Speaker 1: Ah beaute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software up Radio, Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the
Speaker 1: community soft Rep Radio on Time on Target. Episode number
Speaker 1: four s I'm Dennis Jones. The man on my left
Speaker 1: is Jack Murphy. Good afternoon, Sernant. How are you good?
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm well? Thank you. UM. I wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on last episode. I'm still coming down from
Speaker 1: I don't want to say shock, but just the uh,
Speaker 1: the excitement, the it wasn't news, but just the conversation
Speaker 1: we had with Jeff. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty incredible
Speaker 1: and it was really fun to talk to him, and
Speaker 1: it went off in some unexpected but interesting directions. It
Speaker 1: was I I likened it to the conversation with Alex
Speaker 1: where we almost we knew that one was going to
Speaker 1: go off the rails quickly, and it did. And this
Speaker 1: one I didn't know what to expect. I knew, um,
Speaker 1: obviously Jeff is huge into fitness, exercise physiologist. I've been practicing. UM,
Speaker 1: I knew he was gonna want to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But the d m T, the cannabis and UH and
Speaker 1: psychedelic mushroom stuff. That was something I wasn't even really
Speaker 1: aware of to start with. I mean, obviously I know
Speaker 1: that exists, but for treatment for people with PTSD that
Speaker 1: that was something that and then I've done research since
Speaker 1: then and it's been like I opening for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um yeah. The New York Times did some reporting on it. Um.
Speaker 1: It seems like when it's supervised by doctors and it's
Speaker 1: a legitimate treatment, and it really provides um, not a
Speaker 1: solution but or a cure, but it it provides a
Speaker 1: lot of relief pain, mental pain or physical pain, which
Speaker 1: is uh, obviously any way to help PTSD or veterans
Speaker 1: or cope with what they're going through the more than
Speaker 1: marry and and if licking toads helps, then you know,
Speaker 1: God bless you guys. Yeah, I mean it's unconventional, but
Speaker 1: if if that's what works, um, and and it's a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot better than some of the alternatives.
Speaker 1: Opiates are are killers. The opiates, Um, you know, they
Speaker 1: a lot of guys do not like the antidepressant pills.
Speaker 1: They make them feel bad or weird, um, anti anxiety pills,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Um. So hey, man, if
Speaker 1: like you gotta go and do some highahuasca or some
Speaker 1: d MT and like that, and it's like one and done.
Speaker 1: I mean, and it's crazy because like the stigma behind drugs.
Speaker 1: I mean, Jeff talked about it in the interview, was
Speaker 1: like like growing up, we even mentioned a little bit
Speaker 1: off air, was, um, you know, growing up, it's like
Speaker 1: drugs are bad, like, don't do drugs, and just like
Speaker 1: the stuff they feed you, and then the older you
Speaker 1: get and the more like I don't know how many
Speaker 1: states legalized marijuana now, but just like the stigmas behind
Speaker 1: these drugs aren't as terrible as they used to be,
Speaker 1: Like you know, LSD and acid growing up was I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's still good. But like you do
Speaker 1: that and you're gonna get stuck in a trip forever
Speaker 1: and then they'll never come out. And like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I feel like they would um equate that
Speaker 1: to like Vietnam vets that just get you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen some ship man and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're like they they're just gone forever. Well, there's definitely
Speaker 1: an aspect of like refer madness. Yeah, you know that
Speaker 1: we've been propagandized um, you know, and you know, we
Speaker 1: were talking about this before we we went on air
Speaker 1: about the things were taught in school that turn out
Speaker 1: not to be true, and like the DARE program, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it has some value, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's like they're not necessarily telling you the whole story either.
Speaker 1: You know, if you smoke marijuana once, you're not gonna die.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not gonna kill you. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think you have to look at a
Speaker 1: lot of those drugs and it's like, is it positive,
Speaker 1: is it something that's like adding some value to my life,
Speaker 1: or is it like a negative thing where you're sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch eating garritos and smoking marijuana all day.
Speaker 1: So I think there's uh a positive and a negative
Speaker 1: way that a lot of these substances can be used.
Speaker 1: Of course we're not we're not advocating going down just
Speaker 1: like you said last episode, going down to the corner
Speaker 1: and just hey man, you got any want to try
Speaker 1: some d m R pulls his duster open and he's
Speaker 1: just got like LSD lined in his in his uh
Speaker 1: in his jacket. No, I mean, Jeff said himself, he
Speaker 1: provided UH and we put the link to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be a free for all that it should
Speaker 1: be like I mean, doctor assisted. He was, he was
Speaker 1: looked up to kgs and whatnot. But that was something
Speaker 1: that I never really thought of before. And I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not a veteran, so that luckily I don't
Speaker 1: I don't deal with PTS. He said the same thing
Speaker 1: about because it's I don't want to shock anyone, but
Speaker 1: it is rife in the special operations community. Is a
Speaker 1: steroid use. Um. I don't think that's a shocker. I know,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been sarcastic. There's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: steroid use, and I, in my my humble opinion, I
Speaker 1: don't really like that guy's abuse it um or use
Speaker 1: it illegally, because a lot of people don't really know
Speaker 1: what they're doing and they end up sucking themselves up.
Speaker 1: Um So, but nonetheless, it is out there, and I
Speaker 1: wish that the medical community in the military would maybe
Speaker 1: study it and maybe guys could use it in a
Speaker 1: medically assisted manner that um gives you some of the
Speaker 1: benefits gallops, you get stronger. If if that's what we
Speaker 1: decide the direction we want to go in, but that
Speaker 1: it's uh supervised, so that guys aren't really having like
Speaker 1: these long term, um, you know, health impacts. And there
Speaker 1: are definitely doctors out there, I think, like me being
Speaker 1: the sports and that I am. I think of um
Speaker 1: the Balco with Barry Bonds years ago. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: don't say, I'm not saying find a shady doctor, but
Speaker 1: like they're doctors who have not like they know their stuff.
Speaker 1: So find one and explain to them, like, look, here's
Speaker 1: what we want to do for the military. Like whether
Speaker 1: we want to admit it or not, their steroid use
Speaker 1: is a thing. Can we find a way to make
Speaker 1: this so it's it's not as detrimental to these guys.
Speaker 1: Why don't you like just instream it and you know,
Speaker 1: make it part of the Like there's a clinic or
Speaker 1: something like that, and like you go see the guy
Speaker 1: or it's just part of your like physical performance enhancement
Speaker 1: or whatever. Whatever. There's a whole bunch of different programs
Speaker 1: that the military has that are for um to improve
Speaker 1: physical performance. Why not just integrate that into it and
Speaker 1: be like, well, okay, if you want to do it,
Speaker 1: if you want to try this, it's here for you.
Speaker 1: Here it is, you know, and you can be you know,
Speaker 1: it could be supervised by doctors something to consider people.
Speaker 1: The I mean, I think some of the attitudes towards
Speaker 1: this stuff are changing, you know, oh absolutely, And we
Speaker 1: had mentioned that off air. It's because people, you know,
Speaker 1: like we said, in in schools, you know, you you
Speaker 1: learn that. I mean we not just the DARE program,
Speaker 1: but like you had said that, the like the AIDS epidemic,
Speaker 1: like you you can get it from kissing, and it's
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, they teach you all the like I
Speaker 1: remember vividly, and this was in the late nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: It was like probably n or ninety nine sitting in
Speaker 1: Hoist school health class and putting it they put the
Speaker 1: VHS tape bomb, which is twenty years ago, like how
Speaker 1: far we've come, and the and it's um, it's like
Speaker 1: a little p s a thing that it takes place.
Speaker 1: It's like as if it's a female student having a
Speaker 1: conversation with like the school nurse about AIDS and she's
Speaker 1: like the girl hass like, can I get AIDS from kissing?
Speaker 1: And the nurse is like no, we don't think so, Sally,
Speaker 1: what about deep kissing? And the nurse look said her
Speaker 1: and said, well, Sally, we just don't know about deep kissing.
Speaker 1: It's like this like total propaganda, like and we knew
Speaker 1: by ninety nine, we knew that was bullshit. And that
Speaker 1: you know that they scared the ship out of all
Speaker 1: these kids that you know you're gonna get AIDS from
Speaker 1: your high school sweetheart, which was not the reality of
Speaker 1: the AIDS epidemic at all. These two high school kids
Speaker 1: just going we're gonna cut class, We're gonna go into
Speaker 1: the bleachers and make up, but hey, be careful because
Speaker 1: I don't want to catch AIDS from you don't have
Speaker 1: hiv uh. And then then some of the other things
Speaker 1: we were taught in school, like that the that people
Speaker 1: back in the old days thought the Earth was flat,
Speaker 1: and I you could calculated that the the circumference of
Speaker 1: the Earth. And I mean, I don't know the year
Speaker 1: off the top of my head, but it was like
Speaker 1: a thousand years before Christ. It was in ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: It's a long as time ago. So there was one
Speaker 1: thousand b C. That's easy math. I that's not exactly
Speaker 1: I'm just throwing numbers out there. It was a long,
Speaker 1: long time ago that they figured that out. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I remember like going when I got to college and
Speaker 1: um my professor of European history at Mercy College and
Speaker 1: Dobb's Ferry, he was like, I don't know why they
Speaker 1: still teach you kids that the earth is that they
Speaker 1: thought the earth was flat back in the old days,
Speaker 1: like around Christopher Columbus time. He's like, nobody thought that.
Speaker 1: It was like, okay, well, I'm glad we learned that
Speaker 1: growing up, Like the Earth is flat? One cracks me
Speaker 1: up because, like you said, the circumference and it was like,
Speaker 1: well who thought, like who thought the Earth was flat?
Speaker 1: Like where in the readings like none of that at
Speaker 1: no point? Like and then also I'm a big I
Speaker 1: love the flat earth truth. There's like today, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's like made it come back, Flat Earth made
Speaker 1: a come back, And it's like what do you, honestly,
Speaker 1: what do these people believe? Like at a certain at
Speaker 1: a certain point, you just fall like where does the
Speaker 1: earth end? I mean, people back in the olden times
Speaker 1: obviously they were not dumb. They weren't dumb people. I
Speaker 1: mean you look at the things that they did, the
Speaker 1: things that they built. It's incredible, But I mean just
Speaker 1: somebody who. I mean, if you're up on top of
Speaker 1: a mountain, you can see the circumference, like you curt
Speaker 1: see the curvature. There's if you're a sailor, you can
Speaker 1: see ships off in the distance and you can see
Speaker 1: the sail, but you can't see the bottom of the
Speaker 1: boat because it's going to flat the curvature of the Earth.
Speaker 1: I mean, people knew this stuff. They weren't dumb by
Speaker 1: any means. So if the flat earth flat Earth, there's
Speaker 1: there a whole another element, well, I don't even want
Speaker 1: to I feel like the media makes that a thing though,
Speaker 1: because they do so much reporting on it. It's like
Speaker 1: they're anti science crusade. Not the media's anti science crusade,
Speaker 1: but they want to point out to us that there's
Speaker 1: people out there are anti science, so they do a
Speaker 1: ton of flat Earth stories, and like, how many of
Speaker 1: these people are there really in the flat earth society?
Speaker 1: I feel like it's like, you know, some guy in
Speaker 1: his garage, you know, with like one of those green
Speaker 1: screen computers, and he's like typing on the floppy disks.
Speaker 1: Like many people think the Earth is round, but actually
Speaker 1: turns out we're living on a pia a piece of
Speaker 1: peter bread. I'm here to tell you the truth. Uh,
Speaker 1: flat earthers there a different breed. I would like to
Speaker 1: meet one. Maybe we can. I don't know how we
Speaker 1: go about booking a flat earther, but if you're out there,
Speaker 1: you know, send us an email. One of one of
Speaker 1: my fascinations going back to when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: there's people who think the earth is hollow. Hollow. You
Speaker 1: never heard this? Yeah, and it goes okay in it
Speaker 1: really kind of goes back more to pulp fiction back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties because when with all those old
Speaker 1: pulp magazines, Um, there were stories like the Shriver Mystery
Speaker 1: was one of them, and they were like some of
Speaker 1: them were pitched as being factual. Um like here the
Speaker 1: true life story, that kind of thing. Um. But there's
Speaker 1: all these different there are these different stories and ideas
Speaker 1: that the earth is hollow and you can go inside
Speaker 1: it and perhaps there's a whole other civilization in there.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's an inner sun inside our hollow, Like there's
Speaker 1: more people beyond the more people in like the subway
Speaker 1: s cobolds. Yeah, they're down there somewhere. Um. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like ten foot tall Amazon women and they will, you know,
Speaker 1: man handle you in horrible ways. I can subscribe to that. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's obviously nonsense. The earth would be torn
Speaker 1: apart if it were hollow, because you know, we're spinning
Speaker 1: on our axes and YadA, YadA, YadA. There's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why that's not true. But it's an
Speaker 1: interesting theory certainly, I mean hollow. I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: The hollow earth theory. Some people believe that there's an
Speaker 1: entrance at the north and South pole where like you
Speaker 1: you're going and then there's just like a hole and
Speaker 1: you go side and you start curving inside the earth,
Speaker 1: almost like like a globe. How it just spins like
Speaker 1: you just got the pole and you oh, you want
Speaker 1: to travel to the south pole? You just hop hop
Speaker 1: to the north and you'll drop right through in the
Speaker 1: hollow earth. Express. Here we go. How quick you think
Speaker 1: you get there? We need to do some matheticians hollow
Speaker 1: earth and a mathematician you're out there, reach out, man,
Speaker 1: we'd we'd love to do some math with you. Um.
Speaker 1: Before we welcome on our guest, Stephen Elliott. He is
Speaker 1: a former ranger like yourself. Uh he wrote the book
Speaker 1: War Story, which I don't want to get into too much.
Speaker 1: We talked about at the end of it. But I
Speaker 1: want him to come on because I feel like this
Speaker 1: is gonna be the majority of the conversation. Um, he
Speaker 1: was a he was a ranger in two thou three seven.
Speaker 1: But in two thou three he was in the same
Speaker 1: infantry as Pat and Kevin Tilman. He's in the same platoon. Platoon. Yes,
Speaker 1: and UM, we'll let him. I mean, you and him
Speaker 1: are going to have a lengthy conversation about it, because
Speaker 1: you would. I think you talked about it on the air,
Speaker 1: right We didn't. It was I feel like you did.
Speaker 1: You mentioned it. I don't. I talked about it a
Speaker 1: little bit yet, right, Um, how do you guys have
Speaker 1: a similar story? I mean, obviously Pat some similarities is
Speaker 1: a huge name in the h and not some similarities.
Speaker 1: And we're both involved in friendly fire incidents. And the
Speaker 1: sort of connective tissue that connects the one he was
Speaker 1: involved in in the one I was involved in is
Speaker 1: Pat Tilman. Um. So, and it's just very strange, it's
Speaker 1: very strange to think about. And I never met Pat.
Speaker 1: Um I heard I went through pre ranger with guys
Speaker 1: who were in his platoon and in his company, and UM,
Speaker 1: I asked them about it and they said, yeah, Pat
Speaker 1: Tilman was a real deal, like really good guy. UM,
Speaker 1: which just makes it even that much more sad. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that he was killed out there in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: But we'll get into all that. Yeah, Like I obviously
Speaker 1: you and I don't want to sit here and yeah,
Speaker 1: ruined Steve's conversation. Steve, Stephen is the source he was.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who was there that day, so you
Speaker 1: know he can elaborate on that. Yes, So before we
Speaker 1: get to Stephen, I wanted to talk to you. We
Speaker 1: record on Thursday, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Obviously you hear Wednesday, Friday. Um,
Speaker 1: the Iran situation, this morning chaos. If we can grbal chaos.
Speaker 1: We're our own, um, we're our own conspiracy theorists. Now
Speaker 1: we got mass hysteria. It is mass hysteria, it really is.
Speaker 1: It was what what kind of it was? A m
Speaker 1: Q one was a Q four for Triton drone. I
Speaker 1: believe it was the maritime version of the prone for
Speaker 1: for maritime surveillance UM over the Strait of Hormuz and
Speaker 1: the Persian golf, Get that right, Yeah, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: the Straits are where the Persian Gulf narrows. UM. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a maritime choke point where UM oil tankers
Speaker 1: go through. UM could ostensibly be closed off by naval power.
Speaker 1: UM not quite as easily as some people. Some people
Speaker 1: it could sound like you just sink a ship in
Speaker 1: the Straits and it would like jam it up And no,
Speaker 1: it's like twenty kilometers across or something like that. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a pretty sizeable portion of you know, body
Speaker 1: of water. But it's so it seems that the Iranians
Speaker 1: shot down an American drone UM with a high altitude
Speaker 1: surfaced air missile mid the high altitude We're not sure exactly.
Speaker 1: The real debate is was our drone over Iranian airspace
Speaker 1: or was it an international airspace? Which makes a pretty
Speaker 1: big world of difference. UM, if the Iranians shot down
Speaker 1: in American spy drone essentially over their own airspace, I
Speaker 1: don't think we can really get outraged with them over that.
Speaker 1: You caught us, Yeah, yeah, it's like like the you
Speaker 1: remember a few years ago the Chinese pulled the drone
Speaker 1: out of the water it's like, can we have our
Speaker 1: drone back please? Um. But it was it shot and
Speaker 1: over international waters that could become an issue. UM, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a I don't think the shooting down
Speaker 1: of a drone regardless is such a big issue that
Speaker 1: we would go to war over that. I don't think. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta be cautious here. I mean you we had
Speaker 1: a spy plane, manned spy plane UM crash come down,
Speaker 1: um after the Chinese came up to intercept it during
Speaker 1: thees UM. It sounds like a fighter jet one of
Speaker 1: their fighters collided with our spy plane and had to
Speaker 1: make an emergency landing in China. And we did not
Speaker 1: go to war there. Nobody fired any shots. Eventually, our
Speaker 1: pilots were returned to US. The spy plane was stripped
Speaker 1: of any technology that had on it, but I think
Speaker 1: they returned the husk of the plane back to US. UM.
Speaker 1: But then at the same time, you have you know,
Speaker 1: what was Donald Trump tweeting out, you know, quite simply
Speaker 1: Iran made a very big mistake, like only trumpkin the
Speaker 1: danger here. I mean that could be you know, just bluster,
Speaker 1: you know, like like President Trump often does. But the
Speaker 1: danger is that there is this momentum building that we
Speaker 1: put the I r g C on the terrorist list UM,
Speaker 1: which means ostensibly we could also attack them outside of Iran.
Speaker 1: We could attack them in Syria. UM if they have
Speaker 1: any presence, were able to find in Lebanon, you know,
Speaker 1: you could strike UM. Some of the other things that
Speaker 1: have been going on is just that that they're just
Speaker 1: ratcheting up the tension UM and you can hear it
Speaker 1: from UH Prime Minister net and Yahoo also UM and
Speaker 1: him and the Trump administration. They seem to be pretty
Speaker 1: aligned in the direction that they want to go. The
Speaker 1: next steps could possibly be that we send more UM
Speaker 1: naval forces into the Persian Gulf to protect the ships,
Speaker 1: because this is the the other thing that has been
Speaker 1: building up here is the oil tank is getting blown up.
Speaker 1: Did Iran blow them up? Did they not blow them up?
Speaker 1: Did they put the mind on the side of the ship.
Speaker 1: Did they take it off? Well, it seems we know
Speaker 1: they took one off. So it's very curious and there
Speaker 1: are people like me who are very very cautious about
Speaker 1: all of this because of the pretexts that we got
Speaker 1: into UH the Iraq war, that Saddam was building w
Speaker 1: m d s, which yes, there were some w m
Speaker 1: d s buried under the sand, but he was not
Speaker 1: He was not building w m d s. He was
Speaker 1: not about to launch chemical weapons attacks. That was all nonsense,
Speaker 1: and it led to us, you know, being in Iraq
Speaker 1: and fighting and dying for like eight or nine years. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the other incident is that that is maybe
Speaker 1: a better comparison to what's been going on in the
Speaker 1: Persian Gulf is the Gulf of Tom King in Vietnam
Speaker 1: where you had a non event, um, you know, where
Speaker 1: ships for you know, maybe they were shooting at radar
Speaker 1: returns from flying fish and the the uh that this
Speaker 1: that event was used you know, they said, well our
Speaker 1: ships are under attack, and they was used to ratchet
Speaker 1: up the tensions against Vietnam. So I'm very very cautious
Speaker 1: about some of the things that are happening over there
Speaker 1: and how those events are being used to build the
Speaker 1: case for war. Obviously, um, so we could see more
Speaker 1: naval forces deployed to the Persian Gulf that to escort
Speaker 1: oil tankers through the Straits. Um. It gets into one
Speaker 1: of those things too where they're like, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have enough you know, our our troops are under
Speaker 1: attack in the goal for their under threat, so we
Speaker 1: have to deploy more troops to protect the troops. Like
Speaker 1: it gets very weird, had on a hat, you know.
Speaker 1: It's the same sort of thing you've seen in you know,
Speaker 1: Afghanistan or Iraqi times where it's like, oh, we don't
Speaker 1: have enough. It's unsafe to have this number of troops,
Speaker 1: so we have to deploy more troops. You could never
Speaker 1: have enough guys. Well, yeah, every general is always going
Speaker 1: to want more resources for whatever he does or admiral
Speaker 1: and the Pentagon's answer to everything everything is it a a
Speaker 1: plot more troops, Like it's it really is a failure
Speaker 1: of creativity. And it's not done out of any kind
Speaker 1: of like malice or anything. It's just like path dependency.
Speaker 1: It's like an institutional inertia, Like they don't know how
Speaker 1: else to respond to problems around the world. So the
Speaker 1: answer always becomes deploy more troops. Like, oh, we're losing
Speaker 1: the war in Iraq, deploy more troops. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: is where you get surges from, Like you get these
Speaker 1: colonels and generals, they just get in the mood to
Speaker 1: like surge some troops. It's really weird. It's really weird,
Speaker 1: and and like there needs to be like a full
Speaker 1: blown case study on like why this is done and
Speaker 1: and what the results of it are, because I feel
Speaker 1: like it's um. It's like the Cult of the Offensive
Speaker 1: and World War One. It was just a tactic and
Speaker 1: a strategy, like it just turned out not to be
Speaker 1: true at all. It doesn't work, so they keep doing this.
Speaker 1: And then I think the other thing that we're building
Speaker 1: up to eventually depend on how these things go, is
Speaker 1: to um put up throw up a no fly zone
Speaker 1: over Iran, the way we did over Iraq for many years.
Speaker 1: What Trump in in net and Yahoo, I feel like
Speaker 1: they're setting up is um the pretexts for us to
Speaker 1: do some sort of retaliatory strike inside Iran. So, hey,
Speaker 1: you blew up these oil tankers you shot down or drone,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go funk up something in yours and drop
Speaker 1: a few bombs, and then the Iranians will respond, will respond,
Speaker 1: We'll escalate, they'll escalate, UM, and then you end up
Speaker 1: with no fly zones over Iran, And it's just it's
Speaker 1: just one thing leads to the next slippery slope. Uh,
Speaker 1: stay tuned. I mean we we'll let you know anything
Speaker 1: that happened I mean, not breaking news, but obviously we'll
Speaker 1: talk about anything that happens in the coming weeks or days,
Speaker 1: I mean, depending on who knows what we've We're in
Speaker 1: for a treat here um before we bring on Steven
Speaker 1: Elliott to talk about his his time as a ranger.
Speaker 1: The book is War Story. I want to let you
Speaker 1: guys know that this show is brought to you by
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Speaker 1: with that, we're gonna welcome on Steven Elliott, author of
Speaker 1: War Story, to talk about his time as a ranger
Speaker 1: and the Pet Tilman incident. Enjoy joining us. Now we
Speaker 1: have Steven Elliott. He graduated summa cum law with a
Speaker 1: BS degree in International business from Oral Roberts in two
Speaker 1: thousand three and then went to Oklahoma State in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven to get your m b A. After going
Speaker 1: to Oral Roberts, he joined the Army Basic Training at
Speaker 1: Fort Benning and Georgia and eventually became a ranger. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about his ranger time because that's
Speaker 1: what he's here for. He is currently the president of
Speaker 1: Capstone Trust in Olympia, Washington, and the author of War Story.
Speaker 1: So Stephen, first off, welcome and thank you for coming on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Yes, Stephen, this is uh, just
Speaker 1: very interesting experience. I was saying before we called you
Speaker 1: up that you know, you and I have a very
Speaker 1: odd connection. Um, and we were both involved in these
Speaker 1: friendly fire incidents, and in a very interesting way, Pat
Speaker 1: Tillman is kind of the connective tissue between the two
Speaker 1: of them. Um, and I have to admit I have
Speaker 1: not read your book yet. UM, I really want to.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go and get a copy. I
Speaker 1: actually saw I saw a woman walking down the street
Speaker 1: with it, with your book in or hand. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn a couple of days ago. Yeah. Yeahs Um,
Speaker 1: so I think I would be. I'd definitely like to
Speaker 1: tell you my story. I'd also like to hear yours, um,
Speaker 1: if you're willing. UM, I know that on some level
Speaker 1: you're probably sick of talking about it, but um, it
Speaker 1: also is kind of important. And I think you know
Speaker 1: your book is titled war Story. And I wrote about
Speaker 1: in my book how these stories that we both have
Speaker 1: are the kinds of stories that they don't make into movies. Um,
Speaker 1: this this doesn't make it into the comic books, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make it into the films. Um, these are not
Speaker 1: the stories that get repeated. These are the ones that
Speaker 1: like people just kind of carry around inside themselves and
Speaker 1: like we're kind of not really supposed to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But with that said, the reason why I wrote about
Speaker 1: it in my book, and UM, I'm sure that you
Speaker 1: know has you well, you can tell me. But the
Speaker 1: reason why I decided to write abou out it was
Speaker 1: because I think that there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there who are in the military or thinking about
Speaker 1: joining the military, and I feel like I owe it
Speaker 1: to them to tell them the real deal, and maybe
Speaker 1: by telling it they can avoid that situation themselves at least.
Speaker 1: That that's my hope behind it. Yeah, no, I plely agree.
Speaker 1: And yeah, just from what little, um little communication has
Speaker 1: passed between us before for this interview, UM, I'm keenly
Speaker 1: interested to kind of hear more about UM, about that
Speaker 1: connection um UM. And then yeah, happy to talk talk
Speaker 1: about sort of my experiences UM and UM, and then
Speaker 1: what we're doing with that. You know, it's important, I
Speaker 1: think for the listener to have context, So we kind
Speaker 1: of have to talk about the past. But then to
Speaker 1: your point, we talked about the past, UM, so that
Speaker 1: we can hopefully help make a better future. I think
Speaker 1: we should probably go in chronological order, because the incident
Speaker 1: I was involved in was too winner of two thousand four,
Speaker 1: so yours was oh three, right, so well it was earlier.
Speaker 1: It was that's when I was deployed Afghanistan. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I remember I was UM. I was actually backpacking in
Speaker 1: Costa Rica and I was going through the jungle for
Speaker 1: like two or three days, and Um, I came out
Speaker 1: in a little town called Karate and Drake Bay, and
Speaker 1: I went through this little internet cafe and pulled that
Speaker 1: I was. This was right after I graduated Ranger School
Speaker 1: and and I and I went you wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: you graduated Ranger school and you went back in Costa Rica. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of one of those. I was one
Speaker 1: of those guys, all right. I pulled up um like
Speaker 1: like the A. O. L home page or something like that,
Speaker 1: and right there on there it was Pat Tilman killed
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. It was like a whole ship. So that
Speaker 1: that was when I learned about I graduated class zero
Speaker 1: four zero four Ranger School and so during that time
Speaker 1: frame when I was down in Costa Rica, that was
Speaker 1: when this incident you were involved in happened. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you want to take it from there and just
Speaker 1: tell us, I mean, feel free to start wherever you
Speaker 1: want if you want to talk about, you know, coming
Speaker 1: into the range of regiment or or start from that
Speaker 1: deployment in Afghanistan, whatever feels natural for you. Yeah, totally, thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I um graduated, graduated the mindergrad in May of oh
Speaker 1: three and then Yeah, started UM at Fort Benning there
Speaker 1: a few weeks after I got assigned to second Range
Speaker 1: of Battalion, Fort Louis in November of three, and then
Speaker 1: UM was assigned to that fall. The battalion had just
Speaker 1: gotten back, like literally as I got there, they were
Speaker 1: just getting back from their first deployment to Afghanistan. And
Speaker 1: the first k i A that the battalion experienced in
Speaker 1: in the War Iraq or Afghanistan was sustained on that deployment.
Speaker 1: And then UM, Yeah, I was signed to platoon there
Speaker 1: at second bat UM with UM with Pat and his
Speaker 1: brother Kevin, and UM. Kevin and I were in the
Speaker 1: same squad. We were both UM part of weapons squad.
Speaker 1: So you know, I was a g M two forty.
Speaker 1: That's where I started in um uh in battalion and
Speaker 1: so we trained up as a platoon you know, for
Speaker 1: the next number of months, and then we were deployed
Speaker 1: as part of Spring Search in April of two and four.
Speaker 1: Of course, as you referenced, April two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: was killed UM and we uh, we found out very quickly,
Speaker 1: UM that that was a result of friendly fire, a
Speaker 1: variety of mitigating circumstances, but UM. Ultimately our platoon was
Speaker 1: split and UM. During the course of that split, trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish two objectives at the same time. UM, our
Speaker 1: cereal are half the platoon that I was a part
Speaker 1: of was ambushed and as we engaged and moved through
Speaker 1: UM that that kill zone. UM, we mistakenly fired on
Speaker 1: on a friendly position, which was ultimately Pat's position. PAT
Speaker 1: squad that was responding and maneuvering along the bridge line
Speaker 1: to try and support us in our engagement. And so
Speaker 1: as those pieces start to fall into place, that happened,
Speaker 1: you know, the evening of a m We knew instantly
Speaker 1: that we had sustained four casualties too dead and too wounded. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the one of those who was killed the
Speaker 1: courses path. The other was an Afghan military uh A
Speaker 1: MS soldier r P L got hit and our our
Speaker 1: t O got hit and UM. And so those are
Speaker 1: the casualties we sustained. We knew within twenty four hours
Speaker 1: those casualties were as a result of friendly fire. UM.
Speaker 1: And then as those pieces started to kind of come together,
Speaker 1: you know, go back to the FOB critical incident debrief
Speaker 1: to investigations, UM, UM, it was very evident that UM
Speaker 1: and we still know this day who fired the shots
Speaker 1: that that killed Patum, but we know that there's likely
Speaker 1: um from what we do know, likely one of two
Speaker 1: or both rangers who fired those round and I'm one
Speaker 1: of those two men. So it was myself as the
Speaker 1: two pretty gunner on on the vehicle and then the
Speaker 1: saw gunner on the vehicle as well are considered likely
Speaker 1: to have fired those uh those shots, and so um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's you know, my my association with the
Speaker 1: incident and perhaps you know, one of the worst possible ways.
Speaker 1: And so that happens, you know, A four debriefed at
Speaker 1: the FOB, and then relatively quickly, you know, we were
Speaker 1: back out um doing more raids before we came home.
Speaker 1: And so there was sort of a false sense of closure.
Speaker 1: I mean there's nothing, there's nothing in the ranger handbook
Speaker 1: about what's the protocol as a you know non tab
Speaker 1: e F for friendly fire, Like you have no idea
Speaker 1: what's supposed to happen, and you don't have a context
Speaker 1: for that UM, and so there's sort of a sense
Speaker 1: of well, I guess that was it, Like I guess, um,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we lost Pat and that's terrible and
Speaker 1: and this thing happened, but you're just kind of moving on.
Speaker 1: And then we got home and then that's when, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of things really started to kind of
Speaker 1: fall apart, because that's when we discovered that the narrative
Speaker 1: that was being told that the family was very very
Speaker 1: in the world, frankly, was very different than what we
Speaker 1: knew to be true as a platoon. UM. And then
Speaker 1: that's when myself and and four others were urfs from
Speaker 1: the regiment for um, you know, for our role in
Speaker 1: that incident. And so and I completed, you know, I
Speaker 1: was in the Army until I was seven complete the
Speaker 1: mind listening, um. But certainly, you know what happened in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: that was a significant shifts in you know, in my
Speaker 1: life and in my service for you know, pretty obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible that they so they kicked you out
Speaker 1: of the Ranger Regiment. So the Army is saying that,
Speaker 1: telling the world and telling the tilman's that Pat Pat
Speaker 1: died heroically fighting the enemy. But at the same time
Speaker 1: they're kicking you guys out of the military because it
Speaker 1: was a friendly fire incident and no one sees the
Speaker 1: country diction here. Yeah. Well the worst thing about that,
Speaker 1: like it was it was really hard you know, for
Speaker 1: I mean for previous reasons as as a shooter in
Speaker 1: that incident, Like you you know, your heart and your
Speaker 1: mind vacillates between. You know, this is unfair to you know,
Speaker 1: I deserve worse, you know what I mean. So and
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm I'm the last person that is in
Speaker 1: a position to kind of past judgment on my own
Speaker 1: my own actions. M but that one of the biggest
Speaker 1: injustices was you know, of the guys that were released
Speaker 1: in the regime at the time was our was our
Speaker 1: p L who vehemently um disputed and fought with the
Speaker 1: team of command against splitting a platoon. And so um,
Speaker 1: there's there's uh, you know, reverberations of this, I think
Speaker 1: and what happened in nijare m spliting splitting up the team. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so there was there was a lot of um and
Speaker 1: so that obviously, I mean, it was just it was
Speaker 1: a horrid incident for so many reasons. It was horrible
Speaker 1: for the family, I mean, losing Pat but then effectively
Speaker 1: losing him twice in a way in terms of being
Speaker 1: told one narrative and then being told another and then
Speaker 1: all the distrust that that created, and then just the yeah,
Speaker 1: just the just the brokenness that created within the unit
Speaker 1: um as UM. Yeah, as we know this, UM, but
Speaker 1: you know that you know, Uh, bad stories or dark stories,
Speaker 1: they don't get better with age, and they certainly don't
Speaker 1: get better with deception. Um, you just make it worse
Speaker 1: for everybody. And so that UM, yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a very difficult toil to swallow for lots of reasons, UM,
Speaker 1: and not the least of which was you know, Pat
Speaker 1: was gone and UM, and you were, you know me
Speaker 1: as as part of that incident. You know, you were
Speaker 1: part of UM. You know we're part of that. And UM,
Speaker 1: you know it's not it's not fair to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, I caused his death or I'm responsible for it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was one person that was taking actions
Speaker 1: within the broader, a much broader, dysfunctional contexts at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, you pull the trigger right and
Speaker 1: you have responsibility. And so you know, I spent a
Speaker 1: better part of twelve years trying to sort that out
Speaker 1: in my heart and mind in terms of um, you know,
Speaker 1: owning what I needed to own, you know, as a
Speaker 1: as a soldier, as a ranger, as a man, but
Speaker 1: at the same time not making myself the center of
Speaker 1: the story, if that makes sense, because I think sometimes
Speaker 1: we can own a part of a part of a
Speaker 1: tragedy that really just makes us more important than we are.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just like, yeah, are you really that
Speaker 1: important to be the one who caused all of this?
Speaker 1: Will know, at the same time, you have responsibility I had.
Speaker 1: I you know, it's funny. I mean, it's not funny,
Speaker 1: but it's it's interesting to hear you say this because I, like,
Speaker 1: I went through so many of the same things where
Speaker 1: like I totally blamed myself for everything. And it was
Speaker 1: really funny in the sense that when I like was
Speaker 1: writing my book, I went and I asked teammates of
Speaker 1: my who were there um or supervisors I had at
Speaker 1: the time, like hey, can you like like take a
Speaker 1: look at what I wrote here, like and like just
Speaker 1: for fact checking really and um they came back to
Speaker 1: me and like I think, to a man, each of
Speaker 1: them was like, it wasn't even your fault, Jack, Like
Speaker 1: why why you blis? But I feel like it's my
Speaker 1: fault and I took responsibility for it and the and
Speaker 1: at the time I took responsibility for it, and in
Speaker 1: my book I did as well. But I mean it
Speaker 1: was interesting that you know, a lot of the guys
Speaker 1: I worked with are like, dude, like you're putting a
Speaker 1: little bit too much on yourself here. But anyway, if
Speaker 1: you want, I will walk you through the what happened
Speaker 1: to me? UM that winner of two thousand and four
Speaker 1: so um winner of oh four oh five. And I
Speaker 1: can't remember the exact date unfortunately. UM. Maybe if I
Speaker 1: go dig in through some paperwork, I can try to
Speaker 1: figure that out. But it was that winner. UM. We
Speaker 1: got the word. I was down in UM Salerno FOB
Speaker 1: Salerno in Afghanistan, which is in Cowst Province. UM. I
Speaker 1: was a sniper attached to Charlie Company, third Ranger Battalion UM.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, it was the first deployment with our new
Speaker 1: Wreckie teams UM that we had just stood up and
Speaker 1: the I was working with the reky guys a lot.
Speaker 1: We were kind of because we were all HHC. We
Speaker 1: were kind of put under the same platoon leader and
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant for that deployment UM. And a mission came
Speaker 1: down that we were to go and reconnoiter the compound
Speaker 1: where the guy who planned the pat Tilman ambush as
Speaker 1: they called it died. I'm not sure what the name
Speaker 1: of that. Uh, not where he died, but where where
Speaker 1: he was suspected to be living. Um, the guy who
Speaker 1: actually planned that ambush that you guys got caught in.
Speaker 1: So they wanted us to go recon this compound, get
Speaker 1: eyes on it and um then in order to help
Speaker 1: them plan for the Charlie Company guys to come in
Speaker 1: and raid the compound and capture killed the guy. So
Speaker 1: we took a couple non standard tactical vehicles UH high
Speaker 1: lucks Is, drove down to the Pakistan border to a
Speaker 1: border control point where there were these um c I
Speaker 1: A paramilitary guys Afghans that were trained there and we
Speaker 1: were we were working with them on that operation. It
Speaker 1: was just the wrecky guys, two guys from the mortar
Speaker 1: section and then me as a sniper. We're disguised, we're
Speaker 1: disguised as Afghan UM paramilitaries essentially. UH. We had we
Speaker 1: had the beards, we had the tiger stripe camo, we
Speaker 1: had the picole caps, all that, all that stuff so
Speaker 1: that we blended in with the indige. Uh. The day
Speaker 1: that we went out to recon from the from the BCP,
Speaker 1: we're really right on the right on the Pakistan border. Um.
Speaker 1: You could hear firefights in the mountains. We were told
Speaker 1: that it was just various tribes like tribal feuds, um,
Speaker 1: and they're fighting with each other and mortoring each other.
Speaker 1: It really had nothing to do with us. UM. We
Speaker 1: drove up into the mountains. Um we found a MSS
Speaker 1: or mission support site. Uh we did uh. UM. We
Speaker 1: split up the team as as his planned for a
Speaker 1: wreckie operation. There's the MSS where the guy with the
Speaker 1: radio and some other security elements are and then the
Speaker 1: recon patrol goes forward. I was left at the MSS
Speaker 1: and told that we should try to scout out some
Speaker 1: areas nearby for um el z's for the helicopters to
Speaker 1: come in and land for the actual direct action raid
Speaker 1: that was being planned for this objective. So we went
Speaker 1: out and we scout. We were scouting out some landing
Speaker 1: zones on top of this mountain and UM, we got
Speaker 1: word over the radio the other there's one other ranger
Speaker 1: with me and a couple of Afghans and the other
Speaker 1: ranger had an embitor and he got word that the
Speaker 1: recompatrol it was like six seven guys that were out
Speaker 1: on foot. UM radioed back to the m S S
Speaker 1: and they said that there was ten armed guys, armed
Speaker 1: Taliban or or you know whoever. They were locals move
Speaker 1: moving towards the m S S. And they were reported
Speaker 1: to have a recoil is rifle. They were armed, they
Speaker 1: were moving towards our position. So he said, holy sh it.
Speaker 1: We got back in the truck. We drove right back
Speaker 1: to the m S S. UM. We did not have
Speaker 1: any further commo at that time with the recompatrol. Then
Speaker 1: this is one of the after the fact you find
Speaker 1: out this is one of the big problems we had
Speaker 1: was poor communications. That like, in terms in terms of
Speaker 1: actual radio equipment, we had these embitors that were not
Speaker 1: necessarily UM able to reach one another. UM. But because
Speaker 1: of the terrain, UM I made the decision at that
Speaker 1: point that we were gonna launch a hasty near ambush
Speaker 1: rather than just wait for the enemy to walk into
Speaker 1: the MSS and get into some kind of running firefight.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, well, we'll go down the road
Speaker 1: a little bit. We'll set up a hasty ambush. UM.
Speaker 1: I did that with the one other ranger, and um
Speaker 1: maybe twelve Afghans got them down in position. There's like
Speaker 1: rangers school really um except for the except that they
Speaker 1: liked to fire on auto from the squatting position. That's
Speaker 1: one of the big totally serious UM. So we get
Speaker 1: down in position. UM. I don't know how long I
Speaker 1: was there. It's like one of those things you can't
Speaker 1: really tell time when you're like under streets like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe a couple of minutes. UM I I had taken
Speaker 1: cover behind a tree. I tried to get everyone else
Speaker 1: down behind cover also, UM I made sure no one
Speaker 1: had issued that that I would be the one who
Speaker 1: initiated the ambush. I heard uh after a few minutes,
Speaker 1: somebody coming down the um the side of the mountain,
Speaker 1: but not through the kill zone we had planned, but
Speaker 1: like across the dirt road that we had the ambush
Speaker 1: set up on, there was a um an embankment. It
Speaker 1: went uphill and it was like somebody was coming down
Speaker 1: that you could hear rocks falling under their footsteps and
Speaker 1: they were walking right past our kill zone. So now
Speaker 1: now we had to do like a forty five degree
Speaker 1: turn to engage these guys. Um I got I did that.
Speaker 1: I had an Sr five sniper rifle that I backed
Speaker 1: the magnification down to what three point five because we
Speaker 1: were so close. Um, I saw someone pass through my sights.
Speaker 1: It was like a silhouette. Um. You know, gun in hand,
Speaker 1: chest rig you know the cap, the picole cap. But
Speaker 1: he passed through my site so quickly that I didn't
Speaker 1: get a beat on him. Second guy comes into view,
Speaker 1: same thing, gun in the hand, the Afghan cap um,
Speaker 1: but it's like a silhouette. It's like a shadow. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of at that point now where it's like
Speaker 1: now or never, Like if these guys get through us,
Speaker 1: they're gonna walk right into the MSS where there's another
Speaker 1: American ranger on the r T O and like to Afghans,
Speaker 1: it's like you gotta make it happen now. So I took,
Speaker 1: I took, I took the shot. Um the gun snapped,
Speaker 1: had a suppressor, so you hear like the snap of
Speaker 1: the gun shot. Everything's quiet for a pregnant pause, and
Speaker 1: then all hell breaks. There's fire, there's return fire, there's
Speaker 1: Afghans shooting from the squatting position like the tree I'm
Speaker 1: behind is getting turned into splinters. There's like dirt getting
Speaker 1: kicked up in my face from from the gunfire coming
Speaker 1: back at us Um. And then one of the Afghans
Speaker 1: with his little handheld walkie talkie starts jumping up and down.
Speaker 1: He's like, and I don't really understand what the hell
Speaker 1: he's saying, but I get the point. No no shoot,
Speaker 1: no shoot, no shoot, Like, what the hell is going
Speaker 1: on here? Um? I told the guy next to me,
Speaker 1: and this is this is another interesting thing. So I
Speaker 1: had read and I don't know, you can tell me
Speaker 1: if this is accurate or not. I had read that
Speaker 1: Pat Tilman was killed because he stood up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the firefight and he yelled on Pat Tillman
Speaker 1: stopped shooting, and that was when he got hit. That
Speaker 1: was something I had read. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: true or not, but that that thing that I had
Speaker 1: read that was going through my head at the time.
Speaker 1: Because I told the guy next to me, Um, I
Speaker 1: won't say his name. I have no idea of where
Speaker 1: he is today. I couldn't find him, um call I called.
Speaker 1: I named him Val in the book, the other Ranger,
Speaker 1: and I said, do not stand up do not stand up,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna get shot. Um. But then we we
Speaker 1: have this obvious problem, like who are these people down there? Like,
Speaker 1: didn't didn't did a Special Forces O d A wander
Speaker 1: into our our kill zone? Was this a friendly like
Speaker 1: Afghan police unit? Like? What the hell just happened? So
Speaker 1: I realized I'm in charge. I I have to break
Speaker 1: my own rule. Um, So I told I told Val,
Speaker 1: I was like, don't do not get up, just stay
Speaker 1: where you are. And I stood up and I walked
Speaker 1: down to the road to try to figure out what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on. And I was just sure
Speaker 1: I was going to get shot. But as I get
Speaker 1: down to the road, I come face to face with
Speaker 1: my buddy Paul, who was the assistant Recie team leader
Speaker 1: who's out on the foot patrol. And he looks back
Speaker 1: at me, and I looked at him, and we were
Speaker 1: both like, what the funk just happened? He was like
Speaker 1: he was like Murph. I was like like Paul, like
Speaker 1: what the what, what the funk are you doing here?
Speaker 1: That was when we realized that this was a friendly
Speaker 1: fire incident. Um. So I don't want to like drag
Speaker 1: this out even longer than I already had, but long
Speaker 1: story short UM the recon patrol leader, UM, the senior
Speaker 1: guy on the ground for that operation as a staff sergeant.
Speaker 1: He had been shot across the shoulders and I did not.
Speaker 1: And when I went down there, when I went down
Speaker 1: to the road and went down to where all of
Speaker 1: this had happened, he was down on his hands and
Speaker 1: knees as somebody was putting gauze on his back, and
Speaker 1: I thought he had been shot between the shoulders. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, this guy is about to die. UM.
Speaker 1: It had been more of UM. There was a flesh wound.
Speaker 1: It was in and out. It was like went right
Speaker 1: across his shoulder blades. And when we went back to
Speaker 1: the b c P, we he the hell. We called
Speaker 1: him MEDEVAC. Helicopter came and got him out, took him
Speaker 1: back to Salerno UM for treatment. We went back to
Speaker 1: the beast EP and we all sat down and we
Speaker 1: did our own internal a r As we started talking, UM,
Speaker 1: we realized I realized what some of the things that
Speaker 1: had happened. And I and so that guy who had
Speaker 1: been shot, that ranger that was shot, he was second
Speaker 1: in the order of the movement on that patrol. I
Speaker 1: fired on the guy who was second in the order
Speaker 1: of movement. When I fired, I had it wasn't a
Speaker 1: very good shot because of the position I was in.
Speaker 1: I had to fire through some tree branches and it
Speaker 1: was horrible. But I pulled the trigger and I can.
Speaker 1: When you're a sniper and you've shot enough, you know
Speaker 1: where the round is going. UM. And when I felt
Speaker 1: the trigger break and that shot go off, I felt
Speaker 1: it go like just behind this person was working perpendicutive
Speaker 1: to me. So that night when the our our platoon
Speaker 1: leader flew in on a helicopter to kind of get
Speaker 1: a handle on the situation, take control of the patrol
Speaker 1: and get us back to UM, back to our but
Speaker 1: like he was just trying to be responsible and keep
Speaker 1: us out of trouble. UM. But he came in that
Speaker 1: night on helicopter and uh, and he he came and
Speaker 1: talked to me, and he was totally professional, but he
Speaker 1: asked me. He said, Murph, who shot that guy? Who shot?
Speaker 1: Who shot the patrol leader? And I looked at him,
Speaker 1: I was like, it was me. He's like I I
Speaker 1: was like, I can't prove it to you. There's nothing
Speaker 1: I can ever do to prove that. But I'm telling
Speaker 1: you I know personally that I'm the one who shot him.
Speaker 1: And thank god, UM, no one was killed. That guy
Speaker 1: came back to work, he went home for that deployment.
Speaker 1: He was sent home. UM. I think just because he
Speaker 1: had been hurt and they didn't want his family to
Speaker 1: worry about him, of course. Um. But he recovered, came
Speaker 1: back to work, and and had the rest of his
Speaker 1: special operations career. Um. So thank god everything turned out. Now,
Speaker 1: what became of this gentleman we were targeting who supposedly
Speaker 1: planned the ambush the killed Pat Tilman. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tragic irony of all that as far as um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the friendly fire connection, both in terms of our our
Speaker 1: incident and in the one where you're trying to respond
Speaker 1: to to that, I mean, it's uh, that's incredible. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: what do you say to that? I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's so many things that I you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the Ranger Handbook to prepare you for that. Um,
Speaker 1: And I Uh, I got back home and it was
Speaker 1: like it destroyed me in in a sense that like
Speaker 1: my whole identity was being a ranger, Like I loved it,
Speaker 1: um And but there's nothing there. There's no stories, there's
Speaker 1: no books, there's no movies that like tell you what
Speaker 1: are you supposed to do? Like you kind of know
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do? You supposed to do when
Speaker 1: like your friend gets killed by the enemy. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, no one really tells you what you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do in a situation like this. And I found
Speaker 1: myself that I had made these decisions in combat that
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily proud of. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I feel like I did what I had to do
Speaker 1: with the information I had. And but in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of it, you know, I found myself just ostracized. I
Speaker 1: was just this this um not by not by everyone, um,
Speaker 1: but by a lot of people UM. And that's that's
Speaker 1: just range of Battalion. It's a super competitive environment and
Speaker 1: people are going to judge you, and it is what
Speaker 1: it is. But I remember thinking about looking in the
Speaker 1: mirror one night, thinking like what do you do and
Speaker 1: the like do you kill yourself? What do you do
Speaker 1: in this situation? What are you supposed to do? But
Speaker 1: I can say that I did reflect back on the
Speaker 1: range of Creed at that moment because it doesn't say
Speaker 1: anything in there about quitting UM. Which was which was
Speaker 1: something that kind of carried me through that moment, was
Speaker 1: that I felt that the thing to do was ultimately
Speaker 1: was to just like head down and just like go
Speaker 1: barrel through it. UM. And I was fortunate that my
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant UM allowed me to do that, and that
Speaker 1: I was allowed to say I was allowed to stay
Speaker 1: in ranger battalion and UM and I went on another deployment,
Speaker 1: and I felt that I was able to push past
Speaker 1: that incident and show that I could do the job. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm forever grateful for them, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that one incident would have defined my entire life. UM,
Speaker 1: had you know, had I been like RFS at that
Speaker 1: time and I never got to do what I felt
Speaker 1: I was supposed to do as a ranger. Do you
Speaker 1: think that how much of that? And it's hard to
Speaker 1: you know, know, our decision sometimes as circumstance has been different.
Speaker 1: But did that experience play into your decision to move
Speaker 1: on and do things beyond the regiment you think? I
Speaker 1: don't know. UM. It wasn't so much that UM, I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to stay in the Army at that
Speaker 1: time and pursue you know, special operations. But I think
Speaker 1: it was also just life and ranger regiment where you
Speaker 1: know how it is. Man, It's like, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I I relate in the book this one story where
Speaker 1: I was a tab spec for UH and they told
Speaker 1: me to go and um mow the lawn. Um because
Speaker 1: I was I was at headquarters and that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a problem. It's like, Okay, we gotta cut the grass,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So I go to the wamow, go
Speaker 1: pull out the lawmow or the wamower. Spark plugs are dead. Um,
Speaker 1: So I was going to the UM. I was going
Speaker 1: to go to the hardware store and gets get a
Speaker 1: new spark plug for the wawmower. And I got confronted
Speaker 1: by this E five and he's like, where are you going, Murphy?
Speaker 1: What the funk are you doing? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going on. You know, I told him what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: He's like, whoa, that's way outside your pay grade. What
Speaker 1: are you doing? It's like, man, you trust me with
Speaker 1: a loaded gun in combat, but I can't come buy
Speaker 1: a fucking spark plug to get the lawmower working. Like
Speaker 1: So it gets that, but I mean it's just that's
Speaker 1: just one little vignette, But I mean there are all
Speaker 1: these stories like that where it's just like, man, do
Speaker 1: I really want to stay in this unit over the
Speaker 1: long haul? Like like like just yell at privates because
Speaker 1: they're wearing the wrong type of belt, Like I don't.
Speaker 1: That's not really my thing, right, Well, particularly when it
Speaker 1: was like at that time, it's an interesting time of
Speaker 1: history because I think, I mean, you were there for
Speaker 1: longer than I was, But I can even look back
Speaker 1: and see like bits and pieces of this garrison version
Speaker 1: of the regiment versus like no ship, we're going to war,
Speaker 1: so um, we don't have to prove our ranger nous
Speaker 1: by our like by how shiny the waxed floor is
Speaker 1: or by you know how creased. Um. You know a
Speaker 1: b du pant leg is. That's fine, but no, really
Speaker 1: like we have their bigger and better, not better, but
Speaker 1: there's there's more weighty matters UM that that we need
Speaker 1: to tend to. UM that is actually being an operational
Speaker 1: combat unit um and not um just just a garrison
Speaker 1: unit UM. And I think I was starting to starting
Speaker 1: to see that at that time, and I think even
Speaker 1: you know just I mean I remember the guys and
Speaker 1: they came back from that. Um you know, I was
Speaker 1: fresh green, you know, straight from ripped, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know which end was up, and um, you know, guys
Speaker 1: were processing the fact that hey, it's it's not a
Speaker 1: game anymore. We just lost J. Blessing, he was killed
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and you know, winner of OH three and
Speaker 1: so like that was that was like this pivot point
Speaker 1: where it isn't just this really yeah, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a conversation about you know, spark plugs or floor waxer's
Speaker 1: or whatever stupid crap that you want to talk about. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to go to war. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what that's what we're being asked to do. And
Speaker 1: so um, so it's interesting and now I mean obviously
Speaker 1: so many years on that that hasn't stopped. Um. But
Speaker 1: but it isn't interesting and strange. It's a strange world
Speaker 1: question where the pettiness and the importance of things just
Speaker 1: sort of mesh in a strange way. I got to
Speaker 1: Range of Battalion kind of at the same time as you,
Speaker 1: I guess I got there. And what the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand three and the guys they had just come
Speaker 1: back from the invasion of Iraq, so I think at
Speaker 1: that point they had done one one deployment to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and then that one to Iraq. Um and they had
Speaker 1: lost My company had lost three guys um and Uh
Speaker 1: s V B I E. D Um killed Long Livida
Speaker 1: and Rippitto uh where the three guys were killed specialist,
Speaker 1: a staff sergeant and the captain. And yeah, as you say,
Speaker 1: the guys in the company were really processing that. UM
Speaker 1: and there was a trauma there that no one wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about. And my team leader, Um, I still
Speaker 1: know to this day he was I remember him sitting
Speaker 1: there and he like almost he'd almost start tearing up
Speaker 1: because when Um that bomb went off, he my team
Speaker 1: leader had called and like taking his field jacket and
Speaker 1: smothered the fire out on staff Sergeant Lividay his remains
Speaker 1: the fire and he went and smothered the fire out
Speaker 1: and Um and it it was just something that these
Speaker 1: guys have been traumatized. But it was early on in
Speaker 1: the war and no one really knew what to do
Speaker 1: with it. Um And And the difference between the war
Speaker 1: mentality and the garrison mentality was strong really strong, and
Speaker 1: it was so it was so strong that when I
Speaker 1: got there, we had it was this is hilarious to
Speaker 1: think about, Like we had our go to war kit,
Speaker 1: um our go to war gear, and then we had
Speaker 1: like also when I got there, I had to rig
Speaker 1: up my t A fifty, my l C with all
Speaker 1: the appropriate with all the appropriate tie downs, like with
Speaker 1: the certain types of the square knots and you burn
Speaker 1: the ends to connect so that on there and so.
Speaker 1: But we we didn't use that kit. We didn't use
Speaker 1: that l C anymore. It was like something we just
Speaker 1: did out of a tradition, like we've been doing this
Speaker 1: for so long that you have to have it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like range of arts and crafts.
Speaker 1: I remember that, I remember, and I got I mean,
Speaker 1: I got treated with a little bit more difference because
Speaker 1: I had a degree UM. Patt and Kevin and I
Speaker 1: think were the only three guys other than the p
Speaker 1: L who had had a bachelor's degree in the in
Speaker 1: the platoon, which doesn't mean anything at all other than
Speaker 1: the fact that you've spent four years out of high
Speaker 1: school doing something else that other guys hadn't UM. So,
Speaker 1: so I was maybe less of an idiot at twenty
Speaker 1: two than I would have been an eight team, but
Speaker 1: but just a more well read idiot in a lot
Speaker 1: of respects, because I would find myself asking questions that
Speaker 1: I shouldn't ask a V five anissances, and then as
Speaker 1: I'm pushing, it's just like you know, okay, well, next time,
Speaker 1: just shut up and do it as opposed to do
Speaker 1: not insert logic into this situation. Right, that's that's your
Speaker 1: first mistake, like burn off the ends of the l
Speaker 1: c E. That is going to hang on your bunk
Speaker 1: um as you prepare to go to an actual war. Okay,
Speaker 1: rogers aren't got it? And um yeah there was still
Speaker 1: that's so funny. Yeah, there was still some of that
Speaker 1: stuff going on. Did you have to sew up your
Speaker 1: patrol cap with dental floss? Yeah? That was my favorite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the best, um, which I mean, that was
Speaker 1: a great life hack when I figured that out. Just
Speaker 1: the power of dental floss as a selling mechanism. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just that's just served me so well, um beyond
Speaker 1: the army now, but yeah, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of these just kind of goofy, but it was
Speaker 1: it was a weird in a weird way. It was
Speaker 1: this um, I mean even the equipment was changing so quickly,
Speaker 1: so there was still this like, yeah, there was these
Speaker 1: things of initiation, but also like these are the markers
Speaker 1: of who we are as a unit. And it's still
Speaker 1: having a hard time, you know, even like when I
Speaker 1: got there, it was high and tight or bald head
Speaker 1: every week, and then then that changed while I was there,
Speaker 1: and you could see like the sevens and above, just
Speaker 1: the gears grinding in their brain, just just driving them
Speaker 1: crazy about that. But it wasn't like that's what they
Speaker 1: grew up with, you know. And so how do you, like,
Speaker 1: how do you let things go that are some alick
Speaker 1: and actually hold on to the things in the unit
Speaker 1: that matter like that the haircut, only it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: it discipline matters absolutely, But how that discipline is expressed
Speaker 1: and enforced that can change. And so yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: a that's interesting to kind of seem the early stages
Speaker 1: of that and and then how it's transformed over my guys,
Speaker 1: over fifteen years. That's it's incredible. How much how much
Speaker 1: do you think I'm curious? Like um, because I mean
Speaker 1: I don't have a clearer reader connection within that community
Speaker 1: as probably you do it lining there for as long
Speaker 1: like how do you think, um, like, how do we
Speaker 1: affect or how can cultural change be affected in units
Speaker 1: like that? So that when those things happen friendly fire
Speaker 1: or otherwise, UM, there's freedom for guys to actually get
Speaker 1: help that they need, um and not just stuff the
Speaker 1: trauma that they experience. What what do you think of
Speaker 1: all that? And I I mean that that plays into
Speaker 1: the whole like bigger issue of like PTSD in general.
Speaker 1: And I think, yeah, I don't I'm not a psychologist,
Speaker 1: but I think that there has to be something embedded
Speaker 1: inside these units that are continuously deployed over and over
Speaker 1: again that like that it's like almost mandatory, like you
Speaker 1: have to go and see the shrink or something like that,
Speaker 1: UM and talk about whatever it is that's you know,
Speaker 1: what what your experiences are and what bothers you. And
Speaker 1: I think it'll be really hard to get a lot
Speaker 1: of the guys to open up. Maybe maybe the culture
Speaker 1: of the unit is different now, but I mean back
Speaker 1: in the day, like we wouldn't say shit. I mean
Speaker 1: I know we wouldn't. UM. You know, they get they
Speaker 1: give you those questionnaires when you come back from deployment,
Speaker 1: like do you have trouble sleeping? Nope? Do you have mayors? Nope?
Speaker 1: Uh you know, did did you were you exposed to trauma? Nope?
Speaker 1: You know. Um, but I think, yeah, these units, these
Speaker 1: soft units that are deployed, you know, you have guys
Speaker 1: we're going on twelve fifteen deployments, Like there has to
Speaker 1: be something that's embedded in the unit that it's just
Speaker 1: like part of your deployment and like post deployment process
Speaker 1: that you go and talk to the you go and
Speaker 1: talk to the shrink um and get treated and um.
Speaker 1: And it shouldn't be seen as like a stigma or
Speaker 1: that there's something wrong with you. It's like that this
Speaker 1: is just part of the normal process. Just like you
Speaker 1: go to the shooting range and you shoot your guns
Speaker 1: and you work on marksmanship, Like this is just you
Speaker 1: working on your head so that you can redeploy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's I mean, I agree, and that's part
Speaker 1: of I mean for us, that's you know, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons, Um, that is the reason really that you know,
Speaker 1: I chose to even write Wars story was not to um,
Speaker 1: you know, just try and reflect on something that you know,
Speaker 1: as you say, we normally don't talk about you know
Speaker 1: that happens fifteen years ago, because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you know, there's lots of sad stories that
Speaker 1: we can tell. But if we can put those stories
Speaker 1: in service of something, then um, then maybe that's meaningful.
Speaker 1: And I think even you know, to your point, you know,
Speaker 1: whether intersects with mental health or not. I think the
Speaker 1: very notion of UM demystifying um a you know, sort
Speaker 1: of black hawk down version of war. And it's even
Speaker 1: so funny, like even whether it's a film or anything
Speaker 1: else in the media about war, oftentimes you see what
Speaker 1: you want to see, you know, Um, you see UM
Speaker 1: the heroism, you see the camaraderie, and you see um,
Speaker 1: you know, all these things, and you don't see the
Speaker 1: other side of that. UM that that that isn't always
Speaker 1: the case. I mean I tell people that too. It's
Speaker 1: just like, you know, just like you know, don't assume
Speaker 1: that just because somebody has been in the army and
Speaker 1: deployed a million times that they're suffering from postmatic stress. UM,
Speaker 1: don't assume that just like everyone doesn't get a gunshot
Speaker 1: one UM, So don't assume that. At the same time,
Speaker 1: don't assume that just because somebody was like me who
Speaker 1: had a white collar job and was high functioning. Don't
Speaker 1: assume that just because I'm not homeless, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that I'm doing okay, because for a lot of years
Speaker 1: I wasn't um and Um. I was hiding behind uh
Speaker 1: you know success. I was hiding. You know, I'm medicating
Speaker 1: with alcohol and managing on my own, um, not having language,
Speaker 1: and and feeling you know, just my own guilt for
Speaker 1: even if I was wounded. Internally, I felt like, because
Speaker 1: I was a shooter in the incident, I don't deserve
Speaker 1: to be well. You know, it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: other people didn't come home. I did, and so you
Speaker 1: need to be thankful for what you have and stop
Speaker 1: you know, your arranger, dammit, you know, stop whining and
Speaker 1: whining about it. And it's just like, well, those two
Speaker 1: things have nothing to do with one another. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you're hurt, you're hurt, um and um,
Speaker 1: just because other people aren't here, you're not doing the
Speaker 1: people in your life that matter a service by continuing
Speaker 1: to be wounded. Um that that's not heroic. You're not
Speaker 1: taking one for just kind of like wallowing in your
Speaker 1: pain at a certain point. Yeah, and you're becoming defined
Speaker 1: by it anything. I was being funny to think about,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and sometimes those those events, even though
Speaker 1: we would say gush, I could change them in a heartbeat,
Speaker 1: they then become in a weird perverse way, part of
Speaker 1: your own internal identity. And then it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want to let that go, Like who
Speaker 1: am I if I'm not this broken person from this incident.
Speaker 1: While it's just like, well, you can be a well
Speaker 1: person or you can be like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like whatever that journey looks like there, there can be
Speaker 1: a journey and it doesn't just have to be um
Speaker 1: uh that being stuck in that and um, I mean
Speaker 1: that's yeah. I mean that's a lot of my experience anyway,
Speaker 1: and what took me way longer to learn that it
Speaker 1: probably needed to but um, but yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: interesting because you don't hear about that. In fact, it
Speaker 1: was funny. I had the platoon sergeant who took over
Speaker 1: a second platoon after that deployment. Um, he was coming
Speaker 1: back to Eco second Italian he'd grown up there, and
Speaker 1: that was One of the first things that he shared
Speaker 1: with me after you know, I just got told of
Speaker 1: was getting URFS by the company commander. He was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: he was just like, he didn't he did it in
Speaker 1: such a way that was um so e seven ish
Speaker 1: of him, do not um not in some way um
Speaker 1: cast a pallor on the decision the company commander. But
Speaker 1: at the same time he was just like, um, this
Speaker 1: purple heart on my rack, he said, that's from family
Speaker 1: fire I got. I got shot at one of my guys,
Speaker 1: you know, X number of years ago. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: much all he said. And then and then he said,
Speaker 1: you know, if you need anything for me, ever, he said,
Speaker 1: here's my number, you call me. And that was pretty
Speaker 1: much the end of it. But it was like and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of those little moments um where
Speaker 1: people weren't asked because it is like your to your point,
Speaker 1: like ranger regiment. It's like, I mean, once you're once
Speaker 1: you're the guy getting RFS, it kind of doesn't even matter.
Speaker 1: Why just the fact that you are getting RFS just
Speaker 1: proof that you did something wrong. And yeah, and if
Speaker 1: nothing else, like whatever it is, even if it's just
Speaker 1: bad luck, like whatever, it is that you have, like
Speaker 1: it might be contagious, and so don't want to get
Speaker 1: too close. Um, because I was that way, you know,
Speaker 1: I remember I remembering that way. You know, guys who
Speaker 1: were you know, on the way out of the unit
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. It's just like yeah, okay, um, it's
Speaker 1: guilty tail proven innocent. And so yeah, the culture is
Speaker 1: certainly a challenge. But yeah, I mean that's just really
Speaker 1: interesting how those how how our experiences in that way
Speaker 1: I think have have kind of intersected. Yeah. Man, it's surreal. Um,
Speaker 1: and it gets even stranger. Um. So my platoon sergeant
Speaker 1: at the time was Jared van alist Um, and I
Speaker 1: read about him in the book also, and me and
Speaker 1: him had kind of a contentious relationship in some ways
Speaker 1: because well there are a variety of reasons. But he
Speaker 1: was my platoon sergeant and sniper section. And then after
Speaker 1: that deployment he fired me from sniper section and he
Speaker 1: it's and so I get sent back to Alpha Company. Um,
Speaker 1: so I'm in Alpha Company, no ship. I shaved my
Speaker 1: beard off. I was there for a day. One day
Speaker 1: and my new squad leader comes up to me, says, murph,
Speaker 1: our platoon sergeant, he's getting the can. There's a new
Speaker 1: one coming. His name's van Alice. I'm like, are you
Speaker 1: for real? Man? So van Alice van Alice was my
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant twice. UM. But when he came, when he
Speaker 1: came and took charge, when he became the platoon sergeant
Speaker 1: of of the Glory Boys whose first platoon aco, UM,
Speaker 1: he handled it and he handled me differently. And in
Speaker 1: hindsight I can see that he was looking over me
Speaker 1: like he didn't rfs me right, he just sent me
Speaker 1: to another company. Um. And when he was my platoon sergeant,
Speaker 1: like he was kind of like looking after me. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like he wasn't like out to get me the
Speaker 1: way I thought at the time. At the time, I'm
Speaker 1: actually very angry with him. Um. But in hindsight I
Speaker 1: can see that really he was kind of looking after me,
Speaker 1: That's really what he was doing. So after that deployment,
Speaker 1: I went to s f A S That next to apointment,
Speaker 1: we went to Iraq. I came back, went to s
Speaker 1: f A s UM, I went to UM before I
Speaker 1: went to the Q course. You know, he had a
Speaker 1: little like pow wow for me and gave me a
Speaker 1: plaque and stuff it was really cool, and you know,
Speaker 1: we shook hands and it was it was cool. But
Speaker 1: I went to Fort Bragg started the Q course. UM
Speaker 1: lost touch with van Alice um as I was getting
Speaker 1: out of the army. Years later, in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: I heard the sergeant van Alice had been killed. Well,
Speaker 1: I found out what happened was he he had gone
Speaker 1: as as was his goal. I think for a long time.
Speaker 1: He went to Delta Force selection, became an operator, his
Speaker 1: first I believe it was his first apployment with the
Speaker 1: unit to Afghanistan. He was killed in a friendly fire incident. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I I point this out because
Speaker 1: a these these incidents are way more common than people think.
Speaker 1: And second, as hard a pill as it is to swallow,
Speaker 1: these things happen in our most professional, most highly trained units.
Speaker 1: So for us to walk around and think that it
Speaker 1: can't happen to you, you think you're too cool for school,
Speaker 1: that this can't happen, that's like the first hurdle that
Speaker 1: we all need to be disabused of this fantasy. It happens,
Speaker 1: It happens, it can happen, and if you're not really
Speaker 1: damn careful, it will happen um. And and that's why
Speaker 1: that was my motivation really for coming forward and talking
Speaker 1: about this. Because I joined the army because I read
Speaker 1: a lot of memoirs written by guys who are like
Speaker 1: orps and rangers in Vietnam, and so I figured that
Speaker 1: there's probably some eighteen year old kids who are going
Speaker 1: to read my book or read your book, and I
Speaker 1: want them to know the whole story. I want them
Speaker 1: to know the truth so that hopefully they can avoid
Speaker 1: some of this. Yeah, because I think it's so good,
Speaker 1: because I think the other thing is too like you know,
Speaker 1: friendly fire, No, which I think friendly fire is about.
Speaker 1: I think it's about the apex of you know, guilt
Speaker 1: and ing that you can carry around um and and
Speaker 1: still be alive in terms of bad things happening on
Speaker 1: a deployment um that aren't in the normal range as
Speaker 1: you put it, as far as well my friends die
Speaker 1: or I die or something, um that's more like quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal, Like we have a container for that, But
Speaker 1: then the friendly firepiece we don't. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that sits within this broader issue of just just our
Speaker 1: expectations in general and our idealism that we bring often
Speaker 1: to military service, and particularly to serving in a special
Speaker 1: operations unit. I mean usually those expectations are are pretty
Speaker 1: high in terms of um, like my or someone's desire
Speaker 1: to contribute, someone's desire to serve, someone's desire to um,
Speaker 1: you know, to serve in a positive fashion, and and
Speaker 1: then have something to be proud of because that title,
Speaker 1: whether it's seal or ranger, operate or whatever, that can
Speaker 1: become such a part of your identity. And that's that's
Speaker 1: dangerous in a way because then, well what does that
Speaker 1: identity represent. Does it represent your ideal whatever that means
Speaker 1: of military service, or does it represent shame? And you
Speaker 1: know how many guys do you know that even if
Speaker 1: they weren't part of it or shoot an a front
Speaker 1: of fire incident, um, they feel like they didn't do enough. Um.
Speaker 1: They feel like, you know, I didn't go on enough
Speaker 1: deployments or you know, things didn't go as I thought,
Speaker 1: And I think it is so um yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: really dangerous too. It's dangerous to go down that road
Speaker 1: of expectation. Then when you're young, it's it's really easy
Speaker 1: to go there because you don't know, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're couching your experience in such a
Speaker 1: way where if it doesn't look like X, then it's
Speaker 1: a failure. And Um, I think that's just we do
Speaker 1: ourselves a disservice with that, um and um, and I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's a great I think it's
Speaker 1: a great message, Jack, And I think that's it's good,
Speaker 1: not not in a way to like diminished service or
Speaker 1: to diminish you know, the you know, the good things
Speaker 1: of those units that just yeah, like you don't you
Speaker 1: don't have control in some respects like I didn't, you do,
Speaker 1: and you don't like be humble because you don't know
Speaker 1: what situation you're gonna be put in. Learned from the
Speaker 1: mistakes of others, Learned from my mistakes, learned from your
Speaker 1: you know, like we make mistakes, learn from those I
Speaker 1: don't think they can't happen to you, and then understand
Speaker 1: that there's just a lot of things outside of your control.
Speaker 1: I didn't decide to slip to the tune. I didn't
Speaker 1: just decide to, you know, initiate movement at desk. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the world you have responsibility for your decisions
Speaker 1: as a human, and at the same time, the world
Speaker 1: doesn't at all around you and and that can be sometimes.
Speaker 1: As for me, and for a long time that was
Speaker 1: really hard tension to hold because I either felt like
Speaker 1: I was, you know, a victim, which was not true,
Speaker 1: or I felt like I caused the whole thing, which
Speaker 1: was also not true. And so it's just the truth
Speaker 1: is usually a lot more complicated than that. And when
Speaker 1: we're hurting and we're dealing with trauma and we're dealing
Speaker 1: with regret our, our emotions can are real, but they
Speaker 1: can get the best of us sometimes. And so um, anyway,
Speaker 1: now I think that's I'm right there with you. I
Speaker 1: think not to glorify it, but just say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is this happens, um, and it's not ash and we
Speaker 1: want it, we want it to never happen. UM. But
Speaker 1: it does. And regardless of all of the cool guys
Speaker 1: ship you were into war, UM, fratricide continues to be
Speaker 1: friendly fire continues to be a part of just the
Speaker 1: chaos that is war and that will probably never change.
Speaker 1: So after all those years, like you said, you're carrying around,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying this like shame you felt inside, like
Speaker 1: what made you sit down and decide to write about it?
Speaker 1: After all those years. Yeah. I mean at first had
Speaker 1: happened five years ago, when the ten year anniversary of
Speaker 1: the incident, um ESPN came knocking. And then they were
Speaker 1: they were wanting to do a piece from the shooter's perspective,
Speaker 1: because no one had really done that, and initially I
Speaker 1: said no. And then because I was the only one
Speaker 1: that would would really talk, or that they had a
Speaker 1: beat on in talking and and um, we sat down
Speaker 1: with the producer and just said, look, if we're just
Speaker 1: going to have a conversation about this thing that happened
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, um, um, for the sake of, you know,
Speaker 1: stimulating people's tear ducks, I'm not interested. Um. I had
Speaker 1: better things to do, and I've spent the last ten
Speaker 1: years trying to distance myself from that, and frankly worried. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I can remember, just give you for instance.
Speaker 1: I can remember. You know, I'm a wealth manager at
Speaker 1: Smith Barney and one of my partners we bumped into
Speaker 1: each other in the lunch room and he looked a
Speaker 1: little bleary eyed, and I was like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: how's it going sed And he was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: he's like hardly, he's like getting enough sleep. Last night,
Speaker 1: I'm reading that new crack Our book and just like
Speaker 1: my my heart just stopped. Uh it's you know, crack
Speaker 1: Ours book where men when Glory, and Uh. I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, really, what what part are you at?
Speaker 1: And he's at a part where mine I'm not prominent
Speaker 1: in the book, but I'm my name is mentioned in
Speaker 1: the book, and he'd read he'd read my name a
Speaker 1: number of times, but never put it together that I
Speaker 1: was one of the guys, because that's not what you
Speaker 1: that's what you're, not what you expect. And so the
Speaker 1: following day I basically just like, you know, if you,
Speaker 1: if you figures like I just need to tell him.
Speaker 1: But it was that sort of like I was trying
Speaker 1: really hard for ten years too. I wasn't like sometimes
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even tell people I was in the army
Speaker 1: because you don't know what like lines of questionings you're
Speaker 1: gonna get. Um, Like most people they don't have a clue.
Speaker 1: Army cool. Some people, Oh army, what would you do?
Speaker 1: I was infantry? Oh, infantry, what did you do? Well?
Speaker 1: I was? And then all of a sudden their cousin
Speaker 1: was a platoon sergeant in Beko and you're just like,
Speaker 1: well ship, you know, like you don't want to go
Speaker 1: down that line of questioning, and then have people put together,
Speaker 1: oh wait a second, you weren't at the regiment for
Speaker 1: even a full year, and you never got your tab
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera, And so then it's just it's just
Speaker 1: easier to not even engage the conversation. And so that's
Speaker 1: what I've done for ten years. And so with ESPN
Speaker 1: we basically said, look, if you're willing to have a conversation, um,
Speaker 1: not for the sake of just what happened fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: but to pivot and use this to highlight the fact
Speaker 1: that my story, what I experien arian is only unique
Speaker 1: insofar as it intersected with somebody who played in the NFL.
Speaker 1: That's it, um. Other than that, the experience of war,
Speaker 1: the experience of the unseen warns of war, and the
Speaker 1: experience are friendly fires we've just talked about is not unique.
Speaker 1: And so if the story is worth talking about, it's
Speaker 1: worth talking about not because it's unique, but precisely because
Speaker 1: it's ordinary. And so if if the association with pat
Speaker 1: gives us some hookum to get me on ESPN or whatever,
Speaker 1: so that we can highlight this broader issue of veteran
Speaker 1: suicide and the mental health epidemic and cultural and policy
Speaker 1: changes that we think need to happen. Sign me up.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we did five years ago. UM.
Speaker 1: Certainly a lot of the conversation was just about the
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, one of the shooters just talking
Speaker 1: and so it's hard to get beyond that. And then
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, you know, we had folks who were, um,
Speaker 1: you know, interested in helping uh me write the story down,
Speaker 1: and that was you know, the four or five year
Speaker 1: journey um to kind of get that right. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it rolled down to, was in the in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of ESPN piece and some other media, we did, UM,
Speaker 1: what what you're saying at any given point in time
Speaker 1: and what other people are hearing maybe two different things.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you don't always have control. A lot of
Speaker 1: times you don't have control about what people are getting
Speaker 1: out of what you're what you're saying. But what people
Speaker 1: seem to be getting out of it was I'm not alone,
Speaker 1: civilians and military alike. UM. They were basically communicating that
Speaker 1: thank you for talking about this, thank you for talking
Speaker 1: like kind of a sigh, Like I've dealt with depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety. My dad was a Korean War that my
Speaker 1: dad was in viet not like like, all these stories
Speaker 1: started coming out, and so the upshot of it was
Speaker 1: maybe this is doing some good. So if it's doing
Speaker 1: some good, then let's continue to tell that story in
Speaker 1: a more broader medium as a memoir UM. And then
Speaker 1: really specifically putting that story in service of U two things.
Speaker 1: I mean, any proceeds of the book, UM, we're being
Speaker 1: away to other organizations UM that are doing good work
Speaker 1: UM needing mental health needs of the veteran community. But
Speaker 1: then advocating using that as a platform to advocate for
Speaker 1: specific policy change at the active duty level, not just
Speaker 1: within the v A because obviously to the extent that
Speaker 1: there's unseen wounds UM, as frustrating as a v A
Speaker 1: can be, those wounds aren't incurred waiting in line at
Speaker 1: a VA hospital. They're incurred in Afghanistan, Interact, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: so UM, you know, we want to advocate and fight
Speaker 1: for UM from making significant policy changes, you know, one
Speaker 1: of which you just kind of outline previously as far
Speaker 1: as just to be stigmatization. UM. You know, nobody asks
Speaker 1: your permission to get an anthrax vaccine. At least our
Speaker 1: Medics didn't. It's no few wandered by the eight station.
Speaker 1: You know, you're a pin cushion for whatever whatever is mandated,
Speaker 1: and to some degree that has to be the case, um,
Speaker 1: with respect to our mental emotional health. Because it's real
Speaker 1: and so so that's why that's the why of writing
Speaker 1: it down is um, it's it's because the story is ordinary,
Speaker 1: and because it's affecting a lot of people, both in
Speaker 1: uniform and out of uniform, and so that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's why we're doing it. No, that's awesome that you're
Speaker 1: trying to use it to, you know, affect some positive change.
Speaker 1: I uh sorry, it was as you you know said,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it was like the shameful thing that you know,
Speaker 1: I carried around in it, and it felt good to
Speaker 1: write it down. Um. And I had told myself for
Speaker 1: a long time that I don't want to make the
Speaker 1: story about me, like I didn't and that's why I
Speaker 1: I never wrote a book. That's why I wasn't telling
Speaker 1: my stories. Um. You know, I kind of tried to
Speaker 1: like make myself out like, oh, I'm just so humble.
Speaker 1: I won't talk about It's like, no, really, really, I
Speaker 1: won't talk about it because I'm just Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: that I would ever lie to somebody about it, but
Speaker 1: I would. I don't want to talk about it if
Speaker 1: I don't have to. UM. And I even had this
Speaker 1: experience when I was after I got out of the
Speaker 1: military and I was in college. I was in Columbia
Speaker 1: and there was another guy up there. He was a
Speaker 1: through seven five ranger and he when he went around
Speaker 1: like trying to poison the well, uh telling people you
Speaker 1: know who Jack, you know who Jack Murphy is. You
Speaker 1: know what he did? Guys, guy, I think he's a
Speaker 1: legitimate psychopath. But he went around doing that, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, god, damn, like talk about
Speaker 1: a kick balls like low blow. I was like, if
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want to have you have
Speaker 1: a problem with me, like come to me, but don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just that's pretty Yeah, it's and it's still something
Speaker 1: to this day that people used to attack me. UM
Speaker 1: because I mean, and I guess I invite it to
Speaker 1: a certain extent um because I work as a journalist
Speaker 1: and I write things about, you know, special operations that
Speaker 1: some people they don't want to hear it. So that's
Speaker 1: the that's the backlash to it. And I think maybe
Speaker 1: now that now you got me thinking about it, maybe
Speaker 1: I have Maybe I've done too much to celebrate my
Speaker 1: pariahs status over the years. Yeah, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a fine line. I mean it's again, people sometimes they
Speaker 1: can just in having the broaching the conversation can be
Speaker 1: viewed as a threat in any way, and um, and
Speaker 1: everyone's coming at it from a different angle. I mean,
Speaker 1: oftentimes I think there is a danger where um, I
Speaker 1: mean I've seen this to myself, I've seen another's where Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes the pendulum swings a little bit too far once
Speaker 1: we step into the space of I am talking about
Speaker 1: something and I am talking about pain that I have,
Speaker 1: brokenness that I've experienced. There's a fine line between being
Speaker 1: open about that properly and celebrating it. And we don't.
Speaker 1: We're not that's the point isn't to celebrate it. And
Speaker 1: sometimes even if you're trying really hard not to celebrate it,
Speaker 1: that's how people can take it is that you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to just kind of hang out there and
Speaker 1: it's just like, no, it's not the point but it
Speaker 1: did happen and and it's UM, and it's and it's
Speaker 1: not even to necessarily defend yourself, not to try and
Speaker 1: be your own apologist. It's just to say that UM,
Speaker 1: because because there has to be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: UM for any of us. I think we're we become
Speaker 1: less effective in our work UM when we're not humble. UM.
Speaker 1: And the moment that you think something couldn't happen to you,
Speaker 1: at the moment that you become more susceptible to that
Speaker 1: thing occurring because you think you're above it all. You know,
Speaker 1: they look at your decision, and they look at my decision,
Speaker 1: and maybe I did deserve at urfs. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not arguing that one way or the other.
Speaker 1: People could come down on that however they want, UM,
Speaker 1: But at the very least, look at what happened on
Speaker 1: a four, Look at what happened, you know, in that
Speaker 1: day in Afghanistan for you with just at least a
Speaker 1: grain of humility, and understand that maybe just maybe um,
Speaker 1: there was there was enough misinformation, enough chaos, Maybe just
Speaker 1: maybe you're not above making that decision and be vigilant
Speaker 1: to that ends. Not not you know, I don't say
Speaker 1: that to say you're no better than me. I hope
Speaker 1: you're better than me. I really hope you are. You know,
Speaker 1: I hope you learned from that, because, um my god,
Speaker 1: I don't want I wouldn't want anyone to experience what
Speaker 1: I've gone through. Um, you know what you've gone through.
Speaker 1: War is war is bad enough, and and what we
Speaker 1: already risk enough and lose enough without doing damage to ourselves.
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, that's that's a that's a tough
Speaker 1: line to walk. But but I think there is a
Speaker 1: certain amount of image that people want to protect, rightly. So,
Speaker 1: but I think just like just like in in my
Speaker 1: instance in particular, the regiment never did more damage to
Speaker 1: itself than in lying about a pretty embarrassing day. They
Speaker 1: made the day worse. And so I mean that's a
Speaker 1: lesson to all of us at any point in time,
Speaker 1: is just you gotta tell the truth and you just
Speaker 1: got to get it out there. You know. You know
Speaker 1: what you just reminded me of too, Stephen, that same
Speaker 1: deployment are our CEO. The regimental commander came out and
Speaker 1: saw us at one point, and he gave us a
Speaker 1: speech about all the media drama surrounding the pat Yeah
Speaker 1: and oh ship, yeah, I'm remembering this now. And he
Speaker 1: was like defending, you know, the chain of command and
Speaker 1: how like how like the regiment and so calm and everyone,
Speaker 1: we're making the right decisions. And yeah, yeah, I forgot
Speaker 1: all about that. Wow, that's great. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's it sounds that sounds about right, sadly, um and
Speaker 1: um yeah, and it's it's it's not a I mean,
Speaker 1: like any any organization changes over time with respect to
Speaker 1: its leaders. So I mean, you know, regiment, like any
Speaker 1: organization ebbs and flows with his leading it. And that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really unfortunate because um, but that's what we have.
Speaker 1: That But even in that, I mean I've had to
Speaker 1: come full circle with that too, because you know, I've
Speaker 1: spent my fair share years, you know, looking at the
Speaker 1: chain of command and just cursing him up and down. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's not to say that they didn't do the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. They did. They objectively did the wrong thing
Speaker 1: in terms of telling lies. Um. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I've had to come to a place where, um, I
Speaker 1: can't I can judge their behavior and I can judge
Speaker 1: somebody else's behavior as that behavior is wrong, and yet
Speaker 1: I am not their judge. That makes sense because because
Speaker 1: ironically so, it's just like wait a second, Stephen, so
Speaker 1: you pull the trigger in this incident, are really the
Speaker 1: best one to start judging other people's behavior within it?
Speaker 1: And the answer is no, because they can do the
Speaker 1: same thing to me. And if I think I'm so
Speaker 1: much better than them because they lied, um, I become
Speaker 1: more susceptible myself. I become more fragile myself UM to
Speaker 1: the same moral quandaries because I'm operating out of a
Speaker 1: place of pride and not a place of humility. If
Speaker 1: I don't realize that I'm a human and I get
Speaker 1: scared and I haven't an instinct to preserve myself too,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be more likely to do that. But
Speaker 1: now the time that I'm faced with a tough decision
Speaker 1: that might be easier to lie or obvious skate, um,
Speaker 1: I have to do. I have to try and maintain
Speaker 1: a humble posture, um to remember that hey, like, we're
Speaker 1: all people, and it doesn't mean that I agree with
Speaker 1: what they did, and I think they made the situation
Speaker 1: way worse. Um. But but I'm a I'm a human too,
Speaker 1: and I've I've made my mistakes and hopefully I can
Speaker 1: learn from their mistakes at a very visceral way to remember.
Speaker 1: As bad as it might feel to tell the truth
Speaker 1: about something right now, it's not going to get easier
Speaker 1: and it's not going to get better. Um, And I've
Speaker 1: lived that. I've been on the other side of that
Speaker 1: in terms of just the blowbacks from all of that,
Speaker 1: and that's, Um, that's really interesting that that that the
Speaker 1: r c O was was banging that drum and that's unfortunate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean you also have to acknowledge that the
Speaker 1: Regiment and the Special Operations Command, their response to all
Speaker 1: of this was to RFS, the most low ranking people involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean it is. And that's the that's
Speaker 1: the piece of it where Um again like it's i've
Speaker 1: i've never and I will not, you know, put myself
Speaker 1: out there. It's kind of my own apologists as far
Speaker 1: as what shared what shouldn't have happened for me, because
Speaker 1: some extent like like my like my career and so
Speaker 1: calm on balance with what happened that day is just irrelevant.
Speaker 1: It just is, you know what I mean, Um, and
Speaker 1: at the same time UM, and it was really challenging
Speaker 1: within the platoon. Like the platoon. You know, you had
Speaker 1: guys who were who were in path squad who could
Speaker 1: have just easily been killed that weren't UM, and they
Speaker 1: were Some of them were like, this is sucked up
Speaker 1: and you know, if I was in your shoes, I
Speaker 1: probably would have done the same thing. And other guys
Speaker 1: were really pissed and they're just like, yeah, get rid
Speaker 1: of them, right, And so you have that going on
Speaker 1: in the unit, which was not good. UM, but everyone
Speaker 1: was united around the fact that UM, the yell UM
Speaker 1: got the shaft. Everyone was in that respect. That was
Speaker 1: kind of the one and I think that was probably
Speaker 1: the single most UM. That was the single biggest beyond
Speaker 1: Pat getting killed. UM. As a result of this whole
Speaker 1: ridiculous scenario of our platoon blinks split. It was the
Speaker 1: individual who was in charge of us in the field
Speaker 1: who did not want to split us. UM was the
Speaker 1: guy who got his walking papers. And that was probably
Speaker 1: we were all unified UM and UM and felt that
Speaker 1: sense of the trail against the regiment for that because
Speaker 1: listened to the guy on the ground, right, it's just like,
Speaker 1: what about the guy in the father was telling him
Speaker 1: that he had to do that or else he's gonna
Speaker 1: get fired. Then what what about him? You know? And
Speaker 1: so so that was that was the hardest I think,
Speaker 1: even beyond losing path. That was the hardest pill to
Speaker 1: swallow for everybody. And that's that. I made that allusion
Speaker 1: that to some of the stuff that's come out about
Speaker 1: what went down in Niger where the team leader was
Speaker 1: on the radio saying like, no, we're not prepared for
Speaker 1: this operation. We need to return to base and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you're going to go and do this operation. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's the same, it's the same. It's bring it
Speaker 1: full circle to some degree, like some grains of that
Speaker 1: that thinking are like they have their seats in the
Speaker 1: same thinking that is like like, I mean in the
Speaker 1: same little things like I can remember, like you're trying
Speaker 1: to like, okay, you want me to mow the grass, Um,
Speaker 1: I need a spark plug, and then you're getting berated
Speaker 1: for trying to get a spark plug. It's like you're
Speaker 1: a ranger. You need to figure out how to mow
Speaker 1: this grass with a lawnmower. That doesn't work. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's essentially the almost the command. It's like, this impossible
Speaker 1: situation and if you're smart enough and if you're man
Speaker 1: enough and if your ranger enough, still figure it out.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember that as a private you know,
Speaker 1: having a buff the floors every night and four companies
Speaker 1: three four four buffers that were four years old and
Speaker 1: um didn't work out the time and they like you
Speaker 1: prison then that information just like presenting, hey, sir, we
Speaker 1: have a broken down vehicle and you have an objective,
Speaker 1: please pick one because trying to do both at the
Speaker 1: same time is really not tenable. That's not that's not
Speaker 1: going to work. And it was just like, well, if
Speaker 1: you're a good enough leader, you can make it work.
Speaker 1: It's it's that same attitude that I don't think it's
Speaker 1: that's you're not you neque to regiment. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say that everyone in regiment at all time has
Speaker 1: thought that way, but I hear echoes of that where
Speaker 1: it's this like, why are we making this a test?
Speaker 1: This is just not a good decision, So let's just
Speaker 1: not make the decision, um, and then not blame the
Speaker 1: guy on the ground for being put in an impossible
Speaker 1: decision or situation and so that's yeah. I mean that
Speaker 1: sounds like yeah, just kind of the beat goes on
Speaker 1: in some respects Um. As far as all of that,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a common theme. And I guess the one
Speaker 1: last thing I'll hit up on my end, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can definitely fill sit on anything else that we've
Speaker 1: we failed to cover was the subsequent investigation. I found
Speaker 1: was interesting because we got back to the base, we
Speaker 1: did a bigger a r um. It's announced that there
Speaker 1: is gonna be a guy coming down from bag room,
Speaker 1: that we're gonna do sworn statements or something like this,
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be a like some sort of fifteen
Speaker 1: six investigation, which I don't blame the military for doing
Speaker 1: at all. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to figure out
Speaker 1: what happened and why. Um. But what was interesting to
Speaker 1: me about it was that they interviewed everybody except me.
Speaker 1: I was the very last person they interviewed. UM. They
Speaker 1: called me in. Finally I went down and sat down
Speaker 1: with this guy. He was I can't remember if he
Speaker 1: was a captain or a major. And he tells me
Speaker 1: that the fifteen six is informal, which means that there's
Speaker 1: no sworn statements. You don't sign anything. It's an inform
Speaker 1: it's an informal investigation. And then in the next thing
Speaker 1: he says, he then briefs me. Essentially, he tells me
Speaker 1: his findings, like this is what happened. This happened before
Speaker 1: before I've said a word, this happened, and then this happened,
Speaker 1: and then this happened, and we think that, you know,
Speaker 1: there were some communication issues here with communications equipment, and
Speaker 1: also that some tactical decisions were made that probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been. And so he like told me the results
Speaker 1: of the investigation before I said anything. It was like
Speaker 1: super weird, and I knew what was going on, even
Speaker 1: as I was twenty one years old. I knew what
Speaker 1: was going on. But again, it's like, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those things where you're like, you're like Jessica Lynch
Speaker 1: and the Army's pinning a silver star on you, and
Speaker 1: you're like, yes, sir, may I have another? You know
Speaker 1: you don't have you don't necessarily have the wherewithal to say,
Speaker 1: you know, that's bullshit right right right exactly, especially after
Speaker 1: you I mean, there's a whole this whole weight of
Speaker 1: command structure machine and I mean, you're the muscle memory
Speaker 1: is not to fight that machine, right especially. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're E four No nothing, you know, you do
Speaker 1: what you're told. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: was I mean, you know, for us, it was you know,
Speaker 1: we did the critical incident debrief when we got back,
Speaker 1: and then it was actually a this I mean, this
Speaker 1: goes back to just so many decisions that it was
Speaker 1: just like, why did you guys do that? Um? It
Speaker 1: was actually the HHC company commander who did the first investigation,
Speaker 1: the second bat HC company commander, which means that effectively,
Speaker 1: at the very least, he's partially investigating one of his peers,
Speaker 1: the ACO company commander, who was in the FOB, and
Speaker 1: then also potentially implicating if they find something that's not
Speaker 1: positive his boss, who is the BC, so like obviously
Speaker 1: keep it in house, keep it within second bat UM.
Speaker 1: And then they did another fifteen six that I think
Speaker 1: was done by somebody from Regiment UM. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: and then once the this was coming out that summer
Speaker 1: for uh, then it was another investigation that so Calm
Speaker 1: did UM and then the family understandably wasn't happy with
Speaker 1: that UM. And then finally it was c I d
Speaker 1: UM that did the final investigation actually went back the
Speaker 1: guys actually went back to the ambush to kill zone
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan tried to recreate the scenario. UM. And then ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, their investigation was that the most of the
Speaker 1: CID investigation and uh, that steath centered around essentially the
Speaker 1: errors in the chain of command in terms of how
Speaker 1: um they didn't follow protocol in terms of even reporting
Speaker 1: and investigating the incident. I mean, I think the shooters,
Speaker 1: myself and the other guys, I think we had all
Speaker 1: of one paragraph and the report, which was effectively, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they thought they were under threat. They followed the
Speaker 1: r O e M. They mistake, I mean, aid I
Speaker 1: decide the target and you know they're they're not culpable.
Speaker 1: That was the extent of it. But it took that
Speaker 1: wasn't until the seven I mean, it was basically three
Speaker 1: years of that kind of grinding on, precisely because at
Speaker 1: the point of UM, at the point of the incident,
Speaker 1: it wasn't investigated properly and because the chain of command
Speaker 1: didn't tell the truth and so UM. But but it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely there's definitely a strong drive in any culture
Speaker 1: like that too. Nobody wants that to happen, you know, nobody.
Speaker 1: I don't want that to be the regiment's story. You
Speaker 1: don't want that. Um, it's just that, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the the personification of the hard right over
Speaker 1: the easy wrong is is just is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: And that's really difficult. And I don't say that as
Speaker 1: somebody whom who sits the top some self righteous mountain
Speaker 1: and those truth telling, but it's just man, when you
Speaker 1: don't do it, it just makes it worse. And then
Speaker 1: even for you, I would imagine, like then that's almost
Speaker 1: like in a weird way, even if they're trying to
Speaker 1: I would imagine correct me if I'm wrong. You didn't
Speaker 1: probably feel really cared for in that moment. Uh, you
Speaker 1: felt like, well, whatever I'm experiencing, I don't really get
Speaker 1: to share a talk about because this isn't about taking
Speaker 1: care of jack Um. This is about taking care of
Speaker 1: the unit. And that's not a really that's not a
Speaker 1: great place. Um. I wouldn't think that's not a great
Speaker 1: place to be out. I mean I got this sense
Speaker 1: like the incident I was in was never reported in
Speaker 1: the press at all. It was all kept behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: and I just kept my mouth shut because I wanted
Speaker 1: to keep being a ranger and go and do ranger trains,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, So it was, um yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think the regiment wanted another Black Eyes, is what it
Speaker 1: comes down to. And the aftermath of the Pat Tillman incident,
Speaker 1: because from the way I know enough about how the
Speaker 1: military thinks and the way the brass would look at it,
Speaker 1: they would look down at the regiment be like, okay,
Speaker 1: you guys have there's a pattern here now, like what's
Speaker 1: going on in this unit? Um? Yeah, it was very
Speaker 1: very strange, um some some of the ways that that
Speaker 1: was handled. And I just kinda and and it's on
Speaker 1: me too. I I went with the flow because I
Speaker 1: just I also wanted it to just go away and
Speaker 1: just move on and uh and go on and do
Speaker 1: the ranger thing. Of course, yeah, of course. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: not something you want to dwell on and and it's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's not how the story is supposed to go.
Speaker 1: Um And yet in some cases that's how the story goes.
Speaker 1: And there has to be uh for whatever story we're
Speaker 1: a part of, and however our stories wind up, there
Speaker 1: has to be uh space to kind of deal with that,
Speaker 1: you know, good, beat or indifferent, because it's usually a
Speaker 1: mix of all of those things. Is there any like
Speaker 1: this is another like rumor I had heard over the years.
Speaker 1: Is there any truth to these stories about how like
Speaker 1: Pat Tilman's diary was burned and stuff like that in
Speaker 1: the in the aftermath of the incident. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good question, it's a fair question. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't really know the all of that was handled
Speaker 1: at you know, platoon and above level. UM. I know
Speaker 1: that there was some stuff, um, some of his just
Speaker 1: just the fact just the way that he died. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, his uniform and kit was essentially a biohazard,
Speaker 1: right UM and um and so UM. I don't know
Speaker 1: who took possession of that. I don't know, UM you
Speaker 1: know what they did with that, UM. And I certainly
Speaker 1: don't know if the decision to dispose of it was
Speaker 1: based on anything more than just we're disposing of you know, UM,
Speaker 1: we're disposing of something that needs to be disposed of
Speaker 1: in some way. UM. So i'd be I would be
Speaker 1: speculating um as to that. UM. I do know that,
Speaker 1: at least for us at the platoon level, there was
Speaker 1: no question. Within twenty four hours, there was no question
Speaker 1: that it was from the fire like. That wasn't a question. Um.
Speaker 1: When we got back to the FOB and you know
Speaker 1: what we were told. What I was tolding my squad
Speaker 1: leader was, hey, there's going to be a fifteen six.
Speaker 1: Captain Scott is doing it. Um tell the truth, like,
Speaker 1: no one's going to expect you to remember every detail,
Speaker 1: but just you know, tell tell it as best as
Speaker 1: you can. And so, um, that's what we were told.
Speaker 1: That in terms of what happened to you know, those
Speaker 1: effects and what the um like, what the underlying motivation
Speaker 1: for how those things were disposed of? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I wish I did the uniform That doesn't surprise me
Speaker 1: at all. I mean I I threw bloody uniforms in
Speaker 1: the in the trash and the dumpster in a rack,
Speaker 1: so from arkandis after they were hurt. So I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is like an s op. So that that
Speaker 1: part doesn't surprise me, right, And then it's just so
Speaker 1: so it's just one of those things that then when
Speaker 1: it's when that is when any of those things the
Speaker 1: presence of an act or the absence of an act
Speaker 1: or a piece of quote unquote evidence is then looked
Speaker 1: back through the lens of lies. Then you have then
Speaker 1: kind of like ye that the horses left the barn
Speaker 1: in terms of conjecture and what people can UM, you
Speaker 1: know what what happens, um, And and certainly there was
Speaker 1: lots of motivations um to UM to not want the
Speaker 1: army's poster child to be killed, be be killed by
Speaker 1: friendly fire, see be killed by friendly fire at the
Speaker 1: end of UM kind of a bizarre command decision. UM.
Speaker 1: And all of that happening in two thousand four, Iraq
Speaker 1: is still grinding on jeffic glinch has happens of the
Speaker 1: grave all of these things. UM, that's not ideal pr
Speaker 1: so so yeah, of course I don't know um as
Speaker 1: far as some of those details. UM, but uh, but
Speaker 1: it it didn't didn't help the fact that those those items,
Speaker 1: if they were destroyed. UM. It certainly didn't help UM
Speaker 1: the the narrative in terms of trying to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of what happened. And for some of our
Speaker 1: younger listeners, because this war has gone on for so long,
Speaker 1: they might not realize. But I just want to all
Speaker 1: up on what you said like Pat Tillman was a
Speaker 1: really big deal for the army. Um when when when
Speaker 1: that happened, when he joined up and he was like
Speaker 1: a cycle or two ahead of me going through basic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: going through Basic Airborne and ripped. He was just a
Speaker 1: couple of cycles ahead of me. So like all the
Speaker 1: instructors like, oh, yeah, we had that Pat Tilman in
Speaker 1: our course and this and that, and I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't say this to like um to
Speaker 1: like short Sell um Pat Tilman. I just want to
Speaker 1: point out, like it was a really big deal that
Speaker 1: this guy was, like in the media, he was a hero.
Speaker 1: This guy gave up a big NFL contract to join
Speaker 1: the military during wartime and volunteer to become a ranger.
Speaker 1: Like that was a really big deal at the time.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. Yeah, And it was um
Speaker 1: so that and that was largely I mean he never um,
Speaker 1: I mean, he never gave once he joined. He never
Speaker 1: gave one interview to the press, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of that was um, it was not. He didn't invite that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like he was not And
Speaker 1: and the way he carried himself in the way that
Speaker 1: Kevin carred himself as well. They were. They were good
Speaker 1: guys who worked with They didn't expect special treatment. As
Speaker 1: far as I could tell, they didn't receive it. Um.
Speaker 1: They did their job as well. UM. They were um
Speaker 1: kind and respectful of everyone, whether it was the brand
Speaker 1: new eighteen year old private or whomever. UM. So they
Speaker 1: just kept their head down, they did their job, and
Speaker 1: and they were they were great. They were great to
Speaker 1: work with in that regard. But but yeah, it was
Speaker 1: so that was weird because I didn't have like I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't have cable in college. Um, I was I
Speaker 1: wasn't really dialed into a lot of the broader kind
Speaker 1: of sports media. So I kind of heard, like I
Speaker 1: knew about this guy, but I didn't for me mostly
Speaker 1: like he was, oh, yeah, he's Pat, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's he's got a really he's big. But other than that,
Speaker 1: Pat you know, and UM, and Kevin's Kevin, and they're
Speaker 1: and they're good guys and and they're just the guys
Speaker 1: that you worked with, UM. And so so then even
Speaker 1: that was it was weird because like, you don't expect, um,
Speaker 1: you automatically don't expect yourself to be even related to
Speaker 1: something that the media at large cares about So then
Speaker 1: it's hard for you to wrap your mind around the
Speaker 1: fact that the media cares about it, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: because you're part of it in some way and that
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem real. You know, when we have a
Speaker 1: from employment. You know, one of the guys in our
Speaker 1: platoon who was he was in ranger school at the
Speaker 1: time and he was in between cycles or something. You know,
Speaker 1: we came back and he had bought copies of the
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated issue that had Pad on the cover. Um,
Speaker 1: and that was the first time it hit me. I
Speaker 1: remember he had a stack of those, and you know
Speaker 1: he was you know, as a not as a celebration obviously,
Speaker 1: it was just more like, hey, I got these as
Speaker 1: like mementos for everybody because the ship that happened. But
Speaker 1: that was the first time that hit me or it's
Speaker 1: just like ship, you know, like like it was. It
Speaker 1: went from being like this cognitive thing that oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in the NFL to like people are across
Speaker 1: the country or dialed into this and that's not good
Speaker 1: and um, and then it obviously it it continued to
Speaker 1: kind of unfold from there. Oh man, yeah, friendly fires,
Speaker 1: the gift that keeps on giving. It's yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: there is I think, UM. I mean, I think to
Speaker 1: your point, I think the whole point of this is
Speaker 1: um is, yeah, there's um. Their life can and does
Speaker 1: go on and it doesn't mean that in life going
Speaker 1: on and I felt that too. Or it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: if I am enjoying my life, I'm somehow just honoring Pat.
Speaker 1: And it's like that is so stupid. It's not. It's
Speaker 1: not like, yeah, so it's like you're telling me, if
Speaker 1: Pat was standing here right now, he would want you
Speaker 1: to suffer, and he would want you to drink yourself
Speaker 1: to sleep every night, and he would want you to
Speaker 1: get divorced, and he would want you to do those things.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that's honoring anybody's memory. Um.
Speaker 1: But in in when that guilt and shame is kind
Speaker 1: of driving narrative at at and b how you feel.
Speaker 1: So I think that's man, it's for me anyway. That's
Speaker 1: a message to a lot of people, civilian or otherwise.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that you know, you being continuing to
Speaker 1: be broken and embracing that brokenness. UM, embrace it, honestly,
Speaker 1: the dark parts of the story. But do that because
Speaker 1: you can there's healing that can come from that, and
Speaker 1: there's there's life that can come from that. And maybe
Speaker 1: you'll still have the scars. You'll always have the scars,
Speaker 1: but those scars can can can start to close over time.
Speaker 1: And so that's certainly what I've experienced that where you know,
Speaker 1: if I could change what happened on Aple twenty second,
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, I change at the heartbeat, um,
Speaker 1: and um, I regret would occurred at the same time. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, life goes on and good things can happen
Speaker 1: on the other side of that. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: you have to forgive yourself at some point. And I
Speaker 1: think the same thing about my platoon sergeant, Sergeant van Alice.
Speaker 1: And you know, like when when I hear people talking
Speaker 1: about how a Memorial Day we're all supposed to be
Speaker 1: sad and everything, I was like, you know, if Sergeant
Speaker 1: Van alle saw me at an Applebee's crying into a
Speaker 1: beer on Memorial Day, he'd let me in the face.
Speaker 1: You know, what are you doing? Guy? Like like like,
Speaker 1: that's right. He was. He was a family man. Do
Speaker 1: you think he wouldn't give anything for another day with
Speaker 1: his family and and and I'm going to go and
Speaker 1: feel sorry for myself in a bar instead of going
Speaker 1: and like seeing my parents and having a barbecue. Like
Speaker 1: come on, man, that's right, that's right now, that's and
Speaker 1: that's so good because I think there is a like
Speaker 1: we missed the fact that in lament, yeah we lament,
Speaker 1: not so that we stay there the lament, and then
Speaker 1: in lamenting we realize, Wow, the sun is up, like
Speaker 1: it's eighty five degrees. And perhaps one of the best
Speaker 1: ways after lamenting to honor those that are gone, that
Speaker 1: aren't with us is to actually live with life that
Speaker 1: they can't live. Um. And I think that's that's really
Speaker 1: can be really freeing the once once you start kind
Speaker 1: of living into that. Man, that's awesome. UM, Steven, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for telling this story. UM. You know I
Speaker 1: know better than uh the vast majority of people out
Speaker 1: there that it isn't an easy story to tell. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I I admire you for telling it
Speaker 1: because of that, UM, and because I think other people
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from it. Um. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else that we failed to cover, um that you want
Speaker 1: to get into? Yeah, I think or just real quick
Speaker 1: and thirty seconds, if folks, if you guys are listeners
Speaker 1: are interested in learning specifically what we're advocating for and
Speaker 1: what we're doing on the policy side. Um, you can
Speaker 1: go to Elliott Fund dot org to else two t
Speaker 1: s UM. There's a petition there that outlines seventeen specific
Speaker 1: policy initiatives that um that we're calling on a sect
Speaker 1: deaf and in Congress to consider an implement And so
Speaker 1: I encourage you to, whether you read the book or not,
Speaker 1: certainly check out War Stories on Amazon or wherever you
Speaker 1: buy nonfiction. But frankly, UM, whether you read the book
Speaker 1: or not, much rather if you have a choice between
Speaker 1: reading it or going to Elliott's son, not that it's
Speaker 1: a choice, but um, please got Elliott Fund out or
Speaker 1: check out the petition and find that if uh if
Speaker 1: if you see said, because that's the point, that's the
Speaker 1: point of all this is, is to tell a story
Speaker 1: so that we can hopefully move the needle and uh
Speaker 1: and and improve our military. Stephen, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on and spending some time with us today.
Speaker 1: And UM, you know, if you're ever passing through New York,
Speaker 1: please drop me a line, UM and we go out
Speaker 1: and uh and have a coffee or a beer as
Speaker 1: you prefer. I won't. I won't cry into my beer though,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you that now. That's right, fair, fair enough. Thanks.
Speaker 1: That was Steven Elliott. The book is War Story. The
Speaker 1: website is Elliott Fund. I want to us old on Okay,
Speaker 1: you have it right here. It is Elliott Fund dot org.
Speaker 1: I was gonna get story, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: guess wrong. Um, really really great stuff between the two
Speaker 1: of you. This was for me. This was the first
Speaker 1: podcast I was a part of where you were more
Speaker 1: than just asking questions to to hear the story. You
Speaker 1: obviously have quite the connection and hearing both sides of
Speaker 1: it was certainly awesome is not the right word, because
Speaker 1: it's it's terrible stories on both ends. But enlightening is
Speaker 1: not the very word. I don't know the right word,
Speaker 1: but it was. It's interesting, to say the least, certainly interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a that that whole conversation is, like we we
Speaker 1: were both saying, is one of those this is the
Speaker 1: story you don't hear, like you're just not gonna hear
Speaker 1: because people don't want to talk about it. And um
Speaker 1: that I was able to talk to Stephen about this,
Speaker 1: who is directly involved in something so so intimate and
Speaker 1: as we said, it's it's something that you know, it's
Speaker 1: so shameful for us. Um, most people will never talk
Speaker 1: about it, and that I was really glad that the
Speaker 1: both of us could talk about it together and some
Speaker 1: of our connections and similarities in our experiences. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: it took some balls on his part to come forward
Speaker 1: and tell this story. UM. I know I know better
Speaker 1: than most people, because you know I came in forward
Speaker 1: and told my part of this story too. UM. But
Speaker 1: I just hope people listen to it and learned something
Speaker 1: from it. And I feel like they most certainly will. Um,
Speaker 1: First and foremost for me, the fact that it had
Speaker 1: like you know, it obviously happened to Stephen, it happened
Speaker 1: to you. And then what's a van Van Alice? I
Speaker 1: don't know, Alice, my platoon sergeant he died from from that.
Speaker 1: Those are three instances of friendly fire right there. Like
Speaker 1: I didn't realize obviously I knew the Pat Tilman stuff
Speaker 1: just from I mean, if you grew up in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousands like I did, you knew that just
Speaker 1: because of who Pat Tilman was. So that was a
Speaker 1: huge story. UM, I didn't realize it occurs. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say this frequently because obviously you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want it to happen as well. But this wasn't
Speaker 1: a one off like this this does take place, which
Speaker 1: is it's not a one off at all, um. And
Speaker 1: there are many other incidents out there. These are just
Speaker 1: some of the ones that we have personal connections to
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. UM. I know about special operations community,
Speaker 1: um that we're never publicized, which has to be like
Speaker 1: pretty much the lowest feeling you can have, like within
Speaker 1: within the military. And I couldn't even equate to something
Speaker 1: like I don't know, maybe maybe killing like a little
Speaker 1: kid on accident right right, but outside like friendly fire's
Speaker 1: gotta because you're you know, especially how they split the squad,
Speaker 1: like you know, just listening to the story, it's like that.
Speaker 1: In my head, I'm like, well, that's wrong, that's wrong,
Speaker 1: Like I wouldn't have done that. But I mean, easier
Speaker 1: for me to say that same thing in my kids.
Speaker 1: Our element was split, um, which is it was doctrinal
Speaker 1: though in our case, like the MSS stays behind, the
Speaker 1: wrecky element goes forward on foot. That's that's a straight
Speaker 1: out of the manual UM. But in retrospect, there are
Speaker 1: some control measures we should have put in place that
Speaker 1: could have helped prevents. And just like I, you know,
Speaker 1: I dropped down notes during it um the chain of command,
Speaker 1: like I obviously you have to respect that, but just
Speaker 1: it just feels like everyone's trying to cover their own ass.
Speaker 1: And then it's like Loman, you know, well sorry buddy,
Speaker 1: like you're you're the bottom gun the tunnel pole, like
Speaker 1: hit the bricks, buddy, Yeah, I mean it goes all
Speaker 1: the way up to General McCrystal um. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: for them to like blame a bunch of like privates
Speaker 1: and specialists like yeah, it's it's all on you guys,
Speaker 1: and especially in Steven's case, like uh hey guys, no kidding.
Speaker 1: Like if I if I had the opportunity not to
Speaker 1: kill Pat Tilman, no no ship, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not aiming for him. It wasn't like I went
Speaker 1: rogue here, like you know, ship went down, something got crossed.
Speaker 1: It It's like we were talking in this podcast. I
Speaker 1: mean I was telling you earlier that the Pentagon the
Speaker 1: Poise troops, because that's what the Pentagon does, you know,
Speaker 1: the range of regiment. You know, Stephen was talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, we prepare our hit a certain way. You
Speaker 1: sew up your patrol capitental, which is because that's the
Speaker 1: way we've always done it. The regiment, the range of regiment,
Speaker 1: like that's the only that's the tool they have is
Speaker 1: to rfs to release for standards. So I honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think they really knew what else to do. And
Speaker 1: that's what Elliott's I'm sorry with Stephen. What Steven Elliot's
Speaker 1: platoon sergeant was alluding to when he got RFS was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: like it's a raw deal, you know, sorry, like we
Speaker 1: know you're getting the chef, but you're still getting the chef. Um.
Speaker 1: But the regiment probably they they're like, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: we had this friendly fire incident. What do we do
Speaker 1: with these guys? And they probably didn't just didn't know
Speaker 1: what else to do with it. Now is that like
Speaker 1: this might sound like a dump question, but like does
Speaker 1: an action need to take place? Like you know, you
Speaker 1: go in there and and they break it down, like
Speaker 1: you know, they asked Steven, they're like, hey, what went what?
Speaker 1: Like what went down? And he says, you know, X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z, this is what happened. Here's a result.
Speaker 1: Can it be like something as simple as like, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody fucked up, We're just kind of going to ignore
Speaker 1: this one. But no, you can't. You can't say That's
Speaker 1: another thing about the institution of the armies. You can't
Speaker 1: say that. You can't say shit happens, because like any
Speaker 1: any time there's a problem from like a general's perspective
Speaker 1: or a colonel, it's like, okay, what's the fix. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there needs to be an answer, and you can't come
Speaker 1: back and say we don't have a fix like that.
Speaker 1: The staff guys will always find some kind of spin,
Speaker 1: some kind of like you want to come back with
Speaker 1: an answer. You don't want to go to the general
Speaker 1: of the colonel and say act of God should happens,
Speaker 1: you know, out of our control. You know, they have
Speaker 1: to come back with some kind of answer. And uh,
Speaker 1: I mean that was probably more of a you question
Speaker 1: because with with Stephen, just the name pet Tillman, like
Speaker 1: like you said, he was the I don't want to
Speaker 1: say poster child, but pretty much the poster child he was.
Speaker 1: He was he was the regiment's poster child. And at
Speaker 1: the time, yeah, for me, like I was, so what
Speaker 1: was this? Two was in three four is I was
Speaker 1: in high school. I was, you know, sophomore, junior year
Speaker 1: high school. Um, he you know, when it first came out,
Speaker 1: it was, oh, you know he was killed by the
Speaker 1: Taliban or whoever. And it was like, you know, that's
Speaker 1: fucked up. But he, you know, he he went there
Speaker 1: trying to serve and unfortunately we got the row in.
Speaker 1: And then however, many months or years later it comes
Speaker 1: out it was like, oh, it was actually a friendly fire.
Speaker 1: And for Stephen to like, obviously I had no idea
Speaker 1: about that, and for Stephen to come out and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we knew within a day, like it was because of us,
Speaker 1: It's like, well when then what the funk? Like because
Speaker 1: they were trying whose idea was it to be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's let's try and cover this up.
Speaker 1: We'll tell them that it was the other team and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll hope for the best. That's that's a good question.
Speaker 1: And that happened at very high levels, right like you
Speaker 1: know that nobody nobody there was thinking like, guys, at
Speaker 1: some point this is going to come out. It was us,
Speaker 1: let's let's get ahead, not even get ahead of it.
Speaker 1: Let's let's tell the truth. I mean, Steven said, tell
Speaker 1: the truth. Who made the who made the decision. We're
Speaker 1: gonna lie to the family. In the interview, he said
Speaker 1: he was like, it sucks because they have to deal
Speaker 1: with it twice. You know, it's it's bad enough you
Speaker 1: lost him, but okay, somebody got the better of him.
Speaker 1: You can not that you can live with that, but
Speaker 1: you can grasp that. Then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: comes out, Nah, you know something went wrong on our
Speaker 1: end and it was friendly fire. Now you like, whether
Speaker 1: you've come to grips with pat dying initially is one thing,
Speaker 1: and now you gotta you're just reopening old wounds, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's almost worse. It's worse because now that
Speaker 1: now your government's lying to you, it's horrible. It'd rather
Speaker 1: rather just like take the news. You know, your your
Speaker 1: your family member died in combat and this is how
Speaker 1: it went down. Um, that's that's a tough pill to swallow.
Speaker 1: But like you can deal with that. But then when
Speaker 1: you find out people are lying to you, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: now now you're in a totally different realm. This this
Speaker 1: just popped in my head and I know you're a
Speaker 1: comic book guy. Um a little of a like Harvey
Speaker 1: Dent White Knights situation where like like he's our he's
Speaker 1: what like he's the good and all of us. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of the Christian band What was the Dark Knight?
Speaker 1: Is it rises? No? No No Dark Knight? Where at the
Speaker 1: end when you know Harvey Dent dies and it's like
Speaker 1: Pat Tillman dies, Oh and they got to keep the
Speaker 1: myth alot And they're like, well, like he's like he's
Speaker 1: our hero, Like this is the guy we want. We
Speaker 1: can't our our guys can't kill him. We maybe maybe
Speaker 1: that's their logic. I don't know, Like I'm not no.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a roundabout way of explaining it, but
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you're right, there's a there's like he
Speaker 1: was the Army kind of wanted him to be the
Speaker 1: poster boy. The range of regiment did too, and then
Speaker 1: after his death they realized very quickly I was friendly fire,
Speaker 1: but like, no, we want to keep the myth alive
Speaker 1: and people's heads. You know, he went out in a
Speaker 1: blaze of glory and contract. We didn't die from one
Speaker 1: of us, right, right, And we've talked about this many
Speaker 1: times actually on the podcast, like when we had ed
Speaker 1: to rock on and talking about UM the Extortion seventeen
Speaker 1: crash where a bunch of Seals were killed on the
Speaker 1: helicopter was shot down. All these conspiracy theories come up
Speaker 1: around it because people cannot wrap their minds around that
Speaker 1: a bunch of Seal Team six operators, like our best soldiers, right,
Speaker 1: our best troops just die in the blink of an eye,
Speaker 1: like just snuffed out. You know, a guy gets a
Speaker 1: lucky shot off with an RPG, shoots down a helicopter.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you lose and and our our badass commandos all
Speaker 1: die and one fell swoop like that. Um. People just
Speaker 1: don't like they can't wrap their mind around it because,
Speaker 1: I mean, war doesn't work the way it does in
Speaker 1: the movies or in the comic books. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: not every every death is a heroic UM sacrifice. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it is her sacrifice for sure, that they
Speaker 1: served our country, but it isn't you know, people want
Speaker 1: to blow it up into you know, going out in
Speaker 1: a blaze of glory and active combat with the enemy,
Speaker 1: and you know, sadly, you know, sometimes our most professional
Speaker 1: soldiers run over an I e. D In Street and
Speaker 1: kills them and they're just dead and and there there
Speaker 1: there's nothing I mean, sadly, there's nothing heroic about it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just the realism of the war. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're sacrifice is real, and there is a
Speaker 1: heroism in that that they they stepped up to that line.
Speaker 1: But the manner in which you know, you check out,
Speaker 1: you know, you might just step around the corner of
Speaker 1: a building and get shot by a sniper and yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna make a movie out of that. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not the it's not the heroic narrative. Um. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what me and Stephen we're talking about today, Like,
Speaker 1: this is not the heroic narrative, and that's why you
Speaker 1: don't really hear about it. So, I mean you talk
Speaker 1: about it often, how you know, writing your book Murphy
Speaker 1: Law check it out, Um. I love I love plugging. Um.
Speaker 1: How you talk about You're like, I want to give
Speaker 1: people that are either interested or becoming I want to
Speaker 1: tell them the truth like that, it's not all you know,
Speaker 1: black Hawk down and you know, saving Private Ryan like that.
Speaker 1: There's a there's an ugliness to war and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously both of you have have a connection. And it's
Speaker 1: not to tell people that they shouldn't join the military.
Speaker 1: What it is is that I just want them to
Speaker 1: have a realistic perspective and if they have those ideas
Speaker 1: in their mind, that they know these things happen. Um
Speaker 1: that war is an ugly thing that when they actually
Speaker 1: experience it, it won't come as such a big shock.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they'll be able to process that a
Speaker 1: little bit better. I mean, ideally they'll make a little
Speaker 1: bit better decisions than I made in some circumstances. Maybe
Speaker 1: they'll be able to avoid some of those things entirely.
Speaker 1: But um, worst case, you know, at least it's not
Speaker 1: like such a shock, Like, oh, I've read other other people,
Speaker 1: other soldiers have written about these incidents, So I know
Speaker 1: this stuff is out there, which is which is awesome
Speaker 1: because if you're just reading like the I'm not that
Speaker 1: we do. But like the positive where is just like
Speaker 1: you know, the army is great, that rah rah rah,
Speaker 1: like the flag waving and all that, and you get
Speaker 1: in there and you see ship like that's got to
Speaker 1: be a cold like you're just not ready for that
Speaker 1: at all. No man That's what I was talking about
Speaker 1: last time, Like support the troops, Like that's two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. Spreading awareness, that's like two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: Like now we're we're like eighteen years into the war here,
Speaker 1: Like we are past those points, Okay, Like I support
Speaker 1: the troops. I don't need to keep telling people I
Speaker 1: support the troops every day. Okay, Like okay, got it.
Speaker 1: Like now we need to talk about what's really going
Speaker 1: on and how things can be done better, maybe UM
Speaker 1: to get people to think critically about it. Like in
Speaker 1: uh Steven's case, he has that that not for profit.
Speaker 1: They're trying to UM bring about policy changes, which is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: spreading awareness is bullshit. People know. People know. Okay, now
Speaker 1: it's time to the like actually do some stuff. UM
Speaker 1: whatever that is, whatever venue you take, you know. My
Speaker 1: mine has been to write about it and to bring
Speaker 1: new information to the public UM, which gets a lot
Speaker 1: of backlash, but hey man, it is what it is, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my eyes, that means you're doing something right.
Speaker 1: We'll see. But the same same thing with this podcast,
Speaker 1: I mean, were the goal is to bring some of
Speaker 1: these voices like Stephen to the forefront UM and since
Speaker 1: we're wrapping up, I'll tease out. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: name names yet, but i'll tease out next next next
Speaker 1: week is gonna be awesome. Big week. Next week we
Speaker 1: have a retired Jaysock operator coming on. I was asked
Speaker 1: not to use the D word. I won't use it. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's Dennis the This guy is a retired operator. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's ever done an interview before. You
Speaker 1: had said that. When, um, when you were telling me
Speaker 1: so that it's gonna be interesting, and I I've I
Speaker 1: went and asked a good end of mine who served
Speaker 1: uh in the same unit, do you know such and stuff?
Speaker 1: She's like, I've known him for like almost thirty years.
Speaker 1: He's a great person, great American. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to hear that, because we talked. I
Speaker 1: talked on this guest we're having on. I talked to
Speaker 1: him on the phone like what two nights ago, had
Speaker 1: like an hour and a half phone conversation with him.
Speaker 1: Super cool guy, super cool guy. He's gonna have really
Speaker 1: really down to earth and he's gonna be able to
Speaker 1: illuminate a lot of things about his military career and
Speaker 1: also transitioning out of the military and he has his
Speaker 1: own experience. Is really cool. Um. And then our second
Speaker 1: interview next week is a retired CIA officer and he
Speaker 1: was fairly senior at the agency and back in the
Speaker 1: day his job, Um, we'll let him talk about it.
Speaker 1: But one of his jobs was making essentially like disinformation films.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so like trick bad guys. Interesting, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: made essentially propaganda films that is something to to to
Speaker 1: mind trip uh and fool the enemy involved in early
Speaker 1: counter terrorism efforts back in back in the day. So
Speaker 1: and he has he ever done I have to suspect
Speaker 1: he's done interviews before, but he's not. He's not like
Speaker 1: a super well known guy. Um, it's gonna be interesting.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really interesting to get into it with him.
Speaker 1: That it'll it'll certainly be a fun next two episodes.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was this wasn't a fun episode because
Speaker 1: the topic. But uh, but Stephen was incredible. Um, thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on. As I said, the book is
Speaker 1: War Story, The profit is Elliott fun dot org. Go
Speaker 1: on there, Um, what was that petition? I think he
Speaker 1: said sign up for the petition, but also by the book,
Speaker 1: which you can buy on that website. But while you're there,
Speaker 1: also by Murphy's Murphy's Law, I mean I said it once,
Speaker 1: I say again, by Murphy's Law. You know, don't let
Speaker 1: the terrorists win. Buy this book as we try and
Speaker 1: as we try and get against just flag waving. But seriously,
Speaker 1: if you don't buy Murphy's Law, you basically hate America.
Speaker 1: It's like, what's wrong with you? But no, the book
Speaker 1: is out there, and and go check out Steven's book
Speaker 1: to like I'm I'm gonna go and um me and
Speaker 1: Steven are gonna swap books and uh, which I need
Speaker 1: to write a book because that's such an easy like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to read your book. Here, take one of mine.
Speaker 1: There you go. Maybe I could pass off Dr Seuss
Speaker 1: my own. I'm not very I'm not I'm not very
Speaker 1: I'm not very skilled in that in writing. I barely
Speaker 1: can talk. So I'm gonna have to find a different avenue.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll just write your coat tails. Hey, you might
Speaker 1: send it to My daughter really loves these war stories,
Speaker 1: like it's just given them me. I would appreciate that
Speaker 1: some food for thought. Jack. But before we go, I
Speaker 1: have to tell you guys something. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out Create Club. It's a club four men by men
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Speaker 1: subscription for all creates sign up today. Also as a
Speaker 1: reminder to you the listener, now is the time to
Speaker 1: sign up for spec Ops Channel. It's our channel that
Speaker 1: offers the most exclusive shows, documentaries and interviews covering the
Speaker 1: most exciting military content today. The spec Ops channel premier show,
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Speaker 1: guys like Jack Murphy, the Man to my left. They're Stavros,
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Speaker 1: That concludes episode four hundred and sixty seven. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Stephen, thank you to you as well for telling
Speaker 1: your story. Um, great conversation. Is always looking forward to
Speaker 1: next week, like you said, it's gonna be. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: got some heavy hitters lined up here. I feel good.
Speaker 1: I feel like, uh maybe at the beginner's luck since
Speaker 1: since I'm new, but we've we've done very well. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the two guys the the Army counter terrorism
Speaker 1: operator as as much as Mr guest one, Mr guest
Speaker 1: one and uh and Mr former CIA officer, they were
Speaker 1: both listeners suggestions. Also they were actually uh, they're actually
Speaker 1: the agency guy. It was a close friend of mine
Speaker 1: came to me and recommended him. Um, so yeah, they
Speaker 1: came to us through listeners suggestions. Guys, keep them coming.
Speaker 1: You guys have done a phenomenal job. And uh, I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy next week. I hope you enjoy. Stephen,
Speaker 1: you will, and thank you for listening. As always, guys,
Speaker 1: take care, Yeah, see you next week. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to Self Rep Radio. New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday.
Speaker 1: Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter at self Rep Radio.