#298 Jason Magnavice - SEAL Team 6 Red Squadron Operator

38:15But anyway, yeah, I'm talking, if you try to fight back at all, because I was a pretty good scrapper back then. and it's all over when somebody's got your balls in their hand, and they're twisting, man, and you're getting tied up or zip tied and getting dragged out, freaking shaving your balls, hot sauce in the balls, getting hit with paddles. Yeah, it's stupid, right? It's all fun and games until you're tied naked to a spine board hanging upside down from an elevator shaft, and they're shooting fucking simulation rounds at you, and then tape your head up and put a little pinhole in your mouth and throw you in the fucking showers yeah like welcome to team two you're like waterboarding like what you get that all the time man yeah drop a rag on your face while you're hanging upside down and then as soon as you take an inhale somebody's blowing cigar smoke in your face yeah they're like that's not that's not torture more whiskey down your throat oh my goodness yeah it was stupid i mean back then it was just like and then once you actually you got there were like no fucking rules when you were in.

39:20Yeah, well, that's why you were, I mean. Like, no rules. You were smart. When you got secured on Friday, we would sneak out through the locker room, jump the back fence over by STV, and get to your car. You parked on the road, so you want to get freaking, guys would have, yeah, a keg in the locker room, you know, a Friday, and freaking, where are the new guys at? You know? We didn't want to be around, man. Did you carry that forward? No, I did not. No, I can't say that. I wasn't big into it. I wasn't really big into it. No, I thought it was stupid when it happened to me, so I'm like, well, why would I want to do that?

39:57But when you were a new guy and after you got hazed, if somebody else was going to get hazed, they made you, like me and my buddy John, we were to take down guys. Like the most dangerous part of hazing somebody that doesn't want to be hazed, right? You got to go in and grab them while everybody else tries to control them, tie them up, do whatever. And then I just, yeah, it wasn't for me. really yeah yeah well how did it feel checking into team two after butts a lot of pride a lot of pride in team two because you know they had a reputation i kind of wanted to go to four because i like south america jungle type stuff which come to find out the older i got i really don't like the jungle that much um there's a lot of history there you know what i mean when you walk across that quarter deck um and then but you're still you still got to go through stt and then seal tactical training back then before they they stopped doing that and made it all go on in Coronado but uh yeah STT was it was fun and challenging I mean the summertime in Virginia at Apia Hill very hot and then that's where you try to start you know building your reputation too because nobody really cares who you are till you get you check into your team and then you start training and that's all shooting movement communicating really really big back then it still is it still is but now you know you know you got a little a lot more to worry about with drones and stuff like that yeah yeah actually yesterday we brought these um were you involved in were drones big when you left and they were just coming in they were just being teeny quite a bit now it's like it's one of the deadliest things in the battlefield obviously dude holy shit i did this uh i did this little um we made a piece of content yesterday and we brought these uh drone operators from ukraine down oh that's about yeah those guys know what they're doing dude holy shit so they they kind of briefed us up on everything they're doing i had no i have never i've never seen it on the closest thing to drum warfare i've seen is a predator overhead yep you know but none of these like fpv drones or anything so we go we um brought them on on this property's over 100 acres they gave us you know hey this is the this is the drones these are the capabilities these are these type of drones and uh they're like all right go hide we'll give you a head start and then they're sending the drones after you and you can't Dude, holy shit.

42:30You can't hear where the fuck they're at. No. You, I mean, like, it sounds like they're right above you and they're over there. It's impossible to get the fuck away from those. Yeah. I took some shots at one just for the hell. I just wanted to see what the sight picture was like. And there's no way in hell. I mean, you're basically trying to hit a four-inch dot. They just came out with a particular ammunition. I read somewhere, four drones, that you could shoot out of like a 5.56 or whatever too, and it still seems like pretty hokey to me. Because it shoots in a pattern. The one round splits into like four little rounds.

43:08Gotcha. Yeah. Even if you try to jam them, you know what I mean? I think they're still already pre-programmed for what they're going to do, where they're going to go. The tethered ones are the big problem too. Yeah. Well, I mean, once you're identified, you're fucked yeah because i mean i like i just had a pistol with it i was like you know just just just for the hell of it i was like i just want to see i just want to put myself in the fucking scenario and actually take it seriously and you know i was like listening to their tactics and shit at the beginning on how they find people and all the different capabilities and uh what the weaknesses are so i was trying to utilize some of that stuff and but once once are on you you're you're done like it doesn't doesn't if you if you shoot one down there's just going to be a swarm of them coming 20 of them yeah and they're even saying that you can have one on station or more than one on station and have the same pilot control in multiples so you could you know fly 10 damn drones and have nine on station and just up that one went down another one switch to the next one you know what i mean and they're already hovering on station just waiting for it.

44:20Waiting to bounce. Yeah. I was like, this is, you're fucked. A shotgun, even a shotgun, you don't even have that many shells to go through, you know what I mean? Maybe hit one, but by the time you got one coming behind you too, it's a whole different battlefield. We always say, like getting back to the STT thing, that's where they really teach you, well, the diving and then shoot, move and communicate. And now you got to really stay low, move with discretion and definitely have somebody watching your six or somebody that's gonna yeah because the drones are the biggest i mean for what i'm hearing now and all this stuff because i've been out of the game for a while and then talking to people that are that know a lot about it it's yeah it's a different battlefield definitely it's pretty wild yep it's pretty wild because as you said yeah back then and you know the beginning of oef and oif all we had were yeah predators draco's up there and not and now they're they're kind of outdated yeah i mean these things one of them was like that big yeah said it can go 300 kilometers an hour i think it's fucking crazy that's insane but um i actually i could be off on that but anyways back to you back to me stt yep ap hill then the dive in and then yep got my first platoon how was that it was actually a pretty good deal because they usually don't give like new guys out of stt back but like i said with winter warfare platoons right so we go to alaska do telemark skiing you learn how to live out of a backpack for freaking almost 11 days on unsupported and so i got into a winter warfare platoon and great great people in there my first the dive buddy was Tommy Valentine who unfortunately passed away quite a time back in a jumping accident in Arizona or uh yeah but uh yeah he was my first swim buddy he was a freaking stud all in all the time awesome awesome dude um I learned a lot you're pretty much trying to gather you're trying to see like we talked about earlier like hey who do I want to who do I want to be like you know what I And yeah, Val was definitely one of those guys.

46:37He led by example, hardcore, super incredible combat diver too. And like, we take that shit for granted nowadays, right? How much water's in the desert? But yeah, super squared away. Pretty much everything he did. Where was your deployment? We went to our first trip. Well, they moved the command. Well, not the command, the unit from Scotland. And then, yeah, we moved on over to Italy, Brindisi, the heel of the boot, because we were staged there just to go over back and forth to Bosnia, to Syria or Kosovo for whatever, just to work with other little units over there. We really weren't doing much as far as combat-wise.

47:19And a teammate did a couple ship takedowns in the Adriatic around that time to enforce an embargo. Like I said, this was back in the 90s. And then we went to Norway, which was a blast. I've heard those are awesome Went there for a month And yeah The funny thing is I go I've raised my whole life Right Thinking I'm Polish And Lithuanian My first trip to Norway I get there We're talking To the Marine Yeagers They're like They're version of the Great Incredible people They're like Are you Scandinavian Are you like Norwegian Like you got a big head You kind of like You look like us And I'm like No dude I'm not No I'm I'm like Polish and freaking I think Lithuanian you know but back then sure enough I get my freaking 23 or whatever the DNA checked on comes back hey you're 80 it's like 78 % from in like in Norway that area like it's right over there kind of a little bit to the UK and my mom is also the same like my dad is he even my dad no he is but yeah he don't have any like I don't have anything that my dad has in him from his DNA it's weird well like the ethnicity traits or whatever you want to call them yeah but going back to the first trip to Norway and they like dude are you are you Norwegian I'm like nah like you look like you could be you know and I mean they were like I said this was back in 93 94 and I'm like no and yep sure enough I am but Norway was a blast man a lot of skiing those guys are born with freaking skis on their feet jump turning with 80 pound rucks on with the telly skis on you're like holy cow we're just too busy picking ourselves up off the snow you know what i mean yeah damn damn what was going on i mean i i know what was going on but what did you wind up going to bosnia yeah we go to syrievo hang out there i actually that's where i started uh made a couple good friends with a couple ccts combat controllers over there from, you know, we just drive around to various, like, safe houses there, hang out there, bring them food and stuff and come back.

49:33It was a lot of driving around, not too much. What was the point? What was the mission? Back then, right? It's funny how America goes to one extreme. We were protecting Muslims from getting killed by Christians, right?

49:50The wasn't clear what the mission was over there i really it was just this sounds like every war going after uh i'm not really sure what the well going after pithwix and like um person wanted for war crimes or whatever like these generals that were in charge of the mass freaking graves and stuff and killing just in like towns of people you know what i mean yeah but that was very like genocide going on yeah a lot of genocide yep yeah humanity can be evil at times man so what i'm just curious i mean this was uh i don't want to relate our experiences but this sounds similar to when i joined what what was your impression of the SEAL teams were you fired up were you disappointed i mean you got this all came off of rambo in 1982 yes it did it did you're not doing rambo stuff no yeah not yet i i think i was just along for the ride like waiting for something to happen you know what i mean and the training was fun but we made obviously you know we make things that people pay to do for fun suck like jumping like dude oh we'll go skydiving like dude i don't care if i ever see a rig again you know diving like it's not the fun i'm staring at a compass board freaking depth gauge and a stopwatch for freaking two hours underwater and freezing your ass off right But you learn a lot and you want to be good at it.

51:16You don't want to be subpar, especially the biggest thing is not letting your teammates down. I think that was... So the brotherhood, you definitely see from the beginning, once you're in, once you get kind of established in your role and you build that trust. But as far as being bored, yeah, as far as not actually doing what you're training to do, I think that's kind of what was going on in the past couple of years too as well with guys, just getting bored and wanting to just... you know, but you got to be careful what you ask for too. You got to be careful what you ask for.

51:49So you,

51:55you spent some, how long were you at team two before you decided? Eight years. Eight years. Yeah. There's something, glad you brought that up. Something that's not in that piece of paper right there. So I got out in 98. for eight months. I got out. I was going to be a U.S. Marshal. A couple of my buddies from Team 4 already went over and doing it. I went through the whole process. Got out, moved to Connecticut, moved back home because I thought I was going to work out of New Haven. Guy I went to high school with. As a Marshal. He was the head Marshal at the time. A guy I went to high school with his dad's best friend.

52:37So he's like, come up. Yeah, come up here. You move up here. And I'm waiting to hear back from the marshal service about when I'm going to go to Glencoe, you know, to start a school down here, Fleet Sea, whatever. And then I get a letter back then, this was before emails and all that, we're sorry to tell you that you're no longer considered for the, and I went through the interview, I went through the, like, you're going to, I interviewed. So you left the fucking SEAL teams to become a marshal and then they denied you? But can I rewind for a minute? Yes. Why did you want to leave the SEAL teams to become a U.S.

53:06marshal? My daughter was born. I didn't want to deploy anymore for no reason. just what we were talking about earlier as far as like you know being bored where it really wasn't anything going on and i thought it would be cool you know what i mean and just talking to other buddies too like hey it's better than being an fbi agent because you don't got as much red tape to cut if you want to do this is back then you know yeah and i got the said you're no longer being considered for the position and i called up one of my buddies he's like yeah dude it's a whole they're doing a whole scrub they're it was at that time it was kind of like because i looked the way i am and who i am who i am i wasn't going through with that class i'll just leave it at that so i'm like shit what am i gonna do like i got a newborn and my buddy's like hey the federal prison's hiring in danbury connecticut and i'm like what be a freaking co right and so i go i go interview for that job 23 24 years old and i'm like yeah i guess i could do it and it just went from male prison to female prison medium security federal correctional institution in danbury connecticut and they're like dude you sure you want this job like i like i need something man whether i start off as a gs7 or gs8 whatever i'm like i just got out of the navy i got and my buddy of mine well was also in my first platoon he got out this is where i'm going with this he moved to florida to be an emt and we've talked back and forth he's like he's like fuck this i'm going back in the Navy and back then, so this is fun.

54:51I don't know where I'm going with this. But anyway, I worked in the prison. I go to Glencoe for the training down in Florida, at Fleet Sea, where they train the federal COs. And that was fun. Only one other dude knew what I did prior. Like, I just kept it on the down low. He was a Marine. And we both worked at the same prison, but we both went to training together. and when you're down there you shoot like a ruger nine millimeter the old freaking ar-15s and a shotgun a pump shotgun and yeah it was it was a good time it was a pretty the shotgun story i gotta tell it though that's what so this you line up in like a couple lines when you're shooting everything else you're online the shotgun you're getting like a two lines because think i don't know when to save money for shells or it's just something and it was like a remington 870 i think a pretty basic pump gun and there was a lady a dea agent that was an instructor there right and i'm just having a good i'm like dude i'm like why this is gonna be funny so because she's like milking everybody through it like hey this is what you do like you put one in the chamber this way and then you load it like that and she's like all right be careful it kicks a little right and i get up there and i'm like i'm like i'm like dude i'm acting like i'm all nervous and shit and he was trying not to laugh right and she's like hey just relax just relax and like dude i've been john shaw taught us how to shoot shotguns you know what i mean i grab the shell i go put it in backwards you know the brass face and she's like no no no no know it goes up i drop it you did this shit on purpose i drop i i drop it and then i'm i load up and she's like okay be careful you know it kicks a little and like the way they're showing how to shoot like boom so boom give it back to her she called me a fucking asshole and the guy behind me was laughing i'm like dude i just wanted to have fun with it and one of our one of our instructors like he started laughing his freaking ass off because it was it was a pretty the way it went down you had to be there to see it but it was pretty fucking obvious she was like be careful i'm like yeah no i'm a little nervous that's awesome but yeah i did that for eight months found out my buddy went back in the navy and i'm like dude i don't i can't do this anymore so i called up i'll call him mad dog a lot of people can know who he is and um he was working another great guy another great role model growing up taught me how to ski actually well growing up in the teams and i'm like hey are you taking i'm like can i go back and he goes i knew you'd be calling back i knew you'd be calling back like are they taking he's like yeah you got to go see your recruiter i'm like what i just can't he goes yeah you got to go see your recruiter this is before as so was actually a rate i was still a quartermaster so i went to the same recruiting office i went in freaking dude 10 years ago when i first started talking to him when i was in middle in high school and obviously the same recruiters aren't in there and like hey i want to go back to the navy i mean but they called it a nav vet like i'm a nav vet i want to go back and like well what'd you do i was like a quartermaster i think it was second class and um he gets up he calls a detailer he's like no they're not no they're not taking you back i said don't my Andy sees 5326.

58:26And I'm wearing T-buzz, torn shorts, and like freaking a beat up t-shirt. And he's like, you're a fucking SEAL? He goes, oh yeah, they're taking you guys back. And that was another little journey. So I had to go back to the MEPS, the Military Entrance Processing Station up in Springfield, the same one I went to before. And my recruiter drove me up. Well, the recruiter I was working with. I had to do the duck walk, go through the whole physical again to get in there. And then when we were standing there swearing, I'm like talking to this kid. Hey, what do you go to the Navy for? He goes, I think I'm going to go to Bud's.

59:02You know, I want to be a SEAL. I'm like, I heard that's tough as shit, man. Like it's a pretty hard line of work to choose. And my recruiter's like, Jay, leave him alone. Like, don't be it. And I said, hey, we'll talk about it afterwards. So it was going through the whole recruiting thing again, going through the whole freaking, yep. I came in two weeks later. I was in a platoon with DJ's dad, my platoon chief. Yep. How was that? It was good. It was a fun, it was a good time. It was good just getting back in, man. It was good getting back in, man. It was just good getting, being around, you know, going to work.

59:41I'm not saying, going to work at FCI for like eight months and then having that broken service and then realizing, you know, how much you do miss. Like the biggest thing you miss when you leave are the guys, right? with the boys so getting back in right into another winter warfare platoon yeah right on it was and then they had two years later i screened for uh Damn that Dev Group. Well, before we dive into Dev Group, let's take a quick break. All right. Perfect. If you've ever hired somebody like I'm in the middle of doing right now, you know this can be extremely overwhelming. You put a job posting out, and the next thing you know, you have 2 ,000 resumes, all wanting to be the next producer.

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1:02:00But this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know.

1:02:14All right, Jason, we're back from the break. We left off at, you took a quick, you took a, you took another break from the SEAL teams, became a correctional officer, went back to Team 2 for about another two years, and now it sounds like you're getting ready to scream for development group, also known as SEAL Team 6. Yes. I wanted to go over there to take a break.

1:02:44You wanted to go over there to take a break? Yes. Did you tell them that in your screening? No. I'm just kidding. I wanted to go over there to stop because my daughter, once again, was young. I was never home. Just wanted to stop with a six-month deployments. And I'm like, go over there. A bunch of my buddies went over there. And they're like, it's great. You hang around for three months, just carrying a beeper on you back then. And then you train. You do some very specialized training for another three months. You get to go to schools. You want to go to civilian schools. great shooting schools you know lock picking all that stuff and at a very high level and then you train with your team back then or not squadron now for another three months so you're home quite a bit except for when you're picking and choosing what training you want to go do and uh this is what you were told yeah this is pre 9-11 yeah yep and I I finished a training program there in September 2001 and yeah well hold on let's talk about the screening the green team yeah it's definitely more cerebral than like you would say like in buds is as far as the shooting move and communicating part of it i mean when you got in when you got you know went through went through green team i mean i'm not a fucking dev group guy so i can't talk shit but i know what i saw when i was in and I got out in 2006, and they went from running one green team a year to running two green team a year, and it seemed like the majority made it through green team.

1:04:26I think it was a completely different scenario when you got in because there was nothing going on. Retention was probably really good. Guys weren't dying, so there wasn't really much to fill. So it was really, really fucking hard to get in there. Harder than... probably should shut my mouth because I'm not one of them. No, no, but I get your point. Even when I went over here to screen, I wasn't impressed by the attitudes of some of the guys over there. You know what I mean? They were more high and mighty than you were. You know what I mean? We have guys coming over there that have done real-world shipboardings.

1:05:02You know what I mean? Real-world operations, either Bosnia, Kosovo. And we knew that the guys at the command really weren't doing anything except hanging around to maybe go grab a person wanted for crime and that was the big thing or you know take down a ship that gets hijacked or whatever and i wasn't impressed by the attitude because they were like oh like this new guy you wear your blues when you go over there to screen and do your interview and all that stuff and it was just like they're arrogant dude it's pompous and arrogant and you could then even after green team you could kind of see why they are because you do get some pretty good training like really good training and but as you said once again there's there wasn't much going on and then 9-11 happened and they weren't taking anybody though were they i mean they were taking like very few people before september 11th yeah it it's a good old boy network you know what i mean they go around they ask everybody you work with in you dump platoons within if you don't if you don't like somebody you just give a reason why because there are a lot of great guys that don't come over to the command because they just don't want to deal with the you know what i mean back then and then when we got busy and started growing yeah that's when they were because we were gone i mean quite a bit yeah the three color teams were yeah four months, four months, four months, you know, you rotate every four months.

1:06:32How was the green team? It was challenging. Safety's a big thing there, and doing things at a very high level. You know, being able to shoot well, it's a big thing. Safety violations, as I said, is the biggest thing that gets people shaking in from there. not being able to think, shooting an unknown instead of, you know, what you're supposed to do in the house. That was, I think, the most challenging part for people going through the training. Jumping, they take that at a very high level, too. Can't go one degree off heading when you exit the plane. You've got to be able to fly a tight formation under canopy.

1:07:14And everything, the diving, it was pretty, you know, at a high level. because you're not just in peers anymore you're diving as a whole group so no no shit yeah with a little pole yeah right right on so you get through green team where do you go from there um I went right into a squadron and then well a team back then and then we we punched out to to Afghanistan. Which squadron? Red. Red squadron. Is that where you met Biss? I met him a few years after that when he came there, yes. Okay. Yep. Red squadron. And you graduated dream team? It was red team back then, and then they started calling squadrons to meet up with our Army counterparts at CAG.

1:08:07Gotcha. Because they were squadrons, so they're like, hey, we're not team anymore. Gotcha. We're just making squadrons for the higher-ups at JSOC to make it easier for them. And so you graduated green team right before September 11th? Right during. Right during. We were walking across the compound when the first plane hit. And I remember one of my buddies comes out of the locker room. He's like, did you hear what happened? And that's what we had just... Well, like, phones weren't that big back then either. We were just watching the news inside the team room or inside our training room, and then another plane hit.

1:08:43Then our skippers called a meeting for all the cadre and all the class and kind of gave a lowdown on what's going down. That's when he said there's another plane they're tracking down right now after one hit the Pentagon. And, yeah, it was kind of exciting. It was an exciting time, I think, but then it was, you know, this is shit's about ready to get real. What's your wife think? She was worried, obviously. All the wives were. Yeah, that first deployment wasn't really good for the Wife Network. Yeah, when we first punched out over there. So you, hold on, hold on. So you get done with Green Team, and then you go right to Red Team, right to Afghanistan?

1:09:29Yes. Yep. Well, we had a few weeks in between, and we were working on stuff that we might be doing over there as far as insertion techniques, like jumping, how we're going to work, freaking getting our gear set up. Because it was the first move for, I mean, going to Afghanistan, right? It just kicked off, and we wanted to be sure. Were you the first squadron to go? No. No. Second.

1:10:00What were you guys doing? What was the mission going to be? Hunting down the lot and was the big one. Obviously, we first got over there looking for him all over his network of people and yeah, just trying to find him and that was our big mission when we first went over there. Well, let's talk about flying in there. I mean, you just had what, roughly a 10 year career at SEAL Team 2? Yeah, yeah, eight. Eight years at SEAL Team 2 with an eight-month break. You joined the SEAL Teams because of Rambo in 1982. Yep. And now you're stepping foot in a country that just, where a terrace cell is, that just fucking hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon.

1:10:50Yeah. Yeah, we flew over there. That was freaking entertaining, too. The crew that I was with, the team, the boat crew, and like a little squad you call it pretty in the teams we moved around we call ourselves the orphans we moved around from we landed we got in kandahar and then we went to a couple other small towns we were living out of a backpack eating mres for almost four months holy and then yeah just standing by trying to get develop intelligence to actually track down people in this network and then we they had a big a big military offensive operation anaconda that happened during our first pump over there where we lost neil roberts fifi chappy the controller and uh yeah that was you were there for that i was one we were on the other bridge yeah holy shit let's go into that well getting into that was even funny because my chief my boat really call him crazy horse he's like jay are you still up on your jtac stuff and because he comes out of a meeting right and we're just messing with our gear like i said we were moving everywhere and he wanted to know if i was still could you because i was a communicator too as well in my platoons i've done and i'm like yeah he goes dude you know how to use like 117 Fox right yeah I'm like why we had no idea what was going on he goes I'm trying to get us some work we were an assault team we weren't a recce team but they wanted to put up they're like well we got snipers in here we get with 10 inch barrels to this it was stupid but it was two hours you got two hours go do your radio checks meet up with Al who was our freaking our comm support guy not a team guy but a very smart uh incredible guy and you get a dmc 125 satellite antenna the donkey dick uhf i'm like two hours and then we got to pack out rucks for i think we're gonna be out there seven to ten days and guys weren't really sure i'm like how to pack out a winter ruck because it was freaking cold and we're at 10 000 feet most of between nine and ten thousand feet so yeah we're doing i'm doing radio checks as we're getting on to freaking 47 to go in i'm like off the back of the way they're sending a fucking assault team in to do sniper work with two hours of prep time yes it was just it was one of those things hey it's better let's go do something instead of not doing anything right and yep we inserted up on this point it was uh jumped off the rapid ass set up our freaking bit our op site as tf mountain it was the 82nd 100 first airborne as they were moving to clear out this valley and we just called in cast for a week and then one night that March 4th anniversary just just passed that was a yeah when Neil and his team was slabby a couple other guys that's when they inserted and got lit up and where if he fell off and ended up dying I just interviewed Pete blaber about this I think he wrote he was yeah he was out there as part of didn't he write a book he did yeah he did yep he was with the delta unit that was there before how do you feel about that now about i thought it was we helped out a lot we did i mean we supported you know the big movement with tf mountain or whatever the hundred yeah those guys and it was uh i didn't feel good when you know we found out that Fifi passed away.

1:14:28All of our casts went to them, and then we kind of, yeah, we took it out in the Teleband the next day, put it that way, just with more casts. Yeah. Were you the one calling the casts? Yes. How did that feel? It was... I mean, you're on your first operation that's gone kinetic, I'm assuming. Yes. Well, big time kinetic, yeah. Yeah. It was a fucking huge operation of cut your teeth on it. Yeah, in a kind of... Yeah, we would call the... We had shoot B-52s, B-1s, 18s, 15s. Yeah. Do you remember the first cast you called where you killed somebody? Uh... Yeah, it was right there with B-52s on a Disco site, actually.

1:15:19You need to describe it. We had shorty rifles, too, which was... Yeah, our post-op debrief on that was... all right, we do this again, we got to do it a lot better.

1:15:31Can you describe your first cast? It was pretty, it was actually, I mean, pretty dramatic. I mean, as far as what a B-52 could drop, you know what I mean? And pretty accurate too. I mean, describe everything. What were you hitting? It was a dish composition in the town that was a good, maybe 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 meters from us. But we'd see these guys come up, start lighting up the 101st, 82nd. We had them all graded out already. And we were doing this with a GPS and a rangefinder back and forth. There's a lot better ways to do it nowadays. But it was super accurate as soon as you give the modified 9-line to the pilot or the controller up there in the B-52.

1:16:19They programmed where the JDAM is going to go. and yeah took it out then freaking four hours later another guy would come out of the there was a big cave system it's called the whale and yeah the guys would just come come out of that and just like refill the roll and just keep doing it they were like little ants you know what i mean how did it feel to for your first gas i felt successful it felt good it was just work you You know what I mean? It's just pretty much what it's about. That's it. How many bombs do you think you dropped? Oh my goodness. Dude, that was a long time ago. A lot. That's all I know.

1:17:01A lot. Yeah, I gotta read the post-op we did. It was, yeah, a pretty good amount of munitions. I'll bet. Yep. What was the sentiment like after Neil died? Oh, revenge, I think. you know what I mean and uh yeah that whole thing yeah it was I mean it was tough too because the guys that I was with the other four dudes that knew him really well I knew him from two then he he came over to the command before I did and the two guys I were with were really good buddies of them and when we went when his call sign came back that that's who fell off the helicopter they're like shit and at this time yeah getting back to the wives being home at this time we we didn't even talk yeah we didn't we haven't talked to anybody for like almost a month from home so they were kind of worried and then that hit the news and our command did not know how to deal with that they were hearing about neil before the command told anybody and that when we got out of the field i'll never forget al like i said our calm guy we get out and we're going to the gardez mud pit and he he's throwing his two iridium phones he's like call home like they call home now the wife network is losing their freaking mind so that was a big lesson learned too for the command after yeah after fifi passed what came after that deployment um well during that deployment we did another good little wolverine which was a good a good little operation and ended up working out perfectly we're going after uh zawa harry and his bodyguards and that was perfect l shape once again the orphans had a run around with a perfect good L-shaped ambush set up with two 47s and Zawahiri wasn't there but uh yeah we got the mission accomplished as far as dealing with the detail what was that mission about going after going after their bodyguards it been modens what we thought he was going to be with him too and the intel wasn't that great where was that at Right outside of Gardez.

1:19:11Do you want to describe it? What was your role in that? I was an assaulter, yeah. It was... We rolled up on in the 47s, and like an L-shaped ambush, they said they had squirters. Oh, this is a funny story. Well, not funny. They said they had squirters up on another ridgeline, and like somebody that they thought was fleeing from part of that motorcade that we ambushed. and we... Wait, you ambushed a motorcade? Yeah. How'd you do that? It was a motorcade. Two 47s. Okay. We caught them right when they were doing a little traverse up at... The timing in the TF-160th guys are freaking awesome, man.

1:19:52They're, yeah, the way it was set up too in the LZs, the landing zones they put them on, it just happened to be perfect. And the guys that we were going after didn't even, I don't even think they knew what, They started shooting and bailing out of the vehicle, but the vehicles, there was three of them, but after that it was over. Then we went after the squarters, and it was just a farmer in the field. I was the first one off the ramp. I'll never forget. I got my two buddies standing next to me in disguise. We get back into 47, take off. We go land. We're right next to where the crew chief's yelling at us, where this guy's at.

1:20:31i get off i look at him and he's got his hands in so i'm thinking okay maybe he's got a suicide vest on it that's fast and he's walking he keeps walking towards us and my buddy and next to me he's like dude i'm like dude don't once again this is where you got to be a thinker right you just don't like blast somebody to freaking do it so i let three rounds rip by his feet and he falls over on his back like a freaking upside down turtle hands in here we go zip time and my buddy was just getting ready to drill him. He was just a farmer out there, a goat herder, you know what I mean? And we took him down, dropped him off after we found out who he was.

1:21:05But that made me feel really good, you know what I mean? Not because it could have gone another way, which would have been, hey, that's the fog of war. But yeah, that was something I remember really good about, I mean, specifically about that, that I was comfortable with at that time. Right on.

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1:23:49so you guys are busy yeah but it was a lot of sitting around waiting you know what i mean like waiting to do something getting approval to do something and then yeah we went through three times wasn't really that busy i was going to go to the training cell until one of my chiefs said dude you want to go to iraq and uh like yes i want to go to iraq because i just i've heard the stories from green oh it's everything a team guy wants to do and get up at night eat uh dinner for breakfast and then walk out to the birds, go do your work, come back, and do it again. Maybe all night. But yeah, APRAC was, I think what every team guy at that time, the type of operations they wanted to do, just going out and getting busy.

1:24:43No shit. What year was this? 2003 and 2004. Same squadron? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, we sent a couple other guys. We would do the crossbreeding. like we sent a couple guys from our i think even this did it from the newer guys actually to go work with CAG with Delta Force guys and then we do it back and forth and we took a lot of lessons learned too and brought that into our into our training in our SOPs the way we operated coming from each side like you ever remember doing a hot hallway in in training oh yeah right that's one of the stupidest things you could do right just hey run on the way down there instead of you know maybe crash in our total grade and we learned that lesson the hard way from a couple squadron guys in the army no shit so did you log man over there no no no no you went over there with the with dev group yes yep how was it was it was cracked up to be yeah it was it was an um yeah we were busy you know but it was everything like i said earlier that you kind of want yeah man hey just load up come up with a game plan it got to the point like the first couple times when you're planning to go you know go to work you it's you overthink things a little bit too much into you get like a little bit nervous and But then once you keep doing it more and more and more, it just becomes second nature.

1:26:19Like you could go, all right, we got to go take this down. Our officers wouldn't even come in there. They'd let the team leaders figure out, okay, yeah, I got the white side again, got the green side, blue side, whatever, boom, just go to work. But it was great. And then walk out to the Little Birds or 60s or 47s, and the targets would change all the time depending on the intel and what we had going on over there. What were you guys going after? Just going after bad guys. Just going after, yeah, just bad dudes. Shit that were coming over from, yeah, different places too, different countries, and not only just in Iraq itself.

1:27:01How many targets are you guys hitting a night? It would depend on the follow-ons. Some nights one, some nights five. it just depended on what we got off one target if we even landed on the right building and or if they move somewhere else that's where the isr assets were great too helping us out and getting back we're talking about the drone war now that with drone warfare it probably be so much easier to actually pinpoint and not mistakenly hit targets you know what i mean yeah yeah i mean what did you so now you're doing close quarters combat lots of action you got a wife a kid at home what's going through your head during all this you don't even think about them they're yeah you can't let that distraction get in your way you know that's people may make mistakes like when you leave home it's yeah it's all right as soon as that gate closes you walk in there like yeah if you if you think about that you're gonna let your boys down you know what i mean compartmentalize it yep you compartmentalize it just like you do losing a teammate you got to compartmentalize it and put it in the cupboard and try not to let it peek itself out keep keep the cover closed what about the cadence cadence of ops are you keeping up yeah Yeah.

1:28:26You feel good about it? Yeah, it was, back in that time, it was what we wanted to do, like, what we were trained to do. But, uh, the cadence was there, definitely. Yeah. Do you remember your first kill? Um, yeah, it was on a rooftop. I mean, I don't want to talk about that, but yeah, it was, yeah, it was because we were a recce team. We climb up buildings and, uh, yeah, I don't know if that was my first one. Once again, you compartmentalize that too. Be that guy with a gun on the roof.

1:29:03Sneaking over to the side as our assault team was coming up. Yeah, we'd like to climb buildings there. They're ecky guys. Did the killing bother you? No. No. I mean, of course, it's going to bother you if you sit back and, like, think about it, right? But no, I mean, it just adds work. And you're doing it to save. If you put it in their mindset and like, hey, I'm protecting my guys right now. And that's pretty much what we did a lot of as a recce team. I'm covering my guys, protecting them. And you just don't think about the actual action that you just did.

1:29:49anything else you want to talk about on that deployment um they all kind of blend together oh getting to yeah i want to talk about one good buddy of mine like i say his name he'll know one of the best operators ever worked with you know we were on the roof this is actually a pretty funny story i told you it's carrying the sr-25k and this was supposed to be like a can in like a little it was gonna be almost like a dog and pony op because we were doing a turnover with another color team coming in this was like our last stop before we went back to the states and it's gonna be super easy right walk in once again climb a building there's no cover in the building it's a flat mud roof stupid idea right stupid idea to climb this building we got rangers coming down the other side of this canal covered in elephant grass that we're going to take out.

1:30:43We'll take out a tent close by. Not take it out. Just go in there and see who the heck was in there. So we climb up the building. We're laying there. Then we start getting lit up by a building that come to find out was 300 yards away. We start getting lit up from a PKM on top of a freaking car. It looked like it was like a black Mercedes. Then a guy comes out of a house behind us and starts lighting us up. And we're like, what the? This was supposed to be easier than this. And we're on a roof like sucking mud. my buddy's standing up looking through his nods i'm like dude what are you doing man fearless and he worked with CAG for a little bit too they love them over there i'm like get the fuck down man and he's like dude is that what is that meanwhile i'm fishing for my inline for my scope my night vision for the scope i was carrying he's still standing up he's looking and i put the inline he thought i had my 556 my recce m4 when i had the 308 and I couldn't see behind, I couldn't really pick out what was going on because there was a big light behind the car where the guy was shooting with PKN.

1:31:47And I'm like, well, I wonder how far that is. And I carry the rifle doped in at.300, so I know my holds for.100 to.500. It's a short barrel.308. Take the shot, the light goes poof. And I'm like, oh, this happened in seconds. I'm like, dude, they're at 300 yards right as I'm transitioning down to the guy shooting a PKN, who I hit in the shoulder, by the way. I'm not too proud about it because it's all those flip-flops. I come to find out they all duck behind the car. And I'm like, oh. I carry a mag of AP rounds right here, too, and they're ducking behind the car. So I fishtail. It's got a big-ass piece of prigger tape on it.

1:32:26I put it in my first round. It's like 20 yards in front of the car. but then I worked it up to the car and then yeah we took care of business come the final the next day after our turnover the next night the people we were turning over with Blue they went in and said yeah like how do you guys see that well at night time shooting and all that yeah we did a pretty good job yeah but that mission was supposed to be like freaking just go in gather some intel and leave and that's not the way it worked out Yeah. Damn. How many times did you go over there? Four. Four times? And I left, yeah. Then we started working out of Ramadi.

1:33:08We started doing, transitioning a lot more around instead of being in LSI. Yeah, we moved all over the place. Then we went to, when it really started getting entertaining, when we brought our forces up just north of Baghdad to Bakuba. And they weren't used to, bad guys weren't used to having people coming at night and do operations up there and that's right when i got the call to get back to the beach to start flight training for the aviation unit that we have no shit well so what is the aviation unit and how did that pop on your radar a bunch of my buddies went over to fly over there and well i got a funny story about that so my first time back from my first pump in oef back home you know basket leave for two weeks

1:34:03and my chief my bookery leader he's like jay you got to escort the weapons out the shaw's gun box i'm like all right how do i do that i'm still a new guy we just got back from our first trip our first deployment when we talked about earlier and he's like you go over to the airport to norfolk international on the general on the other side of the airport this is back in 2002 2003 right and you're gonna see a gate go up to that gate ring the buzzer whatever so i drive there govy pickup truck happens in the back and i see this big dude wearing a polo shirt khaki pants he's waving me up back up throw the guns in the caravan c208 little turbo prop for a four-hour flight to memphis so we take off and this dude's asking me all kinds of questions about the deployment like hey about roberts ridge what's going on i think he's just like some normal dude right in total oblivious i'm like dude are you a fucking team guy he's like fuck yeah i am and um he ended up down the road he was a master chief on freaking neptune spirit and i've been loud enough because i'm trying to get back to freaking big guy i'm trying to get back to the to blue you know what i mean and i can't right now and i'm like dude wait you wait you're freaking flying an airplane like you're a team guide pilot right now flying me to freaking memphis so that's when i'm like well this is pretty freaking cool kind of scary but pretty cool you know and yeah come to find out that program was developed back in the beginning just to learn how to steal airplanes if you had to do it if you man i remember hearing about that shit i didn't know it was still going on i had no clue at the time either apparently yeah i didn't know anything about it and then come find out yeah it's it's kind of where they sent people that they really didn't want to it wasn't a good thing to go to but it was a great trade a great skill to have right they send you to civilian flight school you you get your all your pilot licenses even cfi flight instructor licenses and then you just pass it on why do you say it's not a good place to go well back then it wasn't because we were at war and you don't want to be a team guy flying around the United States while your buddies are off, you know, doing work overseas.

1:36:14So is that what you do? Well, I was burnt. That was the first time. Oh, you're talking about flying around in the States. Yeah, that's, yep, you just, you don't deploy at that time. Oh, shit. Yeah. Well, they just spend a bunch of money for you to go to the school, and they do utilize you to a certain extent pretty well. How do they utilize you? flying gear flying equipment around just like it makes the process of moving like weapons from one place to another place easy and there's one little special program we have for our bigger bird our bigger plane that we have there the 1900 which is used for yeah a lot of special stuff as far but in the united states nothing crazy interesting is it i mean is it still like that i think so i've been back there in a little bit it's been couple years how many people were involved in that eight that's it ten

1:37:15yeah it's a good it's a close-knit unit too it's i mean i don't know much what talking about it but what um i mean we talked about you wanted a break to be with your daughter how old is your daughter at this point it's 2007. 13. 13 years old. Was that the big reason you wanted to do it? Yeah, and just get a break from, yeah, just kind of getting, you know, the same routine that was the normal one every four months, every eight months, you know, yeah, and also building that skill. Because when I went over there, they're like, hey, you're never going to, you're not going to make master chief if you don't, you know, take a certain leadership position as a troop chief.

1:38:04And I'm like, no, I'd rather get my pilot trade, you know, than have to worry about making E9. So, and it turned out to be a smart move, and also being home a little bit more. But you do go to flight school for like almost eight months in Florida. So it's a lot of back and forth. How did it feel being home after all that? It felt good. It felt good. We got divorced, of course. Did you get divorced? Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah, we'll be separated for like three or four years, and then tried it again, and then, nope, it just didn't work out. Sorry to hear that. Typical story about teen guys. Yeah, yeah.

1:38:4190 % success rate at getting divorced.

1:38:47Are you close with your daughter? Yes. I try to be closer. We had her little problems when she was, like, younger, in her teens, you know what I mean? And when me and her mom were separated, it was kind of, she could pick and choose. who she wanted to see me and her mom really didn't have a ugly divorce at all we just say hey what do you want went out but when she was going through that age yeah she was a typical teenage girl and plus i was flying a lot i was just learning to fly and yeah but i'm pretty close to her yeah she lives in virginia beach right now so you got divorced after the break yes what led to that do you think uh me being gone i think and then also just yeah just my wife my she said that when i got back from my first trip to afghanistan like something changed yeah i'll bet it did and blame you know like i'm still me you know what i mean because we compartmentalize no there's something different like no i'm good you know what i mean you know how we are our community like we just ignore it and just keep rolling and some of the people close to you actually see the changes that you choose to ignore happening I think and I think that's what led to pretty much yeah she was just yeah is there anything you would change anything I would change yeah no nothing nothing I wouldn't change anything how long after you took the break did you wind up getting divorced or not took a break well we were separated for three years anyway and then so it was probably five six years we got the worst yeah like 2015 yeah did you feel different when you were coming home from iraq no i was just worn out did you notice any changes i didn't know she might have noticed yeah

1:40:46looking back do you notice any changes

1:40:52Well, hindsight's always 20-20, right? So I think, yeah, they're probably, yeah, maybe I was a little more cold when I got home, you know what I mean? More, I sound like a psychiatrist now, but I wouldn't say not as caring, but not as emotional, I guess. So that's, I guess that's a side of me she saw that changed pretty much. so you do you feel like that you had any pts tbi no i did have tbi and i had to go through that with the faa too that's another story but um no not really any ptsd i think we're good at compartmentalizing you know the certain days like march 4th like we talked about august 6 extortion 17 yeah there's certain times where you're like shit hasn't been that long you know and like you miss those dudes too so it's kind of but then you just move on right because if you dwell on it it doesn't does you no good at all yeah you're steering the bottom of a freaking vodka bottle or something you know what i mean how do you deal with it now just compartmentalize it stay busy stay busy i like shooting you know what i mean uh i'm in the cars motorcycle that's what i do when i would come back from my deployments I rebuilt a 93 Mustang in my garage.

1:42:16That was the way I dealt with it. Like, I got back from my first pump in Afghanistan, go out in the garage, work in the car, and motorcycles. I like motorcycles a lot. That's how I deal with it. Keep busy, because a stagnant mind is not something that's good. Yeah. What kind of motorcycle do you have? Ducati. No shit? Not a Harley? Mm-mm. It's a V4, actually. Right on, man. Knock an A. no harley you know it's italiano it's italian right on so what do you i mean what did you think of the aviation unit it was good it was monotonous you know what i mean but it was you learned a lot for a lot of times you're on call i'm like i'm a merited night adam brown i was flying when Adam Brown was killed.

1:43:11And, yeah, we were on standby then, and my wife knew his wife from doing, she would do her hair, actually. And then I got a phone call from our command at, like, yeah, 11 o 'clock, hey, you got to fly to Arkansas, Hot Springs. And my wife heard it on the phone, and she's, what? I'm like, yeah, no, I don't know. She goes, that's where so-and-so lives. And, yeah, at times like that, that's hard, too, flying a keiko team out to tell you know to tell the family and this is like shoot right before the year before extortion so but other than that yeah the aviation unit was it was a learning experience put it that way and it sets you up for the future too for if you want to stay with the flying part and you did yeah till i went to when i did my last three years at the recruiting district um i wasn't flying much at all there but when i got out i got had an opportunity to freaking jump right back into it again how was the recruiting duty oh man dealing with recruiters i don't know how the fuck you did that it was when i first went in there i told them i had very little respect for that anybody that could sit behind a desk in the military for a career and have a rating of a navy counselor and then i think it should be a civilian position personally because they want like our job there is to give them quality all they care about is quantity right and you're and you're screwing with young kids like futures and lives and i was glad i went there with the rank that i had as a senior chief because i don't see how like a second class at e5 could go do that job because they would just get stepped on as far as hey keep giving us bodies you know what i mean we're like we're not going to just sign somebody off that that's how that job got created in our community when they made so an actual job seal eod diver rescue swimmer yeah and swick they recruiters would just you know pencil whip their pst scores and then they sent them up to boot camp where they already spent money on getting this guy up there going through boot camp and they bombed the pst like why are you sending these guys to us you know and that's where they put in the shit screen at the recruiting level so they would have more qualified candidates go up there and it was cool like going out the way it came in you know talking to kids answering their silly little questions about buds and training all the book writers books that i may have read one or two

1:45:55do you know about this guy you know but it was a rewarding job it was rewarding even though i think like maybe five kids i said they made it through buds but in three years right on so why did you what what led from the aviation unit to the recruiting i wanted to move to texas why did you want to move to texas and i like i used to like it when we trained on there in the 90s. We trained at Fort Hood and go visit Austin back when it was a nice sleepy college town. It's not anymore. But I just like the weather there. It does get hot, the people, the culture when I was there. And it worked out. I didn't even know that job was a job.

1:46:40I called up my detailer and he told me that there's a recruiting job in San Antonio, like working there. And I'm like, I don't want to be a recruiter. He goes, no, no, it's a coordinator. I never even heard about him before, once again. And you work with a civilian counterpart that worked for Academy. He's like a contractor, so there's two of you. And I had no zero shore duty as far as every command I was at. I was always on like C duty. You could deploy whatever I want. He's like, dude, I'll hook you up with this job. And that's what made me go to Texas. So, like anywhere, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and it covers a humongous district in Texas.

1:47:23San Antonio all the way up to the Northwest, all the way down to the Southeast. It's huge, a lot of driving. But like I said, it was rewarding. It was rewarding. I mean, what was it like for you to just totally punch out of that command? Out of SEAL Team Seals? Oh, that was kind of relieving. No shit? It was kind of relieving, yeah. It was good just to move on and think about the next chapter. you were done yeah it was yeah and things started to slow down too a little bit but and losing friends and like when extortion 17 got shot down man i was sitting i actually flew up to boston to pick guys up that were training up there and i'm sitting behind home plate at fenway park because i was only the one of the top red sock and patriot fans that everybody knew that was up there they had tickets so i'm sitting behind home plate and my phone it was actually abyss my phone vibrates and like he's a two troop i'm like who like two troop like what i'm like it's not sinking in and that was when that was august 6th when freaking extortion 17 got shot down with quite a few of our friends on there but then yeah and that was right around the time i was like i just wanted to you know move on and do a more cushier job you were ready and the divorce just wanted to get away from you know the area hampton roads area and start out start out new and i had a new girlfriend too who's not my wife wow congratulations yeah how'd you meet her that is another interesting story so before all the book writers right the at our command we'd have people come down we knew people in the aviation this is when i was flying we knew people in the aviation community like higher-ups like some of the guys that founded NetJets just through doing our recurrent training in LaGuardia Airport so we'd bring them down for visits they visit the command I'll never forget one time I'm walking around the command give them a tour of a room kind of like you know the team room and then going downstairs showing this monument we're getting built and one of the head guys of United Technologies prior Whitney he's like well when's going to be done and we're like well we don't know we need like 25 000 whenever operations guys is telling him this and uh he turns around to his assistant and whipped out one of those big like notebook checkbooks and writes it and here it's covered so through that he was good buddies with my current wife's best friend's dad so we met up through that meeting right there and then And it just kind of, a long story short, my wife's going to be pissed.

1:50:14But her best friend died, and then I called her just to say, hey, I'm sorry about it, and then we linked up that way. Gotcha. But through that meeting that happened at the command, of course. They got to shoot like freaking 50 Kels, the Maudeus. They got to shoot grenade launchers. They had a blast. Now they don't do that anymore. I can't even get on the command anymore because of the notoriety. but they were very happy and yeah it was a pretty cool the way that went down with you know taking care of the memorial that they were building for the command just this one guy writing a check it was pretty it impressed me too and they were happy with their experience there right on what was it like for you separating out of the navy you're i mean it sounds like you're 100 % ready yeah yep well i was offered a job to actually fly by a great company out of california solaris aviation and i thought they were rolling the dice with me too as well because it's flying a jet and all i have been flying is turbo props twin turbo props it's like a jet with a prop on anyway so the ceo there he gave me the opportunity to uh he's like dude i gotta give you a job right now in van nuys or teeterboro i'm like no i'm not leaving texas something pops up in texas let me know like two weeks before i retired a golf stream job popped up and i got to freaking go to initial training for it and it was a little bit easier than flying a prop things just move a little bit quicker and then i rolled right into that you like flying a golf stream yeah it's it's gorgeous airplane it's a gorgeous plane all all the golf streams are we fly a 550 though it's a beautiful airplane right on man and then it started yep i did that and then flew for another guy to austin a single turboprop pc12 which is a gorgeous plane they're they're incredible and the guy was one of the best guys ever flew for in my life then i got hired by big freight company and And did that for a little bit and kind of taking a break and just working with my buddy out of North Carolina.

1:52:29Right on, man. How do you, I mean, so you got out in 2019? Yes, retired. Do you miss it? I miss the boys. I miss the fellas. You know what I mean? I do. But when I think back, do I really miss it that much?

1:52:48Not really. I mean I miss some of the cool things we did you know but I was ready at that time I'm gonna be I have replaced shoulder my knee my back's jacked up freaking yeah it's it took a toll you know what I mean and mentally it takes a toll on you yeah it takes it takes a toll yeah especially with the FAA it takes a toll what do you mean by that we went to Isle of Man I got back and I'm to help other people out with this right i got back from island man going through mail we went there for the tt races the motorcycle races there it's freaking incredible experience in itself but i'm going through the mail and i go oh i never get a letter from the faa open it up like hey we see your disabled vet like yeah and you got to tell us everything that that's on your va letter and i'm like well when i take my physical every six months i check off like the the stuff that bothered i I didn't even know about half the stuff that was on my VA letter.

1:53:51And I read it. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, because it's kind of like a blanket one we had. Yeah, long story. So I go through everything that's on there. You got TBI, PTSD, sleep apnea, all this other stuff. And I got to go get it taken care of. So I see a great doctor in Savannah, Georgia. He has me go through everything. I go through all the testing. smoke it. I mean my brain is like fried going through the neuropsych testing and then I end up answering questions to a bunch of other guys that are disabled vets that are pilots that are going through the same thing. But a lot of these guys they keep trying to push for more disability right and but they don't report it to the FAA.

1:54:37We check everything off every six months when we get our flight physicals through our docks and there's a box in there are you disabled boom you check it and you get filled out you put it in everything you have and you're good to go some guys are lying they got in trouble they got caught and what's weird is they're worried about some of the veterans right that are that are on there and you can walk around the flight operations area and see like a five foot four 350 pound man pilot walking around like i'd be worried about that guy more than be worried about you know having a vet flying an airplane yeah what do think they're worried about vets flying airplanes i don't know well disabled vets yeah interesting well some i mean there are some crazy people out there not even vets you know what i mean that do stupid so mm-hmm so you're a grandpa now yep how's that i don't see them that often but when i do it's cool the one the littlest one Braxton he's a he's a terror and uh yeah Topher's they're both good kids they're good kids they're crazy they're good right yeah it was weird that wasn't planned either so yeah right on yeah they're good they're good kids I spoil them when I see them you know what I mean that's pretty much what you could I can't I'm looking forward to getting them out in Texas do some shooting I already bought them uh like a little 22 a little Tomcat whatever nice the little can on it yeah nice i'm looking forward to that maybe you can get him behind that 300 black out there yeah in a couple in a couple more years i don't want to give it to braxton he might turn around and shoot me with it oh man you want to go break that thing in well before we do what do you got coming up next anything anything no this was a no this is a big step for me i'll tell you that coming in here talking to you and thanks for the opportunity my pleasure jason i got recurrent training next week.

1:56:36So that's my next big step. Well, I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. Thank you, man. Cheers.

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