Speaker 1: M oh beat force. If it doesn't work, you're just
Speaker 1: not using enough. You're listening to software Gradio, special operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the community.
Speaker 1: George hand the fourth ak a deal a pipe heater
Speaker 1: of fame. Do you spent over a decade with Delta
Speaker 1: Force the armist here of one special missions unit now
Speaker 1: he uses he spent entertained friends and falls alike. Welcome George,
Speaker 1: thanks to that introduction. Man, it was really pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect that we have surprised you. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was awesome. Stoppards, thank you. Before we
Speaker 1: start with the main questions, can you please go go
Speaker 1: over your military and post military career. Yeah, of course
Speaker 1: I can do that, and I can be brief. I
Speaker 1: came in the regular Army as a indirect fire infantryman,
Speaker 1: that's a mortar crew. My first assignment was a mechanized
Speaker 1: differantry in Colorado with fourth MAC I D and I
Speaker 1: was really unhappy there. But I didn't I didn't see
Speaker 1: a great way out. The one the one way out
Speaker 1: that I readily recognized is that if I could go
Speaker 1: to special operations units where I'm sure I was sure
Speaker 1: the level of motivation was much higher than it was
Speaker 1: where I was at the one hurtle, but one hurdle
Speaker 1: that was in my way was was Airborne school. I
Speaker 1: had to have Airborne school to get to any of
Speaker 1: these places, you know, Rangers or Green Berets. And I
Speaker 1: still have a real terrible clinical fear of heights. So
Speaker 1: you know, after a couple of years in that mechanized unit,
Speaker 1: I was ready to jump without a parachute. Frankly, I
Speaker 1: just had needed to get out of there. So I
Speaker 1: did go to Airborne, got assignments with some you know
Speaker 1: Special Forces A teams. I was there for a few years,
Speaker 1: and then at at a lot of people's recommendation management
Speaker 1: level and peer level were recommending that I should try
Speaker 1: out for DELF Force and I did try out for
Speaker 1: it reluctantly, and I actually made it through the first
Speaker 1: time through selection. So that's where I spent my last
Speaker 1: two years. And if I correctly, I was reading your
Speaker 1: selection assessment article the other day, you over prepared before
Speaker 1: your first track, correct? Oh yeah, I did, And that
Speaker 1: was my fault. I was nervous, you know. I at
Speaker 1: no time did I ever honestly feel that I was
Speaker 1: able to make it through selection. So that left me with,
Speaker 1: you know, my best effort, you know forward. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna do the best I can. And I remember some
Speaker 1: words of encouragement from the key person that made me
Speaker 1: decide to go to selection. That's James Nelson Sundrith. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, George is an out of body experience. I
Speaker 1: just gotta go. You just have to go there. So
Speaker 1: I I did my train up and I overdid it.
Speaker 1: I injured my feet. My feet were blistered. The morning
Speaker 1: that I packed up my uf to go catch an
Speaker 1: airplane to fly to West Virginia, I was carrying my
Speaker 1: bags and I was literally limping to my car. And
Speaker 1: I stopped at the trunk in a car and I said,
Speaker 1: what am I doing? You cannot limp, you know, just
Speaker 1: to Delta's selection. You cannot be limping your way there.
Speaker 1: It's just it's it can't happen. I'm not going to recover.
Speaker 1: So I pulled my bags and UH made the phone call,
Speaker 1: you know, to West Virginia and said I was unable
Speaker 1: to make it. So they said that's too bad, you know,
Speaker 1: wish you the best. Hopefully we hope you can try
Speaker 1: out in the future, and at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: discouragement was there and I had no intention of retraining
Speaker 1: at all. I did the best I could. I couldn't
Speaker 1: even make it to selection. And one of the one
Speaker 1: of my students, I was assigned to Key West at
Speaker 1: the time, I was a cad remember, for the Special
Speaker 1: Forces Combat Dive Operations School. And one of my students
Speaker 1: had just his name's Vic Draybar is his name, and
Speaker 1: he had just come from selection. He came from the
Speaker 1: same class that I was supposed to make. And he said, hey, yeah, Sartain,
Speaker 1: Hey were you supposed to make it to be a
Speaker 1: selection course here recently? And I said yeah. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, I was how did you know? And
Speaker 1: he said, well, I had a bunk I was assigned
Speaker 1: to bunk and it was a top bunk in the
Speaker 1: bunk below me had your name on it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, it was spooky. Very good choice of
Speaker 1: word that is. That's that's really how I felt. Gave
Speaker 1: me kind of you know, a goose flesh and it
Speaker 1: was spooky and it made me really think, that's a sign,
Speaker 1: that's an omen, that's whatever it is. And incidentally, that
Speaker 1: same student, Vick Graybeard, he went back and tried later
Speaker 1: and and he did make it. And him and I
Speaker 1: were there together in different squadrons. But that changed my mind,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that same day, I just was
Speaker 1: putting together a plan, you know, getting the mission focus,
Speaker 1: and uh I started training that that day and I
Speaker 1: kept up my program. I was never able to meet
Speaker 1: the recommended guidelines that the unit published for a fourth selection,
Speaker 1: you know, like they recommend ten miles this day at
Speaker 1: this speed, you know, twenty miles and so on. I
Speaker 1: was never able to keep up the speeds that they recommended,
Speaker 1: with the weights they recommended. And to me, that said,
Speaker 1: you can't make it. Then if you can't do this,
Speaker 1: you can't follow this curriculum at the standards that you
Speaker 1: don't have a chance of making it. But then not
Speaker 1: you just hear James Sutterth in my head saying, George,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't explain it, but you just you
Speaker 1: have to go. You need to go. And so I
Speaker 1: did go. And honestly, Patrick Arthur McNamara has the phrase
Speaker 1: he likes to say, and it's with regards to it
Speaker 1: boils down to if if you go after this thing,
Speaker 1: if you can release you know, the intense drive that
Speaker 1: you have. If you can release the obsession we have
Speaker 1: with getting this thing, if you can release that, then
Speaker 1: the chances of you actually getting it are are going
Speaker 1: to increase. And that seems like contrary to a lot
Speaker 1: of what I've heard growing up, but I've embraced that saying.
Speaker 1: And when I got to West Virginia, it didn't really
Speaker 1: matter to me if I made it. If I made it,
Speaker 1: that was gonna be great. It was gonna be gravy,
Speaker 1: but I didn't expect to make it. And uh, it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna kill me if I if I failed and
Speaker 1: washed out, because I was still going back to a
Speaker 1: really prestigious position with you know, the combat the Cat
Speaker 1: Combat Divers Academy, and it just kind of gave me
Speaker 1: a calm and it chilled me out, and that calm
Speaker 1: just kind of stayed with me as the days went
Speaker 1: and I was able to regulate myself, it seems anyway.
Speaker 1: It just kept me consistent day after day, and I
Speaker 1: made it. Surprisingly made it true. How did you end
Speaker 1: up us in instructor the comb code? Kind of a
Speaker 1: selfish reason really. When I was stationed with First Green
Speaker 1: Berets in in Uh, Washington State. UM, I had the
Speaker 1: number of years I had in the service at the
Speaker 1: time with and with Special Forces. It was the mandatory
Speaker 1: that I had to go pull a few years duty
Speaker 1: with a special Warfare Center. In other words, I had
Speaker 1: to come off the action the Action A teams, and
Speaker 1: I had to go on an administrative tour for three
Speaker 1: to four years on the platform, you know, teaching other
Speaker 1: Green Berets various subjects. And they called that a Swick
Speaker 1: Levy as you see Levy. And so I was warned, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're coming up on a Swick Levy. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I've got to be I've got to be proactive, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be selfish. I want to go out
Speaker 1: there and I want to I want to get the
Speaker 1: the platform position that I want. I don't want to
Speaker 1: just show up and have them say, oh, you know
Speaker 1: you're gonna be teaching map folding at can't recall. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: So I had my sight set on Key West, Florida
Speaker 1: because the cadre there at Combat Dive Academy. I mean
Speaker 1: that that academy at the time and maybe still is
Speaker 1: by far the most difficult UH Special Forces course out there. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the Cadre. There are just a real elite select bunch
Speaker 1: of guys from from different eight teams, and that that's
Speaker 1: just absolutely what I wanted. You know, I I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be the best guy ever in someplace. If
Speaker 1: I was the best guy, I felt, then then we're
Speaker 1: hurting because you know, I'm not all that. And two,
Speaker 1: So when I went to Key West, yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: was not the best guy there. I wasn't the fastest runner,
Speaker 1: I wasn't the smartest guy. So this is what I want.
Speaker 1: I'm surrounded by all these guys that are you know,
Speaker 1: they're just inviting me to improve myself, is what it is.
Speaker 1: So I felt I really got spectacular in fluence from
Speaker 1: those those guys. And and and as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: those guys were one by one trying out for the
Speaker 1: Delta Force and they were making it as six guys
Speaker 1: from the Key West Cadre when I was involved to
Speaker 1: their six of us tried out for Delta and every
Speaker 1: one of us made it. That's remarkable. It is remarkable.
Speaker 1: It just really is. I can trance a pattern though
Speaker 1: when you say if you're surrounded by great guy, a
Speaker 1: great guy also, I totally believe that, especially when I
Speaker 1: got to Delta, you know, like I disappeared in Delta,
Speaker 1: I was just you know, the middle of the road person.
Speaker 1: I was surrounded by, and younger guys too. I was
Speaker 1: surrounded by younger guys that just absolutely you know, choked
Speaker 1: me with their dust. They were they were spectacular, you know,
Speaker 1: and that that was definitely a place to be. So
Speaker 1: every day was just a challenge to try to get
Speaker 1: better and better, you know, and the fear of not
Speaker 1: being not being able to make the grade was there
Speaker 1: all the time. You know. It wasn't just up front
Speaker 1: in the beginning, you know, like, well, I'll stand on
Speaker 1: your head and pass this course, then you'll you know,
Speaker 1: it's all gravy from here, it's all downhill train. That's
Speaker 1: not the way it was. Man. It's like I got
Speaker 1: out of the training group and got on a team,
Speaker 1: and I was you think, the person's fresh out of
Speaker 1: training are gonna be all in shape, you know, and
Speaker 1: have all their all the essential skills they've been learning
Speaker 1: and practicing for the past six months. You know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna put everyone to shame. It just was not like
Speaker 1: that I got out on a team and I was
Speaker 1: just the I was the punk again, you know, it
Speaker 1: was just I was the worst shot, that was the
Speaker 1: slowest runner, you know, and I had just a bunch
Speaker 1: of I had four or five guys on there too,
Speaker 1: to try to be as good as one day, you know,
Speaker 1: just constantly trying to catch up at them. It's a motivation,
Speaker 1: but it's also like, um, it's an onus too, you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a sort of damno pleast, but it's
Speaker 1: something there that's telling you that if you don't, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't try hard every single day and be
Speaker 1: honest with yourself, that you could find your if you
Speaker 1: could find yourself reassigned somewhere else, you know, for attitude,
Speaker 1: for performance, and I saw guys fault by the wayside
Speaker 1: and lose their position in delta for both of those things,
Speaker 1: for physical performance, for attitude, and also and this is
Speaker 1: a big deal in the community in this day and age,
Speaker 1: but for moral you know, failure to act on on
Speaker 1: a in taping with the morals that are part of
Speaker 1: the culture in Belt Force. I mean, there's no lying,
Speaker 1: there's no cheating, there's no womanizing, there's no war crimes,
Speaker 1: you know, those things I feel strongly would never happen.
Speaker 1: They would never get a chance to happen because the
Speaker 1: guys on the teams, when they see that sort of
Speaker 1: thing coming up in a person, they're gonna pull that
Speaker 1: guy and they're gonna take care of him, or you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to be on his way somewhere else reassigned.
Speaker 1: And why do you think is that? Why do you
Speaker 1: think that sat tissues wouldn't happen in Delta others me
Speaker 1: use or special persons units. I thought about that a lot,
Speaker 1: not not a lot. I thought about that tremendous amount.
Speaker 1: And that question is almost as hard as George, where
Speaker 1: did we go wrong in Vietnam? You know, I'm just
Speaker 1: kidding Star Wars. It's it is really difficult. I mean,
Speaker 1: so I came up in the Green Berets and that's
Speaker 1: the culture. And guys from the Army Green Berets they
Speaker 1: seem to come they seem to come from the same
Speaker 1: places in the United States. But we had some unusual guys,
Speaker 1: Like we had a guy that was he was a
Speaker 1: PhD in genetics, you know, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to grow plants on top of rocks. That was an
Speaker 1: unusual person. You don't know, the guy was a private
Speaker 1: investigator and just you know, on some some unusual backgrounds,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, the guys were cut from
Speaker 1: the pretty medium sized piece of cloth and even from
Speaker 1: the Green berets. I've got experience being attached to Whiteside
Speaker 1: Seals to do some water born operations with seals, underwater operations,
Speaker 1: submarine operations and the sword and that was just my
Speaker 1: good fortune for being brought up as a combat diver
Speaker 1: in the army. So I mean, I have the experience
Speaker 1: with with seals from the White Side Seals, you know,
Speaker 1: for a number of weeks, and I can see not eventually,
Speaker 1: but immediately, I can see the difference in the personalities
Speaker 1: of the of the guys from the seal teams. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely shutting up when I get into place like that,
Speaker 1: and I shut up. And so I'm doing is listening
Speaker 1: to these guys talk about having personal conversations, having professional
Speaker 1: conversations about missions, operations, tactics and the like. I can
Speaker 1: see the difference. I can see the difference in the
Speaker 1: culture that is there on the seal teams. And I
Speaker 1: can tell that the guys from the seal teams are
Speaker 1: coming from different places, you know, in America different backgrounds
Speaker 1: than the guys from the Green Berets. I can tell that,
Speaker 1: and I could articulate it too. I could have written
Speaker 1: about it. It would have been easy, and I have
Speaker 1: a bunch of examples to site. But so I'm going
Speaker 1: through the operations and been graduating to Delta rob and
Speaker 1: elbows closely with DEAV Group. There again, I've got a
Speaker 1: myriad of experience with the guys from DEAF Group joint
Speaker 1: operations taking over operations from you know, Deaf Group guys.
Speaker 1: I guess I can go on for a way longer
Speaker 1: about the situation than we have time for. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that the guys from in Delta to compared
Speaker 1: to the guys in DEAV Group, they come from different places,
Speaker 1: different backgrounds in America. They've got different attitudes than the
Speaker 1: guys in in DEAV Group. Yeah, exactly, Death grewp recruits
Speaker 1: from the seal teams, so that immediately restricts the recruiting pool.
Speaker 1: What else, Delta is open to the whole military, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it is absolutely is the whole military.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I was there when the first U. S.
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. I believe he came from Onslow Beach area.
Speaker 1: It was to have Battalion Recon Recon as opposed to
Speaker 1: Force Recon. But the first Marines actually showed up and
Speaker 1: made it through selection. And the first brother from from
Speaker 1: one of the seal teams came through a selection and
Speaker 1: made it. And he not only made it, but he
Speaker 1: was at the very top of his class, and more
Speaker 1: than just on the one seal, but a multitude of
Speaker 1: a number Seals have have come and made it through
Speaker 1: Delta selection. You know, are in the unit doing very well.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, you don't see any Delta guys
Speaker 1: even thinking about want to go be on a on
Speaker 1: a seal team. And it's really easy to say for
Speaker 1: the Seals to say well last because it's too hard
Speaker 1: for them and they're not good enough. And they're like,
Speaker 1: well that's okay, okay, let's say that okay, because that
Speaker 1: is something that guys like that would say. But the
Speaker 1: point is, no, nobody want no part of no seal
Speaker 1: team when you're in Delta, that's the fact. So you
Speaker 1: get into Delta, you get as signed to a Scott squadron.
Speaker 1: Black hockdown happened you arriving Mogat Tissue one day after
Speaker 1: the battle. Well is it that correct? That's correct? What
Speaker 1: was it like? We got there as a result of,
Speaker 1: as you know, the Sea Squad conducting the operations with
Speaker 1: their outer security perimeter being affected by the range of regiment.
Speaker 1: That that did not go well at all, not at all.
Speaker 1: So if I mean the premise, if you want to
Speaker 1: call it a premise, it doesn't matter. The reason that
Speaker 1: that got us out of Brag and into movie issue
Speaker 1: was the failure of the interaction between C Squad and
Speaker 1: the Ranger Regiment. So initially we were gonna we're going
Speaker 1: to pick up the Security Court on. That would leave
Speaker 1: I don't know what where that would have put the Rangers.
Speaker 1: It would have put it nowhere, it would have put
Speaker 1: them back in washing Washington State. I guess it just
Speaker 1: totally wrote them out of the mission. So we showed
Speaker 1: up there, you know, under the for the reason that
Speaker 1: we were going to be the Security Court on and
Speaker 1: work well together. And then that turned into well, we're
Speaker 1: going to we're gonna we're gonna alternate missions, you know,
Speaker 1: so that C Squatter doesn't have to get hammered every
Speaker 1: single time with actions on the objective. And that made
Speaker 1: a great sense to me, it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: one time, you one time, we'll pick up outer security
Speaker 1: for see, let them, you know, go after ded. Then
Speaker 1: the next mission we'll just rotate out. We'll take the
Speaker 1: pressure and let's see squadron you pick up the outer security.
Speaker 1: But when we got there, actually we stepped right off
Speaker 1: the C five A aircraft and walked toward the terminal
Speaker 1: building and there was a ceremony just about to begin
Speaker 1: for the guys that were killed in the battle. So
Speaker 1: our baptism was getting off an aircraft, going walking right
Speaker 1: up to this into the ceremony and joining the rank
Speaker 1: and file while General Garrison spoke and then you know,
Speaker 1: the command start to Major Millwick spoke and then that
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how we that's how we arrived. That's
Speaker 1: that's the first thing we saw, and we took up.
Speaker 1: We took up a cover in a building that was
Speaker 1: called the terminal building, and it was a couple hundreds
Speaker 1: away from the hangar where C Squadron was. We had
Speaker 1: no cover in that building at all. It was it
Speaker 1: was wide open. And that same night, of course, we
Speaker 1: got mordered and one of the more rounds just landed
Speaker 1: right smack in the middle of guys out right outside
Speaker 1: the hangar. The boss Jerry Boykin was talking with Matthew Ryerson,
Speaker 1: one of the team leaders he had his EXO was there,
Speaker 1: Garry Harold and DC marsh was there and a number
Speaker 1: of guys anyway, and we were waiting, kind of waiting
Speaker 1: a turn to talk to Matt Ryerson because, uh, I
Speaker 1: shook hands with Matt when I first got there, because
Speaker 1: him and I are friends from way back, and um
Speaker 1: he said, I'm glad you hear, George, And I said, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'll come by and see you tonight. And so we
Speaker 1: were we were going to go talk to Matt, but
Speaker 1: he was talking to you know, being a commander, you're
Speaker 1: not going to walk in there and interrupt. So I
Speaker 1: was just kind of hanging out on the sidelines waiting
Speaker 1: for him to finish talking with h With that group,
Speaker 1: mortg just smoked him, just smoked right in on him.
Speaker 1: So he killed Matt Ryerson immediately. It took out more
Speaker 1: C squadron men. Scott Miller, he was the assault commander there.
Speaker 1: He was already he was already wounded in his arms
Speaker 1: from the from the fight, and I could see that
Speaker 1: they had him sitting on the ground with his his
Speaker 1: shirt pulled up over his head, and he had him
Speaker 1: he had frags in his back. So he got hit again,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty upset about that. I was pretty
Speaker 1: bummed that the guys that had been, you know, had
Speaker 1: it so hard in the fight were already getting wounded again.
Speaker 1: And so thirteen casualties is what we took just from
Speaker 1: that one round, as a matter of fact. And one
Speaker 1: a squadron man I didn't know he was there at
Speaker 1: the time. He got He took a frag in his hand,
Speaker 1: went in the back of his hand, and he he
Speaker 1: walked back to the terminal building where we were already
Speaker 1: sat on his cut and he chewed it out of
Speaker 1: his hand and spin it on the ground. I thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty That was Jamie Weedeman, who's like sits
Speaker 1: up high on the board of the Surefire these days,
Speaker 1: this or f Our Corporation. He didn't think anything of
Speaker 1: it and never said a thing, but it caught up
Speaker 1: to him and he ended up in a purple heart
Speaker 1: for that that he did not want. He didn't want it,
Speaker 1: but it was like, you know, you will accept the sword. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you conduct any fullen missions after after the body. No,
Speaker 1: there were no actions on objective after that, neither for
Speaker 1: my squad Overseas Squadron. We did conduct routine signature flights whereby,
Speaker 1: you know, we loaded the full armata as if we
Speaker 1: were headed for a specific target, and we just flew,
Speaker 1: you know, around and around the city just to draw
Speaker 1: fired and never did. By that time, the Smalley's had
Speaker 1: had no desire whatsoever to take any more shots at
Speaker 1: the American Task Force Ranger because they got whipped pretty
Speaker 1: damn bad on the three of on the Battle of
Speaker 1: the Black Sea. So we flew day and night in
Speaker 1: the rain. We did the typical signature flights. And what
Speaker 1: a signature flight does for the enemy is I mean,
Speaker 1: if if the armada picks up, it starts flying only
Speaker 1: when it has a target, they know every time that
Speaker 1: it picks up that they're coming to get somebody. But
Speaker 1: if we pick up and just fly over the city routinely,
Speaker 1: they don't know when the ship is really on, so
Speaker 1: they end up getting you know, just like anybody else, like,
Speaker 1: oh they're flying again, big deal. You get a little relaxed.
Speaker 1: But then the next thing you know that the helo
Speaker 1: swarm on a target and they're taking by surprise. We
Speaker 1: did that. We did a lot of We flew every day,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere. Sometimes we just flew in the periphery
Speaker 1: of of Mogadishu. The choppers would dump us on the
Speaker 1: ground and we do some We do do some operations
Speaker 1: on the ground for a while. We flew down along
Speaker 1: the coast a little bit further and we did a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of live fire training day and night, you know,
Speaker 1: calling in doing calls for fire with with the halos.
Speaker 1: A H six is uh the six gun birds like
Speaker 1: Greg Coker flu as well as the full of depths.
Speaker 1: We've shot those quite a bit down the coast. We
Speaker 1: actually even our operations cell made us some uh targets
Speaker 1: out of styrophones, like these huge chunks of styrophone. They
Speaker 1: were as big as a like a small boat. And
Speaker 1: they took those and and dumped them out over the
Speaker 1: sea and there they were floating, and we would fly
Speaker 1: by in the halos and we would engage the targets,
Speaker 1: you know, from the pods with our with our weapons.
Speaker 1: In seventy ninths, you know that we even heath grenades adam,
Speaker 1: which was kind of fun. It was unusual and we
Speaker 1: did it. We did it for a nighttime operation as well.
Speaker 1: In that case, the styrofoam target was laced with kim
Speaker 1: lights and so we flew over those heels with bank
Speaker 1: and we just you know, unleash on these these targets.
Speaker 1: Heave some grenades at him and just basically try to
Speaker 1: sink them, which is very difficult and I wish you
Speaker 1: should point out. I'd like to point out with regard
Speaker 1: to those age pilots, you know they were carrying in
Speaker 1: four carbons as well, and you would think, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so they've checked that block. They've got an him four
Speaker 1: there in the cabin with him, and maybe they have
Speaker 1: some bullets there. You know, the block is checked. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you at one point I I was sitting
Speaker 1: on the on the on the starboard side, so yeah,
Speaker 1: pilot side, I think the code had was flying it
Speaker 1: at the time. He had he had the helm and
Speaker 1: my primary ran drive. So I was I fired all
Speaker 1: my basic load of and I was kind of out
Speaker 1: of the shoot there. But then the pilots stuck his
Speaker 1: arm out of of the window or of his cabin
Speaker 1: and he had a mag He had a thirty round magh.
Speaker 1: The pilot's given me his bullets. That's really nice, you know.
Speaker 1: So I slapped and racked and just you know kept firing.
Speaker 1: When I was done with those, you know, I passed
Speaker 1: the empty back and he passed another full. I was like, damn,
Speaker 1: this guy's got two magazines. Let me I'm going to
Speaker 1: give him a golf clap right now. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: He did that like eight times. He passed eight magazines
Speaker 1: back to me, and I dumped him all, you know,
Speaker 1: And when we we landed it moved and got out.
Speaker 1: I you know, I got out and went right up
Speaker 1: to him just you know, slapped him on the back
Speaker 1: where the shoulders. As you know, I said, you are
Speaker 1: her proper man, thanks for the thanks for the resupply,
Speaker 1: and as uhm that that was said direct consequence often bottle, yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you read the accounts during the battle and
Speaker 1: ages images, if some immy just sat down on the ground,
Speaker 1: it's really tight alleys. For example, to pick up John
Speaker 1: Smith and Daniel Bush. Dan Bush was killed. He got
Speaker 1: hit in the side where there was no plate, no
Speaker 1: armor protection. He got hit inside with a k oh
Speaker 1: It didn't kill him immediately, but he was you know,
Speaker 1: basically dying. Jim Smith ran out there to pick up
Speaker 1: Dan Bush. Jim actually was dragging or carrying Dan Bush
Speaker 1: and he was accosted by one of the militia up close.
Speaker 1: Dan actually drew his secondary, drew his forty five with
Speaker 1: his right arm and killed this guy while he was
Speaker 1: dragging Dan Bush. That's amazing that he and this helo
Speaker 1: landed in an alley really tight, you know, like a
Speaker 1: feat clearance on the sides of the blade. Both the
Speaker 1: pilot and the code were leaning out the doors with
Speaker 1: n P five's just knocking down targets. Again. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, a nine by nineteen round, that's a pistol round.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not an assault rifle round. And so
Speaker 1: it had effect. It still would kill people, but didn't
Speaker 1: have nearly the effect that like the a K forty
Speaker 1: seven has, even over the M four carving or the
Speaker 1: CAR fifteen rather that's where we carry in the days,
Speaker 1: the CAR fifteen still the same round. The pilots understood
Speaker 1: that they were kind of pencil whipping it at the
Speaker 1: time with with those weapons. They're there, sexy, they're cool,
Speaker 1: they're compact, and that's important in the cabin of a
Speaker 1: little bird for Pete's sake. But when it comes right
Speaker 1: down to it, it's just it's got to be something bigger.
Speaker 1: They have to be if they're going to be true
Speaker 1: to themselves. You know, they've got to look themselves in
Speaker 1: the mirrors say I need to have and I need
Speaker 1: to have a car fift team. Yeah that makes sense. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Brandon Webb, form an ABC and founder of the
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Speaker 1: up today at Craig club dot com c r A
Speaker 1: T E Club dot com. So moving forward, the battle
Speaker 1: comes you. You get reassigned from an assault squadron to
Speaker 1: the Combat Support Troop correct, from Salt Squadro to at
Speaker 1: the advant troop Advance Forced the troop. Yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: conducting close target Reconnaissance and lo v's operations. Yes, the
Speaker 1: CRT Close Target Reconnaissance, General and Specific Reconnaissance, battlespace preparation basically,
Speaker 1: you know, operations in advance of the assault forces. That
Speaker 1: was our charter that wel contained from an assault squadron.
Speaker 1: It was yeah, I mean I wanted it. I definitely
Speaker 1: wanted it. I mean I wanted to because I was
Speaker 1: already had eighteen years in the Army. I wanted to
Speaker 1: do my last couple in like the Advance the Advance
Speaker 1: squadron or the guys that were teaching S and T
Speaker 1: selection and training, you know, go do a teaching job,
Speaker 1: teaching the new guys that are coming in from West Virginia,
Speaker 1: I want to do something like that. It was a
Speaker 1: it was a really typical path for persons that were
Speaker 1: working their way out of the unit, you know, because
Speaker 1: the kind of experience they could get in those areas
Speaker 1: were it was a little bit more conducive to something
Speaker 1: that we might be doing on the outside once we're
Speaker 1: separated from the military. So I really wanted to add
Speaker 1: von Advanced Force Operations because like that mission sounded pretty
Speaker 1: cool to me. It was as close to Singleton missions
Speaker 1: as you could as you could get. So I asked
Speaker 1: for and I think all my foreign languages is probably
Speaker 1: what got me there because during their selection, they had
Speaker 1: their own selection that lasted weeks. Not everybody on the
Speaker 1: board thought I did really great, and they had some
Speaker 1: really strange reasons why. But they couldn't dispute that I
Speaker 1: had as unified languages in the areas that they were
Speaker 1: operating in. So I could have I could have like
Speaker 1: thumbed my nose at him, given him a raspberry, and
Speaker 1: they still would have had to take me. So how
Speaker 1: many how many languages do you speak? Seven? I have ratings,
Speaker 1: I have Defense Language Institute qualified ratings in six foreign language,
Speaker 1: and then I gave myself a rating in English on
Speaker 1: my own. I think you deserved it. I mean that
Speaker 1: your side, I give myself a bee. We still got
Speaker 1: to do anything we wanted, just like squadrons. I mean
Speaker 1: I could I could go grab some dirt bikes, we
Speaker 1: could go ride, we could climb, do obstacle course, and
Speaker 1: we could do all the p Q we wanted. And
Speaker 1: we could still shoot as much as we had time
Speaker 1: for as much as we wanted, you know. But our
Speaker 1: focus was, you know, getting into these foreign kind trees
Speaker 1: and adapting and blending in and being able to operate
Speaker 1: in four countries without making it blatantly obvious that we
Speaker 1: were you know, ugly Americans, and some of that preparation
Speaker 1: and some of the profile we developed went kind of
Speaker 1: deep without saying anything specific. Of course, it was a
Speaker 1: great adventure, honestly, it really was. And most of my
Speaker 1: time was well all of my time was was in Bosnia.
Speaker 1: When I was was was in that that squadron, and
Speaker 1: and that language Bosnian or Server Croatian. That's not one
Speaker 1: that I came into the Advanced Squadron with. I got
Speaker 1: my qualification after having been in Bosnia with the Salt
Speaker 1: squadrons and with the Advance squadron. You know, I just
Speaker 1: finally said, okay, I I think I'm at a certain
Speaker 1: level and I'm gonna go take this deal. I examined,
Speaker 1: see how I did, how I do and I did well.
Speaker 1: I qualified for pay in that language, which really pleased
Speaker 1: me because I didn't think that was quite you know,
Speaker 1: that good at it. So you were getting paid for
Speaker 1: each language. Know, the way it works is it was
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars a month if you qualified in the language,
Speaker 1: and then that was it. A hundred dollars was the max.
Speaker 1: And so I was I had a number of languages
Speaker 1: that I could have tested in, and I did. I
Speaker 1: did test in them just for the hell of it,
Speaker 1: because I mean taking that test was a really great training,
Speaker 1: is what it was. It was a really great exercise
Speaker 1: in the language. So I did it for that value.
Speaker 1: But I think the language that I was getting paid
Speaker 1: for was Cantonese Chinese. You know, since since back when
Speaker 1: I was in the Green Berets, I just took that.
Speaker 1: I took that exam every year. I think I was
Speaker 1: the only person in the army taking that exam and
Speaker 1: I kind of hate to say it, but it's a
Speaker 1: matter of fact that taking that language, that test every
Speaker 1: year after year, I was getting pretty damned good and
Speaker 1: taking that exam and it was the same exam, And
Speaker 1: that's that's that's no good. I mean, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: you take the Spanish. When the turnover of of that
Speaker 1: exam is going to be high, you know they're gonna
Speaker 1: change it up. You know, every year you're gonna get
Speaker 1: something different. But Kenny's like, they had no one taking
Speaker 1: it except this one fucker. Only he's taking it every year.
Speaker 1: We're not going to revamp the test for them. So
Speaker 1: every year I took it, man, I was just like
Speaker 1: I was getting a two plus three, which is the
Speaker 1: highest three three is the highest I could ever get
Speaker 1: based on my background. That's just the that's the rule.
Speaker 1: And I was getting a two plus three, and I
Speaker 1: was just it was irritating as hell. I was agonizing over.
Speaker 1: I thought I was getting every single question right, you know,
Speaker 1: but obviously I was missing something. I was only getting
Speaker 1: a two plus in my reading comprehension, and I was
Speaker 1: I was like, this, what question am I missing? You know,
Speaker 1: which one am I getting wrong? It boiled down to
Speaker 1: like two, these two that I thought, you know, these
Speaker 1: are the problem Mary's I'm not sure which is the
Speaker 1: right answer. And I used to I used to ask
Speaker 1: Chinese people, you know, real Chinese people. I used to
Speaker 1: ask him the question and give him the four answers,
Speaker 1: like there was it was written a Chinese. It's this expression,
Speaker 1: and there's four answers, and one of them is absence
Speaker 1: makes the heart grow fonder, and the other is a
Speaker 1: miss as good as a mile, and the next one
Speaker 1: is I can't see the trees for the forest, or
Speaker 1: can't see the forest for the trees. And the fourth
Speaker 1: one was like something like I wouldn't know him from Adam.
Speaker 1: Those are the four answers. And I would get I
Speaker 1: would get I would get a Chinese dude, hey, you
Speaker 1: are you Chinese? Come here, and I would write out
Speaker 1: the question for him, you know, you know, and I
Speaker 1: haven't read it, and I've given the four answers, and
Speaker 1: they would look at me, Ago, what are you asking me?
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know? I said, cool, okay, great,
Speaker 1: native Chinese aren't getting this question right? How am I
Speaker 1: supposed to get it right? So I would just answered
Speaker 1: different every time, every year I would answer it different
Speaker 1: until finally, bam, you know, I got three three and
Speaker 1: I took me four years. M yeah, it took four
Speaker 1: years because well there was four answers, so it took
Speaker 1: four years. And of course the last answer was the
Speaker 1: one they were telling me was right. So but anyway,
Speaker 1: so I got that, and my last year in the service,
Speaker 1: language pay went up to three hundred dollars a month, right,
Speaker 1: and you could take as you could take as many
Speaker 1: languages exams as you wanted to get to three hundred.
Speaker 1: And I just and I knew I was out. I
Speaker 1: knew I was on my way out. I just wanted
Speaker 1: that so bad, you know, like that was the ultimate
Speaker 1: even if I could do it, so I would take.
Speaker 1: I took you know, Cantonese. Bam, there's a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: right there. And then I took took French, German, Spanish
Speaker 1: was another good one. And what I got, what I
Speaker 1: got those, I hit three hundred dollars and I didn't
Speaker 1: have to take the Serbo Croatian, you know, to to
Speaker 1: try to get the three hundred. I was able to
Speaker 1: get the three hundred with those languages. But so ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, I made it. You know, I made the
Speaker 1: three hundred bucks and I got to use that as
Speaker 1: bragging rights. And one of these languages were the standards
Speaker 1: academic or street. So example, for example, studying French or
Speaker 1: taking the French exam, was it something that you could
Speaker 1: actually use on the street or was it something you
Speaker 1: would read on lifting or high end. It was academic
Speaker 1: star wars, I'll tell you that because there were there
Speaker 1: really was like those slang anywhere in any of those.
Speaker 1: It was all proper across the board. You know, the
Speaker 1: subjects were you didn't have to have a background in
Speaker 1: in particular subjects to be able to understand the passage
Speaker 1: that they're speaking, you know, in the foreign languages, some
Speaker 1: pretty general stuff. You know. It would be something like
Speaker 1: Bill's father, you know, he's a big believer in Western medicine.
Speaker 1: He wants his son to be treated by Western doctors,
Speaker 1: you know that school. His mom she's more like she
Speaker 1: tries to get up there to the Eastern kind of
Speaker 1: medicine and treatment where you're taking strange herbs, you know,
Speaker 1: in these potions, etcetera, etcetera. And they're constantly struggling between
Speaker 1: each other, and in the end, the kid he's not
Speaker 1: really getting well. So that's pretty easy to understand if
Speaker 1: you can understand the language. And in the in the
Speaker 1: questions boiled downto something like the right hand there was
Speaker 1: between the kid's mom and his dad. He just wasn't
Speaker 1: getting any better, and that was the right answer. But
Speaker 1: it's not like they bled into some discussion about, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Renaissance paintings and then it was about what
Speaker 1: was it flawed money or was it you know, Carvaggio
Speaker 1: or Rathlael. I don't know, I understood. I just don't
Speaker 1: know the freaking answer. So you're getting out that was
Speaker 1: a thousand or early two thousand one. It was literally
Speaker 1: was January, the first of two thousand one. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: few nine months later the towers got down. We're at
Speaker 1: four and if I'm not mistaken, the unit reached out
Speaker 1: to former operators to come back with a blank tick. Correct,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, boss. And uh, I don't mind
Speaker 1: telling you that when when the actual towers did come down,
Speaker 1: I was I was in an aircraft. I was flying
Speaker 1: from the East coast back you know, to Nevada, so
Speaker 1: I was there born in a Southwest airliner when the
Speaker 1: towers got hit. We actually when we landed, I was
Speaker 1: looking out the window and I was saying to myself, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing's right here. This is all wrong, this is not,
Speaker 1: this is not you know the airport at uh in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada. I don't know what airport this is.
Speaker 1: And then they came over the intercom and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just landed in Dallas Fort Worth Airport for emergency landing.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1: And so it was we deplaned and we're in that
Speaker 1: holding area. I could see the TV. As I was
Speaker 1: standing there in the in the crowd of people, I
Speaker 1: could see the World Trade Center's burning on the TV screen,
Speaker 1: and I was part of my my French. I was
Speaker 1: kind of fucked up because I had taken a sleep
Speaker 1: med the whole way, and I would have except we
Speaker 1: landed at Dallas, and so I was prematurely awakened from
Speaker 1: this med and was still under the influence it. But
Speaker 1: I was understanding what I was seeing. I was understanding
Speaker 1: that the towers were burning, then that a tower collapsed Bam,
Speaker 1: which is rouge. It went down, and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: this is as serious as it gets, and that other
Speaker 1: tower there, it's going to collapse so here in a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes, and of course it did. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so back at my job working contract with the with
Speaker 1: the Department of Energy to dally, there were as something
Speaker 1: like as many as thirteen former Delta Force guys working
Speaker 1: there that James Sutter had recruited and you know, working
Speaker 1: in different areas. And it was we wondered that with
Speaker 1: such a number of us that had gotten out so
Speaker 1: quick and had pulled ourselves here in Las Vegas working
Speaker 1: on this contract, we wondered what the the unit would
Speaker 1: think of that, you know. And the speculation went from
Speaker 1: they're gonna order us back, you know, to they're gonna
Speaker 1: request us to come back, you know, or they're gonna
Speaker 1: guilt us into coming back. But from my point of view,
Speaker 1: so I'm like, guys, get over yourselves, man. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not that, You're not all that. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't even know you guys are alive anymore us. They
Speaker 1: don't know we're even alive. They don't care there, but
Speaker 1: lo and behold. Yeah, you know, right after night eleven,
Speaker 1: James the boss, he said, hey, the units sending down
Speaker 1: started Major Rick Hall, who is the guy, the last
Speaker 1: guy I worked for in the Advanced Force Operations squad
Speaker 1: with a started Major Rick Hall, and they're sending Rick
Speaker 1: to come down and he wants to talk to us.
Speaker 1: We said, okay, we know what that's about. And he
Speaker 1: came and it was great. We all piled at a
Speaker 1: conference room and other people tried to come in. We
Speaker 1: told him to get the hell out, and you know,
Speaker 1: we did this the five minutes of dude, dude, hatch up,
Speaker 1: you know this and that, and then then Rick he
Speaker 1: finally just said, okay, so let's leus get let's get
Speaker 1: on with this. Uh So, basically the unit would like
Speaker 1: to have each of you guys come back immediately. And
Speaker 1: the offer is that you guys write your ticket. You know,
Speaker 1: you tell us what it is you want to do.
Speaker 1: I mean you can be you know, running as fast
Speaker 1: as you can with a rifle, shooting it, throwing grenades,
Speaker 1: or you can sit back in an office, you know,
Speaker 1: helling out reports. The point is, you were you tell
Speaker 1: us what you want to do, and you know, will
Speaker 1: give you that position if you'll come back. And so
Speaker 1: he finished up his spiel and then you know, he
Speaker 1: was gone. And then James before he left, he said, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to I can't tell you guys what to do,
Speaker 1: but I just encourage you to make your own decision,
Speaker 1: you know, go off by yourself and think about it
Speaker 1: and make your own decision. Don't get in groups and
Speaker 1: say what are you guys gonna do? What are you
Speaker 1: guys gonna do? And then come up with a group
Speaker 1: decision and race back or not race back. Just only
Speaker 1: that was really cool of him to say that, And
Speaker 1: I thought that was really important too. And I made
Speaker 1: my decision, which was to not go back. I don't
Speaker 1: know who in the group it was also going to
Speaker 1: decide that way. But in the end, nobody went back.
Speaker 1: Not one person went back. But ironically, and I say that,
Speaker 1: I say it is ironically, not coincidentally, but ironically, almost
Speaker 1: every one of those guys, well every one of the
Speaker 1: guys besides me, went off to a contract with with
Speaker 1: Triple Canopy. If you remember Triple Canopy, I mean in
Speaker 1: the day you had black Water, that was seals. He
Speaker 1: had Triple Canopy, which is more delta and green berets,
Speaker 1: you know, and and you know Star Wars. If you
Speaker 1: look back then and comparing those two groups to which
Speaker 1: one had which one had the problems? You know, which
Speaker 1: one was in the media with the fucking problems? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean who was shooting civilians and unfore actually who
Speaker 1: was getting captured and hung from a bridge? However that
Speaker 1: ended up happening. But who was having the problems and
Speaker 1: getting the bad press. Well it wasn't Triple Canopy. But
Speaker 1: all of the guys that didn't, they didn't go to
Speaker 1: the unit back to unit. They went to Triple Canopy.
Speaker 1: And all I could think of is, what in the
Speaker 1: hell for? I don't understand. You know, you you get
Speaker 1: out of the unit and you go to to another
Speaker 1: contract and you're doing the same thing. You know, you're well, okay,
Speaker 1: you're making big money really fast, but you're at the
Speaker 1: same risk, you know, fighting for your life with a
Speaker 1: rifle that you were doing when you were in unit. Um.
Speaker 1: So those guys chose big money fast, and I chose it,
Speaker 1: chose big money acute, and I chose little money chronically.
Speaker 1: And I just you know, kept a peaceful job, a
Speaker 1: lot of peaceful job at all, but a job back
Speaker 1: in the States, you know, relatively safe, not toting around
Speaker 1: at gat and gun. Yeah, and taking care of my
Speaker 1: family you know, getting out of Delta, being away from
Speaker 1: your family most of the year carrying a rifle, I thank,
Speaker 1: what the hell is the difference? And so that's mouth.
Speaker 1: I'p taking it total to your family life and every once, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So I'm happy that I made the decision on my own.
Speaker 1: I can add this to the to the mix starb
Speaker 1: ROAs is that you know, getting out of the unit.
Speaker 1: Getting out of Delta was really tough. It was real tough,
Speaker 1: you know. Once I was out, I mean I never
Speaker 1: even went back to any of the functions, never went
Speaker 1: back to a informal or a formal or you kind
Speaker 1: of get together. To me, it was like the last
Speaker 1: view I had of the compound was in my rear
Speaker 1: view mirror as I drove away, and that absolutely was
Speaker 1: the last view of the compound. And I'm never going
Speaker 1: to go back there. Getting out was really tough, So
Speaker 1: I would never go back. That's deep. But now you're
Speaker 1: writing about Delta and you are drawing. Most importantly, tell
Speaker 1: us about your your cartoon. What makes you begin drawing
Speaker 1: the cartoon stuff? I mean I started drawing, you know,
Speaker 1: of course when I was when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: I just really enjoyed it, and it was all for
Speaker 1: just fun and pleasure. It was just entertainment and it
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. And then, for some reason, I remember
Speaker 1: I was about thirteen years old, you know, some something
Speaker 1: was driving to me that day. You know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: really sure what, but it was real specific. I was
Speaker 1: doing some really intentional specific things, you know. Found paper,
Speaker 1: went through the house, found a pencil. Then I went
Speaker 1: to uh, my mother's record collection, and she was a
Speaker 1: huge fan of folksinger countries. John Denver is who he was,
Speaker 1: and I was flipping through her final LP albums from
Speaker 1: record players back in the day, and I had one
Speaker 1: of his albums. I knew it was one of her
Speaker 1: Head is his record there's one of her favorite and
Speaker 1: there's a picture of his face on there. You know, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm John Denver. And I sat down with my paper
Speaker 1: and that album next to it, and I said, that
Speaker 1: face on the album looks like this, And I started
Speaker 1: drawing with the pencil and I was shading and I
Speaker 1: was doing all this crap that I've never done before.
Speaker 1: When I was done, I said, my picture on my
Speaker 1: paper to me, looks just like the picture on the album.
Speaker 1: And I was satisfied. Right that. I took the picture
Speaker 1: to my mother, you know, her favorite thing. I wanted
Speaker 1: surprise her. I says, hey, Mom, and you a picture.
Speaker 1: You know. She's like, oh, that's nice. I go, well,
Speaker 1: you want to see it? She goes, oh, well here, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: let me let me see it. And she picked it up,
Speaker 1: and the look on her face was untreaking believable. Man.
Speaker 1: She looked like she just saw a ghost man. She
Speaker 1: excelled all of her all the air out of her
Speaker 1: long and gasped, you know. And I woke up in
Speaker 1: the hospital fourteen days later after a car but it
Speaker 1: was it was really clear to me, as like I said,
Speaker 1: that proves to me that what I drew does look
Speaker 1: like what's on that album, you know, which is a
Speaker 1: photograph of a real person in real life. And yeah,
Speaker 1: she just she just couldn't get over it. Man, she
Speaker 1: had to sit out. So from there I just started drawing,
Speaker 1: you know, everything, all these different faces and people were amazed.
Speaker 1: And then I got into I started drawing cartoons on
Speaker 1: my own, just for myself, for things that I thought
Speaker 1: were funny. I got that's really funny. I made it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's my humor. I thought of it, and
Speaker 1: I put it down in a cartoon, and I said,
Speaker 1: I think that's funny. And I'd show them to people
Speaker 1: and most people would go, h, this is this is
Speaker 1: freaking funny, man. You should do more of these. But
Speaker 1: but a whole lot of people would look at it
Speaker 1: go I don't get it. I don't even get it.
Speaker 1: And even if I explained it to them, they've got
Speaker 1: I still don't get it. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I understand.
Speaker 1: It's just just a it's a thing that you get
Speaker 1: it or you don't. But I found it. You know,
Speaker 1: people really really enjoy the cartoons, man, and they do
Speaker 1: some more, do some more. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the photography I ended up doing, is that people really
Speaker 1: enjoy your photography, especially if it's done well of them,
Speaker 1: or especially mainly if it's done of their children. They
Speaker 1: go absolute bonkers and nuts over good photos of their kids.
Speaker 1: And and I just pleased me to know and to
Speaker 1: be able to like produce these and give these to
Speaker 1: these people and make them happy, you know. And I
Speaker 1: was never able to charge anybody of anything for my photography.
Speaker 1: It's just the way he was. But the cartoons and
Speaker 1: the drawings. It was the same thing. People have got
Speaker 1: so much enjoyment out of it. That's it became a
Speaker 1: thing that I could always do in a certain settings,
Speaker 1: in certain surroundings. Great Icebreaker. I did a few obscure
Speaker 1: ones when I was on my My My Green Beret teams.
Speaker 1: I didn't really start getting heavy into it until I
Speaker 1: was at Key West working with the Dive Academy. I've
Speaker 1: really started getting into it there. So many situations were happening,
Speaker 1: you know, there's just so much going on, and I
Speaker 1: found humor in just the majority of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: we had we had a mix there. We had some seals,
Speaker 1: a couple of seals. They're builded from the teams, so
Speaker 1: there was always that petty and yet harmless rivalry, you know,
Speaker 1: joking between the two. So I started doing the cartoons.
Speaker 1: Guys were going nuts. They loved it, and I just
Speaker 1: started putting in a binder, a black binder on the bar.
Speaker 1: I would get requests every day, you know, from people George,
Speaker 1: you got to do a cartoon, you know, like okay,
Speaker 1: what happened, tell me what happened, and to tell me
Speaker 1: this situation. And I would think about it and I'd
Speaker 1: put something down on paper that I thought was humorous
Speaker 1: and people were donuts over it. But one of the
Speaker 1: harder parts about it is that guys would come up
Speaker 1: and they would they would explain how the cartoons should look,
Speaker 1: you know, and that would never go over well with me,
Speaker 1: just it didn't sound funny the way explained it. Just
Speaker 1: just tell me the story and I'll put it together.
Speaker 1: So you have to yeah, yeah, like, hey, draw a
Speaker 1: picture of Bill walking on the beach, and who's he's saying? Here?
Speaker 1: I am walking on the beach. And it needs more.
Speaker 1: It needs a little more. Man have the have to
Speaker 1: have the flood tide, like going in the opposite direction,
Speaker 1: saying we're not going there. That guy, I don't know something.
Speaker 1: It has to have something that's funny. People were almost
Speaker 1: demanding him in Key West, they just like, hey, where's
Speaker 1: the cartoon on on yesterday's incident? Like working on it?
Speaker 1: Give me a break. And that carried over really well
Speaker 1: to Delta, you know, since I was a nobody again,
Speaker 1: you know, a new guy and nobody, and they had
Speaker 1: a bar. Just like in Key West. The first opportunity
Speaker 1: I had to do one, I would do the cartoons
Speaker 1: and I would hang them on the bulletin board, and
Speaker 1: the guys would walk by, and I think I had
Speaker 1: a big kick out of it. So I started saving
Speaker 1: him once again at a Black Binder, and the popularity
Speaker 1: was just as as good as great, if not better
Speaker 1: than it was at Key West. You know again, guys
Speaker 1: would they would be standing by the empty bulletin board,
Speaker 1: you know, just hanging out by the empty bulletboard. He's
Speaker 1: got to stick it up here somewhere. We want to
Speaker 1: be the first ones to see it, the mass sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And U, yeah, I didn't be on bullet
Speaker 1: board for an amount of time, say a couple of days,
Speaker 1: that I would put it in the book, and I
Speaker 1: could never walk through the crisis lounge and not see
Speaker 1: somebody thumbing through the book. And guys from other squadrons
Speaker 1: would actually come in, Hey, where's the book. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: right here, to help yourself, and they would flipped through it,
Speaker 1: ha ha and have a great time. And Pat McNamara, simultaneously,
Speaker 1: right across the spine the squad was doing the very
Speaker 1: same thing. He's an amazing cartoonist, that guy, and he
Speaker 1: put together a book for b Squad and it's badass
Speaker 1: and There was actually a third guy over in C
Speaker 1: Squad that made himself the C Squad representative, and he
Speaker 1: tried to keep keep up, carry on the tradition, keep
Speaker 1: up the tradition, tradition of developing a cartoon book. And
Speaker 1: we came together and presented to the command that we
Speaker 1: would like to combine all three squadrons cartoons into one
Speaker 1: publication and put it in print, and we would keep
Speaker 1: it in house and you know, give it, give it
Speaker 1: out as uh, you know, gifts to visitors, to the
Speaker 1: I p s, to that sort of make it available,
Speaker 1: talk to the unit members that they could get themselves
Speaker 1: a copy. And the command flat turned us down, just
Speaker 1: like that, just saiting now. And I thought, fucking you,
Speaker 1: that really loved me the wrong way. Man, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just I forget who was in charge at the time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Barge Well, it was not Eldon barge Well,
Speaker 1: but oh I was. I thought that this is like
Speaker 1: the greatest thing, and they just piste it away for
Speaker 1: some bullshit officer reason. You know, it won't even make
Speaker 1: sense if we asked them to explain it to us.
Speaker 1: I was bitter about that. It wasn't even so much
Speaker 1: as my stuff. But it's like, you know, these other
Speaker 1: two guys, that's it's really good stuff. And to not
Speaker 1: preserve that in some organized fashion it's a big it's
Speaker 1: a great, big screw you, and it's a mistake. And
Speaker 1: in the end given them to software. And I'm really
Speaker 1: I'm really here, you are. People have been enjoying them immensely.
Speaker 1: I'm just really happy that I'm just not the only
Speaker 1: one sitting in my room sucking my thumb and flipping
Speaker 1: through my old cartoons and I get to push them
Speaker 1: out to people and I got I get some really
Speaker 1: great feedback from the folks. You know, if you know,
Speaker 1: the command back at Brag is upset. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, man, I gotta tell him, fuck you,
Speaker 1: you had your chance, you insulted me, and that this
Speaker 1: is what happens now with cartoons. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: in house, it's out of house. Some hard truth right there. Well, George,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us on the podcasts. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: my man, I'm telling you, it's great to be able
Speaker 1: to kick back, you push, sit down the pencil, you know,
Speaker 1: and not not just be smoking through writing all the time.
Speaker 1: And because as you know, our boss is a real
Speaker 1: slave driver. Yeah. If I find like you you ought
Speaker 1: to be hung, I can tell you that you ought
Speaker 1: to be hung. Yeah I was. I wish it's set
Speaker 1: up a lynch party, a lynching party, pitchforks and torches
Speaker 1: right off there. It's a real privilege for me to
Speaker 1: be asked to be on a podcast, man, So thank
Speaker 1: you very much. I'm indetit to you, sir. Thank you man.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: You've them listening to self red Radio. New episodes up
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