This is JoCo podcast number two fifty seven with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening. Good evening. The president of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Sergeant First Class Ryan, Michael Hendrickson, United States Army, for exceptional gallantry in the face of the enemies of the United States of America with exceptional valorous conduct. As the engineer sergeant of Special Operational Detachment, Bravo S.F. ODP seven two two zero Advanced Operations Base North Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan on twenty three February twenty sixteen during Operation Freedom's Sentinel in support of Resolute Support Mission four on twenty three February.

Twenty sixteen members of the fifth, eighth and 10th Special Operations Kandak tactically advised by MSF Odah seven two two, three and S f ODP seven two two zero conducted clearing operations in order to deny a known Taliban safe haven. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen led a team of National Mine Reduction Group and R.G. soldiers ahead of the main effort to clear routes of improvised explosive devices, IEDs, clearing 15 IEDs in the process. While conducting movement to the first compound of interest, a member of his element struck a tripwire IED.

The element immediately took cover. However, there was no detonation. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen team was then immediately ambushed by heavy enemy machine gun, small arms and RPG fire from approximately 15 meters away. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen immediately directed his NMR team to play suppressive fires on the enemy while providing detailed terminal attack guidance, which enabled an F-16 close air support platform. To conduct a strike on four to five enemy fighting positions, danger close to his position. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen assessed that his element needed to maneuver away from the enemy's position to ensure the safety, the safety of his and Marji members.

He quickly led the element to bounce back to a friendly position by creating additional distance between his team and the enemy, air assets were able to successfully neutralize, neutralize the enemy during a second air strike.

After the smoke cleared following air to ground engagements, Sergeant First Class Hendriksen immediately began clearing a path for friendly forces by leading his team to clear several complex IEDs designed to target friendly dismounted elements.

During exfiltration, the element was reengaged by heavy and effective enemy PKM, RPG, sniper and mortar fire, which resulted in multiple U.S. and partner force casualties. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen directed Afghan commandos who were pinned down and separated from the main element to maneuver to and gain cover behind his position. Under heavy enemy fire, Sergeant First Class Hendriksen directed friendly elements to a nearby compound where the casualty collection point was established.

After conducting head count, Sergeant First Class Hendriksen realized that two partner force members were missing. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen organized a team to locate and recover the separated and potentially wounded friendly forces. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen had to be held back numerous times while air support conducted additional attacks on enemy positions once the air to ground engagements were complete. Sergeant First Class Hendriksen selflessly maneuvered the recovery team under enemy small arms fire to retrieve the missing friendlies. Upon reaching the two missing soldiers, they discovered that the soldiers had been mortally wounded.

Sergeant First Class Hendriksen then utilized a ladder as a litter to help carry the wounded soldiers to the CCP, while his element continued to engage enemy forces with suppressive fires.

Sergeant First Class Hendricks's actions prevented the Taliban forces from recovering the bodies of friendly forces, which ensured all partner force members were accounted for, leaving no one behind. Sergeant First Class Hendricks's actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism and reflect distinct credit upon himself, the Special Operations Task Force, Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Special Operations Component Command, Afghanistan. Special Operations. Joint Task Force, Afghanistan and.

The United States Army. So.

Obviously, that is a Silver Star citation from an incredibly hard mission and this particular individual, this Special Forces soldier, Ryan Hendrickson, he had already been through hell just to get on that mission.

And luckily for us, he has written a book about his experiences, which is called Tip of the Spear, and it is an honor to have him with us here tonight to share his story.

Ryan, that was a doozy of a mission. Thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate you guys having me on here. Yeah, that was is awesome.

Well, it's good to meet you. And we'll dive into that some of the details around that that what you did there, because really that's you know, like I said, you already been through a hell of a lot just to be on that mission in the first place you've been. Well, we'll get there. But, yeah, let's let's start at the beginning.

And and, you know, I read your book and it's called Tip of the Spear The Incredible Story of an Injured Green Berets Return to Battle.

And I always like to start at the beginning. So let's start at the beginning. Let's see what made Ryan Hendrickson.

So you start off here in the book.

I grew up in the unincorporated California town of Fall River Mills, nestled between the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain Ranges in rugged Shasta County.

And then you and I always have to say this, I have to jump around in the book. I'm not going to read the whole book. You have to buy the book if you want to get the whole story. But I'll I'll fast forward through a bunch of the highlights. This is always a good way to start life.

Pretty much sucked because my mother, who delivered my sister and me into this world, was hooked on drugs and alcohol.

Dad sent her packing. My dad was a Vietnam vet who did two tours as an aviation crew chief before returning to the Pacific Northwest and eventually Northern California following his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

My dad's primary aircraft aircraft was the three otter with the fifty fourth aviation out of Vung Tau. But he constantly found himself flying into combat in a Huey military helicopter formerly known as the Bell One.

It was in a Huey that my father experienced the true horror of war as an M. Sixty door gunner, using the deadly firepower at his fingertips to rain down death on Enova troops and Viet Cong. So your dad was in. How many years did he do? Did he do like the two years, like, hey, I was in Vietnam, I did two years and got out and stay in longer.

What do you do? Well, yeah, he actually he actually did two tours in Vietnam, so total of four years in the Army, but he did a back to back to back tours in Vietnam as in two years straight.

Dang yeah.

Well there was a there was a break because he came back for an hour, an hour and then went back. So you know kind of a little break but but yeah he did. He did. His duty was over there. And what do you know anything about his decision making process on that.

His so what we have talked about, his decision behind wanting to do multiple tours in Vietnam is number one, he loved the people. And number two, it's it's combat in combat that's addicting, extremely dangerously addicting.

And that was kind of when he was over there, he's like, hey, I can go back to wherever Northern California, Oregon, or I can sit here and just keep getting after it. Yeah. And the choice was pretty obvious for how old was he?

He left out of high school. He volunteered for the army at high school. Which what do you know what year was 1966.

Oh dang. I think yeah. Around in there. But then he got out. Mm hmm.

So he did two tours, two years straight with a little break. You know how he got out.

I'm not extremely sure the decision making process behind him getting out, just as he told me, you know, back in those days being in the military wasn't like it is today. And so, you know, getting out and moving on with your life or whatnot like that is just the military wasn't popular at the time, wasn't a prestigious thing for, you know, like today, us serving. It's, you know, it means something. And back then and he's like, oh yeah.

Well, if you went in in sixty six or two tours in Nam. So he's we're talking to you. This is nineteen sixty eight. Nineteen sixty nine. Yep. The wars freak and everyone, everyone's against it.

You guys moved around a bunch retting.

You say this about your dad before Wendie and that's your sister. Yes. Before Wendy and I came in the world though my dad was a guy who liked his beer.

You get drunk and if you happen to cross paths with him in the wrong way, you would most likely be at the losing end of a fist fight. He worked hard logging, putting in crazy twelve hour days, but he partied even harder when the logging industry was booming and money was good coming in. He was blowing a healthy portion of his dough on booze. And you go into some detail here. He was just sort of blazing a path of destruction one night.

He's like drunk and.

Basically. Feels like his life is kind of going nowhere. Yep, and he's well, I'll go to the book here while driving in his drunken stupor. My father thought about what his life had become. His options had slowly dwindled down over the years with no hope and no future. He believed he was facing his last choice to end it all. Dad pulled his truck in front of Uncle Steve's house right as he shifted in a park. A man appeared in front of the house and walked up to the driver's side window that hadn't seen and seen him leave the house.

So he didn't know how or why this man had approached his car. My uncle lived in the middle of nowhere.

Larry Hendrickson, the middle aged man dressed conservatively, had a smile on his face. My father had never seen this man in his life. How do you know my name? He asked the man. Ignore the question, Larry. You're out of chances, aren't you? He asked. This time my father was too stunned to answer. It doesn't have to be that way, the man continued. Jesus has a better plan for you and your life. In front of my uncle's house that night, my father found God after that, his hellion days slowed to a trickle.

That didn't mean he didn't get pissed off at the cards he was dealt in life, especially after he had just polished off another six pack. But my father, like everyone else I've met, including myself, was on a journey. So that sounds like almost a mystical situation like where this dude come from.

Yeah. So talking to our talking it out with my dad and it's one of the most powerful stories. But yeah, he was so he threw the truck in the park and he was going to bring my sister and I to my uncle's house, tell my uncle to take care of us. Then he was going to go shoot himself in the head. And that's I. I don't know. I mean, you know, I am religious and I believe, you know, I believe that God has a plan for everybody.

And I that was just the plan.

Did did this guy did we ever see this guy again?

I don't think we ever did. I was young, so.

But I don't think my dad ever did crazy. Yeah. So you guys move around for a while. You say, we lived out. We lived out in the woods in a house that had no running water due to damage pipes and limited electricity. So the place was cheap. Your dad got hurt and then he gets healed up and you say it was clear that he couldn't even afford a home with running water or steady electricity. His only option was to have us move in with his mother, who lived in Kolten, Oregon, one to one hundred miles to the south.

Colton was even smaller than Burke and Field, but my grandmother could help provide the necessities of life. While my father got under his feet and attended a Bible college, he wanted to become a preacher. Fast forward a little bit after my father got ordained as a preacher, his first pastor, it was at a small church in Lincoln City on the central Oregon coast. He seemed happy and we as a family were happy, although we were still poor, didn't matter much because life was good.

My dad didn't. My dad, being a preacher, didn't lift us out of poverty.

Actually, just the opposite happened. We had to live in a tent for several months while we waited to move into the upstairs of the parsonage tent. Living wasn't bad, but it did get embarrassing when other kids are living conditions and teased me at school. All right, let's get down to brass tacks, how big of a tent was this tent? I would say Alaskan tent, Afghan Alaskan tent, and now I kind of feel bad about that in there because I've definitely lived in Alaskan tent with about 15 other dudes.

And so we actually had it pretty nice. Yeah, right on.

Well, that's a positive attitude. I like it.

You continue on here. After the tiny church in Lincoln City couldn't afford to keep its doors open, we were forced to pack up and move again. This time we settled in the sleepy logging town of Lowell, Oregon, 20 miles southeast of Eugene, and populated with one thousand residents. My dad did his best to keep us in one spot until I could finish high school and move on with my life. I guess having four years in one place is why I say that Lowell is my hometown.

I was always active as a kid, preferring to wander around the foothills of the Cascade Mountains or play sports rather than sitting on my butt watching movies or doing nothing. I'm sure I was hell for my dad to raise, but he instilled in me the idea that I should set the rules for my life, not let life set rules for me.

At Lowell High, I gave everything I had to our football and wrestling programs.

I was never the most talented athlete, but every coach said I was the toughest kid they'd ever trained. That was when I first heard the saying that boys too stupid to quit. A backhanded compliment for sure, but I wore it like a badge of honor.

How good were you at wrestling?

I was mediocre and so. But did you start wrestling in high school or did you wrestle before that eighth grade started?

Yeah. So I went against kids that were wrestling since they were whatever. First grade kindergarten. Yeah, yeah.

I was never a rock star at it or anything like that, but I picked it up quickly and and I just kind of I don't know, it was wrestling in my mind.

I know people will have their own opinions about it, but it's probably one of the toughest, I guess, sports out there as far as physical fitness, endurance and whatnot. And that also leads into, you know, jujitsu and Greco, Roman and freestyle and whatnot. But it also what it did for me was it kind of I already had that work ethic, but it kind of like I mean, you have to get tough or you're just going to get slaughtered on the mat.

And that's embarrassing because I've had it happen before. What weight did you wrestle at?

So I wrestled.

I started off at one.

One 20, whatever it was, 121 or whatever, yes. And then my senior year, I cut weight down to 142, which was, yeah, pretty hard, but I was running from the 151 weight class because the kid there was just a beast.

And so I cut right down to 140 to basically running from somebody. And I went to state and, you know, did OK, OK, well damn.

If you went to state in Oregon, that's freaking legit.

Yeah, it was during the gut just period and stuff like that. So we, we had a pretty Oregon was nationally known for wrestling with, you know, like the got brothers and whatnot. But that's awesome.

And here's a little story. One day as we were kicking around my future, you're talking about your dad, he told me a story. There were two old men sitting on their porches staring out into the abyss. They didn't know each other, but they had one thing in common. They were waiting on death. I leaned in closer, Dad could always tell a good story, but this was different, he meant business. One old man was miserable.

He had let life's chances passing by and now lots of opportunities long gone, were replaced with haunted ideas of what could have been, the other old man was totally fulfilled by the life he had lived.

He had done everything there was to do. And now he could sit back and relish his golden moments and wonderful memories because he had lived life to the fullest.

So there you go, son. I wish I would have done this or that statements are a prison of misery for the mind. You want to go through life and be perfectly content with the life you've lived.

You want to do everything there is to be done right or wrong. You do it and never regret a decision you made.

This from a man who'd been off to war, fought for his life seeing the world given life, taken life loved and had his heart broken, he had made mistakes, taken chances and failed and succeeded many times. Good or bad, I can sit back and reminisce on my life and feel good about it, he said. When God tells me it's my time to go home, I will leave this earth fulfilled because I've done it all and I want you to feel the same way.

So let me leave you with this thought. What kind of old man do you want to be, son? Freakin good guidance from the from from Pops. Yeah, yeah, that's that is pretty much that guidance right there is pretty much led, you know, half of the the decisions I've made my life, whether or not I look back and I'm like, wow, I can't believe I'm alive from that. Most of what he said right there is the reason why, you know, I can look back and like, wow, that was that was really dumb.

Let's try this again.

So and that's sort of what made you guys start talking about you going in the military.

I know you you check with an Army recruiter, you didn't even you didn't even think about the Navy.

No. First. So the basically how it went down was my my teachers basically said, hey, you'll graduate if you join the military. You are you are doomed. Like, you need to go do something that the military will force you to do. All right. So the Air Force, they looked at my test scores and they're like, no, sorry, man, you're real cute. But now the the army, they actually didn't in the mid 90s.

They didn't need anybody it this crazy. So they had like Patriot missile program and it was like a six month wait to get in. And then the Marines came in and I got so angry and mean I was like, man, you're scary. I'm like, I don't want to be a Marine. You're scaring me. And then so the Navy recruiter, I mean, imposible, had on like a Hawaiian t shirt or whatnot. But, you know, you want to you want to be an F 14 Tomcat pilot like Tom Cruise, like.

Yeah, you want to be a Navy SEAL like Charlie Sheen's. Yeah. I want to go to exotic ports and see exotic women. And yeah, he goes, cool man. Sign here. Right. I didn't I didn't fly an effort as any one of the.

So so then you went to boot camp and look, there's so much you cover this stuff in the book which is, which is cool, but I'm going to jump through, jump pass some of that stuff.

You go on here, you finally get to see being on board a ship with nine hundred other sailors and Marines, all male in this deployment was a major culture shock and not for the faint of heart, especially for lower enlisted sailors like me working 16 hour days and doing maintenance duties like keeping the deck department and equipment in good condition, loading and unloading cargo, shining brass busting rust because of salt water and painting bulkheads, walls and passageways. The same battleship grey sucked.

What little free time I had was spent in my coffin rack trying to get some much needed sleep.

Tell us about a coffin rack. What's that all about? Coffin racks? Yes. So when people talk about quality of life in the military, I just say, if you've never lived on a ship that was commissioned in the 60s, then I don't think you really understand what bad quality life is.

So what was worse, the tent that you lived in or a shipboard. Oh, shit. Oh, by far. And the Marines had it even worse. Oh yeah. There I think they were stacked like six high down in the Marine berthing base or five high.

Yeah, well I did two deployments on amphibious ships and both of them were built in like nineteen sixty, something like that. And they were built to transport troops over to the Southeast Asia. Yeah. And so you were supposed to be on them when they originally built this was to put Marines on there for whatever a four week trip and then you get off and go do your work. Well, by the time the 90s rolled around, like what you're talking about here, we were going on six, six month deployments.

And yes, I stayed in as a seal was staying in the berthing, were where the Marines stayed. And so, yeah, there would be they would we we literally had the old school canvas racks, the canvas strung between metal pipes. Yeah. And then a little cheap freakin mattress on top of that.

And yeah it was just and there before five high I think usually we would kind of adjust our, our living space as seals. We kind of like yeah we do some work in there so maybe we wouldn't be quite as bad but get some gas and rack.

Sorry I cut you off.

No people. Yeah people don't understand but you're in your entire life so I've done a dozen, you know the USA report which was LPT twelve and Fed Boiler several and then, you know, the Guam. I did some time on that and then the Kamden well and the Kamden was commissioned in the seventies. So it was super, it was just this great upgrade. But yeah, the Shreveport we we were in the Persian Gulf probably ten months in ninety eight and and then yeah.

It's your coffin rack like you have that thin mattress and then you open up the what the mattress sits on is basically a lid that you open up and now you have your, your area, your where your clothes go and.

You know, everything else and is just this tiny like it, it's it's a coffin, but even a coffin has more depth in a coffin rack on board the ship. And so, yeah, that's that's your entire life.

And when you're in deck division and you're lower enlisted, I mean, we were stacked four high and and so it was and then you got you know, you have your little curtain closed the curtain and, you know, try and get some sleep or whatnot and maybe kick their ass and the guy next to you and he's being too loud or the you know. You know. You know about it. Yeah.

No, it's it's that's what's always surprising is, you know, when guys are going through seal training and, you know, even if you if you just hear about that, you think, well, I don't that doesn't sound like a good deal. I might be wet, cold and sandy right now, but that sounds like maybe I don't want to go do that. This was I thought this was interesting.

So fast forward a little bit. At the time the USS Cole was bombed, I was on board my second ship, the USS Camden. We were then 12 hours of Yemen. When the distress calls came out, we sailed full steam ahead through the Straits of Hormuz and along the USS, along with the USS Donald Cook. We would be the first American military personnel to arrive and assist the Cole crew in saving the ship and pulling bodies from the wreckage.

I'll never forget the smell of burning human flesh. When I stepped on board the Cole for the next week, we teamed up with Cole crew members to keep the ship from sinking and recovered the remains of all. Seventeen heroes killed that day. I was I had witnessed the first salvo in what would become known as the war on terror. And our rescue and recovery effort with the USS Cole would impact my life in the years to come. Yeah, you definitely being on a Navy ship, you feel very untouchable by the enemy for sure, and especially in the 90s.

So that must have been a shocker. I think it was a shocker for the world. But for you to actually go there, that's crazy.

Yeah, I seen that. I remember when we were on the we call them Liberty Boats, but, you know, there were the barges taking us over over to the Cole and just looking at that massive hole in the side of it that had just been blown in there about 18 hours prior. It was yeah, it's pretty intense. It's you know, you go from untouchable to all of a sudden you you can be touched. And so and yeah, it would set the path for, you know, my you know, basically what I did in special operations and whatnot as a Green Beret and the enemy trying to kill me and that, you know, the the zip in, the crack in and you're not untouchable anymore.

And so.

Yeah, but that was the first first little idea I got. Of what? Of wow. You know, people, they they do want to kill you. Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's a weird feeling.

Yeah. It takes a little getting used to spring of 2001. You get out, you get out of the Navy, you'd got married. And again, there's all kinds of good. This is good. Some good life lessons learned in this book.

Good life lessons in this book. So you get married, you get out of the Navy. You actually married a girl that was in the Army. Mm hmm. And so you get out you try a bunch of different jobs. You end up as a bartender, which Echo supports.

September eleventh happens and now you're feeling like, you know, hey, maybe I want to go do something. In the meantime, I got to read this little section. One day in early 2002, I received a phone call out of the blue. Hi. Is this Ryan Hendrickson? Yes. Who's this? It's your big sister, Chris. Remember me? Barely. I thought our family had been separated when I was still in diapers. I had two older half sisters.

Paul was five years old and Chris was eight years older. I also had a half brother who's 10 years older than me and lived with us periodically. His name was Robbie. Both my dad and his first wife were heavy drinkers. One night she swept up my older siblings and disappeared. I had memories of them, but I was so young I didn't really have a grasp of what had happened or who they were. And now this phone call came out of the blue.

So that's that's kind of crazy.

Yeah, yeah. That was that was something else.

And she wanted to contact me because she she basically said, like, you won't remember all the bad stuff, so I'm going to start off with you.

But it was when is when that what is it.

Not ancestry DNA, but whenever they're building your family trees or like the genealogy type thing. Yeah. So that's actually when everyone started getting connected back again. And and it was. It was. Yeah it was, it was crazy. But my dad and I, we made a trip down to New Mexico to see him and that was the first time he saw his kids in years, years since, you know, and then we just, you know, we started kind of building the bridges back in.

You know, I learned I learned just how, you know, my dad, like, he he lived a hard life, you know?

And so I heard some of those stories. And but that's that's the one thing that, you know, the people that are out there and they said, you know, people people never change or you're not going to change once you're once a loser, always lose or something like that. And I look at my dad and I could be like, I 100 percent disagree with you.

And you knew your dad as this guy that was kind of, you know, on such a good path in life and was staring you in the right direction. And then your older half sister had stories that you almost seemed like a different. Yeah, she was talking about a different guy.

Well, I remember she said, hey, have you talked to Dad lately? And I was like, yeah, I talked to him all the time. He's a preacher. And she goes, No, no, no. Larry Henrikson. Yeah, yeah, he's a preacher. She goes, It's impossible. Wow. I was like, no, it's not. Wow, that's crazy.

Now, during this time, also, you stayed in the Navy Reserves, which means you were doing your one weekend, a month or whatever, and then we go back to the book. Then an unexpected opportunity came up. As a naval reservist, I could attend basic underwater demolition school at Naval Special Warfare Training Complex in Coronado, California. But six month long training class was part was the first part of Navy SEAL training. So if I ever wanted to become a SEAL and a member of the Naval Special Operations Community, Basic Underwater Demolition School is where I had to start.

My wife, Sarah, knew that being part of special operations had always appealed to me. Now this opportunity was sitting right in front of me. I had undergone training as a rescue swimmer in the Navy, so I assumed I had the swimming part down. When I was approved to attend the six month Budd's course, visions of becoming a seal danced in my head.

I quickly found out how tough it was during the first phase of training a pre Budd's training course that lasted around three weeks. From there I went on to phase one, which consisted of eight weeks of grueling exercise and conditioning topped off by hell week. Typically, more than half the recruits wash out sheer fatigue and sleep deprivation cause every candidate to wonder what his limits are. The nonstop beating that our bodies took from some of the hardest training the military has followed by long stretches of being cold, wet and miserable with no time to recover, took its toll.

When my body broke down from a leg injury and severe pneumonia. I was dropped after three months of training. I could have tried again after I recovered, but I couldn't bring myself to go through all that shit again.

Yeah. So what was what was that like going through buds or attending buds?

Yeah, Budd's was I mean I was class two for two, I have to say we were a beat down class. That's that's just my opinion. You know how they have the classes where some of them are. Oh man. That's you guys got secured early from hell week and whatnot. And the next class is man you guys are a beat down class or whatnot. Well, we we had a beat down class and it was it was intense. Everything that they talk about it.

Yeah. The only thing I can tell any listener who wants to contemplate that route is do it because it's an experience that you'll never forget. They will make sure you will never forget it 100 percent.

So it was the worst part you think, for because you know, all different guys, they dislike different things. What do you think was the worst part for me?

The worst part, actually. Once I got pneumonia, I couldn't breathe and so on. And so when we were doing drowned proofing and whatnot like that, I just my nose would just start, you know, open up. But I would I would have to say anything like on on the water. Fine. Under the water.

I don't I don't really like that. I'm not I'm not a very big fan of that.

So when I we'll go back to the book here. For the first time in my life, I experienced a major setback. Becoming part of an elite unit was something I wanted with every inch of my being, but I couldn't make the cut, which prompted a series of questions, why did I fail? Why wasn't I good enough? How come my body broke down? Was I that weak? I had no answers and I came up with every every poor me excuse in the book, you'd think that for a guy who was raised the way I was, excuses would be the last thing on my mind.

But they were my crutch.

I slowly but steadily turned myself into a victim. If only I didn't grow up in a broken family, if only the world and everyone in it weren't against me. That just wasn't about buds, but me not making it through my buried demons to the surface. So even at this point, you know, you don't make it through buds and you kind of blame all these, you know, hey, it's OK, cause I was raised this way. I had these you know, my dad my mom wasn't around.

And you kind of make those excuses for yourself.

Yeah. I buried I buried myself in excuses. And it it became very easy to do that. It's very easy to to make somebody else the issue instead of looking deep inside and saying, hey, man, you know, if everyone can make it, then it wouldn't be buds. And so instead of understanding that, you know, I did I took the it was it was more it was almost more entitlement than it was. Victim is like, well, this isn't fair.

Why why didn't I make the cut?

And thing is, I could have rolled back, but I don't know how how far did you make it all the way up to the end of the first phase.

So it was. Yeah, it is. Basically they wanted me to go back to day one of phase one. And I was just like and, you know, I just I didn't have it in me, so. But, yeah, it's you know, it's it's one of those things I look back on, you know, and I, I do I don't ever regret anything. But it is one of those things where I'm like, yeah, you kind of you kind of fuck that one up, you know?

So, yeah.

Well, you know, when you say you had a beat down class more than other people, it's like, I'm going to tell you, the classes are beat down classes there. They are beat down classes. You're going to get beat down. You know, I was over there a few months ago with one of my friends. It still works over there. And, you know, he was like, there's there's whatever there's like a hundred helmets by the bell.

And and he goes, every single one of those guys is a stud that wanted to be you are. And services like almost every single one of those guys is a total stud that showed up here thinking they were going to be a seal. And they ring that bell man and they go, I go, it's crazy. He is he's like, it's it's crazy. That's the way it is. It's a crazy process to crazy machine.

Yep. So now you and Sarah. She's done in the Army, you. You're now out of the Navy and. Well, he will go to the book, everything was perfect, so you go to Minnesota and that's because that's where her family's from. Yeah. So you go to Minnesota. Everything was perfect except for one major problem. I cannot overcome my immaturity and my sense of being a victim. When I refused to take responsibility for my actions, I drank, partied and ran my marriage into the ground.

I used whatever excuses I could find. So you're just on a bad path at this point?

Yeah, it's I was on a years long bender and like, I don't think Guns N Roses could have held up with me.

And you get the idea that you should go back in the military. You obviously don't want to be in the Navy. Your wife was in the Army. So maybe you're thinking the army's a bad idea. So you go back and check it, check the Air Force.

You go here, I looked at Air Force Special Operations, combat control and jumped feet first into training, I buried myself in every aspect of the course until a medical review of my record showed I had taken depression medication while in the Navy. A lot of people need prescriptions, antidepressants and depression ran in my family. Antidepressant medication and counseling helped me through a very dark period in my life. But this detour came back to bite me. The Air Force decided that I was not medically qualified for special operations and put me in a job where they needed bodies.

I was told I would become an ammunition specialist or ammo troop. So you did they had you already enlisted when you. Did you did you had you already enlisted when you were going to try for four? Yes, yeah, I was already I mean, I was already a couple of months into the training. Oh, you are actually in the Air Force. Yeah. Going through training.

Yeah, I was that air traffic control school day and they told, you know. Yeah. I mean that the depression medication, it, you know, it it helped me out through, you know, some events in my life or whatnot the one time I did it. And and but back in those days and I'm not making excuses for it, but back in those days, you know, the go to for counselors or whatnot is here, take this, take this, take this and says, OK, I'll take this and that.

When you were in the Navy, so then you were taking a Navy prescribed thing and they they told, you know, even though you're taking something I was prescribed by the Navy.

Well, I had gone out for civilian counseling. Yeah. But I had reported it all, you know, like you're supposed to. And but yeah, it was I mean, it's just back in the days when it was easier to medicate than to actually, you know, kind of face your issues and fix them, man up and do the right thing. It's just easier to take some pills and go to go to the spirit world, I guess.

But yeah, it came back and got me.

So but, you know, it's er you know, there's a there's a path for everybody in life and and I firmly believe that, you know, the way my life panned out, I it was this, this is the path that was going to happen way before I was I was ever born. I believe, you know, God had this path laid out. And, you know, I was going to take some bumps and bruises along the way, some big ones.

But, you know, now, you know, to the point where I'm at right now. So, you know, I still make my mistakes. I'm a I'm a man. But, you know, I think I'm doing a lot better at, you know, building up people around me instead of tearing them down like one of the destructive paths that I was on, you know, my life.

So, yeah, know, that's that's one of the best things about this whole story is when you look at something, you took some major, you know, like right there. Right. Those two things, you didn't make it through buds. And then you try for Air Force combat control and you don't get that either. Like, those are two things that people like. That's that could be the last straw.

One of those things could be the last straw. I mean, you've already been through the hard childhood. So any of these things could be something that could completely derail someone's life. And yet you're sitting here so.

Well, let's continue. Let's continue that telling the story of your path. So you get stationed in Idaho. You're an ammo guy. You end up going on deployment to Qatar while you're in Qatar, you're loading up aircraft that are going and dropping bombs. Oh, yeah.

They were they were Winchester. Every night they'd come back. Winchester what year was that? Two thousand three.

OK, you get divorced.

Now, you go to Iraq in 2005, you're in Kirkuk and you say this, Iraq was the first place out. I was exposed to U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Berets. These bearded, shaggy haired men seem to play by their own rules. We would see them walking by. And later that night when the rest of us were hanging out after dinner, the stories of what we thought we knew about these guys would spill out. You end up in you end up in the gym.

One time you're lifting and a guy says, you know, hey, can you spot me? And you look over, it's it's this Green Beret. His name is Johnny. Days later, he introduced me to guys on his team. One guy in particular, a Jew named Gary, was in the Air Force before going into the Army. This got the wheels in my head turning. What if I tried to become a Green Beret? Could I do it?

Do I have what it takes? My failure at Buddz was never far from my mind when I contemplated my future. One thing was for sure. I did not want to be an old man sitting on my porch wondering about what might have been.

So you go to Iraq as your when you get back from Iraq, you take some leave, you go to do you freak and get after you were talking earlier about like you're not leaving not leaving any any stone unturned. You do some serious traveling. You go to you go to Vietnam, you go to Ho Chi Minh City in the Mekong Delta, and you got all really cool stories about all that stuff in here.

You come back from that, you're in Idaho. And again, you know, you're kind of drinking, you're not feeling like your path, you're on the right path. You go on you go on a trip to Europe, you go you end up going to Korea. You get you end up going for about a one year deployment to Korea. Yes. And this is still an Air Force deployment. You're over there doing what an ammo specialist does. Yeah.

And playing rugby and playing rugby. You go while you're over there.

You go to you go to you go to Bangkok.

So you go to Thailand. You go to China, you go to Cambodia. I mean, you're broke. You're getting after that. We do military travel. You do in civilian travel.

So that was that was for my leave. So the 30 days leave or whatnot like that. But but yeah. So Vietnam, that was civilian backpacking around Europe, that was civilian. Everything was civilian travel. And it was just trying to I don't know, I think I don't really know if I was running from things more than, you know, I was just trying to figure out, you know, who who I was because I had no I had no direction.

You know, I had I had my time in the Navy, time in the Air Force divorced, which, you know, I'm surprised she she made it that long. She's a fighter, but it is what it is. So I ran that one into the ground. And I think I just buried myself in everything that I could possibly do just to kind of like keep my mind off of the fact that, you know, I was turning into I was turned myself in a loser, basically, you know, and it was becoming easier and easier to give up.

And and I still I had that I had Buddz in the back of my head the entire time. And it just I don't know, as I really had a I guess, a come to Jesus moment when I started realizing that giving up was becoming almost natural because I was I was the entitled victim. Everything was someone else's fault.

In Korea, you end up with a girl named Jessica, which is not a real name, but you end up with a girl called Jessica in here and you're just partying and you're boozing.

And you and Jessica are I mean, this is like the couple that we all knew when they were two. How old are you at this point?

Early twenties. Yeah.

So this is like, you know, the couple that's fighting and yelling at each other and then all of a sudden, you know, they're going to the club just like, you know, I can I could I could see that scene if and of course, you guys decide you need to get married.

Yes. Which ends up in a pretty quick divorce at this point.

You write this in the book, I needed to win a big win. I was never the type to give up. But with two blown marriages, a failed attempt at becoming a Navy SEAL and the feeling that I hadn't found my calling in life, I was just settling and letting life run me ragged. I needed to reset my failures with a major victory. That was when I decided that there would be no more losing. It was time to start winning again.

At the time, the Air Force was overmanned in certain jobs, IMHO, being one of them, the army had a shortage of soldiers in certain career fields, so the Air Force was offering a direct transfer to the army.

One thing my dad had told me years earlier kept nagging me, if you don't try, you'll never know. And if you never know, it's because you didn't try.

The answer was clear. I wasn't going to live a life of regrets, even if the high risk of failure was there. After clearing my head, I decided to jump headfirst. Eyes closed into the unknown.

That's you know, you want to talk about there being a plan, the fact that the Air Force was overmanned and the Army would just do a direct transfer?

Yeah, it was it was it was insane because I was I was going to the to the S1 or the personnel office, whatever, to update some stuff for promotion. And there is this poster on the wall. And it had this guy in two uniforms. Half of them was in our airforce uniform. The other half was, you know, class A's army said blue to green. And that's in it. It all kind of fell within the same time frame as, you know, I need a victory.

I need I need something, because right now, you know, I am I'm 100 percent heading down the path of that that I probably won't be able to recover from if I keep, you know, because everything's an excuse.

Everything's everyone else's fault and entitlement and victimization.

And I was I was I still wasn't far enough down the path to where I couldn't recognize that I totally became a victim of life's shitty circumstances. And so I was I was still able to see, like, all right, you need a victory, you need something. You got a whole lot of zeros going. You need a one.

You know, what's weird is whenever I talk of vets and people, especially when people get out, I'm like you. When you get out of the when you get out of the military, you need a new mission. You need to have something else to focus on.

But what's weird about this is you were in the military, but the mission that you had, whatever that mission was, it like wasn't bringing you the satisfaction. You didn't feel like it was what you should be doing. You know, you knew that you had more to offer. And so you're traveling around. You're looking for you're looking for the mission. Yeah. And you just couldn't find it. And so then it's the same thing that happens when guys get out and they don't have a mission and all of a sudden they just go down a path of least resistance and a bottle of pills or whatever, and it ends up bad.

You were still in while you were having that go on. And luckily they had this opportunity to go in the Army man. So you went to Army boot camp and you talk about that in here.

Was that was that a little bit of a gentlemen's course? Do you if you heard the term, of course, before.

I have, yeah. OK, so it was your boot camp, like a gentlemen's course, which in the military at gentlemen's courses is basically there. It's basically you're there to actually learn. It's not like this beat down thing. You're going to actually learn stuff. You get treated like a human.

You're not getting treated like a like a, you know, new guy, piece of shit, whatever. You're getting treated well and you're there to learn. That's a gentlemen's course. For instance, I went to officer candidate school with all the other people coming out of college that go to school.

That's not a gentlemen's course like you go and you get all the full benefit of people yelling and screaming at you.

But for warn officers or or limited duty officers in the Navy, they go to a gentlemen's course where, hey, here's how you wear the uniform. And here's here's what here's how you write these reports.

It's like a nice transition. Yeah. Sounds like yours was somewhere in between. You kind of had to go to boot camp a little bit, but they were being called to you.

So, yeah, infantry basic was that there was two things that happened there. No. One.

So I had done the the prior service course that they had for us in New Mexico, which was supposed it was supposed to suffice. As you know, that was the phase one of infantry basic. Then you go to it.

When you say infantry basic is that boot camp, straight up boot camp. So you went to his class in New Mexico. How long was that course?

That was a month. And then, OK, a normal army boot camp is, what, twelve weeks? Yeah, I think so.

They gave you a little short course where they called you or were they yelling and screaming? So New Mexico, they can't really yell and scream of you know, they're a bunch of guard guys that were kind of which no offense, I mean definitely. But they, they were just there to check the boxes on us. So they're there to actually transition you.

OK, this is the way it works in the army. Here's how you wear your uniform in the army. These are the roles, responsibilities, those it was it was a gentleman's course that that was.

And then I get to Benning for Infantry and apparently I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to wait for it.

So I started basic with everyone else. And so the drill instructor, he he came up to me, hey, man, you're not supposed to be here.

And I basically told them, like, hey, I need this. You know, I need something to bury completely.

Just focus everything I got on it, bury all of my efforts into into into a cause. And I loved it like I loved it. And he's like, hey, you know. You're going to have to play the game then I was like, I'll play the game I got I got nothing but time. So it was awesome. I loved it. And so I would think for a private going through when I went through, they probably would say it was not a gentleman and score.

But for me, going through basic, you know, our inventory, basic and whatnot like that, it was it was exactly what I needed at that point in time. Every day was awesome. And it just kept my mind off of everything that I just went through.

Everything so but still didn't fix it, just kept my mind off it.

You end up so you go through that infantry basic, you go through it, you go to airborne, then you start the 18 X, which is when you going in Special Forces and you're not exactly sure which specialty you're going to get.

They call it 18 X, and you go to this 18 X prep course and you say this 18 X prep course was extremely hard and pushed me to my limits. I'm talking nonstop physical training, 12 hours per day, getting beat down. The intent of the prep program was not only to get a soldier ready mentally and physically for selection, but also to weed out the weak. So how long is that prep course? It it depends, but our x ray, the prep course for selection, I think ours was a month, so four weeks.

And then from prep course, you go to Special Forces selection. Yes. So prep courses literally just to get you ready, like. Yes, hard Petey's.

And they're trying to get you in good physical shape to be ready for four Special Forces selection.

Yes. Or to help you understand that this isn't really what you want. And so they don't blow a bunch of money training you. They can just send you over to the second really quick got and move on with life. Got it.

So now you get to Special Forces selection to go to the book. This was do or die time, an 18 day gut check to pull out all the stops. There was no way I would accept failure because I didn't think I could handle another fuckup in my life. This was most likely my only chance and I was going to make it happen. Everything that I've been through, all the hard work I put in, everything led up to this point selection.

As soon as we stepped off the bus as a chemical, it was game on. We started with the usual Army PT test, a readiness assessment also known as the Army Physical Fitness Test. To my surprise, some soldiers showed up for a shot to be the best, failed the first test, and were gone on day zero.

Fast forward, a lot of time was flying by for me and I was killing it, regardless of whether it was a 10 mile run along Sandy backwoods roads, a 10K rucksack march with 60 pounds on my back, a 12 mile land navigation course, rifle log with telephone poles, or the dreaded team week events that broke the will of most of the trainees. I was speeding through. As excruciating as everything was, I was amazed at how well I was doing.

The prep course lived up to his name. So you're kind of getting after it.

Dogood Yeah. We were constantly on the move 18 to 20 hours a day, whether it was a ballbuster session or hustling from one event to the other shot, I came in, snatches and meals were always on the go. Not getting enough food for me or not getting enough food for the number of calories I was burning took its toll after the first week, but I didn't care. While the lack of calories depleted my energy and strength, that, combined with my lack of sleep, was all part of the meant mentally and physically breaking down a trainee.

So you're not eating very much, which is one thing that I always was happy that I ended up in the Navy and going to Buddz instead of any of the Army courses where you don't get to eat.

Yeah, the the army seems to they they really like the whole you don't need to eat thing.

Yeah. The Navy focuses on you don't need to sleep and and also you don't need to be warm which look ranger school and freakin surf school. You don't it's not like you're warm or cuddly. They're either now.

Now the just beatdowns. We just we're not under the water and that is good.

As the days turned into weeks, our bodies are breaking down.

So I pressed on as we near the end, the final major obstacle in my way was a long march. We weren't supposed to know the distance of the final trek, but every selection class got the scoop from guys are gone before we go in. Twenty five to thirty miles. Turned out you guys went more than twenty five to thirty miles again, I'm jumped you give some really cool information and that's why people should get the book. Fast forward a little bit.

After hitting the finish line, we gathered in a large conference hall to hear who got selected and who didn't. I could barely put one foot in front of the other, but at least I walked in under my own power. Those left standing after the dust cleared look like they had spent years as W's. Most of the guys hobbled and limp their way into the conference hall, beaten down and on edge. As I took my seat, my tired head was filled with questions.

Will all this physical and mental effort be for nothing? Did I give it the best I could do? I have what they are looking for. After a wait that seemed like days, the selection cards entered the hall to call off the roster numbers of the guys selected. I was roster number zero for nine out of one hundred eighty five. As you went down the list, he reached those in the 40s. I held my breath and closed my eyes.

Roster number zero for nine selected.

I melted into my chair as the leaf spread over my body out of one hundred eighty five, only 50 or so men were selected, a little more than one out of every four. I was one of them, but I wasn't there yet. I still had more hurdles in front of me.

Out of the 50 of us who would advance to the qualification course, less than half would become Green Berets. Those concerns didn't matter to me at that point. However, for now, I savored my accomplishment. I was on my way. So you you do this freakin all this training of selection. How long selection? 18 days.

Yeah, it it varies. There are some three week selections and whatnot.

But yeah, I had an 18 day selection and then even if you pass everything you can still just not get selected.

Yes. There was a lot of those guys who they said, hey, thank you for coming out. You're just not what we're looking for. Good luck. Damn.

So you're sitting in there with your freakin fingers crossed. Yeah. Yeah. Jade Yeah.

Do you have any idea what they're like? What is the kind of thing where they're saying, hey, this guy's not not for us.

So the cause I would be pissed. Yeah. Some of the lessons that I've learned and some of the things that, you know, I can, I think make a good operator, regardless of what special operations unit you're with is a guy who's always looking for work. You're never stagnant, look for work, a guy who's always willing to carry the heaviest shit, look for work, carry heavy stuff. And then the guy who he just regardless of how bad it hurts, smile.

Because you're making memories that you're. You're just you're not you can never recreate it, ever, so look for work, carry heavy stuff and smile.

Yeah, that that's very good advice.

We used to actually we used to tell guys, you know, especially when I was running training, that was one of the things we tell guys is look for work, even in a tactical sense, like, hey, you're sitting there with your weapon, pointed down the ground, look for work, go find something to cover, go find some security somewhere, look for work, make something happen. And that's right in there. I mean, that's almost the same thing as carry heavy shit.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't be the guy that's trying to shirk that.

Yep. If if the two forces on the ground and everyone's moving to a different weapons system, grab the 240.

Because I can promise you one thing, it will not be the heaviest thing you'll carry in combat training can't touch a combat load.

Yeah, no doubt. So from there, you go to the Q course and I guess enroute to Q course or part of the Q course, the Q course is like a whole bunch of things wrapped up together, right?

Yes, that's right.

So you do sere school, you do see your school, you you go to language school, which you did Spanish. Yes. And and, well, this was kind of funny you like before selection, I was given a language aptitude test, my score determine the difficulty of the language I would learn. Well, let's just say that Ryan Hendricks's test results were modest at best, and I would not be learning Arabic or Mandarin Chinese.

So no, no, no.

So you also said this. You would joke with your friends where you're taking Spanish.

I can barely speak American, let alone Mexican that our teacher did not like.

So then you go to Robin Sage and Robin Sage is this famous Green Beret exercise that you do at the end of the Q course over a period of three weeks, we would plan in full train, advise and assist a resistance movement that on some level back the United States and was seeking to defeat the occupying repressive forces in Pine Island, which is a made up place in western North Carolina.

This would be by far the most realistic military exercise to prepare men for what we would actually encounter while deployed.

When times were hard and I needed to pull strength from somewhere, anywhere, I would see someone in the course who I had fought, who I thought had no business being there, someone who is riding the coattails of others performing only when the spotlight was on him, I would pick these guys out and think, I'm not going anywhere. If this guy is still here, I'm better than this shit bag and I will outlast him no matter what.

Then that guy would fail or quit and I would target someone else. I knew that I was better than I would use their weaknesses to make me stronger in a crazy way. I fed off their failures, be bad, good or indifferent. This was the mindset I used to keep pushing myself. Just I mean, for me, when people were quitting, I would do I was always like, damn, what a loser.

I guess I had a little bit of that and there was a couple of people that surprised me when they quit. There was one guy in my buddy's class that was like he had gone to buds before he was an E5.

He was probably like 25 or 26 years old, which seemed pretty freaking old to me and like maturer because I was still like, not, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, he's got this you got this stuff off.

And he would give me advice like, hey, you know, we need structures do this, you know, and you need to keep this in mind. I was like, OK, you know, sounds good. And then it's frigged.

First night of hell week he quits and I was like, What?

What's your problem? But but the same thing, I was kind of like, all right, well, I'm definitely not quitting this freakin loser.

So then for eighty four weeks, that's 20 months from start to finish. My tired and broken body performed at levels I didn't think were possible. I pushed myself to my limits and through to the end life dealt me some major blows and no one knew better than me that I dug a hole for myself that was damn near impossible to get out of. Despite how much I had fucked things up, I had pulled myself out of the pit, started something and seen through it to the end, leaving nothing behind.

I'd given this everything, and I had succeeded now as a Green Beret, ready to write the next chapter of my life.

Damn, that's already up like one full book right there.

I just needed one victory. Yeah. As it damn. And I like what you said earlier. You know, you were talking about your dad being, like, able to turn himself around and that's the same. You know, it's the same story for you, too. You know, you going from a horrible spot where you've racked up some some failures and then you just get it together, get focused and you win. You start winning.

Fast forward a little bit. OK, here's the sergeant major talking. You're checking in, OK? You're the new eighteen Charlie I've been waiting for. I'm assigning you to Odia seven two one five. I knew the seven stood for 7th Special Forces, the two for 2nd Battalion, the one for Alpha Company and the five for fifteen in the company.

I knew my job as an 18 Charlie to talk about what an 18 Charlie is, so 18 Charlie is a demolition expert on a.D.A. And we you know, we have the different is like the 18 Bravo weapon weapons expert at echo coms, Charlie, demolitions and also construction. But stateside, you are a a special forces supply guy. Really is. Is it technically engineering?

Yep. Yep. That's that's what the Charlie is.

Yep. And then, you know, the Fox Intel and, you know, teams are in Zulu and whatnot like that. And Delta Medical. Hmm.

So you say this and this is a weird thing because you don't think when you think engineers you think building and and constructing and it just happens in the Marine Corps to Engineers becomes the people that handle IEDs.

So I knew my job as an 18. Charlie wasn't for the faint of heart while patrolling an enemy held areas of Afghanistan. I would find myself up front the tip of the spear, one might say. With three to five Afghan counterparts who specialized in counter idea operations, there were very good at finding them, we would be exposed to Taliban snipers or any run of the mill dumb ass wanting to take a shot at us. The worst part of being the man up front was that I would be the first soldier to encounter the IEDs.

I'd rather be in a firefight with the Taliban any day of the week than deal with IEDs, which were a nasty but very effective way to fight a war. One of the senior one of the more senior guys in the back corner spoke up. You've got a lot to learn and a little bit of time sit down and listen. But most of all, keep your mouth shut. Keep your eyes open. This will be a firehose.

And you get men, you do a good job in the book of of talking about the team and checking into the team, and you're a new guy and you go through all that stuff. But we're going to skip through that and people need to buy the book to get that information. I'm going straight to Afghanistan. You're heading toward an outpost. The outpost is called the Alamo, which is always a good sign.

Yeah, not sure what happened there, but I don't think it ended up very well.

So here you are. Oh, shit. Not only was I my first mission as a Green Beret, but I was walking into a live combat situation because you guys heard gunfire. This wasn't a video game. Real 762 caliber bullets would be flying. This caliber of bullet would easily rip a hole the size of a silver dollar through a man's torso in tears, internal organs to shreds. We wore body armor that gave some protection to our chest and upper backs.

But when a bullet penetrated the chest cavity nine times out of ten, you were dead. I was driving the lead vehicle when our convoy arrived at the last stopping point, around a thousand meters from the Alamo, a call came over the vehicle, radio, communications, all vehicle stop. During our pre mission brief that morning, I remember being told that we would have to make a mad dash over a one kilometer over one kilometer of open ground to reach the safety of the Alamo.

So we needed to be prepared for that. The Alamo was surrounded by a U. Shaped ridge line, a finger like natural rock structure that ran toward the Helmand River.

Then the call came over the radio, all vehicles move, I hit the gas on my R.G. thirty three mine resistant vehicle and started covering ground. Within seconds, a Taliban machine gun crew started sending rounds our way. I heard pings from the bullets hitting our truck. Thank God. The thirty three was armored. Sprays of dirt and dust from incoming bullets engulfed our vehicle, my senses shot up to overdrive and adrenaline pumped through my veins. Even though I was scared, I had never felt so alive as I concentrated on keeping the heavy vehicle moving forward, then crack.

We'd been hit the front windshield split in one hundred different directions, like a spider's web, cracked crack. Two more rounds hit my windshield. I didn't know how many more rounds this windshield could take. Drive. My captain yelled from the front passenger seat. We got to get the fuck off this open ground. I jam the gas pedal to the floorboard and push the thirty three to its limits, limits and RG thirty three ways around thirty eight thousand pounds.

So maneuvering such a large bullet magnet over a thousand meters of of of uneven rough terrain was no easy task. I managed to rumble to safety through the almost single entrance gate and into a large courtyard.

The other two vehicles arrived safely as well. Almost as soon as my R.G. thirty three stopped in the courtyard, I jumped out and ran to the nearest elevated position in the compound. I toggle to select a switch on my four car being from safe to fire, and started sending rounds down range toward the enemy. For the next few hours we exchanged sporadic gunfire, but I have to admit that it was hard to think clearly. Adrenaline had really taken over my body at that point.

Training kicked in and I reacted with muscle memory that had been honed through hundreds of hours spent training for combat. When my first battle experience was over, I couldn't get my hands to quit shaking, my nerves were tingling as well, but I felt good. The question of how I would react when bullets were flying had been answered that evening. Some of the guys looked at the damage on my vehicle. We could see where the rounds hit, even though bullets hadn't made holes.

But the indentations were everywhere. Damn, one more round hitting your windshield and it was gone. One of my teammates said you would have been fucked up. You got that right. I said, Looks like you got your Sibby bro, joked another buddy, which is the Combat Infantryman's Badge that they're telling you. Yeah, you just got it. So there's. You're welcome to combat.

Yeah, that was a day three, day three. And that that happened and it was is awesome. Is awesome.

I mean, it's hard to explain it, but it was so awesome that it, you know, it's it's addicting. You know, combat's it's a rush. So that's and I got that day three. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a that's a good welcome there. It's it's I remember the first time I went into and it was an RPG. Thirty three or four was one I think it was an RPG. Thirty three was that there was one other vehicle, I forget the name of it.

So they had so the met the Maccabees, the RG thirty ones. They also have the Maeve's or the Marx Brothers.

I think it was a thirty three but I remember driving through Ramadi as I had been in Ramadi for like a month at this point and all the time all my transits were either in a Bradley which you can't see anything, or in a Humvee which you can barely see and you're all freakin having to scan. So the first time I rolled down Route Michigan and RG thirty three sitting at like 15 feet with the white lights on and the big giant bulletproof windows, it's like the coolest thing ever.

You're like, oh I'm good. I can bring you and you can look around and you can like really pay attention.

So that's, that's it. That's a good feeling. As opposed to a Humvee where you're just waiting to suck, start an IED and die.

Yeah, so now you guys are doing rotations out at this place, the Alamo, it's like a forward operating base. Yeah, it was it was a cop that's basically we took over a compound, old chicken farm, goat, cow, whatever compound, and turned it into basically where we were going to conduct operations, engaging Taliban forces along the Helmand River.

You say I learned quickly that 90 percent of a deployment was sheer boredom, followed by 10 percent of heart racing, terror and excitement. Each rush of combat left me craving more.

There was something about the kill or be killed aspect of fighting that gave me a high, a high that was dangerously addicting.

During my first three months in Afghanistan, my detachment saw combat got caught in several intense firefights, but we didn't take any casualties.

The rest of the men of Alpha Company 2nd Battalion, however, 2010 was proving to be one hell of a deadly deployment, two men on a different detachment were killed in action, including one of our Air Force counterparts, and more than a dozen were wounded. Normally, a deployment to Afghanistan resulted in four or five wounded guys and maybe one fallen soldier. But our company more than doubled or tripled that amount. One afternoon, our team leader approached me to tell me that a friend of mine named Jason had been killed in action that day in a different part of Afghanistan.

Jason Didna V Jason died when his vehicle hit an IED. He said, damn man, this shit sucks. Are you going to be OK? I absorbed the emotional blow. Yeah, I'm good. I said even though my chest was closing in, I hadn't known Jason that long, but we had gone through a large portion of special forces training together back at Fort Bragg. It's through training that you really get to know someone. I knew. I could always count on Jason for help.

There were times I felt like I was a fish out of water coming over from the Air Force to the army. But Jason took the time to help me. Whenever I got hung up on one ever part of training I was stuck with. Jason was someone I looked up to, admired how everything was easy for him. He was smart, in great shape, a super dad to his kids, an amazing husband to his wife. But just two months into his first deployment as a Green Beret, he was dead.

In the past, I had heard about guys from a different battalion or unit dying in Iraq or Afghanistan, but this was the first time I knew someone personally. Death in combat was not just something I saw on the news. Now it was personal. Jason was my friend and this was the ugly reality of war. I tried my best not to think about Jason's death too much, which was difficult, I knew full well that Afghanistan was not the place to mourn the death of friends.

There would be plenty of time back in the states to think about that and try to come to terms with it. I still had a job to do to make sure no one on my team stepped on an IED. And a promise to fulfill to myself I would do whatever it took to make sure my teammates returned with to their families in one piece. In 2010, though, Afghanistan was not getting safer and the real fighting had yet to begin. How long have you guys been on deployment for at that point?

So when Jason was killed, I think I was we both got in the country at the same time. And so that would be two months.

And how long are you how long were your deployments? At this point? They they vary, but most of them were nine months at that at that point. Mm hmm.

So you're only two months into a nine month deployment. Mm hmm. You've already your your battalion's lost a bunch of guys. Your company's had it guys wounded and killed. Now your friend gets killed. Mm hmm.

Going back to the book when summer was coming to a close, my team, along with other odors from our company, was tasked with entering Chu to Valley. I say that right up from different locations and clearing out the Taliban to a central point which would send the bastards running for the mountains. Working against us, however, was the fact that this was not a covert mission. Everyone up and down the valley knew we were coming, which gave the Taliban ample time to place IEDs and prepare for us.

So you go you talk through some of the planning and finally you guys go to execute this mission. The date was September 10th, 2010. Each of us was carrying a different equipment, carrying different equipment for the mission. Besides my body armor and M4 rifle, I was toting a 60 pound assault pack on my back, filled with ammunition, demolition material, food, water, extra batteries and whatever else I would need. For three days, my average fighting weight was two hundred pounds, but with body armor, weapons, ammo and my assault pack, I probably tipped the scales at 280.

Kuwaitis being generous. Yeah. You say during our our final premise checks, I had time to let my mind wander. What will be out there waiting for us? Do they know we're coming, how hard will it be to find IEDs? How I react when the bullets start flying? All these questions plague my mind as I was watching the river flow in the light of the moon until it disappeared into the darkness. This seemed like a good moment to take out a small pad of paper from my assault pack and write a quick note for my family in case the worst happened.

Dad, Wendy, Paula, Chris and Robbie, I hope I made you proud. If you're reading this note, I did not make it. Death doesn't really scare me because I'm doing what I believe is right and just I guess that's really all you can ask from a man. Death comes to everyone at some point in life, so there's no use fighting it. When it's your time, it's your time and there's nothing you can do about it.

I believe I live as good a life as possible and I'm asking you not to stay sad very long. Very soon you will be joining me in heaven and we will again be together. I'll keep the beer cold for you all. I love you, Ryan. I don't know why I chose to write this note, maybe it was the fact that I was a new guy and had no clue what would happen on my first patrol. That far from the Alamo, maybe I'd seen too many war movies and figured this was a good idea.

Maybe deep down, I really believe that this mission was destined to have a terrible outcome. Whatever the reason, I chose to write down exactly what I felt at that moment because I wanted my family to hear from me one last time. If the worst happened, I folded the note, placed it in a Ziploc bag so it wouldn't get damaged if it got wet and stuck it to my right arm, stuck it in my right arm, front uniform pocket, where, God willing, someone would find it and pass the letter along to my family.

Did did you have the proverbial bad feeling about this, so, you know, looking back now and I remember, you know, sitting there and I and I got to thinking. Everyone up and down the valley knew we were coming and the first set of villages were deserted, and so, you know, as you well see for bad time, I don't I to this day, I don't know why I decided to write that note again.

It could just be too many war movies. I have no idea. But did you save it? I do. I got at home. But but yeah. It just seems.

Didn't you think you were jinxing yourself? So I do worry about that a little bit, but because I never thought I would get that now I'm not right in that nothing's going to happen to me.

I'm good. I just had this I don't know, I just had this weird feeling. Plus, you know, being up in the front, it's just kind of like, oh, man. And I, I don't know. I just think I just think, you know, getting caught up in all the emotion of everything and and you're amped up, you're ready to go, you're ready for the green light and everything like that. And it's like, all right, let me let me bust this out, man, because I just really don't know.

So, yeah, it was very.

Uncertain what we were walking into. Yeah, the the freaking IEDs are crazy, you know, you're going into an IED thick area. You know, you're the first guy. And even if you're not getting an IED, you're the person that's walking into an ambush.

Oh, yeah. You're going to get shot in the face. Good times. So finally, you get the call from Ben, let's move out, guys. We slowly trudged our way toward the village of Sarr, two two in the distance. Our two is made up of several mud hut compounds. And my group was tasked with clearing one of the sections, keeping strict noise and light discipline. We scanned the hillsides and the riverbank for any movement. I kept my thumb on my weapon safety selector Regius Twitcher to engage to kill the enemy.

Taking fire from the Taliban was a risk we all knew was possible. But the more likely scenario was experiencing a catastrophic IED explosion, resulting in the loss of limbs and broken bodies. All the team members were fully aware that one wrong step could change their lives forever. My job was to make sure that did not happen. These insidious bombs could be hidden anywhere, buried in the ground, hung in trees, dashed and cooking pots inside the carcasses of dead animals, within car trunks or under clothing with the infamous strap on suicide vests.

While they might have been built with fertilizer and discarded spare parts and look like a junior high school shop class project, I never underestimated the lethality of these homemade bombs. All I took was a handful. All it took was a handful of high explosives, a few inches of copper wire and a battery detonation could be triggered by compression. The weight of a soldier or vehicle passing over the explosive charge, remote control with cell phones or an electrical circuit from a distance.

The Taliban were limited only by their imagination, which was limitless when it came to killing Americans. Moving up, we intercepted a radio transmission from the Taliban indicating that they knew we were on the move and could see us.

At first, the news made my heart race, my palms got sweaty as my arm, as my eyes darted around looking for anything slightly abnormal, I felt I was starting to see things that really weren't. There were my eyes playing tricks on me or my ears. It seemed like I was hearing all sorts of things when we stopped to get our bearings. The guys called this hyper vigilance, hyper vigilance, and told me that when danger was imminent, your senses rose up several notches to high alert status.

Fueling the hypersensitivity was an overwhelming desire to stay alive.

The village was deserted when we entered, one thing every guy knew was that when you entered a village and it's deserted, you better figure that you're in for a big fight or a village full of IEDs. In our minds, IEDs were a coward's way of fighting, but no one could deny that they were extremely effective.

We had to clear each compounder home, so we advanced slowly and deliberately looking for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary that could conceal an IED. We were professional soldiers. Details matter. A slight discoloration of the dirt, a suspicious pile of rocks and abandoned water pail, a tree that had been tagged with a marker, a disturbance in a mud wall or a lone person walking quickly, directly toward us, anything mattered.

But we didn't see any people or anything questionable, even though I assumed every doorway and window had a pair of eyes looking at me and my buddies, after we hit our first planned stopping point, the team broke up into smaller elements to cover a bigger area in and around the village, including a World War One like trench that ran adjacent to the Helmand River. One of the Taliban's favorite positions to fighters from each element was made up of two or three Green Berets and a handful of Afghan fighters assisting us in clearing the village.

My element consisted of myself, our team sergeant Lance and six Afghans, one of whom was Nick. Our interpreter. Nick wasn't demands real name, but everybody who supported our team was giving, given an easy to remember nickname for the ease of communication. Our job alongside the Afghans was to clear the first set of compounds running parallel to the river, once the compounds were clear, we would move on to the next set. As I approached within 15 meters of the first compound, I watched for everything and anything from movement in the compounds to variations in the terrain where I was stepping.

I stopped and turned around to check on Lance, who was behind me with several Afghans. He gave me a nod, meaning I could keep moving with the Afghans and check out the first compound. I motion to Nick to come closer. Tell your guys to move up and clear the compound, I said keep your fucking eyes open. We both knew what that meant. Sweep the courtyard while watching every nook and cranny for a rifle barrel barrel waiting to open fire, Nick turned and relayed my direction to the handful of Afghan soldiers.

Instead of moving, they stood there like statues.

As precious seconds passed by, it became clear to me that they were not going to move. What the fuck? I thought. Do they not understand what I need them to do? Are they too scared to go? I whispered to Nick, What's the problem? It's too dangerous. Nick replied. No shit. Of course this was dangerous. This was what war was all about. I knew they were scared, I was, too, I figured they wanted the Americans to go first because they felt we had better weapons and knew we were better fighters.

I kept my cool and refrained from losing my temper, but I was pissed. This is your damn country, so fight for it. I turned around to have a word with Lance when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick moving toward the front of the compound about 15 meters from me. Where a wooden door into our first mud hut was slightly ajar. What's he doing? Why is he walking into an uncleared part of the compound without Afghan soldiers leading the way?

He was my damn interpreter, not a fighter. I knew better than to yell out to stop him, since that could have invited a firefight. Even though the Taliban were on the move.

Tactically, it was best to assume the enemy did not know where we were and to remain relatively undetected for as long as possible in case Taliban fighters were inside the compound and waiting to spring a nasty surprise, Lance grabbed me by the arm. Get Nic away from that door. This wasn't the place or time for an Afghan Rambo. Even though 15 meters wasn't a lot of ground to cover, each step was a gamble in Taliban controlled area. I carefully but quickly moved up the neck and grabbed his arm neck, don't move, bro.

We need to move back to Lance's position and regroup. This is uncleared ground.

Nick looked at me. We're going to back away slowly. I continued.

I want you to place your feet over my bootprints and slowly move with me back to Lance. If you stay in my steps, you'll be OK. Nic did not want to retreat. We can still get our guys inside the compound. He said, no, the time is not right.

I reiterated we need to get reorganized. The firmness in my voice told Nick that I meant business, he started to move back from the compound and retreated slowly as well, and I retreated slowly as well, making sure I had my M4 ready to rock in case someone in the compound moved around the corner and opened fire on us. My eyes were sweeping the compound as well as looking where I placed my feet. I took one slow step after another. When?

Boom. A deafening explosion pounded my eardrums at this at the same instant, a hot, searing, brighter than midday flash of light enveloped me. The blast shattered the silence across the valley, sending birds into the sky as they flap their wings and screeched, the concussive explosion knocked me to the ground like a blindside hit from a line black linebacker.

In an instant, I landed on my back just outside the compound entrance. The foul ammonia smelling air clogged my lungs and choked my breathing. I instinctively rubbed the grit from my eyes and waited for the dust to settle, trying as hard as I could to breathe, but I could only manage the barest of breaths.

I fought for air. As I fought for, a yellow brown cloud swirled around me, I couldn't see my hands in front of my face because of all the dust in the air. I shook my head and yawned a couple of times, trying to squelch the high pitched ringing my ears. But that didn't work. Then I open my mouth to scream for Nick, wanting to make sure he was OK, but nothing came out.

The thickness of the dust with the overwhelming smell of ammonia saturated the air and made it impossible to yell or to take a full gulp of air. I'm not sure what just happened, but if I don't get fresh air, I will suffocate in those first few disorienting moments. I didn't feel any pain, so I had to be OK. I tried to stand, but then I fell back over in a heap. Damn, I tried again, but I couldn't stand up.

What the fuck? What's happening to me? I was having trouble thinking clearly then in a moment, then a moment or two later, I suddenly realized what had happened. I had stepped on an IED.

Damn. When you are going through that compound to grab Nic, there was still this was still there had been no compromise yet, like it was just silence.

Yeah, there was no compromise. There was.

That the quietest I think I'll ever remember any environment being was that's the scene, just incredibly creepy and quiet and you're trying to step in the boot prints that you made when you get when you went to get Nick.

So you walking backwards.

So kind of, sort of you know, all of us know that you never turn your back or your side to the unknown. And so past the breach point is the unknown. So we have the breach or the doorway or whatever you want to call it. And so what it what had happened was I was trying to move back. But then, you know how when you're the very last man in a patrol, you're constantly doing the work. Sorry, you're constantly doing the back look.

Yeah, well, that's kind of what I was doing, making sure that my M4 was ready to start putting rounds into the compound and.

Yeah, so and it's and it's still like the sun wasn't up yet. The sky was getting light, but the sun wasn't quite up yet. So, you know.

Yeah. It's just the perfect, perfect storm.

It's like that time where you're not sure if you're better off with or off. Not like that moment of the morning. Yep.

Yep. Within about ten minutes you're taking your nods off and. Of it was that that perfect moment of zero is back to the book.

I suddenly became aware of the pain. They was slowly creeping in like a snake, squeezing his victim to death. I reached down for my left leg and wiggled. That leg was still there bloody, but still there. When I tried to move my right leg, however, the pain was unbearable, waiving the sand and dust away with my hands to get a better view, I could see my right combat boot was bent at a weird 90 degree angle.

It was like my combat boot made a T at the end of my leg. It didn't seem possible that my leather boot could be twisted like that, so I grabbed my right leg behind my right knee and lifted to get a better look.

As I raise my right leg up a tad, my right foot flopped off to the side of my leg.

Oh, shit.

The only thing connecting my foot to my leg was stringy bloody red muscle tissue and ragged skin. What was more disturbing was seeing the stark white bones poking out of my leg. I was amazed at how glistening white they were, in contrast with my bloody leg.

Oh, God, this was bad. I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm hit. So. What's crazy about these situations is when there's these IED environments, no one can move like you can't just go, oh, my buddies hurt, I'm going to go help him. That's the wrong move. You have to you have to actually freeze and not move.

You know where there's one? There's five. Yeah. And you find out later that this was a little bit of not a full low ordered detonation detonation, but there was probably 20 pounds and only seven or only only like a third of the IED went off.

Yep. Otherwise you wouldn't be here right now?

No, there would be they could have put what was left of me in a plastic bag if the whole thing went off.

These guys, they do and again, you know, you do a great job describing the stuff in the book. I mean, there's one part where you say, I hear the team sergeant Lance yell, don't move, Ryan.

And you yell back, where the fuck do you think I'm going? Because you sit there wounded.

Yeah. Yeah. Seconds stretched by like hours, I'd never been in so much pain or felt so alone, it was like I was the only person in that village. I lay on my side in the dirt waiting for the bright light. Everyone says, you see before you die. Lance was the closest American to me, but I knew he couldn't rush to me because I had walked into an IED filled area. Chances were that he would be next.

And then what?

And in that moment, it was impossible, it was impossible to think clearly, this is it, I'm going to die in this shithole village in Afghanistan. As I lay there for what seemed like hours, I prayed harder than I had in years, this was serious. I felt like I was on the cusp of eternity. I'd always heard there were no atheists in foxholes, and I guess they were right. I was a Christian who had accepted Jesus Christ into my heart years ago, but I had strayed from the path of righteousness since then, to say the least.

Nonetheless, I made peace with God and figured he understood the mistakes I had made in my life came back to me, but so did the things I had done right. I asked for forgiveness for my sins and for the people I had hurt in the state of mind I was in. I felt this could be my last chance to make things right. Suddenly I felt a calm come over me that I couldn't explain explain. The pain lessened as I felt like I was fading into a deep sleep.

I thought of some of the good times I had had in my life. Fourth of July barbecue with loved ones watching the fireworks without a care in the world, traveling around the world and all the amazing experience that brought me. But most of all, I was thinking about my family and how much at that moment I missed them. I hope I made my family proud, but I also felt a strong sense of nagging guilt for letting my team down, know Green Beret wants that to happen.

But it did. I fought back tears because I felt like I had failed my team. Five minutes or so after stepping on the IED, I knew I was hanging on for dear life, I could feel my life myself slipping away. I'd heard so many say that your life flashes before your eyes, just before you go. But that wasn't happening. I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Stay awake, Lance yelled.

Don't pass out, Ryan. We're moving. And I skipped over this part. But you had been trying to get a tourniquet on yourself and you couldn't get it done.

Now, I yeah, I couldn't get it done because I so I pulled one of the rookie mistakes where usually on your kit you rubberband the turning it on. Correct? Well, as you know what, if that security I'm going to double security, I'm going to use zip ties.

Mm. Yeah.

So whoops. Oops. Fast forward a little bit, I felt a slap sharp, I felt a sharp slap across my face and another and another each one harder than the last, what the fuck? I opened my eyes and I found myself lying still in the dirt of the this pissant village. My teammate George screamed, Stay awake. Try and keep your eyes open. So he's just slapping you, trying to. So is this all just blood loss, blood loss?

But I think more of it was shock. And I don't I don't really understand how shock works, but I. I know it could kill you. And so there was some blood loss there, but it was, you know, everything that had built up to, you know, George slapping the crap out of me.

That was I think I dealt with a lot of shock what was going on, because, I mean, it's, you know, stepped on an IED.

Yeah. And then they give you some morphine and you get hives. So it turns out you're allergic to morphine. Yeah. It's not a good time.

And find out eventually. And again, you've got to read the book. But eventually, Kyle, who must be a horse.

Lifts Kyle couldn't move fast enough because he lifts you up his buddy, can you? Kyle couldn't move fast enough because his body armor and gear, along with 200 pound man over his shoulder. Elzie was a long ways away, more than 500 meters. The team took turns carrying me while keeping security high, the Taliban knew I was hit because our Afghan interpreter, monitoring their radio traffic, could hear them celebrating and laughing about hitting me.

So they get you to the Elzie, they get you extracted and. Then the next thing you know, you're showing up in in Tarin Kot. Mm hmm. And in the hospital, you get pissed because they're going to cut off your shirt, which is one of your ones.

You're freaking lucky shirt, my lucky Oregon Ducks football shirt, but they end up cut it off.

And again, you know, you give you a great job talking about the medical team and the doctors and nurses and the staff that freakin takes care of you and and keeps you alive, get you stabilized.

And then from there, you go to Caffe.

More surgeries they're trying to clean, you know, trying to clean it out and then it's over to Germany. You end up in Ramstein and then at long school, I mean, then again, I'm just jumping through a bunch of stuff that you got to read the book because, you know, it's it's all it's all part of the story, what you're going through. I mean.

Yeah, I'll put one little quote you say, so I'm out on patrol trying to find IEDs, my damn metal detector wasn't working, so I closed my eyes and stomped around to clear the route. Boom found one mission success.

You say here, I've been to Germany many times during my military career, but this time it felt different because I was fresh off the battlefields of Afghanistan, I finally felt safe when the aircraft landed no longer a dangerous part of the world. I could finally relax, or so I thought. What I didn't know is that now I have plenty of time to actually think about everything that had happened to me. I would also have time to cry over my friends who didn't make it home alive, the ones placed into coffins for the one way flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, a grim trip that no one wants to take a lot of time to think about the families torn apart because of war, either because they lost a loved one or the soldier was coming home with a mangled body, never to be the same again.

That was my situation as well. I knew I was never going to be the same again.

All right. Again, jumping ahead here where you end up at Brooke, Army Medical Center, BMA, BAMC. Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Fast forward after I woke up from my 15th surgery. An unexpected visitor stepped in my room where I was resting, my father somewhere between me getting blown up and getting to Germany, my dad was notified about my injuries, seeing my father standing next to my hospital bed in a sweat caked cowboy hat perched on his head and cow shit, likely still on his boots, gave me a much needed sense of normality and safety.

This was a major surprised that it's good to see you. My father gave my leg a long look that he gave me the usual tough but correct opinion. Well, I figured if you played with fire long enough, you're going to get burnt. Looks like you stepped on a doozy. Glad you're alive, son. From his demeanor, one would think I'd suffered little more than a scratch. For the first month of my time at BAMC, my father never left my hospital room on the seventh floor.

It was like he felt the need to be there for me, observing, protecting and taking everything in. My older sister, Chris, who is my half sister from my dad's first marriage, was also there. And you talk about the just the doctors and the nurses and the health care providers that are there and what they're seeing every single freaking day, you know how hard that is on them. You get your yearly doctor, a guy named Dr. Sue.

And he comes in and you're talking to him, the status of my right foot and leg was still uncertain. I would lose the rest of my life. Would I lose the rest of my lower leg or was it worth trying to keep the damn thing?

Dr. Sue never sugarcoated anything, even though at times I wish he would. I'll never forget one conversation we have. We have enough tissue to do a limb salvage surgery, he said. We'll do our best to reattach your foot and lower leg. But there are no guarantees because your leg is in bad shape. We're giving it a 10 to 15 percent chance for success.

And if that doesn't work, I asked, we'll have to amputate the look on the bright side. If this works, we will rewrite limb, salvage medical history. Well, that was a ray of hope.

So do you think we should go ahead? Yes, I do. But this will be a long, painful road.

It could be worth it in the end. So what do you think? I thought for a moment this is a big decision. While I still have my leg, I still have options. But at the moment. But the moment I have to cut it off, there's no going back, I reasoned. You've been telling me that this will be the hardest thing I've ever done. But if successful, doctors will use my case to redefine limb salvage. Hellyeah, I love a challenge.

Let's do it. Like paint a picture for me, what's connecting your right lower leg to your rest of your body?

So at that point in the hospital I had this it was called a X fix. It looks like this giant birdcage.

And there's like 20 some odd rods that they screw into your bone. Mm hmm. So my so, you know, obviously you need your you need your TEB, your fibula. Mm hmm. But the fib, they weren't really worried about it and they said Dad doesn't really do much for you, so we're just going to let that free float. OK, fine. But the TEB, so basically what they did was they lined up the tribute to the best that they could through the surgeries, screwed all of the rods into my bones, you know, upper and lower.

And I had I had rods gone into my toes and it looked like something out of a saw movie. But and then, yeah, they just they they they secure everything together with just all these rods gone into your leg and then the halo devices that attach to the rods and then yeah, the only way you can really grow bone is through friction and just beating the crap out of yourself in physical therapy and whatnot.

So, you know, I had about two.

Two inches ish of tibia, a little girl back, and so I was yasari to do some. That's beat down sessions, you know, in physical therapy to get that bone grown, so when at like when it happened, you describe there's just like basically a piece of meat keeping your leg. How about nerves to the nerves get damaged?

Yeah. So even even right now, I have I probably have half a nerve function in my leg and then there's parts of my leg that I just don't feel at all. And then there's other parts that are hypersensitive and then and it's it's crazy.

But but yeah, my right leg is a skin graft. The bottom of my foot is skin graft. It's yeah. It's it's pretty, it's pretty. It is pretty intense. But damn medical technology and the graft, the skin on your bottom of your foot.

So I have this draw from I have this dream that I want to be able to kick somebody in the face because it's from my ass. And then I could. Yeah.

Does that, does that because I think it is the skin that's on the bottom of your foot.

Is that. Like this, it does it develop calluses and everything now like it? No, it's it's it'll never go past the newborn stage. Damn yeah. So there's yeah. When I damage it, it it's bad.

So this so this whole procedure was a was like a freakin bottom of the ninth, like just last ditch effort.

Hail Mary.

I guess we'll go football. We'll go Hail Mary scenario.

Yeah. Well to save my leg it was but for the surgeons because I you know, I remember Doctor she's saying, I mean flat out he's like if he if it doesn't work, it's not like you had a leg anyway. So, you know, you just move on. And so for them it was and it was an excellent opportunity to. To advance, you know, technology with limb salvage and whatnot like that and and, yeah, it's 2010 was an excellent year to do it because there is a lot of dudes getting blown up.

Lots of dudes.

Man, that's that's crazy. This is cool. Your your command sergeant major, who you call Brian. Brian was a man of his word, someone who put his men before himself. He understood those under his command, took personal time to do what he could to ensure each and every man was taken care of. He was a tough leader who would crush you if you were wrong, but he would go to hell and back to defend any of his men.

And you go into the book, hear one thing among Green Berets is the willingness to do anything to get back in the fight. I was no different. Toward the end of his visit, I asked Brian the one question that had been haunting, haunting me for weeks.

I don't know what my future holds, but I will not let this injury beat me. I fully intend on being a Green Beret and deploying again. If I can get myself healthy, will you send me back into the fight? Brian looked at me like I had two heads, then glanced down to my right leg. He knew that he knew what was in the heart of every Green Beret, but he had to drop some common sense on me. You're lucky to be alive, Ryan.

Let's figure out how to get you walking again. You've got a long road ahead of you. Relax and take it easy. That wasn't exactly the response I was hoping for. But hell, I knew I'd be lucky to walk unassisted one day. So maybe the chances of returning to active duty as a Green Beret were a little far fetched.

All it took was one look at my blown up leg and everyone knew this was something that just wasn't going to happen. But I wasn't giving up. Brian had my back, but when I asked anyone in the hospital the same question, I heard something like this. It's cool the way you feel, Ryan, but you would be limping and in pain for the rest of your life. Leave the fighting to the young, healthy guys. You've proven yourself enough.

But before he left, my sergeant major surprised me, Brian leaned in, looked me in the eye and made me a promise. Ryan, if you can get medically cleared, I will send you back to Afghanistan. No check. That's awesome. I don't think he quite realized, you know, what was I talking about? We still keep in touch now and it's you know, it's hey man, did you do you guys think I was going to, you know, come back?

Man, it's I mean, no.

Yeah, I can't imagine he was just trying to, you know. Hey, yeah. Hey, cool. Yeah, I know you want to come back. If you can get healthy, you come back. But he's thinking, I hope this guy walks again.

Yeah it was. And, and not you know, because I, they did medically retire me and I had to, you know, fight back on active duty. So but yeah, it was it was one of those situations.

And I remember I remember I had I forgot who he was. He either know I don't know. But one of the doctors, he said, hey, look, man, it's good to have goals. It is. But your goals aren't realistic. You're setting yourself up for failure because you're not going back like this.

Is the doctor told you this? Not Dr. Shu, but one of the other doctors? Yes, another doctor. That was a part of my therapy and whatnot. And he and I understood where he was coming from. It's expectation management, you know, and he said, my biggest concern is that you set these goals up for yourself. And when they don't happen, you can't recover from, you know, not achieving your goals, especially as a wounded guy, because we all do.

It's you know, I don't think there's a single military member in the United States armed forces that got wounded and didn't want to get back in the fight as quick as they could. I mean, there probably is. I don't know. I don't think so.

Yeah, I've never heard of one.

So but yeah, you just expectation management. You got to understand like. You can want it and it's a good drive, but, man, it's you know, you're here and you're in the bottom whether you're in the bottom of the ninth, just like you said.

So it's like you need you need you need to do some management expectation here because, like, start thinking about other things, start, you know, what are you going to do with your life out of the military and stuff like that. And I understood where he was going with it because unfortunately, a very bad statistic. Even, you know, two thousand nine, 10, 11, 12 was wounded, dudes dying, you know, committing suicide.

Why not? And and so they had to manage expectations with guys because. Got it. Yeah. So I understood it.

The other thing that you write about in here is the like you're on all these different drugs, obviously for painkillers and stuff, but it seems like that's just kind of sent you in like real super emotional. You'd be like laughing and you'd be crying. Sound like that was just freaking crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. The the drugs I was on, I mean, methadone for one. Oh my gosh.

It's I don't quite know what it would be like to be a zombie, but I'm pretty sure I got a good idea from that drug. Yeah. Methadone is a hell of a drug so.

And that's what they used to get people off of heroin. And you're just they had you on it for pain.

Obviously, you're so crazy.

There's another got another got another quote in here from the old man. I might have to get the old man on the podcast says, you know, because you were you kind of like rock bottom. You're all freakin emotional about everything. And he says, look, son, you got dealt a bad hand. But this is a speed bump in life. That's all how you handled this situation. And pick yourself up will determine how this affects you later.

As bad as it seems right now, as dark as the times appear to be, never forget that with time you will heal and look back on this. Please don't allow yourself to look back and feel ashamed about how you dealt with this.

Take control of your life, own this situation, turn it into something good. Learn about yourself in a positive way, and I promise you in the end, you will be a better man. That's pep talk to pep talk meant the world to me. I lay in my hospital bed that night and vowed I would never become a victim of life's circumstances.

I would use this situation to make myself even stronger.

I would face my demons, which I had held close for many years, and defeat them for years. I had used my difficult childhood as a crutch after my father and mother divorced. Dad had married two more times and always seemed to find the bad ones.

I did not trust women or really anyone for that matter, which I blamed on my past before I became a Green Beret. I had two failed marriages and it left a path of destruction behind me. But I always found ways to rationalize my behavior. It was never my fault. I'm this way because I grew up poor. I'm this way because I had a shitty childhood. This way because life's not fair. Everything was always someone or something else's fault.

I did not have control over my life. Life controlled me even though my dad had raised me right. There were some things you just had to learn on your own the hard way. The saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger seemed like the story of my life, but it didn't just happen on my own. I had to make the choice to become stronger. That's when I determined I would use this near-death experience to make myself a better man.

This will not beat me. I will be the man I was raised to be. I will take control of my life and finally be responsible for my actions.

Even with this my come to Jesus moment, I knew life wasn't going to get any easier. As a matter of fact, the hard work was just beginning. Can take some ownership of what's going on, you know, your dad told you to own it? Yeah, I actually a lot of people don't understand this when I say when I say this, but stepping on that, I'd actually save my life.

Yeah, and expand, so the path that I was heading down, I was I was going to a point to where I couldn't return from just a life controlled me, a victim of everything. I was just running, you know, I would destroy people around me instead of building them up. I was not a good person. Even with the victory of becoming a Green Beret, I still hadn't I still hadn't faced any of my issues. I was just I was constantly running from issues.

And and there was always I mean, there was always something I was just I was weak.

It was easy to to blame somebody or something or use the excuse of I mean, you name it, I came up with it.

Instead of taking that, they'll use it. You trademark it.

But instead of taking extreme ownership of your life, I you know, I allowed Lifetime to own me. And it did. And it did. And it wasn't until I stepped on that IED that I was actually able to get control of my life again.

What are the biggest things you what was what was like the core issue that you were running from what like was pent up in you that made you that you think like steered you in these directions where you would be being a tear tear people down? Like, what do you think made you so kind of destructive?

I hated myself. I wasn't happy. I didn't know how to like myself.

I didn't I you know, I always tried to live this other people's lives thing in, you know.

I mean, you see it today. It's rampant where people they try and be something that they're not they they don't have their own identity. And I had no identity because what I was as a person was was ugly and destructive. And I didn't like myself at all. And so I technically, I was always running from myself in the easiest way to do it is to take a good situation, turn it into shit, blame everybody else for it, tear people down around you, and then move on to the next.

Lately I've been thinking about this. It's really easy when when you got an opportunity, when there's an opportunity for you to do something and you either fail or you're scared to try, one of the easiest things to do is say, well, that's not cool or that's not important or that's not for me.

So it happens on every level, right? It happens on every level when you know, oh, you're not great. You're not a great runner while running. Here's here's a classic example in the SEAL.

Teams running, right. Just running like going for a run. And people that weren't good at running would be like running breeds, cowardice, media, you know, we're never going to run.

And it's a funny thing, you know, but that's like a little bit of an example of what we do as people of saying, oh, well. School doesn't matter, right? When I was a kid, right, school district school student was me all day long when I was going to high school. School doesn't matter. Why? Because I didn't want to try, you know, I didn't want to put forth the effort. It's like, oh, so therefore it doesn't matter.

And it's something that we do all the time.

And people do it with, you know, like hard work, like starting a business.

Hey, I'm not I'm not I'm not into all that material stuff when really they just don't want to work hard.

Yeah. So they cut it down and they actually will detract from people that are working hard. There's you could say this about really about anything. Right. And. It seems like that's sort of that's sort of it's not exactly what you're saying, but it's something that I've been thinking about lately as I look at my life and I'm like, oh, you know, oh, yeah, that doesn't really matter. I'm like, oh, wait a second.

Does that really not matter? Or am I just, you know, am I just throwing that thing out?

Because it's something that I don't want to do or I'm afraid of or I'm calling it not important because. Oh, really? OK, well, let's take a look at that. Let's take a look at that.

You look puzzled. No, no, no.

That's interesting there. That because that's like a level deeper than like what's happening. That's like kind of like, OK, so you know what, sour grapes, right?

You heard that before that expression. So it's kind of the same way. Expand on sour grapes. So I know your definition.

OK, so sour grapes is like it's almost like jealousy almost. But so this is where the expression came from.

I found out where there was this fox and he saw some grapes hanging on a vine kind of high up.

And he's like, oh, I'm going to jump up and eat those grapes. So he jumps up and he can't jump high enough. So it's like whatever.

And he tries again. Still can't jump high enough. He tries one more time. He's like, I'm going to get them this time.

They look delicious up there. He jumps up, he can't get them. And he's like, those grapes are probably sour grapes anywhere, you know, that's in leaves.

So it's kind of that definitely. Kind of.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely kind of that. I don't want to live like that. Yeah. That's not important. Yeah.

Or and if you let that, if you, if you continually do that, if you continue to kind of shun and turn your back on everything, that is a challenge. You know, like you could have done this, like, you know, being a freakin special operations, you know, after you left, after you didn't make it through. But you'd be like, yeah, being in the military stupid, right? You could have done that.

You could've done that all day long. Been the military stupid. Those guys are freakin idiots. I don't want to be like you could have you could have gone into that mode and you just turn your back and then you turn your back on something else me. And pretty soon you look around and there's you're you're just you have nothing left. Right. There's no that you've turned your back on everything.

Yup. It becomes a lifestyle and that's that's when it's dangerous. And we've all we've all seen people today that they have shunned away from anything that is that that they could possibly fail at because of the fear of failure that they I mean, they've made that their life.

They are that person now. And that's that's hard to come back from.

You know what I really like about what you just said? I really like the fact that you just because, you know, everyone talks about lifestyle in like a positive thing, like, oh, it's a jujitsu lifestyle, it's a healthy lifestyle or what. And you're like, oh, there's another lifestyle. It's called denial and making excuses. That's a lifestyle, too. And it's a shitty one that leads to bad places. That's interesting.

The tearing other people down thing where you know, how you say it out loud and it's like, why would anyone do that?

Like, it's so obvious not to do that. But I think when, like, you're in it and you say you hated yourself. Right. We're even that's another one where it's like, how can you hate yourself? That doesn't even make sense.

Right. It's oh, that's so like expression.

But in a way it's like literally true where you if you don't like yourself, that makes you feel a certain way.

And it's it's a bad feeling, we'll say put simply.

So what kind of relief can you get from that bad feeling is if you make other people seem less then and they kind of like relieves you of that feeling just a little bit, you know, but not fully, not even close to fully. So you constantly got to do it to feel better about yourself, essentially.

Yep, it is. It's it's a serious problem. We we see it in our country all the time right now.

I think that's actually what made me start thinking about this, because I'm talking about oh, running is but you're what you're talking about is the same thing when you look at another person. And instead of going down, that person's really accomplished a lot. That's awesome. Instead, you say, well, I'm not going to be some kind of career guy that's chasing a promotion or or.

Yeah, they just want to get all those qualities so they can look good. Yeah, you just throw all kinds of hate at them.

Yeah.

But the person that you really hate, those are those are the excuses I'm talking about is you make up your own demise, you make up your own excuses as to why that is not your path into basically you demonize that person to make yourself feel better, even though 90 you screw it one hundred percent of the time, it's because it's because you are afraid to fail the.

Yeah, yeah. And it's weird when you start looking at. Like chunks of people that look and say, oh, that lifestyle's bad and it's like, OK, what are you really mad about?

Someone that's working hard and trying to be in good physical condition and trying to learn and trying to grow like there's people that look down on all those things, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.

Yeah. Yup, all right. Hey, tell us about that, what do you call the IDEO brace or is IDEO like? Do you how do you say that?

Yeah, it's it. So I called it an ideal. I did OK.

But yeah, basically it's it Ryan Blendtec, he he created these things and it gives me a calf and, you know, push, you know, I can I got plan. I think whatever one goes down I don't know but I yeah. I'm sitting here John.

It's like, it's like an exoskeleton type brace that you wear that makes up for whatever deficiencies you might have in your movement. Yes.

And so it gives, you know, that that basically it's it gives you your life back in. That's what allows you to keep your leg. That's what allows you to not have to go through the prosthetic is because now you have this. This. I'm not even going to try and say the name, but as long as the you mean the intrepid dynamic exoskeleton or thesis, that's what I was going to say.

I understand. Do you where do you have to wear that thing all the time?

So I've actually gotten to a point now to where I've rebuilt back my leg to where I only use that if I'm doing anything physical like Jim, I'll have my day on or deployment. I'll wear the idea or whatnot. But here I know I came here without it on.

I didn't. And you're walking around. I mean, you're walking totally normal, walking upstairs, downstairs. I mean, it's it's awesome to see. Yeah.

And yeah. Until and until you get caught on that one thing and it's that's funny and that's because you have no nerves.

Or do you have like drop foot.

No I, I, I don't have dropped foot. It's kind of naturally is fused itself at the, the well.

OK, so but you know you can catch yourself and it's, it's, I think it's funny what is dropped like, like the nerve that makes you lift up, your foot gets damaged and so your foot just kind of.

Yeah.

Yeah that yeah. It, it, it had naturally fused at the ankle joint so that nerve is gone but it's just the foot just stays at Anel and he stomps has a certain amount of drop foot and from when he got shot he like lost some, he got some.

You got a bunch of injuries but he got some nerve damage and so his foot doesn't respond really the way he wants it to. And he makes some pretty funny jokes about that.

And it's, it's kind of funny.

So the Army wanted to medically retire you at this point. And and then they offered you kind of something called continuation on active duty, which means you basically they're still going to give you your paycheck and you're some kind of an admin job for you get to twenty.

Yep. Yeah. So I was medically retired and then I applied for the waiver, which was the continuation on active duty waiver, and I got picked up for that.

How many years had you been in at this point? Total Air Force, Navy and Army, 12 ish. Yeah, something like that. So, you know, did you. Is that a document that you like, signed? You accept that or did you fight it?

The medical retirement?

Well, the medically retired medical retirement you obviously fought. Yeah, I mean, that that was so I was medically retired and then I came back on to active duty through a waiver. Got it. So they medically retired you and then you came back on when you came back on, did you have that limited duty thing, the the the continuation on active duty? Is that how you came back on?

Yeah. And basically what it is. So they do it for Green Beret, SEALs, Raiders, all kind of stuff. If they spent that kind of money training you up, we can find something for you.

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's it's an awesome program and it's a good way to take care of take care of people. Yep.

Then you find out about this program called for three.

Yeah. And so tell us about that through three programs.

So I think I think the SEALs, I think you guys got to have something similar. The return to flight program.

Yeah. We got we got awesome people that are just doing everything they can to keep guys ready and if they get hurt to get them back in the fight. Yeah, that's awesome. Yep.

So it's basically that we call it the return to flight or the Road to war program or whatever. And and it's hard. I mean, they bring these guys in from you know, they were physical, physical trainers for, you know, hockey teams or whatnot are like Paul. He was he he worked he was on Tito Ortiz's group. And Paul did all of the athletic training for him. So, yeah, you're not really going to tell him.

Like, it's kind of like he's like, oh, that's cute. So and and I just I knew, you know, I had gotten myself back to Seventh Group, but I had a deadman's profile.

So I knew for me for Seventh Group to wave big armies profile, I would have to I would have to tear up dudes in the Thor three program.

And and so I just you know, I was on this path of you know, I was getting I was racking up victories in my life and into the three program is it was tough. It was extremely hard.

But guys that had never been hurt before, I was just, you know, with all the physical events and everything like that, just leaving them in the dust. But, you know, they weren't really fighting for anything. I was I was trying to get back to work, so.

And then you end up pulling it off, man.

Yeah, yeah. Here you go. After a few months of working with with a four three program, building up my body and rehabbing my sore right leg and pressing my PTS on how far I'd come, my command gave me some great news.

I was good to deploy. When seventh group would take full responsibility for me, my waiver was signed, I was jacked from the moment I got the word from Brian that if I could get healthy enough, he would send me back. I had only one goal in my head to return to combat. This was why I'd put in all the hard work. I didn't want to be cooped up in some cubicle reading reports and looking at the clock, counting down the hours until I would call.

Today, I want to be conducting missions with the guys doing what I was trained to do, taking the fight to the enemy. My company had already left for Afghanistan. But once I got the medical waiver signed by Seventh Group lead surgeon, I was on the next flight out April 2012. I would be deployed to the Panjwai, is that right?

Panjwai, Panjwai district in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, known as the birthplace of the Taliban. Times couldn't have been tenser in the area. So there you go.

Man Yeah. Yeah, I got my wish. Return returned to war and then I got sent to the the most heavily IED area in Afghanistan in 2012.

Bro, this is this is freaking. All right. So here we go. Your year, you get sent to the most heavily IED place.

I was reading this, I was like, all right, I'll just read it. So here we go. You're on you're on a really hard patrol to get to where you're going to get to the target area. Your freakin point man again, by the way, the last time you were point man, you got freakin blown up.

Yeah. You start you start clearing this compound again. This is like deja vu.

Back to the book. We were barely underway when one of my Afghan Special Forces soldiers and I detected our first IED in a partially collapsed outside wall of the first compound there. It was buried in the dirt and surrounded by rubble from a break in the wall that was likely caused by a previous IED blast or an RPG strike. A nice little IED. All you had to do is trip this sucker. All you had to do the trip. This sucker was step on the pressure plates that connected the positive wires to the negative.

Once a circuit was completed, boom, the charge went off and your life was changed forever. Welcome back to Afghanistan. The Taliban had figured we would take this route because it was a shortcut into the compound. I have to admit that finding my first IED since nearly losing my life, especially a nasty one like this, produced a whole range of emotions. My heart was racing, but I had to keep it together because my team was watching. Really, you have to admit that you had some some emotions thrown.

First, I slowly pushed the dirt away, exposing the corners of the pressure plate. I steadied my hands and searched for the pharming wires. When I covered them, I traced the wires to a battery pack hidden behind some rocks. Then I disconnected the power source and clamped surgical clamps to the wire. My surgical clamps were attached to a 50 foot nylon cord so I could get some standoff or safe distance before pulling out the pressure plate. After moving the team back, I got my fifty feet a standoff and gave the cord a pull.

The pressure plate came flying through the air. The first step was complete, but the idea was not completely disarmed. I then attached my cord to a plastic yellow jug buried beneath the pressure plate and returned to my 50 foot withdraw distance. After a tug of war match with the jug, I was finally able to yank it out of the ground. Crap. This was a fifteen pound IED. More than enough to kill you or blow off both your legs.

How come I didn't just safely blow up the IED, which is exactly what I was asking, the normal procedure is when you find a freaking IED, you put some explosives on. So that thing up blow in place. Bip. Yep.

Usually when I come across an idea, I expose part of the pressure plate to verify it was natural explosive. Then I would place a half block of C4 on it, blow it in place. But we were trying to track down the IED makers in our area. I decided to disarm the IED instead of blowing it up because of the increased pressure we were getting to collect evidence which was key to finding the culprits with this first IED out of the way, I breathe the deep sigh of relief.

Things had gone well and it almost felt like I knew what I was doing. Better yet, I gave my teammates a warm, fuzzy feeling about my capabilities and showed them that I could be an asset rather than a liability on the battlefield.

Why did I deal with the IED instead of directing one of our Afghan counter IEDs to get on it, you could call me stupid or crazy, but I wanted to get some IEDs under my belt.

OK. I mean, you're not stupid. So I guess we're going with crazy. And I guess you want to get some IEDs under your belt is better than getting IEDs under your foot.

Yeah, I yeah. I think I think my mindset at that time was very I mean, could have been. Pretty deemed as pretty reckless, but I, I just and that was the first one I came in contact with and I was going to own it. Yeah, that just kind of that's the choice I made. If I was to go back, I would stick Hyflux C4 on it and move back.

And that's what you're doing, man. I'd after I'd cash after cash every time we'd go out on a mission. One thing was certain as the sun coming up in the morning, we'd run into some sort of explosive device made to kill her.

Maim us. Mm hmm. And, you know, I skipped through the part where you kind of like we're checking back in with the team and these guys are thinking, hey, can this guy really do his job? And he's how scared is he going to be? How bad is his leg? He's out here with a freakin brace on his leg. What kind of you know, so you had to kind of push through all that to kind of skip through it.

But it's a really interesting part of the book as well.

Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is I've had I've heard people's reaction to it. They're like, oh, well, that's that's just so messed up.

And it's not that special operations, when you go out to the team, being in war is in a Make a Wish Foundation kind of thing, like, oh, you know, here's our Make a Wish Foundation Green Beret. We're going to take him out on some missions. No people people can die. And and so I understood completely like they knew what had happened to me. Most of the team was on the battlefield that day in Helmand, saw my leg.

And so for me to get back out to the team in the most heavily IED area in Afghanistan at that point, I don't blame like, what are you doing here, dude? Like, you have no business being out here, but you've got to prove it.

Another cool. I'm not going to read the whole section, but you're talking about like what you're looking for.

And one thing you said is you'd you'd be looking at you'd be thinking, would I put an IED there if I was a bad guy? That was kind of the perception you looked at everything with.

Oh, yeah. I get asked this question a lot about how do I find IEDs?

And they're like, oh, you have a mine detector. Mine detector doesn't really do anything for me. I look at so I take a break of the battlefield or the objective that we're going onto. And then I look at, OK, so the easiest avenues of approach, they're going to be IEDs. They're you got a 12 foot mud wall and there's a break in the wall right here. And then it's 12 feet again. There's going to be an IED there.

And then I also so before I even use my mine detector, I get ground nine ground sign tells me everything and then I verify it with my mine detector.

And then, I mean, I've definitely come up to like breaks in the wall and whatnot, and I don't even use my mine detector or anything. I just put a block of C4 there and get back and forth because there's going to be one there.

And so how much of how much do you think? Like, one thing I was always paranoid about was like, oh, they've got the fake IED there. And they did this in Ramadi a lot like, oh, there's a wire and whatever. And someone goes over to disarm it and they step on something else and get blown up. Yep.

The decoys, the decoys are nasty, super nasty. And that that goes back to that, you know, that saying that we've all had and I guarantee you guys probably said in Ramadi was where there's one, there's five. And you know you know where there is one, there could be ten or what. But where there's one, there's going to be secondary because when that guy hits one of them, then the rescue teams going to come in and they're going to start hitting the secondaries or we're going to use one as a decoy.

And then we're pretty sure we can funnel with this decoy here. Now, I can funnel the troop movement this way and then it's all IED.

Yeah. And my point in bringing that up is like it's a it's it's not checkers.

It's not like, oh, there's an obvious place, there's an IED, it's chess where it's like, oh, there's one there. But that means that probably think I'm going to move over there someplace. We really need to watch out for it.

So the Taliban are super good at that, crazy good at trying to anticipate troop movements and then IEDs you're carrying on with the deployment months go by and at one point you're in a little bit of a firefight and you you step into basically a shit ditch and it's filled with shit.

It's filled with human sewage, which is which sucks because it stinks and it's gross and all that. But the real problem is you got your you know, your foot, which is a bunch of skin grafts, is in there. And this is after a long patrol. So you already got blisters and whatnot because you got a freaking baby skin on the bottom of your foot.

Yeah.

Open blisters, so. That is a problem. Yeah, I mean, we we got we got in a bit of a tick in every every war fighter knows cover and then return fire, violence of action or anything like that to, you know, get control of the situation again. And so I remember, you know, we're we're engaged in, you know, different targets. And I was, you know, my my adrenaline was really high.

But it's still something really stinks here. Like, what in the heck is this?

And I just. And then finally, once, you know, it's like, all right, we got aircraft on station, which means bad guys are gone. So then I start to kind of get a sense of my surroundings and as a shit trench. And I was up to my my calves.

And so all of the open source that I had where my skin grafts were just human feces gone and.

Yeah.

So you get an infection. And you're worried you're going to get sent home, but it turns out they don't they don't send you home. Yeah, go ahead. No. Yeah, they my team, you know, when we got back, you know, I basically I had to tell our Delta, you know, because it was bad news and you need to go to Cathe.

And then when I got the calf, they basically said they're like, OK, you're done in the Panjwayi. We need to monitor you. We don't you know, we're not sure if you're going to redeploy back to the states or not. I knew if I redeployed back to the states, that was a death wish, as in and I don't mean literally, but as in the command will know that this gamble that they took to let me go back to war, it didn't pay off and I would never see combat again.

And so I, I, I found work. I carried heavy shit. And I made myself an important part of that. And this was the first time in my life.

And so, again, it sounds really weird, but stepping in this, you know, knee deep, I'm sorry, a calf deep in human feces led up to the first time in my life instead of saying, poor me, this happened to me, why did I jump in that one trench and everything like that?

I owned it and I went and I found work and I and I made myself this valuable asset on calf loading helicopters to send supplies out to the guys in the field, you know, and still in combat. And I made, you know, made a name for myself, as always, getting these guys stuff they needed and wanting to like that. So I found work and then that the first time that like that was a major victory for me of taking control over something that I very easily in the past.

What a straight went into victimization.

So much so that here. How long are you doing that job for?

I was doing that for probably the last three months of the deployment.

And then you do you end up feeling up decently and there's one more year ends up being a mission. And the mission is is to go set up. There's a big mission going on, but you're going to go with the command element. You're going to set up a command post on the top of a hill. And that means you're going to get inserted and you're going to have to walk two kilometers, but with three thousand feet of elevation gain.

And if it's a it's a tough mission, physically tough mission, you have some other straphangers with you. One of those guys wants to quit. One of the other guys. You guys end up having to carry other people's gear on that.

But you do it. Yeah, you do it. You do a good job. You're healed up.

And luckily on the mission, you know, it's a it's a relatively peaceful mission. Yeah.

We we were supporting so the the SEALs and a bunch odas, we were clearing this valley together. It was a joint mission and in the command element, last mission of the deployment command element wants to get, you know, boots on the ground, say they did something. And so yeah, we yeah, we were going up to hilltop towns and guys, you know, one guy, he just flat out I mean it's all right, but quit.

And I was like, I didn't think he can do that in combat.

Yeah, this is not training, bro. There's no training time out here. And then another guy, his body just failed him. And so we were all we were carrying all this stuff up to the top.

But I'm not big on Spotlight Ranger kind of stuff. But I knew for sure that I could solidify my career as a Green Beret if the colonel in the command sergeant major all saw me as a beast, even though my body was.

Oh, that's that was another time when I learned, like, your mind quits way before your body will weigh before your body. Well, and if you have if you if you put this drive, you have this goal you want to reach. And that goal is more important to you than your mind given up on you, then you will be able to see how much further you can actually go once your mind has told you you're done.

Some of those people like, oh, what do you do when you get what do you tell yourself when you're when you don't want to do something? And I'm like, I'm going to tell myself anything because my mind is the one. I'm just going to go I'm going to keep doing. I'm doing like I'm I don't have these negotiations with myself about like, well, you should really know.

I'm like, shut up, keep going. There's the answer.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's hard until you make it a lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the positive lifestyle we're looking for. You get done with that mission. You know, a little while later you go back to America. When you get back to America, you actually go into the normal seventh group rotation.

Which seventh groups. AOH is South America.

Yep. South Central America, South and Central America. So you end up doing some do you call them deployments.

If they're, if they're short, what do you call those. So we we have Sants or Jaysus and I know Seale's you guys do, Jason, but you also do C.A.C. the counternarcotics. OK, so it's the same thing because we I remember all of my deployments down South Central America. There was always seal platoons there.

So so you do some of those shorter trips and you go to El Salvador, you go to Colombia, you go to Peru. And then I think you were getting ready to deploy to Guatemala.

And all of a sudden things change. Yeah, they had they requested. So Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion was headed back to Afghanistan short on guys. And so I saw I saw my in right there and I started creating ways of finding my way over to Afghanistan somehow. And that was and that was all it took was I just I, I gave him the sales pitch and the original answer to your sales pitch was cool.

You can come, but you're going to be not not not shooter.

Yeah, I was going to be riding a desk in managing. I just sources. So you so you're doing that, that's your plan is to go over there, you show up and about a month after you're there.

You get approached by the ops sergeant who says a new mission just got dropped in our laps, you want a piece of the action and you say, yup.

And so you guys start planning this mission, going to the book here. The way we drew things up, the Taliban would see the Afghan commandos heading into the village and fire at them, knowing for certain that the Afghan soldiers would turn and run away like they had many times before. Once a bunch of Taliban assholes started shooting. However, that would be all we needed to call in close air support assets overhead, which would give the Taliban a healthy taste of American firepower.

The insurgents would know in a New York minute that the Americans were in the fight and that would change the battlefield in a hurry. Mm hmm. And then you say on paper, everything read well. And I, I, I put a nice little exclamation point by that, because as we know, things that look good on paper don't always turn out the way you expect them to know.

You proceed into this.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You're now executing the mission, I could see our first target compound, which was about 100 metres up the path, still had a long distance to clear. And again, this is after you insert on the mission. We get down plan the mission, you sort the mission, you're moving. You're moving to this first area that you're going to clear. And the path started to narrow and rows of dormant fruit trees swallowed up the ground.

As we patrolled deeper into the orchard, I reminded myself to concentrate on significant details that were almost impossible to see under night vision and then pop.

What the fuck was that?

We all hit the ground unsure of the loud snap we just heard. Was it a gunshot? Snipers in the area. We waited for a shitstorm of bullets to rain down on us, but nothing happened. Then I noticed that Jaweed, is that right? Yep, Joey Jaweed and I were tangled in some type of line, almost like fishing line. Holy shit, we had hit a trip wire IED that didn't explode.

How did I miss that? As Jaweed carefully investigated the trip wire against his chest without any quick movements, I determined that the Taliban had tied the wire that ran from the set of explosives hidden in a mud wall all the way to a tree on the opposite side of the path.

The wire had been tied at chest level, not the usual ankle height, a clever move on the Taliban's part. They knew we would be looking at our detectors to clear, which meant we would be looking down at the dirt and walk right into a chest level trip wire.

Why didn't the ID go off? The best explanation I could come up with was that the when the overwatch element laid waste for five minutes, firing everything they had into the orchard, fragmentation from one of the mortars had hit the IED and disabled it. Luck was on our side.

So there you go. You're walking through this freaking orchard. You hit a trip wire. And for whatever reason, probably the the preparatory fire that had been fired by your team had disrupted IED. Yep.

We had cleared another 15 meters of path when I saw movement in an open field near the first compound. I turned to Abe, and Abe is one of your guys that you had with you, one of your ordinary Afghans that you had with you, and that was when all hell broke out. Before Abe could respond, the night was lit up by a barrage of gunfire coming from the compound's outer wall. First, it was a zip, zip, zip, followed by the crack of seven, six two caliber rounds flying past our heads.

These rounds, which ripped holes in the darkness, looked like a laser light show with tracer streaking across the night sky. Next came an explosion from an RPG being fired at us, then more automatic fire. We'd walk directly into an ambush. Shit. With my heart beating out of my chest, I hit the ground and started returning fire. The Taliban, the Taliban had set up a complex ambush ambush and the tripwire IED was supposed to start the whole thing off.

One of their peak machine guns let out a burst of 20 meters, a burst of fire 20 meters from our position, a distance so close that it was almost like I could grab the flame coming out of the end of the barrel.

Jaweed, Abe and Bismullah, you see that Bismullah, Bismullah jumped into the ditch while Karhan Khan con OK, just Khan Wacken darted back and took cover behind a tree.

I hit the deck and lay as far as I could in the middle of the dirt path. Bullets kicked up and rock and gravel fragments all around me, stinging my skin when bullets hit the ground around me, splintering fragments sprayed everywhere. I could tell some fragments struck my body armor, protective plate. I was engaged, I engaged the flames, figuring that where there were flames, there was a gun, and where there was an AK 47, there was a fighter.

Ryan, your strobe light, my buddy Zach yelled over the radio. They have envy's. They can see your strobe. Dambrot, what were you thinking when you heard that I need to get this off Comet? I need to get this air strobe away from me and our Geotech couldn't see me because we get caught up in an owl shaped ambush. And and so he wasn't sure where the cam was. And that's, you know, I took it off my helmet and I threw it as close as I could to where that game was at and then just hit the deck again and started engaging muzzle flashes.

And the could the jetpack once you through the IRR, could you see it? Could they tax it?

So it was kind of funny. So I said, you know, you guys have visual on the island. Yeah. And and go, OK, they're there over that direction.

He was what, in a clown show going back here. There's one guy that starts peeking out and you actually end up killing this guy. The third time he came out, he took more time in the previous two two tries attempting to get better shot off at us. It was like he was daring me to light his ass up. I knew I had him. I locked in with a clear shot and let go a ten to 15 round burst from my M4.

I watched him drop his body, lay still on the ground. It felt good to kill him, but I couldn't relish the moment too long. We were still pinned down. Our main element, which was about twenty five to thirty meters behind our position, put as much firepower on the enemy as they could, hoping to keep their heads down long enough for US aircraft to start dropping bombs. I knew from the many fights I'd been in before in this country that a call for air support had been made within seconds of their attack.

In the meantime, Francie's position let loose this one of your other team teammates. But the Taliban were well protected behind mud walls unless they stepped out of the open like the guy with the RPG launcher, there wasn't much we could do without an airstrike. At the same time, I was aware, given how close we were to the enemy, that being killed by friendly fire was our very real worry. Yeah, so you're you're 15 to 20 meters away from these bad guys.

Yes, the first game.

And just so anyone that's wondering, 15 to 20 meters is not a long way, you know, when you're going to try and drop bombs.

Yeah, there's danger close and there's calling in on your position. And it's yet it's a little dicey. This is getting a lot dicey.

Yet as our situation deteriorated by the second, I knew that without bombs on target, Jaweed, Abe, Bismullah Khan and I would all die.

This was about to turn into a body recovery mission, and it would be our bodies that would be that they would be taking home within a couple of minutes. The decision was made for us when our Air Force geotech called in a 500 pound bomb just 20 meters from my position. This was considered a danger close strike. I don't even know if that's considered dangerous. That's that's called on my position.

Yeah. Especially 500 pounds. Mm hmm.

This was considered a danger close strike, but one that would give us a fighting chance of making it out of the orchard alive. The call went out over the radio and then I heard Air Force Jack's voice in my earpiece. Ryan, were dropping close to you, man. Keep your fucking head down. After receiving the radio transmission, I relayed the information to Abe, who told the others to get as low as they could. There wasn't enough room in the ditch, so I grabbed Con and pushed him into the trench while I stayed on the footpath.

I ordered them to hunker down and prepare for the blast since we weren't firing back at the enemy. The volume of fire on our position picked up. So now you guys are hunkering down because you're expecting this bomb and now the enemy's thinking they got an upper hand overhead.

I could hear the rocket motors of the F-16 ripping through the sky. As the fighter jet came inbound, I received one last warning over the radio. Bombs away, man, stay low. I last flight as I could on the path, holding my hands over my head and planting my face in the dirt. Then I slightly tilted my head and opened my mouth to give the overpressure or shock wave a place to exit. All I could do is wait for the blast.

When the bomb hit, the overpressure from the explosion sent grass, dirt, gravel, dust and tree branches flying in our direction. I waited for the big chunks of mud of the mud compound to land on me, as well as bits of earth and other debris. Thankfully, I was spared from the hunks of mud wall hitting me, which would have broken my back. Instead, I was covered with dirt leaves and branches, but the concussive force was so great that I felt like my skeleton had just walked out of my body, turned slap me in the face and re-entered my body.

I tried to stand up, I kept falling, I almost felt like I was drunk. Yeah, if you have a five hundred pound bomb going off freakin you're rocked. It's like you just got like when you see someone get knocked out in the in the UFC, that's what you just got hit with, only not just to the jaw but to the entire body.

In all my time. And in Afghanistan, I get to experience a concussive explosion of that magnitude. It took a good minute to regain. My sense is just as I was figuring out what happened, I heard my guys screaming over the radio. Ryan, are you good? Ryan, answer your fucking radio if you're alive. Their voice. It sounded like someone was yelling down a long tunnel trying to get my attention. I got my bearings. Fuck, that was that was big.

Big. But I'm good, man. I answered. I couldn't believe what had just happened. How big of a bomb was that? Five hundred pounds. Brother used to a big one man and I'm still alive. I thought I'd come away without a scratch until I felt warm liquid coming out of my ears from the monstrous blast. Damn, that was close. There was no time to worry about my the ear drip because I had no idea if the enemy was still moving around or all tapped out.

I took a moment to shake the cobwebs out of my head. Then I checked on my guys to ensure they were good. After everyone was accounted for uninjured, I had my guys fall back to the closest position, which was 20 meters behind us.

Once we were back with the main element are called in another strike, which would ensure that if anyone was still moving in the compound, they were sure to be dead.

Damn. That's that's freaking psycho crazy right there, dropping a 500 pound bomb at 20 meters, like I said, that's. I mean, we'll have to ask a good deal, Dave Burke, and see what the you know, what what the error box is on that. Yeah, you know, I Ryuji, I was a JTAC and like 20 meters is tight.

That's a tight one. But but they do it. That's what they do. You know, they got GPS guided munitions and they do they do drop them right in a spot.

Yeah. They actually had to switch out aircraft or switch out platforms to drop a non fragmentation producing like a concussive.

Oh wow. Because of how close we were. And it took like five minutes to get bombs on target. And anyone who's been in a tick before five minutes, really long time.

Well, salute to your geotech because that's a ballsy call right there. Yep. He's freakin legit. Yeah, I remember him saying he was like, man, if I if I would have killed you, my career's done. I was like, thank you.

Don't worry about your bro. Yeah.

The deed, the deeds. Amazing. Saved my life. Oh yeah. For sure. That's crazy.

You know, that's when I was a geotech. They were when you had to call danger close. You have to give your initials. I don't know if they still do this, but you have to give your initials saying, like, I'm signing for this bomb, this is on me and you need to drop this bomb and you like they would be off the ticket with you or jātaka initials or something. I forget the actual calls, but the uptick, Juliette Wisky drop it and boom.

So you now you go, you you go, you clear this compound, the sun starting to come up. It's kind of settled down. The situation's kind of settled down a little bit. The sun started to come up. You're feeling good about that because now it makes it easier to find.

Then you start moving to another compound, and once again, you're just like finding IEDs, tripping IED and still just moving from compound to compound, clearing more IEDs.

As you enter these other compounds, there's not any movement or anything you say during the rest of our clearance, I encountered more than 20 IEDs. I personally blew up 15 before I ran out of C4 explosives. We marked the rest. Overall, we located more than 50 IEDs for one hundred and seventy one hundred and seven millimeter rockets, multiple booby traps and a complex bunker and tunnel system. This this particular part of the village lived up to its reputation as a hotbed for Taliban fighters.

The Taliban had reinforced bunkers spread throughout the village, many connecting with tunnels. That's freaking psycho, I mean, running into 50 IEDs in the mall. Yeah, it's yeah, the ones we couldn't clear, we just had to mark and bypass. It was yeah, that village was a super nasty, super nasty. So then there's this little.

Discussion between the Afghan force leader, who after you guys clear these places, yea, the goal is, hey, the Afghans stay there to, you know, prohibit the Taliban from coming in and taking over.

So there's a little bit of a discussion because, you know, American forces are going to leave. OK, we did the hard part and we cleared everything. Now you stay there and occupy and build the fences and set up claymores and, you know, secure the area and hold on to it. Well, they don't want to do that.

And so this discussion is happening.

And while this discussion is happening, which, by the way, your team leader says, the Afghan says the Americans should say, not my Afghan soldiers, you're better equipped to fight the Taliban. And the team leader says if this was Texas, I would agree with you. But we're in Afghanistan. This is your country. I'm here to help you, but not win your battles.

So as this little discussions going on, one of your Afghan one of the Afghan commandos comes up to you and and with with the interpreter and says there's 15 to 20 men moving our way, you know, and.

You know, the discussion still going on. A few seconds later, the Afghan commando tugged on my shirt sleeve to get my attention again. The men are heading this way. We need to do something because I don't think these are villagers from the area, he said. I went back to my team sergeant was more direct. We need to get out of here. We have fighting age males moving in our direction. I'm grabbing my guys and getting into positions to move out.

The team sergeant now nodded. Fuck this, he said. I'm done negotiating with these guys. Let's move out. He had barely finished this sentence when the first shot whizzed by my head with the all too familiar zip followed by a crack. We were immediately in the fight for our lives. Mm hmm. Rounds were coming in all around. From automatic machine gunfire, a series of RPG explosions took us by total surprise, everything turned into total chaos.

In an instant, everything was happening so fast it was impossible for the human brain to comprehend it instinctively. I knew I was sprinting for cover, but for a split second, I felt frozen in pandemonium of everything happening around me while my brain scrambled to make sense of the attacks.

Ferocity now is moving quickly, screaming instructions and returning fire to an enemy I could not see round sprayed everywhere, hitting compound walls like a garden hose watering down a dusty road. Just then I heard a grunt as if he was hurt. That was that's one of your Afghans. But for some reason, it didn't occur to me that he could have been hit. I darted toward a ditch that parallel the dirt road running through the village. After diving for cover.

I peered out cautiously, but I couldn't see any of my guys or where we were taking fire from. Bullets were telling up dirt all around me as we tried to stay as low as possible. Then I noticed that three commandos in the ditch, 10 meters from my position, had drawn the attention of a Taliban machine gun crew that had zeroed in on them. I waved for the three Afghans to move to my position, which would give them more cover, but they were too scared to move.

I knew that if they didn't get their asses in gear and start moving, they were going to die. I don't know what possessed me, but I climbed out from my ditch and sprinted to their position, praying to God that my adaptive leg would hold up.

I reached the first commando and grabbed the very first thing that I could get a hold of his hair, I yanked him out up and pulled him back to my ditch, hoping the other two would follow. They did. As we ran, dust kicked up and more rounds impacted around us. I slid into the ditch like I was laying out a triple. Then I reach back and grab drag. The three scared shitless commandos down with me. We had company in this part of the ditch.

Frankie was providing aid to another wounded Afghan. Frankie, you OK, man? I'm good, brother. How about you? Yeah, I'm OK. You see a boy or anyone else not? Yeah, man. I move closer to a small mud wall that parallel the ditch this wall, provide a decent protection from enemy fire and allow me to look down the dirt road where I saw an Afghan soldier lying motionless. I brought up my rifle scope to get a better look.

Frankie, I think that's Bismullah in the middle of the road, bro. I think he's dead. My heart jumped straight to my throat. One of our guys was killed. Fuck. Where's the rest of my team? Frankie and I were the only two Americans in that ditch. I scanned back down the road were Bismullah Lei.

I knew A was next to him before the ambush kicked off, but I could only see Bismullah. I hoped Abe wasn't hit to what I could determine was that we had two wounded Afghan commandos and Bismullah lying in the middle of the road. I figured Bismillah was dead, but until I had my hands on him, I couldn't be 100 percent sure I knew I needed to get to him. But the amount of live fire coming in was too heavy. The radio crackled again, and then I heard a heart stopping message in my headset, loud and clear.

Eagles down, eagles down. The phrase eagles down was code for Americans wounded or killed, the fight had just taken the worst possible turn. There were Americans wounded or killed somewhere on the battlefield, but I didn't know where we needed some air support in a hurry.

How much time has passed and what I just read and I skipped a little bit of stuff, but this is all I remember a few minutes now, I remember we were basically screaming for air support and they couldn't because the Taliban, with the tunnel systems, they were in our lines and they couldn't drop because they couldn't distinguish who was who. And so, yeah, they became a fistfight at that point.

Here's the understatement of the year coming from you back to the book, bro, this shit is bad. I said to Frankie, No sooner did the words leave my lips than I heard one sound that gives every Green Beret chills and explosion from a mortar round which landed 30 meters from us and shook the earth. I hit the ground and turned toward Frankie.

Shit, I yelled. They got a mortar tube up. We need to move before we get hit.

So for anyone that doesn't know anything about mortars, when you shoot mortars, you don't hit what you're aiming at on the first shot. Usually you have to do something called bracketing, which means you fire your first shot and oh, it goes long. So you back your distance off a little bit. You fire your next shot. It's probably going to be short. And then you split the difference and your next shots are on target. So when you're getting mortared, if you sit there, they're going to bracket you, they're going to find you and they're going to get you.

Gunfire is one thing. If the enemy is close enough to shoot you, he's close. You're close enough to kill him. Mortars are different. They can be two or three kilometers away and engage with deadly fire, and by the time you figure out where they're coming from, it's too late. Another explosion hit the compound to the left of us, too close for comfort. That was our cue. Time to make a move. Frankin engage Taliban targets as much as possible, trying to keep their heads down with returned fire, which would give us a little time to pick up our wounded Afghans and move back, crack around, hit directly in the wall above my head, crack another round, too close for comfort, crack and another one.

Then two more rounds hit the mud wall in front of us. A sniper had our position dialed in. Every time we stuck our heads up, he sent rounds our way. To make matters worse, the Taliban were dropping mortars closer and closer to our position. One of the Afghan commandos besides us spoke a little English. He pointed to his radio and said he heard the Taliban had our position and we're trying to capture us. Hearing that word struck fear in my heart, I nudged Frankie again, the Taliban are trying to flank us and cut us off from the rest of our guys so they can take us.

It's time to move, brother, I shouted. First things first, how do we avoid getting shot by the sniper? I saw a protected area near a compound a couple of hundred meters from us where I recognized several Americans, including our medic, Joe Franki. I see Joe.

Let's move to him. So you guys gather everyone up and you finally, like, are able to get over to this other position where Joe is, Joe's your medic, he's working on guys, you get there all blood moans and cries for help. State of shock could be seen on the commandos faces. We knew we were in a real shitstorm so far. We had one dead Afghan commando, two wounded Afghans, three wounded Americans.

We were missing five Afghans, including Abe and Bismullah. Who are your two guys? Yes.

And still no air support at that point in time, once we were able to get back to the CCP. Well, the first CCP, we were able to start dropping bombs on the targets probably 45 minutes into the tick. And then they came up out of tunnels and engaged us at that first CCP, which means we had to find another CCP.

How are you doing for ammo? We're hand in. Mag's off.

Yeah. So you're in this first casualty collection point, so for those of you who don't know, this is when you're in a bad situation and you've got casualties, you want to get to a point where you can gather all the casualties together so you can, No. One, provide security number to provide medical attention. And then, number three, try and figure out where you're tactically can get them out of there.

So you're in this. I looked around for Jaweed and Con Jaweed was sitting up against the wall trying to catch his breath grabbing ghost. Our interpreter. I asked him if he knew where Abe was. Jaweed shook his head. No, I haven't seen Abe. Just then I saw Frankie Khan and two Afghan commandos carrying Bismullah from the road to the CCP. Bismullah is alive, but he can't feel his legs. He said, Thank God we got Bui's.

But where is Abe?

I asked a pause. A look came over. Franki. No one has seen Abe since the firing started. Broo he's still out there. Fast forward a little bit now that we had most of our friendly forces back in one location, our aircraft could start engaging targets. Up first was the white two story former school building. And these are things you explain. These are areas where you're taking fire from. After forty five minutes of intense fighting, we finally dropped our first bomb as they have 15 jets screamed across the sky and extremely close to our position.

The first bomb dropped. The white building was reduced to wooden debris in a nanosecond, instantly killing the sniper inside. Fast forward a little bit at that point, we had two wounded Afghans, three wounded Americans and now two dead Afghan commandos, three hundred meters to the right of the compound was another mud hut compound with tall walls for protection and a large open field big enough for helicopters to land in.

This was going to have to work because we needed to get going. We picked up and quickly moved to our new location and started calling a dustoff, which was our call sign, our radio call sign for medical evacuation. So now you move into this bigger compound and you're preparing to get helicopters in there to get the wounded and dead out of there.

You go over to Bismullah. I calmly asked him if he knew where Abe was. Abe was next to me when we started fighting, he said, and then he jumped into the ditch near the footbridge at the last compound we cleared, OK. Now, I had a starting point, but we couldn't move or go near that area of the village. The enemy was too well dug in. Every time we poked our heads above the nearest road, we got lit up by the Taliban.

Somehow I had to get a job. I was not leaving him behind. I had an Afghan commando pointing to the footbridge saying another commando was there with Abe, that meant two wounded guys now, which also meant I would need more help. Our Air Force Getback said he had a plan to keep the Taliban's head down while we sprinted for the footbridge. I'll call the Apaches to fly in front of your movement and shoot the shit out of everything ahead of you guys.

I like the way that sounded. Little cover move with the helicopters. At the same time, we were putting together our two minute game plan, the team sergeant stopped us. We can't risk you going down there to get those guys, he said too much enemy fire. Well, we're not leaving them behind. I said my team sergeant wasn't happy with my answer, but he knew what we had to do.

I spoke up again. If we leave without them, we could go. We could have a mutiny on our hands with the Afghans. We have to go. No one gets left behind.

The team sergeant looked at us knowing this was something that must happen. OK, we'll go, he said. This was going to be an American led recovery operation, why the Afghan commandos wouldn't go recover their own guys was beyond me. If an American had been left behind, we would go to hell and back for our to get our brothers out, dead or alive.

The attack interrupted the discussion, stating the Apaches were inbound to do a gun run on enemy positions. We needed to use cover this cover as our chance to move. Here they come, everyone ready, the jack asked, it was go time. The sounds of the large caliber bullets echoed off the compound walls as the Apaches opened fire, blanketing the area with 30 millimeter rounds. Franki attack. Our team sergeant and I sprinted down the road toward the area where we assumed Abe in the mission missing commando were as we ran like hell in the direction of the footbridge.

We took on small arms fire, but nothing compared to what it could have been if those Apaches weren't helping us.

The closer I got to the footbridge, though, the more I prepared myself for what I might see leading up to the bridge, the terrain shifted upward slightly, making it hard to see what was in the ditch. I was almost to the foot bridge when I looked down there, float, floating lifeless in the water. At the bottom of the ditch was Abe. His body was sprawled out with a blood soaked bandage around his pelvic area. Abe had attempted to stop the bleeding himself, but I knew that pelvic wounds were almost impossible to treat without proper medical help.

A bit bled out so much that the muddy water in the ditch had turned bright red. My friend was dead and I could not save him. A Taliban sniper had perfectly placed three rounds into his pelvis. Oh, Abe, they finally got you.

As I got to his body in the ditch, Frankie was providing covering fire while the team sergeant and I attempted to pull about lifting a lifeless body out of a six foot muddy ditch was especially difficult. Adding to the difficulties was the fact that Aves body was covered in blood, which made him extremely slippery to hold on to. We couldn't get a good grip on him and struggled to carry his body up to dry ground. I became more and more drenched in the Abes blood and even got some of his blood in my mouth, a taste that's forever etched in my mind.

Finally, after giving it everything we had, we freed from his watery grave, but the smells, the tastes and everything about that moment still haunt me to this day. Kind of, kind of it's I mean, not only does it say a lot about the American soldier and the American fighting man that EUFOR go down to recover the body of these Afghans also obviously says a lot about the Afghans who.

Don't go to go and recover their own people. But that's you know, to me, it's a lot of it's just it has to do with the value of human life that we have as Americans, like we value human life more. And the bond that we have is so strong and it's just it's a it's a real tribute to the American soldier that you're going you're risking your life and your friends are risking your lives, your lives as Americans to go and.

Basically, you know that these guys are dead. I mean, that's your suspicion. Yeah, but you're still not going to leave these guys behind.

No one gets left behind. You get you get a job out of the trench and you basically you find a ladder that that you use as a stretcher, you put them on this thing, on this ladder, you can bring him into the compound as you're carrying him into the compound. There's Afghan commandos that are just standing there watching you struggle.

Right back to the book, don't just stand there fucking helpless, I screamed at the commandos, but they stood there like statues. We continued on the landing zone to wait for the helicopter. I was carrying I was helping Carrie get Abe, Harry, Abe on the makeshift gurney when I saw the helicopter hovering over it, it finally hit me. My body was really dead. My heart sank when the helicopter touched down. I helped load Abe onto the last flight you would ever take.

I reached out and grabbed his lifeless hand as the helicopter lifted off from the ground to take him away. Yes, Abe was gone, but we had recovered his body so that his family could give him a proper burial, a true Warriors funeral. If the Taliban had recovered his body, they would have desecrated it. Instead, we did right by him. As American fighting men and women, we have one belief we will fight and die for no one gets left behind.

Yeah. And, you know, in the book, you go into a little bit about both Abe and Bismullah, who you knew well and their backgrounds, what kind of guys they were, you know, the the what they had volunteered to do. Right. And, you know, like as I'm sitting here calling you crazy for wanting to go back and find IEDs, if you're if you're part of the Afghan team, guess what? Guess how long your deployment lasts forever.

Right. So these guys are out there hanging it out there. And, you know, you had that bond with them and then you stayed true to that bond, you know?

What was the what was the I mean, you know, obviously shortly after this, you you end up getting the rest of the team out. What was the total losses for that day?

That day we ended up with four Americans, Y.A., eight Afghans, Karia and 12 Afghans. So it was pretty bad day.

How big was the force going in?

We have conflicting reports. The last report I remember seeing as we killed over 400 Taliban now aircraft killed over foreign Taliban. And we, you know, personally probably, you know, 10, 20 at small arms, but that's still a pretty big force. But over 400.

How many guys did you have total? How many Afghans? How big was the Afghan commando unit?

We 100 and I think about 120 Afghans. And then in ODA in an OTB. So about twenty five Americans, about one hundred and twenty Afghans.

So. How? How much longer were you in country after that operation that had actually just started the deployment off, so we still had another? I think I'd say five more months and what was the what was the rest of the appointment like? It was it was back to just trying to trying to chase, you know, chase that elusive combat again. But nothing nothing came even close to touching Baglan.

And did they throw you back in? Because you your original purpose on that deployment was more of work in the Intel side. Did you get moved back into that? And that's kind of what you spent most of the deployment. Yes, doing.

I did. Yeah, I was I was moved back into the into the intel role of it. And I would you know, I would constantly try and create work and find myself on missions and whatnot. But, yeah, I was back, you know, doing doing those reports.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit to you're heading home. When our twenty sixteen tour duty was over in July, our team boarded a C17 at Bagram Airfield and flew west until we landed at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Florida, following a fuel stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. We basically hop from the dangers of the Afghan, from the dangers of Afghanistan to tranquil Florida. Within twenty four hours, the quickest I ever returned home, I still had in Afghanistan dirt underneath my fingernails.

I didn't realize that I had suffered traumatic brain injury during the firefight where the 500 pound bomb had landed just 17 meters from my position. Binge drinking on weekends became the norm for me, fast forwarding a little bit, including consumption of a lot of beer at home, I could easily clear 12 to 15 million lights in an evening. And you know, you again, it's really good because in this book, you go through some of the details of what's happening when you come home from deployment, you know, you have that kind of what is it, a little empty feeling that we get something like that and you're trying to fill it up.

You're trying to figure out, you know, what this is how how to adjust back to.

Being in Florida or wherever you're going to be, so you're doing. You're doing the path which is easily available to us when we come home, which is drinking, fighting, causing problems. Little road rage activity you're with Don, and are you married to Don at this point?

No, we got married in 18.

So you got your girlfriend, Don, and you're you're like driving and you're with Don. And I'm going to the book here. The dude suddenly turned into this is. Oh, yeah, he cut you off right driving and you get your road rage on and you follow him.

What kind of vehicle are you driving?

I was driving Tundra. OK, Jack. So you're driving your tundra. This dude suddenly turned into a driveway and ran into the house. I slid into the curb and put my truck in park. I was about to run after him when Don grabbed my arm. What are you doing? She asked. Are you going to chase him down, beat him up? And then what? What if we've got guns in the house? What makes you think he doesn't have them?

This is stupid. What's going on with you right now? She had a point. I let out a huge breath of air which dialed back the adrenaline surging through my body. Fuck this, I mumbled as I got back into the truck.

I eased away from the curb and turned homeward. For the next ten minutes, neither of us said a word. My mind was locked on this thought. You need to get your temper under control. Damn it. I was a Green Beret, that man. I was a professional and flipping the switch between civilian life and being in a war zone was the professional thing to do. Yet here I was acting like a bully, if someone did something I didn't like, I took some active measures.

Over the next few days and weeks, I opened up to my friend Mike Valke. How do you say his name? Yeah. Then I opened up to my friend, my friend Mike Valke, Tyler and Frankie, about some of my struggles. It turned out I wasn't alone. After sharing my innermost thoughts with Frankie, he said he was going through the same issues as me.

Finally, someone gets it. And this is where you started kind of getting control, though nothing happened overnight. I slowly got my shit under control. My anger issues at times we're still an open question. But I started to focus on what triggered me, which helped me ratchet my aggression way down.

Yeah, I kind of I kind of spoiler alert it on the on the marriage thing, but luckily I didn't spoil much because in a very romantic fashion and Applebee's parking lot, you asked Dawn if she would marry you. Yeah.

Uh. You got married. You get cleared to do another seven month deployment to Afghanistan in August. Twenty eighteen ends in March of thousand nineteen.

You say in the book here in a few words, My last deployment to Afghanistan was boring and cold. You detail some of these missions, you also say that Boring has tons of upside for coming back with all your limbs, which is good. And you did make it home from that deployment. With all your limbs, but and you did make it home and now and obviously, as we know, not everybody does and I don't want to close out this book, you know, you detail some more information and.

But I want to close out the book in the actually in the acknowledgements, when you address the fact that not everyone comes home, then you say, last, I want to point out the men who epitomize heroic courage and whom I look up to for strength.

Ben Harrow, Will Lyles and Levi Rogers. Yes, those guys are wounded.

Yes. Levi, he he was in a Maspero or R.G. that hit an IED. Everyone died but him. And so that was Chief Rogers. Ben was my team leader when I got hit. And then on the 2012 deployment, he stepped on an IED, lost both of his legs. And then we'll Lyall's he was one of my friends that I went through the course with. And this is basically the same time frame that I stepped on my head.

He stepped on his and lost both of his legs.

So you say these three men are the definition of what it means to overcome astronomical odds, to go through hell and back, only to come out stronger on the other side? I will forever be grateful for the lessons I learned from them, as well as their strength and determination in putting aside their catastrophic injuries to show me the true value of life. They remind me that no matter what life throws at you or how bad you think you have it, you can always pick yourself up off the ground and kick life in the ass.

For the men in heaven, keeping a watchful eye on us, I salute you. May God hold you close and give you the comfort you all deserve. Until we meet again, I will do my best to live the life you all embodied while you are here still walking among us.

So. That's the like I said, this is a powerful book and we're reading a very small percentage of it. I definitely recommend go out, get this book, read the full story. I mean, it's just powerful and it's a powerful tribute. You know, that powerful tribute at the end to all these guys. And it's just it's just amazing when you think about. The sacrifices that have been made by by the service men and women in this country has been just we should never we can never, ever allow that to be forgotten.

And I think this book is a is a personal account of some of those sacrifices. What? So what's going on now? So I actually I retired from the Army in January of 2000. Ah, twenty.

And was that was that 20 years. Yeah.

Twenty one and some change. And then within a week I was back in Afghanistan as a as a contractor. So I gave my time about I gave myself about five days to celebrate retirement that I was back at it. And that's what you're doing now.

You're doing contracting. Yes. And you're continue to go. How how long are you going on deployments now?

So these are these are four month deployments. Coronavirus that a little something to do with the last one. So we stayed longer.

But the next one I have coming up is that'll be a four month there and then we'll kind of readdress readdress, you know, what's going on in Afghanistan and whatnot like that, what you talk about in the book.

But I didn't read through it. At what point did you start writing the book?

So the book actually it started off as as therapy. And when I came back from the 16th trip, the road rage incident was one. But there was there's multiple other ones.

But and and so I actually you know, I remember going to a therapist army, you know, counselor, counselor, therapists, whatever they're called.

And he was kind of going down his list. And I remember asking him, I was like, what's my name? And I saw his eyes had to go up to the top right hand corner. And I was like, I'm done here.

So I started, you know, I you know, our chaplains in group are very close with us.

And I remember talking to one of them just in my biggest my biggest issue was, like all three of us, we could be we could be sitting at a bar drinking a beer and talking about, you know, things and what we deal with and whatnot like that. And then you go home to your family, you go home years and I go home to mine and it's dead air. It was it was talked about, but nothing was really, like, taken off your chest.

And so our chaplain, he's like, have you ever thought about writing? No, I haven't. I majored in, you know, English and like the third grade. There's no I've never thought about writing. So the twenty seventeen deployment. So I went to Afghanistan sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. And then back in our twenty nineteen, Ugne down and 19 and 20. So pretty much since sixteen. I've been in Afghanistan every year and and in the seventeen trip I just remember just needing to, to just get stuff off my chest and, and I remember, I was, I was in my little little living area and I just opened my laptop and just started typing and typing and it just and it felt good because I was I was taken I was taking these these these ICOM items, but I was taking these items that that had been bothering me for years or have been or just anything.

And I wasn't just talking about it. And it was dead air not to be, you know, having to be readdressed again. But I was putting it on something else that was tangible, a word document, and so I could come back to that word document any time I wanted. And it actually felt like, you know, I was I was taking this off of my chest and I was putting it somewhere that was actually tangible. Now it was something and it felt great.

And that's and that's when I said, oh, writing therapy got you.

Makes sense now. But and then from that came the book.

So, yeah, you know, it's I always talk about using detachment is is what you have to do that as a person. You have to get you have to detach from your emotions. You can't get off. Look, I'm not saying you need to leave all your emotion totally behind, but I'm saying you have to detach from them somewhat. And what's cool about writing and this is I was trying to figure out what you meant by this.

So it's just dead air. And I was like, oh, wait a second, I get it. When you write something down, you are you are actually detaching from it, right? You get to see those words are coming out. They're going somewhere else. Now you're looking at those words. And so it gives you an actual physical form of the detachment from the thoughts that you have, from the feelings that you have, from the emotions that you have.

And then you can read them, you can read them from a distance and you can understand them better. And then as you continue to work through the writing that you're doing it, it's another way to reprocess it.

And did you ever. I actually don't think I think I I guess I have heard the term writing therapy, but like, I guess it's a thing, huh?

I never heard about it before until that point. Yeah, but did you just make that up yourself or do you think that I hurt?

So when I had when I started typing, writing therapy, that was. That was purely what I just thought it was, but I think I've heard of it before, like I do think it's a thing. Yeah, I think it's a thing we're going have to find out. If not, we're going to have to trademark it.

You should trademark me. That's why I've just been writing books all the time, just providing therapy for myself.

And so then what what did you do? How did you get the book published?

So I went, yeah, that that was kind of a funny situation. So I basically I had all of these notes are not notes, but I had all these pages of my life. Five hundred and some odd and I had a couple, you know, I had reorganized it to kind of like the organization in the book and at a couple of people like Frankie and Mike read it and they're like, this is me. Like, Yeah, that's that's me.

And so I said, you know, you should make this a book. And so, you know, I did the Google and and you get these you get these assholes that'll take you for your money. So I lost about five grand with with a fake ghostwriter or whatever.

I was like, man. So finally I got a hold of, you know, my buddy said, hey, just Google military authors and sent him an email. And I can't remember how many. But this lady named Lynn Vincent, she's here in San Diego, but she contacted me back. She said, hey, you know, I got I got a guy that yeah, he he take a look at where he said, Mike Yawkey, who's another San Diego guy.

I sent it to him and he's you know, he read it. He's like, yeah, this this needs to be a book. And so Mike and I painstakingly, sentence by sentence, went back and forth over, you know, Florida to San Diego over the period of a year, creating a document to send to the DOD for review. DOD review went through. Good to go. No, no redactions. And then Mike had a good buddy of his who's an agent named Greg Johnson.

And Greg, he was able to. Yeah, he he sent the proposal.

Yeah. To Hachette Book Group. And they were like, yeah. So that's that's basically where it got that started. I yeah I was I was in Afghanistan most of the time but it's yeah.

I still, I still couldn't believe it in the first time I was in Afghanistan when my book released July 7th of this year and I remember this, this, this kid came up to, I call him a kid because you know, I'm forty two and he's he's a young private.

And he said, Hey, can I ask you a question sir. Yeah. He goes, did you, did you write a book. I was like, now I didn't write a book.

And he goes, Huh, that's funny. And he held the book. And he goes because this kind of looks like he is like, Give me that book, you son of a bitch. You know, like I'm not here to promote a book. I'm here to do a job. And then I was like, let me see that book.

And that's the first time I ever touched my book while you're on the ground in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the future?

Hold another deployment. But my wife and I actually strangely enough, we are going down the adoption route now. Oh, right on. Yeah. So I'd kind of made it to having kids is is going to be an issue, but adoption is not. So we're we're starting that whole process right now and it's very murky.

So, so but you know, we'll we'll get all that done and hopefully within the next year we'll open up our home and give, you know, give a little what a great life. So that's yeah. That's what we're going on. And yeah, I just I don't know other than that, just kind of living life and riding the lightning and and slowly trying to trying to build up people around me, making up for years of destructiveness.

So yeah.

Look, I've had you over here for over three hours. People can find you. Where can they find you?

So I actually have a website. It's a Ryan Mm. Hendriksen dot com. And then they yeah. I'm on I'm on Instagram at tip of the spear h but yeah. The website that has the links to everything.

So it's so it's Ryan M.. Hendriksen dot com. Yes.

Right on man. Awesome. Ekler you got anything else. Oh I don't actually that's a shocking. Well yeah I know that's a shocking moment.

Any, any closing thoughts. Closing thoughts. Right. Yeah. I mean we talked a lot about my dad, but I it's you know, the guy's a hero and some some good advice, you know. Definitely that has helped change my life around. And then, you know, like we were talking about with Don, my wife. You know, we had we had dated since 2008, and in twenty eighteen when we got married, it was it was kind of like like, hey, I'm going to I'm going to tell you what's going to happen there.

Guy, we are getting married before you go back to Afghanistan and like. Yes. What if I say now she's like, you're not we're getting married like this is happening. So. Okay. So yeah, she's she's a stud and I'm blessed. So but there's yeah. There's a lot of people that have done some, you know, amazing things in my life. And I do you know, I think a lot of these different organizations out there, like the Green Beret Foundation and I know the SEALs have won and the Marines have won, but they really do.

One of the things that I would have to say that I'm most proud of, because I see it from my dad, is my dad got closure on the Vietnam War, seeing how I was taken care of.

And the military has done a very good job at taking care of us. You know, of guys that we we come back changed forever and there's still a lot of work to do. But I just.

Yeah, there's it's it's good. It's good.

And I definitely I you know, I'm proud to you know, I'm proud to be a soldier. I'm proud to serve my country. And I'm proud of everybody that has. And I just I think we're we're on the right path.

So awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on here to to share this story. And it's quite a story and obviously much more important. Thanks for your service.

Thanks for your sacrifice in in the Navy, in the Air Force and in the Army. Thanks for being out there. Thanks for keeping evil at bay. Thanks for protecting your brothers and your comrades.

And most of all, thanks for protecting us in this great nation. Appreciate it. Greatest nation on earth. Amen. You know. And with that, Ryan Hendrickson has left the building to go and carry on and live the best life that he can.

And it certainly seems like we should do the same. A great echo. Any recommendations, suggestions on how we can live the best life we can?

What he got out say overall, there's a lot of things we can do.

So it might seem like an obvious one because we talk about it every single time. But I'm going to say it again.

Oh, yeah, you are.

Anyway, we're working out ice, I suggest or should I recommend reading to I was about to say we don't really talk about reading that much, but technically we do talk about reading a lot when we're reading. I mean, I'm literally reading all the time.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, um. Yeah. So boom, we're doing a bunch of things. We need improvement things not we need generative, not degenerative for lack of a better one.

That's been reading the thesaurus. Anyway, while we work it out we take a beating. Your body takes a beating.

I just got over bursitis quickly by the way, again, by the way, I narrowed down what causes my bursitis in my heel weakness.

Let's say the limitations of my body habitat from time to time weakness anyway. We don't want to worry about our joints while we're taking those beatings with our workouts. It's part of life, but we don't want to worry about that and stuff.

So good news for fuel. So we take our supplementation for our joints, which is interesting to start with this, which is joint warfare, super krill oil boom sort joints right out so you don't have to worry about them.

Also immunity, right? That's a big thing. Getting sick like these are things that like we don't want to have to worry about joints, immunity. So for immunity, we got vitamin D. Also, Cold War. Take these yeah, you don't want to worry about I mean, definitely take these. Yes, sir. Also, what do we got? Discipline, supplementation, kind of kind of like a not even really a supply. I mean, technically supplementation.

But you want to go kind of lifestyle, lifestyle, that kind of a lifestyle lifestyle. And actually now that we're seeing now that we're thinking about, you know, the way Ryan used the term lifestyle, it could be used negative because I'm thinking now, if you think about the the joint warfare is a lifestyle. Krill oil. Super krill is a lifestyle. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fully.

You should make vitamin D a lifestyle that should be part of your life. It's the way you live cold work the way you live. Why would you why would you not do that? There's not there's no reason to not be living this lifestyle. There's zero reason it will make you better.

Yeah, that's that's that same thing with the discipline you. Yeah, that's true. So discipline is one of those.

When you first came out with it, I was like coo coo. I'll take it. But, you know, sometimes you didn't really understand that.

I didn't really understand. I am of full understanding at this time.

I think so. Yes, that is a lifestyle.

So this one has three methodologies of deployment for lack of a better way of putting it. Boom, discipline, powder, pre workout. That's my I'm saying my little routine, my little lifestyle, if you will.

Pre workout is the powder. Discipline go the pills, I don't take this, don't have to. Well, that's me, because I'm going to talk and I need that little different lifestyle to write you a letter.

But the discipline go kans energy drink.

That's just like a real energy. That's like a treat to look. I don't want to group this in with energy drink because we know what that means. It's actually we know what that means. This isn't an energy.

It's real energy, a healthy energy drink.

It's definitely healthy. So asked me the other day, like on a on the social media platform, is this healthy?

Do you imagine being asked if it's healthy?

And I get to say yes, it is actually healthy. Yeah. Also I'm sure you had that feeling like kind of like Tim Kennedy had when you asked him if he was allowed to shoot his guns in its backyard. Oh, yeah. And when you ask him that, he's like, I'm not going to justify that question with an answer kind of like that. You kind of feel that only because you know, though. But here's the thing.

That's a good question, but it is a good question. And also it's a good question because the chances that you go through the effort to make actually make something and spend the time and effort and money to make something that's actually good for you, the chances of that are rare, you know, but we did it, did it.

And this also got milk, which is also good for you in forty seven different ways. One of them being protein, the other one being tasty.

Yeah.

So this whole Iowa thing, right in my household lifestyle, whatever with the kids, they don't get dessert during the week, dessert only on the weekends.

So every once in a while, like when the smash smashing pumpkin milk came out, I make a big deal out of it, you know, do the things that, hey, you guys wanna taste this or whatever. This can be like the dessert, but not today. It's like a Thursday or tomorrow.

So I build the hype. You see what I'm saying? Next day they're all excited.

Oh, we get to try that new thing you guys got or whatever for. Make it up. Give it to them. Of course they love it, but you got the extra hype. And then on top of that, it's like, good for you. See, I'm saying so. So now in the future, hey, this is the long game. We're playing the long game over in the future.

I'll make them think I'm in a better mood than normal. During the week I'll be like, hey, and I'll be the good dad getting dessert, you know, during the the week. And they get the health benefit. I'm actually giving you a solid ninety four grade on that. So good job man.

Long term. Yeah I like that. I like how you played that whole thing. You played the psychological, you played the human nature.

Yeah. You know the way we, we could call it manipulation but we won't because you're doing something that's good for them, for everybody.

I see what I like it exactly right. So yes. Thank you, Charles. JoCo belittle my son knows Brian Littlefield's actual name refers to him by his first and last name. When you see when he's taking more or drinking milk, eating the right, here's a little inside tip the milk bars like he'll send me the samples.

You so have you got the latest ones? Yes, I got a few of them, my son Adam.

And and that's part of the reason why he'll be like, hey, call Brian Littlefield's to call him and tell them to send more or to tell him thank you for all this stuff anyway. So, yes. Thank you guys for for creating this. This is helping us on many, many levels.

If you want to get any of this stuff, you can get it at Origin, the main dotcom, you can get it at the vitamin shop nationwide. You can actually get it on Amazon Prime.

And if you're in Florida, if you're in Florida, go to a Walwa in Florida and just go clear out the shelves. Just go clear about why. Because of go discipline, go in the can is there we're trying to it's beyond infiltrate. But we start we have to start we have to start with infiltration. It starts in Florida. So if you're down there, go to Walwa, cleared, clean out the shelves, clean them out, and then we'll get you the whole East Coast.

Then we'll be out West Coast and pretty soon we'll be everywhere you go. You'll be able to get some you'll be able to get that little. Ed, and it's doing good, that's the thing, it's doing good for us, for all of us who drink this. It's doing good for us. Yeah, yeah.

Because you can land in Wisconsin, hopefully in a little while and be like, oh, cool, I'm going into any store and I'm going to get some go, you know.

Yes, true.

So, yes, Orjan main dotcom, speaking of which, has jiujitsu Ghys made in America, by the way, other clothing items made in America, by the way, also American denim and boots made in America again, by the way, which is a big deal.

Oh, it's a real big deal as far as the economy, as far as like what you're what the craftsmanship, what you're actually wearing, like the whole deal as far as rebuilding the economy and the manufacturing capabilities of our nation.

Yes, it's a big deal. And you can help out. You can help that. You can help that go to orange and main dotcom if you want something. Gets speaking of getting something if you want, JoCo has a store called JoCo Store. This is what this is a discipline equals Freedom Store is what it is really. OK, also to good store.

Oh, I see where you're going at this grocery store, which is good. Very funny.

Anyway, you got to represent while you're on this path and the path is not easy. Some of us choose to represent while we're on this path feels good. This is where you go.

Dotcom get, you know, get a shirt, jacket, hat. Christmas is coming up. We got gift cards on there even. Yeah, I'll tell you what.

Here's what's going on with this. Let me give you a little heads up. Christmas is coming right now, covid the whole nine yards. There is a shortage of aircraft. There's a shortage of shipping personnel I'm talking about in the entire world.

We're not going to be able to ship what needs to get shipped.

So if you want to if you want stuff, don't wait to order it now.

Yeah, that's the fax. Yeah, that's what I would say to. And I'm not just talking about JoCo store. I'm talking about Origin. I'm talking about Amazon. I'm talking about wherever you're getting stuff sent from, order it early. Let's be ahead of the power curve. Don't get behind the power curve. This ain't the kind of year we're going to be like December. Twenty second ordering my wife's gift for Christmas.

Don't let it happen. You know, I got to keep that in mind.

By the way, now that you mention it, good, good tips for sure. So but on the store also, like I said, we have a gift card so you don't got to worry about shipping for that canned stuff for the gift card.

Just get it for a digital thing. Boom. Yeah. You get the code, you get a boom, boom, boom. Easy money. Yeah. But if you're trading it, you understand what I'm saying.

Also, what else we have is our docos t shirt club. OK, all this is a good club.

This is where you can get like if you're, you know you can get a little bit more how should I say, layered, creative, lighthearted. Sometimes shirts, they're kind of like monthly, one of a kind. Once we once we pass the month, we're not selling those anymore. So if you're part of the club, you get these kind of these shirts.

If you if you if you're in the club and there's a shirt that came out before, can you get that shirt as of right now.

No. OK, OK. As of right now. But you never know. Every once in a while it's kind of like man down, down, down was really good. So let's bring it back. Or maybe I don't know but every now. Fraid not. Sorry.

So yes, it's a subscription based situation so yeah it's a T-shirt club to look into that if you want that. That's cool. You want to support and you want to be on the path while representing.

Well I support that one very much so, yeah.

So JoCo store Dotcom also subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already, which is how it always feels weird saying not subscribe but whatever. So yes you are if, if you want to subscribe, just know if you didn't know that you can subscribe.

But there's other podcasts. You can leave a review, you have other podcasts. We've got the de-brief which is already inside the and are worried about subscribing to that one.

But we also have the JoCo Unraveling JoCo Unravelling podcast, Darrell Cooper and I talking about all kinds of crazy stuff, all kinds of crazy stuff on that grounded podcast, which we owe for your kid podcast, which your kid for is coming out.

So we're going to work on that one. We've got a YouTube channel.

If you want to see what Charles does in his spare time, then you can check out the YouTube channel.

You can see it echo Charles. Looks like you can see what Ryan Hendrickson looks like because we put the whole podcast on there and a bunch of short clips of the podcast, which, according to Echo Charles, are shareable, shareable, shareable.

Yes. And we can you know, obviously we're going to you know, in the in the spirit of brevity, I think I use it right. We're not going to go into why that's so valuable. Maybe we could. We don't need to, but, yes, little excerpts you want to share with your friend Boomi, show that excerpt. All good. And let's face the facts. Some of the excerpts have explosions, have fire, have smoke, have all kinds of things that lasers, lasers, just those kind of things.

If you're into that kind of stuff, which one of the people that are speaking on this podcast right now is into this maybe too.

Yeah. So, yeah. You to get a look at that one, subscribe if you want to also.

Psychological warfare. You know what that is, that's an album, tracks of JoCo helping you through moments of weakness if they may arise in your life, which I think for most of us they do from time to time. So just check that out.

And if you want some visual representation of that, then you can go to flip side canvas dotcom owned by my brother, Dakota Meyer, where he makes awesome stuff for you to look at to keep you on the path. We've got a bunch of books you mentioned reading earlier. I also concur that reading is important. First of all, Tip of the Spear. Ryan, Hendriksen, this book is just it's a great book. All kinds of good guides.

I gave you 10 percent of it, five percent of it today. So check that out about Face by David Hackworth. I wrote the foreword to that Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

You got to code the evaluation, the protocols you got, the discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. Look, what are you going to say?

Is it lame to say, like, this is a good book, gift book? It's kind of lame to say that. Oh, but it's also the truth.

Yeah. It's not lame to say that. The truth is the truth is this is a this is a book you can give to somebody as a gift and you don't feel like you don't feel like, oh, I was well I was wandering by the bookstore and oh I thought you might like this.

Like this is not like this but like, hey, I got you this and people like check it so get it. This one I was reading Field Manual, the new edition where the Warrior Kid one, two, three. And guess what way the Warrior Kid for once again, if you want to get this book for Christmas for your kids, you need to order it like now.

Way the Warrior Kid for Field Manual making the Dragons, that's a good one for the kids, extreme ownership of the dichotomy of leadership.

The books written with my brother Leif Babin. We have a consulting company called Echelon Front where we solve problems through leadership. We have Heff online where you can actually ask me any question you want.

And I will be sitting there virtually on a computer live talking to you and answering your question. So go to EFF online dot com for that. We've got to muster twenty twenty. This is the only muster that we're doing in twenty twenty. If you want to learn about leadership, if you want to get granular information about the principles that we talk about all the time, come to the muster. Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Extreme ownership dotcom for details.

If overwatch. If you want to hire someone that understands the principles that we talk about all the time, that has experienced tested leadership experience. From the military will go to f overwatched dot com if you want to help service members active and retired their families, Gold Star Families, check out Mark Leigh's mom's charity organization, Mammoliti. It's called America's Mighty Warriors, and it's at America's Mighty Warriors dot org. You can go there if you want to donate or if you want to get involved.

And listen, if you're into misery, personal, self-inflicted misery and you want more of it, you want more of my unremarkable remarks or you need more of EKOS chaotic commentary than you can find us on the interweb on Twitter.

Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as the Graham ad on Facebook. Echo is adequate. Charles, I am at Jocke willing. Ryan Hendriksen. You can find him. Tip of the spear on Instagram. Tip of the spear are M.H. on Twitter. He's tip of the spear. Forty to Facebook is Ryan Hendriksen and he's also got Ryan Hendriksen dot com.

And thanks once again to Ryan for coming on, for sharing your story with an incredible story. And obviously thank you, Ryan, for your service and for your sacrifice and for taking care of your your comrades on the battlefield and in taking care of all of us and protecting all of us. And thanks to all the military personnel out there in every branch of service in the Army, Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard, thank you for doing the same, protecting us.

And that also goes for our first responders here at home, police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all of you, thanks for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there, like Ryan said in his book.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But that doesn't happen on its own, you have to choose to get stronger. Take control of your life, take responsibility for your actions, something I call taking ownership, extreme ownership and yes, do that, go out there every day and get after it.

And until next time, there's the Echo and JoCo.