[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jockel Bonkass number five-o-two with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening, I go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of February, the first air cavalry brigade had participated in thirty two separate engagements with the enemy that month.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had lost two aircraft with many others damaged as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: worst of all, we lost four fine officers, men who are sons, brothers, and fathers, men whose lost we mourn to this day.

[SPEAKER_00]: We came away from that month, changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were lessons learned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Things that we probably should have seen before, but either pride or stubbornness didn't allow us to.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we mourned, learned, and moved on.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was all we could do.

[SPEAKER_00]: It may sound cliche or corny, but we owed it to them to keep going.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is what they would have done.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Crazy Horse flying Apache attack helicopters with the first cavalry division in Iraq, two thousand six to two thousand seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was written by Daniel M.

McClinton, who's a retired chief on officer four.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he served in the army for twenty four years.

[SPEAKER_00]: beginning as a Huey pilot before eventually transitioning to the age sixty four Apache attack helicopter.

[SPEAKER_00]: He completed three combat tours to Iraq.

[SPEAKER_00]: Engaged the enemy in hundreds of contacts and flew more than a thousand hours in combat.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after retiring from the army, he wrote two books, Crazy Horse, the one I just mentioned, and thirty seven months.

[SPEAKER_00]: another book and he also produced a documentary film called The Longest Month.

[SPEAKER_00]: On top of all that he's a published photographer who specializes in as you might guess aviation photography.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his stories and lessons learned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dan, thanks for joining us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I had a real interesting time reading your book.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the most in-depth I've seen from the air side of the Iraq war and I was on the ground and I reckon you were talking before the podcast that we kind of missed each other on deployments by months here and there, but definitely recognize that the places that you are flying over in the areas of operations you were in.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, great to sit down and talk with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before we do jump into the book, let's just get a little background on where you came from, how you grew up.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was born and raised in Waco, Texas.

[SPEAKER_04]: My dad was a letter carrier for the post office for thirty-five years.

[SPEAKER_04]: We lived in the same house on E-Rath Avenue for, well, my parents lived there until they passed away.

[SPEAKER_04]: But my whole childhood lived in the same house.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you were growing up, what sports were you playing, what was school like for you?

[SPEAKER_04]: I played a little bit of everything being a child of the to seventies like we were always riding our backs around and playing whatever sport was the sport of the season organized sports I played baseball most that was the sport I played the most was baseball I played it from the time I could until high school [SPEAKER_00]: And then at what point did you start thinking about the military?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, there's a picture of me wearing an army uniform like when I was seven years old.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I got those two.

[SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, seriously thinking about what I wanted to do in life, as far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a pilot of some sort in the military.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what was your, when did you start thinking about helicopters?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, wake up Texas being in close proximity to Fordhood.

[SPEAKER_04]: I saw helicopters all the time.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, I have a picture of me sitting in the front seat of a cobra.

[SPEAKER_04]: They would bring aircraft to the county fair from Fordhood all the time when I was a kid and the fairgrounds were other four blocks from my house.

[SPEAKER_00]: So those recruiting efforts paid off eventually.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they did.

[SPEAKER_04]: Eventually, what I actually wanted to do at first, I wanted to be, I wanted to fly of six teams.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I joined Civil Air Patrol as a teenager with the goal like I wanted to go join the Air Force and fly fighters.

[SPEAKER_04]: and I would read everything I could get my hands on about, you know, there's a book called The Gridge about the Vietnam era war that I read.

[SPEAKER_04]: Anything that I could get my hands on about flying jets, I was doing it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the army, flying for the army, [SPEAKER_04]: I knew about it, I read about it, but my main focus was one to be in the Air Force.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then I went to college and fooled around and I was actually told by the Air Force ROTC.

[SPEAKER_04]: the professor and, you know, the guy in charge.

[SPEAKER_04]: He asked me one day, he goes, what do you, you know, why are you in the program?

[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, I want to fly, and he goes, well, I'm going to be honest with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not with those grades, you want to fly?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and the fact that he only had a certain number of flight slots to give the people from his program.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I was going [SPEAKER_04]: to a junior college, so he's straight up with me even if you go to a finish out of another college.

[SPEAKER_04]: The odds of that guy giving you his flight slots and not giving it to somebody who's been there for four years is not going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So did you continue with college?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or did he tell you about the Army program?

[SPEAKER_04]: he reminded me of it I knew it because we had a neighbor that actually talked to me about war officer like training and how I worked in the army he reminded me of it I got I ended up getting a degree in drafting and design and I worked for a government contractor in the Dallas for a work area for about two years okay and I remember one day I was sitting at the drafting table and [SPEAKER_04]: You know this is kind of a warning to folks like you know you may not want to get a job doing something that you think you enjoy because once you have to do it eight hours a day five days a week you don't enjoy it so much anymore because I always enjoy drawing until I had to do it for a living and I remember sitting at the drafting board one day I go I can't do this for the rest of my life [SPEAKER_04]: and the next day I went over the Army recruiter and I said I want to go to flight school and for anybody who happens to be watching and who's thinking about joining the Army and wants to go to flight school don't let them talk you into becoming a crew chief first if you really want to be a pilot recruiters they want to do what's easy for them because it gets them the credit for recruiting [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't blame them one bit, you know, because if I was in that position, why would I want to have to go through all the stuff you got to go through to get somebody qualified for a flight slot?

[SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of naively went in there and said, okay, if I can't get go to flight school, then I'm not joining the Army.

[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't didn't know that there were pre-study books for, you know, the test you have to digger in.

[SPEAKER_04]: Just went and took all those test gold.

[SPEAKER_04]: Still made it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's good.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you know past the flight flight physical You know went the basic training and I went the basic when I was twenty five so [SPEAKER_04]: And I hadn't, you know, it was twenty-five years old in the mid-eighties.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I wasn't exactly, you know, working out wouldn't a big deal in the eighties.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I wasn't really ready for basic training.

[SPEAKER_04]: I kind of kicked my butt, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna say that two years sitting at the drafting table couldn't help much.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, I didn't.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I played barely softball, but that's not enough to get you ready to go, you know, run a couple of miles and, you know, do all these pushups and clutter kicks and all that.

[SPEAKER_04]: All the stuff that we did.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you were good enough to make it thorough.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, stuck where they got through that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And this is the cool thing about it, like you can go right from the street to flight school.

[SPEAKER_04]: So once I finished basic training, they sent me to warn officer candidate school.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I got to take a little bit of leave at home.

[SPEAKER_04]: Then drove over to Fort Rucker in Alabama, went to warn officer candidate school, got through that six weeks.

[SPEAKER_04]: Then they told us it's going to be four months before you can start flight school.

[SPEAKER_04]: So between Finishing Warrants or Canada School and starting flight school, I think I painted every trash can on four-worker.

[SPEAKER_04]: What year is this?

[SPEAKER_04]: This is nineteen eighty six.

[SPEAKER_04]: So at that time, when you finish Warrant or Canada School, you're still a Warrant Officer Canada until you finished flight school.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I was, when you're on for a record war in Oxford Canada, it is pretty much lower than anyone.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we were doing picking up garbage, paint and stuff, moving people's furniture, anything that needed to be done.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I actually volunteered to go to Harris salt school just to get out of picking up garbage.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like there were, I want to say eight of us that went just to get out of doing all the details.

[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, it was good and I actually learned a little bit about how to plan aerosols and how all that stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's not the hardest school in the Army, but it was better than picking up garbage and pain and stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say so.

[SPEAKER_04]: So got done with that ended up starting flight school in January of eighty seven and went straight through and proud to say never got a pink slip which a pink slip when you're training and you have a bad day on the flight you get a pink slip.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many pink slips can you get before you get [SPEAKER_04]: Back then, I think, you know, because it's broken up the phases, so it's not cumulative.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I wanted to say, if you got more than two in a phase that you were going to get a progress, which meant another instructor was going to come and look at you.

[SPEAKER_04]: And if they thought you were salvageable, they could say, okay, we're going to send them for more flight time or, you know, whatever they thought they needed to do to fix you, or they could kick you out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you must have had some levels like natural ability in flying.

[SPEAKER_04]: I would think, you know, you would think so, but like I remember being on that bus, because we rode back and forth of the fly line on a bus.

[SPEAKER_04]: And when I first started flying, I remember being on that bus going, well, I guess I'm going to be an entertainment.

[SPEAKER_04]: I can't fly this thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and I had my instructor was what we called a screamer.

[SPEAKER_04]: He would like yell all the time.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it wasn't till I started actually, I got the opportunity to fly with another instructor that I realized that, oh, they aren't that way.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're not hitting you in the helmet with their little pointer.

[SPEAKER_04]: There wasn't anything that I could do to please him.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it was like, oh, what are you trying to do, kill me?

[SPEAKER_04]: And his only, you just kind of endured.

[SPEAKER_04]: And like when I took my check right, I got really good, you know, to get out of that phase.

[SPEAKER_04]: I actually got a really good grade, but he put me up with the minimum passing grade.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because I guess he didn't think I was any good.

[SPEAKER_04]: But like, I guess I didn't really understand the program because, you know, when you fly, there's a variance there.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's a window like you're supposed to hold, let's say, seventy knots.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you don't have to stay right on seventy knots.

[SPEAKER_04]: You have to be between sixty and eighty.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big variance.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's plus ten minus ten.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you didn't know that.

[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't really click with me because, you know, if I got off of seventy knots, this guy was screaming at me.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm like, you know, working my butt off to like, stay right all the same.

[SPEAKER_04]: And like, when I started taking my check right with the other guys, like, hey, you know, loosen up, you know, you don't have to [SPEAKER_04]: The secret, the flying, is not being tense.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because the more you tense up, the harder it is to be smooth on the control.

[SPEAKER_00]: How long do you spend in fixed wing before you get in a helicopter?

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, in the army, it's no fixed wing.

[SPEAKER_00]: No fixed wing at all.

[SPEAKER_04]: Jump in the helicopter, let's go.

[SPEAKER_04]: Dang.

[SPEAKER_04]: And a helicopter doesn't want to fly.

[SPEAKER_04]: So like, yeah, you got, I want to say primary back then was fifty, fifty hours.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you're supposed to solo by about fifteen or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this whole program started in Vietnam, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Taking kids off the street.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: They needed helicopter pilots.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say if I remember this correctly, there was five thousand huies that were sent to Vietnam in three thousand two hundred and more lost in combat.

[SPEAKER_04]: good, sounds about right, and a lot of them were accidents.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so, but they needed, they needed pilots.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they started this program where you could take a, eighteen, nineteen year old kid and they're out of high school and put them through this program and they go fly.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, back then they called it high school to flights.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Now they call it street to see because you get people with, you know, like I had college.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I never met so many college dropouts in my life, go to a guitar or any flight school.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've had some of those guys on this podcast talking about what that was like for them and and you know, those those Huey crews like the average age would be like twenty because the pilot would be twenty one or twenty and then you know the crew chief might be twenty one and then the door gunners eighteen is just young kids over there and you end up your first bird is he is Huey right and and what where did you get a sign for that?

[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, you know, you get to put in your want list.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I found this out later.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to go back to, I wanted to go to Ford Head Texas, which is about forty miles from my hometown.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I got it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I found out later, like anybody who asked for Ford, it's going to get it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Usually, the only people that want to go there are people from Texas.

[SPEAKER_04]: Everybody else is being forced together because it doesn't have a good reputation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was your first unit there.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was in the second armored division to unit that doesn't exist anymore, but it was Patton's division in World War II.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what's that like when you show up there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting good flight time?

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, it was the unit I was assigned to as a VIP unit.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we were responsible to be ready to do any kind of mission a utility pilot had to do, which meant aerosol.

[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, I was MVG qualified.

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but our primary job was to fly the division commander and his staff around Florida or anywhere they needed to go, which [SPEAKER_04]: to be honest actually helped me later on because it was a lot of jump through your past kind of like hey you know the aid would call us up and say pick up the general at this grid coordinate as fast as you can get there and then you know you go go out there picking up and then they hand you another grid taking over air and it was to go from one grid to the other so you know you learn how to read maps and because this is for GPS [SPEAKER_04]: So you learn how to figure out how to do that stuff really quick.

[SPEAKER_04]: And there's no sitting down in plan and you pull out the map and go.

[SPEAKER_01]: How do you like the Huey?

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, to this day, if I had to, if somebody said, let's go flying, I would want to get in the UH one because if you get that thing started, you're going flying because it's, it was reliable.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's pretty simple.

[SPEAKER_04]: If I had to go to combat again, I would want to go in a patchy, but if I was just going to fly around an helicopter, [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's probably you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this guys that food that thing, they just love that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it seemed like you could work on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it seemed like it was an old seventies muscle car.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, or like a late sixties muscle car that when you open up the hood, you could kind of see what you're doing with not like a modern day car, where when you open up the hood, there's a bunch of electronic computer stuff in there and you wouldn't know where to start.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's no computers on the UH on.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't like computers like here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I ended up being a maintenance test pilot on UH ones.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I knew how to troubleshoot everything on the aircraft by the time I was done flying that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what how the transition happened over to patches?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's kind of a little twisted story.

[SPEAKER_04]: I, as I just said, I was a maintenance test pilot, and I actually ended up being the production control officer for Batan, and the PC officer.

[SPEAKER_04]: His job is to assign maintenance priorities to all the aircraft in the Batan.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the Batan I was in had Black Oaks, OHCA, KAI was hand-hewies.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so I'd have a meeting every morning in the sign all these tasks of various people and and also did maintenance test flights on UH ones.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, [SPEAKER_04]: Despite having a job like that, I got passed over for CW-III, and this was during the Clinton administration, like right after Desert Storm, you know, when they drew down the Army.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the main reason I was told later on is because I was flying a legacy aircraft, and so if you didn't have a path to what was called an advanced aircraft, like a Black Hawk on a patch of yours, Chinook, they were getting rid of people.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, they were offering money.

[SPEAKER_04]: So after I got passed over and I went up, I talked to my career manager up at D.A.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, you know, I want to stay in the Army.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've been in for ten years.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like, what do I need to do?

[SPEAKER_04]: And he looked at my records and he goes, I can't tell you what to do.

[SPEAKER_04]: because there's nothing on here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why you got passed over.

[SPEAKER_04]: I said, well, if you can't tell me, I'm going to take the money and get out because how can I fix what they saw or why I don't know what it is.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because if you give passed over twice, it's kind of limited your options.

[SPEAKER_04]: So took the money, got out, actually went to work for petroleum helicopters flying off short of oil rigs.

[SPEAKER_04]: And when I was out there doing that, the Army sent out a message, basically saying, hey, we screwed up, we let too many people go.

[SPEAKER_04]: And part of the deal of me getting out, I was in the individual radar reserve.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I got picked up for W-III and the IRR.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you keep that money?

[SPEAKER_04]: I got to keep the money and I came back, but the deal for coming back is I had to go to the Apache course, which was cool with me because to be honest, when I went to the flight school, I wanted to be a cober guy and it just didn't work out.

[SPEAKER_04]: And like I said before, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, so I always wanted to engage the bad guys if I had to.

[SPEAKER_04]: Being a position where if I was getting shot at to be able to shoot back, [SPEAKER_04]: So came back, went to the Apache course.

[SPEAKER_00]: What years did that you come back in?

[SPEAKER_04]: Ninety-eight.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I got out in ninety-six, came back in ninety-eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then as a patchy school, and then where you get a sign from there?

[SPEAKER_04]: Back to fordood.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I was in fourth infantry division at Ford Hood, flying A-model of patches.

[SPEAKER_04]: And at that time, the Army was starting to replace the A-model with the D-model.

[SPEAKER_04]: And shortly before night eleven, I got assigned to a unit called a third squadron six cavalry.

[SPEAKER_04]: And they were forming up at Ford Hood to get qualified in the D-model and then go over to Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: So where are you on September eleventh?

[SPEAKER_04]: I was at Fort Ed going I was in a class Going to a class about it was something called Command Post of the Future [SPEAKER_04]: that sounds like a real DOD course right yeah it was actually most of the stuff actually exist in the real army now it's like it was basically digitizing everything so it was one of the first courses about how all this digitization was supposed to work like blue force tracker and all that stuff [SPEAKER_04]: And my job at the time was called the Battalion Tactical Operations Officer, which is a fancy term for a mission planner.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm also responsible for tactics and stuff like that, but it's mostly mission planning.

[SPEAKER_04]: So because I'm in the talk, and I was available, they sent me to that class.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we're sitting in this class, and all of a sudden, one of the instructor comes out and goes, you guys need to go back to your unit.

[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't say what happened, but we knew it was bad, because they go, hey, class is over.

[SPEAKER_04]: We don't think it's gonna happen tomorrow or when we don't know when, but you need to go back to your unit right now.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it wasn't till I got back to the unit that I found out what was going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then are you guys gearing up for deployment?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like immediately, or what did that look like?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we were opening up the vaults and pulling out all the secret stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was pretty certain given where our division was in the packing order and especially aviation unit because they were in the pipeline to get to switch out aircraft.

[SPEAKER_04]: So they were already ramping down and I was pretty certain that we weren't going to go.

[SPEAKER_04]: But still, we were pulling out all the stuff off a zipper like what's going on.

[SPEAKER_04]: and like it was it was really strange to see like M-One Abrams seeing at the front gate with a guy manning the fifty cow.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like when I came to work the next day it took me four hours to get on post because they were searching every single car coming through the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: how long did it take before you started before you were slaughtered and you know you knew you were going to your first plumber was to Iraq combat upon it so how long did it take before you knew where you got that you guys wanted to follow to Iraq?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well you know as I said before I got a son at three six cab that that continued on and we went over to Korea and I only spent ten months in Korea and got orders to come back to forehead to first cab.

[SPEAKER_04]: And when I came back, they had already deployed.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I had to go through the whole pre-deployment, shots, and issues, draw, and all that stuff by myself.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then I got put on a plane with the spare parts and ended up over there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to say it was May, two thousand six is when, no, two thousand four, May, two thousand four when I got over there first.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, it's interesting because I think I left in April of two thousand four.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we just did like a high five.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how was that first deployment when you're over there?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you know, it's kind of eye-opening because number one, you know, I've never been in combat before.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'd been in El Salvador and I actually, as far as the Army's concerned, I got a combat service patch.

[SPEAKER_04]: But that combat is not the same as what I saw in Baghdad, that deployment.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was the, what was your main mission during that deployment?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's always pretty much a nine one one troops in contact.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were doing counter mortar, counter rocket patrols, convoy security.

[SPEAKER_04]: But troops in contact and MetaVac were always first priority.

[SPEAKER_04]: You'd walk out the door with an idea of what you were going to do, but if there was troops in contact, we're dropping what we're doing and we're going to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And on that first deployment, so like I said, I left an April, and right before I left, things had really started to spiral downhill.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was the, the moddy army was getting all fired up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mooktaught all solder was going crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had actually captured one of Mooktaught all solder's top lieutenant's before we left, and that really pissed everyone off.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they started getting really nuts.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think you showed up into pretty much a shitstorm.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah, I spent the majority of a lot of missions around Sotter City supporting stuff going on in Sotter City.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, that's [SPEAKER_04]: You know, the most intense fire I've ever seen in my life was during that deployment.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was flying down a route gold.

[SPEAKER_04]: The ground unit, first BCT, first cab was given the job to go down that route to the solder bureau.

[SPEAKER_04]: They were, they were going to take out solder.

[SPEAKER_04]: because we'd finally add enough, you know, spoiler alert, we didn't take him out.

[SPEAKER_04]: But anyway, so they're going down a route gold and they called us in.

[SPEAKER_04]: They wanted us to put rockets down the street in front of him to suppress, I guess.

[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't get a real warm and fuzzy about why they wanted us to do what they wanted us to do, but there wasn't [SPEAKER_04]: There wasn't any harm to friendly, you know, if I just shoot the street, it's not gonna harm anything.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if that's what you want me to do, I'll do it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we're coming in one after another, relying on up on the street, and I was actually flying in the front seat then.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the fire coming to pass the canopy looked exactly like the final scene of Star Wars when Luke's flying down the [SPEAKER_04]: You know, through the Death Star.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there's tracers just like flying past the canopy.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've never seen anything like it before, since.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know how my aircraft didn't get hit.

[SPEAKER_00]: No hits on the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody was watching over us because the flight lead got hit.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's usually trail.

[SPEAKER_04]: our flight lead got hit in the terror drive shaft and this is like on the second or third pass so we had to go back to the far because anytime somebody gets hit you need to really check out the aircraft because you you don't know what [SPEAKER_04]: And he got back to the farming area.

[SPEAKER_04]: We came to fly this aircraft.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it was actually towards, we had like a four hour mission window and then another team would come up and replace us.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it was like, I think thirty minutes prior to us being replaced.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think the next team took off early.

[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, that was pretty high opening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how long was that deployment?

[SPEAKER_04]: I was over there for ten months at that time, but the battalion was there for a year.

[SPEAKER_04]: We left, I think we got extended a couple of weeks because they wanted us to cover the election, the first election.

[SPEAKER_04]: We covered the second battle of pollution.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that had to be a very intense.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they kind of kept us some of our guys handed up going over the city.

[SPEAKER_04]: Most of the missions I flew around the perimeter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what was the reason for that?

[SPEAKER_04]: It was just, you know, de-confliction of, you know, what was going on in the Marines were the major show in the, in the city.

[SPEAKER_04]: So they had, they had their idea of how they wanted to conduct cast and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we, we did work for Marines around the, around the perimeter, but most of the time I got there and worked with the Army guys that were supporting the effort.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were flying along the, you Friday's.

[SPEAKER_04]: One of our guys got shot up a boat that was full of ammo and guns, you know, for the insurgents that were in them.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, that's sort of why we're out there kind of like the, the handlepiece.

[SPEAKER_00]: The interdict.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, sir, you wrap up, so that deployment's ten months long and then you go back from that deployment and then what's next?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I knew I kind of touched on it in the book.

[SPEAKER_04]: I kind of knew because I start off the book talking about the end of this deployment like being down in Kuwait.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were there for a couple of weeks to decompress for when home.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the best place for decompressing.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, it was pretty useless.

[SPEAKER_04]: All I did was make people mad.

[SPEAKER_04]: But we knew staying in there based on what was going on when we laughed.

[SPEAKER_04]: I go, I work in a be back.

[SPEAKER_04]: So as soon as we got back, we got a new commander and that kind of gave rise to the joke amongst some of the pilots about us being the reverse pony express.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the reverse pony express speed?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, the commanders in the Army, you know, they before they take command, they go to some school or, you know, they're basically taking a break.

[SPEAKER_04]: They don't.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're not in it like the people in the unit are.

[SPEAKER_04]: So there's there's people assigned to the unit that are there for years and years and years.

[SPEAKER_04]: So commanders, two of duties, probably a couple of years.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the old commander, you know, he's like, go, go, go, you know, like we've got to, you know, glory the calf, all that kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: and he finishes up his command and does a high five with the new guy coming in and that guy's go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go [SPEAKER_00]: In some way, outdo their last commander.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if the previous guy had done this many training operands, this is during there's no war going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if this guy did this many training operations, the new commander would want to do at least a few more than that guy did.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's raised the bar a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's definitely their attitude where they're in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing that's, you know, I've been talking about with civilian companies, military leadership, like you don't have, there's military leaders that get promoted up the ranks that are not good leaders and they say, well, how does that happen?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because they're only in that position for two years and it takes the troops, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: five or six months to figure out, wait a second, is this guy, this guy seems like he might be a jackass, wait, dude, should we be listening to this guy?

[SPEAKER_00]: This guy seems like, and then, you know, by the time you get to a year, you've confirmed, like, oh, yeah, this guy is definitely a jackass, but now we're getting ready for deployment, so we know it's gonna cause a bunch of drama if we do it, if we try and, you know, you serve this guy as command, so we'll suck it up, and the troops on the ground are doing a good job, because they wanna do a good job, because they're proud soldiers, [SPEAKER_00]: And then that guy gets a good fitness report, even though he was terrible, and the troops were able to do a good job despite his leadership.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens, that guy gets promoted.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that definitely occurs.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you deploy, you come back, you get a new commander, let's go go go again, and then it's back to Iraq again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then how long is this next deployment?

[SPEAKER_04]: Fifteen months.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what's that one consist of?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or we get into, is this the one that you're, we're getting into the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, so prior to that one, you get your, you get something like you got a good work up for this next deployment that you're going to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys do, uh, good for Darwin, and you do, which is a, I don't know, for us, it's awesome training.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when seals go up there to train, it's awesome because they have [SPEAKER_00]: Great, you know, urban towns.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've got targets to be hit.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've got all these crazy role players that, you know, speak Arabic or at least at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were speaking Arabic.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have the army to interact with.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've got armor.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's it like for you guys?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, what a lot of people don't know.

[SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of pilots get frustrated because all these training center rotations.

[SPEAKER_04]: If it's a, if it's in association with a brigade combat team, it's about the, it's about training that brigade combat team.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to, we as aviation are inablers and supporters.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if I get training out of it, I'm going to get training out of it regardless, but it's not focused on me for the most part.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it can be frustrating at times because there's, and I get it because if the BCT is not getting its training, accomplishing its training goals because I killed the bad guy.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, because I saw him and then I killed him and I just wrecked their whole training iteration.

[SPEAKER_04]: I understand why, okay, we're just going to reset this and patch you guys.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can just go away now.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, and to be honest, like this training period before we went over the next time, we went to GRTC too, which is in [SPEAKER_04]: Louisiana.

[SPEAKER_04]: That was a little better, and it had more aviation, centric stuff for us to do, that we got better training over there, I believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: So did you feel like you were taking some of the lessons that you guys had learned on the previous deployments to Iraq and you're starting to be able to train at least towards those situations you know you're going to be facing?

[SPEAKER_04]: You know what's funny about that is [SPEAKER_04]: When I saw some things over there that convinced me that we needed to be more joint, that we needed to be able to capture the assets that were already on the battlefield and use their abilities.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, like, there's I have sixteenths up there and nonstop.

[SPEAKER_04]: We weren't talking to them.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that guy is just circling around at ten, fifteen, whatever altitude they're at.

[SPEAKER_04]: can use his optics and look for stuff that's not putting me at risk and then we can use him better or even use him at all.

[SPEAKER_04]: We weren't using them.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I saw that I wrote a decision paper, like, and sent it up to division, well, went through my chain of command, and ended up going to division, to send our instructor pilots to the FACA course.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, you were told me that before we hit record today, and you came out here to Coronado, or the FACA course.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I went to the ground school.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wasn't an instructor pilot, so they didn't let me go to Yuma.

[SPEAKER_04]: The instructor pilot went to Yuma and they had to be an instructor pilot because the Marine had to fly in the aircraft to give them instruction.

[SPEAKER_04]: And if you're not an instructor pilot, you can't fly somebody who's not rated in the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before we jump into Iraq, you mentioned that on one of your previous deployments, you said you were in the front seat.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the difference between the front seat guy and the back seat guy in Apache?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's, they're both pilots.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's basically rolled.

[SPEAKER_04]: So usually the guy in the front seat is working the site.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's primarily in charge of the weapons.

[SPEAKER_04]: the person in the back flies the aircraft, usually the pilot in command is in the back.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he's telling the guy in the front what to do, orienting him on what we need to look at or what our objectives are, what priorities are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the weapon systems give us a quick brief on the weapon systems that we're using.

[SPEAKER_04]: So over in Iraq, the primary weapon system that we were using was the thirty millimeter chain gun.

[SPEAKER_04]: Believe it's right a fire.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's been about fifteen years since I've flown one.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I apologize if I get this wrong.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure somebody else correct me in the comments.

[SPEAKER_04]: I want to say it's like six hundred rounds a minute.

[SPEAKER_04]: great a fire, but usually fire tended to tend to twenty round bursts.

[SPEAKER_04]: At first we were using ten round bursts but found that wasn't doing the job sometimes so we increased the burst rate up to twenty.

[SPEAKER_04]: Aircraft usually carry around two hundred rounds on a mission.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, I had a twenty round burst, you got ten round, ten bursts.

[SPEAKER_04]: Usually carried three to four hellfire and thirty-six rockets.

[SPEAKER_04]: And those rockets were our mix of point detonating, flushet rounds, and we usually carried on a safe four elimination rounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty good, pretty good savior to show up on seeing if you're on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're gonna get into some of that stuff all right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get to this book again.

[SPEAKER_00]: The name of the book is Crazy Horse.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fantastic read.

[SPEAKER_00]: Get it if you don't have it yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Go order it right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys arrive, Camp Taji, October, two thousand and six.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is, I had just, I actually left in October, two thousand six.

[SPEAKER_00]: I left October, twenty first, two thousand six.

[SPEAKER_00]: you say this they call the process rip or relieve in place and for those leaving it can't go fast enough for those just arriving it always seems as if you are being rushed and pushed into a position you aren't quite ready for and you know you again I'm gonna read just some some high points of the book but of course you have to attend a bunch of meetings [SPEAKER_00]: and the outgoing brigade commanders giving you guys kind of a brief and you say he had his own presentation where he bragged about his gun crews having tactical patients and then showed and then he showed some gun camera tape that pretty much outraged me and I know from comments that were made in the meeting quite a few others as well the tape began in the middle of a troops in contact tick situation [SPEAKER_00]: The presentation showed several US vehicles and troops on a street just outside a mosque and Baghdad being fired on by some people on the high brick walls surrounding the mosque and from the Minaret on the grounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: It appeared to me that it was entirely possible to engage these people within the rules of engagement that were in the effect at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, it also appeared to me that they could have done so without causing any significant collateral damage, but they didn't engage.

[SPEAKER_00]: They watched as American troops were being shot at and did nothing, and their commander held them up as an example of what was right.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I was watching the tape, I was thinking, shoot.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the same time, I heard several other people in the room muttered the same thing under their breath.

[SPEAKER_00]: The longer we stayed in the room with that kernel, the more obvious it became why they didn't shoot.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you already had a little sense of they were being a little bit too restrictive.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think they, after talking with some people that were in that unit, I believe they had the attitude of, they wanted to go along get along, and they wanted to be the nice guy, and just based on my experience, the previous time I was over there, people in that part of the world respect the strongholds.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you're the nice guy, if you turn the other cheek, that's just sweetness to especially the bad guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: turn the other cheek, the other cheek's getting smacked too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I never really recognized the thirty millimeter chain gun as a nice, the tool of the nice guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: My, my opinion.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually we all the left seat right seat rides and local area orientations were done and we had the controls.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our helpful hosts had packed up and left and we had the mission.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the first missions we flew came under fire while conducting a recon mission resulting in a damage to an aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's out of the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are getting aircraft damage.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go through kind of the, you go through the kind of the uptemple that you guys were on.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to run through this real quick.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wake up, seven, thirty personal hygiene, seven, thirty to seven, forty five breakfast, seven, forty five to eight, forty five.

[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure to allow the time needed to walk a quarter mile to a half mile to and from the defac briefing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Zero nine hundred to ten, fifteen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once we finish briefing is about a mile walk to the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pre-flight, ten thirty to eleven thirty.

[SPEAKER_00]: APU start up and run up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Eleven forty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cooling down the electronics usually took twenty minutes or so, and the summertime took much longer to get the fleer down to the proper operating temperature.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was something I did not understand at all, is that since it's so freaking hot and I rack, you had to turn on the aircraft, turn on the cooling, and then it would cool the electronics down enough where it would start functioning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take off, twelve o'clock.

[SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to depart on the schedule time, which meant taxi out and then conduct daily engine health, indication text, test, weapons, poor site, and before take off checks in order to be ready to lift off on the schedule time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Schedule landing, a sixteen hundred.

[SPEAKER_00]: We would normally have a three to four hour mission if the BHO took place on time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you extended on station either because the mission went longer, your replacement had maintenance issues, all the following tasks would shift backward or right on the schedule.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then post flight debrief, sixteen hundred to eighteen thirty.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you had nothing significant to report, the debrief would go quickly.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you had an engagement however, depending on what happened, you'd be doing paperwork for quite some time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dinner eighteen thirty to nineteen thirty.

[SPEAKER_00]: This all dependent on the defac, you chose to eat at or someone brought you a sandwich on down the flight line, quarters twenty hundred.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's your daily.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, basically working the entire day.

[SPEAKER_04]: In most pilots, they flew five days on and one day off.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then how did you rotate like going night versus day?

[SPEAKER_04]: I forget what the, because I was, I was on batained staff, so I would fill in.

[SPEAKER_04]: I was actually assigned to be company to fly with them.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I would fill in where their commander needed a pilot to give somebody a break.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I ended up flying like two, three times a week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so does that mean you're, you're flying with different people all the time?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And is that difficult or the standard operating procedures so clear that everyone just kind of rolls the same way?

[SPEAKER_04]: After a while, I knew most of them.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, at first, you know, if you haven't flown with somebody, it's a learning process.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that seems like it'd be a little bit strange.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, yeah, there is an SOP of how things are supposed to work, but everybody has their own little things or, you know, the way they do things.

[SPEAKER_00]: and you would be either in the front seat or the back seat, just depending on what they needed.

[SPEAKER_04]: Usually, because I was a senior pilot, I would usually be the pilot in command.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things you talk about here is the fobits.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was the deal with the fobits?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's a person who inhabits the fob, the forward operating base, and they never leave it.

[SPEAKER_04]: My only gripe with them for the most part is they were buying all the Dr.

Pepper in the P.A.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so they're basically staying in the air conditioned, you know, nice chow haul and all that stuff while you guys are out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it sounds freaking miserable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did they have AC in the aircraft?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's nice.

[SPEAKER_04]: If it breaks, you have to actually fly back because, well, to be honest, the AC's there for the electronics.

[SPEAKER_04]: I get what's left over.

[SPEAKER_04]: So like if you're flying in the afternoon and Iraq, the cockpit temperature is ninety-ish, you know, you point the van at your face.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not going to, I'm not going to bitch about that because I remember flying around and looking at how to see some guy in body armor like out on the street.

[SPEAKER_04]: But it's not.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, how somebody might think like your car, you know, it's a hundred and whatever outside in your cars, like you've got ice cubes going out there.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's not like that, but it's better than being outside.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you, you being the ops guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other guys are they on their running that schedule every day and is there more is their schedule more consistent than yours that they're flying like every day at twelve o'clock every day twelve o'clock or is everyone kind of rotating around the schedule.

[SPEAKER_04]: They would they would rotate.

[SPEAKER_04]: I want to save as every.

[SPEAKER_04]: see there every two or every three weeks they would shift got it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So each company had to put up two missions a day because we had to have a team up twenty four seven three sixty five weather weather permitting.

[SPEAKER_04]: So there's three line companies that fly in a battalion.

[SPEAKER_04]: So each company had to put up you know with the four-hour mission window each company had to put up two missions a day.

[SPEAKER_00]: twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whether's generally speaking, flyable, generally speaking.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you get to the sandstorms.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wouldn't say, you know, it's like flying around in the states where you can see, remember flying around in Texas, you could almost see the Dallas, you know, the skies are so clear.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'd never see skies that clear in Iraq.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's always dust or [SPEAKER_00]: there's always something on fire fast forward a little bit here I was flying that morning and this is January twenty thirty-two thousand seven I was flying that morning as lead in an A-W-T would say W-T attack weapons team [SPEAKER_00]: with First Lieutenant Smith Griggs, a West Pointer from Dothan, Alabama, as my CPG.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were operating in the Northeastern parts of Baghdad and checking NAIs when we heard a May Day call on a bag on Baghdad radio.

[SPEAKER_00]: We rushed toward the area, just north of the green zone, where the blackwater aircraft was calling from.

[SPEAKER_00]: So blackwater, this is the private military corporation that was doing all kinds of stuff when I rack at this time.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were working for today.

[SPEAKER_04]: They were working for the state department.

[SPEAKER_00]: doing, um, they were doing everything and they had, they had helicopters, they had, they had many birds.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had, they had some pretty good assets and in this particular case, one of them was calling them a day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I called Washington Tower, the entity that controlled the airspace and immediately vicinity of the green zone and told them we need to shut down the airspace to the northeast due to a fallen angel.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means we got a helicopter down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Trail called battalion and Baghdad radio as we established ourselves in zone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was talking with one of the blackwater aircraft pilots who was desperately searching for the lost aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: He thought they had possibly gone down in the tiger's river so we worked back and forth in the vicinity of the river looking for signs of a downed aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: We could see no signs of anything resembling a helicopter or a crash site.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no smoke, fire, or even massing of people that might indicate the location of a downed aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: Minutes went by as we continued to search with no results after about fifteen to twenty minutes of fruit the searching.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were tasked by a tack mic to respond to a ground unit a couple of kilometers away on the east side of the river that was in contact and receiving fire from enemy forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt bad about leaving the black water guys to continue their search.

[SPEAKER_00]: but they did have the other aircraft above us to lend them assistance as needed.

[SPEAKER_00]: We pushed over the ground units frequency and quickly flew to their location.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when you get to like a troops in contact like that, you're getting called, told the location to fly to and they give you a frequency to bump to.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that group on the ground and this is, again, you and I were talking about this before we hit record.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's awesome about Apache's is, [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like part of, once you guys check on board, it's like your part of the ground unit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the guys on the ground, you can just talk to them like human beings.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't know this in the military, when you're calling for fire, there's special qualifications that you're supposed to have.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's protocols that you have to go through [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, it can be a really complex thing, especially from fast-moving aircraft that are ten thousand feet in the air, but you guys are more like around aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are so close to the ground, and you just communicate in direct language with the guys on the ground, and you can make things happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a good assessment?

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, we had a road show where several worn officers would go around to the ground units that we would support.

[SPEAKER_04]: and give them a class, you know, so we could coordinate better.

[SPEAKER_04]: So they wouldn't feel like, you know, because a lot of guys, they'd get on the radio and they weren't sure what to say or how to go about it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we're just like, Tom, just tell us what you want, tell us where the bad guys are, and we'll do the rest.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I think it paid dividends.

[SPEAKER_04]: We actually, in my shop, we made a card that we handed out to the ground units.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is what we're going to tell you.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because every time we called somebody on the radio, I told them how much station time I had, what kind of ammo I had on board and what we were.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so we told them exactly what we were capable of and how long we were going to be there if they needed us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, we were talking about this before he recorded, but there's really tight protocols to follow when you're calling.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say a fixed wing fast moving aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in this case, you know, I can say, hey, do you see the big white building?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, do you see the small white building next to it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's bad guys in that building and boom, you can you can clear yourself out as the pilot to go and freaking engage that building, which is awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Going back to the book here.

[SPEAKER_00]: We found the unit easily.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were moving through congested city streets of eastern Baghdad and striker infantry vehicles.

[SPEAKER_00]: A striker was a big, was as big as a small bus and green in color so they were typically easy to spot among all the tan and browns of Baghdad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I made one turn around the friendlies and as I came around I saw the muzzle flash from an automatic weapon that was firing out of an open door of a side building that was attached to a mosque.

[SPEAKER_00]: A person inside the mosque was obviously shooting toward one of the strikers moving down the adjacent street.

[SPEAKER_00]: The friendlies didn't have anything [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't have any dismounts out at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So while I saw, well, what I saw may be concerned it was something that we could take a bit more time to get set up on.

[SPEAKER_00]: As you might imagine, a mosque is a sensitive area and we needed to be careful about shooting up a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I called out the muzzle flash to Lieutenant Griggs.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've got muzzle flash off the nose in the mosque.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's right off the nose.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know how he could miss it, so to make my point I entered a dive pointing the aircraft directly at the offending doorway.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aggressively pushing forward on sight on the cyclic, I said, it's right there in front of us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the textbook way of handling handing over targets from the back seat to the front cedar, and if I had to do it over again, I would've done it differently, but it got the job done.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it was the dive or the noise the blades on the aircraft when they get loaded and it turned, but the firing stopped.

[SPEAKER_00]: We continued to circle, but could never break out any one of the weapon in or near the mosque.

[SPEAKER_00]: It happened this way most of the time when we responded to a troops in contact call.

[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as the enemy heard the approaching aircraft or saw us, they would break contact.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was rare they would stand in flight if they knew we were about.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they knew what we were about, we jokingly called such situations, twicks, troops were in contact.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seriously though, if we were able to get the enemy off the backs of our ground forces, we had done our job.

[SPEAKER_00]: We relayed that in the info about the shooter of the ground unit and provided security for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, the downed blackwater aircraft had finally been located.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's good little indication kind of what you guys are doing out there.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Getting your front seat to see that.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, my proudest moment.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because there's textbook ways of handing over a target to a front theater.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the more textbook ways that talking them on?

[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, well, as you probably know, like an Apache when you fly, you've got this monical on your right eye.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that's what you can use to aim the gun with.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I could have told him my line of sight.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've got a shooter and he could have set the sight up to slave to my line of sight.

[SPEAKER_04]: Got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that would have been the more patient waited to get there.

[SPEAKER_04]: It would have been the more for-refer-approved way of passing that target.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm sure that Mujahideen fighter, when he saw you freaking good, getting right towards him, I'm sure that shot him down pretty quick.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well something made him move so fast for a little bit fallen angel again January twenty eight two thousand seven again.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are like you know a few days apart that we're dealing with here.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were fast for what we were directed to find about fifteen minutes out the Baghdad to the vicinity of Salman Park pack.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember this little area of operations and link up with a ground patrol in zone two-o-two that was searching for some individuals who had taken a shot or two at them earlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were working this contact looking in the reads around the Tigers River for these shooters when I got a call from Captain Dagle and I say that right, Dagle?

[SPEAKER_00]: In the talk, the words sent a chill through me, fallen angel, another aircraft had gone down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unbeknownst to us earlier that day, a special US Army Special Forces team along with their Iraqi counterparts had been ambushed near the city of Anna Joff by what ended up being a force of over eight hundred enemy combatants.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our sister battalion, the four, two hundred and twenty-seventh avian call sign big gun, sent an A.W.T.

[SPEAKER_00]: in response to the call for help while engaging enemy forces just north of the city, big gun, five, three and H.D.

[SPEAKER_00]: and H.D.

[SPEAKER_00]: and H.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.

[SPEAKER_00]: and Captain Mark Rush was brought down by multiple hits from various weapon systems.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, there were no survivors.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their flight lead big gun five to being flown by CW-four, Johnny Judd and CW-two, Jake Gatson, Gaston had taken battle damage that disabled their thirty millimeter gun, but they had remained on station guarding their fellow troopers until help arrived in the form of another big gun team.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were dispatched to relieve them and pick up the flight.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's got to be a hairy situation when you know that aircraft has already been shot down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Guys have been killed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other aircraft's been hit and damaged.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's your thought process going into the situation like this?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well to be honest at the time, I didn't, you know, you only know what they tell you.

[SPEAKER_04]: So what we didn't talk about is like I responded to a fallen angel earlier, actually in the first deployment, I responded to one.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's usually when you get there because the bad guys for the most part knew that somebody, you know, all hell's going to break loose if they stay around.

[SPEAKER_04]: They usually break contact as soon as something like that goes down.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we're headed that way and because there's a lot of unanswered questions like at that time I didn't know there were eight hundred bad guys down there.

[SPEAKER_04]: We just heard there was like a troops in contact that we were supposed to go break up and [SPEAKER_04]: that's something you were doing every day and I think at the first the first radio call they may have said like twenty or thirty harmed insurgents which is not that hair raising and it took thirty minutes to fly there from where we were at so unfortunately you know that gives you time to think about things you know because you're flying and there's you know not much else to do other than think [SPEAKER_04]: And the closer as time went on, we get situation updates and the number of bad guys keeps growing and growing and growing.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so we're like talking to each other going like what the hell's going on down there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we're at least smart enough to look at the, we have moving map in the aircraft so we're at least smart enough to look at the map, look at where the shoot down area is.

[SPEAKER_04]: and come over the plan about how we're going to come in there.

[SPEAKER_04]: So there was a lot of desert out to the west of where the shoot down was just wide open desert.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we decided and it was late afternoon we decided to go out to the west and come in that way so the sun would be behind us.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if the guys on the ground had a manpads as a man portable air defense weapon, the sun would help us in that respect and also just coming out of the sun makes it harder for them to see us to shoot at us.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we set out to the set up out to the west out there and I think we went through one turn and [SPEAKER_04]: my front seat are looked inbound on that on the side.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he saw like twenty bad guys just lined up on a on a burn like shooting towards the friendlies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, going to the book here.

[SPEAKER_00]: You say we approach the flight from the north swing out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why do the west to stay clear the flight until we were invited in after getting situation update from big gun.

[SPEAKER_00]: We took over the flight around fifteen hundred flight lead was talking with the J attack on the ground Titan.

[SPEAKER_00]: Zero one while I main contact with big gun C.P.

[SPEAKER_00]: at Cal Sur.

[SPEAKER_00]: After we made a couple turns in an orbit to the west, I heard Jake's explain man oh man.

[SPEAKER_00]: I snuck a look out of my left side TSD where I had Jay's video displayed and saw two groups of armed men each number between ten and fifteen arrayed along an east west running north, earth and berm.

[SPEAKER_00]: firing at friendly forces to the north.

[SPEAKER_00]: I called dog on internal and asked him, do you guys have eyes on two groups of individuals on the east west berm?

[SPEAKER_00]: Dog replied immediately that they did.

[SPEAKER_00]: We divided up the targets.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the next pass, lead would take the far group and we would take the near targets.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to stay out of Jay's cockpit and let him set the aircraft up so he could be ready to engage as necessary.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this was going to be the first time he would fired anything in anger.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to talk to him about how I saw the engagement going.

[SPEAKER_00]: I reminded Jay that on the basis of my previous experience, once we started firing, I expected them to scatter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he should take his time and engage whatever targets he could fire at after the first burst.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd lagged back a bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when Dog broke off his first attack run, [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be in position to cover his egress and engage.

[SPEAKER_00]: I saw him break to the left and I called visual and inbound.

[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as lead was clear of us, I informed Jay.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was cleared to engage.

[SPEAKER_00]: His first burst of thirty millimeter was a little left and he got no immediate effects on target.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he adjusted and fired again.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got three bursts off on the first pass.

[SPEAKER_00]: The weird thing is that I was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: The AIF that's anti-airarchy forces stayed in place even though thirty millimeter rounds were bursting around them.

[SPEAKER_00]: We found out later in the after-action review that the ground unit found atchropene injectors and other types of drugs among the bodies.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were apparently higher than a kite at this time, which might explain why they didn't move.

[SPEAKER_00]: In retrospect, I wish I had fired rockets in our initial pass since a group of individuals in the open as a classic rocket target.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the second pass, we got a little better weapon effect on Target.

[SPEAKER_00]: We broke off our gun run and we were in the turn to pick up lead who was outbound.

[SPEAKER_00]: I looked back over my shoulder just to ensure nobody was trying to shoot us in the ass.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just then I saw a huge explosion to the north side of the berm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I immediately called dog since he was on the primary guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the primary guy talking with a J-Tac and asked, did the Air Force just drop a bomb?

[SPEAKER_00]: Say again, did the Air Force just drop a bomb?

[SPEAKER_00]: We just had a huge explosion on the side of the burn, not that I know of.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it was, it caused the people who were able to start moving off the burn and down toward a trench at the base of the hill.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was, in fact, a bomb dropped by an F-X-X-X from somewhere up in the ether.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was amused to read in an article in Stars and Stripes newspaper a few months later that this bomb strike turned the tide of the battle, and the pilot of the F- Sixteen received a distinguished flying cross for his actions that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell those brown dudes on the ground that the battle was over, so we turned in, bound, and fired all our remaining flushet rockets into the trench line.

[SPEAKER_00]: We couldn't tell till we reviewed the tapes back at Camp Taji, but we did get good effects with the rockets, which we followed up with the gun getting good hits.

[SPEAKER_00]: That seems crazy that there's a freaking F- Sixteen drop in bombs while you guys are in the areas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a lot like an error of some kind?

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't technically know that the Jay-Tak, I wasn't in, I wasn't in, you know, range of it.

[SPEAKER_04]: uh...

the jacac has control of all that had i would have just it was a communications problem is what it was it wasn't i don't think there was anything wrong that went on got it it was just the fact okay he didn't know about it i knew it was a bomb that blew up but it's like it's somebody in a tell us that they're dropping bombs [SPEAKER_04]: Now, I wasn't on the freak with the J-TAC, so they may have told dog up in the front that yeah, we're bringing in some guys to drop.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I just think it was a communication problem, but you know, that's war.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you read an article that that stars and stripes article that that saved the day, apparently.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the funny thing about it is the awards that we were put in toward downgraded by division.

[SPEAKER_04]: And they certainly weren't distinguished flying roses.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, you guys spend more time down there and get that place mopped up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, we were released to return to Taajie after take off dog punched in a direct route back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: We flew the aircraft as fast so we could go.

[SPEAKER_00]: We arrived at Taajie and taxi next into parking, shutting down with over eight hours of flight time for the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't left the cockpit or moved out of the seat in that time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Freaking eight hours sitting in that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you guys wear like a pest bladder or something?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you got a pest?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, usually what would happen is down on the fly line before we went out to the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_04]: They had a freezer and had like bottles of gatorade and then they were frozen.

[SPEAKER_04]: put it up on the dash and about halfway through the mission.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's unfrozen, so you can drink some cold gator.

[SPEAKER_04]: When you empty the bottle, you got something to piss in.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if you need to pee, you transfer the controls to the other pilot and take care of business.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what the girls do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you continue to say the battle went on all night as a U.S.

[SPEAKER_00]: Air Force and our attack helicopters continued to pound enemy positions after the battles over ground forces found at least six hundred enemy dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's freaking crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the for the Iraq war, that's a lot of dead people at this time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know once you know ISIS started moving with mass troops with carrying flags and big convoys, this is a little bit more common, but during the night, two AC one, thirty gunships expended all their ammunition.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the most extensive air battle the entire Iraq war, our brigade maintained aircraft on station over the fallen aircraft until everything was recovered.

[SPEAKER_00]: The A-Company A-W-T remained on station in excessive eight hours as well, and ultimately escorted one of the friendly units south through the city of Omnjaf before returning to the end of mission at Tajji.

[SPEAKER_00]: During the unit's next appointment to Iraq in two thousand nine warders received that the fourth battalion, two hundred twenty-seven the aviation one cd had received the valors unit award for their actions near Najoff on January twenty-eighth two thousand seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: To date the elements from first battalion two hundred twenty-seven the AVN that participated have yet to be recognized by the army for the part we played that day.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's typical.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to say, who are you, are you holding your breath on that recognition?

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, we got my unit the first time I was over there got a naval unit commendation for in the battle of Felicia.

[SPEAKER_04]: We still, they, that unit still doesn't have the streamer on their on their paddle flag.

[SPEAKER_00]: Going back to the book here, what, what started with the shoot down of a UH-sixty with the call sign of EZ-Forty on January, twenty if escalated over the month of February, eventually a total of eight hall helicopters we brought down by enemy fire resulting in the loss of twenty four lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: between January, January, and February, twenty-second.

[SPEAKER_00]: Most of these incidents were in or near the crazy horse area of operations, so some of us had appeared that something we had feared for a long time was coming to pass.

[SPEAKER_00]: The AIF, which is anti-racchi forces in the AQI, which is al Qaeda in Iraq, would be getting to specifically target helicopters with teams, specifically to shoot them down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a lot of helos going down that had to start to give you guys the Some nerves wire flying to be honest you know because it was my job to think about those kind of things [SPEAKER_04]: I was surprised they didn't do it earlier because all you had to do is look at what happened in Mogadishu.

[SPEAKER_04]: And no hit on anybody in a convoy or anybody on the ground.

[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody bats in the state when somebody blows up a truck.

[SPEAKER_04]: He starts shooting down a bunch of aircraft.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's on the evening news and it's a big deal.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it just surprised me that they didn't get around to it sooner.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: February, second, two thousand seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew something was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Almost as soon as I got out of bed that morning when I tried to check my email, the internet was down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I stuck my head outside the trailer and it was unusually quiet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something just didn't feel right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Since I wasn't on the schedule of fly that day, I took my time putting on my uniform and set out for the talk.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was immediately apparent when I opened the door to our CP that something terrible had occurred.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had an aircraft down in the crew was lost.

[SPEAKER_00]: When they came to work that morning, CW for Keith Yokeham, saying that right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And CW two Jason different.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Attended a mission briefing with their wingmen and flight lead, Crazy Horse O seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: They walked out the door as Crazy Horse O eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did their pleat pre flight ran up and took off just like every other mission they'd flown during in Iraq during that deployment.

[SPEAKER_00]: As they approached the test fire area, the flight ran into a helicopter ambush.

[SPEAKER_00]: Much like the crew of easy- Forty, almost two weeks before Keith and Jason were surprised by a coordinated attack by multiple weapon systems designed to bring maximum fire power to bear against an airborne target.

[SPEAKER_00]: On that day, Keith and Jason were flying slightly behind Leet, the flight lead as they entered the ambush area.

[SPEAKER_00]: As is their want, the enemy chose to engage the trail aircraft since it was in the middle of the ambush zone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keith and Jason's aircraft were struck with multiple rounds in its afth part near the rear avionics bay and the hydraulic fluid reservoir.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the cockpit of CZO-A, they knew the aircraft had been hit.

[SPEAKER_00]: They pushed through the ambush and attempted to evaluate the damage to their aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keith announced to lead that he had received enemy fire and had a utility hydraulics failure.

[SPEAKER_00]: The emergency procedure for that failure would have been for them to make the five-minute flight back to Camp Taji or, in a worst case, pick a spot and find a place to land.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Keith and Jason elected to stay in the fight.

[SPEAKER_00]: During a rapid turning, turbulent flight fight that followed CZ-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z- [SPEAKER_00]: So, minutes after initially coming under fire, as they were attempting to engage the enemy with two-point-seven-five-inch rockets, the aircraft finally gave up coming apart and falling to Earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy horse, zero-eight was lost.

[SPEAKER_00]: QRF was aerosolted into secure the site initially.

[SPEAKER_00]: It took a ground convoy from one BCT over seven hours to fight their way through multiple ID's taking casualties in the process of getting to the site, but they persevered and eventually made it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a particularly bitter pill for those of us who had been here during OIF-II to see that this area had been cleared of AIF was riddled again with IEDs and other enemy activity.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pilots remains were secured and returned to Camp Toggi where they were prepared for their journey home.

[SPEAKER_00]: The rest of us were left to think about how this event occurred and how we could work to make sure something like that didn't happen again.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the aftermath, we applied the lessons learned from this event and we put our heads down and drove on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime a unit loses someone, there's a ceremony that, according to tradition, must be carried out.

[SPEAKER_00]: This occasion was no different.

[SPEAKER_00]: A military memorial can be quite affecting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I sometimes think that the army sat down and tried to make something so emotional that you would get it all out of your system at once so you could go on and get past this painful experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: The war doesn't stop when you lose guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it, you know, here are two awesome people that you know and you're with them and you're talking to them and then they're gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as much as that hurts within hours, if not days, you get your gear back on and you gotta go out into your job.

[SPEAKER_04]: there was another team out there right that second that was still flying mission and they knew those guys were dead so you got to keep just got to keep going because there were people depending on us did um [SPEAKER_00]: You do a really great job.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go into some of the ceremony itself and how that went and what that's like.

[SPEAKER_00]: How did that impact you guys and what your thought process were?

[SPEAKER_00]: You as a senior flight guy, did you see guys start more nervous?

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you have anybody that was that you had to talk to and kind of help them get through it?

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, to be honest, [SPEAKER_04]: I saw people put their heads down and go to work.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, especially the folks that were in a company, which was the company that they belonged to, they like, it was like a switch was thrown, they like re-double their efforts.

[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't like they, you know, somebody lit a fire and they're out there killing everything inside, but they were, you know, if you flew their aircraft, their aircraft were the cleanest aircraft out there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And Mr.

Yoga was their maintenance officer.

[SPEAKER_04]: So all those cruchies worked on the aircraft and his honor.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you got him one of the aircraft, it was immaculate.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's no shade on any of the other companies.

[SPEAKER_04]: But it's like those guys have just incredible height and direct answered your question.

[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't have to talk to anybody.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think we all like sat down and thought about [SPEAKER_04]: you know what why why it happened and I kind of explained in the book it's obvious why it happened like seventy five eighty percent of the shoot-downs in Iraq were because of patterns and yeah [SPEAKER_00]: That's a big point that you cover in the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pattern was you go to this area, take off, go to this area, do a fight, test fire, and then go do your mission.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the enemy will track your patterns.

[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually they're going to try and capitalize on what you're doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: This stuff goes on fast forward a little bit in the book here.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a story from correspondent Laurie Ann Moss.

[SPEAKER_00]: Only a few minutes into the four-hour, the four-boat patrol, Sergeant Ken Thomas, twenty-three of Utopia Texas, heard a machine gun unload on the boats from the river's shore.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then numerous insurgents pop out of buildings on both sides of the river and peppered the unconcealed blue boats with bullet holes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bullets were everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty wild, said Sergeant Thomas.

[SPEAKER_00]: The soldiers had [SPEAKER_00]: a gut instinct that the mission wouldn't be a quiet cruise down the river so they brought extra ammunition.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas estimated that he shot at least, five hundred and seventy rounds from his M-four during this firefight.

[SPEAKER_00]: First lieutenant, John Dolan, Thomas's lead in the boat, had no choice but to give the order to turn back, but it was too late for the first two boats.

[SPEAKER_00]: While steering around, and Iraqi policemen driving Dolan's boat was fatally shot in the stomach and fell against the wheel, making the boat veer towards an island where a ran a ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thomas's crew in the second boat went to help, but his two engine boat lost power when boats destroyed one of its engines.

[SPEAKER_00]: The boat also got stuck in shallow waters, forcing six soldiers to bail out into the polluted river.

[SPEAKER_00]: Way down by roughly eighty pounds of combat equipment, the soldiers struggled to swim in the murky water to another island about fifty meters away, Thomas said.

[SPEAKER_00]: Staff Sergeant Alan Johns ordered Thomas to climb the steep muddy riverbank and look for a way out while the rest of it while the rest hunkered down.

[SPEAKER_00]: As he climbed, Iraqis armed with A.K.

[SPEAKER_00]: forty-seven rifles as close as fifty feet away were taking aim.

[SPEAKER_00]: and machine gun fire continued from across the river.

[SPEAKER_00]: Soking wet Thomas went about cutting through an electrical fence to gain access to a building where his group took shelter.

[SPEAKER_00]: A second group with a wounded first lieutenant Dolan was isolated, pinned down by enemy fire on the island in the middle of the river.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a nightmare.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you've got boats in the water.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got, you know, sounds like almost a three hundred and sixty degree ambush.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got wounded guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got down boats, just a terrible scenario.

[SPEAKER_03]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it's a little less terrible when you guys show up fast forward a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, after doing a fight, a fighter checking with Iron Horse main, we were pushed down.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Gary Owen Mike, one-seven cab, and then eventually to command you white one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Along with that, we finally got a good grid of their location.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Lieutenant Griggs talked with them, I could hear gunfire in the background.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had KIA and wounded.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were under attack and running out of ammo.

[SPEAKER_00]: They needed help now.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we came into the view of soldiers trapped on the island, Lieutenant Dolan made a radio call and said, you are really angels on our shoulder.

[SPEAKER_00]: For a split second, what he said may be wonder if he watched saving private Ryan one too many times, but having heard a situation report, I knew it was real and not some attempt at being funny.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's calling you to try and talk you, and I called no joy on the ground forces back to Comanche White.

[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately after my radio call, some crazy dude and ACUs stood up waving an Orange VS Seventeen marker panel.

[SPEAKER_00]: That crazy dude was Staff Sergeant Matthew Shilling, one who would later receive a Bronze Star with V device for his actions that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was quite shocked to see him and took my left hand off the collective and waived at him to get down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could still hear gunfire in the background when Comanche White acknowledged my call of visual.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would find out later that day they had been told by their interpreter.

[SPEAKER_00]: The loudspeakers on the mosque in the village had been giving a call for everyone to gather to kill the Americans.

[SPEAKER_00]: This no doubt added to their anxiety about being stuck on the island in the middle river surrounded waiting for help.

[SPEAKER_00]: Comanche White requested immediate suppression to the south of their position on the island.

[SPEAKER_00]: From above, I could see the area south and east of the island that was full of reeds and it had to be concerned that someone might be hiding there waiting for a chance to attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were down to about a hundred feet AGL as I turned inbound and slowed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had control over the gun and it was slave to my helmet site.

[SPEAKER_00]: I called Comanche White once more to make sure confirmed there are no friendly south of your position.

[SPEAKER_00]: He called back immediately, negative friendlies.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I fired.

[SPEAKER_00]: I put three ten round bursts of thirty millimeter into the reads and tall grass on the southeast and southern end of the island near the disabled boat.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was about to fire again when Lieutenant Greg said that's enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: We climbed back to a higher altitude and established a wide orbit over the village in the island.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could see Lieutenant Dolan's section hunkered down at a low spot near the middle of the island.

[SPEAKER_00]: His boat was abandoned on the southern end of the island about a hundred feet from the shoreline.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a second boat that was run around on the eastern shore of the Tigris near the village of the northern tip of the island.

[SPEAKER_00]: While we were assessing the situation, it became apparent that Lieutenant Dolan and others needed medical attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: I asked C-bass if they could contact attack Mike and have them get with second battalion to get the Medevac headed out to the island.

[SPEAKER_00]: In my mind, it shouldn't take that long because we were almost in the traffic pattern for the airfield.

[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, we were talking to Gary Owen Maine, who hopefully reminded us that it was very important that we try not to damage any boats anymore than they already were since they were brand new and Iron Horse Six didn't want them destroyed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it was a little late for that at this point.

[SPEAKER_04]: We actually had a conversation in the cockpit between me and Lieutenant about, are we going to tell him that we already fired like right next to the boat, so we probably put more holes in him.

[SPEAKER_00]: uh...

fast forward a little bit our conversation with gary owners were uninterrupted by radio call from some other boats belonging to one seven cab who now couple miles up the river near the bridge area we called airfield island they were apparently under fire again we wind up to our our orbit to see if we could see was going on up there but i was extremely reluctant to leave these guys on the island [SPEAKER_00]: who were exposed and almost out of ammo.

[SPEAKER_00]: It smelled like a ruse to lure us up there leaving the guys on the island exposed.

[SPEAKER_00]: We monitored the situation and the guys and the other boats were eventually able to break contact.

[SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, you're trying to get this Medevac.

[SPEAKER_00]: After hearing that info from C-Bass, I called him and asked him how they were doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The voice on the radio said he was okay, but that he was feeling kind of woozy.

[SPEAKER_00]: After hearing that bit of news, I told Lieutenant Griggs that if the Medevac wasn't there in the next few minutes, he was going to get out and strap himself to the outside of the aircraft, and we're going to transfer these people ourselves using a technique known as a spur ride.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't a way I wanted to do it, but I'd be damned if I flew around listening to these guys on the radio while someone blood out with a damn Medevac bird sat on the ground less than five miles away.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out that shockingly, you know, when you call a Medevac, it still has to go through the proper channels.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this was just taken forever.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the aggravating part of it was our headquarters and their headquarters during the same building.

[SPEAKER_04]: So, all somebody had to do is walk out the door and go down, twenty feet down the hall, but they couldn't launch until it came through.

[SPEAKER_04]: The official channel.

[SPEAKER_01]: The official channel.

[SPEAKER_04]: Luckily, they got them.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they've, they [SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: During the AR process, we were told that there were twenty plus confirmed AF killed along with fifty wounded that day by one seven calf.

[SPEAKER_00]: One Iraqi police officer who was shot in the stomach and when later died, his wounds was the only death for coalition forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: After we turned from Iraq, we were able to meet the newly promoted captain Dolen and some of his soldiers who were on the island that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was humbled and embarrassed when he thanked us for saving his life that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I told him we were just doing our jobs that anyone in the battalion would have done the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: He also told me then that he didn't know how he was going to, how it was we didn't get shot down that day when I made a gun run on the island because the AAF were all firing at me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank God they were bad shots because my aircraft returned with zero damage.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, again, I told you that this is like the first book that I've read that is kind of [SPEAKER_00]: did from the air perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so wild to think of the mobility that you have in the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can travel however many miles in a matter of minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, for me on the ground, you're hearing reports.

[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes, you know, they might be, they might be ten blocks away.

[SPEAKER_00]: They might as well be a hundred miles away because you can't get to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to take you forever to get to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a massive fight.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you can just hit your, you know, hit your stick and show up there in thirty seconds.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a totally different mentality and perspective that you guys have.

[SPEAKER_04]: And, you know, any time we got a tick, it was balls to the wall to get there.

[SPEAKER_04]: We kind of had to back off that a little bit because, you know, sometimes you just walk into the middle of something that you probably shouldn't have.

[SPEAKER_04]: You probably should have set up a way from it a little bit and assessed what was going on.

[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't get anybody shot down that way, but we got people shot up that way.

[SPEAKER_00]: So eventually you learned to have a little slow down to go to a little attack to face it's rolling out.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a section here on leave.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for every soldier that's doing more than ten months, you get something called environmental leave.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, we do short, short deployments in the Navy.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we do like a six, seven month deployment, something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is something we don't do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be honest with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever I talk to someone that had this leave, I'm always like, dude, I don't know if I would have wanted to take it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I get it, you want to go get some good food, but being in that locked-in mentality of, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: accepting death, accepting your situation, being like, all right, we're doing this job, and then going home, and eating that every good apple bees or whatever with normal people, knowing that in nine days, eight days, seven days, six days, you're gonna be right back in the shit again.

[SPEAKER_00]: What did you, what'd you think of that?

[SPEAKER_04]: It was like, it was almost like I was on the Starship Enterprise, and I got being dented up.

[SPEAKER_04]: into the middle of taxes, you know, my brother from he lives in four worth pick me up at the airport and he's just driving down the road and like like two days, like two days ago, I was in a rack-flying combat and just seeing people go about their lives and [SPEAKER_04]: You know, the vast majority of those people didn't, I mean, nothing against them.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think they meant it this way.

[SPEAKER_04]: But the vast majority of these people had no clue what goes on over there or what we were doing or any of that.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're just living their lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you feel like, uh, like, this is just all fake, you know, I'm just gonna be back in the shit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, nine days, eight days, seven days, six days, it's coming.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, I mean, I enjoyed it for what it was.

[SPEAKER_04]: The weird thing was getting off the plane at DFW because there's trying to think I have many, there was a lot of people there that took time out of their lives to come and welcome people back.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know if they knew that we were just there for like two weeks.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, because they're acting like I'm back for good or something, you know, like, welcome home.

[SPEAKER_00]: You made it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, slapping people on the back, you know, and cheering and all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I got him.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's so certain I really earned that, but I appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's they didn't have to do that.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I, I'll remember that to the day I die, like, all those people, but it was kind of [SPEAKER_04]: in a way it was kind of misplaced because like we're not done, you know, I don't know why you're doing this because I'm just gonna turn around and go right back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: You say the book for the next nine days, I enjoyed some of the things I'd been missing over the last six months.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before I knew it, I was back at DFW standing in line with about two hundred other soldiers getting yelled at by an NCO with no combat patch about the weight of our rucksacks and being told to take off our boots and belts so we could go through the TSA line.

[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know what what's funny about that TSA thing is like a civilian saw standing there with all without a boot on and started screaming at TSA.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was funny.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like none of the, none of the soldiers were complaining, okay, we're just gonna do what I'm told.

[SPEAKER_04]: But like the civilian pastors getting on planes going through TSA, they were just absolutely letting TSA have it.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's insane.

[SPEAKER_04]: God.

[SPEAKER_00]: uh...

fast forward a little bit we knew in January when President Bush first announced that the surge was coming most of us also knew that meant our tour would be extended but that wasn't official until April eleven thirty thousand seven on that day the new secretary defense Robert Gates announced that effective immediately our tour was now fifteen months long [SPEAKER_00]: get some that that reminded me of the book catch twenty two you ever read that book yes i have yeah so it's like echo trials in this book you got to do twenty five missions to to go home uh these are the guys in world war two and then the the leadership changes it to fifty changes it to fifty five changes this sixty changes to seventy so no one's ever going home [SPEAKER_00]: That's what's happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the real number was actually twenty five.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I find interesting about that was the the expected casualties on those big air missions, the army calculated was four percent.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to take four percent on all these missions that we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you do twenty five missions, you can go home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what's twenty five times four percent?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hundred percent.

[SPEAKER_00]: So guess what?

[SPEAKER_00]: It ain't happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And very few of those guys ever actually completed twenty five minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very small number.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but here you are, you get extended back back to the book here fast forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: Around twenty one thirty, we get a call from Captain Paul Dagel, the Battalion Captain, that even directing us to fly towards some suspicious activity that was going on in Zell Nine, which was located near Soder City.

[SPEAKER_00]: is an area from which a lot of indirect fire and bad guy activity had been occurring since forever but especially over the past several months.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were still several kilometers out when Brian called that he had the target in sight in this fastward.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had his video and underlay as an underlay on my left display so I glanced down and sure enough there was a van and what looked like a lot of rocket launchers arrayed across a soccer field.

[SPEAKER_00]: All aimed in the direction of the green zone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I called lead and let them know we had tally on target.

[SPEAKER_00]: Attack six, then called strike main, describe the target and asked for permission to engage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Immediately strike called back, crazy horse to zero six, you are cleared to engage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kevin had already rolled flight inbound toward the target.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd slow down in order to give us enough spacing behind to cover to behind lead to cover their break and be able to engage our targets as quickly as possible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lead is pressing in the target and begins firing his thirty millimeter cannon cannon.

[SPEAKER_00]: All in the van.

[SPEAKER_00]: Brian tells me they are hitting our target.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I glance down just in time to see leads thirty millimeter rounds striking the van.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not wanting Brian to try and shift targets at the last moment and possibly screw up the shot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I tell him to go ahead and hit the van again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Brian fired two ten round thirty millimeter cannon bursts into the van, which calls the smoldering brand van to burst into flames.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the flight came around for the second pass, Kevin relayed to us that he was going to take out some rocket launchers.

[SPEAKER_00]: First, they fired two pairs of rockets with little to no effect.

[SPEAKER_00]: Continuing the pass, they began to engage with the aircraft's thirty millimeter cannon.

[SPEAKER_00]: From my position, they appeared that they were almost directly above the target.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could plainly see the rockets exploding as they were struck by the thirty millimeter rounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them were cooking off and flying around the soccer field.

[SPEAKER_00]: Almost like some pyro-technic snake gone wild.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was spectacular.

[SPEAKER_00]: Since Kevin had slowed to almost a hover, I maneuvered around to protect him as best I could by flying a figure eight pattern to the south and east.

[SPEAKER_00]: During this, one of the rockets lit off and launched, going just underneath Kevin and ATK's six aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was worried they were just about to shoot themselves down, so I called the warning.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just had a rocket go under you immediately after the call lead accelerated and moved out to a little more respectable distance from the exploding ordinance.

[SPEAKER_00]: This sounds like freaking chaos.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's a phenomenon that happens quite often among the patches.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I kind of call it swirling around the toilet bowl.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like the longer an engagement goes on, the closer we get to the target because it's almost like you're sucked in.

[SPEAKER_04]: That they could have easily shot at that stuff from a greater range.

[SPEAKER_04]: but it's like moth to a flame and a taxis is the botanian commander in case you probably knew but the case the audience doesn't know so it even happens to like most senior people out there that you just if you don't watch it you're gonna get sucked in [SPEAKER_00]: closer and closer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next, you know, these rockets that you're blowing up are near misses.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next day, I received an email from the S-III asking me to fill out a sworn statement on the mission from the night before.

[SPEAKER_00]: sworn statements are usually filled out only when there is going to be an award submitted or someone is in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew we hadn't done anything wrong, so I assumed it was an award situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knocked it out quickly and said it back with a note that if said if they need anything else, please let me know.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks later, I returned from flying a mission and spotted a green binder on my desk.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of the binders the army uses for awards opening it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I saw the citation for an air medal for the events took place on June second, two thousand and seven.

[SPEAKER_00]: These types of things were usually done with a bit more ceremony.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess it was a good thing I decided to come to work that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: They just throw that thing out there.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I never lied and asked about it, but that was kind of odd.

[SPEAKER_04]: They usually at least have a formation when they end those things out.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I had seven of them, so.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess they're like, hey, this is just another one.

[SPEAKER_04]: Another one to end.

[SPEAKER_00]: July second a team of OH fifty d kaiwa warriors.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's there's there's there out came under some fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a report by a Washington Post writer and Scott Tyson who says this.

[SPEAKER_00]: about the situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're taking fire, chief one officer second, Steven, Sephrinti, see a frinti yelled, twenty seven yelled to his copilot as he looked out the helicopter door and saw trace around flying his way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hearing see your frinties.

[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, T-Forn officer, two Mark Burroughs, thirty-five, banked right to evade bullets from a heavy machine gun that had opened up across the field.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then a second machine gun began firing at them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Burroughs turned again only to face a heavier barrage.

[SPEAKER_00]: The whole world just opened up upon us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed like, see, frini said in a telephone interview from Iraq, we zigzagged, whatever we could do to get out of the gun's target line, then we started taking rounds from behind that took down the aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we got another aircraft going down.

[SPEAKER_00]: At zero, seven, eleven, CZ, one, six, and one, seven, received a refined grid for the fallen angel and began to search for the downed aircraft.

[SPEAKER_00]: They arrived in the general area where the aircraft had gone down and assisted three Kiyoakru's already on site and searching for the downed helicopter.

[SPEAKER_00]: After several minutes, one of the Kai was reported that they had spotted the missing crew hiding near the crash site.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few seconds after the sighting, the fifty-eight asked CZ-one-six and one-seven if they could execute a spur-ride extraction.

[SPEAKER_00]: Davidson responded in the affirmative [SPEAKER_00]: And then maneuvered CZ-one six to land near the crash site.

[SPEAKER_00]: They waited about thirty seconds without seeing anyone exposed and vulnerable in the area where one aircraft had already been shot down time crawled.

[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't wait forever.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the aircraft was lifting off, one of the scout pilots called that called that the crew was on the opposite side of the crash site in the reeds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Davis and maneuvered the aircraft and sure enough there they were.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said they aircraft down about twenty meters away from their hiding place.

[SPEAKER_00]: They came out of the reeds running toward the waiting Apache.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mike Johnson, who had gotten out of the front seat of the aircraft to assist, said that when he first saw them, he wasn't sure those guys were even pilots since their flight gear was soaked and stained with canal water.

[SPEAKER_00]: As they boarded the aircraft, Johnson placed one of the aviators in the front seat where he had been sitting.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other went on the left side where he assisted in hooking him up, finally Johnson hooked himself to the outside of the aircraft on the right side.

[SPEAKER_00]: After Micah gave Davidson the thumbs up, signaling everyone was ready, the AWT and friends departed and began the ten minute flight back to biop.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was understandably a bit amped up and was flying around a hundred and ten knots.

[SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who's ever stuck to their hand out of their car window at seventy miles per hour, imagine doing that at a hundred and twenty.

[SPEAKER_00]: The guys in the outside took quite a beating, but they held on to make it back to the third entry division area in bi-app.

[SPEAKER_00]: The down-aircraft was later destroyed by an eight-tend to prevent sensitive materials from falling into enemy hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like a legit thing, these spur rides.

[SPEAKER_00]: How come they take the pilot out of one of the seats and he rides on the outside of the aircraft?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, to be honest, according to Michael when he looked at that one guy, he kind of looked like he thought he looked like he was out of it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he wasn't sure he could handle being on the outside.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he gave up his seat and found out later, one of the guys said, no, that's just the way he normally looks.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you guys drilled that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys were, is that something, you know?

[SPEAKER_04]: It kind of requires special permission to actually train it.

[SPEAKER_04]: But we talk about it.

[SPEAKER_04]: They do it occasionally, but obviously that's kind of a risky thing to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a, like, uh, the pilots aren't wearing anything to clip themselves in, are they?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Our, um, our survival vest has a lanyard and a deering on it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Got it.

[SPEAKER_04]: and then there's something to clip it to on the aircraft or is it just a handle on the outside of the aircraft I'm not sure if it's stress for you know your body weight but you know you brace your feet against the rocket rail and [SPEAKER_04]: hopefully the guys kind of flying not flying like a hundred ten miles an hour but to hopefully you know the guys not you're not it's not designed to go a long distance that way let's put that way yeah again I'm there's so many more stories in here and I'm just kind of hitting some of the highlights that one was definitely one of them but there's so so many [SPEAKER_00]: revealing and informational operations that you guys are conducting really does a great job, but I wanted to get into this one right here an engagement called collateral murder.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's the in the air quotes collateral murder.

[SPEAKER_00]: July, twelve, two thousand seven and I'm going to go straight to this [SPEAKER_00]: You say this, I know all the aviators who were involved that day, and they were, and are, men of courage and honor.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are men who are fathers, brothers, and sons.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are also quite human.

[SPEAKER_00]: A short description of the day goes like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: A zero nine fifty three local elements of two one six infantry, call sign Bushmaster, received enemy fire while conducting operation cure in zone thirty in the strike brigade area of responsibility, southeast Baghdad, and requested aviation support.

[SPEAKER_00]: CZ-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E [SPEAKER_00]: After determining that these were friendly forces, the AWT then spotted eight to ten individual standing in the street, some of whom were believed to be armed with RPGs and small arms and reported this to Bushmaster.

[SPEAKER_00]: At ten thirty, Bushmaster cleared the AWT to engage this group.

[SPEAKER_00]: So again, you got the aircraft show up.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's an element on the ground, call sign bushmaster.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're taking fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're asking, hey, what do you guys seen?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you help us?

[SPEAKER_00]: We're in contact.

[SPEAKER_00]: The aircraft show up.

[SPEAKER_00]: They see people on rooftops.

[SPEAKER_00]: They determine that that's friendly forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then they see eight to ten people standing in the streets.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the AWT reports that and the bushmaster says, all right, yeah, engage them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are bad guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: Going back to the book here, a ten-thirty bushmaster cleared AWT to engage this group, CZ-One-eight and one-nine engaged a group of individuals with thirty rounds of thirty millimeter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Soon after the engagement, a van arrived with three to four persons inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: The personnel in the van were observed as tempting to evacuate the individuals and weapons from the street.

[SPEAKER_00]: CZ-One-eight-one-nine received the clearance to engage the van and engage with thirty-millimeter destroying it.

[SPEAKER_00]: At ten forty-ground forces caught in the area and began to evaluate the casualties confirming eleven KIA.

[SPEAKER_00]: They also found one RPG and small arms.

[SPEAKER_00]: At this time the ground forces reported two children had been wounded in action.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both children were removed from inside the van.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were evacuated to fob loyalty as urgent surgical.

[SPEAKER_00]: At eleven-o-t eleven-o-two, CZ-one-eight and one-nine reported sighting three more individuals with AK- forty-seven and RPGs at another location.

[SPEAKER_00]: The A-W-T engaged that group with ten rounds of thirty millimeter cannon fire resulting in no enemy casualties.

[SPEAKER_00]: At eleven eighteen the ground unit attempted to conduct a court and search of the structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: The unit took sustained small arms fire and requested destruction of the structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: CZ-one eight and one nine then engaged the building with two n-model and a single K-model Hellfire missiles causing an estimated eight to ten A-I-F killed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bushmaster, Bushmaster, talk, cleared all fires.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is, you know, kind of the breakdown of what happened and how it went.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously you end up with some kids that are wounded and it turns out that amongst this group were people that were allegedly reporters.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, anytime there's civilian casualties in Iraq, there's an investigation.

[SPEAKER_00]: When this happened, did you think of it as a big deal when it happened?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or was it kind of just another day in Iraq?

[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, when they got back from that mission, anytime there's an engagement, the S-II looks at the tape.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know how long it took, but I was called in and say, you need to look at this tape.

[SPEAKER_04]: Me and the head instructor pilot both looked at it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we look at it, we look at, we try to look at all the engagements, not just that one.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I think they were concerned with that one, because I think by that time they'd already heard that Reuters was saying that we killed some of the reporters.

[SPEAKER_04]: And to be honest, when I looked at it, my main concern was there, because we know like people above already in it always see the tapes.

[SPEAKER_04]: My concern was not necessarily the way the engagement was carried out, but what they were saying.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I would tell somebody who has problems with what they see on that tape to watch it with the sound off.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because what those guys say is emotional.

[SPEAKER_04]: And at that point, we've been there almost a year.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you've heard a little bit about what, you know, the kind of stuff we saw all the time.

[SPEAKER_04]: And if you don't expect somebody to be emotional, when they see bad guys, they're shooting at printlies and say stuff, then I think you're not being realistic.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, like they should hear some of the stuff I've heard ground guys say to us over the radio because they don't realize they're being recorded.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if they recorded everybody who was on the battlefield, what you heard on it, what you would hear on that tape is nothing.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think you also need to look at the results of what happened versus the emotional response that people have about what happened.

[SPEAKER_04]: I would also say that [SPEAKER_04]: I have told people that I actually did, I don't know how this guy got a hole in me, but the alleged boss of those reporters got a hole in me.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I told him, because he asked me if I would have shot, I said, yeah, I would have shot.

[SPEAKER_04]: I said, I may have not done things exactly the same way as those guys did.

[SPEAKER_04]: but as far as engaging that group of individuals, yeah, I would have shot because there were weapons there.

[SPEAKER_04]: In the whole thing, a lot of people have an issue with is because one of the guys that was Prairie Dogon around the corner had a camera.

[SPEAKER_04]: Even if we knew it was a camera, a QI used cameras.

[SPEAKER_04]: When they circled around and they saw people with AKs, that's what [SPEAKER_04]: That's the determining factor that they're cleared out is like there's not just this thing that I saw sticking around the corner.

[SPEAKER_04]: Now I see multiple weapons.

[SPEAKER_00]: Going into this, you have there were two official investigations accomplished recording this engagement.

[SPEAKER_00]: One by our parent unit, the first air cavalry brigade and the other by the second brigade combat team.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are both included in their entirety in the appendix section of this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: What the reader may find in lightning though are the findings of the one ACB investigation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says this.

[SPEAKER_00]: The AWT was on a directed mission conducted the appropriate check in with ground elements in contact and received an adequate situation report describing the current status and disposition of forces on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: At this point the AWT began to develop the situation in concert with the ground element in contact and maintained positive identification of friendly locations throughout the supported period.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the situation developed, the A-W-T exercise sound judgment and discrimination during attempts to acquire tart insurgents, or morrow, morover, to identify personnel engaged in hostile or threatening activities against our brothers on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: The A-W-T accurately assessed that the criteria to find and terminate the threat to friendly forces were met in accordance with the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fundamental to all engagements is the principle of military necessity.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was clearly established and supported by the friendly forces inherent right to self defense and the ground commanders obligation to ensure that all necessary means were employed to defend or protect his soldiers from hostile acts.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, the AWT was employed to destroy insurgents from attempting to kill friendly forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: The attack weapons team won, positively identified the threat.

[SPEAKER_00]: The WT with reasonable certainty identified military age male males both in location and with weapons consistent with reports of hostile acts conducted against friendly forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: While observing the scoop of individuals, the WT satisfied all requirements to initiate an engagement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Established hostile intent, hostile intent was exhibited by armed insurgents peering around the corner of a home, to monitor the movement or activities of friendly forces, and it was confirmed by the presence of those personnel carrying an ARPG and AK-Fourty-Semons.

[SPEAKER_00]: These west-weapon systems were reported in the national check initial check-in as the type used to engage friendly forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: Three, conducted collateral damage assessment.

[SPEAKER_00]: The AWT accurately assessed that using a thirty millimeter cannon was proportionally appropriate to omit the threat while reducing the probability of excessive damage to surrounding structures, vehicles, and real property in the area.

[SPEAKER_00]: Four, received clearance of fires, having already identified through voice communications, physical markings, and ultimately visual recognition in friendly positions.

[SPEAKER_00]: The AWT again requested and received clearance from the ground unit that there was no friendly forces in the engagement area.

[SPEAKER_00]: and finally see only after an extensive review of the AWT's gun camera video and with the knowledge of the two missing media personnel, it is reasonable to deduce that the two individuals intermixed among the insurgents located in the engagement area may have been reporters.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was neither reason nor probability to assume that neutral media personnel were embedded with enemy forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is worth noting the fact that insurgent groups often video and photograph friendly activity and insurgent attacks against friendly forces for use in training videos and for use as propaganda to exploit or highlight their capabilities.

[SPEAKER_00]: The air crews erroneously identified the cameras as weapons due to the presentation, slung over the soldier with the shoulder, with the body of the object resting at the back rear of the torso, and association.

[SPEAKER_00]: Personnel collected with others having RPGs and AK-Fourys Evans.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is always interesting because I always trying to explain to people that if you go to war civilians are going to die and when you are in especially in an urban environment like this, [SPEAKER_00]: Civilians are going to die.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's one of the reasons we should be very, very cautious before we enter into a war.

[SPEAKER_00]: But these, as I actually, you can go online, you can watch this video.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can go on YouTube and look up collateral murder, and you can watch it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like you said, you watch it with the sound off.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you said the sound off, like you've got the quotes in here, but the guys are saying stuff like, hey, pick up that RPG, so I can engage you like that kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're wanting to take these guys out.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're enemy fighters that are engaging their American brothers on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: They want to kill them.

[SPEAKER_00]: God bless them.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you watch the video, if you have any remote level of combat experience, there's not even one doubt that these guys should be taken out, not even one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're a reporter and you embed with enemies of America, [SPEAKER_00]: Don't think that you're going to be spared when those enemies of America are trying to attack and kill American forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not happening.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, it also points out here that they didn't have any press.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't have any indications of being anything other than insurgents.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can want this kind of your narrative here, which you kind of cover, but it's worth saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, of course, as I said previously, none of this is going to change the minds of those who would like to see us as murdering kill bots who were bent on death and destruction, instead of imperfect human beings who are required to make split second decisions on the field of battle.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because someone says things like, look at all those dead bastards, and again, these are quotes.

[SPEAKER_00]: or urges wounded enemy with the words come on body just pick up the weapon so that we could legally engage him doesn't mean we think this is a game or find this particularly amusing it means we are sick of seeing our fellow soldiers in innocence hurt and killed and when you feel you have finally gotten one of the people who has been doing these things in your sights for gives if it forgive us if we don't show much sympathy or even professionalism because by this point in the deployment things become very personal [SPEAKER_00]: If you find these comments disgusting or particularly brutal, I can assure you that this is nothing compared to the things I've heard and seen on other deployments when talking to people on the ground or listening over their radio network.

[SPEAKER_00]: War is a brutal, ugly thing, and if you are offended by language, that is unfortunate.

[SPEAKER_00]: The language is also a coping mechanism that people tend to use to de-personalize the ugly vicious things that we must sometimes do.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm also quite sure that infantry men and tank crews are happy that their engagements aren't taped.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the pilots who were involved in this event would be the first one to tell you that this was not a textbook example of how to conduct an engagement.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also feel safe in saying that most of us in the unit placed, if we were placed in this situation, every single one of us probably would have done it differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: The point being this, a troops in contact scenario is a dynamic and changes by the second.

[SPEAKER_00]: Each tick is different from the one before and things happen in a hurry.

[SPEAKER_00]: This crew followed the rules of engagement that were in place at the time, and while it might not have been pretty, and people said words or express feelings that you might not have wanted to hear, what is what that is the reality of what happens, but it isn't a war crime.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you guys get any kind of like pressure during the deployment because of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because of this incident?

[SPEAKER_04]: No.

[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, that the shit didn't hit the fan over that until I was on my third deployment.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're getting ready to come home on a third deployment when that guy released the tape.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: The WikiLeaks guy.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's I'm like I said before the only grief we guy was about being professional on the radio when you're talking Yeah, you know talk through the engagement and be professional.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I had a very strict rule When I was in charge of a patreon charge of a task unit, which was you'd be professional the radio and It was like that's why I [SPEAKER_00]: you know I would tell guys like everyone is hearing what you're saying and if you're not professional in the radio it's gonna come back and so we would very I was very very strict about no joking around on the radio no just be a hundred percent professional all the time because because of this thing right here you know because of this type of thing but the other thing is it's like [SPEAKER_00]: the amount that America and our armed forces bends over backwards to prevent collateral damage is it's unbelievable it's unbelievable the the lengths that we go to to prevent collateral damage to prevent killing or wounding civilians you know the the efforts that we take is truly sometimes it's sometimes it seems a little bit crazy to think that you know we would rather [SPEAKER_00]: You know, getting shot at from a mosque while we can't enter the mosque.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, we're literally getting shot at from the mosque.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, we're gonna just back away and let them continue to do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, sometimes we would get the authorization to assault, but sometimes it was like, no, we're not doing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the efforts that we would make to, you know, respect the locals and try and protect the locals was immense.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when something goes wrong, there's massive investigations, you know, this is an example.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you put the investigations in the back of the book, which is really cool, you know, because all, you know, when civilian casualties happen, there are absolutely investigations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if something was done wrong, someone's going to, you know, either get punished for it, maybe go to prison for it, but, but also maybe the on the stake was made, and people will try and learn from that mistake.

[SPEAKER_00]: because there's a huge difference and you point this out really well in the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a huge difference between the confusion and chaos of combat and someone making a split second decision.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out to be what when I was with the army, the army called good shot bad result, meaning they were doing something that looked bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an enemy tactic technique procedure, a U.S.

[SPEAKER_00]: person engaged and it turned out that they were wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good shot bad result.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we look out for, you know, and we try and prevent it to the utmost of our ability.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when something does happen, it goes through like the most thorough investigations like you put in this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the one of the big pressures that I saw in O, you know, six was, you know, this, the whole thing had just happened with the Marine Corps up at the Haditha Dam.

[SPEAKER_00]: So everyone was like hyper paranoid about collateral damage and civilian casualties.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, that's when I asked you about pressure, like we definitely felt that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you had to be a hundred percent aware of what could happen, what would happen if something bad happened.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think from the get go, we were always really serious about PI getting PID.

[SPEAKER_04]: So in that respect, nothing changed.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think they had PID anyway.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it's like, it was just like you said, [SPEAKER_04]: Good shot, bad result.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, plus the damage that it does strategically when you when you kill a civilian, it really hurts the strategic efforts.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you're going to get the big protests, you're going to get to Algae Zero TV with the dead civilians.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an awful nightmare.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you get another reason.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, yeah, it's terrible for an individual, terrible for the civilian, terrible for the service member.

[SPEAKER_00]: and terrible for the strategic efforts when this kind of thing happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why we got to be professional about it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why a lot of our shots were on the, the zipper for that guy to, [SPEAKER_04]: you know, scoop up because any time we engage something, we sent our engagement down to the landowner.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the owning aviation are the owning BCT.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: We sent it to them.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if locals came and say, hey, you shot at my house or they could show them the engagement and say, look, there's a guy in there with an RPK.

[SPEAKER_04]: Like, that's why we shot your house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't quite have that, but what we did have was a sworn statements.

[SPEAKER_00]: So every one that we shot, we'd do a sworn statement.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say they'll date the location.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for the exact same reason, like if someone was to come back in two days, or in two years, or in twenty years and say, oh, yeah, this, you know, my uncle, brother, cousin, whatever was shot, they're like, oh, where was it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that wasn't Americans, you know, we didn't, we didn't do that in that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there was no one there, even in that area in that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty cool that you guys have the video of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Makes it real cut and dry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or at least more cut and dry.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's still open to interpretation sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a section here called cab hats and combat patches.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about the Stetson, the iconic Stetson.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's, what's the history of it?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it actually goes back obviously to the Calvary of the Old West.

[SPEAKER_04]: So over the years, it actually got brought back during the Vietnam War, a guy named Lieutenant Colonel.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, actually Lieutenant Colonel Stockton.

[SPEAKER_04]: He was the commander.

[SPEAKER_04]: I want to say a one nine cab and first cab during Vietnam.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's the guy that brought the hat back.

[SPEAKER_04]: So after that, everybody in first cab pretty much started wearing statins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And are they not authorized or are they authorized?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's an unauthorized headgear.

[SPEAKER_00]: No kidding.

[SPEAKER_04]: All cavalry units in the Army, their soldiers wear them in some way, shape, or form.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've got gold spurs.

[SPEAKER_04]: You earn gold spurs when you go to combat with a cavalry unit, so I have gold spurs at home, and I've got a certificate on my wall that's that I earn gold spurs.

[SPEAKER_04]: But there's a whole ceremony surrounding the hat.

[SPEAKER_04]: When you get your new hat, you have to wet down the hat.

[SPEAKER_04]: So when you're in the state, it normally means you got to go down to the oak club and they fill your hat with all sorts of junk.

[SPEAKER_04]: and you start to drink out of the hat.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that comes from the tradition and the old west of giving water to your horse out of your hat.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the soldier starts drinking out of his hat and they end up dumping most of that stuff on the soldier.

[SPEAKER_04]: So it's, you know, looked upon in Calgary, and it's very fondly, but there's a lot of people in the army that don't like them.

[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a lot of people that are afraid to embrace it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So like when you get into a situation where they might be judged or whatever they don't want, like they don't want to let you wear it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a afraid it might come back on them that your soldiers are running around like loose cannons wearing stethens and you know, so it's it's kind of [SPEAKER_04]: It's authorized, but it's a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's wild too, because the point you make in the book is, here's the army, and I forget what they're doing to try and instill a speed of core and try and give you something unique to be proud of.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, hey, dude, we got this freaking tradition that comes that is part of what we do, and we're banning that, and we're trying to create some new, you know, newfangled form of a speed of core that's just dumb.

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I think every commander, almost every commander, they come in there with what got to, you know, we got to improve this or, you know, they got to come up.

[SPEAKER_04]: They got to find some way to make their own mark and often the solution is right in front of them, but they refuse to take the obvious answer and they got to come up with some crazy scheme on their own.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I guess it kind of happened with the berets too in the army, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was green berets for special forces and black berets for Rangers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what the army authorized black berets for the so-called general Shinseki was the chief of staff of the army.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I believe he was a tanker.

[SPEAKER_04]: So this may have been where the black beret came from with him.

[SPEAKER_04]: In the post Vietnam era, tankers in Germany were black berets.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he may have decided [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to get back at these Rangers or whatever, you know, because there's always like an armor, infantry, I'm an aviator, I don't know how those stuff works, but the ground guys like fight with each other about who's tougher, you know, stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's where it came from.

[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the Rangers ended up going to like the tan, the tambouray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very interesting the way these things work.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I did not know that the cat, that the stetsons were not an authorized piece of.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't wear them.

[SPEAKER_00]: When do you wear them?

[SPEAKER_00]: When do you get to wear them, actually?

[SPEAKER_04]: When I was in every Friday, you could wear it.

[SPEAKER_04]: But it was only in the batained footprint, her and the brigade footprint.

[SPEAKER_04]: So you couldn't go like, hey, let's go to everybody's going to chilies for lunch.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can't wear your stetsons.

[SPEAKER_04]: You better have another head gear with you.

[SPEAKER_04]: you would wear them like if there was a ball or some formal event, everybody would wear them.

[SPEAKER_04]: If there was a change of command, people in the certain officers would wear them at the change of command.

[SPEAKER_00]: Damn, that's a bummer.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought that was an authorized piece ahead of gear.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wish it was, I think, you know, because they're always worried about people getting sunburned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's things that's perfect to keep the sun off of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward, July, July, thirty first, two thousand seven, just before nine a.m.

[SPEAKER_00]: while moving through this the scud on the edge of zone seventy seven, the pilot command of Crazy Horsey, Crazy Horsey zero three made a call over over the team internal radio frequency that they were hit and going down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later listening to the recovered voice recording, one could hear a loud bang followed by the sounds of extreme vibration.

[SPEAKER_00]: Telling the piling control.

[SPEAKER_00]: The piling control telling his front seat or to make sure his seat belt was locked and then several seconds later by the aircraft striking the ground, crazy horse zero three been struck by a missile which had failed the detonate but still managed to break one of the four pitch change links which control the angle of the rotor blades now the blade was connected [SPEAKER_00]: to the broken link was free to do whatever the laws of physics and aerodynamics compelled it to do, which for now meant causing a great deal of vibration.

[SPEAKER_00]: It caused so much vibration that the cockpit canopy shattered in several places.

[SPEAKER_00]: The crew, of course, had no idea of this.

[SPEAKER_00]: All they knew was that the aircraft was darn near uncontrollable and they needed to find a place to land.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, they spotted a field just ahead and set up to make a running landing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But a slow broken rotor system does not a soft landing make when the helicopter struck the ground, the landing gear, bottomed out, exactly as designed, absorbing a lot of the impact of the forces.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's so much forward energy left, however, that a rocket pod, that a rocket pod, the thirty millimeter cannon and several other items were ripped loose from the aircraft as it finally came to arrest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Crazy Horth, O-Fore, flown by C-W-T, Micah Johnson and Captain Laura Perunic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perunic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Perunic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Witness the entire landing sequence, quents, and when O-III came to arrest and swooped into assess the situation and discourage anyone with ideas or approaching the aircraft, they fired two bursts of cannon fire and opened field nearby their wingman to let anyone know they were serious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seeing an opportunity to possibly extract the wingman, CZO for landed nearby the broken carcass of CZO III, the PIC and CPG of CZO III got out of their ruin of an aircraft and made their way to the wingman's aircraft and after attaching themselves to the outside, we're on their way back to Camp Tajji.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the herd is again, another freaking spur ride.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we talk about it every day in mission briefs for we launched on a mission.

[SPEAKER_04]: This is what we're going to do if we go down.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's like the primary course of getting those guys out of there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Spur right.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm not leaving you on the ground unless somebody kill you and drag you down those, you know, the streets, drag your dead body.

[SPEAKER_00]: fast forward a little bit as the days tick by an our deployment rapidly grew due to a close and the number of an intensity of engagements decreased dramatically so you felt things start to mellow a little bit you know the commander he actually had a good good idea and like you know every day before we went on a mission we had the S.D.

[SPEAKER_04]: gave us a brief so they they put up the PowerPoint presentation this is what happened in this section of town blah blah blah [SPEAKER_04]: So they put up a breed, they put up a slide, the very first slide was significant actions one year ago today, significant significant actions today.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you could physically see when you looked up there that it was going down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so like I said, I left in October of two thousand and six, and you know, you fast forward six months from them, the guy, the seals that relieved us, man, they weren't a totally different world in in-remotty.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, the total, like, there was thirty to fifty enemy attacks when we were there, and it was down to like one a week.

[SPEAKER_00]: by the time they were coming home so it was dramatically different and that's kind of this time frame.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a little bit you guys are now like you guys are packed up because you guys can ready to fly home on the appointed day and time we got up short of sleep since we are all been working all day.

[SPEAKER_00]: loaded the last of our belongings onto our aircraft and launched into the darkness headed south to Kuwait.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we cleared the Taji airspace for the last time, we radioed the tower.

[SPEAKER_00]: Taji Tower, Crazy Horse Zero One, is clear to the south.

[SPEAKER_00]: Frequency change, negative ETR.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the ETR is estimated time and return and so you're saying we're not coming back.

[SPEAKER_00]: That had to be a pretty good call to make.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the tower said, we'll see in about a year.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had to drag you down a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you guys do a stop in Shannon, Ireland.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's still under the rules of general order one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no drink and find to get back to Texas.

[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are, you know, it's plain trains and automobiles and find that you get on a bus and then another bus and then another bus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, the last bus.

[SPEAKER_00]: The bus carried us to the first cavalry division headquarters.

[SPEAKER_00]: The street out front was blocked off.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were guys on horses, the band had somehow made it over there now, and families were in bleachers cheering.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was an awesome sight.

[SPEAKER_00]: The buses pulled up next to the curb, and parked so we could exit away from the families in the stands with the vehicles blocking their view.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone got off their bus and scrambled into a massive formation.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we were all set, the buses pulled away to reveal us standing there in front of the crowd.

[SPEAKER_00]: People were cheering, horses nade in the band played Gary Owen.

[SPEAKER_00]: We marched forward in what had to be the worst display of drill and ceremony in the history of the military, but nobody cared.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some officer stood at a podium and said something, at least it was short, and then we were dismissed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Bedlam erupted, and kids, wives, family, and significant others rushed into the ranks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I made my way to one side of the mass of people and eventually spotted my old aviation photography buddy from North Texas, Keith Snyder.

[SPEAKER_00]: who had the keys to my Mustang that he had been storing for me while I was downrange.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went over shook his hand, grabbed my bags, and then left to go get my car, eat a steak dinner, and find a place to live.

[SPEAKER_00]: What an odd feeling it is after fifteen months of deployment to walk to a car, jump in, and just drive off with nothing to do for the next several days.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I could remember how to drive a stick.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sixteen months later, the battalion would be back and I rack to do the whole thing all over again.

[SPEAKER_00]: attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to close the book out with a quote, and this quote comes from one of the brigade commanders that you all worked with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought it was just an awesome example of what you guys did over there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says first Battalion, two hundred twenty-seven aviation regiment has been an outstanding enabler for the strike brigade combat team during our deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom from O six to O eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the past ten months, their extensive support has included hundreds of missions, including reconnaissance, security, and close combat attack missions.

[SPEAKER_00]: First attack responsiveness and courage under fire is a testament to their skill and valor, and on many occasions, their combat power has been the difference between failure and success on the streets of Baghdad and throughout AO strike.

[SPEAKER_00]: The men and women of the strike team are emboldened by the mere presence of the fine aviators of first attack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their fearlessness and aggressive nature have proven to deter the enemy from attacking our soldiers and saved many lives as a result.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it be a kinetic strike against the enemies if I rack or providing a security detail for logistical patrol, the pilots of first attack have displayed amazing balance of lethality and tactical patience.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the call for support goes out from our headquarters, we are never let down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even in the face of extremely dangerous surface to air of threat, these men and women from the one at two hundred twenty-seventh aviation regiment will not hesitate to come to our aid.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are the essence of selfless service.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's from Colonel Jeffrey Bannister, Commander, Second BCT, Second ID.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a few more of those in there, but I mean, the essence of selfless service as he says.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we kind of be in one of the senior guys.

[SPEAKER_04]: That's something we, I say, beat into the junior aviators when they arrived at the unit that we don't fly for us.

[SPEAKER_04]: We fly for the people we work for on the ground and everything we do is about them.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're not out there just because we want to go flying or out there for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, the risks that you guys take to get in there and help out over and over again, especially with the losing so many aircraft and pilots.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to have that commitment to the guys in the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: What did you, how was your reintegration back to the world when you got home?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's always kind of weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good way of putting it.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I tell you what, like, the frustration with the way things are in back home would really reveal itself if I was driving, because you see how selfish people are when you're out there on the highway.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if I'm just existing, like going on my day, like go to a restaurant or something, it's not really that apparent.

[SPEAKER_04]: But when you get out on the highway and people are cutting you off or people are like driving like idiots, it really reveals itself.

[SPEAKER_04]: And for some reason, and I'm not going to say it's PTSD, but for some reason, like why right when I got back, it really bothered me.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it almost made me want to have road rage like when people just act like idiots.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I've taught myself down off the ledge and not doing anything, but that for some reason, how to have everything else is just driving it really was hard to deal with the way people are.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, just dealing with people on a day-to-day basis, I don't expect anybody to know what I did or appreciate, even appreciate what I did.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're doing their thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're living their lives.

[SPEAKER_04]: But like when you interact with others and you see how selfish people can be, that's when it really would bug me.

[SPEAKER_04]: When I witnessed selfless acts or heard about selfless acts and see people actually literally give their life for somebody.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then somebody can't wait [SPEAKER_04]: You know, a couple of seconds on the highway, they got to cut somebody off because apparently what they have to do is so much more important than what anybody else has to do.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know why it is that way, but that's the one thing that really would catch in my car off.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's self selfishness on display, especially when it's the exact opposite of the people you've been working with for the past fifteen months.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was your next job?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I stayed in the unit until I retired in two thousand eleven so we did another deployment.

[SPEAKER_04]: I stayed in the job that I was holding.

[SPEAKER_04]: And actually the reason I retired from the army when I did is I was on orders to go to Fort Rucker because I told my career manager I need a break because I've been on three deployments in a row.

[SPEAKER_04]: So between two thousand and four and two thousand and [SPEAKER_04]: Ten, I was gone for thirty seven months in Iraq.

[SPEAKER_04]: And before that, I was ten months in Korea.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I said, hey, I just need a break because I don't know how many chances I want to give these people to kill me.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I've been shot at too many times.

[SPEAKER_04]: I can't begin to say.

[SPEAKER_04]: And okay, we'll cut orders for you to go to for a rucker.

[SPEAKER_04]: But just because of the way the war in our deployment cycle went, I had not been able to get a good promotion photo done or set up my [SPEAKER_04]: packet to get promoted to w five and I got passed over for five and at that time I really wasn't that concerned about it because the the policy was that if you made w four you could stay for thirty years and then the army changed the policy so [SPEAKER_04]: My career manager called me back and said, sorry, I'm going to have to cancel your orders.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can be retained.

[SPEAKER_04]: You'll go before a board.

[SPEAKER_04]: They can retain you at W four.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't see any problem with you getting picked up.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I said, well, the problem is my units on orders to go to Afghanistan and the whole reason I wanted to go to Rucker was I didn't think I could, my mind wasn't right to deploy again.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, sorry, I can't do anything about it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I go, okay, I'll drop my paperwork to retire then.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because if I had stayed in wait for that board to happen, I would have been going to Afghanistan with the unit.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I was just, at that point, I was just done.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so, okay, I'll retire.

[SPEAKER_04]: And before my block leave was just before I used up all my leave.

[SPEAKER_04]: I had a job at a flight in a major company that does flight instruction up in the dials for a work there.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I went to work for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Boom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now you ended up, you just mentioned do you're on deployment for thirty-seven months and you made a book.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's called thirty-seven months.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I actually, I ordered it, but I don't have it yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a primarily photography, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's almost it's probably ninety percent photography.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's some captions, but there's not a whole lot of text in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of camera did you use on deployment?

[SPEAKER_04]: I've got a, well, back then I had Nikon, well, some of the, some of the, actually some of the photos are in there are slides.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that was from a Nikon F-IV.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then I went digital and I had a Nikon D-III-hundred.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think I didn't switch the eight, fifteen until I was out of the army.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think they're mostly D-III-hundreds and the F-IV.

[SPEAKER_00]: And photography was just something you were always into on the side.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's a funny story.

[SPEAKER_04]: I got into photography.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I said it while back, I used to love to draw.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I drew pictures of airplanes right in the left and I was using pictures out of magazine to draw from.

[SPEAKER_04]: And one of our neighbors, a friend of the family, said, why don't you take your own photographs and use those as your reference because if you're drawing off of somebody else's photographs, you're kind of just replicating their image.

[SPEAKER_04]: So that kind of got me started, and then I took a photography class in college.

[SPEAKER_04]: And eventually, when I got in the army, it was easier to take a picture than [SPEAKER_04]: draw.

[SPEAKER_04]: And there's also a drawback in the military.

[SPEAKER_04]: If you have a talent like drawing and people find out about it, you get used for a daily talent.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I tried to keep the fact that I knew how to draw things and was fairly decent at it.

[SPEAKER_04]: I tried to keep that kind of on the download.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who published thirty seven months?

[SPEAKER_04]: That one came out first, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[SPEAKER_04]: I actually self-published it.

[SPEAKER_04]: that's and it's I'm sure it's all full color like those are expensive books to publish well that's that's uh...

and not trying to drive down the sales of my own book but i'm not exactly happy with [SPEAKER_04]: And this is a problem when you do your own printing is the quality.

[SPEAKER_04]: And like you were alluding to, just there, if you want to get really high quality upbook or the pictures, well, crazy or spoke that the printer did an excellent job of those photos in there.

[SPEAKER_04]: So to get that quality photos in a book that's nothing but photos, it's going to be a really expensive book.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I wanted to get something out basically for the people I worked with because, you know, I would show people would see the photos I took and I actually gave some of them to the PAO that, like some of my photos have appeared on the Army's website as, you know, with my credit on it.

[SPEAKER_04]: So people have seen my photographs, but I wanted to give them more than that.

[SPEAKER_04]: So the guys that I worked with, the people I flew with, the people I worked with, that they could have something, and they wouldn't break the bank for them to get it.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wish I could find a better way to publish where the quality of the photos were better.

[SPEAKER_04]: They're not exactly where I want them to be.

[SPEAKER_04]: And actually, on Amazon, some of the commenters have said the same thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, I feel like, yeah, I know, man.

[SPEAKER_04]: But it only cost you.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's like thirty bucks or something.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, you know, put.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Forty bucks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I ordered one of, like, I don't know a week ago and hasn't shown up yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, um, and then what, what, what made you decide to write crazy horse?

[SPEAKER_04]: My whole life, I, um, I have read military history and enjoyed reading books about warfare and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And at the time all this stuff was going down, I knew that somebody needs to tell these stories.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because if somebody, one of us doesn't tell it, nobody is.

[SPEAKER_04]: And honestly, the way, I don't know how historians in the future are going to, you know how it's like now when people write were war two books they go back to.

[SPEAKER_04]: uh, the source material and they find all these diaries and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, to Army now when you leave the it or they wipe all our drugs, it's freaking crazy.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't there's no historian that's going to go back and, you know, fifteen twenty years from now and figure out what happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do they?

[SPEAKER_00]: I know that there was like a hard drive that had like basically every had my entire deployment to Romadi, the entire deployment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like every message that was sent every concept of operations, every award that was written up, every AAR, like everything was on one drive.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we turned it in, they have it in a safe somewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't wipe it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, someone's at some point is going to get a hold of that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, they'll have a lot of really good documentation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I'm sure that the brigade has that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure that the various petal, the Marine Corp Italians that were there, the army of Italians that were there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I bet these things exist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope they exist still.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope they just didn't wipe their drives.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not as optimistic but I hope they are I hope they're out there too.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean when I I made a definite effort when I thought about writing this book like I saved that the reason I've got like [SPEAKER_04]: what people were saying is not my personal recollection.

[SPEAKER_04]: I saved sworn statements.

[SPEAKER_04]: I made a point of going on and those aren't classified.

[SPEAKER_04]: I made a point of printing out sworn statements on missions of note.

[SPEAKER_04]: Nice.

[SPEAKER_04]: And because I wanted to make sure [SPEAKER_04]: If nothing else, you know, I wasn't.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need this book to make a living from, but I want to make sure that these stories are told so people can see what these people did.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's not necessarily, as you know, from reading the book, you know, seventy-five percent of it is not about me.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't want people to think that story is about me.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I was there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And there's stuff in there about me, about stuff that I did.

[SPEAKER_04]: The real stories are about other people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's a great story.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great historical document.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like I said for me, just kind of filling in holes of my deployments when I wasn't there when you were there and just seeing how things transpired.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then what about this documentary that got made?

[SPEAKER_00]: How did that come about?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the longest month that you can watch on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_00]: What how did that come about?

[SPEAKER_04]: It's also an Amazon prime, but how did that come about?

[SPEAKER_04]: The guy that I made it with his name is Ken Christensen.

[SPEAKER_04]: He's a filmmaker.

[SPEAKER_04]: He started out making commercials for different companies on the West Coast.

[SPEAKER_04]: He was actually living in Oregon at the time that I met him on line.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he was actually on a political kind of website where people were talking about Iraq and history and stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he was [SPEAKER_04]: He was a kind, he, I don't know how to say this.

[SPEAKER_04]: He was a supporter of the military as father was a World War II vet like mine was.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do we miss out what your dad doing the army?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or whatever.

[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he was drafted into World War II.

[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, I had an assignment when I was in elementary school to ask my dad what he was doing.

[SPEAKER_04]: The day Pearl Harbor was bombed.

[SPEAKER_04]: And my dad was on a train going to basic training.

[SPEAKER_04]: So he ended up in, he went and ended up going to cook cooks in Biker's school.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he ran a kitchen in a field hospital in North Africa, Sicily, Italy.

[SPEAKER_04]: He was at Andeo.

[SPEAKER_04]: My father, he only had like two or three stories he ever told about World War II, and I read a book about the Italian campaign after my father passed away, and I finally realized why he never talked about it, because it was brutal.

[SPEAKER_04]: But he was in a field hospital, so he probably saw some pretty horrors, horrific stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this guy that you're gonna make this movie with, that's his dad was World War II, and you guys connected.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's he's supporter of the military and everything and I kept at first I kind of talked him into doing because my old unit was having it's fifty at the anniversary.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I talked him into doing a little piece.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's still out there on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's called the history of the one two two seven.

[SPEAKER_04]: We actually got Nick Searsy, the actor he was on a show called Justified.

[SPEAKER_04]: We got him to narrate it.

[SPEAKER_04]: But it tells a whole story of the unit and everything.

[SPEAKER_04]: And while we were doing that, I showed him a rough draft of that book.

[SPEAKER_04]: And he goes, wow, I wish I had the money in the backing to do like a band of brothers kind of show about that book.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I started thinking about it and I got, well, why don't we do a documentary about this piece of the book?

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's the longest month is about that period of time when all those helicopters got shot down.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we spent two years going out and interviewing people, and we made a point of interviewing not just pilots, but guys who worked on the aircraft on the ground.

[SPEAKER_04]: Folks who are in the talk, we actually made a real effort to get out there and talk to people that we supported that were on the ground.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm real proud of that, and it's one several awards that film festivals and whatnot.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's how do you fund that thing?

[SPEAKER_04]: We did a go fund me.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, cool.

[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, that raised most of the money.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's awesome.

[SPEAKER_04]: And me and Ken paid for the rest.

[SPEAKER_04]: And once again, it wasn't really about making a lot of money.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's for free right now on YouTube.

[SPEAKER_04]: And if you have Amazon Prime, it's free on there too.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, it's a lot more accessible because I know how little people read these days.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I used to joke with Ken because his original cut of that documentary was like almost three hours.

[SPEAKER_04]: I said, look, even if people really care about what they're seeing, nobody's going to sit still for three hours to listen to us, you act about [SPEAKER_04]: this, that and the other thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: But we had a premiere for it in four or fourth when we finished it and got a bunch of people from the, it was like a mini unit reunion.

[SPEAKER_04]: Nice.

[SPEAKER_04]: probably shouldn't say this because people hadn't seen it might not want to watch it but like people were coming out of their crying and I think it has a lot to do with it you know they were in the unit and they knew the people that were talking about and obviously we cover some like tough ground there with those two shoot downs and so but I think at the end there's there's some redeeming you know we kind of took care of the people that caused the [SPEAKER_04]: The hurt, which could have got it done sooner, but they got him eventually.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what's next for you?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are you working on now?

[SPEAKER_04]: I am working with Ken on another documentary.

[SPEAKER_04]: We just spent like a week at Fort Rucker out on the flight line.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're making a documentary called Gun Pilots.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we interviewed like people who've been doing it for thirty years and kids that are going through the training.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so hopefully it'll tell the story of what it takes to be trained up to go flying Apache these days.

[SPEAKER_04]: And also we're kind of contrasting that with people who've done it like a whole career and then some.

[SPEAKER_04]: And their takes on what they did during their career, what's important, like their advice to a new pilot.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I think it should be [SPEAKER_04]: For people who, you know, like that sort of thing, I think it'll be something build and do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know we talked briefly before he recorded about William Reader.

[SPEAKER_00]: He might be cool to interview for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's just a freaking awesome guy with pretty amazing stories and I think he did.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when he got done with, when he got out of the Hanoi Hilton, he still went on for another, like, thirty years in the army.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he spent almost forty years in the army.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, and he flew a patchy's at the end of almost positive flew a patchy's at the end.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I recognized the name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he was cobras and the patchy's, and he'd be pretty awesome to have on that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the latest project on gun pilot.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, sir.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds freaking outstanding.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that get us up to speed?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, if people want to find you, you've got a, on the internet, uh, you've got a website.

[SPEAKER_00]: Danger Pig, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that right?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it's DNGRPIG.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, DNGRPIG.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can get the books there.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can get various other items there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you're also on social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, at Dan McClinton a one.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you're at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where you can find you.

[SPEAKER_00]: What else do you have on danger pick?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where danger pick come from?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, when I flew Huey's, I was in a unit that was based in Honduras, but half our company was in El Salvador.

[SPEAKER_04]: And we were supporting U.S.

[SPEAKER_04]: Mill group El Salvador, which had Navy seals, special forces.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we would fly those guys around.

[SPEAKER_04]: And the battalion that I was assigned to was half Huey's half Black Oaks.

[SPEAKER_04]: and the black hog guys to be honest were tools.

[SPEAKER_04]: So they would refer to us as slug drivers, pig boat drivers, you know, they whatever aspersions they could cast on us, they did.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we took the pig, we took ownership of the pig and we turned it around because we were the only ones that were flying in El Salvador earning combat pay because they wanted us to blend in.

[SPEAKER_04]: with the Salvadoran military because they're trying to keep our presence on the download.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we were the ones flying in the combat zone.

[SPEAKER_04]: We were the ones getting danger pay.

[SPEAKER_04]: So we were danger pigs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nice.

[SPEAKER_04]: So I drew like a pig on the nose of the aircraft and we named them like Miss Piggy and [SPEAKER_00]: You got pictures of those of those pigs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you got to send me some of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: When this thing comes out, I'll post them up.

[SPEAKER_00]: That'd be awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's at dngrpig.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: Social media's Dan McClinton MC Clinton at one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Echo Charles, you got any questions?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, real quick.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the flight, the Apache attack helicopter.

[SPEAKER_02]: Those are pretty big, right?

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a forty-eight foot rotor span.

[SPEAKER_04]: So how fast do those go?

[SPEAKER_04]: Like top speed.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well it depends on temperature and weight and all that, but on a good day you can probably get it up to one forty.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then what about altitude?

[SPEAKER_02]: How does that work?

[SPEAKER_04]: Well that's once again weight temperature dependent.

[SPEAKER_04]: I know over in Afghanistan they were fighting with those aircraft.

[SPEAKER_04]: They like twelve thousand feet.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you guys aren't really zipping around or because the you figured the Huey is a lot smaller.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my crack.

[SPEAKER_04]: It is smaller.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: Are you still drawing?

[SPEAKER_04]: I actually draw, you know, we were talking about dangerpig.com.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've got a bunch of stickers on there that I did all I artwork on those.

[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you got a bunch of old aviation patches on there as well, people can get.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I got.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to see the dangerpig U is I'm looking forward to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are there pictures of them on dangerpig?

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I don't think so.

[SPEAKER_04]: Because I'm pretty certain like the only pictures I got were like prints, you know, because back then I was not as sophisticated in my photography as I am now.

[SPEAKER_04]: But there is proof out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right on also.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dan, any closing thoughts?

[SPEAKER_04]: No, I just appreciate the opportunity and thanks for having me on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: I actually linked up with you through Twitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where I first saw your book and as soon as I saw your book ordered it, we got in touch and here you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks for making the trip out here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Join us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for sharing your lessons learned and thanks for documenting the history and your book and most important.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your service as a [SPEAKER_00]: For myself as a guy on the ground, there's nothing better than the guys and the skies above us that cover us with fire support and get us to safety when we need it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks for you and your team and all that the Army aviation did to help us execute our mission and the thirty seven months that you did supporting us on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_04]: You're welcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And with that, Dan McClinton has left the building.

[SPEAKER_00]: And well, when he left the building, I put down a little break.

[SPEAKER_00]: I drank a jockel fuel, vanilla, milk, ready to drink.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I came to the conclusion that vanilla is an underrated situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to agree with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look, and I highly rated it, but I was looking, we have all flavors here of the rated drink, banana chocolate vanilla.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, you know, of course, let's face it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Chocolate is kind of the standard go to from a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_00]: banana I was the it's always a good option but I said you know we're going with the milk because I remember that milked ice cream that this is what it tastes like tastes like melted milked ice cream and as soon as I drank the first sip and hit the lips I was like yeah this is like uh really good so jacco ready to drink milk from jacco fuel is underrated [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you realize this or notice what.

[SPEAKER_02]: I got that vanilla as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you?

[SPEAKER_00]: I did.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, when did you drink it during the podcast?

[SPEAKER_02]: I drink a hundred percent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I get chocolate and banana on repeat at home.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then yeah, I looked in the thing I was a quiz.

[SPEAKER_02]: I haven't vanilla in a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if there's something weird?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, what is it like telekinesis that we have with each other that you had this feeling for vanilla and I had a feeling for vanilla?

[SPEAKER_00]: You think we're already just growing out over there?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's possible.

[SPEAKER_02]: Or it just sort of could be like one of these undeniable common knowledge truths, you know, one of those, but either way.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we got that for your Jockelfield.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, you know, speaking of where you and I might have some telekinesis connection over vanilla milk, you're all into these origin, Chelsea boots.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you get a pair?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you're just observing from afar.

[SPEAKER_02]: Every time I see him, yeah, you know, you see that, you know, they pop up on the internet and stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not my thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in fact, they're so not my thing that I had got a pair and I gave him the carry right in front of him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And carry was freaking pumped.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, that was in front of you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember at your house, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: How come you didn't say nothing?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I actually helped it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I helped the emotions inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Karate Mancrowd, the inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Chelsea Boot Mancrowd, the inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I will say, so I'll Chelsea Boot, look, if you wear that type of thing, there's just no scenario when I'm breaking out of Chelsea Boots.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, I'm either working [SPEAKER_00]: or I'm not working, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I'm working, I'm wearing the black, the black, the black, the black, out pair of mocto boots.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are totally legit.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're outstanding.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're comfortable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Have you, did you try on the Chelsea boots?

[SPEAKER_02]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's, it's this good year well to be sold and they do something with cork.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they like put this glue cork stuff in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's what gives it the max comfort and the things are comfortable.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: These new origin boots super comfortable and of course made America.

[SPEAKER_00]: So check out the Chelsea boots.

[SPEAKER_00]: OriginUSA.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got that for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, at Jockel Store, correct me if I'm wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you have, what is it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Def five?

[SPEAKER_02]: discipline equals freedom version five out of you know I forget all the mark mods whatever but we'll call it the fifth version five point oh if you will yeah yeah I thought I figured you know we've been kind of in this outfit for ten years now and there's only been a handful of discipline equals freedom updates to the apparel you know we're out here representing so you know everyone's kind of [SPEAKER_02]: got that old design, which is good, of course.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I think it was about time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you gave me some insight into the next shirt locker shirt, too.

[SPEAKER_00]: With the kind of looks like a college situation, like a discipline, and then it looks like a college shirt.

[SPEAKER_00]: That if you didn't analyze it a little more deeply, you know it might not recognize.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as you recognize, you say, oh, hell yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: So perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: You see how you just said that in the game.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like, uh, sometimes like the word like the expression in the game, that's what it's from.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like like, you know, you always say in the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's funny because when we started the podcast and stuff and we, I'd be out talking to someone and I could tell that they were.

[SPEAKER_00]: in the game and then I'd ask them I'd be like, oh, how'd you get in the game?

[SPEAKER_00]: And they would know what I meant by the game and they'd say, oh, I heard you on Tim Ferriss, or I heard you on Joe Rogan, or I had Red X-Tree motor shape and then I got the point and but they'd have them they'd explain to you or they'd say something like, oh, you know my nephew or my cousin or my brother my brother was like in the game and I started saying what's going on?

[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, you made a t-shirt that's kind of like in the game [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I figured that what design would kind of strike you if you thought of the expression in the game.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what it.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's what it currently is.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't show them to you often, but I was compelled for whatever reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad you're happy with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm going to need some of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe two of them.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't make that face.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I feel like all the people who are in the game.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they just make it first.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just remember that you didn't even give me the ones that I requested.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so more so yes at the end of the day, yes, but you know, it's for us that we'll say obligatory not obligatory.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll say required details of that scenario.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did, but they all went out to the people and there wasn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't even get one.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was not as many left over as I thought.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not even one.

[SPEAKER_02]: of the, that other one, the comfort is a curse.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Great enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're out.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're good.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're out.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're sold out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I can do it as a, has a, has a shirt locker shirt ever become a, like staple permanent shirt on the store.

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that part of the scarcity of the shirts is it would just not happening?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, I just never really thought about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Deeply, I mean, I guess could, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: One, like, yeah, there's a few that I could see happening like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's one called good, you know, that good one that I wear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the fancy good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, that one, the people like you call it.

[SPEAKER_00]: First world, first world, first world.

[SPEAKER_02]: High level problems.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: You must be so weird to be in your head.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've all this strangeness going around like whatever part of your brain thought of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's gone out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't be able to start it.

[SPEAKER_02]: We made it out there.

[SPEAKER_02]: The sugar coated lies one that that seemed to be a hit.

[SPEAKER_02]: The crispy creams.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: That old that one of the OG ones is the GI Joe one that people that it don't care about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it like on a tank?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like a comic book.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, I don't know that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That one was good too, but no, it was just it just has discipline with the logo.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look like a G.A.

[SPEAKER_02]: Joe look.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a few, but no, not yet.

[SPEAKER_02]: Tense your question.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the one season to sister like when you when you imitate someone's brand like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because we have a Snickers bar one too, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but yeah, I guess so can they sue you and assist you?

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I read some other stuff about copyright, long time ago, and it was, uh, it had something, it's like a certain percentage has to be different.

[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever's trade and whatever's trademarked about this logo, you can't use that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I mean, I can't use any smickers logos, I mean, but what, but you know, you can put, so you can make stuff look very similar.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, especially if they're real basic.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you figure the Snickers, that's just blue lettering that's kind of tilted and like you put a white background in on whatever background with a brown shirt.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it looks like it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, if anyone sends me a season to cis, won't have, I don't think.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, we already ceased because they're all, they're just Charlotte Locker, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you could say, oh, he sent all the letters you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: We already done it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to convey a message.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not trying to capture the audience from you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be trying to capture their audience.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's part of the process of violation.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're not in violation at all.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't feel so, but like I said, I'm trying to help.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, finally, you kind of came at me a little bit because you were talking about echelon front and you inferred that I wouldn't think that saying that the principles of extreme ownership are kind of like the force.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, first of all, Jason Gardner would be, you know, if I said anything negative about Star Wars, Jason Gardner might call Matt Me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, but it is kind of like the force, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have these principles, you can utilize them and they will be very helpful in overcoming the darkness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[SPEAKER_02]: And actually, what is it that dark side?

[SPEAKER_02]: The dark side, the dark side, the dark side, the dark side, the dark side, the dark side, the dark side, whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: The reason that I first thought of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it the Sith or is it the Sith?

[SPEAKER_02]: The reason I at first thought you wouldn't because I remember you saying a few times hey this isn't some Jedi mine trick you're trying to like manipulate somebody you'd say that but I'm like oh yeah that's true and there's a big difference for sure the forces like when you learn kind of the way you know and it's for everybody [SPEAKER_00]: But you use the force for good, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You all forget it and use it for the dark side.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're this.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're the dark side.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know Star Wars?

[SPEAKER_02]: But you are correct.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, man.

[SPEAKER_02]: I get that one Star Wars.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was that was that starting when you were young?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Star Wars one was made or not one.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, part four.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's episode four.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the first Star Wars that came out came out the year I was born by the way.

[SPEAKER_02]: I saw return of the Jedi and the movie theater too.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I saw the first one in the movie theater because I'm older than you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but when you were a little kid going to movies, you just, they didn't comprehend anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, when I saw return of the Jedi, so I was like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, I comprehend it that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was legit.

[SPEAKER_02]: The ring core, that big monster was crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was the big monster?

[SPEAKER_02]: Ring core, this is what it's called.

[SPEAKER_02]: What looks guy walker?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it looks guy walker has to fight him in the cage, job of the hunt.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, is this when he falls in the water?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's under this, the, the side starts shutting.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, that's the that's part episode for a new hope when they're in the trash disposal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's a different one.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a big monster in there too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, a little snake monster.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: Media, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Check.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you want to use some of these principles, go to echelonfront.com or go to extreme ownership.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want some of those cool shirts, go to jocostor.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want some of those Chelsea boots or other comfortable clothing, go to originusa.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you need good protein, good energy, good immune system activities, go to jockfield.com or just go shopping.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're getting kind of everywhere right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also if you want to help out through it from a charity perspective, [SPEAKER_00]: Check out Mark Lee, my brother, his mom, created an awesome charity organization.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's called America's Mighty Warriors.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can go to America's Mighty Warriors.org if you want to get involved or you want to donate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also check out heroes and horses.org and finally Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org.

[SPEAKER_00]: org.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to connect with us on the interwebs for Dan McClin, check out that DNGRPIG.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: Got all kinds of cool stuff on there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, he's on social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's on the Twitter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Twitter X, as they say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I guess that's what I said.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's Dan McClinton, MC, CL, I, N, T, L, N, one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, for us, you can check us out on social media, I'm at Jaco Willink, Echoes and Echo Charles, and we're there sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not that often.

[SPEAKER_00]: We were discussing why we only dare that often the other day.

[SPEAKER_00]: What did you say?

[SPEAKER_00]: People dancing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's people that feel like they have to dance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Online.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Online.

[SPEAKER_02]: They got it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went pretty deep.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, it's, um, yeah, people oddly metaphorically.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but on their clown make up and do a lot of dances for the money on the internet.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's some odd behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you made robots dance on the interwebs for literally.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's, you know, that's served like three purposes in one, but that's one of the things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you want to check that out, we're there sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, thanks to Dan McClinton, one more time for joining us grateful for your service to our great nation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to all of our armed forces for protecting us with a solemn salute to Army aviation.

[SPEAKER_00]: men and women like Dan McClendon who put themselves at great risk to support the troops on the ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for your service and sacrifice and finally thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, board patrol, secret services as well as all other first responders.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for holding the line at home to keep us safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for everyone else out there, in dance book, Crazy Horse, he put in there the US Army's core values, and they are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage, and they have a note or like a description about duty.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it says fulfill your obligations, fulfill your obligations, [SPEAKER_00]: That means do what you're supposed to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no sweatless solutions.

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, no slack.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do what you're supposed to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what that means.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means get after every day without fail.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's your duty to go get some.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's always got for tonight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.