Transcript for:
Jocko Podcast: SEAL Team Experiences in Ramadi

This is Joo podcast number 486 with me Joo Willink. In October of 2006, tasking to Bruiser was turning over with our replacements from SEAL team 5 and Leif had been at team five and had just deployed with team five and Tony had been at team five and you know it's the team so we kind of know some of their boys and their task unit but it was definitely going to be a different type of turnover because it had been a different type of deployment and the guys from team five had been back in San Diego reading the afteraction reports for months and they had read about what had been happening in Rammani, the enemy contacts, the gunfights, the killing, the casualties, the enemy casualties and of course the the friendlies killed in action and wounded in action. And these guys from team five had many of them gone to the funerals and memorial services for our guys from task unit bruiser. And when they showed up, of course, we wanted to stay longer. We wanted to keep fighting, but that's not the way it works. And we spent, I don't know, couple weeks downloading as much information as we could to them, trying to give them a good turnover. And and I remember the first kind of full muster when all the guys because guys come guys show up in theater in bits and pieces many cases. So it was like the first full muster of the team five task unit and I was we were kind of giving the official turnover brief and I was talking about the optempo and I was talking about the relationships with the army and the marine corps and how important those were and I was talking about the strategic impact of the battle. And I remember telling some them something very direct. I told them you will take casualties. And it it seemed a little strange telling telling them that because I I wondered to myself, you know, before I told them that, is this defeist to tell them that? Is is it like it's unavoidable? It's a foregone conclusion. Maybe it would scare some of the guys. And I kind of debated whether I should tell them that or not. But I decided ultimately that it was the right thing to do because it was the truth. The fighting was so heavy. The enemy was so immersed in the city. If you were out there day after day, night after night, eventually the odds would come into play and men would be wounded or killed. And they needed to know that. And I thought to myself that at a minimum they would think about how to handle it when it did happen. And I hoped it would land hard enough that it would maximize their focus for planning and preparation and execution. And like I said, we poured into them, you know, at every level. the comm guys talking to the comm guys, the snipers talking to the snipers, the the senior enlisted guys talking to the senior enlisted guys, the officers talking to the officers trying to turn over the tactics, the techniques, the procedures that we were using, the loopholes, the the radio procedures, the breaching protocols, the common enemy tactics, the best practices for for planning and executing operations. Everything that we could, we tried to give to them. And then we said, "Good luck. Godspeed." And I left with the last group of troops from tasking a bruiser cuz we also go home sort of in in bits. And I last with left with the last group of tasking a bruiser guys on October 21st, 2006. And we get home and of course it's a a it's a whole another kind of administrative drama going home. You got to do turn-in gear and you got to do debriefs and there's a bunch of administrative things you got to turn over. But of course we're tracking trying to pay attention to what's going on with the boys that that relieved us, the guys from team five, but you're also, you know, interacting with your family again. And so you're you're you're you have other things to do. But a few weeks later on November 19th, 2006, we got word that an operation for them had gone sideways. An overwatch position had been hit. There was, you know, we got reports that there was grenades, there was small arms, massive IED, severely wounded guys. It was really kind of heart-wrenching to hear it. And also because the the military rumor mill, it was hard to figure out what actually was going on. The story was all over the place place. You know, some was like a bunch of guys were dead. Then another one was no guys were dead and then no one was wounded that bad and then guys were wounded really bad. It took a while for the information to settle and it went something like this. The guys were out on an overwatch position and they had been attacked. uh guy got wounded and then they called the army for casualty evacuation and when they were going to load the evacuation vehicle hit a massive IED and it killed some Iraqi soldiers and severely wounded two SEALs and it sounded like a nightmare and that nightmare has now been captured for everyone to see in a movie that just came out and it's called Warfare and it was written and directed by a guy named Raymond Mendoza, Ray Ray. He He's also a guy that made a a while ago he made a show uh on the History Channel called War Fighters and he did one episode that was called Charlie Patoon and the story of Mark Lee. Well, he was also wrote and directed this movie Warfare. And this movie Warfare, he was on that operation. And this movie depicts that single operation and it's really depicts it with no holds barred. Uh there's no there's no sugar coating anything that goes on in that movie. It is ground truth. It is rough to watch and it includes everything includes the horrible wounds that were suffered by the two SEALs that day Elliot Miller and Joe Hildebrand. And Joe received devastating injuries to his legs. And Elliot suffered severe injuries throughout his body. He got shrapnel. He got grievous burns, wounds that eventually resulted in the loss of his leg. And he also received traumatic brain injury that impaired his motor skills and significantly inhibited his ability to speak. But thankfully both of them survived through the hard work of the guys on the ground with them and the army and the Marine Corps risking their lives to go and help out. They made it. And it's an honor to have both of them here to share their stories, their lessons learned, and their thoughts on the movie that captures this horrific story. Joe Elliot, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it, boys. Um, now for Elliot, since his speech is inhibited by his brain injury, I asked him a bunch of questions beforehand and he wrote out some answers, um, which I I'm going to read through. And then he's got also got an an iPad that he uses to communicate and insult the people around him and make fun of everybody, which is fine. But, uh, let's get into it. Let's get into some background. So, thanks for coming down, guys. Really appreciate it. It's good to It's good to see you both. Um, let's start with you, Elliot. So, I I was asking about where where what your background was, where you came from, and you said this. Uh, I was born the third out of four kids into a modest family. We lived on a small farm in southern Illinois where we had some heads of cattle as well as a little amount of agricultural land. It was there that I developed my love of the outdoors and hunt, shooting, and hunting. I was always very interested in firearms as my grandmother on my mom's side was a Marine or sorry my grandfather on my mom's side was a Marine. He was probably the reason I had become a Marine which we're going to find out that you you joined the Marine Corps. And I had and he had fought on the island of Tarwa and Saipan too. I believe he had a small shop in town where he sold guns and other knickknacks. I was thinking what what's besides like what do you sell? Guns and like uh ramen noodles. What's going on there? Zippo lighters. Zippo lighters and ramen noodles. Uh, it's like a country store where you happen to have 12 gauges in the in the back and plug a tobacco. Yeah. And he also sold some food as well. Check. So, you can get a ham a hamburger and a 9 mil. Uh you say my a my younger brother and I would go to work for him almost every day during the summer and then one day he just decided he was going to retire. So we had a big auction where he sold oh hell I don't know let's just say somewhere in the neighborhood between four and 500 or so firearms as well as some other stuff that he acquired over the years but I don't require I don't recall anything other than that. You say I was also in the scouts where I had obtained the rank of Eagle Scout which would pay off for me in the very near future as I was promoted to E2 right out of boot camp. I put in a lot of work to make Eagle Scout and just get E2 out of it. That's harder work than going to college and those people get a commission which is just a eightmon, you know, eight months later you get advanced. Uh, which in that back in those days meant around 150 bucks a month raise, which was a lot. Um, so what about you, Joe? Where'd you grow up? So, I grew up in Arkansas. Small town, 556 people. Um, definitely country living. Mhm. Yeah. What'd your parents do? So, my dad would didn't really do a whole lot of work outside of He was retired from a Caterpillar tractor company and my mom worked for a uh she does like used cars. How many brothers and sisters? I got one brother. He's older. And what what sports were you playing growing up? So, I played baseball. Um, any good? I was pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I I was I was pretty decent. I liked it. Um, but as I got a little bit older, I figured out I could I could do work instead of play baseball and fund uh you know, some some beverages for the weekends and pay for gas so I could go dirt roading with my friends. What kind of car do you have? I had a uh well, my first vehicle was a 1979 Chevy Love. I traded a horse for it. A 19 That was that little tiny uh truck. Yeah. Yeah. Had a Mitsubishi motor in it. The hood opened backwards like a Corvette. Had big buckshot mutters on it. Elliot first vehicle. What was it? Maybe he had some kind of a a pimp car like, you know, like a Camaro or something like that. Yeah, it's a Chevy something. Oh, S10. That was close. There you go. That's That's the Chevy's version. Yeah. Well, that's actually the version ahead of my my Chevy love. The next thing was an S10. 1985 Chevy S10 Blazer. Check. That's a That's a womanizing vehicle right there, bro. Uh, how did you find out about the So, you didn't I know you you end up joining um just the regular Navy? Yes. Did you know you wanted to be a CB? No. Okay. No. So, I was, you know, post high school, small town, was white. Check. So, small town Arkansas, there wasn't much future there. So, you either, you know, go get out of high school and just go to work at a local whatever company and stay there or and I didn't I didn't want to do that. So, I knew the Navy was a way to get out of there and go do something. And uh I I had read some books about the SEAL teams and that was something that was pretty interesting to me. Um but at the time, I just needed to to get out of the town and I was doing construction so kind of the easy translation was the Navy CBS. Yep. Yeah. The CBS is a great job. a great job for people to get and a great opportunity and they they got a cool job in the military, too. Like, one thing that's cool about the CBS is you get to do your job for real all the time. You're building stuff. So, all right, Elliot. So, you obviously didn't know about the SEAL teams yet cuz you end up joining the Marine Corps. You say this. So, I joined the Marine Corps in 198 1996, straight out of high school as an infantryman, but I was actually just like a lav crewman, light armored vehicle crewman. Went on two deployments to Oki. One in 97 and again in 99, but on number two, I was the MU the MU platoon. So, I got to go to Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines. No combat or anything like that. I mean, that was the Clinton era. That was me too. Uh I did I did some time in the in the actually I actually got the tail end of the first bush 19 I joined in 1990. So yeah, not a lot going on, but I'm sure there was things some things going on in Australia in the Philippines from that smirk for Lance Corporal Corporal Elliot over here. Corporal Miller. Uh you say then then I got out of the crotch which is a slang term for the Marine Corps. I got out of the crotch and moved back home southern Illinois to go to college at SIU for just one year but I couldn't stand not having to carry a weapon. So I got the hairrained idea that I would become an LAPD officer. How come you didn't want to come a local officer? Because I wanted some action. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I remember in the '9s, you know, we would look at the LAPD. the LAPD SWAT team, the Seals would work with them back in the day and they were getting, you know, they do a bunch of hits every month, so pretty good call. You you figured that out. Um, back to what you were saying here. So, I packed my [ __ ] along with a friend and we set out for LA. Then along the way, and I mean that too, as we were driving through Arizona, those chicken [ __ ] flew into the World Trade Center. So almost immediately I went into the recruiter's office there in Roondo Beach and my original intention was to reinlist the Marines, but they told me that if I was to reinlist, I would have to go back to E3. So I told them to get [Laughter] [ __ ] and walked right next door to the Navy and told them that I wanted Buds and Corman, too. So I had to go to core school in Great Lakes first, which was a joke, but I I got that done and reported to Buds in March of O2 and finished in November. for that same year. Yeah, dude. That's right. No roll backs for me. Made it through in one shot, huh? It's legit. So, you must have been what? 24 23. 24 years old when I graduated, buds. Chuck. So, that's that's probably average. I don't know. That's probably average cuz there's not many guys that actually graduate that are young. Most of guys are like 23, 24, 25. I think those were the kind of prime years. Yeah. Especially back then. Yeah. Um and so but you Joe, so that's what you did. So Joe, you join the Navy, you go to boot camp, you end up in the CBS. Um and then how long you how long did you spend in the CBS for? So about almost six years. So cuz I went I went to Camp David. So I didn't really get into the full CB work like in a battalion. So I went to Camp David, worked for the president there. Uh did that for two years. What did you do there? So, Camp David's 100, it's 99% military. So, there's one person that comes and plays an organ, you know, for for church, but everybody else is military. So, you maintain the whole facility. Got it. So, I was brand new to the Navy. So, I was the junior guy at the camp. So, basically, all the young guys were mowing grass and I got to go learn how to take care of a golf green. So, I took care of the president's golf green. There's two of us. And there was only one green. Dang. Seven seven T's. Yeah. What a weird way to kick off your Navy career, huh? Really weird. really weird, but it was it was it was cool. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Looking back, it was a great great time. Yeah. And then from there, you went to a CB battalion. So, I ended up going to Guam. So, I went I headed overseas and did um worked in Guam and then from there back um to a CB unit and then to Buds from there. At what point did you like make the decision that you were going so to going to BUDS? Yeah. So early on, you know, every every day was a battle like you love the Navy, you hate the Navy, and um can't wait to get out, can't, you know, and then and then I realized, you know, I was in the CBS. I loved I loved the CBS, but I realized if I wanted to join the Marine Corps, I would have joined the Marine Corps. So, cuz they're very structured. And then I saw a SEAL platoon and I'm like, "Oo, I like, you know, you knew what SEALs do cuz you read the books." Um, but when you actually see them, you're like, "Wow, you guys are grown-ups." They treat you like grown-ups. You talk to each other like grown-ups. I'm like, "That's what I want to do." [ __ ] So then um I went to I was at self-help um which is a CV based or CV job in PointLoma and then I got my orders to Buds from there. And what class were you in? 244. So I was just just just um behind Elliot a couple class. Right on. Right on. Um any big challenges for you. Well, you're like a freaking stud athlete. I tried to be. Yeah. Like Okay. You're being humble, but you're even even like talking to guys talking to Lelay from Team Five. He's like, "Yeah, you'd go on a like they'd be doing an ocean swim. Team five would do an ocean and you would do the ocean swim with no fins and still beat 90% of the people, which is totally ridiculous. That's like being on a motorcycle versus a bicycle." And he said, "And anyone that you didn't beat or anyone that beat you on the swim, you just destroy them on the run." And where did Were you Did you do triathlons or something? I did. Yeah. So, I did um just I enjoyed it, you you know, I enjoyed working out and that was just kind of part of my life. Um, post small town living and you know, once I got in the military, I'm like, "Oh, you know, I enjoy this. I'm actually I realized I'm actually kind of good at it." Um, so that Yeah. So So you didn't start that until you didn't you didn't run track or cross country in high school or anything. No swim team, nothing like that. Well, so I I I was on a track team in in high school for a short amount of time, but we I was a fat kid, so we weren't, you know, I was not crushing it. So matter of fact, our town may remember I told you it's 556 people. um one of the you know so it was we didn't even have a track so I got on this track team I don't know how I got on it and we had a little there was a little road just by the school that we would go run our track on but there was a little restaurant there so I would go over there and just sit and eat ice cream at this little store I wasn't even running and then um and then I had this big event it was the mile and I was going to run the mile and I'm sitting on the bus you know track meets are all day long you're sitting there and I'm just sitting on the bus waiting for my time to go well end up getting in a fight with a kid so I punched him in the case then then the the coach wouldn't let me go run my one event. So I ended that was my whole track career. So I ended up yeah not running track. But you know to be fair as I got a little bit older in in high school um I did I did not like being overweight. So I figured that I figured out real quick if I go run you know it was helping me manage that weight and get back to get into some sort of shape. And then it became something that I don't know if I just internally challenged myself but it became easy. And then when I did eventually run with people in the Navy I was like wow these people are slow. I didn't know I was I didn't know I was fast. I thought, "Wow, you know, these people are slow." And then I realized actually, you know, was a pretty decent runner. It's more of a natural thing. What So, was Buds What did What challenged you in Buds? Like, if you're good at running and swimming, that's real nice. Yeah, it was real nice. Well, yes. And then, you know, because I ran so much, lower extremity injuries wasn't I was not prone to those. So, I didn't, you know, I had no I had no issues. I thought Buds was Well, for me, coming from the CBS had a good work ethic to start with. I just remember, you know, just laying in the water and people quitting and thinking, well, I'm getting paid to do this. And I could see where I just came from across the bay there in Pointlman. I'm like, I'm not going back to that. So, you know, I did not think Buds was that hard. I think the if I was to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me and Buds was the dirty name. And that was something and that was something I got over real quick. You know, I cracked some ribs on it to start with. I didn't understand it, but after that, yeah, I thought Buds was fun. What was your biggest challenge, Elliot, in Buds? Leif said it was keeping your mouth shut. That's still his challenge. Swimming. Yeah. That's what I'm surprised with you, Joe. Like for someone that didn't grow up in the water, didn't grow up on the swim. For to win swims is a big deal. Like that's a big deal. That's challenging. I spent a lot of time in the water, so I've always been comfortable in the water and always been good swimming. So, and I started doing Iron Man. So, I did five Iron Man before I went to Buds. As a disclaimer, I did them all in one year. So, you know, I got trained up just just started crushing them. Freaking epic. But I think for me, if you to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me is I was 27 in butts. So, those are dog years. Anything over, you know, anything over 25 is dog years. So, you know, those young kids are, you know, they'll go get beat up during the day and then they go out and drink at night. I'm like icing and like, okay, it's not the same. Uh, fast forward a little bit. So, you guys get done with Buds. Elliot, you say after that, so you get done with Buds. After that, I got my jump wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was back to Coronado so I could get my trident, which I did in May of 03. Since I was a corman, I had to go back across the country yet again for my additional medical training at Fort Bragg North Kakalaki for about another 6 or so months. So after that, I got sent back to Coronado to Team 5 and was assigned a Bravo platoon where I did two platoon. The first of which was split. The first part we did PSD for the interim VP of Iraq and yeah that sucked but that only lasted a couple months because then we got slotted to go to Paycom. We left Iraq and headed to Guam. And so this is kind of this is how you knew Leif. Did you were you in buds with Leif too? So you guys were in buds together and I think Leif actually knew that you were when you were at medical school, he kind of talked and figured out a way to get you put into his platoon with Zi and Ray Ray. And so you guys got a little core group of new guys in there. Was that Were you a new guy in that platoon, too? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This first platoon. Yep. ESR Bob. That's right. Uh you guys had a good little crew then. Um you say from there I'd gone to Thailand, South Korea and finally to Singapore. Also whilst in Guam I was hiloed down on the USS San Francisco. It was a submarine that had actually hit an underwater sea mountain and one of the crew had smashed his head into something and in doing so that pretty much killed him. But that doesn't mean I didn't try everything I could to save him up to and including giving giving him a tracheotomy. But that was to no avail. So I had to pack him up and send him off to get pronounced dead. So this was a interesting event that took place. It was 8th January 2005. The USS San Francisco was going max speed and I think that's classified but it's fast. and it hit a a damn undersea mountain that wasn't on the charts or and it was at a depth of 525 ft. They they almost lost the vessel. Mhm. It was a And I was looking at pictures of it yesterday. Like it was all jacked up. Oh, yeah. It looked like a car getting in a head-on collision going 50 m or probably 45 or 50 miles an hour. That's how bad it looked. Uh, were you the were you the only guy that went on or did you send all the medics you had? No, we also got the group dive medical officer down there, too. Got it. Got it. Um, ultimately, like you said, machinist mate, second class Joseph Ashley, 24 of Akran, Ohio, was killed in that in that tragedy. Um, and so he's a medic. What was your job in platoon in your first platoon? So because I was so senior, um I was an E6 going through BUDS. So I eventually become the LPO in my first platoon. Oh, really? Yeah. When you say eventually, did someone make chief or No. So our LPO got relieved. Got it. Yeah. So I just kind of took over. That's that's pretty impressive to step up. But that was all because I believed that the seas were too rough. Yeah. Yeah. Um so I started off as first lieutenant. Got it. So I was running first lieutenant and then eventually I took over the LPO. Mhm. Yeah. That's that's that's a big step, man. Yeah. To go from new guy to LPO. Yeah. How'd the boys like that? So, the interesting thing is, you know, talking about the core guys, you know, all of us new guys that got there. Um, we were new to the SEAL teams, but we, none of us were new to the military. So, everybody had some, you know, life experience, some military experience. So, there was a lot of maturity there. To be honest, I think the core group getting there had more maturity than some of the older guys. And uh well to be honest it's 100% true. So the core you know we all there was not a power struggle. I think when the LPO was relieved I think everybody was kind of you know how it is like you have that person everybody already knows they need to be relieved and then once he was relieved it was kind of like this sigh of relief and the two senior guys we had was really really one senior guy. Um they didn't want the responsibility you know so they they were kind of like all about just you know falling in line. Yeah. it it the dynamics in SEO platoon and it's I' now that I've seen so much leadership in so many different organizations it's like if someone is stepping up if there's a leadership vacuum and someone steps up and it's going to make things happen and they're they're listening they're not being arrogant it's like it works fine in fact that's what that's what officers do right the officer the junior officers they don't have any experience and yet they're supposed to step up and lead and as long as they do it and humble and they listen they take advice like it works yeah I felt like it was you know they the guys want leadership and they don't care where it come So it didn't have to have, you know, have the because I certainly didn't have the experience, the team experience, but I had leadership experience from being in the CBS for so long. So and that first deployment you guys did half the time in Iraq doing PSD and half the time in Guam doing exercises. And I know uh Leif was telling me that he he and a couple other guys Elliot was one of them went up to Samara and did some sniper operations. Nothing really huge great happened, but he was uh at least excited to be able to do that. Did you guys did you get in on some DAs at least or something like that in Iraq? Yeah. So unfortunately I did not because I was I eventually me and uh Kevin Katy our OIC we took the principal he was from London so we ended up spending we did a whirlwind tour of London and Saudi Arabia all these places but we moved the platoon over to um to where they could do DA with team 3 cuz team 3 was deployed at the same time that we were there doing PSD. Right on. So they got to go do some DA. So you were like doing fullon just diplomatic wearing a suit the whole nine yards. So yes. Yes. But it was, you know, it wasn't too bad. We got to some countries like, you know, England. You just turned them right over to Scotland Yard and, you know, we're just off just like hanging out. So that's crazy. You You had a freaking weird career. Like that's weird doing the freaking golf course thing. I know. And then and now you're going to London. It gets weirder. Yeah. We peel it apart. It gets weirder. Weird. Yeah. Um, so you guys get done with that deployment. Uh, you get home, Elliot. You say, "After I got done with my first platoon, I'd gone to sniper school as well as some other schools and then deployed to Iraq in the fall of '06 where we were supporting the army's first brigade, first armored division, providing sniper sniper overwatch." You say, "Now, this is where things get funky because I don't have any kind of recollection of what happened to me on my day. The last memory I have of Iraq is that of my room and all the pornographic photos I had up on my wall in my little cubby. none of nothing of any missions that I had gone on and especially nothing and I mean zero recollection of the day when I was blowed up. So they say that it'll come back but I'm not buying it just because Joe Hildebrandt who was also injured though not nearly to the extent that I was has told me the story probably a dozen [ __ ] times and then I'll just like forget. Yeah, dude. TBI is a real [ __ ] [Music] [ __ ] Uh I want to talk a little bit about preparing uh preparing for Rammani as you guys are getting ready to go there. As I mentioned earlier, you know, and I didn't really think too much about this while I was in Ramadi that our afteractions reports like one of my buddies when I got back, he's like, "Dude, we were reading those things to the command daily." Yeah. Um, what was that like for you like as you're hearing the [ __ ] that's going on and and you guys know where you're going? So, I can I can probably speak for the whole platoon at the time. You know, we were reading that stuff and it was the most real anything had ever been in our lives because we know what we were preparing to go do and there was no shortcuts. We were, you know, we were honing our skills. We were sharpening our knives, um, learning how to keep our powder dry every single day. And it was not, you know, ult was a whole new beast for us at the time because, you know, we' taken diving out. We just whittleled it down to like what really is important. And then we were taking that time for SIT, which, you know, it wasn't called SIT back then, but we were taking that that integration time to really hone down on what we're learning from your afteraction reports and uh to try to be as as mentally and physically and, you know, tactically prepared as we possibly could be. And you know, even for the rest of my career, I don't know, you know, we always, you always think, you know, even as platoon chief, I was trying to focus my platoon on what really matters, but that was a time where, you know, you were really paying attention to to every little detail. Um, yeah. I I think that I mean, I did seven deployments and it there was no time where I was in your guys's shoes, which is like even when we were going to Romani, oh, I knew it was bad, but it was sort of bad in a good way, you know? Oh, there's lots of bad guys there and it's going to be a great deployment. And so I kind of had that feeling, not the And by the way, we only found out we were going to Romani 2 weeks before we deployed. So we were really focused on Baghdad and Baghdad. I had been to Baghdad and kind of done the same kind of operations that were done in Baghdad. So it was very much okay, cool, like it's going to be a great deployment. But then we find out we're going to Romani and you know, we get a we barely even had time to talk to guys that were over there. no uh pre-eployment site survey. We just show up and it was real obvious when we got there though, like okay and and I knew it. I I mean I knew how bad it was because you're you're seeing the casualty reports in Albar province and most of them are most of the casualties are in Ramani but I don't I never went on a deployment where like you guys knew 100% what you were getting into as much as a human being can know what it's going to be like and there's only so much you can convey. You know I was talking to a kid that was going through pool comp. He was gonna go through pool comp and I said, "Hey man, like it is pool comp is really really messed up in buds and you know the kid's like you know he's a surfer and comfortable in the water and he was doing good in all the other aspects and he's like it's you know how bad can it be type thing and he failed it. He failed at the first one, failed the second one. finally passed on the third try and I said to him I was like hey you know I tried to tell you how messed up pool comp was and he looked at me and said nothing you could have told me would have conveyed to me how [ __ ] up pool comp is and so so I feel like that was kind of where you guys were at like we're trying we're telling you guys hey you know it's gnarly and as much as you guys could possibly understand that you guys understood it well you know I I think we fully understood it because you know after action reports They're always getting and they're always inflated. They're always, you know, trying to make something, you know, we did this J set or whatever and you build it up to do it. We did all these things. But this was the first time that we were reading these after action reports. We knew it was true. The these things were very truthful and this is what we were preparing to go do. And I think that was across the board. Everybody knew that. Mhm. I got some uh I got some emails between Elliot and Leif and Leif and Elliot. Uh this one is from Elliot to Leif May 17th. So this is like we're only a couple we're like a month and a half into deployment from Elliot to Leif. Damn, dude. What are you tasking the bruiser dudes doing over there? All the different rumors and stories we're getting back here on the Strand make it sound like blood, spit, and ass are just flying everywhere you go, including Ciao. Good stuff. Too bad about Kowi. So Kawi was in your buds class with Leif and Elliot and uh he was wounded bad in May of 2006. Um you said too bad about Kawi. Anyways, dude. Anyway, dude, holler back whenever you get the chance. And then Leif wrote back that day, bro. What's happening? You guys finished up with ult. We're doing a lot, man. There's a few places out here there in Cow Town that are going to need a little remodeling. If you guys are headed out to leave us, then you are set because this is the place to be. Downtown has got some crazy [ __ ] going on. How are things in Sand Dog? Fast forward a little bit. July 24th from from Elliot, dude. And I'm not 100% sure what this means, dude. You boys got the top down with your lean on or what? Uh, for those of you that don't know, and I'm I'm assuming this is a gangster rap thing because Leif Babin is like a gangster rap uh affectionado. Yeah. And uh so I'm assuming that's a gangster rap thing. Got your top down with your lean on. Yeah. Uh we be hearing good stuff coming out of your hood. Just try and save some for your old boys in Bravo. We don't want to get over there. You guys have turned that place into a ghost town. All the fellas are doing good though and everyone gives you a shout. I'll tell them you said what's up. Anyhow, take care, dude. And it's funny this you can't It's very hard to understand the mind of team guys where that's, you know, he's kind of half joking. Elliot's kind of half joking, but like leave some for us. Like, you know what I mean? That's the attitude. Um, Leif replied, Elliot, all is good here. Lots of shooting going on regularly. Always a good time. Be ready to get your sniper on. Make sure the 300 Win Mag is doped in as you should be putting her to good use. Slap Al in the nuts for me. Keep it real and take it to the house. Uh, fast forward a little bit. And again, this is what's happening as you guys are preparing to deploy. And do you know when you guys found out you were going to relieve us when that like got confirmed? I don't remember exactly when it was. I mean, it was I think it was like later in ult, but we knew I think because, you know, um our leadership was very keen on people knowing where they're going as early as possible. It wasn't that little game at the end, you know. Yep. I think about 6 months out was when we knew. Check. Um Yeah. And that's basically when we got there. So, as we got there, you guys were probably, "All right, let's see what these guys are doing." And then you're tracking. Uh here's another email. This one's from August 19th from Elliot. Sorry to hear about everything. And that right there is just a reference to Mark Lee and Ryan Job, you know, uh, Ryan getting wounded so bad and Mark getting killed on August 2nd. Uh, but I'm glad to hear you're all right. Everyone was pretty anxious to get over there and replace you guys so we can put a little hurt on, too. Got to admit, though, TU Bruiser has set a hard set the bar good and high. But who are we kidding? You're only as good as I taught you, young Jedi. Well, as usual, I don't have much to say. Take care, brother. And always remember, Elvis isn't dead. Mickey Mouse is really a master conspirator of communis communism, and Chuck Norris is just a [ __ ] actor. Have fun, dude. Leif replied the same day, E-rex, which is one of your nicknames. Your other nickname is Booger, which you get that got that from your parents? No. Who gave you the nickname Booger? One of the things you wrote, Ereex. Thanks for your words, brother. Rough times here, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be long I don't remember just you just became booger at some point. But I think that it was Dave Tindle and Zawi who gave me that nickname because I had said one time that I wanted to booger some chicks and then it stuck with me. Fair enough. Uh reply to that email. Another nickname that you had was E-Rex. Uh, it said, this is from Leif Rex. Thanks for your words, brother. Rough times, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be lots to do here as long as your headshed lets you do it. Depends on how much risk they want to run. Obviously, it's some dangerous [ __ ] As always, I'm still your daddy. Enjoy your last six weeks in the world and we'll see you out here soonest. Give a shout out to Al, Ray, Ray, Casey, Jojo, and Baby Lou for me. Peace out, your grandappy. Um, so there was still the rest of that was that was in August that you sent that email. There's still August the rest of August, September, October before you guys deployed and we would send home more wounded and of course um September 29th Mikey Monsour was killed. Were you guys still did you guys go go to his funeral? Yeah. um that I mean I just can't imagine a more sobering pre-eployment event. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough watching the guys, too. Um you know, we're getting ready to step out the door and seeing that seeing him come back and go to his funeral and Yeah, it was hard. It was hard to keep keep focused on what was on what was going on or where we're going, but it was also a good way to focus on where we're going. So, it was it was it was a hard time, though. So you guys show up. Um, do you do you remember me saying like, "Hey, you're going to take casualties?" I don't know. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That happened right as we got there. We We did a quick So Elliot and I when we got on the ground there, we got back over to to Mark Lee and we reorged really quick cuz we headed to Corrior um to go turn over Seth. Y So yeah, that that happened really quick. We were there. Um, how was the turnover? It was good. Yeah. I mean, it was a typical Seth turnover, you know? We uh we walked right out into a gunfight. Like, what are we doing? We just went out and u on the turnover op. We just went out just blowing loopholes everywhere, just getting after it. And I remember we got back, we're like, what the hell just happened? Like, but it was a good turnover. You know, we got out and um cuz you know, none of us had been um in any real gunfights up to that point. So, that was a good way for us to like kind of break into it. And then um and then they they were gone. You know that you know how fast that rip happened. We we basically got a lay of the land one night, two nights and it was like, "Okay, we're out." And you know, normally you have these long turnovers in places that doesn't even really matter. And this is one of them that really mattered. And but then again, it's good to get that leadership to get those people out of the way so you can, you know, start focusing on what's next. Yeah. It it definitely felt like we wanted to give you more turnover. Absolutely. I remember uh so I don't know maybe a couple weeks before you guys started showing up. We were out doing some operation and I I was like out there with the platoon and we're we're peeling back and I'm looking at the platoon, you know, I happen to be like holding security or waiting for my turn and I'm watching the platoon and you could see like they're just freaking good. You know, everyone is just so in the game mode. Yeah. That and everyone had learned a million little tiny lessons. A million little tiny lessons. Every guy had their own little thing that they'd figured out and shared. But it's just like the experience. There's no other way to get it, you know? And I I just remember thinking like, [ __ ] man. Like I like just praying like please like let it let you guys get some time to kind of uh uh get more experienced, you know, like let you get some time before [ __ ] hits the fan. And unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. The enemy doesn't give a [ __ ] In fact, the enemy knows and they can they they have their own little intel network and they all the new new group took over. They did that [ __ ] all the time when when when uh the army would start to turn over with the Iraqis somewhere or a new unit came in. It was like guaranteed you're getting hit. Yeah. And um they did that when the 111 AD showed up like new new Oh, new Humvees are out in town. Oh, those that means there's new people. That means they don't know. They're not experienced yet. And and they hit them. Um and I remember actually Leif was talking about it with me uh yesterday. You know, he was watching you guys were getting ready to head over Corodor and you know, he was just telling me like how Elliot, you were so like fired up because after however many years in the military, you're going to go and and you're a sniper. You're going to go do 100% you're going to go do the thing that we train to do. And he he was telling me he was watching you. you guys were getting ready to take your convoy over to Craigor and he's like watching you in the 50 cal turret in lock mode and you're he's he he's just sitting there looking at you and he was telling me he could see how freaking stoked you were and he was super pumped but at the same time he was just like man like it's the same feeling we all had like it's it's freaking it's it's real man and it's going to it's It's real. And just pray like we're praying for you guys. Like please just like let these guys let these guys get get their bearings. And what please let them you know you just you feel like no matter what we did in that short period of time, you just leave going damn it. You know just you know you're out in the streets in Romani and I don't even know if you guys had the opportunity to get there. We were out there so much. It was like we know exactly. you could just drop us off anywhere and it'd be like getting dropped off in, you know, by my local freaking um uh uh Starbucks. I think I know exactly where I am. I can walk home. I can go and but it takes a little bit of time to get that. But it's so useful to have that when you know exactly like you know the we knew the building numbers, you know, we know the building numbers without having to look at a battle map. That's just time and uh yeah, it was definitely it was hard to leave. It was hard to leave. Um, and by the way, one interesting fact that I always like to point out, we were we we had the siege of sodaf came down to do a visit with us. We were like had been there for maybe a month and the siege of Sodiff came down to visit and we were giving him a brief and I was in the middle of telling the the colonel that the guys out at Corodor had done 23 straight operations and had been in enemy contact on 23 straight operations. And I'm not kidding and I didn't plan this, but as I'm saying that, the talk chief comes in and is like, "Hey boss, just a heads up. The guys in Corodor are on a tick right now." And I'm like, "Roger." And I looked at the colonel. I said, "Make that 24 straight." And because that's the level of enemy and contact that was happening. So for you guys to roll out with Seth on your first operation to get a big gunfight, it's like, "Welcome to Craigor. Welcome to the Moolab." Yeah, that's exactly what it was. But you know what you were saying is interesting. You know, the combat maturity, you know, that's something that you don't typically have, you know, unless you've been in a lot of combat and even if you had every every every conflict's different. So getting that that and every deployment's different. Getting your your bearings and getting that combat maturity. Um we just didn't have it. You know, we got there and and you know, unfortunately these these rips happen on a timeline. You know, it's the you know, the the Air Force is directing, you know, how we're going to move our troops around. And this was a time that, you know, had we had the opportunity to push back and keep two platoon or or two teams deployed at one time and have that overlap by a month, you know, some, you know, and that was that would have been important, but you know, like team guys do. We figured we figured it out. Um, and luckily, you know, we you learn those lessons because there's a lot there's a lot of risk in learning those small little lessons and there's no way to pass that, you know, that knowledge quickly, you know, especially in a couple day, you know, turnover. So, but you know, God loves Frogman and you know, we were we were pretty lucky, you know, so we we we learned along the same same lines. And what was your op tempo like when those first out at Corodor those first just turning and burning right into it. You know, one of the one of the last things Seth told us and he did just right on our turnover op. He's pointing on a map like Papa 10. He's like where where Mikey got killed and that's where we got hurt. He's like don't go there. He's like Papa 10. He's like that's that's bad. He goes unless you want to go there. You know, he's like such a Seth thing to say. He's like don't go there. bad. Unless you want to go there, then go there. It's gonna be good, you know. So, we the next time we went in there was when we got hurt. So, that was definitely a gnarly little error. Oh, man. Um, what was the So, like how many how many offsets do you guys think you did between between when you landed and November 19th? Probably like 10, 12, 15. Like a bunch. A bunch. Yeah. So, you guys were racking them up. Yeah. Because, you know, sometimes you go direct action into an Overwatch. So, you know, it's like multiple operations going on. Yeah. [Applause] Uh, all right. Let's talk about this this operation that's the the subject of the movie. And if you haven't gone to see the movie, go see the movie. Go see it while it's in the theaters. Yeah, for sure. IMAX. It is. It is. I didn't get to do the IMAX thing. Maybe I'll try and find that. So, I actually went um with my wife and watched it on IMAX when it came out. Totally different than seeing it um you know, in a regular theater, but theater's still a million times better than on TV. Um, normal you guys are planning for it. Um, planning cycle goes, you probably aren't. That's that's the other thing. And some some people talk to me about the movie and they're like, well, it just kind of started and ended. I'm like, exactly. I'm like, that's exactly right. This is one day in Yeah, this is one day. And there was many, many, many, many days like this. Yeah. Um, you guys do nighttime insert, nighttime infiltration, you know, and this was this was something that was kind of new. Yeah. At the time, like going into a building, you know, what we learned in the in the '9s, you know, you're breaching everything. And even even up until that time, a lot of people, everything that you go in, you're going to smash the door and you're going to kick the door in. And we probably turned over with you guys, hey, listen. If you're Iraqi soldiers are good for anything, it's they know how to get in and out of these houses. So, they know how to open the doors. They know how to they know how to deal with, you know, the what's going to be in the courtyard and all that stuff. And that's portrayed pretty cool in the film. We didn't start off that way. We, you know, we got on the ground there and just like always, you know, we're like, "Hey, let's blow this front door through the house at 3,000 mph." And then we learned real quick like, "Hey, did you check see if doors open?" You know, it's like there's there's a lot better way. But again, that's at operational maturity. Yeah. And this another thing is I mean, we had to have told you guys, hey, listen, if you can go quiet, but guess what a breacher wants to do? Oh yeah. And and the other thing is your your propensity for risk, you know, it seems like, are you serious? You're going to walk in there like quietly? That seems crazy. let's breach the freaking door and get the advantage. Yeah. And that seems like a logical thing until you realize that you it's pretty easy to sneak in those houses. And when you breach the door, now all of a sudden you're giving away your position, etc., etc., etc. Um, and what's interesting about the movie is you're in there's there's actually two elements out there. You're set up set up in mutually supporting Overwatch positions. Um, and they only show the they only show your guys' house. That's that's the that's the whole movie. There's actually three elements. There's three elements. There's three they talk about in the movie. OP1, OP2, but there is a there is a scene in the movie where the two elements that are moving to us when they link up. That's right. That's right. One thing I've been telling people about the movie is that it doesn't give the audience any clues. No. No. There's no clues for the audience. Like a great example of that is there's Anglico. Yeah. In the building with you guys that play a pivotal role. Anglico played a pivotal role with us. like we I'm one of my great friends right now is Dave Burke who is one of our Anglico guys and you know they did scores of missions with us. There's no way that anybody that's watching that movie that doesn't know like what Jaco Willink knows knows that that's an Anglico guy. And there's no hint, you know. You know, a normal movie they'd say, "Hey, throw a piece of dialogue in there to explain that those are Anglico Marines." Like, you know, and someone would say, "Hey, check with the Anglico Marines and see what they say." Hey, Anglico Marine, what's the deal here? Well, here's what's But there's none of that. No, they just they're just like, "We're moving forward and there's no clues for the audience. Just like there's no clues about what's, you know, what's the plan? Well, no, you're on the mission. There's no clues. And it's it's um it's a different feeling for watching a movie. And I'm I have it with all my knowledge. Like, oh, I know exactly what they're doing. I freaking know that. Heyo. I know like, oh, you're in Papa 10. Oh yeah, that I was looking at some of the scenes and I was like, wait, they might have used pictures of my guys on on some of those street corners cuz like we have there's good pictures of Task Br. I was like, they might have used it looks exactly like that. It's It was exactly like it. Yeah, it's the same stuff. But the way the movie is done, you don't get those clues as the audience. You you're just immersed in it and it's a really powerful thing. Um, you know, they did a great job of your the first half hour of the movie is just like sitting on an Overwatch position. How boring. Boring. Slow. Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, man, if they they should do this for a long time. And they did. Yeah. And the other interesting thing, there's no soundtrack. Nope. No. There's just the noises. And I was I was uh reading an a interview I think it was with Ray Ray and they would like when a Hollywood when Hollywood makes a movie a shot is like one minute. Yeah. They were doing like 12 15 minute shots because they would capture what the guys were really doing. They're hot. They're they're uncomfortable. They're itching their head. They're adjusting their gear. Like that's what a actual over a watch is like. and they captured it all. They got Elliot sitting on the gun looking, scanning. Man, you want to talk about getting the blood flowing? Like, I'm sitting there watching this stuff and just like, yeah, um call to prayer [Music] comes. This stuff is just so emblematic of what these operations were like. Call to prayer comes, interpreter comes in, hey, here's what they're saying. Mhm. That's those call to prayer would be followed by like, hey, it's time to get our jihad on. Yeah. Oh, yeah. [Music] Um, finally end up after this massive suspenseful and do I need to say spoiler alert? Is that a thing? Cuz we're about to talk about this whole freaking movie. No, I think uh the trailer shows it all. I think spoiler alert. So, grenade comes in. Um Ellie gets wounded. Now, When Ellie gets wounded, what was what were those initial wounds? He just had uh just some frag in his his upper arm like underneath. Mhm. It was nothing. Uh you know, the interesting thing there was three guys in that room and that frag came in. It wasn't a big room and it only hurt just just Elliot. Mhm. And uh and it takes me back to like there was a lot of things that we would talk about sitting around the platoon space or you know sitting around the uh the the hooch there. And Elliot used to say as a medic, you get hurt, you get shot, you get hit in the street, you better get your ass off the street. He goes, you better start getting we're not coming to get you. We come get you, we're going to get shot, too. You know, and that wasn't a selfish thing. That was like just kind of a wise like, hey, start trying to get out of the street. And then uh same thing with the grenade cuz you know, Full Metal Jacket there at Corriodor, we got we got um morted like every day. And you know, we would go up on the roof and see where the mortars would hit and there was always this they would hit and then it would spray upwards. Mhm. So Elliot say, "Hey, just lay on the ground. If you know, if a mortar comes in or grenade, just lay on the ground. Don't jump on top of it. Just lay on the ground and it'll hopefully get around you." And that's what they did. And three people in a small room with a grenade and it only hit Elliot and it didn't even hit him bad. He was fine. He would have been fine. Um that being said, the call gets made like, "Hey, he might be fine, but we need to make sure let's let's kazak him." Yeah. So the plan was we were he'd been hit so we needed to get him out of there no matter what. And obviously now you're fully compromised when they were putting grenades into your the mission was pretty much over anyway. You know this was kind of typical like hey we need to it's time to just go ahead and call it anyway. We've done what we need to do and you know cuz we always got shot off target by the end of the the end of the overwatch. It was always like okay we're you know we're going to leave you know we'll extract hot you know we'll get out of there. So this was time to get him out of there. He'd been hurt. No reason to keep him there. So the the plan was call in a section of Bradley's, get him in a Bradley, get him out of there, link up all of our units, call in more Bradley's, and get out of there or leave on foot cuz we we patrolled in on foot. We were we were just down the street from Mingles Nest. Mhm. That's another crazy thing is like you you're probably 300 400 meters away from like full friendly forces. I mean, Eagles Nest was a fully, you know, oh man. Yeah, it was just right down the street. It's freaking what a wild scene to be in. Yeah. Um so that was the plan. We're gonna get him out of here and then we'll consolidate either foot patrol or consolidate the troops cuz we knew at that point it was a consolidated uh or a coordinated attack cuz they had just contacted alpha platoon which was over at Mark Lee and they pulled our air over to support them. So we could only suspect that it they knew what they were doing. So pull our air so they could get on our roof and get a grenade through loophole. They were good. They were. They were. And you know, I think that's something that we back to your afteractions. You know, up until that point, you know, we like to call them booger eaters. And I think you downplay your enemy a lot, especially going, you know, through the whole pipeline of buds. And you know, instructors are always talking about how, you know, they're the enemy is stupid or whatever. They're not. And and if you underestimate them, you will have a bad day. I would tell guys they did everything that we did. meaning they had comms. They they didn't have cell phones, but they had radios. Yeah. They would call for reinforcements. You could watch reinforcements come in. They had Kazak. They would take guys and that were wounded and bring them up to the Romani General Hospital before it was secured by the Marines. So every and and they did uh supporting arms. Yeah. And and coordinated arms. So they'd start an attack with machine gun fire, get the heads down, then RPGs to get the heads even further down, and then in would come mortars and fall. The final thing would be a vehicle born IED. That's like that's what they were doing. That is advanced combined arms operations by the enemy. Uh and this is a classic case like what you just said. They do an attack somewhere else, get air support pulled off, and then now they can get to rooftops. They can they can maneuver on your element. So that's a lot of coordination that has to happen. You guys recognize what was happening. It's like, all right, we're calling it and and that's a there's no right answer. It was always, you know, okay, do we stay here cuz we don't want to leave in the daytime cuz we we generally speaking didn't want to leave an Overwatch during the daytime, right? But at a certain point, like this is no longer or this won't be a defendable position much longer. Let's get out of here. And it's always it's it's a it's a decision. Yep. And there's no right answer. And sometimes you're going to be right, sometimes you're going to be wrong. That's the way it is. Same thing with being on the rooftop. This is another debate we would have. You put a guys on, you can put guys on the rooftop, they're exposed to grenades. If you put them on the top floor inside the building, well, you're blowing loopholes, but you still don't have quite the same amount of angles that you can see, so there's more threat. So, you're It was a constant game of of okay, what you know, what risk do we want to take? Y do we want to take the risk of putting guys on the rooftop or do we want to take the risk of putting guys uh one level down where now we don't have the full visibility and and that's what that's what we had to calculate that night is because we typically were on the rooftops but this time in Papa 10 that's where you know Mikey got a grenade thrown up on the roof so we're like hey let's go the one the top story below the roof and we definitely lost a lot of situational awareness by that and you know the and then you know those roofs are really close together so they able to just kind of step roof to you know roof roof to roof and we couldn't see him without our air support. Jack, so the decision gets made. Um, Bradley's are coming. And by the way, this is something I always point out and I've heard Ray talking about it. Of course, again, there's no clues. You don't get these clues in the movie. It doesn't spell everything out for you. When we would call the Army or the Marine Corps for a Kazvak or for fire support, they would risk their lives to come and give that to us. Those roads that they were coming down, the the 11 AD lost nine Abrams man main battle tanks and 15 Bradley fighting vehicles while we were there. So when these guys were jumping in their vehicles to come and rescue us, it was at great peril and risk to themselves, their vehicles, their their forces. Uh but they did it over and over and over again. And they did it here. Yeah. Without without hesitation. Yeah. No hesitation ever. It was just the the just awesome awesome that these guys would and you know sometimes you're calling a Kazak from some company or element that you never met before. You haven't worked with them before. Over time you get to know them but they don't care. They don't care if they know you or not. You're an American. They're going to come and do everything they can to help you. So that's a situation you guys are in. Um, so they come in and what is who's in you guys are just going to break out? Is like a couple Iraqis go first or a few Iraqis go first? Yeah, we had four Yeah, four Iraqi scouts and then you two and then me and Elliot. And are you just going to throw him in the back of the Brad? Yeah, we're just getting him in the Brad and then we're going to head back in the house. What do you remember about what happened next? So I remember I mean I remember pretty pretty well most everything but a lot of smoke. you we got our smokes out and uh heading to the Bradley. I just remember we stacked up in the you know in the house. We got our scouts out first and then you know Elliot and I were going to go to we're going to go to a Bradley. So um even though I like I said earlier he was barely wounded but he was still wounded. I wanted to keep him close because of the smoke. So I had my hand on his shoulder as we went out the gate and then as soon as we got right to that Bradley cuz the Bradley was just right there. Soon as we got to the brow ramp down, that's when the blast came in. And uh Yeah. And that's when Yeah. everything started to go south. The way it's portrayed in the film, like slow motion, Yeah. overwhelming noise, but then overwhelming like silence and slow and muffled. What how does that compared? And I think you you worked with them to try and Yeah. give your perspective on it. Absolutely. And that's, you know, that's exact. It's kind of how it plays out in the movie. So, it's very realistic to me, you know. I mean, that's that's the way it seemed. That slow motion, there's a lot of pain that's coming. It's like when you stub your toe and you don't know, you know, it's going to hurt here in a minute, but it's not hurting yet. Same thing, you know, you have that that deafening um you slow motion pain, but the pain's like dull and it's starting to come more and more acute as as the seconds go on. Um, and you start to with as the seconds go start going on, you start to realize that, you know, things start to speed back up. You're starting to hear things like gunfire. Um, and you're starting to see a little bit better cuz the smoke's starting to clear and your your kind of your haze is starting to go away a little bit. And then you start I started to realize kind of where I was as far as, you know, in a in a bad place. But to be honest, my very first thought, and I don't know why I remember this, but I thought that I got hit by an RPG7. I thought it had landed right at my feet. Um because we had just been talking about these RPG7s and how much more powerful they were than, you know, so that in my mind I had just got hit with an RPG7, which obviously was not the case. Mhm. And what was your recognition that your legs were jacked? So yeah, I I I knew that immediately cuz uh obviously the pain, but I remember it being real like real smoky, not just from our smokes, but just from the blast and the the dust and and I remember I could see the sun up in the sky and I remember raising trying to raise my feet up a little bit so my legs up so I could see um you know to be fair, I've been watching Band of Brothers, you know, so you know, I just expected this gruesome, you know, this is it. But as I could see, my pants just kind of went up and fell. So I thought I thought my feet were both gone, you know, I mean in my mind like they're not there. So but that's not something you're really worried about at the time. More worried about you know getting shot at still, you know, and so getting back in the house and that's something that we don't it doesn't you know Ray and I talked about this later but you know I remember telling Ray cuz he said I was fine. He's like you're going to be fine. He remember he checked he's like your junk's still there. And I remember like I appreciate that you know cuz we talked about these things but I remember saying that my feet were gone and and I remember him looking he's like no they're there. They're in wrong place cuz they were like pretty pretty jacked up. Um, and how many Iraqis got killed? Two. So, two. So, you you just to clarify for people that don't know, you said scouts. You said scouts went out and those were uh Iraqi soldiers that were like a scout platoon. And so, we'd call them scouts. Um, and that so two of those guys were killed. Yeah, your OIC is like concussed bad. And um they get you guys inside. And again, I go see the movie. We could sit here and talk about it. Go see the movie. We're sitting here with two guys that were there that and and the movie was made by a guy that was there and we're not going to do it justice. We're not going to do the movie justice. Yeah. And you know, it's it's funny. I I put it out on social media and people were saying like, well, I guess, you know, I I'm I haven't approved I don't approve a lot of war movies, right? Like, oh, this is a good one, but man, this is a good one. And and like I said, there's no punches pulled. And so getting the details of that, uh, go see the movie. You end up, you guys both end up, you're in pain, you guys get morphine, there's confusion, there's chaos, and it really is portrayed well in the film like the mayhem. Yeah. And at one point I I was I was really paying attention to it, but they have all all the radio calls are coming in and radio calls radio calls and it's like radio calls on top of radio calls on top of radio calls, which is 100% what can happen in chaotic situations and it's 100% what's happening. And finally Ry just unplugs his headphones cuz he can't like he needs to just get to the what's right in front of him. Yeah. Uh but they did a great job of portraying that and you notice it because all of a sudden when he pulls that out all that crazy traffic stops and you know I had like in my in my platoon in my task like you weren't allowed to talk on the radio like you no one talked on the radio. It was like unless you had something just level 10 critical. But that doesn't apply to everybody because you got different units that are out there and they're trying to figure out what's going on. They're trying to coordinate. They're they got wounded. There's other firefights going on. Um, finally, the other squad. And again, I I'm just go see the movie. This is this is as good as you're going to get. The guy that was there made the movie. The guy that was there that made the movie got the input from all the guys that were there. Like, it's And he had pretty free reign, it sounds like, to do what he wanted to do. Um, and so go see it. Finally, the other the other like you'd mentioned earlier, there's actually two other Overwatch positions. They consolidate, they move to your position. Um, how freaking stoked were you to see those guys? Yeah. Yeah. Really stoked. Um, let's take a step a quick step back here, you know. So, one thing the movie does not capture and, uh, we had one medic. Elliot was our medic. So, now we're, you know, we're in a really bad place. Um, we have two wounded SEALs. the rest of them are either holding some sort of overwatch or keeping us alive. So, we were in desperate need of getting these other guys consolidated to us, which they're in a tick. And, you know, these bad guys were talking about being, you know, coordinated. It's it's as if they were coordinated enough to keep them from coming to us. That was their goal was not necessarily to kill them. I mean, think that was their overall goal, but to prevent them from consolidating on us, to give them an opportunity to get into in on top of us and and do what they needed to do there. Mhm. But yeah, so the movie doesn't even start to allude to Elliot being our medic. Elliot was our medic. So, you know, we had Ray working on me, which is a calm guy, and then Anglico working on Elliot because they thought Elliot was going to die, you know, and and I I hate to say it that way, but he did not look like there was anything they could do to help him. So, that's why Anglico was working on him. So, yeah, we were we were in pretty dire straits. We went through every contingency you could possibly go through at that point. Yeah. Well, it's dire in the movie. You You're definitely feeling it. Um, and you know, I don't know. I don't know from being in the teams myself if it seems worse in the movie or if a civilian would look at it and go, "That's level 10 bad." Or if they'd be like, "Well, probably like a level seven." Or if they're like, "No, that's a 12." or if you know I would I don't know how a civilian but reading reviews of it people get the message like this is a terrible terrible situation and yeah just to just to give a little more clarity you got two severely wounded guys you got guys trying to keep them alive there's not that many freaking people on the team the Iraqi soldiers you there's they're gone they bailed two two dead two gone two gone uh you cannot hold security barely in a building like that like basically you can't. So, you're trying to, you know, the enem is closing in on you. Uh just a it's just a nightmare. Um the other the other squads consolidate, they show up. Um they now they can start to actually make prog. It's like you guys as a as a smaller element, you guys are just treading water. Just barely keeping your head above water. Yep. Just your lips. And yeah, just your lips barely one nostril. And so finally when the other guys show up now you can start making progress towards coordinating and getting out of there. That's right. And um but that was a it was a glorious moment when they came in cuz you could hear the gunfire coming and you could tell it was our gunfire and then when they got there they set security and then you could hear those 60s rocking and rolling and it's a good feeling. And then you get you know these fast movers doing show of forces and I've never had an aircraft that you know a fast mover that low. I thought the buildings were going to collapse. I mean, it felt like they were going to collapse. You guys get extract. Um, and then like I mentioned earlier, the movie look, they show the family come out, the family's kind of looking around like, damn, what what the hell just happened? And then they show the insurgents kind of coming out and debriefing, walking around, seeing what's happening. And then just the movie ends. Yeah. And you know, I've read t I've actually not just read, but I've been talking to people and they're like, "Well, it just kind of ended." And and my response is like, "This is just another day." Yeah. And these freaking extreme heroics by the army guys that came to get you out, by your guys, by by you guys being there, by the people trying to keep you alive, by the other squad maneuver, too. those heroics, that's what happened on a daily basis, almost a daily basis in that city. Yeah. And so to say, yep, it's over. There's no there's no like, oh, we we go back and we're going to have a party now and we're going to celebrate our hero. It's like, no, actually, you're going to go back, debrief, and go out the next day and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. And that's to me an one of the most important messages. It's like, no, we're not we're not glorifying this one day. It's like these guys did heroic things and made huge sacrifices and yep, we're on to the next day. Yeah. [Music] Um, when you went So, you went and saw the movie. Yeah. Did you see it with civilians like a normal day? So, I've seen it, you know, I I saw it several times, you know, through the process. Um, actually went to the the red carpet and watched Elliot and his all his picture taken there. But, uh, yeah, so I I you know, I was able to see the movie several times. But, yeah, when it came out, my wife and I decided, okay, let's let's go watch an IMAX. And uh yeah, just a bunch of civilians. Um but funny is they put our pictures at the end of the movie. Well, all these clowns, you don't think anybody recognizes, you know, I don't think I would see somebody and be like, "Oh, that's him." They knew. They knew right away to the end of the movie. People started looking at me like, "Hey, that's that's you." Yeah. So, it's it's pretty interesting. But, uh on IMAX, um yeah, it was really cool. Loud. Yeah. So, I went down opening night. My wife and I went down. I sit down in the theater and sure enough all of a sudden guy comes over taps me on the shoulder. What's up bro? And it's one of my brothers from Task and Bruiser and his wife. And we sat there and watched this thing like totally uncoordinated. But um yeah, it was it was [Music] uh definitely it's wild to see and plus because like just knowing you know everybody you know knowing all you guys I'm not like best friends with anyone but know all those guys worked with all like all those guys and over the years. So knowing and and seeing it and seeing what you guys went through is freaking um definitely go see the movie. You guys get Kazak. Uh where did you go when you guys get Kazak? So we kind of stayed together for quite a while actually all the way till out of country. So from there, you know, we went back to the to the med station across the street from Criador and that's where we we left, you know, went there for just a hot minute. They got us in a 46 and flew us I think it was a 46. I know I eventually ended up in a 46 at some point. Um because Yeah. So they flew us from there to TQ and then TQ to Bad and then uh while we're in Balad, we were there for maybe four or five days, got stable there and then flew to Germany. by the time you guys um you know we're getting this word like I mentioned earlier I'm I'm going to go to Elliott a little bit by the time you get back um so Leif you know who's your brother Leif um he was like immediately engaged and uh you know was interesting talking to Leif he because you ended up in San Antonio pretty quickly Elliot and talking to Leif like when Leif got his stuff together to go to San Antonio, he packed his blues. And for those of you that aren't in the in the military or in the Navy, like when you pack your blues, that means there's only one reason you there's two reasons you put your blues on. Uh wedding, funeral. And so here's your brother Leif like back here in San Diego getting ready to go and he he packs his blues because from the reports that we're getting, it was not looking good for Elliot. Um he wrote this to a group of us on uh December 2nd. Leifed kind of sent out the email. He said, "What's happening, brothers? I'm in San Antonio with Elliot. I wish I could say things were better than they are. It's it's a [ __ ] bad bad deal, and it hit me like a freight train when I walked in there to see him early this morning. He has suffered some brain damage, so no one can say for sure how minor or severe it will be. A distant second is that the doctors have not made a decision yet on whether or not he will keep his left leg. This problem, however, seem seems insignificant to the brain injury. There are some small signs of hope, however. Eye movement, response to pain. We are all just hoping and praying that he wakes up and comes and slowly comes back to the Elliot we all know and love. As bad as all this sounds, he certainly has a fighting chance. And the fact that he's probably the toughest, most bullheaded bastard I know gives me confidence that if anybody can pull through it, he will. It's time to get down on our knees and ask Almighty God with all our hearts to heal our friend and brother Leif. Here's what you write about this time, Elliot. You say, "I I woke up in the ICU room in Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio with my left leg still attached, though it's pretty much useless because it was just a big club of a foot and my calf was also blown off and surgically reattached with a giant fixator on my left leg and also I had one on my right arm, too. They told me that I would probably need an amputation, but I declined at first. I guess that I was actually just hoping that it would get better and I would be able to join my team and finish my 20 years and retire. However, looking back now, I see just how naive of thinking it was because I've never seen a one-legged frogman that couldn't speak. Have you didn't think so? I know my my one of my old assistant platoon commanders from SEAL Team 7, he actually brought his whole platoon out. Uh they were in Texas doing training and he brought his whole platoon. They all like scrubbed, all went in to see you. Um, and what what was the nature of your injuries? Like how you're you're in I thought you were losing both your legs. That was kind of the reports that I was getting. Yeah. How'd they save them? I don't know. You know, I mean, at first, I mean, by the grace of God and and the right the right surgeons in all mean or all reasonable all reasonable um I guess they they they should have just taken them off in Iraq. And that's what my doctors here were like, "Hey, they kept them on. Um, they kept them on through Germany, so we're going to we'll see what we can do um to to fix them." So, just a lot of surgery. And then eventually they they put nails in them, rods in both tibas, and and one fibula. One of my fibulas is still broken. Um, and just a lot of hardware and then just a lot of rehab. Just metal. Yeah. Yeah. Metal and rigorous tape. That's right. Some pailing wire in there. But yeah, I mean they they they really probably should have for simplicity just taken at least my left one off in in Iraq. But and was it just broken bones? Broken bones and a lot of flesh missing. Um so they eventually had to to harvest um so the inner gastro calf muscle to put over the flap over the front cuz you could just see my tibia. There was just a big hole where my tibia was was there. And you know, you could see the tendon that went down to my big toe which traveled right along the uh tibia which did not get injured which is crazy because it was just exposed. Um but they all they were able to cover it up and yeah get it get it up and going. So bilateral tip fractures um missing a lot of flesh. How long was like when they started putting your legs back together? How long did that take to put them back together where you could walk again? When could you run again? Yeah. So, so the after all the surgeries, um, I was in the hospital here in San Diego. Eventually made it back to San Diego for my surgery. So, I did all my big surgeries here. So, I was in the hospital up until almost Christmas time and then I had to break out of the hospital. I could not stand the hospital anymore. And then it was a few more months where I was able to kind of stand um on a walker and then yeah, so probably running was a while. So they they end up group one bought a underwater treadmill which I thought was really cool, state-of-the-art at the time, not so state-of-the-art anymore. So I was able to kind of get in this treadmill, you know, flood it with water and and run. Um, but to actually be on my feet like not nonassisted, it was probably 6 months a little better. Was the prognosis from the beginning like, hey, like you're going to be you'll be able to walk again or were they kind of No, no. everybody was, you know, and I don't know why these they they some of these surgeons or these doctors would just kind of default to the the worst. And at first they're like, you're probably not going to walk, you know, normal with the way your legs are, you know, and then as I started kind of getting better, they're like, well, you're going to always walk with a limp, but you won't run, you know, and all these things. And and not to take them and turn them into, you know, kind of a motivational thing, but it was more of like, okay, I didn't I didn't believe him, you know. I'm like, we we'll see, you know, we'll see what we can do. and then to find you know that new uh you know because basically you got to find where you can work from because I didn't know where my where my baseline was now once I found my baseline and started working and I caveat that real quick before we move on also suffered an injury to my junk too and when I was in the hospital there in Iraq I believe but anywh who there was a surgeon there who was a urologist and he put my junk back together for me God bless that guy Yeah, we need to give that guy at least a Navy achievement medal. At least if you're out there and you're listening and you did that, you we want to have you on the podcast to talk about the heroic achievement, especially that type of micro surgery on on Elliot's junk. Uh here's another update email from Leif. Um and I I remember this one. The subject line was booger is still in there. It says, "The miraculous breakthrough that we have been praying for happens tonight. Me, Dave, and Elliot's dad, Joe Miller, went to see Elliot tonight and immediately noticed that his eyes were wide open, much more so than before, and was clearly looking around. He very perceptibly looked over at each of us as we talked to him and focused on us. I asked him to blink for me if he clearly and he clearly responded. His dad talked to him, let him know where he was and that he had been out for a while. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Sue. No response. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Elliot. Two definite blinks. He then indicated that he knew it was his dad, me, and Dave. Elliot has always given me a lot of [ __ ] from my Lonear State heritage. And I told him that since we were in San Antonio, when he's well enough, I would take him to the Alamo to pay his respects. He clearly furrowed his brow at me. First indicators that I have seen that Booger is still there. I can't describe how incredibly uplifting it was to witness this. While he still has a long road ahead and many challenges ahead for recovery, just knowing that Elliott is in there, that he hears us and that he knows who he is and who we are is a huge step in the right direction. I hope all is well with each of you and we'll keep you updated as often as I can. Word to your mom's. Leif. Uh, and then in January, you got a visit from your platoon commander who is actually the the platoon commander that's in the movie that's on the mission, the guy that was severely concussed. Um, and he wrote an update to the guys in Rammani and and some of us uh about both both of you guys. And this is this is what he said. and he's still active duty. Obviously, we're not using his name. You don't need use his name in the movie. Uh Joe is awesome physically, mentally, spiritually. He makes me feel like a little [ __ ] He is kicking ass. And I'll put money down that he will be walking unassisted when we all return from deployment. Joe and I went and visited Elliot this weekend. We spent two days with him and left amazed. Elliot makes Joe feel like a [ __ ] So, where does that put me? When we all talk about Elliot, you have to understand that his improvement is all relative. That doesn't discredit his progress though. I think some of the things have gotten lost in the rumor mill and the email chain. So, I want to try and paint an accurate but relative picture. To do that, I have to go back give a little background that I didn't quite know all the details about. When Elliot finally made it to San Antonio, he was in intensive care unit and his parents and Leif didn't know if he was going to live through the night. He was rough. So many wounds, so much trauma to the body and brain. So many complications and treatments were slowed and put on hold until his body could handle the extra stress. He was in a coma, had brain swelling, his stomach sliced open to see if he had any any internal damage, covered in burns, had pockets of swelling where the pressure had to be relieved by cutting open his skin, etc. Now, let me tell you the awesome [ __ ] 3 days ago, he was moved out of the ICU, which means he's going to make it. He's still drugged up on pain medication and gets extra when they change his bandages or have to do something that they know is going to hurt. This makes him pretty incoherent. He goes in and out of conscious and sleeps a lot. When he isn't too drugged up, he's totally different. From the coma and from having tubes down his throat for so long, all the muscles in his bodies have atrophied. His speech suffers from this. But if you spent even just a little time with him, you know Elliott is in there. He mumbles a lot and repeats things, which I think he does because he knows people can't understand him very well. That being said, Joe and I had some alone time with him and we had some awesome short conversations where we could totally understand him. No [ __ ] He listed all the guys at Camp Corodor and his close friends at Camp Mark Lee and he said he missed them. We think he has some short-term memory issues, but I think a lot has to do with the drugs he's on. You just can't always tell if he's listening or on a morphine trip. So that's probably why he forgets things. The second we came in, he recognized us. His eyes widened like hockey pucks. He looked at his dad and then back at us in amazement. We were fired up and took and it took everything we had to keep the tears away. I'm not going to lie, he's not in the shape that I expected. I was not prepared for the scene, but when you hear the state he was in only weeks ago, he is doing awesome. Elliot gets the best care in the building just because his dad is by his side every second he can be. There's no one that I want more to be with Elliot than his dad. Elliot makes me so [ __ ] proud because he's fighting hard. Last night around 11:00 p.m. he asked Joe and I to take him to the gym. You already know this. He is an absolute beast. Joe and I did our best to represent you guys. We told him everyone loves him about a thousand times. He said he loves us, too. So, progress is being made. It's slow. Um, but it's there. You say this, Elliot. Uh, after I spent two to three months down there, I'd gone up to San Francisco to the VA Poly Trauma Center at Palo Alto because of my TBI. I was there for another three or four months, which totally sucked ass. So after about five or six months in a goddamn hospital, I finally got back to SD, Balboa to be exact. And before you returned to San Diego, you sent an email to everybody on 24th May 2007, you said, "Hey everyone, I'm coming home in like in a week and a half for good. So put the women and children to bed cuz it's going to be on like Donkey Kong." No, but seriously, I will be home soon enough. Can't wait to see all of you again. Um, and you get home. You got after it. This is how it looked. This is another thing you say here. It was It was there that I decided to go ahead and get my leg chopped off almost 9 months after my actual alive day. So, I went under the knife for the second time for the second to the last time in July and got my leg amputated. and went to rehab there at Balboa, which is where I met my wife as she was my physical therapist. But we didn't start dating until about until about a little over a year and a half after we met because I had gone to Omaha, Nebraska for another rehab center. It was then that we started dating. So, like a typical frog man, you go and you start going out with your freaking physical therapist and you hook up with her. and eventually get married to her. Awesome woman. Kids, two kids. So that the surgeon in Balot or wherever did a good job fully functional uh fire equipment. Uh, and then after after I was done with all my rehab centers and whatnot, I finally returned to SD to begin my retirement process almost 2 years after I was injured. Um, what what did you do afterwards, Joe? So, you get you get healed up. Takes what, a year before you're functional again? It does. It takes a while. Um, so funny the first phase though, which I never met the guy up until this point. He he actually came to Balboa to the hospital and he offered me a job. He's like, "Hey." Cuz he knew the platoon was gone. He knew the team was gone and he knew I was going to be in a pretty dark spot or pretty dark place. And uh you know, looking back at the time, I had no idea he you know, it's pretty that he that he was thinking like that far ahead, you know. Yeah. And anyway, so once I got out the day I got out of the hospital, um checked into physical therapy um in the trailer, you know, it's like we think of the SEAL teams having this like state-of-the-art that which they do now. They do now. But then it was a trailer um in behind team five and checked in there, started my rehab or at least started the process and then freaking Jason. That's right, Jason. Yeah, man. He is. Yeah, that guy. Incredible. Um I just talked to him the other day in Coronado. I hadn't seen him. He's like, "What? He He didn't even know I was part of this." He's like, "You got hurt there." I'm like, "Jason, what do you think you were you know what you been doing the whole time?" Yeah. But anyway, um so then I went to Buds and I'm in Buds. I met Buds first phase in a wheelchair, you know, and it was just a liability, but I at least was there and around all those young men and it was interesting. But um yeah, so that I did that. I did that and then uh once I was able to to be back on my feet, I got orders to to BUDS. So I did the next few years as a first phase instructor, which really helped me um get back on my feet because you got to you know, you're in front of these students, you know, you can't let them, you know, push you around, you know, you can't be the weak the weak guy around there. So you got to you got to heal up. But funny story is the first class I don't remember what class it was but during hell week I was out there on my crutches and there was a Hilda brand and a Miller and they were in the same boat. Damn. And they both quit during hell week the same time. Cuz I remember I remember telling Elliot like hey our our replacements are here and then they both quit. I said they're out of here. So replace YouTube now. Well it was weird because you know it's like both of them in the same boat here too. That's wild. Yeah. But anyway, so I stayed at Buds for a few years and then once I was really fully healed up, then I was off to um I did my platoon chief at team one. Mhm. How was it going back to a team? You're you're you're now like you got this experience and you're going to be put in charge this time kind of not getting thrown in the last minute as LPO, but you're platoon chief, man. Yeah. Like God in a seal platoon. Yeah. Well, so actually that was my second LPO when I got hurt. So that was our second platoon. Oh, that's right. That's right. So I did I did partial full one. Yeah. But um I think you know preparing a platoon is a little different now. As a platoon chief I had a whole different mindset on what is important you know and and what you should be preparing towards. So we did a lot of um and actually um you know Flynn was my platoon commander. So yeah so we had a good time. We had a good time but we were able to focus on what was really important. Um yeah for the platoon. Yeah. And we, you know, the things that we did in Trade, you know, when I got back and just really stepping it up to try and make sure guys were as ready as we possibly could, you know, doing everything we could. Well, yeah. We've carried our whole platoon through Nland for years. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's it's it's one of those things where and in the 90s in the teams, like a down man, like, okay, you're like, oh yeah, we'll find the lightest guy. Yeah, I'll find the lightest guy and put him down and he can help you get up and all this stuff. And and by the way, you know, in the '90s there was no body armor. Um it just was a totally no helmets. Just it was not every single guy had a radio. So, you know, you're picking up like a 200lb guy. Mhm. Okay, cool. Well, now you get to the the war and now the guy's wearing body armor. He has a radio. He has a helmet. He has night vision. This guy all of a sudden weighs 250 lbs. And and by the way, as it's depicted in the in the movie, Yeah. it ain't freaking easy to carry a down man. No. And we did a lot of down man. Yeah. Well, it's it's important, you know. I mean, like like you said, it's not so easy picking up a down man. Not when they're not assisting you. Not when they really weigh a bunch. They have gear. Um and you don't the adrenaline doesn't kick in and you have superhuman strength. You know, it just doesn't happen. You get done with Apple. What's next after that? So, did that platoon and then I went off to Kodiak for a couple years. Oh, nice. Yep. So, and then so I was a senior chief out there and then uh Kodiak, came back, did my troop chief at team three. Nice. Yeah. Did that and then after troop chief I ran SQT um for a year and then I was made master chief there and then back over to team one ops match chief CMC. Nice. Yeah. And finished out your career. Yep. Finished out there. Um and then what do you you retired out of there? I did. So, I retired in uh September 21. Um, and then I just I work here at a tech company here in San Diego. Okay. And uh Yeah. Floating around here. Just working at a tech company now. Yeah. How isn't that weird to go to What's your job at the tech company? I'm a trainer. So, I work a lot with special operations still. Okay. Yeah. Check. So, I'm not the techie kind of guy. I was going to say if you're like, "Hey, go check with that guy Joe and see if you can get your computer back up." I can't even get my computer back up. That's that's always the jokes like my little my little group of people are a bunch of you know prior seals and like we don't know anything about computers. We work a tech company. That's awesome. Um any other any any closing thoughts from you Joe? Um well I mean just you know this whole process you know like Ray writing the story uh or I guess he didn't write the story but telling the story you know getting it out there. It's definitely been very therapeutic I think for most of us if not all of us because as you know these operations we all carry a certain amount of guilt with us a certain amount of you know that that baggage that um you know we never had an opportunity to kind of decompress it and like lay it out on the table. So I think we all carried a certain amount and through this process we were able to kind of lay it out there and uh and realize like hey you know there was there was a lot of you know bad things that happened that weren't people's decision process that got us there. So, we're able to to kind of lay all that out and that's been very therapeutic for all of us. And then just, you know, for Elliot, for him to finally be able to really see on the screen, you know, what what happened. Um, yeah, it's been it's been a huge thing. Yeah. The decision part, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but you know, like I said, you go on the roof or do you go on the top floor in the building? Which one of those is correct? Yeah. Well, you don't know. Do you leave during Do you leave during the day or do you hold all out all night? You don't know. You You're making a decision with the information that you have at the time and you're going to make the best decision you can. And you might you might get it right and you might extract and you get in the Bradley's and everyone's okay. And that happens and it happened plenty of times and you might it might not happen that way. You might walk out there, hit an ID, you might lose a guy in a firefight. you know, we all those decisions are they're decisions that are being made at the time with the most information that you have uh with the information that you have available at the time. And the the other option is no decision, which that that doesn't work. You can't just sit there. You have to make a decision of what we're going to do. I think that, and this is something that I learned, um, you know, when when I lost guys and I lost friends, for some reason, I ended up a lot of times being the the guy that was delivering like the eulogy at the memorial service. And so, what does that mean? That means 12 hours after you lose one of your friends, you're sitting down. I'm sitting down writing thoughts. And I didn't think about this at all at the time, but over time, I recognized that sitting down and writing down what my thoughts were, what my feelings were, what I was thinking, what I'm going to miss about him, what good memories I have, that seemed to be a therapeutic thing. Yeah. and and then you know writing about the stuff and talking about on the podcast with with different people and being able to talk through what our experiences were I think was very helpful to me being able to for you guys to have never sat down and talked about it uh that I can't imagine you know you're thinking well what if I would have done this it's like all you need is someone to say actually Joe you couldn't have done that because of this thing over here go [ __ ] I didn't know that or well what if I think we should have done this well we couldn't have done that because of this thing over here and people's perception, you know, what do we do as SEALs? A lot of times we just look at what, okay, this is what I did wrong. This is on me. I wrote a freaking book about it. Extreme Ownership. Like, this is on me. But if you take that and you go, oh, this all happened because of me. And someone goes, "Hey, actually, Joe, like you couldn't have done anything over there." Or, "Yeah, that didn't happen that way." And so I think the fact that this is that you guys were able to sit down, rehash it, see all the different perspectives and go, "All right, and and get to a point, for lack of a better word, get to a point of like get to a point of forgiveness. Forgive yourself, forgive your teammate, forgive your, you know, whoever, and go, "Yeah, this is what happened. There's nothing we can do to change it." We all were doing everything we could at the time that we were capable of doing to to try and get through this situation. That's what happened. And I think that's a huge part of overcoming and and and uh what's that word? I think it's a huge part of processing these situations is the recognition that everyone was doing the best they could including myself including yourself everyone's doing the best they could at the time and this is the [ __ ] sandwich yeah that happened yeah no you're right and just just writing it down you know and having Ray write it down for us here you know so that you know this was the beginning of our journeys you know like this this like you know talk about the snapshot of the movie that is snapshot of, you know, us getting hurt. But that was kind of the that's one battle stepping into the next battle. And I've been, you know, writing kind of a memoir on that for my kids because my kids, my older kids are kind of, you know, they they they kind of lived a lot of it. They or at least were around it. I got two younger kids. I've got one that's two and one that's 7 months. So, I've been kind of jotting it all down to try to put it into perspective so they can see what that process, that next battle was really like. And so, that's kind of progressing. And I think I'm going to release that out as an actual an actual like more of a like a self-help book, not a sealed book, but more of like, hey, this is what you have to do. Um, when you kind of hit bottom, you find your bottom, whether it's through war, through trauma, you know, loss, failure. Um, how do you find a new road map? How do you find that blueprint to get out of that? Um, and claw your way back um to being a new normal person, you know, maybe somebody that's stronger, um, more wise. So, yeah, kind of working on that right now. Oh, that sounds awesome. Um, yeah, it's it's another thing is the expectations in going into the like the movie. I mean, of course, people get portrayed in the military as superheroes. Yeah. And like, oh yeah, they're going to do everything awesome and they're going to be awesome. It's like, well, no, it's it's like you just got your freaking legs blown in half. Like, what's going to happen now? And the the the realism of the movie in that perspective is freaking legit. Yeah. uh how far you how deep you into that book? I'm pretty deep. So, it's it's not hard to write. I'm not a writer. Um but it's not hard to write when it's kind of a it's a true story. So, yeah. And, you know, I'm titling uh alone in the platoon space because I think that's something that we we kind of miss a lot. We think that we're, you know, you people can help you on these recovery paths. Nobody can help you. You're you're you're by yourself. People can be around you and root you on. Um but you got to find your own, you know, you can't quit on your own. You got to find your own your own grit to to kind of, you know, get through those those hard times. People can rally around you all they want, but you have to do it yourself. Yeah. And I think that's a culture or that's a thing that we've got in our culture now where we try to, you know, we we ask for all this help, but nobody can really help you. They can provide you things, they can provide you assistance, you know, they can give you resources, but they can't do it for you. So, yeah. Uh Dan Canawson, you know, Dan, right? So yeah, probably five, six years ago, we we met up, Leif and I were in wherever he was. I think we're in Colorado. And we meet up with him. We go out to dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're talking, you know, of course, it's like heavy heavy talk about what's happening. And you know, at the end of the night, he was kind of like he said something along the lines of like, "Hey, when when I go home, like when I head home right now, I still don't have legs." M and you know we sit there and interact with him for an hour and talk 2 hours dinner and like oh yeah you're doing this you're doing that and hey you're training for this and he just was letting us know that like this is the everyday thing that he deals with every single day. And that's just what I thought of when you said alone in the platoon space. Like look your platoon mates they want to help you but ultimately you're going to be alone in that platoon space. Dan can I didn't go home with him that night and help him, you know, get in and out of his car and he did all that stuff himself. Yeah. And that's uh so that's a powerful uh concept that you're talking about there. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Trying to get out there. I'm actually wanting to get it out by November 19th is kind of what I'm looking at. Right on. Right on. Yeah. Kind of a special day for us. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. But I I think it's gonna be helpful for people, you know. I mean, because it's not about a it's not about a seal. It's about being human, you know, and humans have you got to fight through things and just not quit. Yeah. I want to close this out and and by the way, when you when that comes out, we'll have you back on here. We'll go into the details of the rest of this stuff. Um uh but I want to close out with what Elliot uh closed out his notes to me. He said, "Today, I'm just waking up each and every day with the memory of my old self, thinking, what if? What if I just shot that dude? would have made any difference. I don't know. But maybe, just maybe, it would. But I'm doubtful because I know now that it was just an IED and even and that even if I had gotten the shot, it still would have caught up to me. I mean, those IEDs don't give two shits whom they get. And I guess that it was just my time. Better me than anyone else, eh? I'm glad that it happened to me and not anyone else. just because I don't think that anyone else would have the intestinal fortitude to be able to handle what I've gone through. And I'm referring to all the surgeries and rehab. And the worst part of all was the separation anxiety that I suffered from my teammates who were still fighting the enemy and still are to this day. Well, Elliot, I agree. I don't think I know anyone else that could have gone through what you went through and what you've gone through with the same intestinal fortitude and the same incredible attitude that you have. And I and I actually know this and you should know this that while you were forced off the battlefield, you continued to inspire your teammates. And to this day, to this day, the next generation is inspired by you and the example that you have set as a true frog man. And it's shown, it's shown in the movie and it's shown in what you've done since then and it's an inspiration. Thanks to both of you guys for coming out, for joining us. Um, thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice for the nation, for the Navy, and for the teams. Thank you for your kind words. I don't know what else to say other than thank you for the opportunity to be able to share my story and experiences. I'm not a talker. But before we go, you want to hear a funny story about my stay in the hospital there in San Antonio? I had recently seen a pic of me with Joe and Clint where I am staring off into space. And when I asked my dad about the picture, he said, "Morphine, it's a hell of a drug. I've got it in my phone if you guys want to see it after we're done. Outstanding, man. I guess that says it, man. Um, yeah. Awesome. It's an honor to be able to share your story. I'm glad that your story of your of your platoon's getting out there to the world. Thanks to Ray Ray for making that happen and all the all the people that put that thing together. Uh it's it's really gonna help people understand the the the nature of warfare. Also, one more thing real quick like a bunny. But if anyone from Brown Ability is listening to this podcast, I've got just two words for you. [ __ ] you. And I really do mean that too because you guys just plain old suck. I have sent you a couple emails, but since you guys probably have a lot of complaints about your product, I guess that it just fell on deaf ears. Never miss an opportunity to talk [ __ ] That's right. Yeah, they are the makers of the wheelchair lift that I've got for my truck. Roger that. We can I'm sure we can put some pressure on them and get you a wheelchair kickass wheelchair lift for your truck. We We'll do it, brother. Right on. Awesome, fellas. Thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you. Right on, brother. Thank you, guys. And with that, Elliot and Joe have left the building. And also, we have left the building. We've relocated back to our normal studio closet. Sure. If you're watching this on video apparatus, you'll see that. Um, and interestingly, you know, talking to the talking to the boys afterwards, as as hard as that mission was, as hard as Buds is, as hard as SEAL training is, all that stuff, the recovery, both those guys, the recovery that they went through, you know, they're both saying the recovery is the hardest part of story. So, you know, Joe having to get his legs repaired, Elliot having to get his leg amputated, relearn just life. Re both of them, you got a new starting point. So, for both them to go through what they went through, it's uh pretty awesome to be able to sit down and talk with those boys and especially cuz I haven't seen him in a, you know, quite a few years now. Seen Elliot a little bit more often. I haven't seen Joe in a bit. But if they can go through that, I think that we can all step up and work a little harder. If you remember correctly, it's been I remember after we did episode 50. That's when you that was when you first introduced the idea of Elliot coming out coming on. Really? How do you remember that? cuz you said you were like, "Hey, he has an iPad to talk and it'll like you're explaining that to Did I say that on the podcast?" Well, how come you remember it? Cuz I remember thinking that's a very unique approach for an all audio scenario and then we were kind of spitballing it for a little bit and you were explaining kind of what happened. I was like, man, that that could come out kind of crazy. Um, but yeah. So, yeah, I always remembered that and it was interesting to connect all the dots with like the movie cuz I saw the trailer for that movie when it like un this is before you when it first came out. You didn't talk about it at all. I just saw it and I was like, damn, this is like very a very well done promo like trailer, you know. Mhm. You know, that's my ch the trailers. Let's face it. Um, and yeah, the way that came out was so good. So that was always on my radar like, okay, this is gonna be like a different kind of presentation for a for a war movie, you know, different kind of presentation for any kind of movie. Yeah. And then just with the hype or whatever, and then it's like, okay, that was about Elliot, the guy Jo was talking about back then. So I'm like connecting the dots. I'm like, bro, that's crazy. That's cool, though. Yeah. And I had some emails going back and forth with Elliot for years of like, you know, hey dude, you need to get on here. You need to come on the podcast and then he was fired up, you know, like. So I'm glad we were able to finally get it done. And you know, I think people hearing that part of the story, even especially after seeing the movie Warfare, after seeing the movie and then listening to this, or maybe they'll listen to this and then go see the movie, but either way, you get a more you get a bigger connection. You get more context, I should say, more context of the whole thing. Um, when Joe was talking about recovering and you know how the doctors tell him like, "Hey, you won't really walk that good again or you won't walk or or then you'll always walk with a limp or whatever." And so I was I think I was talking to Koa about this cake nuts. Hell yeah. And he had his packri attached cuz he had, you know, tore it or whatever. And then, you know, they give you your percentages and all this stuff. And we're kind of I don't know if this is true, but I think this is true. This is something to think about. And what Joe was talking about really rema reminded me of this made me think even more about it where when the doctors tell you, oh yeah, you have like a 25% chance or 1% chance or whatever, right? It's based on the past. It's not based on like other stuff that you that might land as actual probability goes. It's based on the past. So it's essentially let's say a 100 people got this particular ailment that that you got. Mhm. Out of those 100 people, 25 have gotten to a certain level of recovery. That's for the sake of this discussion. Let's say 100 25% get full recovery. Yeah. And then they'll say you have about a 25% chance of going full recovery, right? So it's kind of like, okay, cool. That that actually does make sense, right? Cuz the only we'll say factor that they're kind of considering is your injury. And out of 100 people, you know, we'll say roughly 25%. So that's 25% chance. Okay. So it doesn't really take into consideration your approach, your mindset, your your work ethic, which is a big one cuz they told me that when I broke blew out my knee. They're like, "Oh, it'll be about a 9-month recovery." That's how it is, like a 9-month recovery. So I'm like, "All right." I was like, "What are the chances of me getting like back cleared to play, meaning you got to pass all these physical tests and stuff before that?" They're like, "It goes down and all this stuff to give me all this probability." So freaking three and a half months I was cleared to play. Three and a half months. But it's because I approached it like a like an actual like fitness program that I had a goal, you know, and I was like I remember thinking again I made up my own fitness program. So I was like all right I feel like that's when I first started believing okay they didn't take into cons consideration the work ethic that people take cuz everyone takes different work ethic. You see what I'm saying? They have different work work ethic and they approach it differently. Now, when you consider an injury as like a let's say let's say I'm a 47 year old average person and I get a peck tear or whatever at work and you're not used to being into fitness or whatever, you're going to approach it way different. So, they're taking into consideration those people as well in that 25%. See what I'm saying? So, it kind of in a way doesn't apply to you if you don't let it. Yeah. Which is kind of the point of kind of Joe's thing. Not even kind of. That's straight up the point where Joe probably was hitting on this notion without even knowing it where it's like I didn't believe the straight up doctor now. I didn't believe it because this doctor doesn't know me. Yeah. He doesn't know my work ethic. Right. That's what he was thinking. And guess what? He was right. It's absolutely right. And I think that applies to everybody because it's true. They don't know your work ethic. You know, that being said, I'm sure that the doctors are trying to set expectations properly, right? I imagine so. Because what I don't want to say is like, "Don't worry, you'll be back to 100%." And you never get there and now you're mad. That being said, I would hope that someone would say, "Hey, listen, you got a 25% chance of getting full recovery from your pec tear. But if you apply discipline, work ethic, follow the protocols, you you're going to increase that by a lot." And so then they at least recognize that it's kind of that it's on them. You know, that's the thing. Physical therapy is on you. Yeah. You know, the physical therapy is on you. You gota you got to fix it and you got to protect it. You know, you got to be the use your judgment to know when cuz like I'm glad you got cleared at three and a half months. But sometimes people think they're okay and they start doing stuff when they shouldn't be doing stuff and something's not fully healed and they do it anyways and they can get hurt or they don't do things soon enough and now they're not pushing now the thing doesn't heal, right? So yeah, fully. And oh, I don't doubt that. And I don't doubt that there's probably even more to it than that. But I'm saying this factor when you're when you have like a really really strong work ethic and you know a lot about, you know, physical like training and stuff like that, you're lumped in with the rest of the people who got that same exact ailment and don't have your work ethic. See what I'm saying? So you're part of that 25%. But if you just isolated you and everyone like you, right, it might not be 25%. And we don't know what that is. I get it. Of course we don't. All I'm say I'm saying is probably what Joe's thinking in his brain where it's like I don't care. You give me a 1% guess who's the 1%. Me. See what I'm saying? And now it it if you kind of do the numbers kind of in retrospect after you he can walk again. It's kind of like well isn't that 100%. Mhm. Cuz I'm the I'm the what do you call the the sample size me 100%. See what I'm saying? And everyone like me 100%. You see what I'm saying? Check. So, it's not, you know, it's not a cut and dry thing, but it is almost like a in a way like a um practical and logical way to look at these quote unquote odds that people can impose on you. Yeah. I don't listen to the odds on anything. Yeah. Cuz they kind of like in a way don't have to apply. They don't accept it. Accept it. Yeah. And but it not only boils down to discipline and work ethic, it also boils down to fuel. Got to have the right fuel. Got it. So, imagine you're got some kind of a physical ailment. Yep. Get the right Get the right fuel. We recommend Jaco Fuel. Check it out. Get the Get the Get the Jago Protein, Mul Protein, ready to drink powders. We got new flavors of powders coming out. We got It just It just tastes delicious. By the way, joint warfare, super krill. These are things you should take every day. Time War. These are things you should take every day. These are things that are so helpful. I got I'm so stoked. Like my kids who are young adults, they're all on it. Cuz Rana, like a few months ago, she's like, "Dude, oh no, it was more than a few months ago, but she's like, I see you rolling with the freaking Miha, Wes, Dean, uh, Young Bucks, right? people that are Sloan, um, Wyatt, like people that are legit competitive grapplers. She's like, "I see you doing that and you're almost 54 years old." She's like, "How is that?" I said, "Lift weights." I said, "Never stop lifting weights. Never stop working out and take the stuff that I take. Take joint warfare. Take Super Curl. Take Time War, please." Mhm. I go, if you do that, it's going to just make you so much more durable over time. Keep you right in the game. Keep you in the game, bro. You got to stay in the game. Yep. Uh, so we got all that stuff. We got hydration. We got greens, creatine. I'm on the mega creatine right now. Yeah. With you. You're with me? Well, you know, I just 10 grams a day. I just got back from the I know and we call that the land. Yeah. Yeah. The land. And I failed to bring the creatine. So the moment I got back, I started double creatine sticks. By the way, we have the little creatine stick packs. So it's so awesome. So I go on travel and I just, oh, I'm going for 4 days. Cool. Eight creatine stick packs. Boom. Done. Easy. 10 grams a day. We're in the game. And then I get home cuz the creatine stick packs are obviously a little bit more expensive because it's packaging. But then when I get home, you got the big bucket. It's like, well, it's not a big I got I have a small like a small bucket little of creatine morning and night. Five grams. Five grams. I'm even thinking I was listening to Rhonda Patrick. You know who that is? Yeah. Of course. She was talking about she had an individual on there and she was talking about like, oh, sleep deprivation up your creatine. I'm like, cool. I'm in the game. Oh, if you don't get that much sleep, don't get that much sleep, more creatine. Oh, that helps. Okay. All right. Good to know. See what I'm saying? Good to know. So now when I travel, I'm probably going to put two extra stick packs so I can do a little maybe a 15, maybe a 20 because sometimes that jet lag, you stayed up too late, still got to get up early. Yep. Get yourself some creatine. So the packs of creatine is 10 10 g. No, it's five. Okay. So I bring if I'm going for 4 days, I bring eight. So I have one in the morning, one at night. Jack. And by the way, I'm just straight dry scooping this all the time. I'm not mixing it with water or nothing. Just pouring it in my mouth and then drinking some water. Okay, I get it. That's what we're doing. Hey, do it. I don't know if I can get there, but all good. You can get all the stuff that you need here. jofuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart, Waw Wa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Aphes, Hannford, Dash Stores, Maryland, Wakeern, Shopright, HB down in Texas has walls of Jaco Fuel. Thank you, Texas. Meer has walls of JCO Fuel up in the up in the Midwest. Wegman's pallets of Jaco fuel. Harris ter Hey. Hey, Florida. What's happening Florida? Publix crushing. Thank you, Florida. If you want Jonaf fuel, go to go to Publix. You can get it. Lifetime Fitness Shields and whatever gym you're at. Hopefully, they have Jonof Fuel. If they don't, email jfs [email protected]. We'll hook you up. Also, America, we have people that fought for America. And yet, there's people that take their money and spend it in a foreign country, a communist country. A country. Do you like communism? I I don't you know. No, not really. Okay. You don't like communism? Do you like slavery? No, I don't. Okay. Do you like child abuse? No, I don't. Okay. You see what I'm saying? You see where I'm going with this? I see. There are nations in the world that that's what that's how they roll. Communist, slavery, child labor, child abuse. It's heinous. And yet, just giving them money. Just giving them money. You don't need to do that anymore. Mhm. Origin USA. Originusa.com. Go there. You need jeans, ghee for jiu-jitsu, rash guard, hoodie, t-shirt, pants. Uh, we got different types of pants, too, by the way. We got like, hey, I'm going to go casual day. Sure. Casual. We got I'm going to go adventuring. Sure. Like, I'm going to be, you know, possibly sweating, possibly maybe getting wet, possibly having to leap over small things. Yeah. Yeah. We got you. Hunt gear. Sure, we got what you need. Boots. And it's all 100% made in America with Americanmade material. So don't support communism. Don't support child labor. Don't support slave labor. Support America. Support your America. Originusa.com. Go check it out. Y. Also check out a store called Joo Store. So it's Joo's store. Anyway, you want to represent discipline equals freedom. We got your shirts there. Merch there. Uh the idea of good. We got those shirts as well. Few uh few options there. U we got some socks on there. Hyped about the socks. Um socks are on there right now. And hats. They're on there right now. Yeah. Okay. Send me some socks. I will. Just like two pairs. Two pair. You got it. Um and then yeah, also the shirt locker, which is a different shirt design every month. It's a subscription scenario. People seem to like that one. a little bit different types of design, but still design's representative of the path big time. So check that out. You go on jakostore.com, click on the top, it says shirt locker, you can kind of see the some of the past design, see what it's all about. Anyway, check it out. If you like something, get something. Also, check out primalbeef.com and Coloradobeef.com. Awesome people, awesome steaks, awesome jerky, meat sticks, beef tallow. What do you need? We got you. primalbeef.com, coroladcraftbeef.com. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Check out joo underground.com. It's another little podcast that we do answering your questions. Check out our YouTube channel, Jaco Fuel YouTube channel. Origin USA YouTube channel. Check out some books. Final spin, The Way of the Warrior Kid books. We got a movie coming with that. Mikey and the Dragons. I just read through that the other day randomly. It's a good one. It's a good one, man. It's a good one. Get that for your kid. Get that for your neighbors. It's going to it's going to help them. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. All the things we talked about today, the combat that we went through, the combat that we went through required leadership and we utilized leadership principles that were tested on the battlefield and now we teach them to people. If you need them inside your organization, go to eslonfront.com. If you want to come to our one of our events, go to eslonfront.com. You want to come to the muster, the next muster, April 29th through May 1st. There still are some seats available. You need to get there quickly. Check it out. echelonfront.com. We also have an online training academy, extreme ownership.com. Learn these leadership principles through the online academy. Interact, live questions and answers, tests. It's it's an awesome program and you can learn these actual principles so you can have a better life. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Goldstar families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americaasmightywarriors.org and check that out. Also, heroes andhorses.org. Micah Fank helping our vets find themselves up in the wilderness. And finally, Jimmy May. Jimmy May's got an organization beyond the brotherhood.org. And actually, I didn't mention this today, forgot about it in the moment. Jimmy May was in Rammani with Tasking Bruiser. He joined us probably halfway through deployment and then he stayed a little extra time. Remember how I was saying like we didn't want to go home? Well, because Jimmy hadn't been there long, he didn't have to go home. So, he stayed a little bit longer and he actually got shot I want to say a couple days before November 19th, but he he wasn't wounded too badly. Thank God, but he was going to leave. So, he wasn't on this operation and when these guys got hurt, he's the one that escorted him home. So, Jimmy May, he's got his organization beyond the brotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, first of all, for Elliot Miller. If you want to follow Elliot Elliot Miller, he is on Instagram, he is dude bro_78. Dude dro_78. I don't have I don't have Joe's. If we figure it out, we'll we'll link everybody. And also for the movie, the warfare movie on Instagram. It's warfaremov. And then for us, you can check out joo.com and on social media. I'm at joollink and echo is at echo charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm there trying to destroy your life. Don't let it. And thanks to all of our military around the globe right now. And a special thanks obviously to Joe Hildebrand and Elliot Miller. so severely wounded but who survived thanks to their teammates from SEAL team 5 and to the Army and the Marine Corps. You saw the Anglico in action in the movie. You saw the Army in action in the movie. That happened time and time and time again. Our service members working together as a team. That was the ready first brigade combat team. We thank you all for taking care of our teammates. And thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officer officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for taking care of us here at home. And for everyone else out there, do you need a better example of fortitude and perseverance than Elliot Miller? Because if you need someone better than that, I don't have anything for you. If he can get up and drive on every day and get married and have kids and carry on, if he can do that, then we have no excuses and we have no other option other than to get up every day and get after it. Thanks, Elliot. Thanks, Joe. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Ekko and Joo out.