On your bio it said that you had you got a purple heart from an ID.

Was it on that first strike or was that a separate one, No, it.

Was, it was later on.

It was in April.

It was April nine, two thousand and five, So we were just doing a mission.

You want the whole story.

Yeah, yeah, So it's two thousand and two thousand and five, April Knife.

So like you know, we're like we're you know, seeing a lot of action and ship and there was this there was you know a lot of people were getting killed.

So they were like, you know, we're gonna.

Like chill out on like the religious sites and anything that's kind of sensitive.

You know, we don't want to like make you know, piss everybody off so much.

So then it got to a point where they're just like fuck that.

So one of the points spots they wont it was kind of off limits they just won was a cemetery near one of the mosqueuse Like there was a big golden mosque that got blown up like a year later, but so this cemetery that like they're hiding weapons in there, you know, at night, they're sneaking in there after curfew and pulling weapons, IDs and stuff like that.

We want to go in there and do.

A search in the middle of the day, like all right, whatever.

So my platoon goes.

So we roll up and we got a guy with a metal detector and my Bradley pulls up drops out.

There's a red gate and the cemetery is kind of like an L shape.

So we we open up.

So I'm the first guy in.

Just end up being the point man and walking into the cemetery.

My fucking answers are like this.

Everybody's like fucking tense.

We're all fucking looking wait and get ambushed, you know, get attacked.

There's a lot of good.

It's the city completely surrounds it, so there's lots of rooftops they could shoot out us from, and shit, you know they everybody knows definitely that we're we're doing.

So we go in there.

So I'm on point.

To the right of me's the guy with the metal detector, and he's going through.

Now, all the graves are shallow, so it's like a cemetery, but it's all like mounds of dirt for like where the different graves are and the.

Headstones and everything.

So we start moving through and second squad hops a fence off to the left and they're moving through.

So we're all like in these big wedge formations.

We're kind of like moving through and it's fucking you know, we're going through nice and.

Slow metal detector trying to d's and shit.

Tense as fuck.

I think there's like eleven o'clock in the morning, you know, big beautiful blue sky.

We're moving through and we just don't find anything.

We find like remnants of stuff, like like you know, like some pieces of like exploded ordnance, like like just pieces of like a mortar round this and that, but nothing too serious.

My platoon sogeant, he's just walking around picking stuff up, looking around.

No fucks given.

Like, we go through, don't find shit.

So we all take an ee roll pulling security.

I remember looking at my lieutenant like, yo, sorry, let's get the fuck out of here, right, He's like, yeah, let's mount up, let's get out of here.

So we all turn around and we start walking back the way we came.

So it's a giant l So I'm walking on point.

Man this time.

Now walking in, I'm fucking like alert at the high ready on the way out, I'm like kind of whistling.

I don't have sunglasses.

I left my sunglasses back at the base or whatever.

So I had my goggles on, these SSX goggles, and I was using those for my day, like a tint in them.

So I'm using those for my sunglass, thank god.

And I'm walking.

So my squad makes the left, go towards the red gate.

Get the hell out of there.

Second squad's moving forward, they start to begin to hop the wall to go into an alley way to get out of the cemetery.

So I'm walking and I'm coming real close to this red gate.

I see it coming up.

I'm looking.

I look down at the ground, you know, I'm just kind of walking.

Boom, fucking earth just flies right up next to me, right next to me, fucking dust, smoke, fucking I go flying like four feet in the air, and my rifle goes flying.

I land on my back.

The hole from the explosion at six and a half feet wide by three and a half feet deep.

Fucking giant, giant, monster bomb.

So I hit the ground.

I roll over, and the first thing I do is I'm like, this is the initiation to an ambush, Like they're gonna detonate this fucking thing.

And then guys are gonn jump off on the rooftops and start spraying the fuck out of us.

So I hit, I roll over, and I start crawling on my crash.

So I fucking crawl roll over a fucking grave.

I have a shotgun on my back.

I pull my shotgun out.

I'm like this, I look down, I start checking.

I look and I start checking my legs.

My legs there and my crotches intact.

I look down and on my vest I have blood and like a piece of skin.

I blood like splatter all over and so I'm like, fuck, So I'm looking.

I'm looking.

This year is ringing?

This year not a sound.

I'm like those motherfuckers they just they blew my fucking ear off.

I'm like, ah ah, Like so, I'm like this my finger, I don't want to touch it.

I'm like, is this gonna be the fucking like slag of.

Meat something like this.

I'm like, it's all there.

Sorry, I could good.

I roll over and my shotgun.

I look the dust, smell all the debris, you know, raining down from the sky.

I look, and everybody hit the dirt, and I see my lieutenant through the smoke and he's like, he's like.

Quaw your her.

I'm like, like, I'm blowing the fuck up, sir.

He's like, don't fucking move what comes to you.

So I'm just sitting there, fucking medic, bad ass guy eighteen years old, Delgado, fucking the man.

He comes running over, grabs me.

He's a little dude, grabs me.

Drags me out my Squalida, runs up to the hole, gets my rifle.

They throw me on my back.

He starts like fucking bandaging in my face up and ship and I'm laying on my back and a beautiful blue sky.

Everybody's looking down the top of me, like, oh fuck.

My two sons like started fucking hitting all the houses.

So everybody starts fucking.

Everyone's fucking mad as fuck.

Now they start going through all the houses trying to find the detonation guy.

So I'm laying there.

I'm like in a daze, like, oh, like what just happened to me.

He's like, Yo, You're gonna be fine.

You gonna be fine.

You fine, wrap me up.

Once I got wrapped up, I stood up.

I felt like I'm like, I know I'm not gonna die.

I'm like I knew I was.

I'm like, I felt like a fucking badass.

Now I'm like, I got the foot of my teeth and my face was all cut up and shit.

So I hoped the fence.

Joining in with second squad.

We start going through houses.

Medic grabs me inside the house, he's like, come with me, Come with me.

Going to a room, He's like, yo, pig hory your clothes off from like the waist up.

He wanted to make sure I had no puncture wounds that I didn't know about, and my my adrenaline was going so I didn't feel so I fucking undressed.

People in the house are screaming the background and everything and what do you call it?

So I have nothing put my shit back on, Like all right.

So we started walking out.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna quit, and Tarantino this story.

We're gonna go back in time when we first got dropped off and we went in a bunch of neighborhood kids came up to the bradley and my friend's like, Hey, what's up.

So I'm throwing candy to him.

As he's throwing candy to him, a military age.

Male guy comes walking out and starts yelling and cursing at the kids, like it's the fuck away from the Americans.

It's that.

So my buddy starts yelling at I'm like fuck you, and he's like yeah, whatever whatever.

So the kids run away and he walks away and he goes.

Into an abandoned building right across the street from where I got blown up.

So he paid no mind and mean, you know, mentioned to it.

And so later on he's watching us come through.

He sees me getting nuked.

He's like, oh fuck.

So he goes on the radio like, YO, come in this building.

Go in this building.

So I come out.

I got I just go back to the beginning of the story I was at.

I checked, I'm fine.

I come walking out and I'm walking and I hear around the corner like, yo, we got the motherfucker second squad up in that built.

Came back to that, Bradley, my Buddy's like, yo, check that building.

They ran up in there.

They found the guy in the third story.

So he saw him.

He was like trying to take his clothes off, his shirt, change his shirt.

They fucking tackle him as the fighting and he throws something out the window.

They send the guy down below.

They find a car garage door opener and they zip tie him up.

So they bring him out, so they they have him around the corner like you motherfucker.

So they're like, hey, come on, come over here, come over here, yo, this is go guard the guy that tried to kill you.

So they threw me in the back of a Bradley with this guy and face to face with the guy who fucking tried to blow me up.

That's crazy.

I took pictures of him too.

I was like, hey, man, what's up, you know, But yeah, it was pretty wild face to face, you know, and that's that.

Was it, you know, like the guy that tried to kill me, and shit, I'm all bandaged off, you know.

Holy shit, dude, that's such a surreal thing.

Like no one has that kind of opportunity.

Yeah, you know, and you know, like that's it, you know, it's you know, the cups are on, there's nothing I can do, you know, but just being faced with.

The guy fucking try to kill me.

You know, I have a.

Fucking you know, my wife's at home pregnant, and this guy I was so fucking lucky man, And so we took him back.

They interrogated him, they had like I think, what do they call it?

Like a military intelligence officer came talk to him, and then the Iraqi Army ended up taking him, you know as a prisoner and shit.

But you know they did the whole wipe of his hands and stuff.

You know, they came up black with the ballistics and everything.

So yeah, no, so that was a fucking close call.

I come back to the base and everybody's like, yeah, chest bumping me high five.

And you mother fucking you, fucking I heard you face plant an ID.

You lived to tell it, so, you know, very lucky.

So the next day they come back and force engineers and everything.

They had to evacuate the cemetery three times, so you know where the IDs were hidden.

As soon as you walk through the gate, they were all buried directly to the right.

So like we we missed it.

Like when we walked in, we looked a little past and like missed it.

They had RpK machine guns, RPGs, mortars, they had won five five artillery shells.

They'd oldest ship buried in the ground.

Thank god that I needed to blow up and and detonate all that ship.

It would have killed it would have killed half my platoon, like all my team squad mates, we got a fucking duke.

But do you know what you were hip?

Do you know what you were hit by?

Was it a homemade or was it a they They said.

It was like a one five five round.

I don't think so.

I think I would have died.

But still to this day, I'm amazed.

I didn't like lose a limb, have a giant puncture of any sort, but just blew up, blew up, like right next to me, and you know, I got some trap and I got like thirteen stitches and like that was it, you know, and you know, I go so they bring I go to the medics.

They look at me, they clean me up a little bit.

Everybody's like my CEOs like fucking high five and me like you're fucking bad ass man, You've got nukes.

So that was all done.

My michaeltoo, Sergeant.

It's like, yo, listen, you just got blown up.

Go chill in your room, play Xbox whatever.

I'm like, all right.

So I went up there and I'm like I'm.

Like I actually called my my my ex life at the time, and she's like my wife and she's like I'm talking to her and I had to, you know, was caimbat ear plugs, the three m's, those those famous ones from all the commercials.

So the medics told me to like, yo, listen, your ear drum blew out, So keep that ear plug in there, like almost twenty.

Four to seven.

Just take it out a little bit when you take a shower, but leave it in there because you might not you might lose hearing completely in there.

I'm like, okay.

So I called her.

I didn't tell her that.

I just got blown the fuck up, and she's like, she's kind of yelling at me.

She's like, what's woe we you can't hear me.

I'm like, oh, like it was the awkwardest conversation, but I dont want to tell her I almost died and shit.

So I hang up with her.

I called my friend, one of my friends back at Fort Stewart.

That didn't go over.

I'm like, I'm like, yo, it's up.

Bobby's like, what's up.

I'm like, I just got blown the fuck up.

So I go back to my room.

I'm sitting down to play Xbox and my platoon sergeant comes in.

He's like, yo, listen, I know you just got blown up.

I told you a chill, but like we're going back out.

We got like this mission that just came up, like I really need you, can you you?

He wasn't even telling me.

He was like, would you mind coming out, you know, because like we don't have a lot of guys.

I'm like absolutely, I threw my shirt on and I fucking went out there and did missions all night, you know,