He got out September 3, 2001. A week later, September 11 happens. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. And they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. Had a catastrophic failure and crashed $100 million helicopter in age 47. Our guys didn't even have uniforms. What'd you think of working with the seals? It was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. A week later, Benghazi happens.
The number one priority for me is... I've been dying to ask you this question. You got out September 3rd, 2001. A week later, September 11 happens. The towers go down. What is the first thing that went through your head? Knowing, you know,
Your primary mission was, or your primary goal was to become a green beret and special operations, kicking fucking doors and going to combat that whole lifestyle. And then you immediately know we're at war. Yeah, it was. And you're not in it. The biggest kick in the balls that I've ever had, because I mean, backing up a little bit.
I had the option to re-enlist. Obviously, I was on retention radar for like, hey, this guy's an airborne Ranger qualified dude. He's an E5. I made sergeant when I was 20 years old. And so I was a team leader in the infantry. He had good in-suiars. And so it's like, hey, man, this guy is a good guy. We're going to keep in the military. But I told them that I want sniper school and I want halo school.
en route to 18th Airborne Corps Lurse, or long range reconnaissance, or Ranger Battalion. And I was adamant about that. I actually went into a Sergeant Major's office who was the military district of Washington, so he was a command sergeant major. He knew my uncle, and he said, Mike, what can I give you to stay in? I said, this is the things that I want. And he goes, which I found out later is true. Halo or free fall school is not a re-enlistment option.
And it's not. Back then, you didn't have a lot of incentive for staying in, so they used to give you schools to stay in. And I said, Sergeant Major, well, we can make it an option, right? Because that's what I want. It's like, Mike, I can't do that for you. I mean, I'll call and I'll try. And he did. But it's not an option. So a CSM even can't make it an option.
And so I said, okay, that's, that's my, I gave the options on the table and they decided not to facilitate what I wanted as a dream. And so I decided to get out. I had a buddy who re-enlisted with me that I went to Rainier School with or re-enlisted without me. And he went to third range of time. He jumped into Afghanistan on October 19th, 2001. Son of a bitch. And so,
The moment it happened, I was actually in college and I had gotten out of the military, obviously, but I had transitioned into the National Guard component. So I'm sitting in a child hall at Fayetteville Technical Community College.
getting my associate's degree so I could further my education. And saw the events happen. I did some crazy shit, man. I immediately started making phone calls. I went home. I packed a duffel bag of my equipment.
I threw my battle dress uniforms, my camo uniforms in the washer and then dried them and was making calls like, what are we doing here? What's happening? And I was at the time, I was in 30th heavy armor separate brigade and I was in the scout platoon and I was a team leader. So I had a little minuscule position that could affect something, but I knew we were going to war.
So I had a choice to make, which is really easy, which was I'm going back in the fucking military. Yeah. So on September 12th, like zero nine in the morning, I'm making phone calls to get back in. I mean, that had to be like at the exact same time that's happening to completely separate emotions. One, you know, tragedy would just been attacked and a lot of people died. On the other hand,
You know what that what comes after and everything you've ever wanted to do since you said you were 10 years old becomes a reality and you're not there. I mean that had to be it was one more overpowering than the other.
Yeah, it was, I mean, I felt for the people obviously, but I knew that I was in a unique position to make a difference in the fight, because I was an NCO. I mean, I was a non-commissioned officer. And I knew that there was an opportunity for me to get in the military and fight and get some vengeance. And that's what I wanted to do. I joined the army to fight. The reason I got out, because there was no fight to be had. If there was a war or there was something going on, I would have been in it.
something important to note is the biological instinct in men, most men, the men I associate with, to fight. I mean, it's to fight each other in training, because that's what we do. As kids, we fight and we grow up in those environments where we're displaying our masculinity and there's a whole bunch of psychological and physiological things that are associated with that.
And I don't think we grow out of that. We grow up and we want to fight and defend. That's what men do. And so it definitely was part of my character and my DNA. And I don't think it was fake. I think it was something very real. And I wanted to fight. So I had to go back in. How did you get back in?
It was a battle because the army didn't really know how to handle a whole bunch of dudes who were prior service guys that wanted to go back in. Was there a lot of guys that wanted to go back? Oh yeah, there was a lot of guys. There in that time period, a lot of people who were prior service who had gotten out, I mean, even older guys who had gotten out wanted to come back in and serve.
So I had to go through the whole process again, which was... Holy shit. I had to go through MEPS, you know, as an E5, going back through MEPS, you know, the whole duck walk thing, all that stuff. I had to go back through all that to get back in.
And they had a program, which is kind of similar to what's called ATNX right now, where you can come in off the streets and try out for selection. And if you make it, they'll send you to Special Forces Training. And if you don't, you simply just go back to your sister unit, or if you don't have a unit, whatever your job is, they'll find a job for you in that position. Now, how old are you at this point?
At this point, I'm 21 years old. 21 years old? Yeah. You just saw the towers come down. Yep. And the only thing on your mind is I got to fucking get back in there. Yep. No shit. I mean, yeah. Wow. That's, I mean, that's...
That's a lot of courage. I was young. When I hit the ground, I mean, I was running. We immediately deployed to Afghanistan. How many guys are on your team roughly? Well, I think at that time, maybe 10. 10 dudes. Yeah, most attachments are light by nature of guys coming and going. And like I said, my 18 Bravo senior was in surgery.
So he had to get a surgery recover. And so we deployed that year to Afghanistan with a little bit of a light package. What year? This was 05 early 05. So that's a hot year. Mm hmm. Yeah. Now are you doing? Are you running in ditch? Yeah, part of the job is running in ditch. I mean, when I reported
Uh, as, as an 18 Bravo, I was in charge of about 144 Afghan commandos. Holy shit. So there are 10 guys, there's 10 SF guys running 144 man army. Yeah. And basically I was the commander of them. So I was in charge of all of them. As a new guy. As a new guy. Holy shit. Yeah. I'll never forget. He said, Hey, your, your guys are formed up waiting on you, waiting on me. Yeah. You're the 18 Bravo, get up there and then,
and be their commander. Because everybody else had other stuff to worry about. I mean, the 18 Charlie's had to run the Firebase, which is a full-time job of the base security and the actual physical structure, the generators, the water system, everything, the combo, base defense, the combo guys. What are your living conditions like?
Shit, I mean tents living on a cot living on a cot surrounded by stack sandbags in a Concrete ish just mud mud hut okay on the second floor of a little structure
So you're way the fuck out there and like at your own firebase. There's no PX. Nothing. There's no chow haul. Nothing. None of that shit. Are you eating local food? Well, a lot of the time we were or mermaid or MRE. I mean, we were the furthest northern firebase on the border with Pakistan. And we had really not a lot of support. I mean, the closest
Support was J bad, which is still hours away. I mean, if something, if something went bad. So how trained up you show up in country, you're looking, you're the now the commander of 144 Afghan force.
How well are they trained? Did you guys, was there like a changeover from another team or are you starting from scratch? Now, some of them were trained up by prior ODA's. I think first group was there before us. Before that, there was another third group team. And so they had a little bit of training.
But that's, I mean, man, when you're talking about Afghans in a rural province of Afghanistan that have no education, have no aptitude, don't know how to read, right? Yeah, I mean, it's all relative. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I'm assuming the first thing you want to do is figure out what they're actually capable of doing.
No matter what the condition or the situation, when you come into a new firebase or fall into a new ended, you got to vet them. You got to put them through some kind of process to be able to see what their current capability is. We did that. It wasn't much. So we started from scratch. Wow. We were doing small unit tactics every single day. I was doing small unit tactics within every single day that we weren't operating. And this would be the force
Not only, this is before Afghan commando units, Afghan border police, Afghan national police, this is before all that. So they didn't have a job. Their job for us were, they were Afghan commandos working for Special Forces guys. We paid them directly cash. So
These were our first line of defense and QRF, if anything went wrong. So you show up in country. You got to get to know these guys. You got to train them. You got to figure out what their capabilities are. You got to improve those. How long do you have before boots on the ground? First operation.
Well, I mean, again, that's relative as well because when you infill into a remote firebase, the one we were at in the middle of nowhere was surrounded by high ground. It was just a couple Americans in the middle of the Wild West. So we were getting rocketed, we were getting reports of attacks and all these things that were happening.
So we were in it. We were in the thick of it already. But the, I mean, we didn't have any time. It was immediate. I think we went on an op two days, three days after we hit the ground, immediately went and did a link up with one of the, you know, Afghan, you know, seniors were Afghan elders in a village. And that's a movement to contact. I mean, you're just rolling, hoping you're not going to get blown up, hoping you're not going to get in a tick.
With the guys that you haven't vetted yet. Holy shit We're talking two fucking days two days and you're out the door with them out on a movement Yeah, we had no choice. How did that go?
It went uneventful, we had activity, but nothing significant happened, luckily for us. And we just started building more rapport with them, vetting them, training them, and improved our situation over time. So you're out, you meet the village elder, you come back, you debrief. Are you happy with what you've just been handed with the 144 guys? Are you going, holy shit, we have got a lot of work to do.
No, I will say, here's just a little bit of forward history on the guys that I train. Those same guys that I train had worked with Special Operations, including Special Missions Unit from the Navy. Okay. Prior to working with us, so there were some good dudes. And when I left that firebase, a guy by the name of Rob Miller ripped into that firebase,
and was with those guys as an 18 Bravo from 3rd Special Forces Group when he was killed and earned the Medal of Honor, posthumously of course.
those men, those Afghans that were with them were the Afghans that I trained that were trained prior. And so they were squared away. I mean, they had a heart, they were disciplined. They wanted it, man. They were impressed with them. Yeah, I was impressed. A good example was they instinctively knew when, or if there was a potential significant act going to happen called SIGAT.
and they would immediately get to the high ground and they were good about displacing themselves and then talking to the local community because you have to understand that these people lived in that same community. So they knew everybody around them and they didn't want to be the guy that failed their mission and got an American killed. So they had buy-in. So yeah, I was impressed with them. We had a lot of work to do obviously
but they had a good base and all the guys in Nurse Stand Province that I operate with that were Afghan in the village of Nurei and Asatabad.
Barrick out all great, great men. What are these guys carrying? Do they have nods to helmets? At this time in the war, no nods, no helmet. We eventually evolved into that, but we were straight AK-47s and flip-flops. Oh, man. I mean, our guys didn't even have uniforms. They're rolling around in whatever we can get them. I actually
exploited a program that was a nonprofit that was providing clothes and toiletry items to soldiers overseas and got this nonprofit to send me
helicopters full of equipment to be able to outfit my Afghans with just clothes, with just toothbrushes, because they didn't have it. And we weren't paying for it. So they needed stuff. I mean, it's so funny seeing these these dudes running around, Harley Davis and Church and flannel jackets and USA ball caps. But we had to do what we had to do. You finish that deployment. You come home. What's next?
I get back from that deployment and Iraq was getting bad and I wanted to go to school. So I went to put my name in the hat to go to Sephardic, Sephard Tech, which is Special Forces Advanced Target, reconnaissance, target acquisition, interdiction, exploitation, a whole bunch of words and an acronym. That doesn't even look right. It's Sephardic, whatever.
People call it Sephardic, and it's our CQB Advanced Schoolhouse for Haas' Rescue for direct action, for vehicle interdiction. We learn all that stuff there. It's, I believe, an eight-week school, maybe nine weeks, so it's pretty long, and it is the minimum
qualification that you need to serve in a commanders and extremists force, which there's one of those per group, which is a reinforced company that's designed to conduct Haas's rescue and crisis response across the world. How much CQB do you have? What's your background in CQB before you show up to that school? What is the basic kind of mold for an SF guy?
Usually, at the team level, you learn in, it's called Safawic. You learn basic CQB. Sometimes it's strong wall. I think at that time, it was probably strong wall. Real basic CQB. You don't learn points of domination. You don't learn Haas's rescue considerations. Maybe a little bit, but there's not a lot of it.
At the basic team level, if you don't have a Sephardic qualified guy, you might not know a lot. You might think you know a lot, but you really don't. And I thought I knew a lot, but I didn't know anything. I showed up and didn't know shit about CQB until I got there. I knew how to shoot. I was a decent shooter with pistol and carbine, but I didn't know much. After that school, let's fast forward to the next deployment. Did you utilize that a lot, or was it back to
what you were doing before? No, it was, in fact, I was in Charlie company, Second Battalion. The SIF was Bravo Company, Second Battalion. One company designated per group, so they were right next door. So I used to see those dudes come in and they had longer hair, they had cooler uniforms, they had better guns, and I wanted to be in the SIF. At that time, you had to have two years' time to even think about going in the SIF.
but I had real good rapport with my company, Sergeant Major, and he went next door to take the SIF. So he was my Sergeant Major, he became the SIF, Sergeant Major, and long story short, I wasn't supposed to go to SIF as a new guy with only a year or some change on a team, but I went to Sephardic and came recommended out of Sephardic, and so they pulled me over. I mean, I wasn't supposed to deploy to Afghanistan for another year.
But I went next door and I was in Iraq a month later. I mean, out of Sephardic. From that trip, I came back. I went straight to Sephardic, which is two months. I had 30 days and I was straight back in Iraq. So you did a nine month deployment, come back.
Roughly in 90 days. Yeah, you two months of that is Training becoming an assault or at the highest level and then you redeploy Yep, we reported Iraq for counter terrorism mission, which is all CQB. Did you have any Jim remarried at the time at the time? I was married but I was married young and didn't I mean to be honest
Absolutely secondary to the mission. We barely knew each other. I mean, on the ground, I had a couple of months with her. So it was, it was turning to burning. In fact, I had a hasty marriage because I had saw some dudes get killed, killed our trip, you know, operation. I was part of Operation Red Wing that trip and we had a couple other Chinooks that were down. We had guys that we lost in the company. So it was a bad trip. It was a bad year. A lot of Americans were killed that year.
It's a fucking small world. The fact that you were there, I came there right after that, which means we were there at the same time. And as we talked a couple of days ago, you met my fucking best friend who just passed away.
It's fucking crazy. It is a small world. It is a small world, man. So you did utilize, sorry, sidetracked there, but so you did utilize that school on that next appointment? Every operation. I explosively breached every other target, every other night. We went out every night, sometimes twice a night.
going after bad guys, and it was a real active campaign. It was us, and I believe Siltium 8, and we did joint ops, where it was like two SIF guys and five Sills, and we went out with our Indige and conducted counter-terrorism missions. What do you think of working with the Sills?
My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I never forget, you know, at the time I was believed still in E6. I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had a combat rotation behind me and I was on my second deployment and had been in training for years, had been in the military and the infantry, and so I had a background.
I'll never forget one of the young sills being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy. I was the most junior guy in the SIF. A SIF, a commander's in extremist forces filled with the most senior guys in the group.
I think my detachment years later, everybody made Master Sergeant the same time. Like an entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat, guys on average had three or four rotations, and this is early GWOT. He said,
Hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because we could do some cross training and maybe teach you guys some things. And he said, what could your guys possibly teach mine? You got to be shitting me. He said that.
And I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community. There was already stories about them, and so I paid attention. And we had a lot of experiences like that with the young sales, but a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA, and he was killed, unfortunately, in a suicide bombing.
He was there. He was great. A couple guys that are now in other special missions units were working with me and they were great. So I didn't have a horrible experience, but it was different. I mean a young still coming out of training.
21 22 and Even at that time I was 26. Yeah at the time So it was different, but we got along good. I mean we didn't have problems with operating with them and we had a lot of Action we had a lot of fun that rotation
What is your next assignment? So you're at the third group. You go to the CIF. What comes next? Another rotation in the CIF. I mean, the CIF is a grime. I did three CIF rotations that I racked back to back.
going to war coming back, going to war coming back, going to war coming back. I eventually moved up into reconnaissance in special operations and became a sniper, went to sniper school, went to free fall school and started specializing my efforts on the long gun. So between unilateral operations, which is working with task force, joint task force,
I think at the time, we were working with Tom D. Tomasso, who's a famous Black Hawk down platoon leader, and he was a special missions unit commander.
We operated under him and under Task Force 16, which is Stanley McChrystal's big kill capture conglomerate of the best units in the world. We were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years. I mean, it was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys. Yeah. So I did that for three rotations in a row. You've got a hell of a career, man. Yeah, thanks, man.
So you leave there and then so I leave and start running to build up this unit. Hiring fire a couple guys and.
build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis that potentially happened. And there was no at the time organization that was covering down on Africa, because it used to be third group's responsibility, but because of the war, we had a change in hands and change in responsibility. So we stood it up.
It was a grind. We got validated by Special Operations Command. And that was, ironically enough, September 1st of 2012, we got validated. And a week later, we're September 11th, Benghazi happens.
I had already been notified prior to Benghazi happening that my team and myself was going to be the first guys in Bolivia to run what's called a 12-weight program, which is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program to counter Al-Qaeda, which therein lies the benny therein lies the point, which is before September 11th,
2012. I had already been identified. We're going to go in there, stand up a counter terrorism force to counter al-Qaeda.
So it's often been said that hey, there was no threats there. There was threats. There was bombings. There were shootings. There was attacks on the UN foreign nationals, embassy staff. So I was getting all those intel sit reps before that happened. And then obviously that happened and it changed everything. Where were you when that happened? Ironically enough, I was back in
a special missions units compound doing a cross talk brief with basically a key leader engagement with the team lead from team Libya that had been designated and me and the other guy from my unit because we were former unit members of that unit. We were there doing a cross talk. I'll never forget I went
I went there and met up with a J3, which was at the time a colonel. And he told me last night, this just happened and this is what's going on. And so I stayed an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in because at that point, it was my unit's responsibility to react and respond outside of obviously the primary main effort
that unit that I was in, the responsibility of responding to that crisis. So was this happening? Was it going to happen in real time when you found out? Yes. It was happening in real time. It was still active and it was still happening and I was watching on ISR things unfolding. Jesus Christ. Is this what ultimately led you to separate
Yeah, so that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that and stood up a 1208 program and
We had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Benghazi, you know, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Glen Doherty in Tyrone Woods. So we went there. I was deployed there for over six months. I busted my ass and tried everything I could to
kill or capture those guys with obviously other special operations units that were there. And other one other special operation unit that was there. And we offered up a full platter. Kill capture, bilateral mission, unilateral mission, whatever you want will do. And we were told that the political climate wouldn't allow for it. So we're not going to do anything. Yeah. And so let's just say I was disgruntled when I came back.
I had a lieutenant colonel that I was co-located with that was a reserve officer from Africa, who was a fucking piece of shit, who was drinking every night getting drunk, who didn't give a fuck about the mission, who was making excuses every single day about not wanting to work, not wanting to do the op. And so when I get back, I said, go fuck yourself.
You know, I know how fucking tough that can be. I mean, I didn't watch, I didn't, we didn't have Fred Veed or anything like that, but to watch an event going down, I mean, that's one of the most, when you know you can fucking help.
It's one of the most helpless feelings in the fucking world, and I've experienced that as well. We were working with a foreign counterpart and should have been on that fucking op, but we weren't and their helos went down and we listened to the entire thing on the fucking radio and...
And then we saw them when they got back. And the event that you had to stay on the sideline for us.
Yeah, I could see how you could be that disgruntled. I mean, you got out with 18 fucking years in, right? Yeah. Yeah. Two years to retirement. Yep. Yeah. I got back. Um, I did get recruited by the CIA at the time. They recruited me for a job. Um, and I had finished my college degree, my bachelor's degree.
the year prior to that. So that was a prerequisite to become a staffer for them. I came back with the anticipation of doing that job, but the sequester happened, which was a stop loss on all or a hiring freeze on all jobs.
So I wasn't able to do that job, uh, which kind of fucked me up. You know, I was prepared to do that. So I transitioned off active duty and then went into the national guard component where I took a team in Texas, a 19th special forces group and was just waiting on the word and field craft. It seems like you guys do a lot of prepping and, uh, our masters of it. And,
I don't know about you, but a lot of the clients that I've had think that there might be something they need to prepare for. They think something might happen, not necessarily the end of the world, but they just want to be ready in case of a natural disaster, an EFP. There's a thousand different scenarios.
What would you say for somebody that's completely green? They don't know how to shoot. They don't own a gun. They don't have food storage, anything. What would you say the number one priority would be? Where do they start?
The number one priority for me is personal defense because the first principle of patrolling is security. And if you can't secure yourself, you can't secure your family. You can't defend your life. You can't defend your family's life. So I would say it starts with a personal decision to
by a firearm, learn how to utilize a firearm, and carry that firearm daily. What firearm would you suggest starting with post-order rifle? I think universally, you know, I carry different guns for different reasons, but universally a Glock 19 is probably the staple
concealed carry pistol. In contracting, we carry Glock 17s typically, but Glock 19s is the right frame size for most. It's the right size frame for concealment. It has the most accessories per gun in the industry. It's a good platform. It's reasonably priced.
And I've used a Glock 19 when the military got him in special operations and I've seen him. I've seen him throughout my motor career and I've never seen one fail. So a single action only Glock 19 is the start point. I would definitely agree with that. It's like the Toyota Corolla handguns. Yeah, absolutely. They just never fucking die. Yeah. And then.
So next would be, so you would say pistol and then move on to rifle? No, the next priority for me is med. Med? Med, absolutely. 30,000 people a year die in vehicle accidents. I wonder how many of those could have been prevented.
480, it's a year for all their tree stands and hunting and break their legs and do dumb shit. So we're prone to accidents. We're prone to trauma. And I've treated trauma in real life. I've saved people's lives with Tourniquets. Tourniquet, which is a $29.99 piece of equipment from North American Rescue, which we sell on our website at feelcrassarabha.com, is the number one piece of equipment, the in-med that you need to carry.
Stop in an extremity wound, a traumatic bleed from a femoral or breakable artery is life-saving. If you don't do that, you simply just go to sleep and die. Are you guys teaching meds? We absolutely do, yeah. We teach TCCC, Tactical Combat Casual Care, which we were required by our contract to train. We teach a course, certified TCCC course.
through NAEMT, the certification on tactical med training, trauma training. I just taught a CPR lifesaver course at my tribe expo recently, so we frequently teach med, and I expect
that if in contracting in austere environments we're required to carry a tourniquet based on our own understanding of what we could run into that a civilian should do the same whether that's in your inside your waistband because we do sell inside the waistband tourniquet holder or that's inside of a bag or inside your vehicle somewhere within arms reach or if you're experiencing trauma you could save your life interesting
So number three, what would the number three thing be? We got pistol, we got med. If we're talking about equipment specific things that you need to carry, the next piece of equipment would be the way in which you carry it, which would be the bag in which you carry. A lot of people don't think about it, but the extension of your capability of what you can carry on your person is limited. You can only fit so much shit in your pockets and your pants.
And if you have a bag, meaning an everyday carry bag, that might be your purse, your MERS, your European man's satchel. It sets you up for an extended capacity. That's how we look at vehicles.
I mean, if I have a med kit in my back pocket, that's a minimalist, you know, low-vis med kit, well, I want my fucking car to be an ambulance. I want there to be enough med equipment to treat my family, myself. And then you upgrade that to your house as well. I want a damn hospital at my house. So having the ability to carry all their stuff is super important. And in that bag, I would definitely include a survival kit, a modern survival kit that
that has the staples of survival, including the ability to contain water, purify water, start a fire, signal, communicate potentially, sat or ridium, VHF, UHF, the list goes on. Gummy bears. Gummy bears that are fat free, they have lots of carbs, lots of sugars, lots of calories. They're survival bears. That's what we call it. They're survival bears.
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