is it?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what it is to be. Do
Speaker 1: you have a daytime emmy, then shut up in sinnati. No,
Speaker 1: Like there's a great way to masculate, he would give you.
Speaker 1: But the people are assault of the earth. And we
Speaker 1: had a horrific event where we had a white guy
Speaker 1: walk into an all black neighborhood shoot up a bunch
Speaker 1: of people in a grocery store every reason, and many
Speaker 1: people tried to hijack that and make that about you know,
Speaker 1: we have a problem, everyone hates everyone. How to We're
Speaker 1: never going to fix it. Let's just exacerbate it and
Speaker 1: throw gas on the fire. But we had clergy, We
Speaker 1: had people in the inner city, people in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: people come together and just say, look, we've got to
Speaker 1: stop this from happening again. But more importantly, remind people
Speaker 1: who we are. You know, it's the only everywhere there's
Speaker 1: a mass It was the only time I've seen a
Speaker 1: press conference for a mass shooting that opened with a
Speaker 1: word of prayer and ended with a word of prayer,
Speaker 1: with a sheriff and a mayor and a you name it.
Speaker 1: It started with a prayer and it ended with a prayer.
Speaker 1: And I'm very proud of my hometown and and that's
Speaker 1: who we are. And being able to you know, talk
Speaker 1: to them and you know, keep them going is something
Speaker 1: I take a lot of a lot of pride in.
Speaker 3: David. I am, I am. I am so honored you
Speaker 3: joined us. And you know, ironically, you this is kind
Speaker 3: of a crossover show. You are just a normal guy
Speaker 3: who's done amazing things for the service of so many
Speaker 3: all of our country. The people you served with, the
Speaker 3: young kids as a staff sergeant, she led, and then
Speaker 3: which led to you being in a great position. And
Speaker 3: talk about who supported your greatness, the Ramrods, your father,
Speaker 3: your grandfather, the men you served with, and your stories
Speaker 3: are so inspirational and the things you've had to say
Speaker 3: or are so thought provoking, especially about let's not screw
Speaker 3: up the one thing that ninety percent of us all
Speaker 3: can agree on which is our military's good and the
Speaker 3: people who serve in it are the best of us
Speaker 3: and brother, I cannot thank you enough for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate this is a lot of fun, and
Speaker 1: I hope this is the first of many conversations now
Speaker 1: with cameras, but the first of many conversations we had
Speaker 1: down the road. I look forward to having you and
Speaker 1: being able to talk to you about everything else that's
Speaker 1: happened in the world.
Speaker 3: Me too, Buke. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: It was good.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you, and thank you for joining us
Speaker 3: this week. If David or another guest has inspired you
Speaker 3: in general, or better yet, to take action, please let
Speaker 3: me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can
Speaker 3: write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us, and
Speaker 3: I promise you I will respond. And if you enjoyed
Speaker 3: this episode, please share it with friends and on social
Speaker 3: subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, become a
Speaker 3: premium member at normalfolks dot us. All these things that
Speaker 3: will help grow an army of normal folks For our
Speaker 3: premium members. We'll have bonus content from this episode, and
Speaker 3: it's David and I talking about post traumatic stress disorder
Speaker 3: PTSD among his fellow soldiers, and he even corrects me
Speaker 3: a little bit on this, and rightfully. So if you
Speaker 3: don't want to miss it, become a Premium member today
Speaker 3: and you'll see it. I'd also like to at the
Speaker 3: end really tell you how much I appreciate our sponsor,
Speaker 3: Iron Light Laps. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week.