This is Joo podcast number 69 with Echo Charles and me Jaco Willink Good evening Ekko Good evening The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor postumously to Captain Henry T Lrod United States Marine Corps For service as set forth in the following citation for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while attached to Marine Fighting Squadron 211 during action against the Japanese land surface and aerial units at Wake Island from 8 to 23 December 1941 engaging vastly superior forces of enemy bombers and warships On 9 and 12 December Captain Lrod shot down two of a flight of 22 hostile planes and executing repeated bombing and strafing runs at extremely low altitude in close range succeeded in inflicting deadly damage upon a large Japanese vessel thereby sinking the first major warship to be destroyed by small caliber bombs delivered from a fighter type aircraft When his plane was disabled by hostile fire and no other ships were operative Captain Lrod assumed command of one flank of the line Set up in defiance of the enemy landing and conducting a brilliant defense enabled his men to hold their positions and repulse determined enemy attacks repeatedly proceeding through intense hostile fuselads to provide covering fire for unarmed ammunition carriers Capturing an automatic weapon during one enemy rush in force he gave his own firearm to one of his men and fought on vigorously against the Japanese responsible in a large measure of the strength of his sector’s gallant resistance On 23 December Captain Lrod led his men with bold aggre aggressiveness until he fell mortally wounded His superb skill as a pilot daring leadership and unswerving devotion to duty distinguished him among the defenders of Wake Island And his valiant conduct reflects the highest credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service He gallantly gave his life for his country signed Harry S Truman And that is the Medal of Honor citation for Henry Talmage Lrod the first aviator in World War II to be awarded the Medal of Honor and the first man to sink a warship from a fighter plane during the Battle of Wake Island And if you don’t know anything about the Battle of Wake Island it began simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor when that started And it ended on 23 December 1941 when American forces were forced to surrender And that was with around 500 American servicemen And they had a handful of coastal artillery pieces and a handful of anti-aircraft guns And they had 12 aircraft And what they were facing was 2 500 Japanese infantry supported by three light cruisers eight destroyers two patrol boats two troop transports two aircraft carriers with all their planes and two heavy cruisers They were completely outnumbered and completely and utterly outgunned But they held out for 15 days And while they were under that siege on the 20th of December while the Japanese were preparing for their final attack Major Lrod got out one last letter to his wife And I’m going to read that to you Saturday 20 December 1941 My dearest darling sweetheart I never suspected this afternoon when I wrote my other short note that I would be sitting down writing another tonight But here we are I just got in a few minutes ago and have just learned that Walt Baylor is returning and he has kindly consented to deliver this personally So I am very thankful for the moment Of course there isn’t a lot of news that I can write about and you probably know more real news than I do anyhow I am missing you terribly and I am undergoing a few new experiences but also is everyone else We’ve had considerable rain today and it is still cloudy The wind has been very low however The weather on the whole is nothing to complain about But I would like to see a good old-fashioned typhoon sweep this entire area I imagine there’s an awful lot of whitewashing going on now in high places It certainly will be a criminal shame if they succeed in covering over everything I am writing this in something of a hurry and under somewhat difficult circumstances I’ll think of a million things that I should have said after I had gone to bed tonight But now I’m going to say that I love you and you alone always and always and repeated a million times or so Give my love to Mary also Between the two of you you have it all There isn’t any for anyone else I know that you are praying for me and I have nothing more to ask than that your prayers be answered Yours devotedly and loving Talmage And so I think it’s important that when you hear that letter you recognize the fact that this is a this is a man And of course we always remember that these men we call them we call them heroes deservedly so We do that to honor them But I think it’s important to always remember that these heroes they’re people They’re people And these men these heroes these Marines these people that held the line they held the line for 15 days before they were forced to surrender after losing 49 Marines killed two missing in action three Navy personnel killed 70 US civilians killed And by the way the Japanese losses were recorded at about 820 killed with over 300 wounded two destroyers lost and almost 30 Japanese aircraft shot down or damaged But the odds and the ratio of force was just stacked against the US forces on Wake Island And when you get into a situation like that a dire situation a violent situation a situation where you are facing a determined enemy there is a bond that forms between people regardless of where they’re from or what their background is or what their socioeconomic class is or what service they were in None of that matters There’s a bond that forms that cannot be broken And we certainly had that in the battle of Rammani US Army soldiers United States Marines CBS our seals of task unit bru bruiser All of us that were in that fight had that bond We were brothers And tonight I am honored to have one of those brothers here with me and he’s a Marine Corps aviator a fighter pilot who also did time as a forward air controller on the ground And we’ve talked about that in many of the books that we’ve reviewed on the podcast where you have a Marine Corps pilot who’s now on the ground with the troops usually in one of the most forward positions because they have to know where the troops are out of that airond conditioned cockpit and into the sweat in mud on the ground And this this pilot as an Anglico team leader who with his team conducted dozens and dozens of missions with task unit bruiser in Ramani and I’ve talked about bringing him on the show and so here he is tonight Lieutenant Colonel almost retired David Burke Dave welcome to the podcast and thank you for coming on Thanks for having me man It’s good to be here Awesome So we have to before we talk about what we went through together we have to learn a little bit about you where you came from what you did and how you went from being from being a you know a pilot but not just a pilot a Top Gun pilot but not just a Top Gun pilot but a but a Top Gun instructor which is just incredibly selective That’s got to be one of the most selective things in the whole world right? How many top gun pilots are there? So about 25 at a time every three years they kind of rotate through So small group Yeah So that’s ridiculous And and but then you know you thought maybe you need to get after a little bit more So you’re going to go do an aggra So we’ll get into that But let’s start off with with where you came from just a little bit about your background and how you ended up saying “You know what? I think I want to do be in the Marine Corps ” Yep Go Right on Um so I actually grew up around here My parents moved out here San Diego when I was probably a year and a half years old one and a half years old And between here and Orange County I grew up Southern California kid Um not all that of exciting childhood I don’t have you know a ton of crazy memories I was a pretty quiet kid I was a good kid in school Got along with most folks um moved up to Orange County My parents got divorced It was basically just me and my mom and my sister for a while And uh I lived in a town called El Toro and what happened to be very close to where I grew up was a Marine base It was a fighter base And so as a kid I probably was there and late 70s and early 80s they had F4 Phantoms and A4s and A6s and just the cool jets at the time And so uh I went to the air show every year grew up out there and I think it was no joke it was overhead I could see it you know every day And I think that just got in my blood a little bit Uh went to El Toro High School went to the air show probably every year from I was 6 years old till the time the base closed down No joke I mean it was just part of my life And uh you know I met some people along the way too You know there’s a lot of Marines living there So I had some real powerful influences that kind of guided me towards that Um I’m sure we’re going to get into this because it’s come up already in the pre-con conversation but at around 14 I’d say watched this obscure movie called uh Top Gun Straight up Top Gun Straight up man Uh watched the movie as a kid Uh saw dudes flying airplanes off carriers shooting down MiGs and I’m like I want to do that And probably by 14 I I had a pretty good idea that’s what I wanted to do Um and did you make the connection between school and grades and all that stuff? Because a lot of people saw that movie and said “Oh I want to be a top gun pilot but I’m still going to slack off and do whatever I want and not you know play hookie and all that ” Somehow you made that connection It’s not shown in the movie right? They didn’t show people studying hard in school cuz that would have not sold a lot of tickets Totally Um I did eventually I mean when I watched that movie I think there was just something I’d always been interested in aviation It’s kind of captivating when you see planes flying around and to get to see the air shows see the Blue Angels that kind of stuff You can’t help but look up and watch that stuff It’s cool Um I would say that my performance in the academic arena was slightly less than stellar I was I did fine but I had no real motivation to do anything Um I wasn’t a real driven kid to uh to work really hard I kind of discovered that if I put in very little effort I was okay And if I wanted to do really well I had to put in a lot of effort And I hadn’t made much of a connection But so as I got a little older you know you know I watched the movie you know I think I was a part of a lot of different things but about the time I was 16 so kind of junior year in high school Um as I got some other influences in my life biggest one was a guy named Aaron Irvin I started working at Target around the corner from my house and was a Marine there And like I said my parents got divorced Um I had a stepdad that was there and kind of come and gone He ended up being a really big father figure in my life and a real positive influence and a Marine which was great and he explained some more things about what it’s like to be a Marine He he’s the one that made the connection for me that all that stuff you saw in the movies you can actually do that for real The Marine Corps you can do that as a Marine You know it’s not just a movie That’s a real life Somebody’s living that life right now And you can do that And uh I remember coming home and kind of telling my mom like “Hey I’m you I’m 16 I’m a junior high school I’m thinking about being a Marine Corps fighter pilot ” Which I had no military in my background Nobody had ever done anything like that And her answer was “That sounds awesome you should do that I mean just 100% And she had a very similar approach Uh you know everything every idea I ever had in my life that I run by my mom She’s like “Well somebody’s going to do it Might as well be you ” That was kind of her approach to everything I want to be a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps Somebody’s going to be it Might as well be you And that’s about the time I kind of started to get my my stuff together a little bit I wasn’t a mess by by any stretch but I I was a little bit just kind of running through life doing my thing being a kid And um uh I certainly think I was lucky because I knew with great detail at about 16 and change what I wanted to do I mean I knew I wanted to be a Marine Corps F-18 pilot based in Southern California and fly off carriers And that’s exactly what I ended up doing So at that time everything I started to do from there was with that kind of singular focus of of circling back to do that I even knew I wanted to be stationed at El Toro I mean I I had a real specific plan And so all the things I started doing from there school you know into college as well uh going to the Marine recruiter to say I wanted to join the Marine Corps be an officer in the Marine Corps all those things were geared very specifically towards that goal Now there’s a ton of hurdles between time you’re 16 and time I got my commission at 21 But everything else that I did in my life was either a distraction I just got rid of or it was a means to that end Uh I worked full-time uh while I was in school Put myself through the nearest college Uh you know the local state school that I lived close to I just drove up to school Didn’t have like a real big exciting college life Wasn’t a fraternity Didn’t go away to school Uh I paid my way through a school that I got a good education I I worked really hard to to to do well but it was all specifically designed to you want to be in the Marine Corps and be an officer you need a college graduate You need to be a college graduate Right on I can do that I can do that here Where’s the closest college? Okay Yep Close to college Uh how much does it cost? How much do I need to work? Did the math It was my life from about that time I started working at like I said I worked at Target as a kid I worked at Target from the time I was 15 and a half and got a work permit from school to the time that I got my commission in the Marine Corps and I went to school in Cal State Fullerton Monday Wednesday Friday My mom was a guidance counselor and a teacher So she helped me build a schedule that I could graduate as fast as possible which is exactly in four years It was all day Monday all day Wednesday and half a day Friday And I worked Tuesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday The money I paid I got paid I went to my tuition My tuition went to my education My education got me a commission in the Marine Corps I mean that was kind of it I mean in some ways you look back I probably could have diversified a little bit but at the time I wasn’t unhappy I was I was stoked man I was exactly what I wanted to be doing There was no like man I wish I could be doing this It wasn’t a chore by any stretch Like I said in retrospect you know I probably could have done things a little bit differently but 17-year-old Dave Burke 18-year-old Dave Burke knew exactly what he wanted to do And I had sort of talked myself into it like hey any detour that’s going to throw you off your path man And you’re going to look back with regret and go you know why you didn’t end up being what you wanted to be is because of this or that And I wasn’t going to let that happen So I kind of just got a little intense about being a pilot in the Marine Corps And sure enough and there’s still luck involved cuz when you go to when you go to TBS which is the basic school which all Marine officers go through you you have to still win or or get that billet that you wanted and you got that but I mean that could have gone totally man sideways There’s a lot of luck involved Um I think everybody in the military and everybody that’s been successful in the military knows you looking back on your career you know it’s a confluence of a lot of different things but timing circumstance and luck are they’re a part of it without a doubt Nobody can take credit for everything they’ve done And if I went back to do it again the odds of it working out the way that it did are pretty slim There’s just a lot of things that worked out in my favor Um but you know I went to OCS you know I went to the Marine Corps recruiter I started my freshman year at Cal State Fullerton as a se I was 17 when I started college went right to the recruiter on day one or they called it an OSO an officer selection officer So it’s basically recruiter for officers Hey I want to be a Marine He’s like right on Start filling out this paperwork Filled out the paperwork I said I want to be a pilot I was like piece of cake No problem We can we can make that happen Uh sign this ground contract and we’ll just make you a pilot at some point in the future So for those of you that don’t know um that’s a big lie It ain’t that easy And so when he says ground contract of course the Marine Corps needs pilots and guys to infantry And so but they need more infantry than they need pilots And so they say “Hey don’t worry about it You just sign up for ground right now We’ll take care of that other pilot You want to be a P?” Yeah Yeah of course We’ll take care of that later Yeah we’ll just transition over It shouldn’t be a big deal No factor And at 17 I mean I was signing paperwork to be a Marine officer That was that was a big step for me And I you know I probably would have signed anything Uh happily signed that Um after my freshman year in college I went to officer candidate school And to be honest with you you know I had all these big grand ideas for the last you know two three years I knew what I wanted to do but I when I went to OCS that was the first real hurdle I mean everything else was either an idea a plan some paperwork I get to the officer candidate school it’s like okay there’s a real marine drill instructor screaming at you You know you’re really doing the deed there And getting through OCS was a big thing for me because it was the first real test of did I you know I knew what I wanted to do but I had no real sense if I had what was required to be a Marine And I think as a kid you build up what that is in your mind as a larger than life thing Like how could anybody possibly do this? You turn it into something more than it is When I went to boot camp there was a there was a Navy Seal there right? And I I swear when I saw him I was like “God look at that ” And he was huge I mean huge big giant forearms and big just a big massive guy It just looked like a destroyer of human life I was “Oh my god ” So fast forward four years I’m in the teams and I meet this guy and he’s not at all man It was completely in my head It was completely in my head that this guy was such a destroyer But I just thought hey he’s a SEAL He must be a destroyer And I I actually saw it that way Yeah you can’t help it It’s certainly at that age I mean those those things are real powerful influences Well when you get out to OCS and all of a sudden you’re like “Oh man I need to I need to make this happen ” Uh that was a big big achievement in my life that I said “Hey I I can do this ” Okay I started to realize I’m not the biggest guy in the Marine Corps Nobody’s going to mistake me for a destroyer Um but what I discovered as I got there is I I knew mentally what I wanted to do It wasn’t a real question mark about my intentions or my desires And I was surrounded by tough strong kids you know young kids my age that are trying to be Marine officers And that’s that’s a physical and a mental challenge There’s no doubt about it And I was seeing guys kind of left and right of me that looked at least bigger faster stronger tougher and more capable than me They looked like that That same image you have in your mind And I’m watching these dudes kind of fall out of stuff or not finish stuff fast enough or just straight up quit Um you know guys would do drop on requests at OCS And I was kind of looking around thinking what’s you know what’s going on? You know why are you here if your plan wasn’t to get through it? So that was a good a a really good thing for me psychologically to realize that it wasn’t just a kind of a fantasy or a dream I I I had I had the potential being able to do this So I got through OCS Um you know that’s kind of a painful process as you know it’s 84 days It can be it can be slogging You lose a lot of folks doing it for a whole host of different reasons Some people get hurt some people quit Some people just can’t do it Uh and when you get on the back side of that like I can I can make this happen Let’s get that air contract Well we’ll get you that air contract at at the basic school So which is when you get your commission you finish school you get your degree finish officer candidate school So basically it’s hey you’ve done everything that you need You’re a commission officer became a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in June of 1994 And the first thing you do on active duty as a Marine is you go to something called the basic school I know you’ve talked about it a few times It’s basically a school for the Marine Corps teaches officers a little bit of everything doesn’t teach you everything of anything but you get a little exposure to infantry exposure to tanks artillery call for fire a little exposure to aviation patrolling defense offense So you kind of get a whole way in the land And the whole point of that for the Marine Corps is you go there with 250 people and they got to give each one of those people an assignment you know a particular job an MOS a specialty Um and they rank you I mean you were ranked from one to 250 And for aviation when I got there I remember getting there in the first week they kind of announce what billets are going to be available Oh we’re going to have you know 40 infantry slots and 20 they just tell you kind of what we expect to have breakdown and from there you’re supposed to go back and think about what you want to do They had two pilot slots I’m like man that is some rough math you know 250 folks Now not all 250 wanted to be a pilot obviously and not not all 250 people were qualified with you know their eyes and whatnot It wasn’t competing with 250 people but there’s a lot of people that wanted to be a pilot So the math was certainly not in my favor And that was another challenge of yeah you got to do well I mean you get ranked and graded on everything Physical fitness your leadership ability your academics you get peer reviewed you know your peers rate you you know anonymously and what they think of you So you got basically six months to get after it And at the end they line you up 250 people in a line not this is a real line and you walk into a room And on the room there’s a board and whatever job is available you can pick Now the Marine Corps does this thing called quality spread where they basically cut the class in third So out of 250 folks you know 80 80 or something around there The number one guy picks then the number 81 guy picks and then the number 161 guy picks or whatever it is and then the number two guy picks The only job in the Marine Corps that they did not quality spread while I was at the basic school was pilot So it was going to be the first two guys out of the gate that wanted it that were qualified were going to get it and I got the number two spot Um so again it was one of those things that I’m I I was starting to in my mind realize like well this I can do this Uh you know I built this thing up what I wanted to do You know we’re I’m 21 now You know 22 I think actually So it’s six years of my life that I’ve been sort of singularly dedicated to doing this And so that day where they my platoon commander guy named John Marian I’ll never forget it He was an F-18 pilot Brings him into his office He’s like “Dave you’re going to be a pilot ” And he goes “I think you’re going to fly America’s airplane You’re going to fly the F-18 Hornet ” And I was like “It was an awesome day man ” And uh I won’t I won’t ever forget it And um that was it You know I got my my ticket I I when I when I was selected for pilot I was ranked I think like number eight out of 250 in my company And by the time I graduated like three weeks later I was like 25 out of 250 So my performance might have declined a little bit after I had achieved those You wasn’t following the theory of no slack Yeah there was a little slack in that line That line was pretty tight for a lot of years Six years of you got it So a little bit of slack there at the end But um I did finish uh you know well enough to get that pilot which is what I always wanted It was kind of my dream And what year was that? Uh that was April of 1995 So I started the basic school in October of ’94 right after I got graduated from college in June little delay to get down to Quanico for the basic school That’s six months long I graduated sometime mid April Well wow About this time in 1995 So and then you go to flight school Yeah You do the rag You do all that stuff to get out to a squadron Then the first kind of work you were doing was uh was Southern Watch right? Yeah So I get through flight school I end up picking F-18s I get stationed at El Toro So I am literally living the dream I move back to my hometown Um I think I went to like my tenure high school reunion and you know I had told all my buddies you know what I wanted to do Ran into some people I hadn’t seen in a while It was it was good Um and uh shortly after I got there I actually flew the last flight out of El Toro They closed the base and all the Marines moved down to Myiramar So the Navy where Top Gun was was filmed and all that stuff back in the day The Navy left San Diego moved back east and the Marine Corps happily took over that base And so I moved down to Myiramar ended up in an F-18 squadron stationed out of Myiramar flying Hornets off carriers Straight up living the dream You’re actual dream you are now living at this time That’s that’s that is exactly right I’m living in San Diego Uh I was living in PB off Anacappa and um stationar flying hornets and and the carrier that I was assigned to my first deployment we did operation southern watch So you know I watched Desert Storm in ’91 uh on TV I was in freshman in college And you know we hadn’t we hadn’t done much in the military since then but we had flown every single day since that war ended in I think was it March of 91? Every single day since then we flew patrols over Iraq to make sure that the skies were clear and we were enforcing the no-fly zone And here it was you know 10 years later 2000 um on a carrier in the Persian Gulf flying combat operations uh over southern Iraq Did you guys ever drop any bombs there? I did Yeah a few of us did Not a ton There wasn’t a ton going on but what we would do these things called response options So if the Iraqis would do something I think in my case they set up a surface air missile south of a of a line that they weren’t supposed to be And we had surveillance that told us what was out there And I launched on a mission and blew up a SAM site was something called a JDAM at the time Was a it was a a bomb guided by GPS which at the time was this brand new invention Yeah It was crazy technology I think we were the only planes in the entire carrier that could do it because we had this thing called a GPS Super fancy back then Um but but at the time Jaco that was combat That was that was it There was no other show in town And so the night that I dropped a bomb on a SAM site in Iraq off a carrier in an F-18 You could have you could have just retired right there good to go dude I Yeah that was it I could have come back to that They could have flown me off the ship and I probably would have died a happy man at that point I was like that’s it I I have I’ve reached critical mass That’s all I ever wanted to do So it was um again a lot of it was just things that worked out in my favor but I did exactly what I wanted to do and that event was was kind of at the time sort of the pinnacle That was what I I thought I was going to achieve Yeah I mean it’s the same thing in the dry years for the SEAL teams Like if you did some kind of mission you were just super stoked You know we were over in the Persian Gulf Actually same time 2000 99 2000 I was there I was in the Persian Gulf and we were doing you know MO operations stopping smugglers coming out of Iraq So we were taking down vessels and getting control of them And again at the time super stoked Yes The big mission was taking down these vessels and you thought it was pretty cool And it it was cool It was cool but you just didn’t have any anything to compare it to at all Yeah So what happened? Uh so I get back from that deployment Uh that’s the summer summer of 2000 And um shortly after that I got selected by my commanding officer to go to Top Gun So that was my first exposure to kind of advancing inside the squadron So as a young guy I’ had done almost two years in the squadron I’ve been there for a little while and got some qualifications and grew and developed in the squadron And they pick one or two guys every couple years from each squadron to go to the school And the whole point of going there is that you learn kind of this advanced you know it’s like a master’s degree basically in in being a fighter pilot with the intent that you can bring that back to the squadron and be one of the kind of key trainers the key leaders in the squadron So I went to Top Gun uh early the next year uh summer of actually about a year later So summer of 2001 uh I go to Top Gun and I came back and we were just in a work When you show up to Top Gun just so everybody knows you feel like I mean especially cuz you were the big combat vet with bombs dropped and you feel like you’re pretty much a complete stud Yeah And then you show up at Top Gun and the instructors just can completely annihilate Just for those of you who don’t know it’s it’s you’re learning how to dog fight mono emano against another guy in another plane like stock car racing cuz the planes are equal and it’s you against the other guy and it was actually cool You were explaining some of the rules and how you’d set it up and they have you know how in jiu-jitsu you know you you you okay you know you start standing you know you shake hands bump fist okay now it’s on Well with the Top Gun they start at a certain distance They they go towards each other at a certain altitude certain distance away from each other They go they pass at 1 000 ft you know left left wing to left wing And then once they pass they say “What do you say? Game on Fights on Fights on Fights on ” And then boom now it’s go So that’s how they start in their neutral position And and of course when you show up there it’s just like jiu-jitsu in the fact that it’s like a guy that did a little bit of training somewhere and then they show up at a jiu-jitsu place and they’re going to get totally destroyed So he shows up you show up at this thing and and you think you’re again a big combat vet you just get annihilated Totally So yeah I get that I had dropped a bomb That’s singular I had dropped a bomb at bomb and I was I was Yeah I was a big deal that dude had dropped a bomb you know and so at the time I was I I thought because some of the instructors had never done that before right? Most of them like you said there’s the dry years There just wasn’t a ton going on You had a story here and there but um I think more than anything in my own mind you you kind of build up like I got some game here man I’m going to watch this You know I’m going to do some good work here Uh and you know I’d done well enough in my squadron and I was one of the guys that got picked to go to school So which is another little confidence boost So your ego is getting fed It’s getting forcefed maybe Yeah a little bit Um yeah you’re feeling pretty good about yourself and so you go up there and uh like like you said so you know you’re you’re a student and you know you’re not going to you know you’re not going to be as good as the instructors but what you don’t know is that you’re not just going to lose You’re going to get you’re not just going to lose or get annihilated You’re not even going to know what happened It’s going to be over and you’re going to kind of be flying back and before you’re going to land and and you’re not going to be able to explain what just occurred I mean it occurs in a way that is so it’s hard to explain It’s like you weren’t there Uh it it’s really it’s humbling I mean Jacob we’re talking the very first flight on the very first day my very first event the very first fight of the first flight it was over in like 20 seconds And the instructor was saying “Okay they call they say “Knock it off when we’re done We’re going to start and set it up again ” And I knew right then I was totally in over my head The very first one And uh it was so my first flight was was so bad that when I landed um we were walking back in uh to you go to maintenance and you you basically go back and turn the airplane back in and so they can fix it And then what you’re supposed to do is walk across the street to the squadron hanger and talk about it And I’m in my gear and you’re supposed to get undressed out of your flight gear and go He’s like “Hey don’t get undressed “ And uh I’m like “Okay right Right on ” He’s like “Why don’t we just go do that again?” Um it was bad enough that we didn’t even need to talk about it We just needed to just Hey and he’s like “Hey why don’t you just just take a deep breath man? Just” and we went and did that flight without ever without ever even talking about the first one right? Um so I kind of knew I was Yeah I had some work to do So Top Gun is is really good about not just humbling you but obviously it teaches you a ton It’s it’s a it’s a six at the time it was only six weeks for the Marines because we we didn’t do some of the syllabus that the Navy did because we got it elsewhere And it’s six weeks where you start with literally just you against another guy one against one and you end up building up to where it’s uh you know six to eight of you on the front on the blue side the friendly side against you know 15 20 simulated adversaries So it’s a it’s a a lot in a short period of time and that idea of being like really bad when you start happens over and over again in the course So you get through the 1 v one phase and at the end you’re like “Oh finally I got this 1 v one thing I got this thing wired I can do this ” Like all right cool Now you’re going to go two against whatever and you just get rolled again and you’re like “Ah back to square one ” So it it builds you up It breaks you down Builds you up Standard military you know just breaks you down your pieces And then the guys there their instructors are so they’re obviously really good I mean that part is sort of speaks for itself They’re really good on the airplane but what makes them unique is that they’re exceptional teachers So you learn a ton So by the time by the time you finish Top Gun that that image in the mirror where you’re like man that that dude is awesome that gets shattered It’s actually all back together by the time you leave And so you leave there like you got that patch on your shoulder you fly back you get the patch in the last day you get up in your airplane F-18 with my name painted on the sign with a Top Gun patch and I flew back to Miramar Like so the dream is getting better The dream is getting better But but there’s been enough reminders like yeah I should probably maybe cool out a little bit you know you start to just learn that there’s always guys out there that are significantly better than you and and you you keep climbing up the hill but finishing Top Gun as a student you feel like you’ve hit the top of the mountain but you realize cuz the guys you’ve been working with there’s an awful long way to go You at least know what you don’t know Yeah that’s a great way to put it You know what you don’t know and you know there’s a lot that you don’t know and so it kind of dispels all those feeling You know we went through flight school like “Wow I I’m I finished flight school I got F-18s I’ve really got this flying thing nailed ” and you you’re you’re barely functional in an airplane compared to these other guys And when you get to a place like Top Gun it’s just such a concentration of talent You you as good as it feels you actually the thing you get the most out of some humility because you just got crushed for six weeks crushed Uh and hopefully you learned something out of it And you’re supposed to take that back and and teach the guys in your squadron all those same lessons And so my expectation was I was going to go back from Top Gun I was going to spend another two years 18 months in the squadron as a kind of the senior uh instructors and then go on to something else and and I didn’t know exactly what that was at the time But as I’m leaving no joke my last day I remember the guy who asked me um it’s actually the same guy that’s going to do my retirement here in a couple months He’s like “Hey man have you thought about coming back to be an instructor at Top Gun after this tour and your squadron’s over?” And I try to play it cool like “Oh that’s let me let me go home and think about that “ But clearly there wasn’t a lot to think about there So I left there with kind of an inclination that I might get asked back and I was pretty stoked about that They didn’t formalize it But he was a senior IP on the staff a senior marine there as well Um a real respected guy in marine aviation and he had given me a sit down So I was hoping that that was going to happen But I also thought I had time I thought I was you know this is July 2001 and obviously you know 6 weeks later uh 911 uh hits and so all all that calculus kind of changed and very quickly my squadron which was on this regular cycle of preparing to go to what was going to be another Southern Watch deployment just like we had did that whole thing had changed um because of because of September 11th So what happens on September 11th for you? Yeah you were active in a squadron getting ready for work in the morning Totally boom I’m stationed right up the road here You know 5 miles north of here is Marine Corp Station Miramar I’m I’m on my second half of my first tour as a pilot in the F-18 squadron I’d already done that one deployment and um I had a routine down You know I was getting up I was probably I guess it was probably 5 in the morning I’m sitting at the foot of my bed lacing up my boots like I did every day to just get in the car and drive into work and click on the TV And you know I see it’s 8:00 back east or around that time and I see what’s going on And I think you know same story for all of us Kind of piece it together very quickly like hey this isn’t an accident This is something’s really happening here You see the second building and it it very quickly kind of clicks in like this is the real thing Um and I knew I knew something I knew we were going to go to war I didn’t know what I I obviously didn’t know the details but I knew things were going to change really dramatically As a matter of fact you know my drive to work which normally would have taken me 10 minutes or whatever 15 minutes something some short drive to get up into into the base it was like 3 hours to get on the base You know they’re inspecting every vehicle You know every car is getting pulled over dogs are sn you know the the whole nine yards to just the security Uh it was pretty chaotic It was kind of mayhem And I’m I drive into my squadron and half of my squadron had already not half but a good number of guys had already been up to Fallon which was where we’re going to go for training the same place that Top Gun is And it was just part of our normal training cycle And my squadron commander at the time uh an awesome guy called me because he had gone up there and I was supposed to bring the you know be part of the second half of that went up there He’s like “Hey man you need to go brief You’re going to be the lead of a four ship of aircraft Uh we don’t know all the details yet but we’re going to they’re going to call you They’re going to find live ordinance and you’re going to have to fly an a mission a an air patrol a combat air patrol mission called it a cap because there were still a bunch of airliners that were still airborne coming in from places like Japan and Korea These long haul you know 12 13 14 hour flights There’s a whole bunch of airplanes airborne and and we didn’t know if those there’s a potential issue with those airplanes you know if they’re going to try to do the same thing back east that they did out west Total chaos And and I had just recently graduated from Top Gun so I was he’s like “Hey you’re the lead ” And and we didn’t have a good We didn’t know what the mission was was I mean it was basically one of those things where we’re supposed to get airborne and somehow between us and some other controller going to kind of determine if a particular aircraft might have been a threat and that was happening all over the country People were in their aircraft Air Force Navy Marine pilots were just launching to do these protection missions of what ended up becoming something called uh Operation Noble Eagle which started on September 11th and it was this aviation overwatch of of key cities and key locations and we were totally clueless on what that was I ended up not launching It didn’t happen Um you know but we did the brief we were getting ready to go and uh it was just kind of that moment of chaos of we were on our heels and talking didn’t prepare me for that I didn’t have a a sense of what I was supposed to do with an airliner you know filled with civilians on some route coming from Japan and trying to figure out what I would do if somebody said “Hey that aircraft we’ve figured out that aircraft is going to try to fly into a building or crash into an airport or something like that ” It was just it was just kind of mayhem and and it was you know it was tough to start off The the idea being that if that is suspected of happening or they can somehow confirm that’s going to happen then you or one of your mates is going to have to shoot down a civilian aircraft That’s what you’re being that’s what they’re that’s what they’re thinking Yeah Exactly And and that was something I’d never considered um you know anybody had considered that at that point and I’ve read there’s some you know there’s some pilots that actually ended up launching out out in the east coast I’ve read a couple articles of pilots that took off in their F-16s here in DC because obviously it was with the Pentagon uh up in DC and then New York City that actually did get airborne and there they had missions to do exactly that Um so in some sense I was pretty lucky that I didn’t have to go through that calculus But I still can picture where I’m sitting given that brief with three other pilots kind of like where we’re sitting today And we’re even asking ourselves like how do you I mean how do you shoot down an airliner? You know what what would we actually go through to do that? How would we determine you know we were kind of trying to talk through that and and the idea that an airliner filled with civilians and we knew you know at that point that those other airliners are just regular commercial airplanes that just took off to go in their flight and they had crash We knew everybody on on board you know nobody’s going to survive that And so it was just a very strange way to start what ended up being kind of a cycle of war that you know we’ve all been through for years now uh that morning of getting that call from the co hey this is what you’re doing and you know that was the beginning um shortly very shortly after that within a day or two no actually I think probably that late afternoon and certainly by the next day my squadron was one of the several squadrons that was tked to go back out on the carrier so we split the squadron in half that same co that called me he took guys from fallon flew onto the ship on onto the carrier right off the coast of LAX Uh and I still we we talked about this I can picture to this day I took off out of San Diego and was flying overhead Los Angeles International Airport and we had guys that taking off from the carrier They had live missiles and they were doing a cap and I’m flying you know kind of opposite direction overhead LAX looking down and you know I grew up in Southern California LAX is like one of the busiest airports in the world There’s planes all over the tarmac on the runways on the taxi ways cuz there’s everybody landed nobody took off There’s no controllers and they’re doing this CAT mission where they’re just flying overhead LAX kind of largely unknown on what’s going on and just that moment of seriality of um airborne and there’s nobody else nobody else flying and we’re just sort of just waiting for something to happen and you know it was kind of one of those hey you’ll get your you’ll get more specific instructions as we figure it out you know the leadership was was scrambling every bit as much as we were and kind of looking down thinking this is this is a whole new world You know this is not Southern Watch you know that that mission we’ve been doing And within maybe six weeks we we steamed out We we took we loaded the carrier a couple months early put the squadron the whole airwing got on board the the carrier and steamed out towards the North Arabian Gulf to go do um what we called as Operation Enduring Freedom So late of 2001 I think it was maybe November of 2001 we were going to war Uh and I Afghanistan was where the war was you remember and at the time that was it There was nothing else going on We went to Afghanistan So I did a seven-month cruise on a carrier um from November of 2001 I think we came back April May of 2002 uh and did combat operations over Afghanistan And you know you know a lot more ordinance and a lot busier We did a mission at the time It was called Operation Anaconda I think I might have asked you about that That was like the largest ground offensive We had supported this Desert Storm Um and when we came back in April April or May of O2 we thought we we’ sort of largely won the war We we thought we’d accomplished most of our mission We left thinking hey this thing is winding down We’re feeling pretty good about it And when I got back in May of O2 I kind of distinctly remember like I just had my war experience You know I was a pilot in combat You know I’d done Southern Watch but obviously you know nothing like this And but I I’d done a combat deployment off a carrier supported troops on the ground in Afghanistan dropping bombs and flying off carriers I I kind of thought that was it I think a lot of us did Yeah a lot of us did I know I thought that by coming back from my first deployment to Iraq I was kind of you know I’m thankful that I got to do this deployment and I thought it can’t go on that much longer But I mean really quickly after we got back it it it spiraled and I said “Oh this this is going to be a while ” Yeah big time Um you know while I was on that deployment I had got an email from Top Gun saying “Hey why don’t you come up here next summer and be an instructor?” So I came back in May of that deployment knowing that my next step was going to go back up to Fallon So I was feeling pretty good about that I was pretty pumped to know what was next And um you know in that that period of time we came back You know I’m packing up that summer moving out in the fall and already the gears are starting to turn uh for what ended up being Operation Iraqi Freedom You know it’s the writing is on the wall that this is we’re not done I mean we’re really just getting started And it was several months before that all kicked off I think everybody in the military certainly knew this is which way it’s going to happen And I think there were some things along the way that were supposed to occur but we we all knew this was coming Certainly you know it kicked off in March of the following year It it wasn’t a big surprise to any of us And I was up at Fallon kind of watching that whole thing roll and I realized that that deployment that I just finished was not the end of you know what what we were doing as a country try to deal with this problem and and then you show up at Top Gun to be an instructor which is you know you said the going to Top Gun was like a master’s and so now it’s it’s beyond a doctorate right I mean it’s yeah I we say it’s the PhD I mean in in our business um you know certainly as a for a marine or a naval aviator a fighter pilot that’s that’s it top gun kind of represents it’s the schoolhouse It’s it’s the place where you want to be And as an instructor you have a you have a huge amount of responsibility It’s a bunch of sort of mid mid-career guys It’s it’s Navy lieutenants It’s it’s Marine Corps captains maybe a junior major or a junior lieutenant commander but it’s run by um relatively young guys guys that have maybe a full deployment under their belt And you know quickly guys are coming in having done Afghanistan combat operations guys coming having done Iraq combat operations So in the time that I was there from 02 to05 the combat experience on the staff went from basically none to everybody every single dude had been in combat It was coming off a long deployment where they had done backto-back deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan Guys that I knew had done 10-month deployments to Iraq on a carrier I mean really seasoned guys where just one generation three years prior Not a single person on the staff had seen any combat like that So the exact same thing in the SEAL teams we experienced exact same thing It went from zero or close to zero combat experience Either it’s an odd guy that had done little operation here or there to every single guy except for the new guys you know and then but but your your learning curve when you show back up there it was just as steep as the first time Yeah without a doubt So when you’re there as a student and you don’t understand a lot of what’s going on as a student at least on the instructor side you know they’re not trying to keep anything from you but you’re just you were so busy just trying to keep your head above water You’re not spending a lot of time wondering what the instructors are doing on their free time Um you know you’re just prepping for every brief The flight may take an hour but you’ve put in 10 hours of work ahead of time and you’ve debriefed for six hours and when you’re done you need to go start the next prep process again for so you are just all day every day thinking about your next flight and getting ready for that and the things going on So in your learning curve is steep as a student when you get there as an instructor and I didn’t know this at the time you get there when you’re there as an instructor you you have certainly been selected to a pretty elite group of folks but you don’t teach student at Topgun when you’re an instructor for a year They spend an entire year with you as an instructor There’s only 25 guys on the staff and so a third of you basically if you kind of do the math are sequestered for an entire year just going through what’s called we call the IUT the instructor under training and they’re just teaching you how to teach students Um and in that year you’re now flying all these different training missions with the instructors that are training you to be an instructor and you’re getting annihilated again So that whole continuum of well I’m pretty good Uh you were reminded very quickly and so it takes an entire year Now the good news about that is that by the time you’re finishing your initial instructor qualification you can go teach students You have been flying more than you’ve ever flown in your entire career I mean I’m flying two three times a day sometimes for a year And so you’re just getting reps and reps and reps And you have god more reps I think than anybody in aviation So by the time you get your first student you sit down your very first student brief your agame has been elevated you know quite a bit And you’re able to fly with the students and teach them way more effectively because heck when I finished Topgun I went to Afghanistan I didn’t do a single air-to-air mission for almost a year I was dropping bombs I was doing CASS and all those other type of missions So when I got there I was I was pretty rusty on those skill sets Uh a year of flying with instructors will will resolve that pretty well It just it just the amount of flying that you get you know in jiu-jitsu we call it math time but but for a normal pilot you’re not even getting a fraction of that right? A fraction Yeah Not only you’re not getting a fraction of it a lot of the time that you’re flying is when you’re not at Top Gun is you know sometimes you do admin flying just flying to and from different places Sometimes you’re just prepping for a very particular mission You know it takes a skill to you know the missions are getting ready to drop bombs or do arm reconnaissance or different types of flying You don’t get to see all of it You get to see a pretty narrow amount At Top Gun you get exposed to everything repeatedly And so that one against one that we talked about that we call BFM basic fighter maneuvers which is just you and another guy fighting two airplanes you do that a ton but you you do all the other things just as much So you get exposed to the PhD part of it isn’t just the reps I think that’s critical but it’s that you get exposed to this nuance part of aviation that you just didn’t even really know existed So you you get all the science all the math all the things that drive us to say this is why we do the things we do Then you just get to practice it over and over and then you go back to the science and go “Hey I think there’s some flaws here maybe some differences here ” And the guys at Topgun are the one writing the manual We literally write a manual It’s 4 in thick of all these different chapters of how to fly the airplane Everything from doing a one against one to dropping a bomb to mission planning Top Gun owns that And so I was given a chapter in a book and a lecture that I was responsible for And that the the thing that was pretty amazing for me is when I got there the mission set that I was responsible for my my SME area my subject matter expert area was surface air threat and counter tactics So I was the guy as a captain in the Marine Corps that was responsible for writing the chapter teaching the lecture and establishing our tactics for how to defeat threat surface air missiles in AAA And this was from September of 2002 to March of 2003 that I was the guy that established the Navy Marine Corps’s procedures and techniques and how we did that and taught that So you know desert I’m sorry OAF kicks off you know guys that I’m would had flown with and trained with are out there on deployments or writing me letters hey we’re seeing this threat What what should we do here? You know buddies of mine that I I’ve been growing up in aviation I’m saying hey this is what we should do This is how you should deal with this particular case And so the responsibility as an IP I think why it’s such a PhD type program is that your level of responsibility grows You have to be more than just a good pilot I mean you can teach anybody to be a good pilot but if you can’t teach and explain to other guys what they’re doing and how to get better and how to keep themselves alive you’re kind of useless in combat So it was a it was it was the best three years of my life man It was it was ridiculous And we just flew every day two three times a day I got qualified in the F-16 I got to fly a totally different airplane So I was dual qualled in an F-18 and and an F-16 as a Marine on a Navy base at a Navy command after having done two deployments on carriers I mean you cannot It’d be like if I said “Jo I need you to do jiu-jitsu three day three times a day every day for three years “ That and you need and that’s all I need you to do I don’t need you to do anything else Yeah Yeah You know it’s I’ve actually done a backseat ride in F-18 at Fallon as a matter of fact And and one of the things that I think is important to understand or at least from my perspective one of the things that made it really cool was when you get in an F-18 if you’ve never been in one most people you’re not going to get the chance to get in an F-18 and fly with it right? So I’ll give a little description of what I thought was one of the coolest parts about it is that if you look at the structure of an of an F-18 the the the pod that you sit in the cockpit is really far forward and the wings and the engines and stuff are behind you And it looks that way when you look at it but when you get in it you those those wings are so far behind you that you feel like you’re in a superhero pod You need to turn you need to turn hard You can’t just look back to see the wings And it’s a glass canopy that surrounds you So you feel like you’re just in a little pod that is moving at whatever 800 miles an hour And it’s it’s it’s a crazy feeling It’s a crazy feeling And you cuz you’re it’s deceiving cuz you just feel like you’re in this little space pod somehow Star Wars powering through the air You don’t realize that behind you is you know tons of metal and machinery that’s making this happen And the G forces and all that stuff It’s it’s it’s it’s a very cool very cool thing to experience for me I I thought “Oh yeah that was awesome “ I didn’t think to myself man I should have been a pilot I there’s some there’s some I know you we were talking about it yesterday for you the connection between man and machine is a really cool thing that you enjoy For me I don’t like it I don’t like to rely on a machine Yeah I don’t even even getting in Bradley’s and stuff in Romani I’d always think uh you know I mean I always was apprehensive about a big machine that I had to rely on I don’t want to rely on me and what I could do and that’s why I had that little disconnect always I still have it today You know that’s why I’m waiting for the robot war cuz I want I want to fight those things So I just have a little disconnect with the machines but I can see where people that are have that type of mindset It’s just you know it’s just a complete equalizer As you were telling me last night you it’s like is it’s a stock car race It’s you in the same plane as me and who is better is going to win Period That’s it There’s really no excuses you can make Yeah that’s one of my favorite things It’s always been one of my favorite things about flying fighters is that it’s it’s an equalizer You don’t get you don’t bring any advantage to that airplane Now if we’re going to train something you and me there’s guys that are bigger guys that are better heart rate the guy whatever There’s a whole bunch of ways that maybe you can bring an advantage Uh you lose all that the strap on that airplane because you’re only going to go as fast as the airplane goes You’re only going to pull as many G’s as the airplane pulls That’s what you get Now you get a lot of all that stuff I mean it’s awesome But your success or your failure is 100% about how well you interact with that machine and compared to that other guy And if you lose you’re not well my engine No Well I didn’t have negative You lost because you were worse than me today Period And and look you’re going to we’re going to find reasons why You know we we record every flight We record our radars We record our information our display So you can go back and dissect And what you end up being able to do as an instructor is right there that’s why you lost This decision you made here this move you went you went this direction or you went up or down and you decided to go at this speed or whatnot You can dissect every single flight And the great instructors are the ones that can tell you this is why I did this to you in 45 seconds Because here you made a decision and it took me this long to capitalize it but right now is where I took advantage of a mistake that you made And you freeze that mistake you put on a TV and they see it and they look at it and that burns into their brain and they make that mistake over and over and over again until eventually they don’t make that mistake and then you’re starting to make your money as an instructor But being in an airplane I brought every bit of capability that airplane had and I never had it There’s no you don’t start at a disadvantage Um and if you beat somebody they have nobody to look at no excuse no nothing to blame except for their own performance And I loved that and I will always love that about being a fighter pilot Um and then when you’re flying an F-16 now you have a different airplane So hey one airplane’s faster than the other One airplane actually turns better And so now instead of it just being two totally equal platforms it’s one has particular strengths and weaknesses that are different than the other ones So you better be really good about avoiding his strengths and getting you know and playing to his weaknesses and vice versa And if you lose guess what? It’s still your fault 100% because instead of you having two similar airplanes you couldn’t identify what he was able to do better than you in his regime that he has ex you know you’re stronger than me fine Then I’m going to do I’m going to try to be more agile than you Uh you know you’re quicker than me Okay I’m going to maybe try to outpower you Those type of things And those games that you’d play kind of back and forth you there is no question at the end of a flight at Top Gun that you’re fighting another dude who won Nobody comes back like I wonder how I did on that one It’s all very evident If you’re looking over your shoulder and a guy’s telling you that he’s gunning you with his airplane you don’t go back to the debrief and think I wonder how that I wonder how this is going to play out So it’s all right there uh laid out The cards are always on the table Uh there’s a reason for everything why you succeeded and why you failed And I just thrived in that environment because you couldn’t hide from anything Everybody saw everything and it was all right there A good student a really good talented student coming up to Top Gun has what percentage chance of winning? So if if the best let’s say that hypothetically the best student that I ever saw that came to Top Gun as a student from a squadron the best student that ever came to Top Gun to fight a qualified Top Gun instructor stands at 0% chance of winning the best student at Top Gun has zero chance Yeah I could fall asleep in an airplane as an IP and a student is not going to beat me There is just such a huge and it it doesn’t even mean that we’re better I don’t mean to imply that we were better pilots but you’re just you’re just time You are just it’s not it’s and it’s and I don’t even mean that critical It’s just not even close And and nor would they expect it you know? I mean some students every now and then a student kind of thinks he’s going to do some good work you know hey watch this I’m awesome But most guys show up realizing that that disparity I you know I understood that when I got there as a student like these guys are just in a different world And that’s you want to get to that world But you know as an IP you which is instructor pilot by the way instructor pilot Yeah If I flew my best jet on day one against the best student it would be over so fast that you almost wouldn’t even learn as much as you should So you you still fly your best airplane but you make sure that there’s a learning process there If you want to just annihilate somebody at Top Gun as you can do that Mhm The students that go come there even on their last day aren’t aren’t on your on your same level They they just aren’t They’ve gotten a lot better The learning curve is steep But when you’re in your third year as an IP at Top Gun you have just had so many reps you know so many laps doing the exact same thing You’ve seen everything that it’s almost like we talked about this yesterday it’s almost like things are happening in slow motion for you like you’re in the Matrix and that guy is just working as hard as he possibly can and doing his thing and you’re just kind of sitting there kind of watching it at like one/ird speed So your ability to decide and do something to him or something to that airplane or make a decision it you’re just operating at a faster pace than him and that reaction is just impossible to keep up with I can’t wait till you start training jiu-jitsu because you’re just going to the the analogies are just everywhere And that’s one thing I say in jiu-jitsu you can see the future You can actually see the future when when you’re training jiu-jitsu with some someone that doesn’t know as much as you You know what is going to happen You know what they are going to do Just like when you’re in the cockpit and you you do something and you know what that person you know what they’re going to do You just know it totally And and don’t forget too as a as a as an instructor you’ve been on the receiving end of that for years as well So you understand kind of both sides of that coin And you know you fly with someone and you’ll think to yourself like “Oh I can’t believe he just did that ” And then you know three turns later is when you you get to take advantage of that because you know some time will have to play out for his mistake to really reveal itself Like man I can’t can’t believe you just did that This is going to cost you over time And you can go back on the tape like I said and say hey the you know you’re worried about what happened at the end where I’m behind you But what really what let me do that was 30 seconds ago you did this and when this was the environment or the the circumstances and you see that stuff and that’s when you talk about seeing the future I mean if you really want to be a jerk about it you know if guys are your your buddies you know I’ll get on the radio like a buddy of mine I’ll students that came through but guys from my squadron I’m like “Oh that’s going to hurt ” And they’re like “What? What?” I’m like “Stand by you know and 30 seconds later you’ll be gunning the guy ” Um because you see the mistakes that they make and you know how that’s going to play out So you are on your own playing field there as as an instructor And like I said man it’s not about being better or worse It’s just the time And you get so much of the time there and you get exposed to all the the why You get the why at Top Gun We teach the why a lot but when you’re writing the the the manual when you’re doing the and you’re you have all the testing equipment available and you’re running a thousand computer generator reps to see what the results are the level of what you know about the Y is just so much more So you just there’s a whole world available to you to and and the guys at Topin 2 want to be there though the most that the IPs are killing to get to a place like that So there’s not a lot of slackers there Not a lot of dudes are trying to motivate or kind of prod along like “Hey buddy let’s get going ” You know dudes are getting after it from startup to shut down every single day And so you’re also getting pulled along because you want to keep up with your peers You know you don’t want to be the worst Top Gun instructor there You know every time you think you’ve made it you realize all you did was just get in a more selective pool And your goal is the same as to be the best that you can be and hopefully the best you can be as one of the best guys there you know you don’t want to be last at Top Gun because then you’re just last and I don’t want to be last at anything Who does? And so that that’s a real kind of a type A real aggressive group of dudes and um they pull you and and you you you got to keep up and sometimes you know a couple guys here and there don’t but for the most part the selection process works pretty well You know what’s cool? Just to bring this back for a second to you know talking about leadership and interacting with other people The same exact thing happens when you start to pay attention to the tactics techniques procedures of leadership You start to see the moves that people are making You know you start to see the moves that your subordinate is making because his ego is flaring up or because he’s getting um taking too much ownership of something that he doesn’t want to let go and he’s getting emotional about it you start seeing you start seeing the same type of things at onethird speed And you know that that was great for me when I was running the the West Coast SEAL team training I saw we we’d take a platoon We had these scenarios and we’d put a platoon through We’d put another platoon through We’d put another platoon through We’d put another platoon through We just over the same scenario You know guy here shooter over here person on this hilltop hostage in this room We’d put all these guys through the same scenario And so as soon as you’d approach as soon as you’d watch them approach and you say “Oh the platoon commander’s too far in the rear This is what’s going to happen He’s not going to see what’s coming up front Yep there it is ” And so you just know what’s going to happen And it’s the same thing when you start dealing with their personalities You get a guy with a big ego that comes in and he wants to run everything his way and he thinks he’s going to be able to control everything and you’re like “Nope he’s not going to be able to do this ” So you can end up and I see that in the business world obviously now too where you get the same exact problems of a guy that’s too emotional about his plan or has too big of an ego about something or he’s not passing the word well enough or they’re he’s trying to control everyone and not using decentralized commitment It’s so obvious because you have the reps We have the reps now in this in this arena to be to look at a situation and say “Okay let me watch this Oh oh okay I see what’s about to happen here’s what’s going on We can break it down So it’s the same thing across the board You get that level of just experience and repetitions and repetitions and now you can kind of see the future and you can predict what’s going to happen And then the good thing is in the business world when you can predict what’s going to happen you can stop it You can get the people on the right track pull them back in and get them arranged Well I think the thing that a lot of people don’t realize because sometimes I think it’s just different in the military The reasons why people are successful in the military and the reasons why people fail are exactly the same as why you succeed in business and why you succeed as a person or why you fail Now look I know you know being in an airplane is different I get that the environment might be a little bit different Being in combat certainly so the setting changes in all these things The setting is different but the reasons are exactly the same And so to dispel whatever myth you know it’s different in the military It’s identical in the military No doubt It comes out in an airplane or it comes out on a ship or whatever or it comes out in downtown Roman I mean it the setting yeah it’s different but what’s going on it’s identical Um and when you get to a when you get to be in a place where you get to devote 100% of your time to that and you’re not distracted by just the distractice of military bureaucracy and and life of training schedules and that everybody do their uh you know their annual survey When you’re away from that and you’re just living in a world of just being tactical and doing nothing but learning about how to be the best pilot you can be and the best teacher everything not just being a fighter pilot everything in the world slows down Everything slows down Uh and I think it just gives you a perspective on life that Top Gun I will carry those lessons I mean obviously I carry that with me in everything that I do and I will forever you know what was honed at a place like that and and in some ways in the military it’s just a luxury because it’s just not that common to for someone to say for three years you’re just going to do nothing but this like dude are you kidding me so so speaking of decision making and good andor bad decision-m so you’re living the dream living the dream you’re up in Fallon you actually have a house and up in the mountains you’re skiing flying everything’s good and and and then somehow you make a decision that’s a little bit off the track a little bit what was that all about? I don’t know I don’t know what you’re talking about So yeah I am uh I’m in my third year at Top Gun 2005 I was selected to be the training officer So I am running Top Gun as the senior uh IP there which is just it’s awesome It’s it’s it is literally as a Marine it’s a dream job You could not ask for anything better Uh I was dating what ended up becoming my wife So my wife Whitney at the time we’re dating lives out there We had a place in Tahoe drove a Corvette Life was pretty good man Oh yeah And um I’m actually coming up on my end of service obligation I can leave the Marine Corps uh in 2005 And I I sort of sold my relationship to Whitney on that idea Like hey come put up with this living in Tahoe but I’m going to get out of the Marine Corps and don’t worry about this None of this is all it’s all come Don’t even worry about that Deployment’s war It’s over You don’t need to worry about that Uh and so I think I I oversold that to her a little bit got her to move out uh to Tahoe And so there was just a part of me that didn’t feel done with the Marine Corps And ironically in this this amazing experience that I had built up in my mind since I was 16 years old I’m now a Top Gun instructor I joined the Marine Corps knowing because as a 14-year-old that Top Gun was this big influence I’m going to leave the Marine Corps as a top gun instructor But I had spent four years uh flying F-18s off carriers basically in the in the Navy for the for all intents and purposes And I was a marine in a marine squadron but we deployed with Navy carriers And we and I spent three years in Fallon on a Navy base with a Navy command as one of three pilots on the staff at Top Gun And there was just a part of me that I knew I was going to be done I I was ready to leave the Marine Corps but I wanted to leave the Marine Corps having fulfilled I think that part of being a Marine a real Marine is kind of how I felt And so um again uh I I had kind of contemplated what I was going to do You you talk to somebody called your monitor He’s the guy that gives you orders Hey this is what’s next in your career This is where you’re going to go for how long We think you should do this because it’s helpful for whatever He kind of explains it to you as a guy that basically is responsible for your career progression And I was kind of going back and forth what do I do? Do I stay in? Do I get out? You know I kind of was struggling with that decision And he’s like “Look we’re going to as a top instructor you’ve got a lot of skill You got a lot of experience and they want you to use that and and bring it back to the Marine Corps and go to a squadron and teach these guys ” So he gave me orders He says “Your going to be to go to Japan You’re going to fly F-18s back to a regular fleet squadron and and and you’ll go from there ” And I even I think I even got to the point where I had orders given to me Would you been like a squadron commander or a squad? No I would have been like an operations officer or maintenance officer I was too junior You know I’d only been in um like 10 year mark The 11 year mark So I’m kind of what’s called we call it a department head where I’m going to run a major department in a squadron Operations or maintenance are kind of the two big ones And um I it just it just didn’t it’s not what I wanted to do Um I had like I said some long-term plans of doing other stuff I was thinking longterm I was going to get out and go do something else And so I called the monitor I said “Hey I want to do a fack tour ” Uh fax is the Ford air controllers like you described earlier on the podcast And we had this little list on the internet that was called a hot fill list It was basically all the jobs that nobody wanted And if you called it was a first come first- serve If you called and volunteered for anything you were automatically going to get it And because it was just a list of jobs that they couldn’t like force on guys for whatever reason I’m probably not explaining it all that well but the bottom line is the hot fill bill It is you call you it’s yours for any reason And I’m like “Hey man I I see there’s a hot fill to be a Ford air controller in Japan ” Because I was “We’re going to go to Japan ” We kind of crossed that bridge of “Okay we’re going to move overseas ” We didn’t have any kids It was all Whitney This is with Whitney She’s a little bit not super cool with it but we found hey we’ll go to Japan We’ll fly It’ll be it’ll be fine And he’s like “You’re not you’re not going to be a Ford air controller in Japan You’re going to go fly and whatnot ” I said “Dude it’s right there in black and white man It says Hotill I’m your guy ” And he was like “Okay ” Yeah I mean he and so he gave me these orders and I wanted I wanted to be a fat cuz I wanted to leave the Marine Corps having fulfilled all the parts about being a Marine And in my mind it’s funny cuz it’s like we’re opposite on that The real challenge or the thing I didn’t really want to do but I knew I should was getting out of the airplane and doing something really hard on the ground Like my natural state in the Marine Corps is in an airplane And for some people they’re miserable and don’t want to do it For me that was so to do that was to be a Ford air controller was and it’s it’s strange to hear myself say it I didn’t want to go be a Ford air controller but I knew I needed to go do that There’s no I needed to leave the Marine Corps and say “Yeah I did that too ” And it was just a matter I think of fulfillment of kind of an exclamation point on a career that I always kind of fantasized and as I learned more about the Marine Corps there was more to it than just being a pilot right? So I just wanted that So so in your mind were you thinking forward air controller in Japan meant you were going to go over there you know have a little team of Marines? You’d go out to the different training ranges call for some bombs All good You you know go home at night be with your wife uh spend some time in Japan Just just nice little sort of like a long vacation working a little bit of time on the ground I get to go to the field I spend the night in the woods or spend the night in the woods something like that you know Yeah Really cool camping And they pay for it So yeah that’s what it was I was going to go to Japan There’s a bunch of really cool It was going to be in Okinawa actually So not mainland Japan Okinawa’s got great scuba diving And it’s it’s kind of neat And you know I could bring my wife with me It was going to be a lot of fun And you can I can train I was going to teach guys how to use airplanes to drop bombs I knew how to do that I was It was going to be a really cool thing So I get these orders and my wife and I moved out to Japan We got there and uh to Okanawa a place called Campans a little base up there in the middle of the island And I’m there probably Dude I’m probably there a week And my boss the brigade platoon to commander is like “Hey you’re we’re going to send a brigade platoon which is probably 50 guys I’m guessing I’m guessing at the numbers to Camp Leon because that Anglico just came back from seven months in in Iraq and they need to go right back and turn very quick turnaround They don’t have enough qualified guys “ And so I mean I’m there a week and I’m coming home tell Whitney like “Hey here’s the deal They need guys to go out to Lun to do this deployment to Iraq and I’m going to be one of those guys So we were there instead of a year we were there for maybe She’s like “Is there snorkeling in Iraq?” Because you were telling me about scuba diving So we crammed a year’s worth of stuff in about 6 weeks Uh cuz we had so it was probably um maybe early November uh when the word kind of came down and we knew we had till the end of the calendar year So we shoved a year’s worth of living in in Japan in about 6 weeks I mean we we did Korea we did Thailand we did mainland did Tokyo we did got our dive call I mean we did it all Only December 22nd or whatever it was you know we flew home and I went straight to Lun from there to start training with second Anglico uh which was the the team that had just come back from Iraq after their seven-month deployment on a on a very quick turn They’re probably four months into their turnaround So just real quick for people that don’t know what Anglico is Yeah please The Anglico um Anglico stands for Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company And really what it is is it’s a group of it’s a it’s a group of small teams four or fiveman teams called firepower control teams And what those teams were all supposed to be able to do is control airplanes tell airplanes what to do with their bombs Uh we could control artillery So had a fire artillery ordinance And even we didn’t do it there in Iraq but we could use naval gunfire So guns off ships We were training all three of those skill sets And the whole point of an Anglico in a place like Iraq is it’s you had different units You had Navy units army units Marine Corps units And as an Anglico you’re a liazison So that’s what the L in Anglico is So I could I was trained to go to an army unit and know how army does People may not know this All the services actually do the same job differently So the Army and the Marine Corps will get the same mission and have a totally different way of doing it because their doctrine and their training is different Now it’s similar but there’s a bunch of pretty critical differences in there And so what we were training to do is we had all Marine airplanes in where we were in Iraq and all Army land forces And so the Army doesn’t have any training how to use Marine Corps airplanes Marine Corps doesn’t have a lot of air training to use Army ground forces And so when those two people connect there’s there’s a problem with how they communicate and what they want from each other Insert Anglico We’re the liazison between the Army ground units and in this case the Marine Corps air units So my job was to control marine airplanes to support the army on the ground And that was all over Iraq and went the Anglico team would take this whole group and break it into maybe 25 fourman teams and went all over the country to go do this same mission with a whole bunch of different units And so that was our mission as a Ford air controller And I was qualified as a Ford air controller because I had flown airplanes drop bombs in combat understood how F-18s were supposed to support ground maneuver And I went to school at Ford air controller school So let’s go to Japan It’ll be fun We’ll pretend to do that for a year Um and then we end up in Camp Llejun training to go to Iraq And now it’s your first time kind of doing grunt work right? So last time I had held a rifle shot a rifle and worn a pair of combat boots was the basic school So I had um you know I was I got my air slot at TBS That was a big day for me Uh you know I’d done six months of that I had that check on the block I was feeling pretty good about that And I had never I don’t think I put on my cammy my camouflage uniform I think I wore a flight suit honestly I think every day for seven years I could probably count on one hand well even longer than that I wasn’t even counting flight school I could probably count on one hand the number of days that I didn’t wear a flight suit from the time that I selected to go to flight school to the time that I ended up in Anglico Days I mean so this was a foreign now I had I was a Marine I went to the basic school It’s all back there somewhere Um but you know I think there’s this and I mentioned this I think to you I think it’s just sort of this habit of self-sabotage like well I can’t leave the Marine Corps without being a being a real Marine So I’m going to literally sabotage myself by volunteering for a job that I don’t know if I really want to do but now I’m stuck doing it so I’m going to have to do that so I won’t ever have to say “I didn’t do that ” So this kind of cycle of breaking promises to my wife uh volunteering for stuff I didn’t really want to do but knew that I should and next thing I know it all blew up in my face because let’s go to Japan That Japan’s awesome Good sushi and and great experience there and it’s going to be awesome and I will be a fact and I can for the rest of my life say “Oh I was a real marine I was a fact ” And I did all that And you know it’s January in camp Careful what you wish for Oh man So yeah make no mistake I mean I I did that I volunteered but I did not at the time when I was trading in my flying orders for these fak orders I didn’t expect to be in Romani but as Hey we need to send a brigaded platoon to uh Camp Lun to prep those guys of course Yep We’re I’m going I mean I’m not going to not go That’s what we need to do We’re going to go do that When I got to Camp Lun I ended up being the senior just by rank the senior forward air controller in the unit I was kind of a mid-level major Um I you know come from Top Gun I came straight from Top Gun to that and I was an experienced guy and the commanding officer no joke I can picture the day walks in one day and he hands me a piece of paper and it’s got like 26 lines on it one for every team And on the other sheet was all the locations that we were going to go to And he’s like “Fill out where all the teams are going because we got to cover these 15 different locations you know one to two teams per location and just write the number of the team on there and get this back to me by close of business ” Like roger that sir I take care of it And again my wife loves the story and I didn’t tell her at the time but my best friend who I grew up with was in Romani at the time He was in third battalion 7 Marines who we replaced when we got out there or did a turnover with And that’s where the war was man I mean in in late 2005 and early 2006 the war was in Romani And so I took the pen I wrote Lightning 6 and so 61 62 and 63 were all going to Romani I handed it off to every filled it out gave it to the co And so um if you’re going to go do something you don’t necessarily want to do but you’re going to go do it you might as well do it And that’s where the war was I could have gone to a whole host of other places where there’s not much going on it would have been relatively chill I would have gotten that check on the block for sure I would have said “Yeah I went to here or there ” And and no hit on the guys that were different places It just it was just more going on there Um and if I wasn’t going to go then somebody else was going to go do that Or was Neil? Neil was telling you what was up He said “Hey this it’s on big time ” No I He and I were tight and we talked as regular as we could as much as we can say Oh wasn’t he telling you like “Oh yeah I was putting rounds I was shooting yesterday and you said “Well what were you shooting at?” And he’s like “People “ Yeah I was just It was such a foreign thing to me as a pilot Certainly coming from Top Gun This is my best friend too And our whole life we both wanted to be Marine pilots And we we we never were in the same unit together We just couldn’t get aligned with that It never occurred to me when we were kids dreaming about being Marine Corps fighter pilots that the only time we’d ever served together was in Romani as Ford air controllers He’ll listen to this podcast He’ll get a good chuckle out of this But so he was there for the seven months prior So I think the sum you know maybe June or July of of that year when I was getting ready to get orders He was on his fact tour and he was just a battalion fing 37 you know OP 293 OP Here OPVA Just doing the deed man I mean getting after it big time and struggling you know there’s a lot going on there And when he would tell me these stories even someone who had been a Marine for that long he’s like “Yeah we’re in a firefight ” And I’m like “Are you shooting your rifle?” He’s like “Yeah man ” Like it what? It’s like the people that are shooting at me it just it it it’s you’re disconnected and you have this you don’t have this sense of what that means And so even as I was processing what he was saying and trying to understand and then saying I this is where the this is what I’m going to go do and kind of volunteering to go do that I’ll be honest with you there’s still a part in retrospect that just didn’t really quite fully grasp what that meant I don’t know how anybody on their first deployment to a place like Romani goes into that You know I dabbled in aviation You’re like you said I’m up in sky I mean it’s relatively safe Uh and I I’m sure even the first deployment you did there’s just there’s an element of just not being able to fully understand it And that didn’t even become clear to me until right when we’re getting ready to leave for and the new units coming in and I was explaining what they’re about to get into That’s when it really hit me and I just rewind myself a year earlier I’m like I’m that dude that really doesn’t know what the hell’s about to happen to him and what’s about to go on But it was like I said man um and I don’t even want to make it sound like that big of a deal but I volunteered for a fact tour They needed guys to go to Ljun to go to Iraq That’s where Romani was where the fight was My best friend was there I’m going to Romani Yeah And that was about it It was just that’s what I thought I should do So I went to Romani And now you’re leading Marines too Yeah And Yes So I I I explained just a minute ago about those things that make you successful uh and things that that lead to failure are identical They are the exact same things in an airplane are the same on the ground but the environment is different It it is different There’s no way around it And I also would say too that and for good reason I think the ground marines you know I worked with a lot of infantry and artillery Most of Anglica was made up of artillery and some infantry not and you know obviously there’s pilots that are controllers There’s a decent bit of skepticism of pilots coming in to lead these these teams and and I think for good reason you know because a lot of these guys when I talk about combat experience they’re on their third fourth deployment to Iraq and you’re coming in Yep They’re on their they’ve already done You’re wearing your Top Gun patch on your shoulder of your camies Well what’s worse is I’m not wearing my Top Gun patch I’m wearing my camies and they’re like “Have have you ever washed those camies?” I’m like “As a matter of fact I haven’t ” They are fresh you know brand new And they’re wearing their camies from they did the march up to Baghdad They went home for four months and I went right back around and did OAF 2 guys that did Fallujah and they’re back and they’re on their third deployment in three years and they’re legit deployments And you know Dave Burke Mr Top Gun shows up and like where’s this brigade platoon? You know where’s my salt team? You know and I think that skepticism of for good reason is who is this guy? And that’s a real that was a real leadership challenge for me is to apply those things things that I knew were the were effective but in an environment that I’m totally out of my comfort zone man I’m totally out of my comfort zone And I had to apply a skill set of things that I just haven’t I haven’t shot a rifle since 1994 I got to the basic school in October 94 The first thing you do is go to the rifle range That’s the last time I squeezed a trigger on a rifle was October of 1994 And here it is is you know January of 2006 prepping to go to Romani and I got a sight in my M4 So they should be skeptical a little bit And um it was a challenge for me a real leadership challenge of to be successful in a place that I’m not comfortable with To be honest with you if you told me I was going to lead a squadron in combat I’d feel pretty comfortable doing that I know it’d be a challenge It’d be hard but I wouldn’t feel like I don’t know about this I would be all over it I I I I don’t mean to say easy but right in my wheelhouse Not not true for that So um I worked hard to try to be successful in that And you know you got to get your Marines to buy off on your your program you know they’re because you’re going to go downtown with those guys you know and every relationship with any of those guys was different as you know you know and you got to build those relationships and and demonstrate that you know this is going to work Um and then you know just talk a little bit about people have heard about what TU Bruiser was doing over in Ramati and we’ll get to how we interacted but overall what were you guys doing when you first got there? You just kind of jumped into it with both feet as they say We did man Um so I get there I’ve got a salt team that stands for supporting arms liaison team Really what it meant was three of those little four-man teams uh grouped together in a one 13-man team because we had an additional corman little uh medic with us So I had three of those teams that I was responsible for and and I kind of knew what I expected was going to happen when I got there that I would be in what’s called the TAC the tactical operations center which was I’d kind of run things from the desk and farm out my teams and units to support the guys that needed our help these army units that were going to go do missions They needed someone to help them control the air I had those teams I would give them those teams Well it took basically no time to get there and realize that the demand signal for our support was higher than we could have ever responded to They needed 20 of our teams not three And so that idea that I would kind of be a coc guy a talk guy was over in the first day because as I get there and we’re during the turnover with the other Anglico team getting ready to leave he’s introducing me to all the people he’s been working with and it’s like 15 different teams Yeah You know they’re not running operations like three battalions It’s 40 squads you know and these guys are going out in 12 13 man teams and they all need you Yep So and there’s operations I mean just so everyone knows there’s 5 600 people in the 1180 or you showed up at the 228 still so it’s 6 000 people or whatever And there’s operations going on all over Romani every single night There’s people patrolling There’s people getting in firefights every single night There’s constant gunfire And so there’s no way with three teams you’re going to cover all that You can’t do it Yeah And that was sort of the immediate awareness for me is not only was I not going to be able to support everything I knew how to prioritize and tell folks hey we can do this and not that You know I can help you here or or there And so very quickly it was a matter of how am I going to break down my team and support these guys Um I did have an advantage that I was as an F-18 pilot that was the primary aircraft F-18s and Harrows are the primary aircraft that was doing the support and I knew those airplanes really well and I was able to very quickly when I saw what the army hey we’re doing this patrol today and we’re going to take our Humvees from the camp Romani to go to this location and it would be really difficult just to get there just navigating at night in your Humvees on the night vision goggles and the roads can be kind of confusing and you know what it’s like down there and some days you’re operating in downtown Romani and it’s straight up urban combat like just buildings and 5 miles away you can be in place We called it Mike Charlie one that it looks like Vietnam I mean it’s it’s the contrast for being so close together was so incredible how different those places were And so every environment was different I was able to understand how what airplanes could do well and not well in those environments And so as they asked for support I’m like “Hey I can’t really do that but what I can do is this and maybe this will be more helpful for you ” And I could very quickly build a relationship with the Army which is really who you needed to be the best support for The Marines they were going to get on board We were good We had a relationship I wasn’t worried about my Marines and us building our team What I was worried about was us as a team being effective for the folks we were supporting and showing that we could do good work for those guys And we took a very different approach Uh I immediately broke our team into three separate teams 61 62 and 63 I actually sent the 63 team a guy named Allan to another base Blue Diamond You remember that base right across the river? because there was a company based out of Blue Diamond that were doing operations independently and they never had any Anglico support So like dude you got to go move They literally moved there and lived with those guys and then my other team 61 and 62 Adam and I just we took a whiteboard and all the requests for support we just started plugging our names in And so it was just I had five guys he had four he had his own Humvey I had my own Humvey We had all the weapons all the radios and just started to just go do operations 228 would do everything for just a little vehicle patrol where they would just do a presence patrol There two Humvees driving around the city We would just jump in on that and just bring a third truck which was a ton of firepower and awareness Sometimes we’re just doing foot patrols and we would just go walk around and do move into contact or do room clearing stuff like that Jo man I found myself way way out of my comfort zone very early I think my second mission there was a raid where I was ended up like clearing a room I was in a stack of dudes clearing a room while I was trying to talk to airplanes overhead of where and it was just a basically a manpower shortage Like yeah you get in go you and these two guys go clear the room Okay roger that You know um and I was a senior or mid-grade major I was a I was always kind of one of the senior guys but I wasn’t in charge of this So I would be working for a first lieutenant which was perfectly fine It was his platoon He was doing this mission He knew what he was doing I was there to support as best as I could That image of like yeah just get up on the roof and control air It’ll be awesome What do you need me to blow up? Negative I mean it was hey get in line and and start getting after it And I think that I remember that second mission we’re with the 228 and and the lieutenant was I think he was like a I think he worked at Home Depot No joke cuz it was a National Guard unit Yeah National Guard These dudes were awesome They’d been there for probably 10 or 11 months by the time I got there Maybe even longer They’ve been there almost a year Hardened dudes that had lost a lot of guys and sacrificed a ton But I was learning everything I could from them because they were veterans and I was brand new I was supposed to bring this great capability But the reality was I was just soaking up from them as much as I could and I’m I’m clearing a room with this guy you know So the phrase “What am I doing here?” Uh went through my head a lot uh while I was there And it was just kind of Ramati was a type of place that the deal was is when you got there it was just a bullet train and and you just jumped on the train or you had to you were you couldn’t slow things down You certainly couldn’t ask those other guys hey can we can we dial it back a little bit? We need to get up to speed they were just doing their thing and if you’re going to be anything other than a hindrance you need to get on board immediately And so that’s what we did as best we could Um and I have a lot to thank for those guys at 228 cuz no matter how hard we tried those first couple times we’re we’re just getting up to speed We’re we’re not uh you know bringing our agame yet We’re we’re trying to figure out what’s going on around us And there’s no doubt that without those guys their leadership their willingness to kind of bring us on board and get us up to speed that played a big part We got up to speed quickly but day one I’m sure you know we were struggling to keep up Just like we were talking about with flying and jiu-jitsu and fighting and everything else You show up there and things are going they’re not slowed down a third They’re going five times faster and you’re just seeing you know you’re getting told to clear a room That’s the only thing in the world you can see is now this room and you’re not aware of all this other stuff that’s going on And it definitely takes some ops to get your to get your senses about you of what’s happening Yeah And the ops were there were so many different kinds of operations Like I said you know you go from doing just um you know a a three Humvey presence patrol in downtown Romani is not cool It’s not It’s just you’re just waiting for something to go wrong You know whether it’s getting lit up you know in a firefight RPGs getting shot I mean you’re literally just driving around waiting for somebody to do something to you You know these presence patrols And then you go right from that to you’d get some intelligence that somebody you needed to grab was in uh you know a house somewhere in a totally different environment and you’d be off doing a raid We helped stand up the QRF You’ve talked about that in the past A quick reaction force where you you literally just waited right outside the gate of the main base for somebody to call for help Okay something’s gone wrong It’s here Come help us And so we just started doing all these missions And I I just was on board with all of them And they varied and they were very different from day to day And you got to call for fire too Legit We did We we between me I did a lot and and my teams we I controlled the release of every single piece of ordinance in the Marine Corps infantry Uh uh Marine Corps inventory So every piece of ordinance that the the air the Hornets and the Harriers dropped and everything from the Huge and the Cobras and artillery we called artillery as well They had a you know field artillery battalion out there that we did controls from as Anglico I did myself So you know that story You know what? You get to TBS there’s an old saying in the Marine Corps we all subscribe to it Every Marine’s a rifleman And when you’re a Top Gun instructor that could not be further from the truth Because the last thing you are as a Top Gun as the training officer at Top Gun skiing in Lake Tahoe on a Saturday afternoon is a rifleman But I will I will say this uh for the Marine Corps Yeah I’m biased I’m a little procharical to the Marine Corps dude It’s all in there OCS TBS all that exposure all that doctrine everything you learn it’s there Now it took a while to dig down and find it And those same things when I went to OCS and I was the skinniest guy there and I was scared I couldn’t get through it And I’m like wait a second bigger tougher stronger dudes are doing this or not doing this and I am it’s all in there And so I just had to figure out how to tap that stuff again and bring it back up and just go do it So great decision Here I am in Romani getting after it And then you guys showed up Yeah There was one story you were telling me that you were calling for fire up in MC1 and it was your buddy Yeah Yeah We were doing um we’re doing what’s called movement to contact My favorite mission as a pilot Nothing better than movement to contact And a movement to contact mission is you literally you drive your Humvees take all your your folks out and you set up a staging area on the north side of this uh this big area is big kind of wooded dirt It has like little ravines and trees and stuff like that And we would just we would walk a patrol you know 10 15 guys would just go from north to south And the mission was called move into contact So you walked until you got in contact which meant you got into a firefight And I remember not this same day but my first day going there I think it was Bravo Company at 228 I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure it was And I met the platoon commander for the first time And I kind of get out of my Humvey I walk up I’m I’m looking for the platoon commander I’m there as a supporting asset I’m a I’m a helpful guy because I bring airplanes is going to be good for them And he walks up and he’s got a shotgun hanging on his on his kit And you know I was a brand new guy but I you know I was I’m like “Hey hey what’s with the shotgun?” You know I I have a rifle Everybody’s got a rifle He goes “Hey to be honest with you I find that this is the best weapon for these type of missions ” And it turns out he actually was right on that patrol It’s like “Dude what am I doing here man? You know I’m going to go do a foot patrol with the guy with a shotgun ” Yeah Um so I knew that I was in there was a lot in store for that Um and we would do these patrols these these move into contacts and you’d end up in a building And my job as a fact was hey get out in the building get up on top of the roof right away and I would do overwatch You know similar different assets I had airplanes I had radios SEALs would do overwatch all the time and it was just a matter of covering a move So I would get up on the roof and I go “Hey this is what I see This is what the airplane sees Okay you guys jump to that next building ” Sometimes the next building would be 20 yards away Sometimes it’ be 200 yards away So you would you would just do these bounding movements building to building And then when they get to the next building my other guy would be up on the roof He’d say “You’re good ” We’d run down and go to the next building Um and so we get into this building and as soon as I get up on top of the roof of the building so if you can picture it half of us are in the roof of the building half of the other guys are trying to move to the other building So they’re out in the open And from that other building as I get up on the roof I look up and the first thing that happens is like three RPGs hit the building that I’m in directly underneath me I probably miss our team by like 15 ft below us So above their heads and below us That’s the first thing that happens And there was a vehicle like a truck It was a car It was like just some car in between on a like kind of a dirt road behind some trees where this fire came from And we had airplanes overhead It was two F-18 DS I remember it um from an East Coast uh squadron And um you know at TBS they teach you hey every Marine’s a rifleman and they tell they tell you these stories is that one day you’re going to be in a position where you’re going to be in a firefight and there’s going to be an airplane overhead and it’s going to be a buddy of yours from TBS It’s going to be an old buddy and you’re going to be like “Hey Jo it’s Dave Help me out ” And Dave’s going to roll in on his white horse and come in with his hornet and blast these things out of and and your infantry buddy’s going to thank you one day I’m like “Right on ” The only problem was that I was on the ground and the guy flying the airplane was one of my closest friends a guy named uh Bu Freriedman was OPSo of the squadron I just left and no joke I’m like “Hey we’re in a we’re in a troops in contact You know we’re taking fire from wherever ” And on the radio he says “Hey Chip it’s Boo What do you need?” And it took me right back to TBS The problem was I was supposed to be in an airplane when that happened And I’m like I said uh I said um south to north call wings level And and and that’s what happened And and I had four passes from these F-18s did these strafing runs on this car And I remember looking at the uh the army guys was with us the first lieutenant And I looked at him I go “Dude we’re going to be fine ” Like super cool like very chill Hey this just happened I see what’s going on The Hornets overhead had saw everything What do you need? I need this We’re in And you know the next call was wings level Hey you’re cleared hot And you know the hair in my arms standing up telling the story It’s just one of those stories where the Marine Corps for whatever insane reason will take F-18 pilots and train them millions of dollars in 10 years of of training them And they’ll stick them on the ground And it’s for that exact reason that that exact event was I could bring an asset that the Army would never have in environment that they would never be able to use and through two buddies just talking plain English to each other on the radio make it happen in like that and um I was supposed to be in that airplane Jaco that’s how it was supposed to work out but in that particular day man it the roles were reversed but it was it was an awesome it was kind of a culmination of a lot of things like that the Marine Corps it’s a legit that thing they breed in us it’s a real thing uh and it was pretty satisfying to be honest with you see that car burn in the ground and then uh eventually yeah I don’t Maybe a month or so goes by and we show up and who’s the first who who’d you meet first? Leif Yep Leif uh was the first guy that I met Um actually Leif and Tony show up together Um so we had seen you guys you know you we had turned over and we were just kind of getting up to speed We’ probably been there maybe a month or so before you guys had So you know quick learning curve We’re just kind of getting comfortable uh with what’s going on We also know there’s a new brigade platoon coming in I’m sorry Uh a new um uh uh armored division coming in We know that the unit that were there the 228 that brigade combat team is leaving We knew new new brigade combat team is coming in And we were actually in just a relatively short period of time we’re kind of the continuity cuz all the old guys are leaving We we had the overlap So we had kind of a prominent role with the new battalion and the new battalion commander he’s retired now Um awesome dude from uh 137 armor guy named Tedesco Just an awesome dude just an awesome dude Awesome Um he had been there as part of his turnover Had come out a couple months prior maybe a month prior and saw us and we got My favorite thing about Tedesco is like you said awesome guy We we were getting ready to do a big operation with them I think it was the first time we were pushing into South Central Romani and and we were in his briefing and he’s quoting Patton but he’s quoting Patton the movie He’s just getting after it I was like “Yes yes Thank you Thank you for bringing me here this day Yeah he was awesome And he had seen me It just so happened when he was doing his initial turnover before the the battalion came out I had done I had controlled um a release I controlled a hellfire and blew up a car Uh and he got to see it and it was kind of a cool thing is he come like who you know who are these guys? I’m in the middle of doing a real control I happen to be in the COC that day Blew up a car It’s all in the video We got this big TV screens that show the whole thing and this car detonates and cool pictures and everything And he he comes over to me after we’re done I’m kind of sitting there and he’s a lieutenant colonel I’m a major Hey sir he’s like “Can you do that when we get here?” I’m like “Absolutely man ” He’s like “We’re going to get along great ” That was my initial interaction with him So it was awesome And so we knew when they were coming back we had already just through virtue of that experience built some pretty good inroads with them and we were going to do some good work He was also the type of guy look there’s a whole brigade combat team came in has 5 000 guys but his battalion that group of you know several hundred was really the core group that I initially did most of my work with And his approach was if you can help us you’re on the team Y they’re um same exact attitude he had with us Yeah for sure For all the enablers So uh they were called the Bandits and they had a little bandit pin had kind of a skull and crossbones kind of thing You were if you you were a I was a bandit to him Just totally on board the team and he treated us like his own guys and that was awesome And so um all the enablers we had military we had working dogs we had explosive ordinance disposal we had the Anglico folks we had the SEALs you know all these different groups from different places that none of them were assigned to him But his approach was if you can help my soldiers out you’re you’re a bandit You’re on the team And everybody was like right on let’s do this Cuz that’s you needed to work with them anyway You might as well make the best of it We started to do a couple of missions and every one of those missions was your teams and my teams Uh and I would say probably in the first week or so you know I’m guessing a little bit of dates but relatively quick in the first couple of missions we were doing the similar things We’re bringing support in Overwatch and helping these guys do their job which is the exact same thing you guys were doing you know totally different ways but ultimately we’re supporting these guys I’m in my my little building there one day whatever just sitting around prepping for something And in walks Leif and Tony you know he drove they drove over from your base which is kind of you know a little bit of a haul around around there to drive in And he goes “Hey man Um love to work with you more We find a way that we can work together on some of these missions and we got this big mission coming up You want to come down and and brief with us?” Well yeah absolutely I’d love to go brief with the SEALs and it’d be awesome I thought it would just be kind of this cool one time thing I get to see how SEALs do business Um and that was it That was his introduction Had Leif and Tony I I’ll be really candid I I’d like to think I would have done that I doubt I would have gone to Shark Base and knocked on your door and said “Hey Leif Jock let’s do some work together ” I he made that initial contact and him and Tony we were definitely equal opportunity employers at that point man We the same thing as you know Colonel Toedesco If we thought someone could do something to help us out or we could complement each other in any way man we were knocking on doors to to try and make that happen For sure Yeah And that was his approach Um I didn’t I had never done any work on the ground I didn’t know much about the seals I’ll be very blunt I had my own opinion of what I assumed you guys would be like and it was probably something out of the movies I expected like long beards and dudes just running around doing their own thing Uh and so I was actually a little surprised that that Leif came and asked to do some work with us And so I I went to that first night mission uh that first brief I don’t want to say I was skeptical but I was certainly interested in what because my fear was that you guys were going to go do your own thing and my guys were kind of just either not be able to keep up not know what you’re doing and not fit in very well and be able to help out and just kind of put ourselves at risk And and look I’ll I’ll say this very bluntly I have a very high bar when you leave Top Gun on what to expect from a mission brief and mission execution and mission debrief because that’s what we’re all about And I was pretty sure that there’s no chance that you were going to do anything anywhere near that And I was shocked and kind of overwhelmed at how professional your organ your your team was And that was the biggest thing for me was what are these guys going to be like? I just sort of pictured a kind of a pickup game Hey let’s go there and just you know kill some bad guys and come on back and high five each other And dude it was one of the most professional organized mission briefs I totally understood what your plan was I knew exactly where I was going to fit in We went and did it and then you guys debriefed after We came back after this It was a relatively unevent Nothing really happened that night in terms of in the grand scheme of things that we saw We were there and then you debriefed it You guys came back and you mission debriefed Dudes were there kind of cleaning weapons and and going through and analyzing what happened and that was it man I was totally on board I was I was I was sold at that we could work together like pretty effectively Um and that was kind of the beginning It just sort of started out of the blue and you guys came down and asked to do some good work and and we did Man you did a lot of work We did Your team did a lot of work with us because we we started to think cuz cuz for our from our perspective and I know you know there’s one uh junior officer out there who’s now probably a lieutenant commander or maybe even a commander at this point But at that time you know he was on his first deployment and he was a JTAC What we call in the SEAL teams our air controllers are called a J-TAC And so here he is in some of those missions instead of being a SEAL he’s being a JTAC So he’s one of those guys that looked over at you guys and said “Hey wait a second Can you take this radio from me and do that thing so I can go do my Frogman stuff over here?” And that and plus again to be blunt you guys could do it a lot better than we could Period You know we we you know you were an F-18 pilot for crying out loud and we had a new guy junior officer on the radio trying to call for fire you guys were just imminently better qualified to do it And so yeah we looked at it as if okay we that gives us one more shooter and it gives us a whole new level of expertise Now of course there’s JTAX and the SEAL teams that they are a lot more experienced and they’re awesome and of course but in our group to bring you guys was just a huge level up for us to get a lot better and give us more people to maneuver as SEALs on assaults or on overwatches or whatever So it turned out to be a a real good little little relationship we got going there It was a classic win-win when a when a SEAL says “Hey would you control the air so I can go shoot people?” You know and that means I’m no I don’t have to clear that room and be in a position where I might have to do something like that I’m all over it And I Yeah I know who you’re talking about We had a He and I had a great relationship someone that I really loved working with who wanted to go be a frogman you said I wanted to go control airplanes and uh we found a way to make that stuff work Now it was it was a big deal for me though man to to for my for me and my guys to work with you guys because uh you’ve said this on the podcast Um and I know I know how organizations can we’re not necessarily parochial that we don’t trust other people but we get really comfortable with how we do business and to just bring in another group of dudes I think this also speaks volumes to Tedesk and all those guys You’re gonna just you want to make sure those guys can keep up you know and everybody knows that you guys are legit man And to keep up you got you’re going to have to keep up You’re going to have to carry your own weight and you’re going to have to make it happen You’re going to have to provide something because the minute you become a drain on the on the team you know you’re going to get cut loose And we we couldn’t afford to be a drain on you and we couldn’t afford to have other people be a drain on us So I think there was a lot of kind of at the beginning of there are a lot of reasons why it wouldn’t have worked There’s a whole bunch of reasons why it wouldn’t have worked and the only reason it did work is that everybody was committed to building a relationship to support the battalion That was it We all had the same end state in mind It wasn’t about what can the SEALs do to be seals and be great or how he what can we do to support those guys Yeah What’s the whole thing I was opening up with? That’s sort of where that came from is just this attitude that everybody there was on the same team straight up on the same team And so then that turned into big missions you know big missions pushing into Ramani putting in the combat outpost you know night after night day after day doing those those big operations And that relationship just got just got stronger and stronger you know uh Leif obviously with you and and just turned into something really not just not just cool but man effective Yeah effective It was I mean in that deployment I’ve I I kept a long journal I I took a lot of notes on my experience there and I’ve gone back and reread it a few times and I’ve somewhat recently throughout that whole thing One of the common themes is how there’ll be Leif and I did this today our team We did stuff with you all the time and it kind of became in that middle that kind of June July August I mean that was all we were really doing because we were so busy and there the big OP was kicking off and we were starting to get into downtown you know had never been all these clearings and all that stuff And so the need for us to support the army and the need for you to support the army again we could have had 10 times as many of folks and we probably still could have done more work Um everything in that journal is just about what we were doing together And I think at the time I just kind of lost track of it because we were just every day get up and go do something I mean there was no down days There was hardly ever any time we weren’t doing anything And it was almost always with you guys Um and it was a huge highlight for me uh to to to be with a group of guys that were so on board with just making things happen You guys had an incredible knack of this is in the way or this process keeps it Yeah we got that sorted out Hey I need to get airplanes Oh that well to do this and this You got No no no We got We can get that sorted out So you guys had kind of had cornered the market on what do you need? We’ll make we’ll get it We’ll make it happen And for me um to be able to get that asset sort of delivered that I could and hey you did all the work to get it but I can control the hell out of it Right on man I didn’t have to do any of the work to explain why I needed this because you guys did all that work and you had a valid reason for it They would laugh at me if I said I wanted an AC130 gunship Like who are you? I’m Dave Burke man I’m like negative Le and Jo need an AC130 gunship Not every time you know obviously it was a thin asset but when that thing showed up overhead and then you get the guy we’re talking about like you want to control this? I’m like yes I do I want to control this thing So there’s a lot of mutual benefit there And I think what we also proved is I think for the battalion and the brigade they figured out that we were really helpful in helping those guys accomplish what they wanted to accomplish And that was just I’m not putting very good words to it right now but it was obviously real rewarding and it was the highlight of that deployment is our ability to work together through like I said there’s a whole laundry list of reasons why we shouldn’t have been able to do this A bunch You didn’t work for me I didn’t outrank you your guy There’s just a whole bunch of institutional roadblocks that we could have just stayed in our own corners done our own thing and you and I could have never met and that wouldn’t have really been all that uncommon It would have just been obsormal Um it worked out man Yeah A lot of awesome highlights on that deployment and obviously some of the worst days of our lives were over there June 20th talk to me about that Yeah man Um so obviously I know we’re going to talk about this Um so we had been there quite a bit and I remember kind of the shock when we first got there talking to the 228 I first day I’m there I go to Alpha Company They’ve got a memorial outside of their uh compound of all the soldiers that have been killed I can picture it It’s just kind of like a names are on a little placard and it’s kind of a tall little pyramid looking thing with the names on there and you see it you understand it Hey people have died here You get it It’s not hard to to understand that those things have happened But there’s just a level of disconnect when you first get there You’re like “Oh people are dying ” But you don’t you haven’t seen it And then you know very quickly I think probably my second mission out there was uh kind of a QRF from a a vehicle IED So basically an uh um an insurgent with a bunch of bombs in his vehicles got in between American convoy and blew himself up So I see my first dead body You know I see this real combat people are dying here It was an enemy wasn’t the same And then you know March April May we started taking I mean not started we continue to take casualties and I’m starting to go to memorials and we’re starting to see guys that we knew and work with and were friends with and built relationship with and they’re they’re they’re getting killed or really gravely wounded And those memorials started to become every couple of days we’re going to a memorial And that sort of weighs on you I’ve thought about this a lot and how it affected me you as a pilot being out of my comfort zone in this environment and and what that was like But without trying to diminish any of that loss there’s a there’s a disconnect when it’s not your person when it’s not your guy And on June 20th so Chris Leon who was my radio operator we were in a building that we had been in let me back up I was not there I had left that building that morning gone back to the COC Adam’s team with Chris had replaced us and we’re basically just going back and forth operations into this this combat outpost because it gave us a really good view of the north part of the city and we had to be there basically 24/7 and Chris and and Adam’s team had gone back out there and they were supposed to go from like 12 to 4 something like that I don’t know what it was We gave him like a six hour shift or something And then we were going to kind of figure out if we replace or start over We had just sort of sent him out there and we’re going to come back in a little bit And I got a call on the radio from the battalion saying “Hey can you extend your Anglico team out here for four hours? We’re going to go do another movement to do some clearing ” Like “Yeah roger that Hey Adam can you guys stay out for a another couple hours? You know support We’re going to get you or whatnot ” You know standard answer Yeah roger that No problem And during that time um it was not uncommon to take fire in from that in that OP and there was some sniper fire And the first shot uh there was a younger Marino Lance Corporal who was up there and Chris ran up from the other side and kind of put put him down you know say “Hey why don’t you get down take cover go go over to the other side of the building ” And Chris got up to start to he was a he was doing his observation to try to figure out what’s going on And Chris was shot by a sniper And I get a call kind of very very closely after that from Adam You know I’m I’m kind of maning the radios all the time anyway even our home little base there like where we had a radio right there So I was never really not there I was just on the radio and say “Hey Corvolon’s been hit We’re on our way back ” And that was about it So I didn’t have any real good sense of anything was going on And um a little panic sets in like okay um and I don’t want to press for too much information I get a call from Alpha Company who had who manned all the observation posts between where he was and where we were that they were clearing make sure the roads were clear They’re using their tanks and their Bradley so they could pick them up and bring a straight shot because that was a pretty busy dangerous road You always had a lookout for IEDs and stuff like that And so everybody’s kind of picking up the pace to clear out that road and he’s coming back And I get a call Hey he’s breathing Uh we’re heading straight to Charlie Med And I’m like all right Okay I kind of had this sense of this is going to be okay Um Charlie Med is this medical facility on the the camp that we were stationed at there and was literally 100 yards from where I slept And I just ran down to Charlie Med uh to meet the Humvey I was there and I I’m sorry it wasn’t Hubby it was a Bradley Bradley fighting vehicle Bradley pulls up Myself and my my corman Doc are there The the the Bradley has a door on the back of the Brad that comes down like a ramp Uh and the ramp comes down He’s on a stretcher Doc goes up to get the front piece of the stretcher I’m at the bottom and he comes down carrying the stretcher and Chris is laying on the stretcher and I he went right by me I looked at him and I knew immediately that he was gone It was I mean it was gone It was I could see the entrance wound The whole thing was all kind of there They had stabilized him They had done their best to kind of manage through it but there was no question that the outcome had already played itself out and Chris was gone They take him in to the medical facility um which I’d been in and you’ve been in a dozen times for a whole host of different reasons but it had always been somebody else I mean I may have known that person and been close to that person but it was always somebody else And Doc goes in with him He’s carrying the stretcher and he comes out in probably Jaco was probably 10 seconds and he just comes out with his head shaking and I knew I wasn’t holding my breath or I I knew but he kind of came out and and just sort of I guess confirmed if that’s the word I’m looking for just sort of it made it official that that Chris had been killed and um it it sort of initiated just a very strange kind of very sequence of events I I I knew Adam and the rest of the team are trying to get back and they’re going to have a slower road back because they’re not going to get the support It’s just going to take a little more time They got to get their gear and all the things go along with that Chris just got loaded in the Humvey and racing back in a Bradley They’re kind of loading up their Humvees and it’s just going to take some time And I know like I need to get back to the vehicle we parked our trucks because I want to meet them there And I walk back like I said it was maybe 100 yards from my hooch to to Charlie Med And I get about halfway there and I had this thought that that I maybe didn’t confirm that Chris was killed And so I actually walked all the way back to go find there’s a senior medical officer We called him the smoke Really awesome guy that dealt with all the the casualties there who I knew because I had done control I had controlled helicopter cavs on wounded folks I’ve been there a lot We did we gave blood I mean we were in that facility all the time And I I don’t know why I needed to do it but I was I just I had to talk to him because hey is is is Corporal Leon is is he is he killed? And he’s like yeah I’m sorry man You know it was kind of an odd conversation I I could tell the why he was looking at me like why are you asking me this question? Like it just was one of those things that I was in sort of I think just a stage of disbelief that as I walked back and I was going to deliver the news I sort of told myself like I can’t tell them in case what if I’m wrong because I never really went through that I saw him I saw Doc I but there were no words were exchanged and I had this very odd like walking back and forth a couple of times and kind of sorting it out And then you know my job was next thing I had to do is I Adam I watch the trucks pull up They all get out you know four guys and everybody else had heard you know all the Angle Co teams that were there and we shared a facility with EOD and the working bellies everybody you know the word was passed that was something that happened and I you know hey Corvolon’s Corvalon’s dead Um you know we do something called I think it’s called a hero flight Uh hero flight’s going to be at like 1 600 I I got the information in like 10 minutes the the process of them bringing in a casualty that casualty not surviving and them moving They had that thing wired Um and I’d seen it done a bunch of times but it just it was Chris It was my guy He was a guy that I just knew differently than everybody else And I just saw him differently When we entered our trucks he was the back left and I was the front right And our trucks are always parked backed into their spots So they’re always side by side So the back left of his truck enter door and the right front of my truck door We always had to fight space for each other You know Chris was a standard perfect Marine Like he could be 90% of the way through If he saw me walking up he’d get out of the way close the door let me in I’m like “Ah come on dude ” Like just he was just a great Marine Just I walked past that kid without even really talking to him you know a thousand times Just every single day a couple times a day And um it it demystifies as a as a Marine you just live a slightly bit for me and I shouldn’t say you how it felt for me as I just felt with all that was going on and all the destruction and the death and the violence and all the things that I’d sort of become accustomed to at that point There’s just an aspect of it that’s just a tiny bit insulated in your life to a really small degree but it’s enough to just keep you sort of preserved And when Chris was killed it just sort of exposed that It broke down my last little boundary of I’m I’m I’m okay here because I can do this because I’m gonna get through this I’m gonna go home and everything’s going to be okay Um and that hurt a lot That hurt in ways that I did not understand how it was going to hurt I just didn’t I I just didn’t know what that was going to be like And the the all those next steps And you I know you know this because you you saw it He’s on a helicopter and he’s gone flying away in that 46 in what feels like about a minute It’s hours an hour or even rehearse the the movement onto the the to carry him onto the but you go from Chris has said he’s on his way into watching the helicopter fly away and it feels like it takes about that long and then you’re just sort of left and you walk back you you literally walk away from the medical facility where the helicopter just takes off and you walk back 100 yards and you just go back to your room only Chris is gone and it’s like that whole deployment kind of re I don’t know what the right word is it’s like I had to start the deployment again because all the things that I was dealing with and all things that I was managing and leading as as the leader what you know whatever you want to say was my job It all just sort of changed in terms of what I thought really the guys that I was working with everything was different now because it was their brother that was gone not somebody else And it just sort of changed the calculus and it really redefined the rest of that deployment And I’ll be really really blunt It was hard for me to not fold And there was a lot of instinct of like I do not want to do this anymore I do not want to be here This is more than I had bargained for And this we can laugh about volunteering and being a Marine You know it was a little more than I bargained for And look man we had done some crazy stuff at that point And I’d seen some bad things happen I was a participant in some bad things And I was okay I was doing okay I was going to be okay with that and this one just sort of I just I struggled with it a little bit So it was a tough day man Yeah And obviously you know for for us it was you know what a month and a half later on August 2nd when when Mark got killed And you know I I think that’s one of the things that that we felt you know that little bit of insulation that you’re talking about We felt that we felt I would say I would say actually more insulated because you know my guys were out there taking massive risks getting in crazy gunfights getting after it to a degree that no one had ever thought they would And we were doing all right I think we had a couple guys get wounded here and there but they were okay And and honestly that guys getting wounded you know if it’s not a a a devastating wound I mean I had you know one of my guys got wounded early on and he he almost lost his leg but guess what? He didn’t And that that didn’t make us feel more vulnerable in my mind It made us feel stronger and like hey we might get wounded but we’re going to be good And so yeah when Mark got killed and especially Mark who was you know such a gregarious and such a guy so full of life that you don’t think he can be killed You don’t think he can be killed And same thing you know that insulation was just completely shattered And I think what was also it was it was recognizable It was recognizable to me was that other people outside of Task Bruiser they thought the same thing They thought “Hey the Seals are here They’re going to they’re they’re going to they’re going to push through this They’re going to they’re going to win and they’re nothing’s going to happen to them ” And we saw it you know at the memorial service You could see in guys faces that they were they were also their insulation about us was was kind of shattered too And then it turns into damn if the seals can get killed Where am I at? And I think that was another thing that that really you know that was another thing that really just made Mark getting killed such a such an impact to all of us there Dude there’s no doubt that what you just said is exactly how it played out You were the first guy to talk to me when when Chris’s helicopter flies away It’s it’s literally dusty and you know the helicopter’s loud and it kicks up dust there and it’s it was dark It was nighttime and you came up to me and I don’t remember the exact words but we were just turn around walking back and you said something like “We’re going to get after this guys and we’re going to go find the snipers that are doing this ” something to those words and it was basically like we’re going to take care of this And I remember feeling really comforted by that like yeah man Yeah go do that That’s awesome And feeling good about that That we weren’t helpless and we’re just going to suck it up and deal with this just this terrible loss that we’re going to get something from this We’re going to go find some guys and go get after it and we’re going to go kill these guys you and you guys and you guys were going to you guys were going to make that happen And I I remember feeling I remember how that felt And look June 20th to August 2nd just like everything else was a blur man It was like it was like the it might as well just been the next day cuz things happened so fast there And I was you know I wasn’t on the patrol uh on the on August 2nd but I was on the radio I was a guy running the air I was doing all the same stuff we always did that you know and I was back in the co with you u working that mission all that stuff that happened and before you know it we’re watching that helicopter fly away um you know or or he’s gone you know and you and you’re seeing the the the the aftermath of that and I actually went back last night to look at my journal entry for that day because I ended up running down to Charlie Met again because that’s where everybody came in and I remember seeing Leif there you know Leif was a guy I worked with a ton And there he is He’s got a wound I’m looking at it I’m over I’m standing over his right shoulder They’re cutting his shirt off They’re they’re they’re they’re attending to Leif who was Leif was a larger than life you know for a guy like me who always kind of felt a little bit like what the hell am I doing here man? What the hell am I doing with the seals? Like this is insane These guys are just they’re just larger than life And to see the exposure of of that it it it bothered me And I knew I had that feeling of holy cow if this can happen to these guys you know it can happen to any of us And it’s not a good feeling And when you saw the guys from the team who were it was just it was just everybody was scrambling and it was just that sense of and I don’t want to make it sound like there wasn’t a nobody’s panicking or freaking out It was not like that but it was just a tiny bit chaotic if that makes sense On a a small degree but enough when you were so used to just being completely not like that That feeling like like when Chris lost was that what I felt was like “Oh man I’m not really in control of any of this I am not in control all that stuff that I’ve told myself all that comfort and confidence and we’re getting better and I’m gonna be more effective and do more good work until this thing is over It was like no negative That could be you That could happen today And then it and between Chris and Mark the army suffered a whole God bless We were going to memorials like every couple of days People were getting killed all the time And every one of those eroded that that confidence a little bit And when it happened to to Mark and Leif that was hard to see that Um and it that was the feeling that I had I was like I’m Yeah maybe I’m just lucky you know? Maybe I maybe this whole thing is just luck Um now look we We regrouped I mean June 20th was a bad day you know We did all the things We did the memorial We paid our our we honored him the right way You guys came and we did it the right way and we acknowledged uh Chris Um but if you kind of think of what’s going on in Romani in the middle of June man there was no taking a knee There was no like let’s hold off for a second catch a breath The bullet chain was just running As a matter of fact it was just going to it was actually just going to get a ton worse So you remember July and August were just they were insane They were insane So we we lost Chris really at the big ramp up You know we had done a big movement in earlier in June and we were really starting to lay into the city but the real you know the crazy JB block you know that kind of stuff all that stuff was all out in front of us Um and so for me it was you know my entire career I’ve done a whole bunch of really great stuff in my career Nothing is even nothing is even it’s not even worth talking about what anything else in my career has meant compared to that deployment and then that day I mean it’s just light years different Um and it was like you got to get up and go do it the very next day And it’s a I remember going that first patrol that first mission and trying to that feeling of okay yeah it’s different And you got I think you’ve got one of two ways to go with that it’s either going to get inside your head and kind of mess with you and break you a little bit and and I could feel that happening or you just you just you just don’t you just shut it down and just go do it Um and I found how to compartmentalize You know I’d come back I’d have moments when I was back on my hooch up on the roof by myself I have my moments man I don’t want anybody to think that I didn’t Uh I had plenty of those moments As a matter of fact I I still do to be honest with you I still have my moments I go visit Chris at Arlington on his birthday I go visit Chris on the day he was killed I go to visit Chris Memorial Day His mom comes out I see cat She is and I are very close Um I have my moments without a doubt Um but the rest of the three months in Romani there was just not there wasn’t a ton of time to do that So I guess I kind of just saved it maybe uh for for when I came back And it it was there I mean it it’s not good But um yeah man So then you you do come back and I mean obviously like you said it ramped up It ramped up all the time and the guys were just you know everybody I’m not just talking about our guys I’m talking about everybody It ramped up hardcore It got hotter outside The the the combat got more intense The enemy started fighting harder They got more squared away And Like you said you and the rest of the guys there did the mission day after day night after night and then one day you fly home Yeah And how was that transition for you getting back to the States? Uh interesting It was an interesting transition So from the time that I left Ramani so we packed up our stuff we left Ramati I think we we went to Kuwait for a day or two Went to Lun went to Japan because I had to check out of both places Jack I think it was six days on the calendar from the day I left for the today to the day I landed on a plane in San Diego Um which at the time was all I wanted I was the and I’ve been fairly good about this throughout my career is when I want things to happen administratively I can make those things happen If I get if I catch wind that there’s a flight from Japan to San Diego and I can get on that flight I’m going to get on that flight Even if my co is yelling me like “How did you get out of here so fast?” Like “I have the thing in the paper I got to go and I’m out ” Um I wanted to get out quickly Uh so I found myself in San Diego executing my next orders which the Marine Corps had said you go to Romani you do the fac go to you do the factor you’re going to go back to San Diego from there which will be your your next set of orders So I I knew while I was in Iraq that San Diego was in my future My wife had already moved down there I told you uh she was living with my best friend Neil who was on that fact tour before me So I go in Romani his battalion comes home We show up My wife and my best friend are living together in San Diego uh which was really good for her because he was able to kind of in keep her aware of what’s going on but knew exactly how to explain it in a way that wasn’t gonna freak her out and he also to be honest with you knew how to downplay I would call hey we’re doing this no big deal I mean I didn’t I wasn’t telling them half of what the hell was going on we can’t you’re not going to share those stories so he was a really great resource for her I paid very little time worrying about it to be honest with you I was comfortable that that she had a good support structure um which she really didn’t we we got married uh I deployed 4 months later to Ramati She she started dating a dude who was driving a Corvette and living in Tahoe as a top gun instructor and four months after we got married I was in Romani So there was no like easing and so I knew there was just I didn’t know at the time I didn’t think of it but it was obvious looking back that she was just thrown into an environment that she was totally unprepared for Um now forget about just me being gone but just the fact that I was in Ramadi and it’s all over the news Everybody knew what’s going on I think one of my Marines has killed me A lot of crazy stuff going on And next thing you know I’m home September 28th I’m back in San Diego Like 365 days uh to the day I’m home And I checked into an F-18 squadron like the day after I got home Before October 1st I was back into an F-18 squadron in San Diego which is insane Um and I to be really blunt I was you know all those guys in Anglican went back to Anglico in Camp Leune in Camp uh Hansen in in Japan I was like later bros you know I no longer buy you know high five great deployment Uh you know I’m out I was just on to other things And I kind of extricated myself It’s you know I follow the rules I do what I was supposed to do and before I know it I’m back there And I honestly I think also kind of kidding myself like that was to be the best thing for me Let’s let’s get home I knew something was a a miss because on the drive home from the airport I fly into San Diego International just down the road My wife and my my mom who lives in San Diego both of them came to pick me up from the airport You’ve already met my mom great lady My wife and my mom pick me up from the airport I got pictures of them meeting me there get in the car drive from San Diego International to our house in Pacific Beach and as we’re pulling like onto Chel Sydney up to the house um I like screamed at them and told them to stop talking or something like that I said something like I don’t even I don’t know what it was but I I think I just remember sitting in the passenger seat and some the gears just start I’m in a truck or a car like whatever I don’t know what it was but something’s going on and I think just the pressure is building and I’m and I have no sense of what’s going on No outlet for it And they’re like having a perfectly normal adult conversation that might have been an octave above what I was willing to accept or tolerate maybe And I completely freaked out on my wife and my mom who I hadn’t seen in a year And you know they were like “Oh sorry ” You know they were super cool No push back And I was it was an indicator like yeah you you recognize that immediately You’re like oh god Yep Immediately And it was that combination recognition of that’s not good and clearly I have I have things I need to deal with that I wasn’t quite aware of So I I knew no question right away And I think you I think about this a lot with with other Marines and and the things you experience in combat You’ve talked about PTSD a lot Look that’s a subject you spend hours on And the bottom line is everybody deals with things differently It doesn’t mean you’re broken or messed It just you it just means you have some process you got to go through and you got to deal with it And we all deal with it differently I had maybe talked myself into I was 33 I was a fairly experienced guy I was surrounded by very young Marines who maybe in my mind didn’t have maybe the emotional uh maturity maybe the life skills to maybe manage some of these same chaotic things You know guys that saw Chris get shot you know I maybe kind of built myself up a little bit I was a little better equipped and I was better equipped in my mind and I was I I in a matter of 45 minutes from the airport to the house I’m flying off the handle on something So um it it just all it was man it was it was those two things like that’s not good and this is going to probably happen again I’m going to need to I’m going to need to think about this I can’t pretend like I’m not going to just have some sort of residual You can’t leave Ramani be in San Diego 6 days later and not bring some baggage home with you And I was bringing some baggage home Um and there is some baggage there a little bit Uh so that transition was was it started you know Is there anything that like anything that helped you? Yeah dude I’ll tell you what helped the most is my best friend who had been in Ramati and endured all of that loss The look our story you know the the guys that we replaced the guys that replaced us It’s a very similar story A lot they understand that you know I think having an outlet having one other dude it happened to be my best friend since we were 14 So it was you want to talk about just hitting the jackpot and being the best equipped to sort of just deal and power through it and and and accept what’s going on and and embrace it and all those things that go along with it I had an outlet man I had my best friend who knew I mean he knew every place we were I mean it wasn’t even like oh he was here and I It was the same place Yeah cuz Ramadi’s not that big It’s just not that big man And so we say uh I was on the corner of Sunset in Michigan He’s like “Yeah I’ve been there about 500 times ” Yeah Um and and he was struggling a little bit too You know again it’s all relative I mean we’re handled it relatively okay You know I’m going back to kind of dealing a normal life and but the moments when you get those little spikes and those is what kind of comes up and get you those little spikes those are unforeseen kind of reactions He could see that in me and I could see that in him And we actually been really were really good for each other when I see him kind of get a little shaky a little break like I’m not you know he’s not digging his environment a little bit or he’d see that in me you had that other person to kind of bring you back to helping you helping you deal with that Uh which was good The the flip side of that while it was really helpful for him to be there I think it was really tough on Whitney because she was not my outlet for that She kind of got cut out totally and I and I didn’t certainly not by design And I’m not like doing this calculation of I don’t want she just not I’m not going to use her as a resource you know for that And to be honest with you too there’s also a little part of she doesn’t know what the corner of Michigan sunset is like So totally man And I’ll I’ll be really candid You know I I think I would have been almost embarrassed is maybe not the right word but I I wasn’t I don’t know if I wanted her to see that part of it You know what I like “Hey babe check out this ridiculous v vulnerability that I have right now that I’m going to carry with me for god knows how long that’s going to come up out of nowhere and you’re going to have to just deal with it ” So there was a uh I think the thing that bothered me the most and was part of just kind of getting back to day-to-day life was it I would get when things didn’t go well when I had my moments my reaction was just I just get pissed off It was that feeling of so I’d have this like some event would happen something stupid would catch my attention and kind of heighten my you know my response and because it happened I’d be annoyed at myself that I let it that I let it bother me and then I’d be pissed off at myself because I let it bother me You know what I mean? Like this ridiculous cycle of I told you the story the other day Um my wife and I shoot I guarantee she remembers the story We’re walking across the street downtown No no by the beach I think And uh an auto body shop is running the the air drill to pull some tires off You know that that kind of sound and as we’re walking I think my left arm is over her her shoulder We’re walking like this I hear that sound and my first reaction is I push her down to the ground And in the time that it takes to do that and catch that it’s happening is maybe a third of a second You know what I mean? So I hear it I do the I I’m I’m reacting and pushing her to the ground I’m kind of getting on top of her to do look what to oh that’s the car it’s not a thing there’s no reason for you to do this is about a third of a second and what bothered me the most about it is that I did it not that I felt like that is that I re reacted to it and I was like embarrassed like what’s wrong with me to to go go through that and she’s like what the you know and I’m I it sounded like you know and kind of going through the whole thing and I think just the the the fact that I had responses pissed me off and I would just kind of honestly I have a temper about it And that was She got to see me just get pissed off at stuff for no real good reason which you never really get pissed off Like I mean I have tempers about just stuff that just I would get mad about stuff that just didn’t make sense I mean I have a temper about things that my computer pisses me off just like it pisses you off man That’s totally normal right? I would get I would have reactions to stuff that just there was no way for her to say “Oh that makes sense I understand ” It would just be this totally oddball Somebody would say something wrong Just it it would just trigger in ways that she would look at me and kind of be like “Who are you?” She knew all my flaws She knows everything right and wrong with me And all of a sudden now I’m doing all this other stuff You put another little thing in the mix I add that to the mix So I got my wife who we get married I leave I go on this deployment I come back I’m home for maybe seven months before I deploy again In that seven months you know welcome to marriage to Dave Burke you know that involves a year-long deployment seven months in Iraq You know God only knows what the hell I was you know I’m back to work So I’m back at a squadron as the exo you know working ridiculous exo hours in a fighter squadron prepping to go on a deployment I I voluntarily extend my time to make the deployment which is exactly what you should do at the beginning of your marriage is volunteer to extend on a deployment I got accepted into grad school I was going to go to Dartmouth I was getting out of the Marine Corps I was going to go to get my MBA and I remember the conversation of hey I’m going to extend they asked me to extend and you know explaining why I was going to do what I was going to do and she’s like why why would you do that and I said so I can deploy and you hear those words like god did I just say that to my wife like which is so I cannot be with you so I can be apart from you long so I can hang out with the boys and go do that you know what I mean so I cannot retire from the Marine or get out of the Marine Corp so I not do all these other things that I not set up this future that I told you all about and sold you on Totally So to say that my wife look and and everybody’s got those stories The laundry list of reasons why she should have just sort of cut bait and be like “No this is not happening ” is a lot longer than the list of reasons why she shouldn’t have And props we’re good We’re She’s here and my marriage with her Uh you know for all the ups and downs that goes along with everybody’s marriage the one thing I don’t worry about even even when we’re at our worst at our absolute worst which our worst is whatever it is we have our worst moments At our absolute worst I don’t have a shred I don’t have a brain cell of thought of I wonder if our marriage is going to survive this you know this throwdown we’re having over God knows what you know So we kind of went through the fire there and she she got forged Yeah Big time She’s a stud Uh she deserves mad props for going through that cuz I’m not really sure why she did to be honest with you She’s a You know what? I don’t I can’t I can’t come up with any good reasons either She had a lot of options on the table I’m not sure Uh yeah So it was that transition was tough man So now you’re in another squadron You go on deployment again which is another What are you doing on that deployment? Just more So I’m back in an F-18 squadron I’m the EXO and the OPO Actually did both jobs on this deployment We just go to Japan It’s a Westpack So Western Pacific We’re back in Wauni and uh and Okinawa just doing exercise and training that kind of stuff Get done with that And so now maybe it’s time to uh get out of the Marine Corps Before I left on that deployment I had told my commander the the group commander and the squadron commander hey this is it for me I’m hanging it up It’s been awesome I happily to extend for this deployment that they needed me to go on It was great experience I got to train a bunch of young guys Life was good But they knew before I left that I was going to be out of the Marine Corps at the end of that I deferred at Dartmouth for a year paid my non-refundable deposit which I’ve never gotten back It wasn’t That’s why they call it non-refundable That’s right Absolutely There my point is I wasn’t kicking around the idea of getting out I was in full execution We had looked at houses like we were in execution This was merely a detour to get to that end state And when I’m due back from that deployment in January I think it is of the following year And um it it turns out that the Marine Corps wants to uh send a guy to go fly F-22s for the with the Air Force for three years And they’re accepting applications for uh the F22 Raptor exchange which had never been happened before never happened since It was a one-time thing And the guy the guy that they picked you know was going to go to non-deploying in Nellis and fly the F22 Raptor Should probably apply I guess just seems like a reasonable thing to do cuz if they say no then yeah I’ll just go get my MBA It’s all good Um and lo and behold uh at the end of December I get the word that I got picked up for this Raptor exchange Um and I you know I remember calling Whitney like “Hey babe ” And it’s like “Totally totally She knows what’s up ” And I did the standard Dave Burke oversell Hey no deploying we’re going to go to you know it’s all here’s all the goodness There’s no downside you know and she’s like “Shut up ” You know she’s and she was good with it you know It was it was it was just another one of those things like “I can’t say no to this This is just something that doesn’t happen You just don’t get to Nobody gets to fly the F22 in the Marine Corps cuz the Marine doesn’t fly F22s ” Same thing I said when I flew F16s and Top Gun and all this sort of stuff So it was just another thing that I just couldn’t believe was happening And I couldn’t leave the Marine Corps saying I walked away from that I just couldn’t And she was totally on board and came home and didn’t get back my non-refundable deposit and uh moved to Vegas and started flying the F22 Raptor Three years up there and then at some point that rolled into the Oh yeah And that rolls into the F-35 at some point So I I’m flying F-22s Um how many people were flying the F22 at this point? So we probably had I knew at the time what number I was I think I might have been in the hund something you know we had two squadrons that were stood up and you know and it was starting to pick up the pace It was early 2008 So the the Raptor was just starting to get its legs underneath it It was started building more and it was starting to become a thing And the Marine Corps had this idea that they’re going to they’re going to build this new stealth airplane called the F-35 and they’re going to get it And they wanted somebody to go to the Air Force to learn all the airplanes are really similar They said “Go steal all their experience and all the pain that they’ve gone through to to stand up this thing and then you’re going to bring it back to the Marine Corps ” So the deal with this F22 gig was it was really high probability I was going to go right from the F22 to the F35 and command the first operational squadron And lo and behold man that’s exactly what happened We went to Tindle We lived in Tindle for 3 months when I went through training and that was awesome We’re living on the beach in in Florida uh for 3 months I get trained in the Raptor We move out to Vegas Um lived there for three plus years Started a family Two my first two kids were born in Las Vegas We’re we’re killing it man I mean it was awesome And as I’m getting ready to leave Vegas I get selected to command the first operational There was a guy there before They didn’t have airplanes They had a guy there was another CO before me But I was going to go out there and accept and start flying the first F-35s of the Marine Corps I show up and this poor guy was selected to do the same thing you know two years prior Great dude But he you know we had stayed in touch and I we’re always in contact and helping him stand up with everything And and I get there Jaco I’m there I think two days and the first airplane showed up I’m like what’s the what’s the big deal? He he spent two years didn’t see a single airplane working setting up all this paperwork grinding doing all this administrative stuff to prep He gets no airplanes You show up two days later Boom Dude the amount of work that him and his guys went through to stand up the squadron and I literally showed up to work and the next day the first airplane landed Yeah that’s my new nickname for you Like this really isn’t that hard man What’s the big deal? And and I did a turnover and he left and started flying up 35s Um and you know that’s a whole part of my career We could spend hours on that but I flew the Raptor which was an amazing airplane and I flew the F-35 which was this amazing airplane and I and I got to totally be relevant in aviation I had sort of exhausted I did all the things I wanted to do in a Hornet I I loved that airplane I did Top Gun I kind of had reached all the things And we talked about this too When when you leave Top Gun you’re never going to be that good ever again So it’s just a matter of how slow you can make the process of getting worse It’s just how can you slow it down to be as good as you can knowing that you will never be as good as you were there because you’re just you’re never going to get the reps again ever You’re just never going to get it And so it’s just a matter of kind of slowing down that process And at some point in your mind like I don’t want to be in this business if I’m not at the top of my game When I flew the F22 I didn’t have a job I didn’t I wasn’t I wasn’t the opso of a squadron which is what I should have been show I just showed up and flew the plane had some leadership responsibility in in the organization Show up grab the keys from someone take it out on a spin run it into the ground write a little report and be like bring it back hand the keys back to the maintenance guys and yeah hey this thing is broken Give me another one Um it was good deal It was awesome Yeah So I did that Uh totally great for for my marriage my I was able to combine all these professional interests with great which you don’t get to do in the Marine Corps when there’s a war going on You just don’t get to do that And here I am And dude I had I I had no more friends in the Marine Corps man Nobody liked me They’re all doing backto backto back deployments and airplanes are breaking and I’m I’m living in Vegas flying the Raptor All my bros were like “We’re done with you man We got nothing for you ” So you know I was just I almost felt guilty I did not feel guilty but I almost did Almost did Uh and then I go out to we we moved to Dest Florida you know or or Fort Walton Beach You know we lived in Nightsville in this awesome house and this great community and I was the first pilot to ever fly the F35B operationally in the world Like ridiculous I did that for like two and a half years and it was awesome And then you What brought you up to DC? Um so what brought me up to DC? I was I was so sure that I was going to leave the Marine Corps after that command tour of the F-35 that I reapplied to Dartmouth got back in again got accepted Did you have to give him another deposit? Um no I was I was smart enough not to pay the deposit because there’s a tiny little possibility that wasn’t going to work out Anyway I did get into Dartmouth again and was like “Babe I’m going to go to get my NBA I’ve always wanted to get my MBA ” And um I got selected uh for an academic fellowship where I basically got to go to grad school for a year I went to so they sent me to Johns Hopkins University to get my masters and I basically went to DC I was a civilian for a year and between those two things was another terrible deal Like can the Marine Corps like to pay you to go be a full-time student at Johns Hopkins which which they did Um so we moved up to DC and I went to Johns Hopkins and got my masters And then the next thing they offered you was to go back and Yeah So from there the the the payback of that good deal was to go to the Pentagon which was totally reasonable thing I’d post command I’d been to school You know I certainly couldn’t complain about how tough my life was in the Marine Corps since you know the last eight years or whatever it was Uh and I just went basically did a desk job in the Pentagon Uh and I worked for in the Joint Staff and the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff just working some project It wasn’t all that exciting It was I learned a bunch but it was just kind of a kind of a med job I was you know very 9 to5 strict hours don’t take work home no Blackberry no real responsibility pretty chill life Life was pretty good Um I selected I picked up Colonel while I was there Um the end of 2015 I was selected for colonel And uh in the summer of 2016 I selected for command again as a colonel this time to command an F-35 squadron Um but I didn’t want to do that I don’t know how this is going to come across to the people listening and what a terrible deal it was the Marine Corps as to be a colonel and go fly 35s again And I’m not I’m not I don’t want this to come across that I was complaining but what I the one thing that I in all those great deals and dude they were great deals the thing that I was missing the most was that I always kind of felt like I had one foot in and one foot out They were these non-deploying jobs The Air Force exchange Um the the F-35 job was kind of standing up a squadron We weren’t prepping for anything And I loved it but I could feel sort of underneath the surface like a lack of investment I could tell I just wasn’t I I didn’t have to be 100% pot committed because there was no we’re going to go to deploy or we’re going to go to the there was no thing that was going to happen and I think one of the healthiest things about being in the Marine Corps is you’re always prepping for something Yeah So even in the crappy stuff you don’t want to do you know hey we got to do this because the end state is this and I was missing that and it sort of over time started to erode a little bit that I just I was catching myself I don’t know a little slack in the line to be honest with you To be really blunt I didn’t have to bring my agame every day I just didn’t I could do the things that I was doing certainly in an airplane because there was just an element that there was no outcome to what I was preparing for And I started to kind of find other interests like school became really interesting to me I did that And so I I continued my education in Johns Hopkins and started working towards my MBA because I needed something or wanted something else And once you kind of catch in your mind that the Marine Corps and what they’re asking you to do I was going to go back to a training squadron I wanted to go to be an operational commander with operational units that are prep preparing to go something I wasn’t going to get to do that I was going to go back to a training environment I caught myself losing the thing that was the most passionate about the Marine Corps and seeing as more of like okay three years here this will get me to this retirement and this amount of money and it was just starting to become a little too professional and not enough a passion And I don’t mean to say I was going to needed to feel like a 21-year-old again I you don’t need to recreate it like that but my wife actually sat me down We were talking and she just kind of looked at me She’s like “Dude you’re not going to be happy doing this ” It was really clear to her I think even more clear than it was for me It’s hard to come across as ungrateful but I I could I was not going to be good at that job because there was something that was missing It was something that I didn’t there was nothing that I about it that it made me feel passionate about doing it So no joke man Last year August I basically told her I declined command I declined promotion and I put him for retirement all the same day And that was a big move man was a big move that created a little splash out there in the world of the Marine Corps Maybe uh it was it didn’t it surprised everybody but my wife obviously she was totally got it and I knew it was the right thing and my closest buddies I mean I talked to my bros my tight my bros those guys understood but yeah it was a big move um and I was turning down what by whole by all rights was a really good great deal another great deal no doubt about it but and then at some point you show up at a different kind of event in Virginia with Leif and and I working with a company for our company Echelon Front We’re doing a leadership training for a company and you decided going to come down and check it out Leif said “Come on down and check this out See what you think of this ” Yeah So Leif had talked to me a couple years ago when I was leaving that F-35 drop before I went up to DC and he’s like “Hey man Jo and I are doing this thing It’s going to be awesome Um we’d love to you know talk to you about it ” I’m like “Hey man I’m I’m all in on this other gig I’m going to school I’m going to the Marine Corps We stayed in touch I mean Leif was a buddy I mean it was a guy that that I appreciated you the times that we reconnected here and there and I certainly appreciated the call but it just really wasn’t in the calculate I wasn’t really I wasn’t there So when I told him like “Hey man I dropped my letter Uh I’m getting out ” Um and like I said Leif isn’t always the easiest guy to get a hold of right away to talk sometimes He’s he’s got a lot on his plate He’s a busy guy And he text he texted me back right then I’m on the bus leaving the Pentagon He’s like “Hey do you have time to talk right now?” Like “Yeah I do ” So he calls me and we talk for I mean probably a solid 45 minutes to an hour and he’s like “Hey Jock and I are going to be up in Vienna here in a couple weeks Why don’t you come out for the day?” I’m like “Okay right on ” And he and he gave me you know I look I was following you guys I knew was going on I was seeing what you’re doing Things were blowing up I was certainly bragging on my my buddies Leif and Jaco to anybody that would listen to me about it Um and I watched you you know you and Leif give this uh presentation up there in Vienna to this group and um dude you were uh it was awesome man You were the smile on your face when we you know we got done and that first day and we sat down with you you were in big time You’re like I am in I want to do this This is a you were you were pumped and and I think that was you know and then and then actually we did I brought you up and we did an event with another company Yeah And that you’re now involved with for a long term and and even then you know cuz then cuz then for us you know I I wanted to see what you were going to do and see how you were going to do it And man I was like I don’t know you gave your first two paragraphs of talking you know your first two minutes of of explaining something I was like okay cool I’m good And I was you know just everything that we talk about all the time you know that’s in the book and hearing you describe things from the book but with your view on it and your angle and it’s it’s it’s refreshing to me And also I’m just I’m I’m even learning right? So I’m hearing a different angle And like I talk about with with everything like we just talked about with with flying at Top Gun or like it is in jiu-jitsu or like it is in the battlefield the more different angles you can see something from the better you’re going to get at it And so here I am listening to you going “Oh there’s another angle Yep here we go “ So that was awesome And it was also the first time you know with JP same thing You know I I I listened to JP It was like the first time JP came with me and he was just uh sitting in the back like what you did the first time He was sitting in the back and and I said “Hey man come come up you know when when I do this Q&A answer some questions And you know I’m thinking hey if something goes sideways I’ll just be able to cover for him No big deal You know somebody asked a question and and JP kind of gives me a look like hey I’ll answer this And I was like okay you know go ahead and I’ll just cover for you He just just gives an awesome answer I’m like okay I’ll sit down now And it’s the same thing with you I was like you know you’re thinking okay where’s he going to go with this? This is a tough question or whatever And boom here you go You know fire for effect you know and and both those two events happened really close together for me and for for me it was and I actually called Leif I think it was the next day or it might have been that evening and I said hey Leif you know we’re good to go like we are not going to have to do all of this ourselves because Dave and JP can do this they get it they can they can do it and which was you know everybody in their own I don’t want to think it’s arrogance But it’s it’s just you don’t see it And so you kind of think how is and you know what it’s like when you’re in command of something That’s one of the really hard things to do is let go You know and Leif’s talked about this all the time You know when I’d be watching him roll out on out the gate for his first mission I’d done all kinds of missions like that And here he’s going out on his first one that he’s in charge of And you’re thinking man I should just go I want to go I want to go And and then you know two hours he comes back and you’re like high five And then then you go cool I don’t have to be the guy that goes every time And so when when I saw you when I saw JP and I was like this is awesome and I called Leif and said we are going to be good to go other guys they can do this they can bring the same message they can bring the same passion and power and knowledge and that was very very you know refreshing to me and bottom line is the experiences are the same I mean they’re not exactly the same but the the experience in Romani is the same And then the experience that we had throughout our military career and now you get to see what it’s like interacting with businesses and you see all those similarities So that was a that was a big day And so in case I haven’t made this clear yet Dave now is with us part of the Echelon Front team and doing what we do helping businesses with their leadership in their companies So it’s awesome It’s awesome having you on It’s huge for me I told you I left you know I left the Marine Corps I’m like I there’s something missing and I can’t I can’t stay in Marine because there’s something missing Well you leave the Marine Corps like how in the hell am I going to recreate that thing that I I’m looking for Not in the military That’s all I know is that’s the place And that was my biggest con my biggest fear was I’m just going to go like go to work you know and go do some thing that so I was worried like I got to find something And that’s part of the reason why that first gig with you guys in the back was like “Holy cow man You’ve you’ve got to be kidding me It’s all those things you just discussed All those things I spent my whole life living and breathing and learning and and then it’s with people like Lean Junko from we’re we’re going to do this together Yeah So good deal Dave Are you kidding me? Yeah dude I I wasn’t on monster com searching for employment opportunities Dave called me He said “Come to Vienna ” I’m like “Yeah okay ” My head was a million miles away man I’m just working through paperwork to drop my letter out to leave the Marine Corps like very hastily with no no plan B There was no I’m leaving to do this You can ask Winnie Like there was zero conversation about what I’m going to do And I came back from that I’m like have a seat Here’s the plan And it dude it was instantaneous for me It was instantaneous And then to be able to share that message and believe it and have all those feelings and in in a totally different way and to work with you guys Yeah And it’s cool too because you get that kind of uh for you Top Gun for me working in the training command where it’s like like what I already talked about You you have this experience and when I was getting out I was saying what am I going to do with this thing? what am I going to do with it? I got all this knowledge and I thought okay well I guess I’ll put it in a cruise box over here lock it up and it’ll it’ll it’ll fade away and turn into dust But when you realize that you can take what you learned and you can you can apply it to all these you know civilian civilians and civilian companies it’s it’s a pretty it’s a pretty damn good feeling to to have and to be out go out and do it on a regular basis And one of the best things about it is you get to see the improvement you get to see teams and again it’s kind of like when you show up and you see the leadership issues you’re having it’s like you’re seeing you you know what the future is you know how to fix it and you just go this is going to be fun and you get to see these people grow and learn and and improve and get better and if they’re already good you get to see them become awesome if they’re not doing great you get to see them improve their position and then move in that direction so it’s definitely rewarding from that aspect and I know you’ve already seen that yeah without a doubt and it you know the book and and the lessons and you talked you know the title of the book is how US Navy Seals lead and win you know I’m top my life is what I learned mil from Top Gun in the Marine Corps it just so happens like we said it’s exactly the same I have my own long list of my personal experiences with those things but I was telling you the other day like the concepts it’s identical and so there’s no like big leap in my mind like how am I going to get there from how I’m going to embrace this it’s oh yeah oh my god that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last 23 years Only my story is this this and this and this is my view of that So uh again man it was just it was so easy to just see it and go this is this is legit I am I’m all I want in I want in right now Like hey slow down Like no 100% I don’t want I don’t want to go look for like this is still still happening right? And yeah it’s happening So trying not to over sell it a little bit but it was I was all in uh 5 minutes into day one Yeah it’s been been awesome so far And speaking of Echelonfront if you want to have us come work with your company or with your team or whatever you can you can email info@ echelonfront com If you want us to speak for an event don’t contact the speakers bureau Contact info@chelonfront com You’ll find us there Um also we have the muster coming up Speaking of Echelon Front the muster number 002 It’s going to be in New York City By the way Dave will be there He’s going to do a little presentation cuz you know what? He’s going to do a presentation He’s going to You going to do about the Udaloop? I can a lot of questions about the udaloop He’s going to do a present He’s going to do a presentation about the Udaloop It’s going to be 14 hours Uh no he’s going to talk you know he’s going to talk about his um his perspective on a lot of this stuff and and Udaloop A lot of times people ask me about the UDLoop because I do talk about it and I’ve I said a few you know a month ago or something somebody asked me about it I said you know what I’m going to I’m going to bring you a professional a professional with that specific information So Dave will be talking obviously Leif is going to be there JP’s going to be there clearly as well JP is gonna be doing a little presentation as well from his perspective on some things Echo Charles you know Echo Charles is going to be there Will he be doing a presentation? I don’t know Time will tell I don’t know what he would present on Maybe just present on you know we could bring all the intensity and we could do a presentation on cruising Yep Balance things out a little bit back to throw a little balance into that dichotomy right there And yeah so muster May 4th and 5th New York City Marriott Grand Marquee It’s an event about leadership It’s tools for luc leadership It’s about understanding understanding leadership and getting those reps in and hearing all the different angles That’s what makes you good at it Of course it’s live Of course there’s no backstage There’s no diva green room that we’ll be hiding in saying “Bring me some green M&M’s for my next set ” No that’s not happening We won’t be hiding It’s going to be all of us together We’ll be learning be becoming better leaders We will see you there Now as far as this podcast goes Echo Charles maybe you could present us at this time with some information on if anybody does want to support this podcast how they could do it Yeah small presentation Yeah small presentation Who is that with the green M&M’s? That thing you said with the green that was somebody right? David Lee Roth It’s David Lee Roth And I actually know the story behind this There’s a reason why he did that They would have a it’s called a I forget what it’s called but when you go to somewhere oh it’s called a rider right so you get a contract and the contract comes with a rider and says this is the things that we need right so what David Lee Roth from Van Halen would do is he would say hey I want you know seven bowls of M&M’s with no brown M&M’s in them or green or whatever I think it was brown but he’d say no brown M&M’s and this sounds like a ridiculous request right I And who would who would possibly want that? Blah blah blah Well David Lee Roth did it for a reason Why do you think he did it? Can you guess? No Can you guess? Because check it out Think of how simple this is He’s doing a concert one night He’s doing a concert two nights later to concert three nights after that So he’s on the road hitting these concert venues and there’s all this stuff that has to be set up and all the stuff that lights and sound and soundboards and special effects and ramps and all this stuff’s got to be set up and it’s got to be set up right when he would show up if the seven bowls of M&M’s were laid out and there’s no brown M&M’s in them he wouldn’t have to go and inspect everything because he knew that they were paying attention And if he got there and it wasn’t that way he knew that these people had an issue with attention to detail And so now he had to be go and scrutinize and make sure everything was in place the way it was supposed to be Little lesson learned from David Lee Roth So it was like a little test Yeah little test Little test the M&M’s test Interesting And and by the way that story that I just told that may be 100% urban myth right? But I I No I heard it from somebody I I thought I think it’s true I’m sure somebody I’m sure our listeners will tell us where that can be referenced Yeah for some reason I thought I thought it was somebody else and that’s just how they were or they’re OCD or something like that I don’t know But either way um hey you’re so you think about like um the reason you were such a important asset given your skill set as a um forward air controller that’s what it’s called is because essentially you have all this expertise while you’re in the air and you can bring all that brain and eyes to the ground Yeah That’s why you’re better than your Yeah I mean in Absolutely I didn’t really pick up on that till kind of later I was like “Dang that’s pretty advanced ” If you think about any any aspect I mean it’s like if you That’s why in the corner of a mixed martial arts match often times they’ll be a striking coach they’ll be a jiu-jitsu coach and they’ll be a wrestling coach You know they’ll have those specific guys in there and sometimes they’ll bring a specific guy in to corner like like Dean Dean has been brought in to corner guys that are going against a specific jiu-jitsu person because they want to get a little bit of that expertise Same fundamental concept here Hey when we started this podcast I needed somebody that knew how to press record Boom See same thing Identical Identical All those years of pressing record and then stop and then record again Boom Yeah So I’m kind of like good deal echo in a way You know it’s same thing I’m doing the same thing as Dave really when it comes down to it Speaking of doing good things So that was a big like breath Like you better say something right now Actually I’m not going to say a lot Yeah You know last one I felt like I really went deep into the krill oil analogy the nightclub omega-3s Oh don’t do that again please For the love of God I feel like the me that was a good that was a good analogy That was a perfect analogy Sounds excellent In fact it was so good I wouldn’t touch it again That’s what I’m saying That’s exactly what I’m saying You know that this too much of a good thing anyway if you don’t know what krill oil is It’s little like what? Shrimp things Baby shrimp You extract the the the oil and it’s it’s good for your joints The um omega-3s in there they’re good for your joints Anyway in regards to supplementation which I’m down for now by the way I’m a supplement person Not all supplements just the key ones joint uh maintenance whatnot Anyway get them from Onit That’s the best ones Everyone knows that factually So if you want a 10% discount on that go to onet com I want to talk about the sodium in the water situation I got a feeling we’re just going to hear it over here Yeah So so while Dave and I are talking through the podcast are you just over here just dreaming up just where you’re going with this? No When you say Echo how can you support? I’m thinking dang you Dave’s been controlling all this stuff and going to Top Gun You’ve been doing your stuff and I’m watching like sodium in the lake videos You ever you ever watch those? You’re doing what you have to doing what I’m doing Yeah Yeah So That’s a um anyway the more I watch those the better analogy I realize it is you know with the Amazon clickthrough thing So people want to support this podcast in an easy way Click through the website chocolodcast com There’s a little support tab Click on it Do your Amazon shopping Some people are smart when they do this They’re clever they figured out which I me I think I mentioned or I know I mentioned it a long time ago but what they do is they click on it then they save that URL into their bookmarks some people like that yeah like just says Amazon so on my on my bookmarks bar it just says Amazon and that’s what I did I’m not even smart and I did that yeah man that’s a smart thing to do good way to support you yeah good way to support before you do your Amazon shopping click through there and uh you know that’s It’s a really solid solid way to support uh small action with a clickth through big reaction big support There it is Also subscribe to YouTube if you’re in the videos you like the video version of this podcast or little excerpts that I’ll put on there if you don’t want to watch necessarily the whole podcast at any given moment Little excerpt you can take uh some value from that Also sharable Sharable Yeah Yeah You don’t want to share with your buddy hey I heard you got this situation going on Just watch this 2 hour and 48 minute podcast and it’ll make No people don’t have that kind of patience No unfortunately the time the time legitimate time It’s before they’re going to work that day You know they can listen to four or five minutes not they’re like man I I got this guy that’s really you know treating me bad at work What should I do? Cool This is what you do Ignore and outperform next Exactly Yeah As opposed to hey listen to this you know episode number you know whatever it is Two hours It’s 19 hours long Yeah Can’t do it It’s not do It’s not realistic Also Joo has a store It’s called Joo Store Uh we got a new design That’s all I’m going to say about it Um so yeah go there Joostore com Um that’s a you know a new You mean a new shirt? New t-shirt New t-shirt Yeah a new t-shirt is out at this time It is currently Yeah Dang This was kind of like a people should get after it This was like a crowd I wouldn’t consider it crowdsourced idea but you know how crowd demanded Yeah You know I was like “Hey that you put this on the shirt put this on a shirt Makes sense Makes sense ” So I kind of extrapolated all the ideas that I thought were good masked them over the ideas that I heard from you you thought were good and boom there it is New design uh currently legit Yeah Jotore com Anyway there there some cool stuff good for uh there’s stuff for women and rash cards There’s stuff for rash cards No I that was the interruption of thought So like rash cards We have the new More Alpha Brainy after this one Yeah No no it’s okay Good You know how you think of like five things at once and they’re all like jocking to see which ones are going to come through? Yeah That’s what happened right there The the the rash guard uh thought came in and won Anyway I think I’m going to put a new rash guard one um design out as well But anyway rash guards if you want 19% improvement in performance All aspects of performance All Yeah that’s mental physical emotional as well Double blind tested by the way Yeah I think like quadruple blind Yeah And not blind tested All that stuff psychological warfare If you’re having weakness in maintaining unmitigated daily discipline in all things listen to psychological warfare Yeah I I got I just got interviewed the other day and it was a the guy you know he set me up with this question you know hey what do you do when you’re you’re in a situation where you’ve got you know you want to go to the gym or you’re you’re supposed to do some hard task for work or you’re some trying to do something to improve yourself and you just you know the the the mindset comes in where you just you just don’t want to do it You know what should you think people should do then? Yeah And I said do it anyway right? And then it was all quiet because he thinks I’m going to give this big explanation but there’s no big explanation The explanation is “Oh this stuff is hard ” Yeah I can’t make that thing easier for you I cannot make 20 rep squats any easier for you I can’t do it They’re going to be hard In fact they’re going to suck And I can’t make nothing I can do is going to make it easier for you You know what you have to do? Just do it anyways Yeah It’s kind of like I I told this to Jade that exact situation or that thing that you just said where it’s even if you don’t feel like doing it you still want to do it and all this stuff So but your body is like “Oh it’s kind of running on auto like okay compared to like a video camera right where you put the settings on auto and it’ll it’ll adjust with how it’s feeling and that’s how it’s going to handle any situation and the light kind of goes down it kind of adjusts how it feels you know that to deal with this situation So if you’re running on auto and you don’t feel like dealing headon with this workout these squats you’re going to maneuver around it just kind of automatically No you got to turn it to manual and be like I don’t care if they’re hard squats easy squats what I feel I’m going to do them This is what we’re doing Yes Exactly So it’s like a manual mind control Yeah Just control your own mind We’ve talked about that before Don’t do it all like the automat cuz your body wants to rest Really it wants to rest Weak Your body wants to rest every single day Actually you got to turn it from auto to manual And you can get information like this in Psychological Warfare on iTunes The artist’s name Joo Is Joo Willink The artist name I never thought that I would be I thought you had to paint something or sculpt something to be an artist Yeah I thought that I think it’s But now I I put something on iTunes then they just know you’re an artist now Yeah to deny that I’m going to say they’re they’re really stretching the words on that But yeah man If you’re you know if you’re slipping on the diet waking up in the morning and you want to hit snooze maybe postpone the workout and you want how should I say like a spot to switch the dial from automatic to manual that’s what it is So search psychological warfare on iTunes Jaco Willink and get after it It’s a war on weakness Yeah big time You know when you’re clicking through Amazon by the way you can get Jaco white tea there on Amazon And you know when you get it I’m just going to say this When you get it you will see And I’m going to give you one word just to kind of what what to anticipate Just just think about this deadlift That’s what you’re gonna be That’s what’s going to come to come to mind with the jock of white tea and it’s going to be going up a lot So and that’s by the way again quadruple blind double tested that you’re going to bring your you know minimum what’s the lightest I think the minimum that you’re going to get deadlifting is 8 000 8 000 lbs So get on that You can also pre-order Weigh the Warrior kit It comes out May 2nd By the way it just came out on iTunes as one of the most anticipated books of the spring Oh dang It got listed right? How How do you imagine that? Right It’s kids book Now all of a sudden we’re talking most anticipated book of the spring which means people are waiting for it and they’ve ordered it So if you want it order it now Now I’m going to tell you there are some people that are not looking forward to this book coming out They are not anticipating You know who those people are? Bullies Oh yeah Bullies aren’t looking forward to it I’ll tell you who else isn’t looking forward to this coming out Donut makers People that make donuts They know the gig is up Weakness You know weakness is like a creature Like a weak creature Like a thing He’s not looking forward to this book coming out cuz all those things are going down All those things are trembling Make those things tremble harder Order Weigh the warrior kid for your kid for your neighbor’s kid and for yourself You will dig it Also discipline equals freedom The field manual It’s coming out October 17th I know it seems like a long time away but I’m telling you you should pre-order it now Why? Because when you pre-order it you will then know that it is coming Interesting And when you know it is coming you will begin to prepare for it mentally and physically for this book to arrive on your doorstep You want to be ready mentally and physically because when you get this book you will have to do certain things Namely get after it Yeah that one Extreme Ownership Of course the book you can get it right now You don’t have to wait at all Not just for you but for your team your spouse your boss your babysitter your mother-in-law You know she needs a copy of that She needs it It takes ownership So grab her a copy Just be gentle with it You don’t have to throw it at her but maybe just you know place it on her desk so she can read it Because the more people you get in the game and start taking ownership of things the better your life’s going to be straight up Now if that isn’t enough of us you can find us active on the interwebs Twitter Instagram and if you want to look at that Facebook we going to be there as well Dave is at David Burke Echo is echo Charles and I am at Joo Willink Echo Charles any closing words? Uh I feel like we should talk about the movie Top Gun a little bit right? No Actually one one question One qu You know how like when you watch Top Gun right? Of course Maverick that’s your guy Or Goose that’s your guy Did you like Ice Man? Cuz he was pretty dope You know what I’m talking about right? I do Absolutely Who doesn’t like Ice Man? Boom See? Absolutely There it is Yep Simple as that That’s your one question Profound question Yeah Or did you ever buzz the tower? You know what I’m saying? That never happened Is that fake? Is that like you can’t really do that? You can’t really do that Well you could do it You could be in a ton of trouble As they say you can do anything once You can do that once And then what? You’re out You’re out But not if you’re maverick You know what I’m saying? Right on Awesome Dave man obviously thanks a ton for coming on You got any uh you got any closing remarks? And I’m sure we’ll do this again and when you listen to this you’ll think of a bunch of stuff that we should have said on this one but anything else you want to wrap up with for today? Yeah man First thanks This was awesome Uh I’ve been thinking about this for a couple weeks now We’ve been talking about it I was super fired up to be here and this was this was awesome Um you know we were talking about it just briefly uh and I mentioned it You know my my wife obviously I talked about the things that they went through So my wife and my mom you those are my family Those are folks that have endured to whatever degree that when you’re removed I think when you’re on deployment you do this stuff it’s hard But it’s actually in some ways harder for the people that you leave behind because they don’t know what’s going on They’re just waiting and wondering and dealing with it and they’re kind of holding their breath I remember a story that Whitney told me when I was deployed I didn’t think about any of this stuff Um a buddy of Neils had come to the house he was gone and uh he couldn’t get in the house and he he was knocking on the window which was by the front of the house and kind of ringing the doorbell and it was late at night like not a time that somebody should be at the door and she didn’t want to answer the door and she was telling me and the stuff you don’t think about that stuff until you get back and hear the stories cuz you don’t really think about what your family’s going through because you’re busy and you’re doing your thing and she talked about the thing that she hated the most was people knocking on the door because she was always just sort a tiny bit paranoid that it was going to be somebody coming to tell her about me You know Chris’s mom Kathy Leon who’s someone I I don’t even have the words to describe how much I I love her and admire her And it’s not just about her loss She obviously she had to answer that call You know she had to take that call On June 20th 2006 she she took that phone call But that woman has endured the loss of a Marine who sacrificed herself on behalf of the entire country And my relationship the irony of all this is that I would not I would not have a relationship with Kathy if Chris wasn’t killed And I would give anything to take that day back and bring him home I would trade any of it But the goodness that comes out of that there’s always there is always some goodness if you look for it hard enough that comes out of all this stuff and and the loss and the things that you sacrifice And I know Kathy certainly is listening and and I never anticipated having a relationship with with someone like that based on those circumstances but my relationship with her is really important Uh and what she has done for the country is really important And if you look hard enough in the worst situations you find something that’s good And my relationship with her is really good And I would really it would be wrong for me to go through this whole podcast and talking about all those things without acknowledging uh that goodness with her So I wanted to mention that Well Dave obviously thanks for thanks for coming on I know we’ve been talking about this for a while and it’s great to have you on and thanks for sharing your story with us The story of you a marine a fighter pilot a forward air controller but also a son a brother a father a person And yeah thanks for sharing the story of Corporal Chris Leon a Marine no doubt a hero without question But let us remember let us always remember that these men these men we call warriors these men we call soldiers these men we call Marines these men we call heroes Let us never forget that they’re people sons and daughters and husbands and wives and brothers and sisters And let us not forget that they’re they’re not only courageous and vigilant and bold and aggressive and inspiring but they’re also funny and outrageous and flawed like any of us and that they’re loving and loved and that they’re people People who left behind people and those that are left behind never forget like Chris Leon’s mom Kathy Leon who wrote a note on his memorial page back in 2008 And she said “Hi baby Another difficult day to face without you here I never thought that Memorial Day would be in memory of you my dear sweet beautiful son It’s been 1 year 11 months and 5 days so close to two years that I cannot bear the thought We honor you by flying the flag every day and we will place your American heroes tribute banner for all to see tomorrow Of course we will cry more tears and maybe find a smile or laugh as we remember your deep voice great smile joking sense of humor and the love you showed to us Our hearts are forever empty and broken without you Miss you so much and love you more All our love mom and dad Remember remember Major Henry Lrod Remember Corporal Christopher Leon Remember those like them who have fallen Remember them as warriors Remember them as heroes But always always remember them as people remember them And until next time this is Dave and Ekko and Joo out
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