Ivan: My platoon and I have been tasked to drive down and take over this compound on the edge of the green zone as we drive.

Down into it all.

Hell just literally broke loose on us.

Uh, RPG round bounced off the hood of the truck and blew up behind us.

Turned to started firing with the turnt guns.

People dismounted and started doing like bounds towards these enemy positions.

The Marines just got out, dismounted the trucks, and just started going at it with these guys.

So then I go running across and over the top of my head, my interpreter has his AK and is just firing bursts.

Like he scared, shit lifts, but he is like, I'm, I'm gonna do something.

It is chaos.

And I run around the other side and I call my hire and say, Hey, we're, we're in a pretty sticky situation and we need to get out here.

He goes, yeah, you have my approval.

And I was kinda like, I'm out asking you truth.

AJ: This is, this is what we are

Ivan: going to do.

AJ: Welcome to Combat Story.

I'm AJ Pesi, a retired marine force recon scout, sniper, and marine gunner with 21 years of service, multiple combat tours, and a lifetime of lessons learned in the arena itself.

On this show, I sit down with warriors from every front line to uncover what combat truly feels like and how it shapes the way we see life each other and ourselves.

This is combat story.

In today's combat story, we sit down with Lieutenant Colonel Ivan f Ingram, U-S-M-C-A 24 year Marine, who spent most of his career in special operations as a Marine Raider with marsoc.

He's since turned those hard won lessons into leadership, coaching, writing, and speaking.

Ivan is the author of a novel Once We Pledged Forever, and a series of shorter works that examine leadership, moral injury, and the human cost of war, including the patrol.

A story of Marsoc at War 22, A Journey to the Edge of Darkness.

Athena Bravery knows no Gender and Dream job.

His newsletter, the log book, explores life, leadership and purpose.

Within the same unflinching clarity, his voice will be familiar to readers of the warhorse and task and purpose, where he has written on service, family, and leading under pressure with one recent essay reflecting on welcoming home, his deployed daughter, and the realities of returning from war.

Ivan's also an in-demand speaker, his eagle in the mountains talk and leadership workshops bring battlefield tested lessons to companies, teams and communities that want to perform when it counts.

Join us as we dive into Ivan's story from Marine Raider to author and coach to talk about courage, the weight of command building trust when the stakes are high, and finding purpose on the far side of uniform service.

This is Ivan Ingram.

So, uh, I'm excited today to have, uh, Ivan Ingram, uh, our guest here.

Uh, so, uh, what I've understood is 24 years active duty in the Marines, uh, as an officer in both conventional and special operations.

Uh, and so we're excited, uh, also an author.

Uh, so super excited to have a conversation with you today.

Uh, I wanted to be able to talk about some, some combat stories, but my first question always revolves around, um, the genesis.

So like, what led you to your service?

What was your family life, uh, like before you joined the military?

Was there a large inclination that led you to this to be able to make the decision to join the Marines specifically?

Ivan: My father is, was a retired, well, he retired as an army colonel.

He was, um, life lifelong soldier, and I had spent time moving around the world, um, with him in the wake of, of service during the Vietnam era.

My father was not a Vietnam veteran as far as like serving in, in country in that war, but he, he joined the military, uh, in 1967 and certainly served all during that time.

Um, he was a military psychologist, so that has its own interesting thing as far as, you know, growing up.

Um, so I, I grew up around the service.

All my friends for the, the most part as I was moving around were, were military or former or were, were associated with the military in some capacity.

And I absolutely had an interest in military history.

I enjoyed, uh, traveling around when we were living in Europe and going to battlefields, and I spent a lot of time reading about, uh, I guess tales of, of Daring Dew, uh, in the post, uh, Vietnam era growing up in the 1980s.

Yeah.

But oddly, it wasn't something that ever compelled me saying, okay, as soon as I get out of, of high school or college, this is exactly what I'm gonna do.

I wouldn't say that I absolutely shoot it, uh, but it wasn't anything that I really thought about doing.

Um, so my first inclination to really, after I got outta college was to become a federal law enforcement agent.

I thought that would be a pretty interesting thing.

And I, I looked at various, uh, entities like the DEA, the FBI, the Marshals, uh, did the mag security.

I kind of wanted this, uh, exciting, uh, lifestyle and, and, and in a sense of doing something that, that was service oriented.

Um, and this is in the middle of 1990s.

There's not a lot going on as far as, uh, conflict, well, there's plenty of conflict going on in the world, but none of the big stuff that we would run into later, uh, or, or serving later.

But at that point in time, I, I thought that that would be a great way to sort of balance out being able to be doing something really interesting and also, uh, serve, you know, in, in some capacity.

And then I kept getting turned down during the interviews, um, whether it was by lack of educational background or just bad timing.

But eventually I, I asked one of the interviewers, I said, what, you know, what do I do?

Um, 'cause I really want to do this.

And, and so actually they were, they were just blunt.

They were like, look, you're young.

Um, you quite frankly don't have a lot of experience.

You're interviewing fine, but we only have room for 1200 new agents and we can be really picky.

And honestly, if you really want to get yourself, make yourself competitive, go become a local cop, uh, detective, go join the military.

Uh, get some experience and, and you'll be more competitive.

You'll still be planning young enough to, to do this.

But, uh, you know, it's, it's not something that people generally can come in and and do, but the fact you made it this far is actually testament to, to, you know, your, your work ethic.

It's certainly your, how you present yourself.

Um, but that's our recommendation.

AJ: And so you were like 22.

Sorry to cut in, but you were like 22, 23, 24 ish at this timeframe.

Ivan: Yeah.

I was about 20, 23 years old, 24 years old.

Um, I joined the mil, the, the, the Marine Corps, uh, when I was 25.

I joined in 1997.

Uh, at that point in time, it was just gonna be a means to an end.

I had, I really didn't know that much about the military despite growing up around it.

And in that environment, I,

AJ: I

Ivan: didn't know much about how.

AJ: Yeah, any of this stuff worked.

So was federal service always the goal?

Like federal law enforcement always the goal and the military was a Yeah.

Like, you know, seeding the resume to do that or to build that, you know, that resume.

Yeah.

I mean, I grew up in the Washington DC

Ivan: area and I, I figured I'd wanted to actually get away from that and federal law enforcement will allow me to get assigned anywhere in the country.

My luck, I've just done right back to the Washington Field office.

I mean, but I figured something would, you know, that would, that would help me kind of springboard, you know, a, a career.

Uh, and then the, of course, the Marine Corps, um, military was gonna be a resume builder.

And at first I started, I looked to join the Army.

Um, they really couldn't get their act together.

And Marine Corps, Marine Corps snatched me right up off the street.

Uh, the, the recruiters did a fabulous job about, uh, wearing dress blues and all this enticed me.

And, um, as the old, as the old Jody goes, uh, mama told Johnny not to go downtown.

Uh, and Ivan did, and the Marine Corps recruiter was hanging around and that was it.

Uh, in fact, in fact, you know, I didn't ask a lot of questions and they, they probably were like, damn, are there more of you?

Like, did this make my job?

Really?

Like, oh my gosh, man, you're so dumb.

You, you even lost because this is great.

This is great.

Welcome sucker.

I mean, brother, and, you know, sign here, here and here.

So yeah, I, I, I kind of had an idea, this, this sort of lofty idea of this, you know, just kind of whims up, go through that.

And then, uh, from there I decided maybe I'd like to be a pilot, but I took, uh, so I took the earth test and, uh, found that I might be better suited to fill on one up with gas, but I sure as shit wasn't gonna fly one.

So, uh, yeah, I kind of kind, I got, got pigeonholed pretty quick about where I was going to

AJ: go.

A lot of us, I think, got hooked in with the, uh, top Gun, right?

You know, like we're the top gun generation and we all thought we were gonna be, I don't know, naval aviators at some sort, or when I was growing up, my dad

Ivan: had had a number of people.

My dad studied leadership in the Army and kind of the, the, the trauma as the Army rebuilt itself, particularly its NCO Corps, after the Vietnam War.

And he wrote a book, uh, with this, with his research partner called The Boys in the Barracks.

Uh, and it focuses actually quite heavily on, um, substance abuse and the breakdown of cohesion, uh, in, in the United States Army.

And one of the things that he found in his research was that, you know, it isn't to say it didn't happen in the Special Forces community, but they had much lower, uh, rates of insubordination.

They had much lower rates of, of, uh, drug abuse.

They had much, you know, their cohesion was higher and they tried to figure out, you know, Hey, what is it that this, this group has that the rest of the army could adapt?

It doesn't try to make everyone a special forces soldier who's just saying, look, how do, how do we revamp the way that we train and develop our, uh, because militaries honestly thrive on their NCO court.

There's, you can talk about officership all you want, but you, you have to have a good, good non commissioned Officer Corps staff end, and that the user level E four above.

And so he, he looked very closely at that.

So I was, I was exposed to Green Berets and people who'd been involved in some pretty amazing stuff, uh, looking back on it.

And, and it's not to say I was meaning, you know, brand name guys like Stryker Meyer and some of these other people that they've heard of, but I, I met a lot of people who had, had been involved in some things, you know, that, that they'd make movies about and, and read books about it.

And I was like, wow.

So in my mind, the reason I wanted do in the Army is 'cause I was gonna be a Green Beret.

Now Kyle was gonna do that inside of four years, and there I didn't have a plan for that.

I really don't.

So, but when that didn't happen, I went to the Marine Corps and, you know, they, they really sold me war on being a Marine than, than anything else.

But I I, I, I had been told of this other group within the Marine Corps, there was very elite called, called Force Reconnaissance, reconnaissance marines.

And that in the back of my mind actually was like, okay, well that sounds like it's, it's a pretty different interesting, uh, culture within this, this system.

Uh, but I didn't know anything about that when I first showed up.

I'm kind of getting her head of stuff.

But that's kind of how, you know, you asked about the genesis.

It's, it's, it's coming in from different, different sides and it all.

Manifested.

AJ: I absolutely love that.

I think that the, your, so your fun part is your recruiting story is, uh, the more people that I interview, uh, the more I find stories similar to my own as far as the Marine Corps recruiting.

The Army guy wasn't there.

Uh, and the Marines were looking sharp, and then I have no idea what I signed up for.

That is generally the story, uh, that marines,

Ivan: they, they're fabulously trained.

I mean, the professionally trained salesman, they're fabulously, uh, invested in for what they do.

Um, and as we know, you know, a Marine Corps, Marine Corps recruiting mission doesn't, you can't fail.

And what I mean by that, it, it cannot fail.

I mean, you can be fired and there'll be, you know, there's consequences.

But that mission itself, they don't miss mission.

They don't miss, you know, getting who, who they need and, and, and how, uh, the better qualified the candidate be.

You know?

So, so be it.

But they are, they're masters at that

AJ: salesmanship.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay, so I've got, uh, so a follow up question.

I know when, kind of researching a little bit on your website, I remember, I, I remember seeing, um, you've been able to trace your family lineage back to the Civil War.

So it seems like patriotism or serving your country at some level, although.

Um, you know, you said that your, your, your father, you know, didn't pressure you to join the military, but there was always this idea of service, you know, towards the, the country.

Is that something that, am I, am I, uh, imagining that or is that something that was, was kind of just laid through the generations if you I

Ivan: don't, yes.

I think in, in an indirect way it was, there was, there has not been a drive through, you know, upbringing that this is what you will do.

Although all of my family, my three children are, two of them are serving in the military.

One is, uh, married to military officer and marine pilot.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so we don't make any money in the family business, so we're very proud of it.

Um, so, but I mean, but I mean, their grandfather served, their great grandfather served.

Um, it just happened to be something that, that hasn't, uh, we do instill that the country has worked defending.

Although I will say that I've, I've, I've had a little bit of, uh, conscience wrestling as of late just because of rec reconciling my own service and, um, kind of where we are as a country without getting, again, too far ahead in the interview.

But I, I will say that the sense of duty, the sense that the country is worth, um, defending in its because of its tenants and what it espouses to be, uh, or can be, uh, is in my mind worthwhile now.

How that is interpreted through others is, is is one largely out of our hands, but two is something worth considering.

But I have no, you know, there's nothing where we come forward and tell people, jingle in the family.

Jing, egoistically country's the greatest thing ever.

You need to serve for it.

We, we, we do encourage it though.

Like, Hey, if that's the direction you wanna go, then, then, then, all right.

AJ: Well, I love that.

I mean, it's also hard not to look at, you know, again, like I, I said earlier in the pre-interview, like, I, I've read a lot of your stuff and I am just fa, I'm like kind of a fanboy at this point, but like, if I had you as a dad, right, I would say like, well, I want what he has, right?

So he's, you know, obviously squared away, but you know, intelligent, insightful, empathetic, has seen the world, real world experience.

Like, why wouldn't I want to get that?

And I see that thread happen a lot through military, you know, families, I don't wanna say dynasties, but military families is, there's like a, it's never, I actually think a lot of marines that I've been around are not super forceful with saying, you need to do this.

In fact, it's quite the opposite.

It's a lot more militant in their way of saying, you need to understand what you're getting into if you do this.

Um, uh, or for sure,

Ivan: I mean, and I mean, I tell, I've told this story before, but it's true, but when I signed my paperwork, I was really, I, I signed it December 22nd, 1997, and I took my oath in.

I, I told my dad that I was going to you join the military, and I'm not sure he, he took me to, I mean, he, he see that I was serious about the product, but the thought of me actually committing and going to do that was something, I don't know if he ever reconciled.

Um, because then I went to his house.

He was living in, uh, social Spring, Maryland, and I, I just signed up in, in Hyattsville and I, I drove to his house about 10 o'clock in the morning.

Um, and I, I knock on the door and he's, Hey, what's going on?

His pre-cell phone, you know, he just kind of dropped by and he's like, he was like, and he, and I said, dad, I, I, I did it.

I, I joined the Marine Corps, and his face just like dropped, like, like he was kinda like gobsmack.

And he said, well, well, I guess this call for a drink now.

My father was a recovered alcoholic and he, he had a bottle of gin bean, uh, bourbon.

That he kept, um, on a shelf that had been corked and it was dusty, like it was the last drink he'd ever taken from this bottle.

And, and he kept it on the, so I don't know how long this, this thing had been, been on his shelf.

And I said, dad, you don't drink.

He goes, it's not for me, it's for you.

Like, yeah, you about to brother.

I'm not the one who's gonna need this.

So I had, I had the next drink out of that bottle before, you know, I was the next Ingram to drink out of that bottle.

AJ: Okay.

That's really cool.

Yeah, that's kind of, I mean, like I, I myself, uh, uh, struggled with, uh, alcohol abuse and since, uh, ceased that when during my career.

Um, but I completely understand, and again, there's like this interesting bond that shares over that.

I think that's a really cool story.

Yeah.

I appreciate you sharing that with us.

Okay.

So 1997, uh, so you sign up, you said December 22nd.

Mm-hmm.

1997.

Okay.

So when do you go to OCS?

25th of January, 1998.

So it's a little etched into your mind?

It is very, as far as that like quick, quick chain of events.

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome.

So then you go through t uh, go through OCS, uh, and TBS, uh, afterwards.

And for any non marine listeners, right?

There's officer candidate school, and then there's the basic school.

Can you describe in your own words the difference that you saw between both of those two, uh, schools, and then I'm assuming based on your.

Your job that you went to IOC afterwards, the infantry officer course.

Would you mind taking the viewers and the listeners through that kind of journey?

Ivan: Sure.

Ocss, officer Kennedy School, also abbreviated for organized chicken Shit.

I've never heard that.

It is, it is, it is.

Uh, our, you know, is Officer bootcamp.

It is also a selection course of sorts.

Uh, it's very PT heavy.

Uh, there's some very basic, um, tactics in understanding of military studies.

But you're, you're really not being g grinned for anything other than your suitability for becoming com a commissioned officer.

Um, uh, the washout rate is actually pretty high.

Um, okay.

Or at least at the time it was, I mean, certainly not everybody makes it through.

Some people quit, some people get trouble disciplinary wise.

Um, a lot of people get hurt.

Um, and then there's an academic, uh, and, and physical, uh, standard that you have to meet.

And if you're not meeting, we just, they cut you away.

So that's 10 weeks long.

I was very fortunate in my OCS class to have a large number of prior enlisted, uh, candidates with me.

Oh, great.

And once they realized that I might actually survive this thing, they kind of put their arm around me.

Were like, all right, listen, you're really motivated, but we gotta channelize this thing that, that you are and help you through this.

And that kind of, that, that really did kind of took me under their wing to understand, better understand the Marine Corps process.

From there, you go to K six Fool, which is also Quantico or another, another part of Quantico.

Um, and that's six months long.

And, and it is, they call it the Basic Officer course, and it just teaches newly min as lieutenants how to actually be a Marine Corps officer.

And it does get into your tactics and it does get into, you know, your field problems, defense, offense, uh, planning, uh, and everyone goes through that regardless of a third ground contractor or they're a pilot or, uh, even, uh, a jag a, uh, judge advocate the lawyer.

So everyone goes through it.

They say every Marine or rifleman.

And, and in this case, they want every marine officer to be able to be a platoon commander.

Make no mistake, that does not mean that every Marine is an infant.

Forman, and every Marine is who goes to the basic school, is trained to be an infant fleet officer, but you are trained to be a leader and you are trained to be able to take charge and, and grab a group of Marines and, and get something accomplished to include, uh, fight if you have to.

And, uh, and that, that was ev I mean, that was evidenced.

Um, back in, just use an anecdote, uh, in 20 20 12, uh, 2013 timeframe, uh, the attack on Bastion where, uh, the harriers were destroyed on the tarmac.

Mm-hmm.

Um, yes, there were a number of, of people defending that airfield, but the guy who led the main counter attack was a air pilot himself.

He'd actually been a J Tac, uh, friend of mine, and he grabbed a group of, um.

You know, any marine seat that he could and said, we're going in to, to, to the fight.

And he did.

So I mean, that's, that's leadership from the front that is irrespective of, of, of your training.

Um, as you know, I won't be doing this.

That's, that's one of the reasons they do what they do at, um, infant inter officer course.

And that's also the reason that, you know, you, you have artillery, marine artillery unit serving is for provisional infantry in, uh, Somalia and things like that.

So that's the reason the basic course is set up that way.

It teaches people to call for fire, do medivacs, um, stuff that honestly you think you may never have to use.

And then it, it, it comes into play.

AJ: So

Ivan: that's six months long

AJ: go.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh yeah.

So when comparing, when I'm sure, I'm sure you spoke with your father, uh, you know, when going through this or wrote letters.

I think probably the timeframe, maybe the few phone calls home.

One of the things that I, so I'm a graduate of TBS myself, um, and, um.

I went through after 15 years of being an enlisted Marine first.

Um, and I was able to now kind of finally realize the Officer Corps.

That's almost, I think TBS itself, in my personal opinion, is kind of what makes the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps right, to is it, it it shows everyone that we are not just a cook, a baker, a candlestick maker, or an infantry marine, and they are different, uh, you know, and separate parts.

We are all underneath one war fighting banner, you know, to effectively, you know, locate and close with the destroy.

Right.

And I, I, I don't know.

Did your conversations with your father, is the Army set up like that or was his training something different than that

Ivan: at the time?

No, it was not.

The Army has actually gone to great lengths to develop what they call a bloc, which is basic, uh, officers course.

Uh, so then they call it Bullock, basically basic officer, uh, leadership course.

We, but it's, it's still MOS focused, uh, whether you're an combat engineer or you go to infantry, near infantry school, um, the Army's very big on having their, uh, particular infantry officers or combat arms officers go to ranger school.

That is a proving course, uh, to, you know, as a mark of distinction, uh, to lead troops.

Um, so it is the same but different.

Uh, the Army sources their, their officers a little bit differently than the Marine Corps does.

Certainly we've got.

You are getting them from ROTC or N-R-O-T-C, there's plenty of Naval Academy, uh, marine option graduates who, who go, but everyone goes to the basic school.

And the basic school is just that, that that central, uh, commonality.

It's like a funnel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the Army doesn't really do it that way.

Like if you get commissioned from West Point, your, uh, their, their curriculum there is completely focused on, you know, leadership training.

Whereas you go to ROTC at a college, once you're commissioned, you know, let's say you went to Notre Dame, you're not going to any sort of TBS, you're going to Fort Benning or whatever your MOS happens to be.

And then you from there, you know, kind of pick up and learn how to be in the army.

So the, the TDS is really good.

Good.

That way.

Uh, yeah.

AJ: Kind of flatline.

It does education level.

Yeah, it

Ivan: does.

It brings everybody to a, you know, as I say, the basic level of, of instruction.

Um, and from there you get your MOS, your military occupational specialty.

Um, did you choose anything, uh, other than what the one you got?

I was told I could only work allowed and hot job and the marine and the entry free was like perfect for me.

Uh, carry heavy stuff, break things.

Um, yeah, I mean, I was custom tight, tailored.

No, I, I actually really did one of the entry jobs, or I did, I liked, I liked going to the field, I liked all the stuff that went with it.

I was, I took to it.

Um, again, I had sort of this idea of getting into reconnaissance and I was told, Hey, you can't get there unless you become an infantry guy.

And well, that's okay.

That's easy.

I wanna be one.

Uh, and then if I didn't get that, I didn't know what I was gonna do.

'cause I was still like, well this is literally all I all I want to do.

And so I was fortunate.

AJ: That's another similar parallel with a lot of young Marines is like, I'm just gonna send it.

I have one option that I'm gonna go for, and I don't know what failure means.

Right.

And I think that's actually kind of a cool thing for, I think it sets you up for later on, right?

There is no, it's like, I dunno, burning the boats or burning the ships.

Yep.

Right.

I don't have a second option.

I'm gonna do this.

No,

Ivan: right.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, this is where I'm gonna fight it out right here.

So yeah, I, I have, uh, I have good memories of, of basic school.

And then from there we went to, um, I-O-C-I-O-C is 10 weeks long.

Uh, I mean, I, I, I spent a whole year at Quantico basically just back to back to back just training and working.

Um, so that, that worked really pretty well.

And then, you know, that took me to the end of, end of 1990.

AJ: So now you did, so, uh, 24 years you were able to see, um, you know, uh, a lot of the service obviously.

Um, do you think that, um, IOC in the nineties versus what you know of IOC in the late two thousands and 2000 tens, do you think that there was a, a developmental shift or anything that you saw inside of IOC that, um, that, like were they adaptive or is it the same curriculum that you saw in 1997?

Ivan: It, it was very, it, it, it was adaptive.

Um, I, I believe, and I, I haven't been to ranger school, so I'm, I'm gonna say this with a caveat.

But I do believe that IOC produces the finest light infantry leader in the world based upon its training, live fire, its curriculum.

They've expanded it, they've got a desert phase.

They do a lot more with supporting ours.

Mm-hmm.

Than we did.

We, we were trained in that regard.

But, you know, at that point in time, the most recent things that had happened were a little bit of stuff in Bosnia, maybe some Somalia vignettes or Haiti.

But we didn't have anything like the baseline of combat experience that would, that, you know, come to define the Marine Corps in the American, uh, armed forces in general from, let's call it about 2003 on.

And so I was also not an, an instructor at infantry officer course, but I did go back there several times to see people who either were commissioned and graduating, uh, or quite frankly, got to see how infantry officers, uh, served and fought in, in combat.

And I realized that, you know, what, what they're being taught and, and how they're being, uh, resourced to, to enable them to make the decisions and, and fight the way that they do.

Marine Corps is very big on teaching the fighter leader, um, you know, your warrior, but you, your main weapon as a, as a platoon commander is the, you know, the Marines under your, uh, you know, in your command.

At least that's in my mind how you should see it.

Although you better be able to fix a x and shoot, you'd have to, you have to be able to do all of that.

Correct.

So in their, in that case though, that that ethos was alive and well and, um.

I, I still think it's impressive.

Absolutely.

AJ: Absolutely.

Okay, cool.

So you graduate, uh, uh, IOC I'm guessing now, probably December-ish, uh, of, of, uh, 1998.

Yep.

Uh, and then heading to your first unit, what was your first unit?

Ivan: I went to, uh, camp Pendleton.

I was in the first battalion, fourth Marines and, uh, first

AJ: Marine Union.

All right.

Yep.

Right on.

Right on.

Yeah.

Uh, big fan of one four.

I spent some time, uh, associated with them overseas.

Okay.

So then, uh, what did you, what did you step into when you were with one four for the first time as a new platoon commander?

Ivan: Um, my first, first day there, I was presented with a congregate, uh, which is a congressional investigation for, uh, misconduct by a bunch of my Marines.

So that was my welcoming.

I don't know

AJ: that they teach that in, uh, TBS.

Yeah.

No, no.

That was,

Ivan: that was, that was in this fine print that I never bothered to read.

You probably see a trend here.

Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, I, uh, I was met by my platoon sergeant.

Um, well, at first I was trying to go into my, uh, CP command post, and the staff sergeant could walk down and he goes, Hey, where you going?

And I said, uh, inside, it's not like this or not.

He reaches up and he like, fixes my tie.

And I was like, dammit.

And then I bent down to, I bent down to tie my shoe and popped the stitching on my.

And so those were, um, that's how I entered the cp and as soon as I did, I, I went upstairs and met my xo and that didn't go nearly as well as I'd hoped.

And by the time I worked my way back downstairs, my, my ben platoon sergeant, um, he's like, oh man, I'm glad to see you.

And I thought, oh, this, okay, fine.

You know, this is some, he said, well, here's, here's the investigating paperwork.

Here's the stack of, and I was gonna have to do this, but today you got it, and tomorrow we're gonna go see Battalion Commander, but I'll be with you.

Don't worry about it.

I was like, uh, right on.

So yeah, that was welcome to the fleet.

Yeah.

AJ: Yeah.

A lot of like, figure this out.

Yeah.

Right.

I think that we do place a lot as an enlisted guy and then an officer later on.

We place a lot of, um, of weight on young lieutenants shoulders.

Uh, and oftentimes without a lot of training, you know, in specific things like the ancillary duties that they have to have, uh, inside of a unit is, is, uh, is it's, I think it actually makes them, to your point, you know, later on and as far as your current career and where you're at as, as, as a consultant and as a lecturer and a leader is, I think that's also, I don't know that it's an intended, uh, effect, uh, but it is something that teaches young officers to be able to solve any problem, uh, that they're faced with pretty early on without a lot of instruction.

That was at least my experience of watching that kind of go through my career.

Ivan: Yeah.

I, I think it's, it's.

You have to adapt or requires a great deal of adaptability.

So I absolutely, I had to.

So

Ryan: just a quick word for myself before we dive back into this combat story, many of you know are previous interviews with AJ Chui, Marine sniper Recon operator, and the man who tracked, hunted and ultimately eliminated Iraq's Deadliest Sniper Juba.

This was an enemy responsible for deaths of over a hundred Americans, some say, up to 140, many of which were filmed and posted online.

Aj, who was just a very humble, very young Marine at the time, took that fateful shot, put an end to so much pain for so many families.

He never took credit for it.

And over the years, that story's changed and been retold countless times.

I'm incredibly proud to let you know that you can get your hands on AJ's new book, dark Horse Harnessing Hidden Potential In War In Life, a book I asked him to write after I interviewed him immediately after I interviewed him.

It's part memoir, part roadmap, a look at the lessons AJ learned through combat and throughout his career and how they can help all of us find strength and purpose.

If you enjoy Combat Story, you're going to love this book.

If you get a copy, head to combat story.com/darkhorse.

That's combat story.com/darkhorse.

It's packed with details and insights that we never got to cover in our interviews, and I know you're going to love it.

Now, back to this combat story.

AJ: Okay, so first deployment, um, did you do a mu, is it one of the Westpacs or something like that?

Uh, inside of, uh, uh, camp Pendleton or, yeah, I did a Campton.

Yeah, I

Ivan: did a Westpac at a 15th

AJ: with 15th Mu.

Um, okay.

So you chopped to the 15th mu uh, and then you, uh, go on a Westpac, uh, on the 15th view.

Is that correct?

Yeah, well,

Ivan: we, we didn't have much in the way of tasking except that you're just gonna go out and before deployed, we knew we would be going eventually to the Middle East, uh, to be part of Operation Southern Watch, um, in Kuwait, um, as a result of, of Gulf, of Gulf one, and kind of keep as keeping the Iraqis north of their line demarcation.

Uh, but be other than that, we had no real idea of, of what we were gonna get into.

And at that point in time in the world, you deployed for presence, but you weren't necessarily tasked with doing anything ahead of time.

It wasn't like your news or going straight into combat as they started later in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Um, so that's 2000, and my first real operation is humanitarian ops, although it was considered a combat op, um, in east to more, uh, in, in the Pacific.

So that that wasn't even really the, I mean, it was exciting because you were part of something interesting.

Um.

But we didn't get into any action.

You know, Australians said long, long before taking care of that.

In fact, I met Dave Co Collin years later and it turned out that we were there at about the same time.

So always playing d Dave Co.

Collins are taking, taking my mission, but that's all right.

AJ: Okay, awesome.

And so now you come back from the 15th Mu um, you know, seems like it would be a kind of a fun to, you know, fun deployment, something that, you know, unique to the timeframe.

I brought my golf clubs with me.

Aj, are you serious?

Yeah,

Ivan: I

AJ: different world back then,

Ivan: I'm sure.

Yeah, I was, I I just didn't even think about it.

AJ: You got to see the full spectrum of the Marine Corps.

Like, like I am, my experience, I joined right after nine 11, um, and then, so all I knew was war and then retired kind of when the war ended.

And it, you had this opportunity to see the Marine Corps before we were at full scale war, go through all of this, and then, uh, you know, kind of, I, I, you know, retire towards the end or, you know, at the end of the conflict.

I'm really exci excited to hear about what you saw as the differences between the service, if the service changed or adapted or moved, uh, you know, along those lines.

Yes.

Ivan: Um, I, I have to put, just to keep things in perspective, um, I joined, you know, pre-war in Klac Marine, uh mm-hmm.

Marine Corps and then subsequent.

Common odd from there.

Certainly changed and changed the core, made changes to the core as as it progressed, and I think in many ways for the better.

Um, I'm not so sure towards the end if some of those choices that were made were circumspect, but certainly on war footing.

You know, Marine Corps is a very, as you mentioned, adaptive organization.

Um, and it's hard to, to make a, a group that, you know, almost 200,000 people, you know, change and change your cultures and change the way that you do stuff.

And, and so some of it takes some innovation and it also takes a bit of time.

So I, I think that the marine ethos, uh, lends itself to that.

But I, once I got into serving in Marsoc, which became a completely different world, uh, you know, I wasn't really in the line Marine Corps anymore.

Mm-hmm.

So that, which I saw was kind of from a periphery.

Uh, but I also felt those changes within the organization, uh, in Marsoc itself.

Um, in, in, in, in

AJ: different ways.

So after your first deployment, uh, based on what I know about that time in the service, you had now met the requirements to take a, a recon in dock.

Uh, is that the path that you took?

Is, is that you continued down that, that, that pathway and kind of accomplished that goal of becoming a reconnaissance spring?

Yeah,

Ivan: I took re, I took the Recon indoc actually before I went on deployment, uh, to set myself up to then come back and I actually, I did want to go to First Force, uh, but they did not have any officer slots, so I went to first Recon at the Time Company and they did.

And, uh, I took the indoc, my battalion commander was supportive and then sent me, uh, or got me made orders, uh, when I got back to go to, to go to First Recon and I checked in there.

And, uh, so when

AJ: did you check into First Recon Battalion?

Uh, the fall of 2000.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Alright, so you, now I have to ask the, you know, the elephant in the room.

Like, okay, so you're in first recon at, you know, in 2000.

Where were you on September 11th?

Um, and, and, and can you describe what that was like, you know, kind of, you know, where wherever you were at witnessing that?

Ivan: Well, I was, I was at first recon, um, I was not deployed, in fact, I was earmarked, uh, to support, uh, RCT deployment if, if it went.

Uh, but that was, that was all part of just a, a, a kind of.

Ethereal plant.

Like if this regiment had to go out, you would be assigned to it.

And that was just part of the way that we, we were training at the time, it was seven, it was seventh Marines that, that my platoon was attached to, to be their Okay.

Regimen console.

Which, which would've been great.

Um, but that's not, and what happened?

Um, so I was there.

Yeah, I was, I was living in Camp Pendleton, uh, when nine 11 occurred and there were recon units that were already deployed on, on news that then went into Afghanistan shortly afterward.

Um, all of us were watching how that unfolded.

Um, and so I, I like the rest of us in the unit just sat and watched it unfold and stood, stood by waiting to see what was going to happen next.

AJ: So what was the mood at first recon when, like that?

So again, I wasn't active duty at the time I was in high school.

What was the mood like while being active duty watching this kind of thing happen?

Let's go get these guys,

Ivan: let's go get to work.

And when we started hearing about platoons that had, that were, that were forward deployed and actually started getting into action and doing things, we were like, damn it.

You know, good, good for them, but boy do we, we wish we were, we were harder.

That, and we looked pretty, um, we looked pretty hard at our training.

We looked pretty hard at our equipment and just started getting things ready 'cause we just didn't know what was was going to happen.

And that, that took us all the way through, uh, 2001 and, uh, into 2002.

And I, um, unfortunately was unable to take my Marine, my recon platoon, uh, to war because, uh, I was given orders at that point in time, uh, oh no, in summer 2002.

So where did you take orders to?

Uh, I went to the Infa Chicon School.

So if I had to be sent somewhere, at least I got to train and be around recon Marines.

But there were a number of us who were training recon Marines with big pouty faces.

AJ: Oh man.

God.

Uh, so were you, so was that you said a RS That was, yeah.

The east coast.

Okay.

Uh, so my, uh, friends of mine call that actual recon school, uh, and not, uh, uh, baby recon school.

Yeah.

Well, I,

Ivan: I'm, I'm both, I'm, I'm both the president and the client.

I, uh, I went to BRC and then I became the XO at a RS.

So I, I've done both.

I, I, each, each has its pluses and minuses.

Sure.

Um, and I mean, that's a reason they consolidated all the recon training on the west coast.

Yeah.

Um, it did, it did make sense for them to do so.

Um, although a little bit bittersweet to drive by what's now called mc gig, which was the old compound there, which I and others helped, helped build and manifest, uh, or manage and maintain, and then it, you know, got repurposed for Marine Corps stuff.

There's

AJ: plenty of options.

That is one of the hard things is like going back and seeing things that you like, literally put your blood, sweat, and tears into building something.

Um, I at Scout Sniper School, camp Pendleton, um, I mean, it's boarded up, right?

And I was a student there, I was an instructor there.

Yep.

I painted the walls, you know, and I look at it, I'm like, oh, like, so there's like this, I understand progress, but man, it's really hard to be in the midst of progress when you have built something that you felt was going to last for a long time.

I can, I can definitely empathize with that.

Yeah.

Ivan: I mean, we, we named the place Kaufman Hall after Buck Kaufman or the Navy Cross Recipient Reconnaissance Marine.

Um, anyway, so there was this a huge, you know, that was a little bit, little bit of a letdown.

Um, sure.

But I, I, so yeah, I was there for, from oh two to oh five and I remember, you know, not only do I remember nine 11, but I also remember watching, um, OIF kickoff, uh, yeah.

On TV while we were, you know, we trained guys who then weren't reconnaissance units that, that went into combat.

AJ: Yeah.

And like watching that guy, whoever that was, that survived the court martial, uh, then step off on the line of departure.

Ivan: Oh yeah, yeah.

AJ: You're like, I might have done things differently.

Ivan: Well, the system's, the system and, you know, he, he, he was in his, it was within his, uh, rights as a Marine to, to request that he did.

So that's fantastic.

Okay.

AJ: So then after, so you do three years, so now 2005 timeframe.

Um, and if from, from my recollection, we had, um, I mean I'll let you kind of describe what was going on.

Is that when you made the crossover to Mars Sock?

I know that started in 2006 ish.

Um, or where did you go in between before?

'cause I know that you ended up over at MARSOC and became a Raider.

What was the process before that happened?

Ivan: So I actually, I went to Second Force, uh, after a RS.

Um, and in fact, I, I was told I wouldn't have a career if I did that because as an infantry officer and I said, Hey, if you don't take infantry company command, it's over.

But you know, that's what you want to do.

I couldn't, honestly, I couldn't take my, uh, monitor at the time enough for, for actually doing that for me.

Uh, but I had to like submit a letter of writing that I knew that I was taking a huge risk, but I've known a few people who had done it and, and come out okay.

And I just figured, okay, well this is where I wanna serve.

This is what I like doing.

There's place open, uh, or slots open.

And I, and I, I wanted to be a force recon marine.

And so therefore there, that's going to, you know, not only a reconnaissance marine, but this is where I wanna serve.

So, uh, I went there, I did not, you know, I for went, uh, Marine Infantry company command mm-hmm.

And took a platoon.

Um, and at the time right around 2003, the Marine, uh, SOCOM debt one, detachment one had been activated.

And was doing stuff over in Iraq, uh, in support of US SOCOM and had demonstrated the Marine Corps could, could put together not only, well that was a super unit for one, but two Yeah.

Stake eaters in that one.

I know some, there's some bloody legends in that, in that group, in that group of people from the commander on down.

Um, but they, you know, they, they'd acquitted themselves very well.

And so at that point, debt One was sort of completing, its its genesis or it was the genesis for what became marsoc, but they were completing, um, its inaugural, uh, deployment, uh, looking to get more work, looking to become the baseline of, of what we formed marsoc.

And then it was in classic Marine Corps fashion.

It was stood down and then they decided to build MARSOC out of hand out of Hyde, uh, a little bit later.

So I was in Force Recon in 2005, and then they stood up MARSOC in 2006.

So I again was going to be attached to a u as part of my platoon.

There was two wars going on now, or two front war going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I figured, okay, you know, we'll finally get to get in, get, get into with people that, you know, have done this.

And, and I, the platoon I checked into and just come back from the first Fallujah, and I was, I've said this before, but I was like, if I was a new lieutenant or captain checking into the hundred first Airborne after they got back from Normandy, I mean, I was just, yeah, shit, what am I, how do I lead these guys?

What do I do?

AJ: Um, okay, so let's talk about, I gotta, I gotta dive into that because this is something that, so I dealt with a ton as later in my career.

So I was a gunner before I retired, and that was often the question that I would get from a lot of young lieutenants who would come into, so, you know how the gunner can be right.

You know, if he's not a total jerk, right?

He's kind of like the lieutenant whisperer, right.

You know?

And so, uh, that was the question that I had.

How do I lead these marines?

How do I take charge of these marines when they've done the thing?

And I've only practiced the thing.

How did you overcome that?

Was there NCO leadership?

Was there, um, you know, how did you, I'm sure that there was some level of imposter syndrome that you had.

How did you overcome those things?

Because like, this is what I think is to me, is like really the essence of leadership.

How do you take something where in our gun club there is haves and have nots, and at this point you have gone through all the training, all the things, you are the thing.

But in this weird classification, they may see you as a have-not, how did you, how did you o overcome that?

Ivan: Well, you're right in that it's, it's a feeling of imposter syndrome.

Even though I had all the schools and I had been trained in the same way that they had, I knew some of these guys, um, both from the west coast and, and people that I trained in combat or, or trained who had been to combat and, uh, returned.

Um, and there were people that I had, you were my former students who, you know, as they saw me coming through, they're like, Hey buddy, how you doing?

You know, like, so, um.

My own self-conscious feelings had to be put to the side.

And I had that feeling that, you know, what people were judging me on, not only how I would perform as we trained, but they didn't know wh how I'd perform in combat.

But I don't think anybody knows that ahead of time.

But there was also no guarantee that I wouldn't.

And there was also no, no, no precedent to say that I couldn't do the job.

And so at that point I was like, look, I need to lead this unit, but I have to be circumspect.

I have to be careful in how I approach it because it can't just be like an infantry unit.

'cause that one, there was way too much experience inside of the organization.

But then when we stood up in to marsoc, we almost doubled the number of, of staff NCOs within my platoon because we became a direct action assault platoon, uh, based upon the, which, which was an amazing experience.

Uh, but now I've got, you know, five gunnery sergeants running around and my platoon sergeants master sergeant, and they're, they're all combat that.

And then like from the staff sergeant up, they're all combat bets with very few, uh, exception.

And if they're not with re recon combat bets, they've been, they've gotten combat.

With infantry units, which arguably have has done more than a fourth reconnaissance unit in combat.

Like they fixed bayonets against Yes.

The enemy.

And we were, I was briefed by a guy named Black Jack Matthews, who led Navy Cross recipient and led, uh, I wanna say fifth, one of the battalions and fifth Marines in the battle away.

But he said when he gave the order to fix bay, that's, that it was one of the toughest he ever given because someone on either end of that rifle was gonna die.

Yeah.

And so, so we had guys who literally like fought people in a hand to hand combat or now, you know, picking their teeth with their K bar, looking at me like, what are you going to, what are you gonna teach me?

What are we gonna work?

But organizations need leadership.

And the way you approach that, I approached it, was that there was a lot I didn't know, there were things about me that they didn't know.

And we had to be able to form a team and it had to be formed quickly.

And I had, I would take things under Revisement and listen to what they had to say.

Ultimately the decision was mine.

And when the decision was made, we went forward.

And it didn't mean that we didn't have, uh, quite frankly some heated discussions behind the doors.

But when we came out unified front in front of, front of the boys, that's just how it went.

Um, and there was never any playing of favorites and there was never any, um.

There was never any sort of parochialism.

Now some of that was a little, or at least from my side, you know, working downward cliques and other things form within units, and that that happens.

But we didn't have this, as you said, have and half nots.

Like, if you haven't been in combat, you can only go over here.

You know, everyone was expected to be trained to a certain level, perform at that level, and then maintain that level of proficiency.

And it didn't matter who you were.

And Delta approaches this the same way.

They don't care if you're a truck driver, um mm-hmm.

A, a tank mechanic, uh, or, or the rangers the best ranger when you show up there, everyone is trained exactly the same and they don't give a shit.

If you've got the, you know, the Medal of Honor or you, you've just got two ribbons.

If you're, if you can perform or do the job, then that's what what you're there to do.

And that's, that's how we've very, very much approached it there.

It takes a lot of maturity to take that.

And also as a leader, it takes a little bit of humility, a lot of bit of humility to sit there and go, okay, I, I really don't know what I don't know, and I need some help.

Um, people can, people can be taking advantage of that.

Perhaps I was over the course of my career, but I like to think I probably had more wins than, than losses in that regard.

AJ: So now you're with Second Force, which is now transitioned.

Portions of it have stood up into what would be, uh, second Raider Batal or Second Marsoc?

Second SO at the time.

Yeah.

So they took

Ivan: all of first and second recon, uh, or first recon and made them the nucleus for first and second.

Uh, Marine Special Operations Battalion, the mop, it doesn't become Raiders, uh, until much later.

Um, although that,

AJ: that's

Ivan: a moniker that almost immediately begins to, you know, be, be taken on, uh, particularly because the World War II Raiders wanted, they wanted a legacy to continue to, to put, uh, continue their, their stolen history.

And they kind of started adapting us, uh, or adopting us everywhere.

But, so that happens in 2006, uh, the nucleus for that, for those two battalions, uh, a third battalion stood up eventually out of what was called the Foreign Military, uh, training Unit, FMTU.

So yeah, you've got all these mm-hmm.

Disparate groups of, uh, people or, you know, or groups of marines who are now coming together to form something that hasn't been done before.

Um, and you talk about evolution, just beginning to have a selection process.

Uh, there isn't, uh, an operator training course yet.

There's a bunch of things that have yet to be built.

Mm-hmm.

Um, not only structurally, um, but also infrastructure, you know, as far as buildings and, you know, the, the, the massive MARSOC compound, it's down in campus Union, that, that didn't exist.

In fact, that was a land n course they used for, um, sniper course down there as well.

As a matter of fact.

So, yeah.

Um, all of that is, is yet to be built and put together.

Um, so it was an interesting time for sure.

And again, it was one of those things where we don't know what's gonna happen, but we're now working for socom kind of cutting out a lot of the backstory on this.

But we, you know, we, we, we basically are not working for the Marine Corps.

We're Marines who we're now working for socom, and we gotta remember that Don Donald Refield told, uh, you know, Hague at the time, uh, commandant, you know, if, Hey, you're doing this, so go do it.

Not like, well, we need to do an assessment.

No.

That, that, that, that wasn't happening.

So we stood out, you know, then yeah, the time for

AJ: analysis was over the time for action.

Yeah.

And

Ivan: it was, it was, it was a, uh, a, it, it was a situation that the Marine Corps was standing up something it didn't want to.

Um, and they were no obligation to, to do it as well as it could be done out the gate.

They did, they did pretty well as far as grabbing, you know, us, us all, but they're still, I, I'll say that, that the MARSOC that's developed now 20 years later is pretty impressive.

AJ: I, I think that, that there is, I've got so many questions to, you know, in regards to the kind of the not, I think growing pains has a negative connotation to it, but, you know, the forming of a, of a new dynamic team.

When MARSOC stood up.

Right.

Was there, what was the biggest, some of the biggest like cultural friction points.

So you came from Recon or you came from the infantry and now you are classified as special operation.

Were you accepted by SOCOM as special operations?

Were you accepted by the Marine Corps as special operations?

Were you accepted by Recon, um, as something, you know, as something different?

What was that?

What was that transition like?

I

Ivan: think there was a lot of resit reticence within the SOCOM community to accept this.

Uh, I think at, at face value, they took the force recon thing, just saying, okay, you've got the right attitude as far as you, you do run a selection of, of sorts.

You are, uh, focused in your training.

Um, but unlike Army Special Forces, so there's soft right?

Special operation forces, and then you've got special forces and the Army is very particular about their charter and who gets to be called that and rightfully so, and longtime guys have earned that.

But they wanted to, SOCOM wanted to make sure that we were more than just a combat rating force, which, um, which is what we were best suited to do, to be quite frank.

Um, but they wanted a little more, the ability within SOCOM to spread load the, the mission, particularly the advisor train and assist mission around, uh, both.

Afghanistan and Iraq, and also in other parts of the world.

I mean, it's still a huge foot footprint for sa And so there was some limitations there within our own training structure.

Uh, it's one of the reasons FMTU was absorbed into that to kind of get ahead of what would eventually become a more holistic training program.

Uh, but we had like this very, these two very aggressive, you know, war fighting battalions, if you will.

And then you had sort of this other unit of FMTU guys that were, were doing all of the, uh, not so sexy stuff, but arguably more important in other places in, in the world.

And so you wanna talk about half and half nots or, you know, a feeling, ah, he's the first fmt U and I, he's just a third battalion guy.

That's, that was not the right way to approach that.

But you It is, it is.

Growing pains.

It, you have to, we, we were building this on, on the move and trying to go to war in different places.

We eventually, we spent most, you know, our soc spend most of their time in Afghanistan isn't to say that there were people mm-hmm.

Who weren't serving elsewhere.

But then when you talk about the recon community, because they took us all very worse.

Recon guys out of, uh, and essentially disbanded first and second force only to stand them up a little bit later, um, as com as their original, uh.

Components, uh, within the reconnaissance battalions, re reconnaissance formations.

And it's interesting because we were both first and Second Force and we took all the paddles and lineage from those units with us as we became first and second mso.

And then when they stood first and Second Force back up, the O 3 21 community was like, Hey, give us our shit back.

AJ: Yeah, that was tough.

I remember.

Now I've, hindsight is a fantastic Right.

You know, uh, and then a little bit of gray hair on the side helps.

But I remember I was at, uh, at Second Force in 2000 and tens when I checked into Second Force, and there was, I mean, my best friend in the entire world is currently the oh 3 72 monitor.

Um, and so he, we were both in three five together.

And so we had this kind of, he went over to the FMTU or third M Oag, I think it was at the time.

And then con, you know, progressed through there, had a whole bunch of really cool deployments.

Yes.

And then I went over to recon and then forced recon.

And so we would often try to like OutCo each other.

We would send each other pictures from wherever we were at in the world, you know.

Um, but there was always like this, like silent, like we just didn't talk about it.

Sometimes it's like when people have different political opinions, like, we're like, Hey, I, I love you, but I'm just not gonna talk about how these are our paddles.

Right.

You know, like

Ivan: the operative word is culture.

Uh, we had to develop our own, um, while at the same time none of us can.

Turn our backs on being in the recon community, OT 20 ones.

And there were people who after doing some time with marsoc, even as the offer came around, they said, yo, I, I like being in OT 21.

I like being a recon Marine.

I just, I want to stay with the Marine Corps.

And so you talk about kinda some of the problems that we ran in, you know, twos from, as we're not only building, but growing and developing reputation within socom.

Uh, they were unsure what we could do and how we perform, uh, and were work.

And they weren't really taking us seriously in, in some regards.

Uh, and then you had your parent organization, your parent service who didn't want you around or didn't want you, and they wanted you as Marines, but they didn't, you guys, they didn't want you to be the redheaded step children.

Absolutely.

The Marine Corps, it was like a, they, they were just like, okay, well we, we didn't, we didn't ask for this.

We didn't want this.

And if you're off doing that than your SOCOMs issue, and you know, there was a, there was money, there was resourcing, there was equipping all kinds of things that we were enjoying in a way that most Marines did not.

And I think one of the bigger things that the Marine Corps has done well is maintaining the MAR in SOC and the Marine Marine Corps part of it because that ethos does lend itself to a disciplined, highly disciplined organization.

Um, which is good.

Uh, but I think that it probably could have been a better lean to saying, oh, well if we got this group that does this stuff from our side.

Uh, or called marsoc.

Well, that could get the rest of our Marines involved in this in ways that other soft forces just could not do.

And that, that include whether it's humanitarian aid or, you know, helping with training.

It's one thing to say, okay, I've got a guy who you say Army Parlin Systems, the 18 Problem weapons course.

And they're supposed to be the subject matter weapons expert in all things, um, NATO and, and Warsaw Pact, uh, weapons systems.

Um, but they're not gonna be able to train how to do no kidding mortar gunnery better than the Marinos 3 41, right?

So mm-hmm.

That's who I used when we needed mortar training.

I, I didn't say, okay, go get a manual.

We, we went to the infantry unit and said, Hey, we need, we need to learn how to do this.

'cause we were deploying with mortars, the Marines were like, okay, we'll do that.

And, you know, within a week our guys were doing just fine and learned how to do stuff.

Um, but, you know, there are something to be said for specialties that, that is worse.

Um.

Tapping into and worse acknowledging and, and, and working with even within your own service.

So there was, there were some missed opportunities there, I think in a lot of ways.

Um, and it was, it was a little bit of a struggle to not only demonstrate your competence, but also that your, to your service that you, you were relevant.

And a, we got a lot of pushback.

Even I got pushback from guys in the infantry, like, there's nothing you're doing that we couldn't do.

I don't understand why we stood this thing up.

Yeah.

There's, this is pointless.

Like, okay, well that's great, but where's the Marine Corps doing to advocate for the missions for you to get in there and do that?

Because we had a whole mu, we had a whole mu sitting off the coast of Afghanistan right after nine 11 and instead they flew an entire assault squatter from Delta on on and cleared an, an entire aircraft carrier to fly them nine hours into Afghanistan to do that raid.

And that the first phone call was not to the mute.

So if we really have our shit together,

AJ: we're that good, right?

What are we doing?

And that was the real golden child of the Marine Corps, right?

That is what we, you know, expeditionary operation.

Heck yeah.

That was the And so when that doesn't get moment's notice.

Yeah, exactly.

So then when that get, doesn't get used, that became a, um, my own personal experience that became kind of a trend was a lot of times Naval shipping or Marine, you know, slated vessels would just be, turn into.

Um, uh, you know, a lily pad for highly specialized units when the mu had all those things.

And that was a very, it's a very, it was, it was a lot of different sandboxes that people were trying to play in.

It was an interesting dynamic.

Ivan: Well, that comes down to, in, you know, just taking this in one direction for a moment.

I mean, that comes down to branding and confidence.

That's really what comes down to is, is just those units have, have a high degree of branding.

Uh, and, and they have the, the people who, who employ them have a high level of confidence for a good reason in what they can do.

And when you're re, when you're re compositing your muse every 18 to 24 months, and you're having your retrain and rebuild, yes, you have a base level of skill that you can go and do certain things.

But when you have standing forces like the one 60th, and that's all they do, I like, I like marine aviation pilots and, and you know, I, shit, if I want something destroyed, I want us marine infantry to make it pea size rubble.

They'll do it better than the Rangers.

They can destroy an anvil and that's fine.

That's exactly who I want.

But we're, you're talking about specific kinds of application, almost like a dagger

AJ: and in the Marine Corps district versus a broad Yes.

So I have a question.

So let's talk about the dagger, right?

Uh, you know, that's something that's very, very true to this, you know, symbolism, um, that, uh, that you use as Raiders.

Can you explain a little bit more of the dagger?

Uh, yeah.

There was a

Ivan: adapted off of what it was called, the, uh.

Fairburn Sykes Dagger like that.

Yeah.

Which was developed, uh, as a closed combat weapon in the Second World War.

Um, and then the Marine Raider knifes, uh, was inspired by that as a, as a commando was 'cause this is what was issued to the commandos in, in World War ii, where this a type like this, this one's actually a later issue model, but the ones, um, and of course the Raiders also had a, had a belt knife, sort of a larger K bar looking thing.

But that the Raider Stiletto, uh, was developed specifically, you know, in the same vein of the Syke stacker.

That's awesome.

And that goes all the way back to World War ii.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

AJ: Okay.

So now you are with, uh, second M sab, uh, at the time, and you're ready for your first deployment.

When do you go and where you go and who do you take with you?

Ivan: Uh, at the time we went to Afghanistan, we were, uh, the companies were organized very differently than they are now.

Um, at the time we had a direct action, the Special Reconnaissance Platoon, which consisted of 45, um, oh three, 20 ones and sars, um, special amphibious reconnaissance, corpsman.

It was a very unique way of developing, uh, or, um, organizing a unit, tons of experience.

And you almost exclusively had to be selected to be in it.

I mean, you, you're assigned, but you also have to prove that you could be part of this thing.

And, and we had, uh, five man assault teams, uh, and four squads of 10.

And then you have five man headquarters element, and you had some other attachments that came with it.

So that was the core was the Dasra platoon.

And then attach to that was an infantry platoon, uh, which would be unfairly characterized, um, as a trailer platoon.

That's what they used to call them back in the day.

They kind of quote unquote trailed behind a force, recon platoon and provided security, uh, and allowed them to do their jobs on objectives.

But in this case, um, they were gutters and drivers.

Some of these guys had been in Ramadi.

They had experience, combat experience too.

So you couldn't just sneer these guys for being grus.

They had their own level of, of expertise.

Um, and then within you, you, you had the in platoon as well, and then you also had headquarters platoon, which was led by, uh, a major and had, uh, a very robust intelligence section as well as EOD and, um, all kinds of enablers, mechanics, et cetera.

So you guys were

AJ: like combat

Ivan: boxed is what it seems like.

Yeah, and, and we, we rolled around in what was called gvs, uh, which were for custom built Humvee variant, um, gun trucks.

And we went to Afghanistan, uh, in 2007.

And that was our, that was our first deployment as a golf company.

That's who I was a member of.

But Fox Company had been there beforehand and they'd gotten into a pretty good scrape out in the east.

Uh, and then that's.

Unfortunately ended in, in, in some, a little bit of economy, which they had to work through.

And I think that that's been covered plenty of times.

Uh, but we deployed in, in the wake of that, uh, and that was one more thing, this, the soft community, particularly army soft community, like, well who are these guys?

Like what do

AJ: just added on?

Right.

You know, to this like, yep.

Ivan: Well, and they, they assigned SF units to us to sort of, you know, they were supposed to show us the ropes, if you will, but they were there to keep tabs off us.

I mean, there's no other way around it, but they.

The guys we work with are pretty, pretty

Ryan: square away.

At least a guy from some Special forces group.

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And now back to this episode.

AJ: So what was that deployment like?

Where are you at in Afghanistan?

Ivan: We're in the helmet outside of Las ga, um, in Moala Valley is a very extremely, uh, violent area, uh, Taliban hotbed.

Um, I would equate it to just being in the Wild West.

Uh, a it was, it was like, to that point, I had not experienced any real combat.

I'd done that one sort of combat mission in East Timor, meaning I had live ammunition in grenade and flying around helicopters and kinda looking at humanitarian sites.

You might get into something, but that, that was not necessarily combat.

I certainly had no direct action combat, no, no direct combat.

Like all the re most majority of my guys did.

Uh, like I said, including some of these infantry guys.

And then we got there and, you know, we were still really getting into, this is before they, it was called VSO Billability Ops.

We were just really working on operating base and going out and fighting the enemy and fighting and fighting them as, as hard as we could in the effort of just kind of getting Taliban on their heels for what would hopefully be a larger offensive that eventually manifested in more Marines, muse, et cetera, coming in on behind us.

But at that point in time, we were just out there as a raid force, combat force looking for fights.

Picking fights, right?

Yeah.

Or they picked them with us.

Um, one, I hate that there was no, no shortage.

Um.

I mean, you could get in a, what's called a tick, uh, troops in contact situation, literally on demand

AJ: wouldn't take very long.

Can you describe some of those, those engagements or, you know, a couple in particular that you, you know, life changing things that were, you know, a culmination of a lot of training and like, here you are at the, at the moment you're in the gate, right?

And what do you do?

Ivan: I won't say that I was in so many, I can't remember, right.

But there was a lot of them, and some of them are more, um, more protracted than others.

But two in particular, we we're actually trying to take, take down this Taliban commander inside of this, this area.

And, you know, as far as the organization chart would be like taken out a colonel or even a brigadier general, depending on, on how he looked at it.

Um, so we're always trying to get this guy and, you know, you could hear him on the radio and we always figured, okay, if we could just take him out, then we would probably be able to just piecemeal or turn their, his unit into a piecemeal unit and we could, it'd just be easier for them to, for us to fight them.

So we, we tried some direct raid looking for this guy, or at least developing intelligence.

But other times we would just be out and we'd get into, uh, a fight, um, and we could hear him and just say, cool, maybe we can vector him and we'll try and try and get him.

But in one, one part we were trying to get down into, uh.

What's known as the green Zone, which is where most of the Afghan villages reside, uh, along Riverbed.

And that's where most people live 'cause it's obviously a source of water.

It also allows 'em to have, uh, irrigation for their crops, uh, support their, their animals and families.

Uh, but they also make fabulous French lines.

And the Taliban was adapted, u very adept at using them.

Uh, they also had quite ability to fight with defense in depth.

Um, and they were fairly well organized when it came time to, to get into larger fights.

Um, and they could mass some people pretty quickly.

So I've been tasked to, my platoon and I had been tasked to drive down and take over this compound on the edge of the green zone, which is up on a little bit of a rise, so we could get a higher piece of dominating terrain to actually then use that as a jump off point as we're gonna try and push further into the green zone and a five vehicle convoy.

And as we drive down into it, it all, hell just literally broke loose on us and we got, there's a saying that if your attack's going well, you an ambush.

And my, my attack was going, my attack went, was going famously aj like amazing.

And, uh, RPG round bounced off the hood of the truck and blew up behind us.

Um, we, it, it was just insane.

So.

We had been trained in immediate action drills and guys, you know, turned to and started firing with the Turt guns, people dismounted and started doing like bounds towards these, um, enemy positions.

The enemy had to have been thinking like, these guys are absolutely insane.

Um, because they're, the, the, the tactic if you're in a close ambush is to fight through it, otherwise you're just gonna get shot to pieces.

And so that's what they did.

Uh, my, the Marines just got out, dismounted the trucks and just started going at it with these guys.

And I, I can still vividly see a dude standing, firing his saw from the offhand in short bursts owning it.

Yeah.

Going like, I mean, it just, yeah.

And I, and I, I could, I see, I can see his face.

I, he wore a ball cap underneath his helmet and I can see the ball.

Just all these weird things that come up.

And so I jumped out to help with this fight and as I'm getting out, I go to run around the other side of the truck.

'cause I wanted to get there and actually get on the radio.

Now this is an i, I wanted to be out enabled.

You were talking about that fighter leader thing where you're out and able to have command and control.

I really couldn't do that from inside the vehicle.

Even though I had better communications inside of the vehicle, I could still operate my radios off of, off of my body.

And as I'm getting out, I hear this, sir, could you shut the door?

Like it is the most calm statement and it's my driver and I'm like.

I'm like, two steps down the, the GMV.

I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

So I walk back and I, do you mind mind there's bullet flying mind.

Yeah, sir.

Just if you, if as a, as a point of fact, it would just really help me to knock a shot.

I appreciate if you would shut the armor plate the door for me.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So I'm like, oh, my bad.

So then I go running across and over the top of my head.

My, my interpreter has his ak he's just perched it on the top of the armor plate and it's just firing bursts to like, he steered shit lifts, but he is like, I'm, I'm gonna do something.

So I'm like, ducking, I can like this.

This is booming over my head.

The 50 cows going off.

It is chaos.

And I run around the other side and I call, uh, you know, my, my hire and say, Hey, we're, we're in a pretty good situation.

We, we, our sticky situation and we need to get out here.

He goes, yeah, you have my approval.

And I was kinda like, I'm not asking you.

Yeah.

I'm telling you what's happening.

This is, this is what we are going to do.

So we, we, we passed that over the radio to everybody and now I've gotta think about all these guys who've dismounted to go, I don't know if anybody's in these trench lines or whatever.

So I'm like, get everyone back.

But it was the, even as crazy as the cacophony is all the gunfire and you can hear the bullets smack it off of the plating and the, and everything, the, the clarity that I somehow manufactured, I had it developed was.

Just amazing.

And I don't, you can't train for that.

And I don't know what happened there.

People know me.

You know, I can be excitable and somebody's going can be Yeah.

Accused the same.

Yeah.

Don't worry how to put it, I'm passionate.

So we're in a passionate situation there.

I uh, then remember as I'm getting ready to go back around the vehicle, I then remember that I've been, you know, some of, some training that we had from some people were, were helping us out, uh, before we deployed.

Some of 'em former, uh, tag guys.

And, and some of 'em, uh, were, were our own people who'd been in combat.

And one of 'em was a guy named Mass Sergeant Eden Pearl, who, who, who succumbed to his wounds a number of years ago, unfortunately.

But at the time, he had been a mentor to me and, and he said, Hey, if you are behind some cover that you haven't cleared, even though you were on the other side of it, you need to cle that meaning you need to make sure it's safe.

You can't just assume that it's safe on the other side of that.

'cause you don't, you don't know.

And I don't know, I had the presence of mind to be like, don't run around this vehicle right now.

Like, you need to, like, they call it piling it off.

Like you, you, you break down the, the sectors that you can see and keep yourself protected.

And I leaned around the corner and there's three guys running down the edge of this trench line with a PKM and I just, just shot all of them.

AJ: No way.

And they went, I mean, like, what a.

And again, had you have come around that corner without, you know, the lessons from somebody beforehand would've exposed you to a, you know, an open bolt weapons system.

Right.

Um, well,

Ivan: they were, they weren't employing it.

They were running, like the guy had it over shoulder.

They had already gone from somewhere else and they were then moving.

But, but that doesn't matter.

I mean, there was already the people there, you know, who gave, but they, they themselves could have been employing that pretty, pretty quickly.

Oh, wow.

AJ: Um, but yeah, I will give the Taliban a little bit of credit.

Like anytime that I had, they were fantastic at, uh, finding, fixing and flanking us, uh, totally as if they read our own, our own doctrine, uh, and then knew how we were going to fight and then worked against that as well.

Yeah,

Ivan: they had, they had put mortar rounds, indirect fire on, on a support by fire position I had behind me to make them displace ahead of us, uh, getting into this ambush.

I mean, it was very well prepared.

They'd been watching us during the day.

Um, I'm not sure, you know, aside from overhead, this is why battlefield drones are great.

Like, if we'd had some ability to throw something up there and go, you know, take a look at what was out in front of us that might have helped us here.

But in this case we were just, you know, firing closed combat.

Um, so yeah.

And so, so at that point then I ran back around and fired a few more rounds into the, uh, trench and got back in, in the vehicle.

Um, and so we, this is all happening in like a compressed period of time, and we're trying to turn these vehicles around and get out of this thing.

My, my J tac during the time has.

Calmly opened the door and like prepared his nine line and he's got out a, um, flow grenade so he can mark our position.

Like he's doing all these things that I'm, would be thinking like, Hey, do this.

And he's already, and, and you know, he's a hair pilot.

He hasn't done, uh, any, he hasn't, you know, dug the grounding, done ground combat.

In fact, when I remember him getting off the air aircraft and he still had his bright cap, his bars on and his flight wings, and I was like, take that shit off.

Like, you can't be wandering around here with us.

Like he was outta a movie.

Like, ah.

So, but I mean, he, he, he does everything he's supposed to do.

We get in the vehicles, we start to turn around and he rolls down the window so he can put his rifle out like in a, and start shooting from inside of the vehicle.

And it's loud as shit.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

I'm helping.

He looks at me, he looks at me like, what?

And the brass hit my driver on the back of the neck and.

Sir, can you stop doing that?

And I was like, what is wrong with you?

And like, we're having like this philosophical discussion about why he's returning fire and a fire.

I'm like, we have a gun up top.

There's a pin mount of two 40 that's now gone.

And I we're, we're, we don't need, you're not helping, we don't need this interior help right now.

And he, and because he, he was using a close quarter battle, you know, it's only about 10 and a half inch barrels.

So it's really short and it's really freaking loud.

So I was just like, oh my gosh.

So getting over the radio, I hear like, Hey, one of our vehicles is stuck.

But it's, it's much more emotional than that.

It's like we're, oh my God, I don't know if we can get out here now.

These, these, these gvs are in a lot, you know, like seven tons maybe maybe 10 tons with all the ammo and everything.

And the back wheel had hooked on this pr this drop off that was on the edge of the road.

And I'm like, great, now we are, the word fixed, the technical term is fucked.

I was like, man, what, what?

Dammit.

So as we're, because they're right behind me, our SOP is that we're the ones who then would hook up the tow ropes from their, so as I'm getting ready to exit the door again, luckily this is now on the safe side, uh, because we're now facing the opposite direction.

The hand of God, I don't know, comes down and lifts this truck out.

Now we had all been sent to driver training before we went.

Both on and off road as one of the reasons we did that is because one of the highest, uh, casualty producers in, in, in both theaters was vehicle rollovers and vehicle accidents.

So we want everybody to be able to know how to drive, and we send both the infantry and the, and the, uh, uh, daer guys to that training.

We did it together.

So this guy learned, you know, he's feathering, he's breaking, he's, he's, he's working and he just drop, gets this thing out and you hear this, we're free.

Go.

And as we are driving away another r, you know, RPG hits and blows up, like why it took him long to get the RRP G back in action.

Well, maybe it didn't, but it, it doesn't really matter.

And we speed out of this thing and we get back to, um, another coverage kill position.

And my, my, my commander looks at me and he is like, is everyone all right?

And I'm like, I have no idea.

Like, I know we, we, we got accountability as we're leaving, but we need like, no kidding.

See what happened here.

I haven't got any casual, like I don't have, uh, you know, the, or AML ACE report, AML casualty expenditure, you, anything like that.

So.

He, he just had like this look on his face.

He was like, I, I can't believe what I just witnessed.

And I was like, yeah, you will try living through it.

Like this was crazy.

Yeah.

And at the time, and so the, the J TAC has actually popped this purple smoke grenade.

And again, everyone's making so like, oh, do you have any other color?

Great buddy.

Like, now we're all joking.

And I'm like, what?

And, and 2 80 10 show up and they pulverize this line and it, and it breaks the back of this.

Like we broke the back of the a amateur.

Then it absolutely just tears this place up.

And, and then after that we got an AC one 30 on on station a little bit later and, and pummeled them,

AJ: you know, quite a bit more.

I pause you on that.

I wanted to ask, so a lot of our viewers and listeners haven't had the, um, experience of seeing an A 10, uh, go in, you know, wings level, uh, at a target.

Can you describe that, uh, a little bit more?

Uh, what that, what that, what that process, what that site, what the sound was like.

Right.

That specific weapon system itself.

Ivan: Yeah.

It's pretty surreal actually.

And it was, it was getting on tour, I mean, when this ambush happened, it was at dusk, well, not, not quite dark enough that we could use night vision goggles, which is another reason that they mm-hmm.

Attacked us at that point.

'cause it realized that mm-hmm.

We, it was nighttime we'd had complete tactical advantage with our MVGs and lasers and stuff.

So we got it, we hit a dusk and then as we were working our way back out, by the time the 1810 showed up, it's now just getting into that, that twilight darkness.

Uh, but the A 10 As as a platform is a purpose design, close air support platform.

That, uh, was it one time on the chopping block, uh, to be decommissioned, but they may be bringing it back.

I'm not sure.

Um, I've heard both.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I was, yeah, I I've heard both as well.

I wrote an article about, uh, you know, defending the reason to keep the eight 10 published a number of years ago.

I think it was in the Havoc Journal.

People can look that up.

But, um, the, the, the aircraft, uh, was essentially built around a 30 millimeter cannon that was developed by, of all things General Electrics, whose motto is, uh, we bring good things to life.

So the 30 millimeter cannon, uh, is an absolute, it's meant for destroying tanks.

Uh, but the payload of this, this aircraft, it has a titanium tub, armored tub that protects the pilot and then its payload is unbelievable.

It can take off from short runways.

It's meant to be flown in a steer environments.

It's actually quite perfect for worldwide combat and the Marine Corps probably should just buy it.

Uh, because it, it, you know, it's great.

Could you imagine that?

Or soft as an attack platform.

SOCOM could just buy it and have their own organic, uh, attack, attack platform.

Just take the whole thing and just turn it into a socom, uh, you know, asoft wing.

That's, that's, that's an opinion.

Uh, but it would be, it'd be really problematic to lose all the close air support, um, knowledge within the Air Force, uh, particularly within that community.

'cause they're the ones who actually do ground combat, uh, or support ground combat forces with close air support.

And we're assured by Air Force, um, tactic tacticians, that the F 22 can deliver and do everything the A 10 can, and you don't have to worry about it.

But the F 22, uh, is a very, the delicate aircraft, it doesn't have nearly the payload.

Um, the pilots who fly it are not either, they're obviously quite skilled and capable, but they don't have that close air support capability, and they're not gonna break a hard deck, uh, for fear of actually damaging the aircraft.

Whereas the A 10 is purposely built to weave, uh, at less than 10,000 feet.

And these guys came screaming in at somewhere like a thousand feet.

In fact, from where I was standing, I probably, uh, could, if it was daylight, would've been able to see that the pilot's eyes were blue.

Because that's how close they were.

I

AJ: mean, a ten's an absolute pig.

Right.

It's a, it's not, it is not pretty.

It's not, it's meant to do one thing Right.

You know, low and slow and deliver its payload.

Ivan: Yep.

Um, and it, it can take a shit ton of damage too.

You can, you can, you can add, you can take, you can see pictures of, particularly from a YF one of a tens, that it took just a tremendous amount of battle damage and they still flew 'em home and they just replaced, it's meant to be replaced and, you know, they put it back in the air.

Yeah.

Warthog iss an appropriate name for that, for that aircraft.

It is, it's an ugly, it's an ugly aircraft that does its job amazingly well.

And so, uh, yeah, it, you get to see this thing fly in and just the sound of that main gun, I mean, it sounds like bur and it, and then there's this just explosions because what they're firing is depleted, uranium bullets, you know, and it's just exploding and shielding all over the place.

And, and I know if you get here with that, you're losing limbs.

Um, but it, it probably way worse.

Um, and then from there, you know, so they did a couple gun runs and then they, we dropped a few bombs on 'em and, and yeah, we heard them over the Icom After we, after we'd gotten out of this ambush, uh, my, uh, my, uh, interpreter who now covered his senses after you getting his AK over my head, he says, sir, you need to hear what they're saying.

And I said, what, what's going on?

He's like, um, they, they need, they need more, more, more vehicles for the wounded and, um.

They said that we are worse than the Russians.

No kidding.

Which is probably the highest compliment I've ever been given.

Yeah.

Well, you know, we'll take that.

I mean, again, they

AJ: fought them for what, over a decade, right?

I think, uh, right.

Um, right.

And the Russians were Ruth, I don't know how many,

Ivan: and I don't know how many like white haired Afghan war vets were still rubbing around in the Taliban ranks, but there was enough to remember.

And they're also, you know, a country that prides itself on lore in stories.

So Lord knows that people have been brought up with like, Hey, look, this is in your lineage to do this.

So well that, so that was, that was one pretty particular area.

And then, you know, we, I, I certainly could tell another one, but yeah,

AJ: I mean, we very pause, let,

Ivan: we need chat,

AJ: chat about that.

So let me ask you a question in regards to something that you've kind of written.

I wanna call.

So again, uh, fantastic author.

I highly recommend that anyone listening to this or watching this checks out your substack checks out your webpage, because I think you have four, uh, titles, if I'm not mistaken, that you've published.

Um, and five now.

Five, excuse me.

Excuse me.

Um, yep.

So one of the things you've written about was, uh, a little bit of the ambiguity of combat.

Right.

And so.

The fact that, and I think this is really important for leaders, specifically young leaders, or actually really any leaders, and I think this plays into your, uh, you know, your current profession, right?

Is that decisions aren't always right versus wrong.

Can you walk us through a moment in combat when the uncertainty was a little overwhelming, and how you found the clarity to act?

Um, in my personal experience, what I've seen is a lot of people or lessons and formal lessons, whether that be tactical decision games or whatnot, have forced people into this idea that sometimes combat or conflict or uncertainty is binary.

There is a right answer and there's a wrong answer, but oftentimes what I've seen on the ground is it's quite different.

Have you experienced things like that and what have you done to kind of overwhelm or overcome that, um, and, and get clarity in inside of the gray?

Ivan: Yeah.

Well, luckily haven't been faced with too many of those.

Nobody, that, those are the kinds of things that really weigh on on a leader and, and, you know, you're talking about things that there's no right answers per se, because we're not dealing necessarily, uh, you're dealing with things that are happening in the moment, not a pre-decision, uh, or something that, you know, you're going into it going, you know, I, this is gonna compromise my ethics, or, or, or morally.

I feel that this is really not something that we should be doing.

Like pre ahead of going in there.

You, you're now faced with this at the point of time, the point of of impact.

And, um, not on this deployment in particular, but you know, as we're talking about this as a vignette, um, we were in combat and taken some pretty heavy fire from a, a compound.

My guys were not pinned down, but definitely needed some help to, we were not gonna assault this compound.

It wasn't worth attacking.

We we're actually going towards it to, to try and ascertain like whether this person was there.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, and you know, somebody was there.

Uh, but it was to a point of like, you know, we, we made a decision before we went on the objective.

Like, okay, if we're on and we get into combat, you know, then, then we're on and we're, we're gonna just fight while we're there.

But this is not meant to like assault, to destroy assault, to, to, you know,

AJ: to

Ivan: kill, capture this guy.

He's not so important that we have to, you know, fight him out with scaling ladders and all this other stuff.

Um, and you want to have those conversations ahead, like what's, what is the value of this mission?

Like, what are we going to do?

And I learned, I learned that from working primarily with, uh, with Army aviation, army soft Aviation.

'cause they were like, look, if we're gonna fly there and we're gonna do everything, we're gonna list risk, machine, life, limb, eyesight, and most importantly your guys, because we're, we're the kind of the, you're the customer.

Mm-hmm.

We need, there's no time in the cockpit to have a discussion as to whether or not we're going in.

If we, if the orders were going in and we're going in, and if we're not, then we're gonna pull out and there's not.

That's it.

So what, what is the decision points?

Where, where and now is the time to have those, those, those chats?

And so in this case, we, we'd gone in and said, okay, look, if we get the opportunity and it works out that we can go get this guy and, and he's in this compound and it works for us, great, but we are not going to get ourselves decisively engaged to a point where we've got stuff to that is going to o overwhelm our ability

AJ: to do that.

Right.

Or outpace our ability to do that.

It's high value target, but it's not like the pinnacle, right?

Like, Hey, we're gonna do our best.

Right?

But not over commit.

Absolutely.

Ivan: And we're lightly armed, certainly very skilled, but lightly armed, don't have a lot of, uh, you know, the only backup you have is your own, unless you get some more air support, et cetera.

But you're, you're kind of self-contained and self-reliant.

Uh, but so my guys are now getting shot at can't really flank.

They're not really meant to flank, but you know, they're trying to get out this position.

They got 'em in a pretty good, pretty good fire sack.

And, and they're, and they're, they're undercover, but ground force, uh, I was a ground force commander, but the, the assault leader was like, Hey man, we need a bomb on this compound.

And I'm, I have the wherewithal, it's my final decision as to whether or not we drop a bump on that compound.

And I was like, Hey, can you, can you get yourselves out of there?

Well.

Yeah.

Well, you knows now we're having this discussion.

Right.

But, um, we don't have any casualties yet.

Well, and luckily we didn't at this point throughout the mission, but I was like, have we got any casualties?

Are we, no, we're, we're good, but the fire's pretty heavy.

It's like, all right, well we'll see what we can do.

But you know, I, I started talking to my JA like, Hey, what, what?

Can you get a bomb?

Yeah.

We, we get a bomb about five minutes.

And I said, well, we may need it faster than that.

But again, you don't know what's in that compound.

I mean, you'd love to assume that it's an enemy, it's a barracks right.

Full of nothing but enemy fighters.

And they're all confirmed that they're just card carrying bag guys.

And you know, when you drop that bomb, it's all good.

Two 500 pound bombs on a a compound in Afghanistan will vaporize it.

Yeah.

And, and you'll be picking through the rubble.

So, and this was at night, so they're taking pretty good of fire.

But it's really more because of what these guys inside the compound could hear.

Our guys can actually see 'em and stuff with their lasers and their, and using lasers.

And, and so there's, it, it does a pretty, I can see the engagement through my nods.

Like they're sitting Yeah.

This, it's pretty, it's pretty sticky.

'cause I'm up on this hill watching this thing and so, um, I, I just told 'em like, look, I can't, I can't give you a bomb unless it's just so overwhelming you can't get out of there.

And, and, and, and if we had casualties and you were, you know, just totally pinned down.

Okay.

But.

We're right now, I need you to just get yourselves extricate as best you can.

So that was met with a little bit of frustration.

AJ: Sure.

Um, there's a natural and when he came back Yeah.

There's a natural, like, aggressive kind of like, let's bomb, let's blow it.

Right.

You know, and Oh yeah.

And, and in my

Ivan: mind I was like, well, and nevermind.

You know, so you don't know every, everybody's inside of that compound.

Women, kids, whatever.

And Siv Cass is a huge concern, but, you know, we're aj we're ostensibly the good guys.

Yeah.

And we're supposed to be circumspect in what we're doing.

And at that point in time, I could have easily come up with enough of a reason that to put two bombs on ethic and, and been justified in doing it, or at least would like, likely have been justified, you know, exonerated in doing so.

But that was not something that I wanted to take on.

And, uh, they were able to eventually, you know, kind of get themselves out of it.

We, we actually set up another support, support by fire position.

We maneuvered some vehicles so that we could put some more fire on the compound itself to then allow these guys to, to get back.

And, and then, so everything was recovered.

But then they, he, he wanted to have a one-to-one conversation with me.

It was got very rhetorical, very quickly.

What it's, how, you know, what, what would've happened?

You know, I can't believe you didn't, you didn't drop it.

Because our reputation would be fairly aggressive.

And I think they expect, I don't do this, don't worry about.

AJ: So, yeah, I mean that, so that challenges you.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I've got some follow up questions on that.

Um, so first of all, I think it's huge that you're able to allow the space.

One of the things that I've studied and seen with leaders is that, uh, oftentimes they don't allow for, um, one of the things I think is really good about special operations communities is that we have a hot wash.

And, um, I struggled myself when coming back to Big Marine Corps after being a force reconnaissance Marine for a number of years.

Was that in our culture?

Right?

The oh 3 21 or oh 3 72 or, you know, the oh 3, 0 7, right?

That was what it's turned into now.

Like the, the recon in Mars community, when you go into a hot wash, you take your rank off, right?

It's like, Hey, who did this?

Oh, yeah.

And that's not something that I experienced outside of those communities.

And I think that's very, um, very nuanced.

It's very unique to them because I would get back to the, you know, regular infantry and we're like, okay, hot wash.

And I'm like, oh, I can't wait for what happens here because this person did X.

And they're like, um, well sir, I think everything was great.

And I was like, were you watching the same attack that I was watching?

'cause I don't, you know.

And so to the, as a leader, having that space, opening that dialogue up, what was that like in that kind of conversation, if you're willing to share that?

Going back to what you were saying, um,

Ivan: early on we, we established that that's how we did our hot washes.

And some, some people took a little bit more of offense to that than others.

Uh, even in the staff, NCO ranks, uh, particularly if the, you know, we had guys who'd come from the regular Marine Corps to come into Marsoc when they stood it up and, you know, maybe culturally not quite used to that.

And somebody, some first sergeants seen a, a gunny poking me in the chest, in the desert, yelling at me, calling me Ivan.

Ivan, I can't believe you didn't, you know, in the heat of the moment, he would've lost his, he would've lost his mind.

And I'm like, back, back to him, Hey, first name, don't forget what we're doing here.

And oh, by the way, like, don't accuse me.

You know?

So then we got ourselves calmed down and never got any emotion out.

But when you get home, you're right.

There's no friends in a hot washing.

We, my my unit had spent, um, quite a bit of time working with other special operations force, in particular, the Special Air Service, and their hot watchers are absolutely just merciless.

AJ: I've been through one of those and, uh, I don't want to do it again.

Yeah, I just,

Ivan: yeah, I mean, but we, we were working with them and we thought like, oh man, we really nailed this.

We're doing special economies for one, for one of their groups.

And like, we, we thought like, hold man, we hit it.

Oh man.

At the end I was like, I need, I need a beer.

This is, this is awful.

I quit.

I I'm not good at this job.

Yeah, no, it was, it was really bad.

And, you know, and, and they, I think they, they really are, in my opinion, you know, with, with a few others, they like the gold standard of, of how you should be doing this shit.

AJ: And,

Ivan: um, yeah, it was so that was in, that was built into the culture for sure.

Um, but.

It is one thing, you're in hot washing training, another one, it's in combat.

And now you're just talk.

And now it just is.

You, you've got no, hey, let's redo this.

Mm-hmm.

Hey, next time, like now it's like, well this is what you did and yeah, it worked, but end not if, but, but, and and, and what are we learning from this?

And then, you know, you can go all the way back, well, is this guy really that important?

Like if he's really that important that we, we we kill him, then why do we send him ground assault force against it?

Anyone?

Let's just blow up the compound.

Right?

Well we can't do that 'cause there could be civilians there.

So

AJ: what's the difference between, I just did, you know, I struggled as an enlisted guy and later on as an officer of being able to see different perspectives.

I do really appreciate the perspective that the officer corps has.

They purposefully, uh, train and educate the officers to try to remain above the fray at times to see the whole picture.

Right.

To understand.

So, I mean, I've been the enlisted guy poking the chest of an officer.

Why didn't you do this?

We should have, 'cause I'm like, I want blood, right?

I'm trying to, I'm like a dog with a bone, right?

And I want to end this situation as fast as possible to protect my team.

And then I've had the arguments with the officers before that are like, Hey, there's a lot other of other things going on.

One of the things that I wrote specifically in my book was, um, I wrote.

The line that Afghanistan was fought with rifles in our hands and rule books in our pockets.

Um, and it was such a very hard, um, it was a different war for me than it was in Iraq, because at points in Iraq, like Fallujah and stuff, it's like, Hey, bad guys that way.

So, and like you said, you're operating in the green zone, you know, having to be able to have the wherewithal to say like, I don't, I can't use speed and violence of action everywhere I go, and I can't just blow everything up because what are we doing Right.

You know?

Ivan: Yeah.

Well I think, I think at that point in Afghanistan, you could almost call it, we're still in phase one, which is just, like you said, very much violence of action.

Very much.

I mean, we're on level two conops.

We could just go out and do whatever we wanted.

I mean, it was blanket, we could just get, get into fights all over the place.

And you get into the second phase, which is really kind of the VSO period where we're trying to do a lot more nation building.

We're really trying to be more, uh, focused, or at least that was the intent.

Uh, I've, I've argued before that there probably wasn't much of a, of a plan.

They thought there was, but really wasn't.

But the second, you know, the second phase was, you know, try to do that.

And then the third is obviously where just comes to a point of just almost like throwing your hands in the air and go, like, at what point are you going to take interest in your own fate?

I've got, so question.

Uh, and, and that's not to diminish.

Yeah, well that's not to diminish, you know, any, anyone in any one place that they served and how, but I kind of got to see Afghanistan in its phases as it went.

Nevermind that I was working in, in So Carmen Joint Special Operations Command and other worldwide, uh, you know, venues or missions in different venues, uh, that, you know, essential Bureau supposed to be nested in.

I can tell you that.

It, it in a lot of

AJ: ways it wasn't.

That's frustrating, I'm sure.

Um, especially to Oh yeah.

So much to it.

And just to kind of watch that.

So how many deployments did you do to, uh, Afghanistan specifically?

Uh, uh, five.

Oh geez, Luis.

Oh God.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

That's a lot.

Okay.

Um, so you spent, I mean, a good, were these, if you can say, were these longer deployments, like a typical Marine seven month deployment, or were they shorter stints?

Um,

Ivan: some of 'em were shorter.

Um, it kind of depended on who I was working for and what the, what the mission was.

Um, what I did, my two longest ones were, were with marsoc.

Once, uh, the, the Daer PLA commander once as a company, I was Fox Company's commander in 20 12, 20 13.

Wow.

So, and that was nine months long.

Wow.

So I, I, I did, you know, the majority of my deployments in Afghanistan, at least the longest, you know, time in Afghanistan, I was a, as a Mars guy, so I was in MARSOC the whole time.

But work, working for marsoc, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

AJ: So that's cool.

You got to stay.

So when you crossed over to the dark side, right?

When you crossed over, uh, you got to a chance to stay, or is that, is that, is that, uh, accurate that you stayed for the end of your career?

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

I, I went

Ivan: from, I went from signing that letter with, with my monitor, you know, him telling me, look, you're, you're pretty much finished.

And then people told me like, Hey, if you stick around MARSOC for too long, 'cause I was still in oh 3 0 2 slash oh 3 0 7, this will not be good for your career.

And I managed to make a career outta something that wasn't supposed to be good for me.

So anybody who's, you know, looking at what should I do?

How should I take my career, man, if you get an opportunity that is, you know, valuable to you, take it, go.

There is no guarantee.

And honestly, like the Marine Corps is a giant corporation.

It needs people, it will find the people, it needs to put where it needs to go.

And if you're not sitting in exactly where you, you know, you're supposed to, according to some sort of, uh, you know, org chart or, or progression.

Don't worry about it.

Go, go do the thing that you, you believe, you, you, you want to do.

I really appreciate that respect.

I think, I think a lot of times I think the rest of it will take care of itself.

AJ: Yeah.

A lot of times we almost live to this idea of a script, uh, and what you should do, what the next right action is.

Um, and I really, I, I really, uh, I resonate with that, right?

All your dreams.

Ivan: And remember, I was only gonna do this four or five years and do, you know, go be a cop, a federal cop.

And so then I was, but then when I got into it, I found I really liked it.

I was like, well, how can I just keep doing, yes.

Like, I really like being in a recon.

I really like being a part of this.

I like the energy, I like the people.

I like all the, I like the gear and the gadgets and you know, I like the training and okay, so how can I can, how can I keep doing this?

And that's what I set out to do.

And, but it also came at a, a cost and, you know, so, you know, I had to take very, um, calculated, considered risk, and I weighed those and, and.

That's it.

That's

AJ: fantastic.

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AJ: So I'd really like to transition here to a point, um, about, so reading through your substack, one of the things that really, really popped out to me was, um, the short story.

I dunno how to, I dunno how to describe it.

You know, um, it's called what if.

Um, and I think that this is something that people who exist in the Combat Arms specialties, um, we share something very similar, that this is not something that necessarily resonates with, uh, people who don't live this kind of lifestyle.

Um, so I, I read it and it like was visceral.

I like brought tears.

I have written my own, you know, version of something like this.

Can you describe a little bit, I'm sorry, this is a little off of what I'm sure you were ready to talk about, but I,

Ivan: I, I called it and, and it was developed with a group of people that I knew who, um, they work in some very covered activities and they asked me one time if I had a, a what if packet.

And I said, what's that?

They said, well, in blunt terms it's what to do if something happens to you.

And it, it is not just your will.

It's like, what do you want us to do with all of your stuff?

What do you, are there, is there stuff you don't want people to find?

Do you have items that you wanna see certain people get?

Uh, not only that, but you know, have you, have you considered.

If somebody were to like, open this packet that you've written letters or put something together so that they know how you felt and you, and they said, look, this is, this is not something easy to do because you'll fill out a will and you'll fill out all these other things.

But have you thought about who your Paul bearers are going to be?

Have you thought about the music at your funeral?

Have you thought about the things that your wife will have to, uh, take care of?

How about your finances?

Like, there was this huge, it's not like it was a checklist, but there's this litany of stuff that they, they asked about.

And I, they said, the reason I tell you this is because, um, you're not gonna get to choose and the people who are left behind are gonna have to clean all this shit up.

And you probably need to name someone here with whom you're working, uh, to kind of be an executor of sorts.

Not so much of your will and stuff, but what, what, what your family's gonna have questions and all kinds of stuff, and you need, you need to like, have somebody.

And so I, I named him and I told him exactly what was in that package.

Um, and it remained in my, you know, sort of my holding, you don't deploy with it.

It, it remains, you know, at home base.

Uh, and I kept it with me for a long time.

Um, and in fact, uh, every once in a while I'd go, go in and update the letters to different people just because of things had changed.

Sure.

Or they've gotten older, kicking my children.

Um.

I not getting rid of the other letters, I just kind of, then, then you had more letters for them to read as, as you were going along.

So it's kinda like this time capsule of, of, of preparing for really bad stuff in, in a way to sort of blunt

AJ: that possibility.

Right.

I, I think what, um, what I see is, um, that we have an experience, I don't know if it's a luxury, but we have the experience, um, of having, understanding whether or not we want to or not the, uh, finality of death.

Um, and so we are constantly, we're presently rich, always around it.

Right.

You know, whether or not it's enemies or friendlies, civilians, there's just death.

Right?

And so there's this tough, uh, another piece that resonated with some of your writing was the conversation or the writing around losing your father, um, and losing someone suddenly, um, and, um, conversations that just couldn't, you know, closure, that just couldn't happen.

I, I like the idea of done with the what if packet, because I think that even if you're a civilian, I think that there's value in, um, trying to speak from beyond the grave, almost putting down letters and, and, and words.

It also says here that you burned your what if packet.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah.

Uh,

Ivan: I, I think it's, first, I, I gotta tell you, I'm, I'm, I'm, thank you for reading that and thank you.

I mean, I, I've got like 16.

Five articles written now, and you know that, that someone went back and, and took, took a look at that catalog.

I really appreciate.

So thank you.

Um, the, I, I think the burning of it was kind of closing out.

I, I've had a, a difficulty, uh, even now, three years after retiring, my transition is still just kind of ongoing.

I've had a, this is something I did for all of my adult life.

Um, you live in a, we lived in a, in a very closed society, um, a private one, um, a lonely one, particularly for being a leader inside of this stuff.

Despite, um, perhaps some limited popularity with my own people, I certainly unpopular with others.

So, I mean, you're not gonna please everybody.

Um, oh, well, I mean, it's, it's the truth.

But I think for me, in the, in the What If packet and getting rid of it, it was time for me to just, you know, accept that this portion of my, my life ha needs to gently be put in the past.

And, and that part of that has to me, rec deal with me reconciling certain things.

But the other was that the What if Packet was a snapshot of who I was at the point in time and all of those pieces.

And I think to your point of finale of death and the thought that you can be killed at any moment, whether it's a helicopter or Hershey crash or, or a accident or get shot, blown up, what have you?

Um, that that was done out of a necessity.

And then I no longer had to keep that.

Now I could still write down, Hey, much, you really do want these, him selling that kind of thing.

But it doesn't have to be as sort of like, I, I haven't wanted you to have this and then this, you know, that's the only thing of me either holding

AJ: anymore.

Ivan: And I, I guess I think I wanted to say to myself, you know, you, you, you've earned a lease on the next portion of your life.

And not maybe that's an anchor, but it is something that in order to actually be able to appreciate that you, you can't be hanging on to the way that you were living.

AJ: It resonates a ton.

We are, I actually, when I read it, like there's a, when I've read the burn portion, I was like, you know what, to me that says is we're a very recon marsoc, right?

The Marine Corps we're very ritualistic in a lot of the things that we do.

Almost cult-like actually not almost cult-like in a lot of ways, in a lot of things that we do.

And I saw as Kim Philby said, if you wanted defect, you have

Ivan: to belong.

That's exactly correct.

No, I'm, I'm not Kim Philby.

I'm walking outta here to go to the Russian.

Just say it's like.

AJ: That felt like that was a closing of a chapter.

Right.

And and you're saying mm-hmm.

I recently, when kind of going through, you know, like the storage unit that is your life when you move around and deploy a whole bunch is I found my letters, like my letters as a 21-year-old Lance Corporal going into Fallujah.

Right.

Like this, like the same kind of thing.

And you, and it's a snapshot to who you were at that point in time.

And I think that's really valuable.

And so for any of the listeners out there, um, you know, or viewers, I think that that's something, it's an exercise that I would recommend.

I don't know that you would, but it's an exercise that I would recommend is it's a consolidation of your life at that point in time and what you want to give to the next generation of people that would follow you inside of that.

I really do appreciate you sharing that story specifically.

It's pretty vulnerable to do that.

Well, I think that, you know,

Ivan: just in light of being now a day after nine 11, I mean, 3000 people went to work that day and didn't come home.

And I've suffered combat losses through my own people and having to inventory somebody's equipment and their, their life and all their stuff and they're not there, is it, it just really weighs on you and, and you still have a mission to complete that kind of thing.

So.

Yeah, I think it is worth you, you know, just at least

AJ: exploring, uh, where, where you are.

Yeah.

You also write about compartmentalization as a leader, which I think I, if I could implore people to read your writing, uh, at like, and just devour it.

I think that you, in my opinion, like I said, total fanboy.

I never met you.

Right.

But, um, if you want to figure out, if you're out there and you wanna figure out what right.

Looks like, what a full spectrum and I, and I believe warrior looks like, I think that you have this in your writings, right?

This feels very, um, meditations, right.

Marcus Aurelius is kind of meditations.

It really does.

Uh, and I know you said it took you 10 years to write the book and 53 years to create it.

Um, you know, uh, I think that's fantastic.

So I do have some, some that one.

Yes, yes.

Absolutely.

I, I, I, I have some questions.

So you mentioned family.

So you have three children.

Is it two sons and one daughter, if I'm not mistaken?

Two.

Two daughters and sons.

Two daughters and a sons.

Excuse me.

Um, you deployed a lot, like a lot.

A lot.

Uh, how did your family, how did that work?

What was that conversation like?

What was that lifestyle, that tempo?

Because you were effectively being what your dad was to you, you were gone a lot.

You were a big professional soldier, right?

Um.

Did that take a toll on your family?

Did it have any kind of, um, are there, are there regrets, things that you wish that you could have done differently as a, as a husband, as a father, as a man?

Ivan: I, I think it's something they grew up with.

I, I, I'm going to definitely put words in, in, in people's mouths and, and, and, and talk about thoughts, um, that they may have had.

But I'll also say that we're very close in being able to talk about that together.

And that doesn't mean that, you know, I came home and just broke down about all the shit that happened to me in front of my, my, all of my family.

But as they came of age, uh, having those discussions, you know, my, my daughter, my youngest daughter, uh, attended West Point, she had a lot of questions about just being a leader.

And, and, you know, anytime we could have a discussion, I could give something anecdotally or, you know, real world example, um, of just something that would help her with, with that journey.

Um, and my son's a Marine Corps officer, so he certainly had questions as well, and things that he, he wanted to do, uh, and ways of approaching things.

But, you know, people have to learn how to, to exist, um, in, in the world with someone like us, me.

Um, and it just became something, this is what their father did.

Um, and they understood it and they understood that.

But, you know, there are definitely some tensions there.

Uh, but I will say that I, I did, I believe the best I could in balancing things out in that when I was home, I tried to be home and present and available.

Uh, there were also some times where I was just like, this is strange and weird and I don't get it.

Like,

AJ: there's like handbooks on how to be a marine officer.

There are not handbooks, how to be a marine officer coming home after combat deployments.

Uh, and how to be,

Ivan: yeah, and, and, and not, and not being, and being a special operations officer and being saddled with all kinds of stuff.

Nevermind, you know, your, your, your own personal feelings.

But like, I came home from deployment and almost immediately got on a plane, uh, to go to a wedding.

And I remember sitting in the airport drinking a beer as just the world's going by me.

And I was like, I don't know what's going on here.

AJ: I wrote about that a lot.

That was something that I struggled with was like, for us it was deploy, deploy, super kinetic, and then like done off You're home.

Yeah.

Traffic dogs, barking kids, whatever it is.

Right?

And, and you're kind of like, I mean, a week ago I was, you know, doing whatever.

Right.

It's a.

That was a lot, I think, uh, and a lot for us to continually cycle back through that.

Ivan: Yeah.

I, I think that's one of the issues that people don't necessarily grasp.

And I, and I, I do write about this, um, in several different platforms that, you know, we were, you talk about the greatest generation and, and others, and I'm not diminishing people's service across anything, but, you know, any war or what they did, you know, the United States, as I've come to find its currency is warfare.

Whether it's supporting it or it's exporting it.

It's what it does.

I hadn't told that.

And there is, there's a lot of things I'm wrestling with as a result of that.

Um, because as I said, I'm a very, I'm proud of my service.

I'm proud of my, my children's service.

I'm proud of the things that we have, we have done.

I'm proud of the people I served alongside.

I do believe that what we are doing in its, in its nacient stages was indeed righteous in some capacity.

And I think we've also lost track of what, you know, what we, we, the reasons we go do this stuff anymore, it's become so ingrained that it just isn't, is, won't get too deep into that.

But ultimately too, too much deeper than that.

But, but ultimately there's a, there's a disconnect because we deployed so much and did this so often that it was just sort of like, well, I was deployed again.

Their dad's deployed again.

Oh, anywhere you live where it was Lajeune, Peleton, what have you.

Oh, they're just, they're deployed.

They're not just deployed.

They're a war.

People get killed.

People are dying.

People lose their legs.

People are getting paralyzed.

People have all kinds of other issues.

They're coming back Un not whole.

Yeah.

And so we did this.

Perennially a a j.

We, us, you and I collectively.

And people just assumed it was just the way things go, going out for credit.

And there's one thing where you can say, yeah, well, you know, hey, you signed up for this.

Well, sure, I guess I did.

And as you said, I'm a military professional, but, um, don't begrudge me my benefits or any of the other stuff that is sort of promised to me, nevermind that what you got to do on the backs of what we were doing.

I, uh, thank you for your service or thank you for serving.

So I didn't have to, was that what, what you say?

That's, and that probably makes me sound like a real dick, so I'll just, no, I was at the gym

AJ: yesterday, uh, like, and I was talking to, you know, guys in the locker rooms have like random, tough guy conversations, I guess.

I don't know.

And you know, this, he asked me about a tattoo that I had, right.

And I won't go into super big detail, but I have a tattoo that's a, um, uh, this constellation of stars that was above my head when something significant happened.

Um, sure.

And I explained it and I, and I was kind of cagey with it 'cause it's not his business, but I was being nice, right?

And I said, yeah, it's the thing.

And he says, well, thank you for your service.

And the thing that I came to mind was, I said, my, my only regret is that I have but one life to give to my country.

And the look on his face was like, what?

Like he had, I, I, I don't remember who said that.

I know it was like a colonial kind of thing, right?

But like, right, like Aaron Burr or something.

Right.

You know, like, so.

Yeah, but that's just not something that was in his wheelhouse.

And so you and I, if I said that in our space, I struggle and I have my own consternation, um, about our journey, where we've ended up, uh, and what that is.

Uh, you know, I often have to question myself and say, you know, were we the good guys?

You know, and good guys to us was a matter of perspective in my own way.

But to that like, oh yeah, I could say that statement to you.

And you go, yeah, no, I get it.

I get it.

Right.

It's a service.

It's like this thing, uh, any moments like,

Ivan: yeah.

And I don't, I, I'm not rude.

I don't say that to people.

I just thank you.

Okay, no worries.

And it's not, everything's meant to be a knife fight.

That's

AJ: a

Ivan: good way to look at it.

And I think, I think people are sincere.

I do.

I mean, I think they, but they also, just as I said, there's this, the other thing, and I, and I've, and I've said this also as well, um, you know, we, as you know, g wat modern war combat veterans, we don't look old by comparison.

Like, you look at World War II Vet, you look at a, a Korean War or Vietnam veteran, you, you know, that's what a veteran quote unquote looks like.

But as I was growing up, the, the Vietnam era veterans, that, that would come to my house as my father's colleagues and the people that, that I grew up knowing, they were just people too.

Right.

So there's, there's a, this idea, I think that you, you kind of have, you, you fit this sort of mold as to, you know, when you were serving and then afterward, you know, by, by all.

By all means right now.

Uh, I should be in a ball cap with my beard grown out appropriately sleeve tattoos and be a soft bro.

Talks like this, man.

Nobody talks like that.

So I love that.

For me, I guess I, I like being, I, I like being more of a, a counter culturalist to my own culture.

Like being a writer, like being a thinker.

Like let's talk about things and, and, and it wasn't that I wasn't this when I was on active duty, but you talk about the compartmentalized station, my family had to compartmentalize to.

We all had to find ways to co to cope with, with that absence and be very real possibility that something bad could happen.

It kind of nests your question about what if, and you know how my family, you know, worked with stuff, but I remember specifically one time I was just not doing well in a very crowded area and my son was like, do you wanna get outta here?

There was no, like,

AJ: there was no, no other question.

It was just no major fan.

Didn't make a big production out of it.

Nope.

Just recognized.

Ivan: Yeah.

We, where's a place that we, we spent some time and effort to try and get to and some money and like, you know, we can be surfing in seven hours.

I said, done out here.

I like that.

AJ: I like that.

So my, as we start to kind of wind this thing down, I've got a few more, you know, questions for you, um, more in line.

Sure.

With, uh, transition, um, and then where you are now.

Um.

So, okay.

I did 21 years, uh, I retired two years ago.

You did 24 years.

You retired three years ago.

Um, after 24 years in uniform.

What is the hardest part about figuring out who Ivan was, uh, without being, you know, Lieutenant Colonel Ingram without the Marine Corps?

How do you, how have you gone through that process?

Ivan: Well, I had a, the advantage in that when I was leaving service, I had a very good transition program called the Honor Foundation, uh, which specifically, um, works with primarily special operations people, uh, as they transition from service and they try and match you with, uh, not only your interests, but your appropriate skill sets and things that will help you not only get a job, but work your way out of service in such a way that it's, it's more comfortable.

It's not going to be amazing, but you're gonna, you're, you'll have a better way of getting out than just kind of the tap tams TRS and see you later.

So it's a pretty involved program.

Um, but what I found with it was that I was a lot of expectations for me as an officer to be a certain thing, whether that was corporate or some sort of project manager or working in a hierarchical environment or becoming a, a consultant with another larger consultant company.

But they were sort of like, these are jobs that are commensurate to.

Your station, where you have come from.

Um, the money will be excellent and you will have no problem transitioning into these.

Um, you know, just gotta get you in the right place.

And I think we can find you a job that you'll really enjoyed.

Early on aging, none of that felt right.

And I have learned not to ignore that.

'cause I've also found that if you get into a place that it doesn't work, it's not going to get any better.

I believe that the best part of THF was that I found out what I didn't want to do.

Hmm.

And that was a hard thing for me to acknowledge and say, okay, something's wrong here.

I don't want this.

And it's actually was the impetus for my book Dream Job.

Um, 'cause people told me like, oh man, you're gonna get ag energy job, dude.

You're, and so I found that retiring allowed me to actually get a lease, you know, a reset on my life in such a way that I could design it and do anything I want.

And I said, I really want to be a writer.

And if somebody wants me to consult and work with them, I want to do that because they feel like they wanna solve something and get through a problem, not just me be a consultant and show up and do a bunch of PowerPoints and tap.

Garbage about what have you or give you leadership platitudes.

It's all been written.

It's all been done.

Thank you.

Go find Tony Robbins' book or whatever the fuck else you wanna read and do that, that's fine.

But I'm, that's not how I do this.

And so I, I said, okay, I'm, well what is, what do I want?

What does it look like to Ivan?

Mm.

And that's where it became very uncomfortable.

And so that's been the hardest part of transitioning, is actually giving me myself the grace of saying, you get to do whatever you want.

Again, you gotta do some analysis.

There are some calculations and risk that's associated with it, but ultimately, you know what you want to do and where you want to go.

And I've always been able to find a way, and I will.

And so I, I am a writer.

I become a writer.

That's what I do.

I do.

'cause I'm consulting stuff.

I also do some work, uh, uh, particularly with, with a, a group of people former, uh, most special operations guys overseas.

Uh, not, this is all boardroom mercenary stuff.

It's not wanna run around Poland or Ukraine or something like that.

Um, but yeah, I just try, I I just said, okay, like that's been the embrace.

And, and so you shed a little bit of that Lieutenant Colonel c, if you will.

But it's also being comfortable in that space.

And that is, you know, I'd say be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Well, what does that mean?

Who's uncomfortable?

You and I can both like being cold weather.

Sure.

But you might like cold weather.

Or you might, you know, my, my tolerance might be, you know, better or worse, you know, nobody likes having hair down the back of their shirt.

I think that's sort of universal.

Um, but, but ultimately somebody like, well the money's so good.

I just put up with it.

I've had people say that.

Yeah.

Like, I hate this job, but the money's so good.

I just keep doing it.

And I'm like, none of that is

AJ: ever worth it to me.

I 100% agree.

That challenge, I think, because I have to say, like, people are like, what do you do now?

I'm like, uh, I'm a writer.

Right.

And it feels like it's just like kinda artsy and nebulous, right?

When it's like, oh, totally.

I feel like it's like, oh, cool.

You know?

Ivan: Have I read any of your stuff?

Well, well, if you're asking me, probably not.

Yeah.

Are you any good?

Um, I think I'm terrible.

I'm really, I I, I, I know.

I think I'm fucking great.

Yeah.

And you should too, right?

Alright, well, yeah.

I mean, well, if you haven't read my stuff, then well, you have no idea.

That's big of you to say, well, how would you know?

I, I love that.

Yeah.

I'm true.

But it's, but it's true.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, there is a bit of a leap of faith towards going towards that, but having the competency Yeah.

Writer, what do you write?

You know, and then you get into some discussion stuff.

But I mean, I like, I like all kinds of different writing and, and I think that.

That it, it's a great space.

That is another thing that's helped me to really unpack, um, a lot of this, the books that I write and the articles that I have in my substack is substack is actually a lot like playing the guitar, which is something I do like to do.

Nobody really likes to practice, but you get better when you practice.

And that's, that's kind of what, what writing with Substack is, is it's, it's my, my weekly scales, if you will.

And sometimes it's great, and other times I'm just shredding around.

I've had people say, eh, this week is kind of boring.

I'm like, well, I don't know.

Everybody wants sensationalism or whatever, but you can't meet everybody's requirement, so.

Right, right,

AJ: right.

I completely agree.

I, I love the idea that you've been able to anchor truth and story kind of together.

Can you explain some of the process behind some of the, I would say almost like parables or allegories, right, that you're able to write?

Uh, can you explain some of that process?

Ivan: I, I think I'm looking for, you know, I'll just shamelessly in, in my book, right?

So once We pledge forever, uh, it's out with, by the Seger Group.

You can get it on Amazon.

Um, it's, I, I think it's pretty big book, so take a look.

But one of the things, you know, I, I tried to write a book that has actually more, um, yes, it is, it is a military action book in, in some ways, uh, there are plenty of bang, bang, shoot 'em up in there.

Uh, so everybody can scratch their itch on that.

But it is not a piece of airport fiction.

Um, I wrote, saw, wrote it so that it's.

Appeals to sort of universal themes that people can identify with whether or not they were in the military.

And that's sense of isolation and a sense of, uh, having to do things that you question.

I think everybody does that in, in their, their daily lives, uh, with their jobs or in relationships.

And the, ultimately the book is a love story.

It is about relationships and it's about reconciliation.

Um, it has a thriller aspect to it.

I think it scratches a lot of itches.

Um, and the story is meant to be something that someone can read and actually think about psychologically, not just how to consume.

At least that's the way I've, I've, I approached it.

AJ: That absolutely resonates.

I, I think that we've per, I mean, listen, I've read my share of all the books you're supposed to read, read, you're a military, you know, enlisted, senior enlisted officer.

I am not interested anymore in reading, like you said, like the three Cs of leadership or whatever, like that, those books have been written, and I think that.

Anytime.

Like this was the struggle that I faced when I was reading, uh, and looking for leadership advice.

Uh, you know, I found that there was a difference between a practitioner and an academic, and a lot of academics were writing books about leadership that would fall very, very flat when a practitioner, specifically a practitioner in combat arms.

Uh, I think that business, I think that books about com leadership in combat arms can transcend into business.

I do not believe that business leadership books have much, in my own personal opinion, much of a space to transcend into, uh, combat leadership.

Mostly because I believe that business leadership books are written under the general generalization of the creation of capital.

Where in leadership books or things like an our scenarios of where we've led and where we fought is, uh, the currency is sacrifice, right?

So we're not here to make a better bottom line.

We're here to be able to do a job where we are just trying to, to, to make through some pretty tough situations.

And that really resonates in your writing with me and, and things that I've been able to take away as well as a, as a hopeful future leader.

Ivan: No, I appreciate that.

I, I will say that hasn't stopped the Marine Corps from adopting, you know, Stephen Covey seven habits, uh, the Lean Sigma, six, all the other corporate stuff.

And I think there is a danger, especially when you're, and that's what sets people up, you know, very well to go into corporate type of transitions for the military.

The hardest part they have is that the people corporate are not military for the most part, and they, you can't talk to them certain ways and they, or understand that, you know, and so, you know, that's one part.

But the other part is we, you have to be very careful, particularly when you're dealing with, you know, human endeavors, um, that you, that you don't look at your people as capital or some sort of commodity that's easily traded or gotten yes.

You know, done away with.

And you, you, you know, the leadership thing is very simple, aj, and this is just, just observation, right?

People, people wanna know that their leaders give a shit about them, and they don't want to have their time wasted.

And they also want to be treated with dignity and respect.

They'll treat your people with dignity and respect, and don't waste their fucking time and you'll get

AJ: what you need.

I, I completely agree.

Fair.

That leads us into my three closing questions.

You just answered one of them, which is fantastic.

Alright, so these are my lightning rounds that we're kind of playing around with.

Right.

But they're lightning round questions that are 32nd answers or less.

I need bite-sized chunks of trying to, you know, summarize 24 years of fantastic, uh, service.

Um, alright.

So, okay.

First question is, uh, if you could meet anyone in history, who would it be and what would you say to them if you had 30 seconds to talk to them?

Not, what questions would you ask?

What would you say to this person if you had 30 seconds or less?

Oh gosh.

Ivan: I think if you got an opportunity to talk to Abraham Lincoln and just say, how did, how did you do it?

I love that.

And that's, I mean, you wanna talk about being assailed from all sides.

AJ: The idea that I look at with, uh.

The similarities between, I'm sure what, what he had to deal with and where we are at now is, is uh, um, I, we could, we could definitely use his leadership.

Ivan: They may have, you know what, as you're saying, that they may have subconsciously just 'cause you know, gave me 30 seconds and it's not like I wander.

I mean, I probably wander around thinking all the time if people, I wouldn't mind me, you're gonna think of it after this.

Like, I shoulda said this, oh, possibly I'll, I'll call you and be like, we gotta reshoot this.

No, I, nobody but po possibly.

Yeah, I think, I think maybe transcendentally it might have come in then I was like, you know what, I appreciate

AJ: that.

So you, you kind of covered it a little bit.

Um, if you have 30 seconds to distill for the next generation of leaders, what do you say?

Slow down

Ivan: and seek to understand.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate that We're moving way too fast.

I call it getting out ahead of your skis or Yeah.

Moving faster in your headlights or all the, all the anti, you know,

AJ: anecdotes, cliches apply.

And then my final question, you've kind of covered a little bit.

We've had some chats on and off air, um, about the state of what veterans and what the space looks like.

Can you describe for me what your vision of, as a father Right, as a, you know, special operations Marine for 24 years as a husband, as a man.

What does masculinity look like to you?

Grace,

Ivan: you have to have some grace for opinions that you don't like.

You have to be able to understand that.

You may not agree with everything out there, but you are in control of who you are and how you react.

And you have to give yourself some grace for that.

But it's too easy.

All, all the other stuff's out there being tough, being a man, et cetera.

But could you walk away from something and, you know, knowing you were right, even if you were the way you were gonna act was righteous and be comfortable with that.

I think it's a harder thing to do, you know, if you really talk about the Warrior's journey, it's a, it's one that's one I've learning and I think, I think maybe that's what I'm trying to do now is, is learn how to give myself and others, you know, grace, slow down, think about what, what's out there.

Wow, I really appreciate that.

Um, I really, really, God knows, you wouldn't want have known me as a lieutenant.

AJ: Well, uh, Ivan, uh, I cannot thank you enough.

Uh, so once again for anyone that's, uh, uh, listening, uh, or watching, uh, once we pledged forever, uh, Ivan Ingram, uh, retired Lieutenant Colonel from marsoc, uh, storied career.

We will put, uh, the book, uh, as well as his link for his substack in the description.

Uh, please, please, please.

I, I, I implore you to take a look at this.

I think that his writing, who this man is, um, is life changing.

Uh, and nothing short of that, uh, has been for me.

Um, and with that, I'll give you the parting shot, uh, uh, Mr.

Ingram, if you'd like to say anything to the audience before we go.

Ivan: Yep.

I really appreciate the time today, aj.

Definitely.

Um, you know, I'm, I never thought I'd say this before, but you can Google me.

I got a website and everything else and all those pluggables.

But, uh, it's, it's been my pleasure to come on and, and chat with you and.